The tea cup appeared, the fire disappeared. Beside it sat a saucer with the decayed, moldy remains of what might have been a bagel. Months old.
“Slamm-0!—shut off your AR.”
The hacker nodded, and then whistled as he looked around.
A fine layer of dust covered the cup and saucer, the coffee table desktop, and when he put his hand on the sofa cushion closest to him, it too came away covered in dust.
“No one’s living here,” Mack muttered. “But the voice said someone was here five hours ago.” That one fact gnawed at him. “Slamm-0!, do you have access to the apartment host’s environmental program? Is there a way to find out who was in here five hours ago?”
“I’ve been looking—but the system files are corrupted, as well as the preferences. I’ll keep looking for a security profile.”
Straightening, Mack walked into a side room. It was a bedroom, nearly as spacious as the living room. It had the floor-to-ceiling windows too, but they were covered by thin sheers of soft pink. The bed was unmade, the sheets and duvet pulled away as if someone had prepared for bed a minute ago.
A few pieces of clothing, personal essentials, were scattered on the other side of the room near the bathroom. Mack turned the light on in there and was surprised to see a counter full of makeup. The bathtub still held a dish of half-used soap. A crumpled shower cap lay on the floor beside the toilet. Towels hung in disarray on their racks. And everything—every nook and cranny of the room—was covered in a thin layer of dust.
He heard Preacher behind him. “I don’t like this,” he said, his voice a quiet rumble.
Mack nodded slowly as he squinted up at the troll. “It’s like she just left for work—”
“—and never came back,” Slamm-0! finished as he joined them in the bedroom. “And it feels wrong in here.”
“Feels wrong?”
“He’s right.” The troll nodded. “The whole place has the feeling of something interrupted.”
Mack had to agree. He too could sense an overwhelming feeling of—unfinished. As if Miss Tetsu’s life was in limbo.
“The kitchen is just like this,” Preacher said as he nodded to the bathroom behind Mack. “She made soykaf, and there’s still crumbs in the toaster. The butter was out on the counter with a knife.” He sighed. “It’s like the place has been preserved since the moment she left.”
Mack moved past Preacher back into the living room. Most control centers in apartments like this were built into the wall. Behind the couch, he saw a blank wall that might hold what he was looking for, and said, “Ops.”
He heard movement like gears turning, but the wall remained smooth.
“Hey, in here,” Slamm-0! called out.
Mack stepped back into the bedroom. The wall to the right of the bed seamed and parted. The two sides slid back and a desk came forward. Dimensional screens flickered to life, showing a meter-wide holo image of a desktop. The image on it was of a young woman and a man.
Mack recognized the man from the dossier Charis gave him.
Kazuma Tetsu.
“That’s the sister?” Preacher asked as he came up behind him. Since the rig was powered via cameras and projectors, the mid-air image was visible to the troll without his monocle.
Mack pulled up his own AR desktop and clicked open a folder. The information he’d uncovered on Hitori Tetsu was spotty, and there had been no image stored on any host he could find. “I think we can assume that’s her. I’ll do an image capture and save it.”
With practiced ease, Mack saved the image, then started moving around the desktop. There weren’t any high-level encryption protocols. In fact, he didn’t encounter any security at all. But neither were there any personal files.
Slamm-0! confirmed his findings. “Someone’s already been in this system and wiped it clean.”
“Clean?” Preacher asked from his right.
“Yeah.” Slamm-0! reached up and tapped some of the folders that opened on the holographic screen. “Nothing. Looks like the whole machine’s been through a complete system reinstall.”
“Wait—Mack—” Preacher reached out and pointed to an icon on the upper left of the desktop. “I know that symbol.”
“Oh?” Mack double-clicked it. The screen went dark, and the two of them were treated to a deep, bass rattling note, followed by a familiar piece of classical music. “That’s from Carmina Burana, right?”
