shadowrun 40 The Burning Time

by Stephen Kenson

  "Talon! What are you doing here? How’d you get in?"

  "It’s not hard when you’re a mage," he said by way of explanation. "Sorry to barge in this way, but you weren’t around. I tried to get you on your phone, but . . ."

  "I turned it off," she said abruptly. "Sorry, but I needed some personal time."

  "I understand, but something’s come up, something important."

  "Actually, I’ve got some news, too," she said, but Talon held up a hand.

  "I think Gallow’s back," he said.

  Trouble took in a breath slowly. "Are. . .are you sure?"

  "Not a hundred percent, but yeah, pretty sure. I had a vision while I was on an astral journey earlier tonight. I saw someone who looked like me, but burst into flames when I tried to get past him. That says Gallow to me."

  "Oh, god," Trouble said, coming over to sit next to Talon on the couch. The two of them had met because of Gallow, the rogue fire elemental the seventeen-year-old Talon had conjured to avenge Jase’s death at the hands of a Rox gang. Talon had completely forgotten about the elemental after he’d commanded it to kill the members of the Asphalt Rats. The spirit, created out of Talon’s anger and grief, had somehow continued to exist after fulfilling its only purpose for being. It had possessed one of the dying gang members and, hungry for more lives, had a short-lived career as "The T-Slasher," a mysterious serial killer the Boston authorities never caught.

  That was because the spirit’s host had managed to gather the strength to end his own life, trying to take the elemental with him. He hung himself in the abandoned area of the Catacombs where the spirit was hiding out. That didn’t destroy the elemental; it merely trapped it in a dead and slowly decaying body. The mad spirit, calling itself Gallow, eventually contacted a human mage named Garnoff, and the two formed a pact. Their plan was to draw Talon back to Boston so that Gallow could take possession of his summoner’s body. Gallow ultimately betrayed Garnoff and took over his body, but Talon and his friends managed to overcome him. The last time Talon had seen Gallow was when Garnoff’s body hit the third rail in a subway station near the Rox. The body burned to a crisp. Gallow, however, was a spirit, and the death of its host body was only a temporary hindrance.

  "It might not be him," Trouble said. "Maybe it was just a vision or a warning of something else."

  "Maybe," Talon said, "but I don’t think so. Anyway when. . .when I was falling away from the burning figure, I heard a voice." He bit his lip and blinked back the tears forming in his eyes. "I heard his voice, T. I heard Jase calling out to me, begging me to help him. . .to help save him."

  Tears began to run down his cheeks. "And the Dweller, it said to me ‘don’t ask the question unless you’re certain you want the answer.’ And I understood why I couldn’t get past. It’s because I’m not sure I want to know what’s going on and whether it’s Jase who’s trying to contact me, or just Gallow or someone else trying to frag with me." He turned his tear-streaked face toward her. "Gods, I thought this was all over and done with, that I’d finally laid Jase to rest, and now. . ."

  Trouble took Talon in her arms as he began to cry, and she held him close.

  "I don’t know if I could face seeing him again," he whispered as sobs wracked his body.

  "No," Trouble said gently. "It wasn’t your fault, Tal. There was nothing you could have done to save him." She stroked his hair, and gradually his tears subsided. He pulled away slightly, his mouth set in a grim line.

  "Gallow is my fault, though. If it weren’t for me, that thing wouldn’t exist. I’m going to make sure it’s destroyed this time, once and for all."

  Trouble laid a hand on his arm. "You didn’t know what you were doing when you summoned Gallow," she said. "You were crazy with grief, you were. . ."

  "I should have known better than to let something like that loose with nothing to control it. I taught it to kill and then expected it to stop without bothering to make sure it did. How many people have died because of me? How many more are going to die now?"

  He stood up and said, "I’ve got to stop it somehow."

  "Where the hell do you think you’re going?" Trouble said, jumping up to grab Talon’s arm and spin him around to face her.

