Deep Vengeance..., ...is the Daughter of Deep Silence Options

[Fenris]

" I'll scout the site, from a distance. I'll take some footage with my comm, for a more recent pic and a chance to get other people's eyes on it without the risk. I should be able to do 500m or so without startling anyone."

Ayo seemed positively talkative since they'd left the club, compared to previous silent responses. He's back in the mask, however, and already moving towards the door as he speaks, clearly relieved at the chance to take action and be useful.

[JxJxA]

Zerone nods and begins casting himself. Uttering Latin verses from the Gospel, he begins to glow momentarily with a golden light. As the light fades, he begins another chant from the Psalms. Suddenly, a spirit that looks very similar to Amara coalesces into view. However, unlike that fiery ravmalakh, this one is formed out of golden white water, flowing placidly and perfectly.

"I am Iovannis, of the Watery Sphere of Archangel Gabriel. You have called me, young one, and I have answered. What aspect of His work would you have me do?"

"Brother Iovannis, I would ask that you follow my comrade's shen and hide it from sight as it scouts a place held by villains."

The ravmalakh nods, "Then you know with this task my service to you shall be at an end. Walk His Path, young one, and remember this. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." With those words still floating in the air, Iovannis fades from the physical and follows Fat Man's shen into the astral.

[Buddha72]

Cypher
You feel the outside world fade away from view as you sink deeper and deeper into the code, it's ebb and flow tugging at your awareness. You see the windows arrayed around you and monitor the data as its compiled. An alert sounds and you quickly bring up the search attached to it.

The layout of the faculty appears to be a standard clinic - it seems this site was a local medical center before it was acquired by an unknown buyer. You are able to find some old footage of people in the clinic with their families when a local news report was doing a "feel good" piece on improvements in community based healthcare. As the data scrolls by you see reports of increased power capacity added to the building for "electrical upgrades". Your search seems to hit a wall in finding anything more current than 15 years ago about the lay out and infrastructure of the site. The external images don't show any sign of change so any modifications have left the exterior walls unaltered.

You follow links out from this collection of information to the larger shadow community and see the excerpts pulled by your search. Reading over them it seems people were aware of the clinic and that it was connected to organized crime in some way but most everyone had no idea who it belonged to. They are reports of runners receiving ware from there after doing jobs. You find accounts of people talking about the good doctor and her penchant for human experimentation. That several people have claimed to been test subjects of hers and claim to have been held at the clinic. You also found a small thread, largely discounted and ignored, that claimed she was looking for a donor to save a wealthy benefactor perhaps even the shadow owner of the clinic from some sort of genetic or cellular degeneration. It seems the majority of the clientele for the site are shadowrunners and eccentric wealthy individuals. No one person seems to jump out as a frequent guest.

You bring up the accounts of the human lab rats and pull up the window devoted to that search. You see over a dozen bounties posted for Dr. Takayasu with the largest being offered for 500,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) . The bounty is asking for her head and heart as proof of the deed done. You see several posting claiming the bounty isn't real and just some digital jockey getting their kicks. The staff seems well insulated from public knowledge but you do find rewards offered for information about "patients" of the Dr. Takayasu and their current status though many of the posters believe their loved ones are dead but are just looking for some sort of closure. Strolling through the listings you quickly do the math and see about another 35,000 for final notices.

Another alert goes off and you see the spec you needed for a TacNet are finished being compiled along with a cracked copy of the program you need to make it all work. You quickly look it over and move it to storage to upload it later to the team's gear and get this thing off the ground.

You bring your attention back to the active windows hanging around you in VR and see the programs sifting through media sources and databases. You see the customary reports of traffic violations, disturbances and a few assaults and/or muggings within three blocks but you quickly see a void in the reports you check within one block. You see reports of shots fired and disturbances being handed off to "private security" when they are reported within one block of the site. You comb through the data and see some speculation that the clinic has a private "contract" with the security provider for that area to leave them be if they keep it contained to their immediate environs. It's hard to tell if it's a local arrangement being kept from the corporation or a sanctioned money feed for this extra consideration.

