“Then they can be strong. Right now they’re scattered, hunted, shunned. They need guidance.”
“And you’re it.”
“Who else is there?”
“Hestaby…no one is going to follow a dragon.”
And what she said next both comforted and terrified him. “You may be right.”
Was that why part of him wanted to take everything that damned dragon told him, lock it away and ignore her, and show everyone—who would get pulled into what he could only see would be madness—just how manipulative she was?
He replayed the conversation again. Not in his head, but the recording he’d made of it. After getting screwed a few times, he learned to keep as much evidence as possible. And voice verification would go a long way.
It was audio only, but he remembered her face, her facial expressions above lips that never moved. And he remembered every word she said, with or without the recording.
“Boss?” Shayla knocked on his office door.
Mack rubbed his face and shut the recording off. He hadn’t slept since Hestaby’s call. There was too much to do, too much to accomplish, and very little time, if what the dragon told him was true.
He was going to need evidence, and a solid team.
“Come in,” he called as he stood and moved to the blank wall by the door.
His rigger peeked in and smiled. “The hacker’s here. Flew in from Seattle.”
“All right. Grab Preacher and bring him in. It’s time to have a come to Jesus meeting.”
The look she gave him was interesting—a mixture of affirmative and “Uh oh, boss done gone crazy.”
When Shayla returned, she led their new hacker, a rather tall, wiry man with spiky, blond hair and a squared jaw. He followed behind her politely and Mack eyed him, his AR picking up no RFID tags at all on him. He was clean—all the way down to his socks. No tags at all.
Mack liked that.
“Mack,” Shayla moved out of the way as she motioned the man to step forward. “You said get someone fast and he answered the fastest. He’s got quite a resume—as do his parents. His handle’s Slamm-0!.”
The young man offered his hand and Mack took it, schooling his own features into a less than flattering smirk. “Slam–Oh?”
“That’s right,” Slamm-0! grinned. “That’s with two m’s, a hyphen, and then a zero and an exclamation point.”
Mack snorted. “Cheesy. Just call me Mack. Or Boss. One m, no zeros.”
“Fair enough.”
Mack could tell this man was far from a kid—perhaps in his early thirties—but he presented an air of youth about him. And confidence. Dressed in jeans, T-shirt, and a light jacket with his commlink nestled comfortably in his left ear. On his left temple was an updated datajack, and on his arm was a bag big enough to possibly carry a cyberdeck.
“Pay is 25,000 nuyen up front, that’s split between the team evenly, for the duration of the run. If we achieve our goal—then it’s another 100,000 for each.”
Slamm-0! whistled. “This Johnson sounds serious.”
“She is. Did Shayla brief you on the specifics?”
The blond nodded. “A little. Your other hacker dodged, and you need a new one.”
Mack glared at Shayla as she turned and left the office. That wasn’t a briefing, that was more of a passing comment. “Yeah. First, let’s go over the run that brought us to where we are now.”
“Oh I know about the Annex break-in. That was you guys—and someone else.”
Mack turned his irritated look on the hacker before he initiated the vid screens, the control rings on his fingers humming as holographic images branched out to form a two-meter view of four stacked windows.
“Mind if I drive for a bit?” Slamm-0! asked.
“Shayla give you an access ID?”
“Don’t need one,” the man smiled, wiggled his eyebrows.
Stepping back, Mack watched as Slamm-0! slipped on his gloves, wiggled his fingers and abruptly the images changed even faster. “I linked your holo-imager up to my AR—so you can see what I see. Though your processor’s clocking speed is a bit faster than my own—nice host.”
“Thanks.”
“Let’s see.” Slamm-0! moved his hands in the air, making circles, expanding and collapsing windows. He called up the building schematics from on the disc the Johnson had given him, and rendered a three-dimensional image of the Annex.
Okay…so his is prettier than mine, Mack thought. So what? I’m not a hacker.
“You were here.” Mack’s marks from earlier on the map showed up in place. “Your hacker and mage were here, and the two guards were here. So, where was this other hacker?”
