The groupi s hired through a meeting in a Needle Net 'chatroom' and are offered 2K up front and 8 on completion.
The job is at Cavilard Research Center in Bellevue, named a NeoNET facility for 'personal' projects or what have you. The job is to find the research done by Gerald Watkins, the Johnson calls it a 'Decoder Ring'.
Taking the macguffin without letting on what you're after is worth another 1k to the Johnson.
The team meets up in a room and gets a handle on who they are and their abilities.
The teams initial matrix look up reveals:
Located at 1302 118th Ave SE, the unassuming research park is located in Bellevue. It's private, fenced off and has a small campus, focused on the main research building, with two secondary buildings on the grounds. It used to belong to MCT but was mothballed after Crash 2.0. Neonate purchased it and it has assumed some of the overflow from NeoNET Labs in Bellevue.
Deeper searching shows two types of research occur at Cavilard... magical research deemed 'problematic' for their main facility and 'pet projects.' Security is pretty tight, but not abnormal for a corporate research center.
Pictures show a manned gate entry, one way in and one way out, a monowire topped cyclone fence about 3 meters tall, and ample parking for the facility. One of the two smaller buildings looks like a cafeteria.
Pictures don't seem to show any patrolling guards but they might have moved out of the way for the photos.
Dr. Gerald Watkins is a leading expert on Resonance Theory, as well as a respected programmer. Ice doesn't find anything to indicate that he, himself, is a technomancer. There is a story bout a time he was attacked by an unnamed group suspected to have ties to technomancers, but nothing to indicate that Dr Watkins is guilty of any sort of human rights violations or unethical experimentation.
Still, the idea of a 'Resonance Theory Expert' chills Ice to the core.
There is nothing to indicate what his current project is, though previous works have included IC development, spam filtering software, and more IC development.
Pennies attempts to take a lok at the pace but is too far away, so she and Requiem ride to check it out a bit closer. Pennies learns the host is powerful and leaves a drone to watch the pace with a camera.
The group discusses their options and decides to go in with the old, "We're exterminators" ploy.
So now you are at the exterminators putting yourselve sinto the NeoNET schedule on the Exterminators Host, then to take some of their equipment, and then plan your next move accordingly.