Working for a security company, he should have realized seeing that kind of data hidden on a closed host wasn’t a fluke. It had been put there by someone. Deliberately. And now that someone had come to collect it. Was it just fate that it happened to be the same night he’d chosen?
But who was this girl? And why had someone killed her?
Ponsu appeared in a subdued color to his left within his ever-present AR. In fact…his entire virtual desktop was a bit dim.
Boss, Ponsu said. The patch isn’t working. Your vitals are dropping. I need to call a CrashCart.
Well, it’s not an exact science now, is it? “No—no CrashCart. Understand?” Kazuma was still staring at the body, but was able to stagger into a somewhat standing position. His event horizon was totally fucked up, and the floor looked closer than he knew it was. “I need to get to my car.”
Just outside the door. It’s parked and the door’s open. Just…hurry.
What? Kazuma narrowed his eyes as he stumbled to retrieve his Fichetti. He grabbed things and shoved them back inside the bag.
Boss…now!
Kazuma picked up the pace and followed the quickly dimming directional guidance from his sprite, but nothing was stopping the perspiration streaming from his body; a side effect of the stimulant—or the effect of shock and blood loss. “Ponsu…you can’t move a car…”
Silk.
He could see the exit at the end of the corridor—a light beckoning him—and he pushed himself to move toward that light. He burst through it and saw his car at the curb, the passenger door open, and Silk at the wheel.
Chapter Seven
Outside the Horizon Archive Annex
Mack kicked the now silent GMC’s tire. It wasn’t a bright thing to do—and it hurt like hell. But the pain sharpened his senses, and he stood unnaturally still as he listened to the night around him. There… He heard the gentle purr of a high-performance car nearby.
Pursing his lips, he took off at a dead run, backtracking the same path he’d used before, just on the opposite side of the street. Once he got to the corner—the one across from where he’d been hiding in the shadows—he turned to his right.
There sat a beautiful Lexus sedan. Its right two wheels were on the sidewalk—its passenger door open right in front of the Annex’s side door.
What the—
As he started toward it, the building’s door slammed open. He saw an older man in a long coat stumble out onto the pavement. He had a messenger bag over his shoulder—and he didn’t look well.
Breaking into a run, he shouted at the man. “Hey!”
The stranger turned, but Mack couldn’t see his face. And then—
Something moved in front of him, blocking his view. It was brilliant, and had a familiar shape—something he remembered from his childhood. A bird. A stork? And that shape was in front of him, blinding his cybereyes and causing painful feedback into his neural sensors that was the equivalent of a blow to his forehead. Clapping his hands to his eyes, he cursed as he stopped just a few meters from the car. He could hear the car door shut, and was able to regain enough sight to see it hauling ass down the road.
He ran to the open door of the building and bulled inside. He didn’t see Blackwater anywhere. But he smelled blood, and pulled his Ares Predator V from its holster as he walked farther in.
Mack followed the building’s blueprints on his AR and came to the corridor where Maria and two security guards lay motionless. There was blood everywhere, smeared on the floor as if someone had tripped in it, and then tracked it down the hallway toward the door he’d just entered.
“Mack! Blackwater’s in the GMC! We gotta roll!” came Shayla’s more than stressed voice.
“Maria’s dead—”
“I know. He told me. We can’t do anything right now.”
“I can’t just leave her—”
“Mack,” Blackwater interrupted. “You get out here now, or we’re leaving—and I’m taking your club while you’re in jail.”
That was enough to kick Mack in the ass, and the hacker knew it. With a last, sad look at the dead shaman, he spotted a commlink by her foot and assumed it belonged to one of the dead security guards. Cursing under his breath, he retraced the same route out and headed to the GMC.
Just as the wail of approaching KE sirens broke through the night.
Chapter Eight
Horizon Arcology, Luxury LEVEL
Los Angeles
Friday Morning
Artus Wagner, soon-to-be-retiring Horizon Personnel Manager for the Los Angeles Home Office, did not enjoy being awakened at six in the morning by the authorities. It had been a long evening downtown—Wagner’s people entertaining the Vice President and his associates for their first night in Los Angeles. Everything had gone so smoothly—
Except for the Vice President’s guest, an irritating dwarf named Powell and his mongrel dog—a large, black animal with a haunting stare. He had spent most of the evening in the shadows, drinking very little and keeping part of his attention focused through the monocle on his left eye. Wagner knew the monocle was the dwarf’s AR connection—and he knew the dwarf was someone the Vice President held in high regard. But Wagner had no idea what the man’s purpose was. The Vice President never revealed his position in the company—or whether he worked for Horizon at all.
But putting that aside—it had been a very productive evening.
Until his personal assistant had called. Charis Monogue was a tall, slender, leggy elf. He hadn’t hired her for her organizational skills—but because the woman could shoot a hole through a moving target’s left eye socket. Ork, human, elf, dwarf, or troll. She was the best weapons specialist he had on retainer.
Her call was a heads-up about a little “incident” at the lower Annex building on Boulevard Avenue.
