Chapter 1: Lockdown
19th December, 5:42pm, Renraku Arcology, 26th Floor
Outside you can imagine the whir of sirens dipping in and out of the buzzing of traffice. You can almost hear the sound of the rain you see patting against the windows you sometimes walk by.
Despite the fact the Arcology is in the middle of Downtown Seattle, the Sprawl feels a long way away.
"A few security procedures." Tsukume Hiromitsu mutters, just as much to herself as to you all as she leads you through the maze of cubicles that seem to take up the entirety of this floor. She's as odd person to be working with black assests, constantly looking flustered, like she's lost something important and is trying desperately to prove that everything is fine and accounted for. She seems to know what she's talking about but most of the time it's like she's talking to herself, with all of you reduced to bystanders. And she doesn't seem very fond of any of you, particularly Albrecht, who she avoids eye contact with as much as possible. Instead she speaks either to herself or to Inoue Kasama, a Red Samurai who seems to be serving as her bodyguard.
She leads you along a winding path through the cubicles, most of them filled only with the glow of dataterminals in standby mode. Finally she comes to an office with a closed door. She quickly swipes a card through the reader and opens the door.
"My office." She explains, almost apologetically as she leads you in. The office is just one room, but it's bigger than it looks on the outside, easily seating all of you. Tsukume herself sits behind the only desk in the room, her faces dyed a lifeless green by her dataterminal.
"As you know Renraku is very enthusiastic about the Arcology coming online. Naturally to ensure it opened as soon as possible they cut a few corners." She pauses, as if she can't believe she's sharing this.
"Corners that Hiroshi Ushida would prefer Dr Huang and Mr Aneki didn't know about."
She pauses, as if she is about to get to the point. But before she can continue, the lights dim. It only lasts for a second before they come back to full brightness. Inoue looks around at the ceiling.
There is an audible whirring noise and the dataterminal blinks. Instead of the green it previous was, it reflects of Tsukume's face in a pulsating series of light and dark.
"What in the...?" Tsukume sputters. Her head tilts to her side for a moment, then she shakes her head.
"That's odd." She says, "the communication network is down. Captain Kasama," she calls to her bodyguard who is standing beside the door, "go to the security station and find out what's going on. The Matrix looks like it's down."
Inoue nods and wordlessly leaves the room. Tsukume watches him go, her fingers resting on her mouth. She mutters something in Japanese - "Of all the times..."

19th December, 5:42pm, Renraku Arcology, 202nd Floor
"Well this is going nowhere." Phillip Clarke, programmer and Decker extraordinaire (at least in his own mind) observed wryly. Sitting beside him, the figures and numbers on the display in front of him reflected off his thick rim glasses, Dr Kabuo Amori frowned.
"It makes no sense. Output should be in the high positive. Instead it's in the mid negatives and falling."
"Minus 36 and dropping." Clark confirmed.
"It's almost like something is using more processing power than it should." Amori concluded, his tone telling just how ridiculous that sounded.
"Yeah," Clarke snorted, "like a hundred times the power it should be using. Not even the AEP uses that much." He paused looking at the figures.
"I mean, once this drops to Minus 67..."
"Something is using as much power as the Seattle RTG." Amori finished the thought. Neither of them were willing to add the unspoken.
and we don't know what it is
"And we can't can't just shut it down to examine just what's happening." Clarke said in disgust.
"Not without shutting down the SCIRE grid." Amori agreed. He rubbed his eyes and leaned back. "I don't need this" He said, "not today."
"How old is she turning?" Clarke asked with a smile.
"Nineteen." Clarke replied, also smiling. "I finally got her that deck she's been wanting."
"Speaking of which..." Clarke said, leaning forward, "Gabby, how are you doing?"
The third figure in the room lay motionless behind them on what looked almost like a dentist chair with wires and power chords attached randomly. Her fingers played over the keyboard of the deck resting in her lap.
"I can't see anything." Her reply was transmitted directly into Clarke's and Amori's headphones. "I mean, everything looks normal. Resolution is a bit choppy, but this is a big shopping night." More figures danced across the screens in front of Clarke and Amori.
"Hang on a sec..." She said suddenly, "that shouldn't be there..."
"What shouldn't?" Amori asked.
The only thing that transmitted back was static. The screens in front of them suddenly winked out. And behind them, Gabby screamed.

