Shadowrun, p.25
Shadowrun, page 25
“Right. I keep forgetting. Wonder why that could be.”
The rest of the night passed quietly without another call. When they pulled back into headquarters and went to the showers, Emir stood in front of his locker and took the card out of his pocket. It was still red with blood, and when he touched it his fingers came back red. He grabbed a towel and dabbed at it, not wanting to risk smudging the artwork. No matter how much he dried it, it remained wet. Despite that, the blood never pooled or formed a droplet. After a couple of attempts, he grabbed the towel and rubbed it across the face of the card. When he pulled the towel away, the blood remained in the exact same location, not smudged by the contact.
“Hey, Emir. Heard you had a crazy night tonight!”
Emir tossed the card face up onto the top shelf of his locker before turning to face his questioner, slamming the door shut and hearing the lock latch into place.
Emir sat in the driver’s seat of the ambulance with his feet propped against the dash, his hands folded together over his abdomen as he watched traffic pass by on the cross street in front of him. A veritable moving wall of people passed by, taking advantage of the light change to get where they needed to go.
“There’s always so many people,” he said. “Do you ever just think how many people there are in this city? Millions. It’s so crowded.”
“You say that every time we pull the day shift,” Nessa replied.
Emir dropped his feet to the floor with a solid thud that rattled the drinks resting on the dash. He leaned forward and draped his arms over the wheel, letting his not inconsiderable weight rest on the machinery with a steady groan of protest.
“That’s because it never stops surprising me. I’m used to it being quiet.”
“Yeah, ’cause it’s so quiet when some runners are shooting off their weapons or blowing shit up all night.”
Emir rolled his eyes. He opened his mouth to respond when an alert popped up on his display saying dispatch was attempting to contact him. He answered the call and started up the vehicle, ready to drive as soon as they had a location.
“Call for 2–4–1. Platinum client, coffee shop near Ares Atlanta. Sudden drop in vitals but coming back to normal.”
The engine roared to life, spooking some of the pedestrians in front of the hospital. Emir flicked the switch for the siren, smiling a bit as the people scampered to get out of the way. As soon as the path was clear, he pulled into traffic, going as fast as the increased density would permit.
“Great—an Ares exec. That close to home base, they’re gonna have a doc on staff. Waste of time.”
“Still have to make it look good. Higher ups would be pissed if we didn’t give the platinum client every full step of the dance. He’s probably fine already.”
“You called it. Vitals already back in the green.” Nessa scoffed. “I hate going into main corp space. They always look down on us. I bet half of ’em think about all the runners we save, and conveniently forget they all have contracts with us, too.”
Emir snorted in agreement. He kept his lips pressed together as they drove, deliberately focusing on the road ahead and not saying a word as they headed to Ares Atlanta. Otherwise he might not be able to keep his mouth shut once they were on the scene.
The main building was a tower stretching several stories up to dwarf all the neighboring buildings. Emir drove past the main entrance and pulled up to a stop in front of the coffee house kitty corner from the main office. A pair of corporate security officers flanked the doorway. As soon as the ambulance stopped, Emir and Nessa jumped out and sprinted up to the front entrance, each carrying a med kit. The guards scanned their displayed SINs and waved them through.
The coffee house was eerily quiet. Most of the patrons clustered together on one side of the building with the baristas, watching in silence as another corporate security officer stood as sentry between them and the executive. The older, heavyset man sat in a padded chair, rubbing his temples with his fingers while a doctor crouched on the ground next to him, interacting with a display only he could see. The doctor looked up as Emir and Nessa approached.
“Ah, yes. Thanks for your prompt arrival, but I believe your presence here will be unnecessary. As you can see, Mr. Duntera is perfectly healthy. It was a minor episode, and nothing you need to concern yourselves with.”
The doctor stood up and physically placed himself between Emir and the client. When Emir shifted to the side, the doctor shifted as well, offering a smile that didn’t even attempt to convey warmth.
“I’m afraid I still need to look him over and gather some quick vitals. Company policy and all that. I’m sure that you understand regulations and requirements.”
The doctor hesitated, staring at the two DocWagon employees. He took in a sharp breath, but before he said anything, the executive reached out and tugged on his sleeve. The doctor turned and looked down at the client. When the older man waved his hand, the doctor bowed and backed away, letting Emir and Nessa approach.
Emir crouched by the man’s side, taking a knee so he was about the same height as the seated man. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“I came here at 11:35 a.m. for my daily pastry. I took it to this chair and began reviewing my shipment reports, the same as I do every day. About five minutes later, I felt a seizing pain in my chest and my right arm went numb. I tried to message someone, but everything went black. When I woke up, the doctor was already here, and you arrived shortly thereafter.”
Nessa took the vitals and fed them to Emir’s screen, numbers and charts popping up on the edge of his vision as he watched the client and listened to the executive’s story. According to the numbers, the man was healthy, given his age and known health risks. Emir suppressed the desire to shrug and sigh. Instead, he nodded and stood up.
“Well, it looks like you’re in good hands. Your vitals check out, so I think we’ll leave you in the capable hands of your doctor, if you’re okay with that.” The client nodded, so Emir and Nessa turned to go.
