Shadowrun, p.10
Shadowrun, page 10
That would be too easy an end for someone who’d taken so much away from me.
No, this was my show.
His name is James Thompson.
What a boring name for a monster. I don’t want to think about him having a name like a normal person, because monsters don’t deserve the things normal people have. In my mind, he’s Bluebird.
I tell Baba I need to take a few days off from deliveries, and call in a favor from a decker I worked with once. I don’t tell him why. I send him the photos and the details I know, and I wait.
It takes him three days. It was harder than he’d expected, he tells me. I feel like I’m going to throw up again as the story emerges, and I see why.
Bluebird is James F. Thompson, Jr., age forty-two. Son of James F. Thompson Sr., executive vice president of a large division at Ares Macrotechnology, member of several smaller companies’ boards of directors, and wealthy, old-money investor. No criminal record, but the father has reputed connections with various shadowy organizations.
One of my first questions had been to wonder why Bluebird never came after me. Why hadn’t he chased me as I ran headlong into the night? Why hadn’t he tracked me down and snatched me back to his chamber of horrors, or just killed me? My mind had blocked the horror out so effectively that night that he could have walked right up to me and I wouldn’t have recognized him. So why?
My friend gives me the answer: because he’s been out of the country for the last fifteen years, spotted at various times in parts of Europe, Japan, and Russia, living the life of a playboy under an assumed name. “I can’t find the details about why he left,” the decker tells me, “but it looks like his father arranged it, and it was very hush-hush.”
“So why’d he come back?” I ask.
“I don’t know. His father just died a couple months ago, though. Maybe that’s it.”
My jaw tightens. That has to be it. A scenario snaps into place: A favored son gets into bad trouble. Maybe he tells Dad the details, but probably not. He has to run, so Dad arranges a quick trip out of the country. You can do that when you’re wealthy and connected—you don’t have to face the consequences the rest of us live with every day. So a monster gets away with his horrific crimes, and Daddy looks the other way as long as Golden Boy stays safely out of sight, away from any chance to reflect badly on the family name.
And now Daddy’s dead.
My fists clench so hard my short nails dig furrows into my palms.
I wonder what happened to the place where I’d been held. To all the other children who were captives there. I can’t even look that up, because I don’t remember where it was. The memories are back, but that night’s desperate flight didn’t leave room for noting landmarks.
My whole body chills as I consider a possibility too horrible to imagine.
I remember the way he looked at me, back at the warehouse with his two friends. The way they leered, but he didn’t.
Of course he didn’t. Because I’m too old for him.
And now he’s back.
What if he’s started again?
“I need to find him,” I tell my friend.
I don’t tell him what I need to do with him when I do.
It’s laughably easy to find Bluebird, since he’s not hiding.
Of course he isn’t—he thinks he has nothing to worry about. He’s got Daddy’s money now, which makes it even easier to keep his secrets.
He has no idea how much he does have to worry about.
I track him for three days. My decker chummer gets me his home address, the names of the clubs he frequents, the route he takes when he goes running in the morning. Before the three days are over, I’ve got a complete picture of his life from the time he gets up in the morning to the time he returns home sometime before dawn.
A complete picture, including the abandoned warehouse in the Barrens where he goes in the pre-dawn hours of almost every night. He owns it, my friend tells me, though a series of dummy companies nearly impossible to trace unless you’re looking for them.
I watch him from far away, too far for the ghouls and other shadowy figures who come and go there to see me. It turns out Bluebird doesn’t snatch the children himself, which is probably why he’s never been caught. He’s even more of a coward than I thought. His little network grabs his prey, he plays with them until he’s tired of them, and then the organleggers and the ghouls get what’s left over. I crouch on the rooftop of a building three blocks away, shaking and sick with the terror of the child I was fifteen years ago, and the rage of what I am now.
My hands close around the hilt of my katana—a gift from Baba on my twenty-first birthday—and the grip of my customized Predator—a gift to myself last year. I glance down at the new bioluminescent tattoos I had done two days ago: crossed swords on my right hand, and the scales of justice on my left.
