Who Hunts the Hunter

by Nyx Smith

  And then they’re tearing at each other’s clothes and jerking around, tussling, twitching, shivering, gasping, lunging together. It’s like a fight, but every move sends them flying closer to climax, and when it’s all over they’re both winners.

  “Are you happy?” Minx whispers.

  “Sure,” Monk replies."With you.”

  “Me too.”

  It’s hard to believe how his life has changed since he met Minx. She got him a SIN, not a SIN with his name, but a SIN’s a SIN. Some of her friends got them whole new identities and the jobs with the Newark Coroner’s office, and even keyed them on this new apartment. The apartment’s not very big—not here in Newark’s Sector 3—but it’s their space and now they’ve got the nuyen to do what they want with it.

  Mostly, they’ve just thrown down a few mattresses and lots of cushions and pillows, installed a big mother-fragging telecom, and tacked some of the Minx’s pictures to the walls.

  The pictures are jewel. They come from all over the sprawl, pictures of bodies, corpses, hanging out of wrecked cars, lying in streets, on stretchers, some missing body parts, or with holes in their heads or other places, drooling blood and gore and various internal organs. One of the best ones shows this slag’s decapitated head sitting in the middle of a transitway lane with its eyes wide open and an expression like, Is this for real?

  Monk chuckles, just thinking about it.

  When he finally gets around to writing his TV/3V script or simsense treatment, the one that’s going to make him famous and rich, so rich he’ll make money just moving his bowels, he’s going to have to write in a big part for Minx, just to thank her.

  He’ll make her a novastar, as big as Taffy Lee.

  Even bigger.

  Brobdingnagian.

  Nude, and gorgeously lovely, Minx leans down over him, smiles, and kisses him."Listen, booty,” she says."If I told you we had to go do something, would you do it? without asking why? Do you trust me that much? Do you?”

  Monk ponders."Sure.”

  Minx smiles and nuzzles his cheek, and strokes his neck, making his nerves tingle all the way down to his feet."We have to go see somebody,” Minx says.

  “Wiz,” Monk replies.

  “He’s kind of different. You might think he’s strange.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We call him the Master.”

  “Yeah?”

  Minx smiles and nods.

  “Nova.” The Master.

  Why not?

  32

  The morning is hell. The Human Genome Group fires off a batch of priority reqs for some rush project that absolutely requires her personal attention, and Mr. Audit, Kurushima Jussai, requires her personal explanations for any number of trivial matters that any ordinary wageslave could understand.

  On top of that, she can’t keep her composure. Wildly emotional thoughts keep popping into her head. Scottie’s back! He’s alive! Amy’s forced to run off to the lav or take refuge in her office to grin like an idiot and brush tears from her eyes.

  When she thinks of all the times she worried that Scottie might have succumbed to the dangers of some dark corner of the sprawl, gotten mixed up with shadowrunners, or worse ...

  All she can do is shake her head and moan.

  Harman calls, and immediately notices the conflicting emotions on her face. She’s hardly begun explaining when he says, “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

  Trying to explain about that brings her back to earth. She stalls by talking about her and Scottie as kids. That gives her time to try to understand why she’s never mentioned her brother to Harman. It’s more than just a lapse of memory. It’s a deliberate omission that she’s considered at least in passing dozens, if not hundreds, of times, and it disturbs her.

  Having a shaman for a brother, if that’s what Scottie really is, isn’t something a straight suit should brag about. Shamans don’t make good suits; corps and corporates mistrust them. That fact has influenced her in the past, when Scottie wasn’t around, when she and Harman were new, but she won’t let that affect her anymore. If Harman really cares about her, and wants to forge a future with her, this is something he’ll have to accept.

  He seems to take the news all right. Before she’s finished, he smiles oddly, and says, “Does this mean you’ve got magic genes?”

  “Oh god, no ...” What a joke."I’m as mundane as they come.”

  “Suppose you have children?”

  Now that’s a sudden, frightening turn-about. Amy hesitates. The thought holds her speechless, if only because she can’t honestly answer it with a definite no. Science has yet to determine exactly what is the genetic difference between a magician and a mundane. There’s no way she can be absolutely certain that any child she might have would not turn out to be magically active.

  “Amy, I’m just kidding.”

  “I’m sorry. I just—”

  “No, I’m sorry,” Harman insists."Of course you don’t see anything funny in this. It was a foolish thing to say. I apologize.”

  Amy draws a deep breath, and says, “Does this change anything?”

  “What, your brother? I’d like to meet him. But this certainly doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

  “I’m so glad you said that.”

  “Well ...” Harman smiles warmly, but that fades into a matter-of-fact expression, sincere but sober."I won’t say I’m not surprised. In fact, I may be more surprised than I realize, if you know what I mean. As far as anything else goes ... well, why don’t we talk this out over dinner?”

  “Yes, you’re right. Let’s do that.”

  This is all very new; they both need time to adjust. Better they should leave thoughts about children and magic till they’ve had their dinner and that talk about the future.

