《Good People》


 Submersion: 1.01

    No matter how much things changed, high school was still high school.


    In the classroom, everyone had their place. They sat at their desks and pretended to listen to the teacher drone on about World Issues, but what''s important is that they were all stationary, without any annoying variables. They didn''t have room or time to wander off to throw hoops, skip out to the burger joint on the next block over for a substitute school lunch, or even run off to the bathrooms for a good cry. They were predictable.


    Matthew Hellman always sat on the third row from the back, next to the window. He did that because it gave him an uninterrupted view of Rose Connaghty, who sat one desk in front and one to the right, because that put her in-between her friends. She was dating someone in the year above, which Hellman would know given how much time he spent scrolling through her social media.


    Of course, as is the nature of things, Hellman himself ¨C being on the football team, friendly enough and just a little bit dim ¨C had the attention of Sarah Lancet, who sat directly behind him. She was very self-conscious about her height, despite both her parents being dwarves, and her social media scrolling tended to be limited to athletic beefcakes who never dropped below six feet.


    She had also gone blind as the result of an illness caused by a chemical spill near her tenement block, but the MassChem hush money paid to her parents had been enough to let them fit their daughter out with a set of adequate implants that were almost, but not quite, indistinguishable from regular eyes.


    The quality was about on par with human basic, which put them well below the industry standard for optics, but when piggy-backing off a schoolgirl''s cyberware beggars ¨C and hackers ¨C couldn''t be choosers. What mattered was that they let me keep an eye on Matthew Hellman while he was in school, which was what I''d been spending the last three days doing.


    The bell went, and since most of the class hadn''t even unpacked their bags for this lesson, Sarah''s vision was immediately filled with motion as people stood up and hurried out into the halls. Her eyes didn''t have audio sensors, naturally, but I''d already compromised Hellman Junior''s commlink to provide me with a live feed of every word he spoke.


    Interestingly, I heard him brush off his friends in order to get out the classroom quicker, and I quickly abandoned Sarah''s eyes in favour of following him through the school''s security cameras, grumbling to myself at how half the cameras in this wreck of a building were non-functional, and a quarter of the rest could only manage black and white.


    It had been two years since I left, but Winslow was still Winslow. The paint on the walls was still peeling, the teachers still looked weary and overworked, and the students were still the same mess of cliques and gangs and teenage politics that used to seem so important to me, but that now seemed so petty and meaningless.


    Seen from the dispassionate eye of the cameras, the cliques were only obvious if I really paid attention. The gangs were the only ones that stood out, but even then I couldn''t help but compare them to the real gang member''s I''d watched through different cameras. Compared to that, the teenagers dressed up in Yakuza colours came across like kids who''d raided their parents'' closet.


    I lost visual on the target a couple of times, but his commlink''s GPS meant I could get it back just as quickly. In the gaps, I piggybacked off any and every camera I could find, drifting through privacy locks on commlinks or cyberware like they weren''t even there. It was a deviation from Matthew''s pattern, and that meant I couldn''t just keep one eye on him and another on a good book.


    He stepped into an empty classroom, out of view of the cameras, and I listened attentively as he sat down, a chair creaking beneath him.


    "So," he began, clearly talking to someone, "what do I have to do?"


    There''s the sound of something clattering against a wooden desk. I couldn''t be certain, but it was light. Maybe a datastick. Could be nuyen on it or just data, but I''m not here to speculate.


    "You get the number seventeen bus, same as usual." It was a girl''s voice, with a local accent. Not deep enough to be an ork or a troll, but that didn''t mean much. "You sit on the left aisle seat, three rows from the back. At some point, a man will stand next to you. He''ll be wearing a military surplus jacket ¨C UCAS military. You''ll put this in his pocket."


    "That''s it?" he asked, sounding cocky rather than nervous. "I don''t have to say something?"


    "You won''t say shit," another voice piped up, this one male. Already my sprites were trawling through Winslow''s social media feeds, simpleminded programmes trying to match voices to faces and faces to names, but it was an inexact science at best and slower than I''d have liked.


    "And that gets me in?" Matthew continued.


    "That gets your foot in the door," the girl shut him down, and actually sounded a little pissed at the suggestion. "Proves you aren''t some lightweight out for a cheap thrill, that you don''t mind following orders blind so long as it''s for the cause. Initiation''s what gets you in, but you''ve gotta be vetted first."


    "Hey, I''m all about the cause!" the kid protested.


    "Remains to be seen. Now take the stick and frag off, SINner."


    Matthew left the classroom moments later, the stick clenched in his fist tight enough that I could see his knuckles whitening even through the less-than-stellar resolution. I watched him slip it into the pocket of his jacket, but then I let him wander off to his next class with only a sprite monitoring his movements, while I watched the classroom door. Minutes later, the two others stepped out, and everything fell into place.


    The girl looked almost normal, and my facial recognition soft finally pegged her as a member of the cheerleading team. A quick look through her academic records revealed a student who, while not at the top of her class, was getting grades that were more than respectable. The sort of model student who excels, but not so much that she sticks out. The sort of student who, under any other circumstances, wouldn''t be seen dead next to the guy.


    He was from the exact opposite of the social spectrum, and he looked the part. He wore his hair in a deep red mohawk, and his clothes consisted of tattered jeans and a tank top beneath a worn and faded leather jacket. As he turned to walk down the corridor, putting his back to the camera, I got a picture-perfect view of the snarling wolf''s head emblazoned on the back of his jacket.


    Sprites chimed up, laying folders of information at my digital feet. The girl was Samantha Bordin, though she went by Sam, and her parents were due-paying members of the Humanis policlub. She herself posted on Humanis forums, but she must have approached Matthew in meatspace.


    She''s a cheerleader, he''s a footballer. Doesn''t take a genius to figure out how they met.


    The guy was Rex Matthis, and he already had a record on file with Knight Errant. As if the jacket wasn''t proof enough, there was a marker in the file linking him to one of the gangs that flocked around the Chosen like toddlers clinging to their parent''s pants. Another human fascist with an axe to grind and a record of assaulting anyone whose ears were just a little too pointy, with a future of deniable grunt work for people like Sam.


    With a stray thought, I gathered up the audio recording of the meeting, as well as stills of the three of them leaving the classroom, and sent them off to the client''s comm, along with a message.


    ?Mrs Hellman, sorry to bother you at work, but I''m afraid I have bad news. You were right to worry. File attached.?


    This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.- Bug (12:15:24/14-2-70)


    The client was a middle manager in a local firm that did subcontracted work on the periphery of Ares Macrotechnology''s corporate empire, which meant she sent her son to Winslow rather than one of Ares'' own schools. She''d been worried about some of what her son was saying over dinner, but I don''t think she was expecting it to be more than a couple of bad friends leading him astray.


    ?Why would they make him do that? And what did they mean by initiation??


    - A.Hellman (12:20:13/14-2-70)


    ?By having him do something illegal, they gain leverage. Not sure you want to know what initiation is.?


    - Bug (12:20:15/14-2-70)


    ?He''s my son.?


    - A.Hellman (12:20:21/14-2-70)


    ?Murder of a nonhuman. They pick someone SINless nobody will miss and have the initiate kill them. If it''s an ork or a troll, the other gang members will usually cripple them first. Level the playing field.?


    - Bug (12:20:25/14-2-70)


    ?I see. This isn''t the news I was hoping for, so forgive me for not thanking you, but your payment has been earned all the same. Transferring the second half of your payment now.?


    - A.Hellman (12:22:04/14-2-70)


    I watched the nuyen slip into my account, then quickly sifted off most of it into another account I''d set aside for the rent money. I just about had enough to last the month and, so long as I could keep finding these odd jobs and easy paychecks, the month after as well.


    The client was already calling the school, and she was looking up psychologists on the Matrix. I let my hold on her dataflow slip, pulling back through the ephemeral strands of networks that made up Brockton Bay. The city''s Matrix stretched everywhere like a spider''s web, constantly pulsing with the dataflow of hundreds of thousands of comms, computers and anything else that needed a connection to work. It was an anarchic mess of a system, part-built, part-grown in and around the old remains of the pre-Crash 2.0 net.


    In and around the web floated islands of sealed networks, with strands of data clumped thickly enough to form robust walls, patrolled by ever-vigilant ICE. The private data-fortresses of corporations, gangs, fixers, shadowrunners and anyone else with a need for a little privacy.


    Taken from a distance, I could see the entire city through a funhouse mirror; the networks of the grid-linked parts of the city glowed even brighter than they did in the real world with the sheer volume of data passing through its streets, while the city''s more desolate areas were near-invisible, with only the occasional data-tap streaming pirated trideo to run-down tenement blocks at a bitrate that was barely enough to make the picture move.


    I didn''t focus on the city for long, though I dearly wanted to. It was easy to get lost in the brilliance of the digital city, to get sucked into its ever-shifting patterns and forget there was any meat attached to my mind until hours had passed and I woke up with my body twitching with hunger.


    I was hungry this time, too, but not with the gnawing pangs that came from spending too long under. More like someone who hadn''t eaten since last night, and who''d been following some high-schooler around since he left home that morning.


    I almost rolled off the couch, taking a moment to stretch myself out and get used to standing up again before turning back and doing my best to get rid of the person-shaped dent I''d left in the cushions, to get the couch looking like it was before.


    Home was just about right for a couple with a child, too cramped for two fully-grown adults and much too large for just one. Even two years on, the place was still filled with memories; family photos hanging on the walls next to dad''s work photos from the docks, bookshelves filled with legal texts I''ve never read and a ladder of notches on the kitchen doorframe, each annotated with an ever-increasing number.


    I staggered into the bathroom and splashed frigid water onto my face to wake me up, blinking gormlessly at my reflection in the mirror as I got used to seeing through my eyes again. Once the colours were right, things were still blurry, and I let out a weary sigh before I went hunting for my glasses, finding them on the kitchen countertop.


    I sighed again as I found a fridge empty of food, but not of beer, and briefly debated breaking open a packet of unseasoned instant ramen that had been sitting in the cupboard for months before giving up and pulling the comm number for a Jamaican place off the Matrix.


    Doing so felt far more natural than ambling back across the room and sinking into an armchair, and I indulged myself by filling my vision with datafeeds before pulling up a copy of Great Expectations I''d been steadily working my way through. All digitally, of course, though I was pretty sure there was an old paper copy of the book somewhere in the house. Mom was a traditionalist like that. With literature, not politics.


    To be honest, I never really saw the appeal of paper. It''s fragile, takes up too much meatspace, and at the end of the day it''s only ever going to be right for some people. The font will always be the same size, and if you can''t actually see the text then you''d need someone else there to manually read it out for you. A datafile is suitable for everyone with a commlink.


    Not that I even needed that. Not since Crash 2.0 in twenty sixty-four, when a fourteen-year-old me collapsed in the middle of school because my brain had just hooked into the school''s wired network. It became even more instinctive once the wireless matrix rolled out, and for a couple of years I was too scared to do anything with it. After that I was on my own, and my fear of my abilities was overshadowed by my fear of being evicted from the only home I''ve ever known.


    Someone buzzed at the door, and I pulled myself out of the armchair once more, idly bringing up the security feed from the corridor. The delivery guy wasn''t the only person in the hall; the woman from apartment thirteen twenty-two was fumbling with her keys as she arrived back from her shift, while the building super was hammering on the door of thirteen twenty-five at the end of the hall.


    The delivery guy was young and, at about six foot four, tall for a human. He was wearing motorcycle leathers and carrying an insulated box, open to reveal a paper bag with the joint''s logo on it. I let the camera go as I opened up the door, looking down at him as his face paled and his mouth dropped open a little. In spite of myself, I almost found myself shrinking under the attention, instead grabbing the takeaway out of his hands and closing the door a lot quicker than I needed to.


    Almost in spite of myself, I brought the camera back up and watched as the delivery guy stared at the door for a few moments, before pulling a comm out of his pocket. In a panic, I started digging through the device, pulling up his name, his call, location and browser history, until he just faked a signature for the delivery and walked off down the corridor.


    I still watched him leave, taking the thirteen-floor trip down the elevator and collecting his bike from where he''d parked it up outside the lobby, chained to a lamp post. When he set off, I waited until his comm automatically fed a route to the heads-up display in his helmet before finally stopping the trace. He was going to the next delivery, nowhere else.


    I snagged a beer from the fridge and made my way over to the balcony, using my mind to hit the switch that retracted the metal storm shutters and exposed the city to my meatspace eyes.


    Rather unsurprisingly, the docks dominated the view. Dad bought this place because it was right on the edge of the docks, and he poured his heart and soul into those miles of wharves, jetties, cranes and warehouses. Poured everything he had into them, until they ate him up and spat him out full of lead.


    Half of the docks were run by the Association in one way or another, the company renting and leasing access to anyone with nuyen while individual managers earned a tidy side-income from smuggling and mob backhands. From my vantage point thirteen stories up, I could see the logos of dozens of different companies spread out across the sprawling warehouses, a healthy spread of local corps and double-A giants.


    Half the docks were independent, but they were also worse off. Their infrastructure was mismatched and rusting, and they couldn''t hold a candle to the rest.


    Segregated behind physical walls and legal extraterritoriality, Ares Macrotechnology''s docks were like a city within a city. They were pristine and largely automated, with a constant flow of containers moving in on trains from Detroit before being loaded onto ships and sent off to ports the world over.


    Their arcology lorded over this enclave like the keep of a castle, a great wedge-sided edifice that eclipsed any other building in the docks by an order of magnitude and made the skyscrapers of downtown look like spindly needles in comparison. The Ares logo ¨C the head of a Greek warrior in red white and blue ¨C seemed to almost be staring those towers down.


    Three of those skyscrapers bore the Medhall Pharmaceuticals logo ¨C a stylized black crown over a red M, on a yellow background. Ares was a supranational giant, a triple-A corporation to whom Brockton Bay was just one port city among many, but Medhall were local titans, homegrown and on the cusp of double-A status. They liked to promote themselves as the champions of the city ¨C at least, the parts of the city whose ears were round.


    I couldn''t help catching sight of my own ears in the glass of the screen door, as the meagre light from the apartment turned it into a partial mirror. They''d never be round enough for Medhall''s Humanis connections, but it''s not like my ears were what people would notice first.


    At over eight feet tall, I''d never be able to hide in a crowd. My mouth would be too wide if it weren''t for the tusks jutting out of the underbite, tusks I''d had to spend years learning how to talk around if I didn''t want to lisp. My hair ¨C the colour of slate ¨C fell down to my shoulders, and was parted by a pair of knobbly-looking horns that jutted out of my head. With grey-blue skin, I stood out even more.


    I slid the screen door open, and my reflection disappeared. We kept some garden furniture on the balcony ¨C the white plastic long-since stained yellow by the air pollution ¨C and slumped down in front of the table before unwrapping the bag and popping the ring-pull, taking a deep draught of the stuff as I watched the city from a distance.

 Submersion: 1.02

    The next morning, I didn¡¯t wake up when the first rays of the sun poked through my curtains, or to the shrill noise of an alarm clock. Part of that was because my bedroom didn¡¯t actually have a window, but it was also because regular light and regular sound never seemed as real to me as the Matrix was. They couldn¡¯t hold my attention like it could.


    The longer I spent in the Matrix, the larger the footprint I left, the more I risked drawing attention to myself. In following Hellman, I¡¯d leapt from device to device, leaving my mark across half the school. Winslow¡¯s systems were kept on Brockton Bay¡¯s local grid, and that kind of trail had the potential to draw the attention of the Grid Overwatch Division, sending them hunting after my virtual persona and trying to dig up my body¡¯s location.


    It was a small risk with a low-priority network like Winslow¡¯s, but there could be some unusually dedicated DemiGOD out there who decided to take the bite.


    So, every night before I went to sleep, I¡¯d focus on my connection to the net and let all its brilliant datastreams fade away into nothing, essentially cutting myself off from the Matrix. Sleep generally came easily after that ¨C I was essentially turning all the lights out in my brain, after all ¨C and overnight my brain would reboot, for want of a better word, until I¡¯d wake up when all that data came flooding back into my mind and I could face the day with a fresh ¨C and legally clean ¨C persona.


    For normal people, cyberspace was something they had to go out of their way to interact with. Even if it was something as simple as switching their optics over to augmented reality, there was still a degree of separation between their meatspace senses and the digital ones. Without those implants, or a commlink or something, their brain wouldn¡¯t be able to make sense of the data.


    What set Technomancers apart ¨C what set me apart ¨C was that our brains were capable of interpreting that data on their own. There was no distinction in my mind between augmented reality and reality; between the icon on the wall showing the date, time and weather forecast and the worn synthwood desk covered in a decade¡¯s worth of wear and tear. I saw both, and both were equally real.


    As I walked to the kitchen to make myself an unsatisfying breakfast ¨C probably out of the packet of ramen I¡¯d ignored the night before ¨C I couldn¡¯t help seeing memories with every step. Dad¡¯s memories were laid out in the photos on the wall ¨C of him shaking hands with government officials in City and State halls, corporate executives in front of immense infrastructure projects, and oil-stained engineers down in the bowels of some machine room ¨C and in the data on his computer.


    I¡¯d long since read through the entirety of the latter, and it had given me a clearer picture of my father than actually knowing him ever could have. Or rather, it completed the picture. I knew what he was like as a father, what he was like at home, but you don¡¯t truly know a person until you know how they act in both public and private.


    My dad¡¯s files were an account of a long struggle, against rent payments, against discrimination, against every petty little obstacle in his path. It was a record of meetings, whip-rounds, covert sales and backroom deals, charting the changing character of the Dockworker¡¯s Association as he and his friends slowly worked from the inside. The last files on the computer showed the fruit of all his labour; a Union by stealth, with its employees its biggest shareholders and a stranglehold over all non-Ares shipping in the city.


    The last email he ever sent was a short note agreeing to meet with one of his major stakeholders, a woman he¡¯d known for years. She wasn¡¯t there, of course; the Marche were waiting for him instead, and he was cut down by mafia bullets.


    Mom¡¯s stuff was more neatly separated between work and pleasure. One wall of the living room was taken up by nothing but bookshelves, filled from end to end by paper copies of all sorts of literature. She had a digital library that held even more, along with all the files associated with her professor work for Brockton Bay University.


    On a separate drive, she kept her work for the Ork Rights Commission ¨C despite the name, they pulled double-duty as a troll advocacy group. Mom had been an active member of the polyclub since she was a university student herself, and her files were a long list of minutes from meetings, materiel for awareness campaigns, plans for protests and even a few files on a secret drive that detailed the work she¡¯d done as ¡®Ms Johnson,¡¯ using the ORC¡¯s covert funds to hire Shadowrunners in service of the cause.


    I¡¯d gone digging through the Knight Errant files, but as far as I could tell her death was exactly as it seemed. Distracted driving. It seemed a poor death for someone like her, but I told myself there was no such thing as a good way to die.


    The last memories in the apartment were my favourite, because they were the memories where all three of us came together. Dad¡¯s work photos took second place to photos of the three of us on a family holiday in Boston, or mom trying and failing to teach me to bake a cake, with more flour on the walls than in the bowl. There was a bring your child to work day photo of me using an industrial crane as a jungle gym, surrounded by a cluster of burly dockworkers who were clearly terrified and waiting to catch me when I inevitably fell.


    Memories were all I had left of them, and all my memories were tied into this apartment. It¡¯s why I couldn¡¯t sell it, and it¡¯s why I spent so much of my time trying to scrounge up enough money to keep it. The neighbourhood had gone downhill with the Association moving its offices closer to the city centre, and the rent had gone down with it, but it was still right next to the docks. Prime commuter territory for any number of junior managers or dockworkers with the kind of specialised skills that earned them a little more financial respect than their peers.


    My life was defined by the three thousand five hundred nuyen I sent off to the landlord at the end of each month. I had an automated system sending the cash, and he had an automated system receiving it. I wasn¡¯t even sure he knew who lived here, but I was fine with that.


    If I missed a payment ¨C even one ¨C then it would flag on his system and he might actually start paying attention to me. Attention ¨C of any kind ¨C was the last thing I wanted, so most of my day was spent making sure I had money in the bank. Once I¡¯d gathered enough to make the month¡¯s payment, then anything left over would be spent on essentials. Never anything fancy. After all, if I wanted to try steak made from real cows then I could just hop into the Matrix and steal the experience from a virtual restaurant. The taste would be just as real.


    I¡¯d actually done that for a job once. A restaurant on the edge of town wanted to flesh out the menu in the VR mirror of their meatspace mirror, so had paid me some Nuyen to acquire ¡®samples¡¯ from around the city, scrub the files of their attached RFID tags, and hand them over to create an instant menu of food they¡¯d never be able to supply in the meatspace restaurant. I think the plan was to lure people in with premium virtual food so they¡¯d be suckered into spending more money on the ultimately disappointing meatspace fare. I kept copies of the files for my own personal use.


    You¡¯d be surprised how heavy the security can be on some real avocado on wheat-bread toast, and I didn¡¯t even touch the city¡¯s fanciest Matrix restaurants.


    I was paid one thousand five hundred nuyen for that job ¨C two hundred and fifty short of half a month¡¯s rent for only three days of work. Most of my jobs paid significantly less than that, but they also involved significantly less work.


    My bread and butter consisted of cleaning up tags on stolen property. Nobody wants a washing machine that doesn¡¯t work because it¡¯s supposed to be tied into the DRM software of the corp that built it, or a car that wouldn¡¯t work if it was repaired with non-standard parts ¨C meaning parts that hadn¡¯t been bought at a premium from the manufacturer.


    The turnover was never high ¨C a couple of hundred nuyen at the higher end, and a couple of dozen at the lower ¨C but I could wipe the security in a few hours, max, and do it all from the comfort of my own little corner of cyberspace, without the need to dig through unfamiliar hosts and dodge hostile ICE.


    But to get paid, I had to find work first. So I finished my morning the same way I always did ¨C by slumping bonelessly into an armchair and unshackling my persona from my body, casting myself out and into the Matrix.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    Most people who interacted with the net tended to make their persona a carbon copy of themselves, the occasional cleaning-up notwithstanding. This was because most people were boring. Given the chance to be anyone ¨C anything ¨C else, they chose to be a carbon-copy of themselves.


    What my persona looked like changed almost every day, but I usually stuck to the same theme. Calling myself ¡®Bug¡¯ had initially started out as a joke. Back before I¡¯d even heard of the term Technomancer, I used to think of myself as some sort of glitch in reality. Some bit of code that wasn¡¯t quite playing right, was messing with systems I shouldn¡¯t have been able to. So, Bug.


    Consequently, most of my icons tended to be insect themed: a woman with chitin in place of skin and translucent wings growing out of her back; a swarm of wasps that would fly together in ways that suggested a metahumanoid shape; a silken woman manipulated by the threads of an ecology of spiders; even an oversized cartoon of a bee. When I accessed a device, I left a mark in the form of a stylised scarab ¨C a digital trail that was an unavoidable part of life in the Matrix.


    I drifted through the matrix, flying through the innumerable datastreams passing from icon to icon as each linked system communicated with each other. On the system below, I could see streams linking commlinks to shops as their owner walked past them, so that they could see at a glance where the nearest Stuffer Shack, gas station, gym or dive bar was and what their services cost. Longer streams tied servers to each other, with the largest stretching out of the city as they carried data elsewhere.


    Most people who interacted with the Matrix filtered them out by default. Without the filters, the sheer number of datastreams would block out the stuff they actually wanted to see. From what I¡¯d gathered, even deckers filtered them out unless they absolutely needed to see them for a job. It seemed incredibly limiting to me ¨C like they were trying too hard to make the Matrix mirror meatspace ¨C but, then, I¡¯d never had any trouble seeing past the datastreams. Just another quirk of my biology, I supposed.


    Some of these datastreams weren¡¯t heading from device to device, or from the city to somewhere beyond it. A tiny fraction ¨C maybe two or three in a million ¨C instead drifted away from the glowing brilliance of the Matrix, falling down into the inky black abyss that surrounded the Brockton Bay grid. There was no natural light in the Matrix, no world to exist beyond that generated by its inhabitants. High-traffic areas were almost brilliantly bright with the weight of their dataflow, while more remote parts of the city had small pinpricks of light like constellations of stars.


    But below the city, deep beneath where the physical ground would be, there were no devices to generate data, and so the city floated like an island of light over an immense abyss. Most people in the Matrix paid no attention to that void, others found it uncomfortable to look at, but I found it strangely calming. If I ever felt I needed to step back from reality, I¡¯d slip into the Matrix and stare into its depths, watching stray data disappear into nothing.


    I wasn¡¯t interested in the abyss today. Instead I drifted through icons and hosts until I found myself in a network hub that received and transmitted hundreds of messages every second. I let the datastreams fade away and saw the space as its creators intended it to be seen; a bar on an immense scale with walls lined by individual nooks and booths, each containing a screen or screens that displayed scrolling text.


    Hundreds of commlinks were connected to this host, their programming skipping the virtual space in favour of displaying their owner¡¯s chosen forum directly onto the comm¡¯s screen. The virtual space existed for those who were a little deeper into cyberspace, and wanted somewhere they could scroll without leaving the Matrix.


    BayWatch was a message board service, local to Brockton Bay and largely dealing with regurgitating bulletins from the harbourmaster¡¯s office on which ships and trains were coming when, providing social spaces for dockworkers to meet and gripe, along with anyone else who didn¡¯t want to pay a premium for corp-owned social media, and hosting low-level help wanted ads on specific subforums.


    A lot of them were either job adverts or people putting their resumes out there to see who¡¯s hiring. Others were simpler tasks like someone offering ten nuyen to anyone who could help them carry a new flatscreen up to their nineteenth floor apartment ¨C apparently the elevator was busted. Some of the boards were dedicated to tech requests, and those were the ones on which I made my bread and butter.


    Most of them weren¡¯t worth the data they were printed on ¨C they¡¯d either take too long for the money to be worth it, or the request was made by someone who clearly hadn¡¯t the slightest idea what technology was actually capable of ¨C and I¡¯d long since become used to filtering out the wheat from the chaff.


    The jobs on offer today were poor at best. There were a couple of desperate attempts to remove the ownership details from stolen property, which I¡¯d normally be alright with but they were asking for someone who could unlock some smartweapons. Guns were much too hot to handle ¨C particularly for the money on offer. Other jobs were longer term, like someone asking for a skilled coder who could give their new fast food joint a proper VR presence. I¡¯d taken on that sort of contract before, but not for that sort of money.


    There was one job that grabbed my attention, in the same way that a poisonous frog might grab attention with its brightly-coloured skin.


    ?Subject: Tech Support. Skilled hacker needed for one-off job. Must be able to operate in a high-stress environment. 3,000N£¤ on completion of job. Send a message,?


    - Tt (08:56:27/15-2-70)


    Obviously the pay was what first caught my eye. Almost an entire month¡¯s rent for a single job was the sort of thing that sounded too good to be true, which meant it usually was. Still, that was more money than I¡¯d ever seen offered for a single job on this board before, and the job itself was a lot more vague, too. People were generally upfront about what they wanted doing.


    Naturally, the money had drawn quite the crowd. A dozen different wannabee deckers had already thrown their hat in the ring, but I couldn¡¯t help noticing something about the responses. The thread had been up for almost two hours now, and yet the job was still open. It was possible that ¡®Tt¡¯ hadn¡¯t come back to the thread yet, but four of the responses had been posted within half an hour of the original message. If it was important, surely they¡¯d have stuck around for that long?


    The last post was someone condemning the whole thing as a hoax, but I was growing increasingly curious. So I let the virtual dive bar fade away, and saw the Matrix as it really was. If I focused, I could see the marks of all the devices that had interacted with this board, hidden within the code of their messages. There was no such thing as anonymous interaction, not truly. Everything left a mark.


    It didn¡¯t take me long to find the mark left by Tt¡¯s post ¨C a stylised eye with a slit pupil. It was recent, meaning they¡¯d been on the site since the message was sent, but there were no datastreams connecting them to any of the people who¡¯d posted on the thread. They hadn¡¯t spoken to any of them, no matter what resumes they¡¯d listed. In fact, Tt had gone further; their account on the site was set to block all incoming messages.


    That was what reconceptualised the offer in my mind. If it was a trap or a prank, they would have made themself as accessible as possible. Instead, they clearly didn¡¯t want to be contacted.


    No, that¡¯s not right, I thought. They said ¡®send a message.¡¯


    Three thousand nuyen was enough to mean I wouldn¡¯t have to work for the rest of the month, and, with what I¡¯d already gathered since the last payment, it would leave me with more than enough left over to actually treat myself for once. This was looking more promising by the second, and all I had to do was accept Tt¡¯s invitation.


    Everything in the Matrix left a trace, no matter how hard it might be to follow. It was simply a matter of using the trail to find the source, and I could find an excellent tracker. A quick glance at the virtual bar showed that the other personas¡¯ attentions were firmly fixed on their own browsing. I reached out to the Matrix itself ¨C to the resonant harmonics of its datastreams ¨C and plucked raw data out of the air, weaving and compiling it into what looked for a moment like a kludgy mismatch of code fragments and data snippets before it seemed to curl in on itself and take shape as a luminescent dragonfly.


    The sprite was a persona without any machine on the other end. It was a creature of the Matrix, with no presence whatsoever in meatspace. A Ghost in the Machine. It was life made by my hands, and with the compound insectoid eyes I gave it, it was a creature made to seek and find.


    I held it in the hand of my persona, bringing it up to look at the mark left by Tt¡¯s device. I could feel its attention latch onto the small piece of data, as well as something close to eagerness as it waited for instructions. I let it skitter around my hand and onto my arm, bringing it up so I could speak to it directly.


    ¡°Find the owner of this mark,¡± I commanded, ¡°and send me its trace.¡±


    The dragonfly¡¯s wings unfurled and it took flight, flitting in-between personas as it darted out of the bar and into the wider Matrix. It would hunt for other marks left by the same device, and gradually build up a picture of its movements. Once it had found the persona, it would contact me before vanishing back into the resonance.


    The process took hours, and I used the time to clear the copy protection on a whole folder of bootlegged films, but eventually I received a datastream from my sprite. It had found Tt¡¯s commlink, and the persona attached to it. She presented herself in the Matrix as an almost painfully beautiful blonde elven woman, with her hair worn down and a third eye open on her forehead. Her persona wore a skintight black outfit with a purple eye on her chest ¨C fashion in the Matrix was less constrained by real-world norms. The same slit-pupiled symbol as her mark. Something about her screamed Shadowrunner, but I¡¯d already come this far.


    I sent the message.


    ?Re: Subject: Tech Support. Interested in the job.?


    - Bug (12:34:51/15-2-70)


    The response came back in seconds.


    ?Welcome aboard. We should meet. Come find me at 2pm.?


    - Tt (12:35:01/15-2-70)

 Submersion: 1.03

    Tt¡¯s commlink was broadcasting from a caf¨¦ near the base of Charter Hill, a densely-packed district that largely provided low income workers to the more highly-priced financial district downtown. Cleaners, security guards and low-level office drones had to come from somewhere, after all, and a few of the tower blocks bore the logo of the corporation that owned them ¨C and that owned the employees housed within.


    It was a vertical neighbourhood, crisscrossed by elevated roads and walkways that cast deep shadows under which pop-up stalls plied their trade, while more illegal goods could be bought by those who ventured deeper into the darkened corners.


    The caf¨¦ wasn¡¯t part of that side of the district. It sat in an elevated mall complex, a bridge of shops that spanned the trench between two long rows of apartment buildings, bathed in natural sunlight for most of the day. It even had a balcony, poking out the side of the bridge where it enjoyed a commanding view down the entire length of the artificial gorge.


    Dozens of other bridges reached across that gap, some wide enough to allow six lanes of traffic to cross while others were spindly things supporting elevated metro lines and the smallest were simple footways barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side, though most of those were down on the lower floors.


    I only knew this because I¡¯d been to that part of the city before, with mom and dad. In the Matrix, all I could see were the digital signatures of the flowing traffic, the barely-protected systems of the shops in the bridge, and the constant flow of icons and personas that marked people out from the landscape.


    One of those icons depicted a fairly basic security camera manufactured by Aztechnology before the Matrix went wireless, but someone had since jury-rigged it with a wireless connection. Because it was a jury-rig, it was simplicity itself to work my way into the system and take control of the camera, swivelling it on its axis to point right at the icon of Tt¡¯s commlink.


    Simultaneously, I drew the feed¡¯s web-like datastream away from the CCTV box in the backroom and pulled it into my persona¡¯s eyes, letting me see Tt for the first time.


    Her elven features were as breathtakingly elegant as they were on her persona, and the only real difference between her two was the absent third eye on her persona¡¯s forehead. Her attire was different, too; she was dressed much the same as any other relatively well-off young woman would when she out on the town, in a crop top and fashionably tight syn-leather pants. The crop top was purple ¨C clearly her favourite colour ¨C and she wore a simple silver necklace around her neck, with a pendant on the end. I couldn¡¯t quite make it out through the camera¡¯s poor resolution, but it looked like the same slit-pupiled eye.


    Notably, she wasn¡¯t alone. There was an ork sitting across the table from her, dark skinned and built like he punched walls for a living. At six foot six, the difference between his frame and Tt¡¯s waifish body was stark. Like her, he was dressed casually, but in a noticeably different style. Rather than her girl-about-town look, he wore practical work boots under faded jeans and a drab green jacket over a black tank top.


    He also had cybernetic eyes, though they had false covers that made them look organic, and looking at his signature in the Matrix I could see other cyberware laced discretely throughout his body: the cybereyes had an integrated smartlink feeding data to the pistol holstered in his jacket, his arms were artificial ¨C metal coated with synflesh to keep the appearance of normality ¨C and his commlink was an implant rather than a separate device. There was probably more in there, but it wasn¡¯t wireless. There was a UCAS System Identification Number linked to the comm, registered to Mark Andrews, but I could tell it was fake.


    Tt¡¯s commlink had a SIN as well, again for the United Canadian-American States, but if hers was a fake then it was a much higher-quality job than the ork¡¯s. Either way, it identified her as Lisa Wilbourn, and unlike her counterpart she had no presence whatsoever in the Matrix. In fact, the only Matrix-capable devices on her person were her handbag and a pair of AR-linked aviator sunglasses sitting on the table, the lenses tinted purple. When considered alongside the third eye on her persona and the shopping bag for an occult store sitting next to her in the booth, I got a sneaking suspicion that she was a mage.


    The two of them were slowly chatting about not much in particular, both of them nursing cups of soykaf like they were expecting to have to wait a while. I steeled myself, then sent another message to Lisa¡¯s commlink.


    ?Who¡¯s the muscle??


    - Bug (14:00:01/15-2-70)


    Lisa looked at her commlink, smiled, and looked across the table at Brian. Her commlink was already feeding me its audio, so I heard what she said next.


    ¡°They¡¯re here.¡±


    Mark ¨C or whoever he was beneath the fake SIN ¨C set his cup down and looked around the caf¨¦. After scanning the people, his gaze landed on the security camera I¡¯d moved to point straight at their table. He had a handsome face, with the sort of lantern jaw you¡¯d expect from some trideo star, and he wore his hair in shoulder-length cornrows. His metatype came through in pointed ears and tusks, but they actually added to his looks rather than taking away from them. He frowned.


    ¡°Can they hear us?¡± he asked, leaning in and murmuring. Not that it mattered, when he was leaning over Lisa¡¯s commlink.


    ¡°Don¡¯t know,¡± she replied with an easy grin. ¡°I¡¯m not a tech girl, that¡¯s why we¡¯re hiring Bug.¡± Simultaneously, she was typing out a response on her commlink.


    ?A colleague. He¡¯s Grue, and I¡¯m Tattletale.?


    - Tt (14:00:53/15-2-70)


    Shadowrunner handles, obviously. Tattletale didn¡¯t need much explanation, for all that it didn¡¯t tell me about how she operated, but Grue¡­ I send off a query in search of information, and found a film that had come out about half a decade ago, in which a magical research lab had been unintentionally sealed and most of the scientists killed by a massive monster that struck from the shadows. The monster was called a Grue.


    Almost without conscious thought, I dug a little deeper, peeling back the security on Grue¡¯s commlink. Tattletale was a closed book, digitally speaking, but with Grue I was able to find the real SIN buried beneath his fake. Grue was a registered UCAS citizen; Brian Laborn.


    Satisfied that I had a little leverage in case this was a trap, I changed my persona to that of a nondescript human-looking woman, provided you ignored the fact her skin was formed from discrete chitin plates, and edited it to include a chair as I sat myself down at the head of their outdoor booth.


    ¡°I can,¡± I said to Grue, his cybereyes and ingrained commlink overlaying my persona and voice onto the real world, along with all the other augmented reality features in this caf¨¦. His optics widened as he saw me, and Tattletale latched onto that motion like a hawk before putting on her own AR sunglasses.


    ¡°Nice look,¡± she said, admiringly, before turning to Grue. ¡°Pay up.¡±


    ¡°You took bets on whether I¡¯d show up?¡± I asked.


    ¡°On whether you¡¯d show up in person,¡± Grue said, handing a crumpled nuyen bill to Tattletale. I couldn¡¯t see the denomination. ¡°Shadowrunners put a lot of weight on face to face meetings. It¡¯s a sign of respect, and trust.¡± There was a not-so-subtle rebuke in that.


    ¡°I¡¯m not a Shadowrunner,¡± I said, leaning back and shrugging. ¡°Tattletale asked for someone who can hack, not some meat to catch bullets. Besides, why would I trust you? We¡¯ve just met.¡±


    ¡°Exactly my point,¡± he countered. ¡°It builds trust.¡±


    ¡°Look, I¡¯m here. You have a job. I want the money. I don¡¯t see the problem.¡±


    Grue looked like he was about to say something, but through the camera I saw Tattletale kick him in the shin. She must have been expecting me to be seeing through my persona, rather than still using the camera. Was that some kind of signal?


    I left my persona¡¯s head facing forwards while I hurriedly scanned the nearby Matrix icons, but I couldn¡¯t see anything unusual.


    ¡°It¡¯s never as good as the real thing,¡± Tattletale mused, drawing my attention right back to her. She was leaning back in her seat, looking out over the balcony while sipping at her cup of soykaf.


    ¡°What isn¡¯t?¡± I snapped, angry that they wouldn¡¯t let this go.


    ¡°Soykaf,¡± she clarified, sounding a little confused, and my anger deflated.


    Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    I shrugged my shoulders. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t know.¡± I had the taste of beankaf stored in digital form from the restaurant job, but I figured Tattletale would insist that doesn¡¯t count.


    ¡°Tattletale keeps a bag of real coffee beans back at our place,¡± Grue explains, looking a little less wound up. ¡°I¡¯ve had some, but I don¡¯t see what the fuss is about. So long as it¡¯s hot and wakes you up, who cares?¡±


    ¡°Philistine,¡± the coffee aficionado shook her head in dismay.


    ¡°Your place?¡± I asked. ¡°Are you two¡­ together?¡±


    Tattletale almost spat up her coffee at that, while Grue just shook his head.


    ¡°When I put the team together, I rented a place for us all to crash. Everyone chips in for the rent, and it means we don¡¯t have to worry about commuting in from across half the city.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s temporary,¡± Tattletale clarifies. ¡°I know I want to get my own place eventually, and I¡¯m pretty sure the others think the same way. Things are a little cramped right now.¡±


    ¡°So, why aren¡¯t the rest here?¡±


    ¡°We didn¡¯t want to overwhelm you,¡± Grue explained. ¡°Plus, there¡¯s no point in all four of us waiting around if you were late or didn¡¯t show.¡±


    ¡°Right,¡± I drummed virtual fingers against the table. ¡°So what¡¯s the job?¡±


    ¡°How much do you know about how Shadowrunners work?¡± Grue asked.


    I shrugged. ¡°Only what I¡¯ve seen on trideo.¡±


    Grue shifted in his seat a little so he was properly facing me, resting his elbows on the table as he accented his words with gestures. My conversations in meatspace were so infrequent I couldn¡¯t remember if that was a nervous tick or not.


    ¡°We¡¯re trying to move up in the world, which means getting an in with a better Fixer. A better fixer means a higher-quality of clientele, which means we¡¯re not stuck getting fragged by some street-trash gang in an alleyway behind a Mega-Mart. Or, if we are, we¡¯re at least getting good money for it.¡±


    He tapped his middle finger against the table, the metal beneath the synflesh making the tap much more distinctive.


    ¡°The Fixer we want to impress has given us a little interview job. Directly, rather than sending Mr Johnson our way.¡±


    ¡°Is that normal?¡± I asked. About the only thing I¡¯d picked up from the films was that Shadowrunners were always hired by ¡®Mr Johnson¡¯ ¨C a euphemistic name used for any number of anonymous clients.


    ¡°It isn''t, but then this isn¡¯t a normal job. Could be that the Johnson wants anonymity, could be that our Fixer doesn¡¯t yet trust us to interact with their clients.¡±


    ¡°Could be there is no ¡®Mr Johnson¡¯¡± ¨C Tattletale piped up ¨C ¡°and this whole job is just a consequence-free test they cooked up for us.¡±


    Grue gave her a weary look. Clearly they were getting close to rehashing a discussion they¡¯d already had.


    ¡°Regardless,¡± Grue continued, ¡°we¡¯ve been hired to locate a specific package inside a specific shipping container.¡±


    ¡°I can get you into the port authority systems,¡± I said, already sending off a datastream with the backdoor password dad had kept on his computer for a rainy day. ¡°I should be able to pull the container¡¯s projected route from there.¡±


    ¡°Good to know,¡± Grue said, and he looked impressed, ¡°but that won¡¯t be necessary. No need to tangle with corp security today, because Lung''s Clan already tangled with them. They waited till it was on its way out of the city, then jumped it before it hit the interstate.¡±


    ¡°They want the package too?¡± I asked. ¡°What¡¯s inside it, anyway?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not our biz to speculate,¡± Grue said, even as Tattletale rolled her eyes. ¡°As for whether they¡¯re looking for it as well¡­ probably not. They raid shipping all the time.¡±


    ¡°So what do you need me for? I¡¯ve got no experience with Yakuza systems, if they even have one.¡±


    ¡°They¡¯re not Yakuza,¡± Tattletale interrupts. ¡°Not real Yakuza, at least. Most of their core diaspora are exiled Japanese nonhumans, which means the actual Yakuza families back home want nothing to do with them.¡±


    I think I remember mom saying something about that once.


    ¡°Semantics aside, I still don¡¯t know why you need a hacker.¡±


    ¡°The Fixer suggested it. They¡¯ve improved their Matrix presence recently ¨C which is probably how they masked the container¡¯s RFID signal in the first place.¡±


    I thought it over, my persona completely motionless as my mind focused on other matters. After a moment, when their stares became a little pointed, I mirrored Grue¡¯s mannerisms and started drumming my virtual fingers on the table, consciously generating the sound of chitin on plastic to complete the illusion.


    ¡°They could have used a device wired directly into the container, or an area jammer. The former would be harder to track, but more wasteful if you need one for every container.¡±


    ¡°We think they¡¯re storing the container in a warehouse along with the others they¡¯ve lifted,¡± Grue elaborated. ¡°They¡¯ll unpack them one by one and slowly filter the contents onto the black market.¡±


    ¡°Area jammer, then. Take it out and I¡¯ll be able to point you to your target, but I don¡¯t know if I¡¯ll be able to help you find it in the first place.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s my job,¡± Tattletale said with a predatory grin. ¡°I¡¯ll ask around their favourite haunts, do some investigating of my own, maybe even borrow one of the others to lean on a few people. Someone¡¯ll talk.¡±


    ¡°So,¡± Grue said, trying to look casual but it didn¡¯t quite reach his eyes ¨C Cybernetic they might have been, but that didn¡¯t stop the muscles around them tensing ¨C ¡°what do you think?¡±


    I sat there for a moment, my mind alive with possibilities. It sounded like there were a lot of things that could go wrong with this plan ¨C and I¡¯d be exposing myself to more risk than ever before ¨C but on the other hand, the money was really good. Besides, maybe it¡¯d be nice to be working with people, rather than for them?


    ¡°For three thousand? I can do it.¡±


    Some of the tension slipped out of Grue¡¯s shoulders, while Tattletale laughed happily, trying and failing to pat my virtual shoulder.


    ¡°We¡¯ll contact you when we know where we¡¯re going,¡± Grue said.


    ¡°Actually,¡± Tattletale jumped in, ¡°I might get in touch if I need some tech support while I¡¯m investigating. That alright?¡±


    ¡°Fine by me,¡± I answered, nodding for her benefit.


    I got up, letting my ¡®chair¡¯ dissolve back into nothingness as I walked my persona out of the caf¨¦, turning the camera back to where it was before.


    Or rather, almost to where it was before. I¡¯d kept them in the corner of its vision, and I hadn¡¯t abandoned my hold on Tattletale¡¯s commlink.


    ¡°I don¡¯t like that she didn¡¯t show up in person,¡± Grue said after a few moments, his eyes firmly planted on the door I¡¯d just ¡®walked¡¯ out of.


    ¡°So she¡¯s shy,¡± Tattletale shrugged her shoulders. ¡°So what?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s what you think it is? Shyness?¡±


    ¡°You noticed her persona, right? She doesn¡¯t want to present her real face to the world, for whatever reason. Could be body image issues, maybe. Either way, she had a point. We¡¯re not hiring her to block bullets.¡±


    ¡°But the Fixer-¡± he began, before Tattletale cut him off.


    ¡°Let me worry about that. I can talk to her while I¡¯m hunting this place down, get a feel for her.¡±


    ¡°Fine,¡± Grue replied, giving ground. ¡°Got any idea how you¡¯ll start?¡±


    ¡°I figured I¡¯d go put on a nice dress and hit the clubs, see if I can get some boasting out of a drunk Yakuza.¡±


    ¡°I thought you said they weren¡¯t real Yakuza.¡±


    ¡°They call themselves Yakuza,¡± Tattletale said as she stood up. ¡°That¡¯s what really matters.¡±


    I spun datastreams together, creating a dragonfly sprite to follow Grue ¨C Brian Laborn ¨C and see where he called home. If they were all living together like he said, that would tell me where I could find them.


    After all, there¡¯s nothing wrong with having a little insurance.


    Once the insect was on its way, I turned my attention to more directly following Tattletale¡¯s commlink through the matrix as she popped into a handful of stores and window-shopped in even more.


    ¡°You¡¯re still here, aren¡¯t you?¡± she said out of the blue, and if I was in meatspace I think I might have jumped in shock. As it was, I hurriedly scanned my surroundings looking for any hint of an ambush and seized control of the shop¡¯s security camera. There were no deckers waiting in the wings, or Grid Overwatch Division agents out to snatch me up. Or corps out to cut me up to see what made my Technomancer brain tick. She was just browsing the shop¡¯s discount rack.


    ¡°How did you know?¡± She still had her AR glasses on, and they had dermal speakers built discretely into the frame.


    ¡°Because it¡¯s what I¡¯d do,¡± she said, holding a top up to her chest and checking out her reflection in a mirror. ¡°I get the feeling you¡¯re like me in that regard; neither of us can leave a secret alone.¡±


    ¡°And you¡¯re not mad?¡± I asked, hesitantly. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t your buddy call this a breach of trust?¡±


    Tattletale let out a short, sharp, laugh. ¡°Trust but verify, ever heard of that? Besides, I¡¯d be a hypocrite if I got mad. Like you heard, I¡¯m watching you as well.¡±


    I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach at that, but I grudgingly felt it would be hypocritical of me to complain.


    ¡°So¡­ find anything interesting?¡± I asked, awkwardly.


    ¡°Oh don¡¯t worry,¡± Tattletale turned to smile up at the camera. ¡°I can¡¯t do anything really thorough because the Matrix doesn¡¯t have an astral presence, so I¡¯m mostly just relying on psychological guesswork. I figure you got more detailed information from Brian¡¯s cheap-ass fake SIN.¡±


    I fell silent, and from the way Tattletale¡¯s smile slowly grew even wider I could tell she¡¯d taken my silence as an admission of guilt.


    ¡°Look, so long as your secrets don¡¯t affect me or the team, I¡¯m not about to spill them. I trust that goes both ways. Find what you can, but be very careful how you use it.¡±


    She¡¯d finally found a top she liked, a sleeveless one with a coiled snake printed on the front. She turned and made her way to the changing rooms, reaching down to the commlink on her belt and switching it off as she pulled the curtain shut.


    I let my digital presence soar back through the city, pulling it back towards my own body until I awoke with a start, slumped over in an armchair and drenched in sweat. I pulled my legs up, curling in on myself as I sat there, shaking. My heart was beating at a million miles a minute, fear pumping through my system like a drug, but there was something else laced among the emotion.


    This wasn¡¯t just some everyday job lifting copy protection off stolen property; it felt real. Mixed in with the fear was adrenaline, and my heart was beating with as much eagerness as terror. For the first time in a long while, it felt like I was truly living.

 Submersion: 1.04

    I didn¡¯t hear from Grue or Tattletale again until the next night, when I got a message from Tattletale out of the blue while I was busy watching pirated trideo.


    ?Hey, Bug! Could use a hand with some tech stuff, if you¡¯re free.?


    - Tt (23:49:13/16-2-70)


    Her commlink was pinging me from somewhere south of the docks, in the part of the city where the Yakuza tended to operate. She actually wasn¡¯t all that far from me, physically speaking, even if my neighbourhood had gentrified a bit over the last decade. More important than that was the fact that she was pinging me from inside a hotel ¨C the Osaka Palace ¨C that wasn¡¯t hosted on the public grid.


    ?Need a moment to access the metro grid.?


    - Bug (23:49:23/16-2-70)


    ?Decker things, say no more.?


    - Tt (23:49:31/16-2-70)


    Technically, the Matrix was free for all. In reality, that only applied to the public grid, a world-wide web put together by the architects of the new Matrix largely so that they could say it was free, and so that even the most illicit activity still happened somewhere they could watch.


    In reality, most civilised members of society interacted with the world through one of innumerable private or semi-private grids. Some of these were corporate owned and boasted access across the world, while others were set up by local municipalities. If a business was only on the public grid, it was seen as second class, and the same applied to the people who exclusively used it.


    The Osaka Palace was on the Brockton Bay municipal grid. It was a mid-range place at best, but even mid-range comes with its own expectations and codes of conduct. If I wanted to do more than send text messages to Tattletale without exhausting myself, I¡¯d need to access that grid ¨C which I couldn¡¯t do legally because it was an expense I hadn¡¯t wanted to take on before now.


    So I paused at the threshold, looking at the gateway to the municipal grid ¨C shaped like the arch of a dockyard crane. I reached out for the datastreams around me, drawing them into myself rather than using them to form a sprite. I twisted them into motion, spinning them around myself until they took shape as a complex form.


    For a moment, I felt as if I was a spider perched at the centre of an immense web, stretching out datastreams to anchor myself across the entire Matrix, without regard for the flimsy boundaries of the different grids. The effort of spinning this form was draining, and I could feel myself fading ever so slightly as I exerted my will on the Matrix itself. I¡¯d already spent all day in the Matrix, and my physical and digital bodies were both tired.


    Still, it was more than worth it as I drifted through the halls of the hotel like I belonged there, ignored by the security ICE programmes ¨C in the form of simple geometric shapes ¨C while I cast my senses out through the matrix, looking for any sign of a security Spider. There was nothing, which meant the hotel was too cheap to hire a decker to watch its host, instead relying on automated systems and occasional check-ups. Perfect.


    The Osaka Palace wasn¡¯t much to look at. Its host was laid out like the meat-space version, presumably, but all the graphics were very low-poly, like an impressionist painting of the real thing. Clearly it wasn¡¯t somewhere that saw many Matrix visitors, and even a semi-regular security Spider would have spruced the place up a little ¨C if only for the sake of their sanity.


    Tattletale¡¯s signal was coming from room five-thirteen, a double-bed space with an en-suite bathroom and not much else. It¡¯s nightly rate was reasonable for this part of town, but I couldn¡¯t help noticing that the electronic door lock had been opened by a staff key, rather than receipt of payment.


    Tattletale¡¯s commlink was resting near the middle of the room, probably where the bed was, and there was another commlink nearby. That was almost it as far as devices went, though the room¡¯s lights could be wirelessly adjusted, as could the trideo screen mounted on the wall. Tattletale¡¯s AR sunglasses were nowhere to be seen, but she had accessorised with what looked like a vibration-based speaker and a similar microphone. From their signature, I could see they were wafer-thin and meant to blend into the skin of her neck and behind her ears.


    ¡°So what am I looking at?¡± I asked through the speaker.


    ¡°Mean to say you can¡¯t see it?¡± Lisa asked.


    ¡°I see the comm¡¯s icon, but hotels don¡¯t put cameras in the rooms.¡±


    ¡°Eh, you¡¯d be surprised,¡± Lisa replied, and I got the impression she was shrugging her shoulders. ¡°But I see your point. Here, have a look.¡±


    Her comm¡¯s icon moved upwards, and I took control of its inbuilt camera, streaming its feed right into my vision.


    The d¨¦cor in the hotel room leaned a lot more towards opportunistic one-night-stands than the kind of place someone would stay in on a business trip. The sheets were red and had a plasticky sheen that was probably supposed to look silky, while the floor was mostly easy-clean red carpeting. More noticeably, there was a guy slumped over by the end of the bed, his face planted in the carpet and his fortunately fully-clothed ass in the air.


    Tattletale spun the camera around, and I saw her lying back on the bed itself, wearing a lilac cocktail dress underneath a waist-length syn-leather jacket topped by a faux-fur collar. She¡¯d dyed her hair red, and there was a confident grin on her face. From the fact she was still wearing the jacket and heels, I guessed she¡¯d probably knocked the guy out the moment they were alone. She was also still wearing her necklace, with the slit-pupiled eye looking up at me.


    I took control of her comm¡¯s screen, replacing the mirror image of her with a different avatar, this one of a vaguely female form buried beneath silken robes that covered her from head to toe, with spiders crawling among the folds.


    ¡°So, what¡¯s up?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Lightweight over there is a Yakuza foot soldier who¡¯s involved in their raids to snatch containers, something he clearly thought would impress the pretty elf at the club ¨C who, of course, was just out to get laid.¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°Typical.¡±


    ¡°Hey, a stereotype can make a great weapon if you use it right,¡± Tattletale said with another shrug of her shoulders. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t believe how much information I¡¯ve managed to squeeze out by playing up the nymphomaniac elf routine. Besides¡± ¨C she gestured to the comatose man at the end of the bed ¨C ¡°it got him here, alone.¡±


    ¡°Which is when you put him to sleep.¡±


    ¡°Exactly! Normally this is the point where I¡¯d rob the guy blind, swipe his commlink, and take it to someone who knows how to decrypt it, but since I¡¯ve got your number I figured I¡¯d cut out the middlewoman. Then lightweight wakes up tomorrow morning with a head full of warm fuzzy feelings and a distinct smell of alcohol on his clothes.¡±


    ¡°Alright,¡± I said, shifting my attention to the second commlink in the room. ¡°I can take a look.¡±


    Of course, when I said I, I really meant a sprite. I reached out for the tangled skeins of data that passes through the hotel¡¯s host, gathering and twisting them together into a cohesive shape. Tattletale¡¯s faint digital presence had me thinking more about what I was doing; I knew I could do more than a decker, was more than a decker, and I guess some people might have called it digital magic. I wasn¡¯t sure it was that simple.


    The dragonfly I¡¯d used to track her comm was what I¡¯d come to call a courier sprite. It¡¯s multi-lensed eyes were great for hunting down specific targets, and it¡¯s wide wings and narrow body allowed it to travel effortlessly through the matrix, relaying data to a target or back to me. The sprite I was weaving to break into lightweight¡¯s comm was different; a relentless woodlouse that would slowly but surely chew through any security in its path, but that lacked mobility as a result.


    I wasn¡¯t sure where their forms came from ¨C whether I was consciously making them that way or my subconscious was taking over. I hadn¡¯t spent much time on the few Technomancer forums out there ¨C I was afraid they were traps meant to draw us out of hiding ¨C but I¡¯d seen some people had an almost shamanic attitude to their sprites, like they were spirits bestowed upon them by some patron deity. I thought that was too limiting a view, and one rooted in a very magical view of the world that was incompatible with the Matrix.


    The woodlouse flew from my outstretched hand ¨C unconstrained by the physical limitations of its assumed form ¨C and landed on the commlink, where it began steadily unspooling the tightly-wound chains that secured its secrets. I whispered to it through gentle streams of data, slowing its pace to avoid unintentionally triggering any alarms. We had time to wait.


    ¡°Once I¡¯m in,¡± I said to Tattletale, ¡°I¡¯ll copy any relevant data onto your commlink.¡±


    ¡°Can¡¯t you store it on your deck?¡± she asked, and I instinctively froze.


    Regular hackers had to interact with the matrix through a datajack and a cyberdeck, crude augmentations that provided by technological means what I could do simply by thinking, but the one thing they had that I didn¡¯t was a hard drive. In a way, I guess it was a blessing. Given the ability to edit my own internal memory, I wasn¡¯t sure I¡¯d have been able to resist the temptation.


    ¡°You¡¯ve been doing all the hard work,¡± I flubbed. ¡°I figure you should be the one who gets to bring the data to your team. Take the prize.¡±


    ¡°Huh, thanks,¡± she said, as I desperately wracked my brain, hunting for a way to draw her attention onto other things.


    ¡°So, what¡¯s with the necklace?¡± I asked. ¡°Only you have the same sign on your VR persona. And your commlink¡¯s mark.¡±


    ¡°Perceptive, aren¡¯t you?¡± she said with a chuckle. ¡°But sure, I¡¯ll bite. How much do you know about mages?¡±


    ¡°Only what I¡¯ve-¡±


    ¡°Seen on trideo, right,¡± she cut me off, graciously leaving the ¡®you need to get out more¡¯ unspoken. ¡°Well, one of the things you might have seen in your sanitized, sensationalised drek is the idea of a mentor spirit.¡±


    I thought back for a moment. ¡°Yeah, I think it¡¯s come up a couple of times. Voices in your head, that sort of thing?¡±


    Tattletale laughed. ¡°You make me sound crazy, but honestly, you¡¯re not far off? This¡± ¨C I didn¡¯t need to see her to know she was holding up her pendant ¨C ¡°is a symbol of my link to Snake. Some people like to think of their spirits as guardians, but I say it¡¯s more transactional than that. Snake keeps me safe, helps me work, and in return I keep her well fed.¡±


    ¡°I assume you¡¯re not talking about the occasional dead mouse,¡± I joked.


    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    ¡°Secrets, Bug,¡± Tattletale responded, sounding deadly serious. ¡°I feed Snake secrets. The less well known, the more carefully guarded, the better. So I hunt them down, no matter where it takes me or who it might piss off if I¡¯m caught.¡±


    I paused for a moment.


    ¡°I have to say, that sounds like a compulsion.¡±


    ¡°Maybe it is,¡± she admitted, ¡°but I know you¡¯re a borderline agoraphobe, so you don¡¯t have much of a leg to stand on there.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not afraid of open spaces,¡± I replied, defensively. ¡°I just don¡¯t need to go out. I can work fine remotely, can order groceries from my nearest Stuffer Shack. Everything I need is in the Matrix.¡±


    ¡°Except it¡¯s not the space you¡¯re afraid of,¡± Tattletale responded, cryptically, but I was saved from answering her as my sprite chimed up, having finished unlocking the commlink.


    ¡°I¡¯m in.¡±


    Windows opened up in front of me, a branching web of file directories and message logs. One caught my eye, but not for the reasons I was expecting.


    ¡°Got a secret for you,¡± I said. ¡°Lightweight here has been writing a film script.¡±


    ¡°Ooh, interesting.¡± Tattletale preened with predatory glee. ¡°Not the sort of thing he¡¯d be bragging about to his street-gang buddies. It any good?¡±


    ¡°Got an elevator pitch. Um, ¡®Mai Murai is a regular in the New York nightclub scene, with an easy laugh, a love of the crowd, and a body to die for.¡¯ And then there¡¯s an ellipsis, followed by ¡®literally¡¯ and an exclamation mark.¡±


    Tattletale was clearly relishing every word, if her laugh was any indication.


    ¡°Let me guess, vampire?¡±


    ¡°Quiet down; you¡¯re ruining the flow of the pitch. ¡®This sweet-talking razorgirl has a dark secret, of the vampiric kind, and when it¡¯s exposed she finds herself on the run from a team of shadowrunners, but is there more to their leader than meets the eye?¡¯¡±


    ¡°Another vampire?¡± Tattletale asked, eagerly, and I quickly started skimming the script.


    ¡°Nope. Looks like he¡¯s just hot. And an expy of the author, of course.¡±


    Tattletale¡¯s laughter gradually trailed off into smug chuckles, while I set the script aside.


    ¡°A hidden masterpiece that¡¯s only masterful so long as it¡¯s never seen by anyone besides the author. That¡¯s a good secret, Bug. Anything else on there?¡±


    I flicked through the file directory, unfolding new webs of data as I sifted through the comm¡¯s operating system, muttering to myself and Tattletale in equal measure.


    ¡°Pics of a bike, pics of a girl, pics of lightweight and the girl, girl on the bike, mutual nudes, more pics of bikes. Let¡¯s see¡­ recent texts from his mother, from his dealer, breakup text from the girl ¨C hard luck, lightweight.¡±


    I switched my attention from the files to the comm¡¯s programmes, and immediately struck gold.


    ¡°Now this looks promising.¡±


    ¡°What does?¡± Tattletale asked.


    ¡°¡®The Anarchist¡¯s Phonebook.¡¯ Looks like some sort of messaging programme with end-to-end encryption.¡±


    ¡°Can you crack it?¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t need to,¡± I replied, with a little smugness of my own. ¡°End to end, remember, and this is one of the ends.¡±


    I pulled apart the app, ignoring the front-facing messaging feature in favour of digging through the comm logs collected by the app as a matter of course. I could see a web of illicit work unfolding in front of me, and I felt like a true professional before a hidden programme within the app initialised, and I was confronted by an image of an old fashioned cartoon bomb with a lit fuse and a digital clock on its front, counting down from ten.


    ¡°Oh fuck.¡± I murmured.


    ¡°Oh fuck?¡± Tattletale asked, panicked ¨C though I barely heard her. ¡°¡®Oh fuck¡¯ doesn¡¯t sound good.¡±


    I dug into the bomb, finding a simple numerical lock backed up by fiendishly complex code. If I was whoever set this up, I could input the right combination at the speed of thought. As it was, I could only frantically yet futilely dig at the code while the numbers steadily ran down. The number hit zero, and I almost jerked back as a stab of pain shot through me. It wasn¡¯t enough to kick me out, but it hurt like hell and I knew I¡¯d feel it later.


    ¡°Data bomb hidden within the code,¡± I said, futilely watching as a single datastream slipped past my code and out of the hotel, travelling out into the city. ¡°Think it sent an SOS.¡±


    ¡°Fuck the SOS,¡± Tattletale snapped. ¡°What¡¯s in the logs?¡±


    I abandoned subtlety entirely, pulling apart the file directory of the hidden app like I was frantically tearing apart an office in search of gold.


    ¡°Got it.¡± I said, triumph seeping past my urgency. ¡°Escort route from the raid to the storage warehouse. Transferring to your comm.¡±


    As an afterthought, I gathered together a file on lightweight¡¯s drug running routes as well, hoping that it would be enough of an obfuscation to get the Yakuza to write this off as a raid by rival dealers.


    ¡°Tattletale, you need to get out of there,¡± I said, as I spotted a steady stream of data broadcasting from the comm. ¡°Comm¡¯s sending exact location data, down to the meter.¡±


    ¡°Okay,¡± Tattletale replied, doing a good job of hiding her panic ¨C if she was even feeling any. ¡°I¡¯ll need your eyes; I¡¯m unarmed.¡±


    ¡°You went after a Yakuza lieutenant, unarmed?¡± I asked, incredulously, even as I left the hotel room and soared through the walls and floors of the hotel like they weren¡¯t even there, hunting for the security office on the ground floor.


    ¡°I couldn¡¯t find a piece that matched the dress,¡± Tattletale snarked back.


    The hotel¡¯s CCTV system was as utilitarian as the rest of the place, with occasional inputs that told me someone in meatspace was monitoring it. That was encouraging, even if it complicated things. More to the point, there was no sign of an alert yet.


    Might have seconds, but seconds are all I need.


    The system was old and poorly maintained, and I was able to slip in my own data among the incoming feeds from the wireless cameras, tricking the monitors into showing a loop while relaying the real feeds straight to my brain.


    Suddenly, I was bombarded by the images of sixteen different cameras across the entire hotel, from the garage to the rooftop. It stretched my consciousness, drawing upon my persona until it felt like I was fading slightly, losing my connection to the Matrix. With an effort of concerted will, I was able to wrest control of my mind and keep my hold on the surveillance system.


    Immediately, I had every member of staff tagged. There were twelve in the building in total, not including whoever was behind the CCTV console, but only three were obviously security ¨C a guard on the door, a bouncer in the bar, and a lone guard grabbing a bite to eat in a staff break room. Two of the three were armed, though the orc bouncer looked like he could get by with his immense fists alone.


    Tattletale wasn¡¯t being idle. She was on her commlink, frantically calling someone marked down as ¡®Bitch¡¯ ¨C which I chose to believe was a Shadowrunner handle rather than a character assessment ¨C as she made her way to the lift at the end of the hall.


    As I watched, an incoming datastream slipped past my hold on the security system, and the guard behind the console immediately started contacting his associates on the comms. The guard on the door stayed where he was, but the bouncer and the guy in the break room left their posts and made their way into the halls.


    Surprisingly, an elf woman behind the bar started moving as well, ducking behind the counter and emerging with a submachine gun. Her and the bouncer were both dressed in sleek blazers, but below the waist she wore a miniskirt that displayed legs covered from top to bottom in Yakuza tattoos. The pair nodded to each other as they left the bar, moving for the elevator.


    ¡°Tattletale, skip the lift,¡± I said, urgently. ¡°Got two guards moving up, one armed.¡±


    ¡°Stairs it is, then,¡± she replied. ¡°Think you can slow them down?¡±


    I reached out past the security centre, my mind reeling again as I focused on maintaining my connection to the cameras while I moved my persona out into the hallway, close enough to snatch control of the elevator mechanism. I watched through the elevator¡¯s camera as the two guards got in, letting the doors close behind them before sealing it shut and sending it on a journey to nowhere ¨C or, more specifically, to halfway between the top floor and the one below it.


    ¡°They¡¯re slowed,¡± I said, ¡°but they don¡¯t know it yet.¡±


    The other guard ¨C the one from the break room ¨C had moved to cover the delivery entrance to the hotel, his gun drawn as he tried to simultaneously watch the entrance and the exit. The guard in the security centre still had his eyes on the screen ¨C I¡¯d been selectively editing the feed to show the guards movements, but not Tattletale¡¯s. It wouldn¡¯t hold up much longer, though.


    ¡°Oh shit!¡±


    Tattletale¡¯s panicked shout immediately drew my attention away, but she was out of sight of the CCTV system. A moment later, I saw her slamming open the stairwell door on the floor below. She turned back for just long enough to throw her high heels at some unseen target before sprinting barefoot down the corridor.


    A moment later, a truly immense troll battered aside the door as it was swinging shut, ducking to get his horns underneath the door before barrelling down the corridor like a charging rhinoceros.


    ¡°Bug!¡± Tattletale shouted, the ponderous footfalls of her pursuer audible in the background of her audio.


    Frantically, I took in all the cameras at a glance, my subconscious outpacing my mind as I noted the distance between Tattletale and the elevator in the middle of the corridor, and the two goons stuck a few floors above, who by this point had realised their predicament and were trying to pry open the elevator doors.


    ¡°Elevator!¡± I shouted, even as I pulled at datastreams, tugging on the elevator like it was a marionette. It was brute force hacking, and I could feel my presence in the Matrix fading from the effort of it all as I overrode safety after safety.


    I let the lift plummet five floors, then nearly burnt out the motors as I brought it to a jarring halt only a few inches off from being perfectly aligned with Tattletale¡¯s floor. The thugs inside had first been lifted up by the negative g of the drop, then slammed into the floor by the force of the brakes.


    It had knocked the elf out, and the ork was dazed enough that he wouldn¡¯t be an issue.


    I let the doors open a couple of feet, and watched through the camera as Tattletale practically dove into the lift, using the ork to catch her momentum before rolling off him and shuffling backwards.


    The moment she was clear I closed the elevator doors, and the troll was unable to stop himself in time to do anything about it as I sent the elevator downwards at a brisk ¨C but still safe ¨C pace.


    ¡°Couldn¡¯t have warned me about the troll, Bug?¡± Tattletale snapped.


    ¡°There¡¯s no cameras in the stairwell,¡± I said back, paradoxically breathless with digital fatigue. ¡°What was he even doing there?¡±


    Tattletale jerked her head back in frustration, hitting the metal wall of the elevator, before pulling herself up to her feet.


    ¡°Fucking smoker sneaking a puff. I could smell it on him.¡±


    She gingerly moved the bartender¡¯s submachine gun away from her with a foot, but didn¡¯t pick it up herself.


    ¡°You¡¯ve still got three guards on the ground floor,¡± I said.


    Tattletale sighed, her formerly perfect poise gone as she bent over, resting her hands on her knees and breathing heavily. Then she straightened herself up, checked her expression in the mirror, and her resolve seemed to return.


    ¡°The others aren¡¯t far. Think these doors can stop gunfire?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re the Shadowrunner,¡± I said. ¡°Two of them have pistols, the third has another submachine gun. The troll could probably force them open, but he¡¯s got five flights of stairs to descend.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll risk it.¡± She turned to the semi-conscious ork, stretching out an arm and launching a ball of energy into him, the brief burst of magic messing with the camera feed for a millisecond. His eye¡¯s closed and he slumped over, properly unconscious now.


    The next thirty seconds was maybe the tensest half a minute I¡¯d ever experienced, even though I myself wasn¡¯t in any physical danger. Maybe it was because of that danger that I was having trouble treating this as just another job, but as the three gangsters tried to force open the doors with a crowbar, I found myself unable to look away from Tattletale, who still seemed unphased.


    In the end, it was a sudden burst of movement on the lobby¡¯s camera that caught my attention. Like a lot of hotels, the lifts were set into the back of an open-plan lobby, behind a reception desk and a decorative sculpture of a Japanese castle that would be the first thing people saw when they stepped through the doors.


    The doors at the front of the lobby were glass, and they shattered beautifully as a grey panel van reversed through them, crushing the flimsy plastic castle before coming to a halt just before the reception desk.


    The rear doors of the van opened, and the lobby was immediately filled with gunfire as a GM-Nissan Doberman drone rolled out the back of the van on tracked wheels, already firing it¡¯s machine gun into the lobby. I could see the network it was part of ¨C linked to the van itself and another couple of drones stored in the back ¨C but the encryption on it was fiendishly tight. It was all tied to the driver, but she was outside the camera¡¯s view.


    The three gangsters dove behind the reception desk, but the Doberman¡¯s bullets cut through their cover like it wasn¡¯t even there. Within moments all three of them had been hit, and one of them was definitely dead.


    I¡¯d never seen someone die before, and I knew it should have horrified me, but I could have cheered in relief as all the tension drained out of me. I let the elevator doors open, and watched as Lisa ran across the lobby, one foot landing in a pool of blood as she vaulted over the reception and dove into the back of the van. The Doberman trundled in after her, before the van doors slammed shut with a pulse of data from the Rigger¡¯s implanted control rig.


    As a final fuck you, I let go of my stranglehold on the hotel¡¯s emergency lockdown, and heavy steel shutters clattered down over the shattered doors just in time for the troll to stagger breathlessly out of the stairwell, with nothing waiting for him but a bloodbath and a locked room.


    ¡°Thanks for the save,¡± Tattletale said, her voice shaking a little. I couldn¡¯t tell if it was elation, stress or fear.


    ¡°Bitch,¡± she continued, catching me off guard, ¡°meet Bug. Bug, this is Bitch; the best Rigger in the city.¡±


    The ¡®best Rigger in the city¡¯ just grunted, her attention focused on her drones and her ride. Or she was just living up to her namesake. Either way, I could feel fatigue pulling at my persona. I¡¯d exerted myself more than ever before in that hotel, and my presence in the Matrix had faded because of it. I needed to step back, gather my strength. Especially since I knew the actual job would be even harder.


    So I said my goodbyes to Tattletale, telling her to message me when it was time to go, and gathered the last of my presence into a simple bedbug with instructions to wake me when that message came through. Then I pulled back from the Matrix, not even seeing Meatspace before I fell asleep right there in the armchair.

 Submersion: 1.05

    ¡°No fucking way.¡±


    ¡°Come on, Bitch, be serious.¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s not touching my drones!¡±


    The Shadowrunners weren¡¯t in their shared apartment. I knew that much from the sprite I¡¯d had follow Grue after I first met him. Instead, they were in an empty warehouse about a mile away from the one where the Yakuza were keeping their stolen containers.


    I¡¯d been brought here by a message from Grue, saying that they were preparing to launch the raid. Apparently what that meant was that Tattletale was scouting out the site in the astral plane, while the other three members of the team were engaged in more mundane preparations. Like linking me into their cameras to prevent me from getting surprised by another troll. Which was where the problems had started.


    ¡°Listen, uh, Bitch,¡± I began, awkwardly trying to find a way to make her handle sound a little less insulting. ¡°I can¡¯t help out if I can¡¯t see, and I can¡¯t guarantee there¡¯ll be CCTV cameras to look through.¡±


    ¡°So what?¡± she snapped back. ¡°Don¡¯t need a Decker anyway.¡±


    A datastream grabbed my attention, as Grue¡¯s cybereyes yielded to my request for access. He, at least, had no trouble letting me piggyback off his optics, and I saw the remaining members of the Undersiders for the first time.


    Inevitably, Bitch drew my eye. She was standing protectively near her drones, arrayed in various stages of assembly in front of the same grey van she¡¯d used to rescue Tattletale from the hotel. She¡¯d laid out a case of tools in front of them, and each piece of each drone had been meticulously set out on a stained sheet of cloth that kept them off the dusty warehouse floor.


    Bitch herself seemed almost as mechanical as her drones. She was probably more cybered-up than Brian, and unlike him her cybernetics didn¡¯t even try to mimic organic limbs. Her arms ¨C what little of them I could see ¨C were entirely mechanical, without any syn-flesh coating. They were gunmetal grey, and as far as I could tell they were meticulously well-maintained. Her eyes were similarly inhuman, with featureless camera optics set directly into her skull.


    They looked like they¡¯d been cheap when she bought them ¨C most obvious cyberware is, for obvious reasons ¨C but she¡¯d clearly modified them since then.


    Her outfit was about as practical as it came, and similarly looked like something she¡¯d very carefully pieced together from whatever she could find. Her jacket was grey, military surplus, and had clearly originally belonged to someone taller than her. She¡¯d rolled the sleeves up past her elbows, exposing her cybernetic arms, and the front was open, revealing an old Lone Star ballistic vest she wore over a black tank top. There were patches on the vest where she¡¯d fixed up old bullet holes.


    Her face was squarish and blunt featured, with auburn hair and a downright ferocious expression. She looked terrifying.


    ¡°Let her in,¡± Brian said, forcefully. ¡°We need her for the job, and she needs to see.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong with her eyes?¡± Bitch snapped back.


    I wished Lisa was aware right now, rather than sitting cross-legged in a ritual circle while she scouted out the site through some magic astral projection nonsense. She¡¯d swapped the dress I¡¯d last seen her in for hard-wearing pants and a black and purple shirt underneath a long trench coat, armoured and laden with obscure magical items. Yet she still somehow managed to make it all look sleek and expensive.


    ¡°My eyes are miles away,¡± I answered. ¡°Listen, they might have Deckers of their own. I can protect your drones?¡± I could tell it was the wrong thing to say the moment I said it.


    ¡°I don¡¯t need protection from you.¡± There was venom in her words, but to be fair she did have a point. The wireless connection between her implanted control rig and its pairs in her drones was about as rock-solid as a wireless network could get.


    ¡°Bitch, you¡¯re being ridiculous!¡± Brian said exasperatedly, while I looked closer at her network.


    It was solid, sure. Good enough to keep out almost anyone. So I worked at it from another angle ¨C focusing my attentions solely on the ancillary systems. Bitch had paid the most attention to the joints, optics and weapons, because those were the most vulnerable and the parts she used the most.


    She doesn¡¯t want to play ball? Well, fuck her. She can¡¯t shoot me while I¡¯m halfway across the city.


    I let go of my hold on Brian¡¯s optics, minimising the window while I reached out and grasped at the resonance around me. In and amongst the warehouses of this district, wireless networks were a lot sparser than elsewhere, but it was still on the public grid, still in the city. So I drew together datastreams and spun them together, as another sprite took shape. One I¡¯d never made before.


    I¡¯d used sprites to slowly and methodically strip away security, but what I needed now was something a lot less subtle. Something that would hurt, and show that Bitch needed me. I wasn¡¯t about to lose out on this job because she was living up to her name¡­ and I¡¯d be lying if I said I wasn¡¯t invested enough to want to see this through.


    So I taught my sprite to attack, quickly and violently, and its form took shape with manoeuvrable wings and a needle-sharp stinger ready to stab malware straight into anything I sent it at. A hunter-killer, in the shape of a wasp.


    It dove at Bitch¡¯s GM-Nissan Doberman in a frenzied attack, slamming into her firewalls with brute force. I watched Bitch¡¯s firewall respond along predictable patterns, the systems around the most vital areas coiling tighter and tighter in an attempt to keep out the wasp¡¯s sting, even as other systems became exposed in the process.


    I hit those myself, digging away at the drone¡¯s autopilot. It had to be aware of its surroundings, but it also had to be aware of the locations of the other drones, and that was my way in; the wireless link between her network, one that was far from the systems her control rig touched but integral to the drone¡¯s systems. A backdoor.


    Bitch noticed, of course, but she was too slow to assert control of the drones. I¡¯d already tagged the autopilot¡¯s optical senses, and a second window opened up in front of me showing the view from the Doberman¡¯s gun-mounted camera.


    She wasn¡¯t a Decker. All she had was whatever firewall she¡¯d put on her drones. It didn¡¯t matter how good that firewall was; one it was gone, it was gone, and there was only one option left to her. A moment later, the Doberman disappeared from the matrix as Bitch did what any luddite does when they come across malfunctioning tech. She turned it off.


    ¡°You fucking-¡± Bitch began, before I cut her off ¨C kicking up the volume of the earpieces I was talking through.


    ¡°I fucking what? That could have been any Decker, and we already know the Yakuza has a good one on call.¡± Bitch¡¯s drone finished rebooting, reappearing on the matrix with its firewalls reset. ¡°How long was that? Ten seconds? That¡¯s a long time in a fight, I¡¯m sure.¡±


    Bitch didn¡¯t respond. She just stood there, scowling at Brian since she couldn¡¯t scowl at me. His eyes were all over the place, darting between her and the drone. He knew something had just happened, but there wasn¡¯t any visual tell.


    ¡°Now, ask yourself, do you want it to happen again?¡±


    Her scowl deepened, and I pushed the issue by sending her control rig a datastream requesting access to the drone¡¯s sensors. She didn¡¯t say anything, but a second later I had a quintet of camera feeds at my disposal.


    The three drones and the dashcam in her van were expected, but she¡¯d also given me the feed from her own cybereyes. It seemed like the sort of thing she¡¯d want to keep private, and I didn¡¯t ask for it, but I wasn¡¯t about to try psychoanalysing someone who was more than a little bit psycho.


    ¡°You know, digital catfights aren¡¯t as fun to watch as real ones,¡± the last member of the team piped up from behind Brian, and as Bitch¡¯s eyes snapped to him I saw him clearly for the first time.


    He was human, like her, but that was where the similarities ended. Tattletale, at least, had dressed to fit her environment, but Regent could have been on his way to a club, with a silver shirt, white blazer and tailored black pants. The blazer was maybe a little stiffer than it should be, which suggested it had some hidden armoured fabric, but most of his gear seemed to consist of talismans worn around his neck. Unlike the more wild nature of Lisa¡¯s magic accessories, there was a formal elegance to Regent¡¯s gear.


    Maybe they trained in different traditions?


    Brain turned around, ready to say something to the obvious mage, but the sound of Lisa pulling herself to her feet drew him right back.


    ¡°Well?¡± he asked.


    ¡°They¡¯re in the A2B Freight warehouse,¡± Tattletale confirmed. ¡°Bug¡¯s intel was right on the money.¡±


    She dropped to one knee, dragging her gloved finger through the dusty warehouse floor as she sketched out a map. I could see the open main floor of the warehouse, with rows of shipping containers marked out, as well as several rooms to the side that were revealed as offices as Tattletale started marking out desks, tables and other obstacles.


