Shadowrun

by Dylan Birtolo

  One flashing signature blinked the bright green of “friend” nearly a half-block away near the line at a brick of angles that had to be a soycaf stand—Yu.

  See? He’s fine. Rude clipped the image and sent it to Zipfile’s link.

  Or tried to, anyway.

  What the frag? He wasn’t a complete rube when it came to computers, but Rude didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. Stupid Sony. Knew I shoulda nabbed the Hermes.

  Yu’s flashing indicator was moving again. It paced a few times in front of the building, but vanished along the wall of gridlines next door to it after just a minute or three. Seconds later, the green icon appeared on top of the small office complex across the alley. Whatever Yu was up to, he was at least trying to be careful and clever about it. Rude rolled back the last few seconds and tried to pop it to Zipfile again.

 

  Again, the data packet didn’t send. Once was a technical hiccup, but twice in a row—something wasn’t adding up. The noise here shouldn’t be high enough to muck with Rude’s gear, but an internally encrypted simple message with the same routing hub? No way. This wasn’t normal. He made a note of the timestamp—20:58. That could be important information later on if they need to track the problems and see what happened.

  Maybe Zippy was right to be worried…

  Rude took another quick scan of the street level using the Predator, saw that nothing really had changed across the way. Yu was still watching from across the alley from a high vantage point—although not as high as Rude’s. With this whole Matrix glitch thing that was happening however, it couldn’t hurt to be a little extra thorough.

  Pulling himself out of SmartGun mode, the gray and murk of the real world snapped back into view. He readjusted his stance so he was facing the wall and rose slightly from sitting to kneeling so he could look at things in better, sharper detail. Rude scanned the rooftops—both Rip Current’s and the parking tower’s—as slowly as his patience would allow. Nothing seemed out of place, not really, not even—

  Wait a sec. Rude focused on a shining sparkle on the wall’s ledge just beyond the AC block. It was a piece of mechanical something. What the hell is it, though? He zoomed in tight on the weird chunk of metal, and even then it took a moment to recognize…the mangled deadbolt from the door! Switching from the common wavelengths of his cybereyes to their high-powered recreation of his natural thermographic vision, he squinted at the scene like a jeweler peered through their loop at an unknown piece.

  There it was, just beyond the broken AC unit, the faint outline of a person sitting cross-legged.

  Frag. Rude took a steadying breath. I ain’t alone up here.

  There wasn’t much in the way of heat being given off, but enough that Rude was sure that it wasn’t a trick of code or even some homeless guy who managed to get stuck up here and die in a weird position. It was the kind of heat signature that looked like it was purposefully obscured, because that shit don’t happen by accident.

  The mere potential that this babysitting gig might turn into something exciting quickened Rude’s heart rate, a trickle of his triple-strength adrenaline being released into his veins. That familiar tingle rose up to meet it, his muscles starting to buzz, and he was yanked back to that Meridian Street sidewalk earlier that day. Might be nothin’, the terrified eyes of that racist’s hopefully now ex-friend like a billboard in his thoughts, don’t lose it.

  Careful not to reveal himself just in case it was just some guy in the wrong place at the right time, Rude crawled in a wide arc so as to get a better vantage point on this stranger. He needed to see this person before making some kind of judgment call. Having to end some meditating utility worker’s life wouldn’t cost him any sleep or anything—but he wasn’t getting paid for that kind of heat. It’s a lot of work to make somebody disappear in the ’80s, and not something he does for free.

  Guy chose a good spot, Rude growled internally, better than mine, for damn sure. He had to keep adjusting his angle of approach, because the few random objects on this rooftop overlapped the lanes of vision to this mystery person perfectly. Rude was nearly back at the access door by the time he could lay eyes—shifted back to the visible spectrum for full effect, of course—on his little rooftop friend.

  I knew it was too goddam perfect!