  Once they’ve disconnected, Amy turns to the serious business awaiting her: the mystery datafile from the Metascience comp network. Getting focused takes a real effort.

  The mystery file, apparently a record of payments, contains an entry for every one fo the twenty-seven items the Resource Consumption Control program failed to note as consumed. The entries in the file also include a total of thirty-three names, apparently names of corporations.

  Amy keys her desktop term into Hurley-Cooper’s accounts payable database. Whenever something is purchased, an entry is made into the payables database to provide a record of the monetary transaction. For each of the twenty-seven unaccounted-for items, there should be a record of payment including specific information on where the money went and how it got there. And, she soon determines, the records are there for every last transaction.

  According to the payables records, the money for the twenty-seven items went to the same corps named in her Purchasing records. There’s absolutely nothing indicative of fraud or even sloppy record-keeping.

  Next step.

  Amy keys her desktop into the LTG and calls TransUnion Intercorp. She selects the TUI Corporate Profile database. TUI has general business information on everyone, practically every last corp in the world, large and small. If the corp’s registered anywhere, TUI has a profile. Within ten minutes, Amy’s downloaded profiles for every name in both the Payables database and the Metascience mystery file. After just a brief look-through, she closes her eyes.

  She is in a nightmare with no way out.

  Another twenty, twenty-five minutes of sorting through text windows confirms her fear. The names in the Metascience file are not part of someone’s online fantasy. They are the names of corporations or the divisions of corporations, and every one of them is related in some way to the corps in the Accounts Payable database.

  What does that tell her? For a moment, she can’t figure it out. She sits back in her chair and stares at the ceiling and tries not to think of Scottie or the newly arisen implications for her relationship with Harman. So someone at the Metascience Group is keeping separate track of payments made to Hurley-Cooper’s vendors. So what?

  But that’s not the issue.<
br />
  The names—that’s the point. Why bother keeping a record of payments if you only have to did into Purchasing or Payables to find out who got paid what, and when? There is no real point unless the actual payee does not go by the name emblazoned on the Hurley-Cooper electronic draft.

  And so what? The corps in the Metascience file are all related to the corps in the Purchasing and Payables records. Corporate divisions and subsidiaries swap funds every day of the week. It’s a perfectly legitimate and integral part of doing business. What’s the issue?

  Amy knows the answer to that too well. The issue is that you don’t take merchandise from one organization and pay someone else. You pay the people who deliver the goods. Because whoever made it and got paid for it is going to be held liable if the merchandise doesn’t perform to spec. In a case where limited partnerships or joint ventures complicate matters, you make damn sure the path of liability is blindingly clear, and in any event you get everything fully documented.

  The implication then, if Amy can believe it, is that the vendors in the Purchasing and Payables Records are not really the organizations that made and sold the twenty-seven items she’s been trying to account for. The real vendors are named in the Metascience mystery file. Or are they?

  Amy looks at the corporate profiles again, and starts keying telecom codes. She starts with the corps listed in her Purchasing records, then goes on to those from the Metascience file.

  “We’re sorry, the number you dialed has been disconnected ...”

  “We’re sorry, the number you dialed is not in service ...”

  “For directory assistance, please dial ...”

  Not one call goes through.

  Maybe the telecom codes are old. TUI’s profiles aren’t always up to date. A common problem with the database. Amy tries Telecom Directory Assistance. No luck. No listings for any of the corps on either of her lists. Maybe the corps were absorbed by other corps and the telecom codes all changed. Happens every day. She tries the TUI Special Service Bureau. Her answers are not long in coming. There’s no record of any of the corps having been acquired by anyone. So either the corps no longer use telecoms, or they’re defunct. Or they were never anything more than registration papers and bank accounts and descriptions in databases like TUI.

  Fronts, in other words. Phony corps.

  Prospective vendors are routinely checked out in order to prove that they’re more than electronic shills, but that doesn’t mean the checks are foolproof, and the growing likelihood that Hurley-Cooper has been scammed makes Amy angry enough to want to shout.

  Instead, she pounds her fist against the desktop, hard enough to hurt herself, then sits back in her chair again and covers her eyes with her hand. Never mind whether or not the twenty-seven unaccounted-for items were ever used. Were they ever received? Did Hurley-Cooper actually get anything for the money it spent, or did the nuyen end up in someone’s private account?

  And what the hell does she do now?

  33

  Afternoon fades into evening. Tikki watches and waits. The street before her is a side street and it’s almost suffocating, crammed on both sides by jammed-together three-story brownstones, sidewalks glutted with people, curb lanes packed with parked and abandoned cars. Everything is stone and metal and plastic and pushing, jostling meat. Tikki wonders how she could ever have seen anything appealing in this choking crush of metahumanity. The smells, the sights, and the sounds all speak of the two-leg infatuation with things, machines, ornaments, trinkets. Nothing that really means anything. Nothing of significance.

  Her cub has meaning. She isn’t entirely sure what the meaning is, or what words might be used to describe it, but the meaning’s there. She can feel it, smell it. Waiting somewhere, in some corner of her mind. She feels like finding her cub might be the most significant thing she’ll ever do. Instinct reminds her of it with nearly every breath.

