Kowloon walled city was one of the densest, most oppressive, most crime-ridden slums in the entire world. It made the barrens where Dunk and I grew up look like easy street. The classic “wretched hive of scum and villainy”. And we were supposed to waltz in, find a renegade Triad enforcer going by the friendly name of “Strangler Bao”, and deliver a message he almost certainly did *not* want to receive. Without hurting any of his thugs. Frag.
Is0bel seemed to shrink in on herself as we approached. She wouldn’t say much about it – beyond that this is where she had grown up. She just wanted to get in, get the job finished, and get out again as quickly as possible.
We hadn’t gone far when I noticed a young woman sitting slumped in an alcove. Her clothes were a little too new – a little too well made – for her to be a native. But they were stained with blood… I bent down to check on her – despite Iz’s hissed warning.
She was a grad student from HKU. While she had been beaten up a bit in an attempted mugging, she had been armed. The blood was not hers. She said she was studying Feng Shui – which had emerged as a real and measurable effect since the return of Magic. She was trying to test the theory that small adjustments to the energy flow in parts of Kowloon could improve day-to-day life. It seemed naive at best and idiotic at worst to me – but I couldn’t exactly be a full-on skeptic about magical principles when it came down to it, could I?
At any rate she said that the Qi here was much, much fouler than it had any reason to be – even given the nature of Kowloon. As if it were being actively corrupted and spoiled. She had taken notes casing the area, and wanted to fix three minor disruptions to see if it could have an effect. But she was too shaken up to go poking about any further. She’d also come down with something breathing in Kowloon’s “fine country air”. Since we planned to be casing the area anyway, I shrugged and agreed to check it out. Couldn’t hurt, could it?
The first item on her list was a simple streetlight control with exposed wiring – shorting and sparking and preventing several nearby lights from functioning properly. No problem for Iz.
The next was a little more of a stretch – a pile of burning tires giving off a foul, rancid smoke. And whatever these tires were made of just did *not* want to be extinguished. Dunk and Iz were bouncing around ideas involving mud and buckets of sand. While they were chattering I just did it my way…. stuck my arm directly in the flames and sucked out the energy. Iz stared. Dunk just rolled his eyes. What can I say? I’m no prime – don’t have the training. But power… that I can do.
The final task involved a water main shutoff, but that was down below. And we needed to do finish our legwork up top first. With a little discrete digging we learned that Strangler Bao had carved out his own territory here, centered at a place called the White Lotus Den. He was a nasty piece of work. His men beat up struggling merchants, smuggled street drug. Mugging. Kidnapping. And worse. And I rather doubted “Kindly” Cheng’s crew was all that different. I suspected part of the point of this whole gig – beyond seeing what we could do – had been making it crystal clear who and what we were getting involved with.
The White Lotus Den itself wasn’t hard to find…. but there were several well armed goons out front with no interest in conversation. If we wanted to get in without a fight we’d need find another way.
We kept looking around, and came around a corner just in time to see a Lotus thug shoving down an old man and grabbing a credstick from him. Dunk ran him off while checked on him, but he was out cold. We did what we could to get him settled someplace warm and dry. But there weren’t exactly clinics around the corner in this ‘hood, and I’d never learned much healing magic.
In the ransacked remains of a market stall we found wadded up bloody rags. Feeling a tug from my sixth sense, I had a quick look in the Astral. There was a spirit tied there – lost and confused. It didn’t understand either what had happened to it… or why it was still here. From what I could gather he had been killed by Bao’s men after refusing “protection”. Cheng’s “don’t kill any of them” restriction was becoming a serious drag… I couldn’t promise to avenge him. He didn’t have unfinished business he could remember. He was just stuck.
He told me about a friend that had known of a back entry into the Lotus Den. Locked down – but he knew the combo. Told me for nothing – as long as I promised Bao would be inconvenienced by its use. Wished I could do more. Wished I understood spirits well enough to know why he was stuck.
