Shadowrun: Spells & Chrome

by John Helfers

  Not good. He’d have to watch himself. No use tipping it off …

  These are the demons. Daniel Ben-Yusuf raised a finger to his throat. Rachel’s mezuzah hung around his neck—a focus, or simply a protective amulet of silver and amethyst, he was never sure—but his gloved fingers met only chilled trilaminates and butyl rubber. These are the princes of enmity dwelling in the abyss …

  With the sleds, the light went fast, turning thin and watery at twenty meters. There were still plenty of fish—a rainbow of gobies and triggerfish and angels—darting in and around dense pinkish-white forests of elkhorn coral and the bristly quills of sea urchins. By the time his HUD said he was at twenty-five, the water was a weird blue-gray, and by thirty, as they stopped to purge their low-pressure lines and switch out to heliox, the reef was completely vertical, the fish petering out, the anvil of water palming Daniel’s body dense and heavy. Far below, the sea was a very cold cobalt blue, the color of a lost day slipping inexorably toward night.

  At sixty meters, they tied off their bail-out tank, double-checked their spare air canisters. (Hey, call him a cockeyed optimist, but if something went wrong at depth, the spare air might get one, or both of them to the bail-out.) At ninety-seven meters, a click sounded in his full facemask, and Alana’s voice fizzed through, tinny and flat because of the depth: “Oh shit. Look down, your two o’clock.”

  The maw of the cave—a dead, unknown undersea volcano between the Big Island and Maui—yawned deep and fathomless, a nearly perfect circle as black as an empty eye socket. Just below the rim, a pair of motionless dive sleds was suspended on tethers.

  But that kind of paled when you considered the sharks.

  A school of white-tip reef sharks spooled up in a silent swirl, their auras ghostly, nacreous penumbras as insubstantial as cobwebs.

  “Oh my God.” Alana’s voice was shaky. “Daniel, what … ?”

  “I don’t know. Take it easy.” He watched the phalanx of animals ascend, saw them veer as one toward Alana.

  “Daniel?” A note of panic now. Her hand moved to her dive knife.

  “Alana, no. That’s a fight you don’t want and can’t win.” Her aura blazed in his astral vision: a fierce, fiery orange-red sunburst, a supernova. He watched as the sharks angled right and began to circle the woman in a stately clockwise procession, maintaining their distance, never closing, never peeling away. “Honey, listen to me: It’s you, don’t you see?”

  “Yes, yes, kayn.” For the first time during the dive, the Rebbe’s voice sizzled through his aural implant. A novel design, the implant could penetrate at depth and halfway around the world if need be. “It is the only explanation.”

  “What?” She was startled. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s like the petroglyph. You’re calling them somehow.” He had an idea, a theory and the Rebbe echoed his thoughts: “She’s a latent. The tooth is a focus, kayn? But it’s old, there is DNA …”

  Daniel said, “Alana, were they here when you and Harriman …?”

  “No. I don’t know. The only thing I remember is the descent and …” She drew in a sudden sharp breath. “You feel that?”

  He did: a tug. Not like the touch of magic this time but palpable, a swirl of current grabbing his body, first gently and then with more insistence like the subtle rush of water upstream that signaled the beginning of rapids just around the bend.

  Something else homing in on her … on us …

  The sharks felt it, too. They closed, their circle tightening round Alana, but he didn’t think that would do any good.

  “Okay, here’s where you get gone,” he said. “I’ll take it from here.”

  “Lo, lo!” The Rebbe hissed. “No, what are you doing? You must replicate the conditions of her encounter exactly.”

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. At that moment, he wished like hell that the Rebbe was psychic instead of eavesdropping. You’re way the fuck in Israel. We’re the ones on a one-way trip to hell.

  “Not a chance,” said Alana. “We go together. Lee’s still in there.”

  “That wasn’t the deal.”

  “No, lo, take her. She’s …” the Rebbe began but then abruptly cut out.

  What the hell? Then he felt it: how the sea went turgid and thick, the pressure fisting his body. Instead of rising, Daniel’s bubbles hung in shuddering silver pearls, caught in a pocket scooped out of time.

