Shadowrun: Shaken: No Job Too Small

by Russell Zimmerman

  God, was this guy actually writing down ‘magically whammied’?

  “Reynolds and Minirth worked together. Hermetic Studies, right down the street. Minirth was into theoretical stuff, but was working on some parazoology, I guess. I don’t know, I haven’t seen his research.”

  Because you pricks won’t give it to me, it’s on the floor right over there, I could reach out and grab it if you’d let me.

  “Please, continue,” the Knight Errant dick said, probably playing a video game on his commlink instead of actually taking notes.

  “And Reynolds was infected. HMHVV.”

  “A Nosferatu, yeah.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Right down the hall, roaming the campus?”

  I could imagine the skeptical eye-roll from the detective, even if I couldn’t quite see it.

  “Basically. Semi-retired for years, the nice old man taking up a night class, a fresh wave of undergrads coming in for him to sip from here and there. Wards wouldn’t catch him, he made ’em, maintained ’em. Detection spells wouldn’t work, he was the archivist who uploaded them, who taught ’em to everyone. You couldn’t eyeball the prick, he used illusion spells to mask it, we all just thought he was just—look, we’ve been over this, man.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Reynolds eventually gets the courage to approach Minirth. ‘Hey, you seem cool, want to live forever?’ he asks, but Minirth tells him to fuck off, threatens to report him, starts taking careful notes about him, wanting to involve the authorities, but also aware this is a unique…ngh… research opportunity. Minirth’s crazy, he’s an academic. Reynolds is crazy, HMHVV plays with your head. So Minirth strings him along, Reynolds eventually gets tired of it. He’s upset enough about the rejection, and paranoid enough about Minirth’s research that eventually he snaps and kills him.”

  “With a heart attack.”

  “Man, you know how many tricks Nosferatu’ve got?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s a lot, okay? Read a fucking book.”

  “I have quite a few on the subject,” said a more level voice, more confident, not grunting and snarling like me, not sarcastically disinterested like the detective I wanted to punch in the neck a few times.

  It was Dylan Pike, leader of the Hermetic Order of the Auric Aurora, owner of the Blue Moon Lore Store, and regional authority on all things magical.

  “That—” He pointed to the pieces of corpse. “—is a Nosferatu.”

  “This—” He pointed at me. “—is the man who killed it, and who is owed a bounty.”

  “That—” He pointed to the Knight Errant officer who’d been kneeling on my back this whole time, making the interrogation even more awkward. “—is a man who needs to be somewhere else. Along with, I do believe, the rest of you. Out.”

  It’s funny, but when orders come from a man wearing what pop culture tells you is a wizard’s robe, this greatcoat adorned with softly glowing runes, pointing at things with a classical wand, doing all of it knowing he’s got a reputation—and formal licensing—with the authorities? People listen.

  I could breathe more easily without the monkey on my back, and while my Corpsman still warned me against any sort of exertion, I worked to get up off the floor. Pike helped me up, using his own two hands, more down-to-earth than Martin de Vries, despite all his power.

  “You, Mr. Kincaid, seem to have had a busy night.”

  I wobbled over to my new favorite chair and dropped into it. Lodge Master Pike gestured and a bound spirit of Man drifted over from the astral. Together they knit me back together again while I told the whole, sad story.

  Again.

  Pike’s spirit—a flawless Hermetic elemental, a ghostly man-shape made of raw magical power and human spirit—faded when he was done with it, leaving the two of us alone.

  “I should have paid more attention to Theodore,” he said, brow furrowed. “He’d been acting erratically lately, but we all thought it was…academic eccentricity. None of us would have dreamed he’d have dallied with the Infected, somehow tracked down a willing creature to share the disease with him. And then to have killed Christopher so suddenly!”

  “No, I don’t think that was it.” I rolled my shoulder, still stiff, but well on the mend. “He’d been a Nosferatu for a while, I think. He’d obsessed for a while. Wanted to extend lifespans, wanted to share his gift. He wasn’t brand new to it. Something changed, recently, though. Something made him more…sick.”

  I thought about Pinkerton’s shared reports, thought about the rise in missing persons cases, thought about how nasty ghouls had been lately, about Martin de Vries’ recent vampire troubles.

