by Mel Odom
Since that time, the corps had reformed the Matrix into grids and created the Grid Overwatch Division, called GOD. The Matrix had gotten a lot more dangerous and dodgy nowadays. If someone was going to snoop and spy on people and corporations in the Matrix these days, they had to know what they were doing.
Hawke didn’t.
“You’ll just be piggybacking off me,” Dolphin insisted. “It’ll be like you’re not even there. And if I try to just explain everything I’ve found, you won’t understand. This is what you came to me for, remember? You need to see this for yourself.”
Reluctantly, Hawke picked up the rig, running his thumbs over the ebony buds. Taking a breath to steel himself, he pulled it on and stared out the bug-smeared windshield. They were on the highway, seemingly locked into a void of darkness the headlights carved a long tunnel through.
“Just relax.” Dolphin’s voice was a deep whisper inside his skull. “I’ve got you.”
Hawke experienced a brief sensation of endless falling, then—
—he stood in a massive room filled with library stacks containing millions of books, scrolls, stone tablets, paintings, scrimshaw, and objects he couldn’t even name. Everything was made of wood, the burnished surfaces gleaming from polish and care. Travertine Italian marble tiles the color of old bone covered the floor. The faint smell of spices—cinnamon, cardamom, saffron, and vanilla—hung in the cool air. Elevators and ziplines criss-crossed the endless space. Hawke just stared at everything for a few moments.
“Sorry. I forgot how overwhelming it can be to someone who hasn’t been here before.”
He turned toward the voice, and spotted Dolphin perched behind a tall mahogany desk covered with books and a large red apple. Petite and blonde, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looked like she was in her late twenties or early thirties, slim and vivacious. She wore sea-green framed glasses, an unnecessary affectation in the cyber world, but which complemented her loose-fitting, pale green turtleneck.
“Hi.” She waved, her gray eyes shining with excitement.
“Hi.” Hawke walked over to the desk. His movement made him aware of his clothing. Instead of the tactical gear he wore in the van—where I really am, he reminded himself—he was dressed in a light gray Savile Row suit. He looked back at Dolphin. “Not my usual look.”
Dolphin grinned and her cheeks reddened a little. “It’s cyberspace. No reason you can’t look good while you’re here. Skins are free.” She shrugged. “Unless you want something special.” The mirth left her face as she turned serious. “Do you want anything special? I didn’t even think to ask. How you see yourself in cyberspace is important.”
“This is fine.” Hawke stopped on the other side of the tall desk and looked around at the library. “This is your place?”
“It is.” Dolphin smiled with pride. “It’s kind of a Warehouse 13 motif. Stuff from everywhere. I’m still exploring. It’s hard to do when I’m getting new acquisitions in all the time, but I can’t quit reaching for the new stuff, you know?”
Hawke didn’t understand the reference, but let it go. Dolphin had all kinds of interests, and pop culture was only one of them. He’d always felt a little uncomfortable around her because she radiated a kind of innocence he didn’t think he’d ever understand. He didn’t know much about her other than her decker skills, but he had her true SIN: Adeline “Addy” Jaeger. He’d helped her keep that information off the Matrix when she’d first come to him for help. She was a technomancer, someone who’d evolved after the Crash of ’64, and who could link with the Matrix simply with their minds. She’d gotten hacked, and her SIN had almost been turned loose into the wild. Hawke had prevented that.
She was also a constant collector of information. She chased secrets and rumors and gossip on the Matrix, and provided services to people who wanted those things, or who feared those things getting released to the public. If she’d used her gifts for purely predatory purposes, she could have been wealthier than Hawke assumed she already was. Financial motivation wasn’t what spurred her on: she just liked knowing things.
“Maybe I’ll give you a tour and highlight my special projects some other time,” Dolphin suggested.
“Sure.”
“I know we’re facing a time crunch, so we’re going to get to what I’ve discovered so far.” Dolphin got down from her chair. She walked forward, and the desk disappeared as the room began changing around them.
