The Found Arcana - Chapter 13 [IC], Urban Exploration - 13 is the luckiest number... Options

[Jack_Spade]

Under the onslaught of AM's hacking attempt, the mag lock accepted defeat almost immediately. Mato was able to enter the cellar without problems.

As Rachel had reported, the walls were covered with shelves and marked with neat AR tags. Most of the stuff was in clear plastic bins, only larger parts lay openly there.

Apparently it was a collection of things the crew had found in their forays into abandoned buildings - the AR tags showed date and place of everything.
Going back by the date of the last video, Mato found a bin containing a bunch of half molten data chips as well as some solid state repositories. Those had to be the mentioned evidence that the hadn't published yet.

More interesting were the most recent additions. They were from three days ago and consisted of the drone/tool parts that Rachel had seen first thanks to their strong aura.

The place they had been found at was marked as Arcology Commercial and Housing Enclave - ACHE. Better known as the former Renraku Arcology.

[Thanee]

<< Can we maybe not completely ignore those bugs and deal with them before proceeding here? >>

<< It would be good to know what they sent since our arrival and whether someone got that data, already. And if not, we probably want to make sure it does not go anywhere? >>

[Beta]

"If you are OK to walk back to the house, I could head down to the dead drop and start watching, maybe set up a balloon drone if I can launch it safely. And the security on it is weak enough that if I can get to it subtly enough to direct connect I'd be able to hack it. Or for that matter, there is that one fancy hacking drone that you all picked up on a job before I joined -- the one with the rich people on an estate. The agent on it should be able to hack the billboard no problem, so if I can fly the drone in that would do it to -- provided of course that somebody isn't also surveying it and ready to intervene."

[Gilga]

Once I finish with the maglock, I move on to my next magic trick.

I shift to AR, letting my breath slow as the high of hot sim drains from my system — like sliding out of a dream that moved too fast to keep up with. Everything returns to normal speed as I type:

>> Door’s open. Now let’s find the bugs...

I grab my commlink and launch the piloting program. A moment later, a tiny MCT Fly-Spy buzzes to life from my pocket and zips into the air like a curious insect set loose.

It’s easy to forget how much tech these little things carry — each one comes with a custom suite of eight sensors, eight chances to be clever. Between this Fly-Spy and my new Flying Eye, I’ve got a toolkit built for mischief.

I guide the drone through the room, steady and deliberate. The cyberware scanner hums beneath its casing, sweeping for signal emissions and hidden tech.

Every time I find a bug, I bring the drone to a hover above it and blink its LED — a soft, rhythmic flash, like a private Morse code:
Here. Another. And another.

No commentary. Just clean, efficient work.

My eyes flick to Tamarind — searching for a flicker of approval. Or teasing. I don't think I’ve ever shown her my drones before.

I don’t have her emotional bond with them — not like she does, like they’re family — but I’m starting to get it. I’m still loyal to my little Erika, but... flying one of these? It’s surprisingly satisfying.

I text Tamarind
>> I should probably be the one hacking that device. Safest this way. If you are confident about direct connect and want to try it, invisibility would be a big help.

[Tecumseh]

<<Don't like being watched?>> Mato asks Rachel. <<I thought you liked attention.>>

Teasing, perhaps, but it can be hard to tell in a text medium.

<<As far as I'm concerned, someone trying intervene or elves appearing in trench coats would be a good thing. It gives us a lead to follow, and we need all the leads we can get.>>

<<AM, can you hack it effectively from here or is it better to do it in person? I know in-person is an easier hack, but I'm conscious of the time lost getting down there. If we're pulling the tags now, that might give them warning to go to ground or eliminate the dead drop.>>

[Gilga]

I smirk at Mato’s comeback — not wanting to escalate, but definitely enjoying the banter.

From where I sit, Rachel can just do things I can’t. Like make this whole “hooking up” thing seem effortless, natural, and somehow an integral part of life. Something people just do, like eating lunch or going to the gym. Not even worth brooding about.

As for me?

It’s more like Antarctica.

Technically, you can get there. But it’s far, freezing, and you might die before I feel comfortable enough to let you in.

Note to self: never write that in a dating app.

I refocus and send:

>> Hack yes, totally. I’ll just try until I get it right. It's a powerful host though — doing it cleanly from here without being identified? Let's say 70%. Likely, but not guaranteed. If we get direct contact, our chances jump closer to 100%.

[Thanee]

<< Depends on who's watching. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) >>

[Jack_Spade]

Unaware of the online discussion, Felicitas followed Mato into the cellar. When she saw the latest addition to the collection, she frowned:
"Really? He went to the Arcology? I wonder where they found the drones? The whole place is supposed to be completely free from all remnants of the shut down."

