Hey guys, Fanoren here. Don't really have much to say today, so let's get to the show.
The smooth, sparkling clean floor and walls of the Ares lab was in complete contrast to the filth and ruin of the city outside. The four mercenaries that had just entered the building through one of the many back doors scanned the area. They were in the middle of a dark hallway with doors on either side of them. Further down the hall was an intersection with a pair of elevators.
"Blitz?" Artemis said, looking at the sign for one of the doors.
"Yup, on it." The hacker issued a mental command to the commlink built into his head, and a map of the building appeared in the corner of everyone's vision. "The records department is on the 76th floor, get me there and I can find the lab that Johnson's friends are being held in. While I was able to disable the alarm that those guards's biomoniters would have set off when they died, I can't disable the alarm for the whole building. The best I can do is reroute the system and set off alarms all across the building, not just on our floor."
"So expect company, but at least we won't be bringing every security guard in the building down on our heads." Gutshot summed up.
"Sounds good. Now how about we get to that elevator and get to work?"
"Give me a sec, boss." Blitz said to Artemis with a smirk, Suddenly, a small metallic bug zipped out of one of the pockets on Blitz's jacket. "This baby of mine'll check the halls." Blitz issued a mental command to his tiny little drone flew off to the intersection. "Let's see..." A new display popped open in the corner of Blitz's cyber eye, showing him everything his drone was seeing. "No security, but there's a group of what looks like maintenance workers taking a water break off to the left."
"Simple enough." Artemis snapped her fingers, and with a brief shimmer of light, she vanished. "I'll go on ahead. Once the elevator door is open, get in." The rest of the team nodded in agreement. The team moved into position as the now invisible Artemis made a silent dash to the elevator door. Time slowed to a crawl as they all waited for the elevator. They could hear the laughter from the group of employees down the hall as they talked about some trideo show, completely oblivious to the killers just a few feet away from them. Shadow and Gutshot held their weapons, their fingers on the triggers. They couldn't afford to be spotted. If these workers realized there were shadowrunners in the building, they would raise the alarm. The team was well experienced, well equiped, and highly capable. But if security found out where they were, they'd simply overwhelm them with sheer numbers, or at least pin them down until their High Threat Response teams arrived to clean up. Needless to say, they couldn't afford either.
After a few minutes, or what felt like a few hours at least, the elevator dinged and the doors opened. However, the laughter stopped. The workers had heard the elevator.
"They're moving towards the elevator." Blitz told them. There were a few clicks as Gutshot readied his weapon. Shadow held up his hand.
"Hold up. Let's see if the adept can't steal a bit more fun, shall we?" The elf's eyes began to glow as magical energy began to surge throughout his body. "Break time is over privates!" He shouted, but his voice wasn't coming from his mouth. It genuinely sounded like it was coming from the right side of the intersection, and it didn't even sound like him. It was deeper, rougher, more like a drill seargent. "If I find that any one of you worthless slugs is not back to work in the next five seconds I'll have you all fired!"
"Y-yes, sir!" One of the workers said in a panic, scrambling further down the hall. Shadow truned back to his teammates with a grin.
"Good job, Shadow, but we need to get moving!" Artemis ordered.
"Whatever you say Arti." The team wasted no time getting into the elevator and pressing the button that began taking them up to the 76th floor.
"Ok." Blitz said, the maps in the corners of the team's visions flashed and a yellow path formed leading into a rather large room.
"The Records room is the first door on the left. We get in there, we find out where these guys are being held, we grab them, and get out."
"let's just get this over with and get back to Seattle." Artemis said, dispelling her invisibility spell. "Wyrm talk is on tomorrow night and I want to be home by then."
"Please don't bring up that show." Blitz shook his head. "I'm pretty sure the last words of the decker I replaced in my Berlin team's last words were, and I quote "Let's do this quick, Wyrm talk is on tonight."" Gutshot raised an eyebrow.
"How do you know that?" He asked.
"Because I first met them when they were tracking down the guy who hired them for the job. Apparently he was attacked by an AI while in the matrix. The biofeedback that killed him was so bad it gave him a seizure that broke his spine."
"Ouch."
