Mean Streets
This is a Cyberpunk plot. I originally ran it using Ex Machina from Guardians of Order but it should fit well in most Cyberpunk games/settings. Various sections feature a VoiceOver link. The game is meant to be run for a P.I./Gumshoe style character and his/her associates. At these points I passed the VoiceOver section to the Gumshoe player, who read it aloud. The setting is the fictitious Opal City, a city in the middle of what was once fertile plains, now despoiled by corporate greed and pollution (and yes I’m borrowing this from DC Comic’s Starman series).
Plot
A femme fatale (Lucy Harland) from the P.I.’s past turns up with an offer he can’t refuse. Cold hard cash in order to find a burned-out mercenary by the name of Jacob Sykes.
Jacob was part of a team who blew up part of a facility owned by the corporation Lucy works for (Datastream Corp.) and they want him brought in for questioning. Lucy wants this done on the quiet, despite having tried to involve the Police. Apparently they don’t have the manpower to bring in a trained operative like Jacob, though Lucy believes this to just be an excuse.
Jacob used to haunt several places in Opal City: the Hot Legs Bar, Kool K@’s Cybercafé, and the St. Blessed flophouse. He hasn’t been seen at any of these places for a week but someone there might know where he is. Lucy wants him found, his identity confirmed, and a tag kept on him until her colleagues can pick him up.
Jacob is in hiding because he knows someone is after him. Unfortunately he’s a bit messed up after an accident on his last mission. He believes that a secret technocracy with plans to destabilize the government is hunting for him. He believes he was hired to take part in a series of raids on government banking facilities as part of a team of mercenaries. The objective was apparently to throw the electronic banking system in to turmoil whilst using a hacker to adjust their funds under cover of the inevitable repairs. Jacob thinks he went on the run after figuring out that the money he was going to get paid would just disappear in the confusion, leading him to suspect the corporation would just kill him after the op.
In fact two corporations are after Jacob, and for entirely different reasons. Datastream, who makes components used in most major brands of datajack, and Virtual Illusions, part of a conglomerate of corporations that maintain the code used in the Net, both want Jacob after he stumbled upon a joint venture of theirs.
Datastream and Virtual Illusions have resurrected an old military super-soldier experiment that was rendered obsolete by the invention of SkillSofts, chips containing uploadable programs that granted the user skills they did not otherwise have. The super-soldier experiment tried to achieve the same thing without having to plug in the chips, but it was found that the skills learned faded rapidly as the brain “healed” the damage.
However the corporate R&D team that resurrected the project have found a different use for the process. Virtual Illusions has coded a new sub-routine due to be uploaded into the standard Net code in the next update. Datastream has recent updated it’s main product to drastically improve data transfer speeds in the datajacks that use it. If a user with these datajacks connects to the Net after V.I.’s sub-routine goes live the R&D team have found a way to directly re-write part of the user’s brain temporarily. Both corporations have seen the marketing possibilities and well as other more nefarious users and decided to collaborate.
Jacob discovered evidence of this plan but was forced into hiding when the corporations sent agents after him: “failed”, zombie-like experiments. They are programmed by the corporations to have no emotions, following orders to the letter and fighting to the death. They are sometimes referred to as the Mindless.
Jacob managed to connect to the Net, in order to try and warn his old war buddies. But he had recently had the Datastream datajacks implanted and Virtual Illusions were able to overwrite a large chunk of his memory. The corporations were able to track down everyone he warned, but Jacob’s new-found paranoia about this “Technocracy” has made him almost impossible to find.
Part 1
Lucy hires the P.I. to find Jacob.
[Introduction]
The Team can question people at three locations: Hot Legs Bar, Kool K@’s Cybercafé, and the St. Blessed Open House. Each area has a clue to Jacob’s location.
Hot Legs is a dive in the French Quarter. It’s a stripjoint run by Old Sam, a small time fixer and “retired” criminal. Old Sam is nobody special in the city, but he knows a few of the right people and has managed to keep out of the worst deals. For a fee he can put you in contact with someone or track down that item you are after, and his reputation is good enough to keep the business coming in. Hot Legs is sort of his retirement package. He was once much more active in the mob, but after the old boss got iced, the boss’ son took over and decided to shelve Old Sam.
Veronica runs the bar and is the only person who can take people in to see Old Sam. She was once a dancer and from the look of her a good one. Now, she’s a little too old and the body sculpting is starting to show. She’s got four goons on call who patrol the club as combined bouncers and hired muscle for Old Sam.
