Lucas Reading strolled through the wood-paneled halls of the private club—an icon of St. James’s Street for centuries—and admired the styling and classical trappings of gentlemanly leisure these paragons of English aristocracy afforded themselves. His escort glided ahead of him, far enough away to be polite, but close enough to sense even the slightest misstep if Mr. Reading were to deviate from the path toward the sitting room where he was to meet this afternoon’s quarry.
Every so often, members would catch a glimpse of him; servants wouldn’t dare. Were it not for his adept abilities, Reading would draw unwelcome attention for his pointed ears. Elves, especially Irish or Tír elves, were generally not favored by the men of status and titles who were members of this club. Even those who might otherwise have been favorable or just indifferent toward him understood the policy and attitudes that prevailed within these walls. While they were bigots, they were also gentlemen who would never be so uncouth as to say something out loud. It would not do to let guests or other outsiders know how the club worked internally. Words were not necessary, though—Reading was more than able to register the unconscious reactions of those around him. His entire life was spent risking his neck based on his ability to read those reactions.
The escort finally stopped in a remote sitting room that was empty save for an older man sitting in an overstuffed chair. An identical chair sat next to his at an angle, and between them was a table made before the Great War, on top of which rested a serving tray with two glasses, an ice bucket, and a bottle of sixty-year-old blended scotch.
“Sir,” the escort said. “Mr. Lucas Reading.”
“Thank you.” Reading took the empty seat as the escort vanished back into the club, closing the room’s door behind him.
He then turned to his host, a man who was obviously continental and not English; one who’d seen much of the life that the Sixth World had to offer. “Is it secure?”
“Of course. You can put away that face.”
Reading smiled, and his facial features changed instantly.
Rory Caolain was himself again. The elf plucked three ice cubes
from the silver bucket and dropped them into a glass in rapid succession. He then popped the top off of the bottle and poured himself a generous amount.
“Nothing but the best for Signora Dell’Otto’s boy,” Rory said.
“Indeed. I don’t trust alcohol younger than me,” Fianchetto replied as he fixed himself a drink.
“To the Blessed Virgin,” Rory said with an exaggerated Irish brogue. Fianchetto nodded, and they took a drink. “If these old farts knew a couple of Papists were besmirching this venerable institution …” Rory shook his head and smirked before taking a drink of whiskey that was almost older than the Awakening.
“So what is so important that I had to come all this way? I have business to complete.”
“Friday,” Fianchetto said, in a solid and serious tone. The small time allotted for verbal repartee was over.
“Fucking hell,” Rory replied.
“She’s out there, and I know you were out there recently. So I figured it would be useful for both of us to discuss and share what we know. The boy had been tracking her; one of his many little projects. I’ve got some assets pursuing leads following an encounter they had with a cell in Bilbao last night.”
“How the in the nine hells did she get to North America?”
“That’s a very good question, and one I don’t have an answer for. Whoever’s helping her, though, is someone to worry about.”
Rory knew that his compatriot did not make such comments lightly.
“Not only that, but she, or someone as good as her, has upped their game,” Fianchetto continued as he reached into his jacket pocket and tossed some small items to Rory, who caught them in midair. The elf then examined the damaged remains of a trio of skillsoft chips. “This is an upgrade, but it’s based on the original design from that nasty business in the SCIRE some years back—business that involved someone combining tech from Winternight’s God chips and Deus’ Blues into a mesh network that operated, God help them, like the kind of intuitive gestalt network only seen before in insect spirits and Aztechnology’s guerreros. The information I have says that
Inc oming . . . .
TOO MANY SECRETS ...
fun. While she escorts the runners to the O’Hare sub-sprawl and into Chicago, she briefs the runners on Friday, Winternight, and the mission profile. If they were involved in Shadows of Peace, she also interrogates them on the terrorists they encountered at Offutt. Her job on the flight is to tell the runners what they need to know, but she is also gathering information at her end, and she is quite good at what she does. She has spent decades getting information from people who don’t want to give it, specifically people associated with threats like Winternight—including runners. She is looking for information about the artifacts people and organizations are chasing across the globe. She has gathered enough information to know that the situation with the shroud suggests that the other parties involved in the chase know more about the bigger picture than most other people, but many of them, including Friday, may not know how their actions fit into a larger plan. Roth knows she has a captive audience, so she is going to make her case strongly. She also knows she has a load of surveillance equipment on board the jet to make sure no information slips by her.
The crux of her sales pitch (which she can make very forcefully given that the runners were infiltrating a UCAS Air Force base filled with nuclear weapons) is that since the runners know whom they’re fighting and what to expect, they are going to be offered the opportunity to finish the job. Brennan “Heavy” O’Dell and his trid show, Toxic Hunter, are broadcasting a special episode
ovERvIEW
During the events in Shadows of Peace (see p. 61), the players encountered another team using the Shroud of Shadows to attempt to steal several nuclear weapons from the Air Force Special Weapons Depot at Offutt AFB. Those runners were able to make off with seven weapons, and they are now on the run. In response, the UCAS military and law enforcement has scrambled everything they have in order to recover those nukes before they can be used. When it becomes clear that the team was composed of Winternight terrorists, the Corporate Court Crisis Coordination Committee (“C5”) takes charge. The Court throws their considerable resources toward settling accounts with Friday and the rest of Winternight once and for all. Thanks to the combined resources of the Big Ten and UCAS intelligence, the terrorists are identified as being en route to Chicago, where it is suspected that the area’s magical environment will be able to hide the weapons until they can be smuggled out safely and secretly.
