by Mel Odom
So far none of them had arrived in the lab, probably because we were so deep inside the building, but they’d be along soon enough.
“Given the shitstorm we set off by going to the executive penthouses first,” Jarl said, “we probably have a few minutes. They’ll be too busy trying to figure out what we were doing up there.” He shrugged. “Hardingham and Taylor’s apartments are pretty trashed, so they’ll have to figure out what we’re really after before they can respond.”
“Why were you up there?” Gobbet asked.
“I’d gotten some intel that Hardingham and Taylor would be out tonight,” Dizzy replied, “but they had a secure safe down here. We figured that would be where they kept the prototype, and the keycard we found would work on the lab door.”
I thought about the safe we’d found in the central room.
Bull glared at the keycard in his fist. “If wishes were fishes. Looks like we made the wrong move, heading up there first.”
Racter looked at me and talked softly. “I know Taylor and Hardingham. That key is almost certainly for the private safe where they’re keeping the auto-repair circuitry. We need to let these runners in so I can get it.”
“All right.”
“In the meantime, I’ll have Koschei deal with the gas venting into the lab. I’ve located three areas where it can be shut off. It will give us more time to work.”
Time to work wasn’t what we needed. What we needed was to get the hell out of the building.
I looked at Bull and the keycard in his fist. “We’ll get you out. For the keycard.”
Bull hesitated, looked at his teammates, and nodded reluctantly. “Deal.”
I opened the door.
“Thanks a lot,” Jarl said. “We would have been cut apart out there. Never let yourself get backed into a corner, you know?”
“Somebody shoulda brought an assault cannon like he’d planned!” Opti said. “But nnnnoooooo. Getting it through Sea-Tac security was too much trouble.”
“Don’t sass me, Opti,” Bull said. “If I’d had my way, I’d have brought a second deck, too. Goddamn Sparky ice.” He held up a smoking deck.
I figured Is0bel would have commiserated with him.
“Here,” Bull said, tossing me the keycard. “This thing is worthless.”
I caught the keycard and passed it to Racter, who immediately thanked me and headed back the way we’d come. I nodded at Duncan to accompany him.
“You know where that keycard goes, don’t you?” Bull asked, shaking his head in disgust.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “There gonna be a problem with that?”
“No. Just our bad luck.” Bull shook his head, but he wasn’t happy about it. “We’re copacetic.”
“Wait a minute,” Jarl said. “I recognize you. You’re one of those shadowrunners the HKPF’s got such a jones for, right?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Your names are all over the shadows of Hong Kong,” Jarl went on. “From what I hear, you’ve been doing a lot of work for Kindly Cheng.”
“Well damn.” Dizzy peered at me more closely. “I didn’t expect to run into such heavy hitters on our first run out here.”
I ignored the fanboy gleam in her eyes. “We’re running out of time,” I said. “We gotta move.”
“What’s your way out?” Dizzy asked. “We were going to rappel over to the Federated-Boeing building next door, but with all the racket…” She shrugged. “Well, I think we’d probably get shot off the line.”
“We’re going out underground,” I said. “Down an elevator shaft, and over to an MTR station.”
“I didn’t even know that was there,” Bull said. “Shoulda done better legwork before we got here. We’ll follow. More guns couldn’t hurt, right? You lead the way. We’ll be right behind you.”
Duncan spoke over my commlink. “Good news is that Racter’s got his toy and we scored some nuyen, but the bad news is that Knight Errant sec guys are entering the lab right now.”
I turned and took cover, yelling a warning to the new arrivals as a torrent of bullets slammed into the walls around us.
Chapter 72
Downer
“Want a grenade, chummer?”
That was a question you didn’t hear every day, and under the circumstance we were presently in, one you didn’t turn down. I glanced back at Bull and accepted the proffered HE grenade he held. He palmed another one.
“Together?” he asked.
“Together,” I said, and pulled the pin.
We threw the grenades together and ducked. The explosions detonated at almost the same time, filling the immediate area with concussive waves and rolling thunder.
