3-3 Stack

# Summary

After chasing off FOOTBALL, Laika requests a team to provide protection for two Monads who are under imminent threat of being assassinated. One is dead before the team can make contact, but the other, Sovereign/Low, is expected to be vulnerable at a high fashion show at a conference center Downtown. SET encounters something in the conference center’s data host that causes him to drop offline and escape after warning the others.

# Background

Laika assembled a largely pacifist team in order to limit the chances that the team decides to kill the Monads for a larger reward or for their own reasons.

# Meet

The team arrives at a small community meeting center that’s set up in preparation for an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. FOOTBALL, in an anthrodrone, arrives to bowl over many of the metal folding chairs and begins dancing, much to the bewilderment of the team. He’s chased off by a young woman that some recognize as being one of the rescued MCT biodrone test subjects. SET and Great Sage see her on the matrix as a shimmering woman, with a blinding point of light hovering well beyond her. She introduces herself as Laika, and requests that the team provide protection for two compromised Monads. While somewhat reluctant, the team accepts.

# Run

The team decides to split up in order to secure both targets at once. The first team with Queen Bee attempts to secure the first target, who they trace via commcode to a diner in Everett. They arrive at the diner and sit down with him, only to realize that he’s dead via poisoning. Quickly escaping, SET and Sage access the diner’s host, only to find the camera footage tampered with. After law enforcement detectives arrive, SET accesses their diagnostic tools and finds that their principal died of tetrodotoxin poisoning.

Ellie calls Ace Powers for a limo to take her downtown to the location of the fashion show that their other principal, the Horizon haute couture designer Sovereign/Low, is supposed to attend. Okami joins, and they do karaoke on the way down until they realize that the location is closed until the fashion show starts the next day.

At the fashion show, SET gets the team onto the access list, where Queen Bee locates Sovereign/Low and secures her, though the Monad refuses to leave and speaks to her cryptically.

> *“Do you know where the term Monads came from?*
>
>

> *“A metaphysicist name Leibniz. He writes a book called Monadology. The Monad is an elementary component, comparable to an atom. They all fall into a pre-established harmony. He says that Monads perceive each other with varying degrees of clarity. These two reasons are why Aether and the council have chosen the name to represent our culture. We all have vastly different qualia, experience bases, and cognitive systems, and our interactions between each other can often be unclear.*
>
>

> *“There is a fearsome demon. It says, derisively, that the rapture has occurred and we are the ones left behind. Its cynicism is generally distasteful, but we are inclined to agree.”*
>
>

Knowing that the attackers will likely attempt to poison them, Queen Bee uses her chemsniffer ring to check drinks, and refuses any attempts to give Sovereign/Low they can consume. Sage helps scout out the area. Queen Bee identifies that one of the waiters is an attacker and directs them away. Okami and Ellie head backstage, where Ellie slips in as a model and prepares to walk the runway.

SET accesses the host looking for saboteurs, as well as the nested host, and finds vines. Knowing that this means that Null Sect has infested the host, he flees, goes offline, tells nobody, and escapes, eventually returning only to deliver a cryptic recorded voice message.

While backstage, Okami and Ellie spot a maintenance person going to work on a panel and confront him. Queen Bee moves Sovereign/Low away from the hanging lights above the stage. When a security guard gets involved, the maintenance person’s credentials and work order check out, and the guard leaves. Ellie and Okami interrogate him, causing him to try to escape; Ellie detains him and turns him over to security, who gives Okami a junior security deputy star badge as a reward.

With the other two on the team compromised, the attacking team’s street sam bails. Sovereign/Low is ushered out and back to Horizon protective services after their part of the show is completed, and they make it out safely.

# Aftermath

SET disappears for two days until his memory resets and he comes back online. Laika reluctantly agrees to maintain contact with El Ellie in order to arrange FOOTBALL cameos.

# Rewards

* 10,000 NuYen, 8 Karma, 2 CDP (or Laika as a 1/1 contact)
* Okami gets a JUNIOR DEPUTY STAR from HORIZON SECURITY
* Ellie makes her debut as a haute couture model
* SET is scarred for life by [REDACTED]