Shadowrun

by Russell Zimmerman

  “Oh.” Oh! I remembered hearing something about a snatch-and-grab shootout the other day, remarkable only because it had happened so close to the District Hall. I’d been scanning the screamsheet headlines while using my optics to snap incriminating evidence for a nasty divorce case. Nasty divorce cases were closer to my norm than this sort of thing. The carjacking had been a little unusual. Violence was second nature here in Puyallup, but most professional crews wouldn’t jack an out-of-towner car that close to Knight Errant’s district office.

  I was on retainer with Mr. Campa, the ork Puyallup had elected, and I handled wards and miscellaneous thaumaturgical security issues for his offices. Lots of Lon’s council members didn’t need my help, because they were already in the pocket of the Italians or Japanese, and had mob or Yakuza spellslingers to scratch their backs. I worked for the rest of ’em, the ones who got voted in clean and tried to stay that way. The ones I liked. Someone getting away with a carjacking, kidnapping, and murder right under their noses wasn’t doing any of my District Hall buddies any favors. I also had more than a few contacts in the local precinct, even if not all the cops liked me.

  “So Knight Errant isn’t bein’ helpful enough?” For a legit corp job hunting a legit corp kid, there was no reason for her not to go to the legit cops. Or try to, at least.

  “In Puyallup?” She smirked at me a bit, and I nodded.

  “Yeah, I figured. Still, I’m legally obligated to remind you to take a missing persons case to them.”

  “I have. They seem to have accomplished nothing since I did exactly that twenty-four hours ago, so I’m exploring other options. Are you able to help me, Mr. Kincaid, or not?”

  “Were you able to bring something like I asked?” I stopped musing and hoped she’d gotten Hard Exit’s call. I might not have to go butt heads with the Knight Errant office, might not have to go snooping around Ancients turf, might be able to handle almost this whole damned case from my office, if she’d been able to bring me…

  “Something of personal significance to Ms. Nishimura, yes.” Johnson reached into her slim purse and hauled out a small toy. My optics tagged it as a yellow and white doll of a cartoonish horse, bright and cheery colors, all shining plastic and rounded edges.

  “It’s a ponicorn,” the corporate executive said very primly. “We recovered it from her company housing. It’s my understanding it was her favorite when she was younger.”

  As ritual links go, you could do worse than someone’s favorite childhood toy. I thanked Ms. Johnson for the help and the credstick, and let her know I’d give her a call if I found anything. These rituals took time, but I hoped to cut out a whole lot of middlemen with that little toy horse she left sitting on my desk straddling a credstick holding a half-year’s pay.

  She smelled like vanilla when I held the office door open for her. I kept an eye on her as she sauntered down the hall, watched the street out front to make sure she made it into her coupe okay, then reached for a Target and sank back into my cushioned chair. Ariana wasn’t real happy with how I’d looked at my new boss, and she let me know it as soon as Johnson’s BMW had vanished down the street. She wasn’t too pleased with me for lighting up, either—y’ask me, I think her elemental-plane-of-earth-self just doesn’t like all that fire and wind I’m inhaling—but whether she was cross with me or not, I knew I had Ari’s help.

  I let her get her grousing out of her system as I spun up my Transys headware and sent Trace a short message, just asking for a routine background check on our missing girl to see if anything of interest came up. There was no reason not to have her working the Matrix angle while Ariana and I worked the magic.

  I finished my smoke, then nodded at the ponicorn. Ari cooed as she carefully picked it up, the artificial colors of the little toy almost as bright as the artificial colors of my girlish ally.

  We headed into the other room of my dive; not the one with the rumpled mattress where I slept, or the fake-oak desk where I sat for clients, but the one where I got the real work done. Some hoity-toity types, especially Hermetic mages, called this sort of room a sanctum. Shaman preferred terms like medicine lodge. Me, I just thought of it as my library. A library reinforced with wards, shelf-lined walls full of datachips and old hardcopy books, summoning materials, fetish items, and curious trinkets, sure, but basically still a library. My own personal brand of magic used whatever worked, and that meant I hoarded this sort of thing.

