Search for runners past.

Sickle, Ash, Six.

Six and Glyph headed down to Nunzio’s safe house, Glyph stayed behind and watched the apartment while Six headed back to Albuquerque to see how Ash was getting on with the repairs to the pickup.
Repairs were completed as quoted and the pair of them headed back to Atlanta.

Nunzio phoned, he told the runners that he had been given a job that he wanted to pass onto the runners. Once they got back to the safe house Carlo would give them the details. The runners met back up with Glyph and not long after Carlo came with beer and a job for them.

Carlo explained that there was a meeting with some significant crime bosses that was held in San Fran a few weeks ago. A guy called the Cowboy assembled the Mafia, the Seven Stars Triad, and some Yardies from New Orleans (the Yaks were also invited to the meet but they declined to attend). and started waving the almighty nuyen around to get these crime syndicates to dance to his tune.
This meeting happened to be the same meeting that the runners had witnessed, and they quickly placed the name Jonny Kickback to the man called Cowboy.
Nunzio wasn’t happy with the deal but the Don wanted to stay in while the other syndicates were in to ensure they weren’t missing out on anything so Nunzio shook hands with the other crime bosses that night.

A couple of weeks passed before the Cowboy made his first request. Find three people. Shift, Kote, and Binary Pulse. Unimpressed with the task Nunzio passed the job onto his little brother, Six, who he knew was kicking his heels and better to keep the free flowing money in the family.

Sunday 16th July 2070

Six and Ash started to do the legwork, Ash called Daisy to see if she could get any info on these people, while Six put a call straight through to their fixer, Snow.

Six was hit with a vision of Snow stood in front of his field of vision, scrabbling for a gun. There was a whine and then a beam of energy punching a neat hole through Snow’s forehead. Snow stared for a moment with a stupefied expression, before collapsing like a broken doll.

Then Snow answered the phone. Caught off guard for a moment all Six could do is warn his friend to get out of town for a while and to trust him. Snow was confused but agreed. Then Six asked about the three names. Snow knew who they were. Runners back in the 50’s, there was a fourth runner called Solace, but they had long since retired.

Six let Ash know what he had gleaned, who then refined the search parameters with Daisy. The decker then came up with some more snippets of information. Kote, had killed himself 13/03/58. Went on a killing spree in Renraku before blowing a new hole in his own head. Shift and Solace went under the radar at about the same time. Binary Pulse was a decker who continued to run until 2065, when she turned herself in to Lone Star for the crimes she had committed. She then seemed to have gone straight, ditching the name Binary Pulse in favour of her real name, April Walker she had opening up a Talismonger shop in Birmingham (Alabama)
Keen to follow up leads quickly Ash and Six headed there.

Sickle received a phone call message from Six warning of possible issues in San Fran, and when Sickle finally picked up the message he called Six, who advised him of the situation. Sickle decided to join the other runners out in the CAS.

Checking out the talismongery called Walk the Path, the runners found that it was locked up. And had clearly been closed for a time. They asked around and Six found a women’s boutique where the store owner claimed to know April. Six left a spurious calling card for April to call him and then headed back to the shop.

Checking over the shop they decided that there was little of value inside except a Fairlight super computer that was broadcasting a heavily encrypted signal to somewhere. This piqued their interest enough for them to have another look.
Daisy advised Ash that she could download the information from the computer but they would need to go inside and tap into the cabling itself. She sent Ash a plug and play transmitter that they could use for this task.

Sickle and the transmitter arrived the following morning. After a long brief the trio headed back to the mall for about 10pm to start their B&E.

Six sat outside not far away in the car, Ash and Sickle went in. Getting inside was easy, getting to the computer was easy, selecting the cable and starting the download of the data was easy. Sickle and Ash detected a faint odour of heating surface oil, and then Sickle saw movement down the stairs.
Sickle called Six and asked him take his drone to go and see what was moving around. Six duly did and saw an eight foot tall machine with weaponry for hands. Six reported in. Sickle and Ash got worried but it seemed to be waiting for them down stairs.

The pair waited quietly while Daisy raped the hard drive of information. Then a large safe in the opposite room finally broke Ash, who whipped out his acetaline torch and began to cut the doors off.
The machine/creature pounded up the stairs as soon as it heard the torch flick into life, and the pair of them readied themselves for a fight. Six sped to the scene also.

They fought for not much more than a minute before a rail gun appeared in a track along the ceiling and opened up on the machine as well. The concentration of fire killed it and it detonated with force to knock over the runners.

In the aftermath Sickle heard a phone ringing. He headed to answer while Ash raided the safe, which housed all manner of magical goods.

The call was from someone claiming to be Binary Pulse. Sickle sort of explained who they were and eventually agreed to meet up with her. Ash filled his pockets with semi-precious stones, and gold powder.

The runners headed back to their hotel in Birmingham. They argued for a while over the benefit of meeting up with Binary Pulse but Sickle stuck to his guns, and duly did the following morning.

Monday 17th July 2070

Binary Pulse was into her forties now, but she still had a subtle attractiveness, Sickle met with her over a coffee while Ash and Six observed from another table. She asked a lot of questions and Sickle answered vaguely, she then left with a warning that shadowrunning was a dangerous business.

Six tailed her with a drone, while Ash hassled Daisy for the information from the computer. Daisy said that she had only decrypted 10% of the mass of files held on the computer, but she did have a forwarding number for Shift. Ash recognised the number instantly as one he recognised. It was Snow’s.

Six phoned Snow but there was no answer. They assume that Snow took Six’s advice and had left town.

Meanwhile Binary Pulse had headed to the train station. Headed out of town before doing a switch back to head back to Atlanta. The runners blazed to catch up arriving in the train station with 10 minutes to spare. Ash and Sickle then watched and failed to spot Binary Pulse leave the train.

The headed onto he train and began searching the cabins and toilets as the train began to move off, on a one stop run to the east coast. Ash asked Daisy if she could check the video feeds for the cabin that Binary Pulse had sat in, sure enough she sat down. Only to get up when the train moved off. She headed into a toilet, and a few minutes later stepped out of the toilet as the Cowboy and settle back down for the rest of the ride to Atlanta.

It was too late now, Ash and Sickle were en route to Charleston on the coast. Six was in his car speeding into Atlanta, and Binary Pulse, or the Cowboy, or whoever had slipped past them.

TBC…