Fade to Black

by Nyx Smith

  Her gaze was like a promise, telling him that she had contacts, contacts that could make a deal, a deal that anyone in their right mind would grab at, if only to better the chances of getting out of this mess alive.

  Rico didn't want to believe it.

  * * *

  A voice whispered softly at Bandit's left ear, saying, "Master, look."

  Bandit shifted to his astral perceptions.

  The bedroom now glowed softly with the radiance of life, the astral forms of Rico and Marena Farris, Bandit's own, and one other, a spirit. The spirit took the form of a large raccoon, but one that walked erect.

  It hovered behind Bandit's left shoulder as if to hide from the other astral forms in the room.

  This particular sort of spirit was known as a watcher. It was a simple spirit capable of simple tasks.

  Bandit had assigned it to watch the astral terrain in the vicinity of the apartment.

  "You've noticed something?" Bandit asked.

  The watcher nodded vigorously, and extended a paw toward the wall at the rear of the room. Bandit looked at the wall, but saw nothing of interest. "Come swiftly, master," the watcher said. "Come and look! You said if I noticed anything strange ... Well, this is very strange indeed!"

  Bandit shifted to the astral plane, leaving flesh and bone behind. He wondered what the watcher had noticed. Still sitting cross-legged, he rose from the floor, turned and followed the watcher through the rear wall of the room and into the alley behind the building.

  The night pulsed softly with primal energies. The auras of hundreds of people glowed dimly through the rear windows of buildings lining the alley. Other subtler gleamings of life showed here and there along the length of the alley-the auras of a rat, several weeds, birds pecking at a sprawling pile of garbage. Bandit took all of this in at a glance, and, seeing nothing of value, turned his attention elsewhere. Something else, something far more significant, demanded his attention. It tugged at his magician's sense with sudden violence-and held it.

  Through the alley leading to the next block came tendrils of mana: drifting, flowing. Curling slowly forward like sinuous snakes, radiant with power. Rising, falling. Flowing up and down. Curving in and out.

  As the tendrils neared the back alley, they began turning outward, fanning out left and right, as if to proceed in both directions up and down the back alley, but then they curved back again as if returning to a single course.

  Here was magic in the making, a long magic. Nothing else could bind the mana into such form or send it much beyond the limit of sight. Could this appearance be mere coincidence? Bandit doubted it. Long magic built up slowly, over the course of hours. It was a far more exacting magic than the manabolts and fireballs that fledgling magicians tossed off on the spur of the moment or amid the chaos of a gun battle.

  The leading tendrils of the spell seemed to be coming toward the building where Rico and the others had taken refuge. Even now those tendrils were crossing the back alley, slowly, sinuously snaking their way toward the wall through which Bandit had emerged.

  A group of armed razorguys passing through the alleyways might have been a coincidence. There were hundreds, possibly thousands of razorguys in the plex and they all had to live somewhere. Magic and magicians were far less common. Uncommon enough to be rare.

  What was the point of this sending? Bandit spent a short while considering this, assensing the spell being cast. It appeared to be a spell of detection, one designed to find a particular individual. What individual, he could not tell. Did this have something to do with Rico and the team, Ansell Surikov, or Marena Farris? Bandit wondered.

  On occasions in the past, Bandit had in fact observed the sendings of other magicians, sendings that had nothing to do with him or anyone he knew or anything he was doing, but he could count those occasions on the fingers of one hand.

  Always, it was best to be careful.

  He returned to his physical body. Rico was crouched right in front of him, gazing at him steadily, questioningly. Bandit considered that questioning gaze, then said, "Trouble's coming."

  "What trouble?" Rico asked, grimacing.

  Bandit replied, "How bad do you want to know?"

  * * *

  Through the rear windows of the van, Shank watched the Asian slag turn in off the street and come hustling up the alley, walking fast, almost breaking into a ran. He didn't look like trouble, but his haste made Shank wonder. He was dressed like a cook: greasy white apron, shirt, pants, sneaks. If he had any weapons, they were under his hide and crammed in pretty tight. He was skinny to the point of skeletal. He might've just climbed out of a grave.