  This elf, by the pointed ears jutting out from the sides of her combat helmet, was hunkered down behind a curtain of high-tech plastic interwoven with circuitry. Rude wasn’t familiar, but he could tell the strange patterns were technomantic. That cloak must have been hiding her from more than just thermals, because he didn’t pick up any static or scan blips when he swept the rooftop. Hell, maybe it even clouded her from his mind in some way. Magic’s like fraggin’ cheatin’. His teeth ground against each other. But techno-magic? That’s like double cheatin’.

  Whatever this elf was up to, Rude knew it wasn’t good. He leveled his sidearm at the back of her head, about to send her face splattering out into the street, but then paused. Too loud. Need something else, something quieter. He drew one of his boot knives. Perfect.

  Feeling the weight in his hand and judging the wind, in one swift motion Rude cocked back his arm and launched it back forward. The blade spun forward with the force of a bullet. His skills said that it was going to hit point-first, but when thrown by a cybered-up troll—even the blunt hilt would probably break bone.

  If the knife would have hit at all, that is. Striking some unseen barrier—maybe whatever was shielding her thermographics—it ricocheted away and clattered across the top of the AC unit.

  His target leaped to her feet and spun around in the same fluid motion. The plastic sheet loosely tied around her neck crinkled and flipped behind her like a cape, motes of glittering energy dancing across its surface.

  Under that weird cloak her thin, elven frame was partially hidden by a suit of ballistic armor emblazoned on the chest with the silver badge icon of a Knight Errant street agent. The uniform wasn’t standard though, as she didn’t wear the normal reinforced gloves and boots. Actually, she didn’t have shoes on at all.

  “Guys,” she hissed into her chinstrap microphone. Lightly glowing sapphire eyes peered out from behind her helmet’s clear visor, surely seeing things that even Rude’s augmented eyes couldn’t even imagine, and she was already moving her fingers like disjointed worms at the ends of her hands. “Move in. Go time.”

  A streak of white-blue fire leapt from her fingertips with a fwoosh, forcing Rude into a sideways roll just to avoid it. He could feel the spell’s energy through his clothes and thick skin, like the meat under his dermal layering was trying to cook from within. Where the bolt hit the access doorframe behind him, a blackened flower of a scorch mark bloomed.

  “Frag it.” Rude’s voice was full of venom, letting his instincts take over. Using one knee as a pivot point like a Renton street dancer, he turned in place, snatched up the closest thing to his open hand—the broken cinderblock doorstop. He hurled the glorified brick with all day’s pent up frustration at her.

  There was nothing to say that the cinderblock would fare any better than the knife against her invisible shielding, if it was even still there, but Rude wasn’t just some dumb troll from the Barrens. He was full of skills he couldn’t remember learning, instincts that made no sense for a professional thug to have, and experiences that came back to him at the strangest of moments.

  The elf put up her hands to block it, but the tumbling, soaring, manmade meteor struck its target dead on—which wasn’t her at all.

  Nearly a meter to her left, it tore through the pressurized coolant tank attached to the AC block unit. While she was preparing to deflect a physical attack from her front, the actual assault sprayed at her from the side and coated her with toxic, semi-acidic foam. It crept in like rain through the gaps in her jumpsuit, across her exposed chin, and thoroughly onto her bare hands and feet. Not only was it excruciatingly cold, but it was also
slick like motor oil. As soon as it touched her bare skin, it started to immediately draw out the water in her flesh. She slipped to the ground to flop about in the steaming pool; the arc of slowly drooping liquid from the de-pressurizing tank coating her with even more.

  “Unh… g-ge… hnurhk!” she tried in vain to speak, to call for help, but Rude wasn’t about to lose the upper hand. “Ah’m… attack…”

  He crossed the distance between them in two great leaps, the second of which allowed him to land within arm’s reach of her kicking, bare, and blistering feet. He clamped his cybernetic hand around her ankle like a vice. It was surely painful to be in his bone-splintering grip, but her exposed skin was already black with chemical freezing, so she felt nothing when the troll yanked her up and out of the coolant spill. When he swung her at waist level into the nearest light pole however, she definitely felt it.

