You going to open it here?
“Yes. To anyone looking in, all they would see was a diagnostic subroutine running. My being in here doesn’t even make a blip on the host’s running.”
And GOD?
“Even they’re not watching. Why monitor an old coffee shop host that had been hacked three years ago, and is now under the auspice of Knight Errant?”
Ponsu nodded her folded golden beak up and down, then abruptly turned around. He’s here!
That was alarming news. “In this host?”
He’s in the coffee shop.
In the flesh? Kazuma kept calm and opened the briefcase. He took out a thick file and copied it to his commlink. He made additional copies, giving one to Ponsu to hide once again in the Matrix, and returned the original to the briefcase. He carefully replaced it, reset everything as it should be, and stepped out of the host.
The disorientation was brief as he stood up and straightened his suit. Kazuma left the building through the back entrance, locked everything up as it should be, then walked around the front and stepped inside the coffee shop.
Nothing had changed in three years—except the place was cleaner.
Dirk Montgomery sat at one of the small two-person tables near the back. He smiled when he saw Kazuma, but didn’t wave. Kazuma made his way around the crowd and stood at the table. “It is good to see you again, Montgomery-sama.”
“Oh, stop bowing and sit down, omae. And cut the crap with the Nihongo talk. You’re more Californian than anyone in this building, no matter what you look like.”
Kazuma smiled and sat in the chair. “It is good to see you, chummer.”
Dirk winked at him as he lifted his cup of soykaf. The steam curled around his wrinkled face. “You’re gettin’ it. I’ll admit I was surprised to get your message.”
“And I’m surprised you’re here in person.”
“Nowadays, with Overwatch and the demiGODs and spiders…eh…I thought it would be better to just talk face-to-face. Then I can see the sadness in your eyes. I am sorry, Kazuma. I hate what happened to Silk.”
“I’m surprised, but then I’m not, that you know.”
“I’m an investigator. It’s what I do. I also noticed Contagion’s out of business. Bellex has been blathering on and on about how the technomancers destroyed his company—”
“Bellex is Caliban.”
The declaration stopped Dirk. He narrowed his eyes for a second, then lowered his cup. It made a small clink as he set it on its saucer. “Well, that makes sense.”
“Dirk,” he said as transmitted a SIN to the old investigator’s commlink. “I need you to keep that. It’s enough creds to keep looking for Hitori, in case I don’t ever find her. And when she is found, there’s enough to send her back to Japan and bury her with our father.”
“Kaz…what’s going on?” He looked hard at Kazuma. “You’re going after Caliban? You can’t do that on your own. You know how hard it is for anyone, even a technomancer, to fight an AI—”
“It said it has Hitori.”
Dirk put his hands on the table. “No, Kazuma. You can’t believe it. It’s lying to you—”
“And I have its kill switch.” Kazuma kept talking so Dirk wouldn’t interrupt him again; he told him about the owners of Contagion, and what had happened, and what he had on his commlink.
Dirk sat quiet for a few minutes before he picked up his soykaf. “And what if I’m right, and it’s lying? What if it doesn’t have her?” He paused. “What if she’s already dead?”
“Then I use the switch, and it dies. I’ve already told it I have to see her. I have to talk to her.”
“Do you know how to use the switch?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t looked at it yet—”
“You gotta find out how to use the switch first. If you don’t know, it’ll be like throwing rocks at a rock monster. It’s just code about a thing made from code. Chummer, if there aren’t any instructions in that information, don’t do it. Wait. Delay seeing Hitori because it’s all just vapor, Kaz. If what you just told me is right, and what this Netcat said is true about what it was doing to the ones it kidnapped, then you’re walking into a trap.”
“I know I am. It screams trap all over itself. But I’ve got to do this.”
“Take backup. You’ve got a set of shadowrunners ready to back you up.”
“And a dragon.”
