Clusterfrag

Tyros nods slowly in agreement, "work your magic Val, we need to see who it is under that hood."

While Val taps away at the console, Adams kneels down beside the chair, and starts to search the unconscious tech.

"Dragesh, does this place have some equivalent of law enforcement? Maybe a brig or a holding cell? Otherwise, I can give this guy something that'll make sure he doesn't wake up too soon and cause problems for us."

Dragesh nods. "There's a root cellar. It should do until we can decide what to do with him."

Val hunts through the footage until he stumbles upon the castle's courtyard. He sets the same date as specified by Dragesh and drags his finger around in a lazy circle, rewinding the footage and forcing the various figures on the screen to shuffle around backwards at high speeds. He releases his hands from the controls when the robed man appears.

The audio has been erased!

The clever decker taps the corner of the monitor and the entire scene rotates. He slides a finger upwards and the images zooms. They now have a clear view of the robed man's lips as he speaks.

Tyros points at the screen and then eyes Max, "Can you make out what he is saying? Anything about his name?"

Mac steps toward the screen and narrows his eyes in an attempt to make out anything of use.

Max repeats the words that he can make out.

"...followed your... instructions to the letter... meeting with Darius Mcleod... no suspicion... that we are... grim... rites?"

Adams digests what he's heard.

"Okay, so we have blood magic, and something about rites. I don't know much about magic, but I'm guessing whatever they had to do to call up Zhiago, was probably done here, or somewhere nearby. Dragesh, do you remember when this guy left? And Val, try scrubbing through more of the video. Maybe we can find where this guy went, and where the voodoo ceremony or whatever was held."

Val zooms the video out to a normal perspective and speeds it up until the hooded figure departs. He attempts to track the man by switching to adjacent camera footage archives as soon as he disappears from the visual field, queueing up the footage to match the timestamp of the previous archive the instant he does so.

What are you up to, Val wonders as the man disappears around a corner of the library. Make a move, 'mano. Val switches to another camera's archive and imports the final timestamp from the last archive.

Dragesh has been silent for a few minutes, but speaks up.

"The grim rites... It can't be."

Tyros' snaps his head around to stare at Dragesh, "What are you talking about Dragesh? Spit it out!"

"But how do you figure their connection with this hooded man? We have to find him. Once we do, he will tell us who all is behind our master's murder."

Dragesh scratches his chin.

"We don't have a lot of leads. I've an idea, but I know that it's something Darius would have never suggested..."

Max perks up at Dragesh's hesitancy and leads,

"Oh... ?"

Dragesh's features seem all the more severe.

"We could summon Zhiago."

Val rubs his chin nervously.

"Y'know, I'm no expert... but... perhaps there are other options to explore?"

Val swallows dryly.

Max looks around a little nervously and asks,

"Am I missing something? Why don't we just track these fraggers down and blow their brains out?"

Tyros shrugs, "My summoning abilities are rudimentary. I'm not sure I could handle Zhiago. Dragesh, can you summon him? Otherwise I'm inclined to do as Max suggests and hunt them down the old fashioned way. Someone must have seen where this hooded monk went."

Val finally locates footage from a camera located on the castle's exterior wall. The hooded man moves swiftly to a waiting limousine under the cover of dusk. He bends down to speak with the driver before slipping into the back.

Val snaps his fingers.

"There he goes. Dragesh, does your security team track the arrivals and departures of non-Brothers? We've got a time stamp on his exit, so if there's a record it might give us some clue of who he is. Otherwise... does the Brotherhood have Vehicle ID scanners near the perimeter? If not, you should. This unfortunate situation illustrates that quite artfully, I think."

Val spins his finger around on the glass panel, attempting to rotate the perspective and zoom in as necessary to get a picture of the holoplate or the on the car.

"Worse comes to worse, maybe I can get a hold of some DMV records, but that drek is a convoluted mess I'd rather not deal with. You think going there in person is bad, you should see the bloody nodes. Look like they're maintained by a bunch of chimps on LSD."

Dragesh directs Val to the vehicle ID records.

