Miranda.
They were all characters in The Tempest.
He flipped through his notes until he came to the prophecy. All of it.
“The Tempest will bring the destruction of the Sycorax child. The Soldier will come with weapons of truth, and Dark Resonance shall fall beneath the love of knowledge.”
Kazuma moved his fingers over the text floating in front of him. He felt as if he had the answer…that it was right in front of him…but still out of his reach. Hitori loved The Tempest…was it such a coincidence that ever since he learned about Caliban and Contagion Games, every name and reference connected with both all pointed to the same play?
Even the prophecy?
He searched the public host for a full text of The Tempest and searched it, looking for any reference to the prophecy. But that exact wording wasn’t a part of it. So where did it originally come from?
Kazuma dove into VR, letting his body fall back on the bed as he moved along the public grid in search of the prophecy. The terms of it had to be carefully couched, so he wouldn’t alarm Caliban in case the AI and his dissonant associates had their own tags and search sprites out looking for any sign of him. He didn’t want to attract their attention.
He checked the chronometer again. There was still time, though he doubted he would know how the switch worked by the time he’d arrive at the meeting. But now it didn’t seem to matter, because it would seem at the end of all things, he might actually find out what really happened to his sister.
Chapter Seventy-One
Delaney’s Hyundai Appa Van
Outside Coastal Address
Delaney and Renault continued running their ARs as they waited, making sure they didn’t take up all their visual of the area outside the van. She could see Mack’s van parked up the hill, and continued feeding Slamm-0! information as she got it. Learning what she had from Mack about Hitori had been an eye opener, and Renault had latched onto that intel and run with it.
But not all the facts fit.
There was no evidence of Hitori and Tolen having a relationship. Mack assured her he’d heard right, that the information was solid. But Powell had said Tolen had had a relationship with Miranda Sebastian.
“Wait,” Renault said as he moved his hand in the air and the car moved with him.
“No heavy waving,” she said as she looked at his AR. “You find anything about her and Tolen?”
“Not exactly, but look here.” He pushed a few receipts over to her AR. She caught them and read through them. “This is for a dinner theater in lower Los Angeles…less than two years ago.”
“Yeah. I found it in that theater’s records when I did a grid-search for their names. The receipt was paid for with Tolen’s commlink, but there were three meals and they were at a table for four.”
“So…maybe it was just a dinner out with the other two? Baron and Huerta?”
“Three guys? Going to see a dinner theater of a Shakespeare play?” Renault made a pained face. “I don’t think so. I’ll buy two of them were guys, but one of them was a woman. Look at the drinks. Four beers and two glasses of wine.”
Delaney pursed her lips. “Good catch. Wait…you said Shakespeare.” She pulled on the receipts to make them bigger and looked over the numbers. “What was the play?”
“The receipt doesn’t say. Let me cross-reference the date of the receipt with the theater’s schedule—”
“Already done.” She stared at the name. “The Tempest.”
“Mm.” Renault nodded. “That’s one of his best.”
“Rennie!” She smacked his upper arm. “That’s it! The Tempest! Look at all these names. Caliban, Prospero, Ferdinand, Miranda, Sycorax—they’re all characters from The Tempest!” Delaney couldn’t stop grinning at him. “It’s all got to do with that play.”
He blinked at her, then looked back at the AR. “I already knew that. Powell’s favorite play was The Tempest. I mean—he named his pet AI Caliban, for crying out loud. But what does it all have to do with how the switch is used?”
Her excitement quieted for a second before she opened Slamm-0!’s window. She relayed what they just found to him and sent him the receipts and theater schedule.
Renault shook his head. “I don’t see how it connects.”
“We know Tolen had a relationship with Miranda Sebastian. We also know that programmers tend to base codes and passwords on what ever they’re experiencing at that point in their life. What if…what if it was Miranda’s love of that play that brought them to that theater. She loved the play. He took her to see it. He was programing a kill switch at that time.”
“We’re not even sure that’s who went.”
“Yeah, we are.” Slamm-0!’s voice and text came from his window on her AR. “But here’s where it gets weird. I took that info and did a quick search through security in that area—traffic, local merchants, everything. Look what I found.”
The window widened as a vid began playing. The angle focused on the entrance to the dinner theater. Two minutes later a car pulled up and two gentlemen stepped out. The taller one, the one she recognized as Tolen, leaned in and helped a young woman from the car. She was dark-haired, dressed in dark evening clothing and dark makeup.
But her face, every detail of it, was pixelated.
“What—” Delaney said. “Someone blacked her out.”
“She did it herself. It’s got her signature on it.”
“Who is she?” Delaney said.
“Miranda Sebastian.”
Renault sighed. “Okay, so she was there. But how does this connect the dots?”
“But why redact her own image?” Delaney asked.
