Monday, October 22, 2007

The End?

Six, Glyph, Ki-Rin, Ash,

The runners had made their way onto Alcatraz, and were now engaged in a firefight with Allisom’s elite Seraphim troops. Ki-Rin, Ash and Glyph were inside the main prison block backed up by Six’s drones, while Six remained hidden in an old unused concrete toilet block.

Ki-Rin lobbed in a few grenades into the kill zone and a few moments later Six’s drone led the charge into the corridor followed by Ash, Ki-Rin and Glyph. It could have easily become a kill zone, with Seraphim soldiers overlooking the corridor they ran down but Six spotted the movement of men suiting up and the team lobbed some well aimed grenades which reduced the fighting fit to mortally wounded. Glyph and Ash made their way up to make sure they were dead.

Six, outside, heard movement and braved a snap look out from his hiding place to see a small squad heading over to a underground emplacement not far from where he hid. An inspection with a drone indicated some kind of concrete bunker, he gave the others a heads up, and this was enough for Ki-Rin who left the main block to investigate.

Ash had made his way over to the now dead Seraphim and found that the area where they were was an equipping station. There were sets of their hi-tech armour scattered about the flooring, and although blast charred from the grenades, seemed relatively undamaged. His mercenary tendencies shone through and he quickly began to don bits and pieces of the armour, until someone remembered that the last time they were able to inspect one of these suits they saw that the man inside was attached to the suit cyberneticaly and a warning was shouted out that he may become entwined into the Seraphim system. He had a moment of clarity and aborted the idea.

Ki-Rin came to the top of the concrete emplacement and saw that it lead down into some kind of bunker. Six tried to send a drone down to investigate but there was some kind of signal shielding and nearly lost contact with the drone completely. Ki-Rin waited for the rest of the team but managed to tweak a signal booster so that Six could drop a eyeball drone and get information back. The drone reported that there was a circular room at the bottom of the ladder that was completely empty with the exception of a dead body, that of a Seraphim trooper.
Glyph announced her arrival at the top of the bunker by lobbing a grenade down, obliterating the corpse, and the eyeball drone.

The runners had gathered at the top of the concrete bunker when Six realised that they were in the open and could be fodder for the sniper, he aligned the Flyspy onto the lighthouse tower and both the Sniper and the spotter were overlooking their position and for some reason hadn’t fired. This news was enough to hustle the runners out of sight into the bunker despite Ki-Rin’s protestations that they could be dropping into a trap.

Cautiously the runners investigated and discovered that this bunker seemed to be the housing for a gigantic computer that they presumed housed the A.I, Choir, but when they descended into the computer room they were surprised to find more dead Seraphim troops. Each seemed to have been in the process of laying anti-personnel mines before having been killed with some kind of laser, the runners assumed that Choir had struck them down.

The runners experimented by taunting the A.I.’s weapon system and realised that she tracked the runners constantly but only fired when Ash brought out his weapon in the computer room, Ash was lucky to survive, but his combat reflexes were good.

Ki-Rin decided to engage the A.I. in the matrix, and was surprised and a little intimidated when the computer was able to impose it’s own profile over his own powerful persona, he persisted and tried to talk to the AI. Being given nothing but riddles and unhelpful answers he gave up and apologised to the rest of the team. They then barracked him back into the matrix and he tried again.

Choir was more helpful than he imagined, and once he cut through her computer jargon, she told him that she had killed the guards so the runners would be able to stay alive to cease the scourge. When questioned deeper, she knew nothing of what she had just said and the runners assumed that she had been hacked in some way. Choir also told the runners that Blake was on route with the Primary (whom they took to mean Allisom) and that the Primary had stood down the rest of Seraphim.

The runners realised that this was their chance to take out Allisom and hurried up to the only helipad which was on the roof of one of the buildings. They set the anti-personnel mines around and took up positions around the helipad. They then watched in dismay when two helicopter gunships and an executive helicopter swooped over head, the executive touching down on the scrubland at the other end of the island. The runners moved quickly and hustled across to where Allisom stood outside the helicopter.

Allisom had Blake at gunpoint and was surrounded by six handpicked Seraphim troopers, the runners were quickly closing on the scene. Ki-Rin was first on the scene and fired the first Salvo at Allisom. The Sedim realised that it was not going to be able to bargain with the runners and dispatched Blake with a single bullet before ordering his troops to open fire.

The runners were forced into a desperate fight, Six had to break cover, his drones stranded on the rooftop ambush, Ki-Rin was strafed by both helicopters and had to make a do or die shot at the pilot through the windshield. Glyph and Ash engaged the Seraphim guards in a close run firefight.

After the dust settled, Dominic Cross/Allisom lay dead in the dirt. The runners weren’t sure how to kill a Shedim but urged Ash to decapitate the body with his weapons focus. There was a slight glint of light at the cut, but that was all. They weren’t sure if they had banished the spirit but they could think of nothing else to do.

The runners took Dominic Cross’s helicopter and flew back to San Francisco main land with Blake’s body which they left in Ash’s care.

The runners returned to their homes. Blake was dead. Allisom was gone. Cross Applied Technologies had become nothing more than corporate assets divvied up between the bigger corporations.

But was that the end?...