2400 Data Loss 4

DATA LOSS // LOG 04: Mind Over Mangled Meat

Forget the gel. When a robotic hound with a plasma torch for a face is sprinting down a catwalk to incinerate you, you don't rely on structural adhesive. You rely on the heavy-duty tech wired directly into your skull. The pain in my sliced thigh is an agonizing, blinding white noise, but I grit my teeth, lean my back hard against the high-voltage transformer, and focus every ounce of mental discipline I have left.

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ROOM 2: THE PLANT PERIMETER (COMBAT)

The utility bot leaps, the roaring blue plasma torch attached to its front end coming uncomfortably close to my face. The heat instantly singes my eyebrows. Because my leg is torn up, I can't dodge, duck, or dive out of the way. I am completely stationary, making me a sitting duck.

Instead of trying to move away, I thrust my hand straight out toward the leaping machine, tapping directly into my Shatter mod. I'm not just trying to push it back—I'm channeling my Will to lock onto the internal gears of its front leg actuators and snap them like toothpicks mid-air, forcing it to crash and burn before the torch can cook my chest cavity.

MECHANICS CORNER: THE ROLL
Janse is using telekinesis to break a robot limb, which utilizes the Will skillset. Janse's Will is a strong d8. However, because Janse is currently injured and hindered by the shrapnel wound from the Tunneler Mech, the skill die drops down one step to a d6.

Rolling 1d6... Result: 5 (Success!)

The GM Renders the Verdict: A 5 is a clean Success. Janse fights through the agony and executes the move perfectly!

A sharp, microscopic shockwave ripples out from my outstretched palm. *SNAP.* The utility bot's front right leg joints violently warp and fracture under the psychic pressure. Deprived of its landing gear, the mechanical hound loses all trajectory control mid-leap. It misses me completely, hitting the steel mesh catwalk face-first with a spectacular spray of sparks.

The white-hot plasma torch digs directly into the grated floor, melting a jagged hole through the metal before its safety overrides kick in and the engine chokes to a pathetic, smoky halt. The bot twitches on its side, completely disabled.

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DOWN AND OUT IN THE COURTYARD

I slump back against the transformer, clutching my bleeding thigh. My head is pounding from the exertion, but the immediate threat is scrap metal. The 120-second DRM lysis countdown doesn't tick down for this thing—it's just a low-level maintenance drone, not a SOUL-bearing cybernetic clone—but that doesn't mean it's useless.

MECHANICS CORNER: SALVAGING THE SCRAP
Since the utility bot is permanently downed, I'm spending a few precious moments to salvage what I can from its shattered chassis before moving deeper into the refinery.

Acquired: Arcwire Tool (Weld, solder, cut; functions as a light weapon).

Using a piece of sharp scrap metal from the catwalk, I pry open the bot's maintenance panel and rip out its internal Arcwire Tool. It’s a handheld utility wand used for industrial maintenance, capable of welding, soldering, and cutting through structural alloy. In my hands, it's a perfect light weapon and an invaluable tool for breaking and entering. Finally, I'm not completely defenseless.

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THE REFINERY AIRLOCK

I limp down the catwalk toward the main structure of the power plant. The heavy automated airlock door looms ahead, hissing softly as pressure stabilizes. According to the internal map scrawled on the wall by some long-dead worker, this airlock is a major crossroads. It leads directly to three distinct sectors of the facility:

• The Plant Core (DUMAH): The main refinery floor. I can hear a massive, unnatural distortion humming from inside—the domain of DUMAH, the hovering, cable-shackled giant metamind holding this whole grid hostage.
• The Labs Elevator: A high-security elevator shaft leading straight down into a secret underground laboratory complex.
• The Mines Airlock: A subterranean transit tunnel connecting the refinery directly to the deep mining sectors.

My leg is still a bloody mess, meaning I'm still hindered. I have that can of Repair Gel, which can fix broken equipment, but it won't fix organic meat. To heal my leg, I either need to find a Medic8 pack, or find a way to get an Arcwire Mod like PatchUp to weld my flesh back together.

