The first thing Anna noticed was a huge sculpture: A crucified figur made entirely of leather rags. The thing had an aura and it wasn't a nice one. Despair came of it in waves - intensely and unpleasant.
Also, there was an above average background count here, tinged in the same fashion. It spoke of pain, past and present and of the many atrocities that this city had witnessed and endured.
Quite a lot of the other sculptures did have a colorful representation in the astral, indicating the passions that had flowed into their creation. But none was as strong as the Crucified.

More important were the small watcher spirits flitting around - low effort wage mage creations no doubt - that kept an eye on visitors and exponats alike.

Anna noticed a female dwarf at the other end of the room who also seemed to be astrally active, looking around the room.

On the matrix, bnc didn't face any particularly difficult obstacles: The iconography of the host was formed to fit the museum, but clearly hadn't had an artists touch but was generated from preexisting images with little love for the medium.
Finding plans wasn't hard either - evacuation and safety information was easy to find. Getting to the sensitive stuff about electrical power and security relevant material required her to crack an encrypted file.

One thing though did catch her attention: There was one persona moving around whose icon was much too well crafted for the environment - Tycho Brahe as a quick image search told her - and he moved around the same section of the host as herself...

Nova and Taurus were confined to the mundane in their investigation, but they also spotted a couple that definitely wasn't your average sarari wage slave couple: A heavy set ork with tribal tatoos on his left face led a tall and radiantly beautiful elf on his arm. Their clothes were fashionable, but both runners recognized the signs of expensive armored clothing.

Nova was wearing her Zoé business dress while visiting the gallery.

She forwards a picture of the ork and elf pair to the team.

<< @Anna: This guy and his "arm candy" might be worth checking out. >>

That one catches her attention.
"There's someone else checking out the host. Do you want me to take the risk of tracing the icon? We could get noticed, but we could also find out where they hide and who they are."
Carefully hiding, she analyzes the target and forwards the findings to the group.

<< @bnc: No risk, no reward. Right? Besides, we know very little at the moment. We need more information. >>

"If these people are the Lovci Stínů, then perhaps it would be best to announce ourselves so that we don't end up working at cross-purposes."

bnc took a closer look with her analysis program.
Apparently, it was a cheapish deck, only an R1 - alas one that had been heavily modified:
There were four programs, one of which was a virtual machine on a program carrier. The original deck slot was occupied by an R4 agent, the other two slots had the root kit and the stealth program running.
The deck sported A1 S6 D3 F1. It wasn't running silent currently although the last matrix action had been the Hack on the Fly maneuver.

"Talking instead of acting never was a strength of mine", bnc answers, ready to go with Nova's green light. Still running silent, she breaks the deck's firewall with ease and attempts to locate its physical destination.

Anna shivers when she looks at the Crucified, she likes passion but these emotions are shocking. It makes her uncomfortable.

Anna tries to assense the dwarf without being obvious that she does so, and when Nova mentions the suspicious couple she tries to do the same to them, while pretending to appreciate the art.

In the matrix:



The suspicious icon was definitely engaged in a direct connection hack against one of the door locks at the back of the building. bnc was able to pinpoint the location of the deck to a coffee shop located not far away down the Moldau.
At the same time, a patrol IC made it's sweep, but was apparently badly configurated since it missed both bnc and the other decker.

Anna took a closer look at the three suspicious people:
The astrally active dwarf was apparently a full mage at comparable power to Anna, but specialized to conjuration and alchemy.

The ork was cybered up to the gills - or his ware was particularly bad quality - or both.

The elf had no cyberware at all but was also magically active, although more on a physical level.


As Anna looked on, the three runners turned ever so slightly away from her and began leaving towards the exit.

Anna texted mentally, and avoided drawing the attention of the runners, for good practice she extended her counterspell field to her friends. >> They are runners, all of them, the dwarf is a mage, sexy-elf-girl is an adept, and the orc is the street-sam. Just like in that, Blackcube trid- they are only missing a decker in the van. I'm continuing mainly for the record, perhaps these details would be useful to us.


The dwarf is a conjurer and alchemist of similar power than my own, very capable of alchemical bombs. Since I could verify two schools of magic, she is likely a full mage and we'll assume sorcery abilities as well - though I could not verify. She follows the fire-bringer - like many other alchemists. She does not bind spirits, and feels very strongly about it. So don't tell her I bounded Sophie. She may have access to a larger than normal types of spirits, and can likely conjure very powerful spirits on a whim.

The Orc is cybered, physically fit, and augmented reflexes. Very strong but not Taurus strong. His reaction times appear to be off the charts.

