The Singularity Event

Runners: Fingers, Barger, Running Wolf, Uruk-hai, Iceface, Viking

Dodging the Bullet

November 1st, 2064, 19:00 PST - Acccording to the newsnets, the city was it’s usual chaotic self; a huge fire was sweeping the Barrens, a mysterious disease affecting deckers; there was a minor riot in Renton, 32 murders and at least 3 runs against major megacorps -the perfect for time for a Run. The Runners were kicking their heels in Joe’s sipping their favourite poisons, waiting for the next Johnson to call. The last thing they expected to see was Dodger coming through the doors. From the worried look on his face and the way he anxiously scanned the room the Runners just knew he was looking for them.

Indeed he was, and when the decker explained why; the Runners shared his concern. Since they’d located him earlier in the year the decker had been working with Maegera monitoring the activity of Deus’ nodes. Earlier that evening the node he’d been observing suddenly went catatonic and moments later news began filtering through of other people turning up across the city in a similar state – all had been nodes on Deus’ Network. Dodger feared that this meant Deus had re-integrated its code an uploaded itself to the Matrix. This could only be bad news. Dodger wanted them to try and locate Ronin for him, in the hope that the otaku, as a former node himself, might have some idea what the AI was up to.

November 1st, 2064, 20:00 PST - Dodger got up to go. As he left the building there was a fusillade of bullets outside. The runners reacted swiftly – despite a tear-gas canister that was fired into the entranceway. They found Dodger lying in a pool of blood, but still alive, and a car speeding away down the road. Feeling they might need more muscle, Uruk-hai put a call in to Viking while Fingers dealt with the wounded Dodger. Uruk-hai then dashed round to where his bike was parked and firing it up sped after the fleeing gunmen.

November 1st, 2064, 21:00 PST - Uruk-hai managed to follow them to a small run-down looking hotel in an industrial part of Tahoma on Pacific Highway East. It was a real class area, the sign outside the hotel proclaimed it was the Quality Inn Fife, it looked anything but quality! Opposite, acoss the highway was what looked like a disused factory. The bank across the way looked more like a fortress than a retail bank and most of the other shops and buildings in the area looked tired and run down.

As the three gunmen got out of the car Uruk-hai noticed that they had striking blue cyber-eyes. Reporting back to the others, Fingers and Barger recalled that Deus had installed similar cyber-eyes in his security agents in the Arcology. The group, now joined by Viking, headed down to Tahoma, where Barger and Running-Wolf scouted the place astrally. There were five blue-banded in there, but after some consideration, they decided that assaulting the hotel would only alert Deus.

They decided to follow Dodger’s advice and try and locate Ronin. After some debate they decide the best place to start was with Kira – the node they’d saved from a skellbot some months ago on Ronin’s behalf. Heading to the ork underground, they quickly located Kira, who told them that she didn’t know exactly where Ronin was but he had mentioned something about a scrap yard.

The Runner’s racked their brains for a while, and even put in a call to Junkyard, who helpfully sent them a list of all the scrap yards in Seattle. Eventually someone remembered the Tin Man scrap yard where Deus had set up a manufacturing facility for drones, and Neo and Red Hammer had met their untimely end five years ago.

November 1st, 2064, 22:00 PST - The Runners headed for the site in Pullayup. As they pulled up outside the scrap yard, they could hear the familiar sound of sporadic gunfire from inside. Iceface, crashed his van through the gate only to discover the area beyond had been mined. Fortunately the armour on the van saved the occupants from any serious damage, though the underside of the van itself was badly mangled.

Piling out of the van,Iceface and Viking scanned the area warily. Uruk-hai joined them, quickly followed by Fingers, Barger and Running Wolf. Uruk-hai spotted something moving in the piles of scrap and Viking fired-off a grenade round into the pile of junk. Moments later the two runners was swarmed by a group of small medusa drones. Uruk-hai went down in a welter of blood. Barger and Fingers started launching lightning bolt spells at the drones destroying several of them, while Iceface and Viking took care of the rest.

Running Wolf, realised that her teeth were ineffective against the drones, loped off into the yard, heading towards the single building that had survived the massive detonation five years ago. She paused, hiding in a pile of junk as she saw two medusa drones patrolling outside the door.

Uruk-hai’s wounds proved not as serious as they had first looked, and he quickly got to his feet.The Runners followed on after Running Wolf - deeper into the scrap yard.

Junkyard Blues

Running Wolf waited patiently, hiding in the scrap, for the others to arrive and watched the two medusa drones patrolling outside the workshop apprehensively. These drones were larger than the ones that had nearly killed Uruk-hai and Viking at the entrance!In short order the rest of the runners arrived and unleashed a furious assault on the drones - to little effect. Most of their bullets seemed to bounce off the drones' ablative armour, and even Finger's Lightning bolt spells were having little effect.