  Ritual magic can take a lot out of you, and the hard truth was that I didn’t have a whole lot left in me. I still knew what I was doing, though, still knew the tricks of the trade and the formulas and focusing techniques. Ariana supplied the raw mojo, I refined it and guided it, and with a toy that the girl had cared about, had handled and played with and named and loved through her childhood, we’d have a clear link to her.

  Hell, this case was half-solved already, right?

  Four

  The next morning I woke up to my headware commlink chiming. My meet with Ms. Johnson had been over for hours, Ari and I had focused and chanted the night away, and then she’d carried me—easily, like a parent hefting a sleepy child—to my messy bed and left me there to sleep off my exhaustion. Everything magical came harder to me, since the vampire attack had left two holes in my neck and a gaping chasm where my power used to be. I wasn’t half the mage I used to be. I wasn’t even close.

  I answered on the fourth or fifth ring, trying to shake away dark thoughts and cold memories.

  “You ready to go?” Trace popped into my vidphone box at the corner of my field of vision until a flicker of thought zoomed in, enlarged, and centered it.

  “With you? Anywhere.” I gave her my brightest smile, and she just snorted and rolled her eyes.

  “Well, it’s seven, Kincaid. Skip and I are downstairs, and we’re just waiting on you.”

  “I’ll be right down.” She hung up, and I started across the room for my coat and hat. This case was almost in the bag. Ari and I had tracked the girl’s location down to a shithole tenement not ten klicks away, and all that was left was the ugly part; blasting our way in and taking her. Luckily, we were all pretty good at the ugly part. The two of us had gotten a good look at the astral forms of the shadowunners holding her, we’d seen that she was still in one piece, aura bright and clear, and we just needed time to recover and get Skiptrace along for the ride.

  Yessirree, the girl was as good as safe, I figured.

  Seven in the morning wasn’t a time I saw real often, but the nap had been enough of a help, the Sideways did the rest.

  I was ready to kick in doors, slay some dragons, and rescue the princess. I hoped the good little corp-girl had learned her lesson and stuck to safer neighborhoods after this, though. Her aura had been roiling with fear and anger when we’d seen her, flaring brightly compared to the muted colors and dispassionate rage of the augmented criminals who’d snatched her right off the street just for sitting in the wrong car.

  I chewed three pieces of WhiteBrite on the way over to stay sharp, reassured by Ariana’s upbeat chattering from my passenger seat, the hum of Trace’s sleek little Suzuki, and the snarl of Skip’s big Harley on the road behind me. Seven was a weird time for me to be up, but even more so for these shadowunners-turned-kidnappers. They’d all be either asleep or exhausted when we rolled up, slow to react when Trace and I went in the front door, quick and lethal. They didn’t have a magician with them, so Ari was our real ace. It’d be a piece of cake.

  We parked a block away, and Skiptrace climbed into the back of my Americar, then waited in silence as I whistled us up some extra help. The Spirit of Man didn’t get summoned as easily as I might have several years ago, but it showed up all the same.

  I sniffed hard and ignored the taste of blood in my mouth—and Ariana’s concerned look—as I chatted with it out my driver’s side window. It was a miniature street urchin made of Puyallup ash, used condoms, a food wrapper, and a couple used slap-patches, all whipped together from the gutter in the blink
of an eye and a rush of power. I told it what I wanted, and it complied; a heartbeat later me, Skip, Trace, and my Ford were easy to overlook. Ariana faded into the astral on her own, and my Americar carried us down the street, the next best thing to invisible.

  The spirit’s favor multiplied the usual Puyallup apathy a thousandfold. No one cared enough to pay attention as we parked outside their housing project. People standing not two meters from us glanced away and didn’t notice as we piled out of my car and geared up for an assault. The dealer on the corner didn’t bat an eye as I popped the trunk and grabbed my old Mossberg CMDT, or Trace slung on her Smartgun X, or Skip noisily racked the slide on her big, ugly AK-98. The gaudy, childish, pink polymer of her gun was the most feminine thing about her. Ari, who had wheedled her into the colorful purchase some months ago, floated alongside us as we entered the building and climbed up the stairs.

