SHADOWRUN: Spells and Chrome (shadowrun)

by Anthology

  The gunman scoffed. "Are you telling me that some of those damned elves were trying to figure out a way to throw the evil eye at a whole city at once?'

  Lucky waited for the man to stop chuckling at himself. Then he started in.

  "Ever read The Lord of the Rings?" he asked.

  The gunman shrugged and shook his head. The hatchet-faced man and the banker followed suit. Only the white-haired man seemed prepared to admit he'd ever even heard of the books.

  "I've seen the movies," he said. "The trideo remakes, not the originals."

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah," the gunman said. "The ones with the dwarves in them." He glanced at Lucky as the others nodded in recognition at last. "I'll bet those are your favorites."

  "In The Lord of the Rings, there's this dark lord named Sauron-"

  "As in 'the Sons of Sauron.'" The white-haired man glared at Lucky. "Who did you say you worked with again?"

  "I didn't," said Lucky. "But I try to avoid those pro-metahuman wackos whenever I can. Their agenda is almost as stupid as the crap you Humanis idiots spout."

  The gunman started to say something, but Lucky cut him off. "That's not what I'm trying to get at here. This Sauron-the one in the book-he had a ring of power. The ring of power. It corrupted anyone who touched it. Drove them mad."

  "Including him?"

  "He lost it."

  "How'd that happen?"

  "Just go back to school, learn how to read, and then open the fucking book. That's not my story here."

  Lucky waited for a moment for the gunman to sit back in his chair and shut up.

  "All right. Imagine-now, I know that's hard for calcified brains like the ones you guys tote around in your skulls-but imagine, if you will, what would happen if you could take that cursed ring and atomize it."

  "Atom-what?" The hatchet-faced man scowled.

  "Grind it up into a fine dust and then mix it with an aerosol spray," the white-haired man said.

  "I see someone paid attention in chemistry class," Lucky said. "Now, imagine if you did that with the One Ring. If you could grind it up and aerosolize it, think about how many people you could corrupt at once. And they'd never stand a chance of not getting infected by it."

  "That's insane," the banker said. "Nothing like that's ever been done before."

  "Insane," the dwarf said, "but not impossible. In any case, that's what these scientists had set out to do."

  "Are you saying they had the One Ring? I thought those books were supposed to be fiction."

  Lucky gestured at himself. "Do I look like fiction?" Instead of waiting for an answer, he just shook his head. "No, there's no such thing as the One Ring, but the scientists up there near the Soo Locks didn't need an artifact like that. Instead, they had something else."

  "Which was?"

  "Ever hear of the Edmund Fitzgerald?"

  The men at the table stared at him with blank looks.

  "Nobody listens to the classics anymore," Lucky said. "The Edmund Fitzgerald was the most massive ship to ever sail the Great Lakes. It went down in a storm in 1975, almost a hundred years back. Twenty-nine men died."

  "So what does an ancient wreck have to do with anything?"

  "The Edmund Fitzgerald didn't go down due to mechanical failure or due to the storm. It went down because it was cursed."

  "Bullshit." The hatchet-faced man cleared his throat and spat on the floor. "That's too early. Before the aberrations began."

  "Back in the 'good ol' days,' right?" Lucky shook his head. "You Humanis schmucks never get it, do you? Magic isn't something wrong with the world. It's the natural way of things. It waxes and wanes through the centuries like the moon in the sky.

  "Just like during a new moon, though, even when you can't see magic, it's still there. It's just waiting for its time to shine again."

  "That's just a bunch of Sixth World crap," the banker said. "The same foolishness street shamans and other charlatans have been spouting forever."

  Lucky smiled. "Believe what you like." He gestured at himself. "I think the facts are on my side."

  "So what sank the Edmund Fitzgerald? The One Ring? Or was it made of white gold this time?"

  Lucky shook his head. "A sailor on the ship had been having an affair with a Chippewa woman, the daughter of the Bad River band's chief. When she dumped him for another man, he stole something from her home, an ancient spear that had been part of the band's history ever since they'd taken that name.