We made our way down below through a rusty old stairwell. It didn’t take long to find a secured entrance to the Den. I wasn’t sure what the place had been before, but it was clear Bao had at least made an effort to secure the back doors. That didn’t keep out Iz though.
Inside we found another security door… but a rather large one. I suspected it would be guarded on the other side. Even better, however, was the old deck terminal in the room… which was still wired into the Den’s main systems. Iz jacked in to do some digging.
Sending your brain directly into a Grid is never really a “safe” thing to do. Especially a Grid where you’re not wanted. But Bao hadn’t exactly splurged on the finest of ICE, so Iz was able pull some useful paydata out of his systems. A list of contacts for exotic animal smuggling – not much use to us, but someone would pay for it. More importantly the security codes currently being used inside the Den, and a map of the layout…
But I still didn’t want to enter from there. All these active connections made it feel too conspicuous. I was more interested in the entrance the spirit had told me about above.
A bit more poking around in the Below and we found the last item on the Feng Shui list – a water main running a bit too hard causing leaks upside. I gave it a shot, but the sucker wouldn’t budge for me. So I let Dunk do the honors.
We also stumbled upon the cubby where the mugger we had run off earlier had holed up. He talked tough at first – threatening us with his connections in Bao’s gang. I let him know that I was not impressed… and he quickly handed over the old man’s credstick. At least we’d be able to give that back.
We eventually found the door the spirit mentioned, and I entered the code it had given us. Unfortunately the room behind wasn’t quite as empty as the other one… Two Hellhounds were locked inside! Two very hungry Hellhounds… That list of buyers for “exotic animals” probably should have been a bit more of a clue… Fortunately Dunk was on it.
Past the torn up storage area was a passage leading up to the main level. We snuck past drunk Triads, made our way to the central office, and used the code Iz had hacked to bypass the lock.
Inside we found what could only be Strangler Bao himself. He told us we had his full attention… and five minutes to satisfy his curiosity before he decorated the walls with our innards. I told him we had been sent by Kindly Cheng, and he laughed. “Tell that old fool that *I* have a message for *her*. Kowloon is mine now. And as long as she stays out I’ll let her keep Heoi“. I answered that we would return with whatever message he wanted – as long as he listened to the recording on Cheng’s datastick.
He took it contemptuously, plugged it in, and her voice came through loud and clear. She knew he had been embezzling funds from the Triad. She knew who, when, where, and how. And she had receipts. Emails. Pics. Cam feeds – the works. He had 24 hours to appear at the MahJong Parlor and beg to return – along with his entire operation. And if he didn’t grovel well enough the Triad bosses would receive the data-cache tomorrow.
The blood drained completely from his face. I could never have imagined such a cybered-up hulk of a killer looking that flat-out scared. I was *very* glad to currently be on Cheng’s good side. He sullenly told us to tell her he would be there shortly, and then we were dismissed.
On the way back we returned the old man’ s credstick and checked in with the HKU girl. She said she could detect no change at all in the local Qi – even though all her math said it should have worked. She thanked us for the effort, and then headed back to uni. Muttering under her breath about curses and “a bottomless well of psychic rot”.
Cheng – instructing us to address her as “Auntie” now – was pleased with our work. She told us that our ID’s had been officially wiped. We were SINless, and she considered our debt to have been repaid by bringing Bao to heel without any extra complications.
She also told us that she had news. News that we would not like. I shot Dunk a look. I *knew* he shouldn’t have asked how it could get worse! Then she dropped the bomb.
Uncle Ray was dead. News reports were claiming a “Seattle-based businessman” had been killed resisting arrest during a police interview. Dunk looked ready to throw up. I wasn’t doing much better. The reports included a low-res vid feed from a security cam. It showed what looked very much like Uncle having a discussion with an odd looking man accompanied by heavily armed guards. The camera feed cut out just as shooting began.
Iz did what she could with the video, but the best pic she could get of the man confronting Uncle didn’t give us much to go on. His face looked almost… plastic. As if his skin had been replaced? Re-grown? I had never seen anything like it. Dunk stared like he was memorizing it. One thing I was sure of. One way or another we were going find this frag-hole.
