by Kai O'Connal
“It’s good to see you again.” Elijah slapped the hacker on the back. “What’s with the outfit? The air that bad?”
Leung raised his nose and sniffed. “Depends on the day.” Then he looked back at Elijah. “I thought you said you were never coming back here? Must be a pretty good payday to bring you in.”
“It is,” Elijah replied. “Besides, I think it’s been long enough. I’d like to just put that whole thing behind me.” He hoped he sounded convincing to Leung. “It’s ancient history, and we’ve got enough to do here and now. Here’s the rest of the team you’ll be working with. This is Kyrie, who’s been an able teammate on several missions, and the rather large fellow here is named Pineapple.”
Leung looked up at the troll. “For the fruit?”
Pineapple shook his head. “For the grenade.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, what’s with the … ?” Leung finished his question by pointing to the top of his own head.
“The horns?” Pineapple grunted. He rubbed the pair of stumps where most trolls’ horns would be. “Sawed ’em off,” he said. “Got sick of folks grabbin’ ’em while I was tryin’ to kill ’em. Felt like a goddamn jungle gym sometimes.”
Leung nodded. “Quite reasonable.” He turned to Kyrie and extended his hand. “Very pleased to meet you. Any friend of Elijah’s is a friend of mine, especially when they understand what they’ve been missing by spending so much time with him.”
“Mm-hmm. I hope you’re as good as you are pretty,” she said.
“Better.” He smiled that smile again.
“We’ll see.” Kyrie nudged the troll. “C’mon, Pineapple, let’s load up. We can all get to know each other on the road.”
As Kyrie and Pineapple retreated back into the LAV, the door on the side of the step van slid open with a loud scrape. The woman standing in the opening was not quite four feet tall. She wore gray sweat pants, sneakers, and an oversized, hooded sweatshirt with the hood up.
“We gotta get rolling, Leung,” she called before retreating back into the van.
“Our rigger?” said Elijah.
Leung nodded. “Name’s Cao. From Amazonia originally—Metropôle , I think—but she’s been doing her thing in Chicago for the past couple of years. I’ve worked with her before. She’s very good.”
“Dwarf?”
“Not exactly.”
Elijah frowned. “Meaning …?”
“She’s a goblin.”
Elijah narrowed his eyes at Leung. He knew a few people infected with the HMHVV virus, but he typically kept those relationships casual and at a distance. Even the need for HMHVV victims to eat metahuman flesh was something he could live with if the victim handled their dietary restriction legally, but in a trade where blood spraying was all too common, the threat of infection made them dangerous teammates. Not to mention the fact that few metahumans emerged from the transformation of infection with their psyche wholly intact.
Leung held up his hands. “I know what you’re thinking, and don’t worry. She’s sane and she’s non-infectious. I wouldn’t have hired her otherwise. I know your feelings about that after what happened in Miami.”
“I just wish you’d checked with me first,” said Elijah.
Leung smiled again. “You said you wanted fast, cheap, and good. I told you to pick two. You chose fast and good ’cause you know what cheap really gets you in this game. Nothing was ever said about race.”
Elijah held back a sigh and shook his head. “Fair enough.”
Pineapple and Kyrie exited the LAV with the gear. Kyrie carried a trio of bulging black duffle bags, while Pineapple had two larger bags balanced on his broad shoulders and a man-sized metal equipment crate under each arm.
“Hope you’re not jet-lagged, because we have a meeting in about an hour,” Leung said. “You want to go artifact hunting in Chicago, there’s one guy to talk to. His name Marick. I managed to get a meeting with him on relatively short notice. Bad news is, we have to go to his place.”
“And his place is …?” Elijah asked.
“It’s kind of in the Containment Zone.”
“And by ‘kind of’ you mean …”
“Totally.”
Elijah sighed. “Guess we’re diving right into the deep end of the pool—lovely. All right, let’s go.”
Cao’s van bounced and jumped as it rattled over streets that hadn’t seen a repair crew in decades. The crumbling buildings seemed to be the only thing holding the thick air in the sky; without them, the miasma would have fallen on the streets like a heavy, stifling curtain. And the buildings didn’t seem like they would be up to the task much longer, almost buckling under the strain of holding the thick, humid pollution at bay.
