by John Helfers
“Fine,” Vitriol said with a casual wave of his hand. “Waste as much time as you want. You don’t have anything that can do what you’re saying.”
“But we have nanotechnology research that interests you enough to break in and attempt to steal it. So you know we have nanites here that can affect your mind, and we’re willing to use them. They are nanites that have some kind of effect—if they didn’t, we would never have continued Project Siren long enough to catch the interest of whoever hired you. We have nanites that can affect the brain, and we’re going to put them into your skull.
“But maybe we don’t know what we’re doing. Maybe we have these nanites that can do things to your brain, but not the things we think they’ll do. And we will put these things into your brain and let them run wild and we will see what they do to your mind. Are you willing to see what the results will be?”
Vitriol wished his eyes hadn’t grown wider, but he knew they had and there was nothing he could do about it. “You can’t do that. You can’t just take someone off the street and inject things into their brain!”
“First of all, Mr. Vitriol, we didn’t just pull you off the street. Second, while human testing is sometimes frowned upon by the more squeamish corporations, many of us know that the use of human subjects can provide great advances in learning. So when you are whatever you’ll become after this, Mr. Vitriol, you’ll know that you helped the cause of science.”
“I don’t think this is necessary,” Vitriol said, wishing there was something, anything interesting in the room to look at.
“You’re prepared to talk? About your conversation with Blood Sister, perhaps?”
“About what? What do you—” He kept a nervous eye on the room’s door. “Okay. I’ll talk. Let’s negotiate.”
“Not that kind of talking, Mr. Vitriol. The kind where you tell us what you want to know.”
“I can’t—”
The door to the room opened, and a man in a long white coat walked in holding a small metal box. The man with the sunglasses waved his hand abruptly in front of Vitriol’s face.
“It’s too late. We’ll do it my way.”
“But—”
“We’re done,” the man said, and walked out of the room as the man in the white coat approached.
• • •
Vitriol didn’t go out for a while after that. For a few days he simply didn’t feel like it, and after that he stayed in because he thought it would be best to lie low. He didn’t go home, either—his home was a dump, and he didn’t want anyone to find him there. He stayed at a hotel, the type of place he could afford with the money he had earned, with a false identity that came as an additional form of compensation.
When he finally went out again, he avoided his usual haunts, even staying away from a sphinx party he heard about. But there are some things in life that, like chronic headaches, cannot be avoided no matter how hard one tries, and one night Vitriol found himself in the same bar as Gemmel. He was not able to avoid the dwarf, and he was surprised to realize that he didn’t want to. He should probably know what other people knew about the incident.
Gemmel didn’t make him wait. He plopped down net to him on a stool, easily climbing up on it even though it was almost as tall as he was. Vitriol glared at the bartender to let him know he should stay away for a time. The bartender, who did not seem anxious to move from his padded stool at the other end of the bar, looked away from Vitriol and Gemmel.
“Hey, hey, Vitriol, did you hear?” Gemmel said, brown beard bobbing. “Did you hear about the nun?”
“What?”
“The nun, the nun. Blood Sister. Sold out. Went corporate.”
So that was their game, Vitriol thought. “What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean? She got a steady gig, shadow ops for Prometheus. They might even put her on the official payroll someday.”
“Wow. Never thought she was the type to go corporate.”
“So why do you think she did it?”
“Don’t know,” Gemmel said, scratching his head. “How does anyone ever get anyone to do anything they don’t want to do? They had something on her, I guess.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Maybe that’s what was bothering her. She seemed like she was kind of in a bad mood, don’t you think.”
“Yeah. For about the last five years.”
“No, I mean recently. Recently she was in an even worse mood. You saw it, didn’t you? That night at the sphinx party? Didn’t she seem like she was in a really bad mood that night?”
“Yeah.”
“So what did you talk about?”
“Nothing,” Vitriol said. “Nothing at all.” Then he smiled and walked out.