[Buddha72]

Fat Man
The quiet of the house settles around you as your new teammate settles into a chair and seems to have lapsed into some deep sleep or trance - you assume it has something to do with the matrix and interacting with it. The home seems to echo with traces of lives before and there is a slightly chemical smell to the air. You snack as you wait for the return of the spirit you tasked to look at the site from the astral.

Sometime later you feel the approach of the shen that had agreed to your request. You open your senses to the spirit world overlaid over this one and see the giant bird fly through the nearest wall and settle on the floor. It turn its head sideways to look at you with one solid black eye.

I have returned from the There you sent me to observe. I found living things - two legged beasts riddled with voids, their flesh ripped out and replaced with the dead meats of the earth. There was no spirits bound or free there - the air stinks of death and pain. No great barriers arose to block my sight or passage. No Caller such as yourself was there or even a Weaver that I could see.

You can feel the spirit waiting for any other questions before being released from its oath of service.

[UmaroVI]

Fat Man suddenly sets down the bag of soychips he's been loudly crunching through and turns to the empty air, bows, and starts speaking in Mandarin.

"Thank you greatly for you help. How many of the damaged humans did you see? Were you able to tell if some of them were there against their will?"

[UmaroVI]

Fat Man suddenly sets down the bag of soychips he's been loudly crunching through and turns to the empty air, bows, and starts speaking in Mandarin.

"Thank you greatly for you help. How many of the damaged humans did you see? Were you able to tell if some of them were there against their will?"

[BishopMcQ]

With the first loud *CRUNCH* from the soy chips, Cypher shook his head. Using augmented reality was great to make sure no one was sneaking up on him while he was surfing the matrix, but it had its disadvantages. He slid earbuds from his commlink and put them in. Music began thrumming across his senses, dulling the sound of Fat Man and the bag of chips.

Laying out the map, he highlighted the outer walls. Those were going to be constant. Moving across the blueprints, he highlighted the weightbearing walls and supports. Everything else was marked with red--questionable. He makes notes of a few names of people who had been there recently. If the group wanted more precise information, interrogation of a recent patient may help. Option B would be to loose a bug in there with sensors and see what it could find.

A cool half million for the head and heart of Grandma Death seemed to good to be true. Even split across the team, Cypher would be sitting pretty for a couple years on that kind of scratch. Some of the smaller bounties looked more reasonable, but only more information would tell. He queued up search terms to gather any information he could about the bounty offerers and see what seemed legitimate.

He also scanned the list of small bounties that looked like they were looking for final disposition. Putting the families to rest would certainly assuage some of his guilt at chopping the hands off of surgeons and nurses who may not have been as cruel as their boss. Whipping up a quick message to Widget, he scribbled a short note to see if she downloaded any of the data from the drug lab's computer before it all blew up.

//Text Message
//Attn: Prodigal Daughter
//From: Wayward Sheep
//Did you stumble on loose electrons by the water?
//Looking into my past, for my future.

When the TacNet downloads, he shoves the file into a corner. That would be a longer project and couldn't be helped for the moment. The ork begins actively cursing, an active mishmash of tongues that showed how diverse an education could be found in the worst parts of language on the streets. Private security had a cordon line that stretched out past the building--that meant money, influence and pain if this went loud. It was going to be a double-edged sword--if the team crushed the private security, the bribes may not stop the Knights from stomping bootheels on the back of an ork's neck. If they didn't, KE wouldn't be in any hurry to stop security from gunning them down in the street as the team tried to escape. "Running while meta" may be all the reason that KE needed to help security gun them down if they made it past the imaginary line.

Bad news, worse news, and the shadow of good news. He needed more info before going to the team with what he knew.

[Buddha72]

Fat Man
The spirit angles its head in the opposite direction as it thinks over your question.

