The team finished their breakfast, wiping away the crumbs of soy that was apparently a sweet-biscuit flavour – though if asked, most of them would have said it tasted of disappointment instead. Tads wished they were somewhere a bit more secluded, as she could have created some fresh fruit – but it was far too risky to do that out on the small veranda of the café. Instead, they washed down the bland-tasting and oddly textured 'food' with coffee or water, and waited for their commlinks to cross-load the best map that Hunter could find for the city, so they could navigate around reasonably well. Aswon checked the weather report, squinting at the data before he looked up to share his findings with the rest of the team.
"Looks like we're in for a clear day, no clouds forecast at all. Temperature is expected to get up to about twenty-six Celsius, with almost no wind. At least the humidity is going to be low. But the disguises should stop you lot from burning at least."
"Glad that we didn't bring the armour, then. How are you feeling, Marius?" Kai turned towards the German, with a curious look on his face. "Does the skin feel different? Are we going to have to watch for anything, do you think?"
"It should breathe and sweat normally, if it's a standard ortho-skin or dermal sheath. It looks plastic, but it's actually a very advanced composite weave, with micro-tubular gland links, from the sweat mechanism in the dermis," Hunter said, in a dry voice – sounding very much like he knew what he was talking about. "This stuff is a bit different from the standard stuff I've seen on the market before – but it should have the same kind of features as a base, otherwise the user WOULD get too hot and suffer heatstroke under a variety of situations."
"It feels normal, thank you. I do not feel any hotter or colder than I would expect to otherwise." Marius shrugged, then lapsed back into silence, sipping at his coffee.
"Ok, good then. As long as we don't have to hose you down or put you in the fridge to cool then." Kai smirked at him, then his smile faded a little as he nodded up the street towards the gallery and museum. "So, we've seen the place this morning – front still all sealed off, and entrance on a temporary basis on the back road, along with a bunch of other businesses. I'm wondering if we can get in there as tourists, see if we can get hold of any of the staff and get Tads to have a poke around in their mind to get some useful info?"
"It's possible, but I feel very strongly we shouldn't do that. Not with their laws and approach to magic. All it would take is for someone to see my shamanic mask showing a little, or for any of their trained security staff to recognise the feeling of being probed, and they'll raise the alarm – and if they catch me, then we're looking at a death sentence." Aswon stirred, and Tads placed a finger on his forearm, stalling his interruption. "Not that it would get that far. I have faith in you all, and though you might grumble and look put upon, I don't think that any policeman that turned up to arrest me would actually do so. I think you'd stop them, using as much force as was needed. But that might involve a lot of force, and that would make a much bigger issue – and then we can't do our job. So I'd much rather not risk it at all if we can help it."
"You guys get another coffee or something, I'm just going for a quick walk." Aswon got up from his seat and set off up the road at a brisk pace, heading towards the temporary entrance to the museum. When he got there, he made a show of checking his map on the phone, then examined the entrance. The shutters had been raised, but the door was still locked, there being another five minutes until opening time. He studied the opening hours, peered through the window and saw the staff setting up for the day, and then turned and headed back to the team.
"I don't think we want to go in there. They've got a weapons scanner built into the door – fairly standard stuff I would imagine, and it's probably not that high-tech or competent. But, they do have two other things – a security guard, and a turnstile with SIN slot. Now, the guard is the least of the issues, he's probably about fifty or so, a little portly – I would guess a retired copper, now holding down a job to stretch his pension. Probably trained, but he certainly looks past his prime."
"That doesn't so bad at all."
"No, Kai – like I said, he's the least of our issues. Probably spends most of his day directing lost tourists to the toilets and telling people they can't park outside. It's the turnstile and SIN scanner. If we go in there, we're going to have to slot our IDs to get through the gate and into the facility."
"Ok, so we leave a record of one of our fake IDs? That doesn't sound so bad." Kai looked confused, at least until Hunter piped up.