When she took Hawke by the hand, her flesh felt warm and vibrant, and he wondered if she was the same in real life. He’d never met her in the flesh. “The first visit is going to be somewhat unpleasant, I’m afraid. How well did you know your Johnson?”
“I met him briefly twice, talked to him once in between.”
“Good, then you’re not emotionally invested.”
As she led Hawke forward, the lights in the library turned dark, then went black. When the lights came back on, he was standing in a morgue, next to a stainless steel table holding Mr. Johnson’s lifeless body.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
The chill pervading the room was cold enough to make Hawke’s bones ache. He didn’t know if it was a programmed virtual reality sensation, or if the feeling was a visceral reaction to seeing the dead man laid out on the table under the stark white lights. He’d seen plenty of dead people before, those who’d been killed quietly in their sleep and those who had been spread all over an alley by explosives, so he didn’t think the blood or just the idea of someone being dead was the cause.
There was something unnatural about seeing a once living human being and their parts all spread out in surroundings that were clean and austere at the same time. The impersonality of it all cut like a monofilament blade.
Mr. Johnson lay on the table, arms tucked close by his sides, his various organs floating above his open chest. The heart, lungs, kidneys, eyes, brain, and other pieces were all recognizable, and spun slowly on their individual axes. One of the kidneys had been replaced with bioware that looked both human and artificial at the same time, because it was so perfect.
The brain was a ruptured mass that had expanded once freed of the skull and was now full of bone splinters as well. All of the flesh was devoid of blood for the most part, cleaned by the medtechs who had then cut him to pieces.
A flattened bullet hovered above the dead man’s face. As Hawke looked at it, he flashed back to when Mr. Johnson had taken the round through his hand while in the club. The hand at the dead man’s side still had the bullet hole in it. The surrounding flesh had turned dark violet and black with postmortem bruising.
Dolphin stepped into the carnage and waved at the bullet. It immediately plopped back into the dead man’s brain, which oozed into his skull and left a small diameter hole in the forehead. The back of Mr. Johnson’s head was gone, and bits of hair-covered scalp and bone dangled beneath his head. They were sucked back into the head as well, but a few pieces were missing. Some of the smaller bone splinters darted back down to the wounded hand.
“You already know what killed him,” Dolphin said, “but I wanted you to know I checked on that as well. To verify things. The one bullet struck him in the brain. Death was instantaneous. Off—” She snapped her fingers. “—like that.”
“Are we inside the medical examiner’s files?” Hawke felt a little threatened as he gazed around the room. If they were inside a government node and tripped some kind of alarm, he’d never know. Not only that, he wasn’t certain he’d know how to escape.
“No.” Dolphin smiled at him. “This is a re-creation I set up in my private data storage, totally secure from outside interference. Anyone wanting to get in here would have to follow me in, and that’s impossible because the firewall we’re behind is something I designed. No one has this software.”
Hawke resisted the urge to tell her that she charged clients for breaking into cyber strongholds of people who thought they were as well-protected as she believed she was. “So, you’re just doing this from an educated guess?�
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“I stole copies of these files from the medical examiner’s office and brought them here, then started tracking down who your Johnson really is. It took time. His info was really protected behind black ice.”
Ice was decker slang for intrusion countermeasures code written to defend cyber systems. IC came in different protective levels and had multiple uses. White IC was designed to slow and observe a decker targeting a site. Trace IC tracked a decker’s location in the physical world and allowed law enforcement teams, or someone more lethal, to find him or her. Gray IC destroyed cyberdecks.
“He was protected by black ice?” Hawke looked at the Johnson again and tried to figure out what made him so important. Black IC was expensive, code written expressly to kill deckers. It wasn’t just handed down to shield a wageslave. Not even one who negotiated with shadowrunners.
“Yeah. Quality stuff. Top shelf variety.” Dolphin stared at Hawke with raised eyebrows. “This guy’s a nobody, so whoever was protecting him was more interested in protecting themselves. Or in hiding what they’re doing. To them, he’s just one more piece of the firewall.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the corporation he worked for, KilmerTek, hired Mr. Johnson four days before they put him onto you.”