I pushed myself up and fired at the first Knight Errant guard I saw. Bullets punched his head back, but the armor held. Before he could recover, I’d closed the distance on him while still firing. I shoved my pistol into my shoulder rig, grabbed the guard’s head in both hands, and cranked it around, snapping his spine.
Bull swore behind me as I leaned down to scoop up the guard’s fallen AK-97. I took a few more moments to strip spare magazines from the dead man’s body.
Gobbet called up a fire spirit and fireballs flew at the guards. Koschei scuttled from a nearby vent and unloaded .50-caliber armor-piercing rounds into the guards, breaking the first wave.
“Hurry!” Duncan yelled as he stepped around the corner of the central room and heaved a couple grenades toward the Knight Errant forces.
The fire spirit held back only a few meters from them. When the grenades blew, it amplified the flames, filling the immediate area with a raging inferno for a few seconds.
By that time, I was running, shoving Gobbet in front of me toward the elevator on the other side of the floor. I noticed the gas had stopped venting into the room, so I figured Koschei had succeeded in shutting down the valves Racter had mentioned.
Knight Errant tried to put up a fight, and we took some bullets and damage, but we reached the elevators. I pushed the button to summon the cage, but it didn’t come. Swearing, I pried the doors open and looked at the cables that disappeared into the waiting darkness.
“Elevator’s not working?” Duncan asked.
“No.”
“How far down?”
“We’re on the twenty-seventh floor. Add at least three or four more for the underground tunnels. A long freaking way down.”
Bullets ricocheted around us while the group returned fire. We all knew we couldn’t stay there, though, and we couldn’t go back either. The elevator shaft offered the only escape route. I just hoped Kindly Cheng was right about the MRT tunnel.
“Gimme a sec.” Bull leaned in and dropped a chem flare into the opening.
The blue flare sailed down the shaft, bouncing off the sides as it dropped till it finally landed on the floor far below.
“That’s a long freaking way,” Bull agreed. “And if we try climbing down, Knight Errant will light us up.”
“I’ve got this,” Gobbet said. She spoke and threw out her hand.
An air spirit manifested inside the shaft and the howling breeze rattled the cables. The creature hovered there for a moment, its big face appearing and disappearing as translucent eddies whipped faster and faster. Then it streaked down to the bottom and blew the flare around in a whirl that had it bouncing off the walls.
Gobbet looked at me. “Jump. The air spirit will break your fall.”
I leaned into the shaft, but I hesitated. Before I could say anything, Gobbet shoved me forward, knocking my holds loose, and I tumbled into the shaft.
I might have screamed somewhere in there. It sounded like someone did. All I could think of at the time was how much smashing into the floor below was going to hurt.
Instead, I slowed and only thumped into the ground with bruising force. It hurt like hell, but I was alive. I rolled over onto my back and looked up, watching the dancing flare suddenly shatter against one wall and a cloud of blue liquid and light mix with the whirling winds.
Then I saw Bull, arms and legs flailing as he fell. He did scream. I got out of the way, caught up the dropped assault rifle, and started working on the doors to open the elevator shaft. By the time I had it open, Jarl, Dizzy, Racter, and Koschei were picking themselves up from the floor.
I stepped out into the hallway and looked around. A moment later, the roar of the wind died away. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Gobbet, Opti, and Duncan had made their escape, too.
“Wow!” Jarl yelled. “That was truly righteous!”
“If you say you want to do it again,” Dizzy warned, “I’m going to shoot you myself.”
“Oh hell no!” Jarl said. “But I will buy the first round of drinks when we find a bar way the hell from here.”
Chapter 73
“A Very Clear Message.”
I was hungover from the after-run celebration. True to his word, Jarl had bought the first round. There were a lot of rounds after that, because we were all grateful to be alive, and with a story we couldn’t really tell anyone. I even bought a few rounds myself.
