Poison Agendas

by Stephen Kenson

  Lothan dropped more incense onto the coals. The ward seemed to contain most of the smoke, but not all of it. The slight haze inside the dome gave things a dreamlike quality. Lothan planted his feet firmly, squared his shoulders and raised his hands as he began chanting. Kellan felt a tingle wash over her, the first ripples of Lothan's summoning ritual. She watched as the troll mage slowly built up magical energy inside the shimmering ward.

  The chanting rose and fell. The rest of the incense went into the brazier, little by little, along with wood chips and shavings: rowan, apple, oak and holly. The tang of smoke filled the basement. The coals of the fire glowed red-hot as it crackled and snapped. Kellan sweated, sitting as still as possible and watching carefully. The rite seemed to go on forever. Then Lothan spread his arms wide, out to the edges of the circle.

  "By the power of earth, I compel you!

  By the power of air, I compel you!

  By the power of water, I compel you!

  By the power of fire eternal, I compel you!

  I conjure and charge thee, oh spirit of fire, arise!

  Arise at my command and truly do my will!"

  Kellan felt the murmur of power surge into a rushing crescendo.

  "Arise!" Lothan commanded again, and there was a flash of fire from the brazier that made Kellan jump. A puff of flame shot up from the coals into the smoke-filled air. It hung there, hovering about half a meter above the brazier. The fire seemed to condense into a small, glowing shape surrounded by a shimmer of heat and a corona of light the size of a beach ball. The warmth it was throwing off made Kellan sweat even more, but Lothan appeared cool and comfortable.

  The troll mage turned his palms to the floor, and slowly lowered his arms. The dome of the ward lowered along with them. When Lothan's arms reached his sides, the ward was gone. Only the hovering fire elemental remained. Kellan saw it clearly now; it looked like a large lizard, maybe half a meter in length. Its scales were deep red fading to orange along its belly, and its eyes glowed like hot coals.

  "There." Lothan gestured toward the spirit with a theatrical wave of one hand. "Here we have a simple fire elemental—a salamander, as it is commonly known." The spirit shifted and lashed its tail, but otherwise hovered right where it was, close by Lothan.

  "Did watching the summoning help you understand what is required?" he asked Kellan.

  "I watched really closely." she said, shifting her eyes away from the elemental and back to Lothan. "But I still don't see how you did it. I mean, what part of the chanting actually called the spirit?"

  Lothan gave a tired sigh. With a negligent wave of one hand, he dismissed the elemental. It faded and then winked out like a candle deprived of oxygen, disappearing into the smoky air, which immediately felt cooler.

  "As with sorcery, it is not the precise words you use that matter." the troll said patiently, stepping out of the circle to crack open a window and let in some fresh air. "It's your intent and focus. The chanting, the gestures and so forth merely provide a means of attaining that focus."

  Kellan nodded, and Lothan continued.

  "The key is to gather in power, then project it with the intent of bringing the spirit into being and binding it to your will." Seeing the look on Kellan's face, Lothan gave a lopsided smile and raised a shaggy eyebrow. "Ah, there's the concern over elemental servitude again." he said.

  Kellan shrugged. "What if you don't focus on binding it?" she asked.

  "Then the spirit is free to do as it wishes in the world. Do you know what the first act of an uncontrolled spirit typically is?"

  Kellan shook her head.

  "To slay its summoner." Lothan continued. He snapped his fingers suddenly for emphasis, and the sound made Kellan start. "A spirit's summoner has a degree of power over it, whether it is controlled or not. So a spirit that escapes service will take measures to ensure it is never controlled again."

  "Can't say I blame it." Kellan muttered, and Lothan sighed again.

  "I can see we'll get nowhere with this discussion today." he said, picking up a brass lid and capping the smoldering brazier. "If you don't want to learn the art of conjuring, please—"

  "I do." Kellan interrupted. "It's just that—"

  Lothan broke into her thought. "We'll pick this up another time. I think we've both had enough for one day. Do some further reading on the subject, and perhaps try some conjuring on your own. Focus on the material about watchers; there are far fewer consequences for failing to properly summon such a low-powered spirit. Then, if you decide you want to pursue conjuring, I will endeavor to teach it. If not, we will move on. Fair?"

