Who Hunts the Hunter

by Nyx Smith

  Amy hesitates just for an instant. Kurushima has apparently not come ill-prepared. She wonders why he would name any one scientist. As it happens, his guess is right, but what is his point?

  What is Tokyo really after?

  “Dr. Phalen is an excellent example of what I am referring to,” Amy replies."He has been cited by the Noble Commission for his work in metaserology. His group has provided Hurley-Cooper with some of its most significant patents. Quite frankly, his value to Hurley-Cooper is inestimable. However, he is both a brilliant man and an eccentric man. He could easily triple his salary should he choose to seek employment elsewhere. He stays with Hurley-Cooper because he holds his colleagues here in high regard and he likes the way we do business.”

  At the head-end of the table, Janasova fiddles with his necktie, still smiling, but looking uncomfortable.

  Across the table, Greg Vanderlinde, VP for Research and Development, gives Amy a quick glance and adds a quick nod, as if to confirm what she just said. What he should have said. Greg’s a good man, with a strong science background and an incredible imagination, but he hasn’t got the nerve to stand up to anyone, much less a Tokyo-appointed auditor. How he got the VP post for R&D is really a mystery. Amy suspects he was promoted one step beyond his level of competency.

  Chang’s sweaty sheen has spread to his cheeks. Kurushima gazes at Amy impassively, and opens his mouth to reply, but then Enoshi Ken is on his feet, talking about daikazoku again and how everything can be worked out to the greater benefit of the whole corporation.

  Amy doesn’t believe that for a second. She can see there’s a collision coming. The Tokyo cadre is driving straight at her, whether they know it or not, regardless of what they really want, and she’s put too much effort into her work, and into this corporation, to tug on the wheel and veer off.

  She just hopes her seatbelt holds.

  6

  It’s a little past noon when Brian Guemey eases his battered brown and green Mitsubishi Sunset Runner through the intersection and onto some street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Brian’s heard this part of the city referred to as The Pit, and it’s easy to see why. The buildings are pretty decrepit, the streets are strewn with crap, and the streetlife has the look of chiller thriller go-go-go gangbangers.

  There are no street signs. The building numbers are either hidden somewhere behind steel grilles or mesh gratings or buried beneath about forty gazillion layers of multicolored and mostly illegible graffiti. Brian’s supervisor told him what to look for, but the only thing he really recognizes, as he turns onto the street, is the small group of Sisters Sinister gangers on the corner to his right, and the group of Blood Monkeys on the corner to his left. He’s seen them before on Staten Island and in Brooklyn, though what they’re doing here, in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge, maybe two blocks from the elevated FDR Drive, he couldn’t guess. And he wouldn’t try to even if he could. The gangers look ugly as usual and they’re carrying submachine guns and machine pistols in addition to their usual ordnance. Most of the surrounding streetlife seems intent on getting as far away as possible with no delay.

  About halfway up the block is a DocWagon clinic with metal bars arrayed across its façade of graffiti-covered windows. Brian wonders how the graffitoists got their paintguns in through the bars. Directly across from the clinic, jammed in between slum-rent apartment buildings, is a small structure that looks like it was carved out of a block of grayish bedrock. Brian guesses that’s where he’s supposed to go, based on his super’s descriptions, and pulls his car into an empty space at curbside.

  As he switches off the ignition, the clatter of autofire weapons erupts. Brian leans down across the front seat, covers the back of his head with his sky blue Department of Water and Wastewater Management hard hat, then waits.

  The opening fusillade is followed by a thunderous discharge of guns, like the whole First UCAS Marine had just opened up. That’s followed by a bang and a boom that could be from any one of a number of offensive or defensive explosives, possibly grenades. More bangs, thumps, wumps, and clatterings follow. Brian risks lifting a hand to flip down the sun visor on the passenger side, just to show his orange florescent Department of Water & Wastewater Management Official-Use-Only permit, allowing him to park anywhere in direct violation of law. That’s to show he’s a noncombatant. Just a guy with the D.W.W.M. The “Water” Department. He doesn’t bother anybody, nobody bothers him. Most of the time, anyway.