Dirk’s eyes widened, and he opened his mouth, closed it, then sat back for a moment. He held up his finger as he quickly leaned forward, poking it at Kazuma’s face. “No! No dragons. Don’t you make any drekkin’ deals with a dragon, you hear me? None.”
“I haven’t. Not yet. But she’s there if I need her.” He tried not to laugh at Dirk’s reaction to Hestaby. It was a response he’d seen many times when talking about dragons. “I can’t wait, Dirk. That thing’s killed what…over a hundred innocent technomancers? And it’ll kill more because of its delusions, because it was pampered and coddled by an insane dwarf who thought he should have been a technomancer. I can’t let it just run around the Matrix and start this all over again. Because that’s what it’s going to do.”
“Wait, Kazuma. Just figure the switch out first.”
Kazuma rose from his chair. “I will. If you don’t hear from me, contact Netcat and let her know what I did. She’ll contact everyone on GiTm0 and let them know.”
He bowed at Dirk, smiled, and left the Cup O’ Sin.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Mack’s Office
Bang Bang Booty Club
Shayla reported in first—she had the car charged and ready.
Slamm-0! had surveillance on the Cup O’ Sin, but Kazuma had already come and gone, and he’d spoken there with someone he didn’t have an ID on yet.
Preacher checked in with the management to make sure there hadn’t been any intrusions or raids while they were gone.
As Mack entered his office, he got a call from Delaney and answered it on his commlink. He still had his mic on and barked into it. “Yeah?”
“Wow, and good morning to you, too.”
“I’m kinda busy.”
“Yeah, I know. Slamm-0! just sent me the recording of Kazuma’s companion, the one he snatched off the security feed. I know who that was.”
Mack stopped just inside the door. “Who?”
“That was the private investigator he hired a few years ago to look for Hitori the first time, Dirk Montgomery. I don’t know why he’d speak to him again.”
“Can you find him?”
“Well, apparently he’s already contacted someone at Lone Star asking about you.”
That didn’t sit well with Mack at all. He narrowed his eyes as he waved a hand and his AR appeared in his cybereyes. “About me?”
“Yeah. I got the call a few seconds ago. He wants to meet in VR with you.” She hesitated. “Now.”
“Now?”
“I’ve sending you the host information. Said it’ll take about five minutes. Then you call me back. Oh, did Slamm tell you about that code Renault found?”
“He mentioned it.” Mack locked his office door and headed to his couch, where he slid his old cyberdeck out from underneath it and pulled the old cables out. He hated that weird, twitchy feeling he got in his toes when he shoved the connector into his datajack. “He’s working on it, but I don’t know if it means anything.”
He received the encrypted information from Delaney and put the coordinates into his commlink before he transferred them into his deck. “You vouch for this guy?”
“Yeah, I do. He’s got a good rep, Mack. You heading in?”
“Yeah.”
“Call me when you’re done.” She severed her connection, and Mack made himself comfortable as he rested back on the couch. The first level he stepped into was the commlink. There he got his programs ready and double-checked, much like a cop preparing to raid a building. Then with a metaphorical deep breath, he stepped into VR and transported to the host.
The subscription provided worked like a charm, and within seconds he stood on a hill overlooking Seattle. He could see the Space Needle towering above the city, its single light pulsing from the top.
“Mr. Schmetzer?”
The persona that approached was a monochromatic image of a man in a battered trenchcoat, with a worried expression beneath a worn fedora over graying temples. He looked like an old noir comic-book character. “Dirk Montgomery?”
“You got him, chummer.” Dirk offered him a hand. They shook and stepped back. “I’m gonna get right to it. Kazuma Tetsu is in this mess because of me, and I don’t want him getting killed.”
“Because of you?”
“A few years ago, he hired me to find his sister. At the time, neither of us knew she was off with friends submerging—I think that’s what they call it. She was deep in VR, playing in the streams, so to speak. She was gone for a while, long enough to scare everyone around her. Nearly lost her job at Ares, but they kept her on after she showed back up again, and Tetsu and I parted company. What I didn’t tell him back then was what I’d found while looking for her—that her name had shown up in connection to the name Caliban.”