“Well,” Slamm-0!’s voice sounded tired. “There aren’t any good shots of her. She’s Ferdinand’s CFO, and no one’s really ever seen her. Maybe she likes privacy.”
Delaney replayed the vid of the three of them moving into the theater several times.
“What’re you doing?” Renault said.
“Slamm-0!,” Delaney said in a soft tone. “The code you got from Renault. You both said it was basic. Like…HTML basic?”
“Well, yeah.” Slamm-0!’s persona tilted its head.
“The backslash means a note’s following, that the programmer or editor should know this.”
“Right.”
“And is it possible that the parenthetical followed by the quotes means the same thing as the old input code? Like with parenthesis, quotes, period—”
“—quotes, parenthesis.” Slamm-0!’s persona went idle for a few seconds. Then they heard a lot of yelling on the other end through Slamm-0!’s mic. “That’s it, Delaney! It’s a note for the input code. The TS must mean The Soldier, and the AR means Augmented Reality. That’s the switch! A technomancer has to input the code!”
“Someone needs to send this to Kazuma. I don’t know where he is, but he has to have this.” Delaney made notes about the code just as Slamm-0! read them out.
“I’m sending it to him now,” Netcat said as another window popped up with a little black cat in it.
Delaney leaned back in her seat. Now she could rest a little easier. There was no guarantee they were right, but it was a step closer. And if Kazuma could use it, then it would help his chances. That is, if he ever showed up.
Renault put a hand on her arm. “Delaney…if this is the code…what’s the switch? What was in the briefcase? And why does it have Miranda’s name as part of the input?”
Delaney shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Guys,” Slamm-0! said. “He’s in the house. Tetsu is here.”
Chapter Seventy-Two
Coastal address
Kazuma received the information from Netcat just before he entered the house. He knew what the code was the minute he saw it, and he knew what he had to do. The footnote made even more sense now, and he didn’t have a lot of time if he wanted to get this done.
The back door of the estate’s house was open, just as the latest message said
it would be. He entered cautiously, with no weapon and no gear. Not even his commlink. He felt the pulse and whisper of several hosts nearby, and the harsh metal of a host with devices slaved to it. Lots of devices with a familiar sound.
“Welcome, Kazuma Tetsu. The environmental control is unable to connect to your PAN. Please restart your commlink and try again.”
The sliding glass door opened into a spotless kitchen. He doubted the place had been used as anything but a storage facility for some time. His shoes made no noise as he walked across the floor and into the living room. The message said he would find Hitori in the master bedroom, on the second floor. With a wary look up the stairs, he ascended, keeping one hand on the banister.
A short hallway greeted him at the top of the stairs, with doors on either side and one in the center. He moved forward and put his hand on the knob of the one at the end of the hall. With a slight hesitation, he opened the door.
The room was open to the dawn over the ocean. Open sliding glass doors let in a breeze that moved the white sheers against the carpet. A round bed with white sheets sat in the right corner, and on that bed was a body.
He paused, licked his lips, and with shaking hands, moved toward it. But as he neared and watched the shrouded figure, he knew from the smell and the silence that she was long dead. He looked down at her for a few seconds before he pressed his fingers to her throat. Gone maybe an hour, and he had to tell himself, if he’d been any sooner, it wouldn’t have made a difference.
Her body was emaciated from months with no solid food. He saw the holes on her upper arms, her wrists, and a large one at the base of her throat where the autodoc had placed a trach tube to keep her breathing. Pain creased her face and marred her beauty. Her hair had been half clipped, half shorn from her head. Raw, bald spots revealed where the electrodes had been glued to her scalp.
“You have what you wanted?”
He’d heard her footfalls on the carpet before she spoke. That, and her smell betrayed her. “No.”
“She’s here. Just as promised.”
“She’s dead.” He straightened up but kept his gaze on the body. “But your master knew that would happen when he took her out of the doc.” He shook his head. “Tell me, was she one of the rungs?” He had listened carefully to Netcat’s description, and the images his imagination painted for him were terrifying. “In that bastard’s ladder to heaven?”
“Yes.”
“Are the others still in that ladder, alive?”
“No.”
“But the original three,” he finally turned and faced her. She was dressed in a white suit with a matching white mask. “They’re still alive?”
“No. They’re all dead.”
“That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? What you’ve wanted all this time. For him to kill off the original owners so that you, Miranda Sebastian, and your AI could be alone.”
“Did you bring the kill switch?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“You have what you came for. She’s on the bed. Did you bring the kill switch?” She paused and her mask canted to the right. “He’s here. In the host. Watching you. Shax is here as well, along with his entourage.”
“I know. I’m sure they are.” He clasped his hands in front of him. “I did not bring it with me. I will have to retrieve it in VR.”
Her shoulders sagged. “You are a fool.”
