They both brought their rifles down and turned to look at me. Even as I hid the baton, an identical series of looks flitted across each of our faces.
Casual. Shock. Recognition.
“You…” she whispered.
“Shit,” he said, lowering his SPAS-12.
The seconds ticked by as Needles and Slim climbed up the cisterns, helping the ghouls out. Pretty dropped to the ground to run to the ones holding humans, reassuring them that they would be safe soon enough.
“What the frag are you doing here?” the male trooper asked.
“Some of our people got snatched. We came to free them.”
“What’s with the uniforms?” She looked me up and down suspiciously.
“We didn’t feel like getting shot at the moment you spotted us. Why the hell are you here?”
“Massive kidnapping,” the black man replied, shouldering his shotgun. “A poorhouse and orphanage. They got away with maybe twenty-eight civilians.”
I nodded. “Look, if you’re willing, I just want to get my people out of here. We won’t go taking anyone with us, just getting ourselves out. Your civilians will be left for you to escort.”
She looked pained even as he considered it. “How are we going to explain that to the sergeant?” she asked.
He indicated my baton. “You were gonna knock us out?”
I considered the metal in my hand with a shrug. “If I could help it.”
He chuckled bitterly. “No dice. I’m not getting left asleep out here while there’s hostiles around. No, I think my partner and I need to check out the top of this chamber for the next five minutes. Then we’re going to go down and help all those civilians out of there. How many are there?”
I whispered over my commlink for a head count. Slim responded. “Twenty-three,” I told them. “I’ll bet you’ll find the rest partially transformed in some of the eggs.”
They nodded sadly. “Fine,” he said. “I expect twenty-three civilians down there.”
“You’ll have them.”
They began walking up the ramp, carefully keeping their eyes away from the bottom of the hive.
“Hey.”
They turned back.
“Thanks.”
She smiled. “We’re even,” he said.
“Even it is.”
The survivors, eight if the one back at the warren pulled through, trembled and cast darting glances about the gooey walls as we headed out through another tunnel. Barnes sulked among them, shooting reproachful glances at Needles every so often, who was doing his best to ignore him.
His head swathed in bandages, Slim listened closely to his earpiece as a pair of ghouls half-carried him, scanning frequencies to find a way back to the warren without any awkward reunions with friendly Lone Star officers.
I carried the Bhianchi Orb under my arm, idly wondering what powers it really held. Step after step I was worried the background count at the edge of the old Cermak mana warp would start hurting the ghouls, but it never came. Strange.
Mene floated up next to me, hands behind her back and coasting as though she were ice skating beside me. I looked over at her and smiled. She smiled back, pixie-like. “You owe me.”
I laughed. “Fine, I owe you.”
We emerged from the underground two city blocks away from an entrance to the warren.
The sun would be coming up in a half-hour, and the predawn light made the ghouls nervous. Imagine how I felt.
“What now?”
We all turned to look at the source of the question. Barnes had stopped, perhaps three meters back, and stood alone, defiant. “What, are we all supposed to come crawling back because you saved us?”
Needles moved to the new front of the crowd, looking more tired than angry. Barnes’s eyes narrowed at seeing him. If a man could snarl silently, he did. Needles just stood and waited.
“What do you want, Barnes?” he asked with a voice reminiscent of an exhausted parent.
“You expect I’m going to heel like a good dog just because you came to the rescue? You think I owe you something, now?”
Needles flipped the safety on and slung his rifle over his shoulder. “Barnes, I don’t give a fuck any more. You can do whatever you want to do. You wanna come home? You do that. You don’t like things, you wanna leave? Then go. No one is forcing you to do anything.”
He smirked, sniffing in mocking amusement. “Yeah, but what about the others?” Needles shrugged and turned to address the huddled group of tired ghouls.
“If anybody wants to, they can leave. If you don’t like me or the warren, you can go with Barnes, or head out on your own. If you want to come back, though, that’s fine, too. Do whatever you want, no one is forcing you to do anything.”
