2xs

by Nigel Findley

  And finally came the clinic and evaluation lab. The clinic's beds were empty, but Skyhill led us to a glass-fronted control room in the basement that looked out onto a smaller version of the UCAS army's Urban Combat Simulator. We watched while a young woman, wearing only singlet, shorts, and an electronic gizmo strapped to the back of her neck and wired to her datajack, out-maneuvered, outfought, and comprehensively kicked the drek out of four security drones. "Apart from the data-jack and SPISES box, she's totally off-the-rack," Skyhill said-needlessly. The woman was wearing so little that the scars from even the cleanest-implanted cyberware would have shown up clearly.

  As we left the building, I was glad to return to fresh air. The noontime sun was trying valiantly to break through the clouds, and the verdant woods of Fort Lewis were a soothing balm to my soul. Just what I needed after touring ISP's chamber of horrors'.

  Skyhill started back toward the admin building. "What about the viral lab?" Jocasta asked.

  Skyhill gave that chuckle that had begun to grate on my nerves. "Sorry," he said, "Yamatetsu policy. No visitors in biohazard areas."

  "Fair enough," Jocasta said easily. Then, after a moment, she asked, "What's your doctorate in, Adrian? Medicine?"

  "I considered it," Skyhill said, apparently pleased to be talking about himself again, "and maybe one day I'll go back for my M.D. No, bioelectronics was my field, although administering a project like this has forced me to branch out considerably."

  "How about magical training?" she pressed. "I assume you need to be on top of the magical aspects of research as well."

  "Very true. I took a couple of postgrad courses in magical theory and mago-ethics, of course. But it's all academic. I'm a mundane through and through, more's the pity."

  When we got back to the admin building, Skyhill shook us off as fast as basic politeness would allow.

  We'd burned our hour, and more, and he'd discharged whatever duty he owed us. With a last insincere request that we call if we had any more questions, he was gone.

  Which was just fine with me. I was happy-no, ecstatic-to see the ISP gate shrinking in the rearview mirror as I swung the Harmony onto Perimeter Road and headed for the I-5.

  Jocasta was quiet, thoughtful, as I drove. Finally, I asked, "What do you think?"

  "I think I don't like Dr. Adrian Skyhill," she said, and I smiled hearty agreement. "And it's more than just that phony smile."

  I could see her struggling to put her impressions into words. "He ... He just felt wrong." She shook her head in frustration. "I know that's vague, but there was something about his aura. It was. . ." Again she groped for the right word. "It was smooth, untroubled. Unnaturally so for so troubled a man."

  "You thought he was troubled?"

  "Didn't you?" she shot back. I remembered what he'd said about the political situation with Barnard. I might have described him as driven rather than troubled, but her word wasn't inappropriate.

  I nodded slowly. "Can you"-my turn to grope for words-"can you do stress management on an aura?"

  She laughed at that, not unkindly. "In a way you can," she said. "It's called aura masking. But it's a kind of metamagic, something that only the most powerful mages or shamans can use. And Skyhill's a mundane."

  Or so he says, I thought but didn't say. "What was all that about P-whatever containment?" I asked.

  "Did his story hang together?"

  "It hung," she confirmed. "Viral surgery's powerful stuff... if it works. But if you hose up somehow, it can be deadly."

  "Like how?"

  "Like... Like you're trying to cure diabetes, the way Skyhill said, but you accidentally come up with a virus that destroys the gene that codes for insulin. And then that virus gets out. Anyone infected by the virus loses the ability to make insulin, and instantly becomes a diabetic."

  "That can happen?"

  "You mean the fragged-up virus?" She nodded. "It's not particularly likely, not with modern techniques.

  But it can still happen, particularly in the early stages of research. That's what containment labs are for: to make sure nothing dangerous gets out into the world. Labs like that are labeled according to the protocol they use: PI is about like a hospital operating room, P2 is more secure, and P3 is the most secure. There was a P4 protocol for a while, but new technology made it irrelevant."

  "What about Skyhill's P5?" I asked.

  She thought for a moment, then chuckled. "I don't want to give him credit for a good idea," she said, "but adding magic to the P3 protocol was good idea."

