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in the East River, between Manhattan and the Queens and Bronx boroughs. Randall’s Island is adjoined to Ward’s Island. While Ward’s Island has the Horizon Rehabilitation and Psychiatric Center, Randall’s Island is mainly used to house three minimum- and two moderate- security prisons for Manhattan. Due to the long history Randall’s Island has had of housing everything from an orphanage and an insane asylum to a workhouse and now prisons, it has a very high background count, ranging anywhere from 4 to 5 on most academic scales. Like Ward’s Island, Randall’s Island also has problems with troubled spirits. Vehicle and pedestrian access to Randall’s and Ward’s Islands comes through the Triborough bridge, though entry points are heavily guarded and inspected by NYPD, Inc. to prevent escape attempts. Matrix access is sporadic on Randall’s Island, due to NYPD, Inc.’s concerted efforts to

most famous jails: Riker’s Prison. During the second Matrix Crash, many of the security features failed inside of the jail, releasing the entire population. A savage prison riot ensued, which lasted five days and allowed thirty-eight, high threat prisoners to escape. During the riot itself, nearly a hundred and eighty prisoners and ninety prison staff were killed. Following that tragic riot, and given the obsolete nature of the jail (which had been in service since 1932), the MDC had the original prison on Riker’s closed. They rebuilt its successor; the New Riker’s Prison, on Roosevelt Island (which is fairly ironic given that the original Riker’s Island was opened to replace the original Blackwell Island prison, which sat on Roosevelt Island) and turned it into a maximum security prison.

The husk of the prison remains unoccupied on Riker’s Island, waiting for the MDC to decide what to do with it. Some on the MDC want to tear down the penitentiary and to use the former prison island to provide middle- and lower-income housing (such a wonderful metaphor there).

Others on the council desire to rehabilitate the buildings and turn Riker’s into a museum and tourist trap, much like what Alcatraz used to be in the California Free State. Ever since 2065, when the prison was officially closed, there has been no consensus on the MDC for what to do with it, and so the matter has been tabled for years. While the prison sits and waits, it continues to be vandalized by neo-anarchist groups and various gangs looking to make it their turf. Many of the interiors of the damaged buildings are not secure and are becoming inhabited by both squatters and by dangerous paranormal critters, from Gabriel hounds and demon rats to feral ghouls and vampires. There are also reports of vicious spirit attacks on the squatters who brave the remnants of Riker’s Island. Every so often, NYPD, Inc. is tasked by the MDC to clear out Riker’s prison, but instead of putting their own personnel in harm’s way, NYPD, Inc. normally subcontracts the work to shadowrunners and other bounty hunters.

ROOSEVELT ISLAND

Roosevelt Island houses the worst of the worst prisoners for Manhattan, off of the shoreline of the Eastside neighborhood. There are three maximum-security (New Riker’s Penitentiary, Gatestrom Penitentiary, and Stonewater Correctional Facility) and two ultra-maximum security prisons (New Blackwell Penitentiary, Stormbreak Penitentiary) on Roosevelt Island, all under NYPD, Inc.’s control. The ultra-maximum security prisons are believed to have facilities capable of housing Awakened prisoners and technomancers. One wing of Stormbreak is now reportedly being used to house CFD patients.

With Roosevelt Island’s long and torrid history of serving as a home for an infamous insane asylum, workhouses, a smallpox hospital, and the infamous Blackwell prison, as well as its brief time being used as a burial site for the poor, Roosevelt Island has developed a major background count. Institutions such as the Draco Foundation and the Dunkelzahn Institute of Magical Research all have high background counts, which likely proves tortuous to the Awakened prisoners incarcerated here.

