by Mel Odom
44
Argent arrived in Denver at Lowry Airport with the team that evening. The SINs and IDs Peg and Archangel had managed to cobble together for them over the past two days held up under the scrutiny of the flesh and blood and cybernetic security in place to protect CAS interests. Hard-eyed secguards covered the airport, weapons in sight. The security tech was also top of the line. Laveau registered the magework done to keep the integrity of the airport secure.
Denver was also known as the Front Range Free Zone. Independent and dependent all at the same time, the mile-high city was divided between six political sectors that included the UCAS, CAS, Sioux Nation, Aztlan, Ute Nation, and Pueblo Corporate Council.
With the way the relationships between the six countries remained within the plex, no trade or currency could legally travel between the sectors. If it hadn't been for the runners plying the shadows between the sectors, commerce of any kind would have died in the area, or would have been bitterly fought over on six armed fronts.
Argent was counting on the Wild West nature of the area to help with the exfiltration efforts he had planned. Once they'd dropped into the CAS, getting permits for weapons hadn't been a problem. The CAS had a permanent soft spot for allowing personal defense weapons to its citizens and guests, and that courtesy continued to be respected in the CAS sector of Denver. The SINs Peg and Archangel had put together covered the weapons the group carried.
The only thing that wouldn't have made it through security had been Archangel's deck. Knight Errant provided the security for the sector regarding decks, and even those that were properly licensed by the CAS sector of Denver had ID-trace chipsets installed so Knight Errant could monitor activity going through the Matrix.
Then again, with the black market running rampant through Denver, Argent knew they could replace the deck within an hour after they started looking.
The only potential hose-up had been when a group of fans had recognized Harrison Dane from the trid show. He'd split off from Argent at once and started signing autographs. It also provided him the opportunity to check along their back trail.
Outside the airport, Argent flagged down a cab. He and Archangel took the first cab while the Travers twins and Laveau went on to the hotel the big Shadowrunner had set up in Chinatown. With all the animosity running through the areas regarding Chinatown, Argent had figured it would be the safest place to be. Luckily, they were trying to stay hidden, not find anyone. Digging someone out of the sectors was much harder than disappearing.
Argent and Archangel made the rendezvous Rottstein had fixed up with the CAS Yakuza at half-past 2200. After slotting the credstick he had for the transaction with the black market dealers the fixer had recommended, Argent and Archangel walked away with a top-of-the-line NovaTech Slimcase 10 cyberdeck.
Inside a cab Argent flagged down a few blocks from where the transaction had taken place, Archangel ran her hands across the NovaTech cyberdeck. "Expensive." the elven decker said quietly.
"You can work with this?" Argent asked. Peg had set up the specs while Archangel had been deep into the Matrix.
"Easily. What I'm talking about is the cost of the deck. Even without the black market prices, this unit is over two million nuyen."
Argent was aware of the price. Being selective about the work he did in the shadows didn't always push him toward the big money. Even with the impressive brag sheet on the shadownet, there had been lean times, or runs that had doled out a high cost. Leveraging the two million nuyen to buy the deck had left him tapped out, especially after the shadow tariffs Peg'd had to pay to jockey the money around. And if he had to cover the whole cost of the unit if it was damaged or destroyed, he'd be broke for a long time to come.
"We can't keep it." the big shadowrunner told the elven decker. "That investment has tied up all of my liquid capital and then some."
"I can understand."
"In case you were thinking out upping your end of the contract price." Argent said, "I'm broke."
She looked at him thoughtfully, studying his face, his eyes.
For a moment, Argent got the impression that she was looking straight into whatever was left of his soul.
"I wasn't scamming toward that at all." she said softly. "I'm not that way. I've got standards, and I stick to them."
Argent nodded.
"Why?" she asked.
"Why what?" Argent didn't understand the question.
"Why risk everything for a woman you haven't seen in years?"
45
Argent didn't say anything for a time and sat draped in the shadows filling the back seat of the CAS Denver cab.
"If I've stepped over the boundaries, I apologize." Archangel said quickly.
"No." the big man replied. "I was just thinking how best to answer your question. I think you asked it wrong."
She glanced at him.
In her eyes, Argent again saw some of the pain and confusion that she worked so hard to mask. "It would be easier to ask me how could I not risk what I'm risking."
"Okay."
"The answer is that I couldn't not risk it."
"Why?"
"Part of it has to do with the way I see myself." Argent answered. "When chummers need me, I'm there. When I hire on with a Mr. Johnson, if I'm not lied to, or if I understand why I was lied to at the time, I stick. How many absolutes do you see in the world we live in?"
"I don't know that I've ever bought into the metaphysical." the elven decker said.
"I've seen the Matrix." Argent said. "Being involved with that world involves buying into a lot of concepts. Not everything is as it looks in the Matrix."
"But there is something there." Archangel said. "And if you ignore it, it will slot you fragging quick."
