Who Hunts the Hunter

by Nyx Smith

  It will have to suffice. They’ll have no second chance.

  O’Keefe flips open the cover of his wristfone to call for the muscleboys he’s engaged for the occasion. Striper looks to weigh even more than he had supposed, 300 kilos at the very least. Alone he’d never get the beast out of the building, much less to her destination.

  Fortunately, they don’t have far to go.

  45

  The roar of the minigrenade seems likely to shake the old brick walls of the tunnel into dust. Brian’s Nightfighter visor shows the muzzle of Art’s Ares combat gun spitting red fire. Twenty meters up the tunnel a figure nearly the size of a troll staggers, slumps to the ground, then explodes.

  There’s no other word for it, but it’s like no explosion Brian’s ever seen in his life, not even during the flame-up he attended in North Africa with Commando One. The figure on the floor of the tunnel glows like a lamp, then suddenly the grayish dark of the tunnel is filled with streaks of dazzling white, flashing outward in every direction, like headless comets going faster than light. Art shouts; Brian goes prone. The flashes of white vanish through the tunnel walls, ceiling, and floor, and then the real strangeness begins.

  A greenish sort of haze, sparking and glinting like some high-tech energy shield, swells out of nothing to fill the tunnel like a barrier between the fallen body and Brian and Art.

  “What the frag ...” Brian feels the hairs standing up on the back of his neck."Art?”

  No answer.

  Then an orangey sort of orb, semitransparent, like a bubble, but about the size of a melon, rises from out of the prone figure and floats up into the haze, then drifts up and down like it’s bobbing gently on zephyrs of air.

  A second orb rises, then a third, and a fourth ...

  “Watch it, kid,” Art growls."Don’t shoot. You’ll bring the whole tunnel down.”

  “What the ... what are they?”

  No reply.

  Three of the orbs come floating nearer: one high, one low, one in between. They come through the sparking greenish haze like it isn’t there. The lowest of the three comes drifting right toward Brian’s visor, then slowly turns and disappears through the floor of the tunnel. The other two drift past Art. One pauses mere centimeters away from the muzzle of the combat gun, then slowly rises and disappears through the tunnel ceiling. The third and last drifts on by, down the tunnel and out of sight.

  “Mother of Mercy.” Brian crosses himself.

  But then Art’s moving ahead. Brian gets to his feet and follows. The greenish haze is gone. Twenty meters further on they pause beside the body. It’s sure big enough to be a troll, but it looks like none Brian’s ever seen. It’s half melted into the floor of the tunnel. The chest is an empty cavity, like melted plastic, everything fused and congealed and scorched black, and it smells really bad.

  “This is magic,” Brian says."This is fragging magic!”

  Art turns to face him, lifts up the visor of his Kelmar helmet, scowls, and says, “You don’t know the half of it, kid.”

  Brian rubs at the thick stubble swathing his face. They’ve been down in these tunnels too fricking long.

  46

  At just past ten a.m., Amy steps into her outer office, palmtop in hand."I have some business to attend to,” she tells her aide Laurena."I should be back around two.”

  Laurena lifts her eyebrows in question.

  “Let’s say I’m in conference.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Ask me that sometime tomorrow.”

  Laurena clearly wants more info, but Amy turns and walks away. She takes the elevator down through the levels of the underground garage to the subway and takes the next train to the Bronx Terminal Market. There she finds a little shop, black drapes obscuring the interior, the front window marked, “Madam Ortiz.” The front door lets into a small space swathed in more black drapes, centered around a small table with a crystal ball. A fat woman wearing a bandanna and masses of gaudy jewelry sits behind the table. She draws back the end of the drape hanging behind her, and says, hushedly, “Spirits are calling.”

  Is she serious? or overly melodramatic? Amy hasn’t time to worry about it. She steps past the drape, into a dark space that leads to another door, which leads to stairs, which lead down to the parking garage beneath the market. There she spots a white Toyota Elite and walks straight to it. Scottie waits in the passenger seat, wearing a dark gray suit. Amy gets in behind the wheel.