  "I’m going to find a way to track down Gallow and finish this once and for all. I’ll make it tell me what’s happened to Jase, and then I’ll make sure it never threatens anyone again."

  "Alone?"

  "It’s my responsibility," he said.

  "Are you crazy? You can’t go up against Gallow alone!"

  "I’ll have Aracos. . ." he began.

  "What about the team?" Trouble said. "What about your friends? Don’t you think we might have something to say about all this?"

  "It’s not your problem. I can’t ask you or the others to risk—"

  "Jesus Christ, Talon!" Trouble burst out, her face flushed with anger. "What do you think we do every time we work together? What about the risks we take every fraggin’ day for some corporate suit with a fat credstick who we don’t even know? Don’t you think we’d be willing to take the same risks for a chummer, somebody we care about?"

  The set of Talon’s jaw became even grimmer. "I can’t ask that of you. . ."

  Trouble stood up too. "You don’t have to ask. We’re you’re friends. We care about you. I care about you." She drew him to her. "I love you," she said, pulling his face to hers and kissing him firmly.

  Talon’s eyes widened, and he grabbed Trouble by the arms and pushed her away.

  "Trouble, hey, what are you doing?" he said.

  She shook off his hands and turned away from him. "I’m sorry, I. . .I don’t know. I don’t know why I did that."

  "I didn’t know you felt that way," Talon said. "I mean, I thought you understood. . ."

  "You’re not an easy man to get over," she said. "Look, can we just forget about this? There are more important things to worry about." She wouldn’t meet his eyes. "I don’t really want to talk about it. I think I’ve made enough of a fool of myself for one night."

  "Don’t say that," Talon said. "I’m really flattered, but. . ."

  "Yeah, but," Trouble interjected. She took a deep breath, fighting back tears. "How about I start doing some checking. You know, Knight Errant reports, drek like that, see if I notice any of Gallow’s old patterns. You can get everyone else together and fill them in, okay? And don’t even think about arguing with me that it’s too dangerous, all right?"

  Talon wanted to object again, but he knew it was useless. "All right. I’ll give you a call after I’ve talked with the rest of the team, and you can tell us what you found, okay?"

  Trouble nodded and tried to give him a smile.

  "Thanks," he said. "For everything."

  "Shush," she said and waved him to the door.

  "I’ll call soon," he said, closing the door behind him.

  Talon was disturbed by what had just happened with Trouble. It was awkward, embarrassing. It was sad, too, to think that he was causing pain to a good friend without meaning to.

  Right now, though, he thought work would be the best medicine for both of them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Roy Kilaro was not a happy man. He’d come to Boston looking for intrigue and a chance to prove himself to the big bosses, and he’d done it in spades. First, he tagged Dan Otabi as a potential security leak. Then he managed to survive getting kidnapped by shadowrunners after even Cross Special Security failed to protect whatever it was the runners were after. Now that it was all over, however, CATco was giving him less than a hero’s welcome.

  Both he and Otabi were being housed at a company condoplex in Methuen, an anonymous sector inhabited mostly by lower-paid CATco employees and not far from the decay of the Lowell-Lawrence Zone. Though Roy and Otabi were supposed to be free to move about, it was abundantly clear that they weren’t to go anywhere without informing a company representative. Security personnel were on-site "for their protection." The guards kept a closer eye on Otabi, though it ha
rdly seemed necessary. The guy was so despondent he could barely get out of bed in the morning, and when he did, he spent all his time watching the trid. Roy knew they were watching him, too, like they suspected him of something.

  Then there were the "debriefings," though Roy thought interrogation was more accurate. Endless rounds of questions, starting from the moment he had discovered signs of unusual activity in the Boston logs right up until he walked through the doors of the Merrick Valley facility under the watchful eye of Gabriel. The Seraphim agent personally conducted many of the interrogations. He even questioned Roy about events where he’d been present. Roy got the distinct impression that Gabriel was trying to catch him in a lie or to trip him up about some of the facts. He stuck to what he knew and told his interrogators everything he could remember, but they were never satisfied. They wanted to go over the same things again and again and again. And this had been going on for two full days now.

