Shadowplay

by Nigel Findley

  He nodded, acknowledging the wordless communication. “So what now?” he asked quietly.

  “We’re taking a walk,” she said again. “Across the street, behind the warehouse. And no fast moves, okay? I don’t want to geek you, but I will if you force me.”

  He nodded again. “I know,” he said calmly. “Okay, it’s your party.” He swung himself off his bike, calmly started to jander across the road. A little belatedly, she followed, keeping some distance between them.

  Halfway across, he turned back. For a hideous moment she thought he was going to try something; she tightened her grip on the revolver. But he just smiled. “I could blow the whistle on you, you know,” he remarked, his tone still conversational. “Raise a bloody riot, yell, ‘The slitch behind me’s got two bloody guns.’”

  “But you won't,” she said, injecting more confidence into her voice than she felt.

  He walked on, thinking about it for a few moments. Then, “No, I won’t,” he shot back over his shoulder.

  In the relative darkness behind the warehouse, out of sight from the street, Sly began to feel more secure. She pulled her Warhawk from its pocket, trained it on the back of Modal’s head.

  He turned to face her, eyes steady on the massive revolver. “So you do have your own gun,” he said. “I was starting to wonder.”

  She touched the Warhawk’s trigger, activating the sighting laser, positioned the ruby dot on his forehead. “Kneel down,” she told him coldly, “hands behind your head.”

  He didn't move. “I don’t want to go on my knees.”

  “I told you I wasn’t going to geek you,” she snapped. “Get down.”

  He shrugged, as though it didn’t really matter. But he obeyed.

  Sly let herself relax a little more. With his wired reflexes, the elf was still hideously dangerous—particularly if he thought she was about to pull the trigger—but at least in this position he’d be slower to move. She released the revolver’s trigger, and the laser died.

  He looked up at her, smiled. “I guess you want to have a little talk.”

  She took a deep breath, trying to control her emotions. There was something very wrong here, but she couldn’t figure what it was. Modal was just too calm. Not relaxed, for she could see the tension in his body. But it was the tension of readiness, like a panther poised to spring, not the tension of fear. His eyes were fixed on her like gun sights, but they revealed no obvious emotion.

  It doesn’t really matter, she told herself firmly. I’ve got the drop on him. I’m safe.

  She forced her voice to sound equally calm. “Tell me about Yamatetsu,” she said.

  He nodded, almost to himself. “You know, then.” Know what! she wondered, but tried to keep the puzzlement out of her face. Maybe if he thinks I already know, he’ll tell me more.

  “I know some of it,” she told him. “And I suspect more. I just need to confirm it.”

  Modal smiled at that. “I always did like your moves . . . Sly," he said—his purposeful hesitation over the name striking home. “Good interrogation technique. Don’t let the subject know how much you've already got.”

  “Yamatetsu,” she reminded him. “Are you working for them?”

  He hesitated, eyes searching hers for some clue. “Yes,” he said finally. Then added hastily, “But not in the way you probably think.”

  “Tell me,” she pressed. “And don’t lie to me. If you lie, I’ll drop you right here.”

  He nodded. “Yes,” he said slowly, “you would, wouldn’t you? Okay, the truth. Yamatetsu’s after you. Searching the shadows with a fine-tooth comb. They’ve got operatives out—their own people, plus maybe a dozen hired runners.”

  “And you’re not one of them?”

  He shook his head with a smile. “Not directly,” he said. “I don’t run the shadows anymore. It’s a young mug’s game, you know that. There’s bold runners, and there’s old runners. But there’s no old, bold runners.” She grimaced at that. He’s younger than I am, she thought with disgust. “So how come you’re involved?” she asked harshly.

  “What do retired shadowrunners do?” he asked rhetorically, “Open a bloody boutique? Sell ladies’ hats?”

  “You’re a fixer.” To her own ears, the words sounded like an accusation.

  “On the bloody nose,” he said with a grin. “I’m still in the game, I can use all my old connections, but I don't have to hang my arse out and wait for somebody to shoot it off.”

