by Anthology
Fade away, then, he thought to the now nameless, masterless man headed out into that empty night. Fade away, into the shadows.
Big Jake
Dan C. Duval
The Spirit drifted over to the curb and eased to a stop. Paulie was an excellent rigger and one of the few I would trust to remote me anywhere, especially after more than twenty years hiding out. You get used to not trusting anyone when you have been under the radar that long.
This was stupid, in so many ways, but when Donna-probably my daughter-got in touch and told me that my grandson-probably-had been kidnapped, what choice did I have? I might be-well, over fifty years old anyway, but I still hope to live enough years that I don't want any more regrets following me around.
And, God help me, I couldn't resist being John Wayne just once in my life.
Through the windscreen, I saw the shop at the corner ahead, the last shop open in this part of Seattle at this time of night. Some of the apartment windows above the shops were lit, but most were dark, meaning either early risers or a lot of empty apartments. The streets almost looked clean, shining with the rain that had been falling all day and had just given up, probably for a short breather before starting again.
As soon as I stepped out of the little three-wheeler, the clock would start. If the kidnappers were late or if the deal didn't go down quick enough, we would all have more problems than we were ready to deal with. 4th and Pine was not the most happening part of downtown, but all of my contacts combined still gave me no hope of being able to spoof all of the cams, sniffers, ears, and other possible stuff that could be scattered all over the place here.
My best hope was that popping up unexpected, in a city far from my normal haunts in my runner days, would give me enough time to get the swap made and get my grandson out of here, before Humanis goons overran the drop point.
Frankly, I was tempted to blow it all off when the call came from Donna, but then she knew she was taking a chance of blowing my cover by calling in the first place, and the need was desperate enough that she used the one-off code I'd given her, so it had to be serious and I knew, at least, that it was her and not anyone I really had to worry about. Made a trap at least a little less likely.
About the time I dropped off the face of the Earth, she was just starting at Ares, a development manager in some lab or another, doing something that she couldn't talk about, but she probably was my daughter, so I had to leave a contact point with someone in case some of my old friends needed me. In the bosom of Ares, she was about as safe as she could be from anyone trying to pry the contact info out of her. Besides, only my really good friends knew she was probably my daughter: my name didn't appear anywhere on any of her records, so if I hadn't told someone myself, they wouldn't know. I trusted my closest friends to keep the secret and, since I am still alive, they must have.
I took a deep breath and popped the hatch. As I stepped out, I started a clock in my head. Packets were doubtless already flying and it was only a matter of time before one of those packets hooked up with a spider out in the Matrix somewhere and a whole world of crap would descend from the sky.
OK, I chose the place. Donna gave me the contact info for the exchange. Fortunately, the people who took the kid were smart enough to realize Donna had no hope of getting around Ares security, so they were willing to allow a go-between and the fact that the go-between was an old man with the beginnings of a serious belly seemed to go well with them.
Of course, the picture I let them see wasn't really me. Facial recognition software would have tied my face to my name and that would have been the game.
I patted my jacket and tapped the various pockets in my cargo pants.
And they said cargo pants would never come back in style. OK, so they were right, but all those pockets were still useful for carrying stuff. I just hoped it was enough.
I stepped on the sidewalk as the Spirit pulled back into the street and disappeared into the night. Paulie would lose it out there somewhere for a while, long enough that I would hopefully be able to crawl back into a hole somewhere before anyone could use it to track me down.
I shuffled down the sidewalk as fast as I could. Less time on the street, the less packets maybe, but any one packet could be enough.
The door of the shop swung easily and I slipped inside.
Lou's Gear-Up was just that: if you had the money, Lou had the gear. Looked like the Radio Shack when I was a kid. Aisles of stuff, from pods to comms to scanners to spy gear to just about every sort of electronic toy you could imagine. Bright, overhead fluorescents and an above-average security system. Bars over the windows.
I was here a good fifteen minutes earlier than I had told the kidnappers. I had some business to take care of first.
The guy behind the glassed-in counter was nondescript, a nobody. Early middle age, starting to bald, rounding in the belly even faster than I was, his practiced, eager-bland expression offset by a shrewd pair of eyes that looked me over carefully and dismissed me as mostly harmless.
I pulled out a credstick and stuck it under the guy's nose.
"Ten K nuyen. Crank your ECM as high as it'll go." I didn't care. Wasn't my nuyen. Donna wasn't stupid: her first call had been to Ares Internal Security. I'd asked for a half-dozen 10K credsticks and the AIS chick I worked with didn't even blink as she handed them over.
Naturally, he immediately became suspicious.
"Relax, dude," I said, "A guy is going to show up here, we're going to talk a little, then we leave. I just don't want anyone listening in, 'K?"
The little wheels in his head cranked for several seconds before he reached under the counter, came up with a packet of cheap hearing aid batteries and slid them across the counter. The guy was pretty good at this, but not good enough to keep me from seeing him snatch the 10K 'stick from my hand, palm it, and drop a different stick into the cash drawer. Good enough for the security cameras in the store, though.
