Eureka
January 2, 2073
SAN FRANCISCO, California -- Federal authorities seized control of several properties owned by Senator Yasuji Shimada. These actions occurred in the wake of yesterday's attempted assassination of President Charles Ellison. Shimada is being held at an undisclosed location in San Francisco and is expected to be held without bail until a trail is arranged. If convicted, he would face a life sentence at Alcatraz, the only prison facility currently equipped to handle both mentally unstable prisoners and magicians.
The CFS Congress is currently on recess but will resume in a few days. The Speaker of the House, a member of the Green Party, has announced that if convicted a vote would be brought up to expel Senator Shimada from the chamber. If such an action were to take place, a special election would be held to replace him. Technocratic Party leaders are expected to support the Speaker's plan, with some Technocrats even calling for an early expulsion.
January 12, 2073
Anastasia lowered her pistol and looked at the bullseye in the distance. A report soon populated her augmented reality, indicating 11 out of 12 shots hit the bullseye directly. "Damnit," she muttered under her breath. Three days straight with imperfect results; masterful by most standards, but not by hers. Her thoughts were interrupted by the faint thud, followed by the primary lighting in the F.A.T.E. shooting range going out. Emergency lighting was followed by the wail of the fire alarm. Again in her augmented reality, a warning popped up:
- ***WARNING*** Fire Alarm - Laboratory 3
This wasn't a drill--Dmitri usually kept them up-to-date on the "unannounced" government-mandated fire drills. Pistol in hand, she bolted from the shooting range, down a long corridor to the main F.A.T.E. lobby, where Doc and Eric coincidentally joined her from another direction. The three ran down the science wing of the floor where they heard commotion from the end of the hall. Dr. Yau emerged from Laboratory 3, his face and lab coat tinged with soot and ash. A plume of smoke followed him out of the room and obscured any visibility into it.
"I've got it, I've got it!" he yelled triumphantly down the hall at the trio approaching.
"What's going on?" Ana responded, her tone urgent. She had to speak loudly to be heard over the fire alarm and the sound of fire extinguishers in the other room.
"I got the device to work!" he explained.
"Is that a good thing?" Ana quirked an eyebrow. Doc and Eric already entered Lab 3 to make sure everyone was O.K.
"Ana, listen to me. This thing, this device," he began to explain, but Ana stopped him. The doctor was typically aloof and she tried not to let it bother her. "One second Yau, let's get this fire out first."
In only a few short moments, the fire alarm was suspended and the main lighting was restored. As things died down, she turned back to Dr. Yau. "What were you saying?"
"This device... it's not what I thought it was. It's not a mana battery. Well, it is, in a way, but that's not its primary purpose."
"Go on," she said. At this point Doc and Eric were at either side, listening as well.
Yau began to dive into extremely detailed engineering and mathematical speak that went well over the head of the three F.A.T.E. agents. Admittedly, Anastasia had not read any of Yau's books or studies on Thaumaturgy, so everything he was saying went in one cyberear and out the other. "...... by taking these compounds and combining them with an infusion of mana you get a Mana Bomb," he explained. "Think of it like a nuclear bomb on the astral plane, making everything in a certain radius a void. It would certainly kill or severely damage all life in a certain radius if detonated properly."
"Did you just detonate one?" Eric asked.
"Sort of... I was working on one of the dual-natured mechanisms you obtained from the Golden Gate Bridge and I managed to set off the detonator. Good thing it wasn't hooked up to any high concentrations of mana, which I presume is what those large batteries are for."
J.P. Redman and all of his top agents sat around the meeting room. Dr. Yau was answering the barrage of questions from J.P. Redman and the agents. "The detonation mechanism was rather crude, but it has given me some new ideas on how to solve some of the mathematical conjectures I presented years ago. Shiawase appears to have stumbled upon a solution without realizing it, or perhaps they have," the last part of his statement he said with some concern; he was reminiscing about a conversation he held over New Year's with some Shiawase employees. "At any rate, they're essentially manufacturing a new, untested weapon at the Drakes Bay facility. It needs to be stopped."
J.P. responded. "I agree. It appears we've stumbled upon this in very early stages of its development. If we can shut it down now, perhaps we can set them back months, even years, in their development. There are still some things we need to take care of before we can act against the facility. I'll get CIA working to collect data on Shiawase and the Drakes Bay facility, see if they can turn up anything useful. Dr. Yau, I want you and everyone else in this room to be thinking about how Dr. Tonogawa of Shiawase can help us. I know he's an old classmate of yours and he owes us a favor, I'd say. We need to bring that facility to the ground and make it look like an accident. We also need to destroy any research data they have been collecting there. We'll only have one shot at it, and it won't be easy."
The group nodded in agreement. Dr. Yau spoke up again, "You know, the night you disabled those devices on the Golden Gate Bridge might have been a real test of the device's capability. You may have saved thousands of lives by disarming them." Dr. Yau was almost certain this was true, as the cells used to store the mana were not capable of storing it for any significant amount of time.
SAN FRANCISCO, California -- San Francisco's largest post office was evacuated today after a fire alarm was triggered. Fire and EMS services were quick to the scene. Some employees reported smelling smoke through the ventilation system and two were taken to a hospital as a precaution. Authorities stated that the alarm was triggered after a heating unit malfunctioned and caught fire in the basement level.