It was dark, darker than in a deep woods at night with no moon. Starlight couldn’t find its way through the opaque air, and most of the buildings had no lights. The few that were working glowed dimly, making the surrounding darkness seem even thicker by contrast.
“So, a morning meeting was out of the question?” Pineapple asked.
“Marick likes the night,” Leung said.
The troll grunted, shifted on the wooden crate that served as his seat, then he poked absent-mindedly at piece of exposed electronics slotted into one of the many racks on the van’s walls.
“Hey, Cao,” he said. “If you’re such a hot-shit rigger, why you drivin’ such a piece of junk?”
Elijah winced. He had wondered the same thing but resisted asking; partly to avoid insulting the rigger, but partly in fear of the answer.
Cao glanced over her shoulder, glaring at Pineapple through narrowed, yellow eyes, and giving Elijah a better view under the sweatshirt hood. Her face was gaunt, nearly skeletal, with no visible hair, and glossy skin the color of cartilage.
“Upgrades.” Cao turned back to the road. “The kind that’ll keep you alive if things go south. In fact, you see that box with the red light on it, about halfway down the third rack? You wanna give that one a push for me?”
“Yeah, sure.” Pineapple reached out and pushed the button. A flash of electric blue light filled the van accompanied by the smell of ozone and a loud zap. Sparks flew from the box as Pineapple jerked his hand back with a shout.
“That’s an IR scanner,” Cao said. “But you’ll wanna watch it. Got a short that gives a nasty shock when it’s turned on.”
Still shaking his zapped hand, Pineapple stared at the rigger, his face darkening. Thinking the troll might be considering tearing the van apart in response to the trick played on him, Elijah readied a stunbolt, just in case. Kyrie, lounging on two of the bags in the back, didn’t even glance in the troll’s direction.
Pineapple threw back his head and let out a rumbling guffaw. “I like this girl already,” he said, showing off his tusks with a huge smile.
Exhaling, Elijah released his gathered spell energy. “How much farther, Leung?”
“Well, at the moment Marick’s holed up in a rented room over a bar called the Crash Pad. It’s in Wicker Park. We’ll just head down Milwaukee, which is in pretty good shape. At least as far as CZ streets go. Assuming we don’t run into trouble, we’ll be there in about twenty min—”
“Crap,” interrupted Cao. “We’ve got trouble.”
Elijah leaned forward and looked out the front windshield. The van’s high beams illuminated a cracked and pothole-riddled road running between two rows of collapsing commercial buildings. About a hundred meters ahead, two three-meter-high piles of rubble blocked the road except for one section, which was barricaded by a pair of trucks. “What is it?”
“Toll booth.” Cao slowed the van as they approached the barricade. People crawled out over the trucks, and for a moment Elijah thought they were going up against some bugs, right here, right now. But then he relaxed—though only slightly. They were people, but they weren’t welcoming. They were gaunt, wiry, and outrageously scarred. A man standing on top of the truck on the right wore a tank top that showed a good chunk of his left shoulder wa
s missing, and what was left was covered by a jagged scar with clear evidence of tooth marks. A woman hanging off the front of the left van was missing half of her lower jaw. Their clothing was more metal than fabric, covered with spikes and hooks and chains. They had clubs and blades, and a few of them held guns. Some of the blades were chipped and rusty, but the guns, each and every one of them, were polished, well-oiled, and gleaming. People tended to become fond of the only thing they trust. They all had dark, haunted expressions on their faces, and Elijah knew all too well what had made them that way.
“Hot damn,” Pineapple said, unzipping one of the duffle bags and reaching into it. “Looks like I get to have some fun.”
“Cool it, big guy,” Cao called back. “There’s an easier way to handle this.”
Elijah’s gaze flicked into the cargo area, where he saw Kyrie poised for action—and that Pineapple hadn’t taken his hand out of the bag yet. Nodding in approval, he turned back to the front.
