I figured it out, apparently epic quests in general(?) have a bug where it'll not 'register' the whole "find person X at Y location".
Had to abort the epic quest and do it all from the start, worked like a charm and talked to the fella and finished the epic quest.

Met another really REALLY generous fellow Chux/Lolerei(?) set me up with a level 3(?) dex implant so I could equip that 80 dex spy PA and gave me a friggin' over-the-top enhanced plasma rifle so now I'm shakin' my boots while running down 'em corridors out at regants, damn that place is creepy as all hell.
Definitely has that atmosphere of 'dark experiment gone horribly wrong'!

Anyway tried to make a new character for crafting, I hear the easiest way to 'go about it' is if you just make a droner and go level up your skills to max + 20 million (for 'em LOMs) and just use LOMs to 'respec' for crafting.
But whenever I try to kill something with any of my drones it doesn't do a single point of damage even if I'm right next to my character so I don't think it's because I'm 'out of range' that's the issue here.