Old Sam knows where Jacob is likely to be, but he’s going to want something in return. One of the local Yakuza bosses, Moto Yakishima, is making overtures towards taking over Hot Legs. Old Sam knows he’s not the most popular boss in the area and is fairly convinced if he can get a bit of blackmail on him the other bosses would shut him down.
Of course, the bosses are never going to accept anything Old Sam provides them with. Old Sam wants the P.I. to trail the boss and get a few good shots of him on his nighttime visits one of the local brothels. One of Sam’s contacts noted some odd behaviour the last time Yakishima was there and Sam is convinced there is something to document. The P.I. can bring the pictures back to Sam and he’ll tell them what he knows.
What Old Sam knows is pretty on the money. He’s had a few reports back from Veronica and the girls about an old Vet called Jacob who used to drink in Hot Legs itself. Veronica has worked for Sam long enough to take notes when someone becomes a repeat customer. Jacob was like most vets, the lucky ones anyway, and liked to splash what little cash he had around. He was certainly no looker and it was no surprise that he had to pay pretty girls to talk to him. One night, whilst really drunk, Jacob tried to convince one of the girls to go back to his place. Told her he was staying at the Plaza Hotel in the Jewellers quarter. Fortunately the girl was smart enough to know that the Plaza Hotel was derelict after a fire a few years back. Seems Jacob had been squatting there. If Old Sam had to gamble, he’d say that was the place to look.
Kool K@s is an up and coming coffee bar with a subtle cyber presence. It’s a place to go to to look cool, but it also has a great connection speed and fairly loose security. This encourages a younger, more hacker orientated crowd alongside the posers. Popular rumour is it is run but a hottie called K@ (Katherine) who is seldom seen but much lusted after by the hacker crowd. This is a complete fabrication and the joint is run by a fat, middle-aged guy called Bernard (XForce69 on the net). He knows about the K@ rumour and does nothing to deter the extra business it brings in. In fact he’s been know to hire an actress on occasion to play “K@” for an afternoon.
Bernard doesn’t know Jacob, but for a small fee he’ll run a search on his security feeds for any mention of that name. If he gets a hit he can run it against his camera logs for that time period and they can confirm the visual.
It turns out Jacob did visit Kool K@s. Many times in fact. Bernard isn’t going to release everything he has on Jacob. He can’t have it get out that your data isn’t safe after all but he will share an IP that Jacob sent the bulk of his emails to.
If a hacker tries to dig further they will be able to open some backups of the email server fairly easily. Bernard is good, but his security is a little out of date. The backups are encrypted but some data can be extracted. This data paints an odd picture. Rather than the financial plot, it talks about Datastream, Virtual Illusions, and their agents – the Mindless. After a while the paranoia creeps in and Jacob starts mentioning the “Technocracy” and their “Agents” before finally mentioning the financial plot and then devolving into madness.
The St. Blessed Open House was set up in a kinder era. It catered to the homeless, providing a soup kitchen and place to stay for those lacking food and shelter. These days it’s a flophouse. The homeless drift in and out whilst the warden pays them as little attention as he can get away with. Decent food is a thing of the past, NuFood being the order of the day now.
Warden Jones is a gruff, middle aged drop out. He spends most of his day sucking on a cigarette and watching TV. Those names and faces he recognises are those who have something he wants. He shows a complete disregard for privacy and personal property, stopping just shy of actual abuse of his charges.
The name Jacob rings a bell though. The guy left a box of his stuff about a week ago and hasn’t come back. Jones claims there was no money in it, but if there was it’s in his pocket by now. Instead it’s some old clothes, including a grimy bathrobe from the Plaza Hotel, and a couple of dataBooks. Mostly novels by trashy technothriller authors: stories about vets who end up back home using their skills to overcome The Man.
The Plaza Hotel was gutted by fire seven years ago. Whichever corporation owned it in the day clearly didn’t think it was making enough money to renovate it so the empty shell has been left derelict. There are occasional corporate guards making sweeps to deter all but the most dedicated squatters, but mostly the building is empty and lifeless.
Jacob has found a quiet spot in the Plaza, having hacked into the old vault, an area the guards don’t patrol. He’s helped himself to anything that survived the fire and made quite a good bolthole. Unfortunately the Mindless have been following the P.I. and now have his location. As the P.I. arrives and uncovers Jacob a black sedan pulls up and two “agents” get out. Jacob immediately starts a paranoid rant about the “technocracy” and the spy satellites used to track him, begging the P.I. to hide him.