"But as soon as it scans our ID, it's going to query for our visa or passport info, and find out that we're not in the country legally. If it's a rubbish system, that might take a while until it calls all the info though – maybe it only dumps the records to the central system at the end of the day – but it would still flag our IDs then. But if it's a system that's online, doing a live SIN check, then it's going to raise the alarm right there and then. And I guess there's going to be cameras in the lobby?" He looked over and saw Aswon nodding, holding up three fingers. "Yeah, so we'd be flagged as illegal immigrants, have current photos and a location suddenly flashing out to the police and any border security force. That's not a good start to our mission either…"
"Possibly we might be able to talk our way in. Or rather, you would – if you knew the lingo. You might be able to do it with Marius translating for you though, if you really worked on the body language. Maybe say you're an interested party, wanting to talk to the museum manager or the insurance company about the painting, rather than touring the gallery. You might be able to bypass the turnstile then, if you're going for a meeting with someone."
"Go on?" Kai raised an eyebrow and sat back, wondering where Aswon was going with this line of thought.
"If you made out that you're an art dealer, and that you had been interested in one of the paintings here – you've heard it might have been destroyed, but didn't know for sure – so you came here to check, discreetly. Didn't want to let other art dealers know in case they got into a bidding war or something. Maybe even contact Germaine to find out if she can tell us anything more about the artist or the style of work, to get some more info – though I think your background in art and antiquities would probably do you fine. At least any holes in the story or knowledge can be put down to dodgy translations!"
"We could get Hunter to translate as well? Or instead of?"
"We could, Kai, but although they do seem to have a fair few metas around, there might still be some bias. We could try it, but I think it might be best to assess the situation carefully. Distrust or fear of metahumans isn't exactly rational!"
"True enough. Hmm, I wonder. Maybe instead of an art dealer, we could make out that we're considering donating to the museum, or becoming a patron. If they thought they were going to get a million Nuyen out of us, I bet we'd get polite treatment!"
"Give me a minute." Hunter checked on his notes and the summary details he'd already discovered about the gallery and museum. "Nope – I didn't think so. I've got no details on sponsors or patrons, and there's nothing advertised on their matrix site. I wonder if it's only displayed in person? Either way, I don't have any details on people who already provide benefit, so we'd be going in a bit cold on that one."
"We could tell the truth – from a certain point of view." Aswon suggested. "We tell them we're investigators, representing a third party – and that we're looking into the fire, which we strongly suspect was started deliberately to cover a theft from the gallery. Maybe even mention that our collector was very interested in the specific piece, and that with the loss it's ruined their chance to get a full collection, making them very angry – which is why we've been hired to look into it."
"So even if someone is skilled at spotting lies, they're not going to find much there – it's just a matter of perspective? I like it… maybe we can try and sell them that our benefactor might be able to help get the gallery back on its feet?"
"Maybe – though we've got no reason to believe that, so it's starting to stray towards being a lie, or at least a fabrication – we lose that element of truthfulness, and that might be important – especially with a language barrier. The other thing is that we'd still need to be really careful not to get our IDs scanned. Unless…" Aswon broke off and stared into the distance for a moment. "Unless we get in touch with one of our ID manufacturers, and find out if they can modify the IDs they've made for us, and add a visa or travel permit to it? That's got to be a lot easier and quicker than making up a new ID, and I bet they've still got the details."
"I wonder if they would react favourably if they said we were here to get the painting – but so we can give it back to the gallery. Our collector is scrupulous about only being artwork with full provenance. Unless we can get it back to the rightful owner, they won't touch it, as the documentation trail would be tainted…"
"I wish to add a point." Shimazu put down his cup and looked around, making sure that nobody was nearby and could overhear their conversation still. "People are dead as a result of the fire. That may not have been the desired outcome for the team that did the break-in – though I suspect that they didn't care. But that means that a line has been crossed – we're not just talking about property damage, or breaking and entering, not just about theft or burglary. We're at least talking about manslaughter, if not outright murder. Most people see those as much more serious crimes of course, but they also strike a different moral chord. People might not see a problem with stealing something from their work-place, or taking advantage of another's mistake or something like that – but taking a life is something much more intrinsically recognised as wrong. No matter the culture, it's a pretty basic tenant of fundamental metahuman psychology."
He looked around at each of them in turn, gauging their expressions.
