Shadowrun: Shaken: No Job Too Small

by Russell Zimmerman

  Gentry’s digital-cartoon head bobbed, big ears waving, and I thought I saw another file icon swoop around, some image or video being saved just in case I wanted to hold onto it. The rewinding commenced, slower now. Leaving the office just a few minutes before Minirth—“There, pause it, let’s see,” I said, slower than Gentry had paused and zoomed and refined the image already—was, maybe, the bastard we were after.

  “Holy Mary, mother of God.”

  I hadn’t prayed, really prayed, since maybe the last time my mom had dragged me to Mass. She’d been dead about thirty years now, if that tells you how long it’d been. I almost choked on it, it almost stuck in my throat, almost hurt coming out. But there, in that second, nothing else seemed quite right to say.

  There, defiling the hallway of my beloved Grant Landrum building, frozen in high-definition, glancing just right that second toward the camera, one lip curled in a bit of a smirk, was N.

  Her street name was Nimbus. She was a petite little Goth girl, swaggered right out of some slumming-it party scene, head to toe in cheap black clothes, torn hose, glossy leather jacket with a few studs and spikes, hair cut crazily and dyed in a few broad purple streaks, skin pale as snow and lips red as blood.

  The last time I’d seen her—the only time I’d seen her—she’d torn into my throat with her fangs and sucked most of the life out of me.

  The neon dream faded. My vision went black.

  CHAPTER 14

  “—aid? Kincaid? Can you hear me?”

  Walls blurred and buzzed, pulsed with light and data.

  “Kincaid? Jimmy? Sersakhan, c’mon, don’t you be dead on me, man.”

  I was back over Gentry’s shoulder. Things were less focused than before, little bursts of static interfered here and there. He was running, impossibly fast, down a neon hallway. Stuck hovering behind his field of view, I saw what he saw; when his head turned, the hallway behind us had three guards in it. When he looked to the front again, one loomed, blinking into being out of nowhere in particular.

  I tried to shout a warning, but couldn’t. On the bright side, I didn’t need to. Gentry’s bow was back, magic-quick, not there one picosecond, there the next. Two arrows flew at once, drawn and fired in the space of a step, both white-fletched shafts sinking deep into the intrusion countermeasure’s chest. It tumbled backward in a spray of pixels and fraying iconography and Gentry bounded past without missing a beat.

  “…Look out,” I managed, well past the action.

  “Hey, there you are!” Gentry didn’t look up, just kept running past neon doors with the beat of bootsteps behind us. “You blacked out for a tick. Your biomonitor pinged something in my deck, weird feedback stuff. Adrenal spike, I think. You okay?”

  “Peachy.” It felt like I was talking after a dentist’s visit, mouth still numb, words forming slower than ever. Or was Gentry just moving faster than ever?

  “Whoops—” He suddenly dropped into a feet-first slide, gliding across the frictionless Matrix-real floor, cloak fluttering behind him as we passed below the outstretched arms of a lunging IC icon. It missed by a hair’s breadth, my field of view only just barely swept beneath it. Gentry was up and running again a split-second later.

  “—That was a close ’un,” he said, still upbeat, like he was having the time of his life.

  The hallway ended up ahead, impossibly suddenly. Gentry lowered his shoulders to pick up steam, apparently not knowing or caring we’d run out of room. Then his ranger-icon ran three steps up the wall, along the ceiling, backflipping to land behind the trio of just-on-our-asses IC. Before his booted feet hit the ground surface of the digital reality, the bow was out again.

  Two arrows flew, drawn back in one shot, and two of the three guards sprouted fletchings and shafts like they’d been designed with them sticking out of their torsos. They were all limned in a glow, I saw up close, wrapped in white like a too-thick border on a drawing. All three—arrow-shot and otherwise—still lurched at Gentry, but he ducked and wove, bobbed and danced away, hands suddenly filled with curved, slender knives, twirling them around and slashing flicker-quick.

  Both marked guards dissipated, tumbling to cubes and vanishing into nothingness. The last one came on again, undeterred, and lashed out with one big fist. Gentry ducked, but not quick enough; the club-like arm bashed into his head, and the world went darker, another burst of static washing over my field of vision. As his elven ranger icon reeled from the blow, I saw another guard burst into existence, just behind him/us.

