The Dirtiest Business

Personal Log: Bethail

+Access denied. Error code 20345123.
+Access denied. Error code 20345123.
+Access Granted…welcome.

بعثة السجل
الموقع: سياتل

دخول 1

+Running translation routine…

Mission Log: 'Run 44
Location: Seattle

ENTRY 1

-Contacted by an old fixer pal of mine, Diego, re: a new job. Had a conference call with two other unknowns, my collegues for this run. The Johnsen wanted to meet at a Stuffer Shack in Midtown. Significant disruption due to St Patrick's day parade and proximity to town hall. A Boston senator named Rick O'Cleary is in town running for President, his goons are everywhere. The campaign is against metahumans in major sports Leagues. I make rendezvous without passing a security checkpoint but the crowds make proper recconaisence impossible. I proceed with caution. The first of my collegues has arrived ahead of me.

- [ Alec. Human. Dark clothing, concealed weapons. Graceful yet measured movements. Skill set: Stealth/Black Ops, wetwork.]

- [ Zane. Ork. Shabby appearence, high-grade comm-implants. Blackhammer Combat Avatar. Skill set: Hacker, matrix combatant ]

- Met the Johnsen at 0900hrs using disposable, prepaid trix accounts. Fairly standard, if a bit overkill security-wise. No lead yet on which meg he represents.

Mission Parameters

  • Recovery Target: Reggie 'the Flash' Reece. Ork male, muscular/athletic, mid-twenties.
  • Target is star quarterback for New England Patriots, due to play the Superbowl in 6 weeks.
  • Location services went dark at 1am this morning, during 'shore-leave', San Fransisco [Japanese Corp-Sec Protectorate].
  • Target last known location Luxe-Windsor hotel, penthouse, SF.
  • Possible motives; kidnapping/racial attack/corporate sabotage/match fixing.

Notes:

  • Helicopter leaving Sea Tac at 1100hrs.
  • Social unrest has led to a security clampdown in the protectorate. Foreign nationals are forbidden without Government permits, alerts go out when foreign accounts are activated within the Japanese zone. We'll need to be able to work out of our carry-on luggage on this one.

- Explosions disrupt the meeting. A bomb has gone off down the street at an Ork bar. The revellers are looting and CommSec are keeping their hands clear.
- Couple of eco-terrorists crash into the Stuffer Shack in a van. Drones come crawling out, firefight ensures. Left my goddam rifle in the car.
- Great. I've got blood and Nutrisoy all over my coat. [sigh] I bagged two goons and the rest scattered, Alec took out their street-shaman. They were looking for someone; one of them had a blurry photo of some suit in his pocket.
- Left the scene - Alec is nabbed by Horizon Group goons and we bolt. Hopefully he's got contacts who can recover him. ComSec is everywhere but they don't seem to be interveneing in the riots.


Mission Log: Run 44
Location: San Fransisco
Bethail

ENTRY 2
- Picked up by a drone-truck replete with holoskins. Drive right down Madison Street under Lone Star's nose. We make a stopover on the way to the airport to pick up a last-minute replacement for Alec. He's got a blank AR profile and doesn't give his name. Elf in a powersuit, obviously an Adept despite all the implants hes got. He's been briefed already, so we head for the helipad.

- Made a wet drop off of Hunters Point and hiked our gear up to mass-storage lockers in Pier 96. I spend a few hours setting up a workshop and base of operations. The Suit goes out to pound some pavement and comes back with a big tip; Horizon Group has locked the local PD out of a square block uptown, including our target's last known location. We load up on gear and head out.

- Lux Windsor hotel sectioned off by Corporate goons. I scale a building to get around their checkpoints and come down through the elevator shaft. Zane whips up some schematics and a fake ID for the Suit. We meet in the penthouse and deactivate the forensic-droid.

- It's clear the target brought up a girl, she stayed for a few drinks and some party drugs then they went to the bedroom. There's a fair bit of blood and broken glass in here. Not enough for it to have been a kill though. Still, doesn't look like a break-in or abduction.

- Zane has gotten wind of a Corporate hacker that needs taking care of. He's in a security van in the hotel's underground carpark. Zane overrides Horizon's lockdown and gets me down there in the elevator. I take out the hacker and his bodyguard with my Ranger then warm up the van for our getaway. The Suit cleans up upstairs and joins me a minute later. We drive out through the cordon waving Zane's fake ID.

- Photos of Reggie's night out have surfaced on social media. We're heading to a club uptown called Trance'lvania where he's been tagged. The others are inside. I've set myself up in a crow's nest across the drag to keep an eye out for tails or any suspicious characters; so far so good though.

Mission Log: Run 44
Location: San Jose
Bethail
ENTRY 3

- The Suit has the name of the girl Reggie took home, a prostitute apparently. You'd think these super-celebrities would be able to get girls without paying. Suit spun some BS about representing a fan who wanted to sleep with the same bird. Got an address out of town, bit of a surprise; a Paladin Medical facility in San Jose, part of the State University. Zane said he'd need some time and a full-emersion matrix-jack to crack their datavaults, so the Suit and I went across town for some breakfast while he set up back in the storage locker. I crash for a few hours on one of the camper beds while the Suit headed out for more networking. Creeper doesn't ever seem to sleep.

