Shadowrun 43 - Fallen Angels

by Stephen Kenson

  "She's not," the fixer answered. "I don't mean Kellan any harm. On the contrary, I've been trying to protect her, but I haven't been able to reach her."

  "You have an odd idea of protection, Mr. Akimura. Does it include sending a gang after the person you are trying to shield?"

  The other man shook his head impatiently. "I have already answered this accusation. I didn't send the Halloweeners after Kellan. I only heard about it after the fact."

  "If you didn't employ the Halloweeners, then who did?"

  "I have my suspicions."

  "But you choose not to share them?"

  "Forgive my saying so, Lothan, but I don't know you, and you don't know me. I don't know where your loyalties lie, and you have no reason to trust me."

  "That's quite true. So why should I believe any of what you're telling me now?"

  "Because I know that Kellan is in very grave danger," Akimura said, fixing Lothan with a level stare, "and I doubt she is aware that someone close to her is planning to betray her."

  Absorbed in their embrace, Kellan and Orion sprang apart when a synthleather satchel thudded to the floor of the small room. They turned toward the door where Midnight stood, holding a plastic bag that smelled of Asian take-out, and wearing a barely controlled smirk.

  "I'm sorry," she said in a mocking tone, "I didn't mean to interrupt. Should I come back a little later . . . or maybe much later?"

  Kellan looked at Orion, blushed furiously, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  "No!" she said. "I mean . . . um . . ."

  "It's fine," Orion interjected flatly. Midnight didn't say anything else, but the look on her face spoke volumes.

  "I brought dinner," she said, carrying the food over to the table, "and information." She produced a data-chip from her pocket, holding it up for them to see. "We've got what we need to get down to work, so let's do it ... if that's all right with you two."

  When they nodded agreement, Midnight passed the chip to Kellan, asking her to slot it into her cyberdeck so that they could look at the information while they ate. Kellan kept busy at the computer for a moment, but risked a sidelong glance at Orion. He looked up from pulling food cartons out of the plastic bag, caught Kellan's eye, and then glanced away as she did the same, both obviously wondering for the first time about the future after this run was finished.

  12

  Someone is planning to betray Kellan?" Lothan asked. "I think I can guess who." Someone is planning to betray Kellan?" Lothan asked. "I think I can guess who."

  "I'm afraid I won't be able to confirm your suspicions at this time," Akimura replied softly.

  "You don't offer much information, Akimura-san."

  "I cannot. Not until I can better comprehend where things stand."

  "Why are you so concerned with Kellan's welfare? She doesn't even know you."

  "That is true, but I nonetheless owe her a debt," the fixer said, "and I always make good on my debts."

  "You knew Kellan's mother," Lothan said. It wasn't a question.

  Akimura paused for only a moment. "Yes, I did," he said, his expression unreadable.

  "Well?"

  "Very well."

  "You're not Kellan's—" Lothan began, but the other man shook his head.

  "No, I'm not, but I owe it to Kellan's mother to look out for her daughter. I owe her my life, many times over. We worked together once, quite closely."

  "Then you know what happened to her."

  For the first time since he'd sat down, Lothan saw the faintest crack in Akimura's emotional mask. A flicker of pain crossed the dark eyes, a grimace tugged at the corner of his mouth.

  "She's dead, and I feel confident that her killer is after Kellan now. So once again: I need to know if you can get a message to her. We need to talk."

  "Why haven't you contacted Kellan before now? If you had this information about her mother, and felt you owed her a debt . . ."

  "I couldn't," Akimura replied. "I was . . . indisposed. If I could have gotten in touch with Kellan sooner I would have."

  "The clinic," Lothan mused out loud. "You were at Nightengale's."

  Akimura didn't flinch. "You have done your research, I see."

  Lothan shook his head. "Not me, Kellan. She was hired to erase your records at the clinic—she assumed by you. That's why she thinks you're out to get her now."

  "Was she working alone?"

  "No, she was working with someone—someone else who says she knew Kellan's mother."

  "Lothan, where is Kellan now?"