  Her upper body bent around the anchored pole roughly halfway up her ribcage, shattering her midsection into a grisly obtuse angle. The Knight Errant armor couldn’t protect her from this impact, yet it was likely the only thing keeping her from tearing in two. When her head snapped around to face her pelvis, the helmet that was protecting it popped off and spun away like a top. She was a fish pulled from the river, her mouth opening and closing soundlessly in vain. No words came out; only a bloody froth.

  “Goddam mages,” Rude watched as the glittering sparkle in her eyes faded away along with her life. “Wait. What the hell is that?” He stooped down and turned her head to the side with his mechanical index finger. There on her neck, disappearing down into the collar of her armor was an elaborate tattoo of a white-feathered flying serpent. “Ya’ll ain’t KE standard, are ya?”

  “—on approach—”

  Tinny little words trickled into Rude’s ears from somewhere nearby. He tilted his commlink’s screen up to see if he was accidentally channel surfing or something, but no, he was still dealing with too much noise to be receiving anything.

  “—contact…ten—”

  There it was again, but this time he knew to listen for it and homed in. Her fraggin’ helmet! The modified Knight Errant riot helmet, altered so she could have her open ears and half-visor for some weird magic-using reason, was tiny in his palm. Like trying to hear the ocean in a conch shell, Rude lifted it up to his ear.

  “—Spotlyte isn’t answering for sitrep,” a deep but feminine voice, possibly an ork’s, crackled across the helmet’s internal speakers, “but the target is supposed to be here. We’re going in chummers, hard and hot. Get ready!”

  Over the ledge, from down in the street, it was suddenly a war zone. Rude heard the staccato reports of submachine gun fire answered by higher caliber assault rifles. Multiple sets of tires screeched on the pavement, but the echoing spwang of assault vehicles tearing through the fencing put a little more pep in his step.

  Rude kept the helmet in hand as he ran to the street side ledge, looking over it at the Rip Current building and just how much the scene had changed in just a few minutes. A trio of Knight Errant armored cars were on the scene, the last of which Rude saw drive straight through the gatehouse and the unfortunate guard standing beside it. Heavy gear response agents from KE spilled out three at a time from these vehicles as they slid into position. This kind of mobile attack unit was paramilitary in nature, and not something that could be planned quickly or as a reaction—these corporate soldiers were here at this time because they had been told to be here at this time.

  Guards and other strangely well-equipped employees from within Rip Current began exchanging fire, bursts of bullets turning the side of the warehouse into a modern art piece and denting the plating of the armored cars like weird, violent constellations on their black paint. A handful of Knights began moving around to flank, but they missed the tell-tale whump of a 40mm grenade round being fired at them. The resulting explosion sent the agents spiraling in several directions and forced them to hunker down and take note of the situation. All the while, Yu clung to the rooftop of the office building and did his best to stay out from between these two forces.

  “Serpent Squad,” a voice with some authority came from the helmet, “fan out! Search everywhere! Find the target, shoot to kill.”

  Rude watched as the Knight Errant agents did as instructed. Teams of two or three vanished into all the neighboring buildings. They were all wearing Knight Errant armor and possessed sidearms that matched, but that was where the similarities end. They were mostly metas with a few humans, but even the humans looked like they didn’t belong in everyday society.

  Another grenade nearly tipped over an unmarked deployment van, leaving one of the Knights Errant dead in the street and two others reeling. What has Yu gotten us into now? he was genuinely curious, because this was one serious escalation from a few guards and drones.

  The sound of a familiar weapon’s—Yu’s machine pistol—signature gunfire caught Rude’s focus. Elfy-Pants had lost his cover and was now showering some KE troll with small caliber rounds, barely forcing him to shield his eyes. It was a good enough distraction to let Yu duck past and into the stairwell access.

  “We got him trapped! Move in!” The helmet speaker’s message matched the fact that three of the Knight Errant soldiers had just blown the street-level emergency doors on the first floor and were disappearing into the smoke. The troll from above and the soldiers from below; they were going to catch Yu in the middle, and he had no idea. Rude could see flashes of gunfire in the windows of multiple floors in that building, and he hoped Yu wasn’t already getting chewed up by that crossfire.