The ghouls looked at each other. These were most of the ones whose intellects hadn’t quite survived the transformation into being a ghoul, and most were simple-minded at best. One hesitantly loped over to stand by Barnes. Another followed. Barnes’s spreading victory smile melted into a sneer as the rest huddled close to Needles.
“Fine!” he shouted. “I only have use for the strong, anyway. Stay out of my way, Needles, or so help me, I’ll rend your flesh and bathe in your blood.”
Pretty rolled her eyes as Slim snorted in amusement. Needles just shrugged as we turned away to leave.
“Barnes,” Needles called over his shoulder. Barnes turned to look.
“Stay the fuck away from my people, or I’ll kill you.”
Barnes let a glare linger for a moment before running off with his pair of ghouls. The remaining group looked to Needles. He took a deep breath, exhaled.
“Let’s go home.”
Chapter 13
Aftershocks and Turncoats
We got back to the warren to find a sort of welcoming committee, the women and children swarming to hold us close and mutter their simple words of affection. No sweeping music, no dramatic kisses or fireworks. Just a crowd of twenty-eight people and a free spirit embracing randomly and being close. I recorded it on my contacts, feeling more of a sense of community, love, and pure humanity in that moment than I’d felt in dozens of aboveground towns and families. It was the closest thing to trust and belonging I’d felt since losing my family so many decades ago.
Mene took every opportunity to latch onto me and squeeze me in her approximation of a hug. I cast a glance over her shoulder to see Pretty gazing at me, almost unreadable, before she left the room for the decontamination showers.
I passed the next week relaxing, playing with my new commlink and choosing a few mapsofts, linguasofts, and music chips to go with it. I also pulled out a virtual pet program, a hellhound. I’d wanted a real one since I woke up the first time, but this was just as good. A handful of music chips caught me up to some of what people were listening to these days. Not bad. I’d always loved music, but it was a shattering blow to discover that Shield Wall was long gone. I raised a glass of wasp juice to all the old greats, wistfully aware that I’d never hear something new from the likes of JetBlack or Concrete Dreams again.
On the trid, reports came in of people dropping dead in the street, maybe twenty or so, most from the derelicts and dispossessed of society. It was all carefully glossed over, but from the time of death, I knew it was a bunch of “good merges” who didn’t have enough strength to break free of their bond to the queen. I worried about the ones who had managed to break free, becoming free spirits like Mene, but probably far too twisted and alien to find a peaceful place in society. Rumors in the warren spoke of a free roach spirit that had wandered the city for years, making deals with metahumans toward unknown ends. I ruefully wished Lone Star all the luck in the world finding them.
Slim’s head was wound with gauzy bandages after a flesh form had spat acid into his face. He had absolutely no free time, and were he not saving his money to go through with the plastic surgery, he might have invested in a sleep regulator to play with all his new toys 24/7. He was almost thankful for the facial wound, as it h
ad finally convinced Needles to give his blessing regarding the surgery.
As soon as things were installed and settled, and someone was taught how to keep an eye on the automated security agents, he’d be off to the same street doc who had worked on Pretty. He’d sat with me for hours, going through skin tones, noses, hair and more, flipping through a catalog of possibilities, but always coming back to the skinny, pale, shaggy-maned boy his icon resembled. To my mind, it was how he had always seen himself, and I couldn’t think of anything more perfect for him.
The drones and most of the chips and standard commlinks stayed in their boxes, ready to be taken to Ranes in payment for the job. They filled the greater part of the van, considering the value of the commlinks and sensor equipment we kept. Sleep and eating were things Pretty and I had to remind Slim of as he spent all his waking hours installing cameras and sensors at every entrance to the warren. The specialized bacterial scanners and medical systems went into the two rooms for decontamination. Needles beamed as they were installed. Without them, the Strain III-infested ghoul, Goolah, would surely have died.
