Summary:Another raid on The Hand property reveals a chilling discovery Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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Kian Allard-Liao is a much better swordsman than many he is apt to meet. He's literally been studying it most of his adult life and it has paid off by saving his life several times. The last one was just thirty seconds ago as he finishes his fight in the back room of a Hand front. New York has been lousier than usual with Hand and Order agents and one of them recently decided to try to clear out some loose ends. He was one of them.
And he still is. The tech ninja wipes his blade off on his opponents clothes and rises from his crouch to look around. Doesn't look like the PD were called though he'd be surprised if any of the alarms here actually called the police. Time to have a look around.
Ryoshu, as she is at the moment, catches the chakram that has just returned to her hand. The metal morphs into small scales and disappears under the sleeve of her armour as she kicks one of the Hand that just tried to gut her.
"Move. They'll have reinforcements coming soon and we don't know what they'll be sending. Whatever you're looking for, get to it." She tells Shiranui, as the helmet of her armour seems to 'flow' down into the shoulders, revealing her face.
"Just a moment." Kian feels under what looks like a working desk until he finds a loose panel and presses. It causes the center of the desk to flip over, revealing a very complicated looking circuit board. Well. A set of very complicated looking circuit boards each about the size of a stick of RAM, all on a sprue. "Bingo."
He says taking it. "Order slicing sticks. One use hacker in a box. For some definitions of hacker. Figured it had to be here. You finish up playing with yours?"
"What do you mean have I finished up playing with mine?" Ryoshu asks "He'll need patching up, have a helluva of headache and I might have broken a rib just then. But I think he'll think twice about hitting a lady, next time."
Well he won't. But then, Ryoshu might be just get to do this all again.
"Why are you looking for these, anyway? And I have to wonder where you're getting your information…"
"The Order hides its messages in parts in plain sight. They're little errors and glitches in the viewable code on websites, mostly. The Project learned the algorithm a long time ago. It takes a lot of computing power and I have to do it largely by hand so I only get a handful of messages but I do sometimes read their mail and sometimes I come up with something good." He prioritizes anything that's got his name in it or references to the Project. It has kept him alive almost as much as his swordsmanship.
"It turns out that Order systems are as vulnerable to these wonderful little sticks as anything else if you know how to modify them. Which I do. It helps me break into their computers to find out more detailed information." Which is how he knew about this. He makes sure to take these things from every hideout he hits. It's on their standard equipment list.
"I was mostly looking for them because they were looking for me. Now it will take them a little while to put someone on my trail again."
"Well that explains it." Ryoshi mutters, dragging the guys they've knocked to the side. While Shiranui explains and gets what he's come for, the small ninja hogties their 'prisoners'. It will make for an embarrassing explanation.
"Is that how you knew I was on to you?"
"Yes. Not you specifically but I knew that the Order had put an agent onto me and I know the codename. And because they're such paranoid bastards that they make you check in regularly, sometimes I knew where you were." Down to the address she was staying at. Unfortunately he didn't have full coverage on her which is why she got the drop on him sometimes.
Kian moves over and cuts open the weapons locker. There's a lot of fancy guns and explosives but Kian instead picks out two slightly rounded plates and tosses them to Ryoshi one at a time. "Here. Cogmium. I don't know if your armor gets damaged but you might want spare parts." Which is what he proceeds to take for himself. Electronics and other hard to get materials that he needs to keep his armor fully functioning.
"Also because the last message from your mother had a location encoded into it when I looked at it closely. See if there's something behind that wall over there."
"It does. Like most things." The small ninja is budgetting her words tonight it seems but catches the plates and puts them in the bag she's carrying. "If there's any daggers or small blades, grab them. They're good for disposables and I need to work on my skill."
Whatever that means.
With the last of their victims secured, Ryoshi looks over, frowning at the other ninja trying to work out what he meant. Looking at the wall, that was clear enough but the bit before that.
At any rate, she spends a few seconds examining the panel and finds a latching mechanism. The panel slides open.
