Shadowrun, p.22
Shadowrun, page 22
“You getting a body count with the infrared scanner?” she whispered as she deployed four tiny laser replicator drones to make an undetectable hole through the security grid. She could just barely see the network of red lasers against the bright backdrop of Moon Palace. Still, the dome wasn’t as blinding as she’d expected; up close, its luminance seemed much gentler.
“Nobody outside, at least not on this side,” he replied. “The walls are too thick to detect anyone inside. Think we should try to hack into the house automation to check?”
She sighed; she could, but then she’d be useless with vertigo. “I’m still too scorched for that. You?”
“Same.”
“Slash and grab,” she said. “Let’s get in, get out, and get back. If anybody discovers us, well, it’s their damn unlucky day.”
They ran through the laser gap to the wall. Borealis hefted the cutter and fired it up; a wicked two-foot blade of red-white light emerged from the tip. He plunged it into the glowing surface of the dome, and it sank straight through, cutting the sparking LED matrix like it was cake frosting. In seconds, he’d cut a doorway, and she kicked it into the building. It landed with a crash that made the cat burglar in her cringe.
She froze at the smoking opening. The room inside was dark and silent, but through her enhanced eyes she could see it clearly enough: a richly appointed bedroom with a satin-covered bed big enough to sleep at least seven people. The padded headboard was taller than she was, and she saw recessed D-rings affixed to the posts. Clearly, Moon enjoyed having a few friends over for parties.
“Let’s do this.” She jumped over the fallen wall to the plush carpet beyond.
Suddenly, the bathroom door swung open.
Velocity’s hands were on her guns and she fired before the bald man in the purple silk bathrobe and bunny slippers could utter anything more than an indignant “What the—” He fell where he stood, a bullet in his heart and another in his brain.
“Frag me,” Borealis muttered. “That’s Morgenstern Moon!”
“Oh, crap.” She blinked, wondering what accidentally assassinating the master of the palace would do to the terms of their payment.
His brainstem hadn’t quite died yet, and his hand spasmed. Something shiny slid from his opened palm. A card. A playing card? She darted forward to pluck it off the carpet.
It was a tarot card, she realized, and it depicted three young women, one a green incarnation of the Matrix, another a mechanic in red with a dragon tattoo, and the third a blue adept of Nature with a hawk familiar. They looked like they could be sisters or lovers or maybe just all aspects of the same woman. No—lovers, definitely; there was nothing sisterly in the look that the blue nature girl was giving the red mechanic in the middle. The green woman had left the imprint of her kiss on the mechanic’s cheek, and Velocity felt as if she were staring right through her. Her expression was less seductive and more deadly. As she traced her finger over the image, she felt as though she could hear the ocean.
“What is it?” Borealis asked.
“Just a card.” Velocity tucked it into a vest pocket and reloaded her pistols with magazines of explosive rounds. “Don’t think it means anything. We better find the box in the panic room before—”
Four guards in full battle gear kicked down the hallway door. Huge, orks or trolls probably, but she couldn’t make out their race or sex under all that armor. Felicity plugged the first two in the neck where the Kevlar was weakest, and she heard the wet pop! of their bodies and skulls getting pulped inside their carapaces. The other two fell back, but laid down fire she and Borealis had to dance sideways to dodge. More trolls bellowed in the hallway: reinforcements were coming fast.
“Get the box!” she shouted. “I’ll deal with these guys.”
Borealis set to cutting open the floor behind the cover of the huge bed while she ducked and dodged and plugged the massive guards one by one. This was a dance she’d done on more jobs than she could remember; her legs moved and her eyes aimed and her hands fired seemingly all of their own accord. Time seemed to stretch like taffy, every smoking shell taking an eon to hit the fancy carpet. She was faster than any armored guard. Tonight, she would be faster than bullets, faster than death. The highly trained, loyal men and women in the hallway dropped one by one, minds literally blown.
It took her a moment to realize that Borealis was yelling, “Got it!” and sprinting for the hole in the wall. She killed the second-to-final guard and backed out, guns still blazing, and they both took off for the road.
