Shadowrun, p.19
Shadowrun, page 19
Jumping away, Deveaux dropped the box in panic. The device fell out and bounced once on the deck. Then, it activated, projecting a single image. It showed…Halo?
I looked at the image of a Halo in battle, cloak billowing and sword ablaze in one hand with dark dagger in the other, boot on a burned troll skull. Almost like what had just happened. I wasn’t sure, but I also thought I saw some kind of writing in the image, but my vision was slightly swimming from blood loss. What was this thing?
“NO, NO! STAY BACK!!!” Deveaux cried out.
I looked back, just as Halo, dagger sheathed and sword already back in hand, picked up Deveaux by his neck. She leaned in and whispered something I couldn’t hear into his ear before ramming her blade into his stomach. I heard, saw, and smelled cooking flesh as she roasted him, his only reply a choking gurgle.
Dropping him like the inert meat he now was, her eyes widened when she saw the projecting image. Calmly, she walked to it and looked down, realization crossing her face. The fury was gone, but none of the determination. The color in her eyes flickered like flame, but there was almost a sadness to them.
“You have seen this?” she asked me flatly.
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you know what this is, what it can do, what it means?”
“No. I was simply tasked with obtaining it.”
“And you did not try and shoot me like the others. Why?”
“It would not have mattered. Even if I completed my task, it would not have changed anything for me. I would still be under another’s thumb. Maybe…maybe I hoped you would give me that freedom, in death.”
Then, something in her face changed again. She seemed conflicted. “That is…unfortunate. But because of what you have seen, I cannot let you live. My very freedom is at stake. And…I did promise you a quick death. But know I will take no pleasure from it. I am sorry.”
She then reached down to pick the emitter up, but her hand passed through it. Stunned, she tried again, and again. I took a look on the astral and watched as her essence passed right through the emitter several times.
I then sat there, leg bleeding and watched as Halo, the legendary assassin, fall to her knees and let out the most heartbreaking cry of despair I had ever heard. Had she been metahuman, I would have sworn she was sobbing uncontrollably.
Her body heaved several more times before she looked at me and finally uttered in a low voice, “I can never be free now. Eventually, someone will claim this, and succeed in enslaving me again.”
In that moment, I understood everything. The writing I saw in the image could have been her true name. She was not just a free spirit, she was djinn, and this device, in a cruel twist of fate, had become her lamp. She was bound to it forever, and all she could do was wait for someone to claim it, and her. Even if she killed me and sent this ship, everyone still alive, and the device to the sea’s floor, it would still be a matter of time before the next person stumbled across it.
And this would start again. We both knew this.
I looked over at the small projector and thought of my own lamp. Crawling over, I took the device and deactivated it. Halo looked over to me, suspicion (and a faint hint of flame) in her now green eyes.
“I, too, know what it is like to be bound. I live every day under the yoke of another. But I will not try and trade the freedom of another for my own. Instead, I offer this: I will accept responsibility for this, and vow to keep it safe from those who would enslave you, in exchange for my life and those still left on this ship. If not, I humbly ask that you grant me that quick death now, rather than bleed out later.”
Halo still looked suspicious. “The pirates are still a threat.”
“Leave them to me. Do we have a bargain?”
“—unfortunately, the device was a fake. That’s what started the fight. Deveaux noticed it immediately, and even I could tell it had no magical properties once Malik presented it. At that point I saw no reason to even attempt a purchase and tried to leave. That’s when Deveaux became enraged and ordered his people to kill Malik. The ensuing firefight led to the destruction of the Jann Almaik. I commandeered a lifeboat and made my way back to shore.”
“Bloody, backstabbing frog,” Murdock said, shaking his head. “He always was a poor loser.”
I sat there, this time in a physical chair, in the real office, my face as impassive as I could make it, looking directly into Murdock’s eyes. Again, he sat behind his desk, fingers steepled as his gaze again dug into my soul. Despite my projected calm, it felt as if my heart had stopped while I awaited his response.