  "What's this freaking piece of drek?" Thorvin said.

  Shank grunted, wondering, tightening his hold on his compact Colt M22A2.

  The slag kept on coming, hustled up alongside the van, then turned to the door of the apartment the team was using as a bolthole. He pounded on the door with a fist. Shank stepped out through the rear door of the van, stepped around the rear corner of the van, took one step further and put the muzzle of the Colt at the back of the slag's head.

  "Be real careful," he growled, his voice low and menacing.

  The slag froze, except to slowly turn his head. That head barely came up as far as the middle of Shank's chest. From what Shank could see, the slag looked surprised enough to be terrified, eyes open wide.

  Abruptly, the door to the apartment swung inward and Piper stepped into view. Shank put a hand around the back of the slag's neck, about to push him inside, just into the hallway, to scope him out, but then the slag was looking at Piper and nodding and bowing the way Asians do, and Piper was bowing, too.

  "Okyaku sdma ga kite imdsu!" the slag said. He spoke quickly and quietly, seeming excited. Shank wondered what the fragger was saying.

  Piper's eyes went wide. "Doo yuu imi desu ka!" she said, breathlessly.

  "Shookdijoo o mdtte indkereba narimasen hi!"

  "Ara ma! Osore irimasu! Ddnata desu ka!"

  "Nan-no shirushi ga yoroshii desu ka!"

  They went on like that for a few moments more.

  Shank looked up and down the alley. Nobody passing the street-end of the alley seemed in any particular hurry, no more than usual for this part of town. On the street itself, a sanitation truck rumbled by, workers in black masks, gloves and jumpsuits mounted on the truck's steps. For a night in Little Asia, for any part of the Newark sprawl, things seemed pretty quiet.

  "Hai! Wakammasu! Domo arigato gozaimasu!" Piper said.

  "Do itashimashite!" the slag said.

  Shank lowered his weapon.

  Piper bowed and the slag bowed, too. They both bowed again. The slag hurried back toward the street. Shank looked at Piper. She looked at him and said quickly, in English, "Shank, we must go. Get ready to run."

  "Null sheen," Shank replied. "Run where?"

  Piper stared at him wide-eyed, then suddenly shook her head and hurried back down the hall to the apartment. Shank shrugged.

  Behind him, the van rumbled to life.

  31

  "A deal has been made, jefe," Piper said rapidly. "Daisaka has approached the oyabun himself. Kobun of Honjowara yakuza and agents of Daisaka Security are sweeping the district together. It is said they make discreet inquiries, but that is just cover. They will find us unless we leave here."

  Rico grimaced. "How much time we got?"

  "We must go now. Right now."

  Piper didn't need to give any extra emphasis to her words. Rico could see the emphasis in her eyes.

  She was scared, and probably with good reason. "Somebody sold us out?"

  "Not how you are thinking."

  "One of your contacts."

  Piper shook her head. "Perhaps Honjowara-sama has used us to obtain something he wants from Daisaka. That is most likely. But we have been warned, jefe. Warned to get away. We have been used as pawns. That is not the same as betrayal."

  Maybe, maybe not. It sounded like the kind of deal that a slag like the oy
abun could make with impunity. Rico was in no position to argue about it. What the fragging sama wanted from Daisaka was none of his business. An honorable man might have told Daisaka Security to go slot, but Rico decided to be glad for small favors. Without the oyabun's token consent, they'd never have been able to lay low in this part of the plex, and without the warning that had come to them now ... they might've wound up dead.

  "Let's flash."

  They gathered their gear. Bandit threw a few handfuls of some sparkling stuff all around the front room of the apartment and sang something too soft to make out. Rico didn't know what it was for and didn't waste time asking. They headed out to the alley. Dok and Piper got Marena Farris into the van. Rico tugged the side door closed and got into the passenger seat and then they were rolling, turning toward the nearest transitway. "What's our terminus?" Thorvin said. A fragging good question, Rico thought. This run was pushing their limits. They'd used all the presets, contacts, and hideyholes they'd had lined up in advance. They'd stepped beyond the last step of the plan. They could head for the fortified bolthole in Sector 13, but Rico wanted to save that till they had autofire burning their butts and nowhere else to turn.

