PISCES Campaign - WONDER WALL - Session Three (After-Action Report)

Operation Roster (linked to After-Action Reports):

+ Ronald "Al" Frost - previously AFO with the Met's Diplomatic Protection Service
+ Chloe Thornes - ex-MI6 case officer with overseas experience in Russia
+ George Crackanthorpe - old-hand MI6 secondee
+ Holly Walker - a PISCES shrink and professional skeptic
+ Simon Spencer - millennial bad-boy computer hacker given another chance at life

WONDER WALL: SESSION THREE

"Forget it. This stinks. The whole operation stinks. And I'm gonna find out why..."

Leaving Hatton Garden Police Station, officers Frost, Thornes and a bandaged-handed Spencer pondered what they should do next. The had more than enough clues to go around - the dead shoot-out suspects and its injured survivor (still in ICU), the Kacey woman, the blue stone - but nothing they felt was concrete just yet. Phoning Control, Frost gave a brief and deliberately imprecise run-down on what they'd learned and informed his superiors the team would join up with their colleagues in Team Wenseclas and help with their "rat problem."

At the same time Crackanthorpe and Walker were having their own desires for aid. Drenched by rain, standing in a graveyard full of names, lost out of time, they sneaked out as swiftly as possible. Again they patched their wounds back in their car, Crackanthorpe applying bandages to his blood-soaked belly and switching to a spare shirt. Walker called the other team, requesting they meet up at Brixton Police Station to assist, as Crackanthorpe started the car and headed for an unannounced meeting with Det. Sgt. Styles...

PISCES Campaign - WONDER WALL - Session Two (After-Action Report)

Operation Roster (linked to After-Action Reports):

+ Ronald "Al" Frost - previously AFO with the Met's Diplomatic Protection Service
+ Chloe Thornes - ex-MI6 case officer with overseas experience in Russia
+ George Crackanthorpe - old-hand MI6 secondee
+ Holly Walker - a PISCES shrink and professional skeptic
+ Simon Spencer - millennial bad-boy computer hacker given another chance at life

WONDER WALL: SESSION TWO

"From mice to men
And then to rats
But only snakes behave like that..."

Last time we left the PISCES lads and ladettes, Team Wenceslas (Officers Walker and Crackanthorpe) had set up a surveillance post in one of the abandoned flats at the top of the Wyndham Court estate. Hoping to catch a snifter of Old Scratch's existence beyond second-hand stories, they tossed their bedrolls on the dirty, beer-can-and-tin-foil strewn floor and readied for the long haul.

Night falls, electric lights come on. Across the estate people return home to the warmth of their apartments. A bored Crackanthorpe saunters outside to poke his head around the estate after dark. He takes the stairs down to the fifth floor walkway, and as he rounds the corner spots one of those greasy "rat-prints" on a flat window. Inside, the sound of a TV buzzes.

Then something fat and heavy ran across his foot. A black rat. Behind him - tired of waiting, having come down to find him - Walker watched the creature rush past her.

Ahead on the balcony, the electric lights flickered out one by one. A solid darkness advanced...

Swallowing the two PISCES agents in impenetrable gloom.

PISCES Campaign - WONDER WALL - Session Two Prep

NEWS AND PUBLIC SOURCE INFO

BNC 24: Police are appealing for anyone with footage of the gun-battle and car-chase in central London yesterday to come forward. The incident, which left a tourist and two alleged attackers dead, saw Waterloo Station and surrounding roads closed. Four men, including two police officers, are being treated in hospital for injuries.

Star News: At a presser this evening, Commander Harry Singh of London Counter-terrorism Command stated that the Strand shoot-out was not a "terror incident" but organized crime, with investigations remaining under the Metropolitan Police's Organized Crime Division. Information on those killed and injured will be released at "an appropriate time, when families have been informed" he added.

The Daily Crucible: English police forces' heavy-handed tactics in breaking up "rave culture" are damaging public trust, say community figures. Last month's dispersal of crowds at an illegal rave in Essex, which left six officers injured and led to the arrest of thirty-four people, has come under scrutiny following evidence that officers failed to present noise abatement writs to the rave's organizers prior to sending in riot police.

London Mail: Three boats carrying 43 migrants were caught in the English Channel yesterday, bringing this month's tally to more than 500. Numbers have surged since the bulldozing of the "Amazon" refugee camp outside Calais, a popular congregating site for those looking to escape to Britain. While Minister for Immigration Jason Woolpit-Coates has vowed to dismantle the organized smuggling gangs that prey on such individuals, the London Mail can report none of those who made it to the UK in the last year have yet been deported...

WATERCOOLER TALK

Gary in D-Section says the chiefs are in a flap over yesterday's debacle - and our friends in SIS have been on the phone, shouting all night. Everyone involved, and I mean everyone who breathed the same air, is being called to the carpet for a 2pm debrief and wall-to-wall bollocking. Do NOT be late.

Rumor from the armorers is pistols will be signed-out on a "will permit" basis. Still no license-to-kill with it though, so unless you found a 00 designation in your cornflakes this morning, weigh your options before taking it up. You pays your money, you takes your chances, as my old man used to say.

Our lad in the Met says someone's pushing hard - really hard - to make sure this doesn't get marked as a terror incident. According to them, Organized Crime's been told to back off too, which means someone's running interference. As to why, who knows? You didn't hear it from me, mind.

PISCES Campaign - WONDER WALL - Session One (After-Action Report)

Operation Roster (linked to After-Action Reports):

+ Ronald "Al" Frost - previously AFO with the Met's Diplomatic Protection Service
+ Chloe Thornes - ex-MI6 case officer with overseas experience in Russia
+ George Crackanthorpe - old-hand MI6 secondee
+ Holly Walker - a PISCES shrink and professional skeptic
+ Simon Spencer - millennial bad-boy computer hacker given another chance at life

WONDER WALL: SESSION ONE

A drab gray day in London. From the 23rd floor of the Severn Aerospace Building it was hard to tell if the Thames reflected the gunbolt hue of the sky or vice-versa. Sipping coffee, doodling on notepads, chit-chatting about the Gunners, the officers waited for today's Control - a middle-aged, tweed-jacketed type with a personality far too hip for his years - to brief them. "The Gods have spoken," he said. "The Sorting Hat chosen its candidates." He pinned photographs and papers to the whiteboard on the wall. Two issues had come up requiring the Section's involvement...

Team Shadwell: Heathrow Airport flagged Chuck Hauser (or rather his passport, AKA Milton Waters), an American citizen, entering the country via Schiphol, Amsterdam. He's booked into the Strand Hotel near Covent Garden. The Gods want him surveilled. No reasons given.

Team Wenceslas: One of PISCES' prognosticators dreamed a dream of doom. Onto the board goes his child-like etching of a ziggurat and stick-figures, drowning in a river of blood, overlooked by the lidless eye of the moon. The actuaries often send in their nightmares, scrawled in crayon; like Nostradamus they think they have meaning.

Sometimes - as in this case - they do.