by Lisa Smedman
Alma was on her own, for the second time in her life.
She acknowledged Hu with a nod and stepped into the elevator ahead of him. As it descended, she thought back to the hexagram she had cast that morning—Innocence—and the overall judgment the I Ching had given her: A great mystery must unfold, or a misunderstood part of your nature must come forth before progress can he made. A proper questioning attitude and receptive frame of mind bring success. Though you do not seek the innocent yourself, the innocent seek you, because your aspirations correspond.
The last part was the most puzzling—and the most frustrating. Alma liked to act, not to wait. She could be as patient as a stalking tiger when an assignment demanded it, but there was too much yang in her soul for her to wait passively for answers to come to her. She would follow the course of action the I Ching recommended and remain open to information from new sources, but in the meantime she would do whatever it took to discover who had framed her—and why.
* * *
Alma stood poised on one foot, arms extended to the side with palms up, left leg cocked in front of her as if she were about to take a step forward. Her head was perfectly level, chin neither too high nor too low, her face turned slightly to the left. Slowly, she leaned to the right until the weight of her entire body was balanced on the outer edge of her right foot. When she was certain the form was absolutely correct, she locked her body in that position, allowing the move-by-wire system at the base of her skull to keep her as steady as a precisely weighted balance.
All around her in the park, dozens of people stood poised on the grass, moving in slow motion as they followed the master whose image was projected on the monitor screen at one end of the field. High above them, the dome that covered Stanley Park kept out the incessant rain, and banks of grow lamps and heaters kept the park consistently warm and bright.
For Alma, tai chi—the "infinite void"—was a way of forcing herself into a waiting mode. The combination of perfectly controlled movement and enforced stillness slowed her racing thoughts, quieting the storm of questions and self-doubts that had filled her mind since her meeting with Mr. Lali and Hu that morning. She had already decided on her next course of action but had to wait for Tiger Cat's call to put her plan into motion. The tai chi helped her to endure that wait.
As the figure on the monitor screen broke its frozen stance and began to move, Alma shifted gracefully into the next form. The people around her, all moving together, reminded her of the drills and exercises that had filled the days of her youth. Only two things were missing: a uniform excellence in all of the participants, and the battery of researchers who had tested and observed the Superkids as they were put through their paces.
Alma's attention should have been focused on the center of stillness she was trying to create within herself, but she found herself distracted by a man about her age, a dozen meters ahead of her. He wore loose black pants and a black suit jacket that wrapped like a kimono. His hair was long and black, clipped back in a ponytail. A slight bulge under his left armpit suggested that a weapon was holstered there. Although his tai chi forms were perfect, he never once turned in Alma's direction. He seemed to be keeping a watchful eye on the crowd, as if looking for potential threats to the Full Blood just ahead of him—an Indian who moved with formal dignity, as if used to public scrutiny.
After years in the security industry, Alma could read the relationship between the two men in a heartbeat: politician and bodyguard. When the Full Blood turned his face, Alma recognized him as Darcy Jim, hereditary chief of the Nootka tribe.
But that wasn't what held her interest. Her eyes kept coming back to the pair not because of Darcy Jim but because of the fluid movements of his bodyguard. The younger man moved with the same smooth grace and perfect control as Alma. It was almost as if Alma were watching herself in a mirror. She found herself compromising her own form, keeping her head half turned so she could watch him.
The bodyguard's instincts were as sharp as her own. Feeling her eyes upon him, he smoothly pirouetted to face her. He made the move appear casual, as though he were merely completing a tai chi form.
As the man completed the turn, Alma felt a shudder of recognition. His features matched her own, from the hint of an epicanthic fold on his eyelids to his longer, more Caucasian nose and prominent cheekbones. His eyes were a bright blue, instead of brown, and a silver datajack puckered his left temple, but aside from those minor differences, his resemblance to Alma was close enough that he might have been her brother.
