Shadowrun: Borrowed Time

by R. L. King

  “You can’t do it…you’re losing your grip… You’re not strong enough…you’ve never been strong enough…that’s why they abandoned you…”

  He reached out to turn the knob on the right-side double door, and both of them swung open. Behind them was utter, impenetrable darkness, so black it made his eyes hurt with the strain of trying to pierce it. No hints, then. Turning, he glanced behind him again. The rosebushes were closer now; the flowers’ deep red was even deeper, almost black, the leaves a dark unhealthy gray-green, the needle-pointed thorns the size of tigers’ claws. Clouds rolled in overhead, obscuring the sun and turning the sky an unfeeling slate gray.

  He was wrong, he decided: as hints went, this one was pretty blatant. Either the metaplanes were getting more literal than he’d remembered, or this was just the opening act. Forward: good. Backward: bad.

  Or impossible.

  He stepped into the darkness, prepared to summon a light spell that he fully expected to be ineffective. This proved unnecessary: the moment he crossed the threshold, the doors slammed shut behind him and the lights came up.

  “Welcome,” said a voice. “We’ve been expecting you.”

  Ocelot and Dreja appeared on an arid plain that didn’t look that much different from the Outback landscape they’d just occupied. The rough land stretched out as far as they could see: reddish earth, scrubby, brittle plants, and a vast, pale blue sky. There was no sign of Winterhawk, Thuma, the fire, or anything else familiar.

  “What the hell—?” Dreja demanded, her hands immediately going to the AK-98 slung over her back.

  Ocelot dropped into a defensive crouch, drawing his Mossberg and sweeping it around, scanning for threats. There were none, though: as far as he could tell, there was nothing alive. Even the plants looked spent and dead. “Where’d they go? ’Hawk!” he called. “Thuma! What’s going on?”

  Dreja didn’t put her gun away, but she did lower it. “Looks like we got left behind.”

  “Looks that way,” Ocelot said through his teeth. Had Thuma done this deliberately? Or was it just the metaplanes up to their old tricks again? Obviously they weren’t still at the Aborigines’ ritual site, but were they even still in Australia? Was this a metaplane? When he’d gone with Winterhawk before, there’d been some kind of Watcher thing that tested them before they could go on. Where was that? And if this was a metaplane, what were they doing here if they weren’t meant to help Winterhawk?

  “So what now, we just wait?” Dreja’s heavy brows knotted in frustration. “We just sit here? If that’s the case, we should have stayed back at the camp.”

  “Maybe not,” Ocelot said, though he was as frustrated as she was. “The one thing I learned from the couple times I did this with ’Hawk is that everything happens for a reason, even though we might not have a fraggin’ clue what it is at the time.”

  “Great,” she said. “So, we sit here on our asses until the coach decides to put us into the game.”

  “If there’s still a game when the time comes,” Ocelot said.

  The two individuals standing in front of Winterhawk were both human: a man and a woman, each dressed in perfect business suits covered by white coats. They wore nearly identical smiles, dazzling and cheerful, and had identical shiny silver datajacks on the sides of their heads.

  “You’ve…been expecting me,” Winterhawk repeated. He looked around: it was a spotlessly clean lobby with a tasteful grouping of beige sofas surrounding a glass-topped table on his right, and a large pale gray receptionist’s station on his left. Another set of swinging double doors was on the far side of the room, a few meters behind the two humans. It looked like the waiting room of a high-class hospital. Aside from the pair of humans, no other living soul was visible.

  The woman smiled and nodded. “We’re all ready for you. If you’ll come with us, we’ll give you a tour around the facility, and then show you where you’ll be staying.”

  “You can’t solve this. You’re not clever enough. Are you even sure these thoughts are your own?”

  He shuddered a little and glared at the humans. The male held a datapad—had he had that before? “What kind of facility is this?”

