Counsel / Council (Attn: all)

[mnemosyne]

"Alex is an apprentice."  Sera answers Pen's question, "He's an orphan and he's always seemed pretty straight-laced to me.  His magick isn't strong enough to break reality.  I can't imagine that he's a prime target for the Order.  Ever.  Kidnapping him and holding him - "

Flat-mouthed, here.  Something sharp and angry cuts through the scrim of her exhaustion.  Her small hands are fisted and there is something something something -

Dan cuts in.  "The way we see it, there are two ways we get Alex back.  One is go get in there somehow and take him back.  The other is to get them to give him back, and hell, maybe to think it was their idea to give him back all along.  If we have to do it the first way, it sounds like everyone here is willing to do whatever is necessary to make it happen.  

"But if the second path is viable, it seems like it's the safest for everyone here, and especially for Alex.  Hell, if they let him go, there's no reason he couldn't resume his own goddamned life and job.  Now, I don't know much about the internal workings of the Technocratic Union, but I watched a helluva lot of the original X-files, so I am pretty convinced I have some idea about how shitty, controlling bureaucracies work.  If we, somehow, get the less militant faction to frame this  Agent Weston as a crazy Fox Mulder type, kidnapping innocent fucking apprentices who are suspected of nothing more than being wrong-place wrong-time wrong-day, maybe they can force his release."

Dan takes a deep breath: inhales through the nose.  Exhales the same way.  These little gears turning as he marshals his thoughts.    

"We've got what, two - " a glance at Sera, " - maybe three ways back to them.  That guy who contacted Will last summer.  This - entity? -  who's been in contact with Kalen.  Which, I'm not sure I really understand?  And Pen's idea, which I think Sera has the magick to pull off if no one else does."

"Grace, I think it's fair to conclude that Ginger is compromised, but they don't know that we know.  Maybe you start putting your hacking skills and magick to work by making it seem as if we are still using it.  If they've cracked our code and we know they've cracked it, we can use Ginger to feed them false info, or false leads, or hell, just string them along until we really need to feed them something.  I'm also thinking that maybe you could do something with any compromised phone numbers: some kind of rote spell to replicate pre-compromise use.  You know: make it seem like someone's still calling, texting, surfing the 'net just as much as ever.  Amplify the noise they have to sift through to actually find us."

"Then there's Leah.  If you haven't met her, you probably shouldn't.  Best to be able to say, truthfully, that you don't have any goddamned idea who the girl in the picture is.    But I don't know: maybe we take it another step.  Maybe we fake her death far away from Denver, dramatically and convincing enough that the Order mothballs their investigation of her for another five years.  That, I'm not sure if it's achievable, or what we'd need to make it real enough to convince the order.  But it would give her - and us - and maybe Alex - some breathing room.

"I mean, if it has to be daring rescue, it'll be daring rescue.   But maybe it doesn't have to be."