(AGToO) Dawn

[Vincent]

Kaze : Through the foggy window of his passenger seat, the Awakened sees them. One after another, a host of cars speeds though the night, slashing the veil with their back-lit trails before being swallowed whole by the darkness of the city. The rain keeps pouring incessant.

Alastor : The Arrow is almost sure that the spatial distortion is a powerful ward. Whether its purpose is to safeguard whatever lies inside, or worse, to protect the outside world, the Arrow cannot say without studying any potential ban embedded in it.
Without a Sympathetic Tap he can't pinpoint the exact moment the sympathetic threads are lit, but his Advanced Sight and his Correspondence spell are enough to fill the gaps in his knowledge. He imagines what he'd see, like a regular heart-beat the barrier pulsates along a tangled web of sympathetic threads being shot outwards into every direction. Among the webbed maze, he can spot the large intimate link between the Hierarch and the content of the canvas bag, another intimate thread links Shodan to his laptop and the Hierarch's USB-stick. The rest of those countless smaller tendrils of various intensities extends itself for an immeasurable length into the horizon of the city, falling out of view amid the downpour. The Arrow's command of Space is considerable, his sight can part the shroud of water unlike none of his peers inside the car, but he can't follow them for more than a couple dozen of yards, for he too has to succumb to the limits of the Lie.

Shodan : They're not far from the most upscale part of downtown. He's heard about this particular gallery, a former industrial space converted into a trendy loft, one of those places where the cultured elite goes to hobnob and sip their Martinis sheltered inside a rib cage of glass and steel.
District 3 of the Sacramento Police Department lies nearby. Luckily, the Libertine remembers* there's an underground parking garage a handful of blocks away from their destination.
*Google Maps, really.

Campanella : The die is cast. It's time to move.

[Kaze]

Kaze keeps silent a moment, waiting for either Councillor Campanella or First Talon Alastor to clarify the priorities for him and Shodan as to protecting the data versus rushing in together if it looked like something had gone amiss. At least both he and Shodan could move invisibly in necessary to try to do both at the same time.

[Campanella]

Campanella half turns in his seat, then pauses on the cusp of speaking. He withdraws his half formed words with a contemplative gesture.

"I had not thought of that," he confessed.

Looking around, perhaps a little too hopefully: "Anyone skilled in the Mind Arcanum? I understand telepathy and such workings fall under the Mind's purview?"

Back to Shodan: "I was hoping you could stake out near the gallery. However, I shall leave it at your discretion. I would rather not alert any faction - potential enemies or the Sleeper authorities - to our presence; so if you feel that parking openly or driving around the block is too dangerous... You go where you are safe. If a crisis does occur, perhaps Alastor might be able to create an escape for us."

He risked a look at Alastor.

To avoid further embarrassment, the Moros collected the whisky in its presentation box.

"How about you drop us here. We can walk the rest of the way. And it will give you an opportunity to take a look around the block."

Internally, Campanella was kicking himself. He had been locked in his Sanctum for too long!

[Vincent]

Shodan's first attempt fails, a scrupulous sysadmin might have patched the most common exploits. His second attempt however works like a charm and he levers a known protocol vulnerability to spoof the unusually strong signal coming off the WiFi network. So strong to register on a Read Matrices spell actually. Surprisingly the system is protected by a weak encryption, anyway, he cracks it.

It takes almost 2 minutes for the command prompt of the camera's embedded OS to appear. Then all of a sudden, the cameras reboot, filling his screen with the silvery live feeds of 5 different CCTV wireless linked devices. Odd. The entrance, a side exit, a large lobby, a deposit on the rear of the building and a camera facing directly an internal industrial elevator. It's a proper deluge outside, so even with the night vision motion sensors they're equipped, the external cameras provide limited visibility.
The cameras inside however show a scene of eerie tranquility. It's dark and silence reigns supreme among the various pieces of artwork that populate the lobby. The dusty deposit is no different. The elevator however is on the ground floor, its doors are open. Other than that, everything is normal.

Rolls

Shodan:
Wits + Investigation + Equip bonus - 3, and your sniffer will record a few kilobytes of inbound traffic right before the re-flush followed by the 2 minute downtime.

Since you scored an exceptional success earlier, you're allowed to substitute your hacking skills (int+comp etc) for the normal larceny roll that would otherwise be required to disable the physical-electronic layer of countermeasures that make up the alarm network throughout the gallery.
Two successes will grant you $$admin privileges.

The car slides against the wet concrete, a screech of brakes and it halts to a crawl. The Magi are several hundred yards away from the Gallery, it would be a relaxing walk if not for the heavy rain that will no doubt drench their clothes. Those with enough mastery of Forces [Read Matrices up] can see the electric fluctuations blowing through the underground power lines, burning through the LEDs of the street lighting system. The storm has effectively caused a partial blackout. [-3 to Perception checks while outside, doesn't apply to those with advanced spatial vision spells, trained observer, combat awareness and similar spells/merits]

What will you do?

[Vincent]

Somewhere in the night a man breathed a sigh of relief. Time to celebrate 4-20, he deserved it.