  “Come on,” the woman said, beckoning. “We’ll show you. We’re so proud of what we’re doing here. I’m sure we’ll be able to help you.”

  He studied her for a moment. There was a certain plastic quality to her expression, as if she were looking at him from behind a mask. There appeared to be names embroidered over the breast pockets of both her coat and the man’s, but when he tried to focus on them they seemed to shift and blur. Whatever he was here to deal with, he was sure it wasn’t these two. They were just the messengers. “Suppose I want to look around on my own?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

  She shook her head with a rueful smile. “I’m sorry, but we can’t let you do that. Not at first. After you’ve had the tour and settled in, then you’ll be able to do your own exploring.” She motioned toward the doors. “Let’s go.”

  Acutely aware of what had to be going on with his physical body, he decided it was in his best interests not to stall any longer. Even though he didn’t feel weak right now, as his body faded he knew it would inevitably have a detrimental effect on his astral form.

  He followed the two of them and they pushed through the swinging doors. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw the waiting room recede into darkness as the doors swung shut behind him.

  Far off in the distance, someone screamed.

  “What was that?” he demanded.

  “What was what?” The woman looked back at him. Her face was a little different, but he couldn’t quite identify how.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” the man said without turning.

  They were in a wide corridor now, lined with doors, carpeted in sturdy beige plush, the walls painted brilliant white. Tasteful pastel-dominated abstracts were interspersed at regular intervals. Each door had a small window set into it, but as he tried to glance through them as they went by, he saw nothing but darkness inside.

  He caught a glimpse of his own leg as he moved, and stopped, startled. His immaculate suit and longcoat were now crisp pajamas, slippers, and a black robe belted at the waist. He hadn’t noticed the change.

  “Are you all right?” the woman asked, turning again. Was he seeing things, or was her coat not quite as brightly white as it had been? Looking at her embroidered name made his eyes want to skitter away from it.

  “You’re doomed…” whispered the voice. “You’ll never get it. You’re on your own. No one wants to help you. They’ve already gone back home.”

  “Bugger off,” he whispered. He kept going.

  It took him a while to realize that the light had changed, from muted overhead fluorescents set into the ceiling to drab, institutional hanging fixtures with metal cages built around them. The carpeting under his feet shifted seamlessly from the beige plush to a gray, utilitarian weave. The walls were still white, but a dingier shade in need of a good scrubbing. The pastel abstracts had become yellowed still lifes and floral studies of a type that had gone out of style sometime in the previous century. He noticed that the floor sloped downward at an almost imperceptible angle.

  The screams were more frequent now.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, but he didn’t stop. “Where are you taking me?”

  “I told you,” the woman said. “We’re taking you to where you’ll be staying. How do you like our facility so far?” Her hair was different now, piled on top of her head. Her makeup was overdone, her mascara running just a bit. There were unidentifiable stains on her lab coat and the man’s. Instead of a data pad, the man now held a metal clipboard.

  A hand thumped on the window of one of the nearby doors, fingers splayed like a pale starfish. It stayed there for a moment, then slid downward, as if its owner were being dragged away.

  “Charming,” Winterhawk said, wondering what this was all leading to. Wondering if, whatever form it took, he would h
ave any chance of defeating it.

  “Of course not. You’re going to die alone. You had the chance to survive, but you failed.”

  He kept going.

  “Do you see that?” Ocelot leaped up from where he sat, gesturing with the barrel of his shotgun to something far off in the distance.

  “See what?” Dreja shaded her eyes with her hand and craned her neck. Then she stiffened. “There’s something there. Is that—a person?”

  “Looks like it,” he said. He was sure it hadn’t been there before, but it was there now. Adjusting the magnification in his cybereyes (huh, he thought idly: this is one of the metaplanes where cyberware actually works) he focused in on it. It was a humanoid form—probably male, probably a human or elf from the look of it. It was upright, and seemed to be confined inside some kind of structure. “Come on,” he said, glad to have something to do. “Let’s go check it out.”

