This sector of Capitol City is riddled with black out zones and home to the disreputable.
This message was last updated by the GM at 07:02, Sat 22 Apr 2006.

   It took Lei quite a while to walk to the old town sector. It was the next district over from the Downtown sector, but on foot it was still a fair distance to walk. Her feet were getting sore from walking on the concrete sidewalk, too. On Destiny she could get away with walking around barefoot all the time, but the concrete was slightly more abrasive than the metal decks of the ship, and she had covered more distance in the last half hour than she would need to for a full day on the ship. She was starting to really wish that she had grabbed the shoes Geoff had bought her before they had left, but everything had happened so fast when Destiny was coming in to land.
   Lei spotted another Alliance cruiser driving up the street, and slipped into a side alley to hide from it, sitting in the shadows to give her feet a rest too. The first cruiser had got too close to her for comfort before she had spotted the uniforms of the people inside it. But now she knew what the vehicles looked like, she could spot them a long way away, and could hide properly before they got near her.
   She rested the tablet on her lap again, and took a quick look at the map. She had finally worked out where she was, maybe, and shouldn't be too far from one of the blackout zones. It was looking like she had come up lucky in choosing to come here, the blackout zones were starting to look like the perfect place to hide. She still didn't look like she belonged here, if anything, she was too clean, but the few other people walking around took little notice of her, once she had learned to slip the tablet out of sight into her dress top. It still wasn't a perfect way to hide the device, but it was better than nothing.
   While she was waiting for the Alliance vehicle to go by, Lei decided to start looking into the message she had spotted earlier. She read the message several times, thinking about everything that it could mean. According to the message, she was from here, and her father was looking for her. Lei could not remember anything about her father, all she could remember was the lab on Valon. As far as she knew, she didn't have a father. She knew that someone had to have provided the genetic material for her, so she had to have a mother and father somewhere, but she couldn't remember anything about them. All she could remember was the last couple of years, in the lab.
   The wave did tell her who was looking for her, though. Mr Fredrick Timoto and the Blue Sun corporation. She opened up new searches, one for each name. It seemed safe enough here for now. It was time to find out a bit about her "father".

Every search that Lei tried for Fredrick Timoto came up with nothing.  There was n record of him working for Blue Sun or of him every having been on Osiris, or any other planet for that matter, either.  As far as the computer was concerned the man didn't exsist.

   Lei gave up on trying to find information on her so called father, and concentrated on finding out about the Blue Sun corporation. The first hit on the search was an information page run by the company. It gave her an idea of how big and widespread the company was, and what they were publicly involved in. The only useful thing it told her was that they had a lot of resources.
   She closed down the tablet, and hid it in her dress again. It was time to continue on. Hopefully, she'd be able to find somewhere to sleep later. She'd heard about rain and didn't want to try sleeping in it, it had to be something like trying to sleep in the shower with the water running. Lei didn't think she'd be able to.
   She stepped out onto the street again, and started towards the nearest blackout zone. It was time to start looking for a better place to stop, and maybe some food, if she could find it. The only thing she had eaten all day was that sandwich back at Kyoko's apartment.

Lei noticed that no one seemed to be entering the street that the computer had denoted as a 'black out' zone.  A few people glanced down it but most walked quickly by.  There were no security cameras in the zones and no police presence at all.  Could be safe for someone hiding out ... could also be highly dangerous for someone who couldn't protect themselves.

As she entered the dark street she noticed a group of men talking in low voices, all with pistols at their hips, most of them tall and scruffy - they looked a little like Geoff - but meaner. They seemed to have packets of some sort of powdery looking substance in bags.

There were a few shops on the street but none looked to be open for business.  Although most looked occupied.  One was playing loud music and voices could be heard, most rather loud, and very drunk.

   Lei tried to avoid getting too close to anyone as she entered the street. She didn't know anyone here, and didn't know who she could trust. She started to look for somewhere quiet, somewhere she could be alone to think, preferably somewhere inside. And she wanted to do it without bieng seen if she could.
   Remembering how she got out of Kyoko's apartment, she snuck down the street until she came to a side alley. She looked in, hoping to find a convenient ladder on the side of one of the buildings. She got out down the fire escape once, maybe she could get in by the fire escape this time... And hopefully find an empty room to hole up in.

