Preying for Keeps

by Mel Odom

  Instead, the woman got up from the table and waited for Maddock to take her arm.

  Changing directions at once, Skater cut away from the bulk of the crowd. A glance showed him Duran was at his heels.

  “Trouble.” the ork growled.

  Skater had already spotted the three Japanese men who’d altered their course and were closing on Maddock and the woman. They wore black Vashon Island suits and dark sunglasses despite the gloom that filled the Inferno. A smile was on the leader’s face.

  “Maddock.” the leader of the trio called out in a good-natured voice. His right hand was concealed under his jacket.

  The fixer came around, and the smile he’d been showing off to the woman melted quickly from his face. “What do you want?”

  “My oyabun would like a few moments of your time.” The lead Japanese stopped a few meters from Maddock with his hand still out of sight under his jacket. The other two men dropped into flanking positions.

  The elven woman beside Maddock moved with the fluid grace of someone who either had extraordinary reflexes or was chipped to the teeth. She stepped behind the fixer and grabbed him by the collar as the doors to the maglev opened with a ping.

  “Drek.” Duran said softly but with genuine feeling.

  Skater fisted the Predator and slipped it free, holding it out of sight by his leg.

  “Get out of the slotting cage.” the woman ordered the passengers inside the maglev. She motioned with the gun and they departed with alacrity. Maddock tried to jerk away, but the woman jammed the muzzle of her Tiffani Self-Defender against his temple. “Not so fast, nitbrain. You and I are out of here.” She yanked him back into the maglev cage.

  The crowd around the maglev suddenly dropped back and pushed their way out onto the dance floor. There were a few screams from nearby women who suddenly realized they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Taking a step forward, sensing the violence about to be unleashed. Skater watched the yak leader make his move.

  In the blink of an eye, the yakuza pulled out a Scorpion machine pistol. He barked orders to his two companions as he raked a blistering line of fire across the wall only a few meters from the maglev doors.

  Skater pointed his weapon at the leader’s knee. Whether the knee was chromed or covered by Kevlar-lined pants, the bullet wound would deliver enough force to knock the man off his feet. He wanted Maddock alive even if the yaks didn’t.

  Evidently the elven woman did as well, because she emptied all four shots from the Self-Defender into the yak’s face even as Skater's bullet caught the dead man in the knee and hammered him off-balance.

  The remaining two yakuza turned to face Skater and Duran as the maglev doors closed and the Inferno’s sec-teams started vectoring in on them.

  18

  “Put the fragging guns down now!” one of the Inferno guards bellowed. He made the alternative clear by thrusting his own weapon out.

  Skater ignored the command. Getting caught at this point wasn’t an option.

  The surviving yaks must have felt the same way, because one of them directed his pistol at Skater and Duran while the other unleashed half a clip at the nightclub’s sec-team.

  Leaping, accessing both boosted reflexes and extra adrenaline, Skater put himself over and behind the low wall holding the plants. He hoped the wall would block the bullets. He dropped with his back against the wall in a squatting position and his pistol in a two-handed Weaver grip.

  “Kid.” Duran called. “You in one piece?”

  Skater glanced around the corner of the wall and saw the ork in a defensive position behind an overturned table. “Yeah.”

  The gun battle was quickly heating up. The sec-teams had a momentary advantage, but more yakuza gunners drifted in from the dance floor and pushed them back, firing from whatever defensive positions they could find.

  Every tick of the clock, Skater knew, put that much more distance between them and Maddock. “The stairs?” he shouted to Duran.

  The ork nodded. “On your go, chummer.”

  “Do it!” Skater threw himself from cover, angling away from the thrust of the firefight. Bullets cut the air before and behind him. He didn’t break stride. A round caught him high on the left shoulder but was stopped by the Kevlar-lined bomber jacket. The impact drove him off-balance, but he managed a stagger that got him to the door just after Duran burst through.