  "As you can see," Midnight said, leaning over the diagram on the display of Kellan's deck, "the Telestrian Habitat isn't quite as big as the old Renraku Arcology, but it's still a huge area to safeguard. Even the best security measures cannot fully accommodate the sheer number of people who move in and out of the facility on a daily basis, and that's how we're going to get in."

  "Huh?" Kellan asked.

  "Blend in with the on-site personnel," Midnight prompted, "disappear into the crowd and let the daily routine get us closer to the goal."

  "Won't it be that much harder carrying out the run with the place full of people?" Orion asked, emphasizing his question with a wave of his chopsticks.

  "Not if we do it right," said Midnight. "If we try to get inside the habitat after hours, we'll need to get past the sorts of security measures intended to keep people out. If we go in as part of the regular traffic, security will be lighter because it has to be, and we've got a better chance of passing unnoticed, as long as we plan carefully and don't make any mistakes."

  "That's likely," Kellan heard Orion mutter under his breath.

  Midnight reached into her bag and produced a flat plastic badge. "These will get us past most of the security," she said. "They're keyed to the habitat's systems, and broadcast an ID code that will identify us as authorized employees, giving us access. We won't set off any alarms, so security will have no reason to question us."

  "And if they do?" Kellan asked, recalling their brush with the guard at the cyberclinic.

  "Then we improvise," Midnight said with a smile. "We set up a cover story and stick to it. We're out-of-town consultants, troubleshooters, brought in to handle a system-processing problem and we answer directly to Timothy Telestrian, who's the head of the NeuroTech Computing division."

  "Won't somebody check?"

  "Trust me, no one in Tir Tairngire wants to get a higher-up annoyed with them, and people learn not to question authority. As long as we play it like we're important enough not to be bothered, no one will bother us. They won't contact NeuroTech because they don't want to get on Telestrian's bad side. As long as it isn't any trouble for them, they're not going to worry about it."

  "What about getting the data?" Kellan asked.

  "That's going to be the harder part," Midnight said. "Once we're on the inside, we'll have access to a terminal, but our contact can't provide us with all the codes we need to get access to the files, so we're going to have to do some of it the old-fashioned way."

  "Hacking into the files?"

  "Right. And we'll need to be careful, since an external system alert can blow our cover."

  "Kellan," Orion asked, "can you handle that?"

  "Of course she can," Midnight offered supportively. Kellan seemed a little less certain.

  "Well, Jackie has set me up with some good software," she began, "but hacking into a corporate main host—"

  "We'll be inside the primary intrusion countermea-sures of the habitat's system," Midnight pointed out. "All you'll need to worry about is the ice protecting the actual files. Even the encryption we can deal with once we're out."

  Kellan nodded. "That's true."

  "I wouldn't ask you if I didn't think you could handle it, Kellan."

  Kellan glanced from Orion to Midnight, then nodded firmly. "Okay, then. No problem."

  "Good," Midnight said. "Okay, this is what we need to work on tomorrow, and we ought to get an early start. . . ."

 
; "Where is Kellan?" Akimura asked again.

  Lothan slowly stood, towering over the man sitting in front of him. "I'll pass on your message, Akimura-san," he said. "After that, it's up to Kellan."

  For a moment, the fixer looked like he was about lo say something more, but he simply nodded. "Very well," he said. "Please tell her that she can set up the meeting, and I'll agree to any terms she wants to place on our rendezvous. I need her to understand she can trust me."

  "I'll tell her," Lothan repeated.

  With a nod to G-Dogg, Lothan walked toward the door. The Street Deacon handed them their weapons, then stepped aside to allow the pair to pass. Lothan heard the door close softly behind them, but didn't look back or say anything until they reached the elevator.

  "Lothan—" G-Dogg began, but the mage held up a hand for silence. Only once they stepped inside the elevator car and the doors closed behind them did he lower his hand, indicating that his companion was allowed to speak.

  "What the frag is going on?" G-Dogg asked, his voice low.

  "That's what I intend to find out," Lothan replied. "If any of what we've been told is true, then Akimura is right about one thing: Kellan is in danger."

