Standing Here, I Realize

Standing Here, I Realize
Part of The Arrival
Date 2083-05-06 GM Asmodeus Location Downtown & Tacoma Status Threat Level: High
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven	Evo	Knight Errant
Crazy Hoof 8133D3R Chipset Spirit Speaker	Drones Rigger Researchers	Knight Errant drone
Casualties and losses
	All the drones are scrap!	The drone jumped out of a window.

Summary

Runners extract a kidnapped astral researcher. It is more painful than expected.

The Meet

The team's called to Snohomish for a quick chat by someone who doesn't seem like they're particularly in their element. Introducing themselves as an event organizer, they were going to go meet Jeanne Hristvilg, a known scholar of thaumaturgy, when he found out that her apartment was utterly trashed. He only found a little emergency item showing up to be an emergency protocol in case she wasn't in contact with it for a given amount of time. He offers the team a tremendous amount of 15,000 Nuyen per head if they bring her in alive, but only 4,000 if she's dead. The team agrees and the J provides further information.

Jeanne Hristvilg is known for participating in environmental cleanup with Renraku and has three masters degrees, two from France and one in MIT&T. Her expertise seems to be tainted background counts and how they interact with other astral entities.

The Plan

The plan is to check out the hotel apartment she was staying in first of all, then follow the breadcrumbs if any are found. Hoof is staying behind since the hotel is in a high security zone in Downtown.

The Run

Three team members head to the hotel which turns out to be a AA-rated security zone LARPing hotel for various rich kids to enjoy in. They craft false identities and then play it out with the staff assuming the roles of actors. Making it to the fourth floor, the team finds the door to be missing to Jeanne's apartment but a Knight-Errant drone is watching it. Upon trying to approach, the drone shoves the team back. After a quick Matrix Perception, Bleeder doesn't see its icon immediately, but Chipset does a second sweep and manages to snag the icon running silent due to being slaved to something. He traces the icon back to its source and finds the security spider's nest on the penultimate top floor. The two hackers take matters into their own hands and with a mix of Technomancer puppeteering and Decker mark-gaining, eventually get the drone to throw itself out of the window. Drastic, but they'd attempted to just go past it with its camera shut off. Unfortunately, it had ultrasound sensors to spot the movement regardless, so extreme measures were needed. At that point, the spider began rebooting its camera so disposing of the drone was easiest.

After this, Chipset and Spirit Speaker worked together to explore the apartment. Chipset jacked into Jeanne's data terminal while Spirit Speaker did recon in astral form to check a mana barrier-surrounded safe. He discovered a high background count and various toxic artifacts, as well as an astral impression on the bed and in the bathroom. Overall, the impressions told him that she'd suffered from radiation poisoning and was taking intravenous treatment for it before she had some pleasure at night and was after kidnapped by two masked figures in overalls. Chipset recovered two files as well as opening the safe. Jeanne was going to participate in various seminars in Seattle, but never made the appointed times due to the kidnapping. In addition, it mentioned that she did work near the edge of Glow City with Renraku just recently.

Overstaying their welcome, the team leave after Spirit Speaker confiscates two toxic foci for safekeeping and slams the safe shut.

Trying to match Spirit Speaker's spoken description of the kidnappers, Chipset and Bleeder do further searching from traffic cameras, forums and more in the 'Trix. Eventually Chipset snags a hit, finding that people with matching descriptions had visited a market in Tacoma, arriving in a car and removing their masks to look more inconspicuous. Cross-referencing their faces from the security footage matches them as being employees at a nearby Evo drone assembly and programming factory. Planning an entry, Spirit Speaker first does a quick peek, finding not only Jeanne in a vat but also the culprits, though his astral senses can't get too much information about anything else. Crazy Hoof gets smuggled on site, the hackers hit the fire alarm to evacuate the main floor and then Chipset and Hoof take elevators down to the assembly plant. Crazy Hoof stirs up as much trouble as possible but the kidnappers seem to be eggheads with various quirky items at their disposal. They manage to eventually incapacitate Chipset with flashbangs and screecher rifles, but Crazy Hoof snags the attention of the security rigger who deploys drones once the camera turrets end up being insufficient. Despite the drone swarm's synchronized attacks, Crazy Hoof runs into them with a high-explosive grenade, Bleeder puppeteering one of them to kill the last one with friendly fire. The rigger is apparently knocked out before the end because of biofeedback damage, leaving Spirit Speaker and Crazy Hoof to strongarm the wisely surrendered kidnappers into handing Jeanne over. They're uncooperative, knowing full surrender means they'll get killed regardless, but they agree to let Jeanne go.

Having recovered the target, they leave quickly and exfil before Knight Errant arrives.

Aftermath

The J is relieved to see that Jeanne is intact and pays slightly more than was promised; unfortunately, Jeanne remains comatose due to whatever the vat did to her.

Rewards

• 16,000 Nuyen (8 RVP)
• 4 Karma (4 RVP)
• 10 CDP (2 base + 4 RVP)
• +1 Draco Foundation Reputation
• -2 Evo Reputation