Anna returns to her body and reports the findings to the group. ">>>No magic security, plenty of physical security - perhaps we can use spirits to incapacitate him. There was this strange magic in his blood, Flatline thinks it is blood line tradition...

Does anyone know about Blood magic to try and figure out what they did? I afraid that Blood magic was always a taboo in the university. I've heard a few whispers and rumors nothing more. "

"[/color]. She allowed Flatline to explain how the cuts were made and so forth.

"Hmmm. I'm no practitioner but I read a book about blood magic once. A Blood Oath does not only bind him to fulfill his duty, but also would boost his skills. The spider might have sworn such an Oath in order to ensure his loyalty. Breaking it would likely mean his death.
If that is so, it is even more necessary to make sure he can't go online."

Anna texted >> You have an odd taste in books! Though it is great that you read that book. Thanks for the info I did not know such things. Blood magic is sort of a slippery road for practitioners. Very addictive, or so they say. Anything practical we want to do with that intel? Let's make sure that the spider jacks in from home and if so, we can subdue him with spirits. He'll be out cold before he can do anything.

@bnc@mike>>Either of you guys got the two primo guard's room numbers, and does anyone mind providing some astral overwatch before I go full bull-in-china shop on the wards?

Also a medkit for when I trigger a flechette mine again.

Anna texted "Perhaps some physical overwatch as well? We are in the same hotel and these elites seem quite dangerous."
She did not wait for a reply, instead she projected toward the room Slobber was about to b&e trying to figure out if it was unoccupied/magically protected.

Finding the room numbers wasn't hard. Unsurprisingly the two bodyguards lodged on different levels.
Ramirez' room was closest and also a corner room. Looking inside, Anna found no magical protection but a suspicious looking mirror. bnc only needed a simple matrix check to recognize it as an R4 Sensor Array. Curiously, it was only slaved to the adept's own commlink. Otherwise there weren't any protections visible - likely because room service didn't like to be blown up making the beds.
Peaking her astral head through the small wall safe told Anna that it was filled with some documents. It was an old model with a simple number pad without matrix connection.
Learning from her previous look around, Anna also checked the bathroom. There were no bloody bandages in the waste basket, but a lingering aura told her that something really bad had been disposed inside not long ago. It felt a little bit like what the spider had had, but much, much worse. The only thing she could remotely associate with it was the one time at Uni when their professor had encouraged them to look at the aura of a ghoul...

Kynos room didn't even have a sensor array, but besides some nutribar wrappers the main room was clear - not even the safe was occupied. The waste basket did contain bloody bandages, but those had no blood magic aura at all. They showed barely any living essence at all.

Anna poked around into the pipes, seeing if something evil was desposed there. Then she returned to her body and reported.

Anna texted >> All clear astrally, both rooms are empty. Something is very off in the adept's room. I have no idea what they were doing there but it affects me so much stronger than the Spider that it might as well be a human sacrifice. I have never sensed something so negative so I might be exaggerating... but it felt terrible"

With that in mind, Anna projected again and followed the robo maid and assense her waste busket. She hoped to find some evidence of the recently removed element that caused her strong reaction.

Digging astrally through a heap of hotel waste was a lot less fun than Anna had expected. Beside the usual refuse like used condoms and pads/tampons, a surprising amount of needles, drugs (both legal and illegal), endless bouts of paper and even more plastic wrappers, soycaf filters and so on made the undertaking less than promising.
Still, the astral resonance was not too bad and she could at least try to find something.

<@Anna <i do have a taste for evrythg thats addictive. we have to consider he might get magical support when we take him out. guess well be faster though>>
<@all <does anyone of you go in?. i doubt they will dispose of a whole corpse in the waste so i dont think it was a full sacrifice but it sure was a nasty piece of blood magic. maybe a small animal sacrificed or blood drawn for a blood spirit or something like that.
u need me to open the door and remove the sensor array? im not sure whether knowing what the creepy bastard did in there will do us any good.

Mike chimed in: <<Well, for one thing if we can prove that the guy is a Blood Adept we can legally abduct him and get the bounty from the DIMR. It's a bit under a million these days. Better yet, if we leak that to this other mercenary, he might decide to go for the money himself.>>

Whatever was in the garbage heap, it felt too faint now or perhaps Anna assensed the wrong heap. She found no evidence in the heap. Perhaps they need to be patient and routinely assense garbage heaps. As much as that behavior was repulsive, just like the physical version of the task.


Anna texted "@Mike >> how much of a proof does DIMIR needs? Do we need reasonable doubt like we have now or a smoking gun? Can they verify such claim about a person?

@bnc >> About Spider, will it be reasonable to eliminate digital evidence once the spirits are done?