Meanwhile, Slim tore apart his old room, setting all of his jury-rigged equipment aside lovingly as he installed the new systems, linking up all the cameras, commlinks, decks, and sensors with as much fiber optic cable as possible to prevent detection. The warren had caught up with the latter half of the twenty-first century at last.
The renegades were welcomed back without a word. They merged seamlessly back into things, apparently cowed by the displays of force Needles had shown in rescuing them and winning a stare-down with Barnes. Combined with the new security system, there was finally a sense of safety in the warren.
Needles called me to his room as he got ready to take Slim out to the cyberdoc. He’d made use of Pretty’s makeup skills and took advantage of the cold weather. There would be no need to see anything more than his face until they were safely in the clinic, and a parka, gloves, and broad hood and scarf concealed most of his features. I stood in the doorway as he got ready, but he beckoned me in, closing the door behind me.
“You wanted to see me?”
He slipped on his gloves, focusing on anything but looking me in the eye. “Yeah...I wanted to say…that you were right.”
“About what?”
“About here. This place. Me avoiding change. You were right.” He finally raised his eyes to look at me. “But I don’t think you understood the challenges in keeping a place like this going, or the investment it took to keep it alive all this time.”
I nodded. “You’re probably right.”
“I’m still not sure you do.”
“Probably.”
He returned to his prepping. “But that doesn’t mean you’re wrong. That LS patrol was way too quick to arrive, and we’ve heard too many rumors about corps buying back into the zone. It’s only a matter of time before they come down here and flush us out. And there’s no damned point in waiting around for it to happen.” He finished putting on his gloves and sighed. “I’ve called the ghouls at Long Pig Farm. Since we’re a smaller group, they might be up for merging with us, especially if we bring our contacts and haul.”
“That’s awesome!”
He nodded. “I’m not entirely comfortable with it, and I’m trying to take my feelings out of the equation. Still, I can’t shake the feeling there might be some more to it.”
“You’re worried they’re gonna try to fuck you?”
“Yeah, a bit. There aren’t a lot of us, and we have some pretty excellent goods. And the fact that so many of us are feral...it doesn’t exactly bode well for integrating into a place that does business with norms.” He sighed. “But, if we can pull our weight, we might be able to make it there….” He chuckled. “Heh. Pull our weight? I honestly think it’ll be a vacation compared to what we usually deal with.”
“That brings up a good point. What about the bug hunting for food?”
“Yeah. I think they live on body bank leavings, which is...not what I wanted, but I can’t avoid the reality of what we are forever. But, that’s also something on our end of the table. Feeding on clinic scraps makes you lazy. We’ve been hunting bugs. I’d put any of my ghouls against ten of theirs and call it a fair fight. And we might be able to do some more bug hunting, pull in some bounties for cash, eat the majority, really open up some options for them.”
“And you’d be one step closer to bringing your warren into the light.”
He smiled softly. “Yeah.”
“It’s what Sara would have wanted.”
He sniffed. “You didn’t know her, so that’s a little melodramatic. Still...you’re probably right. Or, at least it’s as close we’ll get for now.”
He zipped up. “Are you willing to come along after I drop off Slim? You and Pretty can help me out.”
“Sure.”
Needles was wiping the makeup off as he stopped the van up at the corner of Grove and Washington in what was once Skokie, on the broken gravel of a parking lot behind an old sign for a country club with a newer, raw wood board reading Long Pig Farms in spray paint. The suburb had once been shrouded in oak trees before they were taken down for wood, but many stands remained, surrounding the rolling hills of converted golf courses with tall chain-link fences and razor wire. The old clubhouse was an exhibition of passing time, with patched and wooden planks over many windows, yet retaining the mixture of architecture as only a building more than one hundred and fifty years old could. There still remained weathered hints of what must have once been fine architecture.
The three of us got out of the van in the post-dusk light to the wafting stench of livestock.