    ¡°There aren¡¯t any wageslaves on site,¡± she began, ¡°but the company is legit, if small. They probably slip out the stolen containers along with legitimate freight. The employees must have gone home for the evening, which leaves ten guards on the premises.¡±


    ¡°More than usual, for a warehouse.¡± I could see Brian frown through the camera of one of Bitch¡¯s drones ¨C an Aztechnology Crawler made for snooping around on walls and ceilings.


    ¡°Noticeably more,¡± Tattletale nodded. ¡°There¡¯s something else, too. Six of the guards were patrolling the site, with two in what I think is the security office with the tag jammer, two on the grounds and two doing the rounds on the warehouse floor, but there¡¯s something off about the other four. They¡¯re all here¡± ¨C she tapped a random spot on the map, right on the end of one of the rows of containers ¨C ¡°and they¡¯re not moving.¡±


    ¡°It could be a break room,¡± I offered, but Tattletale shook her head.


    ¡°That¡¯s not it. There¡¯s something about them. It¡¯s hard to put into words, but something is wrong with them. Astrally, I mean.¡±


    ¡°We have two mages, and a lot of firepower,¡± Brian said, confidently. ¡°If there is something weird going on, we can handle it.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯ll be harder to hack their systems while the RFID tag jammer is active,¡± I said, ¡°and downright impossible to track the case.¡±


    ¡°Then that¡¯s our first target,¡± Brian said. ¡°We pick our moment and storm the office, then push onto the warehouse floor while Bug directs us to the right container. We do it hard and fast enough, and they won¡¯t know what hit them. Any questions?¡±


    Nobody spoke, and I watched through Brian¡¯s eyes as he stepped back from the map.


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    ¡°Then let¡¯s move.¡±


    Bitch¡¯s van was an armoured GMC Bulldog, easily large enough to fit the team along with the three drones she¡¯d bought ¨C the Crawler and the two Doberman¡¯s, tucked away in compartments that, combined with the rest of her tools, took up the whole back third of the van. To my untrained eye, a lot of the gear seemed unnecessary. Like she could just take the van and drive off without leaving much of her life behind.


    Grue and Regent were sitting in the middle third of the van, and the contrast between the burly ork in an armoured jacket and the waif-like mage in designer clothes was almost comical. There was a similar contrast in the front of the van, where Tattletale was leaning back in the passenger seat while Bitch focused on driving. She wasn¡¯t using a steering wheel, instead piloting the vehicle directly using her control rig.


    I saw through both her eyes and the dashcam as we drew up level with the gates of the freight yard. Bitch slowed for a moment, looking at the simple metal barrier, before gunning the engine and spinning the wheels left.


    ¡°Brace!¡± she shouted a moment before the van hit the gates, knocking them off their hinges even as the impact sent a juddering shock through the van. Something flew off the gates, hitting the Bulldog in the windscreen, but it didn¡¯t even dent the glass.


    Rather than slow down once she was clear of the broken gates, Bitch sped up, even as I heard gunfire pranging off the armoured sides of the van. In the back, Brian tightly gripped his rifle in one hand, with the other resting on the release buckle of his heavy-duty seatbelt.


    The contest between a Rigger-customised, up-armoured van and the insulated sheet metal walls of an aging warehouse was an unfair one, and the wall practically disintegrated as the van slammed into it. Bitch hit the brakes, and the van came to a tyre-screeching halt in the middle of what might once have been a meeting room, if the half-shattered table that had been spread out across the opposite wall was any indication.


    Bitch hit the door release automatically, and Grue was up in a heartbeat, throwing a grenade out the door even as he shouldered his rifle.


    He wasn¡¯t quite as fast as the Dobermans, however, which rolled out of the open doors of the van and out into the warehouse yard. I watched through the lead drone¡¯s camera as Bitch guided its sights onto a uniformed security guard with tattooed arms, the crosshairs shaking with each shot as she pumped a burst rounds into him. The force of the shots jerked him backwards, and I looked away. With the perspective of the drone¡¯s feed, it felt uncomfortably like I¡¯d killed him myself.


    Mere moments had passed, and Grue¡¯s grenade had only just burst, filling the room with smoke. His optics cut through it like it was nothing, sounding out the edges of the room and marking them on his vision with a green overlay. It wasn¡¯t perfect, and I did what I could to clean up the lines.


    The others followed him, Bitch handing her drones over to the autopilot as her arm split open to reveal a hidden submachine gun. Her eyes were tapped into the same feed as Grue¡¯s, with Regent and Tattletale¡¯s AR glasses doing the same.


    I watched through Grue¡¯s eyes as a silhouette appeared in the doorway, with one arm raised. Grue didn¡¯t even blink. He just strode forwards, raising his rifle and firing five rounds into the silhouette, his cybernetic arms automatically compensating for the recoil.


    He stepped past the body without even looking down, even as Bitch left one Doberman to guard the back of the van and brought the other to her heel. Regent, for his part, almost lazily leaned out through the hole left by the van and, catching sight of the last remaining security guard outside, twisted his hands in a gesture that reminded me strangely of an old-fashioned puppeteer pulling strings.


    I saw through his AR goggles as the guard fumbled, tripping, and a shot that might have hit the Doberman instead ricocheted off the ground. The drone¡¯s simplistic programming latched onto the gunshot, tracked it back to its point of origin, and retorted with a sharp burst of gunfire that had the guard scrambling back towards cover, even as Regent kept causing her to stumble. It wasn¡¯t enough to stop her completely, but it was enough to stop her from making it in time.


    It almost looks like he¡¯s toying with her; keeping her on the border between safety and death. It must be a limitation in the spell.


    Lisa, on the other hand, was ignoring the battle entirely in favour of getting a closer look at the guard Brian had gunned down. Unlike the pair outside, this one wasn¡¯t dressed in a uniform. Instead he was wearing the sort of padded red and green biker suit that was common among Lung¡¯s Clan, with the arms knotted around his waist to leave bare a torso covered in tattoos.


    ¡°We¡¯re in the right place,¡± Lisa said over the comm, with obvious satisfaction in her voice.


    ¡°The guards outside are dead,¡± Regent reported matter-of-factly as he ducked back inside.


    ¡°Good,¡± Brian replied. ¡°Bitch, keep watch out there. Bug, anything in the Matrix?¡±


    ¡°Uh,¡± I stammered, realising I¡¯d been so caught up in the camera feed I¡¯d forgotten to do what they were paying me for, ¡°one sec.¡±


    I stepped back from the camera feeds and focused on my surroundings. My persona had drifted along with them like it was tethered, and I found myself in the warehouse¡¯s sparse grid. It had the barest possible presence in the matrix, but there was still enough data to delineate the physical structure of the building.


    I tapped into the team¡¯s cameras again, overlaying their position onto the Matrix. I could see Bitch¡¯s presence clearly ¨C a mirror of her physical body, chrome and all, and Grue¡¯s cybereyes let me see him as well, but I had to manually add in Regent and Tattletale. It wasn¡¯t as good as actually being there and seeing the augmented reality with my own eyes, but it had the upside of a much smaller risk of death by gunshot.


    Grue was creeping towards a doorway, letting the smoke cover his advance, and I drifted ahead of him, ¡®stepping¡¯ through the wall like it wasn¡¯t even there. There was a guard on the other side, visible in the Matrix by his commlink and a smartgun linked to a headset.


    ¡°Watch out,¡± I said to Grue, even as I edited his cybereyes to mark out the guard¡¯s location. Grue nodded, bringing up his rifle and firing through the wall, but I was already drifting off to the office where we were supposed to find the RFID jammer.


    While A2B might have been a legitimate freight company on paper, it quickly became clear this office was nothing more than a paper-thin smokescreen, and that if they ever managed to snag any genuine contracts it wasn¡¯t because of any deliberate effort on the company¡¯s part.


    I¡¯d seen corporate offices before ¨C albeit rarely, and never for anything bigger than a local business ¨C and each of them was a hub of neatly ordered Matrix devices as outsourced workers remotely interacted with domestic staff on shared documents that had to be supported from multiple computers at once. The warehouse might as well have been dead in comparison, with only the bare minimum needed to keep the lights on.


    It meant that the room full of matrix-linked gear, emitting steady pulses of datastreams designed to soothe the twitchy programming of any number of RFID tags, stuck out like a sore thumb. This close, it was even affecting my presence. I could feel it draining away at my connection to the matrix, damping down the link between my body and my persona.


    ¡°Jammer¡¯s here,¡± I said, marking the location in Grue¡¯s optics, ¡°but I can¡¯t touch it remotely. You¡¯ll have to shut it down manually.¡±


    ¡°Understood,¡± he said even as my attention was grabbed by a strange flow of data in the either.


    ¡°Look out!¡± I shouted, just as a heavily-armoured figure knocked down the door. I watched through Grue¡¯s eyes as a samurai barrelled down on him, its arms playing host to integrated blades that slashed down at the ork. The matrix revealed the mechanical form beneath the exterior ¨C a bipedal Ares Duelist drone.


    Grue ducked beneath one blade and caught the other on his rifle ¨C the monofilament edge cleaving through the gun before becoming lodged somewhere in the middle. With his free hand, Grue delivered a withering blow to the drone that had it staggering back, its gyroscopic subroutines struggling to keep it upright.


    I abandoned the feed to face the drone in the Matrix, seeing the same samurai rendered in digital space by Ares programmers eager to get that brand recognition across. It had no eyes for me, of course. It was built for meatspace, and only had a matrix presence to allow it to be linked into a network.


    It didn¡¯t even react as I pulled together a web of resonance, collection it together into a spike that resonated with potential energy. As the drone moved to strike the now-unarmed Grue, I pounced, driving the spike into the machine¡¯s matrix presence.


    The effect was immediate, the drone¡¯s leg seizing up as it struggled to cope with the damage I had done to its systems. Inside its chassis, fuses blew and circuit boards sparked, and Bitch seized on the opportunity, her Doberman finishing off what my spike couldn¡¯t touch.


    I saw a last datastream leave the drone, heading for another in the next room, out of the Shadowrunner¡¯s sight.


    ¡°Got one more!¡± I reported.


    ¡°Mark it,¡± Grue said as he drew his smart pistol, pointing it squarely at the wall.


    The drone was quickly wrapped in datastreams that broadcasted its position through walls, and Grue¡¯s smartlink software latched onto that signal like a moth to a flame. His pistol was a bulky thing, and the crack of each shot was followed a microsecond later by the sound of microscopic jets lighting up on each bullet, guiding them effortlessly to the drone¡¯s most vulnerable points.


    Each shot hit with the force of an eighteen-wheeler, with the first shattering the drone¡¯s kneecap and the second and third pulping the chestpiece and the vital control circuitry within.


    ¡°It¡¯s down,¡± I confirmed, as Grue lowered his Ares Predator. ¡°I can¡¯t see any more drones.¡±


    ¡°Sorry I missed them,¡± Tattletale said, hanging back behind Bitch¡¯s drone and Grue. ¡°Drones don¡¯t have an astral presence, but I should have expected that.¡±


    ¡°Not your fault,¡± Grue replied as he moved up to the door. ¡°That¡¯s three guards down. Have the four unusual signatures moved at all?¡±


    Tattletale paused for a moment, resting her palm against the wall. Grue¡¯s cybereyes flickered for an instant, but not enough that he would notice.


    ¡°No,¡± Tattletale answered, sounding concerned. ¡°Do you think¡­¡±


    Regent snapped his fingers, grinning with the satisfaction of someone who¡¯s solved a difficult puzzle with no effort at all.


    ¡°Bunraku dolls!¡± he exclaimed, and I felt physically sick. Sex workers implanted with tech that overwrites their mind, keeping them as unconscious puppets ready to be loaded with whatever software the ¡®client¡¯ wants.


    ¡°You can¡¯t leave them there,¡± I exclaimed, and for the first time I actually wished I was anywhere other than my apartment right now. If I was there, I could open up their shipping container myself and set them free, rather than appealing to the morality of mercenaries.


    Grue was hesitant, saying nothing, and my heart sank.


    ¡°There¡¯s no harm in it,¡± Tattletale said to her boss. ¡°We¡¯re not hauling anything large away with us, and even if we don¡¯t bring them in the van we can still send a tip-off to Knight Errant. It can¡¯t hurt our reputation.¡±


    ¡°Fine,¡± Grue conceded, even as he kicked down a door, firing a pair of shots into a yakuza thug who¡¯d been trying to sneak up with a shotgun. ¡°But we take out the jammer first.¡±


    The warehouse floor was a bare expanse of shipping containers, stacked two high in places. They bore the logos of dozens of different companies on the side, great and small, and some had been opened up already, though I couldn¡¯t tell if they were being loaded or unloaded.


    Inevitably, my eyes were drawn to the container I knew contained the dolls. The Shadowrunners paid them no mind, with Bitch taking position at the entrance to the warehouse¡¯s small office while Grue prepared to lead the way in. He paused at the threshold, waiting for Tattletale to give the nod, before throwing his shoulder against the door and stepping in with his pistol raised.


    The two Yakuza goons inside were clearly a cut above the hired goons outside, with one dressed in a pinstriped white suit and the other wearing mechanic¡¯s overalls. Both had their hands up, but the mechanic had an implanted commlink. I took a closer look, peeling back the layers of his defensive.


    ¡°Grue, the mechanic sent an alert.¡±


    ¡°Unwise,¡± Grue growled, and despite not hearing what he was replying to the pair of them shrank in their seats, ¡°but not unexpected. Tattletale, secure them.¡±


    As Tattletale strode forward with a pair of zip-ties in her hand and a predatory grin on her face, Grue turned and fired a single shot into the signal jammer. In an instant, the matrix became filled with dozens of competing RFID tags, each sending off datastreams in seemingly every direction.


    ¡°The matrix just lit up like a Christmas tree,¡± I remarked, even as I picked out the needle in the haystack. ¡°I have the right box, but there¡¯s no way Knight Errant won¡¯t respond to this.¡±


    ¡°Then we won¡¯t have to call them for the girls,¡± Grue remarked, stepping out of the office.


    I was about to respond when I was suddenly hit by a burst of crippling pain, feeling like my soul was being torn from my body. What¡¯s worse was that I could feel my physical body suffering as well, as the biofeedback built into the programme piggybacked off my connection.


    ¡°I think you¡¯ve got bigger problems to worry about,¡± a distorted voice spoke over the Runner¡¯s comm network. My persona shrank in on itself, my digital presence flickering. Another persona drifted past me, virtual hands caressing my shoulder before she flew up into the centre of the space. She¡¯d deliberately overlaid her persona onto the team¡¯s optics, letting them see her as clear as if she were standing there in front of them, and her Decker handle was burned into every scrap of code. Bakuda.


    ¡°You¡¯re fucking with my operation,¡± she said, and I looked up to see a figure wrapped in a cloak of living smoke, with a gas mask in place of a face. The lenses of her mask glowed with a baleful red light, and the matrix around her shimmered as she took control of the local network.


    ¡°I don¡¯t think I can allow that.¡±


    The doll¡¯s shipping container was torn off its hinges as a quartet of metahumans lumbered out of it, each of them tied to Bakuda by leashes of data. There was a female ork, two male orks and a lumbering male troll, each one of their bodies split apart and held together by invasive cyberware.


    ¡°I suppose this is as good a time to test the prototypes as any,¡± the Decker gloated. ¡°Honestly, sometimes I pity my peers. They see a device that can overwrite a subject¡¯s mind, turning them into anything so long as it can be programmed and put on a chip, and what do they do? They use it to get their dicks wet.¡±


    She sighed, shaking her head melodramatically before gesturing towards the team.


    ¡°Kill them.¡±

 Submersion: 1.06

    ¡°Regent!¡±


    Grue shouted out even as he dove to one side to avoid the troll charging down on him, his fingers replaced by razor-sharp claws and his already significant musculature enhanced by an exoskeleton drilled into the bone.


    Regent responded by taking a step to one side and clicking his fingers again, except this time the gesture seemed to carry a lot more weight to it ¨C the sound of it was harsher, like an audio glitch. Through the periphery of Bitch¡¯s cybereyes, I saw the air around Regent shimmer and distort in a digital haze until suddenly there was a figure standing next to him; a Greek Adonis with cracked stone skin that seemed to shift unnaturally, its feet seemingly planted on the ground by choice than any ties to the laws of gravity. The effect it had on Bitch¡¯s camera was¡­ strange, the image subtly distorted as if the machinery was only grudging admitting it existed.


    I caught a brief glimpse of its stone face, locked in an angry rictus, before Regent waved it forward with a dismissive gesture. The spirit charged straight into one of the enhanced orks, bowling him over before attempting to stave his head in. The female ork switched its attention from the Shadowrunners, turning her arm-mounted submachine gun on the living statue instead.


    ¡°Don¡¯t¡­ Don¡¯t kill them.¡± I managed to force the words out through the pain. ¡°They¡¯re victims.¡±


    ¡°Might not have a choice, Bug,¡± Grue said, even as he drew his heavy pistol and tried to unload the rest of the magazine into the troll, only for the weighty rounds to fly off course. His smartlink had been hacked.


    I tried to gather myself, forcing my persona to my feet as a psychological shorthand for drawing the streams of data that made up my virtual form back together. I reached out into the matrix and pulled, spinning strands into a trio of wasps before sending them to harass Bakuda¡¯s persona.


    The trio of sprites compiled sequences of their own, generating an electron storm that engulphed Bakuda, shrouding her from sight behind the electric-blue tornado even as it wore away at her form like a belt sander.


    It wasn¡¯t enough to stop her, but it would slow her down enough to let me get my head back in the game. The Shadowrunners were almost overwhelmed, with Tattletale forced to duck and weave beneath the extended blades of the last ork while Grue was gradually being battered into submission by a troll.


    Regent¡¯s spirit was just about holding its own, but Bitch¡¯s Doberman had been scrapped by gunfire and the woman herself was in cover behind a pillar, firing at the puppets with the submachine gun in her arm while she called up her other Doberman from where it had been watching the van.


    I reached out for the resonance again, stretching myself to compile another spirit. A spider this time; a black widow. The effort of it drained me almost as far as I could go, and I knew I¡¯d feel it when I left the Matrix. Still, it worked, and I flung the spider at the ork attacking Tattletale.


    In the Matrix, the four combat cyborgs were exaggerated parodies of their meatspace forms, with the flesh minimised in favour of emphasising the chrome. Each bore Bakuda¡¯s mark on their torso, neck or cheek ¨C the same cartoon bomb I¡¯d seen on lightweight¡¯s commlink.


    The ork had jammed a blade through Tattletale¡¯s jacket, pinning her to the ground as it lined up another with her throat. The spider dug its legs into the back of the beast, stripping away its defences while the cyborg¡¯s mistress was occupied and causing it to malfunction. The cyborg¡¯s blades retracted back into its arms as the motors spun out of control, burning out in a shower of sparks and rendering the weapons useless. At the same time, Tattletale crawled backwards and held out a hand, firing a stunbolt into the cyborg that overwhelmed its organic components. It toppled over, unconscious for the time being.


    My eye was drawn right back to the Matrix as the electron storm dissipated, the three wasps shrinking backwards with great wounds torn into their code. Bakuda herself hadn¡¯t escaped unscathed ¨C her cloak was ragged and frayed ¨C but the lenses of her gas mask were glowing with an even greater intensity.


    I stood up, the flowing silk robes of my persona dropping into nothingness as they faded away to reveal a bipedal Arachne, formed from chitinous brown plates and with a quartet of spindly limbs jutting out of her back. I gathered myself into that form, loading complex forms of resonance into each taloned finger or razor-sharp spider leg.


    I drove the legs into the digital ¡®floor¡¯ of the space, raising my body upwards even as the limbs drew in the surrounding datastreams, weaving them around my persona like a web. At the same time I recalled my fault sprites, and the trio of wasps began circling me as they awaited my command.


    ¡°Fancy,¡± Bakuda chuckled, even as she reinforced her own defences. ¡°But it¡¯s style over substance, Bug.¡±


    I didn¡¯t respond, driving my limbs into the virtual ground as I slowly swept forward. She was right, of course. Personas were just visual white-noise; a necessary feature to help the metahuman brain make sense of the digital world. Somewhere in the city, Bakuda was using technology to make sense of it in a different way. She had an implant hooked into her brain that took in the raw data and made it understandable.


    But I had no such limitations. I used a persona because it was expected of me, but I never really saw it as a necessity the way everyone else did. If Bakuda was watching the datastreams rather than the Arachne in front of her ¨C like I was ¨C she¡¯d have seen the sprite that slipped past her and latched onto her cyborg troll.


    As it was, she only noticed once it was finished digging through the troll¡¯s defences and importing gremlins into its cyberware, causing it to miss a swing that would have pulped Grue¡¯s skull.


    She turned in shock at being blindsided, and that was when I pounced. I drove a limb into her back, the tip loaded with a resonance spike that injected esoteric data into her persona, tricking the device with logical impossibilities and nonsensical information that overheated it even while spinning the fans out of control. Short of finding her in meatspace and shooting her in the face, the only way to deal with a Decker was to brick the device they were using.


    She rebounded quickly, a skeletal limb darting out of her cloak as she tried to hit me with a data spike of her own, only to hit a sprite that I¡¯d brought up to block the blow instead. As it withered and died, its code spilling out into the resonance, Bakuda jabbed out with a second limb and this time managed to catch me. The same junk data that would have damaged a machine ran rampant through my brain, the attached biofeedback causing synapses to burst. While I was in VR, I couldn¡¯t feel the physical damage, but I knew there was only so long I could last.


    So I leapt back, sending the two remaining wasps to harass her even as I weaved datastreams around myself, layering them into armour that protected me at the cost of restricting my ability to move unhindered as I tethered myself to the passing data, using it to offload the lingering effects of her spike.


    Bakuda hit hard, and she hit lethally. I couldn¡¯t risk getting close to her again, so I started to slowly shuffle backwards, roughly dragging another wasp out of the resonance even as I saw the edges of my persona start to fray back into raw data as I cannibalised myself to give it life.


    It went to join the other two, and they darted around Bakuda. She couldn¡¯t hit them, but they couldn¡¯t do much to her either. Like me, she¡¯d pulled together a defence that was more than enough to blunt their stings to the point where the damage was negligible. I¡¯d surprised her once, but I wouldn¡¯t be able to do it again.


    Not unless I stopped thinking like a brute-force Decker and started fighting like a Technomancer.


    A sudden realisation ran through me like an electric shock, and I focused my attention not on her persona but on the strands of data linking it to her distant body like marionette wires. I reached out, drawing on those wires and clouding them with false data. I took advantage of all those systems that worked to make the unreal understandable, disconnecting them from reality with a heavy veil of resonance even as I loaded up my own information.


    She saw my persona lunging for an attack, and responded to a blow that didn¡¯t actually exist. As she danced with shadows, I set the one surviving wasp onto her back and had it sting. While she fought shadows, and my spider disabled the female cyborg, that wasp slowly filled her data with poison and ate away at her persona, burning out her device as her defence became all the more frantic, desperate and futile.


    And then she was gone, booted out of cyberspace with nothing but a crippling headache and a bricked cyberdeck for her troubles. The digital attack had ended as quickly as it came, with only the physical fight still ongoing.


    One of the male orks was unconscious, and my spider had managed to shut down the woman¡¯s cybernetics, but even half-disabled the troll was still managing to threaten Grue. So, with a whispered apology, I drove a resonance spike into its cybernetics and crashed the governor system running the bunraku software. The troll collapsed, and I could feel the mind beneath the software stirring. He was terrified, the software told me ¨C locked into a body that no longer felt familiar ¨C but I couldn¡¯t risk any further alterations to the bunraku system. If I messed up, I could leave him permanently paralysed or braindead.


    Miraculously, all the cyborgs were still alive, though the ork girl¡¯s inbuilt biomonitor was reporting several bullet wounds that would need attention at some point. The biomonitor of the only ork I hadn¡¯t touched, however ¨C the one Regent¡¯s spirit had been fighting ¨C was dangerously close to flatlining, and I quickly pulled up the available camera feeds to see what was going on.


    Through Bitch¡¯s Doberman, I saw Regent¡¯s spirit wrestling with the cyborg, its stone hands wrapped around the ork¡¯s neck even as he stabbed at the living statue with razor-sharp hand spurs that slid off the stone with a sound that didn¡¯t seem real. The statue¡¯s face was locked in a rictus of rage, and it was slowly throttling the ork.


    I quickly tore into the defences on his cyberwear, forcing a backdoor into Bakuda¡¯s command and control system in order to cut his arms off from the cyborg¡¯s digital nervous system. They fell limp, the metal claws scraping against the ground, but the statue didn¡¯t let up its attack.


    The ork had a SIN, buried beneath the bunraku software. Park Jihoo.


    ¡°You can stop now,¡± I said over the comms. ¡°They¡¯re down, and the Decker is gone.¡±


    Regent didn¡¯t answer. He just stood over the statue, watching the life slowly drain from the ork¡¯s eyes.


    ¡°You don¡¯t have to kill him,¡± I pleaded. ¡°Knight Errant will have noticed the RFID tags coming back online. They¡¯ll be here soon.¡±


    ¡°Regent,¡± Grue said, looking not at the ork but at the stacks of containers, ¡°we have a job to do.¡±


    ¡°Right,¡± Regent answered, blinking uncertainly. He snapped his fingers again and the spirit disappeared, leaving Park Jihoo writhing on the ground until Tattletale stepped up and hit him with a stunbolt.


    I felt the ground swaying beneath my virtual feet as fatigue finally started to catch up to me. I pushed through it, managing to mark out the right container on Grue¡¯s HUD, but I knew I was spent. It¡¯s like I was exercising a muscle I¡¯d never used before; none of the work I¡¯d done before had been half as intense as this.


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    ¡°That¡¯s the container you¡¯re looking for. I have to go¡­ throw up or something. Just wire me my cut, okay?¡±


    I didn¡¯t wait for their response, drifting aimlessly back through the matrix as I reeled myself back along the datastreams linking me to my meat. All the while, I could feel myself fading away, my presence in the matrix growing weaker, until finally, I was out.


    I woke with a start, my mouth filled with a bitter flavour. My vision slowly started to return, blotchy patches gradually disappearing. My head pounded like a dockyard crane had dropped a container on it, and as I looked down I saw that I hadn¡¯t been honest to the Shadowrunners; I¡¯d already thrown up, and my shirt was stained with blood and vomit in equal measure.


    There was a pack of tissues on an end table next to the armchair, and I wiped up the vomit as best as I could, obscurely grateful none had got on the chair itself. I hauled myself up onto trembling legs, stumbling across the apartment before half-falling onto the wall and using it to prop myself up as I staggered to the bathroom.


    I caught sight of myself in the mirror. My eyes were bloodshot, and had in fact been weeping bloody tears down my ashen cheeks ¨C more ashen than normal, that is. It mixed with yet more blood from my nose and mouth to leave me looking like nothing less than the monster in some low-budget horror flick.


    Slowly, agonisingly, I pulled off my ruined top and pants and tossed them aside, wincing as each motion sent spasms of pain through my nerves, before stepping into the shower in my underwear. With my palms flat against the wall to hold me up, I looked up into the showerhead as scalding hot water cascaded onto me, staining pink as it washed the gore off my body. The heat helped me centre myself, and slowly I could feel the biofeedback fading from my nerves.


    After perhaps half an hour, my connection to the matrix returned and I cut of the shower off as the graphic showing the ticking cost of the hot water appeared next to the temperature control lever.


    Grue had sent me a message ten minutes ago, telling me that they¡¯d retrieved the case and would be in touch later to discuss payment. In spite of how unbearably shit I felt, part of me was sad it was ending soon. That job had been the most hair-raising experience of my life, but I also felt alive while I was doing it. I didn¡¯t have anything waiting for me at home, and it was like I¡¯d finally found a way to live through the matrix, rather than just exist in it. It had been days since I¡¯d last gone on a trip down memory lane, trawling through mom and dad¡¯s files to try and recapture their lost memory.


    Ultimately, though, I didn¡¯t give it much more thought. I wasn¡¯t really conscious enough for thinking, so I staggered into my room, fell face-first onto my bed, and immediately slipped into unconsciousness.


    I slept through the rest of the night and most of the day, only to wake to an incoming phone call from Grue ¨C with Tattletale¡¯s comm piggybacking off the link. I answered it as I rooted around in my closet for some clean clothes.


    ¡°Hello? Did the handover go okay?¡±


    ¡°Well that¡¯s what I wanted to talk to you about, Bug.¡±


    I was struck by another sinking feeling in my stomach, but I didn¡¯t have anything left to throw up.


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    ¡°We were wondering if you wanted to make this a more permanent arrangement,¡± he said. ¡°I thought we worked well together, and the team agrees.¡±


    ¡°They do?¡± I asked, doubtful Bitch thought that way.


    ¡°Regent is indifferent,¡± Tattletale said, ¡°but Bitch said you ¡®might be useful.¡¯ Good job hacking her drones, by the way. Not a lot of people would have thought to do that, but Bitch is big on shows of force. She thought you were a coward, and you proved her wrong.¡±


    ¡°So, what do you say?¡± Grue asked. ¡°We¡¯re moving up in the world, and the payouts are only going to get bigger from here.¡±


    ¡°I haven¡¯t been paid for this job yet,¡± I countered. ¡°How did the handover go?¡±


    ¡°Well,¡± Grue sounded a lot more hesitant, ¡°that¡¯s why we¡¯re calling. I told you this job was essentially an interview that would get us in with a new fixer, but what I didn¡¯t say was that the offer was conditional on us bringing a Decker onto the team. To fill a gap in our capabilities.¡±


    ¡°I see,¡± I said, but I¡¯d already made up my mind. ¡°Well, I¡¯m happy to work together more, so mission accomplished?¡±


    ¡°Except the fixer wants everyone there for the handover,¡± Grue continued. ¡°In person.¡±


    ¡°Well that¡¯s stupid,¡± I snapped. ¡°I can work just fine from the Matrix, so what¡¯s the point in dragging myself halfway across the city?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s about showing you¡¯re committed, Bug,¡± Grue answered.


    ¡°Fuck that,¡± I snapped at him. ¡°You know Bakuda was using biofeedback, right? I returned to meatspace in a pool of my own blood and vomit. I was in just as much danger as you were.¡±


    ¡°Then what¡¯s the problem?¡± Grue asked, incredulous. ¡°What¡¯s so bad about showing up in person?¡±


    Tattletale piped up before I could respond.


    ¡°People don¡¯t get into Shadowrunning because they¡¯re the picture of mental health, Bug. We all have our neuroses, and it just so happens this fixer is obsessed with everyone ¡®having skin in the game,¡¯ as her contact put it to us. Look, I don¡¯t know exactly why you¡¯re hiding yourself away behind fake personas, but I¡¯ve got a few educated guesses.¡±


    I didn¡¯t respond, and Tattletale let the line hang silent for a couple of seconds before continuing.


    ¡°The thing is, none of those guesses matter, because we¡¯re all a little fucked up. You saw Bitch and Regent, heard me talk about my pathological compulsion for secrets. Even Grue has his own neuroses and hang-ups that made him decide getting shot at for a career was the smart thing to do. We don¡¯t care if you¡¯re deformed, or on the run from a corp, or a rogue AI passing yourself off as metahuman. It doesn¡¯t matter.¡±


    ¡°A rogue AI?¡± I asked, hesitantly.


    ¡°My profile of you gives it three percent odds,¡± Tattletale answered. ¡°Stranger things have happened.¡±


    The line fell silent, as I thought it over. I looked over myself ¨C my ashen skin, my gangly limbs, the room full of oversized furniture that only made the few regular-sized items stand out more. I clenched my hand into a fist, feeling the weight of muscle and bone. I looked up, and saw the walls of my room. They were covered in memories: the notches on the closet where dad had charted my growth over the years; the few school prizes tucked at the back of a high shelf; paperbacks mom had bought me.


    My entire childhood was laid out before me, but my childhood was a long time ago, and I suddenly noticed that there wasn¡¯t a single memory of my life after that. It was like the room was stuck in stasis, like I was living in a time capsule that had been buried the moment my dad died and the world dropped out from under me.


    ¡°Alright,¡± I said, stamping down my nerves. ¡°Send me the location of the meet. I¡¯ll be there in an hour.¡±


    Most of my tops were wide-necked ¨C they had to be, to fit over my horns ¨C so I threw on a zip-up hoodie over the top of it. Coupled with a pair of faded jeans, and I was about as nondescript as I could make myself while still being over eight feet tall.


    I didn¡¯t have much time to reach the meeting point, but that was by design. It forced me out of the door and into the corridor, when I would otherwise have stood there until my doubts swallowed me. From there, there was nowhere to go but onwards, down the elevator and out into the streets.


    I caught the metro, and there found myself face to face with more people than I¡¯d seen in years. There were dozens of commuters all crammed into the carriage, pressed in side by side. I had to hunch over to even fit below the low ceiling, but I still had enough headroom to look out over the sea of faces. It made it easier to deal with, somehow.


    The journey was just long enough for worry to start sinking in, but the metro wasn¡¯t going to stop just because I was having second thoughts. The streets were easier, in a way. I could focus on putting one foot in front of the other, and my paranoia kept me too busy with half-glimpsed shadows to make stopping seem appealing.


    The neighbourhood was mostly industrial buildings that had emptied out as the evening rush died down, with only the occasional twenty-four hour factory still showing signs of life. The streets still held a steady stream of factory workers making their way towards the metro line, as well as other waifs and strays who were just cutting through the district on their way to other places, but all of them gave the Shadowrunners a wide berth.


    Bitch¡¯s van was parked out the front of a failed factory, its doors chained and its windows boarded up. The woman herself was sitting in the open doorway of the van, fiddling with one of the components from her drones. Her cyberarm had split apart into an array of screwdrivers and tools that I couldn¡¯t even begin to make sense of, and she seemed to be wholly consumed by her work.


    Regent was occupied as well, scrolling through something on his commlink as he leant against the van. Grue and Tattletale, on the other hand, were keeping their eyes open, looking up and down the street at the passing commuters. Grue actually looked at me a few times, his eyes passing over me as I drew closer and closer. Then Tattletale turned, scanned the crowd, and landed right on me with a smile that was at first satisfied, then genuine.


    She nudged Grue with an elbow and pointed to me. Grue looked closer, but didn¡¯t seem to actually believe the mage until I awkwardly waved a hand at them. Then he looked at me again, his eyes focusing on my clothing before he shook his head and stepped forward, holding out a hand.


    ¡°Good to meet you in person,¡± he said, ¡°and welcome to the team. I¡¯m Brian, by the way.¡±


    ¡°And I¡¯m Lisa,¡± Tattletale piped up, ¡°and those two are Rachel and Alec.¡±


    Right. Probably not the best idea to let on that I¡¯ve known Grue and Tattletale¡¯s real names since our first meeting.


    ¡°Taylor,¡± I reciprocated. ¡°Is the contact arriving soon?¡±


    ¡°Any minute now,¡± Grue answered, still looking me over. Having looked through his eyes enough times and become used to that frame of reference, it was disconcerting and strangely confidence-boosting to find myself looking down on him.


    ¡°Didn¡¯t you¡­¡± ¨C he begins, hesitantly, before pressing on ¨C ¡°have anything more¡­ I don¡¯t know, professional to wear?¡±


    I looked around at the group, my eyes lingering on their leather jackets, magical accessories, body armour, holstered pistols and all the other tricks of their trade.


    ¡°Not really,¡± I shrugged my shoulders. ¡°You know I was just lifting copy protection on stolen goods before this, right?¡±


    Grue looked like he wanted to say something more, only to stop as a bulky four-by-four with tinted windows rounded the corner.


    ¡°Alright everyone, look lively,¡± he said, his voice raised. His left hand tightened its grip on a small grey briefcase ¨C presumably the very thing we¡¯d all been looking for. Bitch and Regent ¨C Rachel and Alec, I suppose ¨C set aside their distractions and stood up, watching as the Ares Roadmaster approached.


    Tattletale sidled up to me, looking as pleased as punch, and stood on her tip-toes to whisper in my ear.


    ¡°I gave Technomancer nine percent odds.¡±


    I stiffened, looking around for an escape before I realised how pointless that would be, and that I probably didn¡¯t need to escape. Instead I sighed, and whispered back.


    ¡°How did you figure it out?¡±


    ¡°Astral perception. You don¡¯t have any cyberware at all, and when I try to get a closer look things become a little weird. Like my sight doesn¡¯t want to acknowledge you exist.¡±


    ¡°Are you going to tell anyone?¡±


    ¡°Of course not,¡± Lisa smiled. ¡°Remember what I said about how a secret is more valuable the fewer people know about it? You should tell the others, though. If only because otherwise they might figure it out themselves and get all mad.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll think about it,¡± I said with a sigh.


    ¡°Speaking of astral perception,¡± Lisa continued, a little louder this time so that Brian could hear, ¡°the guy in the back of that truck is Awakened. Which means it¡¯s not our new fixer, but her head gofer.¡±


    The armoured car pulled to a stop in front of us, and the passenger door swung open before a truly immense figure stepped out. He was a troll, and with his horns he was easily taller than me. More to the point, where I was comparatively skinny he seemed to have been hewn from fat and muscle in equal measure.


    He went bare chested beneath a long leather jacket that was covered in shamanic totems and fetishes, and when he spoke it was with a noticeable accent that I couldn¡¯t quite place beyond a passing familiarity to some of the Scandinavian dockworkers I¡¯d grown up around.


    ¡°Grue. My congratulations on the success of your mission.¡±


    ¡°Gregor,¡± Grue nodded in acknowledgement. ¡°We were expecting Faultline.¡±


    ¡°For a simple handover? The case, if you will.¡±


    Grue stepped forward and held out the case for the troll, who took it carefully and held it in his immense grip.


    ¡°Then our business here is concluded. The funds shall be wired to your accounts,¡± he fixed me with a weighty look, ¡°Grue, we will send you your Decker¡¯s share to your account as we do not have her details on file. If that is acceptable, miss?¡±


    ¡°Bug,¡± I answered after a moment¡¯s indecision. ¡°I go by ¡®Bug.¡¯¡±


    Gregor nodded, turning and walking back to his armoured car.


    ¡°So, we¡¯re in?¡± Grue called to Gregor¡¯s back.


    Gregor paused, halfway into his custom troll-sized seat, and turned back to look at Grue.


    ¡°Faultline will review your conduct and make a decision. We will be in touch.¡±


    We watched in silence as the Roadmaster disappeared into the city streets, taking the case with it. Not for the first time, I found myself wondering just what was in it that was worth all the trouble. On all the jobs I¡¯d taken before this one, I knew everything there was to know about it, whether that was because the job was simple or because I was free to dig as deep as I wanted. I¡¯d probably never be able to figure this one out, and I wasn¡¯t sure how I felt about that.


    ¡°Hey, Taylor,¡± Lisa grabbed my attention. ¡°We¡¯re going to have a few drinks to celebrate a job well done, then head back to our place. You want to come with?¡±


    ¡°That sounds perfect,¡± I replied, surprised at how easily the answer had come.

 Interlude 1: Gregor

    As the four-by-four drove away from the team of Shadowrunners, leaving the emptying roads of the warehouse district and joining the still-flowing evening traffic of the Lord Street thoroughfare, Gregor rested the nondescript silver case on his lap, his oversized fingers struggling for a moment as he input the code.


    The lock beeped once, the light switching from red to green, and Gregor gingerly lifted up the lid. Inside, cocooned in foam packaging, was a single wristwatch. To his untrained eye, the watch was an anachronism ¨C with mechanical hands rather than a digital display.


    To the trained eye, those anachronisms would only become more apparent. The watch had no presence in the Matrix, no battery or electronic components of any kind. Its internal mechanism was clockwork, and the spring that drove it would have to be periodically wound up to ensure it kept the proper time. Nor had any electronic tools touched it during the manufacturing process; each component had been made by hand by Swiss artisans, practicing their trade in the same way as their forefathers would have centuries ago.


    It was as close to perfection as metahuman hands could manage, and it had a price tag to match. Gregor reached into his jacket pocket and drew out a pair of white gloves, slipping them onto his hands before taking the watch out and looking it over, checking for any obvious damage from what it had endured. He was struck by how small it seemed; even if the strap were twice as long it still wouldn''t be enough to circle his wrist.


    Satisfied that no harm had been done to it, he gently set the watch back into the case and closed it, the lock beeping again as it reset. He took off the gloves, folding and returning them to his pocket, and took out his commlink.


    The number he wanted was in his contacts under "GC", and he received an answer after his comm had rung four times.


    "Ares Arms, General Cantarelli''s office, how may I direct your call?"


    The voice was young, male, and in all likelihood human.


    "I must speak to the General on a personal matter," Gregor stated, as his driver deftly overtook a greyhound bus, cutting off a sedan in the process.


    "I''m sorry sir," the man replied, his tone a textbook example of a feigned apology, "the General is in a meeting right now. I can take a message?"


    "I see. To whom am I speaking?"


    "Marcus Wright, sir. I''m the General''s PA."


    Gregor paused for a moment as he deliberated how best to proceed.


    "Simply inform the General that his lost property has been found."


    "Oh!" the man exclaimed. "Is this about the Patek Philippe?"


    Gregor relaxed slightly.


    "That is correct. I am calling to inform the General that it has been successfully retrieved."


    "I''ll be honest, I''d given that up for lost," the personal assistant said, though he sounded relieved all the same. "I only reached out to your organisation to do the due diligence."


    "So you put out the contract?" Gregor asked. "We were informed this was a request from General Cantarelli."


    "The General asked me to look into it," he explained, "but I think he''d written it off. This''ll be a feather in my cap, that''s for sure."


    "I am happy for you," Gregor said, noncommittedly. "All that remains is to fulfil the first part of your payment, then I shall dispatch the watch by courier. Would you prefer it to be delivered to the General''s office, or his private residence?"


    "Office, definitely," he replied. "I''ll collect it and hand it over to the General myself. After delivering the second half of your payment, naturally."


    "Naturally. Our courier will contact you when he is on route. A pleasure doing business, Mr Wright."


    Gregor hung up the call, tucking away his commlink and watching out the window as his driver turned off Lord Street, up the exit ramp and into the hills. The streets here were narrower, with four lanes of traffic turning into two in places, and the corporate office blocks began to give way to franchise chains and small businesses.


    "Pull in here," he said to the driver as they approached a small family-run deli. The driver had already been halfway to making the turn ¨C this was a fairly frequent stop. Once they were parked, Gregor wordlessly handed the driver a disposable credstick and waited patiently until she re-emerged with a plastic bag full of sandwiches.


    She made a half-hearted to return the stick, which Gregor waved off, and soon they were making their way through the streets again, as the neighbourhood changed once more. Gone were the small businesses and office blocks, and in their place were wide avenues lined with bars and clubs.


    Among the mass of gaudy neon signs and impossibly-large AR artwork, one club was conspicuous by its inconspicuousness. It was tall, but its front was plain and unadorned save for glowing yellow letters spelling out ''Palanquin'' in an almost intentionally plain script.


    There was a long line in front of the building, kept separate from the street by simple chain ropes and separate from the club by a more elaborate gate and a pair of burly bouncers. The driver pulled up in front of that gate and Gregor, sandwiches in one hand and briefcase in the other, stepped out as one of the bouncers wordlessly opened up the entrance.


    "What the hell?" one of the girls near the front of the line complained. "We''ve been waiting for forty-five minutes and you let that fat trog through just like that?"


    "Out of the line," the closest doorman, a seven-foot tall ork with muscles almost bursting through his suit jacket said, his voice bored.


    "The hell? Why?"


    "You just dissed a shareholder, fuckwit," the doorman told her. "Out of the line. You and your friends are banned."


    Gregor smiled and shook his head. It was truly amazing how power could reverse so many barriers, especially in this city.


    At many of the other clubs in this district, the line was nothing more than a carefully maintained illusion used to create the impression of a thriving establishment, regardless of how many people were actually in side. No such deceptions were needed in Palanquin; even on a Tuesday evening, the main floor of the club was packed.


    Gregor made his way through the tightly-packed crowds of dancers and drinkers, his grip like iron on the handle of the case. He ignored the stairs up to the VIP section, instead ducking behind the bar and making his way towards a nondescript elevator in the club''s backrooms.


    Four floors later and he stepped out of the elevator into the Palanquin''s private rooms, ones that were the private preserve of the organisation''s members. Their home, sanctuary and fortress all in one.


    In theory, at least. In practice, the woman staggering out of the first door on the right was definitely not part of the team. With pink highlights in her hair and blue lipstick, Gregor could have been fooled into thinking the blonde human had just stepped off the dance floor for a moment, were it not for the crumpled dress she was adjusting with one hand while her other had a tight grip on her high heels.


    She was followed, to Gregor''s slight surprise, by another woman ¨C an ork with darker hair and a European cast to her features ¨C in a similar state of dishevelment. The first girl looked mortified as she found herself face to face with Gregor, while the other gave him a wry smile.


    At the sound of their footsteps slowing, the last occupant of the room poked his head out the door.


    "Gregor, my boy!" Newter stepped out into the corridor, his arms outstretched. He was a lithe ork, perhaps twenty years old ¨C though he himself was not sure ¨C and as skinny as a rake with tawny brown skin. He was shirtless, revealing the results of careful exercise and hard labour, and had clearly only just thrown on the sweatpants he was wearing.


    "I brought your dinner." Gregor said, holding up the carrier bag of sandwiches.


    "Thanks, chummer!" Newter replied, even as he walked the women to the elevator.


    "I also need to speak with you," he continued, as it seemed like Newter would go down the elevator with the girls.


    "Right¡­" he turned to his companions. "You girls take care. See you again, Laura? Mary?"


    "Maybe," the dark haired girl ¨C Laura ¨C replied. "Maybe not." The last two words were said with a meaningful wink at Gregor.


    As the elevator door closed, Newter turned back to Gregor with the same easy smile he''d shown the women.


    "Does Faultline know you''re bringing girls up here?" Gregor asked, pointedly.


    "It''s cool," Newter shrugged. "She swung by while we were in the lounge and joined in the conversation, so she''s obviously okay with it." He stepped forward reaching into the bag and retrieving one of the sandwiches.


    "So, what''s the job?"


    "Courier," Gregor said simply, holding up the case so Newter could see it. "I need you to drive to the head office of Ares Arms, in Baltimore. You''ll hand this case off to a man named Marcus Wright, from the outer office of the Executive Vice President."


    "The watch job," Newter nodded. "I remember. Seems a lot of effort to go through when he could just look at his comm if he wanted to tell the time."


    "It was a great deal of effort for the team who retrieved it, and less effort for us, but for the client? For them, it was no effort at all."


    Newter snorted. "''Aint that the truth. Alright, I''ll set off first thing tomorrow morning. Don''t want to drive drunk, after all."


    "Very well. I will pass on the contact details and store the briefcase in my safe."


    As Newter nodded, stepping back into his room and closing the door, Gregor knocked on the door opposite.


    "Come in!"


    The apartment was well furnished, and filled with clutter. The walls were covered in posters, pictures, overflowing bookshelves, a trideo screen and a wall-mounted sound system that was loud enough to drown out the sound of the club. A computer was set aside on a desk, and much of the remaining space was taken up by a long couch.


    At first glance, it would appear as if the occupant on one of the apartment''s beds ¨C set on opposite sides of the room ¨C had allowed her sense of style to completely overcome the other, but Gregor knew the balance of d¨¦cor would be reversed in augmented reality.


    The girl who lived in the real world was lying back on her bed, surrounded by stacks of glossy magazines. She was younger than Newter ¨C but only just ¨C and human, with curly brown hair and a dense covering of freckles on her face and hands.


    The girl who lived in the virtual world was seated in the corner, staring into the wall. She was elven, and as such could be anywhere between twenty and two hundred, with platinum white-blonde hair. Her clothing was simple; designed to be easy to put on.


    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    "I brought your dinner, Emily."


    "Thanks," the freckled girl responded, catching the sandwich he threw to her and unwrapping it from the packaging.


    "Is she here?" he asked, gesturing to the girl in the corner.


    "See for yourself," Emily replied, before tossing Gregor a pair of AR sunglasses. Gregor held the glasses up to his comm for a moment, syncing the pair, before putting them on.


    The appearance of Elle''s space changed every day, as she meticulously tore down and recreated features as the whims led her. At present, the bedroom had been replaced by a meticulously-crafted zen garden of neon-pink cherry blossoms and sand carefully raked into impossible visual illusions. The walls had been torn down, or switched out for illusions that stretched the garden off into infinity.


    In the real world, Elle was wearing a plain sweater and jeans that were easy for her to put on, but in her world she was not bound by such mundane constraints, and instead wore ephemeral silk robes that shifted impossibly in an intangible breeze.


    As Gregor''s commlink recognised the presence of the AR glasses, it automatically replaced its icon with that of his persona; a carbon-copy of the man himself. He became visible in the matrix, and Elle''s eyes immediately snapped to him.


    "Hello Gregor," she smiled.


    "Hello, Elle," he returned the smile. "May I come closer?"


    "Of course," she answered, warmly. "But please do not disrupt the sand."


    Gregor nodded, placing each foot on the stepping-stones placed in trails throughout the garden, careful to ensure both that he did not disrupt her world and that he did not stub his toe on Emily''s furniture.


    Once he was in front of Elle he knelt down, gently grabbed her hand, and uncurled her fingers before placing her sandwich in her grasp.


    "I have brought your dinner, Elle."


    The Technomancer brought her hand up to her eyes, staring at it intently.


    "There''s nothing there, and I already ate." She gestured to an apple tree a few yards away, one formed from crystals and coloured glass.


    "It is a beautiful fruit," Gregor admitted, "but there is no nourishment in it. You have food in your hand, Elle. You must eat it."


    "Okay. But only because I trust you."


    She brought her hand up to her mouth, jumping a little as she brushed the sandwich against her lips. That was enough to get her to start eating it, in slow, deliberate bites.


    After Gregor had been running for about a year, a job took them deep into the heart of a Mitsuhama Consumer Technologies research facility in the territory of the Pueblo Corporate Council. They had gone in search of information, but in the chaos of their entry they had unintentionally caused an escape attempt amongst the test subjects contained there. Elle had been one of them, and she had helped the team make their exit. Afterwards, she had joined them, and had taken on the name Labyrinth.


    Whatever MCT had put her through, she had responded by using her Technomancer abilities to retreat into the matrix, almost entirely withdrawing from the real world.


    Gregor sat there watching Elle until she was most of the way through her sandwich, then stood up, leaving Emily''s glasses at the foot of her bed and nodding as she waved goodbye.


    Before pressing on, he made a detour into the next door on the left. His own apartment had been sparse once, but was slowly filling up with the flotsam and jetsam of a settled life. Shamanic totems sat next to holiday photos, there was a gun rack next to the coat hooks, and two corners of the space had been set aside for ritual work and meditation respectively. The furniture was split evenly between normal-sized pieces and custom orders made to fit a troll''s bulk.


    He set his own sandwich down on his desk for later as he knelt to put in the code for the safe, carefully placing the briefcase on the shelf above his emergency cash and gold reserves before resealing both the mundane and magical locks.


    A door opened behind him, and Gregor stood up, turning quickly before calming as he saw who had just walked in. Her skin-tight taksuit was covered in grime and brick dust, and her face was clammy with sweat, but, looking at her, Gregor still felt his heart quicken.


    "Gilmar," she greeted him, using his real name rather than his handle. "Have a quiet night?"


    "As quiet as can be expected, Sin¨¦ad" he replied as he crossed the room, holding out his second last sandwich. "I bought dinner."


    "No, you bought a sandwich. Dinner involves menus, waitresses and hot food. Maybe a candle if you''re feeling fancy." She smiled sardonically. "Besides, it''s Shamrock when I''m dressed like this. You''re the one who drilled that into me."


    She waved off the offered meal.


    "Not right now; I''m sweaty and disgusting. We''ll eat together, once you''re done briefing the boss."


    "You have already briefed her?" Gregor asked as he went to set her sandwich down beside his, and Shamrock locked her rifle into the gun case.


    "I have," Shamrock answered as she began to unzip her taksuit. "They''re an impressive bunch, for amateurs.


    Gilmar snorted, even as he stepped over to help her reach. "What a difference a few years makes. Sometimes I forget we were ever anything less than professional."


    Sin¨¦ad shrugged off the rest of her taksuit, tossing it into a laundry basket before stepping into the bathroom. After a moment, the sound of a running shower filled the apartment. Gilmar paused, leaning against the open bathroom door. He couldn''t help his eye wandering to the ring on Sin¨¦ad''s finger; an exact copy ¨C size excluded ¨C to the one on his own.


    "Go on, you big lug," she said as she stretched out an arm to nudge the door closed. "It doesn''t do to keep the boss waiting."


    Gregor nodded as he recentred himself, striding out of his apartment and down the hall to Faultline''s office, passing the shared kitchen and living room.


    Faultline was standing before a floor-to-ceiling window, wearing a white business blouse with the sleeves rolled up and black slacks tucked into shiny black riding boots. Before her, past the panes of glass, the city stretched out. Palanquin was not the tallest building in the neighbourhood, but it was at the top of the hill and, as such, held a commanding view of the city''s skyline, out past the towering edifices of Medhall and Ares to the endless expanse of the Atlantic.


    She turned as Gregor crossed the room, her features sharp and her wavy black hair tied back in a ponytail. Her expression was severe, and Gregor''s unconsciously shifted to match her, even as he held out the last sandwich.


    "It was seven o''clock. Nobody had eaten yet."


    "Thank you. How''s Elle?"


    "Lost in the matrix, but here rather than elsewhere. She has eaten now. Perhaps tomorrow will be better."


    Faultline sighed, even as she moved to sit behind her oak desk. Genuine oak, not a synthetic imitation ¨C it was a spoil of war, from a long-distant job.


    "Let''s hope. But at least she''s happier these days. Regardless, we have business to discuss. Pull up a chair."


    Gregor nodded, grabbing a chair from the wall as Faultline hit a button on her desk. Immediately, the floor to ceiling window blacked out, each pane of glass coming back online as a panopticon of news feeds, stock reports, chat logs and elaborate grids displaying engaged, resting and available Shadowrunners, both teams and solos. A separate grid displayed potential, pending and current clients, their details obfuscated by codenames.


    "First, the state of the city," Faultline began, the pair falling into a familiar and comfortable routine as the fixer used her second in command as a sounding board. She hit another button on her desk and the centre retracted to reveal a holographic display, set to show a map of the city with extraterritorial zones marked out and numbers floating over each notable company, great and small, showing current stock prices.


    "Ares and Medhall are largely in a holding pattern. Mayor Christner''s re-election was a political victory for Ares, and Medhall have yet to determine a suitable response. The Dockworkers Association will likely be running damage control after the recovery of so many stolen shipping containers. They''ve been minimising the issue, and the high-profile return of so much stolen property has highlighted the scale of the problem."


    "Do you think this will affect the smuggling routes?" Gregor asked, manipulating the hologram as he scrolled through files. "We have several pending shipments, and if the Marche are about to renege on the deal¡­"


    "They won''t," Faultline reassured him. "Any loss in their legitimate income would only make them more determined to squeeze as much illegal income out of the docks as possible. No, if there''s any part of the corporate landscape that concerns me, it''s this."


    She pulled up an intercepted communication lifted from the matrix by Labyrinth. Gregor''s eyes darted over the details; it was a fairly standard report, listing the delivery of an additional twelve ambulances to the city, along with the authorisation needed to hire on more drivers, paramedics and security guards to crew them.


    "CrashCart?" Gregor mused, stroking his chin. "They''re expanding?"


    "When all logic and good sense would have them cut their losses and leave," Faultline nodded. "Either they have inside information we don''t, or Evo Biomedical are planning something that will change the situation."


    Gregor was silent, staring at the graphs and figures as if he could somehow discern something from the numbers. Not for the first time, he found himself frustrated by the secrecy of their new profession. They moved in a world of shadows, and though they had a clearer picture of events than the Shadowrunners who worked for them, that only made the dark corners of the world stand out all the more.


    "In more immediate news," Faultline drew his attention back to the present, as she gestured to a rolling newsfeed playing on one of the screens behind her, "Knight Errant have claimed full responsibility for securing both the stolen containers and the bunraku cyborgs. Grue''s team has been entirely omitted from their press releases."


    "And the Yakuza?"


    A satisfied smile crept across Faultline''s face.


    "We seem to have only escalated their internal conflict. Lung is still the king, of course, but Bakuda seems to have hoped her¡­ experiment would give her an edge over Oni Lee. Both factions have covertly reached out to us with jobs aimed at sabotaging the other."


    "Can we accept work from both without running afoul of a conflict of interest?"


    "If we''re careful," Faultline shrugged. "We''ll use different teams, and only accept discreet jobs that aren''t likely to cross paths. I''ll justify it as us not wanting to publicly tie our flag to one side."


    "And what of Grue and his people?" Gregor asked. "I know Shamrock has given her assessment."


    Thanks to Labyrinth''s efforts in the matrix, Faultline''s network had been aware of the location of the case before they''d even delivered the first brief to Grue. Faultline had decided ¨C and Gregor had agreed ¨C that it represented an opportunity to test the up-and-coming team to see if they were worthy of being added to Palanquin''s roster.


    Consequently, Shamrock had spent several days stalking out the warehouse in a cloaked taksuit, waiting for Grue to make his move.


    "They weren''t subtle," Faultline began, a little dismissively, "but we already knew that would be the case. They lack an infiltrator, after all, but they do have a disproportionate amount of firepower. Shamrock said they fought well, but with some coordination issues. They''re gifted amateurs, in short."


    "That concurs with my assessment," Gregor added, thinking back to the dishevelled troll who had presented herself as the group''s decker, and the obvious tension that existed between her and many of the others. "Were you able to vet them?"


    "Partially," Faultline frowned, bringing up a number of files.


    "Grue was simple enough. Brian Laborn been hired muscle for years now, all within the city. Bitch has an intermittent history in several cities, and I''ve managed to dig up a real name. Rachel Lindt. She''s removed her SIN since then."


    Their files were short, with the kind of brevity that comes from an uncomplicated history. Grue''s had a list of prior employers, starting out with street gangs and finishing up with a few solo jobs before he''d gathered together his team of waifs and strays. Bitch''s file, in contrast, had a long list of enemies, as she left or was driven out of city after city on her perpetual journey north-east.


    "It seems she has run out of land¡­" Gregor mused.


    "Quite," Faultline said with a grin, before gesturing to the next file. "Regent was harder to track. He goes by ''Alec,'' but his real name is Jean-Paul Vasil. He ran away from a cult in Quebec, run by his father."


    "For ideological reasons?" Gregor asked. "Moral ones?"


    "For reasons of control, I think," Faultline said. "Or a lack of it. He paid a fixer in Montreal to change his identity before crossing the border, then cropped up in Ontario as ''Alec Lauren.'' His current identity is pretty high quality ¨C I think he must have stolen some of daddy''s money on the way out ¨C but it''s nothing compared to Tattletale''s."


    "Another runaway?" Gregor asked.


    "I have no idea," Faultline replied, visibly frustrated. "Lisa Wilbourne is a fake identity, I''ve been able to establish that much, but as far as I can tell she simply appeared out of thin air a year ago, in Kansas City. Since then she''s been slowly travelling east, getting by on cons and hired mage work before finally deciding to stop here. Who she was before is a mystery."


    "She wouldn''t be the first enigma we''ve employed," Gregor pointed out.


    Faultline sighed. "True. She''s not even the only one on Grue''s team."


    "You''re talking about their Decker."


    "Grue surprised us there," Faultline said, with a smile that didn''t reach her eyes. "I assumed he''d reach out to one of the independents, not find someone new. As far as I can tell, ''Bug'' has been active for two years now, doing odd jobs on the net. If she hadn''t shown up to the handover, we wouldn''t even know what she looks like."


    "If it is a concern, I could talk to Labyrinth and ask her to see what she can dig up."


    Faultline shook her head. "Labyrinth isn''t subtle, and the reputational damage isn''t worth the risk of discovery, especially if she''s just the shut-in hacker she seems to be. Just run her face through the system until we get a match."


    "Very well," Gregor said, as he stood up. "Shall I inform Grue that we have agreed to sponsor his team?"


    Faultline nodded, turning her attention back to the information arrayed in front of her. Gregor began to make his way out of the room, but paused at the threshold, turning back to look at her.


    "Do you ever miss it?"


    There were a great many things he could have been talking about. On the outside, Faultline''s body was entirely human in appearance, but in reality very little of her humanity remained. There was not a single part of her body that had not been touched by the surgeon''s knife, through both injury and deliberate sacrifice as she sought any way to gain an edge in the field. Her body was a shell of bioware and cyberware, nestled around her still-human brain.


    But Gregor was not looking at her. His eyes were drawn to the suit of armour on a stand in the corner of the office, kept in Faultline''s constant view. The power armour was pockmarked and scored, the decorative light grey cloth charred and burned. It stood upright and proud in spite of its injuries, and small lights were arrayed around it to emphasise it even more.


    Faultline, surrounded by the tools of a far more subtle trade, looked up from her work. Her smile was gone; her expression steadfast and resolved.


    "Not at all."

 Persona: 2.01

    ¡°So, how did you guys all meet anyway?¡±


    The bar was a dive a few hundred meters from the Shadowrunners¡¯ shared apartment. It was a kitschy place of brightly coloured furniture, lit even brighter by neon lighting and intricate AR patterns. Alec was in his element, but Rachel looked obviously uncomfortable, and her cyberware was drawing pointed looks from the college students and salarymen who filled the space. To be fair, all of us were drawing eyes for one reason or another.


    Our group theme didn¡¯t really match the d¨¦cor, but I was pretty sure we wouldn¡¯t be staying here for long.


    Lisa smiled, leaning forward and resting her elbows against the table as she spun her tale, her gestures coming within a hair¡¯s breadth of knocking our half-empty glasses onto the floor.


    ¡°I¡¯d been in the city a week. I was pulling a con, stringing this rich girl along so that I could swipe her jewellery and use it to get me in with a good fence, when suddenly someone throws a smoke grenade through the window of her apartment.¡±


    At this she leant back and punched Brian¡¯s arm ¨C lightly, so that she didn¡¯t hurt herself on his cyberware.


    ¡°I staggered out onto the balcony, coughing my lungs out, only to see some guy making off with my jewellery.¡±


    I looked at Brian, who shrugged.


    ¡°I was hired by a rival to lift the corporate data Tattletale¡¯s gal pal had been keeping on an unsecured drive, in order to get her in trouble with her bosses and scuttle her chances at promotion. Or something. It was amateur hour all the way through, but I was able to learn she kept the data on a drive hidden in a necklace.¡±


    ¡°So my financial plan for the next few weeks had just gone in smoke,¡± Lisa continued, ¡°and I figured I might as well go hit a bar, read the room, and see if I could get by with tarot readings, pickpocketing or genuine hired mage work. And there he was, handing off the paydata to his client.¡±


    ¡°I recognised her,¡± Grue cut in, ¡°and we got talking. In the end, we made an arrangement. I got the money from the job, but I gave her the remaining jewellery.¡±


    ¡°And you decided to work together?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Not for a few weeks,¡± Lisa clarified. ¡°I settled into a bit of an equilibrium doing odd mage jobs, and ran into one that was a bit too hot for me to handle. So I scoped out the same bar and asked Brian to help.¡±


    ¡°That was what gave us the idea of setting up a team. Alec came to us through a fixer, and we recruited Rachel ourselves. Once I realised the three of them were basically homeless, we pooled funds and bought the loft. Speaking of¡­¡±


    He fished into his jacket, pulling out an old-fashioned metal key and lightly tossing it onto the table.


    ¡°That¡¯s the key to our place. And I mean that. Ours as in yours too. You¡¯re free to come by even if nobody¡¯s there, though somebody usually is. Kick back and watch trideo, eat our food, track mud on our floor, yell at the others for tracking mud on the floor, whatever. Just no guests.¡±


    I quickly pocketed the key, as a warm feeling slowly made its way through my core. It¡¯s funny how a different location can make my usual activities seem so much livelier.


    ¡°And no bleeding on the upholstery,¡± Alec spoke up, with a smug grin he directed towards Brian.


    ¡°Is that a common problem?¡± I asked.


    ¡°It was one time,¡± Brian answered. ¡°I got winged by a Knight Errant badge with an itchy trigger finger. They were putting the district on lockdown, so I couldn¡¯t stick around to apply a field dressing.¡±


    ¡°So instead he staggers through the door like he¡¯s been drinking all night,¡± ¨C Alec interrupts ¨C ¡°slumps down on a pristine, white couch and starts making these pitiful moaning noises until Lisa comes and heals him up. We had to throw the couch out.¡±


    I couldn¡¯t help smiling, though I wasn¡¯t sure if it was at the story or Alec¡¯s warped sense of priorities.


    ¡°You¡¯re welcome to stay the night, too,¡± Brian offered. ¡°We have a spare room.¡±


    ¡°Thanks, but I have my own place,¡± I demurred. Tattletale nodded enthusiastically.


    ¡°That¡¯s the dream. I mean, roommates are cool, I guess, but now that we¡¯re in the big leagues I want to save up and get an apartment of my own.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s too fucking loud,¡± Rachel said. They were the first words she¡¯d spoken since we got here, unless you counted ¡®get me a beer.¡¯ ¡°I want to work on my drones in peace.¡±


    ¡°And I want to make as much noise as I want without an angry borg throwing tools at me,¡± Alec said, with a smile on his face that made me think he either wasn¡¯t being serious or just didn¡¯t care. Either way, Rachel didn¡¯t react.


    ¡°This¡¯ll be good for us,¡± Brian said. ¡°Faultline has one hell of a rep, which means her clients do too.¡± He held up his glass. ¡°Here¡¯s to the big leagues.¡±


    The others seemed less eager, and Alec even rolled his eyes, but we all clinked our glasses together.


    ¡°The big leagues!¡±


    Rachel left us shortly after ¨C Brian said she tended to steer clear of social occasions unless she had no other choice. Three bars and an unknown number of drinks later, we all gathered outside an old auto repair shop as Brian fumbled with a hefty lock. After a moment, the door swung open and Brian swung right after it, stumbling a little before an implant in his kidney started to treat the ¡®poison¡¯ in his drink and he steadied himself.


    The floor of the shop had clearly been claimed by Rachel; each wall held neatly-arrayed tools and ordered pieces of technology, and her van was parked in prime of place alongside a damaged Steel Lynx drone that had clearly been salvaged from a junkyard ¨C equally clear was that Rachel was slowly bringing it back to working order. It was about as large as a ride-on lawnmower, with four wheeled legs and a currently empty weapon mount on its back. There was also a blue four-door Ford Americar parked up next to the Lynx, but it didn¡¯t have any signs of Rachel¡¯s touch on it so I figured it belonged to one of the others.


    Rachel herself was currently elbows-deep in her Doberman, welding patches onto the armour plate. She wasn¡¯t wearing a welder¡¯s mask, and I couldn¡¯t help noticing that she treated her machinery with a lot more respect than her meat. She was even sleeping here, if the camp bed I could see tucked into the old mechanic¡¯s office was any indication.


    She looked up as we entered, then wordlessly turned back to her work as I followed the others to a metal staircase at the back of the workshop. Upstairs, the building was a lot more liveable, thought it was clear that only extended so far. The walls were bare concrete, and the floors were only partially carpeted, but it was clear that someone had put work into making this place feel homey.


    The loft space had been divided into three sections, more or less, though it looked like they¡¯d tried to keep it as open plan as they could. The closest was clearly a weird combination of living room and ready room, with two couches neatly separating the coffee table and expensive trideo set from the gun locker, coat rack and a very prominent first aid kit taped to the wall.


    Beyond that was a corridor of different rooms, three on each side, their walls not quite extending to the top of the space. Some of the doors ¨C and a lot of the walls ¨C held artwork of different styles and subjects, some ¨C like the white male and female silhouettes common to mixed gender bathrooms, or the stylised elven face with puckered lips ¨C were clearly labels, while others were a little more experimental or abstract.


    This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    ¡°Nice art,¡± I commented, pointing at a mural of a multi-limbed woman wreathed in fire. A spirit of some kind?


    ¡°Thanks,¡± Alec replied. Guess he¡¯s the artist.


    Past the corridor I could just about see a large table and some cabinets, so I figured that had to be their kitchen and dining room. Overall, the loft was maybe a quarter again as big as my apartment, which added up to a lot of extra space when you considered all the furniture was metahuman standard rather than troll-sized.


    More to the point, it felt a lot more lived-in. A lot more alive. Most of my apartment was kept neat and orderly simply because I was hardly using any of the stuff in it. Here, the rooms were full of the kind of clutter that comes from everyday life: two dirty plates on the coffee table, a stack of cans in the dining room, a solitary shoe inexplicably sitting in the middle of the lounge. There was activity here.


    ¡°Nice place,¡± I said, meaning it.


    ¡°It¡¯s an attic,¡± Alec said.


    ¡°It¡¯s our attic,¡± Lisa replied, saving me from thinking up a reply, ¡°and that means yours too, Taylor. This is the team¡¯s space, for now, and you¡¯re part of the team.¡±


    Brian disappeared off into the kitchen, while Alec slumped down onto one of the couches, his head at one end and his feet at the other. Lisa gestured me over to the other couch, and I sat at the opposite end to her. It was too small for me, of course, so I stretched out my legs rather than risk looking like I was trying to hunch in on myself.


    ¡°The rooms,¡± Lisa said, waving her hand at the corridor. ¡°On the left, there¡¯s Alec¡¯s room, the bathroom, and mine. On the right, Brian¡¯s, Rachel¡¯s room that she doesn¡¯t use, and the storage cupboard. Mine and Alec¡¯s rooms are doing double-duty as our magical workplaces, which is why we want to get our own places eventually.¡±


    She paused, looking at Alec, who nodded.


    ¡°You can take Rachel¡¯s room,¡± she said to me. ¡°She likes to sleep in her workshop.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t have to do that for me,¡± I told her, taken aback. ¡°I have my own place.¡±


    Lisa made a pained face. ¡°Can you take the room anyway? It¡¯d be a lot better if you had your own space here.¡±


    Alec must have spotted my confusion. ¡°Brian has his own apartment,¡± he explained, ¡°and he was pretty clear he didn¡¯t need a room, but after he ruined a perfectly good couch he came around to the idea of having a bed here just in case.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯ll also give you somewhere to work that¡¯s closer than a phone call, so I can pop in and say hello,¡± Lisa smiled.


    ¡°Just so you know, I¡¯m not helping you carry any of your gear upstairs,¡± Alec said, and Lisa gave me a pointed look.


    ¡°Um,¡± I started, before forcing myself to continue. ¡°Gear isn¡¯t really a factor. I¡¯m a Technomancer. I probably will need to buy a bigger bed, though, if the one in there was meant for Rachel. And maybe some other things.¡±


    Lisa nodded, while Alec leant up in his seat, looking more intrigued than I¡¯d ever seen him.


    ¡°Technomancer?¡± He grinned. ¡°You feel an urge to crash the whole city, just let me know. I¡¯d like to watch.¡±


    I shrank into my seat, though I couldn¡¯t shrink far.


    ¡°Don¡¯t believe everything you see on trideo,¡± Lisa said to Alec, even as she nudged my side with her elbow. I chuckled.


    ¡°So,¡± I heard Brian¡¯s voice from the corridor, and turned to look at him. He was leaning against the wall, looking almost entirely sober. ¡°Feel free to hang out here as much as you want, I¡¯m sure Lisa has already offered a room. When you¡¯re not here, keep your commlink on you in case we have a job.¡±


    ¡°Won¡¯t be a problem,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m a Technomancer. My commlink¡¯s in here.¡± I tapped the side of my head.


    ¡°Huh,¡± Brian stopped and blinked. ¡°Well, that¡¯s useful. Regardless, I¡¯m heading home for the night. You kids have fun.¡±


    Alec lifted up an arm to flip him off, but otherwise didn¡¯t move. I raised a hand to wave him goodbye, only to hold it up in their air like an idiot for a couple of seconds before lowering it again. I don¡¯t know if it was the size difference or just how effortless they made it all look, but I still didn¡¯t feel like I fit in.


    ¡°I should probably head back too,¡± I said to Lisa once Brian had disappeared down the stairs.


    ¡°On foot?¡± she asked. ¡°Without a gun? This isn¡¯t the best neighbourhood.¡±


    I opened my mouth to reply, then paused as I was hit by creeping dread. I¡¯d been so caught up in the moment that I¡¯d forgotten there were perfectly good reasons to stay locked up in my apartment for months.


    I smiled, awkwardly and without feeling. ¡°Guess I¡¯ll be taking that bed after all.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll grab some spare bedding,¡± Lisa said, rising from the couch. ¡°Come find me tomorrow. We¡¯ll go shopping for the essentials, and you can spend some of your ill-gotten gains.¡±


    Fatigue was starting to set in, so I didn¡¯t comment as Lisa handed me a duvet and a pillow and showed me into a fairly cramped space, by my standards.


    Sleep didn¡¯t come easy. It wouldn¡¯t have come easy regardless, given that I had to curl up just to fit on the human-sized bed, but what really kept me up was the realisation that this was the first night I¡¯d spent away from home in five years, and that I was spending it in the base of a team of professional mercenaries. Mercenaries I¡¯d just joined.


    If it wasn¡¯t for the beer in my system, I doubt I¡¯d have fallen asleep at all.


    The next morning, I woke up to the smell of cooked bacon and stepped into the corridor to see Lisa upending a carrier bag of paper-wrapped rolls onto the table, then setting down a carry tray of three cups of coffee only a little more gently. Bitch was with her, and she took a seat at the table before opening up one of the rolls and digging into it with gusto.


    ¡°Is one of those for me?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Of course,¡± Lisa said. ¡°The soykaf, too. I¡¯ve got my own cafeti¨¨re.¡±


    I sat down side-on, as I couldn¡¯t comfortably fit my knees under the table, unwrapped the roll and enjoyed a piping-hot mouthful of egg, bacon and ketchup.


    ¡°Ah,¡± Lisa sighed as she sat down. ¡°Sorry. I guess we can buy a second table?¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t bother,¡± I waved her concerns off. ¡°I¡¯d much rather squeeze onto this one than get exiled to the corner.¡±


    ¡°Fair enough,¡± Lisa said with a shrug. ¡°Anyway, today I figure you and I could do a little shopping.¡±


    ¡°What?¡± I snorted. ¡°Clothes stores and girl talk, that sort of thing?¡±


    ¡°Not quite,¡± she smiled. ¡°You need a gun and some gear to wear in the field¡­ but you could also do with upgrading your wardrobe while you¡¯re at it.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong with my wardrobe?¡± I asked, defensively.


    ¡°Besides the fact it¡¯s the same stuff you wore yesterday?¡± Lisa pointed out. ¡°Nothing, really. It¡¯s just very¡­ you.¡±


    ¡°Thanks, Lisa,¡± I drawled, though it did hurt to hear. ¡°I really needed that.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re a cautious person,¡± Lisa explained. ¡°It¡¯s a good quality, and one the team didn¡¯t have before.¡±


    ¡°Brian¡¯s cautious,¡± I pointed out, but Lisa shook her head.


    ¡°Brian¡¯s pragmatic ¨C professional ¨C but that¡¯s not the same as cautious. He¡¯s been a hired gun almost since he was old enough to hold one, and that can colour his perceptions sometimes. If he¡¯s taken a risk a thousand times before, he wouldn¡¯t think twice before taking it again. Similarly, his red lines are redder than red because he¡¯s so used to working within those rules. He takes a lot for granted.¡±


    I sighed, leaning back in my seat as I took the lid off the soykaf cup and started sipping at the piping hot beverage. Soymilk and sweetener. How fancy.


    ¡°Go on then. Psychoanalyse me.¡± I could have sworn I saw the corners of Rachel¡¯s mouth curl up.


    ¡°Well, since you asked,¡± Lisa seized the invitation with an entirely self-satisfied grin. ¡°You¡¯re observant, detail-oriented and focused. From the moment you first met us you started digging for information, and if we¡¯d given you a reason to use that information then I know you¡¯d have struck swiftly and decisively.¡±


    She must have caught the look on my face, because she added ¡°that¡¯s something we share. Neither of us can resist pulling at a good secret. But it¡¯s a strength and a flaw.¡±


    ¡°Uh huh. And that ties into my clothes how, exactly?¡±


    ¡°In cyberspace, you hid yourself away behind eye-catching personas that were just as much an enigma as you were: chitin plates made to look like skin, spiders crawling in and out of a robe. You were enigmatic in a way that drew the eye and disguised yourself, but right now you¡¯re wearing your personality on your sleeve even while you¡¯re trying to do the opposite. Muted colours, loose fits, full coverage. You¡¯re not trying to define your identity, or fit into some clique. You¡¯re trying to hide, and you¡¯re screaming that to the world.¡±


    ¡°And you want to change that.¡±


    ¡°Hiding isn¡¯t ever going to work. I¡¯m sorry, Taylor, but you¡¯re eight feet tall and grey. More than that, I don¡¯t know how you got rid of Bakuda, but I¡¯ve heard of her reputation and she¡¯s one nasty bitch. I¡¯m interested to see what other feats you can manage if I can coax you out of your shell.¡±


    I sighed. ¡°Alright, fine. But I¡¯m not going crazy; I¡¯ve got rent to pay.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll take my victories where I can find them,¡± she exclaimed, before turning to Rachel. ¡°Hey Rache, want to come to the market with us? We could use a lift.¡±


    I presumed she¡¯d refuse outright, but instead she took the last bite of her roll and stood up, her cybernetic eyes shifting as the lenses changed focus.


    ¡°Sure,¡± she said. ¡°Need to get new parts, anyway.¡±


    She started making her way through the corridor, and me and Lisa followed her. As the three of us got into the van ¨C myself in the middle, the pair of them up front ¨C Lisa turned to me and grinned.


    ¡°Well would you look at that. I¡¯ve got you on a girl¡¯s day out after all.¡±


    I looked between her fashionable crop top and Rachel¡¯s grease-stained tanktop, then caught my own horned reflection in the mirror and couldn¡¯t stop myself from laughing.


    ¡°Hey!¡± Rachel slammed a metal fist against the metal roof. ¡°Buckle up back there!¡±

 Persona: 2.02

    It had been years since I¡¯d last travelled this way through the north end of Brockton Bay. I found it hard to keep track of where we were going, as Rachel expertly manoeuvred us through the traffic with a mix of deft turns and sheer intimidation. I knew our destination, and the rough path of how to get there, but the streets themselves had undergone two years of change while I sat in my apartment.


    Still, there were some things that time couldn¡¯t change, some fixtures that remained constant no matter how many waves batter against the shore. The signs might be different, as small businesses and franchises rose and fell, but the streets and the people still looked much the same.


    The cars were generally small and cheap, and our van quickly blended in with whole herds of similar vehicles as drivers and tradesmen hustled to-and-fro. The skies overhead were quiet and overcast, at least until the din of the road was drowned out by the roar of a VTOL aircraft flying overhead on its own business; a Boeing Commuter with an Ares IFF, probably heading for their arcology by the docks. After a point, the road traffic became almost too dense to bear and our progress slowed to a gridlocked crawl before Rachel pulled us off the road into a multi-storey car park so we could continue on foot.


    At one point, Lord Street had run through the entire city, linking it from one end to the other as it curved around the Bay. The city grew up around it, and with that growth the number of vehicles increased. In the end, its four lanes of traffic simply weren¡¯t enough to contain the population of the city, so the city council had agreed to revitalise the city¡¯s road network.


    Spearheaded by its founder, Richard Anders, Medhall had part-funded construction, and thanks to their lobbying the new network had been built according to their designs. It flew over neighbourhoods on elevated roads, but around the city-centre it dropped down closer to the ground level, forming a ring road wall between the corporate brain of the city and its beating heart to the north.


    Consequently, Lord Street had turned from a city-wide thoroughfare into a disconnected series of still-important roads. Neighbourhoods found themselves rebalancing around the changed state of the city, with some prospering and others declining, and whole junctions and major intersections were left practically abandoned, or reclaimed by new growth.


    One of the redundant junctions that had flourished rather than deteriorated had done so because the lack of vehicle traffic opened up new opportunities for pedestrians. Old roads had been cut off from the network, and their wide thoroughfares became rental space for innumerable stalls as enterprising peddlers took advantage of the increased foot traffic.


    In time, it had grown vertically to fill the space, with constructions rising up to fill the gap between flyover junctions and lowered underpasses, creating a three-dimensional bazaar in which just about anything could be bought at a price that wouldn¡¯t cost an arm and a leg. It was a far cry from the boutique stores that lined the more upper-class areas of the city, but it wasn¡¯t completely lawless either. Hired security guards patrolled the space, and the Marche valued the revenue they received from the site too highly to allow any of the other gangs to take root here.


