Shadowrun, p.32
Shadowrun, page 32
“Ay, dios mio! Are you okay? What happened?”
Ichiro gave Luis the whole story, and explained Janice’s role in the events and how she had helped save his life. When Ichiro mentioned Janice, Luis said something a little unusual: “Put her on the line, niño.”
After talking with Luis for a few minutes, Janice seemed to be much happier. Luis spoke with Ichiro one last time, telling him that Janice and he needed to meet Luis as soon as possible, and that they could meet at Café Jalisco. This was one of Luis’ favorite spots, and Ichiro had met him there a number of times for doing data drops and such. The coffee there was sublime, but their real claim to fame was that they were the best Aztlán restaurant in Seattle.
The rain in Seattle seemed to never stop at this time of year. Normally this would be a consoling experience, but as Ichiro sat in Janice’s Ford Americar in front of Café Jalisco, his senses were telling him that he needed to be careful. He had the feeling that a Renraku drone had been following them the whole way to the restaurant. To be safe, he had Janice drive around for an extra half-hour. Still, he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that he was being watched. The sensation was nothing new to a corporate spy, but it still ate at him, despite knowing he was finally going to be coming in from the cold.
Sitting in the rain, knowing that their lives were in constant peril, it was all sort of romantic. Janice looked especially fetching in the indirect sunlight threatening to pierce the clouds. Ichiro had a handsome jaw, and Janice had always loved the taper of his ears. Most dwarves had them, but Ichiro’s were a little more pointed and a little shorter than most. He was starting to get a five o’clock shadow, and Janice loved that scruffy look. The two of them shared a moment as they looked at each other, heedless of the world around them.
That moment was interrupted when Luis called Ichiro on his commlink.
“Ichi, come inside. I’ve ordered you a latte and the lady a cappuccino.”
Sighing, the two of them opened their doors and went into Café Jalisco. Inside, they found Luis’s table. A barista was working behind the counter, and two patrons were sitting in a booth between Luis and the door, talking to each other.
Luis was an older gentleman, probably in his sixties, with graying hair at his temples. Despite his age, he appeared to be in fantastic shape, either the result of hard work or cybernetic miracles. One of the rewards of being good at your job at Aztechnology was that they gave their employees extra training, magical goods, or technological advantages. They wanted to keep their assets operating in the field as long as possible, and Luis Coyotl was direct evidence of this plan.
Despite his physique, Luis used a walking cane. He always explained that the limp was the result of a childhood accident, and that he had intended to get it fixed but never got around to it. The story had become something of a joke between Luis and his friends.
They sat down at the table with Luis, who rose and shook Janice’s hand profusely. “Ichi, you did not say just how beautiful this Janice is! Mujer esta muy bonita! Janice, if I may call you that, please accept my heartfelt thanks for assisting my dear niño from the clutches of Renraku security. If there is anything that I can do to reward you, please let me know and I will do it rapidamente.”
“Thank you, sir,” Janice began, “I was happy to help. Ichiro has always been a gentleman to me, and I was afraid for his safety. The security guards at Renraku are not exactly friendly to metahumans.”
“Indeed, I know exactly what you mean,” said Luis. “Renraku and the other Japanese megacorps are often a little more resistant to change than the rest of us. Aztechnology, as you may be aware, was built upon change. We were created shortly after the Awakening, with the resurgence in magical power that is native to Aztlan.”
”Actually, I didn’t know that,” Janice said. Ichiro was getting impatient waiting for the pleasantries to end. “Maybe if I get to see Aztlan as Ichi has suggested, I’ll get the chance to learn more about your culture.”
“Ah.” Luis paused. Ichiro knew that this was the part that might break Janice’s heart. “Well you know that mi niño here is not allowed to speculate about job opportunities in Aztechnology. Still, it is possible that we could give you a reward for showing your loyalty to the company. As we discussed on the commlink, you are entitled to a reward for working with my division in such a capacity.”
