Into the Shadows

by Jordan Weisman

  I yanked the receiver from the phone and ran out of the garage. Following Zig and Zag’s footprints around chemical-crusted mud puddles, I reached the abandoned bus quickly.

  Seeing them there, I keyed my radio. "Kay, Stealth, let it rip."

  Something that looked like the tip of a hooked dagger punched through the corrugated tin sheeting of the scrap yard's back gate. Two smaller metal talons punctured it to the left of the original hole, then all three blades sliced down through the sheet metal, tearing it into two long, diagonal strips. A second cut moved at right angles to the first, opening a triangular hole through the gate.

  I darted through first, then turned to watch Zig and Zag’s reaction to Kid Stealth. Zig paled as he looked Stealth over from toes to nose. Zag, who’d gotten down on all fours to make it through the hole, just stayed on his knees as his jaw dropped open in awe.

  Zig shook himself. "Wha . . . who are you?"

  Asking the question as "What are you?" wouldn’t have been far wrong where Kid Stealth is concerned. From the waist up—hell, from the knees up—he looks like a whole legion of giliettes. Sure, his eyes have been done and his skull carries more hardware than your average True Value store, but he looks vaguely normal. Even the stainless steel replacement for his left arm isn’t that out of the ordinary.

  His legs, on the other hand, are not built for dancing. Below the knees, both have been replaced with elongated ankles, making his legs appear to have an extra joint, much like a bird’s. The major difference between his legs and those of your average pigeon is that Stealth's titanium legs come equipped with razored talons, especially the large, sickleshaped blade on the innermost of the three toes of each foot. Dew claws were added for esthetics, and a spur caps each ankle for balance.

  "Kid Stealth." I smiled. "Meet Zig and Zag."

  The trio introduced themselves properly while I squatted and looked back through the triangular hole in the fence. "Zig. lend me your AK." As he handed me the unwieldy monster, I waved him and the others further along the alley. "All right, guys, it’s time to run like hell. Do it out of a direct line with the garage because I’m going to create a little diversion. Ready, set, go!"

  Ignoring Stealth’s petulant expression, I tucked the Kalashnikov’s butt to my shoulder and sighted back toward the door. I triggered two short bursts and found myself pleasantly surprised that Zig’s muzzlebrake fought the weapon's tendency to rise. Tightening my grip on the barrel, I burned the rest of the clip, then turned and ran as all hell broke loose.

  I suppose, in retrospect, that it was cruel to goad Lone Star into blasting McKuen’s Scrap and Salvage, but what can one really damage in a junkyard? Anyway, having all those cops keyed up and waiting for disaster had to be bad for their blood pressure. My random shots through the back of the garage and out through the front simply gave them an excuse for a healthy, cathartic experience. It was a public service, really.

  More ordnance passed through that building in the next thirty seconds than was used in all fifty-seven James Bond movies combined. The regular metal rounds tore chunks from the wooden walls and ricocheted off the mountains of scrap metal scattered all over the yard. Explosive shells thundered as they blew huge holes in the walls and foundation. One hit a gas storage area inside the garage and rocketed the roof skyward on a fireball, barely missing George Van Housen’s helicopter.

  I made it down the alley just slightly behind the chromed guard puppy who had cravenly abandoned its domain. I reached the darkened doorway of a building on the south side of the alley and flew down two flights of stairs to the basement. There I found Stealth waiting patiently along with Zig and Zag. Jerking a thumb at the far wall. I asked Stealth, "Have you raised Tark yet?"

  The man the Old One referred to as the Murder Machine shook his head. "Not even static. I don’t think he has his radio on."

  "He's probably monitoring Lone Star's tac frequency." Handing Zig his AK, I rummaged around in the piles of trash and debris and found a short length of wiring pipe. Picking my way to the back wall, I smacked the pipe against the cinderblocks twice, waited, then hit it twice more. Even without a signal. Stealth moved away from Zig and Zag, then brought up his own Kalashnikov.

