Shadowrun

by Dylan Birtolo

  AVR’s Matrix lobby looked just like the outside. Gleaming gray walls, no decorations, and a faceless generic persona that probably wasn’t even a person sitting at a desk. The persona’s smooth face smiled pleasantly, waiting.

  Zip suppressed a chuckle.

  For real, out of the box.

  She had just entered this host through its public portal, but she hadn’t taken any further actions. She hadn’t, as they said in meatspace, taken the next step. Base personas like this one were programmed to wait until the potential consumer expressed a minimum of interest, to ensure it didn’t waste processing power on people who were just poking their head inside to see what was on the other side of the portal. The Matrix equivalent of window-shopping.

  Zip stepped forward.

  “Good day, welcome to AVR Optronics, may I help you?”

  “Who owns this company?” Zipfile asked, curious to hear the answer.

  “Our chairman is—” the person began, but Zipfile cut it off.

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “AVR Optronics is owned by its shareholders,” the persona said. A real person—a metahuman jacked in—would have said that in a peevish tone, but the persona didn’t have the range. “As all corporations are,” it added.

  Not smugly, as a corp wageslave would have. Especially one with stock options. Any wageslave would want to make sure anyone who heard that statement understood that the wageslave knew corp life was the best life. The only life. Just in case it was a manager masquerading as a nobody to check on their staff.

  The persona made it just a statement. It was just a machine, and not a very smart one at that.

  Zipfile regarded the persona. “Can I get a list of all your shareholders?”

  “I’m afraid that information is proprietary,” the persona said. It paused, fake mouth half-open. It was only for an infinitesimal instant, but Zipfile saw it.

  She’d been waiting for it.

  “Why do you ask?” the persona said, but Zip knew.

  The robot was gone. That persona was now a person beneath the mask. Her questions had earned her a metahuman’s interest. She was careful not to move or react, being as she was in a borrowed commlink and not running her deck, but she knew if she had been, and she’d taken a closer look around, there’d be more eyes on her that she couldn’t see. There was probably patrol IC behind the walls right now, just in case. Maybe even a spider. Or three.

  Eish, this could be Renraku; there could be a full-blown AI picking through her commlink without her even knowing it.

  But the smart money was on a metahuman.

  She was running security for AVR, there certainly would be. Maybe not a troubleshooter, but someone who’d know how to ask the questions from the script labeled “how to tell evildoers from innocent consumers of the corp.” This would be a Renraku-trained operator. Maybe a young one, maybe not that good, but still Renraku-trained.

  And Zipfile had no illusions that she was better than Renraku.

  “I’m interested in purchasing stock,” she said.

  “Our stock is traded on the exchange,” she was told.

  “Then I’ll go there,” Zip said, and jacked out. It might be rude—not saying goodbye, not trading pleasantries—but it got her out of there and reset her commlink. Just in case.

  Besides, whether it was paranoia or not, it felt like the walls were closing in.

  In a blink, she was back in the real. She was in her rack in the safehouse with the rest of the team, but she was alone. She lay there for a second, adjusting to the sensations of her real, dwarf body instead of the virtual reality of being a hapless ork in the Matrix. The commlink she used to jack that persona lay next to her, all hard plastic and plates.

  “Eish,” she whispered.

  The Matrix just felt more real.

  Turning her head, Zip looked at the wall. She closed her eyes and thought of the distance between where she was and where she needed to be.

  The actual, physical location of AVR Optronics.

  “Frag.”

  Just for kicks, she picked up the commlink and checked the log. Sure enough, some IC she hadn’t even noticed while she was playing it safe had gotten a mark on her. She isolated the code and saved it for later, but she was sure it was a usual first-level tracker any hacker knew about.

  Heck, defeating that simple code was one of the first things a baby hacker learned to deal with.

  Which gave her an idea.

  “Say that again,” Yu said. “Slowly.”

