Shadowrun: Borrowed Time

by R. L. King

  “Within the next few days.”

  “Or—what? You turn into a pumpkin?”

  “Something like that, yes.” Again, the odd look flitted across ’Hawk’s face.

  Ocelot leaned back in his chair and looked out over the crowd. “What’s it pay?” His tone was noncommittal: he knew that even after all this time, Winterhawk would know he wasn’t conceding—he was just exploring his options.

  “Ten thousand up front. Another twenty on completion. Expenses handled.”

  Ocelot considered. It was a good offer—not as good as what he’d made on some of his bigger recent jobs, but respectable. “You check out the job, or we gonna go meet with somebody? Who’s the Johnson?”

  The mage’s gaze didn’t waver. “As far as you need to know, I am.”

  Ocelot didn’t answer for a long time. This was pinging more alarm bells than a botched B&E in a top-secret corp lab. ’Hawk brokering his own jobs? In the old days, the mage and his catlike attention span regarding anything not in his area of interest had barely paid attention during the meets with Johnsons. What was going on?

  He shook his head. “’Hawk, this is fragged up. I don’t know what you been doing all this time, but I know you been out of the biz. I don’t even think you realize how messed up what you just said sounds. You want me to take a job without any background intel? You just want me to trust you?”

  Winterhawk nodded. “Yes,” he said softly. “That’s precisely what I want.” He started to rise. “And I need to know right now: are you in or not? Because if you’re not in, I need to find someone who is. I don’t fancy doing this job on my own.”

  Ocelot stared. ’Hawk was going to leave. He was going to get up and jet, just like that, if Ocelot didn’t play ball. He leaned in, examining the other man more closely. He opened his mouth to say something, but instead thumped his beer cup on the table (no glasses at the Wharf Rat; Frank wasn’t an idiot) and got up. “I dunno, ’Hawk. I gotta think about it. C’mon. Let’s get outta here. My cred for the fight just showed up: we’ll go somewhere and have a real drink.”

  Winterhawk rose too, his hands clenched for a moment around the edge of the table. He looked like he was working through a difficult mental dilemma. “Fine,” he said at last. “But I need an answer soon. I still have more people I need to find.” He retrieved his overcoat and shrugged into it, motioning for Ocelot to precede him out.

  When you haven’t seen someone for a long time, you tend to forget about the more difficult aspects of their personality. Winterhawk contemplated Ocelot’s retreating back as they exited the Wharf Rat into the drizzly, (comparatively) clear air of the Seattle docks. He didn’t know why he’d expected the meet to go more smoothly: wishful thinking, perhaps, though he thought experience and cynicism had burned that out of him years ago. More likely that his mind was still reeling from the very real possibility he’d be dead by next week if he couldn’t get this team together and get this job done.

  Nothing like a little impending doom to derail your higher thought processes.

  “Boss?”

  Maya’s voice poked into his thoughts—he’d almost forgotten she was still there. The last instruction he’d given her inside the bar had been “Let me know if anything’s getting ready to jump me.” She’d replied: “Everything in here looks like it wants to jump you. You don’t exactly fit in.” Sometimes he wished his ally spirit didn’t reflect his own personality quite so much: he wasn’t in the mood for a smartass cat tonight. “Yes?”

  “Trouble.”

  He didn’t get a chance to ask what kind before three figures leaped out from behind parked cars, their movements a blur in the foggy air.

  Before he could call out a warning, Ocelot was already moving. There wasn’t much light in the parking lot, but the brief mental impression the spirit sent revealed the hulking form of Julio, the kid from the pit fight he’d watched on an AR feed from the bar. Apparently losing hadn’t sat too well with him, so he’d come back with some friends to even the score.

  All three went for Ocelot, coming at him from the front and both sides. The two others were almost as fast as Julio: a troll and a human, from the look of them. As easily as Ocelot had taken Julio down, the ork plus two friends might have proven problematic, assuming the friends were equally jacked and quite probably drunk by this point.

