Newcastle Colony Synopses

RPC

16 May 2110

Session Sixteen

As the building invaders began the slow work of overcoming the office door’s physical security, Konrad watched the data download from Doffey’s computer system. He could already catch bits and pieces of intriguing data in the stream flowing through the interface. It looked like Doffey’s bid would be substantially lower than Alexei’s, and it looked like she planned to be creative to make this happen.

Jack made his way to the building front and into the breezeway. At the entry, he flashed his badge. One of the faux guards jogged up to the door to let him in. Jack pretended he’d left something at his desk. The two faux guards offered understanding smiles and chuckles. Jack toyed with the idea of quickly dispatching them, but he wasn’t sure he could get to the one in the security office before the whole building would be alerted to their presence. Jack decided his best plan would be to get to the 22nd floor as quickly as possible, so he headed for the elevator.

Once in the elevator, Jack decided his best bet would be to push the emergency button at the 21st floor and to crawl out of the elevator. He planned to pry open the door of the 22nd floor and gain access that way. He radioed his plan to the others.

James had reached the 22nd floor by this point. He quickly cut the mouldings holding the window he’d earlier shot a bird into and pulled out a ballpeen hammer. Inside the office, Penny readied her machine pistol and Konrad prepared everything for a quick escape. All the while, the data crawled.

James smacked the window with his hammer and pulled it free from the frame. He set it inside the office and quickly crawled inside. He stripped the coveralls off, revealing the sneak suit that had been taken off Benjamin Roy’s corpse back in the alien ant colony. That done, he popped a ceiling tile and crawled up above to give him a better shot at an ambush once the door opened. Once up in the ceiling, he realized the bathrooms next to the office weren’t fully sealed off. He told the others what he planned to do: crawl into the nearest bathroom and ambush the folks making their way into the office. Konrad agreed to the plan.

Jack arrived at the 21st floor as James squeezed into the ceiling over the bathroom. As James dropped to the bathroom floor, the download from Doffey’s computer entered the final stage. Jack hit the emergency button, stopping the elevator and setting off alarms. The folks trying to enter Doffey’s office defeated the door and readied to enter.

James moved to the bathroom door, propping it open just enough to get a look at the folks outside Doffey’s office. He opened fire on one of the intruders, sending him to the ground with a ruined throat. James quickly leapt back up to the ceiling before the intruders could return fire. At the same time, Jack hurled a flash-bang grenade towards the office where Konrad and Penny were hiding. The grenade blinded the techie who’d cracked the office door. Another of the intruders pushed the office door open while a third scooted past the bathroom to get an eye on the source of the grenade and the bathroom door. Jack let the elevator door close back.

As Penny readied to shoot, Konrad said to her just loud enough for the man in the door to hear, “Guns? If a bullet hits this canister, it will unleash enough biological agents to kill us all!” This caused the gunman to hesitate. Penny opened fire on him, splintering the door and sending a round through his shoulder. The gunman shouted back at someone, “You didn’t say anything about biological weapons!” The man he shouted at, the operational leader, shouted back as he retreated from the gunfight, “There aren’t any biological weapons. Kill them!” He then shouted into his radio for folks to get to the 22nd floor, they were under attack.

Konrad grabbed the data out of the computer and made for the scaffold. He quickly strapped himself into one of the harnesses James had left on attached to the railing and told the others they were good to go. Penny and James finished off two more of the gunmen and wounded the blinded technician. The blinded technician scrambled for cover behind a cubicle. James got the drop on him and ordered him to drop his gun.

Jack climbed out of the elevator and ran for the far end of the room, where he thought the operational leader was hiding. Unfortunately, the leader chose to fire on an unsuspecting James, barely winging him and getting a wicked return shot for his trouble. Penny took a moment to scoop up one of the attacking gunmen’s machine pistol and shot up Doffey’s computer to make it look like the gunmen were responsible for all the mischief. Penny and James reached the scaffold, James pulling the techie behind him. James secured the wounded and panicky technician to the scaffold with zip ties so he couldn’t fall to his death.

By the time Jack was in position, the leader had shaken the wound off and was sprinting for the nearest stairwell. Jack closed on the leader, but he abandoned that idea as the stairwell door opened and three men burst into the room, guns drawn. The leader shouted for them to kill the others then took cover. Jack realized the best course was to run for it. He threw a flash-bang at the three newcomers and ran for cover. One of the men was blinded. The other two crab-walked and managed to get a series of shots at Jack as he sprinted for the scaffold.