There is no direct vehicle access for Roosevelt Island. Those wishing to travel to Roosevelt Island may travel via ferry to the island and may use public transportation to get around the island (which is heavily monitored by NYPD, Inc.), but also vehicle access is greatly limited to authorized vehicles only. There used to be subway access to Roosevelt Island, but after the quake of 2005, that subway tunnel

by the Court in NeoNET’s favor (with both Renraku and NeoNET justices obviously not voting in the case), leav-ing Renraku to sulk over the loss. To add insult to injury, NeoNET has remained the top Matrix service provider in Manhattan for the last ten years, thanks mainly to NeoNET “being the first Matrix service provider choice for the Corporate Court” (to use their ad language) That ad campaign seemed to resonant with the people of Manhattan. Ever since that time, Renraku has looked to show up NeoNET in any way it could. Many local run-ners will tell you that many of the recent activities to undermine NeoNET and its reliability as a Matrix ser-vice provider has come from Renraku Johnsons, and as such, by being the ones directing the damage inflicted on NeoNET’s infrastructure, Renraku has been able to specifically target those areas of Manhattan and those clients that have been most affected by the damage done by their deniable assets, and lure those disgrun-tled clients away with cutthroat deals that NeoNET has not been able to match.

So far, Renraku has been making great strides in securing greater control of the Matrix service provider market share in Manhattan. If the trending holds, they will continue to make strides in this area for at least an-other year. At the same time, Renraku has chosen its sights on another target: the upcoming contract nego-tiations for servicing the Corporate Court Matrix infra-structure. If Renraku can manage to steal this contract from NeoNET as well and gain equal footing with Neo-NET in Manhattan as a Matrix service provider, they will likely feel as though it would have righted many of the wrongs they believe NeoNET inflicted on them over a decade ago. With NeoNET having to defend its interests from Saeder-Krupp, Renraku, and all the other corpora-tions looking to buy a seat on the MDC, it is a distinct possibility that NeoNET will find itself spread too thin to defend itself adequately and will continue to lose more ground to Renraku (and to its other rivals). These mul-tiple fronts may come to really hurt NeoNET in its con-tract negotiations with the Corporate Court as well, as recent rumors in the shadows suggest that Renraku has placed no budgetary restrictions on Renraku Johnsons as to how much they can spend on shadow assets in the effort to steal the contract away from NeoNET. If they can steal that one prestigious contract from NeoNET, Renraku believes that it would be worth it, no matter the

cost. Unfortunately for NeoNET, if Renraku is putting this policy into place, you can bet that the other megacorps with decent Matrix based interests are doing the same thing, and that by defending this one contract from be-ing poached, NeoNET risks losbe-ing hundreds of millions of nuyen just to keep their rivals away. For all intents and purposes, open hunting season has been called on Neo-NET, and all I can say to that is: it sucks to be them.

Renraku is not just trying to make a play for the ma-jority market share of Matrix users in Manhattan, but also is trying to dominate the sprawl in Matrix security.

When the new Matrix protocols were introduced, Ren-raku released five brand-new types of IC and three dif-ferent types of firewalls, all designed to completely shut down hacking attempts (to get a bit of a jab in against NeoNET, Renraku publicly announced these new pro-grams a day after it was discovered NeoNET security had been compromised, and millions of users had their personal information accessed by hackers. Some would argue business is never personal; these two megacorps show that they’re wrong). Rumors continue to circu-late in Manhattan shadows that what has contributed to Renraku’s success in the field of Matrix security has not just been talented programmers but rather techno-mancers and AIs that have been captured (or extract-ed) by Renraku and forced into unwilling employment.

Renraku naturally denies having such a program, and is competent enough to keep all traces of it secret, but the rumors persist. No matter the truth, Renraku and its Ma-trix security expertise services nearly fifty percent of all AA and A corporations in the Manhattan area, making Matrix security a very profitable enterprise for Renraku.

