<b>Spook</b><br/><br/>Her escort watched Spook quietly as she answered his question. The faintest smile appeared crossed his fine features. Halfway through he returned his gaze back out the window to the buildings passing them, the people outside coming and going. His features reflected on the glass.<br/><br/>The car slowed, pulled up before a building with a smooth white facade. It was illuminated from the base with gold hues cast up its walls. The man looked out the window past Spook at it.<br/><br/>"Here we are."<br/><br/>He got out of the car, waited outside the for Spook to join him. He didn't open the door for her. The Tenzou logo was embedded in brass up the broad flight of stairs leading up to the the structure from the street. At least a dozen people were coming and going from it, well dressed. They cast curious looks at Spook's simple white outfit, her shaved head. Even without the layer of Dreg on her skin, she still stuck out.<br/><br/>"Follow me. Please." He added curtly, giving her a half smile.<br/><br/>He lead her up the steps, past planters that without trees or fauna - not that Spook had much experience with either. Rather, erected in them were prosthetic approximations, plants built from machine and steel and aluminum.<br/><br/>"Power built Pangu." He told her, walking ahead of her. He gestured to one of the machine trees. "Power rose it from the earth and placed us above our predecessors. All of us, even you and the world you came from rests above the old one."<br/><br/>The doors to the building opened, polished glass on silver slides. Spook felt the cool, crisp air wash over her as she stepped inside - a stark contrast to the heat of the city. They crossed a lobby of marble floors and brushed aluminum.  On the walls were moving images of prosthetic limbs, hands opening and closing, flesh and machine merged.<br/><br/>"Power makes WatchTower and their kind move, makes them breath. It gives purpose." He raised his finger. "Power is a single mind from which billions are given direction."<br/><br/>Around them people stood, speaking with sales reps, looked at displays, limbs, body parts.  A young man behind a long desk who was speaking to a customer saw Spook and her escort coming. His eyes widened. He apologized to the customer and excused himself. Her escort looked at him, pointed to a door with a security pad. The young man hurried to it as they approached, almost frantic. He entered a code into the pad, scanned his ID tag.<br/><br/>"Power dictates. Power controls."<br/><br/>The door opened. He waved the young man back to his customers, pausing and stepping aside, gesturing for Spook to go before him. As she stepped in front of him he spoke again, it was with a cold resolution, a sharp edge that cut away all pretense.<br/><br/>"But above all, remember this: Power is a lie."<br/><br/>Beyond the door was a hallway, and from it rooms and windows branched off. Beyond the windows were surgical rooms, complex high precision machines installing prosthetics in their patients, on them. Technicians in white coats and masks sat and consoles, controlling and directing them. Scalpels, sutures, cauterizing lasers. The people, laying on stretchers, unconscious as parts of them were discarded, flesh and blood no more than property.<br/><br/>In the rooms mechanics and engineers worked, modifying, preparing prosthetics for implanting. Spook saw an array or organs all stamped with Tenzou's logo. Liver, lungs, legs, scalp. An engineer looked up, saw the two, stared.<br/><br/>Spook's escort paused down the hall before a window. He watched the surgery beyond with his hands clasped behind his back. Beyond the wall of glass a young boy was being brought in, sitting in a wheelchair, his legs deformed and twisted. Her escort's fine features reflected on the glass as he watched.<br/><br/>"It is a remarkable thing, power... That feeling when we are without it. How we are desperate for it." He watched the young boy look nervously at the doctors, his parents reassuring him, holding his hands. In his eyes the glimmer of hope beyond fear as he was lifted onto the table.<br/><br/>"People like me - in my position... they wield power, but seldom understand it. They dictate, control, direct... all of it in pursuit of more power. They want influence, want security. They chase mindlessly after their egos whims without ever once knowing what they truly have."<br/><br/>A technician wheeled a pair of prosthetic legs into the room, and a lower spinal column. The boy laying on the table stared, smiling, tears in his eyes. Spook didn't need to hear the conversation to know its contents. He would walk, when we woke. He would walk for the first time in his life.<br/><br/>"I could tell everyone in this building that they don't work here anymore. I could unemploy them with a word. I could tell that boy he wasn't going to walk. I could tell those engineers to create defects in those organs. That is power."<br/><br/>"But what, Spook, would happen I wonder if they simply... didn't?" He looked at her, curious. "What if they kept coming to work? What if those technicians gave that boy his legs anyway - or those engineers refused to cripple those organs? What if they just... kept going? Well then all that power I possess means nothing, does it? Of course I could suspend their pay, but that would require other people to carry out that order as well. What if they didn't do what I told them either? I could call in WatchTower or Nobunaga to come and clear these people out -<i>but again</i>... I rely on other people."<br/><br/>He waved her to follow him as the boy was put under and the surgery was set to commence.