Nothing's Free in the Free Zone (IC), Adventure 1: Broken Star Options

[DrZaius]

Abandoned house, S. Flanders Ct, 11:16 PM, July 31st, 2075

Pulling his Ingram X out of the glove box, Grease nodded at Amy. "That does sound simpler. Are you sure it'll work? If so, I'd say go for it. If something doesn't work out, we can always go in after and clear 'em out the old fashioned way. I'd just prefer not to sleep someplace with Devil Rat guts lining the walls."

[Jack VII]

Abandoned house, S. Flanders Ct, 11:16 PM, July 31st, 2075

"Nothing's too good for my Henry..." Jack said, echoing Grease's earlier comment.

[Chrome Head]

Abandoned house, S. Flanders Ct, 11:16 PM, July 31st, 2075

Amy was glad to hear Grease and Jack say that it was a good idea. "All right, let's see how it goes."

Reaching out into the astral, the shaman finds her beast and commands it once again. "Ok I have another task for you. There are 3 devil rats inside this house here, and I want them gone. I know you can tell them what to do or even scare them away. Please just make sure that they won't come back any time soon. If you can't avoid hurting them to complete this service for me, that's fine too. Let me know how it went when it's done, go."

[Lobo0705]

Abandoned house, S. Flanders Ct, 11:16 PM, July 31st, 2075

At Amy's call, the spirit manifests, its fur a dark black with silver highlights. The gorilla-like creature moves past Jack and Grease through the front door, and inside the room with the devil rats.

Grease's drone records and broadcasts the images as the spirit seems to speak to the rats in short barking tones, and the rats leave the carcass on the floor, and scurry along behind the spirit out the back door and into the yard beyond. After a minute or two, Amy feels the spirit touch her mind, "It is done."

[Chrome Head]

Abandoned house, S. Flanders Ct, 11:18 PM, July 31st, 2075

"All right. Let's check out the inside." And Amy walks inside the house. "Welcome to Hotel Amy." She continues turning to the others and bowing jokingly.

[Jack VII]

Abandoned house, S. Flanders Ct, 11:18 PM, July 31st, 2075

"Nice work, kid." Jack replies, bringing up his SMG at a ready position as he enters the house. Slowly moving from room to room, he checks the area for any threats, the rest of the team following behind him. After clearing the house, the ork says, "Looks like Casa Amy is open for biz. We've got one clean bedroom, but that back bedroom still has whatever those rats were snacking on in it, so that's probably out for now. The lounge area has a decent bit of floor space."

"Grease, can you get some of the drones up to keep watch outside the house? Then we can have the person on watch setup in the dining room to cover the two main entrances to the house."

[Lobo0705]

Abandoned house, S. Flanders Ct, 11:18 PM, July 31st, 2075

Nodding, Grease sends a quick message to his Fly Spy, and takes the Microskimmer out of his pocket. Both drones then launch into the sky above the house, providing a bird's eye view of the area.

"Can you help me get Rhex and this rotodrone into the house there, buddy?" Grease picks up one end of Rhex, and waits for Jack to grab the other.

Jack obliges, and they move first Rhex, and then the rotodrone into the lounge area. Grease scratches his head, and says, "Ok, first things first, let's see if we can get this rotodrone back into shape."

Overkill, who has put his Crusader down on the couch, takes a knee and pulls out his deck, and says "A few moments, Mein Freund, I have to make sure alles in ordnung with my Proteus first" The decker hums to himself as he takes out his toolkit and starts to remove the case.

[Jack VII]

Abandoned house, S. Flanders Ct, 11:59 PM, July 31st, 2075

With Grease and Overkill breaking out the tools and repair kits, Jack decided to assess the rest of the house for security purposes. Slipping through the dining room to the kitchen, he unlatched the sliding glass door and moved onto the patio. The tiny backyard was mostly unkempt, the past occupants apparently not all that into yard work. Walking the short perimeter, the ork took note of a section of the plastiboard fencing that had been knocked free. Well, if the drek hits the fan, someone's probably going through this thing. He glanced at the sky but failed to spot Grease's Fly-Spy. The ork figured that bastard skimmer was probably in the front yard somewhere.