Janice seemed excited by the chance to maybe see more of the world, or get into one of Aztechnology’s famous rest and relaxation facilities. What did Luis promise that would make her so giddy? The hairs on the back of Ichiro’s neck stood up, his gut telling him that something was about to happen.
Luis paused for a moment, and gripped the head of his cane. He sipped his coffee for the first time in the whole meeting. He stared directly into Janice’s eyes. “There is one thing that we value above all else at Aztechnology—lealtad, loyalty. It’s embedded into the very fabric of our being. We reward those who are loyal, and we destroy those who are not.”
With a deft motion, Luis pulled on his cane handle and out came a sword, glistening in the light and reflecting the look of horror on Ichiro’s face. In the briefest of seconds, Luis’ sword flashed across the table and stabbed into Janice’s throat. “You betrayed those you had sworn loyalty to. There is no place for you in Aztechnology.”
Before Ichiro could react, he found that all of his skillsofts and cyberware had been shut out by a remote command. He had been completely crippled by Luis.
The barista behind the counter pulled out a submachine gun and leveled it at Ichiro. One of the patrons in the booth gestured, and his hand began to glow with blue light—magic, clearly. The other patron in the booth had pulled out a pistol and was aiming it at Ichiro as well.
There was nothing he could do. His old friend, his mentor, had lured him into a trap.
“Luis, what is the meaning of this?!” Ichiro raged, unable to move for fear of being obliterated in a hail of gunfire and magic.
“Well mi niño, it’s simple. You did great work while you were undercover, but you were unable to maintain that cover. So you failed. As you know, we have a second tenet at Aztechnology—éxito, success. I am very sorry to do this, but you need to—”
Luis was abruptly cut off as the magician in the café shouted and hurled a crackling lightning bolt through the front door. Luis and Ichiro both turned to follow the bolt, and saw a man in red samurai armor thrown out onto the street by the force of the strike. The two gunmen turned and opened fire on the street as bullets ripped through the glass window of the café.
Ichiro noticed four other people in samurai armor walking across the street. Two of them had Nissan Optimum assault rifles, another had a minigun of unknown manufacture, and the fourth one was standing back with a katana in hand. Luis stood and sheathed his sword, heading to cover. Ichiro stood as well, taking the opportunity to try to escape.
The Red Samurai were Renraku’s elite security force. Whatever data he had was worth them sending a squad of elite killers after him, and presumably they had been following him this whole time. For all he knew, Janice was helping them out. He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. All that mattered was getting out alive.
He flipped a table and ran to cover behind the counter with the barista and Luis. Silverware flew all over the room as the mage conjured up a telekinesis spell. Ichiro reached up into the cloud of shrapnel and snagged a flying knife before the whole thing was thrown out the front window. With a grunt, he slammed the blade into Luis’ hand and pulled the knife through, severing his thumb and bringing a chunk of flesh with it.
Luis shouted in pain and turned to Ichiro, but before he could draw his sword, a bullet hit his shoulder and sent him to the ground. Ichiro seized his chance. Grabbing Luis’ commlink and thumb, he took off for the kitchen.
The chrome double doors swung wide as he barreled through them, ducking at the last possible second. Another samurai stood in the kitchen, sweeping the area with an assault rifle. When the doors opened, the samurai reacted by putting a slug through the door from his underbarrel shotgun. Ichiro considered that Jaguar was with him, giving him the grace, agility, and downright luck needed to avoid getting turned to paste.
However, even Jaguar couldn’t compensate for his lack of skills. Ichiro was no moron—but he was not a good fighter and he knew it. He was great at avoiding combat, infiltrating places, convincing people to believe his lies, that sort of thing. But without his skillsofts, he barely knew which end of a gun a bullet escaped.
Luis had disabled his skillsofts with a remote command, so Ichiro took out Luis’ commlink and thumb, pressed one against the other, and gained access to it. There it was, a giant AR button floating in the trideo display. Ichiro jammed the button, and immediately felt all his cyberware coming back online. It was like being pumped with adrenaline and novacoke at the same time. He felt alive again.