  She nodded slowly. “So Yamatetsu came to you to hire street ops.” She thought out loud. “Who’s Yamatetsu Seattle? Jacques Barnard, still?”

  “You’re out of date. Barnard got bumped upstairs three months ago. He’s in Kyoto now, no doubt living in the lap of bloody luxury. It’s Blake Hood. A dwarf and a real charmer. Blakey makes Jacques Barnard look like a nancy-boy.”

  “How many runners?”

  Modal shrugged. “Blakey likes to share the wealth. He never gives everything to one fixer.”

  “How many contracts did he offer you?”

  “Eight. And he was offering top brass, too.”

  Sly could hear her pulse in her ears. Eight high-priced runners. She probably knew some of them. Like they said, Seattle wasn’t a big town, not in the shadows—and that made it worse. No pro was going to let sentiment get in the way of biz, and the people who were after her might know her habits, know where she dossed down. Frag, she thought, I could have talked to one of them tonight. Quickly she reviewed what she’d said on the phone to the members of her information net. Too much, probably.

  Who the frag am I going to trust? she asked herself, feeling her fear like a dirty snowball in her belly. Nobody! Tox!

  She glared down at Modal. “And of course you filled those eight contracts,” she accused bitterly.

  “Of course,” he answered reasonably, “It’s biz, isn’t it? And even if I didn’t, Blakey would just go to another fixer, wouldn’t he?”

  She had to accept the truth of what he was saying, but that didn’t make her feel any better. “You were looking for me yourself, weren't you?” she grated.

  His eyebrows rose at that. “So you were at The Armadillo. I thought you were.”

  “Why?” she growled. “What were you going to do? Scrag me yourself? Pocket the bounty?”

  Modal was silent for a moment. “I don’t know what I was going to do, and that’s gospel.” He shook his head. "The bounty would have been nice. Ten K’s a lot of scratch, and times are lean. But god’s truth, I don’t know what I’d have done. Scragged you? Warned you? I don’t know.”

  Sly found herself staring into the depths of those black eyes. They were still clear, showing not the slightest trace of fear or of any other emotion. He could be lying, but she didn’t think so.

  But . . . drek, ten K. A ten-thousand nuyen bounty. Somebody wants me bad.

  “Why?” she demanded again, but this time the word was a different question. “Why’s Yamatetsu after me?” He shrugged.

  Anger flared in her chest, almost, but not quite, overpowering the fear. “Aren’t you at least curious?”

  “Not really.” Modal’s voice was calm, uninflected. “It doesn't really matter. There’re dozens of people on the street looking for you. Whatever the reason, they’ll find you soon enough, and you’ll go down.”

  She stared at him again. With a different intonation, those words could have been a threat. But the way Modal said them they were merely a bald statement of fact. Which only made them more terrifying.

  “Do you know?” Modal’s question was mildly curious, nothing more.

  I think I do. Sly thought, imagining she could feel the weight of the two datachips—the one containing Morgenstern's personnel file, and the other one containing Louis’ encrypted file—in her pocket. Imagination, of course; each chip, even in its carrier, weighed less than a feather. For an instant, she felt an almost overwhelming impulse to confide in Modal, to bounce her suspicions off him. But of course that made no sense. He could jus
t as easily turn round and tell Yamatetsu how much she’d figured out. She shook her head.

  “Oh, well.” He shrugged.

  And that, of course, brought her to another question. Just what the frag was she going to do about Modal? Turn around and walk away? Possibly. But she’d confirmed to him, accidentally and indirectly, that she was pretty tight with Theresa Smeland. That meant he could pass that gem on to Yamatetsu. And how would they handle it?

  Probably the same way they’d handled Louis. She couldn’t do that to Theresa. Sly could drop out of sight; there wasn’t anything—not really—holding her to Seattle. But Theresa had The Armadillo, no doubt had much of her net worth sunk into the bar. Doing the quick fade would, for Smeland, be the same as Sly leaving behind her “retirement fund.” That would leave Smeland with only what she could carry, plus whatever liquid assets she had, while the business she’d built up would be gone. Great way to reward a friend for being a friend, huh?