  “Huh,” the decker said, like that was completely normal.

  “Binders.” He lashed out with his chrome-bright silver blades in a dazzling display. His feet seemed to be moving a little slower, though. One IC fell, the other loomed.

  “That’s not good.”

  The new guard rushed at him, swinging, but the ranger got away, tumbling backwards just barely out of reach.

  “But it’s also not impossible.”

  Instead of returning the attack, he jabbed both knives into what I thought was empty wall—where the hallway just ended—and I saw a crack appear. I heard a footstep behind us, was certain we were about to get bashed again, but suddenly the crack widened or we shrank or both, and we were wedged into it, then through and out the other side.

  The digital campus looked mostly the same, but the Grant Landrum building was lit up, glowing like it was on fire, almost. It was some sort of alarm or alert. Gentry’s ranger pulled his night-black cloak up again, hood falling over his Matrix-golden hair, and we walked away.

  CHAPTER 15

  We were back in my Ford, just like that.

  Gentry had an ugly bruise spreading across his face and a trickle of a nosebleed that he licked and swiped away. My Corpsman let me know that I had a few medical irregularities too, but I dismissed the pop-ups.

  “You got it? The file?”

  “Sielle.” He nodded. “All set. It was just a little IC. Nothing too hot.”

  “All right,” I said, like I cared about the details or understood the Matrix.

  I thumbed the Ford to life, and Ariana manifested in the back seat as we pulled away. Gentry saw me scanning the rearview mirrors and shook his head.

  “We’re cool. Really. They didn’t run any sort of trace or anything. They were trying to slow me down at the end, but they didn’t pin me down, clearly, or we’d still be in there. They were trying to trap me in the host so they could run a trace, was all.”

  “Yeah,” I nodded with him, not really listening, Corpsman still warning me about my blood pressure and heart rate.

  “Kincaid, really. We’re in the clear, bro. Relax.”

  I gave him a sideways look, and he wised up enough to shut up and stop trying to reassure me. I let the Ford snarl as I shifted gears, creating distance, all the world back in reassuring black-and-white, but me still driving in a fight or flight response like half the world was chasing me.

  Thing is, it wasn’t U-Dub security I was worried about. It wasn’t boogeyman Matrix icons. It wasn’t even Knight Errant, who maybe the campus cops would’ve called if they’d tracked us.

  It was her. It. N was for Nimbus. The vampire who’d ripped me open and taken away my light and power. The vampire who’d killed my teacher.

  I got back to my apartment. I didn’t say much, and if Gentry did, I didn’t hear him. I let him upstairs, let him figure out his own way home with seven of my eight cases of protein shakes—he sure wasn’t gonna be jumping across any fucking roofs, I’ll tell you that—and then I told the whole wide world to fuck off. Ari cleaned up after me as I opened a few bottles and worked really hard at closing my eyes.

  CHAPTER 16

  I knew I was dreaming because I was young and powerful and the world was in color. Not gaudy neon, with everything glowing against the backdrop of digital nothing, no, just regular color. Color like a normal person sees, like I’d seen as a boy, as a young man, and like I’d first seen through my cyberoptics.

  First had come the schol
arships, then the academy, then more training, the headware, my induction as a Department of Paranormal Investigations officer, tactical training atop tactical training, honing my physical skills just as they honed my sorcerous ones.

  After all, I was a rising star. I was my precinct’s golden boy, soaking up the favor of Divisional Chair Hilary Asenby, who was soaking up the budget of the corporation.

  They spared no expense, because they had almost unlimited money. The D.P.I. has always been a gloryhound’s dream job, with less than a tenth the employees of the already-elite Tactical Division, but almost the same budget. Suck it, SWATties. D.P.I.’s where it’s at. Lone Star was invested in them, and the Dips were invested in me.

  I’d thought the sky was the limit, but it turned out it was the sewers instead.

  I dreamed my way through the briefing again. I was tactical Hermetic support to the Fast Response Team being sent on a simple, ugly, sweep-and-geek mission. SWAT wasn’t involved, FRT was, because there weren’t any hostages to protect. There weren’t any arrests to be made. There was a filthy pack of ghouls eating people, and that was that. We were performing a community service in accordance with our contract, D.P.I. Paranormal Animal Control had tracked down the Krieger-infected nasties, and they’d tapped a Fast Response kill-team—and me, the up-and-comer—to go clean house.

