by Mel Odom
28
[Chip file: Argent
Security access: ******—01:55:10/10-11-60]
UPLOAD CONTINUED Location: CalFree Safehouse
I watched Andi Sencio as she spoke, matching what I saw against what I knew I'd never forget. Andi knew a side of me that I didn't show. Her ability to reach that side of me hadn't ended just because the relationship had.
"You were never one to waste words." Andi said coolly, "and I don't have a lot of time here either. Even with the burst capability on the communications transmission we've cobbled together, we're pushing the clock." Despite her outward appearance, I picked up the tell-tale spike in her voice with my enhanced hearing that told how twitchy she was feeling.
As I watched Andi speak, I couldn't help thinking she might already be flat-lined. Even the com-burst getting off to Chandler only ensured that she'd lived that long, no longer.
"I'm still working for Richard Villiers." Andi said. "He assigned me to a covert run against one of the NAN-megas. We were on a major datasteal from a company in the Pueblo Corporate Council called VaulTek."
"I'm searching for VaulTek now." Peg told me.
"The CEO of VaulTek is a man named Clay Ironaxe."
Andi said. "He's Amerind, always trying to learn more about his people and his culture. When Villiers put my team on the assignment, he had a good cover waiting for us as part of the research staff of LegacyTrax, an institution catering to the location of antiquities and information in the Awakened World."
LegacyTrax I knew about. They were a small operation that specialized in tracking down the reality of myths and legends that had been handed down before magic returned to the world. The big player in that field was the Atlantean Foundation. I'd done some close-cover work on some of Atlantean's fact-finding hunts over the years. But there were some who said Atlantean served its own purposes and not everything that was found was turned over to the contractors. LegacyTrax still enjoyed a good rep, as far as I knew.
"Some of my team were actual research assistants." Andi went on, "while the rest of us held sec positions. The assignment required that VaulTek open up many of their mainframes to us so our techs could confirm the mythologies being searched. Ironaxe had a number of security measures set up against what we accomplished, but they were easier to get around after we'd been given an invitation to be there."
The fact that Villiers had used Ironaxe's own curiosity against him wasn't surprising news. On the surface, Villiers had a reputation for acting quickly and ruthlessly. And there were some people in the plexes where he did the majority of his biz who considered him to be ready for sainthood. Every move was polished, though, and took into account any weaknesses Villiers could take advantage of.
"If you're wondering how Villiers worked our insertion into LegacyTrax." Andi said, "he did it by buying out the corp on a closed-market deal through other shell corps and dummy bank accounts. No one will be able to trace it back to him."
Without saying it, Andi knew I'd understand that she was the weak link in Villiers' covert datasnatch.
Without Andi's testimony to tie NovaTech to LegacyTrax, Iron-axe might suspect, but he'd never prove, that Villiers had been behind the datasteal. And for one corp player to make a move against another corp player without gaining a bad rep, proof had to be involved at some point.
"While we had access to VaulTek's mainframes and cybernetic systems." Andi said, "we also managed to download information Villiers wanted us to retrieve. We used the open databases to patch and bridge our way into the R&D computers, then upload all the files to our decks."
I shifted on the bed and took a bottle of spring water from the stores Nolly had assigned me. I popped the tab unconsciously and drank off a third of its contents, focusing on Andi's words.
"You already know about all the in-fighting that's taking place between the three Fuchis." Andi said. "Any shadowrunner worth contracting has, and I'm guessing that you've been offered a lot of work in the past few months. Maybe you're too busy to handle the bit of action I'm trying to push your way. I hope not. If there was a way to get out without help, you know I'd never have contacted you. I gave you my promise back then, and you know I don't go back on those any more than you do."
I studied the way Andi was dressed, noting the scuff marks of gray-colored dust on the knees of the synthdenim jeans. Wherever she'd gone to tape the com-burst, there'd been some climbing involved.