The eye candy is a physical adept, with no augmentations but magically augmented reflexes, she has slightly less magic than my own.
I can verify lightning-fast reactions, the dragon slayer mentor spirit, and that she is bilingual but no idea which languages. The most remarkable thing about her is her potential to regenerate, so even if you leave her bleeding out, she may be fully healed in under a minute.

Yes, I am fun with on first dates.

The crucified statue is a bad omen - very disturbing astrally radiating despair, and pain and violence. No idea about the history of this place, but it has plenty of artocities in it, and the present is also not looking so good. It radiates background count making magic less effective around it. Know that if we fight at the gallery or something.

Taurus is not letting the group go, but isn't ready to chat either. He will follow, while sending a quick text to Jimmy V. >>Those vampire hunters, do they count a dwarven mage, an ork samurai and an elven phys adept in their crew?

Jimmy replied: <<Possibly. It doesn't help that the group used face concealing, ballistic masks while on mission. I'm sending you a semi current image of some of their crew. Could be out of date by now - they do tend to have a rather high turnover.>>
The image attached was from a surveillance drone, some distance away and showed about twenty people inside a training room. The only one Taurus could recognize was the female dwarf and even that one was a bit iffy from the distance.

"Whoever they are, they're going in through the back door. Somebody wanna check there? Maybe we can shadow them unnoticed. I found their decker. I sent James there to trail him."

True to her word, she sends James down to the coffee shop.

James found at the coordinates a pimply faced boy of about 18 years in VR with his hand in his backpack.

"Oh shit, that's a boy, not a mercenary. They hired a kid with a cheap slab of India-built chips for decking. Who are these guys?
Shall we, uhm, shall we kidnap and question him?"

>> bnc are you sure the decker is related to the team in the gallery?
A city employed vampire hunters would not need to hack the gallery, and if they can afford these guys they can afford a proper decker...

+ Kidnapping the decker makes sense, we'll pretend to be gallery security or something. Need anything from my side?

"Actually, no. It would just be a hell of a coincidence if three teams would operate her independently. It is possible, though. I sent you the map of the Gallery and indicated the door he just attacked - whatever he did exactly. Go check on the door, you'll find his teammates there."

bnc does the same - she sends one of her bodies, in this case her FlySpy - to the place.

Anna makes her way to the door without delay. >>On my way.

The flying drone started its way from the hidden blimp - it would arrive in about ten minutes time.

Meanwhile, the team of supposed rival runners or shadow hunters reached the exit and started to file out.

Anna texts >> bnc nothing physical on the door, it is an emergency exit. Let's go speak to the decker. She'll wait for instructions, and then try to catch the decker.

Nova also made her way to the location of the decker kid, that bnc forwarded them. She moved casually, looking at the occasional gallery piece, as to not attract any attention.

bnc manually follows the icons. Once James arrives at the decker's, she reboots her deck to get rid of the overwatch score, and sends the Munin to the place, while the FlySpy is still on her way to the gallery. Once rebooted, she again begins to trail the icons of the three runners.

Both Anna and Nova left the gallery and moved out on the street to get to the cafe. There, as bnc had described, the young man, or rather boy sat. He was lanky, with dark, messy hair and bad acne. He did have a data jack though, albeit a very cheap looking one.
He wore a shabby looking synth leather jacket that was at least two sizes to big for his frame and had his hand inside a bright neon green backpack that rested next to him on the ground. His relaxed posture revealed that he had to be in VR with RAS override active. A waitress was glancing over now and again, annoyed. Likely because the boy had a single cup of tea cooling in front of him, not bothering to order anything else.

Taurus found the suspected team of three filing out the main entrance, moving down the street. Although the dwarf didn't join them, she took pains to keep the ork and the elf in sight as they moved towards the bus stop.

Once he suspects they are not with the door hacker, Taurus decides to make contact. Choosing to confront the heavies, he quickens his pace, and putting himself opposite the dwarf, at a distance but even with them, speaks.

"Excuse me, are you the vampire hunters?"

Oh my, teamwork really isn't his strength, huh? Well, let's see how this one turns out...

Anna seats next to the boy and tries to get his attention.

Nova looked at the waitress, saying to her: "I'm really sorry, he does that all the time. Sitting in a cafe in VR and playing his damn video games all day long. We will take care of him.", then simply moved towards the table of the boy and looked at/into the backpack on her way, which probably contained his cyberdeck. Was there a cable connected to it? Or did he use a wireless signal.

<< Anna and I are at the boy's location now. Should I just shut down his deck? >>

At Taurus words the dwarf turned around. The look of horror on her face might have come from the fact that a towering bull headed man had just spoken to her unprovoked - or from the fact that he publicly tried to out her as a vampire hunter.
Her next words indicated that it was the latter: "What? No! Are you crazy? Get away from me you buvolí mozek!"