  And Modal himself. Frag it.

  His eyes were still on her—steady, untroubled. But there was something else in them, even if she couldn’t discern any emotion. A look of awareness, of understanding.

  He knows, she thought. He knows what I’m thinking. She couldn’t meet his gaze, looked away. Looked at the rough ground, covered with garbage. Looked at the back of the disused warehouse, up to the lights of the city that showed above the hill leading to Elliot Avenue. She tightened her grip on the Warhawk. Frag it till it bleeds. . . .

  “Geeking me would be the easy way out,” the black elf said evenly, echoing her deep, painful thoughts. “But it’s not the only way.”

  She looked at him again knowing that her silent entreaty, her inner plea for him to explain another way out showed in her face. “Talk,” she said roughly.

  “You can’t just let me go free,” he said, his voice as calm as if he were discussing the weather. “You think I’ll go to Yamatetsu with what I know. I know your moves, Sharon Louise, I know where you hang. I know a lot of your mates. And I know you’re here. If you let me walk, even if you take all my gear, I can get to a phone in two minutes. Yamatetsu could have this place flooded with street ops in another five. And how far could you get in seven minutes? Not far enough. Right?”

  She nodded miserably. He was just reciting the reasons why she had to kill him. Was he depending on any feelings she might still have for him to keep him alive? (Were there any feelings? Yes, frag it, there were.) But if he was, he was misjudging her. She’d hate herself afterward if she had to kill him, but she could do it. If necessary. And she would. Her finger tightened on the trigger. The laser dot trembled on the kneeling elf’s chest.

  “But there’s another way.” Even this close to death, his voice gave away nothing, neither fear, nor supplication.

  “Talk,” she demanded again. This time her voice was a whisper.

  “Use me, Sharon Louise,” he said, the name paining her like a knife twisting in her gut. “Turn me. Make it so I can’t work with Yamatetsu. Make it so I don’t have any choice but to work with you.”

  “How?” The plea almost caught in her throat.

  “I could say, ‘Trust me’,” he said with a chuckle. “But I know what that’d get me.” He looked down meaningfully at the laser dot. “Trash me with Yamatetsu. Compromise me, make it look to Blakey like I’ve sold him out to you. He’ll buy it. He doesn’t trust anybody, and he knows we were . . .” He let his voice trail off.

  She was silent for a moment. She couldn’t feel her hands, was numb from the elbows on down, but she could see from the movement of the sighting dot that they were trembling. It makes sense, she thought. What he says makes sense. She wanted to believe him. She wanted . . .

  “I’ll tell you how. It’ll work, Sharon Louise.”

  “Sly!”

  “It’ll work, Sly.”

  Suddenly, rage flared up inside her, a consuming fire of overpowering anger. She moved the gun off-line, pulled the trigger. The big revolver boomed, kicked hard in her hand. She heard the bullet slam into the ground beside Modal. He jumped at the report, at the sound of the heavy slug splitting the air near his ear. But his gaze remained fixed on her face, his eyes and face showing . . . nothing.

  “Feel something!” she screamed at him. “Feel something! It’s like you're a fragging zombie! What the frag’s wrong with you? I could kill you!”

  “I know.” Still not the least trace of emotion.

  She forced the rage down. Painted the bridge of his nose with the laser, knowing it must be flaring in his eyes. His pupils contracted, but that was the only reaction. “What is it?” she whispered. “Tell me.”

  “Always emotional, Sly,” he remarked conversationally. “Always letting emotions get in the way. Just like I used to. Don’t you get tired of it? Doesn’t it slot you up sometimes?”

  He didn’t wait for her answer, asked another question. “Ever hear of ‘deadhead’?”

  Taken off balance by his query, she shook her head wordlessly.

  ”It's a drug,” he explained flatly. “It decouples the emotions. They’re still there, but your conscious mind can’t access them. When you’re taking them, you can’t feel your feelings. No fear, no anger. Most of all, no sadness. Can I?” He moved his left hand slightly.

