Forty-six floors up a skyscraper in downtown Taipei, a substantial charge of plastic explosive detonates. The heavy steel security door of a nondescript office is blasted into shards of superheated scrap metal. A team of four-legged FIDO drones trot through the door, spraying the room with automatic fire from microguns mounted on their backs. Alarms shriek, and the office suite of the Syntek Corporation descends into chaos. Security teams are already dispatched to deal with the threat, and should arrive within minutes.

You’re counting on that. Because while your dronerigger is making a mess downstairs, you’re ten floors up, getting ready to quietly cut through the wall of your real target, the server room of the Theragen Corporation. The files you’re after are worth a fortune, but their value increases the longer no one notices they’re compromised. Thus today’s little subterfuge.

You’re ${character.name}. Nasty little black operations like this one are your speciality. The rest of your team consists of Hazel, the aforementioned drone jockey, Ben, your hacker, Lucas, your burglary and demolition expert, and Becca, a giant armored brute with enough integrated firepower in her augmented body to take on an infantry platoon.

Lucas chalks an outline on the wall, and Becca fires up the cutting torch built into her right forearm. In your planning, you estimated that it will take about three minutes to cut a pathway from this maintenance hallway into the server room. Becca does it in two and a half, then carefully lifts the chunk of reinforced wall and sets it aside. You take point and head through the opening, covering the room with your silenced pistol. No one’s here. Ben follows you in, takes out his laptop, plugs it into the nearest server bank, and starts doing what he does. It takes him another five minutes to find the files you want. You planned for ten. More good news.

You and Ben retreat from the room. Becca fits the piece of wall back into place, and Lucas sets to work with a tube of quick-drying epoxy, sealing the opening again. It won’t bear a close inspection, but with any luck, no one will look at that wall for a while.

You make your way up the fire stairs, another fourteen floors, and reach the roof. Now, you need to sit tight, and wait for a highly illegal helicopter flight to pick you up. That will draw a lot of attention, but you’re hoping they think you’re escaping from the office raid downstairs, not the data breach upstairs.

Below, you can hear sirens, and occasional gunfire. Hazel and her FIDOs are still busy.

In the distance, you see your ride approaching. It’s a twin rotor Chinook, chosen mostly because Becca weighs about half a ton and takes up the space of two normal passengers. It should be here in about two minutes. It won’t land, you’ll have to climb the cable it drops while it hovers.

But that’s when your luck runs out. Two things happen. The door behind you bursts open, and dozens of armed, armored corporate security types swarm out. And just before the Chinook reaches the rooftop, it explodes in a giant fireball.

All of you except Becca take cover. The cyborg giantess strides forward, leveling her arm-mounted weapons at the guards. She lets out a roar, and opens fire.