GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 6: Body Snatchers

Characters:
Braxton "Jar" Jiggs - Cybertech/Ripperdoc
Alexander "Specter" Marshal - Solo
Pat "Peacock" Watson - "Former" Nomad
Ruby "Paxos" Lang - Netrunner

Taking Care of Business

Paxos was newly homeless and Specter figured he needed to relocate as well in case Stacy had recognized him, so for the last three days of June, they couch-surfed with Peacock and Jar, respectively.  They were all larger than life personalities so it wouldn't be a viable long-term solution, though, so Paxos started a lease on an actual apartment in The Glen, while Specter just found a cheap room above the roundabout in Kabuki.  Peacock spent a week hanging out at a bar that the guards of the prison their family was locked up in frequented.  After spending close to a thousand eddies on drinks for people, they singled out one who seemed susceptible to pressure, for future reference.

Jar waited a week to get a meeting with a Voodoo Boys higher-up, then bribed him to let him take over another unit in the hotel to have a more "proper" ripper lab.  Having seen a chameleon skin in action, Specter finally bit the bullet and had Jar do the full skin replacement job, then spent the next week in bed recovering.  He also got his cyber knuckles tuned up so they wouldn't fail on him, but the parts for his bootleg Sandevistan were pricey and had to be ordered from the Soviet Union, meaning that piece of chrome would remain glitchy for now.  

Paxos spent a while reading the news, trying to read between the lines to find places that had little corporate authority, eventually ending up with a very short list, largely featuring warzones, or exotic locales like the O'Neill space stations (which were closed to the outside world anyway).  A couple weeks later, Paxos got an abrupt call from a Downtown fixer who was in the big leagues: Reality Black.  She was extremely dismissive, telling Paxos that this call wouldn't usually be worth her time, but that the client had asked for Paxos' crew by name.  Client's name was Sabela Elara, an old friend of Paxos', and after confirming that she already had the contact info, Reality hung up.

Some Work For A Friend

After shooting a few quick texts back and forth with Sabela, Paxos had arranged a meeting for the next day, at a nice cafe in Reconciliation Park.  When everybody showed up, there were heavy clouds in the sky, and the corpo security forces and NCPD were staring each other down from their respective turf across the park.  They found the cafe, which was built right over the creek, with glass floors, and Paxos gave Sabela a quick hug.  Her brother, Ezra, who had been partying?  Now he was missing.  (This being Corpo Plaza, everyone was careful to not openly discuss illegal crimes.)

She'd had a buddy in the biomonitor division look up his Trauma Team implant and found that his biorhythms were perfect, with no fluctuation, which meant it was probably being spoofed.  His GPS showed that he was at his apartment, but she'd been over there to look for him (she had a spare key) and confirmed that he wasn't there, just to make sure.  His place was a mess, but it didn't look like it had been broken into (not that she'd necessarily know what that would look like).

Peacock asked why she hadn't gone to the NCPD; she had, and they'd made her wait 7 days until they'd open a missing person case.  After the wait, they'd made it clear that they wouldn't do anything proactive, but they'd tell Sabela if Ezra turned up.  She'd given up on doing this through official channels and had gone to Paxos instead.  She knew he was probably dead, but she'd like to know for sure, and ideally they'd bring back his remains.  Sabela offered up only 2000 eddies for the job.  Despite pressure from the others, Paxos refused to attempt to negotiate up: as far as she was concerned, she was doing a favour for a friend, and money was secondary.

That out of the way, she gave them what clues she had.  Ezra had been going out to a ton of clubs, but analysis of his GPS showed that he had been frequenting 3 in particular: one in Kabuki, one in Arroyo, and one Downtown.  After looking at the coordinates, Peacock noted that the Arroyo place was an Animals-run fight pit called The Marmoset, and the Downtown location was Sub-Zero, an independent club, but they weren't sure on Kabuki.

Sabela also sent them a photo of Ezra:

• Caucasian
• Artificially-tanned skin
• Dyed green hair, expertly styled
• Faux faded vest and jeans, both actually from a luxury brand
• Lots of gold jewelry
• Chrome limbs (Jar noted that they were actually just skinplates, and that the limbs were 'ganic)
• Noteworthy abs and other muscles (though Jar couldn't tell if they were cosmetic or not)

With that done, Sabela offered to take them to have a look around Ezra's place, and Peacock agreed to drive them there; Sabela was surprised that any of them could afford a car.  It was a nice corpo apartment tower Downtown, with a (likely armed) concierge and metal detectors.  They took the turbo elevator up quite a ways, and walked into the apartment.  It was far bigger and more luxurious than anywhere any of them had ever lived.  The bedroom was in a loft, it had floor-to-ceiling windows with a decent view of the coast, and it even had some hardwood paneling.

At the moment, though, it was in rough shape.  Weeks or months of unwashed dishes, leftover takeout, empty beer bottles, and miscellaneous trash filled the air with a pungent stench, and some loose scattered white powder (likely cocaine) gave the floor a gritty texture.  The crew looked around and agreed that it didn't seem that there'd been a struggle (other than Ezra's personal struggle with being recently divorced, anyway).  Paxos hacked into Ezra's terminal and went over his credit card statements, which finally let her identify the address in Kabuki: Lizzie's.

Given the crew's recent bad blood with the Mox, they decided they wouldn't be going there unless they absolutely couldn't help it.  There was one other transfer of note, to a numbered corporation that a quick search revealed as being headquartered in Pacifica.  Whatever was going on, it seemed too sophisticated for the Animals.  Since they were done in her brother's apartment, Sabela left to go get ready for work.