Cao brought the van to a stop about twenty yards from the barricade, and then turned around to face Elijah and the others. “Let me take care of this.”
Cao stopped the van, turned off the lights, and rolled down her window. A man with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder slid over toward the van, dragging his right leg behind him. Somehow, his bad leg made him seem more dangerous. He had a long, thin face, a hooked nose, and stains on his chin that looked like he had just been chewing on something bloody. When he spoke, Elijah barely recognized the distorted English behind the gravelly rumble.
“Crav off, ya fuckin’ skin-chewing canbo. Nuthin’ for ya here.”
“I’m not staying,” Cao said. “Not doing anything in your territory. Just passing through.”
“Not that ever.”
“I think you have me wrong. I’m not a scavenger. I’m not here to take things. I’m bringing things.”
“What?”
“Supplies. Clinic needs ’em.”
The eyes of the man outside the van gleamed. “Clinic?”
Cao looked down. “Drek. Shouldn’t have said that. But yeah, a clinic.”
“Could talk. Could clout it out.”
“What did you have in mind?”
The man jerked his head toward the back of the van. “Some for us.”
“No. Come on, are you kidding me? Do you know how they are about this stuff? They count every damn pill. Every one. I come up short, they’ll think I stole them for myself. Do you know what they’ll do to me?”
The man grinned, licked his lips, then moved his assault rifle into his hands. “Ya. I know.”
“You’re killing me here.”
“Mebbe.”
Cao shook her head. “Fine.” She turned and looked at Kyrie. “Hand me the box by your feet.”
Kyrie gingerly lifted the box and gave it to Elijah, who passed it forward to Cao.
Elijah looked into the box as it moved forward. It contained a jumble of pill bottles of varying sizes. He read a couple of labels, spotting antibiotics, painkillers, and vitamin supplements, both brand name and generic.
Cao showed the box to the man outside. “All right, look, most of this isn’t going to be interesting to you. Like this.” She held up a brown pill. “Just a vitamin. You don’t care about that, I figure.”
The man only sniggered.
“This is an antibiotic, not really fun,” Cao said, sorting through the box. Then she held up a green pill. “Ah, but this one. Corinol. Pain killer. Not an opiate, but simulates their effect. Good stuff. We could … dig around for a few more of those.”
The man grunted his assent. Then he reached in and started digging himself, pulling out all the green ones he could find. Then he found a small, blue, oval pill. He held it out, showing it to the woman with the missing jaw, sniggering. She rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, fine, keep that one too. Have fun, knock yourselves out. But hey, hey, come on, leave me some of the Corinol, will you? If the clinic doesn’t get any of those—”
She was interrupted by the muzzle of the assault rifle moving into her face. She leaned away from it, still talking.
“All right, all right, fine. Cool it, okay? Drek, fine, take what you need.”
It took about ten minutes. In the end, the man backed away with about sixty assorted pills in his pocket. He motioned toward the trucks, which pulled back, leaving an opening for them.
“Luck,” the man said over his shoulder as he walked away.
Cao scowled as she started her engine and passed through the blockade. She managed to keep the scowl on her face for four whole blocks. Then she shook her head and chuckled lightly.
“There’s no clinic, is there?” Elijah asked.
“Sure there is,” Cao said. “I lifted the pills from ’em this morning. You drive the roads around here, you gotta be ready to pay the tolls.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Fifteen minutes later, the van pulled up in front of a dilapidated, two-story brick building. Once part of a whole row of businesses, the old tavern was the only thing on the street still standing. Its former brothers and sisters lay in shattered piles of brick and steel on either side, and every structure across the street had been bulldozed. The air over the lot was positively thick. Elijah didn’t inhale between the van and the door of the building, just like when he was a child walking by a graveyard.
There was power in the bar—it didn’t take much effort to see that. It leaked in thin but bright strands through the cracks in the boards covering the windows. A buzzing neon sign over the door read -rash P-d, and somewhere in the distance Elijah heard the steady thump of a gas-powered generator.
“Marick is a bit skittish.” Leung glanced at Pineapple. “I don’t think we should all go in.”
