Something hard tapped at Frostburn’s shin. She jumped in surprise and looked down in shock. Her Ceska Black Scorpion floated in the air next to her leg. Frostburn scowled in alarm and momentary confusion, then glanced over at Emilia. Emilia wore a look of intense concentration, and the machine pistol floated gently down to the grass, where it lay next to Frostburn’s foot.
Frostburn looked back up and met Emilia’s eyes. Emilia looked pale and sweaty, as well as somewhat scorched from her Power Ball, but she shot Frostburn a grin and waggled her fingers. Frostburn allowed a small smile of her own and carefully bent down to pick up the pistol without exposing herself to the elf.
She rested her back against the tree and slid back up to standing. She checked the magazine. Six rounds left. The rest of her ammunition was in her car. For whatever reason—stupidity, adrenaline, distraction...hell, all of the above—she hadn’t grabbed more than one spare mag when she’d raided her car for supplies earlier. Whatever the case, she had to put an end to this.She wracked her brain, trying to come up with a plan. The kids were in trouble, in the line of fire as they were, but the elf so far seemed to regard them as a complete non-issue. Emilia was another matter. Her cousin’s eyelids fluttered, she swayed, and her eyes looked glassy. A thin line of blood ran down her face from her nostril.
Frostburn looked for the elf, and spotted the top of his head poking out from behind the front end of her car. She scanned the area, looking for a better angle on him, and made a break for a tree a short distance away. He must have been ready for her, though, and a full auto burst split the air, sending a confetti of bark flying all around her.
Suddenly, it felt like someone took a ball-peen hammer to her leg, and it simply gave out underneath her. She stumbled and just managed to grab the tree she was headed toward. She fell to the ground beside it and dragged herself through the grass to a sitting position behind it. She’d been shot. Air blew through a crisp hole in her pant leg, but blood soon soaked the fabric, sticking it to her skin. Frostburn’s respiration accelerated, and she caught herself before a panic response could set in. She concentrated, placed her hands around the bullet hole in her leg, and cast a Heal spell. Icy tendrils of magic set in and around the wound with a rush not much less painful than the original gunshot itself, but the pain in her leg soon subsided as the bullet was squeezed out of her wound and fell out onto the grass. However, the pain in her head redoubled as the drain from the spell washed away whatever advantage she had left remaining after the stim patch. Once she could see straight, a quick examination showed the skin of her leg had knit itself back together. She poked experimentally at the spot, found it functional again, and clambered laboriously back up onto her feet.
She peered around the corner. She still wasn’t at the right angle to prevent the elf from using her car as cover, but he had less room to move. Emilia was visible, still near the rear of the car, but under cover from the elf. She could see movement inside the car. Stay inside, stay inside. She willed the thoughts to reach inside their stubborn child heads and keep them the hell there.
Emilia leaned over and did something in the direction of the elf. Frostburn could hear a sizzling sound and saw acrid smoke tendrils rise from his direction. She suspected it was another Acid Stream and hoped she wasn’t trying to melt more metal. The elf did not seem to react; maybe she missed him? But then Frostburn saw motion: Emilia sagged, barely holding herself up off the ground by one bent arm, and heaved with her heavy breathing.
A whirlwind of white smoke curled into being beside Emilia, and grew, spinning like a small tornado. After a moment, the whirlwind had formed a vaguely person-like shape—a spirit of air—teetered over, and fell on top of and around Emilia’s now prone form.
The elf called out from behind the car. “Enough!” he said. “I’ve got Emilia. Give up, and I’ll let her go. Keep fighting me, and I’ll order my spirit to kill her.”
Frostburn experienced a strange kind of calm. Normally, her thoughts might have seized up at a time like this, desperately scrabbling for a plan. Instead, she was frosty. She stepped out from behind the tree and walked directly toward the elf until she had a clear view of him.For a moment, the look on his face was one of victory. He’d done his homework; anyone who knew anything about Frostburn knew that she needed a plan. She insisted on plans. A moment like this would spell defeat, or at least a need to regroup to give oneself time to come up with a new plan.
