Mr. Smith & Sledge
Sunday 8/17/70 21:37:00

"Watashi ga inai to ayashimareru darou. Shinitakunai kara, iu toori ni suru."

Sledge
Sunday 8/17/70 21:37:05

It took a moment to rerun everything through the linguasoft to double check, but now Sledge was getting a better sense of where this was going. Under her mask she snarled silently at everyone in the room. This wasn't much different then what she was used to, people not thinking through the consequences. It was one thing when the result might simply be ripping out a sidewalk and repouring the cement because someone forgot to lay in the underchannel waste tube. This was a whole 'nother kind of mess.

Sledge laid aside her hammer, the handle within easy reach. Reaching into a couple of her pockets she pulled out some plastic gloves and slid them on. Then she pulled out two other bags, one with a brick of doughy plastic, the other with a small plastic screen with a couple of backing pins. After a brief scan of the man tied to the chair she reached into the bag of doughy plastic and pulled out a chunk of it. While vigorously shaping the clay like dough into a thin flat shape she flipped through some mental commands.

User her connection to Mr Smith, <<C4. Detonator codes... after the safety lecture.>>

Visible to everyone the small screen flashed a number 5 and started counting down once per second.

Sledge was busy working.

Mr. Smith & Sledge
Sunday 8/17/70 21:37:06

Terukazu Kazama grew visibly nervous, waiting for a response as the seconds ticked by. At every sound in the van, his body twitched.

Mr. Smith
Sunday 8/17/70 21:37:07

Mr. Smith was busy thinking over his options. The offer would have been a good one if Smith felt like putting his life in this scared Japanese man's hands. Even if Smith pulled off an brilliant performance, the ruse would probably be discovered by the fact that Terukazu would be sweatting bullets. However, without physical keys, in order to access the building without this guard, he was going to need to spoof his commlink, and get some very detailed instructions on how to properly approach.

And then there was the fact that Hiro would be suspicious if Mr. Smith arrived unannounced. Of course, Smith was pretty sure that Deerwalker could make him look exactly like Terukazu, if need be - but Smith's ability to odds of pulling off pretending to be this very specific person were only slightly better than his odds of pulling off perfect Japanese.

This sucks.

Then Sledge produced some clay and started molding it. It took a second for Mr. Smith to realize what she was working with, but when it did, his eyes lit up. Holy shit. The hacker brought C4! What the hell sort of people am I working with? Suddenly the timer started ticking down. 5... 4... 3... Oh shit, did she set it off. Mr. Smith looked back and forth between Cal and Sledge as the last seconds tick by. 2... 1...

Nobody died. The timer started over again at 5, and Mr. Smith calmed down - understanding what it was she was setting up. Once again, Smith was impressed by her preparedness - although he wasn't sure the situation warranted high-explosives.

Returning to the guard he responds, "[i]Very well. You've made a good point. We will place explosives on you to insure that you don't do anything stupid. I will be taking your ammunition, but leaving your weaponry on your person so nothing looks amis - and our hacker may access your headware for our safety. You can tell Hiro that I am a new trainee that got dumped on you at the last second." Mr. Smith then smiled, becoming rather pleased with the situation. "In exchange for this good idea, and your cooperation, once our objective is complete - and Hiro has left the building, I would be willing to knock you out, return your equipment, and leave you there - offering you plausible deniability, safety after-the-fact, and the hope of maintaining your position. There is no reason Parasoft needs to know that you helped us, and as I mentioned before - you are not the enemy. I would like to help you keep your job - you seem like a nice man."

"Do we have a deal?"

Sledge
Sunday 8/17/70 21:37:30

Sledge had worked the clay into a thin flat necklace shape. holding it up in one hand she grabbed her hammer and flipped the hammer end up. She then slid the handle into one of the innumerable utility hoops on her jump suit, hanging the hammer at her waist. Moving to stand behind the man strapped in the chair, her bulk moved Cal and Deerwalker back a bit.
Surprisingly the van rocked only very little.

Staring at the back of the man's neck, taking measure, she suddenly pointed to the headjammer.

<<@Mr Smith:: Hacker. Where the vut is the hacker. Do I have to do EVERYTHING! I haven't seen any sign of this "groovy" hacker, have you?>>

Mr. Smith
Sunday 8/17/70 21:37:30

<<@Sledge:: I have not seen him. If Cal doesn't produce him after this meeting - I'll handle the man's commlink myself. >>

Mr. Smith hid the fact that he was half-convinced that Sledge was Cal's mystery hacker. That not being the case, Smith was sure that Cal knew someone who could pass as a hacker - but would almost rather take things into his own hands at this point.

Sledge & Mr. Smith
Sunday 8/17/70 21:37:30

When Sledge pulled out the exlosives, there was a sharp intake of breath from both Deerwalker and Cal. The blond started to move toward the door, but Cal grabbed her arm and stood there, sweating bullets, determined to show he had the guts to be running this job.

Once Mr. Smith explained the plan, the guards eyes got so wide they threatened to escape the blindfold. After taking a moment to catch his breath, he stammered, "Hai, hai. Wakatta. Wakatta. I uiru herupu yuu. I uiru herupu yuu."

Sledge
Sunday 8/17/70 21:38:03

always pick the best person for the job...

Sledge held the necklace of plastique up in one hand and pointed a hand at Deerwalker, then jabbed it down at the top buttons of the guards shirt. She waited impatiently with the woman expertly undid the guards shirt and opened it revealingly. Sledge waved her back away and looped the plastique around the guards neck, mildly annoyed that the blonde woman had still taken the time to run her fingers over the poor mans chest provocatively. The detonator she carefully places against the man's spine, the display against his skin so the numbers wouldn't be displayed through his shirt, and she carefully built up the plastique around the pins that would trigger the charge.

<<Mr. Smith:: Maybe you boys can settle this Hacker business for me while I do this? From what I can tell our little drive here will leave a data trail on the traffic grid, and if we don't want to blow this guys head off right away, we need to deal with his comm.>>

Once Sledge was done, Deerwalker moved to rebutton the shirt, but Sledge snarled at her and waved her away and did it herself, her hands now free. She knew how to do this, having done it often enough for Andy, but unlike this blond woman who could probably do it in the dark with one hand behind her back, Sledge needed two hands to do it.

Sledge stepped back when she was finished, then glared in Cal's direction. that woman deserves what she's got...

Mr. Smith & Sledge
Sunday 8/17/70 21:38:03

As Sledge and Deerwalker set teh explosives on the guard, Mr. Smith turns his attention to Cal, following Sledge's suggestion. "Okay, we're going to need the hacker to access this guy's headware after we release him - which won't happen until we get there. We're goign to need him to monitor the guy's actions, and make sure he's not doing anything stupid like callign for help, or warning his partner. Sledge and I have a few other requests, but I'd rather pass the message along myself. When are we going to meet this 'mystery hacker'?"

"Ya won't, man. I'm happy to pass any information along, but, like, the hacker will be doing his thing from out there..." he sorts waves his hands around in the air like the hacker is a ghost or something. "... while you two are doing your thing here."

Mr. Smith looked a little bit annoyed. Holding back information wasn't part of the "new deal". In fact, it went directly against his condition that he "know things". Oh well, I'll play Cal's game. I think I know a bit more about computers than he does.

"Fine. For starters, I'm going to need to be broadcasting a comm - same as him." Smith gestured back at the guard, and noticed Deerwalker running her finger along his chest while finishing undressing him. "Not the exact same commcode - but a similar one, and producing the same sort of traffic. Once the hacker gets inside, that should be easy enough to dupe - but for now, could you have him spoof my commcode ID. I suggest he does it to everyone, as it will really help clean up our datatrail." As he spoke, he moved his hands around in the air, quickly putting together a new account for the mystery hacker to use on his metalink. Mr. Smith was more than capable of spoofing his own commcode ID - but the idea was to get the hacker to connect to his commlink... then he could communicate without using Cal as a middle-man. "Here is an account he can use." Mr. Smith forwarded some information to Cal's comm, and then set up a few commands to watch for users in the system, and alert him when another one logged in. He wanted to at least message the hacker, if not grab whatever commcode he was using so he could message him later if need be.