“What do you mean by ‘incident’?” he asked as he rose from his bed. The house environment raised the bedroom lights a degree at a time until his eyes adjusted. Holo-vids activated, and the room filled with a chorus of voices as the world stock reports came online, as well as smaller windows searching the local news stations for pertinent information culled 24/7 for Consensus.
Charis had already uploaded the information to his agent, but she answered him anyway. “Apparently there was a break-in last night. The thieves left two dead security officers and a dead girl.”
Wagner stopped in his tracks—his robe half on his shoulders. He turned and looked at the single screen, Charis’ perfectly proportioned face staring back at him. “Thieves? Dead bodies? You did say this was at the Annex?”
She nodded. “Fortunately, your PCC friend arrived in the building first, so the media didn’t get wind of the girl’s body—just the security officers. But of course no one knows why she was there—”
“What was stolen?”
She paused, her expression, which was usually cool and collected, darkened just a shade with irritation. “Nothing. I mean, that Annex is scheduled for demolition tomorrow. The host’s cleared out. It’s not connected. It’s just a redundant system. There was—is—nothing there to steal. I triple-checked the host’s last diagnostic, along with its manifest.”
“Who ran the last manifest?”
“Knight Errant, during the decommission protocols.”
Wagner narrowed his eyes. “KE? Since when do they work security on, like you said, a redundant system?”
Charis looked down at her desk and moved a few things around. “Since Las Vegas. Remember, we’ve sustained a number of brute hacks ever since, even with a closed host like that. They won the contract to securely destroy the host. I think contracting them was a good move due to Horizon’s—perceived indiscretions.”
Funny how Charis used the word perceived. Wagner knew the truths behind many of the corporation’s rumored side projects. Was it possible she did too? Or was she just being suspicious because he paid her to be?
She shook her head. “
They even had an employee working last night during the break-in.”
“Oh?” Wagner’s shoulders stiffened. “Knight Errant had a tech at the facility?”
“Yes. One of the retired consultants—a Mr. Toshi Morimoto. He specializes in erasures and reformatting.”
The name didn’t sound familiar to Wagner. “I need a copy of that work order and who issued it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll be there in a half-hour.”
“Yes, sir. Half-kaf-soy or a non-fat whip sugar-free mocha?”
“Both,” he said as he disconnected, canceled the house systems and went to a wall safe, hidden behind the main holo-vids. Pulling out a wrist commlink, he inserted the earbuds, slipped on the image shades, and logged in through his neighbor’s secured PAN. It was a stunning deal Wagner had set up with Charles Hockenberry, having Wagner’s IT man set up a secure network for the neighbor.
And leaving Wagner his own back door.
In the commlink’s AR, he contacted a preset number and waited. There was a pause before the handshake and then a new window opened up. The familiar Matrix persona of Cole Blackwater appeared in the window. Usually Blackwater preferred to parade around as a large, white wolf. But this image was human, a heroic male figure right out of a romance trid. Full pecs; long, flowing blond hair; and electric blue eyes. Wagner knew the real Blackwater looked nothing like this.
The persona looked anything but happy to see his meal ticket. “Not now.”
“Yes, now. Did you kill the guards and the girl?”
“How’d you already know that?” The persona actually looked impressed. “The guards walked in on me, so I had to cap ’em. They were just rent-a-cops anyway.” Blackwater looked around. “I can’t talk right now. Mack’s on the warpath. That other hacker somehow nixed our rigger’s RCC. I’ve got Mack thinking he was the one that killed Maria and the guards.”
“I really don’t care what your boss thinks.” Wagner summoned several news reports his agent had compiled. “Do you realize how easy it’s going to be to ID that girl and track her back to you, and then back to me? How could you be so stupidly careless?”
Blackwater’s persona made an obscene gesture. “No one can track her real ID—I’m not even sure I could. About the only person that might know it would be Mack Schmetzer.”
Schmetzer. Schmetzer. Why was that name familiar? It wasn’t that Wagner didn’t already know his hired gun worked for a face named Schmetzer. It was just that every time he heard it there was a slight tremor—a distant memory of the name he couldn’t quite make clear. “What is this about another hacker? Did you get the data?”
Blackwater’s persona rolled its eyes in frustration. “I put some serious hurt on the guy before he got away.”
Wagner closed his eyes. “Did you get the data I hired you to retrieve?”
There was a pause. It was all the answer Wagner needed. “You failed.”
“I’m gonna get it back. I just told you, Shayla and I are looking for him. I shot him.”
“Who is this person? And why are they after my data? I put it there. No one else knew it was there, except for you.”
The persona held up both hands. “I’m gonna find him and get the stuff back.”
Wagner held up the right hand of his own icon, a stately man with ashen skin and an ork’s protruding jaw. He wasn’t an ork, but they were a race of beings not usually screwed with. In the Matrix, one could be anything they wanted. He paused, remembering what Charis had said about the Knight Errant tech working on the system. “Did you get a look at him? Was he Asian?”
The persona shrugged. “I got a glimpse of someone—some old dude in the basement. All I could see was his back—gray hair. I did see his Matrix persona—it was some red-headed dude with a katana.”