[Thanee]

Rachel also heads into the room, once the lock has been removed. She makes sure the door does not stay wide open, in case they missed a camera looking inside.

"That must be what he was talking about. I really hope they did not go in there. Judging from what I can sense here, that is not a good place at all."

She moves a bit closer to Felicitas and speaks in a whisper, once she realizes, that they have not talked to her much since the bugs were found.

"Sorry about the silence. We were talking on our internal comm channel. We should probably get you on there as well. This whole place is bugged. Someone was here for sure and might be watching. But, apparently, they could not make it inside this room. We expect to be followed, once we get back outside, assuming they saw the data from since when we got inside. That part is not entirely certain."

[Jack_Spade]

Felicitas stiffened for a moment, but than her acting abilities as well as her stunt abilities took over and she nodded. In a whisper she answered back:
"Do you think they got ambushed by them? If not we need to go to the Arcology. If they found an area from Pre-Crash 20 years ago, there's no telling in what danger they are right now."

[Tecumseh]

Mato loops Felicitas into a group chat with the team.

He was only about four years old when the Shutdown hit, although he knows a bit about what's happened since.

<<They have the public mall on the bottom five floors. Then there are 200 floors of public housing where, if reports are to be believed, inmates are running the asylum. The upper floors are still off-limits, and the UCAS military controls the fusion reactors in the basement.>>

<<So, top floors or subterranean. I bet there are some tunnels in the Ork Underground that can get you into the basement. The challenge then becomes avoiding the trigger-happy soldiers who, presumably, have been told to shoot first and question the corpses.>>

Perhaps not the most diplomatic thing to say in front of Felicitas, but if she wants to go in then she needs to understand the risks.

<<Do we know if Skull had any connections with the Skraacha?>> he asks Felicitas, referring to the largest gang of the Ork Underground.

<<I don't know if we should expect someone the moment we step outside. That implies that there's continual monitoring of the dead drop. Maybe there's an agent or a sprite parsing the stream, but if they're pulling data down in batches then we might have a window of opportunity.>>

[Jack_Spade]

Felicitas replied: <<Skull is a total boy scout - He always stayed away from gangs - but I know someone from them. Charlie runs a bike modding shop - pretty good prices if you don't ask where the parts are from.
I introduced Diego to him.>>

[Beta]

<<I've been looking for signs of surveillance, and I haven't spotted anything yet. Of course there could be micro-drones hidden outside taking pictures of the van or what ever, and we should do a matrix sweep, maybe visual too, before we leave to make sure we don't have a passenger like that. But at the least I don't think there is vehicle waiting to follow us.>>

<<I'm going to send that fancy drone you all inherited over towards the billboard now. It will take time to get there anyway, so we'll still have time to decide if we want its agent to try hacking, and in the meantime it can watch to see if anyone is accessing the drop.>>

Putting actions to words, she has Stitch get the drone out of its carrier, open a window and hold it outside until it is ready to fly on its own. The she meets it at the front door, and attaches one of the Kanmushi to go along for the ride -- it can always dismount to continue watching the drop if that ends up being convenient. Then she sends the pair off.

That drone really does need a name, but it is team property. I wonder what they'd think if I asked them all to sit down for a naming session?

[Gilga]

After dismantling the bugs AM begins probing the solid state drives. "Tell me your secrets, and I'll tell you mine." she says half to herself as she connects the drive.

[Jack_Spade]

AM had to fish around on Dave's desktop for the right connectors and adapters to get physical access to the the SSR. Looking around carefully in the 20 year old tech, she noticed at once, that a lot of the data had been damaged and corrupted. Still, there remained quite a lot of unspoiled information. The repository seemed to have been a part of the security system during the lockdown of the arcology.

It contained, among other things, detailed plans of all levels of the building, including hidden maintenance shafts, access panels and override codes for security doors.

With this information it was easy to plan a route into the locked upper levels of the building.

[Tecumseh]

<<Alright, ACHE it is>> Mato comms to the others. <<At least as a place to start.>>

What do you wear for this sort of thing? he wonders. Raven probably has a black catsuit for such occasions.

<<I'm going to go raid Skull's closet.>>

Mato goes looking for something that will fit him. He'll settle for an Urban Explorer jumpsuit, preferably in blacks and greys, but he holds out hope that there might be something fancy from the Ares sponsorship. Light security armor? An ork can dream.