“Hang on a moment.” Emir turned back and saw the executive holding out a card that by now had grown familiar. “You dropped this.”
Emir took it, tucking it into his pocket without looking at it. Just a glance confirmed his suspicions. When the client let go of the card, Emir noticed that the man’s fingers weren’t red with blood. Yet he could feel the sticky wetness as his glove touched its surface.
When they got back to the ambulance, Nessa turned to face him. “What was that he handed you, and why does it look like you just found out your dad’s a ghoul?”
Emir pulled the card out and showed it to Nessa. She picked it up and tilted her head to the side as she examined it. After a few seconds she shrugged and handed it back.
“I’ve seen this card before. Not a copy of this card, but this card itself. You remember that crazy night almost a week ago? The one that started with the troll getting shot up near the university?” When Nessa nodded, he continued. “He had a card on him. I thought it was his, so I tucked it into his jacket. But the same card showed up when we went to that munitions place. There was one in the jacket. I put it in my locker…”
His words trailed off, and his eyes grew distant. Emir jerked around in his chair, turning on the ambulance and shooting forward on the road back to DocWagon headquarters. Nessa yelped and scrambled to fasten her seat belt as they lurched into traffic. Emir reached down and turned on the siren, speeding as the cars swerved out of his way.
“What are you doing?”
“I need to check something.”
The tires screeched against the pavement as they slammed to a stop in front of the headquarters. Emir jumped out of the ambulance, not even bothering to turn the vehicle off as he sprinted into the building. He burst through the doors into the locker room and rushed to his locker. His fingers shook hard enough that he had to enter his code three times before he finally unlocked it. Reaching up, he checked the top shelf of his locker.
The card wasn’t there.
Emir walked back to the main entrance of the building, his feet dragging across the carpet, not paying any attention to those around him or the incoming alerts. Nessa stood in front of their ambulance, glaring at him as he exited the building.
“Come on! We got a call. Gold client, so we need to hustle. He’s redlining.”
His movements were stiff as Emir clambered up into the driver’s seat. He fumbled for the seat belt, reaching back behind him and having to grab for it a couple times before his fingers managed to curl around the fabric.
“Emir! Snap out of it.”
“It has to mean something…I know it. They must be connected. But how…?”
“Client. Gold level. Time’s wasting.”
“First the shootout, and those weird chemical burns. Just like the woman at the munitions clinic. So maybe the same chemicals. But what would they need at the munitions center? And what the hell does it all have to do with an Ares exec in charge of shipments?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they wanted to steal some bullets. Can we get going now?”
Emir sat upright and his hands clenched around the steering wheel, making the synthleather cover creak as it twisted in his grip.
“They don’t want to steal bullets…they want to replace them! They weren’t stealing something from the munitions plant. They were making bullets with whatever caused those chemical burns. Can you imagine what it would be like if a bunch of those bullets got out?”
Emir burst into motion, starting the ambulance and shooting out of the DocWagon parking lot, heading toward the industrial district. His AR alerted him that he was going the wrong way, instructing him to turn around and head the other direction, but he turned it off.
“Where are you going? The client’s in the other direction!”
“I need to stop this. I can’t let those bullets get out.”
“You’ve lost it. Even if you’re right, leave it to Lone Star. That’s what they do. We save people, that’s our job. And right now, we have a gold client going critical. Do you want to lose your job?”
“That’s what I’m doing. Saving people. The cards came to me. I need to do this. That’s why I got them.”
“You’re talking crazy.”
Emir glanced out of the corner of his eye and saw Nessa reaching for her stun baton. She inched her arm up her thigh to where it was tucked into her belt, not making any sudden movements. With a growl, Emir drew his own stun baton and jabbed it into her side. The smell of burned flesh filled the air and she screamed once before her jaw clenched and she lost the ability to make sound. When he pulled away, she collapsed against the seat belt, her head hanging limp.
“I’m sorry, Nessa, but I have to do this.”
When he got to the industrial district, he flicked off the siren and the lights. He didn’t know where the shipment was, but he drove forward, taking turns at random. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the card, resting it on the dash and propping it up so that he could see it at the edge of his vision while he drove.
The light caught on the right edge of the card, flashing white and forcing him to squint, so Emir turned the car to the right. Directly ahead of him, he saw a pallet holding a crate with a label. His AR display magnified the label and it was ammunition from Ares Atlanta to be shipped to Lone Star central distribution center. A worker had picked up the pallet with a forklift and was backing it out of a storage building. Emir flattened the accelerator against the floor.
The crash was deafening as the ambulance slammed into the crate and smashed through it into the forklift on the other side. Emir’s head punched through the airbag with enough force to slam into the dash beyond, cracking open his forehead. Blood streamed down into his vision. Several spots of his face felt like they were melting where the chemicals from the sabotaged bullets had splashed against it. Smoke filled the air, making it difficult to breathe.
Emir reached over and tore off Nessa’s seat belt, dragging her out of the chair. He pulled her out of the vehicle, laying her down in the dirt. Her limp body was already bruising, but there were no open wounds or visible burns.
