It will rain again tomorrow (RP)

"Of course!" says Benji. "It must be important to you and I’m sure Lizabeth won’t mind. As much as she likes collecting things, she never hesitates to give them away when the opportunity arises to find them a new home."

- Benji -

This is all very surprising to the three women, especially the parts about Lizabeth not minding them being here and, even more so, that she is happy to give away her things. This is not the sort of behaviour they were expecting, so they clearly don't know Lizabeth at all.

"Your friend has ... collected ... " Amira uses your word as though feeling the texture of it and nodding with aproval. "... Something she should not have. Now bad people are after her, people whose attention you don't want."

Amira looks around the clutter of stuff in the living room —much of it created by their search— and you can see her doubt about the value of what is here. "Where does she keep the good stuff?" She asks. "We have intelligence that she is to be released this morning, and she does not want 'them' coming looking for her once she is out of police custody. If we have ... the stuff ...?" There is a definite questioning element to 'stuff', as though Amira does not know what 'it' is. "... they will leave her alone... maybe." The last word was added begrudgingly, she does not want to lie to you even though her companions look surprised by this concession.

• It is unlikely, but does Lizabeth have a 'secret stash' of 'the good stuff'? If so, would you show it to them?

What do you do?

"But won’t they come after you then? These ‘bad people’?" asks Benji.

Regarding ‘the good stuff’, he looks around at the mess and shrugs. "I mean… it’s all good stuff to Lizabeth. She doesn’t really arrange things by monetary value, if that’s what you mean. It would probably help if I had some idea what you were looking for."

- Benji -

"They are welcome to try." Amira scoffs with obvious confidence that those who pose a threat to someone like Lizabeth don't concern her. Clearly she feels she has protections that Lizbeth does not.

"You don't know?" She asks, sharing a surprised look with her sisters (not necessarily literal 'sisters').

"Um... We don't know either." She admits after a moment of hesitation. "We were hoping we would recognise it when we found it."

What do you do?

- Mark -

Josephine's phone is still dead, but you got a reply from one of her friends on one of the school groups that she was at school. It is not an ideal situation, but kids these days seem to have their own way of communicating.

"Yeah. I was." Jena says, slightly defensively. "But I don't mind cutting it short."

She looks at your phone (or is it a real camera?), puzzled, and asks. "Is something wrong with your lens?" All the pictures are either blobs of fuzz or blank.

"What are you trying to photograph?" She asks, looking around and not seeing anything your were especially focused (if you will excuse the word) on. Taking her phone from her bag she tries photographing the same place you did and is surprised to find her's also don't come out. Turning and photographing up towards Temple Place everything works, but down towards the water there are blank spots [eg] and down on the riverside road nothing comes out.

This is a public place, you can't have thought it would be so easy as to wander down here and snap some picks, else Stephano would have done so himself.

What do you do?

- Mark -

"You don't think it's radiation?!" Jena asks, taking a step back and immediately realising the foolishness of her exclamation and action.

You recall that Stephano would have settled for satellite footage and checking your phone's various maps apps you find that this area only has default 'map' data and not 'satellite imagery either. Seeing how Stefano is an accomplished model maker, you might find it strange that he has not just come down here and modeled it on-location, maybe whatever is preventing the camera and satellites, and caused general people not to notice the issue, also, somehow, prevents him from doing that, or even thinking of doing that. He did not mention having tried.

What do you do?

- Rhiannon -

You arrive at the 'safe' house where you left Charles yesterday (was it really only yesterday, it seems like a lot has happened in that short time), and expect to be buzzed in but no one answers the intercom. There is a complicated, manual procedure that you have to go through to let yourself in, but you remember the codes and tricks.

Inside you would expect to hear Charles' classical music played on the gramophone (though more often than not it is classic-rock that he insists is 'still classical music'), but all you hear is the hiss and click of the end of a vinyl that has not returned to start properly.

Something is very wrong here.

What do you do?

"If you don’t mind my asking, why are you looking for this thing if you don’t even know what it is?"

- Benji -

"Because others want it." Amira says. It is not within her idiom —and probably not yours either— but it definitely sounds like her sentence should have ended with 'duh'. She is surprised that this is not obvious to you: if someone wants a thing that gives it power, therefore others want that power and want that thing, therefore more people want it... and so it goes in an never-ending ouroboros of self-perpetuating power-plays.

From what you heard, Lizabeth had only just found 'the thing' earlier that night, and probably had it in her possession when she was arrested, and nothing of her stuff from before had caused such a stir. It is unlikely that there is anything here that would actually interest these power-players, but they don't know that.

What do you do?

- Mark -

"Intriguing!" Jena exclaims. "I never noticed that before. I am sure I must have tried taking photos here." (She uses her phone for such things all the time). "It seems to be more concentrated towards the river." She speculates.

"I wonder if it is also happening on the other side?" She points her phone at the far bank, zooms, and shoots a few shots. At first it looks like they are all fine, but then more study shows a similar shimmer over there, but only right by the water, the buildings are all in the shot. More study shows another strange effect: any boats on the river are clearly evident in the photos, but the water is lacking in detail, you can only see this when the wake of a boat should disturb the featureless surface but does not.

"It is worse down that way." Jena says, pointing east. She sound excited by the new puzzle you have presented to her.

What do you do?

"Well, that’s not a very good reason at all," says Benji, annoyed on Lizabeth’s behalf that her home has been ransacked and the people who did it don’t even seem to know why. "I suppose I could ask Lizabeth about all this once she’s been released. Do you have a phone number or address I could reach you at?"

- Benji -

The short sister scoffs at your naivety, but Amira silences her with a gesture.

Amira is watching you, puzzled, but you seem genuine in your offer, right? She gives you an email address, if you know anything about these things you might recognise it as a disposable, auto-created, possibly-once-off address.

What do you do?

"Oh, this is—I don’t really do computers," Benji says, frowning at the email address Amira jotted down like it’s some kind of indecipherable riddle. "You don’t have a telephone? Or a… a house, maybe? I could send a letter." He smiles, innocently.

- Mark -

As you head down Victoria Embankment, along the river, the distortions and interference become become more pronounced. A few blocks down from the station you come to what appears on a map to be a large, undifferentiated green section [map] but in person is less green and has more detail that does not show up.

Photographs of this area become less and less detailed, until the last one that has anything in it looks like this street view. After that point, going east towards Blackfriars', nothing comes out. After the green section, ending around Temple Avenue, things start to improve, and, by the time you get to Blackfriar's Bridge, they are back to normal.

Away from the river things improve, too. But Middle Temple Lane defies being imaged, and you even feel a strange reluctance to enter the lane from the north, going down towards the river (street view).

What do you do?