Fallen Angels

by Stephen Kenson

  Mustang looked at him for a long moment, her face streaked with tears, and took a deep breath. For that moment, Silk was sure she was going to fight him, insist on going after Aerwin regardless of the consequences. Then she let her breath out in a shuddering sigh.

  "You’re right," she said. "Let’s go."

  When the helicopter’s searchlight swept over the area again, the shadowy figures were gone. All that remained was the flickering red-orange glow coming from the mouth of the cave high along the slope of the mountain, the wilderness and the haunted night.

  Chapter 1

  Kellan Colt crouched beside the high chain-link fence surrounding the corporate office facility in Bellevue, all but invisible in the shadows pooled outside the ring of illumination cast by the halogen floodlights. She checked the fence carefully, gently touching a voltage tester to the metal mesh. It wasn’t live. There were no signs saying it was, but some corporations ignored niceties like notifying potential intruders about their security, so it always paid to check. She glanced up at the strands of razor wire topping the fence. Not the most sophisticated deterrent, but still not easy to overcome for a person working alone.

  Kellan was used to being on her own. From the time her mother left her with an aunt who cared more about her next drink and her next sim than family, Kellan had taken care of herself. She learned that you had to look out for number one, and it was a lesson that had been reinforced by living and working in the shadows, the spaces between "proper" and "recognized" society.

  She was on her own with her aunt. As soon as she could, she took off into the shadows of Kansas City, and she was on her own there. She worked with other runaways and small-time shadowrunners, but everyone looked out for their own interests. Then she got the mysterious package, containing some running gear, the amulet she always wore, and a note. "This stuff belonged to your mother. Thought you might want it," it said. No signature, no explanation. Nothing except for a postmark showing that the package had originated in the Seattle Metroplex.

  So Kellan set out with the last of her credit for Seattle, and was on her own there, for a while at least. She met new people in the shadows, made connections. Even then, she discovered the need to watch her back. She learned that she had the talent for magic, and began taking lessons from the troll mage Lothan, but she also ran up against Lothan on a job, discovering he hadn’t told her or anyone else the whole truth about the run. That was the way it worked: nobody told the whole truth unless they had to, and everyone had an agenda of their own. Everyone looked out for number one. Even if you worked with a team, you still had to work alone. Like Kellan was alone. That was the way it was, she told herself, that was the way it had to be.

  She focused on that sense of solitude. She found that the feeling of being detached from the world around her made the magic easier. She drew on that feeling as she spoke the words of a spell Lothan had taught her, sensing the mana, the magical power flow around her. That power bent and warped light, reshaped shadow. As the last whispered syllables faded from her lips, Kellan faded from view.

  She took the compact bolt cutters from the sheath strapped to her thigh. What they lacked in leverage, they more than made up for in the specialization of their cutting edges—spun diamond monofilament. They quickly, silently snipped through the chain links as if the fence were made of cobwebs. In mere moments, Kellan cut an opening large enough to crawl through. She slipped through the hole and into the compound.

  If her information on the timing of the security sweeps of the grounds was accurate, she had only a few moments to wait. She glanced down at the barely visible phosphorescent glow of the chronometer on the back of her glove, which she had synched to the schedule she’d acquired. It had to be accurate, because if it wasn’t, she was as good as caught. Her spell would protect her from causal notice, but the facility’s cameras almost certainly had infrared capabilities. Her employer would deny any knowledge of her existence, of course—easy to do since Kellan had no real idea who her employer was. Anonymity was all-important in the shadows.

  She watched as the seconds ticked past, her body tense. Just a few more and . . . now!

  Kellan bolted away from the fence and headed for the side of the building, moving as quietly as she could, as quickly as she dared. Her gear was strapped on tight; the only sound she made was the whispering tread of soft-soled boots along the concrete. She pressed up against the cool outer wall, barely breathing hard, and glanced down at the time readout again. She’d made it with seconds to spare. Now came the tricky part.