PLoT PoINT oNE
I Can Make You Famous
The runners are contacted and hired by Samantha Roth, who says she has a high-paying, high-profile job that should be
Inc oming . . . .
these chips were supposed to be headed to Albuquerque, and to Omaha after that.”
Rory made a series of mental calculations. The only thing those cities had in common was that both were near military bases.
Before the Ghost Dance, Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque was home to the U.S. tactical nuclear weapons depot. Now that supply lay outside of Omaha.
“Why didn’t you tell any of this to Kay? He’s tight with the Yanks.”
“I have some doubt that the Americans are fully capable of stopping these madmen.”
“Then what am I doing here?”
“I don’t trust Kay with this, but José Montes has been reconstructing some data for me that was corrupted to hell, even within the Realms. It ties back to Anton Gage, one of Ghostwalker’s top Watchers, and one of Kay’s best friends in Denver.”
Rory stifled a brief chuckle. “Kay doesn’t have friends.
Treacherous little shite.” His brogue started to poke through as he spoke. “It makes sense, though. These maniacs are just another chess piece to the white wyrm, especially against Lofwyr, given their predilections for European action. There’s something else, though. Gage and the Smokers have been involved in their own thing, especially involving that dustup in Albuquerque.”
“The artifacts. I didn’t want to tip my hand at the time, but all the information those mad scientists were using to reverse engineer them as manatech came from Ghostwalker’s people.”
Rory was mentally connecting the dots, but that wasn’t his thing.
If he needed someone to do that, Kay would be able to find the right person.
“Friday. Nukes. And an astral GPS guiding her to Heaven knows where. The wyrm must be out of his bloody mind.”
“Indeed. I need to go back and have some folks scour the mess left back in Pueblo and Portland. That’s where that particular trail of destruction ended.”
“And where your old friend McGuinness was.”
“Yes, well, that matter aside I am most concerned about how Friday knows about this. No one really knows that much, and we only know as much as we do because we know where to look.”
“Well, if we’re talking about astral navigation and nukes and apocalypse cultists, I can imagine what they think that they can accomplish. She’s probably trying to get her magicians to find and conjure frost giants or dark elves or some other Norse nonsense.”
“Nonsense or not, they nearly succeeded last time. Here’s a random thought from my list of worst-case scenarios: Nukes, sacrificing blood magic, and a Great Ghost Dance. If these artifacts really can help people track things in astral space, wouldn’t that be the brass ring? Access to magic that can make the earth shudder.”
“Ten years ago I would say that idea is beyond the pale. Now
… but the questions is, what does Ghostwalker get out of all of this?”
“Guinea pigs? He has a much stronger affinity for spirits than any of the other dragons or other players that we know about.
Perhaps he wants something found, or unleashed. If it requires any kind of sacrifice, then who better to use than people who are already willing to die for a cause and can also be manipulated?”
“That’s terrible.”
“That’s what makes its possible.”
TOO MANY SECRETS ... runners must climb down in order to find the terrorists. Luckily,
the team has the external intelligence support of the Joint O’Hare Police Force, UCAS Army, and others. That isn’t, however, going to help them with anything that they may encounter in the building, including squatters; feral, possibly mutant, critters;
the biological remains of insect spirits and their worshippers looking for telesma; insect spirits; and (for magicians) floating clouds of FAB Strain III-Beta still lingering throughout the tower. Winternight knew what they were doing when they took up positions in this building. They don’t fear death, so they don’t worry about these obstacles—they’re only impediments to people hunting them.
And when they do find Winternight, they will be somewhere on the 265th through 268th floors. There is a lot of room for movement between these floors, and they include a number of fairly defensible positions. The team is also hindered by the fact that this is a media spectacle (Roth’s and Heavy’s appearances and actions as they parachute in and sneak downstairs should help emphasize this). That affects how they can take on these terrorists.
To make things worse, the attack can contain some surprises for the runners and the Toxic Hunter cast. For added complications, the toxic magic slung by the Winternight terrorists can attract the attention of a wasp or other flying spirits from elsewhere in the building if not the other towers nearby, or they could even draw the notice of the Chicago wyvern. Additionally, Winternight has long preferred to use drone support for their missions, and they have a number of these that are controlled by Friday as they battle the runners and make their escape.
Friday’s main strategy is to get away rather than confront the runners head on, and she makes her escape as early as necessary.
