Part 9 - Secret Labs in the Desert
Friday, June 26, 2020 - Our players met for evening drinks at their usual haunt: Millieâs. During the week, another riot broke out. A crowd had quickly and suddenly amassed at City Hall, attempting to get in, but NCPD responded with deadly force. Millie noted that this one was similar to the La Croix incident: just a sudden mad rush at a specific target that seemed suicidal.
Turns out Millie has been digging into the Kaleidoscope mystery on her own. She had contacted a medtech named Jane Weyss with the info the players uncovered, and asked her to look into the nanomachines. Jane found some answers, but needed more help, so Millie asked the players to go meet Jane and assist her.
Our crew saddled up and moseyed over to Janeâs front: a pharmacy down on 22nd street. They walked in and introduced themselves as friends of Millie. Jane got down to business immediately: she had discovered that the Kaleidoscope nanomachines manipulate the neurochemistry of their victim in order to control their behavior, but she hasnât yet figured out how it changed from just random, aggressive behavior like Deck suffered to more the directed, coordinated attacks like the riots.
Jane did, however, find out that just like most nanomachine designs, the Kaleidoscope nano has a chemical killswitch that can be used to deactivate it. When this specifically-formulated chemical is present in the bloodstream with the nanos, they interpret its presence as a âstopâ command and (harmlessly) self-destruct. Much like a password or a secret command code. Jane could brute force this killswitch formula and figure it out on her own, but that would take a long, long time. If our players could just find what the killswitch formula is, she could skip right to the production phase.
Janeâs sleuthing turned up the creators of the model of nanomachines found in Kaleidoscope: a company called Locutis Pharmaceuticals. They had a lab out in the desert not too far from Night City, but it was abandoned after it was attacked by a rival corporation. If our crew could search the lab, they might find the formula for the chemical killswitch. The mention of Locutis Pharmaceuticals triggered a memory in Frogs, and he started shouting out its GPS coordinates in the desert.
In order to get to the lab, our players were referred to the Ace in the Hole bar: a hangout for ex-military pilots that fly AVs for hire. The players piled into their station wagon and drove over to check it out. Once inside, Heavy quickly made an ass of himself and ended up being fooled into drinking a shot of aviation fuel.Â
The players tried chatting up some hotshot pilot who was asking for a hiring fee they could never afford. Luckily, they were interrupted by Hops, an incredibly kind and boisterous woman who likes a good adventure. She agreed to do the job for free, as long as they bring her a souvenir from the lab. After a few Human Perception checks in order to look the gift horse directly in the mouth, the players were satisfied that Hops seemed to be telling the truth, so they agreed. Hops took the players over to her AV-4 named Lurlene and they hopped on in.
Lurlene lurched off the ground, then sped off toward the location of the lab. It wasnât long before Night City was faded to a distant glow on the horizon. Hops warned the players to be quick, as the desert is full of Nomads and not all of them are friendly to visitors. Hopsâs constant referral to the players as âkidsâ made them question how old she was. She didnât give them a clear answer, but her war stories indicated she must have been a veteran of the Second Central American War.
Lurlene touched down in the sands outside the derelict lab and our crew disembarked.
The lab was full of holes and collapsed walls, so it wasnât hard to find their way in. There was also suspiciously fresh human activity in the form of bloody footprints throughout the hall. The players followed the footprints to their origin and saw they came from a room full of a noxious gas, with a hole in the floor leading into the lower levels of the lab.
They dug around the main floor, disarmed a few small traps laid by nomads and previous raiders, and shit in some non-functional toilets. Along the way they found a trucker cap with Icarus LLCâs logo on it, a callback to the names of corporations associated with Integral MedTech. They also found some clues indicating that the chemistry lab is down in the basement, past the fumes, and was likely where they could find the chemical killswitch they were after.
Finally, Ackbar uncovered a maintenance room with logs about the poisonous gas, and surmised that they could vent the gas if they could get the HVAC system back online.
She nearly lost her head a second time when grabbing a booby-trapped toolbox off the floor that was tied to a shotgun on a hair trigger. Luckily, she had learned since the incident in the Slammer, and the reinforced plates in her head stopped the buckshot.
After rallying the party, they branched out to the uncovered sections and found the parts they needed to restart the ventillation system, this time taking the traps a bit more seriously.
Tic Tac found a sample of an anti-cyberpsychosis drug, something sheâd been after since she wants to replicate a treatment to distribute to those who need it. She also found a series of records that indicated Locutis Pharma was indeed making a prototype of Kaleidoscope before the lab was destroyed.Â
It looked like Locutis was trying to make a nanomachine to treat cyberpsychosis, however their early results on test subjects only made them worse: subjects injected with the prototype became paranoid and aggressive. The records for this experiment stopped suddenly, indicating that the raid on the lab put a halt to any further development. It looks like this nanomachine, or possibly a derivative of it, was now appearing nestled inside doses of Kaleidoscope being sold in the streets of Night City.
Frogs found a pile of papers containing a termination slip that contained his name. He struggled with another flashback, but he still didnât have an explanation for why he knew the location of this lab, or why he was fired from it.
Eventually after some more atmospheric digging, and some lucky looting of a microwave pistol by Bud, they found the equipment they needed to bring the HVAC system back online. Ackbar used her engineering prowess to put the pieces back together, and turned it on. It sputtered to life, and the noxious fumes blocking the hole to the basement were cleared.
Approaching the hole, Frogs spotted something revealed after the fumes cleared. Something that brought him joy and closure: his precious mop and bucket. Overwhelmed with joy, the memories came flooding back: he used to be a janitor here at Locutis. There was still a bit of a gap after his âterminationâ, and was not really sure how he ended up in Night City, but whatever, mop and bucket!
After the reunion, the party entered the hole in the basement where the bloody footprints came from. It was dark down there, and it looked like it had been turned over and looted many times. However, they spotted a case that contained the killswitch in the middle of the lab floor. Ivy drew the short straw and approached the case. When she got there, she noticed the giant pile of bloody bodies that was hidden by the darkness. She also heard a voice calling out, greeting her warmly.
A man emerged, completely nude, flesh torn and hanging off his bones, but fully augmented by cyberware. He was a human who underwent full-body conversion with cyber augmentations (you know, a cyborg), and despite his friendly greeting and ragged appearance, Frogs smelled stranger danger and started firing.
The party was swarmed by other deteriorating cyborgs and tried their best to fight them off, but it was Budâs lucky discovery of a microwave pistol that clinched their victory. Bloodied but victorious, they scrambled out of the lab with the chemical killswitch and the Icarus LLC hat. Ivy decided to take the decapitated head of the main cyborg as a souvenir.
They rendezvoused with Hops who was waiting patiently in her AV-4. They climbed into Lurlene and flew off, giving Hops the hat as a token of their adventure. Not long before they took off, they found themselves being chased by air pirates who attempted to board their craft. Our solosâ adept use of the door-mounted miniguns made short work of their pursuers, and the crew made it back to Night City alive.
A job well done, they turned in the killswitch to Jane and competed their quest. She thanked them valiantly for their efforts, offered the sale of her black-market combat stims at cost, and promised to assist the team with any pharma-related efforts in the future. In the meantime, she estimated it would take her about a week to analyze the killswitch and come up with a method of production.
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