If the Mindless suspect Jacob is present they will use any means (including violence) to obtain him. However, though distant, they can be reasoned with. Their cover story is that they are here on a matter of national security and that the P.I. is best served by moving on. They can be convinced that Jacob is not here however and will leave peacefully after leaving a calling card (blank, except for a lone telephone number).
Once the agents are gone, Jacob becomes reasonably talkative. Clearly the P.I. has seen at least part of the truth otherwise he would have handed Jacob over. The old soldier will explain a little of the conspiracy (he doesn’t want to mention names out in the open) and admit to being involved in the bombings.
Meanwhile Lucy will call to warn the P.I. about the agents. She claims not to know who they are, only that they’ve been asking after Jacob and are nothing to do with her.
The P.I. can either let Jacob go or take him to a meeting with Lucy. Either way their involvement with him appears to be over.
Part 2
The next day the P.I. gets a call at his office from the Detective. Jacob has turned up dead and security camera footage puts the P.I. near the scene of the crime within the right timeframe. The CCTV footage might even show the P.I. with Jacob as they are leaving the building, depending on what happened earlier.
The Detective brings the P.I. in for questioning, leaving the rest of the group to prove his innocence. They can probably find enough footage to prove the P.I. wasn’t around Jacob at his time of death, though Lucy will not admit to Jacob dying whilst with her corporate friends.
Eventually the P.I. will be let go due to lack of evidence, but told not to leave the city. If he wants to get out of a murder charge he’s going to need to come up with some hard evidence. The most obvious place to start is with Jacob’s colleagues in the bombings.
Each bomb hit a corporate plaza in the city targeted. As part of the explosions, very few civilian casualties were reported due to the bomb detonating in the middle of the night. In fact, property damage appeared to be much higher on the priority chain as no shrapnel was used in the construction of the bombs.
What is odd though is the use of mundane explosives. Certainly they were effective enough, but an EMP blast in addition to the physical one would have made certain the data was lost. No EMP was recorded.
Research of the previous explosions finds mentions of previous safe houses used to run the operation from. We a little extrapolation by a teleoperator the group will be able to theorise three locations the group might have set up shop in Opal City in: above a café, an abandoned workshop, and above the public library.
The bodies of Jacob’s mercenary group are in a small room above the library. They show signs of a struggle but none of them managed to draw their weapons in time to defend themselves. Each was shot at close range with a medium sized handgun. The shooters were clearly well trained and double-tapped each target.
A search of the safehouse reveals a package of explosives, enough to take out the corporate target nearby. Included is a radio detonator with sufficient strength to broadcast over that distance.
Part 3
The search is interrupted however by the arrival of a black sedan. Three Mindless agents get out and approach the building to confront the P.I. They want to know what the P.I. knows about Jacob and why he is investigating. If the P.I. admits to knowing anything the Mindless will try to take him in to custody, plus any others complicit in the investigation. If any resistance is offered they will pull medium sized handguns out of their holsters and point them at the group. Only if the group initiates actual violence will they open fire, but they shoot to kill and have no fear of dying themselves.
On death the group will find no identification of any kind on the Mindless. Their guns are unremarkable and registered to the military, as stolen weapons often are. Should the party capture a Mindless it will not know how to respond and will simply go dormant, activating a homing beacon and awaiting an opportunity to escape.
After the combat the group will have a short time to examine the bodies before the police show up. The expedient facts are that the agents appear normal, if unresponsive to the wider world. They have normal levels of cyberware, but no equipment beyond their guns. And what cyberware they are using is from recognised brand names excepting their datajacks, which appear experimental (or at least bleeding edge and not yet commercially released).
Either the group will wish to speak to Lucy or she will call them. Back at the office she will confess that the Mindless are something to do with her corporation, but will point out that the P.I. has bigger problems at hand. The whisky they’ve just drunk contains a tailored virus that will kill them in 24 hours. The only man who can provide them with an antidote is a scientist by the name of Dr. Belekov. The doctor recently went into hiding in Opal City and Lucy wants him found. Belekov will need certain materials to produce the antidote as the virus was originally his creation and Lucy has access to his original lab. She will agree to giving him access to the lab if the P.I. turns him over to the corporation.
Dr. Belekov is not a native of Opal and has no formal intelligence training. He should be easy enough for the P.I. to find (with the aid of a picture). Should the group think about revenge on Lucy she will point out that she is one of the key components in their future survival. That and the bodyguard she has outside who is more than capable of removing the four of them from this world.