- Zane is in -and he's been sure to remind us how difficult it was, and how noone else could have done it. Paladin Medical has been running a test program on the HVIRV virus. Our "prostitute" - Milly Jones - is currently registered in a vaccine trial for advanced cases of Vampirism. There is no record of a breakout, but the data collected by the forensic drone and the security footage from the club confirm that it's her. I wonder if Paladin knows they let a monster back on the streets. I'd say so; Zane's sniffer programs also turned up an interesting new in-patient at the SFSU facility - a former security consultant named Victor Solo - one of Alec's several fake identities. Luckily his turn trailing the vaccine doesn't start for another 5 hours. We gear up while Suit heads out to rent us some wheels.

- The building is non-military luckily, just a couple of rent-a-cops on the ground floor. According to Zane's layout Alec will be a few floors down. A roster of staff shows at least 6 private security officers on duty, and a recent receipt to ARES for some non-specified security work. This could potentially get ugly, but we haven't got time to work up anything too flash. The key is to take them by surprise.

+Search: [Operational Log]/ mp3 15/8/2072…
+File located.
+Coverting…
+Play:

[Bethail] We're inside the elevator. Took the guards quietly with my sidearm, but there was a civilian complication. One or two of their admin staff may have mild-concussions. Otherwise, mission is proceeding satisfactorily.

[Zane] Ready? I'll open the doors.
[Bethail] On my mark - Three, Two One, Mark. [Gunfire]. Two guards - down. Another in cover. (Hgn) taking fire.
[Zane] Check this out …
[Gunfire]
[Zane] Hahaha! Nice shot!
[Bethail] He left cover. What did you do?
[Zane] Emptied the vending machine on him and switched off all the lights. You've got thermal right?
[Bethail] Yep. Alright got a few more here…Switching out for my Striker.
[Explosion] [Static]
[Zane] Yikes.
[Bethail] Three more rooms. What am I looking at.
[Zane] Ok there'll be 3 Scarabs and a Doberman in the lab and a couple more goons in the dosing room. It'll say B3 on the door.
[Bethail] Where are you on the drones?
[Zane] I can knock them out of commission but they've got really good anti-slaving software. It'll give you about 5 seconds.
[Bethail] Alright Next door. Three, Two, One, Mark!
[Gunfire]
[Bethail] I'm at the dosing room…I think - I can see Alec! He's engaged in melee! Open it up!
[Gunfire]
[Bethail] Z, the package has been retrieved. Lets wrap this up.
[Alec] Hi Zane.
[Bethail] Where's the suit?
[Suit] Waiting for you. Your exit is clear.
[Bethail] Oh. You have any problems with -
[Suit] None. Please hurry up.
[Zane] Come on gentlemen, we still have a job to do.

- mp3 ends

- Turns out Alec was nabbed from a Horizon van by some hired goons from Paladin. From what he overheard, I guess they thought any high-priority Horizon captive must be either Reggie or Milly. He says they didn't get anything out of him about the job. Lucky we got to him so quickly.

Mission Log: Run 44
Location: Smuggler's Run, SF Underground
Bethail
ENTRY 4

- Our little operation has confirmed that Milly Jones did not escape from Paladin Medical. Instead, she was left on the project roster and quietly released. After making several unscheduled visits to the old naval base at Mission Island last month, the PM research coordinator - Alan Priest - had received a payments of 50,000 nuyen and organized for Ms Jones to be discharged. The payment to Priest came from a heavily protected offshore bank account. As for Priest himself, he was found not 2 nights ago having "overdosed" on prescription painkillers in his Penthouse suite. Security footage shows a confused Ms Jones being met by a mysterious man in the lobby and driven off in a plateless limosine. This man looks strikingly similar to the one photographed by the Earthfirst eco-terrorists. Unfortunately we have no way to trace Milly's movements between leaving the facility and meeting Reggie at the Club uptown just a few days later. Mission Island is an old naval base in the bay, partially sunk during the second Awakening. It also happens that a reality TV show 'Real Shadowrunners of Toyko' is being shot there this month. This being one coincidence too many for us, we decide to head out into the bay to check it out.

- Mission Island is a wreck, shattered roads, collapsed warehouses and sparking, semi-functional hardware just lying around everywhere. It's even worse in the dark. It's exactly the kind of place the public thinks shadowrunners frequent, and exactly the kind of place any professional would avoid. A quick look around confirms our suspicions; something pretty serious went down here recently. What's left of the set is in total ruin. There are bodies, or body parts, flung everywhere. A huge gunfight between Horizon Group and Paladin ComSecs clearly occurred, but then some other force came into play. Some of the bodies have been gnawed on. At first I thought Hellrats, but all this talk of Vampires has me thinking maybe Halloweeners. There is some sort of closed warehouse with scratched walls right in the middle of the complex. There are empty IV bags everywhere, but no sign of a breakout. Something lived here for several days, and recently.

- Found something. There's a corpse here, some kind of spindly creature with needle teeth. Could almost be an elf, but kinda hunched and wiry. Never seen anything like it. It's throat has been completely torn out.

