Shadowrun: Borrowed Time

by R. L. King

“No. I didn’t want to arouse any suspicions by flagging any searches for him, in case anyone is paying attention.”

  “I’ll see what I can find,” Scuzzy said, pulling out his deck.

  “Don’t get caught,” Dreja said, eyes narrowed.

  Scuzzy made a pfft noise and rolled his red-rimmed eyes. “Hey lady, I don’t tell you how to shoot your guns, right?”

  “Not yet…” Ocelot muttered.

  “Is anybody else after the dwarf?” Kivuli spoke up. “Should we expect any kind of resistance other than from his own corp?”

  “Not that I was told,” Winterhawk said. He pulled out his commlink and sent around the holopic and the fact file on Toby Boyd. “Naturally, that means we should expect it.”

  “So, after snatching him, we’re supposed to be getting some item, but you don’t know what it is?” Tiny asked. He kept shifting uncomfortably, his bulky frame too big for his seat. “Drek, what kinda job is this? We’re just supposed to go in with no intel?”

  “If it was easy, anybody could do it,” Ocelot growled. “You don’t do the job, you don’t get paid.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” he said, waving him off. “Payment clears, I do the job. I’m just here to shoot stuff anyway.”

  “Do you have a plan for how we’re doing the extraction?” Dreja asked with a glare at Tiny. “Or are we just gonna make it up as we go along?”

  Winterhawk shook his head. “Suppose you tell me how you expected me to have a plan, since I had no idea what sort of group I’d be working with? That’s where you lot come in: we’ll get more facts once we get to L.A., and then I’d hope that between us we can come up with something that will work.”

  “So, the only way we find out about this thing and the rest of the job is from the guy?” Tiny asked. “What happens if he gets killed?”

  “We make sure that doesn’t happen,” Winterhawk said, fixing him with a cold stare. “I got a look at the artillery you’re bringing along—don’t expect that you’ll be using it much. I want this one to be as quick and quiet as possible.”

  “You can plan for that all you want,” the samurai said. “Don’t mean it works out that way. And when things go sideways, you’ll be glad to have my guns protecting your ass.”

  Winterhawk started to reply to that, but decided it was pointless. He let his breath out slowly and remained silent, looking out the window at the layer of clouds rolling along below their wings. He felt the tension rising in his shoulders and the back of his neck again, remembering one of the reasons why he’d gotten out of the shadowrunning game in the first place. He’d run with Ocelot long enough that the man was one of the few in the world he trusted with his life, even after all this time. Whether that was a mistake or not was beside the point. But the rest of this group—they were already getting on his nerves, and the plane hadn’t even landed yet.

  He settled back in his seat and took a few deep breaths, focusing on a meditation technique he used when preparing to perform ritual magic. He had no idea if remaining calm would slow the poison’s progression, but it couldn’t hurt. And he might as well get a jump on cultivating inner calm around this lot.

  Before this was done, he had a feeling he’d need as much of it as he could get.

  Dreja moved to the back of the plane and sat back down to look out the window. Like Winterhawk, she was stressed, but unlike him, she was not meditating.

  She dragged the smaller of her two gear bags over and began going through it, ensuring that everything was where she wanted it to be. It was a kind of ritual to her, carefully incorporating each new bit of kit into her carefully arranged configuration. She had trained herself to find any given item in this bag in pitch darkness, and this obsession had saved her life on more than one occasion.

  When she finished, she put the bag aside and leaned back, studying the backs of the others’ heads and already regretting her decision to take this job. If this got out—assuming they survived, which was becoming less of a given in her mind with each passing hour—it would play hell with her reputation. That made her smile, a tight little thing with no humor in it: her rep wouldn’t mean a fragging thing if Gianelli’s people caught up with her before she had the cred to pay him off. She’d already sent the initial payment to him, but it was only a small fraction of what she had to come up with to get him and his people off her back for good. She’d be a lot more comfortable if she knew what the second part of the run involved; she was sure Winterhawk actually knew and was keeping it to himself. The mage was like that, even worse than most magical types she’d run across: he loved his secrets, and getting them out of him was like trying to get a dragon to part with his hoard. Dreja was convinced he was keeping this one because as soon as he told her what they were after, she’d walk.

