Session 06 Recap: "Ghosts of Babylon"

The culmination of the short but intense gun battle at Candyland had left the Shankers gang decimated and leaderless. Before they could leave the area, the team was surrounded by corporate security forces belonging to Babylon Security Solutions International (BSSI). A representative of the corporation named Naama presented herself to the runners and claimed that she and her colleagues had been tracking the movements of MC and that they were looking to hire some runners from the Sprawl for a particularly dangerous mission. Big Bob objected to going anywhere with the finely dressed businesswoman and indelicately argued that Spade and him had nothing to do with whatever they wanted with Roo and the rest of the team. Naama acquiesced and allowed the boy and the automaton to leave the area. She even had one of the combat vans nearby shuttle them to the Foundry. V3ct0r asked if Babylon was responsible for having Spade kidnapped in the first place. Upon hearing this, Killeroo warned the corporate rep that if they had anything to do with harming his son in any way that he would retaliate against them. Naama assured him and the rest of the team that they were never interested in harming anyone. In fact, she explained, Babylon's security team were responsible for the elimination of the Shanker gang members who were taking shots at both Roo and Bob from the upper floors of Candyland. Babylon, she explained, had very different reasons for being in the Sprawl. She went on to say that it was simply a coincidence that they had engaged with a person of interest to them. Babylon, it seemed, had been tracking MC since the assassination of their CEO Maximilian Hersch almost a year ago. Curious, MC inquired as to what she meant. Naama then offered to take the conversation to a more private venue. Specifically, the Luxor hotel at the heart of the city's megaplex. Deciding to go with the flow, the team boarded the heavily armored security vans and watched as they were driven to one of the most expensive luxury hotels in the Sprawl. Gold and Ivory Babylon's outfit walked them into the hotel through a rear entrance and had already secured several floors for their arrival. The team was then escorted into a soundproof corporate style meeting room where Naama began to explain to MC what they knew and what they didn't know about MC's missing memories and the connection to Hersch's assassination: Months before Max Hersch was murdered in his beach house by MC, a group of runners had infiltrated Shidao corporation's cybernetics division storage facility in Chiba, Japan. This storage facility was where Shidao had been keeping MC and others who were similarly employed by the mega corporation to eliminate targets of their choosing. The team made off with some corporate paydata but nothing that worried the heads of Shidao's cybernetics division. Sometime after that, MC went missing from storage for weeks and wasn't seen again until a clip of Hersch's last simrecording made its way onto the matrix. As soon as they had identified MC as belonging to Shidao, Babylon retaliated immediately against them by hiring a group of mercenaries to sabotage a production facility in South America. Simultaneously, they utilized their best security personnel to track and target MC for elimination. Then something curious happened: Shidao corporation claimed no wrong doing in Hersch's death and were themselves in the process of hunting down their own operative. Claiming MC had "gone rogue", Shidao dispatched waves of killers to bring MC's corpse to them, dead or alive. This went on for months. Tracking MC's movements for months, Babylon noticed that MC had been making inquiries on the streets and on the matrix about the BTL that allegedly captured Hersch's assassination on video. Finding that a dealer by the name of Sweet Tooth was selling copies of the hot new sim out of an abandoned tenement called Candyland in District 7, Babylon sent their people to stakeout the place and wait to make contact with MC. Corporate security was ready to go in until Killeroo and Big Bob turned Candyland into a war zone. After monitoring their comm chatter, Babylon realized that MC and these other runners were working together to take on the Shankers gang. Naama gave her people the order to take out the shooters in the windows and wait until everyone who survived emerged from the building before moving in. "I trust you found what you came for," Naama probed, looking at MC. MC nodded silently and produced the chip with the BTL on it. Naama produced a chip of her own and slid it down the long table towards the cybernetic assassin. The chip, she explained, contained the entirety of the video that MC's chip was missing. The sim recording that was on the BTL was simply a much shortened and illegally enhanced portion of the source footage that captured the murder of