by Anthology
"Ooh, kinky." Damon laughed. "But you'll understand that I can't let you do that. It's so hard to find good furniture these days, and it would be criminal to let you destroy my art pieces. Oh-" He tilted his head, "-but you are criminals, though, aren't you?"
At that point, everything happened at once. Torque roared with rage and swung the Predator around to point at Damon. Before Zack or Elena could yell anything, Torque screamed and clutched his hand and the gun dropped to the floor. Elena spun, operating on pure instinct now, and flung a spell at Damon. It never reached him: instead, it flared up in a display of pyrotechnics and then fizzled out. The three runners stared, wide-eyed.
Throughout all of this, Damon had not moved. Now he pushed himself off the wall and shrugged. "I told you it wasn't a good idea." Something changed in his smile-a little less amused, a little more predatory. "You didn't do your research about me, did you?"
Zack took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He was beginning to realize that they might be in over their heads here. Just keep him talking… "You're-new in town. Own the Odyssey Club that's opening next week. Came from back east somewhere, where you ran another club."
Damon nodded. "That's the easy part. But you didn't find the rest, did you?" He shrugged philosophically. "Not surprising. It's not public knowledge, but it's not a secret, either. Leads to tiresome problems when people find out." He moved toward them with casual slowness, still keeping them all pinned with his gaze. "But then, I've got another party to get to in half an hour, so I can't afford to take too long with this."
Zack stood very still as Damon approached him. The young man locked eyes with him for a moment, and Zack suddenly felt like the contents of his mind were being sifted through. There was no pain, but it was an unsettlingly crawly feeling. Torque and Elena remained where they were, watching silently. Then Zack's eyes got big as the exchange of information briefly switched directions. Something unseen passed from the young man to the shadowrunner, and Zack staggered back a couple of steps, mouth hanging open.
Finally Damon nodded, smiling again. "Okay, so that's who it was. Doesn't surprise me. I thought he might cause trouble, I just wasn't sure when." He glanced at Zack and waved toward Elena and Torque. "Go ahead, tell them. I can see you want to."
The whites were visible all the way around Zack's eyes. His mouth worked a couple of times but no sound came out. Beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead.
"What?" Torque demanded, shifting his attention back and forth between Damon, Zack, and his fallen Predator.
"He's-" Zack started, pointing at Damon.
"He's what?" Elena glared at Damon. "C'mon, Zack, spill it if you know something!"
"He's a fraggin' dragon! " Zack blurted. Then all the energy drained from his tone. "He…let us get in because he…thought it would be…fun…to see what we were up to."
Elena and Torque stared, first at Zack and then at the young man. "Did I hear that 'dragon' part right?" Sparq's voice, forgotten, crackled over the comm. Nobody answered him.
"Oh, drek…" Elena began. She took a step backward.
"You're-sure of this?" Torque murmured, as if afraid he would dislodge something if he spoke too loudly.
"Oh, yeah." Zack had found his voice again, sort of. "L-let's not ask him to prove it, okay? I'm convinced."
Torque and Elena exchanged nervous glances. Then Torque regarded Damon, his tone shaky. "So-now what happens? You aren't gonna…I dunno…eat us, are you?"
Damon laughed. "No. All that metal tastes terrible, and the cleanup's a bitch."
"So-what, then? Are you going to let us go?" Elena asked hopefully.
"Maybe," Damon mused. His hand was on his chin in a 'thinking' pose. Then he shrugged and flashed them a brilliant grin. "Sure, why not? But you'll have to do something for me in return. How's that sound?"
The runners didn't even ask what it was before they all nodded in unison.
The next day the four of them met over lunch in the darkened back corner of their favorite local bar and grill. Zack was late. When he arrived, he was carrying a newsfax which he tossed on the table. "Looks like we got away with it," he said, more than a little relief in his voice.
Elena picked it up. It was one of the local unsavory entertainment rags. "Club Owner's Home Vandalized," she read. Her eyes scanned ahead a little and she chuckled. "Bryce Manetti, owner of several novahot Seattle clubs including One Step Beyond and the Star Lounge, reportedly returned home last night to find parts of his Bellevue mansion defaced by unknown vandals. The investigation is pending-no details are available, but rumors say that the vandals' attacks included suspending Manetti's grand piano from the beams of his ceiling and dyeing his white carpets purple. These rumors are, of course, unconfirmed."