  I dreamed about the ride over, boisterous and eager in the belly of our CityMaster. We were all suited up, each and every one of us wrapped head to toe in heavy-tac armor, heads-up smart helmets strapped on, locked and loaded, ready to rock and roll. Every other man and woman in the back had a Ruger Thunderbolt, I packed my graduation present Colt 2061. We bristled with long-guns, though, sidearms be damned. Lone Star’s standard tactical loadout had been modified for the close quarters kill zone: six shooters had sleek Heckler & Koch 227s, five of them CMDT assault shotguns.

  Me? I had my spells, and my big gun was Ariana. Fresh from my Master’s thesis, she was gorgeous. Flawless. Resilient as stone, beautiful as a diamond, powerful as my ego. I’d boasted to the rest of the kill-team I wouldn’t need them or her, had warned ’em to stand behind me so I could just let loose down there, had laughingly ordered her to the Astral so I could brag to my friends about the havoc I was going to personally wreak.

  I dreamed it all again, the insanity of looking forward to disembarking, the madness of how gung-ho we all were. How hungry for glory. How eager.

  I dreamed of darkness, lit only by cones from underbarrel flashlights, a darkness so thick cyberoptics didn’t quite work right, a darkness so cold we felt it through our armor.

  I dreamed of claws in the dark, leering faces, hairless skulls with pale eyes, wrapped in sickly-grey skin, yellow teeth and yellow claws, both slick with blood all too quick.

  I dreamed of gunshots ringing through tunnels, the screams of the dying, the spells—god damn those spells—coming at us out of nowhere. I poured my power into attacking instead of defending, determined that the best defense was a good offense, dedicating myself to lashing out with waves of acid and balls of lightning, bolts of fire and spearing laser-bright lances of pure energy.

  I dreamed my heads-up display started to show FRT troopers dying, almost faster than I could keep up. Ariana screamed for me to let her help, but then I saw her, saw it, saw the creature I’d come to know by the name Nimbus.

  She came on me too fast. She laughed, fangs red, white-painted skull on her face smeared with crimson, arms bloody up to the elbows, and when I tried to blast her with a bolt of power she took the hit and lunged at me anyway, her chest a burned, smoking ruin.

  I dreamed she tore my throat out and fed on my blood and fear. To a vampire, the blood was just the vector; it was life force they fed on, pure energy, mana, power, soul. Slow-aging elf or not, she sucked away my light. She took my brightness. She stole my spirit.

  I couldn’t muster up coherence and reason in the face of that, couldn’t think my way out of a situation I hadn’t thought myself into. I couldn’t put together two plus two, much less muster up the appropriate collegiate formula, much less solve this equation.

  I dreamed she laughed and danced and splashed in the guts of my team while I lay there, gurgling, hoping I’d die.

  Ari ran and got help, since my joking order had still kept her from properly manifesting. Quick as fear, she rushed to the precinct house, got the attention of the on-duty astral overwatch officer, and showed him what was happening.

  They got there just in time. My power was almost gone, almost broken. My team was dead, and I was minutes away from joining them.

  I dreamed it all in color, in clear view, without the filter of my cyberoptics to remove me from it, without the unreality of their display to hold the memories at arm’s length.

  Nimbus, her name was. Nimbus.

  CHAPTER 17

  I awoke feeling terribly unrested, but full of grim determination.

  I wasn’t going to make the same mistakes I had all those years ago. Back then, I’d had a full Lone Star team on my side. I’d had substantial rank, and with it broad access to the resources of the world’s premier law enforcement agency, all their tech and toys, all their men, all my power—and I’d lost anyway.

  This time was going to be different. This time I’d stack the deck so far in my favor it’d make a Vegas dealer blush. This time, the way I saw it, I had Jackpoint. That was better. Every shadowy expert in the world was at my beck and call, sort of. Hard Exit would help. Hard Exit had to. She was one of Jackpoint’s favorites

  Hard Exit made calls for me. Hard Exit told me when to expect some nova-hot vampire-killing consultant she knew. Hard Exit joked that I owed her one, and then her voice softened and the street name vanished while my friend, Jessica, wished me luck.