  The elf sat on the small sofa in their safehouse, one heel up on the opposite knee and his arm thrown back across the back of the sofa. Taking up as much space as possible. Unconsciously putting his body in a position that said I can have all the space I want because I’m better than you. You get to be in the space I leave for you.

  Except...

  You forget I’m older than you, bru, Zipfile thought. She didn’t let the internal smile get to her face. Dominance games were something she’d learned about as a kid back in the zone.

  No shiny elf was going to crowd her out. No way, no day.

  Came to it, she had the whole Matrix to go away into, and that sucker was endless.

  “I want to hire someone to take a run at AVR,” she said.

  Slowly, he’d said.

  “Can you say ay-vee-are?” Zip added, grinning. “I know you can. Come on. Sound out the letters—”

  “You want to tip them off we’re coming?”

  “No, I want to see how hard they’re protected.”

  “By tipping them off that we’re coming.”

  Zipfile breathed in through her nose, and held it. She reached up and tapped her fingertips against the ports along the side of her shaved head. It helped her think. She would have ruffled her pink mohawk, but she’d just styled it, and that was work she didn’t want to do twice before she went out.

  And they were going out.

  Even if Yu didn’t know it yet.

  If nothing else, she was tired of being cooped up in this farmhouse. She’d already had a bucket of fun out with Emu. She’d almost gotten to shoot her gun.

  “You’re supposed to be the strategic thinker,” she told Yu. “Think it through.”

  “I thought I had,” he replied. Zip heard the tone. High testy elf.

  “AVR is Renraku.”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Yu said.

  “Part of my point,” Zipfile said. “Now be quiet. Let the adult talk.”

  “Uh-huh,” the eloquent elf said.

  “Renraku is somewhat proficient at Matrix security,” Zipfile said. “You’ll agree with me there?”

  “I’d put that statement on par with ‘Dunkelzahn liked secrets,’ yes,” Yu allowed. “But—”

  Zip cut him off. “Shh. Still talking.” She clasped her hands in her lap, as if she were speaking to a small child and wanted to stay nonthreatening. “We’re going to have to go in there soon, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “More precisely, you all are going to have to go in there. I’ll probably be along the wall, hiding out, doing what?”

  Yu rolled his eyes. “Defeating their Matrix security.”

  “Whose Matrix security?”

  “Renraku,” he growled. “If it is Renraku. Listen—”

  “Still not done.”

  Yu glared at her, but gestured for her to continue.

  “Now. I’m pretty good, but I do better if I know what I’m going into. Hence the need for what the soldier-boys call a recce.”

  Yu snorted. “A recce is a failure if they get caught,” he told her. “Those boys and girls sneak around in the weeds and the mud and then crawl out and no one knows they were ever there.”

  Zip smiled. “I chose the wrong analogy,” she said placatingly.

  “It’s a good idea,” Yu said just as placatingly.

  “Except…” Zip said, setting the hook.

  “Except what?”

  Got you, bru, she thought. It
was the same when they bet on the games. Get Yu to a certain point of ego, and he was yours. If the Johnsons ever figured out to how to play him like she could, it’d go hard on them.

  “What about this thing I heard Rude talking about? A Trojan Horse?”

  Yu rolled his eyes again. “Zip…”

  Zip knew when to drop the teasing and press. It was time.

  “I need to know what I’m up against before you guys go in there,” she said. “It’s a subsidiary, yes. They make Renraku parts, yes. It could be they’re on their own, and their security is so crap that even Emu could hack her way in and get what you need.” She spread her hands. “In which case you can all blow the building to kingdom come and I’ll stay here and catch a game.”

  “But what if it’s not?”

  Yu sighed and set his foot down. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and regarded her. She pretended not to notice that he shot the cuffs of his jacket when he did so. There’d be a next time, and she could razz him then. “Yeah. What if it’s not?”

  Zip couldn’t help her grin. “Toldja.”

  Yu glared at her. “How would we do this?”

  “You’re the dealmaker. Haven’t you ever hired a shadowrunner before?”