Jack leaped onto the scaffold, knocking it away from the building, just as Konrad threw the free-fall switch James had told him about. Jack’s leap knocked the technician off the scaffold, but the zip tie kept him from falling. Unfortunately, it snapped his wrists and dislocated an elbow, taking his screams from terror to agony. As the scaffold crashed back into the building, the screams ratcheted up to a new octave and volume. Wild gunshots from the gunmen above mercifully silenced the screaming a few seconds before the free fall ended with the scaffold snapping every major bone in the technician’s tortured body.

Konrad and Penny ran for the window maintenance van parked in the alley while James and Jack ran for Jack’s car. Only Penny was fully functional after the fall. She let Konrad drive the van, but his slowness allowed the wild shots to take out the front windshield and destroy the glass cradled in the van’s rear compartment. Finally, they escaped the Pomeroy Building, Doffey’s data in their possession.

After dumping the vehicles and ensuring they weren’t being followed, they met back at a pre-arranged rendezvous point to let things cool down and begin the data analysis. After a few hours, they moved to their office and James headed out to see if he could dig up information on the building invaders. After receiving a little medical attention, Jack headed home to reassure his wife he was okay and to spend some time with his son.

James dug up quite a bit of information on the building invaders. Word on the street was Mark Chen, a fairly well-known local troubleshooter (Chen Security Specialists), had been hired to for something major and was now looking for someone to replace his gearhead, Bob Garrett. No one knew who had hired Chen, but the news was reporting the incident as a criminal operation (Chen had apparently planned to hide the true operation by robbing a financial services office on the 11th floor). Police only reported on the bodies of a couple kklocal hired guns, not on Garrett, the technician, so Chen had cleaned up his trail.

Konrad discovered Doffey had crafted an elaborate scam to significantly underbid EEC. It was something that would simultaneously win the contract and get her a significant boost within Riesigfirma while damaging Riesigfirma’s reputation on the colony. She even projected 25 million in legal fees and more penalties and fees as part of her estimates. It was the sort of short-term thinking that was typical amongst corporate ladder climbers.

Konrad made multiple copies of the data before contacting Alexei to handle the transfer. Alexei asked Konrad to meet him at one of his private estates outside of the city. Konrad brought James and Penny with him, leaving Jack to spend time with his family.

Half-expecting betrayal, Konrad’s team was surprised to instead find Alexei’s mansion occupied only by him, a bodyguard named Yuri, and Nastya, a very attractive “maid.” Alexei and Konrad discussed the details of the data. Konrad offered a couple suggestions on what Alexei could do to counter the Riesigfirma bid.

Alexei seemed pleased, offering them drinks. He assured Konrad he’d be in contact with Anton to praise their work. He offered a substantial fee for the work, including a bonus. Konrad bumped the bonus a little higher to cover some of the unexpected expenses they’d incurred. Alexei didn’t quibble. Konrad, James, and Penny headed out, found their car unmolested, and returned to town. Once back in their office alive, they finally relaxed and celebrated.

Several days passed as folks settled into the routine of life on Newcastle. Penny had more shopping to do, James had more escape routes, safehouse work, and research on Chen to do, and Jack had a wife to satisfy. Konrad and Mariel made time for themselves for a little getaway before returning their focus to the business. They had connections to make if they intended to get the word out on their business.

After more than two weeks passed, Konrad began to sweat the lack of feelers or even promising jobs being advertised on the grid. He was second-guessing the move to Newcastle, worrying he’d somehow been blackballed by Alexei. Finally, a call came in. The man’s name was Thomas Rackers. He asked if Konrad’s team had its own transportation off-planet or could secure it quickly. He asked if they could mobilize within the hour and if they could reach the address he gave them in 20 minutes. It was a Friday afternoon, with the office already empty. Konrad said yes to both questions while Mariel researched the address. It belonged to RPC, Inc.

Konrad scrambled the team. James agreed to meet Konrad and Mariel at the address for the meeting. Jack and Penny agreed to be there and ready to move after the meeting. En route to the address, Penny researched RPC and Rackers. Konrad and Mariel did the same, with a greater focus on the business.

Rackers turned out to be a large shareholder in RPC, Inc., a private corporation known for its focus on subcontracting biodynamics research (better fitting humans and Earth in the galaxy in a sustainable fashion) for the major corporations. RPC had recently had a hiring spike, and had spent a significant sum on some fairly complex contracts. Konrad and Mariel were able to do some inference based on what they could dig up. They assumed RPC had purchased a habitat for one of the planet’s moons. Penny provided some supplemental data she’d dug up so that Konrad and Mariel felt pretty confident what they were heading into.