- We were just attacked! The bodies from the massacre just started getting up and coming at us like something out of a damn zombie movie! I'm nearly out of ammo and Alec lost his combat knife but nobody seems to have been bitten. Even the Suit seems a bit unnerved. Zane is waiting for us back at the boat. We've got to get there quickly before these things find him, I dont think he even has a gun. The suit calls the cops; whatever else you say about PMCs, they're probably pretty well equipped to handle this kind of thing.

- We're underwater. We fought the zombies all the way back to the dock (it turns out Zane did have a gun), this situation looking ever-more urgent than finding one little footballer. We got halfway across the chanell when we spotted half the fleet of the Japanese Water Police coming the opposite direction. We scuttled the boat and jumped in the drink. Luckily, the Suit still had the gear from our wet-drop in his duffelbag. We're swimming back into San Fransisco, but I have no idea where to go from here.

- Looks like I've got my answer. I wonder if we'll still get paid. The Japs have annexed the whole of San Fransisco in light of a breakout of HVIRV in the lower districts. Frontline fucking battletanks are lined up Golden Gate Boulevard and guys in hazmat suits are testing people as they cross the border. 2 hours from first notice to total lockdown. I doubt the Americans could have done it. We're holed up in the safehouse trying to think of a way out.

-Zane has got a hit back from his pals online. Someone recognized the guy from the photo as a member of Rick O'Cleary's campaign team! Fella's name is Bill Flannery. Diego has also gotten back in contact, madder than a cut snake. Seems someone tried to kill him in his own home, just as he took a call from our Johnsen. It's basically settled; this whole thing has been a massive double-cross. The Suit figured it out before the rest of us, after just sitting there quietly for several hours. The Horizon Group owns, and represent half the team of the New England Patriots, including Reggie. Nobody stands to lose more if something bad were to happen to him. On the flipside, Rick O'Cleary could basically win the Presidency off his stance on the American Sports Commission Act, disqualifying all metahumans from participating. All he needed was a way to bring the issue to the forefront of public discussion.

FINAL CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS

  • On 06/7/2072, Rick O'Cleary's staffer paid Alan Priest the final installment to release Milly Jones from his facility. Within 3 days he would cover his tracks by having Priest assassinated. Aware that the first stages of Vampirism are characterized by uncontrolled rage and violence, they planned to show America's greatest metahuman sports star succumb to the violent stereotype, shifting public sentiment over to their side of the debate. Jones was taken back to a facility on Mission Island, and fed a steady diet of treated blood, and coached to approach Reggie at his favorite nightclub. She did so on 13/8/2072. By 2300hrs she had come back to his hotel and bitten him.
  • At 0120hrs, 14/8/2072, Reggie's locator went dark. This is probably as the HVIRV began to rewrite his DNA, meaning that the device no longer recognized him.
  • By 0700hrs, 14/8/2072 Flannery had contacted a group of shadowrunners to disrupt the attempts of Reggie's managers at Horizon Group, from locating him. After all, there would be no scandal if the virus did not run it's course. In order to cut off any connection between the Senator and the scandal, Flannery would try to have Diego assassinated the evening of the 15th.
  • BUT - Horizon Group knew O'Cleary was trying to meet with shadowrunners. They staged an attack by using operatives posing as eco-terrorists to try to wipe Flannery out. When it became clear he had not met them in person, they tried to bag the 'runners instead. The remaining runners managed to subvert their efforts at investigating the affair, sabotaging their forensic drone and destroying their facility within the protectorate. Their remaining teams were wiped out when they tailed a possible lead to Mission Island and ran across Paladin Medical CommSecs. The shootout attracted the 'survivors' of the film-set Real Shadowrunners of Tokyo. One night previously, Ms Milly Jones had returned to the facility in the desperate search for more blood bags. She was followed by the heavily infected Reggie, who had killed her in a rage when he found out what she was. O'Cleary could never have predicted that the HVIRV virus would affect an Orc differently than a human. Orcs so infected do not become Vampires, but monstrous, flesh eating Wendigos. Likewise, their victims do not simply burn up in the sun the next day, but rise again as zombie-like Ghouls. Such was the fate of the RSOT crew, when Reggie's transformation progressed.
  • At 2230hrs 15/8/2072 The Japanese quarantined lower San Francisco in response to the apparent outbreak of Vampirism. Shortly after, a massive white-haired beast was destroyed by the Navy, as it tried to swim across to Alcatraz Island. Rick O'Cleary - his plan perhaps too successful - has declined to comment on the whole affair, stating that it was a matter for the Japanese military.

- Zane is right. While I generally couldn't care who the President is, it certainly shouldn't be this fucker O'Cleary. We've put together a few of my personal log entries and bundled it off to the media. While I doubt it will be enough to have O'Cleary locked up, the accusations should certainly derail his campaign. Diego is organizing a lift for us outta here I think he feels bad for setting us up on this goddam job. None of us really blame him. I'm just sore about the money we lost. One thing's for sure; no matter what people say about shadowrunning, this whole thing goes to show that politics really is the dirtiest business in town.

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