  A few minutes pass. The gunfire subsides. Brian carefully sits up, looking all around and rearranging his hard hat. Good thing he popped the extra cred for the special Kevlar-3 insulated hard hat, just in case. If his super keeps on dispatching him to neighborhoods like this, he’ll spring for the matching body armor and face shield, too.

  The quiet holds. Streetlife returns to the sidewalks. A few cars pass by. There’s a bunch of bodies sprawled near the corner, but nobody looks on the verge of punching any more tickets.

  Brian pulls his utility belt from the passenger-side floor and gets out. In addition to the hard hat, he’s wearing his sky blue D.W.W.M. jumpsuit. Nobody passing by more than glances in his direction. He’s invisible, or nearly so. Just another grunt for the city making his daily rounds. Too bad he’s not bullet-proof as well.

  He steps across the sidewalk to the rough-faced gray stone building. He’s never been to this particular site before, but that’s no surprise. The D.W.W.M. has literally thousands of sites scattered around the metroplex, everything from management offices in Midtown to sewers out in Queens. Brian notes that the building before him is certainly plain enough, workmanlike enough, to be a D.W.W.M. outpost. There’s a vehicle-sized bay door and a human-sized door, both black. Beside the latter is a black stud like for a doorbell. Immediately above the stud is a mesh-covered speaker and, above that, the lens of a security cam.

  Brian lifts a finger to touch the black stud, but a metallic-toned voice says from the speaker, “Let’s see your ID, kid.”

  Must be some automated voice program, maybe coupled with proximity sensors. Cute. You wouldn’t think that anyone would ever bother breaking into buildings devoted exclusively to either the water supply or the sewers, but, hey, there’s buttonheads everywhere, so security’s routine. Brian holds his D.W.W.M. ID up toward the security cam lens.

  “Okay, kid,” says the voice from the speaker.

  The door buzzes and clicks. There are no handles or doorknobs, so Brian steps forward and pushes and the door swings inward. He’s two or three steps beyond the doorway before he realizes that the shadowy interior is not just a lot dimmer than the sunlight outside, or that his eyes are not just taking an extra moment or two to adjust. The door slams shut behind him and he’s enveloped in pitch blackness, a dark so complete he can’t see a fragging thing.

  “Uh ... hello?”

  “Who’re you?” a gruff voice asks.

  “Hit the lights, willya?”

  “I asked you a question, kid.”

  So much for automated security systems. Confirm name, rank, and ID: nothing new about that."Guerney. Brian. From Metro Two. My super told me to report—”

  “Who’s the Deputy Director for Metro Operations?”

  “What?”

  “Answer the question!”

  “Uh ...” What the frag’s the name? “I guess that’d be Orly. Michele Orly, I think.”

  A match flares so near Brian’s face he jerks back involuntarily. In the light of that small flame, he sees a man’s round face, a face with a balding pate, a thick black mustache, heavy black brows, and eyes that gaze at him intently."Close enough,” the slag says.

  “Who the hell are you?” Brian asks.

  The guy lowers the match. He’s wearing a black vest, like an armored vest. On the left breast is an oval patch with broken block capitals that read, “Art”.

  “You the site manager here?” Brian asks.

  “You ask too many questions, kid.”

  What’s with this “kid” scag?
And what the hell’s going on here, anyway? This guy “Art” is starting to look kind of lu-lu."Hey, if it’s a problem, I can head back to Metro Two. It’s lunch break anyway. Art.”

  Art sneers."Union man.”

  “You ever meet a D.W.W.M. worker who ain’t?”

  “I’m a G-67. What does that tell you?”

  Brian frowns, uncertain. He’s a G-8, himself. His super is a G-12."Nobody’s got a tech rating that high.”

  “You got a lot to learn, kid.”

  Without warning, the lights snap on. Brian covers his eyes briefly, then gets his first clear look at his surroundings and “Art.” They’re standing in a narrow hallway that leads toward the back of the building. Art is about as tall as Brian, which makes him about average height, but he’s chunky, stout. There’s a kind of pitbull-something in his expression that hints he could be a dangerous man in a fight. Beneath the vest, he wears black fatigues stuffed into the tops of mil-style boots.