The troll had just stepped out of the vehicle. The reflection of red neon outlined the massive gun on his back. The bony deposits on his arm made his muscles look like massive sea urchins.
The troll curled his upper lip. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I get it. Big scary troll’s gotta stay in the car. Whatever.” The van’s shocks groaned as he climbed back in.
Cao, still in the driver’s seat, ran a hand lovingly over the dash. “I wouldn’t mind having someone else out here anyhow. Not many running cars in these parts. Makes my baby a pretty tempting target.”
Pineapple laughed as he shut the door. “Just like piss looks tempting to a man dying of thirst.”
Elijah turned to Leung. Leung still wore his full protective suit, and his gas mask was on. Elijah couldn’t blame him.
“Have you set up a local network?” Elijah asked. “I want to be able to call Pineapple and Cao in if we need them, and I figure we can’t rely on the local Matrix infrastructure.”
“Yes, but I wound it in pretty tight—passive broadcast is only a couple of meters. It’ll let the three of us talk without sending up a flare to anyone running a network scanner. Cao or I can bump it up if we need to.”
Kyrie stepped up next to them. “Works for me. Otherwise I gotta listen to Pineapple complain every couple minutes about how long it’s been since he got to shoot something.”
She wore the black, form-fitting body armor she preferred when she didn’t need to be subtle. She’d been holding a pistol a moment ago, but now it was nowhere to be seen. Elijah wondered where it was for a moment, then hoped he didn’t see it—if it came out, it would mean something had gone wrong.
He smoothed out his own black combat fatigues, trying not to look like some weekend warrior. The clothes were lightly armored and had a few custom add-ons. He’d picked them up a while ago for just this sort of situation. He also verified that his Hammerli 620s light pistol was snug in its shoulder holster. It was mostly for show—he’d never been very good with firearms, depending on magic or well-chosen companions to handle any violent interactions.
Here, though, he might need it. Magic and Chicago didn’t always mix, something he’d learned the hard way. One of the chemicals you sometimes found in the mushy air was FAB III
, the mana-eating bacteria Ares had employed to fight the bug spirits that overran Chicago in the ’50’s. In a relatively short period of time, a FAB III infection could destroy a mage’s ability to use magic. He’d have to keep an eye on the astral and watch for any suspicious spots of emptiness, then stay far away from those locations.
Then there was Chicago’s background count, which was a non-chemical element that made the air what it was. In parts of the city, psychic residue from decades of emotional horrors had warped astral space so hideously that magic became almost unusable. The queasiness, the uneasiness, and the occasional outright terror these spots inspired drove away all reasonable people—and attracted a host of unpleasant beings. Toxic shamans, dark spirits, and twisted beings with claws and tentacles and multi-orbed eyes in places where they just didn’t belong. Back in Seattle, the money Mr. Johnson had been offering—combined with the heat of Knight Errant looking for the people behind the Hayakawa break-in—made this trip seem like a no-brainer. Being on the ground in Chicago, though, was a great way to inspire second thoughts.
“Ready?” Kyrie asked.
Balling his hands into fists, Elijah nodded, and then led them inside.
A potent wall of stench hit him as he entered. The thick mix of sweat, smoke, vomit, and stale beer almost stopped him in his tracks. As the door closed, his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light. Here and there, people huddled around tables, speaking in low voices. Off in the corner a jukebox, missing most of its exterior lights, churned out a clunky, decade-old dance number.
Leung placed his hand on Elijah’s shoulder and said, “Be right back. I need to go talk to the owner.”
As Leung walked to the bar, one of the patrons stumbled up from his seat and swayed over to Kyrie and Elijah.
“Hey darlin’,” the man slurred as he slid up next to Kyrie.
Even through the room’s funk, Elijah could smell the alcohol on him. There was a good chance that Cao and Pineapple, way out in the van, could smell it too. It wasn’t whiskey, gin, or any other sort of civilized spirits, but rather the brain frying, blindness-causing grain alcohol distilled in the basements and abandoned warehouses of the zone.