    The city¡¯s Board of Tourism called it the Lord Street Market, but to the residents of the north end it was just ¡®the market.¡¯


    The moment we hit the first stalls, Rachel disappeared into the crowd. I watched her progress as she elbowed her way through the thronging shoppers, her blatant chrome drawing fearful or disgusted looks from most and admiration from a select few.


    The press of people on either side of me was almost suffocating, but I was able to deal with it so long as I focused my attention on the AR features that littered the market ¨C hundreds of signs, price lists, trideo feeds and invasive advirals creeping across the walls, bearing slogans cooked up by some algorithm somewhere.


    ¡°Right then,¡± Lisa said, smacking her palms together gleefully. She was wearing black leggings and a red crop-top, with a black backpack slung over her shoulder. She¡¯d pressed a larger backpack into my hands the moment we¡¯d stepped out of the van, though it had taken me a lot of fiddling to get the straps long enough. ¡°Clothes first.¡±


    ¡°Really?¡± I asked, already weary.


    ¡°Of course! You can walk into a gun shop carrying a bag of clothes, but if you walk into a clothes shop carrying a gun they might get the wrong idea.¡±


    ¡°Fair enough,¡± I chuckled.


    Lisa started making her way through the market with determined certainty, only to stop in her tracks and turn to face me with an awkward expression on her face.


    ¡°Um, the usual places I go to don¡¯t have a great selection of troll-sized stuff. I don¡¯t suppose you know anywhere?¡±


    I shrugged. ¡°It¡¯s been years since I was last here. But I can have a look.¡±


    Tattletale caught my meaning immediately, fishing her AR sunglasses out of her purse and slipping them on just in time to see me tug on the resonance, spinning threads together until a dragonfly sat perched on my finger.


    ¡°That¡¯s surprisingly beautiful,¡± she observed.


    ¡°It¡¯s how I tracked your phone,¡± I said, before turning to the sprite. ¡°Find me a stall that sells clothes to fit trolls.¡±


    It took flight, its wings buzzing as it weaved its way through the market.


    ¡°Do you have to say your commands,¡± Lisa asked, ¡°or can you command it silently?¡±


    I paused. ¡°I can do it silently, but sometimes I talk to them regardless. I didn¡¯t have many people to talk too, I guess, so some living resonance was the next best thing.¡±


    ¡°And you¡¯ve done it all without any electronics whatsoever,¡± Lisa mused.


    ¡°Not a single wire in my head,¡± I smiled. ¡°If you¡¯re looking for the answer to that particular mystery, I¡¯d give up now. Enough people have tried in enough horrible ways that we might as well chalk it up to magic.¡±


    ¡°It could be magic,¡± Lisa said, pointedly, as she leant against the side of a food truck.


    ¡°You¡¯re the last person I¡¯d have expected to say that,¡± I replied. ¡°You¡¯d think a mage would know better.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m being serious,¡± she said, with only a little bit of a pout. ¡°Who says the magic of the sixth world has to be the same as the fourth? Maybe the matrix is some new magic; magic we¡¯re slowly discovering like some long-dead mage discovered how to cast fire from their hands, and like that mage we might have tricked ourselves into thinking we made that fire, rather than calling it from somewhere else. Maybe you¡¯re the shaman of a new astral plane.¡±


    I didn¡¯t know what to say to that, so it was lucky that the dragonfly chose that moment to return, landing on my outstretched finger before I told it to guide us to what it had found.


    We followed the sprite up two flights of stairs and down one, through a built-over car park and underneath an abandoned overpass that now hosted an Aztlan restaurant. In the end, the shop we were looking for was actually found outside, in an old basketball court surrounded by a chain-link fence. A tarpaulin had been attached to that fence at a comfortable eleven feet off the ground, and some of the fencing had been blocked off with boards and corrugated iron sheets to create a more enclosed atmosphere. There was a sign strung over the entrance, with loud yellow letters spelling out ¡°Clothes (For Trolls)¡±


    That no-nonsense message was repeated in the matrix, along with digital price tags attached to each item of clothing. It was a lot cheaper than the stuff I¡¯d occasionally looked at in matrix stores, but I supposed that was because of the combination of delivery costs, online markup, and the lack of a backhand deal with a factory outlet, or a simple ¡°fell-off-a-truck¡± discount.


    Lisa walked through the racks of clothes like she was exploring a whole new world, her contemplative eyes rapidly flicking between me and various items of clothing. The dynamic here was completely reversed from the outside ¨C there were about a dozen trolls in the makeshift shop, as well as the stall¡¯s owner and one employee, and Lisa was the pint-sized outlier.


    Really, I was just glad she seemed largely content to look and let me pick out my own clothes. She just hovered in the background, relying on her presence and neutral gaze to get me to try some more adventurous stuff than I normally would. Only occasionally would she spot something she really liked, and I¡¯d find it pressed into my arms.


    ¡°So should I be looking for anything in particular?¡± I asked, brushing my hand over a rack of sundresses before dismissing them. ¡°I mean, aside from stuff to wear around town?¡±


    ¡°Remember the death glare Brian gave you when you showed up to meet a fixer looking like you¡¯d just rolled out of bed?¡± Lisa asked.


    If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    ¡°I had just rolled out of bed,¡± I pointed out. ¡°I had to stitch my damn brain back together, metaphorically speaking.¡±


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter,¡± Lisa said, ignoring what I had thought was a perfectly valid counterargument. ¡°Probably thirty percent of the job is bullshitting people into thinking you¡¯re better than you are. If you¡¯re meeting a client then you want to put your best face forward. Better than best. Bullshit a little; hide your freshly fried brain behind some mirrorshades and a quick make-up job.¡±


    ¡°Right. So what does a Decker wear to make an impression? I¡¯m not sure I could pull off one of those skintight full-body things they wear in films.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know¡­¡± Lisa said, her head tilted in interest as she looked me up and down, ¡°you¡¯re tall enough to make it work. But I see your point. Maybe an electrochromatic jacket?¡±


    I snorted. ¡°Sure, because I like the idea of being a walking billboard.¡±


    ¡°It doesn¡¯t have to be blatant,¡± she said, as I stepped into the curtained-off changing area at the back of the store. ¡°You try on the street clothes, I¡¯ll have a nose around and see if I can find some good runner gear.¡±


    I looked at myself in the mirror as I changed into a succession of dresses, jeans, tops and a couple of raincoats I¡¯d snagged up from the sale rack. None of them really felt like they fit me, with each drifting a little closer to either Lisa or Brian¡¯s style, but I figured that was the point.


    Periodically, Lisa would appear on the other side of the curtain, judge whatever I was wearing, and hand me some random item of more practical clothing. The first item she brought was a pair of black combat boots that were almost comically oversized in her hands, but that fit me perfectly and were comfortable enough to move in. More importantly, they¡¯d stop me from breaking an ankle if I stumbled on something. Plus, I kind of liked the way they felt like they¡¯d been specifically made for kicking faces in.


    The pants she handed me were aramid-lined, according to the tag, and with their sleek, black texture I could believe it. They were a lot tighter than I¡¯d have picked myself, but felt flexible enough as I did a few experimental stretches, and they definitely matched the boots.


    ¡°They¡¯re a bit tight,¡± I said through the curtain.


    ¡°You have to be bold!¡± Lisa responded, full of cheer.


    ¡°In black?¡± I countered.


    ¡°Black is sexy in the light, and blends into the dark. What¡¯s not to like? Besides, they¡¯re probably stab-proof.¡±


    The black t-shirt she passed me, on the other hand, I absolutely loved. It fit closer than what I¡¯d usually wear, but it wasn¡¯t tight, and the v-neck collar fit easily over my horns. The real appeal of it was the design on the front; a yellow scarab. It wasn¡¯t a perfect match for the one on my mark, but I quickly reached into the resonance and fixed that problem myself.


    ¡°Okay, this I like.¡±


    ¡°See?¡± Lisa replied, smugly. ¡°I know what I¡¯m doing. And, speaking of¡­¡±


    The last item she handed me was a waist-length brown syn-leather jacket with armoured panels not-so discreetly sewn into the lining, making it clear that the jacket was armoured without actually affecting the shape all that much. More to the point, it sang to me in the matrix and I watched with faint amusement as hidden diodes in the seams lit up with electrochromatic light. I shifted the colours until it matched the yellow of the scarab and tried it on, turning to look at myself in the mirror.


    I could hardly recognise myself, but I looked every inch the shadowrunner. I had to admit, Lisa had good taste. I headed straight for the shop¡¯s owner, and walked out of the stall wearing that outfit. In my left hand, I carried my other purchases in bags; several t-shirts, vests and strap tops that had caught my eye, a pair of slacks and a button-up shirt, a couple of pairs of skinny jeans, and even a few dresses.


    ¡°Next is the gun, right?¡± I asked Lisa as we stepped back out into the sun.


    ¡°Yep. And I already know just the place.¡±


    Lisa set off through the maze of stalls, moving through the crowds with effortless grace even as I struggled to keep up in spite of my massively longer legs. Paradoxically, now that my old clothes were stuffed in the bottom of my backpack, I seemed to be drawing a lot less attention from the crowd. People would still stare occasionally, but the wary looks I¡¯d been getting had disappeared entirely.


    I know I wasn¡¯t exactly dressed like the picture of a healthy citizen, but surely I didn¡¯t look that bad?


    I followed Tattletale down three flights of stairs and into an old underpass, where a street had once dropped below ground to pass beneath a much larger road. Said road had apparently been built on top of an old building, as there were still rooms down here that had been freshly exposed by and converted into stalls.


    We were in the back alleys of the market, and it showed. There weren¡¯t any food stalls opportunistically hovering up the tourist trade, and the larger stalls catered to a much more specific clientele. Rather than clothes, electronics or groceries, there was a very obviously magical store next to a salvage shop, an unlicenced cyberware clinic of dubious legality and a specialised store selling decker gear.


    The shop Lisa led me to was conspicuous for its fortifications, even on a street that assigned a much larger value to security than the practically open-air clothes store. Where the other stores had mesh screens serving as windows, the gun shop had plates of flat steel and a security turret that had been embedded into the concrete ceiling of the road above. The sign over the doorway, daubed in blue paint, proudly identified the shop as ¡°Rick¡¯s Guns and Ammo.¡±


    Lisa pushed open the doors with a practiced nonchalance, looking for all the world like she owned the place. I was a lot more hesitant; I¡¯d never been in a gun shop before, and I wasn¡¯t sure what to expect.


    What I got was an interior that placed a similar emphasis on security to the exterior. Two gun turrets on either side of the doorway sat idle, but I could feel the software in their cameras tracking my position. The customers ¨C not that there were any at that moment ¨C stood in a cage, surrounded on all sides by walls of guns, and directly in sight of the ork sitting behind the counter.


    He had to be the palest ork I had ever seen, with a bald head and greasy skin, and his tank top and shorts showed off limbs that were obviously cybernetic replacements. He was in the middle of cleaning a pistol, his metal fingers moving with exacting dexterity as he worked at the mechanism with a small wire brush. He was wearing an AR screen over one eye, and I watched through the matrix as it matched up Lisa¡¯s face with a list of prior clients.


    ¡°Hey, Rick,¡± Lisa greeted him.


    ¡°Tattletale,¡± Rick said, a moment after the software gave him the name. ¡°Grue not with you?¡±


    ¡°Nah, but he¡¯ll probably swing by later,¡± she said. ¡°His rifle got mostly cut in half on the last run.¡±


    Rick sighed, shaking his head. ¡°Is it really too much to ask for you runners to start looking after your damn gear?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re complaining about. More broken guns means more work for you, which means more nuyen.¡±


    ¡°Can¡¯t argue with that,¡± he shrugged his shoulders, the metal moving completely soundlessly. ¡°So,¡± he turned to look at me, ¡°you¡¯ve expanded?¡±


    ¡°Yep,¡± Lisa said, stepping back and reaching up to rest a hand on my shoulder, not-so-subtly pushing me a step forward with all the force of a puppy. ¡°Bug is here to buy her first gun.¡±


    Rick looked me up and down, setting aside his tools and resting his palms on the counter.


    ¡°Let me guess,¡± he said, his tone equal parts weary and sarcastic, ¡°you want the biggest gun I¡¯ve got?¡±


    ¡°No?¡± I replied, uncertainly. ¡°I¡¯m a decker, so really I¡¯m just looking for something for emergencies.¡±


    ¡°Well damn,¡± he leant back, his seat creaking. ¡°Finally, something interesting. You wouldn¡¯t believe how many trolls come in here full of piss and vinegar, asking for a Krime Cannon or a fucking modified Ruhrmetal SF-20.¡±


    ¡°So what do you do?¡± I asked, hesitantly.


    ¡°I stock extra, of course. But it¡¯s boring fucking work.¡±


    He pushed his seat back and stood up, walking across to one of the racks of guns. Most of them were oversized weapons that looked like they belonged mounted on vehicles, but the oversized triggers identified them as weapons made specifically for trolls.


    ¡°For you, I¡¯m thinking you want something more discreet, but with enough stopping power to count,¡± he mumbled to himself as he looked over the rack before dismissing the guns there, dropping down to one knee as he opened up the drawers below the shelf.


    ¡°Slow and accurate isn¡¯t right, because if it¡¯s an emergency gun then accuracy won¡¯t matter half as much as stopping power, or rate of fire¡­¡±


    He grunted, apparently satisfied, and walked back over to the counter before setting down a boxy black weapon with a troll-sized grip.


    ¡°Here. I modified this one months ago, but I haven¡¯t found a buyer yet. The base model is an Ares Executioner, which is technically supposed to be concealable but that¡¯s not going to happen with the new pistol grip. You also lose the stock, but you¡¯re not going to need it. In your hand, it¡¯ll feel like a machine pistol but hit like a submachine gun, because that¡¯s what it is.¡±


    He racked back the slide, looked into the empty magazine housing set just in front of the trigger, and held the pistol out to me grip-first.


    ¡°Go on, see if the grip¡¯s right.¡±


    I grabbed hold of it, looked it over uncertainly, and pointed it around the room a bunch ¨C never at anybody, I knew that much.


    ¡°I¡¯ve got to be honest, I really don¡¯t know what I¡¯m doing here.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll take you out to a shooting range,¡± Lisa said. ¡°The important thing is whether it fits in your hand.¡±


    ¡°Oh. Yeah, it fits fine,¡± I said, handing it back to Rick.


    ¡°Great. A little training and it¡¯ll be second nature to you. As for the cost, I can let you have it for an even nine hundred, and only because there aren¡¯t many other people who¡¯d buy it.¡±


    I looked at Tattletale, who shrugged her shoulders. ¡°It¡¯s not cheap, for a gun,¡± she said, ¡°but it¡¯s the kind of purchase you only need to make once.¡±


    ¡°Alright,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯ll take it.¡±


    ¡°Well all right then,¡± the arms dealer said, ¡°but you¡¯ll be wanting some ammo as well.¡±


    He stepped back from the counter, his metal feet clacking against bare concrete as he opened up another set of cupboards and came back with five black magazine, a carry-case full of ammunition and a holster that looked like it was meant to be strapped to my thigh.


    ¡°Two hundred and forty rounds of regular ammunition, plus a free holster. No mess, no fuss. The magazines might be a little small for your hands, but I don¡¯t have any extended ones in stock for this gun. That¡¯s another four hundred and eighty nuyen.¡±


    Great. Coupled with the clothes, that¡¯s almost two thirds of my cut gone in a single shopping trip.


    ¡°Sure,¡± I murmured, digitally transferring the funds and unceremoniously stuffing gun, magazines and ammunition into the backpack. As I ducked to get my head through the doorway, I let out a long sigh.


    ¡°Well, that¡¯s me cleaned out.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± Lisa said, patting my elbow in commiseration. ¡°I¡¯m sure Faultline is lining up some work for us. She wouldn¡¯t want us looking for another fixer so soon after signing on with her.¡±


    ¡°Here¡¯s hoping,¡± I muttered.

 Persona: 2.03

    Lisa¡¯s prediction proved to be accurate indeed, as the very next day I got a call from Brian saying that he¡¯d received an invitation from Faultline. After my apparently less than stellar first impression, he was very sure to make sure that I knew to dress both smartly and professionally.


    So I opened up my wardrobe and slipped on the clothes I¡¯d bought the day before, covering myself in the aesthetic of a Shadowrunner in the hope that it would make me feel more like one. Slipping my belt through the loops on the top of my holster and wrapping the bottom strap around my thigh was one of the strangest experiences of my life, not least because I kept making eye contact with my old teddy bear that had been left on a shelf in my wardrobe for well over a decade now.


    It felt like a betrayal, of dad at least. I wasn¡¯t sure how mom would have reacted to my career. She¡¯d worked on the other side of the table from time to time, sending out teams of runners for the ORC, and I couldn¡¯t help wondering how she thought of them? Were they just opportunistic mercenaries in her eyes, whose greed could be turned to a progressive cause? Were they themselves non-conformists and rebels, whose criminality was just a reflection of the society they lived in?


    I think she¡¯d have given them more agency than that. They could be saints or sinners, depending on what they did and who they did it for. I just hope she¡¯d understand. They seem like good people. I think.


    Walking through the city with a gun at my side felt a lot more normal than I was expecting it to, but then again it wasn¡¯t like I¡¯d left home much anyway over the past few years. Out here, I didn¡¯t have any memories for it to distort. Instead I watched with a sort of professional detachment as all the nervous looks returned, but at least this time I knew it was as much to do with me being armed as it was me being a troll.


    They were waiting for me in the workshop below the loft. Brian and Rachel were dressed much the same as they had done during the raid, though both had left their body armour behind and Brian was wearing a collared shirt beneath his jacket. Regent¡¯s clothes were all different, but the theme was largely the same, while Lisa seemed to be going for a shamanic private detective look, with a collared shirt and slacks underneath a long trenchcoat, and shamanic totems on layered necklaces.


    Grue was armed, but not excessively so. Whether or not he¡¯d managed to buy a replacement for his rifle, he¡¯d only brought his smart pistol to the meeting. He wore it in a thigh holster, rather than tucked away in his jacket. Rachel had a drone perched on her shoulder ¨C the Crawler she¡¯d brought but not used on the last job ¨C and while Regent or Lisa weren¡¯t obviously armed, they were obviously mages. Which was just as good.


    More to the point, all of us looked like we fit. Even Alec¡¯s style broadly matched with the rest of the group. We looked like a team, and I straightened up a little at the thought. It felt good.


    ¡°Is that an Executioner?¡± Grue asked, with disbelief in his voice.


    I shrugged my shoulders. ¡°It¡¯s more proportional than a regular pistol, and I got it at a discount. So, what do you think? Do I look like a Shadowrunner?¡±


    Immediately I regretted giving him the excuse to look me up and down, and my nerves came rushing back all at once. After a moment, though, he simply nodded.


    ¡°You do. Maybe not a decker, but much better than before.¡±


    ¡°Oh?¡± I smirked. ¡°And what does a decker look like, exactly?¡±


    ¡°Fair enough,¡± he nodded. ¡°Regardless, this is your first meeting with a client, so keep calm, pay attention and don¡¯t show any weakness. He¡¯ll sniff it right out and take it out of our paycheck.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve got it,¡± I said back, a little tense. Grue paused for a moment, looking at me, and nodded.


    ¡°Then let¡¯s go.¡±


    With the full team in Bitch¡¯s van, it was more than a little cramped. Grue rode up front with her, and I was grateful for that. The two of us were easily the biggest people on the team, after all. Tattletale and Regent were tiny in comparison, and Regent only made one crack about how much space I took up.


    We travelled south west through the north end of the city, skirting around the periphery of the elevated ring-road that separated downtown from the rest of Brockton Bay. West of downtown, equally placed to hoover up traffic from the corporate heart of the city and the vast swathes of residential districts to the north, was a long stretch of bars, clubs, restaurants and anywhere else people might go to let their hair down. It hugged the campus of Brockton Bay University ¨C just barely far enough to maintain plausible deniability ¨C and from what I¡¯d heard more than a few students paid for their digs with evening shifts.


    We sped quickly through the red light district, its brothels, strip clubs, Simsense dens and dollhouses shut up for the day, before passing into the broader market of nightclubs and bars that took up most of Constitution Hill, the hill itself rising up in front of us in endless tiers of rooftop bars and gardens.


    It was a part of the city I had never been to before. Maybe, if things had gone differently, I¡¯d have gone to college like I knew mom always wanted me to, and I¡¯d have come down here with whatever friends I managed to make. As it was, this part of the city was utterly alien to me, and I had no idea what to expect from the club itself.


    While almost everywhere was quiet at this time of day ¨C the shutters pulled down over their doors, their signs unlit and their matrix hosts quiet ¨C Palanquin seemed somehow even quieter than most. It didn¡¯t stand out, with a bare brick front and a sign that was about as simple as signs get. I found myself wondering if drew popularity from word of mouth, or if it deliberately cultivated the quiet to better serve its secondary purpose as a fixer¡¯s base of operations.


    Either way, Rachel pulled to a halt right at the front doors and, once we¡¯d all disembarked, turned her van over to the autopilot; to burn fuel circling the block rather than burn money on exorbitant parking charges.


    This early in the day, there was no line to get into the club, but there was still a burly ork bouncer wearing a dark blue turtleneck under his suit jacket, and with a faint string of data linking his concealed smartgun to his black sunglasses.


    I watched the matrix as an algorithm inside the building drew on the feed from those glasses, before sending back a response. Wordlessly, the bouncer stepped aside and gestured for us to enter.


    Grue led the way, equally wordlessly, but I mumbled ¡°thanks¡± to the bouncer before realising I might have made some sort of Shadowrunner faux pas by not being cool and aloof.


    The main floor of the club was wide and expansive, with an open dance floor gathered around a raised stage. The dance floor was, in turn, surrounded by a raised area ¨C level with the stage ¨C that held two bars, quieter areas with a few couches and booths, and the doors to the bathrooms.


    The lights were up, but I could see a whole panopticon of stage lighting raised on gantries over the dance floor. I couldn¡¯t even begin to picture what it would look like when packed full of people every evening, with the lights sending out the strobing patterns I could see burned into their programming.


    At one of the bars, staff members were busy restocking the shelves for the evening. Each of them wore crisp white shirts, the men in trousers and the women in pencil skirts, though that wasn¡¯t a universal rule in either case. It was more of a dress code than a proper uniform, but it did add a lot to the professionalism of the place. If it weren¡¯t for the fact that there was another team of obvious Shadowrunners hanging out on some of the couches, I¡¯d have felt out of place.


    There was a woman standing in front of the bar, her outfit much the same as the other staff but of a noticeably higher quality. As we entered, she turned from where she had been directing the her colleagues to walk over to us. She was a brunette human with a freckled face and the nametag pinned to her shirt read ¡®Emily: Duty Manager.¡¯


    ¡°You must be Grue. Welcome to Palanquin. You¡¯re a little early, so just grab a seat somewhere and I¡¯ll come and get you when Mr Johnson is ready for you. In the meantime, can I get any of you something to drink?¡±


    ¡°Not while we¡¯re working, thanks,¡± Grue replied for us.


    ¡°Suit yourself,¡± Emily shrugged, before heading back over to the bar.


    We claimed a few couches for ourselves, and Regent immediately kicked his feet up onto the low coffee table in front of his. I sat next to Lisa, stretching my legs out in front of me. The club had a few troll-sized couches scattered about the small seating area, but that would mean sitting apart from the others.


    ¡°So,¡± Tattletale began, ¡°do you think this is a ploy?¡±


    ¡°What is?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Making us wait.¡±


    ¡°I think you¡¯re overthinking things,¡± Grue replied.


    The two fell into conversation, and I found myself looking around the club. Not at its physical presence, but at its AR features. There was the usual slew of fluctuating holographic price tags, review boards, and dormant special effects programmes for the stage, but something seemed off about them.


    They looked a lot more organic than I¡¯d come to expect from store-bought programmes, but nor did they have the rigid lines and careful tuning of something custom-made by a single decker.


    I was contemplating whether to dive into the matrix and poke around some more when my attention was drawn back to the real world as Grue locked eyes with a woman who had just walked through the front door.


    ¡°Faultline,¡± he murmured, apparently for my benefit.


    Our fixer appeared to be a human woman in her late twenties, with black hair tied back in a ponytail and a severe expression on her face. She looked like she¡¯d just come back from some corporate meeting; dressed in a sharp grey suit jacket and slacks.


    Her appearance was also a carefully sculpted fa?ade of bioware to hide the extent of her modifications. I could see tightly-coiled cyberware bristling beneath her skin, full of potential energy.


    She ignored us at first, walking over to talk to Emily. At the same time, I could see a constant stream of information flowing into her implanted commlink, but it was encrypted and I wasn¡¯t about to risk angering her with a failed attempt to crack the encryption.


    Once she¡¯d finished her business with the duty manager, Faultline turned and strode across the room towards us, the manager in tow. I watched as Grue stiffened in his seat, but the others seemed largely indifferent. Tattletale even seemed to relax more, leaning back and throwing her arm over the back of the couch. As for me, I tried my best not to wilt under her appraising stare.


    ¡°Mr Johnson has just arrived via the VIP entrance,¡± she informed us, matter of factly. ¡°I¡¯m sure you¡¯re all familiar with the protocol for this sort of meet.¡±


    ¡°We aren¡¯t amateurs,¡± Grue said.


    ¡°You aren¡¯t. Well, most of you aren¡¯t.¡± She turned to look at me. ¡°Welcome to the game, Bug. I have high expectations, and that goes for the rest of you as well. Clients come to me because they know I have quality people who do quality work. Shadowrunners come to me because they know I have quality clients. It¡¯s a mutually beneficial relationship, and I work hard to keep it beneficial.¡±


    ¡°This job is another test, isn¡¯t it?¡± Tattletale asked, as Grue¡¯s eyes widened at the interruption.


    ¡°Of course it is,¡± Faultline replied with a smile that didn¡¯t reach her eyes. ¡°I¡¯ll leave it up to you to decide what exactly I¡¯m testing.¡±


    She turned and made her way back across the room, leaving her employee behind.


    ¡°Mr Johnson is ready for you now,¡± Emily said. ¡°Please follow me.¡±


    Grue led the way as we followed her past a bouncer ¨C who unlatched a velvet rope blocking off a set of stairs ¨C and up into what seemed to be a VIP area located on a mezzanine floor above the main club, with one-way windows looking down past the lighting rig. It was a much more intimate space than the floor below, with secluded booths and couches, and the walls seemed to absorb the sound rather than echo it.


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    The booths were more than wide enough for a team of Shadowrunners plus one extra, and two of the ones in the room were hidden away behind drawn curtains, as other teams on Palanquin¡¯s roster negotiated with their own clients.


    Apart from us, only one other person was visible in the room. ¡®Mr Johnson¡¯ was actually a young human woman ¨C maybe a few years older than me ¨C with platinum blonde hair. She was the archetypal kind of beautiful, the sort of person who was probably a cheerleader in high school, and who probably didn¡¯t go to Winslow if her expensive suit was any indication. It was jet black, trimmed with gold, and even though she was tall enough not to need to, she was wearing heels.


    She blinked as she caught sight of us, before very deliberately schooling her face into a neutral expression.


    ¡°Mr Johnson,¡± Grue greeted her, entirely deadpan.


    The client smiled, flashing her teeth.


    ¡°I¡¯d prefer ¡®Ms Johnson.¡¯ I¡¯m sure you enjoy your cloak and dagger traditions, but we have to move with the times. Please, sit down.¡±


    Grue chuckled, but it sounded fake. Like he knew it was expected of him, and he was trying to make things go smoother. I stood aside as the others filed into the booth, so I wouldn¡¯t have to cram my legs underneath the table, then sat on the end as Emily closed the curtain, sealing us off from the rest of the club and immediately giving the space a small and intimate feel that was maybe only a hair¡¯s breadth away from being cramped.


    ¡°So,¡± Grue began, ¡°how can we help you?¡±


    ¡°I need you to find someone,¡± Ms Johnson responded, ¡°and then snatch them.¡±


    ¡°I see,¡± Grue said, even as Tattletale leant forward in her seat. ¡°I assume they won¡¯t come willingly?¡±


    ¡°Not if they have any sense,¡± Ms Johnson said with an almost bloodthirsty grin. ¡°I assume that won¡¯t be a problem?¡±


    ¡°Not on principle, no. Who¡¯s the target?¡±


    ¡°A waste of space called Andrew Garcia,¡± she said venomously, even as I discreetly twisted my fingers to call up a messenger sprite. ¡°He¡¯s Chosen filth, or he was. He disappeared right as the cops were closing in on him, and he hasn¡¯t been seen since. This would be seven years ago, now.¡±


    I subtly twisted the fingers of my left hand, pulling on the ambient resonance flowing through the club. It was slower, clumsier, than when I was doing it in the Matrix ¨C the physical limitations of my meat fingers a poor substitute for those of my persona ¨C but I was still able to slowly begin weaving a messenger sprite.


    ¡°A lot can happen in seven years,¡± Grue said, a little hesitantly. ¡°He could have left the city, for one.¡±


    ¡°In which case you tell me and I give you a quarter of your fee for wasting your time.¡±


    ¡°Half.¡± Grue responded, firmly.


    ¡°I¡¯m paying you to find and kidnap a gangbanger. If you can¡¯t do either of those, twenty five percent is a very generous consolation prize.¡±


    The sprite took shape, perched on top of my knuckles, and I found myself eye-to-eye not with the oversized dragonfly I¡¯d expected, but with a jet black crow. It stared up at me with black beady eyes and I blinked, surprised. I could still feel my connection to it, and I knew it would obey my commands, but this was¡­ weird.


    ¡°Perhaps,¡± Grue conceded, ¡°but that depends on what it¡¯s twenty five percent of.¡±


    The crow tilted its head and cawed, leaping off my hand to hop around the table, then flapping its wings once to pounce up onto the client¡¯s shoulder before finally perching on her head. It looked at me like it was waiting for something, its black wings flickering with pent-up energy. Hesitantly, I reached out and forced my will onto the crow, sending it to root through my mother¡¯s files, back in my apartment. It let out a last caw, before spreading its wings and flying off in a digital blur.


    ¡°I understand Nuyen is preferable. Twenty thousand. I¡¯ve already paid your Fixer¡¯s fee, so that money¡¯s all yours.¡±


    Split five ways, that¡¯s four thousand. A good pay out by my standards, but not much more than the three thousand we got for the last job.


    ¡°There are a lot of unknowns in this job,¡± Grue said, leaning forward. ¡°The most important is that we don¡¯t yet know where Mr Garcia is now, or what sort of opposition we¡¯ll face while extracting him. Twenty thousand isn¡¯t enough for an unknown.¡±


    The client laughed. ¡°If you¡¯re trying to put a number to a fantasy, you can¡¯t. It could be more dangerous than you¡¯re expecting, but it could just as easily be a cakewalk. Twenty thousand is what I¡¯m offering.¡±


    Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tattletale growing increasingly more irritated, though she was doing a good job at hiding the expression. She looked like she wanted to jump in and say something, but that went against what Grue had told me of how these things usually went down. The team leader was the one who handled negotiations, and since Grue had the most experience, that meant him.


    Instead, I saw her discreetly yet forcefully stamp Grue¡¯s foot. Since her boots were as fashionable as they were practical, and his were heavy steel-toed things, Grue didn¡¯t show any visible reaction, and simply kept talking.


    ¡°Twenty thousand is what we¡¯d charge for a low to medium risk job with known quantities. If you want us to step into the unknown, you need to sweeten the pot. Even a little.¡±


    Suddenly, I felt a stream of data linking me to my apartment, as the messenger crow constructed a link between me and mom¡¯s files. Her Ork Rights Commission files, rather. I was pretty sure I wouldn¡¯t find anything useful in her university files. More importantly, those files also held her password for the ORC¡¯s systems, a password that ¨C as far as I was aware ¨C had never been removed or reset. From across the city, I sent another instruction to the courier, and it took those codes off on another journey.


    Ms Johnson sighed, leaning back in her chair and checking her fingernails rather than continuing to make eye contact with Grue. Then she seemed to firm up, meeting his gaze again.


    ¡°I can do twenty-one thousand.¡±


    Four thousand two hundred. Not a massive increase, but Grue seems satisfied.


    ¡°Acceptable. Now, we need to discuss the details. Tattletale and Bug are our best investigators,¡± he nodded to us, and Ms Johnson¡¯s eyes immediately looked the pair of us up and down. They spent a lot longer on Lisa than on me, but I supposed that was because she was obviously a mage. I didn¡¯t exactly scream ¡®hacker,¡¯ and if our client was the type to see stereotypes then she¡¯d have a hard time making the connection. ¡°I¡¯m sure they have questions.¡±


    ¡°If you have any information on Mr Garcia,¡± Tattletale leapt at the invitation to speak, ¡°no matter how small, we can make use of it. DNA samples would be ideal, but nothing¡¯s ever that easy.¡±


    Mom¡¯s files had four different references to three different Andrew Garcia¡¯s, but one of those was for a case in Baltimore she¡¯d packaged into an awareness presentation. The incoming stream of data from the ORC was more informative; they kept a somewhat comprehensive list of Chosen members, as well as a more comprehensive list of former members. Six hits, two casual members and four with a much longer list of crimes. Only one of them also appeared on the active list.


    ¡°There are three Chosen members named Andrew Garcia who¡¯ve dropped off the grid or out of the gang,¡± I said, only realising a moment later that I¡¯d unintentionally cut Ms Johnson off. ¡°Which one are you referring to?¡±


    ¡°Okay¡­¡± the client said, hesitantly. ¡°I¡¯m feeling a lot more confident about this than I was when I walked in here. Um, he was a person of interest in the firebombing of a med-centre in Sixty-Three. February, I think?¡±


    ¡°Got him,¡± I said, flagging the right guy and having the crow copy his file to mom¡¯s computer.


    Weird. He¡¯s one of the ones without much of a record, and the med-centre bombing wasn¡¯t the most notable crime linked to him.


    ¡°You know where he is?¡± she asked, her cool having vanished beneath naked shock.


    ¡°What?¡± I asked, puzzled. ¡°Oh, no, sorry. I know which guy you¡¯re talking about. Breadcrumbs, that¡¯s all I¡¯ve got. Still have to follow the trail.¡±


    ¡°Oh,¡± she replied, slumping back in her seat. ¡°Well, I can see you have this all well in hand. If you¡¯re happy to proceed,¡± she said, looking at Grue, ¡°I¡¯ll be happy to turn over the funds when you¡¯re done.¡±


    ¡°What should we do when we have the guy?¡± Grue asked.


    ¡°Just call me,¡± she replied. ¡°I¡¯ll arrange a handover and wire you the money.¡±


    ¡°Then I¡¯d say you have a deal,¡± he said, stretching his arm across the table.


    As she reciprocated, I could see that ¨C while Grue¡¯s hand still dwarfed hers ¨C our client was surprisingly athletic in her own right. I could see taut muscles beneath the lines of her suit as she shook his hand, before she stood up, brushed the curtain outside, and left the VIP room with what looked like a slight spring in her step.


    We watched in silence as she left, before Tattletale leant over me, pulled the curtain back shut, and immediately leant forward, resting her elbows on the table with her fingers steepled in front of her.


    ¡°Anyone else get the feeling she¡¯s hiding something from us?¡± she asked.


    ¡°It¡¯s not our business,¡± Grue said. ¡°All we have to do is find Andrew Garcia, and thanks to Bug we have a lead.¡±


    ¡°It is our business if she screws us over,¡± Tattletale pointed out. ¡°Seriously, how old was she? Twenty two, maybe? Way too young to be running anything serious, but just the right age to be a patsy for someone else.¡±


    For my part, I thought Tattletale had a point. Ms Johnson was an enigma, but more to the point there was a lot about her that didn¡¯t add up. My instincts were screaming at me to dig deeper, to untangle the web and figure this out. Why go into a situation without knowing all the variables?


    ¡°That¡¯s not how it¡¯s done, Tattletale,¡± Grue said, wearily. ¡°Damnit, we¡¯ve talked about this.¡±


    I stood up.


    ¡°I¡¯m going to go use the bathroom real quick,¡± I said. ¡°Then I¡¯ll tell you what I¡¯ve dug up so far.¡±


    ¡°Sure,¡± Grue said. ¡°Well done, by the way. An impression like that will work wonders for our rep.¡±


    I nodded, looking around the VIP area before spotting a door tucked away in the corner, with WC written on a metal plaque. Inside, the VIP bathroom certainly lived up to its name, with marble countertops and each stall being an individual room in its own right, with proper walls rather than flimsy boards. They didn¡¯t even have any graffiti on them.


    I locked the door, dropped the lid on the toilet seat, sat down and let meatspace disappear as my body slumped bonelessly against the wall.


    I flung my persona down, passing through the floor and into the main room of the club. A digital bouncer was floating over the dance floor, a piece of security ICE given a facelift to match the space, but since I wasn¡¯t doing anything against the rules it paid me no mind.


    There were a few devices in the room, but only one icon was on its way out of the door. A commlink, almost certainly belonging to Ms Johnson herself. I wated until she¡¯d left the club¡¯s host and moved out onto the public grid, then subtly peeled away the walls of her commlink. A few moments later, and I pulled my matrix avatar back, satisfied.


    What I wasn¡¯t expecting was to find a woman standing in the bathroom, looking down at where my body lay in meatspace. She appeared to be a blonde elf, maybe a couple of years younger than me, wearing a thin and willowy dress that disappeared into labyrinthine patterns of digital fractals. She also appeared to be a persona, but there was a tangibility to her presence that made me think twice. She seemed almost weaved into the environment.


    And then there was the crow perched on her shoulder, looking to all the world like it was whispering into her ear. She turned as I drifted back into the room, and I was struck by a singularly unique sense of d¨¦j¨¤ vu.


    It¡¯s like looking in the mirror.


    It was a paradoxical thought ¨C we couldn¡¯t have looked further apart ¨C but it was true all the same. Beyond the cosmetic differences of our personas, we both interacted with the world in the same way.


    ¡°Hello,¡± she said, smiling, ¡°I am Labyrinth. It¡¯s nice to meet you.¡±


    I felt a handful of datastreams caress my form, spiralling down from the ceiling. She had complete control of this environment, and I was a guest in her home. That was the digital equivalent of a handshake, for people whose hands feel rigid and bound by physical limitations.


    ¡°I¡¯ve never met another Technomancer before,¡± I said, almost wondrously.


    ¡°I have,¡± she replied, with a strange melancholy to the resonance that made up her words. ¡°But it has been a long time.¡±


    ¡°Do you work for Faultline?¡± I asked, and Labyrinth nodded.


    ¡°I do. I keep her domain safe, and provide her with information. It is a small price to pay for safety and a domain of my own.¡±


    ¡°Information¡­¡± I said. ¡°So you¡¯ll tell her I¡¯m a Technomancer?¡±


    ¡°I will,¡± she replied. ¡°You intrigue her, though not as much as Tattletale does.¡±


    ¡°Tattletale?¡± I asked, confused.


    ¡°She has a secret, and she guards it well. Faultline does not like secrets¡± ¨C her persona seemed to light up with amusement ¨C ¡°and neither do you, it seems.¡±


    I didn¡¯t say anything, but I felt more than a little sheepish that I¡¯d been caught.


    ¡°Be careful,¡± Labyrinth said, her presence was fading, but there was a weight to her words. An age beyond her youthful appearance. ¡°The world is a beautiful place, and the deeper you look the more beautiful it gets. But it is not without its dangers.¡±


    And with that, she was gone. I pulled myself back from the matrix, stood up on shaky legs and pushed open the stall to find Tattletale leaning against the sinks.


    ¡°So?¡± she asked, smugly.


    ¡°You didn¡¯t tell Brian you needed to use the bathroom as well, right?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I¡¯m ¡®getting drinks,¡¯¡± she replied, punctuating the words with air quotes.


    ¡°Her name is Victoria Dallon,¡± I stated. ¡°What she didn¡¯t mention is that Andrew Garcia disappeared after murdering Jess Montrose, an investigative journalist and an elf, who¡¯d published a piece on the Chosen. Won an award, even. Her death caused a public outcry, a few riots, but Garcia disappeared before anything could come of the case.¡±


    ¡°So what¡¯s the connection to Miss Dallon?¡±


    ¡°Montrose was in a long-term relationship with Dallon¡¯s uncle, though the two never married. ¡®Ms Johnson¡¯ referred to her as ¡®auntie Jess¡¯ on her social media.¡±


    Tattletale nodded, seemingly satisfied. ¡°Nothing to worry about, then. And, as a bonus, we get to feel all good inside while we¡¯re helping her live out her revenge fantasy.¡±


    ¡°Maybe Grue had a point,¡± I replied. ¡°That really didn¡¯t seem like it was worth investigating.¡±


    ¡°But it could have been,¡± Tattletale countered. ¡°Look, Grue¡¯s got more experience than any of us, but it¡¯s a very specific kind of experience, and it leads him to think in specific ways. He¡¯s used to working on his own and handling the negotiations himself, but I know for a fact that if I¡¯d handled it then I could easily have squeezed twenty-five out of her by asking her to cough up more if we face armed resistance. Make the uncertainty an asset, rather than a detriment.¡±


    ¡°Speaking from experience?¡± I asked, thinking about what Labyrinth had said.


    ¡°I spent a while working as a con artist,¡± Tattletale replied, proudly. ¡°I¡¯ve got pretty good at reading people.¡±


    ¡°That sounded more like corporate speak than con artistry,¡± I said, uncertainly, Labyrinth¡¯s words still fresh in my mind.


    ¡°Oh, Bug.¡± She smiled, warmly. ¡°That¡¯s the secret; they¡¯re the same thing. Now, before we go back, do you have anything on Garcia?¡±


    ¡°A lot of posts on human supremacist boards,¡± I replied. ¡°I was going to suggest we pull in his old associates and see if any of them know where he went off to.¡±


    Tattletale nodded. ¡°Now you¡¯re thinking like a Shadowrunner. Come on, the others are waiting. Let¡¯s get back to it.¡±

 Persona: 2.04

    The sky was lit by a thousand fires, mingling with the light of the setting sun to cast a blood-red glow over the plains beyond the city walls. The city was under siege, the sloped and angled walls surrounded by the besiegers own earthen trenches as cannons ceaselessly pounded away at the stone and magical artillery arced through the sky, momentarily overwhelming the red glare with brilliant light.


    From the city¡¯s fleches and bastions, the defenders fired back as best they could, and the ceaseless barrage had churned the land between the two sets of fortifications into a swampy quagmire, full of ghouls feasting on the quiet dead, while the unquiet dead rose as zombies, banshees and ghosts.


    Warriors strode amongst that hellish landscape, wearing a myriad of colours and standards but ultimately in the service of either the city or the besieging army. They descended into that man-made swamp to cull the number of ghouls, to escort sapping parties as they pushed the lines forward, even to raid their enemy¡¯s camps in hopes of hastening or delaying the fall of the city.


    And that was where the ambience broke down, because no matter how realistic you make your game¡¯s world, players will always break that illusion. For one, they were far too clean. For two, they were wearing all the wrong outfits. For three, they were reliant on UI interfaces and floating numbers that got in the way of the visuals. But no game is built purely for the satisfaction of the developers, and ultimately it was the player¡¯s sandbox to roam.


    Warring Leagues was a fairly typical VRMMO, conceived by some captive creatives on an exclusive contract and given life by a veritable army of programmers, artists, designers, play-testers, marketers and random hangers-on in a Horizon-owned studio, sealed away from the outside world in a constant environment of crunch and deadlines.


    The setting might well have been picked by throwing a peg at a dartboard, but it was popular enough, with a player base in the low millions. For every decker using VR as a tool to enable their hacking, there were thousands more who used lower-power cyberdecks for this exact sort of entertainment. Rather than cranking up their device¡¯s processing power to boost hacking, they¡¯d focus on enhancing their auditory and visual senses until their virtual playground almost felt more real to them than meatspace itself ¨C chasing the impossible sensation I felt every day.


    I stood atop a dismounted gun, a great bombard cut loose from its carriage and half-buried in a muddy rise. Its surface bore intricately detailed engravings depicting battle scenes from its nation¡¯s illustrious past, with the words ¡°the final argument of kings and men¡± wrapped in a loop around the muzzle in cursive script. The metal giving way to rust, the richly-worked engravings, even the past those engravings depicted were all the product of a team of designers and artists, ordered to pursue greater and greater realism as a mere marketing tool, while the player ignored their efforts as she slaughtered a party of scouts in the shadow of the gun.


    The letters above her head identified her as Valk1R3, and showed her allegiance to the ¡®Free Cities of Hansaal,¡¯ which told me that she was fighting on the side of the besieged today, rather than the besiegers.


    Her avatar was human, though that wasn¡¯t a surprise for multiple reasons. From the small icon next to her name, I could see she was a Rogue who specialised in evading damage rather than tanking hits or delivering killing blows, which explained why she felt confident enough to head out here on her own.


    As was typical of video games, her apparel bore no resemblance to what could be called ¡®armour,¡¯ revealing more than it protected, and ¨C as was typical of people ¨C her avatar was an idealised interpretation of how she looked in the real world. Generally speaking, people only tended to depart from that pattern on their second or third character.


    Sarah Lancet went to the same school as our target, though they were a year apart. In their final year, they both worked part-time in the same corner shop during the evenings. The corner shop was in a neighbourhood with a small but noticeable Chosen presence, and it was where Garcia had made the jump from frequenting human-supremacist forums to plotting ways to impress the Chosen themselves. Since he didn¡¯t know any Chosen, that meant grabbing their attention.


    Sarah¡¯s saving grace was that she never went as deep down the rabbit hole as Andrew did, though she still had some racist leanings. They¡¯d started dating each other, before her boyfriend shot Jess Montrose and vanished into thin air.


    When I¡¯d run the list of Garcia¡¯s social media contacts past Tattletale, she¡¯d immediately latched onto two possibilities. The first was that the killing had driven Garcia off the deep end, and he¡¯d become increasingly radical, hiding out for the last seven years with the Chosen under an assumed identity. In which case, Sarah would be useless.


    The second possibility was that the resulting outcry and riots had caused a change of heart, or ¨C more likely ¨C given Garcia cold feet, and he¡¯d hidden himself away from both the DA¡¯s office and the Chosen. That possibility was more unlikely, but Sarah¡¯s dad was a badge with Knight Errant, and could have provided the way into witness protection.


    Either way, Sarah could know something. So I¡¯d taken her, while Grue and Rachel picked up a buddy of Garcia¡¯s who was still in the Chosen, and Tattletale walked Regent through some more social investigations that she couldn¡¯t conduct herself thanks to having the wrong ear shape.


    It had been expectedly easy to fool Warring Leagues¡¯ systems into thinking I was just another player on a premium subscription. After all, I¡¯d done it before dozens, if not hundreds, of times for all sorts of different games. I didn¡¯t play them myself, but there were a lot of people out there who were interested in playing games like this, but not interested enough to cough up full price.


    Getting myself admin permissions had been significantly harder, and I¡¯d proceeded slowly and methodically to avoid drawing the attention of Horizon¡¯s ICE or the host¡¯s live-in monitors. I could afford to go slow; Sarah spent hours online each night. She wasn¡¯t going anywhere.


    I watched her slaughter the last of the scouts, her avatar dancing around them with impossible grace as the software in her VR link interpreted her will into movement that rivalled that of professional gymnasts, mystically-fuelled martial artists or cybernetically enhanced Samurai.


    My own body was the same avatar I had used when fighting Bakuda ¨C an insectoid woman hidden beneath spidersilk robes. Using my hacked admin privileges, I¡¯d given it statistics and attributes roughly equivalent to Valk1R3, then multiplied them by ten. I could have gone further, but Horizon¡¯s anti-cheat measures would have detected the abnormal stats.


    Instead, when I leapt off the cannon and landed in front of her, my robes flying off as four long limbs grew out of my back to arrest my fall, the rogue¡¯s eyes widened in shock as she dropped fluidly into a combat stance, before a grin spread across her face.


    It wasn¡¯t hard to figure out what she was thinking ¨C I wasn¡¯t displaying any of the information a player would, so to her eyes I must have come across as a hidden enemy.


    She darted forwards, her rapier held out in front of her, and ¨C on a whim ¨C I decided to play along. I leapt backwards, driving my insectoid limbs into the ground with far more strength than any real legs could manage, then used the reach of those same limbs to stab out at her.


    My movements were fluid, efficient, and driven almost entirely by programmed move sets I¡¯d pulled out of the game¡¯s files. Still, it was exhilarating to dance around her, and for a brief moment I felt I could understand why people would get sucked into these games. If you lived in Meatspace your whole life, bound by the limitations of your flesh, then games like this would let you experience and even surpass the limits of that flesh, without the years of exercise or invasive augmentations needed by someone like Brian.


    Valk1R3 managed to drive her sword into my torso, but I abandoned the move set¡¯s instinct to stagger back, instead grasping her wrist and dragging myself down the length of her rapier with one hand, while reaching out with the other and dragging it down her neck.


    She gasped, as the simulated pain kicked into action, but I couldn¡¯t help myself from comparing it unfavourably to the genuine pain I¡¯d seen on the faces of the gangster¡¯s at the freight warehouse. She let go of the sword, backflipping out of reach just as my spear-tipped limbs closed in.


    In my chest, the sword disappeared, reappearing in her grip. A skill, perhaps, or just a feature of the game. The power fantasy would fall flat if people were fumbling with their weapons all the time, after all.


    ¡°Okay,¡± she said out loud ¨C to herself, not to me ¨C ¡°this is interesting.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t know the half of it,¡± I snarked back, then ¨C as her eyes widened in shock ¨C lunged forward, driving a limb into her torso with inhuman speed. As the tip pierced her persona, I poured myself into the wound, driving a resonance spike into her code.


    The rules of the game meant that her persona needed to open itself up in ways that simply wouldn¡¯t apply on the rest of the grid. Where most personas ¨C particularly those used by people expecting to be hacked ¨C were a carefully-coiled bundle of data designed to keep attacks out, hers was deliberately set up to allow certain attacks that fit the rules of the game.


    It was a crack in her armour, and I¡¯d just widened it into a chasm. I stepped towards her, my insectoid limbs folding together and retracting into my back, and reached out with a hand to pluck at the tether of data tying her to me. It was simplicity itself to edit that stream, borrowing a programme from the game¡¯s code to inflict her with a paralysis effect below the neck that would have had her slumping bonelessly to the floor, if I hadn¡¯t elected to hold her in place so our eyes were level.


    ¡°Sarah Lancet,¡± ¨C she gasped in shock ¨C ¡°I have a question for you.¡±


    My eye was drawn to a single stream of data, trying and failing to get past the web of resonance I had coiled around her. She¡¯d just tried to log off, and the realisation that she couldn¡¯t, that I wouldn¡¯t let her, sent her into a panic attack. She started hyperventilating; a pointless physical response in this digital world.


    The failed log off attempt had drawn a lot of attention; I could see Horizon snoopers casting out exploratory datastreams in search of their distressed customer. I reached out, pulling on those streams and twisting them into a veil of static that fell like a fog around both of us ¨C digital chaff sealing us away from prying eyes. For now.


    ¡°You can go when I have my answer,¡± I said, trying to calm her down. The fear of being stuck in the matrix was an instinctive one that tickled at the most inherent fears of the metahuman mind; the loss of the self. The fear of being cast loose from their body, from meatspace, and becoming a ghost in the machine.


    It was never a fear of mine, but then I was something in-between meatspace and the matrix. There were times when it didn¡¯t even sound so bad.


    Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    Sarah was still obviously terrified, but at least she¡¯d quietened down.


    ¡°I¡¯m looking for Andrew Garcia,¡± I said, and Sarah let out an involuntary laugh, her face contorted in a manic expression.


    ¡°He¡¯s what this is about?¡± she asked, incredulously. ¡°What the fuck!?¡±


    ¡°You used to know him,¡± I continued. ¡°Perhaps you still do. You tell me what you know, and I¡¯ll let you go.¡±


    ¡°I haven¡¯t spoken to him in four years!¡± she shouted, desperately.


    ¡°Four?¡± I leaned in closer. ¡°He disappeared seven years ago, after murdering Jess Montrose.¡±


    ¡°He didn¡¯t do shit to that pixie bitch,¡± she retorted, and I frowned at the slur. ¡°Andrew was an edgy dick, but he didn¡¯t have the balls.¡±


    ¡°You dated him,¡± I snapped back.


    ¡°Before I realised what a creep he was, yeah. Broke it off when the pawns came looking for him, not that I ever told him it was over.¡±


    ¡°So four years ago he came back looking for his output?¡±


    ¡°Fuck you,¡± she shouted, trying to spit at me. Of course, nothing came out, and I couldn¡¯t help but laugh.


    ¡°You¡¯re not in meatspace anymore,¡± I said. ¡°This is my domain, so you¡¯re going to answer my questions. Unless you¡¯d like to stay here. Forever.¡±


    ¡°Goddamn freak!¡± she shouted, before she seemed to sag. ¡°Fucking fine. He came by to try and pick up where he left off, but I turned him down.¡±


    ¡°He say where he was working?¡± I asked. ¡°Where he lived?¡±


    I let the paralysis effect fade, to reward good behaviour, and Sarah dropped to the ground on her hands and knees, faux-breathing for a few moments before staggering upright. She didn¡¯t run, not that there would be any point.


    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t shut up about it.¡± She coughed, her mind still tricked into thinking she was in a biological body, with biological lungs. ¡°Medhall. He works for Medhall.¡±


    Medhall? Some sympathetic middle-manager take pity on the poor, persecuted, human teen and offer him a job?


    ¡°Fetch and carry? That sort of thing?¡±


    Sarah shook her head.


    ¡°Said he was a duty manager. He was very specific about that. Said he had money now, I said I still wasn¡¯t interested.¡±


    The fuck? People don¡¯t go from stacking shelves in a convenience store to junior management in a near-megacorp. Definitely not when they¡¯ve got a murder charge chasing them.


    ¡°You¡¯re sure about this?¡± I asked her. ¡°Sure he wasn¡¯t bullshitting you to get in your slot?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure,¡± she said. ¡°He was dressed the part, and he showed me his corp ID.¡±


    I paced around her for a moment, thinking it over. I couldn¡¯t tell if she was lying to me, but I also didn¡¯t have any way of verifying what she¡¯d said. Not quickly, at least. In the end, I just had to take her at her word.


    ¡°The corp ID. Don¡¯t suppose you remember where it was for? What building?¡±


    ¡°Uhh¡­ shit.¡± Her eyes darted around, looking anywhere except at me. ¡°Manufacturing, I think. Wait!¡± she exclaimed, realisation lighting up in her eyes. ¡°Charter Hill. He was bragging about his new digs in Charter Hill. A company pad.¡±


    A Medhall plant in Charter Hill, tied to a corporate living space. That narrows it down, but not by much. Hopefully the others have more.


    ¡°Thank you for your assistance,¡± I said, removing my presence from her data as she staggered at the sudden return of control. ¡°You¡¯re free to go.¡±


    ¡°Never touching this game again,¡± she muttered to herself, before turning to me. ¡°You could¡¯ve just fucking asked.¡±


    I shrugged my shoulders. ¡°Had to be sure. Oh, and don¡¯t tell anyone about this.¡±


    ¡°Like I¡¯m that stupid,¡± she said, before her persona vanished as she logged off. I followed, leaving the host behind before Horizon could finish tracking me down.


    Once I was back in the comfortably familiar networks of Brockton Bay¡¯s public grid, I called up Grue¡¯s commlink. He picked up after a few moments.


    ¡°Bug? What is it?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve got a lead, but something¡¯s off about it.¡±


    ¡°Same here. We should talk face to face.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong with the comm?¡± I asked, a little annoyed.


    ¡°Bitch and I have just arrived back,¡± he said, and I heard the sound of a van door slamming shut in the background. ¡°Come on out, we¡¯ll go over it as a team.¡±


    ¡°Fine,¡± I sighed, taking a last look at the vast expanse of the matrix before pulling myself back down to Earth.


    I blinked away at the ceiling light as my eyes adjusted, shifting forwards in the couch so that I wasn¡¯t looking directly at it. I hadn¡¯t been gone for long, so my body only ached a little from how long it¡¯d spent in one place. Still, compared to the limitless freedom of cyberspace it felt like I¡¯d suddenly developed arthritis. It always did.


    I stood up, leant against the wall to steady myself for a moment, and pushed the door open before stepping out into the corridor.


    The others were all there, waiting on the couches in the loft¡¯s living space. I shrank a little under the four pairs of eyes that had turned to look at me, but pressed on regardless. Brian and Rachel looked like they had only just got in, their jackets still wet from the rain I could hear pounding against the loft¡¯s roof ¨C even through the makeshift insulation. He and Rachel had taken one of the long couches, while Lisa was sat in the armchair. Alec was sprawled out across the last remaining couch, his head resting on one armrest and his feet on the other.


    ¡°So, what did you find?¡± I asked Grue as I slumped gracelessly onto the human-sized couch, trusting Alec to move his legs or lose them.


    Grue leant forwards in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees.


    ¡°We snatched Dante Kaur off the street,¡± he said with a nod to Rachel. Kaur was another former friend of Garcia¡¯s, but he was unique among the bunch in that he¡¯d actually managed to graduate from posting about trogs online to actually being a card-carrying, flag-waving member of the Chosen.


    ¡°It took us a while,¡± Grue continued, ¡°but we managed to get him talking. Not only is he still in contact with Garcia, they¡¯re regular business partners. Garcia sources the Chosen opiates, which they then distribute to their dealers across the city. And he gets the opiates-¡±


    ¡°From Medhall,¡± I interrupted, frowning. ¡°But that doesn¡¯t make sense.¡±


    ¡°Something you want to add?¡± Grue asked.


    ¡°Garcia¡¯s ex confirmed he worked for the corp,¡± I explained. ¡°He has citizenship and everything, which explains why his UCAS SIN has completely dropped off the grid. But he¡¯s a manager, not some factory floor worker slipping a few stray pills to his buddies. A duty manager, sure, but still.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not a few stray pills, either,¡± Grue said. ¡°I¡¯m talking boxes of the stuff, though Kaur didn¡¯t confirm how many in each shipment.¡±


    ¡°Taylor¡¯s right,¡± Lisa added with a frown, ¡°something doesn¡¯t add up. Let¡¯s say some Medhall manager with Humanis sympathies ¨C and we all know there are plenty in the company ¨C took pity on him and offered him a job. A patron would explain how he wound up in junior management, but why would he spit in that patron¡¯s eye by stealing product? And why hasn¡¯t the Corp noticed and shut him down?¡±


    ¡°Maybe they have,¡± Grue pointed out. ¡°Could be our client is Medhall, and they¡¯re using us to close the leak without drawing attention to the company.¡±


    Lisa and I shared a brief look, but neither of us spoke up. We both knew that wasn¡¯t true, but we couldn¡¯t exactly tell Grue that without revealing we¡¯d broken the unspoken rules of Shadowrunning.


    ¡°I guess it doesn¡¯t matter,¡± Lisa said after a moment, shaking her head. ¡°The client wants Garcia, and it¡¯s our job to deliver him to her. Hopefully his corporate SIN doesn¡¯t complicate things; if she was expecting some thug in hiding, it¡¯ll come as a surprise.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s her problem to deal with,¡± Grue shrugged. ¡°Ours is getting the guy out.¡± He turned to look at me. ¡°Bug, is there anything you can do to track down a Medhall employee?¡±


    ¡°That depends,¡± I answered. ¡°What drug is he supplying?¡±


    ¡°Dopadrine.¡±


    ¡°Then I know which factory he works at.¡±


    Grue looked surprised. ¡°Just like that?¡±


    ¡°Medhall¡¯s factories have limited extraterritoriality because of a deal with the State government, so they don¡¯t have to declare what they make, but they still ship it through the port, and those shipments do have to be declared ¨C for now, at least. They have four factories in the city that ship out dopadrine, but thanks to Ms Lancet I know Garcia lives in corporate accommodation in Charter Hill. That narrows it down to one.¡±


    ¡°Excellent work.¡± Grue genuinely sounded grateful, and I couldn¡¯t help the smile that crept across my face. ¡°Now we just need to work out an extraction plan.¡±


    ¡°If I can get close enough,¡± Alec spoke up for the first time, ¡°I can take control of his body. Walk him right out the front door.¡± His tone made it sound like he was doing us a massive favour.


    ¡°It¡¯d be better than sedating him and carrying him out,¡± Brian mulled the idea over, stroking his chin. ¡°But we¡¯d still need to get ourselves into the building. Bug, do you know his home address?¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°I might be able to get it, but data on corporate employees is tightly guarded, even for junior managers. It¡¯s to prevent armed talent scouting.¡±


    ¡°So it would have to be the factory. Great.¡±


    ¡°Places like this tend to have large rotating staffs,¡± Lisa explained. ¡°At least on the lower rungs of the ladder. There¡¯ll be a high turnover of building custodians and other menials, maybe it¡¯ll even be subcontracted out. All we¡¯d need are some overalls with the right logos. How long do we have?¡±


    ¡°Not long,¡± Brian shook his head. ¡°Kaur was supposed to pick up the next shipment in three days.¡±


    ¡°You didn¡¯t¡­¡± I hesitated, not sure I wanted to ask. ¡°He¡¯s still alive, right?¡±


    ¡°Welded his arms to an I-beam,¡± Rachel explained, her tone matter-of-fact. ¡°He isn¡¯t going anywhere.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll cut him loose when the job¡¯s done,¡± Brian elaborated. ¡°For now, we don¡¯t want to complicate things with loose ends.¡±


    He paused for a moment, looking at me before continuing.


    ¡°What about on your end? Is Garcia¡¯s old flame going to be a problem?¡±


    ¡°No, she won¡¯t,¡± I answered quickly. ¡°I scared her pretty good, and she and Garcia didn¡¯t part on good terms regardless.¡±


    ¡°Glad to hear it,¡± Brian nodded. ¡°Then I suggest we move tomorrow. Tattletale and Bitch will stay outside with the van, but we can bring in Bitch¡¯s Crawler in a bag to scout the place out. Me, Regent and Bug will go in and extract the guy. Bug, I can get us generic fake ID cards but I¡¯ll need you to spoof whatever punch clock system they have.¡±


    ¡°Wait a second,¡± I leant forward. ¡°Why do I have to go in with you?¡±


    ¡°A second pair of strong hands might come in handy if Regent can¡¯t maintain control,¡± he explained. ¡°Besides, Regent doesn¡¯t exactly look like a janitor. The two of us fit the profile, especially in Medhall.¡±


    ¡°Fuck,¡± I sank back into the seat. ¡°If mom could see me now¡­¡± I murmured to myself.


    I looked up at Brian, but I saw nothing but confidence in his eyes.


    They¡¯re cybernetic. Confidence is easy to fake.


    ¡°If this turns into a shootout¡­¡± I began, but Brian cut me off.


    ¡°Then I¡¯ll take point, and Bitch will roll drones through the front door to create a distraction. You¡¯ll be fine, Bug.¡±


    ¡°Damnit, okay,¡± I said after a moment. ¡°But I want to be thorough about this. We can¡¯t just wing it like last time.¡±


    I spun a sprite together and sent it off into the Matrix, to snoop through building plans in City Hall, techno-anarchist datadumps, anything else that would help give us an idea of the building layout. Then I slumped back onto the couch, falling into a trance-like state as I re-entered the Matrix and accessed public data from the city¡¯s traffic management system, beamed in real time to hundreds of thousands of sat-navs across the city. When combined with the feeds from any CCTV cameras in the neighbouring buildings that even so much has glanced at our target, it gave us a picture of how people moved in and out of the site.


    I left the matrix behind, pulling up all the information I¡¯d gathered into an augmented reality display on top of the coffee table. I fed the data directly to Brian and Rachel¡¯s cyberyeyes, while Lisa and Alec put on their own AR sunglasses to add their own input ¨C though Lisa contributed a lot more, there. We planned long into the night, over a Jamaican takeaway ¨C that Alec ordered ¨C and cans of soft drinks, and at the end of the night I almost felt optimistic about the idea.


    I was still having second thoughts, and third thoughts, fourth thoughts, and so on, but I was just barely confident enough that I wasn¡¯t going to let them stop me.


    ¡°So if there¡¯s nothing else, I think we just planned a hostile extraction before midnight,¡± Lisa said with a grin.


    I reached out in the matrix, idly tugging on a passing datastream and checking its timestamp. Sure enough, it was only eleven thirty, with a night and most of a day before we went in with the evening shift.


    I couldn¡¯t help but wonder if that was a good thing.

 Persona: 2.05

    I tugged at the sleeve of the jumpsuit, wondering how Lisa had managed to first guess my exact measurements and then find an outfit that fit actually fit those measurements in a matter of hours. Not that it fit too well, of course, but that was just more proof of how right she¡¯d got it. Corporate uniforms come in standard and often unisex sizes of small, medium and large, plus the occasional extra-small or extra-extra-large for dwarves and trolls.


    Only the suits have clothes that fit them, and even then it¡¯s only those who can afford to get it tailored.


    ¡°It doesn¡¯t fit right,¡± Regent complained, pulling at the waist of his own jumpsuit. He was a skinny guy, which meant there was a lot of jumpsuit to pull out. It¡¯d look worse on a woman, though. It looked worse on me.


    ¡°Of course it doesn¡¯t,¡± Tattletale answered, leaning against Bitch¡¯s van with a smug expression on her face. ¡°Have you ever seen a janitor in tailored clothes?¡±


    She was dressed in her usual work outfit ¨C what I¡¯d call magical private eye chic ¨C and was clearly relishing seeing her fellow mall-rat teammate slumming it with the rest of us fashion-blind luddites.


    ¡°There was a fad in Montreal for that,¡± Regent replied, seeming almost lost in thought as he popped the collar of his overalls.


    ¡°Really?¡± I asked, trying and failing to picture it. He nodded.


    ¡°For a whole month, all the society kids went out buying up authentic blue collar corp unforms and having them re-tailored into suit jackets, mini-dresses, whatever. I remember this one girl who turned up to a club wearing nothing above the waist except for a high-vis jacket and a hard hat. But the fad had passed, and she just looked like an idiot in construction gear.¡±


    There was something close to a genuine smile on his face, before it slipped back into his usual expression ¨C a self-satisfied grin that seemed just a little too real. Like a perfect copy of the genuine emotion.


    At that point, Grue finished buttoning up his own jumpsuit. If anything, he had the opposite problem to regent. He and his muscles fit the outfit a little too well, and I could see his biceps pressing against the seams of his sleeves. Cyberlimbs they may be, but it was clear his organic body was in much the same shape. Frankly, he looked like an action hero, and that image only became more accurate as he picked up his new rifle and slid it into a black duffle bag.


    He looked up, and our eyes locked for a moment before I looked away.


    ¡°Bug, your gun?¡± he asked, and I almost jerked forward, snatching my gun and holster from where it had been sitting on a table and depositing them in the bag. It had a logo on the side of it; the same one that was embroidered on our jumpsuits. One on each sleeve ¨C on the upper arm, just below the shoulder ¨C and another, smaller, logo over our hearts, next to three random surnames. That particular logo had a small, blank, RFID tag inside it that on a real employee would be loaded with their employee number and, if they were important enough, Corporate SIN.


    Once my gun was in, Bitch ¨C seated in the front of her van and watching us all with a dispassionate expression ¨C had her Crawler scuttle on over, leaping up onto the table and secreting itself in the duffle bag. Grue nodded, zipping the bag up and picking it up with one hand, never mind the weight of all the metal inside.


    ¡°Let¡¯s go,¡± he said, bluntly, before stepping up into the van as the rest of us followed.


    A storm had rolled in from the Atlantic, and our journey was accompanied by the constant clatter of raindrops hitting the Bulldog¡¯s metal roof. Looking over the seats, past Bitch and Tattletale, I could just about make out the road beyond the water streaming down the windshield, only barely held at bay by the wipers ¨C even on full tilt. It was only half nine in the evening, but all the traffic on the road had their headlights on full beam to cut through the downpour.


    Bitch had gone one further, and wasn¡¯t actually looking at the road at all. At least, not with her optics. Instead, I could see the thin stream of data linking her to the souped-up parking sensors that she¡¯d installed around the van, giving her a three hundred and sixty degree view of her surroundings ¨C within a certain amount of distance.


    It meant she could move a little faster than the cars around us, could weave between traffic with complete confidence in her ability to fit the lumbering van through the gap. With each turn, the steering wheel spun on its own accord, her arms resting on her legs in a way that reminded me of the drones stowed neatly in the back, waiting until they¡¯re needed.


    The drive was a lot shorter than the trip to Palanquin, but I spent it in a state of anxious near-panic, feeling like I was ready to spring out of my seat at a moment¡¯s notice. Strangely, I didn¡¯t feel like running. It wasn¡¯t just that I couldn¡¯t run, either; even if I pictured myself leaping out of the van, it was almost always followed by me drawing a gun. I was terrified, but it felt like all that fearful energy was focused forward. Backing down didn¡¯t even cross my mind, now that I¡¯d passed the point of no return.


    The van lurched forward for a moment as Bitch cut off another Bulldog to snag a rare open street-side parking spot, then lurched even more violently to a halt. I wasn¡¯t wearing a seatbelt ¨C the over-the-shoulder belt was too low for me ¨C and I found myself gripping onto the seat so tightly my knuckles turned white, as nightmares I hadn¡¯t suffered in years suddenly resurfaced.


    I leapt up the moment we were stationary, brushing past Grue and almost throwing the panel door open before staggering out into the pouring rain, the sudden shock of cool water on my skin helping to ground me. Grue and Regent followed me, and I silently hoped they¡¯d mistaken my panic attack for professional eagerness.


    ¡°We¡¯ll wait for your signal!¡± Bitch shouted through the rain, and I looked back to see her staring straight at me, one arm slung over the back of her seat. ¡°Send me an exact pickup point, I¡¯ll be there!¡±


    ¡°Got it!¡± I shouted back, my voice still a little shaky. Bitch didn¡¯t acknowledge me, sinking back into a fugue as she remotely closed the van¡¯s door and drove off into traffic accompanied by screeching horns.


    ¡°You okay?¡± Grue asked, suddenly hovering by my shoulder. I flinched a little. ¡°Nervous about the job?¡±


    I could have taken the way out, but instead I shook my head. I didn¡¯t want to seem unprofessional.


    ¡°No, it¡¯s just¡­ You think Bitch would mind if I asked her to install some bigger seats back there? Or just swap out the belt for one that just goes over the waist?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t see why not,¡± he said, shrugging. ¡°The belt at least. Maybe it rubs her the wrong way as well; she likes everything to be neat. Especially when it comes to her gear.¡±


    ¡°C¡¯mon already,¡± Regent interrupted, ¡°I¡¯m soaked through!¡±


    The three of us moved down the street at a brisk walk, ducking under hanging awnings, scaffolding and street-coverings wherever we could to keep us out of the downpour. On our left rose the immense flank of one of the sprawling residential blocks that made up Charter Hill, while to our right ¨C past four lanes of traffic ¨C lower-rise office blocks shared space with clean yet uninspired corporate residential blocks. Each door had the Medhall logo on it, and there were regular tunnels and footbridges that crossed over the traffic onto this side of the road.


    At this hour, the streets were largely empty ¨C most people were either at home or hitting the clubs ¨C but we shared the pavement with a few dozen other people in similar corporate uniforms to ours. They hurried along just like we did ¨C eager to get out of the rain, and afraid of clocking in late ¨C but most of them hurried on their own. It wasn¡¯t like the Dockworker¡¯s association; these people didn¡¯t actually know or care about each other outside of work.


    What¡¯s more, Medhall¡¯s custodial staff had a high turnover rate, and rather than having set staff members assigned to single buildings they were rotated between sites, spending a few hours at one building before being sent on to the next one. The people who were walking were those who were just coming on-shift and had to make their own way to the first site, but the long grey bus that drove past us ¨C a company logo clear to see on its side ¨C was carrying employees who were already on-shift.


    The RFID tags in their uniform all followed a pattern, one I was able to duplicate in our own tags to create the impression of legitimate tags. They weren¡¯t complex; their main purpose was to make sure the bearer was authorised to enter a corporate site, and the ability to actually identify individual employees was an afterthought.


    We were all heading to the same place; at the end of the road, what would otherwise be a serviceable view of the Bay was instead blocked off by a slab-sided grey building that rose up perhaps five stories high. It had few windows, and was surrounded by an equally grey concrete wall topped by razor wire. In fact, the only decoration on the whole structure was the company¡¯s logo and the words Medhall Pharmaceuticals written in great black letters as tall as I was along the face of the building.


    Whenever Medhall ran an advert, or they featured in the local news, they tended to run with pictures of their factories on the south-east side of the city. Those were modernist-looking sites, with grass in-between the buildings and floor-to-ceiling glass in the lobbies. The people who worked there were graduates, or highly-skilled technicians tasked with maintaining automated factory-floor robots. With the suburbs on one side and the university on another, they worked hard to present the company as the forward-thinking New Hampshire behemoth everyone knew it was. But this factory was in the North End, so why would anyone care how it looked?


    As we waited at the road crossing, shoulder to shoulder with half a dozen other similarly-dressed workers, an ambulance sped past with its lights and sirens on full blast. It was white with green trim ¨C a CrashCart vehicle, rather than Valkyrie ¨C and from its Matrix signal I could tell it was crewed by the standard complement of two guards up front ¨C one of which was the driver ¨C and two paramedics in the back.


    Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    I could see a stream of data leaving the vehicle, relaying accurate data on the patient back to CrashCart¡¯s central hub. A heart attack, apparently, and he owned a standard healthcare package. CrashCart was cheaper, but their coverage was a lot worse than Valkyrie. I had neither; I used to be on my parents¡¯ package, but when dad died it was just one of a number of costs I dropped to be able to make the rent.


    The crossing light turned green the moment the ambulance had passed, as the city¡¯s matrix-linked metropolitan traffic grid switched back over to normal procedures. We hurried across the road, anonymous among the crowd of jumpsuits, and joined the line of other workers queueing up outside the factory¡¯s main gate.


    Three minutes later, I stepped over the white painted line and out of New Hampshire, crossing over into Medhall¡¯s sovereign territory. In front of me, the rest of the custodial shift were stepping through angular metal detectors with the unconscious ease of people who¡¯ve done this a thousand times before. They were watched by hired security guards shielded from the rain by ponchos and three-pointed hats, the RFID tags in their simplistic body armour identifying them as contractors from Minutemen Security Services.


    It was further proof that this wasn¡¯t one of Medhall¡¯s most valuable factories; if the work here was truly important, or if the products were trade secrets, then Medhall would use in-house security personnel. Instead, they¡¯d shaved a few numbers off their bottom line by outsourcing.


    As the line edged closer to the bag scanner and metal detector, I twisted my fingers together as I tugged at the ambient resonance, drawing it together and compiling it into a pair of woodlouses ¨C woodlice?


    With a wordless gesture, I watched as the two sprites darted through the air, settling on top of the scanners as they started to work their way into the system. They¡¯d only just made it through when it was Grue¡¯s turn at the scanner, and I let out a faint sigh of relief as I received their signal right as he set the bag down on the conveyor belt.


    He stepped up to the metal detector, and my sprite made sure it picked up the metal in his cybernetics, but not that they were combat grade. Their syn-skin coating and decorative false eye coverings were good, but not so good that a close inspection wouldn¡¯t reveal the metal beneath. So best not to risk it.


    It meant that the metal detector went off with a yellow light, rather than a red, and one of the guards waved Grue aside with the same dispassionate gesture he¡¯d given to the three other people who¡¯d set the device off this way thanks to their own cyberware. As he waved an electronic wand over Grue¡¯s body ¨C fortunately tied into the same system as the detector, so I already had enough control to spoof it ¨C the bag passed into the scanner.


    Fooling the scanner took a lot more effort. It wasn¡¯t just a case of downgrading an alert from red to yellow; I had to feed a false image into the system so that it would show up on the guard¡¯s screen just as it would if the bag were passing through naturally. Since we didn¡¯t know how fast the scan would be moving, that meant I had to do it all in real-time.


    So I swayed a little, as I stopped focusing so much on meatspace and lost myself in the thin strand of data connecting me to the woodlouse, and the invasive spikes anchoring the woodlouse to the scanner. I didn¡¯t even watch the guard to see how she was reacting, instead focusing solely on trying to match the false image to the real one.


    When nothing happened, I knew I¡¯d done it. All she¡¯d seen was a bag full of tools, and I¡¯d just smuggled two guns, a couple hundred rounds of ammunition and a military-grade reconnaissance drone through security.


    I¡¯m sure my parents would be very proud¡­


    Regent was the next to step up to the scanner, and after the stress of getting Grue through it almost seemed anticlimactic when he stepped through the scanner without fanfare, the guard not even sparing him a glance as he waved him forward. But then, it wasn¡¯t like he had any metal on him in the first place.


    Since I didn¡¯t have any metal on me either, I felt pretty confident when it was my turn to step through the metal detector, only to find my way blocked by an outstretched palm on the other side.


    I stopped, and froze when I looked down to see the top of the three-pointed hat of the guard who¡¯d moved in front of me. He was holding out his left hand, because the right was resting on the trigger of a submachine gun.


    ¡°Out of the line,¡± he said, gesturing with a thumb.


    ¡°W-why me?¡± I asked, dumbstruck.


    ¡°Random pat down¡± was all the explanation I got, as the guard finally looked up enough that I could see his face beneath the brim of his hat. He was in his mid-fifties, human, with a salt and pepper beard and an expression on his face that was more disinterest than anger.


    I was relieved, but I tried not to show it. I thought he¡¯d made me, somehow.


    Instead, as I stepped off to one side he turned back to the scanner as the rest of the shift made their way through, none of them sparing me so much as a glance as a female officer approached me.


    She was younger, maybe in her thirties, and only armed with a pistol in a thigh holster. From the look of it, she was just as engaged as the other guy was, but it seemed like she¡¯d tried to put on a stern expression just for me.


    ¡°Arms out, palms facing up,¡± she said, bluntly, before she began running her hands over me with practiced dispassion. I was made to tilt my head back, so that she could reach up to pat down my hair, but otherwise I was simply expected to stand stock still as she went through her checks from top to toe; running a finger around the inside of my collar, her arms down the length of my sleeves, the flat of her palms down my back, and on and on.


    About halfway through, I was stuck by the bizarre realisation that this might be the most intimate anyone outside my immediate family had ever got with me, at least physically, and that it had been years since anyone had touched me for any reason.


    And then, after about a minute and a half, it was over, and I was let through to rejoin Grue and Regent, now at the tail end of the two dozen shift workers streaming into the factory.


    Once we were inside, we were greeted by the sight of the shift workers being assigned to various tasks by a human middle-manager in a crisp white shirt, with a tablet in his hand that was collecting the data from the workers¡¯ RFID tags and telling him who exactly he had to work with.


    ¡°Is that our guy?¡± Grue asked me.


    ¡°No,¡± I answered, with a faint shake of my head. ¡°ID badge reads Michael Simmons.¡±


    I fed false data into his tablet the moment it latched onto our tags. From his perspective, a last minute work order had only just managed to make its way through the system. It was still three more people than he was expecting this shift, so he looked at us with mild confusion.


    ¡°We¡¯re here to fix the lights,¡± I said, and he nodded, immediately turning back to the others as he monitored them clocking-in. Behind him, bracketed to the wall, was a flatscreen that bore the day¡¯s work rota, but most of the custodial staff didn¡¯t even look at it. They knew what they were here to do, because they¡¯d done it hundreds of times before.


    I moved purposely past them, ducking beneath a low doorframe ¨C low for me, at least ¨C and into the featureless corridors of the facility, with whitewashed walls and fluorescent lights embedded in the ceiling.


    ¡°Did you get the lights from their maintenance schedule?¡± Grue asked.


    ¡°Nope,¡± I replied, popping the ¡®p¡¯. ¡°A building this size? There are always lights that need fixing. That and toilets.¡±


    ¡°You sure know your way around grunt work, Bug,¡± Regent observed.


    ¡°I grew up around the docks,¡± I answered. ¡°I¡¯m guessing you didn¡¯t.¡±


    Regent simply smirked, ignoring me in favour of keeping an eye out for trouble.


    It¡¯s good to know he can at least act professional, even when talking shit.


    ¡°Down here,¡± Grue said, gesturing down a side corridor that looked like it didn¡¯t get much foot traffic. I moved to follow, while Regent took up a lookout position at the end of the corridor. At the same time, I was contacting Bitch.


    ¡°We¡¯re about to deploy the Crawler,¡± I said through the Matrix.