He looks over to Felicitas. <<Are you joining, or quarterbacking from the van? We can handle it, but you're obviously invested in the outcome. But perhaps you don't want to do anything that puts your sponsorship at risk. I'm guessing your contract forbids such excursions.>>

Once he's done borrowing clothes, he works to pop open the safe he found in the bedroom.

[ Spoiler ]

(Step 1 open it up) Locksmith + Agility [Physical] vs. Maglock Rating x 2 (1 Combat Turn) Extended Test
Agility 10 + Locksmith 5 + Maglock specialization 2: 17d6t5 9 hits
vs.
Rating 4 + Rating 4: 8d6t5 2 hits, I suppose I didn't need to roll that, given that I had more hits than there were dice to resist

(Step 2 bypass anti-tamper circuits) Locksmith + Agility [Physical] (anti-tamper system rating) Test
Agility 10 + Locksmith 5 + Maglock specialization 2: 17d6t5 2 hits, yikes, Edge that
Edge reroll: 15d6t5 5 hits
vs.
Rating 4 + Rating 4: 8d6t5 3 hits

5 of 6 Edge remaining

<<Let's go check out that dead drop, since it's on the way to ACHE.>>

[Jack_Spade]

Felicitas replied:
<<I have to go back on set soon. But keep me posted. Be careful - I added the commcodes of the crew to this channel. When they are back in communication range, they should pop up in your messages.>>

Mato's raid of Skull's closet only brings about older models of Ares Victory armored collection - but there is an older model of the Big Game Hunter that fits the cyborg body well.

The safe yielded to Mato's attempts after only a few careful attempts.
Inside a few credsticks with about 70k Nuyen were accompanied by a high-end comm link as well as a bunch of data chips, labelled with dates and likely the raw data recorded from a simsense rig.

[Thanee]

<< I will also need to stop by our place to get some items from there. Won't take long. I don't really have any armored outfits other than this one, so I guess this is what I'll wear. Too bad, we do not have a few hours to prepare. I could probably provide us with a glimpse into what to expect there. >>

[ Spoiler ]

Guidance Spirits have the Divining power, but it takes several hours to do.

[Beta]

Tamarind was busy taking stock of what drones she could, and should, take with her into the arcology. Kanmushis and Flying Eyes for certain, and Kaa, her snake drone was a natural between its ability to get through small spaces and climb thanks to the gecko grip points on its body. Of course she'd bring Beauty to help keep an eye on things, and the team's fancy drone they could pick up as they went past the billboard. Then there were the delivery and balloon drones that wouldn't be a good fit inside.

The harder ones were Stitch, her Mechanic's Helper, and Toothless, her medicart. Both tracked drones were equipped with gecko grip features, mostly meant to help them climb stairs or into a truck on a too steep ramp. But for at least short distances they could even climb ductwork, and Stitches arm and Toothless's 'jaws of life' could both possibly help them bypass certain barriers or provide help. But both drones were big, especially Toothless who could function as a self-propelled and self-guided stretcher for a good sized orc. It is unfortunate how biassed some people are against strong drones, when neither Stitch nor Toothless would hurt a fly. Maybe they should stay in the van, even if Stitch will hate me going exploring without him.

She was distracted from these thoughts by some discussion of clothes and armour. "Oh, I guess my long coat isn't the best for climbing in. Then again, I'm not the best at climbing. Do we have time to look for other options, or should I just stay in my good, practical, mechanic's overalls?"

[ Spoiler ]

Even armoured clothes have an availability rating of 2, meaning to buy black-market is a minimum 6 hour delivery window (potentially shortened by good rolls I think). The book doesn't have rules for just buying gear legally because most runners don't want all of the tracking and tags and whatnot ... in this case maybe SIS doesn't either though, as they are going where they shouldn't be.

[Tecumseh]

<<We're going Downtown>> Mato comms. <<There are shops Downtown. There's a five-story mall at the bottom of the ACHE, don't you know.>>

Mato muses for a moment on the irony of shopping at ACHE before breaking and entering at ACHE.

<<We probably have time for off-the-rack shopping, but nothing custom.>>

Mato leaves the credsticks in the safe. He tosses the high-end comm to AM. Then he looks through the dates on the data chips to see if any of them are recent enough to be relevant.

He hums to himself when he finds the Big Game Hunter is Skull's closet. It is not a subtle line and would generally make you stick out like a sore thumb in an urban environment, but in this case the goal is not to be noticed. And, if he is noticed, Mato isn't certain that wearing something more subtle would go very far in convincing security that he was supposed to be there.