As the drones closed, the runners began a fighting withdrawal, Iceface and Uruk-hai switching to fully-auto fire and unleashing a hail of lead at the drones. As Viking began winding up ole Painless; Fingers switched from Lightning bolt to Powerball which seemed to have slightly better results.

Eventually after a combination of powerball spells and, unleashing a frightening amount of very expensive APDS ammo, the two drones were finally destroyed. At this point Iceface recalled that he had 4 clips of (even more expensive) anti-vehicle ammo back in the remains of his van. Recovering the AV ammo, the Runners, led by Running Wolf returned to the workshop, very cautiously!

Inside the workshop they found a curious scene - Ronin standing at the far end frantically jabbing at what looked like a hand held jammer - in front on him a single medusa drone stood stock-still. Seeing them, Ronin looked up and shouted at them "Frag the fragging thing, the control frequency keeps shifting randomly!"

The Runners happily obliged, after which they swiftly briefed Ronin on Dodger's situation. The otaku readily agreed to accompany them, and they made their way to Seattle General (after dropping their ordenance back at Joe's) for a hasty conference with Dodger.

November 1st, 2064, 23:45 PST - After some difficulty with the hospital admissions clerk,given the time, they eventually got in to see the wounded decker. Dodger and Ronin exchanged notes about what Deus was up to. Ronin also told them they could expect little help from Maegera as she was busy trying to keep as many of the nodes vacated by Deus from dying. Ronin pointed out that Deus must have a base somewhere in the city as well as a manufacturing facilty for the drones.If they could locate that they might get some valuable intelligence. Uruk-hai suggested they check out the hotel in Tacoma where the blue-banded had gone after their abortive hit on Dodger and the Runners duly headed off down the I-5 to Tacoma.

November 2nd, 2064, 01:00 PST - By the time they turned off on the Pacific Highway and finally arrived at their destination it was way past bedtime. As it was a non-residential area, the area around the Quality Inn was pretty much deserted at this time of night. Most of the eateries further up the road had closed so they parked on the highway, across from the hotel.

Viking and Uruk-hai began a cautious survey of the exterior hotel - identifying fairly heavy security sensors around the perimeter. Running-wolf complemented their efforts by running an astral reconnaisance of the building,. She assensed seven auras present, five of which were strangely quiescent.

Back at the van, Fingers spent some time surveying the disused building they were parked outside, but she could see no sign of life. The factory's gate was locked with a rusted padlock that looked so old that it actually took a physical key to open, the car-park was overgrown with weeds and the windows were all boarded-up.

No Vacancies

November 2nd, 2064, 01:30 PST - While the others discussed their options, Mouse jacked-in for a quick matrix run on the Quality Inn's network. Easily hacking into the hotel chain's central computer system she quickly located the specific node for the branch in Renton. She quickly discovered there was something wrong. The records showed that the hotel was full with 73 guests, however all the guest appeared to have been resident for the last 18 months continuously! Suspecting something suspicious, Mouse delved deeper into the code and discovered a subroutine that was feeding information to the central systems - the whole node was a fake.

Jacking-out, she informed the others and a plan was hatched. Mouse, Barger, Iceface and Running Wolf would head round to the back of the hotel and go over the wall, while Uruk-hai and Fingers would go in posing as guests and try and book-in.

The rear-wall party got over the wall with little bother, disabling the laser sensors by the simple expedient of slapping mud over the transmitter. Wandering round the back yard didn't reveal much except to confirm that where the windows were sealed with security shutters the second building in the hotel complex was apparently disused.

Back in the foyer, Uruk-hai and fingers had trouble with the automated booking-in system as it insisted the hotel had no vacancies. Without being booked-in they couldn't get through the security door in the foyer. Frustrated Uruk-hai managed to break into the hotel office off the foyer. Even a cursory glance revealed the office had not been used for some time, however the office did contain the computer that ran the booking system.

Uruk-hai called up Mouse and called her to help. Arriving with the others she quickly hacked into the system and booked out seven "guests". After that Uruk-hai and Barger managed to book-in using their fake credsticks and gain access to the interior of the hotel. As they checked out the bar/restaurant area, Running Wolf surveyed the area beyond astrally and identified five auras -one of them a corrupted mage - waiting in the corridor beyond a further set of security doors leading to the rooms.

Barger used his credstick to open the door and battle was commenced, Iceface firing a concussion grenade into the corridor beyond. As the battle started, Mouse - riding shotgun in the hotel's system, discovered that the node was being attacked - some kind of shredding utility was running trashing the system megapulse by megapulse, she attempted to deactivate it, but although she managed to slow down it's progress it continued inexorably trashing the node till she was eventually dumped out.

