Dead Air

by Jak Koke

  "Mana bramble?"

  "It’s an LA phenomenon," Synthia said. "Because of all those mages playing with magic at UCLA, astral space around here is full of interference that sometimes makes magic unstable, unpredictable. A mana bramble is a localized contortion of astral space. It won’t stop us from going in physically, but it looks like a demilitarized zone in the astral."

  Venny leaned forward from his seat behind Jonathon. "I’ve got a twitchy feeling about this run," he said.

  Jonathon glanced back at him. "You want to cut out?

  The internal cameras show all clear."

  Venny shook his head. "Magic can fool cameras, chummer. And Syn can’t project inside to do an astral scan."

  "Could be just a coincidence."

  "Maybe, maybe not," Venny said. "Either way, I don’t like it."

  Jonathon lowered the Hughes Stallion to the tarmac. "Neither do I," he said, "But we’re here. Shouldn’t we have a look? I’ll keep the rotor humming."

  "If you say so."

  Halfchrome popped the side door open and jumped out. "We’re on," she said. "I’ll patch my cyberoptic camera through my headphone."

  "Copy," said Jonathon. Then he switched to her video feed, which the helo’s communications relay picked up. The image was monocular, coming only from her single cybereye. The resolution was low and jumpy, like watching a rapidly changing set of still shots.

  Samantha glided out after Halfchrome, carrying her combat SMG at ready, braced in the crook of her elbow. The human’s movements were superfluid and oh-so-quick thanks to the move-by-wire implant that bulged slightly on her neck. She flickered to Halfchrome’s vanguard position, slicing across the helipad to the rubble of the ruined doorway.

  Halfchrome glanced inside, the red laser sight of her Berretta SMG tracking up the blackened walls for a second before she ducked back.

  Nobody.

  Nothing to see but scorch marks along an empty hallway.

  Halfchrome waved Synthia and Venny to join them. "Seems clear," the dwarf subvocalized. And as Venny accompanied Synthia across the short distance to the twisted and shattered doors, Halfchrome followed Samantha inside.

  The video jumped and hopped as she ran, giving Jonathon a brainache. The white walls were streaked with black burn marks. The carpeting was melted in a blast pattern. Someone else has been here and hit Michaelson already. "Grids," Jonathon said. "You sure this is the right place?"

  Grids let out a short laugh. "This is it. Noodle says the hotel records show Michaelson never left. Of course, he comes and goes as he pleases because Saeder-Krupp owns the place."

  In Halfchrome’s video link, the red dots of the laser sights were the only lights in the hall. The short hall ended at a set of double doors, joining another dark hallway leading off to the right. Still no sign of security or hotel personnel.

  The doors opened easily as Noodle accessed the locking mechanism through the hotel’s security node. The decker had to bypass the printscanner and unlock the door. Then the four were inside, scanning the suite with their laser sights, trigger fingers ready. Coming up blank.

  The cameras hadn’t been lying; the suite was empty and clean. The bed hadn’t been slept in; no clothes in the closet. Michaelson’s stuff was gone.

  Paranoia clamped strangling fingers on Jonathon’s throat just then. A trap, he thought. "This is fragged," he said. "Back-track. Now! Full retreat!"

  And just as the words left his mouth, he saw the brilliant flash of white light through the video linkage, overloading the dwarf’s cybereye. There was no sound, though, and for a split second communication was out, and all he heard was the faint hiss in his head.

  Then Venny’s voice cut in, "Jonathon, did you hear me? Synthia’s gone."

  "What?"

  "She just fragging disappeared."

  36

  The ancient refinery stood dead in the early morning light. This was Wilmington, in the industrial Harbor District, just on the edge of the Barrens—an area of factory waste, quake-tossed concrete and steel, and insane gangs.

  Not the most pleasant place in the Sixth World, thought Cinnamon as she looked at it from astral space—dead gray metal, a lifeless wasteland beneath the lightening haze. Bardolf and Githon, her two earth elementals, accompanied her, but they did not manifest when she did. She assumed her human guise—Cinnamon, a sexy blond in skintight synthleather pants and jacket.

