Shadowrun: New Age
[X] Ask about that performance review you never got because everything was on fire.
Getting pointers is a good thing, especially for someone as green as Adrian. Likewise, if Karna thinks we've done well, Adrian will become more confident.
For the other option... I'm torn between them. Let me lay out the potential benefits as well as drawbacks that I can think of, to see if I can shake something loose and make a decision.
[ ] Look up what happened to the SOX in the fifty years you've been gone.
Give's us a better grounding in the time. If the dragon is indeed Feuerscwhinge (or however you spell it), the reaction might be telling, since that is the area where she died. However, Adrian might be freaked out.
[ ] Research your fellow changelings, see how they've done with themselves.
Changeling's are interesting, and learning more about them would be good, and might allow us to realize that we may not be an actual changeling. I'm not too sure we actually are one, all told. OTOH, it might not give us immediately useful information, albeit I expect it to be useful in the future.
[ ] Research dragons. For a thing that's squatting in your brain you don't know much about it.
This would definitely get the dragon to comment, I expect. It might also offer possibilities as to how to deal with it. Dragons are a fundamental part of the universe as well.
[ ] Look up what this 'comet-mania' is all about.
Probably involved with the plot. May also have the dragon comment. May be the one I'm least curious about, though.
So, to see if we can figure out what we are:
[X] Research your fellow changelings, see how they've done with themselves.
Getting pointers is a good thing, especially for someone as green as Adrian. Likewise, if Karna thinks we've done well, Adrian will become more confident.
For the other option... I'm torn between them. Let me lay out the potential benefits as well as drawbacks that I can think of, to see if I can shake something loose and make a decision.
[ ] Look up what happened to the SOX in the fifty years you've been gone.
Give's us a better grounding in the time. If the dragon is indeed Feuerscwhinge (or however you spell it), the reaction might be telling, since that is the area where she died. However, Adrian might be freaked out.
[ ] Research your fellow changelings, see how they've done with themselves.
Changeling's are interesting, and learning more about them would be good, and might allow us to realize that we may not be an actual changeling. I'm not too sure we actually are one, all told. OTOH, it might not give us immediately useful information, albeit I expect it to be useful in the future.
[ ] Research dragons. For a thing that's squatting in your brain you don't know much about it.
This would definitely get the dragon to comment, I expect. It might also offer possibilities as to how to deal with it. Dragons are a fundamental part of the universe as well.
[ ] Look up what this 'comet-mania' is all about.
Probably involved with the plot. May also have the dragon comment. May be the one I'm least curious about, though.
So, to see if we can figure out what we are:
[X] Research your fellow changelings, see how they've done with themselves.
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
-
[X] Ask about that performance review you never got because everything was on fire.
[X] Research your fellow changelings, see how they've done with themselves.
Eh, I've been swayed.
[X] Research your fellow changelings, see how they've done with themselves.
Eh, I've been swayed.
The Curious Fan
Perpetually sleep deprived
Decided to reread on a whim and saw this:
I see future bonding with the dragon over just how annoying we find the lack of nature in cities.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
"...S-so about that performance review you mentioned the other day?" you ask. Trying to hurry the moment past. Trying not to look too horribly out of your element as your digitized tail waves back and forth, your stance at once anxious and awkward.
"Mm, in a bit," Karna replies. "Once we get out of this game."
And with that he kicks off and soars into the air in the most graceful depiction of noclipping you've ever seen. A platform like a shaped block of obsidian slides out of the wall to meet him, turning gold as his feet set down. He half-turns and waves his hand, prompting a doorway to materialize in the wall behind him too. He's several storeys above you.
"Wait, really?" you ask and your voice sounds whiner that you would have liked.
"The team's told me how you can move. Should be perfectly doable for you."
"But this is a video game. Or the internet. Or whatever," you point out. "I'll only be able to jump and stuff like a human."
"I adjusted the gravity and friction levels, you can jump and climb same as always."
"When did you have time-"
"Adrian, please." The edge of irritation in his voice is balanced out by amusement, but you catch it all the same. "Knowing my way around local systems and cloud-based computation is my job. I know what I'm doing."
"Alright, sorry," you say, contrite.
"Besides, what're you worrying about? Falling? You've done plenty more dangerous already," Karna laughs. "And besides, that's what the web's there for. It'll bounce you right back up to the last platform you were on. Don't worry about it. This isn't the field, there aren't any stakes; understand?"