  "Now for the big question. Were they working oh anything besides SPISES?"

  Jocasta was silent in thought long enough for the Harmony to eat up five klicks of highway. Then she said, "I don't think so, Dirk. We saw pretty much all there was. They weren't manufacturing 2XS chips."

  I sighed. I'd come to the same conclusion. Another fragging dead end.

  I pulled up outside my Purity doss, climbed out of the car. I checked my watch. Almost fourteen hundred hours, which was when I'd programmed my telecom to dump everything I didn't know to various and assorted destinations unless I told it, "No, no, I'm alive, see?"

  Jocasta joined me on the sidewalk, ready to climb into the driver's seat and head off. She smiled at me as she passed.

  "Do you want to come up for a drink?" I said on impulse, immediately embarrassed at how cliched it sounded.

  "Why not?" she said lightly.

  Then I regretted the invitation all the way up the stairs, but was top abashed to cancel it. I opened the door, and stepped aside for her to enter.

  She glanced around, but made no comment, for which I was deeply grateful. She pulled the one chair out from the telecom and sat herself down. Totally at home, or so it seemed.

  "It's the maid's year off," I said in a feeble attempt at a joke. "I'll be with you in a moment." I tossed my duster on the bed, then crossed to the telecom, where I quickly pounded the abort code into the keyboard. The machine beeped its acceptance, canceled the scheduled transmission queue, and stashed the information back in hidden and encrypted files. "Just canceling an insurance policy," I told her. "Would you like a drink? I've got whiskey, beer..."

  "A beer would be fine."

  I crouched down to open the miniature fridge I'd installed under the sink. Yes, thank whatever gods there were, I did have a couple of beers left. I pulled out two, quickly scrabbled around for the least grimy glasses, and poured the drinks. I handed her one, and sat down on the bed with mine. "Kampai," I said.

  She echoed the toast with a smile, sipped her drink.

  Jocasta looked very out of place here, I found myself thinking. Someone wearing her corporate-style clothes and professional demeanor shouldn't be sitting in a squalid econodoss in the Barrens, drinking cheap beer out of a dirty glass. But here we were. I thought I should say something, start a light conversation, but didn't know how to begin.

  Mercifully, Jocasta broke the silence. "You know," she said slowly, "when I was younger I often thought how exciting it would be to run the shadows." She chuckled. "I tried to picture what it would be like to be a famous shadowrunner."

  I gestured around to include the doss, the Barrens, everything. "Then you realized you couldn't handle the luxurious lifestyle, right?"

  "No, that's not it," she said after a moment. "I realized that I wasn't as tough as I thought-tough mentally, I mean. Definitely not tough enough." She paused again. "Can I be honest?"

  I hate that question. The only truthful answer is, No, keep feeding me palatable lies, but I gave the conventional response. "Of course."

  "When I first met you," she said slowly, "I didn't like you. The obvious reason was that I thought you'd killed Lolita. But even after I knew you hadn't done it, you made me uncomfortable. It took me a while to realize why. It probably sounds dumb, but you're what I'm not, what I could never be. You scared me, and I don't like being scared."

  "How about now?" I asked. "Do you still fear me?"

  She smiled. "Respect, I
think is a better word."

  Uncomfortable silence again. Where did a conversation go from there?

  There was a rap on the door. Convenient escape from social discomfort. I virtually leaped to my feet and crossed toward the door. As I did, I cursed the circumstances that had prevented me from setting up the same Quincy-designed security systems on this door as at my Auburn apartment. The reinforced security chain was set, theoretically preventing the door from opening more than a couple of centimeters, but let's, face it, the only space you need is nine millimeters-less if you're using APDS rounds-to make life highly unpleasant for whoever's answering the door. I was just reaching to open the maglock when Jocasta barked, "Don't!"

  I turned. She was sitting stiffly, unnaturally still, staring at the door. No, through the door, as if she could see what was on the other side and didn't like it one bit. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck.

  "What is it?"

  "Don't open it," she said. Her voice was low, little more than a whisper, but it crackled with intensity.

  "Get away from the door."