  They stopped in Sector 11, just across the border from Little Asia. Thorvin parked the van in the big parking garage two stories below the Hillside New Jersey Transit station. Rico put a credstick into a public telecom, stabbed the Vid Off key, and tapped in a special number. Momentarily, Mr. Victor's voice came through the handset to Rico's ear. "How are you, my friend?"

  "The meet went wrong," Rico said. "The man's trash. The client wasted the merchandise. We had to fight our way out."

  Brief silence. "I am sorry to hear that. I am shocked, though I have had certain difficulties myself. We live in dangerous times. Tell me, how did your problems arise?"

  "How do they usually arise?"

  Another silence. "What will you do?"

  Revenge was out of the question, for the moment. Staying alive was the immediate problem, that and what to do with Marena Farris and her proposal. Rico considered mentioning that proposal to Mr. Victor, but decided against it. Mr. Victor's arrangements hadn't been working out so good lately. Rico still trusted him, but right now it seemed enough to trust him with something simple. "We need a new hole."

  "Perhaps I can help you with that, my friend."

  Mr. Victor knew a slag who knew an address. Mr. Victor would arrange a meet. Rico clenched his teeth, but said that was chill. Mr. Victor then said, "You should know that your former employer has put out the word. Nuyen is offered for information on your whereabouts."

  Rico hesitated. "You serious?"

  "Quite serious."

  Incredible.

  Mr. Victor had to be referring to L. Kahn, and that was incredible because fixers didn't usually put out rewards, not directly. That was like L. Kahn admitting to the world that somebody had stuck it to him, and fixers didn't like to admit that. Fixers tended to be acutely conscious of their image, no less than corps.

  What it suggested to Rico was that L. Kahn must be feeling pressure. Maybe from Fuchi. The suits at Fuchi wouldn't be too happy about their merchandise getting dusted. And they wouldn't be too happy about the disappearance of an employee named Marena Farris either.

  Rico returned to the van, gave Thorvin directions. He could feel Farris staring at him from the rear of the van. That stare was a question waiting for an answer.

  The guano was getting deep. Daisaka Security, the Executive Action Brigade, yaks, informants. Maas Intertech, Prometheus, Fuchi. On top of all that was Bandit's latest warning. The shaman hadn't been too clear, but it sounded like somebody had been coming at them magically in the minutes just before they fled the bolthole in Little Asia. How the frag did that fit in? From the original chipfile for the run on Maas Intertech, Rico knew that Daisaka had magicians on-line, but was that his explanation? And did it matter?

  And now Marena Farris had a proposition, one that could get at least part of the opposition off their backs.

  Rico wondered if he really had any choice.

  The problem with corps was that they had the resources to buy just about any kind of contact or informant that might suit their purposes: cops, hustlers, gangs, whole city blocks, entire governments. You couldn't evade power like that forever. Something had to give. Either the corp eventually decided you weren't worth the effort or the nuyen anymore, or it got you, grabbed you by the cojones and made you dance however it wanted, then dropped you down the nearest garbage chute.

  Rico and the rest of the team could try and lay low, but that would take money, hard nuyen. They all had some, but how much would they need? Enough to sit for months, a year, two years? They'd have to change IDs, maybe alter their looks. Dok could handle some of the surgical mods, but that was just the beginning. Piper would need new programs and hardware just to stay up to date. Rico himself would need some cybernetic mods to keep his bodyware from falling behind the leading edge of tech. They'd all need things: Dok, Shank, Thorvin. It was a question of how they would get what they needed. The reality was hard.

  You didn't get bucks for front-line cyberware playing doorman for some bar or collecting on gambling debts. It took big bucks-and big bucks meant taking big risks. Smuggling contraband. Stealing major paydata. Breaking some slag out of a corporate contract that was the moral equal of slavery.