You exhale hard. You roll your shoulders, hop from foot to foot. Actions that are entirely useless in the digital space you find yourself in, but they make you feel better regardless. You focus on the game, try to pick out a path for yourself. The damn platforms are moving so that's going to be a real issue when you're actually having to do the jumping, but you manage to spy a relatively clear path to Karna. All that remains is actually getting to him.
Your first jump is mildly terrifying, but only because you look down. You land just fine, without even skidding. Your second jump is more confident, taking you further. For your third you coil and spring from all fours, taking you clear over an intermediary platform. You land next to a vertical neon-edged slab, a wall floating in the ether. You're moving again before you can even stop and think about the fact that people are meant to move horizontally, skittering across the smooth surface, tail slashing through the air to balance you. You kick off the wall, skipping yet another segment of the level, snatching a horizontal bar as it comes within reach. It seems like the easiest thing in the world to swing yourself upright, rising from a crouch and sprinting along the bar as if it were a wide footpath. You don't even have to hold your arms out, your tail unconsciously picking up the slack.
Not as smooth as when you were fighting, not as graceful or easy. But it feels...right. It feels comfortable. Your brain knows how to handle this even if you don't.
Another leap takes you back onto the course proper, a staggered set of platforms at 45-degree tilts. Child's play for you at this point. You bounce from slab to slab with almost rehearsed ease, soon finding yourself close to the wall of the level. You glance over to the other segments, mentally mapping out your next move. Then you look at the wall, stretching up right past where Karna waits for you. You dig your claws into the sleek, almost slippery material. Fingers hooking on the glossy black. Mandibles spread in something that might have been a smile.
Once you get your momentum up it honestly feels no different than running on all fours. You chew up the vertical distance in mere seconds, flowing up the sheer expanse, leaping from the wall and landing beside Karna with a proud flourish. You're panting when you straighten up, thrilled to the point that you're short of breath even if you weren't actually exerting yourself. Karna appraises you, arms folded.
"Points off for cheating," he says. "But points on for doing it in the confines of the physics settings I used."
"So I did okay?" you venture.
"Just fine." He pats you on the back. The movement's not quite as spontaneous as he clearly hoped it would be, but you appreciate it all the same. "Now, we were going to discuss your performance review and...was there any place you wanted to see? I don't think I asked."
"Oh, um, yeah. I hoping to see what the Matrix has on what's happened to the SOX."
There's a pause. He turns his face in your direction, golden mask gleaming with its own inner glow. You can't tell if he's curious, angry, or just neutral.
"Oh." He says mildly. "Of course. I'll bring us to the search engine."
Some part of you gradually relaxes, you'll settle for neutral.
He waves his hand, and the tunnel into darkness becomes a portal of golden light. He steps through swiftly, and you have to hurry to keep up with him. The sensation of passing through, hopping from one 'map' to the next, makes your head feel a little fuzzy. When you step on solid ground beyond and finish blinking away stars, you see a room that you can only describe as a cyberpunk lecture hall with all the furniture stripped away. An incomplete ceiling rises above you, vaulted ribs arching over you like the rib bones of some obsidian sea beast. It's open on all sides and at the far end; cool light shining directly upon a rounded podium. You approach the front where Karna waits, looking up at the stormy sky far above your head.
"Seems like Google would've been a lot faster," you mutter.
" 'Faster' is relative. Full-immersion VR speeds up the brain a tad via cold ASIST so you can enjoy the pomp and circumstance without worrying about the hassle it's causing you," Karna explains. "In real-time, coming here to log your query is just as quick as typing. I've got hot ASIST, so to be honest I could've been in and out by the time you even got in the chair."
"You're just showing off now."
Karna doesn't reply. You circle around the podium, noticing what appears to be fine microphone mesh across the top. You rest your hands on either side and clear your throat.
"Um… history of the Saar-Lorraine-Luxembourg Special Administrative Zone?" you ask it.
"Confirmed," replies a cool, neutral female voice. You look up, craning your neck as two-dimensional webpages fly down from the aether towards you in three-dimensional space. Karna leans against the podium beside you, idly flicking his free hand. The flurry slows, and the pages line up neatly in order. You nod to him in thanks and reach up, somewhat awkwardly beckoning one of the pages. It swoops down to allow for a closer look.