  “Careful,” she urged. “This whole place is giving me the creeps. Let’s not give it any excuses to eat us.”

  Ocelot glanced at her and was surprised to see nervousness showing on her blunt features. “You’ve never been to the metaplanes before, have you?”

  She shook her head. “Hell, no.” She glared at him. “I guess maybe I don’t run with the same high-flyers you do. The spellslingers I know blow things up and summon spirits, and that’s about it.”

  Ocelot didn’t answer—he didn’t see the point in setting Dreja off again right now. “Come on—I want to see who that is. Maybe they can tell us what the hell’s going on.”

  They started off at a jog. For a while it seemed like the figure wasn’t getting any closer, but then Ocelot skidded to a stop and stared. “’Hawk?”

  It was indeed Winterhawk—or at least a flawless facsimile. The mage was dressed as he had been back at Thuma’s campfire, in the same grubby bush gear Dreja and he wore. His eyes were unfocused and shadowed, his hair limp and hanging in his face, his hands dangling at his sides. He was imprisoned inside a steel-barred cage about three meters square. As they watched, he shuffled back and forth, wandering in aimless patterns without ever touching the bars. He was muttering to himself, but Ocelot couldn’t make out what he was saying.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Dreja demanded. She tried to open the cage door, but it was locked. When Winterhawk’s path took him near her, she reached out a hand as if to shake him by the shoulder, but Ocelot grabbed her arm.

  “Leave him alone,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m thinkin’ maybe we shouldn’t mess with it.”

  “Why is he in a cage? Why doesn’t he notice us?”

  “Damned if I know.” He tried rattling the cage bars, but they were solid and unmoving, even when he applied his full strength to the task. “But he’s good and stuck in there. I hope the plan isn’t for us to get him out.”

  “Is he doing anything?” Dreja looked like she was trying not to let her fear affect her, but it wasn’t entirely working. “Is this even doing any good, or is he just standing here waiting to die back with Thuma?” She wheeled on him. “You’re the one who’s done this before! Tell me what’s happening!”

  “I don’t know,” he said again, feeling every bit as helpless as she looked. He studied Winterhawk again, then let out a frustrated hiss of air through his teeth and dropped down to sit on the dusty ground next to the cage and wait.

  For what, he had no idea.

  The place was changing. Devolving. Winterhawk struggled not to blink, not to take his eyes off what was happening around him, but even as he tried to maintain his focus, he still didn’t see when it changed. He only saw the increasingly horrific results. Whatever he was here to find, he was getting closer. He was certain of that.

  The path continued sloping downward. The screams were nearly constant now, coming from all around him, bouncing off the walls and redoubling in their wordless terror. The doors lining the corridor were something from a nightmare, each one with pale, reaching hands grasping at their tiny windows. Sometimes the windows were gone or broken, and the slashed and bloody hands stretched out, trying to grab him. He dodged out of the way, but it was getting harder with every step. The corridor was even narrower now. Once, one of the hands brushed his shoulder; a shudder of revulsion ran through his body.

  In front of him, his two guides had changed too. They still wore their white lab coats, but they were so stained now that they were more red and brown than white. He didn’t look at their faces anymore. Above him, the lights crackled and buzzed and cut in and out; an eerie strobelike effect cast the area in the hellish guise of something that was never meant to exist in a sane world.

  The worst was when the corridor would widen out into a room. The screams grew louder then, echoing so much they seemed to be coming from every direction. Shadows writhed against the walls, though he couldn’t see what cast them. The clean, white, modern purity of the initial areas had given way to something that wouldn’t have been out of place in an old-style madhouse: heavy wooden instruments of restraint, wrought-iron cages, overpowering odors of sweat and blood and death.