The Manhattan streets were shiny in the night, almost like they were wet. The air was heavy, and the scent of rotting garbage never really went away on days like this.
Vitriol wasn’t paying much attention to the street, though. He was playing around with the twin images, twin memories in his mind. In each of them, he was talking to Blood Sister at the sphinx party. In one of the images, they had briefly exchanged hostile words while the nun’s church collapsed on him, which is what really happened. In the other, they had a brief exchange that strongly indicated that Blood Sister was behind the Prometheus Engineering break-in.
It was a ludicrous image. Anyone who really knew Blood Sister would know she wouldn’t ever work with Vitriol, and she wasn’t the type to organize a run on her own. But the people at Prometheus didn’t know that. Vitriol had talked to Blood Sister so he could put a memory in his head, and then he played with the memory so it would give out the information he wanted it to provide. When the Prometheus people had found the custom-designed memory in Vitriol’s head, they had believed it. Especially since they had heard about the conversation and wanted to know what it was about.
So they had brought Blood Sister in, and they had apparently gotten what they wanted from her. And Vitriol was quietly let go—the people who hired him apparently saw to that, and although Vitriol couldn’t know for sure how that happened, he believed they could order around his former captors because they were their superiors.
It was a shame about Harpy. She was the sacrifice the run needed to look right. Lochinvar hadn’t been seen for a while, and possibly only Carruthers knew of his fate.
Prometheus would move forward, thinking they had gotten what they wanted—not only did they have Blood Sister’s identity, but they seemingly had proof that their memory retrieval nanites worked. Never mind that Vitriol had forced them to work, pretty much waving his fake memory in front of them as hard as he could, so they didn’t have a choice but to find it.
Vitriol’s employers had lied to him about who they were, he had lied about what Blood Sister had said, then his employers had lied to the rest of the Prometheus Engineering corporation about the capabilities of their nanotech program. And the world continued spinning ‘round. Vitriol knew that there was only one secret to survival in this world—stay at least one lie ahead of everyone else.
Bloody Fingers
By Jason Schmetzer
Jason Schmetzer is a writer and editor in the cornfields of Indiana, far from megacorporations or dragons. His work is found in many Catalyst Game Labs products, crossing the BattleTech, MechWarrior and Shadowrun lines. He is currently managing editor of the BattleCorps/subscription website.
2070… somewhere south of London
They’d gone to ground in the Barrens.
Deke blinked his cybereye’s overlay off and inhaled slowly. His eyes—normal vision now, no AR—tracked slowly right-to-left, mostly unfocused. He was watching for movement, for telltales, for things that might not be tagged with an RFID or broadcasting a mesh signal. The sun was nearly down, anyway. If one of the ‘nappers was stupid enough to light a stick, he’d see it. Or smell it. The doxy buggers.
“Deke,” a bud in his ear whispered. “No signs.”
Deke twisted his head. Lincoln was nest
led in a gully a hundred meters to his left, rifle presented but protected by a ghillie suit. A blink brought his AR back up, scattering icons across his vision, but Lincoln wasn’t broadcasting. The subvocal they were using was burst-transmit—if one of the ‘nappers caught the signal, they’d think it was background noise. Unless they were good.
But they’re not good, Deke reminded himself. Good kidnappers wouldn’t have grabbed the daughter of the local oyabun. He thought-clicked a reply to Lincoln and went back to studying the building he thought they were hiding in. It had been a restaurant, once upon a time. Now it was a ganger hideout.
In the Barrens.
Deke blinked the overlay away and sighed. He’d sworn to never come back here. And if he didn’t need the nuyen the bunnie had promised so bad, he never would have. But a samurai has expenses. And so here he was, a half-klick from the shack his mother had birthed him in, sitting the near-misting rain and trying not to think about his childhood. And one job away from getting off this bloody rock for good. There was good money to be made in Europe for a man who was good with his hands.
“Deke,” Lincoln whispered.