The SOX, established in 2008 when the Cattenom nuclear reactor suffered a catastrophic meltdown. The reason for the containment breach, how the stringent safety protocols associated with the operation of a nuclear power plant could have failed so utterly all at once, are lost to history. Either way, you know its effects all too well. You spend four years trapped within the vast exclusion zone, waiting with baited breath for the next supply drop from the military even as they grew rarer and rarer. At least the page confirms for you what was only a rumour in Saarbrücken, whispered behind closed doors. You were trapped there because the German government was busy falling apart, incapable of handling the influx of refugees your release would have triggered. It didn't matter anyway. It fell, and the military stepped in completely.
It looks like Firewing's defeat finally convinced the military to let the refugees come through. The night of Dragonfall was the night that the checkpoints were opened, and anyone who was able fled the SOX. Now it's just a lifeless, irradiated wasteland walled off with concrete. The story of what became of your old life just kind of peters out with a whimper.
"... Frida Marka. Erwin Marka. Alexia Marka. Adrian Marka."
Another flurry of pages, flitting all around you like a disturbed flock of birds, jostling for attention. A lot of social media pages. No familiar faces. Nobody you know. You dismiss them, the pages shattering into twinkling pixels against the walls as they're hurled away from you. You flip to one of the other pages on the SOX, hoping for something more substantial. It's even more barebones than the first article, just another brief summary of the mass exodus from the Saarlands to Berlin where they lived for twenty-seven happy years until the Night of Rage turned the city into an anarchist pit of crime and corporate deals. Then again sixteen years later when the corporations retook the city. You flick to another page. It hasn't even loaded.
"What's going on?" you ask. "I thought this was the super future internet. Everything's a crappy unsourced wiki entry or timed out."
"The servers we use did recently catch fire," Karna points out.
"... oh, yeah," you say guiltily.
Karna pauses. "Not that I meant…" He sighs softly. "Listen. I know you probably feel terrible about what happened at Informationenbahn, but you shouldn't. I mean that honestly. That job was meant to be a milk run and it suddenly turned into high-level drek right on your head. We hadn't prepared you for anything like that, and you couldn't even get help with comms jammed. But you pulled through."
"I guess…" you mumble.
"And hey. There's three people alive right now because of what you did." It's hard to tell past his avatar's visor, but you think Karna's smiling. "That's what I like to see on this team."
You smile back, albeit weakly. Albeit-albeit like something about a late-seventies sci-fi horror movie.
"Listen," he goes on. "I'll admit I didn't want you on the team at first, after 'Herr Brackhaus' dropped it on all of us, but I think-"
It rises from the floor like some kind of ghost, like some kind of monster. Clear panes of gold over shifting sinews that look nothing so much like fiber optic cables. It's a spider. It's an eel. It hunches over like an ape, long tail dragged free of the black material, too many arms sprawled over the floor. A stylized sheaf of papers hanging before its blunt, angled forehead. Surrounded by a slowly rotating halo. Another thing is emerging, breaching the surface of the stone. A third. All with the same mark.
"W-wha-"
"...Excuse me." Karna says to you, half absently. You don't think he even notices that you've slowly sunk behind the podium; mandibles clasped tight.
All the icons fizzle at once. The pages flying free of their carriers. Merging into a collage, a massive composite that fills the air. Karna's standing straight, staring intently at the cinema-screen-sized display hanging over you both. Each page is garbled beyond all recognition, graphics flickering and corrupting, text folding in on itself. Each has a little polygonal wedge of light that stays solid. Karna waves his hand sharply and the distortions disintegrate into so much dust. Blasted away like a sandcastle in front of an industrial strength fan, leaving only the white space that refused to change.
"What's going on?" you whisper.
"Someone sent a message from outside," Karna replies evenly, focused on his work. "Hid it in fragments to cover their tracks, threw it in here for the first Decker to find. Good enough to escape mid-level corporate detection. Let's see what was worth that secrecy…"
The polygonal light-chips writhe against each other, slipping and slotting and sliding as Karna tries a thousand possible permutations in a second. It looks so utterly incomprehensible to you it might as well be magic. Eventually he cracks it, slotting the shapes together perfectly into a fine mesh. It's an audio file. You see a dot slowly track across the scrub bar, blue light flicker and dance beneath as it visualizes the peaks and valleys of the voice. At first it's garbled, then it's modulated to a sexless rumble. Karna rewinds it to the beginning, gesturing. Cleaning it up. Reversing the modulation as easily as breathing. It's a woman's voice.
