Episode 5: The Highly Leveraged Job, Part 1 - kaseido/NeoTokyo GitHub Wiki

The team begins the job of getting Tom Nook disentangled from the real estate acquisition trap he’s found himself in. They start by digging into Viridia Rackham, the junior corpo at Odaiba Securities, who’s in charge of the firm’s strange foray into shitty real estate.

Paragon does a phenomenal dive into her background. Viridia was hired by Odaiba a year ago, despite a much less than top-shelf set of qualifications. And her records don’t extend much farther back than her hiring. However, her biometrics match with one Mikayla Lomax, an Old Dome squat-raised orphan – who disappeared two years ago. And yes, the neighborhood Lomax grew up in is one of those Odaiba has acquired.

Paragon’s search for Taliesin, her colleague/sibling/husband/clone/Soong-type android/whatever, turns up a sterling resume – which is entirely fake, but just good enough to pass cursory examination, not a quality job. Taliesin and Viridia list each other as “partner” and mutual beneficiaries, but on NeoTokyo that could mean anything. The two have an extensive social media presence that indicates serious social climbing – A-list celebrity parties, season tickets to the opera, and the like – they’re definitely not Starscream fans!

Vir assists Carbide in working up an age-regressed image of Viridia. The two of them plan to set up a pop-up clinic/repair shop in the squat Mikayla was from, and ask some questions. The trip out by Metro is uneventful: there’s a cute kid strugging with her math homework, but that’s about it. They set up in a storefront. Folks seem suspicious until someone with an infected knife wound comes in for treatment and leaves as a satisfied and vocal customer. Business starts to flow.

Eventually Carbide gets the neighborhood Granny Gossip: Mikayla was one of the kids raised in the local co-op day care, notably smart, notably private. She disappeared a couple years ago – moved on to something better, Granny hopes. Carbide says he’s got a friend who’d like to find her – they met and kinda hit it off. Granny doesn’t have much more to add. Vir suggests they check the day care.

While Carbide repairs the flickering lights, Vir chats up the frazzled guardian on duty. Mikayla just showed up around age 12, seemed traumatized, wouldn’t talk about her background. She acted normal enough to fit in, but never got particularly close to anyone, and generally preferred reading and schoolwork to trouble. And then a couple years ago, she just disappeared again.

The two leave, and at the Metro station discover a body tucked under the stairs, shot once in the head. Vir feels bad about just leaving them there, and searches the body for any identification. They don’t find any, but do find a subdermal pocket. In the pocket is a small translucent capsule with the Lifetech Consolidated logo etched on it. Carbide recognizes the capsule as a tiny stasis pod; Vir identifies the contents as an actual queen bee, something that hasn’t been seen in NeoTokyo in a century.

They head straight to Carbide’s workshop, untroubled by the pair of boostergangers in their Metro capsule who’re more interested in watching something on their Agents. Vir suggests Carbide slip it right into an RFID sleeve – which was an exceptionally good idea, as the capsule did have a locator tag on it. Carbide disables the tag and opens the pod. The bee wakes up- and takes flight before Carbide can close the pod on it. He and Vir improvise a box trap baited with some of Starscream’s abandoned boba tea, and get the bee safely back into stasis.

They head to the diner to brief the team and hand off the bee to Night. She wants to breed the bee and release them, to break the power of the corps’ pollinator-drones. Paragon argues for breeding the bee but selling it, not back to Lifetech, but to Veridian, the firm that makes the pollinator drones, who’ll pay dearly to keep their monopoly. The Party can then undercut Veridian after the payday. Night tentatively agrees, but advises them that making a connection like that is going to take some time.

Starscream wants an apiary on the rooftop of the brownstone she’s picked out in Firebrand’s community. There’s some discussion as to whether she’s capable of crying if she doesn’t get one.

Carbide thinks that what they’ve found out about the Rackhams suggests that Taliesin is the catalyst for Mikayla/Viridia’s identity change, and that they should focus on him. Viridia thinks Mikayla wasn’t a squat kid originally, before she showed up at age 12, but Starscream cautions that “12 doesn’t mean innocent.” Only the strong survive the star factory.

Paragon’s tap on Ebit’s Alexa turns up a call from one Zhessa, who’s got Ebit wrapped around her finger, apparently sexually and financially. It sounds like Ebit might be under quite a bit of pressure from her. Paragon recognizes the name as Orion. The team observes that at least they know Orion pheromones work on him!

Starscream makes arrangements to bring Paragon to the Spire the next day as her PA, and from there she can do some digging into all the Spire residents at issue – the Rackhams and Zhessa.

Paragon tries examining the transactions but bounces hard off the obscurity and complexity of real estate records, so Starscream calls her accountant again. Exactly at the end of his billable hour, her calls back: Odaiba hasn’t succeeded at every bid, but the net effect has been to vastly bidding up the prices of Old Dome real estate – and thus the value of Odaiba’s portfolio. Which looks like the kind of financial scam an ancient and reputable firm like Odaiba would come nowhere near. Another weird thing: while the seller in each transaction was naturally Dome Ops, which holds all abandoned property in the Dome, the same employee handled every one of the Odaiba bids. That’s distinctly unusual. The employee’s name: Daz Lomax, same last name as Mikayla.

Paragon’s search of Lomax reveals that he’s been steadily working his way up in Dome Ops since he was a teenager -but he’s got a high-value stock portfolio: all Odaiba real-estate-backed securities. And the beneficiary is Viridia Rackham.

Paragon wonders if Daz is Taliesin. Carbide observes that he’s known a lot of Dome Ops workers, and knows a fair bit about the organization. It’s expected that local workers will take kickbacks to keep the power on in the squats: it’s seen as a win for everybody. Dome Ops can’t actually give away power or officially condone squatting, but the kickbacks keep people alive and put a little extra money in workers’ pockets. However, anything that smacks of corporate favoritism is an absolute no go: Dome Ops is powerful because all the corps will back them if push comes to shove.

Paragon thinks they’ve found their leverage. Drop word to Dome Security, and they’ll go all wrath of god on Lomax and the whole problem. Carbide thinks it’s a nuclear option and one that could easily take them all down along with Lomax if they’re not careful. As a threat, it’s got a lot of power. The team agrees to use the information as a threat, but to be prepared to follow through if need be.

Another call comes through to Ebit. His system identifies it as coming from “Davey Lewis,”and coming from a burner Agent. It’s just a set of coordinates, and Ebit seems gleeful to get them. He leaves his office directly afterwards.

A search turns up three “Davey Lewises” in Old Dome. One owns a bar in a terrible neighborhood on Level Three, one is a fixer in a squat neighborhood on a low level, and one is a 93 year old collector of black-market anime.

Not satisfied with the data they’re pulling from Ebit’s Alexa, Paragon writes a virus and inserts it into a link to an Orion porn site. The spearfishing is successful, and they have an in to Ebit’s Agent.