Checking back at the base, we had a new run on the board from Auntie. She wanted us to sort out a problem with the Whampoans. The Whampoans were an odd bunch of tech geeks, hackers, gamers and such. Lived in a tight-knit community and considered themselves “post-cultural”. Almost a tech cult. More than a bit loopy. But they were seriously well connected – providing hacking, tech smuggling, power and bandwidth siphoning to Triads, gangs, and most off-grid residents. They stayed free by being useful. Make trouble with the Whampoans, and half the gangs and Triad bosses in town suddenly make you a priority. To say nothing of all your digital secrets showing up on the evening news. Even governments generally let them be.
But someone hadn’t got the message. The Whampoan Elders were being killed off one by one – and that had everyone spooked. Auntie wanted it solved. Fast. And the Whampoans had the nyuen to pay quite well.
Their nearest rep was a kid going by the handle “Maximum Law”, who sold black market decker gear and such on a pontoon boat kitted up like a disco ball. I had hoped to learn something useful before heading off to Whampoa Garden, but Max’s speech was so laced with obscure buzzwords that I only understood half of what he said.
Since this gig figured to be tech-focused, I decided to change up the team for the run.
Is0bel had once been Whampoan. That’s where she first learned her decking. But she had left some time ago – considering them “fruit loops too jazzed on their own buzz“. She was our only decker and she knew the area personally, so she was a no-brainer. Wouldn’t leave Dunk at home, and he was an ex-cop anyway. Figured he’d be right at home in a murder investigation. This also seemed a prime shot to see Racter in action. His skills seemed more fitting here than Gobbet’s shaman magic.
Whampoa Gardens itself was normally jumping with activity, as whamp-heads gathered to spread the latest buzz. But between the weather and the killings it was pretty flatline when we arrived.
We met the three remaining Whampoan elders in their big boat-shaped tech mall. Elder Ng was an orc “shaman of the machine spirit”. I didn’t even know there *was* such a thing, and her droning on about the great ghost in the machine didn’t impress me much. Elder Ip was the head of security, and had obvious signs of cyber-enhancement. As well as seeming pretty tightly wound. Elder Tang was an elven Rigger. Rack knew him by reputation, if not personally. He seemed the most level. At least compared to the other two.
Tang told us Elders had been iced one-by-one for two weeks now. With the latest found just hours ago – Elder Tong. He was the fourth – including Iz’s former mentor, Yetunde. The MO was the same every time. The bodies were eviscerated – dismembered and torn apart. No signs of forced entry. No witnesses. They wanted us to check the scene, find the perps, and put an end to it. HKPD wasn’t welcome here. Whampoa had too many under-the-table side gigs. And they’d been unable to handle it themselves.
Tong’s VR shop was being guarded by a man named Porter Lam – a bit of a Mr Handy who was a cross between deputy and maintenance man. To him this looked more like an animal attack than any human killings he’d ever seen. He let us in to look around.
As we had been warned, blood was *everywhere*. Dunk stared at it for a while, and commented that it had seemed like it had been literally *painted* on the wall. He’d seen blood splatter on walls. He’d seen his share of shootings and such. This was definitely not that.
Rack checked out the body. At first he thought it might be a ritual murder – someone whacked out compulsive. Time of death, two to four hours ago. No bruising, no signs of struggle. But while it looked like his body had been picked apart by claws, it also looked like Tong had actually been killed by surprise near instantly. A single strike, from behind, from a large blade had nearly beheaded him. Everything else had been done after he was already dead.
Curious, I suppressed a shudder and took a look in Astral. This soon after death the final emotions of both victim and killer normally leave a strong impriont. But what I found was… no anger, no pain, no fear. Just a peaceful sense of… satisfaction? A job well done? Not quite what I expected from a brutal murder.
We kept up the CSI, poking around for anything unusual. The e-safe was open, and looked like it had been opened properly – by key. All that was in it were a few empty cred-sticks.
Tong had top gear in back for generating Syms. Iz checked it out but all the data drives were gone. She ran some basic diag, and learned he’d been pushing his VR Syms *way* past safety specs. Delta levels pushing into “brain burning” territory. Whatever else Elder Tong had been up to, he had been selling some seriously jacked up shit.
Not finding any other clues, we headed out to check the perimeter outside. Around the corner a well-dressed (for Heoi anyway) orc called out to us. He called himself “Zippy”, and said he was the unofficial doc here. He’d done the autopsies for the others. He was surprised by what Rack found about the order of injuries, as well as what I had seen in Astral. He wondered if all the blood and guts was just a smokescreen – intended to have us chasing monsters instead of assassins..
