He was wise enough not to ask my name, as if I would have given it to him. Instead, he asked what he should call me. I pondered for only a moment before an appropriate name came to mind.
“Gallow.” I told him, “you may call me Gallow.”
“Welcome to the citadel.” a voice said. I opened my eyes to see the raven perched on my chest. It took wing and fluttered away as I pushed myself to a sitting position.
The room I found myself in was circular, ringed with spiraling columns of gleaming metal. A hole in the ceiling let golden light pour in, falling on something in the center of the room, covered with a cloth of gold. The raven settled on top of it.
“ You’ve found your way along the path.” it said. “Now you can find what you seek.”
I walked over to the object, about my height, covered completely by the drape of the gleaming cloth.
The raven hopped from it, perched on my shoulder and whispered in my ear. “Look and see the truth.”
With a trembling hand I reached out and whipped aside the cloth. Beneath it was a rectangular bronze frame, cut with runes and symbols. Inside it, a sheet of polished silver. I looked into the mirror and my reflection stared back at me. My skin was blackened, my clothes scorched, and around my neck dangled a crudely woven noose. I knew who Gallow was and I knew its true name, whispered in the darkest corners of my mind. I knew more than its name. I knew what it was, where it came from, and why it wanted me.
I came back to my normal consciousness slowly, listening for a moment to the hum of traffic and the other sounds of the plex outside. With a deep, cleansing breath I opened my eyes to the flickering light of the candles around the circle. They were burned down to small nubs. It was dark outside, but I had no idea if it was still the same day or if several had passed while I was journeying. The metaplanes often played strange tricks with time. A moment could seem like a year and the blink of an eye could be hours in the physical world.
My body felt stiff and cold, and with a shudder I recalled the feeling of being a burnt corpse, glancing down to make sure my skin wasn’t charred and blackened. I got my legs underneath me and leaned back on one hand. As I did, a loud click drew my attention.
I turned to the side to see Trouble standing there. The long barrel of her Ares Predator looked even more menacing in the flickering candlelight as she leveled it at me. Dark figures moved in the room behind her as she gestured with the barrel for me to stand.
“Let’s go, mageboy.” she said in a voice as devoid of emotion as her flat stare. “We don’t want to keep my boss waiting.”
19
“If you try any magic, I’ll blow your fragging head off.” Trouble said, the long barrel of the Predator gleaming in the candlelight. “Get up, slowly.” She was quite good at intimidation. I certainly wasn’t going to argue with her.
I moved to comply as several shadows detached themselves from the darkness outside my small pool of golden candlelight and came up behind Trouble.
“Well done.” Tomo Isogi said, hands folded calmly in front of him. He was flanked by a matched pair of bodyguards wearing dark suits and sunglasses, despite the fact it was dark out. Their eyes were probably cyber implants, not affected by light or darkness.
“Thank you, Isogi-san.” Trouble said, without taking her eyes off me.
“Are we ready to proceed?” he asked, eyeing the circle on the floor and the colored candlelight. Even if Isogi was part of the New Way that embraced (or at least tolerated) many aspects of the Awakened world, there was a certain superstitious fear all mundanes had where magic was concerned. He obviously wasn’t quite sure how to proceed, but Trouble was.
“Step out of the circle.” she said. “And keep your hands at your sides. No tricks.”
I stepped carefully over the boundary of the circle, keeping my attention focused on Trouble and wondering if there were more yakuza soldiers in the church other than the ones I could see. In either event, I wasn’t going to try anything foolish.
“My car is ready.” Isogi said to Trouble, who nodded.
“Good. We just have to prepare Talon for the trip.”
She reached into a pocket of her jacket with one hand, keeping the gun trained on me the whole time. Holding a small skin patch between her fingers, she said, “This stuff will keep him quiet and make it impossible for him to concentrate enough to do magic.” She took a few steps toward me, holding out the patch.
