I mentioned getting rid of any incriminating evidence that links you to the kill earlier, but you might be over- looking some elements of the job. It’s easy to get greedy and try to keep as many toys as you can. You’re welcome to try. But in the age of molecular scanners,
surveillance states, ritual samples, and Awakened cops, the long-lived assassin isn’t greedy, but careful.
First, the body. Most of the time it’s not your problem what happens with a corpse. Bang bang, walk away, and everyone knows Marcus M. Mark got shot to death. No big mystery. And if it’s supposed to look like they died of natural causes, in their sleep, or by other non-suspi- cious circumstances, then it’s actually necessary for their corpse to be found. This is important for when someone needs to inherit something, for example. But there may be times when it’s part of your job to vanish them for good.
There have been tricks to getting rid of a body since clandestine murder was first considered. Arguably the simplest is just a matter of delivering the body to a place where it won’t be found. Sealed in a barrel and dumped in the river, buried in a soy field, holed up in a basement wall, or ditched in the darkest parts of the sewers, you can find places for bodies to end up where they almost certainly won’t be found for years, if ever. If you’re in a hurry and don’t have many resources to spare for it, this can be the way to go.
I’m a believer in actively destroying a body. Tech- nique and technology have made this pretty simple. Sure, you can cremate it or chop it up in pieces or dis- solve it in a bathtub in the barrens if you’re feeling nos- talgic for the twentieth century, but these days there are so many better ways of going about it. If you have magic at hand, a Turn to Goo spell is an excellent way to get rid of a body. Just turn them to jelly, parse it out, and rinse it down a few drains. Leave the water running for a long while to make sure it’s well on its way and fully diluted before you stop. All that will be left to find is a collection of polluted, disassociated wads of almost unrecogniz- able flesh. The flipside is Petrify. Break them down into powder and rinse again. The technological equivalent is a dose of nanites. While shrikes are great for combat, an injection of them with a longer charge than normal can literally turn a body into slurry, bones, heart and all.
You can also subcontract this kind of work. You might be thinking you’ll turn a profit if you dump the body with Tamanous or a body bank somewhere, but that’s greedy, reckless thinking. You never know where something will turn up, and a trail is a trail. The only kind of reliable sale you can make is to the Infected, ghouls specifically. Sure, a banshee might suck out their soul and bleed them dry, but a ghoul will strip flesh from bones and suck the mar- row out of those, too. Even if they leave the skeleton intact somehow (which is doubtful), it’ll be lodged in a warren somewhere, where it can reliably stay safe until someone finds and flushes it out. And there’ll still be no link to you, by then.
A more professional outfit is extant in any major metroplex. Sometimes they are Cleaners, mopping up the whole scene so you don’t have to. More expensive as a service, but if you want to zero your trail, indispens- able, especially when a job that needs to be clean goes
TERMS OF THE TRADE
Cleaner: A specialist who disposes of corpses, as well as other
incriminating evidence. Some can restore a crime scene to pristine order, erasing all evidence of previous wrongdoing.
Game: A particular common scenario and set of tactics for
completion of an assassination, con, etc.
Mark: The target of an assassination.
Sanction: A contract placed by a government or megacorporate
client.
Territory: The area in which a planned assassination takes
place.
Triggerman, Torpedo, Hatchet Man, Apache, Matador, Kick Artist, Mechanic: An assassin.
Zero, Erase, Punch, Equalize, Hit, Clip: To perform an
wrong and leaves a mess. What’s more, they can work on a tight schedule more often than not. Take the time to get to know one or two anywhere you work. It’s a chunk out of your credit, but well worth the investment to stay clear and collect your pay.
>
Tamanous has made use of ghouls for Cleaner services for years, acting as a fixer service to connect them with clients. Their dual nature makes it easy to find every potential ritual sample, and there’s no question as to where the material ends up.>
Hannibelle>
There was a time I was holed up in an isolated section of the Ork Underground to bleed off some heat after a hairy run. Staying off the radar put me in ghoul country. Things got worse when some Cutters decided to start some trouble. I managed to kill two of them before the others retreated, but it was only a matter of time before they came back. So, I went to the ghouls with two bodies and used them to buy the protection of the ghouls. When the Cutters came back, they bit off more than they could chew. From the sounds afterward, so did the ghouls.>
2XL>
Gross. Is there a lesson here?>
/dev/grrl>
Bodies are worth their weight to the right party.>
ButchA professional disposal expert might also be a Clean- er, or a dedicated specialist. The real artists get creative. I’ve noticed the cleanest methods usually involve ani- mals somehow. There’s one in the PCC who uses chick- en droppings. She digs a pit in loose gravel, like in a backwood road or farm, and covers the body in the shit, then covers it back up. Aeration and rain can dissolve the body in mere weeks, and the smells are neutralized, at least in the of the surrounding odors. Another little oper- ation in the Seattle Barrens uses a farm of captured devil rats. Fifty of the little bastards can consume every scrap of flesh off a troll in an hour. Pigs are more of a classic popularized by the movies, but try finding an unsecured pig farm in a metroplex nowadays.
