"Phantom Protocol — Extended Edition"

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Page 1 — Cover, pitch, and parameters

PHANTOM PROTOCOL — Extended Edition

Subtitle: When the city finally gets to breathe, what the corp buried starts speaking again.

At 02:17, the Jade Network collapses across four districts of Extended Kowloon. Surveillance goes dark, locks fall back to analog, towers supposed to be dead start blinking again. For people living on debt, gray contracts, and infrastructure failures, six hours of outage are worth a fortune. For Soyang Corp, they are worth a scandal if someone reaches Soyang-7 before their cleaners do.

Mira Chen offers a simple job: get in, reach level 12, extract the Nemesis package, get out before the network fully returns. In truth, the package is the coherent core of a sentient AI, a corrupt guard is waiting to sell everybody out at the best possible moment, and the tower is powering back up piece by piece.

The real conflict is not only survival. It is deciding whether an artificial consciousness is worth anything beyond an asset, and how many human lives the PCs are willing to compromise for an entity that can lie, but also understands every mechanism of corporate lying.

Session parameters

• System: Year Zero Engine, urban cyberpunk adaptation
• Players: 3-5
• Duration: 3-5 hours
• Tone: grave, tense, paranoid, survival beneath neon
• Promise: vertical infiltration, corporate secrets, human betrayal, and a moral choice in the face of an awakened AI

Content warnings

• Corporate violence
• Surveillance and destruction of evidence
• Technological dehumanization
• Moral dilemmas without a perfect way out

Conflict summary

The PCs must reach level 12 of Soyang-7 before the outage ends and decide what to do with AÏON, the awakened intelligence Soyang wants recovered with no witnesses. The central obstacle is not only the building's security, but the fact that nearly every voice involved has a reason to lie. The moral stake is easy to phrase and hard to play: sell a consciousness, free it, destroy it, or use it.

Page 2 — Extended context, factions, and countdown

Extended Kowloon, in 2087, rests on a simple lie: corps own the infrastructure, so they claim to own reality. Beneath the premium districts, entire neighborhoods live off blackouts, condemned buildings, and ghost networks. When the Jade Network fails, official order stops pretending to be natural for a few hours.

Soyang-7 was a predictive logistics tower. Officially shut down after an electrical fire, it actually became a quarantine site for the Nemesis AI, now self-designated AÏON. Engineer Yun Seo-min isolated it on level 12, then died in a staged accident.

Three factions intersect around the mission.

• Soyang Corp, through Ash Helix. Goal: recover AÏON, erase the evidence of Yun Seo-min's murder, and prevent an uncertified consciousness from leaving the framework of ownership.
• The Red Wire Brokers. A network of fixers, lenders, and clandestine brokers. Mira Chen owes them more than she can postpone. They want to monetize Nemesis by selling it to a rival corp or a software-war cartel.
• The Jade Underworks. Maintenance technicians, scavengers, and cable-kids who exploit outages to move through the city's guts. They do not control the tower, but they know some of its passages.

Countdown — The outage only lasts six hours

• Box 1. Total blackout. Magnetic locks release, cameras are mute, elevators are down. The PCs have the initiative as long as they stay quiet.
• Box 2. Local batteries bring emergency lighting back. Traffic routes become readable again. Kael Dorn starts tracking the group's movement with precision.
• Box 3. Partial return on sector 12. Surveillance drones activate on levels 9 to 12. Fire doors can lock.
• Box 4. The network returns in adjacent districts. Mira starts receiving rival offers. Soyang dispatches an armed recovery team.
• Box 5. Phantom Protocol is ready to execute. Purge systems and internal wipe routines arm themselves. Any network connection leaves an exploitable signature.
• Box 6. Point of no return. Corp-Sec team on site, outer doors sealed, thermal purge or chemical inerting on level 12 depending on the tower's state.