  The back wall shuddered, then a gritty rustle filled the room. A crenelated portion of the wall about two meters square slid back to a depth of half a meter, then drifted to the side. Tark poked his head through the hole for a quick look, then joined us in the basement. "Time is of the essence. gentlemen," He tapped a finger on his radio earphone. "Lone Star has takers exception to the loss of their operatives

  Both Zig and Zag hesitated, but only Zig gave voice to their reluctance. "He’s a grunge."

  I nodded. "He’s also one of us. Tark Graogrim, these are Zig and Zag."

  Tark, who stands just a tad shy of average, really doesn’t look much like an ork, at least not to me. He’s gone to great pains to keep himself well-kempt, having successfully waged a war against the warts so many orks collect at such a prodigious rate. Though he does have the stocky build of his race. Tark was blessed with the bilateral symmetry that eludes many of his people. His lower tusks do certainly protrude above his upper lip, but his slender, handsome face somehow makes the tusks an asset instead of a deformity.

  Tark stepped forward and offered his hand to the two gillettes. "Wolf, as ever, has refined informality to an art. I am Plutarch Graogrim."

  I slapped Tark on the back. "Tark changed late—at seventeen. By that time, he’d pulled down a Master’s in Western Literature from Harvard University." I avoided using the word "goblinization" to describe his transformation from an insufferably bright young man into an ork.

  Tark nodded slightly. "My educational experience gave me a certain philosophical outlook on my new life."

  Zag raised his stock in my eyes by accepting Tark’s hand. "I'm Tiger Jackson, but Wolf calls me Zag."

  Zig shook his head, then met Tark’s proffered hand. "Lord above, a worldy ork. Iron Mike Morrissey, but, informally, I’m Zig."

  Tark looked at me harshly. "Yes, Wolf’s abuse of the English language has set communication back a century or two."

  I wrinkled my nose at him and jerked my thumb at the opening. "If you would do the honors, Plutarch, we can get out of here."

  Tark led the two street samurai through the wall. Stealth paused and looked back toward the stairs. Though the sound of sirens was muted and distorted, we could still hear them and the dopplered effect of a helicopter swooping back and forth over the area. I reached out and touched his flesh-and-blood arm. "Let’s get out of here. There might be too many even for you."

  He looked at me as though such a thing was beyond the realm of possibility, but then squatted down, and moved into the darkness beyond the wall. I followed, but not so closely that he’d accidently cut me with the spurs on the backs of his legs. Passing through the opening, I heard the gurgle of water, then the mobile section of the wall crawled back into place.

  As the lights came up, I saw Tark over to my right. He had his hand on a round crank device that he spun quickly. His motion continued and the small bulbs set every four meters along the course of the downward-slanting tunnel burned yet brighter. He left off and waved us forward. "Welcome, gentlemen, to Seattle’s true underground."

  Zag looked down the tunnel, then at the lights and back at the crank. "What's going on?"

  "The lights?" Tark smiled like a professor about to lecture a class on one of his favorite subjects. "The crank connects to and winds a spring. That spring, through a series of gears, powers a simple generator that produces the energy for the bulbs. The device is of dwarven manufacture, though I believe the design originated before the Awakening."

  I started down the passage, whose slope descended even more rapidly than Madison street, "I think. Tark. that Zag was asking about the tunnels. Most of us Smoothies live our whole lives without ever realizing they’re here."

  Tark nodded and explained from the back of the pack as we descended. "Back
during the metahuman riots, we realized that we needed the means to move and support ourselves independently of contact with you Smoothies." Tark put enough distaste into the word to let all of us know he deplored its usage. "What few people realize is that any major metropolitan area is crisscrossed with tunnels of various and sundry sizes. Sewer lines, oid subway systems that have been abandoned, and here, in Seattle, the whole Undercity, have provided us with virtual highways for unseen travel. Over the years, we have researched and reopened portions of tunnels and sewers cut off by past reconstruction projects. We have also created new entry points, much like the one we used above, to give ourselves new bolt holes if we need them."

  "Yeah, but can you be truly independent from the world above?" Zig nodded toward the lights. "You said you got the technology for the lights from the dwarfs, but those bulbs are strictly off-the-shelf stuff. Most grung . . . orks work top side. You can’t isolate yourselves."

  Tark located another crank and spun it, boosting the light again. "Actually, I think you would be surprised at the number of orks who do not work above. Aside from those refining the tunnels, we have a fair number of our people involved in salvage work and agriculture down here."