Anna had traversed the heap but besides two aggressive devil rats, busily devouring the cadaver of a third she found no trace of the magic.


Mike replied: <<The Dunkelzahn Institute of Magical Research will do their own verification, but for normal law enforcement it would be very wise to have some documentation on hand - but of course that is a minor issue if we manage it quietly.
The problems begin if we are mistaken and it wasn't Ramirez who used blood magic. So all in all, better get some real evidence.>>

She texted >> DIMR, right... I'll keep an eye open. Sadly, I can do so from the safe house as well but without the facilities. Then she raised up from the bed and asked Flatline "Are your spirits any good at knocking people out without killing them? I won't just murder someone unprovoked."

Flatline shrugged:
"Probably as good as yours. A spirit of man should be able to subdue without killing - especially if we can give it some equipment. What we'd really need is a Guardian spirit. Those are especially adapt for such specialized work."

"Welp, once more into the unknown"

@BNC@Anna>> If someone could unlock this door and come with an autopick for the safe, it would be appreciate. Also, turning off that mirror or any other sensors would be nice.

Anna said "I never used them to hurt someone before, I kind of hate to leave such a delicate nature to a spirit. perhaps a spirit of the earth for physical violence or a spirit of man for discrete stun bolt kind of activity."

To Slobber she texted ">> Safe cracking...? I have no equipment for that, then again hotel safes are kind of basic. I can augment your natural ability if that helps - and provide you with some pins. Though perhaps you can just guess the code.

Flatline chimed in: <<Kite packed some of that stuff into my bag. I think there's a little spiderdrone with an autopicker in it. No idea how this thing works, though.>>

Anna giggled when she read Flatline's text. >> Delivery service coming... Flatline take the astral to make sure the rooms stay empty. She said and packed the auto-picker within a small bag. She walked passed Slobber, dropped the bag without forming an eye contact with slobber and continued to a vending machine to buy two bottles of diet cola.

She placed one bottle in her purse and casually drunk the other near the elevator - so that she could warn Slobber and perhaps delay the occupant of the room.

Slobber added said nothing to the strange lady dropping things next to his feet.

@bnc>Is the magic passphrase "open sesame... and also disable the sensors?"

Anna idly browsed an advertisement of a music concert near the elevator and drunk her coke. She had a spare one in case it would take longer.

bnc replied:
<<The door is open and the sensor is on a loop. Better hurry, that's not something I can sustain indefinitely.>>

Indeed the light on the door had turned green and the handle allowed slobber to disengage the lock.

Inside he saw a quite tidy hotel room that had been in use for quite some time. Personal items lay around and one corner had been turned into a combination of meditation and close combat area, with a soft matt on the ground and a dummy that showed definite signs of knife abuse.

The spider moved on it's own accord towards the safe and it took the little drone only seconds to open the small strong box.

<<@bnc Danke>>

Slobber pulled out his Ruger and applied the suppressor as he passed through the door into the bodyguards room and began to search. He focused himself and checked for movement again.

Slobber took a look around the living- and bathroom. He could smell faint traces of blood and something he had smelled all to often in his childhood: The pungent stink of Devil Rat urine. There seemed to be no infestation here - he couldn't find any gnaw holes or other openings the aggressive vermin could have come from. Next he went to the small safe, taking care to memorize the order in which the items lay inside before he took them out to examine.
There was a small box filled with certified credsticks - each around 1000 Nuyen worth, in total 26 sticks.
A small bible that turned out to be written in Spanish and as far as he could make out with his cheap translator soft contained an awe-full lot of blood references.
A collection of ID cards with RFID transponders all with different Spanish sounding names.

Slobber was almost putting them back when he noticed that inside the safe was a small, cut to fit rubber matt. Beneath it he found a very curious item:
A hand written piece of paper. This too was written in Spanish, but the kursive writing was too much for the translator soft to recognize.
All he could make out was that it was addressed to Ramirez and signed by "Z".

Anna meanwhile noticed the owner of the room had just ended his discussion with the hotel staff and was now moving straight towards the elevator. As with their previous experiences, Slobber would have about 30 seconds before the man could reach his room...

If Slobbertooth doesn't wear any VR goggles, bnc instead uses the drone's visual sensors to see things herself. She stores photos of everything Slob unearths, taking care to keep the names on the ID cards legible. When the letter is revealed, bnc quickly draws a snapshot and forwards it to Kito, whom she knows to be a Spanish native speaker.

"Honey, can you translate this for us?"

As soon as Anna warns Slobbertooth, bnc's focus is back to the situation. She quickly looks around for anything that might support. First priority, is the way out clear? All relevant doors unlocked? All relevant cams deactivated? If so, second priority: What might keep Ramirez. Is there anything on the way that could bar the way or draw his attention?

