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You change, stuff your regular clothes into your duffel bag, and head to the morgue. Your slab in the upper left looks cozy: it's made up like a hospital bed, with sheets and everything. You've slept in worse places.

You're not alone in the morgue, and that evening you meet the locals. The skeletally thin Rita May is a Caitiff of Ventrue descent, a vain and prim fallen aristocrat who can't seem to keep blood off her lips. Pattermuster you've already met. The Nosferatu Stercorius sleeps above you, but he keeps a larger haven in the basement with his rats. ("The Eagle Prince gets an eagle, the rat beggar gets rats," Rita May quips.) Others are in and out: a Japanese Malkavian who claims he was martyred in the seventeenth century and resurrected by Jesus Christ, two thin-bloods covered in scabs that never go away, and a woman who might be a ghost or some other kind of thing you don't know much about. They're sad, poisonous little creatures—the increasingly elitist Camarilla would be disgusted to count them as members.

You spend the next few nights just getting a feel for the hospital, its deranged layout, and its ugly, secret little corners where the sick huddle and the vampires feed. You listen in on doctors and insurance executives as they conspire and embezzle, nurses as they sell opiates to patients and people waiting outside, doped-up patients who keep asking what happened to their cell phones and if their families know they're there. You check out urgent care, where accident victims are forced to sign whatever is put in front of them before they're brought inside; the furnace, where surgeons dispose of evidence of their botched operations; and the lobby where, it seems, the same people are always sitting, waiting for help that won't come.

And of course, you spend time upstairs, outside Director Carelli's office. The guards never leave, but her security isn't impenetrable. You just need to find a way through. It would be easier with Pattermuster, but he's busy dealing with one crisis after another.

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With your scrubs and lanyard, you're able to move freely around the hospital, but you're starting to feel watched.

You're invisible to the regular guards, the dull-eyed men and women with black St. Basil polo shirts and bright yellow Tasers, but you keep seeing people with short-cropped hair, military boots, and black windbreakers that are just a little too heavy for the weather outside. The black-jackets operate out of a sealed, windowless office separated from the mostly abandoned Rehab Services wing by particleboard walls and old office equipment.

And they keep looking at you out of the corner of their eyes. The more time you spend in the administrative wing, the more they look at you. It's different people every time, but you're sure they're professionals. You're not sure they know what you are, but there are too many of them, and they follow you too closely whenever you're in the public areas of St. Basil's. You don't want to approach the director's office until you know more, but you'll have to be careful; any more mistakes will expose you, and Pattermuster's followers, a clear violation of the Masquerade.

You know that failure here will escalate things dangerously. You spend a night watching their rounds and making absolutely sure that they don't know where you sleep during the day. You also make sure you have a mask and gloves, and that your duct tape is ready to go.

Finally you spot a likely target: one of their computer specialists. She's armed like all the guards, and obviously ex-military, but she doesn't have the massive, hockey-goon physique of the others. You wait until she heads into the bathroom after getting off her shift around 4:00 a.m., with her phone unlocked and held in front of her. Then you pull on your mask, and slip into the bathroom.

You glide right up behind her, totally silent on the rough tile floor, and catch her in a blood choke before she sees you coming. She's stronger than she looks, and fights like a trapped wolf, but it doesn't matter; you have all the leverage and the element of surprise.

In a few seconds she drops against the stall. You wait a few more seconds to make sure she's not faking, then grab her phone off the floor. It's still unlocked.

The woman groans. You could take her hostage—you have an empty room with a folding chair and a naked light bulb right down the hall, just waiting for her—but when you skim her emails, you realize you have everything you need. You keep the phone in your hand so it doesn't turn off and lock, peel off your mask, and take off before anyone notices you.

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