Two months before killing themselves, the Heaven's Gate cultists bought a $3,600 computerized telescope to study the flying saucer they believed was shadowing the Hale-Bopp comet.

A week later they asked for their money back, complaining that the refrigerator-size telescope wasn't showing the UFO.

- Chicago Tribune

Soundtrack:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_GqVFa5GBA


Night City
August 30, 2045

In the City Medical Center, Daphne Copeland twists and turns in her bed, not quite able to shake the feeling that she's not alone, that something is hovering just outside the corner of her eyes, hunting, whispering, telling her something she just can't make out.  But if she stops listening, even for a moment, the panic sets in.  Then the tremors.  On a monitor, her parents watch their daughter struggle.  Her father grinds his teeth in frustration and fear that someone will use this moment to strike against him.  Her mother clasps her womb, feeling the dull ache that comes with a piece of her flesh in danger.  All Daphne wants is a data connection, the only thing that makes the void go away.  She just wants to Listen.

In her Heywood apartment, Pandora D'Angelo paces.  Holes decorate the walls, fist size chunks of drywall missing from the shitty light weight construction.  The table behind her is covered with pill bottles, whiskey bottles, and a large pistol that has been in her mouth twice today alone.  The solo can move but she can't work.  No way.  Not with the noise ringing in her ears.  It won't stop and the ripperdoc put her into a seizure when he tried to disconnect the work.  She knows addiction and this is it.  Chemical.  Psychological.  Cybernetic.  If she even sees a Listener she's going to find out what they did to her if she has to draw it on the wall with his brainstem.  For now, she's forced to Listen.

At the Aldecaldo camp, Emil Salerno refuses to leave his trailer.  Food has to be brought to him.  When his sister pulled the power on his net connection, he put a gun against her forehead and snarled something less than human.  That was the last time anyone tried to intervene directly.  His uncle has the IP address of the node he's connected to, but everything downstream is so heavily encrypted he can't make heads or tails of it.  Someone else will have to try to crack it.  Emil sits and stares at the walls.  Listening.

Ji-Hoon Kim tries to run his business.  His wife tells him not to.  His customers tell him they're glad he's back, but he doesn't know what to believe.  The world is full of liars, he just can't prove it.  But he knows it.  And the whispers tell him he's right.  At least, if they're speaking Korean they are.  There's wisdom in the madness, he just can't quite figure out what it is.  Every free moment he has is spent with noise canceling headphones strapped to his head, Listening.

------
At 2132, four agents ping simultaneously:

Conrad's Bodega
0130 Tonight
Contract Pending
   -Black Jasper 

Martin's agent emits a discreet alert tone, providing a merciful interruption of the night's study session.  Martin closes the battered management textbook, bookmarking his place with a sheaf of purloined quarterly reports from Orbital Air's aerodyne division, and reaches for the device.

Conrad's Bodega
0130 Tonight
Contract Pending
   -Black Jasper

"Huh," he remarks to no one in particular.  The textbook thumps onto the conapt's coffee table atop the pile of hardcopy detritus from last week's conference security gig.  Martin stands and wanders to the bedroom closet.  The meet is at Conrad's, and after midnight, so his mental style guide has a preset for this... and he has time to figure out a dinner selection and do laundry.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:10, Mon 10 May 2021.

Traveling via NTC requires a blend of humility and patience that Kenji finds difficult to muster. Not for the first time, he finds himself regretting the sale of his motorcycle, a transaction that he pursued only half-heartedly and exclusively out of financial necessity, his termination for cause from TTA precluding the receipt of any severance pay, and his drug addiction recently having entered its very expensive, grief-fueled terminal phase.

The long bus ride from Little China to Pacifica presents a panoramic cross-section of Night City society, skewing towards the lower echelons, the top tiers only hinted at by their complete absence of representation among the bus's passengers. At this hour, most of Kenji's fellow riders consist of construction workers and overnight office cleaning crews on their way to work in the government district, or minimum-wage service industry workers on their way home to the overpacked suburbs of Rancho Coronado and Santo Domingo. The clientele thins out a bit and takes on a slightly more well-scrubbed, aspirational appearance as the route approaches the shiny-new corpo retreat of Pacifica.

Conrad's Bodega is located off the freeway in the interstice between low-rent Heywood and the ballooning real-estate prices of Pacifica Playground. As Kenji exits the bus, bass hits from MetalStorm's industrial sound system, located several blocks to the east, beneath the southern ramp of the Southbay bridge, throb against his chest. He checks his Skinwatch. NTC service is called many things, but on-time is seldom one of them. According to the bus schedule, he should have had at least 15 minutes to travel the final block to Conrad's. He's got one.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 15:04, Mon 10 May 2021.

Alex grabbed something that passed for coffee en route to the bodega.  Hot and fresh from a street cart, the beverage contained the necessary caffeine, though it wasn't nearly as good as the real coffee he'd had in the Navy.  The 'Boats' ran on nuclear fission and coffee extraction.

Hell, the first ratio Cruz had been required to remember at his A-School wasn't anything involving reactors - it was the brewing ratio formula where t is the total dissolved solids expressed as a percentage of the mass of the grounds, V is the volume of the water used, and M is the mass of the grounds. In other words, the strength of a beverage is the product of the brew ratio and the extraction percentage.  If you couldn't master that, you weren't going to be make it through Navy Nuclear Power School.



It was that formula now that would power him through the meet at Conrad's Bodega.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:23, Mon 10 May 2021.

The timing could have been better. Actually it was downright inconvenient. Karma had had plans for the evening.

But her curiosity was piqued. And she knew Jasper well enough to know that he wouldn’t haul her to some crappily anonymous spot in the middle of the night without good reason. After all, there were better things to be doing in the middle of the night. Which circled back to the plans that Karma had. Four hours. Still enough time.

She stepped out of the Uber and onto the sidewalk at zero one twenty seven hours. It would have been nice if Jasper thought that she’d planned to arrive more or less on the dot but it was more luck than anything else. It had taken her slightly longer than she’d reckoned on to disentangle herself from her plans. This really had better be worth it.

The dark haired corp takes a moment to look around. Recent events have made her wary. Check. She’s always wary. Recent events have made her warier. She’s clad in black from head to toe. Black leather jacket, that’s honest to God vintage. Leggings that cling like a second skin. Heels that boost her height by several inches. Her hair looks damp, like she’s straight out of the shower - which she was, the damp hair a tell that it had been a rushed one - and there’s the faintest whiff of what a purveyor of fine fragrances might recognize as one of the latest designer scents, one that’s popular with the fashionistas and influencers. Or at least it was popular with the latter this afternoon. Which was probably an eternity ago for them.

Satisfied that there don’t seem to be any obvious threats, she pushes open the front door of the Bodega, a click of heel announcing her arrival.

Martin arrives first, maybe by virtue of planning, maybe just luck of the draw the with Night City Transit Authority.   The bodega is empty except for Wendell who gives Martin a “yeah, we’re brothers in the trade now” wave as he passes.  Lube Job hits the meet next, hopped up on caffeine and a motorcycle ride.  MDR steps out of her Uber, looking great and ready to eat the City alive.  It’s probable she doesn’t quite know what to do with the run down exterior of the convenience store, but Kenji arrives at a hustle and is able to lead her through the shelves of shitty food, into the freezer of frozen kibble (and more!) and down the steps through the heavy oak door.

The decor in the whiskey bar is the same as before.  Heavy wood, the scent of Eddies changing hands and deals being made.  Karma’s never been here, but she’s been in plenty of places like it.  Vernon tends bar, a bottle or two of whisky sitting on the stained, ancient hardwood surface.  At the other end of the small space, Black Jasper sits at one of the circle tables, his back pressed against the wall.  A bottle of whisky sits on this table as well as five or six tumblers pushed to the middle, detritus from the last deal made in the space.  L.Seth vapes some stimulant or another (probably the last thing the guy needs to be dropping into his already hyped system) at the table next to Jasper’s.  A short woman of about twenty-two sits next to Jasper in a NetRunner suit poking out from underneath a long designer coat that matches her shock pink hair.  She’s laughing at something he’s said.  Martin recognizes the throaty voice as belonging to Viceroy.

“Welcome back,” Jasper says, sweeping the other four seats at the table he waits at.  “Or welcome for the first time, Karma,” he tacks on with a nod.  Apparently being a part owner of the bodega agrees with the Fixer, he looks right at home.  There’s a moment of small talk, a brief introduction to Viceroy and then Jasper gets down to business.

“Last mission went to the client’s satisfaction,” Jasper says.  “Same client has approached with a follow up.  Since you are already familiar with the mission profile, it makes the most sense to hand it to you.  Your extraction is still suffering under the effects of something the Listeners did to her.  Some sort of colossal brain fuckup from what I’m told that mom and dad need squared away.  The doc’s have told the client that without shutting down whatever source she’s trying to tune into, she’s not going to improve.  The long and short of it is that you are being contracted to identify, trace, and neutralize the electronic source that Daphne is trying to stay plugged into.”

An empty tumbler gets pushed back and forth between Jasper’s hands on the table. “The client offered two thousand.  I bargained on your behalf for twenty five hundred given the opposition faced on the extraction.  Karma, you’re  included on the payroll, but I’m assuming you want some payback on the dipshits that thought grabbing you was a reasonable idea.”

“What have you got for me?”

Martin arrives early, wins a couple hundred Euro from the usual losers at poker, then turns around and invest it into learning Black Jasper's tells.  To the undiscerning eye, it probably looks like losing slowly until he reaches the point of breaking even.  Martin is fairly sure that Black Jasper's eye is more discerning and the fixer finds the process mildly amusing.

He drops out of the game when Cruz arrives, standing to greet the other man and engaging in small talk at the bar until the rest of the meet filters in.

When the initial pitch is done, he nods to the NetRunner.  "Viceroy, I assume you're going to handle the locate.  You gonna go on site with us to trash the hardware or will you be giving us remote instruction?"  Unspoken, but again, he's fairly sure at least Black Jasper will get the subtext: can you handle yourself in the inevitable gunfight or will I need to treat you as a protectee?

He returns his attention to the fixer.  "Daphne was the contract but she wasn't the only one we pulled out of there.  Are the others having the same connection issues?"  His gaze flicks momentarily to Cruz and he raises an interrogative eyebrow.

Kenji orders a Mexican Cola. Vernon pops the top, slides the tall, sweat-beaded bottle across the bar. Kenji takes a seat at Jasper's table, enjoys a sip of the cold, sweet beverage, hopes the caffeine kicks in soon.

The Medtech hasn't brought much fresh intel to the table- just the knowledge than neither Daphne Copeland's doctors, nor TTI, have any idea what's causing the lingering aftereffects of her jacked-in captivity. Based on Jasper's preliminary briefing, however, that information seems more or less self-evident. Anyway, he doesn't want to interrupt Whisper's line of questioning, so he keeps his mouth shut for now and listens.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 16:53, Thu 13 May 2021.

In reply to M. Lowell (msg # 8):

Cruz did his own listening, mostly to what Jasper was proposing.  He was content to mull it over and hear out the others, but when Martin mentioned the connection issue, he felt the need to chime in.

"Uh, yeah.  I don't want to talk out of school - the family is doesn't, well, you know.  Anyway, Emil..." Cruz stopped shrugged, then continued.

"..got problems.  Word is, won't take the hardware out and spends every waking hour surfing the net." Alexander paused and signed.  A thought entered his mind:

If you save someone by pulling them off a machine and they spend the rest of their life trying to get hooked back up, did you really save their life?

Cruz dismissed it to move on.

"I asked the family if they could get connection logs and whatnot.  That will take time though.  If we've got a better lead, we could probably help at least two people by stopping that signal."
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 01:38, Fri 14 May 2021.

“Think of me as tech support,” Viceroy grins.  “I’m just a phone call away.”  The subtext being Maelstrom gunfights aren’t really my line of cocaine, but thanks for asking.  “I can work the locate, evaluate the tech, and if you need an on the ground ‘Runner, I can pass on a few names.”

“Cost on my end,” Jasper tacks on. “I’m hiring you, not passing on expenses.”  It is a fairly frank admission for a fixer.  Maybe this guy plays the long game.

“Look,” Viceroy continues with a nod to Lube, “you get me access to the Aldecaldos and I’ll take a little look see. I’d love to tap into whatever it is Emil has found, take a peek, and drop a Snooper into the line.  See what goes where.  Can go public with a handshake or go dark with a hack job.  Your call.”

Well, this is a surprise. Fancy bumping into the Three Amigos again. And look at that. Everyone knows Jasper. Coincidence. Not.

When Whisper asks about the others having the same connection issues she raises the glass of Scotch that she’s holding to her lips, tosses back what remains of the amber liquor then immediately reaches for the bottle, refills her glass with a generous measure. The others. The other victims. The other abductees. The other whatever the fuck you wanted to call them. And unlike the other people here, she had almost been one of them. The others that is.

Maybe she would have bene one of the lucky ones, would have been rescued. Yeah, if Jasper was involved he’d have probably told them to swipe right. Hopefully. But even if they had got her out she might have still been plugged in, dancing to whatever tune someone was playing in her head. And if they had swiped left, well, that really wasn't something that she wanted to think too much about.

”You bet your fucking ass I want payback.” She murmurs softly. For the other three this is business. But for MDR it’s personal. Way too personal.

Kenji weighs his words carefully. He doesn't want anyone at the table, especially the boss, thinking that he's criticizing them for how the extraction gig went down, because he's not. In fairness, nobody knew then quite what they were getting into. They'd all done the best they could with the resources at hand.

"We didn't have a netrunner on the ground during the last job..." and look where we are now. "I'm not a computers guy, so I can't say for sure, but I think it would have helped. Daphne Copeland's doctors have no idea what's wrong with her. Neither does TTI. That means her issues are technological rather than medical. And since the Listeners, or whoever's still fucking with her brainwaves, are using some sort of tech no one's really seen before- otherwise, our expert," Kenji nods towards Viceroy, "would know what we're up against already- telephone tech support probably ain't gonna cut it."

-
This message was last edited by the player at 18:29, Sat 15 May 2021.

"I can make a call to Emil's folks in the morning and see if they are open to some help on this," Cruz said with a shrug.  He wasn't going to pull out his agent at 01:fuckall to call Poncho though.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:01, Sun 16 May 2021.

Martin nods at Viceroy's response, both spoken and unspoken.  "'kay.  We'll see where your initial trace goes.  May take you up on that contact list later."

He turns to Karma.  "So.  These are improved circumstances over the last time we met.  And you're on the payroll with us."  He nods to Black Jasper, acknowledging the fixer's earlier statement - as well as the caveat about personal investment.  "Kentucky makes holes and plugs holes, Lube Job is a machine-whisperer, I do a little bit of executive protection work.  What are you bringing to the party?"  He keeps his tone conversational: assessing, not challenging.

Karma tosses back another slug of Scotch while she considers how to answer the question that Whisper’s just asked. It’s a fair one. None of them know her other than as someone that had needed to br rescued. That thought makes her wince internally. Needed to be rescued. It’s a sign of weakness. She’s on the back foot already. In the circles that she usually moves in the sharks would already have scented the blood and started to circle.

So, what does she bring to the party? Apart from being easy on the eye of course? She leans across the table, looks at Whisper. ”I’m the Executive that you’re normally protecting.” There’s a hint of a smile. The intricately designed tattoo on her left arm ripples, changes, the nanobots forming themselves into a different pattern, the color changing from light green to a dark red. ”I open doors that you can’t. I get people that wouldn’t give you the time of day to talk to me. I work rooms, Whisper, I read people.” She’s matching his demeanour. It’s not a challenge, just a statement of fact.

MDR sits back in her chair, brings her fingers together in a steeple in front of her chin. ”And sometimes I beat ten shades of shit out of people. Purely for recreational purposes. I mean, everyone has to have a way of relaxing.”

After Monica finishes her resume, Jasper leans back with a look that says something between “ferocious, isn’t she,” and “yeah, I know.”  That the Fixer and the Corp share a history hangs in the air unspoken, but it doesn’t seem like it’s the kind of history that entails the exchange of body fluids from either voluntary or involuntary emissions.

“Prefer cars, myself,” the fixer says quietly with a shrug.

“I’m down with some ultraviolence,” L.Seth adds with a nod and a wink that speaks volumes.

“Yeah...” Jasper raps his knuckles against the table bringing everyone back to the point. “Payment.  Same as the last time through.  Twenty five points up front, seventy five on the back end.  Reasonable expenses reimbursed.  You need some gear fronted on the payday, let me know.  Didn’t fuck me last time, I figure we can extend some courtesy here.”

The slide of Jasper’s jaw leaves the fact that fronted gear is probably another test unspoken.  The kind that speaks to the trustworthiness of the people that work with him.

Kenji raises an eyebrow as Karma wraps up her curriculum vitae. Like many working-class denizens of Night City, he has an inherent distrust of corpos- even total smoke shows who like to scrap for kicks. It matters little that his own biological father was an Arisaka exec missing, presumed dead, after the 2023 bombing. If Black Jasper trusts the new girl, though, Kenji will give her the benefit of the doubt.

"Any leads on where this signal is originating from?" Kenji asks the table.

If not, Kenji follows up with, "Maybe we should pay the pagoda another visit." The building itself looks like it could act as an oversized aerial.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 21:25, Wed 19 May 2021.

“Not yet,” Viceroy chips in. “My understanding,” her eyes flick to Jasper for confirmation, “is that the Copeland family and TTI have determined it is in Daphne’s best interest not to access the Net.  Not after the first time.”

With a slight cough, Jasper picks up the story. “A couple days out from pickup, Doc and Dad decide that Daphne just needs to get her life back together.  Gave her access back.  They came back six hours later to find her tearing at the comp in the room trying to get it to interface with her new ‘ware.  The site was a gibberish address.  Online for not much more than eight hours based on logs before disappearing back into the electronic ether. Became a bit distressed when her access was taken away.  Started a nasty habit of cutting to kill the time.”

“My theory,” Viceroy cuts in, “is that the bad guys are building new sites every few hours and using them for brief periods before wiping them clean and moving on in an attempt to throw off pursuit.  I need an active signal, one actively calling home to hone in on anything.”

So the pagoda is probably out. Kenji is momentarily crestfallen. A moving target is always harder to hit. But the team might not have to start back at square one...

"If they're staying mobile, chances are good they're using the same vans." Kenji flashes a sly smile, turns to Lube Job and asks, "Those trackers you rigged up still active?"

-
This message was last edited by the player at 19:40, Thu 20 May 2021.

"Might be," Cruz said.  "Much will depend on how well it was secured and how shitty the streets that van has been driving over in the past two weeks," Alexander added.  It wasn't like the ad-hoc tracker he'd kludged together had been bolted and torqued down.  Still, it was worth a try.

"You still got that number and IMEI," he asked Viceroy, who had triangulated the signal last time.  Cruz could provide it again if needed.

“I”ve got’em,” Viceroy says pushing away the implication that she would lose data with a toss of her hair..  Her left arm comes up on the table and the NetRunner slides back the sleeve of her pink jacket to reveal a chromatic cyber arm.  It’s a nice piece, bedazzled with unicorns and a some “fuck the world” stickers.  It’s also packing a custom cyberdeck.  With her right hand working the controls, Viceroy’s eyes go distant, tapping into the net via Conrad’s data flow.  If the crew is worth a damn, they’ve been upgrading the system since the friendly take over a couple weeks ago.

Across town, two cobbled together  cell phone/tracking beacons receive a ping from the nearest tower.  One fails to acknowledge the request, either dislodged and destroyed or dead.  The other, through the miracles of modern lithium blends or maybe random placement inside the van’s electrical induction charging field, pings back.  Viceroy acknowledges the signal and locks onto the signal, running a quick patch so that the phone sends texts every fifteen minutes as updates to save whatever juice is left in the system.

A few more hand gestures and Viceroy smiles wide, eyes returning to the present moment.

“One of your little toys is still active,” she tells Lube. “Conveniently parked outside The Molt.”

Soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MAP3yVRVJ8


“Just don’t break, huh?  Kinda shit kills profit margins.” Jasper says, handing a set of keys over to Lube.  The van is black, electric, and small.  The perfect size for moving small pieces of contraband throughout NC blending in as just another delivery schmuck.  On the key ring hang an electrical fob, the standard key of the modern age, and an actual mechanical key, a bit of backup should the battery in the fob fail.  Or get wiped in an EMP blast.  You never know.

“He used to have one with a wizard on it.  Painted me riding a unicorn into battle with all kinds of topless babes cheering me on.” L.Seth kicks in.  “True story.”

“Not a true story,” Jasper counters without turning around.

“Should be a true story,” the solo mutters, walking away in momentary boredom.

“I’ll pick you up when you hear from the Nomads,  Let me know.” Viceroy says to Lube.  “I”m gonna go blackout for are few hours.”

At about 0215, the van holding four edgerunners heads out into the NC streets, headed for The Molt.  The streets are quiet in the “good” areas, the action picking up as the real estate value goes down.  Nearing the Molt, the streets take on a familiar scape.  Nothing much has changed in the last couple weeks.  The containment strategy from Maelstrom proper is still in place, though in slightly smaller numbers, most of the Boosters showing a little worse for wear.  At Janissary and Stein, the Molt rots slowly in all its urban decay glory.  People file in and out of the club, the ones going in brimming with energy and violence.  The ones coming out staggering a bit at the end of their night.  Just like before, the club is silent except for the subsonic rumble of the speakers that shake the ground.

Lube puts the van over on Janissary, looking down the block in a spot across the street from where the team launched their prior bugging mission.  A few homeless lean on the wall, high or asleep, not giving a shit about the delivery van whose ass end points at the club.  At the service entrance, a single white van sits still under the protection of a Listener with a fire axe and cyberware.  It’s gotta be the one that’s spiked.  The roll up door hangs partially closed, just enough room to pass underneath it without whacking one’s armored skull on it.

It’s 0320.  It’s dark.  And you’ve all got giant ass Caf’s in various flavors to stay awake.

Who’s doing what?

In the army, Kenji developed the ability to fall asleep quickly just about anywhere, yet wake at the first sign of danger. He'd lost it when he was using- his circadian rhythms had gotten so fucked up that he had to take a handful of downers just to nod off- but it was coming back. The medtech naps until the edgerunners on duty wake him for his shift.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 23:19, Thu 27 May 2021.

With most of his gig work occurring after dark, Martin's sleep cycle is set for a crepuscular, if not wholly nocturnal, existence.  His low-light optics are new enough that he's still marveling at the nighttime world they reveal, too, and he's kicking himself for not making this investment years ago.  Accordingly, he's more than happy to sprawl in the front passenger seat with one earbud dribbling a club mix playlist into his ear and the other ear tuned to whatever quiet conversation his surveillance partner wants to pass the time with.

Lacking any sort of training in driving, and having precious little experience, he's also more than happy to leave that to someone more qualified.

"You know, a guy told me once about the black van of Saigon.  They'd pick up anyone suspected of being VC, then ride around for 3 or 4 hours.  Dump the guy out with a few bruises at the end.  If he was VC, he'd wind up dead a day later.  They assumed he'd talked.  If he wasn't, no one gave a shit.  Took a few months before they caught on.  Something to try if we get bored I guess," Cruz said with a shrug as he navigated the small black van through the streets.

Cruz was quiet again until 3:20, an hour off a really cool time.

"I bet neither of you could sneak past that sentry into the club under that roll up door," Alex said, throwing out a fun and dangerous option that was almost not the most optimal thing, but hey, people get punchy and do stupid shit at three-twenty.

"Heh."  Martin glances at the sentry in question.  "Probably not.  Remember, we're pretty sure they're running headware comms.  What he freaks out about, they all freak out about."  He taps his temple for emphasis.

He's quiet for a minute, then: "I wonder what they'd think if one of them dropped off their net for a while and then came back online.  Could you build a Faraday cage in a black van?"

In the back of the van, MDR is fucking bored.

She taps her calloused knuckles a few times against the side of the metal van, sends a few emails to her pet NetRunner about some various questions she has regarding The Molt, Listeners, and all this other crap.  A few idle moments are spent wondering about the enhanced bulge in Lube Job’s pants.  Finally, she reaches into her blouse, removes a small vial, does a line of synth-coke off her calloused knuckles (just enough to feel the edge, not enough for damage) and breathes a little easier.

“I’m bored,” she announces. “Who wants to hear a story?”

There’s a general lack of enthusiasm that she tunes out immediately or chalks up to it being 0400.

“Once upon a time there was a bag of dicks named Dr. Ryder Kannerack who thought it would be an interesting thought exercise to create a system where people could be physically addicted to electronic media.  Kannerack was a bit of ahead of his time, this being 2017 and all, but the advertising world seized upon his theory.  What C-Suite exec wouldn’t want to have customers who craved what they were selling.  Not only the physical product, but the very story being sold to them through a sophisticated advertising campaign.”  Karma wipes her nose and sniffs heavily. “See what I’m saying here?  The message could be addictive.  Does this sound like any particular shitheads we have come across?”

MDR waits for the appreciative grunt that emanates from somewhere in the front of the van before continuing.

“Unfortunately for Kannerack, or at least for those who tried to use his theories for practical applications in the marketplace, the research proved to be somewhat less than useless.  Again, for Ryder, this shit was theoretical.  For the apex predators in the boardrooms, several hundred million eddies went fucking ‘poof.’”  There’s a shrug that says more about Monica’s acceptance of the costs of doing business than is strictly comfortable for those used to fighting corporate overlords.  For the current listens of the tale, their individual mileage may vary.

“So for the last umpteen years, the Kannerack file has been sitting in the files of various advertising corps as a sort of tripwire for the desperate.  If you were all out of ideas, you would sift through the old shit hoping to find something that hadn’t worked before and come up with re-pitching his ideas with new technology.   A running joke, the Hail Mary of those on the chopping block.

“What does this have to do with the price of snuff-films in the corp zone?  I’m looking at these Listener fucks and seeing weaponized Kannerack.  And the file says fuck-all about reprogramming.”

At 0416, Desmond’s Drone Delivery service pings Lube Job’s Agent and let’s him know he’s got a package arriving a hundred feet behind and ten feet to the side of the van he’s currently occupying.  The GPS on the drone isn’t wrong, it’s just dropping off his order (in twenty two minutes or less, based on the address and time of day) at the specified coordinates outside the sight lines of The Molt.  The tech scampers out, collects the box after shooing away a few unarmed Scav’s with a slight threat of Adjudication and returns to the van with his prize: about a50 square  meters of fine copper mesh, a few nice bits of control module, and a couple rechargeable batteries.  With copper prices being what they are (what, there’s plenty to scavenge from large towers of waiting to be scrap standing nearby), it costs about a hundred Eddies.

A bit of furious activity from those a bit tech savvy led by the tech master and an improvised Faraday Cage takes shape over the next hour or so.  A few screws, a bunch of duct tape, a smidge of elbow grease, and a small chamber is cobbled together that should be able to hold an unconscious Listener should one be procured.

At 0530, the crowds are starting to thin, the sun will be coming up in about an hour, and Lube Job will be due to meet with Viceroy to head out to the Nomad Encampment for data tracing in a couple hours.

What’s the play?

"We got the trap, now we just need to lure the mouse," Cruz said as he worked to finish up.  The work had been a good way to focus his mind on the task at hand, not not think about weaponized addictive media.  I mean, shit, of course some C-suite Corpo type would dream up some shit like that.  Bad enough the Madison Avenue types had all those jingles and other mindworms that would derail your focus.  Cruz didn't buy into any of that shit.  He was his own man, with his own brain, doing his own thing.  Fuck the man and what he was trying to sell.

"Alright, here we go.  Last screw," he said, drilling it in with his cyberhand as the Makita-DeWalt^(tm) logos on each finger twinkled in the neon light.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:11, Mon 05 July 2021.

Roused from his nap by the Pavlovian sound of someone snorting a bump not five feet away, Kenji wakes quickly, grumpily. As Karma wraps up her story, Kenji wonders briefly whether his new teammate doesn't know, or simply doesn't care, that that he's a recovering addict. Either way, his septum starts to itch, and he respects moonlighting corporat a little less.

Kenji takes a sip of water, asks, "Are you suggesting that the Listeners are using this Kannerack? I mean, if that's the case, how do you suppose a buncha Maelstrom rejects got their cyberhands on it?"

Once Karma's had a chance to reply, the Medtech turns his attention to Cruz Control's just-completed project.

"Nice work, choom," he says, admiring the scratch-built personal faraday cage."Looks kinda cozy."

Kenji shifts uncomfortably on his makeshift palette, tries to massage some feeling back into his left leg.

"I probably sound like a broken record," he begins, using a quaint idiomatic expression that, like its subject, stubbornly refuses to die, "...but we're going to need a netrunner- here, on site- to get the most out of that thing. I'm not real confident we can make these borg-monks talk. Hell, I'm not even sure they can talk. If they're using Wifi or radio or something like that to communicate..." he shrugs, letting the others put two and two together for themselves.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 18:50, Fri 09 July 2021.

“Man, I don’t even know,” MDR says to Kenji’s question.  “Entire research divisions have been looking for the Kannerack method and some cyberpuke cracks the code?”  The corp takes a second to wipe some sweat from her brow, the movement required to install a faraday cage bringing up the ambient temp inside the van.  “I do intend to find out.”

Sometime around sunup the activity around The Molt grounds to a halt.  Maelstrom/Listener wannabes come staggering out under the influence of who knows what pharmaceutical/sexual/musical influence.  Groups partner off and disappear into the distance, swallowed by daylight and the sidewalk or summoned autonomous cabs.  Only the fortunate are driving their own vehicles.  And those paid handsomely for security to find their rides unmolested through the morning hours.

The smell of fatigue fills the can, sour with sweat, cooling Caff, and unanswered questions.  Lube peels out, using a summoned cab for his meeting with Viceroy.  Monica chews out an excuse about needing to hit the office and check some more research before vacating shortly after.

That leaves Whisper and Kentucky to follow the van when in departs the club somewhere around 8 am.  The duo watches as a standard issue Listener huscle steps out into the occluded glowing orb of the sun, squints up and down the street, then opens the back of the van.  There’s a flurry of activity that’s kinda hard to spot, but looks suspiciously like a body bag getting carried into the back of the van before the dude gets in the driver’s seat.  There’s a bit more motion in the back, the doors pulled shut from the inside, and van pulls out into the California smog-shine.  There’s enough traffic that Kentucky is able to follow without looking like they’re following (I don’t know…drive casual).  That and the fact that panel vans are ridiculously common around NC when the “legitimate” half of the population starts moving around.

The van heads north, moving with the flow of traffic into the University Zone, and heading east towards the Old Corp Center.  The area  is nice, not where anyone would expect to find Maelstrom building a fort, but there, just at the edge of The Glen, the University District, and the Old Corp Zone, the van pulls into a subterranean parking garage below a nondescript former light industrial center that is currently under redevelopment.  Kentucky stops, pulling the van over a block or so away.  He and Martin are considering their next actions when Kentucky’s agent pings.

Hi, it’s Teagan.  Can you come see me?  I need help.  Please.