  She tightened down on the trigger, felt it move. Another bit of pressure and it would break, putting a bullet into his head. She nodded.

  Slowly, carefully, he reached down and extracted something from the outside pocket of his leather jacket. Held it toward her. A small plastic vial, containing dozens of small black pills. “Deadhead,” he explained needlessly. He set the vial down on the ground, put his hand back behind his head. “I’ve been taking them for three years.”

  She stared at the pills, then looked back into his eyes. “When did you start?” It was an effort to force the words out.

  “Soon after.”

  “And what ...” She couldn’t finish the question.

  “At first it was just what I needed,” he explained. “Everything’s still there, all the sensations. Senses are unaffected. But the emotional reactions are just . . . tuned out. I can do anything, without emotions getting in the way. Just the thing for a shadowrunner, yes? That’s what I thought. No pain, no regrets, no torturing yourself after the fact for the decisions you’ve made, for the mistakes.” He shrugged again. “Of course, it cuts out all emotions. I can’t feel sadness, but I can’t feel joy either. Not unless I take another kind of pill.

  “And there are side effects. There always are with something that affects you this . . . profoundly. It feels like there’s a band around my forehead, sometimes tight, sometimes loose, but always there. And if I misjudge the dosage, people’s voices sometimes take on a ... a kind of metallic ringing. But it’s a small price to pay, don’t you think?”

  No! she wanted to yell. It isn’t right. It isn’t life. Emotion’s what separates us from the animals, isn’t it? We don’t just act, we feel. But . . .

  But wasn’t there something attractive about it, too? An end to emotional pain. To those nights when you wake up in the dark, and you’re tortured by all the might-have-beens and the never-weres? To the fear that loosens your bowels, twists you up inside? To those dark midnights of the soul when it just doesn’t seem worth the effort to go on?

  She shook her head. No. Sometimes the emotions weren’t pleasant. But frag it, they were her emotions.

  “Why don’t you stop?” she asked, then came the question she’d really meant to ask. “Can you stop?”

  He smiled up at her. A smile she now knew was a mask, an empty façade. A habit he’d acquired and hadn’t lost yet, like an amputee trying to scratch at the leg that isn’t there anymore. “The street doc who turned me on to these things said they were habituating,” he said quietly. “Just habituating. I found out later they’re physically addictive. More addictive than heroin, than nicotine, than cram. . . . No, Sly, I can't stop. And I wouldn’t want to if I could.

  “I said the
emotions are still there, I just can’t access them. Would you like to face a three-year supply of emotions? Emotions you haven’t processed? All at once?”

  He shook his head. “I’d rather you pull that trigger, thank you very much.”

  She glanced down at the gun, realized she was still a hair short of firing. With an effort, she released the pressure on the trigger. Looking down at Modal, she saw not the slightest trace of emotion, of relief, as she lowered the weapon. Disgust twisted in her belly.

  “I'll rat you to Yamatetsu,” she said harshly. “Tell me how to do it.”

  6

  0230 hours, November 13, 2053

  As they walked, Falcon toyed with the Fichetti pistol. It felt solid, slightly heavier than he’d expected, a well-machined chunk of metal and ceramic composite. Its lines were smooth, business-like, with no odd protrusions to catch on a holster or the inside of a pocket. Even the bulge of the laser sight, mounted under the barrel, was rounded, streamlined. The weapon felt somehow reassuring in his grip, much different from his jury-rigged zip gun. The zip gun should have been more lethal because the round it fired was much bigger than the Fichetti’s, but Falcon had always suspected that the jury-rigging would make using the zip gun even more dangerous to him than to his target. Not so the Fichetti.

  “Never been heeled before, huh?”

  Falcon turned. Nightwalker was watching him with a faint grin. Condescension?

  The young ganger felt a tingling in his cheeks, knew he was blushing. “Sure I have,” the lie came quickly. “All the time.”

  The shadowrunner didn't say anything, just watched him steadily. His smile didn’t change, but Falcon’s interpretation of it did. It wasn’t condescension he saw, but understanding. There was a difference.