So you've got to ask youself: is it time to get on dying, or get on living?

Original Play Date: January 18, 2002
Gang Members Present: Twitch, Bob, Shiv, Racy, Fix, and Vincent.

Continuation from the previous game.

Vincent, upon hearing shots fired above, rushes back up the stairwell to aid his friends. At the top of the stair on the 4th floor, Vincent bursts out to find a security guard entering the maintenence room with gun raised. With cyberenhanced speed, Vincent pulls out his H&K MP5 from his satchel and puts a three round burst into the guard's ear, throwing him over to slump gorily against the side of the doorway. Vincent entered the room quickly and cautiously to find his friend Codex badly hurt and Sids dead in the corner. Shielded for the moment by the firefight between Shaun and mall security downstairs, Vincent applies first aid to his unconscious and failing friend. Codex is too badly injured to move, so Vincent is forced to leave his friend behind and hope he will live long enough to be saved by trauma teams.

Below, Shaun roars with defiance, deftly running and sliding between the scattering crowd, picking off mall security with 9mm rounds. After cutting down half of his opposition, Shaun makes a break for it, bursting out of the mall and making a run for it on the street. Soon, he disappears into the teeming night.

Vincent charges down the stairs to find the young trio he subdued gone. Down and down, Vincent rushes into the parking level to get his bike, but realizes they'll probably pick up his bike and his license numbers on security vids if he leaves with his bike. Cursing himself for parking in the mall, he spots a shadow descending into a sewer opening. Vincent decides that might be a safe way out, and follows into the darkness.

The tunnel is unlit and switches direction many times. Soon, the sound of the kids splashing in the darkness fades to nothing and Vincent is lost. He is forced to try to find his way sloshing kneee deep in foul sewage with one hand against the slime covered walls and one groping in front of him. Luckily perhaps for him, he soon hears approaching splashes. A person walking perhaps. Vincent queries the darkness. A man's voice answers. After some cautious verbal fencing, the sound of a pocket lighter precedes a flare of light that makes Vincent squint. Before him in the sewage, surrounded by swarms of roaches fleeing his light, is Jack Norton with IR flashlight in hand and night goggles on his face. He gestures for Vincent to follow him and Vincent does.

Jack brings him to a junction where five youths including the three from the stairwell stand waiting. The teens stand bandaged and grumpy looking, but make no violent motions. Jack pins Vincent with a cold glare and asks him what he's doing here in the tunnels. Something about his voice suggests he alread knows the answer. Vincent says he's trying to avoid cameras after a disagreement with security. Jack asks what it was about, and Vincent responds that security shot his friend. Jack steps forward and presses. Why did his friends get into a shootout with security. Vincent finds himself unable to answer. Jack steps back, smug and haughty. "You kneejerk gun and run types make me sick. You wave your weapons all over, people get killed, and you don't even know what you're dying for. Pathetic." He takes back the satchel Vincent lifted off the girl who stands now with a tape across her broken nose with her friends and gives the bag back to her. Someone produces a flashlight and gives it to Vincent. "Go that way to get out. Come find me when you have a reason to live."

"Is that an invitation?" retorts Vincent.

"Take it as you like" quips Jack and nods for Vincent to leave.

---

The others arrive in a trickle at Jenny's apartment. Racy, Twitch, Shiv, Bob and Fix are here, drinking and watching shows with Jenny's flat mates, Perk and Ted18. Jenny bursts in and frantically starts drawing shades. They ask her what she's freaking about, and Jenny recounts a harrowed tale of Brooklyn, Shaun, missing friends, and many, many bullets. Perk brings Jenny some pills and a box of Smash to drink and try to calm her down. Jenny is totally paranoid and hysterical that the cops are going to show up at any moment.

There's a knock at the back door. Twitch checks it, and they find Vincent wet and stinking in the back alley. Jenny freaks and they strip Vincent and clean him up then ask him to recount what happened. Vincent tells what he knows about the shootout and that Sids is dead and perhaps Codex too. Jenny turns white and pleads vith Vincent to hide. Vincent concents and Racy offers to drive him home. Everyone else decides to stay and just pretend nothing happened, reasoning if the cops are coming, Jenny and they didn't do anything and they'll be okay.

---

Racy drives Vincent home, dropping him off a few blocks from his flat. Vincent returns home to collect some things in case he needs to run. Ominously, his phone rings. Vincent hesitates, then picks it up. On the phone is Ken Mahler, one of the evidence clerks at the station. "I've got some interesting footage here on disk" he says. "There was a shotout at the Star mall tonight."

Vincent's blood goes cold. "I'll be right there."

