Those eyes meet mine, and there’s a flash of recognition that hits me like a needle in the base of the spine. I’ve seen him before—don't know where, don’t know when. I don’t know who the frag he is, but I know I’ve seen him before— whether in person, in a holo, on the trid, or whatever.
And fragged if he doesn’t recognize me too! I can see it, I can feel it—and I’ll bet my last nuyen that he knows the recognition’s mutual.
His eyes widen a little, and his face goes blank, totally expressionless. I’m sure my reaction’s exactly the fragging same. It’s like when you pass someone on the street that you know you’ve met before, but you can’t for the life of you remember their name, where you met, or why they might—or might not—be important. So instead of making an ass out of yourself, you let your gaze just slide off them—give them the neutral scan—like you didn’t really see them in the first place. It’s like that, but it’s worse, because we both know we both did see each other.
So what the frag am I supposed to do now? From the other slag’s reaction, he’s in precisely the same position. I know him, goes the brain, I met him—but where? And who is the motherfragger anyway?
We’re both doing the neutral scan, trying to pretend to each other that we didn’t see nothing. And we keep doing it until he’s up the stairway to the main floor of the safe house and out of sight.
8
Okay, honesty time: I’m drek-scared.
Call it enlightened self-interest, call it the necessary paranoia of the deep-cover asset, call it whatever the frag you want. I just know it as a tightness around the heart, a churning, watery feeling in the guts.
Theoretically, nobody in Seattle knows who and what I really am. That’s the idea, at least. That’s why the Star had me transferred out west from Milwaukee. Except for my direct controls and various cut-outs within the Star—and their lovers and confidants and anybody else they happened to shoot their mouths off to—everybody in Seattle knows me solely as Rick Larson, gang-banger extraordinaire, Cutters soldier, and member of Blake’s Praetorian guard.
Any attempt by official channels to dig up deep background on me would lead to Milwaukee, where the local Lone Star franchise has built me a bulletproof cover story. If the search is done unofficially—through the Milwaukee gang scene, for example—they’ll run into the same cover, because Rick Larson Gang Hero was active there as well. So the only people who’d recognize my face in Seattle are my Lone Star superiors or people who’ve met me in my Cutters persona. Nice and logical and reassuring, right?
Yeah, well, that’s in theory, and we all know what happened to the theories that man could never fly and that a nuclear chain reaction would never work. Consider the fact that I flew from Milwaukee to Seattle aboard a new generation of suborbitals launched along linear induction rails that draw their electricity from a fragging nuke plant, and you’ll understand my unwillingness to depend on theories. My cover is watertight and bulletproof only as long as a single, base assumption remains correct: that nobody (except me, of course) ever moves from Milwaukee to Seattle.
Okay, granted, Seattle isn’t one of the garden spots of the universe, but have you visited Milwaukee lately? “A Great City on a Great Lake,” according to the Chamber of Commerce, but in reality it’s a great place to get geeked on a great toxic waste dump. But people do relocate. Hell, take Cat Ashburton, the pneumatic redhead from my meet at the kissaten. She got transferred from Milwaukee to Seattle. Sure, she’s part of Lone Star and thus is no risk to me, but her transfer was totally independent of any assignment of mine, and that makes her—for the purposes of my catastrophizing, at least—just another megacorp wage slave. And if one megacorp wage slave can get bumped to the West Coast, why not another? And just as easily someone who knew me while I was going through the Lone Star Academy, before I found my way into deep-cover work.
Let’s let the old overactive imagination chum away at that for a moment and come up with a worst-case scenario. Maybe the elf’s aide—the guy I’m obsessing about—knew me when we were both young punks in Milwaukee. Maybe we went to school together or met over beers at some college watering hole. In a drunken stupor, I told him I was thinking about joining the Star.
