2xs

by Nigel Findley

  My focus had slipped for an instant, and Dempsey took advantage of it. She hurled herself forward with such inhuman speed I hardly saw her move. Her left hand lashed out and grabbed my gun wrist, forcing the Man-hunter off-line to the right of her head. The laser beamed into the darkness beyond her ear. Her right hand grabbed the side of my neck, her long-nailed fingers digging into. my flesh. The woman's strength was unbelievable, horrible. I couldn't fight her. My gun arm was immobilized as effectively as if it was locked in a vice, and her right hand was slowly dragging my neck and head down toward her face. I could see her white teeth, opened wide, as if she would sink them into my throat. A fragging vampire?

  I couldn't move my right arm. I could pivot the gun, but not enough. She tightened her grip, and I could feel the small bones of my wrist shifting. Through the agony I knew I had a couple of seconds before she broke my wrist, then ripped out my throat.

  My left hand was still free. I fired a couple of short jabs into the side of her head, but our bodies were too close for me to get any leverage, and my fist felt like I'd slugged the dumpster. I brought a knee up hard, aiming for the soft parts of her-sure, it's not as effective as against a guy, but a solid blow to the groin will bring a woman to her knees. But she'd shifted her leg, and my knee drove into a rock-hard thigh muscle. She laughed, and dragged my head closer to her mouth. Her eyes were still staring into mine.

  I reached around with my left hand, drove my fingers into those eyes. She screeched. With all my strength I pulled, forcing her head back. Then I threw my full weight into her, driving her backward-one step, two- into the alley wall. (Son of a slitch, it worked. Strong she may have been, but she still had only the mass of an elf woman.) The back of her head smashed into the wall, with a nasty crack of bone. She screamed again, and I drove my left shoulder harder into her throat.

  Then I screamed as her teeth sank into my shoulder-ice-cold pain turning to fire. I pulled away, felt her teeth tear free of my flesh.

  My laser targeting spot was on the wall, right beside her ear, the light reflected onto her temple. I pulled the trigger.

  The Manhunter roared and kicked. The bullet smashed fragments from the wall, lacerating my face, then ricocheted off to slam into the side of Dempsey's head. Her grip on my wrist and neck tightened spasmodically, then released. I dragged myself away, stumbled a step back. She was still alive, barely, which just shouldn't have been the case. Part of her skull was literally blown away, but she was still standing. Her rolling eyes, now looking far from human, fixed on me, and she moved forward. Her voice was a hideous, bubbling thing.

  I fired again. Again and again. Kept firing after she was down, until my clip was empty. Resisted the impulse to slam in a new magazine and cap it off as well. Then I turned and fled down the alleyway like the devil was behind me. And I wasn't completely sure it wasn't.

  Chapter 25

  My left shoulder felt like pure pluperfect hell. Even the analgesic salve Jocasta had slathered on didn't take away all the pain, and the flesh seemed to have swollen up around the dressing she'd attached. The wound itself burned, the familiar pain of lacerated flesh, but deeper in the shoulder was a dull throbbing that seemed synchronized with my heartbeat. When we'd got back to Rodney's apartment, the sensation had been isolated in the shoulder. But now pain and weakness seemed to be spreading down the left arm.

  Jocasta knelt on the couch beside me. A well-stocked medkit lay on the coffee table, and an optical fiber led from the unit to a watch-sized sensor array that Jocasta held against my shoulder. "Some kind of venom, I think," she said, consulting the medkit's readout. "It suggests a broad-spectrum antidote patch."

  "I'd trust its judgment over mine," I said. "Go ahead."

  "What was she?" Jocasta said as she removed the protective covering from the slap patch and positioned it on my back near the wound.

  I shrugged. It was about 0500 by the time I got back. With the trip being a combination of slow driving and frequent stops for fits of the shakes, I'd had plenty of time to think. My first reaction after the attack was to believe that Dempsey had been some kind of poison-fanged, unnaturally strong monster. Now I realized that had to be mainly my fear talking. Her strength? Cyberware, pure and simple. Not every replacement limb has to look like chrome. The fact that she took a bullet to the head and didn't geek? It sometimes works that way. Wound shock-or lack thereof-just isn't predictable. One guy will take a bullet in the hand and die of shock. Someone else can absorb a few dozen rounds and keep bopping for minutes before his brain admits he's dead.