Four days. Hawke tried to wrap his head around that, but it didn’t make any sense. “You found that order?”
“No, but this guy didn’t meet you on his own. I checked through his background, which was simple, up to his employment with KilmerTek. You two had no commonalities. Nothing to tie you together.”
“Did he do biz with shadowrunners at his old job?”
“Not that I could find, and I think I’d have found it by now. If he had, no matter how deeply it was buried, I would have dug it up. The guy is—was an open book. ”
Hawke believed her.
“PCC detectives from Santa Fe are investigating your Johnson from their end, coordinating with Denver cops. I’ve got datasniffers working both ends, so if they find anything, I’ll be the next to know.”
“You think KilmerTek hired him just to make contact with me?”
“That’s exactly why he was hired: to get you onboard for the run. Being new to KilmerTek, the Johnson couldn’t have his fingers in much of the day-to-day biz, so there’s not much anyone can track about his time there. He was a name and SIN on their payroll, that’s it. I’m running datasniffers back through his files at the corporation, but I already know they’re not going to find much. He wasn’t wired into the corp.” Dolphin looked back down at the dead man. “He was a use and lose interface. For all we know, KilmerTek paid to have him flatlined as well.”
“Not before the job was finished,” Hawke replied. “I was hired to get Rachel Gordon. I got her. Whoever sent him still needed the Johnson to contact me and receive her.”
“Maybe you didn’t get Rachel quietly enough, or maybe they thought their profile was running too high, and decided to cut their losses. Once KilmerTek saw how high the stakes had gotten, with the Azzies and NeoNET looking for you and bodies dropping everywhere, they could have gotten cold feet. Just set up the Johnson to meet with you, then whack you both to erase the trail.”
Hawke took in a breath and let it out, thinking he would never do someone on his team that way, and then realizing that was precisely why he’d never had a permanent team. So he didn’t ever have to make a decision like that.
“Who was he?”
“His real name was Christopher Gant.” Dolphin reached for the bioware kidney, tapped it, and spun it. “The med ID on the kidney cinched the identification for the medical examiner. No one tried to erase it. I followed up on the intel, and came up with the same result the M.E. did. Null sheen. Before he was hired by KilmerTek, Gant was a number-cruncher at Valeddy-Mortensen. V-M manufactures low-end electronics for cheap game decks, nothing special. Gant was just a projects manager, juggling accounts and massaging buyers.”
“What does KilmerTek do?”
“They drill oil fields in Oklahoma and Texas. They’re a wildcatter operation that barely gets by, hitting just enough wells to keep in the black.”
“No connection to Rachel?”
“None.”
“What about to Guatemalan artifacts?”
“Zilch. They’ve got a modest museum they fund in Houston, but that’s mostly a public relations effort to make peace with the Native American Nations. There’s nothing to indicate they’d be interested in whatever Rachel found down there.” Dolphin waved and the morgue collapsed around them, shrinking to a small, thin line that spread horizontally, then grew back into a business foyer.
Under the high ceiling and ornate light fixtures, Hawke stood on a thick carpet. A double-door entrance was on his left. The transplas doors announced KILMERTEK CORPORATION in gold letters. To his right, three people answered comms behind a long desk. Dark green potted plants with colorful flowers anchored the room. Comfortable chairs and couches dotted the carpet. People walked by and through Hawke, never paying attention to Dolphin or him. On the walls, a collection of trideo images of well sites gushed black crude high into cerulean skies.
“This is KilmerTek during its day-to-day operations, as far as I’ve seen.” Dolphin craned her head around, watching everything.
“Maybe Rachel Gordon or the artifact is a personal interest of one of the board members. Flicker identified Ayuni Sukenobu, one of NeoNET’s board members, as a possible supporter of the Guatemalan dig Professor Fredericks proposed.”