Not all that confident in the physical security set-up of their current location, Jack figured that anonymity and the unfamiliar were their biggest defensive assets at the moment. We should be safe here and, if not, we know they're definitely tracking us somehow, the ork thought. Hoping that Amy was making use of the front bedroom to rest up, the ork moved to the rear bedroom. The remains of the devil rats' snack lay on the floor. Not really a student of animal anatomy, Jack was pretty certain it had been a dog or cat, possibly the previous owner's pet. Skirting the remains, the ork moved into the master bathroom. While it was small, it did have an actual bathtub. Hoping his meeting wasn't going to take long, the ork checked his chronograph, closed the bathroom door, and leaned against the exterior window to get a good view of the backyard. Jack mentally composed a quick message to Overkill.

<<@Overkill [JustJack] Hey amigo, I'm in the back bathroom and about to make the jump to the club. I'm inviting MARKs on my biomonitor so you can keep track of me without distracting you too much. Wish me luck.>>

With that, the ork opened a window to the Matrix and mentally expanded it to fill most of his view. Leaving small AR windows of the feeds from Grease's drones open, Jack watched as the Matrix expanded before him.

[Jack VII]

THE MATRIX, 11:59 PM, July 31st, 2075

A glitchy morass of lights, gridlines, and icons stretched to the horizon. The persona icon coalesced as a basic and boring anthropomorphic figure; the small winged helmet and the wings on its feet the only touches of individuality in the iconography. Individuality might be stretching it a bit, the icon was the default for the Hermes Ikon commlink being using to access the Matrix. With little time to waste, the persona emitted a green nimbus of light that darted out, touching a Host icon in the distance. The persona icon flowed into the beam of light it was emitting and darted to the Club Ascension Host.

[Lobo0705]

THE MATRIX, 11:59 PM, July 31st, 2075

As Jack's persona moved along the path illuminated before him, he struggled to absorb the rapidly changing landscape around him. He was moving from the pitch black and desolate Warrens to the gleaming spires of the Hub, each host attempting to outshine the other as they tried to attract customers. The "traffic", if it could be called that, also increased, as more and more personas flitted about, zipping to and fro on their way to their destinations. Some glanced at the austerity of Jack's persona, as if to say "Why choose such a drab appearance when you could look like anything? But they soon hurried on.

After only a few seconds in real time, Jack bridged a the kilometers-long gulf between his meat body and Ascension. The host for the club hung in the sky directly over the physical building, and was in fact sculpted to look exactly like the earthbound structure. Patrons flew up to the entrance, and were greeted by hooded figures in white, who accepted the 20 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) cover-charge. As Jack arrived at the front of the line, he mimicked the patrons in front of him, holding out his virtual hand to accept a piece of paper with a wax seal, the acceptance of which transferred the money from his account, and gave him a mark on the host.

Entering the ground floor, the place is packed, and he has to push his way through the crowd, some of whom are in the Hub at the club itself, while others are at their homes kilometers away. Regardless of where their meat bodies are, they present a very real obstacle, as their virtual forms are quite solid. Jack sees the staircase a few dozen yards ahead of him to the right, and tries to fly over to it, but is unable to get his feet off the ground. Frowning, he tries again, but he remains rooted firmly to the floor of the club. I wonder what's wrong? I'll have to ask Overkill when I get back.

Slowly but surely he is able to make his way to the staircase. While the ground floor is loud, the voices of a hundred or so patrons making a cacophonous sound, as he approaches the 2nd floor, the volume increases. Walking up the stairs, he climbs the spiral up through the 2nd floor, looking at the dance floor filled with wildly different shapes gyrating together. It was an assault on the senses, over here a beautiful elven woman with green hair danced with a human sized badger with purple fur, over there, a pink robot sat in the corner passionately kissing what looked to be a cyborg from a 20th century film. Shaking his head, he continued up to the third floor.

At the top of the stairs, he reached a door, opened it, and stepped through. When he closed it, it was as if the sound of the music was cut off with a knife. The sudden silence disoriented him, and he began to explore his surroundings. He had stepped out into a small foyer, with an angelic form, androgynous in nature, stood at attention, its wings folded behind it. As Jack moved closer, it beckoned to him, motioning for him to follow. They walked through what appeared to be a maze, with various rooms spread throughout, some open to those passing by for the exhibitionist crowd, others closed and locked. After a minute or so, the angel stopped at door, and caused a key to appear in its hand. Handing it to Jack, he motioned for him to open the door, and then moved away.