  And her poison bite-if it really was toxin and not just bad dental hygiene? I've seen street muscle with razors for fingernails and knives in their forearms. Come to think of it, I was surprised not to have heard of poison-filled fangs-probably with carbide steel tips-before now.

  "I don't know what she was," I said. "All I know is she took my sister and gave her to Yamatetsu. The fragger." The pain was fading from my shoulder as the antidote patch did its work. Thank the gods for modern medicine. I jumped up from the couch, I felt the need to pace.

  Jocasta watched me calmly. I knew she understood what I was going through, for she'd just lost her own sister, but my anger and my pain were more immediate. They burned and they churned and they writhed in my belly. I had to do something.

  "What are you planning to do?" Jocasta's voice was calm, soothing-the last thing I wanted at the moment.

  "Take them down," I growled. "Get my sister back."

  "How?"

  I rounded on her. "I don't know how."

  "Then let's talk about it," she said quietly. "I want to help you, Derek. I will help you. But I need to know how." I didn't want to accept the logic in her words, but I had to. Reluctantly, I sat down beside her.

  "So, then," she said with a reassuring smile, "let's figure out what we've got to do."

  One thing was obvious as soon as we got to talking about it. If we wanted to get anywhere near Yamatetsu's ISP facility, we needed more bodies and serious muscle-or muscle-replacement.

  The key word was "serious." Like anyone who works the streets and the shadows, I knew several dozen people who styled themselves shadowrunners. Strictly speaking, I guess they were. But gradations exist among shadow-runners just as they do among, say professional riggers. The vast majority of riggers are perfectly capable of cruising a truck down a highway without hitting anything-or at least not too often. But then there are the guys who can blaze a panzer down a winding canyon at night, dodging incoming missiles, while simultaneously engaging the attacking helicopters with the tank's main gun. Despite what you see on the trid, the latter are few and far between.

  Same with the heavy-hitter type of shadowrunner. He or she's one in a thousand-maybe even rarer-and as much like the run-of-the-mill street muscle as a bogie is to a lap poodle. I met one bona fide, top-drawer shadow-runner once-a samurai who called himself Hangfire-in a semi-social situation, and that was enough for me. I thank whatever gods there are that I've never had to face off against one.

  But now such heavy-hitters were exactly what I had to find. Hiring standard-issue runners isn't difficult: you go to the right kind of bar and pass the word that you need such-and-such talent for such-and-such assignment. Then just weed through the applicants until you find what you need. But the varsity doesn't hang out in bars, nor do they accept just any job. And they almost always work through intermediaries.

  Which was why I phoned Anwar. Much as I dislike the little weasel, his network of contacts is wider than mine will ever be. I laid out a rough description of the job and the level of talent I was after, leaving out the corp name, of course. "I figure I need two, maybe three, really good guns," I told him. "I'll supply a decker"- I was thinking of Rosebud, whose rates were reasonable- "and a mage." Rodney of course. "But I need muscle." I could see the little nuyen signs light up behind Anwar's dark eyes. This was going to be a big contract, which meant he'd pocket a big commission.

  "Yeah, sure, sure," he said. "Sure,
I know some a the people you want. You want smart, too, huh, not just tough? Race a problem?" I shook my head. "Then there's Easter out of Detroit-troll, real good rep. Or Ripper out of Atlanta-dwarf merc, one of the hardest. Or maybe ..."

  I cut him off. "Think local," I told him. "I need them tonight if possible."

  "Oh, rush job," Anwar bleated, and the nuyen signs got brighter. "Yeah, you want..." He pulled up, and his eyes narrowed. "You can pay, huh?" he said suspiciously. "Big players want big credit."

  I nodded. Jocasta and I had already gone through this. I could scratch together maybe seventy-K nuyen, basically by putting a lien on everything I owned or ever would-not too much of a problem, since I fully intended to skip as soon as I had Theresa-and Jocasta had promised to make up any difference. (She hadn't said why, and I knew enough about gift horses not to ask.) "I can pay," I told the weasel.

  "Yeah, okay. You want local, there's a group calls itself the Wrecking Crew. Two samurai, a combat mage, and a decker."

