Shadowrun: Borrowed Time

by R. L. King

  She shifted position as she spoke, making another scan of the area, including a sweep of the skies this time, looking for drones or any flying creatures that might be paying too much attention to her. For now, she still saw nothing.

  The pause this time was even longer. Kivuli wasn’t sure whether the voice on the other end was pausing to get its anger under control, consulting unseen data sources, or simply trying to get under her skin by filling her with uncertainty about her fate. “Acknowledged,” it said after nearly a full minute. “We will attempt to recover the target’s body.”

  “Do you want me to go back there and help?” she asked.

  “No. Stand by and await further instructions. If we are unsuccessful in recovering the remainder of the data, you will receive your next assignment.”

  She let her breath out. So they were planning to continue keeping her in their employ, for now at least. It was something. Perhaps then she would have a chance to redeem herself.

  “Your failure to obtain the entirety of the data, however, will be deducted from your final payment for the assignment.”

  It was nothing less than she expected. “I understand.” She didn’t even bother to ask the voice to help her find a place where she could hide from astral searches. That was something she’d need to do on her own.

  The connection broke without any further comment from the other end. Kivuli waited a moment longer, then pulled a small grapple gun from her belt. As she silently and gracefully rappelled down the side of the building, she was already initiating another call.

  CHAPTER 18

  LOCATION

  LOS ANGELES

  SATURDAY MORNING

  Winterhawk stared too long at the small, bloody hole in the Americar’s seat, until Ocelot finally prodded him. “’Hawk?”

  The mage let his breath out. “Why did she kill him?” he asked in an odd, faraway tone. It didn’t make sense. If Kivuli had wanted Boyd dead, she had ample time to kill him at Pandora during the firefight. One stray round would have done it, and she was certainly a good enough shot to pull it off without arousing their suspicion. Why did she go to the trouble of trying to escape with him?

  And then he thought he knew. “She didn’t mean to…” he said in the same tone.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Dreja demanded. Her frustration with him hadn’t been apparent during the chase and the initial discovery of the accident scene, but now that it appeared they weren’t in danger of imminently being jumped, it resurfaced with renewed vigor. “‘She didn’t mean to’?”

  He pulled back, getting out of the car. “I think she intended to take him somewhere alive. She probably convinced him to go with her voluntarily, and only killed him when Scuzzy’s detours led her into an ambush.”

  “So why’d she drag him into that place?” Ocelot asked, indicating the theater with a head jerk.

  Scuzzy’s text popped up in their AR windows.

  “I doubt she had time for that,” Dreja said. “There’s not enough blood in the back seat for a decapitation, so if she did it, she did it in there.”

  “People are watching you,” Maya’s voice broke gently into Winterhawk’s thoughts.

  He glanced up, startled. “Where?”

  “All around. Up high. They’re waiting.”

  Ocelot and Dreja reacted immediately to Winterhawk’s sudden tenseness. “Trouble?” Ocelot asked, scanning again.

  “Possibly. Maya, are they hostile?” He wanted to get an astral look himself, but didn’t want to leave his body vacated in an area like this.

  “They’re just watching. I think we’re making them nervous. Some of them have guns, though.”

  He wondered if they were the same group who’d set up the ambush of the Americar. If they were, maybe they were just being cautious: an armed group the size of theirs was a bit more daunting than a single vehicle with two occupants. Still, they could be summoning reinforcements as his group stood in the middle of the street talking. They needed to find that headware, and fast. He had no idea how much of Boyd’s knowledge they might have lost if he truly was dead, but the dwarf had told them that his files were locked up in his ’ware. “We have to go,” he said abruptly.

  “Go where?” Dreja asked. “We need to find Kivuli and Boyd.”

  He nodded. “Yes. We need to go into that theater, now. Maya?”

  “Here.”

  “Please check inside that building. Tell me if you see anyone alive, and if so, mark where they are. Especially if you see Kivuli or Boyd. Be careful, though. If you find anything that can hurt you, run away.”

  He felt her agreement as a soft touch in his mind, and then she was gone.

  While they waited, the three of them drifted back toward the Bulldog. “Has the drone spotted anything?” Dreja asked.

  “Yeah, there are definitely people in some of the windows,” Scuzzy said. “I don’t think it’s safe to hang here too long.”

  “Did you get a look at them?” Ocelot asked.

  Tiny, still crouched on top of the bus, jumped down and came over. “They’re ducked back behind the windows, like they’re tryin’ to stay out of sight.”

  “This is gang territory,” Dreja said. “They probably ambushed Kivuli and Boyd, and now they’re waiting more of them to show up before they take us on. We need to hurry.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Ocelot said, sounding contemplative.

  “Why not?” Winterhawk asked. He was notoriously bad at things like examining graffiti to determine which gang had primacy over a particular neighborhood (it was one of those perennial topics of teasing from his old teammates, along with his legendary lack of proper skill with firearms), but even he could see that the proliferation of painted tags covering the building indicated heavy gang involvement.

  Ocelot shook his head. “You’d think it would be…and I’m guessing it used to be. But look at the tags. They’re old. Faded. That’s the thing with gangs—they’re constantly fighting it out over turf, testing each other’s boundaries, tagging over each other’s tags. That’s what gangs do. But these look like they’ve been around and undisturbed for a while now.”