"Shadowrunners of the Anarchist East. I… I need your help." Exhaustion. Fear. You can hear how she glances over her shoulder constantly as if it were a video. She sounds like she hasn't slept in days. "I work for the Yamatetsu Corporation at their Berlin branch, as part of their cybernetic augmentation R&D team. My wife also works… worked… in the same branch, on the security team. Six months ago she was promoted to a location off-site, and I was assured she would be back by the end of the year. But… but they're lying to me. I must have emailed her a hundred times but the replies I got didn't sound like her. There was never a 'right time' to call her or video-chat and the more questions I asked the more defensive they got. I think something's happened to her. I think something's going to happen to me if I keep trying to find her."
You glance at Karna. His face is expressionless.
"Please, whatever you want, I'll pay it. I cleared out as much as I could from my accounts before they could freeze them. I've got a million nuyen in credsticks on me, and I'll transfer a quarter of that to you the moment you accept the job if that's what it takes. Please, just…"
The audio visualizer spikes. The woman hiccups as she chokes off a sob just in time.
"Whatever happened to her, I just need to know."
She takes a moment to control her breathing.
"If you were able to decipher this message, you'll be able to retrieve the contact information I embedded in it. Please contact me if you… if you decide to take the job. I hope you reply soon. I don't know how much time either of us has left."
The file ends. The room is silent.
"I'm sorry, but we're going to have to cut your Matrix trip short," says Karna evenly. "I'm going to take this to Zero Point, see what he thinks of it."
"But-" you start.
"You can't just jump into any run that comes your way. I know whoever sent us that file was convincing, but it could be a scam for all we know. It could be a trap. This is why we have Fixers, Adrian. They do the legwork and vet the client. Then we do the legwork and prep for the run. Then we execute."
"... I guess," you say.
***
Three days pass. They're both mind-numbingly tedious and incredibly stressful. Every hour holds the possibility of getting The Call for action, only for you to hear nothing. Nothing on Accynder's next job, nothing on the mystery-woman's plea. 72 hours roaming the Executive, haunting the Arcade. You try a few more games but truth be told they've sort of lost their luster. It's hard to have fun when you keep seeing that video in your head. When you keep feeling that nervous, anticipatory, itch beneath the scalp. In the end all you can do is focus on getting your sleep-cycle 'right' for Shadowrunning while everyone else runs their errands.
You think of calling Raban once or twice but decide against it as you crouch over your PDA, clawed thumbs still on the softly glowing keyboard; nothing coming to mind. Watching trideo ends up filling the hours instead, but the ever-growing possibility of another visit from Max makes even that a distinctly un-relaxing passtime.
When Karna marches into the living room of the penthouse, PDA cradled in the crook of his arm and Geier in tow, it's almost a sweet relief.
"Did you get cle-"
"Zero Point cleared us, yes."
You sit up on the couch, fumbling the controls for the tri-d. The streams of color dying away. You start to say something, he holds up a hand. The three of you wait in silence. A few minutes pass and Bluejay stumbles out of her room, baring fangs in a yawn. Hiking up a worn shirt to scratch her stomach.
"Got your message, barely even sundown. What's the job?"
"Personnel acquisition eventually." He says. "But tonight? Reconnaissance. We're scouting out a Yamatetsu R&D lab. I'm going to need to second Adrian to someone. Any preferences? Or anyone who could use the help?"
Your head's spinning, almost like a rush of blood to the brain but...that doesn't happen to you anymore. It's happening fast. You try to sort through the jumble in your head.
[ ] Ask to be put with Karna. He'll be comfortably off site, probing the network. That's what Deckers do right? He'll need help putting in physical taps though. And circumnavigating some corporate security. A chance to get hands on.
[ ] Ask to be put with Bluejay. You haven't gotten to talk to her much in the past couple of days but you know she's been on edge about the toxic spirits. You know you can handle yourself around them. Might be good to see a master at work too.
[ ] Ask to be put with Geier. You have no idea what Geier's going to be doing. You don't really know much about what he does during stuff like this, and he just showed up a few hours before sunset so you haven't talked. But if you had to guess you'd say it's something with the drones.
"Mm, in a bit," Karna replies. "Once we get out of this game."
And with that he kicks off and soars into the air in the most graceful depiction of noclipping you've ever seen. A platform like a shaped block of obsidian slides out of the wall to meet him, turning gold as his feet set down. He half-turns and waves his hand, prompting a doorway to materialize in the wall behind him too. He's several storeys above you.
"Wait, really?" you ask and your voice sounds whiner that you would have liked.
"The team's told me how you can move. Should be perfectly doable for you."
"But this is a video game. Or the internet. Or whatever," you point out. "I'll only be able to jump and stuff like a human."
