“Hey,” Delaney said as her boots appeared in his peripheral vision. “Kaz, what’s wrong?”
“Moon’s sick, too,” Mack said. “And this is one ugly environment. Is the game supposed to look like this?”
Kazuma was on his hands and knees as he swallowed repeatedly, trying to keep the bile down, and happy he hadn’t eaten much else besides the fruit and protein bars. It felt as if he had the flu. His joints ached as he pushed himself up and let Delaney pull him the rest of the way.
When he took a closer look around, he had to agree with Mack’s assessment. The place looked…wrong. The leafless trees just past the rusted iron gate were twisted into grotesque, tortured shapes. The sky was dark, with a slight orange tinge, and he could see black smoke or smog as it rolled over the spindly branches. The scattered patches of grass were all brown and dead. A cracked and crumbling fountain near the entrance was covered in black mold. Blackish, oily water spattered and pumped from its center, and he retreated from it.
But…
It all looked a little familiar. Like a painting he’d seen recently, but one that someone had dirtied up. Slung mud and oil over it. The twisted tree could have been a cherry tree if it were in bloom. Just beyond it was short bridge over a stream, and a broken pagoda beyond that.
“Kaz…are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Moon moved against his leg.
“If you mean all kinds of wrong…” He nodded. “Yeah. Are you nauseated?”
“Yeah.”
“Headache?”
“Yeah.”
“Achy?”
“Yeah. Everything in here is wrong, Kaz. We should go. Now.”
“We can’t go,” Mack said from where he and Delaney stood by the park entrance. “You two going to make it?”
MoonShine growled a bit before he said, “How can you want to stay in this nightmare any longer?”
“Moon,” Kaz said as he put a hand on the panther’s flank. “They’re not seeing it the same way we are.”
Delaney shook her head. “What are you seeing?”
“You tell me.”
She sighed. “Well, it’s like Mack said—the place looks like it’s been cheaply done. The graphics are low rez, and the images keep rezzing and derezzing. I’ve adjusted my distance several times, but the objects far away just don’t show up. It’s like…”
“It’s like the whole thing’s been corrupted,” Mack said as he turned to the two technomancers. “Is that what you’re seeing?”
“No.” Kazuma gave him a more detailed description of what he saw, and Moon added a few details of his own. “And the feeling is…it’s a combination of I’ve seen this place before, and I’m literally trying not to get sick all over this grimy sidewalk.”
“You’ve seen it before?” MoonShine asked. “Well, it’s not Denver. I’ve been to this park. This looks like someplace else.”
“Why are you seeing it like that?” Delaney asked. “Like a toxic waste dump.”
Kazuma licked his lips. “Resonance. How we interact with the Matrix.” He paused. “The Matrix is created by our imagination. Hosts are created at the whim of their creator. Their owner dictates what the host will look like, its purpose, its existence. And for most of metahumanity, that’s a positive thing.
“But there are those people who like to inflict pain. They like anarchy for anarchy’s sake. They like to twist and bend the Matrix into the sick and deranged fantasies of their imaginations.”
“Now think about that kind of power in the hands of a technomancer,” MoonShine said. “Who uses thought to make things—and destroy them. They touch the resonance, a pure, ethereal stream of creation, and darken it. Taint it. They make it—”
“Evil,” Delaney finished. “I think I get it now. You see the distortion, and Mack and I see the corruption as code.”
“Yes.” Kazuma said. “Let’s get this over with before I have to find a burned out bush and puke on it.”
They moved as a unit into the park. Kazuma and MoonShine avoided several black, bubbling pools as they popped up out of the ground. Instinctively they knew not to step near or in them. If they did—
“Well, well,” Blackwater said. “I’m surprised to see you, Schmetzer. I thought Slamm-0! would come. Clockwork was looking forward to seeing him again.”
The four of them stopped near a copse of more gnarled cherry trees and black smoke. The smoke hovered near the ground, oozing and undulating around them, as if alive.
Blackwater looked like a ronin, complete with his topknot-shaved head, kimono, and twin katanas. The meaning of the persona wasn’t lost on Kazuma. He just hoped he didn’t have to fight, because he wasn’t sure how he’d do feeling like this.
The floating, spider-armed drone beside the ronin had to be Clockwork. These two didn’t have much imagination.
“’Fraid not, Blackwater,” Mack said.
“Where is he, then? Hacking into this host?”
Mack laughed and kept his hands at his sides, near the pearl handles of his pistols. “No…that would be stupid, wouldn’t it? But where Slamm-0! isn’t the important issue here. We’ve come for Netcat.”
Kazuma texted to MoonShine.
“Where’s the briefcase?” Blackwater countered.
“You get it when Netcat is safe.” Kazuma straightened and it took a lot just to do that. “Not before.”
“That’s not the deal.”
“That’s my deal. Even if you have me, you’ll never have the data, because I have to be the one to unlock it.” He managed a smile. “You don’t trust me?”
“Hell, no.”
“I wonder why?”
The drone moved, pulling something from inside a compartment under the camera eye. It looked like a newspaper clipping. “Her coordinates are here. Check them out yourself.” The drone floated down to the ground and set the clipping on the grass before rising and moving behind Blackwater again.
