Inside the GMC, a single male elf sat, apparently deep in VR, judging by his innert state while his aura was pulsing with emotions. Beside him, an ork - if female or male couldn't be made out - was alert and fidgeting. Annas suspected nicotin withdrawl. Both were not magically active but with slight cybernetic or bio augmentations.
From the compositions of their ideosyncracies, Anna suspected them to be a team of a rigger and a streetsam.

"All right. Do we agree those are the bad boys? Why not knock at their car rather than Czerniak's door?
Anyone coming up with a good idea why vampires would hire human mercs? I mean, apart from the sunlight thing which they can obviously counteract pretty well."

"They could also be working for the vampire hunters. I don't know. Do we want to disturb them, and basically tell them, that we know about this? Can we find out, what they are doing, without giving us away?"

"Uhm... Shall we ask Lizzie? Hey, you, we're about to capture some foks as we did to you. If they're your pals, please tell us. Don't want to make the same mistake twice"

"We, definitely, do not want to make that same mistake twice. That's for sure. And calling her might not be the worst idea, actually. Maybe more like... Hey, Lizzie, we figured out how they got the statue inside, and there are some other disturbing news about the person they used for this. We just found a van with two people inside near that person's home. Since we do not know, whether they belong to your group, we would rather not approach them. Have you figured out by now, whether you are willing to trust us or not? Maybe you are able to tell us whether these guys are friends or enemies."

"Sure, sugar, that's why you're the face. You got my green light. Here's her number."

Anna reports her finding, and then responds, "I don't think the vampires need to monitor her, they control her. They have a telepathic link to her, and if they wanted they could have placed a camera inside her house. This looks like an investigation to me. The way she looks someone may be worried about her. Or considering the cyberwar and professionalism of these guys... I'd bet on hunters again."

"We CANNOT leave that woman in that state if we can help it. It is inhumane." Taurus will not look happy with the talk of contacting the vampire hunters. "Are we planning to ask 'Mother may I ' for every action we take in this place? We need to accomplish OUR mission, not theirs. This surveillance is a hindrance, we need to remove it."

"Exactly. And everything we can do here will only endanger our mission. Either by giving the vampires more information than necessary, or by worsening our relationships with a potential ally."

"Or we could save someone who could be an ACTUAL ally, and if those guys doing the surveillance are the hunters then they will know we are the good guys."

"Anna, can you trace whoever controls these spells?"

"I can actually, I'll follow it and keep a spirit here so that you can instruct me how far you want me to go. Otherwise, there is no way to communicate me with when I am there. "


Anna prepares her mind for the summoning and only attempts it when she is heavily augmented by her protective spells. She grins manically when the spirit appears a handsome, half-naked blond gymnast that vaguely looks like a Greek or Roman Gladiator. She introduces the spirit and politely tasks it to convoy messages between her and the team while she projects.

"Rocky! never knew you were real... " she gives the spirit a nod of appreciation, and then asks it to mask her aura, hide her and carry on communications between her and the team until she returns.

Then Anna takes a deep breath and allows her mind to sleep out of her body. She follows that awful room again, but this time follows the spells to the best of her ability. Trying to scout them and remain out of sight of possible observers.

Anna - now that she knew what to look for - found the astral trail and followed it for about half a kilometer. It ended at a basement that appeared to be warded

Anna resists an urge to test the ward and brave in. On the one hand, she is great at astral sneaking but on the other is an initiated and dangerous vampire mage that may kill her for intruding or to the very least be alerted. The powerful ward which she cannot reliably cross when she is in a hurry also makes being responsible more sensible.

She mentally comments "I followed the spell to warded basement, now I could try to sneak in but I may be stuck inside with an initiated and always astrally perceiving mage. It feels a bit too risky for my taste so I am going back before I am detected."


She goes back to her body, doing her best to not draw any attention to herself - she observes her surroundings well to be able to lead the team to that basement.

Realizing, that she actually hasn't sent her message, yet, Nova did so at that point.

