Shadowrun: Nothing Personal
Page 7
I nod slowly. What a tool. But he’s young, he’ll learn. I reach out for the small data chip where we dumped all the files and hold it up to him. “This is …” I begin, but it gets cut short when his chest explodes.
Large marble-sized gory holes rip open, tearing his suit. I reflexively hold out a hand, my eyes wide. A sudden jump of sourness fills my throat as adrenaline revs me up. Jay has time to gurgle a bit before crumpling to the ground. I look around. I register a sound near me, but I see nothing. Then I eat a mouthful of metal. It hurts. My mouth fills with the coppery taste of blood. My jaw is numb as I fall. One moment I’m staring at nothing, the next Irish is looking down at me, barrel of a silenced Predator pointed at me, cold death in his gaze. Irish. He always had it in for me.
Oh shit. Then I register it. Invisible. Vanity. This is … this is …
“Why?” I ask.
Irish stares down the barrel of his gun at me. Angel, Vanity and even Zoë walk into my field of vision. They all look down at me.
“We got a better deal from Mitsuhama,” says Titanium Angel.
I stare up at all of them. “What?” is all I can manage to say, pouring all my hurt and disbelief into it.
“We got a better deal from Mitsuhama,” repeats Vanity, like it’s the clearest thing in the world. Which it kind of is. Zoë picks up the explanation from there. “Your organization is so mixed up, they’ll never figure it out. We won’t take a hit to our rep. They’ll never know what happened. They’ll blame you. I erased any mention of our team from their files for this job. Nomura is out. He’s the only one that might have known what we were up to, and I doubt he cares anyway. We’re clean. So, we just sold it to the highest bidder. I mean, why not? You gave us the chance. That’s all. Nothing personal.”
I stare at each one of them in turn. They look down on me with the same interest an alien dissecting an abductee might have. “And what about me?” I ask, glancing at Jay’s body.
“What about you?” answers Irish with delight. Vanity raises a hand and lowers Irish’s gun. “Renraku—whether it’s your American bosses, or the Europe division—will figure you betrayed them. It might not make perfect sense, and they might not understand why, but they’ll figure you did it. There isn’t much you’ll be able to say to defend yourself. Even if you make them listen and tell them about us, it’s still on you. You hired us.”
And I know she’s right.
My eyes fall. I am broken, defeated, outdone, and outsmarted. And it wasn’t even that hard for them to do. For all my experience—this is hardly my first time dealing with shadowrunners—I have been played like a child in a grown up’s game. Too focused on saving my own skin, I didn’t think about what others might be up to, what their self-interest would push them too. The most basic calculation of all, and I left it down. What a fucking newb I am.
Angel loses interest and leaves. Zoë gives me a curt shrug and a wink and joins him back at the car. Irish sneers and leaves me, giving Vanity a meaningful look. Vanity crouches down next to me. She seeks my eye contact. I swat at her. “Fuck off, Vanity.”
I pick myself up, spit out blood, groaning. I swear. Start walking, sort of toward Atlanta. Vanity joins me. “Hey,” she says.
“I said fuck off, Vanity! If you’re not going to kill me, leave me alone”.
“Hey!” she says again, grabbing me. I slap her hand away. Then my limbs stiffen like they’re made of rusted steel and I can’t move.
“Really?!” I snap as her spell holds me.
She places herself in front of me. “Stop being a dick. If you can remember how.”
I feel the spell drop. I sigh. I regain some of my composure. “All right. What is it? You played me like a sucker. What else is left to say?”
“I played the game,” she says firmly, without a hint of flirtation. “Just like you played it when you set up a team for a suicide mission. Just like you played it a thousand times before. You dropped your guard, and you know what happens when people do that. You’re still alive, and lucky to be so. So do what the rest of us always do—find a next step to take, and take it.”
Now it’s my turn to give her a level stare.
She extends her arm and offers me something. It’s a commlink. I look at it.
“Take it. It’s linked to an account with some cash, and it’s got a fake SIN on it. Not much, but it’s a start. And it’s also got Angel’s Mitsuhama contact. He wants to talk to you. He wants to offer you a job.”
I cock an eyebrow. I take the device. “Mitsuhama, huh?” I ask slowly. I take a breath, and the last two days come all back to me. No, I won’t be going back to Renraku. Will not be stopping by my pad in Manhattan. It’s heavy. But I knew it could end like this.
End like this.
I smile, and it turns into a chuckle, then a laugh. I shake my head.
“What’s so funny?” asks Vanity
“It always ends in heartbreak, or else it wouldn’t be called the ending,” I recite.
A shy smile grows on her face. She blushes and looks to the side. “You know I was high when I said that, right?” she says.
I grunt. I toss the commlink up and down in my hand, as the moment stretches. “Well, we’ll always have Paris, huh?”
She delicately cocks an eyebrow over her almond eye. “Actually, we’ll have Metrôpole…” she says, turning curtly and walking away.
I frown. “Metrôpole?”
“Yeah. That’s where your new job is.”
“Oh. Okay.” I actually have a hundred questions coming to mind, but none of them can push their way to the front of the line and make it out of my mouth.
“That’s where I’m going too. Team’s heading there for a while.” A mischievous grin curves her lips. “Talk about coincidence, no?”
I chuckle. I watch her walk away, then call after her. “Maybe I’ll hire you, then. I promise it won’t be for a distraction run.”
As she gets into the van, I hear a single mocking laugh. “Even if you do, Mr. Johnson, it’ll be nothing personal, right?” I have a grin on my face as the van drives off, leaving me standing in the night.
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