  "'Bad River.' Makes you wonder what must have happened for a whole band to get slapped with that name."

  "No," the gunman said. He had his hands flat on the table before him, framing his still-smoking gun. The fingers of his right hand twitched toward it. "I don't wonder. I don't care."

  "Course not. It's not all about humanity, is it?" He looked at each of the men in turn. "It's about white, male humanity. If you ever got rid of the metahumans, you'd just turn on each other again. Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, women, gays. Anyone who's different from you in any way.

  "Hell, if you got rid of them, you'd start in on the people with brown eyes. Or black hair. Or crooked noses.

  "It's not about preserving rights with people like you. It never is. It's about preserving power. Yours."

  The men stared wordlessly at Lucky. After a moment, he continued.

  "The Edmund Fitzgerald went down because the spear the sailor stole was cursed. Of course, the spear sank with the ship, and it sat at the bottom of Lake Superior for decades before someone finally figured it out and then went to find it.

  "Ares Industries got its hands on the damned thing, and somebody there decided that it wasn't enough to have a cursed spear around. After all, a spear can only affect one person-or ship, or building, or whatever-at a time. The Ares eggheads set their sights higher than that.

  "So they ground it up, mixed it in with some nanites, and aerosolized the whole mess."

  Lucky let that sink in for a minute.

  "You're fucking nuts." The hatchet-faced man folded his hand. The chips sat untouched in the middle of the table.

  "Ever heard of anthrax?"

  The men squirmed in their seats.

  "People hear the word 'anthrax,' and they break into cold sweats and then reach for their ultra-antibiotics. Remember the attack in Sacramento last year? Killed three hundred orks before it was done."

  Lucky stared at the silent men. "Yeah, I expect you do.

  "The funny thing about anthrax is that it's usually harmless. Cattle everywhere carry it. You can pick it up by walking through any pasture. It's more common than cow pies, and only about as annoying as stepping in one of them.

  "But you refine it and then aerosolize it, and it's deadly.

  "Imagine doing that with a cursed spear."

  The men remained quiet. The white-haired man ran his tongue along the inside of his lips as if he had something to say, but he kept it to himself.

  Lucky shrugged. "Wasn't my idea. I just got mixed up in it.

  "Someone else from inside Ares got wind of the plan and hired me and my team of runners to go in and put an end to it. They'd lost the argument in the boardroom, it seems, but they weren't willing to just let it rest.

  "Of course, they didn't exactly tell us everything about what we were after. Just that we had to snatch it and then confirm its destruction."

  "Everything went smooth as silk at first. Our decker-that's what we called them back in the days when they still had to jack into a system-he blew through their IC defenses like they were made of toilet paper. Our mage took out most of the security with a nappy-time spell, and I took care of the rest of them with less than a single magazine."

  Lucky's hand pulled an imaginary trigger as he spoke.

  "Then, when we got our hands on the package, it all went to hell. Matrix feedback fried Bones's brain. Misha's spells fizzled in his fingers at the exact worst time. My guns jammed.

  "I grabbed the package and high-tailed it out of there. The others were already dead. Our rigger s
cooped me up, and we zoomed away, watching the Soo Locks vanish in the rear-view mirror.

  "We would have made it, too, if it hadn't been for the rain-and that damned moose.

  "The damned thing went right through the windshield and crushed Jeremy dead. I sat there, stuck in the shotgun seat, and watched as we spun out of control and smashed into a stand of pine trees.

  "The fucking airbags saved my life."

  Lucky closed his eyes and took a moment to collect himself. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thick, stubby fingers until the screams in his head went away.

  When Lucky opened his eyes again, the men were still staring at him, waiting for him to continue.

  "The package shattered in the crash. All that dust. It got all over everything. Into everything.

  "Everything.

  "Me."

  Lucky coughed at the memory, and the men around the table all jumped.

  "There's a reason most people figured I died on that day. The paramedics that showed up to save my life were killed when the damn car exploded just after they pulled me out it. The kind man who stopped to give me a ride to the nearest hospital, he blew a tire on the way out of the parking lot and died in the resultant crash.