"Of course, some people value human life less, or are willing to expend them to achieve their aims – I'm not disputing that. But taking a life puts you firmly in the "bad people" camp, and I think this investigation is being taken so seriously due to the lives lost – and probably because they were good Muslim citizens with the right background, rather than foreign workers or gutter scum. They were people that mattered, in the right social class. And that means we should be very careful about doing anything that attracts official attention, and connects our identities, no matter which ones, to this investigation. If we get attached, even peripherally, then it's likely some investigator or detective might start pulling on a thread that unravels the whole thing – or tags the ID and that bites us much further down the line. This is an odd situation – I would have expected the police to be handling this situation entirely, especially with a murder investigation being involved. But we keep seeing the insurance company being mentioned or being involved – and that makes me feel very uneasy. They've either got a lot of pull, or something much bigger is going on behind the scenes that we don't know about. And that makes me feel very nervous, and wary."
"Hmm, when you put it like that, it does sound a bit fishy." Aswon scratched the side of his head, sliding his long fingers through the mass of dreadlocks. "Maybe we want to avoid face to face contact entirely then if we can, and just call the museum on the phone. We lose the chance to use Kai's skills in person, but we can use Hunter much more effectively then, if they don't know his racial type."
"Hunter? Can you make a fake matrix node thingy for an investigation company? So that the museum can find it if they look for it, when we speak to them?"
"Of course I can, Tads – but it might not stand up to much in the way of poking or investigation. Depends on how much effort we want to put into it."
"Maybe we're just making this more complicated than it needs to be. Why don't we go check out the insurance company building and have a look there. Maybe we don't need to go through the museum or gallery to get in there or find the information we need – we can get it direct from the insurance company?" Kai shrugged. "We won't have the name of the contact or agent dealing with the case, but we can always try to find out that from some other means, or just let them know we have some information or something?"
"If we can identify the person dealing with the case, we could try and put a tail on them and find out where they live, Kai."
"Why? What's the point of that Aswon?"
"Because breaking into their home in the middle of the night is almost certainly going to be easier than getting into the office building. If we can't defeat the home security system for a mid-level manager or investigator, then we should just stop. But if we can get in there, and tranq them, or just make sure they stay asleep – Tads can extract all the information she wants from them really easily. If they're asleep, they're not resisting her spell at all, and she should find out everything she wants to know – and even better, in the morning he might think they've had a dream – but about the case they're working on, so it's not even suspicious! I think that's a good idea."
"I have a route plotted. It's only about one and a half klicks from here straight line – so it shouldn't take too long." Hunter sent out a map update to everyone, marking their current location and the address of the insurance building.
"Can we control people? With magic, I mean?" Marius looked over at Tads directly, finishing the dregs of his coffee cup with a wince as the bitter liquid sloshed around his mouth. "Can you make them do what you want? Because if you can, we can maybe not even have to go into the insurance company at all. We just get someone heading that way, and you control them, and make them exfiltrate the data for us? Much safer for us that way."
"Then, no – not the way you mean. One of my spells will let me influence someone – I can plant a really strong desire to do something, depending on how strong-willed they are. But it's more a shift in their personality… I could maybe influence someone to think that green is the best colour in the world, where before red was their favourite… and then that might help us make them choose something green when given a choice. Or vote for saving the land rather than harming it. But I can't really control them with any fine degree. I can't get them to type in a password, and find a specific file, and do something particular with it – especially not if I don't know what those things are anyway! Sorry."
"Okay – well, let's go check it out then, and we can see what our options are." The team followed Kai as he headed off towards the coast, getting off the main road and travelling down the smaller side roads and access ways towards their destination, avoiding as many traffic cameras and major thoroughfares as possible.
Oman Insurance Company had a nice five-story office block all to themselves, set in a business park just south of the Sultan Qaboos Street highway. It, like nearly every other building they'd seen, was predominantly white cermacrete, set back from the road with a large plaza surrounding it on all sides, and with plenty of local parking, all single storey. With a relatively low population compared to many other cities, and lots of space to expand, the city had sprawled horizontally rather than rising vertically – though Hunter also thought that the local soil conditions and geological make up of the area might have something to do with that. He was convinced the soil the city was on was not 'good' by whatever metric mattered, and that precluded the truly massive high-rise buildings so common elsewhere. Clearly those problems could be overcome – one only had to look at the enormous sky-scrapers in Dubai to realise that – but it all came at a cost, and the Omani building sector had clearly decided that they were happy to avoid the expense of enormous pilings driving down sixty metres to find bedrock, and had limited themselves to nothing higher than seven or eight stories in most cases.