  The twisting maze of stairs with flights leading down and up only held subdued lighting. A sec-guard in Inferno colors was coming up the flight of stairs leading to the second-floor landing. Before the man could raise his pistol in self-defense, Duran shoved the Squirt forward at point-blank range and pulled the trigger.

  The DMSO gel ball smashed against the man’s face, spreading visibly, and immediately taking effect.

  Skater grabbed the handrail leading down to steady himself as he raced past the falling guard. Duran hit the wall ahead of them and pushed off, making the corner and gaining speed again. Seizing the handrail, Skater leaped and hauled himself over, knowing he was chancing a broken or sprained ankle, and landed with a jar halfway down the switch-back steps. He followed as Duran exploded through the first-floor door.

  The corridor was empty, but heads were popping out about twenty meters down where the main entrance was. No one seemed too eager to challenge them.

  Skater glanced up at the maglev’s floor indicator. “Says the cage is here.”

  “Only one way to find out.” Duran plucked a broad-bladed combat knife from his sleeve in an eye-blurring movement. The edged metal flashed as he buried it to the hilt between the maglev doors and twisted.

  The doors parted a few centimeters, enough for Skater to shove his fingers in and pull the door back, opening the other with it.

  Maddock hung by a small wire that fitted snugly under his jawline and cut into the flesh enough to leave thin threads of blood seeping down his neck to stain his shirt. His arms hung loosely, and his feet were fifty centimeters from the floor. Splashes of crimson spotted the stainless steel interior of the maglev cage.

  Skater moved into the cage and used his free hand, his legs, and both elbows to leverage his head and shoulders through the escape hatch. The cage was a round, shiny egg-shape that floated up and down the shaft. Two floors above him, he spotted the elf woman floating through a set of double doors, levitated by her own power or someone else’s. The shadowrunner kicked in his low-light vision and picked up three other figures waiting to help the woman make her exit. One of them was the elf who’d led the team that busted Skater out of Lone Star.

  The elf spotted Skater and moved almost faster than Skater could counter, bringing up a shotgun and firing immediately.

  Skater released his hold on the sides of the exit and dropped. The pellets caromed from the top of the cage like a sudden burst of hail, then rattled in smaller echoes against the sides of the maglev shaft.

  “She had a backup team waiting in the wings.” Skater said as he got up. “We’ll never snag her now.”

  “We can’t hold this twenty.” Duran stated. “And I’m two rounds away from no-more-mister-nice-guy. The situation being what it is, I’m not about to surrender.”

  Holding the pistol in one hand, Skater used his other to search through Maddock’s clothing. There was nothing to be found; the woman had evidently gotten whatever she was looking for.

  A glance back into the hallway showed that the possibility of retreat in either direction had been cut off by Inferno sec-teams. Duran put another man down with the last gel pellet from the Squirt, then hauled out his Roomsweeper heavy pistol.

  “Inside.” Skater told the ork. He fired three rounds and holed the standpipe fire extinguishing system near the group of men to their right. A hard spray of water jetted out from the punctures in the standpipe and created a rainbow-colored mist in the hallway that was difficult to see through as well as becoming an approach hazard.

  For a moment, the return fire blistered the walls around the maglev
doors.

  “Kid, I sure as frag hope you’ve got a plan.” Duran took up a position on the other side of the cage from Skater and fired a pair of shots into the hallway. The detonations were deafening trapped inside the small space. “Our escape menu is getting about as limited as an incestuous cannibal’s diet.”

  “Worse than that.” Skater said. “At least an incestuous cannibal knows where his next meal is coming from.”

  Duran gave him a wry look.

  “Cover me.” Skater said.

  “Another slotting crack like that,” Duran warned, “and I geek you myself.”

  Skater lunged through the door long enough to fire three bullets into the maglev level display. A puff of smoke ejected from the crunched plates, followed by sparks and the start of a small fire. He withdrew back into the cage a heartbeat ahead of the gunfire that smashed into the doors. He tapped the down button for the second basement level.

