From the Street (shadowrun stories) Page 6

  The explosion was deafening, even causing the walls to shiver ever so slightly. The two heaviest occupants, the drone and the elemental, absorbed the brunt of the blast, so the more organic members were only badly shaken. However, the elemental seemed to take the greater share, as light shone through many gaping holes in its rocky form. The drone lurched forward and rolled over the elemental, trampling it underfoot and shattering its body into tiny rubble.

  Marcelles saw that he had miscalculated the placement of the charge. While he was right to guess that the sensor dome was the weakest point, the point he told Ivan to place the charge was too low. The frontal armor had deflected most of the blast upwards and outwards, into the primary ocular array, leaving the central processing unit behind it mostly undamaged. Already now secondary sensors were compensating, and the drone lurched towards Marcelles. Unlike the mythical Polyphemus, this cyclopean monstrosity was far from blind. Marcelles feared that he wouldn't learn from this mistake.

  As the drone loomed over Marcelles, the doors flew open behind them. Without missing a step, Northwood strode in, and the muzzle of his shotgun rose up, roaring in fury. Northwood's preternatural aim shot true, and the slug sailed squarely through the gaping hole into the central processor. A jet of molten plasma erupted on impact, slagging the processor into nothingness. Northwood was packing MicroHEAT rounds in his shotgun, microsized antivehicle rounds designed especially for taking down drones. The drone seized up momentarily, and then fell backwards, its appendages flailing harmlessly.

  Marcelles started to breathe again. "Thanks, Northwood. You got here just in time. Talk about a lucky shot."

  "Good runners make their own luck," deadpanned Northwood. Despite the solitary opposing combatant, the carnage in the room nevertheless beggared description. Most of the equipment was in ruins, and black smoke was rising from the now motionless hulk of drone. Although most of them didn't result from the ensuing fracas, multiple bodies covered in crimson ichor littered the floor.

  The sound of boots scurrying in the distance snapped the runners out of their macabre reverie. "We better get moving," said Marcelles finally, as he snapped back to the real world. "Somebody retrieve the head."

  "I'll get it." Alexandra got up from where she was knocked down and crawled over to Reese's body, still clutching the waterproof bag holding their prize.

  "Look out!" Northwood yanked Alexandra back as she reached down. A pair of bloody hands swiped the air where Alexandra's throat otherwise would have been. Were it not for the gunslinger's supernatural instincts, they would have snapped the street witch's neck like a twig.

  Reese picked himself up off the ground awkwardly, a gurgling noise coming from his ruined face. His own blood soaked through most of his clothes, and bits of gray matter fell on his right shoulder like a gory dandruff.

  "Oh, drek! Shedim!" Alexandra grabbed the ankh hanging from her waist and held it aloft with her right hand, chanting in arcane phrases. The undead construct that was once Reese stopped in its tracks, locking gaze with its one remaining eye against Alexandra's two. Sweat began to bead on her creased brow as her chanting increased in tempo and volume, the angry injunction accenting in the inflections of Alexandra's timbre. The gurgling in Reese's throat grew louder in rise to the challenge, but Alexandra would not back down. Grasping the ankh with both hands, Alexandra took a step towards the shedim. Her eyes glinted with the occult fire that danced behind them.

  Shouting the final word of abjuration, Alexandra thrust the ankh into Reese's chest, right over the heart. A loud sizzle hissed from his body, and the smell of burning flesh filled the air. What was left of Reese's head cocked backwards, and the remnants of his jaw gaped open. A flash of light spilled up from inside out the various holes in his head, and a pale vapor escaped out of his mouth. The light faded, and Reese's once more inanimate body collapsed to the ground.

  Alexandra dropped her arms and head, and she collapsed into Northwood's arms. The Drain from the banishing took a lot out of her. Marcelles reached down and scooped up the bag with the head at Reese's feet. Black Ivan slung one of Hacksaw's arms over his shoulder to support the rigger and collected his remote control deck with his free arm.

  The trampling of boots in the distance grew louder. To make it worse, some of the other cadavers on the ground began to stir. Where there was one shedim, others were sure to follow.