  "I just need the muscle," I told Anwar. "I'll supply mage and decker."

  Anwar shook his head. "No go," he said. "The Crew always work together. No exceptions: you get one, you get'em all."

  Four heavy-hitter shadowrunners would blow my budget to hell and gone. "Who else?" I asked.

  He shrugged in his weaselly way. "Nobody, if you want 'em tonight."

  I ground my teeth. "What's their going rate?" The fixer looked at me as if I'd asked him his favorite sex position. "You make an offer, they decide if they want it," he snapped. I knew that was the usual protocol, but I'd been hoping for a clue so as not to waste more time than necessary on negotiation.

  I muted the phone and turned to Jocasta, who'd been watching silently from the couch. "Four of them. Twenty each?"

  She thought about that for a moment, then suggested, "Make it thirty."

  I hesitated. That made a total of one hundred twenty thousand nuyen-my seventy plus fifty from Jocasta. "Are you sure?"

  "Make it thirty," she said firmly. I turned back to the phone, brought Anwar back from electronic limbo. "Okay," I said, "one-twenty total, they pay your cut."

  The weasel's face showed no reaction, Anwar would be one hell of a good poker player. "I'll pass your offer on," he said noncommittally. "And the job?"

  "Get ready to receive," I told him. When he was ready, I pumped a short briefing file down the phone line. The file contained everything Jocasta and I knew, remembered, or could reconstruct about the ISP facility, plus a description of the mission. Even though protocol in deals like this forbade the fixer from scanning any communication from prospective client to the operatives, I'd taken the precaution of loading a read-only single-scan virus into the file. This virus made sure the file could only be opened once and that any attempts to copy it or remove the viral protection would immediately delete it. Paranoid maybe, but paranoia was starting to seem like the price for staying alive.

  The weasel accepted the file, then cut the connection. Pushing myself away from the telecom, I sat back and tried to relax. Nothing to do now but wait.

  We didn't have long. A blessing, because tension was eating away at my gut. When the phone beeped, I damn near wiped out a few pieces of furniture getting to it fast. I hit the receiver key. "Yeah?" I barked into the pickup.

  The face on the screen wasn't familiar, but it could only be one person. Handsome in a hard kind of way, he had a long face with a large jaw, short hair, and a mouth you could describe as either determined or cruel, depending on your mood. His eyes were gray, with a slight silver glint that hinted at modifications. His manner may have been even more distinctive. It had none of the swaggering machismo, the feral edge, that most runner wannabes take on as a mantle of their profession. His was more the air of a high-ranking military officer so confident of himself and his skills that he had no need for posturing. You either took him seriously or you didn't. In the latter case you'd probably die, but it probably wouldn't really matter to him one way or the other.

  "Mr. Johnson?" he said quietly.

  My brain stuttered for a moment. Why would Anwar have set me up with a Johnson? I was the one doing the hiring, which, I suddenly realized, made me the Johnson. "Yes," I said finally.

  "You can call me Argent."

  "Thanks for getting back to me so fast," I said. "I've discussed your offer with my team," he went on, as if I hadn't spoken, "and shown them your briefing file. We've decided to accept your contract." I stifled a sigh of relief. "Your intermediary said you wanted to go tonight. That true?"

  I nodded. "It's important that we go fast."

  "If that's the way you want to play it," the samurai said equably, "I suggest we meet at eighteen hundred for a tactical briefing. Do you have a secure location?" I nodded, gave him the address of Rodney's apartment.

  "Agreed," Argent said. "Hawk and I will be there at eighteen."

  And that was it. I'd hired myself a shadow team. Rodney had emerged from the bedroom while Jocasta and I were waiting for the Wrecking Crew's call. He looked like hell-complexion pale, eyes sunken, the whole trip. I didn't know if it was burnout from tossing spells or grief over Amanda's death, and it didn't seem the right time to ask. He didn't say much to either Jocasta or me until after the call. That's when he told us, "I'm coming along tonight."

  "It's not your fight, Rodney," I said quietly.

  He stared at me, a strange look in his eyes. "Maybe it is," he said. For the first time since I'd met him, he looked dangerous. I remembered the killer spell that had ripped the thing apart, and nodded quickly.

