Shadowrun hell on water, p.5
Shadowrun: Hell on Water, page 5
“You are the people with the packages,” the woman says, and it is not a question.
“There’s lots of people with packages,” Cayman says, not because he is the leader or the spokesman, but because he figures if he speaks first he can prevent some of the others from saying things that might be more inflammatory than the nondescript words he offers.
“Yes,” the woman says, “but you are the people with the packages we are interested in.”
“These packages are going south,” Cayman said, “whether you’re interested in them or not. Sorry.”
“Do you know what is in the packages?” the woman asks.
Cayman hears Agbele Oku draw in breath behind him, so he speaks extra quickly. “No,” he says. “That’s not our job.”
“We have reason to believe the objects you are carrying concern us,” the woman says.
“Okay,” Cayman says. “And who are you?”
“We are some of the many Daughters of Yemaja,” the woman says.
“Oh, good,” Cayman says. He has not been in Lagos long, but he has already heard at least five stories about the Daughters, Awakened women who dedicate their lives to seeking justice for women, which, given the way Lagos tends to treat its women, is a very demanding job indeed, and he braces himself for a lecture and hopefully nothing more.
“We have reasons to believe that you are involved in business that concerns us,” the woman says.
“What?” Cayman says.
“We have reasons to believe that your are involved in business that concerns us,” the woman repeats.
“Okay, just checking to see if you were actually going to say it the same way twice. What do you want from us?”
Then there is a pause, and Cayman looks, and he thinks he can see hesitation in the woman’s face, but when she talks she retains her confidence and authority, so he wonders if he imagined it.
“We want to discuss what you are doing and where you are going.”
“Oh,” Cayman says, then he shrugs and walks forward.
“I think we should talk to them!” Agbele Oku says behind him, and Cayman rolls his eyes and thinks of course Agbele Oku has sympathies with these people, but it does not matter much to him, and he continues walking.
“You think we can just be ignored?” the woman says as he draws near.
“Yes,” Cayman says.
“Do you know who we are?” the woman says as Cayman passes her.
“Vaguely,” he says, and then, against his better judgment, he pauses, though he does not turn around. “Look, I’m sure what you’re doing is important and all, and God knows the women around here need someone to stick up for them, but if you want to make a play, you better make it, because you’re not going to intimidate us into doing anything.”
He can feel the force of Agbele Oku’s glare on his neck, but it does not concern him much. There are always times during a job when someone on the team is mad at someone else, but Cayman knows of one sure way to make everything okay—finish the job with everyone alive and everyone paid. If he worries about those two things, the rest of life tends to take care of itself.
“We are not here to force you to do anything,” the woman says. “We had hoped you would be reasonable, and would help us interpret some troubling information we have heard. We keep hearing about things that are happening across the city, and many of these things keep coming back to you and your team.”
“Sorry, this isn’t how the business works,” Cayman says. “You don’t get to learn our secrets just because you’re curious. We’ve got allegiances to worry about, and none of them are to you.”
“What about to justice? Are any of you allied to that?”
Cayman finally turns and sees the furrowed brow and taut neck muscles of the woman. Behind her, Agbele Oku is opening her mouth to speak, so Cayman speaks faster.
“We’re always happy to be allied to justice whenever justice comes up with a good cash offer,” he says.
But that does not keep Agbele Oku from talking. “You don’t speak for all of us!” There is a tension, a strain in her features that Cayman does not understand, but he is not about to ask her about it.
“Right now, I do,” Cayman says. “We don’t have time to waste. Let’s go.”
The woman has her hands on her hips, balled into fists. “We do not use violence easily, but we will use it. You’re not going to get by us with a more satisfactory answer than that.”
Halim has his arms folded, and if the Daughters know anything about him, they will know that from that position there are at least three weapons he can draw within 1.2 seconds. He does not speak, but his eyes and his posture say everything that he needs to say, and what it says is that unlike them, he does use violence easily, and his patience has been frayed to the point of being on the edge of using it.
Then, suddenly, the mouse is at Cayman’s side. He never sees her coming, he blames her size, but there she is, and her nose is even twitching.
“Maybe we all want the same thing,” Groovetooth says. “Maybe we all want to know more about what’s going on. Maybe we could find out together, open the boxes or something.”
“There’s another person you don’t speak for,” Agbele Oku says, and Cayman finds the smugness in her voice very irritating.
“We’re not opening any boxes!” Cayman says, and he keeps waiting to hear the sound of an unsheathing sword that means Halim’s patience has run out. “We are moving on, and I think the Daughters are too smart to cause a problem about it.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Halim says.
There are many frantic looks going this way and that, both groups are intermingled, their battle lines are not clearly drawn, so each person has to look quickly back and forth to see what the others are doing, and to make sure the seemingly inevitable fight has not started yet.
“Let me talk to them alone,” Agbele Oku says abruptly.
Cayman rolls his eyes. “You? You talk to them, you’ll be on their side in five minutes.”
“I’m a professional,” Agbele Oku says. “Let me talk to them.”