  “Regardless, Mr. Kincaid, you have the Order’s apologies, and its congratulations.” He clapped his hands together, trying to find a bright side.

  “Congratulations?”

  “You have done us a great service, James, and yourself as well. Revealing this corruption, uncovering it, removing it from us…it was a distasteful service, of course, but necessary. You have my thanks, and that of the entire organization.”

  He gestured, a simple telekinetic manipulation spell, and a few pieces of jewelry flew my way from among the wreckage.

  “Take these, earned in fair challenge.” One was a white gold chain with a white gold Order seal on it, the other was a University of Washington class ring, blood-red ruby mounted, Thaumaturgical Studies designs on one flank.

  “No one can deny that you bested Dr. Reynolds here tonight,” he said, and I didn’t feel like correcting him. “While such duels are…frowned upon…and challenges of this magnitude are generally forbidden, they are still, formally, legally binding. Goods and knowledge may exchange hands as the result of a sorcerous duel. Clearly, in his illness, Theodore sought to take your life from you. In exchange, I say, let all his topical belongings—his library, these foci—fall to you, if you want them.”

  “I helped him make those,” Pike continued, voice low, thick with regret and sadness. “They are spell foci. The ring for health magics, the necklace for illusions. Some of our best work. I am sorry for having done so. He used the chain to hide his appearance, and even I thought it was just to appear younger, healthier. The ring, in retrospect, I fear could have been even worse.”

  “Alleviate allergy,” I sighed, tossing it, letting it fall into my palm. “Maybe something like fast?”

  “Precisely so. He may have still felt some discomfort, of course, no doubt why he largely limited himself to night classes, but it was the key to his long-term survival, his long-term deception. Health magic, as you well know, is diverse. He likely used it for exactly such things, controlling his disease, convincing himself he had mastered it. It’s a small wonder he thought he should approach us, offer to share the infection. If he thought it could be controlled…”

  “Yeah.” I pocketed both foci as I stood up. I had other spells in mind for them. I’d worry about it later.

  I reached out to shake Pike’s hand.

  “Don’t beat yourself up over missing it. At least you were around to see. I’m sorry I couldn’t help, sorry I wasn’t handy ’til it was too late.”

  He shook, not as bone-crushing as most, but a firm, polite handshake.

  I shuffled around, stiff-legged, recovering my things. Knife, Colt, wand, datachip, credstick. I didn’t remember what’d been knocked out of my hand versus what’d fallen out of my pockets while I’d gotten thrown around.

  “Yes, about that. Your Order membership, Mr. Kincaid…”

  “Yeah?” I tensed up a little, tried to shore up my masking, hide my aura. If anyone in this city could suss out your tradition or Mentor through assensing an aura, it was probably Dylan Pike. I kicked myself for being sloppy, for having already given him the chance to get a good eyeful of me. Black Magic was forbidden. Adversary was frowned upon. If I was lucky, if I got off easy, I was facing expulsion.

  “…one thing I did agree with Dr. Reynolds on, regardless of his disease, was that your contin
ued absence is a shame. You are welcome in our lodge house any time. No one wants to pressure you away from Puyallup—certainly not I, as I know the importance of home, James—but it’s a shame that it took a ghoul attack to get you to visit the Blue Moon. Please come by more often. Ariana is a treasure, and I believe she enjoys such visits, and over time perhaps you might, as well.”

  He smiled, and I knew he meant it.

  I smiled back, trying not to show my relief at the continued lie.

  “We’ll see,” I said, wearily stuffing my hat on, heading toward the stairs. I still had to navigate the Knight Errant yahoos, get to my Ford, get home before this night—this fight—could really be over.

  “We’ll see.”

  CHAPTER 46

  I let out a gusty sigh at the top of the stairs, looking at my own reflection for a second, focusing on myself instead of the big JAMES KINCAID written on the office-apartment door.

  “I don’t want to do this,” I grumbled to no one in particular, opening the door, peeling off my much-abused coat, hanging it and my hat, shrugging off my suit jacket and draping it over a chair. I made a beeline for the study, shedding clothes as I went.