"I adjusted the gravity and friction levels, you can jump and climb same as always."
"When did you have time-"
"Adrian, please." The edge of irritation in his voice is balanced out by amusement, but you catch it all the same. "Knowing my way around local systems and cloud-based computation is my job. I know what I'm doing."
"Alright, sorry," you say, contrite.
"Besides, what're you worrying about? Falling? You've done plenty more dangerous already," Karna laughs. "And besides, that's what the web's there for. It'll bounce you right back up to the last platform you were on. Don't worry about it. This isn't the field, there aren't any stakes; understand?"
You exhale hard. You roll your shoulders, hop from foot to foot. Actions that are entirely useless in the digital space you find yourself in, but they make you feel better regardless. You focus on the game, try to pick out a path for yourself. The damn platforms are moving so that's going to be a real issue when you're actually having to do the jumping, but you manage to spy a relatively clear path to Karna. All that remains is actually getting to him.
Your first jump is mildly terrifying, but only because you look down. You land just fine, without even skidding. Your second jump is more confident, taking you further. For your third you coil and spring from all fours, taking you clear over an intermediary platform. You land next to a vertical neon-edged slab, a wall floating in the ether. You're moving again before you can even stop and think about the fact that people are meant to move horizontally, skittering across the smooth surface, tail slashing through the air to balance you. You kick off the wall, skipping yet another segment of the level, snatching a horizontal bar as it comes within reach. It seems like the easiest thing in the world to swing yourself upright, rising from a crouch and sprinting along the bar as if it were a wide footpath. You don't even have to hold your arms out, your tail unconsciously picking up the slack.
Not as smooth as when you were fighting, not as graceful or easy. But it feels...right. It feels comfortable. Your brain knows how to handle this even if you don't.
Another leap takes you back onto the course proper, a staggered set of platforms at 45-degree tilts. Child's play for you at this point. You bounce from slab to slab with almost rehearsed ease, soon finding yourself close to the wall of the level. You glance over to the other segments, mentally mapping out your next move. Then you look at the wall, stretching up right past where Karna waits for you. You dig your claws into the sleek, almost slippery material. Fingers hooking on the glossy black. Mandibles spread in something that might have been a smile.
Once you get your momentum up it honestly feels no different than running on all fours. You chew up the vertical distance in mere seconds, flowing up the sheer expanse, leaping from the wall and landing beside Karna with a proud flourish. You're panting when you straighten up, thrilled to the point that you're short of breath even if you weren't actually exerting yourself. Karna appraises you, arms folded.
"Points off for cheating," he says. "But points on for doing it in the confines of the physics settings I used."
"So I did okay?" you venture.
"Just fine." He pats you on the back. The movement's not quite as spontaneous as he clearly hoped it would be, but you appreciate it all the same. "Now, we were going to discuss your performance review and...was there any place you wanted to see? I don't think I asked."
"Oh, um, yeah. I hoping to see what the Matrix has on what's happened to the SOX."
There's a pause. He turns his face in your direction, golden mask gleaming with its own inner glow. You can't tell if he's curious, angry, or just neutral.
"Oh." He says mildly. "Of course. I'll bring us to the search engine."
Some part of you gradually relaxes, you'll settle for neutral.
He waves his hand, and the tunnel into darkness becomes a portal of golden light. He steps through swiftly, and you have to hurry to keep up with him. The sensation of passing through, hopping from one 'map' to the next, makes your head feel a little fuzzy. When you step on solid ground beyond and finish blinking away stars, you see a room that you can only describe as a cyberpunk lecture hall with all the furniture stripped away. An incomplete ceiling rises above you, vaulted ribs arching over you like the rib bones of some obsidian sea beast. It's open on all sides and at the far end; cool light shining directly upon a rounded podium. You approach the front where Karna waits, looking up at the stormy sky far above your head.
"Seems like Google would've been a lot faster," you mutter.
" 'Faster' is relative. Full-immersion VR speeds up the brain a tad via cold ASIST so you can enjoy the pomp and circumstance without worrying about the hassle it's causing you," Karna explains. "In real-time, coming here to log your query is just as quick as typing. I've got hot ASIST, so to be honest I could've been in and out by the time you even got in the chair."
"You're just showing off now."
Karna doesn't reply. You circle around the podium, noticing what appears to be fine microphone mesh across the top. You rest your hands on either side and clear your throat.
"Um… history of the Saar-Lorraine-Luxembourg Special Administrative Zone?" you ask it.