  "So shouldn't we warn her?"

  "My very thought," Lothan replied, "but I want to use a means that's a bit more secure than a cell call. Akimura has resources enough to tap into that."

  "Magic," G-Dogg said, and Lothan nodded. The elevator doors opened onto the lobby, and they made their way out to the street and headed back to the van.

  "Yes," the troll mage said, "and while I'm making preparations, I want to try to get some confirmation of Mr. Akimura's story." He took his phone from his coat pocket and, as he opened the passenger-side door of the van, spoke into it.

  "Call Jackie Ozone," he said, and the phone complied. It rang only twice before the decker answered.

  "Jackie," Lothan said as G-Dogg started up the engine. "I may have some additional leads for you to follow, but I'm going to need that information a little faster than expected."

  When they returned to his home, Lothan went directly to his basement workshop, instructing G-Dogg to keep in touch with Jackie and to discreetly find out what he could about Kellan's current whereabouts.

  "Meet me back here in two hours," the troll said, and G-Dogg set off, leaving Lothan to get to work.

  The mage began sketching a diagram on the floor of the workshop. It rapidly took shape as two concentric circles, the space between the circles filled with mystical symbols. Within the middle circle was a five-pointed star, with sigils at each of the points. Lothan's big hands moved quickly through the familiar patterns of the design. In the center of the star he drew the symbol of the all-seeing eye.

  Sitting back on his haunches, Lothan appraised his work and decided it was sufficient. He set candles at the points of the star and, with a pass of his hand, kindled them into flame. Turning the lights off in the room, the mage sat in the center of the circle he'd created, took a deep breath, and reached into the pouch at his belt to withdraw a tiny plastic bag. With another sigh, Lothan cleared his mind and began working.

  It was a fairly simple ritual. Centering himself, Lothan withdrew a two flaxen hairs from the plastic bag. They were Kellan's hairs, gathered after one of her many lessons. Lothan looked at them and thought about why he had kept them. He had always told himself it was for an occasion like this. If Kellan got into trouble, and it was difficult or dangerous to contact her any other way, then he would have another means at his disposal.

  And if Kellan ever became a problem . . . Lothan didn't allow himself to complete the thought. It was a fact of life in the shadows. Never trust anyone completely, or you were setting yourself up for a fall. Lothan found it hard to believe that Kellan would betray him, but how many betrayals were expected?

  Lothan set charcoal burning in the tiny portable brazier and sprinkled a few grains of incense on it. Sweet, pungent smoke circled up around him, symbolic of the element of air, the element suited to the work he had in mind. Speaking the initial words of the spell, Lothan cast the hairs onto the burning coals, adding an acrid scent to the rising smoke. Inhaling deeply of the scent, he chanted in a low and sonorous tone.

  The repetition of the spell began to induce a trance, and Lothan focused on Kellan: the image of her face, the sound of her voice, the impression of her presence, strengthening his connection to her into a bond that transcended space and time. To his astral senses, a faint silvery thread spun outward from his circle, drifting and floating in the ether, reaching out farther and farther.

  Then, like a fisherman sensing a tug on the line, Lothan felt it. There was a faint psychic vibration, a shiver across his skin. He grabbed hold of it with his thoughts, anchored it with his will. Taking a deep breath, he let it out slowly and, like a swimmer slipping silently into a pool, the mage's spirit slid into the astral plane.

  First came the feeling of weightlessness, of freedom from the bonds of the mundane world. Though it was something Lothan had experienced countless times, it was still a heady feeling, this power to fly free of flesh and blood. The troll's unbound spirit rose up from where his body sat, composed in meditation, and he fixed upon the shimmering thread, stretching off into the distance.

  "Now then," Lothan murmured. "Let's see where you go." Up he rose, through the ceiling of the basement, through the walls of the building, out into the air. Arcing high over the Seattle metroplex, Lothan followed the astral thread—his connection to Kellan Colt—as it led him south.

