by Jak Koke
"Welcome, Miss Stone," came a resonant voice. "I am called Brackhaus."
Facing her was a human of indeterminate age, slightly shorter than average stature and wearing a dark silk business suit. His aura was that of a mundane, at least it appeared so. He could be masking it, she thought.
"I must apologize for the rude manner in which you were brought here," he said "But it was the easiest way, I assure you."
"Do I know you?" Synthia asked.
"Not directly, but my . . . employer is a benefactor of yours. Funds much of your magical research, if I’m not mistaken."
"Lofwyr?"
"Yes."
Synthia stared at the dark shadow that was Brackhaus. "What do you want?"
"Nothing much," he said. "Merely what is ours."
"Which is?"
"The simsense recording of the Magus File."
"I don’t know what you’re talking about."
Brackhaus snorted. "Come now, Miss Stone, don’t insult my intelligence. I have conducted a complete mind probe on you."
"What? You ..." Synthia couldn’t believe it was possible. She remembered none of it.
"I assure you it’s true. Many hours have passed since you were taken, and it’s mid-morning now." As if to verify his claim, Brackhaus touched a button and let the black shielding glass drop five centimeters. The shielding had an interior layer of plexan as an extra security measure. Light poured in through the crack for an instant before Brackhaus flicked the shielding back into place. "My mages were thorough, and your memory of the pain had to be edited out."
Edited out? Synthia thought. How much power can one person have?
Synthia glared at Brackhaus. "Am I to understand that Lofwyr will cut funding for my research at UCLA unless I betray my friends and get this recording for you?" Brackhaus nodded. "It’s a little more serious than that, I’m afraid."
"What does that mean?"
"This chip must be retrieved before it is translated," Brackhaus said. "And all copies destroyed. We wouldn’t want to have to kill anyone who knew too much. The less your friends know about the chip’s contents, the better their chances of staying alive."
"Fine," Synthia said, trying to make herself comfortable in the too-soft seat. "I think you’ve made that clear. What I meant was—"
"What else have I done to coerce you?"
Synthia nodded.
"While you were unconscious, our doctor injected a suite of symbiotic nanites into your blood."
"What!" she yelled, her heart sinking. She struggled to breathe as her throat closed down. "You put machines inside me?"
"Little biological time bombs, to be exact. They manufacture a lethal toxin and store it. Without an injection of monoclonal antibodies, the molecular clock in the symbiotes will trigger the release of the toxin into your system. You’ll die in a matter of minutes."
Bile rose in her throat. She doubled over, clutching the black hole in her gut. Damn.
"The molecular clock was set for twelve hours. Once we give you the antibodies, the symbiotes will die. No harm done."
Synthia looked up through bleary eyes at the little man. "You understand nothing," she said through clenched teeth. "What you have done to me cannot be undone. You have violated me. Raped my flesh."
The manabolt spell itched in her mind as she focused on it. She would fry this fragging exec to an oily black smudge on the seat.
"If there had been a choice—" Brackhaus began.
She let the spell fly, seeing the spell form in astral space and ground through Brackhaus. But the energy flowed around and over him, not penetrating his aura, which remained unchanged.
"As I was saying," Brackhaus continued. "We would have used another way, if there had been a choice." Synthia cast another spell, trying to burn him with a hellblast. But Brackhaus moved at blinding speed, touching her forehead. "Sleep," she heard as she slowly sank into the abyss.
"I can’t have you burning my limo." The words were fainter and fainter as she fell. "You will explain that you were caught in an astral vortex and slipped into unconsciousness. You don’t remember anything." Brackhaus’s voice was barely audible. "I expect to hear from you by early this evening."
Then her head fell against her chest and she remembered no more.
39
Jonathon saw Synthia’s face in his dream, the delicate brush strokes of her features smiling under copper-colored hair that glowed red in the streaming sunlight. She bent down and kissed him, ruby lips pressing softly against his. Moist and warm.