“Get that data back, Blackwater.” Wagner disconnected and removed his commlink, shades, and gloves. He stood very still for a moment. Katana... Was it possible the thief was the same Morimoto who had the work order? And if this hacker had successfully fabricated a work order and managed to pass the Horizon System’s sentinels, and then stolen the intel right out of Blackwater’s hand—he had skills to rival the hacker’s.
Stowing the gear back to its hiding place, Wagner readied himself to see Charis.
Chapter Nine
Knight Errant Arcology
Los Angeles
“You haven’t rested enough.”
“I’m fine,” he called from the bathroom.
“You look like hammered shit.”
“I said I’m fine.” Kazuma stepped out and smiled at the lithe, mocha-skinned beauty lounging in his bed, the sheets barely covering her assets. His gaze lingered on the dark blue tattoos along her arms and thighs, and he sighed. “They don’t care what I look like, just as long as I show up and do my job. And I can’t not go in. After last night—they’re going to be looking hard at anyone who doesn’t show up today.”
“You used Morimoto’s ID, not to mention his face—that’s what they’re going to look for. And once they realize he’s dead—”
“How are they going to connect me to him?” He walked back into the bathroom to finish dressing. The face in the mirror still showed a bit of the effects of fading. Silk was right—he looked bad. Dark circles hung under his eyes, and he was paler than usual. The fading had hit fast after the slap-patch wore off. He had no memory of the drive home, or of getting into his apartment. Silk had taken care of everything.
As she had ever since their first meeting.
Kazuma and his sister had been online, exploring an art host and talking about their upcoming trip to see their family in Chiba, Japan, when the Crash of 2064 hit the Matrix. The last thing Kazuma remembered was sharp pain, and then nothing.
A long, long time of nothing.
Thousands had died at their decks, and many of the survivors were found in comas. He and Hitori languished in this state for nine months. Hitori awoke first, claiming to hear voices, whispers, to see things out of the corner of her eye. She was diagnosed with AIPS— Artificially Induced Psychotropic Schizophrenia—and locked up for a while before she figured out what had happened to her.
She was released when Kazuma woke and helped him as he dealt with his own symptoms of AIPS. Though his wasn’t as severe as Hitori’s, he suffered from horrific nightmares of being trapped in darkness when he slept, and intense migraines when awake.
Where Kazuma fought the terrifying changes, Hitori embraced them. Kazuma refused to use them at first. Hitori honed her skills at technomancy and achieved two submersions before Kazuma attempted his first, and the nightmares and migraines disappeared.
She’d disappeared during her first one—and Kazuma had hired a private detective to find her. It wasn’t until after the event at the coffee ship near Knight Errant that she showed up again. Different. Calmer. And determined more than before to help others like themselves.
Hitori talked him into and helped him through his first submersion. The thought of releasing himself fully into the Matrix terrified him, but she was able to help him relax and try to accept the changes his body and mind were going through.
When he returned feeling, seeing, hearing things a little different, Hitori introduced him to Silk, the one who had guided her into her second submersion into the Resonance Realms, a place inside the Matrix that only technomancers could go when submerged. When they faced these realms, they increased their connection to the Matrix resonance and increased their abilities.
Silk was something most technomancers were not; physically active. Her parents were street fighters, and her life had been mired in gangs outside of Chicago. When her mother was killed in a fight, her father sent her to live in Seattle with her aunt—not so much out of love, but because he couldn’t be bothered with raising a child who seemed more interested in the Matrix than in physical prowess.
Silk told him she felt as if she’d lost both her parents. And as her own special brand of revenge, she trained in several phys
ical skills and rejected the cyberware her parents and the culture she’d left depended on. Her aunt showed her books that spoke about a time before the upgrades, where men and women honed their physical bodies as art. She fell in love with the tattoos of the Maori tribes, and had her body adorned in tribute, a new tattoo for each skill she’d mastered.
And all the while, she had still learned the Matrix and became fascinated with machinery. And through it all she never had a datajack installed. Refused to even think of adding cyberware. But she had used trodes to explore VR.
And then the Crash came. At the time, Silk had been online along with so many others—and her world had changed forever.
Silk had been the one to teach Hitori how to fight physically—and taught her how to run when her opponent was too cyberized to defeat. There was always a choice in survival. And when Kazuma had been mugged one night, it was Silk staying nearby who had saved him from having his throat slashed. Since then she made sure he exercised every day, and kept his physical strength up. She’d also had him reinvent himself in the Matrix. He refined his online persona, making the red-headed ninja more realistic to fit his new online name, Soldat.
Silk appeared beside his reflection in the bathroom mirror. She was nude, and her dark, thick hair cascaded over her shoulders. “Your name is still connected to his, idiot. He was your supervisor. And he was a technomancer.”
“But not for very long.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “He only lived a few years past the Crash. But what he taught me about KE was invaluable.”
She wrapped her arms around his waist. “Stay home. Call in sick. You never miss work.”
He leaned into her and placed his hands on hers. “And that’s why I have to go in. That fact alone will make it look weird if I don’t show up this morning.” He turned and wrapped his arms around hers. “It’s Friday. I’ll get my work done, be home on time, and then you and I can head out for the weekend.”
“You plan on retrieving the data?”
Shadowrun: Dark Resonance Page 4