Kian grabs all of the small blades and shoves them into a bag. There's a dozen or so and most of them are quite small indeed. The sound of the mechanism moving the panel draws his attention and he stands up. Inside is a room the size of a rather large closet. All three walls are lined with odd storage units designed to hold cannisters of some kind. It's cold in here. Very cold.
There's a terminal on the far wall. The message is displaying says 'Project Falcon, Sibko protocol.'
"These are all biological samples of some kind." Kian says peering inside.
Ryoshi is quiet, very quiet, after that panel is slid back and the insides revealed.
Should Shiranui look at her, she's gone pale and is looking around wide eyed. "Biological samples? Like … what, do you mean?" That's not the tone of someone trying to learn something, that's the tone of someone wanting confirming something - or rather, not wanting to confirm something.
"Project Falcon … Sibko protocol…" She says the words, like she might know them.
"Can you access that terminal?"
She's not going anywhere near it.
"They're sealed to prevent contamination. And kept cold. So… could be blood. Or some other kind of tissue sample. Not entirely sure." Shiranui has never seen anything like it before and he definitely doesn't know what the words mean.
"Yeah I can actually. As it happens." He pulls out one of the slicing sticks and very quickly removes one of the microchips on it. "Safety chip. They've got information stored on these things to prevent them from activating if they detect an Order encryption key. Buuuuut… take that off…"
He pops it into a housing and then sticks it into the USB port for the terminal. The screen fritzes and then they have access.
"Alright. I'm in. What did you want out of it."
"I want to know who the samples belong to. I expect they're a serial number and not names, so they won't mean much to us to start with." But it sounds like she might have a way to find out. "Who the lead on this project is and what they're doing. I doubt you'll get everything, but anything we can on this project. And then I'll need somewhere to be able to go through it."
Her place will be ok.
"Do you know what a Sibko is, Shiranui?" There's a note to Ranna's voice, like she's strangling. Tight. Controlled.
"No." Shiranui says as he works. "Sounds medical." It is and it isn't. The Tech ninja grabs the data that he can, downloading it. Which will take a few minutes. "It looks like there's two hundred serial numbers here which…" He glances around him at the rows of canisters. "Yeah sounds about right. Let me see if there is any information on the project lead…"
He works with the computer for a moment and then shakes his head. "No, wait. Maybe. There's a lot of emails from a V. Ward. They look like they might be in charge. I'm downloading them too so you can take a look…"
There's a short pause. "Some of these samples are slated for destruction. About ten of them. Annihilation is the word they use actually."
"Find them and take them. I'll take them Doctor McCoy." Ryoshi says quickly. Shiranui might roll his eyes at that. Moving medical samples like this … requires specialised equipment. "Annihilation. Their line is out of favour with the enclave."
"Sibko are the groups that we … are raised with. In a way. From a very young age, we live and train together. Six normally in a group - as we grow older and get assigned, we don't stay together but … there is always a bond between us." If Shiranui gets this, he'll understand that some of those may be almost her brothers and sisters.
"Ward? So she's risen high. She won't be project lead, she wasn't the science division."
Ryoshi is already preparing the small containers she could find that should keep the samples safe until she give them to Hank.
It takes Shiranui several minutes to locate the specific ten out of the two hundred cannisters present but he does eventually pull them down and hand them to the smaller ninja. "So what are these that they're being destroyed. Wouldn't it be better to find the person and get rid of them if they're out of favor?"
It is entirely possible that the people in question are not dead. They might be on the run or kept captive. This terminal isn't likely to have any information on what or where but they do at the least have serial numbers.
"Who is Ward? One of your… strange not-family?"
Because yes, that's weird.
"It's genetic material." Ryoshi answers. "They want to eliminate the line entirely from the Order." Does he understand? She's not being very specific. "Even if they kill the person, they're elminating their entire line."
"Remember we were told there were others who needed me. It might be these …" Not the samples but the owner of those samples.
"Valencia Ward. She was in the Sibko with me, yes. When I was chosen for my modifications and she was not, she … felt it reflected poorly on her honour." If only Valencia had realised what they were going to do to Ranna at the time.
"I've been away so long, I don't know what she does now." But she might have Ranna targetted as well.