“Shut up,” Deke snarled.
“The lackey is back.”
Bollocks. Deke twisted around and watched the yakuza mage low-crawl forward. He was wearing a black skinsuit, no armor, and he carried no weapons. He was the weapon, of course. And ink. Lots and lots of ink. Deke had seen him without his shirt back at the meet. He was covered in tats. A good little yak. The bloody hell am I doing working for yaks in London?
“It is time,” the mage whispered.
“It’s not,” Deke whispered back.
“They will soon detect us,” he said.
“If you keep talking and moving around, you’re right.” Deke ground his teeth and turned back to the ganger shack. AR showed him old dots, tags from the restaurant days that were still powered. The detectors, for example, were still up. So if they approached from the drive-thru side there’d probably be a chime announcing the arrival of the next consumer-drone sucker to purchase his ration of trans-fat and obesity. The gangers had probably left that there—it was cheap security for them. A gang that could swipe the bunny’s daughter had some sophistication. Not smarts, of course. But sophistication. And maybe… Deke ducked his chin to whisper to the mage behind him.
“Any like you in there?”
“Like me?”
“Spooks? Magickers? Seers-through-walls?”
“Let me see.” There was a still moment, where Deke had the uncomfortable feeling someone was walking on his soul, and then the yak mage spoke. “One of them has some small talent, but he isn’t trained. There are nine, by the way.”
“Where?” The yak shook his head. “Armed?”
“I could not tell.”
Deke sucked air through his teeth. “Guards?”
“I could not tell.”
“You’re not helping, you know.”
“Nor am I hindering,” the yak said. “The oyabun sent me to make sure his interests are looked after, and that his daughter survives this ordeal.” Deke heard something in the man’s—well, the ork’s—voice. He looked back, but the sun had set too far for him to see the man’s face without calling up his cybereye’s thermal settings. “You are being paid. I am to watch, and assist as necessary.”
Deke snorted. “I’m so grateful.” The mage made no reply.
“Deke,” Lincoln whispered. “It’s now or never.”
“Yeah,” Deke whispered. “All right. On my signal.”
“Rog-o,” Lincoln said.
Deke rolled his head around on his shoulders, stretching the sinews of his neck. His fingers ran across his torso and thighs—subgun, pistols, a half-dozen balanced knives wrapped around one thigh. He blinked the combat overlays up, visual light only. No starlight, no thermal. It was a restaurant—there would be stoves, and lights. He sent a quick diagnostic check through his commlink. All implants ready, firewalls up. His kit—both physical and mesh—was secure.
“All right,” he whispered, and then slithered forward.
The hide he’d selected was above the restaurant, and his path forward was downhill and mostly wet—good English weather—and the gullies would hide him for most of the descent. The slings kept his subgun tight against the small of his back, no whispers, no rattles. Dad would’ve been proud. Fast and silent, the old SAS vet had said. Deke was both. He low-crawled into a culvert and risked a look.
A half-klick from where he crouched, his mother had borne him just before things had gone in the pot. His dad had been called up and snapped up into the unpleasantness before he’d even really gotten to know him, and then his Ma had started doing what was necessary to feed them and give them a roof—roofs, really, since the tricks never let us stay long—and Deke had gotten the start of his education in the realities of the Sixth World.
The drekking Barrens.
More and more dots popped up on his AR. Deke shut his mesh down to internals, closing off the queries from parking bots and restaurant menus. The remote aiming reticle from his gun flicked off his overlay, but Deke knew how to shoot without his implants aiming for him. He could bring the mesh back up quickly enough, but anything that wasn’t wired direct would broadcast, and he needed to be unseen.
The misting rain thickened into a good English drizzle, not heavy enough to block his sight or raise a noise, just enough to start swallowing the small sounds of odd noises and his movement. Deke let the grin show—good English weather—and just for a moment forgot where he was and why.
Yaks. In the Barrens.