Looking around, Jack put the key in the door and turned it. As the door popped open, he saw that inside the small room was a man, dressed in an impeccably tailored suit and fedora - both black, with a blue carnation in the lapel of his suit. The race and features of the man are impossible to discover, as his face is completely blank, with no eyes, ears or nose, like a flesh-colored eggshell.

The room was sparsely furnished, a couch and a small low table being the only furnishings. The man was seated on the couch, but rose when Jack entered.

"Welcome, I'm glad you could make it. Won't you please sit down?"

[Jack VII]

THE MATRIX, 12:00 AM, August 1st, 2075

Noting the blue carnation described in the earlier text message, Jack examined the man more closely. Nodding, he took a seat on the couch and gave the man as much space as was allowed by the furnishings.

"Pardon me, I'm not a Matrix regular."

Jack sent a quick message to Overkill.

<<@Overkill [JustJack] I'm here. Meeting begun>>

[Lobo0705]

THE MATRIX, 12:00 AM, August 1st, 2075

The suited figure sits on the opposite side of the couch, and pauses for only a second before beginning to speak.

"Very well, in deference to the novelty of the situation for you, I'll get right to business then. As I said to you earlier, it appears that we have a common friend, and, for the moment, a common enemy. I don't have all of the details, but certainly it seems that Honeypot and you were both interested in something that Lynx is involved in, and Honeypot brought it to my door."

It was uncomfortable for Jack to listen to the stranger, the lack of features made all facial cues useless, and so it was difficult to gauge his mood. The stranger's voice itself sounded as if it were computer generated, the words coming out flat and monotone, further making an assessment of the speaker more difficult.

"Unfortunately, by the time I realized exactly what she was asking me to look into, Lynx and his crew had already compromised her 'link - they showed up at my door, and it was a narrow run thing that I avoided them. I believe we can help each other. Here is my proposal. I can provide information as to where a member or two of his crew is, and you provide the muscle necessary to remove them from the equation. Lynx doesn't like loose ends, and I prefer not to be on the run for the foreseeable future."

The stranger pauses, waiting for a response.

[Jack VII]

THE MATRIX, 12:00 AM, August 1st, 2075

Jack stared out the window of the bathroom and nodded his head. He was a little caught off guard when his persona did the same.

"That's the long and short of it. We're looking to take Lynx and his crew out. so your problems should be solved if we succeed." The ork's persona paused examining the decker's persona for a reaction. Quickly realizing that meat based perception was meaningless in the Matrix, he continued."Any help you can provide us to track down one or two of them would be a big help. We'd like to at least present Lynx with a bigger problem than you."

Jack had to remember that the stranger was just a friend of a friend and kept the team's plans to himself.

[Lobo0705]

THE MATRIX, 12:10 AM, August 1st, 2075

The other persona nodded. "Good. I believe we can cooperate with one another. I'm sending you a file now." Jack's commlink registers a new file arriving, the alert sounding in both the virtual and real world simultaneously, giving him a bit of double vision.

"Take a moment and view the footage."

Jack opens the file, a video feed. The footage is clearly shot from a camera inside someone's cybereyes, as occasionally the person filming blinks, obscuring the feed for a moment. The footage shows a large room, littered with stuffer wrappers, and other garbage. The paint is peeling from the walls, and what little light there is comes from a broken fixture in the ceiling. The occupants of the room are seven of the most run down individuals you have seen, five humans, an ork and a dwarf, who are sprawled on the floor or in the few chairs that are in the room. Each has their body locked in a rigid position by their RAS overrides as their mind is far away. Into the room comes someone familiar. A human, slightly above average height, with a round face and thick eyebrows, Jack recognizes him from the video of the murder of Officer Jackson. He throws one of the derelict human forms off of a chair, and sits down, pulls a BTL from a box in his pocket, and slots it, a smile playing across his lips. At the end of the video, a set of GPS coordinates show up, indicating where the footage was shot, and the time stamp shows this was taken last night at 10:00 PM. Jack pulls up the coordinates and shows them to be a house on S Dunkirk Street on the corner of E. Maplewood Place.

