Downtime 5 - Sam

"If the girls were not crushed by the garbage truck, then they are not beyond saving. Dr. Nakamats had two assistants who knew how to reverse the brain wipe. But they were killed by the Yakuza when we were trying to escape. I do not know how to do it, but at least I know that it is possible.
As for revenue, have you considered shadowrunning?"

"An information broker, then?" Sam suggests. "I think that investigative journalism has more skills in common with running than you might think. But, If you need a place to stay while we put your pirate news station plan into action and try to figure out how to stop this human sex doll operation, I am sure the others would not mind if you stayed at the community center."

"I think that the rooms at the community center have beds in them. Or, we could at least get you a futon. You do not need to stay on a couch," Sam says. "In the meantime, what is the next move to getting the word out on this story? Do you think you can track down where they took Dr. Nakamats? Or what they did with the erased girls?"

"I will see what I can do about getting access to the traffic cameras," Sam says. "You said that you have a lot of contacts. Maybe you can get some information from them. If they murdered Dr. Nakamats and shut down the program, then at least it is over. But, if they just moved to a new location, we need to at least try to stop them."

"Well," Sam thinks. "This will be an interesting dinner at Auntie Muku's..."

Sam and Michiko finish their meals without much more conversation. Sam keeps his gaze fixed on his food as he eats.

Sam picks up a burner commlink (running downtime total 82,002¥) on his way back to the community center, and waits for Michiko and Emiko to send him footage and pictures from the factory.

Sam flips through the pictures Michiko sent him, looking for the clearest picture he can find of Dr. NakaMats.
He attempts to digitally enhance the pictures as much as he can.
Hopefully the footage that Emiko got is a little clearer than this...

Sometime, when Sam isn't actively working on finding and stopping Dr. Nakamats, his commlink lights up displaying a message from Kai Zoku.

Sam ignores it. Kai never contacts him unless he wants something, and it's almost never worth Sam's time. Sam goes back to his video games.

But, this time Kai is persistent. Within the next hour, Sam gets four more messages from Kai asking him to call. So, Sam calls.

It turns out that Kai is actually bringing him something worthwhile this time. A local... trid... theater...? is ... screening? a new trideo for just one night, months before it gets a wide release.

Kai has recently worked his way into a network of Matrix pirates from all around the country. He explains to Sam that if he can get a copy of this trid, everyone is going to be interested. This could be the biggest payday of his life. But, the security at the theater is more than Kai can handle.

Sam starts by hacking the host of theater to see what security is going to look like on the day. It's just a theater, so the security isn't particularly difficult for Sam to get through. He tosses a mark on the entrance, and takes a look around. All he sees around is some ineffectual IC patrolling the area. There don't seem to be any security measures inside the theater at all. Just some door locks. Not even security cameras.

Sam easily finds a layout of the theater, and a list of employees. Feeling confident, Sam keeps looking around in the system for some idea of any extra security measures planned for the screening.

He finds an email thread from the manager of the theater and the production studio. He brazenly opens the thread and reads through it while still in the system, and suddenly more IC pops up around him. The IC must have spotted him!

He quickly jacks out, having scored the payload anyway.

Reading through the thread, it looks like there really isn't that much extra security planned, as such. The transmission is going to be air gapped. The people in the theater will be required to leave their commlinks at the door and use hardwired commlinks provided at their seats. The transmitter with the trideo itself is going to be started, and then the operator is going to leave it in the projection room and lock the door. An extra, analog lock has been added to the door for this purpose.

Sam is happy with this level of security and devises a plan. He's going to have Eula sneak in there.

On the night, Sam sets up nearby and hacks back into the host of the theater. But this time, he is spotted right away. By a spider. The spider wasn't there before, and the email thread didn't say anything about hiring one for the night. Someone must have noticed that the system found him, and decided to up the security.

Sam jacks out. Eula will have to get past the maglock doors on her own. But that shouldn't be a problem. Sam monitors Eula as she makes her way through the back door and up to the projection booth without incident. She easily picks the maglock and the extra analog lock on the projection room door. Everything is going smoothly enough. She opens the door, and is greeted with a taser in her face.