A loud honk burst out from Frostburn’s car—a helping hand from Emilia’s friends inside—and the elf leaped to his feet in shock.
Frostburn marched straight at the elf without missing a beat, lifted her arm in a smooth motion, and fired off a three-round burst directly into his face.
She caught his expression just before the rounds hit. His look creased into an expression of surprise before the stick-and-shock rounds slammed into his cheeks and forehead. Then his visage lit up like a lightning storm. He screamed, his eyes rolled back into his head, showing only the whites, he brought his hands jerkily to his head, convulsed violently, and fell down to the pavement in a smoking heap.
The spirit of air unraveled about Emilia and dissipated as though blasted by a strong wind.
Frostburn ran to her side and rolled her over. Emilia’s eyes cracked open just a touch as the car doors opened and her friends poured out.
“You okay?” Frostburn said, worriedly scanning and prodding her cousin in her attempt to check her over.
“I’m good,” Emilia croaked and managed a half-grin before clutching her stomach with a groan. “At least, I will be.”
“Help Emilia and get in the car. We’ve got to get out of here.” Frostburn barked at the others. Even now, she could hear sirens in the far distance.
She dashed over to the elf and checked him for any signs of life. She found none. Patting his body down, she found his pistol and remaining ammo, a handful of patches, her commlink, and his commlink.
“This will almost certainly be useful,” she said, pocketing the prizes, then she hopped in the car and sped away.
Frostburn drove, and everyone else in the car remained silent. It was a tense drive, and she didn’t want to rely on GridGuide at this particular juncture, just in case anyone caught her license plate and called it in to Knight Errant. She wasn’t an experienced driver, and it took all of her attention to drive as casually as she could while still putting as much distance as possible between them and the mess they left behind.
She zigged and zagged through residential neighborhoods, moving directly away from where they’d come, yet keeping to less populated roads as often as possible. It was a full ten minutes before Frostburn relaxed enough to allow GridGuide to resume control of her car and drive them in a roundabout route back to her aunt’s house.
It was a full five minutes after that before anyone broke the silence. Five minutes passed before anyone said anything. Emilia broke the silence. “Thanks for getting us out of there,” she muttered.
“You’re welcome,” Frostburn said without much feeling.
Silence surrounded them all once again. The four kids Frostburn had rescued first were crammed in a row into the back seat. Their faces betrayed a multitude of feelings, but they kept them to themselves.
After a period of time that ensured whatever she said would be awkward, Frostburn said, “Thanks for the help back there.”
“You’re welcome,” the dwarf boy said cheerfully.
“Okay, you know, no. This is not okay,” Frostburn said and spun around in her seat to face them. “What the hell were you guys thinking, going out there? You don’t just go into a corporate facility for your introductory job. At least, not without a decent plan. Or equipment. Or backup!”
“Just like you, I suppose,” Emilia said, but without much venom in her voice.
Frostburn sagged and only shook her head. “Yeah, I suppose I’m a shit example, aren’t I?”
“And I told you spontaneity was superior to plans, and you didn’t believe me. So, I
told you so,” Emilia said.
“No. No, what you said was something like: something, something, something, fragging plans are boring, something, something.”
Emilia snorted. “You just don’t want to admit you were wrong,” she said at the same time the red-haired ork girl said, “So you planned that shot to his face? That was impressive!”
Frostburn glowered. “Okay, fine, sometimes plans aren’t the be-all, end-all. You happy?”
“Oh, it’s okay. I get it. You’ve got a reputation to maintain,” Emilia said breezily.
“For crying out loud, I’m not trying to maintain a reputation!”
“Sure, sure.” Emilia pretended to be distracted by the passing cityscape. “You wanna tell my friends what you really do to pay the rent?”