After they’d dumped the Eurocar at the waterfront and ran a half block to the Nissan Velocity had parked as a second getaway vehicle in case things went south, she took a moment to examine the lockbox that Morgenstern Moon had paid so dearly for. It was just a battered metal storage case airbrushed with decorative stars. Sturdy, certainly, but it screamed “band gear” more than it did “corporate espionage”. Borealis had scanned it and the tarot card for bugs and trackers while she drove back to the city, and hadn’t found anything. Still, they couldn’t be 100% sure something in the case wasn’t sending somebody a signal unless they got inside it, and the terms of the deal were that they were not to open it no matter what.
“So, you think it’s bearer bonds, patent secrets, or just a mike once owned by his favorite rock star?” she asked.
Borealis shook his head, frowning. “I care more that Felician isn’t answering on any of his channels. And he or someone else appears to have shut off his accounts. All my messages are bouncing. We need to figure out what’s going on, and why.”
Velocity pursed her lips. Felician disappearing could mean he’d been targeted by whoever had fed him bad intel. Or it could mean the client was murderously pissed. Or it could mean that the gig had actually gone mostly according to Felician’s plan, except that she and Borealis were supposed to be bleeding out on Moon’s fancy carpet, and now their fixer was dodging them. Or it could mean something else had happened that had nothing to do with Moon. “Well, if he had to go to ground, I think I know where he’ll be.”
“Are we still taking the case to the drop point tomorrow?”
She nodded. “That’s still the plan. No sense in getting multiple bounties on our heads in the space of two days without good reason. But we better find Felician first. We know we’re in some serious guano here, but he might actually be able to tell us how deep it is and which sewer gull dealt it.”
Felician’s downtown office was stripped bare; apparently he’d cleared out in a hurry. The lack of bloodstains or telltale cleaner odor made Velocity reasonably certain that he hadn’t been murdered and dragged away. So she took Borealis on a tour of the bars and dives that Felician thought she didn’t know about.
They found him sitting in the back of a troll bar called Buster’s. He was at a narrow high table, morosely nursing a gin-and-tonic and pulling at his beard.
Velocity pretended to scratch her collarbone and let her hand drop inside her jacket to the grip of her lefthand pistol. “Felician. What the frag happened, chummer?”
With a start, he looked up, his face paling. “Velocity. Borealis. I—”
From the corner of her eye, she saw the stun grenade sailing toward them, and she barely had time to grab Borealis and dive into an unoccupied booth before it went off. When she popped back up, she saw a whole corporate security goon platoon swarming through the front door. Fortunately, the troll regulars didn’t much cotton to the invasion and were raising a violent ruckus, efficiently blocking the squad’s progress through the bar. At least a half-dozen fistfights broke out, and the place soon filled with the din of smashing glass and fracturing furniture.
She turned back to Felician’s table. The fixer had taken the full blast of the stun grenade and was sprawled unconscious on the floor, bleeding from his nose and ears.
“We gotta get to the safe house,” she told Borealis. “Grab Felician, I’ll cover us!”
He nodded. “You’re the boss.”
A few armored corporate sedans tried to chase them down, but Velocity managed to lose them all in a suburb with hilly, twisty streets and plenty of handy alleys and confusing cul-de-sacs. They ditched the Nissan and switched to an old Toyota she’d left parked in uptown.
An hour later, they were carrying Felician and the case up the steps to the #3 safe house, an abandoned regeneration clinic. Fading lion’s-head caduceus symbols, the logo of the bankrupt company that originally built it, decorated the gray concrete walls.
Once they were securely locked in, they put Felician in a dusty, high-backed office chair and checked his pupils and pulse.
“Looks like he’ll be okay,” Borealis said. “But who knows when he’ll regain consciousness.”
Velocity pulled a pair of chrome handcuffs out of her rucksack. Borealis cocked an eyebrow at her.
“Those professional, or recreational?” he asked.