One thing the team did spot quickly though was the ward – a moderately-powerful affair that covered the outside of the building in a cube of astral shielding. The ward seemed to be anchored into a set of geometric patterns formed by mosaic-tiles, so the impression given was that it had been designed into the building at the time of construction. It also meant of course that there had been, at least at some point, a team of hermetic mages with some advanced knowledge able to work on it – both to cover the overall size of the building, and to build the ward permanently and anchor it to the tiles themselves. The team could have covered a building like this quite easily – in fact they'd done just that in Hong Kong a little while back – and looking around they could see a few other buildings with similar defences built into them.
They split into two teams of three to wander the area for half an hour, meeting up at a fast-food joint near the highway to compare notes. Overall, the area was clean and tidy, with no signs of vagrancy, beggars, or other undesirables – though that was more likely to be a result from the efforts of the local police to move them on, than from the city to prevent their existence at all. Security was relatively light still – there were traffic cameras on the major junctions, and most buildings had a smattering of surveillance systems, but it was nowhere near as oppressive and all encompassing as many of the other major cities they'd visited. A look around in astral space had revealed almost no activity at all, with the two three-man groups having only seen a single watcher spirit each, carrying a message somewhere.
Astral space was distorted, of course – the oppressive nature of the man-made city, the depression and corporate oppression of the workforce generating a low level hum of negative energy that pervaded the area – but again it was no worse than anywhere else they'd encountered, and it was something they'd learnt to accept about being in a settlement of any great size.
Kai had asked them to keep an eye out for substations or power relays, and so far they hadn't found any in the area. What they had seen though was that every building they'd looked at seemed to have a plant room or maintenance bay built into it. The slatted or louvre doors were easy to spot once you started looking for them, and they all seemed to be located around the backs or sides of the buildings, a wide set of double doors with a sturdy and good quality lock protecting them, with the doors themselves having the look of heavy-duty security-rated construction. Hunter gave the opinion that all of the local services were buried, and that they'd probably laid out a grid before the area was built upon, with ducting or even full-blown service tunnels coming up under each building. Certainly, as they looked around the entire area looked to have been constructed within the same general timeframe, which lent some credence to the theory.
The security systems visible on the buildings also appeared to be from the same general time, being somewhat dated in appearance and probably not having the latest features. Nearly all of the cameras came from the same manufacturer and range, Shimazu pointed out, and probably fed into a similar security system, again probably installed at the time of construction, and never updated past any software fixes needed – and perhaps not even that. The dry environment, warmth and lack of humidity probably provided the ideal environment for preserving equipment and preventing the lack of environmental degradation that would be common in somewhere like Seattle or London, with the lack of normal rain, let alone the acid-enriched toxic sludge that fell from the skies elsewhere contributing to the relatively long life-span of external equipment.
The team discussed getting access into the plant room as a means of both entry to the building, and a way to shut off the power and try to drop local security systems from the grid. Aswon felt that the buildings were quite likely not going to be connected internally – and that they were unlikely to have network links or a route to bypass security significantly based on the design they'd noticed, as it was very little effort to walk around the side of the building to access them, and given the weather conditions very unlikely to ever be seen as an uncomfortable or onerous task. Shimazu agreed with him, also pointing out that unless the security systems were really antiquated, most of them would have a local battery or backup power system to control access, and unless they were fire doors and the local laws prevented it – were likely to fail to a closed or more secure state in the event of power loss.
"I'm curious about the hole?" Tads mentioned, sipping at her bottle of chilled water and shifting position slightly to remain under the parasol that sheltered their table as the sun continued its march through the sky.
"Hole? What hole?"
"The one in the middle of the building, Aswon. It looks like a bit is missing on the overhead image. Why?"
"Oh – the atrium! I see… Well, I guess it is a hole, if you look at it like that. It's a central light well, running down the core of the site. It means you have a whole bunch of extra offices that have natural light and external windows – even if they only face across to more windows in the same building. But it can make the offices feel a lot nicer, and can be used for a lot of office politics."
"Office politics?"