The kids in the backseat blinked and listened attentively.
Frostburn pretended to be involved with driving the car. “Not particularly, but I think you have an idea.”
“Yeah,” Emilia said matter-of-factly. “You’re in insurance.”
Frostburn’s mouth quirked.
“Oh, we saw the whole thing,” the sandy-haired ork said. “You’re obviously an experienced runner.” At Frostburn’s silence, he added, “Aren’t you?”
Frostburn pursed her lips and heaved a sigh. “Okay. You got me. Fine, yes, I’m an experienced runner, and have been for a while now.”
The kids grinned at one another.
“But that doesn’t mean you’re ready to go out and do the same kind of stuff! What I do—what we do—it’s a big deal. People get hurt, sometimes innocent people that don’t have anything to do with the job. People die. You have to be ready to deal with that kind of thing. It takes a toll on you.”
Frostburn trailed off, remembering the tolls she’d collected over the years.
“But just because you’re a runner doesn’t mean you can’t get the job done and not kill people,” the dwarf boy offered.
Frostburn sighed again, which broke into a yawn. Her jaw creaked with the strength of it. “Yeah,” she acquiesced, “you can certainly try. But even then, if you aren’t prepared, if you let your emotions get the better of you, you might still want to bring the hammer down. And you’ll have no one to blame for the psychic fallout other than yourself.”
She looked over the kids, whose expressions had all turned somber.
“But everyone’s gotta make that choice for themselves. Sometimes it’s enough to put down the bad guys and not kill them. Sometimes it’s not. It all depends.”
“Well,” Emilia said, and draped her arms over the shoulders of her friends in the backseat, “We’re all adults here. And like it or not, we’re in the business, too. We’re in a good position to do things better next time—thanks to you,” she added and nodded at Frostburn. “I mean, isn’t it nice to know there’s more of us out there? That you’re not the only one raging against the shit in this sometimes-drekky world? I know it makes me feel better.”
Frostburn considered this. All the pressure, all the risk, all the pain, was it really all worth it just to fight the good fight? She allowed herself a small smile and nodded. “Yeah, I suppose it is nice to know. But it’ll be even better to know that you idiots aren’t running around out there half-cocked while you try to scrub the world clean of assholes.”
“Well, yeah, of course,” Emilia said. “So the next time we find ourselves with a big job to do, we’ll just give our big, tough, former corporate security mage buddy a call and let her whip up a nice, safe plan for us. Right?”
Frostburn snorted. “Or you can learn to make up plans on your own, maybe.”
“I already told you, plans are overrated,” Emilia said airily, and laughed.
An hour later, Frostburn got out of her car and dragged her feet into her team’s meeting. She barely noticed or cared about the topic of conversation when she shuffled heavily into the room. Approaching her team’s decker, Zipfile, Frostburn dropped the elf assassin’s commlink into the dwarf’s lap. “I think you’ll find something useful on that,” she told her and plopped down into an empty chair. “I gotta get some sleep. I think taking time away from work nearly killed me.”
Epilogue, One Year Later
Emilia crouched in the shadows of the alleyway, waiting for her signal.
The signal came over their comms, and Emilia made her move. Leading with her favorite non-lethal option, she launched a Blast spell into the group of Humanis thugs who had thought they were going to enjoy a nice, quiet evening at their clubhouse. The effect boomed, cutting through the night air.
The alleyway echoed with the rest of her team’s followup attacks. Digger, the blond dwarf, popped out from behind a dumpster kitty-corner from Emilia, and took down the two thugs nearest him with his shotgun full of gel shot. Nexus, the red-haired ork, fired a stream of industrial glue into the middle of the thugs, tripping and sticking up the rest. And the human, Volt, fired his taser into the last thug left standing, dropping him to the ground.
After a few seconds, all of the Humanis goons lay in a sticky heap in the middle of the alleyway. Emilia grinned at her teammates. She spoke into her commlink. “You make the call?”