Alma didn't have any brothers—not in the conventional sense of the word. But she had once had batch mates. There had been eleven other children in the Superkids "alpha batch" of 2032. One of the boys—Aaron—had died at the age of eight when he slipped while grandstanding on the New Horizons sign, on the tenth floor of the building, but ten other Superkids had presumably grown to maturity. Alma hadn't seen any of them in twenty-two years—she'd given up looking long ago. Was it possible that the random vagaries of chance had caused one of the Superkids to at last cross her path?
After a second or two, the bodyguard's blue eyes widened in recognition. He spun and spoke a word to Darcy Jim and then walked in Alma's direction. Even though he stared at her as if seeing a ghost, a portion of his attention still remained fixed on the crowd and the man he was guarding. Alma nodded, acknowledging his professionalism.
He stopped just in front of Alma and studied her. "It's been a long time," he said in a voice that sounded cybernetically modulated. "Which girl are you?"
"A.L.," she answered. "Alma. Are you . . . Ahmed?"
The bodyguard smiled, revealing perfect white teeth. "Ajax," he corrected her. He cocked his head the same way Alma did as he smiled, making her remember how precisely the body language of her batch mates had matched her own. For the first time in many years, she felt the return of the homesickness that had been with her constantly in the first years that followed her separation from the other Superkids. She'd forgotten what it was like to be with someone who could instinctively read and mirror you—who knew exactly what you were thinking and feeling.
"I come to the park often, but I haven't seen you here before," Alma said.
Ajax nodded at Darcy Jim. "The tai chi was Mr. Jim's idea. He's like his father—he has a thirst for other cultures."
"Do you work for him?"
Ajax fished a card-sized square of plastic out of his pocket and handed it to Alma. When she pressed the logo on its otherwise blank surface, a monologue began to play. She thumbed it off after she heard the name of the company: Priority One Security, a local bodyguard-for-hire service that had recently been acquired by the Knight Errant corporation.
"Looks like we chose the same line of work," she observed.
He smiled again. "They predicted that, didn't they? Just like identical twins, we'd be statistically more likely to drive the same kind of vehicle, have the same taste in clothes, pursue the same careers and hobbies—even choose partners with the same name."
"Or stay single into our thirties," Alma added, nodding at his ringless left hand.
"Uh-huh," Ajax said, shifting uncomfortably. He changed the subject. "What company are you with?" Alma suddenly regretted bringing up the topic, "Pacific Cybernetics," she answered reluctantly. "But I'm . . . on leave at the moment."
"If you ever want to jump ship, let me know. Guarding the rich and famous is pretty dull most of the time, but it pays well. There'll be an opening soon at Priority One; I'm leaving the company in two weeks to teach at the Justice Institute."
Alma nodded politely. Despite the unfortunate incidents of the past few days, she was still fiercely committed to PCI. She didn't want to slink away like a runaway child and beg like an orphan for work at another corporation; she wanted to redeem herself.
"I wonder how many of the other Superkids wound up in security or police work," Ajax mused. "We're certainly tailor-made for it."
Alma blinked, startled by the thought his comment triggered—an
d amazed that it had not occurred to her before. The Superkids, with their superior genetics, had bodies that had been further enhanced by cyberware. Augmented muscle tissue, move-by-wire systems and skillwires were standard, and each Superkid had been fitted with a host of other cyberware, including customized eyes and ears and a host of other cutting-edge technology—all of it delta-grade. By the time the Superkids program was shut down, they were faster, stronger and smarter than children twice their age. They were the ideal candidates for security work, which demanded a combination of intelligence, brawn, speed—and corporate loyalty.
But what if that loyalty, which had also been genetically selected for, was misplaced? If that happened, a former Superkid would also make the perfect shadowrunner. And that shadowrunner's saliva, if subjected to DNA testing, would be an exact match with Alma's, across all hundred thousand chromosomes. The shadowrunner had to have been one of the other girls in Superkids Batch A, since the boy's forty-sixth chromosome would be a Y, not an X. That left five possible suspects.