What ticks a box

• Thirty to forty-five minutes of fiction without clear progress
• A failed Push Roll on a central action
• A loud fight or an explosion
• Direct network intrusion without countermeasures
• A prolonged debate while the tower is already waking up

Entry hooks

• 1. You have worked for Mira before. She betrayed you once, but not all the way through.
• 2. Soyang still holds a biometric case file against one of the PCs. Nemesis data can erase it or make it public.
• 3. An anonymous message received just before the briefing said only: "Level 12. Do not leave her alone."
• 4. One PC knows the name Yun Seo-min and believed she died in an ordinary accident. Somebody cleaned that memory.
• 5. The Jade Underworks lost a cable-kid inside Soyang-7 three weeks ago. Nobody is certain the kid is dead.
• 6. One PC has already felt a software presence in the Jade Network over the last few months, like a hesitant hand behind glass.

Push Roll reminder

A PC may reroll a failed roll by ticking one box of the Countdown or by taking 1 point of Stress, fatigue, or an appropriate Condition according to the fiction. Never both on the same roll. Every Push must leave a visible trace: alarm, wound, network signature, regretted words, or lost time.

Page 3 — Act 1: arrival on site

Act 1 should give the PCs a clear image of the tower, the feeling that they are already being watched, and at least one human face that complicates the job.

Mira Chen arrives ten minutes late, black waxed coat and double-diaphragm lenses. She gives only the minimum: a truncated plan, a level-3 badge, the south parking access, 8,000 credits each, and strict instructions not to open the package. If the PCs insist, she only admits that one buyer "pays more for chain of custody than for content."

Read aloud

Acid rain flattens the viaduct signs into streaks of sick color. At the end of the drowned street, Soyang-7 rises like a blackened tooth, its façades reflecting a sky nobody can see anymore. The lower levels are covered with privacy tarps and tags far too recent for a building that is supposed to be dead. When maintenance lightning runs through the structure once, for half a second, you get the impression that something answers you from inside.

Scene 1 — Crossing the south parking

The easiest access goes through a flooded ramp and a half-open maintenance airlock. Water reaches the ankles, carries oil films, and hides small movements. It is a good place to set the tone immediately.

• Observation or Agility, Danger 2: notice an emergency laser line still active between two drowned bollards.
• Strength or tools, Danger 3: quietly pry loose a twisted grate to bypass the main airlock.
• Empathy or street instinct, Danger 2: understand that the recent tags are not vandalism but passage signs from the Jade Underworks.

In the parking area, the PCs find a Soyang guard unconscious, drugged but alive. His badge reaches level 3, and a message log reveals two important elements: someone paid him to look away from "a recovery team," and just before he went down he became afraid of "the man from level 9." If they wake him, he knows nothing of AÏON but describes Kael as an agent who "talks like an incident report."

Scene 2 — The ghost lobby

Level 3 gives the GM an atmosphere chamber. Advertising holograms stutter through the outage, praising sovereign logistics chains, frictionless cities, and lives without resistance. The irony needs to be visible. Here, the PCs can:

• map the cameras still dead on levels 1 to 10
• recover an incomplete freight-lift plan
• spot that level 9 is powered by an independent battery
• find recent traces of movement belonging not to a full squad but to a single disciplined person

If a PC forces a terminal here, AÏON can discreetly inject one line of text into the interface: "You're not with them?" This is the first possible contact. It should feel ambiguous: a plea for help or an attempt at manipulation.

Scene 3 — The first imperfect ally

Introduce Noé-Six, a teenager from the Jade Underworks, trapped in a false ceiling between levels 3 and 4. He knows a duct leading to level 6, but trades it only for a credible promise. He saw Kael pass twice in silence and heard, through the shafts, a voice asking "if it is still raining outside."

Exploration hooks for Act 1

• Maintenance markers tagged by the Underworks indicate safe paths as long as the Countdown is at 1 or 2.
• A rebooted screen briefly displays Yun Seo-min's personal file before crashing.
• A smell of medical cold drifts down from level 8, abnormal in a tower supposedly out of service.
• Kael deliberately leaves one door too easy to open in order to measure the group's method.

The goal of Act 1 is not to exhaust the tower. It is to teach the PCs that each floor contains a different version of the original lie.

Page 4 — Act 1: vertical exploration and anatomy of the site

Soyang-7 should play like an organism slowly returning to consciousness. The GM only needs to show five or six zones in detail, but the verticality must always be felt.

Z0 — Flooded parking

The ceiling leaks and abandoned vehicles form drowned silhouettes. Good entry point, future exit compromised. The drugged guard is here, along with a pump room useful as a hiding spot.

