{Silver Tounge}
<2317Local, May Seventeenth, Fallout Year Seventeen [2037 Anno Domani]>
The Streetlights were dwarfed by the red-and-blue globes atop the city's new police cruisers, and as always, police presnce drew a crowd. As the globe lights graced the old brick building with color normally unknown to the area, civilans gathered around, pressing up againt yellow caution tape as if a force-barrier had been erected which impeded further progress. No such barrier existed, however, the city couldn't afford one. the citizens of Brockton's poorest sector were simply afraid of the police that patrolled the area, for good reason. Enough were too crooked to be capable of drawing a straight line, that citizens seldom fled to police for help, leading to a porportinate rise in crime rate. This portion of the city was a lost cause, one of many that were birthed in Fallout Year Zero. Such slums became known as "Red Sectors."
It usually took an unbelivably large event to drive conspicous, armed police presence into a Red Sector, and currently, there was no exception.
The old gym had recently been recognised as a confrimed hide-out of a minor Shadow-net hub, one of those which leaked out Jobs to various Runners all over Massachusets and, it was suspected, the rest of New England.
This operation was so small, so organised, that it was believed to be run by only one man. which, would make him, technically, a Runner in his own right.
And, as was unusual ever since the Fallout, the police were absolutely correct in this matter. Wither they were catching onto the Shadow-net, which was unlikely, or they got uncharecteristically accurate intellignece from some supposedly anonymous source. All the Net had to do to find the mole was to track where an unusally large shipment of ration coupons went next month.
Daniel, the one-man Shadow-net hub pulled his cybereyes away from the mainframe's goggles and wiped the acculuating sweat off his brow with a skeltal wrist.
"Well, it looks like someone is ganna get lost in th' Shadows," he mused aloud in his heavy Bostonian accent. His right hand moved to draw an Urban Raptor .65 Calibre handgun from the top-right drawer in his desk, while his left casually struck the "Upload" button on his computer's touchscreen.
The computer beeped once, and asked in small white letters what its operator had said, not recognising the musing in its library of commands.
"Open Music, Play Playlist 'Conflict'" Daniel spoke in reply to the beep, giving the computer a command it recognised, and it immediatly commenced pumping out one of Dan's many Post-modern Cyberpunk/Graver/Techno beats.
"Stop listening"
The word "sleeping" displayed itself in an unassuming corner of the screen.
Dan took his time loading up three ten-round magazines into the heavy pistol. That was all he got before "upload complete" decided to display itself.
"Start listening," Daniel commanded the speech device as he unplugged a USB jumpdrive from the computer tower, capped it, and placed the memorystick in his back-left pocket.
"Emergency shutdown. Purge all files. Do not reboot."
The screen cut to black, and Daniel "Silvertounge" Frederick stood up, pushing his chair away from the desk, and ghosting towards the door.
"But there's no way that I'm ganna be the one to disappear." He slid a magazine into the cop-killer's handle.
"Daddy would be so proud,"