"Confirmed," replies a cool, neutral female voice. You look up, craning your neck as two-dimensional webpages fly down from the aether towards you in three-dimensional space. Karna leans against the podium beside you, idly flicking his free hand. The flurry slows, and the pages line up neatly in order. You nod to him in thanks and reach up, somewhat awkwardly beckoning one of the pages. It swoops down to allow for a closer look.
The SOX, established in 2008 when the Cattenom nuclear reactor suffered a catastrophic meltdown. The reason for the containment breach, how the stringent safety protocols associated with the operation of a nuclear power plant could have failed so utterly all at once, are lost to history. Either way, you know its effects all too well. You spend four years trapped within the vast exclusion zone, waiting with baited breath for the next supply drop from the military even as they grew rarer and rarer. At least the page confirms for you what was only a rumour in Saarbrücken, whispered behind closed doors. You were trapped there because the German government was busy falling apart, incapable of handling the influx of refugees your release would have triggered. It didn't matter anyway. It fell, and the military stepped in completely.
It looks like Firewing's defeat finally convinced the military to let the refugees come through. The night of Dragonfall was the night that the checkpoints were opened, and anyone who was able fled the SOX. Now it's just a lifeless, irradiated wasteland walled off with concrete. The story of what became of your old life just kind of peters out with a whimper.
"... Frida Marka. Erwin Marka. Alexia Marka. Adrian Marka."
Another flurry of pages, flitting all around you like a disturbed flock of birds, jostling for attention. A lot of social media pages. No familiar faces. Nobody you know. You dismiss them, the pages shattering into twinkling pixels against the walls as they're hurled away from you. You flip to one of the other pages on the SOX, hoping for something more substantial. It's even more barebones than the first article, just another brief summary of the mass exodus from the Saarlands to Berlin where they lived for twenty-seven happy years until the Night of Rage turned the city into an anarchist pit of crime and corporate deals. Then again sixteen years later when the corporations retook the city. You flick to another page. It hasn't even loaded.
"What's going on?" you ask. "I thought this was the super future internet. Everything's a crappy unsourced wiki entry or timed out."
"The servers we use did recently catch fire," Karna points out.
"... oh, yeah," you say guiltily.
Karna pauses. "Not that I meant…" He sighs softly. "Listen. I know you probably feel terrible about what happened at Informationenbahn, but you shouldn't. I mean that honestly. That job was meant to be a milk run and it suddenly turned into high-level drek right on your head. We hadn't prepared you for anything like that, and you couldn't even get help with comms jammed. But you pulled through."
"I guess…" you mumble.
"And hey. There's three people alive right now because of what you did." It's hard to tell past his avatar's visor, but you think Karna's smiling. "That's what I like to see on this team."
You smile back, albeit weakly. Albeit-albeit like something about a late-seventies sci-fi horror movie.
"Listen," he goes on. "I'll admit I didn't want you on the team at first, after 'Herr Brackhaus' dropped it on all of us, but I think-"
It rises from the floor like some kind of ghost, like some kind of monster. Clear panes of gold over shifting sinews that look nothing so much like fiber optic cables. It's a spider. It's an eel. It hunches over like an ape, long tail dragged free of the black material, too many arms sprawled over the floor. A stylized sheaf of papers hanging before its blunt, angled forehead. Surrounded by a slowly rotating halo. Another thing is emerging, breaching the surface of the stone. A third. All with the same mark.
"W-wha-"
"...Excuse me." Karna says to you, half absently. You don't think he even notices that you've slowly sunk behind the podium; mandibles clasped tight.
All the icons fizzle at once. The pages flying free of their carriers. Merging into a collage, a massive composite that fills the air. Karna's standing straight, staring intently at the cinema-screen-sized display hanging over you both. Each page is garbled beyond all recognition, graphics flickering and corrupting, text folding in on itself. Each has a little polygonal wedge of light that stays solid. Karna waves his hand sharply and the distortions disintegrate into so much dust. Blasted away like a sandcastle in front of an industrial strength fan, leaving only the white space that refused to change.
"What's going on?" you whisper.
"Someone sent a message from outside," Karna replies evenly, focused on his work. "Hid it in fragments to cover their tracks, threw it in here for the first Decker to find. Good enough to escape mid-level corporate detection. Let's see what was worth that secrecy…"
The polygonal light-chips writhe against each other, slipping and slotting and sliding as Karna tries a thousand possible permutations in a second. It looks so utterly incomprehensible to you it might as well be magic. Eventually he cracks it, slotting the shapes together perfectly into a fine mesh. It's an audio file. You see a dot slowly track across the scrub bar, blue light flicker and dance beneath as it visualizes the peaks and valleys of the voice. At first it's garbled, then it's modulated to a sexless rumble. Karna rewinds it to the beginning, gesturing. Cleaning it up. Reversing the modulation as easily as breathing. It's a woman's voice.
