Short and Sweet
After a night of violence in southern Dallas, the runners are hired by TandyCorp to determine the manufacturer of a BTL chip. Along the way, they discover that there are crooked elements in Lone Star. A regional director has introduced this BTL into the sprawl to show the inability of the DFWPD to contain the current violence and that Lone Star will be given the sprawl's contract. The runners set up a sting operation to catch him.
How It Went Down
In our runner's first adventure, 20Questions,
Guttersnipe, Lynx, Bishop, Hong Lang, and Queensryche witnessed a
drive-by shooting at 6:30 pm on Friday. That evening, south Dallas
explodes in massive outbreaks of random violence. During a lot of
running around, the runners hear that the gang that committed the
drive-by was killed. Gunfire echoes in the background, sirens are
heard, looters are having a field day. The runners come across fights
and firefights, a mandatory curfew is imposed on the cities, and the
runners spend the night with a friendly gang.
The next day, the runners find out that over the last two Fridays,
violent crimes had increased significantly in the south Dallas area.
Mulling this over, a fixer calls up Our Heroes with a job offer.
Mister Johnson is from TandyCorp and has a zippy-lock bag containing
a BTL chip. It seems that on Friday night, five executives geeked
each other in imaginative ways 'bout 8:10pm. All of them were
chipping, and Tandy wants the runners to find out where the chips are
coming from.
An investigation into the chips reveals coding from a local
simsense company and the runners track down an engineer/encoder who
was laid off from said company months ago. The encoder had somehow
come into some nuyen and has a little shop set up. Unfortunately, the
encoder is dead. It seems that a local gang performed a drive-by
shooting early Friday evening, and the encoder was one of the dead.
And now that gang turned up dead. Looks like someone's covering their
tracks.
Hong Lang spends the night at Bu'trey's (the Lone Star mage) where
he tells her what they've found out about the BTLs. She hopes to
uncover the plot with the runners and get noticed in the ranks of
Lone Star, in return she'll kick some Lone Star runs to Hong Lang's
group or help out clearing records. Hong Lang confides in her. The
BTLs are one-shot ecstasy chips with a hidden code inside them, which
they can't decipher.
The next day, Hong Lang returns to his apartment to find four
corrupt Lone Star cops who suggest (with a taser/cattle prod) that
his boys stop investigating. Realizing that the cops are going to
kill him, he summons his bound earth elementals to take care of the
mundane cops.
Further investigation turns up names. The encoder's silent
backer is Gary DeMichaels, regional director of Lone Star Security
Services. They also discover the name of a female street assassin
in town from Quebec called St. John.
The runners head to the warehouse where the
encoder set up shop, only to be on hand when a Lone Star response
team arrives disguised as TandyCorp. All hell breaks looks as the
runners escape with proof of DeMichaels' involvement. He's stirring
up trouble in the cities, then when it looks like the local police
can't handle the increased violence, Lone Star will step in to
assist. The BTLs will be cut back and it will have looked like Lone
Star saved the day. And the city law enforcement contract is up for
renewal in just three months. Perhaps Lone Star will get it.
They learn that St. John killed the gang and is meeting with her
Mr. J - DeMichaels. Setting up a sting with undercover DFWPD
officers, they record DeMichaels conspiring to kill Hong Lang and two
of the other runners. DeMichaels is caught, but St. John slips out.
Lynx and Bishop chase her to a parking garage and kill her.
The runners inform TandyCorp and they get paid. Two days later,
they check out the warehouse - it's empty.
They later find out what was on the second program on the chip, a
program that made the chiphead susceptible to subliminals,
subliminals piggybacked on a trideo program broadcast at 8:00 pm on
Fridays, Firefight This Week. The subliminals read "Kill, Kill,
Kill". The runners don't know what happened to the chips.