When she was close enough I stepped forward, inside the arc of her gun, and gripped the outstretched arm. The drug patch fell to the floor and Trouble followed. I turned toward Isogi, but his bodyguards were on top of me like a pair of dark-suited blurs. They must have hit me a couple times each before I hit the floor. I heard the sound of weapons being drawn and readied.
“IE!” Isogi shouted in Japanese. “No. He must not be killed. Garnoff needs him alive.”
I stayed right were I was for the moment, my jaw and ribs aching. Trouble got back to her feet, rubbing her arm, and quickly retrieved the drug patch. She stood over me, then bent down and pressed the patch firmly against my neck, smacking it once to make sure it was in place.
“You should learn to wise up and take your medicine.” she said. I lay limply on the floor, offering no resistance.
“He won’t be giving us any more trouble.” Trouble said with a smile.
“Pick him up.” Isogi told the bruisers, “and bring him. Dr. Garnoff is eager to see this piece of street trash and I am eager to see this business done.”
With my eyelids at half-mast, I wasn’t really able to appreciate the vista of light, chrome, and macroglass that was downtown Boston at night. The corporate towers and glittering plazas of the Financial District rose up all around us. It must have been quite late, since there was very little traffic on the streets and most of the buildings were dark and silent. It had rained at some point during the night. The pavement was slick and gleaming in the pale light. The dark clouds were beginning to clear away, showing a black velvet sky sprinkled with stars and a glowing gibbous moon.
I lay slumped in the back seat of the dark Mitsubishi Nightsky, with Trouble on one side and one of Isogi’s bodyguards sitting across from us, facing me. He watched carefully for any further signs of resistance, but I offered none. I simply lay still. Trouble kept her Ares Predator close at hand.
Isogi sat in the passenger seat, while the other bodyguard drove. The transpex panel separating the two compartments was up and dialed to full opacity, blocking the view of the front compartment. Isogi wasn’t taking any chances of me being able to cause trouble, despite the drugs Trouble fed me to muddle my concentration and keep me passive. They didn’t bother to blindfold me, but they did tie my hands in front of me using a plastic binder strip, the kind security companies used to restrain prisoners. They took my Viper from its shoulder holster and Trouble took the belt with my sheathed mageblade. None of the yakuza seemed willing to touch it, since everyone knew it was unwise to frag with a magician’s tools uninvited. That was pretty smart of them. Obviously the New Way had taught the yaks something about handling magic and magicians.
Tires hissed on the glistening pavement as the car took a smooth left into the underground garage of the Mitsuhama Tower, which rose a hundred stories above us, black on black into the starry sky. Like a fantasy construction to challenge the gods themselves. At the very top of the tower glowed the MCT logo in cool blue neon. A microwatt laser scanned the fenders as we entered, picking up the Mitsuhama-authorized barcode on them, and probably a coded signal from a transponder in the car as well. The garage’s computer opened the barricades and retracted the tire spikes angled to keep unwanted vehicles out.
We pulled into a space in the garage, almost empty except for the solid, conservative vehicles of a few suits following the fine corporate tradition of overwork, impressing the company with their diligence, or simply preferring to sleep at the office rather than return to whatever they had for a homelife. Trouble took her Predator and popped her door o
pen. She gripped my upper arm firmly, pulling me to my feet and gesturing with the gun.
“Ride’s over, Talon. Let’s go.” Her voice held no trace of compassion or remorse, completely controlled and professional. The yakuza bodyguard helped push my limp body from the car and I stood slowly, wobbling and leaning on the car slightly for balance. With a push of her gun in my lower back, Trouble guided me toward a nearby bank of elevators. Unless someone was standing right next to us, they wouldn’t even see the gun, but there was no one around to see. Isogi and his other bodyguard fell into step behind us, where they could keep an eye on me and Trouble, no doubt.
Moving past the set of doors used by the wageslaves and low-level suits, we stopped in front of a smaller executive elevator. A red LCD blinked above the security camera beside the door, and Trouble looked right into the dead eye of the lens. We waited as the seconds ticked by, then there was a quiet tone and the elevator door slid open. With a nudge of her gun, Trouble said, “After you.”
