>Abel Rowling: Your coworker\drinking-buddy. Used to be your roommate years ago before you got him a job at the place you worked, now he's living on his own and taking care of your cat, Ishelda.
>Jun Viridian: The 38 year old neuroscientist who implanted you with the prototype, and from what you can tell, was the one who designed it.
>John Grayson: A security specialist and agent who works for EE. He has implanted arms and broad shoulders. He used to be military, but declines to explain the circumstances about why he left.
>Verne Tolstoy: A quiet, overweight man who used to be a cop. Most of his internal organs are all augmented versions, and he has an augmented arm; Ever since a mishap with an EMP, he's been unable to do his mercenary work with his niece, Amy.
>Amy Tolstoy: A teenage mercenary girl with neon hair, augmented legs, and a wrist computer full to the brim with random AI constructs. She has all sorts of strange friends.
>Azure, Onyx, and Cyan: Your bullfrog's three onboard AIs; Cyan specializes in networking, Onyx specializes in combat, and Azure bridges the gap between them.
>Natalie Adede: A beautiful young woman who you met in a bar and went home with. She's a lonely lawyer with a penchant for conspiracy theories, and she's relatively new to town, although Dave is paranoid she might be an enemy Agent sent to seduce him.
>Mark: The mechanic who works for EE in B-4, building and maintaining the gear of all Agents.

"Dave, listen closely." The message started. Abel was talking in a fast, breathy voice. "By the time you hear this, I may be dead. First things first, ArmaTek have been hired by Cadmium Dynamics. And that agent I was talking about before? The one in the video? They're in this city. Right now. Looking for me."
"Now I know that you're probably freaking out, but I'm not going to just lay down and die. I had a safehouse built. .but I can't tell you where, because I suspect I'm being watched as I send you this. Your friend, the one you sent me, has been very helpful, and I made sure that he knows what I've been researching. I left him. . inside the princess' throne." He said, and then in the background you heard glass breaking. "Sorry for being cryptic, but I can't let them know exactly what I know. Dave. Good luck, dave."

You hear a gunshot.

"Give 'em hell."

Click.

>>18976794
<Cyan, can we trace where that message was sent from?>

>>18976794
> princess' throne.
What can he mean by that? Maybe something we, as friends, know between us?

Anyway, go see Grayson and Amy and talk about this. We're going to save our friend, they can help us if they want to.

<Cyan, can we trace where that message came from?>
<Negative. He was using some strange kind of homebrewed encryption. It's like nothing I've ever seen, but it's. . familiar, somehow.>

You dart out of the door, tossing on a shirt, thinking. Princess. . princess. . . Maybe he was talking about Ishelda?
You shrug, and call Grayson.
"John Grayson here."
"Abel's in trouble." You say. "He was in trouble two days ago while I was knocked out. I'm going to go save him."
"Do you have any idea who's after him?" He asked. "Or where to find him?"

"... No. But he left me some kind of clue." You say, after a moment, as you descend to B-4.
"Then follow through on that clue. This Abel guy's your friend, right?"
"Yeah, definitely."
"Then count me in." He said. "I'll meet you on B-2."
"Got it." You say, and walk down to Mark's workshop.

"Hey Mark." You say.
He lifts the goggles away from his eyes and waves. "Your stuff is all here, along with the Javelin that girl's working on. I toyed with your 'drites a bit, but I didn't change anything important. They're just a bit thicker and stronger now."

You don the armor, mechandrites, and wear the rest of your gear. Then you call Amy.
"Daaave. What's up?"
"Abel's in trouble."
"You mean the guy who hit that armless chick with a chair?"
"Yeah, him- wait, what?"
"The chick who kidnapped him, when she was gonna kill him, he broke out and beat her with a chair. I liked him! Want my help?"
"Yeah, I do. If you don't mind, that is."
"No problem." She said.
"Okay. Meet me and Grayson at B-2. I'll be up there soon."

>>18976905
We know who's after him. It's the same guys who hired Armatek PMC.

<Cyan. It has probably been written by your fork that I left for Abel. Sure you cannot crack it? It's your work... in a way>

>Today's a pretty slow day, isn't it?