  And I fragging well will, she told herself with a firmness that she didn’t feel, staring down at her hands clenched into fists in her lap. Gianelli can wait for his fraggin’ cred if it’s that bad.

  Movement caught her eye, and she looked up. Ocelot was working his way down the aisle toward her. She glared at him. “Don’t catch hints too well, do you?”

  He dropped down into the seat across from hers. “You can be alone later. I want to talk to you first.”

  “So talk.” She eyed him with distaste, but nothing close to the level of loathing she reserved for Winterhawk. At least this one looked like he could handle himself in a fight, and maybe actually knew what it was like to live on the streets and wonder where his next meal was coming from. He wasn’t an ork, sure, but he couldn’t help that. His choice of friends, on the other hand—

  Ocelot glanced forward, then lowered his voice down to something that barely carried across the aisle. “I wanna know what the hell’s going on between you and ’Hawk.”

  She shrugged. “Not your business, neh?”

  “I’m makin’ it my business,” he said. “If I’m gonna trust somebody to watch my back, I want to know some old bad blood isn’t gonna make her go off the plan.”

  “I took his cred. I’ll do the job. You know my rep, or you wouldn’t have called me.”

  “Yeah,” Ocelot agreed. “And I know you two have issues, but I didn’t know they were that bad, or maybe I wouldn’t have called you. I thought it was just a professional rivalry thing.”

  She snorted. “Professional rivalry. Yeah, that’s a nice way to put it.”

  “Dreja—”

  “Listen,” she said, her voice dropping to a hiss. “I don’t like him. That’s pretty much an understatement. He’s an arrogant, over-privileged asshole who thinks he can do whatever the hell he wants to, and frag anybody who gets in his way. He’s the kind of guy I spend my life trying to take down.”

  Ocelot put up his hands as her words grew more vehement, flicking a glance up front to make sure nobody else had reacted. “Hang on, hang on,” he said. “Where you getting all that? I mean yeah, ’Hawk’s always been a little out of touch with the streets, but—”

  “You know what he’s been doing, right? When was the last time you two talked? You’re still based out of Seattle, aren’t you? You still send each other Christmas cards and get together for lunch three times a year?”

  “Haven’t seen him for two years,” Ocelot said. He shrugged. “I dunno what he’s been up to, except in general terms. Does it matter?”

  She stared at him, unable to keep the incredulity from her face. “Does it matter? Damn fragging right it matters. Don’t you think it matters what somebody stands for? What they decide to spend their life doing?”

  Ocelot’s eyes narrowed. “Lady, I’m a street kid from Seattle who got lucky. I managed to pull myself up out of the gangs and stay alive longer than I should have. You can talk about ideals all you want, but I’ve never met anybody who didn’t chuck their ideals into the nearest drekker when things start going to hell.”

  Dreja’s fists clenched in her lap again. “Go sit somewhere else,” she said, her voice a rumble in the back of her throat. “I’m done. I signed up to
do a job, not to have stupid conversations with clueless smoothies.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then got up. “Fine,” he said. “You do your job, we got no problem. Right now, all I care about is getting this over with and coming home in one piece.”

  “What was that about?” Winterhawk sat up a little straighter as Ocelot returned to his former seat across from him.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Telling you lies about me, was she?” The mage didn’t look disturbed by this.

  Ocelot pulled a small folding blade from his inner jacket pocket, flicked it open, and began cleaning his fingernails. “You tell me. Was she?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He sighed. “Look. I’m already getting sick of playin’ lunchroom monitor between you two. So either tell me what’s goin’ on, or the next one of you that mouths off’s gonna get one in the chin.”

  Winterhawk turned in his seat a little to face him. He appeared to consider for a moment, then shrugged. “It’s nothing, really. She hates everything she thinks I stand for, and I think she’s an idealistic fool.”