“Yeah…I’ve seen this,” Slamm-0! said. “It’s a promo.”
The screen rezzed in, and a middle-aged man dressed in a silver and blue bodysuit appeared. “Hello, and thank for you for taking the time to test this demo for Contagion Games Unlimited. We here at Contagion want to give consumers the best Matrix experience in gaming hosts, so we’ve created this demo for you to try out, enjoy for thirty days, and then report your impressions back to us. That’s all it takes! And, once the game is released, if you choose, you can receive your very own copy of TechnoHack!”
Mack frowned and looked at Slamm-0!. “Game demo?”
“Yeah—I got one, too. Supposed to be able to play a technomancer or a hacker online—sort of a test to see who’s better. And you save the world.” He frowned. “Boss…is this what Hestaby was talking about? Is this it? You think that game somehow got Hitori?”
“I don’t know.” Mack shut the blathering man off and continued scanning Hitori’s desktop. “But that’s not why we’re here. Besides that game, anything that would have identified this as Hitori Tetsu’s system is gone.” He stepped back. “Which makes sense if someone’s wiped the place. That’s why the environmental controls were set to ask for preferences.”
“But why?”
Mack moved a little deeper into the system, not entirely submerging himself, but going deep enough for a closer look. He pulled back and blinked a few times to clear his head and his vision before looking up at Slamm-0!. “Not sure yet. But I can’t find any signatures. And there are always footprints.”
“You think it was the brother?” Slamm-0! turned sharply and left the bedroom.
Mack didn’t voice an opinion on that. Of course, if her brother was indeed a technomancer like Charis and Hestaby believed, it might be possible to remove the information and not leave a trail. He just didn’t know.
An AR window opened with Slamm-0!’s icon.
Mack made sure not to show any outward surprise at that statement, and told them to keep looking around.
Deployed? Mack froze, just before before he heard shots fired from the living room. He was already pulling up the apartment’s layout grid in the holovid and telling the system to latch onto anything the size of a bird of prey—and moving fast.
Another shot roared, and he saw a flash of blue light from the door to the living room as Slamm-0! ducked through, then slammed his back against the bedroom side of the door, pistol held over his chest.
Mack looked back at the screen—but the only thing moving was Preacher’s red dot as he ran past Slamm-0! through the door. Mack heard another shot, saw the flare in the doorway, than a crash. Within a few seconds, the big troll stepped back into the bedroom, holding up a smashed drone. It was still smoking, its legs twitching feebly. It looked like he had stepped on it.
“I hate these things,” he said.
Slamm-0! took it from him—carefully—and brought it to where Mack stood in front of the vids. Mack held it while Slamm-0! began disassembling the underbelly. “What’re you—”
“This is a Lockheed Optic x2 model. High end. Very expensive. And if this belongs to who I think it does…” Slamm-0! let the sentence trail off as he pulled a wire from the bag at his hip and jammed it into the drone.
Within seconds the vids in fr
ont of them flickered, and a new set of data screens appeared. Windows opened and closed as Mack looked between Slamm-0!’s face and the vids. He looked over at Preacher, who pulled the sheets off the bed and wrapped them around his arm.
“You were hit?”
“Just a flesh wound. Shayla said she’d patch it up for me.”
Mack looked down at the drone and saw the added gun barrel integrated into the side. “I didn’t think this model had weapons.”
“It doesn’t—usually,” Slamm-0! said as he worked, his eyes never leaving the larger screens. “It’s been modified. And I think I know by who.”
“What are you doing?”
“Following a lead,” was all the hacker said as the screens came up, numbers flashed across and the information images disappeared.
The kid was fast. Faster then Blackwater had been. And good, if he was doing what Mack suspected he was.
Abruptly one of the screens blackened, filled by white noise and then:
“—wrong with it?” a familiar voice asked.
“I told you, that ugly drekking troll set it off. Damn thing deployed.”
“You mean it started shooting?”