Sparq laughed. "They didn't mention the surprise I left on his dataterminal-wait until he tries to send email and discovers that every third letter changes to a 'D'."
"Or the note," Zack added, wondering what had been inside the sealed envelope they'd left prominently displayed on Johnson's mantelpiece. None of them had been brave enough to open it and peek.
"I thought the shaving cream in the bathrooms was a nice touch," Torque admitted. "Juvenile, but traditional." He sounded like he hadn't had this much fun on a run in years.
Elena took a deep breath. "So you think he'll leave us alone?"
"Johnson, you mean? Or-?"
"Not Johnson."
Zack shrugged. "Not much we can do about it if he decides not to. But I think he got what he wanted."
"As opposed to Johnson, who got what he deserved," Sparq said, unable to suppress a grin at the memory. "Beer, anybody? I'm buying."
DEAD MAN'S PARTY
Jon Szeto
There was one distinctive characteristic about the post-lockdown Renraku Arcology that always unsettled Marcelles: the smell.
Having spent several years in the Arc before the lockdown – first as a wageslave, then later a shadowrunner – the elf gunman had grown accustomed to its climate-controlled atmosphere. To keep the middle managers and executives who lived inside happy, the Arcology added an air freshener to the recirculated air passing through the scrubbers. The aroma was so distinctive that Renraku's marketing department even trademarked it to sell as a designer brand elsewhere. Marcelles also suspected the freshener helped to mask a mood-dampening drug Renraku also piped into the air, to keep the hired help docile and to dull the edges of intruding malcontents.
Since the lockdown and the battle to reopen it, however, the air freshener was one of the first things to go. Now, instead of the trademark Arcology FragranceTM, Marcelles' nose caught the acrid stench of cordite, machine oil, and smoke. It wasn't a scent that the veteran runner had never smelled before, but to smell it while gazing on the Arc's interior hallways jarred like a dissonant screech on Marcelles ' memory.
As Marcelles waved to signal to his companions that the concourse was clear, the elf could detect other odors adding to the Arc's new aroma: a heavy coat of antiseptic, masking the lesser stench of blood, bile, and decomposition. They were close to their objective. Marcelles glanced down to see his hands nervously fidget with the safety of his weapon. Right now he wished Renraku was still pumping that sedative as he always claimed; it would at least help to calm his nerves.
"There," pointed out Marcelles to the man closing on his side, "that's the place, Reese. It used to be a cafeteria for middle managers, but the otaku converted it into a biotech lab. After the Red Samurai took this floor back, they used it as a makeshift morgue to dissect Banded troops they capped."
"Wonderful. Don't think I'll ever eat at a McHugh's again," muttered Reese as he hefted his submachinegun. The once cheery cafeteria, originally themed in shades of green and bright blue, now had splotches of red, yellow, and brown on the walls. Most of the original furniture was gone; in their stead lay cold steel examination tables bearing equally cold cadavers, attended by medical devices of chrome and plastic. They stood perched like vultures over the tables,
gazing down with their blinking multicolored LEDs.
"Any signs of our samurai friends, Ivan?" Reese turned to ask the ork standing behind him. Black Ivan shook his head.
"Nyet. Hacksaw seems to be leading them on a merry chase with his drones," replied Black Ivan, in a thick Russian accent. He glanced down at the gaunt form of the rigger seated on the floor, hunched over the remote control deck before him. Hacksaw only barely registered the ork's presence, as the rigger was preoccupied with directing his drone network. Several hundred meters away, several of Hacksaw's drones, modified to look like Deus' mechanical monstrosities, were distracting the Renraku forces that would normally be guarding the morgue. Only the medical staff remained behind to look after the bodies inside.
"Good," nodded Reese. He figured he didn't have to bother the rigger, so instead he turned to Alexandra. "Anything on the astral?"
Alexandra's wavy tresses of strawberry blonde quivered as the street witch shook her head. "Just the normal background count left over from past fights. It's not pretty, though."
"Well, just as long as there aren't any surprises, that's all I'm worried about." Reese's brow furrowed. "Marcelles, you keep a watch over our rear. You and Hacksaw will stay here while the rest of us rush the clinic; we'll signal you both to move in. Northwood, you and Ivan take point."