“Not nearly as big a one as you. I never thought he would let me live. All I ever wanted was to see my sister, to know where she was, to hear something from her, for her to let me know what happened. To let her know I loved her. And now it’s too late.”
Miranda didn’t answer as the door opened and Shax stepped in. He was flanked by two human technomancers. Their presence made Kazuma’s stomach tighten. “Go with them.”
“Will you be coming, too? Or are you too afraid to watch?”
“I’ll be there. Watching.”
Shax moved to the side and gestured for Kazuma to precede them.
With a lingering look at the body, Kazuma walked past him, and wasn’t surprised when the three technomancers began beating him with pipes and bats.
Chapter Seventy-Three
Outside Coastal Address
Netcat gave the signal to Slamm-0! visually. She sensed five individuals in the house. The team was on AR and VR silence until the hacker could get a good crack into the house’s main host. The fact that he found three hosts unnerved everyone, but Netcat was more than sure one of them was the host where she’d been kept in that hellish place, where the original owners of Contagion Games were physically kept.
He nodded to her, and then made a series of hand gestures for the others to see. He nodded in one direction and held up three fingers: Give him three minutes.
Netcat sighed. These were going to be the longest three minutes of her life. Every second they remained out here she was sure Kazuma was in danger. She continued trying to contact him, against Delaney’s orders. She had to know he’d gotten the information and she wanted to help him. They all wanted to help him.
So why had he gone off on his own?
Slamm-0! gave the all-clear, and she touched the datasphere surrounding the main host and recoiled.
Netcat watched from the shadows cast by the rising sun as Delaney held out her gun and opened the door. It pushed in silently, and she stepped aside as Renault barreled in.
As an answer, the sun dimmed and the outside lights cut back on. To anyone outside the mage’s spell, it would look like a normal sunrise. They wouldn’t see the vehicles or the metahumans breaking into a house. Netcat wasn’t sure the spell was necessary, but it made sense just in case Miranda had called in help other than technomancers.
Once Renault and Preacher were inside, Netcat and Shayla followed behind. Mack and Slamm-0! came through a sliding door from the back and the six of them converged on the main room.
Mack made a gesture with his ringed hand.
Everyone scattered. Since Netcat wasn’t given an assignment, she followed Mack and Delaney upstairs. Mack looked back to see her and started to protest, but the elf reached back and put a hand on his arm. Netcat didn’t know if that was to quiet him or because she wanted Netcat with them.
The short hallway had three doors. They tried the one on the left—empty room. Then the right, same story.
When they got to the back door, it was half open, and Mack held up his hand.
He pushed the door and moved in, Delaney right behind him. Netcat followed, but the garish smears of blood on the white carpet under her feet made her gasp. Mack stepped back at the noise and knelt down.
After a glance at Mack, who stood at the foot of the bed, and another one at Delaney, who was checking out the rest of the room, Netcat walked to the side of the bed and pulled the soft, white linen off the body.
She hadn’t been dead long, but
her condition made her look worse than she was. She was emaciated, bones sticking through her thin skin and pulled taut over a ravaged face. But she was still recognizable. Netcat swallowed.
“Well, well, well…looks like we got us some intruders.” Shax stood in the doorway, a Manhunter pointed at the back of Delaney’s head.
Chapter Seventy-Four
Contagion Host
Dawn
Kazuma opened his eyes to orange and blue skies. Perpetual sunset. A rippling stream of iridescent cording crossed the sky. He knew it for what it was supposed to be, and was underneath the host’s environment. A technomancer could see it without the camouflage, but anyone else could see the effect. Wind caressed his cheek and blew his hair over his eyes as he sat up.
He was in his black ninja persona, but with no mask. His long red hair fell over his shoulder in a braid. He put his hand to his side, but already knew he wasn’t armed.
“Couldn’t let you come in here prepared to inflict Matrix damage, now could I?”
He recognized the voice as he stood and turned to face the persona of Ferdinand Bellex. Same suit. Same smile. Same twinkle glinting off his perfect, white teeth. “Hello, Caliban.”
“I guess we can drop the pretenses here. Hello, Kazuma.” He clasped his hands. “I’m assuming you got what you came for?”
“No.” He shook his head. “You promised me my sister.”
“I didn’t promise her alive, now did I?” He laughed. “But you got her back.”
Kazuma narrowed his eyes at the AI, and sensed sincerity in his voice. Was it that politician attitude he always adapted, or did he truly believe he’d held up his end of the bargain? “Caliban…that wasn’t my sister.”
“Of course it was. I helped untangle her myself. I had to take down most of my ladder—lost a lot of good rungs doing that. But she’s there. Her meat’s on that bed.”
“No.” Kazuma clasped his hands in front. “She’s not. I don’t know who that was, or how long you had her. Yes, she was Asian, but not Hitori.”
Shadowrun: Dark Resonance Page 30