————-

Viceroy picks Lube up out in New Westbrook, her hair changed to a lovely shade of electric green to match both her car and her jacket.  She grins at the site of the tech/nomad and waves him inside the car from the other side of the windshield with a massive cup in her hand.  Debbie Hostess sugar products, or at least their wrappers, decorate the floor and backseat of the four door calling into question the amount of cyber ware that would be required to filter out a level of blood sugar that could give a brachiosaurus diabetes.  Several black cases of gear sit on the floor, covered with various stickers of all kinds of fun princesses with guns.  Maybe a band named Elisa was Framed?

“Rainbow sprinkles coffee?” she asks Lube, pointing to another sugar bomb sitting in a cup holder. “I don’t know what you drink, but…”

She steers the car south east, picking her way to the freeways that lead to the old interstate and following Alexander’s instructions, out towards the Nomad encampment.

“Anything specific I should expect?” She asks Lube as the city gives way to desert waste.

The NetRunner drives casually, not aggressively,

August 31, 2045
1015 Hrs


24 hours after discovering the self-immolation of Lonny Cantu, and spending the intervening time half sick to her stomach, Samantha Fletcher considers her new found cash and whether or not it’s worth the personal cost.  Looking out a nice view is kinda ruined when it comes with the psychosomatic smell of burning flesh.

Her agent pings, bringing forth a number that causes a slew of emotions to bang through Sam’s head: Deacon Gerald.

You have proven able.
I have a contract for you.
Where we met last time.  1300 hrs.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:05, Sat 10 July 2021.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<intermission>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
August 27th, 2045
2200 Hrs
Night City
Kepler Park

”The Trinity recognizes Teagan Brock,” the Father says with all the gravitas his seventy year old body can muster.  It is a lot.  A lifetime of whisky and cigarettes before a second lifetime of war for the soul of humanity.  ”Let her step forward.

Teagan shuffles carefully forward, her ears trying to build a soundscape of the room that she’s in.  In her five years as part of the New Inquisition, she’s never been here.  Of that she’s sure. She doesn’t have to see to know that.  A lifetime of blindness has built a sense of space.  The echoes seem oddly distorted, like maybe the room is insulated or the voices she’s hearing are amplified to seem more imposing.  If that’s the case, the effect works.

”Name yourself, Child.

Teagan clears her throat.  ”I am Teagan Brock, your holiness.  Supplicant to the Blessed.” Just saying the words sends a thrill down her spine.  A surge of shame follows, telling her that it is prideful to feel this and pride leads souls astray.

“As you say,” a new voice says, this one the Son she knows.  She has heard this voice for years in the educational casts she has downloaded and listened to over and over, each time filling her world with purpose.  “Your service is recognized.  Many souls you have saved.  Many times have your demonstrated your love of our Lord.  To join the Blessed is to join our highest calling.  Even higher than the Trinity that you stand before.  Do you take on this charge.”

”I do, your holiness.  With an open heart.”

A third voice, this one low and quiet.  Menacing with judgment.  The Holy Spirit, protector of the New Inquisition’s soul.  “The Holy Spirit has examined this one, found her soul to be pure.”

The Father speaks again.  “The Father has examined this one, found her body to be pure.”  Teagan shudders at the memory of the examination, shamed at the process, but glad that she has held herself above the temptation of flesh for all these years.

“The Son has examined this one, found her mind to be pure in thought.” Those questions had been easy, routine for a mind that was used to building memories and systems to navigate the world.  And the righteous ideas had carved themselves into her core.

Foot steps come across the space, reaching her in a deceptively short time.  A hand places itself on top of her head.  “Then take your place among the Blessed, Teagan Brock,” the Holy Spirit says.  “Take on the mantle of the the High Work, rise above and apart from the blasphemous world of the flesh and stand ready to answer the call of the Trinity.”

Tears begin to stream down Teagan’s face, a half choked sob stuck in her throat.  Finally, she has a home.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<intermission end>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:02, Mon 12 July 2021.

"Shit," Kenji mutters to himself. He answers Whisper's quizzical look, "That blind girl, Teagan, recruiter for the New Inquisition- just texted she needs help."

This complicates things. The team's van is parked right outside a new lead, and Teagan isn't part of the job, so it's not really biz. Is it personal? Yeah, she's cute, but he hardly knows anything about the girl, except that she's in a cult- kind of a big red flag. But she did put the team on to the Listeners, so maybe it's a little bit of both- business and personal.

Waiting for Whisper's take on recent developments, Kenji thumbs dance across the face of his agent.

"What's up?"

-
This message was last edited by the player at 16:28, Mon 12 July 2021.

Sam stares at the message on her agent, queasiness returning full force. What does that psycho "Deacon" Gerald want with her now? Her first guess is that he wants to kill her. She's a witness- as far as she knows the last person not in the cult to have seen Lonnie Cantu alive.

She tosses her agent on the bed, walks to the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the bay, takes a few deep breaths, trying and failing to enjoy the view. She has to check out in a little over an hour.

She'd been looking forward to this, getting out of her apartment, taking advantage of the amenities a reputable hotel can offer, but the news about that poor gonk Cantu had ruined her stay. Gerald, had ruined it.

Fucking asshole.

She walks back to the bed, picks up her agent.

"Pulpo, you fancy a little drone work? Today, Kepler park, 1250 hours. Yeah? Cool. I'm going to meet a cult leader there at 1300. Yeah, seriously. Long story. Thing is, he might try to murder me- betting he won't, once he knows someone's watching. 'Why' is that he says he's got a gig for me; I worked for him before, kind of. You know me, Pulpy, I'm curious. I know, I know... this is pretty fucked up. I'll explain everything later, but I need to get ready, do a little recon before the meeting. You still in? Thanks, choom. Talk to ya later."

She unzips her overnight bag, carefully removes a folded towel- one of the hotel's own- sets it down on the bed. Lifting one corner reveals a Militech Adjudicator VHP. Sam nearly smiles.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 23:30, Sat 10 July 2021.

Martin perks up.  "Personal help or recruiting help or ambush help?"  He glances over at Kenji, then returns his gaze to the garage with occasional flickers of peripheral attention directed toward their own vehicle's mirrors.  "I mean, nice girl and all, but you are tainted by the CyberSatan.  Me, too," he adds meditatively.  "I know you know this, but we've got no way of knowing that she's actually the one sending from that number."

He pulls out his own agent and snaps a couple of images of the parking garage, both zoomed-in and wide-angle.  He fires the pictures off to the team's group chat thread along with the GPS and street-address coordinates.  Our friends rolled out of the club at 0803.  Possible body bag on board.  These guys must appreciate the industrial aesthetic.  Or maybe they need the infrastructure.

"There's coffee in here right?" Cruz said, eyeing the top layer of the cup suspiciously.  He was a black coffee kind of guy.  He cautiously took a sip and after recovering answered the question asked.

"Emil, the Aldecaldo we pulled out, sounds pretty fucked up.  He's jacked in all the time from what I've heard.  The old man you'll meet is Federico 'Poncho' Salerno - call him Señor Salerno until he says otherwise.  He's the HMFIC as far as we are concerned - Emil is family and Poncho knows he needs help.  I suggested this cockamamy scheme so if it's fucked, stay diplomatic and focus on other ways we might be able to help Emil."

Cruz kept a lookout as they made their way to the encampment.  While he suspected the most dangerous thing he'd encounter on this run would be what Viceroy claimed was coffee, he knew better than to let his guard down.

"What else might be good to know?," he asked out loud, half to himself, half to the netrunner.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:02, Mon 12 July 2021.

Teagan’s response isn’t immediate, but it’s not what Kentucky would called delayed either.  Voice to text has probably been a godsend to the blind, but then again, most people who are blind in 2045 have had their optic nerves replaced and/or repaired.

I need protection.  Someone I can trust. You said you helped your friend with the Arch-Demons.  Will you help me?

——————

The Aldecaldo camp announces itself with a marked up-tick in custom hot rods and violence-mobiles modded out for warfare on the open road.  Outriders on motorcycles start showing up a couple miles out.  A few war wagons sit on hill tops overlooking the main approach.  At Cruz’s instruction, Viceroy turns the car off an old off ramp, takes the right hand turn away from the ruin that used to the overpass crossing the highway and follows the remains of an asphalt road that was last repaved in 1621.  The potholes could swallow an eighteen wheeler with room for an SUV on the side.  Viceroy maneuvers around them, following the well worn ruts of other vehicles who have picked their way though this obstacle course.  With her other hand, she eats a pink SnoBall that drops bits off its edge every time she takes a bite.  The sugar coated flakes of coconut fail to find attachment on the static charged coat covering her frame, instead taking up residence on the car’s floor, perhaps giving an early Pink Christmas to the colony of fairies that must live under the driver seat gorging themselves on the waste.

A few of the security minded Nomads wait near the top of a low rise, a couple of assault rifles visible, a couple of cars with who knows what under the hood sitting on either side of the road.  The checkpoint doesn’t scream aggression, the Nomads are used to customers coming out to try their wares, but they don’t want tourists.  A turn around has been carved into the desert sand revealing the progression of those who were turned away politely.  A few conspicuous burned out hulks of cars and vans litter the approach, evidence of those who couldn’t take a hint.

A rough and tumble Nomad by the name of Herman looks to be leading this particular operation.  He stands in the road, automatic shotgun cradled across his body in his left hand, waving Viceroy to stop with his right.  The NetRunner duly complies and hits the down button on her power window allowing the hot and dusty Mojave air to crash into the car.  Herman leans down, his five o’clock shadow half concealing the burn scars decorating the left side of his face.  A cybernetic eye glows behind his cheap sunglasses.

“Morning, miss.” He’s polite, not friendly.  “What brings you to Aldecaldo territory?”

Inside the tiny glass cube that CloudKill like to pretend is an office, Monica holds court over her minions.  The ones loyal to her first, CloudKill second.  Or so everyone likes to pretend.  She’d eat her shoes after walking through the old corp zone before she would swear that none of them were reporting to Avery.  Everyone has a price.  She knows this well having played both the snitch and the source on various occasions.

“Jeremy,” MDR says to her new pet NetRunner, the one corporate swears is more capable than the last three..

“It’s Ja-“

“No one cares, Jeremy.  Get this done for me and I’ll call you whatever you want.” She doesn’t ask if he understands or accepts.  He does.  He will.  Or he won’t get paid.  Or promoted.  Which basically amounts to the same thing.   He doesn’t flinch, either, which speaks well.  MDR reminds herself to give him the once over later.  When she’s got time.

“So way down in the bowels of our data files is a folder labeled Kannerack.  I’m giving you access now.”  She waves her hands across an invisible datascape that only she can see, projected as it is directly into her retinas from lasers all through the ceiling tracking her every move.  “It’s been a joke for a while, only now it’s not.  But pay attention to this part: It’s heavily monitored.  Not sure if it’s ICE or whatever, but every time someone takes a peek, the corporate chain takes notice.  At the moment, we don’t need their notice.  Which is why I need you.”

“Yes ma’am,” “Jeremy” follows along easily.

“I need to know where the fuck Kannerack went.  I’ve read the research.  You need to find me Kannerack the man.  Or the corpse.  But preferably the man.  At the absolute bare-fucking-minimum I want to know what happened to his lab.”

“I’ll get-“

“I know you will.  You will leave now.”

As “Jeremy” heads for the door, head still up despite the morale beating just administered via modern methods of management, Monica turns her eyes to Ringo.  One of her staff who’s been around long enough to rate a handle.  That it’s the name of the least important member of the Beatles probably doesn’t matter.  Probably.

“Ringo,” Monica croons with venom, “dearest.”

RIngo cringes, a hint of a blush crawling up her freckled cheeks.  It would be cute in another light.   “We both know there was a bit of trouble a couple weeks ago, yes?  Something to do with a bit of a security slip up?” 

“Yes ma’am,” she manages.

“Let’s not have that again.  In fact, it would tickle me pink if you would put a little shit stain of a club called The Molt under some surveillance, just to make sure we don’t have that particular issue crop up a second time.”

“The Molt,” Ringo repeats, some measure of composure returning since MDR hasn’t fully eviscerated her.  Without being told, she starts heading for the door, hoping to beat the punch.  She fails.

“Should there be a next time, Ringo, I’ll be sure to pass along the experience.”

Kenji holds up his agent, screen facing out, so that Whisper can read Teagan's text. Maybe it's the power of suggestion at work, but the message does strike the MedTech as having somewhat of a catfishing vibe to it.

For the benefit of his teammate, he narrates his response as this thumbs type it out.

"What about Brother Leo and your other friends? Don't you trust them?"

-
This message was last edited by the player at 17:08, Tue 13 July 2021.

Martin nods.  "This is where she gives you a little hint of exclusive trust and need.  'They can't find out about this.  Help me, Obi-Wan Kenjinobi, you're my only hope!'  Something like that.  Unless... in the thirty seconds you talked to her before, did you get any hint she was looking for extraction?  Not fully programmed into cult dependency yet?"

There’s a longer pause this time.

Kenji’s Agent vibrates after a full three minutes with a response.

Of course I trust them!  It’s just that they can’t help.  I’m supposed to carry a message to the Followers of the Chrome Lie and I’m scared I won’t be able to do it alone.

The agent is still for maybe six seconds.

Because I’m blind.  Are you happy you made me say it?  I hoped you’d help me.  I hoped that you would understand the risk I would take for peace.  I guess not.  I’m sorry I bothered you.

Kenji's about to type a reply to Teagan's first message when the second appears. He reads them both out loud, shakes his head and chuckles ruefully.

"Curious where this was going," he says. Again, Kenji narrates as he types,

"Wait a second, Teagan. Didn't mean to upset you. On a job right now. Want to help, but I need more information first."

He look up at Whisper, gives his teammate a chance to suggest edits before pressing SEND.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 17:32, Tue 13 July 2021.

"She's with me.  We are here to see Poncho," Cruz said as he leaned over to make eye contact.  Slowly, Alex moved his cyberhand over to unzip the sleeve zipper that run up his leather armorjack's right side, his meat side, which let the bottom of his Aldecaldo burning rubber light tattoo shine through.

"You guys had any trouble out here tonight?" Cruz asked, wondering if any of the derelict vehicles they had passed were recent additions.

The reply from Teagan comes in quickly.

I’m not supposed to say.  It’s important. 

There’s another short delay, presumably as she decides whether or not to share whatever it is she wants from Kenji.

The Holy Church has received revelation that a ceasefire is necessary with the Maelstrom.  I’m blessed to carry the message.  Father Leo can’t protect me there.

With Kentucky running comms, Whisper continues to watch and survey the building the Listeners disappeared into.  As he watches, a familiar looking woman comes out of the front of the building.  The last time Martin saw the woman they were exchanging gunfire in the bowels of a pagoda.  Without looking in their direction, the target of interest hooks a left and starts walking south into higher property values.

———-

“Yeah, I’m with the band,” Viceroy smiles up at Herman.

The guard gives her an indulgent smile a polite “excuse me,” and reaches in the car to exchange a quick handshake with Cruz directly in front of the driver’s face.  She tolerates the invasion of personal space with aplomb, sipping her coffee around the interacting limbs.

“Trouble?” Herman scoffs, “Nah, those are old.  Just a reminder that we can throw down, push comes to shove.  I’ll let Poncho know you’re coming.”

The pulls back and waves Cruz and his driver through the invisible checkpoint.  When the small sedan clears the hill, Cruz can see the Nomad encampment in all its hodgepodge wheeled glory.  A dozen or so military surplus tents sit in a rough circle with multiple fire pits for social gathering.  A few repurposed semi-trailers are unfolded into clinics, shops, tool sheds, or bars.  Sprinkled liberally through out the whole space is a multitude of custom vehicles, drivers off doing various tasks.  A couple rough looking mobile homes have been towed into the camp, the most permanent members of the zone, but probably the least comfortable.

Walking out of the circle of tents, Cruz can see Poncho waving casually in their direction, garbed in his boots, hemp pants, and rough wool shirt.  A cigarette dangles loosely from his lips.

As has just recently become de facto SOP, Kenji reads Teagan's latest messages aloud, pauses a moment, then adds, "Could be helpful to sit in on a face to face with a Listener delegation, see how they communicate with the rest of the world, maybe get a sense of their agenda... 'Cept she's not clear whether its them or just garden-variety Maelstrom. Man, I hate text coms."

Kenji activates his agent's talk-to-text function, since he's reading his messages out loud anyway.

"Maelstrom or their splinter faction- the Listeners? Do you have a meet set up already? If not, I may be able to help."

-
This message was last edited by the player at 22:22, Thu 15 July 2021.

"Oh, shit."  Martin blinks hard.  "There's not a lot I can think of that would persuade the Inquisitors to go that far.  Either this is the hardest-sell catfishing job I've ever seen or they are seriously concerned about the Listeners."

He glances back at the building just in time to see the front door swing open.  "Oh, shit," he repeats with a slightly different inflection.  "Check it.  Speaking of Listener recruiters, there's our friend who's a hot hand with a taser."  He watches for a moment.  "On foot, with no cover," he adds contemplatively.  "You got anything in your little black bag that could put her out?  Since Lube went to all that trouble to weld up a cage and all..."

"Yeah, I got a little somethin'-somethin' for that." Kenji answers from over Whisper's shoulder.

He retreats from the window, opens his combat medpack, removes the airhypo and a vial of strong sedative.

"Trick is gonna be dosing it right. Wanna knock her out fast, not kill her."

-
This message was last edited by the player at 17:38, Sat 17 July 2021.

Maelstrom, Teagan’s text returns. Not the Arch-Demons.  I don’t have a meeting, just the name of a bar.  Six Bullet Sally.

Kenji's agent reads Teagan's reply out loud. Whisper responds with, "Let's bite,"

Kenji nods, dictates, "I can help. In the middle of something now. Get back to you soon as I can."

Message sent, Kenji asks, "What about our stroller?"

"We might not get another chance like this..." Whisper answers. Kenji's quiet for a second or two, while he gives a quick and dirty plan that had been percolating in his head a second run-through.

"Okay. I'm gonna have to tranq her, so you're gonna have to drive. Once she gets a bit further down the street, roll up on her- speed limit- then slow down just enough for me to unass right behind her. If I get the dose right, she gets sleepy fast, I toss her in the van, and you drive us someplace out of the way where we can park- I'll probably need a hand getting her into the cage. If I can't subdue her, we delta the fuck outta here. Not much of a plan, but it's all I got. Whattaya think?"

OOC: After we attempt the prisoner snatch, Kenji will send Cruz (and Karma?) the chat log.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 00:29, Wed 21 July 2021.

The nice thing about NC is nobody gives a shit when you do something unexpected.

Taking advantage of the van’s autonomous assist software, Whisper steers the vehicle down the street at a sedate 25mph, slowly gaining on their Listener prey as she strolls unconcerned down the same side of the street.  In the back of the van, Kentucky flips through medikit, selectsthe sedative vial he wants and screws the plastic vial into his air-hypo gun.  With the ambient noise of travel, he feels rather than hears the satisfying hiss as the air-hypo breaks the seal on the sedative vial and prepares itself for delivery.  Weapon prep complete, Kentucky puts a hand on the handle of the sliding door and cracks it open, just a bit.  Not enough to get attention, but enough to speed up the abduction about to take place.  Up front, Martin gets a couple of angry electronic bells and whistles that  let him know that something unsafe is occurring in the vehicle.  Unfortunately for the van’s operating system, the occupants don’t really care.

There isn’t much vehicle traffic to speak of.  The foot traffic is next to non-existent except for a few bums/scavs that have better things to pay attention to (like their chemical highs).

Martin steers the van close, doing his best to keep the speed steady, drifting up next to the curb.  “Ready,” he intones to Kentucky.  The door slides back.  “Go.”

Hitting the sidewalk with momentum isn’t easy.  Kenji hits hard, his legs bunching up underneath him, but he manages to keep his footing.  With his eyes on the prize, he lets the motion from the exit carry him forward, air-hypo rising in attack.  The Listener doesn’t see him coming.  Maybe she’s too tuned in to the signal.  Maybe the Edgerunners are just that good.  It doesn’t matter.  Kenji lunges, driving the drug delivery system against the woman’s neck, and pulls the trigger.  This time he can hear the hiss of the payload.

The sudden arrival of an attack and pain drives the Listener into motion.  She spins, sending a wild punch careening towards her unseen attacker that somehow manages to connect solidly with the medic.  A reinforced gloved hand cracks into his ribs from the haymaker.  If it wasn’t for the armor the medic sports as protection, her fist might have actually hurt.  As it is, he coughs slightly from the minimal compression of his lungs.  Kenji scampers back from the blow, ready to dodge the follow up that he figures is coming.

Featureless metallic eyes focus on her attacker.  Kenji can see his reflection in them, strangely distorted by the rounded surface.  The Listener is starting forward, weight shifting to launch another attack when her left leg buckles sending her into a cascades of negative outcomes. She staggers froward in a series of uncoordinated stutter steps that are about to culminate into a crash to the ground, but which Kenji interrupts, smoothly sliding underneath the Listener’s trajectory and taking her weight before she can complete the face-plant.   A faint sound escapes her lips, perhaps the final thought coursing through her mind as the sedative takes hold.

Inside the van, Whisper is already in motion, sliding through the cargo area and throwing open the cargo doors.  He forgets to set the parking brake, but the van takes care of that itself as soon as his weight exits the driver’s seat.  The solo has a much easier exit than his partner, what with the vehicle being stopped and all, and the two of them manage to wrestle their prize into the faraday cage.  Whisper severs whatever tie the Listener to the electronic world with a slap to the cage’s power supply then leaves Kenji to his patient, heading for the driver’s seat..  The doors bang closed and the van pulls away.

Estimated time of operation: 24 seconds.
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:06, Sun 25 July 2021.

Martin cackles with released tension as he pulls away from the curb.  The nav screen already has his primary exfil route queued up: the nearest expressway on-ramp, then a course that takes them a few miles in the not-quite-opposite direction from their intended destination, just in case there's immediate pursuit.

He catches Kentucky's eye, makes an earpiece and boom mic of his thumb and forefinger, and waits for the medtech to go on comms.  "Hey, you got any recording gear?" he subvocalizes.  "Might be useful to catch her responses when she wakes up and finds herself offline.  And, uh, reciprocally, let's not say anything around her that we don't want her headware recording, until we're sure she doesn't have any."

"Roger that last," Kenji replies, quietly but out loud. He doesn't have the chrome* to transmit subvocally. It takes him a second to work out a way to answer Whisper's question without violating the addended comsec protocol.

"Medscanner, that's it," he says, trusting that Whisper can piece together the slightly disordered conversation.

He takes a deep breath, exhales slowly. Adrenaline comedown can be a real bitch. He repeats the process, but the second exhalation is jumped by an involuntary guffaw, as the full realization of just how impromptu their abduction plan had been hits him square in the diaphragm . Quickly regaining his composure, he asks, "What now?"

OOC: Kentucky's coms set up consists of a discrete earpiece receiver, and a throat mic concealed beneath a small strip of RealSkin.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 00:27, Thu 22 July 2021.

The question of what to do now h in the air inside the cargo van like an unanswered wedding proposal.  They’ve got their quarry.  Now what to do with it?  Whisper steers due west for a bit, evaluating a mile or two of NC real estate before hooking south, south east and heading for some kind of presumed safe harbor.  Behind them, the road looks clear, no sign of pursuit or anything else unusual.

In the back of the van, Kentucky continues his work, taking a few zip-ties to the prisoner and securing her to the floor while trying his best not to disturb the faraday cage.  As far as he can tell, the process is successful.  From that point, it’s more monitoring her condition and keeping the air hypo ready should the need arise.

Moments crawl by, sweat trickles down faces, more from adrenaline than the heat.  Maybe twenty minutes after being doped up, the Listener’s eyes begin to flicker.  Small movements of her arms and legs become hampered by plastic ties and her breathing becomes much deeper, speeding up as her metabolism breaks down the narcotic.   Kenji can almost set his watch on when he expects her eyes to flick open for the first time, revealing their silver orbs underneath.  Unfortunately, it is damn hard to tell where they’re looking and if the mind underneath is capable of rational thought.  Or at least rational cultist thought.

Another minute or two ticks by, Whisper still behind the wheel, Kenji still watching the Listener as her movements become more and more certain.  Limbs pulling briefly against restraints.  Eventually, she shakes her head, looks around and fixes Kenji a stare.  There’s someone home now.  The medic knows it.  Her lips twist in a soundless hiss of anger.  And Kenji catches the vibration in her hands.  The first twitch of an addict craving a hit.

"Good morning, sunshine!" Kenji says with faux cheer, asks, "Sweet dreams?" The Listener replies with a glare that, if looks could kill, would have wiped out every living thing within a one block radius.

"Woke up on the wrong side of the faraday cage, I see," he says, displaying a mock sympathetic smile. The Listener's body stiffens, vibrates, priming itself to explode.

"Relax, sunshine, or I'll send you back to dreamland," the MedTech says, holding up the AirHypo for the prisoner to see. There's a barely perceptible easing in her posture.

"That's better," he soothes.

Kenji gets down to biz, "You and your friends were holding some gonks in an underground parking structure, 'neath the abandoned pagoda downtown. Had 'em plugged in to something, receiving some sort of 'signal'. We unplugged 'em, but they're still receiving. They don't wanna be."

"You want to get out of here, back to your chooms, you need to start talking- like, out loud. Tell us what the signal is, and how we disconnect our clients from it, safely and permanently, and we let you go. Easy-peasy."

OOC: While the Listener was out, Kenji sent Cruz the chat-log of his conversation with Teagan.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 21:28, Sun 25 July 2021.

Kepler Park is still a study in contradictions.  A few days ago a man Cipher barely knew self-immolated on the grounds.  Today there are a few death enthusiasts checking the area out and a lot more folks around just to enjoy the sunny day.  As long as they stay the fuck away from the observatory and it’s friendly neighborhood Inquisitors.  Sam shows up early, even earlier than she told Pulpo just to put some eyes on the real estate.  Deacon Gerald may be a world class asshole psychopath (psychopathic asshole?) but he doesn’t seem to be waiting with a war party.

Cipher is leaning against the rapidly  warming granite of the gate that announces the entry to the park when a sea-green drone the size of a deck of cards  flicks into view just above the tree line, tilts back and forth on it’s axis in a wave of hello, then climbs away.  The little vehicle blinks out of existence as the smart polymer on the body surface starts showing smoggy California sunshine.  The drone doesn’t go invisible, but it’s a whole lot harder to see if you don’t know it’s there.

Got you, chica. Pulpo sends through her agent.  A link appears on the screen that yields to press of her thumb.  A live feed from the drone fills the screen, the vicinity of the gate in a slow rotation fills the display.  Pulpo rotates through various sensor options, the leaves dropping away from the trees as LIDAR bounces across the area.  Thermal shows some body heat signatures of guests and a few puddles of water than haven’t given up the ghost yet.  The images confirm Sam’s earlier impression that there isn’t an ambush waiting for her..

Spotting Deacon G coming down the path isn’t hard.  A bouncing LIDAR image shows a lone man walking down the path and parting the other users of the park like the Red Sea.  Signatures are literally bounding out of his way and heading into the trees, unwilling to mess with the Inquisitor.  Pulpo flips back over to visual and Sam can see the man approaching the gate with his heavy stride.  Sam’s got time to slip her agent away to avoid tipping off her potential client to her unfair advantage.

As Deacon Gerald covers the ground to Sam’s little corner of stone his eyes dart about in a practiced movement, checking for his own safety.  Glass crunches under his boots.  The tattoo on his face swallows sunlight.

“Miss Cipher,” the Deacon says flatly, “Thank you for coming.” He’s not smiling.  But then, that might break his face.

"Figured I owe it to Brother Ezekiel," Sam replies, testing. Gerald's eyes reveal about as much emotion as a reptile's. She struggles to stand firm against screaming fight or flight instinct.

"What's this job you called about?" she asks impatiently.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 21:29, Sun 25 July 2021.

Whatever Kenji is selling, the Listener isn’t buying.  Not yet.  No voice comes from her throat.  Instead, she tilts her head up  enough to look down her body before relaxing back down to the floor.   Her eyes close briefly, the tell tale flickers of muscles on the lids and around the orbits telling Kenji that she’s giving some series of commands to her cyber ware.  The medscanner doesn’t show any activity, but then the Listener is on the other side of an electromagnetic cage.

Years of combat experience on the other hand…

There’s a certain morbid fascination in watching someone dose a combat drug from an internal supply.  Breathing starts to speed up.  A blast of sweat suddenly coats the skin.  The tell tale bump of the carotid pulse turns into a bounding leap, rapidly heading for about 150 bpm.  She’s about to make this not easy.

In the front seat, Whisper turns east, heading towards the bridge to the mainland, the morning traffic starting to heat up.  Most of it is heading the opposite direction, flowing onto the island.  For now.

“Brother Ezekiel was called to his just reward,” Deacon G says, eyes burning with incendiary belief.  “He sits now at the hand of the Father, stripped of sin, forgiven of trespass, and purified by fire.  When the time comes, all the Blessed could count themselves as lucky.” The inquisitor’s gaze turns away from Sam before he continues.  “Brother Ezekiel does not need what you think you owe him.”  A hand disappears into a jacket pocket.  Deacon Gerald’s eyes lock onto Sam.  The muscles of Sam’s body tense, ready for menace.  Ready to react.

In a cooler than thou moment, Sam chooses not to react.  Doesn’t move.  Doesn’t bat an eyelash.  She can read Deacon G, see that he’s testing her, probing for a reaction.  Psychopath or not, he’s not about to gun her down, just waiting to see if she thinks he is.

“Get on with it,”. Sam cracks back at him, twirling her finger in the air.

The hand comes out of Deacon’s jacket with a data spike.  Fingers with yellow tips from far too much nicotine hold the device forward.  He smirks briefly, satisfied with the outcome of his little game.

“Find this man for me, Cipher.” There’s a new intensity there.  Gerald wants this guy, personally.  “This is Jarret Mesa.  He disappeared right before the war with Maelstrom escalated.  His crew was sent to us in pieces.  Of…”, Gerald pauses, reaching for a word. “Of Mesa, we have seen nothing.”
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:10, Tue 27 July 2021.

Sam takes the shard from Gerald, taking great care that her fingers do not touch his. From Gerald's initial précis, it's not clear to her whether he considers this Jarret Mesa friend or a foe.

"Who is he to you?" she asks, probing for more information.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 22:25, Mon 26 July 2021.

"Shit," Kenji mutters. "Girlfriend just shot herself up with combat stims," he reports.

A second dose of sedative is already on tap. He reaches through the cage and presses the airhypo against her jugular...

-

"If she's gonna be like that, we can still learn something from an autopsy," Martin subvocalizes darkly.  He gives the autodrive dog-brain a destination a half-hour away and slides one hand down to take a firing grip on his Adjudicator.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:45, Wed 28 July 2021.

“The Faith Militant,” Gerald says to Cipher, answering her question like it should mean something to her.  “The architect of our war against the unclean.  He disappeared on a scouting mission into Maelstrom territory, near a bar called Six Bullet Sally’s.”  Sam’s truth sense pings positive.  This guy may be a walking creep show, but a liar, he is not. “I will pay, of course.  Though if you prefer trade…” he lets the thought hang in the air, ready for Sam to pick up.

Suddenly taut muscles explode into motion as the female Listener gives a soundless snarl.  She twists, pulls hard, all to no avail as the restraints hold.  Stretched plastic starts to turn white under the load, but it refuses to break even as it cuts into the woman’s flesh.  In Kentucky’s hand, the air hypo gives another hiss, dropping another round of narcotic into the Listener’s system.