  Oil-blackened metal columns seemed to suck the sunlight from the air, darkening the cold spaces beneath the growth of ancient pipes and tubes.

  "Hendrix?" Cinnamon called softly.

  A metal door, large enough to admit a tractor rig, creaked open on her left, leading into a low-slung warehouse of corrugated black metal. Hendrix glanced out, and the light behind him caught the shining silver of the skillsofts that bristled from his shaved head. He waved her inside.

  The smell of incense and scented candles rolled over her as she entered the warehouse. Normally, she would never have come in person to check on the progress of a run. Normally, she merely paid for success, withheld funds in the case of failure, and punished incompetence. But this was far from normal.

  No, this was a fragging emergency. And not one she was happy about.

  Sludge and blackened goo stuck out from the elbows of the old oil pipes that ran along the high ceiling and walls. Dim incandescent bulbs lit the black with their yellow globes. The floor was oil-stained duracrete, stretching thirty or more meters into the darkness.

  A hermetic circle had been drawn in the center of the floor; Juju Pete’s construction designed to hide Michaelson. To mask his presence from searching eyes, and to protect him from ritual spells until tomorrow when Tashika could take possession.

  The circle was one of the largest Cinnamon had seen, ornately drawn with fluorescent powder of red and blue. Juju Pete had drawn patterns of happiness and melancholy, faces with painful eyes, but smiling lips. Deception inherent in the images themselves. Tiny voodoo dolls sat interspersed within the patterns, each simple yet different. Cinnamon noticed several dragon-shaped dolls among them.

  Interesting . . .

  The hermetic circle’s astral image was a swirl of color and contradiction. Hints of powerful magic intermixed with a constantly shifting current of illusory elements that served to hide the whole construct. If she weren’t so close, Cinnamon might overlook the astral image of the circle and the spell.

  Which is the whole idea—to hide Michaelson from Lofwyr.

  Hendrix skirted the circle, leading Cinnamon around to where Layla slept on a small cot, her broken leg in a tight brace. Hendrix seemed fatigued himself, stopping by Layla’s cot and sitting in a vinyl seat he’d pulled from an old Eurovan.

  Inside the circle was Juju Pete, hobbling around on his crutch as he continued to build the spell ritual. The mage looked like a relic from the past—his braids, tipped with bone, swayed and slapped against his back and chest, bare except for the intricate tattooing and the skeleton necklace he wore.

  Over his blue jeans, Juju Pete wore a non-invasive brace on his wounded leg to allow him to walk. His leg had been severely damaged in an earlier run. Nearly blown completely off. It looked like it would be long in healing.

  Michaelson slept restlessly on a cot identical to Layla’s, except that it was inside the circle. He wore a blue-gray business suit and his briefcase rested under the cot.

  Very good, Cinnamon thought. She stood just outside the circle and called to Michaelson, "Hello, Mr. Michaelson. Please wake up."

  Michaelson stirred, then sat up when he saw her. "Hello, Cinnamon," he said.

  "I trust you are not injured," she said. "This setup is inconvenient, but it should suffice until we can get you to your destination."

  "I owe my life to you," Michaelson said. "And these very competent people." He indicated Hendrix and Layla.

  "Your money will be adequate," she said. "I trust you have all the documents?"

  Michaelson’s face went white. He took a breat
h before answering. "Most," he said. "Not all."

  "What do you mean? What’s missing?" This is not funny. "Lofwyr sent somebody to see me." Michaelson swallowed hard. "He suspected something, I’m sure. He burned the Magus File and was going to take me to Germany to have me killed."

  "He burned what?" Cinnamon felt the edge rise inside her, the loss of control that sometimes came with the hunger.

  "Don’t be upset. I had no way of knowing he was already here," Michaelson said. "My secretary told me he wasn’t expected until later today."

  "Oh, I’m not upset," Cinnamon said, the surge rising like a tide inside her. "I am fragging slotted off!" Her voice rose until she was bellowing. She turned away from him and let out an inhuman roar to vent her frustration.

  I will crush this puny human, she thought. I’ll take his weak flesh between my claws and pulverize him. Then slam the bits and pieces that hang limply from his dead form into the floor. Over and over.