"Ajax," Alma said. "Do you know what happened to any of the other Superkids? Are any of them in Vancouver?"
Ajax shook his head. "I don't think so, but then I'm new to the city; until recently I was working out of Priority One's Seattle office. But I'm willing to bet you're the only Superkid placed in Salish-Shidhe. They scattered us pretty thoroughly and did the same with the batches below ours; they claimed this would give us as 'normal' an upbringing as possible, that it was in our best interests to separate us from anything—or anyone—that would remind us of the program. That was pure bull, of course."
"Where did they place you?" Alma asked.
"With a family in the Confederated American States, in Florida."
"Were you able to find out where any of the other Superkids were placed?" Alma asked. Her question was both nostalgic and urgent. She wanted to know if any of her batch mates had wound up in Vancouver—on the wrong side of the law.
"I was able to track down three of us," said Ajax, still scanning the area around Darcy Jim for possible threats. "We've kept in touch on and off over the years. Aimee was fostered by a family in Japan; she works for the Zurich-Orbital Bank. Agatha wound up in one of the German states and became an officer in the Alliance military, and Ahmed is a simsense tech in Denver. Ahmed managed to trace Aella to Chicago but wasn't able to contact her. He thinks she died—either during the bug infestation or when they exploded the nuke that cleared it."
Alma listened carefully. "That leaves two girls unaccounted for; Abby and Akiko."
Ajax nodded. "Three of the boys have vanished into thin air as well. None of the Superkids I've been in touch with has any idea what happened to Acheson, Afandi, or Adam."
He sighed and added: "I still think of them, even after so many years." They stood for a moment in silence, each mirroring the other's painful memories.
On the monitor at the far end of the field, the master bowed. Music welled from the speakers at either side of the screen; the day's tai chi session was over. All around them, people broke ranks and began walking away. The Nootka chief mopped his brow with a towel and turned to see where his bodyguard had gone.
Ajax immediately turned in his direction. "Duty calls," he said over his shoulder. "But I'd like to hook up with you again. Call the number on the card."
"What time does your shift end?" Alma asked. "Could we meet later today? It's very . . . important that we talk some more, as soon as possible."
Alma could hear the strained urgency in her voice but didn't care. Ajax was her one link to the surviving Superkids—perhaps the first link in what could be a long chain of information. Someone, somewhere, had to know where the missing Superkid girls were. Alma needed to begin following that datatrail—today.
"I'm off at seven o'clock tonight," Ajax called back over his shoulder as he walked away. "Call me at five minutes after seven and we'll arrange something."
As she watched Ajax walk away with Darcy Jim, Alma felt a childish urge to run after him. She noticed that he kept glancing back at her until he was out of sight. Then her cellphone chimed.
She flipped it open and heard Tiger Cat say hello. He was using a different stock image this time—a cartoon face with oversized eyes and a Cheshire cat's ear-to-ear grin. This time, Alma activated her cellphone's vidcam, allowing him to see her. It was vital that she establish a certain level of trust before she made her proposal.
"I hear that you succeeded in recovering your package," Tiger Cat said. "I'm pleased. I assume I can expect my second payment momentarily?"
Alma had already decided to be blunt. "There's a slight problem."
Tiger Cat's smile faded. "What do you mean?"
"I'm temporarily unable to access my corporate account."
"I thought we had a deal," Tiger Cat growled. "You owe me three thousand nuyen. What about your personal assets?"
"I don't have that much credit."
She listened to him swear softly in Cantonese and then completed her pilch. "There's only one way you're going to get your money."
"How?"
"I need an insider's look at the Vancouver shadowrun community. To get it, I'll have to pose as one of you. I want you to broker a contract for me. Find me a job that I can carry out in the next day or two, preferably one that will require minimal support from one or two other shadowrunners and that will let me do the bulk of the work. That will buy me the legitimacy I need to assemble a team of shadowrunners for a second, fictitious assignment. You can keep whatever payment the employer provides for the first assignment—even if the total is more than three thousand nuyen. Then my corporation's debt to you will be canceled."