The effect is immediate, quicker than last time even, perhaps due to residual narcotics in her system.  The combative motion halts, limbs falling back to the floor and the chemically induced coma takes hold.  A trail of drool escapes from the woman’s mouth as her jaw goes slack, heading tilting to one side and she begins to snore, the first sound she has uttered.  This sound Kenji knows well: she’s had a ton of juice poured into her system and her airway is under threat of collapse.  That’s an easy fix.  A few seconds digging in his medkit produces a hook shaped piece of plastic that he jams into her mouth, twists, and locks her tongue up and out of the way for the duration.

On the Listener’s throat, Kentucky can watch as her heart races and nerves sing in small spasms under the effects of the stim.  At least he’s turned off her mind.

They’re going to need a destination soon.

Martin lets the van's dog-brain handle the light traffic while he thumbs his agent awake.  He pulls up the chat labeled Team Daphne:

Hey, Lube, we ran into our girl from the club again.  She partied a little too hard with K.  She's sleeping it off now.  Might be an interesting conversation when she wakes up.  You got a place?

Besides cash, what could he possibly have that I would be interested in? Sam wonders. She can't imagine. Doesn't really want to try.

"When was this?" she asks. He'd said, "right before the war with Maelstrom escalated", but only a sociology PHD candidate writing a dissertation on Night City's contemporary gang wars could put a date to that. To the average gonk on the street, NI and Maelstrom had always been trying to wipe each other out, full bore.

"Was he with anyone when he disappeared?"

-
This message was last edited by the player at 01:28, Thu 29 July 2021.

Kenji runs through a list of physical spaces he's familiar with, places the team could properly interrogate and/or hold the prisoner, rules each one out in turn.

"Worse comes to worse, we find a drive-in motel*, expense the concierge a generous tip to guarantee our privacy."

*OOC: I learned these were thing from the Airport episode of Heist.

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This message was last edited by the player at 01:39, Thu 29 July 2021.

“Jarret Mesa, Archbishop Clement, disappeared three weeks ago.  His security detail came back in plastic bags, hurled at our followers on the street like water balloons.”  That paints an image Sam could have done with out.  “We had the remains DNA tested, of course.  None of it could be tied to Mesa.  The archbishop wanted to strike against Maelstrom’s core.  He believed that His Divine Will would see us through, especially with the new weapons we were getting.  Then he disappeared.

“He’s alive. Or at least he was.”  Seems faith can carry a believer down many paths.

Out in Nomad-Land, Lube and Viceroy get to work.  Poncho leads them to the edge of one of the beaten down mobile homes mentioning for them to be quiet as they approach.  If they expected to be led inside, they’re disappointed.  Instead, the elder nomad leads them around the back to where a hodge-podge of salvaged cables sneak away from the aluminum home and lead off in the direction of the “utility” center at the edge fo the camp, home to generators and satellite dishes.

As the trio kneels down around the cables, Poncho speaks to them quietly.  “Emil usually wakes up around 11, starts using his computer shortly thereafter.  My sister says that she’s having to take him his meals and remind him to eat them.  She says he just stares at the screens of random patterns and listens all day with his headphones pushed against his skull.  Just watching it drivers her crazy.  She says it feels like someone is walking over her grave when she gets close to him.”

Ignoring the dirt, Viceroy plops down and sits cross legged amid the cables, for all the world looking like a toddler about to play with blocks.  She cracks open the hard case she brought along to reveal a series of electronic odds and ends that she starts to assemble.  Being tech proficient, it doesn’t take Lube too long to piece together what she’s doing.

“Can you hand me that data cable?” Viceroy asks without looking up.  Lube moves to comply, handing the dusty 1/2” thick cable to the NetRunner.  “Thanks.” It’s perfunctory.  The result of a script running, not conscious thought.

Lithe fingers slide an open circle around the cable before snapping it shut to fully enclose the black cord.  She reaches into the box, producing a set of oversized pliers that she uses to clamp the ring heavily.  There’s a slight pop and and even quieter crack as the fiber optic line in the cable snaps, now interrupted by an external port that can monitor whatever comes and goes down the line.  Tools go back in, a thin spool of smart polymer wire is removed that the NetRunner plugs into the tap.  Her right hand comes up to push the sleeve of her coat back to reveal an implanted cyberdeck hidden inside a flesh covered cyber-arm.  A nice piece of work, that, Lube has to concede.  For all the energy that Edgerunners burn to stay on the bleeding Edge, Viceroy has made some choices that conceal her true capabilities.

She closes the case and stands up daintily, brushing the dust off her ass with careful pats.  “We should move out of sight,” she says.  Poncho nods and leads them to a near by canvas tent that smells comfortingly of engine parts, oil, and silicon.  It doesn’t take more than a moment for Viceroy to get comfortable on an appropriated stool and pull out her various tools and deck, depositing them on a tool bench that she casually brushes clean with a sweep of her arm.

“You will take that tap back out before you leave, correct?” Poncho asks.

“You betcha.”  There’s a pop of chewing gum and Pancho gives Lube a skeptical stare over the top of the NetRunner’s head.  “Well, I’ll disable it anyway.  Can’t remove it without breaking the lines,” she clarifies. “Now we just wait for Emil to wake up and see where he goes.”

“Great.”  Clearly, it is not great.  At best, the whole process is teetering on the edge of okay colored with a serious helping of ‘I’m putting up with this because II just want my nephew to be okay.’

It’s during the waiting process that Cruz gets the data dump regarding Teagan and the captive Listener.  Lube has an option.  He could give them the address of the garage he moonlights in.  He’s a co-owner after all, but then if the prisoner gets tracked back to him, the garage is in play.

Sam might find Gerald's faith inspiring, if it didn't also motivate his coreligionists to immolate themselves.

"You waited three weeks..." Sam lets the accusing fact linger for a beat or two before continuing, "That's going to make this a lot harder, but I'll see what I can do." She removes a transparent plastic rectangle embedded with a spidery trace of metallic circuitry, her business card, and hands it to the cult leader.

"It's gonna cost you. Scan this with your agent- you'll find my fee structure and contract terms. Maelstrom involvement triggers the hazard pay clause. Add in the tech support surcharge too."

She cocks an eyebrow expectantly.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 04:37, Mon 02 Aug 2021.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the pieces all start to move in sync.

Getting a safe house from Jasper doesn’t take too long.  The fixer is able to provide an address on the west side of Haywood, not too far from the bridge with the direction to drive around in circles for 30 minutes while some preparations are put into place.  In the van, Kenji keeps the sedative doses titrated to keep the prisoner snowed under while Martin gives the autopilot little nudges into a warehouse district that has been repurposed into refugee housing and more than a few dens of ill repute.  At the appointed address, Martin spots a blond giant of a man standing outside, leaning on a the garage door with an air of practiced nonchalance.  The kind that doesn’t render him invisible so much as advertise to the world around him that they should most defiantly be looking elsewhere and anything that they might have seen (which they didn’t) definitely neverfuckinghappened.

Martin gives the doorman a slight wave that the giant returns with a shiny steel hand clutching a garage door opener.  The Solo’s brain fills in the click of a thumb press and the corrugated metal door starts to climb on its rails to reveal a small industrial space with multiple locked cages for cargo or other things/people.  A tool bench, a bathroom, and a busted couch complete the urban bolt hole decor.  Before the van is even turned off, the metal door is dropping, sealing the trio in the space that starts to fill up with scent of unfiltered cigarettes almost instantly.  With practiced eyes, Martin scans the area: insulated walls and ceilings, reinforced doors and windows, cameras and alarm systems.  Nobody is getting in here without a dedicated plan, power tools, or a NetRunner that knows just where to look.

The Edgerunners climb out of the van to take in their new surroundings and receive a nod from their host who doesn’t bother to introduce himself.  “Yeah,” he says, puffing on the cigarette before gesturing around the room with the cherry, using it like a laser pointer. “Bathroom through there.  Bit of food in bay 3, along with water and sleeping bags.  The man says to use what you need.”  He takes another hit from the smoke before slapping the garage door opener in Martin’s hand.  “I’ll say it for him.  Be discrete.  Unless you got more for me, I’ve got places to be.”

———————

Out at the Nomad encampment, a small ping alerts Viceroy and Lube that their surveillance subject has rejoined the land of the living and brought his computer on line.  “Oh!” Viceroy chirps, “Yay!” She puts down the cup of “coffee” she’s been nursing for the last half our, settles into her seat and plugs into her cyberdeck leaving Pancho and Lube alone with their thoughts. Pancho raises an eyebrow, ‘yay’ not quite capturing the emotions he’s going through at the moment.  She’s gone maybe a minute and a half, an absolute eternity in cyberspace, before her eyes refocus and her muscle tone regains the solid shape of inhabitation.

“Yeah, so, not my cup of tea,” the NetRunner says, shaking her head to knock out the fuzzy cobwebs the signal dropped in her brain. “Lots of random sounds, I got a snippet to analyze, but I think it was encrypted or distorted in some way.  Nothing I could make sense of.  I was able to drop a snooper down the line.  Once that little gremlin finds a home, we should have an address.  Or at least an origin point for the data signal.”

She sips her coffee.  “Want that I should kill his connection?”

———————

Deacon Gerald dutifully scans Sam’s card, examining the contract language with his handheld agent.  If he wasn’t psychotic, it would probably be endearing that he chewed his cheek while he through deep thoughts, but it’s more than possible he chews his cheek while he’s cutting cyber ware out of people in the name of the holy redemption or some shit.

“This will work,” he says flatly to Sam.  He punches the accept button.  “It wasn’t my decision to wait,” he adds, maybe with a bit of defensiveness.  It’s hard to tell with the flat affect.  “Let me know when you know something.”

Martin nods appreciatively.  "Thanks.  I'm good.  You need anything before we hunker down and get to work?"  The last is directed toward Kenji, currently in the van's passenger seat to stay out of reach of the Faraday cage.

He waits for the cyberviking to vacate the premises, then does his own walkaround of the facility, checking entry points and available resources.  Only when he's confirmed his initial impression does he ping Karma and Lube with the location.  There's enough people-kibble in the indicated bay to keep the team going for a couple of days, but anything more than that will necessitate a shopping trip.  He considers tacking that onto the communication but decides against it.  His assessment of Karma is that in this stage of their working relationship, she'd default to processing any such request as beneath her corporate station... and Lube would probably acquiesce but be the very personification of "malicious compliance."

"Okay," he says, returning to Kenji at what's hopefully a safe and inaudible distance from the van.  "How do we probe her?"
This message was last edited by the player at 02:30, Mon 09 Aug 2021.

Kenji accepts a proffered bottled water from his teammate, raises an eyebrow at his choice of words.

"I'm not even sure she can talk- like, physically talk." Kenji begins. Since they snatched her off the street, the Listener hadn't said a single word. Of course, she's been drugged up most of that time, so her initial reticence does not necessarily indicate inability. "So first thing we gotta do is see if she's got vocal chords or a digivox."

Kenji opens his medkit, dons latex gloves, removes a pen light and dental tech's mirror.

"She's kinked with an internal chem pump. Dosed herself with combat stims after we got her in the cage. Got no idea how many charges it's got. She's burned through one already. That could be it; if she's got more, though, we could be playing pharmaceutical whack-a-mole for hours."

The medtech approaches the faraday iron maiden, says, "She could wake up any second so I need you close in case she starts raging."

Doing his best to work around the mesh of the cage, Kenji opens the Listener's mouth, tilts her head back, and takes a look inside...

-
This message was last edited by the player at 00:49, Thu 12 Aug 2021.

Back in the comparative safety and comfort of her ex-police cruiser, Sam activates her agent's hands-free function. "Pulpy, baby, thanks for the overwatch. You're a gem. Yeah, pretty smooth- nothing too batshit. We're on the job. You still got those backdoors in the NCPD databank? Preem. I need everything you can get on one Jarret Mesa." She spells out both names, continues, "AKA, Archbishop Clement. And phone records- last time and place his agent pinged, who he was in contact with- the usual. Thanks."

She punches the address for Six Bullet Sally's into her sedan's onboard nav system, pulls away from the curb.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 19:57, Sun 29 Aug 2021.

Inside the safe-warehouse, Kenji goes to work.  The medic starts with gingerly opening the Listener’s mouth and examining her throat looking for vocal cords.  Using a dental mirror for the process isn’t easy, but with a little determination Kenji is able to sweep her tongue out of the way and by crouching down low, visualize her vocal cords.   They sit just below the entrance to the trachea, vibrating slightly as the Listener breathes in and out.  And she must really be down as Kenji didn’t provoke a gag reflex shoving metal down her throat.

With proof that she can speak, or at least proof that she has the anatomy to speak, Kenji goes about examining his “patient.”  It’s not an easy process within the confines of the Faraday Cage, but it would be worse to have an electronic signal leak out.  The tell tale traces of speed ware are there, thin silver threads weaving down her neck along the path of her spine.  A skull jack and a chip socket peek out from behind one ear, both sockets holding chips of some design.  Woven under her hair and around the base of her skull is a fine wire mesh just under the skin that Kenji guesses is an antenna of some sort, not a design he’s ever seen.  And, of course,  the requisite mirrored cyber eyes.  A smart gun link pad takes up the palm of her right hand.  No styleware to speak of.  This chrome is for function, not appearance.  The double cross tattoo is ink, not cyber.

Kenji is pretty damn sure there’s more (like hey, combat stims), but unless he cuts her clothes off, an almost physical impossibility with the logistics of the cage, he’s going to be guessing.  He’s got the gear to start to cyberdiagnostics, he can jack into the skull port, but unless the system is wide open, he’s going to be dealing with crypto.  A bit of improvised field surgery might be able to disconnect the antenna, buying the pair a few more options.

Six Bullet Sally’s is exactly what Sam would expect it to be: a battle scarred bar surrounded by corrugated fencing and razor wire on three sides that has been helpfully ventilated with bullet holes which some clever artists has creatively turned into various body orifices of impossibly endowed “women.”  Ah…stay classy combat zone.  Steel shutters are currently pulled down over the windows and doors, each papered over entirely with animated handbills advertising bands, drugs, and input/output services.  And probably the occasional brain dance that would leave Sam reaching for mental bleach.  Just over the door to the bar, a screen blazes out a message in alternating neon letters: “Another night of blood and chaos in 09:32:54,” the timer slowly ticking down, teasing the fun scheduled to start at midnight.

A few drunks totter down the street that she keeps away with cool glances.  The rest of the street is the usual low rent bodegas, a pawn shop that looks like Fort Knox, and a couple of take out food places whose dining rooms are encased with plexiglass.  There are blood stains on the sidewalk so often that at first Sam mistakes them for dirt.

Inside the sedan, Sam’s agent rings, giving her Pulpo.  “Jarret Mesa.  This guy’s a prize, chica.  Military NetRunner,  out of the SouthAm wars.  One of the guys who came home on zapato mobiles via Central America and Mexico.  File says he got picked up for drunk and disorderly, uh, beating the shit out of four cops and two passerby’s.  Judge had mercy when he agreed to have all his cyberware ripped out.  Guess that’s when he saw the light.  After that his arrest record is a bunch of New Inquisition bullshit.  Nothing that really stuck.  A few stints in Max for a couple years.  Then he goes quiet.  No contact last four years.”

Pulpo pauses. “Guy has been around the block, chica.  He’s like fifty.” Sam’s contact doesn’t bother to tell her what that many years in Night City will buy.  “Still, you asked.  As for the Archbishop Clement stuff, it’s kinda vague.  Nothing directly attributable, just a lot of posts of NI posers saying shit like ‘Clement says we’re gonna bring the righteous violence,’ or ‘Bishop Clement will provide us the fury.’  One post of ‘Clement on the streets tonight!’ That one ties nicely to a suspected ripperdoc clinic firebombing and shootout that left about fifteen people dead.

“His agent is a dead end.  Probably using cutouts or something.  Last time an agent resisted to Jarret Mesa hit the web was 2031.  Figure a MilSpec NetRunner knows some OpSec.”

Martin watches the procedure with both eyes on the prisoner, one ear on the door, and the Militech in his hand.  He refrains from commenting on the procedure - neither he nor Kentucky needs the distraction of conversation.  Not until the medic backs away and de-gloves does he relax.

"Something unpleasant just occurred to me," he says, glancing down at the weapon in his hand and thinking over Brother Roland's reaction to the new hardware.  "The antenna.  Do you have any way to tell if it's ripperdoc custom or lab custom?  I mean... just how big is this problem and how much backing does it have?"

He hooks a swivel chair with the toe of his boot and drags it over, settling into it backwards.  "I'm also curious about what's running off of those chips.  Or what she's writing to them."

"We can pull the chips easy enough, run 'em through a standalone reader. The antenna, though, I haven't seen anything like it before. Doesn't mean it isn't street, but if I had to guess, I'd say this is proprietary corpo shit."

Kenji shares Whisper's unease. The subdermal antenna isn't the only evidence of corporate involvement in Listener ops he's seen.

"Which jives with the Militech iron they were carrying. I asked my buddies at Combat Jacks and none of 'em had ever heard of 'the Adjudicator' before- not in any promo brochure, trade-show booth, or company website- zero footprint."

Satisfied that the Listener's vitals are stable, Kenji reaches behind her ear, removes one of the slotted chips. He scans the room for a chip-reader, keeping one eye on the "patient".

-
This message was last edited by the player at 01:47, Thu 12 Aug 2021.

Part of the assembled tool bench here in the warehouse is a small dedicated space for cybernetics.  A chip reader sits in a drawer with a printed tag proclaiming “Reader.”  At Kenji’s direction, Whisper heads over to grab the equipment, noting that each of the drawers in the tool box is  labeled with a printed tag, each tool sitting in a foam slot cut to form.  Either someone has had a lot of time to kill in these parts or really appreciates the power of organization..

Fitting snugly in the reader, the first chip spins up with a slight hum and proclaims itself to be a knowledge chip imbuing the user with a fundamental understanding of Catholicism, various splinter movements, and common heresies.  The production level isn’t slick enough to be an actual Church product, maybe not even an official corporate project.  Maybe a religious enthusiast or an amateur paid to produce content.  Setting that chip aside, Kenji pops the second out of the Listener’s head, the removal eliciting a moan from the woman.  When that chip goes into the reader a flat error message come up:

Error:  Unknown File Type or Corrupted Data.  Please contact your vendor for further assistance.  Error Code: 5FAA7R2

(GM POST)

Cruz rubs his chin and takes in Viceroy’s question for a few seconds.  He shoots Pancho and inquiring glance, checking for where the older Nomad lands on the issue and receives a shrug in turn.  “Nah,” Lube finally answers, “leave it up.  Let’s not tell the fuckwad brigade that we’ve tapped their signal.”

“Okay,” Viceroy says with another throaty laugh.  If she wasn’t a walking pixie stick she might actually be someone Cruz would consider unleashing Mr. Stud on.  As is, he’s pretty sure his teeth would rot out of his head and the plumbing would end up with diabetes.  That’s a thing, right?  STD? Sexually transmitted diabetes?

While Viceroy breaks down, Lube turns to Pancho. “As soon as we know something, you’ll know something.  We’re gonna get this taken care of, Hermano.”

Pancho shoots back a look that speaks to his skepticism, but his words betray gratitude.  “I know you’ll try Alexander.  That counts for a lot.”  The older Nomad leads the duo back to Viceroy’s car, addressing the NetRunner as she puts her gear into the backseat.  “The tap is out?”

“My data connection is cut,” she answers precisely. “I have no remote access.  I can’t remove the tap itself without breaking the connections, but I can’t access the data unless I’m physically here.  Left a little nasty ICE surprise sitting on the tap, waiting for someone else to get any crazy ideas.”

“That will have to do then,” Pancho says, taking his hat and clutching it to his chest.  “Thank you, Miss.”

Viceroy gives the man a wide smile and small curtesy.  “De nada.”

“Come on Sugar Plumb,” Cruz says with a grin, sliding back into the passenger seat.  “We need to meet up with Kentucky and Whisper.  Let’s get out of here before you give the whole camp a sugar high.”

"Amateur catechism on this one," Kenji reports, removing the first shard and slotting the second. He shakes his head as the results appear on the reader screen, "Unkown file type or corrupted data. Viceroy might be able to get something off it..." he offers, with little hope. Truth is, Kenji's running out of ideas.

"What next? Sodium pentothal when she wakes up?"

-
This message was last edited by the player at 18:20, Sat 14 Aug 2021.

"Thanks, Pulpo. I'm outside Six Bullet Sally's right now. Gonna ask around, see if any of the neighbors mighta seen anything. Maybe someone still has surveillance footage from three weeks ago. Yeah, not likely, I know, but gotta try. OK, P, talk to ya later."

Sam pockets her agent and steps out on to the street. The sedan door locks behind her with a meaty, don't-fuck-with-me thunk.

She walks into the first bodega, its transparent bulletproof door chirping unenthusiastically as it slides open.

The clerk sits behind an even thicker layer of ballistic glass, with the jaw slack jaw and glassy-eyed stare of a brain-dancer. She hits the window hard, with the flat of her hand. The clerk's head jerks back slightly. It takes his eyes a second to refocus after he clumsily finds the STOP button. Sam leans into the squawk box embedded in the window and asks, "You working here, 'bout three weeks ago?"

OOC: She'll repeat this process at each neighboring business until she [hopefully] finds somebody who saw something relevant.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 19:03, Sat 14 Aug 2021.

Martin rubs his head.  "Gotta admit, I'm at a loss here.  I mean... we could try talking to her, but I don't know how far we're gonna get.  This feels like it needs a tech solution."  He pulls out his agent and reluctantly begins composing another SITREP to Lube and Viceroy.

Whisper’s agent pings back quickly with a message from Lube: 30 min out.

Inside the safe house, the recently abducted Listener begins to stir.  Kenji is ready for it, having monitored her vitals for the last hour and watched her respiration rate slowly tick up from the depressing effects of the narcotic.  While she was down the medic hooked up a full IV setup, complete with secondary lines for drug admin, and drew up a small vial of sodium pentathol from his kit.  The drug isn’t common, but when one is planning for possible abduction (or just ready to seize an unusual opportunity) one prepares for all contingencies.  In this case, with two doses of the interrogation drug.

The process goes down like a fuzzy algebra problem.  If the patients Level of Consciousness is x, then I need to administer Y mg of sodium pentathol and be ready to add more.  Whisper watches, ready to intervene as Kenji pinches the plastic IV tubing, squeezes the plunger on his syringe, and flushes the first bit of the drug into the Listener’s system.  Muscles that Kenji didn’t even realize had begun to tense, loosen again, setting the woman back to the floor, back into the zip tied bonds.  Her head lolls from side to side as she goes from unconsciousness to something less than normal.  Another mg or two goes down the tube, just to be sure.

“Hey, you in there?” Kenji quips, tapping the Listener on the forehead.

She mumbles slightly, the first vocal sound either of the men have heard her make.

—————-

Sam combs the streets, hitting each of the Bodega’s and other occupancies, looking for clues, rumors, or witnesses.  The first several folks make it clear No, I didn’t see anything, and even if I did, have you seen those psycho motherfuckers?  I. Did. Not. See. Jack. Shit. At the last bodega on the corner, Sam hits gold.  Or at least pyrite.  A small teenager of Indian descent looks her up and down.  Her name tag reads Ritika, and the store seems to specialize in Halal soy products. “No,” she says at first, tilting her head side to side in the traditional Indian manner that translates roughly to “I hear you but won’t comment further.  Maybe.”  Sam’s eyes track down, watching the subtle ticks and glances the girl throws off, reading that she does, in fact, know more, and that she might be willing to share, if given the opportunity for human connection.  So Sam sets off the down the path of must be hard to be smart girl in a neighborhood like this, what with all the blood and chaos getting in the way of your dreams.  Ritika bites and they commiserate the on the difficulties of growing up with parents who, like, just don’t understand, man.

After five minutes or so, Ritika lets slide that she wasn’t at work the night in question, but they have a security cam system that looks up and down the street.  For the price of a Halal Soy Kabab, Sam gets to watch a carload of presumed NI zealots pull up three occupancies down from Sally’s.  They were still for about six fucking seconds with Maelstrom hits them like the fist of NI’s angry god, four goons spilling out of the nearest shop, another two appearing from a parked van.  The Maelsromers lead with automatic weapons and Adjudicators, leveling most of the occupants.  A single body is pulled from the vehicle, one that generally matches the picture Sam has of Mesa, as he’s pulled into the van and driven away.  A few seconds of FFW later, the booster gangers push the body of the driver into the trunk and drive away.

It was a hit.  No doubt about it.

"Progress," Martin remarks darkly.  He gives the Listener an assessing look, then kneels outside the Faraday cage, a meter or so beyond arm's reach or cybersnake range.  "Hey, there.  What's your name?"
This message was last edited by the player at 23:45, Thu 19 Aug 2021.

The Listener’s mouth opens, a croak escaping.  Her tongue moistens her lips.  The mirror orbs of her eyes slide around in the sockets.

“Sa…” she starts before her voice cracks, perhaps unused to forming words.. “Sara.”  There’s pause, an ordering of confused thoughts, her face scrunching in confusion and contradiction. “No…not anymore.  Not Sara.  Sara was weak…”

Kenji looks at Whisper, cocks an eyebrow. Interesting...

"So, artist formerly known as Sara, what do you call yourself now?"

-

Martin nods in agreement. "Huh.  Someone might still be in there.  And deprogrammable, maybe.  I know a pretty good cybertherapist..."

Mental strain crosses Sara’s features again as she searches for a word.  The chemical induced haze isn’t doing her any favors in the critical thinking department.

“Flesh designation Sierra,” she finally says.  “Lambda.  Romeo dash Four.  Assigned.”

Kenji turns to Whisper, sotto voce, says, "Not quite military phonetic alphabet- 'Lambda' 'stead of 'Lima'. SLR-4 mean anything to you?"

-
This message was last edited by the player at 01:26, Tue 24 Aug 2021.

Maelstrom again. No surprise there. Adjudicators and vans. Gotta be the same crew.

Sam calls up the relevant video file on her agent, compares the make, model, and plate numbers of the van Mesa was bundled into in the bodega footage with the vehicle she'd filmed at the firefight where she'd made Lonnie Cantu's acquaintance.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 02:13, Tue 24 Aug 2021.

Working within smelling distance of soyrizo taco is distracting, but Sam is a professional and she manages to get the job done.  The vans aren’t the same.  The one grabbing Mesa is an older box model, maybe 2030 or so, showing some solid wear and tear.  And a wizard hurling a purple fireball at a demon while saving topless civilians painted on the side.  Who paints a wizard on a van any more?

The PI spends a little more time digging, checking faces from the grab she recorded and the grab captured by security cam.  Most are total strangers.  One though, she’s not sure about.  Her fingers dance across the screen, enhancing, contrasting, flipping back and forth.  It takes forty minutes or so, but she’s about 80% certain when it’s done.

The dude who laid hands on Mesa, tossing him into the wizard-mobile?  Since he appeared in this video he’s been updated with a double cross tattoo on his face and is now participating in grab operations, nabbing both NI and Maelstrom gonks.  But here, back in the past, he's pure Maelstrom.
This message was last edited by the GM at 15:16, Thu 02 Sept 2021.

SLR-4 means less than anything to Martin.  He gives Kenji the “hell if I know,” look before resuming his position just outside of the cage, ready to rock the Listener’s world should she decide to get froggy.

“I’ve got a friend,” Kenji starts, taking another tack down the interrogation road. “She can’t get away from  your signal.  If you help us disconnect her, we’ll let you go.”

“God,” SLR-4 murmurs.  Kenji isn’t sure if that’s a curse or something else.  “Why would you turn off the voice of God?”

—————-

A short time later, Viceroy and Lube come crashing into the safe space, giving the Listener the hairy eyeball and looking the scene over with the practiced eyes of professionals.

“Drugs and restraints,” Lube quips. “Looks like a party.”

Viceroy, for her part, chews thoughtfully on a Red Vine.  “What the fuck is a ‘flesh designation?’ She said ‘Sierra Lambda Romeo dash 4?”  When Kenji confirms, Viceroy pulls a marker out of the tool desk and scribbles on the wall. “S λR-4,” she says, reading the script out loud. “Sara.  It’s her name.  In some whacked throw back to hacker typeface.” The NetRunner sets to work, having Kenji knock her back below the threshold of consciousness with a few more tranqs, then gets her cables out. “Look, hacking cyberware isn’t really my jam, but I’ll take a stab.  I mean, this isn’t run of the mill shit.  There’s some sophistication here.”

The chip with the unknown format gets the first look.  The thin piece of silicon gets slid into the chip reader which gets connected to the cyberdeck implanted on the NetRunner’s arm.  Once she blows the left over coconut off of the slots.  “I’ll be careful,” she says to the dubious look Martin gives her. “I’ve got counter ICE. And who hasn’t wanted to hear the Voice of God?”  Her eyes take on the far away stare of the mentally disconnected as she assaults the chip.  Then her body goes rigid, muscles beginning to twitch.  Kenji knows the look of an impending seizure when he sees one.  The medic lunges for his air-hypo ready to administer a sedative when Viceroy drops out of the her connection and promptly vomits a stomach full of processed sugar onto the floor of the warehouse.

“Goddamnshitfuckhell,” she spits out, wiping her mouth with her free arm.  “I have no idea what the fuck that was.”  Lube offers her a water bottle which she accepts graciously, rinsing her mouth out before spitting into one of the floor drains. “Noise,” she says finally when she can speak. “Noise and static ripping across every synapse in my brain.  It ran around my ICE like it wasn’t even there.”  Kenji catches Viceroy’s hand shaking.

“We need to know what she’s tapped into,” Kenji says after making sure his new acquaintance is okay.  “What the hell it’s doing.”

“Fuck these people,” the NetRunner finally snarls.  “Look, you guys go do your thing.  Me and this princess are going to have a little heart to heart.  Or at least a cyberdeck to cyberbrain.”

—————————-

It’s about four when Whisper and Kentucky get back to Teagan.  She tells them to meet her at the same corner she was preaching at the first time they met at 2100hrs leaving the duo with some time to kill.  Sleep and mission prep become the order of the day, difficult when the world doesn’t make sense and they don’t know what the mission profile is anyway.

When the duo arrive in a fresh rental, they see a cordon of NI muscle standing in a circle, each of the eight heavies wearing ArmorJack and carrying large pistols or clubs made of repurposed subway rail.  Single cross tattoos split their cheeks and eyebrows. The practiced eyes of the NetRunners  pick out Adjudicators in this bunch.  This is not the same caliber of shithead the Teagan was running with before.  These guys are the hardcore.  Their leader isn’t hard to spot either, a tall thin man with a bad bowl cut wearing matching silver crosses on either side of his ArmorJack collar.  The locals are moving around them like plasma flowing around a magnetic field, all eyeballs studiously ignoring whatever is about to go down here. In the center of the circle, Kenji and Whisper can make out the figure of Teagan waiting with serene patience wearing a simple white dress.

If this is an ambush, the opposition is doing a terrible job of hiding it.