<< Hey, Lizzie, we figured out how they got the statue inside, and there are some other disturbing news about the person they used for this. She is being mind-controlled. Also, we just found a van with two people inside near her home. Since we do not know, whether they belong to your group, we would rather not approach them. Have you figured out by now, whether you are willing to trust us or not? Maybe you are able to tell us whether these guys are friends or enemies. We also know, where one of the assumed vampire mages is located currently, the one who is controlling the aforementioned woman, and we might just go and pay that one a visit. Any input from your end? >>

The answer came in surprisingly short time: <<Do not engage the people in the van. My contact just told me that we have the director under surveillance.>>

<< Thank you for the quick reply. It is what I figured, but it's still good to know, that we do not have to worry about them. Since your people are only surveiling her, you probably came to the same conclusion, that it would just tip the vampires off, if the spells were removed. On the other hand, now that we learned from where they originate... shutting them off from that side seems a lot more interesting. If you know of any reason why this should not be done, now is the time to raise your voice. >>

<<I can't tell you anything about what the higher ups have found out. But if you want to take on the vampire that basically permanently enslaved the director, I hope you are armed for bear. It's daylight now and they tend to hide in veritable bunkers during that time. As far as I know, we don't have the forces available right now to act.>>
Lizzy replied.

<< Of course, they will also have ways to escape we won't be able to follow. We will see if we can learn more and come up with a plan. Thanks for now. >>


To the others and the spirit, Nova said: "I have checked and the guys in the van are, indeed, affiliated with the hunters. How about we take a look at that warded basement? It is likely heavily fortified and guarded, but if we can get inside, we might have a shot of removing one of their mages, if everything works out well. If we can do that, the woman would be free of the spell. Until then, the connection between the two is not something we should break. At least not right away. Of course, as we know, those vampires are a sneaky kind and usually have some escape plans, like that last time, where the vampire turned into mist and fled."

Anna says "I agree, we should investigate. Gather intel and stuff."

Sweet! Anna, your insisting on pursueing the statue clue actually brought us directly to the vampire's nest. If we can hit hard here, we not only have the element of surprise, we'd also get Muhme's bonus."

"All right. Anna, how much astral reconnaisance can you do?
I will myself first scout from the 'trix, then via drones."

And so she does. First thing, she checks out the place in the matrix, putting a maximum on focus on stealth.

Anna gives bnc a warm smile. "I did not get in because I thought it was dangerous and might alert them if I am discovered. The ward itself is very powerful, but I'll break in if I spend enough time trying to do so. Exiting the ward may also require some time, which means that it might not work for me very well if I need to run away. A safer play would be to send a spirit inside, but it may alert the vampires nevertheless. The good thing about a spirit is that it does not need to get out and can leave to the meta planes and ignore the ward. "

"How about we check it out in the mundane, before getting to any next step here?" Nova suggested.

"Seems reasonable"

Taurus was definitely on board with a physical penetration, he was feeling antsy simply sitting quietly, but he know he could not really help things along on the astral or matrix part. The idea that they were finally going into the beasts den made him check his gear one more time.

As he dryfired weapons and checked his ammo, he mentally contemplated the change the shadows had already wrought on him. He could easily remember weeks at a time that he did nothing at all in his role as bodyguard. But he realized that during that time, he was doing something, he was alert and watching for threats and ready to move into harm's way should one materialize.

No one on this team needed him to make them his primary, so he had been waiting for probably the first time in his professional life.

Taking a closer look to the supposed lair on the matrix, revealed no special matrix activity. The building above contained office spaces, and so it was no surprise when bnc found over 500 matrix capable devices within 100m of her.

The drone revealed that the basement apparently had only one entrance from the back of the building - and probably one from inside the building. All basement windows were blacked out - likely someone painting over the window panes.

What corp owns the offices? Is the building openly accessible?

No particular corporation with logos or something like that. You'd have to do a matrix search to find out who exactly owns it beyond some anonymous holding corp.

It's not exactly high security - a single camera over the main entrance and the entry door is secured with a card scanner.

Anna asks "So are we doing astral recon and taking a risk or are we going in blind and disable whoever is there?"

"I'd love to find out more about the building first, actually. There might be loopholes in their infrastructure or logistics."

bnc does some research on the facilities, especially regarding its owner and, of course, matrix security services.

Being made up of many individual firms residing there, matrix security looked like a patchwork with lots of different low to midlevel hosts. None of them looked like they belonged to a vampire's hideout.
The only thing her search showed up in regard to the holding was that it apparently was pretty easy to rent space here - nothing more than three rents and an online application was necessary to get a space here. There was no name registered for the basement facilities, but the previous occupant had apparently been a micro brewery with tiled floors and walls, a good ventilation system and several different storage rooms and a very large brewing cauldron that likely was still down there.