"You'll probably need to do some deep scanning--but it's got to be there. That looked like a rental, so I'll bet our hooded chum isn't from the Fist..."

Max leads,

"The Fist?"

"The adept brotherhood that is here visiting. Val, see what you can find..."

Having matched the timestamp on the surveillance tape to a Vehicle ID in the log Dragesh directed him to, Val calls up an AR window and begins surfing the 'trix. On the offchance that the car has been an object of interest in any other crime, Val takes a quick breeze through Edinburgh's public access crime log. While that search runs, he zips between nodes and icons alike before coming to an instant stop in front of the Edinburgh transit authority's records node, which he analyzes to get a better idea of just how big a clusterfrag this is like to be. ((Firewall & Scan ratings, please.))

(( Firewall 5, Scan 5. ))

Fortunately for Val, the politics in New Edinburgh keep very little money flowing into the transportation department, meaning their matrix security is sub-par.

A slight smile plays across Val's face as he peers through the AR window and shakes his head at the transit authority's shoddy node security. Good enough for government work, he thinks lightly.

Val verifies that the Stealth and Armor icons are properly illuminated in his processes list before firing up his Exploit program. He watches through the AR window as Stat1C5hade, his better half, summons a wicked looking half-moon axe from the nothingness of matrix space and begins shearing chunks of code from the transit authority firewall. Even in employing the implicitly crude analog of hacking away with a digital axe, every one of the 5hade's movements seems as precise as a surgeon's. Val suppresses the urge with some small effort to fully invest his consciousness into the avatar, and instead settles for the vicarious sensation of guiding the 5hade's arm from behind the looking glass.

Val makes quick work of the firewall code, his axe slicing a path to the software's base subroutine. His avatar reaches forward and makes contact, quickly registering a user account.

(( Damn... forgot to specify account type... again. However, I'm assuming that a user account is all I need to do a records search. ))

Val watches as his avatar flits through the crack in the firewall, his third person point of view following directly behind. A low grunt emerges from his throat, half disgust and half amusement, as his vision through the AR pane transitions into the node interior. Virtual bankers boxes lie stacked atop one another as far as the digital eye can see, some clearly labeled, others not so much. Here and there lie immense stacks of unfiled data packets. Val's always been one for everything having its place, and everything being in it; this is like something out of a lethally boring nightmare. This is why you don't have a fragging car, 'mano. So you don't have to deal with these people, he thinks, though that might not quite be the truth of the matter. Why does a decker need a car when he can simply jump from his favorite data haven in Hong Kong to his favorite VR club in Los Angeles with nary but a thought? You're just lazy and never learned. Admit it.

Ah well, back to work. Val arms his 5hade with the Vehicle ID obtained from the Brotherhood's scanners and guides him through the node in search of the record modules for both private vehicles and charter services. A dim, violet cone of light issues from his avatar's insubstantial palm. He plays the light over the digital disaster, hoping for a hit sooner rather than later.

Val quickly matches the vehicle ID as being registered to an O'Malley Limousine. He makes a note of the address.

Val logs off the node and shuts down his AR session.

"Got the charter company. O'Malley Limo. Shall we pay them a visit?"

"Absolutely, let's go!"

[ O'malley Limousine and Taxi, New Edinburgh ]

The charter service is headquartered in a squat glass building in the middle of a needlessly large car park. Inside, away from the acrid rain and billowing cold of the Irish winter, lives a small army of leather couches, tables overflowing with brochures and a bored looking receptionist perched at an ornate oak desk.

Val gives Max a light jab in the ribs with his elbow, a sly smile playing across his features.

"Make your moves, 'mano. I'm good at finding info when I want it, but getting it from real people gets a bit awkward for me sometimes."

Max steps up to the desk places his palms on it, looming over the receptionist in an imposing but non-threatening fashion. In an authoritative but polite voice, Max says,

"Excuse me, miss. I'm from the Bureau of Standards and Regulations, and I need to see your rental logs for the past eight weeks." As Max claims his false but official sounding organization, he briefly flashes a glimpse at his very non-official ID. "One of your vehicles may have been involved in a scam to defraud a group of investors, and we need to confirm the rental."