“Gem.”
“Hmm?”
“My name’s Gem. I know some stuff about one of ’em. One of the biters, I mean. If we go there now, can I get some noodles?”
We took a walk. We had time to kill, a long way to go to get back to my apartment, or more specifically the Thai joint downstairs. She told me she was from the California Free State, a runaway from the East Bay, headed this direction ’cause her dad was back home, and her big brother’d left there a year earlier and come to Seattle. Gem’d been here six months looking for Daniel, but had no real leads. She’d gotten cut early on from a crazy old lady who wanted to stay the prettiest in the warehouse.
I walked slow, didn’t ask much, let her take her time with the walk and the conversation, let her enjoy some human company. I didn’t press. I didn’t have to, we had a good hike to get where we were going. I told her about Ariana’s favorite cartoons, and her face lit up in a way that made my soul ache. I told her about Skip and Trace, and how they loved to take Ari out and show her new things. I told her about how I tried to do the right thing by this place, and how since she lived in Puyallup, I was looking after her now, too.
By the time we got there, Chanchai and Gamon were in their late-afternoon lull downstairs. They doted on Gem—were also glad to see me, after the week I’d had—and stuffed her full to bursting. We talked, Gem and me, her feet swinging like the little kid she was, dirty sneakers and torn pants, about tridshows and fast food joints we liked, whether Renraku or Mitsuhama had the coolest house-drones, about pop bands she loved and pop bands my Transys had to tell me about in secret so I could keep up.
“Tell me about your brother, kid?”
“I thought you wanted to know about ghouls.”
“I do. But you want to know about him. So, I’ll make you a deal.”
“You already made me a deal.”
I grinned.
“Yeah, well, you got me there. But I’ll make you a new one, since you already ate the food before telling me about the Infected. You tell me what you’ve got on these pricks, I’ll look into your big brother for you, soon as I can. He’s got to be here somewhere, and if not there’s got to be a record of him. I know folks. Folks know me. I’ll help you find him, you’ll be back with him in no time.”
“What if he don’t want me?” Her voice sounded very small.
“Kid, you got here from Halferville to find him. He’d be an awful shitty brother to turn you out after that.”
“I mean ’cause of…”
“I know what you mean. Hush, and eat your yen-ta-fo.”
I couldn’t ditch chopsticks today, but that was all the meals had in common. Lunch had been dainty, gourmet sushi rolls with a Yakuza boss, dinner’d been spicy meats with a knifed-up little girl doing her best not to cry for half the meal. I had a hell of a life.
“There’s this guy,” she said, pushing her plate away when she was finally full, after Gamon’d stopped fluttering and refilling it. “Sammy Bones. He’s a bouncer, like, at a clinic. Beaver’s place.”
Beaver the Cleaver. I knew him. Knew how terrible a street doc he was, along with just bein’ a pretty lousy specimen of metahumanity. I nodded.
“Sammy Bones’s a ghoul. He’s…he’s scary. Even for one of them. Spooky, like. He’s real quiet, except when he wants to be loud. It’s like he…he likes scaring people, you know? Sneaking up on them, then just being mean. He likes looking scary. Tattoos and piercings and stuff. But he has a job. He’s like their boss, or whatever? But he always says he has a boss. He has money, but still no one likes him. Everyone clears out when he shows up. He always laughs and chomps at us. Like he’s gonna infect us, or…”
“I know. I know his type. Sammy Bones. Beaver’s Dam. Got it, Gem. You’re a good kid.”
“Yeah,” she rolled her eyes. Blue, too pretty for the place I’d found her. “Fat lot of good that’s done me.”
I couldn’t just send her out the door, couldn’t kick her back toward that warehouse. I’d given her what we’d agreed, but I wasn’t going to send her back into the drizzle and the darkness.
“Hey. You know the Loveland Bump & Sleep?”
Those eyes turned hurt, her face opened up for just a second, scared, disappointed. Then she turned cold, angry. Closed.
“No,” she said, looking away, reaching for a fork—no more adorable fumbling with chopsticks—to snatch up as much food as she could before she left—and probably stab me with if I tried to touch her. She was a smart kid.