  Kellan agreed. She helped put away the materials from the ritual and cleaned up the room before leaving. It wasn't until she left the house that she realized she'd forgotten to turn her phone back on. She checked and found she had a message from Jackie.

  "Hoi, Kellan," the decker said, "I checked out the data you gave me and I've got to say it doesn't look good. Some of my contacts say the U.S. military was very efficient about dealing with those old weapons depots, and the NAN has been over that area lots of times in the past forty years. Odds are the intel you got is way out of date. If you ask me—and you did—I wouldn't bother running with it. Sorry."

  Kellan punched the command to delete the message, then hit the end button. Well, so much for the big score, she thought sourly. She considered calling Jackie back, but what would be the point? Jackie would just repeat what she'd said in her message, and Kellan really didn't want to hear it a second time. I should call Squeak and tell him it's a no-go. She scrolled to his number on her phone, finger resting on the call button. Then she closed the phone and slipped it back into her pocket. No, she decided, thinking about what G-Dogg had taught her about dealing with other shadowrunners, this is business I should handle in person.

  Chapter 6

  Jackie Ozone preferred the virtual world. In her opinion, the Matrix was better than the real world: cleaner, faster, with rules that made sense. Still, Jackie wasn't one of those deckheads who wanted nothing more than an IV hookup and a comfortable bed that would let her stay jacked in for days on end. She acknowledged the real world, and lived in it. She just preferred doing business online, where she felt secure. This meeting, however, would take place in person, which was how her client wanted it. For Jackie, closing the deal always won out over her personal preferences.

  In fact, closing the deal won out over everything, as far as Jackie Ozone was concerned. She was in the shadows to make money, and she did whatever it took to bring in the nuyen. So now she waited patiently at the small coffee shop in downtown Seattle, one of hundreds of its sort in the metroplex. She'd ordered a small soylatte, but had barely touched it. With her pocket secretary in hand, her stylish clothes and the chrome of her datajack gleaming from her right temple, Jackie looked like an up-and-coming young corporate exec, or an in-demand contract worker. It was a carefully constructed image.

  She sat and ignored her drink for only a few minutes before the door of the shop opened and another smartly dressed woman entered. She made her way directly to Jackie's table.

  "Jackie." the woman said by way of greeting. Her blond hair was straight and stylish, cut precisely long enough to brush her jaw and frame her finely chiseled face. Sunglasses covered her eyes and accented her pale skin. A dark blue pantsuit flattered the toned curves of her body. She was store-bought perfection in every way.

  "Eve." Jackie replied, gesturing toward the empty chair on the opposite side of the table. "Right on time."

  "Well, you said it was something worthwhile." Eve slid into the seat, setting her shoulder bag on the floor beside her. She didn't take off her glasses. She apparently had no qualms about sitting with her back to the door.

  "Oh, I'm very confident you'll like this." Jackie assured her. She laid her pocket secretary on the table and spun it so that it faced the other woman. Eve picked it up and touched the screen to activate it, scrolling down a few times to read the entire file.

&n
bsp; Jackie couldn't see her eyes, but she thought she saw the faintest flicker of a raised eyebrow.

  "Can this be legit?" Eve asked the decker, placing the palmtop on the table. Her tone hadn't changed, but her question betrayed her interest.

  "Everything I've been able to access tells me that there's a very good chance something is still there."

  "It's been a long time." Eve countered.

  "Half a century's not that long for the kind of materiel we're talking about, especially if parts of the facility were sealed." Jackie could feel the other woman's ambivalence. "The kicker," she added casually, "is that Ares was supposed to oversee the decommissioning and disposal of the contents for a lot of sites like this one, but for this particular location, I can find no records of that ever happening."

  "Interesting. What if Ares did the job but just covered it up, or the records were lost, or stolen?"

  Jackie shook her head. "I don't think so. More likely Ares pocketed the money from the U.S. government and then access to the site fell through after the Treaty of Denver, or because of some other trouble. It was easier to just ignore the problem, especially since it was in foreign territory."

