Dark_RP

Dirty work lay ahead of Operation Cygnus and they knew it.
As such they formulated two separate plans to dispose of the bodies they knew would soon be pilling up.
The first came courtesy of Dara's old contact Professor Lazarus, whom he knew used cadavers in his 'research' and would be able to dispose of them.
The second came from Agent Fabius and involved a local meat processing plant followed by a fertilizer factory, some copied key cards, and a quiet time of night.
Next they knew that they needed final confirmation on all their targets that they weren't who they said they were.
As Fabius continued his research back at the facility with Cohen, Marika and Dara waited till the targets were out at work before subtly gaining entry to their homes and collecting DNA samples for analysis.
Toward the end of that day, after all had been said and done, they had their answers for all four suspects.
Javi Aznar was indeed Javi Aznar, a former FSB agent, bodyguard to the Mayor, and an innocent man. The reality was very different for the other three.
If their intel from the GIA was to be believed all were Blanks, once loyal citizens of the NEG taken by the alien Migou and brainwashed beyond recognition before being sent back to assume new lives and betray their own people.
However distasteful, Erica Smithe, Anton Beria, and Lt Bradley had to die.

The team quickly formulated a plan to get the job done with as little mess as possible and prepared to put it into action the very next day.
They would wait until all three were home before activating planted canisters of carbon monoxide gas to render them fully unconscious before entering to administer the coupe de grace in person.
The plan to dispose of the bodies via Prof Lazarus was ruled out despite the old liche's willingness, due to the reluctance of Special Agent Cohen to turn the Blank cadavers over to an unknown third party with even more unknown motivations. They would instead be using the tried and true methods for urban corpse disposal as proposed by Fabius.
Upon final agreement the following morning Dara left to plant gas filled cylinders and hidden cams in each of the apartments before taking up position to follow his chosen mark home for the last time. Fabius likewise made sure his target reached her apartment as predicted, while Marika simply watched the feed of the planted cams for her mark to enter his home.
He didn't show.
Figuring he must be staying late at work she headed out to the Naval base then into the MI section. As Marika arrived she saw the lights being turned out and passed Major Trigatta in the corridor, followed shortly by Ltn Bradley.
She entered the offices, doing a token amount of paperwork before checking on the cams to see if her target had reached home. He Hadn't. Bradley was off the grid again and the hunt was on.
Leaving the offices she checked with the gate guards on the way out of the base, Bradley had indeed left about an hour ago, he just hadn't gone home.

Marika quickly called up Gemini and had the LAI run a trace on Bradley's vehicle.
Shortly afterward she had what she needed - Bradey's vehicle was on the highway headed out of the city. Assuming the Blank had somehow caught wind of their operation and was on the run Marika called it in to her teammates and gave chase.
She drove at top speed after requesting the services of an A-pod drone from Dara. When she caught up with Bradley he hadn't gone too far, just outside the city limits and off the road.
The drone found the car parked in a field and the heat signature of the driver in some nearby trees. As Natalya pulled up nearby the drone also detected an encrypted signal being transmitted, before the heat signature began to move back toward the car.
Bradley was just reaching his car when Marika burst out from the back of the van in her mech, firing its laser cannon directly into the D-engine and destroying the vehicle.
Shocked, the Blank broke out into a run, blindly fleeing into the darkness and the hoped for safety of the tree line.

A few miles east, back in the arcology, things were progressing a little more smoothly. As predictable as ever Dr Beria came home from the Ashcroft labs and went to bed as usual. The odorless gas was silently activated as the Blank slept, and little more than an hour later Fabius and Dara entered the darkened apartment equipped with breather masks and grim intentions. Using a plastic bag and a cable tie Fabius easily suffocated what little life remained out of the already poisoned man. One down, two to go.



Next came Ms Smithe, who likewise had returned home just as predicted. She fell asleep on the sofa in her lounge as they activated the carbon monoxide canister, and waited.
The moment they entered her apartment and saw her sleeping peacefully Fabius ralized he wasn't going to be able to do it. There was just something about the act of killing a defenseless, essentially human, woman that he couldn't bring himself to do, giving anyone that comments on the chivalry of Fabius an extra two experience. He handed the plastic bag and cable tie to Dara, who after some initial trepidation had no such qualms.
There was just one problem, Ms Smithe came round.
As Dara began to pull the bag down over her head she realized what was going on enough to forcefully push him away. A pyro-kinetic heat-haze began to rapidly form about her as a gout of flame erupted from the panicked Blank's fingertips. Dara dove out of the way as Fabius finally raised his gun and fired. Erica Smithe fell back, dead. The bullet wound in her head leaking dark blood on to the couch.
They were both shaken, but it was time to clean up and get the hell out.

As Fabius and Dara disposed of the bodies downtown Natalya arrived at Marika's location like a bat out of hell on her bike.
She closed in on the scene just in time to see Marika's powered armour fire a second blinding shot from its laser cannon, vaporising the last confirmed Blank on their list as he ran for cover.
Once the job was done Natalya began to investigate the scene as Marika moved to pull the target's smoldering vehicle into a nearby lake with her mech.
Natalia found that only the man's extremities were left, but near the remains of a blackened arm she saw a small brick-like black box.
The thing was inscrutably plain save for a row of small lights in the top corner. She bagged it for later examination before they finished cleaning, and then rapidly vacating, the area.

Their nerves frayed by the night's activities, it was not until the early hours of the morning that the Cygnus team managed to reassemble back at the facility to be commended on a job well done by agent Cohen. It was then that they began to notice the news, Mt Rainier had erupted.
The largest dormant volcano in the Cascade range had roared to life without warning, spreading fiery destruction over tens of miles, and spewing out dangerous black ash over tens of thousands. The black cloud had already ruined crops and poisoned water across the north-west, even causing structural damage in Seattle before being blown eastward, and was expected to darken the skies of New York over coming days.
The NEG President had declared a state of emergency across the affected areas as geologists struggled to understand what had happened and relief teams tried to mitigate the damage.

The next day the members of Operation Cygnus sat down once again with Ericsson, Skinner, and Cohen, briefing them on last night's operations. The GIA executives had also received a report from Dara. He had been examining both the telemetry from Marika's drone and the object Natalya had found and learned firstly that the object was a transmitter of Migou design, and secondly that it had sent a signal roughly toward the Cascade Mountains in the north-west shortly before Marika had intercepted Bradley. The same area in which Mt Rainier had erupted with devastating effect.
Ericsson explained that before any scientists entered the area the GIA wanted to send in an intelligence team to make sure nothing was amiss and try to find what the blank had been signaling.
Given their many talents and existing connections to the case the Assistant Director had decided that Operation Cygnus would be the the first team to go in.