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2400 Data Loss 3

DATA LOSS // LOG 03: The Long Walk to the Power Grid

The dark depths of the Mines sound like a good place to get trapped like a rat, so I’m betting my fresh clone skin on the surface. I turn my back on the yawning mine shaft and start down the cracked dirt road toward the Plant. In the distance, the massive, fenced-in power refinery looms against the bruised sky, humming with enough high-voltage current to make the hairs on my arms stand up.

But like the graffiti warned, you don't just take a stroll in the Outskirts without paying the toll.

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TRANSITION: THE DIRT ROAD (HAZARD)

I’m about halfway to the refinery gates when the ground beneath my bare feet begins to violently shudder. It starts as a low, rhythmic thumping that rattles my teeth, rapidly building into a teeth-grinding roar. The earth fractures fifty meters ahead of me, bursting upward in a geyser of rocky debris and rusted rebar.

Out of the dirt rises the Tunneler Mech. It’s an absolute unit of industrial malice—a segmented, armored centipede-like machine bristling with hydraulic diamond-tipped drills where a face should be. Sensor nodes flash a hostile, piercing crimson light right at me. It tracks vibrations, and my desperate sprint down the road just rang its dinner bell.

There's no cover out here, and I can't outrun it. But I've still got that heavy, broken half of an iron pipe I looted from the worker. I'm going to use my TK implant to hurl the heavy pipe chunk as hard as I can into the wreckage of an old car chassis way off to the left. If I can make enough noise over there, I can trick its acoustic sensors into striking the car while I dive into a nearby drainage ditch to hide.

MECHANICS CORNER: THE ROLL
Janse is trying to execute a clever, distracting stunt using telekinesis to avoid a fatal encounter. This relies on the Will skillset (Janse has a d8). Because I'm executing a risky, desperate maneuver to divert a massive threat, the GM doesn't apply a hindrance, but a failure here means getting crushed by a multi-ton drill.

Rolling 1d8... Result: 3 (Setback)

The GM Renders the Verdict: A 3 is a Setback. The distraction works, but the escape is far from clean.

I focus my mind, locking onto the jagged metal pipe and launching it across the road. It slams into the rusted car chassis with a resounding, metallic *CLANG*. The Tunneler Mech instantly reacts, its massive drill head snapping toward the sound. It lunges with terrifying speed, completely obliterating the car in a shower of sparks and shredded steel.

But the shockwave from the mech's violent strike tears up the road, sending a spray of sharp concrete shrapnel flying right toward my ditch. I dive for cover, but a jagged piece of debris slices deep across my thigh. I manage to crawl out of its sensory line of sight into the shadow of the refinery's perimeter fence, but I am bleeding, injured, and my movement will be hindered until I can find a way to patch this up.

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ROOM 2: THE PLANT PERIMETER (INFO & ENCOUNTER)

Dragging my bleeding leg, I slip through a tear in the massive chain-link fence and collapse against an auxiliary terminal. A cracked holo-display blinks with a looping text log fragment:

RE-ROUTE TERMINAL // LOG ERROR:
"...couldn't shut the power off even if we wanted to. DUMAH won't let us. The thralls are burning through the capacitors..."

Before I can even process who or what "DUMAH" is, a sharp mechanical bark cuts through the electronic hum of the station. I look up. Patrolling the courtyard is a dog-sized Utility Bot. It looks like a mechanical hound built out of industrial scrap, and instead of jaws, its head is a roaring, blue-hot plasma welding torch.

It smells the fresh blood on my clone suit. It sparks, revs its torch to a blinding white heat, and starts charging down the catwalk straight at me.

I'm backed against a high-voltage transformer, my leg is mangled (hindered), and I don't have a weapon. But I do have that canister of corporate Repair Gel in my pocket. If I can time it right, I can try to spray the quick-hardening gel directly into the bot's plasma torch nozzle as it lunges. If it hardens instantly, the back-pressure might explode the torch or short-circuit its head.

