Notes Taken by Samantha and Alastair Beadle.
Session 2.11 Index Session 3.2
[One month and two days from the end of the last campaign segment, which finished on 28th February 1997.]
Mother Bear has just arrived home from work at the 'Tula' tractor factory to be greeted by her five school-age children (Nina, aged fifteen; Tomas, aged nine; Vladimir junior, aged nine; Grigori, aged five and Anya, aged two). She notices that Tomas, Vladimir and Grigori look distressed, and little Anya is joining in. She asks what is wrong.
Tomas and Vladimir explain that their friend Sergei was killed at school today by an icicle falling from the school roof, which impaled him. They say they were sent home early while the school knocks all of the icicles down.
Whilst being consoled and fed ice cream little Grigori notes that another classmate, Svetlana, was run over last week by a car whilst waiting on the pavement for a bus.
Meanwhile, Napalm (in her civilian identity as Ana) is begging for money near the New Moscow State Circus, having been moved on by the police from the streets around Red Square. She is begging with Egor, one of her former army comrades.
There are crowds on the streets, of commuters and people going to the Circus, but despite this they are not being very successful in their begging, so they split up to try their luck on each side of the nearby Metro station.
The early evening show at the circus will start shortly.
As Napalm begs through the crowd, there is a screech of brakes and a scream from the crowd on the other side of the station. Napalm goes over to find that someone has been crushed under a van - Egor! In the van (labelled 'Honest Vladimir's Plumbing Supplies') the driver (Vladimir?) is dazed, having hit his head on the steering wheel.
After a moment the driver gets out and staggers around to the front of the van. He seems upset and scared about what he has just done. Ana checks Egor, but quickly finds that he is dead. The van driver is shocked, but claims that Egor stepped out, or was pushed out, in front of him, and he couldn't stop in time.
At about this point, a policeman pushes his way through the rubbernecking crowd to the scene. Napalm explains what happened to him. She is understandably upset about what has happened, and takes it out on the police officer, though he is just trying to do his job.
She is asked to provide a statement. "What good is that going to do?" she asks.
An old man steps out from the crowd and tells the police officer that Egor just came out of the crowd, almost as if he was pushed, and in front of the van before it could stop.
She is taken down to the local police station, along with the van driver and the old man, as other police officers turn up and begin collecting evidence from the scene (such as length of skid marks on the road, and so on).
Meanwhile again, Akula, in his civilian guise as Vladimir Patrovich Kutuzov, is working on the research reactor at the Moscow State University. He has been performing maintenance on one of the core pipes - from the inside. As is his wont.
He exits from the reactor core pipe-work and prepares to leave for the evening,
As he heads out, he meets Fyodor, the Universities other Reactor technician, comes in for the evening shift. They exchange pleasantries and Akula describes the day's work so far. Fyodor puts his things into his locker, puts on his overalls and prepares to start work. Akula does the reverse.
Just as he heading out of the door Akula hears a great cracking noise from one of the steam pipes, followed by a scream. He runs back in to investigate, and finds that the luckless Fyodor has been steamed! Live steam is spraying from a cracked pipe, and seems to have badly hurt Fyodor.
Akula drags him out through the superheated radioactive steam, shuts down the steam to that pipe and cancels the alarms that are sounding.
Fyodor, however, is clearly dying of his injuries. Akula summons an ambulance that quickly arrives from the nearby University Hospital. However, the ambulance crew is reluctant to approach a radioactive casualty. Akula eventually persuades them to do so, and they go off with the casualty.
Akula, severely distressed by this accident which reminds him all to much of certain incidents in his past, makes a terse call to inform the University Administration of the incident, then flees the scene in water form and off into the night...
Mother Bear, having put her own young children to bed, considers the incidents at school.
She knows Sergei's parents, Anya and Pavil Suberov, who live in the next apartment building along Nakhimoski Prospekt. She tells the eldest of her children, Nina, to look after the other children and goes to visit the Suberov's.
When she gets to the other apartment block she finds that there is no answer from the door entry system and no lights are visible in the apartment. The security door proves to not be locked so, smiling at the building's concierge (a fearsome-looking babushka named Varinka and explaining to her where she is going, she goes in and up the stairs.
Changing to Bear form she climbs the stairs towards the Suberov's second floor flat. Sneaking out into the hall, she listens and sniffs around for scents at the apartment door. She can hear no sounds from within, but there are two recent scents. One scent was male and came and went at about the same time. The other was a 'distressed female' and only leaves the apartment.
Mother Bear returns to ground level and human form, then returns to her own apartment.
At the local police station, Napalm is offered a meal and some glasses whilst they take her statement.
Napalm tells her story, not that she can really tell them much.
The police are curious as to whether it was bad luck, or murder, or suicide. Napalm insists that it was not suicide, based on having been with Egor all day.