I stepped into the car, followed by Trouble and the yakuza. The doors slid closed, and the elevator smoothly deposited us on the eighty-sixth floor of the tower. Trouble kept an eye on the car’s internal security camera on the ride up, while I leaned against the wall heavily. The ride seemed to take forever and the silence inside the elevator car was deafening.
Garnoff’s office was decorated with enough class to impress most anyone, but I hated the place from the moment I saw it. Perhaps it was the circumstances of my visit, but there was a feeling about it that made my skin crawl.
The whole place was larger than Dr. Gordon’s entire cramped apartment in the Rox. The wall opposite the door was all variable-tint, one-way armored macroglass, currently set on transparent to show the sparkling night skyline of the sprawl. The floor was covered in deep blue carpet and the furniture was modern techno-Nippon style; all chrome, smoked glass, and black-lacquered panels, with occasional kanji characters and mon emblems to break up the monotony. It was cold, immaculate, and lifeless, much like its inhabitant.
Trouble guided me over to a black leather and chrome chair in front of the broad, glass-top desk. I dropped into it like I was poured there and looked across at the man sitting behind the desk.
He fit the image of the successful corporate wagemage to a “T.” Tall and thin, with urbane, aristocratic features. His dark hair and beard neatly trimmed, with enough gray to show his solid years of experience and wisdom without making him look old. His suit was a charcoal gray, double-breasted number with tasteful silver lapel pin. A pale blue shirt and navy-blue and silver power tie with a pentagram stickpin topped off the ensemble. All very stylish, businesslike, and fast-track.
I looked into his dark eyes and suppressed a shudder. I hadn’t been close enough to Garnoff to really see into his eyes at the Manadyne party, but I was now. They were as flat and cold as the smoked glass desktop between us, reflecting no more human warmth or emotion than the building’s security cameras. I wondered briefly if they might even be cyber implants. Even though most of the Awakened didn’t care for the idea of sticking machinery into their living flesh, I was proof that modern convenience often won out over squeamishness. I got the feeling Garnoff had no qualms about such things. Indeed, no qualms about anything at all.
“Now this, this is how I imagined we would first meet.” he said to me. His real voice was a calm and mellow tenor, but it didn’t quite conceal a gloating note of triumph. “The great shadowrunner Talon, brought low by such. . .simple means.” I barely suppressed an angry twitch, which was about all I could do at this point.
Garnoff’s gaze flicked from me to Trouble. “Are you sure he’s under?” he asked. She nodded. I felt a chill run through me, but suppressed it. Garnoff was the suspicious type.
“I dosed him with enough neuro-stun to keep him groggy for hours. He’s not capable of much more than assisted movement and sitting and listening.” She tapped the grip of my Viper, tucked into her belt. “He was armed with this—not that he’d even be able to aim it at this point—and this.” She held out my mageblade to Garnoff. He smiled and gripped Talonclaw’s hilt, drawing it from the leather sheath Trouble held. The fine steel of the blade gleamed dully in the dead fluorescent light of the office.
“A fine weapon.” he said, turning the blade over in his hands, inspecting the edge. He came around the front of the desk and sat on a corner of it, a gesture that reminded me strangely of the priest at the South Boston mission where I grew up, sitting on his desk to offer fatherly advice or a stern reprimand to the wild street kid.
Garnoff held Talonclaw and toyed with the hilt as he spoke. “I was quite surprised to see you at the party. It showed unexpected resourcefulness. I fully expected you to skulk in the shadows a while longer before you tried to confront me. Still, I’m pleased you did it. It gave me an opportunity to see you at your best, before this.
“I would have expected a street mage of your. . . ‘rep’ as they say, to have noticed the little surprise I left with Trouble.”
He walked over to stand near Trouble and lightly caressed the side of her neck with one finger. Trouble flashed him a winsome smile that could melt the coldest heart. “Such an apt name.” he mused.