  I hate the projects. They’re egg cartons full of desperate people who live packed into buildings made of concrete and fear. Gangs run them, drug and BTL slingers run them, addiction runs them. The district can’t afford anything but the most basic upkeep and maintenance, so they’re lucky to have water, power, and maglocks on their doors. I’ve seen the astral side of prisons—literally—with less fear and frustration soaked into their steel and glass. Life and brightness and magic didn’t come easy in a place like this.

  Ariana felt it, her colors muting a little as we got closer to our target. My professors called it “background count.” I called it a pain in the ass. Skip sure as hell didn’t mind, taking point with her augmented muscles, long legs taking steps two and three at a time. Trace didn’t seem to notice, either, of course, but she was as mundane as a loaf of bread, just like her girlfriend. Me, though? Me, clinging to my Talent by the skin of my teeth? I was glad to have my shotgun and Colt with me and not just my wand, and we’ll leave it at that.

  When we slunk out of the stairwell on the seventh floor—Trace and I a little out of breath, Skip looking impatient, Ariana just looking sad to be here—we knew something else was wrong, though. We weren’t just being overlooked; the hallway was empty. No chipheads sat on the stained carpet, burning their souls away with better-than-life programs. No punks wrapped in leather and spikes approached to sneer and swagger and revel in the fear they caused. No pushers lounged and waited for fresh marks. No children chased devil rats with dull knives and sharp sticks. No joygirls or pimps prowled and looked for business. No parents hid their younger ones from the eyes of their neighbors, no couples bickered, no tired, old women limped down the hall on their way to serve up slop at a greasy spoon. Puyallup came more alive at night, sure, but even for early morning, even for the building we were in, something was off.

  Skip’s combat boot took the door clean off its hinges—I could pick a lock when I had to, and Trace could sure as hell fool a maglock, but we were in a hurry—and we rushed in. Ariana skipped through the wall and manifested in the middle of the room while our gun muzzles led the other three of us inside. Then we all hit the brakes.

  Dammit.

  Our magical camouflage fell away, and a sidelong nod sent my Spirit of Man scampering back home, even though it technically owed me more favors. I didn’t need it any more. The place was empty.

  Or, rather, the place was full of corpses.

  We lowered our guns, and I let out a long, low sigh. We’d all seen our share of violence, don’t get me wrong, but this place was a regular charnel house. We cleared it anyway, just making sure, hoping against hope the girl might still be here despite the recent slaughter, but she was gone.

  Skiptrace took off. Trace would scour the Matrix for more information and research, do some real digging to try to piece together what had happened and why and what to do next. Ari and I stuck around to do the same thing the old-fashioned way. Trace got more mileage out of her commlink than I did, but I knew more real-world tricks than her. I’d scour the place for clues and details, and put pieces together until I saw a clearer picture.

  Ariana hovered in the middle of the room, and when I nodded, she cast a handy piece of detection magic. It was a great little spell, and one that’d solved more cases for me than mana blasts and my Colt put together. She cataloged every item in the room, her inhuman voice clear as a bell, rattling off a list of everything in the place, one piece at a time. I half-listened, half-looked around, trusting my cyberaudio suite to record it so I could play it back later if I had to. Lone Star had cut me a raw deal when they’d decided to throw me away, but at least they hadn’t taken their headware back. I shut off the color filter on my optics to make sure I didn’t miss anything, and went to work.

  “One hundred sixty-four 9mm shell casings,” she started.

  They were hard to miss, and our initial rush had sent more than a few skittering across the floor. Most of the shooting had come from just where we’d stopped, the side of the tiny living room closest to the door. The Sideways parts of my brain counted the cases almost as fast as Ariana did, and found the pattern in their spray easily, comparing it to the pockmarked wall across the room. Three shooters had fired from near the entrance, the fourth up closer, hosing down the opposite side of the room willy-nilly. Terrible groupings, lots of muzzle climb, more misses than hits. Enough had hit, though. Four bodies sprawled out messily on the other side of the room, lending credence to the shooters’ quantity over quality approach.

  “—four spent twelve-gauge casings—”

  So there’d been some return fire, but not much. There were more bullet holes than just those four shotgun blasts, and no other shells scattered around. I wasn’t surprised, though. Caseless rounds were plenty common, it was really only here in the Barrens that you saw much cased ammo any more. Whoever had taken these four out had been using older, cheaper hardware.