“There’s no one like that here that I can see. The board of directors consists of seven people—five women and two men—all primarily concerned with the bottom line. If it doesn’t turn a profit, they’re not interested. They don’t have hobbies in things remotely like what you and Flicker found.”
“Rachel found the artifact.”
Dolphin shrugged. “Either way.”
Hawke sighed in disgust. “If no one at KilmerTek’s interested in archeology—”
“Or whatever Rachel Gordon found in Guatemala,” Dolphin said, “because we don’t know exactly what that is either.”
“—then that corp is a smokescreen, too. Designed to confuse the issue.”
Dolphin nodded. “Probably, but I would have checked them out anyway, just to be thorough.” She frowned and crossed her arms. “If this is a time suck, it worked. To a degree.”
“What do you mean?”
“If no one at KilmerTek is interested in weird archeology, someone outside the corp had to have pushed them to hire Gant and send him after you. There was a plan. This didn’t just happen randomly.”
“You think KilmerTek is in someone’s pocket.”
“Yep. Most of these small corps are. A lot of them have to maintain contracts with bigger corps or governmental departments and agencies in order to remain solvent.” Dolphin looked pointedly at the holos of oil wells on the wall. “Especially one that’s solely dependent on a natural resource whose worth bounces around radically in the stock market. It’s feast or famine for these drillers.”
“And making a deal on the side helps keep them solvent.” Hawke pulled up a stock market report for KilmerTek. “Crude oil hasn’t been doing so well lately.”
Dolphin touched her nose with a forefinger and smiled at him. “Exactly. A few months ago, a few African nations signed a deal to allow more drilling. Oil prices went into freefall. Seventeen days ago, investment specialists were selling KilmerTek stock like they were having a fire sale. There was talk the corp was going to go under when they couldn’t make their lease payments. Vultures were starting to gather to pick over the bones when the company eventually imploded.”
“Let me guess—that didn’t happen.”
“No, because KilmerTek received an infusion of nuyen that saved them. The details of that deal still haven’t been released, and it’s more protected than Gant was.”
“Those two events don’t have to be related.”
Dolphin grinned as the foyer me
lted down around them and the library took its place. “Want to bet on that?”
“No.”
“Too bad.” She walked back to the desk, sat, and lifted a hand over the desktop. A deck window opened in the air. “The information you need is out there somewhere. I’ll find it.”
“I know you will. Be careful.”
“Me?” Dolphin made a pistol of her thumb and forefinger and shot him. “You’re the one in front of bullets and blades, omae. Don’t stand still too long.”
The library grayed out and vanished, taking Dolphin with it.
CHAPTER FIFTY-Seven
Down on one knee, Rachel peered into the clear water of the shallow creek. To her right, over a hundred meters away, the gurgling stream poured down broken boulders, falling several dozen meters to splash into a large pool that flowed on at the far end. Those splashes had drawn Rachel to the water.
Ripples on the pool’s surface glinted in the sporadic sunlight through the towering conifers. Feathered creatures, she wasn’t sure if they were actual birds or lizards, flitted around the cascading water, hunting brightly-colored winged insects that glittered like jewels when the sun caught them. The insects fed on large pink and orange blossoms sprouting from plants hugging the rough rock face.
Thirsty and hungry, Rachel bent down over the creek and cupped her hands to catch the water. Small, finger-length fish darted beneath the surface and above the pebbled bed. The water felt cool, almost cold in her palms, in spite of the tropical conditions. As thirsty as she was, she hesitated to drink, thinking something would rear up from the depths at any moment and try to kill her. Or that the water was poisoned.
She didn’t know how long she’d been running, but she hadn’t stopped because the things hunting her hadn’t stopped either. Night hadn’t fallen, and she didn’t think it was going to. And if it did, she was convinced that whatever lurked in the darkness would be even more dangerous than what she’d seen so far.
As tired as she was, she didn’t dare do more than occasionally nap. There had been no food or water since she had arrived. She didn’t know how she was finding the strength to keep going.