Stranger Souls

by Jak Koke

  Jane felt the rain, smelled the cigarette smoke. Everything was so real. "I'm in the middle of a run," she said. "Please let me return to my friends. They're counting on me."

  Alice smiled, the firefly street reflecting in her eyes like an endless reduction of mirrored images. "I have determined how you can repay me," she said. "I will explain, briefly, then I will let you go."

  Even if Jane had a choice in the matter, she never let a debt go unpaid. "I'm listening," she said.

  35

  "Go, go!" Axler yelled, her voice ripped to hollow tatters under the deafening rush of the helo's rotor.

  Ryan let himself fall through the night air, so fast he was pushing the edge of control as he free-rappelled down the nylon rope hanging out of the hovering helicopter. He watched Axler's black-streaked face grow smaller as he slid down, his gloved hands growing hot as he channeled the rope through his harness at a furious pace.

  The sky was a splotched charcoal underbelly behind the 'copter, as Ryan caught a glimpse of Axler descending her rope just above him. She wore the same gray and black-spotted camouflage that covered Ryan, with semi-flexible Kevlar body armor underneath. The silhouette of a rucksack bulged on her back, its smooth surface broken by the sharp jutting of her Ares Alpha Combat gun, her favorite weapon—an automatic assault rifle and grenade launcher in one.

  Ryan snapped his focus back on himself, using his magically enhanced strength and senses to drop into the arboretum trees below. And in seconds, he was down, unbuckling the harness from the rope. Crouching, blending into the surrounding cover. He made a quick scan of the terrain from down here even though he had done the same from above.

  Nothing thermal, nothing visual. And nothing in the astral except bushes and trees and brambles.

  Axler landed deftly next to him and scanned the area herself. Her subvocalization sounded like a deep whisper in his ear. "Condition?"

  Ryan subvocalized into the pickup taped to his throat. "Green. Let's go."

  He caught Axler's nod in the darkness, and followed her as she led the way through the trees. They sneaked along the river, darting from copse to thicket until they had gone about two kilometers. There were paved paths for bicycles, and foot bridges for pedestrians. There were birds and wildlife and lots of plants. Amazing for the center of a fragging city. Of course, this was Tir Tairngire. The elves were notorious for their adamant protection of nature.

  In this case, it worked in Ryan's favor. He and Axler closed to within thirty meters of the outer fence of the Atlantean Foundation building before they had to stop. The physical movement felt great after the long, uneventful ride in the helicopter. The Tir border patrol didn't even hiccup when they'd come across near La Grande earlier that afternoon.

  "I don't like it," Axler said. "Jane's been out of touch too long."

  "We wait?"

  Axler nodded. "Give her five minutes," she said.

  Ryan sat on his heels and looked at the building. A three-meter-tall cyclone fence marked the perimeter of the facility. Monowire looped along the top, and inside those loops cameras and electric pulse generators were placed at twenty-meter intervals. A solid inner wall of painted cinderblock ran parallel to the fence. The building itself stood a few meters inside the wall. This was not going to be easy.

  Ryan focused himself. Centering. After a minute he looked into the astral. The building's aura glowed in fuzzy reds and greens, like a defocused Christmas tree. The high background energy made it harder for Ryan to locate the watcher spirits, but after a few minutes of concentration, he thought he'd spotted them all. Two tiny spirits that looked like floating eyeballs hovered just above the inner wall, waiting for intruders.

  Ryan couldn't see any elementals or nature spirits, but he did catch a glimpse of one of the hell hounds. The paranimal was larger than a normal dog, about twice the size of a wolf, but with red eyes, and acutely aware of both the physical and astral planes at the same time. It ran along a worn path inside the outer fence, trotting past as it burned off nervous energy.

  The hound stopped just then, sniffing the air right in front of them. Ryan held his breath and refocused his vision on the physical. He grabbed Axler's arm, then held a finger to his lips when she looked at him. He pointed toward the fence where the hell hound paced, smelling the air.

  "Axler, Ryan," came Jane's voice in his ear just then. And even though she'd whispered, Ryan's heart jumped into his throat. His breath quickened for a second before he used magic to steady himself, to hone his senses down on the here and now. No more fragging surprises.

