It's raining in London... again (RP)

"Sure, sure." Stefano readily agrees. "We can take a look in a bit. But first, I have something to show you." He says to Benji. "You will like this!"

If you allow him, Stefano leads you (anyone who wants to follow, but probably Benji and Jacob) through an old door off to the side of his office and down some unused corridors to a back-room. He has set up an elaborate model train diorama of the nearby part of the London Underground, the streets cut out with plexiglas where needed —it seems his hobbies vie close to his work-life— and points proudly at a new-looking part of the landscape, recently painted.

"I finished that last night." He says. "But I am still needing to model the trees over there." He looks, with some avarice, at fancy clothes and smart demeanors of Benji's friends. He knows that Benji has contacts with all sorts, and hopes to get something out of this meeting.

"There are no cameras overlooking that part." He says with glee. "So no one has modeled it.

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours." He says, joke-suggestively. "There must be some way to get images? Satellites? Drones? I don't know."

What do you do?

"Oh, wow! This is marvellous!" says Benji, genuinely delighted. He crouches down to admire the model at eye-level, fascinated by all the little details. He isn’t actually all that interested in the train aspect — he likes the station because he likes people, not trains— but he loves art, especially art made purely for one’s own satisfaction. "I don’t know about drones or anything like that but I could probably get you some photos. I mean, I could just follow the tracks, right?"

"I don't know about these done things either." Stefano admits. "But my niece's kid plays around with them up in Sheffield.

"Detailed photos would help. But I have not been able to get past the wall." He indicates where on his model the detail stop at a building wall that borders the railway line.

What do you do?

Curious, Benji takes a closer look at the miniaturized tunnel between Piccadilly Circus and Green Park. The level of detail is very impressive – Stefano even included the abandoned Edwardian parts of the station that Benji uses as his Haven – so Benji wonders if Stefano’s model might provide some clue as to why the hellhound was wandering around that section of the track.

- Benji -

Stefano sees you scrutinising that section of track and smiles. "You guys hunting 'The Dog'?" He asks. "You won't find it on any of the tapes, 'g'unters have been looking for years... since way back when there actually were 'tapes'.

"People say I should add a little version of 'The Dog' to my model, but I want it to be real, and there is no evidence of 'The Dog' ever existing. Even if there were more worker reports last month."

What do you do?

"I thought maybe it might be guarding something," explains Benji. "A hatch or a maintenance door or something." He frowns at the tiny tunnel, frustrated.

"We’re not really looking for the Dog, anyway. We’re looking for a group of men who got off the first train this morning. They’re the one’s who did this to my head." He gestures to his bandaged head. "We want to know where they got on. Also, Jacob wants to know if you have video of Parliament Square, I think."

- Benji -

"Well we can't be having that!" Stefano exclaims. "Hitting people in the head. Not on my trains!" He is relieved to hear the incident did not happen in his station —he had no report of a fight— and is curious about the details, but does not press for more than you are willing to give.

"Parliament Square? Not sure I can help you with that. I don't have direct access to those feeds from here, and Westminster's street-side cameras are wide-angle so they only have the blurriest view of the square across the road." He shrugs resignedly. "D'you think these thugs of yours got on there?"

What do you do?

- Mark -

"Well, thank you, sir." Stefano says, reveling in the acknowledgment of his craftsmanship.

"Me? No. I've not seen it." Stefano concedes. "And I am not saying I believe the stories. But I am open minded." This sounds a lot like 'approved official position' language. "But there are all sorts of stories. Bound to be with something as old and complex as the railway, no?"

When you ask him 'where' he confirms what you have already heard. "The Dog? All along the Piccadilly line, but mostly between here and Hyde Park." (Hyde Park Corner is one stop further down the line from Green Park, to the west.)

What do you do?

Benji shakes his head in answer to Stefano’s question. "They were on the Piccadilly Line. They could have gotten on at Green Park maybe or perhaps further along the line."

- Benji -

"Easy enough." Stefano agrees. "Let's check."

He leads you back to his office and logs onto his computer. It takes him a minute to find and log into the camera control software —he is not overly proficient with computers— and then he has to scrub back and forth through the footage till he finds the first train in this morning. After a while of swapping between individual cameras —this machine can't do all of them at once like the security people's ones can, he apologises— you see your group step off the train.

"That them?" Stefano asks, noting down the carriage they were on.

He then has to remote-logon to a different system to view the cameras in the train. These are fuzzy and glitchy, and cut out regularly, but you find your demons, standing right by the doors and getting some irritated looks from the other passengers.

"Let's rewind this to Green Park." Stafano suggest, to see if they boarded there. He overshoots, adjusts his sitting position and stops to press his back with a grimace, but then drags your view back to Green Park departure. The demons are not there. It takes a while of looking around on the footage of the carriage to confirm they are not in there as it leave the station.

"Strange." Stefano says, dragging the footage forward a few minutes. There they are, standing passively by the door, he drags it backwards and there is a glitch, after (or before) which they just are not there. All the other passengers are there, but not your demons. Dragging forward again there is that glitch, but you see the passengers that were nearest doors have moved, some of them look puzzled, but that is overwritten by irritation at the 'queue barging'.

It is like the demons just appeared on the train mid-journey. "Do they have tickets?" Stefano demands indignantly.

What do you do?

- Jacob -

"Sure." Stefano says, indicating the top right of the screen where the carriage- and camera ids are displayed alongside the date and time.

"It will overnight at South Harrow." He says and is immediately keen to show you on his model in the other room. "But that is a secure facility. They won't let you in to look at the trains. 'Terrorists' and all that jazz. I probably also need to report that there was strange access and goings on... but I wouldn't know what to tell BTP." (BTP is the British Transport Police, and they really get unhappy if people go poking around the tracks without them, not only is it a security risk, but there is danger from moving stock overnight and the third rail would be live at those times posing a threat of imminent death to anyone unwary (or unaware).)

It has also been many hours, and there have been hundreds of people through that carriage since 5 this morning.

• Did the 'disappearing demon' leave any portal signs you could look for? Would they persist? There is nothing of the sort visible on the camera.

What do you do?