The boy stirred as Anna sat next to him. There was indeed a cheap deck hidden inside the backpack - lot's of improve repairs and modifications had turned it into a sprawling mess of electronics and cables, making the backpack somewhat necessary from a structural point of view.
His eyes cleared enough to indicate he was back in AR: "Promiň, ano, právě jsem odcházel, můžeš mít tu židli."

Anna says quietly "I am here because you hacked the Gallery. No running please, I came to talk."

"You guys fancy getting straight to the point, huh?
Taurus, if you'd kindly tag one of those vampire slayers for me?"

Nova stood next to the boy now and put a hand on his shoulder, giving him a slight taste of how much strength she had in her slender body. She smiled at him in a friendly, but not exactly reassuring way.

"Speak english."

<< @bnc: Can you translate what he said? >>

>>I'm sorry, you want me to do what? I am not carrying any tracers.

Taurus will be careful about the dwarf's space.

"I have no quarrel with you Miss, or your imposing friends over there, but I am a professional that is working on something similar and I felt it was important to meet."

<@Nova @Anna <nothg important. basicly: sry sit down, im on my way anyway>>

bnc sighs an annoyed sigh. [i]Do it yourself, or don't get it done.
<@Taurus <nvm make sure your new friends write into your friend's book>>

The hacker being trapped between Nova's grip and Anna on his other side visibly gulped. In strongly accented English he said:
"I don't know what you are talking about. I was just sitting here, watching this backpack for a... friend."

The dwarf looked alarmed left and right and then screamed: "Pomoc, býk mě chce znásilnit!" and started to run away across the street.
Several people turned around, as well as some road workers, two orks and a particularly beefy human that could have passed as one of his colleagues in bad lighting.
"One of them called: "Ahoj! Pryč od ní, ty prase!"

"That still makes you an accessory, if you know what that is. Shut the deck down now and come with us. Immediately!" Nova said to him, resolutely. "We would like to know more about the 'friend' of yours."

Anna assenses the hacker for his emotional state.

Anna found the teenager to be a veritable font of emotion - right now he displayed pantscrapping terror. For that though, he kept remarkable cool. She also found that the young man had some very interesting talents that would one day make him into a matrix wizard akin to bnc - but he likely was also on the spectrum of a slight autism disorder. He certainly disliked physical contact.
Nova certainly noticed the boy's heartrate spiking severely.
"I don't know what you mean. I have done nothing but sitting here." His deck powered down just as bnc had placed her watchdog MARK - there was an outgoing message, that she could try to stop being send though.

"Do you think we are dumb? Get up! We are going."

Nova picked up the backpack with one hand, and held the boy at one arm, forcing him up, if need be.

Taurus will pick s direction that would not have him following the dwarf, ideally it would be following the ork/elf, if not, then then towards the rest of the team, and start walking.

The dwarf hurried away, leaving Taurus a chance to follow the couple - the road workers faced a moment of indecision long enough for Taurus to be far enough away.



"Get your hands of me!" The boy shrieked, but he still got up. He didn't look like he could run and was well aware of the fact. His predicament only drew bemused glances from the other patrons - a reaction that would have likely been different had the involved genders been reversed. In this case, no-one stopped Nova and Anna from pulling the boy from the cafe.

"I will, if you promise to follow along nice and quiet and not try anything dumb. It won't work, anyways. We are not going to harm you, if you do not force our hand."

Nova loosens her grip on his arm, just gently guiding him away from the café for now, while waiting for an answer.

Anna follows, keeping line of sight to the two, but not needing to make any threat since Nova is intimidating enough.

"Boy tried to send for help. I suppressed the message. Deck is down. Check whether he's got a commlink on him."

"We can see what you do on the Matrix, okay? Noone is gonna come to rescue you. Your commlink. Hand it over, or I will take it from you."

<< In the meantime, someone could figure out, where we actually take him to. We do not even have a car. >>

>>Drag him out into the alley and beat the frag out of him.

>>I can mind rape him, but I'd rather not do it in public.

"No, not publicly. I'll rent a driverless cab. In it, you can do your raping. We're shadowrunners, not thugs. Also, we don't want to draw too much attention."

If nobody objects, bnc will use a burner link to anonymously rent a taxi on autopilot.

The boy followed, keeping his mouth shut. The deck was offline now, but bnc was able to decode and translate the last message sent: <<2 fem merc got me>>

Taurus followed the pair into the next street, where they headed for a parked car. The mid range BMW model pulled out into traffic, allowing Taurus to get a good look at its plates

The auto cab arrived a minute later for Anna and Nova to enter.