by John Helfers
I was growing desperate. The squad Cylestra had sent would reach the door any moment, and if I reached out to Allora in any significant way, the sniffer would find us both. I tried again and again, using all the complex forms I had learned over the years, but none of it was working.
At the back of my mind, I sensed an alarm from Skittles. The squad had broken through the door. I released the inhibitors that prevented her from launching tranq darts without my approval, hoping it would help Koorong, if only to a small degree. When I did so, I felt the telltale remains of Koorong’s virus.
And that’s when it struck me. The solution was crystal clear. The only thing I wasn’t sure of was whether I had the time to do it.
Using Koorong’s virus—a truly masterful piece of ware—as a model, I altered the sprites I’d used earlier. It was rushed, and I knew there were holes, but I only needed several good seconds. After adding some tracerouting, I released the paladins, moving as close to Cylestra as I dared. I could tell they’d found Allora, but had not yet been able to purge her from their systems. I commanded the paladins to ping loudly, forcing the IC to split its attention.
The dark and deadly arms turned and attacked. I nearly got caught in the initial onslaught, but was able to slip away as they fell upon the duplicates. Immediately I spread my awareness among the sprawl, pulling together the previous data I had earmarked regarding Sindara. I had not gone further at the time, thinking the other patients irrelevant, but I found more and more participants, building a case of circumstantial data that, when viewed as a whole, would paint a very uncomfortable picture of Cylestra’s medical practices.
As I continued, I felt the data stream from me, through the paladins, and all the way to Allora. She was feeling everything I was.
I hoped it was enough. It would have to be, because the IC—even though it had nearly succumbed to Koorong’s virus—had finally traced the signals back to me. It began boring through my defenses. The pain was worse than the bullet wound, for I felt it everywhere. It was nearly impossible to think, but I couldn’t leave. Not yet.
I sent the information to all of the district attorneys that were responsible for the patients in Cylestra’s kidney trials, and several more copies to the most independent news outlets I knew.
And then I dropped out.
I woke to the sound of rapid, heavy gunfire.
In front of me, a chromed up troll lay unconscious in the hallway, two darts sticking out of his neck, another from his right cheek.
Next to me, the rotating barrel of the machine gun stopped as the bullets ran out. Koorong glanced over at me, realizing I was back. “Is it done?” he asked while feeding another belt of bullets into the gun.
“I—”
My words were cut off as a stream of bullets tore into the room. Koorong’s shoulder blossomed red, and he howled in pain. The gypsum board above me crumbled as I dove to the floor. The bullets stopped a moment later, and in the following silence I heard a series of sharp puffs as Skittles’ dart gun fired.
The short burst of gunfire that followed ended with a horrible, high-pitched yelp. Moments later, there came the sound of a body falling heavily to the floor.
Koorong was silent. Unconscious. I searched for Skittles’ signal, but the only response I received was a simple readout showing that nearly all of her systems had been destroyed but that the one of last resort—the thermite grenade tucked into her chest cavity—was active and waiting for the signal to detonate.
Two more sets of footsteps approached the entrance. They stepped into the forward room a moment later, their boots scraping noisily over the detritus of battle. There was a moment of silence: the men taking caution after so many had unexpectedly died.
The grenade’s active status blinked in my readout, but I didn’t think I could do it—didn’t know if I could kill her, even to save myself—but the moment I saw the shadow of the first of them stepping into the short hallway leading to the bedroom, a fear so expansive welled up in my chest that I gladly grabbed for the chance Skittles was offering me.
I crab-walked into the corner, curled up into a ball, and gave Skittles the affirmative.
The grenade detonated a split-second later.
Even with my eyes shut tight, everything went white. The explosion was deafening. The shockwave pounded every part of me at once. Debris blew into the room and rained down for long moments, and I swear I felt the section of the building we were in sway back and forth.
As the sound of pattering debris filled the room, I slowly got to my feet and brushed away the powdery white bits of wall that had fallen over me. I coughed as I waded through the cloud, looking for Koorong.