"Shadowrunners of the Anarchist East. I… I need your help." Exhaustion. Fear. You can hear how she glances over her shoulder constantly as if it were a video. She sounds like she hasn't slept in days. "I work for the Yamatetsu Corporation at their Berlin branch, as part of their cybernetic augmentation R&D team. My wife also works… worked… in the same branch, on the security team. Six months ago she was promoted to a location off-site, and I was assured she would be back by the end of the year. But… but they're lying to me. I must have emailed her a hundred times but the replies I got didn't sound like her. There was never a 'right time' to call her or video-chat and the more questions I asked the more defensive they got. I think something's happened to her. I think something's going to happen to me if I keep trying to find her."
You glance at Karna. His face is expressionless.
"Please, whatever you want, I'll pay it. I cleared out as much as I could from my accounts before they could freeze them. I've got a million nuyen in credsticks on me, and I'll transfer a quarter of that to you the moment you accept the job if that's what it takes. Please, just…"
The audio visualizer spikes. The woman hiccups as she chokes off a sob just in time.
"Whatever happened to her, I just need to know."
She takes a moment to control her breathing.
"If you were able to decipher this message, you'll be able to retrieve the contact information I embedded in it. Please contact me if you… if you decide to take the job. I hope you reply soon. I don't know how much time either of us has left."
The file ends. The room is silent.
"I'm sorry, but we're going to have to cut your Matrix trip short," says Karna evenly. "I'm going to take this to Zero Point, see what he thinks of it."
"But-" you start.
"You can't just jump into any run that comes your way. I know whoever sent us that file was convincing, but it could be a scam for all we know. It could be a trap. This is why we have Fixers, Adrian. They do the legwork and vet the client. Then we do the legwork and prep for the run. Then we execute."
"... I guess," you say.
***
Three days pass. They're both mind-numbingly tedious and incredibly stressful. Every hour holds the possibility of getting The Call for action, only for you to hear nothing. Nothing on Accynder's next job, nothing on the mystery-woman's plea. 72 hours roaming the Executive, haunting the Arcade. You try a few more games but truth be told they've sort of lost their luster. It's hard to have fun when you keep seeing that video in your head. When you keep feeling that nervous, anticipatory, itch beneath the scalp. In the end all you can do is focus on getting your sleep-cycle 'right' for Shadowrunning while everyone else runs their errands.
You think of calling Raban once or twice but decide against it as you crouch over your PDA, clawed thumbs still on the softly glowing keyboard; nothing coming to mind. Watching trideo ends up filling the hours instead, but the ever-growing possibility of another visit from Max makes even that a distinctly un-relaxing passtime.
When Karna marches into the living room of the penthouse, PDA cradled in the crook of his arm and Geier in tow, it's almost a sweet relief.
"Did you get cle-"
"Zero Point cleared us, yes."
You sit up on the couch, fumbling the controls for the tri-d. The streams of color dying away. You start to say something, he holds up a hand. The three of you wait in silence. A few minutes pass and Bluejay stumbles out of her room, baring fangs in a yawn. Hiking up a worn shirt to scratch her stomach.
"Got your message, barely even sundown. What's the job?"
"Personnel acquisition eventually." He says. "But tonight? Reconnaissance. We're scouting out a Yamatetsu R&D lab. I'm going to need to second Adrian to someone. Any preferences? Or anyone who could use the help?"
Your head's spinning, almost like a rush of blood to the brain but...that doesn't happen to you anymore. It's happening fast. You try to sort through the jumble in your head.
[ ] Ask to be put with Karna. He'll be comfortably off site, probing the network. That's what Deckers do right? He'll need help putting in physical taps though. And circumnavigating some corporate security. A chance to get hands on.
[ ] Ask to be put with Bluejay. You haven't gotten to talk to her much in the past couple of days but you know she's been on edge about the toxic spirits. You know you can handle yourself around them. Might be good to see a master at work too.
[ ] Ask to be put with Geier. You have no idea what Geier's going to be doing. You don't really know much about what he does during stuff like this, and he just showed up a few hours before sunset so you haven't talked. But if you had to guess you'd say it's something with the drones.
will408914
(slouching towards bethlehem)
- Location
- California
[X] Ask to be put with Bluejay. You haven't gotten to talk to her much in the past couple of days but you know she's been on edge about the toxic spirits. You know you can handle yourself around them. Might be good to see a master at work too.