  It came down to two choices. Dying was the easy way out. Simply send Marena Farris back to Fuchi, then sit around and wait for the corps to come and scrag them. The hard way meant going along with what Marena Farris was proposing, check it out, investigate. Then, if everything looked chill, do it. That might get them just as dead, but Rico could see no other way that they could ever get enough nuyen together at one place and one time to make a difference.

  And time was running down.

  * * *

  His wives waited silently, as wives should, seated around him in the rear of the Mercedes limo as he whispered sorcerous words and wove the spell into existence. A handful of sparkling motes appeared in the air before him and gradually swelled into a pulsating, coruscating cloud. Daniella lowered a window.

  Maurice pointed. The cloud drifted out and across the alley to the door of the runners' apartment. It spread across the door and sifted through the door's substance, passing into the spaces beyond.

  In a matter of seconds, it would expand to fill the three small rooms of the apartment, stunning unconscious everyone it touched.

  A second spell turned the alley door into dust.

  Maurice nodded. Clad all in black, Claude Jaeger turned and darted through the empty doorway and disappeared into the apartment. He would swiftly dispatch the runners and anyone else he found there. And then their contract would be complete. The knowledge and talent of a skilled magician would be forever lost, and that would indeed be a loss, but it could not be helped. The runners had gone rogue, and L. Kahn had ordered they be exterminated. But the more important point was that, with tonight's work done, Maurice would finally be free to return to his studies. He had wasted too many days working magic on the world instead of pursuing knowledge, truth. He was impatient to be done.

  Momentarily Jaeger returned to the doorway. He cast a mouthful of sputum to the concrete floor of the alley. "Mages," he said, with a sneer. "You fragged up."

  Impossible.

  And yet...

  Shifting to his astral senses, Maurice looked at his ally, Vera Causa. At his command, she had scouted the apartment astrally and confirmed that the runners were present. But for that, she had said nothing since their arrival here in Little Asia. She said nothing now. She did not even look at him. Was it possible she had erred?

  "Guard," he told her.

  "Yes, master," she replied. "Of course."

  There was an acid quality to that reply which Maurice did not like. He considered whether this bound spirit might be escaping his control. A difficult matter to decide.

  He snapped his fingers and pointed. Daniella thrust op
en the door on his right and preceded him outside. He did not object when she and the other slitches followed him into the apartment. Daniella had a certain limited ability in the arts, and the others also had certain skills that might prove useful, To the mundane eye, the apartment looked deserted. It was cluttered with furniture, kitchen appliances, trideos, bookdisks, and what looked like the scattered components from several cyberdecks.

  Pillows and blankets, discarded fast-food containers, and other anonymous litter also lay strewn about. The former occupants seemed to have departed swiftly. And yet appearances deceived. On the astral level, the runners appeared to be lingering still. Amid the pulsing fluctuations of the life energy coursing irregularly about the room glowed not one but seven auras, or what appeared to be seven human and metahuman auras.

  It was as if the runners had gone but had somehow managed to leave their auras behind. Maurice had never seen anything quite like it. Plainly now, he assensed that these "auras" were merely a spell, a clever manipulation of mana, drawn from the surrounding etheric energies. What amazed him was the fact that he had been unable to detect this deception while working the ritual spell that had brought him here to these rooms. He had been duped. Led to believe that John Dokker and the rest of the runners were still present.

  How, he wondered, could such a perfect mirage have been assembled? Until now, he had imagined his ritual spell of detection to be inexorable, long and slow, but certain to succeed. Obviously, such was not the case. He felt persuaded by the desire to learn more of this deluding spell. He must investigate the intricacies of a work that conjured such perfect fantasies.

  Concentrating his astral perceptions, he moved nearer the false auras. In that very instant, the spell unraveled, as if it had expected the touch of his mind, as if it wished to keep its secrets. Mana flashed, bursting outward in all directions, blazing, rejoining the pulsing streams of the world.