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That program’s real. I know two chummers from the NY

area who I believe were snatched by Renraku and taken into that downtown tower of theirs for their “special employment” program. I’ve been working with the local neo-a’s who are trying to free the technomancers and the AIs that are trapped inside that building, and building a way to get them out of Manhattan in a manner similar to what used to be known as the underground railroad. So far, they’ve only been able to free three technomancers and two AIs over the past eight months. And sadly, they weren’t any of the ones I knew. From what the neo-a’s tell me, it’s going to take some real talent as far as shadowrunners are concerned to penetrate their security, and to get more of the technomancers and AIs freed.

Where the technomancers are kept (in the sub-levels beneath the building), they are guarded 24/7 by at least four squadrons of Red Samurai, with backup able to arrive on scene in a very short period of time. Many times, the runners the neo-a’s have hired in the past have not come back, raising the reluctance of some runners to break into the Renraku tower.

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^Netcat

• North American Broadcasting System (Ares)

• NewsNet, Inc.

• Public Broadcasting Network

• NBCNN (independent)

• Pathfinder Multimedia (Horizon)

• The Apple Press (independent news firm believed to be a front for Neo-Anarchists)

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That, and even today, runners are still hesitant to break into any building that could be considered a Renraku Arcology-type situation. Seriously, what happened between 2059 and 2061 was some scary shit that left a lot of people scarred for life. And the smart runners know that the corps never, ever, learn from their mistakes. There could always be second-generation Deus just waiting to do the same thing all over again. And given how they are treating technomancers and AIs …

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^Balladeer

In addition to its activities relating to the Matrix, Ren-raku is also making nuyen off the sprawl from its finan-cial and investment firms spread throughout Manhattan, such as Champion Financial. They also hold the contract for sanitation and for leasing street-sweeper drones to Manhattan to keep the streets clean (they also lease snow-plow drones). On top of everything else, Renraku now also runs GridGuide for the Manhattan sprawl, hav-ing bought the property from Mitsuhama back in 2074.

Renraku is believed to be keeping its CFD research contained within its high-security Renraku Tower in Mid-town. Renraku appears to be tackling the problem of the virus through nanotechnology. Whereas Saeder-Krupp was researching nanites to create better diagnostic tools, Renraku is researching and developing new types of nanites as nanite hunters in an effort to eliminate cor-rupted nanites before they can cause damage. So far, Renraku has not experienced much success. From what I have heard, the problem is that any nanites carrying the virus are able to infect nanite hunters, getting them to work to spread the virus to the patient instead of curing them. So in Renraku’s (rather unethical) testing meth-ods, when a metahuman test subject was intentionally infected with the CFD virus via nanite injection, and then given these newly designed nanite hunters to “cure” the disease, they ended up expressing new (and sometimes additional) personalities faster than they would have had they not been given the nanite hunters. Renraku researchers are having a distinct problem with the inva-siveness of the CFD virus and with its seemingly urgent imperative to spread, much like biological microorgan-isms. It’s hard to tell where all these corporations are in their research at this point in comparison to their rivals, but Renraku seems to be further behind the rest with all the difficulties they have been experiencing with these nanite hunters. Given how invasive and transmittable the corrupted programming of the CFD virus is, Renraku may in fact have to give up their line of research into nano therapies (which is starting to look like a dead end to me) and broaden their research into other fields that hold more promise.

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One thing I have heard about Renraku is that they are

not only just infecting ordinary metahumans with the CFD virus (which goes far beyond contemptuous), they

are also doing so to technomancers and even a few Awakened who they extracted from their penitentiaries just to see how head crash occurs in their physiologies.

Pretty disturbing stuff if you ask me. Particularly since these two populations generally do not go in for unnatural augmentations that put their natural talents at risk.

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^Beaker

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It’s my understanding that Renraku has also been busy

hiring runners to track down shapeshifters and put them into these trials as well, to see if a shapeshifter’s regenerative properties protect them from the effects of the CFD virus. I haven’t heard anything yet about the results of those tests.

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^Sticks

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It would not surprise me in the least if Renraku started

rounding up bug spirits to experiment on … oh wait, that’s Ares’ bailiwick. Never mind.