  "Stand by, Jane," Axler subvocalized in a low whisper.

  "I had a short delay," Jane said. "But I'm on-line now. Your black window begins in twenty seconds."

  The hell hound looked out in the direction of Ryan and Axler as they crouched like part of the foliage, unmoving. Finally, it moved away, continuing on its pacing track.

  Jane's voice sounded in Ryan's ear again. "Grind and McFaren are ready to move," she said. "They'll wait until you're through the perimeter. Where's the spirit?"

  Ryan looked into the astral but there was no sign of Lethe. Wait a second, he thought. The fuzziness of the building's aura grew clearer as he looked. As if a transparent pane of glass or a heat shimmer stood between him and the fence. "Is that you, Lethe?" he spoke.

  "Yes, I am here. You are very perceptive."

  "Thank you," Ryan said, but he was wondering how the spirit had made himself nearly invisible in astral space. Ryan hadn't thought it possible. "You'll have to show me how to do that sometime."

  "I'm not sure if it is something I can teach," came the reply.

  "Ready?" Axler said.

  "Yes," said Lethe.

  "Ready," said Ryan.

  "Their blind spot is between those two cameras." Axler pointed at a space on the perimeter about six or seven meters to their right. "We'll have to move exactly between them to prevent the other cameras from spotting us."

  Ryan looked at Lethe. "Can you take care of the watcher spirits?"

  "Yes," came the reply. "They will not see us." Axler tensed next to Ryan. "It begins . . . now," she said. "Let's go."

  She led the way, moving in a quick crouch, along the edge of the trees for a few meters, then straight across the clearing to the fence. Ryan moved behind her, a silent, invisible shadow. Axler reached the fence and doused the links with a squirt from her Ares Cascade gun. The liquid inside the reservoir was DMSO-laced water with a modified gamma-scopolamine clip. The stuff would paralyze a human or metahuman on contact. The liquid fell on the metal fence without so much as a sizzle. No electricity here.

  Axler glanced around for the hell hounds, then removed wire cutters from her belt, clipped the fence at the base, and scrambled through. Ryan followed. The sprint between the fence and the wall went without a hitch, but just as Axler's grapple caught on the top of the wall, one of the hell hounds trotted around the corner.

  Ryan moved, a blur in the night, pulling out a narcotic dart before the big dog even knew he was there. The dart flew, a high-velocity projectile, moving silently in the dark. Another was in Ryan's hand before the first one struck, hard, in the hound's neck.

  Ryan had not needed his magically enhanced abilities since the night he'd spoken with Dunkelzahn on his wrist-phone, high on the ladder of the amusement park tower. It felt good to use magic again. He remembered falling that night, remembered fighting the cyberzombie, Burnout. And losing for the first time in his life. That idea hung in his mind for a minute. Had he met his match in combat? He and Dunkelzahn had both lost that night.

  But this is just a fragging dog. He was on the hound before it could even yelp. Ryan grabbed its nose and clamped down, closing its jaw and twisting it off its feet in one motion. Taking no chances. The animal had no time to react; Ryan was too fast, too strong. He jammed the second dart into the creature's neck and it passed out. The whole thing took less than a minute.

  Then he was pulling the hound's body off the worn track bef
ore following Axler up the rope and over the wall. They dropped down into a grassy courtyard scattered with tables and benches. So far, so fragging excellent. The target room was through the double glass doors, and up one level in a sealed room. But when Ryan and Axler crossed the grass and tried the doors, they found them locked.

  Drek! Grind and McFaren are supposed to be here to unlock this door. What could have happened to them?

  Axler shrugged, then moved aside as Ryan switched to the backup plan—he would pick the lock. That would take time, however, and time was a luxury they just didn't have. He examined the lock—simple dead bolt operated by an ID scanner. The best option would be to use acid paste on the bolt.

  "Jane," Axler subvocalized. "The doors are locked. Can you help us out?"