Lei skirts down a side alleyway and sure enough finds a fire escape, its too high for her to reach to pull the ladder down though.  There are however some empty or nearly empty trash bins nearby, and all the windows upstairs appear to be be dark and empty.

   Lei checked behind her, just to see that she had the alley to herself. Once she was sure, she started to move empty bins over to under the end of the fire escape, until she had enough stacked there to reach up to the bottom platform.
   Eventually, she had an unstable stack of bins high enough to try to reach. She carefully started climbing up onto them, hoping that they would be stable enough to hold her weight until she could get up onto the fire escape. She carefully pulled the data tablet out, and slipped it up onto the lowest platform, it wouldn't do to have that damaged, before reaching up to grab the edge of the platform herself.
   Once she had struggled up onto the platform, and retrieved the tablet, she started to climb up the stairs, stopping at the windows on each floor to listen for a short while.

   ((The only question is did she knock the bins over when she started to climb?))

The bins wobbled slightly but didn't come crashing down as Lei scrambled onto the platform.  The first window Lei came to she could hear voices but the next was dark and quiet.  It was a small room with a few stacked chairs in one corner and an old desk.  The door was closed.

   This room would do.
   Lei looked at the window, trying to work out how to get into it without breaking the glass. She put her palms flat against the glass of the lower section, and tried pushing up. It was stiff, but the window slid open slowly. Lei climbed into the room through the gap as soon as it was open enough for her to fit.
   She looked around the room, examining the chairs and the desk quietly before going to the door and listening to see if there was anyone on the other side. She gently reached out to the handle and gave it a slight turn to check if it was unlocked. The handle turned easily. Deciding that she wanted something a little more secure, she went over to the desk and started trying to drag it to the door without making too much noise.

The desk was quite a bit louder then Lei would have liked but not so loud that she didn't think it was worth pushing it in front of the door.  With it in place the room was pretty empty save the chairs and covered in dust and cobwebs in the corners.

   Lei wiped the dust from her hands onto her dress. Moving the desk was a bit harder than she thought it would be, and she was sure that the scraping sound it produced was audible from two rooms away. But the door was blocked, and she felt a little more secure now.
   She eyed off the chairs stacked in the corner. Dismissing them as not worth the effort, she went over to one edge of the room, and sat down leaning against the wall. She fired up the data tablet again to check on what was happening in the city.
   The only thing that Lei regretted about her getaway so far was that she hadn't greabbed any more food...

Larry glanced up as he heard something in the other room and held up a hand for the rest of the men in the room to stop talking.  "You hear that?" he said.

"The sound of somethin' scrappin', Boss?" the small measley man asked.

"No the sound 'o children laughin'" Larry said smacking the man over the head.  "Yes the scrappin' sound." he didn't wait for a response though as he got up and began walking out of the room and down the hall, not bothering to hide the sound of his footsteps.  If there was someone in his building they were as good as dead, ain't no one goes sneakin' 'round his place.

Larry owned the bar downstairs ... and practically the entire crime world in Old Town Osiris.  Whoever had snuck into his place was just askin' fer trouble.  He reached the door at the end of the hall and turned the handle ... the thing didn't budge.  "What the hell! he said, knowing that there was no reason for that door to be locked he began hitting it with his shoulder the door slid open slightly and he realized that somone had pushed a large desk in front of it, and that someone looked to be a very scared little girl.

   Lei had only just settled down, and was only just starting to play with the tablet again when she heard the footsteps approaching the other side of the door she had just barricaded.
   Just keep going. Just walk past. Don't come in here. Keep going.
   The doorhandle rattled as someone tried to open it. Lei pushed herself upright, leaning against the wall and staring towards the door.
   It's shut. There's nothing in here. Just go away. Go back to what you were doing. No-one in here.
   The door shuddered with a thump from the other side, shifting the desk an inch into the room. Lei was frozen to the spot, staring. The door shuddered again, and there was enough of a gap for her to see the face of the man trying to push his way into the room. He looked big and rough, kind of like Geoff, except he also looked mean and angry.
   Lei made a break for the window. She was already starting to worm her way out the gap when the next thud shifted the desk a little further across the room. It had done it's job and slowed down any trouble, allowing her time to escape. She dropped the couple of feet onto the fire escape and scrambled to her feet, taking one last wide eyed look back into the room at the man who had finally succeeded at getting through the door. She ran to the end of the platform and started quickly climbing the stairs up the outside of the building.