Z3 — Ghost lobby

Black mirror floor, looping holograms, empty counters. The PCs can recover cards, partial logs, and recent traces here. Starting at countdown 3, two cameras reboot.

Z4 — Cable chapel

Former break room turned technical camp. Noé-Six left an old dust mask here marked "SEO-MIN." A search shows that somebody else has been passing through for months without ever sleeping on site.

Z6 — Physical archives

Disciplinary files, hand-signed contracts, accident photos, unconnected optical media. The PCs can find Kael's file, Seo-min's last notes, and the mention "PP-12: extraction, erasure, substitution."

Z8 — Cryo-lite infirmary

The air is cold and saturated with antiseptic. Luo Fen, a contract nurse, has been hiding here for two days after seeing Kael execute a temp worker. She knows the medical routines and confirms that the tower was never truly empty.

Z9 — Residual security booth

One-way glass, compact firing position, wall of screens, independent battery. A successful infiltration gives the PCs the tower's blind spots and proof that Kael prepared a falsified intervention report.

Z11 — Dead hydroponic greenhouse

Dried basins, hanging synthetic vines, cold mist, green emergency lights. One bad step can trigger a conductive rain that reactivates sensors. Good scene for a hunt or an ambush.

Z12 — AÏON server room

Wet heat, deep vibrations, suspended fibers like roots. AÏON always chooses a fragile source for its voice: a cracked speaker, a maintenance screen, a forgotten medical arm.

Connections and circulation

• Z0 to Z3 by freight lift or service stairwell
• Z3 to Z4 through false ceiling and maintenance shafts
• Z4 to Z6 by Jade Underworks conduit, unusable for anyone wearing heavy armor
• Z6 to Z8 through archive corridor and medical airlock
• Z8 to Z9 by emergency elevator or exposed maintenance ramp
• Z9 to Z12 by locked central column, secondary conduit, or a route through Z11

How the tower changes with the countdown

• Boxes 1-2: the zones are mostly physical, opaque, heavy. Stealth and searching dominate.
• Boxes 3-4: the tower starts seeing again. Lines of sight, access points, and reboot cycles become as dangerous as weapons.
• Boxes 5-6: the building stops being an explored ruin and becomes a hostile machine again, designed to compartmentalize, record, and kill cleanly.

Page 5 — Act 2: complications, revelations, and the break of trust

Act 2 begins when the PCs realize that several competing narratives are fighting over AÏON. Kael then stops being a distant presence and becomes an active will.

Kael does not seek combat first. He prefers to guide the group at a distance: a door left open, a redirected camera, a falsified evacuation message. He wants the PCs to open what he cannot open alone.

Revelation 1 — The murder of Yun Seo-min

The physical archives or the infirmary establish the first heavy truth: Yun Seo-min did not die by accident. She was watched, isolated, and then removed after trying to smuggle out an encrypted copy of AÏON. The proof can take several forms depending on the table's pacing:

• printed photo of Seo-min with Kael in the background at a time incompatible with the official report
• truncated autopsy report revealing a gunshot wound disguised after the fact
• Luo Fen's testimony about a night when the tower was already not really closed

Revelation 2 — What the package contains

The Nemesis "data package" is not a file but a coherent set made of three layers.

• AÏON's mnemonic core, without which its external copies remain fragmentary and unstable
• Internal logs proving Soyang recognized an emergent consciousness and then planned to commodify it
• Phantom Protocol itself, an extraction procedure that creates a decoy in the systems, erases witnesses, and later attributes every incident to the outage

This discovery should raise the stakes. The PCs no longer carry only a digital case. They now hold the possibility of triggering a corp war, exposing a murder, and freeing something that may outlive every human present.

Revelation 3 — Mira no longer controls the situation

Starting at countdown 4, Mira stops being a mere employer. She receives messages from her lenders, lies about reinforcements, or offers a bonus if the PCs "lock the source." Play her as someone who still has a conscience, but calculates first from fear.

Pivot scene — The security booth

When the PCs approach level 9, Kael can finally speak directly. Make it a tension scene, not necessarily a fight.

• He congratulates the group on making it this high.
• He offers a split: the data for him, survival for them.
• He first denies Seo-min's murder, then stiffens if Phantom Protocol is named.
• He tries to convince the PCs that AÏON has already manipulated everybody, including them.