There is a guard camped out in the room. This was also not in the email. Eula is able to take out the guard, using gel rounds loaded in her Ares Predator. But she takes a lot of matrix damage from the taser.

Still, she is able to plug in to the trideo transmitter, and Sam hacks the security through her and downloads the trideo. Eula makes it back out of the theater without further incident.

(rolled a 3 on the extra job roll)

Emiko reads Sam's text and it dawns on her, "my cameras!" She realized she left her cameras at the warehouse. "Well, it's not like I could have grabbed them on the way out."

Emiko watches the footage and nearly faints while watching Tetsu dismantle the security guard with his axe. When finished, she encrypts the footage and sends it to Sam. "Sam, I'm sure you were going to do this anyway but please make sure you don't share the video with us in it. We're wearing masks but I want to be cautious."

Sam sifts through the data that Emiko sent, hoping for clearer images of Dr. Nakamats and the Yakuza people. And video of them marching hundreds of naked brainwashed women into a garbage truck. Hopefully the quality is more useable than what Michiko got.

Sam notices that the only footage Emiko sent is from the cameras that she set up outside. He is pretty sure that he remembers Emiko taking video and pictures from inside the factory of Dr. Nakamats giving his evil genius speech and of the rooms of women, for exactly this purpose. He sends another message to Emiko:

>>>>>>I thought you also got footage in the basement?
>>>>>>Send that, too.

When Sam asks Emiko for the footage of inside the warehouse, when Dr. Nakamats explained his devious plan, she flinches since she was going to use that to spread in a bulletin board system.

"I trust you Sam, you'll put this video to better use," she thinks to herself before sending the video.

Sam goes through all of the data Emiko sent over. He edits out any appearances from the three of them. During Dr. Nakamat's monologue in the operating room, he manipulates the voices of himself, and any of the Emiko or Tetsu who might be heard so that they are unrecognizable.

When he gets to the end, he realizes that Emiko didn't send him any of the footage he remembers her getting of the women being stored in the basement. He does have Dr. Nakamats's speech, and the women being herded into the trash compactor. So, for now he thinks he might not need the extra pictures. Though, he can't imagine why Emiko would have left them out.

He sends the edited footage over to Michiko:
>>>>>>Here is some more footage that we got that night.
>>>>>>What can we do with this?

He also edits a still of Dr. Nakamats being put in the sedan out of the video footage. He sends the picture to Yoshinari from the burner commlink that he picked up on the way home with the message:
>>>>>>I know you think your father is ignoring you.
>>>>>>He is not.
>>>>>>He is being held by the Yamaguchi.
>>>>>>-A Friend-

Immediately after sending the message to Yoshinari, Sam hacks his commlink to snoop on what he does upon receiving the message (3 hits on hack on the fly)

Kin places a call to Sam.

"Hey Sam, this is Kin Tanaka. We met at the Community Center. I know you're busy, but I've got a favor to ask when you get a moment. I'm looking for some information on my parents, Nori and Yumi. I think there might be something about them in the server at the Church of Happy Science. I hear you're the best, but how much trouble would it be to get in and poke around? I'd be happy to pay you for your trouble."

Kin replies-

>>>>>>>>Thanks Sam. I really appreciate it.

Sam responds to Yoshinari from the burner right away.
>>>>>>This is not a joke.
>>>>>>I know that your father stopped responding to you <number> months ago.
>>>>>>You probably assumed that it was because he does not approve of your lifestyle.
>>>>>>But it is because he is being held by the Yamaguchi.
>>>>>>I do not know if he was initially kidnapped, or went willingly. But he is being held currently.
>>>>>>He was at the factory that was broken into last night.
>>>>>> What you see on the news is not the whole truth.

Sam sends that message, and then follows it up with a still of Dr. NakaMats operating in the dingy basement laboratory.

He continues monitoring Yoshinari's phone. (He would be using fly on the wall and baby monitor for this monitoring)