Cayman does not really want to do that, but he also does not want to get into another fight. It’s already been a long day. He waves his hand and hopes she can take care of things quickly.
Chapter Seven
Three and three-quarters hours
before the bridge
Did I mention that the whole team has had a long day? They did not just wake up after a full night’s sleep and decide to go walk the bridge. No, by the time they arrived at the bridge they had covered much of the city, running here and there, in three separate directions at least, so that their walk on the bridge is not done with the fresh steps of energy, but with the heavy paces of people who are strong and fit, but still need to rest on occasion after all they have been through.
Let us see what Akuchi and Agbele Oku were doing earlier in the day. You remember how Akuchi rode his cycle, abi? You remember how he can navigate through the streets? He had Agbele Oku with him most of the day, and she kept her face impassive as he drove, because when you are a shadowrunner, you learn very early on that if you look impressed at something that means you likely have not ever seen such a thing before, and to admit that kind of inexperience is to give an advantage to those around you. So you keep your face blank and bland, and if you see someone drive a cycle through an alley barely a meter and a half wide and then put that cycle into a wheelie and then hop over perilously deep holes in the road and then bring the front wheel down at just the right time to squish a large devil rat that seemed determined to get in the way, you just nod and say “Not bad” in a tone so quiet that you are not sure if the driver ahead of you heard it.
There was a point in the day where Akuchi and Agbele Oku came out of an alley into a dusty street and kicked up a cloud behind them. They were lucky to find a street there, but ahead of them their luck ran out. A thick vine, thicker in parts than Akuchi and Agbele Oku and the cycle put together, had gone and taken the street away from metahumanity and reclaimed it for nature, or at least for itself, for it is very possible that of the things the vine represented, “nature,” in its purest sense, is not one of them. It had spread many tendrils here and there, it had gone up and down through the asphalt and concrete, it had shattered the road and made it rubble. The buildings on either side of the road were mostly gone, they were ivy-covered, they had tree limbs poking through them here and there. Agbele Oku swore she could see the plants growing before her eyes, reaching out and expanding, but of course she could not, for they grow fast but they do not grow that fast. But no matter how fast or slow they were, they had blocked the road, and Akuchi had to find another way to go.
And so they go through another alley, this one wider than the first, and made even wider by the fact that the buildings that used to shape it have mostly gone away. The alley seemed harmless, there were no creatures in sight, but this was Alimosho, and if you are in Alimosho and you do not see creatures there, it is because they are just out of your sight doing something horrible, so you should not feel the least amount of comfort.
The breeze switched and blew from the road ahead of them, and Agbele Oku got a hint of what that nearby horrible thing was. It was a thick odor, it had its own substance, it was a mist that pushed into her head and made everything in her clench. It was cloying, rotten, and dead.
If it was not for the noise of the cycle, she would have heard the noises ahead of her before she saw what made them, but as it was she had to wait until the motorcycle emerged from the alley to see the large, shiny, black bugs swarming on top of a pulpy, red-and-brown mound, and maybe she could not hear them over the noise of the cycle but she at least imagined she heard them, the clacking of their legs on the ground, of their shells against each other, as they squirmed and pushed and maneuvered to find the tastiest spot on whatever dead thing was beneath them.
Agbele Oku’s first instinct would be to run, run in the opposite direction, but Akuchi knew the roaches had what they wanted, and so were not likely to be distracted by anything else. He gave them a wide berth, of course, so they did not think he was threatening their food, but he drove by them and the bugs seemed not to notice, and Agbele Oku made a point to look away from them because she did not want a detailed image of them and their meal burned into her skull.
She wanted to be out of here. She tried to imagine leaving Alimosho, but she could not picture it, because she could not quite imagine how she was going to conclude her business here. She had not had nearly long enough to think about it, and she certainly had not had enough time to keep from feeling like what she was going to do was a betrayal.
There were plants all over, the air here was moister than the rest of the city, a little cleaner thanks to the plants scouring it, and normally Agbele Oku would find this refreshing, except she could almost hear the sound of the plants breathing, as if their thick stems and rough husks hid moving lungs and beating hearts. She wished she did not have to deal with the sort of people who test others by asking them to come to places like Alimosho, but this was her lot in life. She held tight to Akuchi, and hoped they would find their target soon.
No sooner did she think this than the cycle turned a corner and there were a group of people in the street. They were walking to one side, moving slowly, and Agbele Oku saw the shamble of shedim in their walk, but then the cycle came closer and she saw she was mistaken. It was a group of women, all in brown and black bodysuits, each one wearing a different shade that matched their skin. Their uniforms, for that was what they appear to be, bore no markings. The slow movements of the group resolved themselves into a formation, and they stood behind one of their number, a woman whose skin and clothing were the color of the inside of the mouth of a desert cave at sunset.
Akuchi stopped the cycle a respectful distance from the women and climbed off slow enough to ensure that Agbele Oku was off first. This had all been discussed, this was her job to do, and he was not going to get in the way of her doing it.