Martin quietly handles cleanup, keeping an ear on the conversation in case any more tidbits of knowledge are dropped that he might have the technical background to understand.  The well-stocked custodial closet suggests that this is a fairly regular issue in the safehouse, and the impressive assortment of PPE further implies that Viceroy's loss of snack containment is far from the most dangerous thing to splatter on this floor.  Or these walls.  Or this ceiling.  But this particular eruption isn't as bad as some of the stuff he's had to handle for corporate clients.

* * *

Martin is familiar with Six Bullet Sally's.  It's not on his list of preferred Combat Zone dives and he's not overtly chromed enough to blend well, but some clients are willing to cough up hazard pay to stagger a few more rungs down the ladder of debasement and slumming.  So he's taken the time to dress for the planned destination: mostly-freshly-laundered Kevlar-reinforced motorcycle jeans, black synthleather steel-toed Nike-APEX combat boots, and, after some deliberation, a Rocket Propelled Chainsaws concert shirt from the (critically-loathed but fan-acclaimed) Last Night's Sins tour.  His usual charcoal Gibson Battlegear Strandhögg jacket tops off the outfit.  A sling bag that was once mil-spec chameleon cloth but is now permanently stuck on the urban decay palette contains his motorcycle helmet and the Adjudicator.

He makes no move for the bag in the footwell as he surveys the NI muscle.  The big 13mm remote drill press might help if the Inquisitors decide to throw down, but it's a provocative display of firepower.  And, really, there are easier and less public ways for the NI to make this a trap.  So he fires a comm check over his headware to Kenji, waits for the nod, and puts a hand on the door handle.  He waits for the medtech to make the first move, then, tracking with his peripheral vision, swings open his own door and steps out in as close to a synchronous mirror as practice and the Kerenzikov neurachem can manage.  It's a cheap bit of theatre but it plays well with suits and gangers alike.

He falls in a precise three steps to the right and two steps behind his partner as they approach Teagan's electron shell of bioconservative shock troops.  The Beretta Consigliere is its usual comforting weight on his right hip.  Opposite it, a flash-bang and a smoke canister are both primed to arm on acceleration and ignite on deceleration.  Fuck trust.  Show me your hands.

Kenji takes the lead, recognizing that he's gotten the pair of edgerunner's into whatever they're walking into, so he should be positioned to take the opening fusillade if the meet goes go sideways.

"Teagan! It's Kentucky," he calls out, trusting the girl to keep her coreligionist huscle in check. "I brought a friend."

-
This message was last edited by the player at 19:40, Sun 29 Aug 2021.

At the sound of Kentucky’s voice, Teagan cocks her head and breaks out into a wide and warm smile.  A small hand rises into the air and she waves in his general direction.  “Hi Kentucky!”  The leader of the NI posse doesn’t look quite as pleased to see the Edgerunner’s approach.  He chews his cheek in some low form of disgust as he appraises the threat level Kentucky and Whisper represent, eyeballs sliding up and down their forms, counting weapons.  Tension passes through the rest of the Boostergangers, but no one produces any threatening gestures.  In the bodyguard position, Whisper lets years of professional practice build the threat scenario.  Most of these men are fighters, the Solo figures.  It the lead guy that is the killer, what with his dead eyes, angular face, and tonsure haircut.  Abnormally long fingers dance on his hip, just above the handle of his pistol.   The Solo can draw the diagram of how a fight would start with the huscle in his head: the yells and curses, the drawn weapons, the flanking.  He knows where he would shoot first, where to pull Kentucky, and just how fast they would have to run.

“Deacon Gerald, this is my friend Kentucky,”  Teagan exclaims, starting to move towards Kentucky, only to be gently restrained by one of the guards.  He gives her an uncomfortable smile that she can’t see and mumbles something like “forgive me, Blessed.”

Deacon Gerald doesn’t offer his hand.  “You are as The Blessed One described,” Gerald says, voice tilted with a learned affect of formality.  The tone sits in stark contrast to the violence in his stance.  He doesn’t like being here and he doesn’t like Kenji and Whisper.  “You are willing to protect our messenger in a nest of corruption and sin?”

I've protected less-innocent people in worse places, Martin doesn't quite say.  His professional filters are on, so he gives Deacon Gerald a slight, impassive nod and an ironic lift of an eyebrow that doesn't quite point to the eight Inquisitors apparently needed to do the job of two Edgerunners.  In the part of his awareness that opens onto the Shutzhund system's interface, a targeting reticle flickers on the notch of exposed skin between those silver crosses.  It doesn't quite rise to the level of conscious consideration that this reflex may well be part of the NI's problem with cyber augmentation...

Combat Awareness 5: Threat Detection 5 (+5 to Perception checks)

Kenji's tempted to ask why the NI huscle isn't up to the task, but that would probably start shit, and that's not what the edgerunners are here for. Instead, he answers, matter-of-fact, "That's why we're here," while trying hard not to stare at "Deacon" Gerald's bowl cut. On anyone else, it would look ridiculous; on this gonk, it's downright scary.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 20:20, Sun 29 Aug 2021.

It's not much, but a lead's a lead. Sam rewards herself with a couple soyrizo street tacos and a Fanta, returns to her vehicle. Deacon Gerald had told her to "let me know when you know something," so Cipher shoots him a text, "Your man was grabbed by a Maelstrom gonk.  He's changed, though. Last time I saw him he was grabbing your Inquisitors with a double cross face tattoo. Got video evidence."

While she waits for a response, Sam inhales one of the tacos. After wiping her greasy hands on a recycled bamboo paper napkin the texture of medium grade sandpaper, the private eye dials up her netrunner friend.

"Pulpster, got your next mission. We're looking for a van, 2030 model year, maybe, with a custom paint job- a wizard hurling a purple fireball at a demon, topless damsel in distress looking on. Kinda hard to miss. Figure its prolly be in some traffic cam footage somewhere- I'm hoping for a moving violation or something; could give us an address the ticket was mailed to."

-
This message was last edited by the player at 19:46, Thu 02 Sept 2021.

"I told them you would help," Teagan says helpfully from the pack.  "I know good people when I hear their voices."

Amazingly, Deacon Gerald doesn't flinch, snort, or in anyway react to being labeled a "good person."  A moment or two pass and the NI leader nods, presumably to himself, before turning to face Teagan and his congregation of heavies. He raises his hand in benediction and the men kneel.  Teagan stares to the sky, beaming.

"Father," the Deacon starts without giving two shits about the passerby's that can't help but be curious now. "We beg your blessing for our Pure One, the voice of the Trinity.  May her task be successful and may those who walk in the desert of sin at her side be redeemed and see the error of their ways.  Your will, our hands.  Amen."

The others echo the amen and part, allowing Teagan to step forward.  Gerald gently takes her shoulder and presents her to Kentucky like a prize pony.  "She is your responsibility now.  Blessings be upon you."

What's the functional difference between curable ignorance, incurable idealism, and an outright lack of higher brain functions?  Martin is fairly sure he's seeing at least one of the three in play inside Teagan's skull, but keeping the "Pure One" alive and reasonably unbesmirched is the job.

He does, however, make a mental note to ask Kenji later if "desert of sin" is really the right way to describe the places they're about to go.  "Desert" implies a state of emptiness, and Night City is the geometric opposite of empty of sin.  Maybe "jungle," lush and teeming with inappropriate vigor.  Yeah, "jungle of sin" has a good ring to it.

He lets his gaze roll off Brother Gerald and flick across the passersby, looking for anyone who's taking too much interest... or affecting too little.

"Yeah, thanks," Kenji replies flatly to Gerald's half-hearted blessing. He turns away from the gang leader and his unnervingly ridiculous haircut and takes a couple of steps towards Teagan. He smiles at her, holds out his arm for her to take hold of, realizes that she can't see, and feels silly for hoping that she can somehow feel his gestures.

"Ready to roll, milady?" he asks, gently touching her arm and guiding it so that the interior crooks of their elbows are linked.

As he walks her back to the car, he asks, "Where to now, Teagan?"

-

Kenji and Whisper escort their charge back to their ride feeling the collective eyes of the NI whack jobs boring into their backs.  The presence of Teagan reassures them a bit as they presumably wouldn’t send a hail of bullets heading their way if the cost of doing business was their own holy blessed one.

Martin keeps his head on a swivel, eyes loose, sweeping the civilians for anything decidedly non-civilian-y, coming up with nothing more than a few Scavs shopping the flesh of the unaware.  Those bottom feeders are smart enough to give the professionals a wide berth.

“To Six Bullet Sally’s,” Teagan says.  “I carry a message for the Maelstrom leadership.”  From all the weight she gives the situation, she might as well be asking Kenji to pick up tacos and a 2L of ZoneBlast Cola (All the Sugar! All the Fun!).  “They don’t know I’m coming,” she says, prempting Kenji’s next question. “Though I trust the Lord to prepare my way.”

Whisper watches the street as Kenji gets Teagan settled in the back of the car.  He’s rewarded for his help when Teagan squeezes the medic’s  bicep softly, hand unerringly finding the muscle, and treats him to a bright smile.  “Thank you again, I knew you would help.”

Waiting for return messages is much more pleasant with seasoned soy and pure refined sugar.  Sam finishes eating, cleans out her car of trash, and sprays a little Febreezy No Scent to knock the smell of chilies, cumin, and fat out of the air.

Pulpo comes back first with a You betcha chica.  One pedo-van search coming up.

Father Deacon comes back around 9:30pm.  He doesn't apologize for the delay.  Then I have a rat problem.  The cultist doesn't comment on why a Maelstrom guy would end up with facial decorations and hitting his own crew three weeks after grabbing a NI heavy.  There is a meet set tonight at Six Bullet Sally's.  Gather any evidence if there is another grab attempt.

Around 10pm, Pulpo gets back to Sam.  Got a hit.  Parking violation in Japan Town.  They still give parking tickets there?  Registered to one R.K. Meeker.  Address attached, though it's old.  An apartment building in Heywood. Looks like registration is on autopay.

The address dumps with an old driver's license capture.  R.K. Meeker looks to be about forty when the pic was taken almost fifteen years ago.  A woman, which is surprising, with hooded eyes heavy with life's defeats.  Or maybe just the embarrassment of driving the Wizard Mobile.  Sam is just about to shut the file down when she gets the fuzzies.  A bit of zooming in at the pic and the PI comes to the conclusion that R.K. Meeker has the tells of a post transition woman.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:37, Thu 02 Sept 2021.

Sam wants to follow up on the van lead, but it's late, and Six Bullet Sally's opens in a hour. She texts Pulpo.

I'll swing by the Heywood address in the morning. Gonna need drone surveillance again, one hour from now at Six Bullet Sally's.

Deacon Gerald knows more than he's letting on. Sam wonders what this meet he mentioned is about. Clearly, NI is one of the players, and Sally's is a known Maelstrom hangout. Anytime those two get together, the bullets inevitably fly. And then there's the double-crossers, who seem to have beef with everyone. It seems less a matter of if another grab attempt will occur, than it does when, why, and what the body count will be.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 00:26, Sat 04 Sept 2021.

"Good evening, ma'am."  Martin keeps it in professional mode - in this interaction, he judges that there's nothing to be lost through politeness, and it's worth being a good wingman for Kenji.  "We haven't actually met before.  I'm Whisper.  Kentucky and I occasionally work together."  And she can extrapolate "work" however she likes.

He drops the rental into gear and lets the autodrive pull into traffic.  "Can you tell us what this message is that you're carrying?  Maelstrom can sometimes be... volatile.  It would help us keep you safe if we could anticipate how they're likely to react."

Teagan has a way of staring precisely nowhere, head tilted to the side just a bit, blind eyes focused on her inner world, not the crass material one outside the rental’s window.  At Martin’s words, she triangulates his location from years of practice and fixes her sightless gaze in his mostly correct position and takes on a serene smile.

“I carry a message of peace,” Teagan tells the duo.  “A message that we should turn our attentions to the greater devil in our midst.  The Arch-Demons,those of the Twice Barred Cross.”  Presumably, she means The Listeners.  “The Holy Seat has declared that while Maelstrom has mortgaged their souls, they are not all beyond repentance or redemption.  It is only those who threaten us both that are truly and inevitably damned.  All they need do is turn away from violence against the pure and smite the evil instead.”

Outside the car, Night CIty traffic grinds away.  Gonks, corps, Edgerunners, and John Q. Public all out on their normal evening business.  The radio reminds the audience that some of these folks won’t be coming home.  Place your bets now.
————————

Damn girl.  You know I got actual girls right?  Plural girls.  That actually do things to me.  That feel good.  Girls who want me to do things to them.  The snark is there, but Sam knows Pulpo is good for it.  There’s more than one reason he’s called The Octopus.  I got you, though.  You know i do.  Rates just going up to double time.  Monique and Sasha say so.  And no way I’m saying no to Jezz. Oh hell no.

Martin shoots Kenji a concerned expression.  If they bite, we're gonna see even more of a gutter war than we already have.  Not peace, he sends over the team channel.

Aloud, he keeps his misgivings out of his tone and adds a touch of the formal intonation that he's heard from Inquisition higher-ups.  "That is an interesting offer of alliance.  Maelstrom tends to see everyone not of their own as targets, but you must know as well as we do that the Arch-Demons have been preying on them.  Can you tell us anything else about the Arch-Demons?  Do you have any other information that might help persuade Maelstrom to make common cause with you?"

Whisper's asking all the right questions, so Kenji stays silent for now, gives Teagan a chance to reply before following up with, "Maelstrom know we're coming, or is this a surprise parley?"

-

The messenger of the NI considers Whisper’s question.  “The Arch-Demons came from nowhere,” she says.  “No one tells me much, of course,” she adds.  “But I hear most of what they say.  Being…this way…those of the faith tend to forget that I’m there.” A brief smile crosses her lips. “It’s been less than a month, for sure.  We went from our struggle for purity of the spirit to a struggle for our lives.  We thought that they were of Maelstrom, but something changed and now we know they are a common enemy.  The Arch Demons hunt us both.”

To Kenji’s question: “We have no contact with sinners like that,” Teagan says without heat, without the contempt that the word “sinner” can bring. “We come only with peace on our lips.”

In a world of overreactions that border on the psychotic, the New Inquisition is relying on faith alone.

Crack.  Thump.

MDR folds her arm inin and smashes the punching bag with the point of her elbow, sending the weighed bag up towards the ceiling.  Beads of sweat pour down her face, trickle down her chest, dampen her sports bra, and fly out from the seams of her work out shorts.  The weight of the bag feels good, rubbing the flesh of her knuckles, reverberating through her muscles and into her torso.  She steps forward, throws a knee into the dropping bag and gives a satisfied grin at the abrasive impact that sends the bag back to the ceiling.  The bag comes back down fast, accelerated from the smart chain anchoring above, simulating the counter attack.  MDR drops to a knee, lets the bag pass over, and spins with a vicious chop from her left hand.  CloudKill may like small offices, but the executive gym has everything the aspiring corporate warrior needs to stay sharp.

“Ma’am?”  Jeremy’s voice cuts across the space.

MDR comes out of her flow, checks her internal chrono.  Sixty five minutes in the training zone.  It’s a start.

“Yes Jeremy.” She moves away from the swinging bag and grabs a towel from her bag on the floor.

“I have something on Professor Kannerack.”

“I assumed so,” she answers while toweling off her long arms and paying the minimum necessary attention to her minion.

“So Kannerack disappeared around the time his research proved to be less that effective.  More than a few companies tried to license the patents resulting from the research and subsequently went poof.”

“Poof?”

“Bankrupt.”

“Charming,” MDR says flatly. “Follow.”  She scoops up her bag and heads for the women’s locker room where Jeremy hesitates at the door. “Follow, Jeremy,” she repeats.

“Uh, okay.” The corporate NetRunner tries his best to keep his gaze on the floor as he follows into the locker room.  Monica drops her bag on a bench and starts stripping which causes all manner of amusing colors to flow up Jeremy’s face. This kid, she reflects as her sports top hits the ground with a wet splat, needs some hardening if he’s going to make it in the world of extremely hostile takeovers.

“Kannerack?” MDR helpfully prods.

“Yes, ma’am.”  He clears his throat once before continuing. “Professor Kannerack cleared out his lab shortly before several legal departments could foreclose and seize his data.   He disappeared for several years only to come up with an ID change.  The data got wiped years ago in a run of the mill data hostage operation, but I have a friend in data salvage that-“

“Point,” MDR says, heading for the showers.

“Ryder Kannerack changed her name legally to Ryan Kannerack Meeker.  She’s transitioned about fifteen years ago, which explains teh silence.  She owns a shit box apartment flat in Heywood.”

“You’re sure?”  Hot needles of water pound into Monica’s toned flesh, soothing the worked muscles.

“Yes, ma’am.”  Jeremy straightens up, just managing to meet her eyes.

“Well done, Jason Caldwell.”

That really gets Jeremy’s attention. “You know…”

“I’m not a monster,” Monica smiles with a monster’s set of teeth.  “Find out what’s going on at that building.”

She’s trying to decide if the guy is too milquetoast to invite into the shower to blow off some stress when Ringo pings her agent. We have movement at the Molt.  Two vans on the move full of assholes with guns.  Do you want me to trail?

So much for an active shower.  Caldwell would probably fold under the pressure anyway.  Pursue and report back.

"So, how do we want to handle this?" Kenji asks his partner. Executive protection is Whisper's bread-and-butter so the Medtech is happy to let the solo make the call.

-

Back at the ranch, Lube and Viceroy go to work on Sara.  The duo doesn’t have the medical skills, but they’ve got the tech skills to evaluate the hardware the Listener is packing.   There isn’t a ton of time, they’ve got the drip that Kentucky set up before he hit the road with Whisper but the tech experts set out to make the best of the minutes they have.

Producing a pair of fiber optic cables, Viceroy connects one end to the cyberdeck in her arm and the other to the plugs on the chip socket in the Listener’s head, before closing her eyes briefly. “I need your pass code, flesh designation Sara,” she says, voice flat in the affect of those whose brains are dancing between the silicon and carbon worlds.

“Can’t…” the Listener mumbles.  “Don’t know...”

Lube smashes his hands down on the table in bad cop mode.  “The code!  Spill it!” Sara couldn’t care less.

Flat affect or not, one of Viceroy’s eyebrows edges up.  “You’re cute when your angry.” With her voice in its current mode, Lube is left with an exercise as  listener to determine if she’s fucking with him, flirting, or both.

“Not mine…” Sara repeats. “Only Collector knows….”

“Collector?”

“The one who-“ Sara’s hand comes up, trying to make a gesture before halting on the restraints.  Her face scrunches in confusion for a second or two. “The one who lets us hear the voice of God.”  A series of slight tremors rolls through the Listener’s body and she coughs slightly.

Viceroy shakes her head. “This is stupid.  I quit.” She leaves Lube for a few minutes to do some cyber magic before returning fully to consciousness.  “Total custom rig,” she declares.

“Whatcha got?”

“Most of the processing is off site, all I could do was chase the chrome.  Aural hook ups, cyber eyes, and a big fucking antenna.  Someone can send her a message, directly to the brain.  And she can send the other way.”

Lube considers this for a second.  “Like Emil, but two way.”

“And in full 3D surround brain dance audio stereo deluxe.”

Another spasm rocks the Listener.  “Where’s God?” She asks.

“Emil was compelled right?  Like addicted?”

“Where’s God?”  Sara repeats, her voice taking on a whine.  “I can’t hear Him.”

Lube rolls his eyes.  “This should be amazing fun.”

“WHERE IS GOD?” Sara screams, muscles going rigid as she starts to thrash.

VIceroy brings her voice up, talking over the looney toon locked in the Faraday cage. “You and I have different ideas of fun. You got any ideas here?”

Whisper checks the time.  "We have a few extra minutes.  Let's do a quick recon of the area.  I've been here before but I'd like to refresh myself.  Figure out the best place to park, talk through our primary and secondary egress routes so all of us know how we're getting out if there's a problem."

He thinks for a moment.  "When we go in, you're the outer layer of protection.  This is Maelstrom, so subtlety is kind of lost on them."  He quirks a half-smile.  "I'll stay within arm's reach of Teagan.  If we have to leave in a hurry, you plow the road.  You choose the route; we'll move when you tell us to.  Teagan, if that happens, stay in physical contact with me.  I'll try to keep a hand on your shoulder, but if I need both hands, hang onto the back of my belt and follow me, please.  What questions do you have?"

“You do not  have to worry so much,” Teagan says with a patient smile. “I will do as you say.  I just need you to tell me when I should talk.  Noisy places are kind of difficult.  If you need to lead me, just put my hand on your belt.  I can follow.”

Once again, Kenji and Martin take a drive down the highway of declining real estate values.  Once again, as real estate values go down, the action on the street goes up.  So does the open carry policy.  Weapons become fashion items, implicit chrome danger becomes explicit.  Bullet holes become style choices.  When they get to Sally’s the timer on the door reads 00:14:34 until opening.  The bar sits on a large lot, the physical building maybe 15 meters wide, 40 or so deep.  A single door with two pulled down storm shutters take up the front.  Martin knows from experience that when the shutters open, there’s no glass behind them.  It would get to be a hassle to replace all the glass that would be broken from multiple forcible ejections.  Per night. (Though Multiple Forcible Ejections would make a hell of a ChromeCore band name).

Running from either side of the building, corrugated metal plates shelter the outside riot/concert/drinking/party venue from public view.  Razor wire adorned with various bits of clothing, flesh, and garbage tops the wall.  On the west side of the property, a massive collection of bras and g-strings has been shot up into the bladed wire.  The total outside area is roughly double the interior of the bar.  Two large doors open from the bar proper to the venue and on the quick drive by, Martin can see that they are already open the crew for the evening prepping the playground away from public view.  Music blasts from speakers, a preview of the band to come: The Tiki Torch Parade.  At least two locked gates allow egress from the venue, though all locking mechanisms are inside the wall, though it takes circling the block once to spot them.

People are already lining up on the sidewalk, the usual NC mix of boosterganger, corporate slummer, kids on the town, and occasional disaster area tourist.  This crew skews toward obvious chromeware and flesh change.  Scars are fun and in style this year, though the after Labor Day colors have yet to be published.  Black is always a good guess.  Blood red a popular second.

As the trio begin to invoke the gods of parking availability, they pass a crew of Maelstromers headed down the side walk towards the bar.  Twelve, fifteen strong, they look like they’re out for fun.  Kenji watches at least two hitting from dosing inhalers, breathing down some cocktail of chemical rage/fun.  It’s confirmation the monsters will be out tonight..  Two minutes later, Kenji tells the car to park in a monitored garage, pays the 20eb and 10eb bribe to keep the car available and they step out into the night.,  Martin just catches a drone banking away, disappearing behind a building back towards Sally’s as they hit the sidewalk.

———————-

A block or so away, Sam sits in her cruiser watching drone feed from Pulpo’s collection of little friends.  In this environment, he’s deployed two of the drones, one high altitude with several cameras trained on the grounds of Six Bullet Sally’s.  The other he’s using to check out little leads that creep up.  Most are worthless.  That’s to be expected.  One though…

“Car circled the bar, chica,” Pulpo intones in her ear.  He’s breathing a bit more ragged than Sam is strictly comfortable with, but she tries to keep the implications far away from her mind.  Madness lies down that road.  “I’m gonna take you in.”  There’s nothing special about the run of the mill rental that Pulpo has picked out of the mess.  Could just be somebody looking for parking.  Could be an El Salvador hit team disguised as drag queens.   The little drone weaves through the building tops, staying low and running silent, camera fixed on the top, secondary camera snapping the license plate.

“Cordial Connections,” Pulpo reports.  “Common company.  Standard rental.  Stand by.”

The drone banks sharp, just zipping past a pair of flickering street lamps. “Yeah, okay.  Contract looks good.  Rented via credit chip, long term, bouncing back to Tzu Holdings.”  The drone banks again as the car pulls into a rental lot with a decent level of security, the kind for people who want to have a car when they return from the clubs.  A few second later the feed vanishes as a building blocks the drone’s line of sight.  Then it’s back.

Two men step out of the car, each wearing the swagger of Edgerunners, the contained violence that tells others “now is not the goddamn time for your shit.”  Pulpo coughs slightly,  “Do these guys look like Tzu Holdings types to you?”

Sam is about to respond when a third figure emerges from the car, this one helped by the more dapperly dressed of the duo: a girl in a plain white robe.  A robe she’s seen before.  The kind that last covered Brother Ezekiel prior to his high temperature exit from the mortal world.

Sara screams and thrashes around the makeshift ball gag that Lube built out of a tennis ball and his belt, much to the amusement of Viceroy who gave him a little wink when she put together what he was doing.

“You’ve done that before,” she says between bites of Twinkie.

“Sometimes ya gotta keep’em quiet,” he says, sipping on the lowest sugar content soda he could find in her car.  It still makes his teeth hurt.

“And sometimes…” she lets trail off.

“Let your freak flag fly, baby.” 

A throaty laugh escapees from Viceroy before Sara  cuts it off with another thrash and muffled moan show.  When the spasm subsides, she shakes her head back and forth slowly, tears leaking from the corner of her eyes.  The Listener is clearly miserable and probably not 100% home at the moment.

“I watched my brother kick heroin three times,” the NetRunner opines.  “The cheap stuff.  The kind that doesn’t run the neural inhibitors to block physical addiction.  That,” she gestures with the last nub of sponge cake and sugar cream in her fingers, “looks much worse.  And is growing slightly annoying.” The Twinkie disappears down the hatch.

“Is she transmitting?” Lube asks. “I mean, we’re assuming she can tell her team where she is.  But if she’s whacked out of her skull on god-withdrawal, can she tell them anything?  Is there a GPS signal fixed to her transmissions?”

Viceroy pushes her trash to the floor and steps away from the wrappers.  Charming habit, that.

“Let’s see.  Can you build me a receiver for capture?”

“Is a ball gag more fun when it’s consensual?”

“Ewwww.”

“Yeah, maybe too far.  Yes, I can.”

“Then lets see what we can see.”
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:58, Wed 15 Sept 2021.

"Christ," Sam mutters, taking a screen cap of the girl and her huscle, the latter looking very little like N.I. gangoons.

She one of yours?, Sam taps out, shoots the captioned image off to Deacon Gerald.

"Pulp, keep a drone on those three," she instructs. She studies the other feeds, half expecting to see a heavy metal welcome committee forming.

-

Kenji takes point, starts leading the trio towards Sally's. He's not used to the role. On most jobs, the medtech is nearer the rear.

Just going clubbing with my new pals... at a violent chromer bar.

In a situation like this, how you project is everything. It's that old adage about sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. Appear weak, naive, out of the fold- like a sheep- you're bound to attract street predators on the hunt for easy pickings. Too cocksure, aggressive, like you own the place- the wolf- you're bound to catch the eye of a roided up meathead looking for a fight. It's a trick to look both unthreatening and not-to-be-fucked-with at the same time, but Kenji does his level best.

-

Martin checks the temperature of the neighborhood and curses himself for being about as blind as Teagan.  The girl's attire is already drawing side-eye and hostile murmurs on the street, and this isn't the kind of neighborhood where a challenge like a lone NI acolyte will go unanswered.  "Standing in line with the rest of that crowd out front is going to be a very bad idea," he observes.  "Service entrance.  We need to talk to management anyway."

His mental map from prior acquaintance and recent reconnaissance points to the back alley.  At its mouth, the burnt-out chassis of an old Tetracorp Fen Lien is angled against one wall.  The scarring on the brickwork from where the aerodyne came down hard doesn't match its current orientation.  At a guess, several someones with cyberpsycho strength positioned it to force traffic entering the alley to slow down - and, not coincidentally, to block line of sight from the street to whatever felonious shenanigans are happening back there.

"Watch your step, Teagan.  Lots of trash on the ground here."  Including what looks like a poorly-excised neural coprocessor with a 6mm hole punched through it, but there's no need to give her that detail.

“Got it,” Pulpo says.  The mic blessedly kicks off before the detective can assess whether or not his heavy breathing is continuing.

Eerie fascination crosses through Sam’s mind as she watches from above.  The singled out trio make their way down the street, turning down a dark alley instead of heading to the front door of Sally’s. Makes some sense.  It isn’t hard to read the body language of the folks on the street. Even from altitude there is a noticeable change in the general demeanor of the natives at the appearance of the NI’s messenger.  The detective sweeps over to the primary zone, looking down at the band just finishing up their setup inside the venue.  Doesn’t look like anyone is prepping anything for their incoming guests.

She is.  Deacon Gerald’s message arrives with a vibration and a ping.  She carries a message of peace.  If she needs help, we will pay for your intervention.

—————-

Teagan proves adroit and stepping carefully through a debris strewn alley.  Inhalers in every shape and variety litter the and crunch underfoot, sources of chemical ecstasy and dependency.  You could, Martin observes, make a hell of a bean bag chair by collecting the plastic castaways, drop them in a leather bag, and pretend that they hadn’t been chewed on by hundreds of dead souls trying to eke out a momentary escape from whatever hell they’ve found theirselves in.  With booted fear, Martin and Kenji knock a narrow pathway for Teagan to follow, leaving the path mostly clear.  Should they need to leave in a hurry, there’s less of a chance that gravity and surface friction will work against them.

“This place is…cold,” Teagan says with a shiver, commenting far more on the vibe than the ambience So-Cal weather.

Towards the back of the alley, a pair of stained mattresses have been compressed and rolled against a wall, tucked in behind steel grating.  The purveyors of mattress service aren’t here yet and neither is their pimp.  The goal of the descent into desperation of others reveals itself to be a solid door with an electronic lock that more than likely feeds into a narrow partition of the outdoor space.

Knock or go through the lock?

Kenji looks around for a camera. There's got to be one somewhere, covering the back alley, if for no other reason than to film the mattresses for blackmail and/or cinema verite porn vids.

"I'm inclined to try knocking first," Kenji says. Breaking into the club would probably not be a good prelude to peaceful negotiations with its de facto ownership.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 21:31, Sun 19 Sept 2021.

Sam frowns at her agent. If Gerald knew this "messenger of peace" was on her way to the same club he wanted his PI to surveil, why didn't he say something about it earlier? If this cult envoy ends up requiring Cipher's "intervention", it would be helpful to know more about her escorting huscle. Sam can't think of many scenarios more dangerous than jumping, unannounced, into someone else's fight as an unknown third party.

Do you have coms with her? she types. Without waiting for a reply, she follows up with, Can you let her know about me?

She unlocks the former cruiser's glove box, extracts her new Militech Arms M-5445B Adjudicator VHP and places it on the passenger seat.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 20:36, Sun 19 Sept 2021.

"Definitely," Martin agrees.  He does his own check for cameras, looking back down just in time to catch Kentucky doing the same.  Nice to be working with a professional.

For Teagan's benefit, he adds aloud, "They probably already have us on vid.  No need to be excessively provocative."

I don’t want her to know you are there unless it becomes absolutely necessary, Deacon Gerald pings through to Sam’s agent.  A second later, another ping hits: Teagan’s contact information.  I pay you for discretion.


—————

In the alley, two sets fo eyes sweep the wall, door, and surrounding area for a camera, something to signal.  Martin spots it in an unlikely place: mounted low and underneath an old power junction box that has seemed better days.  It’s button size, disposable in that a modified barnacle protein has permanently anchored the device.  Removing it, hell, jacking with it, would result in destruction of the device.  The Edgerunners look at each other, coming up with a plan.   Kenji leans down, waving at the camera while Martin knocks delicately on the security door with the tip of his boot.  It’s possible no one is coming, but patience is the better part of survival and the trio waits.  Teagan softly recites a prayer.