Mack and Delaney shifted where they stood. MoonShine was making a great show of bravado and strength, but Kazuma was pretty sure he felt just as bad. He no longer cared what Mack had in mind—he just wanted to be out of the host. His feeling of nausea had intensified into a heavy sense of dread.
Kazuma slowly drew his katana from his back, careful not to make any sudden moves and used it to stab the clipping in the center.
The second his sword touched the paper, the grass disappeared as the same black ichor bubbled up and swallowed the clipping as well as the end of his blade. Kazuma pulled at the katana, but the viscous fluid clung tight as it flowed up the blade toward him.
“Let go, Kaz!” MoonShine shouted as he roared and bared his teeth.
He did exactly that. The katana sunk fast into the pool just as a golden flash appeared at his side.
Protecting the case! Boss—you have to get out of here! I detected over thirty IC programs just in this park. They all appear to be linked to the same system GOD uses to pinpoint hackers’ physical locations.
Kazuma relayed this information to his companions just as everyone took a step back. He had a second katana, but didn’t pull it just yet. Blackwater drew his own katana and held it in front of him with both hands. In the Matrix, weapons weren’t what they appeared to be. It might look like a traditional sword, but only the wielder knew what its real purpose was.
Delaney and Mack also drew their weapons as Clockwork the drone chuckled. “I guess this was just a monumental waste of time.”
“Powell never intended to trade Netcat for the data,” Mack said as he thumbed back the hammers on his pistols.
“Powell?” Blackwater said, but it was obvious in his persona’s expression Mack had hit the truth.
“Screw this,” Clockwork declar
ed and abruptly fired at the ground near Kazuma’s feet.
This time the grass folded in under Kazuma’s black slippers and the ichor whipped up another rope-like appendage and encircled his leg. He yelled as it yanked him down, and he landed on his side.
MoonShine blurred into action and charged after Blackwater. Kazuma wasn’t sure if it was a lucky shot or Blackwater didn’t know how to actually swing a sword when the giant white panther sunk his teeth into the man’s thigh. Blackwater screamed as he lost control of that leg and tried to hack at MoonShine with his sword.
Mack went after Clockwork while Delaney stepped behind Kazuma and hooked her arms under his shoulders. He pulled his second katana out and used it pretty much the way Blackwater was using his on MoonShine. But the blade passed through the black tendrils as if they were nothing more than butter. The ichor dissolved and then reformed in seconds.
Using Delaney as ballast, he kicked at the cords, and narrowly missed having his other leg trapped the same way.
“This isn’t working!” she yelled.
“Ya think?” What hindered him most was the constant, cloying nausea that sent bile to the back of his throat, as well as the headache moving from the front of his skull to the back of it. “Delaney —what do you see? What do you see holding me?”
“That’s hard to describe!”
“Just try!” He heard MoonShine roar and looked over in time to see the great panther evade a slice of the katana and snap at Blackwater’s hand. Mack and Clockwork had moved away near a large, gnarled tree and continued to shoot it out with each other. It looked like a stalemate.
“Okay…the grass is all pixelated—you know, like a low resolution. And I can see code swirling around your leg. It’s like…it’s like your persona and the environmental system are trying to merge.”
“You mean like it’s trying to de-rezz my persona?”
“Yeah. It’s weird, but that’s what it looks like.”
He knew what he saw was one reality, and what Delaney saw was another. She saw the framework, but he saw the nightmare. So, in order to change the nightmare, he was going to have to recode the framework.
Here, Boss.
Almost. It’s like an IC sprite. It’s been compiled using some sophisticated code. But it’s all…damaged code, and underneath it is a dissonance well. You get sucked into that Boss, and I might lose you. It’s like something got into the environment and corrupted the system. Turned a Happy Birthday party into a slasher flick.
He didn’t have time to admire his sprite’s analogy, as creative as it was. He got the idea, though.
Ponsu spouted a list of commands, and Kazuma used them to compile a countermeasure sprite. He gave it sharp teeth, and infused it with his own rage and anger. He knew he was on the verge of using dissonance himself by doing that. Once it finished the compile, his headache flared into a full-born fire behind his eyes, and the fatigue in his muscles, that he knew was caused by the dissonance in the host, doubled.
With pleasure, Boss!
He grabbed hold of Delaney’s arms. “When I give the word, pull!”
“Okay.”
He watched as the new sprite exposed rows of sharp, nasty teeth and attacked the strands of ichor. The sprite turned from soft green to black immediately, but Kazuma had allowed for that and made sure the dissonance it ingested would be easily swayed to attack itself. So it kept feeding on the black tendrils.
The moment he felt them give, he yelled at Delaney to pull.
It took a minute, and Kazuma thought for half of that minute his legs was going to come off, but finally the black tentacles snapped, and the two of them lurched backward, away from the black pool.
With Delaney helping, he scrambled to his feet and watched as the sprite continued to scoop up the ichor and eat it. It sort of looked like a tiny fairy eating…oil.
MoonShine yelped, and Kazuma looked over to see Blackwater pull his katana back. He’d finally gotten a hit on Moon—but the technomancer wasn’t down, and leaped at the ronin hacker with an open maw full of teeth.