"Then I found out *after* I joined them by the way, that the people who killed their previous decker were hunting them down."
"Pretty sure we've all been there." Gutshot commented. "Was that how you got into shadowrunning?"
"Yeah it was, but the guys who were hunting them were working for the dragon Feuerschwinge." Gutshot's eyes went wide.
"Shit, your first run was against a dragon? You might be slightly more badass than I thought. I was there when Sirrug attacked that Azzie army base during the war with Amazonia last year. I know how dangerous dragons can be."
"I heard about that." Shadow chimed in. "They say that Sirrug killed over fifteen thousand people that day."
"Completely true. I lost my entire squad in that fight, the dragon burned them alive."
"Sounds rough." Blitz shook his head. "Dragons are the worst"
"I'll drink to that"! Gutshot pat blitz on the back.
"Are they actually agreeing on something?" Artemis asked Shadow.
"It's the end of the world!" The adept said in mock panic. The two shared a chuckle, and then things fell silent. The seriousness of what they were about to do sinking in. Shadow and Gutshot double checked their weapons as they reached the 60s.
When the elevator hit 76 and the door slid open, they were greeted with the sight of a security check point. Four Knight-Errant security guards with SMGs hanging lazily from their hips stood waiting for them.
"I'm going to need your..." The guard captain began, but even behind the blank face plate, the look of horror on his face as the four shadowrunners poured out of the elevator was clear as day. "Drek!" It was the last thing he would ever say, as Gutshot fired a shotgun blast right into his face. Shadow gunned down two more guards before they had a chance to draw their weapons, and the final one screamed as he was lit on fire by Artemis.
"Blitz, were their biomonitors shut off in time?" Artemis asked.
"Actually, they weren't wearing any. Looks like Biomonitors are only issued to guards who are outside the building."
"Well, that's good." Shadow said, ejecting the clip from his rifle to check how many bullets were left. "Just means that we can kill them so long as we aren't that noisy about it." The team walked over to the door leading to the records room. They set up positions on either side of the door, with Shadow and Gutshot in front. Blitz started a countdown on their HUDs.
3...2...1...
Gutshot's foot slammed into the door, smashing it open. Shadow rushed inside, his rifle at the ready, scanning the room. Gutshot followed suit while Blitz prepared to spray and pray with his SMG. The room was empty except for a single console and floor to ceiling servers packed so closely together that they would only just barely allow Shadow to squeeze in between them.
"Clear." Gutshot confirmed. "Blitz, get in here and do your thing." The decker approached the console, flipping open two folds in the cyberdeck on his arm, revealing two cables. He plugged one into the console and the other into the socket in his head. He slumped over as his mind entered the matrix.
Artemis entered the room, looking around the room with glowing eyes.
"Astral's clear."
"That's good." Shadow said as he and Gutshot took up their position on either side of the busted door. "At least we don't have to worry about spirits while Blitz takes his nap."
"Just make sure we don't get shot in the back until Blitz has the paydata."
"Just keep the astral clear Arti, leave this to me and the rookie."
"I'm not a rookie."
"You've been running for the past eight months. You're a rookie unless you've lasted a year."
"And who made that up?"
"Captain Chaos."
"And who the hell is that?"
"And there's a reason why you're a rookie."
"Can we cut the chatter, boys?"
"Sorry Arti." Shadow shrugged. Gutshot simply nodded his acknowlegement.
A silence passed across the team as they waited for Blitz to finish his work. They didn't have to wait for very long, as Blitz stood back up a few minutes late, unplugging his brain from his deck.
"That was disturbing."
"You got the data?" Artemis asked.
"More than that. Have a look." A video popped up on the HUDs of the rest of his team.
It was a dark room, illuminated only by the light inside a large orange tube in the middle of the room. Inside the tube was a green transparent beetle the size roughly Gutshot's size. It was clearly dying. Even as they watched, chunks were falling off the spirit and dissolving into the air. Surrounding the contained bug was a staff of scientists, each carrying a tablet in their arms. However, one woman stood out from the rest.
