After being restored from backups, we were called to see Ming. He asked us to investigate a murder. Vicki Gold, a supporting character in the vidshow deadtime was murdered in her apartment. The show was about vampires. The Titan police chief is fan of show and also works for firewall. He had flagged some irregularities in her death as it looked like she had been attacked by a vampire. Her apartment was on Profunda, a beehive habitat orbiting Saturn. Similar murders had occurred on Profunda recently. The show was produced on Profunda, and all staff live there. The producer was an infomorph called Sanguinious.

There were 11 other victims, all biomorphs:
Wanda Maximov
Cara Kinkade
Magato Umbari
Clint Barton
Norman Osborne
Jack Dupri
Minuete Minour
Silas Black
Magnas Strongberg
Lilly Angelsong
Matt Tyson
They all had two puncture marks on their necks and their bodies had been drained of blood.

I modified one of Bobs blueprints as he wanted some silver bullets because he believed they would kill vampires. We then took the shuttle to Profunda and headed to Vicki's apartment. There were four dead morphs lying in the apartment. In addition to Vicki the other three were her bodyguards, Jack Stone, Ann Gables and Miles Stuart.

Jack's body was lying on balcony, his left hand and wrist shattered, right eye removed, and heart ripped out through his body armour. His gun had not been fired. Ann heavy pistol in her hand which had been fired twice, her neck was broken.

Miles's arms had been torn off and were lying several metre away by the kitchen door. The submachinegun still in his hand had not been fired.

Video footage from the apartment was corrupted. I got video of the balcony taken from further away. It showed Jack and figure moving unbelievably fast, and wearing a black cape with bright red interior. Their face was black with 2 blood red eyes. The figure came from inside the apartment and Jack was killed in a few seconds. It matched the description of a vampire lord character from the show.

We spoke with Sanguinious in simulspace. An actor called cyber psycho played the vampire lord in series 1. As we returned to the transit station the lights suddenly went off and we were attacked by three figures. They were very fast but fled when Nova killed one. Nova hit another with a round coated in twitch, then she and Bob gave chase while I stayed guarding the body.

They caught up with the one that was twitched and had been immobilised. Bob went to remove their stack before they could recover but stopped when he saw something red disappear into the stack cavity. The bodies were rustermorphs that had been heavily modified with some form of nano technology. The police chief was contacted and sent people to retrieve the bodies. Bob was diagnosed with a nanite infection from the bites he suffered in the fight. The infection could not be halted and he ended up having to be resleeved.

The red on the stack was some form of nano goo. I examined the nanite infection and identified it as being a nanovirus which was exergent in origin and had been designed as a biological pathogen. It was similar to what we encountered on the Keplar station.

The two rustermorphs we apprehended were identified as Monica Lewis and Roberto. They belonged to a social group on the mesh called the vlads who meet in an invite only simulspace called the lair of the white worm. I hacked into the white worm. Nova identified it as being designed to look like the lair of the vampire lord from deadtime. There were a total of twelve members listed. Nova recognised one of the names, David Sander, as being the head of security for the show.

We entered the simulation and found we were outside the club. When we entered a bouncer asked for tickets which I quickly generated. Inside there were simulated people but no avatars. I set up to be notified when the others came then we left to visit cyber psycho. Nova said we were recruiting for a new show and got a blood sample in the guise of medical checks. It was clean. We also saw his vampire lord morph. It is not what we saw in the video from Vicki's apartment, looking cheaply made.

We then went to visit David Sander. He was not in so I hacked the system to gain access. There was not much in the apartment and he clearly lived alone. There was several props from the show including a small coffin which rattled. I went into the bathroom to open it, away from the meat puppets that seemed susceptible to this red nano virus. It was lucky I did as when I opened it a cloud of red spores erupted. They did not seem to affect me and so I modified one of my pulsers to emit a broad band energy beam to destroy the nanites.

We went to the film set to apprehend David. He told us to leave and escorted us to the door at which point we drew weapons on him. He was exceptionally strong and reacted fast. He seemed to take only minor damage from our weapons before suddenly turning into a nanoswarm and fleeing. Nova managed to open an airlock as the swarm passed and it was sucked out into space. She managed to hang on and closed the airlock when it passed.