As the action continued, Mr. Smith paused from his side-conversation with Cal every once in a while to calm the guard. Apparantly he had realyl struck a nerve with whatever he had said earlier to intimidate him - probably the vagueness of his threats led the guard to imagine his own worst fears. Mr. Smith was a little disappointed that he didn't get to bust out his new toy - but with the guard blindfolded, it wouldn't have had the same intimidation-factor. As he gave Cal the details of the new plan, he started to sift throug hthe guard's discarded weaponry - manually removing all of the ammo from the gun, and all of the spare clips. He wanted the guard to apepar armed as usual, but had no intention of letting him keep a loaded weapon. Pointing at the stun-baton, Smith says, "Yeah, and if there is some way the hacker can turn this thing off for the next hour, that would be excellent." Mr. Smith wasn't certain the thing was even wireless. It probably had the capability, but for safety's sake, it was probably turned off at the moment. The guard wasn't even on duty. Smith mostly suggested it out loud, so that Cal could think about how useful it would be to have the hacker right here, rather than hidden away where the rest of the team can't communicate with him.

"And what are these for?" Mr. Smith gestured at the handcarts and the boxes on the other side of the van - apparantly not part of the guard's confiscated equipment. Mr. Smith's face was serious, he wanted some sort of response from Cal. The deal was, he was gonna start knowing things - that, and he was supposed to get introduced to the team.

Mr. Smith & Sledge
Sunday 8/17/70 21:45:00

The van was now en-route to the facility. The guard was still blindfolded and tied up - since most of the team was riding in the back. Sledge was brooding and occationally snarling at people - visiably upset with what she was seeing tonight. This seemed to be putting Cal out of sorts - as it was pretty clear now that wanting to make a good impression was second only to succeeding. Deerwalker and Mr. Smith were sitting across from them, absorbed in conversation about the disguise. The physical mask was good. Mr. Smith as actually quite impressed with her spell, and borrowing a mirror had her concentrate on a couple of minor changes before he felt the illusion was complete. He hadn't often complimented Deerwalker on anything she had done (mostly because he had so often seen her doing exactly nothing) but this derserved some recognition, so Smith spent some of the ride talking to Deerwalker about magic, illusions, shamanism and other topics that he knew very little about - and even he could never hope to perform. She had the same sort of aloofness that she always did, though, and Mr. Smith started intertaining himself in AR - looking up Japanese things, listening to some music, and messaging Sledge and other members of the team to try to make sure everyone had the right level of awareness. Using AR messages helped mask the fact that Mr. Smith seemed to be trying to cover for Cal where he thought things hadn't been explained well enough, or where certain members of the team (whose eyes were all bloodshot right now) might have forgotten something.

The other hippies in the back seemed to be talking with one another about some band or concert they had recently seen. They kept trying to pull Cal into their conversation, but the leader had a lot on his mind, and prefered not to be drawn into such an unprofessional topic.

Yoshito Satou & Sledge
Sunday 8/17/70 21:56:00

The van was now approaching its destination, and Cal's face lit up with renewed vigor. Victory was in sight, and things hadn't completely fallen apart. "Okay, you guys ready?" From one side of the van, Deerwalker and Yoshito Satou gave a thumbs up - from the other, Sledge just nodded unpleasently.

"Okay, lets untie the guard," said Yoshito/Smith. "I'll take off the blindfold once we're outside to make sure he doesn't see anyone." In Japanese, he said to the guard, "Okay, its showtime. Remember what I said, and you will be fine - miss-step, and there won't be enough of you left to send back to Japan."

Mr. Smith & Sledge
Sunday 8/17/70 21:38:03

Mr. Smith spent a whole lot of time talking. Though it looked like no matter what they tried they weren't going to actually meet this hacker. Sledge could almost understand, she didn't want to be with most of this group either, they set her on edge. The one thing you learned working in construction was the consequence of not thinking through what you were doing. And one thing she knew for sure was that it was unlikely any of tonight's work would be covered by a company health insurance policy.

When Mr Smith pointed at the stun baton, she simply grabbed it and with a few twists decoupled the capacitor from the battery. She had bitter memories of powered stun batons.

The entire ride to the place both tense and boring, only interrupted when the blonde woman did something to make Mr Smith look different. It was spooky and unnerved her a bit. Anything that she didn't know exactly how it worked, and apparently couldn't learn to do was a real bother to her.

Once they arrived, she just nodded. And watched as...

Mr Smith went to work

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 21:51:36

The van swung easily into the Idenshitech parking lot. It was out of sight of the foyer windows, and though riddled with cameras, Cal assured them that those had been taken care of.
Like the rest of the facility.
Except for the guard.
Mr. Smith opened the back and hopped out. Then he helped the blindfolded Teru. Once the doors were closed, the blindfold came off.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 21:58:00
Mr. Smith (a.k.a. Yoshito Satou) - Security Guard
PAN - Passive (or Active if that is more convincing)

As Mr. Smith, disguised as Yoshito Satou, escorted the terrified Terukazu Kazama towards the main doors he whispered in Japanese, "Try not to look so nervous - I don't want you to blow us up any more than you do." He decided to keep Cal's "big surprise" to himself for the time being. Telling Teru would just freak him out even more - and that could only hurt their chances right now.

As the reached the door, Terukazu reached out and entered some sort of AR passcode into some invisible virtual terminal. The other Parashield security guard looked up from his booth just inside the door, and seemed initially alarmed, but then recognised Terukazu and waited until they got inside to see what was going on.

"Terukazu, who is that with you?"

"This is Yoshito Satou, he's the new guy."

"What new guy?"

"You... didn't get the message?"

Mr. Smith could see that Terukazu was starting to sweat, so he decided to steal the spotlight for a second. Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward and bowed very formally towards Hiro. "Good evening, Hiro. It is a pleasure to meet you. Please think well of me. I will work very hard." His speech was respectful - fitting for a trainie who ranks below a full-time guard, and he turned on his trademark charm - wondering how much of it would come through the illusion.

What was most impressive, though, was his fluency. Having heard Mr. Smith stumble through even the most basic Japanese sentences in the van, Terukazu thought for sure that this couldn't be the same man. Yoshito spoke with confidence, speed, and precision that sounded like he had been speaking Japanese his whole life. Once or twice he slipped and mispoke, but was luckily able to play it off as a similar word or meaning - quickly turning his formal introduction to the other guard into pleasent small-talk about the company, the weather, and Yoshito's trip from Japan to Seattle.

Mr. Smith dominated the conversation, and performed admirably. Terukazu, on the other hand, felt as though his nerves were shot - and he didn't appreciate being forced to stand around and act normally while his captor made small-talk with someone who could get them all killed. After a little reminding, Hiro laughed, and agreed that he should get going - he was eager to get back to the dorm and get something to drink. With a pleasent exchange of goodbyes, Hiro left the complex completely comfortable in the situation, and eager to spend some more time with the new recruit - he had promised to show him around to some of the more exciting Seattle attractions this weekend.

As soon as he left, Terukazu slumped against the wall, exhaling and mumbling in Japanese. "You did well," Mr. Smith said, loosing his proficiency in Japanese almost as quickly as its necessity. "However, there has been a slight change in the plan." Terukazu's eyes widened.

"No, please, no. I've done everything you asked." He had feared that his captors wouldn't live up to their end of the deal - but it was clear that Teru thought he had gotten through the worst of it, and now feared his night had just begun.

"Trust me," continued Mr. Smith, raising a hand to calm the Japanese man. "I don't like this any more than you do - but I will keep my promise to you.... Not here, though. You see, the people who hired me had another suprise for us both. That explosive you are wearing is just the tip of the iceburg - once they are done doing whatever it is they intend to do... they plan to ruduce this building to rubble."

Terukazu was frozen for a second or two, as it all sunk in. "I'm afraid there isn't going to be much of a job left for you to salvage, tomarrow morning - but perhaps Parashield will relocate your dorm to another facility." Mr. Smith was actually very upset. Nobody was supposed to get hurt - and yet, somehow, he had known that Cal's "master plan" was going to cost this honest hard-working guard his job. Then, at the last minute, Cal informed him that he was going to put them all out of work.

The only thing that kept Mr. Smith from bringing up his displeasure was the fact that he agreed with Cal about the nature of the work done at this facility. It needed to stop, and once it stopped, there would be no need to guard it. Mr. Smith just hoped that Terukazu, Hiro, and the other security guards would find more employment soon - it wasn't their fault that any of this was happening.