  "Where did you get this information?" Eve asked, slowly spinning the palmtop on the table. She seemed to be considering the value of the intel. "Who else knows about it?"

  Jackie had expected this question. Without missing a beat, she answered, "Some warez dood." She didn't mention Kellan's part. It was better for everyone—especially Kellan—if she stayed out of this.

  "Does he know what he's got?"

  "He must have some idea, but he's strictly smalltime."

  "You have the rest of this?" Eve asked, holding out the pocket secretary. Jackie took it.

  "Of course. If I didn't, I wouldn't have called."

  Eve favored her with a slight smile.

  "All right, then." she said. "If you say it's legit, I can think of several uses for it—one in particular comes to mind. It's an angle we've been cultivating for a while."

  "A run?"

  Her contact shook her head.

  "No, an . . . interested party. If you're willing to deliver the data, I'll arrange for double your usual finder's fee."

  "Deliver it where?" Jackie asked. She didn't much care for the way Eve smiled in return.

  * * *

  Telling Kellan her data was worthless was not even close to the worst thing Jackie ever did to a fellow runner. By the time she met with Eve, the decker had convinced herself it was for Kellan's own good. The kid was too green to handle a run like this, anyway. Better she let the professionals handle it than run off and get herself killed.

  After concluding her deal with Eve, Jackie had to admit she was having second thoughts. Not about selling the data, but about agreeing to deliver it to her contact's "interested party." To her, that phrase usually meant some shadowrunner specializing in salvage operations—maybe an arms dealer or a fixer with good connections. Jackie knew her share of that type of person, and had no problem dealing with them. Under normal circumstances, she would secure the data in storage somewhere online, then provide access once payment was delivered to an untraceable account. But the interested party wanted it delivered in person, to a physical location. And once Jackie found out where, it was obvious why.

  They called it the Rat's Nest, and with good reason. It was part of the Redmond Barrens. Officially, it was the North Seattle Refuse Center, a huge open-air landfill north of the Snoqualmie River on the edge of Salish-Shidhe territory. Unofficially, the Rat's Nest was home to the human and metahuman refuse of society. Hundreds of squatters inhabited the mazelike mounds of trash, scratching out a living scavenging everything useful from the landfill. They built tents and lean-to huts from packing material, plastic tarps and other found materials, and the homes—and their inhabitants—blended into the landscape of garbage. The stench made Jackie glad she'd worn a breather mask, which filtered out the worst of it.

  Eve said her client preferred doing biz at night, but there was no way Jackie was visiting the Rat's Nest after dark. She agreed to a meet at sunset, figuring that was as close to daytime as she was going to get, and as close to night as she was willing to go. So, as the setting sun lit up the chemically tinged sky in a spectacular palette of colors, Jackie picked her way past the trash-laden paths just inside the entrance to the landfill. The underpaid guards employed by the metroplex ignored her. Their job was primarily to make sure that what was inside the Rat's Nest stayed inside—one more poor fragger going in was no concern of theirs.

  She'd been assured safe passage, but Jackie felt the weight of what she was sure were hundreds of eyes watching her, concealed in the ragged tents and shadowy piles of refuse. Her hand closed around the light automatic pistol she carried in her shoulder bag. The Rat's Nest was well named, and its inhabitants weren't just human or metahuman. She'd read stories about the devil rats, hideous paranormal creatures the size of small dogs, and the other dangerous creatures lurking in the mounds of trash.

  Her directions to the meet site were solid, and she found it without a single wrong turn. A strange sort of totem pole, like an idol built by a tribe worshipping the cast-offs of modern society, thrust up out of a mound of garbage that nearly hid the door to a warehouse. The totem pole incorporated several broken trideo sets, meters of fiber-optic cable, keyboards and other computer peripherals, and a stained store mannequin with no legs. Jackie stared at it, mesmerized with a strange sort of fascination. The feeling of being watched intensified as she stood in front of the totem pole, and she forced herself to slow her breathing, trying to show no outward signs of concern.

  Where the frag is he? she wondered frantically.