Mato takes the suit to have the option of using it, but he wants eyes on the scene before deciding whether to wear it or not. It's full daylight now but Trece and his friends usually moved around at night. What worked for them might not work for us, Mato thinks to himself.

[Thanee]

<< When we go to the mall, we can change our appearance with illusion spells. It would make it harder to track us there, and depending on what we are going to do there, things won't come back to us easily. Just need to make sure that we do it in a place where the change won't be too obvious. And maybe split up when we go into the mall. That would mostly leave the car as an easy source for tracking. Maybe we can do something about that as well? And then there is the question of commlinks and SINs as well, I suppose. How tight is security there? Do you have to have your commlink open and accessible? Also, we can totally customize clothes, improve their fit, and all that. >>

[Jack_Spade]

Mato found that the date on the most recent chip corresponds with the dates on the drone parts that were in the cellar. That alone makes it more than likely that this is the material shot in their retrieval.

Now that Raven thought about it (Area Knowledge Seattle Downtown) she remembered some facts about the ACHE

[ Spoiler ]

The 320-story, nearly one-kilometer tall, massive building is taller than anything else in Seattle and dominates its skyline; no other skyscraper comes close to its mass or can obscure it from any angle on the skyline. The former Renraku Arcology stands where PioneerSquare, the old urban heart of the city of Seattle before it became Seattle Metroplex, once stood. Its foundation covers 56 city blocks

The ACHE remains an eyesore in downtown Seattle. A huge building filled with the poorest of the poor, held here in a kind of mega-prison in the middle of the richest area of the metroplex. And a welcome reason for the UCAS federal government to maintain large contingents of troops in Seattle just in case the independence movement flared up again.

The ACHE caused a fair amount of scandal and conflict during its time under the administration of the Metroplex government. In 2074, a bill that would reactivate ACHE's hydroponic facilities and turn them into large-scale producers under the Metroplex's direction was overturned at the last minute by the Democratic Party, depriving Brackhaven Investments and its partner companies (who would have received the operating contracts from the Metroplex) of some Nuyen 100 million in revenue. Finally, in July 2077, ACHE's cooling systems failed during the record heat wave between July 9 and July 15, as the cooling systems of the ACHE were shut down. July 9-15, as the Downtown district government under Nikola Taul had cut back massively on ACHE maintenance to free up money for other projects, resulting in temperatures inside the building exceeding 50°C and the deaths of 564 residents. Regulation also failed because ACHE's electronics on some floors could not withstand the temperatures and failed completely.

[Tecumseh]

<<Got some data chips here with dates that match the dates of the artifacts. Let's watch them on the drive to Downtown. If they don't have a route then we'll connect with Felicitas' friend, Charlie. Odds are good the route will take us to him anyway.>>

<<The saw blades, syringes, clamps, and electrodes are not encouraging, especially if they're radiating as much pain as you say. There have been rumors in the shadows for years about what happened during the Shutdown. There were wild stories about horrible experiments, like Frankenstein's monster, or a slasher film. Always hard to separate the fact from the fiction. Chummers be using the Shutdown as backdrop for their ghost stories. And yet... and yet... here we have things like look like they're out of a nightmare.>>

<<Let's be ready for a hostile environment, especially one that's not conducive to magic. This won't be a tickling contest. Tam, we'll lean on your family. I can't promise that they'll come back unscathed, but they'll help keep us from harm.>>

Mato is definitely going to take the Big Game Hunter now.

[Beta]

<<I don't want to disappoint, but as a reminder I don't have any of them armed with anything heavier than a taser, and at that it is only five of them that have even that -- Uncle and the three Aunties, and Beauty -- but she doesn't get around on her own. I didn't want anything too illegal, and we are investigators, not shadowrunners or something like that.>>

<<Oh, there is also the heavily modified drone with the agent, the one that is on its way to the dead drop. It has an actual pistol. Still, if really scary things pop out, one pistol and some tasers may help, but we'd best have plans on how stop Scary Monsters ourselves. My drones absolutely will scout in front and watch behind, and try to give us warning, and they know the risks involved in that, but they just are not set up to be a full security screen. I guess I will bring my long coat, and my Ingram hidden underneath it, as well as the hacking dongle for my phone as back-up for AM in that department.>>

[Tecumseh]

Phone, what's a phone? Mato wonders before his mnemonic enhancers kick in. Oh, right, Tamarind is old. She means a commlink.

<<Just looking for more eyes, not fire support. This is a rescue op, not a strike force. Drones or no drones, we're not going to have the firepower to stand and bang. If we're shooting, it should probably be covering fire to suppress and maneuver.>>

Mato packs up his gear and readies to leave.