The reinforced front doors of the compound opened to a pair of ghouls with Uzi IIIs. Between them, dressed in a shabby suit that wasn’t too bad for a Corridor ghoul, was a tall man with cybereyes. His talons were trimmed short, his smile conservative and confident. He knew he was in control, and he communicated it without arrogance. I wondered if he was used to this position.
He walked down the front steps, extending his hand to me. “Needles, I presume?”
I smiled. “Afraid not...” I pointed to Needles on my right.
The ghoul adjusted with a chuckle. “My apologies. Matthias Greene, I represent the ghouls of Long Pig Farm. Who are your friends?”
“Pretty.” She smiled. Her mask was on. I was grateful for it now.
“Red.” I extended my hand, which Greene took. Without letting go, he looked back to Needles.
“A vampire? Does your pack include many other breeds of Infected?” Needles was about to answer when Greene cut him off. “Oh, but where are my manners? Won’t you step inside? Winter is coming quickly now.” He indicated the door and welcomed us inside.
Pretty leaned close to Needles, whispering, “He’s trying to throw you off. Don’t let him. Stay cool.” He nodded, his face grim. Needles was incredible at rallying the troops, but when it came to negotiations and diplomacy, he was sorely lacking. Still, he was the one who had to conduct the negotiations, or he would lose credit in the pack and at the table.
The interior of the clubhouse was decorated in a classic, luxurious style, though the dust and decay of time had taken its toll. The furniture was done in a style that would have been called modern back in the ‘50s, and it was worn enough to be that old. We walked past open doors, behind which ghouls were preparing for their day’s work, some sharpening tools for the treatment of meats and hides. Greene had an office behind a door labeled “Manager” just off a large sitting room with a stone fireplace stocked generously with wood. Spacious and sparse, with views out to what once had been the golfing greens. The smarter ghouls were leading their brain-damaged cousins, emerging from the bunkhouse and converted bungalows to tend the fields of clover and grains and the lean pigs that happily wandered the hills and wallowed in the muddy pools.
Behind the ancient, wooden desk, Greene sat and steepled his fingers, smiling. “Can I offer you some refreshment? Our pork is specially pr
epared to be more palatable to a ghoul’s tastes.”
“Thank you, no.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps after, if all goes well.”
“Perhaps.”
“You seem to be doing quite well for yourselves,” Pretty observed.
Greene beamed with pride. “We can’t discount luck, but a lot of effort went into making this place. We’ve established one of the few communities outside of Asamando that shelters ghouls in harmony with its neighbors.”
“Well,” I said, “Asamando is hardly at peace right now. And surely you have your complications.”
“Certainly. Swine rustlers come around every now and again. And Humanis sometimes finances attacks, but thus far we’ve been able to hold them off with a minimal loss of life.”
Pretty looked back toward the door, where the guards had been. “You don’t seem to have much in the way of hardware to defend yourselves.”
Greene’s smile deepened. “Not to greet guests, no.” He let that hang in the air for a moment before continuing. “So, to business, then. I’m to understand that you represent a pack around thirty strong, and you would like to take up residence in our community?”
Needles nodded, relieved to finally get to the point. “Correct.”
Pretty interjected. “We have a number of options we’re exploring, but we feel Long Pig Farm has the most to offer our community, and vice-versa.”
“How is that?”
“Integration,” I said.
Needles picked up immediately where I gave him the starter, a topic he could focus on. “For almost twenty years I’ve tried to keep this pack alive, off the radar of bugs and corps alike. In that time, I’ve seen many of them grow up with minimal resources and learn to make the best of it. Living behind the wall has taught us the hard way how to stay clean and alive, how to defend ourselves and how to exhibit restraint. Our diet has primarily been insect flesh-forms.”
Green raised an eyebrow. “Hybrids? Are they still metahuman enough to provide sustenance?”
Shadowrun: Crimson Page 21
