by Kai O'Connal
Leung managed to finish his sentence. “—no choice.” He sat for a moment, then grabbed one of his AROs, crumpled it into a virtual paper ball, and threw it, because he felt like it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Getting out of a country like Amazonia is easier than getting in for the same reason that escaping from a house you’ve broken into is easier than the initial entry. As with a house, the vast majority of Amazonian security focused on keeping the wrong people out. If some of the undesirables somehow make it past your initial security, and then decide they want to leave, well, why should you stop them, seeing as how having them on the outside was what you wanted in the first place?
Still, this was a major, paranoid nation, and Elijah was trying to smuggle out something incredibly valuable. There were plenty of things that could go wrong. He busied himself listing them in his head as his group walked through the airport.
Amazonia was a wealthy enough nation that the Southern Metropôle Airport didn’t have the clucking-chickens-and-free-range-pickpockets vibe of airports in more feral cities. It was an orderly place—people stood in line when they were told to stand in line, they seldom yelled, and if they were carrying a weapon, they were subtle about it.
None of Elijah’s group had any weapons showing. Pineapple walked in front of the group, a long brown coat waving behind him, and his size and glaring eyes the only weapons he needed. People got out of his way as soon as they saw him. Some didn’t even need to look at him—they just felt something as he walked along (possibly the impact of his heavy treads on the stone-tile floor) and instinctively moved out of the way.
But then they came to a group of people that the troll couldn’t intimidate—the ones waiting in line at the security checkpoint. In the airport’s corridors, people would move out of Pineapple’s way because all they were giving up was a small amount of real estate they didn’t really care about. The line was a different matter. Everyone in line ahead of them felt they had earned the space they currently possessed, and they would fight for that space as if it were one of their children. In fact, Elijah suspected that there were a few people there who would give up a child if it meant they wouldn’t have to move farther back in line.
The identities the Johnson had given them had the team posing as tourists returning from a wedding—the kind of tourists security is all too happy to see go away, as they typically are too jovial and/or intoxicated to be endured. Right now, they all looked like people who had partied too hard and were leaving with plenty of suppressed regrets. The five of them looked in five different directions, and none of those directions intersected the eyes of another team member. None of them had said anything to each other beyond the basic talk needed to coordinate their departure.
Elijah felt some guilt over the state of affairs, as he knew much of it was his fault. Cao’s silence wasn’t new—she was shy to begin with, and she had seemed even more withdrawn ever since their brief time with Humanis people in Chicago—but Leung and Kyrie’s distance was definitely tied to his actions with Mr. Johnson. As far as Pineapple went, well, Elijah and Pineapple wouldn’t have much to talk about even in the best of circumstances.
Elijah was confident that they would all come around in time. He compared their present situation to the people who had discovered King Tut’s tomb. Mummy’s curse or not, that discovery was clearly the greatest moment in the lives of all those involved in it, something they could talk about for all their lives, something they would be remembered for. Even if they died early, they would die as legends, with a wonderful memory of a singular accomplishment that would surely make any death worthwhile. Similarly, Elijah was confident that the rest of his group would be thankful to be involved in this journey, right up to their dying breath, no matter how it was they died. They were on the verge of making history, and who didn’t want to do that?
He thought about trying to explain all this to them. Then he thought a bit more, and decided to remain silent. Even so, Kyrie’s words to him, both in Chicago and last night, kept running through his mind. He tried not thinking about them, but they kept buzzing irritably around in his head, refusing to go away. With a frown, he concentrated on getting through the line, more sure than ever that he wasn’t the kind of person the adept had been talking about.
The next moments served as a fine proof of the theory of relativity, though not in the way Einstein intended it. Everyone in the security line moved at exactly the same speed, but time nevertheless traveled at different speeds for all of them. There was a sarariman in a Vashon suit clearly on a business trip, maybe his first one (if he’d done this more often, he might have learned a frequent flier’s tricks to avoiding this line), and for him time was clearly moving slowly. He was working, his hands swiping back and forth to move AROs only he could see, his voice occasionally muttering instructions or bits of conversation into a subvocal mic. Though he was working, there was only so much he could do in his current location, and every moment he stood in this line limited his productivity, which would make the wait seem like an eternity to him.
Just behind him was a couple, a young boy and a young girl kept leaning against each other and rubbing their faces together in ways that made Elijah fear that their various studs and piercings would snag on each other and do terrible things to the flesh in which they were set. They kissed with hungry abandon, they tried to spend their time in line lost in each other, but they had to move when the line moved. Elijah saw each of them occasionally open their eyes to glance at how the line was moving ahead of them, and he saw the dismay and surprise in their expressions telling him that for them, the line was moving far too fast. The girl carried a bag, the boy didn’t, and Elijah assumed that when they reached the checkpoint, the girl would go through, and the boy would have to stand and watch her go.