  "The hospital itself suffered a gas leak shortly after I was admitted. The blast destroyed an entire wing of the place."

  "How?" the white-haired man said. "You-with luck like that, you should be dead a dozen times over."

  "Sure enough," said Lucky, "and that was just the start of it. It took me a while to twig to just what was going on. I'd taken a number of head injuries, after all. Eventually, though, I figured it out.

  "The scientists had gotten it right. They'd turned that single cursed spear into uncountable millions of tiny little curses, and all the ones that hadn't gotten scattered all over the wreck had worked their way into me.

  "I'd become-I am-a living curse. I'm kind of the anti-Midas. Everything I touch turns to shit."

  The men stared at the dwarf. The banker actually edged his chair away from the table.

  "It's all right," the gunman said. "He hasn't touched any of us."

  Lucky reached over and picked up a card, then grinned. "True enough," he said. "But I didn't have to."

  As he held the card up-the Queen of Hearts-the symbols on its face began to morph. Soon, he held the 2 of Spades.

  "The nanites," the white-haired man whispered.

  Lucky tossed the card down on the table and rubbed the moving tattoo on his scalp. The inkiness under his skin leaped toward his touch like iron filings to a magnet.

  "They get into anything I touch for more than a few seconds. And then they do the same to anything-or anyone-handling that."

  The gunman snatched up his gun again. "This-this game's over. I'm through playing around with you, stunty."

  "Go ahead and fight it, kid," the dwarf said. "Give it your best shot. I've been at it for years, and I can't get it right. I'd love to see someone win."

  "No," the white-haired man said to the gunman. "Don't-"

  The gunman pulled the trigger. The gun exploded in his hand. He fell to the ground, clutching the raw stump of his wrist for a moment before passing out from the shock.

  The banker leaped to his feet, knocking over the tray of chips as he went. He took three steps away from the table before he slipped on one of those chips and went sliding into the plate-glass window that Lucky had been staring out through before. The glass gave way as if the sealants all around it had somehow rotted away, and it and the banker tipped out into the wide-open Chicago night.

  The hatchet-faced man snarled like a caged animal. "I don't believe you," he said. "This is all just some more of the usual metahuman propaganda you freaks propagate."

  "I went into hiding right after I became cursed," Lucky said. "The sorts of things that happen to the people I come into contact with, they're not pretty. I can barely stand to watch.

  "For assholes like you however, I'm happy to make an exception."

  Lucky stepped onto the green felt in front of him, then beckoned the man toward him, taunting him to try to knock the dwarf from his perch. The hatchet-faced man lost his temper and lunged straight for Lucky.

  The dwarf swung a meaty fist out and smashed the hatchet-faced man's nose flat. He felt the bones inside shatter and go straight back into the man's brain. The man fell to the floor with a sickening thud.

  "Wouldn't your curse have taken care of him?" the white-haired man said.

  "Eventually," said Lucky. "But who wants to wait for something like that when handling it yourself is so satisfying?"

  "What about me?" the white-haired man said.

  "You're already history. You were dead the moment I came into the room. Just like all the security guards you've been waiting on to show up since then."

  The white-haired man clutched as his chest as he broke out into a sick sweat. "My heart."

  "Imagine that," Lucky said. "What are the chances?"

  "But." The white-haired man gasped. "What about you? Why doesn't the curse kill you too?"

  "Because," Lucky said as the man collapsed on the table, "that would be letting me off too easy."

  The dwarf got down from the table and strolled toward the door. As he reached it, he looked back over his shoulder at the four dead men. They'd engineered the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of metahumans. They'd have killed Lucky on the spot if they'd had an honest chance-not that he'd given them one.

  They'd deserved to die, and he felt good about their deaths.

  And more than a little jealous. He'd hoped one of them might have finally been able to release him from his curse. But no such luck.

  He spat one last thing back at them as he left the place.