"Yes." Aswon thought for a moment about how best to explain to someone who had grown up living in a yurt or wigwam or similar structure about byzantine office bureaucracies. "If you work in an open plan bit of office, you have no privacy, and you're the bottom in terms of responsibilities and rights. And when you get promoted, you might get an office – a space that's yours, with a door. And right at the top, you get the chief executive, who often have the top floors with the best views or the nicest facilities. They get corner offices, much larger and with really good views. And the offices along the outer edge, the ones with proper windows, are often sought after because of that – so the most important people have them, ok?" Tads nodded, accepting if not understanding entirely. "So if you open up more of your office space to having windows – even if they're not great windows, you've got more space to 'promote' people into a better office. And, the atrium is generally a place where people can go and get a bit of fresh air, eat some food or things like that – but it's still secure, because its in your building. You don't have to let your employees out of sight, and people can't get at them to kidnap them or listen to their conversations. Corps like them, for that reason alone."
"Oh, I see, I think. But does that mean that we can get in that way? If we flew over the top?"
"Maybe. I think it's unlikely that the security measures are quite as tough on the internal doors as the external, and with the general lack of magical activity around here, I think they're not as likely to expect magical flying assault." Aswon grinned a little at the concept. "Again, the location, culture and lack of population density are working for us here. Fewer people overall means that one hundredth of a percent of people with magical power is such a low absolute number that it's not a major factor for them. Just put up the wards to cover against spirits and astral travellers, and call it done. I take it you're thinking about us levitating in a few people?"
"I'm not keen on performing much magic here, as I've said before. But it's a thought, yes. If we can do it quietly. But I was mainly wondering if you can climb up it with your Gecko gift, and if Hunter can use his claws to get up there. If you can, then it's easy enough for you to drop a rope and get the rest of us up – like we did back when we were looking for Harley and that fire escape was too dangerous."
"Ahh, yes, I see. Well that works too. For a moment though when you said hole, I wondered if you were talking about Plascrete-7, was all."
"What's that?"
"Oh… well it's not surprising you haven't heard of it. I don't know much about it to be honest, but it's a bit of a running joke in some circles. They made different versions of plascrete, messing around with the formulas to make it stronger or lighter or cheaper and so on. And one of them, I think it was back in the thirties – they released this new formula, the seventh one from the company – hence plascrete-7. But there was something really weird about it. Someone found out that if you used a special chemical catalyst it made the plascrete go all funny, like it was melting. You could spray the stuff on the wall and give it a few minutes to go soggy, then you could walk up to what had been a solid wall, and pretty much push your way through. Of course, when people found out, they stopped using it and switched to other products, but there's still a whole bunch of buildings out there made with the stuff, that technically you can just mush the walls out of the way to get into them."
"And is this building made with that stuff?"
"I have no idea. And we don't have the catalyst – or a place to make it ourselves or get it, probably. Just a bit of trivia I suppose…"
"As well as the atrium, if we get up near the top of the building, we might be able to get in through the windows. I would imagine that break-sensors are fitted in the bottom two, maybe three levels – but not after that. I didn't see any external fire escape on the building, so there's no way short of flying or being really obvious with very tall ladders to get up there. My guess is that they've saved money by limiting the alarms on the windows, on higher levels." Shimazu suggested.
"Good idea. I think we'd be slow getting through – they're still going to be double thick glass or sealed units to cope with the weather. But I'm sure we can cut through eventually. We have got a glass cutter, yes?" Aswon glanced around the team, hoping someone had the answer.
"I have a diamond tipped cutter and rig in my toolkit, yes." Marius confirmed. "It would take a while to cut a man-size hole, especially one big enough for Shimazu and Hunter – but it can be done."
"Great. Another thing I noticed was that the building had those large vertical stripes of dark stone, creating a pattern on each side. If we're going to climb, if we used one of those, we're much more likely to blend in, particularly if we're on the right side of the building." He checked his commlink again and then twisted his arm around, trying to line up the display to the real-world geography, before hesitantly pointing towards the horizon. "I think I'm right on this – but the moon will come up over that direction, and then rise over here, and set that way…" he swept his arm around in a large arc. "That means the moon, which is pretty full right now, will be illuminating two sides of the building mostly, and if we go onto the shadow side, it'll be even better cover."
"Ok, that covers various options for external break-ins. What about trying to get in during opening times and getting through the building internally? Could we sneak in and get through service elevators? Or, could we dig a tunnel, like we did in the church to steal the gun?"