Mack rubbed his chin. “Her name came up with Caliban’s name three years ago? But, she wasn’t officially missing then, and if what we’ve learned about Caliban is true, then he wasn’t even introduced into the Contagion system yet.” He paused. “I’m assuming you know about the previous owners of Contagion and Ferdinand Bellex.”
“Kazuma let me know Bellex is Caliban’s persona. I hadn’t figured that out on my own, but let me start from the beginning.” He slipped his hands into pockets as the full moon above them and the lights from the city illuminated his face. “After Hitori showed back up, and went back to work for Ares, she also did some private jobs. She was a good artist, and liked not only working to make more attractive RFID tags, but better graphics in the Matrix. Ares had her working on their own host’s landing site, improving their graphics. And it was during that time she met a man named Radcliff Tolen. He liked what she was doing, and I suspect they knew each other were technomancers. So he hired her to do work on Contagion’s new game, TechnoHack.”
Mack felt his heart jump into his throat. “Drek…you mean Hitori worked on the graphics for that game.”
“Yes. From the information I’ve gathered, she and Tolen had a relationship, both in the Matrix and outside it. And they were both pretty hooked on VR, much like a BTLer. They loved having power in there, and I have eyewitness accounts of other game designers who worked with them.” He hesitated. “They chose a host with a resonance well to build the game on. Purposely.”
“Did she know Powell then?”
“I think she did, but not personally. I think it was more of a friend-of-a-friend kind of thing. She was hired to make things pretty. And she did. Unfortunately, the game attracted a few unsavory elements.”
“You mean the dissonant technomancers.”
“Yeah. Given what I know, between this time and her going missing a second time, the original owners and Powell came to an agreement—on the outside. But I suspect on the inside that Hitori got caught up in what was happening and she was taken out, maybe in the same way as the original owners. I learned about the prophecy and the soldier, and when Kazuma contacted me again and said Hitori was missing again, and this time she wasn’t in the Matrix, I put him on the path of finding those clues. I told him to search for Caliban, to add that to his parameters, and I told him to change his online persona handle to Soldat.”
“Because you knew that would get the attention of anyone following the prophecy.” Mack put his hands on his hips. “Where’s Kazuma now? We know he met you at the coffee shop.”
“He’d hidden the data he found, which apparently contains a kill switch on this AI, in that old host, the one he repaired when he and I met. It was brilliant of his sprite to think of that place. Apparently, Bellex contacted Kazuma and told him he could trade Hitori for the kill switch.”
“Trade…Hitori? So the AI has her?”
Dirk shrugged. “Do you trust this AI? I don’t. Hitori Tetsu disappeared off the grids five months ago and suddenly this AI pulls her out of its back pocket? Unlikely. But what worries me more is that I don’t think Kazuma knows how to use the kill switch. Yeah he’s a great programmer and a great technician—but you know as well as me that things like a kill switch are personal. Not for the thing they kill, but for the designer. He said Tolen made it.”
“Yeah. That’s as much as we know from what Powell said.”
“Then you’re going to need to know more about Tolen. His personality, what excites him, his hobbies—anything that will help Kazuma use that kill switch.”
“Wouldn’t he have that information with the switch?”
“No. If he did and the intended AI got hold of it, then he could reverse-engineer it. I’m banking if Tolen went through the trouble to do it, then he’s wanting that thing destroyed.”
Mack rubbed at his neck. “I’m guessing he didn’t tell you where he was meeting the bastard?”
Dirk smiled and pulled a business card from the inside pocket of his trench coat. “This is the address. He wanted me to contact Netcat and let her know what he was doing in case he failed.”
Looking at the card, Mack downloaded the information into his commlink. The address was local. He pulled in a satellite image and then zeroed in on a range of nice, sprawling houses along the coast. Mack whistled. “Nice digs.”