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Balladeer

Like Evo, Mitsuhama has a limited presence in Manhattan. Ever since being kicked off the Manhattan Development Consortium, business opportunities for MCT within the sprawl have slowly dwindled (thanks to MDC and its vindictive nature), with MCT only able to hang onto certain interests through its influence on the Corporate Court and the pressure it could bring to bear on the double-A corporations from its Corporate Court justices. In Manhattan, MCT’s security drones are big business, but often times they compete directly with Winter Systems, and unfortunately for MCT, Winter Systems has the luxury of being able to manipulate the playing field to give them a home-field advantage.

MCT’s commercial drone lines (household drones, industrial drones) are popular but also face similar challenges and competition from the other corps on the MDC, from S-K and Aztechnology to Horizon and Renraku. Due to all these factors, MCT’s drone lines are not nearly as profitable in Manhattan as they are in other parts of North America.

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Given MCT’s difficulties in being able to compete in the

Manhattan market, it should be no surprise to anyone that MCT and their justices are leading the charge to merge the MDC functions with the Corporate Court. If MCT should fail to buy a seat on the MDC, expect tensions to rise as the MCT justices pursue this merger.

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Kay St. Irregular

Most of MCT’s CFD virus research is being handled by their CodeBlue Biotech subsidiary, which has an eigh-teen-story research facility in Newtown, eight blocks away from their main office complex. CodeBlue Bio-tech is rumored to be pursuing various bioware options to regenerate damaged tissue caused by the CFD virus

and to restore the tissue to its natural state. Rumors are CodeBlue Biotech is working on tweaking Léonization therapies to fix the damage left by the CFD virus. So far, MCT has seen little progress from this line of research, with the trials often inflicting more damage to the pa-tient than what was there previously. However, since some of what MCT is trying to do with biotech mirrors what NeoNET and Dorada Biotech are attempting, you can bet there are a lot of runs happening between these two corporations to scout out any developments the other corporation has made, or to try to learn of any new lines of research the other corp may be pursuing. Those knowledgeable of MCT believe that they, if they succeed in finding a cure or treatment for the CFD virus, they will try to use that advancement as additional leverage to get back onto the MDC.

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The CFD virus and the Corporate Court angles aren’t

MCT’s only plays on getting back on the MDC. Multiple sources within the shadows have allowed it to leak out that MCT has submitted a proposal to the MDC to be the corporation to clean up the Terminal Z-Zone. The MDC has tabled the matter for now, but doing something to improve Terminal is very popular with a vast majority of the wealthy socialites that live in Manhattan, and they no longer want to put up with the unsightly blight and the nauseous odors that occasionally drift over into the better parts of Manhattan. The MDC desperately wants to do something with Terminal, but as NYPD, Inc. has pointed out, doing so would be bloody and it would be resource intensive. Apparently, MCT is willing to suffer the losses if it means getting back into the good graces of the MDC in the long term. But the MDC is reluctant to move on such a proposal due to MCT’s well-established reputation for cold and efficient ruthlessness, particularly with its zero zones. Allowing MCT to act in such a manner could cause more problems for the MDC than they already have. But at the same time, they also realize the wealthy elite of the sprawl have limits to their patience and tolerance. And make no mistake, places like the Pit and Terminal are seen as blights on an otherwise glamorous sprawl for the elite.

If there is even a minor incident with Terminal, the wealthy and the well connected will be clamoring for major change with the existing policy of containment, despite the political fallout that might happen from outside Manhattan for allowing MCT to act on their behalf and clean house. Obviously, these leaks have only fired up the neo-anarchists, intensifying their protests and their anti-corporate actions. There could very well be a powder keg brewing on the streets of Manhattan, waiting to go off.

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^{Dr. Spin}

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Don’t forget the new spirit of cooperativeness running

through the Japanacorps. They don’t see eye to eye on

through the Japanacorps. They don’t see eye to eye on

In document LA FRANJA D’ARAGÓ (página 38-44)