{Desert Rat}
<0005Local, May Eighteenth Fallout Year Seventeen [2037 Anno Domani]>
A middle-aged man shut the lid on his laptop and tipped a grin to the bartendress. "Thanks for letting me jack in through your port, Jess"
The Red-haired, hourglass figure in the semi-formal black and white uniform smiled back, revealing a double-row of inhumanly well mantained teeth. It was almost blinding. "You can thank me in ways other than words, sweetie." The man couldn't help but chuckle. He never could figure out Jessica's attraction to him. He was really not much to look at, and in fact would have fit in pretty well with the old colloquialisim of the wisend college professor. He was thrity-seven years old. He remembered Fallout. Hell, he remembered the invention of cybernetic implants. His hair was thinning, and he was to vain to apply a toupe or get surgery to replace the recceeding hairline. the blonde locks, still short from force of habit and his stint in the Air Force, were already begining to whiten with age and stress. He remained clean-shaven, and his eyes bespoke of fatigue, world-weariness, and the stress he was constantly under. His brief military carrer had been doomed ever since his arrival in Texas during Fallout Year Zero.
That didn't matter much, what mattered was that this young girl, too young to remember Fallout, or even have seen what became known as a "tortise", or the extremly slow ancient computers. Hell, She was always amazed at how LARGE the man's laptop was.
"So, why do they call you the 'Desert Rat', anyway?" She asked.
"Like I've told you, please... call me Jack."
"Okay, Mr. Rat," she said with a giggle. "You still in Three-Zero-One-Seven?"
"Of course, I should apply for residency there,"
"We're already working on it for you,"
"Thanks, doll. When do you get off, anyway?"
"About 0500,"
"I'll be ready,"
Jack gently slid the laptop into the backpack, slung it over one shoulder, and trapised up the stairs to the third floor, and ducked inside room seventeen. He then proceeded to conceal the monofilment knives on the end table by placing them under the matress and placed the antiquated Five-seveN pistol underneath his pillow.
From there, he jacked into the bar downstairs again, and sent out a message through the Shadow-net, which would only be traced so far as Jessica. Poor girl. She was so obsessed with sex, that it would soon be her downfall.
That'll teach her.
The message read: .
{Red Moon}
<2100Local, May Seventeenth, Fallout Year Seventeen [2037 Anno Domani]>
A clipped voice resonated from an excessivly large, and unessecarily expenisve computer touchcreen on an otherwise bare wall, displaying a image of a smartly-dressed female with brown hair tightly wound into a severe bun, and her red sports jacket complementing her cream blouse to an oddly excessive degree. Her voice was as manicured as her nails, and it spoke briefly, describing the incident which had, just ten minuetes ago finally come to an end in Southeastren Massachusets. And it ended in a way where the local police refused to comment.
"The two criminals are believed to be part of the global organisation known as 'shadow-net', and supposedly operate under the aliases 'Hat Trick' and 'Silvertounge'. Both men are considered armed and dangerous."
The volume slid down with an alarming rapidity, as the reporter's mouth moved silently, supposedly spouting further details of the incident. Sometimes it would be more efficent to simply say, "In furhter news, nothing has changed", in lieu of the constant "If you're just joining us..." recitations of the exact same monolouge she gave two and a half minuetes ago. Amazing how she talked that long without drinking anything.
There was a form in a large chair, which was, apparently, observing the mute form on the creen with a detached intrest. His fingers moved rapidly in accordance to a rapid exchange of sentances via a normal, commercial messanging service.
REDMOON: THE MA INCIDENT IS ONE OF OURS
DESERTRAT: YES, SILVERTOUNGE AND HAT TRICK AS REPORTED
REDMOON: VERY WELL, HOWS THE CYBERSOL/TECHNOX PROJECT DOING
DESERTRAT: WE STILL NEED TWO MORE PLAYERS, AND I THINK THAT WE'VE FOUND OUR NEXT DRAFT PICKS.
REDMOON: MAKE IT SO
The man quickly shutdown the window in which the conversation was taking place, reset the volume to a comfortable level, and turned on the baseball game.
Go, Dodgers.
{Hat trick}
<2333Local, May Seventeenth, Fallout Year Seventeen [2037 Anno Domani]>
<"Daddy would be so proud,"> resounded in one man's wireless headset, supposedly connected to his cell phone, and he breathed a sigh of relief. "Finally, Goddess, man, what took you so long?" He groaned as he slithered throught he crowd toward the caution tape, and a police officer holding the perimeter to wait for the Spec Weapons team to arrive so they could storm the place. A part of every onlooker was wondering why it wasn't the Spec Weapons team that responded to a call in the Red Sector, anyway. Most honest cops were too afraid to hear the calls for such areas, and devloped strange and persitent cases of deafness whenever a disturbance in these sectors were announced. the Department's Medical staff was "looking into it".