  “I’m halfway around the world, Mitch, or I’d be there,” she said, and I knew she was telling the truth. She owed me, even though I’d never tell her that. She felt like she owed me still, from all those years ago.

  “I know, Jess. It’s okay. You’re doing plenty.” I mustered up a rusty smile for the trid, then hung up.

  He was supposed to be some sort of expert on vampire psychology and parabiology. Some specialist in the HMHVV, Human-Metahuman Vampiric Virus, and the monsters it created. Some big-shot hunter who’d killed dozens or hundreds of the things. Some world-class genius in the art and science of destroying the Infected. Someone with a deep understanding of their flaws, their weaknesses, the sort of attacks that could bypass their innate recuperative abilities, ways to beat them despite their tremendous physicality and dangerous natures.

  Hey, if he was eager enough to help some vampires get killed that he was gonna arrange transportation for a personal consultation, I wasn’t going to turn it down.

  I had hours to kill, ’cause her expert’s suborbital flight wasn’t arriving at Sea-Tac until almost midnight, so I settled in with my old chipsoft lecture about some very specific detection spells. Dr. Reynolds himself had uploaded them to the Hermetic Order’s digital library, the grimoire we could all access from the safety of our personal wizard chambers. Detect vampire. I read. I studied. I learned, and Ari soaked it up like the magical sponge she was, right next to me.

  “No vampires,” she helpfully piped up about three times a minute while practicing. It was a radar-type spell, centered on the spellcaster, and it let you know if anything fitting the formula’s specifications—HMHVV infected with the Ghilany Vrykolakivididae strain, folks we called sanguisuga europa, or “vampires”—was within range. That spell, cast and re-cast by Ariana, was going to be my eyes and ears for the foreseeable future. I gave her strict orders, the very opposite of the ones I’d stupidly given her all those years ago. Ari was going to constantly check for vampiric skullduggery, she was going to lay into any vampires she ever found with it, and that was that. Problem solved.

  I won’t get blindsided again, I told myself.

  And then, the Sixth World being the Sixth World, I did anyway.

  A convertible
Eurocar Westwind luxury coupe—big money, those—parked out front and a Manhattan-slick suit clambered out, checked his commlink with a disappointed shoulder slump, and then walked into my building. Ariana bebopped around the apartment, practicing her spellcasting, and I watched his crisp lines and slick hair as he headed up past my cheap security cameras to the office door. He paused to knock, I casually hollered for him to enter, still sitting at my desk.

  He looked efficient. Businesslike. Professional. Wealthy. Slender and fit. I expected an Infected hunter to be more brawny, more clearly threatening, but I knew there were other kinds of strength. I had a few seconds to get a quick impression of him, and I liked what I saw. I felt like he could help me. I felt confident. I felt like we had a shot.

  Then Ariana finished another practice-casting, and all the shit hit all the fans at once.

  “Vampire!” she howled, voice full of girlish rage.

  “Ally Spirit?” the New York businessman hissed in response, accent anything but New York.

  “What?” I said stupidly, kicking my feet off my desk and sitting up straight.

  Ari rushed him like an avalanche, nails sharp as flint and leading the way. Illusions slithered off his body, but the suit remained, and even as I clawed my wand from my hip and flung up my own detect vampire spell—just making sure I wasn’t about to kill someone because Ari’d childishly screwed up the casting, somehow—my headware started in on a facial recognition subroutine.

  He and Ariana were all tangled up while my wand warmed in my hand and I confirmed his status as Infected. She raked him with her claws, all in a blur, and he bared his fangs and fought to throw her off him. I dropped the detection spell and flung a probing bolt of mana just as the Transys in my skull matched his face to a half dozen news reports.

  Martin de Vries, bestselling author, vampire hunter, conspiracy nut, and—apparently—vampire, reached out with an open hand and batted my spell out of the air like it was nothing. He made it look as easy as I did. His other hand palmed Ariana’s face to shove her away and he struck a pose, for just a moment, giving me a disappointed look at the lack of power in my first attack of the fight.