  As if summoned by her thought, a shadow detached from the mound behind the totem and glided toward her. Jackie turned as the figure stepped into the fading light that spilled through the gap between the putrid hills.

  He was human, most likely. It was difficult to tell because his flesh was so heavily scarred, pierced and decorated. Staples ran along his bald scalp and across one cheek, stretching taut his leathery skin, with heavy chrome rings piercing brow and cheek. It was as if his face were a mask of flayed skin worn over muscle and bone. A dark beard stubble was visible in spots, but otherwise his eyebrows were the only hair on his face. His eyes were pits of shadow beneath those dark brows, but Jackie thought wildly that she saw a gleam of red where his eyes should be.

  His clothing was a mismatched collection of synthleathers that creaked slightly as he moved. A padded biker's vest and pants were topped by heavy shin guards, vambraces and shoulder pads. Jackie recognized some of the equipment as parts of a sports uniform of some sort, probably combat biker or urban brawl. Draped across his back like a cloak was a plastic slicker, coated to repel acid rain. Fingerless synthleather gauntlets creaked as he flexed his hands, which appeared empty.

  "Zhade?" Jackie asked in a cautious tone, never taking her hand off the gun in her bag. The figure nodded.

  "You have the goods?" he asked, his voice the rasp of a lifelong smoker, or someone forced to breathe smog-laden air for too long.

  "Yes." she said.

  "Leave it and go." As he spoke, Jackie caught a flicker of movement from beside the totem pole. A bulbous, gray-furred shape shuffled out of the shadows, beady red eyes gleaming in the fading, blood-red sunlight, whiskers twitching as it sniffed the air. The creature was not quite a meter in length. Zhade showed no concern at its arrival.

  Jackie reached slowly into the inside pocket of her jacket with her free hand and withdrew a datapad containing all the information she'd gathered. When she moved, the devil rat scampered to where Zhade stood and curled around his feet like a well-heeled dog, crouching down on all fours and watching her every move.

  She held up the datapad so Zhade could see it, then laid it on the ground at her feet.

  "It's all there." she said. Then she took a step backward, keeping her eyes on the devil rat. She could hear scrabbling and scratching
from the surrounding trash.

  She continued walking backward until Zhade and his pet were out of sight around the edge of the mound. Then she turned and strode purposefully back toward the entrance. She forced herself not to look toward any of the faint noises coming from either side, and not to run. Her hand clutched her pistol so hard that her fingers hurt. The landfill guards looked at her curiously when she walked out, but didn't try to stop her. It wasn't until Jackie had driven a couple of kilometers away from the Rat's Nest that she pulled over to the side of the road to take a few long, deep breaths. She rested her forehead against the steering wheel for a moment before resolutely straightening up in her seat.

  "Toxic." she said under her breath, thinking of Zhade, the totem of refuse, the devil rats. A toxic Rat shaman. She'd never encountered one before, but you didn't work in the shadows for long without hearing rumors and stories. She had long assumed that toxic shamans were real. Shamans drew their magical power from the natural world, from a relationship with their totem spirits. It made a twisted kind of sense, then, that toxic shamans found power in everything unnatural, in garbage and pollution, waste and filth. Those same stories also said toxic shamans were all deranged, unhinged by contact with magical powers no one could deal with and stay sane. Zhade certainly fit the profile. The look in his eyes . . .

  Jackie gripped the steering wheel. It was over and done with. She would check the proper account when she got home to confirm the transfer of funds. Otherwise, her part in the deal was done. She was looking forward to a long bath, and forgetting everything about the Rat's Nest and what lurked there. But as she put the car into gear and eased it back onto the road, she couldn't help wondering: what kind of ties did Eve's organization have to a freak like Zhade?

  She wouldn't even let herself think about the kind of "salvage" he would be interested in—or what he'd do with it.

  Chapter 7

  Squeak lived in Redmond, so it took Kellan a while to get there from Lothan's place on Capitol Hill. Lots of warez doods and deckheads like Squeak lived in the Redmond Barrens, filled as it was with buildings wired for telecommunications, with old fiberoptic trunk lines and jackpoints scattered everywhere. Pirate deckers and techies found plenty of places to access the virtual world and carry out their business.