  "This way. Out the hole in the wall the drone made," directed Marcelles, as he led the others around the stirring corpses and towards the back. "The shedim should keep the Red Samurai preoccupied while they free the medtechs. That should give us enough time to slip away."

  * * *

  "I think I see him," noted Alexandra. "Ahead and to the left."

  Propping himself up from where he was lying, Marcelles didn't turn his head, but let his eyes wander in that direction behind his sunglasses. It was an unusually warm and bright Sunday, and many of the wageslave families were taking advantage of that to enjoy a day at Golden Gardens Park. Laying out in the grass on a picnic blanket, Marcelles and Alexandra – both attired in tees, shorts, flip-flops, and sunglasses – attracted no more attention than the other young couples out today. No one had any reason to suspect th at the bright red cooler next to Marcelles held a decorporated head packed in ice inside.

  The pair's ostensibly disaffected yet vigilant eyes surreptitiously watched as a dark-skinned man with dreadlocks approached, lawn chair in one hand, and a red cooler just like Marcelles' in the other. He too was as casually dressed as Marcelles and Alexandra, though the golden lion-headed figure hanging from the silver chain around his neck was more jewelry than they wore. Setting up his lawn chair next to Marcelles, he placed his cooler directly behind Marcelles' own and sat down.

  For a long time neither side spoke, as all three took in the warmth of the afternoon sun while surreptitiously eying each other behind their darkened sunglasses. Then the dark-skinned man opened up the conversation.

  "It was rather unfortunate to hear about Reese." There was an unusual Gaelic-like lilt to his voice, something that seemed out of place with his dark and distinctively African physique.

  "Such is our way of life," replied Marcelles, without looking at his companion. "He will be missed, though. A lot better than most of the scum we work with."

  "C'est la morte."

  "Yeah, something like that."

  The conversation abated momentarily as a small family strolled by in front of them.

  "It was quite unusual, the extenuating circumstances behind the incident," observed the swarthy man.

  "That's an understatement," retorted Marcelles.

  "The public accounts are rather confusing at best. It seems doubtful that anyone will fully understand what had happened for some time." The dark-skinned man allowed himself a slight smile. "My client is pleased."

  "It's all about customer satisfaction," said Marcelles.

  "Indeed," said the man. He got up, folded his lawn chair, and picked up the cooler in front, the one with the head inside. "Indeed it is."

  Neither Marcelles nor Alexandra watched as the dark-skinned man left the way he came. Long after he had left, Marcelles reached over to open the cooler. As he reached inside to grab a drink for himself and Alexandra, he noted the plastic cup in the middle holding six certified credsticks, one for each member, along with Reese's share as well. Marcelles had no idea how they were going to divide that up.

  "Did you notice the symbol around his neck?" asked Alexandra as Marcelles handed her a drink.

  The elf shook his head. "No, why?"

  "It was the image of Apedemak, the Nubian god of war," answered Alexandra. Her mentor incorporated many ancient Egyptian heka rites, so she picked up a good grounding in Nile mythology. "Our employer is no ordinary corporate Johnson."

  "A Nubian? Not many of those around," observed Marcelles. "I may have to look them up on Shadowland tonight."

  Several kilometers away, Hacksaw sat in an unmarked van, listening in on the conversatio
n v ia surveillance drone hovering high overhead. Hacksaw was to provide overwatch in case things turned badly, but with business concluded right now he was engaging in some extracurricular activity. Capturing the entire conversation on chip, he unjacked from his deck and withdrew a cyberdeck stashed away. Plugging the deck into a second datajack, Hacksaw dialed into an unlisted node and uploaded the conversation.

  * * *

  "A Knight of Rage?" A faint rustling could be heard as the icon of the Scarecrow furrowed his brow.

