[color=lightgreen][center][h3][i][b]Day 2: 06:10:21
Somewhere in Novy Jork
Capital Province,
Republic of Polavia
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Daylight.  The sight of it rouses Upswing from his state of relaxation.  How long is it going to take them to get here?  There isn’t much of anywhere else the train could be going; they’ve passed all the switches.  Unless the damned thing threw it in reverse somewhere along the way, they should be arriving now.  There’s nowhere else they ought to be.

Then again, it’s often hard to pin down where a Reactor operator goes, mostly because they’ve a habit of ending up places no man ought to be, period.

Upswing’s perch is inside of a large public housing building about a quarter of a mile from the factory, unfinished by the time of the Old Regime’s collapse and separated from the railroad by a decaying chain-link fence.  From what he’s heard, it could have been done ten years ago were it not for the expenditure of a frankly embarrassing portion of the public fund on a Novy Jork monument to communism that ended up blown up in the revolution anyway.  Fuckin’ waste, all of it.  At least squatters—and Upswing, though he might well be one of them—get good use out of this place.

Polavian Standard.  He can see the sign from the third-floor flat he’s chosen.  What the bloody hell are these people doing going to a vodka bottler?

It’s no matter to him.  He lifts a thermos of soup to his lips and drinks while he watches the place go.  Tracksuits and old uniforms; he prefers the former.  At least gopniks know what they are.

“Rowan Morgana, ‘ye dumb broad, where ‘ye be?” he mutters under his breath.

[color=red][i]Look alive, Upswing.[/i][/color]

The train’s come in.  It screeches past, old brakes wailing in protest as the inexorable mass comes to a slow stop.  He watches as the gopniks in the parking lot start, begin to converge on the train.  He watches one of them talking with the engineer; another seems to be threatening the factory’s foreman.  In the midst of it all, he sees movement he can’t identify off-rip.  Someone’s flitting between the concrete pillars; someone’s sneaking about.  He laughs a little.  Unless the universe just gained a fucking massive sense of humor, Upswing just scored big.

Quickly, quietly, he stoops down and retrieves a long, slender rifle from its resting place against the wall, its muzzle ending in an insectile silencer.  He clears the chamber just in case, gives it a cursory look, then snaps a mag into the well and carefully draws back the bolt until he hears that sacred click.  One in the hole.  One gloved hand gently pushes up the window screen until he’s free to poke the barrel out.

He’s watching now through the scope of his rifle, one hand shielding the lens from the sunlight to keep the glare down.  At the same time, with a thought and a rather crude-looking hand signal, the dark of the abandoned apartment seems to wrap around him until he’s barely visible, the only hint of his existence the barest black circle of a suppressor’s end.

“Come ‘ye forth, ‘ye chemical witch,” he taunts, “let me see what Kalan gave ‘ye.”