generally important info
(possible) major NPC
minor/incidental NPC
Rupak was investigating a person responsible for the production of the company's marketing material. He had a gnatbot infiltrate through the HVAC system, and observe the person, one
Rupak tried to kick down the door to Tien's apartment a few times, but it was too sturdy. However, Grace was able to escalate her privledges for that area of the network to security status: she unlocked the door, and also was able to grab various important bits of information, including confidential profiles of workers (including infractions), non-public spime records, and logs about who locked and unlocked the door. (Grace noticed, however, that the logs for Tien's door lock had been altered).
Rupak began to examine Tien's body. He noted that rigor mortis hadn't set in yet. There were no obvious injuries, cuts, puncture marks, etc: it looked as if Tien had gone to sleep, and not woken up. Tien did not have a cortical stack for religious reasons, making it impossible to question him post-mortem. When Grace tried to talk to his muse, she found it had been corrupted/deleted.
Rupak began to explore the logs of the food maker in Tien's room. The last thing he had consumed was some darjeelian tea and some glumjumon (an Indian desert). Rupak grabbed some of Tien's last meal (I think Rupak was also able to obtain a blood sample from Tien but can't remember for certain), and headed back to his guest quarters to perform analyses on the substances.
Meanwhile, also climbing through the ventwork, were Azif, August, and Crow. They reached some sort of strange hatch leading further underground, so Azif and August decided to enter and explore that tunnel network, while Crow continued to look around the vent work in the superstructure. Azif and August remained out-of-contact for the rest of the time, due to mesh signals being blocked by the Moon rock.
Crow continued through the HVAC of the superstructure. He began to notice some sort of strange biological residue. He began to track it. After awhile, he overheard what sounded like wimpering/sniffling. He noticed a small figure: a child, or a lady or a ?
But then the small, weeping "woman" sprung at Crow, revealing itself to be some sort of spider-like monster (exsurgent? alien?) lying in wait to attack.
Luckily for Crow, the monster did not have a powerful enough bite to penetrate Crow's synthmorph armor. The creature realized attacking Crow was futile, so began to retreat. Crow, however, had a strong fascination with spiders. He grappled the creature, holding onto it until it tired out. He then had Rupak meet him at the exit to the HVAC, Rupak bearing a bag. Crow stuffed the creature into the bag, brought it to his quarters, and the still-present trio were able to improvise a sort of cage for the creature out of furniture. Grace came up with a theory about the creature: it was a bio/nano-weapon concocted by the Jovians for use on Mars. She wondered why it was on Luna. When she conveyed her notion about a Jovian bioweapon to Rupak, however, Rupak realized the idea was some sort of crazy conspiracy theory nonsense. He, however, did not feel like arguing with her delusion.
At this point, Rupak had finished his analysis of Tien's last meal and blood sample. There were traces of poison present: BTX^2 aka "frog bite". Meanwhile, Grace reviewed the spime footage. The last person to see Tien alive was one
Rupak also looked at spime footage from within Tien's room. He was able to notice a fly land on Tien's food before flying away. It was presumed that this was the delivery method for the frog bite
Joe went to get Sara for an interview at this point. She was very nervous about this (assuming this meant her job might be threatened), but we were able to calm her somewhat by being friendly, reassuring, and offering her a strong (real, not fabricated) mixed drink. Unknown to her, we also dosed the drink with oxytocin-A so she would trust us more.
As we interviewed Sara, it seemed she didn't have anything to do with the conspiracy of sabotage. She did have some useful information, however, revealing that the climate at the corp seemed to have shifted months back. Accidents were happening more often. (Conversely?) It seemed like every little fault and flaw was being reported, making the whole operation look bad. Rupak prompted Sara to basically snitch on coworkers who were particularly dissatisfied and hurting morale, and Sara, now dosed with oxytocin-A, listed off some names, including that of admin Rajesh.
At this point, we thanked her for her time, and bid her out. Rupak secretly planted a gnat on her as she was leaving, while Crow tailed her. As she entered a bank of two elevators, we spotted four cameleon-cloaked figures arriving through the other elevator.
With seconds to prepare, Rupak and Joe took up positions to cover the doorway. Grace fled to the bathroom in the back, cowering in the bathtub. She tried to hack into the hit squad, but realized, from lack of mesh traffic, and the fact the hit squad was using hand gestures, they were off the network. Crow, meanwhile, tried to halt the other elevator from leaving, but accidentally halted it between floors, trapping him momentarily.
The hit squad kicked down the door, tossed a smoke grenade in, and opened up with their SMGs. Rupak (armed with a freezer) and Joe (armed with an SMG) held them off for a few seconds. Grace continued to hide, but checked that the hit squad did not have their own hacker trying to compomise the party's mesh network. Crow scrambled to get out of the elevator shaft, and was finally able to get into the hallway after a few more seconds, and rushed the shooters to grapple/melee them.
The battle was brief (only about ten seconds) but intense. Rupak, Joe, and Crow all ended up taking bullets. But, finally, there was only one of the hit squad mooks standing. Realizing the battle was lost, he head shot his injured compatriots before eating a bullet by his own hand.
There seemed to be nothing left to interogate of the hit squad: none of them had stacks. So Crow dragged their bodies into his room and fed them to the spider thing, which seemed to be becoming his new "pet".
We realized Sara had heard the gun fire, so we recalled her elevator. Joe was able to convince her that the gun battle was the result of a disgruntled employee. We decided to sequester her (Grace offered to sleep on the couch of her quarters if Sara wanted the bed) while we rushed to wrap up our investigation: if a hit squad had come after us, likely whomever had deployed the hit squad was getting ready to pull out and leave the Angels One complex. We looked over and analyzed a list of suspicious people. At this point, Azif and August returned from their little adventure.
+~2 days post-start