Crossroads

by Stephen Kenson

  I thought for a moment. Maybe Jane felt responsible for getting me involved in the whole business with the Dragon Heart that had led to my working with Assets, or maybe she really considered me a chummer. Good friends were rare in our line of work, and I was honored to think Jane might view me as one.

  “Well.” I said, “there is one thing, two things actually. I’m going to need a new cover ID for a trip to Boston, and I need you to compile a jacket for me on someone who works for Manadyne. A mage by the name of Anton Garnoff.”

  5

  As I stared out the window of the plane, I thought about how soon we would arrive in Boston, the city of my birth, a place I never thought to see again. When I’d left the Hub ten years ago, I hadn’t planned to go back, and yet, here I was, on a UCASAir shuttle flight on my way there. Jane came through with the cover ID and flight reservations in a matter of hours. Meanwhile, I’d managed to catch a few hours’ sleep before Trouble and I boarded the red-eye flight at Thomas Jefferson International.

  Trouble had slept for most of the trip, which steadily improved my evaluation of her capabilities. She showed the good sense to catch some zees when she could. In the shadows you never knew when you might next get another chance to rest, and it had already been a long night. I was too caught up in my thoughts for sleep.

  From what I’d heard, both from Trouble and from the shadowtalk recently, Boston was a very different city than the one I’d left behind. A lot of the city had been damaged in the earthquake that hit the East Coast years before I was born. Historic buildings that had stood for centuries were destroyed, along with plenty more modern structures. The metroplex was quick to rebuild, and it had the good fortune to become the new home of the East Coast Stock Exchange. The same earthquake had also devastated New York City, leaving Wall Street a pile of rubble. But business went on, and Boston became the new financial capitol of North America. It made sense. There were already so many corporate and financial interests there. The damage from the quake gave them the perfect excuse to rebuild the city in their own image.

  Boston became an ultra-modern metroplex filled with old-world money and attitude. While the city center and the outlying Route 128 sections had been heavily renovated and rebuilt to meet the needs of the growing sprawl, areas like the Rox and South Boston, where I grew up, were left to whoever wanted them. The corporations had no interest in rebuilding homes shattered by the quake or in reweaving social fabrics torn apart by the upheavals of the Awakening or the Ghost Dance War. Like every sprawl. Boston had its dark underside, filled with the forgotten and the outcast, who survived day to day as best they could. If it hadn’t been for my Talent and Jase’s help, I’d probably still be there—alive or dead.

  When I lived in Boston, the city wasn’t much of a place for shadowrunning. The corporations considered the Stock Exchange too important to mess around with, so security in Boston was tight and the corps kept up a “gentlemen’s agreement” not to cause each other trouble in what amounted to a neutral ground for all of them. Or almost all of them.

  The neutrality lasted until Fuchi Industrial Electronics split up, not too long ago. One of the megacorp’s owners, Richard Villiers, was originally from Boston, and it turned out he had quietly been preparing for the split by buying up smaller companies in the city through fronts and shells. He was building his own little corporate empire for the time when he would have to jump ship, taking a lot of Fuchi’s secrets and resources with him. When it came down to it, the split was bloody, and people on all sides decided to hell with neutrality.

  Suddenly, Boston was a hot spot in the shadow biz. Opportunities for shadowrunners sprang up everywhere as all the other corps started getting in on the act. There weren’t enough runners in Boston to handle all of the demand, so shadowrunners from other metroplexes got called in, and the population of the shadows boomed. Local runners like Trouble got their shot at the big time.

  All things considered, it was kind of surprising that I hadn’t been back to the Beanplex before this. Still, Assets didn’t get involved in the kind of business going on in Boston these days. The Draco Foundation had bigger fish to fry than worrying about corporations fighting over the remains of Fuchi’s carcass or the presence of Villiers’ new Novatech corporation extending controlling tendrils everywhere in the high-tech industry.