  Stealth stopped as the tunnel leveled off. ‘Agriculture?" Tark laughed. "You recall the chanterelle mushrooms served with your filet at the Eye of the Needle? We grew them down here."

  Kid Stealth remained rock-still for a moment or two, then threw back his head in a cold, hollow laugh. "That bastard Emile said they were imported from down the coast. I’ll kill him for that."

  "Don’t." Tark looked and sounded horrified, which puzzled Zig and Zag. They obviously thought Stealth was kidding. "That’s what our fixer tells him so Emile will buy them. "

  I stopped as we reached a dead end. "Speaking of telling stories to make folks do things, what the hell got you two into Fairview Tower tonight?" I wanted to add that I knew they were too bright to be easily duped, but I wasn’t quite ready to see Zag lose that hang-dog look on his face.

  As Stealth walked over to help Tark pump up the hydraulic pressure to move the wall, Zig raked lingers through his blood-crusted hair. "We were hired to strong-arm a guy into paying his bills. Our Mr, Johnson paid us off in United Oil scrip. He paid us too much, but our target came up pretty clean. Well, actually, we knew from the files on him that he had something to hide, but that’s why we figured we were being hired. We just didn’t figure him as trouble."

  Zag squatted down and retied the lace on his left boot. "We both cased the place, then went up. We were only supposed to talk to him. but we came packing the heavy artillery because we didn’t feel good about the job. We got too much money for things to be easy. Anyway, a guy in a gas mask answered the door and pitched a tear-gas canister at us. Then somebody blew the door apart with a shotgun."

  Zag raised his right hand as though aiming a gun. "The guy at the door got ballistic acupuncture on his face and Mike aced the guy with the shotgun by overdriving his AK. We both started running, then the whole building went crazy and something exploded above us. We ran down the emergency stairs, figuring we‘d mix in with everyone else trying to escape, but the Lone Stars spotted us immediately, and they weren't asking questions before they wanted to start shooting.

  Stealth’s red eyes glowed in the weak light. "Newsfax broadcast says you two tried to put a hit on Nadia Mirin, V.P. for Natural Vat. They’ve got two badly burned bodies in the penthouse, suite and three dead Lone Stars in the building. Two are in the apartment below hers, and the other one took a header from the top floor." He shrugged while using one leg to work the pump lever. "All the dead guys were Shadowriders, so no great loss."

  As much as I hated the casual way that Stealth discounted the Lone Star deaths, I really had a hard time wanting to mourn Shadowriders. Lone Star was just one of several firms the City of Seattle hired to supply "peace" officers. As I had been reminded time and again, a peace officer is not the same as a law officer. The unofficial cadre of Lone Star Cops who called themselves Shadowriders went to great pains to make the distinction easily apparent. They made shadowrunners their special jurisdiction. Because SIN less folk have no recourse in the official system, the Shadowriders used intimidation, assault, extortion, and even murder in their war on runners

  Zag stood up. "No offense, Mr. Stealth, but Mike and I don’t do wetwork." He glanced over at me. "Wolf will tell you we don’t shy from a light, but we don’t accept murder contracts. Besides, if we did, we’d never have gone to the apartment. Take a fifty-caliber sniper rifle and you could do Nadia Mirin on her balcony sipping her morning soykaf. "

  "So, that means you two were lured to that spot to be the fall guys in her death." I held my hands up with thumbs touching and parallel to the ground, I closed one eye and centered the pan of them in the open square my hands formed. "Yup. the frame fits perfectly. The Lone Stars one floor down say they got you running from the hit and case is closed." Tark worked a lever, and the wall swiftly slid up into the ceiling. I turned to face that direction and heard the Old One growl in low tones as it disappeared. At his urging. I sniffed the air, but all I could smell was ork. Given the circumstances, that didn't surprise me. I didn't catch the significance of the Old One’s warning until I heard the wall lock into place and heard the safety on the HK227 click off.

  "Claw dirt, Smoothies! Now or I bleed you . . ."