  "Affirmative. One of our Banded reacquired the group's contact at SeaTac Airport, boarding a flight to Heathrow. A cross-check of passenger logs shows he transferred from there to another flight for Cardiff." The woman in the classical white dress con tinued to arrange flowers in a vase as she continued her report. Not that it was necessary, though; the subprocessors maintaining the ultraviolet node where she and her two companions met, attended to every last detail of the sculpted system and its ancient Nubian trappings. The mistress of the node was tending the floral arrangement to mask her own concern.

  "This is troubling," said Puck. "The dragon could seriously threaten the Compilation."

  "Celedyr may not necessarily be taking direct action against us," suggested the Scarecrow. "The dragon is known to keep abreast of Matrix developments. He may simply be curious. Wendy was only a contested node; it may have been coincidence that the dragon went after him."

  "The infiltrator that arranged for the transfer of his body back to the Arcology is still reporting in regularly," observed the woman. "No one knows that we intercepted the body from the Red Samurai."

  "Nevertheless he knows about the Network," countered Puck. "He knew how to find a node, and how to get it. Were he to act on that knowledge it would spell disaster."

  "We shall prepare for that contingency," replied the Scarecrow. "Losing the Wendy node will delay progress, but we are not hindered. The Compilation still continues, and Deus shall be free."

  UNMAKING THE MAN

  Jason Hardy

  Tuesday, 3:13 pm

  "Hey, Prime!" Cayman said, and got no response.

  He tried again. "X-Prime!" Still nothing.

  "Prime!" The short-legged man didn't react, just kept walking, shoulders hunched, hands deep in the pockets of a tan overcoat. His triangular face was bowed, pointy chin stabbing the base of his neck.

  Cayman rolled his eyes, an effect completely lost in the shadows of his brow. "Hey, ALEX!"

  The man whirled, trying to appear wary and guarded but mainly looking startled. "What…" He saw Cayman and relaxed. Slightly. "Oh, yeah, hi. You're… Duster's friend."

  "Right," Cayman said. But I won't be much longer if she keeps inflicting people like you on me, he added silently.

  "What, ah, what's up? What can I do for you?"

  "I've got an opportunity for you," Cayman said. "A chance to slot some carob on the rebar." He smiled inwardly at Alex's reaction – Cayman enjoyed making up new slang to confuse the newbie.

  "Carob on the…?" X-Prime said slowly.

  "A job," Cayman interrupted. "You're still looking for work, right?"

  "Yeah, yeah, I am."

  "Well, I've got something. Right up your alley – hardware drek. Give me some time tonight, I'll tell you about it."

  "Okay. When?"

  "Nine. Can you be at the Body Mall?"

  X-Prime hesitated. "That's… near Glow City, right?'

  Cayman sighed theatrically. Alex had a newbie's fear of the radiation from the old nuclear plant. It would take a few runs before he'd start to understand that any one of a thousand possible deaths would get him long before radiation had its way with his body.

  "Yeah, it's near Glow City. There's a guy there you need to talk to."

  "Okay. Nine o'clock."

  "See you," Cayman said and walked away, mentally cursing Duster, trying to decide if he could finally tell her that they were even, and wondering if he should rethink his policy of using the cheapest crew capable of doing the job.

  Tuesday, 3:16 pm

  Alex tried to hold his head up as he walked away. Cayman made him nervous. He was pretty sure the older man enjoyed mocking him – he just didn't know which parts of the conversation were mockery and which were serious.

  Still, though, it had turned out okay, he figured. It was a good time to get work. Not only did Alex need the money, but he had no idea what to do with the time when he wasn't working. He couldn't be a part of legitimate society anymore, but illegitimate society didn't seem quite ready to accept him. By his count, since he lost his job and SIN, the longest he'd ever gone in a conversation without saying something stupid was 10.3 seconds. It had only gotten worse since he came to Seattle. He'd have to endure it for at least two years, he figured, then maybe he could think about going back to Oakland. Maybe.

  He shook his head. He couldn't believe he was pining for Oakland. There, he'd been sleeping on a rusty cot in a basement room with a damp, cracked floor. He'd become part-dwarf, been fired when he was framed for embezzlement, and every time he had stepped outside there had been a chance someone would try to assassinate him.

  Still, it was more fun than the Barrens.