Vincent meets Racy and gets a lift to the precinct. He makes his way past vagrants, hookers, and gang members to Ken Mahler's desk. They talk briefly, talking around the subject. Ken says the footage from the mall has been loaded into the system but won't be reviewed until sometime after 6am. Work load being what it is tonight, there are no available officers to follow up until then. They talk some more and Vincent implies he's in trouble. "You think you've got problems? My girl wants to go on a cruise. Ten thousand Euro it's going to cost me. Where am I going to get that kind of money? Furthermore, I'm going to need to get it before going to work at 6 tomorrow. I don't know where I'm going to get it..."

Vincent's mind begins to race. He's knows he's being given a way out, but all of his friends combined don't have ten thousand Euro. "Hey, I think I can help you, but I'll need a few weeks to put that together" he says.

"Sorry Vincent, I need it tomorrow. Hey, I've got to go. Talk to you, okay?" Ken gets up and brushes off Vincent's attempts to negotiate for time. "Can't talk. Gotta go."

Desperate, Vincent begins searching for ideas. There isn't ten thousand Euro between his friends if they pooled their money and sold all their bikes.

Returning to Jenny's with Racy, Vincent is at a loss. He consults the gang, and it occurs to him to call Dale. Dale's got street connections, and is known for getting things done. Maybe Dale can come up with something. Vincent decides to call the fixer and ask him to convince Ken to let Vincent go.

...

6AM. Dale is on the phone with Vincent. Ken is handled, and Vincent's job is safe, but Vincent owes him. Dale has a favor he needs done. It's a long shot, but if Vincent can handle it, they'll be even. The job is a long shot. Very difficult and without much time to accomplish. A prisoner is being transported from a safe house over the Bay bridge. If Vincent could eliminate the prisoner before he reaches town... that would be a very good thing. Vincent nods and starts making calls.

The gang gathers, groggy but awake, at the warehouses at the city side landing of the bridge. Without time to prepare, they decide to stall the armored van in a traffic when it descends off the bridge, light it on fire so the crew has to ge out, and then shoot the prisoner.

Suffice it to say, the plan doesn't work. They can't find anything to light the cars on fire though they do succeed in creating a traffic jam, and while trying to get around the van to pry open the armored doors, one of the riders spots Vincent and says "hi." Having been identified, Vincent chats with him and retreats.

Later, Dale simply says he understands, and that he's sure he'll find some way for Vincent to repay him, so with uncertainty and anxiety, Vincent goes to work.

[GM's Notes]

This is a continuation of the Star Mall shootout. Since the players didn't finish what they were doing and get out last time, I let them play through the firefight and deal with the consequences of their actions.

I reasoned there were two main choices for Vincent in the mall. Run for his life or try to escape with Codex. Vincent realised that Codex was too injured to move, and decided to run. This was good for him, because if he tried to save Codex, he probably would have been slowed enough for the cops to get him when they arrived, effectively ending his life.

In the sewer connections to the parking garage, Vincent realised that if he tries to just drive out, he'll be picked up on cameras, so I provided the only safe (if only slightly unplausible) option of following Jacks kids into the sewer. This was my first hint at something that the players had overlooked: security cameras. Even when confronted with the idea that he couldn't leave undetected, Vincent hadn't yet connected that he probably didn't do anything unwatched in the mall, and he definitely wasn't wearing his helmet the whole time.

The encounter in the sewer with Jack is their second exposure to him in two games. Jack is a kind of Tyler Durden/Jiminy Cricket sort of character, and his interaction with Vincent introduces one of the philosophical threads I hope to explore in the game. That is, in a world of objectification, alienation, and consumer apathy, what do people have to live for and what keeps them human? This I hope was summed up in Jack's question to Vincent: "why did you get into a shootout with mall security?" Where Vincent didn't really have an answer. It was driven home when Jack said "Let's talk again when you have a reason to live and reasons to die."

Anyway, Vincent escapes, and I got to do some nice NPC roleplaying at Jenny's with her freaking out and really whippping the other players into some paranoia. They did a nice job of worrying that the cops were going to bust down the door at any second and take them all away. Things got really amusing when Vincent comes in and gives everyone the details of the shootout in front of Bob, who he realizes is wearing a cop uniform under his coat only after most of the cat is out of the bag. Cue awkward moment.

The next part of the story was a bit difficult to pull off, because it became even more Vincent heavy. I apologize to the players who stayed in the apartment while I put the vise on Vincent. I should have had more gonig on there, like watching an OJ style chase of Shaun through the streets from AV-4 cameras or something.

So I spring on Vincent that he's on film. Maybe. He hasn't seen the footage at all, but Ken really rakes Vincent over the coals to make him sweat. This was a bitterly painful scene for Vincent I'm sure, as it seemed and continues to seem that he was being railroaded. Some of that is true, but I felt it was time to drive home some of the ways this game is different from the adventure games they've played previously. Death. Cops. Law. Consequences. There will be many places and situations where the characters will have opportunities to conduct nefarious dealings, but a shopping mall in downtown is not one of them--at least not one that is taken lightly. I hoped this would begin giving the players and characters both some street smarts and wisdom about the dynamics of this world.