  It wasn’t a shock that the runners, meanwhile, had opted mostly for caseless stuff. I leaned in close and checked a few of the return-fire bullet holes, guessing them to be from a big pistol not terribly unlike my own Colt. The main shooters, though, who’d won the fight, were poor enough for cased ammo, sloppy enough to leave the casings behind, but cheap enough to take any empty magazines before they left.

  Ariana droned on in the background, dispassionately listing items. I nudged with a toe here and there, knowing the bodies had already been disturbed post-mortem to get looted. Three of the shadowrunners had big, empty holsters that would fit a fat-framed Browning or more likely an Ares Predator. None had credsticks on them.

  “—one human digitus secundus mammas severed at the proximal phalanx. One human digitus tertius severed at the proximal phalanx. One human digitus annularis severed at the proximal phalanx—”

  The big ork closest to the shooters had gone down missing most of a hand. He was just another razorboy clawing his way up out of the gutters, but I’d seen him around before. He went by Yard Dawg, and I remembered toasting and cheering with him down at a corner dive during a live broadcast of the Super Brawl. He’d been an up-and-comer three or four years ago. Then a down-and-outer, just like the rest of us.

  He hadn’t died pretty. Something sharp, wicked sharp, had come at him low and to his right. He’d been chipped fast enough to try and block, but the blade had swept up, through his hand, and sliced neatly across his throat. He’d popped a cyberspur while he bled out, but never gotten it wet. The razorboy’d gone down swinging but missing.

  Curiously, he had a broken nose that had been crudely taped up, a split lip, a black eye, and some blistering around the cranial injuries that looked like burn marks. Someone had hit him hard and fast and more than once, and done so well before this gunfight, but judging from the size of the wounds the fist had been pretty small. Huh.

  “—four software chips, three twelve-gauge shotgun slugs—”

  The shotgunner was behind the couch, covered in blood and cushion stuffing from the shredded furniture. He was a weedy little guy, built more like the elven stereotype than I was. He had a half-dozen datajacks high on his left temple,
and in their rush his robber-killers had missed some of the chips he’d dropped as he died.

  I crouched behind the couch with congealed blood under my shoes, staring at their leftovers. Ari’s spell—my spell, technically, but she cast it better than I could—didn’t know exactly what sort of chips they were, but I did. CalFrees, and I recognized the maker’s mark, a tiny logo etched on each of the small gem cases. A couple years ago, I would’ve called it a jackpot. I tried not to think about Turbo Bunny, and made myself think about anything else, instead.

  “—two sets of zip ties, severed—”

  That made for a timely reminder of what I was really after, and a nice distraction from unpleasant memories. The girl. I was here for the girl. I stalked over to the old-fashioned heating unit. It’s where we’d seen Kyoko hours earlier, aura blazing with anger and fear, tied to it by hard plastic restraints. They were cut now, and the slices that had freed her dug into the cheap metal, too. It was the same blade that had opened up the team’s heavy, I was sure, and it was mono-edged, or I’d turn in my license.

  I tugged at my pocket and thumbed open my tactical knife, a folding Cougar shortblade. It was a weapon focus—vampire insurance, I called it—but not much of one. I kept it around more for the mundane sharpness than the hint of orichalcum and wisps of enchantment. I held it against the metal pipes and dug in gently, seeing how hard I’d have to press to match, or close to match, the depth of their cut. It was easy as pie, went in without hardly any pressure. Whoever’d cut her free had been careful about it, then. It was like they didn’t want to hurt her, or they didn’t want to damage a package. I shut my Cougar and clipped it back inside my pocket, then paced around the room sucking on a Target while Ariana kept rattling off the room’s contents.

  The other two corpses didn’t bear any obvious gang ink—and obvious gang ink was the only kind worth having—either, didn’t wear any patches, didn’t get hits in my own steel-trap memory or ping anything on my facial recognition protocols. They were just some thugs Yard Dawg had picked up to help with a job, it looked like. They were chromed up irregularly enough that they had money to burn on augmentations, but hadn’t gotten them together, like gangers or syndicate soldiers might.