  Erratically, the doors closed with metallic grindings and protesting squeaks. More bullets spanged across the stainless steel and ricocheted over his and Duran’s heads before they were shut out. The maglev dropped at once, starting Skater’s stomach spinning with the near-feeling of weightlessness.

  “Down?” Duran growled. “Down means we’re going to be wearing a straitjacket of plascrete and have the building sitting on top of us.”

  The maglev arrived with a slight bump that belied the swirling sensation in Skater’s stomach. He took the lead when the doors opened, following the Predator into the corridor. No one was in either direction. The closer to Hell a person got, the fewer people were around.

  “This floor’s connected to an underground garage.” Skater said, orienting himself to what he’d learned about the building. Low-wattage security lights painted gray stripes of illumination across the floor. While the ork had worked the portaphone to arrange invitations into the nightclub, Skater had been using the Eurowind’s small computer to download maps of the building provided by Archangel, which he’d used to plot routes for a hasty retreat. He counted doors, then went through.

  “They’ll have the garage sealed and watched.” Duran said.

  “We’re not going through the garage doors.” Skater said as they entered the parking area.

  “Ops guy will have made us by now.” Duran said, pointing to the lens of a vidcam in the wall. “They’ll know where we’re at.”

  “Give me a hand.” Skater said, shoving his fingers into the recessed handle of a manhole cover in the corner. “This fragging thing is heavy.”

  Duran reached down and hooked the cover as well. Even with them working together, it moved only with difficulty. “Tell me this is only an access tube for the utilities.”

  Skater didn’t reply as they bent to the task. The stench that curled up from the darkness inside the manhole after the cover was removed was the only necessary answer.

  “Drek, kid,” the ork grumbled, “we’ve hit a new low for getaways.”

  Skater swung onto the ladder mounted on the wall and started down into the stinking gloom. “Just hope we’ve hit this one at low tide.”

  * * *

  Standing under the heated pummeling of the shower, Skater let the water sluice away the fatigue and the drek from their escape through the sewer running under the Inferno. Wheeler had disposed of Archibald’s corpse by pouring acid and bacteria-reinforced lime over it in the bathtub, so the surfaces around him gleamed. The process had taken a few hours, but by the time the rigger was done, their host was only a memory and bits of DNA drifting through the lines to the water recycling plant. Skater didn’t like thinking that the nightclub was on the same system as the doss, nor that it might be downstream. The thought that some of Archibald might have made it back to the apartment with him to go through the pipes again was too much.

  The small bathroom in the doss acted like an acoustic ear, attracting all the sounds from without. Wheeler, Elvis, and Trey, despite the tension of the present situation, were still laughing at the kvetching Duran was doing about the escape through the sewer system.

  “I mean it was this fragging big." the ork growled. “If it’d had eyes, I’da thought I’d been attacked by a slotting deathrattle. Drek, I’d already flamed a few shots in that direction when the kid told me to relax.”

  “You thought it was a snake?” Wheeler said. “A death-rattle?” The dwarf succumbed to a new wave of barking laughter. “Slot me, I wish I’d been there.”

  “You keep rubbing me raw, halfer,” Duran promised, “and it can still be arranged.”

  Skater shut off the water, dried off, and got dressed. A bag on the sink contained deodorant, shaving cream, and a razor. He used them, then went to join the others. He almost felt human again.

  The windows were blacked out with cloth, and Wheeler had established new perimeter security measures. The master control held a number of cables plugged into it, as well as three vidlinks covering possible approaches to the apartment. The unit sat on the table with quick-disconnects, blinking green. All the cameras were hidden, had motion-detecting capabilities, and IR functions.

  Duran was clad in fresh clothes and sat on the floor cleaning the weapons they’d used at the nightclub. He wore gloves and was working over a shirt Archibald no longer had a need for.

  Elvis sat on the couch in contemplative silence, but the muscles in his thighs flexed and shifted, letting Skater know the troll was keeping limber and ready with isometrics. His silver horntip gleamed as he polished both his tusks with wax. Wheeler occupied himself with tweaking up the kluged systems he’d set up in the apartment. His tool belt held various instruments, and his vest was festooned as well. Spare wiring leaked out of one pocket from a spool.