    ¡°Got it,¡± she replied. ¡°I have control.¡±


    Grue set the bag down on the floor and unzipped it, allowing the Aztechnology Crawler to¡­ well, crawl on out. It was a boxy grey thing with four articulated legs, with its main body small enough to fit the palm of my hand. Bitch was looking through its eyes, and after a moment I pulled up the feed in an AR window in front of me, letting me see what she could see.


    I knelt down, holding out my hand palm up and letting the drone crawl up my arm. It perched on my shoulder, and I stood up to my full height before reaching up and pushing one of the ceiling tiles out of its bracket.


    Bitch used my arm like a ramp, bringing the Crawler up into the gap between the ceiling tiles and the actual ceiling. I let the tile drop down as Grue zipped the bag back up, and we left the side-corridor without any indications of what we¡¯d just done.


    ¡°Now what?¡± Regent asked.


    ¡°Now we look busy,¡± I responded.


    So we did, wandering the halls with the purposeful stride of people who know where they¡¯re going and want to get there, even though we didn¡¯t on both counts. It was all about putting on appearances for the people who passed us in the halls. Some were other custodians in grey jumpsuits, others were factory workers who wore the same outfit, but in white and with hair nets, face masks and gloves.


    A couple of them were obviously much more than that; a woman in slacks and a business blouse talking to a man in an expensive suit. We moved to one side to let them pass us ¨C Regent moving a few moments later than Grue and I ¨C but they didn¡¯t even seem to notice we existed. As they passed, I was able to catch a brief snapshot of their conversation.


    ¡°-I¡¯ll pass your concerns on,¡± the man was saying, ¡°but the increase in production is non-negotiable. New markets have opened up, and supply must increase to match demand before someone else moves in.¡±


    And then they were gone, stepping into a side office.


    Bitch contacted us again right as we were passing a long window that looked over the factory floor, where about a dozen employees were collecting wheeled troughs of carefully-measured powder and moving them over to other machines that mixed and pressed that powder into dopadrine pills, ready for bottling.


    ¡°I¡¯m in position,¡± she said. ¡°You should have access now.¡±


    I relayed her words to Brian, then leant against the wall while I focused on the matrix. Bitch had just moved her crawler to the building¡¯s server room, and more specifically the server that held employee data.


    We knew Garcia had a Medhall System Identification Number, but the details of corporate citizens were protected with the same delicate care as any other matter of national security, because that¡¯s what they were. The whole reason Garcia¡¯s UCAS SIN had disappeared for seven years was that he¡¯d been living in a company pad, shopping in company stores and working in a company building, all while that company had kept his identity secret.


    But the company needed to keep track of its employees, and there were all sorts of reasons why a workplace might need the biometric data of the people who work there. So it would have a stored list of all limited and full corporate numbers who worked here, including our target¡¯s. For added security, they were often kept on offline servers, to prevent rival companies from sending in deckers to scout out just who works where.


    And Bitch had just driven her drone¡¯s datajack into that server, giving me full access.


    It was simplicity itself to find the right SIN; all I had to do was look for the exact same biometric data as his UCAS one. Once I had it, I spun a courier sprite into existence and sent the dragonfly off in search of the connected ID badge. About a minute later, it pinged me with his exact location ¨C in a small office overlooking the factory floor in a different part of a building.


    ¡°I¡¯ve got him,¡± I said, triumphantly, in both the Matrix and meatspace. Bitch immediately pulled back her drone, moving it out of sight of any data techs who might wander in, while Grue immediately took note of the positioning data I layered over his optics.


    ¡°You¡¯ve found him,¡± Grue said, obviously pleased. ¡°Now let¡¯s get the bastard.¡±

 Persona: 2.06

    ¡°Something isn¡¯t right,¡± I said, as we moved at a brisk walk through the corridors.


    ¡°What is it?¡± Grue asked, concerned.


    ¡°Garcia¡¯s SIN. If a company brings in someone from outside, they¡¯ll give them a limited corporate SIN. It¡¯s like a work visa, basically. But Garcia¡¯s got a full corporate SIN. Even in a company the size of Medhall, that¡¯s usually limited to people who were born in the corp, grew up in corp houses, went to corp schools. Not some guy off the street, no matter who they killed.¡±


    ¡°Is it something we need to be worried about?¡± Grue responded.


    I thought it over for a few moments, as we passed another custodial crew coming the other way, and shrugged my shoulders.


    ¡°It means whoever let Garcia into the corp is a lot more influential than I thought. We might be stepping on someone¡¯s toes, here.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m sure they¡¯d be totally cool with us snatching some other wageslave,¡± Regent snarked.


    ¡°He¡¯s got a point,¡± Grue said, diplomatically. ¡°We¡¯re always going to piss someone off. The thing that the really dangerous ones are also the ones most likely to take it on the chin. They might hate it when Shadowrunners hit them, but if they start taking revenge on ¡®runner teams ¨C or shutting down places like Palanquin or Somer¡¯s Rock ¨C then they¡¯d lose out on their own access to deniable assets. Everyone¡¯s got their hand in the pot.¡±


    ¡°If you say so¡­¡± I answered, uncertainly, falling silent as we reached Garcia¡¯s door. It was white and glossy, with the words ¡®Duty Manager - Distribution¡¯ on a metal plate and a small digital screen below it displaying ¡®Andrew Garcia¡¯ in red text, ready to be swapped out for whoever might occupy the office after him.


    Grue held the bag in one hand as he unzipped it with the other, reaching in to pass me my submachine gun before pulling out his rifle. Regent, of course, didn¡¯t need a gun to be dangerous.


    ¡°Just follow my lead, Bug,¡± Grue said as he took up a position next to the door. ¡°Come in behind me and keep your gun trained on Garcia until Regent has him. Got it?¡±


    I nodded, my heart pounding in my chest, and moved behind Grue as Regent mirrored him on the other side of the door. I watched the muscles in Grue¡¯s back shifting as he tensed his grip on his rifle, before he reached out and, in a single fluid motion, swung the door open and stepped through into the office, his rifle perfectly level even as he held it with one arm.


    There was a sudden intake of breath from inside the office, and the sound of a chair scraping against the floor. Regent rushed in after him, and I followed, with my submachine gun raised over his head.


    Garcia¡¯s back was pressed against a window that overlooked the shop floor. He was wearing a crisp white shirt and black slacks, with his ID badge clipped to the shirt pocket. His hair had been styled with a little too much gel, and his belt buckle looked more trashy than expensive; a stylised silver eagle on a heavy metal plate.


    His face was locked in a rictus of terror until Regent hit him with a stunbolt and he slid to the ground, his hair leaving a trail on the window like a human snail. Only once he¡¯d hit the ground did I take my eyes off him and look around the office.


    In his seven years hiding under Medhall¡¯s wing, Garcia hadn¡¯t done much with his life ¨C or, if he had, he¡¯d kept it firmly at home. There was clutter in the office, but it was the kind of clutter work generates. Personalised coffee mugs, pictures of workplace gatherings, a spare shirt hanging up on the back of the door. No pictures of any spouses or children, no signs of the man behind the nameplate on his desk.


    Garcia¡¯s personality had slipped into the office in only one respect; the flag that hung on his wall, right where he could see it from his desk.


    Grue noticed it as well, even as he moved to cover the door while Regent began worming his magic into Garcia¡¯s body.


    ¡°I count fifty,¡± he observed.


    Sure enough, he was right. The flag looked like it could have been printed yesterday, but it was antiquated all the same. Downright historic, in fact. The UCAS hadn¡¯t used the old stars and stripes in thirteen years, and there hadn¡¯t been fifty stars on it since the end of the Ghost Dance War in twenty-eighteen. Over half a century ago.


    The picture it painted was troubling indeed, because the last time I¡¯d seen that flag with my own eyes was six years ago. It was being waved by the terrorists who stormed city hall in the name of their New Revolution, in a display of force that was mirrored across all the nations of the former United States of America. The President was captured, many others were assassinated, government buildings were bombed, and militias and hired mercenaries seized control of key locations across North America.


    The current President, Angela Colloton, made her name as the general that regained control of DeeCee, though the then-President was killed during a botched rescue mission. She paraded the ringleader ¨C some Senator ¨C on national television, and that turned the tide against the terrorists.


    But what I remembered most about that time was huddling up in our apartment, almost half-mad thanks to the Matrix¡¯s sudden intrusion in my skull, and unintentionally eavesdropping on Mom and Dad as they both made call after call, while the streets below were filled with shouts, gunfire and explosions as the Chosen and New Revolution¡¯s thugs rioted across the city.


    To find that flag here, now, with every irregularity I¡¯d found around Andrew Garcia¡­ I didn¡¯t know what to think, and I guess Grue would tell me not to bother. After all, I hadn¡¯t seen that flag in years because I was a shut in. It was a lot less common after sixty-four, but that didn¡¯t change the massive media presence it had in any film before then, didn¡¯t change the old glory types who¡¯d hang it from a flagpole in their front lawn come what may, didn¡¯t change how common the design was in clothing, and how half the world probably still linked it to the UCAS. It didn¡¯t necessarily mean anything.


    But still, I looked away and opened myself up to the Matrix, letting meatspace fade somewhat as I brought the digital world to the forefront of my vision. I smiled, and walked around Garcia¡¯s desk to find his computer open and logged in.


    ¡°Mind if I look through Garcia¡¯s computer?¡± I asked Grue, as Garcia lurched to his feet like a marionette puppet. Regent frowned, muttering something about being ¡®out of practice¡¯, and began methodically twitching his puppet¡¯s muscles.


    ¡°What for?¡± Grue asked, keeping his eye on the door.


    ¡°Might be something we can sell,¡± I answered, even as I was already starting to trawl through his files. ¡°I doubt there are any patents on here, but you¡¯d be surprised what people are prepared to pay for. I¡¯ve seen all sorts being sold; truck schedules, shift rotas, who¡¯s getting what bonus. Even how much dopadrine the factory makes in a day might be useful to a rival business.¡±


    It wasn¡¯t just the money motivating me, but I wasn¡¯t sure Grue would¡¯ve accepted ¡®curiosity¡¯ as an answer. Something was going on here, and I wanted to find out what.


    ¡°Make it quick,¡± Grue decided, as I was rummaging through Garcia¡¯s emails. He¡¯d accumulated dozens of regular communications, but they all seemed normal enough. Unless some of the innocuous terms held double meanings, but it wasn¡¯t like I¡¯d be able to tell that.


    ¡°Speed of thought, promise,¡± I told Grue half-heartedly, my attention drifting further away from meatspace.


    Since Garcia was logged onto his computer when we nabbed him, I didn¡¯t have to brute force past any security measures. So long as no Medhall Patrol IC decided to ¨C or, more accurately, was driven by its guiding algorithm to take a closer look at me, I could piggyback off his credentials to act unopposed.


    It wasn¡¯t just surface level access, either. I discarded Garcia¡¯s email and timetable in favour of diving deep into the spreadsheets and documents directly related to the running of the factory.


    It was there, hidden amongst the distribution orders, that I found what I was looking for. Every week, the factory produced tens of millions of dopadrine pills. They were collated together in bottles of various amounts, packaged up on-site and sent off in distribution trucks to match orders around the world.


    There was an easy pattern to the orders. Medhall didn¡¯t deal with individual pharmacies directly, but they did have contracts with several large pharmaceutical companies to supply them with bulk orders for normal expected consumption. Those numbers were present week after week, year after year, stretching back as long as the factory had been operating. Orders might drop out or appear occasionally as contracts changed hands, but by and large those deliveries were short term, and together they accounted for seventy nine percent of the factory¡¯s total output.


    Most of the remaining twenty one percent left the factory sporadically, in quick bursts making use of spare capacity. They were often assigned at the last minute, and their destinations were many and varied. I knew for a fact that if I cross-referenced those destinations with local newsfeeds I¡¯d find shortages, natural disasters, wars and any other short-term factor that might cause a temporary spike in demand.


    It all seemed perfectly legitimate, but there was a single number that stood out. Nestled among the long-term orders, with a date stretching right back to the factory¡¯s opening date ten years ago, was order number C-20. Unlike every other long-term order, it was comparatively tiny ¨C amounting for zero point zero five percent of the factory¡¯s total output.


    In every ten thousand pills, five had been assigned to that order from day one. It wasn¡¯t just the scale or the longevity of the order that struck me as suspicious, it was the number itself. Zero point zero five was far too regular, far too round. It was like someone had elected to skim a fraction of the pills, and their metahuman brain picked a metahuman-friendly number. It felt deliberate.


    I didn¡¯t have all the pieces, but I had enough to put things together. We¡¯d stumbled across a long-term con. Someone in Medhall¡¯s management, probably the factory¡¯s General Manager, had set up a false order to skim off a miniscule fraction of the pills and sell them on to the Chosen and who knows else? The amount being skimmed was too little for corporate to notice, but the factory¡¯s duty managers dealt with those numbers every day. They¡¯d notice.


    Enter Andrew Garcia, and others like him. I was sure that if I dug into the backgrounds of the other managers here, I¡¯d find the same debts, secrets and kompromat that made for the perfect accomplice.


    There was no point smiling in the matrix ¨C it was a cosmetic affectation, the same as any other physical movement ¨C but I felt the twisted and esoteric code that made up my persona almost singing in satisfaction.


    Right before I was dragged back to Earth as Regent clapped a hand on my shoulder and loudly exclaimed ¡°got him!¡±


    I jolted, blinking away spots as I took in the harsh halogen glow of the office lights. Garcia was standing by the window, as still as a statue but with eyes that were still full of life, and maybe full of fear.


    Apart from that, there wasn¡¯t any sign of the spell Regent had cast. To be fair, I wasn¡¯t sure what sort of sign I was expecting. After all, if the spell had caused his eyes to glow, or something, then this exfiltration wouldn¡¯t stay covert for long.


    ¡°He looks a little¡­ spaced out,¡± I observed.


    ¡°So did you, ten seconds ago,¡± Regent snarked back. ¡°I¡¯m in control of his body right now, I¡¯m just not doing anything with it.¡±


    As he spoke, Garcia seemed to stand much more naturally as Regent pulled on his muscles to create the microexpressions that I wouldn¡¯t have noticed if it weren¡¯t for his unnatural stillness before.


    Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    ¡°And where¡¯s Garcia while you¡¯re in control?¡± I asked, not entirely sure I wanted to know.


    ¡°Oh, he¡¯s in there,¡± Regent almost purred as he sauntered up to Garcia, standing inches away from the taller man¡¯s face and looking him right in the eyes. ¡°The body is mine, but the brain is still his. He¡¯s looking out of those eyes, straining to break free. But he can¡¯t, because deep down he¡¯s just a weak-willed little-¡±


    Garcia¡¯s face twisted into a furious rictus, his arm spasming up as he knocked Regent aside before he charged right at me. I moved almost without thinking, a massive grey hand wrapping around his neck before I lifted and slammed him against the wall, holding him a foot off the ground with one arm as he kicked futilely against my legs, his hands wrapped around my forearm as he struggled for breath.


    And, just as quickly, he slumped over like a puppet with its strings cut.


    ¡°Holy shit, Bug¡± ¨C Regent chuckled as he pulled himself off the floor, sounding completely unharmed ¨C ¡°right for the throat? And here I thought you were a dork!¡±


    I let Garcia go, but Regent made sure he landed on his feet rather than falling to the floor. I didn¡¯t care; I was already storming towards Regent, ready to repeat my display on the puppetmaster, when Grue stepped in between us, his hand outstretched to block me even as his eyes were focused on Regent.


    ¡°There¡¯s a time and a place,¡± he said, with a calm sort of fury, ¡°and this isn¡¯t either. You like to take it easy, Regent, and I tolerate that because there¡¯s a good mage behind your bullshit. But it stays at home.¡±


    ¡°Want me to apologise?¡± Regent drawled, crossing his arms and staring Grue down in spite of the frankly absurd difference in height.


    ¡°Would you mean it? I haven¡¯t heard an honest apology since I met you, and believe me an insincere apology from you would only piss me off more right now. Just sharpen the fuck up; we¡¯ve got a job to do.¡±


    Regent held Grue¡¯s gaze for another few moments before wavering, his eyes darting down Grue¡¯s body before he stepped away, throwing two pairs of hands in the air.


    ¡°Calice, fine. New girl gets a pass. I know how it goes; don¡¯t want to step on your patch.¡±


    I took another half step forwards, only to feel Grue¡¯s hand digging in deeper. He turned, looked me dead in the eyes, and moved his mouth in silent speech.


    ¡®They¡¯re just words.¡¯


    It took me a moment to get his meaning, but after a moment I relaxed the death-grip I had on my submachine gun. Regent backed down, but his pride wouldn¡¯t let him go without a parting shot. So I just nodded; I could be the bigger person in more ways than just physically.


    Grue was satisfied, and slid his gun back into the duffel bag, as I did the same a moment later. With a bit of luck, we wouldn¡¯t need them from here. Grue slung the strap back onto his left shoulder, but left the bag itself open so he could reach in and snatch his gun if he needed to.


    At the same time, I reached out to Bitch through the Matrix.


    ¡°We¡¯re about to move out; the target¡¯s under control,¡± I reported with a sideways glance at Regent, who seemed to be acting like nothing had happened. ¡°Get ready to pick us up at the delivery exit.¡±


    ¡°Not the way we came in?¡± Grue asked as we stepped out into the corridor, with Garcia ¡®leading¡¯ the way like a good little middle-manager.


    ¡°That brings us past the admin block,¡± I explained. ¡°There¡¯s more of a chance we¡¯ll run into someone who outranks Garcia.¡±


    ¡°Good call,¡± he nodded. ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡±


    We moved as quickly as could reasonably be expected through the halls, as Regent controlled Garcia¡¯s body with scarily natural ease. If I didn¡¯t know he was the one doing it, I¡¯d never have been able to tell; it was worlds away from the halting control he¡¯d shown over the guard at the Yakuza freight warehouse, but maybe that was the difference made by time and the lack of gunfire.


    My route paid dividends; the only people who passed us were dressed in the white clean suits of factory floor workers ¨C who either nodded respectfully to our target or just didn¡¯t make eye contact ¨C and custodial workers in grey ¨C some of whom actually looked away, no doubt worried they¡¯d be snatched up for some shit task like they presumed we had been.


    It wasn¡¯t until we were two corridors away from freedom that the penny dropped. Two people stepped into view, one a man in an expensive suit and another in a business blouse. After a moment, I placed them; we¡¯d passed them while we were waiting for Bitch to reach their servers.


    To my horror, the suit smiled as he saw our target ¨C a slick expression that didn¡¯t reach his eyes ¨C and he called out down the corridor.


    ¡°Mr Garcia! Just who I was looking for; I need to pick your brains about the next quarter¡¯s production targets.¡± I couldn¡¯t be sure, but I felt like there was a particular emphasis on those last words.


    Is this the guy running the scam?


    Grue and I shared a sideways glance. We both knew that we couldn¡¯t afford to stay and chat. Regent clearly thought the same; I saw an almost imperceptible shiver pass through Garcia, like an actor struggling when forced to improvise.


    So I took a step to the side ¨C putting me shoulder to shoulder with Grue ¨C reached into the duffel bag and pulled out my submachine gun. I raised it in a single motion, pointing it squarely at the corpo¡¯s head and hoping he didn¡¯t notice the way my aim was wavering.


    Half a second later, Grue did the same with his assault rifle while Regent and Garcia both dropped down to give us a clear line of fire.


    ¡°Put your hands up!¡± Grue shouted as he moved out in front of the two humans. I followed, sticking just close enough to Grue that part of my body was hidden behind his. Instinctively, I let my attention drift into the matrix as I started pulling sprites together, but I was too slow.


    ¡°Shit!¡± I exclaimed. ¡°He¡¯s fucking wired!¡±


    Whatever cyberware the suit had in his skull, he¡¯d just used it to trigger a facility-wide silent alarm.


    ¡°Bad move,¡± Grue growled, raising his gun.


    ¡°Try me,¡± the suit stared back with the kind of confidence that could silence a boardroom. ¡°I¡¯ve got a platinum Valkyrie card. You do so much as break the skin and a High Threat Response team will fill you full of holes before you can say ¡®clusterfuck¡¯, tusker.¡±


    I¡¯d had about enough of this, and sent a wasp flying through the Matrix. It latched onto his brainware, with its open connection to the Medhall network, and flooded it with paradoxical junk code, overwhelming its processor and sending an impressive burst of sparks out the side of his head. He dropped to his knees, bombarded by sound and light that only he could see.


    ¡°You¡¯re dead!¡± the suit snarled, his voice dripping with pain. ¡°I¡¯ll remember your faces!¡±


    ¡°I burned out your hard drive,¡± I said, feeding the audio into his chip to make sure he heard it. ¡°Without it, I doubt you can tell one tusker from another. And there¡¯s a lot of us.¡±


    I raised my gun again, pointing it directly at the woman in the business blouse. She got the message, scrambling backwards in fear.


    ¡°Slot and run!¡± Regent shouted. ¡°Let¡¯s fucking go!¡±


    We sprinted down the corridors like there was a dragon at our back, as the silent alarm turned loud and the doors around us started automatically locking as the building¡¯s lockdown systems enacted their active shooter protocols. I took the panicked code of the alarm and spun it into sprites that flew beside us, invisible to everyone but me even as they chewed through locks and overrode others to keep away pursuers.


    It wasn¡¯t enough to get everyone, however; a pair of Minutemen rounded the corner with pistols raised. I found myself staring down two pistol barrels, knowing for a fact that I was too slow to react in time. Grue was faster, however, and their shots went wide as a burst from his assault rifle rippled across them, a diagonal line of impacts ripping through their uniforms with the last shot tearing a chunk out of the neck of the one on the right.


    At the same time, one of my sprites alerted me to movement behind us. I wheeled around to see a Minuteman in cheap-looking armour raising a submachine gun at us, her finger frantically pulling on the trigger. One of my sprites was resting on the barrel of the weapon, having burned out its smartlink.


    I grinned, raising my submachine gun, and watched as the rent-a-cop turned tail and sprinted away.


    When we emerged into the loading bay, we came out fighting on all fronts. I¡¯d already hacked the bay¡¯s security camera and used it to mark the five guards who¡¯d taken up positions to stop us, and Regent had made Garcia pick up a gun from the fallen guards. He led the way, his shots inaccurate. Clearly Regent didn¡¯t have much skill with a gun.


    Accuracy wasn¡¯t the point, though. What mattered was that the hired guards weren¡¯t prepared to fire into one of the managers of the building they were supposed to protect. It was a bit of a gamble, but it was one that paid off.


    Grue was the one who was doing the most damage ¨C firing brief, accurate bursts of gunfire that killed two of the guards.


    I didn¡¯t fire at all; I was keeping only the barest fraction of my attention on meatspace, guiding my body more through the CCTV feed than what I could see with my own eyes. Instead I focused on corralling sprites as I bricked smart weapons and suppressed any outgoing communications.


    Inevitably, such blatant action drew the eye of Medhall¡¯s security systems, and security IC began to manifest around us. There were too many of them for me to fight alone, so I drew a cloak of resonance around myself and set my sprites to attack anything nearby that was connected to the matrix, essentially tricking the simple programmes into thinking they were the priority target.


    With the guards either dead or pinned down, we were able to sprint out of the loading bay and back into the rain, every footfall splashing through puddles as we ran towards the road. Ahead of us, Bitch¡¯s van rounded the corner at full speed before slamming to a halt with the side door already open.


    Regent had been pushing Garcia¡¯s body to its very limits, and he practically threw our target into the van head-first. We followed, leaping into the van with only a little more care before Bitch sped off into the night. I kept one eye on the matrix for signs of incoming pursuers, while Tattletale hit Garcia with a stunbolt so that Regent could let the spell drop.


    After five minutes of driving with no signs of any Medhall kill squads, I finally let myself relax a little.


    ¡°I think we¡¯re clear,¡± I said, sighing with relief.


    ¡°Well, thank fuck for that,¡± Regent drawled, his voice hoarse from both physical and magical exertion.


    ¡°I¡¯ll call the client,¡± Grue said. ¡°No reason to hold onto this hot potato any longer than we have to.¡±


    As he sank into one of the van¡¯s seats, I watched the datastream leave his commlink. It was simplicity itself to piggyback off the call without either him or our client knowing.


    ¡°Hello?¡± Her voice was clear, but there were others in the background I couldn¡¯t make out.


    ¡°Ms Johnson,¡± Grue began, ¡°I¡¯m calling to let you know we have a parcel for delivery. We¡¯re eager to hand it over.¡±


    ¡°Really?¡± she asked, with the kind of excitement that can¡¯t be feigned. ¡°That¡¯s great news! Hold on a sec, I¡¯ll arrange a dropoff and wire your funds to your fixer.¡±


    What followed was about two minutes of tense waiting, as Bitch drove us nowhere in particular, before she came back on the line.


    ¡°Okay, they¡¯re on-route and expecting you. I¡¯ll send you the address.¡±


    As luck would have it, the meeting point wasn¡¯t too far away; on the edge of Midtown, in the shadow of the overpass that flew over the old city centre and into Downtown. It was a vacant lot ¨C a rare thing in this part of the city ¨C but it was sheltered from the rain. My boots crunched on gravel as I stepped out of the van, followed by Grue ¨C who was holding Garcia up by his shoulders. He¡¯d come to on the journey, but still hung in Grue¡¯s grip like a ragdoll.


    Bitch deployed a couple of drones that fanned out to cover our perimeter, but otherwise we just sat there and waited for something to happen.


    About five minutes later, two vehicles turned the corner and drove onto the lot with the rumble of wheels on gravel; a car, followed by a truck. Both were armoured, with metal mesh covering the windows, and both had the same paint scheme of black accented with yellow. However, I almost didn¡¯t notice those details as the lights on top of the two vehicles flicked on, covering the lot with alternating flashes of red and blue.


    Everyone tensed as five Knight Errant beat cops stepped out of the two vehicles, each of them anonymous in black tacsuits trimmed with yellow and full-face helmets that hid their features behind opaque yellow lenses. Each of them was armed, too, apart from one officer near the edge who looked to be some sort of mage, his taksuit accented with a tabard that bore intricate mystical designs.


    The squad¡¯s suits were linked together in the matrix, each of them equipped with an IFF system that broadcast their badge number, but without any name attached. The fifth cop, the one who¡¯d been sitting in the back of the car, had a rank attached to his tag and a plate carrier over his suit. He was a lieutenant.


    ¡°Is this him?¡± he asked Grue, his voice altered by the helmet.


    ¡°In the flesh,¡± Grue nodded.


    ¡°Delta four, delta five, take custody,¡± the lieutenant gestured, and the two cops from the truck moved forwards. Grue handed Garcia over to the pair of them, and they cuffed his arms behind his back.


    The moment he was in Knight Errant¡¯s hands, the life seemed to return to Garcia. He struggled against their grip, shouting at the lieutenant.


    ¡°You can¡¯t do this to me! I¡¯m a corporate citizen!¡±


    The lieutenant didn¡¯t respond verbally, instead opening a pouch on his plate carrier and pulling out a small black device that looked a little like an epi-pen. Sure enough, he stabbed it into Garcia¡¯s shoulder and held it there until it beeped.


    ¡°Andrew Garcia,¡± he began, reading out the information that had just been relayed to him by Knight Errant¡¯s SIN database. ¡°Registered citizen of the United Canadian and American States. Wanted for the murder of Jess Montrose. Listed as a fugitive and a missing person. No recorded corporate affiliation.¡±


    At that, Garcia descended into a tirade of profanity, kicking and screaming as the officers dragged him to a cage in the back of the van. The lieutenant watched as they locked him in, then turned back to us ¨C his expression inscrutable behind his helmet.


    ¡°We¡¯re done here,¡± he turned away, walking back to the car. ¡°Let¡¯s move.¡±


    We watched them drive off into the night, taking a murderer with them. I felt satisfied that we¡¯d completed the job, but what surprised me was that I didn¡¯t particularly care that we¡¯d put him away. There were thousands of other would-be race heroes just like him, but that wasn¡¯t the reason.


    I kept thinking back to what I¡¯d uncovered over the course of this job, kept thinking over the operation that had been run out of that factory. It was clear that Garcia had just been a pawn in a larger scheme, and I felt like I was only scraping at the surface of something big.


    But I couldn¡¯t dig into every secret in the world, no matter how much I might want to. Maybe I needed to think less like Tattletale and more like Grue; we¡¯d got the target out, fulfilled the client¡¯s request and very soon I¡¯d have some nuyen burning a hole in my bank account. This was a win, plain and simple.

 Interlude 2: Victoria

    There were very few things, in Victoria Dallon¡¯s estimation, more satisfying than exercise. It was the most obvious form of self-improvement, with tangible results visible over the course of time, even if they took months. It was also an excellent way to relieve stress; throwing herself into an intensive circuit and venting her frustrations on dumbbells and pull-up bars until she was too sore and weary to be angry about anything.


    It was also reassuring to know that she could run for miles without tiring, and dislocate a jaw with a single punch if it came to that.


    She kept her eyes forward as she rose up from a squat, the eighty kilogram barbell rising with her as she held it on her shoulders. Victoria had been running circuits for almost half an hour now, and she was really starting to feel the effect of the kettlebell swings, box jumps, pull-ups, sprints and deadlifts. Still she continued, with single-minded determination.


    She was proud of her strength, and the effort it took to maintain it, even as she was aware of her limitations. She knew, for one, that she¡¯d never be able to match the troll on the other end of the gym, his oversized muscles heaving as he lifted no less than four hundred and eighty kilogrammes over his head.


    But his barbell was longer than hers, to fit his longer arms, and reinforced to deal with the weight it was expected to handle. She wasn¡¯t about to begrudge him his strength, because she knew he was putting in just as much effort as she was. Victoria would never be as strong as him, or any other troll that put even a little effort into exercise, but nor would she ever be able to cast spells, or become CEO of Saeder-Krupp. What she could do was become as good as Victoria Dallon could be, in body and in mind.


    As she finished the set, she laid the barbell down and moved over to the wall of the gym, collecting the medicine ball she¡¯d left there and throwing up against a target painted about three feet above her head height. As it bounced off, she caught it and used the momentum to drop into a squat, which she then used to springboard the next throw.


    She repeated that motion thirty five times, her legs burning, before she was finally done. After quickly returning the equipment to its rightful place, she sat herself down on the floor and began a long routine of stretches that would hopefully ensure she was still capable of standing up that evening.


    As she did so, she couldn¡¯t help but notice another of the gym¡¯s occupants. There was an elf working out on one of the rowing machines, half-heartedly pulling at the bar while his eyes kept drifting back and forth, looking between some random point and¡­ right at her.


    Oh hell, Victoria thought as he slowed, about to let go of the bar as he clearly saw something in her expression that absolutely wasn¡¯t there. So she narrowed her eyes, and he faltered for a moment before continuing to row at a much faster pace, pretending like he¡¯d never intended to stop, or even that he¡¯d been looking at all.


    Victoria looked away as well, but then she caught the gaze of the troll on the other end of the room. He simply rolled his eyes, the corner of his lip curling up past his right tusk in a sympathetic half-smile as he went in for another lift.


    Victoria mirrored the expression as she returned to her stretches, finishing off her routine in peace before grabbing her water bottle, taking a deep drink, and striding out of the gym.


    Outside, it had started to rain, and heavily. Victoria might have welcomed the refreshing chill, but the pathways of the New Brockton University campus were all covered by translucent awnings to protect against the occasional acid rainstorm that rolled in from the factories of the rest of the North End.


    The campus itself was built into the slopes of Captain¡¯s Hill, with academic buildings and accommodation blocks rising up in tiers linked by staircases and escalators. It was a relatively new university, paid for by provisions in President Dunkelzahn¡¯s will in twenty fifty-seven. Anders Memorial University, the older institution by several centuries, had shifted towards an entirely STEM-focused institution when it was expanded and renamed by the Richard Anders Foundation after the death of its namesake, and New Brockton University had served to redress the balance by providing an institution that was more focused on law, social sciences and the liberal arts.


    Victoria enjoyed the way it felt almost separate from the city, nestled in a closed campus between the sparse mansions of the Captain¡¯s Hill Estates and the river. It was only a few miles away from the Midtown apartment she¡¯d grown up in, but it felt so much further.


    Her own accommodation block was at the edge of the highest tier of the campus, which paradoxically meant it was one of the cheaper buildings on the site. After all, travelling to and from classes meant traversing either an entire hill¡¯s worth of stairs or packed elevator rides. It was also further from the city, and the bars and clubs of Constitution Hill.


    The doors of the building opened automatically for her, reading the electronic tag in her student ID card and matching it up with her System Identification Number. Her room was on the eighth floor, up an elevator and almost at the end of the corridor, one of fourteen two-person dorm rooms on that floor. Each room, save for the studios, shared a bathroom with the one next to it.


    Victoria¡¯s room was evenly split between the two competing influences of its occupants. Victoria¡¯s half was a mess of organised chaos, with shelves of textbooks, periodicals and magazines spilling over her shelves and onto stacks on her desk, all of them ordered in a way that made absolute sense to her and was completely incomprehensible to anyone else. Above her desk, Victoria¡¯s noticeboard was covered in a spiderweb of competing notes for different subjects and modules, with a few photographs pinned in the corners.


    The other half of the room was more orderly, but often in a much more artistic way. The noticeboard bore neat flashcards and elegant mind maps, with bright colours separating each topic. It was almost contradictory in places; the orderly structure of the notes competing with more artistic elements, as the person who made them experimented with expressing herself.


    Victoria¡¯s roommate wasn¡¯t back yet, so she peeled off her gym clothes and spent almost twenty minutes in the shower, before throwing on a pair of sweatpants and a black tank top, and sitting herself down in front of a mirror to start carefully putting her make-up on in preparation for that evening. She worked methodically and in utter silence, until she was distracted by the buzz of her commlink.


    She looked down, smiled, and immediately flicked through her contact list until she found the right number.


    ¡°Hey Victoria,¡± Crystal picked up on the second ring, ¡°glad I could catch you before tonight. You looking forward to it?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯ll be interesting,¡± Victoria replied, peering at herself in the mirror to check she was done before leaving the shared bathroom. ¡°But honestly, it¡¯s kind of stressful. A lot of big names, you know.¡±


    Crystal scoffed, and Victoria smiled as she imagined the expression on her face. ¡°Oh come on, let your hair down! You¡¯d better enjoy yourself, or I swear I¡¯ll head back up there and drag you out clubbing until you¡¯re finally acting like a college student should.¡±


    ¡°Not all of us can just coast along on our magic powers,¡± Victoria drawled. ¡°Some of us might have to actually work for their living. Are you still heating all your food yourself or have you actually bought a stove since I last saw you?¡±


    ¡°I mean, I have a stove,¡± she admitted, without a hint of shame. ¡°The apartment came with one. No idea if it works, though.¡±


    Victoria laughed. ¡°You¡¯re such a slob. How¡¯s Shenandoah treating you, anyway?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s really beautiful out here. I had no idea there was this much nature left anywhere in the world. It couldn¡¯t be more different from the city. The campus is nice too, but a lot of these people have some real sticks up their asses just because they¡¯re from magical families. All prim and proper, and of course they¡¯ve already got work lined up by their family¡¯s connections for when they graduate.¡±


    ¡°And how about you?¡± Victoria asked. ¡°Anything lined up for when you graduate?¡±


    ¡°Well there have been a lot of emails and letters from different companies, including some of the big ten, but they¡¯re all pretty formulaic. I¡¯m sure everyone on campus has received them, and the Shiawase letter just had ¡®Candidate Name¡¯ instead of Crystal Pelham. I¡¯m not sure I want to be just another cog in a company¡¯s machine.¡±


    ¡°So what are you thinking?¡±


    ¡°I might try for government work,¡± she answered, ¡°or a smaller company. Maybe an NGO. Somewhere things are a little more personal, and the work more interesting than just being a glorified security guard. At least I don¡¯t have to figure it out just yet. But what about you? Still sticking to your plan?¡±


    ¡°If the FBI will have me, yeah. If not, I¡¯ll probably work for Knight Errant for a few years then apply again.¡±


    ¡°Oh? Is that something Prince Charming suggested?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not like that,¡± Victoria blushed. ¡°The FBI doesn¡¯t take many graduates, and Knight Errant has a good reputation. I¡¯d certainly rather work for them than most of the competition. I wouldn¡¯t touch Lone Star if they were the last company on Earth, and Minuteman and NYPD Inc aren¡¯t much better.¡±


    ¡°You know, I can picture you as some sort of ultra-cop. Like a film star, or something. You¡¯d be the straight-edge professional, and then they¡¯d pair you up with some maverick who doesn¡¯t play by the rules.¡±


    Victoria chuckled, but her heart wasn¡¯t in it. For an instant, she debated telling Crystal about what she¡¯d done, about hiring a team of professional criminals for the sake of revenge. But that wasn¡¯t a burden she could share.


    ¡°I¡¯m coming back to the city in a few weeks,¡± Crystal continued, and Victoria wondered whether she¡¯d been silent just long enough for it to become awkward. ¡°Just for a weekend. We should meet up, you me and Eric. It¡¯d be like old times.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d like that.¡± Victoria smiled, remembering all the time she¡¯d spent over at her cousins¡¯ house. At times, it had felt like she¡¯d spent more time there than in her own home. It wasn¡¯t just that she was an only child; things were calmer there, for all that Eric and Crystal got on each other¡¯s¡¯ nerves sometimes. She¡¯d often ended up playing mediator, being the middle child of the three.


    At least their problems were something I could fix, or at least understand, she thought.


    ¡°Great!¡± Crystal exclaimed. ¡°I¡¯ll get in touch with Eric, see if I can hammer out a time and a place. For now, though, I¡¯ve got to go. We¡¯re doing a midnight ritual tonight, and I need to get ready.¡±


    ¡°Spooky,¡± Victoria chuckled. ¡°Well, have fun dancing naked around a firepit, or whatever it is you do. I¡¯ll let you know how tonight goes.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I will! See you, Vic!¡±


    She hung up, and Victoria set her commlink down before moving over to the window. Her room might be on the edge of the campus, but by a stroke of good fortune that meant it was tall enough that it looked over the campus buildings and out to the distant spires of the city centre. She tried to picture the slopes of ascending skyscrapers as the vast mountains of the Shenandoah valley, but she just couldn¡¯t manage to bridge the gap between the man-made world and the natural.


    Besides, Victoria was a city girl at heart.


    Victoria turned as the door to her dorm room was opened by a short woman wearing a lilac raincoat, with a backpack slung over one shoulder and a folded-over suit carrier in her left hand. She smiled as she saw Victoria, and Victoria returned the gesture before her eyes widened as she took in the logo on the side of the suit carrier.


    ¡°Hey Vicky,¡± Lily greeted her. ¡°Sorry I¡¯m late, I lost track of time.¡±


    ¡°Oh come on,¡± Victoria replied, ¡°you¡¯ve got absolutely nothing to be sorry for. I really appreciate you setting this whole thing up, and for picking it up for me.¡±


    ¡°What can I say,¡± her roommate shrugged her shoulders. ¡°I¡¯ll take any excuse to spend more time with Sabah.¡±


    ¡°Lily, you¡¯ve been seeing her for six months,¡± Victoria said, with a faux-serious expression on her face. ¡°You¡¯re going steady. You don¡¯t need an excuse to go and see your girlfriend.¡± She emphasised the word, and enjoyed the faint blush that spread across the korobokuru dwarf¡¯s face.


    ¡°I don¡¯t want to bother her,¡± Lily admitted, sheepishly, looking down at the floor. ¡°Don¡¯t want to interrupt her creative energies, or something.¡±


    ¡°When she was measuring me she called you her muse,¡± Victoria pointed out. ¡°Seriously, hit the metro some time and head down to her studio. Bring some coursework if you don¡¯t want to get in the way, but you¡¯re too cute a couple to keep apart.¡±


    ¡°Enough already.¡± Lily¡¯s voice was somewhere between a whine and a laugh. ¡°Today¡¯s supposed to be about your love life, not mine.¡±


    She set the suit carrier down on Victoria¡¯s bed, and Victoria immediately fell silent, approaching the sleek black bag like it was some reverential artefact. She pulled the zip down carefully, then brushed open the carrier and audibly gasped at what she saw.


    At its most basic, the one-shoulder dress was sleek and black, an hour-long measuring session at Sabah¡¯s studio ensuring it would fit her perfectly, but that was underselling the amount of time and effort that had been put into it. As Victoria peered closer, she could see faint flecks of gold hidden among the black fabric, weaved so tightly together that it was impossible to tell where one began and the other ended. Under the artificial light of the dorm room, it made the black look like it held a sea of golden stars among its depths.


    Thicker gold thread was weaved all across the upper part of the dress, creating intricate traced patterns that somehow put Victoria in mind of magically-harmonised designs she had once seen in a textbook of Crystal¡¯s. They continued up the line of the dress, following it over the wide shoulder that gave the impression that the dress had been folded together from a single piece of cloth, with no straps or embellishments beyond the threaded patterns. She couldn¡¯t even see any seams.


    ¡°It¡¯s beautiful¡­¡± Victoria murmured, entranced.


    ¡°Not yet it isn¡¯t,¡± Lily said with a smile. ¡°Try it on, then you¡¯ll see.¡±


    Victoria nodded, gingerly taking the dress out of its case and positioning herself in front of the mirror as she dressed. The material was smoother than silk on her skin, and the cut of the dress hugged her body perfectly from her shoulder to the hemline just above her knees, without a single part that was too loose or too tight except for where it had been deliberately designed to be so.


    But what amazed Victoria was the way the starfield suddenly came alive as the material made contact with her skin, the gold seeming to shimmer and flicker without any regard for the way the light was actually hitting it.


    ¡°This isn¡¯t electrochromatic fabric, is it? I didn¡¯t think it could be made this thin.¡± she asked, her eyes still focused solely on her reflection in the mirror.


    ¡°No, apparently that¡¯s out at the moment,¡± Lily said, moving to stand next to Victoria. She smiled, looking up to meet Victoria¡¯s gaze in the mirror.


    ¡°That¡¯s your soul. Sabah put a geomantic web into the dress that reacts to your essence, creating a pattern that¡¯s completely unique. If a mage wore that dress, it¡¯d be almost completely gold.¡±


    ¡°Incredible. Seriously, I can¡¯t thank Sabah enough.¡±


    ¡°You can,¡± Lily chuckled. ¡°People are going to ask you who you¡¯re wearing, and you¡¯re going to tell them it¡¯s Parian. Besides, it¡¯s Dean who you should thank.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t remind me.¡± Victoria¡¯s smile faltered. ¡°Seriously, I have no idea how I¡¯m supposed to make this up to him,¡± she said, not really talking about the dress.


    ¡°It¡¯s all relative,¡± Lily shrugged her shoulders. ¡°The idea that it¡¯s the thought that counts goes both ways. Money means less to him than it does to you or me, so he pulls these extravagant gestures to do justice to how he feels about you.¡±


    ¡°I know,¡± Victoria sighed, thinking of how he hadn¡¯t even blinked when he covered the cost of the Shadowrunners. ¡°Still, please don¡¯t tell me how much this costs. I really think I¡¯m better off not knowing.¡±


    ¡°Probably,¡± Lily shrugged, before rolling her eyes as Victoria reached for a shoebox at the bottom of her closet. ¡°I really don¡¯t think you need heels, you know. You¡¯re already taller than Dean.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not about Dean,¡± Victoria countered. ¡°It¡¯s a powerplay. It sucks, but a lot of people there will probably see me as just his accessory. I want to prove them wrong, and that means looking them in the eye and acting like I have every bit as much right to be there as they do.¡±


    ¡°Forget looking them in the eye,¡± Lily said, ¡°you¡¯ll be taller than most of them. And I¡¯m going to end up with even worse neck pain than I already have.¡±


    Victoria blushed and looked away, suddenly conscious of the sixty centimetre height difference between her and the dwarf. ¡°Ah, sorry. But it¡¯s how these people think.¡±


    ¡°I get it. When in Tokyo, do as the Japanese do.¡± On the table, Victoria¡¯s commlink buzzed. ¡°Speaking of, that¡¯s probably the Crown Prince now.¡±


    ¡°Yep,¡± Victoria confirmed, not even acknowledging the nickname. ¡°He¡¯s trying to ask what¡¯s taking me so long without actually asking me what¡¯s taking me so long.¡±


    ¡°Did it work?¡± Lily asked.


    Victoria, typing with one hand, waved the other in a ¡®so-so¡¯ gesture.


    ¡®I¡¯m on way down now,¡¯ she sent. ¡®You can¡¯t miss me.¡¯


    Victoria set her commlink down, grabbing a pair of earrings from her wardrobe and slipping them on before pulling out a small black box. Inside was a pair of clear contact lenses that Victoria applied with practiced ease, blinking twice to ensure the fit. The ocular screens connected to the circuitry in the earrings, pairing with her commlink.


    Victoria mused that while women¡¯s fashion was still light on pockets, at least modern technology had mostly condemned the handbag to the charity shop of history.


    ¡°Seriously, thanks, Lily. And thank Sabah for me. I¡¯ll try and be quiet when I come back tonight.¡±


    ¡°Or spend the night at Dean¡¯s and make as much noise as you want. Have fun¡± ¨C she smirked ¨C ¡°Cinderella.¡±


    Victoria made her way through the halls one again, moving with carefully-practiced poise on her high heels. Dean was waiting for her outside the building¡¯s entrance, dressed for the evening in a sharp black suit ¨C from Zo¨¦, Victoria thought, though she wasn¡¯t sure ¨C with a crisp white shirt and a rich red tie, held in place by a golden tie clasp with the logo of Ares Macrotechnology on its front ¨C the helmeted head of an Ancient Greek warrior, in profile.


    His eyes ¨C Victoria noticed with some satisfaction and more than a little pride ¨C were wide open, drinking in every detail like a man stranded in the desert might look at a mirage ¨C a loving, genuine and slightly desperate look, as if he was afraid she might vanish into the desert sands at any moment.


    ¡°Well?¡± Victoria asked, doing a slow pirouette. ¡°What do you think?¡± She smiled. ¡°It¡¯s okay if you need a moment to pick your jaw up off the floor.¡±


    ¡°Victoria, you look radiant,¡± he managed to say.


    ¡°You¡¯re not so bad yourself, you know,¡± she replied, though to be honest it wasn¡¯t her favourite look of his.


    Dean was dressed exactly like you¡¯d expect the scion of corporate nobility to look; someone who already dresses like they¡¯re in charge because they can be sure of a golden ticket to the top courtesy of their parents and connections within the company. The party would be full of people dressed just the same as him, for all the individual brands and colours might vary somewhat.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    Victoria wasn¡¯t fond of suits in general; there were some brands out there that weren¡¯t afraid to innovate on the centuries-old paradigm, but it still seemed too close to a uniform for her tastes. Uniforms had their place, of course, but they stifled individuality by design. Dresses had much more variety to them, much more freedom to be expressive.


    She much preferred the outfits Dean wore when she was able to bring him away from the constantly judging eyes of high society, or the self-contained Ares ecosystem of the Bellamy Arcology. She¡¯d never seen Dean more honest, more expressive, more alive than when he absolutely lost himself in the crush of a Bad Canary concert, far away from the isolation of the VIP boxes.


    He was wearing a merchandise t-shirt from one of Canary¡¯s older tours, one Victoria had bought when she took him to the Market, and as the powernoize din deafened the pair of them, his every movement, every expression, was filled with the pure, genuine joy that was why Victoria fell for him in the first place, once she¡¯d managed to spot it beneath a lifetime of learned behaviours. She¡¯d been teasing that Dean out ever since, and she wasn¡¯t going to stop for as long as their relationship lasted.


    It''s why the smile on Dean¡¯s face was wholly genuine, in spite of his carefully-constructed hairstyle and suit. It¡¯s why Victoria didn¡¯t even mind that he was accompanied by a bodyguard, especially since she already knew her.


    ¡°You¡¯re looking sharp too, Geneva.¡±


    The elven woman smiled, glancing down at her neatly-cut pantsuit, the only decoration a magical sigil on a necklace. Victoria knew the suit was armoured, even if she couldn¡¯t actually see the armour. It was also probably her work uniform. Normally, when Victoria went out with Dean his close protection detail tended to follow from a discrete distance to give them some space, so they¡¯d wear all sorts of outfits to blend in with wherever the pair were going that day. At a formal event like this, apparently the bodyguards were meant to be visible.


    ¡°Thank you, Miss Dallon. That¡¯s an incredible dress. It¡¯s magical, right?¡±


    Victoria had long given up trying to get Dean¡¯s bodyguards to call her Victoria. It had been a long fight to get them to stop calling her ma¡¯am, which just made her feel old.


    ¡°The fabric reacts to my essence to create the pattern. Which kind of makes me want to see what happens when I do this.¡±


    Victoria strode forward and wrapped her arms around Dean, pulling him into a tight hug and going in for a kiss. He was still, for a moment, as propriety warred with emotion, before enthusiastically returning the hug. At his touch, the starfield on Victoria¡¯s dress came alive with flickering supernovas as it reacted to two sources of essence.


    ¡°It¡¯s beautiful,¡± she whispered into his ear. ¡°Thank you.¡±


    She pulled back from the hug, the starfield settling.


    ¡°And thanks for going to Sabah for it. I¡¯m sure she really appreciates the business.¡±


    ¡°She does excellent work,¡± Dean said, ¡°and she¡¯s local. I might see if I can drum up some investment for her; Ares is lagging behind in the fashion department.¡±


    ¡°Isn¡¯t high fashion a bit far from the heavy industry sphere?¡± Victoria asked, as the pair of them started to make their way back through the pedestrianised campus.


    ¡°None of the big ten can afford to have spheres,¡± Dean explained. ¡°Companies like Medhall can specialise because it allows them to undercut their competition and helps their growth, but once a company has reached the size of a triple-A corporation, they have to diversify or they¡¯ll be brought down by a thousand cuts. They might have areas they¡¯re more experienced in, but they have to be able to provide everything, fashion included.¡±


    As Dean spoke, Victoria couldn¡¯t stop herself from thinking about how this sort of thinking was why their relationship was so strained at times. Both of them came from different backgrounds and wanted to get to different places, for all that Dean was already showing a willingness to go against the company by attending university in Brockton Bay rather than attending one of Ares¡¯ own institutions.


    Even that had been justified, at least outwardly, by arguing that attending a local university would help Dean navigate Brockton Bay¡¯s uniquely dynastic political scene, dominated by local families and old names. They were from very different worlds, and perhaps that made it impossible for their relationship to work in the long run, but both of them were determined to make the most out of their mutual infatuation while it lasted.


    There was a car waiting for them, a luxury-model Ares Roadmaster ¨C which meant ¡®armoured personnel carrier¡¯ was a closer fit than ¡®car¡¯, to Victoria¡¯s eyes. The vehicle¡¯s silhouette was typically boxy and militaristic, and it had no windows whatsoever behind the driver¡¯s cabin, where the glass was patterned with faint hexagons that were the only visual sign of the intricate armour within the transparent pane.


    Standing by the car was Dean¡¯s other bodyguard for the night, a musclebound ork with faint seams visible in the skin of his arms and face, the only visible signs of his extensive cybernetic augmentation. He wore a suit in the same nondescript colours as Geneva, and ¨C while he wasn¡¯t visibly armed ¨C Victoria knew he had a hidden submachine gun built into each of his cybernetic arms, alongside a whole host of other offensive and defensive cyberware.


    ¡°Hey Jerry,¡± Victoria greeted him, receiving a polite nod and a ¡°Miss Dallon¡± in return, as the ork opened up the passenger door of the Roadmaster, a compact set of stairs folding out of the side of the van to provide easy access. Dean stood to one side of the steps, his hand holding Victoria¡¯s own as he helped her up in an entirely unnecessary but typically gallant gesture.


    Inside, the back of the truck held a u-shaped leather couch, with a carpeted floor and tastefully minimalist lighting. All around the couch, and along the top halves of the doors, white panels ran the length of the space. As Victoria and Dean sat down on the couch and Jerry swung the door shut behind them, those screens flickered into life to display a panoramic view of their surroundings, as if the armoured sides of the vehicle weren¡¯t even there.


    For a few minutes, Victoria did nothing but look out those windows, her body turned and her arm resting on the back of her seat. She watched as they descended down the slopes of Captain¡¯s Hill, then rose up onto the elevated road that crossed over the river towards the towering spires of Downtown.


    The couple fell into a comfortable silence as Jerry weaved the vehicle through traffic, content to simply watch the city pass them by. When they¡¯d crossed the river, Dean finally spoke.


    ¡°Are you worried about tonight? I don¡¯t want to push you out of your comfort zone.¡±


    Victoria turned from the city, giving him a reassuring smile.


    ¡°I¡¯ll be fine. It¡¯s not my usual scene, sure, but I know I¡¯ve dragged you along to plenty of strange and unfamiliar places.¡±


    Her smile turned a bit strained for a moment, and she looked away before continuing.


    ¡°Honestly, if I¡¯m worried about anything, it¡¯s¡­ auntie Jess.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re worried about the Shadowrunners?¡± Dean asked. ¡°I asked around; Faultline has a good reputation. Her teams are professionals. They¡¯ll get the job done.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s the thing,¡± Victoria sighed, leaning back in her seat, ¡°I¡¯m wondering whether they should. I mean¡­ it¡¯s revenge, isn¡¯t it? Andrew Garcia took my aunt¡¯s life, so I¡¯ve paid a bunch of thugs to take his.¡±


    ¡°They¡¯re not killing him, though,¡± Dean pointed out. ¡°Just capturing him.¡±


    ¡°Unless something goes wrong,¡± Victoria replied, pointedly. ¡°Even if everything goes right, I¡¯m still tearing someone away from their home for the sake of satisfying a grudge.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s more than a grudge,¡± Dean pointed out. ¡°It¡¯s an injustice. Yes this is personal to you, but that doesn¡¯t make it any less unjust. It just means that you have the means and the motive to actually do something about it.¡±


    ¡°I guess¡­¡± Victoria demurred, turning back to the city. ¡°Either way, what¡¯s done is done. I¡¯ve sent out the hunters, and I couldn¡¯t call them back even if I wanted to. Besides,¡± she smiled, ¡°if we¡¯re about to descend into the viper pit of city politics, I¡¯m going to need to get my head in the game.¡±


    The Forsberg Gallery was an old building, built over sixty years ago in a style that was seen as daring at the time, looking more like a collection of blocks than a single, cohesive building ¨C with gaps, arches and tunnels that broke up its silhouette and caused it to almost whistle in high winds. Time had seen its twenty-six-story grandeur dwarfed by the hundred-story-plus skyscrapers of Downtown, to the point where it now sat as the sole outlier in a chasm of buildings.


    But Brockton Bay has always turned necessity into innovation, and with lights fixed to the sides of those immense buildings, the Forsberg Gallery was permanently lit up in an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of colours that used its irregular shape to cast mesmerising patterns of light and shadow onto the glass fronts of the buildings that surrounded it. The city itself remained split firmly down the middle over whether the effect was beautiful or tacky to the extreme, but it remained the largest art installation in New England regardless of what they thought, and that drew in tourists.


    The front of the Gallery had been cordoned off behind sleek velvet ropes and less sleek security fences, with Knight Errant cops mingling with the Gallery¡¯s own contracted security. Inside the wire perimeter, dozens of photographers, reporters and journalists crowded behind the velvet ropes, on either side of a long, red carpet like the entourage of some medieval court.


    Victoria could see other guests moving down the red carpet, a queue of VIP vehicles lining up one after another to deposit their precious cargo. With so many of the city¡¯s notables in one place, she was sure that the visible security was only a miniscule percentage of the total amount.


    Within moments, their turn had come and the Roadmaster pulled to a halt in front of the red carpet, with dozens of camera lenses aimed right at the door. Victoria felt her heart pounding in her chest as Geneva dismounted from the passenger seat and the panels flickered back to their flat white colour as she opened the door.


    ¡°Ready?¡± Dean asked Victoria, who nodded in spite of the way her heart was pounding in her chest.


    As the door swung open, and the clamour of the city rushed back in, Dean was the first to step down the ladder. Once he was out, he turned back to Victoria and held out a hand for her as she descended.


    The pair of them walked along the carpet arm in arm, focusing on each other or on the gallery¡¯s doors rather than on the constant clamour of the journalists as they jostled for the best angles and light. Victoria couldn¡¯t help but wonder what held their attention more; her, or her dress. She knew that ultimately she¡¯d take second place to Dean in the articles ¨C ¡®Ares Heir meets College Sweetheart¡¯, ¡®Who is that girl on Dean Stansfield¡¯s arm?¡¯, ¡®Who¡¯s wearing Who at the Gallery?¡¯


    She might have been annoyed by the inherent unfairness of it all, if she cared at all about society gossip rags. Besides, it¡¯d definitely drum up business for Sabah, so at least some good would come of it.


    They ascended the staircase to the gallery itself, passing by armed and armoured security without so much as a questioning look before stepping through the doors and into the lobby, where the clamour of the press was muffled by white noise generators and a live band played a smooth fractal phase song.


    Dean nodded to the greeters welcoming them to the Gallery, before the pair of them were politely ushered into an elevator that carried them up to the event hall that occupied the topmost floors of the gallery.


    Once the doors opened, the pair were presented with a sea of figures in all manner of formalwear, from suits and dresses to half a dozen different uniforms. Most prominent among them was the deep blue of the Brockton Bay Fire Department, but Victoria had been expecting that. This was, after all, their fundraiser.


    In an era of near-universal privatisation of police and emergency medical services, firefighting remained one of the few professions in which private companies were the rare exception, rather than the norm. Those private firefighting companies that did exist usually catered to airports, heavy industry, or were owned by megacorporations for use on their own sovereign territory.


    It simply wasn¡¯t economical for a company to step in when the vast majority of firefighters were unpaid volunteers. Dean had told her that switching those volunteers out for contracted companies would result in costs increasing, rather than decreasing, so fire departments remained largely under the ownership of the municipalities they patrolled.


    It meant that they were often free from the suspicion of external influence that accompanied private police services, and even those corporations that enjoyed extraterritoriality would often let firefighters onto their premises. After all, it saved them the trouble of hiring their own in-house firefighters and shouldering the cost of preventing an emergency that might never happen.


    It also meant that donating to a fire department was one of the purest forms of civic charity there was, and annual events such as this took advantage of that golden PR opportunity to ensure that the Brockton Bay Fire Department could survive without so much as dipping a finger into the city¡¯s coffers.


    Dean and Victoria circulated through the room, which flickered with irregular light as the second-hand reflections of the neighbouring skyscrapers sent the night¡¯s pattern of light through the glass ceiling that capped off the Forsberg Gallery. The pair accepted champagne flutes from a passing member of the wait staff, dressed plainly in a black skirt and white blouse, and made small talk as Dean walked Victoria through the notables in attendance.


    Inevitably, he started with the delegation from Ares. His father was there, in his position as the Executive Officer Commanding Ares Macrotechnology¡¯s Brockton Bay division. Victoria had met Alexander Stansfield before, of course, and her conversation with him was just as stilted as it was before. She was sure that nobody his son ever dated would manage to meet his expectations.


    From there, Dean introduced her to a number of other local Ares figures and their occasional children, all of whom were much more immersed in Ares¡¯ militarised corporate culture than Dean was, with even more rigid dress styles, haircuts and minimalist make-up, all matched by a particular sort of posture that gave the impression they were always standing at attention. Ares Macrotechnology grew out of much of the military industrial complex of the USA, and it really showed. Dean was only insulated from it because he was expected to take over in Brockton Bay someday, so had a much more outward-facing education to help keep Ares¡¯ public face friendly.


    The one person in the Ares delegation that Victoria was genuinely interested in talking to was also the only one in uniform. She was an olive skinned human in the forest green dress uniform of Ares¡¯ Marine Corps, with a row of medals on her chest and a professionally neutral expression on her face. Dean introduced her to Victoria as Major Hana Besam, the commander of the garrison at the Ares Docks, and at Dean¡¯s encouragement she told Victoria how she¡¯d originally enlisted with the corporation¡¯s military wing in Kurdistan.


    Victoria was fascinated as she recounted the countries she¡¯d seen in her time in the military, and was almost disappointed when Dean suggested they move on to continue the circuit of notables.


    He didn¡¯t actually introduce her to the Medhall delegation. After all, they were Ares¡¯ main rivals for influence within the city; the two companies its first and second largest employers respectively. He did introduce them to her, however, pointing out Max Anders in a steel grey suit, his wife in a radiant white dress and their son, who was wearing a visibly strained smile that would no doubt cost his father¡¯s company some ground in the invisible game of prestige and soft power.


    The CEO of Medhall was talking to two blonde women in matching carmine red dresses ¨C twins, in fact. Victoria recognised them immediately as Jessica and Nessa Bierman, also known as Fenja and Menja ¨C or the Valkyries. They were the public face of Valkyrie Paramedical, and part of the Medhall subsidiary¡¯s most famous High Threat Response team. There was a reality TV show following their operations, and persistent rumours that the pair had been Shadowrunners before being personally scouted by Max Anders himself.


    Victoria was sure that their decision to show up in dresses, rather than uniforms like the representatives of the city¡¯s other emergency services ¨C private and public ¨C contained some hidden message, but she couldn¡¯t figure it out.


    Dean was much more willing to speak to the delegation from the city government, both because it was important to keep them on side and because Mayor Christner was apparently closer to Ares than Medhall. Victoria was happy to shake hands and make polite conversation, but increasingly her eyes were being drawn to the figures circulating the party in black dress uniforms trimmed with yellow.


    Fortunately, Dean caught her mood and effortlessly introduced her to a Knight Errant guest who had Victoria¡¯s heart beating in nervous eagerness. Colonel Wallis was a grizzled veteran, with an obvious prosthetic eye surrounded by scar tissue and the kind of handshake that only an artificial arm could deliver. What had Victoria so starstruck, however, was the fact that his uniform was trimmed with red, rather than yellow.


    Colonel Colin Wallis ran the city¡¯s Firewatch detachment ¨C the elite of the elite within Knight Errant ¨C and the service medals on his uniform outlined a long history of extermination missions against Insect Spirit outbreaks. Victoria considered it an honour to even be speaking with him, and she couldn¡¯t help but feel that her professed desire to work in the FBI sounded a little hollow when speaking to someone who¡¯d personally worked with the bureau to root out holdouts of the infested Universal Brotherhood cult.


    Colonel Wallis was polite, answering Victoria¡¯s questions concisely and with more than a little patience, but it was clear that he thought he had better things to do with his time than make nice with high society ¨C something Victoria entirely agreed with ¨C and that he was only humouring her because of Dean¡¯s social status.


    Commissioner Emily Piggot, the overall head of the city¡¯s Knight Errant department, was similarly professional but brusque. Victoria quickly made her excuses to leave the stocky dwarf be, Dean and her moving to mingle at random with the guests who weren¡¯t obviously tied to any particular faction within the city¡¯s dynastic politics.


    Dean managed to discreetly steer her away from accidentally saying hello to the patriarch of the Lavere family ¨C who¡¯d attended the fundraiser alongside his daughter despite the fact that his links to the mafia were all but public knowledge. So the pair of them stood in their own little bubble of arrogant isolation, with nobody willing to do so much as talk to either of them for fear of immediately falling under the suspicion of Knight Errant.


    It was as Victoria was talking to a small, unassuming man who was apparently in charge of CrashCart¡¯s operations in the city that her attention was suddenly drawn to an AR window that had been overlayed onto her vision with her contact lenses.


    She gave Dean a meaningful look and stepped away from the conversation with a muttered apology to the bureaucrat about needing to make a call. It was the team she¡¯d hired, calling her directly.


    ¡°Hello?¡± she asked, once she was sure she wouldn¡¯t be overheard or disturbed. Dean moved to stand next to her, to prevent anyone from coming over to ¡®make conversation¡¯ with the lone woman in the head-turning dress.


    ¡°Ms Johnson,¡± the voice on the other end of the line was deep, and Victoria immediately matched it to the ork. The team¡¯s leader. ¡°I''m calling to let you know we have a parcel for delivery. We''re eager to hand it over."


    ¡°Really?¡± Victoria asked, shocked and excited at the news. "That''s great news! Hold on a sec, I''ll arrange a dropoff and wire your funds to your fixer."


    Dean nodded, his own commlink already out as he sent messages of his own.


    ¡°Knight Errant can meet them under Archer¡¯s Overpass in ten minutes,¡± he said. ¡°They¡¯re routing officers now, and I¡¯ve sent them a description of your team.¡±


    ¡°Thanks,¡± Victoria smiled, before reactivating the microphone hidden in her earing. ¡°Okay, they''re on-route and expecting you. I''ll send you the address."


    She did so, then hung up and looked at Dean with a grin from ear to ear. She stepped in close and for a moment considered damning propriety and going in for a hug before instead grabbing him by the hands and politely yet firmly dragging him across the room.


    ¡°I know we can¡¯t leave just yet, but I¡¯m full of energy right now and need to burn it off somehow.¡±


    The dance floor in the centre of the room was pretty sparse, with most of the guests too busy networking to take note of it. It was actually where most of the firefighters in attendance could be found, taking the chance to dance with their partners at the fanciest party they¡¯d ever get to attend. Most of the others on the floor were minor guests who¡¯d bought their tickets out of either genuine charity or just a desire to attend a nice party, rather than to gain entry into the halls of the mighty and powerful.


    Either way, it was the one space in the room where people were actually there to enjoy themselves, and Victoria and Dean gracefully danced among them to the neo-classical music played by an orchestra sequestered on the room¡¯s mezzanine level. The moment enough time had passed that it wouldn¡¯t be a faux pas to leave, Victoria leant in for a kiss and the pair of them left the party without a word to anyone.


    Victoria knew that people would notice them go, but she hoped they¡¯d just assume they were sneaking back to Dean¡¯s studio apartment for an extensive makeout session.


    Instead, they got back into the Roadmaster as Dean¡¯s bodyguards drove them to a Knight Errant precinct in the North End of the city ¨C a blocky building surrounded by razor-wire fences and ever-vigilant automated security turrets. They parked in the vehicle depot, surrounded by armoured trucks and marginally less-armoured patrol cars. Once they stepped out, flanked by the two bodyguards, they were greeted by a uniformed Knight Errant officer, her features hidden behind a full-face helmet.


    ¡°Ma¡¯am, sir. If you would follow me, please.¡±


    The woman behind the yellow faceplate was sharp, immediately recognising the way Dean had stood back a little to put Victoria in front. This was her victory, her night, and she followed the officer into the precinct with trepidation and eagerness warring in her heart.


    The corridors were filled with Knight Errant officers ¨C some anonymous behind bodysuits and armour, while the administrative staff were dressed in simple black and yellow uniforms ¨C and Victoria felt more than a little out of place in her dress and high heels.


    Still, she pressed on, as the officer led her and her entourage to a nondescript doorway labelled ¡®Interrogation Room 1.¡¯


    The officer entered the room, and Victoria was about to follow her when she saw Dean pause at the threshold, standing back.


    ¡°This is your moment. Whatever you need to do, do. When you¡¯re done, I¡¯ll be here for you.¡±


    Victoria nodded, and stepped across the threshold. Inside, the officer from before was accompanied by two others ¨C a truly immense man who must be a troll, if his sheer size was anything to go by, and a female officer who could be elvish behind the helmet, judging by her lithe build. The latter was surprisingly much more intimidating than the former, and practically exuded menace as she stood there with her arms crossed, staring down at a broken man handcuffed to an interrogation table.


    Andrew Garcia had changed in the seven years since Victoria had last seen his face, plastered across news cycles, billboards and protest signs. Back then he¡¯d looked like a skinny kid, a little weasel who¡¯d got lucky. He¡¯d filled out somewhat since then, but it was still unmistakably the man who¡¯d killed her aunt.


    Victoria couldn¡¯t actually see his face; he was staring despondently down at the metal surface of the table like it somehow held the secret to his salvation. She almost leant down to try and get a closer look at him before deciding against showing any sort of weakness. The elven officer, however, had clearly noticed the movement and grabbed Garcia by his hair, tugging his head back and forcing him to look at Victoria.


    Victoria was almost disappointed when she didn¡¯t see even a hint of a sign that he recognised her, and with a shake of her head the Knight Errant officer let go, allowing Garcia¡¯s head to slump back down.


    ¡°It¡¯s really him¡­¡± she wondered out loud before asking, almost rhetorically, ¡°where has he been all this time?¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s a complication there,¡± the lead officer murmured into her ear. ¡°He has dual citizenship; the UCAS and Medhall. It seems someone over there liked the guy, and set him up with a place to lie low.¡±


    ¡°What does that mean moving forwards?¡± Victoria asked, with a sinking feeling in her stomach. Nothing could mess up a win quite like a corporation could.


    ¡°Medhall¡¯s extraterritoriality agreement is with New Hampshire, not the UCAS. It might be best to have a quiet trial, out of state. We can get him before a judge on federal hate crime charges.¡±


    Victoria paused for a moment, thinking it over even as her mind pulled up memories of her aunt; of family get-togethers, birthday gifts and presents, of the way she smiled, of how obviously in love she was with uncle Mike, and how he¡¯d been so distraught after she died that he¡¯d moved to Ontario to get away. Of how most of the problems within her extended family could be traced back to the ripples that spread out of her death, and the stresses of that time.


    ¡°No,¡± she said, firmly. ¡°Put him before a court in Brockton Bay, on the murder charge. Before you announce a date, I want all the evidence you have on him so I can leak it to the press. When he killed my Aunt, her whole life story became public knowledge within hours. I had tabloid journalists chasing me for comments when I was fourteen, saw pictures of my aunt being burned by Chosen scum on the streets, or held aloft as some patron saint of elves.¡±


    Garcia was looking up now, his eyes wide with understanding if not recognition. That would do, Victoria thought.


    ¡°The one thing I don¡¯t want anyone to mention is Medhall. I want the city to see this man as the scum of the Earth, because that¡¯s what he is. Medhall won¡¯t claim him then; they won¡¯t even look at him. His freedom, his life? They don¡¯t outweigh the reputational cost.¡±


    The officer nodded, and Victoria dearly wished she could read her expression behind the helmet.


    ¡°By the book, then. Mostly.¡± She turned to her colleagues. ¡°Maruyama, Hess, take this wretch to the cells.¡±


    As the trio of officers escorted Andrew Garcia out, Victoria sighed and planted her palms on the table, breathing heavily as she tried to centre herself. Once she was sure she wasn¡¯t about to break down, she left the interrogation room and locked eyes with Dean, whose face was the very picture of patient concern.


    ¡°Did it help?¡± he asked.


    Victoria sighed.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± she admitted. ¡°But I know it can¡¯t hurt.¡±

 Resonance: 3.01

    ?Data for sale; Medhall internal documents relating to dopadrine manufacture and distribution. Projected total output of all Medhall dopadrine production, specific route details for exports from Medhall Pharmaceutical Plant 43-BB, internal shift patterns and employee details for the same. Also included in the package is an analytical assessment of the data, in combination with a partially-redacted audio file of an interrogation, that posits potential criminal activity at Plant 43-BB, linked to the Brockton Bay criminal organisation The Chosen.?


    - Bug (17:30:00/23-2-2070)


    I cast out the bait, and it didn¡¯t take long for the first fish to bite. The auction house wasn¡¯t one I¡¯d used before, when I¡¯d sold scraps of data on open forums after a client decided they didn¡¯t actually want to pay for my hard work, so I decided their exclusive right to the data they wanted didn¡¯t deserve to be so exclusive anymore.


    But that was all handled in regular chatrooms and message boards, little deals for little sums taking place over private messages because I was sure what I was working on was far too insignificant for anyone who actually mattered to worry about. The data I''d managed to lift from Medhall was different, and I didn¡¯t want to rely solely on my own abilities to protect me.


    So, inevitably, I¡¯d turned to Labyrinth and asked her if she knew any sites that were secure while being popular enough to boost interest in the auction. I really shouldn¡¯t have been surprised that Palanquin already ran their own site for exactly this sort of transaction; the organisation seemed a lot more... organised than my pop-culture knowledge of Shadowrunning would have me believe.


    Faultline wasn''t just some guy in the know, passing over Manila folders in the backrooms of a smoke-filled office, or gesturing with one hand to accent a briefing while the other poured a pint of beer with the precise froth to beer ratio that came from a lifetime of practice.


    It was a lot more clinical than that; our fixer was a distant figure pulling strings and keeping a finger on the pulse of the Shadows through networks and intermediaries, and as Shadowrunners we only really saw the tail end of her efforts presented as a vetted client and a guaranteed job. It was a business relationship, plain and simple.


    If the Palanquin itself was designed to lure in Shadowrunners and clients, like a peacock¡¯s feathers lured in mates or a brightly coloured frog lured in poisoners and exotic junkies, the auction house was designed to appeal to a different sort of clientele and it had clearly been crafted by Labyrinth¡¯s expert hands.


    In style, it was Grecian in a way that reminded me of a temple, or perhaps a bank, with smooth polished stone, pristine marble statuary and great carved pillars topped by Corinthian columns.


    But that was where the similarities to meatspace architecture ended. Labyrinth had clearly been given a free hand in designing this place, and she''d manifested that freedom in ways that only a digital or semi-digital creature can.


    The columns were Escheresque; changing in size and direction in impossible ways, bending while remaining perfectly straight and level. The statues changed completely with only the slightest change in angle; a cavorting satyr atop a pile of gold seemed to dance a jig without ever moving, while a nude nymph pouring water from a jug into a fountain above her head bashfully covered herself no matter where she was viewed from. The space had no ceiling, with floors canted at radically different angles and linked by impossible staircases so that the whole structure resembled a sphere from which all comers had an unobstructed view of my message, which was presented on a carved slate that faced all angles simultaneously.


    It was an absolute masterpiece, and every scrap of resonance, every dramatic flourish that had been woven into its digital stone seemed to hum with the promise of potential wealth.


    I only wished I could have explored it further, but ¨C microseconds after casting out the bait ¨C someone had already taken the bite.


    Or perhaps something would be more accurate. The persona that appeared on one of the floors ¨C a balcony with an arched portico held up by two statues of women in stoles that, despite having the consistency and texture of stone, flowed in an invisible breeze ¨C didn¡¯t do so much as look around the room; its gaze was firmly locked on the prize.


    It was an Agent; an autonomous program with the intelligence of a decidedly average dog. Unlike my Sprites, Agents were compiled by corporate code monkeys painstakingly programming its capabilities before packaging it up and selling it like any other piece of online software. Consequently, the Agent looked about as visually uninspired as it got; a not unattractive human woman in a slate grey suit jacket and skirt, who matched the stereotype of the dutiful secretary right down to her lipstick.


    If I were asked to create a stock model for a personal assistant Agent, and to make it as mass-market generic as I could, that''s what I would have designed. Except I recognised the Agent''s code; it was a Mitsutama Consumer Technologies product, and its standard appearance was a Japanese woman in traditional dress. The underlying concept was the same, right down to the implicit sexism and objectification, but that meant that the Agent had been modified after its purchase. As paradoxical as it might seem  this was someone ¨C probably a corpo ¨C trying to assert their individuality or community.


    I couldn¡¯t be sure, but I suspected this agent belonged to Medhall, and that it was tasked with trawling this sort of auction house and bidding on anything that contained its master¡¯s name. Another handful of Agents arrived milliseconds later, drawn by keywords of their own. Most were as anonymously generic as the Medhall one, but one stood out; a target dummy in a Knight Errant uniform, no doubt drawn in by ¡®criminal activity''.


    The rest probably belonged to Medhall''s competitors, looking for any scrap of advantage they could use to thwart the company¡¯s seemingly inevitable progression to double-A status and true Extraterritoriality. Either that, or they were truly dumb programs that just hung around every auction to reserve a space for the metahumans who¡¯d made the real decisions.


    Not that they needed to bother. The Agents had arrived within seconds at most, but there was a fifteen minute gap between the host opening for business and the auction actually beginning. Not to mention that this event happened at the same time every day, so any idle speculators would already know something was being sold. I¡¯d managed to snag top billing, but after me two other packets of paydata were being offloaded by other members of Faultline''s network.


    Several of the Agents ¨C the ones not entrusted to make financial decisions themselves ¨C flickered out of existence as they left the host, only a few of them being replaced by actual people ¨C distinguishable by their customised personas of varying qualities that reflected the cost of the commlink that was projecting the avatar into cyberspace. Other personas came of their own accord; speculative buyers who were here on the off chance there was anything here they could resell.


    Exactly sixty seconds before the auction began, a section of smooth marble flooring rippled as a figure emerged from it as if it were the surface of a still pool, liquid stone flowing like water over her equally-stone body. Labyrinth had clad herself in the garments of Justice; with a blindfold over her persona¡¯s eyes, Hellenistic robes clinging as if they were wet ¨C their marble texture growing somewhat looser to suggest they were rapidly drying in the air ¨C and a set of scales in her hands that sloshed out liquid stone as the technomancer took a single step that launched her up into the centre of the space, where she floated beside the slab that contained my data.


    Most of the audience were nonplussed, either because they¡¯d seen this display before and assumed Labyrinth was just another Agent responsible for running the auction, or because they felt they had to keep a stony face to preserve their position in some social game.


    As the seller, the Host¡¯s rules rendered me invisible to all of them, and so I didn¡¯t even try to hide my amazement at the sublime display of code involved.


    ¡°The auction will now begin,¡± Labyrinth spoke, her words timed perfectly to ensure that she finished the word ¡®begin'' at the appointed time, down to the millisecond.


    Medhall''s algorithm won the frantic, impossibly fast battle for the first bid; setting an insultingly low starting price of just one hundred nuyen ¨C in case the auction hall is completely empty, I guessed. From there, an automatic lock prevented any bids from being registered for another second, to remove the competitive edge algorithms had over users.


    I watched as the price steadily ticked up, climbing the ladder from two hundred and fifty to an even six hundred. Almost all of the bids were coming from the algorithms ¨C only the metahumans who''d been specifically summoned by their Agents seemed interested, and even then some of them had already left the host.


    But still, the price kept rising, and the first Agent dropped out of the race at three thousand nuyen as it hit the maximum amount of money it was allowed to spend on any one purchase.


    It¡¯s funny, I thought as I watched the number gradually climb, it wasn¡¯t so long ago that seeing three thousand nuyen at once seemed like a pipe dream, but now all I can think is that it¡¯s not that much, split five ways.


    Still the number rose, slowly but steadily. Labyrinth didn¡¯t visibly move as the bids came in, floating beside the slate as still as the statue she resembled. Instead, the scale in her right hand rose and fell as bids were matched and beaten. One by one the interested parties dropped off, some of them leaving while others remained to bid on the next lots, until there were only two participants left.


    Both of them were Agents; the one that I thought belonged to Medhall and the other using a stock avatar that resembled an ork in Cossack garb. Shortly after the bidding rose above ten thousand, the Cossack shimmered as human hands took control of its tiller. The persona that emerged from the haze was a silhouette of a man, like a pitch black void in the air, and he continued submitting bids without comment.


    If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Labyrinth, however, did react. Her body remained still, but I could feel herself reaching out through the resonance, taking hold of the absolute control she had over the host. I understood why a moment later, as I received a message from the persona ¨C which shouldn¡¯t be possible right now.


    ?I will double the current price if you can end this auction in my favour, now. My time is precious, and I wish to waste as little of it as possible.?


    - 30276043 (17:46:37/23-2-2070)


    It was a blatant attempt to cheat the auction, but Labyrinth still hadn¡¯t acted against them.


    Is she waiting to see how I react? I thought, even as I wondered how to respond. I wasn¡¯t sure what the best outcome was. Medhall would probably just bury the corruption I¡¯d uncovered, but on the other hand this new mystery metahuman could be working for some criminal organisation and just wanted to know Medhall¡¯s supply source so they could score some dopadrine.


    Lisa would have tugged on the anonymous bidder''s code until she knew everything there was to know about them, but that wasn¡¯t an option with Labyrinth here ¨C it¡¯d be rude to break the rules of her host. So I thought about how Brian would act.


    ?Your opponent likely has a pre-set spend limit. If it''s slowly approaching that limit, it will have the time to call a metahuman with greater authority. Like your Agent did. If you make a large enough bid now, the auction will close before that human can log on. In this case, money is time.?


    - Bug (17:46:49/23-2-2070)


    I felt Labyrinth''s presence withdrawing back to her persona, as the anonymous bidder took a few moments to consider.


    ?Well played.?


    - 30276043 (17:47:01/23-2-2070)


    Labyrinth''s scales swung with the weight of his bid, the total jumping up from eleven thousand five hundred to twenty five thousand. I watched, shocked, as Medhall''s Agent sent out a frantic burst of data, but it was too little, too late. That was the limitation of Agents, I¡¯d found. Their code was rigid; programmed. They only had as much intelligence as had been built into them, and there¡¯s only so much people can build.