There were plenty of other people in the line, but no matter what else people were going through, no matter what their situation was, no one was experiencing slower time than Elijah and his crew. Not even the woman with the two screaming children and the facial expression that clearly indicated a full-blown migraine. The runners had to spend the whole time in line being watchful without looking watchful, tensing up when security guards walked by, wondering with each crackle of the public address if the words about to emerge from the speaker would be the ones indicating that the game was up, their fake SINs had been blown, and they had to get out of there fast. Or worse, they would discover on their own that Mr. Johnson had set them up and given them worthless IDs, then dropped them in the middle of a nest of Amazonian security and left them alone and stranded to find their way out. Each step forward was a minor victory, each halting moment was excruciating. The fact that you couldn’t see this on any of the others’ faces just meant that they were pros.
The line moved forward, the guards came closer, stony faces glaring at an array of sensor results only they could see. Elijah was playing it safe and had stowed all his weapons in luggage that had already been checked, and the others claimed they had done the same. Though he wouldn’t be surprised if Pineapple had some supposedly scanner-proof item hidden on him somewhere.
He was close enough to the checkpoint that he could hear grunted instructions from a member of the security team. “Step ahead. Stop. Take two steps. Stop again. Wait. Okay, go ahead. Next. Step ahead. Stop. No, no, stop. Stay there. Please move to your left, the officer will tell you what to do. Next! Step ahead. Stop ...”
A few people needed a more detailed scan, but they, like everyone else, were soon moving toward their gate. There were no incidents, which was too bad. After one incident, guards were usually reluctant to have another, and were more likely to let something questionable pass.
It took some time, but eventually Elijah was three people away from the checkpoint, then two, then one, then there.
“Next. Step ahead. Stop. Take two steps. Stop again. Wait. Okay, go ahead next.”
And like that, he was through. Then the others. The SINs held up, and if anyone was carr
ying a weapon, it either didn’t show up or the guards didn’t care. Their gate was B34. Elijah started walking quickly.
It seemed like the gate was a kilometer away. Just as it finally came in sight, Elijah saw a sign announcing the Ambassador Club, and he briefly considered asking Leung to do a quick hack and get them all admitted, but that seemed like an unnecessary risk. When the door opened as he passed by, he thought about grabbing it and doing an old-fashioned sneak-in, enjoying the comfortable chairs until someone kicked him out. But then the man who had just emerged from the club spoke and put all those thoughts to flight.
“Mr. Henderson. May I invite you to have a drink with me?”
Elijah smiled, fully prepared to inhabit his cover identity.
“That’s an offer I’m always happy to hear, but I’m afraid I’ve got a plane to catch.”
The man who had emerged from the Ambassador Club, a bronzed man with a salt-and-pepper beard, returned Elijah’s smile. “Nonsense. Your flight won’t board for a good forty-five minutes. I’m certain you have time to enjoy a drink with me.”
It was an old trick—reveal that you know more about the subject than you’d be expected to in order to get them off balance. But Elijah had been in the shadows too long for it to work.
“I’d be happy to have a drink with you—except I don’t know who you are.”
The man pushed the door of the club open wider to reveal an interior that was mostly empty except for a pair of Amazonian soldiers standing spread-legged, rifles resting comfortably in their hands.
“Come inside, and I’ll happily tell you who I am.”
A message from Leung appeared as an ARO in front of Elijah.
Elijah complied, since that was exactly what he’d planned to do anyway.
Leung had to say this for the Amazonian who had them in a state of semi-captivity—he had actually bought the team the drinks he had promised. In the hacker’s book, that was worth something.
They all sat in the club, comfortable in faux-leather chairs, enjoying their drinks, with a pair of uniformed soldiers serving as the only reminder that things were not normal. The drink in front of Leung, a rum and Coke, was tasty, and the condensation running down the side of the glass made him unconsciously lick his lips every time it caught his eye, but he stayed disciplined and only sipped.
He wasn’t sure how to broach the subject of why they were there, but he didn’t need to worry about it. The man who had invited them in took control of the conversation, using the same warm tones he had used when he first spoke to them.
“My friends, I want to be honest with you, because I find that when you are honest, you can have conversations that are direct and do not waste time on things of no importance. So the first thing I should tell you is that none of you is in any trouble whatsoever. No matter what you say in this meeting, at the end of it you will be free to go and board your plane, if that is what you wish.”
Leung was pretty sure the man wouldn’t buy his innocent act, but he tried it anyway, if only to be irritating. “Why wouldn’t we be free to go? And why would we choose not to? I don’t understand.”
The man shrugged off Leung’s words like a duck shrugging off water. “I only brought you in here to make you an offer. An offer similar to the one you recently received from the person who provided you with these very convincing cover identities.”
“Cover identities?”
“Mr. Leung,” the man said with a tone full of reproach. “These are just the kind of dishonesties I was talking about. The kind that waste all of our time. I have given you drinks and spoken forthrightly. Perhaps you could return my courtesy with some honesty of your own.”
Leung checked the time. The man had this much right—they really didn’t have time to waste.
