2012 11 12 1

Mon Nov 12 2072 Matrix Free Toronto is a respected team of runners. They're not the best of the best, but they're probably close to it. Their decker cut into a CATCo voting database just after the election, found the information, and led the team to a facility in Ottawa. It's not clear exactly what happened there, but Seraphim came to interrogate their friends and their friends' friends. Word leaked out slowly, with rumors of psychotropic black IC and disappearances. The only thing that's clear is that Matrix Free Toronto is no longer, as of today, of concern to anyone. Last Friday a trio of riggers launched an assault on a convoy carrying voting equipment. There were no obvious escorts, but the attacking drones never made it within half a kilometer of the target. Ares stealth fighters took out the drones, tracked down the signal, and then hit the riggers' command post with a small but sufficient burst of missiles. And those are just the competent actions against the UCAS and the megacorporations involved in the last election. A hundred of more small-time runners probe government buildings and networks, sniff around the periphery of Wuxing and Cross Applied Technologies compounds. They are captured and killed by the dozens. Of course successes aren't public. They can't be. But the usual runner haunts have very little bragging about successes in the election game, and there are more empty seats and posts without comment than usual. Runners went into the bear's cave and discovered the bear wasn't hibernating. The UCAS was expecting the opportunists. The megas were expecting them. There is little glory for the shadow community. Survivors lick their wounds quietly and election counts proceed without interference, at least as far as anyone can tell.