“The spell is really quite simple.” Garnoff sounded like a professor lecturing a room full of students. “It implants a powerful suggestion deep in the psyche, triggered by a specific set of circumstances later on. You see, I could have hired shadowrunners to track you down and bring you to me, but you street scum have a distressing tendency to take care of your own. Your involvement with Assets, Inc. and their ties to the Draco Foundation complicated matters. If agents went after you directly, you could simply go to ground and it would take a very long time to track you down again, and time is very important to me. You might have become suspicious, been put on the defensive.
“Instead, I placed this spell on Trouble without her knowledge, then arranged for her to believe she was in danger because of what she’d discovered for me thus far. It took no more than a gentle subconscious nudge to send her looking to you for help. I knew the mystery of someone looking into your past and the lure of a lady in distress would be too much for you to refuse. Everything I’ve learned about you so far says you like to handle such things personally. What else could you do but come to Boston to confront me? That brought you here, minus your friends from Assets.
“Once you arrived, it was only a matter of time before the opportunity to betray you presented itself and Trouble took it. Your intrusion into the Manadyne facility was one such opportunity. Unfortunately, you refused to allow Trouble to go along personally. She was able to send me a message about your intrusion, but I had to rely on less resourceful assistance.”
He threw a glance toward Isogi, who stiffened at the off-handed way Garnoff dismissed the yakuza.
“Still, it was only a matter of time. All of your so-called investigation was never of any concern. I knew I had time on my side all along. All I needed to do was wait for you to make your mistake, and Trouble would deal with you. Now you have done that. How did you put it? You only get so many mistakes, Talon.”
He shook his head with a mocking look of sadness.
“Magicians such as you who do not do their research deserve their fate. Evolution in action, my young alley runner: only the strong survive.”
“Why?” I said slowly and with visible effort. “Why are you doing this?”
Garnoff smiled and returned to his perch on the edge of his desk.
“Why?" he echoed, mocking my question. “Why do tigers hunt? Why do corporations acquire? It is the way of life. The strong consume the weak and use them to grow stronger. You could have been on the winning side, Talon. In fact, I actually imagined our first meeting many years ago, when you would have graduated from MIT&T and come to work for me.”
I kept my expression as neutral as possible, but Garnoff was obviously looking for a reaction. I just clenched my jaw and stared at him.
“Yes, I was the one w
ho arranged for your recruitment.” he said. “You had such potential. Your Talent was strong and you clearly possessed an aptitude too great to waste doing hedge magic and charms in the gutters. You could have been so much more.
“But you wouldn’t leave. You knew no other life and you couldn’t see the potential I saw in you. Your . . . teacher wanted to keep you in the gutter with him, mold you in his image. No different from what I wanted, I suppose, except I had the means to make things happen. I was sure once you were in the proper environment, you would come around.”
“You killed him.” I said thickly. I knew it was true, but I had to hear him say the words himself.
“No.” Garnoff said. “I had him killed. A subtle, but important, difference.”
“You son of a bitch.” I said. My muscles tensed but I didn’t move from the chair. I couldn’t. Not yet. Triumph radiated off Garnoff in waves. He was really enjoying this, the sick frag.
“Enough.” Tomo Isogi said from somewhere behind me. There was a touch of irritation and impatience in his voice. “We have brought him to you as you requested, Garnoff-san. Now get the information you need from him so we can conclude this business. The oyabun cannot be kept waiting. He still expects a full report on your progress.”
“Of course.” Garnoff said, “but I cannot interrogate him here. I have made other arrangements. I will get the information I need and then I will be able to provide Hiramatsu-sama with a complete report in a day or two.”
“That is not acceptable.” Isogi replied. “I am not leaving until I have more information to bring back to the oyabun.”
“I cannot interrogate him here.” Garnoff repeated. “I require tools I have elsewhere.”
“Then I will go with you, Garnoff-san, to ensure that our interests are maintained.”
Garnoff looked past me at Isogi for several long seconds before replying. “Very well.” he said, “if that is your wish, so be it.” He took a dark overcoat from a rack near the door and shrugged into it.
Crossroads Page 18