Dr. Belekov has not so much gone to ground as been recruited. He was last seen getting in to a taxi outside a conference at the Royal Hotel two days ago. He was speaking on the transmission of bio-engineered virus from animal to human and was expected back at head office the following day. Instead, the taxi driver took him to an abandoned warehouse in the French Quarter where he is being held by a group of freelancers on behalf of Biotechnology Inc. The problem is the freelancers want more money and has decided to hold back on delivering Dr. Belekov.
If they group decide to seek out Belekov they have several avenues. The freelancers have been in contact with the local mob, who normally use the warehouse to store illegal shipments. The mob have been bought off for the moment but have not been told the full value of the “shipment” being held there. Old Sam would be able to track down Belekov if given enough information.
In addition it would be possible to track the movements of the taxi. Although the freelancers took the time to jam the Police drones they passed underneath, a smart hacker could assist a teleoperator in tracking the route plotted by the hacked drones and patching into any feeds from nearby civilian drones (like the advertising blimps).
Dr. Belekov is being guarded by five trained freelancers. They have SMG’s and body armour, plus some decent cyberware. However they are not as smart as they think they are and have done little to make their position defensible beyond their presence and a few shifted crates.
Belekov will be very grateful for being rescued, although he will become more philosophical about returning to Virtual Illusions. He is reticent to speak about his past with the company, but is not unsympathetic if told about the virus. He will explain that his role at V.I. is mostly theoretical in nature. He is an expert on viruses and is part of a team seeking to model computer viruses after biological ones. It was his research that V.I. was using in their sub-routine.
Whenever appropriate to prevent the group from finding out too much information and new threat arrives. A unit of Yakuza, under orders from Yakishima, arrive in overwhelming numbers and capture the group. They are tied up, hooded, and thrown in the back of a van. Belekov is knocked unconscious whilst protesting his neutrality and does not come round.
Eventually the group are tied to chairs in a room and left. Some of their bonds might be loose enough to get free or perhaps a still loose teleoperator might be able to get in to them. They are being held just outside of Opal City in an old abandoned gas station, though the room they are in is sealed and gives away nothing. It is featureless and windowless due to being a converted gas tank under the main lot. The Yakuza mean to leave the group there to die with no hope of rescue.
There is no signal strength in the tank, however the lock holding them in is a modern voice activated device. If the teleoperator cannot get to them the hacker might be able to jury-rig the lock using electrical components from various devices they are carrying.
Once free the group must decide what to do about Belekov. He is still unconscious and in need of medical attention. In addition he is the only person able to cure the virus. Hopefully Lucy will be the only logical choice and an unmarked van will soon be dispatched to collect the group. The van contains Lucy, a driver, a medic, and two bodyguards.
The P.I. is dropped off at his office and told to wait for a delivery. Lucy will make a point of patting the P.I. on the chest as she reinforces the importance of waiting. In fact, she is dropping a datachip into the P.I.’s pocket. If they were to stay in the office a group of Mindless would arrive and remove them from the picture. Instead the datachip contains a simple text file. It reads:
“Your office is not safe. Make excuses and leave as soon as possible. Meet me under the Franklin Bridge at midnight if you want any chance at survival. The agents will be watching you.
Lucy”
Franklin Bridge is in the Jewellers Quarter and runs over the largest canal through the city. It’s a busy road bridge, but the side ramps to the canal side docks are quiet after dark. Lucy is waiting under a street lamp, dressed in a raincoat. When approached by the P.I. she hurriedly closes with him and embraces him. Whilst this might seem confusing at first, she is simply trying to keep her profile low in the hope that no one has spotted her so far. She offers something of an explanation.
It’s all for naught however as a shot rings out in the darkness and Lucy is killed by an unseen gunman. Agents in a nearby car attempt to take out the P.I. and any of his group present, but a nearby warehouse should make for an easy enough escape.
The End
The group then begin to take down Virtual Illusions and Data Stream. At some point they will need to make their way into the tower as well as do something about the data on the servers.
The corporations have adequate physical security and excellent online security. Corporate guards will be on the lookout for intruders and will fight intelligently where necessary. The sysop has put a good level of security on all the internal systems but is unable to completely bar them against attack from the inside. A hacker with a physical connection is going to have a lot of freedom, although certain systems will still be off limits.
Of course the final ending really does depend on the group and what they’ve done throughout the campaign. I had a slightly metaphysical ending involving Lucy possibly a clone, but in the end it’s up to you.
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