  “I don’t see any recent AR tags, either,” Scuzzy said. “What’s it mean? They left?”

  “Or else they’re not fighting over the area anymore,” Ocelot said. “Which might mean something’s changed so there’s no reason to fight over it anymore.”

  “Like what?” the decker asked.

  Winterhawk didn’t hear Ocelot’s answer, though, because Maya chose that moment to come back. “Kivuli isn’t inside,” she said.

  He moved off a little from the group, crouching behind the Bulldog. “What about Boyd?”

  “Not alive, if he’s there. I found a body, but I can’t tell whose it is.”

  “Why not? You saw Boyd—the dwarf. Can’t you tell if it was him?” Winterhawk’s tension was growing again, knotting the muscles between his shoulderblades.

  Maya managed to sound delicate when she answered. “It…wasn’t all in one piece.”

  His eyes widened, and he stood quickly back up. “What?” And then a slow realization settled over him as his mind began to put two and two together.

  The nearly-deserted neighborhood… the trail of blood… Kivuli’s absence…

  “Maya…are there other beings inside that building?”

  The cat’s voice took on a tinge of reluctance. “Yes.”

  Oh, bloody hell…no… “How many?”

  “Didn’t count. Twenty or so, that I saw, I think. Maybe more, hiding.”

  “Could any of them see you?”

  “Yes.”

  He moved back around to where the others were still conversing; they appeared to be comparing notes on which windows were occupied, painting the targets on an AR window that Winterhawk didn’t currently have up. “You aren’t
going to like this,” he said, cutting into their discussion.

  Dreja looked up sharply, swinging her gun barrel around as if she expected to see something looming up behind Winterhawk. “What?”

  “Boyd’s dead. We’re going to have go in after him to get that headware back. And Kivuli didn’t drag him in there. Ghouls did.”

  CHAPTER 19

  UNKNOWN LOCATION

  The view on the AR window showed a figure obviously sitting at some kind of outdoor location, perhaps a park or a table at a sidewalk café. It was a beautiful, sunny day where he was, but something in the software obscured his face. It was possible to identify him as male, human, and dark-skinned, but nothing more.

  “How are things progressing?” the caller asked.

  The man in the sunny climate nodded. “Everything is going according to plan. Our team was able to liberate the package from its location with little difficulty. It has been taken to a protected facility where it cannot be traced. We’re only waiting for you now.”

  “There’s been a bit of a setback. Our local operative was not able to secure the details on where the other package is currently located. The target is dead, and she was only able to obtain partial data from his headware files.”

  The man with the obscured face leaned forward. “What are your next steps, then?” His voice took on a dangerous edge. “We thought you had everything under control up there.”

  “There’s no need for concern. Our operative will continue to track the team who originally had the target. After they recover the information from the headware and learn the location of the package, she and our other operatives will follow them and ensure that the package is recaptured. It might require another day or two before we can begin the next stage of the plan, but no more.”

  “See that it doesn’t,” the man said. “Keep me apprised of your progress. I want to have everything in place and be ready to move as soon as we have both packages in hand.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  CHAPTER 20

  LOS ANGELES

  SATURDAY MORNING

  “Careful,” Dreja snapped, putting up a hard-muscled arm to catch Winterhawk across the chest and stop his forward progress. “You might be able to spot ghouls with magic, but if you blunder into some kind of mundane trap, we’ll be just as dead.”

  Winterhawk nodded, pausing to let her go first as they stepped into the lobby of the old theater. A wary Ocelot brought up the rear, Mossberg in one hand and monowhip in the other.

  It was just the three of them—and Maya, of course, who was running astral overwatch along with another summoned spirit. As soon as Winterhawk mentioned ghouls, Tiny held up both hands, shook his head with great vehemence, and pronounced, “No. Fragging. Way. You ain’t payin’ me enough to go in there after fraggin’ ghouls. Let ’em have the damn dwarf. Maybe when they’re done with him we can go in and pick the headware outta the scraps.”

  They didn’t have time to argue. Dreja glared at him in disgust, called him a few choice names in Or’zet that nearly brought the two to blows, but finally ordered him to stay on the street with Cosworth and Scuzzy. “Stay in contact,” she’d told them. “Keep an eye on the area, and let us know if any trouble shows up.”

  Cosworth produced another small, tracked drone from one of the storage compartments in the Bulldog. “I’ll send this in with you. It’s not armed, but it’s got a good sensor package and lights. We’ll be able to keep an eye on you from out here.”

  The theater was of an antique vintage, the type that had been popular in the early part of the twentieth century. Its small box office out front had been nearly destroyed, its windows broken and everything inside gutted. On either side of it were sets of double doors with colorfully tagged plywood nailed over their broken glass panes. The set on the right was locked with a heavy chain and padlock, but the right-side door of the left set opened under protest, dragging against an accumulation of dirt and compacted trash. By assensing, Winterhawk determined that the blood trail led in through this door and disappeared into the darkened lobby.