More often, you need to think about your gear. Sure, you’ve got a beautiful sniper rifle, but it’s con- nectable to a major murder, and you’re not going to be able to smuggle it home. So what do you do? The greedy will think to sell it. Sure, you could sterilize it, but it wouldn’t be the first time a hot weapon end- ed up resold. After all, who is going to buy assassin gear except someone planning to similar chaos? And if they screw up, it’ll end up in the wrong hands. But wait, I can hear you asking, won’t that mean they’ll take the fall for my misdeeds?
Think for a moment. How would you feel about buy- ing hot guns? Would you be pissed to discover you’ve been saddled with assassination charges in addition to the rest of your rap sheet? Wouldn’t you be willing to sell out the no-good asshole who sold you this historical iron? Sure you would! And the trail back to the assassin begins. There are a dozen dozen ways and more that I don’t know about that investigators can use to follow that trail to you, by hook or by crook. It’s not worth the heat. If you absolutely must have the cash from it, you can strip the whole thing apart, use it for parts, etc. I’ve heard a lot of thoughts about it, but none of them are any good.
So how do you dispose of this weapon? Well, it’s not all that different from disposing of a body, only it’s slightly easier. You see, melted plastics and metals don’t carry the risk of genetic fragments, and not nearly as much psychic spoor to track back. Take the whole thing to its smallest pieces and melt them in acid. Use magic if you have it. One killer I know who takes his personal craftsmanship very seriously likes to take burner guns and melt them down to make ammo for future work. There’s a funny poetry in that.
>
He fails to mention it, but it can be necessary to get rid of digital gear as well. You’re not going to do a hit with a cyberdeck and then melt it down, but it might be necessary to do a full system re-register just to keep the dogs off your data trail. Then again, if you’re any kind of decker, you should have been doing this all along.>
Bull>
Ditto for commlinks, though I think it’s easier to just toss the burner into a homeless dude’s cup. Nothing beats a false trail for buying time.>
Slamm-0!THE REP
You might be wondering, “If I have to keep all records of my involvement in a kill secret, how am I supposed to build a rep?” That’s fair. Nobody likes a one-hit won- der. Let me put your mind at ease: There is a difference between a reputable assassin and a famous one.
The reputable assassin builds their reputation pure- ly by word-of-mouth. A good fixer is going to get more contracts, and they will be the one with the reputation for getting work done through you. They’ll vouch for you, but won’t say what jobs you specifically have complet- ed, only that you have the skills necessary for the task at hand. The best employers won’t go looking for your résumé and won’t fish for anecdotes. If they do, you’re probably the subject of a security sting, and your profes- sional tact will keep you in the clear. If they look crooked, get up and walk away. It’s on them for looking unprofes- sional, and it’s never worth the risk. In other words, your fixer is your filter and your shield. Pay them well for good
work. The famous assassin is in danger if they are a lone gunman. You don’t need a fixer in this case, but you have to worry about being recognized by everyone with any interest, including the task force you have no doubt at- tracted. Famous assassins make the news, so there’s a lot of political capital in being the one to take you down.
>
Assassins like this can be found on “Top Ten Most Wanted” lists and the like, usually with cash for information leading to the arrest.>
Sticks>
Actually bringing them in is discouraged, though. They want the glory for themselves.>
Kay St. Irregular>
What was that about a task force?>
Ecotope>
Assassinations are statistically more likely to make headlines than terrorist attacks.>
Sunshine>
Why?>
Ecotope>
Priority. A terrorist attack on equipment is often covered up to prevent loss of public faith in the company and stock, which includes the public safety which is the business of private security providers like Lone Star and Knight Errant. Assassinations remove people, often famous and influential, forever, and that can only be covered up for so long.>
Mr. Bonds>
More than that, security companies like assassins better than terrorists because they are high-profile but more likely to be alone. Storming a terror cell usually involves walking into a lot of traps. An assassin wants to live. Less resources to find them.>
Hard Exit>
And the public investment/gain ratio is much higher. When you shoot terrorists, you’re talking about politics, and that gets messy and divisive. One man’s ecoterrorist is another’s freedom fighter. Just look at the Yucatan. But assassins? They’re mercenary murderers, obvious bad guys. Catching them is just good press.>
Dr. Spin>
Ergo, more likely to have a task force.>
Hard ExitChimera is a fine example of this. Sure, as an orga- nization they are famous, but their individual assassins are cloaked behind the aegis of the group. When you call on their services, you don’t have a face or a name, just a guild that absorbs the credit and the blame. It’s one more layer between the killer and the forces that will pursue them.
The other side of this is how others who aren’t look- ing to employ you will see you. It helps to have a cover, to keep this side of your life as invisible from everyone as possible. The classic importer/exporter still works and fits the bill. But for those who do know, an assassin is not a very sympathetic character. A shadowrunner might be a romantic Robin Hood-type, sticking it to The Man. Ditto for go gangers or neo-anarchists. But the assas- sin’s stock and trade is death, and since almost all fear is tied into our perception of death, we are objects of fear. And people like to destroy what they are afraid of. On top of that, there are the bleeding hearts who won’t do business with you because they feel that makes them culpable, too.