Back at the firefight, Iceface took a full-on hit by a stream of acid cast by the invisible blue band mage, before a combination of spells and firepower took him down. Denied their magical support the remaining samurai were swiftly taken out. Barger and Fingers took out one apiece with spells; Running Wolf launched herself at one teeth bared; while Iceface and Uruk-hai disposed of the others with a fusillade of rounds, but not before both were wounded in turn.

In the bedrooms beyond, as well as the rooms the banded had been occupying, they found two people in a catatonic state - obviously nodes on the Network that Deus had uploaded his code from.

Storm Drain Sortie

November 2nd, 2064, 02:00 PST - Recovering a pass-key from the body of one of the blue-banded, Uruk-hai led the Runners across to the other building in the hotel complex. They found it completely deserted, but in the middle of the floor of the hallway a hole had been cut leading to a storm-drain below. Running Wolf jumped down into the drain to scan it astrally, Uruk-hai following more slowly, rappelling down on a line held by Viking. The astral scan revealed nothing, what was more Running Wolf was finding it difficult to catch her breath in the tunnel and as Uruk-hai reached the ground next to her she passed out. Realising something was badly wrong, Uruk-hai scooped her up and called on Viking to haul them back to the surface.

As Fingers tended to the unconscious wolf, the others pondered the situation - Iceface suggested that they'd flooded the storm-drain with halon gas and they should try again using respirators. Unfortunately not everyone had come equipped so he put in a call to his fixer and for a truly exorbitant premium was able to source some additional respirators and have them delivered within the hour. While they waited, Barger and Uruk-hai, who did have respirators, scouted the drain, finding what looked like an airlock to the south - which Barger reckoned was below the abandoned factory across the road.

November 2nd, 2064, 03:00 PST - Once tooled-up the Runners deployed into the storm drain, reaching the airlock Uruk-hai opened it cautiously - only to have a large medusa drone leap past him and attack the others. Iceface stepped back, firing off a burst of AV ammo. Viking too fired off a round at point-blank range into the drone. The drone retaliated launching a series of attacks on Iceface which failed to penetrate his security armour. Uruk-hai, meanwhile dived through the hatchway - only to find himself face-to-face with three smaller drones hurtling up the drain towards him.

As Mouse and Barger backed off slightly, Fingers launched a powerbolt at the drone. Badly damaged by the hammering it was taking, the medusa initiated it's self-destruct mechanism. The resulting explosion caused various degrees of hurt to all the Runners. Uruk-hai, flipped back through the airlock and closed it just as the other drones were getting near. After a moment to recover, Barger indicated to Uruk-hai to open the door a crack, through which he cast a powerball - resulting in three satisfying explosions!

The way cleared, the Runners moved forward, following a ramp on the other side up into a warehouse stacked with crates. Forcing open a crate they discovered a medusa drone packaged inside - destined for Washington DC. As they stood around, a large hatchway opened across the warehouse and another crate was deposited via an overhead crane. Heading over, the Runners found a door leading to the main building from which they could clearly hear the sounds of heavy machinery operating. Running Wolf went astral and did a quick reconnaissance - determining there were no auras.

Uruk-hai, with Viking's help, levered himself up to the hatchway and looked through into the factory. A fully-automated production line was in full-swing - manufacturing drones. Five skell-bots patrolled the area, and in a glass-walled office in the centre of the factory floor what looked like one of Deus terminator drones sitting in front of a bank of computers - probably the location of the paydata they were after . The Runners quickly hatched a plan for assaulting the factory - Uruk-hai would head back and launch a frontal assault as a distraction and the others would come in hard and fast. While Uruk-hai set of to get his bike, Mouse hacked into the local network and shut down the heavy machinery.

November 2nd, 2064, 03:54 PST - There was the sound of gunfire from outside as Uruk-hai smashed through the front gate, the skell-bots in the factory reacted - moving towards the main door. At the same time the rest of the runners crashed in deploying round the factory. Iceface took up a sniping position and lined up a shot on the terminator drone. Uruk-hai fired off another burst of fire - sending a hail of lead smashing through the main door of the factory. As the skell-bots took up position, to intercept Uruk-hai's assault, Iceface took the shot - which smashed through the terminator's armoured forehead. As the AV round slammed into it, the terminator's skull exploded.

Their rigger destroyed, the five skell-bots slumped - deactivated.

Deus Ex

November 2nd, 2064, 04:09 PST Mouse recovered the paydata from the systems running he factory minutes before the self-destruct mechanisms in th eboxed drones detonated simultaneously, turning the factory into a pile of rubble in large, mildly radioactive crater. As the Runners sped away they coul dhear sirns screaming towards ther site. Uruk-hai put in a call to Ronin who advised them to meet him at hospital. As they screamed up the interstate, fortunately relatively free of traffic Mouse took a look at the data, but it was too heavily encrypted for anything she had loaded on her deck.

