“She wants you.”
My eyes bulged with an incredulous look. “Maybe for dinner.”
“Are you blind?! She desires you! For mating!”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Just how did Menerytheria think of me? Some ally spirits viewed their masters as friends, partners, unknowing minions, even as parents. I’d always thought she regarded me as an employer, maybe as a friend. Just how off target had I been?
Seconds ticked as I tried to make sense of her emotions. Her face seemed fit to burst with tears when she flew away from me. I didn’t get a chance to speak a word before she was through a wall and out of reach.
Cabrini Green hadn’t seen better days since before I was born, its buildings bearing scars over scars that spoke of violence and crime as a way of life for more than a century. The landmark additions, declaring it a monument and museum, looked well cared for, making it an anomaly for the Zone. It was like everything else that had played an important part in my past: nostalgic and changed at the same time.
The guards nodded at me after I passed through the airlock, entering a lobby threshold I hadn’t crossed since the ’50s. Broken tile floors were swept clean, the squalor preserved in memory of the struggles Needles and his ilk had endured with Tamir Grey. Holograms showed footage of familiar faces, moments of violence and tenderness. I paused at one, a familiar face with an uncharacteristic smile. Nicholas and Sara Macavoy before their infection. Needles, in happier times, with a shock of dark hair and the grin of someone in love. Someone who would leave a lucrative job as a DocWagon HTR specialist for a beautiful young doctor with a caring heart. A girl who would risk her life for victims of HMHVV, and would lose her mind and her life when the infection took her, too.
The portraits led to the gravesite of Tamir. His hologram was projected in front of the headstone, stoic and inspiring as he had been in life. The stone itself was a monument, gray marble of a bald ghoul reaching up to the sky. Reaching, just as he always had.
“Been a long time, old friend.”
One of the visitors, a ghouled elven woman, walked over as I said it. “Excuse me, but...are you a vampire?”
I smiled. “I’m afraid so.”
“Did you...did you know Tamir Grey?”
I shoved my hands in my pockets, my eyes far away.
“I was there the day he gave a copy of his journal to a group of shadowrunners.”
“Ghosts... That’s...if you don’t mind, what was he like?”
I looked up at the outstretched arm of the monument. “He was a leader. A man who never saw any of us as monsters. No more than any other metahuman, anyway. I didn’t know him for very long, but he was both strong and meek. Modest but passionate. For him, leadership wasn’t a matter of power, but responsibility. He lived life in service to all people.” I turned to face her. “He lived up to his legend and then some.”
She was dumbfounded. Probably a pilgrim who had come to this place, a mecca for ghouls and the birthplace of Infected rights.
To the right, the hard copy of his famous journal was on display in a glass case, preserved from the elements and lit overhead. An interactive holoscan of it could be flipped through. The neat handwriting didn’t focus on the medical research, but the daily observations of ghouls and those few other Infected who made this place a refuge. Every page extolled their humanity in the face of adversity, the hardships within and without. Grey had the perspective of someone who had gone through the change, knew the hunger, and never forgot what it was to be metahuman. Along with everything he had accomplished, his inspiring words were his enduring gift and legacy.
He was my friend. I missed him.
I fished my Meta-link out of my pocket, turned on the image link in my contacts, and blinked a picture of the ghoulish pilgrim, hands clasped before her as she gazed at the journal. To her eyes, the letters were almost invisible. But the vestigial wisps of his intent clung still, the afterimage in the astral that was a greater insight into him than any words I could offer.
To my camera, the greater tale of souls and echoes was lost, yet the story was still told, somehow, just by her stance.
I was no Tamir Grey, but I’d strayed a long way from the example he set so many years ago. The least I could do now was tell my story.
The high-rise was long since toppled, a victim of the Alamos bombing that never got repaired before the rest of the city followed it into ruin. Only one corner of a wall was left. About twelve floors up, it was one of the larger structures left behind.