  Winterhawk stood back for a moment, watching Ocelot’s fist lash out at one attacker, his foot at another. He moved in a blur, every movement efficient, planned, and lightning fast. He might have gotten older, but he hadn’t gotten any slower—or at least he was doing a damned good job at hiding it behind his disciplined, precision strikes. So far he hadn’t deployed any of his deadlier toys, such as his cyberspur or monofilament whip, but depending on how the fight went, the mage was sure they wouldn’t be off the table if things started going south.

  No doubt Ocelot could have dealt with all three of the kids in time, but you could never count on that in a street fight: any number of variables could go out of control at any moment, and Winterhawk didn’t have time to deal with the aftermath if they did. He didn’t know whether Ocelot would appreciate a little help, but at this point he didn’t care. Pointing his hand at one of the attackers Ocelot had just flung away, he gathered mana and unleashed a bolt of energy that picked the troll kid up and threw him halfway across the parking lot. It wouldn’t kill him—not at his size, and with all the augmentations he had—but it might make him realize that the fight wasn’t three on one.

  “Holy drek, he’s got a spellslinger!” the troll yelled, scrambling to his feet.

  What he managed to miss was that the spellslinger wasn’t his biggest problem. Ocelot took advantage of the troll’s friends’ momentary distraction to unleash a punishing strike into Julio’s face. Something cracked, and the ork yelped, pulling back.

  The human lunged in, swinging a katana at Ocelot in a wild arc. He leaped over the blade, his foot smashing into the kid’s chin and sending him reeling backward into a parked car. The kid dropped and didn’t get up as the car’s alarm went off with a loud, screeching warble.

  “Okay, who’s next?” Ocelot yelled, popping a gleaming cyberspur from his right arm and brandishing it in front of Julio and the troll.

  Maybe it was the threat. Maybe it was the fact that Ocelot had a mage on his side. Maybe it was just the car alarm spooking them. Whatever it was, Julio and the troll decided that whole thing about discretion and valor might have some truth to it. They both turned tail and took off into the night. The whole fight had taken less than thirty seconds.

  By now, a few spectators had drifted out to the lot. Ocelot stood, panting, his eyes scanning the lot for any other potential attackers. He sheathed the spur, swiped blood from the corner of his mouth, and shot Winterhawk a fierce grin. “Dumbasses.”

  Winterhawk couldn’t help returning the grin. It had been too long since he’d flexed his magical muscles in an old-fashioned street brawl, even in such a small way. It wasn’t something he’d ever go out of his way looking for, but it brought back memories of days he thought were long gone. Things had been a lot simpler back then. For a moment, he’d forgotten the sword that hung over him and just reveled in the sheer rush of letting loose with his power.

  Ocelot nudged the unconscious form of the human, rolling the kid over onto his back. “C’mon. Let’s get out of here before somebody calls KE.”

  “Have you actually got a car these days? There’s no way in hell I’m riding on the back of a motorcycle.”

  Continuing the theme of revisiting old haunts, they reconvened at the Glass Onion, a bar where they’d attended many late-night meets with teammates and Mr. Johnsons back in the old days. It had changed, as everything did: formerly a solidly mid-level runner joint, it was now a trendy bar-and-grill that appeared to cater to the corp crowd. That was all right with Winterhawk; tipsy sararimen out for a little relaxation weren’t likely to get too interested in your business.

  Ocelot eyed him over his glass
, which contained an infinitely better class of beer than he’d been drinking at the Wharf Rat. “So, you got anybody else lined up for this team?”

  “Not yet.”

  There was a long pause, during which he looked like he was carefully considering something. “I might know somebody you can talk to. But you’re not gonna like who it is.”

  Winterhawk frowned. “Why not? Are they competent?”

  “Oh, yeah. Competent as hell. Fact is, if you want somebody good, you’re lucky she’s available. She usually isn’t.”

  “But—?”

  Ocelot told him who it was.

  Winterhawk stopped in the act of reaching for his glass, his hands involuntarily clenching into fists. He shook his head. “No. Just…no.”

  Ocelot shrugged. “You said you needed good people in a hurry.”