Inside the RPC office, Rackers welcomed them and impatiently ushered them into a conference room. Inside the conference room, they found a pretty, 40ish woman, two young men (one bookish, one “security expert”), and a video conference line where a middle-aged man barely paid attention to them. Rackers asked them to sign NDAs. Konrad and Mariel found them pretty much boiler plate, so they signed them.

Rackers anxiously waited for the signatures then launched into a quick description of the problem. He explained they’d recently taken on work for the next step in man-machine interface research. The research was close to monetizing state. They had extensive security measures in place, but an hour ago, they lost contact with the research station.

Rackers said it was entirely possible the communications array was down and there was no problem, but stressed they couldn’t afford to assume that. He wanted Konrad’s team to go to the moon (Ira) and confirm all was well. A few more details were provided (no biological hazard threat, they couldn’t disclose who they were working for, etc.), then bidding. The man on the video conference call suddenly became interested, haggling down the asking price. The woman nearly broke at that and said “Harry is going to die and you’re arguing over price?!?!”

Penny had passed on the major shareholders of the company: Thomas Rackers, Harry Cho, and Richard Paulson (any Tom, Dick, and Harry could own a research business on Newcastle). Paulson was the main moneyman. Cho was the original brains, Rackers was the most heavily invested now and the main driver. The woman was Paulina Cho, Harry’s wife and the company’s CFO (a former competent scientist turned businesswoman out of necessity).

Finally, details were agreed to and Konrad scrambled the team to head to the spaceport. RPC had agreed to provide them mining equipment, an open moon buggy, and some energy weapons they could use inside the habitat without damaging it. They’d provided detailed floor plans and photos of the interior. They’d also explained that a panic room/safe room existed beneath the habitat where the most critical data was stored for weekly retrieval. The room was rated at six hours, meaning it would hold up to anything but ruinous explosives for that length of time. The crew were trained to fall back to the safe room in case of emergency. There were always eight in the habitat: two security, two techies, and four scientists.

After ushering everyone out and signing off from the conference call (and showing a bit more than professional compassion for Mrs. Cho), Rackers had explained that the number one matter was the data. He was obviously very disturbed having to say that, but he explained the company was highly leveraged and would fail without the data. He recommended going to the facility with the assumption it was compromised, but pointed out that the only way it could have been compromised would have been with someone inside the company selling them out.

The group came in from the far side of the moon and took the buggy in using the best cover the topography had to offer. They checked from a rock outcropping and confirmed a shuttle just like theirs had landed a short way from the habitat. They decided to drive the buggy in with the habitat between them and the shuttle then to take the shuttle out before heading into the habitat.

They reached the habitat without being spotted. Jack and James ran for the shuttle, hoping to sneak up on the pilot and disable the craft. Konrad and Penny held back to watch and to see if the habitat airlock could be hacked. Penny realized that Jack and James were walking right up to the back of the shuttle without seeing the belly gun rotate to target them. She shouted a warning just in time.

Jack had another flashback to a time where he’d lost squadmates on a similar mission. He leaped to the roof and ran for the cockpit while James agilely jumped to the hull and began prying open a panel to get at the airlock controls. Jack hooked a foot into a crease beneath a jutting antenna and proceeded to crack the cockpit screen. The pilot tried to get her helmet on but was sucked up to the hole. Her scalp sealed the hole for a moment until the skin froze and pulled away, leaving only skull. Jack mercifully cracked the rest of the screen open seconds later, releasing her into the minimal atmosphere, where she went into shock and died.

Konrad and Penny worked together to overcome the trapped security pad and gained access to the airlock. Jack and James joined them moments later. The next airlock was safe. Konrad opened it onto what should have been a recreation room. It was, but it was also where three thugs were lying in ambush. Unfortunately, they didn’t care about the habitat and opened up with automatic slug throwers, piercing the hull. Konrad quickly repaired the hole.

A quick combat ensued, with Jack rendering two thugs immobile in record time. James and Penny finished off the third and one of the immobile thugs. The third thug gave up. He admitted to working for Mark Chen (that bastard!). He didn’t know who’d hired Chen (he was just hired muscle). There’d been twelve of them, total, but with Jesse (the pilot) dead, and his two comrades dead, that left only eight.