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2400 Data Loss 2

DATA LOSS // LOG 02: Playing Dirty in the Dirt

So, there I was. Back stuck against a pile of sharp industrial scrap, ears ringing from a telekinetic backlash, and a second corrupted worker stepping over his buddy's broken pipe with a rusted shiv raised high. My head feels like an over-clocked graphics card, and I'm already tracking dirt onto my fresh clone suit. Time to see if Janse can think fast under pressure.

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ROOM 1: THE RESIDENTIAL BLOCK (CONCLUDED)

The worker lunges, the rusted shiv aimed straight for my throat. Because of that nasty psychic whiplash from my last move, my reflexes are sluggish. I am officially hindered. I can’t rely on a clean TK blast without risking frying my own synapses.

Instead of trying to be elegant, I'm playing dirty. I reach out with my bare hands, grab a handful of the loose, metallic soot from the dirt road beneath me, and use a tiny, desperate flare of my TK implant to launch it like a shotgun blast of grit right into the worker's eyes. If I can blind him, I can scramble out of this scrap heap and tackle him to the concrete before he can stick me.

MECHANICS CORNER: THE ROLL
Janse is trying to rely on raw Speed to throw dirt and tackle the foe. Normally, Speed is a d6. However, because Janse was hindered by the previous setback, the die size drops by one step down to a d4.

Rolling 1d4... Result: 5 (Success!)

The GM Renders the Verdict: Against the odds, a 5 is a clean Success! Even with a d4, Janse pulls it off beautifully.

The telekinetic burst sends a blinding cloud of sharp, magnetic dust straight into the worker’s face. He shrieks, dropping his guard and clawing at his eyes. Capitalizing on the distraction, I shake off my mental fog, drive my shoulder right into his midsection, and slam him hard onto the cracked pavement.

The rusted shiv clatters out of his hand. Before he can recover, I grab the heavy, broken half of the iron pipe from the first guy and finish the job. A dull, digital chime echoes in my ear as his body falls perfectly still.

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LOOTING THE REBOOT

I’m breathing heavy, standing over two dead shells. But in this game, death comes with a timer. A holographic countdown blinks to life in my peripheral vision: DRM Lysis Protocol: 120s. If I don't move fast, the corporate security software embedded in their tech will vaporize everything into ash.

I drop to my knees and rifle through their pockets, ripping out what I can find before the disintegration micro-lasers kick in.

MECHANICS CORNER: LOOT & FINDING SOULs
Per the rules, defeating standard enemies yields roughly ~1 SOUL chip per player. I'm also searching the immediate area (Room 1, Item roll) to see what else these workers were hoarding before they lost their minds.

Acquired: 1 SOUL Chip.
Rolling d20 for Room Item... Result: 15 (Repair Gel, 1 use).

Right at the 15-second mark, both bodies dissolve into a fine, sparkling grey powder, leaving behind a pristine, glowing green data wafer—a SOUL chip—and a pressurized canister of corporate-branded Repair Gel. I pocket both. I might not have a weapon yet, but a can of structural adhesive can fix broken tech or seal a door in a pinch.

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THE ROAD AHEAD

The residential block is clear, but I can't stay here. The dirt road splits in front of me, winding past collapsed neon signs and rusted chain-link fences. According to my internal navigation layout, I've got two main routes out of the Outskirts:

• The Plant: A massive, fenced-in power refinery humming with lethal voltage. I can hear the distant thrum of heavy machinery from here.
• The Mines: A plunging drop into a subterranean network via a massive, open mine shaft.

But there's a catch. The local graffiti scrawled on a nearby concrete barrier warns that traveling these roads risks attracting the attention of a massive, aggressive tunneler mech that hunts things making vibrations on the surface.

Which way are we heading, readers? Do we brave the roads toward the high-voltage Plant, or do we try to find a way down into the dark depths of the Mines?

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