“I’m going,” he subvocalized. The processor smashed those two words to a zip-squeal and burst it out to be picked up by Lincoln’s mesh. That was his signal—that meant that anything Lincoln saw through his scope that wasn’t an early-middle-aged former SAS commando carrying a little yak princess out the door was a target for the big rifle he was snuggled up with. Deke gathered himself into a crouch, brought his subgun around, and triggered his mesh.
Then he sprinted.
His AR came active again and filled with dots, RFIDs sensing him and firing off announcements and queries. He made the ten meters between himself and the access door he was aiming at in about five seconds, which was about fourteen and a half seconds longer than it took the first of the over-the-counter security bots to see that his mesh wasn’t one of the gangers and trigger what passed for an alarm.
That’s right, kids, he thought. Run outside, where my friend Lincoln can see you.
It was forty seconds before the door opened, and a boy with iridescent facial tattoos ran out, cradling an old Ares repeater. Deke grabbed him from behind, swung him around and into the side of the building, then dropped him. The muzzle of his submachine gun was already pointing down—a single round was all it took, and all of that in the span of two seconds and a half-yelp of noise from the ganger. Deke ignored the tapping of the boy’s foot against his as the body’s nerves reacted to the loss of its brain. He was listening, his cyberear attuned for echo and canceling the masking rain noise.
A boom echoed through the night, so close it almost covered the mallet-striking-soft-meat sound of the large-caliber bullet hitting its target from around the building. Deke didn’t bother looking in that direction. Lincoln’s ghillie was more than enough cover to conceal him from the likes of these pukes.
Seven. Deke heard footsteps coming, but they stopped before they appeared out the door. He frowned, looked down. The dead boy had dropped his Ares where someone in the hallway could see it. Damn it, he thought. Then he slid away from the doorway.
Bullets punched through the light metal of the door as one of the gangers inside lit through a whole magazine. Deke grimaced as hot bits of metal flecked against his face, but none got in his eyes. He squatted, subgun ready. His cyberear had already adjusted for the noise of the gunfire. Footsteps.
One set of footsteps. The clatter of a magazine hitting the floor. No answering click of a new one being
seated.
Deke stood up, slipped his gun around behind him on its sling, and clenched his fist. Precise pressure from his ring finger against a specific part of his palm triggered a mechanism in his fist. A ten-centimeter blade slid from between his ring and middle fingers of his right hand, mono-edge sharp. Deke stepped around the door and took two long steps.
The ganger was maybe eighteen, fit but with the added paunch around the midsection that a young man gets when the near-constant exercise of youth is replaced with the sedentary complacence of one’s early twenties. He was fumbling with a magazine for the bullpup-style subgun he was carrying. He saw Deke, and his eyes went as big as saucers. His mouth opened, ork’s tusks prominent.
“Shite—” Deke heard, but that was all the man had time for. Deke swung an uppercut at the kid, hard enough that when it landed it lifted the ork ganger off the floor. He didn’t fall, though, because his jaw was caught on the edge of the blade protruding from Deke’s fist, the blade that quickly sliced through the jawbone holding it in place. The kid collapsed, blood and bits of bone and gray matter leaking out of the gaping hole in his chin.
“Bloody hell,” Deke whispered. “Another kid.”
Six.
A message window popped up on Deke’s AR. ALARM TO CITY—DON’T KNOW WHO. Deke blinked the message closed and pulled one of the matte black automatics from his thigh holster. A remote alarm? All the way out here? For gangers? He looked down.
The dead kid’s arms were tattooed.
Oh, shit. These weren’t gangers. They were yaks.
Rival yaks.
Deke drew in a deep breath and flashed a warning to Lincoln. His instincts screamed at him for standing in one place this long. He crept around the body and down the hall, pistol presented. He’d only used a single round from his subgun, and there were still twenty-nine more in the magazine, but he didn’t want to be spraying bullets around in a room where his paycheck—I mean, the little yak princess—might be held.