After much talking and much tea she leaves - in tears. The officer she has been talking to, Alexi Phillipov, takes pity on her, giving her some money and offering to help her if she gets into trouble in future.
Napalm goes off and spends the money on alcohol.
Akula, fretting terribly, wanders the streets and ends up in the (still partly frozen) Moscow River. He becomes one with the water and drifts with the flow for some time but, noticing that he is about to drift past the outer Moscow Ring Road, clambers out of the river and wanders until he finds a bar.
He has a few vodkas there, then wanders off again.
He wanders the streets for much of the night, and in the end he falls asleep on a bench in Gorky Park (having used his powers to get through the fence).
Mother Bear is woken up by the sound of her husband Vladimir Leonidovitch returning from the night shift at the tractor factory. They exchange pleasantries and communist ideals - and the story of Sergei. Vladimir goes to bed.
Mother Bear makes a breakfast of rye bread, cheese, jam and glasses of tea for the 'ravaging horde'. She then packs them off to School Number 32 (which they all attend) and heads off to work.
Some time later in the morning, Akula wakes up on his park bench, glad he does not feel the cold.
Two park attendants are looking down at him. Akula, tries to ignore them, but they won't go away. They question him about how he got here, and accuse him (not entirely unreasonably!) of trespassing, and threaten to get the police. They ask him for the price of admission to the park.
Akula refuses, so they go to fetch a police officer.
A little later Akula sees them returning with a couple of police officers, and gets up to leave before they arrive.
They see this, and the officers order him to stop as he walks off. He doesn't, and picks up his pace. He then turns and sprints towards a copse of trees on the side of Gorky Park towards the river. He disappears into the trees, changes to water form, splashes through the fence, jumps from car to car across the rush hour traffic on the other side, and dives into a non-frozen part of the Moscow River.
Akula swims to the other side, emerges again, and walks the streets for a while, thinking about what happened last night. He is struck by the thought that if what happened was an accident then it was an incredibly unlikely one. So could it have been sabotage?
He suddenly changes direction and heads straight for Moscow State University.
Napalm wakes up wet and hung over in a slushy gutter. She looks around and identifies her location - not far away from the New Moscow State Circus again.
She goes into a nearby supermarket to warm up and dry out. The staff look at her in a very dubious fashion. After about ten minutes a large shop assistant/security man approaches, so she leaves before he gets there.
Upon leaving she sees Akula striding purposefully past, heading towards the University.
She follows, thinking about university food.
Akula, focused on other things, does not notice this.
Akula marches onto the University campus and heads straight for the Research Reactor Facility.
There seem to be a large number of people there, technicians and bureaucrats, and the head of the Facility. He barges past the people and allows the restraining hands of those who try to stop him to pass straight through him.
He goes up to the broken steam pipe and takes a close look at it.
Outside, Napalm attempts to sneak into the reactor building under cover of Akula's distraction.
Unfortunately she rather stands out from everyone else here, and an official bars her entry, despite her best attempts at persuasion.
She wanders off instead, and wanders around the campus. She ducks into a dark corner, turns on her flames and flies around the buildings.
Akula's investigation shows, after a couple of hours, that a joint in the steam pipe came apart due to all the bolts shearing simultaneously. There is no evidence of sabotage but an accident of this type is extremely unlikely. He strides out of the building, telling the director that "This was no accident".
As he leaves he notices Napalm circling the building.
She sees Akula and circles down towards him as he waits.
They exchange stories, then go off for breakfast at the teams normal café meeting place, changing discretely into their civilian identities before arriving there.
Ludmilla Chestikova's (Mother Bear's) day ends and she wends her weary way home.
As she approaches her apartment block she notices that an ambulance is parked outside the Suberov's apartment block, next to hers on Nakhimoski Prospekt, with a crowd gathered around it. She asks some of the bystanders what is going on, and is told that Mrs Topelova fell from her seventh floor balcony after part of it collapsed. A slab of concrete hanging from a couple of reinforcing rods is visible high overhead.
Ludmilla returns home, considering this. The children do not seem to be aware of the accident.
They tell her that there was another accident at school, though. Apparently a teacher fell down the stairs, broke her arm and knocked over one of the children...
As the team had arranged to meet up tonight, Mother Bear joins the other two in the café, and assorted stories of bad luck are exchanged.
Napalm is deeply suspicious that someone is out to get us.
Mother Bear is less convinced due to the indirectness of the 'attacks'.
It is suggested that we all attend the reactor accident scene to allow Mother Bear to investigate the scents of people there, and see if any are suspicious. So we all head off to the University.
Upon arrival, Mother Bear and Akula enter the Research Reactor Facility building.