She was young and incredibly beautiful. Her long, flowing red hair and cold, piercing eyes as red as blood sent chills down the spines of the observers. There was something about her that just seemed plain wrong about her, something that scared them straight to their souls. She wore cargo pants with combat boots, and had a jacket tied around her waist, she also wore a tube top that covered just as much as a sports bra, though how she put it on was a complete mystery because of her arms. They were absolutely massive cybernetic arms more than half the size of the girl they were attached to. They were pitch black, and ended in giant claws as large as the girl's head.
An older woman dressed in a lab coat stepped up to face the rest of the scientists in the lab.
"Let's get this over with." She said. "Bring in the subject." A door on a level above her opened. Illuminating a catwalk just above their heads.
"NOOOOOO! HELP ME!" echoed the screams of an elven woman as a pair of Knight Errant guards dragged her, kicking and screaming, along the catwalk leading to the top of the tube containing the beetle. When they reached it, the top of the tube snapped open. With one final scream, the knight Errant officers threw the woman into the container with the bug. The top of the tube snapped shut behind her almost instantly.
The poor girl didn't even have the chance to stand up. Driven by desperation and starvation, the beetle spirit dove at her, dissappearing into her body. She began to twitch violently, screaming in pain as her body slowly began to morph into the stuff of nightmares. The head of the beetle emerged from her back, and as more of the creature pushed it's way out of her body.
The screaming ended as the transformation finished. Half of the Beetle's body had erupted out of the woman's backside, including two pairs of spiney insectoid legs. It's back legs were half human and half insect. The back half of the monster was all that was left of the woman's body. Her face was twisted into a final scream of terror and pain that would never end, with her arms outstretched, as though she had been hoping to reach something that might have saved her.
"Ma'am, the subject has been fully transformed." Reported one of the scientists.
"Good."
The video closed automatically.
Off in the corner of the room, the sounds of Artemis throwing up made Shadow look a little green.
"That was fragged up!" Gutshot almost shouted. "I've seen a lot of fragged up drek before! I grew up in Tenochtitlan! Blood magic is legal there! I grew up watching orphans and the homeless all rounded up to be sacrificed in their rituals! When I fought in the war, we sent spirits that litterally drained people of all their blood after our enemies, and those that ran ran into a forest of flesh eating trees that we'd planted! But this was way past fragged up!"
"Blitz, anyone who spends time in Chicago knows that Ares has been doing experiments with the bugs." Shadow said. Although he looked calm and composed, his voice was trembling. "This isn't exactly news."
"I wasn't talking about the bugs." Blitz looked worst out of all of them. His eyes were wide, his face had gone pale, he looked like he'd just seen a ghost. "That woman with those giant cyber arms. I knew her."
"How did you know her, Blitz?" Artemis spat out the last of the vomit in her mouth. "Don't tell me that she's an ex of yours or something?" The old man of the team shook his head.
"She was a member of my old team, the one from Berlin." Shadow raised an eyebrow.
"The team that you watched die when Lofwyr's forces invaded?"
"I didn't actually watch them die." Blitz admitted. "I was at my favorite cafe when the building we were using as a hideout got hit by an artillery shell. Brought the whole thing down, nobody could survive that."
"Looks like she did." Shadow said with a sneer. "Is she going to be a problem, Blitz?" The decker nodded.
"According to the records, she's a shadowrunner they hired to advise their security teams. It's her job to tell them how we think and how to stop us, and if needed, she'll deal with us herself."
"Ok, Blitz, if we did end up getting into a fight with her, do you think we could handle it?" Asked Artemis. Blitz shook his head.
"She's as fast as Shadow when he uses that speed boost power, and those claws of hers... I watched her tear trolls in half with those several times."
"That's just wiz." Shadow shook his head. "We've got another reason to not trigger any alarms if we don't have to. Anything else we should know?"
"Well, for one thing, she used to have black hair. And she should be well over fourty by now, so either something magical is going on or she's undergoing anti-aging treatments."
"So either she has a powerful mage backing her up, or her pockets are deep." Shadow pondered.
"Has to be magic. If a shadowrunner had that kind of money, they'd have retired." Artemis stood up straight. "Either way though, we still have a job to do, and we still need to grab Johnson's friends before we get out of here.