"I uploaded most of the information we snatched to Villiers' cut-off team working the perimeter of our op." Andi said. "But they didn't get it all. Villiers also knows we're still alive. Some of us. And as long as we are, we're a liability. If he can't find a way clear to exfiltrate us from here without exposing himself and this op, I have no doubt he'll have us chilled. I want to hire you to exfiltrate us."
Watching the way she moved, pacing as she spoke, I knew her left leg had been injured. The movement wasn't noticeable in a big way, but to someone who knew her as intimately as I did, it was obvious. Andi had always carried a sinuous grace about her in anything physical: from dancing to sex to assassination.
"You know the kind of money Villiers paid us when you worked for him." she said, then gave me a wry smile. "And you probably remember the way I liked to spend it. Maybe you'd be surprised at how much of it I've put back in recent years, though. I'll pay a fair price for your time. Almost from the day you left me, I set up a joint account with the names of aliases you and I used to operate under. The last report I saw showed a little more than four hundred thousand nuyen in the account. It's with Solar First in Washington, DC." She read off the account number twice, speaking clearly both times.
I tapped the telecom and froze the chip play. "Run it." I told Peg. "But be careful. Things could get gnarly when you access the information about that account."
"It's not like you to try to tell me how to do my biz." Peg said irritably.
I sipped my water and ignored the comment. When she had Solar First's entry page on the telecom, I put my thumb over the scanner built into the telecom and watched the light bar flash across the print. It's expensive making sure my thumbprints match after getting a cyberhand or cyberlimb damaged, or losing one entirely, which has happened as well. The cyberdoc I used worked at corp-spec and was very expensive. But when my thumbprint was laid into the bank's sec-systems, access to that account was allowed immediately.
A short commercial played on the telecom display, cramming as much info as the bank could manage about their services into a ten-second burst. Then Peg went through the menu, fencing momentarily with the bank's sec-systems as they tried to track down my location. She sleazed through the defenses and fed them a false location. By the time they figured out their mistake, she was out of the system.
When the account opened, the balance was four hundred thirty-seven thousand, one hundred-thirteen nuyen and change. A quick scan of the account's activity log showed that monthly deposits had been made for the duration of the account, with no record of anything ever having been withdrawn.
I considered that maybe Andi had thought the longer we didn't speak, the more money it would take to bring me back around if she ever needed me. That realization made me feel uncomfortable, but I quickly pushed the feeling away. Operating out of an emotional frame of reference wasn't acceptable.
"She wasn't lying about the money." Peg said.
"No. I didn't think she was." I stared at the names on the account. Mr. and Mrs. Linda and Robert Raynes. They were two perfectly normal citizen names and carried none of the history that our real names or the names we wore now brought with them. Even the SINs would be spotless.
"Argent." Peg said in a quiet voice, "is Andi Sencio your wife?"
UPLOAD TO CONTINUE
29
[Chip file: Argent
Security access: ******—02:03:57/10-11-60]
UPLOAD CONTINUED Location: CalFree Safehouse
I gazed at the still frame displayed on the telecom and considered how brainfragged answ
ering that question had been even back then, without all the time and distance that separated us now. Even trying to wall myself off from the emotions that seeing Andi stirred up in me, I still wanted to touch her and smell her hair. More than that, I wanted to know she was all right.
"We were never married." I told Peg.
"Are you all right?" she asked almost immediately.
"I'm fine."
"I've never heard your voice like that before."
I only felt the tightness in my throat then. The cyberware I had installed was very sensitive. I cut out some of the feedback from my central nervous system, leaving only the mechanical application. Maybe I'd sound more like myself. "It must be the aud pick-up in this room."
"Maybe."
But I thought Peg was cutting me some slack. She wasn't ready to deal with that side of me any more than I was. I forced myself to go on because answering Peg's question was the only way I was going to get her to totally concentrate on what we were going to need to do. "We were close, Peg, as close as I've ever been to another person. There were days back then when it didn't even seem like we were two people."