  “Are we in the clear?”

  “So it seems,” Scottie replies.

  The car is rented. Amy ordered it this morning from a payfone. She did that for the same reason that she’s meeting Scottie here, for the same reason that she left her Arbiter GX at New Bronx Plaza, and the same reason she bucked the crowds on the subway. Scottie said they have to be careful. When he left her condo last night, someone was watching, watching him or watching her, or maybe both of them.

  She hands him a plastic laminated badge that ID’s him as Scott Hatsumi, an auditor for Kono-Furata-Ko International.

  “How did you get this?” he asks.

  “I lied,” Amy says bluntly. She didn’t actually lie, but rather led someone to presume something that wasn’t true, and that amounts to the same thing. She isn’t happy about it, either. Unfortunately, she couldn’t see any alternative."Just clip it to your pocket and forget it. Don’t plug it in anywhere or every alarm in the world will go off.”

  Scottie nods.

  “You’re sure you understand what we talked about?”

  “I understand.”

  “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

  “Don’t you believe me?”

  Belief isn’t the issue, at least not in the way Scottie means. She believes what he says, of course. What she finds hard to believe is that her head-in-the-clouds shaman brother has come down so close to earth that he actually wants to get involved with her problems. He’s always seemed so completely detached from the corporate life that she used to wonder if he knew even corps existed. She can’t help wondering now if he really understands what she’s told him, the very pressing but starkly mundane problems afflicting her little slice of the corporate domain.

  But of course that’s unfair. She really should give him some credit. After all, Scottie’s survived all these years without a single nuyen from her or their parents. He couldn’t have managed that without being at least a little in tune with reality. No one could. Considering what he’s said about some of his experiences, he’s probably better equipped for this morning’s adventure than she is.

  “Keep to the local streets,” Scottie says."They might be watching the highways.”

  “Who ... oh, never mind.”

  It’s useless to ask.

  Amy starts the car and drives them out the 150th Street ramp to River Avenue. It could be anyone watching them, if anyone is actually watching. It could be KFK, it could be some corp out of Scottie’s past. Scottie’s been very careful so far to mention none of the names of the people and corps he’s been mixed up with since he disappeared, except for Shell, his girlfriend. That’s how he wants it. Amy’s not entirely comfortable with that, but she’s trying to accept it. She’s also trying to deal with the concept that Scottie, by his own admission, has not only worked with shadowrunners but has gone on clandestine and illegal forays against various unnamed corps.

  It’s enough to give her pangs of guilt, to make her feel like a criminal herself.

  Evidently, she’s about to become one.

  She must be losing her mind.

  Scottie says his involvement with shadowrunning was limited to instances where corps, while legally in the right, were morally in the wrong. Amy reminds herself of the similarities between cases like that and her present situation. What they’re about to do is totally wrong and illegal, but they’re doing it for the right reasons. Ultimately, embezzlement is a sort of treason, and a crime of that magnitude must be uncovered.

  Letting the ends just
ify the means is arrogant and unethical and she hates it, but she’s just desperate enough to give it a try.

  Jerome Avenue brings them to the main entrance plaza of the Van Cortlandt Industrial Park. Dark blue cars and security vans marked for Apollo Services line both sides of the road. Amy slows the Elite to a stop at the guard booths crossing the plaza. She runs her window down to show an elven guard her ID. The guard looks across at Scottie.

  Scottie holds up his card.

  “Have a better tomorrow,” the guard says, waving them past.

  Amy drives ahead. Does she have any hope of succeeding at this? She supposes that if she’s still got a job by this time tomorrow she’ll have her answer. She has no doubt about what Enoshi Ken or anyone else with KFK International will do if they learn that she’s bringing a known shadowrunner onto Hurley-Cooper property. She’d be lucky to simply lose her job. More likely she’d end up in jail.

  Why the hell did she let Scottie cajole her into accepting his help? Only last night she’d made up her mind to approach Dr. Hill openly, and now here she is hoping her shaman brother will be able to finger anyone who lies. She isn’t losing her mind—she’s lost it!

