Traffic is a slow crawl over the bridges spanning the sound, the van shifting along sluggishly in the torturous stop and go traffic of the morning commute. The sun is rising slowly in a display of brillant hues, testimony to Natures determination to make lemonade out of lemons.

The house is much as you expected from the blueprints, massive and perched on a slight hill that doesn't seem to match the rest of the fairly flat geography. The guard house window is tinted, but the drive up to the house itself seems guard by just a simple, flimsy looking gate.

Alerts trill softly in Jester's mind, showing that the area is undergoing almost constant sensor sweeps, although nothing seems specifically locked on your van.

"damn," he says over the van intercom. "This place has some heavy duty active sensor arrays. I don't think I can launch the drone without it being detected."

Jester spends the next few minutes looking carefully for a place to park that seems normal.

Van - There's not much in the area besides the constant twists and turns of the road and the roadside flora. It would be easy enough to pull off the road and tuck the van behind some of the vegetation, but it might be harder to get back to the road if one needed to leave in a hurry.

Astrally - The physical world blurrs into a haze of colors and emotions. You can't see much of the actual grounds from your low vantage point, but you can tell that there does not seem to be any spirits flying around outside.

In the Matrix - The comfortable world of the Matrix slides around you, generic and personalized icons darting by in rapid succession, millions of other people going about their business in the world wide web of communication. You extend your arms into the electronic tide, feeling the ebb and flow of information slipping through your fingers, and move.

Several nano-seconds later finds you standing outside of a huge, rambling mansion that all information seems to indicate is the node you're looking for. There are no icons moving around the porch surrounding the ramshackle building, but the windows have been boarded up, and the door is shut tight.

"Alright, the old tricks are the best tricks. Hang on."

The van suddenly lurched to a halt on the side of the road. Steam pouring out of the engine compartment. Jester got out and propped up the engine hatch above the rear left tire. Over the comm inside: Poke away folks we can stay like this for 15 minutes.

He went on pretending to do stuff.

"Ok looks clear for me to get a little closer." Joli relaxes into the seat and releases herself from her body, quickly passing through the floor of the van and moving cautiously towards the site.

Blackjack stand in front of the boarded up mansion and ponders how to get inside.

Hm! They obviously don't take visitors. I wonder if there is anyone hidden nearby.

She scans the area for deckers and IC.

Joli - You pass up through the confines of the vehicle, stretching your form to it's full extent, the sense of freedom almost palpable. Across the road in less time then it takes to think, you peer around and over the walls.

The lawn is manicured perfectly, and radiates the healthy glow of something tended to with constant love and attention. You spot two forms moving across the grounds in the distance, 1 taller and bipedal, a guard you'd assume, and the other lower, 4 legged. Probably the paracritters.

Blackjack - The area looks clear. This space doesn't seem to be very popular, just more personal nodes scattered around much like this one. The occasional icon moves by, but always at a distance, and none stop or approach.

Blackjack studies the area for a bit and realizes that there aren't any IC or deckers guarding the access node.

No IC. No deckers. I must be dreaming! I'll bet hacking in is going to be really hard. If there are no IC on the outside, the ones on the inside must be really deadly. If that's true, then they must think that anyone who can actually get in won't be able to get out undetected.

With a smile, Blackjack says, "Time to test this place!"

She walks up the steps and across the porch to the door and tries the handle.

Joli - You slip across the lawn, moving low to the groud, using the aura giving off by all living things and Gaia herself to mask your presence. Moving up the house, you dart around the exterior, marking the patrols of several dual natured critters around the expanse of land surrounding the house. None of the exterior walls are warded, and what windows you can check in show no evidence of wards on the interior. You dart back to the van with just a thought, settling back into your body with understanble regret. Jester slams the hood shut, climbing back aboard after just a few minutes and turning the van back towards Seattle.