With his skillsofts reactivated and the combat suite loaded, Ichiro knew exactly what to do. He snuck around the side of a cooking station and grabbed a pan from the counter. When the samurai came around, Ichiro swung the pan with all the force his dwarven body could muster. The pan gave a resounding and satisfying “CLANG” against the samurai helmet. He followed it up by grabbing the gun, another Nissan Optimum, and shoved the barrel against the samurai’s helmet. He looked away and squeezed the trigger. The ensuing blast deafened him, and blood went everywhere. Ichiro grabbed the Optimum from the dead samurai’s hands and continued his escape.
At the back door, he poked it open slightly with his foot. A bullet ripped through the door the moment it moved. A sniper out back would certainly prove difficult to deal with.
He went back in the kitchen, grabbed the samurai’s body, and dragged it to the back door. Hoisting it up, he pushed the corpse through the back door and followed it, using the body as a human shield. Another perk of being smaller than most people is that snipers don’t necessarily aim for your head immediately. Bullets plunged into the samurai, protecting Ichiro long enough that he could get out to wall on the other side of the alley. Once out of sight of the sniper, Ichiro ran off as fast as he could.
Ichiro Gomez was no more. According to official reports, he was killed by gang violence at Café Jalisco. As far as either Renraku or Aztechnology is concerned, the fight ended in a stalemate, and both sides think the other got Ichiro under their protection. Seattle’s Barrens got the public blame; the megacorporations each blame each other; and the world keeps spinning. Such is the way of things. Ichiro learned the value of not trusting those who seemed to offer hope, because the world is full of things that will take advantage of that naiveté. He learned that the megacorporations are too powerful to fail, and will blatantly lie to the public to protect their images. And he learned what was on the disc he’d recovered from Renraku. All the files he had stolen for his Aztechnology corporate handlers, and there was nothing he could do with it.
Well, until recently there was nothing he could do with it. The shootout had happened almost six months ago, and now the man formerly known as Ichiro Gomez stood in the middle of Club Penumbra. His skill at manipulating people had gotten him a good deal on an apartment in the Barrens, with no name associated with it. He even worked out a decent agreement with a local gang to provide protection. Basically, all the people he’d ever worked with while undercover at Renraku had provided him with the education he needed to survive on the streets of Seattle. Now it was time to cash in his payday.
He danced with a female dwarf, the two of them enjoying the rhythmic pulses and flashing lights. The augmented displays showed him even more wondrous effects, images like dragons floating through the crowd.
One of the effects was especially weird—he had this visual of a person sitting at a table, flipping over a series of cards. As soon as the last card was flipped, the person looked up, directly into Ichiro’s eyes. Ichi froze for a moment, unnerved by what he had just seen. When he blinked, the figure was gone. Maybe it was a hacker playing a prank on him, but he didn’t need something like that happening on a night like this.
“Voxel, can you confirm that the AR feeds haven’t been tampered with?” Ichiro talked into his subvocal microphone to a hacker he’d hired to help out tonight.
“Nothing here, Nami-san,” the Japanese elf replied.
He decided to chalk it up to exhaustion. Ever since he’d recovered the data on the disc, he knew what to do with it. He had a massive database of the shadow community in Seattle, he had a lot of skills that people like him would pay a lot of money for, and he needed a way to stay off both Renraku’s and Aztechnology’s radar. So he reached out to the one person he knew would be looking for the disc—Naoki Tanaka.
As she entered the club, Voxel provided a notification. Ichiro and the female dwarf both stopped dancing and headed toward the bar. Ichiro pretended to care what the dwarf said, but was mostly focused on making sure Tanaka saw him standing there.
“Mr. Gomez,” said the cold timbre of Tanaka. Ichiro told the dwarf to get lost before turning to face Tanaka head-on.
He looked at her and smiled a wide grin. “Oh I don’t go by that name anymore. You and yours helped make sure that happened. I go by Namikaze now. My friends call me Nami.” He slid a drink toward Tanaka, who caught it and looked down at it for a moment. It was as if she were afraid of the blue haze in her glass, or unsure of who she was talking with.