  Through the darkened glass, Ryan caught a glimpse of something inside. People coming. Guards? He bolted to the side of the door, pulling Axler with him, pressing himself against the wall. He focused, listening to the sound of the approaching footsteps. The harsh blue-white light on the wall shone through the trees, casting twisted skeletal shadows over the tables and chairs in the courtyard. Perfect cover.

  Ryan pulled a small mirror from his webbing and carefully held it out in front of him, angling so that he could see the approaching figures. There were four of them, uniformed in black and crimson, carrying automatic weapons of some kind. They were headed straight for the double doors.

  "Put-up or shut-up time, Axler," Ryan said. "Four sec guards. SMGs, light body armor, swords. Possibly a mage or a shaman. Ready?"

  Axler sighed, drawing her Ares Cascade and dialing the nozzle to wide spray. She nodded.

  "Okay, chummer," she said, "let's grind some hoop."

  36

  In her virtual steel box, Jane tried to shake off the lingering sensation of Wonderland City and focus tightly on Grind's feed. Alice's request had been simple, and could easily wait until after the run, but what gave Jane the shivers was what she'd learned about Alice from her research into the Crash of '29.

  The only Alice who'd been part of Echo Mirage was Alice Haeffner. There were two things that spooked Jane about that. The first was her last name. Alice Haeffner turned out to be the ex-wife of Dunkelzahn's running mate and current president of the UCAS, Kyle Haeffner. The second thing was even more creepy: Alice Haeffner was dead. She had been killed in cybercombat against the virus that had caused the worldwide computer crash forty years ago.

  Jane took a deep breath and shook away the virtual goose pimples. It was time to put all that out of her mind and deal with the here and now. Right now, Grind and McFaren, under the cloak of invisibility, were stealing along the corridor a safe distance behind the four security personnel who stood between them and the doors where Axler and Ryan waited. There were three women and one man, all of the elven metatype. They were not the same four who'd stolen the Dragon Heart, but she had no doubt that they belonged to the Mystic Crusaders.

  They wore similar uniforms, except that one of the women wore a dog skin draped like a headdress. Must be a shaman, Jane thought. The others were most likely samurai or physical adepts like Quicksilver. The datajack in the temple of one of them said he could be a rigger or a decker, but the man also carried an array of knives and at least three guns that Jane cold see through Grind's eyes.

  Luckily, none of them had looked back astrally. In fact their posture seemed overly casual to Jane, as though they were taking a break. They chatted among themselves in Sperethiel.

  Earlier, back in the hermetic circle chamber, Grind and McFaren had taken out the two guards with a combination of magic and precise shots to their skulls. At that exact moment, Lethe had trapped the astral projecting forms of the three mages who had been examining the African sculpture. Then McFaren had cast a physical masking spell in the room to make it look to the cameras as though nothing had happened, calling on one of his elementals to sustain the spell.

  Now, hiding in the corridor behind the four Mystic Crusaders, Grind subvocalized, "Jane, any suggestions on how to get rid of these guys?"

  "Let those guards open the door," Jane said. "Then hope they don't see Quicksilver and Axler passing through."

  "I don't like that idea. They're off duty, I think, probably going outside for a pipe or a tea or whatever the frag dandelion-eaters do on break."

  "I don't think we should try to take them down," Jane said. "Too risky. Too much noise if they fire their weapons."

  "I can sustain a silence spell on them," McFaren said, "but we might become visible. The high background in here is making my magic a little unpredictable."

  Axler's voice came through. "Jane, give me something. They're almost to the door."

  Drek, drek, drek. Not enough time to plan it out right.

  "Okay," she said. "McFaren, silence spell as they open the door. Not before. Axler, you—"

  "Too late," Axler said. "They've just popped the door." Axler turned, and through her eyes, Jane saw the Cascade come up.

  One of the samurai called out a warning, but her cries made no sound. And by the time she'd drawn her gun, and was starting to jump out of the way, she was doused by the spray from the Cascade. The gun was on wide disbursement and all the guards got drenched.

  Next to Axler, Ryan was firing his silenced pistol. Gel rounds, Jane remembered, to stun them. Trying to keep casualties low. First the dog shaman went down with a jerk as the bullet slammed into her neck.