  “Doesn’t matter anyway. She wouldn’t do it.”

  “Yeah, I think she would. Like I said, things are different right now. You want me to call her?”

  Winterhawk sighed. Things just kept getting better and better tonight. “No. I don’t want you to call her. But I haven’t a choice, have I? Do it, before I change my mind.”

  CHAPTER 8

  ORK UNDERGROUND

  SEATTLE

  THURSDAY NIGHT/FRIDAY MORNING

  An hour later, they were already farther into the Ork Underground than a couple of humans were technically supposed to be without an escort.

  “She’s doing this on purpose,” Winterhawk muttered. He glanced around, feeling every eye and every suspicious glare on them as they wound their way along a narrow, claustrophobic street toward their destination. In addition to Maya, he had a summoned elemental on standby; the two of them patrolled the nearby area on the astral plane, playing nice with the neighborhood spirits, but on the lookout for incipient threats. It didn’t make him feel much safer, though. If any number of unseen observers wanted to, it would be an easy thing to plug him and Ocelot from a distance and be long gone before anybody noticed or cared. Just a couple of smooth-skins where they didn’t belong—anybody would think they got what they deserved.

  Ocelot shrugged. “Sure she is. And loosen up, will you? People down here don’t bite.”

  “Some of them do.”

  He grinned. “Only if you pay ’em first. C’mon, ’Hawk. You’ve been doin’ the jet-set thing too long. You forgot what the real world’s like.”

  Nobody bothered them, but more than one loitering group acted like they were tempted to. Knots of orks and a few trolls lounged against buildings, drinking, chatting, looking over as the newcomers went by. It was too late at night for there to be any children out; music filtered down from open upper-level windows. “You’ve been down here before, have you?” Winterhawk asked.

  “Sure. Never without somebody who belongs, though.” Ocelot’s words were dismissive, but Winterhawk couldn’t help noticing that he was constantly scanning the area too, looking for sudden movement.

  On paper, the Underground was just another Seattle district, its sprawling tunnels and dug-out basements home to many of the city’s orks, fewer trolls, the occasional dwarf, and a varied collection of more “unusual” types who preferred the concealment of the subterranean tunnels to the light (in both a physical and a metaphorical sense) of the surface. Most of them had jobs, families, and the same concerns as the surface-dwellers did. But it didn’t stop there, and anyone who assumed it did and attempted to venture down here unprepared was in for a rude awakening.

  The “sanitized” part of the Underground was a big tourist attraction in the Seattle Sprawl —if anything, that was more true now than it had been back in the days when Winterhawk had still been actively running. But if you were a tourist and you were smart, you kept to the public entrances and well-lit areas that served as the place’s face to the rest of the world. This was especially true if you were a human or an elf—in other words, one of the “pretty” races. Unfamiliar dwarfs sometimes got a pass, and if you were an ork or a troll, you could count on at least getting civil treatment even if you weren’t a resident. But the orks and trolls of the Underground, well cognizant that they weren’t likely to get a fair shake in the rest of the city, guarded their corner of the sprawl jealously. They didn’t look kindly upon unaccompanied humans or elves coming down to get an eyeful of the trogs in their natural habitat. Bribes helped, of course—bribes helped nearly everywhere—but only if you treated the residents with respect and always kept in mind that you were an interloper in their domain.

  Damn her anyway, Winterhawk thought sourly as he followed Ocelot, picking his way through a narrow choke point lined with dumpsters, plaswood crates, and strategically piled mountains of trash. She knew exactly what kind of effect this would have. She was probably waiting at the bar she’d told them to meet her at, laughing as she visualized them navigating the minefield, trying to find their destination amid a sea of signs they couldn’t read and misleading directions and sullen glares from unsympathetic locals. She might even have somebody sending her the street-cam feed of their trek, and be broadcasting it on a viewscreen for the amusement of the room. He wouldn’t put that past her.

  That assumed, of course, that she even planned to show up.

