Shadows Down Under: Shadowrun, #8

by Jean Rabe

  “That AISE Draye might be on the mark. Pretty clever for a lumper, ya ken? Looks like he’s pretty thorough, too. But a dockworker? I dunno about that. I don’t see a dockworker hanging out in tunnels and basements. I don’t think that guy who tried to geek you was a common dock lug. Doesn’t hit me in the this-feels-right, ya ken?”

  Great, he’d picked up one of Tarr’s expressions—ya ken.

  “Draye’s not too shoddy. I agree. Not a dockworker, I agree. But maybe somebody who hangs around the docks. Maybe somebody who lives down there.” There were plenty of squatters on and under the bridge. One of her first missing persons cases had led her to the bridge. Cadi had wanted his grandfather found, and Ninn had found the old troll—turned to steel on the bridge, victim of a mana storm.

  Ninn made sure her encephalon was recording images of all the files. She skimmed a few more, pieces of each murder book, not really reading them—she didn’t have time for that, but knowing she could call it up later when they were somewhere else and she had an hour or two to spare.

  “Fifteen minutes,” Mordred announced. “Half of that half hour’s up, ya ken?”

  Ninn restored the screen to the original files that had been displayed and joined Barega. Tarr had moved onto to another body and was picking through its organs for reusable parts.

  “I wonder at humanity sometimes,” Ninn mused, watching the dwarf work.

  “The Inhumans, 2019, Marvel Studios, Joe Robert Cole, screenwriter.”

  “I think I actually saw the remake of that one,” Ninn returned.

  Miss Ella Gance was still beautiful under the pale yellow light that shone from recessed fixtures in the ceiling. She’d been sliced open and restitched, the autopsy long concluded. A tag listed that the body was scheduled to be picked up by SydbiTech tomorrow morning, a division of the Moon Corporation. Recycling, no doubt.

  Barega’s eyes were closed, his lips moving as if in conversation, but no sound came out. Ninn shut down her inscribers and took a step back, intending to open drawer 112 to see Cadi, and in that instant she heard singing:

  “Love is where you find it, find it.

  And if you find it, keep it, keep it.

  Keep it close to your heart, where it’s yours alone

  ’Cause if someone else finds it, they’ll steal it, steal it.”

  It was Ella Gance, smooth and captivating, no instruments behind her, just that amazing voice, like she was crooning only for Ninn.

  “Do you hear that, Mordred?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Lover, won’t you find me, find me?

  I’m lonely, won’t you keep me, keep me?

  Keep me close to your heart, I’ll be yours alone.

  ’Til another catches my eye and steals me, steals me.”

  In her mind’s eye, Ninn watched Ella appear, naked like she was on the slab, the gash in her neck an ugly second smile. Mist billowed around her, swirling to form a gown, wrapping up her torso and concealing the cuts and staples the coroner had made.

  “’Cause love is where you find it, find it.

  And if you find it, keep it, keep it.

  Keep it close to your heart, where it’s yours alone

  For when someone else finds it, they’ll steal it, steal it.”

  Ninn watched Ella become as diaphanous as the mist, but her cloudy face loomed closer and larger, her staring eyes hot pinpricks, flaring and boring in. Ella stretched out her hands, and Ninn took them. The foggy tendrils impossibly strong, the singer pulled Ninn into the mist.

  “In the mana storm, death will find you, find you.

  It rains inside you, ’side you.

  Your heart sings a melody, sings you’ll be ever alone.

  ’Til another comes along and steals you, steals you.

  ’Til another comes and steals you away.”

  Sixteen

  The Lower Deep

  Ninn whirled with Ella, like they were happy children at a playground, mist conveniently spreading beneath them to form a dance floor. Music started, not from instruments, but voices humming; some pitch-perfect, some off-key, the mix sounding dissonant, and reminding her of a tone poem she’d heard at an eclectic arts fair at the Sydney Opera House.

  Ella seemed to have more substance now, color returning to her face, the rich dark brown flowing down her arms, stopping at Ninn’s hands, which were pale in comparison. Their fingers interlaced like lovers would, and a chill scurried down Ninn’s spine. The air was cold—as cold as a refrigerated corpse shelf.

