The Johnson Run

by Kai O'Connal

  “So, a dragon.” Paz smiled as she snapped a piece back into place with more fervor than necessary. “I think it sounds fun.”

  Keandra frowned at her. “You realize we’re not talking about fighting the dragon, right? In fact, if anything, we’re talking about specifically not fighting the dragon.”

  Lance gestured vaguely without sitting up or opening his eyes. “It’s for the best. She’d barely make a mouthful.”

  “At least I wouldn’t be all crunchy and gristly. You should work on getting some meat on your bones.”

  “So I can be better dragon bait? I have slightly higher aspirations for my life than that.”

  Humor was good. Their incessant banter put Keandra more at ease. Even in the face of these monumental events, they were still the same old Paz and Lance. But she needed to keep them focused on the tasks at hand.

  “We should approach this like any other job,” she said. “The first thing we need to do is verify whether this story is even close to the truth. Granted, there’s only so much we can check out, but I want to do our preparations for this one. I also want to keep our options open. So I’m going to keep my meeting with our fixer and get the SINs and travel papers. We might still need them, depending on how this all plays out. I don’t want to be caught unprepared.”

  “Do you want an escort?” With how he looked, Lance didn’t look like he’d be able to provide much support, but Keandra appreciated the offer.

  “You can barely walk without pain right now, let alone fight. You’re going to need at least a few hours to recover. Get some rest and heal up. Keep E-jekt company. Make sure he remembers to eat and sleep. Don’t even think of arguing with me,” she said as the ork started to protest. “We both know how many times I’ve come out in the morning and found you still plugged into the Matrix and too tired to do your job the next day. Paz, do you mind coming with me?”

  “Not at all. Would be nice to rub it in his face while he’s stuck manning the home base.”

  E-jekt was already pulling up his interface to begin his searches. But he was still aware enough of his surroundings to be part of the conversation. “What do you want to do about Freyr?”

  “I’ll keep him on my commlink and keep it disconnected. That means I won’t be able to get your messages. I don’t want to give him the ability to roam around and jump ship just yet, at least not until we can verify some part of his story. It’s too risky. Remember what I said about keeping our options open. Once we get some information, we’ll need to have another discussion. Time is short, so let’s get moving.”

  Keandra scooped up the commlink, tucking it into her pocket before heading for the door. Paz snapped the last couple pieces of her gun together and hustled after her.

  15

  Victoria’s was an unusual shop on Council Island, selling all manner of totems—both those of the authentic magical variety and common trinkets peddled to tourists who wanted to take home something “native.” Like most of the buildings on the island, it was an odd combination of state-of-the-art green technology and traditional Native American décor. It was cluttered with the cheap trinkets people wanted to believe Native Americans used, regardless of whether they served any actual purpose.

  When Keandra and Paz entered, Victoria was showing off a dreamcatcher, explaining to an elf woman how the artifact would help her sleep at night, and then remember only pleasant dreams when she woke. Victoria held it in her thick fingers with unexpected dexterity for a large ork, spinning it so the glass beads caught the light and sparkled. The fascinated elf gasped and reached out to gently touch some of the feathers hanging from it.

  Keandra browsed in the front of the store, looking over a collection of teas while she waited for the business to conclude. She wondered if Victoria had the kind Lance enjoyed. She didn’t see it, but she selected a couple of bags that had a similar fragrance. Hopefully one of them would be sufficient. Paz looked around but didn’t touch anything.

  The elf left and Keandra approached the counter. Victoria beamed at her as she approached. She wrapped a large hand around Keandra’s forearm, squeezing hard enough to make the smaller woman flinch. “Good to see you again, my friend! Always a pleasure to have you in my shop. What can I do for you?”

  “I thought I’d come by and pick up some tea.”

  Keandra put the sampling of bags she’d selected on the counter and Victoria made a show of inspecting them.

  “Ah, now this tea, this is special. This one comes from leaves that are handpicked by dwarfs in Tibet. It’s very rare and takes months to arrive. To preserve the tea, the leaves are stored in a large container where an air spirit maintains the perfect humidity and temperature.”

  The door closed as the last couple of patrons left the shop. Victora pressed a button behind the counter, switching the sign on the front to read CLOSED. A bolt slammed into place with a solid thud and the shutters rattled as they unwound, dropping the room into darkness until the lights kicked on a half-second later. Behind the counter, the wall slid to the side, revealing a back office glowing with the light of several AR projectors.

  “Come on back,” Victoria said as she turned and entered her back room reserved for special customers.

  “I actually do want the tea.”

  “Bring it with you. After how much I’ll charge you for the other things, you can have it on the house.”

  Paz picked up the bag of tea. She carried it into the back room and held it out to the ork with a quizzical look. “This really from Tibet?”

  “Nah, that just helps sell it. I know a chap down in Tr Tairngire who makes it. Has some sort of system set up where he grows the plants. He explained it to me once, but the science went over my head. Besides, science doesn’t sell. People would rather hear a story with some mysticism. A good yarn lets me charge twice as much.”