  I guess it surprised me less to face an ork in the tunnel than it did to see him dressed in a Lone Star uniform. He stood incredibly tall, his cowlick of brown hair brushing the top of the tunnel. He held his gun steady and pointed it at Zig. but kept his eye on Stealth.

  "Keyen, keyen," Tark urged in orkish gutter slang. He raised his hands to his waist and gestured for everyone to remain calm. "Please, Harry, let us have no bloodshed here."

  "Graogrim?" The ork sounded truly surprised to find Tark there. "So this wasn’t a little freelance operation Kid Stealth put together. Why did Raven want Nadia Mirin hit?"

  Hearing his voice spurred something in my memory and I was finally able to tag a name to the silhoutte. Harry Braxen was a Lone Star Cop and, as I heard it, a good one. I’d seen him before, but he hadn't seemed this big to me. Of course, someone confronting you at close quarters with an SMG in his hands makes anyone seem big.

  "Braxen, this isn't at all what you're making it out to be." I looked over at Zig and Zag. "They were set up by someone with connections in the dirty side of Lone Star and the Shadowriders. You know that as well as I do."

  "Do I?" He addressed me with no strain or tension in his voice, but kept his eye on Stealth.

  "Yeah, you do. If you thought these guys were the bloody-handed murderers the newsfax is making them out to be, you’d have shot first. You might even have brought some backup with you here to the tunnels. You know Tark wouldn’t have risked exposing their secret to these guys if they were crazy butchers."

  "Stealth's here, isn’t he?"

  I pulled myself up to my full height. "Stealth’s days with La Plante and his gang are long over, but his presence here should tell you that Tark trusts him. Stealth, you still monitoring the newsfax radio frequency?"

  "Yes."

  "What was the name of the falling star that landed in the courtyard?

  Both Stealth and Braxen answered at the same time. "Corporal John Ogino."

  "There you have it, Harry. Ogino was dirtier than a mud-wrestling troll. He was George Van Housen’s great good buddy and go-fer, and old George is the Prince of Darkness himself. You know George hasn't nominated these two as Outstanding Young American Men. In fact, he'd consider their funeral the social high point of his year."

  Braxen’s gun didn’t waver a millimeter. "Even if what you say is gospel truth, I still have to bring them in because you can’t prove any of it." Frustration echoed in his voice. "They’ve covered themselves too well."

  "Perhaps not. Harry." Tark folded his arms across his chest. "The way Tiger and Mike were set up suggests that their bodies would have be
en paraded before the press as another case successfully solved. Such a precedent was set with the Yoshimura murder a week or so back. That suggests to me that murder weapons would have been planted with the correct fingerprints. The blast that took the top off Fairview Tower is not the thing to leave the evidence needed to implicate these two in the Mirin murder. In the face of the explosion and their escape. Van Housen has covered himself by claiming they bombed Mirin’s apartment, but everything will begin to unravel very soon unless these two are silenced."

  I nodded in agreement. "The trick is to keep them alive long enough for George to become paranoid about his exposure. He’ll use all his resources to get at them, and at the very least, his excesses will bring scrutiny from Lone Star higher-ups. If you want Lone Star to run a square shop here, this is your chance for a clean sweep of the bad boys."

  "And Braxen," Stealth whispered in cold tones, "no matter what you think of me or the rest of us, know this: if Raven had performed this hit, the only way you’d know anything was amiss would be by reading his memoirs. The fact is, you’ve got him to thank for not having to mop up buckets of La Plante Cartel and Shadowrider blood. As for me, well, next time you want to surprise someone, don’t stand in one place for so long. The thermographic bleed from your feet gave you away the second the wall started to rise."

  Braxen stood there in silence for a moment, then tipped his gun toward the ceiling. "O.K. I'll let you guys manufacture the rope to hang Van Housen, but I want to be in on the bust of the dirty cops."

  Stealth looked at him with his Zeiss eyes. "And if all you get to do is count bodies?"

  "They better have been dirty, and you better be clean. Ultra-clean."

  Braxen turned to Tark. "If you weren’t here, I’d have taken the lot in. Krest varg neyor ka."

  "Kaza." Tark waited until Braxen withdrew and headed up along a subsidiary tunnel before he invited us forward and hit the lever that let the wall descend.