shadowrun 40 The Burning Time

by Stephen Kenson

  "Not bad," Talon mused, looking around. Arlington Park wasn’t as posh as some corporate condoplexes he’d seen, but it was ritzy enough for a sarariman like Dan Otabi. He lived alone, which suited their purposes.

  Trouble parked the car. "Ready?" she asked.

  "Yeah, except for one last touch." Talon wove his hands through the air, making mystical passes from his forehead to his feet, then he turned and did the same for Trouble. When finished with that, he closed his eyes in concentration, his fingers interlaced at his chest. Finally, he clapped his hands and blinked a couple of times, like he was coming out of a trance.

  "What’d you do?" Trouble asked.

  "Masking spell," Talon said. "In case someone sees us."

  "Good idea. We shouldn’t have any problem with the electronic security. It thinks we’re authorized ‘guests’ of Mr. Otabi. The frame I planted in the building system will erase the records of our little visit before it deletes itself. Let’s go."

  From the lobby, they took an elevator to the third floor, where Otabi lived. As they were exiting the elevator, they passed a human woman and a younger elf, who saw an ork and a human in their late teens or early twenties. The young elf looked at the "ork"—Talon—with studied distaste and gave them as wide a berth as possible in the hall.

  Good, Talon thought. The elf would definitely remember seeing a couple of scruffy metahumans near Otabi’s place at this time of day.

  "This is it," Trouble said when they reached number 308. She slipped a maglock passkey into the reader in the door-lock. It clicked immediately, and the LED light turned from red to green as the passkey scrambled the maglock’s systems. Talon pushed the door open, and they went in.

  Otabi’s apartment was a slightly neater, more adult version of a college dorm room. There was a small kitchenette with a collection of dishes stacked in and around the sink. Off that was a living room with floor-to-ceiling windows and a balcony overlooking the grounds around the building. An entertainment center holding a trideo unit, stereo, and other modules filled one wall. Facing it was a large sofa with a low, Japanese-style table in front of it.

  Talon bent to examine some items scattered over the table while Trouble quickly checked the other rooms.

  "All clear," she said.

  Talon gestured to the items on the table. "It’s all here." A Novatech Sandman simsense player and a handful of chips and their plastic casings were scattered over the tabletop. The player looked like last’s model, and there were easily a dozen chips.

  "There’s a lot more chips in the bedroom," Trouble said.

  Talon picked up the Sandman and stuffed it into his carrying bag. "Look around for more hardware," he said. A quick search turned up an older chip-player made by Fuchi, Novatech’s predecessor. That followed the Sandman into the bag, along with more of Otabi’s chips.

  "Why don’t we just slip our chip in with his other ones," Trouble asked, "or replace his player?"

  Talon shook his head. "That’d take too long. We’ve got to be sure Otabi uses the chip. We have no way of knowing which are his favorites without a lot of legwork we don’t have time for. We also don’t know if he’d recognize a fake. We’ve got to make him come to us. Did you get anything else?"

  "Yeah, trid chips and drek like that. Nothing major."

  "Okay, then let’s buzz. Leave the door open slightly. That should get somebody’s attention."

  As they left the apartment and proceeded down the hall, they passed a different man coming out of the elevator this time. He was a red-haired human who looked like a corporate type on his day off. The man gave Talon and Trouble a long look, and Talon in his ork-form couldn’t resist giving him a tusky grin as he and Trouble stepped into the elevator.

  Roy Kilaro walked past the two rough-looking metahumans, who got into the elevator he’d taken to the third floor. They certainly had no business in a place like Arlington Park, and he looked at them curiously. He walked down the hall to Dan Otabi’s apartment, then stopped short when he saw that the door was ajar. The LEDs above the maglock were flashing back and forth between red and green, indicating that the lock was scrambled, probably by some sort of passkey.

  Roy glanced back toward the elevators. It looked like somebody had beat him to it. He’d been planning to talk to the neighbors as well as toss Otabi’s flat, but the open door changed his plans. He couldn’t risk being implicated in the break-in because it would tip off Otabi. He turned back toward the elevators.