  I pulled my kit bag out from under the seat in front of me and took out my Tarot deck. I folded down the tray table and unwrapped the black silk cloth protecting the cards, idly shuffling them while forming the questions in my mind and blocking out all other distractions. What’s going on here? What does this have to do with Jase? Why now? I projected my questions and thoughts into the cards, letting my hands shuffle at random. When I felt ready, I split the deck into four equal piles and flipped up the first card of each one.

  The Magician. No surprise there, since the magician was the card I generally identified with myself. Could also mean that, whatever the problem was, it had something to do with magic. Maybe another magician was involved. It could have associations with Garnoff, and even with Jase. The card was upright, not reversed, so I took it as more tied to me. Magic—and clear thought—were going to help me out of this.

  The Nine of Swords. Cruelty and betrayal. Was Jase betrayed by someone? Could he have betrayed someone? Was this revenge on the part of Garnoff or whoever else was behind this? Or was I being betrayed? It certainly occurred to me that this whole thing could be some kind of trap, but why? I had no involvement with Manadyne. Hell, the corp didn't even exist when I was still in Boston. Still, best to be on guard.

  The Queen of Swords. A woman, Trouble maybe, or Jane, the only real women in my life. Or maybe a woman I was yet to meet. Someone who offered wisdom and assistance. Or might she be the betrayer? I got a sense she would be helpful to me, but not very much beyond that.

  I turned up the last card.

  The Hanged Man, reversed. Deception, power at great cost, sacrifice and suffering. Not a good ending. However it went, this business was going to turn out bad for someone. I frowned as I looked over the cards. I didn’t much like the picture they painted, what there was of it that I could understand, that is.

  “Penny for 'em.”

  I turned, startled out of my reverie, toward Trouble sitting in the seat next to me. I hadn’t noticed that she was awake.

  “What's that?” I asked.

  “Just an old saying, ‘a penny for your thoughts.’ You seemed to be thinking a lot about something. Were you doing magic?” She bobbed her chin toward the Tarot cards.

  I picked up the cards, squared them and started wrapping them up again before I answered. Trouble obviously didn’t know very much about mages or she would have known never to interrupt one while he’s working. I wasn’t doing anything major, but I could have been, and with some magic a distraction can be dangerous. Of course, most mundanes didn’t scan much about how magic worked, even shadowrunners.

  “Nothing fancy.” I said, “just a divination to try and get a better idea of what’s going on. I’m afraid it wasn’t very helpful.”

  “Oh. Too bad.”

  “Tell me some more about your Mr. Johnson . . . Garnoff, right?” I said.

  “Sure, what do you want to know?”

  “Did he tell you why he wanted a jacket on Jase?”

  “Nope, but then I didn’t need to know that. He just wanted me to check up on this guy and then on you. Ours is not to reason why . . .” Ours is but to do or die. She left the rest of the quote unsaid.

  “Did he want you to keep checking on Jase, too?”

  “Hmmm, no. When I told him I was sure that Vale was dead, he told me to concentrate on you.”

  “Because of my connection to Jase?”

  “Hey, you said the guy was your teacher, right? Maybe Garnoff is looking for something that Vale knew that he might of taught you.”

  I thought about that for a second and shook my head.

  “Secrets of the ages? I doubt it. I didn’t get much mor
e than my basic magical training from Jase. I learned most of my real magical stuff at the Institute and afterward on the streets.”

  “How about something he owned?”

  "Maybe. Most of Jase’s stuff got sold or trashed after he died. I’ve still got a few things, mostly books, but none of them are worth anything really. They’re not rare or anything like that.”

  ‘‘Maybe something he didn’t tell you about?”

  I shrugged. “Anything’s possible, but if that’s the case, then Garnoff is going to be pretty disappointed, because I don't know what he could be after.” I put away my Tarot deck and folded up the tray table with a sigh, then resumed my staring out the window.

  “I remember seeing in the Knight Errant report that Vale was killed in a gang incident, right?”

  I nodded without looking back at her, so she continued. “Garnoff’s got some local gang working for him. Maybe there’s a connection there.”