“We don’t know. According to our former hacker, no one knew he was there—not even Maria.”
Slamm-0! turned and gave Mack a withering look. “Your mage couldn’t sense living things in the environment? Anyone think to ask her Guardian—did she have one?”
Mack shook his head. “Her body disappeared right after it was interned in the morgue. Without the body—it’s kinda hard to call up her eagle.”
“Eagle, huh? She a shaman? Native American?”
“Yeah,” Mack said, and had a hard time keeping the anger out of his voice. “Blackwater said they were coming out of this stairwell and he ambushed them, shooting her first. That’s when they fought, and Blackwater got the gun and said he shot the hacker—but he got away.”
Slamm-0! paused. “Blackwater—you mean the Cole Blackwater? Same dude that was responsible for the system crash over at Ares last year?”
“The same.”
“You know that guy’s a recovering chiphead. And I find it hard that anyone caught him off guard—”
When the hacker paused both in his movements and his speaking, Mack started. The kid was staring at the display. “What is it?”
“You said they were in this stairwell?” Slamm-0! moved the image of the stairwell and its schematic to the front.
“Yeah.”
“But according to this, those stairs go to the basement. The Annex is two stories plus the basement,” the images shifted and moved, making Mack dizzy. “The upper floor is basically to house the air-conditioning units to keep the servers cool—old design—and then that air was pumped down through a false floor into the server room. There are two sets of stairs—one here on the east side near the administrative offices that leads up to the actual attic—and there you have decking access to the array—here and here,” he reached out and two dots appeared on the larger screens. “If he were going to access the primary—and this is a wired host—he’d deck at the source for a quick hack and snack. There’s no reason for Blackwater or your shaman to be here and be surprised by anyone, especially if she watched the lower access door, which I’m assuming she would have.”
Mack watched the screen, growing angrier by the second. “You’re right. They wouldn’t have kept that door closed—it’s the only way in or out of that attic space.”
“Precisely. So—the main access is in the basement—where the master CPU was housed back in the day. I assume the other hacker was down there. Which means he had a longer way to come up once the two met on the host. My guess is that they met either on the stairs up or just outside—” he looked at Mack. “You got communication logs? Time stamps?”
Mack nodded. “Same folder.”
“Good.” Slamm-0! moved back to the map and within seconds a list of times and calls appeared on the right side. He moved each call to the location, and verified with the Knight Errant logs Mack had gotten from the Johnson. “Uh oh—looks like the guards actually found a dude ID’d as Morimoto down in the basement about five minutes after the alarm was tripped. Then here it shows your call with Blackwater—and then another eight minutes before Shayla’s RCC was hacked. Guards lost contact a full ten minutes after clearing Morimoto.” He looked at Mack. “Who was Morimoto?”
“The other hacker. He was disguised.” Mack studied the map and the time stamps. “So b
asically—Maria was shot before Blackwater ever came into physical contact with the other hacker.”
Slamm-0! nodded. “Yeah—if Morimoto is the same dude. Then he was in the basement with the guards for a full five minutes or so after the shot went off. Your Morimoto—or hacker two, whatever—wasn’t near the administrative door.”
Mack stepped forward and made a fist, activating his rings. He pulled a folder from his AR and transferred it to the host so both of them could bring it up and take a look at it. Inside were personnel files from Knight Errant and Horizon. Mack pulled a file up with an elderly Asian man. “This is Toshi Morimoto.”
“That guy is the other hacker?” Slamm-0! made a face as if he smelled something bad.
“No. Morimoto died two years ago. The hacker was disguised as him, and even had his ID and a work order to be in the Annex to work on the host. According to the records we got from both KE and Horizon, he was part of the team archiving it for termination.”
The hacker paused and looked directly at Mack. “So—he wasn’t stealing the data? He was actually there doing his job?”