“Yeah. But my screen’s gone.”
Mack didn’t recognize the hobgoblin half-visible in the window. But that didn’t matter as much as the voice he did recognize. And when he saw Cole Blackwater’s shiny chrome skull come into view, he clenched his jaw.
Now he saw that wasn’t reality.
Blackwater’s eye came close as he examined something. “Cole Blackwater,” Mack said through gritted teeth.
“That blows,” Preacher said behind him, now wrapped up in the sheet like a toga.
“And the other one?”
Slamm-0! sighed. “Clockwork. A notorious decker and hater of technomancers. Looks like your old hacker buddy is on the other side of the Matrix this time.”
“Can they hear us?” Preacher asked.
“Why, of course we can!” the hobgoblin said as he looked into the RCC camera. “Nice to see you again, Slamm-0! Say, is that pretty little technomancer girlfriend with you this time? NeoNET’s offer is still open—”
Slamm-0! ended the communication with an abrupt blank screen. He yanked the cables out, grabbed the drone, and threw it on the floor, then pointed his gun at it and fired. Several times.
Eventually Preacher walked over and put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s dead.”
“But he isn’t.”
“What the hell?” Mack narrowed his eyes at Slamm-0! “Technomancer girlfriend? You and this Clockwork got history?”
But Slamm-0! was already back in AR, hands blurring as they worked. “You could say that.”
An alert told Mack he had a message with an attachment. “You send me that?”
“Yeah. It’s the address to their grandmother’s house. The grandmother who isn’t a grandmother. I took it from Clockwork’s commlink. I’ve already verified its location and legitimacy.”
“You hacked that hobgoblin’s commlink while you were in that drone?”
“Something like that.”
Mack stared at Slamm-0! and caught the subtle smile on the young man’s face. “You used the comm and spoke to keep his attention focused on you while you were hacking him.”
Slamm-0! didn’t agree, but he didn’t deny it either.
Well, I’ll be damned. Wonder if this guy wants a permanent gig.
“Clock’s biggest weakness is he’s full of himself. He thinks he’s untouchable.” Slamm-0! grinned. “I just counted coup. We need to go.”
“All right—other than the sheet, Preacher—let’s un-ass this place and get going.” He planned on questioning Slamm-0! more later on this technomancer girlfriend. Given what Hestaby had requested for his job, he felt a little bit easier having someone who was sympathetic to the TMs.
But a girlfriend?
They were out of the apartment and back in the GMC in under two minutes. Shayla checked the address, but drove in the opposite direction.
“Where are you going?” Mack asked.
“To the club. Given the time of day, and the fact that if Tetsu’s heading there and any other players in this game might be as well, I figured we’ll want an aerial arrival.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Draco powell’s Office
Undisclosed Location
Los Angeles
Early Saturday Morning
Draco Powell sat back in his tailor-made chair. He wore his monocle and his gloves, his attention focused on the icon taking up most of his AR’s desktop.
His office was safely ensconced within a converted warehouse on the edge of the city, one of Prospero’s holdings in the Los Angeles area—like a few of their holdings throughout the Pueblo Corporate Council. He had the building converted into a holding pen, one part of it surrounded by a Faraday field, something he found blocked out a technomancer’s ability to connect with the Matrix. Or connect to anything else.
When he put his hand down to stroke Hyde’s fur, he felt a twinge of regret and deep sadness as he remembered his pet was no longer there. His wolf had been killed by that damn security guard, and his prize had gotten away.
But not before Hyde had injected a tag into the back of Tetsu’s neck. Unfortunately, with the technocritter dead, Draco had no way of utilizing the advantage.
He chose Shax, an ork whose technomancer abilities attracted Draco after his move from Aztlan, to replace his wolf. Shax had been one of the dwarf’s early extractions, but Draco found the tusked creature had a natural affinity for the dark. And so far, the ork had proven himself loyal, and someone who could be trusted.