As quickly as Terukazu was snapping back to his senses, Mr. Smith had produced a taser from a concealed holster in his suit (which was further disguised by Deerwalker's illusion). "So, we can do this one of two ways. Either I knock you out right now, throw you back in the van, and keep you safe until the fat lady sings - then drop you off somewhere and let you figure out how to explain how you survived the explosion unharmed.... or I put a gun to your head and keep you looking away while my employers go inside to do their thing - then, when we're all finished here, the two of us walk outside, and I knock you out a safe distance from the building and leave you here to be found by your friends when news of the explosion reaches them.... Again, you're on your own to explain why we bothered to spare you - but at least you won't be at our mercy for as long. So, which will it be?"

"Either way, lay down, and put your hands behind your head...."

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 21:58:00
Sledge
PAN - Hidden

Sledge waited till Mr Smith was on his way before making her move. Most of the ride she'd been standing and swaying with the movement of the van, but she hadn't missed Cal's little pantomime when asked about the boxes.

The door closed and she flipped out a little razor and opened the carton and peered inside.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 21:58:05

Cal made no move to stop the ork observer's snooping, but stammered, "Fight the power, cerri. Ain't no more animal comrades getting tortured in this chamber of horrors never again!" His smile was a bit too forced.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 21:58:30
Mr. Smith (a.k.a. Yoshito Satou) - Security Guard
PAN - Passive

Cold as ice, Mr. Smith moved around the guard, getting into position and partially to keep himself from having to look at the wimpering man's face. It was an impossible choice, and Mr. Smith took no pleasure in having to present it to him. Outside, he knew his allies were waiting to make their entrance - and he didn't want this thing to take any longer than it had to. "Oyasuminasai, Terukazu-san."

Mr. Smith kicked the back of the man's legs which were already weak with fear - forcing him to his knees. Then lowered the taser gun to the back of his head - like he had seen a hundred times in ganger or hitter movies. The only difference was in those movies, the bad-ass with the gun was preparing to kill the person on the ground - and in Mr. Smith's case, he was just going to knock him out for a while. Of course, that didn't make him feel a whole lot better. He certainly wouldn't want to take a stun-baton to the face if he could help it.

Taking a moment to steel himself for what he was about to do, he breathed deep and began removing the C4 explosive - messaging Sledge to make sure he was doing it right. He didn't want to set them off, but he didn't want to risk having his taser do it either. Once the explosives were secure, Mr. Smith said he was sorry in Japanese, and then activated the weapon's melee stun feature, pressing it against the back of the man's head.

Even after trying to prepare himself, he felt a cold chill enter his body when the electricity fired. The guard yelped, then went silent as he spasmed, then it fell forward and laid still on the ground. Adam quickly messaged Cal signalling that the coast was now clear - and then knelt beside the fallen guard to check that his taser hadn't caused too much damage. Electricity and brains don't mix well, and Mr. Smith was no street-doc, but he knew enough about biology to think that he might be able to find a pulse or check for bleeding.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 21:58:30
Sledge
PAN - Hidden

She'd sealed up the box right away. Then just waited for everyone to get moving. The van moved again, then the doors opened and Cal and Deerwalker got out and stepped through the facility doors and looked in on Mr Smith. Seeing the guard on the floor, she pushed past everyone and quickly knelt down and checked the man's condition. A moment later she stood up again, backed away, and glanced around the room.

It was the first time she'd looked at Cal since she'd decided what to do to him.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 21:59:30
Mr. Smith (a.k.a. Yoshito Satou) - Security Guard
PAN - Passive

After Sledge checks out Teru's body, Mr. Smith drags it into the booth, out of sight from the outside and from the foyer (should anyone walk in while the team is doing their thing). Taking his position in the booth, he feels a bit useless while everyone else is carting in the explosives - but he is glad to be "safe" where he is. Mr. Smith wasn't really comfortable with the explosive idea to begin with - and had no idea who Cal hired to cook that stuf up. Based on his record so far tonight, Mr. Smith was fairly sure he wouldn't be told, should he bother to ask.

After everyone is inside, Smith salutes Cal, and asks, "Anything else? or should I just keep an eye on the door and the van?"

Mr. Smith already knew that the plan was for him to "sit tight," but it made him feel useless and nervous - so he thought he'd give Cal a second chance to assign him something else to do.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:01:00

"No man, you did GREAT! Wow, you are the shit, man. So now you just gotta sit tight and look sharp, man. The hacker'll let you know if anyone is headed your way," answered Cal. Deerwalker smiled, and in her smile was a promise.

A couple of the hacky-sackers started unloading their homemade mayhem in the lobby, setting it here and there. It was obviousl to Sledge that the placement was random, with no thought for maximizing structural damage. Cal and Deerwalker, with another two hippies trailing with handcarts, moved straight for the doors into the building proper.

Assured that the guard was fine, Sledge caught up with a few strides, in time to hear Cal talk into the commlink - "Going in th....oooh, right on!" Before he'd been able to finish his instructions to the hacker, the doors he'd wanted opened had swung wide, revealing another, more hospitable reception area, with several hallways leading off of it and two banks of elevators. As they entered, lights started coming on.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:02:27
Sledge
PAN - Hidden

<<@Mr Smith:: You'll need to drag yourself and your new friend at least 70 meters clear before they start the party. The primary isn't going to be that effective, but this kind of facility usually has enough secondary effects, and who the vut knows whatever will be let loose.

And can you access the building access logs and internal surveillance from there? Probably good to double check there's no one running a 3rd shift here.>>

Sledge stalked after Cal and when he paused, she spoke through her mask, making an effort to be heard clearly, "You are certain the place is clear?"

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:02:30

"Totally certain, sistah."

"Except for the furry ones," added Deerwalker, "But that will change very soon."

As if on cue, Sledge's commlink chirped with an IM from Mr. Smith - <<Building confirmed clear. Smith.>>

The four merry draino-bomb fairies dispersed with their handcarts down the various hallways, stopping here and there to unload one of their boxes and prime the charge.

But Cal and Deerwalker headed for an elevator, which opened upon their approach. They went up to the top floor, and once there proceeded easily, lights coming on and doors opening as if by magic.

Finally, they came to the end of a long hallway and on their left was an unobtrusive door. Like all the others, it opened before them. And like all the others, it was labeled in Japanese. The clearly written script was no problem for Sledge's linguasoft - "Genetic Subject Holding/Observation Area".

The lights went on even before they entered, and from outside the room they could already hear the lowing of cattle, the screeching of primates, and the roar of big cats.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:02:30
Mr. Smith (a.k.a. Yoshito Satou) - Security Guard
PAN - Passive

"Kashikoi" muttered Mr. Smith as he logged himself into the system. He was definatly getting the feeling that the hacker knew his stuff - a welcome surprise after all of the unwelcome ones. Using the command interface presented to him, Smith used the building's internal cameras to scan for other employees, and track the band of terrorists through the building (much as he expected the hacker to be doing).

Once he got a lock on their locations, and confirmed that the rest of the building was empty, he started opening up a number of other AR windows displaying various views of the outside of the building. Aside from a big suspicious-looking black van showing up on a number of them - he didn't see anything worth mentioning.

As he settled back onto the stool in his booth, careful not to rest his feet on Teru-san, he felt anxiety rush over him. The success or failure of this mission was now completely out of his hands. He was rather pleased with the job he had done, but didn't like having to wait around in a building that was being charged to explode by a couple of high college students. One false move, and they were probably all going to die - but at least Smith was close to the door. If he heard an explosion, he was going to make for that door with everything he had. Until then, though, he thought he could at least lighten the hacker's load by keeping an eye on the outside of the place. He also wanted to keep an eye on Cal's group, so that when everything went to drek, he'd be one fo the first to know, instead of the last.

I wonder how they are going to get a bunch of animals down an elevator shaft, Mr. Smith though to himself as he watched the group exit the elevator on the top floor out of the corner of his eye.

Bending down to undo Teru's belt, he lifted it into his lap, and idly started to reload the 5 clips with the bullets he had confiscated earlier while keeping an eye out for anything interesting.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:04:02
Sledge
PAN - Hidden

<<Mr Smith:: How do they move these animals? You seen a forklift, motorized hand truck or freight drone, transport cages and the locations of the freight elevators?>>

Sledge let slide the irritation with Cal's persistent condescending tone, and simply followed them silently, scanning area carefully. Upon reaching the labeled door she'd reached into her jumpsuit and taken out her taser, and slid out the hammer into her other hand. As Cal and Deerwalker glanced back to check on her, she waved at them to open the door.

<<Mr Smith:: Can you tell how many tracking tags these animals have? Be interesting to know how many of these we need to move.>>

probably be easiest to toss them all off of the roof from here...