"Ward. I've heard the last name but not in that context. There was another, an old one, that my parents spoke up. He was considered to be a very dangerous swordsman and a significant threat to the project." Shiranui backs up out of the room and makes a face. Genetic material.
"Why would you need genetic material though? Eliminating the line. Are you saying that the Order engages in selective breeding or something like that?"
That kind of thing has been an off again on again fascination of certain brands of mystic ninjitsu but he's never seen in practiced like this, on a scale he can only call industrial. "Do you think she's involved in anything here in New York? Comes to that… why was this thing here in New York?"
"Her … ancestor. Yes. You might call him her father." Ryoshi acknowledges packing the samples into the small cool box with reverence. "If you have everything, we need to go. I just hope they don't destroy these because we've been here."
"We're not free births, if that what you mean." the small ninja answers. "I've told you I didn't know my father."
"I won't know what Valencia is involved with till I read that information you pulled. Shall I do that now, while you wait?" No, he wouldn't and she's being a little snippy.
"Why was the Hand transporting cryochambers? Would you like to guess what they're doing with this stuff?"
"No I would not. Let's get out of here." Why was the hand transporting cryochambers. Seems unlike them. Too technological for one thing. They're happy to use technology but the Hand is a traditionalist outfit at its core. They'd never engage in the kind of eugenics program that the Order, or at least this part of it, is apparently engaging in.
"What is a free birth?" She's going to have a lot of questions to answer as they make their retreat.
The look Ryoshi gives Shiranui is speaking as the helmet of her armour covers her head and face again. "I suspect, but I'm guessing, that they're breeding warriors like me. Except they're not waiting for us to 'grow up', they're breeding us grown."
hence the genetic material in storage. It's a guess though and she can't confirm it. The data Shiranui just lifted will help but she might need to speak to Hank about that truck full of people they bought in.
"They're breeding an army, probably."
Grabbing the cooler, the small ninja starts to make their exit. Hopefully they won't be stopped - but who knows. "Freebirth? When the male and female in question breed outside the approved program and don't draw from the genetic material."
"So when regular people have kids, then." Kian says with a quirk of his brow. They reach the bikes and he starts his. It is almost dead quiet being electric. And it's damn fast, she knows that. It gets off the line like nothing else. He has a few others that he uses for street racing. She knows that too she's seen him do it.
"Breeding an army. But why in New York." He doesn't expect her to have the answer but she might have the start of one. She might have some idea why it was so important that the Project be brought down and New York secured. They need this city for something. He just has no idea what as yet.
"If you like." Ryoshi answers. She's never thought about the Orders breeding ideas. She wasn't encouraged to and when she turned sixteen, they turned her into a killing machine.
Ranna's bike isn't as quiet as Kians. It's a small street bike that runs on gas. Kicking the engine over, she secures the cooler in front of her. "Shiranui, I don't know. I don't know anything. They sent me here because you were here … that's all I know." She *might* know something, but it's buried in her subconscious. There might be a way to get at it.
"Mmmmmmm." Shiranui is having thoughts along exactly those lines. "You might know, but you don't know that you know. We need to find a way to dig deep and get what the Order sent you in with. If they bothered to give you protocols to kill me they might have set you up for your next mission as well. And if they did the information MIGHT be either in your head or in that wrecked implant that McCoy removed. Either way…"
They need to find a way to get at it. They can track and try to rescue some of these serial numbers. But without knowing what the Order is trying to accomplish, they're shadowboxing. And eventually that will catch up with them.
"I'm calling Doctor McCoy and telling him we're bringing these samples into the Clinic." Ryoshi says. "I don't want people poking around my head again." It's a mutter - Shiranui knows she'll do it but she'll complain.
"You can ask McCoy when we see him." It's that simple and until they get more information, Ranna is going to focus on the mission at hand.
"Don't blame you. We'll see if we can get it from the implant." But if they can't Shiranui is going to have to ask her to let people back into her head. She won't like it. He knows that. But it is what it is. They can't let this slip away because if they do it will round on them like an angry dog.
He's seen it before. He won't let it happen again.