  Never mind about her career! If Scottie’s caught ... if he’s found on corporate property ...

  They’re both dead, dead and buried.

  She turns the Elite into the hedge-lined entrance to the Hurley-Cooper Metascience labs. Two blue-uniformed guards stand flanking the lane. Amy stops the Elite between them, shows her ID, then lets the retina scanner confirm her identity.

  Scottie whispers something. Amy hears it, not with her ears, but somewhere in the back of her head. She feels it raising the hairs all along her spine. She struggles to suppress a shiver, then sees both the guards looking at Scottie so oddly.

  “I’m Mr. Hatsumi,” Scottie says.

  “Yes, sir,” the guards reply.

  “My ID checks.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “You can go on ahead.”

  It’s that easy—they’re in, without another word said.

  What is she really doing here? Why is she bringing Scottie? It’s more than just fraud or her career or any of the other explanations she’s been feeding herself. More than anything else, she wants to prove her fears wrong, her suspicions groundless. For that, she’s willing to risk everything. Maybe with Scottie’s help, she’s got a chance.

  47

  The suit doesn’t fit very well and it hasn’t got anything like the number of pockets he wants, but that figures. It’s in the nature of suits. The corporate lifestyle is constricting and confining, so it’s only natural that a suit should force him to make compromises. The problem with compromises is that they prevent him from bringing certain items that might be of use.

  Security at the entrance to the Hurley-Cooper Metascience Group facility doesn’t seem very extensive. Raccoon could get inside blindfolded. One simple spell and it’s done.

  The building at the end of the lane doesn’t look like much: two stories of vine-encrusted brick. Bandit wonders if such a place could contain anything interesting, but then reminds himself that he’s here to help his sister. Helping Amy. That’s the only reason he’s come. He’ll have to keep that in mind.

  A faint shimmering appears in the air. Bandit shifts to his astral perceptions. The raccoon-shaped figure of a watcher spirit sits facing him from the dashboard."All clear, Master."

  No one’s following."Keep watch on the car."

  “Yes, Master."

  In the background, the Metascience building glimmers and gleams with the reflected energy of life: swirling, coiling, winding all around the building like eddies in a pool, seeking the deepest point.

  “If anything happens,” Amy says, “if anything goes wrong .. . Scottie, I want you to get out. Do whatever you have to do but get away.” She puts one hand on his arm."You know what I’m saying, right?”

  “I understand.”

  Amy’s very nervous. The anxiety shows clearly in the turbulence of her aura."You sure you want to do this?”

  “Yes.”

  Amy parks the car before the main entrance to the building. They walk into the lobby. A uniformed guard and a dark-suited receptionist stand behind the reception counter along the rear wall. They do not even ask to inspect IDs. A glance at the cards is enough.

  “Where would I find Dr. Hill?” Amy asks.

  The receptionist looks at something behind the counter, and says, smiling, “Dr. Hill’s in his office. Shall I ring him?”

  “Just say Mr. Hatsumi and I are on our way.”

  They go through a set of double doors and down a long hallway lined in gray and yellow tiles. On the astral, energy pulses and flows in diverse directions, and something’s not right about that. Bandit gains a vague sense unlike any he’s felt before, a sense of being trapped, with no way out. The very life energy flowing around him seems to reverberate with vague, discordant emotion.

  They go through a door marked Lab 16 and enter a large area, a laboratory. Innumerable devices and equipment, bubbling and humming, cover the many black-topped counters and tables that divide the room into aisles. All except for the circular space at the center of the room. The floor there is marked with circles. Hermetic circles, Bandit guesses. A metal rack holds numerous large tomes. On the astral, all are radiant with power.

  The moment Bandit steps into the room, his sense for discord rises sharply. Despite the nexus of glowing life energy at the center of the room, nature at its purest, he feels that he’s entered a vault of horrors, a killing ground. A mood like death presses at him from all around the periphery of the room. Tones and colors of thought conjure images in his mind of many living things, small and great alike, giving up their life energy here, dying, in fear and terror.