  When G-Dogg returned to Lothan's place, he found Jackie Ozone already waiting there. The decker acknowledged him with a nod as the ork came into the kitchen. G-Dogg wasn't too surprised to see Jackie in the flesh; few people got to meet Jackie face-to-face, but he knew Lothan and Jackie went back quite a ways. When the old mage needed her, Jackie was there.

  "He still working?" G-Dogg asked with a glance toward the basement door, and Jackie nodded.

  "Looks like," she said. "You find out anything more?"

  "Just that Akimura's story checks out as far as I can follow it, but nobody really knows much. He's good at covering his tracks, so he might have been telling the truth, or he might still be trying to set Kellan up."

  "Long way to go to set up a small-time shadowrun-ner, don't you think?" Jackie asked, and G-Dogg shrugged.

  "How the frag do I know why people do anything? Did you find out anything?"

  "I'd rather just tell it once," Jackie said with a glance toward the door.

  G-Dogg went to the fridge to grab himself a drink as the basement door opened and a somewhat weary-looking Lothan emerged. G-Dogg could hardly remember a time when he'd seen the mage look so grim.

  "Tir Tairngire," Lothan said with a note of resignation in his voice. "She's gone to Tir Tairngire. G-Dogg, we need to arrange another meeting. This time, I think Kellan has gotten in well and truly over her head."

  Eve proved less reluctant to meet Jackie in the virtual bar at Shadowland when the decker contacted her and said she had additional information about Toshi Akimura. In fact, Eve was already there waiting when Jackie arrived for the meeting, which told her what she already suspected. Whatever Cross Corp's interest in Akimura, it was worthwhile for a corporate ladder-climber like Eve to drop everything to meet with her about it.

  Jackie's persona slid into the booth opposite Eve's more photorealistic one. Privacy and encryption software ran automatically on the deck sitting in Jackie's lap in the real world, helping to safeguard their conversation and protect their identities from anyone who might take undue interest.

  "What do you have?" the company woman asked without preamble. The impatience in her voice was noticeable, even if it didn't show in her persona's presentation.

  Jackie settled into the seat, feeling the sensation of the leather cool against her skin. It wasn't real, of course, but it felt real, and it was soothing nonetheless.

  "Akimura underwent long-term treatment at a cy-berclinic called Nightengale's
in downtown Seattle, not far from the Space Needle," she began. "Someone hired somebody to delete his records from the clinic's files, but I managed to obtain a copy."

  "From where?"

  "An outside source," she supplied. "It's reliable." The company woman nodded for her to continue.

  "The records show that Akimura underwent some pretty major treatment for a series of injuries that should have killed him—did kill him, technically. There was some reconstructive work, replacement organs, gene therapy, the works."

  "Someone tried to kill him," Eve observed and Jackie nodded.

  "Looks like, and they came damn close to succeeding."

  "Do you know who arranged to have the records wiped? Was it him?"

  "I don't know yet, but I don't think it was."

  "Why?"

  "That's where it gets interesting. Akimura is definitely out of the clinic and back on the streets, and none the worse for wear from what I've been able to find out. He arranged his release from the clinic a little while before the records were wiped. As I told you last time, he's looking for the shadowrunner named Kellan Colt."

  "Have you figured out why he's looking for her?"

  "Well, she's the one who wiped the records. She obviously believed that Akimura had hired her, but he claims he didn't."

  Eve shrugged. "So? Maybe he's just tying up loose ends."

  "Maybe," Jackie mused, "but I don't think so. For one thing, it doesn't fit Akimura's rep at all. From everything I've heard, he deals fairly with any shadow talent. A hire-and-burn arrangement doesn't sound like him."

  "Or he's good enough that nobody ever found that out before."

  "Like I said, that may be, but there's more to it. He's interested in this girl."

  "Do you know why?"

  Jackie paused. The question struck her as particularly . . . eager, like Eve was expecting a particular answer. She shook her head.

  "No, not yet, but he's convinced some local talent to help him find her."

  "Has she gone into hiding?"

  "That," the decker said, "or she simply left town for a while when things got hot. But she's not in the metroplex any more."