  He was leaving without getting the proof he’d hoped to find, yet he was more suspicious than ever. Someone else had wanted to get into Dan Otabi’s doss bad enough to break in. Otabi was hiding something, and Roy Kilaro was going to find out what it was.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  As Trouble and Talon drove away from Dan Otabi’s apartment, Trouble noticed that the sky had cleared and was alight with stars and the waxing moon.

  "So now we wait and see if Otabi contacts you?" Trouble asked.

  Talon nodded. "Um-hmm. Without his simsense toys, he’s going to be desperate for a fix, and the only dealer he knows is me. I think his habit will cancel out what happened at the Avalon the other night."

  "Maybe he’ll just go down to the local Warez, Etc. and pick up a new simdeck."

  "I don’t think so. He’s had a taste of the good stuff. He won’t be satisfied with anything less. The regular sims just won’t do it for him anymore. Even if he does decide to get another deck and some chips, there are still some things we can do."

  "So that leaves the next move up to him," Trouble said. "Val will be keeping an eye on Otabi, but we can’t do much more until he takes the bait. Want to go grab a bite?"

  Talon shook his head. "I think I’d better go back home and try to catch up on some sleep."

  "Want me to drive you back to your place, then?"

  Talon shrugged. "I could take Aracos. . ."

  "You’re dead on your feet, Tal. Let me take you home. It’s no big deal."

  "Okay," he said, settling back against the seat. There was a moment of silence as Trouble shifted lanes, navigating through the maze of Boston streets with ease.

  "Can I ask you something?" she said.

  Talon over at her from under hooded eyes. "Sure."

  "Has there. . .have you been involved with anyone else since Jase?"

  "You mean romantically?"

  "Yeah."

  Talon took a deep breath and let it out with a long sigh. "Yes. No. Not really—I mean, yes, I’ve been involved with other guys since Jase died. I hooked up from time to time in college, and there are a lot more available guys in the shadows than most people think." He gave a wry smile. "But it was mostly brief encounters or short flings. I never met anyone like Jase, somebody I was really, truly in love with. I think I managed to convince myself it was love a few times, but those never panned out. I guess when it comes to romance I’m as hopeless as our buddy Otabi. I think I should stay away from simsense, though. I can see how plugging into a perfect fantasy life where you’ve got everything you ever wanted could be addictive."

  "Yeah," Trouble said.

  "How about you?" he asked. "Has there been anyone since Ian?"

  Trouble glanced over at Talon, then back to the road. Traffic had slowed through a series of lights, and now they’d came to a stop.

  "Not really. I guess we’re a lot alike in that respect. Ian was my first real love. Looking back on it, I was pretty naive at the time. I’ve dated here and there since then, but that’s about it."

  "Our business doesn’t exactly give us many opportunities to meet the right people, does it?" Talon said.

  "No. Besides, what are the chances of the right one coming along anyway? You don’t run into that kind of person every day."

  "Are you sorry you called it quits with Ian?" Talon asked. "For me, there wasn’t much choice, but. . ."

  "Most of the time, no," Trouble said. "He cared so much about freeing the Irish that it seemed to mean more to him than I did. I guess I didn’
t really want to share him with a cause, you know?"

  "Yeah, I can see that."

  The traffic began to move again, and they lapsed back into silence as Trouble cut through the city to South Boston.

  Talon began to go over the run with her. They agreed that, if all went as planned with Otabi, they should be able to pull it off with ease.

  "The only other thing that bothers me is that we don’t have any real information on the Johnson," Talon said. That bothered Trouble as well. Most employers—"Mr. Johnsons," as they were known—valued their anonymity. Shadowrunners, however, liked to know whom they were working for, just in case their Johnson tried to use them for some secret purpose of his own. The team knew very little about their current employer, apart from the fact that his credit was good.

  "I’ll see if I can dig up something," Trouble said, pulling up to the curb in front of Talon’s doss.

  He got out of the car. "Good. I’ll give you a call when everything’s set for the meet."

  "Okay." She watched him until he’d climbed the front steps and gone through the door of his apartment house before putting the ZX back into gear. At the stop sign, she glanced back again before driving on.