He rang it up and handed me a paper receipt that showed a purchase of a whole five nuyens. The paper was brown around the edges. Must have been in the machine for a long time. No one used credsticks anymore.
Just old fossils, like me.
The guy smiled and stepped down to the end of the counter, where he tapped on the keyboard of a pretty hefty old deck. Then he nodded at me.
I didn't put a lot of DMSO on that credstick, so the rohypnol would seep into his bloodstream slowly. If I timed this right, the guy wouldn't remember much of anything but, more importantly, wouldn't be inclined to get involved in anything that was about to happen.
With luck, that also wouldn't be much, but why risk any more complications than I already had?
"Where are the personal secretaries?" I asked.
The guy had a sort of dreamy look on his face when he drifted back to my end of the counter and tapped the glass over a half-dozen handhelds on the top shelf.
"Which ones are secure?"
His hand wavered a bit as he pointed out the three at the end. I may have given him a bit more than I'd wanted. I just hoped he wouldn't pass out before the deal was done.
Now, there was a chance that just upping the security on the place was enough to trigger warning flags someplace. A chance, but who knew what sort of skull gear the kidnappers would be walking in with?
Five minutes early, an elf walked into the shop.
Nasty-looking elf. No apparent gear but what did he have in his head? He was alone and, if this was the guy, he was supposed to be alone, at least while we were in the shop. Can't say the purple hair and subcutaneous LEDs were exactly inconspicuous, but he was an elf.
I'd been underground for years. What did I know about fashion?
"You the man?" the elf asked me.
"If you got the kid," I said, "I am."
"Yeah, I got the kid. You got the stuff?"
What this was all about was something that Ares had cooked up in one of their labs, just simple corporate espionage. I give them the files, they give me my gran
dson. As long as they didn't tweak to the kid being my grandson, things would be just fine and very businesslike.
'Course, I'd get a bonus from Ares if I managed to get the boy back without handing over the files. And another bonus if I found out who this bunch of faeries were working for. Priority was the kid, though. Donna had apparently become pretty important to Ares and their primary interest was to keep her happy, more than anything else.
I stepped to one side and pointed out the three secure secretaries. "Pick one."
The elf looked at me like I was crazy. "Nobody uses that obsolete crap anymore."
"I do," I said, tapping the socket behind my ear. "Couple generations old. You want the data, it goes into the sec. When I get the kid, you get the sec released." I shrugged. "No other way to get it out of my head."
The elf peered at the three units. "Secure, eh? Double biometrics lock and the whole bit?"
I shrugged. "Sure. It all still works. That's why they still make them."
The nice thing about these little secure secretaries is that someone could dissect them but not before they overwrote the data ten or twelve times. The data would be secure enough for the next hour or two, long enough for me to collect the kid and get away, even if everything else went to hell.
Pointing at the Schraeder, the elf straightened up.
I stuck out my lower jaw and nodded. "Good choice. You know your gear."
Schraeder was a very minor player in the corporate world, but that meant they had to try harder. Rugged, reliable, and hard to spoof the security features. I waved the guy behind the counter over and indicated the Schraeder. He reached in and handed it over without even asking for payment.
I probably had given him too much of the roofie. Then again, he already had one of Ares' 10K sticks, so what the hey? He could afford to cover the cost of the Schraeder. Long as he didn't pass out on me.
Someone way back in the 20th Century had invented packaging that you could not open without power tools. It was good to see that they'd improved things since then. I nearly tore off a fingernail getting the damn package open.
The rear of the sec had half a dozen interfaces, none of them compatible with my old, old headware. I poked the sec under the slightly-crossed eyes of the counter guy. "What you got that interfaces to a MD-45?"
He weaved a little but finally a hand rose up and he pointed at a rotating kiosk farther back in the store.
But first.
I rubbed my thumb on the pad I'd glued onto my belt, getting a good dose of ruffie on it. Wouldn't hurt to make the elf relax a bit. Better if he relaxed a lot.
I put my thumb on the biometric pad of the sec and waited for the beep, then handed the unit to the elf.
Secs are pretty standard stuff. Nobody wants to have to relearn a new sec, so they all work alike. Feed the biometric reader, then set up your security.
The elf planted its thumb on the pad and waited for the beep.
I took the unit back. Now I had to stall a bit. It would take a few minutes for the drug to work its way into his system.
Fortunately, I didn't have to pretend that I was having trouble finding the right adapter. I knew there had to be one but damned if I could find it the first time through or the second. I must have turned that kiosk four of five times.
Naturally, the bloody thing was hiding behind a different adapter that someone had hung on the rack in the wrong place. And this one was also wrapped in Impenetrable Plastic.
I always carry my own cable and snapped it to the adapter and felt around behind my ear for the skin pad I had had grafted over the plug to my datalock-quite expensively, if I may say so. Then it was just plug and play.
Like I said, I had been a courier back in the day. Lots of fine storage in my skull, most of it secure in a datalock. All of it obsolete.
Good enough for me, though.
I was just about as obsolete. Tried my damnedest to keep my hands from shaking.
The clock I had started in my head when I got out of the Spirit was starting to get into the yellow zone. I had to push things along.