  Moving along the wall, she reached a side entrance shown on the building schematics—a standard steel fire door. Beside the door, a narrow card slot was faintly illuminated by a burning point of red light set into the frame of the maglock. Kellan moved directly in front of the lock and took a passkey from a pocket of her jacket. This handy tool consisted of a circuit-imbedded plastic card trailing wires to a small keypad. She slotted the card, and the keypad flickered to life.

  She could easily use the passkey to scramble the lock and open the door quickly, but that would likely trigger alarms set to watch for any malfunction in the building’s maglocks. The trick was to let the passkey cycle through possible combinations, until it found the right one to open the lock without arousing any suspicion. Unfortunately, the potential number of combinations was immense. Unless the passkey hit on the right one quickly, Kellan would have to try something else to get in, or abandon the run altogether. She waited in silence as the glowing numbers cycled on the passkey’s screen.

  The seconds seemed to crawl past, unbearably slowly. Kellan barely allowed herself to breathe, her senses straining to detect any sign that she’d been spotted, watching for any approaching trouble. The numbers flashed past at computer-processing speeds, too quickly for human eyes to read.

  Suddenly, without warning, the numbers stopped. The light over the card slot changed from red to green, and there was a faint click as the lock disengaged. Kellan’s breath whooshed out in a sigh of relief. Taking hold of the edge of the door in one gloved hand, she eased it open just enough to slide through, pulling it gently closed behind her.

  The hallway was lit by the dull, whitewash glow of phosphorescent bulbs, every other one turned off to conserve power at night. The walls were nondescript and sterile. No signs marked the way, but Kellan knew what she was looking for. She headed down the hall to where it intersected another and turned to the right.

  Just as she turned the corner, a dwarf in a dark blue uniform stepped into the hall. Kellan started, panicking—until she remembered she was as invisible to the security guard as she’d been to the cameras outside. He wore his dark brown hair in a long braid and had a full beard, a fashion popular among dwarfs. An almost invisible throat mic extended from over one pointed ear, and the butt of a pistol jutted away from his hip. As he pulled the door closed behind him, he turned to scan the hallway. He was . . .

  He was looking right at her.

  Drek! Kellan thought as the dwarf reached for his weapon, at the same time calling out, "Intruder at the east entrance!"

  As he grabbed his gun, Kellan snatched a short metal rod from her belt. With a flick of her wrist, it extended to almost a full meter in length, its tip crackling with blue sparks. She slammed it into the dwarf’s arm as he brought up his pistol. There was a crackle and a yelp of pain as nerveless fingers dropped the gun. The dwarf stumbled back, clutching his arm where the stun baton had touched it.

  Kellan pressed her advantage, slamming the tip of the baton into the dwarfs chest. There was another crack and the smell of ozone as the security guard pitched backward onto the floor, muscles twitching. At the same moment, alarms began to sound throughout the building.

  Kellan left the dwarf where he lay and took off back down the hall from which she came. She barreled into the door at full speed, but only ended up bruising her shoulder as she bounced off it.

  "Ow!" she swore. The building was on alert, so now the door was locked down.
Quickly, she slotted her passkey and punched the override button. It scrambled the maglock; the time for stealth was over. The security door released, and Kellan kicked it open, bolting back across the compound toward her hole in the fence.

  She’d made it about halfway when a burst of automatic gunfire ricocheted off the pavement nearby, sending up sparks. Several uniformed security guards were headed her way.

  "Stop!" one of them yelled, and Kellan could see two were wearing infrared goggles. The third either had implanted thermal optics or was relying on the other two to tell him where their target stood. Still, if she could reach cover beyond the fence, she might be able to escape. She kept going.

  "Stop!" the guard shouted again, punctuating the order with additional bursts of gunfire. Kellan was gathering herself to dive through the fence when she felt a sharp pain in her lower back that knocked her to the ground and made her cry out. Dammit!

