Shadows Down Under: Shadowrun, #8

by Jean Rabe

  Except the Moon Corporation, Ninn thought. Moon doesn’t seem to respect anyone.

  In the back of her mind, she heard the dwarf in the canteen gun down the coffee drinkers.

  Snip snip…

  Twenty-Nine

  The Corpse Solution

  Medical science advanced every day. Ninn had brought her sister to Sydney because the city was known for its “miracles,” though no miracle had happened. The treatments had merely prolonged the end.

  She still kept up on stuff, mostly because she liked upgrading her bioware and cyberware and put new options on her shopping list. She knew about chemicals and bio-attachments that slowed aging, and figured that at some point she’d embrace some of that—if she had the nuyen. Adding years was expensive. Hadn’t thought a whole lot about it, though. Elves had long lifespans. But humans…like Ella-Adoni, they burned out fast. Trolls and orks burned out faster.

  “Wonder what this place looks like from the outside, you know…above.” The helicopter had landed several minutes ago, the engine shut down, passengers filed out. No one disturbed the crates. Someone moved around the outside; she heard panels open and close, probably the pilot inspecting the engine.

  “Does it matter?” Barega looked exhausted.

  “I suppose not.” Ninn glanced out the tinted window. It wasn’t raining here, but by her estimation, they’d traveled far enough that they were out from under Sydney’s cloud. It looked sunny. “Unless someone comes out to take this bird for another ride, I want to wait until it’s dark.”

  Barega curled up behind a crate. Benzo lay at his feet.

  “Then I’ll find a way in…provided we really are at the Moon Corp, get on a computer—”

  “You will not need a computer, Nininiru.”

  She huffed. “Siland…whoever’s here…they’re not going to volunteer anything, Barega. I need computer records to find out—“

  “A koradji such as yourself does not need a computer…or Siland or anyone else living inside to confess their sins.” Barega closed his eyes. “But a gun would be useful. I am sure you will have to shoot somebody. You always have to shoot somebody.” In a heartbeat, he was sleeping.

  “Shooter, 2007, Mark Wahlberg. The Shooter, 1997, Randy Travis.”

  Getting inside hadn’t been as difficult as Ninn had expected; there were badges in the helicopter, and she found spare deep blue coveralls in the copter bay…which was on the roof of a large, round building on stilts perched over the river.

  The badges got them through security doors, and they took the stairwell, where, if there was surveillance, she couldn’t see it. A barracks, chapel, social room, mess—the top level looked military…and fortunately had a video room, where two security guards watched feeds from throughout the complex and the surrounding sodden grounds and who—thankfully—tried pulling matching Thunderbolt pistols when she stepped inside. It took two seconds to draw Mordred from her pocket. The men were dead in two more, the door closed and maglocked, and she and Barega seated at the console, looking from one screen to the next.

  “I was correct,” the Aborigine said. “You had to shoot someone.”

  “Sometimes they need to be shot.”

  Barega nodded and smiled faintly.

  “You understand there’s a strong possibility we won’t be getting out of this.” Ninn studied a screen slightly larger than the others. It showed a lab. Most of the screens showed labs.

  “I am not afraid of death, Nininiru. I am only a visitor to this time and place.”

  “I know about some of this,” Ninn spoke aloud, but it was only for her benefit. “When I brought my sister to this stinking big island, I learned about skin grafting and regrowing flesh…that’s what they’re doing in this little lab here. See these tanks and monitors? I recognize this stuff. They’re doing some other things too, with this tank and this one, but these tanks up front, that’s flesh regrowth. See? This tank even has a woman in it, on oxygen feed. Back in the city, they had my sister in one of those tanks. Not as fancy as that one, though.”

  She looked at the next monitor and moved the stick to pan the room. “This place is pretty big. I count nine labs, and this one here…this is like an organlegging operation.”

  “And this—” Barega pointed to the view of a room bathed in blue light.

  “Dunno. It’s got…seals. We need to go there.”

  “And this—” Barega pointed again.

  “That looks like a morgue. Yeah, that’s a morgue.”

  “We need to go there,” Barega said.

  “Yeah.” Ninn scrutinized the old man. “You really didn’t need me for any of this, did you? Investigating your brother’s death? You could have done this all on your own.”

  “The galah sent me to you, Nininiru.”

  “You didn’t need me. Did you?”

  “I suppose not.” Barega tipped his head in acknowledgement, his eyes mirthful. “But you needed me.”

  The Moon Corporation’s morgue made Sydney’s counterpart look like a relic. Corpses were stored in tanks filled with a gelatinous material that Ninn guessed kept the flesh from decaying. The tanks were stacked three-high, again the military similarity, she thought. The dead looked like they were sleeping in watery army bunks. Four banks of tanks, for a total of one dozen corpse nests. Half were occupied, and one held an all-too-familiar body.

  The Slayer.

  “They brought him back here.” She touched the glass. It felt cold, but not like in Sydney’s morgue, more the pleasant chill of a summer drink type of cold. “Why?” So his body wouldn’t be discovered floating belly up in the harbor? So they could study him? Make another one, if they hadn’t already? His corpse was so big, the legs and arms were pressed against the side of the tank. “I’d thought the sharks would have eaten him.”