“They’re whatever I need them to be, sweetie.” She snapped the short chain at him and then set to binding Felician’s hands behind the chair.
“I get the feeling he knows how to wriggle out of tight spots,” Borealis remarked. “Better use some rope, too.”
After they got Felician as securely bound as they could without impeding his breathing, they went upstairs to the lounge. Velocity’s socks were uncomfortably sodden with sweat and rain inside her tactical boots. She set down the metal case, took a seat on the low sofa, unbuckled her boots, and dug her strappy stiletto heels out of her rucksack. They wouldn’t be ideal if they had to leave in a hurry, but at least her feet would get some air. She’d learned the hard way to never go barefoot after she’d stepped on a razorblade caltrop hidden in the carpet in one motel bedroom.
“Can you run in those?” Borealis asked.
She gave him a quick smile. “I can run, climb, whatever I need to do. Want something to drink?”
“Sure, what’s here?”
“Um.” She got up and checked the fridge. “Looks like you can have anything you want as long as it’s bottled water or cherry-beet IcyAde.”
“I’ll take water, thanks.”
She found a couple of skull-shaped coffee mugs in the cabinet, poured their drinks, and took them back to the sofa.
“Well, this whole evening has been a royal trash fire,” she said, “but you were good back there.”
He gave her a slow, sexy grin. “High praise, indeed.”
She felt herself redden in an unfamiliar blush. “Well, I mean...I was never much for group projects, even back in school. But working with you...yeah, it was good.”
His grin widened, and his silver eyes sparkled. She had to resist the urge to just lean in and kiss him.
“I can’t say I’ve enjoyed the complications, but I have enjoyed the company.” He raised his mug in a toast. “To solid partnerships, and better gigs in the future.”
“From your lips to Fate’s ears.” She clinked her skull’s face against his, as if the porcelain figures were exchanging a quick peck.
“Fraaaaag!” Shrieking at the top of his lungs, Felician charged up the stairs, still loosely bound in the ropes. The handcuffs dangled half-open from one wrist.
Velocity pulled her gun, at first thinking that he’d gone mad and was charging at them, but he just kept running up the stairs.
“What the frag is going on?” Borealis asked.
They both got up to look down the stairs—and saw dark grey water rising fast in the stairwell. It was already higher than the front door. The salty, rotten-kelp smell of seawater slid up her nostrils. The temperature in the room was dropping, but the water looked like it was boiling...
No. Not boiling. She stumbled back, wondering if she was going to faint. The water was roiling because it was teeming with serpents. The same dark, coiling monstrosities she’d been seeing in her prophetic hallucinations.
“Frag me,” Borealis moaned, staring at the rising water in horror. “Not freakin’ snakes.”
“But...your tattoo. Don’t you like snakes?”
“Drek, no. I got this because of the fraggin’ dreams. I thought...I thought it might help.”
Her heart beat faster. “What dreams?”
“I’m standing on a cold beach, and all these serpents come out of the water...”
“Frag! I know that dream. I’ve had it myself.”
He looked startled. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
The water rose faster and faster, and more and more snakes seemed to be coming with it. Just looking into the serpent-infested waves made her sick with vertigo.
“This has to be somebody’s summoning spell,” Borealis said. “But I didn’t know Evo had shamans with the kind of juice to do something like this.”
“Felician had the right idea; let’s get some altitude,” she replied. “This can’t possibly get much higher, can it?”
A huge wave of seawater and snakes abruptly washed onto the landing, and they ran upstairs. The sea surged up behind them, faster and faster. Soon, breathless, they slammed open the door to the roof. Felician was standing there untying the last couple of Velocity’s knots.
She drew her pistols and put Felician in her sights. “Talk. What the frag is going on?”
He raised his hands in an appeasing gesture. “I don’t know, I swear! I got to my office and somebody had cleared it out, and then my accounts all got shut down—”
“Oh, hells,” Borealis said.
