“Found you.” Whatever the man’s got planned for you does not seem very enticing. Goddamn cultists set you up with a cozy little crime scene and bailed, but where? There must be another way out somewhere in this darkness. Without saying a word, you run deeper into the room, away from the glow of the fire at the door. You can’t see anything, so you stick your hands out in hopes of avoiding a face-first collision with the wall or whatever might be in there. Then, you remember the gun. In that instant, you take a sidestep to the right and a second or two later, a bolt of plasma flies past you on your left, briefly illuminating the room in front of you before hitting a wall and exploding in a slightly brighter burst before fizzling out. But it is enough for you to spot the open doorway on the left side of the back wall. Dashing in a slight zigzag, you approach the doorway as a paralyzing shot of plasma hits you in the back, dropping you down on the floor with a painful crash, your limbs now fully immobilized. You hear the rapidly approaching footsteps of the man in white, his gun now giving off a glow of white light directly at your immobile body. “Nice try, weirdo. But not fast enough.” The man walks up to you, swiftly restrains your legs and hands with a strong rope-like material emanating an orange glow, and begins to drag you back towards the fading fire at the now-exploded doorway. “W-would you believe me if I told you I’m not a part of this in any way? I’m just a tourist, the people in charge of this place set me up!” You try to plead your case. “I’m well aware you don’t run this show alone. Mahjong is not a game you play by yourself, you see. But we’ll get them too, don’t you worry about that.” Two guardbots emerge from the doorway, ready to support the man in white with his apprehension efforts as he drags you right to their feet. “Take ‘em away, boys - I’ll find the rest of them.” he says, taking off in a mad dash towards the darkness where you attempted to find escape. The bots do as instructed, grabbing you in a familiar manner from your shoulders and begin to escort you out of the raided room, back through the secret passageway you came from. The guardbots roughly and efficiently deposit you into a hovervan and slam the door shut. After a while of waiting in complete silence, the van begins to move, only to stop after an oddly short drive. There’s no way you’re even close to leaving the city outskirts yet. You hear a man talking outside, followed by footsteps and the van door flying open. The white-haired man dressed in white greets you once more. “Yo.” He gives you a quick wave with two fingers and leans against the van door frame. “Name’s A-47. Professional… assassin.” He speaks in a cocky and intimidating tone. An assassin? But the guardbots were definitely of the Viper Sentry type. Why would the Sentry need assassins? A-47 flicks out a holopad brimming with data, dangling it in front of his face in an exaggerated manner. “I checked your details, and your story adds up. Upstanding citizen, no record of misbehavior, even a full 100 game played very recently. I mean, I haven’t seen you around here before either, so it only makes sense. A ‘tourist’, that’s all you really are.” “I’ll be frank with you, I lost them. Fuckers have a proper maze of sewers and tunnels down there. But they’ll show up again soon enough, and I’m not going back to HQ with a failed mission report right now. Especially with all the other shit’s that’s been happening recently.” He speaks in an adamant but oddly friendly tone, in an attempt to build some trust, you presume. “And I bet they saw something special in you. It’s not like them to drag any random guy into their secret little rituals.” The conversation is starting to reveal its true nature to you, giving you enough confidence to probe a bit. “What’s the occasion anyway? From what I could tell, they’ve been here for ages. All of a sudden, the Sentry wants them dead?” You wonder if this is connected to what Fu Ji showed you. It must be, right? A-47 reacts to the mention of the Sentry with a flash of surprise, not expecting you to have figured out his employer that swiftly, but replies with an enigmatic chuckle. “This city’s reached a boiling point. It is no longer big enough to fit all these schizos and whatnot. Only NAGA shall prevail. Nothing will change for an ‘upstanding’ citizen like you, though.” “Here’s how this’ll go down. I’ll throw you back out there with this bug, you’ll reappear at their ‘shrine’ after a while and claim you got away from us. Then just play time for a while, maybe set up another game or something, and I’ll come to finish what I started.” He throws a small round device into your lap. “Once the deed is done, I’ll let you go. Scot-free. Sound better than the re-education camps? You’ll get your revenge too. I mean, they just left you there for me to kill, right?” A-47 lets out another laugh. “But no funny business, alright? The moment this bug dies, I’ll be hot on your tail - and I won’t be firing just paralyzers.” It does sound better, infinitely so. But it would require going undercover for the Sentry’s assassin and betraying the Anawrahta. You decide to: 1. Comply gladly. NAGA shall prevail. 2. Pretend to comply - it’s the only way out of this for the time being. 3. Decline. You refuse to do undercover business for an assassin.