Omens

[Markovnikov]

Monday blinked repeatedly, the dull roar of buzzing around him slowly turning to a softer monotonous droning hum, and the thick soup of grey static that enveloped his peripheral vision glacially gained clarity with each passing blink.

The familiar soft spoken voice of an old man rang out from all directions, and from nowhere in particular.
"You're early, Magpie. We are still waiting on Crow, Jackdaw, and Jay. Feel free to take some time to collect yourself, I'm told that the upgraded rig has not arrived to you yet."

Monday looked around, Raven sat to his left at a large round oaken table - the old man's eyes peered at him through a mask in the shape of the head of a black bird. 'RAVEN' floated ethereally over his head, a godsend as Monday had never seen any birds in the flesh - much less enough to discern between ravens, crows, jackdaws, jays, and even magpies. A single large chandelier suspended from a ceiling he could not see, illuminating the vicinity in an omnipresent warm light that cast no shadows, and anything beyond in an impenetrable grey haze.

One after another, three masked figures materialized in the remaining three seats.

"Thank you for joining me on such short notice," boomed Raven, "Five simultaneous attacks across New Berlin, Hamburg, and Frankfurt have killed at least one hundred and fifty two - including sixty three persons of interest and thirty two personnel key to maintaining economic and security readiness in Rheinland."

Raven stretched his open hand foward - files materialized in front of everyone.
"These are being transmitted to your secure terminals - look them over. Each of you are to investigate for potential involved parties in this incident within your respective houses. Any trail of evidence remaining grows fainter by the hour, disregard the traditional route of communications on this matter - we will allocate stellar relay bandwidth time to maintain this channel indefinitely until further notice."