  A sarcastic comment rose to my lips, then died just as quickly. I moved away from the door, never taking my eyes off it, finding my duster by feel and pulling out my gun. I thumbed off the safety. Jocasta was still sitting, frozen. "Jocasta," I said, "you'd better-"

  No warning. One moment everything was unnaturally quiet, forebodingly still. The next moment the door ripped from its hinges like it had been hit by a bullet train, hurtling across the room to slam into the opposite wall. Before I could react, a baseball-sized globe of glaring, churning light rocketed in through the empty doorway. When it reached the center of the room, it blossomed into a roaring fireball.

  I screamed as the flames washed over me. The concussion was enough to knock me off my feet, smash me back into the wall. Everything went black.

  But only for an instant. The wall was still vibrating from my impact when the world came back into focus.

  The apartment was a write-off. It looked like a fragging grenade had gone off in it. Furniture smashed to fragments, windows blown out into the street. Small fires were burning everywhere, on the floors, walls, even the ceiling. The reek of seared flesh was in my nostrils. I looked down, found my clothes scorched and smoldering. My exposed skin was red and raw-feeling, already blistering in places. Second-degree burns at the very least.

  What was I doing still alive? No time to think about it now, or I wouldn't be. Two attackers burst into the room, machine pistols at the ready. No doubt they were expecting to pump a couple of rounds into two slabs of cooked meat, just for the sake of completeness. I greeted one with a Manhunter round through the upper lip, exploding what he used for brains out the back of his skull. The second gunman crouched and spun, triggering his weapon as I brought mine to bear. Bullets slammed into the walls around me, and I knew I was dead. Then a bullet tore into the side of his neck, knocking him off balance and his gun off-line, while another shattered his lower jaw. As he fell backward I pumped a round into his throat, and that was it. His death spasm emptied the machine pistol's clip into the ceiling, then the apartment was silent.

  No, not silent. I could see hear running footsteps in the hall. I charged across the room, jumping over the bodies, and blasted out the door. A figure was fleeing down the hallway, a small and weaselly elf. The hit-team mage? A good bet. I capped off five rounds after him. He shrieked as they slammed into the wall beside him. At least one round hit him, staggering him and knocking something out of his hand. But then he spun back toward me, gibbering in a language I didn't recognize. I tried to throw myself back into the apartment, but I was too late. The spell hit me, but it didn't kill me. Instead, it only rang my bell, about the same way as a good, solid punch to the head. I lurched back against the wall, slid slowly to the ground, watched helplessly as two elves ducked around two corners at the end of two hallways, and vanished. I tried to raise my gun to send a farewell gift after them, but the Manhunter suddenly weighed a ton or two. I gave up on it as a bad idea.

  Then Jocasta swam into my field of vision. "Are you all right?" she asked urgently.

  I nodded, trying to force a dashing, devil-may-care smile onto my face. Judging by her expression, I didn't quite make it. "I'm all right," I told her, and it was only partially a lie. My thought processes were as sluggish as cold soy syrup, but the serious disorientation was passing. I still felt pretty fragging lousy, though.

  Much as I'd have liked to, I couldn't just sit there, basking in the attention of Jocasta's concern. Even in the Barrens, a fireball and a firefight are going to attract someone's attention. We had to get out of the area. "Help me up," I told Jocasta. "We've got to move." We took my car, but Jocasta drove. My sense of both balance and reality were returning slowly, but I didn't yet trust myself behind the wheel. We were silent for the first few minutes, Jocasta concentrating on her driving, while I turned over and over in my hand the item my gunshots had knocked out of the elf-mage's hands. It was a wide bracelet, probably what used to be called a "bracer," made of beaten silver. Set into it was a large black stone that was probably onyx, surrounded by delicate lines and scrollwork graven into the metal. I didn't recognize the symbolism, but it was intricate and seemed arcane. I also found it very disturbing.

  The bracer wasn't the only disturbing thing. I thought I'd figured out what had happened in the hallway, why the elf's final spell had only knocked me off my feet instead of geeking me where I stood. Either I hadn't given him the time to put together something more lethal, or he didn't have enough jam left after tossing the fireball to cook me. (Of course, I could be wrong.) But what about the fireball itself?

