Until Dawn

Until Dawn
Part of Pacific Grudge
Date 2082-09-21 GM Dejapes Location Seattle Status Threat Level: High
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Bautista Hukbalahap	Mitsuhama Computer Technologies
Vip3r Glamor Katherine Tyler Samsara	Escaped Test Subjects
Casualties and losses
	Subjects Swayed or Captured, Treated, Freed

Summary

Four runners are hired for a job entailing both manhunt and a rescue. They must find three fugitives before implanted cortex bombs detonate. They have until dawn.

Background

Though the revolution is technically over, Huk pirates rarely pass on the opportunity to hit a Japanacorp shipment. Four days ago, one Huk captain overtakes and seizes a Mitsuhama Computer Technologies owned freighter soon after it departs from the California Free State. In addition to the expected cargo, the Huk discover several captives who were experimental test subjects. All three captives are awakened shifters and powerful adepts.

The Huk captain elects to drop off the freed captives in Seattle, providing them with fake SINs before sending them on their way.

Three days later, a Huk decker investigates the laboratory the captives were en route to. The decker discovers that the laboratory belonged to an MCT division that regularly implants cortex bombs into captives in transit, and unless the implants receive a 'signal of receipt' on the expected date of arrival the bombs will detonate.

Without much of an on-foot presence in Seattle, the Huks turn to runners to find the fugitives and disable the bombs before their detonation becomes an international incident.

The Meet

The four runners meet in a Everett Warehouse, where they receive the sitrep and job offer via teleconference. Their Johnson is Bautista, who is calling in from Los Angeles. After an explanation of the situation, the runners readily agree to help and get to work immediately.

Bautista connects them with a Dr. Villya, an assistant of Dr. Tony Hanks and a street doctor with the knowledge to disable and remove a cortex bomb. She will be driving a medical van in support of the runners, and will generally defer to their instructions.

Additionally, the Johnson offers the fake SIN names of the three fugitives and some hints as to where they went in Seattle as of several days ago. One is 'Alicia Vaughan,' a Falconine shifter, who inquired about service jobs and was given a few numbers to bars and restaurants in Little Asia, Tacoma. The second is 'Pablo Santonino,' a Coyote shifter, who went looking for some old UCAS military friends that fought with the CalFree resistance, and the third was 'Gregory McCallister,' a Jaguar shifter and survivalist who asked for a map of Snohomish.

The Plan

Glamor dispatches spirits to find the three, having seen their faces. The spirits succeed in narrowing down the locations of Alicia Vaughan and Gregory McCallister, but fail to establish their precise location. Vip3r runs face and pattern recognition searches via the matrix and spots a match for Alicia via social media taken at a Little Asia dance club called the 'Honeypot.' She does not get a similar result for Gregory, but deduces that he might be paying visits to the one legal BTL store in the area the spirit believed him to be in.

Glamor then calls a contact to learn more about Pablo's past, referencing his attempts to reconnect with veteran buddies. The contact tells Glamor that she had heard of a UCAS military unit that went awol and contravened direct orders so that they could join the CalFree resistance movement against General Saito, and that one of the members of that unit was the shifter. Glamor learns that this group's point of contact in the Veteran's Affairs department was in a branch in Auburn.

The group begins traveling to Snohomish to find Gregory, as his is the closest lead.

The Run

Glamor chats up the receptionist at the BTL store and learns that Gregory had a 9PM appointment to get an obscure BTL. As the group waits, Vip3r enters the matrix and infiltrates the host of the VA's office in Auburn. She gets advice from Katherine Tyler on the way VA files tended to be handled, at least in the CAS. Evading both an on-site spider and the host's IC, Vip3r manages to retrieve the case file of one Alfred Williams, who was in Pablo's unit. Alfred is homeless, but his parole officer noted that he could often be found beneath a particular pedestrian overpass in the Redmond Barrens.

Meanwhile, the group posts up in preparation for Gregory's arrival, with Samsara and Katherine Tyler taking up hidden positions atop a nearby building, while Glamor waits inside the shop and Vip3r takes control of the store cameras. Gregory arrives some ten minutes late. Glamor attempts to speak with the wary man, who immediately assenses her and puts up his guard - assuming her to be with MCT's magical division. Though Glamor talks him down from attacking her, Gregory turns to flee and Samsara is forced to intercept him. The two trade blows before Gregory falls to stick-and-shock ammo fired by Katherine Tyler and a powerful stun spell from Glamor. Vip3r squelches the commlinks of nearby witnesses, but the runners still have to make a speedy escape after a brief battle in the center of the rural town.

With Gregory secured, they head to the Redmond Barrens next. They manage to avoid a Halloweener trap en route and arrive at the overpass where Pablo was visiting his old veteran friend, Alfred. Vip3r and Katherine Tyler approach the two, and carefully build up rapport by blending in with the Barrens populace and joining in with the conversation about General Saito, CalFree, and Alfred's deceased relative in Oakland. All four eventually share a whiskey bottle and raise a toast to the fallen. Vip3r decides to broach the topic of Pablo's cortex bomb, and the two runners prove their sincerity after Katherine Tyler shares her dog tags and Vip3r talks about her time in a MCT facility. Pablo lowers his guard and agrees to go peacefully with the runners.