“Well then, it’s fortunate that you escaped. Terrible shame about your escorts; good help is very hard to find. But, they did their jobs by keeping you safe, so there’s that,” he said, eyes still locked with mine. He didn’t even have the decency to use Azim and Broadside’s names. But I couldn’t worry about that now.
And then, he looked up at the ceiling.
My heart started again; he believes me!
“And despite current…frictions between us. I am glad you survived. There is much work we have yet to do,” he said with a slightly patronizing tone. Somehow, I didn’t quite believe him.
I politely nodded. “Yes, Father, I understand completely. Is there anything else? I would like to rest now.”
Smugly, he nodded. “I don’t have anything else for you at the moment, so yes. Oh, and pleasant dreams,” he said before turning in his chair to again gaze out the window.
Standing, I curtsied, despite my healing leg. Once out of the office and in the elevator, I remembered Halo’s words:
“You move me, more than anyone in the past millennium. Very well, the pact is sealed. Through this selfless act, you’ve shown your true self. You will be this object’s guardian. And as long as you keep your oath to me and keep my freedom, I will help you find yours. Not as a servant or slave, but as an ally. This is my oath to you.”
I now had an asset—no, an ally—that my father knew nothing about. I also had decided that at some point my dear father needed to pay for everything he had done to me and others.
As the elevator descended I caressed my thigh, the wound cauterized and in the shape of a curved sword within a halo; a symbol of my bargain and promise for the future. I simply had to wait for the right time and opportunity.
Smiling fully, I enjoyed the weight of my upgraded pendant.
IF YOU CAN’T BEAT ’EM, RUN
(THE ECLIPSE)
JOSH VOGT
The giggling got louder, and Adric wondered how close it needed to come before they died.
“Drek,” Vilyna said, scurrying along beside him. “You’re hearing that, too, right? I can’t be brain-baked already.”
Adric glanced down at the gnome’s avatar. It looked much like her meatbod, except for the jagged mane of green glass in place of her hot pink hair. She trailed shards behind her as the two of them dashed through the impossibly infinite amusement park that could be their grave.
She had to double-time it as he loped along, his taller, leaner ork build giving him the advantage in outpacing their hunter. He’d skinned his avatar to resemble his real body, too, except with chrome-plated skin and a suit of armor made of blue lightning.
They wove between the steel pylons of a towering roller coaster, the track looping overhead. The cars that zoomed past every few seconds lacked passengers, their silent passage reinforcing the unnatural nature of the park. Jangly music clashed and twanged all around, giving their race for freedom an even more frantic feel.
“I hear it,” he said between huffs. He glanced at the glowing orange disk floating over his palm, the icon of the deck he’d used to hack into this corp host. The data it projected made him snarl. “Can’t ID the source, but not sure how much I can trust my sensors.”
More giggling off to his right. Adric cut left, through a row that went between a gothic haunted house and a shooting gallery. Gaudy posters and wooden signs leered down at the two deckers, clown-painted faces, ghouls, and ghosts watching them sprint past.
They rounded a cotton candy stand, where delicate strands of code formed tempting sugary fluffs, begging to be consumed—and no doubt laced with all sorts of viruses and worms. He paused, searching for any path out of this virtual reality trap.
“Still can’t jack out?” he asked once he caught his breath.
Vilyna’s face scrunched up as she ran fingers over her own deck icon. “Pinging the meat every millisecond, but I can’t even sense the grid. We might as well be in deep space.” More shards drizzled from her hair in a glassy waterfall.
Adric scowled. His scanners returned the same results. As soon as the countermeasures’ VR filter had overridden his own, he’d lost connection with his jackpoint. This host realm had link-locked them down tight. Not even his emergency dump protocol worked, no matter how many times he triggered it. Dumpshock be damned. If they didn’t get out before the ice caught up with them, they’d both be fried meat.
“I told you not to touch anything,” he said. “Don’t try to access anything. Watch. Learn. You’d get your chance to work a bag-n-tag after you mastered the basics.”