  Oh shit … “Alana!” His voice came out as a wheeze, barely audible. His body felt gluey, like a fly upended on its back in a puddle of honey. “Alana, go, swim, take your sled, go!”

  Too late. Alana gasped, and then her body gave a great, convulsive jerk as something clamped round her ankles and yanked, hard. As one, the sharks knotted in a swirl, but they were creatures that must always move, or die and so there were gaps, and he saw what would happen before it did.

  No, he thought frantically, take me! I’m the one you want … !

  “D-Daniel!” Alana wailed. “Help … h-help me!”

  No, no! He wanted to scream, he wanted to hurl something killing, banish her someplace safe—and he should’ve while he had the chance and damn the drain; what a fool! But too late now: He couldn’t move. Blood pounded in his temples. Blackness ate at the margins of his vision. He fought to clear his head, looked down at the seamount—and his heart nearly died in his chest.

  A swirl of astral energy, livid as a bruise, spiraled up from the maw of the cave, twining round their bodies like the sticky weave of a spider’s web. At its touch, the sharks writhed, and their formation faltered.

  “N-no!” Alana’s hands flew up, her wrists pinned together, and her back arched in a sudden, agonized rictus. Her sled spun away, and then her screams filled his ears as the astral web drew her down, down …

  The web closed round and then he was hurtling, the water roaring, the ring of sharks flying apart and blurring at his passage …

  And then the darkness took them both.

  Four Days Earlier

  II

  Kohala Neuropsychiatric Institute, Hawai’i

  May 7, 2070

  The psychiatrist’s voice, brisk, officious: Let’s try again, Alana. Go back to the beginning and maybe we can push through some of your …

  Denial? The word was muddy and Daniel thought that, yeah, she’d been medicated up the yin-yang. Understandable, though. The emergency evac records indicated that Alana Kamakua had been distraught, disoriented: her hands pulpy, drysuit in tatters after her mad scramble over knife-edged lava. She hadn’t wanted to leave the beach, insisting the evac unit rescue her lover … As if the bits of drysuit washed ashore in a swirl of purple water belonged to someone else.

  Given that, who wouldn’t be, well, a little upset?

  I’ve told you: I remember going into the caves. Alana’s voice seethed with frustration. Then our lights went out—and then I don’t remember. The next thing I know, I’m on a stretcher …

  The doctor paused the recording. “Her thoughts get pretty derailed after that. She goes on about some old Hawaiian myth, or family story, I don’t know, something she says her umptity-ump great-grandmother passed down. Even if I believed in psychoanalysis, I’m not sure you’d find much symbolism in an old Hawaiian legend of a fair maiden and a shark.”

  “Don’t make the mistake of accepting his presumptions.” The Rebbe’s rich baritone was a faint faraway hiss, like the fizzle of a commlink tuned to a dead channel. “Besides, he’s a tachat.”

  No argument there: The doctor was an ass. Daniel said, “But didn’t the police think Harriman was attacked by a shark?”

  “Who the hell knows? Maybe she did him in.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Hey, call me a cynical bastard, but I’m always suspicious.”

  No, you’re just a bastard. His thought, not the Rebbe’s. “Yet many stories have personal valence. Maybe the myth means something.”

  “Uh-huh.” A pause. “Look, Mr. … uh …”

  “Fehrmacht.” The a
lias, the well-doctored background information, and the vague implication that he worked for Saeder-Krupp, with the hint that Lofwyr might be, well, interested, opened a lot of doors. That, and plenty of nuyen. An Israeli Mossad agent, even one in semi-retirement and with more than a little bit of a death wish, had a lot of tricks up his proverbial sleeve. It was one of the reasons why the Rebbe had chosen Daniel in the first place.

  “Yeah. Well, look: I don’t do stories. I’m not into magic. I’m a shrink, and I practice without the voodoo, thanks.”

  Okay, so the doctor was also a self-righteous little prick. Daniel was jet-lagged, nearly dead on his feet from the long flight, first from Tel Aviv to Sydney and from there to Honolulu International and then, finally, a hop to the Big Island. He’d been stewing in the same clothes for the last two days. The last thing he was interested in was playing footsie with a tin-pot dictator. “You’re not prejudiced, are you, Doc?”

  The Rebbe: “Lo, Daniel, don’t provoke him. We need his cooperation.”

