Pivo fires at the thug helping to carry the container unit before ducking back behind cover.
Aleks jacks in and attempts to access the lower level's security feature.
The ruster morph screams as the electrical rounds bury into him. You can see as red drops stain the reinforced clothing he wears and his eyes bulge wide with panic.
And he explodes throwing the scientist and container holding David's morph back. The container takes the brunt of the force and cracks open, and you can see her eyes begin to open (female morph).
(missed 2nd shot)
Her next series of rounds hit the wall, as the hit the wall behind the enemy.
(missed third shot)
More shots fired, more shots missed.
(missed 3rd shot)
Catarina looses another series of shots at the guard who is gunning for Pilgrim. The attack connects, but this one powers through the shock effect. Still, he takes two wounds.
Though he makes it through the shock, the wounds themselves are too much and falls unconscious. Unlike the two exploding goons, this one does not explode.
While the thug that attacked Cat is now stuck in place, Pilgrim's foe manages to move out of the way in time before the freeze takes hold of him.
Pivo, who's original target is now paste, switches over to the Ruster Pilgrim couldn't tie down. He fires.
The bolts of energy pierce through the morph and the ruster grits his teeth.
The Ruster is barely standing, breathing heavy. It glances at the rest of the gang, and yells a warcry. He charges and grabs hold of Pilgrim.
He swings but misses. Snarling, he does his best to keep close to Pilgrim.
[ooc]Players up!
Pilgrim drops his freezer, pulling out his shock baton and swinging at the Ruster.
"Knock it off!"
+ shock
Catarina jumps out of the cover and runs to the scientist. She puts her cyberclaws to his neck, sparks dancing between her fingers. "Don't you move." She glances at the stuck thug. "You too."
Aleksander manages to work around the lower level's online security, but can't navigate the back end to find all the options available at this level. He does gain four options to work with for now.
1. Elevator Door Lock and Unlock
2. Elevator Rise and Lower.
3. Lights: for the lab, all on or all off
4. Lockdown: shuts down Elevator, elevates security and isolates lab while turning on private life support unit
And with one solid thud, the Ruster morph goes rigid and collapses on the floor while stuck on one leg. Its still alive, awake, but currently stunned.
The scientist immediately surrenders, and with the shock and freeze effect the other guard can easily be incapacitated.
You can hear tapping on the now borken glass of David's container.
"Hello?"
Aleks scrunches his face, "Well...hmph! You can't keep me out!" He then attacks it again with now of his more potent programs.
Catarina opens the container and helps David to get up. "David, I presume? We're here to... well, rescue you?"
"Cat- don't touch them. We don't know what they were doing here yet... and given that there was some virology business going on we want to avoid getting more contact than we already have."
Pilgrim grabs the scientist by the shirt.
"What were you doing here? You can tell us now or we can have you uploaded to a nice simulspace for interrogation and then dropped into cold storage and forgotten about, so I would make with the information."
Pivo goes on the defensive, staying very alert for any incoming enemies.
Aleks takes another crack at the menus, diggin harder than ever for that deeper access. Even with the security amped up from his previous intrusion, it only takes a couple moments before he's in.
New options include:
1. Environmental control for the underground lab.
2. Data and Research Archives
3. Containment unit control - ERROR- Unit removed
4. Termination Code: RED - Complete and permanent lockdown of elevator and lab controls. Explosives at Structural points will set up, collapsing the underground chamber completely.
Pilgrim, go ahead and make an Interrogation roll. If you don't have that skill, use a CHA check.
Pivo keeps his guard up, but does not see any change to the situation, including the elevator door not opening
As usual, I come through tried and true!
-W
With this message is a package of the 'Data and Research Archives'.
Aleks then sits in the elevator and begins going through the 'archives'
Lexi, could you do a search through these archives for our mystery person? Go ahead and search by every know appearance and alias.
Of course Aleks.
Pivo will expand his search for clues as to what science they were doing down here. Looking at what tools they have, etc.
Aleks tries to go through the research, but with his "illicit" access, the file searching is actually a tough challenge as it brings up wall after wall of protocols. Before eventually locking you out for a few minutes.
The scientist being held in Pilgrim's rough grasp, struggles to lift himself onto his own two feet, but with each attempt, Pilgrim just seems to lift him higher, and higher, until his feet can't even touch the floor.
However, he seems set on keeping his mouth shut. Your other skills give you a gut feeling that this is in no way an indie operation and someone big must be bankrolling this, or at least someone with connections enough to gain access to this underground laboratory.
Pivo, your cursory look over the room easily informs you that this is all for manufacturing drugs. However, the four vials of overdrive ( a stimulating drug that increases cognitive abilities, but is extremely addictive) seem to be tampered with.
David sees Pivo looking about the room, his eyes are slightly glazed over, and at Cat's questioning statement, he smiles.
"Oh I see, that's nice. Are you here to help find the cure too?"
Lexi! You locked me out!
Aleks pouts for a couple moments and then gets back to his AR display.
"Cure to what? What has been done to these drugs?"
David smiles.
"To the virus of course. Chain Reaction. Didn't you see all the men explode?"
They point to the bloody remains of the exploded corpses.
"I somehow got infected, and they brought me here to study when they got infected too."
Aleks, you start trying to re-access the information when you get a ping. Someone is trying to call the elevator back up....
You do open up those files again, but you feel that the data might become locked out again if you rush it, but there's a chance you could find what you need.
Pilgrim throws a prisoner hood on the scientist and pings Proxy 21.
Pil> Package is in hand with bonus, extracting shortly. Location for delivery?
Aleks ignores the elevator ping and focuses on searching through the files.
"How does the virus spread?