I saw over two dozen souls there though only eight of them were void riddled as I spoke of before. As to the living being there against their will I can not say for certain - the air was heavy with pain and mistrust. Those there were twisted with suspicion and dark thoughts. There was a space that was layered with the anguish of others - in that place some who's days ended there were unwilling. More I do not know - your ways are alien to me.

[Buddha72]

Ayo
You move your way through the city, feeling the pulse of it. You find yourself leaving the human parts of you behind, stuffing them back into the box you keep in your head and let your true self rise to surface. You know the Hunter watches your steps and waits to see what offerings you will make in the nights ahead.

You arrive in the area of the clinic and quickly see it's mostly commercial with a few quirky businesses nestled between. You find the building and see the faded sign proudly proclaiming "New Beginnings Medical Clinic" but it looks like it has seen better days. You circle the block and find a spot that you think you give you the best view of the site. You stash your bike and make your way to the roof of a building some distance away. You hear below the sounds of two executive office workers as they exit the building - talking about their meaningless lives and what they'll do next as if it matters.

You settle down and begin to look over the area. You quickly find the signs of active security - fencing encloses the property possibly wired, cameras and what you think might be sensor bundles but you might need to get a verification from the more tech savvy. You see the locks on the doors are electronic though they look to be old and in need of maintenance. You don't see any signs of foot patrols but think you may have seen drones moving around, it was hard to nail down anything more since the skin was some sort of color adaptive coating. You see a small delivery van arrive and get unloaded by two fit and solid men. They move like hunters and you make out the signs of concealed weapons. They load four 1 foot by 1 foot by 1 foot boxes into the clinic. The delivery gave the appearance of being routine so it seems someone is still running the clinic or at least paying the bills.

You watch for the next few hours and surmise that the clinic must be going into some sort of powered down mode or keeping a low profile during the power vacuum left by its owner death.

[Buddha72]

Cypher
Settling back into the VR workspace you set up for the searches. You open a few new windows and string the code out around you, looking to refine some searches and launch new ones. You watch the dance of numbers and letters. You watch the delicate structure surge to life and reach out to fulfill its purpose. You rest your mind and relax into the quiet of this place, maybe rest a little while you can.

You find yourself startled from the reverie as an alert grabs your attention and you bring the window up to see what fruits your programs have borne. You look over the data and begin to shift it - programs were great at grabbing the information but the human element was still needed to make sense of it and decide what was relevant and what was trash.

You find several discreet searches through organ registries looking for a genotype that isn't attached to any official record or request. You also find reports of private databases being hacked and similar searches were conducted. You try to find any evidence of the the actual genotype or DNA profile but whoever was being paid to do the search covered their tracks. You're not sure why growing replacement organs was not the solution or even to correct the problem with gene therapy. You find a shadow posting about a hacker being paid to investigate the invasions but she turned up dead several weeks later with warnings of four other hackers ending up the same way and not to touch any job looking into these searches. Another alert draws your attention to your second search window.

You see the collated data with the bounties. It seems the smaller ones seeking final disposition are legit with the exception of one that traces back to a known alias for Knight Errant though this particular one is fairly old - perhaps a covert operation looking for a way to get intel on the clinic though considering the arrangement with law enforcement it strikes you as odd but the seems a solid lead. The large bounty still hangs out there unverified - you see shell after shell where the funding is being routed so the money appears to be real but from whom and why is still no clearer.

[UmaroVI]

Fat Man

"Thank you greatly for your help. Hopefully, we will be removing the stain of corruption on this place soon." Fat Man bowed again as the shen departed.

I have some good news. The shen I asked to scout the location reports no wards, spirits, or Awakened security there. That should make our jobs a lot easier.