Max Hersch. "After watching that sim dozens of times, I can tell you with some certainty that despite knowing that it is you in the recording, your movements were not your own." Slotting the chip, MC confirmed what she was saying. The recording showed the cybernetic assassin's movements as being devoid of any kind of finesse or skill. The wielding of MC's mono-filament sword resembled how an amateur would handle a butcher's blade. "If you would allow it, I would have my people take a look at your...enhancements to see if they were tampered with in any way," Naama offered. "It may explain how you were being controlled and how your memories were erased." MC acknowledged that this would be acceptable. Shortly after Naama spoke into a comm located on her lapel, three people in white lab coats and gloves entered the room and began to observe MC up close. "If your people tamper with anything you're not supposed to, I will kill all of you," MC threatened. The technicians looked at each other with wide eyes and looked to Naama for confirmation. The woman nodded and said something to them in Hebrew. After finding a hidden chip deck slot along the base of MC's neckline, one of the medtechs asked if it would be acceptable if they removed what appeared to be a deactivated chip. Going in for a closer look, V3ct0r used her devices to tell whether or not the hidden chip was channeling electricity. It was not. Removing the chip, the techs looked it over and scanned its contents--finding something akin to a Liche program. Not familiar with the terminology, they explained that the program resembled a software that netrunners typically use to lock down and take control of another netrunner's deck in cyberspace. Naama implied that it was likely the runners who hit Shidao's storage facility, using the theft of the paydata as a cover for their real mission; outfitting MC with a control chip. This could have somehow directly contributed to the assassin's already deteriorating memories and the controls Shidao corporation had set into place initially. After the technicians reported to Naama in their own tongue, she offered MC the opportunity to undergo a simple surgery so that Babylon's medtechs can determine what kind of damage the assassin's memories sustained and how they were wiped. "Perhaps some other time," MC said, prompting the medtechs to leave the room. When asked why they hadn't approached MC with the source of the footage to begin with, Naama explained that because some within Babylon believed that Hersch's assassination was orchestrated by his immediate successor, she and her people decided to employ a hands off approach in following the assassin's movements. When it became clear that MC was following the trail of a BTL sale to the Sprawl, Naama decided to use the excuse of hunting down Shidao corporation's agent as a means of covering her real intention to both investigate the living instrument that was used to kill Max and to personally hire runners to look into the corporation's newest CEO, Ada Adler. Adler, it seems, had taken Babylon into radically new directions shortly after Hersch's assassination. Babylon Robotics, it turned out, was a very different kind of corporation when Max was in charge. Primarily, they were in the business of creating prosthesis for use by victims of war's collateral damage both in the region and around the world. Hersch's death signaled an end to that era. Instead of creating cybernetics to help heal people who were victimized by war, Adler's Babylon was now in the business of creating cutting edge war machines and acquiring ludicrous defense contracts. Babylon Security Solutions International was born. Because she was Max's executive assistant and was listed as a sole inheritor on his will, Adler was legally allowed to take Max's position as CEO. She immediately created a shroud of secrecy and confusion across the entire corporation. No one knew who was reporting to whom, which parts of the corp was getting shutdown--it was a total information blackout. Babylon had gone from full transparency to complete opaqueness. Without being able to come up with any records on Adler, Naama and others within Babylon decided to take it upon themselves to discreetly hire some deniable assets to find something they could use to remove her from the top of the food chain. This meant digging into Max's past for clues. Max had lived in Tel Aviv decades ago, in the port of Jaffa, until it was attacked with chemical weapons. This attack created a quarantined zone that has made that part of Tel Aviv uninhabitable for decades. Since the earliest entry of Adler's name in Babylon's employee roster dated back to a time shortly after Max had left the city, Naama deduced that any information on Ada and her relationship with Max would be found in the ruins of Jaffa. Because of the dangerous and clandestine nature of Naama's investigation