Pivo, you try to recollect any and all information on the drug Chain Reaction, but you're getting nothing. It's as if this is an extremely new element and hasn't made any splash in the drug or medical worlds.
Pilgrim, you're informed by your muse that the message is not getting through. It appears the shielding that prvented Pivo's powerful scanning is also blocking mesh communication, except for perhaps Aleks as he's directly jacked into the system.
Aleks looks through the results of his search and manages to pull out a sizable chunk of the research here. Your muse helps you process through the information, but it seems chain reaction is some kind of virus that copies the self programming aspects of nanotech and will rewrite the carrier's cells to explode after a period of time or with trauma. Common ways of getting an infection are through ingestion of a contaminated drug dose or being exposed to the air of the explosion...
*K'chnk!*
Aleks, you feel the elevator being summoned to the ground floor. Someone got into the system while you were going through the research. In a few moments, those doors are gonna open.
Pilgrim looks for any identifying features of the lab equipment, the guards, anything at all to give some kind of clue as to what's going on here.
Wyrm, did you just take the elevator back up?
Catarina reloads her weapons and takes cover behind something still intact.
"Nope..nope..nope..." Aleks begins repeating as he hurriedly hacks back into the elevator system.
Nope, super busy.
Pivo will also take cover relative to the elevator and prepare for incoming enemies.
The elevator doors open, and Aleksander finds himself sitting on the floor, staring up at a team of what look like Olympian morphs, each decked out in containment suits and each with a weapon.
They seem genuinely surprised to see someone on the elevator.
"Are you David?" One asks, training his gun at Aleks.
Alexander waves innocently, "Hello."
"Must be a scientist..." one says to another.
All the new arrivals pile into the elevator, two forcibly lifting Aleksander to his feet and another one training his gun on him from behind.
"Now you're going to cooperate so we can get what we came for," he calmly states as you can feel the cold steel of his firearm pressed at your neck, directly over where you ego is stored.
The elevator dings, and the doors slide open as the two groups see each other.
"Nobody move!" they shout as four of the armed Olympians kneel and take aim, but do not fire. Each containment suit seems to movee with relative ease and minimal movement, high-value products indeed. They see the blood, the bodies, and look to each one of you.
"What's going on here!"
"There was an attack," replies Catarina. "The intruders attempted to... uhm... free David."
Pilgrim holds one hand up, off of his freezer.
"After containment was breached and the guards were overwhelmed, my team was called in to contain the situation. Weren't you briefed that we were here?"
He shoots a glance to Cat.
"I swear, every time they have the indentures run our security clearance something like this goes wrong. I'm guessing they didn't tell you an auxiliary team would be on site?"
Cat lowers her weapon and shakes her head. "Yeah."
Every bit the cold professional, Pivo merely says, "Let's get back to work." before activating his chameleon skin to render himself nearly invisible.
The two up front look at each other, with curious glances.
"Auxillary team you say?" the one on the left asks. "That's funny, I didn't realize our gang had an auxillary team."
The right one looks at the situation, and puts some pieces together.
"Look, we're not here to kill and wipe the area. The fact that you're out in the open with whichever one of you is David, means you're probably exposed or soon to be. I'll ask one more time before we assume you're corporate spies trying to make a buck and hopelessly misinformed. Which one of you is David, and what the hell happened here?"
Aleksander stutters a bit, "S-s-so, I'm pretty s-sure David is dead. Mostly because I don't see him standing." Aleks shifts nervously in front of the weapon. "And because there are a bunch of dead bodies on the floor.."
He points into the room, "These guys came in guns-a-blazing and then asked questions later. Apparently they had at least one insider. To be fair though, when the elevator opened, our people began shooting too. So I snuck around to get in the elevator and 'Bing!' Now you're here. S-so, I don't suppose that gun could be removed from the back of my neck?"
Cat glanced at Pilgrim with a question in her eyes. Should we tell them about the mission? Without mentioning our employer, of course.
"We're here to retrieve David, since they went missing and we tracked them here. The guards opened up on us when we came in and started exploding when we retaliated with zap rounds- imagine our surprise."
"So I'm guessing you're working on this tainted Overdrive?"
Pivo remains silent and hidden.
The new and heavily armed combatants look at Pilgrim and Aleks, and with their eyes you can see them mentally check off two potential morphs housing David.
It seems tense for a moment, but eventually, the newcomers lower their weapons, though do not holster.
"Yeah, we're here because of tainted drugs and David. Unfortunately, we're not wearing these suits to keep the virus out..."
His trailing words seem to insinuate that they themselves are already infected.
"But yeah, we need a cure and we need it fast." The commander starts giving orders for his team to start collecting the physical experiments and the data of the research.
"We don't know how much of the tainted Overdrive has been leaked, so if we don't hurry, we're going to have locals start lighting up like grenades in a few days. Can I trust you to cooperate?"
Pilgrim shoots a glance to Cat.
I don't like it, especially with a criminal group. But this may be the best option.
"I think we can work something out here- none of us need people exploding on the street."
Better than having people explode at least.
"Same here. We can think of something." Cat nods.
She asks Kate to check the group with Facial Recognition
Let's see if there are any hits.
Cat, you indeed get several hits. It seems these guys are part of a local gang operating in the area, The gang, known as Chimera, are known for being hired for jobs and running drugs, but you do find multiple mentions that they look after the community first and often have very violent displays of members who break that creed.
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And so, the PCs with the help of Proxy 21 (their original contact) and the Chimera gang are able to get the research data and eventual cure into the right hands. Some morphs already infected do end up exploding and causing minor panic in the subsequent weeks, but the rapid deployment of treatment keeps the threat and casualties down to a minimum.