Zippy also said there’d been another missing Elder just before the killings started. The others had “forgotten” to mention that… A woman named Magpie. An ace hacker. She’d butted heads with the other Elders for years. Vindictive. Contrarian. A total PITA. And she’d vanished a month ago. He suggested we check out her old pad. There had been no signs of murder like with the others, but her disappearance didn’t sit right with him. And it hadn’t been followed up because nobody really liked Magpie anyway.
We also met a man named Demergo. A former New York PD mage. Specialist in object reading. Elder Ng had asked him to look into things earlier, but he’d turned her down. She wouldn’t meet his price, and he’d already had enough of reliving the thoughts and feelings of crazed murderers and their victims. He did tell us that an HKPD team had been here a month ago. Strange considering how much the Whampoans normally kept them out. And they’d been loaded for bear – kitted out with heavy weapons. They hit a nearby parking garage, had a massive firefight… and none of them ever came back out He suggested we check out that site. But he warned us – the garage was now Red Spear Gang turf. And they probably wouldn’t like us nosing about.
The Red Spears were not friendly… but they had a racket going running street drugs. So they weren’t shoot-on-sight either. Their leader wasn’t keen on us poking around in her business. But I pointed out that we were working for the Elders – who only tolerated them here because it hadn’t been worth the effort to evict them. They took the hint. They’d only been here a few weeks. They’d moved in after the big HKPD raid. And they’d seen a few things themselves. There was something man-sized moving around in the storm drain system. They’d caught a few glimpses, but didn’t know what it was and weren’t inclined to press their luck.
And one of their guys had seen someone “tall and hunched draped in a shitty gray poncho” go into Tong’s after hours last night. When he’d come out later, the guy had gotten curious and gone in to check things out. He’d been the one who cleaned out the safe (using Tong’s own key) and taken the Syms from the shop. But he hadn’t taken the hard drives from back. And the blood hadn’t been smeared on the walls when he’d been there…
We searched the garage. Didn’t take long to find the fight scene. Damage from high caliber bullets all over. Blood still dried on the floor. And walls scored by something long and sharp. Rack also found a broken piece of some kind of red ceramic. High-tech body armor. He was sure of it. And he suspected HKPD had known what they were going to find. Why else charge into a garage in the slums with heavy-duty armor-piercing rounds? You didn’t need that for street gangs.
Back in the Whampoan Bazaar there was a high end outfitter. She made good bank in geek fashions, but she was also their go-to Smee on tech armor. She told us the stuff was Renraku. Ultra high-end Japanese. Not the sort of thing one would expect to find outside of elite Japanese black ops.
The Elders gave us a total runaround when we asked them about Magpie. She wasn’t a murder – she’d just run off. They didn’t see the connection, so they didn’t see the need to bring her up with outsiders. Same story with the HKPD. According to them the HKPD had told them ahead of time about the raid, and they hadn’t seen any reason to make waves about it. Even though they didn’t know the target. The Elders finally told ’em to sod off when they requested a second go with an entire tactical assault squadron. Still no explanation why they hadn’t considered that to have been useful info in the brief.
We got keys from Porter Lam, and went to check out Magpie’s place. Lots of tech stashed away there. Boards, chips, custom decks.
But once again all the drives were gone. No data to be found whatsoever. Whoever had come through had know exactly what they wanted. It hadn’t been gang scavengers.
More ominously, there was dried blood in the back sink. A lot of it. And a high-end electronic lockbox for keys in her office desk. Open and empty.
Next we headed down into the storm drain system. Armed and ready, given what we’d heard so far. It wasn’t long before we noticed a horrific stench, and followed it to a large pile of sorted body parts…
Rack noticed something in the pile that caught his attention. A forearm with tattoos familiar to him. A Vor. Vory v Zakon. A Russian criminal group. Thieves and smugglers mostly. Not clear why they would be here… And while they were by no means gentle, they were not exactly known for leaving severed limbs laying around in piles of gore.
I was happy to leave the mess and keep going. My Astral senses were pulling me another direction – towards a large drainage pool. Then I saw why. A silver pendant caught in a drain grating. A pendant in the shape of a flying magpie. I had a pretty good idea what had really happened to Magpie. The question was, why was *that* killing so different from the others?
Dunk suddenly shushed us, and listened for a moment, Then motioned down the hall. Voices. Speaking quietly, but carrying well in the empty corridors. I couldn’t make out the words, but I caught the cadence. Russian. I was sure of it. Rack nodded, then sent Koschei ahead to check it out.