“It’s part of the Prospero holdings, but they’re listed under Sebastian Unlimited.”
“You really do know a lot about this.”
Dirk chuckled. “Chummer, I know what I’m best at, but this is a young man’s game, and the Matrix is a much more dangerous place today. For example, this host we’re on is accessible through the public grid. But Seattle Overwatch rarely patrols here.”
“Why not?”
The investigator half-turned to leave before he said, “Because it’s in their office.” He tipped his hat. “Always run behind them, because they’re not always looking there. And stop Kazuma from making a mistake. And if you can destroy Caliban…well…then that’s just one more AI we didn’t need.” He rezzed out.
Mack stood on the overlook, and took in the view of Seattle for a minute. It’d been a long time since he visited the city. Maybe after this was over, he’d take a vacation.
As he logged off, he wondered if Delaney had some time off coming.
Chapter Seventy
A hotel somewhere on the Pacific coast
Opening and looking through the data in the briefcase wouldn’t send off an alert. Kazuma knew that. He wasn’t using the public grid illegally, except to spoof a professor’s ID now and then to look something up. But the only illegal thing was the ID, and who knew it wasn’t real? There were several colleges nearby, and Kazuma knew their addresses and names.
The briefcase was full of everything he could ever want when it came to evidence, proving the horrors Horizon had done. Records, lists, memos with signatures all the way to the top. But it wasn’t just Horizon. He found spreadsheet after spreadsheet of departments for all of the Big Six, flagged as Research & Developments where technomancers were taken, housed, and experimented on. He found memos and reports documenting who lived and who died. There were even manuals outlining how to track, subdue, and kidnap technomancers. Plans outlining media blitzes to discredit any technomancer achievements. Propaganda reports varying by demographic regions on where the dumbest metahumans were that would fall for the lies.
He sorted them per corporation until he had a chain of command for each. And though they all denied having any part of persecuting technomancers, it was all right in front of him. Wagner had been thorough. There were vids of private conversations, voice recordings, PAN monitoring—it was all here. Everything he intended to give to GiTm0 for them to disseminate as they wanted.
Kazuma found a two-page report on Caliban, including a copy of his c
ode. In it he saw the switch, the design signed by Radcliff Tolen. He held the kill switch in his hand, written out in two documents—but with no instruction on how to use it. The only note the designer left was a footnote that didn’t make any sense to him.
// ;*Brief Case (* Miranda *)
But what he didn’t find was any information, any list, any document that had his sister’s name on it.
Nowhere in the briefcase was the name Hitori Tetsu.
Kazuma checked the chronometer. He had another hour before he needed to be at the address. But he knew he wouldn’t find Hitori when he arrived. Bellex had lied. Dirk was more than right, and he smiled when he thought of the old man. He’d been with Kazuma since Hitori’s first disappearance.
He recalled how angry he’d been when she showed up in her apartment, excited and eager to tell him what she’d learned in the resonance realms. He hadn’t wanted to listen to her but he had.
“It’s like my own playground, oni-san!” Her eyes had been bright and her cheeks flushed. She hadn’t eaten properly, so he had groceries delivered and cooked for her while she talked. “It’s like…I’m Prospero!”
He had laughed at that. Hitori had always loved Shakespeare, and The Tempest was her favorite. “Is that why you named your sprite Ariel?”
She had made a face at him. “It’s better than naming him after a condiment. I mean, really Kaz? Ponsu?”
“That would have been Ponzu, with a Z. And besides, she doesn’t seem to mind it.” He set out three plates of sashimi and sushi before pouring himself a small cup of sake. He had held it out to her, happy she had returned. “To Ponsu and Ariel.”
They clinked their cups and drank.
It was the last sake he’d tasted. Two years later, and she was gone again…
Prospero.
Ariel.
Caliban.
Sycorax.
Kazuma sat up straight and pulled his AR desktop into existence.
He looked at the footnote again.
Shadowrun: Dark Resonance Page 29