Throughout that partnership, Draco watched Shax’s persona darken to something he knew was unredeemable. Caliban said Shax was a servant of dissonance, something the AI had been studying. Whatever it was, it had also changed the ork’s physical appearance. Shax was thin for his kind, his head a bit larger than it should be, and his gaze was something Draco refused to get caught in.
The ork stood by his side during the communiqué with Caliban’s mouthpiece. Puppet, more like it. Her name was Sycorax, and she made his skin crawl. She was pale like bleached bones, with black hair, lips, and nails. Her eyes were so dark, devoid of color, and her teeth… Draco didn’t like Sycorax. And he knew the feeling was mutual. “I believe my suspicions are correct. I sent you my notes on exactly what the blood said.”
“Which could have been your overactive imagination. Everyone devoted to Caliban knows about the prophecy. And I saw nothing in that report to say this particular technomancer is the Soldier.”
He shifted in his chair. She was being stupid. Very stupid by not giving Caliban what he found. It wasn’t a coincidence the blood had given him the exact prophecy that drove the AI to find a way to transcend his Matrix existence and touch the Resonance Realms. Since the shaman they’d extracted from Mount Shasta had first given Caliban the prophecy, only to be promptly killed in a fit of childish rage on the AI’s part, it had searched the Matrix for anything remotely resembling the Soldier, and killed it as well. No—annihilated it.
Shax shifted on his feet, but kept quiet. Draco knew the ork was just as disgusted as he was with this tool.
“Sycorax, let me propose a scenario. Let’s say something was missed during Caliban’s search—it’s just a proposal. And let’s consider that magic—something you have no concept of—revealed maybe not the clue, but a clue, presented a sign for Caliban as to where to find the Soldier and the code? And you, in your infinite wisdom, denied him the chance to investigate for himself?”
Sycorax’s expression didn’t change. It n
ever did. Except for a slight narrowing of her eyes. It was the only sign Draco had that he’d touched a nerve—one he’d played with before. He waited, as did Shax, to see if the harridan would take the bait.
And he wasn’t disappointed.
“I’ll consider your…proposal. But for now, I suggest you do what you were sent there to do and either extract more technomancers, or lists of known subjects. I’m afraid Caliban…” she glanced off to her right. “Had a bit of a—moment.”
“Oh?” Draco leaned forward. “Would this have anything to do with the new blackout on the UV host?”
“One of the technomancers caught in the trap was able to send a message before he was consumed. Caliban didn’t react well to that.”
“Sycorax,” Draco put his gloved hands on the desk. “Please tell me he didn’t short out the entire collection.”
“No. But a fourth of it before we could calm him down. We’ve been incinerating bodies all morning.”
Shax finally spoke up, his voice deep with a touch of raspiness. “Who did this technomancer send a message to? Have you taken care of the problem?” When Sycorax didn’t answer immediately, the ork laughed. “You haven’t!”
“You need to keep your pet in line, Draco. I’m afraid this one’s not as obedient as Hyde was.” She smiled. The facial change did not reach her eyes. “We’re handling the problem. Just bring in what you were sent to bring in. I’ll…consider what we discussed.”
The connection was severed.
Draco pursed his lips. “Shax, you think you can trace who received a message from someone in the game host in the past twenty-four hours? Find a last minute send?”
“Easy.” The ork held out his gloved hands and moved them around the space in front of him. “Done.”
“Good. Alert me when you have a name.” He cleared his AR desktop and sat back. “Any success hacking into the tag on Tetsu?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Shax said as he faced Draco. “Though I have attempted it.”
“Have you found any other clues as to where he might have gone? Or who helped him out of the building? Preliminary reports say the alarm was tripped at the source—meaning in the building maintenance grid. Someone either did it physically, or it was hacked. No one was caught on camera, so it had to be someone from the outside. I would assume they left a signature of some kind.”
Shadowrun: Dark Resonance Page 13