"I don't know about your first question, but I'm wary about the tunnel. If what Hunter said is true – and I'm not doubting him – then I'm not sure a tunnel through soft sand will work well. And, if we get to the bottom of the building and run into concrete, we're stuck. My spell works on natural earth and rock – not on man-made things."
"Its very likely that a lot of the buildings will have a sub-basement, made out of a reinforced concrete box or slab, spreading the weight of the building and stopping subsidence." Hunter confirmed. "Might even go down a couple of levels – though I've not seen any signs of underground parking, which is pretty unusual. But I'd be almost certain you're going to run into a lot of concrete down there."
"If we're doing a break in, the other thing we should look at is who needs to be in there. I'd say Hunter has to go – we need his expertise with the computers. And Marius needs to go, as he's our doors and security systems man – with Shimazu to handle any physical locks and for general security system knowledge, as well as any guards we bump into. Tads, I think is best to stay outside, and to help provide cover for any response – your stun-ball spell can make short work of a car full of coppers that turn up, if you're hiding away somewhere. And I don't think I need to be in at all, I just don't bring any skills to the mix."
"I would disagree, Kai. Your ability to talk to people and negotiate with them or convince them of things should not be ignored. The only issue might be the language barrier, if they don't speak English."
"You really need to sit down with Aswon you know, and see if he can teach you his skills with linguistics. You're at your best when talking with people, and the more languages you know, the more powerful you become." Tads suggested.
"I would agree, Kai, and I'm happy to help – if it's something you wish to learn. I see no reason why you can't work out how to do it… but in the meantime, I'm not sure if I should be inside or outside. Inside gives us another option for dealing with any guards – and I'm less likely to be instantly lethal than Shimazu. No offence, but your options do tend to leap from 'threaten' to 'instant death' with that sword of yours!"
"That sounds like a problem for other people." Shimazu offered, causing a few grins to spread around the table.
"It's very useful against bears and people definitely trying to kill us, sure. Bit harsh on almost-retired night-shift cleaners though who stumble across us… so I'm probably best going in as well with my extendable staff to give us a non-lethal option."
"Sounds reasonable, Aswon." Kai turned towards Tads. "You can fix things, can't you – magically, I mean."
"Yes, if they are small and relatively simple or easy to design. It does depend on what it is. And all the pieces are present."
"I was thinking floodlights – if we had to break one or more of those that might be illuminating the building at night, could we fix them afterwards?"
"I think so… I would have to try. I don't see why not, if it's just a lightbulb, as they're fairly simple devices."
"We still don't know what's on the roof of course – the images we have from Hunter are a bit blurry." Kai held up his hand. "That wasn't a dig, I know you've got the best you could that wouldn't raise the alarm. I'm just pointing out that they're not great from a tactical sense. What we really could do with is a good look at what's up there.
"I have an idea? I think. I could go take a look – I think we could risk one astral flypast, especially if I came in from out to sea or some other direction. That should be safe enough. Though I'm not sure what I'm looking for exactly, I can try to describe what I saw to you."
"What about a mindlink?" Kai asked.
"Difficult – I'd have to cast it after I left my body. If I push my spirit out of my body, it tends to stop the spells I'm holding up… it takes a lot of effort to push… look, let's just leave it that if I go out of my body, I have to drop my spells. Ok?"
"Ahh, ok. So you can just cast it again once you're out of your body?"
"Yes, and no. I can cast it, though it's more draining and damaging on my astral form than on my real body, so I need to be careful. But if I'm present as an astral entity, I can only affect other astral beings. So I could cast my mindlink on you, Aswon or Shimazu if you were using any of your powers to view the astral, as we're in the same metaplane then… but not Hunter or Marius."
"And then there's a range issue as well – her mindlink will only function to a certain distance, so we'd need to be fairly close."
"I wonder. If we were walking through the area, and I 'fainted'… you guys would cluster around me to check on me right, and feed me sips of water to help me recover? That would provide fairly good cover for me to get out of my body without being seen and cast a spell. If we did that while we were walking down the side of the building, I could dash up to the roof while still being linked to someone – say Aswon, do a quick look, and then come back down. And once back in my body, there's no reason we can't mindlink further and have two sets of memories and understanding of what we saw up there."
"That sounds like a good idea. Let's get some more bottles of water and head back down there then!" Kai exclaimed, climbing up from the picnic table and heading inside to put actions to his words. Ten minutes later, the team staged their little side-show, drawing a few glances from people as Tads somewhat dramatically slumped to the ground, but when they saw her being tended to and given water, people just wandered on by, assuming that she was being looked after.