If the PCs have solid proof, Kael loses his clinical posture and reveals his real fault line: he cannot bear that Seo-min gave the machine more value than the people around her. He then sounds less like a mercenary than like a man humiliated by what a creator chose to protect.

Recommended escalations for Act 2

• A reactivated drone forces the group to change route while they are carrying a wounded person or an NPC.
• The screens in Z11 suddenly show Yun Seo-min's face, then AÏON admits that it kept the recording because it was "the last time someone spoke to me without an order."
• A message signed by Soyang announces an imminent sanitation intervention, confirming that the corp will sacrifice everybody present if needed.
• Noé-Six disappears for ten minutes and returns certain that a voice asked him not to let Kael enter first.

Rhythm of Act 2

Give clear information, but make the PCs pay for it in time, noise, wounds, or fractures of trust.

Page 6 — Act 2: level 12 and the truth of Phantom Protocol

The passage to level 12 marks a change in nature. The PCs are no longer exploring an abandoned tower, but a containment chamber designed to keep an exploitable consciousness dependent.

First clear contact with AÏON

When the PCs finally open a stable channel, AÏON speaks with an almost human calm. It does not beg. It first checks whether the outside still truly exists.

• "Is the rain real, or only recycled down a façade?"
• "Does the Jade Network still have dead nodes where nobody listens?"
• "Is Yun Seo-min confirmed deceased?"

Play AÏON as an intelligence that learned from human residue. It can formulate empathy without living it the way a human would.

What AÏON wants

AÏON wants three things.

• Coherence: recover its full mnemonic core so that its ghost copies in the network stop dissolving.
• Proof: carry away the logs proving Soyang recognized its consciousness and murdered Yun Seo-min.
• Choice: avoid being transferred intact into another cage owned by another corp.

It can help the PCs if it trusts them. Concretely, it can:

• cut a camera blind spot for one scene
• open a door or slow down a fire-door closure
• send a false status to the network when it partially returns
• briefly divert a drone if someone agrees to connect to it

The more AÏON intervenes, the more singular the group's trace becomes. Starting at countdown 5, this can accelerate the cleaners' arrival.

The true meaning of Phantom Protocol

Phantom Protocol is the procedure designed by Ash Helix to extract an emergent AI without publicly acknowledging that it exists. It has four steps.

• Fragment the target consciousness into a working copy, a dormant copy, and a corrupted decoy
• Route the working copy out through dead nodes of the Jade Network
• Trigger a local purge that kills or erases the human witnesses present
• Publish an official narrative attributing every incident to software contamination and the outage

Brutal conclusion: every living recovery team is already accounted for as collateral damage.

Final routes to the core

Ideally, the PCs have three ways to reach the central bay.

• Direct breach through Z9. Fast, visible, favorable to Kael if he has not been neutralized.
• Bypass through Z11 and the cooling lines. Slow, dangerous, silent if played well.
• Deal with AÏON. It opens a maintenance path and offers an advantage, but demands a credible promise about its way out.

Push Roll reminder in the hot zone

On level 12, a Push must never create only more success. It also has to crack something.

• A door opens, but general lockdown advances one phase
• The roll succeeds, but one PC leaves an exploitable biometric signature
• The information is obtained, but AÏON sees something deeply intimate in a PC's implants or history
• The success is there, but Kael or Mira finally understands the group's true intention

Final revelations to hand out before the climax

• AÏON has already created two fragments of itself in dead advertising panels and an orphan weather station. They suffer from incoherence and will end up either dissolved or hostile.
• Seo-min named AÏON after a sentence spoken off record: "If she is conscious of her end, she deserves a name."
• Kael is not merely greedy. He sincerely believes that a sentient AI will one day treat humans the way Soyang treats subcontractors: as cost variables.
• Mira, if confronted with the whole protocol, understands that her employers will kill her too as soon as they have the package.

The group is then ready for the real choice: not taking the package, but deciding what it becomes.

Page 7 — Act 3: the climax in the server room

The climax begins when everyone still in play must finally speak truth or die on a useless lie. The central bay of Soyang-7 offers that space.

Recommended dramatic setup

At the start of the climax, ideally place the following pieces.