The man approached the nearest officer and asked, as if he were any other civilian, what was going on.
The cop, one Sergant Jenkins, gave the civilan a once-over. In another time, in another place, sunglasses at night, a buttoned-up trenchcoat and fatigues with the Army's old ACU pattern may have been suspicious, but not now, not here. Night drew out the worst crowds, and the man was probably hiding illegal cybernetic modifications. The white fedora was kind of funny, though, considering the rest of the mans wardrobe consited of darker colors. There was something about the hat that Sergant Jenkins felt was important, but couldn't quite put his finger on. And so, he gave the man a scripted answer which required no thought or tact to deliver.
"Theres a criminal inside, we're bringing him in,"
The mouth under the sunglasses twisted into a kind of cruel facsimile of a smirk.
"There are criminals everywhere, and we don't appreciate Heros in our Sectors."
For a second, the Sergant ignored the man, then his eyes widened with a sudden shock of realization. The man said "we". The hat suddenly made sense now. Jenkins reached for his sidearm for the first time since the academy. Those weren't sunglasses hiding illegal eyes. Those were his eyes. And the fedora pieced it all together.
"Hat Trick" the man said through a grin, as both his fists slammed into the poor Sergant's abdomen, immediatly relasing the claws he had implanted into his system, which also immediatly injected a surprisingly potent, and doubly efficent, neruoposion into the officer's bloodstream.
Sergant Jenkins hit the damp asphalt, and the criminal retracted his claws as naturally as zipping his fly. The civilans around them shouted a myriad of interjections denoting surprise and filled the air with a wonderful set of screams. As soon as the fear hit the civilians, two flashes of lights erupted from the doorway to the gym, and another police officer found his way to whatever afterlife he desired, only this one went with his skull fragemented into an innumerable amount of pieces.
{Silver Tounge}
<2317Local, May Seventeenth, Fallout Year Seventeen [2037 Anno Domani]>
The Streetlights were dwarfed by the red-and-blue globes atop the city's new police cruisers, and as always, police presnce drew a crowd. As the globe lights graced the old brick building with color normally unknown to the area, civilans gathered around, pressing up againt yellow caution tape as if a force-barrier had been erected which impeded further progress. No such barrier existed, however, the city couldn't afford one. the citizens of Brockton's poorest sector were simply afraid of the police that patrolled the area, for good reason. Enough were too crooked to be capable of drawing a straight line, that citizens seldom fled to police for help, leading to a porportinate rise in crime rate. This portion of the city was a lost cause, one of many that were birthed in Fallout Year Zero. Such slums became known as "Red Sectors."
It usually took an unbelivably large event to drive conspicous, armed police presence into a Red Sector, and currently, there was no exception.
The old gym had recently been recognised as a confrimed hide-out of a minor Shadow-net hub, one of those which leaked out Jobs to various Runners all over Massachusets and, it was suspected, the rest of New England.
This operation was so small, so organised, that it was believed to be run by only one man. which, would make him, technically, a Runner in his own right.
And, as was unusual ever since the Fallout, the police were absolutely correct in this matter. Wither they were catching onto the Shadow-net, which was unlikely, or they got uncharecteristically accurate intellignece from some supposedly anonymous source. All the Net had to do to find the mole was to track where an unusally large shipment of ration coupons went next month.
Daniel, the one-man Shadow-net hub pulled his cybereyes away from the mainframe's goggles and wiped the acculuating sweat off his brow with a skeltal wrist.
"Well, it looks like someone is ganna get lost in th' Shadows," he mused aloud in his heavy Bostonian accent. His right hand moved to draw an Urban Raptor .65 Calibre handgun from the top-right drawer in his desk, while his left casually struck the "Upload" button on his computer's touchscreen.
The computer beeped once, and asked in small white letters what its operator had said, not recognising the musing in its library of commands.
"Open Music, Play Playlist 'Conflict'" Daniel spoke in reply to the beep, giving the computer a command it recognised, and it immediatly commenced pumping out one of Dan's many Post-modern Cyberpunk/Graver/Techno beats.
"Stop listening"
The word "sleeping" displayed itself in an unassuming corner of the screen.
Dan took his time loading up three ten-round magazines into the heavy pistol. That was all he got before "upload complete" decided to display itself.
"Start listening," Daniel commanded the speech device as he unplugged a USB jumpdrive from the computer tower, capped it, and placed the memorystick in his back-left pocket.
"Emergency shutdown. Purge all files. Do not reboot."
The screen cut to black, and Daniel "Silvertounge" Frederick stood up, pushing his chair away from the desk, and ghosting towards the door.
"But there's no way that I'm ganna be the one to disappear." He slid a magazine into the cop-killer's handle.
"Daddy would be so proud,"