  “Babysittin’ my ass.” He cynically laughed. “Time ta save the fuckin’ day.”

  The situation called for quick action, and Rude was built for it—literally.

  Somebody—who, Rude had no idea—had paid a lot of money for the gear all wound up in his body. Hardwired reflex boosters, a synaptic crash suite, state-of-the-art cybereyes, and his augmented forearm would be enough to bankrupt a small business or starting runner. That didn’t even take into consideration his non-combat enhancements like the tracheal filter, commlink bridge, or his secondary—and tertiary—redundancy livers. Rude was one hard ass, troll-shape meat sack worth millions of nuyen.

  Time to put all that money to work.

  Most people will tell you how fast things move in a violent conflict; that it’s over so fast they barely know what’s happened. For Rude, it was the exact opposite. His mind was always a jumble of broken memories, disturbing dreams, and somewhat wrangled chaos—except when he went into full combat mode.

  Nano-catalytic converters interwoven to his glands triggered, sending a full adreno-endorphine cocktail flooding through him. A cold numbness spread out from his core, the familiar tingle of his neuro-muscular network beginning to heat up inside his limbs like the glowing element inside a twentieth century lightbulb. After the initial throb of his body adjusting to the nearly euphoric shift in chemical saturation, the stillness that followed was the closest thing to a meditative state Rude had or would ever know.

  The world slowed down around him. The cycling rates of machine gun fire ticked back slightly. Shouts both fearful and aggressive became longer and more exaggerated. More than anything though, Rude’s thoughts became so precise and focused that he measured every decision and action three times before enacting them. Only someone with similarly augmented synaptic functions knew the momentary Nirvana of using them at full tilt.

  Have ta get down ta the street. Less than two seconds and Rude weighed the options:

  Jump across? It was more than six meters to cross the street. Leaping off the parking tower, even with the angle of descent to the shorter building, was unlikely to be successful.

  Jump down? Rude was a badass, but five stories straight down? Even with his upgrades, a broken pair of ankles was the best case. Worst case? A shattered everything.

  Lightpole? He could probably bend it at the middle and try to use it like a vault to get across, but the wiring was live—it wa
s currently lit—and even he might not be able to crack that alloy casing.

  Door? He could easily rip it off the hinges and concrete-surf down the slope of the garage, but probably only in a straight line, and re-adjusting descent angles would actually take more time than just running.

  Run. Using the ledge as an anchor for his starting foot, he shot forward, easily stepping over the crumpled elf corpse on his way to the descending ramp leading to level four. Rude swung his arm in a wide arc, smashing her helmet against the lightpole as he passed by. Impact-resistant plastic shattered like an eggshell, leaving not only a black scuff and small dent on the pole, but also the formerly internal wire harness that connected the microphone, Matrix power receiver, and speaker suite—and still did! Rude shook off a few fragments of plastic and shoved the tangle of strangely functional electronics under his collar, Might need that later.

  He pumped his legs harder, picking up speed as he rounded level four to level three. There were more parked vehicles on this floor, increasing the chance for additional security issues, but Rude wasn’t terribly worried. If his Zipfile-doctored Sony was still getting scrambled by the noise—it was—there was almost no way a commercial vehicle suite or garage rig was getting through to transmit. With the firefight outside, the chance of anyone seeing and remembering him were pretty low, even with the streetlamp light coming in through the garage windows.

  Windows!

  Rude did some mental navigation as he got to the wall on level three that faced the cross-street alleyway and picked up speed. Right before the turn, he leaped into the air and straightened his body into a feet-first spear to crash through one of the windows into the open space above the alley. As soon as the dense brick wall of the neighboring vacant renovation met the flat of his boots, Rude let his joints become crumple points and he sat up into a sort of vertical crouch. Gravity caught up quickly, and he started to slide down to the ground below. He used his cybernetic fingers as a dragging anchor to slow his descent in a shower of red dust and stony shrapnel, but as soon as he could he stepped back and leaped the rest of the way down.