  Don’t be stupid, she told herself, but she really didn’t have much choice People in love were always doing stupid things, weren’t they? She turned the corner, but didn’t head for home to start tracking down information about their Mr. Johnson. She drove toward the Rox, a section of the Boston plex that most people avoided if they could.

  She was headed for "Doc’s Clinic," as it was known among the locals. It had no official name because most of the places and people in the Rox didn’t officially exist. When the metroplex government was formed, they decided to write off southern Roxbury and the Lowell-Lawrence Zone. From then on, the only market in the Rox or Lowell-Lawrence was the black market. That included medical services, and Doc’s Clinic was one of several that patched up Rox residents for a reasonable fee and no questions asked.

  That same policy made it popular with people who, for various reasons, preferred not to visit the licensed hospitals and doctors. In addition to stitching you up or giving you something for whatever ailed you, Doc’s was a place to get certain modifications, if the price was right and what you wanted was available. The mods included anything from a cyber-replacement hand to new eyes to a new face that wouldn’t be quite so well known to the authorities.

  "Doc" was Dr. Daniel MacArthur, a former combat medic for Ares Macrotechnology. He’d served in the Desert Wars for awhile after discharge from the UCAS military. Then he went to work for Ares, with some "consulting" work on the side until his bosses caught on. Ares booted him out and his license to practice medicine was revoked. In the Rox, however, everyone called him Doc, and no one cared about the license because he knew what he was doing. There weren’t many street docs better than Doctor Mac.

  The first person Trouble saw when she came through the door was Hilda, Doc’s combination nurse, receptionist, and bouncer. Hilda knew how to set a broken bone, draw blood, apply a dressing, and dozens of other things Doc needed done around the place. She handled the clinic’s computer files, keeping the records straight (and ensuring certain things were never recorded). Being a troll, Hilda was also more than able to handle anything from a punker whacked out on chips to a dissatisfied customer looking to cause trouble.

  At the moment she was changing a dressing on the arm of one of the Bane-Sidhe, a local gang. Trouble knew them well, mostly Irish kids, the children of Irish immigrants like her. The ganger Hilda was treating was an ork, and Trouble wondered if his parents were orks, too. A lot of metahumans had felt distinctly unwelcome in the new "paradise" of the Sidhe, and had emigrated to the UCAS. Two of his chummers stood nearby, watching the whole procedure with bored expressions.

  "Hey, Trouble," Hilda said, glancing up briefly. "Have a seat and I’ll be right with you, honey." She finished up with kid in a few minutes, accepted the cred he offered, and sent the three gangers on their way.

  "Looks like business is good," Trouble said.

  "Always is," Hilda replied with a sigh. "We’d be better off if we didn’t have to waste time patching up the gangers, but their money lets us help other people who don’t have any. You wouldn’t believe some of the strange cases ever since the SURGE started. I just hope it’s not some new disease starting the rounds. Anyway, what can we do for you today, Trouble? Aren’t you feeling well?"

  "No, it’s nothing like that," Trouble said. "I just want to talk to Mac if he’s got time."

  "Sure thing. You just wait right there." Hilda disappeared into the back of the clinic and returned a few moments later with Dr. MacArthur in tow. With his receding hairline and the deep creases on his face, Doc looked older than his thirty-seven years. He was still quite fit, though, and carried himself like a soldier. He was wearing blood-stained hospital scrubs—apparently "donated" by Boston General, from the stenciling on them—and he gave Trouble a weary smile.

  "Why don’t we talk in my office," he said, while Hilda went to her desk and began tapping away at the computer.

  Trouble followed Dr. Mac into his office, then perched nervously on the edge of a chair. Dr. Mac leaned back against his desk, looking at her with concern.

  "So, what can I do for you?" he asked.

  Trouble hesitated, not quite sure how to put it. "I’ve got a medical question for you, hypothetically speaking."

  Mac nodded. "Go on."

  "How. . .how involved is a sex-change operation?"

  Mac’s brow furrowed more deeply. "Female to male?" he asked. Trouble nodded, biting her lower lip a bit.