The runners speed off to the last target, who is doing a shift as a bartender in a Tacoma club. The runners enter the building, passing through or fooling SIN and cyberware scanners. However, as they enter, Alicia assenses them. Seeing dangerous implants in one of the runners, and potent magic in another, she vaults the bar she's working at and dashes upstairs. The runners chase her, having to navigate thick crowds, overwhelming stimuli, and an interposing bouncer.

They follow Alicia to the walkways above the building where she draws a modern bow on them and engages them with arrows. Samsara leaps across a gap between walkways to engage Alicia directly while Glamor casts a powerful spell on the adept. Having left her weapons behind due to the bouncers and scanners downstairs, Katherine Tyler focuses on inspiring the team with leadership checks. Vip3r, meanwhile, starts bricking up nearby commlinks to limit the publicity of this very public battle. Glamor uses a gravity spell to disable the camera drone of a nearby Horizon reporter.

Alicia retaliates by shooting an electric arrow into Glamor, knocking the mage unconscious. She hesitates upon seeing a person she doesn't know collapse to the ground. Seeing the hesitation, Samsara starts talking her down and Vip3r projects an AR image to help convince Alicia that the team was there to help her.

They manage to sway Alicia and the five make an escape into the night, using rope, charm, hacking and stealth to evade notice of local security.

When all three fugitives are in the medical van, Dr. Villya informs the team that she has disabled the cortex bombs but would like escort to her Redmond clinic in order to properly remove them. As the team is traveling through Seattle in the dead of night, their vehicles receive a joint call from an unknown number. The man on the line is Saito Akio, a powerful and influential executive of Mitsuhama Computer Technologies. He makes them the offer of paying them what they were promised if they delivered the fugitives to an alternate location, and to 'sweep the entire affair under the rug.'

The runners refuse in colorful terms - especially Vip3r, who makes it personal. Saito Akio will remember the slight.

Aftermath

The cortex bombs are disabled and surgically removed. Dr. Villya relays that they were made specifically to evade scanners, with a plasteel frame and bioware components that organically produce and accumulate explosive compounds in the time leading up to the scheduled detonation. The bioware components did not survive extraction, and only the plasteel frame and the doctor's theorycraft remain to explain the proprietary MCT technology.

Bautista pays the runners in full and, as an additional token of gratitude for rescuing all three and disabling all the bombs, offers a choice selection of Huk goods smuggled via the dockyards of Seattle.

Alicia Vaughan has to find work in a different club, but the sprawl has no shortage of opportunities for a skilled bartender. Gregory McCallister disappears into the Snohomish woods, the jaguar shifter becoming an unusual and rare sight in the backwater parts of the district. Pablo Santonino joins up with Alfred Williams to create a shelter in the Redmond Barrens specifically aimed at homeless veterans and the survivors of the CalFree liberation movement.

MCT will remember.

Rewards

Everyone:

• ¥ 24,000 or ¥ 48,000 in Gear Credit in the form of Weaponry, Vehicles, Explosives, or Armor smuggled in by the Huks. Up to Avail 18 (12RVP)
• 4 Karma (4 RVP)
• 2 CDP
• 1 Street Cred for saving several MCT fugitives from sure death.

• -10 Reputation with Mitsuhama Computer Technologies
• +5 Reputation with the Huk
• +2 Reputation with the Street Docs of Redmond

Optional Contact: Bautista (4/3) - Huk Smuggler, Pacific Pirate

Kate:
1 Chip with Alice Kane repaid.

Vip3r:
Additional -10 Reputation with Mitsuhama Computer Technologies
-30 Reputation with Saito Akio specifically.

Game Quotes

Vip3r: I'm not afraid of you anymore, and I'm done running from you.

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Katherine Tyler

All's well that ends well I guess. I never realized MCT was so...horrible. At least dealing with Ares you know what your getting, with the pompous, self righteous Firewatch. Even the dragon, for all their ruthlessness, has a modicum of honor. These Japanocorps don't mess around. They don't just ignore parts of the book, they throw it in a fire and make their own rules. But we'll deal with MCT when the time comes. It felt nice helping people. Not just doing a job for someone, but genuinely helping to save people's lives. Sure it was a bit tough, and sure it took some clever convincing, but we pulled it off. Specifically for Pablo, it was a bit tough to see veterans, be they CAS or UCAS, having to deal with what they were going through. Perhaps we can help them in the future.

Vip3r

When I read the posting for this job and saw how it was going to deal with unwilling extractions for the targets' own good, I couldn't help drawing a parallel to the last unwilling extraction I did; I didn't think this one was going to be so similar. Same captor. Same tight timetable. Same cranial bombs.

A lot of Neo-A and hooder types swear up and down that the corps are evil, and that it's our duty as shadowrunners to uproot the horrible system that we're living under and replace it with something good. I don't know how possible that is or how right they are, but I do know that Mitsuhama as an organization is the closest thing I've seen to real, actual evil if that's something that exists. They torture people like me and these shifters, and for what? To market a new product to mages? To refine their Matrix security? Their power and their profit come from cruelty, and all they do is take.

And I'm tired of letting them.

Samsara

Damn, MCT really sucks, putting bombs in those shifters heads just to be jerks. It was nice to be able to help them out, even if I had to beat one of them up - I really hope he's up for a rematch. Glad we could convince the other two to go along peacefully. Hopefully those shifters get set up with a better situation - those pirates were pretty cool guys to be looking out for them like that.