Blackjack - Pushing open the door, you glance around. You're in the foyer of the house, and the area is littered with remnants of old code, shaped like broken furniture and knick-knacks. The halls are narrow and dusty, but you don't catch sight of any moving icons.

Blackjack looks around the hallways before here and begins trying to get an idea of whether or not any threats exist on the host.

I was expecting lots of icons. This place is just too empty.

Bloodmoon

With the remoteness of the mansion on the hill and the patrolling guards, it quickly became obvious to Bloodmoon that attempting to physically scout out the location would be difficult at best, even were the target to not be expecting trouble. In any case, Joli's astral recon would be much more likely to discover any useful information without revealing their presence.

Having spent the time instead pretending to hover over Jester as he works on the engine, she keeps her eyes open from any reaction from the mansion - physical security, drones, etc.

Joli shakes her head to clear ot and readjust to her more limited existence. Picking up the comm unit she reports.

Nothing too overt in the way of magical security. They have patrols of mundanes with Awakened canines. I found no signs of wards along the entire exterior of the house. I didn't see any spirits patrolling but they may have them on call.

Suspecting that she is on a bouncer host, Blackjack creates a mirror image of herself to draw the attention of any surprise IC or frames and then runs an analysis of the host's systems.

This is just too easy... I don't think I'm looking at the real code.

Van - The trip back to the warehouse is better, moving in a flow of traffic that's minus the majority of the day-laborers in their cheap suits and fuel-efficient cars.

Blackjack - You pull out a small compact, clicking open to create a mirror image of yourself. You smile, nod, and wave in unison, and turn back to more serious tasks. Scrolling through a list of the specifics of the system that are readily available, you are surprised at the low level of security, in direct opposition to the high level of physical security at the manor itself. The host appears to be genuine, but it's only at Orange, no where near the level of sophistication as the security system on the outside.

Surprised by the lack of security measures on the host, Blackjack continues trying to infiltrate the system carefully. She attempts to swerve her datatrail away from any undetected trace algorithms and then tries to set up an account for herself on the server.

Come on Superadmin!

Blackjack pantomimes the action of rolling dice around in her hand before throwing them.

"Voila!"

"All right, home sweet home, whats the next step?"

Jester killed the engine and slid the passenger door open.

Bloodmoon

Nimbly climbing out of the van, the young woman glances back down the street they had just come from. "I'm still a little concerned that the previous team was so quickly taken down. I think setting up a guard'd be a good idea, and I'm willing to take first shift. Come and grab me when they're all done inside and ready to move on to the next step in the planning. Till then, I'm just going to keep an eye out here."

Looking around the outside of the buildings, Bloodmoon finds a nearby spot in the shadows where she can hunker down and keep an eye out for trouble.

Tombstone stretches lazily, then slowly walks towards where the others will be. "I'm going to see where they're at in the planning, then I might come back out and join you. We do need to be careful, of our target and our employer both."

Joli makes her way out of the van. "I know I am not looking for a bullet between my eyes." She looks at Bloodmoon for a moment and wraps her form in sheath of protection, feeling her will extend to cover her while out here.

Sebastian, remain here with her and keep an eye out. The small dragonette leaps from her shoulders and disperses into the astral, she feels the surge of hunger and focus from him. Eat even one cat or dog while we're here and so help me...... Her only reply is a throaty chuckle in the back of her mind.

Blackjack - You reach behind you, sweeping away the digital trails of your entrance into the house with a small hand broom.

Heading deeper into the house, it seems to be cluttered with the remains of code modules and half-completed algorhithms, like broken down drones and scattered furniture. Stepping into a large, wood paneled office, you stroll over to a set of archaic looking filing cabinets and rifling through the accounts, a pen appearing in your hand as you reach down to scrawl your name into a list of superuser accounts.

You sign your name, but it looks off, and the ink begins to melt from the page. At that same moment, you hear a steady tap-tap, like someone tapping a stick on the floor, and you can see what appears to be a large mechanical eye on three legs doing an odd roll down the hallway, eye peering back and forth.