  The male samurai dove backward, and brought his weapon up with inhuman quickness. The laser sight flicked across Axler's chest for a second before Ryan's second shot hit the man's hand and made the shot fly wide. Fine and good, but Jane wondered how much sound that bullet would make when it hit the wall.

  The whole scene was like a strange simsense game with the sound turned off. And in real life, the action was over in a less than a minute. And then only another two minutes more before Ryan had taken a passcard from the paralyzed body of the dog shaman and had hidden her in the bushes with the other bodies.

  Jane's chess pieces were back in position. Inside the building and prowling along the hall under a newly cast mantle of invisibility. Headed toward the chamber where the Dragon Heart was kept.

  Ryan spoke then. "Lethe says we've got to hurry. Some spirits saw us."

  37

  As Ryan moved silently down the corridor, he shifted his perception to see into the astral. He caught the near transparent ripple that was Lethe, but there was no sign of any hostile spirits. "Where are they?" he asked.

  "I banished them to their home planes," Lethe said. "They will be happier there anyway."

  Jane's voice sounded in Ryan's ear. "What's the scan?" she asked.

  "Lethe was able to banish the spirits," he subvocalized. "But their absence will alert their masters."

  The group increased its pace, moving quickly and quietly along the corridor. Though not as quietly as Ryan would have liked. He realized that these runners were good, but they did not follow the Silent Way as he did. The mage, McFaren, was marginally adept at stealth, and Grind was more of a combat expert than a thief. Without the invisibility spell, those two would be dead by now. And Ryan wasn't about to let that happen. He needed the mage to get through the ward around the Dragon Heart.

  "The door on the left—stairs," Axler said. "We go up one floor. Standard formation."

  Standard formation was Ryan at point, then Axler, followed closely by McFaren, with Grind bringing up the rear. Ryan opened the door to the stairs, surprised that it was unlocked, allowing unrestricted entry to the staircase. He noticed, however, that the door would be locked the other way. Anyone in the staircase would need a passcard and a keycode to get out. Ryan pulled some tape from his webbing and placed a strip of it over the latch. Old trick, but it was simple and worked well.

  A quick glance showed him that no one was on the stairs.

  "Clear," he said, then edged his way in. He noticed security cameras and drone tracks. Stairwells were closed spaces and corps loved to put kille
r drones there. Hope that invisibility holds up.

  Ryan didn't need it himself. He had his own version, magic that helped him blend into dark places, helped camouflage him with his surroundings. Ryan gripped his silenced Walther PB-120 and climbed slowly and steadily up the stairs until he came to a door marked "2nd Floor: Thaumaturgical Research."

  He looked at the lock as the others edged up behind him. He knew their astral images would show like beacons in the dark stairwell, and he hoped no other spirits would come wandering through. He pulled the ID stick that he'd removed from the body of the dog shaman and slotted it into the maglock reader.

  The maglock acknowledged the card, then said, "Please enter passcode" in a man's generic voice. Ryan took the small remote receiver from Axler, and slotted its datacord into the reader's jack. "Unit attached," Ryan subvocalized. "Jane?"

  But before Jane answered, Ryan heard the maglock click open. "Pull the stick out, Ryan," Jane said. "The code is R4N54CK."

  "Got it."

  They passed through the door and into the dark hall beyond. Ryan followed Lethe now, the spirit glowing a little brighter, though Ryan didn't know why. Maybe Lethe was doing it on purpose to make himself easier to see. Or perhaps the spirit was reacting to the proximity of the Dragon Heart. Ryan led the others down the hall, their footsteps a delicate whisper as they moved as quietly as possible.

  Lethe stopped just shy of an intersection with another hall, coming from the left. "It's down this corridor," Lethe said. "But there are guards."

  Ryan signalled the others to stop and maintain silence, then pulled out his small mirror and used it to glance around the corner. Two elves stood in front of a set of double doors. They wore body armor covered by black and crimson uniforms. Ryan subvocalized to Axler. "Two guards," he said, "alert and armed with SMGs and Supersquirts. There are also cameras and locked double doors."