Maybe they’ll haunt Bluebird as much as his haunted me.
But not for nearly as long.
I grab him off the street the next night. Every part of the ambush is planned. My decker friend takes control of the street cameras long enough for me to hit him with a tranq dart and toss him in the back of the van I stole an hour earlier.
I pause to stare at him a moment before driving off, and it strikes me just how ordinary he looks. As ordinary as his name. The face of a monster should be more interesting.
It will be soon.
When he awakens, my face is the first thing he sees.
We’re in another warehouse, this one belonging to Baba. He’s upside-down, suspended by a rope tied around his ankles and around a crossbar high above. His hands are tied behind his back. He’s naked except for his underwear. I don’t ever want to look at that part of him again.
I crouch in front of him, watching the progression of his expressions as he returns to awareness. His eyes widen in the dim light as his gaze settles on me. “What the—?” he begins. His body lurches as he tries to wrench free of his bonds. He won’t. I tie good knots.
“Who the frag are you?” he demands. His voice is breathy and shrieky and full of fear. “What’s going on?” He looks wildly around, and I smile as it hits him: he’s alone with me. “Help!” he screams. “Somebody help me!”
“Scream again,” I say, “and I’ll cut your tongue out.”
He stops screaming. His face is red and blotchy from all the blood rushing to it. Red as the lights of the other warehouse, all those years ago. “Who are you? What do you want?” He blinks then, focusing closer on me. “Wait—you’re the chica from the other night. The one who brought the stuff for Artie.”
I remain silent. I can tell my scrutiny is unnerving him.
“What do you want?” he yells again. “That wasn’t my scene! If there’s a problem, you gotta take it up with Artie. You’re making a big mistake messing with me! You know who I am?”
He was trying to sound confident, but it’s hard to sound confident when you’re upside-down and nearly bare-ass naked. His body is pale, free of marks or tattoos except for the bluebird.
I smile. I know, from previous attempts at relationships, that my smile can be an unsettling thing. “You don’t get it, Mr. Thompson. The important question here isn’t who you are. It’s who I am.”
He stops thrashing. “Who are you, then? Whatever the problem is, we can work this out—”
I reach next to me and pull something from a bag. “Are you hungry, Mr. Thompson? I’ve got Taco Temple here. It’s swill, but I like it.” I take a big bite from a greasy taco and toss it back in the bag, then wipe my hand on my pants and pick up my Predator. “You know, you look different without your mask. You were so scary in that thing. You made me wet myself once, when I was a little girl. I was so embarrassed.”
I rise in a smooth motion and move closer to him. “Do you remember, Mr. Thompson? I didn’t, for a long time. But now I do.”
I put the tip of my katana at his crotch.
His eyes bulge, but he doesn’t thrash. He knows better. “Who…are you?” he asks again.
“I’m the little bird who got away.”
My comm buzzes. I listen for a moment, then my smile widens. “That was my friend. Knight Errant raided your house of horrors while we’ve been chatting. All the little birds are free now.”
He screams, and it isn’t all fear. I can tell. Part of it is indignation, the last desperate cry of somebody who never expects to face the consequences of his actions.
The little girl I used to be stands back and watches, drinking it in.
The woman I’ve become waits for him to finish, because then I’m going to show him just how much those consequences can come back to haunt you.
It’s all over in an hour. I don’t have the taste to make it drag out for days—I guess I’m not a monster like he is after all. When I’m done, I call someone else—someone I don’t often like to talk to, but in this case, she’s just what I need. After all, it was good enough for Bluebird’s tiny victims. It ought to be good enough for him.
She assures me that no trace of him will be found.
That’s not quite true, though. As I crouch once again on the rooftop of a nearby building until I get word that the disposal is complete, I pull a small box from my pocket and study what I’ve put inside.