Alma waited, wondering if Tiger Cat was going to accept her offer. Her only other option was to pose as someone who'd heard of the PCI extraction and wanted to hire the team that had carried it out. But that wasn't likely to work. As soon as the woman heard that someone from the corporate sector was looking for her, she'd vanish.
Alma needed to pose as a shadowrunner instead. The shadow community, however, was like a private party: you had to have an invitation to enter it. Tiger Cat could provide her with that invitation by hiring her for an illicit assignment. Alma would have her way in—and Tiger Cat would have a full credstick.
"I'll see what I can do for you," Tiger Cat said finally. "But I'll have to know a little bit more about your areas of expertise. That will let me know if I should be looking to find you a courier run, a structure hit, a datasteal . . . Can I assume that wetwork is out of the question?"
"You can." Alma considered a moment. "Try to find an extraction. That's the type of 'run' that I'd be best at."
"All right," Tiger Cat said. "I'll see what I can do."
Alma thumbed the cell off. Once again, a message from her crank caller scrolled across the monitor screen. This time, Alma read it in its entirety.
HEY AL, JUST A THOUGHT. MAYBE IT'S TIME YOU RETIRED. I HEAR THAT THINGS AREN'T GOING TOO WELL FOR YOU AT PACIFIC CYBERNETICS, ESPECIALLY NOW THAT THINGS HAVE STARTED GOING MISSING. OH WELL. I NEVER DID LIKE THOSE FRAGGERS MUCH, ANYWAY.
As soon as she realized that the crank caller was talking about the extraction, Alma knew who the message was from: the shadowrunner who had killed Gray Squirrel. One of the other Superkids.
Alma only realized that she was squeezing the cellphone too hard when she heard its plastic case crack. She hit the delete icon, and the message faded from the screen. She didn't need to keep it—the words were seared into her memory.
"Watch your step, you 'fragger,' " she whispered angrily. "I'm coming to get you."
* * *
Ajax lived in an apartment in Metrotown, a sprawling mall surrounded by high-rise towers that was a twentieth-century precursor to the arcology. His suite was a studio unit on the twelfth floor, just large enough to hold his futon, an elegant folding rice-paper screen, a telecom, and some Moroccan rugs and throw pillows. Alma felt entirely at home here, amid the blank white walls and big windows. Even t
he smell in the air seemed right. Lemon-scented wind chimes hung over a small end table that held a holopic of a blond woman with pointed ears, wearing a UCAS military uniform. As Ajax went to the kitchen unit to warm some vitamin-enriched sake, Alma watched the elf in the holopic blow the viewer a kiss. She wondered if the woman was still alive—or if Ajax, too, had lost someone he loved to war.
Alma settled in a lotus position on a plush brown rug. Ajax joined her a moment later with two cups and a porcelain sake bottle on a tray. He sank gracefully into a cross-legged position that mirrored her own, placing the tray on the carpet between them. He poured steaming sake into one of the cups and then held it out to Alma. She noticed that he filled his cup to precisely the same level before lifting it to clink against her own. A love of tidiness and order was one of the personality traits that had been genetically selected for when the alpha batch of Superkids was created.
Alma chatted with Ajax for a few minutes, filling in the blank between age eight and the current day, telling him about her foster parents, her training at the Justice Institute, and her years at PCI. They reminisced about the jokes they used to play on the technicians: swapping wrist badges and pretending to be one of the others in their batch was a favorite trick. Sometimes they even managed to fool each other. The one person at New Horizons who never fell for it, however, was the company's CEO. He never once got them mixed up; he got their names right every time, even without looking at their wrist badges.
To the research technicians and scientists at New Horizons, the CEO was Mr. Louberge, very formal in his suit and tie. But to the Superkids he was just Poppy, the man who tousled their hair and told them bedtime stories. Poppy had loved each of the Superkids individually and unconditionally, as a father should.
"It was sad that Poppy died," Alma said. "My foster parents told me it was a heart attack."