    The other limitation was, of course, the metahuman one. Whichever Medhall suit the Agent messaged would have had to put on their cold-sim VR gear, dive into the matrix, request access to the Host and place a bid. Time moved faster in the matrix, and there was no way they¡¯d be able to make it before Labyrinth''s scales reached the base of their downwards arc.


    Going once, going twice, sold.


    The auction closed, the tablet drifting over to the anonymous bidder as the sealed data file opened itself up to them and them alone. He left just as abruptly as he¡¯d arrived, and the auction moved on just as quickly as the next item was brought up, with another fifteen minute wait period to allow interested bidders to notice and congregate.


    Labyrinth drifted away from the centre of the Escheresque sphere, disappearing back into the marble pool in the same way she arrived. But I could still feel her watching proceedings through the host, even if her persona had drifted into the metaphorical backrooms of the temple-bank, and when part of that host uncoiled to tug at me I turned to follow it, stepping through the intricately carved fresco behind me like it wasn''t even there.


    Labyrinth was sitting on a simple stone seat in the middle of a circular chamber. Her eyes were still covered by the blindfold, and her attention was drawn outwards. After a moment, I realised that both this room and the centre of the auction house acted as nexuses of data; places from which Labyrinth could take in the whole of the host at a glance. If this were a meatspace building, the walls would no doubt be covered in security screens. Instead, Labyrinth drew in strands of data directly, like a spider at the centre of a vast web.


    She turned to look at me, blindfolded eyes meeting beady, insectoid orbs and seeing each other just as clearly. I was struck again by just how different she felt to anything else I¡¯d encountered in the Matrix.


    ¡°It is good that you rejected his offer, and dissuaded him from violating this host''s rules,¡± she spoke. ¡°I did not want to act against another Technomancer.¡±


    ¡°But you would have?¡± I asked. ¡°If I had broken the rules?¡±


    ¡°Certainly,¡± she said, and if she wasn¡¯t such a creature of the Matrix she might have accented the gesture with a nod. As it was, I was stuck in the unusual position of being the most expressive person in the room. ¡°I am responsible for this place, and for its rules. Faultline says it is good to have responsibilities. It keeps me from... drifting away.¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s probably right,¡± I replied. ¡°But this place feels like more than a host you¡¯re responsible for. It doesn¡¯t feel store-bought.¡±


    ¡°It is not,¡± Labyrinth confirmed. ¡°I made it.¡±


    My eyes didn¡¯t widen, but I knew Labyrinth could see my shock in the resonance that made up my digital form.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t know that was possible,¡± I replied. ¡°I thought it took whole companies to make one of these.¡±


    ¡°It is not easy,¡± she replied. ¡°Few have the capability, and selling black market Hosts is a significant secondary income for Palanquin. But if you are wondering how, then tell me, how would you describe the Matrix?¡±


    I paused, thinking it over, before returning to a feature that had defined so much of my ¨C or at least my father¡¯s ¨C life.


    ¡°It¡¯s an ocean. Each host is an island nation, with its own customs restrictions and laws, and data and users pass between those hosts like ships. It¡¯s not a perfect metaphor,¡± I clarified ¨C for mom''s sake. ¡°The different grids are like dozens of oceans stacked on top of each other ¨C and side by side ¨C offering faster, better looking seas for a premium. But it¡¯s good enough for poetry.¡±


    Labyrinth allowed herself to nod.


    ¡°And what,¡± she asked, ¡°lies at the bottom of this ocean?¡±


    ¡°Nothing,¡± I answered, as my mind conjured up an image of the black abyss beneath the floating hosts and glimmering data trails of the Brockton Bay municipal grid. ¡°Just the void.¡±


    ¡°You are wrong,¡± Labyrinth spoke. It wasn¡¯t a theory, or an idea, or another metaphor. It was a statement of fact, and something about her certainty scared me.


    Labyrinth looked down at the floor as segments of the tiles that made up the circular room  dropped downwards, forming a staircase that descended to a chamber hidden within this hidden security hub.


    The room was small, containing two lit torches on the wall that flanked either side of a nondescript wooden door, with a maze-like pattern carved into its surface. It was guarded by two temple maidens, with ancient Greek armour worn over their white robes. Intrusion Countermeasures, strong ones. They carried a spear in their right hand and round shields in their left ¨C with screaming faces painted onto them.


    Labyrinth''s face, I realised with a start.


    ¡°Most people call it the Foundation,¡± Labyrinth spoke, looking down at the door. ¡°Your ocean metaphor is accurate enough; the grids are the water that sits atop the ocean floor, the hosts are islands rising out of the sea. But to make an island, one must grasp the ocean floor ¨C the Foundation ¨C and pull part of it up into the light, where it changes and becomes both more solid and more malleable. From there, it can be sculpted to suit my whims, or the whims of a client.¡±


    ¡°And every host has this connection?¡± I asked, and Labyrinth nodded.


    ¡°Every host needs it. The Foundation is what keeps hosts stable. No matter how small, they all contain some variation of this door, and they all guard it well.¡±


    I looked closer at the door. It was a masterwork of containment, without any sign of what it kept out. Or what it kept in.


    ¡°What¡¯s down there?¡±


    ¡°Madness,¡± she answered. ¡°Beauty and horror more vivid than anywhere else, existing only when it is observed and constantly shifting at all other times. It is a wondrous place, and deadly for the unprepared.¡±


    The floor rose again, the doorway to the Foundation disappearing back into its hidden chamber as Labyrinth rose from her seat.


    ¡°Thank you, Bug, for speaking to me. The others try, but they don¡¯t understand like we do. No matter what they say, this is the real world. It is where we belong, even if our bodies force us into meatspace. But now, I must return to the auction. I will have a guide show you to the exit.¡±


    Her feet left the floor as she rose up towards the ceiling, ready to repeat the display she¡¯d put in before my paydata was sold. The money from that sale had already been transferred to me, minus a twenty percent commission, and once again I found myself holding a pay check larger than any I¡¯d ever received. I¡¯d have to split this one, though.


    The sound of shoes on flagstones brought me back from frantic calculations of how much excess cash I¡¯d have once I paid this month¡¯s rent. Another temple maiden was approaching me, without the weapons and armour of the two below. Instead, her face was partially hidden beneath the hood of her white robes and, as I looked past the surface level icon to the code beneath, I saw that my guide was a piece of Patrol IC ¨C tasked with roaming the host on predetermined patterns and keeping watch for anything suspicious.


    I followed her as she led me through the appropriately labyrinthine backrooms of the host, past data caches, payment protection software and lists of contacts all disguised behind appropriate icons ¨C racks of scrolls, woven filters catching rays of light, statues of winged messengers. Then I stepped through a wall, and I was back at the enormous temple doors that regulated entry to the host.


    From there, a thought was all it took for me to drift back out into the open expanse of the grid, surrounded by a myriad of different personas and hosts. With Palanquin''s physical location in the heart of a whole district of bars and nightclubs, the matrix around it almost hummed with the amount of traffic it saw, as those same establishments sought to draw in online customers and matrix-only establishments tried to improve their reputation by proximity.


    Behind me, the auction house appeared in the Matrix as a stone fountain, a ring of Greek columns surrounding a statue of a nymph pouring an endless stream of water out of a pitcher. It was impossible to approach the statue; the gaps between the columns were cosmetic, and the moment someone with the right credentials crossed the boundary they would find themselves inside the Host. Thanks to Labyrinth''s skill in the Matrix, anyone without the right credentials wouldn''t even see the small fountain nestled next to Palanquin''s online nightclub.


    I loved the matrix, but I¡¯d always found high traffic areas like this a little overwhelming. The constant bustle of personas and omnipresent hosts, AR objects and advirals seemed just as bad to me as the packed streets of the city below my apartment window. But since I¡¯d started walking those streets, the idea of spending some time in the more social areas of the matrix suddenly seemed a lot less daunting. After all, if I was going to have to interact with people regardless, why not do it in the world in which I felt most comfortable?


    But Labyrinth was right when she said that our bodies force us back to meatspace, and I hadn¡¯t eaten since yesterday. So I let the matrix fade from view, and woke up to the aches and pains of mundane reality. Sure enough, I was hungry enough that my stomach had moved past growling and now felt like it was one step away from committing ritualistic suicide to grab my attention.


    So I levered myself up out of the armchair and staggered across my apartment to the fridge, only to be confronted by bare shelves and two thirds of a six pack of beer sitting morosely at the bottom.


    I reached for a beer, contemplating the eternal dilemma of buying takeout and eating quickly, or ordering a delivery from the local Stuffer Shack ¨C which meant a longer delivery time and an extra ten minutes to actually cook something, but at least I¡¯d have some food in the fridge for tomorrow ¨C when I was saved from the mundane horror  of my existence by a message from Lisa.


    ?Word on the grapevine is that KE are announcing AG¡¯s arrest tonight. Want to swing by the loft to celebrate? We¡¯ll order out, of course.?


    - Tt (18:04:26/23-2-2070)


    I looked around my apartment, before my eyes landed on the hand that was frozen halfway to the can of cheap beer. It might have been the easiest decision I¡¯d ever made.


    ?I¡¯ll head over and pick up some drinks on the way. I¡¯ve got my own good news to share?


    - Bug (18:04:31/23-2-2070)

 Resonance: 3.02

    As I stepped out of the apartment building for the sixth time in the last few weeks, and the seventh or eighth time in the last two years, I was almost run down by an ork on a scooter, with an insulated box on the back of the bike displaying Stuffer Shack''s logo. Instead, the teenage driver just about managed to swerve around me, skidding through a puddle leftover from the rain and spraying my legs with water.


    But I was wearing the aramid-lined pants Lisa had persuaded me to buy, so the water just ran down their surface without penetrating the material and I got to see the guy''s eyes widen in shock as he looked up and up and up at who he''d just drenched, so I actually ended up feeling more self-confident than annoyed.


    The metro station was two blocks from my apartment, the line running down the length of the docks before joining a spiderweb of routes that stretched throughout the North End. It was old infrastructure, built in the twenties to meet the needs of Brockton Bay''s growing population and the sudden, phoenix-like resurrection of the docks as the UCAS found itself cut off from all its remaining West Coast ports. If you didn¡¯t want to pay a premium on each container you trucked or trained through the disparate Native American Nations, the only option was to go East rather than West.


    The trouble was that the metro line ¨C at least those lines North of the middle of the city, where Brockton Bay was squeezed against the coast into an hourglass shape by Captain''s Hill ¨C had largely gone unnoticed by successive decades of infrastructure programs, receiving only token support from Richard Anders'' remodelling of the city''s transport networks.


    So the trains were old, and the lines older still, but they worked and were a lot faster than the often gridlocked streets below, provided you didn¡¯t mind the much more pedestrian gridlock that filled their packed carriages.


    I very much did mind, but I didn¡¯t have a driver¡¯s license and I doubted I¡¯d ever be able to learn without having some kind of breakdown. So it was the metro for me.


    I¡¯d never had much reason to pay close attention to the time of day over the past few years, so I was momentarily surprised when I found the carriage packed full of dockworkers in uniformly drab blue-grey overalls, on the first stop of a long commute back from the docks.


    It meant that the one comfort of the last few journeys ¨C that I stood head and shoulders over everyone else, so could look over the press of people ¨C no longer applied. The Dockworkers still had a larger proportion of orks and trolls than any other industry in the city, and so the carriage suddenly felt incredibly claustrophobic. It didn¡¯t help that the whole crowd felt achingly familiar.


    I edged to one side as best I could, leaning down once I was up against the wall to look out of the window rather than back at the packed carriage full of such an achingly familiar crowd. Instead, I focused on the buildings drifting past the window.


    The line ran over the city¡¯s streets, in some places hugging the side of wide thoroughfares or passing over elevated overpasses. At other points it turned off, passing over low rooftops before turning to follow the length of a much narrower street ¨C one it covered like an awning. The buildings here had grown up and out, and in places had extended so far that the residents of those tightly-packed tenements could stick an arm out of their windows and brush the passing carriage if they were so inclined.


    In other places, the tenements had grown so high they¡¯d bridged the gap over the street, and the metro briefly turned into a subway as it passed into the dark tunnels, lit by moments of light from apartment windows or the flickering orange bulbs of corridors-turned-streets.


    I saw the people who lived there in snapshots as we passed each light source; an elderly couple watching a film on an old flatscreen television, a younger couple in the middle of a shouting match, a child curled up under the stairs at the back of a corridor, her eyes entranced by a commlink that didn¡¯t belong to her.


    ¡°Taylor?¡±


    A hand on my shoulder shook me out of my reverie, and I flinched ¨C drawing myself up to my full height before turning to see a middle-aged human woman looking up at me with confusion in her eyes. She wasn¡¯t dressed in overalls, but I could tell she was a dockworker all the same. It was in her muscled physique, and the hard-wearing style of her office clothes.


    ¡°It¡¯s you, isn¡¯t it?¡± she asked, pulling her arm back.


    I didn¡¯t recognise her face, but I didn¡¯t need to when she was carrying her commlink in the pocket of her cargo pants.


    ¡°Hi¡­ Lacey,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s been a while.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s been years,¡± she replied. ¡°What are you doing back in the Bay? I thought you went to live with your grandmother.¡±


    ¡°I¡­ did, yeah,¡± I lied. ¡°Came back to Brockton Bay a short while ago.¡±


    I forgot I did that, I thought to myself.


    Lacey and her husband, Kurt, were both close friends of my father, which meant I¡¯d seen a lot of them when I was growing up. When dad was killed, they reached out to his lawyer asking if they could take custody ¨C because they knew I didn¡¯t have anyone left.


    Except the message never reached dad¡¯s lawyer, because I intercepted it first. I just wanted some time to myself, and I had the power to make that happen so I fabricated a message from the lawyer saying that I¡¯d already gone to stay with a grandmother out of State. I pulled a similar trick with the lawyer, disappearing myself from his notice and leaving our home in my possession.


    ¡°So how was Brooklyn?¡± Lacey asked, manoeuvring herself a little closer in the packed carriage so we weren¡¯t talking over the head of an increasingly irritated looking dwarf.


    ¡°It was nice,¡± I lied. ¡°I think I needed the space, and I liked being somewhere so big. Sometimes it felt too crowded, though.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve never been,¡± Lacey admitted, ¡°but what brought you back to the Bay?¡±


    ¡°Work,¡± I answered, thinking on the spot. ¡°I¡¯m a software engineer, and when an opportunity came up I decided I might as well come back and see what¡¯s changed.¡±


    Lacey sighed, turning to look out the window.


    ¡°Quite a bit...¡± she murmured in a melancholy tone.


    ¡°Me and Kurt are doing okay,¡± she continued at a normal volume. ¡°I¡¯ve actually been promoted over him, which is¡­ interesting, to say the least.¡± She was smiling, but it seemed strained. ¡°Oh, and we have a son now!¡± At that, her smile turned genuine, and she fished her commlink out of her pocket. She fiddled with it for a few moments before turning the screen to show me a picture of an ork in tanktop, his tusks proudly displayed by an ear-to-ear grin as he held a baby in his arms.


    ¡°Congratulations,¡± I said, putting on a smile. ¡°What¡¯s his name?¡±


    Lacey looked a little sheepish at that.


    ¡°Daniel. We named him Daniel.¡±


    ¡°Oh.¡±


    ¡°Your father did a lot for the city, Taylor,¡± Lacey continued. ¡°He helped keep a lot of people in work, helped coach them for interviews and gather references so they could get what they wanted out of life. It was a tragedy what happened to him.¡±


    I didn¡¯t know what to say, but I was saved from having to respond as Lacey¡¯s eyes flicked back out of the window.


    ¡°Ah damnit, this is my stop. Stay safe out there, okay? Things aren¡¯t as dangerous as they were back when you were last here, but it¡¯s still bad.¡±


    ¡°I will,¡± I lied again. ¡°Good luck with your kid.¡±


    I watched as Lacey pushed her way through the carriage and out onto the equally packed platform, joining the flow of other workers descending the stairs down to street level.


    I didn¡¯t know what to think of the encounter, so I shrank back into myself and just stared out the window for the two remaining stops before I reached the one closest to the others¡¯ hideout. As I disembarked, I realised that I hadn¡¯t given Lacey any contact details, and she¡¯d forgot to ask. I felt¡­ maybe not relieved, but okay with that.


    The encounter had shaken me enough that I almost forgot I¡¯d promised to pick up some drinks, so I ducked into a small corner shop and grabbed a whole box of beer cans before making my way through the streets to the loft.


    Inside, the only signs of our recent excursion were the freshly-patched dents on the side of Rachel¡¯s van, where we¡¯d taken a few shots from security as we pulled away. It was quiet down there, and dark too, but light and noise was bleeding down from the staircase up to the loft itself.


    Everyone was up there, sprawled out on the couches in the living room and picking at a whole feast of pizzas that had been scattered across the coffee table. WBBF was on the trideo, but it looked like they hadn¡¯t got to Garcia yet ¨C they were still on the national news.


    Rachel was the first to notice me coming up the stairs, but she just nodded as she munched on her slice ¨C a plain margarita. Brian was the second, and the first to speak up.


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    ¡°Taylor! Glad you could join us!¡±


    I smiled, holding up the beer before setting it down on the table with a heavy thunk.


    ¡°I brought refreshments.¡±


    ¡°A little cheap for my tastes,¡± Regent said, glancing at the tins before catching Grue¡¯s eye as he fixed him with a pointed look. ¡°But I guess I won¡¯t notice once I¡¯m a couple cans in,¡± he conceded. ¡°C plus for effort.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll take it,¡± I said, deciding not to make an issue of it as I sat down next to Rachel. ¡°My grades were shit anyway.¡±


    ¡°Well you¡¯re in good company,¡± Lisa smiled. ¡°Brian dropped out but got a GED later, Rachel never went and I¡¯m pretty sure Alec didn¡¯t either.¡±


    ¡°Not to anything you¡¯d call a school, at least,¡± Alec shrugged, then fell quiet. It seemed like that was all we were getting out of him.


    ¡°What about you?¡± I asked Lisa, pointedly. ¡°Left yourself out of that little summary.¡±


    Lisa smiled, taking her time before answering as she took a bite out of her pizza ¨C artichoke and anchovies, by the look of it.


    ¡°I finished with straight As, of course. Anything less would be unacceptable.¡±


    It might have been my imagination, but I could have sworn there was a slight flash of anger in her eye as she said that last word. If it was there, it quickly disappeared.


    ¡°Not that it¡¯s done me much good, of course. You know what the difference is between a teenage runaway with a high school diploma and a teenage runaway without one?¡±


    ¡°Not much?¡± I guessed.


    ¡°Sweet fuck all,¡± Lisa confirmed, finishing her slice and tossing the crust into the half-empty box.


    ¡°This is it,¡± Brian spoke up, gesturing at the trideo screen. Sure enough, the ad break between the local and national headlines was finishing up, and the network¡¯s logo ¨C an old-fashioned radio tower rising over the dockyard skyline ¨C spun briefly onto the screen before wiping away to reveal an attractive dwarf in a business-like dress sitting behind a desk.


    ¡°You¡¯re watching WBBF, Brockton Bay¡¯s First choice for news,¡± she began, her tone that unique blend of chipper and professional used by newscasters and salespeople.


    ¡°Tonight¡¯s leading headline¡± ¨C there was another wipe, as the anchor was replaced by a very familiar face. Andrew Garcia was looking a little worse for wear in an orange jumpsuit, his eyes shrunken and desponded. It didn¡¯t look like the burly Knight Errant cops surrounding him had worked him over, which surprised me a little.


    ¡°A cold case closed after seven years, as fugitive from justice Andrew Garcia was tracked down by Knight Errant officers and arrested for the murder of the investigative journalist Jess Montrose.¡±


    Alec jeered at the screen, while Lisa and I shared an amused smile. Brian, on the other hand, seemed engrossed by the report. We watched as Garcia was bundled into the back of a van, before the clip ended with another transition. This time, the footage was that of buildings in flames and bloody street fights, with the dead journalist¡¯s face held up on placards and signs.


    ¡°The arrest marks the close of a dark chapter in the city¡¯s history,¡± the anchor continued, ¡°but analysts have raised concerns that the city may see a return to the violence of the Montrose riots of twenty sixty-three, that saw Metahuman rights activists and human-supremacist counter-protestors clashing in the streets.¡±


    The shot lingered on a young elf for a moment, propped up on the pavement with blood soaking through her T-shirt. The graphic on the shirt was an old campaign poster, with the instantly recognisable face of the country¡¯s shortest-lasting President half-visible through the spreading red stain. Below his draconic maw, the maple leaf and the stars, the text read ¡®Dunkelzahn ¡¯57, A New Golden Age.¡¯ WBBF¡¯s editing team knew what they were doing.


    The wipe faded back to the newsroom, though there was still a picture behind the anchor of Garcia in his prison jumpsuit.


    ¡°Commissioner Piggot has promised that her department are taking all necessary precautions to minimise the fallout from this arrest, but has declared that Knight Errant must put the pursuit of justice above political concerns.¡±


    ¡°They¡¯re certainly trying,¡± I observed. ¡°Notice how all the officers are human? Garcia¡¯s face was a symbol before; they don¡¯t want to give the Chosen a picture of him being manhandled by some big troll.¡±


    ¡°It won¡¯t work,¡± Brian observed. ¡°You¡¯ve seen the mood out there. The Chosen are itching for a fight. More so than usual.¡±


    ¡°And it doesn¡¯t help that we might have cut off their supply of dopadrine¡­¡± I observed.


    ¡°You sold the data?¡± Lisa asked. ¡°That¡¯s the good news you mentioned?¡±


    ¡°Yep,¡± I smiled. ¡°Twenty five thousand, minus Faultline¡¯s twenty percent.¡±


    ¡°Fucking hell!¡± Brian exclaimed, his eyes wide.


    ¡°Nice going, Taylor,¡± Lisa leaned back in her seat ¨C looking to all the world like the cat that got the cream ¨C ¡°you just doubled our paycheck.¡±


    ¡°So you pull that much money and you still get cheap corner shop beer cans?¡± Alec asked, seemingly unaffected by the sudden windfall.


    ¡°Who¡¯d you sell it to?¡± Lisa interrupted before I could respond.


    I shrugged my shoulders. ¡°No idea. Some anonymous buyer who was rich and busy enough that I was able to persuade him to spend a stupid sum of money to outbid an Agent that I¡¯m pretty sure belonged to Medhall.¡±


    ¡°You weren¡¯t curious?¡± Lisa pushed, but she was still smiling.


    My eyes darted towards Brian before I answered, but I was thinking about our last client and how I exposed her identity.


    ¡°Can¡¯t get curious about everyone on the Matrix,¡± I answered. ¡°It¡¯s too big. Besides, I didn¡¯t want to piss off Labyrinth.¡±


    ¡°Labyrinth?¡± Brian asked, immediately curious.


    ¡°Oh, right,¡± I snapped my fingers as I remembered that none of the others had met her. ¡°She¡¯s¡± ¨C another technomancer, I almost said, but that wasn¡¯t my secret to tell ¨C ¡°Faultline¡¯s tech support girl. She set up their network architecture, and runs their Matrix security.¡±


    ¡°A good contact to have,¡± Brian observed, leaning over the coffee table to grab a can. ¡°But we¡¯re not here to talk shop. This is a celebration, so grab a slice, okay?¡±


    ¡°No arguments here,¡± I eagerly agreed, looking over the still-hot pizza before grabbing a slice of the locust pepperoni with extra cheese. Brian nodded at my choice ¨C he¡¯d gone for the same thing ¨C and conversation started to flow a little easier as we cracked open the beer.


    After another couple of slices, Lisa gave up in defeat and slumped back into her seat with a groan. Her hair had fallen over her face, and she brushed it aside to give me a pointed look.


    ¡°I guess you¡¯re not the type that gains weight,¡± she said, eyeing the already half-finished pizza in front of me.


    ¡°I have to work to put it on.¡±


    ¡°Damnit,¡± Lisa grumbled, eyeing another slice but unwilling to commit.


    ¡°If it¡¯s any consolation,¡± I said after taking another sip of beer, ¡°I bet it costs a lot more to feed me than it does you.¡±


    ¡°Eh,¡± Lisa waved her hand in a so-so gesture, ¡°it depends. I like expensive food ¨C expensive everything, really ¨C when I can get it, but I¡¯m used to getting by on minute noodles when I need to.¡±


    ¡°What about you?¡± I asked Rachel, partly because I¡¯d noticed how quiet she was and partly because I was curious how her cybernetics affected her metabolism. The idea of getting augmentations had never appealed to me, and I¡¯d heard cyberware didn¡¯t play nice with Technomancers anyway.


    She just shrugged her shoulders. ¡°Don¡¯t know. I just eat what I can find. Couldn¡¯t care less about keeping my meat good.¡±


    I don¡¯t know what I expected, really.


    ¡°Enough of this girl talk,¡± Alec drawled, one of the pizzas drawn protectively close to him. Not that he needed to bother protecting it, given that it was some absolutely ungodly mix of tofu¡¯d tuna and pineapple.


    ¡°What do you want to talk about then?¡± Lisa asked.


    He shrugged, grabbing another slice.


    ¡°More girl talk it is, then,¡± Lisa snarked. ¡°Taylor¡± ¨C she leant forwards, her hands resting on her knees as she fixed me with a serious expression ¨C ¡°I can¡¯t help but notice that you¡¯ve been wearing that exact same outfit every time I¡¯ve seen you, even though I know you bought more clothes than that on our little shopping expedition.¡±


    I looked down at my clothes in case they¡¯d suddenly sprouted mold ¨C even though I¡¯d washed them the night before ¨C but I just didn¡¯t get what she was talking about.


    ¡°Um, yeah? These are my Shadowrunning clothes? We¡¯re Shadowrunners?¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re not Shadowrunning now,¡± Alec pointed out. ¡°Unless you were expecting a gunfight on the way over?¡±


    ¡°In this city?¡± Brian pointed out. ¡°I¡¯m not sure that¡¯s the ¡®gotcha¡¯ moment you think it is.¡±


    Lisa let out a short, sharp laugh before continuing. ¡°What I mean is that you shouldn¡¯t be afraid to live it up a little. It looks good on you, don¡¯t get me wrong, but I can¡¯t help noticing that it¡¯s also the most practical outfit you bought. If I hadn¡¯t been there with you to help pick the style, I bet it¡¯d look exactly the same as what Brian wears.¡±


    ¡°Hey!¡± Brian protested, half-heartedly.


    ¡°Which is fine,¡± Lisa quickly corrected, ¡°for a guy who punches people for a living.¡±


    ¡°Honestly, I just don¡¯t really think much about what I wear,¡± I admitted. ¡°I used to. Back when I was in school, I¡¯d second-guess and stress over the clothes I was wearing even if I was just going to the corner shop near my apartment for some milk and bread. I wanted to make myself as inconspicuous as possible.¡±


    ¡°And how did that work out for you?¡± Alec asked. His tone was innocuous, but rather than looking at me his neck was craned back to look at where my eyes would be if I were standing up.


    ¡°Not great,¡± I admitted. ¡°The thing is, I stopped leaving home so I stopped caring. The last two years, I¡¯ve basically just worn the same three or four sets of comfortable clothes because I didn¡¯t have to care anymore about how people saw me. Always kept them clean, though. I¡¯m not an animal.¡±


    ¡°Stopped leaving home¡­ completely?¡± Brian asked.


    ¡°Pretty much,¡± I shrugged my shoulders. ¡°I mean, I¡¯d go out in the Matrix but I¡¯m sure you¡¯d say that doesn¡¯t count. When you dragged me out to meet Faultline¡¯s guy after our first job, that was the first time I¡¯d left home in¡­ about a year and a half, I think.¡±


    ¡°I had no idea,¡± Brian observed. ¡°I¡¯m sorry I wasn¡¯t more upfront about it.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t be,¡± I shook my head. ¡°Sure I was pissed, but if you hadn¡¯t sprung it on me like that then I probably wouldn¡¯t have taken the job. And this? It¡¯s been good for me so far. It might only be one outfit, but it¡¯s more adventurous than I¡¯ve been in years.¡±


    ¡°In that case,¡± Lisa piped up, sounding genuinely enthusiastic, ¡°why not add a few variations on the same theme and get some more runner gear? Sure, in those trideo shows you saw the runners probably wore the same outfit all the time, but that¡¯s because the characters are so bland you need clear outfits to tell them apart.¡±


    ¡°This coming from the girl who¡¯s worn the exact same trenchcoat every time we¡¯ve gone into a fight?¡± Brian pointed out.


    ¡°It has sentimental value!¡± Lisa countered. ¡°It kept me company on a lot of long nights. Plus it¡¯s cool, in an old-school private detective kind of way, and it has loads of pocket space.¡±


    As we talked and ate and drank into the evening, I reached out and took control of the trideo screen, linking it up to the extensive collection of pirated media I kept back in my apartment. We ummed and erred about what to watch, before eventually settling on a film about a team of Shadowrunners ¨C largely so we could point and laugh at it.


    As the film rolled on, I couldn¡¯t help noticing that Lisa was smiling in a way that seemed completely different from her usual expressions. There wasn¡¯t any sarcasm in it, no sense of smug glee. It was just the genuine smile of someone who was happy and content, and after a while I found that my own lips curled up to mirror it.


    This is better, I thought to myself.

 Resonance: 3.03

    I woke up the next morning with a mild hangover and the taste of pizza and beer still lingering intrusively in my throat. At least it didn¡¯t feel as strange to be waking up in my room in the loft, and I¡¯d managed to replace the bed in there with one that was meant for people my height. I didn¡¯t mind if my feet poked out from underneath the covers ¨C some things were inevitable, after all ¨C but when my legs below the knee hung over the edge it really felt more than a little ridiculous.


    I half-rolled out of bed, pulling myself to my feet and stretching aching joints before opening my mind to the Matrix and pulling on the feeds of several different news stations.


    It seemed things had kicked off last night after the arrest was announced, with opportunistic gangs taking advantage of the tailor-made excuse to strike out at their rivals, while the Ork Rights Commission and other activist groups gradually started to make their own moves; with protest camps springing up in parks, intersections and outside Knight Errant¡¯s headquarters, while notable figures from within the ORC made the rounds on street corners and talk shows alike.


    The various human supremacist groups within the Bay seemed to be holding off on an organised response for the moment. I had to figure the wealthy armchair racists behind the scenes were figuring out how best to spin the narrative in a way that let them keep their fa?ade of being anything other than blood-soaked butchers still living in a world that¡¯s a century out of date.


    Of course, the street-level guys didn¡¯t care about that. The one kindness they did to the world was to not pretend to be anything other than a pack of wild dogs, and the arrest had set them along the familiar patterns of rage and violence that happened whenever something stoked their ire.


    It was far from the first uptick in violence that had happened in my two years alone, but this time felt different. Maybe it was because it was bigger, but maybe it was just that I was actually going out into the city these days. If all the world¡¯s a stage, I¡¯d gone from part of the audience to one of the players. Things didn¡¯t just happen to other people anymore.


    I grimaced at that thought, before staggering out into the corridor of the loft and turning towards the kitchen in hope of finding something to wash my mouth clean, or at least switch the taste out for a more palatable one. So I made a beeline for the teabags I¡¯d bought the other day, my body running almost on autopilot as I made myself a cup and added milk and honey ¨C both synthetic, of course.


    ¡°Morning,¡± an amused voice spoke up from behind me, and I turned to see Lisa sitting at the dining room table, fully dressed, with an open laptop in front of her as she scrolled through news sites.


    ¡°Morning?¡± I returned, groggily.


    She gestured to a brown paper bag on the table. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, Brian already picked up some breakfast. Though it¡¯ll have gone cold by now.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re an angel,¡± I sighed as I slumped down into one of the chairs, jumping a bit as I fell further than I was used to.


    ¡°Not really an early riser, are you?¡± Lisa asked, now openly smiling.


    I didn¡¯t need to ask her what the time was, not when it was stamped on every passing strand of data, but I honestly didn¡¯t see what she was getting at. It was only forty-three minutes past ten.


    ¡°Matrix time is different than real time. Nobody¡¯s active in the morning, so why would I be up?¡±


    ¡°I get that,¡± Lisa replied, sympathetically, ¡°and Shadowrunning isn¡¯t much different. But it still helps me build up my picture of you.¡±


    I frowned. ¡°If it¡¯s taken you this long to realise I live on my own, I really have to question whether you¡¯ve earned your private detective look.¡±


    ¡°Please,¡± she protested, ¡°I¡¯m not that simple. No, it shows you¡¯ve lived alone long enough for the late mornings to become routine, and your reaction to a really small amount of alcohol ¨C especially for your size ¨C shows me that you never took advantage of living alone to go out and get drunk, or stay in and get drunk.¡±


    ¡°It shows that I¡¯m normal,¡± I countered. ¡°Sure, what I was doing was illegal, but it was video piracy illegal. Not getting shot at illegal.¡±


    ¡°I thought you handled yourself well in there,¡± Lisa said. ¡°Rachel had the feed from her Crawler up, which meant I got to see how you fried that exec¡¯s brains. It can¡¯t have been easy to hack on the fly like that.¡±


    ¡°I couldn¡¯t shoot, though.¡± I countered. ¡°Had one of the guards in my sights, but I couldn¡¯t line up the shot right. Couldn¡¯t pull the trigger.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not necessarily a bad thing,¡± Lisa pointed out. ¡°Besides, it was your first time and gunfights are naturally stressful situations. Have you ever even fired a gun before?¡±


    ¡°Never,¡± I shook my head. ¡°Dad had a piece ¨C it¡¯s still in the safe back home ¨C but I never fired it, and he didn¡¯t wear it around.¡±


    Which was noble of him, and stupid.


    ¡°There you go. You just need a little practice.¡±


    The screen of her laptop was facing away from me, but that didn¡¯t stop me from noticing as she started typing up a message to Brian.


    ¡®Turns out Bug is a virgin when it comes to guns. Think you could show her the ropes?¡¯


    I paled, hurriedly spinning datastreams into a spike and sending it down my backdoor into her commlink, deleting the message before she could send it. With the same reflex I jumped up so hard I kicked over the chair.


    I stared down at Lisa in shock, but she didn¡¯t seem at all surprised by the way I¡¯d just taken control of her device.


    ¡°What the hell was that?¡± I asked, once it became clear she wasn¡¯t going to break the silence.


    ¡°Brian¡¯s got more experience in actual combat than the rest of us. Except maybe Rachel,¡± she corrected herself after a moment, ¡°but Brian knows the most about guns and punching.¡±


    ¡°Not what I meant, and you know it.¡±


    ¡°Oh, that,¡± she snapped her fingers like she¡¯d just figured out something difficult. ¡°I figured you had my commlink hacked from the moment we first met, so I might as well use it to see how you react.¡±


    I sighed. ¡°You want me to remove my access?¡±


    Lisa shook her head. ¡°We all have our neuroses. I don¡¯t mind your pathological need to control your digital environment if you don¡¯t mind my pathological need to know what¡¯s in people¡¯s heads. And I can¡¯t just hack that information out, so I like to needle people.¡±


    ¡°About whether I¡¯m interested in Brian?¡± I asked.


    ¡°We¡¯re the first flesh and blood people you¡¯ve interacted with in years,¡± Lisa explained. ¡°When every other high school graduate was experimenting in college, you were shut away at home. Brian¡¯s an attractive guy, and I was wondering if you were starting to realise that.¡±


    I sighed, looking down at the floor.


    ¡°Honestly, I can¡¯t help but feel like the ugly duckling around all of you. And yeah, Brian¡¯s good looking but I really don¡¯t think I¡¯m ready for that sort of thing. There was a time back in high school when I might have leapt into the arms of anyone who so much as smiled at me, but once I left I just¡­ got used to the loneliness, I guess.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t sell yourself short,¡± Lisa said, and though I looked I couldn¡¯t see any hint of sarcasm or white lies on her face. ¡°You¡¯re just not used to looking after yourself. A little time in the sun will work wonders, and you¡¯ve got legs for days.¡±


    I cocked an eyebrow, bringing up a finger to the grey-blue skin of my cheek.


    ¡°This doesn¡¯t tan, you know,¡± I pointed out.


    ¡°Not what I¡¯m talking about,¡± Lisa countered. ¡°You just need to work with what you¡¯ve got. And besides, whatever you look like, whatever your complexion, there¡¯s bound to be someone out there who thinks you¡¯re the hottest fucking person they¡¯ve ever seen.¡±


    ¡°Fantastic,¡± I drawled. ¡°There¡¯s a sketchy necrophiliac out there with my name on him.¡±


    Lisa laughed heartily, propping herself up against the wall for a moment before composing himself.


    ¡°Fuck, I needed that. But seriously, I can ask Brian if he¡¯ll show you how to shoot? And no double entendre this time, cross my heart.¡±


    ¡°Sure,¡± I nodded. ¡°I¡¯m going to hit the shower, make myself at least a little presentable.¡±


    I made my way to the bathroom, but paused at the entrance, looking back at Lisa as she typed out a message on her commlink.


    ¡°Were you ever tempted to try anything?¡± I asked, faintly. ¡°With Brian,¡± I added as she looked up. ¡°You¡¯re both attractive, both worked together for a long time. Hell, you set this whole team up.¡±


    ¡°Not even once,¡± Lisa answered, looking up from her comm as she hit send. ¡°I¡¯ll use sexuality as a weapon, but I¡¯m both asexual and aromantic so that kind of relationship just isn¡¯t going to happen.¡± She smirked, looking me up and down. ¡°So I¡¯m sorry to disappoint, if that¡¯s where you were going.¡±


    I blushed, not that she could tell.


    ¡°No, it¡¯s not that. I mean, I¡¯m pretty sure I¡¯m straight.¡±


    ¡°Only pretty sure?¡± Lisa drawled. ¡°You really have been living in a cave for the last few years.¡±


    ¡°A bridge,¡± I murmured, then continued at her confused look. ¡°Trolls live under bridges.¡±


    She snorted, shaking her head. ¡°Sure. And I¡¯ve got some cookies to sell you.¡±


    ¡°Oh come on,¡± I groaned. ¡°Why go for the cartoon mascot instead of Tolkien?¡±


    ¡°The mascot¡¯s more modern?¡± Lisa asked. ¡°Besides, Tolkien¡¯s more than a little gauche, don¡¯t you think? Well, outside T¨ªr Tairngire or T¨ªr na n¨®g. Honestly surprised you¡¯d even mention it; it¡¯s not like the trolls in it come off well.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s a poignant metaphor for pastoralism over industrialism in there that¡¯d be incredibly relevant today if it wasn¡¯t the single worst example of unintentional pre-Goblinisation bigotry ever written. Not like Tolkien ever knew trolls were real.¡±


    Lisa just stared at me, looking a little stunned at my sudden literary outburst. To be honest, it had surprised me as well.


    ¡°My mom was an English Literature professor,¡± I explained sheepishly once the silence had stretched long enough to be awkward.


    ¡°Clearly.¡±


    Fortunately, both of us were distracted from more awkwardness as Grue¡¯s response came in.


    ¡°Grue¡¯s on board,¡± Lisa said, looking down at her comm. ¡°Says he¡¯ll be here in-¡±


    ¡°Fifteen minutes,¡± I cut her off, reading the message in the Matrix. ¡°Shit, I need to get ready.¡±


    I turned away without a word to Lisa, ducking under the door to the bathroom, wiping the last dregs of sleep from my eyes and squeezing myself under the showerhead ¨C shivering as the initial blast of ice-cold water ran right down my back with no room for me to get out of its way.


    There was a lot I liked about the loft, but the plumbing wasn¡¯t built with trolls in mind, or with how much hot water five people actually use in the morning.


    Still, the cold water was enough to shock me awake, and the awkward fumbling as I tried to ensure I was able to get at least a little bit of spray on all of my body was enough to shake my limbs into some semblance of wakefulness. When I stepped out of the shower and wrapped myself in an almost too short towel, I no longer felt like some shambling zombie from a B-grade horror flick.


    Brian would be here in six minutes, but it wasn¡¯t like I had to wonder what to wear. Instead I winced as I realised the only set of clothes I had here were the ones I arrived in. I¡¯d taken all the stuff Lisa and I had bought back home, where it was still gathering dust in my closet.


    ¡°You really need to move some stuff over here,¡± Lisa said, leaning against the doorway. She was wearing her trenchcoat, and looked like she was on her way out the door. ¡°If only for the sake of hygiene.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, no kidding,¡± I said, awkwardly shuffling past her into my room so as not to dislodge the towel. ¡°Still, these are fine for another day; they were clean yesterday afternoon. Where are you off to, anyway?¡±


    ¡°I guess you could say I¡¯m paying my dues. With Mentor Spirits, there¡¯s a bit of give and take involved. Snake¡¯s been giving, so now I¡¯m going to hit the streets and find some secrets she can take.¡±


    ¡°I hope you find something juicy,¡± I replied, turning back to my clothes before hesitating and popping my head out into the corridor.


    ¡°Lisa,¡± I began, as she stopped in her tracks, ¡°can I ask you a personal question?¡±


    ¡°Sure,¡± she shrugged her shoulders, ¡°but I might not answer it.¡±


    ¡°How did you find out?¡±


    Lisa smiled, wryly, shaking her head from side to side.


    ¡°I never had a ¡®relationship¡¯¡± ¨C I could almost hear the air quotes ¨C ¡°I didn¡¯t hate. It took me a while to figure out it was more than just the other reasons I had to hate the whole situation; that it would never work out. Sometimes you just have to learn from experience.¡±


    ¡°Well I¡¯ve not got much of that,¡± I observed. ¡°Anyway, good luck looking for blackmail.¡±


    ¡°Have fun on your date!¡± she responded gleefully, before disappearing down the stairs.


    I quickly threw on my clothes, taking a moment to wring out my hair again as a droplet of cold water ran down my back. My gun was still in its holster; I pretty much considered it part of the outfit, so had brought it with me last night. Plus, it was reassuring to know it was within reach.


    Brian was pulling into the garage as I came downstairs, parking his dark blue Ford Americar up where Rachel¡¯s van would normally be, but it seemed she was out. He smiled at me as he stepped out of the car, waving as I crossed the floor of the old auto shop.


    He was dressed in deep grey cargo pants, robust work boots and a steel blue sports t-shirt that hugged his muscles, worn underneath a black leather jacket with a syn-cotton hood poking out the back. It looked warm, practical and stylish all at once, in a very Brian way.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    ¡°Thanks for agreeing to come by,¡± I said, brushing a hand over the submachine gun under my jacket. ¡°I¡¯d really like to know how to actually shoot straight if I¡¯m going to be walking into another firefight.¡±


    Not that I plan to make them a regular event, but it¡¯s not like that¡¯s entirely something I control.


    ¡°It¡¯s no trouble,¡± Brian answered. ¡°And it¡¯s important; a weapon you don¡¯t know how to use is as dangerous to your friends as your enemies.¡±


    ¡°Uh-huh,¡± I nodded. Even though the line sounded like he¡¯d lifted it straight from a martial arts movie, there was something genuine about the way he¡¯d said it. ¡°So where are we headed?¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s a place I use just north of Midtown. It¡¯s not too far.¡±


    ¡°Lead on,¡± I gestured, as Brian turned back to his car. I followed him to the front passenger door, which he opened before suddenly stopping ¨C looking down at the seat before turning back to me.


    ¡°Ah,¡± he said.


    ¡°I¡¯ll fit,¡± I said, brushing past him and leaning into the car itself, hunting around the side of the seat. ¡°Where¡¯s the handle to push it back?¡±


    ¡°Other side of the seat,¡± Brian spoke from somewhere behind me.


    ¡°Got it.¡±


    I pushed the seat back as far as it would go, then reached back to grip the roof as I swung myself around, only for my horns to bang up against the roof of the car. I tried to lean forwards, but there was no way I could do that and fit my legs in the footwell. I managed to get one in, but the second just wouldn¡¯t fit.


    ¡°Taylor, I¡¯m not sure¡­¡± Brian began.


    I caught sight of the steering wheel in the corner of my eye, and something in me flipped a little. I started to struggle, only wedging myself deeper in as I stopped trying to sit down and instead started frantically trying to leave the car.


    I caught sight of Brian looking down at me with wide eyes, his arms half-outstretched as if he was unsure whether I wanted his help, and somehow that gave me enough focus to get my head out from under the roof and my hands on the concrete floor of the garage.


    It wasn¡¯t the most dignified exit, and as I stood up, brushing the dust off my sleeves, I found myself looking anywhere except at Brian.


    ¡°You alright?¡± I heard him ask, followed by the sound of a car door closing.


    ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± I almost snapped. I stopped, walking towards the open garage door before stopping. When I looked back at Brian, I hoped he didn¡¯t see how strained my smile was. ¡°Guess the car¡¯s not an option. Hope I didn¡¯t scrape your roof.¡±


    Brian shrugged his shoulders. ¡°Who cares about fabric?¡± he asked, and I hoped he meant it. ¡°We¡¯ll take the bus?¡±


    ¡°Sure,¡± I nodded, stepping out into the hazy mid-morning light. It was overcast again, but so far it didn¡¯t look like rain. I reached out into the matrix and took control of the garage door, closing it shut behind Brian as he followed me out.


    He led the way through the streets for a block and a half, before we found ourselves sharing a bus stop with a couple of teenagers and a near-comatose junkie propped up against the glass, a chip in her head currently running a Better than Life simulation. I didn¡¯t look close, in either the Matrix or meatspace, and Brian didn¡¯t look at all.


    ¡°So¡­¡± he began. ¡°You mind telling me what that was back there? I¡¯d guess claustrophobia, but I remember something similar happening in the van when Rachel stopped a little too fast.¡±


    I didn¡¯t answer at first, as I debated whether I should answer. In the end, though, I figured it was a big enough part of my past that it would probably come out eventually.


    ¡°I lost my mother in a car accident,¡± I admitted, quietly. ¡°I used to be fine riding in my dad¡¯s car, but it¡¯s been years since then and¡­ I guess being trapped in there hit a little too close to home.¡±


    ¡°Shit, I¡¯m sorry.¡± He shook his head. ¡°Car of the people my ass.¡±


    ¡°They do a troll-friendly version,¡± I shrugged my shoulders. ¡°Costs more, though. More metal, I guess.¡± I smiled, as a memory rose up unprompted. ¡°Mom used to call it the ¡®tall tax.¡¯¡±


    Brian snorted, smiling briefly before his features settled back into a more serious expression.


    ¡°If you don¡¯t mind me asking, how long has it been?¡±


    ¡°Almost seven years.¡± I almost couldn¡¯t believe it, hadn¡¯t thought about the number inevitably climbing up, but there it was.


    ¡°And your dad¡­¡± he continued, slowly, ¡°is he?¡±


    I shook my head.


    ¡°Two years. And a bit. He was shot. Everyone knows it was the mafia.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s a hard hand to be dealt,¡± Brian sighed, before we were saved from further depressing conversation as the bus pulled up.


    It was an old and tired vehicle, its electric engine audibly straining as it pulled up to the stop. The sides of the bus and the metal mesh that covered the windows had all been painted in blue and white, except for the spaces that had been set aside for a digital advertisement board ¨C a Mitsubishi Runabout speeding through empty city streets, free from pedestrians, traffic and smog. The paint was chipped and faded, and both it and the advertisement were obscured by blood-red graffiti that proudly declared ¡®FREE ANDREW GAR¡± before trailing off in a long line of red spray paint.


    ¡°That¡¯s not going to last in this neighbourhood,¡± Brian observed as we queued up behind the teens. ¡°I give it an hour before someone changes that ¡®free¡¯ to a ¡®frag.¡¯¡±


    Inside the bus, the driver ¨C a weary-looking woman with her hair tucked under the baseball cap of her company uniform ¨C was separated from the passengers by a Perspex barrier coated in more metal mesh. On the passenger¡¯s side of the divide was a device for reading credsticks and a small printer that churned out synthetic paper tickets. Most didn¡¯t bother collecting them, since nobody ever came around to check, and a small pile had gathered on the floor.


    Brian and I bought our tickets and moved back as the driver shut the door and set off. The sudden lurch had me reaching for a handle, but it wasn¡¯t accompanied by the same stab of fear I¡¯d felt in Rachel¡¯s van.


    It¡¯s good to know my limits, I thought.


    Most of the bus was taken up with plastic seats arranged in rows, but there was no way I¡¯d be able to fit my legs in them. Near the front of the bus, there was an open area set aside for strollers, and that had a couple of seats that had enough legroom.


    Luckily the bus was quiet enough that those seats were free, or else I¡¯d have had to stand the whole way there. As it was, the only other passengers were a few old pensioners and a handful of teens. The benefits of travelling at mid-morning, I guessed.


    We sat in silence for a while, as I looked out the window at the passing tenement blocks and rows of small businesses packed into small shops. Eventually, though, I spoke, without looking at Brian.


    ¡°So you¡¯ve heard about my family, and I get the impression the others don¡¯t really have families to talk about, but you¡¯re local. Do you have anyone in the city?¡±


    He didn¡¯t speak for long enough that I looked over to him to make sure I hadn¡¯t pissed  him off, but I guess he was just psyching himself up. He sighed, and started talking.


    ¡°My parents split up when I was about thirteen. Dad¡¯s still around. We don¡¯t exactly talk much, but I see him every now and then. He¡¯s a boxing trainer, used to go in the ring himself. Taught me how to fight, too. The basics at least. He was always¡­¡± he shrugged his shoulders. ¡°I don¡¯t know, I guess you¡¯d call him a hard man. No warmth to him.¡±


    ¡°And your mom?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t even know if she¡¯s alive,¡± he said, matter-of-factly. ¡°She was an addict. Don¡¯t know if it happened after she and dad split or if she was just a functioning addict before then, but it only got worse with time. A few years back this guy I knew came up to me and said she¡¯d been evicted from her apartment, and I never saw her again.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry you had to go through that,¡± I said. It felt like too little, but what else could I say? I couldn¡¯t even imagine what that must have been like.


    Brian leant back in his seat, taking a moment before continuing.


    ¡°Everyone¡¯s got a sob story. The trick is not letting it define you. Besides, I had it a lot better than my sister; I went with dad in the divorce.¡±


    ¡°You have a sister?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I hope I still do,¡± Brian replied, cryptically. ¡°Aisha ran away from mom when she was about fourteen, not that I can blame her. Every few months she¡¯ll show up out of the blue and crash in my apartment for a couple nights, only to disappear back onto the streets. Where she goes¡­ I¡¯ve no idea. I don¡¯t want to push in case she stays away forever.¡±


    ¡°How old is she now?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Eighteen,¡± Brian answered. ¡°Her birthday was a month and a half ago, not that she was there to celebrate it.¡±


    I fell silent as I debated whether or not to offer some help, but after about a block I figured I might as well present the option and let him decide whether or not to take it.


    ¡°I could¡­ I mean, I might be able to track her down if you wanted. If you still have the details of her System Identification Number ¨C or maybe your dad does ¨C then I can have a sprite comb the city for her signature. Everyone leaves a trail.¡±


    ¡°Not her,¡± Brian shook his head. ¡°She¡¯s SINless.¡±


    ¡°How¡¯d that happen?¡± I asked, surprised. Brian had to use a fake SIN on our jobs to stop his criminal activities being tied to Brian Laborn, UCAS citizen. I did much the same, except using my technomancer abilities to fudge the details. I couldn¡¯t buy anything without revealing myself as Taylor Hebert, but nobody would be identifying me on a job anytime soon.


    ¡°The Crash, back in sixty-four,¡± Brian explained. ¡°Our whole family¡¯s data got wiped out when the matrix went down. Dad took advantage of the amnesty to re-register me and him, but mom didn¡¯t, and Aisha was living with her.¡±


    So she ended up SINless. Someone who doesn¡¯t exist on any records, who has no citizenship, no social security number, no legitimate digital existence of any kind. Which, in real terms, meant they didn¡¯t exist full stop. Brian¡¯s sister couldn¡¯t even buy a bus ticket, because a person¡¯s credstick used their SIN for payment verification.


    ¡°Do you know how she¡¯s supporting herself?¡±


    ¡°No, I don¡¯t,¡± Brian replied. ¡°It¡¯s why having my own apartment is important to me. I need somewhere she can come and stay if ¨C when ¨C whatever she¡¯s doing turns bad.¡±


    ¡°I think it¡¯s admirable,¡± I said. ¡°I don¡¯t have any brothers or sisters, but if I did I like to think I¡¯d be prepared to look out for them like you are.¡±


    ¡°Thanks,¡± Brian smiled, as the bus slowed somewhat. ¡°Come on,¡± he stood up, grabbing onto a pole for support. ¡°This is our stop.¡±


    I followed him for another two blocks before we turned into what looked like a fairly unassuming gym ¨C a brick building with a plain plastic sign over the door, the only AR elements to it being used to make the text glow. Inside was a boxing ring, a whole section of different weight machines, and some stranger equipment that I couldn¡¯t really make sense of beyond the general idea that people might pull on parts of them to work out.


    It was fairly quiet in there, but there was a common trend to all the clientele; they all looked like less professional versions of Brian. Not in terms of appearance, obviously, but if I were asked to picture a room full of guns for hire, this would be it. Faux-military outfits were in fashion, with dark clothes and combat boots in abundance.


    In the ring, a wiry elf with a pristine samurai sword was demonstrating cutting techniques to a human girl with a plastic training version. As with just about everyone else in the room, her gear looked like third or fourth-hand stuff she was trying to pass off as at least second. Her cyberware was the same, with cut-off shorts showing off obviously mechanical legs.


    ¡°What is this place?¡± I asked Brian as we walked across the floor, surprised to see that the pair of us were drawing some appreciative glances from the wannabe street samurai.


    ¡°A lot of people in this part of town want to be Shadowrunners,¡± Brian said. ¡°Everyone dreams of falling in with a good crew, hitting it big, and retiring at thirty on your ill-gotten gains. Everyone has to start somewhere. I started here, and I was lucky enough to make it rather than falling into regular merc work or one of the gangs.¡±


    ¡°A good place to learn to shoot,¡± I observed.


    ¡°My thoughts exactly.¡±


    The counter was manned by an old dwarf in a black polo shirt that had faded to grey at the seams. Brian sauntered up to the guy as easy as you please and set down his credstick on the counter.


    ¡°We¡¯ll have a lane downstairs.¡±


    He was clearly putting on a bit of an act, and slightly preening in the attention the people in the gym were giving him, but the guy behind the counter was having none of it. He just ran Brian¡¯s credstick through the machine and waved us towards a door at the back of the room.


    We descended down a short narrow staircase and through into a little antechamber of sorts, with a few dozen ear defenders hanging on hooks on the wall. I¡¯d had to hunch over on the staircase, but to my surprise they had a few oversized pairs that were designed to wrap around the back of the head, rather than the top, for people with horns.


    The next door was soundproofed, and Brian made sure I¡¯d put my ear defenders on before he opened it. Immediately, I was hit by a barrage of incredibly loud gunshots ¨C pistols and machine guns mingling with much heavier calibre ammunition.


    The range itself was mostly bare concrete, with a bored-looking gym employee watching over a dozen numbered stalls. The range itself was about twenty five metres long, and must have stretched all the way under the gym above. The targets were all synthetic paper, and were sent downrange by means of rails that began at each shooting point and ran all the way to the far wall at the other end.


    Brian walked us over to an empty lane, a couple down from an elven man who was lining up shots with a shotgun that seemed almost comically oversized in his slight hands.


    He took his jacket off, hanging it on a hook on the dividing wall, and with what Lisa had said earlier still fresh in my mind I couldn¡¯t help noticing the way his cybernetic arms strained against the sleeves of his t-shirt. More noticeable than that was the way the muscles running down his back were ever bit as impressive as the artificially sculpted ones.


    Inevitably, the second thing I noticed was the heavy pistol he was wearing in a shoulder holster. The same smartlinked Ares Predator he¡¯d brought to the warehouse job, though the link was off right now.


    It was pretty warm in there, so I took my jacket off as well and hoped my t-shirt didn¡¯t smell of sweat, beer or pizza.


    My own submachine gun was holstered in the same place as Brian¡¯s, and I had a few spare magazines tucked away in the pouches that lined the inside of my jacket. Brian¡¯s pistol was big, but my Ares Executioner was bigger, while still being roughly pistol-sized in comparison to my body.


    ¡°Alright,¡± Brian said. ¡° Quick safety brief; don¡¯t point the weapon anywhere other than down the range. Now then, let¡¯s see what we¡¯re working with. I assume you know how to make that thing ready?¡± he asked.


    I nodded. ¡°I found the manual online and figured it out.¡±


    To be more specific, I downloaded the manual onto dad¡¯s computer so I can just access it whenever.


    Following the instructions to the letter, I made the gun ready as Brian hooked a target onto the rail and sent it ten meters downrange. I lined up a shot at the middle of the black, vaguely-metahuman silhouette and squeezed the trigger for the first time.


    I released the trigger almost immediately, but I was still shocked by a trio of staccato bangs as three bullets flew downrange. I was about to lower the gun, only for Brian to cut me off.


    ¡°Keep it up,¡± he said, and I hurriedly complied. ¡°Fire off another three bursts.¡±


    I was a lot more prepared for the noise the second time around, but it still shocked me. The gun jumped as well, with every shot. Not hard enough to overcome my grip, but enough that my hands shook just a little after the third burst.


    I turned my head to look at Brian, keeping the weapon raised and pointed downrange before he nodded and gestured to the small shelf that divided the stall from the range itself. Taking his meaning, I flicked on the safety and set my gun down ¨C making sure to keep the barrel pointed downrange.


    ¡°Okay, let¡¯s see what we¡¯ve got,¡± he said, before hitting the button that brought the target back to us.


    To my dismay, my shots were well off from the centre of the target. They were actually almost off the edge of the black silhouette altogether, peppering the white backdrop.


    ¡°This is good,¡± Brian said, causing me to fix him with a disbelieving and slightly irritated look; I didn¡¯t want to be condescended to.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t get anywhere near the middle,¡± I pointed out.


    ¡°But your grouping is decent, especially for an automatic,¡± Brian responded, pointing at the cluster of bullet holes. ¡°See how they¡¯re all pretty close together? It means that your firing position is steady enough that you¡¯re hitting the same spot every time, you just need to move that spot to where it needs to be. Keep the front and rear sights lined up on target, and don¡¯t forget you can adjust them if you¡¯re consistently firing off-centre.¡±


    ¡°Mind showing me how it¡¯s done?¡± I asked, nodding at his pistol.


    ¡°No problem,¡± Brian smiled, like he¡¯d been waiting for a chance to do just that. He sent the target out again, drawing his pistol and turning himself side-on to the range. He raised his right arm, and I could see the mechanical muscles sliding beneath the synthskin of his arm as he took aim. His arm was the kind of perfectly steady that only a machine can be, and his eyes were looking right down the length of it.


    He fired five times in quick succession, each shot accompanied by a sharp bark and a spent casing flying out of the pistol, hitting the side of the stall before falling to the floor where it joined the pile of casings I¡¯d left when I fired. After the fifth shot, he flicked the safety on his pistol with a thumb and brought the target back to us.


    The results were, frankly, incredible. It almost looked like he¡¯d only fired a single shot; the only addition to the target was a single, slightly irregular hole in the dead centre of the silhouette¡¯s head.


    ¡°Okay, consider me impressed,¡± I said, as Brian quickly removed the magazine from his pistol, ejected an unfired round from the gun itself, placed it in the magazine with the others and reloaded the gun before tucking it away in his holster. Unlike my rote copying from the manual, there was a fluidity and speed to his movements that spoke of long practice.


    ¡°You¡¯ll get there,¡± Brian said. ¡°Although to be honest, if you really want to brush up your skills these aren¡¯t the ones you should be focusing on.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡± I asked, as Brian swapped the target out for a fresh one, sent it downrange and gestured for me to take another shot.


    ¡°Shadowrunner teams aren¡¯t like other mercenary units. In a PMC, everyone is put through the same boot camp because they need everyone to know the same skills.¡±


    I fired again, taking care to pay particular attention to the sights. Brian stepped up close to me, brushing his hands against my arms as he adjusted my stance. They were warm; like flesh and blood.


    ¡°But Shadowrunner teams are a lot smaller,¡± he continued, ¡°and a set training routine wouldn¡¯t work because everyone¡¯s bringing different skills to the table. It¡¯s about merging those different skills together to cover every eventuality, and each other¡¯s weaknesses. That¡¯s why Faultline made us find a decker before she¡¯d agree to take us on.¡±


    My gun clicked empty, the cocking handle stuck fully back. Pulling up the manual again, I moved through the routine of removing the magazine, performing a seven point check to make sure the gun was empty, and gladly accepting a magazine Brian had fished out of my jacket before loading it and depressing the working parts release catch.


    ¡°So if you want to protect yourself, learn to shoot,¡± Brian said. ¡°But if you want to become a more effective part of the team, learn to hack. And I can¡¯t teach you that in the same way I can¡¯t teach Regent how to manage his spirits, or Bitch how to manage a gun that¡¯s mounted on the back of a drone.¡±


    ¡°Makes sense,¡± I said, as I started to shorten the amount of time before each burst of gunfire. I felt shell casings hitting my legs as they bounced off the wall of the stall, and I could see a growing hole in the target as my shots tore out more and more of the paper. It still wasn¡¯t in the centre, but it was a lot closer than before.


    When the gun clicked empty again I set it down on the counter and hit the switch to bring the target back to us.


    ¡°I think I know just the person to ask.¡±

 Resonance: 3.04

    I left the metro two blocks away from the Palanquin, and immediately found myself in the middle of a protest. The road had once been part of Lord Street, and its four lanes should have been packed full of grid-linked cars and trucks moving through the city in an orderly jumble. Instead the road was packed from end to end with people, and I could see the grid-link data passing through the ether as the city-wide traffic monitoring network routed navigation systems and the occasional autonomous vehicle around the obstruction.


    At first, my heartbeat quickened in my chest at the sight of so many people, and I found my hand unconsciously drifting to my gun as my mind slipped back into the matrix, drawing on the myriad data of the crowd¡¯s commlinks as I tried and failed to take in all that massed data at once.


    It was only a moment later that my eyes finally caught up with my brain, and I relaxed ¨C somewhat ¨C as I saw that a little over half the crowd were non-humans. Most were about my age, too, and I had to figure that they were drawn to this protest in particular by Constitution Hill¡¯s proximity to New Brockton University.


    So while it was hard to head down the stairs and join the crowd on the street, at least I got fewer glances than normal as I carefully manoeuvred through the protest. Still, I couldn¡¯t help my heart quickening at the sheer mass of people that surrounded me. The subway had been hard because of the confined space, but this was something else altogether; I could still see over the crowd just fine, but all that meant was that I was entirely aware of just how many people were surrounded me right now.


    Down at the other end of the protest, a raised stage had been set up beneath some traffic lights, right at the cusp of an intersection through which traffic was still passing. There was a small cluster of speakers standing on the stage, all listening to an elven woman speak ¨C her voice carried to the crowd by a microphone on her lapel that was linked to quad-rotor speaker drones that hovered over the crowd.


    Similar drones were busy in augmented reality, projecting her image on great screens that floated in the air, or were projected on the sides of buildings. At the same time, hacktivists had filled the air with slogans and banners that easily matched the amount of meatspace placards being enthusiastically waved in the air.


    To my surprise, I recognised the speaker. I didn¡¯t remember her name ¨C though the subtitles attached to the video feeds identified her as Donna Hawthorn ¨C but I remembered her face from some events mom had taken me along to. She was a prominent member of Mothers of Metahumans, and she wasn¡¯t local to the Bay.


    I couldn¡¯t help but think about how strange it was that a small team of people could have such an effect. Things were relatively calm for now, but the news seemed to think there would be riots tonight. Sure, it¡¯d blow over in a few days but it was still really weird that I was one fifth of a team that had managed to shake up the city by kidnapping a single person.


    After so long spent as an organic ghost in the machine, I wasn¡¯t sure how I felt about being in the limelight like that, even if none of these protestors knew I was the reason they were out here.


    Suddenly, a strange ripple in the matrix drew my eye. I looked closer, allowing the mundane world to slip just a little further out of reach as I focused my attention on the datastreams around me. There was a second network in the area, beyond the one linking the speakers to the stage. Its code was utilitarian, robust, uncomplicated and familiar. Knight Errant.


    They had their own drones in the air over the protest, quadcopters hiding in and amongst the traffic overhead. They were unmarked, and to the untrained eye would appear just the same as any of the other camera drones that were busy filming the event for news stations, social media feeds or just because someone owned a drone and had to find some way to justify the purchase.


    Strings of data tethered the drones to figures in the crowd, plainclothes officers circulating amongst the protestors with facial recognition scanners running in their cybereyes. They were flagging those with criminal SINs, and those who¡¯d been linked to violent protests in the past. It didn¡¯t look like they were preparing for a crackdown, more like they wanted to know who to prioritise if things got ugly later.


    But their presence wasn¡¯t entirely hostile. There was a Knight Errant officer up on the speakers¡¯ platform, some mid-level bigwig in a dress uniform. A liaison officer, maybe, or someone who was here to reassure the crowd that they actually were going to make sure Andrew Garcia made it to trial.


    As I reached the other side of the street and the edge of the crowd, I found there were more Knight Errant officers around the perimeter of the protest. These ones were wearing actual uniforms, though there were only three of them standing out on the street ¨C next to a car and a large eight-wheeled truck in their colours.


    I could see the IFF tags of an additional eight officers in the back of the truck, and all they¡¯d need to do is turn it around a little to block off the whole street, but it seemed that they were making a deliberate effort to appear unobtrusive, and two of the three officers were actually looking away from the protest.


    No private police company was without controversy, but Knight Errant was widely regarded as the best of them. They had a reputation for professionalism and even-handedness that extended beyond the tightly-controlled circles of corporate media circuits. I dreaded to think how companies like Lone Star might have handled this whole situation.


    Of course, as mom would have been quick to point out, that wasn¡¯t the whole story. Knight Errant was the flagship project of Ares Macrotechnology, receiving disproportionate amounts of funds and expertise. What¡¯s more, they still suffered from the same problems that had plagued police forces since long before they were ever brought into private hands, they were just better at managing them.


    The three officers ¨C a troll man, and two women, one of them lithe enough I thought she might be an elf ¨C were all in peak physical condition, something that was emphasised by the close-fitting black and yellow taksuits they all wore; a style that was more reminiscent of old superhero films than the modernised versions of classic police uniforms favoured by other companies.


    Two of them ¨C the elf and the troll ¨C wore the standard all-over helmets that hid their faces behind a one-way yellow visor. The human, on the other hand, was a mage, with her face visible beneath a hooded tabard worn over her taksuit. All of them had pistols, stun guns and electric batons worn on belts that cinched around their waists, but that was it. I could only presume the riot shields were in the van.


    If any one of them brought the company into disrepute ¨C whether by being filmed brutalizing a suspect or just falling below the fitness standard to the point where that same close-fitting getup made them look like an overstuffed sausage ¨C they wouldn¡¯t be dragged through a lengthy internal appeals process like cops in other corps were. Instead they were fired, then rehired on the spot by another Ares subsidiary; Hard Corps.


    In the end, everyone won out. Knight Errant got to keep their reputation, the people under their jurisdiction got a speedy response to problems ¨C even if it couldn¡¯t be called justice ¨C and the officers themselves got shuffled away from the public eye rather than dragged through a media spectacle and left out on the street. Everyone except for the people in the prisons Hard Corps ran, that is. Or those unlucky enough to be caught breaking into buildings they guarded.


    The trio of Knight Errant cops weren¡¯t stopping the steady stream of people filtering into the protest, so I moved against the flow and tried to make my way past them and out of the press of people.


    The moment I made it clear, I suddenly found myself face to chest with the troll officer, who¡¯d moved out to block my path.


    ¡°You can¡¯t come this way, miss,¡± he said, as I froze, his right hand held out while the other rested on his belt ¨C away from the taser, baton and pistol but that didn¡¯t help me feel any more confident.


    ¡°Is-¡± I stammered, ¡°Is something the matter?¡±


    The elven officer turned from where she was leaning against the car, resting a hand on the hood as her featureless visor moved to look at me.


    ¡°There¡¯s a Humanis rally a block away from here. So far things have been calm, but we don¡¯t want to leave things to chance so we¡¯re closing off the streets between the two groups.¡±


    Sure enough, the flow of people coming into the protest had dried up completely.


    ¡°I have to get to the Palanquin,¡± I said, thinking on the spot. ¡°My shift is starting soon and I don¡¯t want to be late.¡±


    The elven officer cocked her head, though without her face being visible I could only guess at what emotions the gesture represented. The troll, on the other hand, just looked up and down the street like he was weighing up his options.


    ¡°Hmm,¡± he exhaled, lost in thought. ¡°You could try the old pedway.¡± He lifted up an immense arm, pointing down the length of the protest. ¡°The entrance should be about thirty metres that way. Normally I wouldn¡¯t recommend it to a young woman like yourself, but it should take you over the rally rather than through it. Just don¡¯t poke your head out, okay?¡±


    ¡°Thank you, officer,¡± I nodded, as the elf abruptly turned back to look down the length of the road, apparently dismissing me as a threat.


    ¡°Just be careful, okay?¡± he said. ¡°The Palanquin doesn¡¯t have the best reputation.¡±


    I shrugged as I turned to walk away. ¡°It¡¯s a living.¡±


    Sure enough, about halfway down the length of the next building, in between a bustling sandwich place that was making a killing and a jewellery store with the shutters down and magnetic locks engaged, was a set of stairs seemingly leading up into nowhere, the walls and some of the steps covered in so much layered graffiti it was impossible to make out any individual tag.


    Even with the full crowd down below, people had stayed away from this place. The stairs led up into an almost unlit corridor, with only two out of the ten overhead lights actually functional. Once it would have acted like an indoor street, with shops on either side. But the shops had been shuttered and closed, and the shutters themselves had been torn open or crowbarred off their mountings by urban treasure hunters in search of whatever scraps the shops left behind.


    The air was weighty and oppressive, with a chill to it that had me hugging my arms against my chest as I hurried through. Back at school, places like this were the topic of urban legends. Of monsters and spirits and cyberpsychos hiding to ambush the girls who ran in there on dares, or who were forced in there as part of some sadistic prank.


    Using the matrix to orient myself with the rest of the city, I turned at an intersection and went up a second set of stairs that led me out of the building and into a covered walkway that spanned the width of the next road over. While it might once have held a commanding view, the sides had been covered up by electronic advertising hoardings that covered up all but the smallest gaps in the structure.


    As I caught a glimpse of a crowd of hundreds of humans working themselves up into a tornado of self-righteous anger, I counted myself lucky that the boards were there.


    I descended from the pedway after the next block, pushing past a half-closed metal shutter into a section of shops that still had some life in it ¨C even if that life seemed to take the form of BTL dens and what might have been a pop-up brothel. The entrance to this section of the pedway was tucked into the side of a building, up a set of dark stairs that continued downwards into the much more well-lit entrance to a nightclub. It was a little enclave of seediness, one that I¡¯d never have noticed from the outside.


    It was twenty three minutes to six, and the Palanquin was getting ready to open. Already a small line had formed outside the entrance to the club, where a burly bouncer with cyberware-enhanced muscles was watching over a line of people dressed for the club, with most of them already a little bit drunk.


    I wasn¡¯t really sure what the etiquette was for this sort of situation, but I didn¡¯t want to wait in the line. So I swallowed my nerves and stepped up to the door. The bouncer took one look at me, and I saw streams of data linking his cybernetic eyes to the club¡¯s network, matching up my face to their list of contractors.


    He stepped aside and let me past, ignoring the complaints of the people in the line.


    Inside, the nightclub was as tense as a drawn bowstring, with staff waiting in their place like soldiers on parade while others hurried to and fro on last minute errands. I recognised one of them ¨C a brown haired human woman who looked to be about my age, talking to a man whose eccentric clothes marked him out as the night¡¯s DJ.


    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    She turned as I entered the room ¨C an earpiece linking her to the bouncer outside ¨C and looked at me with a confused expression before making her way across the club¡¯s floor. She was still wearing her name badge, which was good because I¡¯d completely forgotten her name was Emily.


    ¡°It¡¯s Bug, isn¡¯t it?¡± she asked. ¡°We weren¡¯t expecting your team tonight, though you¡¯re welcome to use the club when it¡¯s open.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not here on business,¡± I shook my head. ¡°Well, not that kind of business. Is Labyrinth in? I was hoping to ask her something.¡±


    Emily looked surprised, and when she spoke her voice was a little bit more hesitant. ¡°You¡¯re here to see Labyrinth?¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I nodded. ¡°We ran into each other the first time I came here, and she gave me some advice when I sold some paydata through your auction house. We have the same¡­ well, never mind. I was hoping to ask for some more advice, if she¡¯s in.¡±


    ¡°In?¡± Emily asked, confused. ¡°She¡¯s near-comatose in her room with her head in the Matrix, as usual. How did you meet her?¡±


    ¡°Oh right!¡± I chucked. ¡°Sorry, I¡¯ve been on my feet all day and I guess I got stuck in a bit of a meatspace mindset. I swear I¡¯d forget my own horns if they weren¡¯t stuck to my head. Is there somewhere quiet around here where I can dive in?¡±


    Emily looked at me like I¡¯d grown a third head, but I couldn¡¯t figure out what her deal was.


    She¡¯s a little too young to be a luddite, unless she¡¯s a mage.


    In the end, she sighed and muttered something under her breath before looking back up at me.


    ¡°Upstairs, the VIP floor. Just pick an empty booth and close the curtains; nobody will bother you.¡±


    ¡°Thanks,¡± I nodded before she immediately turned back to the club as the evening¡¯s lights ¨C but not the sound ¨C came to life, filling the space with strobing lights in a way that looked really weird when it was so empty.


    Most of the booths on the mezzanine floor that served as Palanquin¡¯s VIP area were empty, but there were two that had curtains drawn tightly shut in front of them. I had to figure they were soundproofed somehow, not just because of the importance of having a private meeting but also because this part of the club had to get deafeningly loud when the night was in full swing.


    I picked the furthest booth from the stairs and closed the curtains behind me. This close, I could see that they were made of some special material that stuck to itself when drawn shut, creating a seam between each curtain rather than leaving them loose. I doubted it was designed to stop people opening them, but it would stop them drifting open of their own accord and that was good enough for me.


    So I slumped down as best I could on the couch, and let my body go slack as meatspace drifted away.


    The moment I looked around the digital facsimile of the club, a familiar crow flittered into view. I held out an arm for it to perch on, my persona the same robed insectoid woman I tended to default to, and watched as it cocked its head at me before disappearing into the matrix with a burst of ephemeral data.


    Labyrinth appeared moments later, her persona stepping through a wall that shimmered and frayed around her to create an opening. She¡¯d changed her persona again; instead of the Greek robes she¡¯d worn in the auction house or the flowing dress when I¡¯d first met her she was dressed almost like a combat shaman, with a hooded cloak of black feathers worn over a deep green bodysuit. The hood of the cloak cast an impossibly deep shadow over her face.


    ¡°Bug,¡± she greeted me. ¡°I was not expecting you.¡±


    ¡°I know,¡± I said, ¡°and I¡¯m sorry if you were busy, but I was hoping you could help me out.¡±


    She paused for a moment, seemingly lost in thought. At first I thought she was debating what to say, but then I caught a glimpse of datastreams twisted around her fingers and I realised she was busy multitasking.


    ¡°I¡¯m listening,¡± she said.


    ¡°It looks like I¡¯m going to be Shadowrunning for the near future, at least,¡± I began, quickly in case she changed her mind, ¡°and I want to help out my team how I can. That means getting better at hacking, but hacking doesn¡¯t work for me like it does for people using technology and you¡¯re the only other technomancer I know. So I was hoping you¡¯d be willing to teach me something.¡±


    ¡°Faultline always says not to work for free,¡± Labyrinth replied, and for a brief moment she sounded so much less mystical; so much more like a kid seeking her parent¡¯s approval. I couldn¡¯t help but wonder how old she really was; her persona was that of a fully-grown elven woman, at least, but it¡¯s not like that really indicated anything.


    ¡°That¡¯s good advice,¡± I nodded, even as my heart sank. I was really hoping this would pan out. ¡°I can pay you?¡±


    ¡°Your money does not mean much to me,¡± Labyrinth said matter-of-factly.


    I guess it wouldn¡¯t, if these guys were Prime Shadowrunners before they were fixers. I can¡¯t afford her.


    ¡°Yeah, okay,¡± I sighed ¨C a strange thing in the matrix. ¡°I had to ask.¡±


    I was just about to jack out when Labyrinth held out a hand for me to stop.


    ¡°Faultline has given me a task to complete. If you want to learn, you can come with me. Watch my back, pull your weight, and I will give you one lesson.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s the job?¡± I asked. ¡°Wait, scratch that. What¡¯s the lesson?¡±


    ¡°Does it really matter?¡± Labyrinth asked.


    It didn¡¯t take me long to decide.


    ¡°No, it doesn¡¯t. I want to learn.¡±


    ¡°Then follow me,¡± Labyrinth said, before abruptly passing through yet another wall as she left the Palanquin. I followed in her wake as we passed over the city, moving around hosts and through seas of glittering datastreams that went unseen by the personas thronging the grid like swarms of fireflies.


    As we drifted through the city, I couldn¡¯t help noticing that something seemed different about Labyrinth. That ethereal air that always seemed to surround her wasn¡¯t quite gone, but it was massively diminished. It took me a while to figure out why; I¡¯d always seen her in digital domains she herself created. She¡¯d spun the auction house into existence, and the same with Palanquin¡¯s digital presence. Maybe that created a harmony between herself and her environment, one that was lacking now we were out in the open.


    ¡°How much experience do you have as a hacker?¡± Labyrinth asked, and even her voice sounded a little less than it did before. Less of an echo, though there was no audible difference. After all, the five senses didn¡¯t exist in the matrix. There was only data in different forms, interpreted for mundane minds by hardware and for technomancers by whatever was up with our brains. The data that made up Labyrinth¡¯s voice was still noticeably different from that created by software, but it lacked the reverberation caused as it harmonised with the environment around it.


    ¡°Not much,¡± I admitted. ¡°I¡¯ve hacked a lot of devices before, and lifted a few files, but I¡¯ve not really gone much deeper than that.¡±


    ¡°Have you ever attacked a Host?¡±


    ¡°Is that what we¡¯re doing?¡± I asked, fear and excitement rising from my core. ¡°No, never. Well, not a proper host, with proper security.¡±


    ¡°Faultline wants to know how the Yakuza intend to capitalise on the unrest, so we¡¯re infiltrating one of their hosts to acquire their orders.¡±


    ¡°Which host?¡± I asked.


    ¡°One of their larger operations. They purchased an employment agency in Japantown and use its host as cover for a brothel, as well as a hub for their activity in the neighbourhood.¡±


    ¡°So people visiting the host don¡¯t draw attention because the low-paying clients look like they¡¯re there for work, and the high paying clients look like they¡¯re there for workers?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Presumably,¡± Labyrinth replied, clearly not interested in speculating.


    We drifted back down to the tightly-packed data hubs that were the city¡¯s streets. Our target was an unassuming host in the shape of an office block in miniature ¨C though it was still about the size of a large house. It was probably an idealised representation of the physical building the shell company occupied. It was too late for any jobseekers, and too early for any brothel customers, so there was nobody around as we drew close to the host.


    ¡°So how does this work?¡± I asked, as we looked up at the building.


    ¡°When you hack a device, you need to mark it in order to fool it into thinking you have permission to access. Think of this building as the host¡¯s icon and its gateway. You need to fool it into letting you in.¡±


    I looked closer, shifting mental gears as I focused less on the set-dressing of the host¡¯s appearance and more on the raw data that made it up. I watched the patterns of datastreams flowing in and out of the host as it connected with other distant points in the matrix and waved my fingers through one of them, letting the data flow over and through me as I tried to make sense of the pattern.


    It was hard ¨C definitely harder than I was used to. My reactions felt somewhat sluggish, a feeling I recognised. It was always harder to hack something that was physically further away, but that hadn¡¯t mattered so much before because I was working on low-level security. Once I felt I had a firm grasp on it, I shifted my fingers so that I was brushing against the stream, and let some of the raw resonance that made up my incorporeal form stick to the stream, where it was carried into the host.


    Maybe Grue has a point about getting closer. Not close enough to get shot, but there¡¯s no point in working from home if it¡¯s just going to make everything harder.