Jar, having noticed the security cameras in the hallway and elevator, suggested Paxos hack into the system to check the recordings.  Unfortunately, she'd need access to the security terminal, which was probably locked on the ground floor.  Fortunately, the concierge was incredibly gullible, and believed her when she said she was there to install a quarterly patch.  She copied over the recordings from the past month to her deck, then went back to her new place to spend the rest of the night scrolling through them for clues.

Going Clubbing

As luck would have it, Peacock knew one of the bartenders at Sub-Zero through their hobby of going to clubs and sitting in the corner, and they arrived early in the evening just as it was opening so she'd have time for a brief chat.  The bartender, an asian woman with a ponytail in tight revealing clothes named Zheng Lin, recognized Ezra from the photo.  Despite his outlandish appearance, he didn't stand out much; a lot of the club's clientele were corpo suits trying to let loose.  As she recalled, he was always trying to pick up chicks.  He'd never gotten into any fights (beyond a slap or two).  Last time she'd seen him, he'd been with a girl, a redhead with a spiderweb light tattoo on her cheek who'd seemed tired.

They next drove to the Marmoset, where Specter had been planning to take the lead; he'd dated an Animal for a while, so he knew how to deal with them.  As they pulled up to the warehouse containing the fighting pit, they noted a crowd of bikers with a flaming cross on their backs, who Peacock pegged as being a roadgang called the Redeemers, milling about before the fights started.  There was some tension as two aggressive gangs interacted, but no fights had broken out yet, and nobody seemed to have any weapons beyond pistols.

The crew walked in, and Jar quickly found the woman taking bets, who towered over the surrounding gangers waving wads of bills in the air.  Specter noticed her too: she was his ex, Sarah.  Rather than risk escalating things, he decided to wait in the car.  Jar attempted to flirt with Sarah, but she was utterly oblivious to his innuendos.  When he became more explicit in his intentions, she immediately shut him down, saying she had a boyfriend.  Figuring she was gullible, Jar then said that he had actually been contracted by her boss to track down a deadbeat, and wanted to know if anybody had seen him, then showed her the picture of Ezra.

Sarah bluntly told him that she'd seen the gonk in the photo with some junkie chick with a spiderweb light tattoo.  They might've been talking about going to some place in Northside.  Jar thanked her and said he'd put in a good word with "the boss".  Just as they were getting back in the car to leave, Paxos called with the results of her research.  There was footage of Ezra and Spiderweb Girl in the elevator with audio, and it seemed like spiderweb girl was trying to lure him to Northside with promises of drugs and hot friends!

Honeypot

Listening to her describe the place, it didn't map to anywhere they knew; the landmarks she was giving would put it in multiple different places.  They spent the next couple hours driving around Night City, picking up Paxos and grabbing body armour and guns at their respective homes.  Peacock then drove them around Northside for a few hours, checking out the places Spiderweb Girl had mentioned in the video, and lucked out by finding her leading another mark towards an unlit parking lot around midnight.  They saw a half-dozen gangers hiding in the shadows of a burnt out car (none of this darkness was a problem for Peacock, whose vision is augmented).

All of the goons had bubblegum pink hair, which marked them as members of Bubblegum Atrocity, the goons of Jar's arch-nemesis, Anthony Guntherson.  Peacock drove them closer, and noticed a van idling nearby driven by another of the pink-haired goons.  Jar asked for someone's phone (Paxos ended up sacrificing hers), and attached a magnet to the back to jury-rig a tracking device.  Specter then stripped down and activated his chameleon skin, invisibly jogging over to plant the device on the van and then returning.

Just as they'd thought, when Spiderweb Girl and her new guy came close to the burnt out car, the gangers jumped out and injected the guy with something that knocked him out, then the van pulled up, they all piled in with the body, and left, leaving the girl alone.  The crew waited for the goons to get a good distance away before pulling up beside the girl; Specter pointed a handgun at her and told her to get in the car.

Peacock started driving, going nowhere in particular, while the others interrogated her about what was happening.  She was forthcoming, saying in a near-monotone that she was paid cash to bring marks out to Northside for the gang to abduct.  They were apparently based out of Pacifica and operated up here because nobody was taking up offers to go to Pacifica for a good time (also this way they didn't piss off any locals).  Other than that, though, she didn't know much, as she was just a freelancer.

Once it was clear that she didn't have more to give, she started asking that they just let her go.  They were capable people who would be able to track down and kill her, so she wouldn't cross them.  Jar figured she wouldn't turn on them immediately, but if they took too long she might tell the goons.  To spook her a bit, Paxos hacked into Spiderweb Girl's agent, found her home address, and dropped her off right outside.

Peacock set off on the highway to Pacifica, and well before they arrived, Jar updated them that the van had come to a stop outside the Luxura Hotel.  As they drew close, they saw the 70-story monstrosity.  It had been strafed by a helicopter gunship a year prior, leaving much of the upper floors a ruin, to the point that a crude "sky bridge" of debris now connected it to a neighbouring tower.  The ground floor entrance was decorated with bright and playful graffiti of stylized faces (think emoji) in the pink and teal of Bubblegum Atrocity.

The entrance tower on the other end of the skybridge was also covered in grafitti, with a recurring image of a skull with a spider crawling out of the mouth.  Other nearby buildings were an abandoned mall, which Jar said was run by the Voodoo Boys, and a "gym" that was non-stop broadcasting a loud and hypersexualized ad.

Notes:

We had to do a slight rewind at the start of the session to allow for downtime to be done between missions.

Paxos' player got a six second voice chat ban for overusing ChatGPT.

We're back after a long hiatus!