Thirty seconds pass with nothing.  Then, WHAP, WHAP, CLUNK.  Martin instinctively moves, blocking any door access from Teagan.  Kenji moves to support, ready to engage anyone that comes pouring through the door with overt hostility, hand inside his coat fingering his pistol grip.  Locks disengaged, the door squeaks open 18.”

Instead of a Malestrom goon squad, a short Chinese man with cyber arms and scars galore sticks his head out, bringing with him a scent of pit barbecue (nothing like smoked soy to bring on an appetite).  A torn and worn Six Bullet Sally’s shirt hangs on his frame, a heavy butcher knife clenched in one hand.

“Whadayawant?” He spits out in one long street speak syllable.   Low grade cybereyes sweep the trio.  “Gottadeathwishwiththatone?”

"Enh.  's a job."  Martin drops into the same dialect to respond.  He shrugs casually and flicks his hands in a "what can ya do?" gesture that not-coincidentally puts them to sweep inside the knife's reach and direct its heavy point into the doorframe.  "'s'here tanegotiate w'top chrome.  Flechette, Antikythera, Slamhound.  Or somewith the voltage to speak for one'a'em."

His casual expression drops away and he fixes the pitmaster with a cold gaze, cybereye to cybereye.  "We's'all Mattis tonight.  You scan?"

I come in peace.  I didn't bring artillery.  But I'm pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: if you fuck with me, I'll kill you all.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:55, Tue 21 Sept 2021.

Kenji keeps his mouth shut, tries to reinforce Whisper's street pigeon opening with posture, and "Yeah, what he said", affect. He also checks the team's flanks and six, but subtly, like he's not too worried about it.

-

Like when the bullets start flying? Probably too late then, buddy.

Sam shakes her head at Geralds reply. Something's tickling her synapses, but she can't quite pin it down.

She looks at the drone feeds, then out her window. The potentially friendly trio have exited her line of sight down a side alley. The drone provides an overhead shot of them conversing with someone at Sally's service entrance. Dude's got plenty of chrome but otherwise doesn't look at all like your typical Maelstromer.

Then it she has it- Gerald's strange habit of alternating between the Royal We and first person singular pronoun when referring to himself. Thinking back, she can't pick out a pattern to it, other than he seems to slip into "I" when he's agitated. What it might signify, she doesn't know, but the thought starts tap-dancing on her amygdala. Right now, though, she needs to keep her focus on the immediate surroundings, so she files the conscious components away for future consideration.

-

Inside her office, Monica is putting the final touches on her day.  Her designer coat hangs on a hook in a hidden closet right next to the flashy ArmorJack she picked up the other day, the one with the hand stitching and polished chrome.  Nice bit, that.  Wang-Sharpova knows their stuff.  Sitting on the shelf below the coats is her new Adjudicator, courtesy of her abductors.  Because fuck those guys.  The ammo for the beast wasn't easy, but what are corporate connections for if you can't get the pieces necessary for flash.

Ringo's ping pulls MDR away from mulling her clothing options and back into the present. Target vehicles have met up with another van.  This one sporting a goddamn wizard.  They're heading towards the combat zone.  Continue pursuit?

Monica breathes out slowly.  Slides on the ArmorJack, feels the weight on her shoulders squeeze her torso like a nice hug.  Checks her pistol.

Yes.  I'm on my way to rendezvous with you.

"Jason!" she calls, striding out of the office and making a beeline for the elevator.  Her pet NetRunner leaps to his feet from the small cubicle he occupies next to her door.  He pretends not to be terrified.  She pretends not to hear the K-Pop/Lagos-Punk mashup he has blasting from his headphones.  "Tell the boys upstairs to spin up a gyro."

"Uh, got it."  Jason says, eyes and head swinging to track her movement.  "Where should I tell them you're going?"

MDR slides the action on her pistol as the elevator doors close.  "Out for drinks."

"Sa sa," the pit boss nods, eyes narrowing.  "Slamhound local.  Flechettenocasa."  The small man nods again, more to himself than the trio asking for his assistance. "Youenteryourisk."

I understand.  Slamhound is here, Flechette is not.  I'll let you in, but if you get killed, it's on you, not me.

The door gets pushed open revealing a small storage room with a rubber mat that runs from the door out to the hallway.  Boxes of various soy products and sauces sit on shelves that run against both walls, the floors sticky with the normal restaurant gunk.  If Martin had to guess, the room is considered too vulnerable to store the things people might actually want to steal like alcohol or prostitutes.

Kenji leads the trio along, eyes focused on the cook and each of the doors that they pass.  The music gets louder, the staff starting to push past them without a second thought, more intent on their various duties than who is walking through the background of the bar.  Martin's practiced eyes try to pull out the little details: offices, food prep, more storage, various exits to the public areas.  For a dive, there's some infrastructure, all of it reeking of stale beer, dried blood, and adrenaline.  And probably synth-coke.

When their guides pushes open the swing doors to the outside venue, all the sensations blow up by a factor of ten.  The music goes heavy, bass driven enough to rearrange body organs.  Teagan actually staggers at the onslaught, her world overpowered by the wall of sound blasting at her ears.  Martin catches her by reflex, left hand momentarily supporting her while she finds her feet.  He can't hear it, but her lips say 'thank you.'  The crowd pays no attention to their arrival, the chrome in eyes, limbs, bodies, and weapons reflecting light in various hues and directions.  Plastic cups tilt to lips.  Inhalers spray chemicals like they will never be available again.  At least two fights are occurring simultaneously and the seem to be involving an exchanging cast of characters.  The bar has been open 19 minutes.

"I sound Slamhound. Asses," the boss yells, pointing to a small table about 4 nanometers from a speaker larger than the first car Kenji ever drove.  He doesn't check to see if they comply and sit.  He stalks away, swinging his knife in a casual manner to create a hole through the crowd as he moves off.

Sit here and wait while I figure out what Slamhound wants to do with you.

Martin sees the first chromehead detect their presence from around the edge of his red Solo Cup.

"Savv.  Occupational hazard." Martin flips between Streetspeak and corp English with an ironic grin.

The environment inside the club is exactly the same as it was on his last visit, save only for new blood splatters overlain on the old ones.  Memory below the level of conscious thought engages his sensory buffer 'ware as he enters.  The Zeiss optics, rated for blinding lasers, are barely above ready-idle for now, but the Sony-Sennheiser audio dampers are feeding him that murky almost-underwater undertone that says they're trading fidelity for protection.

His elbow momentarily tucks in against the lower edge of his ribs as he turns sideways to squeeze through the crowd.  Just checking that the flash-bang and the smoke canister are still there.

He guides Teagan to a chair, then has a seat himself.  He's about to drop the sling bag at his feet, thinks better of that, and pauses.  One hand unzips an outside pocket and rummages around for a small hard case he hasn't needed since the Sony-Sennheisers went in but has never seemed to jettison during repacking.  He flips it open and presses the semi-smart earplugs into Teagan's hand.

"We stat," he tells the pitmaster as he picks up his drink.  He opens his eyes a bit wider than normal, letting the club lights reflect from the titanium rings around the irises.  A mental command to the neural coprocessor disengages the M-sync on the Kerenzikov, letting the unnatural precision of the neurachem bleed into his motions.  Amping up the chrome for the audience.

He feels the chromehead's gaze land on their table and tilts his head casually, letting the guy roll into his peripheral vision.  "Inbound probe, your nine o'clock, eight meters," he sends on the team channel.

Combat Awareness 5: Threat Detection 5 (+5 to Perception checks)

Kenji waits a beat, casually glances to his left, takes care not to make eye contact with the chromer probe. The combat medic's eyes linger just long enough to perform a rudimentary threat assessment, then he turns his head away, affecting unconcern.

"Doesn't look like a bouncer," Kenji says, not bothering to raise his voice. He keeps Red Solo Cup in his peripheral vision, pretending to appraise some of the drunk girls gyrating sloppily on the dance floor.

-

Sam watches the trio disappear into the club via the rear entrance, wonders how they managed to talk their way in.

"Pulpy, keep that drone on the back door," she instructs on the off chance the three exit the same way they entered. "I'm going around front. You think ladies pay a cover?"

If she's going to monitor the meet, Cipher's going to need to get inside da club. She tucks the Adjudicator into a crude underarm harness beneath her jacket, pops the door, and steps out on to the street.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 20:07, Sat 25 Sept 2021.

“That’s how mama likes it,” Viceroy quips.  She doesn’t raise or eyes or turn her head, attention focused on the slim antennas Lube has slipped between the mesh wires of the Faraday Cage.  Sara is a bit preoccupied with thrashing, pulling, and trying to swallow her own tongue to notice.  It shouldn’t be possible to make the veins of one’s neck stand out like steel cables, but the Listener is displaying admirable fortitude in the attempt.

For his part, Lube watches the display on his makeshift detection system, dialing between frequencies trying to figure out which bandwidth the Listener system is using to reach out to the world.  “If she’s frequency hopping,” he says, “we’re as good as fucked.” 

“Maybe,” Viceroy answers.  Deft hands secure the antennae with electrical tape. “The need to sync times would be a motherfucker for a system like this.  I mean, daily group check-in’s?”

“Cults gonna cult.” If Lube had more thoughts to share, they are lost when a sharp squeal indicates a large spike in RF energy from inside the cage. “I stand corrected.”

“Ooh…admissions of shortcomings.  How very liberated.”  Viceroy squeezes in next to Lube, working both the comp in her arm and the small portable model she pulled out of her car.  With her forearm a little closer to the mechanic than is strictly necessary (and a signal he’s not quite sure he wants to return or not), she begins pulling copies of the data out of the receiver.

“I prefer to think of it as accurate assessment of abilities.  What’s your plan for the inevitable encryption?” Lube asks with helpful sardonic insight.  “Gonna be locked up like my dad’s gin collection.”

“I’m guessing that held you for, what, nine seconds?”

“Six.  I’m fast.”

“Always?”

“When properly motivated. Otherwise, slow and steady. Driven like the sea.”

Viceroy lets an eyebrow creep up, but otherwise doesn’t react.  “Let’s talk encryption.  We’ve got the same signal over and over.  Encrypted, but pulsing every five seconds.  I’m going to assume time is part of the message, probably the only part that changes.  Then I’m going to assume that there’s a GPS tag embedded in the signal.  Maybe, maybe not, but it’s a start.  Maybe a little ‘this is me” and a call for an update.”

“I love your tech talk, I appreciate the insight, but if this is foreplay, I’m ready for the show.”

Viceroy closes her eyes, goes off on the silicon highway to nowhere and everywhere.  Maybe ten seconds pass, a lifetime on the digital frontier.  “It means, Mr. Driven like the Sea, that I only have to crack part of the message.  This part.” A slim fingertip pokes at the small LCD screen on her comp.  It’s meaningless run of twenty or so characteristics, but it’s not changing.  It’s on every iteration of the data being sent out. “Then I get go play.  Now,” Viceroy adds, “could you get me a Cherry Coke?”

As Teagan pushes ear plugs into her ear canals with a grateful sigh, Cup Solo nudges a buddy and two sets of eyes drill into space hovering above the table the trio currently occupy.  It doesn’t take skill in lip reading to pick up the “what the fuck is this happy horseshit” that the two exchange.  If either of these gonks has ever actually seen a horse, Martin will proceed to eat the flash bang in his pocket.  Odds are in his favor that rapidly expanding gasses will not be in his future dining plans.  Cup Solo and his sidekick, the Dreadlocked Wonder,” exchange a few more glances, go through the male aggression ceremony of pounding their drinks down, nodding manly at each other, and then doing the whole ‘I nod my head and then you lead’ dance, and begin making their way through the crowded space.

Martin watches from his peripheral, scanning the body language of the other club goers.  No one else seems to be making a move, hostile or otherwise in response to the impending arrivals.  In his seat, Kenji readjusts his sight lines, taking his own good look at the incoming bogies and decides that while they are decked out in cyberware, neither is tilting on the scale towards cyber psychosis.  Threatening, sure, but nobody is about to sprout a second set or arms or kick their table with a few thousand PSI behind their foot.  Teagan, for her part, remains blessedly unaware and unconcerned, her fate in a the arms of a higher power.

“The fuck is this?” Cup Solo directs at Whisper when they are within range.  With his ears doing the work of bringing the music down to a much more manageable level, the bodyguard is able to pick out the words the chrome-gonk is throwing at him with no issue. “She got a death wish?”

“You following her down?” The second man says from underneath his chrome dipped dreads, hoping to throw his own shade. And kind of failing.

In the periphery of their various awarenesses, both Martin and Kenji get an incoming call request from MDR.

“You got it.” Pulpo’s voice comes through low and steady.  Relaxed even.

Instead of dwelling on that particular present, Sam slides out of her car and starts the walk to the line forming at Six Bullet Sally’s. There is a shit load of attitude on the street tonight, and the detective knows how to play that game.  Without even thinking about it, her stride changes, lengthens.  Her head tilts up a few degrees, lips tighten into a slight sneer. Her normally light hair ripples into a cascade of shimmering chrome.  She’s hot shit and knows it.  Death on wheels.

The people in line are gonk trash to this incarnation of Cipher.  She makes her way to the front of the line where a metal clad bouncer gives her the up and down.  His eyes tilt his head for him.

“The back of the line starts over there, sweetheart.”

Sam throws him a frosty come-hither smile.  The kind that promises consensual violence in dark places.  “How nice for them,” she says.  “But not for me.”

“Heh,” the bouncer chuckles.  He knows the show, but can still appreciate the dance.  “All right you cold steel bitch, you have a lovely evening.  And if you get bored, you know where to find me.”

Sam pats him gamely on the cheek as she passes, feeling the reinforced bone of his jaw and the light nip of his sharpened teeth on the flesh of her skin.  Inside, Sally’s lives up to everything is promised Sam from the outside: violence and excited hormones.  There’s no cover.  The price of the drinks bleeds the wallet enough to ensure that getting in is free.  Chrome enhanced bodies cover the space, a few tourists pushing themselves up against the walls in corners, mouths agape in awe or fear.  A few teenage corporate offspring slum their way through the venue, oblivious to the danger around them or turned on by it.

Outside, near one of the speak banks, Sam spots her quarry, getting her first look at the trio in the flesh.  Two professionals to be sure and the NI acolyte who stares oddly at nothing, eyes fixed at a spot faraway.  Heaven maybe?  She watches the pros watch the approach of a two chromers out to prove whose got the biggest dick.

Martin pivots in his seat and grins.  "What this is, is not your problem.  This is business for someone who is not you.  We're on contract."  He nods toward Kenji to encompass the "we" and leaves the question of whose contract for the wireheads to grind toward on their own.  "Now, I can buy you both a drink on the expense account, or you can get involved.  I get paid the same either way."  Shrug.

His neural co-processor spools the Kerenzikov's pre-loading routine, queuing the countermoves for the three most likely escalations Cup Solo and Cut-Rate Sidekick will put on the table if they don't decide to fuck back off.

Combat Awareness 5: Initiative Reaction 5 (+5 to Initiative rolls)

Kenji flashes a brief Pan Am smile at the two wannabe tough guys when Whisper nods in his direction. While Whisper tries street diplomacy, Ken does some quick calculations- angles, range, direction, who his partner will likely take if and when shit pops off. Hopefully, the bullies will realize that they're messing with the wrong party of three and fuck right off. If not, their next move will decide whether they end their night in the ER or the morgue.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 19:35, Sat 16 Oct 2021.

In a rare display of common sense for a bar where the body count for the night is advertised on the fucking marquee, Cup Solo and his sidekick pause mid stride.  Martin and Kenji watch as the tough guy sneers freeze and slowly deflate.  Eyes dart back and forth.  Hands go from fists to flexing fingers and not in the “I’m about to punch something” kind of way.  Maybe they picked up on some reputational ques.  Or maybe professional violence rates stronger than pure rage in the small minded.

“Hey, uh, Jimmy,” the sidekick whines with his dreads tinkling like windchimes in the heavy bass atmosphere.  “Maybe that beer sounds good.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy agrees. “Yeah,” he repeats, picking up a little confidence as he starts to walk backwards.  “Just, uh, send it over to us at the bar, huh Choom?”

The chagrined tough guys fade back leaving Teagan to put her hand on Kenji’s arm.  “I told you we would be fine, Kentucky.  You are already making friends.”  There’s just enough of a lilt at the end of the sentence that Kenji can’t tell if she’s fucking with him or not.

As Martin runs up Jasper’s expense account with a couple of super-expensive-cheap-as-hell beers for his new acquaintances, the Pit Boss returns looking grim.

“You follow.”

Soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmnCKftMbPw

From her perch near one of the bar stands, Sam watches the fight deescalate from physical violence to bruised egos.  She’s not sure what was said, but something in the countenance of the Edgerunners dropped the fight right out of the gonk trash who wanted to prove how manly they were.  The trio wasn’t given much time to celebrate, however.  Before long, Sam watches as a small man in chef whites approaches as beckons the guests to follow.  They rise, not quite as one, the potential sacrifice placing her hand on the Asian runner’s bicep to be led through the crowd, the other providing the security.  That’s when it hits her that the girl is blind.  Legitimately blind.

—————-

The Pit Boss leads the way, moving the crowd out of his way with gentle taps from the back of his big knife.  Behind him, Kenji can feel the presence of Teagan’s hand on his arm, a gentle and steady weight that she uses to effortlessly follow the gentle indications he’s giving her.  He can’t feel the actual sensation of her hands, not with ArmorJack waiting to halt an incoming threats, but it’s easy to imagine the squeeze should he want to.  Behind them, Whisper sweeps the room and keeps a constantly updating threat matrix in place, looking to see what’s going down.  There’s no physical demaracation line in Sally’s.  No VIP room behind a velvet rope for those violent enough to be accorded special privileges.  Only a gradual uptick in scars, expensive mods, and bad attitudes.  Whisper knows when they’ve crossed the Maelstrom Rubicon.  Kenji notices it maybe ten seconds later.  All of the sudden they are in a sea of tattoos, sneers, and murmured threats.  Word moved ahead of them, don’t fuck with this crew.  Not yet.

After delivering Teagan and her guards to the center of the hurricane, the Pit Boss makes a hasty retreat, exercising staff discretion to unass the area before it goes sideways.  Slamhound is easy to spot.  He’s sitting on a metal barrel that has been bent into a chair of sorts.  His jaw has been replaced with chrome, sharpened teeth glistening in his mouth revealed in a rictus smile.  Two cyberarms reinforced with pneumatic rams jut from a armor plate vest.  Most of his visible skin is pocked with scars, metal implants, or more.  If his eyes are cyber, they’re hidden behind mirrored wrap shades, one of lens of which bears an impact scar that shares an uncanny resemblance to a bullet strike.  Behind him, the woman that owns/inspired this place stands, almost a complete borg conversion.  The only flesh Sally shows is her nearly naked torso, flesh pockmarked with six scars, each puckering out in a star.  One steel hand rests on the back of Slamhound’s shoulder.

“What do you have to say for yourselves?” Slamhound asks with a sneer and a voice that has spent years gargling whiskey and razor blades.

Teagan clears her throat, takes half a step back, the impact of Slamhound’s address carrying through to her.  “Greetings, I bring-“

Slamhound doesn’t let her continue.  “Shut your hole, meat.  If I want your pollution, I’ll rip it out of your lungs.  One of you other lumps of flesh, entertain me.”

Martin processes all the threats, the side-eye, the furtive motions toward weapons manufactured or improvised.  Processes, and ignores, keeping the mask of cool in place.  They're scenery.  For now.

Slamhound is the objective.  Martin steps forward.  Wipes away the weaponized disinterest and replaces it with something harder.  Tints it with just a hint of deference, enough to acknowledge Slamhound's status without admitting it matters.

"Entertainment carries a surcharge," he says dryly.  "And last I heard, you were overclocking your patience and appreciated brevity.  So I only brought biz."  A tilt of his head indicates Teagan.  "The Robes seem to think your crew might share their interest in the Listeners.  From what I've seen, I figure you've got your own concerns about them."  He leaves the implication hanging there, waiting for Slamhound or Sally to tug at the thread of exactly what he's seen of the Maelstrom splinter sect.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:47, Tue 19 Oct 2021.

Whisper's got the gift of gab- of that, Kenji has no doubt. His own diplomatic skills feel somewhat narrower, consigned, more often that not, to coaxing fading patients from lapsing into shock, or talking down panicking ones, neither of which seem to apply here. If he opened his gob now, it would probably just get stopped up with his own foot.

The MedTech remains stoic, watchful, trying to stay chill while radiating scorching martial competence.

-

Slamhound stands from the makeshift throne from which he receives what passes for adulation from the Maelstrom hordes that come here to pay him homage.  And when he stands, he keeps standing, legs unfolding underneath him, lifting the booster gang captain to a height of roughly eight feet, the knees bending backwards giving him an unsettling alien like stance.  Velociraptor feet clink forward, bringing Slamhound face to face with Teagan and her protection.  Another folding occurs, this one at the waist, bringing the captain’s face down to within inches of Teagan’s.  For once, it’s probably better than the girl is blind.  She can’t see the poisonous hostility breaking over her in a Maelstrom shaped wave.

“Spit it out then, trash. And if you lie, I gnaw off your face.”

The blind girl collects herself, standing up straight, and manages to find the approximate location of Slamhound’s eyes.  “I bring greetings,” she repeats, “from the Holy Trinity.  Revelation has revealed that our missions are linked and that the Holy Spirit will forgive us trespass to forge an agreement with you, to fight our common enemy, the arch-demons known as the Listeners.”

Slamhound turns his head back to look at Sally.  Kenji and Martin can read the look.  It’s not subtle.  Can you believe this shit?

“Well that’s just fucking dandy,” Slamhound snarls.  “First your kind creates these shitheads, now you want us to help you fight them.”

The accusation drives Teagan back half a step, shaking her head.  “No,” she stammers, knocked off script.  “They are not part of the Holy Order.”

Slamhound’s jaw expands, the joint hinging  wide enough that it looks like he could engulf the envoy’s entire head.

“I don’t think he believes you,” Sally says, perhaps needlessly.

The text notification in the peripheral of Martin and Kenji’s vision drops out, to be replaced with a voice call from Monica Del Rey.

———

Sam can’t see where the trio were moved off to, she’s left holding a beer and waiting to see what unfolds.  With most of the entrances and exits covered, and Pulpo’s drone overhead, the lack of visual contact isn’t totally concerning.

“Pulpo,” she subvocalizes, “Do you still have visual?”

Yeah, he texts back. North west corner.  There’s a big pow-wow going down.  Stand by.

Cipher’s agent picks Pulpo’s feed back up, showing the NI/Malestrom meet from above.  She watches as one of the Maelstrom leaders stalks forward, threatening and interrogating the girl.  The muscle hasn’t moved yet, so it must not be totally sideways yet.

Chica, you got a big problem, Pulpo cuts in.  The feed changes without her consent showing a trio of vans passing her car on the street.  Two white murder vans and one with a wizard mural.

Despite himself, Martin is impressed with Slamhound's augmentation.  Not necessarily impressed in an I gotta get me some of that way... more like well, that's some damn fine engineering, even if it is completely batshit insane.

The threat display has an immediacy that thoroughly overrides the cyberengineering critique.  It is a threat display, though probably not a prelude to actually eating Teagan's face - yet - and one that's mostly wasted on the blind girl.  More posturing for the audience the ganger is accustomed to.  Slamhound's last verbal statement is cause for more concern.  Wait, what?

Outwardly, he manages to hold onto most of his cool, but it's not easy.  "Hold up.  What do you mean, they created the Listeners?"  He flicks a hand toward Teagan.  "The kind of tech they're running isn't exactly the Inquisition's forte."  He nods toward Kenji, hoping the medtech will unspool a line of technobabble to prove they know what they're talking about.

Internally, he curses and kicks the low-powered secondary transceiver that ties his agent into the Hoshino implant radio.  "Yo, MDR, really fuckin' busy with negotiations here.  Call ya back when we aren't in a meet?"

Kenji catches Whisper's nod in his peripheral. He's about to pick up the thread, say, Yeah, they don't even allow biomons; heard new members have to cut 'em out before joining... when what could be a revelation hits.

"Slammy doesn't mean 'create' technologically- more like, theologically. Not all of that N.I. prosthelytizing fell on rocky ground. The Listeners did find 'god', just not the one N.I. wanted 'em to. Is that it?"

Kenji realizes that, if he's wrong, he's probably just fucked things up royally with Slamhound. And Teagan.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 16:25, Sat 23 Oct 2021.

"Shit. Call NCPD. Get MaxTac out here, 10-33," Sam says, turning on her heel so abruptly she sloshes a skosh of beer on the dancefloor. Handing off her drink to a random hot mess, Sam makes a beeline for the main entrance, notes with some relief that her new bouncer friend is still on the door.

"Hey, stud. Don't ask me how I know, but there's three vans full of Maelstrom rejects with double-cross face tattoos 'bout to roll up here and start blastin'. You better lock this place down like right-the-fuck now."

-
This message was last edited by the player at 16:25, Sat 23 Oct 2021.

On seas of silicon ether, Viceroy dances.  A diamond ballerina on feet made of platinum blades sifts through information rendered by her programs into simple songs and drawings, a child’s creation, each opening in a fractal world of possibility.  Most of the paintings are junk.  Most of the songs out of tune, but she sifts and searches with her mind.  The digital signature of the captured Listener gives her the musical key.  The data flowing in from the data spike in the Nomad camp gives her the colors.  Years, relative centuries of accelerated time, in the Net allow give her the experience to pull together the opera.

And so she creates.  A snip of tune, a progression of V, bVI, bVII gives way to a dance.  The dance gives way to a domicile of desolate brick.  The muted colors of the data spike place the story in a desert.  And so the pieces fall, each building upon the next, dominoes of metaphor, symbolic language riding her brain waves to make sense of chaos.

Until finally she has it.  The symphony playing a tune of sorrow and sin.  The dancers excising the demons of flesh and temptation.  A desert palace crumbling under its own decadence.  It would be beautiful if not for what it represented.  When the piece comes together, she gasps, the ballerina stumbling in her steps for a wind begins to blow.  Then howl.  The landscape dissolves into static and chaos, the scream of the wind going over to a low thrumming hum that promises death under the eyes of a vengeful all knowing god.  Her mind recoils, the ballerina collapsing in on itself, curling around the parchment that tells the story of her production.

And then the world shatters.  Pain stabs through the flesh of her brain, consciousness splintering in a thousand directions until all is dark.

A simple point of light.  A voice.  A wet trickle running down her face.

“What…” Viceroy spits out around a mouth of cotton saturated with blood.  The copper taste makes her wretch.

“I jacked you out,” a voice tells her.  Lube? “Killed the power to your cyber modem.”

“You can’t just…you can’t…”

“Look sugar princess, you cracked your own teeth.  You shouldn’t do that.  When you hemorrhaged out of your nose, I figured it was time. You couldn’t really get more fucked up.”

Oh.  That.

“Do you have it?”

“Yeah,” Viceroy says.  The broken ballerina holds out a parchment with an address on it.  “I know where they are.”

A set of wrap around shades and a pair of blind eyes turn towards Kenji.  For a moment, the medic is sure he just stepped in it in a big way.  That the whole delicate dance is about to come crashing down on his head.  Slamhound retracts his jaws, closing them with an audible clank.  Teagan considers.

“They are not of us,” Teagan says, returning her “gaze” to Slamhound.  She doesn’t sound sure.  “Aren’t they of you?” She asks the Maelstrom captain.

“Hell fucking no,” he snaps.  “The one we tortured to death kept screaming the NI line about the vengeance of The One True God.  Blammering on about ‘the true purity of the machine.’” It isn’t hard for Kenji to picture the Malestrom confusion about what begat what around here.

“The Archdemons prey on us both,” Teagan says, testing the waters around her.

“With your bullshit on their lips and your methods in their hands.”

“And your machines corrupting their flesh.”

The make quite a pair squaring off.  A nine foot tall cyborg and a small girl that can’t see the confusion she sews.  Both probing for the truth.  A hush falls.

Behind them, Sally suddenly goes rigid, snapping to attention.

“Snap me your location,” MDR orders Whisper, not really giving a shit about his current negotiation plans.  He hasn’t known her long, but that seems true to character.  It’s an easy request, doesn’t take any verbalizing.  Her response is immediate.  “I’m tracking a Listener party convoy into the combat zone. Three vans.  You’re about to have fucking company.”  The sound of rotors vibrating carries through Monica’s voice.  “Maybe twenty seconds.”

Sally steps forward, blades unfolding from her arms.  “You led them here?”

——————

Sam’s new “friend,” cocks his head at her report, evaluating.  After a second he rocks forward on his feet, mind apparently made up.  “Bar’s closed, gonks!” He fires out.  “Clear out or get cleared.”  The waiting crowd groans, kind of milling around.

“I want to bet on the body count,” an up and coming corp exec demands back. “Let me in for that, at least.”

“Motherfucker, I will make you the body count.  Get gone.”

The bouncer clicks the radio on his lapel, murmuring something about Listeners in bound to fuck shit up then turns back to Sam.  “All right Cold Steel.  You made the call.  In the bar or out?”  He doesn’t wait for Sam to make up her mind, turning to go inside.

Only long and awkward practice enables Martin to juggle Monica's cal and the rapidly-evolving revelations that Kentucky's statement touches off.  This isn't his negotiation, exactly, so he holds his tongue as Teagan seems to regain her footing.

Then Monica's intel dump slices through his view of the proceedings.  "Copy."  The background noise and Monica's known personal case of the ass about the Listeners make it evident that 'I'm tracking' is a statement of personal involvement, not corpo-shorthand for 'my employees are.'  "What's your ETA and are you rigged for extraction or for fire support?"

And just like that, it is his negotiation.  Fuck.

He steps in front of Sally, willing himself to ignore the literal unfolding monomolecular-edged chrome and the figurative unfolding violence potential.  "Random rental, indirect route, we didn't lead shit, and this isn't exactly a secret hideout.  We didn't call ahead, so either her organization has a leak," he nods toward Teagan and rolls over her indignant squawk, "or someone downstairs shopped us.  Either way, timing strongly suggests the Listeners don't want you to have this conversation with her."

In his head, the tactical assessment is running parallel to the conversation.  Maelstrom values strength.  He and Kentucky might be able get Teagan out of here through a cyberpsycho-on-cyberpsycho firefight but it'll burn Teagan's mission and any hope of future cooperation with the less-extreme cyberpsychos.  So the smart and professional option isn't really in play.  That leaves...

He rolls the helmet out of his sling bag and lets it hang, ready to either don it or parry one of those twitching mantis blades.  "So let's hit 'pause' on this and prepare to repel fucking boarders."

OOC: I'm assuming Kenji is also on the call with MDR via Bluetooth-successor earbud or whatever.

"The enemy of my enemy and all that. Look, we've already zeroed a bunch of these Listener pricks, so either join in the fun or get the fuck outta the way," Kenji says, trying to goad Slamhound's crew into redirecting their anger at the approaching threat.