Jack looks at the stranger, and the figure says, "What you are looking at is footage of Stinger. Ex-UCAS military, he is muscle for hire and also does some Matrix work. He's not in my league, of course, but he is passable I suppose. Regardless, it seems he has acquired a nasty habit, and the one thing that I have heard about Lynx is that he can't abide addicts, which is why I suppose Stinger travels to this drekhole to score his BTLs, far away from the prying eyes of his boss. He may not be there tonight, but habits are hard to break, and so I assume he will be there again in the not too distant future."

Another alert, and another video file arrives on Jack's 'link. "I must warn you, this is not for the faint of heart. But it is relevant to our cause, I assure you."

He opens this one, and it appears to be taken from a drone flying over a forested area. It is hard to tell, precisely where, but as the drone starts to circle, Jack can see several bodies of water near one another. The camera zooms in, and near the water stand five figures in dark robes, one of which towers over the others. The robed figures stand in a semicircle around two pieces of wood bound together to form an "X" about 10 feet in height. Bound to the cross is a young hispanic woman, human or elven it is impossible to tell at this distance, and her long thick dark hair covers most of her face as she limply hangs there. One of the figures moves to the woman, picking up a large knife and a wooden bowl. He slashes her across the wrist, and lets the blood drip down into the bowl, quickly filling it. Each of the other figures steps up, throws back their hood, and is anointed with the blood of the woman before drinking deeply from the bowl. When the large figure, last in line throws back his hood and kneels down so that the human can reach his head, Jack instantly recognizes Truck. Rather than drink from the bowl, the troll stands and moves to the woman, and bites into her neck directly. She throws her head back, and fortunately for Jack there is no audio on the feed, so he is not forced to endure her screams. As the video zooms out, Jack notices that there are two other "X"s in the sand near the water, empty. Again, the video ends with a set of coordinates. A quick check shows it to be the eastern shore of Upper Derby Lake. Jack looks at the stranger in shock as he realizes the time stamp shows the footage is live.

"When my little birdies bring me information to view and sell, it is rarely pleasant, but I am fortunate that I do not have to see something like that too often. As you can see, this is going on right now. Today, tomorrow, and Sunday are a new moon period. You will notice that there were three crosses. I believe that if you were to go to that spot at midnight tomorrow, you would find him again, only the second cross would be full, with the third cross being used Sunday at midnight." The figure shakes his head.

"I'm not sure whether I find Truck or Lynx to be the more despicable of the group. Truck has his devotion to the dark gods, while Lynx worships the almighty nuyen. Both have committed atrocities that have earned them a special place in the hells. Unfortunately, I do not have any surveillance footage of the others. Although I will continue to listen peruse the Matrix in search of them. I wish I could help more."

[Jack VII]

THE MATRIX, 12:10 AM, August 1st, 2075

Jack took a few seconds to digest everything he had heard.

When he had gathered himself, his persona replied, "Amigo... I'll call you Amigo for now if that's okay with you. This is more than I expected and appreciate the assistance. I'll have to convince the rest of the crew about this, but the video footage should be helpful. One question, if I may... from what you've seen, is Stinger the extent of their Matrix support? Between a databomb that our decker told me about earlier and the trace of Honeypot's commlink, it seemed like they had more capability in that department. Again, I'm not that familiar with it."

Jack wished Overkill would have been able to be here, he probably would have understood much more about what the decker was saying.

[Lobo0705]

THE MATRIX, 12:10 AM, August 1st, 2075

The suited figure shakes his head. "Child's play. Setting a data bomb and tracing a commlink are well within Stinger's capabilities. But true mastery of the virtual world? This is beyond him."

The suited figure stands. "I will contact you when I have more information. Good luck."

[Jack VII]

THE MATRIX, 12:10 AM, August 1st, 2075

"Muchas Gracias, Amigo" Jack replied. His persona moved to shake hands, but the mysterious persona faded from the Matrix before the action could be completed. With nothing left to do, Jack rebooted his commlinkl, his fading persona leaving the virtual room empty save the furniture.

