Downzone 1: Interdiction
Forty-two days later
"I'm not comfortable with this," James tells you again as you approach the glass doors of the office. You glance at him, catching him fidgeting with his cuffs again. He flushes as he sees you looking and shoves his hands into his pockets, turning his head to hide his scowl from you.
He does look very uncomfortable, you have to admit. The suit you'd bought for him is well-fitted, and its typical blacks and whites complement him quite well, but he doesn't wear it well. He's not the kind of person who wears suits regularly, and it shows.
"I know," you reply soothingly. "You don't have to wear it for long, I promise, just while Alfonso shows us around the office."
He ducks his head, scowling furiously at the floor, but doesn't say anything further as the automatic door slides smoothly open in front of you. You've already explained why the two of you had to dress up, anyway- it's hard to explain away replacement limbs like yours to office workers.
As you enter the office, you see heads swivel towards you, straining to take in the new arrivals. Anyone the boss is standing around to greet must be important, after all.
"Hi, Alfonso," you greet him, adroitly drawing the room's attention to yourself and away from James. "Rolling out the welcome mat for us, huh?"
Your brother pushes himself off the desk of the receptionist he'd been flirting with. "The red carpet's at the dry cleaners," he replies smoothly. "I meant to have it ready for you, but my gofer is intolerably slow."
"Haha," you say dryly. "Planning on introducing us, Alfonso, or are we going to get on with the tour?"
He lets out a long sigh. "Always business, business, business with you," he complains. "Never have time for anything fun these days." You have to bite your cheek to keep from smirking at him in front of his employees. He turns back to the receptionist for a moment. "I guess I'd better go, love. My sister wants a tour of her new workplace."
Alfonso blows the man a kiss as he turns and walks away, gesturing for the two of you to follow him. As you move to follow him, you shoot the receptionist a sympathetic look. Nobody should have to put up with your brother's flirting, even the kind of man who actually wears argyle sweaters in public. He returns your look with a strained grimace.
"There's not much to show you at the moment," Alfonso admits when you catch up to him, moving into a room filled with partitioned cubicles. "You've seen the reception area. This is the main office, where our employees spend their time working and not staring at my sister, people."
The room is suddenly filled with the sounds of rustling paper and awkward coughing. Your cheek is going to start bleeding if you keep biting down on it this often.
"The break room is over there," he continues, gesturing towards the far wall, where an innocuous blue door opens into a room painted bleak white. You can see a microwave sitting on top of a refrigerator across from the door, and the edge off a coffee machine. The rest of the room is blocked off from view. Probably for the better; that coffee machine looks depressingly off-brand.
"Wait, we get breaks?" James pipes up, shooting a longing glance towards the coffee machine.
You have to shut that down, now. No teenaged enhancile will ever have to suffer generic brand instant coffee again while you have anything to say about it.
"No," you say sharply. "Next room."
You catch a smirk at the despondent look on James' face as Alfonso spins around,walking down a path in the middle of the cubicles. He leads you out a red-painted door, down a hall, and past a scattering of doors, introducing each room to you as he goes. Supply closet. Staff toilet. Other supply closet. Security's office. Another supply closet. Filing room. Yet more supply closet.
A sneaky suspicion creeps up on you.
"Alfonso," you ask, frowning, "did you spend all the funds I provided you with on supply closets?"
"Probably not," he answers evasively.
The tour continues as he leads you to an elevator. He presses the button for the fifth floor immediately- "Biotech's on the second floor," he whispers conspiratorially to you, "but they're damn creepy, better to skip them before one of them abducts me in my sleep."- and leads you out as soon as the doors open.
"And this is our floor," he concludes. "Top floor of the building."
"Wow," you deadpan. "You really went all-out with the decor, didn't you?"
If anything, this floor is even more spartan than the first. The first floor had at least had a few paintings hanging on the walls, and the sounds of people desperately trying to sound busy as the boss walked past. This one doesn't even have that- just standard white walls and the occasional pointless window.
Alfonso rolls his eyes. "It's not much to look at, but it works. And, more importantly, it's private up here. All employees have been told that entering this floor without explicit written permission from either you or I is grounds for immediate termination. We can talk freely here."
"Oh, thank god," James groans. "I was worried you'd try to make us be secret and shit. I ain't good at that kind of stuff."
You chuckle a little. "Don't worry, James. We might make you wear a suit, but that's it, you don't have a second identity or anything to live up to."
"Good," he grouses. "Gets way too complicated if you try that kinda stuff."
You hum in agreement. "Yeah. So, Alfonso, where's your office?"
"Oh! Right." He's visibly startled, having apparently tuned the two of you out when James began speaking. "Follow me. I'll lead you to my office."
His office is down the hall and to the left, directly across from a dingy blue door. It's a fairly cluttered room. Stacks of paper flow off every surface, consuming his too-large computer desk and the table beside it, even overflowing from the top of a series of filing cabinets against the back wall.
A quick glance at one of the papers reveals it to be an invoice. For what, you're not sure- "LG PPRCLPS Ct 2000 x 100", it reads, with a cross beside it drawn in red pen. Probably written in Greek.
"And your office is just across the hall," Alfonso concludes. "Sorry it's not much, but I figured you wouldn't be spending too much time here."