    A small scarab mark appeared on the host, almost unnoticeable to anyone who wasn¡¯t actively looking for it. Beside me, I felt an affirming burst of code from Labyrinth as she rested her palm against the host itself and pushed code into it. When she removed her palm, she left behind a green fractal maze-like pattern that almost hurt to look at, until I stopped looking at just the visual layer and saw the way it was intertwined with the host¡¯s code.


    ¡°Everything we do sends out ripples,¡± Labyrinth said, almost to herself. ¡°Projecting ourselves into the world sends out a few, as does interacting with that world in the expected ways, but when we change the world like this the ripples spread much further.¡±


    She looked up, past the hosts and data traffic to the sky above.


    ¡°It draws the eyes of GOD.¡±


    I felt a chill go through me, and instinctively looked around for dark figures in old-time suits.


    ¡°It is harder for them to track us than mundane users. Our minds don¡¯t follow the same patterns a cyberdeck does, but that can be a double edged sword. If they do notice the pattern, it can act like a beacon.¡±


    ¡°And what happens if they find us?¡± I asked.


    ¡°They will converge on our location in force, and if it happens when we¡¯re inside the host it will also inform the host¡¯s owners of the location of¡­ our bodies.¡±


    This time, it was more like a stab of fear directly into my heart. I¡¯d always thought I was safe in my apartment, that what happened in the Matrix would stay there.


    ¡°But we¡¯re safe in the Palanquin, right?¡± I asked, suddenly glad I¡¯d hiked across the city rather than finding a quiet corner of the gym.


    ¡°We are,¡± Labyrinth nodded, ¡°but if the Yakuza become aware of our intrusion they will change their plans and the data will become useless.¡±


    ¡°Right, okay,¡± I said, psyching myself up. ¡°So where do we go from here?¡±


    Rather than answering me, Labyrinth simply stepped through the side of the office block, and I went to follow her.


    For a brief moment, I felt an incredible sensation of weightlessness as my digital form passed from the local grid to the private host before it was abruptly lashed down by crude artificial physics made to represent the limitations of the real world.


    Similarly, the host itself had been made to mimic the interior of a meatspace building, though I very much doubted the physical offices of this employment agency matched the faux-Japanese d¨¦cor, with paper walls and mats on the floor. Ruining the image somewhat was the almost entirely Western furniture of the place, with office chairs around long meeting tables and little alcoves with plush armchairs ¨C one for the employee, one for the client.


    There were a few employees around, with simple personas sitting cross-legged in front of moving tapestries as they processed data. I was worried about being seen, but Labyrinth was already spinning a veil of pure resonance around us, masking our own personas from sight while letting us communicate with each other.


    ¡°Tell me what you see,¡± Labyrinth said, and I got the feeling she wasn¡¯t just talking about the wallpaper.


    So I let the set dressing fade from view and tried to see the host as raw data, taking in the different sub-networks that made up actual functions of the host, rather than the space those functions existed in.


    ¡°I think I see the brothel,¡± I said, looking at a number of systems that were only loosely tied to those of the employment agency. There was somewhat of a link, and I had a horrible feeling that some of the more vulnerable people who came here would be automatically referred to the other side of the business.


    What¡¯s more, I could see a clear dividing wall between the two spaces. It was solid enough to fool a cursory inspection, but anyone who actually went looking for it would find a firewall that slid open at the whims of an automated greeter programme ¨C represented in the host¡¯s architecture by a floor to ceiling painting of a geisha that would slide aside.


    Looking closer at the myriad of devices that made up the host I saw that they weren¡¯t just tied to the customer facing sides of the business. There was a system that managed the physical building¡¯s facilities, with paired marks linking it to lights, temperature controls and magnetic locks. There was even a number of monitoring systems that I couldn¡¯t quite make sense of, until I realised the data I was looking at registered the stress levels and heartbeats of the brothel¡¯s employees, to use the term loosely. The more I thought about the implications of why they¡¯d need that system, the more it sickened me.


    So I pulled back a little and focused more on the devices themselves, rather than what they were linked to. That was when I noticed a common pattern among their marks. Each work terminal and alcove had dozens of marks, which I presumed meant the company practiced hot-desking in here, but very few of those marks also existed on the brothel¡¯s systems, and only two had sway over the brothel, the agency and the facilities hub.


    So I followed the trail of breadcrumbs, finding that the owner of one of those marks wasn¡¯t in the matrix ¨C probably the day¡¯s general manager ¨C while the other was here, but out of site. The fact that their mark was a pair of crossed red samurai swords just cinched it.


    ¡°I think they have a Spider,¡± I said.


    ¡°Then be careful you do not become caught in their web,¡± Labyrinth replied, and it took me a moment to realise she¡¯d just made a joke.


    ¡°I can¡¯t¡­ I can¡¯t figure out where they are,¡± I said, looking at the data. I knew there had to be more to the host ¨C Labyrinth said this was a hub for their work in the area, but everything I¡¯d seen so far had been limited to the legal and illegal functions of the physical building¡¯s business. If I was a little closer, I might have been able to cut through the noise and see what was really there, but everything was just a little too blurry.


    ¡°I can see him,¡± Labyrinth said, nonchalantly. She held out a hand in front of her face as datastreams emerged from her palm, taking shape as her black crow sprite. She caressed its feathers as if it were a real pet rather than an extension of her will, and sent it out beyond our veil.


    I followed its path as it slipped past the tapestry and into the wall, moving around the firewall in a pattern that was nonsensical even when viewed as pure data. Then it moved through a second wall, and I suddenly became aware of an entirely new segment to the host. One that no doubt held what we were looking for.


    ¡°You occupy the spider,¡± Labyrinth said. ¡°I will find the file. Are you ready?¡±


    I didn¡¯t take a breath, because there was no air to breathe.


    ¡°Only one way to find out,¡± I said, as I spun together sprites of my own.

 Resonance: 3.05

    I took hold of the resonance around us, twisting and weaving it as my thoughts gave it form. Mindful of what Labyrinth had said, my first thoughts were of secrecy, and the consequences of being caught. The sprite took shape as a woodlouse, skittering along my arm before nesting itself amongst the folds of my persona¡¯s robe.


    My next sprites were much less subtle; jagged, angular code coming together as a familiar pair of wasps, their stripes, eyes and wings glowing an electric yellow as they circled me in a protective pattern.


    Beside me, Labyrinth¡¯s crow had appeared on her shoulder and was looking at my sprites with its head cocked. Labyrinth herself knelt down, pressing her palm against the ¡®floor¡¯ of the host and drawing in resonance. Rather than forming the sprite directly, however, she stood up and watched as it seemingly took shape of its own accord, forming into a majestic eagle ¨C its wingtips shimmering in and out of existence.


    Labyrinth smiled at the bird, leaning down to ruffle the feathers of its neck. To my surprise, the sprite preened at the attention, cawing softly before leaping upwards and hovering next to her, slowly beating its wings in a parody of flight. It locked eyes with me and let out a harsh screech that took me by surprise.


    ¡°Those sprites are unusually docile,¡± Labyrinth said, looking at my trio of insects.


    ¡°Docile?¡± I asked. ¡°What are you talking about? They¡¯re constructs.¡±


    Labyrinth shook her head.


    ¡°They are creatures of the resonance, just like you or I. We entice them out of the resonance and form a contract, or bind them.¡±


    I looked at her like she¡¯d grown a second head.


    ¡°They don¡¯t come through the resonance,¡± I countered, bemused. ¡°I make them out of it.¡±


    ¡°If that is what you believe,¡± Labyrinth said, noncommittedly. ¡°But we are here for a reason.¡±


    ¡°Hold on, you¡¯re just going to drop it?¡± I asked, a little frustrated.


    ¡°This is a cerebral space,¡± Labyrinth explained. ¡°It is possible for two things to be true for two different people.¡±


    ¡°Sure,¡± I sighed, exasperated. ¡°So, you want me to come with you or go it alone?¡±


    ¡°I am used to working alone,¡± Labyrinth said. ¡°You need to be used to it as well. Without control of the matrix, your team will be vulnerable in meatspace. But they can¡¯t follow you here.¡±


    ¡°Right,¡± I nodded. ¡°Running silent,¡± I warned Labyrinth, determined not to let her completely take the lead in case she thought I wasn¡¯t worth teaching. Especially after our little¡­ philosophical dispute.


    She simply nodded, before vanishing from sight. The veil she¡¯d woven around us vanished with her ¨C along with her sprites ¨C and I hurried to make myself unseen as well before some patrol IC spotted me.


    Everything was connected in cyberspace. Grids linked to hosts, hosts linked to devices, devices linked to personas, personas linked to the metahuman factor. The sixth world ¨C to most people the only real world ¨C was linked to the Matrix by billions of different tethers, from the smallest wireless speaker to the immense base-coding secured in the data vaults of Zurich Orbital, way up in the heavens. But that¡¯s all they were; links.


    Before the crash of twenty sixty-four, the Matrix was formed from the combined processing power of every device on Earth. Afterwards, the next Matrix wasn¡¯t formed from anything. It just was. If every device in the city went dark, the Brockton Bay municipal grid would still be there; a digital ghost town.


    There were all sorts of rumours of how they did it, from grounded ones like immense servers buried under mountains or shot into space to the utterly nonsensical ¨C like a hundred technomancers chained together and mind-linked in some barbaric choir ¨C but in the end the rumours were inconsequential. The matrix was here to stay.


    Because of that permanence, I could cut the links down to the bare minimum and leave my persona almost entirely on the Matrix, reducing the tether between it and my real body to a gossamer-thin thread. Deckers could do something similar with their cyberdecks, and they were the ones who came up with the term ¡®running silent.¡¯


    It meant that nobody was going to detect me unless they were looking really hard, but the reduced connections between me and the devices around me meant that hacking them was going to be a lot harder. To make matters worse, a place like this would have Patrol IC whose sole purpose was to look hard for people. I¡¯d just have to hope we were in and out fast enough for it not to notice me, or it wasn¡¯t looking hard enough to see me.


    So, shrouded in silence, I hurried over to the hidden firewall that separated the public-facing employment agency from the mildly less public-facing brothel. All the while I was watching the few employees in the room as they logged on and off, cataloguing data or reviewing casefiles before dropping back into meatspace. One of them stuck around, and I saw why the moment another persona entered the host. She appeared human, but from the Japanese peasant kimono she was wearing I could tell she was using the stock persona of a Renraku Aguchi ¨C a bargain basement commlink that didn¡¯t support customising personas beyond its sex.


    Satisfied that there weren¡¯t any Patrol IC nearby, I turned my attention back to the firewall. Visually, it appeared to be a floor to ceiling piece of artwork depicting a woman singing to a man as another woman served him tea. All were in Japanese dress, and the whole piece was in a traditional-looking style ¨C to my inexperienced eye ¨C that appeared classy enough for the establishment while also hinting at the host¡¯s second purpose.


    As the visual layer faded, I spotted Labyrinth¡¯s mark nestled in amongst the firewall¡¯s code. She was already ahead of me, but I couldn¡¯t let that faze me. If I tried to rush this, I¡¯d just screw up.


    The link between me and the firewall was a gossamer-thin thread of data, as small as I could possibly make it. Slowly, carefully, I took hold of that thread and used it to send minute pulses of data into the wall, pushing at the boundaries of its programmed permissions in hopes of finding a loophole I could exploit.


    Once I was confident in my positioning, I sent down a sharp burst of data that slipped into the firewall¡¯s code, leaving my mark on the portal. From there, I simply stepped through the painting and into the illegal side of the host.


    Where the employment agency was open and spacious, with false views of distant mountains visible through windows, the brothel was snug in a way that some people might have found intimate, but that I just found jumbled and a little cramped.


    The d¨¦cor was all soft carpeting and wood-panelled walls, with scattered chaise lounges and dangling curtains, all upholstered in red. The air was heavy, thick with a sweet scent that worked its way into the mind, softening it and replicating the effects of certain low-level narcotics.


    I filtered out the simulated smell. The last thing I wanted was to pick up a virtudrug addiction from an illegal brothel looking to squeeze out a little more repeat business.


    It¡¯s hard to imagine anything my parents would disapprove of more.


    I was inordinately grateful that there wasn¡¯t any demand for prostitutes at seven minutes past six in the evening. The host was digitally shuttered and dead quiet, without anything I didn¡¯t want to see except for the occasional obscene statue. It also meant there were no personas back here I needed to tiptoe around, and hopefully the security would be a little lighter without any clients to keep safe.


    Lighter, but not non-existent, I thought as a geisha emerged from around the corner ¨C a hazy and ephemeral figure with a face that took the appearance of painted white plastic, rather than make-up on skin. More to the point, her feet were floating above the floor and her beady eyes were constantly darting around the brothel, checking every subsystem for error.


    An Intrusion Countermeasure. A Patrol variant. This was bound to happen eventually, but I was hoping I¡¯d have more time.


    I looked to my right, seeing the second secret firewall that separated the security hub from the brothel. I could hide and hope the IC didn¡¯t spot me, or I could abandon stealth and hope I could brute force whatever was behind that second firewall before the building¡¯s Spider was able to drown me in countermeasures.


    Unless¡­ I looked around, frantically scanning the icons of the devices around me. The systems in here were set up so that they could either be linked to rooms in the physical building, or left entirely on the Matrix to coax in extra customers when the place was full. What that meant was that there were systems linked to the lights, sound systems, and all the other little gimmicks that helped set the mood.


    With a flick of my wrist, one of the wasps peeled off and flew in front of me, passing before the Patrol IC before driving its stinger into a node of those systems, causing them to go haywire. I don¡¯t know what effect that had in meatspace ¨C whether the systems simply broke or a random room was suddenly filled with strobe lights and mood music ¨C but it drew the attention of the IC like a moth to a flame.


    Immediately, I felt the air thicken as the Spider¡¯s attention shifted to the intrusion. They weren¡¯t moving ¨C not yet ¨C but it was enough to make them suspicious. Which was the plan, I supposed; draw the eyes of the Spider away from Labyrinth¡¯s activities, without exposing myself to so much risk that I was overwhelmed or drew the attention of GOD.


    Hopefully that distraction was small enough that the Spider would assume it was some first-time hacker doing what little they could to fight the power before running at the sight of a single piece of IC. The Matrix was full of that sort of petty vandal and some people never grew out of that stage, instead joining juvenile matrix gangs who¡¯d hack the carefully-balanced traffic management boards in the docks to play hardcore porn, then brag about the gridlock they caused on every forum out there like it was some kind of achievement rather than small-minded bullshit any hacker could have pulled off.


    As the wasp ran rampant through the brothel¡¯s systems, I turned my attention to the second firewall and the security hub that lay behind it. This time there wasn¡¯t even a visual marker to distinguish it from the rest of the environment. It was just a flat piece of wall halfway down a corridor.


    As before, I let the visual chaff fade from view and focused solely on the data, testing the resistance of the wall with probing attacks. I was still running silent, and the connection here was just as thin as with the last wall. I could almost feel it slipping between my fingers, and my movements felt fumbling and awkward.


    So, inevitably, I slipped, and one of my pulses tripped something it shouldn¡¯t have. The firewall seemed to flare up, angrily, and I felt the retaliatory burst of code it sent back down the thread. It stuck to me, digging into the resonance of my living persona as it anchored its mark onto me.


    Immediately, the matrix beside me shivered as an armoured samurai took shape, sword already raised to strike. I backpedalled even as I drew together resonance, desperately trying to counter the sword as it fell, but my connection to the matrix was still deliberately muted, and the host¡¯s mark meant that the Killer IC had a clear trail of data to follow.


    Its sword dug into my shoulder, pouring weaponised viruses and logical paradoxes that hurt my head. An instant later, my second wasp counterattacked, driving its stinger right through the snarling faceplate of the samurai¡¯s armour. The force of the blow was enough to dislodge the blade from my shoulder, and with a thought I directed the other wasp to stop causing chaos and focus on destroying the Patrol IC, while the woodlouse sprung from the folds of my robe to dig into the firewall.


    Simultaneously, I reached down and dug my taloned fingers into my side, digging into my own source code as I tried to pry the host¡¯s mark off me. Idly, I noticed that it was the same cartoon bomb I¡¯d seen the Yakuza¡¯s decker ¨C Bakuda ¨C using in the warehouse. She must have programmed the security of this place, though there was no way someone like her would be happy enough to play Spider. Which meant so long as I was fast enough, I wouldn¡¯t have to deal with her again.


    As the samurai flailed against my wasp ¨C and the Patrol IC disintegrated after a successful hit ¨C I was able to grab hold of the mark and tear it out of my body. It hurt ¨C I was essentially ripping out infected flesh, after all ¨C and I channelled that anger into a vicious attack on the Killer IC.


    I dug my fingers into its shoulder, using the connection to drive a spiker of resonance that had it spasming as its form broke apart into staticky, glitched graphics. As it disintegrated into nothingness, I received a pulse of data from the woodlouse as it managed to tease its way through the firewall, placing my mark amongst its code.


    I burst through the firewall in a flurry of code, the twin wasps following immediately behind me, and took in the sight of the utilitarian confines of the security hub. For once, the flowing data was more interesting than the visual layer ¨C not least because the Yakuza Spider had plastered the wall with obscene posters, trideo screens and all the other little touches that make a shift go quicker.


    It was a hub of data, connected to everything else in the host and with the power to shape all of it. The Spider himself used the persona of a dwarf in an excessively elaborate suit of power armour. He was clearly losing his mind, if his boggled eyes were any indication, but he still had just enough presence of mind to flood the space with IC.


    Four more samurai materialised into place around me, along with another geisha. Two of the samurai positioned themselves between me and the Spider, while the other two moved to flank me. With a thought, I sent my Fault Sprites to hold off the flanking samurai, the twin wasps flying through them as they left behind great rents of corrupted code in the samurai¡¯s armour.


    Once they were in the middle of the group, they gathered resonance of their own and saturated the air with it, creating electron storms that enveloped four of the samurai in a great blue storm of pulsating data. I felt, rather than saw, the geisha fragment beneath the onslaught, but the samurai were holding out. Damaged, blind, but still functional.


    At the sight of the impossible storm, the Spider¡¯s eyes widened with fear and he immediately tried to get a signal out, screaming ¡®technomancer!¡¯ into the matrix. His signal couldn¡¯t make it through the noise generated by the electron storms, but that wouldn¡¯t last forever. I needed to mute him, but I couldn¡¯t get close enough with those samurai in the way.


    So instead I turned my attention to them, driving a resonance spike into the one on the left and using that as a bridge to slip a steady stream of resonance into its body, opening up a link between us rather than just leaving a mark.


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    The eldritch code that made up my persona seeped into the Killer IC, battling against its factory-floor software as it subverted certain key subroutines within the program. It wasn¡¯t enough to gain full control, but it was enough to force the samurai to turn and run its sword through the Spider¡¯s chest.


    The Spider sat right at the centre of the host¡¯s security systems, like his namesake on a web, and I¡¯d just usurped that connection to drive an attack right into his heart. The reaction was obvious; the Spider¡¯s face twisted in real, genuine agony before it glitched out as his device began to overheat and break. It wasn¡¯t enough to stop him, but it sure looked like it hurt.


    More to the point, it meant he wasn¡¯t going to be sending any signals outside the host.


    The Spider only compounded my victory when he reflexively deleted the samurai that had stabbed him, scattering it into nothingness. Maybe he thought I¡¯d taken control of it, rather than just doing the digital equivalent of hitting its knee with a rubber mallet to force out a reflex action. I couldn¡¯t help thinking that there had to be some benefits to techomancers being the world¡¯s first choice in bogeymen.


    While my wasps harried the two flanking samurai, I turned my attention to the third and felt my persona shifting as four great spider-like legs sprouted from my back, the tip of each loaded with poisons and scrapcode. As the samurai reached back with his sword, I tugged on the datastreams around him and formed a sticky web that slowed his attack enough that I could catch it on the flat of one of the legs.


    Sidestepping the stuck samurai, I darted forwards and drove a leg into the Spider¡¯s chest, driving through a resonance spike that sundered every defence he could muster, forcing its way into his commlink¡¯s data until his persona fragmented and disintegrated with a scream, as he was forcibly dumped back into meatspace.


    I smiled, satisfied, only to stumble as another sword dug into my shoulder. I staggered forwards, turning to see that another samurai had materialised, and that one of my wasps had been killed.


    Of course, I thought through the pain. The Spider monitored the security systems, but they can still run without him.


    The Killer IC was just going to keep coming. I¡¯d slowed it down, but the host could simply spawn another as fast as it could be generated. Maybe I could keep on top of the flow, but eventually they¡¯d overwhelm me and even if they didn¡¯t then the constant fighting would draw the eye of Bakuda, or GOD.


    Still, it wasn¡¯t like I had any choice. Labyrinth needed me to distract them, and right now that meant fighting. I¡¯d just have to take this as a lesson on why it¡¯s important to stay hidden ¨C provided I made it out of here with my mind intact.


    I dropped into a compact stance, spider-legs ready to strike even as I called the last remaining wasp back to me, only to falter as Labyrinth¡¯s crow suddenly flittered into existence, perching on the foremost leg.


    If I wasn¡¯t surrounded by enemies, I¡¯d probably have frozen when the crow opened its beak and spoke.


    <The files are secured. Reinforcements are imminent. Jack out and reboot.>


    I didn¡¯t know if it was just relaying Labyrinth¡¯s words or something much weirder was happening, but it didn¡¯t need to tell me twice. I cast my sprites loose, severing the link between me and them, and with a thought I severed the link between my persona and the matrix.


    I jerked awake, my vision blurred and my head pounding as I blinked away spots.


    One of those spots refused to disappear, and the moment I noticed it had arms and legs my own arm shot down to my holster as I fumbled with the grip of my gun.


    The figure reacted immediately, leaping over the booth¡¯s table and drawing a long knife that glinted even under the dim lighting. I felt cold metal pressed against my neck as the figure¡¯s other hand slammed against the wall next to me, bringing his face within inches of my own.


    The sudden shock brought his face into sharp definition, and I found myself eye-to-eye with a grinning ork with tawny brown skin.


    ¡°Good instincts,¡± he drawled, ¡°but your reflexes could use some work. L¡¯s the same whenever she jacks out. Always a little sluggish.¡±


    ¡°You- You know Labyrinth?¡± I coughed out, letting go of my submachine gun¡¯s grip but keeping my hand nearby.


    ¡°Yup,¡± he said, not moving an inch. ¡°The boss asked me to watch you.¡±


    ¡°Faultline?¡± I asked.


    ¡°There any other boss?¡± he answered, before abruptly standing up and tossing his knife in the air, letting it flip before catching it point-down and sliding it into a holster belted to his neotac pants, where it was partially hidden beneath the hem of his extremely long, extremely low-cut tank top.


    ¡°Up you get,¡± he said, a hand outstretched. ¡°Boss also wanted me to show you something.¡±


    I brushed his hand aside and stood up, swaying unsteadily on my feet at the sudden movement until I grabbed onto the wall and steadied myself.


    ¡°Weak at the knees, huh?¡± the ork grinned ¨C and it was a grin, rather than a leer. ¡°I have that effect on people.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s just dumpshock,¡± I snapped back. ¡°It¡¯ll fade.¡±


    ¡°Sure,¡± he shrugged his shoulders. ¡°I¡¯m Newter, by the way. Another founding member of our little crew.¡±


    ¡°I figure you already know who I am,¡± I said, before Newter pulled open the curtains and I was almost deafened by the sound of the Palanquin in full swing.


    ¡°Not a clue, chummer,¡± Newter shouted over the noise. ¡°Faultline says to watch some deckhead take fifty winks, I watch them. Don¡¯t need the who or why.¡±


    I followed him to a hidden elevator at the far end of the room, then up two floors and out into a nondescript corridor that could have been the mirror image of the one outside my apartment, except this one was in slightly better condition.


    ¡°What does Faultline want me to see?¡± I asked, as Newter paused outside the first door on the left.


    ¡°You¡¯ve been hanging out with Labyrinth. It¡¯s about time you met her.¡±


    I sighed.


    ¡°What, another one? I wasn¡¯t aware this place was so full of Luddites. It¡¯s the twenty-seventies; get with the times.¡±


    Newter laughed, his hand resting on the doorhandle.


    ¡°That¡¯s what you think this is?¡±


    He opened the door and, in spite of my growing irritation at whatever this was, I followed in after him as he stepped through.


    Inside was obviously a girl¡¯s bedroom, with walls absolutely covered in an eclectic mix of posters. From the layering of the posters, I could see the occupants¡¯ tastes changing as they grew up, with niche bands covering up generic teen boybands and maybe five years¡¯ worth of movie releases, plus a few old classics.


    There were two beds in the room, but only one of them was occupied.


    Labyrinth was an elf, which meant that while she looked a little older than me it was impossible to know for sure. Her features were similar to those of her matrix persona, but only superficially. It was clearly modelled after her real face, but the flesh-and-blood version was gaunt ¨C almost emaciated ¨C and even through her hoodie and sweatpants I could see her body was the same.


    But the most unsettling thing wasn¡¯t her appearance; it was how she was simply staring at the ceiling, her eyes wide open without really seeing anything. It was a look I¡¯d only ever seen on the blind, or those too high to see anything. What¡¯s more, it wasn¡¯t a look I¡¯d expect from someone who was diving into cyberspace. Whenever I entered the matrix, the first thing I did was close my eyes. It¡¯s a reflex action, but seemingly one Labyrinth didn¡¯t have.


    Unless¡­


    ¡°She¡¯s not online now, is she?¡± I asked without turning my head, and was surprised to hear Faultline¡¯s voice from the doorway.


    ¡°No, she¡¯s not. She just has difficulty seeing the real world, from time to time.¡± I turned to see Faultline leaning against the doorframe, dressed in a crisp white blouse and a pair of close-fitting slacks.


    ¡°What¡¯s¡­¡± I wasn¡¯t sure how I wanted to finish that sentence. What¡¯s wrong with her? What happened to her?


    ¡°We first encountered Labyrinth in a Mitsuhama Consumer Technologies blacksite, hidden beneath a paediatric hospital,¡± Faultline explained. ¡°I¡¯d hired on a decker for the job ¨C a talented amateur named Epeios ¨C and he encountered her cell when he was infiltrating their systems.¡±


    I stepped back as Faultline entered the room, sitting on the edge of Labyrinth¡¯s bed and resting her hand on the girl¡¯s shoulder.


    ¡°He decided to unlock her cell and disable the cyberware that was suppressing her connection to the matrix to cause a distraction and draw guards away from our target. She was terrified and lashed out, killing Epeios in an instant before taking full control of the facility. She sealed every room in the blacksite, then switched on the fire suppression systems. Everyone inside that building suffocated as carbon dioxide was pumped through the air vents. We only survived by offering to take her with us.¡±


    ¡°Why are you telling me this?¡± I asked, wide-eyed.


    ¡°Because in the five years she¡¯s been with us, Labyrinth has almost never spoken to anyone outside the original crew unless it was required for a job. Whatever MCT did to her, she responded by shutting out the world. Reaching out to you is a good sign, but that means you need to be aware of the situation.¡±


    ¡°Aren¡¯t you worried?¡± I asked. ¡°You don¡¯t know me, and that information seems like the sort you¡¯d want to keep in-house.¡±


    ¡°I know more than you think, Taylor,¡± Faultline said, as I stiffened. ¡°For one, I know you¡¯re smart enough that I don¡¯t need to waste my breath explaining the consequences of betrayal.¡±


    Faultline stood up, looking up at me for a moment before turning to leave the room. She paused at the threshold, turning to look back at me.


    ¡°You have my permission to learn from Labyrinth, so long as she is willing to teach you, but don¡¯t forget there are people waiting for her in the real world.¡±


    ¡°Sure,¡± I said, as she left, before turning to Labyrinth. She seemed so much¡­ less like this. So much smaller than she did in the matrix, and not just because my persona was closer to human-sized than troll.


    ¡°Labyrinth,¡± I spoke to her, softly, ¡°can you hear me?¡±


    There was no response, but I wasn¡¯t exactly expecting one after what Faultline told me. I just wanted to try, before I reached out and reconnected myself to the matrix, suddenly lighting up the room with vivid AR artwork that was clearly Labyrinth¡¯s handiwork.


    The moment I was connected, Labyrinth¡¯s eyes darted over to me and she smiled, shifting her body into a sitting position in an almost ponderously slow movement. As she did, she twisted the matrix around her to layer her persona over her real body.


    ¡°Bug,¡± she spoke, her voice hoarse. ¡°So that¡¯s what your shell looks like.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, uh, did you get what you were after?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I did,¡± Labyrinth continued, her voice doubled in meatspace and the matrix. ¡°Your distraction was very useful.¡±


    ¡°So¡­¡± I began, uncertainly. ¡°One job for one lesson, right? I can come back another day if you¡¯re a little weary.¡±


    Labyrinth shook her head, the persona layered over her features smiling.


    ¡°I¡¯m refreshed and ready. Tell me, what do you know about resonance?¡±


    I looked around, grabbed a chair from where it had been set against the wall and sat down before answering. Labyrinth might not care about her physical body, but I was still a little unsteady on my feet.


    ¡°Only what I¡¯ve been able to figure out myself. I know it¡¯s everywhere in the matrix, but that most people can¡¯t really manipulate it like I ¨C like we ¨C can. I¡¯m not sure if they can even see it.¡±


    ¡°They can¡¯t,¡± Labyrinth clarified. ¡°It is our connection to the resonance that allows us to interact with the world. Our abilities are stronger when it is stronger, and weaker when it is absent. There are even parts of the world where the resonance is twisted, and dissonance reigns.¡±


    I shivered.


    ¡°You wanted my help in becoming stronger,¡± Labyrinth said. ¡°You can learn techniques like any other skill, but if you want to improve the amount of resonance you can draw on then you must submerse yourself in it.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡± I asked. ¡°I use virtual reality every day.¡±


    ¡°The matrix is a tightly-controlled environment,¡± Labyrinth said. ¡°Metahumanity created it, and metahumanity monitors it. Resonance is something else entirely. It bleeds into the matrix from outside.¡±


    ¡°So it¡¯s like the foundation?¡± I asked, thinking back to what Labyrinth had told me in the auction house.


    She shook her head. ¡°The foundation is still part of the matrix. It is the soil of a walled garden; a planned and orderly place surrounded by strange and uncharted spaces. Those are the resonance realms, where every piece of datum that has ever existed echoes in perpetuity, and resonance flows freely across digital plains. Submersion means passing beyond the confines of the matrix, and into those wild spaces.¡±


    ¡°And these are real places?¡± I tried not to sound too disbelieving. ¡°Not some sort of vision quest, right?¡±


    ¡°As real as anywhere else in the matrix,¡± Labyrinth said, before she looked around ¨C seeming to take in the physical room for the first time. ¡°Certainly more real than this place.¡±


    I had no idea what to think of this. I¡¯d always believed that my abilities were grounded in reality ¨C that they were just some genetic quirk that let me interact with the matrix. This talk of gardens, resonance and other realms all sounded far too much like the opening spiel of a cult leader.


    But Labyrinth had been honest to me so far ¨C open, even when she didn¡¯t need to be ¨C and part of me couldn¡¯t help but think of the ethereal air she had, of how she seemed almost woven into the fabric of the hosts she made. If resonance was something that existed beyond the matrix, she was a lot more in-tune with it than I was.


    And then there was her sprite, and the way it behaved. The fact it could speak.


    ¡°How do I get there?¡± I asked. After all, I¡¯d come to her to learn the kind of tricks I couldn¡¯t find anywhere else; the kind that were unique to Technomancers. This was just a little weirder than I was expecting.


    ¡°In the future, you will have to find your own way. Find somewhere in the matrix that most resonates with you and fully cut off all connections to your living persona. Quieter places work best for this. Then you must sever the final connection ¨C between your living persona and your organic shell.¡±


    My eyes widened, and Labyrinth picked up on the expression.


    ¡°You will not be able to cut it completely,¡± she said, ¡°but you must let it fray. Only then will you be able to find a backdoor in the matrix and leave its confines.¡±


    ¡°As simple as that?¡± I asked, sarcastically.


    ¡°No,¡± Labyrinth said, either not noticing or not caring about my sarcasm. ¡°Once you have found a door, you must pass through the Event Horizon.¡±


    Some of her persona¡¯s ethereal air seemed to slip away at that, and I saw a rare burst of genuine emotion pass across her digital face.


    ¡°The Event Horizon strips you to the core. Your innermost thoughts, desires, fears and hopes are laid bare and analysed by the Horizon itself. It passes no judgement, but seeing your soul laid bare is a¡­¡± she trailed off for a moment, her organic voice faltering before she continued, speaking purely through the matrix. ¡°A harrowing experience.¡±


    ¡°But I¡¯ll be stronger once I¡¯m through it,¡± I said, more to myself than to her.


    ¡°With any luck,¡± Labyrinth nodded. ¡°If you truly wish to do this, then follow me to the auction house.¡±


    She laid herself back on her bed and closed her eyes, as her persona departed her body and disappeared into the ether. I quickly followed her out of the Palanquin and into the familiar escheresque Ancient Greek temple. Labyrinth was waiting in the centre of the space, having changed her persona to match the host¡¯s style.


    What was immediately apparent was just how quiet the place felt. Labyrinth had shut down all but the most essential systems, banishing the Patrol IC and severing all the connections between the auction house and its clientele. It only made the remaining connections more apparent, and the most notable of those was between Labyrinth herself and the host. It was almost like I could hear a background hum, like the ever-present rumble of heavy goods vehicles around the docks that could be felt even within the heart of the administrative building.


    ¡°This is where I submerse,¡± Labyrinth said. ¡°Whenever my tasks require it, or simply for the sake of it. The resonance realms are not just a place of physical power, as you will no doubt see. More importantly, I can anchor you to this place and save you the effort of finding your own backdoor out of the matrix. All you have to do is sever your connections.¡±


    I nodded, stepping off the floor and floating up into the centre of the space. I let myself hang there, motionless, as I focused on shutting out all the constant ambient streams around me. I lost the time, lost my connection to my commlink, severed the constant link between me and the computers back at home. I focused on that background hum until it was all I could hear, before turning my attention to the one remaining tether.


    I let the connection between me and my body fade, pushing down the feeling that I was weakening my only lifeline. Labyrinth was right; it was impossible to get rid of it completely, but my body felt more distant than it ever had before.


    Floating beside me, the woman in question tilted her head in an unspoken question, her hand poised to do something.


    I nodded. The thought of the Event Horizon was terrifying, but I knew exactly what was waiting for me there. I¡¯d already had two years alone with nothing but thoughts of all I¡¯d lost.


    A dagger appeared in Labyrinth¡¯s hand; a web of resonance pulled into a spike, with strands leading off somewhere I couldn¡¯t see. She raised it high above my chest as I closed my eyes, shutting out the visual feed entirely and plunging my world into darkness.


    The blade pierced my chest, the resonance hooking into my living persona and pulling it off into the distance. I felt an incredible pressure all around me, like my body was warping and reshaping as it was pulled through an impossibly small gap.


    And yet I could somehow feel a light at the end of the tunnel; harsh and bright enough that it would cut through the darkness and lay my soul bare.


    Hello, mom, I thought, before everything went white.

 Event_Horizon

    path\to\SonyA12VII\Vid¨¦osDeFamille\SCScloud\Vid¨¦os\20650612_1321


    ¡°Does the red light mean it''s recording?¡± a woman mutters to herself in French as she stares into the lens of the video camera. She''s in her early thirties, with the kind of immaculate hair and make-up that must have taken at least an hour to get right, and that¡¯s just about managing to cover up the weary bags under her eyes. There¡¯s a faint pattern on her neck; the tell-tale signs of a bruise reduction cream.


    ¡°Stop fiddling around with that thing and start filming,¡± a man''s voice snaps.


    ¡°Yes, my love!¡± the woman almost jumps out of her skin, and the camera momentarily dips down to reveal the elegant cocktail dress she''s wearing before turning to reveal the incongruous sight of a children''s birthday party.


    Ten children are seated along the length of a long table, their ages ranging from five to almost eighteen. The children are not arranged by age, but instead seem to have seated themselves in cliques with clear dividing lines in who''s talking to who.


    At the head of the table is a man in his late thirties or early forties, with long hair falling down to his shoulders and a wiry, muscular physique visible beneath an entirely unbuttoned, ruffled shirt. There¡¯s a necklace around his neck; a silver chain holding dozens of rings. He was the one who snapped at the camerawoman, and the picture wavers as he glares at her, before turning back to the rest of the table.


    At the far end of the table sits a young boy whose party hat marks him out as both eight years old and the birthday boy. He¡¯s sitting there in abject terror, his hands fidgeting even as the rest of the table serenades him with a very enthusiastic, very forced rendition of the French version of Happy Birthday To You.


    Alec is almost hard to recognise. He¡¯s seated two thirds of the way down the table, towards the eight year old, in-between two of the cliques without being part of either. He looks supremely bored by the whole affair, but his singing is as loud as any of the others.


    As the singing reaches its climax, the camera pans away from the table and passes across the dining room of an expensive penthouse, with a floor to ceiling window overlooking an expansive rooftop garden and the towering mega-blocks of an urban sprawl.


    The camera also passes over a dozen women in various states of dress; waiting attentively against the wall with their hands clasped demurely in front of them, following the wordless demands of the kids or their father as they gesture for drinks; two just the other side of the window in figure-hugging taksuits, armed with rifles; and a woman taking a walk further out in the garden, with a baby in one arm and a toddler tugging at the hem of her dress.


    It lands on a trolley bearing a cake being wheeled in by two women; a tall, tiered cake that¡¯s far larger than any of the people at the table can hope to eat on their own. The women do not bring the cake to the birthday boy, but to his father ¨C who doesn¡¯t even acknowledge them as a slice is cut and set before him.


    As the cake makes its way down from child to child, the boy becomes progressively more upset until the father abruptly stands up and slams his fist against the table, silencing all conversation and sending the boy into hysteria.


    ¡°You are supposed to be happy!¡± he shouts. ¡°All this cake, all those presents and you¡¯re still fucking miserable? Later you will be tested, yes. It will hurt, you will hurt, and then you can cry all you want. But now?¡±


    The man brushes his fingers against the necklace of rings, and when he pulls his hand away it has a strange, ethereal quality that appears as misshapen static to the camera. He stretches out his hand towards the boy, curling his fingers like a puppet pulling on marionette strings as the boy''s petrified expression abruptly shifts into exuberance, before he picks up his slice of cake in both hands and begins wolfishly consuming it.


    ¡°Now you will eat, drink and be merry.¡±


    path\to\renrakutorii62\Users\Jayne_Graves\OkokuCloud\BackgroundProcesses\DeletedFiles\Camera\20650714_192432


    The camera is mounted into the frame of a laptop. A woman is typing on the holographic keys. She¡¯s wearing a partially crumpled suit jacket over a yellow blouse, with a pensive expression on her face.


    Behind her a diner is visible with cheap, red upholstery and very few patrons. Out the windows, the sky is lit only by the glare of orange streetlights. Over the woman¡¯s left shoulder, a trio of young men are sitting in a booth.


    Brian Laborn looks a lot younger and a little leaner, with a wide-eyed expression on his face and a habit of nervously glancing around the room. He is free from any cyberware, but the same cannot be said of the men sitting opposite him.


    The pair are wearing mismatched outfits, with one in an armoured jacket with a grinning skull stencilled onto the shoulder. The second has his hair up in a bone-white mohawk, and is wearing a bulletproof vest over tattooed flesh, with both displaying the outline of a skeleton.


    The camera¡¯s microphone is too far away to pick up the details of their conversation, but the man with the mohawk is gesturing animatedly to Brian, clearly trying to persuade him to do something.


    Over the next few minutes, the trio of orks go back and forth with the man in the jacket largely staying silent. Eventually, Brian pauses for a few moments, looking away, before turning back and nodding. The man with the mohawk leans over the table and clasps him on the shoulder, grinning from ear to ear, while the other reaches into his jacket and sets down a pistol on the table.


    Brian hurriedly grabs the gun and tucks it away into his own jacket, before the man with the mohawk calls over the waitress.


    path\to\GartnerFinancialFund\BuildingManagement\Security\CCTV\Camera_01\20650720_1342


    The camera is looking down on the lobby of a small branch franchise of a bank, with a brief lobby, a single office, three credstick ATMs and four reinforced windows for actual tellers, though only two are occupied.


    The customers of the bank ¨C a mix of largely low to middle income residents of the city ¨C are lying flat on the floor with the sullen compliance of people who knew it was only a matter of time before something like this happened in their lives.


    Moving among the customers with cocksure confidence are an eclectic band of figures in matching gang colours ¨C black outfits with bone designs highlighted in white. Two of them are obviously the two who recruited Brian in the diner; the one with the jacket laying a strip of thermite tape on the reinforced glass separating the public and private side of the business, while the one with the mohawk keeps an Ultamax HMG-2 trained on the staff ¨C standing behind the counter with their backs to the wall and their hands above their heads.


    The third member of the gang is a human woman dressed in a frayed black crop-top with a white skeleton pattern continuing in black tattoos on her pale skin, slumped over next to the ATMs with a wire linking one of the machines to the port in her neck. Besides her, his own posture so similar to hers they could have been mirrors, rests a security guard below a blood spatter that matches the entry wound in his chest.


    Brian brings the gang¡¯s strength up to four. He¡¯s standing in the middle of the hostages, cutting an imposing figure in a tight-fitting black biker jumpsuit, an AK-97 resting uneasily in his hands. Like the rest of the gang, his face is obscured behind a full-face motorcycle helmet with a grinning skull sprayed on the visor, but his nerves are clear to see from the way his head keeps whipping around as he tries to keep all the hostages in sight.


    The ork in the jacket steps back from the window, pulling a detonator out of his pocket and looking away as the thermite charges briefly white-out the camera. When the picture returns, both of the two men have vaulted over the teller¡¯s stations and passed beyond the view of the camera.


    The staff have been forced the other way, and are huddled up against the wall under Brian¡¯s watchful eye, and the barrel of his gun. Brian tries to keep his focus on the hostages, but his helmet keeps turning back to look towards the staff area as the man with the mohawk vaults back over the counter, jogging over to the ATMs and starting to cycle credsticks in and out of them, swapping out each of the thumb drive-sized sticks as fast as the Decker can fill them with cash.


    Suddenly, a man with a suit is thrown over the countertop, his jacket tearing as it catches on a stray piece of wire-reinforced glass that the thermite missed. The ork in the jacket follows him, dragging the suit to his feet by his collar before shoving him backwards.


    The moment he hits the wall, the ganger draws a revolver from his pocket and puts a bullet right between his eyes. Blood and circuitry sprays across the wall as the bullet rips through the bank manager¡¯s skull, and the moment he hits the ground the scene devolves into chaos as the hostages scream and the man with the mohawk gets into a shouting match with his colleague.


    Their argument only stops when the Decker flinches, sparks flying out of her datajack socket as her limbs spasm uncontrollably. She curls up into the foetal position and just lays there, her body twitching occasionally through residual current. With the helmet on her head, it¡¯s impossible to tell if she¡¯s alive or dead.


    Either way, the three remaining gang members fall silent as they look at their incapacitated gang member, before the shouting match begins anew. Brian still doesn¡¯t join in, instead staring at the decker as his shoulders slump.


    Seeming to come to a decision, he throws a look back at the other two gang members and sprints out the doorway, only narrowly avoiding a reflexive shot from the one in the jacket.


    Moments later, a storm of bullets rips through the bank, guided by smartlink software to ensure that only the gangers were hit, and a High Threat Response team in power armour storms into the room.


    path\to\GrandHuntOrder\Personnel\PaladinLiafiel56\MonopticCamera\Videos\20670126_1223


    An AR window fills the camera view, displaying a picture of Lisa in a school uniform; a pleated, knee-length skirt and a green blazer over a white blouse.


    ¡°A real damsel in distress¡­¡± the camera¡¯s owner, Paladin Liafiel according to the device¡¯s ID, observes in the lilting, melodious language of Sperathiel. ¡°A nice change of pace from our usual hunts.¡±


    ¡°Check the bio, not the face. She might not be as friendly as she looks.¡± A woman snaps from opposite him. The cameraman briefly minimises the AR elements of his monocular optic lens, revealing the tightly-packed confines of an armoured transport, with arcane and protective script daubed on the walls. The woman is seated opposite him, dressed in sparse, light armour that seems to prioritize appearing fashionable over actually being protective. The optic¡¯s IFF system marks her as a fellow Paladin.


    ¡°So what, we''re playing truant officers?¡± Liafiel almost drawls.


    ¡°Don¡¯t know yet,¡± the other Paladin responds. ¡°She just isn¡¯t where she¡¯s supposed to be. Which you¡¯d know if you shut up and read the file.¡±


    ¡°Asking¡¯s quicker.¡±


    ¡°Settle down back there!¡± another woman shouts from the far end of the vehicle, and Liafiel turns his head to look past the six other Paladins crammed onto the vehicle¡¯s jump seats to where there¡¯s a single Paladin standing up, her attire similarly emphasising form over function, but with added embellishments that marks out her wealth, status and rank.


    ¡°Intel suggests the target is somewhere within a two block radius of the insertion point,¡± the commander continues. ¡°Standard rules of engagement do not apply; this isn¡¯t some tusker, and we aren¡¯t on the border, so kid gloves on this one. Once she¡¯s in, we dose her with Laes. Then she wakes up in her own bed with everything she¡¯s gone through just a fading dream.¡±


    ¡°Are we expecting any pushback from this?¡± Liafiel asks. ¡°The High Prince doesn¡¯t want us operating in Cara¡¯Sir.¡±


    ¡°The day we start listening to a damn ork is the day we cut off our ears and start calling the city ¡®Portland,¡¯¡± the commander shouts, earning a cheer from the Paladins. ¡°Nobility cannot be elected! We¡¯re born superior, no matter what the masses say! Now go! Let this city witness your majesty!¡±


    The door behind the commander lowers open, and suddenly the Paladins¡¯ loose hair is whipped around in the downdraft as the helicopter descends towards the streets of the city below. As one, the Paladins stand and sprint for the exit, leaping out into the open air before catching the ropes stretching down from the rear of the helicopter and descending towards the packed streets of the city below.


    path\to\AZTFranchiseHub\StufferShack\NAN\SalishShidheCouncil\Stuffer_Shack_ExpressSSC142\Facilities\Security\Camera03\20670127_0625


    The CCTV camera looks over the gas station parking lot, a plain concrete rectangle lit by wide floodlights that illuminate the edge of the deep forest that presses up against the borders of the man-made environment.


    There are only two vehicles at the pumps ¨C a family sedan laden down with suitcases and a utilitarian pick-up truck with sides coated in dried mud. As the sedan leaves the lot, another vehicle pulls in from the freeway.


    It¡¯s an immense truck, with eighteen wheels and solid metal sides on the trailer, bearing the logo of Maersk Overland Haulage. As it rumbles to a stop, the driver ¨C an Amerindian ork ¨C clambers out of the cab and lights up a cigarette, leaning against the vehicle as he watches the driver of the pick-up ¨C another Native American, albeit a human ¨C saunter out of the gas station with a small carrier bag of shopping in one hand and the keys to his truck in the other.


    Once the truck has driven off, the ork tosses his cigarette, clenches his hand into a fist and hammers it twice against the side of his trailer. Moment later, a slight figure crawls out from underneath the vehicle, grabbing onto one of the wheels for support as she pulls herself to her feet.


    Dressed in expensive yet ruined clothes, Lisa looks every part the desperate fugitive except for the wide smile on her lips as she takes in her surroundings. After a moment, however, the chill catches up with her and she shivers in the cold morning air.


    The driver notices, turning back to reach up into his cab. The motion reveals his left arm, and the camera¡¯s resolution is just detailed enough to pick up the tattoo of a snake winding down his arm, its head resting on the back of his hand.


    When his hand emerges from the cabin, it¡¯s clutching a bundled-up leather trenchcoat, which he offers to Lisa. She tries to refuse at first but quickly demurs after another bout of shivering, wrapping herself in the coat that falls almost to her ankles.


    The ork looks at her before nodding, and the pair exchange a few more words as he points to somewhere out of the camera¡¯s view. Lisa nods, and something in her posture seems to firm up as she starts walking across the lot, leaving the gas station behind.


    The ork watches her go for a few moments before clambering up into his truck and pulling back onto the open road.


    path\to\PetrovskiSecurityNet\Archive\OfficialSensitive\NorthAmerica\IncidentReports\HanoverHillsMunicipalScrapyard\MCTNissanRotoDrone06\20670406_0324


    The drone hovers over a scrapyard on the outskirts of the Pittsburgh sprawl, pinpoint GPS data being packaged into the live feed it¡¯s constantly relaying back to the local security hub. Its target recognition systems are constantly sending data along that link as well, relying on distant software to make the judgement on whether a suspicious shape is a person, a pile of scrap or a discarded humanoid robot.


    It passes over a hill of abandoned consumer electronics, scrap metal and other valuable detritus that might one day find value in recycling, but that for now is simply dumped and monitored for a nominal fee.


    As the drone crests the hill, the target recognition system immediately latches onto a suspicious shape clambering up the slope. Two point four seconds later, the Identify Friend/Foe software transmits a return package, and the safety catch on the drones integrated rifle disengages.


    Its target is Rachel, her body seemingly free from any cyberwear but still gaunt and unhealthy. Her clothes are a mix of tattered hand-me-downs and hard-wearing leathers, all filthy and grease-stained. She''s accompanied by a simplistic and seemingly handmade drone that''s little more than a large crate on four articulated legs, but that is easily able to keep pace with its owner.


    The moment Rachel hears the drone is obvious from the way her head frantically darts around before looking up, her human eyes widening in shock as the barrel of the gun drops to point directly at her. She dives behind her own drone as the first burst is fired, rifles ripping through the fruits of her labour and utterly crippling her crawler.


    Rachel stands up, a pistol in her hand, and fires off two shots that fail to hit the drone. It retaliates with pin-point accuracy, one shot shearing through Rachel''s pistol before travelling down the length of her arm, while the second lands on her torso and the third just barely misses.


    Rachel drops to the ground, and the drone hovers for thirty seconds as she lies still before transmitting the footage of the incident to the central database and marking the location for corpse disposal.


    path\to\WinSchNet\Staff_Only\Admin\CCTV\Archive\Camera_06_20670406_1304


    The halls of Winslow High School are packed full of students making their way out of the classrooms, all heading in the same direction towards the school¡¯s cafeteria. The camera swivels on its axis, tracking three girls in particular; two human ¨C one red-headed and with a careful elegance to her mannerisms, the other a brunette with an easy-going smile on her face ¨C and one dark-skinned elf with a natural confidence and defined musculature on her arms.


    The camera follows them as they walk down the corridor, the redhead eagerly showing something on her phone to the other two. As they pass a particular door, the camera stops moving and begins to slowly return to its set pattern, but it¡¯s just slow enough to catch Taylor as she leaves the empty classroom she had been hiding in, her eyes darting up to the camera before she turns to make her way down the corridor, going against the flow of foot traffic and away from the direction the three girls took.


    path\to\GMNissanDoberman\Drivers\CorruptedData\IrrecoverableFile


    The drone¡¯s optics are filled from end to end with the surface of a grease-stained tanktop stretched over a pudgy belly. The guy in that tanktop is muttering to himself as he leans over the drone, and faint mechanical sounds can be heard as he messes around with its systems, each patched or broken subroutine captured in the mangled stream of data that makes up the file.


    The mechanic steps back, looking down at the drone. He¡¯s in his early thirties; a balding human with greasy skin, his eyes and arms obviously cybernetic. The room is every bit as tired and grease-stained as he is ¨C part mechanic¡¯s shop, part operating theatre with drone components and scrap cyberware stored haphazardly on shelves around an operating table.


    Whatever he¡¯s about to do next, he doesn¡¯t get the chance as a door behind him slams open and a truly immense troll ducks into the ripperdoc¡¯s shack, followed shortly thereafter by Rachel.


    She¡¯s frighteningly pale ¨C almost bone white ¨C with her left arm holding a dressing against her right, while her clothes are almost soaked through with blood. The troll is similarly unhealthy in complexion, and he¡¯s even fatter than the ripperdoc. He¡¯s heavily modified, with cybernetic eyes and metal poking through his skin.


    ¡°Got another one for you,¡± the troll said, his voice low, rumbling and only made more so by its artificial nature. ¡°Usual mods, and on my dime.¡± He turns to look back at Rachel, who¡¯s swaying on her feet. ¡°¡®Aint that generous of me, pup?¡±


    ¡°Sure, Werewolf,¡± she manages to stammer out. ¡°I get it. You patch me up, I join your crew. It¡¯s fair.¡±


    ¡°¡®Fair,¡¯¡± the troll repeats the word, chuckling to himself. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t kill you to show a little gratitude, you frigid bitch. A ¡®thank you, mister Werewolf, for not letting me die on some fucking scrapheap,¡¯ even.¡±


    Rachel just stares at him, her grip on her left arm tightening, before Werewolf shrugs his shoulders and turns to leave.


    ¡°Make something useful out of her, doc,¡± he says, pausing at the entrance. ¡°Always need more meat for the grinder.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, sure,¡± the doc nods, turning to Rachel as the door to the shack swings shut. ¡°Alright, on the table.¡±


    Rachel gingerly shifts herself onto the operating table, wincing at every movement, while the doc rummages around in the shelves before returning with an inhaler, a circular saw and a strip of leather.


    ¡°Take a hit of this,¡± he says, bringing the inhaler up to Rachel¡¯s lips. ¡°It¡¯s good shit. Not the best on the market, but I¡¯m not made of fucking money.¡±


    He tosses the inhaler aside, nudging the leather strip into Rachel¡¯s mouth as she goes slack.


    ¡°And that¡¯s ¡®cos the Bliss don¡¯t stop all the pain. Now then¡± ¨C he reaches for the saw, almost overwhelming the Doberman¡¯s audio sensors with an electric whine as he activates it ¨C ¡°let¡¯s get that arm off.¡±


    path\to\SonyEmperor\Users\Kristy\MDrive\Videos\StreamCaptures\20670230_2137


    ¡°Welcome to the Triumphal Arch, my darlings!¡± a young human woman exclaims in French, her tone a picture of deliberate enthusiasm as she emotes towards the camera. ¡°The most incredible club in all Montreal! It might not be the most exclusive in the city, but who wants some stuffed-shirt drinking parlour anyway? So, who wants a taste of the high life?¡±


    She¡¯s dressed in a daring minidress with electrochromatic sequins that pulse in time with the lights of the club itself. Her hair is worn in a vibrant fauxhawk that starts bright red at the scalp before transitioning through orange into yellow.


    ¡°Aww, don¡¯t worry,¡± she says, apparently to someone in her chat, ¡°I¡¯m sure if you keep at it, you can make it here someday. But even if you can¡¯t, then you can still see it with me right now! In fact, I think I¡¯m going to see the drinks menu. Any suggestions, chat?¡±


    She flicks a button on her commlink and switches to the camera on the back of the commlink, panning it over the bustling bar before continuing in a panorama of the whole club. True to its name, the Triumphal Arc is built into a bridge that spans across a chasm of megablocks ¨C a slice of opulence suspended amongst the urban sprawl.


    ¡°I¡¯ve seen you before, haven¡¯t I?¡± Alec asks from off camera, his voice recognisable even in another language.


    ¡°Maybe!¡± Kristy replies gleefully, flicking the camera back around to show her beaming smile to the world. ¡°My streams are pretty popular!¡±


    ¡°No, that¡¯s not it. You¡¯re Nora Valiquette, aren¡¯t you?¡± he continues in the same good-natured turn, even as the smile falls from Kristy¡¯s face. ¡°Daughter of Councillor Jaques Valiquette, right? I mean, you¡¯ve changed your hair and your eye colour, but did you think no-one would recognise your face?¡±


    The camera drops as Kristy lowers her arm to her side, the movement stiffer than it had been before.


    ¡°Why are you crying?¡± Alec asks. ¡°You let your viewers choose what colour you dye your hair in the morning, what you wear to the club, even what you eat and drink. You¡¯re already a puppet on strings, the only difference is now there¡¯s one hand pulling them. Not hundreds.¡±


    Kristy ¨C or Nora ¨C begins walking, the club visible in brief snapshots as her legs move in and out of the camera¡¯s field of view. She leaves the club and steps onto an expansive and clearly upper-class avenue that seemingly runs along the length of the building; an elevated street separated by thirty floors from the sprawl below and from the biting cold by a great glass roof.


    She steps into a utility elevator, watched over by an attractive-looking elf in discreet workmen¡¯s coveralls.


    ¡°Part of me wonders why you do it,¡± Alec muses as the elevator descends. ¡°It¡¯s not much of a rebellion if your father knows what you¡¯re doing, but we had to take out the bodyguard who¡¯s always following you from a discreet distance. Don¡¯t worry, I know you can¡¯t talk right now. And I¡¯m not really interested in what a songbird does to pretty up its cage.¡±


    The lift descends for another sixty seconds before stopping on what must be the bottom floor of the megablock.


    ¡°Oh right,¡± Alec says. ¡°You won¡¯t be needing this anymore.¡±


    With a flick of her wrist the commlink is tossed aside, and the camera pans briefly over two more women waiting besides a van in an underground car park, before landing camera-down on the floor of the elevator.


    path\to\megsdiner\data\camera\archive\20670318_1604


    The camera is focused on the till of a fairly busy diner, with most of the customers being teenage kids who clearly just got out of school. Behind the till, a dwarf is perched up on a stool as he takes the orders of a group of kids wearing faux-imitations of Yakuza colours, each of them making the cashier¡¯s life difficult without ever quite going far enough for the employee to hit the panic button nestled into the side of the countertop.


    Past tables full of rowdy students, a single booth is a bastion of quiet calm in comparison. Brian looks much more confident in himself; a little older, maybe wiser, and with a kind of natural presence that has even the wannabee gang kids steering clear of his table. He¡¯s wearing a heavy black jacket with armoured inserts and a new cybernetic poking out of the sleeve.


    Sitting opposite him, with her back to the camera, is a young woman with a purple streak in her hair and her arms spread wide over the back of the seat. She¡¯s wearing a strapless top, and the skin of her long neck is the same shade as Brian¡¯s.


    The pair are deep in conversation, but it¡¯s clear Brian¡¯s doing the lion¡¯s share of the talking. At times, the woman turns her head slightly to look out of the window, at others Brian falls silent as she snaps back a retort.


    There¡¯s no sound with the footage, but the change from a conversation to an argument is clear to see in the growing exasperation on Brian¡¯s face. At times, his hand clenches in an automatic response ¨C one he deliberately suppresses each time he notices it happening.


    Things deteriorate even further, and some of the diner¡¯s other customers occasionally sneak glances at the pair as their argument gets louder, until the young woman slams her fists against the table and stands up, storming past Brian on her way to the exit.


    One of the teenagers spends a little too long looking at her legs ¨C clad in ripped denim shorts and neon green fishnets ¨C only for her to respond by grabbing a knife off the table and bringing it up to his throat in an almost unnaturally rapid movement.


    As the kid¡¯s eyes almost bug out of his skull, she tosses the knife aside and saunters out of the diner. For a moment, it looks like Brian¡¯s about to follow her, but he just sighs and looks down at his hands.


    path\to\UCASGrid\Hosts\StudentRoom\Restricted\UserData\Bug\History\14_04_2067


    ?Subject: Help Wanted. Having a lot of trouble with Modern Lit. Does anyone have any notes they can share on Splintered Stars??


    - AnnaBannana (12:45:03/14-7-68)


    User replied (32) times


    User posted ?Subject: Help Wanted. Does anyone have any revision guides for Computer Science they¡¯d be willing to share?? at (14:05:36/14-4-2067)


    User replied (8) times


    ?Subject: Discussion. How are schools supposed to stop Technomancers from cheating on exams??


    - Revolutionary76 (13:15:53/14-4-2067)


    User replied (2) times


    ?Subject: Discussion. Sometimes I feel like my school just doesn¡¯t care about what¡¯s going on outside the classroom.?


    - Dragonb0rn (15:45:26/14-4-2067)


    ?Subject: No Subject. HELP I COLLAPSED AND NOW IM ONLINE? (Thread locked by AutoMod & referred to UCASgrid DemiGOD)


    - DylanPalmer (16:12:48/14-4-2067)


    ?Subject: Discussion. Does anyone else have no idea what they¡¯re going to do after high school/college??


    - CircusFreak (17:45:28/14-4-2067)


    User replied (4) times


    path\to\wolfpack\leashsystems\bitch\eyespy\20670804_2342


    Rachel is waiting on one knee behind a stout tree, methodically cleaning the working parts of a Browning Max-Power heavy pistol. The footage suddenly shifts as she uses the low-spec night vision function of her one cybernetic eye to check she hasn¡¯t missed anything, before she repeats the same motions on the Doberman drone resting next to her, its tracks still covered in the mud and compacted pine needles of the forest floor.


    As her gaze shifts to the drone, it briefly passes over dozens of other figures hiding in the shadows, looking down on a busy freeway that snakes through the forested valley. Each one of them is dressed in ragged clothes, their only armour scavenged vests or simple scrap metal and chains. Like Rachel, each one of them has at least one cybernetic limb, and most have two or more. There doesn¡¯t seem to be a pattern to the augmentations; some have an arm and a leg, some two cybernetic arms, some have obvious subdermal armour warping the shape of their skin.


    None of them are bothering to check their gear. Instead they¡¯re gathered together in smaller gangs within the gang, chatting to each other in hushed whispers while the runts of the litter are the ones to actually keep watch on the freeway. Rachel isn¡¯t part of any of those groups ¨C in fact most of them seem to be deliberately avoiding her.


    The conversation falls off, however, as Werewolf lumbers into view. Rachel spares her boss a brief look before loading a belt of ammo into the Doberman¡¯s mounted gun and having the drone rack the slide back.


    She looks up again as Werewolf passes her, but he doesn¡¯t seem to have eyes for any of his subordinates. Instead his gaze is solely fixed on the freeway, and he leans nonchalantly on a tree as he watches the traffic passing below.


    ¡°Ready!¡± he shouts after perhaps a minute has passed. Immediately, there¡¯s a mad dash of activity as his soldiers scramble to their feet, cybernetic limbs tightening on poorly-maintained guns. Rachel joins them, her own pistol held in her metal hand as the drone whirrs to life.


    A sudden fireball rises from the treeline below them, before a burning semi-truck rolls out of the forest and past a missing span of barriers, traversing the entire width of the freeway before slamming to a half against the barriers on the other side.


    ¡°Charge!¡± Werewolf shouts, his augmented voice audible even over the sudden din or car horns as the traffic on both sides of the road comes to a halt, some of them too late to avoid slamming into the burning barricade.


    Caught in the jam is a convoy of six semi-trucks in matching dark grey and yellow livery, flanked by armoured personnel carriers at the front and rear of the convoy. All the vehicles have their allegiance written proudly on their flanks in bold yellow letters; Saeder-Krupp.


    One of the APCs tries to turn around, only for a second burning barricade to roll out of the forest and cut them off, smashing into a family sedan that wasn¡¯t able to make it out of the way in time.


    Rachel¡¯s cybereye lurches as she sprints through the forest, with dozens of gangers to her left and right. Some of them are already firing ¨C wildly inaccurate shots that barely manage to get near their target ¨C while others are solely focused on sprinting forwards as fast as they possibly can.


    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    In the convoy, the APCs disgorge their cargo of corporate soldiers onto the freeway ¨C eight of them in all, each of them covered from head to toe in milspec armour and carrying pristine assault rifles.


    They fire as they move through the parked traffic, ignoring or even shoving aside their fellow travellers as they flee their immobile cars for the relative safety of the other side of the wall of slab-sided semi-trucks.


    Ahead of Rachel, one of their shots manages to fell a young dwarf who¡¯d been sprinting forwards on two cybernetic legs. Rachel herself doesn¡¯t fire, but she does send the drone to a slight rise twelve feet away from her, where it starts laying down much more accurate fire into the soldiers.


    But the weight of fire from Saeder-Krupp is too much and too accurate, and bodies start dropping like flies everywhere Rachel looks. It only gets worse as a remote-controlled rotary gun on the top of the APC turns and unleashes a withering hail of fire that cuts down two dozen gangers in a single pass.


    Rachel¡¯s run slows, then stops entirely as her drone winks out of existence thanks to a well-placed shot with a sniper rifle. Instead, she turns and flees back into the forest, accompanied by a handful of other stragglers who¡¯ve decided the risk isn¡¯t worth it.


    One of those stragglers falls to the floor as his cybernetic leg suddenly seizes up, before his head explodes in a burst of viscera as Werewolf fires a shot from his revolver into the deserter.


    ¡°Fucking cowards!¡± he shouts, even as he triggers more overrides in their implants. ¡°Get back in the fight or I¡¯ll kill you myself!¡±


    The feed from the camera distorts momentarily as Werewolf tries to override Rachel¡¯s cyberware, but his own cybereyes widen in shock as she simply raises her arm and fires a shot right at his head.


    ¡°You tricky bitch!¡± he shouts, the skin of his forehead degloved to reveal subdermal armour coating his skull.


    Rachel simply keeps firing as she sprints forward, her modifications pushing her cybernetics to the limit even as they guide each shot onto the precise point the last one hit, digging away at his faceplate until it finally splinters and he falls.


    path\to\SonyA12VII\Vid¨¦osDeFamille\SCScloud\Vid¨¦os\20670810_1456


    The dining room of Alec¡¯s family home has changed significantly. The walls and floor have been torn out and replaced at some point, keeping up with the changing fashions of the wealthy. The furniture is all different, too, and it¡¯s been pushed to the side of the room to make space for a square plastic sheet, weighed down by two lamps, a stack of three books and a toy drone.


    Alec is standing at the edge of the sheet, with his father directly opposite him. His face is a picture of indifference so perfect it¡¯s impossible to tell whether it¡¯s an act or not, even when a beautiful troll woman in combat gear drags a balding human in a police uniform onto the sheet, forcing him to his knees in the centre and holding him there.


    Around the edges of the room stand Alec¡¯s siblings and a number of young, attractive women ¨C with very few familiar faces. The women are mostly ignoring the spectacle as their eyes unconsciously wander to Alec¡¯s father, standing with his arms crossed over his bare chest as his eyes flick between Alec and the prisoner. Alec¡¯s siblings, on the other hand, are much more varied in their expressions, with some indifferent, others taking joy in seeing Alec put on the spot while the rest just seem relieved it isn¡¯t them on the sheet.


    Alec¡¯s father looks at the camera for a brief moment, unconsciously straightening himself up a little.


    ¡°The Gendarmerie took one of my children. They filled her head with poison and lies, weaking her loyalty. But we have paid them back for that insult, and now I must ensure that none of my other children suffer from the same mental sickness.¡±


    He takes a half step forwards, looking across the sheet at Alec.


    ¡°Jean-Paul, do you love me?¡±


    ¡°Of course, father,¡± Alec replied with what sounds like genuine affection, but the sentiment doesn¡¯t reach his eyes.


    ¡°That is good,¡± his father nods. ¡°It¡¯s long past time you were properly blooded; even a traitor can kill when his life is threatened, but loyalty means making sacrifices for your family.¡±


    He walks onto the sheet, grabbing the captured officer by his hair.


    ¡°This is your sacrifice.¡±


    With a gesture, the troll woman throws the officer to the floor as both she and Alec¡¯s father step off the sheet. Alec wastes no time in weaving together a spell that locks the officer¡¯s limbs, right as he was about to stand.


    ¡°You were too calm,¡± Alec observes to the officer as he casts another spell. ¡°What was your plan?¡±


    A moment later, he smiles.


    ¡°There it is.¡±


    His motions controlled by Alec, the officer¡¯s right arm moves stiffly to his boot, drawing a short punch-dagger a moment later. Alec drags the knife along the officer¡¯s throat and releases his control, letting the gendarmerie bleed out onto the sheet.


    He looks up at his father, but rather than showing pride or even just satisfaction the shirtless man shakes his head.


    ¡°The path of least resistance. How disappointing.¡±


    He looks over the audience, skipping over his children as he focuses on the enthralled women.


    ¡°You,¡± he points at one, seemingly at random, and gestures to the corpse. ¡°Take his place.¡±


    Without so much as a moment¡¯s hesitation, and with a placid expression on her face, the woman steps out of the crowd and kneels on the sheet, completely indifferent to the blood beneath her knees. She looks like she could be about eighteen; not much older than Alec himself.


    ¡°Again,¡± the cult¡¯s leader says to his son. ¡°And make it interesting this time.¡±


    path\to\AresDuelist\Drivers\AthenaControlSystems\IFF\CameraLog\20670811_2026


    The ripperdoc¡¯s clinic hasn¡¯t changed much since Rachel was there; the cyberware and drones scattered around the place may be different, but the overall structure is the same. The ripper himself is even wearing the same clothes, his attention occupied by a diagnostic computer wired up to the bipedal Ares-made drone as he tests its software, which appears as a rolling scroll of code down one side of the drone¡¯s camera.


    He''s engrossed in his work, but he jumps up in shock as the door behind him slams open and Rachel storms in, her pistol already raised and pointed at his head.


    ¡°The fuck are you doing!?¡± the doc shouts, even as he levers himself up out of his seat and raises his hands above his head. ¡°Werewolf will have your head for this.¡±


    ¡°Werewolf¡¯s dead,¡± Rachel replies matter-of-factly. ¡°Most of the others are dead, too. If you don¡¯t want to join them, you¡¯ll run.¡±


    ¡°Fuck!¡± the doc swears. ¡°Arrogant fucking trog! Always knew it¡¯d be the death of him. Can I at least take my shit?¡±


    ¡°No.¡±


    ¡°Well fuck you, too,¡± he grumbles, before hurriedly making his way out the door as Rachel moves her aim from his head to his crotch.


    Once he¡¯s out, Rachel drags over a heavy crate of spare electronics and uses it to bar the doorway, before dragging the diagnostic table over to the centre of the room and laying herself down on the table. She unspools a datajack from her neck, plugging the cable into the computer and assuming command of the Duelist drone.


    The drone moves hurriedly around the store as Rachel closes her eyes, seeing things entirely through the drone¡¯s camera as she loads a crate full of the choicest pieces of cyberware ¨C far more than she currently has installed.


    Next come medical tools, the good stuff the doc kept locked in a supply cabinet, but that didn¡¯t hold up when tested by the drone¡¯s mechanical strength; laser cutters, diamond-tipped rotary saws, local anaesthetic and even post-op medication to prevent any rejection issues or metal infections.


    As the drone wheels her pilfered goods over to the table, Rachel¡¯s own arms undo her belt, which she folds in half and bites down on. Then she lets herself go slack, looking down on her own body like a mechanic might look at a piece of machinery, before she picks up a local anaesthetic and injects it straight into her remaining organic shoulder.


    path\to\EagleSecurityCloud\Archive\AlgonquinManitouCouncil\Regina\GridLink\CCTV\DataNotFound\C197_20671123_2213


    The camera pans up and down the length of a quiet street in the middle of a large town, its irregular and halting path screaming out for maintenance. The street is mostly upmarket commercial shops that have long since shuttered for the night, and the only pedestrians are hunched-over figures forcing their way through the heavy snowfall.


    The algorithm attached to the camera recognises each metahuman outline and marks it in its system, outlining them in yellow boxes flagged ¡®area of interest.¡¯ Every now and then, a pattern of snowfall will distort one of the people, or itself form a shape that could be confused for a person, and flickering yellow boxes will appear and disappear as the system struggles to keep up with the picture.


    One of those forcing their way through the snow is Lisa, her blonde hair hidden by the hood of a stained grey sweatshirt and the rest of her body wrapped up in gloves, scarves and her long trenchcoat, with a well-worn backpack slung over her left shoulder. All her clothing is ragged, with many previous owners, and her heavy work boots are too big for her feet, though she¡¯s made up the difference by stuffing them with socks.


    She looks around the street nervously, quickly ducking into an alleyway between two buildings. It¡¯s enough for the camera to change the colour of the box around her from yellow to orange.


    Lisa leans against the wall of the alleyway, hunching over a little as she digs into the pockets of her trenchcoat and pulls out a handful of low-denomination credsticks. She carefully checks the small digital display showing the amount contained within each credstick, and a warm smile spreads across her face before she moves further back into the alleyway.


    When Lisa grabs the side of a large dumpster and wheels it over to block off part of the alleyway, the box around her flashes red for a brief moment with the annotation changing to ¡®suspected vagrancy¡¯ before a burst of heavy snowfall breaks up the image and partially obscures Lisa from view as she takes a piece of tarpaulin out of her rucksack and uses it to add a roof to her makeshift shelter.


    She peers out into the alleyway one last time before curling up on the ground with her rucksack as a pillow, bringing her hands up to her face and twisting her fingers in a complicated motion that appears on the screen as a slight glitch. That seems to settle her shivering, and she reaches up to pull down the tarpaulin over the entrance to her den, obscuring her from the camera¡¯s view.


    path\to\AtlanticReachEstate\Operations\Security\CCTV\Camera_1302\20680124_1553


    The camera is mounted at the end of the same corridor Taylor¡¯s apartment is on, looking down the length of the wing of the apartment block towards the elevator at the opposite end of the hall.


    A woman is walking towards the lift with her purse clutched tightly in her left hand, wearing the uniform of a nearby diner underneath a thick winter coat. Her right hand holds her commlink, and she occupies herself by scrolling through it while waiting for the elevator to arrive.


    When the doors open, the woman looks up and flinches at the sight of two uniformed Knight Errant officers, dressed in full gear like they¡¯ve just been pulled off the street. She hurriedly steps aside to let the officers pass before entering the elevator and hitting the button with more than a little urgency.


    The officers ¨C a troll and a human ¨C walk down the length of the corridor, their heads tilted towards each other in silent conversation made doubly so by the camera¡¯s lack of any microphone.


    About halfway down the hall they reach a consensus and take their helmets off, holding them in the crook of their left arms as they stop outside the door to Taylor¡¯s apartment.


    The pair school their expressions before the troll knocks, waiting for about a minute until the door cracks open ¨C still on the latch. There¡¯s a lengthy and largely one-sided conversation, with the Knight Errant officers doing the lion¡¯s share of the talking, before they turn and head back down the corridor towards the elevator.


    A few moments later, the door of Taylor¡¯s apartment slowly swings shut, and the footage ends.


    path\to\SKLuchs540\Users\grue\Logs\Camera\AutoDeleted\20680308_1121


    Brian is staring intently at his hand, inspecting the RealSkin coating on his right arm. Parts of it are already frayed and pockmarked, and the knuckle of his index finger is worn down to the metal beneath, but he seems unconcerned by the cosmetic damage.


    He¡¯s standing in a steadily-climbing elevator, the walls daubed with random graffiti, an AR number over the door displaying a painfully slow speed as it rises up past the twentieth floor.


    Once it reaches the twenty-third, Brian¡¯s left arm comes into view ¨C itself also covered in RealSkin ¨C as does the assault rifle held in its grip. He wraps his right hand around the trigger and shoulders the weapon, watching as the number above the door slowly ticks up.


    Twenty four; twenty five; twenty six.


    The lift chimes on the twenty-seventh floor and Brian steps to the left as the door slides open, keeping as much of the metal between him and the corridor for as long as he can. Not that it makes a difference; the corridor in front of him is empty except for the glittering letters and numbers above each apartment door, identifying who¡¯s paid their rent, who¡¯s due and one eviction notice in vivid red letters.


    Brian edges carefully along the corridor, watching each door for signs of movement as he passes them. Most of his attention, however, is focused on the sixth door down on the right, with a green smiley face and ¡®Rent Paid¡¯ emblazoned above it.


    Brian doesn¡¯t stop at the door, instead pausing a few feet before it. He keeps his grip on the rifle with his right hand, but brings his left up to knock on the wall, tapping out a rhythm until the sound echoes slightly ¨C the tell-tale sign of a cosmetic, rather than load-bearing wall.


    His left hand reaches into his jacket, coming back with a rectangular shaped charge about the size of a tablet, which Brian affixes to the wall and arms. He steps back from the wall ¨C muttering a countdown to himself ¨C and grabs a cylindrical grenade from his belt, pulling the pin out with his thumb.


    The moment the charge detonates, Brian flings the grenade into the room, waiting for it to detonate in a flash of light and a cloud of billowing smoke before storming in after it.


    The whole image lurches for a moment as Brian switches on his thermals, before the room becomes clearly visible as a web of heat maps, with staggering white shapes struggling for breath in the smoke, most of them reaching for one weapon or another.


    Brian doesn¡¯t give them the chance, bringing his rifle up and gunning down two of the incandescent blobs in a single burst of fire, before turning and dropping to one knee as one of the targets ¨C quicker on the draw than most ¨C fires a roughly chest-high burst through the thick smoke.


    Brian¡¯s return fire is much more accurate, dropping the gunman and the other two figures in the apartment ¨C who had been right next to the wall and the grenade when both exploded, and were in the process of picking themselves up off the floor.


    Scanning the room for any more signs of movement, Brian moves across to a door on the far end of the apartment, opening it up to reveal a small room filled with chemical stills and manned by a man and a woman, both stick-thin and wearing only their underwear.


    From the state of the table in front of them, it looks like they were in the middle of decanting a coarse white powder into partially wrapped packets when the bomb went off, so the table is now coated in a fine layer of dust.


    Both of the drug lab workers cringe back at the sight of Brian, frantically pleading with their hands in the air.


    Brian seems to consider it for a moment, before sighing and gesturing with his left thumb over his shoulder.


    ¡°You¡¯re lucky I¡¯m just here to send a warning,¡± he says as they scamper past him, frantically grabbing their clothes but not waiting to put them on before booking it out the door.


    Brian pays them no mind, instead drawing another cylindrical grenade from his belt ¨C this one yellow, and marked with a red flame in a warning triangle.


    He steps back almost to the other side of the apartment, lobs the grenade into the room with an underarm throw and watches the fireball go up before turning and sprinting back out through the hole in the wall.


    path\to\ErikaElite\Utilisateurs\CoquetterieCherie\Videos\Camera\Accessories\20680502_1948


    The skatepark juts off the side of an immense residential megabuilding, looking over the same Montreal skyline as Alec¡¯s family penthouse does but from much further down the building. Alec himself is just about visible on the other side of the park, disinterestedly looking out over the city.


    The person who owns the commlink ¨C Cherie, if her username is any indication ¨C is more interested in recording the skaters with the camera mounted into her sunglasses, even as she talks to a young man sitting next to her.


    ¡°So what¡¯s the problem? Because I haven¡¯t been hearing good things.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ve still got most of the tower locked up tighter than a dragon¡¯s hoard, but some guys from Block 13 set up shop on the twelfth floor the other day. Wiped out the crew that got sent to deal with them, but it should be manageable with some help. Don¡¯t worry.¡±


    ¡°Why would I worry?¡± Cherie asks, flirtatiously. ¡°A big man like you, I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll have no trouble driving them out.¡±


    ¡°I¡­¡± the young man begins, hesitantly, ¡°I was hoping you would be able to send some people from the top of the tower. They¡¯re well-armed.¡±


    ¡°Marcus¡­¡± Cherie leans against him, resting her hand on his thigh and looking up at the ganger for the first time. He¡¯s an attractive-looking ork in his late teens, with a tattoo of a photorealistic heart made visible by the neckline of his tanktop.


    ¡°I sent myself,¡± Cherie continues, ¡°and now I¡¯m sending you. Heartbreaker has¡­ bigger concerns,¡± she says, with a hesitation that goes unnoticed by her companion.


    In fact, Marcus¡¯ eyes have wandered from the girl leaning against him to focus on another; a human girl performing an impressive trick on a skateboard, egged on by a small group of her friends and fellow gang members. She notices Marcus looking, and flashes the ork a wide smile.


    Cherie just leans in closer, subtly reaching out a hand towards the girl and clenching it shut.


    The image momentarily distorts before the girl slips at the worst possible moment and falls back off her board, the back of her head hitting the ground first.


    The crowd rushes around her, and Marcus makes to join them only to be held back by Cherie¡¯s hand on his arm.


    ¡°That looks like it hurt her,¡± Marcus says.


    ¡°I thought it looked hilarious, don¡¯t you think?¡± Cherie counters, moving her fingers again.


    Marcus chuckles, once, before descending into an unrestrained laugh that draws angry glares from the friends of the injured girl.


    Cherie leans in to wrap her arms around his shoulder, only to abruptly stop and stand up, frantically looking around the skate park.


    ¡°Jean-Paul¡­¡± she mutters, angrily. Sure enough, Alec is nowhere to be seen. ¡°You fucking idiot¡­ Marcus!¡± she snaps. ¡°You and your boys have to look for my dipshit brother; forget the Block 13 crew for now.¡±


    Marcus stops laughing immediately, springing to his feet as he takes out his commlink and begins frantically sending out messages.


    path\to\LeviathanTechnicalLT2100\Users\AiyaOka\Videos\20680603_0032


    ¡°I think you¡¯ve had enough,¡± a burly troll bouncer says to the camerawoman as she and her five friends are ushered out of a club and onto the well-lit street of an upmarket sprawl district.