  “You want to set some dumb slob up to be taken down by Renraku?”

  Zip shrugged. “We’ll pay them.”

  “You’ll pay them, you mean,” Yu said.

  “If I have to,” she said, and meant it. “I don’t want someone too good. I want someone dumb and cheap, who thinks they can make their first big score and get noticed by the corps.”

  “A kid, you mean.”

  “Maybe. Be better if it’s some wageslave trying to get out from under the corp. Extra credit if they work for one of Renraku’s competitors in the real. So when they get caught, the heat goes there instead of on us.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Yu said. He was looking at her, but his eyes were unfocused as he thought. Zip had seen him do this before. He was running through his mental tally of people he knew. The only problem with that…

  “I don’t want to burn a friend,” Yu said.

  …was that. Zip grinned again.

  “No worries, chummer,” she told him. “I posted the job before I came in here.”

  Yu’s glare came back.

  “You did what?”

  “Sounds easy,” the samurai said.

  Zipfile was wearing her ork in the Matrix again. Next to her on the virtual barstool was Yu in one of her backups, a SINless dwarf with a scarring case of acne and a half-shaved head. She hadn’t been able to hide her chuckle when she gave him the commlink and wired it to mask his real SIN.

  They were sitting in a virtual bar on PubGrid. Zip had forgotten the name as soon as they walked in. It was the kind of place where wageslaves gathered at the end of their day to complain quietly about their bosses, their husbands and wives, their kids, whatever wageslaves complained about.

  For all Zip knew, they complained about the same system she wanted to bring down one day.

  She liked these kinds of places. She knew about a score of them; most of the big corps had favorite haunts, both inside their grid and outside on PubGrid. The internal ones the wageslaves visited to be seen by their managers, paying the social dues necessary to secure promotion in the office politics dance.

  The bars on PubGrid they came to in order to be invisible, where they could complain about those same bosses.

  Out the window—because she kept thinking about it—was the pagoda of the Renraku Okoku grid. The Matrix knew what you wanted sometimes before you did. Across the small table from them sat a plain-vanilla Renraku commlink samurai—Dieter, the guy they’d come to hire.

  He’d been the first one to answer her ad with the minimum level of competence. It was a low bar, but the bar was there. She didn’t want to send in a raw kid to get ICed.

  But she didn’t need a real peer, either.

  “You’re sure,” Yu’s persona said. “We told you who we think they’re owned by.”

  The samurai looked down, at himself, then gestured at his persona. “Do I look like I need an introduction to Renraku?”

  “Lots of people buy their commlinks,” Zipfile said. Anyone who’d ever shopped for a commlink knew the default setting for a Renraku device was the exact samurai sitting in front of them. Most people did at least a little personalizing.

  Not Dieter.

  “It’s mine,” Dieter said.

  “You think you can do it, then?” Yu asked.

  Zipfile had to hand it to him. Yu knew how to play a part. They’d switched roles, since Zip knew the lingo. She would act as the face, and he would be the nervous Johnson. Yu had transferred just enough nuyen to set up the meeting—another newb sign, who would pay just to talk to someone this green?—and then let her do the talking.

  “I know Renraku,” Dieter said, as if that explained it all.

  “What about a test?” Zip asked.

  Dieter shrugged. “Sure. You bought the hour.”

  “We put our own hacker on this, but she got caught right off,” Zipfile said. She slid a small specimen jar across the tabletop. “She got tagged by this.”

  The samurai regarded the jar. It wasn’t actually a jar, of course. They were in the Matrix. The jar was how the host rendered the locked down box Zip had hid the code for the mark she’d gained when she went into AVR’s Matrix lobby. Unless the fool took the whole lid off, which would be the code equivalent of unlocking all the safeguards, it was completely safe to look inside.

  Dieter touched the lid, lifted it slightly, then closed it. A glance was all he needed.

  The Matrix was fast.

  Eish, it’s faster than real life, Zip told herself.