“Yes and no. That’s where it gets fuzzy. His name is Kazuma Tetsu. He’s the Knight Errant supervisor overseeing the project to clear the host for termination, which is scheduled for later today.” He pulled a new file out to show a young elf with mixed Asian features. “Excellent service record. Has a sister—missing—and a father. But the father is reported to be in Japan.”
“Maybe I need more information about this?” Slamm-0! moved the map back to the lower right screen as Mack went over the events as quickly as he could, down to Maria’s body going missing half an hour after it was delivered to the morgue, followed up by the murder of Artus Wagner at Horizon. “As an FYI, our first Johnson is Wagner’s personal assistant.”
The hacker dropped his arms and stared at Mack. “Maybe I should have asked for a higher fee?”
Preacher chuckled behind Mack. Slamm-0! looked up at him and grinned, then removed the glove from his right hand and offered it to the big troll. “Slamm-0!”
Mack watched the hacker’s hand disappear in Preacher’s larger one. “Nice to meet you. They call me Preacher.”
“Ah,” Slamm-0! nodded. “Because they ask for last rites when they see you coming?”
That made Preacher grin even wider. He looked at Mack. “I like him.” Then he frowned. “Got a message from Monogue.”
Mack nodded. “Yeah, yeah. What’s up?”
“Caught a creepy report of human remains found in an incinerator in a school in south Los Angeles. Janitor found it when he saw someone coming out of the basement. Thought it was kids doing something illegal.”
He handed Mack a slip of paper. Mack looked at it. “And this is important to me why?”
“Shayla tried to get Blackwater to come in. He pissed her off. So she tracked him down.” Preacher nodded to the slip of paper. “He was at that high school when she talked to him.”
“Damn,” Mack said as he crumpled the piece of paper in his hand. “What do they have on these human remains?”
“Female. Human. Somewhere between twenty-four to thirty.” The troll was quiet for a few seconds. “They also found a bullet. It wasn’t fully destroyed. Same caliber as Blackwater’s. No exact match yet—but it’s a good bet that PCC ballistics is going to find it was fired from the same gun that killed the two guards.”
There had always been a tiny nugget in the pit of Mack’s stomach, a bit of doubt that Blackwater had been truthful when he claimed the hacker killed Maria. But he’d wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt—not wanting to believe that Blackwater would kill one of his own team.
But now, given the blocking and logistics Slamm-0! just disproved about Blackwater’s described chain of events that night, coupled with this bit of news… That bastard.
“Sorry, chummer,” Slamm-0! said. “Blackwater’s got a pretty nasty rep out there.”
“That bastard killed a team member.” He looked at Shayla and then Preacher, who looked back at him with sad faces. “When we’re done saving the world this time, we’re going after him. I want him dead.”
“You got it, boss.” Shayla smiled grimly.
Preacher nodded. “Now we get to meet the new Johnson?”
Slamm-0! looked at each of them. “Meet the new Johnson? That’s sort of irregular, isn’t it?”
“Not in this case.” Mack licked his lips. “Everyone sit down.”
Once they were seated around the large oval table in front of his desk, Mack made a fist again and moved the images. Several holovids lit up the center of the table, the images the same on either side for every person seated. The table had six chairs other than his own.
The first image he displayed was the logo of Contagion Games. All three of them looked at the logo, then looked at him.
“Boss…” Shayla said.
“You’re going to have to trust me and listen. I didn’t know what to think until I spoke with her. We’ve got a lot of work to do, and we both agreed she needed to tell you what has to be done so that I didn’t leave anything out.”
Mack opened up the communication window and piped it through the vids.
Hestaby appeared with a smile and a projected, “Good morning, team. Are we ready to learn?”
Slamm-0!’s jaw dropped, and he gave Mack a troubled look. Mack was pretty sure he knew what was going through the man’s head. There were few people in this world who didn’t know what Hestaby looked like. Or what she was.
And all of them knew that dealing with a dragon was always a very bad idea.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Unknown Location
Friday afternoon
Kazuma jolted awake with a slight yell. The nightmare of being eaten by a tree followed him to the waking world as warm hands gripped his shoulders.