  The first thing that hit him when he stepped inside, careful to mirror Dreja’s footsteps on the moldy, grime-strewn remains of formerly thick carpeting, was the smell. It wasn’t strong out here, but the fetid stench of rotting flesh hung heavy in the air, mixing with the dust.

  “Anything, ’Hawk?” Ocelot asked, his voice laced with disgust.

  Winterhawk paused, reaching out to Maya. After a moment, he switched back on. “They know we’re here,” he said.

  Dreja stopped to check several of the small pouches on her vest and belt. “I’ve got some grenades. If they come after us, we can make ghoul salsa out of ’em.”

  “Not yet,” Winterhawk said. “We have to get that headware first.”

  “You don’t even know where they took Boyd,” Ocelot said. “He could be anywhere in here.”

  “I have an idea. Maya says she saw them gathered around a dismembered body in the backstage area.”

  Ocelot frowned at that. “Who says he’s the only dismembered body they’ve got around here?”

  “Come on,” Dreja said, picking her way through the lobby.

  At the rear, the remains of the concession stand stood in the middle; staircases on both sides presumably led up to the balcony, while each side had two doorways in the back, the doors ripped from their hinges long ago, and probably salvaged for some other purpose. Behind the concession stand, the only decorations were a few dusty paper cups and a single, tattered The Hills Have Eyes poster hanging askew on the wall.

  “Restrooms and the entrances to the theater itself,” Winterhawk said, indicating the two doorways on either side.

  “Anybody in the drekkers?” Dreja asked. She shone her flashlight back and forth as Cosworth’s little drone cruised around, exploring the space.

  “Maya says no.”

  “Let’s go,” Ocelot said. “The longer we’re in here, the more I’m getting the creeps.” He swung his shotgun’s barrel around.

  “Don’t you have some kind of spell you can use to look around and figure out where they are?” Dreja asked Winterhawk.

  “Yes, but there’s no light back there, so I wouldn’t be able to see anything. Ghouls are blind, remember? They only see on the astral. Better to trust Maya, anyway—I don’t fancy leaving my body unoccupied in here.”

  She nodded; clearly even she couldn’t find a decent argument with that. “Cos, send the drone in first to light the place up.”

  “On it,” came the rigger’s voice. “All quiet out here so far.”

  Cautiously, the three of them moved through the rear lobby door. The drone’s light and their flashlights illuminated a narrow aisleway that stretched forward into shadows. On their left side were the rotting husks of upholstered theater seats, some of which had been ripped free of their moorings and tossed haphazardly onto others and into the aisle. Tiny skittering sounds broke the eerie silence as scavengers scuttled around beneath the debris.

  “There’s a balcony above us,” Ocelot said quietly, moving forward in a sideways scuttle that kept his back to the wall. “If any of ’em are up there, they could ambush us easy. Especially if they have weapons.”

  “They’re fraggin’ ghouls,” Dreja said, lips curling around her tusks. “Mindless killers. If anything, they’ll jump down on us.” She added an upward component to her flashlight sweep, though, as they stepped out from beneath balcony overhang.

  “I think most of them are backstage,” Winterhawk said. “That’s where Maya saw the body.”

  They kept moving forward, slowly, picking their way with care over and around mounds of trash, the mangled remains of seats, and piles of what looked like old clothes. A short way down Winterhawk accidentally kicked something; a roundish, pale-white object that rolled half a meter or so down the sloped aisle before hitting the wall with a thud.

  “Careful!” Dreja hissed, swinging her flashlight around to illuminate the object.

  It was a m
etahuman skull: an ork, from the look of the tusks. Its owner was obviously long dead; the tattered bits of hair and flesh that still clung to it were dry and desiccated.

  Dreja stared at it, swallowing hard. “Fraggin’ cannibals…” she muttered.

  “Keep moving,” Ocelot said, nudging her forward.

  They’d made it about halfway down the aisle when Maya spoke in Winterhawk’s mind: “They’re moving.” Nearly at the same time, the other spirit reported the same thing.

  “The drone’s sensors are picking up something—” Cosworth’s voice came over the link.

  It happened fast after that. Several near-simultaneous clicks sounded from several different directions, and hunched figures detached themselves from the shadows at the front of the theater.

  “Behind us!” Ocelot snapped, whirling and bringing his gun around.

  Winterhawk turned too, to spot more figures, two on each side, blocking the exit doorways. He looked up to see more of them leaning over the balcony, aiming what looked suspiciously like guns in their direction.

  “Frag…” Dreja whispered over the link as she aimed at the pair of ghouls blocking the way they’d come in.

  “Wait!” Winterhawk said.

  “Wait for what?”

  “Look.” He was facing back toward the stage again, and pointed.

  Four of the figures were heading up the aisle—toward the group.

  CHAPTER 21

  LOS ANGELES

  SATURDAY MORNING

  Dreja and Ocelot took cover instantly, diving behind two different rows of seats. Dreja still had her AK-98 trained back up the aisle, while Ocelot leveled his shotgun at the approaching figures.

  Winterhawk remained where he was. “Keep an eye on them,” he told Maya. He summoned an armor spell around him, but otherwise didn’t move.