The bluebird tattoo doesn’t frighten me anymore. It’s just a patch of skin with some ink and dried blood on it—the monster it used to belong to can’t hurt me anymore. He can’t hurt anybody.
Now, it’s just a reminder that there are other monsters out there.
My hand tightens on my katana. The scales of justice on the back of my hand glow in the night.
And I smile.
NIGHT OF SWORDS
(King of Blades, Knight of Blades, Knight of Batons)
RUSSELL ZIMMERMAN
The world spun in a blur, and Mongoose was the axis on which it did so. Neon displays turned into streaks of light, the chrome of enemy Road Dawgz’ big Harleys turned into silver spikes against the darkness, and the augmented-reality faux-neon trails left by her brothers and sisters in the Quick Slivers, well, they looked like they always did; light hanging impossibly still in the air, a streak of speed with a blade and tires at the far end.
As her Yamaha Kaburaya’s tires slid on rain-slick concrete, braking and turning impossibly hard, Mongoose smiled inside her combat helmet, behind the big bug-eyes reflecting her bike’s AR dashboard. She smiled because, for that splinter of a second, bike sliding sidelong to a stop, swinging the world around as she leaned into the turn, as her cybered-up center of balance spun with tiny gyros writ large, keeping everything impossibly upright, she was remembering something.
She remembered being there about a year earlier, when Luisa down the hall had given birth. Old Lady Martinez had done most of the work, with all the cleanest towels in the building sorted out, a couple wet rags, all that stuff. Mongoose hadn’t been in the room, no—she wasn’t that kind of girl, that wasn’t her kind of blood—but she’d been pacing, over by the elevator, listening in, worried for her childhood friend. Worried about Luisa, about the baby, about not being close enough to hear anything.
The baby had fixed that. Mongoose didn’t need no chromed-up ears, no. That baby cried and cried when it came out, ringing all through the halls.
It screamed, that little one, just telling the whole world it was alive.
Engines, Mongoose thought in that shining split-second while time stood still, Engines do that, too.
Bullets hung in the air, whizzing just past her head, one lazily punched her shoulder, reflected off her blue-black combat armor to tumble, indignantly, into the shadows and neon past her.
Time sped back up. Her Kaburaya’s speed-tweaked engine screamed, telling the whole world it was alive.
The sparks kept flying, a burly Road Dawgz’ chainsaw—fraggin’ chainsaw—ate up the street behind him as he raced right at her, dragging the silly thing so it scraped and skittered. Mongoose ignored him as she fought to get her Kaburaya facing the right direction; away from the chainsaw, toward the gun.
The chattering autogun was mounted on the handlebars of a Harley Scorpion, with the muzzle flash and tracers leading Mongoose right to the Road Dawg who was her biggest threat in that split-second. His headlight wavered before her like the loser blinking first in a staredown; she had him. He had to keep the nose right on her for that barking gun to stay a threat, but his nerve had just broken. He was turning tail, hauling his bike away from her and the clear and present danger she presented.
Odds were good he’d seen what she’d done to two of his buddies already, and he knew her blue-on-black Yamaha riding straight on, knew her bug-eyed helmet’s unwavering glare, knew her mono-edged sword with its graceful curve perfect for cavalry work, its balanced grip tailored for her hand, its blade already bright with blood even in tonight’s light drizzle, he knew—deep in the belly, where you just know things like ‘gravity works’ and ‘I should breathe’—he just knew she was death on wheels.
She’d shown him that already. She’d shown his whole stupid gang. This wasn’t Road Dawgz turf any more, Mongoose just kept showing them and showing them. It was Quick Sliver territory now.
She hunched down low over her Kaburaya’s AR-bright console and rode him down. It was a straightaway, and not an engine on the streets could beat her. Her bike slashed past him, light display leaving a trail in its wake, and her sword—long and lethal and so, so sharp—swiped out, length of the blade dragged along him, Mongoose barely even having to slash, or reach, or lean. His head just slipped right off his body and tumbled down the street.