  "Your call," I said. "If you're sure you're up for it."

  "I'm up for it," he said. I was in no position to argue.

  I passed the time until 1800 hours in the most constructive ways I could think of. First, I went over and over in my mind the guided tour that Skyhill had given us of the ISP facility, concentrating on things like the lay of the land, logical positions for guards, and other tactical considerations. Then I got back on the horn to Anwar. I wanted whatever background he could offer on the shadow team that called themselves the Wrecking Crew.

  Very impressive brag sheets these guys had. Argent, The leader, had learned his skills in Fuchi's corporate army, with three seasons' worth of Desert Wars under his belt. Definitely a tough customer. One very disturbing note in his record caught my attention, however, and wouldn't let it go. Argent had two cyberarms. Now that wasn't so unusual in itself, particularly after three Desert War tours of duty. I think I'd have been more surprised to learn that he'd come through without losing some of his body parts. No, what I found so disturbing was that the cyberarms were voluntary replacements. Translation: Argent had chosen to have this perfectly functional meat arms lopped off and replaced with metal. What the frag kind of person would make such a decision? What would go through your mind as you told the surgeon, "Go ahead, cut'em off"? Scary.

  Argent's second-in-command was an Amerindian named Hawk. He was also a combat shaman, a rarity in the sprawl. According to Anwar's data, Hawk was an Eagle shaman who'd served a full tour of duty with the Sioux Special Forces-that's right, the infamous Wildcats-in the magically active Spiritwalker unit, then resigned his commission to go solo. One very tough hombre, this Hawk.

  Then there was Toshi, another razorguy. His background was more like that of most of the runners I knew, but more so. Raised on the street, ran with the gangs, metalled himself up, and carved out a solid rep-the usual thing.

  Rounding out the team was Peg the decker. Another interesting case. Thanks to a bike crash when she was sixteen, Peg was a high quadriplegic. The trauma to the spinal cord was so severe and so high up that even cyberware couldn't help. You need motor nerves to communicate with cyberlimbs, and she didn't have any functional ones left. Peg could handle a datajack, though, and she took to the Matrix as the only world where her injuries weren't a disadvantage. In the ten years since, she'd built up a track record that included jobs on every continent, though she never left her room in the San Fr
ancisco clinic that was home.

  For the past three years, Peg was the only decker the other members of the Wrecking Crew would ever work with.

  Interesting reading, and very reassuring. I was getting good people for my money. My confidence increased: we had a good chance of pulling this one off.

  So, I passed the time by planning and by reading. But mainly by worrying myself sick.

  At 1800 on the nose, I heard the roar of heavy-bike engines in the street. Three, I thought: Argent, Hawk, and Toshi. A logical procedure would be for Argent and Hawk to attend the meet, while the other samurai patrolled outside, just in case it was some kind of setup.

  A knock sounded on the door. Rodney closed his eyes, seemed to slip into a kind of trance for a couple of seconds. Then he roused himself and told me, "It's them." I nodded, and he opened the door.

  Argent was the first one in. A big man, even bigger than I'd guessed from his image on the phone screen. Despite my intention to keep my eyes on his face, my gaze was drawn down to his angular metal hands. Not the shining chrome that most would-be street monsters select, but a matte black finish that made the hands look even more lethal-evil, even-than I'd have thought possible. My gaze slipped back to his face, searched his cold eyes for some clue to his personality. But his expression was unreadable.

  Behind Argent was an Amerindian, surprisingly slender-faced and ascetically handsome, but with a muscular body that rivaled Argent's in size. This had to be Hawk, the combat shaman. Both runners wore standard "business suits," form-fitting black garments that showed the characteristic ridging of armor plates under the surface. Neither had any visible weapons, but I knew they had to have hold-outs concealed somewhere.

  Argent scanned the room coolly, Hawk standing a meter back and to his right. Perfect interlocking fields of fire for right-handers. Then the big razorguy nodded to me. "Good evening, Mr. Johnson," he said, gesturing to the phone. "I'd like Peg to join us, if that's all right with you." At a nod from me, tie samurai crossed to tie phone, punched in a code. The screen remained blank, but a female voice sounded from the speaker, "I'm online, Argent."