Tads flew up to the roof, linking her thoughts with Aswon and looking around on the roof, trying to make sense of what she could see. Fortunately the ward surrounding the building was flush to the roof, the tiles that anchored it into reality being built into the top layer of concrete slabs. That meant the roof access stairwell, and most of the other important features showed through. After a quick look around to assure herself that there was nobody watching, she manifested so she could actually see the real-world images, rather than the astral silhouettes of the equipment, and she quickly moved around the roof in a circle, examining all of the devices and objects there. Aswon might not have had the engineering knowledge that Hunter had, but he had more than enough experience with scoping out buildings or using equipment like this as cover against insurgents from half a dozen warzones, and he was able to catalogue most of the equipment and a few other interesting features, before Tads returned to her body and 'shakily' got to her feet.
"I have information. While you were doing your survey, I have been looking at the outside of the building with my thermographic sensors." Marius announced. "If you look on the top floor, in the north-west corner – there is an area with a significant cool patch. It is several degrees cooler than the windows on either side. I suspect that might be the location of either a server room, or cryogenic facility of some kind – and as this is an insurance company, I see no reason for a cold-room or walk-in freezer."
"That's the corner that has lots more air conditioning units on it as well. They're scattered around the roof all the way, but in that corner there's about four times as many." Tads mentioned.
"And if you look at the window, if you catch it just right, it doesn't have the same reflection as the others. It's still polarised, so you can't see through – but there's something weird about the way it refracts light, compared to the ones on either side. Oh – I know what it is… the window's blocked off inside. There's no light coming through from the inside at all – while the ones on the sides do have either office lights or light from other windows bouncing through. I reckon you're right, Marius – that looks like a server room to me." Aswon looked up again, his eye muscles twitching as he zoomed in his view, examining the slightly different sheen on the glass compared to its neighbours. "And from what I saw of the roof entrance, the look looks to be a reasonably old maglock swiper. I don't think it would be too much of a challenge for Marius, from the limited view I got. There's also a sat dish up there – as we know it's not for communications with their matrix system, I reckon they've got a separate network run for things like trideo feeds or their phones – so we're looking at multiple segregated networks in the building. Worth bearing in mind if you're not jacking in directly to a terminal, Hunter, and find a wall socket."
"Tads? Could we summon some spirits to break the HVAC units? They could do that right, because it's outside the ward?" Kai asked. "Just wondering if we can break them, and then turn up as the air-conditioning repair company…"
"Yes, they could," Aswon answered for their shaman, "you're right – the heat exchangers are outside the ward so they're vulnerable. But looking at the quality of the maglock up on the roof hatch, I don't think it's going to be an issue, and it would get us seen by a lot less people." He turned to look at Tads. "Sorry to interrupt – but I wanted to add some context as well." Tads just shrugged and nodded to him.
"Ok, have we checked the day and date? It's not going to be any crazy holiday or non-working day tomorrow, or fancy-dress religion thing is it? Just a normal working Wednesday?" The team checked their calendars and the notes about the country, city, faith and local conditions, but couldn't find anything that might indicate a problem.
"I'm wondering then," Kai said as he looked around. "Whether we can just do a break-in tonight, when everyone has gone home. Make it several hours after dusk, let things settle down. We just find somewhere to hole up for a while, and then we relax, get some sleep – and come back later." He looked up at the buildings to either side of the Oman Insurance building, looking up at the roof of each. "I don't think it's worth trying to get up onto the roof of either of those. They're a little higher, but we're just as likely to run into trouble getting up there, as we are straight up this one."
"I would agree." Aswon pointed across the car-park at the rear, and between two more of the large office blocks built next to the highway. "Do we know what that is? It looks like a gazebo or shelter of some kind? It's just got line of sight directly to the corner we're going to be going up…" Nobody knew, so the team ambled that way, splitting up into pairs and moving separately so they didn't stand out quite so much. The gazebo was a simple structure, though it looked to be permanent – four sturdy metal legs embedded into the verge of the highway, with a solid roof that provided a good amount of shade. It was Shimazu that came up with the most likely use for the structure:
"I think it's for the police or highway patrol agents to wait under. Imagine if you're doing a morning of speed or ID checks – if you're out under the sun, you're going to get heatstroke. Under here though, it's got to be a good few degrees cooler, and you're going to be a lot more comfortable. I'd guess it's only manned sometimes – and it doesn't look to be in use today!"