Napalm remains outside, and buzzes the students around the building. She gets beer thrown at her by a few of them, but unfortunately it evaporates on her fire before she can catch and drink it. She also notices a flight of three green and yellow UFOs passing across the sky high above.
Inside, Akula shows Mother Bear to the site of the accident, which is not terribly radioactive, but they do minimise the time she spends in there.
She sniffs around and finds a number of scents, including that of Akula's human form, the facility's Director, and a few others who are authorised to be in the area who they have met when entering the building. An unidentified scent is verified to that of Fyodor at his locker. There is no scent at all from the pipe itself.
Akula investigates the bolts which sheared, and finds that they were all part of the same batch, supplied by Kyzan Heavy Industries in Kazan. Other bolts from the same batch are in use elsewhere in the facility and have shown no problems. The serial numbers of the bolts (which they possess because they are special bolts for use in nuclear facilities) are noted down for comparison with the bolts which should be there, in case they have been tampered with.
Having done this, they tell the director that the 'accident' was extremely unlikely and explain why they think this is so.
He tells them that he will pass this on to the nuclear safety investigators, who are due here tomorrow.
This done, they leave the Reactor Facility and meet up with Napalm. They wander off to change into civilian clothing and talk. It is agreed that Akula will go into work tomorrow and investigate the bolts, as well as similar bolts from their stock of spares and elsewhere in the Reactor Facility.
With this agreed, Akula goes home, makes supper and goes to bed.
Mother Bear also goes home, makes her family supper and goes to bed.
Napalm goes off to the police station close to the New Moscow State Circus arena to talk to Officer Alexai Philipov and see if there is any news of Egor's 'accident'.
He is on duty when she arrives there, and he invites her into an interview room for a chat. It appears that all the witnesses the police have talked to support the 'accident' theory and the Police tend to agree with them as well.
Ana stays for some time for chat and tea. She tells Alexai the sad story of her life.
His sympathy for her increases as he listens to her. In the end, Alexai offers to put her up for a while in his apartment, and she accepts.
So once he comes off duty, he takes her off to his apartment, which is in a block near Prospekt Vernadskovo Metro Station. She gets the bed while he sleeps on the sofa and doesn't try any funny business...
Mother Bear and her husband Vladimir pass each other at shift change again, as she wakes up and he comes in to sleep.
Over breakfast, she asks her sons (Tomas and little Vladimir) which teacher fell down the stairs.
"Mrs Varusha, the English Teacher," they tell her.
So she accompanies her children to the nearby School Number 32 to talk to Mrs Varusha. However, Mrs Varusha is not about, and from another teacher she learns that Mrs Varusha is taking a few days off because of her injuries.
The teacher explains that the accident was caused when Mrs Varusha tripped over her own shoelace on the stairs. Hmm...
Mother Bear goes off to work.
Napalm wakes up in Officer Philipov's apartment to find the flat empty.
She helps herself to a hearty breakfast and goes off to explore the flat.
Akula wakes up and goes to work as normal.
At the Research Reactor Facility the Facility Director meets him as he comes in and consoles him. It seems that Fyodor died quite soon after the accident, which does not come as a huge surprise to Akula, but is still not very cheering.
Inside the Reactor Facility the investigators, two serious-looking men, have arrived and introduce themselves as Adrakov and Garalski. They question Akula about his role in the accident.
The flange bolts are discussed and the three go off to investigate them. They find that the serial numbers of the bolts which failed match those from the records. Some spare bolts and a sample of other bolts from the same batch in use elsewhere in the reactor are taken for investigation.
Akula reads their report and adds a few details based on his observations. The conclusion of the report is that it was an extremely unlikely accident, pending further investigation of the bolts. One thing he does not is Fyodor's address - an apartment in a block on Nakhimoski Prospekt.
Napalm's investigations of Officer Philipov's apartment show it to be the flat of a single, relatively well off man who does not drink at all.
Napalm prepares dinner for the two of them. It is a simple meal and she can't cook too well, but he appears to be impressed.
Mother Bear returns home to more stories of accidents at school. Apparently a girl slipped on some soap in the showers, hit her head and was taken away by ambulance. Her name was Larissa and the children believe that she lives in one of the apartments upstairs.
As arranged we all meet up in the café again that night.
We discuss the day's findings. Akula mentions Fyodor's address, which Mother Bear, of course, recognises. It seems that Fyodor lived in the same apartment block as Sergei Suberov and Mrs Topelova. Egor, however, has no particular association with the building.
It is decided that Mother Bear and Napalm will go to the local government Records Office to investigate these buildings, and see if there are any signs of the place being haunted in some other way responsible for the 'accidents'.
Akula will go to the Parapsychology Department of the University to see if they can shed some light on these events...
And so, with this decided, we all return to our own or our adopted apartments ready for tomorrow...