A shot whizzed passed Kazuma’s ear, and he held up his katana in time to deflect a second one as he saw the drone barreling down on him.
Where’s Mack?
Chapter Fifty
Shayla’s Shinobi
Slamm-0! maneuvered around the host’s IC, carefully setting his programs in strategic places. He subconsciously felt Silk, Renault, and Preacher breathing down his neck. A warning light in his AR prompted him to tap the window.
“Hey, Silk—someone’s tracking Kazuma.”
“Shit.”
He silently echoed the sentiment as he finished getting everything ready. If this worked, it would give him access to the warehouse’s host and make him administrator, and that would give him total control.
If it worked.
The fact someone was already tracking Kazuma’s physical location told him the meeting had turned sour, and he needed to hurry. Whoever it was—and he was pretty sure it was Bellex or Powell—wouldn’t have an easy time of it. He and Mack had re-routed the wireless signal through a thousand points, moving from Los Angeles to Manhattan, to Grand Rapids, Michigan to Atlanta, Georgia, and then out of the country.
He had a progress map up on his periphery. So far they’d only managed six points before the movement stopped. That either meant Kazuma had severed his connection, or he stopped them from the source.
“Slamm…”
“Don’t rush me.” He was nervous enough. For all he knew, Netcat was in the building across the lot from him. This gave him a little comfort; at least she hadn’t been sold and imprisoned in the bowels of some megacorp.
Yet…
Cursing Clockwork again, Slamm-0! wished him all sorts of Black Hammer deaths as he finished his work and took a deep breath. “Here goes.”
When the program launched, he pulled back into his deck, like setting off an explosion and then hiding behind a shield. Again he watched the progress on the screen as everything fell into play and—
A message came up in the deck’s AR.
He howled in triumph and slapped the Shinobi’s dashboard.
“I take it that was good?” Silk said.
“You got it, baby!” he said as he started a series of complex coding programs that re-routed the host’s control to his deck. The only thing he had to worry about was if the old controller noticed. If he was smooth enough…the change of command would be seamless.
Once he had everything rerouted, he added Preacher, Silk, Shayla, and Renault into his PAN.
The two trolls approached the Shinobi in the dark. Renault leaned in the window. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Oh, ye of little faith. When you’re fighting for the woman you love, you can accomplish anything.” He squared everything away in his bag, and slung it over his shoulder. “You tell me what you need done, and verily, it shall be done.”
Renault smiled. Slamm-0! decided it was a smile he never wanted to see in a dark alley.
“First, let’s get a look inside,” the troll said. “Can you give us visuals on any security cameras?”
Slamm-0! complied, and within minutes they were each viewing a split screen showing the entrance, a room full of auto-docs, an office, and the larger view of the main warehouse. He also retrieved the building’s schematics and offered them up for reference.
“Are those autodocs?” Silk touched her own AR without a commlink or deck. Slamm-0! smiled at this. He’d often watched Netcat do the same thing, and it just made him miss her more. “I see Netcat!”
Following her lead, he zeroed a camera in on the farthest one in the row. She was there, her eyes closed, and a net of something attached to her head.
Renault and Preacher were conferring until
the PCC cop said, “Can you begin the automatic shut off? The sequence is going to take a good five minutes to initiate. If you can get it started, she should be waking up by the time we get to her.”
Slamm-0! searched the host for the autodoc controls. After finding them, he carefully went through the procedures. He saw a red flash in the security camera and pointed it out. “I’ve disabled the shutdown warning in the feed—it’s shutting them all down, and there are flashing red lights on the autodocs. If anyone happens to see that when they walk into the room or see it on the camera, they’ll know.”
“Then we have to move fast.” Renault stepped back and opened the Shinobi’s door as Slamm-0! and Silk stepped out. “Shayla, keep it ready. Might need a roof landing.”
“You got it.” She climbed back into the pilot’s seat and pushed the wiring into her datajack. Slamm-0! knew this meant she was going to dive into the Shinobi and have direct control. It was faster and easier for her, but it also left her body vulnerable.
“Slamm-0! is it possible to put the autodoc room on a looping feed?”
“I can do that. But doing it on the run like this—not sure I can guarantee the splice quality.”
“It’ll have to do.” Renault led them through the shadows to the perimeter fence. He nodded to Slamm-0!, and within seconds the fence door near the back loading dock opened. They ran inside and the hacker had it back in place and locked in under five seconds.
“Any alarms yet?” Silk asked as they kept to the shadows and pressed their backs against the building, away from the cameras.
“No,” Slamm-0! replied. “But I’ve got control of that for the moment.”
A new grid schematic showed up in Slamm-0!’s AR, and he pulled it up. There were three lines of direction in different colors. The red line went through the side door and into the autodoc room. The blue line went around that room to the warehouse, and the yellow line went directly to the office.
“Silk, I need you to follow the blue line and disable their vehicles,” Renault said. “This will help our people when they get here. Preacher, follow the red line and get Netcat out of there and back to the Shinobi—”
Shadowrun: Dark Resonance Page 23