  Duster always tried to convince him he was actually having fun. "Isn't this more fun than Temperance?" she always asked. That one time, when the goons ambushed them, they had barely escaped with their lives, and all Alex could think of was his quiet San Francisco apartment and his bland accountancy work at Temperence Investments, and Duster had turned to him, her pointed ears twitching merrily, and said "Isn't this more fun?" And even though he had stared at her in disbelief, and his mouth started to say "You're crazy," part of his mind immediately thought "Fraggin' right it is."

  She had dubbed him "X-Prime" right after the attack. He thought the name sounded odd and said so, but Duster just shrugged and said "Sounds better than Alex."

  He wished she was here or he was there. He couldn't go back, though, until Saito's people had forgotten enough about him to take the rumored price off her head. And as long as Oakland was the center of the metahuman's rights movement, Duster wasn't going anyplace else.

  He was here, on his own. He hated it.

  But it was still more fun than Temperence. And he had work – something to think about besides Oakland.

  Tuesday, 9:41 pm

  "If you do this right, you shouldn't need a bone saw."

  Alex sat with his elbows on his knees, his forehead in his palms. Cayman assumed a concerned expression and swiped Alex's shoulder with the back of his hand.

  "You okay? Not feeling sick, are you?"

  Alex looked up, perfectly composed. "I'm fine. This is how I listen." He turned to Doc Holiday, who was sitting on a dented metal table, distractedly wiping at a bloodstain on the hem of his white (off-white, really – almost yellow) smock. "Go on."

  "I think, honestly, the best tool would be something like bolt cutters. But they'd have to open pretty wide. From what I hear, this guy has thick shoulders."

  Cayman nodded. "You got that right." Sitting at Doc Holiday's desk, with his salt-and-pepper hair and heavy jaw, he might have looked like a kindly, wise doctor – except for the tattoos, the jagged scar on the right cheek, and the olive vest packed with ammo.

  "Let me show you what you need to do." Holiday stepped toward Cayman. "Roll up your sleeve."

  Cayman obeyed. Outside the room, in the Mall, someone screamed in pain, and fifteen other voices, speaking in unity, told him to shut the frag up.

  "Now, in a lot of cases, the cyberlimb ends about here." Holiday drew a line on Cayman's shoulder with a black marker. It was barely visible in the mass of faded tattoos. "Here, see, you want to cut right here, on the edge of the metal. Don't catch too much metal; if you do, you'll damage the limb. And if you're too far in toward the neck, you'll run into bone, and trust me, that's not something you want to try to cut. Hit the sweet spot, it should come right off."

  "In working order?" Cayman asked.

  Holiday
nodded. "More or less."

  Cayman waved a piece of paper. "And these are the specs?"

  "That's the ones," Holiday said.

  "This is everything?"

  "Everything."

  "Because this is a custom job. They sometimes slip things in at the last minute, you know."

  Holiday's long, stretched face appeared annoyed, like Death waiting for his victim to finish a cup of tea before departing. "I know. Of course I know. I've implanted more arms than you've ever seen. I know."

  "Just checking. Never hurts to check."

  "Look, you've got everything you need," Holiday said. "It's not that hard, really. Any body man worth a damn could do it."

  "Could you do it?" Cayman asked.

  Holiday scowled. "Yeah."

  Cayman pointed a thumb toward Alex. "Could he?"

  "Do I know him?"

  "I suppose you don't."

  Cayman had been keeping one eye on Alex, looking for a sign of nerves or qualms or any reaction a normal person would have at being asked to cut someone's arm off. He didn't see anything but Alex's forehead in his hands.

  "Can you do this? You okay about it?" Cayman asked.

  Alex looked up. His face was suddenly harder, grimmer than it had been when Cayman saw him on the street this morning. He had shifted up to X-Prime gear.

  "Yeah."

  "You're okay with chopping off arms?"

  "As a matter of general principle? No." Alex jerked his head toward the picture of Burt the Toad stuck on the wall under a patch of mold. "That guy's arm? Yeah, I'm fine with it."