  It should smell in here, she thought, chemicals or death or floor cleaner…something. But all she could detect was her own pong from going too long without a bath.

  “He is held here, Ninn, the Slayer’s spirit. I feel it. Held by something, like my brother is held to his perfect body.”

  She felt it, too. His was the middle tank, eye level to her. She pressed the side of her face against the glass. It felt good, the coolness, her skin still aching from the nanites being culled. The vet could have given her something for the pain. Dear God, she needed a slip. She felt her insides quivering for a hit of graypuppy. If she got out of here, somehow, made it back to the Cross, she knew a man who would cut her credit on some graypuppy. High interest, a veritable loan shark, but it would be worth it. She needed it bad.

  “Clear your mind, like you did before.”

  “When I danced with your brother,” Ninn whispered. “Like I did then? You could do this, Barega. Easier for you.”

  “I could watch the door.” The Aborigine had the borrowed gun in his hand, and put his back to hers. “Benzo and I will keep watch.” The dog trotted after him.

  In Paradise Lost, Milton wrote: Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep.

  Did she really want to connect with the spirit of this monster? There were five other bodies in this place…two men, one an elf; three women, one an ork that had similar tribal markings to the fellow in the canteen. Perhaps one of their spirits still clung to this place.

  Just do this. Clear your mind. Do this, do what it takes to get your answers or some measure of justice. For Cadi. Do this and escape, drown in graypuppy and mollify the sweet spot. Her fingers trembled for need of the drug.

  Ninn stared at the body in the viscous liquid. The smooth, shiny black skin was marred from the struggle in the tunnel; chunks were missing where a shark or sharks had eaten part of him. That the entirety of the monster had not been devoured was a puzzle. Maybe the beast tasted awful. Again she was struck by his darkness. Black like pitch, like oil that had been spilled and somehow hardened. His ears were holes—those of a seal, truly. His mouth looked like a seal’s. The teeth…those were man-m
ade and seriously nasty.

  “Concentrate. Focus.”

  Was that Barega talking? Whoever it was, the voice came from far away.

  “Release the physical world.” It sounded like Barega, but the voice was a whisper. “Release the—”

  Like in the morgue in downtown Sydney, a mist formed around her, the foggy wisps forming arms and legs, the mist cocooning her. But it had a different feel. This was cloying and damp, and the fog grew thicker and more opaque, and she swore her feet left the floor and that she floated in the same viscous liquid as the Slayer’s corpse.

  A face emerged, black and wide, beadlike eyes—seal eyes or human eyes? She felt herself floating inside him, looking out through those beady eyes and suddenly seeing…an office? The abrupt transition nearly threw her out of the connection.

  She’d been here before, in this office, when she’d gone upstairs at Cadigal’s and met…

  Siland was in front of her, talking to her…to the Slayer, except it wasn’t the Slayer…it was a man. Looking out through his eyes, she saw human hands, old and wrinkled and blue veins standing out, liver spotted, and realized they were his.

  “Lover, won’t you find me, find me?

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

  It was Ella’s voice, coming in through a speaker on the desk. Applause followed. Siland must be listening…must have been listening…to the performance downstairs on Cadigal’s stage. She tripped through the memories of the person Siland spoke to—Elijah Moon, the head of Moon Corporation, major shareholder in the Sydney Zoo, and owner of who-knew-what-else. Elijah Moon, who later became the monster Eli.

  The men discussed their fortunes and properties and immortality.

  Hudson Siland.

  The realization hit her like a bolt of pink lightning.

  In her first meeting with Siland, he’d said: “My great great grandfather Hudson owned this entire block, passed it along, eventually to my father who kept most of it and passed it on to me when he died.” The antique picture on the wall of Siland’s great-great-grandfather…it was his picture. He was the original Hudson Siland. There’d been no passing it down. He’d retained it, probably making it look like he’d died and given it to a child. Records were easy to forge. But it was the original man. Hudson Siland had cheated death with science, continued to postpone it through whatever was cooked in the labs here. And Moon?

  She looked through the spirit’s eyes, taking in the office. That picture of the original Hudson…the man with him in one of the photographs was Moon. Younger, most certainly, than the relic with the liver spots. Same man. Same men.

  Why had Siland been able retain his youth, and Moon had aged?

  Ninn tripped through Moon’s muddled mind, and the spirit obliged her. In fact, Elijah Moon seemed desperate to tell his sordid tale.

  They were biologists, come to Australia many decades ago, bent on studying the indigenous animals and plants, and discovering a proprietary formula that allowed them to live well past their years. The mana storm affected their crops and studies, and they were forced to expand their quest for immortality in other directions. They owned so much, and Australia’s sea and wildlife were theirs to toy with. So wealthy, they improved their laboratories and acquired the best scientists—who gladly worked with them for a taste of immortality. They discarded the ones deemed a risk.

  They experimented with the locals.

  And then with people in the Cross.

  Adoni. Ella Gance.

  Moon had first heard her sing in Katoomba, a middle-aged drag queen that the years had not been especially kind to. But that voice. That amazing voice.

