A Box Within A Box

A Box Within A Box
Part of I Make Things Happen
Date 2082-06-05 GM Scranton Location The Tesseract, Austin, CAS. Status Threat Level: Medium
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven	Spinrad Global Industries	The mysterious wendigo
Basilisk Canter Cricket La Rapide	4 security guards, 2 spiders	The wendigo himself
Casualties and losses
None	None

Summary

The runners are hired by a rather weird AI to get a cardboard box from a building that is till being built. Then chaos happened.

Background

Austin, capital of the CAS, is at the border between the CAS itself ans Aztlan. This lead to a situtation of cold war in the city, where the confederate government and Aztechnology clash for power and influence. In this context, any other actor is basically free to act however they want, and Spinrad is no ecception, having moved in the city some R&D facilities confident in the lack of regulation. Specifically one, the Tesseract, called colloqually the box due to its cubical shape, is still in the process of being built, and will be used in the future for some quantum computation tests.

The Meet

The meet happened during the night, in a Downtown skate park, where the Johnson, that appeared as an heavily modified MCT RotoDrone, talked to the runners "in person". After a rather lenghty introduction, they requested the team to recover an object, more specifically a cardboard box, from the Tesseract. The J, whose name is Demiurge, also specified two non negotiable conditions, the first being that the runners shouldn't ever watch inside the box, nor cause any casualty to the security team on site. Breaking one of those two would result in not getting paid. The J also offered a secondaary objective, recording the entire operation from the runner's POV, and wiring the footage to the J themself, in order for everyone else to receive a bonus on their paycheck.

The Plan

The team was incredibly wary of the Johnson, suspecting that the requests are specifically engineered in order to get them burned or killed. After some careful considerations, La Rapide thought about a second possibility, that the box is nothing more then a prop, and that they are a penetration test team, in order to stress test the facility's security. The rest of the team quickly accepted this teory as plausible, and decided to go and do some recon work before forming a proper plan.

The Run

After a long car trip and many matrix searches that appeared to confirm the security check theory, the team arrived to the site. A variable that has been downplayed by the J was the existence of an intentionally cultivated background count, aspected towards joy. While it is small in size, with a radius of about a block, it reaches heights of a 9 near the compound. Once arrived, Basilisk sneaked in, confirming that the only outside security measures were cameras and metahuman guards. La Rapide and Canter were able to spot a dual nature entity doing his own recon work on the site. After some initial conflict, the entity was revealed to be a wendigo, forced to attempt the same box as them after some rather confusing and poorly explained altercations with a drone and some Ancients. The team managed quite easily to convince him that the action was not worth it, and to just run away from Austin, but despite the Wendigo's best efforts, they refused to transport him across the border. After this parenthesis, the planning phase started. Cricket was capable, with a quick host dive, to recover the floor plans, locating the target. Canter decided that the best plan was to go in loud, literally driving through the front door. So, the day after, the plan of causing as many mayhem possible on meat and the matrix to provide a distraction for Basilisk and La Rapide to slip in, get the thing, and get out. With stroms of stick and shock bullets from the granny and the oni's relentless onslaught of very angry sprites, one of the spiders and two of the guards were neutralised, and the two infiltrators managed to get inside, where they went toe to toe with two guards, dipatching of them in no time and exfiling

Aftermath

The J set up a drop point, was satisfied with the work, asked the team their opinion on the security of the place, to which the team blatantly lied, and then paid and left. What a weird little guy, that Demiurge.

Rewards

For everyone but Cricket

• 20k nuyens or double the amount in vehicles, drones or mods for both
• 3 karma
• 2 CDP

For Strobe

• 18k nuyens or double the amount in vehicles, drones or mods for both
• 4 karma
• 2 CDP

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

La Rapide

That was enough joy to last me for at least 30 years. That place is worse than glow city and Sophocles combined. At least I learned recendly how to center my self and ignore the effects of the outside world to an extend. *singing*

Just tonight I will stay and well throw it all away

When the light hits your eyes

Its telling me I'm right

And if I, I am through

Then its all because of you

Just tonight

Cricket

Never met an AI before, and wow I fraggin' hate them. No idea how someone without a body can be so stuck up their own ass. The job was fine, mostly went off without a hitch. The magic types were saying that the place was messing with them, but I felt great; ain't often that you get to work without noise. The whole team were good, but I loved workin' with that crazy old hag Canter. She's exactly my type of stupid, and I'm real impressed that she's lived so long.

Basilisk

Too many infected on this run. La Rapide creeped me out a bit I'll admit. Never enjoyed being around infected. Too many of them are immune to my venom. Makes me a bit twitchy. I bought a wooden club to send a message. Thankfully I never had to use it. I'll admit the Wendigo was slightly entertaining though. I hope the poor bastard made it across the border. That AI was a bit of an asshole though. At least it ended up paying. Canter didn't mess the run up this time either.