The combat medic kneels, opens his kitbag, removes his sub gun (conspicuously keeping its muzzle pointed at the floor) and inserts a mag. Standing, he extends its stock, cocks it, and thumbs off the safety. With one hand, he grasps Teagan's, steers her towards the table, says, "Teagan, duck under this table and get against the wall. Stay there and wait for Whisper or me. Don't go with anyone else, got it?"

Turning to Slamhound and Sally, Kenji announces coolly, "Any of your people touch her, it's their death sentence."

OOC: Yeah, Kenji's got an earpiece synched to his agent, so if it's a party line, he can hear. He doesn't have internal coms, though, so he can't transmit silently.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 22:36, Sun 24 Oct 2021.

I'm not gettin' paid enough for this insanity, Sam thinks, joining the throng of patrons hemorrhaging out of the club entrance as the blast doors start sliding into place. She runs across the street, a plan of sorts coming together with each stride.

Assuming the snatch team is here for someone inside the club- probably the envoy Sam's supposed to be discretely helping- its six should be relatively soft. She's got a VHP and a tracking device- if the opportunity presents itself, she'll plant the tracker on the pedo-van. And she's not above zeroing the rear guard if she can do so with minimal risk to herself.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 22:34, Sun 24 Oct 2021.

Monica grunts as g-forces push her back in her seat.  Pilot^TM seems to think that he’s still in the canyons of Columbia, or some shit, instead of the creaking urban landscape of the combat zone.  Frankly, all the thumping, slamming, grunting, and twisting has got her heart going.  Somewhere a mental note is made to do this with less clothes on sometime.  And this guy (black flight suit, sealed helmet, and very little talking ) intuits the point that she wants to be somewhere quickly.  Like an hour ago would be nice.

Pilot cocks his head slightly, listening in to the radio transmissions Monica is routing through the gyrocopter’s comm system.  “A few point defense weapons, ma’am.  This isn’t an Artemis Gunship.  Two more passengers is doable.”  He anticipates her questions.  Point to Pilot.  MDR swears at the fact that the gyro isn’t a Benz-Royce Flotilla either.

“I can’t offer much fire support,” Monica tells Whisper. “Harsh language and some sidearms are all I have on tap.”

“I’ve got a few ideas,” Pilot reports. “90 seconds.”

Another steep turn pushes Monica against her chest harness and draws a slight smile from twisted lips.  “I can imagine.” Two large apartment towers flash past, a few surprised faces streaking by as after images in cyber eyes.

“Ma’am,” Jason comms across her private team channel, the one she’s not sharing with Whisper.  “Max-Tac has just been notified of a disturbance at the address you are approaching.  They are spinning up now.”

Because of course they are.

“Whisper, the Cyberpsycho squad is heading your way.”

Monic mentally flips back to her team. “Ringo, tell me what you see and I’ll tell you what to do.”

Soundtrack:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-LD3a28ePE

As the Listeners arrive, what unfolds resembles less a snatch and grab and more a terrorist attack.

Inside Sally’s, the Maelstrom folks begin to react to the news of an impending attack.  The music hits the breaks, the band looking around in confusion as the PA cuts out.  The crowd shuffles aimlessly as the bouncers try to herd them indoors, which is basically impossible given that hundreds of people can’t fit in dozens of square meters.  Especially with their egos taking up so much damn space.

Sally herself considers Martin’s offers, her steel face nearly impossible to read.  The mantis blades hover, neither reaching out nor retracting.  “You make a point,” she says finally. “We are friends. For now.”  The patron saint of the bar turns to organize her staff into resistance.  Seconds tick by.

Next to Kenji, Teagan obliges him with a shrug, crouching down under a table with a certain bemused acceptance of the impending chaos.  For his part, Slamhound twists his metal jaw into a thin smile at the Medic’s threat. “Why would I want with her stink on my hands?”

Outside the fence, there’s a sound of screeching metal.  Whisper catches a flash of motion in the sky above the bar.

————————-

Outside the bar, Sam gets ready to hunt targets of opportunity.   Down the street, she can see the convoy approaching Six Bullet Sally’s.  Just before the vans cross the final intersection, a small two door coupe flashes into the street in front of them, turning hard and accelerating just as aggressively.  The vans begin to decelerate, approaching their target, sliding doors coming open while still on the move.  The electric motor on the coupe revs one more time as it threads the needle between two parked cars, leaving paint and carbon fiber on the bumpers of both and sending the the few remaining pedestrians on the street scattering out of the car’s path: namely the exterior wall leading into Sally’s courtyard.

Just before impact, Sam spots a drone zipping down the street, roof top level.  It’s close, all four rotors encased in cages, each tilting hard for maximum acceleration.  Hell, she can read the branding on the fucker: Militech.   The drone tilts, crossing over the wall of Sally’s.  And detonates.  Not chemically, though the drone is consumed in the blast (why leave evidence?).  Instead, it comes apart a split second after sending an EMP blast wave into the surrounding space.

She can’t see the effects, other than the sudden drop out of Pulpo’s feed, and presumably the sudden actual drop of the drones he handling via remote control as gravity avoidance mechanisms are overwhelmed and physics takes over.

——————-

Martin and Kenji hear the zip of a low altitude drone rip over the fence.  Then they hear the telltale sound of the EMP blast.  That shitty low frequency “buuuuuuu” accompanied by a flash of electric blue light.    It’s also the last thing Martin hears as the cyber audio suite in his ears takes an electric dump under the magnetic onslaught, taking his system’s neural processor unit right along with it. (Neural processor, cyber ears, and all associated systems down for 1 min or until Kenji succeeds on a difficulty 15 cybertech roll to reboot his partner’s systems.  Cyber eyes functioning normally)

Kenji hears, Martin sees, the metal fence tearing away as a small car crashes into the structure, ripping itself into pieces as part of the process.  The driver gets the worse of the physics involved, ending up with a large piece of fencing stabbing through the windshield and potentially his or her face and chest.  Through the hole in the fence, they can see figures emerging from a trio of vans, each armed to the fucking teeth.  Around the duo and their charge, about half the Maelstrom gangers are down with malfunctioning cyber systems, Slamhound dragging himself forward on dead legs.

———————

Sam watches the emergence of the Listeners.  One catches her eye.  Out of the wizard van, a tall thin man emerges, his face half metal, half flesh, a shit hack job of borg conversion.  He cradles a grenade launcher in low budget cyber arms, his body covered by a black robe marked with a golden double cross.  As the figure turns to direct his minions forward, Sam recognizes the face.

It’s Jarrett Mesa.  Her missing Inquisitor.

Ingrained by years of training and the lingering weight of institutional dogma, Kenji's reaction to the EMP attack borders on instinct. Priority one: stabilize the wounded. One look at Whisper tells the medic that something's not right. The solo is upright, gun in hand, but the glazed look in his eyes indicates at least a partial systems crash. Kenji releases the subgun to hang on its one-point tactical sling and reopens his kitbag.

"Let's get you rebooted," he says, fishing out a set of leads and moving behind the solo.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 19:43, Thu 28 Oct 2021.

"Hnuuurgh," Martin manages as his nervous system reboots in safe mode.  He stays more or less upright by virtue of long hours of adaptation therapy (thank you, ChrisAlice), but he's deaf, his balance is shot, and the world looks like it's behind a thick pane of armorglass.

The interface to the Consigliere is as dead as the rest of his neuralware but the trigger and iron sights work just fine.  Martin hunkers down behind a table and puts the softly-glowing fiber-optic front sight on the door.

There’s screaming.  Of course there’s screaming.  What kind of mass attack and pandemonium doesn’t get accompanied with massive amounts of yelling and screaming?  The customers of Six Bullet Sally’s probably consider themselves veritable connoisseurs of violence.  Some of are willing and technically proficient practitioners of the sport.  Most have not been subjected to a shock and awe attack.

Ironically, it seems most of the Listeners haven’t participated in the spectacle generation business enough to really take advantage of it.  Not at first.

Whisper, blessedly ignorant of the vocal volume accompanying the bodies running hither and yon, keeps him aim steady.  He’s aware in a theoretical way that Kentucky is moving around him, practiced hands poking and prodding the reinforced bits of flesh where his cyberware reaches near the surface of his skin.  There’s that tacky moment where electrodes get pushed against flesh.  A tiny bit of electricity jumps across his skin, a static charge, and a thin crystal clear blue line cuts across his blurred vision.

<<System Reboot>>
<<Stand By>>
<<Systems Check Complete: All systems operational>>
<<Please contact your service representative if this problem persists>>

The world rapidly comes back into focus, sound crashing in.  A brain that is used to far more input that simple flesh gets its supply of data restored.  It’s just in time.  A Listener cradling a shotgun in his arms rounds the battering ram/coupe that has opened Sally’s to the opposition and moves conveniently right into the Consigliere’s sights.  Electronic nerves sing, communicating targeting information up and down the arm.  The world slows as neurons hold a quick debate on optimal firing angles.  The gun barks twice in quick succession.  (-2 rounds)  Both rounds connect in solid body shots, punching through the light armor the Listener wears and causing him to stagger.

Right next to the solo, Kenji watches his tools in satisfaction as the blinking yellow lights on his scanner flash to a reassuring green.  It’s helpful to have cooperative patients who will hold still for you long enough to get them back on their feet.  The automatic training responses continue to run, the leads pulled off with a quick snap that leaves their conduction stickers behind.  The cords get wrapped around the scanner, ready for their next appearance.  A quick glance behind him reassures the medic that Teagan is staying put and so far is doing fine.  When Whisper shoots, Kenji simply reacts to the incoming threats, prepping his next go round.

The Listener horde crashes into the gap running rough-shod over the back of their stumbling point man, and into the waiting frenzy of the Maelstrom blades.  Blood and limbs start to fly, bullets cracking through the air, and despite the ferocity of the initial attack, the first foray of the Listeners gets halted fairly quickly by a counter Sally herself leads, storming into the line of fire with her Mantis blades wreaking havoc.  Not far away from the Edgerunners, Slamhound pushes himself to his knees and balances himself carefully on dead legs and snarls at the incoming Listeners in rage.

Somewhere over the fence, Kenji and Martin can hear someone yelling above din, demanding something, but are as of yet unable to decipher the words above the din.

—————

Back in the street, Sam has plenty of human cover for now.  How long it lasts is up for debate as residents, partygoers, scavs, and tourists scatter away from the onslaught.  The detective can see the van she wants: the tacky wizard almost beckoning her forward.  She slips in between a pair of corporate fuck boys wearing lace and chrome and slides to the ground behind her target, slapping her tracker into place.  It takes roughly a second for the genetically modified barnacle protein to permanently graft the device to the metal frame of the van, a second that stretches into an exposed eternity.  When she takes her hand away, the tracker stays put and Sam rolls away from the van, trying to get distance from the incriminating scene of her crime.  An explosive sigh of relief escapes her lips as she rises.

She watches Mesa shoulder his grenade launcher and advance towards Sally’s with two body guards in tow, yelling something into the club, something about someone named Sara.

Then she hears Wolvers deploying to her left side and turns in time to see the security element she’d hoped to avoid coming to say hello in the most violent way possible.

Still in a crouch, Sam pivots and raises the Militech Adjudicator. As soon as the charging, Wolvers-equipped Listener's center mass fills its holographic sight, she starts squeezing the trigger...

-

Martin puts pressure on the trigger again, holds it for a subjective minute as the world slows down and the Zeiss smartgun interface snaps back into view --

Loading Shutzhund v3.83.1d... OK
Initializing interface... OK
Weapon detected.
Initializing SkinLink-R... OK
Weapon handshake... OK
Loading config:
Weapon firmware • Brilliant Ballistics P4508 • compatibility check OK
Weapon ID • Beretta Consigliere S/N [NOTICE: S/N not found, contact tech support]
Status • Ready
Ammo • BBJHP [7/8]
Targeting sync... OK

-- and puts two more rounds into the Listener with the shotgun.

"Comm check, and thanks," he subvocalizes on the team channel as his radio comes back online.

He takes a moment to assess the scene and look for better cover if any is available.  "Can you get Slamhound mobile?  Politics."  He figures Kentucky can unpack the tactical considerations inherent in that.

Beretta Consigliere (heavy pistol) [7/8]
two more rounds on the shotgunner, moving to better cover if any is available (but staying between Teagan and the most likely source of incoming fire)
Combat Awareness 5: Spot Weakness 5 (+5 damage to first hit each round)
This message was last edited by the player at 20:47, Sun 31 Oct 2021.

This gonk's bite better beat his bark, Kenji thinks as he scuttles over to the fallen Slamhound, scanning for exposed flesh on the prone, 'borged-out monstrosity. Finding a sliver, the Medtech presses the lightly used electrodes against clammy skin. The chaos- sound he can feel, fear that he can literally smell- fades into the background, his attention hyper-focused on the task at hand.

"You better be worth the time, asshole," Kenji mutters as he studies the diagnostic readout.

-

Out in the street, Sam twists away from the Listener who wants to redecorate her face with blades sharpened at the molecular level.  With the threat filling the sight picture of her Adjudicator.  If the gonk sees it coming, he doesn’t react.  Maybe it’s the stress of the moment, but the weapon slips a bit in Sam’s hand just as she pulls the trigger.  The pistol bucks once and the slip doesn’t matter at point blank range (-1 round, fumble didn’t stop shot).  A solid impact scores the cyber weapon wielding asshole in the chest, but doesn’t stop his momentum. The Wolvers come down in a hard arc that Sam cypher tries to avoid and just can’t quite get out of the way of.  Sparks bank away from the detective’s armor jack as the cloth covering shreds, but the armor plate underneath holds the attack at bay.  The ganger’s follow up stroke is easily avoided.  Sam’s can see her reflection in the emotionless eyes of the Listener.

Inside, Kenji hits reset button on the connections to Slamhound’s cyberware, hoping (and receiving) a reboot signal from the captain’s cyber system.  Metal legs expand, pushing the gang leader all the erect, the figure towering over the battlefield that is erupting towards them.

“You are not,” Slamhound intones, looking down at Kenji with a grim smile, “totally fucking useless.”

Martin’s pistol tracks his last target, the pip in his eyes bouncing as the Listener tries to bring his shotgun to bear on the guy that just dropped a pair of pistol rounds into his chest.  Cybersystems take control of nerve systems, math calculating shot vectors and timing.  If feels like Whisper is control, but he’s not.  Not really.  He wills the pistol to shoot and the system obeys when the trigonometry is correct.  Two more cracks ring out, the first finding a hole in the Listener’s armor, following in one of Martin’s first rounds and blowing his heart out the back of his chest.  As the body falls, Martin’s second round removes the jaw, heightened reflexes tracking the semicircle as is spins through the air in a gory rainbow.(-2 bullets)

At the battle lines, Sally leads the Maelstrom counter attack Mantis blades flashing from both arms.  She grins as she hits melee range, a battle angel in her element.  A Listener with an assault rifle easily ducks the first slash.  His companion, a cross tattoo wearing Listener with a shotgun isn’t nearly as lucky, her head coming off her shoulders as Sally casually flicks the blade through the space where flesh used to bind flesh.  Or metal used to bind metal.  Mesa has something to say about this, raising his grenade launcher to deal with the spirit of battle.  His thumb selects flechette and he pulls the trigger, a thousand sharpened metal darts exiting the barrel of the weapon at high velocity.    The Listener couldn’t ask for a better line up.  Sally’s eyes find the threat, she tries to dodge, metal legs bending to propel her into the air but the metal storm beats her to the punch.  The metal darts mostly bounce off the metal plates that make up Sally’s body, a few of them finding home in her flesh, but not many.  Mesa snarls at the affront.

Around the bar, Maelstrom isn’t doing as well as Sally, the boostergangers on the ground falling victim to Listeners willing to take advantage of overwhelmed cyberware, dropping bullets into targets at point blank range.  Still, over by Teagan, a group of four Maelstromers have managed to get their shit together and are prepping a counter attack, one that Slamhound, now functional, intends to lead.

Mesa enters the space through the tear in the fence, mouth open and roaring.

“WHERE IS SARA?”

Escorts with assault rifles flank their commander, lining up targets

Cipher, dips, pivots, and steps away, Adjudicator coming around for another shot. She's not used to the heavy pistol, and it's showing. At point blank range, she tries again, looking to put two rounds somewhere between the Listener's belly button and tattooed face.

-

Hoping he lives long enough to see whether his medical battlefield diplomacy pays off, Kentucky switches from save life to take it mode.

Time to cut the head off the snake, K-man thinks, raising his submachine gun until the mouthy gonk with the grenade launcher fills its holosight.

Who wants to party?


-
This message was last edited by the player at 01:25, Sat 06 Nov 2021.

"WHERE IS SARA?"

Huh.  Glad I didn't mention our Listener in a box, Martin observes internally.  Even without that uncomfortable detail being exposed, the guy with a fucking grenade launcher is a bit of a problem.

"Flashbang out," he warns as he plucks the canister of pyrotechnic misery from his belt and whips it toward the mouthy grenadier's feet.

Beretta Consigliere (heavy pistol) [5/8]
donating a flash-bang to open Mesa's perceptions
Combat Awareness 5: Spot Weakness 5 (+5 damage to first hit each round)

Sam gets her wish.  She pulls the heavy pistol up, aligns correctly, and squeezes the trigger in the proper controlled manner.  And just like a fairy tale where your wish comes true, it comes with complication.  The heavy round exits the barrel to impact one of the ceramic plates in the gonk’s coat directly.  There’s a bit of pass through, but most of the hit bleeds out its kinetic energy producing a massive bruise accompanied by a grunt from her target (-1 shot).  Mr. Wolver cracks a bit of smile and lunges forward with his claws, slashing out twice.  The detective easily evades the first slash, but the counter slash catches her across her coat a second time.  And just like the first time, her armor holds out.

With his medic work done, Kenji retrieves the SMG hanging on the sling attached to his chest, the weight of the weapon familiar and comforting in his hands.  Especially given the threat a grenade launcher represents in close quarters.  There’s chaos running rampant, bodies moving around here and there in erratic patterns, and Kenji elects the three round burst option, hopefully giving the gonk something to think about.  Or better yet, rendering him incapable of thought.  The weapon coughs as the burst screams across the space, each of the bullets tracking one behind the other and catching the target clean (-3 rounds).  Mesa doesn’t seem to give the rounds much thought as they careen off subdermal plates taking tiny bits of flesh with them.

Next to his partner, Whisper adds to the mayhem with a flash bang.  The small cylinder tracks wide, but the beautiful thing about hand grenades is almost is usually effective.  A bright chemical flare twice as bright as the sun erupts across the space followed nanoseconds later by a concussion that sends the already shellshocked patrons spinning to the floor in agony and shock (-1 flash bang).  Mesa and his escort don’t go down, but a Listener mook or two drops.  So do a couple of Maelstrom, those without the fancy gear of Whisper, eat al.  And the civies just exited most of the firing lanes via gravity.

Sally closes with Mesa, leaping into the air and slashing furiously with her blades at the zealot in robes.  Her target ducks one slash, takes the other on the outside of his forearm and fires another flechette round at point blank range into his assailant.  That shot hits square blasting bits of metal out of Sally’s armored limbs but she doesn’t fall.  One of Mesa’s escorts lines up a shot on Sally, letting a burst fly that finds center mass and sends the cyber angel staggering back.  At least until her pain editors come on line.  The second escort takes stock of the situation sweeping the room with his silver eyes before landing on Teagan.  The skin around his eyes tightens in recognition of what the girl represents.  What he used to be.  And what he wants to sever from the earth.  The rifle comes up and he squeezes off one careful shot.

Martin and Kenji watch it unfold in slow motion, the body guard part of Martin driving him to interpose his body in the shot, Kenji trying to get to where he knows he will be needed.  It’s too slow.  Far too slow.  They watch as Teagan turns to them with a beatific smile, one untroubled by the world.  Time stretches.

Maybe she truly is blessed by God.

The Listener’s assault rifle explodes in his face, the round cooking off in the chamber.  Plastic shards tear away at his flesh as the weapon comes apart in his hands.  Unfortunately, he’s already reaching for his sidearm.

Slamhound cackles at the display, turning to Kenji.  “You want peace, you got it.  Two weeks no hostilities.”  Then he rages forward jackhammering a Listener to the ground with one pneumatically assisted punch and using the suddenly prone form of his adversary as a springboard to close the distance to Sally.
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:50, Sat 06 Nov 2021.

Martin swallows hard, painfully aware of what almost just happened.  Somewhere in the sliver of his consciousness not devoted to the gunfight, he makes a mental note to offer appropriate sacrifice to the Holy Order of the Perpetual Railgun, just in case there really is something to Brother Roland's bullshit syncretic ballistic religion.

"You heard the man.  Time for us to go," he tells Kenji and Teagan.  He tops off and holsters the Beretta, scoops up the unattended shotgun on the floor, and moves back to his charge.  "Okay, Teagan.  Hang onto me, just like we talked about."  He takes her wrist and guides it to his belt.  "Kentucky, I've got point, you keep anyone from following us out."

His support hand pulls the smoke grenade from his belt and preps it to screen the retreat.

reloading and holstering pistol, acquiring shotgun, preparing to move
Combat Awareness 5: Spot Weakness 5 (+5 damage to first hit each round)
This message was last edited by the player at 02:02, Fri 12 Nov 2021.

"Roger that!" Kenji says, rising into a combat crouch and taking aim at the gonk who'd shot at Teagan. He's surprised at how protective he feels. He doesn't want to just "neutralize the threat"; he wants to straight up kill the motherfucker. Squeezing the trigger, Kenji starts to backpedal.

Kentucky
HSMG 37/40
Rockin' & rollin'

-

Sam intends to write a scathing product review of the Adjudicator VHP on Militech's website.

Can't defeat body armor at point blank range. What's the fucking point?
Zero bodybags.

Before she can go full Karen, she needs to not get killed. Maneuvering to create adequate space and an as-near-as-optimal-as-possible angle, Cipher raises the pistol until it's pointed at the Listener's ugly mug and squeezes the trigger.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 23:38, Fri 12 Nov 2021.

Despite not killing Mr. Wolvers over the last several shots, Sam has managed to wound him.  That makes him a little slow to dodge.  And Sam is, frankly, tired of his shit.  Inside her eyes, a pip appears directly on the Listener’s forehead.  When arm/hand/barrel align perfectly, an electronic signal cruises down the neurons connecting her cortex to the handgun and a fairly large diameter bullet exits at a fairly large velocity.  After a brief visit to free space, the bullet crashes in to Mr. Wolvers face, drives through bone, and hits brain tissue where it creates a shockingly large cavitation wave that shatters the delicate flesh that used to house the simple thoughts the Listener entertained in his misspent life. Upon completion of the instant personality removal, the bullet blows out the back of the target’s skull and splatters a fantastic amount of blood across the wizard on the van.  Sam may have to rethink her product review. (-1 round, called shot to head)

With divine retribution in mind, Kenji lines up his shot, taking the work of Teagan’s god into his own hands.  As his quarry reaches for a pistol, Kenji lets a burst fly, the rounds streaking past the advancing Slamhound (he doesn’t seem to mind or notice), all three bullets drilling into the Listener.  It’s the first bullet that really does the damage, following the Listener’s sleeve up, cutting under the ArmorJack and tearing forearm muscle into little pieces.  A soundless howl escapes from the man’s lips. (-3 rounds, critical hit). Kenji watches in horrid fascination as Listener’s pistol comes around his direction in his own act of vengeance.  The medic throws himself to the side, but it’s not quite enough.  Bright hot pain scores across Kenji’s flesh as the bullet punches through his armor and kicks him back.  He’s still well in the fight. (-8 HP)

Turning his back to the fray, Whisper collects a nice little tactical shotgun and the duo’s charge.  Teagan tucks her hand into Whisper’s belt and nods to him. “Who is Sara?” She asks, almost not paying attention to the chaos around them.  The solo catches Kenji’s sudden back step out of the corner of his eye and lets fly with the smoke to cover their retreat.  There isn’t much resistance to their path.  Most of the patrons are down on the ground or have fled.  The Maelstrom folks are engaging the Listeners hard and no one has time to shoot the bystanders.  Certainly not the mess of Mesa, his buddies, and Maelstrom cyberpsychotics. (+1 combat shotgun, four shells remaining)

It’s a good time to beat feet.

Martin leads their little train back into the bar proper.  A few heads turn from the floor to see what bad tidings these newcomers with guns bring, but nobody holds their gaze for long.  No one wants to tempt fate.  The floor is sticky here with spilled beer and spilled blood.  The walls have been perforated with bullet holes.  A large bouncer bleeding from the side of his head exchanges shots with a few Listeners outside the door through a firing slot, most of the bullets stoping on the metal storm door, a few cracking through open spaces or managing to punch through the walls.  It’s not a place to loiter.

“Whisper, Kentucky,” MDR’s voice crackles through the team’s comms, “touching down in the street in ten seconds.  Get ready to move.”

 “Get ready to move.”

The encapsulated tilt rotors whine in their housings next to Monica’s head, the irritating sound mostly drowned out by the headset she wears to communicate with the pilot.  Next to her, the pilot continues his delicate work, expression hidden behind the featureless block mask that ties his perceptions to that of the vehicle itself.  Still, he somehow manages to project his eyes through the solid plastic to fix her with a gaze.

“I said we can take two.”

“I say we can take three.”

Stomachs drop through the floor as the gyrocopter climbs to avoid a streetlight festooned with cables that steal electricity from somewhere.

“Physics may disagree with you, ma’am.”

“I’m sure you have some tricks in that combat pilot memory of yours.”

Any reply is lost in the sudden roar of a massive power dump into the rotors, the blades tilting back to overpower the current momentum of the vehicle and drop the gyrocopter the last four feet to the ground in the heat of a firefight.  One Listener tries to draw a bead only to have the pilot swing the copter hard to the left and fire a chaff canister directly into the punk’s chest.  The canister falls to the ground and pops into a spectacular spray of metallic confetti as an afterthought.

Monica hits the door release, the portal to the back seat opening up in the body of the gyro.  She’s got her own pistol if anyone non-authorized tries to get inside.

I take it back, Sam thinks, watching the headless Listener drop to the pavement. Now that the mortal danger has passed, at least temporarily, the scene expands in front of her. It sounds like a full-on battle is taking place inside Sally's. Sam's not about to wade into that shitstorm, and staying put probably isn't a great idea, especially if Pulpo's appeal to MaxTac was successful. The blacked-out tilt-rotor swooping down over the club like an angry murder hornet strongly suggests that it was.

Cipher's placed a tracker on the pedo-van, has video evidence that Mesa is now a leading figure in the splinter cult. Yeah, she's lost sight of the NI envoy, but there doesn't seem to be much she can realistically do about that now. The cultist's life is in the hands of the two unidentified edgerunners. Her job's done here. It's time to delta. The private eye turns her back on the raging party and jogs back to her wheels.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 17:40, Sat 13 Nov 2021.

Kentucky grunts, staggers a bit, but manages to keep his feet. No point in mentioning he's been hit, Kentucky figures. If it was serious, his biomon would let him know. Priority one is to drop the gonk who'd just shot him before he can repeat the feat. Kenji fires another burst at the Listener pistolero. A somewhat familiar voice cuts through the cacophony.

It's about time Karma came back around, Kentucky thinks.

"Go! Covering!" he calls to Whisper, backpedaling a little faster now.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 01:42, Wed 17 Nov 2021.

"Out the way we came in," Martin advises.  "Moving!"  He pushes back into the hallway, heading for the storage room and the back alley at the fastest pace he judges safe for Teagan's footing.  The shotgun points the way.

"We'll be coming out the alley on the east side of the building.  Party of three."

misappropriated combat shotgun [4/x]
leading the party to the alley, engaging any hostiles in the way
Combat Awareness 5: Spot Weakness 5 (+5 damage to first hit each round)

There's another roar outside the bar as Karma's gyrocopter leaps into the air, bounces over the perimeter of the building, and touches down again on the east side of the building.  Sam catches the movement with a slight air of disinterest, what with her attention focused on getting to her car and out of the fucking AO before Max-Tac arrives with large bullets and bad attitudes.

Comms return to life in her ear, Pulpo's equipment coming back online after the EMP blast.  "Chica?  Shit, Sam, you there? Talk to me!"  His tone softens a bit when Cypher tells him to calm down.  "Thought they might have got ya, chica. My little guy is broadcasting again, you want that I follow that gyro?"

Teagan follows along behind Whisper, her hand on his belt barely a presence.  Years of following along when led have left her a light touch and she's able to move easily with very little prodding.  At the entry of the storage room, the Pit Boss briefly fills the sights of Martin's gun, but when the barrel flicks away, the man nods nervously and starts reaching for the locks to the back door.

"Fly mas haste choom," he barks, pulling himself back out of the way and waving his knife around in small circles.  "You me white, dig?" Get the fuck out of here and we're cool, stick around and I'll stick you myself.

Whisper hits the alley without looking back.  Up ahead he can see the small gyrocopter sitting in the middle of the street.  Several shocked civilians huddle around whatever cover they can find, trying to stay out of the way of bullets, rotor wash, or worse.  Two doors sit on each side of the gyro, the front two closed.  Inside the pilot sits in the right hand seat, attention focused on the world outside the gyro.  MDR is leaning over the back of the left hand seat, visible through the open door and waving her cohorts forward with a pistol in her hand.  Her voice doesn't carry over the cacophany of sound around them, but Martin can read her lips: Let's gooooooooooo!

Emerging last in the train, Kenji sweeps the street up and down looking for threats or targets of opportunity.  It's a shit show out here, garbage blowing in the wind, vehicles parked and abandoned at odd angles.  Two Listeners round the corner and Kentucky takes a shot, the burst flying wide but conveying the message that witnesses are not welcome.  Kenji arrives at the side of the aircraft and get momentarily hung up on the tiny interior space.  Whisper is already in, pushed hard against the window.  The solo holds Teagan close, trying to give Kenji the space he needs to cram his own body in the space.  The medic dives in, pulls himself sideways, one foot jammed under the pilots seat, the other somewhere near the ceiling.  The door closes of its own accord.

The moment, like the exact moment, the door hinge locks, the gyrocopter jumps six feet in the air, engines screaming in mechanical outrage at the stress being put upon them.  They need speed to climb, they need altitude for speed.  To dump weight, and because it just looks cool, the pilot dumps six flares and the five remaining chaff canisters into the street in an impromptu New Years Eve celebration.  That gets them over the algae hauler whose driver is engaged in kinky activities at a local establishment.

Stomachs collapse in a rapid up/down as the gyro jinks down the street, the pilot dumping what little bit of altitude he's picked up and executing a right turn down a much busier street as a shadow and rotor wash pass over them.  Or at least it feels that way given the sudden juking and jiving their inner ears are reporting.

"The fuck was that?" MDR asks.

"That, ma'am, was Max-Tac.  Their SOPs require flight floors of ten meters.  So I went under them."

Karma laughs maniacally at the update.

After another thirty seconds or so of high g maneuvers, the pilot manages to climb to a reasonable altitude and everyone is able to relax.  Whisper releases his death grip on Teagan allowing the girl to breathe easily.  She settles into the nook of Kentucky's arm, maybe because there's no where else to go.  Maybe.

"Is flying always like this?" she asks with a small smile.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:27, Sun 21 Nov 2021.