As far as bnc could gather there was nothing preventing Slobber's retreat, but likewise there was nothing preventing Ramirez from reaching his destination - unless bnc used the Mark on the host to use a direct connection hack to the elevator and slow it down a bit.

Kite took a moment to answer:
<<That's some heavy stuff. I'll need some time to translate the letter properly, but the short version is that Z tells Ramirez how to perform some kind of ritual at the "longest night" at midnight. He tells him to make sure to use the other ritual beforehand that he taught him which gives him "life abundance". There is some other stuff I don't understand, might be magic instructions. But it clearly says he is supposed to use the blood of the "mercenary" and make sure to clean up afterwards.>>

Anna texts "30 Seconds!" as she sees Ramerez and when he turns his back to her she assenses him trying to see what she can learn about the man.

Anna took a good look at the man's aura, but curiously she couldn't find any trace of blood magic in his aura, nor did she recognize him as a particularly highly initiated adept. To her sight he looked at best like an awakened with one initiation at best. His aura otherwise looked healthy with no hint at cyberware or any kind of drug abuse.

Slobber fingers twitched as he weighed his options, but ultimately he decided on his plan.

"I'm leaving the room,but some spare time would be appreciated."

Slobber threw everything but the bible back into the safe, closed it, and left it on the number he found it on. Slobber stowed the bible in his jacket pocket, holstered his pistol and quickly retreated from the room with the drone under his arm.

Wakata, sempai!
bnc enables an authentification routine and quickly generates a fake profile the host recognizes as a legit user. Once she's in, she forces the elevator to stop in every floor, just as if some kids had played a trick on it.

The trick worked and Slobber had no trouble leaving the room.
Ramirez arrived - visibly annoyed - and vanished into his room.
Only five minute later he appeared again in the lobby, wearing a different suit jacket and carrying away a lunch packet with him.

"High five, sempai. So what exactly is it you got here?
Shall we return to the base?"

Mike chimed in: <<Yeah, a bit of debriefing would be nice. Kite is working on a better translation of the letter as well as the bible. It seems to be called Sancto Sangre, Holy Blood.
bnc if you are free from your overwatch, you might want to do some research on that.>>

"Yeah let's get out of here. That room was giving me the creeps and if we got in a fight, Wolf wouldn't let me leave without finishing things.

"I took Ramirez's bible out of his safe. Not really sure what it's about but it had quite a few references to blood in it, and might be related to that note."

>> I think that we'll join. Justin is just not into having fun, better regroup. I liked the way you handled it, Slob, less fuss than how I handled it. Show me how to use this gear when you have the chance.
"The flowers, I wonder if they are there yet." she thought.

All in all, it seemed like most legwork was done, she hoped that next time she would be paired up with someone more appreciative of the opportunity of sharing a hotel room with a pretty woman. Flatline's stoic nature was as reassuring as a kick to the groin. Anna needed little assurance to her looks - but she did want to be perceived as entertaining to be around.

It was early evening when the team finally found itself back together at the safe house. Mike had taken care of cooking and produced some kind of stew which seemed to have chilie as its main ingredient.
To their surprise they were joined by Dr. Schmitt midway through the meal. He nodded to the team, but ate only a small portion. When the meal was nearly finished (Hank had thankfully provided a tub of ice cream for desert), Schmitt spoke up:

"Alright, I've read Mike's summary of what you did today, but it would be good if you could tell me in your words what happened, what you saw and what your thoughts were."

Anna said quite seriously "For once I discovered that their maid bots make for excellent security, with ultrasound and heat vision and what else... and they also clean!" and then laughed softly. Shortly after she added
"On a more serious note, I think that Kynos might be in danger from Zola or Ramirez. He is not 'Blood' and these clearly only trust Blood, hence the decker. Add to this the fact that they do not like him and that Kynos is placed in a very delicate place as a personal bodyguard - they might try to literally terminate him. Perhaps we should find a discreet way to contacting him and share some of our observations with him. We could pose as bounty hunters for Blood mages.

Schmitt said: "Duly noted. Those Maids where actually the basis for the Secretary Anthro Drone.
As for the mercenary: This is good news. If we do this right, we might be able to turn an obstacle into an asset - that is if we can convince him to betray his boss at a time that is convenient for us.
The shortest night will be on December 21st, so we have a little while until then.
But before we go further, what has the rest of you noticed."

Slobbertooth tried his best to be methodical about what he'd seen between bites of food

"Spoke with Shanita and Leggio from group 2. K has all of their commlink info in case there is something we can do with it. The team has total faith in Leggio, and trusts Zola as much as is necessary for their job, but they approached us when they heard we represented a company who might be hiring. The team has seen action, and put down a spirit before, but it required them bringing out heavier weapons. They use Browning pistols with laser sights, and keep FN HARs in the back. The team is now banned by the local government from bringing out the big guns unless they are specifically given permission to do so. No word from Zola, no assault rifles. He'll give it at the drop of a hat, though.