  She tried to blink, but found her eyes locked open. She tried to access her encephalon, and could not find it. Was this a bad reaction to one of the drugs Tarr had administered? She’d not taken any of the few measly pain slips the dwarf had given her. But this dance…it was like floating away on a double-hit of high-grade graypuppy, like when the walls in her office would pulse and breathe, and she’d embrace the sweet spot in her soul.

  Shapes formed in the mist that rose up to ring them. The foggy tendrils became legs and arms, a hint of color intruding everywhere. A face emerged…Ninn recognized it from a file she’d flipped through in a murder book. Dezi Desire, Harold Naughton. He was in the ring, expression placid. She had no clue to the identity of the others; men, women, elves, young, old, some naked, with ropy, stapled patterns of Y incisions from autopsies, some clothed in fog, some wearing elaborate stage costumes. Dezi-Harold was in a long gown the color of butter, motes sparkling on it—maybe stars come to ground, maybe rhinestones. Suddenly Barega was in the circle too, the smallest of the watchers.

  She and Ella continued dancing.

  The accompanying music turned to conversation, nothing she could understand beyond a few scattered words that hit her like bullets coming at her from all directions:

  “—Love—”

  “—Song—”

  “—Cross—”

  “—Mother—”

  “—Father—”

  “—Slayer—”

  “—Lost—”

  “—Heartbreak—”

  “—Cold—”

  “—Hot—”

  “—Pain—”

  “—Free—”

  “—Me—”

  “—Free me—”

  “—Freemefreemefreemefreemefree—”

  Was she mad? Had she slipped into some nightmare? Had the booze and the slips and the injuries and the bioware and cyberware shorted out and nudged her mind over the edge into the lower deep? She half expected to see more people joining the misty ring—men and women in white coats who would pluck her from Ella’s dizzying grasp and take her away to an insane asylum.

  “Concentrate.” That was Barega. “Focus. Let go of the physical world. It confuses you.”

  What physical world? She wasn’t anywhere near the physical world. There was only the mist.

  “Let go,” Barega insisted. “You cling too tight to the earth, Ninn. Release your hold.”

  Another part of her nightmare, Barega? His words had cut through the strewn phrases, the cacophonous babble that made her yearn for the dissonant tone poem.

  “Release the physical world, or you will be lost to this,” Barega said, voice growing louder still, almost hurtfully loud. “Focus. Find something to focus on and dream about.”

  Dream.

  Barega had talked about dreaming when she first met him.

  Was Ninn dreaming? Was all of this a dream? Was she still unconscious in her office from the booze and slips? Was Talon still on her couch? Or had she fallen asleep in the body stash, amid the cabinets of corpses? Was that why she was refrigerator cold? Sleeping would be better than madness. She could wake up from sleeping, couldn’t she?

  “Focus.”

  Ninn stared at Ella Gance’s perfect face and felt herself drifting forward, merging with Ella, turning and looking out through her eyes.

  “I am…dreaming,” Ninn said.

  Ninn pushed open the back door of Cadigal’s Corner, found an empty Toohey’s bottle and st
uck it in the jamb so she’d be able to get back in with time to spare for her second number of the night. There was no door handle on the alley side, and she’d accidentally locked herself out before. She trotted across the uneven bricks and sat on a crate, fumbled in her purse and pulled out a slip of graypuppy.

  Oh dear God, she loved graypuppy. Take the world away for just a little while graypuppy. One thing she and Ella Gance had in common—graypuppy. She put the slip on her borrowed tongue. Ninn was hitchhiking, right? In someone else’s head? Ella’s? Or was she sound asleep in the body stash? A nightmare?

  Dreaming, right? Dream or no, Ninn saw a man—huge, hulking, maybe a troll—interrupting her sweet graypuppy sensations. He removed the Toohey’s bottle. Asshole. Now she’d have to go around to the front, tromp in through the little mezzanine to get backstage. Jerk. Ill-bred wacker. Dero. Cadigal would be furious if he caught her.

  Ninn got up, closed her clutch, and talked herself out of a verbal jab at the big guy…who was coming toward her. She didn’t have a weapon, not Mordred or her other guns. Dreaming, right? Sound asleep next to the city’s dead? She tried to imagine Mordred in her hand, but it didn’t work.