November 2nd, 2064, 04.45 PST – Arriving at the hospital, to be met by Ronin, most of the Runners blagged their way into the hospital by snaffling some white coats and putting Fingers on a gurney. Uruk-hai preferred however to exercise his climbing abilities and decided to shin up the outside of the hospital using his grapple-gun.

November 2nd, 2064, 05.00 PST – Waking Dodger up the decker quickly linked up his, Ronin and Mouse’s decks using their combined processing power to decrypt the paydata. While they did that Iceface and Fingers opened the window to let the dangling Uruk-hai into the room! The deckers discovered that Deus was planning on using the increased processing power installed by the East Coast Stock Exchange to handle the Novatech IPO to finally re-integrate his core code. It was the planning to use the fact that the node would be wide open to millions of other nodes to handle the massive interest in the IPO to extend his control over the Matrix. There would only be once chance to stop the AI and they’d have to do it from inside the Matrix.

November 2nd, 2064, 05.30 PST – Realising that it was already 8.30 on the East Coast and the Stock Exchange would be opening for business shortly, the deckers worked at frantic pace. Ronin contacted the surviving members of Overwatch instructing them to contact the third known AI – Mirage - and advise it what was happening. Viking was sent to retrieve any VR equipment from the hospitals game room – to allow those without data-jacks to help.

November 2nd, 2064, 06.00 PST – In remarkably short order everything was as ready as it was going to get and the deckers jacked-in. Barger, Fingers, Uruk-hai and Viking put on their VR goggles finding themselves in the unfamiliar world of the matrix. Dodger had coded each of their icons with some basic combat software which gave each of them what looked like a lightsabre, but apart from that each of them looked like a partially rendered version of themselves. As Dodger and Ronin disappeared down the datastreams, not so much hacking as crashing through the security on the LTG, Mouse’s avatar extruded thin streams of data that hooked on to her fellow Runner’s avatars and she headed off, dragging them behind her on a dizzying whirlwind virtual ride across the country.

November 2nd, 2064, 09.00 EST – They arrived in a 3-D sculpted landscape, the Stock Exchange node being rendered as a huge gothic edifice with stained glass through which millions of datastreams, represented as beams of coloured light, flowed. Outside the virtual building, Ronin and Dodger stood, running various analysing programmes on the node, watched impassively by two doormen in long coats and top hats. As Viking rushed forwards to try and open the doors, the two doormen attacked revealing themselves to be black ICE patterned after skell-bots, attacked Viking. Simultaneously, a virtual rain of sprites descended, transforming into more ICE this time pattered after medusa drones.

November 2nd, 2064, 09.01 EST – A furious virtual battle erupted in which the runners were eventually victorious. The last of the ICE destroyed, Viking opened the doors to reveal the host rendered as a huge gothic building. At the far end, watched in horror by the thousands who had logged in to buy shares and now found themselves trapped, Deus was manifested as an immense crystalline World Tree perfected his code, reaching shimmering branched through the stained glass ceiling to the limitless heavens of the host, forcing open SANs with supercomputers across the globe. Deus was defended by dozens of his otaku manifested a samurai who charged forward as the runners entered. Calling on the Runners to hold off the enemy deckers, Dodger and Ronin began calling up reinforcements, Dodger frantically began opening up a back-door SAN to allow Maegera to attack, while Ronin did the same for Mirage,

As battle was joined, Maegera began manifesting attacking Deus, who screamed in primal rage. In the skies above, a host of metallic-winged angels – sent by Mirage - joined the fray. Deus uttered a deep rumbling roar as the angels hack at his branches and Megaera’s lightning tears at his trunk. As the three AI struggle in combat they fail to notice the final player in the game.

Mouse, Barger and Fingers did however notice the small figure. They were shocked to recognise Caliban - the ork hacker they'd rescued from Alcatraz the previous year. She emerge from the throngs of users staring agape at the scene around them. In her hands she held a large black egg, she calmly advanced and placed the egg down in Deus’s roots. As battle raged around it, in a matter of seconds, it hatched; an impossibly large serpent snaked from the broken shell and twisted itself around Deus’s trunk.

For a moment the battle froze and the Runners, and everone else, watched helplessly. The serpent sank it’s fangs into Deus’s crystal trunk sending poison coursing through its body and through its branches into the other hosts. The poison clouded Megaera and swiftly infected the wings of Mirage’s angels. It clawed into the minds of the thousands of the metahumans assembled, their icons turning black. Then in the blink of an eye all was silent.

The Matrix crashed.

Friends: Dodger, Ronin

Foes: Deus

World events:

Novatech IPO