Auntie told us to go get some sleep, and then we could discuss next steps in the morning. She had a proposal, but she wanted us to have clear heads before we discussed it. I couldn’t disagree. My head was a whirl, and I could tell that Dunk was totally lost.
Iz and Gob lived on an old merchant ship they called the Bolthole. That’s where their team had been staying. The only people living there now were the two of them and an “odd Russian” who lived in the lower decks. Auntie suggested we bunk up there. It wasn’t the most inviting of entrances, but it was what it was.
Gob got us set up with our own rooms, and then headed to her own digs to decompress. I let Dunk have some time to himself, while I went downstairs to check out the “odd Russian”.
He turned out to be an interesting guy. Went by Racter. Odd mannerisms. A bit prone to dropping into trade jargon. And pretty cybered out. But friendly. He had a whole robotics lab kitted out from black market parts down there. His pride and joy was a heavily customized drone named Koschei.
He apparently used to be a corpo, but things went sour and now he worked freelance. Didn’t want to say much about the past. I soon had him sussed as another runner – working on the side to cover expenses. He was a Rigger – jacking into his drones to run gigs remotely.
I suggested we help each other out sometime. He wasn’t sure at first, but did say his choice in gigs was often limited since his skills were specialized. I pointed out that Gob and I could bring magic to the table, while Iz and Dunk had their own talents. He said he’d consider it if the right job came along.
After that I went back up to have a heart-to-heart with Dunk. He’d calmed down a bit now. He didn’t think Uncle Ray was really dead. We already knew we couldn’t trust the news, and he’d still been alive when the video feed cut out. I was… a lot less sure. But I knew that’s what Dunk needed to believe. So I told him that’s what I thought too. He was still having trouble. There’d been a lot to grok all at once the last few days. I told him to get some sleep, and then I went to crash in my own room.
That night I slept terribly. Nightmares. Visions. Someone? Something? Stalking me through Kowloon. And the feelings didn’t fade when I woke up. Yuck.
In the morning we had a message from Auntie saying she had a “gift” for us. We when we arrived at the Parlor a man was kneeling in front of her, with Strangler Bao looming over him. It seemed Bao was back. The kneeling man was HKPD – and looked like he had been roughed up! I gave Dunk a hard glance to keep him quiet, and then looked a question at Auntie.
She told us that the badge had been found poking around the Bolthole last night. There was a literal bounty on our heads now, and he’d been looking to take his shot! Auntie had set Bao on lookout, and he’d caught the slot before he could do anything.
The badge was terrified, and Auntie questioned him for a while – revealing that somebody extremely high up had declared us kill-on-sight. As in Executive Council high up. One of the eight big fish running Hong Kong. He swore he hadn’t yet called in, and Bao checked out his pda for a while before declaring that it hadn’t made any recent transmissions. Auntie smiled, and then motioned to Bao. Who promptly pulled a pistol and shot the cop in the head!
Dunk and I were too stunned to say much as the body was dragged away. Auntie merely told us that this was one of the benefits of working together. She was “looking out for us”… That did *not* make me feel any better. The man had been intending to shoot us in our sleep. And he would certainly have reported our location if released. But cold execution? That was a lot to swallow. And I was sure Dunk was even less cool with it.
Auntie’s proposal was a partnership. She said she had a “critical interest” in sorting this out. To the rest of the Triad, direct attacks on both her shadow-runners and her client looked like a challenge to her powerbase. Failing to respond would make her look weak, and she could *not* afford to look weak. So she proposed that she would devote her resources to finding leads – while we would work for her as runners. Earning badly needed credits, filling in for her vacancies, and following up any leads that either of us turned up. I looked at Dunk to see what he thought, but he just shrugged. The whole setup stunk, but what choice did we have?
Author’s Notes:
Its definitely a different set of challenges sorting out how to render this run. But lots of opportunities to experiment. Security video. Tron-style VR. And we haven’t even gotten into the sorts of magical shenanigans Ye will eventually get up to.
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