She leaned into the turn, braking just so, angling just so, tires slipping and drifting just so; the city spun and whirled again, lights flashing and blurring and streaking against her bug-eyed helmet, and the whole world shifted to point the way she wanted. Just like that, she and her bike were headed back the other way, tires squealing for traction, building up speed again, racing back toward the orkish Road Dawg with the chainsaw.
Only a champion would bring such a stupid weapon, something so loud, so brazen. Only someone who thought he was the nastiest piece of work in the gang, and who the rest of the gang let think that. Only a titan, a hero, a Road Dawg war-leader.
Only her counterpart.
Mongoose was the sword-saint of the Quick Slivers. The orkish maniac with the chainsaw—so inelegant, so unprecise, so loud and raucous and chromed-up as the heavy Harleys they rode—must have been the same for the Road Dawgz.
She smiled and adjusted her grip on her sword as they raced head-on at one another.
A kindred spirit. No wavering. No gun. Street rules for this sort of gang challenge meant no attack spells, no explosives, no personal guns. They made allowances for firepower, but it had to be bike-mounted. Any melee weapon—even a fragging chainsaw—was allowed, but if you wanted to spit lead, it had to be chipped in to your chrome, mounted to your bike, an extension of the machine. Lots of them had guns attached. Mongoose didn’t. She didn’t want the balance of her bike getting thrown off, or the recoil mucking up her ride, or the distraction of juggling an integral weapon on top of her racing-tweaked Kaburaya’s console. No, Mongoose liked it older school. It was a night of clubs and blades. It was a night of swords.
Mongoose didn’t think about guns. In a joust, focus and momentum were everything.
They met. The ork swung, she ducked. She lost centimeters off her lucky feathered fringe, but the saw-teeth never met her armor, never chewed into her flesh. She’d barely moved her sword arm, barely flicked her wrist as they passed. He didn’t feel a cut. He laughed, the Road Dawg knight, a belly-deep roar meant for her ears as much as his own.
Mongoose’s Kaburaya slid into another turn, circling back to eyeball him behind her smart-goggled helmet.
He knew something was wrong when he tried to do the same. His scarred knuckles closed on the brake lever, he shifted his weight, throttled down, worked the bike into a bootlegger turn like he had a dozen or a hundred or a thousand jousts before, but it didn’t work this time.
She saluted with her sword, bright steel flashing. The earlier blood had already been rinsed away by Seattle rain, but something else gleamed too-bright. Something the rainwater didn’t touch quite right.
Brake fluid.
His 450 kilograms of bike, armor, chainsaw, meat, and bone slammed headlong into a parked car in a tangled mess. The murder-saw buzzed and bit into him.
Mongoose turned away, tires biting for traction again. She had a battle to manage. She checked on the gangs’ progress by calling up her heads-up display before closing the distance. Blue arrows for friendly Quick Slivers, red for Road Dawgz. A glance was all it took. She liked what she saw.
The Road Dawgz were starting to get the message, the one she’d repeated all night, the one she’d carve into them until it sank in. Their turf was slipping away as surely as this fight was. Mongoose watched the tangled mess with AR on, but scanned the actual fight instead of just her heads-up mapsoft overlay once she got close enough.
Sliptrip was hammering at a Dawg with her bat, both riders stopped and just trading shots, her aluminum slugger against a crooked metal pipe. Torque had just blasted a Road Dawg off his bike with a swing of his big two-kilo mallet, looking like a polo player. Tempest was riding down a crashed Road Dawg, saber out, to finish him off. Good. A dozen Slivers were cleaning up, running down stragglers.
Some of the news was mixed. Derily—Mongoose rhymed it with “barely,” Darryl Lee by birth name, but barely a man, barely in the gang—was getting mauled by a pair of Road Dawgz, but Tavi, Tikki, and Rikki were on their way. The three bright blue neon streaks inbound caught the eyes of the pummeling Road Dawgz, and the chrome-on-black gangers battering Derily stopped their abuse to speed away. The triplets gave chase with whoops and roaring engines.
