A quick recap, from Cromwell’s point-of-view, before the Shadowrun: Corporate SINs episode tonight at 6pm, on HyperRPG’s Twitch Channel!
Cromwell longed to punch his way through the wall, climb down the hospital’s walls, and flee into the dusk. He had to remind himself that he tried hiding before, and discovered that if loneliness didn’t find him, trouble always did. Remind himself that there was no safety out there, not if he didn’t complete the job. Not for him, and not for Elsie, the wayward teenage that he had promised the Great Bear to protect with his life.
The last job had not gone well. The loss of MMFEC’s mark, Josephine Dzhugashvili, to a team of elite runners had hit everyone hard. Cromwell could see it in the way Mordecai muttered to himself in dark corners. In the way Fang kept rechecking her implanted gun, just in case. In the way Elsie would start to speak and then suddenly fall silent, staring out windows or down at the ground. Even the speed at which Ma1nfram3 agreed to be put under, as bait, seemed incongruous to the Elven Decker’s carefully guarded nature.
But now there was a job to do. Evo’s Ms. O’Johnson had been clear about the terms: 5,000 nuyen, each, to locate a particular Shiawase facility, engaging in illicit research on “volunteers”. The group was to discover the location of the facility and provide video documentation of the location where the research was being performed. A bonus of 3,000 nuyen would be provided if the exact nature of the research could be determined, an extra 2,000 nuyen for freeing five “volunteers”, and 500 more for each extra.
Ma1nfram3 had obtained a low quality security card for Elsie, removed any trace of her actually identity, and put herself in the less-than-gentle care of the Red Blossom clinic, the rest of the group had descended upon the clinic: located on the seventh floor of a hospital, in the shadow of the Aztechnology Pyramid. The plan had been to send Elsie in to wake Ma1nfram3 up. And while she had talked her way past the hospital’s general security, her disguise had not been enough to get her into the restricted area of the Red Blossom clinic. And so, Mordecai, Fang and Cromwell had joined her. Breaking through the security door, Cromwell had carefully fired a narcojet-injected arrow into the one visible security guard… who, remarkably, managed to stay on his feet. And that was where Plan A had turned into the entire group fighting guards, drones, gas grenade, and incredibly, two plant monsters from another plane of existence!
At some point in the fray, Elsie had gone down. Cromwell remembered hearing the sound of The Great Bear roaring in his head, in a hail of grenades, fists, exploding drones, and vines. And then, an odd silence. Wounded and barely standing, the group had revived the unconscious Elsie and found difficulty in waking Ma1nfram3. Cromwell felt a little guilty about the empty spots on his grenade belt–until he remembered that the guards who had taken the brunt of the blasts had stood by while Shiawase experimented upon the innocent. Besides, Cromwell had more to worry about than whether the guards would survive their injuries.
If the guard’s cries hadn’t called down a High Threat Response team, the grenades certainly had, and the team had but scant moments before a force they would have no chance to defeat would arrive…
Tony Beeman has lived in Seattle as a writer, performer, director and software developer since 1998. In addition to performing, directing and serving as Artistic Associate at Unexpected Productions in Pike Place Market, Tony performs regularly with 4&20 Improv, Seattle Experimental Theater, and Improv Anonymous. He has taught workshops in seven countries. His Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is INFP.
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