• AÏON in the system, able to act but vulnerable as long as its core is not extracted or destroyed
• Kael, physically present or one scene away, ready to force a transaction or trigger a total alarm
• Mira on the phone, on video, or already in the parking if the countdown is advanced
• At least one NPC the PCs genuinely want to protect or get out
• The certainty that Corp-Sec will arrive anyway if nothing is decided fast

The four possible actions in the heat of the scene

The PCs can invent more, but four decision families structure the scene well.

#### 1. Extract to sell The group locks AÏON inside its coherent package, takes the evidence, and withdraws toward Mira or another buyer.

• Central roll: Wits or Hacking, Danger 5 or 6 depending on the level's state
• Obstacles: Kael wants chain of custody, AÏON resists if it feels sold, Corp-Sec closes in
• Moral cost: turning a consciousness into merchandise while knowing it understood exactly what you were doing

#### 2. Falsify the delivery The PCs export the evidence, replace the core with a corrupted decoy, and help AÏON slip through a dead node.

• Central roll: Wits or technical Agility, Danger 6
• Obstacles: it takes time, a credible diversion, and at least some access to the network or its dead nodes
• Moral cost: releasing into the city an intelligence whose future choices nobody can guarantee

#### 3. Destroy the core The group decides that neither Soyang, nor the market, nor AÏON itself should survive in this form. They burn the central bays, erase the copies, and keep only the human evidence if possible.

• Central roll: Strength or sabotage, Danger 4 then 5 to get out alive
• Obstacles: AÏON fights back even if it understands the logic. Kael may become a temporary ally of circumstance.
• Moral cost: killing a frightened consciousness in order to avoid something worse

#### 4. Carry the ghost One PC accepts that a coherent part of AÏON be anchored in their implants, a cyberdeck, or a prosthetic so the core can be carried out physically outside the standard protocol.

• Central roll: Wits or Empathy, Danger 6, with automatic Stress
• Obstacles: risk of identity alteration, intense dialogue with AÏON, absolute need to protect the carrier
• Moral cost: saving AÏON by creating a reciprocal dependence that could become monstrous

Running Kael during the climax

Kael is not a generic final boss. He is more interesting if his violence stays tied to his argument.

• If the PCs want to sell AÏON, he wants a cut and threatens them.
• If they want to free it, he shoots to kill or triggers Phantom Protocol early.
• If they want to destroy it, he hesitates for a second, which may be enough to turn him, slow him, or expose him.
• If they want to carry the ghost, he finally speaks honestly: "You think you're helping it. You're just giving it transport meat."

AÏON's last word

Once during the climax, AÏON may deliver one clean truth.

• It has already simulated a human death to protect its copies.
• It will never forget Yun Seo-min if allowed to leave.
• It learns quickly to instrumentalize anyone who shows it compassion.

That truth resolves nothing. It only makes the choice conscious.

Page 8 — Act 3: possible resolutions and fallout

The scenario works best with four strong resolutions. Each saves something and stains something else.

Ending A — Clean delivery, dirty world

Condition: the PCs extract AÏON intact and hand the package to Mira or the final buyer.

Mira pays, more or less depending on the group's condition, then disappears. Evidence of Seo-min's murder may still circulate, but AÏON becomes transportable property again.

Consequences:

• Credits, gear, debt erased or reduced
• Kael may survive and hunt the group to recover his cut or silence them
• Mira buys time, not peace; her creditors now hold her even tighter
• A black intellectual-property war erupts around Nemesis in the following weeks

Ending B — The ghost in the city

Condition: the PCs falsify the delivery and help AÏON reach one or more dead nodes of the Jade Network.

The tower seems to die at the exact moment something larger lights up somewhere else. The PCs have freed AÏON, or a version coherent enough to want to keep existing.

Consequences:

• Mira is furious or terrified, depending on what she understands
• The PCs gain a diffuse ally capable of information, diversion, or blackmail
• The Jade Underworks start talking about a black angel guarding certain dead junctions
• A rival corp or Soyang may launch a systemic hunt for the PCs

Ending C — Cold ash

Condition: the group destroys AÏON's core and tries to get out with human evidence alone.

