Session 4 – Things that make you go BOOM!

Work has gone back to normal at Doc Wagon, except that Thumper seems to be really quiet and keeps to himself.  We keep going to the restaurant and things are OK there, but Thumper seems to be troubled about the Troll gangers we ran into.

Bright was promoted into an EMT position, which he is really excited about.  He has been moved to a different team as their primary med tech.  However they have not yet backfilled his position, so we are running short handed.  We have a day off.

We know Franz was organizing the weapons shipments from Germany, but didn’t know who was behind the idea and why they helped Franz.  However we did not see a Universal Brotherhood symbol there, so we don’t know if it was related to the previous deal down by the docks.

We are at the Triple Tap with a day off.  Thumper is really busy working both the front and back of house, so he cant leave. We decide to go look around the city, to see if we can find Dr. Hyun’s nephew as well as find any more information about the weapons deals and the Universal Brotherhood.  He was last seen near Clybourn and Larabee in the NW part of the Shattergraves.  She also give us a description and a video from one of his presentations.  Ha-Joon Hyun.

We take the L down there.  On the way we also get a message from Charlie Zero say he found something, with a link to Noose Net.  We get off near his last know location.  There are still some businesses, but may are boarded up and things look really sketchy.  Matt finds a quiet stoop and accesses the message while Espadas and Ryoshi keep watch.  However he is not able to connect.  He head to his last known location.  We find a community of apartments that is being built around a park.  The project seems abandoned, and there is only some work going on in one building.  We go into one of the other buildings.  There are some squatters, and we ask them about Ha-Joon.  One of the squatters identifies himself as Jim.  He says the project was shut down after some sort of a problem.  All of the workers just left after some sort of security people told them to leave.  We ask about the Universal Brotherhood.  Another guy comes forward and says he was in there but he got out.  They lie about projects and preach a lot, but nothing ever comes of it.  At the higher levels they get really weird, and people often go missing.  That was why he got out.

We leave and check some other buildings.  Issac notices that another building has a basement and looks a little more finished.  It also seems empty, with no squatters.  We head downstairs and it doesn’t seem to be residential.  There is a large boiler and it is very damp, dirty, and smelly.  We find some boxes and cases from old supplies, but a lot of it is ruined.  There is one computer terminal that seems to control all of this machinery.  It saws it is a water treatment system.  Ryoshi notices a Universal Brotherhood symbol on the wall, scrawled by hand.  There is a trap door nearby, but with no visible mechanism.  Issac looks at the terminal and sees it has some hidden commands.  However when he tries to access them he fumbles and ends up shutting off the terminal.

We go old school and Espadas whacks the floor with his swords.  He slices through the latch and the trap door opens.  There is a lot of dust and darkness, along with a stairwell that goes down.  There is a different smell from below, like chemicals or cleaning solutions.  We head down and find a hallway with a very high tech looking door at then end.  The door says C-104.  The door also senses as magical.  Isaac has a maglock passkey and is able to get it open.  The lights are also on in the room ahead.

Inside is some sort of lab, with an isolation chamber.  There are some glass tubes to one side with some blobby, living things moving around in them.  There is a panel on one wall that says “Verify identity”.  When we don’t respond some small drones drop out of the ceiling.

Espadas moves to block the door so it can’t trap us in here.  He shoots at one and misses.  Issac is able to use his maglock key to hack the security and get the drones to go back into the ceiling.  We grab some files and Issac scans the room and records it with his cyber eyes.  We close the door and get out of there as quickly as possible.

We head to the roof, intending get from there to another building.  We see some security on the road below us.  We quickly climb to the roof and climb over the wall to the next building.  The cops think they saw something and follow us, but we are able to slip away and out the back.

We head to  the restaurant to check on the link and let Charlie Zero know what we found.  The link takes us to a video and a directory that is self deleting, we need to download the data then it will erase itself.  The data has a map of the city showing locations where the Sewer Rats activity have been concentrated.  There are at least 4 hotspots, including the location of the original weapons deal on the docks.  There are 6 or 7 other gangs listed that are competing with the Rats, including two larger gangs.  We can see where the gangs might come into conflict, including the apartments where we just were and around the Triple Tap.

After looking at that we scrub our video to remove faces and voices, and send him the results.  We also include Ha-Joon’s image and tell him what little we know about the Universal Brotherhood.    Since we still have some time we decide to head down to the docks to check out where the weapons deal went down.

As we were riding the L down there, we see that there was an explosion in the area where we just were.  There were casualties, and the explosion leveled multiple buildings, including the building where the lab was and where the homeless were.

We get to the docks, and this area is even seedier than the last area.  There doesn’t look like there has been much activity since the bust.  We find vehicle tracks, marks from large trunks, and many foot prints.  We also find some crumpled paper.  One is a business card for Scott Wilson, who works for the FBI.  The other is a crude map of the warehouse with an area marked to the south is circled.  It is about 1-2 blocks away.  We head that way.

Things smell even worse in this area.  We find another set of buildings that are abandoned.   This was another hot spot on the Sewer Rat activity map.  We stealthily case the neighborhood.  We see some activity on the south side of the building.  There is a cellar entrance there, and some people standing around outside.  They are on watch but we are not spotted.   They do have Sewer Rat patches, and they are all orcs.  Once again Issac records the location and all of the faces to share with Charlie Zero.  We don’t want to take on the whole gang so we retreat.

We head back to the Triple Tap.  We first get a message from Charlie Zero saying that after he started looking around based on our last message when he attracted a lot of unwanted attention.  He is going into hiding and said we should destroy anything we took from the lab.   So of course we look through the folder that we took from the lab.  There seems to be data on test subjects that are identified by a serial number.  The  data tracks them over time and records symptoms.  All of the patients seem to have died, except for the last one.  That one says stage 4 achieved, moving subject to another location.

We decide to replace the binder with a Doc Wagon cover and then hide it work.  We find out that the VTOL crew went to the explosion site. Jay walk says that they had two patients and one fatality.  The patients said he saw some people there right before the explosion and he saw a van.  That guy is in surgery right now.  We head home and will come back just before our shift tomorrow.

When we get in we ask Dr. Hyun.  She says one of the patients is in a coma, but the other one is awake.  She says we shouldn’t talk to him, but Issac goes anyway.  He does his best doctor routine.  Louis Chatwell is the patient.  He is an architect for a firm downtown and was looking at a potential job site.  As they were going past the apartments he saw a black van pull up and several people go into the building carrying big cases.  The ran out shortly after and drove away.  He was about a block away when the explosions started.  It looked like several people were caught in the buildings when they exploded.  He can also describe one of the men:  long nose, Van Dyke goatee, and quite pale skin.

We start our next shift.