Not far away he found the source. A couple of heavily armored slavic women packing up boxes and crates. An orc and a normie. They were talking about “moving out” soon. “Yaroslav” had finished arrangements with the port, but they were irritated that “Aleksandr” hadn’t come back. I suspected I knew where he was. Some of him anyway. Unfortunately then one of them caught sight of Koschei. They pulled out heavy weapons and locked in, this was going to go hot soon if I couldn’t square it.
Dunk tried to hold me back, but I went full flame on. Marched out in clear view – mojo’d up like neon. Wouldn’t have been enough to save me. They had pretty heavy kit. But I guessed they knew tech better than magic. So it was enough to get them to hesitate and talk first.
It was a tense few minutes, but I was finally able to get across that we didn’t care in the slightest about whatever cargo they were running. We just wanted to know if they were the ones who had taken Magpie’s drives. Or Tongs. “Da. Easy Money. There for the taking.” By the looks of things they were tech smugglers, and had been helping themselves to the crime scenes as simple opportunities to pad their score. They also told us Magpie had had a second pad she used for storage . And tossed us the key. They had already cleared out everything they wanted. We left them to their business and headed up to check it out.
It was pretty dismal. Clearly Magpie hadn’t used it for anything but a place to stash stuff she didn’t want found.
But the back room was clearly still being used. There was a ratty bed with signs of being recently slept in. A neatly prepared dinner of some unrecognizable meat drenched in soy sauce on the table. And a stashed box full of Japanese mementos.
Suddenly I realized we were no longer alone. He didn’t make a sound. He just appeared out of the shadows. A ghoul. Wearing renraku armor, a sword on his back, and most strangely of all… distinctly *not* attacking.
Instead he spoke. Politely. I’d never heard of Ghoul that hadn’t gone completely feral. But Rack said it happened sometimes . Usually with infected with particularly strong willpower.
He gave his handle as “Gaichu” – a name which meant something like “parasite” in Japanese. His armor and equipment weren’t stolen – he had actually been a Renraku Red Samurai before becoming infected. Afterwards he had fled to Hong Kong rather than committing Seppuku as had been expected of him. He had been trying to make a living as a Runner – there weren’t many career opportunities for a Ghoul. The Elders had directly hired him to eliminate Magpie. Afterwards he had arranged a meeting – in the parking garage – to accept payment. Instead the Elders had reported him to the HKPD as a raving monster and tried to have him eliminated.
So he’d begun killing the Elders. Picking them off one-by-one. Each time giving the Elder council the opportunity to simply pay him the originally agreed amount and end the vendetta. He said they had been quick, clean kills. He had taken what he could from the bodies afterwards simply as a means to feed his infection. He had *not* been spreading the gore all around afterwards. That had been the Elder Ip – building the case for their “monster that needs to be put down” cover.
It was all coming together now. The Elders suddenly deciding they wanted to cooperate with the HKPD. The thefts at the crime scenes. The differences between Magpie and the others – as well as the Elder’s reluctance to discuss her. We hadn’t been hired to solve the murders. We had been hired to clean up the Elder’s own mess!
So we arranged a final meeting with the Elders, invited Porter Lam, and brought Gaichu with us. The Elders were furious when the ysaw him, demanding to know why we had brought the “monster” with us rather than eliminating him like they had paid us to.
Lam was skeptical at first, but in the face of Gaichu’ himself and the all the evidence we had collected the Elder’s story simply disintegrated. There were just too many coincidences. Too many things he had been asked to do in the past month that hadn’t made sense. He declared all three Elders under arrest, and said they would be put on trial before the entire community. Elder Ip seemed inclined to fight his way out, but Lam stared him down. “You’ve already fried your Deck. All you can do now is choose who else goes down with you .“
Gaichu asked why we had not simply killed the Elders to restore our honor after being deceived. But accepted that that was “not our way” with a simple nod.
I suggested that he come with us. I could tell the others weren’t thrilled with the idea, but he was a shadowrunner. I thought he could be helpful on runs that didn’t require social finesse and public appearances. And I wanted to keep an eye on him. He was both extremely dangerous and extremely unfamiliar with the way things worked here. This was not Japan. And it was not the world of corporate shadow wars. It could be every bit as violent, but it wasn’t quite as straightforward about it.
Author’s Notes:
I’m letting the outfits change a lot more than usual this time around. That contributes some to the appearances floating, but in this kind of setting it just makes sense. They’re always upgrading, replacing things that got burnt/ripped in the last episode, or simply wearing something different today. Except Iz. I imagine her has the type that has a closet full of identical jumpers.
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