"My behavior is my own, but only to a degree. I was raised with absolutes. The... training... I experienced allowed only absolutes. I walked away from much of that. But I couldn't walk away from it all. If I had, there would have been nothing left." Argent paused, looking at the elven decker. "Do you understand?"
"Maybe." she answered. "When you run the Matrix and encounter IC that you've never seen before, you can't depend on what you think you know about all the IC you've seen before. You have to depend on what you know about yourself, about what you can handle. It gives you a certain perception."
"Close enough." Argent rubbed his face, feeling the stubble there and knowing he'd need to shave soon.
His appearance was one of those absolutes he kept for himself. "Most of your world stems from your encounters in the Matrix."
"And yours is based on what you can accomplish while working with people and the situations they've involved themselves in."
"Yes."
"But what made you develop this ..." Archangel seemed at a loss for words.
"Code of behavior?" Argent supplied.
"That'll do."
"Because there was nothing else." Argent told her honestly. "Everything I was trained to believe in was taken from me. All I am is the way I conduct myself. I was all I had left."
"And Sencio."
"Yes."
"Only her code of behavior ultimately proved different than your own." the elven decker said.
"Yes."
"That left you and how you saw the world."
Argent nodded. "It's a strength and a weakness, Archangel. My view makes me strong because I believe in it."
"Even to the point of putting your life on the line for it."
"There's no other way to truly believe in it."
"Then how does it make you weak?" the elven decker asked.
"Because I could be wrong."
"Wrong to believe?" She seemed confused again.
"No. Believing is never wrong. But belief isn't fostered only out of passion. There has to be logic behind it as well. I can't just believe because I want to. I have to believe because I know I can believe, not because I have to."
"Even if it's something you've never done before?"
"Do you
always know you can defeat IC in the Matrix?"
"Of course not. I've found some that I haven't been able to sleaze my way through."
"But any time you set yourself to take it on, you believe you can sleaze your way through it?"
"Yes. Otherwise, why try?"
"Exactly."
Archangel shook her head and turned away, staring out at the passing street in the downtown CAS sector of Denver. "I don't see how what I feel about the Matrix applies to relationships."
"You're the one who's drawn the lines." Argent told her.
"What do you mean?"
"You feel the way you do about your skills inside the Matrix because you want to."
"I have to feel that way in order to get my job done."
"Then you have a reason to feel that way." Argent granted. "But you've chosen to have that confidence.
Just as you choose not to have that confidence in relationships."
She was quiet for a time and the hum of the cab's tires rolling across the street filled the compartment.
"You make it sound easy."
"It shouldn't." Argent said. "Because it's not. Belief is a very strong thing, but it's also the most demanding emotion you'll ever know."
"How do you get it?"
"You don't." Argent said. "It gets you for the most part.
When there's nothing else to turn to, when you're at the most alone you've ever felt in your life, that's when belief will come to you."
"Just like slotting a datachip?" Archangel snorted derisively.
Argent ignored the emotion. What he was dealing with, what she was feeling at the moment, was a very powerful thing. It wasn't just an epiphany for her or him; it was a shared thing that came out of both their needs to know. "No. It's always a very small thing at first, and if you don't recognize it for what it is, don't nurture it, it'll die."
"And if it does?"
"It's only because you discovered you weren't as alone as you thought. People turn to other things during those crises. Some to chem, some to BTL chips, some to other people or religious trappings. Most people can probably get by without believing. There are too many other things to lean on."
"But you can't?"
"No."
"That's such fragging bulldrek." Tears sparkled on Archangel's cheeks, but she quickly wiped them away and no more reappeared.
"You weren't asking those questions about yourself, were you?" Argent asked.
"No."
"They were about someone else? The guy you started to get involved with from your old team?"
"In some ways, you remind me of him." Archangel said.
"How?"
"He has to believe too." she replied. "He has to know what he's doing is right. But I don't think he's as aware of the process as much as you are. He's always tried to keep his life simple, with no attachments to anyone. Because he doesn't trust himself to be what he needs to be for other people. But he can't walk away from things, either. His life just continued to get more complicated."
"Because of you?"
"Jack—" She stopped herself. "He didn't even know I was starting to care too much about him."
"He didn't see it?"
"There were other problems at the time. Other commitments."
"You didn't tell him how you felt?"
"No. He had enough to worry about. I felt it was unfair to pull him in so many directions. And I knew for fragging sure I wasn't going to get involved with something like this. It was a dead-end street. Not going to happen no matter what."
"Why?"
"Because I choose not to let it." Archangel responded. "I am going to be in charge of my life, in charge of the decisions I make without having them influenced by other clutter in my life. I'm good at what I do because I'm a pro."
Argent considered her words, then chose his next tact, feeling there was no convincing her. The elven decker didn't want to be convinced; she was trying to understand because the run had touched her own feelings more deeply than she'd thought it would. "You don't think we can pull this run off?" he asked.
"I do." Archangel said. "Otherwise I wouldn't be here no matter how much Peg wanted me to be."
"Then what?"
"You're doing it for the wrong reasons."
"How do you figure?"