"I see." The tone of Peg's voice told me she was uncertain about her answer. With her meat self getting kluged so early on, she hadn't never had the chance to experience a full physical relationship with another person. Toshi had told me that once, but I didn't know how he came to know it. There was sexually oriented simsense on the market, but from what I'd seen and heard, that medium allowed the human or meta participant too much control. A real relationship—at least to me, and maybe that was because of the upbringing and training I'd had—was a gestalt, something that was greater than the sum of its parts.
The relationship I'd had with Andi convinced me of that. She was the first to convince me that relationships weren't based purely on the physical, though that was a good springboard for them. And the friendship I'd had with Hawk and Toshi, the one I still had with Peg, remained proof to that belief. Over the years there'd only been a handful people I'd let close: Raven, Dirk Montgomery, and Rick Larson, a few others.
Maybe Peg had had some experiences in the Matrix that came close to what she considered meaningful relationships. I didn't know because she'd never mentioned them and I'd ask.
"What happened between you?" Peg asked.
"We both worked for Brynnmawr and the agency he represented." I said, wondering at how I was going to reduce all that history to just a few words. "She was on my team."
"But she was more than a team mate."
"Not at first. That came later. When things with Brynnmawr fell apart, we left together. It was safer for both of us. That way we each had someone who could guard our back."
"Was Sencio in agreement with leaving Brynnmawr?"
For someone who hadn't experienced much of life before she became a paraplegic, Peg was remarkably insightful. But that was one of the reasons she was so good at what she did. "No. Back then Brynnmawr was our only source of security. The things we were taught, the things we were encouraged to believe in—the ties were very strong."
"But you left." Peg said.'
"I had no choice. I didn't believe any more. Not with them. Andi left because she wanted to stay with me." Even then I'd realized that Andi had come along not because she had problems with Brynnmawr's way of doing things, but to protect me. That realization had left me conflicted later, made it harder to do what I'd done.
"Then you went to work for Villiers?" Peg was pushing the limit and I was sure she knew it. However, she also knew she had a right to because her hoop was going to be on the line as well.
"Not immediately. For awhile, Andi and I freelanced in our. . . field. Our circumstances were very dangerous, and there was no security. Where we were, the situations we found ourselves in, we could be compatriots to our employers one day, then hunted outlaws the next. Villiers offered security. At least, he offered as much as we could expect in that part of the world at that time."
"There had to have been more. You're not an easy sell, Argent, and I can't believe there was a time you ever were."
Even back then, I hadn't been sold. But Andi had, and I'd gone along with what she wanted because I wanted her and because I was tired of running. And because she'd followed me when I'd chosen to split from Brynnmawr. I didn't mention that to Peg. "At that time, Villiers made a kind of sense. He was young, just putting together the deals that were going to make him big. He was cut-throat, but he wasn't like he can be now."
"That you knew of."
I nodded. "That made all the difference."
"Then when you found out he was like every other corp CEO out there, you quit."
"There was a certain amount of disillusionment on both sides. I didn't like the way he did some things, and Villiers didn't like it that I wasn't tractable."
"But Andi Sencio stayed?"
"Yes." The answer was simple now, but it hadn't been simple then.
"Why did she stay?"
"She wanted to."
"Why?"
"Because she wanted to." I stared at the screen where Andi stood frozen, knowing Peg was watching me. It made me feel uncomfortable. This was an area that I was supposed to be able to keep to myself.
"Did something happen between you?"
I hesitated.
"Argent." Peg said softly, "if you haven't talked to anyone about this, now might be the time." She paused, but I didn't reply. "And I need to know so I can watch—things better as we go into this. The situation she's in doesn't appear to be something you can handle by yourself. And you're not exactly in a neutral position on this."
