Double post!
Things have died down a bit so I went ahead and wrote a long post to let Renk out of the story (at least for the time being) and sending our group to the EMA facility so we can begin the mission.
Feel free to jump in if you want any detours or any characters re-introduced once we arrive at the facility. If anyone's interested in playing Renk, he could show up later on, perhaps sent there by the military.
Also, KarmaJolt, if you want to play Elise, I'd say it's a safe bet that she's up for grabs at this point.