  She sits in the driver’s seat of a Eurovan parked at curb-side, around mid-block. Eurovans are made in New Jersey, very common. This one is dented and rusted. The windows are darkly tinted. It blends well with the street. Tikki sits and waits because waiting is part of stalking. She’s undercover, using cover, not merely in her human guise, but in a costume that no one would readily associate with her Striper identity.

  Gold-blonde synthhair cascades over her shoulders and halfway down her back. Scenes from Taffy Lee’s latest simsense production wash across the gleaming black macrotech of her jacket. Black lace gloves cover her hands. A skirt clings to her hips like a second skin. Crimson LED roaches dart up and down the webwork of her stockings, disappearing beneath her skirt and into the black synthleather booties strapped for her feet. Facepaint, earrings, chains, and bangles complete the image. She’s just another lowlife gutterpunk waiting for tomorrow’s high to come along and find her, like most of the two-legs she’s seeing on the street.

  Hours pass. Twilight settles in and the two-legs prowling by assume a darker cast. The predators are coming out. None give Tikki anything to worry about. She keeps her attention focused on a particular house just across the street. No lights, no sign of movement. No one’s gone in or out since she arrived. The telecom that called the office of NewMan Management Systems on five separate occasions is supposed to be inside that house.

  Is this O’Keefe’s house? or just another deceptive front? Time she found out for certain.

  She leaves the van and crosses the street. Her Magna 2 passkey cycles the lock on the front door. She steps inside.

  Nearly every living thing leaves traces in the places they inhabit. The traces build up till they color the air, giving the place a definite character. This particular place stinks of elves.

  Nobody’s home. She knows that even before the door swings open. The background stench of elves doesn’t confuse that recognition, no more than a profusion of potted plants might fool her into thinking that she’s stepped into a forest somewhere. Live bodies give off fresh scents that are unmistakably distinct from the stamp of smells impressed on a place over time, and the smells here are all old. Exactly how old she isn’t sure: a few days or so. Her human-shaped nose isn’t quite as acute as the real thing.

  She takes a look around.

  The house is narrow and deep. There are five levels, including a basement workshop and an attic for storage. Ground floor: living room, kitchen, dining room. Second floor: bedroom, den. Third floor: more bedrooms. Stairs connect the main floors. A pull-down ladder connects to the attic. The furnishings are dark and heavy and seem of a masculine character.

  The smells carry her back to the Road to Nowhere, a memory of cool air, trees, snow and ice, then an image of the tall lanky figure that stood before the Mostrans hovertruck in front of the cabin. She remembers his gray and white camo, his rifle, his scent. Before another moment has passed, she’s certain that she’s come to the right place—his place—his home. She finds some documents to confirm it in the second-floor bedroom, made out to the name of Elgin O’Keefe.

  Bounty hunter. Former mercenary. The question Tikki asks herself is what a two-leg like that would want with her cub? Did someone offer him a bounty for her cub? That seems unlikely. Tikki doubts that anyone but her and the cub’s sire even knew the cub existed. Could this be some enemy’s way of taking revenge against her? She feels forced to acknowledge the possibility, but she’s not comfortable with it. Anyone wanting revenge should have just ordered her killed.

  O’Keefe obviously knows some things about Weres. He knew enough to be waiting with enough firepower to knock her down and keep her down while he and his partners made off with the cub. What else might he know? What might he expect?

  None of this really makes sense.

  If he knows that Weres begin life on four legs, not two, he might assume she has more in common with so-called animals than metahumans. In that case, he should expect her to come after the cub, but not very far. No ordinary four-leg would come chasing all this way after a cub. The ordinary female would follow only until
scents dwindled and disappeared, then forget it. Look ahead to another season, another mating, another litter. In the wild, the dangers are many and the young are easy targets. Losses are inevitable. Four-legs know that. They’re too concerned with survival, with hunting down the next meal, to go much beyond their territory and waste time on fading memories, dwindling like fleeting scents.

  Of course, if O’Keefe knows her rep as Striper he might expect her to seek revenge at any cost, if only to repay those who shot her up.

  Maybe that’s part of the plan, inciting her anger, inspiring her to seek revenge, in order to lure her somewhere. But why bother taking the cub? Shooting her and killing the cub would be the most effective way of rousing her rage. She might have gone completely wild. She might have gone so crazy that she’d walk willingly into a trap.

  Maybe some collector of exotic creatures hired O’Keefe to capture something really special. Maybe O’Keefe began by targeting Tikki, but then, discovering her cub, opted for the easier target. That seems logical, but most likely it’s all part of some scheme that no one but an elf could understand. A conspiracy that ultimately has nothing to do with Tikki or anything she cares about. She and the cub are simply being used. That’s what elves do.

  She’s in the process of deciding what to do next when she hears noises: the click of a lock, the thump of a door.

  The smell that comes into the air stands out starkly. A female elf has just entered the ground floor hall. The elf grunts and says, “Where’s your fragging telecom, Tang?”