"Check, Reese," drawled Northwood from underneath his Stetson. The adept's tan long coat rustled as he produced a shotgun from within its folds.
"Okay, let's do it." Making one last quick check, Northwood and Black Ivan darted out from the side corridor where the group was hiding. The Russian ork leapfrogged from cover to cover, first crouching behind the wreck of a burned-out spider drone, then a stand of now-withered stand of decorative trees, until he was backed up to the left of the cafeteria entrance.
Reese momentarily lost sight of Northwood. Every so often he could catch the gunslinger's duster out of the corner of his eye, but the adept otherwise moved with an unnatural stealthiness that almost bordered on invisibility. By the time Reese caught Northwood again, he was pressed up on the opposite side of the entrance from Ivan. Northwood nodded wordlessly and motioned with his hand. Reese and Alexandra broke out in a crouching run, until they arrived at the other side, crouching low beneath Black Ivan and Northwood.
As Black Ivan withdrew his pistol, Northwood reached into his long coat and fished out a grenade, pulled out the pin, and lobbed it between the double doors. A split second later, a loud boom thundered from within, while flashes of light escaped from the doors forcibly banged open. The concussion grenade was mostly flash and bang, thus keeping physical damage to a minimum. However, it would knock out anyone in the immediate vicinity, while surprising the rest long enough to gain the advantage.
Black Ivan and Northwood swung around and kicked the doors back inwards, weapons leveled in front. Ivan bellowed out, "DROP EVERYTHING AND MOVE TO THE BACK NOW!!! MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!"
An intern in scrubs standing a few meters away dropped in a dead faint. Black Ivan was big for an ork, and his synthetic muscle augmentations made him even bigger. With the added shock factor from the grenade blast, Ivan looked to the medical staff like he could wrestle a dragon – and win.
As if on cue, Northwood suddenly swung right and hard with the butt of his shotgun. The stock connected squarely with the jaw of a guard sneaking up from behind. The guard's gun clattered on the floor, followed by a heavy thud from the cold-cocked Red Samurai.
"Move it, people. Now, before I hurt someone!" growled Northwood, as Reese and Alexandra swung around to back up the two. Like cowed sheep, the half-dozen medtechs shuffled backwards away from the shadowrunners. Northwood and Black Ivan herded them into a custodial closet, which Black Ivan shut and barred with a chair under the doorknob.
As the others moved into a defensive position securing the cafeteria-cum-morgue, Reese retrieved a communicator from his jacket. "Marcelles, Hacksaw. Objective secured. Get in here ASAP so we can start looking for our dead friend. It's going to take a while to sort through all the stiffs here."
"Nope, that's not him either." As Marcelles double-checked the holopic Mr. Johnson had given them, Reese unceremoniously rolled the cadaver off one side of the examination table. The corpse rolled a short distance before it came to a rest besides the four others they had previously examined. "You sure they brought him back here?"
"Well, Hacksaw verified that the late Mr. Wendy wasn't taken to Renraku's Bellevue complex," answered Reese, "and the Arcology is the only other place in Seattle that has an onsite morgue."
"But why bring him back here?" asked Alexandra. "If Renraku thought he was one of Deus' sleeper agents, why bring him back to the Arcology?"
Marcelles shrugged. "Dunno, Alex. I think the cover's a sham, anyway. Most of the people I know in Renraku swear Rich Wendy couldn't have been a sleeper. He was just a buyer in purchasing, and not involved in anything classified or really important. Most of them were surprised when they heard the Red Samurai shot him trying to resist arrest."
The speculation came to an halt as Black Ivan emerged from the kitchen with a body bag slung over one shoulder. He dropped it onto the examination table Reese had just cleared. "This is the sixth one."
"Any more left in the freezer, Ivan?" asked Reese.
"Da, another eight more. But two are oversized for trolls, and two are small: either dwarfs or children. That leaves five more to check." Renraku was using the walk-in freezer in the cafeteria's kitchen to store the growing backlog of corpses they were examining.
"Drek. We're running out of time. I hope we get lucky pretty soon." Reese unzipped the body bag. Although the cold of the freezer had retarded decomposition somewhat, a fetid odor nevertheless emanated from the inside as its contents were exposed to air.
"Bingo! That's him. That's Rich Wendy." Marcelles raised his sleeve to cover his nose from the stench of decay.