  “Oh, hey, if that’s all it is…”

  He glanced back toward where Dreja was sitting. “She…takes issue with my recent activities. Especially since a few months back, when she was hired as part of a group sent to retrieve a particular magical artifact from Amazonia, and my little research group got to it first.”

  “That’s just biz, though, isn’t it? Why would she—”

  “Oh, it’s not just that. She felt that the item should be returned to the indigenous population, even though the culture that created it has been dead for thousands of years, and the so-called ‘indigenous population’ was backed by a group headed by a wealthy private collector.”

  “You know this?”

  “Let’s just say all the data pointed in that direction.”

  “So, she thinks your people stole this artifact out from under the noses of the poor, downtrodden natives, and you say it would have ended up in some rich slot’s collection and the natives wouldn’t have seen a cred.”

  “Essentially, she thinks my purpose in life is to exploit underprivileged primitive cultures by appropriating priceless magical items integral to their cultural heritage. Or something like that—I suspect her version would have fewer syllables and more expletives.”

  Ocelot focused on his fingernails in silence, then folded the knife up and put it away. “Hey, you okay?”

  The mage glanced up quickly, startled. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I dunno. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t seen you for a while, but there’s something just—off—about you. I can’t put my finger on it. That makes me nervous. I don’t like being nervous.”

  “You’ve figured it out,” he said with a wry smile. “I’m actually not me at all. I’ve been taken over by a malevolent spirit bent on world domination. This is just the first step in my fiendish plan.”

  “You know, you’re this close to getting that punch in the nose. Just because I want to punch somebody right now, and your smartass routine is getting old.”

  Winterhawk sighed, spreading his hands. “What can I say? I’m fine. Bit tired, is all. I wouldn’t have chosen to take this job, but I—owed someone a favor, and they called it in at an inconvenient time.”

  Ocelot didn’t answer that. He also didn’t mention that if the mage were any more obviously hiding something, there would have to be signs and AROs involved. “Whatever,” he said at last. He glanced over at Scuzzy, whose slack-jawed, glassy-eyed expression and twitchy fingers clearly indicated immersion in some Matrix game. “Get some sleep, you look tired. I’ll tell you the truth: I’m not thrilled about doing this job with you. You’re out of practice. That’s dangerous. But if it has to be done, you’d better be at your best.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Winterhawk said. “Believe me, I’m more motivated than you are to have this whole thing go as smoothly as possible.”

  “You do remember that never happens, right?”

  “Just this once, let me dream.”

  CHAPTER 10

  LOS ANGELES

  FRIDAY LATE MORNING

  The Los Angeles area had undergone many changes in the last decade, as the combined wrath of forces both magical and geological had ripped at it until it was left as a series of interconnected islands. One thing that never changed, though, was the smog.

  The plane landed at a small airfield in Riverside. The sky was a leaden gray choked with yellow, a steady dry breeze blowing as the team transferred their gear from the cargo area to the van Dreja had arranged to be waiting for them. Winterhawk had left the logistics to her: he hadn’t been to Los Angeles recently, and the last time had been as part of a team delivering a paper at a conference at Cal Tech.

  The local rigger Dreja had hired was an amiable, dreadlocked blond elf named Cosworth who looked like he’d be more at home on a surfboard than behind the wheel of a vehicle. “Hop in,” he said, waving them toward the battered GMC Bulldog he’d pulled up next to the plane. “Nellie’s got plenty of room for everybody.”

  Dreja gave him an address, and in less than an hour they arrived at a nondescript, suburban ranch house with an oversized garage in a white-bread neighborhood near the 405.

  Winterhawk raised an eyebrow at it, then at her. “This is a safe house?”

  “Who’s gonna notice it?” Ocelot asked. “I’m gettin’ bored just lookin’ at it.”

  “Doesn’t look like much,” Winterhawk said dubiously.

  “Just the way it’s supposed to look,” Dreja pointed out. “It’s got more than you see. Armored up, high-end locks, full security system. Between Scuzzy, Cosworth, and any spirits you want to summon up, nobody’s getting close to us. Just the way I like it.”