“No, no! Not like that, Gem. I don’t mean it like that, on my mother’s grave. I just know who runs it. I’ve got a room there. A safehouse. You use my key, no one there’ll bug you. I swear.”
Enzo ran the joint. The Bump & Sleep was just as classy as it sounded, but I’d meant what I told her. Trace had modified the maglock for me, after I’d first rented it—permanently, by saving her life—from Enzo, back in the day. No one could, would, bother her there.
I held up the keycard, then slid it halfway across the table to her.
“It’s yours, if you want it. You just promise me you use it, okay? Don’t sell it to nobody, don’t let me hear about you in some friggin’ pawn shop. Room number’s on there. There’s even a little grub stashed away, some dehydrated junk I got, fell offa truck. You crash there a little bit, while I work on this thing, okay?”
She eyed me—wary again, like a dog who’d been kicked a few too many times—but reached out and took it. A little of the light came back when she smiled.
“I’ll walk there,” she said, stowing the key and answering my next question before I asked it. “I ain’t soft, Mr. Kincaid. I got here from Halferville, didn’t I?”
“You did. You scoot now, Gem. Get yourself a roof, I’ll get to work on the other thing, okay?”
Chanchai smiled at her from the kitchen, Gamon shoved a little doggie bag of dumplings into her hand before she left. I sighed and hauled myself to my feet, nodded gratefully at the Thai couple.
Good people. Puyallup’s got ’em, too.
“Add the tab to my rent, yeah?”
They waved me off and I headed back out onto the street. I watched Gem go, then climbed into my Ford. It was time to go back to work.
CHAPTER 31
I didn’t go straight to Beaver’s Dam. Not while the sun was still up. Ghouls didn’t like it, so this Bones knucklehead wouldn’t be there. No, I headed in the general direction of the Weazely residence, and called them up on the way over. Hank and Darlene weren’t married, but my odds of finding him there were still pretty high. It’d only been a half a week or so, right? Odds were good they were still in that honeymoon phase.
“Jimmy K! How’s biz,” she said, smiling.
“I’m fine, thanks. Busy. Working on something. Hank around?”
She didn’t roll her eyes, cuss, or throw anything, so I knew he was, and knew my guess about their lovey-dovey arrangement was right on cue. She smiled again—brighter than when she’d seen me—and went and got him.
His ugly mug filled the screen, looking nervous, like he was about to get in trouble for something. Most of the time, he was.
“What’s the word, Jimmy?”
“You free for a little? Meet me at the Armadillo, my treat?”
“Yeah, sure. Sure, I can do that,” he said, after first casting a glance off-screen, getting the go-ahead from his old lady.
“I’ll see you there in ten,” I shut off the call, spinning up my Transys to find another contact, dial another number. I had the start-up of a plan forming, and Weazely was actually going to make himself useful for once, I hoped.
A nighttime hotspot for hackers of all stripes, the Armadillo was a neighborhood institution if you were a tech-geek, which I wasn’t, or if you lived nearby, which Hank did. When he just wanted a drink, he hit up the ’Dillo. He was only a few buildings away, so he was already waiting inside by the time I showed up, and’d already opened a tab, natch.
“Gimme a…what is that, an old fashion
ed?” I said, settling onto the stool next to his. “Yeah, one of those.”
He lifted his glass in a toast, but I didn’t give him time to stay comfortable. I had too much shit to do.
“You get fired from Eta Engineering yet?”
“What? Christ, Jimmy. What a hurtful way to open a conversa—”
“Did you? Or you still got a gig?”
“I’ve smoothed over recent—indiscretions with management, yes.” He sniffed, taking a drink to make himself look together. “They understand that I’m struggling with a gambling addiction, and they’re willing to work with me.”
“You begged, Darlene cussed, and they brought you back on?”
“Yeah, basically.” He gave me a little grin.
“Good. I need a favor.”
He didn’t speak up right away, so I did. A friendly reminder.
“You promised me, Weazely. Not a week ago, you promised me something good. I didn’t hand you over to Enzo, I got your debt cut in half, I got your old lady a little money to sweeten her up. You owe me.”
He nodded. Good. Prick.