I knew I dreamed, but the alcohol kept the nightmares muted. I woke up on occasion, but the fear didn’t quite touch me in the same way.
My commlink screamed into my head the next morning—or, I should say, afternoon, because I’d slept in. The noise of mahjong tiles and quiet voices in the background immediately let me know who was calling.
“You’ve been gone a while, Auntie,” I said. “I wondered when you were coming back.”
“I’m here now, and I have a present for you, little one. I have a lead on the location of the Plastic-Faced Man.”
I was instantly awake. Even the hangover retreated. Pushing myself out of my bunk, I reached for a pair of pants. “How’d you get it? From who?”
“I’ll explain everything in person. Come see me and we’ll talk.” She broke the connection before I could say anything.
Calling her back wasn’t an option. She wouldn’t answer.
I went to wake Duncan and the others.
Kindly Cheng had a light breakfast of tea and biscuits waiting when we reached the mahjong parlor, and she told us she would only tell us what she knew if we ate.
We sat and dug in, and the hot tea helped ease some of the residual hangover pounding at my temples. Is0bel looked better this morning. Her wound was mostly healed, and she was ambulatory, even in a good mood. She’d heard Gobbet’s side of what had happened at Ares, and she was pressing us for our version of the story as well.
Kindly Cheng clasped her hands and looked pleased at the head of the table. She had a black cigar in her teeth and a wreath of smoke around her head. “It seems like forever since we’ve seen each other.”
“You said you had information to share,” Duncan told her. His impatience showed in the tense way he sat. Or maybe it was the hangover.
Wincing in irritation, Kindly Cheng patted his hand. “Yes, my darling, yes. I met with several contacts within my network who referred me to others in neighboring cities. Regardless of how far technology moves forward, tradition demands that some things be handled face-to-face. I have returned with the information you seek.”
Trying to let her know we hadn’t just been cooling our heels waiting, and to give her something back, I said, “While you were gone, we uncovered a relationship between Josephine Tsang and Raymond Black.”
Her arched eyebrows rose. “Did you? And what was it you uncovered?”
“He’s fiction,” Duncan said bitterly. “Made up. His real name is Edward Tsang.”
“Fiction, eh?” Kindly Cheng placed a forefinger against her cheek and tapped thoughtfully. “Josephine’s son, Edward. So. That explains where he went when he disappeared years ago. Seattle.”
“Any idea why he disappeared?” I poured another cup of tea and took a couple more biscuits.
“No. Just that he went missing after Josephine completed rebuilding the Walled City. That was in the early thirties.” She frowned in disgust. “You realize what this means, don’t you, my sweet? That inbred little goat-whore was cold enough to have her own son executed.”
I remembered the two guys who’d been trying to kill the old man when we’d first crossed paths all those years ago. I didn’t know if that had been new business, or part of the old from Hong Kong.
“What did your out of town networking turn up?” Duncan asked.
Kindly Cheng grabbed a bottle of rum and opened it, pouring herself a shot. “I know the identity of the Plastic-Faced Man. His name is Lee Tai-Lung and he’s an independent contractor—a trusted, deniable asset who handles all of Josephine Tsang’s more…delicate operations off the books and away from the public eye. The Plastic-Faced Man is her shadow right hand outside of the corporation.” She smiled. “And I know how to find him, too.”
We waited, even Duncan, who I knew was ready to explode.
“I’ve made contact with an information broker,” Kindly Cheng went on. “Xiaozhi, who works out of an abandoned night market in Shek Kip Mei called the Shing House Court. It’s not hard to find. Xiaozhi has gained access to the Plastic-Faced Man’s complete itinerary—where he’ll be, who he’ll be with, what sort of security he’ll have—the works.” She flicked ash from her cigar. “You can use it to perform an extraction. Grab him and find out what he knows.”
“Did you find out why Lee has a face made of plastic?” Is0bel asked.