  Something growls. For an instant, the growl seems directed specifically at him, but then he’s back on the physical plane, looking around with his mundane eyes. To his mundane ears, the growl seems strange, kind of savage, but lacking in real menace.

  Bandit turns down an aisle, stepping toward the far end of the lab. He sees a small cage with heavy bars. Inside it is a cat the size of a large dog—a tiger cub, Bandit realizes. He’s seen creatures like it at zoos and museums. But this is an odd one. Maybe some Awakened species. Its fur is red with black stripes. Is astral form is that of a tiger cub. Much as one would expect.

  “Mr. Hatsumi,” Amy says.

  Bandit turns around. Amy’s waiting beside the door to an office. The man standing in the doorway looks middle-aged. He wears a shirt and tie beneath his white lab coat. A rather plain mage’s wand made of some black material protrudes from the hip pocket of his lab coat. On the astral, he’s obviously an initiate, glowing with arcane knowledge of the higher metaplanes, attuned with the energies of the etheric. Bandit wonders what sort of mage could harmonize with a place like this lab, where so much of nature has been twisted, afflicted, even tortured.

  “This is Dr. Benjamin Hill,” Amy says.

  “How do you do?” Bandit says.

  “Fine, thanks,” Hill replies."It’s always a pleasure to meet a representative of our friends in Tokyo.”

  “I’m glad.”

  They go into Hill’s office, which is like a small box. Another rack of tomes, this one rising to the ceiling, stands beside a chrome-hued desk. Hill offers coffee or tea. Amy refuses. Hill looks to Bandit and waits. Is he waiting for a reply on the question of drinks, or is he looking for something more than anyone has mentioned? Is he strong enough to see through the mask cloaking Bandit’s aura? “I do not care for tea,” Bandit says.

  “Coffee then?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Hill’s aura changes subtly. He seems very slightly disturbed. He steps around behind his desk and sits down. He sneezes.

  “Bless you,” Amy says.

  “Thanks.”

  “You use animals in research,” Bandit says.

  Hill looks at him blankly
, but his aura remains disturbed."Well, yes,” he says, hesitantly."Yes, that’s true. But of course all the animals we use are bred specifically for research, with a few limited exceptions. Without them, we’d be severely handicapped.”

  That answer does not seem to justify the way nature has been tortured in this place, but Bandit recalls his reason for being here. He forces himself to keep silent.

  Amy goes on to explain about the reason for this visit.

  Outwardly, she seems matter-of-fact, sober, serious, resolute, the dedicated suit going about her business; on the astral plane, her anxiety is apparent in the slowly shifting, turning, blending colors of her aura.

  “All this began,” she says, “because the audit staff is questioning a number of items that were purchased but apparently never used. I conducted a survey of the Metascience databases, but twenty-seven items remain unaccounted for."

  "That sounds like a clerical glitch,” Hill remarks.

  “Yes, it does,” Amy agrees, “but that’s just where it starts. I also discovered a hidden file on the Metascience network. It looks like a record of payments. The dates and nuyen amounts agree with the missing twenty-seven items, but the payee names shown in this file do not agree with the corps named on the Purchasing reqs or in the Payables records.” Hill gazes at Amy for several moments, then says, “I’m a little puzzled. What do you mean?”

  Amy stares back for several moments, then says, “To the audit staff, it could suggest fraud.”

  Hill coughs, then sneezes."I ... I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  Bandit wonders if that’s a lie. If he’d been able to bring certain items with him, he could probably find out. But he’s forced to keep things simple. To watch. Observe. Like a suit. An auditor.

  “The suggestion,” Amy says, “is that the corps listed in the Purchasing and Payables datafiles are not actually the corps who sold us the twenty-seven items. Those corps merely channeled the money to the corps listed in the hidden files on the Metascience network. That in itself brings up the question of liability, if the items don’t perform to spec, but I went a step further. I checked on the corps named in Purchasing and Payables records as well as those in the hidden file on the Metascience network. I discovered that all these are related, and all of them, both sets of corps, are no longer in business.”