“‘Wind and waves’—isn’t that a bit poetic for a street thug?” Tanaka was off-balance, Namikaze’s gregariousness throwing her for a loop. She was used to dealing with him as a professional at Renraku, not as a potential recruit.
“So here’s the deal.” Namikaze looked at Tanaka directly, his eyes boring into hers, starting the staring contest that was part of their negotiation process. “I need some work, and I know you’re hiring. If I’m not mistaken, Project Falcon has been undermined by some of the folks at Aztechnology. I’m willing to help you find those folks currently doing what I used to do. I’m also willing to give you all your data—the only copy there is. In exchange, you will pay my team fair wages, offer us future work on other projects, and you will ensure that my old existence is gone for good.”
“Tell me, why I shouldn’t just kill you and take your intel right now?”
“Tanaka-sama, you wound me! I would never show up to a meeting unprepared. I have security in positions that would prevent you from getting away, and I don’t have the disc on me. If I don’t report in to the person who has the disc in the next four hours, it goes public. Can we please stop all the dancing around and just get to the point?”
Tanaka shifted from one foot to the other, while Nami waited patiently. He knew what she was going to say, and finally, she spoke the words that started the next portion of his life.
“Okay, Namikaze. You have a deal.”
THE LEAST OF THESE
(5 of Coins, 6 of Coins)
PHILIP A. LEE
Huddled behind a bin, Saint Louise took a long hit off her too-big respirator and zeroed her attention on all the colorful nighttime goings-on across Great Queen Street. The respirator band was sized for adults, but that didn’t bother her much. The whole world was sized for adults, and nothing served as a more stark reminder than the sheer size of the towering stone temple across the way, at the corner of Great Queen and Wild.
She’d be an adult one day—assuming she ever lived that long—and that was good enough for her. But until then, she’d linger huddled behind filthy bins in alleyways like this one, and fancy what being an adult was like. There were plenty of them across the away, girls and blokes frocked up all dapper-like, going in and out of the giant building whose impossible-to-miss sign out front declared: United Grand Lodge of England’s Annual Charity Ball: Help the Needy, Help the World. Next to the sign lay an ocean of tables covered in corrugated cardboard boxes. Outside was for dropping off donated clothing, but inside was some posh party where the super-rich would donate actual money.
Charity drives of any kind always seemed the best places to pick up a few extra things for her mates without getting fingered, and Freemason-hosted drives like this one might as well’ve posted a giant neon bill out front reading Happy Christmas.
Not like anyone else was gonna get her a Christmas present, so she might as well nick one for herself. But first, she had to take care of her pals. They didn’t call her Saint Louise because she put herself first. What was the point of nicking herself a nice, new designer jacket if she knew one of her mates, especially one of the younger ones, would go the night shivering in a falling-apart, drek-stained one? She’d lived on the streets a lot longer than any of them, so she knew how to survive cold London nights with only minor discomfort. Some of her mates though—all runaways, orphans, and other kids who’d fallen through the cracks—they were new to living on the streets and didn’t quite know how to fend for themselves yet. A good coat—designer label or otherwise—could easily mean the difference between surviving the night and not, especially with winter coming down the pike.
A phlegmy cough at her elbow pulled her attention from the Freemason temple. Lou’s left hand instinctively shot to her lower back and caressed the polymer grip of a Streetline Special—but she recognized the face. Her fingers relaxed.
“Cripes, Skint. Don’t fraggin’ sneak up on me like that.” Lou elbowed the young ork’s ribs hard, but inside she beamed with pride. Skint was probably about eight or nine—he didn’t even know for sure—only a few years younger than her, and already he’d learned a lot from her. He’d be going places someday. Maybe even get to where he was supposed to go.
Lou had lost that chance ages ago.
“Sorry, Saint Louise. Din’t mean ta.” Skint took a drag from his own oversized respirator to combat the smog blowing into London’s neon-energized evening, and hacked long and hard this time. The cough, brought on by all this pollution, wouldn’t get better. She’d seen it before. “So, what’s the plan, eh?”