No, make it worse. I met him while I was in the Academy—over the same liter of beer, probably—when I was so adamant about getting into the Star and changing the world. Our career paths thereafter diverge. I go undercover, he goes into the corporate world and ends up cutting shady deals with gangs for a Tir-based outfit. What’s he going to think when he spots good old Ricky Larson, the goof who used to be an Officer Friendly wannabe flashing his Lone Star Fan Club decoder ring to all and sundry, suddenly looking like he’s a top soldier for the fragging Cutters? What’s he going to think? Yeah, that’s exactly what he’s going to think. He’s going to be dead fragging right, and I’m going to be right fragging dead. Ah, isn’t symmetry wonderful?
Yeah, well, that’s the worst-case scenario. Best-case? We passed each other on the street yesterday, and for some reason our faces stuck in each other’s minds. Or maybe he was one of the suits in the Coffee Bon when I was doing my gig with Cat. If that’s the case, then I’m safe. When he finally places me, his reaction is going to be more, “Hey, small world,” than, “Infiltrator! Call out the dogs!”
And what’s the most likely case? Somewhere in between. Maybe we do know each other from Milwaukee, but met after my cover was at least on the way to being established. In which case I’m at minimal, if not zero, risk.
So what do I do now? “Grease the guy” comes immediately to mind, but that carries its own set of risks and consequences. No, obviously the smart thing to do is wrack what I use for brains to figure out who the slag was, is, or whatever. If I can beat him at figuring how and where we’ve seen each other before, then I’ll know which way to jump. Until I get that brain wave, though, about all I can do is obsess about it, and stay drek-scared.
And I’m doing that just fine.
* * *
I’m still at it a couple of days later, and it’s turning into a real pain in the fragging hoop. I still haven’t placed the guy’s face, no matter how hard I strain. I’ve tried all the little psychological tricks, all the mental judo that’s supposed to help you remember. Go through your memory chronologically (Did you see him in 2049? No? Then how about 2050?). Or geographically (Remember the faces of everyone you hung with in Milo’s Bar, Milwaukee. No? Try the U of W student union building . . .). Or how about associationally? (Who have you ever met who has associated closely with elves?) The only results are headaches, difficulty in sleeping, and disturbing nightmares when I do manage to get to sleep. Not productive, chummer. Not productive at all.
So, like a good little mole, I tried another channel. Using all my wiles and wits and lies and machinations, I put out feelers throughout the Cutters to find out if anyone knows anything about my mysterious Mr. X. Null program there, cobber.
Oh, sure, I got a name, but it was one Mr. Nemo. I don’t think the ganger who leaked me that gem ever figured out why I looked like I was tasting something sour when he told me. Apart from something like “I. M. A. Sudonim,” l can’t think of anything that’s more obviously an alias than “Nemo”. (Doesn’t anyone read the classics anymore? “Nemo” means “nobody” in Latin. Our guest had billed himself as Mr. Nobody.) Pretty fragging useless.
Well, no, let’s be fair, there was something else, but it didn’t do much but raise more questions. From what some of the soldiers had heard—and Great Ghu knows how they heard it—Mr. Nemo wasn’t from the same Tir-based corp as the elves. That’s all they could tell me. No clue as to whether that meant he was from another Tir-based corp or a corp from somewhere else in the world ... or whether he was even a corporator at all. Drek, with a pseudonym like Nemo, he could well be a shadowrunner. (But no, frag it till it bleeds, he’s not a runner, I know it, and I don’t know how I know it, and that terrifies me even more. What a bloody nightmare.)
Anyway, I’ve go
t my report all cued up and dictated into the chip in my secondary slot, including everything I know, guess, and wonder about the elven delegation. I’ve got verbal descriptions of everyone, but for the nth time over the last couple of days I wish I could draw worth squat or that someone had seen fit to equip me with chips for skills other than the violent.
So, yes, I’ve got the report ready to go, but go where? Blake’s been working my hoop off as aide/gofer/bodyguard. I've been playing close-cover on him, making drops and running courier, and just basically sitting around waiting for him to figure out what he wants done next. I haven’t been back to my doss in two days, crashing instead on couches, cots, or floors at one or another of the Cutters’ safe houses. I’ve had one and only one chance to log onto UOL with my pocket computer. Of course, I took that opportunity to post the innocuous message that means, “I need a meet now. C’mon back good buddy, y’hear?” or some drek. But I haven’t been able to check for replies.
