A Box Within A Box
| A Box Within A Box | ||||||||||
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| Part of I Make Things Happen | ||||||||||
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| Factions Involved | ||||||||||
| ShadowHaven | Spinrad Global Industries | The mysterious wendigo | ||||||||
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Basilisk Canter Cricket La Rapide | 4 security guards, 2 spiders | |||||||||
| 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 Plan
The team decided to meet in meatspace to discuss the details, more specifically at a cat cafe suggested by Strobe. There they discussed on what could be considered a "career killer" within one of the azzie aligned corporations, which are known for their unethical practices. Lambda, after a deep Matrix search, discovered that the target has both a severe addiction to red mescaline, and has some sort of ties with Tlaloc, a known cybermancer. Thanks to Nix's insight on Aztlaneer society and culture, it was deemed enough to ruin her, and it was decided to add a slide to the presentation, with a picture of her talking to this hooded figure that is known to be Tlaloc themself.
The Run
After some digital scouting, Lambda and Trample entered the venue's host, and searched it for hidden sub-hosts, finding one, and then another nested in deeper. Thanks to the fact they were both running silent, they were able to penetrate the defences of Xandra's bodyguard, Titan, and a sprite of his. Once within the deepest layer, Lambda took care of disarming data bombs, decrypting the file itself (revealing that the plan involved turning the archology into a deltaware clinic, specialised in the production of transhumans), editing (to add the photo, as planned), and then putting the encryption (whose password was "Marlboro2004") back in place, while Trample engaged in cybercombat with the technomancer as a red herring, to allow the human decker more leeway to do his thing. After this skirmish, she also made her way inside the deepest host, and took a look to other presentation files, of rivaling companies, specifically Onotari's idea of turning the place into a testing ground for gauss weaponry, and Aztechnology Paranormal division's proposal of turning it into a observation post to better study the many free spirits roaming the area. After the successful host dive, the core of the run was already archieved, but the team decided that attending the convention would have been preferable, to make connections and to interevene directly if something goes south. Strobe had some fun with a trophy husband, Nix found an old wakyambi azzie to leech off for the night, and Trample got to know Axolotl a famous metasapient rights activist.
Aftermath
The presentation was, as forecasted, a disaster, and seeing Xandra so heartbroken moved something within Trample, that decided to counsel her and accompany her back home. The rest of the team got out of there as perfect ghosts, and the J was satisfied by the brilliant execution.
Rewards
- 14k nuyens or double the amount in bioware, Aztechnology brand weaponry or armor
For Strobe
- 14k nuyens or double the amount in bioware, Aztechnology brand weaponry or armor OR 2k nuyens or double the amount in bioware, Aztechnology brand weaponry or armor AND Tlazopilli as a 6/1 contact
For Trample
- 14k nuyens or double the amount in bioware, Aztechnology brand weaponry or armor OR 4k nuyens or double the amount in bioware, Aztechnology brand weaponry or armor AND Axolotl as a 5/1 contact
- Optional contact Xandra Barkirkis as a 5/1