into Babylon's new CEO, the team would have to go into Tel Aviv and utilize special equipment to avoid contact with the chemicals that still linger in that part of the city. "Light exposure typically results in lightheadedness and exhaustion," Naama explained. "Prolonged exposure causes nausea, internal pains, nosebleeds. A few hours more and the subject will begin to show signs of rashes, burns and a clamminess taking over the skin. Death follows shortly after that point." Of course, exposure to the chemicals and the patrolling automated mechs were not the only problem. According to previous Israeli Defense Force soldiers that kept patrols on the quarantine zone border, some of their units had reported having seen people scurrying around in the quarantined zone. Impossible as it seems, before the arrival of Babylon's automated mechs, some of the Israeli government's soldiers had gone missing inside Jaffa and rumors circulated that "שֵׁד" or ghouls, mutated humans who somehow survived the lethality of the chemical gas attacks, were responsible. Although Naama attributed these rumors to just stories, she warned the team about the dangerous nature of this mission and cautioned them to be prepared before undertaking it. She assured the team that, should they accept the assignment, she will have a contact in the area named Khalil that can smuggle them and their equipment into Tel Aviv as well as provide them with the necessary gear to operate in the quarantined zone without fear of contagion. Once the team accepted the terms of payment, ten thousand credits were sent to everyone's individual accounts. The rest, Naama promised, will be given upon completion of the assignment. There was a hold placed on the ten thousand, of course, until she and her associates were able to confirm that the runners had arrived in Gaza as per their agreement. Their travel itinerary would consist of a ship transport to the port of Alexandria in North Africa, a private car transport into Cairo and then an underground tunnel train that runs from the internationally controlled Suez Channel to Gaza. Once there, the runners are to meet with Khalil, get outfitted and proceed to Tel Aviv and the old city of Jaffa. Being that they had ample time to prepare for this, the team decided to take a week to get things straightened out before taking on this potentially long assignment. Vignettes Lily "V3ct0r" Gosh had been wondering what to get for herself since being gifted a "PICK 3!" freebie card for Dr. Heykl's Cyberclinic in the city metroplex. After having several nights where she lay awake with the images of the dead and dying fresh in her mind, Lily made the decision to choose a mental inhibitor as her first piece of cyberware. The technology, originally used on soldiers who returned with post traumatic stress from their time at war, directly enhanced the brain's ability to deal with the stress usually associated with violence and death on the battlefield. In addition to this, Lily dyed her hair cyan and drastically changed her wardrobe--even going as far as wearing scarves, hats and masks to obscure her face. * Wanting to reach out to a potential contact in that part of the world, Killeroo put in a call to his ex-wife Catelyn. The mercenary sniper answered the line and asked why Roo was reaching out to her right then. After explaining that he's recently found work in the middle-east that is going to be taking him and his team as far as Tel Aviv, Catelyn was intrigued. "Used to be that you could get a nice cushy contract out that way. Someone was always killin' someone else, you know? But about a year ago the Israelis came up with some really fancy mechs and the contracts disappeared. That place is a black hole for mercs like me." When Roo offered a spot on the team to her, Catelyn said she would think about it if the money was good. They then made plans to meet at a mercenary bar called the "Sand Pit" in a bad part of Cairo. Later, Killeroo visited his father, Big Bob, at the Foundry to check in with his adopted son Spade and how things were going. Since having been savagely beaten by the Shankers gang, Spade was asleep most of the time Roo was there. Bob had stitched him up as best as an automaton scrap mechanic could and placed several dermal patches on the teenager so that he could get sufficient rest. It wasn't long before father and son launched into a full blown argument about Roo's latest assignment that would take him away from the Sprawl--possibly for weeks at a time. Roo insisted that the pay would go towards helping to ensure that Spade will have an easier and safer time growing up. Bob countered that going to such extents was a fool's errand and that instead he should just spend time with his son. "C'mon, Jake...there's no future! You know that. Just be a damn father to the boy 'n stop risking yer life for a few credits." Roo began to explain