The group realized they’d missed out on the communicators and promptly listened in on the survivor’s. Chen was asking for an update. They ordered the survivor to tell Chen all was well, the intruders were dead. The survivor did a good job convincing Chen all was well. They put the survivor away (secured him in the airlock) and proceeded in.

Konrad, wearing an environmental suit, managed to gain root on the computer system before Chen’s techies noticed what was going on; one of Chen’s techs was also in as root. Konrad managed to sound like the captive and assured Chen they were checking the exterior cameras to make sure no other intruders were around. Konrad then hacked the security to establish static images. The group decided they had to work out a plan quickly. Most of Chen’s team was just outside the safe room, ready to cut through the door (less than two hours to go).

Session Sixteen End

Session Seventeen

With security hacked and looping static images set for all cameras on the upper floor, the group set about planning their next move. They knew they had less than two hours, so their move would have to be fairly direct. While Konrad worked through more computer and security details, James and Penny searched the compound. Penny noticed there was no sign of any of the living quarters or the fake lab in the habitat having been tossed. She pointed this out to Konrad, who supported her theory it was likely an inside job. That factored into their planning.

James favored a straightforward approach: he and Penny would drop into the lab below the operations room and take out the four folks they could see on the security camera. Jack would drop in to support them. Konrad didn’t like the plan, but he didn’t really have a great alternative, either.

Before Konrad could come up with a different proposal, he noticed something odd about the video feed from the lab beneath them. Two of the guys in the video kept moving from the computer room to the lab and unloading the same equipment. Chen had somehow figured out what was up and his techie had managed to do the same thing to Konrad that he’d done to them.

Konrad cursed and told the team to get ready, they were in for some trouble. He ran to check on the airlock, arriving just in time to see two of Chen’s men pulling the captured mercenary out. One of the men hurled a grenade. Konrad slammed the airlock door shut just in time. The grenade breached the hull, but the door survived, crumpling and warping momentarily.

As Konrad ran for the airlock door, James opened the floor panel and dropped into the lab below, with Penny covering him. James was surprised to see one of Chen’s men on the ladder coming up from below, gun drawn. The two exchanged fire as James fell past; they both missed. Penny fired on the ladder guy, perforating him and sending him to the ground in a slow fall. Jack hesitated before leaping below; he heard the airlock explosion and Konrad’s shout they had serious trouble. Finally, he made the jump, figuring Konrad could handle whatever came up.

Jack finished off the guy Penny had wounded. Another guy opened up on James, wounding him. James shook off the injury and took the gunman down. Chen fired on James, missing. James instantly returned fire, putting a round between Chen’s eyes.

Konrad used the barely-functioning camera in the airlock to track the mercenaries outside. One of them was running for the power module. Konrad pulled up the maps and looked closer, finally locating the means the mercenaries had used to get out of the underground labs without coming through the floor in operations: the power module had a similar trap door. Konrad warned Jack Chen’s men might be trying to sabotage the power module.

When James killed Chen, Konrad seized on the opportunity to bluff the mercenaries outside the habitat into surrendering, even offering to hire them on. It took a few tries, but it stalled them from planting explosives that would rupture the habitat and kill at least Konrad. Finally, with James eliminating all but the last mercenary, who surrendered quickly enough, the mercenaries outside the habitat surrendered.

Jack followed Konrad’s instructions on how to get into the power module. He sneaked up on the last mercenary as the mercenary tried to bring up a control panel. Upon seeing Jack, the mercenary—the same one they’d captured before—surrendered with a whimper.

With Chen dead and his team captured or killed, Konrad contacted the team within the panic room. He convinced them they were safe and to come out. When they opened the door, Konrad discovered they had a problem. Harry Cho was in a coma. As the scientists and techies rushed him to the necessary equipment, they explained he’d been in the middle of some very risky research: his conscience was uploaded to a computer system and had been for much longer than they’d ever before tried. Konrad radioed Mariel to bring the shuttle around and prep for anything, especially an emergency launch.

As the scientists struggled to download Harry’s conscience back into his body, they discovered a critical piece of equipment was damaged. More research revealed a stray round had sheared through a proprietary circuit card. The only thing that remained was to rush Harry down to the planet as quickly as possible and try to keep him alive while they secured a new circuit card. Everyone knew it was too late, though. They still had the complication of a damaged airlock (an hour or two to repair) and the flight back.

The rescued techs set to repairing the airlock and everyone else helped or repaired damaged spacesuits. After an hour, they were able to get into the shuttle and head back to Newcastle. They radioed ahead to warn RPC they were returning with a critical injury (to Harry).