Jonathon put his hand in her silky hair and pulled her head tight against his. He kissed her hard, turning to bring her into bed with him. Her weight felt real. Her smell, that scent of summer wind and roses, was strong and undeniably sweet. Everything about her seemed too real.
This was not a dream at all.
He held her tight against his chest and breathed, closing his eyes for a long moment before opening them again. Before breathing again.
Synthia was still there in his arms, her delicate nose nuzzling behind his ear. She was alive! How? "I love you," she said. "I just want you to know that I love you."
Jonathon couldn’t let go. Refused. "Are you all right?"
"I’m a little scared," she said. "But I’ll be all right. I just want this to be over."
"What happened to you?"
"I was caught in an astral vortex or a trap of some kind," Synthia said. "I thought I could destroy it at first, but whoever placed it has a lot more skill and power than I do. I went unconscious and woke up in the back of a corp security van about two hours ago."
Jonathon squeezed her. Spirits, he thought, I've missed her. "But I escaped," she went on. "Summoned Ilopos and burned them and their drekking van to cinders."
"I thought you were dead," Jonathon said. "I thought I’d killed you too."
Synthia ran her hand over his naked chest. "You didn’t do anything, Jonathon. I made the decision to go." She straddled him and began unzipping her synthleather halter. "I. have to take responsibility for my own actions," she said, pulling off her top to reveal beautiful white breasts.
"Well, I’ll certainly take responsibility for this action," Jonathon said. He lifted his head and took one rosy nipple in his mouth.
Synthia gave a barely audible sigh and leaned down over him, moving her hips. She smiled and pushed his shoulders down into the pillow. She kissed his forehead, his lips, neck, and chest. She trailed her hair over the hard muscles of his chest and stomach as she worked her way down.
Down until the heat of her mouth enveloped him, and for the next few minutes his mind went blissfully blank. His thoughts only on Synthia and his building ecstasy.
And after, he sat up and slowly undressed her, sending her clothes fluttering to the floor. Her body glowed under him, radiating passion as she moved against the soft silk sheets. He kissed her, slowly, gently at first, trailing his tongue across the succulent landscape of her flesh. Pressing his lips into the curves and hollows of her body.
He took his time, building her slowly to a frenzy. Until, finally, she shook with orgasm, bucking her hips, raking her nails into his scalp.
He moved slowly up to kiss her, lay with her a while. Their embrace calm, content. And sometime later, after closing his eyes, he entered her and they made love that way. Holding onto her as if this might be the last time he would ever have with her. Desperate and wanting. Urgent and impossible to quench.
And later, after sleeping awhile, they made love again, both tired but unwilling to release each other. Until they were too exhausted to stay awake.
It was several hours later when Jonathon’s headware woke him. Someone was fragging with his remote rig, sending him something that felt like a gentle tickle in the back of his head. Must be Grids, he thought.
Jonathon disentangled himself from Synthia and crawled out of bed, careful not to wake her. Pangs of hunger jabbed him in the gut as he wrapped one of the thick, terry bathrobes around him and silently stepped o
ut the door.
Jonathon met Grids in the next bedroom where the big Fuchi simsynth was set up next to the cyberdeck. A cluster of fiber-optic lines connected the two machines. "Come in, come in," Grids said, also wearing a terry bathrobe over his thin, ghostly pale body.
Sunlight blazed through the room’s two-meter-tall leaded glass windows. Beyond, Jonathon saw the wall of the hangar, verdant green ivy draped over the steel girders that held up the structure. The huge windows in the wall showed a view of water and flooded buildings that used to be part of the airport years ago, and beyond them, the ocean.
Jonathon pointed to his head. "Did you—?"
"Yeah," Grids said, a wide grin on his face. "A little wake-up call."
"What’s up?"
"Goofy finally finished decoding the Magus File." Grids held up a datajack. "Here, I want you to keep a copy in your head, just in case something happens to these chips."
Jonathon took the ’trode and slotted it. A few seconds later the contents of the Magus File were safely nestled in his headware memory. He’d go over them in detail later, but now he was hungry.