[Notsoevildm]

After the meeting had wound up in the Looking Glass, Eklipse had returned to his apartment upstairs. He stripped off the rather ridiculous outfit he had chosen in an attempt to blend in and folded it away. Then he climbed into his form-fitting armor with a practised ease and pulled his cheap long coat on over it. The sword and sub-machine gun went into the padded sports bag and he tucked the new helmet under his arm. Then he slipped out the door and down to the garage.

Fastening the helm, he pulled up its specs and fired them off to Cypher along with the specs of his lenses and the commlink. He added a note that his own magically enhances senses could also be accessed through the commlink's SIM module. Then he revs the throttle of his racing bike and pulls out into the night.

He lets the bike's GPS lead him to the address supplied by Fat Man. He circles the area a couple of times to scout it out and find a good spot to park. After paying off a couple of asian youths to 'watch' over it, he steps briskly up to the door and knocks.

"Guten abend, Herr Fat Man", he greets the stout mage and nods to Cypher, before setting his bag down next the sofa and placing the bike helmet on top of it.

"So? Have ze spirits, whether astral or digital, anything of interest to report?"

[UmaroVI]

Fat Man

"I believe Cypher is still communing with the machine shen, but mine has returned with good news. There are about 25 living metahumans at the site. Eight of them have significant amounts of machine parts implanted in them, but none of them have any magical power, and there's no spirits or wards... so hopefully no electrocutions, this time. The shen didn't like the place, though, so it might impair our own magical abilities some, but I think we should still have an advantage."

[Buddha72]

Cypher
Your message to Widget seems to only be gone for a few moments before a reply is received.

<<@Wayward Sheep - I found some things of interest but mostly of a commercial nature though there was one bit that was out of place. Can I send it to you by courier? If so - where did you all settle? >

[BishopMcQ]

Jotting a quick note back to Widget, Cypher gives her the address of the safehouse, and okays a courier. He stretches out his arms and spine before dimming the opacity of the screens and taking out his earphones.

"Alright folks. I think it's time to have a chat. Is everyone back yet?"

[JxJxA]

Zerone sees Fat Man's message just as he is getting ready to head out to the meeting place.

That is good to hear. About there being no magical threats, I mean. If someone has a material link to Emilio I might be able to call on a ravmalakh to peer beyond the veils of time and give us some guidance on where he is or how much danger he faces.

He once again manages to get himself into the form-fitting body armor, struggling less this time now that he has practiced getting in and out of it a few times. He grabs his coat and smartpack full of running gear and heads out the door to wait for the first of five buses he needs to take to reach the address.

The bus rides are uneventful. He knows he can take a taxi, but he prefers the bus because it gives him a chance to see more of the world. Taxis are impersonal and efficient: they take the passenger directly to their destination. The roundabout routes of the bus let him see more of the city, more of the people, and experience a little more of the world. As someone who spent most of his early life in darkness, he appreciates the opportunity to see more---especially in a controlled environment and where he can get out of the bus if things get too overwhelming.

When he reaches the address, he knocks on the door, enters the abode, and politely greets his fellow companions.

"Greetings and a good evening. I hope all is well---it is 'well', right? Should I call the ravmalakh of guidance?"

[UmaroVI]

Fat Man
I don't think we have a material link to Emilio, or this would be easier. Since we now know there's no magical protection, though, it might make sense for the two of us to travel astrally to the site. Shen often do not make connections that mortals would; we might be able to figure out which aura is Emilio's. At the very least, we can get a floor plan, which should be of use.

[Fenris]

Ayo will pass along the information he has as well, but with much less in the way of detail. He offers up the high definition recordings instead, pointing out things he think might have been of interet for Cypher and anyone else that has a little more tech savvy then the terminally incompetent runner.

"Everyone I saw was a hunter...weapons, training. No lab techs or scientists here. "

[JxJxA]

Zerone nods in response to Fat Man.

"I thought that might be too much to hope on...hope for? Hope for! Oh, but I thought it was worth asking. I could still call the ravmalakh to come with us. The members of the Harmonious Sphere of Archangel Raguel can sometimes gain insight into the future of a place merely by assensing it."