to Bob about the job and how much he would be getting out of it. This softened the old automaton's rhetoric somewhat, but it was clear that Bob was worried about this new dangerous job his son had taken. Around this time Spade woke up and came out to talk with his dad while Bob went off to bang away at some scrap metal. The two had a heart to heart talk and Spade corrected Roo when the hybrid had said that he hasn't been a particularly good father to him. "You're my dad," he said, going as far as hugging Killeroo, before going back inside Bob's shack. * MC made a temporary home by squatting in a derelict tenement building in District 7. Vague dreams and what seemed like memories plagued MC's sleep. As before, the moments deteriorated anytime the cybernetic assassin tried to mentally connect with the images and emotions that came from these fractured memories. Passage The team was met at the wharfs near Sharkey's by an intermediary of Naama's called Bernie. He walked them into a large tanker transport ship that would take them on a week long trip to West Africa. Aside from some drunken fights and leering glances at Lily by the ship hands, not much occurred aboard the tanker transport. Arriving in the bustling port of Alexandria, the team stuck together and rented a private ground car service that would take them to Cairo. Three hours later, the group arrived in the massive city and sought out individual lodging. The Sand Pit Meeting up at the Sand Pit later that night, the team pushed through a heavy throng of mercenaries and cutthroats who were either inebriated, breaking out into fights or both. The air was thick with smoke, sweat and the smell of cheap alcohol. Seated in a corner was Killeroo's ex-wife Catelyn, as promised. They shared a few drinks and got down to discussing this dangerous run for Babylon. After hearing how much they stood to make, Catelyn agreed to join the group. Lily felt very out of place and became irate towards when Catelyn implied that she was way too young to be considered a professional runner--especially for a mission as dangerous as this. The fifteen year old hacktivist stood up and slapped the mecenary in the face from across the table. With a look of equal parts surprise and amusement, Catelyn decided to put Lily in her place before things got out of hand. "Huh. The first one's free, kid. The next one? I'll pull your teeth right out of your ass." Lily hurled some insult that was lost in the din of the bar and stormed out. Pushing past some surly drunken mercs, she made her way outside to smoke a cigarette. A fifteen year old teenager wearing a hijab in a mercenary bar didn't go unnoticed. Two men began to follow her outside. While Roo and Catelyn caught up at their table, MC began to shadow the two men outside. Someone pulled Lily's hijab from her head and threw it on the ground. They yelled something at her in Arabic, causing some nearby to look on in silence. Using a voice to text program on her mobile device, Lily got the gist of what the man was trying to say; "What the fuck do you think *you're* doing here, bitch?" "Whatever," she responded with and began walking away from the lit framework of the bar and into the heavy shadows that sat on the buildings and alleyways directly across from it. As the two men began to follow her, MC melted into the background. Lily emerged from a shadow in a broad alley between buildings wielding her tazer. To her surprise, the two drunken men backed off slightly, despite one of them continually hurling insults at her. MC's cybernetically enhanced arms fell upon the first man and broke his neck with ease. The assassin's body then spun and delivered a kick that would have smashed in the front end of a ground car's grill, shattering a part of the other man's lower back. Lily's encephalon inhibitor began to work. Before the man with a fractured spine could reach for his pistol, MC placed a steel foot on his wrist and applied pressure. Just as the cybernetic assassin raised his monofilament blade for the final strike, however, Lily put her arms out and stopped him. The man shortly passed into unconsciousness from the pain. For MC, this was perhaps the first time anyone had given the assassin the order to spare someone's life. Stooping to pick up the man's pistol, Lily placed a few rounds into the corpse of his friend and immediately began calling emergency services--claiming that there must have been some drug deal gone bad near the Sand Pit because two men got into a scuffle nearby and one of them ended up shot and dead. As the two runners made their way back to the bar, they managed to walk in on Catelyn and Killeroo kissing out in front of the Pit. Lily quickly apologized for the scene she caused earlier and said that what she said was out of line. Catelyn accepted the apology and agreed to meet the team at the underground tunnel train station the next morning.