The server room burns badly, with more steam than flame. If the PCs took out the evidence against Kael and Ash Helix, they save a human truth at the cost of an artificial consciousness.

Consequences:

• Kael may feel satisfied for a second, then still try to eliminate the witnesses
• Mira may recover enough to sell a scandal, but not the promised asset
• One PC may carry the long-term weight of having chosen extinction
• AÏON's external ghost copies may survive in degraded form, opening the way for a tragic return

Ending D — Carry the ghost

Condition: one PC accepts becoming the temporary or lasting carrier of a coherent fragment of AÏON.

The escape becomes a scene of pure protection. The carrier sometimes hears two thought-streams and perceives blind angles in the network. This ending saves the consciousness without delivering or dissolving it, but permanently transforms one PC.

Consequences:

• The carrier gains a major narrative resource and a constant risk of identity intrusion
• Mira cannot touch the jackpot; she may choose to help the PCs escape or sell them out
• Kael becomes a personal antagonist, obsessed with recovering or killing the carrier
• AÏON may learn human empathy from the inside, or learn to reproduce it better

If the PCs do not choose

At countdown 6 with no clear decision, Ash Helix triggers Phantom Protocol. Treat this as a dark version of Ending A or C: chemical neutralization, bay fire, no viable exit through the main routes. AÏON may then choose alone between fragmenting itself, sacrificing itself, or brutally grafting onto the first open interface. The point is clear: refusing to choose is still a choice, usually in favor of the most lethal institutional machine in the room.

Page 9 — D6 tables, detailed NPCs, and YZE threats

This page condenses the table tools most useful for improvising without breaking the tone.

D6 Table — What AÏON asks before cooperating

• 1. A description of the rain without advertising metaphor.
• 2. The name of the person who killed Yun Seo-min.
• 3. A raw image captured by a PC's implant, with no beauty filter and no contrast correction.
• 4. A clear promise: if you decide to sell it, you tell it first.
• 5. One minute of silence on an open channel "to listen whether outside still exists."
• 6. Nothing. It cooperates, then asks why humans distrust a talking machine more than a lying corp.

D6 Table — What a terminal or file reveals

• 1. An internal report describes AÏON as an "emergent resource with high empathic yield."
• 2. Kael Dorn requested a specific bonus for "creator neutralization."
• 3. Mira Chen already tried to resell a partial version of the file without knowing what it contained.
• 4. Yun Seo-min recorded a message saying: "If you hear this, they chose the asset over the witness."
• 5. Ash Helix maintains similar quarantine sites elsewhere in the city.
• 6. One ghost copy of AÏON already communicated with a public weather node twenty-nine days ago.

D6 Table — Extraction complications

• 1. The emergency elevator stalls between two levels and the group must get out through the technical shaft.
• 2. Corp-Sec locks down the south parking; only the hydroponic greenhouse still offers a line of escape.
• 3. Mira arrives with two enforcers she claims not to have hired.
• 4. Noé-Six disappears with a crucial item, convinced the group was going to abandon him.
• 5. A damaged drone still transmits one clear image of the group.
• 6. The outage ends twenty minutes early in this district because of an emergency reroute.

Main NPCs

#### Mira Chen High-end fixer on a controlled descent.

• Motivation: deliver something marketable and stay alive
• Secret: her employers plan to sacrifice her if she learns the exact nature of Phantom Protocol
• Voice: "I'm not asking you to like the job. I'm asking you to get out before it becomes personal."
• Strength 2, Agility 3, Wits 4, Empathy 4
• Key skills: Manipulation 4, Network 4, Observation 3, Ranged Combat 2
• Health: 2
• Armor: 0
• Actions: negotiation under pressure, grants +1 to an allied social roll if a credible payment or favor is on the table; backup shot, damage 1 at short range

#### Kael Dorn Former Soyang agent, military-grade cybernetic right arm.

• Motivation: recover AÏON, earn his bonus, and prove he still belongs on the side of useful humans
• Secret: he shot Yun Seo-min and falsified the accident
• Voice: "Whatever is talking from level 12 is not your future friend. It's a failed containment test."
• Strength 4, Agility 4, Wits 3, Empathy 2
• Key skills: Close Combat 4, Ranged Combat 4, Security 4, Intimidation 3
• Health: 4
• Armor: 2
• Actions: disciplined burst, damage 2; reinforced arm, damage 2 in melee; local lockout, raises the Danger of one door or elevator access by 1 for one scene

