I'm not sure where this'll put people on things, but we've got at least one major collab post just about wrapped up. The major lag I caused got fixed by me not lagging it. Like a car deciding to move on a busy one-lane street after twenty-four hours. The part we're gonna get out soon is the stealth team finishing up and starting toward the Bridge. So if we had to cut off, admittedly this would be the time. Otherwise the group would have another collab to crank out (albeit, the plan was to keep it shorter), and I'm not sure how up to it people are.

I don't have a problem with this mission, and I think the people that did just didn't have plans on something to do (after the mission's intro: everyone that didn't involve the stealth team's side or the safecrackers) or got sick of the lack of activity. The mission itself was fantastic, since it had an interesting way of getting to the goal and a distinct setting.
That said, we [i]still[/i] would have to get people involved, and that would easily just drag things out without momentum. 

The biggest thing I'd say is in favor of the timeskip is that the newbies have been waiting a long-ass time to get in the team. The amount of time they're supposed to wait in the lobby for team-dom expired a while ago.
If you could do a big event that automatically engenders reactions/engagement from everyone, that might work, though. E.g. The premature ending to the Shadow Broker storyline, where everyone got jumped and murdered/seriously injured and lost everything.

At this point, I'm just gonna let others decide. And if no one responds, I think that's a pretty good sign of which way to go. :P I enjoy this mission, but I'm not going to fight against cutting it short.

EDIT: Yeah, the Mark thing's a little tricky. We could do a short retro collab if Volt/Grif are cool with it to get him some early establishment and participation points.