  Screw this dream, she thought.

  “Run!” somebody shouted.

  Ninn didn’t think that would be prudent—she wanted to face the pug, take him down. It was her dream, so she could do what she wanted, right? Nevertheless, she shot off toward the park and the fountain, where there’d be people and lights; the wacker would have to go his merry way. She was fast, but maybe the graypuppy had rendered her legs sluggish. Ninn couldn’t match the large man’s speed. Several long strides and the stranger came even with her, and then went past her, stepping to the center of the alley and flicking open a long-bladed knife that thrummed softly. He slashed the air with it, the thrumming growing louder and the knife’s edge glowing pale red-orange.

  A heater.

  Just like the knife that the guy—the same guy, Ninn realized—had brought out in the basement of Cadi’s. It was the same guy! The Cross Slayer!

  “Please m-m-mate. Let’s not have any trouble here.” Ninn spoke the words, but they came out in Ella Gance’s beautiful voice. “I’m not a woman. So if women’re what you’re interested in, you can look elsewhere.” Ninn reached down the front of her dress—a beautiful dress, and she hated wearing them, didn’t own any—and pulled out a piece of sweat-soaked foam. “See? I’m a false sheila. I’m an impersonator. Not a joygirl either.”

  But Ninn looked like a joygirl in her purple sequined getup. When had she changed into this beautiful dress and heels?

  The big man took another step forward, and Ninn took another one back. She was sweating profusely, from nerves and the summer heat. It shouldn’t be so hot this late at night. Shouldn’t it be raining to cool things down? Why couldn’t it rain when you needed it? Why was she backing away? She could take this man! She could flatten him like she had the RighteousRight goons in the bar.

  A boxer, Ninn calculated what punches she could throw. Shouldn’t have tried to run anyway. She shouldn’t have let Ella’s legs run. Ninn never ran away.

  She drew back her right arm just as her heel caught in a crack between the bricks. She tugged her foot free of the shoe, and then kicked off the other one. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the big man lean in.

  Ninn got a good look at his face, tried to direct her encephalon to record it, but there was no link. Same man that went after her in Cadi’s basement, but it had been so shadow filled she hadn’t been able to pick out the details. The Cross Slayer. Draye’s report pegged him a metahuman. She thought that a generous term.

  Too bad she could indeed pick out the details here.

  His visage was vaguely human, the head large and wide, but the eyes were too small for it—beads really. The skin was smooth and shiny black; not the black of an Aborigine, but black like pitch, like oil, like jet paint spilled and left to harden. His ears were holes, his nose flat and piggish, his mouth wide and lipless, his teeth pointed stainless steel—too many of them. He flicked his tongue against them; it was fat and rose-petal pink, looking like a bloated sausage.

  His form was that of a man, but he was a monster, the stuff of nightmares and bad horror vids. Where was Mordred? Shouldn’t he be making a reference to an ancient horror movie with actors so long dead their memories were dust?

  Ninn felt her beautiful sequined purse slip from her sweat-slick fingers, heard the slapping of her own feet against the bricks…why was she running when she’d decided to punch him? Why did Ella’s legs keep pumping? Then she heard a louder sound—the stranger’s feet pounding behind her.

  Ninn took in great gulps of the humid air. Shouldn’t it be refrigerator cold? Wasn’t she in the morgue? Her lungs burned, and her temples throbbed like her head was going to explode. Let it explode so she could wake up! Her feet ran faster.

  Slap slap slap slapslapslapslapslap

  Ninn grabbed her aching side, then felt herself flying forward, her feet tangled in her long beautiful dress. There was a reason she never wore dresses! The ground rushed up to meet her, and she slammed hard into the bricks.

  The Slayer bent—his throat oddly bright white against his otherwise blackest black skin—and his arm shot out, his webbed fingers closing on a slender ankle. Ninn defiantly grabbed at the cracks between the bricks and tried to pull herself toward the end of the alley—closer to the park and to the people who must be gathered there, who were always by the fountain late at night, drinking and laughing and wading in the water. Tourists and joygirls and lumpers keeping them in line. Tourists and joygirls and lumpers, oh my.