  “Lover, won’t you find me, find me?

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

  Adoni was quick to embrace the possibility of renewed youth, and promised to sing for Moon forever. Siland and Moon required Adoni to pay them for the bioware that continued pumping the precious elixir into her system. It kept her on a leash, never able to gain enough nuyen to go elsewhere, always under Moon’s thumb…and then Siland’s thumb. Had they loved her? Or was she just a pretty, singing toy to them?

  But Adoni grew tired of the influence and so threatened to spill their secret, let everyone know that two well-known businessmen were the ultimate geezers who should be ashes, and that they were sitting on a true fountain of youth. Moon was certain Adoni’s threats had no substance, that the singer would do nothing that might jeopardize her own health. But they considered their toy broken. She had to die…along with a scattering of other entertainers who were nothing more than a ruse to draw the public away from the one necessary death. The public loves a good serial killer story, Moon’s muddled mind thought.

  And the necessary death before Adoni’s, a cocky biologist who talked too much and headed up the animal culling operation.

  “Snip snip,” she heard Siland say to Moon through her spirit dream. “All the loose ends gone, we’ll be safe to live forever.”

  Cadigal? He was a loose end too, wasn’t he? Ninn thought. Hiring Ninn, demanding to discover who killed his favorite impersonator...snip. One more victim of the Cross Slayer.

  Eli…Elijah Moon.

  She realized the two men couldn’t let their secret get out. Governments would step in to regulate it, other corporations would take any measures to steal it, even militaries might intervene. To keep it their own, to keep their immortality, it had to remain secret.

  “What happened?” Ninn breathed. “What happened to you?”

  The Slayer was eager to share. The days and months melted in a dizzying blur of images that Ninn tried to digest as she floated in the corpse sludge that cocooned the creature that used to be Elijah Moon.

  His body had begun rejecting the bioware that pulsed with the serum that gave him years, reversed decades…and had reversed the years for Ella Gance and a handful of chosen others. Other means to dispense the serum were tried on Moon, then variations on the serum, then experimenting with animals that they’d already been testing for other research…cures for diseases. Splicing animal DNA into metahumans had met with some success, and that’s what Moon opted to do, though he was human—and that type of splicing had not been tried in their labs. Change his DNA just enough so he’d no longer reject the bioware, and so that the precious serum would again work and return him to a robust man seemingly in his prime. But even that yielded minimal results. So they tried again because he was aging, the years catching up and the grave calling.

  Seals. That showed the most promise. With a touch of killer whale, platypus, and shark DNA.

  Tried everything.

  A DNA soup.

  And, in so doing, made Moon into a monster.

  His spirit let Ninn know he was not displeased. Strong, vibrant, vision incredible, the years held at bay again. Indestructible. He could heal at a marvelous rate. He’d lost some of his magnificent scientific mind along the way. Was to be expected, he understood, like in the old days when a man underwent hardcore chemotherapy and “chemo brain” resulted. Moon called his condition “seal brain.” An acceptable loss for the gain of immortality.

  He grew to like the killing.

  So proud of this house of horrors, the Slayer’s spirit treated her to a tour of the facilities, reveling in the twisted painful science inflicted on humans, metahumans, and creatures from the Sydney Zoo. Ninn felt twisted inside, but she paid attention and committed the place to memory…room-by-room, level-by-level, storage containers especially.

  When at last she distanced herself from the spirit, she came to on the floor, Barega hovering over her. Was that worry on his face? She was wet with a slime that covered only her skin. Oddly, it had not touched her borrowed coveralls. The liquid the Slayer floated in? Or something else?

  “No one deserves to live forever, Nininiru.”

  “We are all visitors to this time, this place,” she replied. “We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love…and then we retur
n home.”

  “And in a few years, I will return home. But I will use that time to teach you.”

  “I want to learn it all.” Ninn took a last look around the morgue. “Gotta go,” she told Barega and Benzo. “There’s a routine the guards walk. I’ve got it.” She disabled the monitors as she talked. “It’s rather predictable, and they’re well-armed, but not overly jumpy. Who would come all the way out here, after all? Got a couple of labs to visit, a handful of things to disconnect. We time this right, we don’t get caught. We time this very carefully, and I’ll be an apt student.”

  They gathered oxidizers, reducing agents, magnesium, broke open solvents, mixed them well and set them ablaze in key places.

  “Now we run like the wind, Barega.”

  This time he had little trouble keeping up with her.

  They watched the inferno consume the building from the safety of the swollen riverbank, just at the edge of the Great Ghost Dance. It was barely dawn and the single, nacreous cloud at the top of the sky was all milky blue and opalescent gray, shimmering, beautiful, shiny, a hint of rosy pink. It invited Ninn to stand beneath its pulsing strands in wonder and appreciation while she watched the Moon Corporation come down. Just beyond the edge of the cloud, the rain couldn’t reach the big round building to help put out the fire.

  Sirens, lights, men scurrying…nothing could save the place. Ninn had made sure to disable the elaborate and state-of-the-art sprinkler system first.

  The stench was incredible, but it dissipated, a wind whipping up and blowing the worst of it away.