<br/><br/>"You know the truth of power better than most in this world. You come from a world where you can't rely on others. Your only concept of power is what you can achieve with your own two hands and<i>that</i>... that is the true nature of power. Whether by choice or circumstance, people in your world have separated themselves from wealth, from influence, from security." He came to a door, stopped and looked at her. "And as a result you are free... as none of these people around you are. You rely on no one, and for that you are free from the lie of power. Ironically that is what makes you truly powerful."<br/><br/>He waved his hand in front of the door's security pad and it opened. He entered a room like a warehouse, environment carefully controlled. Rows and rows of locked cases of various sizes rested on racks, each baring a serial number, model number, and the Tenzou logo. He guided her through plastic curtains to a long rack, suspended from which were arms, left and right, metal, synthetically skinned, seamed and smooth.<br/><br/>"Your right arm is damaged. Choose one and it will be replaced. Any of these... or those." He gestured to the cases on the racks. "Any of them."<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><b>Nikki</b><br/><br/>She started shouting and all too quickly Kal understood his mistake. She wasn't a god damn hooker. Not by a long shot. It figured, he supposed. He'd done her wrong. He'd assumed she was meat. He had only a moment of pause as she yelled, called him Dirk - or was it 'dick?'<br/><br/>He felt it at just about the same moment as he heard it. The wall around him spewed chips and dust as it was hit, the thunder of the assault rifle filling the rooms, drowning everything out, drowning out thought. It even drowned out the pain. Kal hit the ground, flattened himself, covered his head as the debris rained down on him, blood mixing with dust. The window cracked and shattered as bullet hit it, the mattress perforating in the corner.<br/><br/>The assault rifle kicked and bucked and shook in Nikki's hands. The smell of gunpowder filled her nostrils, the muzzle flash igniting in her eyes.<br/><br/>She didn't hear the guy at the door, that turned on his heel as he saw one of his gang dead in the hall, bullets in him, the other on the couch, still as a corpse. He saw two guys dead, his guys. He ducked away from the door, shouted and waved, pointing in a panic. The three Dregbangers in the hallway, riding adrenaline and fear didn't bother looking.<br/><br/>They just fired.<br/><br/>The wall behind Nikki exploded, bullets and shot tearing into the room, ricocheting and burying themselves in the walls, in the floor and ceiling. The gunman couldn't see what was in the room or where, so they shot everything. They wanted the wall between them and that room turned into debris. Nikki couldn't run, all she could feel was that shaking rifle in her hands and the wind knocked out of her, the spray of her blood across the floor and fridge just became more colors in her eyes. Frakkis, unconscious on the couch didn't even have the opportunity to let the overdose finish. His body jerked as he took a high caliber rifle round through his chest, another through his arm. The spiraling rods from the street sweeper ripping through his sternum. The old couch sent puffs of stuffing into the air with the dust and debris.<br/><br/>It was like it was snowing, snowing plastic and white dust. As Nikki slumped, she watched the snow. She watched it as everything went black and became nothing at all.<br/><br/><b><span style="color: darkred">Nikki is Dead</span></b><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><b>Darion</b><br/><br/>The sound echoing down the stairwell was everything he didn't want to hear. Footsteps, shouting. And then there was gunfire, dull through the walls. A single rifle, fully automatic. A few seconds later the sound quadrupled, closer. It was coming from just beyond the southern stairwell, fourth floor.<br/><br/>There was no such thing as silently now. There was just degrees of loud.<br/><br/>Just beyond the stairwell were three Dregbangers, backs turned. They were firing down the hall to the east, firing without any control or measure. The wall was falling apart, pieces blowing off it, turning into splintering debris. Three men, three weapons. A submachine gun, shotgun, assault rifle, all handled ineptly, hip fired, sprayed without discipline. He couldn't have heard anyone else coming down the stairs if he had wanted to.<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><b>Valerie</b><br/><br/>Kal didn't respond. She saw all three of them reach the floor, one checked, retreated suddenly, yelled something. And then it was chaos.<br/><br/>Her assault into the connected individual wasn't difficult. He was outmatched, nothing more than a DDB and a neurointerface. He didn't have any hardware with him, at least nothing that showed up. It would explain why he he had terminal access into the building but hadn't set up any kind of control apparatus. Whoever it was simply wasn't equipped to do it.<br/><br/>That meant two things happened. One, she had a window to manipulate his access, back trace it, maybe pick up something wireless, switch it on ff she was lucky. If he was carrying a DDB and didn't realize that it was broadcasting, she'd know where he was at all times to within two meters. Depending on her trickery, who knew what information she could pull on the fuckwit while she was in there.<br/><br/>The second thing was that he knew someone was in the system that<i>was</i>equipped. Anyone else and they'd be dancing with someone remote jacking from a hardware rig. It gave them something to chew on, a bit of information to figure out and interpret. They'd taken out the camera on the top floor, so the connected individual wasn't keeping the information to himself. They didn't know how many people were there, or who they were. All they had was shitload of gunfire and the knowledge that someone had taken control of the building.<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>Valerie / Darion Environment Map:<br/><div class="ToggleTriggerAnchor bbCodeSpoilerContainer">
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