  I looked over at Jocasta. She was as singed as I was, and her clothes were as much the worse for wear. Any other time the considerable expanses of skin showing through burn-holes in those clothes would have been intriguing, but now that flesh looked scorched and inflamed. She was sitting stiffly in the driver's seat, trying to minimize the area of contact with the upholstery.

  "What the frag happened back there?" I said at last. "We should have been barbecued. Did you do it?"

  "Spell defense," she said, answering my first question. "Mages and shamans can protect people near them from the effects of magical attacks." She smiled slightly. "Partially protect," she amended. "So you did it?"

  She shook her head. "Not a chance," she said firmly. "I know the theory, but I never learned the practice."

  "Could you have done it instinctively?" She didn't even dignify that with an answer. I was reaching, I knew. The only other possibility I didn't find reassuring: somebody else had protected us. Which meant somebody else was watching us. And, to be honest, the idea was not appealing.

  "What's that you're playing with?" Jocasta asked. From the tone of her voice, I figured she found the previous subject as disturbing as I did, and wanted to get off it right fragging now.

  "You tell me," I suggested. "The elf mage dropped it when I creased him. Maybe it's some kind of magic drek."

  Jocasta took me at my word, pulling over to the side of the road. I handed the bracer over, watched her as she examined it. "It's magical," she said after a long while. "I can feel the power in it. I think it's shamanic."

  "Oh?"

  "Shamans can throw fireballs, too," she told me. "Don't think otherwise." I took that to heart. "So what is it?" I pressed. She was silent for another minute or so. "It's a focus of some kind, I think a power focus. But..."

  "But what?"

  "But there's something strange about it." She said almost apologetically. "It's . . . 'out of true' is the best way I can describe it. Here, take it back, I don't like it." I took the bracer from her, and she drove on. I noticed we were heading toward north downtown. "Where to?" I asked.

  "U-Dub," she said. "We need a place to hide out, right?"

  I nodded: my Purity doss was certainly, as they say, blown. "Harold can help us. Maybe he can also tell us something about that bauble you picked up."

  I gri
nned over at her. Our minds seemed to be working along parallel lines. Something was telling me that the bracer might be important, apparently Jocasta was hearing the same inner voice. Of course, I wasn't that sure Harold Walks-In-Shadows was a good choice. He might be a drek-hot university professor, but that skill set might not be the one we needed most to keep us alive at the moment.

  "Head for Capitol Hill," I told her. I felt her tense up as much as I saw it. "Why?"

  "I've got a contact there. I think he'll be able to help us more."

  "I trust Harold," she said. "He'll hide us, and . . ." I cut her off, but kept my voice gentle. "And in return we'll drag him into the same deep drek we're in," I told her. "The chummer I want to see runs the shadows, that's his biz, that's his life. He knows what to expect, and he knows how to stay alive in my world." I stressed the word "my" slightly. Jocasta flinched slightly, and I knew my point had hit home.

  "I appreciate your efforts," I said as sincerely as I could, "and if my chummer can't tell us what this thing is, we'll get it to Harold for his opinion. But we'll do it in a way that won't get him killed. Okay?"

  She didn't answer, but she took a right at the next light, and I knew I'd won.

  Chapter 21.

  The silver bracer caught the afternoon sun as Rodney Greybriar turned it in his hands. "Intriguing," he said. "Quite fascinating." He looked up and smiled at Jocasta. "On first examination, I find I agree with Ms.

  Yzerman. A power focus, certainly, and one of quite significant power. But, as did Ms. Yzerman-"

  "Jocasta," she said.

  Greybriar's smile broadened. "As did Jocasta, I as-sensed something peculiar about its aura. Very peculiar indeed."

  "That's all?" I asked.

  "For the moment," he said calmly. "May I keep this for a while?"

  "Yeah, sure," I said. It was strange: I still liked the competent-seeming elf, but he was so urbane that I'd begun to think I was coming up on the short end by comparison. I felt surly, uncultured, while he was the height of civilization and suavity. Was it just his accent or simply because he was an elf? With an effort, I forced these thoughts from my mind. "Can you figure out what it is?" I asked him.