She stamped a foot. “You said this’d be a low-sec corp cache. An easy datasteal so I could see how it’s done. I was just trying to show some initiative.”
Adric rumbled. “No. You were showing how to be a static-sucking hotdogger. You had to try and snitch a sparkly little file like a drekkin’ deckhead.”
“Frag it, I said I’m sorry.” Her scowl made her look like a goblin for a moment. “We’ve got ice hot on our heels, and you’re putting me through a guilt grinder?”
Childish laughter echoed through the park, making them both wince. Off in the distance, a Ferris wheel the size of a moon sluggishly rotated. In the harsh blue sky, an oversized sun blazed like the unforgiving eye of a digital deity.
Adric scratched a nail on a tusk as he tried to carve a solution out of his skull.
He’d offered the young gnome basic deck training as a favor owed to her father, a partner who’d saved Adric’s life years back—and then lost his own a few months back in a run gone wrong. The girl showed potential, but had been overeager to prove just how wiz she was. He’d figured a drek run in VR mode would let Vilyna get a good look at things grid-side while he could pick off a soft target for a little extra nuyen. Should’ve been a cakewalk. Figured he’d hose it with a newbie in tow.
“What do we do?” Vilyna asked. She tapped furiously at her deck, a near-bricked relic he’d provided her. It lacked the sophisticated programs his own held, but let her navigate the Matrix and study his technique. It also marked her in his awareness in case she strayed too far on the grid, and even hid a couple subroutines he’d planted before handing it over—preprogrammed glitches he’d intended to use to test her reactions to unexpected complications.
“We keep moving,” he said. “A decker’s always got to keep moving. Stop for more than a few seconds, and you can lose any edge you got.”
He activated a sniffer program, and a twitch of his fingers flicked motes of light off into the distance. The tracer nodes soared away until they winked out of sight.
The sniffer pinged him a heartbeat later, marking a mental direction that’d lead them toward a merry-go-round the size of a small sprawl. Beyond this, the amusement park landscape grew hazy, which suggested a potential overlay boundary, a defined area they could either break down or slip through.
He jerked his chin that way. “C’mon. Got a lead.”
They set off again. Adric tried to focus on navigating the maze of carnival-style stalls while also keeping an eye out for any countermeasures. The overlay didn’t seem actively hostile, aside from locking them down, but that didn’t mean they were in the clear. Not by a long shot.
Whoever had programmed the amusement park VR did an impressive job, he had to admit. He had to look hard to see the stutters and visual fluxes where the textures didn’t quite line up right. The only other giveaway was the coloration, as every hue went either a few shades too dark or too bright to be natural, giving the whole landscape a neon edge he kept trying to blink away. Breezes wafted by, stinking of grease and body odor, while ripples of heat rose from the baking earth and concrete all around.
Normally, he preferred the full immersion of VR for his deckjockey work. Kept him from getting distracted by the mundane, his mind blazing through the Matrix as he slipped in and out of corp modules like a flyboy through fog, not leaving so much as a data ripple in his wake. This time, though, a few more sensory barriers would’ve been welcome.
Motion ahead made him slow. The merry-go-round had started up, and now spun in a steady orbit. Mirrored paneling flashed in the sunlight, flinging glare into his eyes. All manner of creatures stood skewered by their poles, saddled backs offering rides. Manticores, dragons, unicorns, centaurs, and more all stood in frozen tableau, eyes blank as they circled in an endless parade.
Drawing closer, Adric realized the creatures didn’t look like wooden carvings, holographic projections, or sculptures of any sort. They appeared lifelike, down to the wiring of various cybernetic implants or the hairs on their heads—all of them pinned in place like macabre hunting trophies.
“What the frag?” Vilyna asked, looking both fascinated and disturbed. “What kind of pervo built this place?”
Adric chuffed a laugh. “Don’t let it psych you out. You’ll see weirder and worse every time you jack into a social node.” Assuming they escaped here, of course.