  The dwarf grinned. “I’m totally telling Meat-sack it’s from Tibet.”

  The back room was as much a technological marvel as the front portion of the store was a testament to the green lifestyle. Victoria even had her own server in the corner, one of the old ones that required wires to be most effective. It had a few add-ons to support wireless capabilities, but they were rigged together, and in some cases literally held on with tape. But Victoria also had printers capable of creating the necessary papers for nations and bodies of authority who still required physical credentials. She knew her business, and was connected to almost every government on the continent. If she couldn’t get you what you needed, she knew someone who could.

  She picked up a small stack of papers and a commlink from the table and slapped them into Keandra’s outstretched hand. Keandra leafed through the stack: identification papers for the four members of her team. A quick check on the commlink showed that the SINs were all valid, down to the level of including biometric and facial recognition data.

  “Fake SINs and travel papers that can get you just about anywhere. You didn’t specify a location, so that made it a little trickier. You might need to talk your way through a few border control stations, but I’m sure you can handle that. These papers are valid and the SINs will check out, even under heavy scrutiny. You can have your boy check them out if you want. If anything isn’t to your liking, just bring them back by tomorrow and I’ll give you a full refund.”

  “Thanks,” Keandra said as she transferred the payment, which pretty much wiped out all their working capital. Sorry for such short notice on this one.”

  Victoria shrugged. She dropped into the only chair in the room; it groaned in protest of her weight. Even sitting, her head was still higher than Paz’s.

  “That’s why I had to charge you extra. You paid the fee without any fuss, so there you go. You know the quality of my work.”

  “I do.”

  “And I know how much you like to plan. So that tells me something went wrong. Anything you want to share about it, or am I better off not knowing?”

  Keandra tucked the identities into her coat, then crossed her
arms and shrugged. “Something big might be happening, and we need to get out of Seattle.”

  Victoria raised an eyebrow and leaned forward a little. “Something big? That tells me it involves more than just you. Is this a corp thing? Political? You have to give me something. That information could be valuable.”

  Feigning intrigue, Keandra bit the corner of her lip, trying to make it look as if she were debating how much to share. In truth, she’d already thought this through, and was glad to see Victoria reacting exactly as she’d hoped. “Do you think it might be worth an exchange of information?”

  Victoria laughed and leaned back in her chair, slapping the arm with one hand. “That’s why I like you, Keandra. Always shrewd and always looking for a bargain. I still say you should go into business. Open up a shop like mine and you’d do so well, you’d put me out of business. Just don’t set up shop on Council Island. I like the market I have here.”

  “Do we have a deal, then?”

  “I suppose it depends what you want to know. Information’s like totems. A lot of them are crap, but every so often you find a special one that you can really do something with. Those are the ones worth a fortune.”

  “I need to know about some property in the north of the California Free State. The usual stuff: who’s owned it, how often it changed hands, the price it went for, and so on. I’d like you to check out an area of a few square kilometers. It should be simple enough for someone with your connections.”

  Victoria nodded and picked her teeth with a thick thumbnail.

  “That should be easy enough. All transfer of land still has to be registered through the government. I know someone I could probably get a report from in a couple of hours. Yeah, I think that would be reasonable. Does this have to do with your skipping town? Are you heading down there? The real question would be why.”

  “Hestaby.”

  Victoria steepled her hands in front of her face and made no attempt to hide her interest. Keandra smirked in response, silently promising more information to come. She knew throwing around the dragon’s name would have an effect on the fixer.

  The ork jumped out of her chair so quickly she knocked it over. Paz reached for her gun, but didn’t bring it to bear. Victoria slapped Keandra on the shoulder with a laugh and an impact heavy enough to make the woman stumble.

  “You’re a sly fox, I’ll give you that. All right, you have a deal. You tell me what land you want to know about, and I’ll find out how much it’s changed hands and anything else I can dig up about it. But, in return, you need to share whatever juicy tidbit you have about one of the great ones. Deal?”

  “Deal. Now my associate and I need to leave. We have some preparation to make if we’re leaving this evening. I trust you understand.”

  “Of course, of course. Check back in a couple of hours, see what I have for you then.”

  They returned to the front room, and Victoria transformed the building back into a regular talisman shop with another push of a button. If Keandra didn’t know it was back there, it would be impossible to tell that the rear wall hid a whole other room. Victoria probably had some type of enchantment on the place to make it seem the same size as the outside perimeter, a subtle twist in perception to keep people from becoming too suspicious. Hell, one of the talismans in the shop was probably the focus that maintained the illusion.

  Keandra left the shop and climbed into the passenger side of Paz’s van before reaching for her commlink out of habit to give an update. Once she turned it on, she remembered she was temporarily cut off from the Matrix. She could always get another commlink, but it didn’t seem worth the effort. She tucked it back into her pocket.

  “Want me to send a message to the boys?” Paz asked, glancing over.

  “Yes. Let them know we have the passports and it looks like we’ll be good to go. Also, see if E-jekt found anything yet.”