  “No, I’m pragmatic,” said the doctor. “Now, I’m willing to entertain the theory that there were earlier metahuman ages—”

  “Theory?”

  “Daniel …”

  The doctor ignored the gibe. “And I’m happy to consider that our mythologies, and that includes those of the various religions, reflect those earlier epochs. Every culture and religion has its little people and boogeymen, its magical amulets and taboos.”

  Okay, Daniel considered, that was true. He was suddenly conscious of the weight of Rachel’s silver and amethyst mezuzah that hung from his neck beneath his shirt. A ward against evil, yes; a focus, perhaps. So why had she left it behind … ?

  He said, “So you’re sticking with traumatic amnesia.” When the doctor nodded, Daniel went on: “Will her memory return?”

  “Maybe sí, maybe no.” The doctor steepled his fingers the way a professor does when lecturing to the dumbest kid in class. “The head injury’s legit, but not that bad. But you tell me: Just how likely is it that six lights malfunctioned? That their directional guidance beacons failed? That Lee Harriman’s cyber-eyes chose that moment to go completely black? If we believe her story, every single artificially-powered system—from communications to propulsion to dive computers—went on the fritz. So tell me this: How did she get from depth to the surface without a dive computer calculating her decompression stops? Hell, how did she get up without air? All she had was a drysuit. No gear at all.”

  “Maybe it was magic.” He meant it as a dig, but the doctor frowned.

  “Trust me, she’s a mundane. No bioware implants even. The CSI team had an adept check her over, and he found nothing: no astral signature, nothing in her history to suggest a latent ability. As for the whole systems’ failure stuff, land-based monitoring systems didn’t pick up a single communications hiccup or Matrix glitch that entire day. So, all we’ve got is her story and pieces of a dead guy’s suit.”

  “Eifo?”

  “Where did it happen?” asked Daniel.

  “She either doesn’t remember or isn’t saying. The evac team touched down about a half mile west of Waipi’o Valley. There are, maybe, fifty people in the place and about half are named Dave. Anyway, the Menehune have claimed the whole place. Nasty little buggers.”

  Privately, Daniel doubted that anything could be worse than a shedu and although the beings that oozed into this world bore little resemblance to the “no-gods” of Jewish lore and mysticism, their malevolence was identical. (Well, all except stories about the ones who studied Torah and followed the commandments … but those must be exceptionally good shedim. He’d never met—or bound—any of those.) “Anything on her boyfriend, Harriman?”

  “Nope. Did a lot of tech diving, sometimes hired himself out to places like the Atlantean.”

  “A relic hunter.”

  “Not by choice. I got the impression that it was mainly contract work, but Harriman wasn’t working for anyone that we know of, and he wasn’t a shadowrunner.”

  Daniel didn’t bother pointing out that if you knew a shadowrunner when you saw him, the guy either wasn’t very good or you were three seconds away from a morgue slab. “So, back to either a lie, or an accident.”

  “Or a little of both. He could’ve gotten into trouble, and she might’ve panicked. But the police have closed it, and I’ve got enough work to do. So.” The doctor yawned and stretched. “We’re pretty much done here. She can leave whenever.”

  “Tov, tov, good. Get her away from this godforsaken place. We don’t have that much time, Daniel. You must find it before—”

  “So you have no objection if I speak with her,” said Daniel.

  “Hell no, knock yourself out.” The psychiatrist eyed him curiously. “But what’s S-K’s interest in all this? I mean, she’s an archaeologist, for Christ’s sake.”

  Daniel scraped back his chair and stood. “You’ve been very helpful, Doctor. A pleasure.” A lie, on all counts. “I’d like to see her now.”

  The doctor might be a jerk, but he wasn’t an idiot. His face smoothed into a mask of professional neutrality. “Sure. I’ll have someone bring her to an interview room.”

  “Lo, get her out of there.”

  “Actually, if you don’t mind, I had something a little more comfortable in mind. Something outside the hospital,” said Daniel.

  “What makes you think she’ll go with you?”

  Daniel said nothing.

  The doctor thought another moment then said, “Well, there’s the little problem of her expenses …”

  Daniel was already punching up numbers on his commlink. “How much?”