  His clothes had morphed again at some point. He tried not to look at them, but the pajamas and robe had transformed along the way; first into a set of filthy white scrubs, and then to a tattered, shapeless gray garment that hung limply down to his knees. His arms were thin, too thin, covered with bruises and half-healed cuts. The floor under his bare feet was rough wood, strewn with broken glass from the windows, with the occasional shattered chair or discarded child’s toy flung against the walls. The figures on the peeling flocked wallpaper…moved. He blinked and looked away.

  “Almost there…are you ready to die alone? You can’t win. You are lost. Your mind is losing its grip. Give up now.”

  “No…” he muttered. Giving up wasn’t an option. It’s all an illusion. It’s just the metaplanes messing with your head. He focused on that thought and kept going. None of this is real. It’s all symbolic. Deal with what is.

  But what if this was “what is”?

  What if he was going insane? What if none of this was really there? His breathing sped up, his heart pounding.

  The voice inside his head laughed, a mocking sound that mingled with the screams.

  Winterhawk gritted his teeth and kept walking.

  After what could have been a few minutes, a few hours, or a few days, his two guides stopped. The walls and floor were stone now, great gray blocks imperfectly set and stained with what looked like long-dried blood. The lights were torches set in sconces at wide intervals. A light, frigid draft wafted along the floor, carrying with it the rich, fetid aroma of bare earth and the dead things entombed in it. Ahead, at the end of the corridor, was a small elevator. It was an old-fashioned one, the type where you had to open a metal gate, enter the box, and then close the gate before beginning your descent. A rusted metal plate next to it had the same crawling, uneasy text as the two guides’ coats, and Winterhawk still couldn’t look at it long enough to try to read it. Below it was a single blood-red button.

  “Here we are,” the woman said. Her voice still had the same cheerful lilt, but delivered now in a rasping tone that sounded like two oil-coated stone plates sliding against each other. She took up a position on one side of the elevator, and the man mirrored her on the other. The woman grasped the metal cage and slid it open, and then they both regarded him expectantly. The screams were louder now. They seemed to be getting closer.

  He didn’t look at the two humans. Instead, he stepped forward until he was standing in front of the door.

  “Do it,” whispered the voice. “Do it now, before you lose your nerve. Die alone, in agony, as your mind deserts you. Your friends have left you. You have no one. But still, you have to see what awaits you. Do it. It will all be over soon.”

  He stabbed the button with a decisive finger.

  The door slid open. Inside, there was darkness.

  He stepped inside.

  Ocelot leaped up as Winterhawk abruptly st
opped his aimless shuffling. “’Hawk?”

  The mage ignored him. He stood still, beginning to shake. His jaw was tight, his teeth gritted, beads of perspiration plastering his dark hair to his pale forehead. His hands knotted into fists.

  “What’s he doing?” Dreja moved around him, circling him.

  “Looks like he’s fighting something,” Ocelot said. “Like something’s trying to take him over, and he’s fighting it.” Unable to restrain himself any longer, he grabbed Winterhawk’s shoulders, gripping them firmly, feeling the tension. Whatever the mage was doing, he was as tightly wound as a guitar string tuned to the breaking point. “’Hawk! Can you hear me? We’re here! Let us help you!” He glanced helplessly at Dreja.

  Winterhawk showed no sign that he heard or noticed them.

  The elevator trundled downward, swaying and jerking, periodically bashing against the sides of what was clearly an uneven shaft. Winterhawk stood in the center, looking straight ahead, avoiding even glancing at the walls with their peeling, freakish images that moved and flowed from one panel to another. Only the door seemed clear of them, so the door was where he focused his attention.

  “They’ll never find you now, even if they wanted to. You have to do this alone, and you’re not strong enough. You will fail—”

  “Shut up!” he yelled, pressing his fingers into his temples.

  He couldn’t feel his physical body anymore, but he didn’t have to. He knew its reserve of energy was nearly gone.

  The door opened onto darkness.

  He slid open the metal cage and stepped out, expecting the lights to come up again, wondering what new horror-show panorama he’d be presented with this time.