Velocity glanced behind her. The sea was surging up over the threshold onto the roof and snakes were flopping over with it, writhing and hissing. One coiled up and lunged at Borealis’ booted feet. He drew a throwing stiletto and neatly impaled the serpent’s head. But a dozen more, a hundred more, a thousand more were wriggling onto the roof behind it.
Velocity fired at the front edge of the wave, blasting the snakes to red mist...but she knew she didn’t have enough ammo. Not nearly enough. She wouldn’t have had enough if she’d been so loaded down with bullets she couldn’t stand up.
“We could go over the side of the building,” Borealis said as they backed away from the snakes and waves.
“I used less than five meters on Felician,” she replied. “All the rest is still in my bag downstairs.”
“We could just climb down, though?” Felician sounded hysterical; apparently he wasn’t a snake fan, either. “It wouldn’t be that hard, we’d just have to...oh, fraaag me.”
Felician was staring horrified over the edge of the building. Velocity followed his gaze. The serpent sea wasn’t just in their building; it was everywhere. Rising waves and slithering snakes as far as the eye could see down all the streets and alleys, everything grey and surreal in the early morning light.
A vertiginous nausea took her, and she wobbled backward. This was her nightmare made flesh. And there was no escape from it...except for the bullets in her pistols.
Velocity closed her eyes. No. This didn’t make sense. No shaman was powerful enough to do all this. Probably a hundred shamans couldn’t have pulled this off. She was missing something. What was really going on?
Open your eyes and really see, she told herself.
She followed her own order and turned in a slow circle, taking in the scene around her. Ignoring the snakes and the water and Felician and Borealis. Her eye caught the slightest wavering of air beside the ancient HVAC unit. It could have been a mirage of hot air, but it wasn’t quite in the right place.
Whatever it was, it didn’t belong, and Velocity fired at it. The explosive round found its mark, and she heard a woman’s gasp of pain a moment before all the snakes and the water utterly disappeared.
“What!” Borealis spun in a circle. “That was a swarm illusion! How did I not recognize that?”
Velocity’s eyes and brain were finally making sense of what she was looking at: someone sprawled dead beneath a chameleon cloak. A bare hand and a foot in a fashionable moccasin poked out from beneath the mimetic fabric, giving the illusion of random, bloodless severed limbs lying on the roof.
She strode forward and pulled the cloak off. Beneath it was an odd-looking blonde girl wearing the trendy hippie throwback stuff popular with shamans in the area.
“Either of you know her?” Velocity asked.
“Frag, that’s your client.” Felician scratched his beard. “Well. Hm… This might complicate us getting paid.”
“This is our Miss Johnson?” Velocity was gobsmacked. “But who is she?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s Astrid Moon,” Borealis replied. “Morgenstern Moon’s daughter. I’ve seen pictures of her on the news feeds.”
“His daughter?” Velocity said. “But why would she do all this? If she wanted us dead, why not call in an air strike?”
“You both have SINs, am I right?” Felician asked. “Yeah, I know, you have the forgeries, but you two also have real ones?”
Velocity and Borealis looked at each other and reluctantly nodded.
“So technically killing you could be murder,” Felician said. “Killing SINners has to be investigated. If I stood to inherit a whole lot of money from a father I didn’t like so much, and I didn’t want an investigation, tricking a couple of robbers into killing him and then tricking them into killing each other with the murder weapons would be pretty tidy, wouldn’t it? I mean, aside from the blood all over everything.”
“Wow…” Velocity stared down at the body and realized she and Borealis had both started having the dreams and hallucinations about the serpent sea after they’d been hammered by the black ice on the Evo run. Their brains had been deliberately primed for the illusion Astrid attacked them with. This double-cross had been set up months ago. “That’s pretty hard to prove.”
“Let’s open up that box and see what’s inside,” Borealis said.
They picked the locks and gingerly lifted the lid. In addition to 750,000 nuyen in tidy bank bundles, there was a copy of Morgenstern Moon’s last will and testament.
“An old-fashioned paper will?” Velocity mused. “That’s a surprise.”
