Two of the envoys - Khalil Barnes and Arlo Miller - plus Khalil's brother Hamza drive to Anchorage to visit Anchorage Fast Cash Alaska to see if they can retrieve the ruby stopper for the genie-bottle that was sold there. They enter and Khalil talks to the proprietor, and gives him a story about how it was sold by mistake and he'd like to get it back. The proprietor opens a safe and pulls out a little cardboard jewelry box, inside of which is...a rock.
Khalil holds it up and asks "is this it?" The clerk does a double-take, drops below the counter to look back in the safe, and starts (Khalil assumes) cursing in Russian. "Problems?"
One thing Khalil is good at is getting people talking. The proprietor tells him that his cousin, Mitya, must have taken it - he's got a fence that he meets in Seward who probably said he could give him a good price. Khalil asks him to call Mitya, but he says Mitya won't answer if he sees him calling. He does give Khalil an address ("he stays with this girl when he's in Seward").
Khalil punches this information into the group chat. Back in Seward, at the QCOM HQ, the other three envoys are resting (Amelia Rostov, in particular, is pretty wiped out). But when this info comes through, they rouse themselves, check to make sure there are no djinn waiting for them outside, and head to the apartment building.
Amelia knocks on the door, and a moment later the woman (Sharon) answers. She isn't especially sure about Amelia (she doesn't read like a cop, but very much reads like someone Official), but Amelia manages to get her to get Mitya. Sharon retreats into the apartment and Amelia sends Tuulugaak Hanta around the back of the building to watch the windows, just in case Mitya runs, but he doesn't, he comes to the door to talk to Amelia (Mercy Williams, meanwhile, stands back in case anything goes really pear-shaped). Amelia gives Mitya the same spiel Khalil used (it's an heirloom, it shouldn't have been sold), and Mitya quickly realizes he kind of has the upper hand in this negotiation. He initially asks for $10K; Amelia talks him to down to $8K. (Khalil, who has a good pension from the Air Force, agrees to cover it.) They send Mitya the money, he hands over the stopper.
Khalil and Arlo, meanwhile, are headed back to Seward (after dropping off Hamza, who has officially reached the end of his useful involvement here). The other three head back to QCOM. As they're turning down the street, Mercy (driving) spots a guy leaning on a wall near a turn-off and has a sudden urge to turn toward him. She resists it and recognizes that the feeling was strong enough that it was probably an Unknown compulsion, and points the guy out. They pull the car into the parking lot up near the door and Amelia raises a Sphere of Protection. They move to get into the building (which is still warded), but Amelia slips on the stairs. She manages to keep the sphere up, but the djinn ambles over and very affably demands the bottle.
She shows it the stopper, but it doesn't seem terribly impressed. And now the envoys are faced with a dilemma - they have the bottle, they have the stopper, how do they get the genie into the bottle? Amelia goes into the building to talk with the others, and they look at the bottle and stopper. The bottle looks considerably older, so they're not exactly a matched set. Amelia turns the stove on and holds the bottle in the fire, but nothing happens - it doesn't even get hot. She tries it with the stopper, and that reacts normally.
Outside, they see the djinn walk back up with a bottle in a paper bag. He pulls the bottle out - grain alcohol - and starts splashing it around the door and the base of the building. That makes his plan clear - burn the building, take the bottle. He offers to leave Seward, just give him the bottle ("Alaska isn't much fun, really").
The envoys refuse, of course, but they need a plan or things are going to escalate. They decide to try and trap the djinn - if they can get a circle around it, maybe they can hold it and figure out how to put it in the bottle. Tul runs out and tackles it (making good use of his Quicken discipline), but the djinn grabs his back and its hands burn through Tul's shirt and into his flesh. Mercy runs out with a folding chair and bashes the djinn in the face, pushing past her feeling of revulsion in hitting what seems like a normal person. The djinn's face bleeds, but not...right...somehow.
Amelia touches its leg and Disrupts, and the djinn dissolves into smoke. It flows a bit away and reforms, this time as Dr. Bellman. Mercy charges it and whacks it again, and it grabs her ribs and burns her. Suddenly everything goes black.
All three envoys start feeling their way towards the edges of the blackness. Tul has the sudden urge to toss the bottle behind him, and that seems very reasonable, so he does. And just about now, Arlo and Khalil pull into the parking lot. They see the pocket of darkness and the envoys emerging from it, and Khalil runs over and grabs the bottle. He hears Arlo's voice behind him say "throw it here!" but turns around and sees Arlo behind him...and also getting out of the car.
Not fooled, he shoots at the djinn (nearly hitting Tul, running out of the darkness). Arlo (the real one) grabs the bottle from Khalil and Disrupts, and this seems to hurt the djinn, but it doesn't force him to turn into smoke. It points to Arlo and Arlo feels burns appear over his body, but keeps hold of the bottle.
Tul tackles the djinn again, and Khalil walks over and shoots it in the head. It dissolves to smoke once again, but this time it flows into the bottle! The envoys put the stopper in...and everything goes quiet.
"Ambulance please?" says Mercy, the shock wearing off and the burns on her sides flaring up. Khalil calls 911, telling them about the gunshots (he figures it's probable someone already called it in, might as well get ahead of it) and has them send an ambulance. The envoys also call Dr. Bellman, but he gets there in enough time to follow the ambulance to the hospital. The wounds definitely raise question - Tul and Mercy have hand-shaped burns on them, and Arlo is covered with squiggly brands. The medical staff asks for explanations, of course, but the envoys rely heavily on "I don't know how it happened."
Meanwhile, Khalil and Amelia deal with the bottle. They wrap it in duct tape, and Khalil builds a box, puts the bottle in it, and fills it with cement. And then...well, some discussions happen. Some envoys favor throwing it into the ocean, some think that it's better to keep it close to hand so they know where it is. They ask Dr. Bellman to see if SAVE has a Raiders of the Lost Ark-style warehouse somewhere, but in the meantime it's in the QCOM HQ, covered in a tablecloth.
The envoys still have some legal issues pending, and several of them are pretty badly injured, but they've captured the djinn, so that's victory.
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