  They watch each other a moment, then Art reaches behind his back and takes out what Brian recognizes as an Israeli heavy automatic."Know how to use one of these?”

  “What the frag are you talking about?”

  Art flips the pistol to him. Brian has the choice of catching it with his hands or with his face. He uses his hands. Art immediately puts his back to the wall on the left and points toward the end of the hallway, lost in blackness."There’s your target!”

  Something comes rushing out of the darkness. It looks like a gangbanger, maybe one of the Blood Monkeys, outfitted in gleaming synthleather and studs and spikes and chains. The ganger points a submachine gun at Brian’s face. Brian’s reaction is nearly automatic. He drops into a combat crouch and snaps off three quick rounds: two to the chest, one at the face.

  “Bingo,” Art says."We have a bingo.”

  In that instant, the figure rushing up the hallway comes fully into the light. It’s a dummy, like a clothing store mannequin, hung on a wire from the ceiling. The dummy’s weapon, though, looks as real as they come, a Sandler TMP."I’ll take that,” Art says, extending a hand.

  Brian considers the heavy automatic in his hand, and the man before him. Definitely lu-lu-land. Brian pops the ammo clip and ejects the one shell in the firing chamber, hands Art the pistol, but keeps the clip."I’ll hang onto this if it’s all the same to you.”

  “Suit yourself.” Art doesn’t looked pleased, but then he reaches into a pocket of his vest, pulls out another clip and slots it into the pistol, and goes on to cock the slide and return the weapon from where it came, somewhere behind his back.

  “Not bad,” he says, then turns toward the dummy."Chest shots’re okay, but the head shot’s dead on. I guess you gotta be good to make Commando One.”

  “Say what?”

  Art turns and looks at him, nodding."Sure, kid. You wanna play dumb, that’s fine. Null sweat. We’ll pretend you never heard of Commando One. You were never in the UCAS Marines, First Division. You weren’t first in on that little dustup in Morocco. You didn’t see your CO’s intestines blown out and that’s got nothing to do with you coming back to the plex and joining a peaceable organization like the D.W.W.M. If that’s how you want it, that’s fine.”

  Brian says, slowly, “Who the frag are you?”

  “You ask too many questions.”

  “You’re not Water Department.”

  “Oh, no?” Art steps up real close, close enough for Brian to smell his spearmint-flavored breath. His eyes get very intense, his expression like granite. If this is his imitation of a Marine drill instructor, it ain’t half-bad."Lemme ask you something,” he says, quietly."Why do you think you’re here?”

  “I got no idea.”

  Art stares, then says, “I’ll tell you a little story, kid. There’s maybe twenty million people in this megaplex, Jersey included. What do you think those people depend on more than anything else just to survive? What do you think would happen if some nasty little Sixth World virus got into the water supply? Do you have any concept of how fast this whole plex could go down the drain?”

  This is unreal. Brian wonders if he’s hallucinating. No one outside the military knows about his involvement with Commando One, or Morocco, or any of the rest. Art must have some heavyweight federal connections, and yet with all that talk about water .. .

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You heard me.”

  “So what’re you telling me? You’re running some kind of security op to protect the water supply?”

  “We do what we have to do, kid.”

  Brian holds back a sudden flaring of temper. Enough with the “kid” squat, already! He’ll be fragging thirty next week."What’d you mean ‘we’? Who is ‘we’?”

  “You. Me. Anybody the Department needs.”

  “The Water Department?”

  Art nods."D.W.W.M.”

  “And you’re looping me in.”

  “Yeah.”

  “To do what?”

  “Whatever’s necessary.”

  “This is novacrap.”

  Art stares at him a few moments, then says, “How does triple time and a half sound to you?”

  Brian gapes."You ain’t serious.”

  “I’m damn serious.”

  “Nobody gets pay like that.”

  “Maybe you think the lives of twenty million people aren’t worth a few extra nuyen.”

  “I can’t believe the Water Department—”

  “Kid, you don’t know the half of it.”

  “And maybe I don’t wanna know—”

  “Good. You ask too many damn questions.”

