Snippet #2377565

Rain was was coming down in sheets over Vega, blurring the street lights and the headlamps of the vehicles on the expressway into a palette of pastel shades off in the distance, and night had fallen across the city, filling the forgotten back streets with shadows. How could such a hub of life and activity seem so...desolate?

Perhaps it was the height at which Jael stood, or maybe is was more a matter of thought. The city had always seemed to be such an unbearably savage place. Suffocating and grey.

From the rooftop of the factory, it was possible to see the central business district out on the other bank, across the wide, sluggish river. The high buildings were lit up with billboards and screens, some reaching far up into the sky, all still wholly dwarfed, made to seem utterly insignificant to the backdrop of the Archangel building, that hideous steel and concrete colossus the dominated the centre of Vega.

It loomed across the skyline, vast and disproportionate, the metal 'wings' that had been applied to the side glinting with red aircraft beacons that cast a bloody glow along the girders. In the centre of its western face a great sculpture took prominent place, a human-like figure from whom the wings seemed to reach. An angel of protection, so the publications said. To Jael is had always more resembled something that had been dead for a long time.

It did not help, of course, that the Archangel main building, and the many levels beneath it, had remained uninfiltrated by any Pack member. They had no idea what took place in there on the lower levels, and most likely that just got to all of them.

Architecture was not what she was there for however, and Lion would be most disapproving of her being lost in thought at such a crucial period. Lion was not much for heavy thinking.

The trick there was going to be timing. Too late and she'd land on the electrified rail and become human earth rod with lethal consequences, too early and she'd get hit by a train, yielding similar results.

Straining to hear any sounds of approaching carriages the figure hopped from the factory roof, landing a few feet below on a metal support than ran over the top of the tracks, holding cables and electrics aloft. It shuddered a little under her weight, supporting it well enough, but she doubted one of the male operatives, or even some of the taller females might have kept the precarious foothold, particularly not in the foul weather.

Then, the noise, the rattling of moving parts. She craned her neck round, spotting the lights of the heavy, low slung transport train, thundering toward the hiding place. Jael pulled a deep breath in, positioning herself, looking down. As the view filled with steel and paint she flung herself downwards, landing with a thump, sliding a few feet back before instinct kicked in and she seized a groove in the metalwork, hauling herself into a crouched pose and edging along until she reached the back of he carriage, slipping down and whipping out the key card to open the door. They had an almost inexhaustible supply of the up to date cards. A good friend of theirs worked for the firm that programmed them for Archangel. Within days of a new update they had a full set.

Soon, she was inside. Three, in the centre. It seemed the most likely for containing this 'cargo' that Grey Wolf had spoken of. Wolfy had not been so kind as to define this cargo, other than that it would be within Three. Who could say what it was? That was for people like Wolf and Lion to think on at any rate. She was there to carry it out.