  "Well, it can get pretty involved. Female-to-male changes are more difficult because we have to craft an artificial Y-chromosome for the cloning process. Then there’s growing all the necessary organs, including skin grafts, followed by several surgical procedures and extensive hormone therapy. The whole process can take several months and costs tens of thousands of nuyen. And, of course, it’s still not one hundred percent effective in all cases. I can’t say I get a lot of call for that kind of thing in my practice. Cosmetic work, sure, but not gender reassignment type-stuff."

  "I see," Trouble said quietly.

  "I know it’s none of my business," he said, "and I’ll understand if you’d rather not say, but can I ask why you want to know?"

  "It’s personal, not business," Trouble said.

  "All right, then. I withdraw the question. But if there’s anything you want to talk about. . ."

  "No, but thanks for the info, Doc," Trouble said, getting to her feet.

  "Anytime," he said, moving to open the door for her. "Take care of yourself."

  Trouble smiled feebly. "I’ll try."

  She said goodbye to Hilda and went back to her car. She sat with her head resting on the steering wheel for a few minutes, thinking about her emotional dilemma. She wasn’t ready to go home, and she knew a place where she could actually do something about how she was feeling.

  An hour later, Trouble was sitting at a bar in South Boston, downing the last of her scotch on the rocks. She thunked the tumbler back down onto the bar and gestured for the bartender, rattling the ice in her glass.

  "One more," she said, sliding a hardcopy note across the bar. The bartender poured another and slipped the cash into his pocket. Trouble took a sip from her drink, savoring the burn of the liquor down her throat and the feeling of numbness that followed. It was numbness she was looking for, a way to smother all her feelings and make her forget about them, at least for a while.

  She was still berating herself for being an idiot. Sure, she’d been attracted to Talon from the first time they’d met, very attracted, in fact. But when she found out that nothing could ever come of it, she had tried to put her romantic feelings aside so they could be just friends.

  That had turned out to be a lot harder than she’d imagined, especially with the two of them working together all the time. Still, she thought she’d been handling
it well enough. Then Talon thought he saw the ghost of the long-dead love of his life. Was that possible?

  Hell, she told herself, if the other magical stuff Talon could do was possible, why not that? After all, he was a wizard. Universities taught courses in applied magic, her parents had left an Ireland ruled by elves, and the bartender serving her looked like something out of a fairy story to scare little kids. If she could accept all that, why not ghosts?

  The answer was obvious. It was because of the identity of this particular ghost and the feelings it had stirred up in Talon, that’s why. He was hurting; anyone could see that. She knew that Talon thought he’d finally laid the pain of his grief to rest, but did you ever really get over losing someone you love so much?

  She looked into her glass and swirled the scotch around the ice cubes. Maybe because she never saw Talon get serious with anyone else, she’d let herself indulge the possibility that one day he’d come around and see what was right there in front of him. Now his lover was back from the dead.

  God, I’m jealous of a ghost, she thought bitterly. How pitiful is that? She couldn’t believe she’d gone to Dr. Mac to inquire about changing into someone Talon could love the way she loved him. The whole thing was insane. She didn’t want to be a man, but Talon would never want her as a woman. . .

  "Frag him," she muttered, taking a long swig of her scotch. Frag him for being so nice, so oblivious, and so damned unavailable. She set the glass back down on the bar, wishing she had something to hit.

  "Ariel?" someone said from behind her, and she immediately recognized both the voice and the accent.

  She froze for a second, then turned around slowly. Now she was the one who was seeing ghosts.

  "Ian?" she murmured.

  Standing there was Ian O’Donnel, looking for all the world almost unchanged since she’d last seen him ten years ago. Though he had to be over forty, he looked as fit as a much younger man. His hair was the same reddish brown, but with a bit more gray than Trouble remembered. He had the same warm smile and neatly trimmed beard, and he still dressed more like he belonged in the Old West than in twenty-first century Boston. Tonight he wore battered jeans, a pullover shirt, military-style boots, and a long duster that showed telltale signs of armor beneath.