The floor bore evidence of its previous uses: old wrappers of instant soy-mixes, a long-dried blood smear, shell casings from what I judged to be sniper rounds. Good to know some things never change.
I sat against that corner, just in the shade against the setting sun. I’d chosen the spot two hours earlier, so the majority of my body was out of the light. I didn’t care for fancy cross-legged positions or strange methods for my meditations: it’s enough to simply relax. After all, clarity is in the mind, not the body. I hate crutches.
My left hand hung just over the edge of the building, sitting in the dimming sunlight. It had been there since I had started. It would heal fairly quickly, I was sure, though slower than most things.
Wood, extended sunlight exposure, magic, and brain and spinal damage are the four things hard to heal, going from easiest to hardest. Club me to death in the head and back with a magical spiked wooden cudgel at high noon, and I had problems. Otherwise, I didn’t care overmuch what happened to me.
The hand was blistered, the ashen flesh split with burned cracks as dark blood oozed slowly out of the numerous lacerations. My eyes remained closed, my ears deaf to the relative silence of the sky as I let the pain happen. Pain is really just an alarm. Once you get over it (which is easy to do when you know it’ll heal quickly), it’s not much of a problem. Besides, I wanted the pain. I wanted to be distracted. I wanted it to challenge my concentration. I was behind the times, and I aimed to get back in the game.
The sun set and I pulled my wounded hand back to my lap, opening my eyes to gaze at it.
I could just feel the cells sluggishly moving, wearily mending what was broken. I decided this was the right moment, and started moving my other hand in delicate patterns. I could feel something in me open up, a channel to the astral, my body acting as a gateway from that world to this. There was endless energy, waiting to be tapped, if one could handle the flow.
That was all a mage really was: a transformer. My will shaped the delicate movements and Latin mumblings into something meaningful, twisting that which was without purpose into a healing glow. My hand started fixing that much more quickly. In an instant, it was mostly recovered from the burns, flesh pink and raw but whole. I smiled and relaxed.
And winced. Frag, that hurt!
“I told you, you don’t owe me a thing!”
My arms were crossed, my expression angry. Needles had one to match.
“Then let me help out of the goodness of my heart.”
“I don’t want you here just because you think you owe me something, Red. It ain’t about debts. We stick up for one another. That’s what friends and comrades do. You’d’ve done the same for me.”
“Yeah. And if I did, I’d think you’d be trying to make it up to me, too.”
He displayed exaggerated agreement. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah, I think you would.”
He met me stare for stare for a moment, until he started smiling. “Maybe I would, at that.”
I let my expression soften, but I held my ground. He finally relented, after giving it some thought.
“All right, all right. To be honest, I’m glad you offered. We can always use the help.”
I sighed. “Finally. So, what can I do? I mean, bug hunting only gets you so far, right?”
“Right. Actually, given your face, maybe you wouldn’t mind playing dealer for us?”
I knew what he meant, and I’d been half-afraid of it. “You sure you want me stepping on Pretty’
s toes?”
“Whaddaya mean?”
“I mean she views that as her position in the pack. Maybe if I start picking up her duties, she’ll get really pissed. Feel like I’m trying to replace her.”
“You’re gonna tell me how ghoul packs work, now?”
“No, no, I just mean…she doesn’t like me as it is. I know you’ve noticed.”
Needles probably had, but he didn’t show it. He might have been a little rusty about standard social graces after all these years of isolation, but it still takes mighty charisma to lead a pack of monstrous cannibal humanoids. “I think if she’s truly concerned about the pack, she’ll welcome the help.”
I sighed unhappily. This was not going to go well.
Chapter 4
Soiree
The ghoul before me sat amid piles of cyberdecks and half-constructed commlinks. Bits of microcircuitry hung precariously by wires, dials, keypads, and a dozen other modified knickknacks that looked like an electronic Rube Goldberg machine. Blueprints and user manuals fished out from the garbage were glued to the concrete walls, along with a very old Maria Mercurial poster that must have still been worth something.