Closing the large AR window, Jack checked the video feeds from the drones to make sure nothing had slipped up that he might have missed. Making his way out of the bathroom and slipping past the carcass on the floor of the bedroom, the ork slipped into the dining room. Seeing Grease and Overkill still tinkering with the broken devices in front of him, Jack said, "Hey guys, I got leads. Good ones."

[Always Overkill]

Abandoned house, S. Flanders Ct, 12:10 AM, August 1st, 2075


Drave pulled his head up from his work and said, "Ja? What do you have, Mein Genosse?"

[Jack VII]

Abandoned house, S. Flanders Ct, 12:12 AM, August 1st, 2075

As the men continued tinkering with the devices, Jack authorized MARKS invitations for both Grease and Overkill on the files the mysterious decker had provided. Turning to the rigger, he said, "Alright Grease, so one of the calls Pat made when I asked him to look into the folks tailing Amy and Overkill was to a fairly paranoid decker. Pat never heard back from the guy, but I think I did. Someone who is most likely that hombre contacted me earlier tonight and set up a meet at a VR club. Considering how paranoid the guy seemed to be, I decided to limit who knew about the meet. We needed leads and I didn't want the guy to skip because he thought I might be chatty about it. I told Overkill because I wanted someone to know what was going down in case anything happened."

"I met with the guy for the last ten minutes or so. He claims he barely got away from Lynx's crew and is hoping that whatever job we're working on will get rid of his problem. He managed to track down two of our targets operating on a mostly independent basis. The first clip is of Stinger. He's apparently a bit of a decker, the contact I spoke to thinks he traced Honeypot's commlink and was probably responsible for the data bomb Overkill ran into earlier. On top of that, he's also a chiphead. Lynx apparently frowns on that, so Stinger slips away to feed his need. You'll notice this is the same guy who killed Officer Jackson at the Stuffer Shack."

"The next video is Truck, that ugly fraggin' troll I ran into earlier today. If you check the time stamp of the feed, you'll notice this just happened. You also might notice the woman looks a lot like the picture of Renata we have. I don't know drek about magic, but it looks like magic to me. We can ask Amy about it when she wakes up, I guess. The contact said that this ritual apparently coincides with the moon cycles or some drek, the point being that they are probably going to sacrifice someone each night for the next two days at this time. Which gives us a chance to take them down."

"Now, what we do with this information depends largely on whether we believe this guy is the real deal. It could just be an elaborate trap."

[DrZaius]

Abandoned house, S. Flanders Ct, 12:12 AM, August 1st, 2075

After reviewing the video, Grease is uncharacteristically quiet for some time.

"It definitely could be a trap. I'm not sure how I'd do it, but this seems close."

Setting down his tools, he rubs his hands clean of his namesake on a towel and starts to pace around the small room.

"Even if it IS a trap, I think we have to take the risk. We've had no luck so far tracking Lynx down, and I worry we're running out of time. It's only a matter of time before they find out where we're holed up and come visit us with some heavy ordinance."

He looks at Jack, then back at Overkill. His eyes wander over towards the door to the room where Amy is sleeping.

"I wish I didn't know she had kids... At any rate; we need to make a move here, and this is our best lead so far. If we just grab Stinger, that's one person we can definitively tie to one of these crimes. We can probably collect based on that alone, if we get him to talk. Frankly, if the outcome of this was that we sent Lynx a message saying, "Got what we needed from your buddy; his nasty habit cost him. No bad blood between us." I'd be fine with that."

His mouth turns down in distaste. "I'd love to take Lynx out, but if we can't get to him and we can still find out who is boss is, I'm ok letting him continue his murdering ways provided he isn't gunning for us."

[Jack VII]

Abandoned house, S. Flanders Ct, 12:14 AM, August 1st, 2075

"The contact pretty much said all the right things, but they could have caught him and tortured him to get there, so there's no telling. The one thing that makes me think it isn't a trap is that he gave us two options. Why would they split their options rather than have us focus on one?"

Jack scratched his chin momentarily. "Like you said though, it probably doesn't matter. These are our best leads at the moment. Here's what I was thinking... we drop a drone at the chip-shack that Stinger visits so we can get a head's up for when he's going to be there. For Truck, we pretty much have a fixed time and location where we know he's going to appear. That sounds like a great opportunity for an ambush to me. I am a little worried about all that possible mojo, though."