"<If the vehicle bay goes down again, we're not pulling another forty-hour shift to get it running.>"

The Matrix...is down...? Why now of all times...? Phyrex thought to himself. He strode up behind Tsukume's dataterminal, glancing at the screen to see what was going on.

"<Tsukume! We don't have all day! What's going on?>"

Greaaaat....

Slone rolls the microcameras in head, an old habit from he had meat eyes.

Arisu slid the cord from her pocket secretary to her datajack, dialing in the vehicle bay supervisor's number. Leaving the call unconnected, she awaited Tsukume's response.

His arrival to the arcology had been met with a much more restrained fan reaction than might be expected. Billy had the Screamers' media spindoctors, and their leaking of false travel plans, to thank for that. The simple fact was, Billy wasn't here for the publicity, or even by choice. Someone happened to know something about his past, and was holding it over his head. So he'd talked to the team's PR gurus, and pursuaded them to keep his travel plans a mystery to the media, in order to keep things low. Still, he knew it was impossible to keep out of the public eye. So when he'd pulled into the 3rd sublevel parking garage of the arcology in his Porsche Winter, it had been amidst a small mob of fans. Credit, of course, was due to the Red Samurai who had greeted him, for their efficient crowd control. As much as he didn't like the secmen, they'd kept his fans at a distance, and had even had people waiting to unload his bags, and an aide on standby to confirm the arrival earlier that day of the rest of his gear.

That had been an hour ago.

The rest of the security consultants, as the corporate nomenclature went, had met up with him amidst an impromptu autograph session. Captain Kasama had quickly sent the sairamen back to their work, and he'd joined in with the group. They didn't look like much to Blaze, in both of his professional opinions, but he had to admit he might have gone a touch soft himself this past year. Still, he seemed to recognize the troll, probably another athelete. The Japanese R certainly had picked up an eclectic bunch. He himself was dressed casually, cargo pants and a long sleeved shirt, body armor unseen underneath it. He had a pair of shades on, and tucked rather obviously in the waistband of his pants was his Manhunter. No need to be hiding that he's strapped. It's part of his living after all, both of them.

Now, as the others react to their host's revelation that the comm network was down, he simply sits back, a casual smile on his face. He always did like to see his blackmailers sweat.

Somewhere in the artificial plant in Tsukume's office, a cricket chirruped.

Haruko pulled back the fringe of her hair, dyed blonde in streaks and reaches for a dark jade green hairband in one of her equipment pouches. She had brought almost everything with her to the office, save for her survival gear and the Barrett rifle, which was about three quarters as tall as she was, all in all. She still looked very bulky, with layer upon layer of body armour disguised as civvie clothing and multiple slings, pouches and satchels. One would be surprised she kept standing with all that weight on her.

She slid the hairband on and still felt naked. To heck with etiquette, she tossed it back into her rucksack and snapped on her thermo and lowlight goggles, fashioned to look like high tech 18th century aviator goggles. She pulled the eye lenses above her fringe, and they held her hair back snugly.

She kept quiet as the drama before her unfolded. Looking about the room, Haruko found herself really missing her rifle now.