"Good job," he told Grids as he unjacked and looked around the room for some food.
"Thanks," Grids said. "The only thing I haven’t decided is whether to stash a copy on a Matrix-accessible site."
"I don’t think so," Jonathon said. "At least not until we know what we’re going to do with it."
Grids nodded. "That’s why I hesitated. By the way, did I hear that Synthia was back?"
Jonathon smiled. "I don’t know, what did you hear?"
"Just the usual grunting, screaming, and rhythmic squeaking of the bed."
Jonathon’s smile broke into full laughter. "Sorry if we kept you awake, chummer."
"Don’t be," Grids said. "I seem to have a knack for voyeurism these days."
"Well, she’s back anyway. Got caught in a magical trap of some kind." Jonathon explained about the astral hurricane and Synthia’s escape from the security van. As he spoke, he walked to a tray of french sourdough and pate on the bedstand.
He spread a thick layer of the pate on a slice of bread and took a huge bite to satiate the growling beast inside.
Grids sipped from a cup of soykaf while he listened. "I’m glad she’s all right," he said. "But this is far from over. The Magus File is serious drek."
"You’ve read it?"
"Just the first part," Grids said. "And even that’s enough to know why we’re fragged up the yin-yang." Jonathon finished his bread in one bite and started to fix himself another. "Tell me," he said.
"You want the short or the long version?"
"Short," Jonathon said. "I just want to know how much drek we’re into. I’ll review the text myself later."
"We’re in drek so high it’s clogging our ears."
"Just give me the short scan, okay?"
"You remember the tsunami in ’forty-five?"
"The one here in LA?"
"Yeah," Grids said. "An off-shore oil rig blew its old-style fusion reactor, remember?"
Jonathon nodded. The damage from the tsunami and the fallout had destroyed the coast and the beaches from Ventura to Oceanside. Some of the damage had been repaired, but many places, like LAX, had been left to flounder and rot away. "I wasn’t here at the time," he said. "But I heard about it." Frag, who hadn’t?
"Rumors flew on Shadowland about who was responsible," Grids said. "But no evidence was uncovered. None. You know how rare that is? To completely sequester all evidence of something that big?"
It boggled Jonathon’s mind to think about it.
"Part of the Magus File contains data on the cause of that explosion," Grids went on. "Hard data. I’ve almost been afraid to read the rest of it."
"What does it say?"
"The short scan is this: Saeder-Krupp hired some shadowrunners to break into an offshore laboratory run by Aztechnology. The lab had been there about ten years or so and still ran on an old fusion reactor. Guess what kind of experiments they did there?"
"Just fragging scan it to me, okay?"
"Biological artificial intelligence."
"Is this what you were talking about before?"
Grids nodded. "The rumor on Shadowland was that the Azzies were attempting to make a bio-AI with sections of brain tissue. The Magus File not only confirms that, but it has details on how to do it. They succeeded in creating one over ten years ago!"
Jonathon sat on the edge of the bed.
"But it wasn’t stable, at least that’s what they think. When the runners attacked the lab, trying to infiltrate and secretly steal the Azzies’ data, the AI detected them and went paranoid. It took control of the fusion reactor and blew itself up. Committed suicide."
Grids was silent for a minute, taking another sip of his soykaf.
"How do you know this data is real?" Jonathon asked. "To prevent the AI from gaining access to the Matrix, Aztechnology kept the lab computers totally isolated," Grids said. "That’s why the runners had to physically infiltrate the old rig. Once inside, they uploaded most of the files via satellite link to an S-K databank. It’s all in there. Read it and drek your pants."
"Now, you think S-K is building one of these bio-AIs?" Jonathon asked.
Grids shrugged. "It doesn’t matter," he said. "They could just be holding the info for later. But the fact that we have it is a problem for them. They’ll kill us to prevent its dissemination, and others will kill us to get it. Either way we’re fragged."
A knock on the door interrupted them. Grids checked the security camera. "It’s Venny," he said, opening the door.
