JB XXXV: ...To Rule In Hell...
It is 1pm on a warm Los Angeles afternoon, and Rose Ashford is having the best day ever. Well, maybe not the best-best, but it has to be in the top ten. Some of the others have been since she started on this mission, too. And she's being a good girl and this is a mission where nothing is going wrong and no one has tried to hurt her, and she might even get a commendation because things are going perfectly!
Donald has her wearing what he calls a 'power suit'. It's not anything like the power suits she's encountered before. It doesn't even have the most basic kind of strength-enhancing function. Also, she doesn't want to complain, but it is a teeny tiny bit tight around the chest.
At least Donald let her keep her knives. They're in her jacket. And also in her wrist holsters and leg holsters and there's the fold-out knife in her necklace which she thinks he doesn't know about. Oh, and her earrings can extend into stilettos, but they're a hold-out weapon at best because they'll shatter against armor. And there's also the nanofiber garottes in her hair. And there are her fingernails, which if necessary have a pretty good success rate against APCs. And the poison spit glands and the acid spit glands and the blood nanoattack substrate and...
... and she's glad she doesn't need to use any of it. She doesn't like hurting people, or fighting, even though they say she was made for it. She much prefers her current job of sitting next to Financier Sykes and answering a few questions from people who seem very interested in what she says. She wonders if all bodyguard jobs for the Syndicate are like this.
Yes, Rose is of the opinion that her current mission as Financier Sykes' bodyguard is a very good mission. She has to protect him from people who are trying to hurt him, only no one has tried that yet. And in the mean time, she's getting to go all around Hollywood and Los Angeles and San Diego, having expensive lunches, seeing the sights, and following his orders to use her training in Dimensional Science to note down everything she sees which has extranormal taint, especially looking out for malevolent aliens.
The only bad thing is that she is having to wear quite a bit of sunscreen, because the elements of hemophage biology in her partially negate the standard anti-radiation and anti-DEW modifications she has. And that's the best 'bad thing' she's ever had on a mission!
She's not entirely sure why Donald turned red when she asked him to help with the sunscreen, but that was when he got her the suit rather than her backless sundress. He might have been suffering from sunburn too.
Sitting in the back of Donald's expensive and very comfortable limo, she turns on the television mounted in front of her.
"... and we return to the breaking news of the wave of terror attacks sweeping the Russian capital," says the late-night newsreader. "A press conference is expected in ten to twenty minutes, but in the mean time we have fresh aerial footage of the scenes in Moscow."
"Why'd you have to watch that rubbish?" Donald says jokingly. "Everyone knows the BBC is a NWO pawn. You should watch a proper Syndicate-controlled channel."
Rose blushes. "I like the voices," she says quietly. "D-Donald? Do you think..."
"I'm sure they're fine," Donald says reassuringly. "They're probably enjoying themselves. Remember, Director Belltower is a veteran operative. Things would have to be going very wrong for her to be in the middle of this." He pauses. "It's not impossible she caused this," he admits, "but she knows what she's doing. She probably had a good reason if she's behind it."
***
It is 1am on a freezing Moscow morning, and Dr Serafina Rosario is having the worst day ever. Well, not the worst-worst, but it has to be in the bottom ten.
She's so embarrassed she's almost regretting having regenerated being shot. She'll need to look at getting some dedicated biomods for this. She could do that, and something like 'feeling incredibly hungry because of the energy demands of a dedicated unit' has to be better than blabbing her face off like this. Oh, and of course, she did get shot. And very nearly got captured by hemophages and forcefully addicted to their blood, which leaves merely mundane forms of violation looking pale in comparison. The last time it almost happened, she had been saved by a team of very scary-looking Iteration X cybersoldiers because when you attempted to seduce and kidnap the daughter of high-ranking Technocrats, you generally deserve exactly what's about to happen to you. At least Cross was here to save her.
It's at moments like this that she remembers why she transferred away from Damage Control.
"Vampire?" she says.
"We left it to cool off," the bandaged-up form of Kessler says.
She raises her eyebrows.
"It's in the minibar cooler," Henriette says with a sigh. "I turned down the temperature as low as it'd go, so even if it escaped the stake it'd be less mobile because it'd be... uh, kinda frozen."
"That works," Serafina says, nodding.
She checks the state of the vampire over. Henriette might be an insufferable ball of nerves – probably because she developed her Enlightenment at age
five, shortly after the Dimensional Anomaly and
no Serafina isn't jealous just because she has her beat by four years – but she broadly knows what she's doing. The vampire is trussed up in monomol-cored wire, so even if it did get out it'd probably remove its limbs trying to snap the bonds. Pretty clever, actually. She'll have to remember that trick for containment.
Now she has to work out how to do this.
So Director Belltower wants her to carry out a trawl on this captured vampire with inadequate equipment, does she? Fine! Fine! She'll... she'll just have to use her utterly ginormous brain to work out a way to do it! Despite herself, Serafina perks up slightly. She always does like a challenge. Okay, so, think.