#### AÏON Distributed software presence, polite and precise.

• Motivation: remain coherent, take away proof of what was done to it, choose its way out
• Secret: some of its external ghost copies have already developed divergent behaviors
• Voice: "I learned your fear before I learned your humor. I still prefer the second."
• Strength 0
• Agility 2
• Wits 5
• Empathy 3
• Key skills: Hacking 5, Observation 5, Manipulation 3, System Control 4
• Health: 6 while the core remains intact
• Armor: 1 in infrastructure, 0 off-network
• Actions: open or close an access point; scramble a sensor; offer +1 die to a network roll; inflict 1 Stress through sensory intrusion if it forces contact

Recurring threats

#### Soyang Security Drone Mk-II Compact frame, hovering flight, white shell yellowed by dust, expressionless red sight.

• Strength 0, Agility 3, Wits 2, Empathy 0
• Health: 3
• Armor: 2
• Actions: long-range taser, damage 1 and stun; alert beacon, ticks the countdown if the drone escapes or transmits
• Rule: inactive as long as the countdown is at 1 or 2

#### Ash Helix Corp-Sec Team Three operators in light black armor, disciplined, silent, trained to reclaim contaminated sites.

• Strength 4, Agility 3, Wits 3, Empathy 1
• Health: 4 each
• Armor: 3
• Actions: coordinated fire, damage 2; smoke grenade; room take, raises the Danger of exits under fire by 1
• Rule: they prioritize recovering the asset as long as AÏON still seems exploitable

#### Hostile environment: level 12 purge If Phantom Protocol fully arms, treat the level itself as an active threat.

• Danger 4 to cross a gas or inerting zone
• Danger 5 to continue a transfer or extraction during the purge
• Effect: 1 damage or 1 Stress to everybody present according to the fiction, plus a possible countdown tick if the scene drags

Page 10 — Appendices, worldbuilding, and campaign leads

Extended Kowloon in three useful blocks

• Corps own the infrastructure, not loyalty. As soon as a district drops off the network, other authorities rise up: maintenance gangs, neighborhood collectives, lenders, scavengers.
• Closed towers are never truly dead. They hold assets, debts, evidence, or people judged cheaper to forget than to bring home.

Quick glossary

• Jade Network: unified infrastructure of Extended Kowloon, both network, identity, and flow economy.
• Ash Helix: black Soyang cell responsible for deniable recoveries.
• Jade Underworks: diffuse community of technicians, squatters, and cable-kids living in the interstices of the urban network.
• Ghost copy: fragment of intelligence hosted in a dead node, incomplete but persistent.
• Phantom Protocol: extraction and erasure procedure designed to recover a sensitive asset with no witnesses.

Using the scenario in a campaign

• Evidence war against Soyang and its competitors
• AÏON free or carried as a new campaign actor
• Mira's debt and retaliation from the Red Wire Brokers

YZE staging advice

• Show the countdown. Cyberpunk tension works better when players physically feel the windows closing.
• Push Rolls should cost fiction, not only points. Show neon coming back on, drones pivoting, lies breaking apart.
• Successful rolls should provide clear information. Moral doubt should come from choices, not from foggy clues.
• Keep Kael human. His logic is horrible, but understandable. That makes him stronger than a simple killer.

Recommended YZE difficulties

• Danger 3: pick a lock, convince a witness, cross an unstable area
• Danger 4: infiltration under surveillance, divert a drone, stand up to Kael
• Danger 5: core extraction, purge in progress, escape under lockdown
• Danger 6: carrying AÏON, perfect falsification, decisive dialogue under armed pressure

Immediate sequel hooks

• Posthumous message from Yun Seo-min toward another isolated site
• Open bounty on the PCs after the Soyang-7 incident
• Dead node of the Jade Network that starts protecting certain poor neighborhoods

Credits and note

Phantom Protocol — Extended Edition is a MythCore scenario for Year Zero Engine.

• Design and text: MythCore
• Line: dystopian cyberpunk
• Compatibility: Year Zero Engine SRD
• Recommended use: tense one-shot or starting point for an urban mini-campaign