..Yeah, and I am going to have to leave around 4 too.

Head to B-2 and meet the other and then see if they have any ideas. If not, then we might as well check out his apartment. We could maybe hack the cameras and see where he went or something like that.

>>18977008
>>18977063

Lets first visit Abel's apartment. There might be more clues there.

<It was probably written by your own fork that I left for Abel.> You say. <Are you sure you can't crack it?>
<Not onboard your system, no. My copy was on a much more powerful machine, not to mention that Abel could have helped me with the encryption. Our best hope is to find my fork and reintegrate him with myself.>
<So our first step. . > You start.
<Should be at Abel's home.> Azure continues.

Amy's already at B-2, and she'd replaced her labcoat for a strange, sleeveless set of armor, and she has a small weapon with two barrels on her hip. Grayson was there too, holding his normal gauss rifle.
"You ready, Dave? You've been in a coma for three days, you know." Grayson said.
"I'll be fine." You responded. You can't afford to wait any longer.

>>18977116
We're fully decked, right? Armor, helmet and all shebang?

Lets go then!

Abel's home was covered in police. His car was gone, and all of his windows were smashed in. You could see a few officers moving things around on the inside, and you could see a few standing around a patrol car.

<There's something strange with these officers.> Azure said. <We're near a precinct and I'm checking their database of all officers on their payroll. . but none of these are on that payroll.>
"You okay, Dave?" Amy asked, sitting next to you.

>>18977116
"We can talk about that later. Let's go. The place to start would be his apartment."

Once we get that copy we can hopefully trace the call, but until then we should still hack into any cameras near his apartment to see if we can get an idea of where he went. We could maybe find his safehouse that way.

rolled 49 = 49

>>18977169
"Those police guys are not what they seems to be."

Hack their devices on their bodies. PDA, comms, etc. and try to get info.

Glad I checked the twitter, is this in autosage?

Oh yah, this thread is in autosage, Exabyte.

>>18977169
<I am more then willing to bet that they are connected to Armatek and/or Cadmium Dynamics.>

>>18977216
Second.

Also, hack into the cameras to see where they are all stationed. Or we could just get Azure to do the spatial mapping thing he did when we first met him.

>>18977234
>>18977224

Fuck.

To bypass the autosage, one can make a thread with only a picture. That usually does the trick.

You don't respond to Amy, instead closing your eyes and focusing on the camera data. Rewind to two days before, right when he left. .

The camera view isn't very good, but you can see someone walking up to the front door. Someone in a power suit. They knock, and then the door opens. Gunshots, and the suited person was thrown back, bullets sparking off of their suit.

At the corner of the camera's view, you see Abel dive through a window, carrying a cat cage. He fires another shot back through the window, and scrambles off. It's strange; you've never seen him like this.
"It's impossible to tell where he went from the camera." You say, finally opening your eyes.

"These aren't real cops." Grayson said. "They're too. . too alert, too well trained. I can see that they're uneasy with only sidearms. Given the evidence, I'd say that they're ArmaTek in disguise, or possibly Cadmium."

You close your eyes again, and focus on the police, reaching into them with your will. You don't sense any augmentations, but you do sense that they have implants. Strange implants, much like the combat-drug ones, but very slightly different.
You'll have to take a look at that later. Instead you hack into their PDAs, trying to get all and any information you can. Sadly, they've been all but wiped clean; the only info you can get from the assorted PDAs is a single order, telling them to 'be a cop' and to come to abel's address. The order was from someone labelled as. . 'Grasshopper'. Strange.

>>FF autosage. I'll make a 10.5 thread then. Can someone archive this on suptg?

>>18977269
"Yeah. They aren't.
Can we contact the police with that? Eh, probably going to take too long, right?"

"I'm going to try to climb up from the alley into his apartment."
Then do that.

>>18977296
This.

And also activate Onyx and see if he can give us sight lines like he did last mission. Line of sight for both the "cops" and any cameras. They could have someone watching those.

This could easily be a trap. They may have found out that we are connected to Abel. Let's be extra cautious.