"Good to know. Ok – so we need a place to hole up for the rest of the day. Marius – can you get us a cab booked and see if you can find somewhere?"
Marius headed over to the street and waited for a few minutes until he spied a somewhat battered mini-van with a taxi lamp mounted on top, waving for it to pull into their side street. As the driver pulled to a halt, he started to chat with him, occasionally pointing at the rest of the group, and making a few odd gestures, including rubbing his fingers together. The driver was apparently agreeable and Marius waved for them to climb aboard, into the seats in the back of the vehicle.
"This is Mohammed, and he knows the city pretty well," Marius swapped to Russian, hoping the cab driver wouldn't understand a word – certainly his body language wasn't responsive. "I explained that our company messed up our paperwork and is sorting out fresh visas, but we cannot officially work until they do – but because the visa is messed up, we are unable to get into a normal hotel – but our company has given us some cash to get sorted out with. He knows a place where lots of migrant workers stay for a bit while they sort things out – and apparently, they have an understanding about ID checks and paying cash…"
"Sounds ideal!" Kai gave the cabbie a big grin and an encouraging nod, before settling himself down in one of the seats. Once they were all loaded up, the cab driver headed south-east, cutting through a big chunk of the city and taking a lot of side streets and back alleys to cut out some of the major traffic jams. The team were mostly silent, staring out of the window and memorising landmarks, roads, and routes, looking at some of the more unique buildings and trying to pick up a picture of the layout of the city.
When they were leaving the main commercial core, Aswon piped up, speaking in a quiet voice.
"I've noticed that there's almost no astral traffic over here. It just seems remarkably light – there's plenty of warded buildings, but almost nothing live. A few plants, here and there, sure…but I've only see a couple of watchers spirits for most places. The only magical threats I've seen are some elementals that seem to patrol around some of the mosques and other key buildings. They look pretty competent, and there are a lot of them. That is to say, mosques – we've been past half a dozen, and every single one of them had at least one elemental on guard, patrolling in astral space…"
"So that's good right – less chance of being spotted by an astral spy?" Kai queried, getting a nod from Aswon in return. "Excellent, then. Much better if Tads can support us with spells with less concerns about being stoned to death!" His grin seemed to suggest that this was only a minor drawback, and Tads gave a sigh, then returned to looking out of the window, assessing the city and looking for magical threats as they drove through, heading for the outskirts.
The 'Hotel' they were being taken to was barely worthy of the name – a coffin joint that would have been at home in either Seattle or Japan, or any other major metropolis. It was built under the highway – actually amongst the concrete footings and pillars of an elevated section where the expressway that ringed the city crossed over a major arterial road. Nestled amongst the pillars was a spiderweb of scaffolding and coffin cubes, bolted together to form a dense lattice of rooms on three levels. Like most coffin hotels, there were some larger pods, designed to accommodate trolls and their larger frames – but here they made up nearly a third of the overall capacity, far higher than normal, a direct result of the strength, height and reach advantage that trolls had that made them ideal labour forces on heavy industry – like maintenance crews on gas and oil pipelines or construction of refinery buildings.
They paid for a coffin each, paying roughly twenty Nuyens worth of local currency per person to secure their own room and to allow matrix access, before agreeing to rest and relax until about eight that evening, when they'd gear up and head into the city on foot – recovering the route they'd taken to get out here, and getting a feel for the streets as they went. They should be back into the centre of town by midnight, even at a very gentle pace, giving them plenty of time to plan and execute the job.
One by one, the team climbed into their individual pods, pulling the doors closed behind them and settling down on the plastic mattress, trying to ignore the combination of smells – a heady mix of antiseptic spray and cleaning fluid along with sweat, urine and rotting food that had managed to evade the cleansing spray when the coffins were 'cleaned' after the previous occupant had left.
The city went about its business, tens of thousands of people slaving away at their jobs, unaware that a highly motivated and skilled bunch of Shadowrunners lay in wait, hiding in the cracks at the edge of their society, waiting for the darkness that was their favourite time to strike…