I found him lying in the closet, dead, three bullets—red on white—stitched across his chest. I turned away immediately, unable to look upon him like that.
I turned to the gurney. Allora was still there, but when I touched her neck to find a pulse, I found nothing. I stared at her for long moments, feeling like a sister—in cause, if not in blood. Sadness welled up inside me and begged to be let out, but it was not something I could allow to happen. Not now. Not here.
I left the apartment quickly and wandered in a semi-random path toward the nearest exit from The Blax. I found no resistance. I hitched a ride on an old-style water ferry and took it to the north side of Sydney. Then I paid for a coffin hotel with anonymous cred. Several hours of sheer terror followed where I was sure I would be found and shot dead where I lay, but eventually it became clear that I wouldn’t be followed. Not today, at least.
And finally, hiding in that small, darkened space, I allowed myself to cry.
• • •
I didn’t dare get a new SIN in Australia, and I didn’t dare keep myself anywhere near Cylestra’s sphere of influence, so I headed for Tokyo. I set up shop and began taking very simple jobs—data scrubbing and the like—and then one day I was sitting in a seedy bar drinking a truly horrible cup of kaf when a Japanese man in a black suit walked in and headed directly for my table. The look on his face as he wove through the tables was one of serious intent.
Seven months had passed since the devastation in Blaxland, but I knew immediately he was somehow connected to it. I hadn’t had the heart to get another dog after Skittles. I had, however, picked up a gun. I reached into my purse, but before I could wrap my shaking fingers around the grip, the man slipped one hand inside his suit coat and pulled out a chip the size of a thumbnail. He set it carefully onto my table, then turned and left.
I grabbed the chip and held it tight in my fist. Only after the attention of the others patrons had returned to other things did I slip the chip into a reader inside my purse.
It contained, I found, a SIN. Fiona Douglass. Born within six months of me in Scotland. Her parents had moved to Brisbane when she was twelve, and after graduating early with a degree in datalytics, she’d moved around Australia—not surprisingly to many of the places I had been, both before and after Liam. I could tell already that it was a consummate job; Fiona Douglass had no doubt died recently, but I had few doubts that it would be difficult to tell that without speaking directly to people who’d known her.
I was now Fiona Douglass.
Before I knew it, tears were welling in my eyes. I sniffed and wiped them away, sipping the bitter kaf to camouflage the outward signs of my utmost joy.
Allora had made it. She hadn’t died in that apartment in Blaxland, she’d jacked in. Permanently. A ghost in the machine.
I tapped into the net and began sifting—in an extremely passive manner—the history of Cylestra over the past few months. It was something I had avoided since leaving Australia, but with the arrival of this news it felt sufficiently safe to have a look. What I found was a series of events—communication leaks, misplaced orders, a downtick in sales—that made it clear that Cylestra was on a slow and steady decline toward a death of its own. Corps the size of Cylestra could not truly die; if it performed poorly for too long, it would be swallowed, in whole or in part, b
y another corp, but when that happened, Allora would be there. She would be absorbed as part of the merger, and she would hound the new corp until the biotech wing was deemed too inefficient to justify its continued existence. She would eventually, inevitably, exact her revenge.
After sitting back in my uncomfortable seat and savoring these realizations, I got up and left the bar.
It was time to get a real cup of kaf.
And then it was time to find a dog.
Fade Away
By Steve Kenson
Steve Kenson’s first published work for Shadowrun was an essay in the second edition of The Grimoire. This led to writing the adventure “The Masquerade” in Harlequin’s Back and working on over two dozen books, including Awakenings, Magic in the Shadows, and Portfolio of a Dragon. Steve has written seven Shadowrun novels, including Crossroads and the first Kellan Colt trilogy, beginning with Born to Run. He maintains a website at www.stevekenson.com and a LiveJournal at xomec.livejournal.com.
