//File 0.1 - Helios//

It was rare that Helios-Zen had time off from his day job. His recent employment, animal consultant at Hong Kong's Ocean Park, kept them busy the last couple of weeks due to a new exhibit. The bioengineers at Wu Xing had developed a new strain of photochromatic fish, regular freshwater fish spliced with nanotech such that their bodies could illuminate in a whole spectrum of colours, and thus could be programmed to produce underwater light shows and performances.

Today though, he was out at Lantau Island, pursuing his other interest, botany. Normally, his on-and-off shadowrunning would've kept him busy at night, and in bed and asleep during daylight hours on his off days. But the last week or so was too busy for him to even take on a side job. Today he sought the comfort of hiking through the island's greenery for herbs which he could use as reagent bases.

His reverie was broken though by the beep on his commlink. It was his colleague, Jase Loi, from the aquapark. Helios-Zen wondered what it could be, after all, Jase was not the type to ever contact anyone.

"Hey Helios, a friend of mine at the forensics lab has an interesting case to examine. He asked if I knew anyone who was an expert on bugs and you came to mind. I figure you'd be interested, you've been going on and on about it for as long as I've known you. Wanna look him up? He's at the Ares' Research facility, not the one at the Knight Errant HQ downtown, the other one in Kowloon." Helios' commlink immediately received the contact card for one Hong Sai Yuk. Ares' Knight Errant currently managed the Hong Kong Police, having taken over from MCT's Petrovski Security.

"I mentioned your name when telling him I might know someone. So yeah he's expecting you to call or drop by. I would've thought they had enough experts on their payroll, but maybe they didn't know any bug hunter specialists. I didn't tell them anything else about you though, just said I might know someone is all." Jase was a marine biologist at Ocean Park; Helios had been pulling some late shifts with him on the new exhibit, listening to him babble on enthusiastically about the potential of the new nanotech fish.

"Yes, Jase Loi said to expect you. I'm looking for an expert pair of eyes to examine a case we are currently investigating. Legal confidentiality concerns mean I can't say too much over commlink or send you a simrecording of what we have. Would you have some time to come down and have a look? Or if you have an office somewhere we can arrange to meet there." Anticipating Helios' possible question, "If your expertise witness is deemed necessary, your services will be on retainer, of course."

"A couple of us are pulling all-nighters, come today if you can." The tone of his voice hinted at a sense of relief, as if he was glad to have found someone to help.

While Helios was indeed out on Lantau island, the journey via hover ferry to Kowloon would take no longer than half an hour.

For the most part of the day Helios satisfied himself with scouring the island foliage for useful herbs. As evening began to fall, Helios looked to see where his spirit familiars had disappeared off to. He often left them to their own devices when he didn't require their companionship or service.

An entire day wasted, Helios fumed. There was absolutely nothing he could find that was useful. In fact, of the dubious herbs he had collected, he was now beginning to wonder if they would have an adverse effect on his magical preparations should he choose to use them.

Arianr appeared as summoned. She was a sensible and helpful ally to Helios, coming and going as she was needed. The vagaries of the spirit world meant that sometimes the connection between the two of them might be interrupted, but that was rare; the bond between master and spirit servant was a firm one. This time she behaved no differently, staying reasonably concealed as Helios made his journey to Kowloon, to the forensics department of the Hong Kong police's Ares Research facility.

Ares Research (Hong Kong) was a huge compound with two entirely separate wings, each with its own entrance. The first, a sleek towering building, highly secured, was where the science and development took place. The other was a squat and sprawling structure, a municipal building which served as the research laboratory for Knight Errant security services, aka the HK police, Knight Errant being a subsidiary of the Ares megacorp. It was there that Helios was supposed to meet with Hong. At the guardhouse, Helios was scanned for his identity as part of the standard procedure for entering a security facility

His fake SIN revealed him to be Helios Zen. That wasn't the problem. "Mr Zen, are you carrying anything else with you on your person?"

"No. Well nothing worth mentioning. Okay I mean... I got some herbs that I gathered earlier today but other than that nothing your sensors would not have already analyzed. Do you need me to leave those here?" Not having anything to hide Helios was very nonchalant about things as he was here to render a service not gather intel. Of course he was always gather intel at some level, there was not a place he went that he did not take in as much as he could about the place in case he needed it later for some reason. This place was no different. He gauged and cataloged the security measures he could sense and any other nuance that might notice. Sometimes it was the smaller details that proved to be the handiest.

"Not at all Mr Zen. Standard procedure. Please proceed." The guard had keyed in his arrival into his comms terminal, and given him directions to Hong's office: enter via the main entrance doors, take the elevator to the eighth floor, that was the forensics department. The straightforward instructions found Helios at the front desk of the an entrance labeled Department of Forensic Science. There stood a middle-aged Asian man with graying temples and a slight hunch, wearing a lab coat. He nodded when Helios arrived. "Hong Sai Yuk. You must be Helios. Thank you for coming. Perhaps you could lend your expertise in something very curious."