"Vayacon," Martin tells the pit boss, and gifts the man his misappropriated shotgun.  "Four dak left.  Much joy."  He draws the Consigliere and pushes through the door.

The street and alley aren't the most hostile terrain he's moved a principal through, but the general lack of cover from the mouth of the alley to MDR's ride is nerve-wracking.  He can only interpose his body between Teagan and so many shooters, and it's fifteen meters of counterballistic acrobatics.  He dumps a full mag from the Beretta as suppression while he's moving with the girl, reloads once she's in a seat, dumps another mag to cover Kenji.  He doesn't let the neurachem spin down until the 'copter is out of line of sight.

Diving into the menu for his comm suite, he re-links his agent and pings Lube, copying Kentucky for when the medic is less preoccupied.  SITREP - mission accomplished but had major interruptions.  Listeners showed up looking for Lost Girl.  Seemed like they were hitting Maelstrom rather than us but the timing worries me.  Check for leaks?

The fit's pretty tight in the backseat of the tiltrotor, and Kenji needs a little space to do a bit of self-care. "Uh, yeah, so it's probably nothing to worry about but, uh, I got hit. Need to check it out real quick," he announces, trying to sound nonchalant. Whisper's been there, done that, but the combat medtech doesn't want to worry Teagan- doesn't want her to think his wiggling around means that her close proximity is bothering him. There's a bit of blood on her dress, his presumably, but if she's noticed, she's not letting on.

Paramedic 6/14 (x2) [+2 when using Medscanner]

-
This message was last edited by the player at 22:25, Sat 20 Nov 2021.

In the back of the gyro, Kenji goes to work on himself.  The quarters are tight, the company is distracting, but he manages to just get a coagulant bandage packed into the the small wound in his chest.  He’ll live, he’s had worse.  More annoying than anything else.

“Kentucky, are you okay?” Teagan asks softly, at least as softly as she can over engine vibrations and rotor wash.  Her hand touches his face carefully.

Viceroy says there’s no way we’re leaking data.  Lube sends back to a slightly more comfortable Whisper.  As long as he doesn’t think too hard about how his foot is twisted underneath the gyro’s fire extinguisher.  We’ve got the source of the Listener signal.  Sending now.

A data packet sings through the electromagnetic spectrum that saturates Night City at a level that most likely doesn’t cause cancer.  A map unfolds putting the Listener source on a small hilltop in the former Santo Domingo neighborhood of Heywood.  A tower sitting on top of an old television station.  The updated sat pics show a pair of the now ubiquitous white vans in the parking lot along with fencing around the property.

I have Dr. Kannerack, MDR chimes in.  Last known location is this building.  He’s now a she.  Probably why we couldn’t find her.  Data was missing, though my people tell me that’s due to data loss in the Fall, not deliberate obfuscation.  How they know that is fucking magic, I guess. Straight out of the 8 ball.  If you can shrug over text,, Karma pulls it off.  Another map blip appears in the feed, this one also in Heywood but much closer to the bay.  It’s a dump, four story apartment building with maybe five units per floor.  Just another worn building in a worn part of the City.

Where are we headed? Karma asks across the channel.

Behind the gyro, unseen, a small drone cuts through the sky.  The chaff and flares dumped earlier put on a spectacular light show, but didn’t make the gyro hard to find.  Pulpo has the flight software on override, the transponder isn’t broadcasting, the lights aren’t blinking.  The data signal is jumping from WiFi source to source in complicated pattern only a tech could love.  Sam’s agent is showing her the realtime location of the drone/gyro flight as it moves away from Six Bullet Sally’s.

Our sources say Max-Tac has arrived at the meeting location, Gerald sends Cipher.  Confirm the messenger is alive.

Why don't you ask her security? Fuckin' amateur. Sam rolls her eyes, dictates,

"Messenger is alive. SEND."

She activates the sedan's self-driving mode, scrolls through the video file of the shootout on until she finds a clear frame of Mesa's face, zooms in, converts it to a still.

Know this guy? she sends Gerald. She punches in another number, sends the same pic to Valentin Medlock, with the caption, Look familiar? 5 minutes ago, shootout at Six Bullet Sally's. WTF?

-
This message was last edited by the player at 19:03, Sun 28 Nov 2021.

Kentucky almost flinches when Teagan's hand brushes his face. The intimacy of the gesture seems incongruous, given the copious amount of violence that's just transpired.

"Yeah, uh, it's just a scratch. I'm good," he answers.

The medtech, turns his head towards his partner, makes eye contact, "Probably ought to get the whole band together before we hit the station."

He nods towards Teagan, silently saying, "Shouldn't talk freely with her around." Kenji asks the girl, "You ready to head home, Teagan?"

-
This message was last edited by the player at 19:18, Sun 28 Nov 2021.

"Yeah.  That's not something I want to take on without everyone.  It probably wouldn't hurt to do a little bit of planning, either."  Martin catches Kentucky's subtext and nods in acknowledgement.  "And we should get Teagan back to her people before we go back into harm's way."

Mesa.  Deacon’s reply is almost instantaneous.  He was involved in trying stopping the envoy?  When he received Sam’s affirmative and the report that she tagged his van, there is a slightly longer delay. I must pray on this.

In Sam’s car, she watches two signal, one the drone feed of the gyro, now looking as if it’s heading for a landing near the NI claimed territory in the Combat Zone, and the other, Mesa’s van, now headed towards Heywood apparently having escaped the Max-Tac cordon.

She watches the gyro land, a group of Inquisitors waiting to receive their envoy.  Pulpo dutifully scans the group, zooming in on each face.  She recognizes the dead eyed stare of Gerald waiting to receive The Blessed.

Medlock’s reply is a bit slower.  Maybe a power play.  Maybe he’s busy stepping on kittens for fun. I am told by cooperative sources that he was the primary weapons buyer for the New Inquisition.  Prior to his upgrade.  Afterwards he became the only weapons dealer for the Listeners, cutting off access to Maelstrom and the NI.

What he means by “cooperative” Sam doesn’t have to work hard to guess.

——————

Landing a gyro in the middle of a street causes a bit of a kerfuffle, but MDR isn’t the type to care.  Out the window his face is pressed up against, Whisper can make out the caf stand he watched Kenji’s first interaction with the Inquisitors’ walking advertisement in female form.  Out the other window, Kentucky can see a circle of NI shits waiting for the gyro to arrive.  Most of them shade their eyes from the dust a debris that had been kicked into the sky from the tilt rotor craft settling.  Deacon Gerald doesn’t.  He stand stock still, jacket/robes blowing around him in a swish.

Unloading the gyro takes a bit of gymnastic effort, bodies sliding around, feet coming out of awkward corners, but at the end, Kenji, Martin and Teagan stand on the broken asphalt and ignore the onlookers that take in the spectacle they have caused.  For his part, the pilot keeps the engines humming and low frequency hum, ready to blast back into the sky with minimal preparation.

“I am glad I got to fly,” Teagan says to no one and everyone with a smile.  Her steps follow Kentucky’s directions easily, hand in the crook of his elbow.  “I have always heard the craft above the city, but never dreamed I would ride in one.”  She sounds like she’s checking items off a bucket list, a finality in it.

“We receive the Blessed back into the fold,” Deacon Gerald says when Teagan and her escort his about 5 meters.  As one, the NI bow their heads and make the sign of the cross over their hearts.  “Your mission, Sister?”

Teagan straightens.  “The sinners have agreed, a two week cease fire.”

“His will be done.” Gerald says with a nod.

“On earth and in heaven,” the crowd behind him intones.  It’s fucking creepy.

Gerald comes forward, taking Teagan by the arm that doesn’t claim Kenji’s elbow.  For a second, her feet don’t move.  Her face turns to Martin, “Thank you, Martin.  You placed your self in danger for me and for the Lord.  You are blessed for this.”  Her blank eyes move to Kenji, her lips turning just a a bit to…regret?  “Thank you Kentucky.  You were wounded for me.  I thank you.  I thank you for your friendship.  You, too, are blessed.  I only wish…”

“Blessed One, we must go,” Gerald says, cutting her off.  The words are polite, deferential.  The tone, not so much.

“Goodbye,” Teagan says as she let’s go of Kenji’s arm and walks away with Gerald.

——————

“These guys are completely whacked out of their skulls.” MDR says from the cockpit.  She’s watching the show unfold and passing her pistol back and forth from hand to hand.   At least they buy what CloudKill sells.

“From one pack of zealots to the other,” the pilot agrees from his chair. “Shit, did you see that dumb fuck that lit himself on fire a few weeks ago? He was NI, right?  What an asshole.”

Monica thinks about it for a second.  Doesn’t ring a bell.  Fires off an info request to her pet NetRunner for an info dump.  Mainly because she’s bored.  The file comes back in about twenty seconds.  Not bad.  Not great.  Not bad.

She watches the file while Whisper and Kentucky make the hand off.  Considers throwing up for a second.  Thinks better of it.  Karma unhooks herself from her five point harness and checks her pistol.

“Shit. Fucking. Hell.”

Karma dumps an override text message directly into Kenji and Martin’s visual feeds.

They’re going to burn her alive.

"It's quite literally my job, ma'am."  Martin puts a smile into his voice without giving Gerald the excuse of seeing one on his face.  "I'm glad it went as well as it did.  You be careful, now."

He's turning away when the priority text scrolls across his field of vision.  The Kerenzikov damps out his involuntary startle response, keeps him from stiffening in shock, and does absolutely nothing to buffer the nausea/fire of anger and revulsion.  The detached, professional part of his brain evaluates MDR's input with the same consideration it gives any sudden plot twist emanating from a corporate exec and decides that no, this would be a pretty fucking sloppy and inefficient way to start a fight with the NI for shits and giggles, and if there are two things that MDR's self-image and self-regard probably won't allow, they're sloppiness and inefficiency.

He has some lingering questions about Teagan's sanity, and his kitbashed sense of professional ethics says the plan spinning up in his head would arguably be a double-cross if Gerald was a paying client.  But this job was a favor for Teagan, who has at least demonstrated a spark of humanity along with a huge set of brass ovaries.  And Martin finds it hard to warm up to a zealot who can barely keep his contempt in his hassock, or whatever the fuck that priestly coat is called, and who'd be trying to burn Martin himself if no higher-priority sinner was available.

So.

"I can extract her," he subvocalizes over the team channel as he reaches into his bag.  "But I gotta ask if this is a gunfight we want to have right now over someone who isn't gonna come willingly.  Kenji, gimme a go/no-go.  Shooting hand go, support hand no."

They're going to burn her alive...

Wait, what?

So many questions, so little time. Not for the first time, Kenji wishes he'd sprung for internal coms. Snap decisions aren't new to the combat medtech, lives almost always in the balance. He does the math. Three razor sharp edgerunners, wired for speed, versus ten fanatical meatbags. Accounting for the element of surprise, the odds are pretty solidly in his small team's favor. It should be an easy call, but the equation left out one critical variable- a sweet, sightless angel, caught in the middle. Still, he can't let her burn, assuming Karma meant it literally.

His shooting hand wraps around the pistol grip of the heavy SMG hanging around his neck on its one-point tactical harness.

Go.

-

Sam remembers the last time an outsider returned a New Inquisitor to the fold.

Brother Zeke,

ne' Lonnie Cantu

Human torch.

Bile burns the back of Sam's throat.

"Fuck that. Pulpo, shoot me the coordinates for the NI meet. I'm not gonna watch another one of these poor brainwashed bastards burned alive."

Cipher flips a U-turn, jumping the medium, hits the siren she had reinstalled.

-

Okay, then.

"Copy.  Going in.  Wait for my signal."

Martin strides forward, still rummaging in his bag with the distracted air of a corpo commuter who knows he just put that damn thing in there, where did it go.  "Hey, Deacon.  One more thing you oughta know."  He glances up, still walking, makes brief eye contact as Gerald turns.  Notes the distinct lack of gun muzzles coming up despite the fact that he's inside the Inquisitors' outer perimeter and they can't see his hands.  Slow on the threat recognition, guys.

He halts within easy conversational distance of Gerald.  Not coincidentally, that also puts him within arm's reach of Teagan.  "Shit, where did it go.  Sorry.  Deacon.  Hey."  He looks up, lowers his voice confidentially.  "We had some trouble at the meet.  The, ah, Arch-Demons tried to disrupt it."  He shoots a significant glance toward the girl.  "They specifically targeted the Blessed One.  Acted like they recognized her.  We told no one our mission or destination."

He lets Gerald chew on that revelation and tilts his head toward Teagan.  "Ah.  Ma'am, I'm very sorry, but could I get my plugs back from you?"  His left hand comes out of his bag, slowly, slowly, no threat here, fuckers, with a little twist of the wrist to draw the eye, and flips open the empty case for the semi-smart earplugs that he loaned Teagan in the club.

Internally, practiced reflex flips open the neon-traced interface for his optical and audio augments:

Zeiss Polarization Plus
Mode Select: Auto | Off | Art | Normal | Club | Combat | [Emergency]

Sony-Sennheiser SafeSound Q
Suppression Level: Auto | Off | Senso | Normal | Gunfight | Concert | [Demo]

And while Gerald and the goon squad are looking at the perfectly normal Bose-logoed earplug case, his right hand comes out of the bag --

"Look away."

-- and drops his second flash-bang, armed for detonate-on-decel, at Gerald's feet.

Combat Awareness 5: Initiative Reaction 5 (+5 to Initiative)
This message was last edited by the player at 02:03, Wed 01 Dec 2021.

Soundtrack:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoNRZLOzR2s


The next several seconds of applied violence start with a bang.  Literally.

At Gerald’s feet, the small cylinder of the flash-bang converts from a reinforced cardboard sleeve to an expanding cloud of vapor accompanied with a flash of light brighter than the sun.  At ground zero (or close enough), Whisper feels his internal organs rearrange themselves under the impact of a pressure wave.  The sensation may be familiar, but it’s still uncomfortable, bordering on vomit inducing.  Half of the Listeners drop like bricks, the ground coming up to reach their heads and bodies, puppet strings cut, consciousness replaced with a world of pain and light.  The other half start, scatter and start looking for the threat already in their midst.  Teagan flinches, hands coming to her ears, her predictable world suddenly shattered with noise.  Her feet stagger, but she doesn’t fall.

The killer, the one with dead eyes, Deacon Gerald, tracks the cylinder with his eyes and begins to react in slow motion.  Automatic reflexes drop Teagan’s arm, his mouth coming hope, hands plastered to his ears, eyes squeezing shut as he flings himself away and to the ground.  At the completion of the detonation, Gerald is already scrambling to his feet.

“Treachery!” He screams.

Despite the awesoness of the Martin’s plan, the actual effect is somewhat less than he had hoped.

The Edgerunners continue their onslaught.

Martin knows the threat.  Gerald is the heart, mind, and soul of this group.  Show them he’s vulnerable and maybe the horde breaks.   The Consigliere comes out in his hand, firing at the Deacon point blank range.  With the GM fiat guiding Martin’s hand, he lines up the shot to the cultists head and squeezes the trigger twice.  The pistol report is much quieter by comparison, barely engaging the sound suppressors in Martin’s audio suite.  The bullets however make up for the lack of sound spectacle with a truly impressive visual display.  The first bullet cracks Gerald in the jaw, blasting it in half.  There’s a microsecond of perception in Gerald’s eyes, the moment where he knows he’s about to discover the truth of the NI creed, and the second bullet lands in the bridge of his nose, punching through cartilage, brain, and skull, exiting in a splash pattern that decorates Teagan and a few of the standing Inquisitors with yuck. (-1 flashbang, -2 bullets)

Behind the solo and slightly to the side, Kentucky brings his submachine gun to bear on the standing Inquisitors.  A couple have thoughtfully bunched up for him and he returns the favor with a spray of gunfire arcing across their space.  Two of the mooks stagger back, their leather armor managing to stop the worst of the fire.  The third guy isn’t nearly as lucky, the burst removing his right arm from his body shortly before punching 10mm holes through organs and flesh.  (Dumped entire clip)  Sure, he didn’t get to direct his rage at the shit the Deacon Gerald clearly is, and that is slightly disappointing, but hell, a few more Inquisitors down or off to meet their god really isn’t a problem.

Monica likes what she sees.  Two dead targets, two left standing.  “Because,” she says as she advances, Adjudicator up high.  “Fuck.” BANG. “And you.” BANG. The other two standing Inquisitors die before they can react to the world around them.

In three seconds, the Edgerunners have neutralized the threat.  Kenji reloads on automatic. Monica continues her advance ready to start shooting assholes moaning on the ground.  Martin moves forward and puts a hand on the moaning and shocked Teagan.

“What…” she looks blankly around, unable to see and comprehend her world.  “I don’t understand…what’s happening?  Kentucky?  Deacon Gerald? Whisper?”

"Teaghan, we gotta go now. It's not safe here!" Kenji shouts, by way of inadequate explanation. His sub-gun is pointed at the nearest NI soldier struggling to lift himself up from the pavement.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 22:48, Fri 03 Dec 2021.

A well-framed technicality is a thing of edgerunner joy.  "He's right, ma'am," Martin tells Teagan.  "The job is to get you someplace safe.  Let's do that now, okay?  Just like before, hold onto my belt."  He gently guides her hand to the reference point and begins leading her through the field of bodies to the gyrocopter.  The Consigliere hovers at the ready.

“Holy shit,” Pulpo intones into Sam’s feed.  On her agent’s screen, the Edgerunners in question just prosecuted an immense amount of violence in a matter of seconds.  “I guess they have issues with the NI, too.”  There’s no way to tell what happened on the screen, what precipitated the sudden turn of affairs.  One moment the two gropus were talking, the girl being handed off easily.  The next second bodies were on the ground bleeding out.  Deacon Gerald identifiable only because he’s wearing robes, as his head is…well the technical term would be “missing.”

The modified cruiser streaks through the streets, easily avoiding the smattering of late night traffic still carrying people to assignations and assassinations.  By her watch she’ll be at the scene of the massacre in about thirty seconds.

————————

Teagan nods her head slowly, her fist closing on Martin’s belt.  She traces Martin’s steps, not quite as sure as before, but still managing to avoid the various pitfalls of her progress.  Kenji closes in, flanking the pair, providing security while Karma straps herself back into the cockpit of the gyro.

“Oh…okay…I…I do not understand.  What happened?” Teagan asks.  “ I can barely hear.  Who attacked us?”  She pauses, feet moving but brain locking.  “Where is Gerald?”  Something like hope sits in her voice.

With the luxury of time, the trio can plan a little easier how to occupy the seats in the gyro.  In the distance, an unmarked car with a blasting siren is rapidly approaching from a couple blocks away, lights flashing, sonic assault ongoing.

“We’re about to have more company,” Monica says with a nod to the incoming car.  “What’s the plan, gents?”
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:37, Fri 03 Dec 2021.

“We’re pretty well made here, ma’am,” the pilot intones as Whisper, et al… strap themselves into the back of the gyro.  “We dodged Max-Tac because they had bigger fish to fry.”

“We’re the big fucking fish in this pond is what you’re telling me,” Karma returns.

“The only fish to fry.”

MDR looks out the window, puts on her professional face. “Block their sight line. No sense advertising a body party.”

“Will do.”

The motors of the gyro roar briefly as the copter jumps into the air.

Cipher gets a surprise when the gyrocopter taking up the middle of the street leaps into the air and instead of streaking off into the night, takes a brief hop that puts it back in the street so close to her oncoming car that the autopilot shrieks an alarm and stands up on its own breaks, tires squealing in protest, anti-lock system vibrating through her seat. Whoever is at the controls has huge balls or an intuitive understanding of geometry, physics, and autonomous driving systems.  When the car comes to a complete stop, slightly askew in the road, the passenger side of the gyro is roughly three meters from the front of her vehicle.  The copilot is already emerging, no weapon in hand but pistol strapped to her hip.

Sam’s second surprise is that she recognizes the grip of an Adjudicator.  Damn things seems to be a dime a dozen around these parts.

The woman emerging has dark brown hair tied back tightly and wears a dark armor jack harness over surprisingly well designed fatigues.  Fashion forward battle wear.  That tells Sam everything she needs to know: Corporate.  Cipher runs her normal scan, trained eyeballs sweeping over the woman as she approaches the driver’s side of Cipher’s car.  Hungry designer cyber-eyes, GucMani logo stitched into the iris of each.  Calloused knuckles of a brawler, no a martial artist.  Those hands have power.  Easy grace of someone skilled in proper etiquette.  Smile of someone used to getting other to give them what they want.  If Medlock is power, this is aspiration to power.  She’d be easy not to like.

She leans down to Sam’s window, beckoning for her to roll it down with a spin of her fingers.

“Had a bit of a dust up back there,” she indicates with a tilt of her head.  Sam knows that “bit of a dust up” is a misnomer.  She can see the sprawled bodies and those struggling to stand up and shake off the effects of a flash-bang on the screen of her agent. “Some New Inquisition gonks with their eyes on murder and mutilation.  Had to settle that up, right?”  As if she were conducting a business meeting.  Selling a new product.  “Not like self defense is a crime.  Or it shouldn’t be.”  The corp smiles, perfectly white teeth, perfectly arranged, except for the one incisor, notched just so, a flaw meant to highlight the sculpted perfection presented above.  “In any case, if you need…”

The woman’s eyes narrow briefly, pupils dilating.  Her hand trails down, fingers dancing on the hilt of her pistol, not pulling it, just daring Sam into further action.  “You’re no cop,” she says, voice going over to amused curiosity.  “And you don’t smell corporate. So just who the hell are you?”

"Concerned citizen," Sam answers, deadpan. The corpo's expression does not indicate bemusement. "Private detective," Sam corrects, trying to occupy the grey space between defiant and deferential, "Cipher Investigations. Maybe you've heard of us?" Considering what this woman and her airmobile hit team just did to Deacon Gerald and his private army, Cipher isn't about to volunteer that she was, until about 60 seconds ago, working a case for the cult heavy.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 22:52, Sat 04 Dec 2021.

A decidedly non-sexual thrill runs down Monica’s back.  A player of games, how fun! she muses. “I can’t say that I have heard of you, unfortunately.  Perhaps you are new to the space?”  Monica shakes her head, brushing away the thought, labeling it unimportant enough to chase..  Laying it on thick, she continues, “And I’m sure that you just happened to come this way, lights and sirens blazing as we were visiting the Inquisition by accident.” 

Monica straightens, vividly aware of the very short time horizon she’s operating under.  As if to underscore the point, a single pistol shot rings out, the bullet pinging away off some wall or other, the hand and eye still fuzzy from the effects of the flash.  A single business card emerges as if by magic from Monica’s harness.

“Should you wish to talk about your connection to these…things…please do me the favor of a call.” She smiles, sweetness and amusement in her eyes.

“Bye now,” MDR turns on her heels without waiting for a reply and strides back to the waiting gyro.

The she leaves behind contains only a QR code: a one time burner number useful for one anonymous data connection.  No names.  No history.  But Monica knows talent when she sees it, and she always takes advantage.

"We probably shouldn't lie to her," Martin sends over the team channel.

He takes Teagan's hand and guides her back into the gyrocopter.  "Gerald isn't with us any longer," he responds aloud.  It's the maximum extent of his capacity to pull that particular punch.  His skin crawls as he straps the girl into her seat again, waiting for stunned optical nerves to recover enough for clear aim at his exposed back.

MDR's order to the pilot gives him just enough time to brace a bootheel on the door track and get a grip on the corpo's seatback before the gyrocopter hops skyward and sideways.  He dismounts in lockstep with Monica, positioning himself between the ragged ring of bodies and the aircraft.  The Consigliere, warm from its recent flurry of use, sways gently at contact ready.  One Inquisitor gathers his shit enough to try to restart the gunfight.  The Beretta replies with another controlled pair.

Martin notches down the override on his audiodampers.  Gunfight mode is sufficient to filter the gyrocopter's turbine wail and allow him to monitor the conversation behind him.  He gives the Inquisitors a final scan and turns on his heel, nodding to the new arrival as he trots toward the gyrocopter.  "Self-defense," he tells her sardonically as he holsters the Consigliere.

He squeezes into his allotted space and braces again as the aircraft lifts.  His internal comms chitter as they sync with his agent and initiate a call.  To save explanations, he patches in Kenji's channel in listen-only mode.  "Hey, ChrisAlice.  You in a midwifing mood?  I've got a no-shit innocent here who's gonna need some serious cult deprogramming..."
This message was last edited by the player at 02:02, Sun 05 Dec 2021.

Still covering the cultists with pulses, Kenji backs his way to the gyro's side door. Without turning his head to face the shell-shocked young woman, he attempts to explain, "Uh, yeah Teagan, I don't know how to tell you this, but Gerald was going to, um, set you on fire, like, literally," The truth is, Kenji really really doesn't know what the truth is, and that makes him feel like Night City's biggest asshole right now.

Karma has some gawdamn 'splaining to do.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 01:58, Sun 05 Dec 2021.

The connection to ChrisAlice blossoms through Martin’s mind like a gentle hug.  Even their voice conveys a soothing manner, a promise of better things to come.  A sunrise (tequila or actual) promised and anticipated, never quite arriving for that would ruin the dream.

“Martin Lowell, a surprise, my dearest.” Their voice holds charm and interest, none of the put down a diminutive could contain.  Subtle jazz plays in the background of the connection.  “An innocent in our fair city?  You never fail to impress.  And I am relieved to know that you can still find such potential and beauty among the ruins.”  There’s a pause in the connection, a slight rattle as ChrisAlice steps through a glass door and the background chatter picks up the sounds of urban life. “I have dealt with cults and their costs.  I can soothe and restore a rattled psyche, but tell me, does this innocent wish to emerge from shadow?  If they do, then bring them here, I await you on the roof.”

In his mind, Martin can picture ChrisAlice’s ripperdoc clinic.  Literally hanging over the edge of the bay, on a pier that looks less than stable, a three story warehouse waits behind electronic and physical walls.  A small landing pad, more painting that actual pad, decorates the rooftop.  That and a small seating area where Martin has spent more than a few nights baring his soul and watching global shipping ply its trade in the polluted waters of Night City.  The taste of high end run burns Whisper’s throat in memory.

Next to Martin, Teagan’s fingers burrow into the flesh of Kenji’s arm, half in panic.  “No.  No that’s not-“ Teagan rips her face down and struggles to catch her breath.  Tears stream.  “He wouldn’t purify me,” she says quietly (or as quiet as talking in the back of a moving gyro can be). “There is a cost to our souls even to speak to the demons of Maelstrom, do you understand?  Even to be with…you.  There is a stain.  I have been Blessed by the Holy Trinity.  Made whole in spirit and given charge to carry their message.” Teagan’s face turns back up, sightless eyes boring into Kenji’s. “How could I stand in their light again?  After standing with such sin?  How could I?  They made me whole.” She’s running a stream of words now, getting louder, pain ripping through her voice.  “They gave me a home.  They Blessed me.  They took a broken girl and made her something special.”  She pauses.  “Of course I would burn myself, let the fire consume the stain of my flesh and let my soul soar free and pure.  What else could I do?”

The blind girl is quiet,  Monica peers back over her shoulder at the trio in the double seat.  Gives Martin and Kenji a “well that’s fucked,” shrug.

“You killed him because you misunderstand.  And so they will kill me,” she says.  “The Trinity will cast me out, declare me Unclean and Fallen.  They will hunt me and kill me and my soul will be devoured by the great demon of chrome.”

“What do I do now? Please, Kentucky, tell me what do I do now?”

Kenji really doesn't know what to say, so he falls back on tried and true platitudes.

"Hey, hey, it's OK, Teagan. We're not going to let anyone hurt you."

That was the whole point [of what we just did]!

"Look, there's a better way,"

I'm not exactly sure what it is, but...

"And we're going to help you find it,"

Hurry up, he thinks at the copter driver, and get us to Whisper's headshrinker, like five minutes ago!

-
This message was last edited by the player at 03:19, Wed 08 Dec 2021.

Compared to the various combat jumps and leaps the pilot of the gyro has been putting his passengers through, the landing at ChrisAlice’s abode is slow and smooth.  Gentle.  Whisper can see the ripperdoc shielded their eyes against the rotor wash, unperturbed by the disturbance, the same serene smile he’s spent countless hours discussing the nature of his humanity/inhumanity with sitting on sculpted flesh.  The motors spin down, the gyro coming to a complete stop.  When the passengers start to emerge, the engines click and hiss from cooling metal.

Teagan lets Kenji and Martin help her from the back seat.  She’d spent the last fifteen minutes in silence, face occasionally twisting in some sort of internal dialog or unexpressed pain.  Monica doesn’t crash the party, this isn’t her fight.  Or cause for that matter.

“Martin,” ChrisAlice says softly as the trio approach where they stand.  The ripperdoc wears a flowing dress, slim frame flowing right along with the moving floral pattern on the smart fabric.  Their sex is indeterminate, some times male, sometimes female, sometimes neither, seeming to move and alternate from moment to moment, only the iris and pupils of the eyes holding steady. “And you, my dearest  you must be someone important, if Martin is willing to bring you to my home.”

Teagan straightens, able to intuit that she’s being addressed.  “I do not know who you are,” she says quietly. “I am blind.”

“Everyone is blind.  Some to their pain,” she tilts her head towards Kenji in a knowing nod that proves mildly disconcerting, soft eyes boring for hard truths, “Others to their soul.” This tilt goes to Martin. “All who come to me learn to see.  I am ChrisAlice and you are my welcome guest.”

Martin handles Teagan’s introduction, the girl’s hand tightening one final time on Kenji’s arm before walking forward to the ripperdoc.  Wings, goddamn semi-transparent butterfly wings,  unfurl from ChrisAlice’s back in loose rainbow pastels and the sudden scent of summer dew.  The wings carefully engulf Teagan and ChrisAlice takes the cultist into a warm embrace that Teagan allows with a gentle sob.

“Here you are safe.  Here we will find you.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0nmHymgM7Y

At the safe “house,” five Edgerunners meet, prepping for another onslaught of the violence that has come to define their trade.  Weapons and hardware take up space on the workbench.  Sports drinks and prepacked meals sit in half consumed states giving off the scent of preservatives and fake sugar.  The smell of dried sweat and a bit of blood mingles with all the rest producing smell that would be familiar to any warrior of the last seventy or so years.

Sara has given up screaming and yelling.  Now she mostly moans around the gag in her mouth and looks miserable.  Viceroy has dried blood running down her shirt from self inflicted dental damage and talks around a gauze pack she’s jammed into the hole a molar used to occupy.  Monica looks like Monica always looks, a storm waiting for an excuse to break.  She’s slipped out of her armor for the time being revealing the limbs of someone who likes to break limbs.  She speaks between bits of protein bar.

“I’ll hit Kannerack.” Munch.  “That’s not an issue.  I’ve got the personnel to do it.  But that means I can’t support you if shit goes sideways and they hit you with a chainsaw at the antenna site.”  Munch.  “My back of the envelope threat models would suggest they don’t have much left to throw at us, but I put about as much stock in those as…well…shitty stocks.” Munch.

Lube alternates between shamelessly scoping Monica’s arms and trying to track all the developments.  “We can shut the signal down.  Knock it right the fuck out.   Boom, tower down.   But we don’t’ know if they have a second transmission site.”