You move down the corridor confidently, not striding, because striding implies a sense of arrogance, not humble duty and responsibility. Still, it’s a confidence born of power, of the certain knowledge you can handle anything that might come at you. You know—deep down—that you are up to the challenge, that you were born to be, made to be.
Although you are humble, this place is still beneath you. You step over loose piles of garbage in the hall with the barest sniff of disdain. The place reeks, the stench of human filth and misery is strong in your nostrils, almost threatening to choke you, but you push it aside. You flex your fingers inside their close-fitting, black leather gloves; feel the fine leather creak slightly, the steely strength in your tendons and muscles.
The background noise in the corridor is a mix of broadcast programs and sprawl music barely muffled by cheap, particleboard doors and sheetrock walls worn paper-thin. The noises coming from behind the door ahead and to your left are grunting, animalistic, matching the filth and desperation of this setting. They’re tantalizing and disgusting at the same time. Is it distaste for them or for what needs to be done that wells up in your throat? Tasting the flat, metallic bile, you grab hold of it, turning disgust into anger into power.
[LOWER: EMO_TRACK]
Your booted foot blurs as it lashes at the door. You barely feel it as the jamb disintegrates from the strike, splinters of formerly glued wood-substitute flying. The flimsy chain on the inside tears off, still stubbornly holding onto the fragment of the frame it’s firmly screwed into, as if to proclaim it is the weakness of the structure and not it that had led to this. Things seems to drop into slow motion, and a part of you watches the splinters and fragments fly, detached, fascinated.
The door flies open, banging against the inside wall, but rebounding only slightly. You’re inside before it can do so, the world around you moving so slowly you can pick out every detail. You savor it: the shocked, startled looks spreading across the faces of the man and the woman locked together on the ratty sofa against the wall, the man simultaneously pushing back with his arms to rise while reaching for the crumpled mass of clothing strewn on the floor. Vivid tattoos crawl along his muscled chest and arms: blue-green dragon scales, golden carp, there, between his shoulder blades, a blooming lotus.
Then you have him by the throat, lifting him off the woman, pinning him against the wall next to the couch. Cheap paint and sheetrock chip and crumple where his head hits. He has enough air to grunt once in pain before your fingers close his windpipe and he starts to choke. As if your hand was around her throat as well, a scream arrives stillborn from the woman’s mouth as little more than a hiccup or faint yelp. She starts to move, but there’s a gun in your other hand, and you level it back in her direction without even looking. The sounds of her movement stop and there’s only a faint whimpering.
The man you’ve pinned glares at you with dark eyes, slight epicanthic folds betraying a mixed heritage that strikes a momentary chord of familiarity, but elicits no mercy or slackening of your grip. You watch with a certain fascinated detachment as a full range of emotions play across his face in just a few seconds: surprise and shock give way to rage at your intrusion, a furious desire to strike out at you, then puzzlement at the inability to escape your grip. Hands claw at the leather sleeve of your coat, feeling more like caresses through the thick material. Confusion starts to give way to panic, a desperate need for escape, for air. The man’s face starts to redden. There’s a slight ache along the length of your arm, but you savor it, the burning in your muscles as your grip remains, unrelenting, tightening. You do not look away, still aware of the faint whimpering from the couch behind you—gun leveled there—but no other signs of movement. The man’s feet bang against the wall , just centimeters off the floor. Someone bangs back from the neighboring apartment and you stifle a laugh: are they hoping to quiet the noise or do they think they’re playing a game? They might think it is more foreplay, and not the main event.
The tapping dance of his feet slows, then stops, the clawing at your arm grows feeble, then his arms fall, limp and helpless. His eyes remain locked on yours, but then start to glaze and roll back in his head as the struggles give way to nothing more than deadweight pinned against the wall. You wait with a terrible patience, drawing out the silence that dares anyone to interrupt it. The only noise is the background babble of music and soundtracks from outside and a few last half-hearted thumps from the other side of the wall.
When you release your grip, it’s almost a surprise, like a spring uncoiling. The body drops limply to the floor, like a wet sack sliding down the wall. You lower your other arm for the first time, bringing the sleek, flat-profile pistol down to your side, and turn away from the dead man—knowing his fate with a cold certainty—back towards the woman on the couch.