The team’s decker responded. “Yeah, KE’s on the way. Time to go.”
Emilia nodded. The others jogged back to their van, but Emilia stepped over to the only conscious thug in the bunch. The human moaned and writhed on the ground, trying to figure out just what had happened to him.
Emilia stared down at him, a sneer around her tusks, and said, before she caught up to join her team and get the hell out of Dodge, “This is our town. And we have a plan. We’re not putting up with your bulldrek anymore.”
Part Five
Zipfile
Jason Schmetzer
Inside her own custom host, which was safely nestled in one of her commlinks, Zipfile stood in front of her murderboard and hummed, eyes darting back and forth between images, text strings, Matrix IDs, a hundred other data points she was putting together.
To her, the room looked like a blank white wall with pictures and folders and string, an image familiar to a century of police procedural fans the world over. In reality, the host system was amalgamating databases of information that she’d gathered. All of this was digital. None of it was real in the meatspace sense of the world, but Zipfile knew it was real.
To her, eish, the Matrix was more real than the real.
She chuckled.
It was a shame it was all going to have to go someday. The system was going to have to be broken. She believed that in her heart even more than she believed that the Matrix was real. The system has as much chances as a rookie shooting the puck against a twenty-year veteran goalie. Miracles happen, sure.
But experience almost always wins out in the end.
Simon Dennis’ face glared at Zipfile from the center of her murderboard. It was a stillframe capture from Rip Current’s security system of him leaving the corp the last time he was there. Zip knew if she tapped the image it would expand into a kaleidoscope of everything she had learned about Dennis so far. She’d already tapped it a bunch of times. Too many.
Which wasn’t a great deal.
The Telestrian Johnson had given them the key piece, though.
They knew where he was.
But that wasn’t enough to get the run done. Not and get away.
Not when the true target was Renraku.
Zipfile looked along one virtual string. AVR Optronics. The company the Telestrian Johnson had given them. A Renraku subsidiary. Maybe a future acquisition. Many times Zip had seen an AA or AAA corp farming out some work to test a smaller company’s chops. If they failed the task given them, no worries—that company would never be a threat or a target. Let some other corp waste its time and resources worrying about them.
But a successful little corp…better to gobble them up in acquisition, or ruin them to make sure they never became a challenge to the megacorp’s sovereignty. Those kind of jobs—the non-public ones—were
the bread-and-butter work of teams like Zipfile’s.
That was one of the things she’d have to find out. Renraku would respond much differently if they owned AVR outright than they would if they had just paid the company to do some work.
Zip shrugged. May as well pay ’em a little visit. She looked around her private host and then thought about the door.
A moment later she was on PubGrid, looking at the giant Renraku Okoku grid on the virtual horizon. She could go inside—anyone could, since Renraku granted visitor passes to anyone for a short time—and poke around, but she wasn’t sure that’s where she wanted to go. There was almost no chance anyone legal would give her the answers she was looking for, and doing in a run in the Okoku was never something to take lightly.
Renraku’s demiGODs were very often AIs. They were the frontline security of the Grid Overwatch Division, the overarching security system of the Matrix. After hostile deckers, GOD was a hacker’s main enemy.
That was trouble Zipfile didn’t need.
Instead, she turned her head and found the plain, corporate host-front of AVR Optronics. It was vanilla, out of the box code. Obviously no one there cared a great deal about being found in the Matrix.
Still, they were a known Renraku associate. Maybe a wholly-owned subsidiary. What the box looked like on the outside might mask a great deal of security on the inside.
Zip frowned. She looked down at her persona. She was an ork today, on this commlink.
“Should be safe,” she murmured. Then she stepped inside.
This was one of her favorite parts of the Matrix. In meatspace, she’d have to climb into a car running GridGuide and waste the time away while a machine drove her across town. In the Matrix, everywhere was right here. She could connect to the public hosts in Pretoria from here, if she wanted to.
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