"Finally! Okay, Ivan, let's cut it loose," directed Reese. As Reese held the corpse's head steady, Ivan unholstered a sickle from his belt. The hammer and sickle, former symbols of a former homeland, were Ivan's signature calling card. It established Ivan's reputation as the most feared Vory enforcer in Vladivostok, before circumstances forced him to flee across the Pacific to Seattle.
The sickle that Ivan raised was no ordinary farming tool, however. Forged from the same steel as most combat knives and further enhanced with a diamond-hard enamel of Dikote, it could slice wood without nicking the edge. A wet squish burst out as the blade connected right above the collarbone. Dark crimson spilled onto the floor underneath the table.
"Now, Alexandra," nodded Reese. The street witch placed her hands on both temples of the decorporated head, closed her eyes, and chanted softly under her breath. The blood dripping from the carotid artery slowed to a trickle, and the flesh on the head appeared to become rosier, as Alexandra's spell of stasis arrested the onset of decay. Reaching with one hand into her battered carpet bag, she withdrew a small bronze scarab and placed it on the corpse's forehead. Marcelles almost thought he saw the legs of the metal beetle withdraw slightly and dig into the flesh. Releasing both scarab and head, Alexandra opened her eyes and withdrew.
"It's done. The focus is set and will sustain the preservation spell until we can put the head on ice," confirmed Alexandra. Reese opened up a waterproof bag and placed the head inside, tying it shut afterwards.
"Reese," Hacksaw's low voice interrupted the almost ceremonious proceedings, as the rigger unjacked from his remote control deck. "The Red Samurai have broken contact with my drones and are returning to this location. We don't have much time."
"Damn. This is cutting it close." Reese keyed his radio. "Northwood, it's Reese. The Red Samurai are falling back. Report when you see them and get back here."
"I see 'em already, I'm gone!" The gunslinger was keeping watch a hundred or so meters around the corner, and he could see another hundred meters further down. They had a little time, but not much.
"Okay, people, you heard
the man. Let's get mo-" Reese was cut off in mid-sentence as a large juggernaut of a drone burst through the wall behind them. One of the drone's weapon mounts boomed in discharge, and a spray of red erupted from one side of Reese's head. The runner collapsed where he stood, falling to rest with the other lifeless bodies on the floor.
Black Ivan howled something unintelligible in Russian and launched himself at the drone, hammer and sickle in hand, turning in midair to avoid a strike by on of the drone's legs. The leg struck one of the examination machines, causing chunks of machinery to go flying. One piece struck Hacksaw in the forearm and the rigger fell cursing in pain behind an examination table.
"Alex, see if you can slow that machine down!" shouted Marcelles as he ducked under cover. He had never seen this type of drone before, so he could only guess at how to disable it. Once on the floor, he looked around wildly for his knapsack before he spotted it lying a meter away in the open. Taking one last peek at the mechanical monstrosity, Marcelles launched himself at the ruck, scooped it into his chest as he slid forward, and then somersaulted behind another table while automatic gunfire tore up the floor behind him.
"Earth, to my aid!" yelled Alexandra as she dropped to the ground. The floor in front of her buckled, and a giant humanoid form of rock and dirt rose out of the tiling, using its body to block Alexandra from the drone's gunfire. Alexandra simply pointed at the drone, and the elemental began making a slow ponderous march towards the drone. The elemental grabbed two of its legs in its stony grips and began wrestling the drone to the ground. Meanwhile Ivan systematically slashed and struck at its legs, which combined with the elemental's grappling practically pinned the drone in place.
"Ivan! Place this under the sensor dome!" Marcelles withdrew a magnetic demolitions charge from inside his knapsack and tossed it to Black Ivan. The ork dropped his hammer to make a one-handed catch in midair. Using his sickle as a grappling hook, Ivan swung up onto the drone's dorsal plating, using his knees to check himself from getting bucked off the drone's back. With his other hand the ork reached around the front of the drone, trying to position it under the oblong dome housing the sensor elements. Once his hand was in the correct place, the magnet grabbed hold of the drone's hull with a soft snikt. Ivan went limp and slid off one side, rolling away to safety. Once Marcelles saw that Black Ivan was clear, he pulled out a remote detonator and jammed his thumb on the button.