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Entry 25: 06.08.70>
Ash is up to something. Devious little turd. I know he’s been out and about in Atlanta, doing his thing, flexing the feelers and trying to set us up with sufficient contacts to make us more effective. However, he’s going about it in a manner I’m not sure I like, getting us involved, again, in far deeper shit than I think we can handle.

He came in from one of his contact meet-n-greets a few days back with a mission he told us just had to be done. Pressed, he told us it was for ‘a friend’ and admitted that we wouldn’t be getting paid. Now give the lad his due, he offered to pay Glyph and I for our assistance, out of his own pocket but alarm bells were already starting to ring – none of us know anyone down here well enough to be doing jobs on the house… With reservations then, we agreed to help and soon came to realise that there was a philanthropic kilter to the Run he’d picked up. Atlanta has its very own Orkish Underground, which goes by the name of The Falls. The place has been getting terrorised for the past six years by a serial killer dubbed Lobo and Ash wanted us to go down there and serve up a slice of justice. The authorities don’t care about the place – evidently this new ‘friend’ Ash has made, does.

We resolved to head down there as disguised as we could make ourselves. We bought a couple of Rat Bikes and I got them running, while Ash invested in some tatty clothing and dirtied up our gear – we didn’t want to get lynched for our ‘shinies’ by a horde of Ork Tramps. Reasoning that cash would have little value in the slums of the undercity, Glyph collected together some barter items – food stuffs, medical supplies, booze and fags and suitable togged up we went looking for trouble.

Just getting into the place was a trial. Friendly and welcoming they ain’t but we made our way around the barricades, observation posts and obvious ambush points thanks to the bikes and rode on in. Place is called The Falls because of the constantly streaming water that cascades from the foundations of Atlanta above down on to the undercity – a brackish mix of rainwater, spill from cracked utility pipes, sewage overflow and the natural leak from the water table. It’s a shitty way to live basically and whole areas of the place are flooded with several feet of collected water.

The inhabitants could see through our disguises straight away. Proud to a man, they were unwilling to accept help from outsiders and it took all of our collective powers of persuasion just to get them to talk to us. The art of persuasion often includes violence however and as Ash negotiated, Glyph and I clocked a group of Toughs moving in to get personal. One of them was carrying a sap and intended to use it but when it was shot right out of his hand, he took the point that we might object. The air was thick with unspoken threats of violence for a while but I twigged we were outside what passed for a hospital down there. Medical supplies changed hands and we ‘bought’ the information we were after.

We were pointed in the direction of an area of the undercity known as The Dark. The power seemed to be out in the entire area, evidently giving the place it’s name and as we made our way down to that sector, we mulled over the information we’d been given. It seemed Lobo’s victims were often found with circular abrasions on their chest and temple. We speculated that they might correspond to the medical pads used to monitor heart rate and brain activity and suddenly we began to smell rat. It was beginning to have all the hallmarks of another fucking Corp screw-job, using The Falls’ inhabitants as guinea pigs.

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We were all twitchy, but it was Glyph’s eagle eyes that spotted the first concrete evidence we were right about Corp involvement. As we hunted for a likely-looking building to serve as a temporary base of operations, she spotted that we were under surveillance from the distinctive profile of a set of night vision goggles. It was kit far too high tech for the undercity’s indigenous population so we began to revise our expectations of what we might come up against.

A quick recce soon confirmed that we would need to descend down to the lowest level of The Dark and overcoming a mixture of fear and distaste, we pressed on, chasing half seen shadows of movement, flickers at the edges of our vision and a deep baritone growl. Down at the bottom of the Underground we encountered our first serious resistance – a Corp kill-team kitted out for surveillance. Pinned down at the bottom of the stairwell we had to think fast and pull a twin flanking manoeuvre to switch around behind them and put them out of action. It was then we discovered the first body. It had clearly been the Corp team’s objective – relatively fresh but fitted with sophisticated medical monitoring equipment. Here was a pretty puzzle. Were the Corp ‘feeding’ civilians to Lobo? What information could they hope to obtain from the medical data of a sacrificial lamb?

Pushing on, we got a stroke of luck and spotted light reflecting off of the waters. Tracing it back to the source, we found a relatively intact building, with its own power supply and slipped inside the building opposite so we could make our way up to the windows and see what the hell our neighbours were up to. Jackpot! We were looking across at the Corp nerve centre, just a street’s width away, fully kitted out with computer equipment, signal uplink, medical monitoring bay and armed guards. We lined up, showdown style, at the window and on the count of three let hot lead rip from room to room. It was over in seconds – a concerted burst of fire that took them completely by surprise and finished the battle in our favour before they even knew they were fighting for their lives.

The Corp Ops were monitoring four camera feeds – three from ordinary residents going about their business and one from the viewpoint of someone stalking the Dark near our position. Figuring this to be Lobo, Ash and I headed out to pick up his train leaving Glyph at the monitoring station. She soon found that the Corps had been doing more than simple monitoring – they were directing the flow of certain stimuli to Lobo, effectively switching him on and off, controlling when he was a killer and when he was indistinguishable from other civilians. The bastards had themselves a Manchurian candidate and by the looks of it, several more waiting in the wings. Glyph turned down the stimuli so we could approach this Lobo and try to talk to him but the instant he came down from his drug-fuelled high, he was wracked by remorse, threw down two monowire scythes and fled sobbing.

We had ourselves a dilemma. These Lobo’s weren’t in control of their actions and that made bringing them to justice unfair at the very least. We also didn’t dare sabotage the equipment for fear it would activate all of the Sleeper Lobos and send them running riot. We needed guidance so Ash phoned his mystery contact. In moments, the Run was off. Ash’ new buddy Chuckles had known about these goings on all along and set the whole thing up so that the true evil of the corporations would be revealed to us. What a crock. If Chuckles had bothered to talk to us instead of being all pious and holier than thou he’d have found out our true feelings where the Corps are concerned. With the trials and tribulations we’ve had, he’s preaching to the converted and I don’t like it. I don’t like being taught unnecessary lessons in morality by strangers and worse still, I don’t like the thought that Chuckles is effectively party to the problems in The Falls. He admits to knowing what’s going on yet permits it to happen? Poor form. Ash needs to wise up pronto and ditch this paizon.

Mood: Irritated.
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