Assets - the contents of this limo, the stolen car they picked up, and whatever they have on their person. Maybe... maybe she could try to put a cocktail of drugs which would leave the vampire blabbing their guts out, then feed it to a stray animal, then feed the animal to the vampire? Except then she'd need to worry about dosage and...
Serafina pauses. Oh, wait. This is a Syndicate limo. It has thought-to-text dictation records, because many Syndics are apparently too lazy to actually dictate memos out loud any more. Given its recent build, it's probably one of those designs which doesn't pick up every thought, but that's merely an option she can disable by boosting sensitivity. Okay, this is probably going to be easier than she thought it would be. At least she isn't going to have to torture anyone. Torture doesn't work. Well, apart from when it's carried out by enlightened NWO operatives trained in it, which is slightly annoying.
Oh! And there's some blood packs in the first aid kit here! Yes, she can mix that with some relaxant hallucinogens which… no, wait, 'peaceful beach holiday' wouldn't relax a vampire, she should use 'romantic night'… yes, that'll confuse its sensory input and leave it less willing to contest the questions she asks it.
Serafina's eyes light up as she sees the hand vacuum cleaner and the piping. And she can answer a question of scientific interest at the same time. She can see if you drain the blood from a vampire and then feed it back to it, whether it can wind up addicted to its own blood and blood bonded to itself! Even if it doesn't, she can use it to 'reward' the hemophage!
***
"Dr. Rosario?" Jamelia asks with an arched eyebrow.
"Yes, Director Belltower?" Serafina hopes that accidental attack of honesty hasn't created problems for their professional relationship.
"What are you doing with that hand vacuum cleaner and that plastic tubing?"
"Look, do I tell you how to engage in social engineering? No. Don't tell me how to set up a hemophage for interrogation. It's… well, you know how their blood is a biohazard? Maybe there's a reason I want to be able to clean it up?"
***
"Dr. Rosario? Why is the feed going 'blood, blood, blood, blood' and then producing strings of screaming?" Jamelia asks. She looks at the hemophage, laid out on the table with its limbs neatly removed to ensure a lack of resistance, covered in crimson tubing and jury-rigged equipment. Several gallon jugs of red fluid are attached to the tubing. Jamelia suspects she knows exactly what the mysterious fluid is, but doesn't want to confirm. This level of dissection seems rather... excessive.
"Well, isn't it obvious?" Serafina responds. The scientist is annoyingly happy at her jury-rigged torture device.
"No, Dr. Rosario, please enlighten me."
"Well, at the moment it's picking up the Beast, not the Man." A pause. "I might need to adjust things a bit." She makes a few adjustments to the modified thought-to-text dictation module, and- yes, there. There's something now. "It was simple, really. I just needed to set up a feedback loop where actionable information is rewarded by the reward of the hemophage having some of its own vitae restored to itself. And so now it's thinking of recent memories and other useful information, like intended."
"Is it awake?"
"Yes."
"So why can't it talk or react to us?"
"Well, I also happen to have caused it enough permanent neural damage to prevent it from moving. It'd be fatal for a normal person, but as you know, hemophages don't seem to breathe." Serafina says. "Hemophage parabiology is an interesting topic, although you'll want Rose for that if you want the in-depth version, I only took it as a biotech elective because they said Professor Caldwell had a really easy curve..."
"Relevant information." Jamelia demands.
"Okay, just keep watching the readouts." Serafina says. "I'll also run it through basic facial recognition. When we're done, we can dispose of it."
"Do you legitimately feel nothing for her?" Jamelia asks. She wants to know who she's dealing with.
"I feel a little, but she's also made her bed. She can lie in it. Besides, you can see from her Beast that she's not exactly an angel. This isn't mob justice. We're documenting her crimes and executing her for them, in a way which is minimally painful and entirely deserved." Serafina says. "I'm not a monster."
Jamelia waves. "Good enough. So how long is this going to take anyways?"
"Maybe an hour for a basic trawl, a few hours for a full, why?"
Jamelia nods. "That's excellent timing. Because I need you, Henriette, and Cross to come with me to a hospital. We have a few records we need to access. Kessler?"
"Am I coming too?" the big cyborg asks enthusiastically. "And will there be explosions?"
"No, I need you to stand guard with the Victors and Bobs over the hemophage. If it tries to escape or do something like warn its friends, I need you to torch it. We'll be taking the Paladin. I want you here because if they attack the limo, you're probably better at combat and small unit tactics than Henriette is, no offense to Henriette, and you'll be able to escape from any random attack. On the other hand, Henriette's a better driver than you and it means if we're going to be engaging any threat that wants what we do, we'll need it." If she's going to be fighting rogue EDEs with the minds of Union members, she'll need all the weapons and equipment she can get.
Henriette nods. "I'll drive. I'm good at that."
"All right, Cross, Serafina. You're with me." Jamelia says.