As more figures spun into view, he spotted someone riding a carousel mount that looked like a robotic spider. The avatar appeared as a human girl with short blonde hair, wearing a baggy green shirt that hung down to her knees like a dress. A pair of red-lensed goggles covered her eyes, but were translucent enough for him to follow her gaze as she fixed on the deckers.
She waved as if delighted to see them, and her loud giggle made him cringe. It was the same noise that’d been haunting them ever since Vilyna triggered the trap.
The girl hopped off the spider and skipped over their way. Adric keyed up several offensive/defensive programs to launch at a thought. Lightning crackled over his hands, bolts charged with various protocols. He stepped over to interpose himself between Vilyna and the newcomer. With her father’s death, the debt he’d owed the old gnome had transferred to her, and he’d be damned if anything would happen to her on his watch.
“Hello,” the girl said. “I’m Nova. Who are you?” She blinked with exaggerated innocence. “I don’t think you two belong here. Do you want to play?”
Adric tilted his head Vilyna’s way and murmured, “Keep her talking.”
With a twitch of a hand, he activated a perception filter over his eyes and started scanning the girl.
“Play?” Vilyna asked with forced levity. “Sure. I love games. What do you like to play? Who are you, anyways?”
Adric winced as his sensors shifted past the outer layer of the girl’s avatar. She blazed with so much concentrated data, it felt like he was peering into the center of the sun. Peeking for just a couple milliseconds made his eyes start to sizzle, and he backed off before he fried his visual cortex. Even with the rapid retreat, his skull throbbed from the biofeedback.
“I love playing Hide and Seek,” Nova was saying. Her gaze shifted to Adric and she pouted. “But Eye Spy isn’t a very fun game. It’s not allowed here.”
Adric returned her look, confounded. Every countermeasure he’d run across during his years of decking just went straight into combat or defense mode, dealing with the threat his intrusion posed as efficiently—and often as brutally—as possible. This conversational approach was new.
“Hoi, Nova,” he said. “So you’re a gamester, huh? Hide and Seek sounds fun. How about you go hide, and we’ll count to a trillion and then come find you.”
The girl stuck a foot out and waggled it about. “You’re my first visitors. Can we be friends? I think I’d enjoy learning what it’s like to have friends.” She perked up. “How about a game of tag?”
Her avatar popped like a soap bubble, and her giggle floated through the air from every direction at once. Before Adric could move, she reappeared at his side and slapped his arm. Fire flared out from the touch.
“You’re it,” Nova cried before vanishing again.
Reeling and hollering, Adric slapped at the flames engulfing his forearm. He triggered full defensive mode; sparkling motes swarmed out of his suit and smothered the blaze before it went any further. Char marks streaked his avatar, turning portions of his lightning armor into glassy blotches, protective coding now brittle and compromised.
Vilyna looked in every direction, spooked. “What’s going on? Who is she? What is she?”
Adric fought to calm his breathing. “Drek,” he said. “Not just some ice. Black ice. Full-on AI. Could be a rogue, which would explain why it’s prowling around low-sec nodes. It doesn’t belong here any more than we do.”
The giggle came again. Nova rose from the earth like a ghost from its grave. Her twiggy arms crossed in a sulking pose.
“You’re not playing right,” she said. “You’re supposed to chase me.”
He nudged Vilyna. “You ready?”
Vilyna whispered back, “For what?”
“To slot and run.”
“Been waiting on you, chummer. You’re the one who said we should always keep moving.”
Nova’s expression darkened. “Rude. Not nice to keep secrets.” She fixed on Vilyna. “Not nice to try to steal secrets, either. You’ve been very bad.”
“Um…” Vilyna scooted back further to use Adric as a shield. “Sorry?”
Nova grinned again, mood switching from dark to light like someone flipped a switch. “I forgive you. So long as you make the game fun.”
The rough hairs on the back of Adric’s neck went needle-straight. Slot it. When in doubt, get the frag out.