  III

  It was late afternoon by the time they stopped in Hawi at a little restaurant, an old hotel converted into a popular eatery still going strong after a hundred and fifty years. Their waitress, a cheerful woman as round as a raspberry named “Auntie,” recommended the macadamia-encrusted ono with jasmine rice.

  They sat over sweating glasses of passionfruit iced tea, Daniel still a little … unsettled. When the psych tech led Alana into the doctor’s office, he’d done a double-take, his heart suddenly twisting in his chest.

  Because Alana looked that much like Rachel: petite and bronzed, with high cheekbones, the same widow’s peak, the identical set of jaw; a narrow, aristocratic nose though Alana’s was a little off-kilter, like she’d broken it way back when. Her aura was strong: a scintillating blood-orange.

  (Had Rachel’s been the same? He couldn’t remember and that made him sad.)

  The main difference between the two women, though, was in the eyes. Rachel’s had been an arresting hazel flecked with green, vibrant and alive. Alana’s were dusky black pearls, haunted and drawn.

  “Tell me something.” Alana traced a finger in the dew of her glass. “Why do you keep staring at me?”

  “Am I? Sorry. You remind me of someone, that’s all. Your aura is … interesting.”

  “I see.” Pause. “Did you love her?”

  Daniel blinked. A sudden talon of grief dug at his chest, and he recognized it as the danger signal it was.

  The Rebbe, silent for the last two hours, sensed his distress because he broke in: “Careful, my son. Focus on getting the information. The rest is …” But even he didn’t finish the thought.

  “Very much.” Daniel tried a smile that he knew failed. “You don’t waste any time.”

  “I’m sorry.” She touched the back of his hand. “It’s just that your eyes are so sad and … hungry.”

  “So what made you come with such a mad and melancholy man?”

  “The shrinks weren’t helping. I didn’t like being treated like a criminal.”

  “Well, shrinks are paid to be skeptics.” He should know. Mossad’s psychological screening included an exhaustive battery of tests, interviews and neural scans. Not pleasant to have someone finger-walking then dissecting your thoughts and dreams. And, of course, after Rachel had disappeared and his handler tracked him to that safe house whe
re Daniel had been considering the merits of a well-placed bullet to the brain … then he’d had to see another shrink, a dyspeptic shrew who seemed to get off on his suffering.

  “Please. Did you spend any time with that doctor?” A fleeting spasm of her lips as she tried for a smile. “A good thing he kept me kind of dopey the first couple days, or else I’d have broken his nose. He thought I was faking, the asshole.” Her shirt was open at the throat, and her fingers crept to a shark’s tooth dangling from a black cord. The tooth was perhaps five centimeters long and tawny with serrated edges. She played with the charm. “But it’s the truth.”

  “I know,” said Daniel, gravely. “That doctor is an asshole.” She laughed out loud this time, a good sound, and he grinned. “That’s better.”

  “Yeah.” But she sobered, the smile leaking away. “You think you’re never going to be happy again.”

  Their salads came. As he stabbed arugula and mango, Daniel chinned in the general direction of her necklace. “That looks pretty old.”

  “This?” Chewing, she glanced myopically down, swallowed, said, “My gran claimed that it came from an extinct great white, but who knows. I’ve never bothered getting it dated. It’s supposed to have big-time mojo, but since no Menehune ever appeared and I still had to study my ass off to defend my dissertation … Anyway, the story goes that all the first-born daughters in my family are supposed to wear the tooth and pass it on, etc., etc. We even get a tattoo.” Thrusting her left leg from beneath the table, she pulled up her jeans to reveal a circlet of black-inked wedges lacing her ankle. “Not quite the same as the petroglyph for shark, but close.”

  “That the story you told the doctor? The first-born stuff?”

  Her skin flushed copper, and she found something intensely interesting on her plate. “You heard that. God, I’m so embarrassed. He was just such a … It’s just a myth, a kind of Romeo and Juliet thing: the daughter of a chief falls in love with the son of a rival chief; he gets killed; she tries killing herself. In ancient Hawaiian tradition, bones are sacred and have a lot of mana. Sometimes they were distributed to chiefs and other important people … that’s what happened to Captain Cook, actually.”