Jack frowned, "As far as Lynx, I have the feeling he's not really a 'let bygones be bygones' kind of guy unless he respects or fears you, like Argent. I'm not sure if taking out some of his crew is going to get him off of our back." If the ork was going to be honest with himself, he wanted to take Lynx down hard.

"You got anything, Overkill?"

[Always Overkill]

Abandoned house, S. Flanders Ct, 12:14 AM, August 1st, 2075


"I believe you are right on two counts, Jack." Drave replied, fearing he was sounding repetitive with his continued agreement with Jack's reasoning and assessments. "Giving us multiple options makes no sense if this were a trap, why split their resources defending two possible objectives? That also looked like some serious zauberhaft Truck was involved in, I don't think they would risk endangering whatever ritual they are doing just to lure us in."

He breathed heavily before continuing, "There is also no chance Lynx lets us walk if we take out a couple of his crew. He knows the word is out that he is looking for us, and he most likely couldn't take the hit to his reputation that letting us go would give him."

"Stinger looks like the easy play, he will be alone and likely unable to defend himself if the BTLs he is using have kicked in. Einen Hinterhalt legen Truck and those Magier looks complicated; and I am not sure it would be wise for us to even try and bring him in alive. We would need to hit with extreme precision to pull that off without suffering a tödlich counterattack."

[Jack VII]

Abandoned house, S. Flanders Ct, 12:15 AM, August 1st, 2075

Jack nodded at both men. "I agree that Stinger is probably the easy play, but we don't know when he's going to show up again. He was there last night... I guess it depends on his habit. We should make a plan we can execute on short notice to go bag him next time he uploads. If the other chipheads are slotted, they won't be putting up much of a fight, but I'd bet there are going to be a few guards there at the least."

Frowning, Jack concluded, "I think we're all in agreement that Truck is going to be a hard take down, but I think we have to do it. I know we're supposed to separate biz from personal, but this crew, whoever the frag they are, seem like they're up to some dirty drek and clearly have no problems with human sacrifice. On the plus side, we might be able to get Ramirez to make an allowance that would let us kill any of this crew if they were about to murder someone. Let's wait until Amy wakes up and see what she has to say after seeing the footage, she probably has a better idea about all of this."

Jack couldn't quite pin it down, but the human sacrifice file bothered him more than any other part of this run to date.

[Chrome Head]

Abandoned house, S. Flanders Ct, 12:20 AM, August 1st, 2075

"Beep beep.." The sound of the commlink alarm wakes Amy up with a start. Ah I feel much better now, the headache is gone.

Sitting up, she lifts up her shirt and looks at the bandaged wound, thinking she would finally put an end to this. Concentrating she begins the healing process by touching the wound with her hand, and keeps her concentration up until the skin and flesh is mostly hole again. Almost as good as new.

She walks out the door and into the larger room where she finds all three other runners. "What's with that look? What's going on?"

Abandoned house, S. Flanders Ct, 12:22 AM, August 1st, 2075

After Jack fills her in on the whole story and she has watched both videos on her 'link, she tries to answer their questions about the magic involved as best she can. "This ritual could well be blood magic, but I'm not an expert, especially regarding that kind of obscure, deranged, ritualistic crap. It could just be a bunch of grown men playing warlock for all I know, I just dunno, but I'd have a better idea if I were there to see the site for myself, probably even during the day there will be traces left of what goes on. I'll have to speak with a friend of mine about this, he was my mentor in the spiritual arts and is more knowledgeable than me. I bet he might even get as mad as we are with those fraggers if it's corrupted magic as I suspect."

"If we can remove Stinger and Truck separately before the whole crew can react, we'll be one step ahead of them, but that might require excellent timing."

[Jack VII]

Abandoned house, S. Flanders Ct, 12:22 AM, August 1st, 2075

Jack's stomach twisted a bit when Amy said 'blood magic' but he nodded when she finished. "I think we might be able to pull that off. Bagging Stinger is probably going to be pretty obvious, but I bet there are enough people out there who would have problems with what Truck and that cult or whatever were up to that it could be any number of people who took him out, assuming Lynx's crew finds out about it. !Demonio!, they might just assume the ritual went bad. Magic's pretty unpredictable, right?"