The ghoul, the “decker extraordinaire” Pretty had mentioned, was oblivious to my presence, humming along with some tune or another. Old-fashioned headphones covered his ears as his fingers, the sharpened nails filed down, snapped the case off a commlink that looked like it had been hit with a flamethrower, then run over with a truck.
I came around, trying to insinuate myself into his vision. He was as thin as I was, but without my catatonic excuse. A pair of datajacks gleamed dully on his left temple, and his eyes were cyber replacements, adorned with fanged smiley faces. Cute.
His eyes flicked up toward me, unfocused as though looking at the rock poster behind me, when he jumped halfway to the ceiling, yelping with such alarm that I almost feared guards would come running.
“Whoa!” I raised my hands, trying to display confidence and humanity at once, hoping to calm him down. He adapted quicker than I expected, closing his eyes and letting out a shaky sigh, then smiled and actually laughed. He lowered himself back into his chair, tucking his legs underneath him. He was around sixteen, possibly a little younger, and it showed, from his cracking voice to his exaggerated expressions.
“You really glitched me, there, term.” He looked up at me as he pulled off his headphones.
“Sorry.”
“Nah, nah, its wiz. I just get really…really involved, you know?” He emphasized the word with a clutching motion at the half-dissected commlink. His eyes were already darting back between the diagrams on the walls and the pieces on the desk. He didn’t look back at me until I leaned back into his line of sight and spoke again.
“I’m, uh, Red, by the way.”
He extended a skinny hand to me without taking his other hand from the commlink, or his eyes from the wall. “I’m Slim.”
I can see that… “So, ah, Needles told me I should come and find you, something about a person I’m meeting?”
Slim reluctantly turned his eyes to me. “Yes, yes, I’ve got it all here.” He held up an optical chip; old by today’s standards, but reliable, plugged it into an older cyberdeck, and held out a ’trode set as he flipped switches. I placed the set on my head and felt my mind slip into the ether of electrons that comprised virtual reality.
A full three-dimensional image of a man appeared in the white room I stood in. Tall, lanky, dressed to the nines in fashions which spoke of old European traditions and tastes. Mortimer of London; custom, conservative, costly. Sandy hair glued into immaculate shape, skin tanned, and fingernails manicured. This guy had money. I wanted to say he was a Johnson, or maybe a classier fixer.
“This is your contact, who we just call Edgar.”
Text started flowing before my eyes, including scrollers about his known history, a list of transactions the ghouls had entered into with him, and some pie charts that seemed to serve no discernible purpose.
“He’s our primary supplier for gear and stuff. We also fence some of the salvage we find out here through him.”
“What kind of salvage?”
“Oh, stuff Star patrols use but we don’t really need, artifacts lost during the Breakout, things we claim from local warlords and gangs, spell components from the bugs…”
As he spoke, one of the pie charts enlarged, and I could see a precise breakdown of what had been sold to Edgar, with percentages. Another pie chart showed profit dividends, and there were more beyond that. Two things instantly occurred to me: he had far too much free time on his hands, and most corporations would kill for this kind of natural talent with details and statistics.
“Okay, I get it. He’s a big mover and shaker for the pack. He’s the one I’m meeting?”
“Oh, no, no, not at all. He’s Pretty’s contact.”
A full dossier on Pretty came up, complete with more charts. I spoke up before he got too far off track.
“Then who am I meeting?”
“Oh! Right, right. She has been working on Mr. Edgar for a couple of weeks now. He doesn’t seem to know about her being a ghoul, so she was able to get some names out of him. Since we don’t want to ruin our relationship with Edgar by showing how interested Pretty is, it’ll be your job to meet with these people and establish contact.”
A list popped up displaying aliases, names, commlink numbers, and other data. It streamed past me, showing perhaps a half-dozen names with as much detail on each as could be collected. Despite being unfinished, it was remarkably thorough.
“Do we know what these people do?”
“Most of them. I’m still data mining for the last two.”