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:04:10

As Sledge entered the room she was impressed with its size - it must occupy the entire top floor of that rear wing she'd noticed behind the main building. Past an unmanned reception desk, animal holding areas lined both side of the cavernous space. She could see that the animals got larger as one went deeper in, with rows and rows of cages for rodents and other small furries coming first, and beyond that floor-to-ceiling plexiglass enclosures for primates, larger livestock, and then down it the end it sounded like big cats and maybe some other predators.
Cal and Deerwalker each took a side, busily taking guinea pigs and bunnies out of cages and gently placing them on the floor. Damn, there were hundreds of hutches - all now automatically opened, but the animals couldn't get down by themselves. Glancing at the scene, Sledge reckoned it'd take the two at least ten minutes just for the rodents.

Then she got some info from Mr. Smith - <<Okay, there is a freight elevator at the far end of the space, next to the big refrigerator unit marked "feed" in Japanese. I don't see any gear for moving the animals, but it might not be inventoried online - no - it is inventoried - they've got everything from handheld cages to a big forklift, but where it's all located isn't shown here. As for animals, you've got hundreds. Mostly small stuff, but they've to a couple dozen various monkeys, several cows and goats, some horses, and get this - three tigers. There's also what looks like another animal specimen, but I can't tell what - some kind of code number. No visual either - they keep it in some kind of vault next to the feed refrigerator. Really, I don't know what it is.>> he said into her head.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:02:42
Mr. Smith (a.k.a. Yoshito Satou) - Security Guard
PAN - Passive

As Mr. Smith idley watched the cameras while reloading bullets into the clip from Teru's weapon, he kept pausing to reach out and adjust one of the cameras or switch to another view. He wasn't making very good progress on the gun because the cameras were taking a lot of his attention, so he set it down and brought up a terminal window, which would give an admin access to some of the low-level programming.

The underlying OS was pretty standard, and it didn't take long for him to locate the preprocessing scripts used by the cameras, and to confirm that they were still being executed. Smith hoped that the hacker was taking care of destroying the feed not much further down the line - but, for the moment, was pleased that he hadn't simply disabled them altogether. With a few praticed commands, he brought up the program in one of his windows, along with a virtual keyboard.

The task actually reminded him quite a bit of one of his computer programming class projects - not in the content, exactly, but in the idea that he had to take working code that someone else probably spent months on, get the gist of how it worked, and pull apart and rewire enough of it to make it do some secondary task - and hopefully learn something in the process.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:03:58
Mr. Smith (a.k.a. Yoshito Satou) - Security Guard
PAN - Passive

It wasn't long at all before the programming was done - despite several small setbacks. The program went through a couple of last-minute revisions when he first thought he was finished. The joke in his class is that everytime you compile a program, you get one free 'mulligan,' because no program works right the first time. Mr. Smith would have felt a lot better if he was working on the program in a better environment, running it through his custom commlink, with all his personal settings and a full suite fo programs to help abstract things away - rather than working in what amounts to a text-editor, pulling apart the script by hand, and debuggign through trial and error. However, after just a couple of failed runs (causing the wrong windows to appear - showing only things that wern't moving, and another that turned off all of the AR windows), Mr. Smith thought he had successfully hacked up the preprocessing program to filter the data the way he wanted it - he just hoped the hacker wasn't watching him floundering around with very basic script manipulation and parameter modifications.

To test it, he waved his hand in the real world, and was rewarded by seeing a window appear in his field of view, showing a young japanese male in the guard booth waving his hand. From the angle the camera was set at, he could see Teru's arm sticking out - but wasnt' worried about it, he was happy that the program was working, as intended, and that Deerwalker's illusion was holding up, even against the electronic security system.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:04:10
Mr. Smith (a.k.a. Yoshito Satou) - Security Guard
PAN - Passive

The messages from Sledge seemed to come in rapid-fire.

<<@Mr Smith:: How do they move these animals? You seen a forklift, motorized hand truck or freight drone, transport cages and the locations of the freight elevators?>>

<<@Mr Smith:: Can you tell how many tracking tags these animals have? Be interesting to know how many of these we need to move.>>

Although Mr. Smith thought that was probably the hacker's area of expertise, he understood her frustration with the idea of having to pass every request through Cal - so he did his best to bring up the information. This took only seconds, however.

<<@Sledge:: Okay, there is a freight elevator at the far end of the space, next to the big refrigerator unit marked "feed" in Japanese. I don't see any gear for moving the animals, but it might not be inventoried online - no - it is inventoried - they've got everything from handheld cages to a big forklift, but where it's all located isn't shown here. As for animals, you've got hundreds. Mostly small stuff, but they've to a couple dozen various monkeys, several cows and goats, some horses, and get this - three tigers. There's also what looks like another animal specimen, but I can't tell what - some kind of code number. No visual either - they keep it in some kind of vault next to the feed refrigerator. Really, I don't know what it is.>>

He also decided while he had her on the line he might as well share his AR situational awareness. He was also a llittle excited to share the product of his labor for the last few minutes. Despite how simple the task actually was, to someone not very well versed in computers, it might be impressive - and to a criminal terrorist smack-dab in the middle of a corp facility lined with explosives a hundreds of genetically modified animals, this sort of information would be a welcome treat. With another couple of commands he sent a request to Sledge's PAN requesting permission to forward the data feed, including the relevant camera feeds, locations, and the building's security node's map of the building, all filtered and linked together in a way that Mr. Smith felt would be most useful to the team. It woudl also allow him, later, to mark locations as ARO's on the map, or in her field of view - including this freight elevator she wants to get to, the lcoation of the mystery beast, the other four members of the team, and all of the other information that Cal didn't seem to think they would want to know.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:04:16
Sledge
PAN - Hidden

This entire situation was a classic example why you did a walkthrough a close as possible to the actual plan sometime before doing the job. It would never be perfect, but the obvious problems would come to light before the actual job. Then it was the little details that would snag you, but then you'd deal with them as they came up. There had been that one time they'd had to rip out the wall because they hadn't taken into account that the winter temperature would shrink the metal framework opening through which they were moving the hardwood sculpted doorway for the penthouse suite. Understandable thing to miss, you didn't expect a sudden sub zero frost in September most years, and it wasn't a big deal to redo the wall. At least they'd planned and had an opening to move the piece into the penthouse to begin with.

Sledge looked at the room full of animals and the ARO overlay with a feeling close to despair. A bunny sat on her boot toe.

Resisting the urge to kick the oversize rodentia chewing on her booted toes across the room, Sledge stalked after Cal while firing off a mental command and putting her taser and hammer away.

<<Mr Smith:: Thanks. Nice work... Now if you can give me the same system access, I can see about herding everyone out of here before we blow ourselves up.>>

Reaching Cal, Sledge gripped his arm hard and spun him around to face her and pointing at Deerwalker and teeth clenched, piping her voice through her DNI to Mr Smith as well, slowly snarled, "Unless your friend has a way to whisk these fluffy bunnies out of here, you need to get every one up here and moving cages. Moving cages is easy, moving bunnies is not. We can stack cages. We cannot stack bunnies and tigers together."

Squeezing hard as Cal tries to respond, Sledge continues, "One person grabs cages and moves them to the elevator and stacks them. One moves them up and down the elevator, one moves them out the building from the bottom, one outside releasing outside."

Letting go of his arm, she finishes, "Releasing them outside this building about to blow up and burn down."

"Well?"

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:04:19
Mr. Smith (a.k.a. Yoshito Satou) - Security Guard
PAN - Passive

<<@Cal:: Suggestion. If we don't want Animal Control to pick put most of these animals back in captivity within 24 hours, we might want to come up with a different release strategy for the bigger beasts. Rabbits and rodents will do fine way out here, but the first time a genetically-modified tiger jumps out in front of a car, someone will be sent to gather them back up - and probably put them to sleep.>>

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:04:22

As Cal opens his mouth to respond to Sledge, they both hear Mr. Smith's voice come over the comm with his own thoughts. Bombarded with questions, Cal is obviously upset. Deerwalker stops freeing rats one by one and steps toward the human male and ork female.

"Maaaaan," Cal begins, shaking his head, "you guys just are not in tune with the program are you? I mean, these animals are wards of the Mother, and we merely tools. These furry friends are a whole hell of a lot smarter than any of us are, man, especially about the things in this cosmoverse that matter, man. I mean, you really think they need our meddling man?"