Up until a little while ago, that is. About an hour back, close to 0130 in the middle of what looks like Seattle’s worst overnight rainstorm of the year, Blake came out of his private doss to find me propped up against the corridor wall, catching some zees. I guess I felt his presence—or maybe I heard the door. Anyway, I popped to my feet like I was on springs, expecting royal drek for sleeping on the job.
Any other boss would surely have had my head for dereliction of duty. But Blake never does what any other boss would do. Instead of barking, he just chuckled quietly. “Take twenty-four,” he told me. Then, glancing at his watch, he amended, “Well, make it twenty-two-thirty. Be back here by midnight tomorrow. Got me?”
So I told him “Gotcha,” and I headed downstairs and out to my bike.
I wanted sleep, I craved sleep. But what I needed was to log onto UOL to see if a meet could be scraped together in the next twenty-some hours. Of course, I couldn’t see to that need in the safe house. Blake knew I was bagged to the bone, and what does someone who’s bagged to the bone do when he’s given time off? Not log onto a Matrix BBS, that’s for sure. Word would get back to Blake that for some reason I ranked connect time as more important right now than sack time, and he’d start wondering why. That kind of wondering I don’t need. So it was out to the bike, fire up the engine— after checking for surprises, of course. It wasn’t that I was expecting trouble, but I had tended to be more cautious after seeing some grunts washing remnants of Ranger off the walls of the building. Then I cruised back toward the Wenonah.
By the time I’m rumbling onto Northeast Sixtieth Street, the sheets of rain and the wind in my face have cleared my head to some degree—and it’s just enough to let me know exactly how drekky I feel. I park the bike in the back alley, chain it securely to the building’s gas meter. Then I unlock the metal back door to the building, locking it again carefully behind me, and climb the narrow stairs to the second floor. The hallway—just as narrow as the stairs—is empty. The door to my apartment’s at the far end, at the front of the building—I picked it specifically for the view out over the street and down to the front door of the building. Out of habit, I check the telltales I always leave around the door. Nobody’s opened it since I left here a few days ago. Not that I expected anyone to have done so—Bart’s uninvited visit a week back was the exception, not the rule. I unlock the door and pass into the small living room with its kitchen alcove to the right. I’m hungry, but on consideration I decide I want sleep more than I want food. Anyway, I know there’s nothing in the fridge except a bottle of vodka and some yogurt that’s probably quietly developing into some new form of life by now.
I turn left into the bedroom, stripping off my soaked jacket as I do so. I fling it toward the chair—miss, but what the frag—and slump down onto my bed.
My portable telecom’s just where I left it, on the bedside table, jacked into the LTG socket in the wall. I power it up and hit the keystroke sequence that’ll log me onto UCAS Online. While the machine’s making the connection and shaking hands with the UOL mainframes—somewhere in Virginia, I think, though of course it doesn’t matter—I pull off my boots and make fists with my toes in the ratty carpet. I set my H & K with its two spare clips within easy reach on the floor next to the bed. (Again, not that I’m expecting trouble, but there are some habits you just don’t want to let slide into disuse.) The telecom beeps, announcing it’s ready.
On the ride over, I dictated my innocuous “get back to me quick” message into the chip in my secondary slot. So now I use a cylindrical carrier to extract the chip from the base of my skull, and slip it into the peripheral slot of the telecom. I display a directory of the chip’s contents, and make doubly sure that the file I’m going to upload to the telecom, and from there to UOL, is the right one—the innocuous message, not the report to the Star that would get me a bullet in the brain. Then I check it again. I know I‘m tired, and I know that tired people make mistakes. A single wrong keystroke, and the wrong file goes shooting down the datapaths of the LTG and the Matrix. Yes, it’s the right file. I trigger the transfer.
A second or two later, my message is stored securely and safely on the distant mainframe, ready for my controls at the Star to view it and recognize what it means. I know I really should check the message bases to see if there’s something waiting for me, but I just don’t have the jam at the moment. My brain feels like it’s full of spiders, and my eyeballs like they’ve been sandblasted. I break the connection.