"Right." Blitz nodded. "They're on floor 63, lab 3A."
"Good, now let's grab them and get the frag out of this place." There were no objections to Artemis' order, the team left the server room and went back to the elevator. Even before the door closed and the machine started lowering them to the 63rd floor, they were all checking their weapons once again, making sure they were prepared for anything and everything the seventh most powerful corporation in the world had to throw at them.
"You forgot to tell us her name." Artemis realized. Her eyes, and the eyes of her team were glued to the screen showing them the floor they were on.
"Glory." The door opened to yet another Knight Errant security checkpoint. Again, they were wiped out before they even had the chance to fight back. It didn't take long before the team found lab 3A. They set up for a breach just like they had when they were breaking into the records room.
This time, when Gutshot kicked in the door, they didn't find a room devoid of life. There were a pair of beds, on which lay their targets, who strangely looked no older than they were in the pictures the team had been shown. However, their surprise had to wait, for there were six knight Errant in the room, accompnied by a pair of doctors who looked absolutely terrified to see the shadowrunners who had just burst through their door, and a knight errant captain dressed in mage robes. Unlike the checkpoint guards, these men were heavily armed and ready for a fight. Better weapons, better armor, and better training. However, as Shadow proved by gunning down two of them as he dashed for cover, they were simply outclassed by these mercenaries. In the intital shock of the surprise attack, the shadowrunners dashed for the cover of some crates containing what were likely to be medical supplies.
"Shadowrunners!" The mage yelled in surprise, ducking just in time for a burst of bullets from Gutshot's LMG. "Sound the alarm!"
"I don't think so." Blitz said, he grabbed a small round device from his pocket, a radio jammer, and activated it. "They won't be calling in backup any time soon!"
"Then I'll just have to burn you!" A virtual firestorm erupted from the hands of the knight errant mage, aiming to consume the crate that Blitz and Gutshot were hiding behind. The two men jumped out of the way just before the flames would have incinerated them.
"Things are getting hot over here!" Gutshot yelled as he scrambled for new cover.
"Literally!" Blitz added.
"Whatever happened to "Geek the mage first"?" Shadow wondered out loud, shifting his aim until he had the mage's head in his sights. He let off a few rounds, only for a transparent wall of force to appear between him and the mage, blocking the bullets. "Well, fuck." The mage turned his head to face the adept. Shadow blinked, and suddenly his weapon was on fire. He screamed in pain as the fires began to burn his hands and dropped the weapon to the ground. "I'm going to cut that fragging bitch!" He shouted, drawing his katana. The young elf's eyes began to glow as magical energies pulsed throughout his body.
"They've got an adept!" The fear could be heard in his voice.
"Frag yeah we do." With blinding speed, Shadow charged the mage, who launched a fireball at him in panic. The adept dodged the attack almost effortlessly, and before the mage could launch another one, Shadow sliced into the stomach of his enemy. Before he could scream though, the mage's head was seperated from his neck by another swing of the shadowrunner's sword. The rest of the security forces were quickly mopped up, Gutshot had the suvivors pinned down with LMG fire while Blitz tossed a grenade on top of them. Literally on top of them, it bounced off one guy's helmet.
All that was left were the two doctors cowering next to the beds that Ron and Kim lay on.
"P-please! Don't kill me!" One of them begged.
"Hey, Gutshot." Blitz said, not taking his eyes off the doctors. "Weren't these guys in that video I showed you?" Blitz didn't have to say any more. Gutshot dropped his LMG and switched to his shotgun, blasting both doctors in the face with it, splattering their blood and brains on the wall. "I thought so."
"So, what's up with these two?" Shadow asked, sheathing his katana as he approached the beds. "I was expecting some half dead elders, and here they are, looking younger than I am."
"Maybe there's something on here?" Artemis reached down an picked up one of the tablets that the doctors had been carrying. "Um, how do I work this thing?"
"I'll do it." Blitz said, holding out his hand. Reluctantly, Artemis handed it over to the decker.
"It's ok Arti." Shadow said. "You'll figure out how to use electronics sooner or later."
"Shut up, shadow." She began to look around the room for anything interesting. After all, if they found something they could get Wade to sell on the black market, it would be a bonus on their pay.