"Tell it brother."

"Man, we as metahumans, all we gotta do is undo what other evil metahumans did. Once we get these precious critters out of these manmade cages, they don't need us anymore, man. They can take care of themselves better than we ever could."

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:04:28
Mr. Smith (a.k.a. Yoshito Satou) - Security Guard
PAN - Passive

Mr. Smith thought of about a hundred things to say to Cal's response - mostly involving the fact that metahuman meddling got those animals (or their ancesters) into cages at some point... and just recklessly releasing them isn't going to stop some other metahumans from recapturing them. This was Cal's show, and he wasn't going to trod all over his aspirations, just yet - besides, Smith didn't particularly want to ride home with a cow in the van, and didn't really want these guys taking any longer than they had to.

Mr. Smith had already done what he came here to do. As far as he was concearned, this job was over - now he just wanted to make sure his employer made it out alive, to make sure he gets paid. He didn't like what Idenshitech was doing here, but he definatly felt like releasing the animals into the wild was a pointless gesture and that blowing up the building was going to bring unecessary heat down on Cal's organization, but he could understand that Cal didn't feel that way about it, and neither did Deerwalker, or his other followers.

In any case, it made Mr. Smith uneasy that by removing the little animals from their cages and setting them on the floor, the would-be eco-terrorists were making their jobs much harder for themselves. It also bothered him that, should anything happen to Cal because of his careless ill-planned rescue, Mr. Smith would have spent the last few nights working pro bono which was definatly not in his financial plan for the month.

Whatever, he thought to himself. Just hurry the hell up.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:04:54
Sledge
PAN - Hidden

"Ujnort bot'vut"

Sledge released her grip and stepped back, gaining some space. She took three deep breaths and counted to five, then waved her arm at the pair of them to continue.

"Sorry, was just trying to help, didn't understand."

"Got it now, just open the doors and let them out, things will happen naturally from there, got it."

This was where she really missed having a crew she was used to working with, and especially Andy. There were plenty of times they'd just nod at the architect or engineer and just go ahead and do what needed to be done. No need for them to know what the overnight shift had to do to add a floor or two of progress on a job. Often the only thing they needed to do was to have each of them play dumb and blame the other for getting the job done on time. She had no backup here, she was just supposed to be the observer.

What was worrying her the most was her memory of how the story of the lady and the tiger turned out.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:05:00

Deerwalker's full lips eased into a wide smile - "Right on." - as Cal breathed a visible sigh of relief as the challenge to his leadership passed.
"Okay," he said, "I guess, with your own experience of oppression, you can understand how these animals feel. Tell you what, why don't you help us out by finishing up the hutches, while we go take care of the larger brothers."
As he started away, the building's intercom crackled with life, erupting into some sort of German speed-metal, with a guttural voice hyper-chanting to the thrumming rythym -
A battle hymn I intone
For visitors from the Zero Zone
I face my foes
weapons cocked
Before I exchange blows
All cages unlocked.

And then for some obnoxious reason the hacker left the pounding electric staccato of the death-rock pounding through the building at an insanely high volume.

Cal and Deerwalker were delighted and energized, rushing deeper into the room as all the doors swung open.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:05:00
Mr. Smith (a.k.a. Yoshito Satou) - Security Guard
PAN - Passive

The death-rock startled Mr. Smith from his post, and although his face first showed displeasure, he quickly began smiling and nodding his head along with the music. The soundtrack helped make the situation seem less intense - less real than it was. Watching the action on the camera-feeds was like watching a movie or a music video.

Although entirely unprofessional, Mr. Smith thoroughly enjoyed taking a little pleasure from his work, for a change, and watched the activist-montage play out in AR.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:05:00
Sledge
PAN - Hidden

... breathe ...

Sledge winced as the auditory levels spiked. She reached for the protective headset that wasn't there at her waist.

... breathe ...

There was no way to hear the locks coming undone, but standing at this end of the room looking along the row of cages, the wave of tiny movements each and every door made was obvious, even if any one doors movement wasn't. Sledge's hand checked her head for the protective hard hat that wasn't there.

... breathe ...

Flipping the AR display to her standard crew location mode, the standard command made it clear her crew wasn't there.

... breathe ...

There was no one there anymore, no Andy, no crew, nothing. Sledge gripped the handle of her hammer.

And it looked like it was all coming apart in front of her.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:05:10

As Sledge gathered her senses near the entrance to the 50 meter-long room, Cal and Deerwalker delightedly ran its length, one on each side. The doors were already ajar, but they swung each wide as they went.

From Sledge's angle, she couldn't put eyes into the the individual holding areas, since they were arranged lengthwise running away from her. But between what she could see and the AR views of Cal and Deerwalker as Mr. Smith's program tracked their progress, she got a fair view of events.

The primates wasted not time heading out of their cages and straight for Sledge...or straight for the doors? Hard to tell, but there were a lot of them, a few as big as she was, and they were plenty agitated. Some of them didn't look quite 'right,' while others had horrible scars or outright injuries. It was a surreal image as they charged straight in her direction, seemingly bounding along to the death-core tune.

The farm animals lowed and baaed and didn't move an inch.

And then Cal and Deerwalker were a good forty meters from Sledge. She couldn't see how the tigers were acting, but she could see that Deerwalker was not hesitating. And Cal was pushing the heavy vault door open with all his strength.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:05:15

Comfy in his guard booth, poor Teru snoring at his feet, Mr. Smith's head-banging was interrupted by a lot of movement in the animal room. Paying attention for a moment, he saw it all - the primate stampede, Cal and Deerwalker leading cows and horses out of their holding areas as they bounced to the thrumming death metal rythyms, and of course the ork woman desperately batting away the blows of an enraged Frankensteinian ape with her big hammer.

Damn, he should do something! But what? Maybe he could at least shut down this crazy music - then they could communicate, and maybe the animal would calm down.

Switching his AR view from his video tracking program to the node directory, his eyes were assaulted by what he saw (his ears had already been under assault for several seconds now). There in the node hub, a huge, beefy, skinheaded human in black latex trousers and a sleeveless leather shirt laid about him frantically with a huge double-headed battle-axe, fending off what appeared to be deadly-serious attacks from no less than four anime robots of the Gundam battlesuit variety. All the Japanese robots had the same logo on their chests - he knew it well - he'd seen it on his toothpaste tube just this morning - Mitsuhama Computer Technologies.

At that moment, the punk warrior struck one of the multi-colored robot-things, sending it bounding back against the climate control ARO. Recovering quickly, it prepared to reenter the fray, and noticed Mr. Smith.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:05:10
Sledge
PAN - Hidden

In slow motion view there was a brief pause as cage doors opened, and then in a simultaneous explosive wave animals burst out in a mad scurry throughout the room. Sledge gripped the handle tighter and braced herself at the doorway. A rabbit hopped over a snowy white rat with a black lizard like tail, while a large monkey swung itself over the standard lab table framework towards the door. The wave of animals collected itself together and aligned itself at the door she was in front of.

Sledge stopped in the middle of slapping herself and grabbed her ex shocker instead. Then she ran away from the door to the side of the room to let the wave of creatures past.

All except one.

One large simian with a squared head, bushed brow, and gleaming metallic implanted neck studs fixated on Sledge and veered at her as she moved away from the door. Snarling teeth exposed as it hurled itself over a sequence of lab tables, the animal's mass caused the last table to crack noisily as it slid over the top of it. Calmly Sledge braced herself and stabbed the head of her hammer at it's face to slow down it's advance on her. In the slow motion view of her accelerated reactions she could see the head was going to slide past the beast's shoulders. The ape was also twisting as fast as she was, something she hadn't practiced with much since her surgery, there not being a lot of wired ORC members to practice with. With a desperate twist she turned the handle in her hand, rotating the hammer face to possibly graze the ape's cheek. The ape reacted, twisting it's head just enough to cause it to slip on the glossy coated floor.

.. that was close..

Sledge was almost caught out as the ape continued it's attacking rhythm in the time of the combat beat that Sledge was now just getting used to getting a free follow up blow. She reacted with a practiced slide of her hand to bring the near end of the hammer handle across in a block of the ape's sweeping swing.

In the background a stream of animals coursed out the lab door as she parried a flurry of accelerated time blows from the ape. It was strong, but relatively straightforward in it's attacks. She was glad it hadn't tried to use a readily available weapon, or any fancy maneuvers using it's feet. She knew if it swept her feet, the ape would be able to get up and have her at it's mercy. It was simple enough to just keep blocking or deflecting it's blows.