  “Do you even know where we’re going?” he asked, glancing around again. The AROs here weren’t much help: many were written in Or’zet, and the ones that weren’t mostly flashed advertisements for bars, upcoming entertainment events, and local businesses that were probably closed at this time of night. That was when they flashed at all: Matrix access was notoriously spotty down here, and the AROs kept shifting and flickering in and out of focus.

  “Almost there, I think.” Ocelot paused, obviously checking out something displayed on his cybereyes’ AR, then started moving again. “Just up ahead.”

  The bar they were headed to had a name that Ocelot’s Or’zet translator rendered as something like “The Watering Hole.” There wasn’t much information to be had about it on the Matrix, either because it was new (a lot of businesses in the Underground appeared and disappeared quickly as their owners’ fortunes shifted) or because there wasn’t much to display. His quick check with an ork friend had revealed it was a small neighborhood bar, working-class and very, very orkish. Not quite “No Norms Allowed”-level, but that was probably only because no humans had ever been brave (or stupid) enough to try going inside.

  If Winterhawk thought every gaze had been fixed on them out on the street, it was nothing like what they got when they shoved their way through the Watering Hole’s heavy, carved wooden doors.

  The place was small, but packed with male and female orks standing in pairs and small groups, seated around stout wooden tables or lounging near the bar. The air was redolent of the strong but enticing aroma of heavily spiced meat, mixed with the tang of the potent ales popular with many orks. The deafening, percussion-laden music sounded to Winterhawk like what might happen if an unfortunate moose became trapped in a car crusher during a junkyard orgy. He wished he had cyberears so he could turn them down; he didn’t think putting his hands over his real ones would present the sort of image he was going for.

  The music didn’t stop playing when they entered. The crowd didn’t all stop what they were doing and turn to stare at the two foolish smoothies who’d wandered away from their tour group. No hulking form stepped up to growl that their kind wasn’t welcome here. None of that happened—but none of it had to. Winterhawk shifted his perceptions for a moment to assense the room, and had to steel himself from actually recoiling at the sheer level of suspicion, mistrust, and outright dislike rolling off nearly every person in here. And every bit of it was aimed at them.

  “They don’t like you guys, boss,” the spirit he’d summoned to help Maya keep a lookout and to provide backup if necessary, offered helpfully.

  “You think?” That was why he kept them around: their keen grasp on the subtle nuances of social situations.

  She’d told them to meet her in the back room. Ocelot
led the way, bulling a path through the small groups of patrons who didn’t seem inclined to move aside when asked politely. Winterhawk followed in his wake, close enough that the groups didn’t have time to reform between them. As easily as he could have parted the crowds with a judiciously applied bit of magic, he was quite sure that would not be the best way to handle the situation.

  The “back room” wasn’t much smaller than the front one, though the crowds here were sparser and, once Ocelot waved Winterhawk through and slid the heavy door shut behind them, the music was a lot quieter. The place was fashioned to look like a cavern—or perhaps it really was a cavern, one of the spaces carved from living rock long ago by the dwarfs who used to share the Underground with the orks. Electric torches flickered on the walls; the only other illumination came from neon beer signs. Orks, with their natural low-light vision, wouldn’t consider this a problem; neither would Ocelot, with his cybereyes. Winterhawk pulled a pair of sunglasses from his inner pocket, adjusted them for low light, and put them on.

  She was alone at a table in the back, facing out where she could keep an eye on the whole room at once. “So, you made it,” she said as they approached. Of medium height for an ork, she had light brown skin and short-cropped, dark hair tucked neatly under a black baseball cap. “Was wondering if you would.” Her voice, low but surprisingly pleasant, dripped with contempt. Her gaze settled on Winterhawk for a microsecond, then shifted to Ocelot as she pointedly directed her words at him. It was a clear snub. “So. You wanted a meet. What do you want?”

  “Evening, Dreja,” Winterhawk said, the contempt in his own voice matching hers. He took the oversized seat directly across from her without being invited, flaunting his lack of concern about having his back to a room full of potential hostiles. “Blown up any buildings lately?”

  She ignored him and continued speaking to Ocelot. “You didn’t tell me you were bringing him. Thought you had better taste in friends these days.”