"There's not much to see." Tsukume says to Phrex as he leans over to have a look at the datascreen. She's right too. It's just a series of numbers constantly scrolling up the screen, white on a glowing black background. It looks almost like a virus. When he looks closer, Phrex sees that there is only two numbers used - 0 and 1...
"This is just typical." Tsukume starts. "Christmas shopping, an all time shopping population in the mall and then this happens! I'm starting to think the Arcology is cursed..." Her grumblings trail off into Japanese mumblings, complaining about the loss of productivity, data and consumer confidence.
Frag if she keeps doing that the temptation to shoot her is going to get hard to ignore.
The door behind you opens. It's not Kasama. It's a Red Samurai alright but this one looks different - shorter and more solidly built, his mouth set into a grim frown.
Haruko notices something very interesting as he walks into the room. His eyes. They're just orbs of solid blue. The conservative Red Samurai would frown on such an obvious piece of cyberware.
"Yes Captain Saru?" Tsukume asks, annoyance tinging her voice, making it sounds so brittle you could almost think you could cut it and hear it snap.
"It's about the shutdown sir." He replies, the tone in his voice making it obvious how much he dislikes having to call a woman "Sir". And the way he places emphasis on the word shutdown is unusual too...
"Well?" Tsukume asks, impatience joining annoyance.
"Yes sir." He says, bowing his head.
And then he shoots her. He draws the gun amazingly quickly, obviously with the aid of wires. But the result is obvious. Tsukume is thrown back into her chair, blood spurting forward from the hole that sprouted in her chest. Some of the blood ends up on Phrex's clothes. The rest splatters against the desk, and the dataterminal.
"The Scire isn't yours anywore." Saru says with deep satisfaction in his voice, his SMG lowering to his side. Then his head turns slightly, as if he has noticed all of you for the first time. With lightning speed he raises his SCK towards you.

Billy's reaction is quicksilver smooth, without conscious thought old reflexes and new pour through him, adrenaline and the flow of mana tinting his senses. Even as the Red Samurai turns the SMG on the group, the Brawler is drawing his Colt Manhunter, and firing. Center mass, nothing fancy. He may be a showman, but he's no fool.

"Something about those eyes..." Haruko muttered to herself. When the samurai raised his weapon, Haruko's hands darted for her own. She knew the armour the samurai wore, and her own pistol might not be enough. Haruko bit her lip and got out of her chair, then fired her Savalette Guardian at the samurai's head.

Arisu sprang into motion fluidly, if not with the preternatural speed of her wired compatriots. Vaulting the desk, she flattened herself on the floor behind it, checking Tsukume for signs of life.

:: Artic listen with slight disinterest throughout the tour, yet her eyes scanned every inch of the floor. Instinctively, she looked for bottlenecks, entrances, improved entrance capabilities, vulnerabilities, open target areas and viable cover given a number of different combat possibilities. She paid attention to every datajack, security lock, camera, likely hidden camera locations, as well as where the terminals and phones were located. ::

:: As she did every time since she was a rookie, she studied the new environment as if it was a test on hostage and anti-hostage tactics. She felt confident in her now honed abilities that she knew the entire capabilities of a given territory by the time she exited it. Throughout the meeting, she sat in the rear behind two others and to the right of the door. When the events with the computers began to act wonky, the hairs on the back of Artic's neck rise and after a moment of consideration, she decides to switch out her chips from her jukebox leaving the pistols chip and the biotech chips, she replaces the Negotiations and Interogation chips with her Electronics and Electronics B/R chips. When the Red Samurai arrives, Arctic feels that familiar tingle that something is wrong. She has no idea what, but her years on the force and in combat scenarios has taught her that her 6th sense is rarely wrong. With her hand on her holster, she begins to rise from her chair. Then the weapon is drawn and fired with lethal accuracy. ::

:: Immediately, she twists and continues her momentum to tumble to the side of the desk taking as much cover as possible while still retaining an eye on the events, she draws her own pistol and takes aim over the desk. ::

Phyrex reacts by drawing and firing his pistol in an elegant sweeping motion, simultaneously diving to ground and looking Saru over from head to toe.

Seeing everyone explode inton motion around him, Sloan dives over the deak to land near Arisu. With a mental comand his wires activate. The world slows.

Alarmed by the sudden burst of activity and noise, The Cricket dives for cover, taking refuge in a nearby runner’s armor.

Meanwhile, down below, an armored security vehicle plays with stickers.