    ¡°I¡¯m totally sober,¡± the camerawoman ¨C Aiya Oka ¨C slurs. ¡°Hardly touched a drop. But my friends? They are very drunk, yes.¡±


    ¡°That they are,¡± the bouncer nods. ¡°Which is why it¡¯s good that you¡¯re here to look after them, right?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re right!¡± Aiya exclaims. ¡°That¡¯s a very good point, mister¡­¡± she turns, but the bouncer has already stepped back into the club. ¡°Huh. Rude.¡±


    ¡°Heey, Aiya-chan,¡± one of her friends ¨C a very drunk, very white elf ¨C says as he sways for a moment. ¡°What should we do now?¡±


    ¡°I dunno,¡± Aiya replies, looking over her friends. ¡°I guess we find somewhere else?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know if I can make it somewhere else,¡± another of Aya¡¯s friends says, her hands on her knees as she stares down at the ground.


    ¡°Oh you¡¯ll be fine,¡± the elf comforts her, helping her back up. ¡°Just need to get your head back in the game, Tori!¡±


    ¡°Not a bar, though?¡± Aya asks, glancing back at the one they¡¯ve just left. ¡°I don¡¯t think they liked us dancing in there.¡±


    ¡°Hey there!¡± a voice pipes up from behind them. ¡°You¡¯re new in town, right?¡±


    Aya turns around, tottering for a moment on her heels, only to find herself face to face with Lisa, who¡¯s almost unrecognisable from the way she was before.


    The trenchcoat is nowhere to be seen; in fact her clothes look both new and completely impractical ¨C a purple minidress and high heels, accessorised with a coiled snake on a pendant.


    ¡°That¡¯s right!¡± the elven man smiles, stepping forwards. ¡°We¡¯re all in the same student halls!¡±


    ¡°Wow, really?¡± Lisa asks, hamming it up a little. ¡°I¡¯m a third year medicine student!¡±


    ¡°Ooh!¡± Aya exclaims! ¡°I bet you know all the best places!¡±


    Lisa smiles, her grin entirely predatory ¨C not that the students were sober enough to know the distance.


    ¡°Of course! Only the best places in all Minneapolis! In fact,¡± she moves closer to the group, lowering my voice, ¡°I was on my way to a place that¡¯s pretty exclusive. Like, secret exclusive.¡±


    ¡°You have to take us there!¡± Aya exclaims, grabbing Lisa¡¯s shoulders. ¡°Please!¡±


    Lisa chuckles, but she¡¯s unable to hide the slight discomforted expression that crosses her face before she brushes away Aya¡¯s hands.


    ¡°Sure, but you have to keep it a secret, okay? It¡¯s one of those basement clubs that doesn¡¯t like to advertise.¡±


    Aya nods, seriously, and Lisa watches as her friends do the same before leading them through the streets of the city.


    She turns off the main drag into an alleyway, assuring her marks that it¡¯s a really good shortcut only to suddenly cast a spell that almost whites out the camera in Aya¡¯s decorative glasses, before she and her friends lethargically slump over onto the ground.


    Lisa looks down on the stunned freshmen and stars rummaging through their pockets, taking their credsticks and obviously commercial jewellery but leaving the more meaningful-looking pieces, commlinks and everything else they had on them.


    From where Aya slumped over, the camera in her AR glasses is just able to catch sight of Lisa as she ducks behind a dumpster, emerging a minute later with her trenchcoat worn open over comfortable, well-fitting clothes and sneakers, with her loot and heels in a backpack and the dress in a carefully-folded carrier.


    path\to\VisionCrafterArgusM9\Users\Albin_StAmand\Logs\Camera\AutoDeleted\20680724_2047


    Albin St Amand is a wiry man with thin fingers steepled in front of him as he sits at his desk ¨C an ornate affair with a green baize top and what looks to be real wood polished to a high sheen. His office is a similar example of old-world opulence, with wooden panels and photorealistic portraits covering the walls, and a glittering chandelier overhead.


    Alec is slouched over in an armchair in the corner of the room, dressed in surprisingly well-maintained clothes in the opulent, neo-Bourbon style popular among Quebecois high society. He doesn¡¯t move as the door to the office opens and a mismatched group of figures stride in, all of them wearing expensive-looking suits and carrying an air of professionalism that immediately marks them out as Shadowrunners and St Amand as a Fixer.


    The team consists of three humans and a dwarf, with three of the four being men, and their eyes linger on Alec for a moment before returning to their fixer.


    ¡°St Amand. You said you had something for us?¡± the group¡¯s face ¨C a human woman ¨C asks.


    ¡°Indeed I do,¡± the fixer said, nodding towards Regent. ¡°Meet Mr Dupont. He is going to pay you to smuggle him into the United Canadian and American States.¡±


    ¡°Nothing we haven¡¯t dealt with before,¡± the woman shrugs, before turning to Alec. ¡°One rule, though. You might be footing the bill for this, but until we¡¯re across the border you do what we say when we tell you to do it. There¡¯s no point hiring professionals if you just ignore what they say.¡±


    Alec simply shrugs his shoulders. ¡°So long as I get out of the country, I don¡¯t care.¡±


    path\to\BrocktonBayMunicipalGrid\Hosts\BayWatch\Restricted\UserData\Bug\History\14_08_2068


    ?Subject: Tech Support. Need someone to lift the locks on some trideo files I bought at the market.?


    - Chr0mehead (15:31:14/14-7-68)


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    ?Subject: Tech Support. Can someone track my wife so my lawyer can serve divorce papers??


    - Throwaway12332 (15:56:26/14-7-68)


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    ?Subject: Tech Support. nuyen reward for the location of card cheating bastard slugger williams?


    - DonFuckWithMe (16:46:49/14-7-68)


    ?Subject: Tech Support. Opening a new restaurant with a physical and digital presence and looking for a skilled programmer to decorate its Host.?


    - Rory2042 {17:02:36/15-7-68)


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    ?Subject: Media General. Under the Dragon¡¯s Wing, by Zoh Rothberg, review and general discussion thread.?


    - NetBunny (18:56:12/15-7-68)


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    path\to\SKLuchs540\Users\grue\Logs\Camera\AutoDeleted\20680823_1459


    Brian unloads a chest of drawers from the trunk of his Ford Americar, holding the heavy piece of furniture one-handed for a moment as he closes and locks the trunk.


    He carries the chest across the packed expanse of an underground car park, full of mid to low range vehicles with a few more expensive models visible behind metal gates in secure parking spaces close to the elevator.


    There¡¯s a woman waiting at the elevator, a middle-aged dwarf with two plastic carrier bags full of groceries in one hand. Brian waits beside her until the doors open, when she gestures for him to enter the elevator first.


    ¡°What floor?¡± she asks, having already thumbed the button for the ninth.


    ¡°Seventeenth, thanks,¡± Brian replies.


    ¡°No trouble,¡± the woman shrugs, and the pair of them spend the journey up in comfortable silence until the woman disembarks on the ninth floor. When the elevator reaches the seventeenth floor, Brian steps out into a corridor that might not be perfectly clean, but it¡¯s free from graffiti and all the lights are working.


    His apartment door ¨C number 1765 ¨C slides open as Brian triggers the lock remotely. His apartment is obviously freshly-bought, with sparse furniture and a few boxes of unassembled pieces scattered around the place. It¡¯s narrow ¨C pressed right up against the side of the tower block ¨C but that means it has actual windows letting in natural sunlight.


    Brian passes a room that¡¯s clearly his bedroom ¨C with rumpled deep blue sheets on a double bed ¨C and brings the chest of drawers into a smaller room at the back of the apartment; the kind of room that¡¯s only really good as an office or spare bedroom.


    Brian has chosen to make it the latter, with a partially assembled single bed running almost along the length of one wall. Brian sets the chest of drawers down opposite the bed, taking a moment to look over the room before nodding and heading back to the kitchenette attached to the main room.


    He pulls a cold beer out of the fridge and uses his thumb to flip the bottlecap off, taking a sip before wandering towards a door in the wall, right next to the window.


    The balcony is small, but from it Brian has a commanding view of the next building over and when he cranes his head to the right he can see down the entire length of the block. More importantly, the angle of the afternoon sun is just enough to bathe the whole balcony in golden light.


    Brian takes a seat on a worn garden chair, drinking deep from his bottle and leaning back with a contented sigh.


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    The back of Rachel¡¯s van lacks any seating whatsoever. Instead the space is taken up by drones in varying states of disassembly, racks of tools on the walls and a diagnostic table by the rear doors on which the Doberman is resting while Rachel leans over it, fiddling around in its innards.


    Her grease-stained tanktop shows off her obviously cybernetic arms, along with seams of metal running down her sternum marking out the insert points for subdermal armour or the access port for a cardiovascular implant. The cluster of lifeless optic lenses that have replaced her one organic and one cybernetic eye twist slightly as she zooms in and out, while her hair has been roughly cut short. Her face briefly lights up as she applies minute spot-welds to the drone¡¯s innards.


    Past Rachel, the other drones and all the other flotsam and jetsam of what looks like an entire workshop packed up into a single van, streetlights flick past the windshield at regular intervals as the van¡¯s own drone software navigates its way through the morning traffic.


    Rachel pays the road no mind as she stands up and steps over a deactivated Aztechnology Crawler as she retrieves a long-barrelled light machine gun from a case and carefully buckles it onto the back of the drone, linking the gun¡¯s software to the drone¡¯s main drivers.


    She steps back as far as she can, reaching over the passenger seat to grab a tennis ball that she waves in front of the drone, watching its target recognition software as it tracks the movements of the ball to make sure there aren¡¯t any errors.


    Once she¡¯s satisfied, she tosses the tennis ball back over the seat, switches on the Crawler and takes a clear plastic case of miniature screwdrivers and wrenches off the wall, before shutting down the Doberman.


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    The camera is looking down on the reception of a small motel, quiet except for a bored elven woman sitting behind the front desk, her head buried in her commlink. She looks up as the door chimes open, setting the commlink down as Lisa walks in and up to the front desk.


    Lisa is looking a lot more confident, her clothes a mix of practical slacks, a button-up shirt and layered shamanistic necklaces, all worn beneath her trenchcoat. Her backpack is new as well ¨C larger and a lot more rugged than the one she had before ¨C and she¡¯s trailing a suitcase behind her.


    ¡°How much for a room?¡± she asks the receptionist.


    ¡°Single room, right?¡± the receptionist asks as she flicks through an AR desktop.


    ¡°I¡¯m not one for company,¡± Lisa answers, with a faint smile on her face.


    ¡°Uh huh,¡± the receptionist replies, noncommittedly. ¡°A hundred nuyen gets you twenty-four hours.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not going to need that long,¡± Lisa says, leaning against the desk. ¡°I¡¯m leaving town in the morning.¡±


    ¡°Sorry,¡± the receptionist shrugs her shoulders. ¡°It¡¯s a hundred for a full day or twenty per hour.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s a hefty mark-up,¡± Lisa remarks.


    ¡°If people are going to use us as a brothel, the least we can do is profit from it,¡± the receptionist replies, bluntly.


    ¡°Hah!¡± Lisa laughs. ¡°Alright then, I¡¯ll pay your hundred. Just get me a room as far from those entrepreneurial men and woman as possible.¡±


    ¡°Sure thing,¡± the receptionist says as she makes a selection on her screen. ¡°Just slot in your credstick.¡±


    As Lisa pays for her room, her eyes drift to the wall of flyers behind the receptionist.


    ¡°Hey, is that a bus schedule?¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± the receptionist nods, reaching behind her and placing both the flyer and the room key on the desk. ¡°Someone from Greyhound came by with a bunch of them, I guess maybe as free advertising. Going anywhere in particular?¡±


    ¡°I haven¡¯t decided yet,¡± Lisa answers. ¡°Somewhere interesting, that¡¯s for sure.¡±


    path\to\BrocktonBayMunicipalGrid\Hosts\BayWatch\Restricted\UserData\Bug\History\24_12_2068


    ?Subject: Tech Support. Bought a second-hand TV, but it¡¯s broken. Looking for someone to remove the anti-theft measures.?


    - Wi1dcat (14:12:05/24-12-68)


    User replied (1) times


    ?Subject: Tech Support. The power in my building has gone out, and the emergency engineer said it¡¯s a problem with the Matrix, not the electrics, and that they can¡¯t get someone out until the 28th. Can someone have a look at it? I have tenants without heating.?


    - DMarshall (13:32:58/24-12-68)


    User replied (6) times


    ?Subject: Tech Support. A matrix gang has vandalised my shop¡¯s Host. Need someone to come and clean it up.?


    - Frank006 (16:15:27/24-12-68)


    User replied (13) times


    ?Subject: Discussion. Is anyone else spending the holidays alone??


    - WannabeeRazorGirl (18:52:46/24-12-68)


    ?Subject: Discussion. URGENT My computer has just been hacked and I don¡¯t have a security package. I need someone to make sure it¡¯s clean so I can keep my till open.?


    - BellasBodega (19:01:13/24-12-68)


    User replied (9) times


    ?Subject: General. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.?


    - HugoRune (23:59:58/24-12-68)


    path\to\AegisHomeSecurity\CCTV\Camera_03\20681229_2354


    The screen door of the bank shatters inwards as the shaped charge detonates, slicing apart the couch of the open-plan luxury apartment before the camera¡¯s screen whites out as a grenade detonates right in the middle of the room, filling it with light, noise and billowing smoke.


    Lisa, fully clothed and with her hand deep in the open jewellery box of the woman unconscious on the floor besides her, freezes in shock as Brian storms into the apartment, his pistol drawn but pointed at the floor.


    Brian falters as he catches sight of Lisa before striding across the room towards her, causing Lisa to scramble to put the bed between her and the imposing, balaclava-wearing intruder, only for Brian to keep one eye on her while he makes straight for the jewellery box.


    Brian fishes around in the box with his left hand, before muttering a quiet ¡°fuck it¡± under his breath and simply taking the whole box with him as he sprints back out the window.


    Next to Lisa, the owner of the house starts to stir from magical unconsciousness. Lisa looks between her and the spot where the jewellery box was, a stunned expression on her face.


    ¡°Fuck!¡± she shouts, before jogging over to the door of the apartment.


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    Brian drives his fingers into the doorframe, warping the metal before forcing the door open with the sheer strength of his cybernetic limbs. Immediately, he lets go of the door and grabs his rifle from where it¡¯s slung on his back, shouldering it and flickering on the torch attached to the end of his rifle ¨C a strange-looking weapon without a visible magazine.


    ¡°Clear so far,¡± he says as he steps into the derelict room, kicking up dust.


    ¡°Looks that way,¡± Lisa says as she steps in front of him, a scarf wrapped around the bottom half of her face to protect her from the dust. ¡°But look at this,¡± she points to a part of the floor that¡¯s entirely free from dust, as if something has been dragged through it. ¡°Our boy¡¯s definitely been through here.¡±


    ¡°How did it get here, anyway?¡± Brian asks.


    ¡°Could¡¯ve escaped from a truck on the interstate, I guess,¡± Lisa says, ¡°or a lab somewhere. Or maybe someone in this city just has a really fucked-up zoo and it broke out from there. Then someone else comes and hires me to get it for their own lab, truck or fucked-up zoo, I bring you on to help and the circle of life loops back on itself.¡±


    ¡°Okay,¡± Brian says. ¡°Let¡¯s take this carefully; it probably heard our entrance. Stick behind me, like we discussed.¡±


    ¡°Believe me, I plan to,¡± Lisa says. ¡°Just be careful about looking at it, okay?¡±


    ¡°You said my cyberyeyes would make me immune,¡± Brian observes, his grip on his rifle tightening.


    ¡°I said they¡¯d probably make you immune,¡± Lisa retorts. ¡°I know what I¡¯m doing, but I¡¯ve never hunted a basilisk before. We just do this as quick as possible, and we¡¯ll probably be fine.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve met lots of people who¡¯d say things like ¡®it¡¯ll probably be fine,¡¯¡± Brian says as they edged down a set of stairs, ¡°or that they¡¯d ¡®hope for the best,¡¯ or ¡®just wing it.¡¯ Most of them are dead now.¡±


    ¡°Except we¡¯re not just winging it,¡± Lisa counters. ¡°We¡¯ve got the tranquilizer rifle, the building plans, and I¡¯ve been practicing my stunbolts for a week now. Partial information isn¡¯t the same as no information at all.¡±


    ¡°Sure,¡± Brian shrugs, before holding up his left arm and whispering. ¡°Keep it quiet, I think I hear it.¡±


    He creeps up the corridor, almost pressing himself against the wall as he takes up position past a doorway. He turns to see Lisa waiting on the other side. She holds up three fingers, then two, then one.


    Brian drives his elbow into the door, knocking it open before lobbing a flashbang through. This time there is no smoke to accompany the flash, and Brian and Lisa both rush into the room at the same time.


    At the far end of the nest ¨C the floor strewn with discarded bones and half eaten chunks of viscera ¨C a two and a half meter long lizard is hissing in pain, its beady eyes looking around blindly as it overcomes the effects of the grenade.


    Brian fires three tranquilizer darts into its flank, as Lisa hurls staticky stunbolts that light up the room even as they hit the beast ¨C which rears back and roars in anger.


    path\to\bitchpersonalareanetwork\sensors\optics\standardspectrum\logs\20690228


    Rachel is sitting in the open doorway of her van, her feet resting on the floor of an old auto shop. Across from her, Alec is leaning against a sedan, looking at Rachel with what seems to be morbid curiosity on his face.


    In-between them, a middle aged man in a suit ¨C with a balding head and a pot belly ¨C checks his watch and mutters to himself.


    All three of them look over to the door as someone fiddles with the lock, before Brian and Lisa step through, both of them dressed like they¡¯re ready for a job.


    ¡°Grue, Tattletale,¡± the man greets them with a smile, his voice bearing a faint Irish-American accent. ¡°So glad you could make it.¡±


    ¡°Sorry about the delay, Mr O¡¯Daly,¡± Grue apologises. ¡°We hit some traffic on the way over.¡±


    ¡°Ah, think nothing of it,¡± their fixer shrugs his shoulders. ¡°These things happen. But, to get down to business, let me introduce you to Bitch and Regent.¡±


    ¡°Bitch?¡± Brian asks, looking at Rachel.


    ¡°Yeah?¡± she snaps back.


    ¡°It¡¯s an¡­ unconventional name.¡±


    ¡°To be fair,¡± Lisa points out as she walks over to Rachel, holding out her hand, ¡°so¡¯s Grue. It¡¯s nice to meet you.¡±


    Rachel grunts as she shakes Lisa¡¯s hand, and Lisa gets the hint, turning to Alec.


    ¡°So I take it you¡¯re the mage?¡±


    ¡°What gave it away?¡± he drawls, his accent still slightly audible.


    ¡°Well,¡± O¡¯Daly interjects, ¡°I¡¯ll leave you four to get acquainted. The building¡¯s a bit of a fixer-upper, but I had some of the boys move a few beds up into the loft. The rest is up to you, but as safehouses go it¡¯s not bad.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll make it work,¡± Brian says, looking over the team.


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    The camera is staring down an empty corridor, as the seconds tick down. A young troll man staggers out of the elevator and down the corridor, resting his palm against the wall as he fumbles with his keycard.


    The footage speeds up, minutes passing like seconds as the corridor¡¯s lights darken overnight before coming back on in the morning ¨C when a flood of people emerge from their apartments over the course of an hour as they leave for work.


    Taylor¡¯s door stays shut, as morning passes into midday before the people return from their shift in the hours after five PM. The footage speeds up more, until the whole corridor is in flux with people coming and going.


    The whole corridor, except for the door to Taylor¡¯s apartment. That only opens occasionally for delivery drivers who make their way up with bags of groceries or takeways in heat bags.


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    ¡°Remember, stick to the plan,¡± Brian¡¯s voice comes in clear through the radio attached to Lisa¡¯s glasses. ¡°This place is designed to trick you.¡±


    ¡°And here I was hoping to strike it rich,¡± Alec jokes, visible in the periphery of Lisa¡¯s vision. He¡¯s circulating the tables of an opulent casino done up in deep red and golden yellow, with ¡®Ruby Dreams¡¯ emblazoned across the wall.


    ¡°You¡¯d have more luck finding a street performer with three cups and a ball,¡± Lisa observes. ¡°A place like this? They¡¯ve got whole algorithms for swindling people out of their money. The classier the joint, the more the house takes.¡±


    ¡°So we¡¯ll take from them,¡± Brian replies. ¡°Me and Bitch are ready for exfil if you need it, but so long as you¡¯re careful you shouldn¡¯t need it.¡±


    ¡°Oh we¡¯ll be careful,¡± Lisa laughs as she saunters over to a game of roulette. ¡°A firefight in a casino? You¡¯d be telling that story for years, and we¡¯d be stuck listening to it.¡±


    path\to\AtlanticReachEstate\Operations\Security\CCTV\Camera_1302\20691229_0000


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    The door of Taylor¡¯s apartment slides open and she hurries out into the corridor ¨C dressed in a crumpled hoodie and a faded pair of jeans, with a sickly complexion visible even through her grey-blue skin.


    She almost jogs down the corridor as the door automatically closes and locks behind her, keeping her eyes fixed firmly in front of her even when she reaches the lift. The doors close behind her, the number of the lift slowly counting down from thirteen to one.

 Resonance: 3.06

    I floated in an inky black void, with water filling my lungs.


    Panic shot through me like a lightning bolt. I flailed, frantically swimming upwards ¨C or what I felt was upwards ¨C my strokes becoming more and more desperate as the burning in my lungs only increased. It became harder to think, harder to act, harder to keep pushing my arms and legs against the water until finally I broke through a surface that hadn¡¯t been there a moment before.


    My head emerged from a small circular pool, perhaps twelve feet across and lit from above by a faint green light. My vision was still blurred and hazy as I hauled myself out of the pool on trembling arms and flopped bonelessly onto a tiled floor, coughing out water until my throat was hoarse and sore.


    All the while, the event horizon was still running through my head. I couldn¡¯t believe what I¡¯d seen, what it had shown me. It felt invasive; I was expecting it to tear at old wounds, not open new ones, and seeing my friends¡¯ secrets spread out for my perusal just made me feel dirty.


    I lay there for what felt like hours, sucking in deep breaths of air even as every breath I took seemed to burn its way down my drowned throat, as sensation returned to my sore limbs and my vision went from blurred outlines to distinguishable shapes.


    The room was heptagonal, with vaulted gothic arches dangling over the still black waters of the pool. It was unnaturally dark, with only the faintest green light giving shape to the architecture.


    In the end, the only reason I didn¡¯t just lie there was what I¡¯d just seen. The others had accomplished so much, overcome so much, while I just shut down. Even Regent ¨C a murderer ¨C had managed to escape and reinvent himself. But I¡¯d been broken by my experiences, and fallen into a rut I never managed to climb out of.


    So I pressed my palms against the floor, levering myself up and rising unsteadily onto my knees before descending into another bout of coughing. I brought my hands up to my throat, only to catch sight of them out the corner of my eye and freeze at the sight of grey skin over flesh and bone.


    I sprang to my feet, staggering backwards as I stared at my reflection in the pool ¨C of my horned head and tusks, my eyes and slate grey hair.


    I blinked, and found myself staring down at the chitinous body of my persona, draped in ephemeral spidersilk robes and free from the aches and sensations of a physical body.


    So this is it, I thought, looking around the room again without the barrier of organic eyes. Beyond the matrix.


    I tried to let the visual layer fade, to see the datastreams and raw resonance that made up this place, but I just couldn¡¯t manage it. After a moment, I realised that was because this was the deepest layer. The room wasn¡¯t just a cosmetic overlay created by code; it was raw resonance shaped into walls like bricks and mortar, into the water in the pool, even the air I was breathing before I remembered I didn¡¯t need to.


    As I took a step away from the pool, it didn¡¯t feel like I was arbitrarily deciding to place my foot on the floor, or that my persona was locked and monitored into following the programmed rules of the host. It was almost real, with only the faintest differences that made it so noticeably unreal.


    It felt like I¡¯d stepped into a mirror.


    I made my way to a door built into one of the sides of the heptagon ¨C heavy, wooden and tapered at the arch. As I approached it, the light on a wrought-iron lock flickered once before the door split and soundlessly slid back into the walls.


    Beyond the door stretched a long corridor, with a vaulted ceiling and a deep green carpet covering the floor, with faint silver patterns woven into the material. All along the left wall ¨C set in-between the pillars that supported the vaulted roof ¨C stained glass windows let in rays of pale green light that cast long shadows onto the floor.


    As I moved carefully down the corridor, my eye was drawn to shapes that moved beyond the windows; titanic things made indistinct by the tinted glass. To my right, the wall bore regular iron doors of the kind that wouldn¡¯t look out of place in a B-list horror film set in an old prison or insane asylum, if it weren¡¯t for the electronic locks.


    A sleek golden shape darted above me, and I spun frantically to see a familiar dragonfly clinging to the underside of the ceiling, its multi-faceted eyes looking down at me. For a brief moment, I considered talking to the sprite like Labyrinth would have, but it didn¡¯t quite feel right. It didn¡¯t feel like me.


    I¡¯d spoken to my sprites before, but only because I had to talk to something, and they happened to be nearby. The thought of it felt too much like the same version of me that had sat in her apartment for two years.


    Instead I stretched out my hand expectantly, palm facing upwards in an unspoken command, and watched as the dragonfly spread its golden wings and glided down to rest in my hand.


    I have to be here for a reason, I thought. And the same applies to this.


    So I continued down the corridor, turning my attention from the bottle-green windows to the iron doors. The lock to this hallway had opened automatically the moment I drew close, but the same could not be said of these ones. I tried to summon my woodlouse to pick the lock, but the resonance here was too solid to summon from.


    It already had a form, and I could not weave it into another.


    After I passed the tenth door, I realised that the corridor was curving ever so slightly; enough that the door to the pool room was now out of sight. Eventually, I came to a break in the pattern of small metal cell doors, with an oversized pair of wooden doors set beneath a decorative arch formed from twisted and abstract stone blocks.


    The electronic lock on that door flickered as I approached, and there was the heavy sound of deadbolts retracting into their housing. Gingerly, I reached out with my hand ¨C the dragonfly leaping out of the way before perching itself on my left shoulder ¨C and pushed open the doors, struggling a little against their sheer weight.


    An immense library opened up before me; a cavernous hall stretching hundreds of meters into the distance, with seven stories of bookshelves towering above me on either side of a wide central avenue, linked together by catwalks and gantries of wrought iron.


    In place of books, the shelves were filled with antiquated stacks of servers, with untold numbers of blinking green lights forming ever-shifting constellations as they winked in and out of existence. At the start of each row, a desktop terminal was attached to a movable ladder, with a boxy monitor and a hefty physical keyboard.


    Patterns of light shimmered on the floor, and as I looked up I was struck dumb by the vaulted glass ceiling that ran down the length of the central avenue, and of what lay above it.


    A nebula flickered far above my head; an impossible mass of distant lights so densely packed they formed shifting clouds in the sky, and so bright that their light was able to travel the vast space to cast their glow onto the library below. It was beautiful, tugging at my core in a way I couldn¡¯t quite comprehend.


    It took effort to tear my eyes away from that radiant expanse, but ultimately it was beyond my reach and I needed to keep moving forward. Instead I stepped off the main avenue and picked a set of shelves at random, looking at the servers.


    Try as I might, I couldn¡¯t reach out to them. It was like they had no wireless connection at all, which only further cemented the unreality of this place; air gaps aren¡¯t unheard of, but only a lunatic would wire together this many physical servers when they could just set up a cloud of data instead.


    Stymied, I turned my attention to the computer and sighed in exasperation when I saw a cable wound around a hook on the side of its casing, with an adapter on the end that was completely unrecognisable to me.


    ¡°Seriously?¡± I asked in disbelief, my voice echoing off into the distance.


    Still, I took the cable off the hook and plugged the adaptor into a port on one of the servers, watching as the computer began to whir before green text crawled across the black screen.


    It was strange; for all that I could clearly see it was a nearly incomprehensible mess of spaghetti code, without any rhyme or reason to the random string of numbers and letters, I could also see that it was the inventory of a ship called the Majest?tisch XIV, a Saeder-Krupp vessel.


    I typed away at the keyboard ¨C each stroke accompanied by the heavy and unfamiliar clacking of keys ¨C as I navigated my way through file directories largely concerned with the amount of oil in each of the ship¡¯s tanks. It seemed to just be random data, without any of the precise psychological purpose of the files I¡¯d seen when crossing the event horizon.


    I unplugged the cord, causing the screen to go blank, and plugged it into the next server up. That one held the files of an upmarket restaurant, while the one above it contained the data of the Human Relations department of a Crash Cart branch office.


    My brow furrowed. Even random data could be useful if you knew what to look for, but finding anything in here would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Labyrinth said coming to the resonance realms would strengthen my abilities as a Technomancer, but so far the only thing that applied to was my resolve. Even that had come from crossing the event horizon, not the actual realms.


    Unless¡­ I thought to myself, before a wordless command had the dragonfly arising from my shoulder. It disappeared off into the shelves, only occasionally reappearing as a distant mote of yellow light moving among the muted greens of the library.


    I followed the light at a slow walk, peering down the aisles of servers in hopes of seeing something, anything I could use. Once or twice, it almost felt like there were shapes moving amongst the deeper stacks, but with the ever-shifting lighting of the nebula above my head it was impossible to distinguish the real from the unreal, and a place like this seemed designed to play tricks on my mind.


    Still, it was distinctly unsettling. There was just too much about this place I didn¡¯t understand, and it was both more and less than what I was expecting. So when I saw the dragonfly making its way back towards me, I was glad of the distraction and quickly followed it off the main avenue and into the stacks.


    The sprite led me on a meandering route past innumerable towering shelves of blinking servers, each one containing yet more junk data. And yet, part of me was surprised to find that the library ¨C or this part of it, at least ¨C was not endless. After the fourteenth row of shelves, we reached the edge of the hall; a simple stone wall.


    From there, the dragonfly led me up a narrow metal staircase that joined onto the gantries of the upper shelves, and we climbed up four flights before it abruptly turned off and landed on a single server that ¨C naturally ¨C looked almost identical to every other blinking box in this place.


    Hesitantly, I wheeled the ladder over and grabbed the cable, climbing up until I could slot the adapter in. I didn¡¯t bother climbing down, instead hopping off the ladder and dropping the few feet to the catwalk, where the computer on the ladder was waiting with green text scrolling down the screen.


    The Resonance Library, I read, and immediately the corner of my mouth crept up in a grin. This is more like it!


    From the look of things, it was a document that had been posted on the message boards of a host; a Stuffer Shack with neither the time, money or inclination to maintain the host their franchisers had provided them with, so it had gradually devolved into a general hang-out spot for anyone in the neighbourhood. It wasn¡¯t exactly an uncommon phenomenon.


    The file had been passed around a group of wannabe script kids as part of some sort of urban legend, with one of them bragging that they¡¯d got it from someone who said they¡¯d got it from someone who¡¯d once found their way onto a technomancer forum.


    They¡¯d egged each other on over who was going to open the file up, only to turn on the one who first posted it when they found a nearly incomprehensible mess inside. But that¡¯s not what I saw when I looked at it.


    The document had been compiled in such a way that it could only be understood by someone who could see resonance, not just the basic code of the matrix. It described techniques and complex forms a technomancer could use, and while I couldn¡¯t make sense of the instructions I did recognise most of the forms I¡¯d managed to work out on my own ¨C after years of idle experimentation.


    More importantly, I couldn¡¯t make sense of them in the same way I couldn¡¯t make sense of a university-level textbook I just took off a shelf and opened up. I had a feeling I¡¯d be able to make something of this with a little time and effort.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    So I reached up and tugged on the cable until the plug fell out, then had my dragonfly take its place. Its antennae poked and prodded at the socket for a few moments as it spun together a copy of the resonance library, before I commanded it to return with the file to dad¡¯s computer, where I could access it at my leisure.


    Rather than flying off into the halls, the dragonfly flew straight up before passing through the ceiling as if it wasn¡¯t even there, the resonance forming the arched buttresses simply splitting apart to let it pass.


    I couldn¡¯t help thinking about what Labyrinth had said; about how I was calling my sprites from the resonance realms, rather than making them myself.


    Maybe she had a point, I thought, but that doesn¡¯t mean I¡¯m going to start talking to them.


    Instead, as I wandered back along the central avenue, I took a closer look at the structure around me. The materials, not what they made up. I pressed my hand against the deep green carpeting on the floor, ran my fingers down the wooden shelves and tried to get a feel for the resonance that made up this place.


    It was solid in a way that simply didn¡¯t occur back in the matrix, but as I focused I found I could still feel it in a sense. It was like buying a new trideo screen and seeing a quality to the picture that went beyond anything you could remember experiencing.


    And, just as that initial impression of quality would fade into the new normal, that feeling seemed to diminish as I grew used to the new quality. It seemed coming here had deepened my connection to the resonance, and my brain just hadn¡¯t wrapped its head around that until now.


    So I decided to experiment. I still couldn¡¯t manipulate the resonance that made up this place, so I gathered together some of the ephemeral data that made up my own body, pressing my palm against one of the servers and gently trying to tease a little of my essence into it.


    At first it felt like trying to force water through a stone, but then there was an incredible moment when everything just clicked, and for a brief moment it felt like the server and I were one, as a trickle of my essence seeped into the structure of this strange pseudo-host and the server¡¯s light blinked yellow for a fraction of a second.


    Like a water droplet on a still pool, that was the catalyst for an ever-increasing ring of flickering yellow lights spreading out down the length of the library. I stepped back, warily, as the pattern echoed throughout the hall.


    And then, the lights began to drift away from the servers. First one, then two, then hundreds, swirling through the air in a great swarm of fireflies that drifted ever-closer to me. Part of me felt like I should be terrified by the sight, but I simply stood there entranced by the drifting fireflies as they drew closer to me.


    Until they turned and poured into me, the chitin that made up my persona splitting to let them enter. It burned, my synapses firing all at once, and I was bent double with pain until the last firefly entered my body and I screamed.


    The flies screamed with me, pouring out from beneath my skin as they filled the air with a gnashing, chittering buzz that was almost deafening. I could feel it in my body¡¯s connections, see it in the way the servers around me flickered and faded, in how the air was filled with thousands of swirling yellow motes of light.


    It was like standing in the centre of a spam zone, where thousands of junk messages and intrusive advirals glitch out devices and make it almost impossible for anyone ¨C hacker or not ¨C to force a stable connection through the noise.


    And, when I stopped screaming, the noise stopped with it, the fireflies returning to my persona. They weren¡¯t some foreign parasites; they were part of my essence now. An echo of this place.


    I carried that echo with me, out of the cavernous library and along the gently-curving corridor as I made my way back to the room with the pool. With only a moment¡¯s hesitation, I leapt into the still waters at the centre of the heptagonal chamber, gambling on the way in being the same as the way out.


    Immediately, the faint green glow of the strange chamber disappeared as I sank deep into the waters, until there was no longer an ¡®up¡¯ or ¡®down¡¯ to sink into. My consciousness started to fade, my persona losing cohesion as it was gripped by some unseen force and dragged down tunnels of light that passed at a blur.


    I woke with a start, sitting up before wincing at a twinge in my back. As I blinked away spots, I saw that I was resting on a long and narrow bunk in a small room, with a wipe-clean tiled floor and a simple sink and mirror set against the opposite wall. If it weren¡¯t for the hanging rail and gun rack on the other wall, with my jacket, holster and submachine gun given pride of place, I might have assumed I was in a cell.


    As I manoeuvred my too-stiff legs off the side of the bed, I noticed that I¡¯d been left in my clothes ¨C boots included. I guess someone from Faultline¡¯s organisation must have brought me here and taken off my jacket, gun and holster because otherwise they¡¯d dig into my back while I was lying down.


    Part of me was irritated at that, but I supposed I did collapse on their floor.


    Standing up took more effort than I was expecting, but after one false start I was on my feet and gingerly walking over to the mirror ¨C trying to ignore the pins and needles that ran up and down my legs.


    As I looked at my weary expression, my mind reconnected to the matrix and I was suddenly bombarded by a flurry of missed texts and calls from both Brian and Lisa. I realised with a start that I¡¯d been unconscious for about twenty six hours and hurriedly called Lisa, since I could see Brian¡¯s commlink was busy on another call.


    ¡°Bug?¡± she picked up almost immediately, her voice a little breathless. ¡°Where are you? What happened? You dropped off the grid.¡±


    ¡°Palanquin, I think,¡± I answered, as I peeled back my eyelid with a thumb and winced at how bloodshot it looked. ¡°I was¡­ well, I guess you¡¯d probably call it a vision quest. Trying to deepen my connection to the resonance.¡±


    ¡°Did it work?¡± Tattletale asked, instinctively, before catching herself. ¡°Wait, never mind, that¡¯ll wait. We¡¯re on our way there now.¡±


    ¡°To the Palanquin?¡±


    ¡°Yes, to the Palanquin! Grue¡¯s on the line with Faultline now. She has a new client for us, and it could be a big one. Meet us in the VIP area, ASAP.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll be there,¡± I said without hesitation, before Lisa hung up.


    As I made my way blindly through the backrooms of the Palanquin I passed another team of Shadowrunners who were also making use of what I quickly began to realise was a kind of communal safehouse, complete with an infirmary, several single, double or quadruple rooms and even a communal space with a kitchenette, some couches and a trideo set to while away the time until the heat dies down.


    I doubted it was the only one of its kind Faultline operated around the city; putting it in their own building seemed just a little too obvious. It¡¯d work out fine for someone on the run from a gang, but the corps wouldn¡¯t even blink before storming the place.


    It shared an elevator with the club itself, and the sleek d¨¦cor clashed a bit with the utilitarian saferoom as I rode the elevator up from three stories underground to the VIP area.


    The moment the doors opened, I was hit with the full force of a nightclub in full swing, with strobing lights ¨C both physical and in AR ¨C and deafening music. As I leant over the balcony of the VIP area, I could see a mass of people thronging the club floor, pressed together as they danced to the tune of an elven DJ with her hair in a vibrant blue mohawk woven with electrochromatic extensions that pulsed in time with the music.


    The sight should have been deeply unnerving. Pressing myself into a metro train was bad enough, but in there people weren¡¯t actively trying to throw themselves up against each other. I should have been anxious even looking down at it, but instead I found I could quite comfortably watch it from afar.


    I still wouldn¡¯t want to go down there, but it seems like such a petty thing to be scared about.


    It was because I was watching the crowd that I was immediately able to spot the others as they made their way through the club, gently ¨C and, at times, not-so-gently ¨C pushing through the crowd as they forged a path through to the stairs up to the VIP area.


    I was almost taken aback at the sight of them; they were wearing suits, each of them matched with a black base and a coloured accent. Brian was leading the group, using his bulk to clear a wake the others could follow in. His suit was modern, with discreet armoured inserts around the shoulders and chest, and beneath the jacket he wore a white turtleneck.


    Lisa, on the other hand, was wearing a suit that was a little bit older in style, with visible buttons on the jacket and a crisp purple shirt. She was also wearing a tight-fitting skirt, and in general looked so comfortably familiar with her attire it was as if she could have been wearing that suit from birth.


    In comparison, Rachel was very much a fish out of water in her only mostly-ironed outfit, to the point where I could see combat boots poking out of the bottom of her pants. Like Brian, her suit jacket had been enhanced with armoured inserts, and her shoulders and lapels were covered with brown leather panels.


    Finally, Alec had clearly borrowed at least part of his style from his childhood in the neo-aristocratic high society of Montr¨¦al. His pants were black, like the others, but his blazer was a rich royal blue, and his shirt was ruffled with between three and four of the buttons undone.


    I quickly got over my gawking as Brian spotted me and waved, and Lisa held up an oversized suit carrier she¡¯d been hauling across the dance floor, an ear to ear grin on her face.


    ¡°Oh, great¡­¡± I sighed to myself. I could see the way the wind was blowing.


    Sure enough, the moment they reached the VIP area Lisa pressed the suit carrier and a shoebox into my arms and practically forced me into one of the booths, drawing the curtains shut with nothing more than an assurance that ¡®I¡¯ll love it.¡¯


    I just hope there isn¡¯t a skirt, I thought to myself, but I still tossed my jacket on the booth¡¯s couch and began undressing.


    Maybe I was being unkind to Lisa, because the suit itself was honestly alright. The pants, shirt and jacket fit a lot closer than I was used to, but the shoes were flats rather than heels ¨C it wasn¡¯t like I needed extra height ¨C and the colours honestly really resonated with me. In keeping with the others, the jacket and pants were both black, but the lining and lapels was a vivid yellow the same colour as the glow my sprites let off. The shirt, on the other hand, was a kind of blackened gold that caught the light of the club as I stepped back out, my clothes, gun and boots bundled up under one arm.


    ¡°Where were you?¡± Grue asks, his arms folded over his chest. ¡°Doing your own thing is fine, but not if it puts you out of contact.¡±


    ¡°Gotta admit I¡¯m pretty curious myself,¡± Tattletale admitted. ¡°A ¡®vision quest?¡¯¡±


    ¡°You suggested I learn how to hack better,¡± I said with a nod to Grue. ¡°I did some digging and found a way to deepen my connection to the resonance ¨C that¡¯s what Technomancers use to hack,¡± I clarified at the sight of Grue¡¯s raised eyebrow. ¡°Took longer than I was expecting. Usually matrix time dilation goes the other way, and only a little, but I thought I was only gone for one, two hours tops.¡±


    ¡°Did it work?¡± Tattletale asked.


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I replied, confidently. ¡°It was eye-opening.¡± Unconsciously, I found myself looking towards Regent and Bitch.


    ¡°I can see that,¡± Tattletale replied, cryptically.


    ¡°So what¡¯s this all about?¡± I asked, gesturing to my suit. ¡°Why the extra mile?¡±


    ¡°We have a new potential client,¡± Grue explained. ¡°Not someone Faultline referred to us, but someone that went to her asking for us specifically.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s¡­¡± my eyes widened. ¡°Is that good?¡±


    ¡°Well they¡¯ve booked a private room, not just one of these booths. Whatever this is, it¡¯s big.¡±


    Grue was trying to maintain his professional mask, but his lips kept curling up as he tried and failed to suppress a smile.


    ¡°More to the point,¡± Tattletale interrupted, ¡°we¡¯ve got about seven minutes to get there. It¡¯s a good thing you woke up when you did, sleeping beauty.¡±


    As one, we hurried into the elevator. The Palanquin was built with trolls in mind, but it was still a bit of a tight fit with all four of us in there. We went up three floors, stepping out into a nondescript corridor that was a lot more utilitarian than the club below, but in a way that was still classy rather than barebones.


    One of Faultline¡¯s staff was waiting up there; a redheaded elven woman in a sleek black and green taksuit who practically oozed lethality. As she led us down the corridor, I couldn¡¯t help noticing the names on the doors. The Emir suite, the Sultan, the Satrap.


    Our guide stopped outside the Maharajah suite, inviting us in with a gesture. I looked around for a brief moment before she smiled and shook her head.


    ¡°Just leave those with me,¡± she nodded at my bundled clothes, her voice carrying a lilting Irish accent. ¡°I¡¯ll take them down to the cloakroom, then you can pick them up on your way out.¡±


    ¡°I appreciate it,¡± I said as I handed the bundle over.


    ¡°Mr Johnson is waiting for you inside,¡± was her reply, before she set off back down the corridor.


    Grue took in a deep breath, resting his hand on the doorframe. I¡¯d always seen him as this immutable figure, almost carved from stone, but in that moment I saw something of the kid in the diner in his stance.


    ¡°Then we shouldn¡¯t keep him waiting,¡± he spoke, more to himself than to us, before pushing open the door.


    Inside was a small antechamber, with metal walls partially coated with blocks of sound-dampening foam. The door swung closed behind Regent ¨C the last one in the room ¨C and as it clicked shut I suddenly flinched as my connection to the matrix was entirely cut off.


    ¡°A faraday cage,¡± I said, my voice wavering.


    ¡°It¡¯s magically warded, too,¡± Tattletale said. ¡°No eavesdroppers, whether mundane or magical.¡±


    I shivered, as old fears rose up inside me. The matrix had been my comfort zone ever since I was fourteen, one I could carry everywhere I went. Even after I left my apartment it was still there, still a constant presence in my life.


    But I couldn¡¯t help thinking that the others had overcome much worse. They¡¯d gone without shelter, or money, or safety, or family and they¡¯d pushed through it all. Did I really deserve to be with them ¨C be part of their team ¨C if I couldn¡¯t do the same?


    So I took a long, deep breath and resolved that no matter what lay on the other side of this atrium, I¡¯d face the next job without hesitations or doubt. No more second-guessing or half measures.


    As Grue opened the door into the Maharajah suite itself, the first thing that hit me was the heat. The thermostat had been cranked way beyond what I was used to. It was a dry heat, like what I imagined standing in a desert must feel like.


    The room itself was a fairly compact chamber, with red and gold furnishings. Closest to the door, two quarter-circular couches had been arranged on either side of the door, around one half of a wide elliptical coffee table that was currently empty and barren. Off to one side, cold air was rising off a glass-fronted fridge with beer, soft drinks, water and wine all in glass bottles, with drinking glasses stacked up on top.


    The walls of the room were floor to ceiling screens, currently set to display a bountiful orchard full of metahumans in wide-brimmed hats and overalls picking fruit off the trees.


    Beyond the coffee table was a single, wide couch with red leather cushions on a carved wooden frame. A guard stood on either side of the couch with their hands clasped in front of them. One was a burly Hispanic ork with shamanistic fetishes worn over his clothing, while the other was a severe-looking elven woman with pale, sharp features and heavy cybernetics ¨C including sheathed handspurs.


    Between them an immense serpent was coiled up on the couch, with so many layers of black scales I couldn''t hope to guess how long it was. Its hide was polished, with diamond patterns outlined in off-white and it looked down the length of its triangular head at us with elliptically-pupiled eyes, idly flicking its tail in a way that let off a gentle rattle with every sharp movement.


    ¡°Please, take a seat,¡± it ¨C he ¨C spoke, his tone cordial and with only the slightest impediment as the English words were forced past a non-metahuman mouth.


    ¡°You may call me Mr Johnson,¡± he continued. ¡°I have a proposition for you.¡±

 Interlude 3: Circus

    Circus sat at the counter of a streetside food stall, picking at the bowl of watery noodles in front of him as he watched the two gangs killing each other across the street.


    Two minutes earlier the building had been quiet, with just a Japanese human sitting on the steps of the tenement building with a shotgun resting on his legs as he scrolled through his comm. Then a pair of vans pulled up right in front of the building, and a dozen Chosen poured out the back.


    The Yakuza guard didn¡¯t see the shot coming until it was too late, as the lead Chosen raised his rifle and ventilated his skull. Unfortunately for the rest of the Chosen ¨C dressed in faux-tactical gear and body armour emblazoned with snarling wolves or old world flags ¨C one of the other Yakuza guards in the drug lab on the third floor had been leaning out of the window while he smoked, and saw the whole thing go down.


    Fortunately for the human supremacists, whatever the ork in the window had been smoking was enough to mess with his aim. The spray of fire from his submachine gun only hit one of the Chosen, with the rest of the shots sparking across the roof of one of the vans before ending in the chest of a salaryman in a grey suit, who¡¯d reacted to the gunfire by dropping to the floor with his hands over his head.


    The Chosen responded with a frantic and ill-aimed burst of fire that sprayed across the entire front of the building, with most of them unable to even see the guy who was shooting at them. Circus watched as the leader of the Chosen warband ¨C marked out by his vivid red and black tattoos ¨C stormed up the stairs alongside two of his fellows.


    The door swung shut behind them, only to burst back open seconds later as the leader was knocked right back out onto the street and a lumbering troll bent double to step through the doorway, his hands swapped out for vicious cybernetics. He stood for a moment, bleary eyes surveying the street at the glacial pace of the dosed-up brain attached to them, before the Chosen got their act together and began unloading mags into the troll.


    Part of Circus couldn¡¯t help but smile at the comical display as the troll stumbled towards the closest van with the inevitability of a freight train and the stability of a kid riding a bicycle for the very first time. He still managed to wrap his hand around the head of one Chosen ¨C a woman with three pointed ears on a necklace ¨C and split her skull with the crack of a snapped faceplate before finally dropping to one knee and toppling over, further crushing his target beneath his immense bulk.


    ¡°Hey!¡± a whispered shout drew Circus¡¯ eyes away from the firefight for a brief moment, down to where the proprietor of the food stall was cowering on the ground.


    ¡°Get down, ya fuckin¡¯ lunatic!¡± the wiry human teen spoke in another frantic whisper. ¡°You wanna get shot?¡±


    ¡°¡¯Course I don¡¯t,¡± Circus replied, twirling up some more noodles with his chopsticks. ¡°Up here I can see the bullets coming. Plus, not gonna say no to some free entertainment and this slop isn¡¯t going to taste any better if I let it cool down.¡±


    ¡°Fuck you too, you crazy bastard,¡± the teen murmured as he tried to shrink himself down even further.


    Circus ignored him, turning his attention back to the gunfight just in time to see a Yakuza footsoldier rest a light machine gun on a windowsill on the second floor. He got off a whole brace of shots, but the Chosen stormtroopers had got wise by this point, and a woman with vivid red hair in a braid that went down to her waist was able to pop off a shot with her rifle that caught the dwarf right in the arm.


    A sound grabbed Circus¡¯ attention. Not the gunfire in front of him, but a sharp noise buried amongst the ambient din of the city¡¯s streets. Half a minute later, the battling gangsters started to hear it as well, before an armoured truck turned the corner in a squeal of tyres, with lights and sirens on full blast.


    The truck was red, trimmed with white and with the white silhouette of an armoured, winged woman in profile on the side, a shield on one arm while the other was outstretched; a hand reaching out for anyone that needs it. Below the art, angled white letters spelled out ¡®Valkyrie Paramedical.¡¯


    The shooting abruptly tapered off as the vehicle came to a stop mere feet from the gunfight, its flashing lights bathing Yakuza and Chosen alike in a red glow as a harsh and distorted voice blared from speakers on the vehicle.


    ¡°Stand clear of the patient!¡±


    Circus reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a pair of sports sunglasses. Flipping them open with one hand and putting them on, the AR overlay let him see the vivid red hazard warnings that had sprung up around the wounded salaryman.


    On the roof of the truck, a pair of automated light machine guns swung into action as the vehicle¡¯s driver used his control rig to point one at the Chosen stormtroopers in front of him, and the other at the Yakuza building beside him. Simultaneously, two doors slid open just behind the driver¡¯s compartment and a quartet of armed gunmen stormed out.


    The security team was dressed in red fatigues and white body armour, fanning out  out in front of the patient and dropping to one knee as they kept their assault rifles trained on the gangers. Behind them, a trio of paramedics leapt out of the vehicle. Like the guards, their jumpsuits were red with white trim, but their armour was lighter and much more flexible. Two of them were carrying a stretcher, while the last had a bulky case of first aid supplies.


    The Chosen watched nervously as the paramedics took up positions around their wounded client, cutting away clothing and applying dressings to the gunshot wounds before carefully yet quickly shifting the unconscious salaryman onto the stretcher. The barrel of one of the Chosen¡¯s guns drifted up ever-so-slightly, only for a more senior member to push it back down.


    The patient was carried back into the van and, just as quickly as they arrived, the security guards piled back into the ambulance. The automated guns remained trained on the warring gangs as the ambulance pulled past them, before a single shot broke the silence as one of the Chosen took the opportunity to shoot a dwarf who¡¯d poked his head out of the window.


    Circus was pretty confident the dwarf wasn¡¯t part of the Yakuza, and was, in fact, just a resident of the building who maybe thought the siren represented the salvation of a Knight Errant patrol, rather than just some Valkyries out to protect their customer. It didn¡¯t really matter either way, as both gangs recommenced firing in earnest while the ambulance¡¯s guns swivelled back into neutral as it made to turn the corner, confident that the gunfight was no threat to its precious cargo.


    If anything, the brief pause had made the fight all the fiercer. The Chosen were better organised, a woman with an old-world American flag spread across the back of her jacket stepping up to fill the void of their dead leader. She had half of the stormtroopers unload their magazines into the front of the building, accenting their fusillade with tossed grenades that fell short of the mark but still forced the Yakuza back.


    Simultaneously, the lieutenant grabbed the other half of her force and shoved them out into the open one-by-one ¨C from the way she manhandled men twice her size, her arms had to be cybernetics ¨C where her shouts and vague threats encouraged them to make another rush for the door.


    Their entry went more successfully than the last, and soon the flash of gunfire was visible from the windows on the second floor of the building as the Chosen began to fight their way through the Yakuza lab.


    But the Yakuza weren¡¯t dead yet, and soon one of the windows shattered outwards as they countered the Chosen¡¯s advance with grenades. Moments later, the window was filled with the imposing bulk of an ork, laughing down at the Chosen from behind a metal faceplate as he rested a heavy machine gun on the windowsill.


    A bullet sparked off his faceplate before he was able to open fire, his right eye sparking as it was crushed by the shift of its reinforced housing. That only made the ork laugh louder, before all noise was drowned out by the violent outburst of the HMG.


    Shots tore through the Chosen¡¯s vans like they weren¡¯t even there, ripping through the footsoldiers who sought shelter behind them. The newly-promoted lieutenant staggered back as she was hit, the bullet passing clean through her and exiting through the stripes of the flag on her back, before falling back onto the road.


    The Chosen ¨C the ones still outside the building ¨C were all dead, but the ork still kept firing his machine gun into the trucks, gleefully laughing as the engines sparked. He began moving the gun in an elliptical pattern that grew ever wider until it covered not just the vans but the buildings on the other side of the street.


    Circus saw she shots coming, moving with preternatural quickness as he bent to the right to avoid the angle of incoming fire. The shots tore through the front of the stall, disintegrating packets of dried noodles and filling the air with gas as they cut through the refrigerators. But then the deafening crescendo ended as the ork¡¯s gun ran dry, and Circus simply sat back up.


    He looked down at the cowering teen, who¡¯d only just stopped screaming.


    ¡°Told you,¡± he said, briefly considering finishing his food before fishing a sliver of shrapnel out of the bowl and deciding against it.


    Instead, with the battle done and the lunchtime entertainment over, Circus simply wandered off down the street with his hands in his jacket pockets, as the few survivors of the Yakuza stumbled out the front door of the tenement block to gawk at the carnage and strip the dead Chosen of their guns, drugs, credsticks and commlinks.


    His path through the city streets was purposefully erratic, passing along the pedways and beneath the towering apartment blocks of the New Estates, all grey concrete and brutalist shapes, the slab-sided forms broken up by hanging washing, second-hand air conditioner units and all the other accoutrements of life that messed up the architect¡¯s perfect vision.


    Circus ducked into a corner shop, making a beeline for the chilled racks of soft drinks near the entrance. Once he¡¯d paid for the drink, he walked a little further before taking a seat on a plastic bench that was positioned with a prime view down onto the sparse grass of the small park that occupied the courtyard of the estate.


    The bench was hard plastic, with little circles of metal where spikes once sat to prevent anyone using the bench to sleep on, before one of the city¡¯s more committed transients took a file to them. Circus sat his can down on the bench, using the motion to hide the way he slipped his fingers into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a narrow datashard he¡¯d been carrying since the night before. Quickly, he slipped the shard into the pocket of the man next to him - a dark-skinned human wearing a suit under a raincoat who was seemingly occupied by the AR feed of his cybereyes.


    Circus put on his own glasses for a moment ¨C just long enough to confirm that the payment for the job had been transferred ¨C as his client stood up, before leaning back in his seat and watching a domestic argument on the sixth floor of the building opposite while he finished his soda.


    Once the can was empty he crushed it in his palm and tossed it aside, blending into the foot traffic as he made his way out of the estates, taking the metro deep into the haphazard, older sprawl of the original North End.


    Circus moved a lot more confidently through these streets; he¡¯d got his job done, so there was no reason to be so careful to ensure he wasn¡¯t being followed. He moved a little quicker, his hips swinging a little more as he looked around the neighbourhood with the comfortable familiarity of someone who was coming home.


    His hands found their way naturally into his pockets, drifting away from the machine pistol tucked into a holster in his jacket, the punch dagger in his boot and the stiletto knife strapped to the back of his belt.


    They stayed there even as a pair of gangers almost walked into him as they came around a corner. The first was a woman in a skimpy red leotard that brought to mind old-time strongmen, and the look was only enhanced by the layers of muscle that made up her body. It clearly wasn¡¯t muscle she¡¯d gained naturally; there were still visible seams and silicone injection marks, and the muscles were held together in place by cyberware that poked out of her skin.


    Her companion was a gangly orkish man in a tight fitting purple and black patterned jumpsuit, with his face replaced by a white armoured plate that had black teardrops falling from his eyes. Unlike her companion ¨C who looked like she preferred to let her fists do the talking ¨C he was armed, with the barrel of a shotgun resting on his shoulder as he looked down at Circus.


    ¡°Watch it, norm,¡± he said. ¡°Coulda got¡¯cher filth on my suit.¡±


    ¡°Shit, and it¡¯s such a nice outfit as well,¡± his friend drawled. ¡°Be a real shame to ruin it like that. What¡¯cha doing in this neighbourhood, anyway?¡± she asked, resting her hands on Circus¡¯ shoulders, enveloping them completely. ¡°Here to look at the freaks, huh?¡± she smiled, but there was no warmth in it. ¡°Here to spy on the freaks?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s no business of yours why I¡¯m here,¡± Circus retorted as he looked the woman dead in the eye. ¡°Can come and go whenever I want.¡±


    ¡°Hah!¡± the ork laughed. ¡°Fuckin¡¯ wiz world you must live in. Think I can get whatever BTL you¡¯re running? Jander right into Medhall tower and spend the night fragging the Valkyries? The Troupe owns this turf, so you pay the toll, show the Troupe respect. An¡¯ that means us, meat.¡±


    ¡°Does it?¡± Circus asked, before jabbing her fingers into the musclefreak¡¯s throat. She staggered back, her hands flying off Circus¡¯ shoulders but unable to actually reach her throat due to the sheer amount of muscle she¡¯d packed onto her arms. Circus followed up the strike by kicking off the wall of the building to her right, bringing her knee up as she jumped and driving it into the side of the strongwoman¡¯s skull.


    She used her target¡¯s shoulder as a springboard for her hand, already aware of the barrel of the shotgun dropping as the cyborg harlequin reacted to her sudden movement, the metal of his faceplate not flexible enough to fully display the shock he was radiating.


    As she soared upside down over the harlequin¡¯s head, Circus reached down and snatched the shotgun from his hands, easily pulling it out of the grip of his cyberarms before landing in a wide-legged crouch. Her hands wrapped around the barrel of the gun, Circus grinned wildly as she used the ganger¡¯s faceplate as a target, driving the metal butt of the shotgun into it with enough force that the faceplate cracked, the circuitry of the harlequin¡¯s optics sparking as they were forced out of their housing.


    Blind, disorientated and in agony, the ork went down to a single kick to the chest. Circus tossed the shotgun into the air, catching it by the trigger with one hand before pressing the barrel of the shotgun against the human woman¡¯s bulked-up thigh.


    The crack of the shotgun echoed throughout the street as synthetic muscle and silicone cosmetic pads sprayed against the wall, the strongwoman howling as her leg gave out from under her. Circus looked between her and her companion, before deciding that the strongwoman was the more lucid of the pair. So she pressed the barrel of the shotgun against her throat.


    ¡°Refresh my memory, omae,¡± Circus said, conversationally. ¡°I¡¯m around here a lot, and I don¡¯t remember anybody saying anything about a toll.¡±


    Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    ¡°Shit, man, we didn¡¯t know you was from here!¡± the strongwoman pleaded, forcing the words out past her damaged trachea. ¡°Gang¡¯s got the whole district on lockdown ¡®cos the wolves and the dragons are on the fuckin¡¯ warpath over that wageslave the pawns snatched! We figured why not make some jing while the sun¡¯s shining, right? No harm in it!¡±


    ¡°Uh huh,¡± Circus drawled, looking down at what was left of the woman¡¯s thigh. ¡°Hope you made a lot, ¡®cos fixing that is going to cost you. Didn¡¯t nobody ever tell you not to shit where you eat? You wanna rob people, go nuts. Just do it the fuck away from here. And pick your fucking targets better.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re not gonna geek us?¡± the wounded ganger asked ¨C quietly, like she didn¡¯t quite believe it.


    ¡°I¡¯m not your damn boss,¡± Circus said. ¡°You want to play box fort in the streets, that¡¯s your business.¡± She moved the barrel of the gun away from her target¡¯s throat, jamming it into her open wound and grinning at the hiss of pain that produced. ¡°So long as you aren¡¯t so stupid it brings down heat on me, I couldn¡¯t care less what you do. And while you scrape up the cash and time to fix this¡± ¨C Circus twisted the barrel ¨C ¡°you¡¯ll have plenty of opportunity to think about your mistakes.¡±


    Circus pulled back the shotgun, looking it over for a moment before holding it by the barrel in her left hand as she slammed the bolt forwards, warping the metal and jamming the gun, and tossed it aside.


    She was whistling as she walked down the street with her hands back in her pockets, her eyes passing appreciatively across the gaudy murals that decorated the walls of the run-down tenement buildings, built in layers of brick, concrete and scrap metal as new growth was piled onto the old.


    The murals themselves were likewise a mismatch of different styles, sizes and subjects. Her gaze lingered on a portrait of a human woman that had been painted onto the bricked-up window of one building, so intricate in its detail that it could only have been done by someone with cybernetic optics or those Awakened who ¨C like Circus ¨C could channel mana into their body and enhance their sight.


    Another painting covered the whole front of a row of buildings, vivid lines of paint stretching across boarded-up windows and crawling up rusted fire escapes as they created the unmistakable image of a feathered serpent, stripped down to its most fundamental lines.


    Across the street itself, burned-out vans had been dragged into place and covered in sheet metal, garbage sacks and piles of bricks to make a barricade that blocked off almost all of the street, with only a single narrow route for people to make their way through. Circus frowned at the sight; it was a complete eyesore.


    Some more kids were sitting on the barricade, dressed in a similar motley of different outfits that flaunted skin and prioritised self-expression over any actual united style. A human girl with a vibrant pink mohawk leant forwards as Circus approached, and for a moment her hand drifted to the revolver that was strapped to her bare thigh before recognition dawned in her eyes and she returned to lazily reclining on the barricade, waving off a couple of the newer teens as they eyed Circus suspiciously.


    Circus didn¡¯t even consider for a moment using the small gap in the barricade, instead leaping up onto the roof of one of the derelict vans in a single bound. Before her was what was once a fairly busy intersection, before urban planning relegated it into a side road and the lingering aftereffects of a cyberattack on the city¡¯s GridLink system saw it become a dead spot through which no grid-linked traffic flowed.


    Inevitably, the intersection had been repurposed as those on the fringes of society made use of a space that society had forgotten about. Most of the old road was now filled with shacks and stalls in a makeshift market, daubed with a dozen different multicoloured flags and neo-anarchist tags. A middle-aged dwarf was tossing cuts of unidentifiable meat on a griddle pan, while next to her a number of couches had been set around a stolen trideo screen and protected from the elements by a corrugated iron roof and net curtains. A tattoo parlour had been set up in a small shack, while a wizened old troll sat on the porch of its oversized neighbour, grinding alchemical reagents with a mortar and pestle.


    Directly below the barricade, a hairless male human was levering great iron struts into place with the help of his oversized exoskeleton, coated in bronzed plates of metal. From her position above him, Circus could see the dividing line between the stumps of his shoulders and the circuitry that was woven into his salvaged lifting rig. He was looking up at her, and there was a pneumatic hiss as he raised an oversized hand in greeting.


    ¡°Hey Circus, welcome back,¡± he said. ¡°Have a good trip?¡±


    ¡°Eh, same old shit,¡± Circus replied as she leapt down from the barricade. ¡°The fuck¡¯s all this, Trainwreck?¡±


    ¡°Tensions are running high with so many fascists in town,¡± he shrugged, the action looking a little like an industrial accident. ¡°I¡¯ve been wanting an excuse to build a barricade for years, so I figured why the fuck not take advantage? Everyone else just kind of joined in.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a fucking eyesore,¡± Circus commented.


    ¡°So I¡¯ll tear it down when things calm down,¡± Trainwreck said. ¡°Or some artsy types will get at it, make it look as ¡®good¡¯ as the rest of this place,¡± he said, his eyes drifting disapprovingly over the murals, pennants and gaudy stalls. ¡°Not everyone likes the whole funfair look, you know.¡±


    ¡°Not everyone can make it work,¡± Circus snarked back. ¡°Whatever. You do you.¡±


    She left Trainwreck to play with his toys, passing largely anonymously through the outdoor market. Most people there didn¡¯t recognise her, though her comparatively mundane style of dress did earn her a few wary or dismissive glances. Only a few of the people there ¨C the ones who¡¯d been there the longest, or who she¡¯d just taken an interest in for one reason or another ¨C recognised her and nodded in greeting.


    Circus paid them no mind, pulling her jacket tight as she slipped into one of the buildings that fronted onto the intersection. She made her way up a miraculously intact and powered elevator that took her all the way to the top floor.


    At one point the building might have played host to a number of neat yet cramped apartments, with each unit containing one family of varying sizes crammed into a space that was just about tolerable for a couple with small children, but became unwieldy when those children grew or elderly relatives entered the picture.


    Since the neighbourhood fell off the grid, however, walls had been knocked down and rooms repurposed until it was turned into a squatter¡¯s paradise, with open-plan lounges, graffiti on every wall and enough stolen furniture to fill an entire mansion.


    Circus¡¯ apartment was a little oasis of security in the anarchy; one of the few intact rooms separated from the rest of the space by a heavy door and an electronic lock that gave way as Circus tapped her commlink against it.


    Inside, the space was no less anarchic than the rest of the building, with mismatched paintings and statues covering haphazardly placed furniture. But a skilled eye would recognise that almost all of the art hadn¡¯t come from the market below, but from galleries and private residences. The furniture, too, was expensive enough that it was well out of the reach of almost all the city¡¯s residents.


    Circus eagerly shrugged her jacket off, tossing it across an obscure piece of pre-Awakening sculpture she¡¯d liberated from the penthouse of a local NeoNet shot-caller as she stepped into her walk-in wardrobe, shrugging off the rest of her clothes as she went.


    Her hand drifted past sensible jackets and pants in masculine cuts before landing on a garish green and white leotard that was cut high on one leg and went down to her ankle on the other, with the same disparity repeated in the length of the sleeves. She completed the look with a short-sleeved green jacket that didn¡¯t even reach her waist and a pair of thigh-high boots in the same colour, before sitting herself down in front of a mirror and painstakingly applying make-up to her face.


    Once the face in the mirror matched the vision in her head, Circus looked at the chalk-white face paint and green lipstick and smiled, a manic grin that grew wider by the second before she sprung out of her seat and made right for the door of the apartment, snagging a bottle of real Islay scotch on her way out.


    Carrying her drink, Circus vaulted over a sofa and bent down in front of a minifridge, fishing out a plastic bottle of Jaguar Cola ¨C Stuffer Shack¡¯s own-brand entry in the endless and occasionally bloody war of the brown soft drinks ¨C and grabbing a red plastic cup from the top of the fridge. From there, she simply clambered out the window ¨C long devoid of any glass ¨C and sprawled herself out over a couch that had been precariously set out on a crumbling balcony overlooking the intersection below.


    Circus popped the cork out of the scotch with her teeth, spitting it out and letting it roll over the edge of the balcony, before pouring a dash into the cup and drowning it in cola.


    She let out a contented sigh as she drank, sinking even further back into the couch as she set her bottle down on the ground and watched the sunset. Her attention was only drawn away when another woman stepped over the window.


    ¡°Whirligig,¡± Circus said, waving her plastic cup in greeting.


    She was a young elven woman with her face hidden behind her long hair. Her coat was practical and long, with a high collar and a hem down by her knees, but beneath it she was dressed for work in revealing clothes that came off easily.


    ¡°Hey, Circus,¡± the elf said as she leant against the wall of the balcony, looking out over the rooftops with her arms folded. ¡°So¡­ I was wondering if there was anything else you could teach me? I¡¯m bringing in more money than I was before ¨C more exotic, I guess¡­¡± she smiled, awkwardly, her right hand reaching up to brush some of her hair back from her pointed ear.


    ¡°More money is nice,¡± Circus mused as she poured herself another drink, this time adding more scotch than cola. ¡°I guess I can teach you some more techniques, make your dances really shine and show you how to properly bust a guy¡¯s balls. Hmmm¡­¡±


    She paused for a moment, pretending to think it over as she tapped the surface of her drink with her index finger, watching the ripples spread across the cup.


    ¡°Ten thousand and I¡¯ll give you five days. Lessons every morning, so you can still get to work in the afternoon.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s, uh,¡± Whirligig stammered. ¡°That¡¯s a lot.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s manageable,¡± Circus retorted. ¡°Not in the mood to haggle. You¡¯re bringing in more ¡®cos I taught you how to channel mana, combine mind and body. Enlightenment takes work, work takes cred.¡±


    Circus turned back to the view in front of her as she took a gulp from her cup, feeling the scotch rolling down her throat. All the while, she was aware of Whirligig pacing up and down the balcony behind her, her head bowed and deep in thought. She was aware, too, of how each step Whirligig took was carefully placed, how much effort she¡¯d put into sculpting her body and opening her mind until she¡¯d gained a preternatural amount of control over her movements.


    For an escort, that sort of perfect body control could be very useful indeed. Both for the physical effects and the mystique it gave her. A mystique she could package up and sell.


    ¡°I¡¯ll get the cred,¡± Whirligig said ¨C quickly, like she was afraid the words wouldn¡¯t come out if she didn¡¯t hurry. ¡°Gotta be ready to do anything to get ahead, right?¡±


    ¡°Truth of the world,¡± Circus shrugged, looking at the bottle of cola with a frown. With a flick of her wrist she spilled what was left in her cup over the floor, then put about a shot glass¡¯ worth of scotch in before holding it out for Whirligig. ¡°Here, take this. New business needs a toast, or whatever.¡±


    ¡°Thank you,¡± Whirligig said, a little of her professional demeanour slipping into her tone as she took a sip.


    Circus simply set the soda bottle aside and took a swig directly from the bottle of scotch, sighing in satisfaction.


    ¡°No idea why I thought that would work,¡± she muttered to herself as Whirligig sat down in an armchair, nursing her drink. ¡°I¡¯ll try lemonade next time.¡±


    ¡°Hoi, chummers!¡± another voice said from above them, and Whirligig¡¯s head spun around as a taksuit-clad figure dropped down from the rooftop.


    Circus looked back much more leisurely, having noticed Imp¡¯s approach.


    But it was close, she thought to herself with a slight frown. She¡¯s getting better.


    Imp was dressed in a skin-tight dark grey taksuit coated in patches by concrete and brick dust from where she¡¯d been clambering over rooftops. A black scarf was wrapped around her long neck, one end dangling down over her back like a half-cape, while an assortment of knives and pouches was belted to her waist, with a machine pistol in a holster on her right thigh and a long-range monocular on her left.


    Her face was hidden behind a pale grey mask bearing the visage of a horned, grinning demon with black lenses in place of eyes. The mask was open at the back to leave her hair free, which she¡¯d dyed with a long purple streak.


    She was carrying a bottle of beer in one hand and somebody else¡¯s jewellery box in the other, which she tossed to one side as she sat down on the very edge of the balcony, with her feet dangling over the edge. She reached up and took her mask off, setting it aside before bringing the beer bottle up to her mouth and using a tusk to pop the cap off.


    Imp drank almost half the bottle at once, setting it back down and letting out a contented sigh before picking up the jewellery box and forcing it open with a quick finger-punch.


    ¡°A little lighter than usual, Imp,¡± Circus said, nodding at the beer.


    ¡°It¡¯s pre-drinks,¡± the eighteen year old said as she held up a jewel-encrusted choker to her throat. ¡°Look at all the people down there. Everyone¡¯s all scared and huddled together for warmth like¡­ uh, whatever those black and white birds are. Seen ¡®em on trideo.¡±


    ¡°Pelicans?¡± Circus asked.


    ¡°Sure, whatever,¡± Imp answered half-heartedly. ¡°Point is, someone down there is going to break out the spirits, someone else is going to plug in a sound system and then everyone is going to start having a good time.¡±


    ¡°What is it like out there?¡± Whirligig asked. ¡°I¡¯ve been here all day.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s kicking off,¡± Imp looked back, grinning ear to ear. ¡°I kicked it off. Hid on a rooftop and chucked a firebomb at the pawns.¡±


    ¡°But¡­¡± Whirligig started. ¡°You know the humans are the ones protesting Knight Errant right? I mean, this time?¡±


    ¡°¡¯Course,¡± Imp smiled. ¡°Watching those wannabee stormtroopers get tear gassed and beaten was better than any trideo I¡¯ve ever seen. Oh don¡¯t give me that look,¡± she snapped to Whirligig. ¡°The amount of weapons they pulled out, it was clear they were going to kick off sooner or later. I just made it happen on my time, not theirs.¡±


    ¡°Uh huh,¡± Whirligig sounded unconvinced. ¡°And what if the riot comes here?¡±


    ¡°Then we cut their balls off and nail them to the shiny new wall,¡± Imp replied. ¡°Who gives a shit?¡±


    ¡°Sure we will,¡± Whirligig sighed. ¡°Anyway, I¡¯ve gotta go. Can¡¯t be late for work, and can¡¯t miss work because someone poked the cops into closing off districts.¡±


    ¡°Have fun, omae!¡± Imp drawled sarcastically, before her attention was drawn to an amethyst on the end of a necklace. ¡°If you ever want to frag over rich assholes rather than getting fragged by them, you know where we¡¯ll be.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll see you tomorrow morning,¡± Circus said. ¡°Be ready to build up a sweat, and bring your first payment.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, sure,¡± Whirligig answered as she made her way back through the squat.


    Circus sank back into her seat, taking another swig of scotch until the silence was broken once again by Imp.


    ¡°You¡¯re being pretty chill right now,¡± she observed. ¡°Normally when the greasepaint comes out you¡¯re about ready to tear up the town.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s like you said; things are going to get interesting later. But even now the tension¡¯s thick in the air, getting in my blood. Remember I said part of being an adept is opening your mind to the world? Maybe you¡¯ve noticed it yourself.¡±


    ¡°Shit,¡± Imp chuckled. ¡°I thought that was just the ADD.¡±


    ¡°Imp ¨C Aisha,¡± Circus began, ¡°I¡¯ve gotta ask, why¡¯d you keep coming round here? You¡¯re not paying me for lessons anymore, didn¡¯t take me up on my offer to partner up ¨C and I know that¡¯s not ¡®cos of the seventy-thirty split because I know you don¡¯t care about money.¡±


    ¡°¡¯Aint kicked me out yet, have you?¡± Aisha drawled, though there was a little heat to it. ¡°Nah, but seriously, I just like this place.¡± She swept out an arm in front of her, encompassing the people thronging the market below. ¡°There¡¯s a lot of people down there. You¡¯ve got drifters who stuck around, queer folk looking for community, transhumanists shedding their meat, bad artists who can¡¯t make it big, good artists who just like the vibe¡± ¨C she gave Circus a pointed look ¨C ¡°people who couldn¡¯t make it out there but found something here instead. Here¡¯s the one place in the city I can be myself, which is more than I¡¯ll find with my family.¡±


    Aisha slapped her palm down on the balcony, an angry look in her eyes.


    ¡°I mean, shit, he gets shot at for a living but I¡¯ve got to live a ¡®normal life?¡¯ Finish school, get a job, get a fucking SIN ¨C like I want a government leash around my neck? He¡¯s never said it but I see it in his cybereyes every time I let him see me. I mean, where the fuck does he get off worrying about me? What gives him the right?¡±


    She let out an angry sigh before seeming to calm a little, picking up her mask and lying flat on her back as she stared into its snarling visage.


    ¡°You should see ¡®my¡¯ room in his basic-ass wageslave apartment. It¡¯s all flatpack furniture, cream walls and monochrome bedsheets. How¡¯s that ever gonna compare to a place like this?¡±


    ¡°How is Shadowrunning working out for him, anyway?¡± Circus asked, after Aisha had quietened.


    ¡°Think he¡¯s got a new fixer,¡± Aisha answered. ¡°They¡¯ve been going to this club in Constitution Hill a lot. Got a new member, too. Another girl, maybe a couple years older than me. Means Brian and the cute twink are outnumbered.¡±


    Circus laughed. ¡°And the new girl? Is she cute?¡±


    Aisha took a while to answer. ¡°Nah, I don¡¯t think so. Cute¡¯s a very specific kind of attractive. New girl¡¯s a troll ¨C skinnier than most ¨C with legs for days and fuckin¡¯ awesome horns, but I¡¯d say she¡¯s more statuesque than cute. In a good way.¡±


    All around them, speakers mounted on the buildings around the intersection suddenly burst into life with a sharp blast of static, before switching over to deafening music that was so indie it¡¯d probably never even been heard beyond the boundary of the intersection¡¯s new barricades.


    ¡°That¡¯s more like it,¡± Circus said as she stood up, draining the last of the scotch in a few big gulps. ¡°Everyone was too fucking scared down there.¡±


    ¡°Damn right!¡± Aisha exclaimed as she slipped her mask back over her face before rolling forwards right over the edge of the balcony, her descent almost completely soundless as she climbed down the front of the building.


    Circus tossed the empty bottle aside and strode right up to the edge of the balcony, bowing like a trapeze artist to nobody in particular before leaping off the edge with a gymnast¡¯s grace.

 Phishing: 4.01

    ¡°Would you care for some refreshments?¡± the serpent asked as we sat down, his razorgirl bodyguard moving over to the fridge, and the bottle stacked on top of it. ¡°Alcohol does very little for someone my size, but I understand it is still traditional in certain circles to drink a toast to new business.¡±


    Mom would be disappointed in me for it, but I was expecting him to drag out the ¡®s¡¯ sounds in his speech. Instead, he only struggled slightly to enunciate the harder consonants.


    ¡°Tradition has its place¡± ¨C Grue said, admirably composed in the face of perhaps the second most unexpected client we could have faced after a resurrected Dunkelzahn ¨C ¡°but we all have to move with the times.¡±


    ¡°My philosophy exactly,¡± Mr Johnson said, before his lips moved in what I thought might be a smile. ¡°Besides, I have no hands. So I can¡¯t clink glasses.¡±


    Across from me, Lisa¡¯s mouth curled up in a wry smile. I couldn¡¯t tell if she actually found the attempt at humour amusing, or if she was just humouring our client.


    ¡°An intriguing piece of data recently fell into my grasp,¡± the serpent continued, the levity draining out of his tone in an instant. ¡°It concerned an illegal operation being run out of a Medhall facility in this city.¡±


    Brian¡¯s eyes momentarily flicked over to me while Lisa blinked, slowly ¨C maybe satisfied that she¡¯d managed to solve the mystery of that anonymous online purchaser.


    ¡°We can verify the validity of the information,¡± Brian said, though there was a faint hint of disappointment in his tone; if that was all the serpent had dragged us out here for, we wouldn¡¯t be taking much of a payout.


    ¡°I saw to that myself,¡± Mr Johnson remarked offhandedly. ¡°Not that I had any reason to doubt your hacker¡± ¨C his elliptically-pupiled yellow eyes drifted briefly over the group, assessing us at a glance before landing unerringly on me ¨C ¡°but I had no reason to trust her either. Once the data was verified, I reached out to the owner of the auction house.¡±


    He bared his teeth, in a gesture that might have been a smile but that really didn¡¯t fit on his face.


    ¡°This ¡®Faultline¡¯ was closed-lipped about the details of how and why you came across the data, but I¡¯d expect nothing less from someone in her line of work. Truth be told, I¡¯m disinterested in the why and I don¡¯t need to know the how since ultimately the data ended up in my possession. I asked your fixer to arrange this meeting because I need a team in this city who can get results. You qualify.¡±


    ¡°So what exactly do you need us to do?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ve stumbled across a tail in the rainforest. I want you to pull on it and show me the head. Investigate the local human supremacist gang ¨C these ¡®Chosen¡¯ ¨C and answer some questions for me. Where do the shipments go? How are they distributed throughout the network? Who coordinates it all? Then, contact me for further information.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not how we work,¡± Grue countered even as Mr Johnson¡¯s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. ¡°We won¡¯t take on a job with only half the details.¡±


    The client sighed, a short sound that was just this side of being irritated. ¡°It¡¯s no great secret, simply a two stage plan. It is in my interest to place a mole in the Chosen. Once you have identified the coordinator, I simply require you to determine whether he has any vulnerabilities to which leverage could be applied. Mistresses, dependents, behaviours that do not align with his ideology. That sort of thing.¡±


    ¡°So you can blackmail him?¡± Grue asked.