While checking out the gear still stowed in the panic room, Konrad noticed the container holding all the vital research data records had a small transmitter hidden in it. It was the sort of transmitter that wouldn’t show up on most inspections, something that would require a nearby booster or receiver to get the data. Konrad whipped up a noise-generating device to cause the data transmission to move at about ten percent normal speed. Given the amount of data to be transferred, he figured that would buy him a few days to find the receiver or booster. He told the team of the find; they were all 100% sure now there was a mole inside RPC.

Paulina Cho, Thomas Rackers, and Niko Olshesky were waiting at the spaceport, as was an emergency services vehicle. Paulina rode in the vehicle with Harry’s body. Thomas stayed behind to get turnover from the group. Niko took care of the dead (arranging for his dead security team’s handling and turning Chen and his dead over to the police) and the captured (releasing them).

After watching Rackers and listening to him, Konrad ruled him out as the person behind the “inside job” that cost RPC the habitat and Harry Cho and nearly cost them everything they’d worked so hard to produce. Konrad asked to talk with Rackers in private about the job. The two traveled back to the RPC office; Jack, James, Mariel and Penny trailed, just to be sure Konrad wasn’t in danger and without backup. Konrad explained his suspicions to Rackers, showing him the transmitter and locating within the storage room the receiver/booster.

As expected, Rackers didn’t seem to be the mole. He was conflicted but not terribly surprised by the revelation. He offered to hire the company (using his own money so the mole wouldn’t know) to find the mole. Out of a sense of good will and to nurture future growth, Konrad took a relatively modest price and a small share of future profits on the MMI research.

The group met back at their building to discuss the new contract. After lengthy debate, they settled on doing further research into RPC (Konrad, Mariel, and Penny) while tracking the receiver/booster’s destination and staking out that point. Their tracking led to a transmission/navigation equipment building out near the spaceport. James quickly sneaked into the building and found the signal’s final destination: a device hidden among the building’s legitimate equipment that was writing everything out to data disks. Konrad killed his noise generator to speed up the transmission and Jack joined James inside the equipment building to wait for the inevitable pick-up.

The research into RPC pointed to the most likely mole suspect being Rackers. After him, there was no clear number two suspect. The Chos were deeply invested in RPC’s success (to the point Harry had allowed himself to be killed), Niko lived well within his means and seemed legitimate, Paulson was an extremely wealthy man who’d already pulled much of his money out of RPC. Early the next morning, a couple hours after the transmission was complete (but undetectably ruined by Konrad), a sports car pulled up near the building, providing hope they’d have an answer soon. Konrad radioed the team their visitor had arrived.

The sports car driver headed into the building. While Konrad checked the vehicle for identification and clues, Jack and James waited in hiding for the opportunity to pounce on their spy. Unfortunately, the spy fiddled with some of the legitimate equipment in the building then headed for the exit. Jack and James pounced, regardless. They man didn’t even fight.

Jack and James tried to intimidate their captive. Konrad confirmed the man’s identity was Jason Charles, ‘an independent operator.’ With James’ gun in his face and Jack’s cybernetic arm ready to snap his neck, Mr. Charles admitted he’d come to pick up the data sticks, just like he always did when signaled to. He had no idea who’d hired him to do so or what the sticks contained. He was a courier, nothing more. Konrad told the guys to release him after getting the destination for the data stick drop from him.

Mr. Charles departed, leaving the group to ponder their discoveries. Everything now pointed to Mr. Paulson. Mr. Charles’s benefactor was a company Mr. Paulson had a controlling interest in. The drop-off person at the spaceport was also hired by another Paulson company. Even though he had much less at stake and had profited greatly from RPC already, Paulson was apparently simply a greedy bastard.

The group arranged a meeting with Rackers. They met at the RPC building, disclosing the evidence they’d come up with. It wouldn’t hold up in a court of law, but Rackers was content. He paid off the remainder of the contract and thanked the group profusely for their work. A couple days later, local business news revealed that offworld investor Richard Paulson had liquidated his final holdings in RPC. The report speculated the move was possibly tied to the accident that had left fellow investor Harry Cho comatose.

With over $100,000 recently earned for a few days of work, Konrad and Mariel decided to take a couple days off to celebrate; they also paid out an immediate bonus to the team. The rest of the group took the opportunity to further settle in on Newcastle. Penny had a job hunt to complete, Jack wanted to spend some time with Anna, and James wanted to enhance the safe houses.

