Word of warning. After the events of the last couple of days I am so
angry that it is going to be very hard for me to give an even remotely coherent
summary. So yeah. If there’s huge gaps in this summary I don't frakking care.
This whole terrible downhill slide began in the aftermath of our
execution of Teh Dave and the mess with Doctor Hughes. The SK Johnson had asked
Us to follow through with racking down everyone he had infected, which then
meant finding the people that Teh Dave's underpaid bar staff had sold the CFD
bombs to. All of which was resulting in a massive headache-inducing mess of
people to track down and find out just how badly they had been infected and how
heavily subverted they were.
The good news is that Teh Dave had a list of all the people he had
infected. With Minster's aid, we were able to compare that to Runners he knew
in New York and find out who were on the known to be missing list. From what we
had found, some were more vulnerable to the infection then others, most notably
those with more augmentations. Of those he’d infected, we found only two that
were still missing and unaccounted for, which is good after a fashion.
More thorough investigations told us that there was a definite pattern
to what Teh Dave was doing. He'd been recording who he was dosing and when with
a surprising amount of detail for a drug-addled creep like him. Everything
looked more and more like this was a part of some scientific experiment, but
with no clear indications of to what end or what was the outcome they were trying
to achieve beyond 'infecting people with CFD on a timetable'. What we really
needed was to go to the source.
The next problem was finding where the ones his staff had stolen were
going to. Asking around at The Terminus told us that the waitress who'd been
stealing them had passed them on to a local drug dealer named Skazz. We tracked
him down to a nearby bar, and I gently convinced him to tell us who he'd sold
the drugs to. And by that I mean I beat him up, shocked him, dragged him
outside and roughed him up in the carpark until he told me. Also I probably
scared him out of ever working in Manhattan again. Go me.
While it didn't yield us much new data over who he'd been selling to
and where they were, we did manage to recover his stash, so it was at least a
minor win.
With that tied up, we moved onto the matter of Gennouke Oshi, the man apparently
behind the entire mess. I had been forming a theory that he was actually a headache
himself and that what he was trying to do was create more headcases whole
trying to shut down anti-CFD research all in the name of whatever unknowable
goal headcases have (Because god damn Transhumanits ruin everything, remember?)
but we had no solid proof of all of that. The fact that he was currently
stationed in the Renraku Tower (Don't call it an arcology, as that's a word
they really don't like) in the middle of Manhattan also meant we couldn't just
readily go in and grab him.
Captain Cancer did put a watcher spirit on him, however, which would
serve as an early warning of his activities while we made our next move. Inspiration
came to us in the form of Teh Dave's commlink, which we'd salvaged for evidence
gathering reasons, but also had him in the contacts section. Using that, we
sent a message to Oshi to indicate that there was a 'problem' with the supply,
and that he needed to meet ASAP (I did the typing and was able to do a good
impersonation of Teh Dave along the way). Oshi agreed, even if it was clear
that he was very unhappy.
Captain Cancer's spirit confirmed that he was on the way and heading
for the Terminus, so wer got ready for him. We staged an ambush inside the
Terminal district, using Freddie's Steel Lynx to rather aggressively disable
his car. Minster and I moved in, Oshi firing at us from behind the door. A
quick kick disarmed him, followed by the pair if us taking him down and
disabling him. Once he was secured, wee bustled him off to Doctor Sleep's house
of surgery and Ghoul shelter for questioning.
Fortunately, the good (?) doctor was set up for containing dangerous
CFD infected patients, and we had Oshi immobilized and contained before he was
roused. An injection of Gamma Scopolamine ensured cooperation, giving him no
option but to spill his gust. I almost wish he hadn't.
 |
| Pierce. Not dead, just completely forked |
It turned out my theory was correct, and that Oshi was indeed a
headcase. More to the point, his deliberately engineered CFD nanites were
infected with copies of the same AI as the one in his head. The problem is,
that AI was Pierce, or, at least, a copy of him. Yeah. At that point I was
pretty livid, but it got worse.
What had happened was that Yamura (and his bushy eyebrows) hadn't
wanted to write off all the time and effort he'd invested in the project, and
also had to face an internal investigation. Oshi had been sent after him, but instead
had wound up being infected by Yamura as a part of his new plan. From there,
he'd been trying to build an army of Pierce clones (Neon tells me that the word
I am looking for is 'forks'. Certainly this whole thing is forked) but the result
had been rather unsatisfactory. There had been a very low rate of actual
conversions, and those that did turn over into full Pierce forks tended to end
up dead, one way or another.
The big thing was that Yamura had a "target" that he wanted
to take down, and the army of Pierces was meant to be doing just that. Unfortunately,
Oshi didn't Know what the target was, only that they were apparently not ready
for it given that the pierces had not been working as expected.
Flagging hell. I wish I'd geeked that guy back when we had the chance.
I'd put together some ideas with Wraith, but none of them had ever borne fruit
due to a few disagreements over methodology and acceptable collateral damage.
I'd even considered going off and 'lone wolf'-ing him a few times, just to be
sure. And now, because I didn't, we're in this fragging mess.
The only good news is that Doctor Sleep quietly euthanized Oshi and
agreed to dispose of his body in a way that wouldn't risk anyone else getting
CFD infection (best not to ask). I also arranged a meeting with SK Johnson to
inform her of these developments and the enigmatic 'target'. As to what happens
next, well, that’s anyone's guess now.
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