“Will I be meeting them cold?”
“Huh?”
“Will I be initiating contact with them, or is it all set up?”
“Man…I dunno. I hadn’t really thought about it. I’ve been talking to the first one online. She’s the one you’ll be meeting with first, I think, since we know the most about her.”
“Okay, so tell me about her.”
The environment changed into a perfectly still vineyard. A clear blue sky rained painless sunlight onto me, and I found myself nostalgic for a feeling I had all but forgotten. The field seemed to stretch into eternity, the ocean just in view to the west. I’d’ve placed it as California, if this was lifted from a real location. A large house, in classic Spanish villa style with attached facilities, was a short distance away, and standing by the entrance was a petite woman, probably Japanese, in a conservative business suit. Her stance was relaxed, her eyes dark, her suit expressing a tiny flair of color in the small pin on her lapel, a cluster of red grapes.
“This is Konoko Jones, owner of the Vino Sanguis Vineyards in southern CalFree.”
The name tugged at my memory, but I couldn’t place it. Vine’s Blood? Probably just some commercial or something…
“Her vineyard is known for producing not only exceptional wine, but customized vintages for wealthy consumers. The vineyard also hosts several Awakened plants and animals, which they cultivate to produce useful fetish materiel, as well as mixing some into grape vines or directly into the wine itself. Some of their bottles are totally unique for their mixtures and treatments.”
I had to whistle. I knew what being a talismonger was like. With land like that, she’d turn a pretty credstick if she could keep the poachers and land grabbers away.
“So, why are we interested in meeting her?” I asked.
“Well, we have a lot of Awakened plants and animals here, too, when they survive the Strain III. Maybe there’s something we could sell to her. But Pretty noted that Edgar said she was a good person to talk to when you needed someone to disappear. I don’t know exactly what he meant, but I guess Needles thought we could use a contact like that.”
Well, who couldn’t? I thought.
“So, she’s an assassin? Awfully public persona for someone who does wetwork, even if you believe in hiding out in the o
pen.”
“It doesn’t look like it,” he said. “If she is, she cleans up her trail very well.”
“Okay. So this means I’m flying out to CalFree?”
Slim laughed. “Sorry, chummer, but we ain’t got the cred. No, she’s coming to town on a tour to promote this year’s vintage and shop around for new plants to add to their gardens. I managed to make an appointment for you to meet with her tomorrow. She’s having a wine tasting for the upper crust at an exclusive party at Club Raid. Your name’s on the list. Just get some nice threads and make your appearance. Introduce yourself, and mention ‘extracting juice without picking the grape.’ After that, it’s all you.”
I had to shake my head and laugh. It was all out of a Z-grade spy flick. But then, that’s how some runs went.
I was living a moment out of a romantic comedy from hell.
The elegant elven clerk eyed me with obvious disdain as Pretty talked about what to clothe me in. Most people don’t walk into Mortimer of London without their own entourage, let alone in torn jeans and a hoodie. But Pretty looked like a nouveau-riche princess with a shabby boyfriend she wanted to clean up, and if she had the nuyen, who was the clerk to argue?
Her eyes darted all over the store, taking in every garment. I thought I almost saw the glint of something so human as desire, but then it was gone, as fleeting as my realization. I scowled at her, which fit the act perfectly.
It took some effort to act like I didn’t enjoy getting fitted for the suit. I used to love this kind of thing, reveling in the trappings of wealth. I opted for something dark, slick in cut but standard in fiber. I only needed to look flash. It didn’t need to be made from woven diamond filaments with massaging liners.
That would wait for my fiscal resurrection.
An hour and a half later, I was in a pay shower, enjoying the feeling of warm water and fresh soap. Pretty was right outside, smoking a cigarette and wearing a new mask, seeming to have fully embraced the “tolerant-yet-impatient rich girlfriend” role. It made me wonder just how right Menerytheria had been.
Shadowrun: Crimson Page 6