"Got it." Blitz said after a few seconds of tapping away on the tablet. "It says that they were trapped in some kind of experimental cryo chamber or something."
"So these kids have been frozen for the past seventy years?" Gutshot asked. "Damn. I don't envy whoever's going to be getting them caught up with the times."
"Hey, Blitz, did you disable the cameras?" Artemis asked.
"What cameras?" The decker turned to face her, here eyes fixed on something on the wall near the ceiling. Blitz followed her gaze, and sure enough there was a security camera looking directly at them. "Drek." The lights began to flash red as the alarm sirens blared. Blitz checked his cyberdeck. "We've got five minutes until their HTR teams arrive."
"Drek!" Artemis grabbed Kim's unconcious body and slung it over her shoulder. "Blitz! Grab the boy! Try to lock down the elevators while you can! We gotta run! Now!"
A/N: hey guys. Now, as some of you may have guessed, and some others will have noticed right off the bat, is that Blitz and Glory are not characters I made up unlike the rest of the shadowrunners so far. They actually come from Shadowrun: Dragonfall, a game that came out on steam last year. It's a great game, to me, its the best Shadowrun video game that I've ever played. Sure, the newer Shadowrun: Hong Kong is good, adds a lot of cool new stuff and feels more like shadowrun to me than Dragonfall, but Dragonfall has a great story and great, memorable characters that I fell in love with. Even if Blitz almost got me killed by forgetting to plan an exit strategy for the one job i let him plan. (Luckily I stumbled upon a room with four automated machine guns that Blitz then took control of, saving me from the heavily armed mob that was chasing me.)
It's also like, twenty bucks last i checked, completely worth it.
Now, those of you who have played dragonfall might have noticed a few changes with Glory. It's all from my interpretation of how her story ends. You dont have to play dragonfall to understand it, but it might give you an idea as to whats going on with her.
Also, If I missed a line, if I made a lot of typos, if my writing suddenly took a turn for the worse, give me a break, I didn't expect this chapter to turn out to be this long and I was up until 4 AM two nights in a row writing it.
Anyway, here's some more Shadowrun lore tidbits for you.
Adepts: Adepts are mages, however, unlike the traditional mage who throws fireballs at their enemies, Adepts focus their magic on pushing their bodies to their absolute limits. Adepts can make themselves faster, stronger, and tougher at will. They also have a large range of magical abilities at their disposal. Everything from the ability to walk on walls to changing their faces. However, for many, these powers come at the cost of being unable to cast spells like mages or shamans, though there are some who can, they are known as mystic adepts.
Aztlan: After the Mexican government collapsed immediately following the awakening, it reemerged as the nation of Aztlan, with it's founder and first president promising to restore them to the glory of the old Aztec empire. Many wonder if he would have been elected in the first place if the people knew that he also meant bringing back the old Aztec gods and their bloody rituals.
The man was also the CEO of a large corporation that renamed itself Aztechnology following the founding of Aztlan, and he used his power as president to either absorb other corporations or force them out of the country entirely, creating the foundation for what was to become the fourth largest megacorp in the world. Now, Aztlan and Aztechnology are completely inseperable, with future presidents being high level executives from the megacorp.
Unlike the rest of the world, which imposed very strict laws against blood magic, Aztlan has always been a staunch supporter of it, going so far as to create entire magical departments to experiment with it, using the blood of their citizens that nobody would miss to fuel them.
They are also a large millitary power, having conquered all of central America long ago, as well as seizing parts of texas from the Confederated American States. Recently, they won a war with Amazonia, a large nation ruled by dragons that control just about all of northern South America.
Generally, Aztlan and Aztechnology are not very popular with shadowrunners, because of all the rumored world ending conspiracies they are involved in, as well as the blood magic thing. When Aztechnology wants to hire a team of shadowrunners, they train their Johnsons to mirror the typical behavior the johnsons from other corps, as if the team found out they would be working for Aztechnology, many of them wouldn't take the job. The good news is, they tend to pay well if you don't have any moral qualms about working for them.
Oh, and before I forget, "geek" is shadowrun slang for kill. Don't ask why, I don't know.