The Moloch: a setting sourcebook for KULT

Chapter 6: Reunion

Peter, having learned from the newspaper that his wife was back in the city, first phones the couple his wife and children had originally gone to stay with, as according to the newspaper clipping his wife had said she had been at her parents' place for the past three weeks. He learns that she did in fact stay with their friends and the children are still there, safe, but they do not know where his wife is staying at the moment. Then he phones his home, but the line is engaged (actually the power has been shut off). He then tries his wife's mobile (getting a generic message that the other party was presently unavailable) and finally her parents who are at least able to tell him they had spoken to her and they knew that she was staying in the hotel in the restaurant of which Peter and his wife are so fond of dining. Peter calls there but the receptionist has orders not to put any calls through (Peter's wife doesn't want to be pestered by journalists). Peter asks him to tell his wife to switch her mobile on.

The receptionist does more than that; he believes the media insinuations about Peter's corruption and involvement with child porn and he calls the police.

Later Peter is finally able to get his wife on the mobile and, paranoia kicking in, he tells her to call their mutual friends later from a public phone; he would tell them to tell her where to meet. They agree upon meeting at the train station of Düsseldorf an hour before midnight that night. Peter and Kurt have time enough to clean themselves up a bit, then they go there.

At the train station the two keep a lookout for enemies and almost miss Peter's wife who suddenly practically leaps at Peter. But just seconds into their tearful reunion Kurt spots Bellheim and Hans, the two bully policemen who had assisted in their attempted abduction, heading for them. They have followed Peter's wife.

The three of them leave the train station quickly and pile into a taxi. The policemen take another but Peter gives their driver enough monetary incentive to make sure they lose their pursuit. For unknown reasons their pursuers don't play their police card to make their driver more willing to risk his license, and they manage to lose them. But a different taxi (their driver can tell by its headlights) later catches up with them, hailing them by flaring its lights. The PCs decide to play it safe and evade this taxi, too - the driver drops them off at a small public park and goes on while they hide in the park; the pursuing taxi passes them unnoticed.

Peter then has a bit of explaining to do - the character's traits include complete honesty, so he is hard pressed to stick to the truth but not reveal too much of it as he naturally does not want his wife to believe him insane. Finally they part company after they agree that Peter's wife was better off going back to her friends and not even stopping by her hotel to collect her stuff.

Peter and Kurt make their way back into the underground. Here they meet a very old man who guides them back to their mattresses - but halfway there he asks them to roll up their sleeves and let him study their forearms. He is obviously pleased (or rather assured) by what he does or does not find there but he doesn't comment on it.

Kurt decides to try to find out where his father has gone by calling up someone who works for the company and can be trusted.

(The session stopped there. I had originally planned for Peter's wife to be abducted by the Management but never quite got around to pulling it off. The PCs should also have met Lehmann, the policeman from the first session who by now had left his job and begun to investigate privately - he would have been at the hotel and he was in the second taxi, having trailed the trailers.)