"Kynos is hated by the team, which puts him in better standing there than with Ramirez. The tin man is a sociopath, who broke one of their mate's legs for laughing a bit too much. The team is grateful that his contract is going to be terminated soon. They didn't know the date.


"After that I paid a visit to Ramirez's room. The place gave me the creeps. Clean as a whistle but it reeked of devil rat excrement. Opened up his safe and found a bunch off creds, some kind of magical instructions, and this-"

Slobber put the bible on the table.

Anna said surprised "You didn't... " She was green with envy as she did not get to steal anything in her B&E.

Schmitt raised an eyebrow: "Well, that is certainly something. Of course now we have to think of a way to bring it back before it is missed. Oh well, better make the most of it. Kite if you'd be so good and scann the think in detail to see if there is anything hidden in it and get a good image of every page. Books like that are often used in a book cipher. Very secure as long as no one knows which book you use."

<@all <im free. ill do som research while the others are going home. cya>>


At the meeting, bnc sticked to the dessert. Heavily spiced dishes were to her belly what a nailed club and high speed were to a skull. Only the club worked faster.

"Kite, maybe we can inspect that thing together. Your Spanish skills and technical skills combined with my skills in analyzing and research could make a difference. Will you meet up with me after the meeting?
I myself don't have an awful lot to add, as I wasn't there. We have a remote controlled gas grenade implanted in Pierce's appartment, and we checked out that there is no magical defense in case of Darrel Vandemark's. Still, we should not be careless as we found indications of a blood rituals being performed on him.
Also, I found a shift six days from now, when both Pierce and Vandemark are at work. Inconveniently, that means it's going to be a morning shift, 6am to 2pm."

bnc's findings


Kite nodded at bnc: "Sure, I'm glad for all the help I can get. 18th century Spanish isn't really my forte."

Schmitt nodded: "Yes, these blood ritual thing is worrisome. At the very least we will have to content with very, very motivated opposition. Still, knowing about the stuff is half the battle.
Kite tells me that we have footage of Vandemark and his girlfriend/date. If she has been intimate with him, she might know about his security measures and if he has a bio-monitor we need to worry about.

The shift isn't too much of a problem since it's on a weekend and the bank is closed then."

Anna frowns "Day shift is difficult, due to a chance for collateral damage. I am not sure how comfortable I am with that thought. On the plus side, there is traffic so it may delay intervention."

Schmitt replied: "The whole operation is predicated on not being detected, so there should be no bystanders in danger in the first place. But in any case we'll hit them just after the shift change while it's still dark outside. That should lessen the risk even more."

Anna said "Seems reasonable, how long in and out providing anything goes smooth ?"

Schmidt shrugged: "Hard to say. But I'm working on that question. We'll have a chance to train moving through the bank soon - which reminds me that I have to get going soon.

I'll leave you to it."

bnc summarizes her findings and makes them available to the team, before going to the meeting.

"I don't know any Spanish, alas. You'll have to do the translation, if need be. What I can do, is try and find some translation online. I'm pretty sure that Anlgoamerican world has an interest in these contents. With luck, I might be able to dig something out."



"Regarding Vandemark I'd like to suggest a different approach. I'll simply check myself. If he's got a monitor online, I'll see. If it's not online, it can't do any harm. Mommm.... yah, I just updated my agent to check on him in an irregular pattern, up to 72 times a day. If nothing shows to be online, we don't have to worry. Just to make sure, Anna-darling, I'll describe to you how to identify a biomonitor on the astral plane. It's not easy to spot, but you can train on me. Once you figured it out, go there and check his aura. Even if that thing is offline and only goes on in case of apocalypse, you'll spot it.
If we go after his girl, he'll see us coming. And nothing raises more attention than playing with his favourite toy.

Gerhardt, what kind of training do you have in mind. A digital simulation?
Also, you said you'd look for a plan of the whole facility. How far did you come in this regard?"

Dr Schmidt replied: "Digital is good but no replacement for the real thing. No, I'm talking about a real life test run on a model. I'm not quite finished yet, but I have a very promising young man at hand that already has worked for me on previous occasions and who will be able to help us out. I'll introduce you to him soon.

As for the girl friend: You are right that we shouldn't "make a go" at her. But making friends with her and going for a heartfelt talk about men in general and her boyfriend in specific might unearth some valuable intel. I'm sure Anna can find a way to make this happen with your help.

Oh, before I forget: I'll have to borrow Flatline and Krestov for my next part."