  Paz nodded, her eyes focusing on a different point. It was disturbing how she could look right at Keandra, but not focus on her. Keandra had never quite gotten used to that stare people got when they focused on something in their own personal AR. It was even odder with people like Paz, who used their cybereyes for interacting strictly with AR. It looked like they’d lost focus completely, staring into space.

  After a few seconds, Paz grunted.

  “What is it?”

  The dwarf blinked a couple times and stared at Keandra, a clear sign she was no longer communicating with the rest of the team back at the safehouse.

  “The old man said he was poking around using the story Freyr told us. Apparently, things went boom and electric stuff all went haywire like they did back at the club when Freyr jacked E-jekt’s ride and escaped. So, he’s thinking Freyr told us the truth, at least at that part. Says it’s too old to look for data signatures and stuff, but that it matches our computer guy’s MO. He says he’s looking into a couple of other things too. Purchases and shipments and stuff to the area. Said it would take some time to get through it all.”

  “Well, he has a few hours before we need to make a decision. In the meantime, we should start looking into transportation options. If we’re leaving the country before our deadline, I’d rather have the tickets well in advance. Let’s go to a café where I can use a terminal. I don’t want you to have to handle all the booking.”

  “Good, that crap gives me a headache.”

  They drove to a café in downtown Seattle that offered simple fare for a decent price and had multiple terminals. Keandra sat down and began looking for travel options to the California Free State. At this point, she had a gut feeling that was where they’d wind up going.

  While looking at possible options, a strange prickling sensation rose at the base of her neck, like someone watched her. She stretched her hands over her head and leaned back, attempting to get a glimpse to either side in her peripheral vision without being obvious about it. A few people sat in the café, most of them in small groups and engrossed in their own conversations. A few others were at individual terminals like herself, along with one man reading something in his lap. Nothing stood out as unusual, but she could see less than half of the café from her current position.

  She continued working, but only gave it half her attention as she tried to home in on what put her on edge. After a couple minutes of browsing, a woman got up and headed toward the bathroom. Keandra got up as well, and walked over to the door leading into the single-person facility. She leaned against the wall, waiting for the other customer to come out. This afforded her a full view of the café without seeming like she scanned the crowd.

  Again, most of the customers seemed ordinary, and no one appeared to be giving her any undue attention. She was about to give up when she noticed an elf staring at her over his coffee mug. When she looked in his direction, he angled his eyes down, acting like he read something. His face seemed familiar and gnawed at the back of Keandra’s mind.

  Just then the bathroom door opened, and the young woman excused herself as she squeezed past on the way back to the main area. Keandra slid through the doorway and latched it shut behind her. She stood over the sink and crossed her arms, staring into the mirror as she tried to recall where she’d seen the elf. She closed her eyes, the better to picture the scene where she’d seen him previously.

  When the memory snapped back, her eyes flew open. It was the elf from the sushi restaurant where they’d attempted their first run masquerading as Mr. Johnson. He’d been watching her then, too. She meant to ask E-jekt to look him up, but had forgotten in the excitement of their first run. And now he was back, still spying on her. But who was he working for?

  Someone knocked on the door, so Keandra flushed the toilet and turned on the water in the sink for a few seconds. She walked out of the bathroom, rubbing her hands as if she had been drying them, and apologized to the impatient-looking mother with a little one in tow. She headed to her seat, making a point not to look in the elf’s direction, then pulled up a messenger client on the terminal and sent a d
irect message to her companion.

 

 

 

 

  While she waited, Keandra continued to check their options. If they were going to CalFree, there were three. A flight would be the fastest, as well as the best chance to blend in with other people, but it would have the most security. The other options available were by boat or train.

  She ruled out the boat option. She wasn’t overly fond of being on the water, plus it would only get them as far as the coast. They’d still need to arrange to travel more inland. That left the plane and the train. The train might have less security, but it would take longer and have multiple checks. The airport would only have a single, but more stringent check. Flights to Sacramento were available for this evening, so that seemed like the best option. Keandra trusted the strength of their credentials. If they decided not to take them, she would gladly cover the cost of the tickets with her own share of the run revenue. And at least they’d be out of the country. If they wanted to keep traveling, Sacramento would provide them plenty of options.

  Paz walked over and pulled up a chair, dropping down next to Keandra and leaning forward with her arms propped on her knees. She was close enough she could whisper and not be heard over the din of the other customers.

  “He says there’s nothing on him, beyond a corporate file. It’s been scrubbed clean. Only thing he can find is that the spook’s officially classified as a high-value asset for some tech company. They’re hoping to be bought out by Ares.”

  “Come on, let’s get out of here. Think you can lose him?”

  “Who you think you talkin’ to?” Paz smirked and shook her head. She got up and headed outside, climbing into the van to wait. Keandra closed out the programs running on the terminal, then got up to follow, keeping her attention focused ahead of her. When she got into the van, she held up a hand, instructing Paz to wait.