Except that she couldn't see what was happening to Cal or Deerwalker at their end of the room. Nor what the rest of the team was doing. And this ape wasn't getting the hint she wasn't interested. Though he obviously was. It was hard... to miss.

"ooof!"

In midst of her preparing to give the ape the brush off, the simian had dropped down onto it's hands, admittedly not that far for an ape, and lashed out with both it's feet at Sledge's stomach. Caught off guard she caught the brunt of the blow in her midsection and slid backwards.

.. damn distraction...

Infuriated, Sledge drew a raggedly painful breath and straightened out and tried to loom over the ape holding itself up by it's hands. Grasping the hammer handle towards the middle she discharged the taser in her other hand against the facing of the hammer head. Tiny sparks of electricity sparked back and forth as she waved the hammer back and forth and inarticulately screamed her rage.

"ARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

Staring the ape in the eye, gasping for another breath, Sledge pointed the hammer at the door.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility, Test Subject Holding
Sunday 8/17/70 22:05:16

And out the door the ape went - it backed off a bit first, and then with a disappointed howl turned and followed its cohort.

Taking a breath, Sledge could see that about halfway down the long room Cal was struggling in vain to drag a lowing and obviously very reluctant cow from its pen, while on the other side Deerwalker was beckoning to some equally frightened horses, yelling something at them that Sledge had no hope of hearing over the music.

Beyond the two hippies, she could see that all the holding area doors were ajar, but nothing was coming out of them. She was especially pleased that none of the tigers had yet emerged, but then noticed that the heavy vault door across from the tiger pen was slowly opening - something inside was pushing it outward.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility, Central Node/Lobby
Sunday 8/17/70 22:05:16

Just as Mr. Smith was deciding he had no business mixing things up with these icons, the one that had noticed him fired a jet booster and rocketed toward him, firing tiny missiles from its fingertips.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility, Central Node/Lobby
Sunday 8/17/70 22:05:16
Mr. Smith (a.k.a. Yoshito Satou) - Security Guard
PAN - Passive

Mr. Smith scrambled to move his icon within the virtual representation of the system's node - however, as he flailed one arm in the real world to enter a command into a virtual keypad to his left, he put too much weight on the imaginary object, and felt himself sliding from his stool. Despite his attempts to regain his balance, the surprise of the attack mixed with his own sense of urgency left him destracted and he quickly found himself on the floor, beside Teru. The stool was pushed to the side by his falling body, and was now tipping over, but Smith wasn't interested in that.

He glanced up, from the floor, into the AR display showing the layout of the node - preparing to watch his pitiful commlink crash under the weight of even an average program. Luckily for Mr. Smith no attack ever came. As the "mecha" icon's finger's folded back, revealing four gun-barrels, he saw little puffs of black smoke come out - but nothing else. The mecha-icon, however, looked determined, and was still crossing the metaphorical space between it, and the icon represending Smith's admin connection to the system.

Realising he would not be so lucky a second time, Mr. Smith acted quickly. Standing up, he fired off a quick message to Sledge while his connection to the Matrix was still open.

<<@Sledge:: Code Red. Hacker taking fire. 4 SecOps. Assisting. Relay to Cal. Suggest abort.>>

As soon as the message was out - floating safely across the radio-waves, Mr. Smith began closing AR windows around him, and entering in commands to unload his "edit" program from active memory - in theory, freeing up space so that he could do something more effective, but, in reality, he expected the mecha-icon would land an attack before he got another program up and running.

It wasn't the security-hackers that was worrying Mr. Smith - although he'd have prefered to help the hacker more than he did - it was what their presense represented. Failure. The system knew something was going on, as did the security-staff. An alert had already been raised. Who knew how long ago this had happened, since the hacker didn't bother to tell anyone. Although a real-world response was unlikely in the next few seconds. However, once they finished the hacker and regained control of this building's node - and when they saw that all of the cameras were tracking a band of moving eco-terrorists, the call would go out for real-world guards to mobilise. Mr. Smith wanted to be nowhere near this building when they did, and feared that Cal would be too stubborn to abort right now.

As he thought about all of this, the icons in AR were moving so quickly that Mr. Smith had trouble telling what was going on through the slow, out-dated display his metalink could provide. In a second, his screeen went staticy, and then black. That was it, he was dumped from the matrix.

Upstairs, the 3D map of the building that Mr. Smith was streaming to Sledge winked out of existance - foreshadowing that the battle on the matrix was not going well.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:05:21
Sledge
PAN - Hidden

There was a fire in her belly now.

The unpleasant painful swelling bruising throbbed with each movement and breathe she took. And she was taking a lot of them, and moving a great deal. The moment the message had come in and the augmented reality overlay had cut out, Sledge had gone into a full sprint for the far end vault door.

The music blared throughout the room, covering whatever noises the animals Cal and Deerwalker were struggling with. The stench of animal musk overwhelmed the underlying chemical solvent smell of the lab as she ran towards and hopefully by them.

Despite the idiocy of the pair in creating a situation where they wouldn't be alerted to the plan's failure Sledge was going to get her crew out. She was going to drum it into Cal's head, painfully, that if your hacker lookout gets taken out and you don't monitor him, then there was no way the hacker was going to alert you. It was like putting the alarm off button on the outside of the room you wanted the alarm on.

There wasn't much chance of them paying attention, but she tried anyway, screaming at them to get out now, "OUT! HACKER UNDER ATTACK! OUT ! OUT ! OUT!". Raising her arms and hammer over her head at full extension she built up speed, despite the pain in her stomach as she stretched for maximum extension with her hammer.

This job had kicked her hard enough to hurt, and Sledge was going to kick it right back.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility, Test Subject Holding
Sunday 8/17/70 22:05:26

Sledge yelled her warning as she tried to get to the vault door before it opened fully, but from the start she knew she'd be too late.

As she got closer, she could tell that the three tigers knew it, too, crouching with their backs up in the far corner of their pen.

She waved her arms and yelled about the hacker over the roar of the music.

Cal, his hand through the nosering of a cow, shouted back, "What?"

Deerwalker, fingers snapping to the music, whined, "But what about the horsies?"

And the gigantic tiger-thing that emerged from the vault (Could cats goblinize? Could there be a troll version of a tiger?), howled, "RRRRAAAAAAHHHHGGGRR."

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility, Test Subject Holding
Sunday 8/17/70 22:05:29

"HEAR ME ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!"

Tabbikens tried to squeeze herself further down into the rear corner of her cage, already pressed tightly against the floor, she could feel her stomach muscles quivering against the floor. Her chin was pressed tight down to present the lowest possible profile, and there was the slight sacrifice of exposing her forepaws as she pressed them over her ears and above her eyes in an attempt to protect herself from the obnoxious assaulting noise in the room.

The roar cut through all of it.

She couldn't help but lift a paw and watch as another of the damned hairless ape creatures with a big odd looking stick stupidly ran at the source of her confusion. The two creatures simply charged at each other, challenges issued and met. She watched the flurry as the hairless ape pulled one of their mystifying maneuvers, how could you fight something that didn't even try to bite you in the throat properly? Still there were other ways to fight, and she murmured a satisfied little growl in her throat as the hairless ape received a stunning claw rake across it's back that knocked it down. This would soon be over now, except that for some reason the new lord twitched it's neck as if bitten.

One way or another she hoped this ended soon. The urge to fight, run away, hide, in unnatural combinations all combated with the instinctual need to survive by running out and exposing her throat in submission.

The scent of hot blood in the air didn't make it any easier.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:05:32
Sledge
PAN - Hidden

She kept running and running, twisting to stay on her feet as she kept her torso twisting as she ran, alternating between keeping the handle of her hammer between her and the jaws behind her, and twisting away as they snapped at her.

we could dance all night like this

In the corner of her eye she caught a flash of slim legs pumping away in front her, furiously chasing the sneakered feet ahead of them. Sledge sucked in a large ragged breath, lungs aching in pain that paled in comparison to the searing across her stomach. Breaking rythym in her fast retreat across the lab, she bent a knee, sliding along the floor as she slid under the jaws snapping above her head as she cross stepped to the other side of the teeth. The very large sharp teeth. Rotted meat breath made her nauseous as she completed her maneuver.