  But she couldn’t get into the circle without major effort, not without revealing what she was. Besides if I lose control, I'll forfeit my chance for this man’s spirit energy, the sweetest nectar of all.

  Cinnamon clenched her fists and tried to relax, to maintain her composure. After a minute she pulled a cigarette from her gold case. She lit it and took a satisfying drag.

  "I. . . I’m . . ." Michaelson said. "I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you if I can."

  She ignored his whining attempts to placate her while she smoked. Then when the edginess had retreated slightly, she turned to face him. "You have made me into a liar," she said. "I do not appreciate that."

  "I never meant—"

  "Shut up!"

  "Sorry."

  "I have promised that information to certain parties, and if it cannot be found, someone will have to pay." Michaelson sighed. "I will compensate you for any inconvenience."

  "Yes, you will, Mr. Michaelson. You will." Cinnamon gazed hard into his eyes. "And you just better hope your value doesn’t keep slipping. You’re a corporate, you should know the rules better than most. When an asset declines too far, the wisest course is simply to dump it." Cinnamon tilted her head back and blew out a long plume of smoke. "Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Michaelson?"

  37

  "Look for her!" Jonathon screamed. "She must be somewhere."

  There was no reply for two, three heartbeats. Nothing but the rushed whisper of feet across the carpeting and the rapid scanning of the empty room through Halfchrome’s vid linkage. Showing a room that was just as empty. Just as silent.

  Like a tomb.

  Grids’s voice cut in, "Alarms are going off," he said. "Some tricky delayed thing we couldn’t trap. Sorry."

  "We’re falling back," came Venny’s voice after a minute. "With all this astral interference, I can’t begin to trace her."

  Venny led the retreat, followed by Halfchrome and Samantha, running the short distance to the Hughes Stallion. Syn, Jonathon thought desperately, what happened to youl Why did I agree to let you come?

  The door slammed and he lifted off instinctively, flying by gut, down along the waterline and back the way they’d come. He felt detached from his body. Separate, isolated.

  A cold melancholy seeped into Jonathon as he flew, feeling the cool wind off the ocean swells as he rocketed just above the surf. He cranked the Hughes Stallion, his metal body, to the red, trying to warm the freezing chill inside. The sinking sensation in the heavy pit of his gut that he’d seen the last of his love.

  "Venny, tell me exactly what you saw," Jonathon said.

  Venny gave him a sad look. "It’s hard to explain," he said. "Synthia and I came up behind Samantha and Halfchrome. I glanced around in the near dark, but saw nothing.

  "Synthia was standing next to me, just a step away, scanning the astral to make sure we weren’t hit with a trap. I was trying to keep tabs on the astral myself, but the landscape kept changing. Suddenly there was a blinding white light like a flash grenade, but no concussion report. Just the light. I turned toward it, trying to blink away the glare, and saw . . ."

  The sky grew yellow in the east as Jonathon angled the Stallion around the line of desalinization plants. The water was deep green, punctuated by floating debris and drek. "And saw what?"

  "Nothing."

  "What do you mean nothing?"

  Venny frowned. "I mean, nothing. I didn’t see the world at all. Not the penthouse suite, not the furniture and the walls with the afterglow of the flash on my retina. Instead I saw blackness, void. . . . Nothing."

  Jonathon banked the helo in toward the old LAX. "That’s it?"

  "No. In the astral, I saw something. The ward that surrounded the suite fluxed just at that time."

  "Fluxed? What the frag does fluxed mean?"

  "I don’t know how else to describe it. And I didn’t really get a close look, but that ward wavered and moved. It closed down on the spot where Synthia was standing and collapsed."

  Jonathon started bringing the helo down on the cracked and pitted concrete that had once been a runway. He parked it behind Hemmingway’s modified jet hangar, and powered down the rotor.

  "Then when my eyes adjusted," Venny continued, "she was gone. Vanished. No trace even in astral space."

  As Jonathon stepped out, his legs nearly gave way beneath him. I might never see her again. He steadied himself against the side of the helo.

  "Jonathon," Venny said, supporting the elf with his massive arm as they walked inside the chateau. "You need rest. Frag, I need rest. Please sleep."