“Hey…calm down. You’re okay. It’s me. Focus on my face.”
Kazuma looked into Silk’s amber eyes. He nodded, taking deep, cleansing breaths like she’d taught him, until his heart calmed down enough for him to look around. He didn’t recognize where he was. It was semi-dark, the only illumination coming from a lamp in the corner. The walls were dingy, and the room smelled like mildew and age.
He looked down to find himself shirtless, with a white bandage wrapped around his torso. He reached up to the back of his neck and felt a bandage there as well.
Within seconds, the datasphere whispered to him, and his AR lit up with flashing messages. He brushed them away and refocused on Silk. “Where are we?”
“We’re in a hotel, about two miles from your grannie’s house.”
“Did you get the data?”
“No. Not yet.” She put a hand to his cheek. “Kazuma, do you remember what happened today before you faded?”
He searched her face as his memories slowly resurfaced. It was like pulling pictures out of a muddy hole and having to carefully clean them off. “I went to work…and a dwarf took me to Black’s office…” And then it all came back. He put his hand back on his neck. “A wolf pinned me to the floor.”
“Yeah. I saw the image you sent Netcat. Do you remember getting out of there?”
“The alarm went off, and Karl came in the door. I made the door slam into Powell—that’s the dwarf—and then Karl shot the wolf.”
Silk bit her lip. “Interesting that no one’s mentioned a wolf, and if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes and Netcat’s, I’d’ve thought it was a metaphor. And after that?”
“Karl helped me out of the building, and I found Netcat.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “You told her who I was.”
“I didn’t have a choice, Kaz. Do you realize who that dwarf was?”
“No. I mean I realized pretty fast he believed I was the one that broke into the Annex and he was pretty sure I was a technomancer. He kept drilling on about my commlink.”
“I’m sure.”
“Silk, he had the commlink I was using at the Annex. I must’ve left it there.”
/> “Well it’s a lot more complicated than that. Come on. There’s a clean shirt on the edge of the bed. And I got you Chang’s.”
He loved Chang’s Korean Cuisine. With a smile and a kiss, Kazuma got up carefully—remembering that recovery from a fade was something to take slow—used the facilities, which were in dire need of a bottle of bleach, slipped the shirt on, and stepped into the other room.
The decor wasn’t much better. But there were improvements. Like the food spread out on the table.
Netcat lay on the couch, her eyes closed. A guy in a gray hoodie sat in a chair by the window, shades over his eyes. Kazuma gave Netcat a quizzical look as he grabbed a pair of chopsticks, a carton of noodles, and a container of kimchi and dug in.
Silk opened a bottle of water and set it in front of him while she joined him at the table. “Netcat you met—and you owe her. If she hadn’t been monitoring Powell, you’d be long disappeared by now. To where—” She shivered. “—I don’t even want to think about.”
“And the guy?”
“That’s a friend of hers, lives in this area. You’d know him as MoonShine.”
“MoonShine?” Kazuma took another look at the guy. Couldn’t see much, not with the hoodie down. “I thought he disappeared. Wasn’t his name listed in the BOLOs?”
“Yeah, but he wanted it that way. Seems he was wanted by several corporations.”
“Why?”
Silk smiled. “You can ask him when they get back.”
Kazuma chewed his dinner and looked at the two of them. “Are they submerged?”
“Not entirely. Netcat has a portable IV setup for that—but Moon didn’t want to use needles.” She picked up a spring roll and bit off the end. “I need to bring you up to speed. Do you know an Artus Wagner?”
Kazuma drank half the bottle of water. One of the things he’d always noticed after a fade was how thirsty he was. “Yeah. He’s one of the directors over at Horizon.”
“You ever have contact with him?”
“No. I just know his name.”
“You ever forge his name?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Silk—what’s going on?”
She picked up a folder from the side of the table and set it in front of him. “This is a hardcopy of everything that’s happened since last night. You really need to read it.”
Shadowrun: Dark Resonance Page 10