  Kellan ripped the electrode net from her head and tossed it aside. The pain in her back immediately began to fade as the simsense signal was cut off, her surroundings shifting from a corporate office compound at night to the living room of her small apartment. She looked at the woman sitting in the chair to the left of her couch.

  "Congratulations," she said dryly. "You’re dead."

  "I shouldn’t be," Kellan retorted, frustration making her voice sharp. She picked up a plastic squeeze bottle from the floor next to her and took a long drink of filtered water, rinsing the dryness out of her mouth before she swallowed. "My invisibility spell—"

  "Isn’t effective against a metahuman with thermographic vision, like a dwarf," the other woman interjected.

  "Right," Kellan said. "I didn’t think of that. Sorry, Midnight. Let me give it another try." She reached for the trode net.

  "I think that’s enough for now," Midnight said. "Plus, we’ve got more to go over." She tapped the slim datapad resting across her knees.

  Kellan sighed. Training sessions with Midnight were difficult, maybe even more so than lessons with Lothan. Whereas the old troll mage had an ego the size of an arcology and loved nothing more than to hear himself talk, Midnight was a woman of few words but penetrating insight. She didn’t sugarcoat things, and always told her exactly what she thought Kellan was doing wrong. She was always right, too.

  However, unlike Lothan, Midnight didn’t consider it to be a character-building exercise to let Kellan figure out for herself the right way of doing things. She was as free with advice and suggestions as she was with criticism, and when Kellan did something right, she was quick to praise. Her analysis of Kellan’s performance in the latest simulation was typical: blunt and honest, sparing neither praise nor criticism where they were due.

  Kellan listened carefully. Midnight knew the ins and outs of breaking and entering better than anyone she knew. She had been in the business . . . well, Kellan didn’t really know how long. Midnight didn’t talk much about her past—not a lot of people working in the shadows did. Still, she had the kind of reputation you didn’t get overnight, and Lothan, himself a very veteran shadowrunner, seemed to have known Midnight for a long time. Since Midnight was an elf, it was difficult to tell how old she was. She could pass for only a few years older than Kellan, but she could be as old as Lothan, maybe older.

  "It’s important to know your limitations," Midnight was saying. "Magic is a useful tool, but it’s no substitute for preparation, or old-fashioned stealth and discretion. You may not always be able to rely on it to accomplish your goals."

  Kellan nodded. "Maybe there’s a variant invisibility spell that works against thermographies. I could ask Lothan—"

  "You’re not getting my point, Kellan," Midnight interrupted. "The solution isn’t more magic, it’s more awareness of your situation, and planning for every contingency. Being discovered in the facility was a distinct possibility from the start, but when it happened, you weren’t prepared. You let your magic make you overconfident." At Kellan’s sheepish look, Midnight shrugged and smiled.

  "Don’t worry about it. You did a lot of things right. You’ve come a long way since we started working together. I think your mother would be proud of you."

  Kellan beamed momentarily at the mention of her mother, then her expression became wistful.

  "Do you think so?" she asked, and Midnight nodded.

  "I do," she replied firmly. "You really do take after her, and I like to think of what we’re doing as my way of paying her back for everything she helped teach me."

  "I wish she was around," Kellan said, "or at least that I knew what happened to her."

  "I know," Midnight said sympathetically. "I know." Kellan thought about the mother she hardly knew, who had placed her in the care of an alcoholic aunt, showing up only occasionally and always leaving too soon. Kellan now knew it was because her mother had been a shadowrunner, too, working outside the law. She couldn’t settle down for too long in one place, or take care of a young child. Still, she sent money when she could, and messages for Kellan.

  Then one day the money, the messages and the visits just stopped. Her mother sent no explanation, and Kellan’s aunt offered none. She grew even more resentful of the burden she felt Kellan represented, and had made her feelings clear to Kellan at every opportunity.