She should lead the players and Toxic Hunter runners on a chase throughout the lower floors. Two of her men, either large orks or small trolls, carry cases the size of small washing machines on their backs. These are nukes. As they evade the hunters, around the 260th floor the three terrorists leap out of one of the gaping holes in the building, and their drones are there to catch them.
Depending on the situation, the runners have three primary options as their quarries descend rapidly past I-90/94 towards the Wind Transit Terminal: If they still have the wingsuits, they can follow the terrorists that way. A hacker (either the team’s or Heavy’s) can take over and use some of Winternight’s own drones, or they can wait for the SkyTrains to pick them up (either dangling from the aircraft off heavy ropes or making a ballsy leap into the rear cargo bay).
Heavy and Roth use their wingsuits in the pursuit.
PLoT PoINT THREE
The Terminal
The remains of the Wind Transit Terminal occupy a square kilometer of aboveground space, along with an underground complex that used to be the primary bus terminal for Chicago.
Beetle spirits took control of the terminal, and Ares flooded the complex with FAB-tainted water before imploding the complex with massive thermobaric and fuel-air explosives, dropping the neighborhood above the terminal into a massive crater littered with the wreckage of buildings and vehicles (the terminal held up featuring an effort to track down these terrorists and, ultimately,
their leader—Friday. This trip will require the runners to travel into the Chicago Containment Zone and engage Winternight terrorists who have several tactical nuclear weapons in their possession and the will to use them if they can. It should be noted that Winternight is notorious for their use of chipped-out mercs and shadowrunners (as was the case in Offutt), but they are also able to field groups of toxic shamans, who are notorious for being loners, as part of their organization. If Friday is with a cell, then there will be at least two toxic shamans there as well. In the case of Chicago, there is no shortage of toxic magic and other threats, but Roth tells the runners that they’re up against a wall—they can go in, or they can languish in a cell forever. Heavy O’Dell is happy for more help, since he knows something that he’s not anxious to let the runners know about—there is a contingency plan in place in the event his team fails. The UCAS and Corporate Court have sanctioned the use of their own weapons of mass destruction.
Friday is not leaving the CZ alive, even if the CZ has to go to hell (again) with her.
PLoT PoINT TWo
The Tower
Once Roth and the runners arrive at the C5 forward operating base on the edge of the O’Hare International Aerospaceport, they are introduced to Heavy O’Dell and his team—both the hunters and the production unit. The runners are given enough time to gear up, packing weapons and recording equipment (simrigs and trid cameras/mics) before the runners and the six-man Toxic Hunter cast are loaded into a pair of Hawker-Ridley HS-950 Skytrains to fly into the Containment Zone. The initial plan is to fly into the CZ and assault the old Truman Tower at the southern edge of the zone in the heart of the old Elevated Core. The Tower is not hard to miss, as it stands at over 1.5 kilometers tall (it was taller, but Ares destroyed the top fifty stories during Operation:
Extermination). Even among the other skyscrapers in the old Elevated Core, Truman Tower looms largest and most ominously, dwarfing the older Spire in the Noose to the north.
At the last minute, Roth climbs into the SkyTrain with the runners. It wouldn’t be a problem, except for the fact that she’s changed from tridstar to Kevlar Cowgirl with war paint covering her entire head and face under her Ballistic Mask (see p. 164, War!).
The mission is to fly to the tower, and then perform a wingsuit (see p. 164, War!) jump from the tilt-rotor aircraft into the building to confront the Winternight element that intelligence has indicated is holed up somewhere in the top third of the building. The jump is itself dangerous because, while tall, the Truman Tower has a relatively small footprint (it’s less than half a square kilometer at its base, and it tapers rapidly). In addition to the small landing footprint, the Landing Zone (LZ) is the ruined remains of the upper floors. Ares was not kind to the tower, battering the wasp nests inside with FAB Strain III-Beta-filled cruise missiles before launching a high-explosive fusillade to finish them off.
It doesn’t get any safer for the runners once they land. The FAB is still lingering throughout the tower, and the building is a vertical death trap of collapsed floors and dead-ends that the
TOO MANY SECRETS ...
vehicles long enough to get Friday and others to Cermak. The runners should be able to keep up to some extent, and then watch as a group of jury-rigged vehicles suited for the post-apocalyptic wasteland of the Containment Zone roar out of the terminal.
PLoT PoINT FoUR
Twenty Klicks and Running
The Cermak Crater is approximately twenty kilometers north of the Truman Tower/Wind Transit Center, and the chase takes the Toxic Hunters and the runners across more than half of the Containment Zone. There are two train tracks near the Core, and both lines have numerous stations. Much of this area is suburban, low-profile residential and commercial buildings with some light industrial zones. The overgrown forest of the Dan Ryan Woods is along the way, as is Midway Airport. In between the Truman Tower and the Wind Transit Terminal is I-94/I-90, the former highway that has been blown into uselessness.
The main issue here is that the runners are pursuing a group of people with no regard for their own lives. That means any standard of safety, such as being careful about attracting FAB
The main issue here is that the runners are pursuing a group of people with no regard for their own lives. That means any standard of safety, such as being careful about attracting FAB