"I'm getting fifty thousand nuyen for my part in this." Archangel said. "You aren't getting that. In fact, even after reselling this deck when we're finished with it, you're going to end up in the hole."
"You can look at it that way." Argent admitted. "But the way I look at it, if I didn't attempt to rescue Andi Sencio and her team, I'd end up a lot further in the hole than a few nuyen."
"Only because of the expectations you place on yourself."
"Yes. But without those expectations, I wouldn't be who I am. Saving my life only to lose my self doesn't sound like a good trade-off."
"That isn't what would happen."
"I think it is." Argent said. "Let's turn things around for a moment. Suppose this friend of yours got into trouble? The worst trouble you could imagine, and he asked you for help. What would you do?"
"If I could help, I would."
"Even if it meant risking your own freedom, your life, your financial well-being?"
"Yes."
"And you think he'd do the same?"
"At the time." Archangel said, "I didn't have a doubt about it. But things have changed."
"Because you left?"
"Yes."
"How long has it been since you've seen him?"
"Three years."
Argent got the feeling she could have let him know the time to the hour and minute. "Then why haven't your feelings about it changed?"
"I don't know."
"Maybe you should see him." Argent said softly.
"I think that would be a mistake." the elven decker replied.
"You don't know till you try."
She faced him, sliding her sunglasses into place and tripping the night-vision function. "Look, we got a lot deeper into this than I wanted to. I was just looking for a perspective point, not a lecture."
"Sure." Argent said. "Lecture's over." He leaned back in the cab's back seat and turned his vision outward. Despite the elven decker's discomfort with the conversation, he'd found that it strengthened his own resolve to see it through. He was right about what he was doing.
All that remained to be seen was if he was skilled enough to see it through. Or lucky enough.
46
"Where are we going?"
Argent slotted his credstick in the cabby's reader, adding a generous tip. Most sec forces in the sectors knew better than to ask the cab drivers for information about people they ferried around. In Denver, it paid to make sure memories remained dim, unless someone had a big enough hammer or could offer proof.
"We've got one more meeting." Argent said. "We'll need transport out of Pueblo when we manage the exfiltration."
The section of town the cab had let them off in looked even more run-down than the warehouse area where they'd cut the deal with the Yaks for the cyberdeck.
Argent watched with approval as Archangel took her small pistol from its shoulder holster and tucked it into her jacket pocket where it was immediately accessible.
Three blocks down Means Street, he turned left into an alley and followed it down. Chem-guzzlers on the skids lounged in the shadows, asking for money with practiced pitches. A clutch of thrillers stood outside the single door of a bar at the end of the alley. A listing neon sign hung over the single, weather-beaten door that had shed its synthwood veneer years ago.
Before Argent could step inside, a heavily cybered troll stepped out of the shadows beside the door.
Green neon spitting from the failing light above the door gave the troll a sickly cast, but there was no mistaking the augmentation.
"You got biz inside, omae?" the troll asked. "Because it's off-limits to anybody ain't a member."
"I'm here to see Wakiza Summertrees." Argent s
aid.
"You got a name?" the troll asked.
"Fullburn." the big shadowrunner said.
The troll popped the top of the wristphone and spoke briefly. "So ka." he said, closing the device. "You can go on in." He opened the door with a large hand.
Argent stepped through the door and turned his low-light vision up higher. The interior of the bar was dark, filled with smoke-tainted shadows that seemed to writhe restlessly to the heavy clangor of troll rock stemming from the system buried in the walls.
The Ridgerunner was a T-bird bar and made no bones about it. The walls held scale models of LAVs.
The low-altitude vehicles were definitely the hardware of choice favored by the bar's owners. Most of the featured models were GMC Banshees that looked like stripped down whales arcing through the air sans flukes. The majority of them also featured cannon on their forward firmpoints.
T-birds and their crews were the life's blood of Denver. Without the runners and the jammers taking on the border guards to move product around, the shadow commerce would have died in the area. And the T-birds didn't just handle the locals. They made runs across the North American continent, including Quebec and Aztlan.
Several of the people in the bar reacted to Argent, reading him as someone who didn't belong in the bar.
He drew hostile glares the way cyber took to electricity.
"Hoi, Argent, my friend." A deep voice called from the group of tables around a simsense competition table. In the holo presented by the competition table, two ancient biplanes battled to the death amid a blue sky full of white clouds. Machine guns ripped sparks between them.
“Hello, Wakiza." Argent stuck out a hand.
The Amerind took the shadowrunner's hand briefly, his eyes flicking over Argent's face. Wakiza Summertrees was young and reed slender, only coming to Argent's shoulder. He wore a red synthleather flightsuit with a blue-black dreamcatcher woven over his left breast. His dark hair hung in a long braid down his back. High cheekbones made him look thinner and almost buried his almond-shaped too-blue eyes in slits. The datajack gleamed behind his left ear, lending him an even more alien appearance.
"In a hurry?" Summertrees asked. "Or can you take a trip?"