  I shook my head. “Couldn’t be the same gang.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “Why not?”

  The lights of the sprawl glittered below, so serene and beautiful, but I had seen first-hand the kind of ugliness that hid in the shadows of those clean, bright lights. I turned back to Trouble. “Because I killed them.”

  The awkward silence hung in the air until the intercom beeped and the captain announced that we would be landing at Logan Airport in about fifteen minutes. Trouble busied herself with her portable data-reader, scanning a couple of chips holding all the data Jane had managed to dig up. I went back to staring out the window, rubbing a narrow white scar on my hand and remembering.

  I recalled the day Jase died like it had happened yesterday. It was so stupid, not like the dramatic and heroic deaths of the tragic characters in the sims or on the trideo. He used a public telecom to make a call on the street while we were at the local Stuffer Shack, and a group of gangers called the Asphalt Rats felt like inflicting a little random violence that night. Hitting the streets and messing up anyone who got in their way. At the first sound of the gunfire I ran outside, but I was too late. All I could do was watch the Rats roar off on their bikes and hold Jase while he died, his blood all over the sidewalk and the wall and my clothes.

  The next couple of hours were a blur, but I remember being surprised at how many people in the area were willing to help. I had no idea Jase had so many friends and people he’d helped, folks who he’d done a little healing magic for, or a simple banishment or some such. Sister Margaret from St. Patrick’s kept leading me around like a zombie. I couldn’t seem to get over the shock. Jase died like an extra in a bad sim, only he wasn’t a faceless actor, he had a life ... he was important to people, to me.

  We had to cremate him. It seemed right somehow to do it that way. Jase was SINless, so Knight Errant wasn’t interested in wasting any time dealing with the whole mess beyond getting names and dates for their files. They weren’t going to look into it. The forensic division didn’t have time for blanks. I never realized how little open ground there was in the plex until I had to think about finding a place to bury someone. I remember staring into the funeral pyre in the open lot in the Rox for a long time and it was then, standing there looking into the flames, that I knew what I was going to do.

  I made my way back to the apartment I’d shared with Jase for almost a year since he had taken me in. I went through all the old books, printouts, and chips he’d been using to teach me magic, looking for something I’d seen once in passing, an old formula Jase had tucked away, all but forgotten. I hadn’t paid it much attention before, but now I studied the wrinkled fanfold sheets with a burning purpose. I worked on it all night and into most of the next day. A couple of people stopped by, then politely left me alone when I yelled at them to frag off.

  Pushing what little furniture there was in the main room of the apartment out of the way and rolling up the colorful throw rug, I took chalk and paint and started to draw on the worn wooden floor. I worked for hours, I’m still not sure how long exactly. Time didn’t seem to have any meaning. When I was done, the floor was covered in a complex diagram. There was a large circle and a smaller triangle, edged with mystical runes and sigils.

  Placing candles around the outside of the circle and braziers at the four quarters, I took a small silver knife from Jase’s collection of magical tools. Soon, the flames were flickering and fragrant incense smoke rose from the braziers. A larger brass bowl filled with coals simmered in the center of the triangle. With the sharp edge of the gleaming dagger, I placed a shallow cut along the palm of my hand. Three drops of blood fell onto the glowing coals in the brazier, hissing droplets that covered the incense with the coppery smell of burning blood. Three more drops fell, followed by three more. A silken cloth stopped the flow of blood, and I bound it into a simple bandage.

  From the center of the circle I gathered my anger. I hadn’t slept in a couple of days at least. The sweet smoke of burning incense and burning blood filled the room, making my eyes water. The outlines of things seemed to blur. I thought about Jase’s funeral pyre, staring into the flames of the candles, the smoke. I called on the fire, the fire of my anger and hatred. I stoked it slowly, lovingly, building it hotter and hotter. Flames crackled from the braziers, highest in the bowl where my blood fell.

  I shouted arcane words, I wept, I ranted. At the height of my passion, I loosed the flames of my heart, felt them drawn to the flames where my blood burned. The flames flared with a roar that echoed my cry of anger, and a cloud of flames shot up and seemed to fill the room.