LaRed
Are you stupid or something
- Location
- Mou Ikkai hell
[X] Ask to be put with Geier. You have no idea what Geier's going to be doing. You don't really know much about what he does during stuff like this, and he just showed up a few hours before sunset so you haven't talked. But if you had to guess you'd say it's something with the drones.
LupineVolt
Now with 200% more Puns
- Location
- Michigan
[X] Ask to be put with Bluejay. You haven't gotten to talk to her much in the past couple of days but you know she's been on edge about the toxic spirits. You know you can handle yourself around them. Might be good to see a master at work too.
Time for some Spirit Time with our bestest best friend!
Interesting, interesting. I wonder if Karna would have come across this on his own if we'd gone to Geier or Bluejay instead.
While you could make a case for Geier, I'd say that Bluejay's both sounds more up our alley and it might lead to some relevant information for us in regards to our circumstances. But if anyone has a counterargument, I'm up for a different angle of attack.
Time for some Spirit Time with our bestest best friend!
Interesting, interesting. I wonder if Karna would have come across this on his own if we'd gone to Geier or Bluejay instead.
While you could make a case for Geier, I'd say that Bluejay's both sounds more up our alley and it might lead to some relevant information for us in regards to our circumstances. But if anyone has a counterargument, I'm up for a different angle of attack.
WanderingEye
smol skeleton
[X] Ask to be put with Bluejay. You haven't gotten to talk to her much in the past couple of days but you know she's been on edge about the toxic spirits. You know you can handle yourself around them. Might be good to see a master at work too.
On the other hand I want to socialize with other team member.
on the other hand it's Bluejay!
On the other hand I want to socialize with other team member.
on the other hand it's Bluejay!
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
-
[X] Ask to be put with Bluejay. You haven't gotten to talk to her much in the past couple of days but you know she's been on edge about the toxic spirits. You know you can handle yourself around them. Might be good to see a master at work too.
We really need to be aware we don't have a totem at some point.
We really need to be aware we don't have a totem at some point.
[X] Ask to be put with Bluejay. You haven't gotten to talk to her much in the past couple of days but you know she's been on edge about the toxic spirits. You know you can handle yourself around them. Might be good to see a master at work too.
And thus it was doomed from the start
And thus it was doomed from the start
- Location
- Simi Valley, CA, United States
[X] Ask to be put with Bluejay. You haven't gotten to talk to her much in the past couple of days but you know she's been on edge about the toxic spirits. You know you can handle yourself around them. Might be good to see a master at work too.
I'm hoping that some more talks with Bluejay will help us put two and two together about Firewing.
...and it's Bluejay.
I'm hoping that some more talks with Bluejay will help us put two and two together about Firewing.
...and it's Bluejay.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
My apologies to anyone following this quest, but I'm afraid I have to put it on indefinite hiatus. Though @TenfoldShields and I started this project with clear goals in mind, recently I've found myself increasingly incapable of meeting them. Truth be told he has had to 'save' more than his fair share of updates as I hit writer's block and ceased all forward momentum. So, to put it simply, I'm stopping altogether for now. Maybe, hopefully, one day I'll find the spark again. For now, thank you to everyone who came to vote and discuss the quest. I hope you had fun with what I managed to give.
- Location
- Simi Valley, CA, United States
- Location
- Pilipinas
[X] Ask to be put with Geier. You have no idea what Geier's going to be doing. You don't really know much about what he does during stuff like this, and he just showed up a few hours before sunset so you haven't talked. But if you had to guess you'd say it's something with the drones.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Ask to be put with Bluejay. You haven't gotten to talk to her much in the past couple of days but you know she's been on edge about the toxic spirits. You know you can handle yourself around them. Might be good to see a master at work too.
[X] Ask to be put with Bluejay. You haven't gotten to talk to her much in the past couple of days but you know she's been on edge about the toxic spirits. You know you can handle yourself around them. Might be good to see a master at work too.
sesbio
Not yet Uber
- Location
- Québec
[X] Ask to be put with Bluejay. You haven't gotten to talk to her much in the past couple of days but you know she's been on edge about the toxic spirits. You know you can handle yourself around them. Might be good to see a master at work too.
I hope your muse returns soon, Zerban...
I hope your muse returns soon, Zerban...