  "Lucky bastards." Expectations By Kevin Killiany

  Kevin Killiany has been the husband of Valerie for three decades and the father of Alethea, Anson, and Daya for various shorter periods of time. He has written for Star Trek and Doctor Who in addition to several game universes, most notably BattleTech and Mechwarrior. When not writing Kevin has been an exceptional children's teacher, drill rig operator, high-risk intervention counselor, warehouse grunt, ESL instructor, photographer, mental health case manager and paperboy. Currently Kevin is in family preservation services, is an associate pastor of the Soul Saving Station, and is managing to fit short stories in while working on his third novel. Kevin and Valerie live in Wilmington, North Carolina.

  I rolled my left hand against the sidewalk, pushing off with the edge and heel before momentum broke my fingers. Hunching my shoulder, I tucked my chin to my chest and did my best to turn the headlong dive into a semi-controlled tumble. The plascrete pavement rolled up my elbow and across my shoulders as I pulled my Colt Manhunter free.

  Ice seared my knee. I saw a flash shot image of slashed slacks and a mist of blood as it swung past my face. Flechette round. Dumb luck or my suit had kept the razor slivers from shredding anything more vital than dermis and capillaries.

  I ended my roll flat on my stomach in two fingers of water. Dog kept to his feet, daintily avoiding puddles, as I wrapped both hands around my Manhunter and lined up on-

  Nothing.

  Or more precisely, a ten-meter-high wall of absolute blackness; flat and unreflecting in the orange glow of the sodium lights.

  From the layout of the buildings, the black nothing was covering-or filling-an alley. But it could have been a straight shot to the bowels of the Deep Lacuna for all my eyes could tell me.

  Then the scent of the spell reached me and everything became clear. • • •

  Sight is the easiest sense to fool. Folks notice smells, twitch their ears when the sound's not right, scratch where it itches, and spit out what tastes suspicious, but when it comes to sight, they pretty much run on autopilot.

  Which kinda makes you wonder why Fun City spent so much time and effort making their little piece of security look like it was stuck one hundred and twenty years in the past. Don't get me wrong. I'm as
fond of pink stucco as the next guy, and riding in the replica of an antique car with no roof and decorative fins was-in the argot of the illusionary period-neato.

  But good as the augmented reality overlays were, they didn't hide the fundamental wrongness of the picture. A picture made worse by the not-quite-right scent of orange blossoms they were using to not-quite-mask the stench of the Harbor wafting in over their western wall.

  Technology's not magic; this's good enough for mundanes.

  "It's February. Real orange trees are full of fruit."

  "What?"

  I looked at the woman sitting next to me-more like across from me, the back seat of the ground car was that wide-and realized I'd spoken aloud. That happens sometimes when I'm focused out; I forget what I'm doing.

  "Talking to myself," I answered. I patted Dog absently. Dog hated to be touched, but the sight of the gesture-man patting loyal twelve-kilo companion-had a universally calming effect.

  The woman, who had introduced herself as Rachel, tilted her head to one side, weighing whether she was satisfied with that. The driver skewered me with a gimlet glance; no trust there. These folks had me on constant scan, they knew I wasn't transmitting. But I reminded myself that this wasn't Pasadena, and the local mundanes were suspicious of folks who weren't so mundane talking to themselves.

  "My father worked in the groves," I lied by way of disarming explanation. "It's the wrong time of year for orange blossoms."

  "Ah." Rachel's teeth flashed white against her dark skin as she smiled. She had an exotic Afro-Latina look-more striking than pretty-and all of her original equipment. Rare in LA. Athletic build beneath the expensive suit, and strong features that I bet looked damned formidable when she…

  Focus, Bastion.

  So focus I did. Ignoring the very real cloud of approving pheromones being produced right next to me, I spread my senses wide.

  My eyes, least trusted of my senses, reported we were passing through a suburban merchants' district, circa 1959. Neatly dressed people-most in period costumes marred by chrome-strolled beneath manicured trees, admired vintage shop displays, or noshed beneath bright awnings in sidewalk cafes. Surface readings were smiling faces, clean streets, cops who waved-even the squirrels looked happy. Everything so saccharine I felt my teeth rotting.