“I’ll have to be onsite,” Viceroy chips in, voice thick with cotton (and not candy, boo). “I don’t want to be, but I’ll have to chase the signal before we knock it down.  Might not get another chance.”  The NetRunner calls up a map of the Antenna Site.  The television station must be at least fifty years old, bricks askew and bending this way and that.  The rusted tower of an antenna climbs several hundred feet into the air where it is decorated with microwave dishes, cellular data platforms, and a defunct anti collision light.  Other than the modern cell data hardware, it’s all pretty run down.  The building itself sits on a small hill surrounded by scrub until the low vegetation hits a razor wire fence about a 30 meters out.  After that it’s shanty town, tarps, cardboard, and makeshift housing in most directions.  A single road leads through the throngs and up to an automatic gate.   A small parking lot contains three of the vans now.

“Gonna need a plan.”

Martin studies the map and frowns.  "Just knocking down the tower is going to be a temporary solution," he observes.  "This kind of crazy requires technical and financial backing beyond what we're seeing and those backers will reset and try again unless we exceed their loss tolerance."  He flicks a glance at Monica.

"So I kind of feel like the mission is get you in," he nods at Viceroy, "cover you while you strip every bit of usable intel you can glean, throw any worthwhile physical evidence in a bag, and withdraw without being traced.  I really wanna know who's doing this.  'Why' would be nice too but I'll be surprised if we get that far."
This message was last edited by the player at 20:35, Fri 10 Dec 2021.

Kentucky is well aware that he doesn't know what he's talking about when he suggests, "How about loading a virus into their system, corrupt the shit out of their signal, give 'em a taste of their own medicine?"

-

Sam steps out of the small shower tucked into a corner of her shipping container home office, towels off.

She fixes herself a whiskey on the rocks, curls up on the futon, scans the QR code on the business card acquired at Deacon Gerald's impromptu funeral.

"This is Cipher, we met last night..."

-
This message was last edited by the player at 19:35, Sun 12 Dec 2021.

“I’d love nothing more,” Viceroy answers to Kenji’s question.  <Pink“I need hardware access to do it.  And probably a unicorn bubble tea.  That would be helpful.”</pink>

“Jesus wept girlie,” Lube intones. He points to a pair of 1L cups that used to contain a teeth rotting concoction of caffeine, sugar, and a hint of coffee. “Do you stop eating sugar?  Like ever?” 

“Why would I want to do that?”  The NetRunner winks.

“Because of your pancreas?” There’s a hint of a tease there, but just a hint. “You guys left me with the Queen of the Sugar Kingdom.  All hail Her Majesty of West Sucrose.”

MDR clears her throat before the scene can go any farther.  “Perhaps we can get back to ending an outbreak of cultist assholes?”

Viceroy blinks slowly. “Sure.  If I can get into their system, I can corrupt the signal.  I’ve got a basic understanding of what it entails and some ideas of how to fuck it up, but the exact biophysical effects are far beyond me.  I might suggest that anyone whose brain you don’t want to melt is kept offline for package delivery.”

Before she can continue, Monica steps away to answer a call from her agent.

“Hello Cipher, my name is Karma.  Perhaps you have heard of me.”  Cipher has decidedly not heard of Karma, and MDR takes the silence on the other end of the phone as confirmation of this fact.  “Perhaps that would have been more impressive if you had.  I am curious, dear detective, do we share a common enemy of the Listener variety and are you interested in taking action against said adversary?”  The tone is sweet enough to drip venom.

Well, since you zeroed my client last night...

"Listeners? Is that what you're calling the Maelstrom splinter faction with the crucifix face tattoos? Yeah? I definitely wouldn't mind helping get 'em off the street."

Sam wants to see where this is going badly enough to work pro bono, but she's got rent to pay.

"I just finished a job for a client a few days ago- wanted to know who was selling these 'Listeners' cutting edge iron that hadn't hit the open market yet. Found the leak, assume it's been plugged. So, uh, now I'm looking for a new client, I suppose..."

-

Monica chuckles at Sam’s last.  “Bit of a pirate are we?” She asks rhetorically.  “It so happens I have some friends that will be taking action in the rather immediate future that would love a bit of backup.  I’ll make it worth your while, of course.  750 eddies for a few hours work?” The exec doesn’t wait for Sam’s answer, plowing ahead as though they already have a contract.   “You will be contacted by Whisper soon, he is coordinating the next phase of our little plot.  I will handle the payment.  Any questions? No? Good.”  Monica clicks the connection off and returns briefly to the other Edgerunners.

“You all seem to have this well enough in hand, message me with the time of your hit on the transmitter and I will coordinate to take Kannerack at the same time.  Shouldn’t need more than an hour or so to prepare.”  Monica smiles coldly.  Eyes of hunger waiting to strike. “This is Cipher,” she adds tossing the detectives contact info to Whisper and Kenji, “the detective we met earlier.  She’ll provide back up for your op.  My treat.”

“If you will excuse me…”

The walk to the gyro is brief, a block or so to the vacant lot where the vehicle touched down.  As she approaches, the engines purr back to life.  Karma appreciates the attentiveness of the pilot, even as she manages to just stifle a grimace.  It’s time she eats glass.  She straps into the passenger seat as her agent makes another connection.

“Monica, darling.  It’s either very late or very early.”

“Avery, dearest, when is any of us truly off the clock.  Profit waits for no woman.”  The corporate air-kiss complete via agent.

“So says the Board.  To what do I owe this morning call?”  Avery sounds as if she’s been awake for hours, ready and waiting to receive just this call.  Whether that is due to cyberware or intelligence, Monica knows better than to draw solid conclusions.

MDR baits the hook.  “This Kannerack manner.  If I am to conclude it satisfactorily I need access to the Zeta Funds.”

“And as I am the only one who can authorize the discretionary funds for you…”  The smile on Avery’s face is obvious even over the voice link.

Come one you cold steel bitch, bite.  “You are, of course, integral to the success of this endeavor.” 

“Then I am truly sorry, Monica.  I cannot in good conscious support an operation of such tentative results.”

“We have seen the effects in the field,” Monica hisses between tight teeth.

“So you claim my dear, but this avenue has been explored at length and has never wrought anything more than added expenses and ruined careers.  I would be so sorry to see it claim another.”  As if Avery wasn’t trying to kneecap Monica in just this moment.

“I cannot believe you would-“

Avery cuts her off.  “You need to return the gyro as well.  We have need of the vehicle and it does quite rack up your billing hours.” 

Sure you do. “Fine,” Monica snarls.  She cuts the connection before Avery can get the satisfaction of another blow.  Or the last word.  Next to her, the pilot tilts his head in her direction.

“Everything okay, ma’am?”

The anger on Monica’s face falls away, calm satisfaction replacing the feigned emotion.  “Everything is fine.  Quite satisfactory in fact.  You may take us home.”  Karma clicks off the recording her agent made of her conversation with her soon to be ex-manager.

The amount of cash in her bank account is already low.  She’s about to make it lower.  Consider it an investment in career advancement.  Another voice connection is made by her agent, the answering voice low and stressed.

“Pandora, love, how would you like the opportunity for a bit of payback?”

"Cipher, huh?"  Martin, perhaps wary of hypocrisy, foregoes asking whether that's a handle or a descriptor.  "Awesome.  The more guns, the merrier.  Proud to be a part of this plan."  He shrugs at Monica's rapidly-departing back and cues his agent.

"Cipher?  Whisper.  Mutual acquaintance," he won't go so far as to characterize Monica as "friend," even euphemistically, despite the recent timely extraction, "said you've got an interest in an op we've got going.  Little bit of cult-busting action.  What can you bring to the table?"

Job interview, eh? Fair enough. Sam pauses, weighs her response. "Ten years in NCPD, last six with major crimes. I've seen some things." This Whisper fellow didn't ask, but Sam anticipates a follow-up question, "My last case was tracking down a rogue corpo arms supplier- Militech. Turns out the asshole was double-dealing, selling pre-release iron to the NI and these Listeners too. One of them tried to zero me last night, outside Sally's. I zeroed him first. You could say I have more than just a professional interest in your operation. I'd like to be part of it."

-
This message was last edited by the player at 00:50, Wed 05 Jan 2022.

Martin smiles slightly and glances at the bag containing his Adjudicator.  "Huh.  Militech pre-release sales?  I think I saw something about that."  He studies Viceroy's map, quirks an interrogative eyebrow at the netrunner, and taps the controls at her go-ahead gesture.  "Okay.  So you know who you're gonna be working with, my usual gigs are off-books corp exec-protect.  We've also got a tac medic, a runner, and a technical boy with an exceptionally large shotgun.  Target is the old television broadcast station on South Squatter Hill.  Mission is to get the runner in, hold the site while she traces what the Listeners are 'casting, and break shit on the way out.  There's a sim arcade called StrikeFirst!!!, with three exclamation points, on the east edge of the squat zone.  Unless you need transportation, we'll plan on linking up with you in the parking lot."

StrikeFirst!!! Is busy.  The place is always busy.  Whether that is a testament to the quality of the games and sims or a comment on the shitty lifestyle choices available directly outside of the parking lot is a toss-up.  Cipher arrives first, combat parking her car in the north/west corner of the the lot, farthest from the door and least crowded.  Having Pulpo on over watch lets her know she’s not set for an ambush.  Which is nice for a change.  She takes professional notice of the burnouts and gamers smoking prodigious amounts of nicotine and other stimulants in front of the building, labeling each of them to threat level.  All mild to low.

Whisper, et al… are the next to arrive, their van pulling into the lot and seeking out the sedan that Cipher had informed him to look out for.  Doors open, boots tamp pavement, and the area of operations is swept for threats.  Whisper and Kentucky confirm Cipher’s assessment of the lookie-loos fifty meters away: low threat and unlikely to cause problems.  One stern look from Whisper and they go back to studiously ignoring whatever project is being undertaken in their parking lot.  Given the amount of cigarette butts on the ground here, its unlikely that this group is the first to plan operations in the particular corner of paradise.

Viceroy sets up her map again on the hood of Cipher’s car, lets everyone get reacquainted with the target profile.  The NetRunner pops gum and bounces around in her reinforced net suit.  Her helmet sports a subdued pink Hello-Kitty head, complete with its own helmet and ready for war.

That last to arrive is the late addition.  Nyx.  Known only by Viceroy (and that only by inner circle reputation)  the Russian assassin materializes out of the dark with a duffle bag and a cold demeanor.  Sent by Black Jasper for support when the need for stealth became apparent, she moves with a dancer’s grace, clearly dangerous as hell.

"Hola chica," Cruz said to the new addition, 'Nyx'.  "I'm Lube Job," he said extending a hand.

"So what's the plan," he asked the assembled team, as he loaded rounds into his shotgun and popped up his arm mounted Adjudicator and confirmed its magazine was full as well.

Martin has only been inside StrikeFirst!!! twice, both for recon, but the parking lot is a familiar meet.  The locals are gunfire-averse and twitchy, so he's grown accustomed to using the out-front crowd as the urban equivalent of birds in the jungle: if they scatter, a predator is in the area.  An unfamiliar predator, at any rate.

He gives Nyx a long assessment.  He's heard the handle a couple of times on the streets and has quietly connected those dots to the blood-splattered scenes in briefings from a few corp gigs.  In their respective lines of work, tonight's ally has a non-zero chance of being tomorrow's job.  But that's for later, so he adds his observations to his mental file, folds it away, and turns to the Listener problem.

Because really, fucking over the Listeners seems to be something the whole city can get behind.

"The mission is to get you Viceroy on site and cover her while she violates their datastacks and you steal anything that looks clue-bearing or resellable,  " he tells Lube.  "Shooting cyberzombies in the face is a bonus.  Looking at the overheads, the best option for a covert approach is the drainage ditch that runs up to the fence.  Cover is acceptable but limited, so if we're blown, we hose the shit out of whoever spots us and move in before they can pin us and start rolling grenades down the slope.  We know these assholes are very technical boys and girls, so keep more of an eye than usual out for sensors."

He rotates the map projection.  "Once we're at the fenceline, we either can cut the fence and walk up to the back door on the west side, or we can try our luck with this storm drain.  Do you have anything that can recon it for us?"

OOC: Basically reiterating OOC#174, but it's been a while.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:10, Sat 26 Feb 2022.

Kenji listens, splitting time between studying the map, and studying the brace of new solos. He's worked a gig with Nyx before, seen what she can do. Cyber gods help the Listeners. Cipher, however, is more of a, well, Cipher. She doesn't seen nervous, intimidated by the rest of the all-star team Black Jasper's assembled. That's a good sign.

"I can stand behind that plan," Kenji says, when Whisper finishes. "They'll have that culvert under surveillance. Compound probably has its own power supply, intranet- no backdoors," Kenji looks to Viceroy for confirmation.

"Any way to fry their electronic security remotely?"

-

”Nyx.” The single word is offered in reply when Lube Job introduces himself. There’s a brief pause, just long enough for everyone to wonder if she’s going to the the offered hand. And then she does, giving her newly found acquaintance a brief moment of skin to skin, her grip firm enough, although she’s clearly holding back.

And then long legs clad in something black and skin tight are carrying her to the hood of the car where the meeting is in progress, eyes that are the finest that the Moscow Institute of Teknology (MosTek) and their Sino partners at Huawei could produce to replacce inferior flesh and blood dancing over each person there in turn. If she remembers Kenji from their previous meeting there’s no obvious sign, the MedTek getting the same look as the rest of them, one that implies that she’s sizing them up. Just like they’re all going to be doing to her. It’s to be expected. No offense taken comrades.

The duffle bag is lowered to the ground. Gently. A casual observer might note that she stands with her feet either side of it, glances at it occasionally. OCD.

”I like bonuses.” She offers after a moment. almost as though she’s taking Whisper literally and there’s a bonus for each kill. Then she nods towards Kenji. ”He is right. If fence is obvious point of entry then it is obvious to have it under surveillance. Cameras, motions sensors, shit like that. Is better if they are blinded before we move in.”

She looks around at the others. ”So who is coming in with me and Viceroy? Will anyone be on overwatch with long gun?” Tri usually did her killing up close, with blade or sidearm. Where she could see her target’s face. Like Tamara.
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:05, Sun 27 Feb 2022.

"If it's a wireless signal, I might be able to capture a few minutes of feed, unencode the signal, modify the time stamps, then feed it back into the airwaves at like, 100x power, which could give a small window of time.  Of course the more sensors they have, the harder this problem becomes," Lube offered.

"Beyond two or three sensors though, we're probably left with just jamming the shit of out a large spectrum of frequencies or trying to drop malware payloads into the devices to just disable them.  The problem of course is that having large portions of your sensor net drop suddenly tends to elicit at response.  The best counter I would offer on that would be to drop sensors on the opposite side of first, as a feign, to try to draw an initial QRF away." Cruz's second offering was delivered with a shrug, as he had no idea if that would work.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:04, Sun 27 Feb 2022.

"We don't really have a sniper," Martin tells Nyx, "unless Cipher has something for that in the trunk."  He taps the sedan's hood for emphasis.

"Lube, is it a 'minutes,' 'hours,' or 'days' job to put that together?"

"Can't help you there," Cipher replies with a slow shake of the head. "But I can hook us up with drone over-watch, if that's something we think we need," she continues, subtly begging the question.

-

”Better to have drone and not need it than need it and not have it I think.” Nyx offers in response the question about drones. ”Are they armed?”

"No," Cipher replies, "My netrunner guy doesn't usually work pro bono- I'm kind of straining the working relationship a little hard, as it is. But if you've got the eddies, he can set that up for us."

-
This message was last edited by the player at 00:04, Wed 02 Mar 2022.

"Maybe half an hour?" Cruz said, replying to Whisper with a shrug.  He set about the task at hand - literally - using his tool hand to start the work, augmented by the tech scanner built into his cyberarm.

Soundtrack:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYspXZG9vaA

Nyx leads the assault/infiltration.  Practiced motions betraying grace and an economy of motion take the lead, casually moving up the trash and debris strewn drainage.  Behind her the rest of the team comes along, three men and two more women ready to inflict violence.  They move in comms blackout, hand signals pointing out obstacles.  In the sky five hundred or so meters back, a pair of drones orbits slowly feeding out signals that Cipher picks up, tracking the progress of the Listener guards on the once TV station/now compound.  There is light, spillover from Night City, neon dreams reflecting back down from the dark morning clouds rolling in from the ocean.

Five meters from the exit of the drainage, Nyx calls the halt, each member of the crew moving to rocks or whatever bit of cover or concealment they can find.  If nothing else, just to break up their shapes.  Whisper has to steer Viceroy into position, but she takes the guidance with a smile.  Lube checks his watch, nods up and down the human chain.

Across town, back in Pacifica, a battery turns off.  A faraday cage is suddenly rendered inert.  And a signal calls home.

Here at the source of the Feed, the reaction takes a few minutes to take shape.  Four figures emerge from the building in a hurry, visible only on the drone feed Cipher watches in her eyes.  The Listener response party splits in two, each pair taking a van, and blasts into the night barely clearing the automated gate.

At Cipher’s nod, Lube produces his new latest and greatest invention, flips a few switches, makes a few quips about easy penetration, then snaps his fingers at Viceroy.  The NetRunner rolls her eyes, shoots a finger gun back at the tech, and disappears into the cybernetic ether that surrounds them all.  She’s gone for a few seconds before coming back with a gleam in her eyes.  And a thumbs up for Nyx.

The whole procession moves up the drainage and at Cipher’s go, Nyx pokes her head up, double checking the drone feed for any suspicious activities.  Seeing none, she pulls back down and examines the tense group of Edge Runners ready to move.  Whisper bumps a short text message, a single period to MDR, assured by the resident tech ninjas that the signal will disappear into the electronic maelstrom of Night City.

Viceroy takes in everyone’s posture, takes a deep breath, and punches the green LED blinking on her arm.

The team’s 30 seconds of network capture begin.

Cruz moved purposefully with the others and as the team approached the first door, he actuated his tool hand, supplementing the tools with a set of lock picks he kept for this purpose.  Examining the lock, Alex realized he'd used the same manufacture's model on a couple of freelance jobs.  Confidently, he applied his knowledge and skill, intent on getting the team through this first barrier.  Of course who knows what they might find inside.

Lube's job was to get the door open - he wouldn't be the first one through.  Someone else would be first to discover what secrets the next room held.


11:36, Today: A. Cruz rolled 22 using 1d10+12.  Quietly Opening Lock/Bypassing Security.

Nyx takes a step away from Lube when he starts to go to work on the door,. She’s dressed in black from head to toe, her movements those of a predator, the hilt of the katana protruding above her left shoulder as she moves to the closest window.

Mentally she’s assessing the possible threats that she might find within. And how to deal with them. The blade is elegant. Kulturny, cultured. Killing with it is an art form, makes her an artist. When she wields it she imagines that the feeling is the same as Tchaikovsky might have had when he wrote his most famous works. Or Krasnaya Zvezda when they wrote their Death Metal classics.

And unlike either Tchaikovsky or Krasnaya Zvezda - or a gun - the blade is silent. Death comes quietly this night. And, for those within, from two directions.

OK, so let’s go with Nyx going for the window while Lube does the door.

Martin seems to have fallen into his normal role of covering the noncombatant, so he keeps his left hand resting softly on Viceroy's shoulder, guiding her up against the wall.  He positions himself between her and the door, ready to back up Lube or turn and meatshield the netrunner as the next few seconds require. The Consigliere rests in his right hand, its smartgun link a reassuring cold presence in his enhanced proprioception.

Across town Karma leads her scratch assault team in a simultaneous attack on Kannerack’s apartment building.   They’ve been waiting for Whisper’s signal.  The place has clearly seen better days, old stucco peeling under the constant onslaught of Pacific Ocean moisture and low rent vandalism.  Maybe, back in the 90s or Aughts this might have been someone’s idea of near ocean paradise.  Six units form the U, two stacks of three with a stone paved courtyard crumbling around a dancing Cupid in a what was probably once a working fountain that did not contain urine and brackish rain water.

Pandora’s been casing the place since she got the voice call, figures she has Kannerack pegged to the three stack on the north side of the building.  The Solo waits alone on the roof of the next apartment building over, ready to make the leap to the balcony that serves as the rear exit to the unit.  Anyone decides to leave that way, they’re running smack into Signal-Withdrawal fueled rage.  For the front door Monica plans on a blitz with her own bad attitude, Ringo on point with a suppressed assault rifle, and Jeremy the NetRunner for any data smashing that must occur picking up slack.

She has to hand it to Jason/Jeremy.  The guy is here, holding an SMG like he means it, and nodding along to her instructions with nary a tremor to his body.  Maybe there’s something to this piece of corporate issue personnel after all.

Three minutes ago, a few Listener trash mooks took off with a fire under their collective asses, sprinting away for something, presumably the distraction the other team had cooked up.  Made the odds a little better.  Not that Karma is worried.  Nah.  This shit is personal.  Celebrating prematurely is in bad taste and counter productive, but MDR is ready to squeeze everything she can out of M. Kannerack.  Can almost see the data and taste the look of sudden despair on Avery’s face that is sure to follow.

At Karma’s nod, Ringo pulls the door open on their van and advances across the sidewalk, rifle at the ready, back partially bent in the hunch of assault teams everywhere.  Monica follows, pistol gripped loosely, muscles flowing, hungry for the confrontation.  Behind the two women the pet NetRunner pulls the van door closed, takes a last sweep up and down the block, and follows into the courtyard.

Crossing the debris-strewn lot approaching the old TV broadcasting station, Kenji's in his element. Until he's not. He moves past Lube, taking point now- not the spot usually reserved for the team medic. His SMG is up, slaved to his eyes as they sweep the room.

-

Cipher falls in behind Nyx. The assassin's black bodysuit leaves little to the imagination. It's hard not to admire the other new girl's tight, lithe figure. Sam refocuses, mind of the job. This isn't some Pacifica trap house. The private detective is carrying the new Militech iron. Given how much damage the last Listener she tangled with was capable of absorbing, a little additional firepower seems a must.

-

While Sam does her level best to ignore the various physical qualities that the body of a dancer turned assassin possesses, Nyx turns a blind eye to the throttled display and works the window over her head.  It’s not much.  Doesn’t take much skill, really, and she slowly slides the horizontal plate upwards just enough to slide her body through.  The impact the five foot drop produces is absorbed in a silent roll, hands, shoulders, back, across to thighs and up.  Pistol in her right hand, palm of her left hovering above the hilt of her sword.

The room is empty.  Discarded food wrappers, evidence of prior squatters, particle board faux wall divisions covered with psychologically designed bland patters made to dissuade those forced to work encapsulated in them from committing mass murder.  Bits of excrement, mummified from years of waiting to be cleaned up. Once upon a time, reporters worked here, creating bits of metaphorical excrement of their own.   One door leads out of the room, partially closed with a cracked frosted glass window.

Nyx clicks her tongue once, calling Sam to follow.

Next to Whisper, Viceroy vibrates softly, eyes darting.  She controlling what she’s feeling, this blast of adrenaline.  It’s not candy, not even stimulants, just pure natural epinephrine and she’s riding the wave.  And she’s following directions.  There isn’t time to offer more than a reassuring squeeze and Lube has the lock popped.  Tools flow back into the tech’s cyberhand, weapons come up and Kentucky makes a tactical entry with the rest of the team flowing in behind.

Using the back door has dropped the team into a maintenance room.  Assorted mops, rotting brooms, empty bottles of bleach, and previously huffed bottles of keyboard cleaner fill the space.  The Listeners have been at some work in here.  There aren’t any visible indications of a trap or surveillance, but the debris have been pushed aside enough to leave a walkway through the mess.  On the wall above a tilting and mildew stained desk is a metal plate showing the basic floor plan of the building.  Large offices and a two story studio space on this level.  Admin offices above.  Below ground sit the backup generator, records storage,  and server spaces.  The stairs themselves are in the center of the building, scissor formation leading up and down.  One elevator sits on either side of the stairs.

Best guess, Nyx and Sam are looking into the hallway outside of this room.  The stairs should be a straight shot about 15 meters down the hall.

At the ground floor door of the Kannerack’s apartment building, Ringo posts up allowing MDR to step through.  The corp holds her pistol tight against her body and tries the door handle.

Locked.  What a surprise.  It’s Night City and who need Scavs kicking their doors in in the middle of the night.  Karma steps to the other side of the door and angles her weapon up and out.  They’re sitting in a death funnel and everyone knows it.  Caldwell moves up and jacks his system into the door and sets to work bypassing the lock.

“Faster would be better,” Monica hisses.

“Quiet would be perfect,” Ringo snaps back at the same volume.

Normally Karma wouldn’t take that shit.  In this moment, it’s probably warranted.

Between the two women, the door lock clicks open.  Without a word, Monica turns again and hauls the door open for Ringo’s waiting gun barrel.

They’re in.

Martin takes his hand off Viceroy's shoulder long enough to indicate the server room on the floor plan and trace a route to them.  "Stairs," he murmurs.  No one in the maintenance room should need him to spell out why taking the elevator would be a remarkably bad idea.

"Eyes up, eyes down.  Watch for sensors.  Ready when you guys are."

Nyx’s expression remains largely unchanged as her senses are assailed by the detritus that has accumulated in this room. She’s grateful that it’s her eyes that are enhanced and not her olfactory system as she steps around something unpleasant and approaches the door that is only partially closed.

The Russian Solo blinks, activating her night vision and turning the room into different shades of blacks and greys and greens as she studies the door, looking for any visible alarms or impediments. Every indication is that no one has set foot in this room for some time but she hasn’t stayed alive this long by making assumptions.

If a visual inspection reveals no obvious threats or hazards, she’ll hiss to Sam, both of her hands full with items intended to bring death swiftly and with various amounts of noise and mayhem. ”If you open the door I’ll go through first.”

If it weren't for her cyber audio's auto-dampers, Nyx's hissed whisper would have been louder than a shout. Sam nods, moves aside, reaches out to grasp the door handle, slowly turns until the bolt is freed, then pulls the door open smoothly.

She falls in behind the assassin, Adjudicator in a two handed grip.

-

Kenji eyes the door to the stairs. He'd rather be going up than down. The MedTech recalls a line of dialogue from an old film about an even older war.

"You know, fighting in a basement offers a lot of difficulties. Number one being, you're fighting in a basement."

It can't be helped, though. He approaches the door with caution, notices a dim light on the other side of the small, dust-covered window panel set at about chest level. Kenji looks over his shoulder, makes eye contact with Cruz, points at the door hinges, mouths, "lube" at his eponymous teammate.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 19:52, Sun 20 Mar 2022.

Well, it wasn't an Adjudicator very heavy pistol, but Alex took careful aim nonetheless, aligning the small red tube of a 3 oz. can of WD-40 on the door hinge.  He gave each hinge two short bursts, before returning water displacement formula #40 to its holster.

When Kenji pushes on the door, the hinges turn, screaming silently, their cries of pain and rage dampened by pinpoint accuracy and massive technical know-how.  And a little light commercial chemistry. Technical wizardry claims another victory against the forces of chaos and decay.  Nyx’s door doesn’t flow open quite so easily, Sam having to work the hinges carefully to create an opening that doesn’t require the sacrifice of a dozen screaming squirrels.

Ahem. On to the battle at hand.

Kentucky and Nyx enter the hall simultaneously and exchange a quick nod.  The assassin leads Sam on the left side of the hall, the medic leading the rest on the right.  Viceroy requires a momentary reminder not to step into the death funnel of walls, nods a quick notice of thanks to her guardian and keeps to her feet.  Silence is the order of the day.  Eyeballs track open doorways, track walls, corners, anywhere a sensor package could be waiting.  Anywhere an ambush could drop.

There’s nothing there.

The team passes the first elevator and posts up just outside where the hall gives way to the lobby.  A receptionist desk sits in the center of the space, empty for now.  The stairs are there, too, closer to Kentucky than Nyx.  Light flashes at the bottom of the shaft, shadows reflected up onto the walls.  Maybe fifteen steps make the descent to a landing.  Presumably fifteen more down from there, cutting back the other direction.  No voices radiate up the well, but then again, the Listeners have never needed them.

Threadbare carpet in unknown hues covers the floor here.  What was probably popular in corporate decor back in 2002.  Hard to tell in the green light of night vision or the ambient gray of the moon.  Breaking up the fabric monotony is a trail of fluids leading from the entry of the building and down the stairwell.  Kentucky recognizes those. Knows instantly what he’s looking at.

Blood and the cybernetic operating fluid, the plasma that serves as blood/lubrication/hydraulic fluid.  The ichor of flesh modification.  Somebody came this way, bleeding heavily from flesh and metal, recent enough that light reflects from the puddles.

Sam’s agent pings silently.  Pulpo.
Four hostiles out front.  Two holding near the door.  Two near the vehicles.  They’re looking for something.

On installation, Martin's Zeiss cyberoptics defaulted to a false-color night-vision feed, but after some experimentation and a few integration therapy sessions with ChrisAlice, he decided he was better off with grayscale.  It was a more visceral reminder that he was literally seeing the world in a nonstandard way, and it eliminated a few miscues that were generating some low-level cognitive dissonance in combat sims.

All of which is to say that he recognizes the scent of augmentation fluid well before he picks up on the sheen of the fresh stains atop the carpet's layers of older stains.

He steers Viceroy around the worst of it, not out of consideration for her feelings but to minimize the risk of her picking up enough to leave identifiable tracks or, worse, affect her footing.  It would be embarrassing to have the principal go ass-over-teakettle down the stairs because some cyberzombie's leakage slicked up the soles of her vintage Tradewinds.

The evidence implies a picture he really doesn't like.  And given recent events, he has a nasty suspicion of the fluid's source.  He keys up on the team channel.

"Hey, guys.  Keep an eye out for a surgical suite hosting a budget 'borg with half an ugly face, two cyberarms, and a grenade launcher."

Beretta Consigliere (heavy pistol) [9/8]
guarding Viceroy, following Kenji and Nyx's pathfinding
Combat Awareness 5: Initiative Reaction 5 (+5 to Initiative rolls)
This message was last edited by the player at 01:27, Tue 22 Mar 2022.

Cipher waves her hand, catches the others' attention. "Our eye in the sky spotted four gangoons outside. Two by the front door, two by the vehicles. Seem to be looking for something."

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Catching Cipher's whispered warning, Kenji pulls up short of the stairs. It would be tactically unsound, to say the least, to both cede the high ground and place the team between two hostile forces.

"Abort or adjust the plan?" he asks, addressing the whole crew.

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This message was last edited by the player at 01:07, Thu 24 Mar 2022.

"Ugh," Martin lets slip.  He checks the mission clock running in his neural coprocessor.  "Adjust.  We don't have another way of pulling the QRF off the site again, and we talked too much in front of Sara.  Once they come back with her, our best window for taking this place offline and gathering intel is closed.  We have about twelve minutes before they get to her and are at their maximum time to return here.  Assume whoever's inside will hear us drop the guys outside, and vice versa, so who do we need to alpha-strike while we still have some surprise?"

”We can take out the four outside.” Nyx offers, a nod of her head in Cipher’s direction indicating who the we refers to. In the assassin’s mental calculus two against four are more than acceptable odds. She’d taken down three players on her last gig, the mark and her two bodyguards. The fact that she had taken damage herself is conveniently forgotten.  ”While you deal with what’s in here, hit them all at the same time. In Siberia we call it shock and awe. Once we are done we can rejoin you.”