Everyone else - Lee looks up expectantly as the van pulls back in, obviously eager to show what he's found as he rushes over.

"Aren't you missing someone? Anyway, here, look, I think I found Tombstone and I found a hole in the system..."

"What are you talking about?" Jester says.

Dang! That didn't work.

Blackjack tries to hide under the desk to avoid detection. She tries to make her decoy hide somewhere as well.

Jester - Lee glances up. "That Asian chick you took with you?"

Blackjack - The icon wanders by, apparently not noticing you. It might not be an active seeking program, but better safe then sorry.

Bloodmoon - The night is deathly still, no movement along the deserted strips of concrete that make up the small airport.

Elsewhere - The abandoned building was warmed by a feeble glow of a lamp. Two figures. man and woman, sat in the wan light, carrying on a spirited and friendly conversation. A small pot sat on a hot plate with the light scent of tea on the air. Their laughter mingled with the occasional sound from the outside world.

A single silenced shot rings out and the light bulb bursts and the darkness rushes forward. They cry out and the sounds of scrambling in haste. The next sound is a crack and then a body slumping to the floor. The darkness is split by a lighter as the man extends it forward. The sight of his female companion, her head at a sharp unnatural angle, is illuminated. He sucks in a breath sharply and slowly begins to back up out of the room. He quickly turns and the flame shows a single man blocking the doorway. His face decorated with tattoos, his hair cut jagged and bleached to a platinum color. He smiles, his teeth are jagged and feral. A single thought enters his mind. Ghoul.

A single motion follows and he hits the floor with blood washing down the back of his throat. His vision swims with bright colors. The lighter tumbles to the ground, dropped by his now useless fingers. He feels the pounce as the ghoul straddles his form, pinning him to the ground. A violent jab at his face and he feels his eyes burst from the pressure of fingers rammed into the socket. He cries out from the pain.

"If you slide to the astral, I'll rip your throat out and let you bleed to death right here, right now." As the ghoul speaks he feels the sharp prick of teeth along the side of his neck. He bites down hard enough for blood to flow. "I'm not here for you, I want her. She was here so don't bother lying. I can smell her all over this place." As he speaks the ghouls begins to lap at the blood and bite off small bits of flesh from his shoulder. "I just need you to let her know we haven't forgotten about her and that we're coming. I hope to see her very soon so accounts can be settled according to my master's wishes." As the ghoul continues, he trails his hand down the prone man's chest. "I'm sorry I can't take the time I'd like with you but if you don't mind I'll take your friend with me. A boy has to eat."

The only sound is a dry chuckle and a body being dragged along the ground.

Eric looks up from the plans of the house. He had been measuring distances and trying to figure out how long the team would be in the open.

"Welcome back, I must have lost track of the time. She's still looking for something" the erstwhile leader tilts his head towards the decker.

"What'd you find out about the house?"

Tombstone raises a sardonic eyebrow at Lee. "Actually, the 'Asian chick' is Bloodmoon. I'm Tombstone."

He shoots a wry grin at Evans. "You sure you patched him up right, doc? I think he's still a bit fuzzy."

He turns back to Lee. "But once the decker gets done doing her thing, I think we'd all be real interested in this hole in the system you say you've found."

Lee gives a weak chuckle. "Oh, yeah, I meant....I didn't mean I'd found you, I meant we found...I mean..."

Eric looks over to the wounded runner.

"Lee, take a deep breath, count to ten, and start over. You're not making any sense and I think you're trying too hard."

Lee shakes his head.

"What I meant to say was, while you wre gone, Tombstone and I were looking at the plans. I think I found an easy way for your guys to get in, assuming your decker," he motions towards Blackjack with his head, "can shut down one of the cameras."

Joli grabs a seat. "The magical security I could see consists of one man patrols with Awakened canines. I saw no wards over the grounds and none on the exterior walls of the building. I saw no astral spirits or watchers floating around."