“Now listen. You’re in trouble at work, so I know you get the shit jobs.” Like Enzo Gianelli got the shit jobs from his work, like Tomizawa got the shit jobs from his. I was surrounded by people with shit jobs, and all of ’em had a steadier paycheck than me. What’d that say about my life?
“It ain’t shit jobs, Jimmy.” He looked a little hurt at that. “I do important work!”
“You literally work with shit, Weazely.”
“It’s honest work, though.” He straightened up.
“Fine, yeah. Okay. You’re a good worker, let’s say, and they value you, let’s say, and it’s a noble fucking profession to fly a maintenance drone into a tunnel filled with shit.”
“Thank you.” He sniffed again, missing my mood.
“So I need you to fly a maintenance drone into a tunnel filled with shit. A lot. I need you to be my eyes, Hank. I’m looking for something, somewhere down there. Somewhere you boys don’t normally look. I’ll message you with the details, but I need you to pull some recon for me, quick as you can.”
“That’s a lot of ground to cover, Jimmy! You know how many kilometers of tunnels there are under this city?!”
“Haven’t the faintest.”
“Well, me neither, but it’s a fucking lot, Jimmy. That sort of thing’ll take time!”
“So get started, Hank,” I plucked the glass from his hands and finished it off. “Clock’s ticking. Go.”
He gave me a pathetic glare, then slid off his stool. He wasn’t a bad guy, Hank. He knew when he owed someone. He’d find a way.
“I’ll pay for your drink, don’t sweat it,” I said as he shuffled off. “Get goin’, Hank. Hug Darlene, and do good work.”
I spun on the stool, waved the bartender over.
“Another one, and keep my tab open. I’ve got another buddy comin’, he’s just running a little late. You guys got protein shakes here?”
CHAPTER 32
Gentry hadn’t jogged over here—for once—because I’d called him on such short notice. He had a motorcycle, like probably half the shadowrunners in Seattle, but at least he hadn’t come leaping off a rooftop. He pushed his smartgoggles onto his forehead as he came in, taking in the place with something like reverence.
The Armadillo’s reputation apparently preceded it.
The way he was eyeballing half the folks sitting here, he must’ve seen something I didn’t. I knew I wasn’t missing anything—not with the betel gum, the Sideways, the headware—in realspace, so I poked at my Transys and toggled the augmented reality to ‘on.’
Jesus, Buddha, and Zeus, this place was a madhouse.
The half-real digital overlay turned the Armadillo into a tech-geek’s wet dream. The picture behind the bar turned into a looming digital statue, a monument that was clearly someone’s Matrix avatar. More of the bar’s patrons than not—including Gentry, natch—took on their own digital properties, clothed in computer-generated imagery, turned half-animal, half-magical, coated in gleaming metallics or glowing cloaks of data.
My own avatar was almost stock, tailored for me—back when she’d given a damn—by Trace, last time I’d had my headware patched and upgraded. I used a basic Noir.0 avatar, but she adjusted the imaginary suit to keep it rumpled and worn-in, and had oversized the ears a little. Gentry probably loved that last part.
The human decker was, again, an elven ranger, all dressed up for the geek prom. He brightened up when he saw a protein drink waiting for him, and slid onto Hank’s recently-vacated stool.
“Telegit thelemsa,” he said, back all stiff like he was about to bow to me.
“Seriously?”
“I was just saying hello, Kincaid.”
“No, you weren’t just say—y’know what, never mind? Fine.” I groused, but my Transys was pestering me to respond in kind.
“Siselle. Thelemsa-ha,” I growled back as best I could.
Gentry looked like a schoolgirl about to scream and start clapping at a tea party.
“Enough, though. Knock it off with that stuff. I ain’t your kind of elf, you dig? I only know that stuff ’cause of a chipjack, all right?”
He looked disappointed—beneath the AR overlay of his ridiculous ears, I again noticed that his own seemed a little pointed, and wondered if he was saving up for those cosmetic surgeries a little at a time—so I figured I’d just go straight to business instead of hassling him over his Tír-fueled fixation.