The pillow on my bed is calling to me, its siren song so strong I don’t even power down the telecom. I swing my legs up onto the bed—cold in the wet jeans I can’t be bothered taking off—and slump backward. I feel the welcome blackness of sleep envelop me even before my head hits the pillow.
* * *
What the frag time is it?
My bedside chrono’s set up to project a dim time display onto the ceiling over my bed. I peel my sticky eyelids open and look up. I see that it’s 0332, which means I’ve been asleep less than two hours. Why did I wake up?
Then I hear the sound again, the one that had penetrated my sleeping brain and mingled with my confused dreams. The insistent chirp of my cel phone. Frag! Who the frag is calling me at fragging oh three-thirty in the fragging morning? Have they no fragging respect for the fragging dead?
It can’t be the Star. Procedure doesn’t allow for them calling me direct, for any reason. (And to reinforce that, I’ve made sure they don’t even have my number.) Blake’s got the number, as do a few other higher-ups in the Cutters. They could be calling me, but why? I’m off duty for the next twenty hours, and Blake didn’t say anything about being on call. Conceivably, some emergency’s come up and he needs all his Praetorians around him, but frag him and the hog he rode in on. I’m not answering. “Get fragged,” I grunt to the phone. Obligingly, it shuts the frag up. I roll over and close my eyes again.
Then there’s a knock on the fragging door. My eyes snap open again and look at the time display. It reads, 0333, so no, I haven’t been back to sleep.
And that’s when my instincts kick in, those little warning bells inside my skull, my belly, and half a meter lower. I can almost hear my bag contract. Something’s wrong here ..,
Instinct’s important for someone who’s undercover. Important? Frag, it’s life itself. Supposedly I’m one of the Star’s best undercover cops—that’s what my superiors tell me when they want to stroke my ego, at least—so that should mean mine are some of the best instincts going. All I know is that I’ve come to trust those weird little feelings. And now those instincts are telling me that something’s going down.
A phone call, then a minute later a knock on my door. Unrelated? Maybe. Or maybe the phone call was an attempt to find out whether I’m home or not. When I inconsiderately decided not to answer, I forced my caller to use other methods. Like a knock on the fragging door.
I swing my legs—chilled and very uncomfortable—off the bed and reach for my portable telecom. The Wenonah— “security building” or not—never
had any security for private apartments: no cameras or sensors, not even a viewer in the fragging door. For obvious reasons, I rectified the situation when I moved in. Set into the door frame over the door is a tiny videocam and microphone arrangement set to narrowcast a data stream on a frequency jiggered to my telecom. I hit the keys on the keyboard, thanking whatever spirits—or my own laziness, or whatever—didn’t let me power the thing down. The screen lights up and I can see what that tiny hidden videocam is seeing.
Four figures in the hallway outside my door—two men, two women—all wearing what look like armored leathers. None have weapons out, but there’s something about the way they’re standing that kicks the volume of my internal alarms up a dozen notches. They’re tense, they’re ready— for what? I think I can guess. Frag!
One of the figures—I peg her as the leader—is right up to the door, and she’s raising her hand to knock again. The fisheye lens on the videocam and the angle of view make it impossible for me to recognize anyone.
The biff knocks again. As she does. I’m up on my feet, pulling the telecom jack out of the wall. I scoop up my H & K, and let it and the wire have a little conversation. With my left hand I pick up the telecom, balancing it like a waiter carrying a tray. I move like a ghost out of the bedroom into the living room, keeping my eyes on the screen.
The woman in the image steps back and shakes her head. Three of the figures—the biff leader and the two men— reach into their jackets, and out come weapons. My instincts are deafening now, but I don’t need them anymore. My conscious mind knows what’s going down: a hit. Another gang trying to take out a key Cutters member? Who the frag knows, and for the moment it doesn’t matter one good goddamn. Idees can wait.
In the telecom screen, I see the leader turn to the second woman, the one who hasn’t pulled heat. Bonelessly, the second woman sinks down onto the floor in full lotus, eyes closed.
Lone Wolf Page 7