  “Soykaf?” Trey called from the kitchen.

  “The hotter the better.” The run through the sewer system had left Skater chilled. He stopped a few steps from Archangel.

  She was downloading files, her elven features a study in ice, frosted grayish-green from the deck monitor. Fluidly, her fingers played the keyboard. Images rolled and shifted too fast for Skater to see. Bits and bytes of info traveled in linear fashion, scaling quickly to the top of the screen and disappearing.

  “You called your friend?” Archangel asked.

  “Yes.” Kestrel had left a message at Skater’s drop. “He confirmed that Dion and Shayx worked for Synclair Tone.”

  “And you’ve never bumped into this guy?”

  “No.”

  Voice cold and impersonal, Archangel said, “So the only common denominator you have is Larisa Hartsinger.”

  Skater said yes.

  “I used his LTG number and some of the buzz Trey was able to collect to find out more about him.” Archangel’s fingers kept moving, and the clack of the keys being struck became a constant background noise. “He’s got a record from his days in the Barrens. I picked it up from a pirate board I'm connected to. A lot of private investigators use the service.”

  The monitor cleared and formed a face. The man was young, an elf with the look of a thriller blocked into the ragged cut of his fair hair, the mismatched cybereye in the left socket puckered by a knife scar, and the trio of burn scars interrupting the stubble growth on the right side of his chin.

  “How long has Tone been operating in Seattle?”

  “Five months. About the time since you and Larisa called it quits.”

  That was one way to put being dumped, Skater thought. Then he recalled Brynna’s assurances that Larisa had been blackmailed into leaving him. He pushed his personal feelings aside for the time. “That means he came onto the scene after Maddock. but Aggie said the Synclair Tone Larisa knew was a polished guy.”

  The picture on the monitor shifted in response to Archangel’s commands. The face that replaced the Lone Star mug shot was clean and made-over. Even the mismatched cybereye had been replaced with an organic one and the three burns on his chin had been excised, leaving a smooth and shaven face. His hair was style-shop perfect. “He became that.”

&
nbsp; “Expensive.” Trey commented. Skater knew the mage would know. He hadn’t been born to wealth or to good manners, but he’d chosen how he presented himself and taught himself how to enjoy finer things. “The knife scars and the bums required a vat job to eradicate completely.” The rest of the team had drifted over, listening and looking.

  “Did he have the nuyen?” Wheeler asked.

  “Not much ever showed on his arrest record from Puyallup.” Archangel answered. “Every time he went down, it was for nickel and dime crimes. But he had a reputation for being a hard guy to handle, and one who would never cut a deal with the blues to save himself.”

  “Has he been noosed since he’s been here?”

  “No.”

  Skater shelved that line of inquiry for the moment. “How far did you get into those files we jacked from the freighter?”

  “I cracked them a little more.” she replied. “But they’re not going to tell us anything. They’ve been corrupted, and whoever did it knew what they were doing. I don’t think there’s anything more I can recover.”

  “Intentionally corrupted?” Trey asked.

  She nodded. “But I got far enough in to confirm that they’re some kind of medical reports and research development. Perhaps if we took it to someone who knows more about bioresearch, we could find out what we’re dealing with.”

  “Is there a possibility you accidentally corrupted the files while boosting them from the Seahawk’s system?” Trey asked.

  Archangel turned her cold gaze on the mage. “Was there any way you could have made that sleep spell that you mojoed the crew with any more potent?”

  Trey touched his forehead as if doffing an imaginary hat. “Forgive me for questioning your professionalism, my lady.”

  “The question was legitimate.” Archangel acknowledged. “However, I’m sure I didn’t harm the files when I extracted them. They were already corrupt.”

  “The freighter was carrying worthless files.” Skater said. “Only one reason why that I can think of.”