Runners:
Thankyou aka Eckhard Roberts
Aemon Burst
Ortega
Ro Tain
Tonie Dick

The team accepts a job offered by Corinna to track down some fugitives in NYC. They are wary of getting involved with the Nadja Fixer Network but the free flight out of Chicago is too good of a deal to pass up. They get flown to the city with all of their gear, and are provided a safehouse by Grendel, the Johnson for the job. He tells them they are to make their own way into Manhattan (as a test), and meet him in The Terminal.

They stash their gear (with the lynx on guard duty), and make a local smuggling connection through Ricky Steelsky. A super-ugly and super-pro dwarf named Nichols takes them across the bay from Queens to Manhattan under cover of darkness, and they land at a surprisingly bustling dock- corp types and other smugglers all loading and offloading various items and persons. They make the meet, and are impressed by Grendel’s massive 3m+ stature. He has some backup with him from his bounty collection agency, as well as his sister, Wulf, but he dominates the conversation.

The job is to extract a former New Revolution member, Keith Jones from the island. He lives off of Central Park, and works in the main MDC building, in the Ares Macrotechnology wing. Grendel is worried about the level of heat this is gonna bring down, which is why he needs them to do it. If he tries to approach through legal channels, he expects Ares to close ranks (it being bad press to harbor “traitors”). So he and his team will very publicly be broadcasting their presence elsewhere while the team grabs him. They will get him somewhere secure, and then make the handoff. Grendel will pay them, and then cash in the bounty once the heat has died down a bit. He tells them there will a 2nd job too if this one goes well.

Since they have about 2 weeks to kill til Aemon and Ro initiate in Europe, they agree. TY negotiates for a large rate increase. They make their way to The Pit, to get fake licenses and passes allowing them to operate more freely on the island. TY stays behind with their guns and such. Aemon buys a terrible, large landscape painting from a street artist. He and Ortega also get machine pistols, and non-lethal ammo. They return to The Terminal, and plan to mod their gear before they start surveillance and planning. They have 6 days to get the job done.

They customize their weapons to suit, and get some stun grenades. After carefully surveilling Jones’ home, route to work, and the lobby of the MDC office where he works, they decide they lack the skills to tackle the job any way except the obvious: grab him when he exits the car at the front of the building and try to ko or kill his security detail. They find out he is heavily protected currently due to an attempt by Saeder-Krupp to extract him a month back. He helped fight off the extraction team, so either he REALLY likes Ares, or they’re using his past to keep him complacent.

They hire Sem-par and Barnaby “Wombat” Rudd to hack the Ares Citymaster that they use to convoy him to work, and Ro figures out how to shut down the building’s wireless temporarily using a junction box in the park. After hijacking the car, they will drive it into the park, to a currently “under construction” fountain that actually connects to the Underground district and smuggling network. They contract with the Rat Pack for a hot extraction, and plan to execute the plan on the last day possible- they feel like they’ll only get the 1 shot at it anyway.

Grendel sends in Servaas Nikolic, one of his bounty hunters, along with the newly arrived Tonie Dick, to help with the grab. They spring the trap, and get in a massive gun battle with the KE detail and the building’s security. They manage to grab Jones and ko the guards with no deaths, and TY races off in the hacked Citymaster with everyone loaded in. They fight off a plant spirit that materializes inside the vehicle, and TY smashes into the “under construction” fountain/underground entrance. They ditch the car and dive in the collapsed fountain’s gaping maw, taking some damage in the fall, but successfully evading pursuit.

The Rat Pack smuggles them out as promised, and they call on the Exchange to get a secure ride to their safehouse and some supplies delivered to keep Jones ko’d and less detectable. However, TD gets a call from Monica Jorda, a contact at Ares, asking about the job, and saying Ares wil pay big for his return. They’ve set up a neutral matrix meet overseen by some neo-A’s, and he agrees to attend. There he verifies that he actually has Jones, and meets Ruby, the Ares CorpSec officer. She offers them a bonus to the pay Grendel offered in exchange for bringing Jones back to Ares, and says they’ll pay Grendel as well if the team can get him on board.

Servaas doesn’t want to betray his new boss, so they call him up and TD convinces him of the benefits of this plan: they don’t have to get Jones out of NYC, Ares isn’t after them, and they all still get paid. He agrees, and the swap goes off without a hitch, though the team is very paranoid throughout. Grendel, happy with the outcome, hires them on for another gig, down in the CAS.