Larry kicked the door open the rest of the way as the little girl scrambled out the window, "Who in the gorram hell let a lil' girl in here!" he shouted and climbed out the window after her.  What he feared is that some thug had hired the little brat as a spy.  She looked scrawny enough to be a street urchin and those kids would do anything for a credit, hell half a credit.  His boots pounded on the metal platform as he chased her up the stairs, he caught hold of her ankle as she tried to step up onto the roof and tugged hard.  She literally fell right on top of him, and he wrapped his strong arms around her, pinning her arms to her side.

"Well, whatta we got here?  A lil' spy ain't cha?"  His two buddies were just now making it onto the platform outside the window.  Larry looked back at them with an exhausted and annoyed expression, "Yeah, great work guys, real quick there ... so glad I hired ya."  He pulled Lei back in the window, "Looks like we're gonna have ta figure out what ta do with this one." Larry said.

"Ai ya, boss." the small man said, "She's the girl from the wave ... Blue Sun's looking fer her, payin' a pretty nice reward for her return too."

"Is that so?" Larry asked.

"Sure is, I recognize her, I was just lookin' at the wave."

Larry grinned at Lei, "Well, looks like you just might be useful after all."

   Lei had almost finished climbing the short ladder that led from the top platform of the fire escape and onto the roof when the man made it to the platform. She reached up, putting both hands over the small wall that ran around the roof of the building, and started to lift herself over the edge. Then the man managed to reach up and grab her ankle. He pulled back, putting more weight onto Lei's small frame than she could lift. She lost her grip on the edge of the building and fell backwards onto the man. The data tablet caught on the small wall surrounding the roof, and tore from Lei's grip, falling onto the flat area on top of the building.
   Lei found herself pinned in the man's grip, unable to escape. She squirming and kicking her legs about in an effort to make him loosen his grip on her, but everything she tried didn't seem to make a difference. She soon found herself bundled inside the same window she had climbed out of just before.

Larry pulled the struggling girl in through the window and down the hall to the room he had been sitting in earlier.  "Now that's quite enough of that." he said as she kicked her legs and he twisted her arm up behind her, applying pressure that could cause just the right about of pain to shoot through her ... just as a friendly warning.

"She's a fighter, boss." the small man commented.

"Thank you for your profound observation, Smalls." Larry said sarcastically.  "Toss my that will ya?"

Smalls tossed Larry a bit of rope, he forced Lei down into a chair and began tying her hands securely behind her and to the back of the chair.  Finishing he moved to the table in the center of the room and leaned over the terminal there.  Sure enough a picture of the same girl that he now had squirming in his chair looked back at him.  "Some guys daughter, eh?" he said and looked a Smalls "Bet we could get the reward to be even higher." Larry said with a grin.  "Contact them anonymously, let them know we got their girl and if they want her, they'll have to be raising that pretty little reward they got."  He smiled looking at Lei, "Looks like its gonna be a pretty damn good day after all my little friend."

   Lei let out a scream as she was lifted slightly by the pressure applied to her arm. With it twisted up behind her back, she could do nothing other than stand on the tips of her toes in an attempt to relieve the pressure on her elbow. As soon as she was released and thrown into the chair, she started to struggle again, but was unable to do anything as her hands were roughly dragged behind her and tied to the chair.
   They were going to hand her over to the people who were looking for her, and she was going to get sent back to there. Lei sullenly stared at the man's back as he walked away fron her, and started trying to slip her hands through the loops of rope that held her to the chair. Unfortunately, it seemed that the man had some experience in restraining people, as the loops were too tight for her to make any progress on.
   She was helpless to do anything...

Larry glanced at the girl then back at Smalls, "We're going to want to get her out of here, don't want this leading back to this establishment." Larry said.  This little girl was going to make him a rich man ... well richer then he already was.  He had to play it right however.  "You keep an' eye on her and I'll arrange for a bit of transportation." he said, and left the room, heading down the dingy hall.