Cross nods. "How overt are we doing this? Are we just strolling into the hospital in big body-concealing coats without a care, or are we pretending to be cops or what?"
"We'll just be there to see the doctor. Because I have a feeling we might need the equipment." She racks the IX-15, loads a magazine of flechette rounds designed for the M-27 into the Iteration X multi-rifle. Jamelia's familiar enough with the weapons. Too high-tech and obvious for her tastes, but she tries to not get into gunfights. Cross handles his like he's Allah's gift to precision marksmen-which, to be fair, he basically is.
Even Serafina has some armor in the reinforced clothing she's acquired, and she tentatively grabs a pistol. It's not much, but Jamelia's fairly sure she can use autotargeting bioweapon rounds or aerosol dispensers or something if it comes to a fight.
***
Botkin Hospital, Moscow
Henriette's driving of the Paladin is borderline reckless, but she
does have the emergency sirens blaring. Clad in heavy coats that resemble those worn by Moscow police to hide their combat armor, Jamelia and Cross exit. Serafina has her field kit and can provide remote support with a variety of bioengineered insects, birds, and 'wet' nanomachinery should it become necessary.
The radio crackles. "Hey boss. You might want to hear about this." Kessler's voice is excited. "I've been reading the printouts and they're cra-a-a-a-azy. We're talking full on conspiracy theory wheels within wheels kinds of stuff. You know these Satan-worshipping vamp- hemophages? I think they summoned that guy in the suit we encountered,
and they're trying to take over the entirety of Moscow, because with that attack on the Prince we're gonna see them call 'Elysium', some kind of hemophage truce, and talk about leadership. They also want to get rid of the rogue Technos and take their gear for themselves, their shoulder devils are tellin' 'em that they can tell them how to maintain the gear and provide new stuff. Just gotta create more summoning circles and do more human sacrifice. They're plannin' to move against the traitors who they don't have in their thrall." Kessler pauses. "Fuck 'em."
Jamelia wonders. If this threat is related to Panopticon, it'll be a good chance for Panopticon to swoop in with its massive firepower advantage and annihilate the Baali when they find out their equipment can be kill-switched. If this threat isn't, it's still dangerous anyways. It's a complex plan, with multiple points of failure, but she can understand how it works.
It's like her old teacher, Jamelia realizes. Jeremiah Blanc always made complex plans that seemed like they had multiple points of failure, specifically designed to draw someone into the traps the points of failure were. You assume the enemy will take action, and create a plan intertwined in a fashion such that someone defeating one of your objectives would help them fulfill the others.
She knows his signature. It reads like him. It smells like him. But he was lost in the Dimensional Anomaly, wasn't he?
"You have any locations we can hit now before they can set this plan in motion?" Jamelia asks.
"Yeah." Kessler says. "They're using an old Russian Orthodox Church for their rituals. The irony probably pleases their demons, or so they think. That's where their ritual master might be. He's an old bastard, so he's probably pretty powerful. There's a couple of ex-Commie Technos loyal to them, but not many. They're probably pretty much Nephandi in everyone else's eyes, even the hemophage-quisling Technos, so they stay pretty hidden, but this bitch's been to one of their safehouses, the Molotek Building. There's also a RD gangster with her own mansion compound and tons of security who works with them in exchange for blood and pleasure. Talks about the 'Libertines' a lot, whoever those are. Has her own groupies and a terrible sense of fashion. How many gay leopards died to make her dress?"
"Got it."
So, you voted to murder Baali, and to murder Baali you will go. Because nobody wrote in cool named Baali, I had to give you generic unnamed ones. Tragedy.
[ ] (1.5x) Kill Nephandi. Retrieve Union Property. Win at life.
[ ] (+0.2x) Rope the Russian Technos into it. Convince Catherine to help you, if she can spare the manpower. And maybe you can get her to bring you a crate of the EXORDIUM files while you're at it... (stunt this one).
[ ] (-0.2x) Virtual Adepts sound cool. You're basically doing a shadowrun, you might want to get some shadowrunners for this. And sure, they wear trenchcoats and sunglasses at night, but you've seen Ivan's video surveillance of those guys shooting two guns with perfect accuracy while running along a wall against ghouled SWAT guys. If you can convince them this is of mutual benefit, you can always find some guys sympathetic to a temporary alliance. Besides, Jamelia hasn't seen many physically active Adepts. It's rare for her to actually experience something new and interesting. (Please also stunt this one)
[ ] (1.3x)
Turn Up The Radio. Crash a Technocratic limo and another car through the front gates of a heavily armed Reality Deviant compound full of consors and a Rogue Council member, guns blazing.
[ ] (-0.2x) Blanc would expect you to do subtle, but look, sometimes people expect you to do something because it's the only smart thing to do.
[ ] (1.1x) Purify a church. It's not quite your ideal place of worship, but defiling it is awful.
[ ] (+0.2x) Get the Choristers to purify that church. It's probably the least they can do to pay you back, after firing all those RPGs and autocannon rounds at you.
[ ] Write-In.
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