He's right; it really isn't much, you find out when you duck your head inside, a stark contrast to his cluttered office. There's a desk with a simple computer on it- even the mousepad is a plain black thing. A filing cabinet has been shoved in the back corner. The only amenities are a potted fern sitting on the edge of your desk, and…
[] You've invested so much money into the corporation that Alfonso has decided to upgrade your office. Hooray! Today's upgrade is…
[] A laser printer. Three times as efficient as your old one, and it prints in color. Now you can continue to be just as unproductive, but you'll be quicker about it!
[] An ergonomic chair. It's pretty damn ergonomic. It even has squishy gel armrests- just the kind of feature you like in your office chairs, and it spins!
"Right." You step back out of your office, turning to give him a serious look. "What's up with the plant?"
"It came complementary with the coffee machine down in the break room." He ignores the horrified and slightly betrayed look you shoot at the fern. "Alright. I assume you want to get down to business."
You try to force yourself back into serious mode. It's hard- you've really missed being able to goof off with your younger brother. It's been far too long since you were able to catch up with him last. But you have bigger issues to deal with.
The thought of Cydonia is enough to sober your mood immediately.
"Yeah." You step back out of your office, swinging the door closed, and move into Alfonso's office. "Probably a good idea. Where do you want to start?"
"Well, for starters, the company isn't in really good shape." Alfonso moves to his computer, booting it up from sleep mode, and begins to rapidly open up a series of documents for you. "We're running low on most things- money, employees, and assets to capitalize on. The money you gave me was enough to kickstart a biotech department, and those friends of yours have really followed through, but we won't be seeing any returns on that for at least another three weeks."
"What about the blackmail stuff she gave you?" James asks, lounging against a wall. His tone isn't insolent, exactly, but it's worryingly belligerent. He doesn't like you being challenged.
Alfonso nods. "They've been useful, yes," he acknowledges. "I wouldn't have been able to acquire a building as large as this so quickly without being able to apply some pressure to the mayor of the prefecture, and a few local security companies have switched their contracts over to our biotech department after I threatened to expose some dirty secrets. It's enough to keep us in the black, for the moment."
"But I'm not satisfied with us being in the black," you conclude. "Cydonia betrayed Shamus and I, and fucked you over. I want revenge. I want them to know they screwed with the wrong people. If we want to seriously challenge them, we need to get bigger, and that means getting more money."
"Or more assets, but yes, Ezmerelda is correct."
James shakes his head, letting out a tired little sigh. "Fine," he mutters. "How are we supposed to get our hands on that kind of money? I mean, I'm pretty good, but I don't see how throwing plasma around is supposed to rake in the big bucks."
"You're just not imaginative enough," you reply in a sing-song voice. "But we do need more information before we can start, I agree. What's the situation around here, Alfonso?"
He clears his throat. "Gang warfare has been increasing lately," he begins. "Westhill has always been infested with them, but they've been getting worse. The economy is crashing around here. Businesses are closing, people are being mugged left and right, and the few people who still have any money are afraid to admit to it by buying anything.
"If we want to get anywhere, we're going to have to stabilise the area somehow. I'm not sure where to begin with that. That's your area of expertise, Ez, not mine."
You nod. "What do you know about the gangs in the area?"
"Not much," he says despondently. "I've had people asking around, but it's dangerous for us normal folk to poke around in those kind of affairs. From what I've been able to gather, the three big gangs in the area are the Snakes, the Rollers and the Specters. They're all drug-pushers, and the market there's getting increasingly competitive, so they've been trying to eliminate their competition. There's a few smaller gangs, but I'm not sure what's up with them."
"Right," you mutter. "Well, alright then."
If that's all the information you can get, then that's all the information you can get. You've worked with less before.
[] Now that Vector understands the situation in the area, she needs to decide how she's going to approach it. Please vote for Vector's priorities in the area; note that you can vote for more than one option this vote. The more votes an option receives, the higher it will be on Vector's list of priorities- but if she has too many high priorities, she will get bogged down and become less effective. Please choose carefully.
[] Vector will move to begin investigating the area. James- Immolator- can probably help you out with this; he might not be from the immediate area, but he's an ex-ganger. He knows how they operate. If you can figure out what the big gangs in the area are after and how they operate, you can deal with them more effectively. If she has time, she can probably gather information on local businesses and corporations, too.
[] Vector will move to begin eliminating gangs in the area, starting with the numerous smaller gangs. She probably won't make it to eliminating the bigger gangs in the area, but eliminating the smaller gangs should help the local economy to begin to recover in the short term, and make it easier to eliminate the larger gangs later. Some of them might even have supplies she can liberate- drugs for the biotech department to take apart, and money to fund the growth of the corporation.
[] The gangs can wait; Vector needs the business to grow, and grow quickly. Luckily, while Alfonso might not know a lot about gangs, he knows a lot about local businesses. An enhancile making contact with them will generate a lot of interest, potentially making new contracts or allies for the corporation. More money can only help.
[] Vector stole a series of dossiers from the Syndicate headquarters. If she spends time analysing them, she can investigate interesting assets in the area. Enhanciles, groups of gang members who may be willing to be hired on, potentially even people who might lead her to criminal operations she can destroy- or take over.
[] Stealing money will help in the short term, but long-term growth will lead to better financial stability. Vector will go and investigate local schools and universities, looking for people with talent and skills she might poach for her business. She might not have a cybernetics department yet, but it's a good idea to start recruiting people now before she ends up with an unstaffed one, and she does have a biotech department. Plus, even if she can't find people who are good in those departments, she can always find people who are just good at administration- or punching people in the face.