  “That’s Renraku all right,” Dieter said.

  “Frag,” Yu muttered. He really was a great actor. “Can you beat it?”

  Dieter sniffed. “Not for free,” he said smugly.

  “How much?” Yu asked. “We have to check your skills, after all.”

  Zip let Yu haggle with the supposed hacker. Inside she smiled. This guy was perfect. He’d seen too many runner shows on trid, and thought he knew how to play it. That he didn’t laugh in their face told her all she needed to know.

  If she’d been Rude and was looking for a new shooter, asking if he could hack a simple locator mark was like asking a shooter if she knew where to put the magazine in a pistol.

  “I think we’ll take your word for it,” Yu said. “I want to keep our cash ready for the job.”

  she commed.

  Yu sent back.

  She snorted. Sorting that code wasn’t worth a fifth of that.

  “Suit yourself,” Dieter said. “Renraku doesn’t mess around. Your own runner found that out.”

  “She sure did,” Zip said drily.

  She gave him a time and a place to meet. It was in just a few hours. “You can be ready by then?”

  “No sweat,” he told her. He stood. “One more thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ll be bringing my own security,” he said. “I need someone to watch me while I’m in the Matrix.”

  “But we’re in the Matrix now,” Yu said.

  “We’ll need to be closer to the building,” Dieter said, as if explaining it to a child. “The things you’ll want, you can’t just get to from here.”

  “Oh,” Yu said. Dumbly.

  “How much security?” Zip asked.

  “One guy,” Dieter said. “You won’t want to mess with him.”

  “Fair enough,” Zip told him. “We won’t even come near you.”

  “See you then,” the samurai said. He blinked out as the hacker jacked out.

  “Please tell me I don’t sound like that when I talk,” Zip said as soon as they’d both also jacked out.

  Yu snorted and thrust the borrowed commlink at her. “Only when you’re peevish.”

  “I’m never peevish.”

  “You don’t know what p
eevish is, do you?”

  “’Course I do,” Zip said. Then, “Frag.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “I’m gonna remember that the next time you try and run me up on a game,” Zip said, shaking a stubby finger at him.

  “I’m sure,” Yu said. He looked around, but none of the others were around. “What do you want to tell the others?”

  “Nothing,” Zipfile said, standing up. “Except Emu. We need a driver.”

  “So that’s the place,” Emu said.

  She sat in the front of the Ford Americar she’d lifted for the job. The blue paint was chipped and peeling. The ceiling liner dropped and kept rubbing against Zipfile’s mohawk. It felt like a bug in her hair, but she made herself stop swiping at it every time she shifted her weight in the backseat.

  “Looks like,” Yu said. Zip just grunted.

  AVR Optronics looked just like the small factory it was, deep in a decrepit industrial park. High wire fences with ten-meter concrete guard towers like squat turrets every hundred meters or so, lots of dead ground between the fence and the factory walls.

  In other words, not laid out by a moron, but not a fortress, either.

  If Zip put on her glasses, she knew her AR would be full of warnings and dire messages to keep away on pain of pain or worse. It was all meant to keep the idle away, and impress on anyone else the terrifying majesty of the power of the corp.

  Or something.

  Zip knew from experience there were at least four easy approaches in plain sight.

  “We know how this street meat’s gonna do it?” Emu asked.

  “Not yet,” Zip told him. “I expect a message any time.”

  “Amateurs,” Yu muttered.

  “Better him than us,” Zipfile said.

  “I know,” Yu said, but there was something in his voice.

  Emu looked over her shoulder at Zipfile, eyebrow raised. Zip shook her head. She touched controls on her deck—she had work to do shortly.

  “She’s right, you know, mate,” Emu told Yu.

  “I know,” he repeated.

  “For real,” Emu insisted. “Sending her in blind would be like asking you to go into a meet with no research, no planning.” She chuckled. “In other words, without doing all the stuff she does for you before you go into places. Be like you walking in buck naked without that fancy clobber.”