Blackjack tries to locate the subsystem for the camera feeds.

If I can at least control the cameras, they won't be as likely to notice us.

"Let's assume she can, whats the way in?"

Lee pulls up the map, eagerness to help obvious in his voice as he points out features while he speaks.

"Here, here, and here...look, if we move through here, it blocks us off from 90% of the grounds, and if we move through this lake or pond or whatever for this part of it, it should kill any scent trail leading from the wall to the house. We'd still have to worry about the camera's, but you said she has that handled."

Blackjack - Sifting through the file cabinets again, you find the listing you're looking for, and head out into the hallway, peering around corners and dodging the stalking eye. You end up in front of a door, marked SecOps in red. Reaching out, you twist the knob and step inside the room. You're surrounded by banks of monitors, displaying all sorts of information, including temperatures, sound, video, low light, and thermographic. Cracking your knuckles, you stretch your fingers out, twisting the code and creating segments of recorded video's. Satisfied with the sampling from the various readings, you turn, and are surprised to see two men standing in the doorway. The first is slim, slacks and an open jacket with a shiny looking shirt. The other is larger, one of the no neck variety, and broad enough to fill the doorway. Both are sporting wrap around sunglasses and metallic skin, almost as if chromed. The slim one flips a knife casually end over end, and grins at you.

Blackjack looks at the two in the doorway.

Oh no!

Gotta buy a better deck!

Tombstone - Giving it a critical glance, the theory Lee put foward seems sound enough. The patrols would basically have to walk right over top of you to catch you before you hit the lee of the house. They're probably depending on the electronic sensors for most of the protection.

Tombstone frowns thoughtfully for a few moments, looking like he's carefully mulling over Lee's scenario. Finally, he nods slowly.

"Yeah, going from what we have here, it looks like a genuine hole, all right. What you get when you rely on tech too much. Barring some major bad luck, we should get in smoothly using that route. Only drawback is that we still don't have any idea what we'll run into once we're inside...

Can't be helped, I guess. So, let's see how our aforementioned decker is doing at the moment. If she can take care of the cameras, then we're ready to pick up our gear and roll."

With that, Tombstone heads back to check on Blackjack's progress.

Blackjack spends only a cycle deciding what to do.

I don't have strong enough utilities to take down both of these guys. I got what I came for. Time to log! With any luck, they won't be able to figure out what I did.

With a puff of smoke, she begins the process of logging out.

Blackjack - Both icons snarl and lunge forward, glittering tip of the knife passing through your now insubstantial form as you wave goodbye, and blink your eyes open in the dim light of the warehouse. Tombstone is looming over you expectantly.

Blackjack gasps in surprise at seeing Tombstone standing over her.

She giggles and says, "You scared me!"

Sitting up, she packs up her peripherals and disconnects her deck's optical cable from the wall jack.

"Cameras. I was able to make some looped data recordings from them. As long as they aren't repositioned, I can pipe in the looped recordings over the actual feed to fool anyone who is observing through them. I didn't get a chance to check out the weapon systems, or even see if they have any. Two guys jumped me. One of them was a decker and I think one was an agent. I logged out because they were too much to take on together."

Joli sits up. "So do we have plan now?"

Blackjack says, "Yeah. I'm sure I can trick the cameras into feeding the looping footage to anyone or anything observing them, so you guys can sneak in and not have to worry about them. The only way it wouldn't work is if someone caught me while I was doing it. I'll have to be on the local host the whole time. If those guys show up again, I'll either have to fight them off or leave. In either case, it's going to be impossible for me to monitor your progress. If we're lucky, they won't show up, but I wouldn't count on it. If they move the cameras or somehow set up IC to block me, this could be really hard.

"I didn't get to check for any weapon systems on the host, so I have no idea if I can disable them, or if they are even there. What I could try is writing a quick algorithm to store and run the recorded feeds I have, search for the weapon subsystems, and hope that no one finds and disables the algorithm before you guys get in and out. If I find the weapons systems, I can try to shut them down. Hopefully, the host won't get too upset and trigger any alarms. The faster you guys get in and out, the better because doing those things is sure to attract someone's attention!"