  I sat in the dark, checking my chronometer, checking my headware for messages. Friends and allies and coworkers had touched base with me, in the hours and days since the sewer job, letting me know they were home safe, some in one piece, some in more. Everyone wanted updates on pay, everyone sent me the necessary account information. None of it was interesting, none of it was memories I’d be sad to lose, so I did the grunt-work. Accounting was terrible and mind-numbing, and my Transys would hold onto all it anyway, so there was no risk involved.

  I killed time, forced myself to wait an hour, two. I checked account balances, filed the paperwork—complete with shuffled-over screen captures from my cyberoptics or Hardpoint’s drone-cams—needed for various bounties, did the math to see what cut I’d get to keep, how much money went elsewhere, how the shares were going to get split. I transferred a few bucks over to the room service tab at the Loveland Bump & Sleep, figured Gem could use a few more hot meals. I told my Transys to keep a note, reminding me to call her later and see how she was doing, really get to work tracking down this brother of hers.

  For shits and giggles, I started in on Minirth’s research files. Most of it was encrypted—better get Gentry or Trace on that—but I could make out a little bit, enough to know it was trouble. What I could read was like the introduction to a text, or maybe the conclusion, or maybe a little bit of both. What I could read was heavy stuff. Mana cycles, straight out of Ehran the Scribe’s talks. Fluctuations based on belief and perception, some theoretical philosophies hypothesizing that belief in magic caused greater magic, and vice versa, theories that no one’d successfully proven or disproven. He mentioned the great dragon Lofwyr’s recent changes, the great dragon Hestaby’s eccentricities, the upswing in Infected attacks. He posited they were all linked, that monstrous behavior called for more monstrous behavior, he suggested a direct correlation between the rising mana cycle and unpredictable, inhuman behavior in certain paranormal species.

  I filed it away for later. I had enough on my mind—the mind I was trying to keep blank—right now, had enough on my plate as it was. I had an appointment, of sorts. I had a debt to collect, a bet to formally win, something worth far more than Tillman’s fifty nuyen to pick up.

  When enough time passed, I sat down. There, inside my circle, I pulled out my pack of Targets and my scuffed old lighter. I got a few candles going, then—double-checking it—I re-lit the crumpled butt of a smoke from one guttering little fire.

  A special cigarette. Imported from the Tír. Even just that little bit, even just the fraction of a cigarette Reynolds had left, packed a thoroughly unhealthy dose of laés. The elven drug was a magical, medicinal miracle. An impossibility. It caused near-immediate unconsciousness and a chemically unexplainable memory lapse.

  The one good hit I’d taken would only cost me thirty, forty-five minutes of memory, I figured. I’d forget some accounting, forget the soul-crushing monotony of filing UCAS federal paperwork. Whoopty shit. I wasn’t taking it for that. I was taking it to get knocked out. Deeply, impossibly asleep. The sort of unconscious a human can’t reach without help, the sort of immediate tumble Reynolds would have taken if he hadn’t been Infected. I needed the drug to get as dog-tired, as medically-induced unconscious as I’d been when my last narcotic had flushed my system, when the Long Haul had sent me halfway to another plane, left me so tired Adversary’d been close enough to taunt me.

  It worked.

  He was a Barrens brat, this time, looked like one of the kids you’d see down in Tarislar. A little elven punk, eight or ten years old, ash-smudged face, wearing the sort of rags you saw all the time on the street, vending-machine clothes that someone tried to stretch out for weeks or months at a time. He was too young, too slender, had too mean a glint in his eye, but this form of Adversary reminded me a little of Gem; another kid trying to look tough, like all the other kids on the wrong side of Puyallup.

  “Jimmy, nice to see ya.”

  “Thought you wouldn’t mind the shortcut,” I said, focusing in the dream, trying to form some solid ground for me to stand on.

  “Nah, s’clever. Nice trick. No talking to the Dweller, the prick.”

  “The prick.” I nodded, for once in total agreement with my Mentor.

  “So!” The little ghetto brat rubbed his dirty hands together, excited. “Some fuckin’ day, huh? Hiyah, off with his head, am I right? Hell of a show, Jimmy!”

  “Hell of a show.” I sighed, eyes down.

  “But hey! That’s not what you’re after, is it? Null sweat, chummer. Ari’s all yours. She’s fine! Same as she ever was, solid as the day you built her, an’ just as easy on the eyes.”

  He waved negligently.