  All of Roy’s requests to speak with someone else from the company were met with the same response. They could not allow it "for security reasons" until they’d learned as much as possible about the crime perpetrated against Cross.

  By the time they finish interrogating us, Roy thought glumly, those shadowrunners will be retired. He probably would be, too, though much sooner than expected. No one had said so, but Roy was starting to realize that his involvement in this affair had somehow tainted him in the eyes of others. Though there was no evidence of wrongdoing on his part—except, perhaps, that he hadn’t reported his suspicions immediately because he wanted a shot at investigating them himself—Roy felt like he was being treated like a criminal.

  He could only guess at how they were treating Dan Otabi. It was hard to tell. Deprived of his simchips, Otabi spent all his time either watching the trideo like a zombie or staring off into space, responding only when the guards arrived to take him for another "debriefing."

  Otabi’s career with the company was finished, of course. He could easily end up out on the street when this was all over, still hooked on chips—assuming the enforced isolation didn’t cure him of it (which Roy doubted). So, if Otabi was finished with the company, what did that mean for him?

  The strangest thing of all was the focus of the questions. Roy had thought that Gabriel would be most interested in tracking down the shadowrunners and recovering whatever it was they stole. But his questions focused more on Roy’s own actions. The questions also seemed to be directed at finding out how much he knew about what the shadowrunners took and why, even though Roy hadn’t a clue. It was as if Gabriel wanted to pretend that the shadowrunners didn’t exist and focus the investigation on him and Otabi.

  He’s setting us up, Roy thought. Gabriel needed a scapegoat to pin this on because he’d hosed up and let those runners get away. That had to be it. After all, the Seraphim took their duty to the company very seriously. The fact that Gabriel had let a band of street-runners not only steal company property, but steal it right out from under him, couldn’t look very good. Gabriel was probably trying to divert attention from himself by making it look like Roy had misled him, in cooperation with Otabi.

  Well, if Gabriel had another thing coming to him if he thought he was going to set Roy up for a fall.

  He got up and went over to where his few belongings were stacked up in the corner of the room. Company personnel had recovered his things from the hotel where he’d been staying and brought them here. He took his deck out of its case and sat on the bed with it in his lap. The sounds of the trideo coming from the other room told him that Otabi was occupied, and probably would be for a while.

  He jacked into the deck and plugged the connector into the wall-jack. It was time to find out what was really going on. He booted up the deck’s systems and hit the Go button. Instantly, his senses were filled with a wall of hard static before he emerged into the virtual reality of the Matrix. He was standing next to the small, glowing, white pyramid that represented his cyberdeck, and around him saw the various polygons of the local computer systems. He started with them. They were strictly low-level systems, but they told him that the security at the housing facility was fairly light. It looked like no security cams were spying on him and Otabi, at least not any connected to the main computer systems of the building. That, thought Roy, was a ray of hope.

  He sped through the Matrix at light-speed to the Cross Bio-Medical offices in Boston. The building’s icon loomed up out of the virtual cityscape, topped with the golden cross of the corporate logo. Roy’s pass codes got him through the public section of the host into the employees-only areas. Naturally, the inter-departmental bulletins and such had no mention of the incident in the Merrick Valley bio-med facility or any sort of theft. He’d have to dig deeper than that.

  Think, he told himself, think. There had to be something to go on. He turned up some routine information by inputting a search relating to the research facility, but it was nothing he hadn’t seen before leaving Montreal. He thought about the Whitehorse and the airport, but those searches also came up blank. He even did a search on Gabriel, but it was no surprise that he could learn nothing. The Seraphim were top-secret, as were most of their activities.

  Then he thought about the cylinders that got loaded into the Whitehorse. He recalled the biohazard symbol, indicating that their contents was potentially dangerous or infectious, and the lettering on the sides. He focused and tried to remember what the writing said.