Once she was safe, he tore open his med kit, grabbing at some antiseptic pads. His fingers shook and his vision started to swim, making everything cloudy and hazy. He felt the burns spreading across his face. With a sudden jerk, the med kit tore open and the contents scattered on the ground around him. He dropped to his knees and grabbed the pads, using them to clean his face as best as he could. Eventually the burning stopped, but the pain lingered, and Emir could only curl up on his side, shaking.
He was still in that position when Lone Star responded in three minutes. Ares Atlanta security showed up only seconds later, both forces determined to find a person to blame for the destroyed shipment. They found him unconscious, the card clutched tightly in his left hand and smeared with his blood.
PAWNS AND BATONS
(3 of Batons, 8 of Batons, and 7 of Blades)
JAYM GATES
It can always get darker. In this new world, even the shadows have shadows. No matter how big a monster you are, there’s always something bigger looming over your shoulder, tasting your fear. You’ll never be safe. You can never go home.
I can never go home.
It was a strange mission from the start.
Usually jobs were assigned to groups within the Staves. The group leader would get a letter on her doorstep and a deposit for the expenses, she’d summon the selected troops and handle everything on her own. If the mission was successful, our cut would be automatically distributed into our hidden bank accounts.
This group has never worked together before. We each got our own letter. A red envelope, trimmed with gold embossing and closed with a red string, bearing an address and a thick wad of nuyen, slipped under our doors at night or into our pockets when walking through the market, or appearing in a pile of clean laundry. We never saw who left the letters, only knew what they meant. A strict warning to not tell our teammates, that they wouldn’t miss us. When we got to the address, a cloaked figure met us with terse directions and passports through the southwestern territories.
Even the team makeup was strange: two powerful mages, three snipers, the Voice…and the Sword. The Sword was a surprise, in an organization created to protect. We’ve all heard rumor of her, the lone killer in a group of shepherds, but no one in this group seems to have met her before.
Our task is pretty simple: the powers-that-be want us to ensure the safety of a mage. Apparently she’s been hiding here, or is a captive—no one’s really sure—but now she’s a target. There will be other people trying to hurt her. We may already be too late. That’s all we know. That’s all we need to know.
Keep her safe. Bring her back. Shouldn’t be hard. But Bast, this heat.
We’re used to the deprivations of a mission: long hours, tasteless food, poor sleep, and stale body odor. It’s not so bad in our usual digs, where the weather’s a little cooler, and there’s at least the possibility of finding a real bed and clean clothes.
Out here, all you’ve got is what you bring with you, whatever the desert allows you to keep. Thank Bast it’s not summer, or we wouldn’t have a chance. Even so, we’re all red as lobsters from the relentless sun during the day, and huddling together for warmth at night. It wasn’t so bad when we had the Jeeps, but discretion and meddlesome spirits killed that option pretty quickly. Now we just have one, hauling our lukewarm water and extra ammunition. So we bake by day and freeze by night in this weird hellscape, our instruments useless and our water dwindling.
This world is an endless struggle for a little more power, a little more safety. When a source of power is found, it is never safe for long. If they can’t possess it, they’ll destroy it. That’s how it works.
That’s why I’m here. The Staves were never benevolent guardians. They were dupes, made to safeguard resources and develop dependents who had no one else to trust. I was a tool of that, and I have, through no greed of my own, stolen what they wanted.
Doesn’t that sound familiar.
They hunted her. Now they will hunt me.
We’re about fifty klicks out now, moving fast and low. Mary and Spruce have their magic damped down as much as possible to avoid attracting the wildlife. No lights. No noise. No spells. Even our cyberware doesn’t work so well, gummed with insidious dust. Everything feels slow, dragged down by heat and jammed by sand.
The desert is weird, you know? Sound echoes here. A clattering rock can rebound for kilometers. But a shout, a scream, a rockslide…the sound evaporates almost immediately. Goes dim. Goes weird. Makes you feel more alone than before.
I think we’ll go mad out here before we find what we’re looking for.
There are monsters in the desert, and spirits cruel and lost. No passage goes uncontested, no night passes without attack. We are wounded and bloody long before we find the forsaken corner of the Mojave that hides our target. Our ammunition stores are low, our water nearly gone. If there isn’t water at the target, we are screwed.
Her magic shimmers through me, earths itself from the tips of my fingers. I want to speak, to sing and shout and level mountains with a thought. I can feel her potential, her incredible ambition and might, but I do not know how to use it. The frustration seethes in me, burning my spine and eyes, nibbling at the control I have worked so hard to develop.
I was not built to contain magic, much less use it. I did not want this. I did not want to kill her. I grieve a little for what I took. She could have been so much, so brilliant. She was safe here, if not happy; the desert kept her safe. Kept the hunters at bay, kept her from hunting. It loved her, in its own way, this vessel of its power.
Bast, this heat. We’ve holed up in some rocks a couple klicks out from our target coordinates. We want to hit the place early in the morning, when the sun is just rising and the night-creatures are at their weakest. Even in the shade, it feels like my commlink is going to melt right out through my ears. The fuck were we thinking? Spruce was right. This was stupid.