As the gengineered tiger snapped at her on it's right, she'd slid under across it's jaws and stepped up on it's left as it ran by. Normally someone of her size and height couldn't even do with a normal tiger, but this one was tall enough that even her 215 centimeter height could duck easily unders it snapping teeth. Rising on it's other side and taking a few steps along with it, Sledge stabbed to her right with the taser in her hand.

Arcing electricity sizzled, the sharp odor of crisping fur snapped into her nose. The creatures legs crossed over and it twisted to bite at her. Sledge stared straight into the jaws as they turned towards her, then her feet got tangled with the tigers and she pitched forward.

There was a tangle jumble of flailing limbs and ivory sharp teeth and fur and hot rotten breath, and then it all froze in that awful moment as the all she could see were the teeth above and below and the hot tongue in her face.

She blinked. The view didn't change.

VUT! It fell on me.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:05:35

As Mr. Smith was just starting to drag poor Teru out of the guard booth, and as Sledge was trying to figure out how to drag herself out from under a four-ton trollger, the deafening death metal abruptly ceased and a pleasant female voice calmly intoned - "Attention intruders. Cease and desist. Cease and desist. The facility is completely surrounded by our security forces. Anyone attempting to leave the building will be met with overwhelming and lethal force. I repeat, if you attempt to leave the building, you will be met with overwhelming and lethal force. In order to protect yourself from our loyal guard animals, now roaming freely thoughout the building, go to the nearest empty room and lock yourself in. Our security team, which is now in total control of the facility, will supply AROs to assist you in finding animal-safe shelter. Thank you for your cooperation, and have a pleasant day."
The announcement was followed by elevator music.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:05:35
Sledge
PAN - Hidden

...breathe... #$!%$#@%$!...

She turned her head and peered down along the lab floor, away from the fetid sinking breathe oozing out of the gengineered tiger jaws. Orange and black stripes flashed across the aisle in the distance.

...breathe... vut!...

Sledge let go of the hammer handle and pulled her arm out from under the hot bristly fur rumbling quietly on top of her.

...breathe... #@&$!...

Lubricated with blood, and with both arms free, she pushed hard, sliding out, slick and hot. She lay still for a moment gathering herself.

...breathe... arghhhssh...

Explosively she got to her feet, then slowly she reached down and slid her hammer out, whipping it into ready position. She whirled around and snarled at the room. After a full turn and scan, she grabbed her side and ran her hand over it quickly. Reaching over onto a lab bench, she grabbed a container of disinfectant and worked the top off carefully. Tossing the cap aside, she liberally doused her side, and then dumped the contents on the floor by the deeply breathing gengineered tiger.

...breathe... ow...

She warily looked at the door, then started moving. There was more work to do.

...breathe... keep breathing...

Sledge set her agent to work scanning for the commlinks for the team, the ones she'd so easily identified on the way here. She set the countdown, and the accompanying message to broadcast to the specific comms. Be her calculations the in house security team from the corporate dorms could be here already if they had departed immediately, though it was more likely they would be scrambling now. What worried her most was the time till the Star arrived, which Cal had estimated at ten minutes. That left eight. If Cal was right.

Her internal AR view started up from the last cached input, overlaying the view as she started running.

There was still the job to finish.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility, Lobby
Sunday 8/17/70 22:05:35
Mr. Smith - Lookout
PAN - Offline

The security is being awfuly polite, thought Mr. Smith as let go of Teru, and turned his hooded head to look out the window for any sign of security forces arriving, or paranormal animals patrolling the front grounds. ... and not particularly Japanese. As the elevator music played, it reminded him of a recording, or automated commlink message and having seen nothing out front, he decided to risk it. If I'm going to go to jail for this shit, they might as well arrest me out front.

Kicking the door open, Smith held his jacket over his head and tried to be mindful of camera placement as he sprinted towards open rear door of the van. After hopping up inside, he reached behind him, lowering his head, letting his suit-hood drape over it, to avoid letting the building's outward facing cameras get a good shot of him and pulled both doors shut. Collapsing backwards into the bed fo the van, where it would be difficult to see him from the windows, he fumbled in his jacket's pockets for a second and produced his personal commlink. It was off, and he had only brought it along in case of an emergency - but he supposed this qualified.

As his little showing at the security node proved to him - if he was going to do any real hacking, he was going to need to start taking his decent commlink along with him on jobs like this. Or at least invest in an upgrade and a simmodule for his metalink. When time is a factor, being able to go VR is important. Smith pulled his custom-made commlink out, and attached his skinlinked trodes before rebootting the device and slipping into virtual reality.

The Getaway Van, Rear Floor
Sunday 8/17/70 22:05:45
Mr. Smith - Hacker
PAN - Offline

Virtual Reality of an offline commlink was pretty uninteresting, but before Mr. Smith was going to let his personal commlink communicate with any of the other nodes around here, he needed to make it untracable. A few quick thoughts brought a number of displays and menus into being around him - which quickly changes shape and signature and then disappeared. That's that, I suppose. He reached out into the iconography and enabled the wireless connection, which suddenly brought the system to life. He saw data swimming around him in all directions, which was much more the imagery he was used to.

A second later, he had his communications programs up and running, and fired off a quick message to Sledge. <<@Sledge: Rebooted with better Comm. We leaving? Smith>> He considered CCing Cal on the message, since the music had stopped - but was now concearned that the security forces would overhear. Sledge, at least, seemed to have a good head o nher shoulders - and had communicated discretely with him before. Cal had the annoying tendancy to put him on speakerphone.

A second or two later and Smith was ready to begin his original task. It normally wasn't that annoying to have to boot up a full suite of programs for a few seconds after rebooting a commlink - but when each of those seconds could be the difference between making a clean getaway and spending a few years in jail - even Smith's souped-up commlink seemed agonizingly slow.

He began to scan for wireless signals, finding quite a number of them. Sliding one widget far to his left, he reduced the signal range of his commlink until he could only communicate with devices a within a few years of himself. There were still a couple of signals, which didn't surprise Smith but was oddly concearning considering none of his gear was tagged. A second later, he had located which of the signals was coming from the van, and began to access that node.

It was old, and slightly outdated, but luckily for Mr. Smith, that meant its protection had fallen behind the curve as well. His illegal hacking programs made short work of the node's security, and he quickly found himself presented with a new menu, enumerating the very limited wireless capabilities of this vehicle. It appeared that the only thing the vehicle was wired with was an old "remote starter kit" for starting you car before going outside when it was cold. This meant that besides turning on the defroster, about all Smith had access to was starting the vehicle.

Luckily, that was exactly what he was hoping to be able to do. Of course, Smith wouldn't have minded if he was able to remote-control the van home from the back-seat, but he was at least happy that this was working well. After issuing the command, he returned to AR.

The Getaway Van, Rear Floor
Sunday 8/17/70 22:06:20
Mr. Smith - Getaway Driver
PAN - Hidden

Waking up on the backseat of Cal's hippy-van, Mr. Smith took a quick look around to make sure that he was still safe. He didn't see anything, but did locate his briefcase that he had left back here earlier. He picked up his jacket to throw over his head again before getting into the driver's seat, and as he did so, he felt something hard slap against the side of his head. Slightly confused, he reached in and puleld out a handgun - Teru's handgun, to be precise, and in the other pocket he found the empty spare clips. Shit. Smith had thought they might have been useful in case of rampaging animals - but now they were more likely to be tagged, than not. Could they have been the source of some of the other short-range wireless signals? Mr. Smith wasn't about to find out. Sliding into the driver's seat, careful to avoid looking in either of the rear-view mirrors, he opened the door a crack, and threw them out onto the ground. Getting arrested with Teru's gun on me would have pretty much sealed the case. While the door was open, he heard footsteps approaching from the rear, and heavy breathing, and suddenly regretted having thrown away a pistol. He had a couple more on him, but they wern't in his hand. Lifting the side of his jacket just a little bit, he saw the baggy cargo-pants of one of Cal's cronnies running from the building towards the van. Good. They are making it out of there. Nice timing, Adam.

The Getaway Van, Driver's Seat
Sunday 8/17/70 22:06:23
Mr. Smith - Getaway Driver
PAN - Hidden

Pulling the door closed, and unlocking the passenger door for the hippie, he then pulled up an AR window and typed up one more message - this time forwarding it to Sledge, Cal, and Deerwalker. He would have liked to have sent it to the other hippies, but Cal's "need-to-know" policy prevented him from getting their contact information earlier.