"Apparently, it's not that difficult to rent rooms in there. What about we check whether there is an office or anything available? It would give us the possibility to do recon on site without drawing too much attention."

>> my gut feeling is to just raid the place, and disappear, but I can do subtle.

The minotaur shorts and blows then settles back in for more waiting, subtle is no where's near his wheelhouse.

"Like in: attacking a fortified basement we know nothing of except that in there, vampires - possibly even dozens, for all we know and don't know - are lurking, without preparing for traps, weapons, strategies, or anything?"

bnc does a quick check whether offices or any other rooms even are free for rental.

"Renting a room there seems like a good idea, as we could get inside without raising suspicion and then go on from there."

A quick search showed that there was both space to rent as well as virtual guided tours available. Seeing it in person required calling the caretaker. A quick lookup showed that he was both available and willing to show potential renters the building.

"Look! The stars are in our favor. There's room to rent, and the caretaker is available. We can rent a room basically right now. Anyone wanna do the talking who doesn't have shadowrunner tattooed on their forehead?"

Taurus takes out his comm, sets it to mirror, checks his forehead, shakes his head, "Not it." and settles back in.

"How are we going to do identification? They will need some, right?"

"In a shithole like this? a credstick should reduce the number of questions asked...but I got a burner SIN from Abdecker I don't mind littering.."

She sighs "Normally that would be me as I am unaugmented and can hide my talent. In this case, I think I am out of place, so perhaps bnc?"

"I don't see how you would burn your SIN by renting that hole. If we're done here, we won't come back, there ain't gonna be any official recordings. I'd even use my Ruth Axis for that case.

Aaaah ... what do you mean by "bnc". You're not talking me, are you? Sweet charms and stuff? Cybereyes, datajacks. Gal, I'm not even sure my mimics look human. I get odd looks, anyway. I believe Nova's supposed to kinda be a face, isn't she?

On the other hand. It's renting an office. Sure, I'll go."

bnc makes an appointment for in 15 minutes, if possible.

A quarter of an hour proved to be to sudden for the caretaker, but still, bnc was able to get an appointment in an hour and a half.

The man, a greying mid 50ier with an enormous schnauzer and a potbelly awaited her at the door. After introducing himself as Ignaz Wasik he said:
"We've got two empty spaces at the moment: One on the ground floor and one in the second. Ground floor is a 100sqm, second only 60. All utilities ready to use including bathrooms and a tea kitchen. 9000 a month for ground, 5500 for the one on the second. No parkingspaces included."

"Nine-thousand nuyen just to rent 100 m²? I understand it's Prague, but still, for nine-thousand you could easily rent space roughly twice as large.What does make this so costly?"

"I don't make the prices. It's close to the center. Maybe you'd rather look to the south of the city if that's to rich for you.
Most people rent here in only for the short term - start-ups and the like. So instead of the hassle of a deposit and finding a new renter every three to six months, the company just raised the rent.
There are enough people out there who pay that for flexible and no questions asked business addresses. Take it or leave it."
The man replied with a grin.

"I see. Is there a possibility to rent it for only, say, one week?"

"Sure. Which one do you want? Flat 2500€ then for the ground floor, 2000 for upstairs."
The man replied with a grin.

"I'd be interested in the ground one. Can my assistant and I take a closer look at it?"
bnc tries to smile, but it looks oh so awkward on her.

"Sure, follow me."
The man took out a keycard and led the two runner through the front door. It was readily apparant that this had been a regular block of flats, before it had been converted into office spaces. The stairs were no frills concrete with no elevator and a decor that showed that this whole place hadn't seen renovation since the early 2030ies. A look down the cellar stairs showed that the heavy fire protection door had been fitted with a very modern looking mag lock, as well as a reinforced frame.

The space the team was about to rent looked reasonably clean and even came with working light panels - even though those also looked to be 30 years or older. From the windows they were able to see the parking lot in the back of the building, as well as the external cellar access.

"Good enough for your scam?"
The man grinned, apparently taking bnc for some kind of con-artist.