We accept the Genentech job with the understanding that we won't be available for the second half at a moment's notice.
Jane tried to dig into the Sanskrit in Susan's journal but was unable to decript it. Bianca starts looking into Sanskrit experts. The UW has a three professor department. Bianca asks a friend to see if there is a friend of a friend connection to the department.
The Johnson's assistant (who answers the number), emails us details. He'll send the down payment and the virus to Takada. The first part of the run is against Synergenics Data Mining. They have a building in a corporate park in Everett.
At dinner we celebrate Bianca's 25th brithday.
A package arrives for Bianca. It's a Predator II. It's engraved "to the sneaky one" and if a gift from Bert.
Bianca's friend Rachel calls her back. Rachel's friend knows "Ted", one of the professors in the Sanskrit department. She can set up a meeting for a prospective research assistant next Tuesday. Rachel recommends showing up in "something fuzzy."
Slammo calls Derek back. The address is Viloteen, an ISP. The account is small and is paid up until the end of the year. It's for Nicholas Brandenberg. The address for Nicholas is spurious but is in Puyallup. The account has a program listening. It logs incoming data, the date, time, and the location that the sender is connecting from. There were some deleted files, Slammo couldn't recover them. The listening program is at least six months old. The log is sparse. There is an entry from two months ago (around the time the files were deleted). The report was from "Rabbit 1" in Northern California. There was a login by Rabbit 4 from a wireless provider downtown, near the port, several months before that. Slammo offers us the access code. This runs 500¥.
Derek arranges some investigation into the data mining corporation. It'll run 1,500¥ from Slammo. Derek snoopes around. The research park has four buildings in the corners of the park.
The foot patrols move in groups of three. Each group has two guards with helmets and facemasks. The uniforms are blue. The third person is in forest green robes and wears a skullcap. There is a group of guards out about 75% of the time.
Bianca attends one of the Sanskrit professor's classes. She learns that some magical groups use various languages, including sanskrit, as a way to focus magic. Some cults use Sanskirt. There was talk of using Sanskrit as a lingua franca in Amazonia, but the idea died out.
Slammo gets back to us. We learn that Synergenics is a PR support firm; they process marketting research and provide reports to PR divisions. They have done some advertising production. The research park was built by and is owned by the four companies inside. It's been open for about a year.
Bert meets Takada and gets two chips. One holds the virus. The other is the information. The information says that any computer in the third floor labs will have the necessary access. Log in, run the virus, then run an application that will access the Genentech virtual private network.
We hash out plans.