<<@Cal,Deerwalker,Sledge: Van is running hot. MOVE.>>

He just finished the message when the hippie-bomber reached the van. Mr. Smith was splitting his attention between the road ahead of him, and his AR chat-window looking for any response from the team to say he should wait.

Idenshitech Snohomish Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:05:45
Sledge
PAN - Hidden

She was barely out the door of the lab when her software agent tagged a signal for her immediate attention. The red blinking exclamation mark pulsed in the top left corner of her vision as she looked around. Disregarding it for a moment she leaned over to her left, easing the sharp pain in her side slightly, and took a deep controlled breath. Still bent over slightly she looked along the corridor, easily noticing none of the eco team in sight of this section. Walking slowly Sledge turned her head and started scanning the cached AR map overlay of the facility and highlighted the spots she knew the eco team had prepped on the way in. Finally she then reviewed the alert her software agent had determined needed her attention.

<<!Smith:: Rebooted with better Comm. We leaving? Smith>>

The message was old and when she tried to get an interactive link the response indicated Smith was busy at the moment. Shrugging she relayed the ARO countdown timers and set her software agent to subscribing Smith's commlink and continuing scanning for the others.

Sledge continued jogging to the first set of home made explosives the group had brought in.


<<@Cal,Deerwalker,Sledge: Van is running hot. MOVE.>>
22:06:23
*** = - 4:12
Corp Sec Team (Dorm) = - 1:12 +- 60
LONE STAR = - 7:12 +- 0
Smith1 = No Signal
Smith2 = Signal
Cal = No Signal
Deerwalker = No signal
Crew1 = No signal
Crew2 = No signal
Crew3 = No signal
Crew4 = No signal
Vehicle1 = Signal
Vehicle2 = out of range

<<@Smith2:: Help BOB find everyone will you? Need to get everyone out.>>

Snohomish Idenshitech Facility
Sunday 8/17/70 22:05:50

BOB and Mr. Smith's job of rounding up hippies turned out to be pretty easy - although they all apparently had their comms on hidden mode, it wasn't long at all before the first one's cronies followed him out, and after them came Cal and a sobbing Deerwalker.
They all ran right past Teru, lying on the floor of the foyer where Mr. Smith had left him, and piled into the rear of the van.

*****

Sledge moved as quickly as she could, but her wound was now starting to hurt. She had grabbed a bunch of lab smocks and used them as a brute-force bandage to try and stanch the bleeding, but she nonetheless had the trot along backwards to she could see when drops got away from her. She still had the antiseptic bottle, and she sloshed a little on the floor wherever she bled - it wouldn't stop a forensic investigator, but at least it would deny MCT ritual samples - she hoped.
Coming to the top of the obviously dead elevator bank, she looked around and spotted the fire doors leading onto the emergency stairwell. But in a room off the hall right past the elevators she found the other thing she was looking for - one of the "drano bombs". She looked at it and the timer was counting down from about five minutes - that gave any response units way too much time to get here and stop the blast, by her own estimates anyway. Gauging how much time it would take her to get out, she held her breath and reset the home-made timer for 1:30, praying there were no anti-tamper devices. She'd never have time to find and reset the other devices, but if at least one went off, it should make the sec teams wary enough not to enter the building right away, especially if their hackers were giving them eyes on the inside.
The next minute was a blur as she staggered down the stairs, resetting the timer on her comm display as she went.
Into the foyer with ten seconds to go, Smith yelling into the commnet that it was time to go - thanks for that - and there was that poor slot Teru, lying on the floor. She saw that one of the bombs was right here in the lobby - hoping it would eventually go off - since there was no way she could 'disenfect' and carry the Japanese guard, she grabbed him under the armpits and dragged him out the doors, across the drive, and onto the lawn about ten meters from the building - as panicked hippies called to her from the back of the van.
Setting down her cargo, she was showered by glass as all the windows of the top floor blew outward in great gouts of flame. She dove into the back just as Mr. Smith floored the accelerator.
Sitting in the back, listening to the annoyingly histrionic sobs of the blond woman, she noticed that there was one more "drano-bomb" here in the van.
Then in just a moment they were at the turnout where they'd left Deerwalker's daddy's car. They'd seen absolutely no signs of pursuit, no other vehicles at all.
Cal and Deerwalker and the hippies all got out, and looked over the fields at the fire that blazed several kilometers away.
The boy hippies cheered when the rest of the blasts erupted on the near-horizon.
Sledge, in terrible pain, thought to herself how they could have taken down the whole building with a tenth of the explosive they'd used if only they'd known where to place the charges.
And Deerwalker exploded into a princess-fit over all the poor animals that they'd murdered. Cal said something in her ear that made her feel a lot better - she wiped tears from her face and repeated "That's right, martyrs for the cause. Heroic martyrs for the cause," over and over.
Mr. Smith was looking at Sledge. The ork woman had fastened some sort of giant bandage to herself, but nonetheless half her body seemed to be soaked in blood.
Cal went to the driver's window of the van. He handed a credstick to Smith. "Dude, sorry things went to shit. But we pulled it off, man. We really appreciate your help. If that damned hacker hadn't turned out to be such an amateur, things would have gone a lot better and we wouldn't've had to sacrifice the animal comrades." With that, Cal and Deerwalker got into their luxury internal combustion automobile and took off. There were a thousand things Sledge wanted to say (do) to them, but at the moment all she wanted to do was sleep, which she knew might be disastrous.
Everyone got back into the van, and the hippies directed Mr. Smith to a back road just a couple of klicks away. They stopped, and over a field just a hundred meters distant, they could see the rear of a truck stop that sat on one of the main roads.
One of the hippies set the timer on the last "drano-bomb" and they all took off over the dark field. Just as they reached the truck stop, the van exploded in a huge fireball, and while everyone outside the complex of shops and cafes looked that way, the hippies pointed out a couple of vehicles in the corner of the parking lot.
Flashing the ignition code of the smaller car to Mr. Smith, a hippy explained - "These won't be reported stolen until morning. Just dump it somewhere when you're done with it." He and his cronies boarded the other car and took off into the rural night.

Snohomish Truck Stop
Sunday 8/17/70 22:35:50

Sledge moved carefully, trying not to gasp or wince as she moved, as the others left, she turned to Mr. Smith and asked quietly, "Chop shop time."

She stiffened and took a deep breath before letting it out slowly. She held a hand out to Mr Smith, "You did your part. Must be better work out there though."

In the distance the truck burned.

Snohomish Truck Stop
Sunday 8/17/70 22:35:50
Mr. Smith - Survivor
PAN - Hidden

So much for the afterparty... thought Mr. Smith as Cal and Deerwalker drove off. He wasn't terribly upset though. It hadn't been a very uplifting night, and he was tired. The only thing that kept him from tearing into Cal verbally was the credstick in his pocket. Smith had fulfilled his end of the agreement, and Cal had compensated him appropriately - if Cal wanted to believe that the Hacker was to blame, so be it.

Later, when Sledge offered her hand, Mr. Smith took it and shook back. Just a few hours ago he had offered Sledge his own hand and been denied, and he was glad his performance had earned him this small sign of respect. He also took note of her wounds. In the rush of the escape (and after seeing Deerwalker's reaction to the explosion) Mr. Smith thought better of asking just what the hell happened in there. When he was concentrating on getting everyone away safely, he didn't need the distraction, but now his curiosity was getting the better of him.

"Yeah, we couldn't have done it without you. Cal's got a noble goal in mind... but I don't think I will be accepting any more jobs from him anytime soon."

"Here," Smith forwarded a new Comm number to Sledge - the same number he had given out to Franco (who had seemed to have lost it). "This is my buisness number. I'm always looking for a new source of income, or reliable talent." He smiled and looked back at his stolen ride home. He was sort of hoping Cal and Deerwalker would have given him a lift - since they were all heading back towards campus, but it looked as though he had been ditched.

"I don't really have any connections for getting rid of stolen cars - but if you do, she's all yours. Consider it my way of saying thanks for lending me the use of your lingasoft earlier. I can call a taxi or something, or have a friend pick me up."

"... you okay? Those wounds look pretty bad."

Snohomish Truck Stop
Sunday 8/17/70 22:36:15
Sledge
PAN - Hidden

Sledge grimaced, "You know a reliable health care professional? I can drive you wherever you need. I need to make a call or two ... umphhhh"

Sledge grabbed her side and bent halfway over, then twisted as yet another part of her shot pain through her system. She straightened up and took a deep breathe. Eyeing Mr Smith she pointed to the car, "Let's get out of here and talk."