“It’s not just his face. Lee Tai-Lung’s entire skull is synthetic. He’s designed himself to be the perfect corporate operative. He’s installed a unique piece of hardware, you see. It allocates and compartmentalizes client-related memories so that they can be erased upon the completion of a job. And as an added security measure, this cortical implant will wipe his entire memory if it detects that he’s been captured.”
“Seriously?” Duncan demanded in a loud voice. “He can just wipe out everything having to do with Tsang Mechanical Services?”
Kindly Cheng frowned. “Exactly. Unless you can find a way around the cortical implant, you’ll have no way to extract the information he has and figure out what happened to Raymond Black.” She put her hands together. “Now, I’ve done my part in this, my darling. You need to find a way to neutralize that device.”
“I know a way,” Is0bel said. “I’ve heard of something like this before. I met someone in the Matrix who had to shirk a similar memory-wipe implant once. It was a requirement for a big job, and she pulled it off.”
“Keep talking,” Duncan said.
“Her handle is Dreamland, and I know where to find her. All we have to do is convince her to give up the secret of how she did it.”
I took a breath and looked at them. “Okay, Is0bel and I will go see Dreamland before we hit the information broker. Then we grab the Plastic-Faced Man.”
“I’m gonna be there when you extract the information about Raymond from the Plastic-Faced Man,” Duncan declared. “You got me?”
I nodded. “You’ll be there.”
“We should all be there,” Gobbet said. “I know I wanna see this. You guys aren’t the only ones who lost somebody.”
“Very good, my darlings,” Kindly Cheng said. “Now listen to me. After you get what you need from the Plastic-Faced Man, I want you to end him. You understand?”
No one spoke, but we all understood.
“I need to send a very clear message that this—” she tapped the table with her forefinger, “—is what happens when you mess with Kindly Cheng’s operations—with Kindly Cheng’s people. Josephine takes Nightjar, I take her Plastic-Faced Man.”
“We’ll send the message,” Duncan said as he rose from the table. “No problem there.”
Chapter 74
Dreamland
“You’re sure you’re up to this?” I asked Is0bel as we trudged down the alley to the tenement where Dreamland lived.
“I’m fine,” she told me. “Practically good as new. I just feel like I could sleep for a couple days.” She frowned. “If it weren’t
for those nightmares. I’m beginning to think something on the Bolthole is causing them, and that freaks me out because I haven’t found a cooler place to live. That ship has everything I’ve ever wanted.”
“I like it there, too,” I said, sidestepping a pile of vomit mixed with blood. Dreamland didn’t live in the best of places. “Except for the nightmares.”
“I guess they’ve always been around. Just seems like they’re getting more and more frequent.”
We walked on for a few more blocks, then Is0bel turned and looked around. “Okay, this is the right place. Emilie should be in the first apartment.”
I looked at the sagging building in front of us. It looked like someone had hit it over the head and knocked it into a squatting position, because it bulged at the sides a little, and I had to wonder if it was going to collapse in the middle floors someday.
“Is your friend dangerous?” I asked.
“She shouldn’t be.” Is0bel shrugged. “Emilie’s a decker, yes, but she’s really more into programming than she is violence. She quit running last year. Something about some sort of activist activity she used to be into, and a bunch of big-money execs who’re holding a grudge.”
“Locals?” I didn’t want to step into a turf war.
“Emilie’s from Berlin, but she moved to Hong Kong after the F-State collapsed. The Schockwellenreiter—the group that she worked for—was supposed to protect her, but they’ve got their own problems to deal with now. I guess she decided she’d be safer on her own.”
“F-State? I’m not up on my world politics.” That was one of the things the old man was always harping at me about. He wanted me to be more worldly.
“It was an experiment in sustained institutional anarchy,” Is0bel said. “Great environment for a shadowrunner, but it ended up just like Communism did. Another pipe dream. The German government gave the corps the go-ahead to invade last year, and they forced the anarchists to retreat to the eastern part of the city. Now Berlin’s run by the corps, just like Hong Kong. I bet they wind up building a wall again. Wouldn’t put it past them.”