  Pandora, he recalled. That’s what was stenciled on the sides of the cylinders. He inputted a new search with expanded parameters, feeling his heart beat faster back in the real world while he waited for the search to run. A screen appeared in front of him with the results:

  Pandora, Cross Bio-Medical Project No. X140-762, Security Clearance, Level Three or above.

  Bingo. Roy didn’t have the necessary security clearance to access the file, but he knew a few tricks. He’d been working on company security files and systems long enough for that. He quickly started piecing together a program to do the job. It wasn’t as elegant as he would have liked, but he didn’t have a lot of time. The shape of a silvery key took form in front of him in virtual space as he completed work on the program. He touched the key to the screen to activate it, then held his breath.

  There was a moment where he thought he’d hosed it, that the system was going to lock him out. But then the screen cleared and turned into a small white cube spinning in space—a data-packet. Roy reached out and touched the cube, commanding it to open and display the data it contained. He glanced over the index of the file, and his eyes widened. Then he touched parts of the index to scan highlights of the file.

  Cross Technologies wasn’t going to find the shadowrunners, he realized. They weren’t even looking for them. It all made sense to him now: Gabriel’s presence at the MV facility, the theft of the Whitehorse, Gabriel’s apparent lack of concern about the shadowrunners or the loss of company property. He understood why his interrogators were focusing on his and Otabi’s actions during the incident. They were building a scaffold from which to hang them.

  He collapsed the file back into a cube and put it into his pocket. That triggered the file to download onto his deck. Then he quickly backed out of the system and returned to his starting point, hoping he’d done enough to cover his tracks.

  Back at his jackpoint, he investigated the relatively simple computer system of the building he was in. It handled routine functions like telecom traffic and simple security like electronic locks and such. Roy didn’t find it difficult to gain access to the system as an authorized user. The program he’d used in the Cross system worked just as well here, and this one’s security was childish by comparison. He made a few adjustments, then made sure they were set correctly. Once things were set in motion, there would be no going back. He pressed the virtual button that would start his program, then logged off the system and jacked out.

  Nothing had changed back in his room. No Seraphim agents or security personnel were trying to break down
the door, and the trideo was still blaring in the other room. He briefly regretted not having done more to help Dan Otabi, but there wasn’t much he could do. Otabi had probably been doomed from the start, before Roy ever spotted anything unusual in the logs of the MV facility. He quickly gathered up a few necessities and put his deck into its carrying case.

  He was just finishing up when he heard the scream of the fire alarm. He knew the windows in the room would lock automatically, so he dashed over and threw one open to climb out onto the fire escape. As he ran down it to the alley three floors below, he could see other people starting to emerge from the building. He didn’t look back, but focused on getting to the ground. The metal fire stairs rattled, impossibly loud, and other occupants of the building poked their heads out to see, but he ignored them.

  He hit the ground running. There were a fair number of people on the sidewalk, but a large enough crowd to disappear into. He headed for the subway station they’d passed on the way here. Only when he reached it did he dare take a moment to look over his shoulder. He saw no sign of pursuit, but that wouldn’t last long. He rushed down into the station and fumbled for his credstick, which he slotted into the turnstile like all the other people on their way to the trains.

  Please, God, he prayed, let there be a train. He was in luck. One was filling up as he reached the platform. It sounded the all-aboard signal, and Roy dashed for the doors, slipping in just before they closed. As the train began to pull away from the station, he dropped into a seat and looked out the scratched and dirty window. He thought he saw a familiar figure in a long, dark coat come racing onto the platform in time to see the train pull away. Roy hunched down in his seat, but tried not to be too obvious about it.

  He got off the train a few stations later, just long enough to use the bank machine in the station. He slotted his credstick and downloaded all but a few francs from his personal account onto a certified stick, converting the funds into nuyen. The certified stick was almost as good as cash and virtually untraceable, since it contained no ID codes. He pocketed both sticks and boarded the next train, which would take him to downtown Boston.