  The rooms inside were modern and lush despite the walls made of rough-hewn gray rock. Jonathon and Synthia had been given a room decorated with rich velvet curtains along the walls and a white tiger rug over hardwood flooring that looked like actual wood, not synth. Two white terry cloth bathrobes had been laid out on the king size, four-poster bed.

  When Jonathon saw Synthia’s dresses, pants, and shirts hanging in the closet, he went blank. The hiss rumbled like background noise in his head and he just stared at the clothes as if his brain had gone into sleep mode.

  Syn, what the frag happened to you ?

  Venny snapped Jonathon out of it a minute later when he opened the huge wooden door. "You’re not asleep yet?"

  "Huh? Oh, yeah, I’m getting there."

  "Well, since you’re up, there’s a call for you," Venny said. "I turned your telecom off so you could get some rest, and I was going to take a message, but it could be important."

  "Who is it?"

  "Dougan Rose."

  At the sound of that name, the hackles rose on Jonathon’s neck. "Let me talk with him alone," he said. "Thanks." Venny nodded and walked out, closing the door behind him.

  "Telecom on," Jonathon said to the trideo unit in the enclosed oak cabinet. The doors of the cabinet powered open to reveal a screen divided into small squares, each one representing a telecom line. Dougan Rose’s face showed on line three. Jonathon touched the screen below Dougan’s image, and the other elf’s face expanded to fill the whole screen.

  Dougan smiled when he saw Jonathon. Dougan’s elven features showed fatigue, and his exoskeleton sparkled a deep blue like a second skin around his neck.

  "What do you want?" Jonathon said.

  "I called to apologize," Dougan said. "And to offer you a job."

  "Go fuck yourself."

  "I’m serious," he said. "First of all, it was an accident that Tamara died. I meant to hurt her, not kill her. I am sorry she died."

  "You’re stuffed to the gills with bulldrek."

  Dougan’s green eyes sparkled as he held Jonathon’s gaze. "You’ve got to believe me," he said. "I’m telling the truth. Perhaps her trauma patch was tampered with." Jonathon felt his knees go weak. He stared at Dougan’s face, into his almond eyes. Trying to see the lie, trying to piece together a gestalt of tiny clues that would give him proof that this elf was evil and must be destroyed.

  He couldn’t see it. He didn’t believe Dougan, but neither did he know for
certain that the other elf was lying. Maybe Dougan is right, he thought, Tamara’s trauma patch could’ve been sabotaged.

  "I had no reason to kill her," Dougan said. "That wouldn’t have been smart if my . . . associates wanted the information that she had."

  "Is that why you wanted to injure her?"

  "Yes," said Dougan. "Someone wanted her to leave the game early. Wanted to find out what information she had. That someone applied pressure on me."

  "Who?"

  Dougan shook his head. "I can’t tell you. I can only pass along a warning; the people who did this aren’t amateurs. They think you’ve got the data Tamara stole and they want it back. Which brings me to my next—"

  "How did you know to contact me here?"

  "Much is known to me, but frankly, too many people saw you enter The Fixx and go with Hemmingway. Now, may I finish?"

  Jonathon nodded.

  "I have reason to believe your tenure with the Sabers is limited. The team’s major owner is Saeder-Krupp, and—"

  "Yes," Jonathon said. "I can make the connection myself."

  "I’m sure you can," Dougan said. "And that’s why I called. To—"

  "I’m tired of this conversation." Jonathon reached out a hand to disconnect.

  "Hear me out," Dougan went on without missing a beat. "I called to make you an offer. An offer to join me and the Buzzsaws."

  38

  Synthia awoke to a world of silence and dark. She remembered nothing since the raid on Michaelson’s penthouse suite, the flash of light, and the swirling hurricane of astral energy. Then everything went blank, until now.

  Sensations filtered into her awareness slowly. The growing sound of muted tires on pavement. The unbalanced sensation of moving, the feel of a cushioned seat at her back.

  She blinked open her eyes to the dark interior of a limousine. It was larger than Jonathon’s Mitsubishi Nightsky and more luxuriously appointed. Even in the dark, she could make out the wet bar and the simsense decks.