  Art turns and heads down the hall toward the back of the building. The lighting panels overhead light up before him and fall dark to his rear. Brian considers making a break for the door, but wonders if he’d live to see the street.

  “You coming?” Art asks from the distant end of the hall.

  "I’m thinking about it,” Brian replies. Triple time and a half? That’s tempting even if Art is lu-lu.

  “Don’t think too long, kid.”

  “There ain’t nothing in the union contract about squat like this.”

  Art nods."You’re right. Forget it, kid. It’s not your job. I’m sure there must be some other slag with your qualifications somewhere in the Department. Lose yourself. I’m not gonna trust my life to some candy-ass punk who can’t hack it—”

  “Now wait one fragging second!”

  “Kid, you either got balls or you don’t.”

  “Who the frag do you think you’re—!” Brian begins, so hot he thinks he might pop, but then Art steps through a doorway and out of sight. The lighting panels above wink out and the hallway goes dark.

  Fragging great.

  7

  Churning storm clouds turn the day into twilight. Sweat washes the blood from her fur and then freezes. The cold crisp air burns her throat and lungs, but the burning soon subsides. Her limbs ache with fatigue, but the aches fade as well. Tikki lopes and runs. The trail is clear before her—the scents, the signs in the snow—drawing her onward. She will never stop, never pause, till she has her cub again and the elves have been repaid.

  The trail of the elves’ ACV follows the old road through the forest, around the foot of a mountain, upslope and down, through dense copses of woods and across half-frozen rivers of broken rock. Every running step, every breath, every current of air slipping past her nose and ruffling her thick fur reminds her of the winters of eastern Siberia and Manchuria. She and her mother once traveled for weeks in search of prey, constantly on the move, testing the air, watching the ground for signs, battling other creatures to prove their right to the prey they hunted. That was when she learned of the strength nature had granted her, that she could push herself to the point of exhaustion again and again, and still continue the hunt.

  Now, she plows over a snowbank two meters tall and suddenly descends to the point where the snow-covered track through the forest meets a narrow, icy strip of pavement called the
Road to Nowhere.

  The locals gave it that name, but Tikki knows that every road goes somewhere, and she’s seen and smelled and heard enough to know what goes on. In the summer, the Road to Nowhere leads directly north to the border between the United Canadian and American States and the Republic of Quebec. The runners who ride this road in every kind of armed and armored vehicle carry cyberware and chips and simsense rigs into Quebec. Such things are taxed very heavily there, enough to make smuggling a lucrative trade. In the night, when the air grows still and hearths glow with heat and liquor paints the air, she has heard two-legs boasting of the fortunes to be made along the Road to Nowhere.

  Two kilometers further on stands the last waystation on the Road: a rickety wooden structure that might once have been a barn or a home, but now serves as a watering hole, an oasis amid the trees and snow.

  A dog begins barking as Tikki approaches, but she knows the dog is chained to a small house at the rear of the tavern and poses no threat. A soft rumble of warning rises out of her throat and the beast abruptly goes silent, smelling like fear.

  Between the tavern and the ice-covered road wait a collection of vehicles, a Sikorsky-Bell Red Ranger, small and swift and heavily armed, a Chrysler-Nissan G12A, and others, vans, pickups, all with custom mounts and oversized tires. Among them sits a boxy Mostrans KVP-14T Air-Cushion Vehicle. It has a weapons pod over the cab. Tikki slips through the shadows to the side of the vehicle and sniffs at the cargo door. At first, she isn’t sure what she’s smelling, but then something changes in the air and she catches the scent of her cub. The scent comes from inside the truck, she’s sure of it. But it’s old. Her cub was here, but now it’s gone. Gone where? She glances around, sniffs the air, then waits.

  Darker clouds boil across the sky. Lightning flashes in the distance. The door at the front of the tavern creaks open and bangs shut. A male approaches, a human male, clad in natural fibers and odd bits of jewelry and smelling of alcohol. A large knife and a sawed-off shotgun hang from the belts slashing across his hips. He slips on the hard-packed snow in front of the tavern and staggers drunkenly. He pulls open the driver’s door of the Mostrans. Tikki steps out from the vehicle’s rear.