[UmaroVI]

Fat Man
"It certainly cannot hurt to try. Let's, uh, 'give it a shot,' as they say here."

[JxJxA]

Zerone smiles, happy that he has made a contribution to the group. He begins reciting Bible verse in Latin, and glows momentarily with the same hue as in the changeling club.

"I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust."

Psalm 91, Verse 2. An appropriate recitation for one who walks His Path.

Follower, you have been quiet. Is everything all right?

All is well, my friend. I merely wish to see you follow your own counsel. Do not fear, for I stand with you. Remember, "Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."

Ecclesiastes Chapter 4, Verses 9 through 10.

Very good, my friend. You no longer stand alone, but with me and your new friends. However, keep focus on the task at hand.

The young elf takes a deep breath and begins reciting scripture once more. A new ravmalakh coalesces into view, again similar in visage and form to the prior spirits called by the theurge. However, this one seems to be made more flowing light, pulsing in perfectly pleasing patterns that almost invoke a sense of sound.

"I am Servan, of the Harmonious Sphere of Archangel Raguel. You have called me, young one. How might I aid you in performing His Will?"

"Brother Servan," says Zerone, "I would ask you to accompany us in investigating a den of villainy."

The ravmalakh nods, "Very well, I shall await your call in the astral." The spirit glows golden white before fading from sight.

[BishopMcQ]

"Alright team--before you go soaring off through buildings and scouring the places between here and the next, let me hit you with what I could find."

Slaving the home's trid system to his commlink, Cypher pulls up the schematics to the building and neighborhood files.

"First things first--here's our target. Ayo over there put some eyes on the prize and confirmed that we have goons with guns. It sounds like the preliminary reports are no mojo on site. The building was bought about fifteen years ago, and all recent records scrubbed." The display changes to show the old blueprints with highlights. "The outer walls are all still there and no external modifications have been made. These support walls should still be in place. Everything in red needs to be verified. I'm hoping that's where you two and your fly-by come in. If you find some mojo, we can mark that in green when you're back."

"The bad news is that security has deal with the local thugs in uniforms--anything within about a block of the building the in-house guys get first crack at. Judging by what I could find on the grid, and what I couldn't find, the area is a private little zero-zone. Zero-entry, zero-escape. We need to find out if they are getting any regular shipments and what the security staffing looks like--do they stack up on shipments or spread thin with security playing porter. Also, we need to know how often those happen.

"Your fearless furry has some datapoints for me to look over but she wanted to send it by private courier. That makes me think it could be a little sensitive in the world of ones and zeroes. Once I get that, I can brief you on the news.

"Lastly, the tricky part. There is a posted bounty for the head and heart of the surgeon--half a million cold. That kind of scratch makes me a little curious about whether the offer was legitimate. So far, it's buried behind enough shells, that I'm feeling the corp vibe or a very dangerous psychopath. We have some minor bounties as well, but I think I can clear those through some data access in their system."

[JxJxA]

Zerone listens intently as Cypher gives a rundown of the area. He cannot help but feel a smile tug at his lips when he hears the phrase "zero-zone," seeing as it cites his actual shadowrunning alias. Based from the orc's description, it also sounds like the kind of area that a theurgist of his abilities would come in handy.

"Um...if you think the information that the...uh...furless faerie? Fearless flurry? Uh, I mean, if you think that Mr. Fat Man and I should wait for the information, then I am happy to stay here until it arrives. So long as we go before Brother Servan is called back to his sphere."

[Buddha72]

Cypher
As you explain the data and search results to the team and take in the information they have as well - a small alert window pops up and flashes to get your attention. With little thought or effort you bring the window into view to see what incoming message has arrived.

<<@Wayward Sheep - knock knock>>

[BishopMcQ]

Cypher blinks twice at the message, and then remembers the small drone that cut him free. He steps over to the door and opens it.