30th November 2075-
Stanley and Lomax decide to look into Smokey's message about his fellow squatter, the Bear, going missing. They investigate the squat, and search the joint. They discover strange smells, stains, and a trapdoor to the building's basement. Opening this up, it reveals a giant ant creature on the underside of the trapdoor. Smokey freaks out and runs, and Lomax holds off the ant while Stanley pours Ingram bursts into it. Eventually Lomax cleaves it in half. They send in Lomax's scout drone whose thermographic vision reveals the basement has numerous small tunnels leading off it, and a couple of gently moving cocoon shapes. Stanley does some matrix research and learns of the horrors of insect spirits and insect shamans, and the joy of the huge bounty on insect shamans.
Realising the team cannot accomplish this alone, they contact LoneStar. Very soon (especially considering this is in Kowloon where there is no real police presence) a GMC Banshee VTOL arrives with a squad of LoneStar HTR troops, led by a large troll - who turns out to be DC Lennox, who the runners met on the Canton Federation border a few weeks previously. The trolls bribes the runners to keep their silence over the discovery, contacts his superiors, and they retreat. The runners realise something is up, and pile smokey into their vehicles, and escape the area, just before an orbital satellite strike annihilates the safehouse. Stanley, panicking, tries to contact the Bear by commlink to see if he has survived. He hears falling masonry and angry screaming in the background, before hearing the Bear yell 'Mother!' before the commlink icon blinks out.
Various local squatters, and the Ancients elf go-gang that owns this area arrive to look over the carnage. They gossip about the news reports appearing about the cyberterrorist attack by 9x9, a terrorist organisation fighting for less corporate control over the HK Special Administrative Area. The runners befriend one, called Dave. Stanley buys a burner commlink and contacts Lennox to anonymously let him know that the Bear might still be alive and sends him an image in case he is spotted. The runners leave, past a stream of police vehicles and drones filling the area.
The duo then move on to addressing the information they recieved from Cheese, telling them that he had discovered that the attackers on the motorway (from the border run) were Humanis Policlub. Hoping they have answers about Mr Johnson, they investigate the warehouse address they were given.
Across the fenced off warehouse, there are a group of four Ancients, chatting next to their green and black motorcycles. Dave is among them. Stanley rings the buzzer on the fencing, and is rebuffed. They come up with an idea to pretend to be racist to get on Humanis' good side. While they argue in front of the gate, the Ancient's notice. They are no friends of humans or trolls, and especially not racists, and Stanley starts sending increasingly desperate comm messages to Dave using his implanted commlink to stop guns being drawn. A Hyundai pulls up, and the Humanis soapbox leader (who the runners saw in Kowloon market during the protests in October 2075) emerges. A Humanis member emerges from the warehouse and things get tense, with Humanis and the Ancients both pointing weapons at the runners and each other. Eventually Humanis decide to bring the human Stanley inside to protect him from the lynching. Lomax retreats to his truck and rigs into his scout drone.
Inside the warehouse it is rather sparse, with a few shipping containers, an office against the back wall, and, illuminated by the skylights, a sole ork tied to a chair in the centre of the space. He is obviously drugged with a bloody face. Lomax successfully sneaks his rigged scout drone into the warehouse. The Humanis leader, Jester, and the other two guards huddle on the opposite side of the building to Stanley to discuss how to proceed. Stanley's enhanced cyberears pick up the discussion anyway. They planned to infect the ork with the Krieger strain of HMHVV to cause a panic and anti metahuman sentiment, but their infected target whose blood they were going to use has disappeared. Stanley remembers that the runner crew still have a vial of infected blood from their previous run, and offers to supply it, trying to get in with the crew. Jester sends one of his cohorts, Paul, off with Stanley to his apartment to retrieve the vial. Lomax tails them. Along the way, Stanley chats with him, realises that it was their Mr Johnson who they were attempting to kidnap, as they had heard through the shadowgrid about the runners extraction attempt. They know little else about Johnson though, and Stanley, noting that Paul knows where he lives, decides he has to die. On the return journey, Stanley contacts Lomax through his implanted commlink. Lomax pulls up aside the Hyundai and gets out brandishing his axe. Paul pulls out a colt pistol, and Stanley shoots him. Lomax finishes him off with the axe.
Returning to the warehouse with the intent to wipe out the rest of the Humanis team, the runners speak to the Ancients and advise them of their plan. Not impressed that they had already been brought into a plot without their knowledge, they are not interested in helping, but agree to look the other way as long as the job is done quietly.
It is not done particularly quietly - Stanley runs in panicked pretending that Lomax is chasing him. He runs to the rear of Jester and the remaining thug as Lomax and his rotordrone are silhouetted in the entrance. Stanley with his wired reflexes acts first, firing at the thug with burst fire, but missing. The thug turns wide eyed to Stanley and returns fire with machine pistol fire. The rotordrone tears at Jester with full auto fire
Quickly the runners take down the Humanis operatives, with Lomax once again cleaving one in two.
The runners scour the warehouse. Stanley finds a maglocked safe, and hacks its electronic security. They find a sizeable amount of drugs inside. They head back out to try and wake the drugged ork. While trying to bring him round, they realise they are being watched. Zen, a freelance bounty hunter, introduces herself to them. She is asian, wearing thick black eyeshadow, wearing a white combat suit, and has a mono-edged katana slung across her back. She attempts to subdue both runners. Moving even faster than Stanley, she charges into close combat with him. He takes a battering from Zen's shock gloves, the electricity damage slowing him down. He falls unconscious under the assault, but not before frying Zen's wired reflexes using his matrix skills. Slightly slowed, she then takes on Lomax. With an incredibly lucky swing, Lomax's axe again sings, and Zen is killed. Lomax waits in the warehouse for Stanley and the ork to come round. The ork knows nothing, and was just a local squatter. The duo release him.
While leaving the warehouse, Cheese contacts the group. He knows why the team were attacked by the bounty hunter - LoneStar and Aztechnology have traced the runners (See the report), and there is a price on their heads. This is a rarity for runners, who are usually considered the tools of corporations, rather than criminals who resources must be spent of tracking. This must be something big. The runners cannot trust anyone in HK not to rat them out, and Cheese reckons he can get them out of the country for at least a few weeks while they figure out a plan. The runners will have to abandon significant assets, but they should at least get out alive. He has contacts in a couple of United Canadian and American States cities where he can get them work - and offers them the choice. Seattle or Manhattan?
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