It still took nearly a minute to download the file. I understand it's significantly faster these days but I've got too many enemies from the old days to risk anyone working on my skull anymore.
The file automatically deleted itself from my skullware when the download completed. Standard courier model. I don't have any sort of access to that memory, either.
I tapped up the first page of the file in the secretary and locked it. Then I stuck in a password to freeze the display. Only the elf and I could access the secretary now, but the elf would need my password to change the display.
Before I had a chance to hand over the sec, the elf's face brightened. "Hey, you're Jacob McCandless. I heard of you. Weren't you with Echo Mirage? I heard you were dead."
No, I wasn't with EM. I was twelve back when they were changing the world, but something I've noticed over the years is that for people these days, anything that happened before they were born apparently had all happened at the same time. That damn elf probably thought we rode dinosaurs like the Flintstones.
Plus, my original name wasn't McCandless, but for the last thirty years I had used it. I stopped the clock I had running in my head. The piece-of-crap ECM in this place had not prevented this elf from getting a facial recognition search started and no doubt that search raised flags all over the place when the search hit on that name.
The elf knew my name and had accessed the Matrix to get it. I had to run, if I was going to get out of this intact, but I could not afford to panic this elf.
Or any of the confederates he no doubt had scattered around outside.
I laughed. "You must be a John Wayne fan."
"Who?"
Yeah. One thing about elves, if it isn't that artsy-fartsy airy-faery stuff, they thought it was too much like crap to be worthy of their attention. When I was a kid, I watched all of John Wayne's movies. On a 2D TV set, no less.
"OK," I said, "I showed you mine. Now you show me yours."
I'd told him when I'd talked to him that one time, I had to see the kid, in person, alive and well, and I'd be able to tell if it was some sort of simsense chameleon program. So the boy had to be somewhere close.
I just hoped he was on this side of the street.
Time was running out and I couldn't afford to run back and forth across the street too many times.
Now the elf decides it's time to talk.
"The kid anything to you?"
I felt like I was in the movie.
"Nope. I get paid to bring the kid home in one piece. If something happens to him, I don't get paid and I become cranky."
"I'm scared. You're a real badass."
Didn't have a clue, which was just as well. He might have been more careful if he had. Fortunately, I had spent a lot of nuyen making sure that sort of data had been purged from all of the pertinent files about me. At least, the files I could find.
"Yeah. Big time." I nodded toward the door. "The kid."
The elf shrugged and led the way.
Out the door, turned right, and into a door right next to the shop. Two steps up from the sidewalk, through the door, and onto a landing with a set of stairs that went up into the darkness.
Someone had knocked out all the lights.
Damned elves can see in the dark, but not old, fat men.
Well, not normal old, fat men. I had the best artificial eyes you could buy-twenty years ago. Not to mention ears, nose, and taste buds. All with full recording capability. Better than any other receipt a courier could provide.
Inside my head, I turned up the gain on the image intensifier and the darkness turned into green shadows rather than utter darkness. I nudged up the IR gain, too, though the only significant heat source was the elf.
I still put in a couple of theatrical stumbles on the steps, just to make it look like I was blind up here.
The door at the top of the stairs could have used some paint. The stairs turne
d the other way behind us, going farther up. I stepped through the door after the elf. No lights in this hallway, either, though a couple of doors had light showing underneath them, enough that I could nudge the intensifier image down a bit. Might need some reserve battery power later, so no reason to waste it.
On the other end of the hallway, I could just make out another door. Calling up a floor plan of the building from the Matrix, I saw that both sets of stairs went all the way to the roof and into the basement, so it wouldn't matter which I used when Escape and Evasion time came.
At the farthest door from the front of the building, the elf stopped and tapped, tapped, paused, then tapped one more time. It was one of the doors with light coming out from underneath. Could be a good thing. Maybe they weren't keeping the kid blindfolded and gagged.
As the door swung open, I saw that it was just gagged.
And tied to a chair.
With three other elves in the room.
You know, the stereotype of elves are all slender and brittle-looking. These three bruisers did not follow the stereotype. If they had been a little taller, a person might have been able to mistake them for orks.
They had to go.
Except for the chair, the rest of the apartment was empty. One light shone down from the ceiling fixture right in front of the hallway door. There were sockets in the ceiling in other parts of the big room and one in the ceiling of the kitchen that I could see, but rather than broken bulbs, it looked like the last tenant had taken them. Taken the plastic covers of all the electrical outlets, too. Some people.
"Let the kid go," I said. "Let me take a look at him."
The head elf looked at me for a moment, then nodded to the muscle. One of them touched the binders on the kid and they snapped open.
The kid immediately hopped out of the chair and started for the door.
Didn't get far.
One of the bruisers caught him by the back of the shirt and lifted him off the floor, legs still kicking, tossing him back toward the chair.
Got to give this to the kid, he was persistent. Three times he got caught before he gave it up. Granted, he was a kid, but given how easy he got caught each time, I'd have given up sooner. But finally, the kid stood there in front of the chair, panting, trying to pull the gag free.