Venice Jones entered, dressed in his usual gear. Loose-fitting black pants with lots of pockets, a black long-sleeved shirt, synthleather gloves. Mirrorshades.
Jonathon scowled at him. "Have you slept?"
"Yep," Venny said. "Caught a good four hours of down time, though I had to endure some noise coming from your room." He laughed.
"Yeah, well, we had fun."
"I’m sure you did," Venny said. "Anyway, I thought it might be time to head for the stadium. You did say something about competing tonight, didn’t you?"
Jonathon thought about it. He wasn’t sure anymore. Synthia’s disappearance had spooked him. Derailed his momentum. And Dougan’s offer was sounding more and more tempting. Transferring to the Buzzsaws might just solve all their problems.
Provided Dougan is telling the truth, he thought.
Jonathon looked up at Venny. "Yes," he said. "And I need to get there early to think. Let me get dressed, then you and I will head for the stadium."
Venny nodded.
Synthia was still sleeping soundly as Jonathon crept back in and put on some clothes. He silently packed a bag with some extras. Then he donned his duster, feeling the weight of his Predator II and the extra ammo.
Just as he was about to leave, he turned back to gaze at the sleeping face of the woman he loved. So serene. So beautiful and childlike she seemed.
I can’t risk losing her again, he decided suddenly. I don’t care what I have to do to protect her. He knew then that he would contact Dougan Rose and accept his offer to join the Buzzsaws.
Later, after everyone was safe, he would resume his quest to avenge Tamara’s death. Neither Dougan Rose, nor his . . . associate would be exempt. Jonathon would kill them both. But first, he would bargain for the safety of his friends.
40
Synthia woke to a dim room, sunlight blazing through the cracks around the window shades. She rolled over and discovered that the big bed was empty. Jonathon was gone.
Where is he? she thought. A quick astral reconnaissance told her that neither Jonathon nor Venny were in the adjacent rooms. Then she checked the old-fashioned analog clock on the wall. It read a quarter past two. Jonathon might’ve gone to the new LA Coliseum to run the maze and begin warming up for tonight’s championship match.
Synthia quickly got out of bed, showered and dressed in a flower-print summer dress before going to s
ee Grids. She had no idea how she could get the chip from him without his knowledge. Perhaps a spirit could be told to steal all of his chips, then she would simply destroy them all. But even that couldn’t happen with him in the room.
Perhaps he could be persuaded to join her for breakfast.
She knocked on the oversized wooden door. Grids answered, wearing only his white bathrobe. "Synthia, come in, come in."
"I thought you might like breakfast or lunch or something," she said.
Grids pointed to a tray of fruit, french bread, and pate. "I’ve been munching all morning," he said. "Besides I want to make some more copies of this chip. Goofy has finally decoded the whole text. Can you believe it?"
She could, but didn’t want to. "That’s wiz," she said. "How many copies have you made so far?"
Grids picked up two chips off the case of the simsynth. "Just these two," he said. "Plus the one in Jonathon’s headware."
"Where?" Her voice rose imperceptibly.
Grids looked askance at her.
She forced herself to speak evenly, calmly. "Isn’t that going to put him in danger?"
"Only if one of the bad guys finds out," he said.
Spirits! she thought. That makes things a lot harder. Then she remembered the symbiotes in her blood and nearly fainted. Without the antidote, she would die. Without the chip, there would be no antidote.
"Did Jonathon go to the stadium?" she asked.
"I think so," he said. "Venny went with him."
"Did he say for sure he was going there?"
"Yes, but—"
"But what?" Synthia said, her voice rising again.
Grids shrugged and took a drink of his ’kaf. "I don’t know, it just seemed like he had something else on his mind. Like maybe he was going somewhere else first."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, he got this call from Dougan Rose while you were gone."
"Dougan? What did he want?"
"I don’t know," Grids said defensively. "I didn’t talk to him."
"Well, what do you think Dougan wanted?"
"It’s just a hunch, but I think he offered Jonathon a deal. To get everyone out, safe and sound."