“Okay. What’s the job?”
The man smiled. “It’s essentially the same one you have already accepted. The only difference is, before you report anything to your employer, you will first report to us. I should mention that when you report to us, we might have suggestions on ways to amend the information you give to your other employer.”
“You said ‘us.’ Who’s ‘us’?”
“Amazonian officials.”
Leung cocked his head. “‘Amazonian officials’? Really? That’s you being honest?”
The man sighed. “Sadly, the habits of others sometimes limit the full amount of honesty I would like to display. Let’s just say that your activities have attracted the interest of a certain high-level national official…” The man smiled. “With scales.”
Elijah moved quicker than Leung had ever seen. He jumped to his feet so fast that the heavy chair he was sitting in shot back over a meter.
“No. No way.”
His sudden movement startled the guards, who cocked and readied their weapons. This brought an immediate response from Pineapple, who drew a weapon, a matte-dull gray, plastic gun, from who knows where and leveled at the Amazonian official’s head. Kyrie hadn’t moved, but her gaze was laser-focused on the guard nearest to her, and it was obvious she was ready if the shit they were already in got any deeper. Leung tensed, ready to tip a table and duck behind it if necessary.
But the man held up his hand, and the guards lowered their weapons. “There is no need for histrionics. I told you that you could walk out of here without restriction if you rejected the offer, and I am a man of my word. I think you are being premature, however, as you have heard nothing of the terms.”
“Terms don’t matter,” Elijah said. “There are rules about this kind of thing.”
The man shrugged—it seemed to be his preferred expressive gesture. “I was given to understand that people such as you are not overly preoccupied with rules.”
“We’re overly preoccupied with breathing,” Leung said. “Getting caught up in a dragon’s affairs tends to interrupt that habit.”
“If that is your decision, then so be it. Your flight will board in about fifteen minutes. I will send you all my contact information. Use the time you have to consider what I said. Think particularly about who it is you are working for. There are conflicts coming, and many people will be forced to choose sides. They should do so wisely.”
Then, true to his word, the man let Leung and the others go free. As they walked out of the Ambassador Club, all of them received contact information they could use if they wanted to get ahold of the man they’d just met.
Most of them deleted the request immediately.
Tempest remained in the Ambassador Club for a while, because he found it comfortable, and he liked watching the planes come and go. Every departure, every arrival meant change, and with change came possibility.
The two guards near him continued to stand at attention the whole time, and he did not allow them to relax in the slightest, even though he had no reason to believe there was any kind of imminent threat. They didn’t even react when he dropped the illusion making him look human—a disguise he hated, no matter how practical it was. Only the clumsy used their power haltingly, calling on it only when they thought they needed it. The wise used their power like a cloak, or a crown, keeping it on at all times as a reminder to others and to themselves of who they are and what they can do. Two security guards was not an army by any means, but being able to employ them as personal bodyguards at his whim meant something to Tempest, and he did not intend to let himself or anyone near him, including the guards, forget what kind of discretion he had over such things.
He watched as the plane carrying the runners he had just spoken to taxied away from the gate and moved toward the runway. He watched as it rose into the sky. He refused to feel even a moment’s worth of apprehension.
It took fifteen minutes. The message had probably been sent much earlier than that, but it had traveled a winding path to make it back to the airport. It was a simple message, containing an expression of interest and a channel through which messages could be sent securely. It would not be the most
rapid exchange, but it would happen.
Tempest smiled, flexed his fingers, and prepared to negotiate. This was so much easier than what he had gone through on the streets. Too bad circumstances hadn’t allowed it sooner.
PART FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
To give a bit of legitimacy to their new identities, none of the team sat near the other on the plane to Buenos Aires. Elijah’s window seat afforded him a place to stare other than the back of the headrest in front of him. His mind raced ahead by days, then fired back to retrace their steps as he attempted to pinpoint where and when they’d caught the notice of Hualpa. How long had the dragon been watching?
The man at the airport allowing them to leave Amazonia smacked of having the other shoe drop. Something wasn’t right. Dragons didn’t just let a target go, and officials weren’t in the habit of releasing a shadowrunner team once their identities were revealed. He didn’t think any of them really rated detention anywhere. But in countries like Amazonia, his opinion meant nothing.
Being under a dragon’s surveillance terrified him in ways he couldn’t relate to anyone on his team. Not even Kyrie. Her past never afforded her the unfortunate luxury of being involved in a dragon’s affairs, and he hoped she never would be. As for himself, he planned on keeping as much distance as he could from the beast.
Once on the ground in Argentina, a man in an expensive suit met Elijah at the gate. The suited man handed the mage a sealed, padded envelope with instructions not to open it until they reached their final destination of Antarctica.
Kyrie found him first and stretched as she approached. “That was a nice nap. Though I think we could have rated First Class.” She arched a brow at him. “You weren’t in First Class, were you?”
“No.”
“You’re paler than usual.”