It’s as if you notice her for the first time. She’s young, and still fairly pretty for a whore, her neo-Egyptian style makeup giving bold, dark emphasis to her wide eyes and half-blood features, dark hair spilling loose and wild around her face. Again, a slight feeling of recognition stirs deep inside you, along with something else. She has managed to grab the soiled sheet covering the couch and pull it up to cover herself, although the half-hearted effort is largely forgotten in the spectacle that unfolded before her; one small breast peeks out around the edge of the fabric. The nipple is small, dark and still erect...
[PAUSE_PLAYBACK]
“Did you fuck her?”
“What?” Kage murmured, turning away from the dark rain-streaked window toward the figure lounging on the bed behind him.
“I said, ‘did you fuck her?’” Tomashi replied with a sigh, punctuating his words like he was speaking to a child or an idiot. It was a tone Kage found irritatingly familiar.
“I...no...” he said quietly, eliciting an exaggerated huff of frustration from the other man, who slapped his hands down on the mattress for emphasis.
“It would have been better if you had fucked her,” he muttered to nobody in particular. “That would have been hot. You could have taken her right there after you did him...”
“I didn’t,” Kage repeated, somewhat uselessly, “I...”
“Shut up,” Tomashi countered without any real heat. “Don’t spoil it. I still want to run the rest.” But as he settled back against the pillows of the bed, Kage’s commlink buzzed softly. He answered, eyes remaining on Tomashi who glanced over in idle curiosity.
“Hai,” he replied to the clipped voice on the other end of the line. “Hai.” Tomashi lifted himself up on his elbows, which emphasized his slight but growing paunch, the look on his face making it clear he knew who was calling. Kage disconnected the line.
“Your honorable father—” he began.
“My honorable father can go fuck himself,” Tomashi interrupted.
“He’s here,” Kage forced in, before his charge could go off on a lengthier rant.
“So?”
“He wouldn’t care for...”
“You’re right. He. Wouldn’
t. Care.” Tomashi said. He produced a flat-profile pistol from under the pillows on the bed and made a show of checking the magazine and the slide, sighting along its length at nothing in particular in a corner of the room.
“Where did you get that?” Kage asked, already knowing the answer. The weapon was a familiar one. There was a cold knot in his stomach.
“Where do you think?”
“That’s not a toy.”
“Sure it is, just like you.” He swung the pistol around to point in Kage’s direction, causing the other man to fight down the urge to reach for his own weapon, holstered under his coat.
“Do not point that thing at me!” he said through clenched teeth, taking a fractional step towards the lounging Tomashi.
“Or what...? You’ll kill me?”
Stepping in, grabbing the hand holding the gun faster than the eye could follow, pinning the wrist in a vice-like grip...
“No...” he said quietly. “No, but it’s careless, and dangerous, not everyone has my... restraint.”
Tomashi just laughed, slowly releasing the hammer of the gun and deliberately raising the barrel towards the ceiling before lowering it to the bed.
“Something to be said for going out in a blaze of glory,” he mused, more to himself, looking longingly at the gun. “Better to burn out than to fade away.”
If so, you’re well on your way, Kage thought. Even if he was able to protect Tomashi from all outside threats, including the strong temptation to beat him within a nanometer of his life, he couldn’t do anything to protect him from himself. A fascination with simsense programs had blossomed into a full-blown obsession, perhaps even addiction.
Tomashi had long since given up popular sims like Shadow Super-Mage Talon and Ninja Slayer IX. Even the so-called “California Hot” and “Kong Chips,” with their barely legal signal levels and boosted emotional gains, were not enough to satisfy him. Tomashi was into what many called “real sim.” It wasn’t the pre-packaged, carefully edited programs sold in stores, recordings of staged events and the experiences of simstars, but raw “wet record” sims of real action, real events, of the kind of life he didn’t have.