  When Kellan discovered that Midnight had worked with her mother—had, in fact, learned the ropes of shadowrunning from her—Kellan felt like she’d finally found a real connection to her mother, apart from the few possessions she’d inherited. Kellan had hoped that Midnight knew what became of her mother, but Midnight had lost contact with Mustang over the years. "All right," Kellan sighed, "let me try this again." After Midnight left, Kellan gratefully crawled into bed to get a few hours’ sleep. In her dreams, she made her way through the test again: approaching the perimeter fence, carefully cutting a way in, slipping invisibly into the compound. She crouched alongside the security door, the passkey working through the combinations.

  The door clicked and a bright, shining light poured out around its edges, flooding into the dimness outside. Kellan felt the amulet she wore at her throat become warm, tingling against her skin. She thought she heard someone calling her name from the other side of the door.

  "Kellan . . . Kellan . . ."

  As if in a trance, she swung the door open, then threw her arm up to shield her eyes from the blazing light; it was like looking directly into the sun. She squinted into the glare, trying to make out the shadowy figure she thought was standing there.

  "Kellan . . ." the voice called again. It sounded like a man’s voice, but Kellan couldn’t make it out clearly, didn’t recognize it.

  "Come to me . . ." the voice said sweetly.

  "Kellan . . another voice spoke from behind her and Kellan spun, turning away from the light, framed by it in the doorway.

  Someone stood behind her, raising a slim pistol level with Kellan’s midsection.

  "Congratulations," she said dryly. "You’re dead."

  The gun went off with a bang, and Kellan woke with a start.

  Chapter 2

  Lothan, what do you know about dreams?" Kellan asked, keeping her gaze on the symbols she was chalking on the freshly cleaned floor of Lothan’s basement ritual space.

  The troll wizard raised one shaggy white eyebrow, glancing up from the book he was reading. The fabric-bound volume looked comically small cradled in his big hands.

  "Dreams?" he asked. "What about them?"

  "Well, do they . . . mean anything?"

  "That depends on what you mean by meaning, so to speak," Lothan rumbled. He set the book down on a workbench crowded with crystals, plastic bags containing colored powder, and other books and bric-a-brac, giving the subject his full attention. "There are many different levels of meaning." Kellan could sense Lothan shifting into what their mutual associate Jackie called "pontificate mode," an attitude he often adopted when expounding on one subject or another.

  "Dreams can certainly have psychological meanings— the expression of the d
eep archetypes of the psyche— and those symbols and archetypes in turn often have magical meaning—"

  "Like visions?"

  Lothan harrumphed at the interruption, his broad mouth pursing into an expression of disapproval. "Hardly," he said. "I mean the symbolism from dreams is often quite similar to that of the astral plane, particularly the metaplanes, and an understanding of that imagery can be useful to the practitioner in understanding the experience of metaplanar journeys and the like."

  "So dreams can’t predict the future—even, you know, our dreams?"

  "There’s no indication the dreams of the Awakened are any more powerful or meaningful than those of mundanes," Lothan said with a shake of his homed head. "Despite considerable folklore and urban myth supporting the theory, no study to date has turned up a truly reliable magical means of predicting the future—in or out of dreams, at least for more than a few seconds—with any real degree of reliability. It has to do with the field of probability, which expands as you go further out . . Lothan trailed off.

  "I’m sorry, am I boring you?" her teacher asked. Kellan didn’t think he’d seen her roll her eyes. She quickly shook her head.

  "No, it’s just . .

  "Kellan, have you been having some unusual dreams lately?"

  "What? No. No, I was just wondering. I’ve been doing some reading, and I’d heard some things, you know, about dreams."

  Lothan raised an eyebrow, and then waved his hand dismissively. "Well, you shouldn’t believe evefything you read—or hear, for that matter."

  "Unless it comes from you, of course," Kellan interjected slyly, and the troll smiled, showing off the short tusks jutting up over his upper lip.

  "Of course. I am, after all, the definitive authority on . . . well, most everything."

  "Of course," Kellan said, bending over the chalk diagram again. Lothan stood up from the broad stool where he was sitting, and looked over her shoulder.