  Ninn was strong, and dragged the Slayer with her, and at last she saw faint light filtering into the end of the alley. The streetlight from the park. If she could pull him into the park, she could get some of the people there to help her. Dogpile him, beat the crap out of him, get the lumpers to haul his evil dero ass away and charge him with the string of murders. End the threat to the Cross.

  Be a hero, and drown in nuyen and opals.

  But the Slayer tightened his grip. So strong. Impossibly strong. Ninn guessed he had some serious muscle augmentation, bone lacing, probably a top-of-the-line adrenalin booster. He leaned in closer still and ran his tongue against her cheek. The Slayer smelled strongly of saltwater and fish, like he’d just come from the harbor. A gull cried to lock that notion in her mind…no, not a gull. It was a screechy shrill cry punctuated with squawks. A parrot’s screech.

  A galah circled above the alley, right above Ninn, like a vulture circling a dead piece of meat. It looked electric, like the sign that had hung in the window of Pella’s Rosy Parrot.

  Ninn felt the bones in her left ankle break, then the bones in her right leg.

  Her borrowed chest heaved as pain stabbed up from her shattered legs. The Slayer placed a heavy foot on her silk-covered stomach—no shoes, a wide bare foot. He bent over and she smelled…soy sauce? He drew his heater across her throat.

  The galah circled lower and cried louder.

  The heater slashed again—but this time Ninn looked out through Dezi-Harold’s eyes. It was a different night and a different alley and the scents stronger…cabbage and fish and blood. Same blackest-black face.

  A mask?

  No, it didn’t have that aspect to it; the face was real and horrible.

  No wonder the Slayer stuck to the alleys and basements, tunnels, maybe the sewers. So distinctive, he’d be easy to see and apprehend. She should tell AISE what the monster looked like, how he smelled; that Draye was in part right, he’d come from the harbor, though he was no common dockworker. But she couldn’t talk to AISE. Even though she looked like Ella-Dezi-Ninn-the-joygirl, someone might see through her tattooed and purple sequined disguise. She didn’t want to be tossed away in a Sydney prison.

  She didn’t want…she was Ella again, pulled back from Harold’s body by the strong, wispy fingers. The wounds were gone, the alley a memory.

  Ninn w
as on stage, crooning. People cheered. Flowers covered the table in her dressing room.

  “Lover, won’t you find me, find me?

  I’m lonely, won’t you keep me?”

  Then the scene melted and she was on a slab…not the one in the coroner’s body stash, one somewhere else, gleaming, lights above it and around it, tubes feeding into her arms, someone working on her throat, the air smelled clean. A surgeon flashed a knife and held a small device. Must be that expensive vocal range enhancer she’d had installed.

  The scene shifted, flipping like frames in an ancient movie. A different slab, different tubes. Then she was looking through glass at fish and rays, wanting to feel the ocean against her skin; Ella had loved swimming, Ninn somehow knew. Then she/Ella was floating in a vat, viscous liquid with no hint of salt. A vatjob? Ninn was practically that. Wrinkles melting, years seeming to wash away, time tamped down, skin so dark and smooth and unblemished.

  More frames flipped, a different stage, smaller, still in Sydney—she heard the storm. Then a different stage; it was her first public attempt at female impersonation, beyond the quick displays at parties. More frames and Ella walked the streets, searching for herself.

  Ella/Ninn regressed to her actual younger years. Sounds seeped in: traffic, sirens, birds, and the wash of the ocean against the shore, lightning, journos talking about political races fought decades past. More frames. And still more. Back and back, until Ella was only Adoni and was honestly young, not youth bought through chemicals and procedures. A child.

  Adoni chattered in a sing-song language Ninn did not understand at first. But she focused, and then the words came to her, though not as a translation to English. They still sounded musical and foreign, but the meaning was understood.

  “My blood filled a cup, brother,” the smaller child said. It was Barega; Ninn recognized enough of the face. It was Barega as a child.

  Barega and Adoni had indeed been brothers, the resemblance so close they could have passed for twins! But was that notion true or something fabricated by her swirling nightmare? She urged it to play out nonetheless.