Jack’s attempt to take Anna out was momentarily derailed as Anna sat him down to talk about something she wanted to pursue. She explained she’d lucked into a part-time gig thanks to one of Jesse’s classmates, Taylor Wendt. Taylor has a degenerative nerve illness that’s slowly killing him. His mother, Vera Wendt, is the CFO for the Newcastle Engineering Consultants, LLC. NEC is a relatively successful subcontractor that mostly does lower-profit work for the major corporations. They also take on a good bit of contract work for the government and even for some larger planetary corporations. When there’s budget and a really good feel about something, they’ll also fund a side project of their own, but only if they feel they’re free and clear of even a hint of legal risk. They have one side project at the moment that’s a little over two years old. Vera has let on that it could turn out to be very helpful to NEC. If it pans out, the executives stand to make a good deal of profit from it and she’ll have the money to get gene therapy for Taylor.

Taylor’s current nurse has recently had to return to school, so he needs someone to cover the last few hours of the day and the weekends for him. Anna feels she could make some good money doing this and Jesse could have some time to spend with someone his age, improving his social skills.

Jack agreed to the idea. He then took Anna shopping, allowing her to buy a “nice” (off-the-rack) outfit (instead of insisting she buy something nicer with his bonus). Following their “shopping spree,” Jack took Anna out to a “sensible” dinner. He could see in her eyes he’d saved a lot of money.

James checked into the safe houses, tested and timed the various escape routes he’d laid out, and familiarized himself more with West Gate. He also worked on his motorcycle. With all that done, he headed out to strengthen his contacts and to find Jason Charles. He eventually found the bar Charles most often hung out in and found Charles there (hitting up on a cute blond gal). James slapped a debit card on the counter and told Charles to consider it a down payment for future services. After some hesitation, Charles took the car. James did what he could (in his brutish, socially awkward, cold-blooded killer way) to explain it was all cool and it was all purely business. Charles accepted, although it was pretty clear James’ earlier unprovoked gun to the face didn’t sit all that well with him.

After James finished with Charles, a pretty young woman bumped into James. James suspected she tried to pick his pocket, but he couldn’t find anything missing. The woman introduced herself as Estelle. Despite James’ best efforts, Estelle hit on him and kept hitting on him. After a little bar-hopping, Estelle suggested meeting again. James eventually met with her and “took her back to his place,” a hotel in an area he knew his way around.

After spending the night together, Estelle asked James if he would like to make some extra money. She offered to introduce him to someone who could help him making money just having a good time. It wouldn’t be a lot of money, but it wouldn’t be something demanding, either. James agreed to think about the offer. He then got rid of Estelle and collected her fingerprints so Konrad could run a trace on her.

Penny followed up on a job lead at West Gate Fitness, a health club not fifteen minutes walk from her apartment. The ad said the owner was looking for someone to work weekends as needed and that benefits included membership. This really appealed to Penny given her crazy work hours.

The health club turned out to be new and nice. The owner, Ramon Calderer, seemed like a decent guy. He explained he was working some weekends on another aspect of his business: extreme outdoor challenges. On those weekends, he just needed someone to watch the shop for him, possibly to run a few classes. He complimented Penny for being in good shape and said she looked really good. He told her that any classes she picked up on her own were good for her own money. Penny thought about offering some women’s self-defense classes at that point.

As the two of them worked through the details of the offer, a pretty blonde girl showed up. She turned out to be Ramon’s fiancé and told him it was over (gave him back her ring). She said she couldn’t trust him after discovering he was buying more gear for his business without telling her. She stormed out, crying angrily. Ramon was humiliated and hurt by the whole thing, but he toughed it out and worked out the final contract details with Penny.

Penny left the gym a little conflicted. She felt a little bad for Ramon, but she was happy for the opportunity she’d been able to capitalize on. Ramon had been up front about his financial situation. Penny wasn’t counting on the job to make ends meet, just to help her build up a nest egg should the business fall through.

Konrad and Mariel went to an upscale restaurant to celebrate their newfound success. Although Konrad knew that Mariel could abandon him at any moment, he felt they were stable at present. He told Mariel it was time for him to start planning vengeance against Cytek. Mariel was inscrutable, but she gave him a supporting toast.

As they drank their toast to vengeance, a man walked up and apologized for the interruption. He introduced himself as Donnell O’Meara captain of the Newcastle Major Crimes Unit. He said he just wanted to let Konrad know he’d be in touch soon. He then walked away.

Session Seventeen End

Newcastle Colony Synopses