  “You’ll see, Jimmy. You wake up, she’ll be there, poof. Same as if she’d never left.”

  “Same as if you’d never kept her from me.”

  “Whatever.”

  I sighed. He mistook my weariness for impatience, which I guess was fair. Normally I was kind of a prick.

  “And that ain’t all, Jimmy! I didn’t forget, so cool your tits, eh pal? You’ll get your little level up, too. Not what you once were—that fuckin’ bitch, am I right? Friggin’ Nimbus!—but a little closer, a little closer. You’ll have a little more oomph, buddy. A little more razzle-dazzle. You earned it, my man.”

  “Your man,” I breathed out, lifting my gaze.

  “What’s up your ass, Jimmy?”

  “Why didn’t Nimbus just kill me?”

  “What? What do you mean? ‘Cause you fleeced her, pal. You said it yourself. What was it, like, six, eight spirits? Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am, you know? You swarmed her, man. She never saw it coming. Got her too mad to think straight, she couldn’t cast for shit, didn’t think of going mist and getting free, you nailed her, buddy. Nice work, all around!”

  “No. Not now. Then. Back then. Why didn’t she kill me?”

  “She was crazy! Who knows?” He shrugged narrow, elven shoulders, scrunched up his dirty face. “Broads, am I right?”

  “Who told her not to?”

  “What now?”

  “Who told her not to do it? She said someone—‘they’—told her not to, back then. I was barely alive. Only just barely hanging on. As much of me was gone as could be, and me still havin’ a few scraps of magic. It’s an art, not a science, but that’s what the docs told me, back then. Any more, even just another sip, and I’d’ve been a total burn-out.”

  “So, you got lucky! Don’t look a gift horse in the—”

  “Lucky. Yeah. That’s just what I was gonna say. My unit wiped out, my ass kicked, my career in the toilet. My magic only just barely hanging on, my way of life shattered. No job, no family, no power, no friends. Lucky.”

  “It coulda been worse, Jimmy.”

  “How?”

  “I came along, didn’t I? Y
ou ditched that straight-arrow Hermetic crap, figured out how to—”

  “How to be your supplicant?”

  “Hey, man, if that’s the word you wanna use.” He shrugged again, trying to look innocent.

  “It’s not. An’ I won’t. I don’t know what mentor that crazy skirt followed. I don’t know if it was you, or some dark shadow of you. Or Wolf, I know some of ’em go crazy that way, same thing. Whoever. Whoever it was, they told her not to kill me. To leave me broken. Alone. Desperate. Lookin’ for a new way to look at magic, a new way to tap the mana.”

  “I’m not sure I appreciate the implic—”

  “Shut up. Whoever it was, whatever it was, I ended up with you. Not Dog. Not Dragonslayer. Not Wolf. You. I didn’t have to, but I did. I chose you. You didn’t choose me. I chose you.”

  “Sure, Jimmy, and aren’t y—”

  “Shut up. Just remember that, Adversary. I didn’t come to you, you came to me. I’m not your slave. You don’t own me. I own you. You’re part of me, not the other way around. I never cast another spell, you lose. I never call up another spirit, you lose. I go get a fuckin’ cyberspine installed—a cyberfinger, an extra datajack, anything—and you lose, cut right th’fuck outta my life. No more mojo. No more spellcaster, no more Mentor.”

  I drew myself up, glared at the street-smart little hustler, the sharp-featured Barrens orphan who was always trying to play an angle. Adversary went to open his mouth again, but I cut him off.

  “Remember that. I do your thing because I choose to. ’Cause my ideals line up okay, most of the time, and because your motto appeals to what Reynolds called my contrary nature. I use you ’cause you work for me. But I don’t need to. You don’t make me. No one makes me.”

  I turned my back, thought very, very hard about waking up, and started to vanish.

  “Good on ya, kid, you figured it out,” Adversary said in a deeper voice, an older one. It reminded me of me—or maybe my old man. “You don’t let anyone, even me, tell you what to do.”

  I woke up.

  Ariana had the apartment smelling like waffles and ash already, the kitchen a disaster area and her smile bright as the sun when I opened my eyes. She hovered there while I blinked and sat up, looking hopeful, holding up a plate of terrible breakfast, as glad to be back as I was glad to see her. It was like she’d never been gone.