She looks around for reaction and says, "Um.. what do you guys think?"

Un-looming slightly, Tombstone keeps his face impassive even though he's wincing internally. A not-too confident decker, who's apparently already been spotted once, who might be able to loop the camera feeds. Still, it's probably the best shot they have nonetheless.

He gives a brief nod. "Yeah, sounds like we're as ready to roll as we'll ever be. But I'd like to swing by my place and pick up some gear first. Hell, all I have on me is what I took for the meet. I don't know about the others, but they may need to pick up a few party favors as well."

The smaller service door to the hanger slams open, Bloodmoon's body tumbling in, just clearing the door enough to let it swing shut. She's followed by the ghostly image of a middle aged man dressed in rags. Blood pools out on the concrete of the hanger floor, and the image begins gesturing wildly and shouting, "Get over here, she's hurt, she's hurt!"

Blackjack gasps, "!" with a very concerned look.

She jogs over to where Bloodmoon is to see if she can help.

In the blink of an eye Jesters pistol is in his hands and the old man is running/hobling to his van. he dives in the drivers side quickly plugging in the RC deck. The vans EFC engine humms to life.

Eric stops in the middle of his thought and turns to the bloodied body that just fell into the hangar. That was definitely going to leave a mark...

He thinks about going for the back door and then realizes this is how the first team went...

"Joli, have Sebastian find the shooter and fry him. Everyone else get away from the windows and lines of fire."

Growling, Tombstone sprints over to Bloodmoon's crumpled form, interposing his bulk between her (and Blackjack) and the unknown assailants outside. Pistol in hand, he scans the outside, his cybernetically-enhanced senses straining to detect the intruders and his fingers itching to pull the trigger.

Tombstone - Scanning the outside, cybernetics shifting vision modes and ranges as you compensate for the mediocre light around the hanger, you spot movement maybe two hundred meters away, on the top of a low building that looks like some kind of maintenance shack. Light refracts from the edge of the roof, you spot a suppressed flash. The world explodes in a flash of red and black.


Eric - Taking cover from the expected sniper fire behind a pile of old packing crates from hydralic pump components, you draw the shotgun from under your longcoat, a quick glance confirming that a round is chambered and the safety is off. You notice an odd section on the wall of the hanger as you take cover, like a hexagon about a foot and a half across, with grey squares at each intersection point.

Jester - You plug into your system, indicators for the drones on your list popping into your view as you key the van to life, all numbers reading nill as the drones wait in a dormant state for you to bring them to life.

Evan - Rushing forward, the doctor snatches his medkit off the small table as he runs towards your wounded companion, obvious diagnoses and analsys already running through his head.

Johli - You also notice the odd section on the wall of the hanger, like a hexagon about a foot and a half across, with grey squares at each intersection point.

Sebastian darts over, flowing through the astral. Initially, the location seems to be empty, but nosing around reveals a person tucked under a runthenium cloth covering, with some kind of light framework under the covering to distort the shape of his body.

Tombstone - Blinking rapidly to clear the sparks out of your eyes and falling back out of the doorway out of instinct, you see a hole clean through both edges of the doorjamb and through the far wall of the hanger itself. Glancing up towards the shooter as you take cover, you see a slim shape, maybe a foot or two long, flapping small wings and hovering over the edge of the roof and recognize it as Sebastian. You almost feel a smirk and a wink from the small dragon.

Eric shouts out to the rigger who owns the hangar as he gestures to the odd panelling.

"Is that thing yours?"

On the move, the thief pads quietly behind crates to get a clear line of fire on the closed hangar door . Hunkering down with most of his body concealed behind the heavy boxes, Eric takes aim at the door. The next fragger through the door was getting a solid slug to the midsection.