  They threw their bags down. Scuzzy immediately curled up on an old sofa, pulled out his deck, and switched off the rest of the world. Tiny found an Urban Brawl game on the trid, while Dreja sat down at the kitchen table and began repacking her small bag.

  Winterhawk summoned Maya. “Take a look around, will you? Let me know if anything looks suspicious.”

  “You look suspicious in this house,” she told him, her prim voice amused. “I thought you were allergic to the suburbs.”

  He actually chuckled at that, staring out a window into the small, scrubby back yard. It contained a rusting swing set and what looked like the remains of a sandbox; he wondered if they were put there for show by whoever had set the place up.

  Maya came back to report the all-clear about the same time Ocelot walked into the room. “Everything okay?”

  Winterhawk nodded. “Just doing a bit of astral recon.”

  Ocelot didn’t answer for several seconds. “So…you gonna tell me what this is really about?”

  “What do you mean?” His fingers traced idle patterns into the dust on the windowsill. He didn’t look at Ocelot.

  “Come on, ’Hawk. I’m not an idiot, and I know you. There’s more to this than you’re telling us. So, you gonna tell me what it is?”

  Winterhawk shook his head. “No. Not yet at least.” He turned; Ocelot stood in the middle of the room, watching him warily. “I promise you, though: it won’t affect the run. It’s just something I—need to deal with on my own for now.”

  Ocelot studied him. “You sure I can’t help?”

  “I don’t see how.” He pushed off the sill and headed toward the door. “Come on. Let’s go see if our malodorous decker has made himself useful yet.”

  Ocelot, clearly admitting defeat for the moment, followed him out.

  Scuzzy was sitting up now, carefully stowing his deck away in its bag.

  “You find out anything about our guy?” Ocelot asked.

  “Some. You’re not gonna like it, though,” he said.

  “Try us,” Winterhawk said, preparing for the worst. Tiny and Dreja drifted in.

  “I hope you weren’t planning on grabbing him when he’s at work,” t
he decker said. “That’s gonna be tough.” He popped up a couple of screens to their AR. “There’s some seriously nasty IC protecting the data about that guy, which is weird. He’s some kinda mid-level parabotany researcher at Shiawase, just like you said, but every time I tried to access any files on him, something kept trying to shunt me off. Nothing attacked me, it just—tried to divert me somewhere else. It’s like they don’t want anybody to know he exists.”

  “Makes sense, if they’re afraid he’s an extraction target,” Ocelot said. “Right?”

  “So you’re saying they know you were poking around looking for him?” Dreja asked. “I thought I told you to—”

  “Calm your tusks, chica,” he protested, holding up a hand. “I said they tried.” He grinned. “I eat systems like this for breakfast. They’re good, but they’re not that good. I intercepted their warning messages and sent them off to the cosmic bit bucket. They got no idea I was there.”

  “But did you get the data?” Winterhawk asked.

  “Yeah, some. I didn’t try for everything ’cause I didn’t wanna push my luck. But like I said, he works for Shiawase, at one of their big facilities in the Harbor District. And there’s no way we’re gonna get in there.”

  “Why not?” Tiny asked.

  Scuzzy rolled his eyes, clearly unable to hide his opinion of Tiny’s mental horsepower. “Because,” he said, his tone condescending, “They’ve got more freakin’ security than most banks. It’d be suicide trying to get in there in the meat. Even if we could fake the credentials, we’d have no way to get near our guy.”

  “So you’re sayin’ you can’t do it,” Tiny said, crossing his arms and frowning. “Maybe we need to find us a better decker.”

  “I think what he’s saying,” Winterhawk said, “is that we haven’t time for the sort of planning it would require to pull off that kind of direct infiltration.” He did a considerably better job than Scuzzy had at keeping his voice even.

  “Thank you,” Scuzzy said, nodding for emphasis. “You said we only have a week for the whole job, and that includes whatever we’re doing in Australia. To grab him at work we’d have to spend most of that planning. And it still might not be enough.”