GURPS Cyberpunk 2078 Session 8: Headhunting

Characters:

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

No Rest For The Wicked

While the others divvied up the take from the last job, Peacock took their new van back to the warehouse where they were storing their vehicles and gave it a tune up.  Or, that's what they wanted to do, but they quickly found out that it would need a full engine replacement; it was a miracle it had made it all the way from Pacifica.  After that, they bought a trailer and towed it and the van out into the Badlands in a concealed box canyon for their family to hide out after the inevitable jailbreak.

The others were annoyed when they were informed that Fred Runt, a street kid techie that Jar was acquainted with, had just flooded the market for cheap cyberware.  They elected to wait it out and split the 'ware between Jar's place and Paxos' place, though they still fenced the guns for a few hundred each.  Paxos and Specter then did a weeklong therapy regimen each, which Paxos really ended up needing, because her apartment flooded.  Most of the cyberware was good, though a couple eyes were ruined, but a bunch of furniture and clothes had to be repaired while she lived out of a hotel for a few days.  The guys the landlord called in to do the work were confused because apparently the damaged pipe had been cut clean through with an angle grinder (Paxos: "Militeeeeeech!").

While she was still dealing with the fallout of the flood, Paxos also broke worked on breaking the encryption on some NUSA government databases to prep her new identity.  Peacock slotted a news shard and picked out a date for their family's jailbreak: during a big parade when the NCPD in Santo would be busy elsewhere.  Specter meanwhile went to Thumbs, an old buddy of his who ran a sex dungeon, and scored some used couches and a sweet sound system for his gang hideout, which helped get some new recruits.  In exchange, he had to act as muscle for a drug deal going down in Kabuki with the Tyger Claws, which ended up being uneventful.

Audition

Jar got a call from a surprising source: Alison Wonderland, a fixer Downtown who ran in the same circles as Reality Black.  Job was a corpo extraction and pay was high at $4k each.  It wasn't truly high-end work, because the target wasn't in a really secure corporate enclave, but they should consider it an on-ramp to the big leagues.  If they were interested, she said that the crew should swing by Sub-Zero around midnight where they could meet face to face.  Jar said they were in, and informed the others.

That night, the crew walked into Sub-Zero to gentle electronic music and waded through the crowd to the private rooms where the meet was to be held.  Alison Wonderland was waiting inside, alone, with a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket in the middle of the table.  Famous for being a genetic freak who never aged, Alison had allegedly escaped from a corpo lab during the Time of the Red; Paxos doubted the "genetic freak" thing, as cosmetic 'ware could easily do the job, and it would just add to her mystique.  Still, whether by surgery or genemods, Alison looked to be in her late teens despite having been on the scene for decades.

In a surprisingly retro move, a projector dropped from the ceiling and displayed an image on the wall of the words "Congratulations!" surrounded by clip art of clapping hands and balloons.  Alison congratulated them on getting an audition to the big leagues, said that the job shouldn't be too difficult, and then asked if there were any groups they refused to work with.  Paxos shot her a private message, while Specter just said that he wasn't on good terms with the Mox right now.  With that out of the way, Alison said there shouldn't be any problems and smiled at Paxos: as the job was targeting Militech.

The projector switched to a photo of a woman, and Alison started the briefing: a genetics researcher named Jennifer Thracker was the client, and was looking to defect to a rival corp which the crew didn't need to know.  The terms of the extraction were to retrieve Ms. Thracker, her research data, and some of the actual physical materials.  Legally speaking, this wasn't technically a Militech facility for deniability reasons, but the proxy they were using, "Genetronics", was effectively just a Militech subsidiary.  They were to drop off Ms. Thracker and her research at a safehouse in Wellsprings, where she could lie low until her new employer came to pick her up.

At that, Alison handed Paxos a dongle and explained that it would display the access code to the safehouse, which changed every 30 minutes.  The slide changed again, this time showing a variety of photos and a crude diagram of the facility where the research was stored and started to go into the details:

• All of the walls were glass (except for the washroom), so there was almost no privacy or possibility of sneaking
• It was more or less a panopticon; there were cameras everywhere, so many that Thracker hadn't bothered to show them on the diagram
• There were also mirrors all over the place to get both the cameras and the guards full view of the entire area
• It was a small facility with only one hallway (with a decon airlock) and labs on either side
• Staff was three researchers (including Thracker) and four guards, all of whom have Biomonitors which would send out alarm if they were injured or killed
• The four guards had orders to kill on sight
• There was an emergency alarm in the control room which would call in the full might of Militech in a matter of minutes
• It was in the basement of an "independent optometrist" in The Glen
• There were three access points: a cargo elevator that opened onto an alley, a set of stairs that were in the back rooms of the optometrist's, and an emergency hatch, though Thracker didn't know where it came out

Paxos asked what the timeline was like, but Alison just shrugged and said anything within a month would be fine; Thracker was going to have to lay low for a long time anyway.  Peacock thought they noticed something in the photos and asked for a copy, which Alison transferred.  This confirmed their suspicion: the room labelled "development lab" was conspicuously absent.  By zooming and enhancing on the mirrors and glass walls, with their giant cybereyes, though, they were able to see into it, and noted that it looked like a living space for 3-5 children.

The crew started talking among themselves, trying to work out what they were going to do (Paxos: "Do you think we could fit a child in a briefcase?"), so Alison sat down, crossed her legs, popped the bottle of champagne, and poured some for herself.  After the conversation reached a pause, the crew realized they were done here, and left the club.  

Legwork

Peacock and Specter staked out the "optometrist's" to learn when people came and went.  It looked like the guards were staggered, 2 switching out every 4 hours, while the researchers worked 7-3.  Some cleaning staff entered through the cargo elevator at night.  Paxos looked into Night City building permits and found that the HVAC unit on the building had been updated to an oversized unit, which implied the black site was taking in normal air, meaning they'd be able to pipe in crazy purple knockout gas if they wanted.  The recordings the other two had taken suggested that none of the staff had nasal filters, though it was hard to tell with such a small implant.

While Specter bullied anyone who tried to interrupt, Peacock went around the back of the building and used their enhanced eyes to determine that, going by the building dimensions and the photos they had, the emergency hatch exited out of a city manhole cover.  While that happened, Paxos did a Deep Dive into Genetronic's systems (which were just Militech's) and found one more wrinkle: there was a button in the control room that had to be pressed every 30 minutes, or it would send a signal directly to Militech HQ.

Notes:

Peacock is apparently not yet cool enough to be The Peacock.  One day.

Paxos spent a good 30-40 minutes thinking over whether to install the Grip Feet they stole from the Bubblegum Atrocity gang hideout before declining.  She then spent another 10 minutes on whether to buy a better Neural Port.

There was, as before, much joking about installing the Mr. Studd XXXL Cyberpenis, but sadly nobody did.

Potential rule going forward: a character who gets back up to their maximum Humanity can remove any Humanity Disadvantages they've acquired (provided their maximum Humanity is above the threshold for acquiring those Disadvantages).

Skillshards are probably going to cost 1 Humanity per new one slotted beyond the first.  The main reason for this change is that I didn't like how it worked in fiction, so I came up with something: it's basically wiring your brain with someone else's memories, and while they're not supposed to convey anything other than skills, there are side effects which make it hard to tell whether a thought is yours or from whoever scrolled the shard.

When they went to the meeting at Sub-Zero, Specter actually left his rifle in the car for once.  Character growth!

Peacock used their third car slot on a supercharged van - no more new cars until they free their family from prison.  In this case, "supercharged" just means it's as fast as a normal car but gets extra seats.