"She made a choice." I kept my voice uninflected, surprised at how much of that old emotion was still alive inside me. "When I decided to leave Villiers, I asked her to come with me. She told me she couldn't.
Our lives alone had been difficult. Brynnmawr's people still hunted us, and there were others by that time.
You can't take sides without making enemies. And with the way things changed so rapidly back then, you couldn't count on your allies."
"Better to take the evil that you know than face more that you don't."
I nodded. It was a fair assessment.
"She let you go?" Peg asked.
"If I'd stayed, I wouldn't have been the same." I replied. "Andi knew that. Neither of us had a choice.
About going or staying." And that was why, at the end, she' d let me go. If she'd tried harder to hold me, I honestly didn't know what would have happened.
"You haven't seen her since then?"
"No."
Peg waited a beat, then asked, "So what are you going to do now?"
I answered without pause. "It's a contract, Peg, pure and simple." I leaned forward and tapped the Play button again, sending the chip spinning to generate more of the message.
It was time to find out how hard the projected run could be.
UPLOAD TO CONTINUE
30
[Chip file: Argent
Security access: ******—02:08:12/10-11-60]
UPLOAD CONTINUED Location: CalFree Safehouse
"It's more than just Villiers and Ironaxe." Andi said. "Shikei Nakatomi's involved as well. Villiers kept me away from Nakatomi while the Fuchis were one, so I don't think Asian Fuchi knows who I am. At least, they didn't. Nakatomi's corp espionage teams must really be earning their nuyen these days, because somebody tripped them to this run." She let out a deep breath and I could see the pain lines around her mouth. "Nakatomi smuggled a mole onto my team. A guy named Pendleton Frost. Villiers put the team together and I had the final say, but you know how that scans."
I knew exactly how that scanned. It was one of the chief reasons I was no longer a player in the corp scene. The corps looked at the bottom line, at what they wanted to accomplish rather than how feasible it was. Villiers was usually a joker who played his cards close to his vest, but he was also a risk-taker. Corp players had to be. Steady and conservative only netted modest profits. Someone willing to roll
the dice on an all-or-nothing bid brought up the big payoff.
Villiers operated off the potential profit margins, using them as a benchmark to justify the risk. Money had never interested me as much as doing the right biz for the right reasons. Maybe it was all the early indoctrination Brynnmawr and his associates programmed into me while they were bringing me up. I liked to think I was that way because I chose to be. Walking away from Andi had been the hardest thing I'd ever done since leaving Brynnmawr, but both of those steps had been affirmation in my mind that I was my own man.
And being that was my bottom line, it was the only thing I could live with.
"By the time I found out about Pendleton Frost." Andi said, "it was too late. He'd compromised the run, too late to stop us, but early enough that four of my people died when we tried to get away." She smiled wryly. "Almost got away, I should say. The son-of-a-slitch sold DNA samples from my group to Nakatomi.
While we were occupied dodging Ironaxe's corpcops, Nakatomi's people ambushed us. I lost two more people in a dustup with Asian Fuchi. The last report I got from my spotters surrounding the periphery of this site told me Ironaxe's people may be close to digging us out here."
I paused the chip-play again, keeping my emotions locked in. I had no way of knowing if Ironaxe had found Andi or not. "Peg, scan through the news trid and scream-sheet downloads coming out of the Pueblo Council lands."
"I've been doing that since Ironaxe's name first came up." Peg responded. "They've still got a lot of hot spots out there, and the number of acts of violence I've listed are in the dozens now. It's going to take some time ferreting out all of the information on them. I'm dividing them into two initial groups: ones where the victims are identified, and ones where they aren't."
"The corp could run Andi's corpse under a false name." I pointed out. "They could buy some time there."
"What would you suggest?"
"Break it down further." I said. "Assuming that the bodies have actually surfaced, and there's no guarantee of that, they'll be shipped to funeral homes."
"And any funeral homes owned by VaulTek or Nakatomi will be immediately suspect?"