She moved smoothly, unhurried, confidently. She had done this before, she told herself. They would not show her anything new, they would not tell her anything she was not ready to hear. She was tempted to make some remark about the surroundings, about their reasons for meeting in this piece of hell, but she didn’t. She acted like she did business in Alimosho all the time.
“I have something for you,” she said as she walked up, almost swaggering. “Something you’ll be interested in.”
“That is what we hear,” said the woman in front. Her cheekbones could be used to polish diamonds.
Agbele Oku reached into a pocket and pulled it out, spreading it with both hands. It was a beaded leather hair string—pretty, but not especially fancy. “I don’t have to tell you what this is,” she says, “assuming any of you are good enough to use it.”
She gave the women a minute to look at the string. “You see it,” Agbele Oku told them. “You see how much juju is in here. Whatever is in that box you have, surely it is not worth as much as this.”
Some of the women are nodding, and Agbele Oku saw the looks they were giving to each other. She had them. She began to think, as any trader would, that perhaps she should have asked for more.
But there was a woman in the back, a woman whose black hair had thinned to sparse wires, whose eyes widened and nostrils flared. She said a word.
“Atinuke!” she said. “Atinuke!”
The other women turned to her. The woman with thin hair pointed to the hair string and said it again. “Atinuke! That is Atinuke’s!”
The lead woman turned her back entirely on Agbele Oku, and of course Agbele Oku was dismayed to find out that she obviously was not considered to be much of a threat.
“Are you sure?” the lead woman said.
“Can’t you see? Her aura is still on it! It was created by her hand! That is Atinuke’s hair string!”
Some of the other women murmured in agreement, and despite her best efforts, Agbele Oku felt the confident set of her jaw stiffening and becoming artificial.
The lead woman turned back to Agbele Oku. When she spoke, her voice was low, almost a monotone.
“After the SURGE, when parts of the city were burning and metahuman females were attacked on sight, Atinuke saved fourteen women in three days, helping them get to safety. She has brought women out of brothels, out of piracy, out of conditions that would make a young girl like you want to slit her throat rather than live one moment more. Atinuke was a true Daughter of Yemaja, and that is her hair string. How did you get it?”
And Agbele Oku was ready. There was still a knot in her stomach, a knot that had been tied there the moment she understood where this string had come from, but she at least had not been surprised.
“Yes,” she said, “it is Atinuke’s. I bring it to you with great sorrow, but I am also honored to return it to you, Atinuke’s sisters, who meant so much to her.”
The lead woman was not swayed from her purpose. “How did you get it?”
“It was given to me by an associate. He got it from some area boys. That is all I know.”
“Street thugs did not just happen upon Atinuke’s fetish! Your associate did not come across it by accident! How did Atinuke lose it, and why do you now have it?”
“I have it because I wanted to get it back to you,” Agbele Oku said. “I don’t know what happened to Atinuke. I wish I did. Atinuke was good to me, once. I can’t say I really knew her, but she helped me, like she helped so many others.” Agbele Oku heard the sentimentality in her voice and did not like it, but she also knew that it was what the Daughters were ready to hear. “Once I discovered that I might be able to recover it for you, I knew I had to do it. My associate was able to make a trade for it, and I was able to bring it back to you.”
“So you can make your own trade!” said the older woman with the wiry hair.
“No,” Agbele Oku said, even though she had been trying to do just that a moment before. “All I want to do is return it to you. It belonged to a Daughter, so it should be returned to you.” She stretched out her arms. “Here. Please.”
The lead woman quickly grabbed it. “You want a reward,” she said. “I can see it.”
“I want nothing other than to help the Daughters.”
The lead woman started to sneer, but others behind her had softer faces, and they were talking quietly, and one of them tapped the lead woman on the shoulder and whispered something in her ear. The lead woman nodded, then spoke.
“We do not know what is in the package you want,” she said. “We have been asked, by people we respect, not to open it. We have also been told to give it to someone who does not seem to want it.”
Agbele Oku tried not to let excitement drift into her face as the lead woman continued speaking. “You may not be the person who is supposed to receive it, as you clearly want it. But you are willing to act like you don’t want it, and perhaps to walk away without it. That may be enough.”
She quickly jerked her head, and one of the women behind her made a box materialize seemingly from nowhere. It was a black box, sealed in some way Agbele Oku could not see, about the size of a devil rat’s head. She handed it to Agbele Oku, and Agbele Oku wasted no time in grabbing it, perhaps grabbing it too quickly. But it did not matter. They did not move to take it back while she profusely thanked all of them while backing away, moving toward the cycle so she could leave and take this box to where it belonged and be done with it.
She got on the cycle and then turned to wave to the Daughters behind her, but they were gone.
It was not much later than this when a woman with a long, flowing robe and a headdress with a horizontal piece of carved wood almost as broad as her shoulders was admitted to the office of Sir. There were goose bumps on her skin, and she did not appear at all accustomed to being in air conditioning. She had a mild face that made people who did not know her ask her for advice. Sir, though, was immune to that effect.
The woman, whose name was Baindu, spoke without being asked to, which was unusual in Sir’s experience.