“I got another quick one for ya.” I set the road-worn commlink on the bar and slid it his way, broken screen and all, fresh from the scene of the Rebel crash.
“Hundred again?” He looked down at it—nose wrinkling at the damage done to even a low-end commlink—and then dragged his gaze up to mine.
“Sure.”
“Deal,” he said, almost as quickly as I did. The commlink blinked on, Gentry’s hand drifted over to tap at the ornately filigreed elven bracer that covered his actual cyberdeck.
“Annnnd done.”
Just like that.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
I shook my head, smiling, sending him a credit transfer.
“You have full admin access now. Anything on there, you can see. You need me to walk you through the proce—”
“I’m good, kid. I know how to use ’em, just not how to crack ’em open.”
“You, uh, you didn’t actually try that, did you?” Gentry’s cartoon-big eyes flickered down to the broken case.
“What? No. It was in a wreck, is all.”
“Okay.” He sipped his protein shake and glanced around the place again. I wondered how many avatars he recognized, and how many recognized him. Reputations counted. Even if they were reps I didn’t get, reps I didn’t appreciate, I know they were important. Those AR overlays were heavy with names.
“Listen, there’s another thing I’m lining up. A bigger one. A proper hack.”
“Like the school?”
“Bigger.”
He raised one impossibly-tall, impossibly-long, impossibly-elven eyebrow.
“City power. City sanitation. Stuff like that.”
“City services aren’t easy hacks, Jimmy.”
“I know.”
“I don’t think you do.”
“So enlighten me?”
“Those’re some hardcore servers you’re talking about. Regular targets. Hard targets. Lots of folks want to make the news, Jimmy, make a name for themselves. If you can turn off the lights to half the city, if you can shut off the water, if you can overflow every toilet in Tacoma? That’s a way to get recognized, hardcore, in the hacker community.”
“That’s a way to kill people,” I corrected.
“Right, ’cause no one gets hurt in your line of work?” Another delicate eyebrow quirked, shutting me up. “Anyway, black hats…they live for that shit. Those big hacks, those juicy targets. You want to get a crew together for
something like that, it’ll be…”
“Expensive?”
His AR self flashed perfect elven teeth.
“Tricky. Tricky to thin the herd, separate the sharp from the dull, the smart from the wannabes. You’ll get lots of volunteers, sure. Lots.” He nodded, certain of that, “But you don’t want the psychos. You don’t want the poseurs. You don’t want the plants, the undercover cops, the corporate spiders.”
“So who do I want?”
“Who’ve you got?”
I shrugged.
“You, so far.” I sent a mental command through my headware, shared my contacts list with him. “And whoever you like from that. Or, well, whoever you like from anywhere.”
He sucked down the rest of his protein shake, smiling.
“I can get you more. Good ones. Lots of good ones. I’ll be your fixer. Handle it, organize it.” He was getting hyper, now, my PeopleWatcher told me, and so did my magical power of common sense. His SupraThyroid was doing a number on him, or maybe just his hacker confidence. “I’ll get you a crew together. We all get some cred for it, I get the most, you get your job done. Everyone wins.”
“If you all can pull it off.”
“This is gonna be so awesome!”
“Yeah. Awesome’s just what I was going for.”
He missed my sarcasm; he was already busy scanning the bar.
“I’m gonna grab a smoke and some air, kid. You…get started, yeah?”
Gentry already was, reading user profiles, looking for Matrix handles he recognized. I’m not sure he even noticed when I headed outside.
The sun’d gone down, but it was still pleasantly cool, not yet cold. A big moon smiled down through a crack in the clouds, the wind was down, so the ash was settled. It was nice. Silver and grey and black, through and through, once you glared up past the neon and the AR advertisements, looked up past the streetlights and just saw the night for what it was.
“Nice night, huh?”
I saw someone off to my side, but didn’t really look, stamped down the Sideways and the paranoia and all that to just nod. They were quiet, whoever they were. I hadn’t heard them walk up to me, too tangled up in my thoughts and my worries and the streetlights and shadows. Their voice was rough, they sounded like a hard drinker, heavy smoker. Simple people. Salt of the earth.
Shadowrun: Shaken: No Job Too Small Page 18