Prologue: Into The Circuits, I Rush & I Run

"They think I'm a man out of control, but I've never had so much control."

-Aiden Pearce, The Vigilante

I'll admit, I'm a curious man. What does this mean? Well, when I had the chance to take a look at some of Blume's new hardware, I took it. That's what that means.

T-Bone had given me some info, talking about this project Blume was thinking about before he dropped off the grid, apparently they had finished it. There weren't any files talking about what it was, and there was nothing I could get from ctOS either.

Which, of course, left one option; get into Blume, and find out what this thing was up close and personal. Not the best plan, I admit. I do prefer behind the scenes work, so much simpler, and less getting shot at. Of course, we don't always get what we want. Especially not me.

Clara, she tried to convince me not to go, said I had more important things to do, getting Damien to give Nicky back. She was right, sure, but Blume was one of the major things in the city making my life hard, which of course, meant it was harder to get Nicky back. So, get in, find out about their nifty new toys, and maybe take it for myself, simple plan.

Except, where Blume is involved, nothing is simple. Their overindulgence in high tech security made my job a bit easier, sure. Let me plan routes, all that fun stuff, but it also made their guards tougher to get around. Heavier armor, bigger guns, you see.

Didn't mean all of them were smart, though. I got pretty far in either by sneaking behind some guys, or giving them some good whacks on the back of the head with my telescopic baton. Fun stuff, seeing a guy in pounds of body armor drop cold to this little metal stick.

But I digress, like I said, I was pretty far into one of Blume's dev labs for their fancy stuff. Too far in to get back out easily, that much was for sure. Which left only one option, keep going. I'd hacked a few PCs, some PDAs, stuff like that. Gotten a bit of info on this so called 'Project Widow' odd name, I know.

From what I could gather, Blume was sticking together random new tech they'de found, basically throwing stuff at a wall, and hoping it stuck. The plan was to make a teleporter of some kind, revolutionize fast response for crimes, things like that.

But, like I said, they didn't have any real clue what they were doing right now. That being said, they had apparently gotten it 'operational,' whatever that entails, and were gonna try sending someone to a secure lab some two miles away from this one, short range tests due to safety protocol.

Well, needless to say, I wasn't really a supporter for Blume, and most certainly didn't want them taking over more of Chicago. Which meant I had to stop this project in it's tracks. Easy enough, right? Smash the thing, get out. But no, can't ever be like that.

Blume being themselves, they'd spread out all the data for the project across about eight isolated PCs around the facility, only the project leads would have access to any one of them. Good plan, I'll give credit where it's due.

Didn't mean I liked it though; not only did I have to find these computers, I then had to hack through them, find the data, wipe it, not alert anyway and then find my way to the actual device, sabotage it, and wipe all the testing and operational data.

Times like these I really wish I had some kinda special forces working for me.

"... this will bring about a new age of public safety, with Blume being able to safely, and quickly, dispatch enforcers to any location in the city, crime will be at an alltime low!" This declaration was followed by cheers and applause. Heh, look at Blume, already making a sales pitch before they even got their toy running.

It had taken forever, but I finally reached the final PC, locked inside a secure room, of course. I went through the usual song and dance to unlock secured doors, parsing through code and whatnot, looking for exploits and backdoors, took about thirty seconds before I heard a soft click and pushed open the door.

There we go, final one. A damn nice looking desktop hooked in to all sorts of fancy regulators, they didn't want a blackout or any kind of heat to fuck it up, sat right there on a table infront of me. Things were never easy though. Trying to get into the thing resulted in a password lock screen. From there, I went on to crack it open like an egg.

Higher grade encryption and defense protocols and securities compared to most of the stuff around here, but with plenty of time to work and a quick mind I got in after four minutes work sifting through data.

Next came finding the actual files and getting rid of them, as well as adding a copy to my personal collection. Is that someone's airsoft rifle conversion tutorial? Why was this even here? Whatever, deleted. Next up, lots of celebrity porn, well then. Also deleted. Ah, looks like someone thought this was a good place to put their bank info, stupid bastard. Saved and deleted.

Finally after sifting through even more junk I found what I was looking for, a file named 'Widow_Project' also encrypted yet again. Not bothering to decrypt it now I just made a copy, saved it to my phone, and deleted the original. After that, pretty much nothing was left on the computer, after I erased all evidence of my being anything, nothing remained.

Now to make my way over to where they decided to keep the prototype teleporter, thankfully, I had a handy-dandy little map I downloaded off one of their servers to guide me. Took about thirty minutes, most of that time was spent sneaking around annoying guard patrols.

Now, getting into that room might be a bit… troublesome. You see, not only was there this big secure door, there were also four heavily armed and armoured guards standing out front. And obviously, I couldn't unlock the door 'till they were dealt with.

Usually I would chuck a noisemaker down a hall, wait for some mook to go after it, and knock him out cold. That's the bad thing about trained soldiers, when their friends start disappearing, they notice. Which meant we had to do things the hard way.

First step, find a way to take them all out quietly. Good news, there were plenty of server boxes and their armor wasn't so good for electricity, that would take out one. Next step was to jam the comms, don't want them calling in help, introduce two other's to Mr. Shotty. Finally, shove a grenade in the last guy's face, push him away, and get behind something.

Of course, it didn't go as planned. Their comms had gotten an update, I couldn't scramble them; so while I had gotten rid of the obstacles in my path, the entire armed force of the lab was now gunning for me, and I didn't have a clean way out anymore.

This wasn't how it was supposed to go, not at all. I was supposed to save Nicky, get Jacks his mom back, shut down Blume, maybe. Make Lena's killers pay. But now? Now I was stuck up against an experimental teleporter, desperately hacking away at the console to wipe all the data off it.

I had just finished when Blume agents started coming down the halls. I had sent Nicky a message telling her to remember me by the time they were reaching the door. And I was bashing the teleporter in with my baton by the time they stormed in the room and aimed their guns at me.

After that? I don't remember much after that. Searing pain, a bullet wound, and a damn bright flash of electricity. Then, then I must've been beaten in the head, because my world went black.