  I found the Asphalt Rats partying later that night in a dead-end alleyway deep in their turf. From the amount of booze and discarded chip cases scattered around, it looked like they had recently come into some nuyen. I looked into the alley and saw those bastards partying and laughing after they had killed the best person I had ever known. I literally saw red, a rage that totally obscured everything else in a blood red haze. One of the gangers looked up from his debauchery and saw me standing there.

  I raised my arms and screamed my grief to the heavens, a roar of rage that shot into the alley and erupted into a raging inferno of flames. It was as if Hell itself opened onto the street. Some of the gangers tried to run, a couple reaching for weapons, but most didn’t even look up before being engulfed in a blast that charred their skin and set their hair aflame. A few moments later, the gas tanks of the bikes went off like a succession of bombs, and a black and orange fireball boiled out of the alley to the sky, blackening the sides of the nearby buildings with soot and ash.

  I stood at the end of the alley and watched it all happen. I didn’t care how horrible it was, my only thought was to see the ones responsible for my pain dead. The inferno in the alley was cool compared to the anger I felt as I watched the gangers burn, writhe, and die.

  Then it was all over. The husks of the bikes burned and a stream of acrid smoke billowed up from the alley. The gangers’ blackened and twisted corpses lay where they had fallen. Most of them never even knew what hit them, or why. I turned and walked away from the alley without looking back. The cut on my hand throbbed and ached. I felt drained, empty.

  I’d never killed anyone before that day. Even growing up in the violence of the Rox, I’d never even seriously hurt anyone, even in a fight. Then in the space of a day I killed fourteen people I didn’t even know. The sims would have you believe that I’d have been wracked with guilt ever since, but to be honest, I’m not. They’d want me to say that roasting those gangers didn’t bring Jase back and it didn’t make my grief go away. It didn’t, but to be honest, I don’t care.

  Nobody cried any tears for the Asphalt Rats when they heard about the weird incident in the alley, and another gang took over their turf and their niche in the Barrens ecology soon thereafter. I’m not bothered by the fact that I killed those bastards, then or now. What bothered me is the fact that I enjoyed it. The feeling of power when the Rats burned was an unbelievable high, better than drugs, better than anything. I liked
that feeling, and the idea that I might be willing to kill again just to feel it scared the drek out of me.

  I closed my fingers over the scar on my palm and looked out the window of the plane as we descended. Somewhere out in the dark, sprawling starscape that rushed up to greet us was a blasted and burned alley that no one went near anymore, and I was afraid of seeing it again.

  6

  The sun was coming up as we landed at Logan International Airport. Even this early in the morning, the airport was abuzz with activity from corporate commuter flights coming and going from New York, DeeCee, Atlanta, Seattle, and international flights from around the world. Corp types in suits made their way to and from the terminal as we left the plane. There was a fair security presence, mostly Knight Errant guards in their sleek black uniforms with the “KE” logo on the breast and shoulder, sidearms discreetly placed to provide a formidable image. The airport was busier and security was definitely tighter than I remembered it being on the day I left Boston, ten years ago. It was now a place where things were happening.

  Since we had no luggage to pick up, we breezed past the baggage claim. Both of us traveled light, strictly carry-on stuff. Trouble did have to stop at the security checkpoint at the end of the terminal to have her deck and chips run through a standard scan. I didn't worry. She’d managed to get the deck through security in DeeCee without any trouble, and the check was routine. Her ID claimed Trouble was a corporate research consultant, someone who needed the compact, portable computing power of a cyberdeck. She spoke briefly with the bored-looking clerk.

  “And you certify that these chips contain no illegal or contraband data?” the clerk asked in a droning voice. I watched the small trideo screens running reports from NewsNet. The rolling strip at the bottom of the image presented the local time and weather in Boston. It predicted a light rain for tonight by around 6:05. An announcer, pleasantly bland-looking, was reporting on breaking news in the metroplex.