    ¡°What I do or do not do with them, whoever they may be,¡± the serpent countered, ¡°is beyond your concern. I do not care how you find the information I want, so long as the Chosen do not realise what you¡¯re after.¡±


    ¡°You want us to run silent?¡±


    ¡°Not necessarily. If your last client sent you to retrieve this data you wouldn¡¯t have sold it. I¡¯m sure you¡¯re inventive enough to create suitable smokescreens.¡±


    Grue leant back in his seat, looking between the rest of us. Tattletale simply smiled, curiosity burning like fire in her eyes. I nodded immediately, before doubts could creep into my mind. Regent shrugged his shoulders, while Bitch sent a quick pulse to Grue¡¯s cyberware, the datastream all the more visible in the null space of the faraday cage.


    ¡°We¡¯re used to having a clearer target to go after,¡± Grue said as he turned back to the serpent, ¡°but we can handle this job. Subject to the proper payment, of course.¡±


    ¡°Naturally,¡± Mr Johnson nodded, baring his teeth. ¡°I am prepared to offer forty thousand nuyen.¡±


    Eight thousand per person¡­ I thought. That¡¯s a lot more than our last runs.


    ¡°As a lump sum?¡± Grue asked, pretending like he wasn¡¯t impressed. ¡°This could take a while. A retainer fee would-¡±


    ¡°Would slow down your investigation,¡± the serpent countered, cutting Grue off. ¡°I¡¯m not interested in haggling like some flea market carpet seller.¡±


    He turned and looked at the ork shaman behind him, who stepped forwards and pulled a hard plastic folder out of his jacket. He set it down on the coffee table, turning it to face us before flipping the folder open. Inside was a faintly-glowing sheet of electronic paper, with plain white letters on black text. A contract, of all things.


    The ork reached into his jacket again and set a wood-coated stylus down next to the paper, before returning to his position opposite the elf.


    Grue was looking down at the paper with uncertainty starting to creep through his controlled expression. It was understandable; this was a bit beyond the world he was used to. He probably hadn¡¯t had to sign a contract since renting his apartment.


    Instinctively, I reached out into the claustrophobically small confines of the faraday cage, twisting the scant resonance emanating from my body into a flat surface on which I projected the file. I started looking through the contract; the non-disclosure agreement, task to be completed and payment details provided.


    I was almost expecting a mafia-like promise of violent retribution if the contact was ever breached, but it was almost depressingly dry. Not that I really understood what regular contracts looked like, even outside of the cutthroat world of Shadowrunning. Dad had more than a few old contracts and agreements stored in his files, but while I enjoyed rifling through his memories I hadn¡¯t yet got desperate enough to start rifling through case law.


    Grue reached out to take the contact, and as he did I saw Tattletale subtly trying to grab his attention with pointed looks that went from staring exasperatedly at him to hungrily devouring what little of the contract she could see. I quickly compiled a message and sent it to Grue¡¯s cybereyes.


    ?I think Tattletale knows something about contracts?


    He didn¡¯t acknowledge the message, but he smoothly took hold of the folder and held it out to Tattletale, who nodded gracefully before scanning through the document.


    ¡°No salary, no listed hours,¡± Tattletale murmured as she read through, loud enough that we could hear it, ¡°and the part for our signatures has a clarification that the names we put down don¡¯t have to be tied to any SIN.¡± Her eyes flicked between Grue and our client. ¡°This is more of a receipt than a contract.¡±


    ¡°I like to track my outgoings,¡± the serpent said, baring his teeth in another predatory smile. Or a genuine one, I supposed. It¡¯s not his fault how he looks. ¡°Financial security is the foundation of a good life.¡±


    ¡°Perhaps,¡± Tattletale smiled, before turning back to the rest of us, handing the folder back to Grue. ¡°There¡¯re no traps that I can see. It¡¯s as straightforward as a contract gets.¡±


    ¡°Okay,¡± Grue said, leaning back in his seat as he scrolled down the electronic page to the section for signatures. He reached out to the coffee table, grabbing the stylus and bringing it to the paper, but not signing. Not quite yet.


    ¡°So we have a decision to make,¡± he said, turning away from our client to look at us. ¡°We know the job and we know the price. Take it, or leave it?¡±


    ¡°Take it,¡± I answered quickly, as Tattletale cocked her eyebrow in exaggerated surprise, but with real interest in her eyes. I faltered a little at that, and if the client hadn¡¯t been right there I would have explained my reasoning.


    The last job was an investigation as well, and we did fine. Besides, I thought to myself, I¡¯ll get to hunt through the Matrix again.


    ¡°I¡¯m in,¡± Tattletale said, her expression smoothing changing to an eager smile. ¡°It sounds interesting.¡±


    ¡°It pays good,¡± Bitch nodded. ¡°I say we do it.¡±


    ¡°You know, for once I agree with you,¡± Regent confirmed, and with that we were unanimous ¨C I seriously doubted Grue would turn down a paycheck like this, and even if he wasn¡¯t lured in he still wouldn¡¯t overrule the rest of us. This wasn¡¯t that kind of group, and he wasn¡¯t that kind of leader no matter his confidence.


    Sure enough, Grue quickly signed the contract before passing it to me. I noted that he¡¯d signed it with his Shadowrunner handle, so I quickly scrawled out ¡®Bug¡¯ in cursive. The name didn¡¯t quite seem to fit as well anymore ¨C it felt a little close to the person who¡¯d hidden away in her apartment for two years ¨C but it wasn¡¯t like I could do anything about that right now.


    I passed the folder over to Bitch, on the next couch, and soon enough it had made its way down the chain; Tattletale setting both it and the stylus back down on the coffee table where they were swiftly collected by our new client¡¯s bodyguard.


    ¡°Now that the formalities are over and done with,¡± the serpent said, like our acceptance was just a foregone conclusion, ¡°I will take my leave. My associate will provide you with a number by which you may contact me once you have found the information I seek.¡±


    Making an educated guess, I sent a ping to the cybered-up elf woman and received a short string of numbers connected to an anonymous commlink ¨C one not tied to any particular persona. I quickly relayed the numbers to Grue and loaded them into the others¡¯ persona area networks for good measure.


    ¡°These rooms are booked by the hour,¡± the serpent said, almost conversationally, ¡°so please feel free to make use of it for the remaining time.¡±


    Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    He uncoiled himself from his seat, his lengthy body languidly slithering past us until perhaps ten meters of smooth black scales had gone by. The razorgirl followed him out, her steps completely soundless until her metal feet hit the hard floor of the corridor outside.


    ¡°So,¡± Grue began once the door had swung shut, leaving us alone save for the panoramic view of the bustling apple orchard, ¡°how are we going to play this?¡±


    ¡°The Chosen are busy right now,¡± Tattletale said. ¡°What we did with Garcia kicked the hornet¡¯s nest across the whole city.¡±


    ¡°Luckily he wasn¡¯t the one running the dopadrine network,¡± I said. ¡°Just a duty manager who was in on the scam.¡± I paused for a moment, lost in thought. ¡°I bet their matrix network is bustling right now, trying to fill the gap.¡±


    ¡°The forums too,¡± Grue nodded. ¡°Even if it¡¯s not about the dopadrine, they¡¯ll still be flooded with new members, the riots and everything else going on.¡±


    ¡°Which means a few new usernames on their favourite forums won¡¯t draw attention,¡± Tattletale said, nodding. ¡°Maybe even new faces at their favourite hangouts.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not sure that would work out,¡± Grue said, flicking his tusk. ¡°Bitch is the only one of us who could pass for one of them.¡±


    I nodded. Regent was the right metatype, but he just didn¡¯t fit.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± the man himself interrupted, ¡°but am I the only person here wondering why our client is a giant talking snake?¡±


    ¡°Never heard of Naga before?¡± Tattletale asked him.


    ¡°No! They don¡¯t have those in Quebec.¡±


    ¡°Probably too cold for them,¡± I muttered, smiling, before I remembered what, exactly, Alec had spent his time in Quebec doing.


    ¡°There aren¡¯t that many of them,¡± Grue said. ¡°Maybe a couple hundred thousand, worldwide. Security companies used to catch them and use them as magical attack dogs, before people realised they were sapient.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a bit more than that,¡± Tattletale said. ¡°They pretended to be animals when captured, all while learning about the modern world from their captors. The ones that escaped gathered at Angkor Wat in Cambodia and formed the Naga Kingdom. That¡¯s got to be about eight years ago, now.¡±


    ¡°And this is all stuff you guys just know?¡± Alec asked. I smiled a little; one of my last memories of mom was her talking excitedly about the new sapient species that had just broken its chains and found its own place in the world.


    ¡°I¡¯d never heard of them,¡± Bitch deadpanned. ¡°Just didn¡¯t see any point in asking.¡±


    ¡°It does raise some interesting questions,¡± Tattletale said, leaning forwards. ¡°UCAS doesn¡¯t offer citizenship to Naga, so what is one doing in Brockton Bay?¡±


    Hurriedly, I let my mind drift away from meatspace, ignoring the claustrophobic feeling of the faraday cage, and scanned the tiny space for electronics. Nothing, thankfully.


    ¡°Is that really something we should be worrying about?¡± Grue asked, exasperatedly.


    ¡°Of course it is!¡± Tattletale exclaimed. ¡°This isn¡¯t just some local power making a move, or a concerned citizen who¡¯s scraped up the cash. We¡¯re performing reconnaissance for someone, and reconnaissance always comes before something big.¡±


    I spoke up, unintentionally cutting Grue off. ¡°I¡¯ve gotta say, I agree with Tattletale. Even if we don¡¯t go digging, this is weird and I think we do need to talk about it.¡±


    For a moment, it looked like Grue was going to shut the conversation down, like he did when Tattletale brought this up with our last client, but then he sighed.


    ¡°Fine, but we can¡¯t investigate him. If he finds out, we¡¯ll be done. Faultline rolled out the red carpet for this guy; she¡¯d burn us to keep him happy.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s too rich to be SINless,¡± I said. ¡°Unless he works for the Yakuza, I guess, but that doesn¡¯t add up.¡±


    ¡°No, he¡¯s too classy,¡± Tattletale nodded. ¡°Expensive bodyguards, expensive meeting rooms¡­ and then there¡¯s the contract. All of the big ten offer citizenship to Naga, though in a lot of the Japancorps that¡¯s just as high-paid security guards. If our guy is corporate, there¡¯s only a few that fit.¡±


    ¡°Ares,¡± I said. ¡°You¡¯re thinking about Ares.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s definitely a possibility,¡± Lisa nodded. ¡°This city¡¯s already divided politically between Medhall and Ares. Medhall cut ties with Garcia, so maybe Ares wants some dirt that¡¯ll stick?¡±


    ¡°The election for DA is coming up¡­¡± I mused. ¡°If a candidate with ties to Medhall wins, they can cut the teeth out of Knight Errant.¡±


    ¡°And if a candidate is praising Medhall when the company is haemorrhaging drugs to street gangs¡­¡± Tattletale said, letting us fill in the blanks.


    ¡°None of which affects the job,¡± Grue pointed out. ¡°If your guess is even right. I do think he works for a corp, but all that means is that we have to be very careful not to piss him off.¡±


    ¡°Okay, great,¡± Regent cut in. ¡°Don¡¯t piss off the giant Awakened snake, got it. I could have told you that. How are we going to do this?¡±


    ¡°I still think our best bet is to try and sneak into one of their meetings,¡± Tattletale said. ¡°Even if we don¡¯t find anything tied to the distribution network, chances are there¡¯ll be a few dealers there we can follow.¡±


    ¡°I can ask around, but I don¡¯t think I¡¯d get anywhere,¡± Grue said. ¡°I have a couple of gang connections, but with the wrong sorts of gangs. It¡¯s not like they¡¯re going to be advertising these things in the open. It¡¯s about hanging out in the right bars, knowing the right people-¡±


    ¡°Or visiting the right forums,¡± I butted in. ¡°My mom was with the Ork Rights Commission, and I kept all her files. I think there¡¯s some packets on spotting radicalisation in there somewhere that might have a few likely forums.¡±


    ¡°The Ork Rights Commission?¡± Bitch asked, though to her credit she sounded genuinely confused, rather than snide. I doubt there was much talk of policlubs in her cyberpsycho street gang.


    ¡°They do trolls as well,¡± I explained, though it was something that had always frustrated mom; they¡¯d given up too much for a snappy acronym. Mothers of Metahumans had a better name, but mom always used to say they were a bunch of wet blankets who¡¯d never achieve real change.


    ¡°It sounds like as good a place as any to start,¡± Grue nodded.


    ¡°Can¡¯t do it here, though,¡± I said. ¡°Not with the faraday cage. Feels like I¡¯m trapped in a washing machine.¡±


    ¡°Okay. Back to the loft?¡±


    I paused. My first instinct had been to head back home, but was it really the right choice to make? Thinking tactically, it¡¯d be a lot easier to speak to the others if I could actually just¡­ speak to them. Besides, I knew how the Matrix worked, but gang politics were Greek to me.


    ¡°Sounds good,¡± I nodded.


    We left the club via the cloakroom, where I picked up my street clothes, and made our way to where Bitch had parked her van ¨C in a dingy underground car park that charged by the hour. As she weaved her way through the crowds of drunks spilling off the sidewalk and into the street, I let the Matrix flow back into my sight, gladly abandoning the real world now that Bitch had fit a troll-sized seatbelt on my seat.


    I left the van behind, passing invisibly over the city in a burst of data as I made my way back home, recognising the familiar systems long since suffused with my resonance. Mom¡¯s files were on an old physical hard drive, but I¡¯d ordered in an antique adapter so I could wire it into matrix-linked computer dad used to use. Originally it had been so I didn¡¯t have to read through it with a screen, mouse and keyboard ¨C like looking at the world through an antique diving helmet ¨C but it meant that I could access them even from halfway across the city.


    Mom was a true academic, with an academic¡¯s eye for organisation; her folders were a cluttered mess that no doubt made perfect sense to her, but were almost labyrinthine to her own daughter. Sometimes files were arranged by date ¨C grouped together around whatever projects she was working on at that time ¨C while others had been put into haphazard categories that overlapped and in some cases were outright duplicated.


    Still, I was able to work my way through the mass and find some things that might be useful. The most promising files were found in an unexpected place; resources earmarked for use in schools.


    It turned out mom had collaborated on a series of documents meant not for schoolkids, but for their teachers and staff. It contained a list of warning signs for radicalisation; changes in behaviour, off colour jokes being used more often, bullying specifically targeting other metatypes and a long list of media and sites that kids might have been radicalised on.


    There was a report on the programme¡¯s effectiveness; only a third of the schools in the city had signed onto the programme, and most of those were owned by corps. Not Medhall, but the schools run by Ares, Horizon, Maersk, Aztechnology and Saeder-Krupp had all either made use of the materials or coincidentally rolled out their own programmes that contained much of the same information.


    I guess it made sense; can¡¯t have your future employees holding divided loyalties, after all.


    It was the list of sites I was most interested in. The dragon¡¯s share of them were independent ¡®news¡¯ websites, but a lot of the rest were smaller forums that were used as gathering points and chatrooms for racists. Exactly the kind of place where you¡¯d see mods quietly inviting potential prospects into ever more exclusive chatrooms where they could mingle with their fellow radicals until they picked up extremism by osmosis.


    I didn¡¯t smile ¨C there wasn¡¯t any point in the matrix ¨C but I did feel a shiver of satisfaction pass through me, probably similar to the feeling a spider has when it feels the vibrations of a fly landing on its web.


    That feeling wavered, however, as I saw the old way the forums were formatted. I¡¯d missed the obvious; the latest of mom¡¯s files were from twenty seventy three, so all the listed sites had gone down with the old Wired matrix when it was burned by the Jormungand virus and the EMP blasts of fifteen modified atomic bombs detonated at key points on its infrastructure.


    Of course, there were rumours beyond that, and I¡¯d gone digging for them ¨C if only because Crash 2.0 was the whole reason I hadn¡¯t told anybody about me being a technomancer before joining the team. Everyone knew about Winternight; the apocalyptic cult that sought to bring about Ragnar?k by destroying the Matrix, which they believed was the prison of their god Loki. They¡¯d worked alongside a group of rogue otaku ¨C people who could interact with the wired matrix the same way I did with the wireless one ¨C and after they all disappeared, Technomancers seemed a good enough substitute for the world¡¯s rage.


    But in the secretive corners of the new matrix there were other rumours, too. That Ragnarok had been as much a war as a single attack, fought against a rogue AI who sought to make itself god and had taken over the East Coast Stock Exchange to do it. The rumours went that the nukes, Jormungand, the rogue otaku, had all been a way to destroy the AI, before it became powerful enough to destroy everyone else.


    In those strange forums, the AI¡¯s name ¨C DEUS ¨C was almost never typed. There were people out there who lived in fear of its return, who believed that it lay dormant waiting to be resurrected, or that another AI would rise up to take its place.


    Whatever the truth, the new Matrix hadn¡¯t even been built on the ruins of the old it was so thoroughly destroyed. The architects of the wireless network had needed to start completely from scratch, which meant nothing of the old Matrix had been grandfathered in.


    But the people who made those old websites were still around afterwards ¨C most of them, at least ¨C so there was a lot of duplication. Mom¡¯s web addresses ¨C meant to allow school IT techs to block off certain sites from their networks ¨C weren¡¯t useful anymore, but some of the forums had probably sprung up under the same names. I just had to find the right ones.


    I reached out into the matrix and a dragonfly spun to life on my outstretched palm, its golden wings already humming with potential energy. I fed it the names and sent it off into the matrix, watching its golden trail disappear into the constellation of light that made up the city before allowing the Matrix to fade from my view.


    I slumped forwards in my seat, rubbing at my temples to dispel a slight headache as sensations rushed in from meatspace. Tattletale was sitting next to me, and she wordlessly handed me a bottle of water.


    ¡°Thanks,¡± I mumbled as I unscrewed the cap, suddenly realising that I hadn¡¯t drunk or eaten anything since Labyrinth sent me into the resonance realms. I drained the bottle in a couple of gulps ¨C it looked big in Tattletale¡¯s hand, but it was barely what I¡¯d consider a full glass¡¯ worth ¨C and sighed contentedly.


    ¡°I think I have something,¡± I said. ¡°I found a list of forums in my mom¡¯s files. Pre-crash, all of them, but I have a sprite looking to see if any of them came back.¡±


    ¡°Great,¡± Grue said from the front of the van, ¡°we¡¯re almost back at the loft. But, uh, could you give us a little heads up the next time you dive in?¡±


    ¡°You kind of just sat down and fell unconscious,¡± Tattletale said.


    ¡°Ah.¡± Once again I was grateful that blushes don¡¯t show on stone-grey skin. ¡°Sorry about that, it¡¯s kind of instinctive. You could¡¯ve sent me a text, though.¡±


    ¡°No texting at the table,¡± Regent said from the back of the van, with a wry smirk on his face. ¡°Have to talk to each other.¡±


    ¡°Uh huh,¡± I snarked. ¡°I¡¯m sure your family had a lot of fireside chats.¡±


    For the briefest moment, something close to anger passed across Regent¡¯s face and I paled, realising I¡¯d just drawn on information I really wasn¡¯t supposed to know. The moment passed quickly, though, and his face slipped back into placid indifference.


    I was saved from putting my foot further into my mouth by Tattletale falling into a conversation with Brian over our new client, and what exactly this meant for our status as Shadowrunners. Regent joined in and even Bitch put in a word or two, but I was content to just sit back in my seat and listen to the sound of the engine as we made our way back to the loft, and to whatever news my sprite brought.

 Phishing: 4.02

    We sat ourselves down in the loft, Lisa and Alec slipping on their AR-linked glasses as I pulled up half a dozen different windows in front of us, each displaying the rudimentary user-interfaces of random forums buried in the depths of the matrix, renting the processing space of larger hosts that specialised in licencing netsites.


    The others each had a single site in front of them, each one a utilitarian forum cultivated by some niche sub-community and each having a duplicate on mom¡¯s list of suspect sites. I had six sites in front of me, but I hadn¡¯t yet allowed myself to slip completely into cyberspace, staying in AR with the rest of them.


    In anticipation of a long evening, Brian had ordered in from an Amazonian place nearby, the coffee table in the middle of the living room laden with fries mixed with cheese, meat and just about anything else. I was still famished from my digital vision-quest and eagerly picked at an oversized polyester carton that I¡¯d claimed all for myself even as I scrolled through the sites, a woodlouse resting on my shoulder in case I ran across anything interesting.


    ¡®Interesting¡¯ was perhaps the wrong word, to be honest. Most of the posts were generally innocuous enough, usually just responding to whatever was in the news at the time or whatever fake ¡®scandal¡¯ the users had managed to whip themselves into a frenzy over.


    The sheer amount of posts was hard for me to work through, but fortunately we didn¡¯t need anything too old. Gangs could get pretty mobile when they needed to, as the ebb and flow of territorial disputes combined with the occasional police raid or CorpSec clampdown to drive them out to new territories. We needed something active.


    The national boards were no good, either. They had the right people but the wrong scale; much too big to draw in local traffic or latch on to all but the biggest of issues, and their size meant they tended to draw in the more mainstream humanis types, not the local lunatic gang members we needed.


    Still, all the data was useful in helping me build up a picture of the people using the sites. I paid particular attention to duplicate usernames, where someone was active on more than one site, and then narrowed that down to the ones who split their focus between local and national forums, rather than the ones who just lurked on the national and global ones.


    I was looking for people who were interested in metaphobes in their local area; the ones who might want to meet up with like-minded individuals. Once I had the subset I wanted, I broke the data down further by checking the names to see if they lured any users from national boards who later became local users. They were the ones most likely to be gang recruiters.


    I looked at the raw data as much as I could, skimming over the actual content of the sites in favour of pure numbers and subsets. Inevitably, however, I¡¯d trimmed all the fat I could and had to work on the real meat of the issue; identifying which of the posters were the most likely to be in the Chosen by looking at what, exactly, they were saying on the boards.


    There weren¡¯t any shortcuts I could take here, no clever tricks I could pull with the data. I just had to manually scroll through six different comment histories at once, each filled with slurs and racist rhetoric.


    I could handle that ¨C I¡¯d certainly heard my share of it in Winslow from fourteen-year-old boys who thought it made them look edgy. Few of them had said it to my face, though; I was much taller and stronger than them, after all, even if I knew that actually getting physical wouldn¡¯t have ended well.


    What I couldn¡¯t handle were the people who seemed to actually put some thought into what they were saying, even if their twisted thoughts were moving down pathways that I found absolutely obscene. I found it hard to look at some of them, distracting myself by grabbing another handful of fries from the table.


    When I saw a five thousand word long post about how goblinisation was the product of a super-soldier programme and the internment camps back in the twenties were nothing more than an excuse to gather the soldiers into training barracks, I winced reflexively and looked away from the AR window, focusing on the floor of the loft before building up the nerve to look back.


    When I saw x-ray images of a troll that was meant to ¡®prove¡¯ the theory, I flicked the window shut and leant forwards in my chair, rubbing my temples.


    ¡°You okay?¡± Brian asked, a worried look on his face.


    ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± I replied, quickly, leaning back and turning my attention back to the windows, but I just couldn¡¯t bring myself to read anymore right now.


    I blinked, slowly, and let out a sigh, flicking the article in question over to Brian¡¯s view.


    ¡°It¡¯s just¡­ It¡¯s not easy reading, I guess. I¡¯ll be cool, though, just need a sec.¡± Digital information gathering was my area of expertise, after all. I didn¡¯t want to let the team down.


    I could see Brian scrolling through the ¡®article¡¯ with a placid expression on his face, only the slightest tilt of his eyebrows giving away any emotion at all.


    It took me a while to figure out why he was able to just shrug it off like that, but then I remembered what I¡¯d seen when I crossed the event horizon. We¡¯d lived different lives.


    Growing up, I¡¯d always been surrounded by dockworkers. For the most part, those were the people I interacted with ¨C whenever dad had to come into work to sort something out, he¡¯d leave me with a creche or just let me wander the offices knowing with absolute certainty that I was safe amongst their company. I wouldn¡¯t have really called any of them friends ¨C if nothing else, it was very rarely the same kids each time just because of how big the organisation was ¨C but it wasn¡¯t like I¡¯d had many friends in the first place.


    I was always aware of mom¡¯s political work, of course, but she tended to discuss it in much the same way she talked about her literature classes, and I guess I always saw it in those same academic terms. It was different seeing everything she fought against laid bare before me.


    But Brian didn¡¯t grow up amongst dockworkers, and he hadn¡¯t spent the last two years shut up inside with the worst parts of the world closed off from his own personal echo chamber. What had been rare, scary incidents for me growing up were just a part of life to him. Part of the world. No wonder he¡¯d picked up a gun and started shooting back.


    ¡°Did your parents goblinize?¡± Brian asked after a while.


    ¡°Dad was second generation,¡± I replied, shaking my head. ¡°Mom goblinized when she was about eleven, though. Her parents were human. I guess I¡¯m lucky they decided to do right by her, rather than falling into this kind of thinking.¡±


    Growing up so much larger than everyone else in my class had been hard enough. I had no idea what mom must have went through, to have suddenly and violently changed like that when she was going through puberty. My grandparents on dad¡¯s side had it worse, though. I couldn¡¯t imagine what it was like for grandad being dragged away from the love of his life and stuck in some government camp, half-starved by its contracted management until someone finally realised that goblinization wasn¡¯t some transmissible virus but the coming of the sixth world.


    I turned my attention back to the screens, taking a deep breath before diving back in. So far, I hadn¡¯t had any luck. There were plenty of incriminating posts, plenty of bragging about stuff they¡¯d like to do, but nothing deeper than that. Everything was still public-facing, still dragging in random kids out to act out their edgy fantasies in a space where there were no bigger, stronger, classmates who might object.


    There were plenty of people who cheered on the Chosen, or acted as apologists for their crimes, and plenty of others who said they knew people in the Chosen, or showed off the snarling wolf tattoo they had hidden under their sleeves, but nobody in the gang itself.


    Maybe they just don¡¯t spent much time online, I thought.


    ¡°Hey, Taylor,¡± Lisa spoke up. ¡°I think I¡¯ve got something, but I¡¯ve hit a wall. Could you knock it down for me?¡±


    ¡°On it,¡± I said as I mirrored her display in front of me, glad of the distraction.


    From the look of it, Lisa had honed in on one particular name on the list ¨C NHSapiens ¨C and quickly honed in on the patterns I hadn¡¯t been able to spot. A quick glance at her history showed that she¡¯d been focusing exclusively on the local news board.


    Inevitably, those boards were mostly talking about us. Not us directly, of course, but the heat we¡¯d drawn down on the city. There were a lot of people in the city whose quiet little racist bubble had been so rudely popped by the protestors marching on the streets below their window, and Lisa had managed to find a mod that was expertly sifting through that crop of anger, separating the wheat from the chaff and dropping oblique references to a group for people who wanted to ¡®do something¡¯ about the issue.


    Which was where she¡¯d hit the wall. A firewall, more specifically. A login screen to an entirely private group that the mod managed, and one whose invites he¡¯d been slipping into people¡¯s DMs for the last few days at least.


    With a thought, the woodlouse alighted from my shoulder and began picking away at the window, slowly working away at the password protection on the site. The security wasn¡¯t anything special, but there wasn¡¯t any reason to tempt fate by rushing things. Instead, I simply watched ¨C a soda can in hand ¨C until the login screen was replaced by a wall of plain-text messages.


    ¡°I¡¯m in,¡± I said to Lisa, as I looked through the text.


    If there was any doubt over whether we¡¯d found the right place, I was quickly reassured by the private room¡¯s custom banner, proudly displaying the snarling metal wolf that was so common in Chosen iconography. The posts at the top of the thread, made by the same mod who¡¯d invited everyone in, just sealed the deal.


    Stolen novel; please report.


    ?The trogs are marching through our fucking streets and someones got to beat them back. You all got invites because you looked like you wanted to take action, not talk about it. If that¡¯s wrong, fuck off.?


    - TuskCollector (Admin) (23:24:13/25-2-2070)


    ?Your lucky. Normally you have to know someone to get in, and you have to be blooded by killing a mutant, but we need bodies and we need them now. So were holding trials at the fighting pits, casting out invites to every dangerous motherfucker out there and only taking the ones who make it through. Jumping some old halfer bitch in an alley might make you feel big, but the Chosen only has room for real fighters. You think you can¡¯t stand up, fuck off.?


    - TuskCollector (Admin) (23:24:43/25-2-2070)


    ?You make it through, your in the gang on probation. That means we don¡¯t know you, we don¡¯t trust you. Not until you¡¯ve fought next to us, side by side on the streets. You¡¯ll be put in squads and you¡¯ll do what the fuck your squad leader says. You want special treatment, think we should be begging to have you in, fuck off.?


    - TuskCollector (Admin) (23:25:09/25-2-2070)


    ?You get the fucking picture. Any questions??


    - TuskCollector (Admin) (23:25:15/25-2-2070)


    At the start, there had been about four dozen people in the group, but that dropped by half thirty minutes later when the admin kicked all the ones who hadn¡¯t been engaging on the grounds that they were ¡®fucking around.¡¯ The remaining two dozen were then tested on their commitment to the cause, largely done by a call and response of different slogans aimed at revving them up. Again, the ones who weren¡¯t engaged were kicked until only about eighteen users were left in the group chat.


    I could see the marks left by a Decker who¡¯d used the call and response to conduct a quick IP check on the remaining users, making sure they were all in the Bay area and kicking one user who¡¯d somehow found his way into the group from Philadelphia. Their work was sloppy, but serviceable ¨C a far cry from the tightly-woven network the Yakuza had used when we were looking into them.


    The remaining seventeen users were then given an address to meet at and a time to get there. It was a warehouse on the edge of the New Estates, near the Trainyard. A quick check revealed that the building was abandoned, with the land owned by a developer that hadn¡¯t done anything with it yet. In a few years, they¡¯d probably get around to turning it into another megabuilding for low-income workers.


    ¡°Oh yeah, this is a goldmine,¡± Lisa said, a smile on her face. ¡°Hey Tay, can you show the others?¡±


    With a thought, I had the information up in front of everyone, and I¡¯d overlaid the address on a map that hovered over the coffee table.


    ¡°I think this is the best chance we have,¡± Lisa said, her eyes still latched on the window in front of her. ¡°It¡¯s a party with violence, and a party with violence needs drugs and alcohol to grease the wheels. What¡¯s more, it¡¯s an official event, which will increase the likelihood the drugs were smuggled out of Medhall. They¡¯d want their best stuff to sell the new guys on the lifestyle, and it doesn¡¯t get better than pharma-grade.¡±


    ¡°But we can¡¯t just storm it,¡± Brian pointed out. ¡°There¡¯ll be dozens of guys there, at least.¡±


    ¡°Maybe more,¡± Lisa nodded, frowning. ¡°From the look of it, this isn¡¯t the only batch of recruits being brought in.¡±


    ¡°Could put my Crawler in there,¡± Rachel said, gesturing at the warehouse. ¡°It¡¯s an open space on the plans, but if they¡¯re using it for fighting pits they¡¯ll have modified it.¡±


    ¡°And then what?¡± Regent asked. ¡°Listen for conversations, hope we get lucky? We¡¯d have more luck going in with astral projection.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know if there¡¯d be anything to see,¡± Brian said. ¡°The Chosen are magophobes as well as metaphobes. They don¡¯t have any mages.¡±


    ¡°We need to be in there,¡± Lisa said, her brow furrowed in frustration, before she looked up at me. ¡°Do you think I could pass for human? If I styled my hair the right way, or something.¡±


    ¡°For human?¡± I replied, thinking. It just didn¡¯t fit. Lisa¡¯s features were too sharp, a little too otherworldly, but people could do a lot with makeup. ¡°Maybe?¡±


    ¡°But you couldn¡¯t pass for Chosen,¡± Brian spoke up. ¡°Alec couldn¡¯t either. You¡¯re too soft. No offence.¡±


    ¡°Not everyone¡¯s into meatheads,¡± Alec retorted, shrugging his shoulders.


    ¡°Rachel could do it,¡± I said, before my brain caught up with my words.


    ¡°The fuck?¡± the woman in question asked me, her cybereyes whirring in what might have been shock.


    ¡°No, that¡­¡± Lisa began, a contemplative look in her eyes. ¡°That¡¯s not a bad idea.¡±


    I nodded, my mind still replaying footage of her running back through the woods, surrounded by dead and dying gangers, even as my eyes drifted over the gunmetal grey of her mechanical arms, the camera optics mounted in her skull, not even trying to mimic the eyes she¡¯d replaced them with.


    ¡°Yes, it is,¡± Rachel retorted. ¡°I don¡¯t fucking ¡®infiltrate.¡¯¡±


    ¡°But you could.¡± Brian pointed out, warming to the idea. ¡°Rachel, we¡¯ve taken the job. We need this.¡±


    ¡°Not this way,¡± Rachel shook her head, standing up. ¡°I shoot through problems, not talk through them. You come up with a plan that isn¡¯t fucking stupid, you let me know.¡±


    She stormed off, heading down the stairs to her workshop. None of the rest of us talked for a few moments, while Lisa was looking at me with a contemplative look. After a few moments, she stood up.


    ¡°I¡¯ll go talk to her, see if I can win her around.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯d have better luck squeezing blood from a stone,¡± Alec retorted, shrugging his shoulders before sighing. ¡°Guess we¡¯re back to square one.¡±


    ¡°It was a good idea, Taylor,¡± Brian said, as Lisa sat back down. ¡°Rachel¡¯s just happier as muscle. She prefers to let her drones talk for her.¡±


    ¡°And she doesn¡¯t trust people who talk too much,¡± Lisa adds with a melancholy half-smile. ¡°She doesn¡¯t know how to tell when someone¡¯s messing with her, and that makes her feel like she¡¯s always being messed with.¡±


    I frowned, looking back at the chat logs and the floor plan of the warehouse. Talkative or not, this was the only workable plan we had. Either Rachel went in or we were stuck on the outside ¨C or considering the unthinkable task of attacking an entire gang in search of information that might not even be there.


    I thought back to everything I knew about Rachel ¨C everything I¡¯d seen in the Event Horizon ¨C trying to think of some way of getting her on board with the plan. In the Matrix, I reached out to my still-active connection to Rachel¡¯s personal area network, watching through her cybereyes as she worked on her half-finished Steel Lynx.


    I suddenly realised that she hadn¡¯t turned that connection off once since she¡¯d opened it on the very first day we¡¯d met. Back before coming to Brockton Bay, she¡¯d been betrayed by her gang and gone on to live a solitary life, immersing herself in the network between her and her drones.


    I looked through her eyes again, seeing the machine gun mounted into the cybernetic arm she was currently using to hold a soldering iron, and I suddenly realised what she¡¯d done to survive after being roped into the gang.


    Her mind is in the network. Her body is just another gun-platform.


    Not literally, of course. Her control rig was wired directly to her brain, but the brain itself was still in her skull. But she¡¯d cut herself off from the world like I had, only her network was a lot smaller than the matrix. She was happy in there, and had spent a hell of a lot longer alone than I had. When she had to interact outside of that closed loop ¨C when she had to talk to other people, other networks ¨C she shut down.


    No wonder she wouldn¡¯t even consider it, but maybe I can work with this?


    ¡°I¡¯m gonna have a go, see if I can talk her around,¡± I said, standing up and making my way over to the stairs.


    ¡°You¡¯re crazy,¡± Alec observed, smiling, as I hesitated at the top. Ultimately, though, we needed this to work. I needed this to work.


    So I descended the stairs, my feet ringing out on the metal with every step. Sure enough, Rachel was still working on her drone, hardwired into its CPU as she worked her way through its software. When she saw me, it wasn¡¯t through her body¡¯s eyes but through the partially-assembled optics of the drone.


    ¡°Fuck you,¡± she spat the words out.


    ¡°Rachel-¡± She cut me off.


    ¡°You want to come and bug me to change my mind. Well fuck you. You¡¯re not coming into my space, getting in my business, to make me do or say anything I don¡¯t want to do.¡±


    Instinctively, I half raised my hands, a placating expression on my face, before I stopped myself. That wasn¡¯t how Rachel thought, and if I was being honest with myself it wasn¡¯t how I thought either. Stuff like tone, stress and sarcasm didn¡¯t mean anything to her. Any inflection was taken as the same aggression Werewolf had used when he spoke, and she¡¯d always associate offers of help with tricks designed to entrap her in slaved networks that weren¡¯t hers to control, with real or metaphorical kill-switches held by someone else.


    I had to communicate with her in the way that left the least room for misinterpretation. That, at least, was something I was very familiar with.


    <I didn¡¯t need to come down to get in your space,> I spoke in pure text, overlayed on the constantly scrolling changelog that occupied the top left corner of her heads up display. <I¡¯ve been in here since you invited me in.>


    Rachel frowned, but didn¡¯t say anything. I took that as an invitation to continue, using my voice but trying to keep it as neutral as possible.


    ¡°I don¡¯t understand the engineering behind it,¡± I said with a nod to the Steel Lynx, ¡°but I do understand code. It¡¯s pretty amazing how well you¡¯ve been able to adapt the stock software to fit your rig. With the right parts, it¡¯ll be as responsive as a limb. More, even.¡±


    ¡°Drones are easy,¡± Rachel grunted. ¡°Software does exactly what I want, when I want it to.¡±


    ¡°But it still needs directions from someone,¡± I said, letting the woodlouse appear in her view. ¡°That¡¯s a killing machine, this is a sprite made to crack systems, but both of them are useless without someone telling them what to do.¡± It wasn¡¯t entirely true ¨C the potential autonomy of my sprites was something that had been running through my head ever since I crossed the horizon ¨C but it was what she needed to hear.


    ¡°Your body is the machine we need, and your memory has the experience that¡¯ll help sell the lie,¡± I said, ¡°but it doesn¡¯t have to be your mind at the controls. You don¡¯t understand people, but Lisa does. I can link her in; she can guide you through it.¡±


    ¡°Lisa talks too much,¡± Rachel retorted. ¡°I can¡¯t trust her in my head.¡±


    ¡°You trusted me,¡± I replied. ¡°First day we met. Got me wondering why.¡±


    ¡°You made yourself useful,¡± Rachel replied slowly, a frown appearing on her face. She clenched her fist, slow enough that I could hear the whine of the artificial tendons hidden beneath her metal palm. Centring herself, maybe.


    ¡°And I¡¯d do it again,¡± I said. ¡°Watch the Matrix while your eyes are on meatspace. Rein Lisa in, if it comes to that.¡±


    Rachel just stood there silently, and I decided not to say any more. I couldn¡¯t see more words doing any good; I¡¯d presented my best argument as expediently as I could, and now the ball was out of my court.


    ¡°Alright,¡± Rachel finally said, turning back to her drone. I fought to suppress a smile. ¡°I¡¯m in. You tell the others.¡±


    ¡°Got it,¡± I nodded, turning on my heels and making my way back up to the lounge, where Brian, Alec and Lisa were still sitting around the coffee table.


    They looked up at me as I sat down, with unreadable expressions on their faces.


    ¡°She¡¯s in,¡± I began, bluntly. ¡°Lisa, I¡¯ll link you into her network so you can guide her through it. Wear the VR headset from Alec¡¯s console so that you can see what she sees with no distractions. You¡¯ll tell her who to talk to, where to look, but be as succinct as you can. I¡¯ll run overwatch in the matrix.¡±


    ¡°Holy shit, Taylor,¡± Brian said, a grin spreading across his face. ¡°How did you pull that off?¡±


    ¡°I figured it out,¡± I said with a shrug, not willing to go too deep into it.


    ¡°Well, good job,¡± he continued. ¡°It kind of sucks to sit this one out, but I think you three can handle it. And if not, me and Alec will go in guns blazing to make a distraction so Rachel can slip out in the confusion.¡±


    ¡°Works for me,¡± Lisa smiled, then turned to look at me. ¡°Hey, Taylor, can we talk? Go over the plan a little?¡±


    ¡°Sure,¡± I replied, standing up and following her as she led me into the kitchen area. ¡°What¡¯s up?¡±


    ¡°Just one question,¡± she said, leaning against the countertop and looking up at me with her arms crossed.


    ¡°What the fuck was that?¡±

 Phishing: 4.03

    ¡°I don¡¯t know what you mean,¡± I stammered out, but Lisa didn¡¯t buy it for a second.


    ¡°Sure you don¡¯t,¡± she drawled, her eyes narrowing. ¡°Listen, Taylor, I think you¡¯re pretty great and the more you come out of your shell the more interested I am in what¡¯s hatching, but I know for a fact you aren¡¯t a people person. And yet that¡¯s the second time you¡¯ve known exactly what to say and the exact moment to say it.¡±


    ¡°The second time?¡± I asked, even as my mind was still flooded with panic.


    ¡°In the van. You knew just where to hit to break Alec¡¯s fa?ade. First time I¡¯ve seen a genuine reaction from him.¡±


    ¡°I¡­ I just got lucky?¡±


    ¡°No, you didn¡¯t,¡± Lisa shook her head. ¡°I¡¯ve gotta say, it feels like you¡¯re stepping on my patch,¡± she smiled, though there wasn¡¯t much warmth in it. ¡°Kinda hurts.¡±


    I sighed, looking away from her as I realised there wasn¡¯t a way out of this.


    ¡°It¡¯d hurt more if you knew.¡±


    Lisa looked momentarily confused, before it was suppressed beneath curiosity. I knew I¡¯d said the exact wrong thing to get her to drop this, but it was the only thing I could think to say.


    ¡°Well, now I¡¯m intrigued. I figured it was just a pathological need for control resulting in a whole bunch of doxxing, but then you¡¯d be angry you got caught, not resigned. And you know I¡¯m not going to stop digging. That¡¯s my pathological need, after all.¡±


    ¡°No matter what you find?¡±


    ¡°Knowledge is its own reward,¡± she grinned. ¡°Especially when it can be used.¡±


    I sighed. ¡°And that¡¯s the problem.¡± I wanted to think of these people as my friends, but I just couldn¡¯t help pulling on their secrets like marionette strings. Secrets I never should have learned.


    ¡°I know you¡¯re from T¨ªr Tairngire,¡± I tugged on the string, and Lisa¡¯s grin fell slack. ¡°I know more, about you and the others. I didn¡¯t go looking for that knowledge, but I found it all the same.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean you didn¡¯t go looking?¡± Tattletale almost hissed the words, an angry look in her eyes. ¡°Mean to say my past just, what, fell into your lap? My trauma roll by you at a Kaitenzushi restaurant?¡±


    I didn¡¯t say anything for a few moments, as she just stared at me. I sat down on the table, my arms resting on my legs and my back hunched as I looked at the floor.


    ¡°Remember what you said in the Market,¡± I began, my voice muted, ¡°about how the matrix might well be a new Astral plane? Something big we¡¯re only just scratching the surface of? I brushed you off at the time, but I think you¡¯re more right than you realise.¡±


    ¡°You called it a vision quest,¡± Lisa said, her eyes widening. ¡°When you dropped off the grid.¡±


    I couldn¡¯t help the half-laugh that came out at her unintentional pun.


    ¡°The matrix is a colony,¡± I explained. ¡°The grids hold it into a neatly ordered shape, walled in and packaged for the convenience of the colonisers, but it¡¯s built on a foundation of foreign land and surrounded by untamed wilderness. The resonance. It¡¯s not magic, I know that much. It¡¯s pure data, without the binary limits of ones and zeroes.¡±


    I sighed, finally looking up and meeting Tattletale¡¯s gaze. The anger was still there in her eyes, but it was muted now.


    ¡°It¡¯s alive. Not in any way I understand, but it¡¯s undeniable. To leave the matrix, get off the grid, I had to cross what Faultline¡¯s Technomancer called the Event Horizon. It bombarded me with data; videos and chatlogs aimed right at my damn soul.¡±


    ¡°What did you see?¡± Lisa asked, her voice quiet.


    ¡°Everything. Snapshots of everything you and the others went through, juxtaposed with my own life. From the day you fled the T¨ªr¡± ¨C Some of the tension seemed to leave Lisa¡¯s shoulders ¨C ¡°to the day I finally left my apartment to go meet with you in person.¡±


    ¡°So what was the message? What was it trying to tell you?¡±


    ¡°Isn¡¯t it obvious? That you¡¯d all taken worse hits than me and come back punching, while I went through much less and broke down. When you persuaded me to come to the meeting, that was maybe the third or fourth time I¡¯d left my apartment in two years.¡±


    ¡°Huh,¡± Lisa leant back against the counter, more intrigued than mad now. ¡°I gave ¡®shut-in¡¯ the highest odds, but that¡¯s a lot longer than I was expecting. Kind of makes me envious how you can stay indoors for that long and still look like you could pick me up with one hand.¡±


    I chuckled, wryly. ¡°I guess there has to be some perks, right? Consider it a trade-off for immortality. The point is, I know more than I should ¨C more than I wanted to know ¨C but when the choice is either giving up on the job or using that knowledge to bring Rachel on board¡­ that¡¯s not a choice at all.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a dangerous road to go down,¡± Lisa said, with something close to a wistful expression on her face, ¡°but I¡¯d be lying if I said I wouldn¡¯t do the same with access to the same information. Whatever that information was,¡± she concluded, with a pointed look at me, but I didn¡¯t budge.


    Lisa grinned. ¡°I had to try. Look, I don¡¯t pretend to understand what you went through, but I do understand magic. I understand mentor spirits.¡±


    ¡°It wasn¡¯t like that,¡± I shook my head. ¡°There was no¡­ no entity I could point to and say they were responsible. I don¡¯t think there was any conscious thought behind it at all; it was just a feature of the landscape.¡±


    ¡°Still,¡± Lisa perched herself on the table next to me, ¡°I think right now you need a shamanic perspective.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean by that?¡± I asked, more than a little confused.


    ¡°Alec¡¯s a theurge,¡± Lisa said. ¡°He learned his magic in an academic environment. A school, a coven, a cult, whatever.¡± I tried not to let anything show on my face. ¡°The point is, that education influences how he views magic. Shamans aren¡¯t educated in schools. We stumble across our magic one way or another, as our mentor spirits find us. Choose us.¡±


    She smiled, her hand drifting unconsciously to the pendant hanging from her neck ¨C the silver snake with tiny green gems for eyes. The same bottle green as her own, I realised suddenly.


    ¡°For theurges, magic is a thing that can be categorised and studied, but shamans know for a fact that there are powers out there that are beyond our understanding; things in the world that cannot be explained. It¡¯s why I believe you when you tell me about how the Matrix is just a swimming pool in a very large ocean, even though it goes against everything I thought I knew.¡±


    ¡°Lisa¡­ where are you going with this?¡±


    She flipped the pendant around in her hands, staring into the eyes of the serpent.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know why Snake reached out to me, don¡¯t know what she saw in me, but I do know that when something so powerful chooses to take an interest in something so small, you can¡¯t just turn it away.¡±


    Her gaze shifted, looking up into my eyes as she let the pendant fall.


    ¡°You¡¯ve got a gift, Taylor. Whatever the cause ¨C whatever it is, really ¨C you can¡¯t just ignore it like it never happened. I might not like that you know so much about my secrets, and the others would probably think the same, but that doesn¡¯t matter. Use this, Taylor. Explore the resonance and figure out a way to make it yours, because you already belong to it.¡±


    I sat silently for a while, contemplating what she said.


    ¡°So I should keep going?¡± I asked, hesitantly.


    ¡°Might as well ask me if you should keep breathing,¡± Lisa replied, her tone serious. ¡°Now go on, get some sleep. Got a big day tomorrow; wouldn¡¯t want to mess up your first time in the driver¡¯s seat.¡±


    She smiled, stood up and snatched a spare glass on her way to the fridge, where she poured herself some filtered water before making her way back to her room. For my part, I was frozen; still thinking over her last words.


    My first time in the driver¡¯s seat¡­


    I was terrified, and visions of the thousand different ways I could fuck it up and get Rachel killed played on a loop through my mind until I fell asleep, dreaming of a constellation of flickering stars, high above my head.


    The next evening, as the sun had just fallen beneath the top of the skyline, we set out from the loft in Bitch¡¯s van, but with Grue in the driver¡¯s seat. I kept glancing over at Rachel sitting opposite me, dressed in an outfit that Tattletale had picked out for her from thrift stores and milsurp shops in the market.


    The result was a look that was a little rattier than her usual fare, but with a few cosmetic additions that made it tatty in the right ways. Her pants were downright ancient US Army issue, no doubt ordered for some draftee in the Ghost Dance War before being sold on to whoever would have them by some logistics officer in the anarchy that came before the treaty of Denver. She¡¯d paired them with a set of steel-toed boots that Bitch already owned, and that were hard wearing more to deal with the wear from her cybernetic legs than anything else.


    Above the waist, her mostly-fleshy torso was covered by a black ballistic vest that was practically crying out for some red spray paint to match the Chosen¡¯s colours, but when Lisa tried to add some Rachel countered that turning up already dressed like a member of the gang would just have them single her out for a worse initiation.


    Nobody likes copycats and tryhards, after all.


    The vest also had the intentional side effect of leaving her arms bare, and the gunmetal grey cybernetics combined with her natural (I assumed) height to give her the perfect air of intimidation that would scare off the weaker prospects and impress the actual gang members.


    We dropped Rachel off at the nearest metro station, leaving her to get as close to the warehouse as she could before walking the rest of the way, just to make sure nobody saw their new metaphobe recruit getting out of a van with an ork, a troll and an elf ¨C like the punchline to an off-colour joke.


    The moment I pulled the door shut, I took a moment to try and get rid of the terrified expression on my face before turning to Tattletale, who was strapped into one of the seats in the back and dressed in her full shaman gear, trenchcoat and all. She flashed me a reassuring smile, even as her hands worried at the simsense wreath she was holding.


    ¡°You¡¯ll be fine,¡± she said, as she set the wreath on top of her head. I nodded as decisively as I could, trying to reassure her, before buckling myself into one of the seats ¨C using a belt Bitch had put in especially for me.


    ¡°Okay, we¡¯re going silent now,¡± I said to Grue. He was dressed to the nines with a full-face helmet and extensive body armour, an assault rifle resting on the seat next to him. Insurance, in case everything went wrong. Regent was up front next to him, but he hadn¡¯t brought along any extra gear. Mages don¡¯t need to, I supposed.


    ¡°Alright,¡± he acknowledged, keeping his eyes on the road. ¡°I¡¯ll keep the van parked with the engine running, ready for exfil.¡±


    ¡°Okay¡­¡± I murmured contemplatively to myself as I began tugging on datastreams, linking the simsense wreath into Rachel¡¯s Personal Area Network, using my own brain as the go-between. Once the connection was stable, I turned my focus away from the matrix for a brief moment, looking Lisa in the eye.


    ¡°Whenever you¡¯re ready,¡± I said, before letting the resonance take me.


    Rachel¡¯s PAN was a tightly-woven array of connections ordered in neatly-laid paths that nevertheless cut right through the standard routes the software was meant to take, as Rachel had tinkered on her digital consciousness over the years. Control software for her cybernetics and drones were spread out around me, all matched by a digital simulacrum of the organic parts of her brain ¨C a vital part of the interface that allowed meat to talk to metal, and metal to understand meat.


    A moment later, Tattletale¡¯s simsense rig appeared among the network, in the space I¡¯d made for it. Right now it was blank, which meant Tattletale was stuck looking at an error screen.


    I found the connections for Bitch¡¯s optical and audio input and drew them back from the software, feeding them into my persona so that I could see what she saw, hear what she heard. She¡¯d got off the metro and was walking through the streets of expansive warehouses that spread out from the Trainyard, with groups of overall-wearing workers stepping out into the road in order to get out of her way, even if it meant contending with the steady stream of trucks and autonomous carriers ferrying slab-sided shipping containers from the trains to the warehouses, or the warehouses to the Docks.


    ¡°Hey, Bug?¡± I picked up Tattletale¡¯s voice appearing in the readings from the simsense rig. ¡°I¡¯m just getting an error message here.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m adapting Bitch¡¯s feed for the software,¡± I replied. ¡°A few seconds more, then we¡¯re golden.¡±


    ¡°I hate these things¡­¡± Tattletale murmured, as I hooked up the audio and optical feeds and overlayed them with enough of Bitch¡¯s brainwaves for the data to be understood.


    ¡°How come?¡± I asked. I¡¯d never actually used a simsense rig myself; there was never any point when it just did through technology what I could do naturally.


    ¡°I get a serious case of the uncanny valley every time I use VR. Probably similar to how you felt in the Faraday cage at the Palanquin; it doesn¡¯t matter how well it mirrors emotions and experiences when it¡¯s missing that sixth sense, and simsense can¡¯t process magic. So I stick to screens.¡±


    ¡°I can sympathise,¡± I replied. The cold-sim connection sounded ghastly when compared to using the resonance. ¡°Okay, linking in Bitch¡¯s feed in three¡­ two¡­¡±


    ¡°I see it,¡± Tattletale said, as Bitch hurried across the street. There were a few others with her now who looked like they might be heading the same way ¨C dressed in similarly practical clothes in the right kind of colours. A flashy human kid in obviously new combat gear sidled up to Bitch with a cocky grin on his face and some kind of line no doubt poised on his tongue only to be shoved almost into the path of an oncoming truck ¨C something the more serious prospects found hilarious.


    ¡°Can she hear me?¡± Tattletale asked.


    ¡°Not yet,¡± I said, even as I overlayed a message on Bitch¡¯s optics.


    <We¡¯re online. Are you ready to link up?>


    <Yes,> she replied, typically to-the-point.


    ¡°Okay,¡± I said, to both Bitch and Tattletale. ¡°Connection is stable, audio is good.¡±


    Bitch was making her way towards an expansive warehouse at the end of the street, its faded paint and rusted chain-link fence out of place amongst the more active buildings around it. Even more out of place were the Chosen waiting by the entrance, dressed in body armour that was at least on par with high-end corporate security and carrying well-maintained firearms of various types. They watched over Bitch and the other prospects ¨C now dozens strong ¨C as they filed through the gate and into the lot itself.


    ¡°Have a look around,¡± Tattletale said to Bitch. ¡°Keep an eye out for guards, VIPs, even just members of the gang on a smoke break.¡±


    Bitch¡¯s eyes darted around with quick, tactical movements aimed at covering as much of the area as she could. As she did, I took screenshots to preserve the images and spread them out in front of me, to get as complete a picture as possible.


    The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    There was another Chosen guard on the roof, lying prone in front of a long¡ªbarrelled machine gun. On the ground, a few people were filing past the mass of prospects. They were full members of the gang, judging by their patches and etched cyberware, and from the noise that was creeping out of the warehouse it was clear there were a lot more inside. Music was bleeding out of the building; a pounding electronic dissonance that was almost offensive to my hearing.


    ¡°This is as much a party as a recruitment drive,¡± Tattletale observed. ¡°Which means the prospects are entertainment as well as recruits.¡±


    ¡°Bitch,¡± I began, her chosen Runner handle still a little awkward on my tongue, ¡°do you have any idea what to expect?¡±


    I knew Lisa had to be curious, but she stayed silent and I was grateful for that. Clearly she¡¯d remembered when I said to be as succinct as possible, for Rachel¡¯s sake.


    <They¡¯re going to make us fight each other,> she replied through her HUD¡¯s chat log.


    Ahead of her, a door on the side of the warehouse rolled open. It was easily twice Bitch¡¯s height and wide enough to let through two trucks at once, but it was still miniscule on the enormous side of the warehouse. Red light spilled out into the lot as it opened, accompanied by shouts and music mingling into one discordant din.


    The prospects were ushered inside, bunched up shoulder to shoulder as the guards began pushing the human mass forwards, leaving them no other option. Inside, walls had been hastily erected from scrap metal, forming an enclosure that turned into a pen as the door rolled back shut behind the last straggler. It was hard to make out past the crowd ¨C many of whom were taller than Bitch and blocked her view as she looked around the space ¨C but I thought there could be four dozen people in the group in total.


    Bitch ignored the hushed conversations and loud boasts of the people around her, focusing solely on studying her environment with her arms crossed over her vest. It meant that Tattletale and I had a clear view when a new face appeared on top of the makeshift wall.


    The Chosen lieutenant was a stern-looking woman with scar tissue coating her remaining organic tissue. Her tattered black jeans were full of holes, revealing glimpses of cybernetics, and the sports bra she wore made sure everyone could see the metal laced through the unhealthily pale skin of her upper body. Makeshift armour of spiked metal was bolted to her cybernetic arms, while her shaven head was encased in a cage-like helmet.


    She slammed a fist down on the top of the wall, and the noise of metal on metal was enough to silence the crowd of prospects.


    ¡°Listen up!¡± she shouted not through her mouth, but through a speaker built into her throat. Magnifying Bitch¡¯s feed, I could see a long scar stretching out from either side of the cybernetic; someone had cut her throat. Seeing her speak clearly with her teeth gritted in a feral grin was more than a little disconcerting, which I figured had to be the point.


    ¡°They call me Cricket!¡± she continued. ¡°I call you fresh meat, until you show me you¡¯re worth any more! Every one of you has been picked because you¡¯re thinking the right ways, because you want to take action, but in here that doesn¡¯t mean shit!¡±


    ¡°Hold on,¡± I interrupted, one eye on the matrix. ¡°She¡¯s a Decker. Not much of one, but she has an agent running an identity check.¡±


    Bitch didn¡¯t say anything; this was my area, and she recognised that. I didn¡¯t know if I¡¯d ever be able to have that kind of absolute faith in someone else¡¯s abilities, but what I could do was focus on masking the outside connection to Bitch¡¯s system. She didn¡¯t have a SIN, so it didn¡¯t take much to leave the Agent Cricket was using with nothing to find. The programme itself was surprisingly complex, but its direction left a lot to be desired.


    Still, I could clearly see it flagging up identities from a lot of the other people in the group, and I filed them all away in a catalogue for safekeeping. About thirty percent of the group were SINless like Bitch, forty-five percent had national SINs, while the remaining quarter had criminal SINs ¨C which meant they had been SINless when they were arrested and were assigned an ID that did nothing but blare out their criminal status to the world long after their sentence ended.


    ¡°Normally training lasts a week!¡± Cricket continued, her voice grating and artificial. ¡°A whole week to sort the wheat from the chaff, drop off the dead weight until only the best are left! But these aren¡¯t normal times! We¡¯re in fucking war measures now, and that means a recruiting drive!¡±


    She leant forwards, a grin spreading across her scarred face as she rested her cybernetic hands on the wall.


    ¡°Got a few questions ¡®fore we get into the details, though. Raise your hand if the answer¡¯s yes. Question number one; got any ex-military in the group? Corp or country, it¡¯s all the fucking same.¡±


    About seven or eight people put their hands up, which was about what I was expecting. All of them SINners, of course, though many probably didn¡¯t start out that way. For a lot of people, a few years in uniform was their ticket out of SINless poverty, even if it meant being shipped off to fight in this year¡¯s Desert Wars.


    ¡°Alright, that¡¯s a good start. If you were a grunt, that¡¯s good. If you had a technical job, that¡¯s even fucking better. In fact, question number two; we got any mechanics?¡±


    ¡°Put your hand up,¡± Tattletale said, and Bitch complied, along with three or four others ¨C one of them an ex-soldier.


    ¡°Fuckin¡¯ excellent,¡± Cricket muttered, though her voice box still amplified her words enough that I could hear them clearly. ¡°Don¡¯t care how well you lot do in the trials, you come see me after. Always need more tech-heads. ¡®Course, if you lied about that ¡®cos you think it¡¯ll make it easier, we¡¯ll find out and flay you. We take integrity very seriously.¡±


    One of the prospects who¡¯d put her hand up ¨C a skinny girl with clean clothes ¨C shrank at that, but it wasn¡¯t like there was anything she could do about it.


    ¡°Lastly, any of you been in a gang before? A real fuckin¡¯ gang, not just a group of morons sitting on a street corner.¡±


    ¡°Same again,¡± Tattletale said, and Bitch¡¯s hand went up. The numbers here were a lot larger; twenty of the crowd had done this sort of thing before, most of them either SINless or ex-cons.


    ¡°Got a rule for you people,¡± Cricket said. ¡°Bring your skills from your last crew, but leave your colours at the door. You make it through this, you¡¯re Chosen. That¡¯s all that matters.¡±


    She abruptly turned, looking back behind her and nodding. Moments later, a segment of the pen swung back to reveal a long corridor with a mesh ceiling and rusted spikes jutting irregularly out of the walls.


    ¡°Glory¡¯s waiting for you!¡± Cricket shouted with a grin, as the music increased in volume and the noise of the distant crowd turned rabid. ¡°All you have to do is take it! Now get the fuck in there and prove your worth!¡±


    Once again, the prospects were corralled forwards by guards, but there were more than a few who walked in ahead of the group, either eager or just resigned to their fate. The corridor was cramped, with the ceiling deliberately set just a little too low. More to the point, there were walkways to either side of it that were absolutely teeming with Chosen, shouting down at the prospects as datastreams carried bets through the air.


    As Rachel neared the end of the tunnel, the corrugated steel walls gave way to cages full of wild and rabid hounds that snapped at the passing prospects, almost a third of them frothing at the mouth.


    ¡°Why are there dogs here?¡± I asked, unnerved by the sight.


    Bitch replied, bluntly.


    ¡°It¡¯s psychological warfare,¡± Tattletale elaborated to me, leaving Bitch off the channel. ¡°Supposed to freak out the prospects, but it won¡¯t work on ours.¡±


    Sure enough, Bitch didn¡¯t spare the dogs so much as a glance. She only had eyes for the doors at the end of the short passage, which were pulled open by chains as the first prospects reached them.


    Bitch strode out into the arena with her head held high, immediately scanning her surroundings for possible threats. The pit was hexagonal in shape with rolls of razor wire lashed to the salvaged metal walls, while the floor was simply the bare concrete of the warehouse, chipped and stained by heavy use.


    A flimsy railing of steel pipes was all that kept the crowd at bay as they pressed forwards, hurling abuse down on the prospects with predatory glints in their eyes and optics. Almost all of them had at least one visible cybernetic modification, and every single one of them was armed in one way or another. In the distance, removed from the crowd on a high platform, a DJ manipulated the pounding music, bringing it up to a crescendo as the gate swung shut behind the group, the guards still on the other side.


    ¡°Prospects!¡± a voice shouted, booming through the speakers hung throughout the cavernous warehouse. ¡°You¡¯re here because you think you have what it takes! You¡¯re here because you want to take a stand against the trogs, halfers and keebs that think they own this city! You¡¯re here¡± ¨C the voice paused ¨C ¡°because you want to be us!¡±


    As Bitch looked around, I was able to make out the speaker ¨C standing in amongst the crowd, with a microphone held in his hand. He was shirtless, with a tiger part tattooed, part etched on his chest where metal and flesh met. His arms were entirely cybernetic, and his fingers were tipped with razor sharp claws. There was a metal necklace around his neck, and I fought down a vestigial feeling of nausea as I saw the pointed ears threaded through the chain, saw just how large they were relative to his own.


    ¡°Unfortunately for you,¡± he shouted, raising his left arm in a sweeping gesture that took in the whole crowd, ¡°we only take the best! And today, that means only the meanest, toughest sons of bitches are in with a shot! There¡¯s forty seven of you miserable fuckers, and we¡¯ve only taking twenty!¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s a higher margin than I was expecting,¡± Tattletale said, even as Bitch stopped looking at the stands and started eyeing up the competition. ¡°Guess they¡¯re serious about needing numbers more than quality.¡±


    ¡°So you¡¯re gonna fight!¡± the announcer reached out with a clawed hand to point at the crowd, the polished metal glinting in the red strobe lights. ¡°You¡¯re gonna bleed! You¡¯re gonna suffer, and maybe you¡¯ll die! But the survivors?! Well, they can hold their heads high and call themselves Chosen!¡±


    The crowd went rabid, while around Bitch people started edging away from each other, the weaker targets moving to the side of the arena but prevented from actually reaching the wall by the razor wire.


    ¡°Stay close to the middle,¡± Tattletale said. ¡°Unless you think it¡¯ll hurt you in the fight.¡±


    <It¡¯s fine> Bitch replied, even as she began marking priority targets on her display.


    ¡°Are you ready?!¡±


    There was a clear divide in the fighters between those who were, and those who very much weren¡¯t. The former were clenching their fists, rolling their shoulders and trying to keep as much of the crowd in view as possible. The latter seemed almost lost, their eyes darting around as the noise and the crowd and the threat of violence flooded their system with panic.


    ¡°Fight!¡± the announcer shouted, his voice reverberating throughout the warehouse, and all hell broke loose.


    Bitch wasn¡¯t the first to move, but she wasn¡¯t far off. She swung her fist into the face of a bare-chested man who¡¯d mistaken her for a weaker target ¨C a quick jab that broke his nose and had his hands reflexively reaching up to protect his face, like a boxer.


    It meant that when Bitch drove a metal knee into his groin he bent double, putting him in just the right position to take the elbow she drove into his back.


    As he fell, Bitch staggered sideways, her vision flickering momentarily, as she caught a mean right hook from another steroid junkie. Rather than retaliate, however, she backpedalled just enough to put the crowd between him and her and turned her attention to a shaven-headed woman who¡¯d pulled a switchblade out of her jacket.


    She tried to drive the knife into Bitch¡¯s gut, but Rachel caught the stab on her forearm and grabbed the woman¡¯s wrist with her other hand, pulling her in close before driving her foot into her target¡¯s knee, bending her leg backwards with a snap that was audible even over the chaos.


    Tattletale and I were silent observers as Bitch struggled through the melee, ducking and weaving around the harder targets while picking off the weaker ones. I could see her strategy, though I wasn¡¯t sure how I felt about it. There were twenty places, which meant twenty seven people had to be knocked out of the fight before things ended. Why waste time fighting the tougher targets when she could take out three times as many weaker ones in the same amount of time?


    It was clear the other fighters were starting to realise that as well. Whether by muscle, skill or cyberware the stronger fighters gradually stopped fighting each other in favour of teaming up on the weaker candidates. It wasn¡¯t a complete shift in the dynamic; paranoia ran rampant among the crowd, and even the strongest fighters weren¡¯t comfortable leaving openings at their back. More to the point, there wasn¡¯t a clear consensus on who, exactly, counted as ¡®weaker.¡¯


    ¡°You need to impress,¡± Tattletale said as Bitch broke the arm of a wiry teen who had been trying to crawl away from her after she floored him with a punch to the stomach. ¡°Go for the redhead with the mohawk. He¡¯s isolated enough that the others won¡¯t retaliate.¡±


    <Understood> came Rachel¡¯s terse reply, as she began working her way through the melee towards the man in question. He was a lot neater than most of the others, with his hair slicked up into a tall mohawk and a fit body that almost looked to have been deliberately sculpted; free from tattoos and chiselled in a way that reminded me more of a male model than someone who broke skulls for a living. That immediately marked him as an outlier amongst the rough crowd, and I wasn¡¯t surprised to notice he was one of the ones with a UCAS SIN and no military or gang experience. Tattletale couldn¡¯t have picked a better target.


    He tensed up as Bitch approached him with single-minded focus, figuring out her intention just in time to duck away from a punch aimed right at his head. He retaliated with quick jabs that caught Bitch in the jaw, the force of the blow sending her staggering back into another fighter.


    The whole time, she didn¡¯t do so much as make a sound. I could see the impact of each blow, the movement of each muscle and piston in her body through her inbuilt biomonitor, but no matter how much pain it said she was in she only gritted her teeth and dove back in.


    She redoubled her efforts, throwing herself right back into the melee in ways that the man just couldn¡¯t match. His organic body simply couldn¡¯t keep pace with her cybernetic enhancements, and his movements gradually began to slow. When Bitch hit him in the head, his jabs became less accurate as his vision blurred and he became concussed. Rachel¡¯s optics, on the other hand, were bolted directly to the subdermal armour coating on her skull and no amount of head trauma would make their software less accurate.


    When he finally went down, his eyes had swollen up, his nose had been broken and there were visible dents in his chest from where ribs had broken. Eventually, it all became too much and he sunk to his knees before Bitch delivered a punch to his face that knocked him flat on his back, joining the other failed prospects who were lying wounded or possibly dead on the floor.


    It was a horrible scene, with twitching bodies clutching obviously broken bones as the victors stood over them with more than a few wounds of their own. But then it was over, the announcer declaring victory in a voice that was loud enough to cut through the fog of battle.


    ¡°We have our victors! Tried and tested in battle! A little bruised, sure, but we¡¯ll patch you up! Then you can join the party! Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die!¡±


    He smiled, leaning against the railing and looking down into a pit even as the blooded Chosen in the audience celebrated their wins or commiserated their losses. Idly, I found myself wondering how many of them had bet on Bitch, and what her odds were.


    ¡°As for the rest of you,¡± the announcer continued, now taking in the broken bodies littering the floor of the pit. ¡°You came here full of piss and vinegar, but that¡¯s no substitute for skill. If you¡¯re still alive down there, we¡¯re gonna scrape you off the floor and drop you off a couple miles away. From there, stay the fuck away from our business.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not fuckin¡¯ fair!¡± a voice growled out from the pit, and Bitch turned to see the man she¡¯d floored propping himself up on his elbows, his face twisted into an angry rictus that was only made more grotesque by the bruising and swelling.


    ¡°Bitch¡¯s chromed to the fucking gills! It wasn¡¯t a fair fight!¡± he snarled, angrily, before the whole room fell silent as someone shouted from the crowd, their voice grating and mechanical.


    ¡°Not fair!?¡±


    The crowd parted, hardened gang members casting furtive glances behind them before parting like the red sea before an absolute giant ¨C as tall as any troll ¨C who leapt over the railing of the pit and landed with a booming metal thud on the concrete floor below.


    At first I mistook him for a drone, with the amount of metal he was carrying. It seemed like everything below his neck was cybernetic, with a body that could almost be mistaken for power armour if it weren¡¯t for the misshapen proportions that gave away the lack of any flesh beneath. The pale flesh of his face merged imperfectly with the metal pistons and synthetic muscles of his neck, and I caught a glimpse of thick wires stretched down from the base of his skull, partially hidden from view beneath matted blonde hair.


    He walked through the prospects with the same callous disregard for where he was putting his feet he¡¯d shown in the crowd, like he simply expected the world to up and move before him. Every step was accompanied by whirring pistons and the thud of metal on concrete, except where it was interrupted by the crack of bone and flesh as he simply stepped over and on those failed prospects who were too insensate to get out of the way.


    I felt sick at the sight, but my feelings were nothing compared to the revulsion I could see emanating from Tattletale, captured in the logs of the simsense wreath.


    ¡°That¡¯s¡­ that¡¯s impossible,¡± I heard her mutter. ¡°Nobody can lose that much flesh and survive. His essence has to be hanging on by a thread.¡±


    The monster bent down and picked up Bitch¡¯s opponent by his neck, lifting him in the air with a single hand. This close, I could see designs etched into the plates of his armoured body; all of them scenes of bloody battles between human cyborgs and bestial parodies of metahumanity. His pauldrons angled back and up to create the impression of snarling wolf¡¯s heads, and he looked at his unaugmented prey with cold, dead optics.


    ¡°There¡¯s no such thing as a fair fight,¡± he drawled out the words, mockingly. ¡°Would it be fair if she didn¡¯t have chrome?¡± he asked, his voice quieter, lower, but still clearly audible. ¡°You¡¯re pushing two metres tall, she¡¯s one-seventy-five. You¡¯re a man, she¡¯s not. You¡¯re not asking for a fair fight, you¡¯re asking for an easy win.¡±


    The monster clamped down on the man¡¯s neck, human hands flying up to claw ineffectively against immovable metal.


    ¡°And what if she was a troll!?¡± he shouted, more to the crowd than to the man he was strangling. ¡°What if she was two and a half metres tall and could break your fucking skull with a single punch!? Who could crush your throat with a flick of her fingertips!?¡±


    As if to demonstrate, he clamped his own hand together and snapped the man¡¯s neck in an instant, blood dripping out from between his fingers before he let the limp body drop to the floor.


    ¡°Make no mistake!¡± he shouted, turning to take in all the people around him. ¡°Our enemies are stronger than us! They¡¯re faster than us! They can use powers we can¡¯t even understand!¡±


    He paused, looking down at Bitch even as she stood defiantly in front of him, meeting his gaze without even a hint of fear visible in the lenses of her cyberneticeyes.


    ¡°This wasn¡¯t about finding the strong,¡± he said. ¡°It was about finding survivors! People who¡¯re prepared to do whatever it takes to live! To win!¡±


    He looked away from Bitch, then, instead paying attention to some of the other winners, the ones who were eyeing his cyberware with nerves clear on their face.


    ¡°They call this age the Sixth World!¡± he shouted to the crowd. ¡°They say there was a time before this, before human civilisation! A Fourth World! They say that dragons ruled that world, that orks and trolls, dwarves and elves were their soldiers! I don¡¯t know if what they say is true, but I do know that they came back to take control of this world! Our world!¡±


    He crossed his arms, standing defiantly in the centre of the ring like some ancient warrior.


    ¡°We¡¯re at war! Our enemies have all the tricks of their old world! They have magic, they have muscle and horns!¡±


    He raised a fist into the air, as the Chosen around the pit began cheering him on.


    ¡°But humanity has not been idle, waiting for our old masters to return! We have ten thousand years of history, ten thousand years of technology! What is a troll¡¯s strength to armour-piercing ammunition!? What is a mage to a pipe bomb!? What is flesh to steel!?¡±


    His other fist rose to join the first, as the crowd around the pit rose to a crescendo of cheers. The surviving prospects began to join in as well, taken up by the mood, and Bitch cheered right along with them after an instruction from Tattletale.


    ¡°Your enemies are the ork, the troll, the elf, the dwarf! They¡¯re Yakuza killers, mafia enforcers, corporate soldiers, badges who think they¡¯re knights! Why should your standards be any lower than theirs?! If you are to represent the true human warrior, you have to have higher standards! You have to be the best!¡±


    He looked down from the crowd, addressing the prospects directly now.


    ¡°I am Hookwolf! I will teach you to transcend your humanity, to take our species to a higher level! You are my Chosen! Now go! Join your brothers and sisters in arms!¡±


    I could see in their faces how he¡¯d enraptured them, how he¡¯d brought them here thinking they were the top of the pile, only to give them a new goal, a new purpose in their lacklustre lives. To become monsters. In mind, body, and maybe soul.

 Phishing: 4.04

    The successful prospects were led out of the pit by a different gate, opened up in the wall of the arena. It led directly into a metal staircase that carried the new recruits up and into the middle of the crowd. On their way into the pit, they had been separated from the Chosen by a grated ceiling and curls of razor wire, with the Chosen hurling insults down from above as they gambled on the bloodshed that was about to happen.


    On the way out, there was no such divide. The stairs simply climbed up into the crowd itself and the same voices that had been hurling scorn now shouted in celebration at bets won, or mockingly commiserated bets lost. There was nothing separating the new and old members, and as they ascended the staircase arms reached over to slap them on the back, or held out half-drunk cans of beer to their personal favourites.


    Bitch had clearly earned herself some admirers with her fight; when the first hand clapped her on the shoulder she noticeably flinched, before Tattletale told her to stay calm and she took the other gestures and congratulations with the impassiveness of steel.


    Perched in the tightly-packed web of her personal area network, I saw Rachel¡¯s synapses light up as low-level monitoring systems spun into life in the drones she kept stowed in the back of her van. They weren¡¯t monitoring anything in particular ¨C just the negligible power drain the monitoring systems were having on the drone¡¯s battery ¨C but that wasn¡¯t the point.


    In the warehouse, she glanced back for a moment and I caught a glimpse of the pit through a momentary gap in the crowd. There were Chosen down there ¨C junior ones, judging from their relative lack of cyberware ¨C dragging away the human detritus from the pit¡¯s floor; moving the living off to one side and piling up the dead or near-dead in a heap, where a more chromed-up Chosen was salvaging their cyberware with a callous disregard for the dead flesh attached to the metal.


    In the middle of the carnage, the monster stood as still as a statue, his beady mechanical eyes surveying the scene with a placid expression on his face. It was as if his stock of life had run dry when he was making the speech and all that was left was the machine.


    On a whim, I opened up a window in the matrix and began trawling through image search algorithms, trying to match up his barely-human features to any past appearances. It didn¡¯t take me long to find a myriad of different recordings amongst the false positives, showing Hookwolf at various points in his career.


    In some he was fighting in a pit much like the one Bitch had just climbed out of, in others he was speaking to a crowd of Chosen, or leading the charge in violent street brawls filmed by nervous onlookers from the windows of their tenements. In all of them he was augmented, but still recognisably human, and his every move and expression was full of life; of anger, hate and the thrill of the fight.


    I could never feel sorry for a monster like that, but I found the snapshot glance of him in the pit was lingering in my mind. I couldn¡¯t help wondering what he¡¯d given up to reach his current form. I wasn¡¯t sure what would be worse; that he reached this point without realising, that it was forced on him by circumstance or that he willingly carved away at himself until only this remained.


    Bitch was still hemmed in by the crowd, but the momentum was changing. Rather than the prospects and the members running into each other around the lip of the pit, the crowd had gradually shifted to move as one, spilling out across the expansive floor of the warehouse as I saw bars and kegs of beer being opened up through momentary gaps in the press.


    Under Tattletale¡¯s direction, Bitch made her way over to one of the stands and accepted a clear plastic cup of some nearly pitch-black beer from a Chosen girl with the skin on the side of her head above her ear cut away to reveal her deep grey subdermal armour, in what had to be the most extreme side shave I¡¯d ever seen.


    As she turned to work her way back through the crowd, I caught sight of Hookwolf making his way up a flight of stairs to what looked like an old supervisor¡¯s office; a number of rooms hugging the corner of the ceiling, where they had a commanding view of the factory floor.


    ¡°Try and see if you can find Cricket,¡± Tattletale said. She didn¡¯t offer an explanation and Bitch didn¡¯t ask for one, but I could see the logic in the idea; taking the gang lieutenant up on her offer to the mechanics in the crowd would be a good way to get close to the leadership.


    The crowd had properly dispersed, though there was still a large number gathered around the fighting pit. From the sound of the chatter, it seemed the dogfights would begin in a few minutes. The rest of the warehouse seemed to serve as more of a clubhouse than anything else ¨C like a trideo biker gang hangout with graffiti daubed on the walls, worn pseudo-leather sofas torn half to shreds by jagged cyberware and random exercise equipment scattered about the place.


    There were Chosen pairing off in makeshift fighting tournaments, throwing each other onto the concrete floor without a care in the world as sparks flew from clashing cyberlimbs. The lieutenant who¡¯d served as the announcer in the pit ¨C with the tiger etched into his chest ¨C was moving throughout the brawling pairs, correcting poor form and egging the fighters on.


    Cricket was watching the fight from an old armchair, typing away at an AR keyboard as she made notes on the cyberdeck she¡¯d linked up to her internal CPU. It was a closed loop ¨C the laptop connected to her brain by a physical wire rather than through the matrix ¨C but from the way she was looking at the fighters I presumed she was making notes on their performance.


    As Bitch approached, another one of the prospects who¡¯d claimed engineering experience beat her to it. At Tattletale¡¯s suggestion, Bitch hung back, her enhanced senses picking up the conversation between the two. The prospect was a shaven-headed man in his mid-thirties, with a South Missouri State flag tattooed on his shoulder, just above the crest of some military unit.


    With Bitch¡¯s cybernetics, I could isolate and enhance the conversation between the two of them, filtering out the ambient din of the warehouse and amplifying their quiet dialogue. As was blatantly obvious from his tattoos, the ex-soldier was from the Confederation of American States ¨C the UCAS¡¯ estranged neighbour to the south ¨C and he had spent two years in the CAS¡¯ military as an electrical engineer stationed in Austin, on the border with Aztlan.


    Cricket pushed further into his past, making him recount the series of screw ups that had led him from the Texan desert to the rainy shore of a whole other country. She also dug into what he didn¡¯t tell her, rudimentary agents sniffing out his trail in the matrix and picking out past addictions and a hefty active warrant out in St Louis that had prompted him to flee across the border in the first place. To no great surprise, the victim of the murder was a dwarven college student.


    I did some digging of my own; the victim was the son of a mid-level NeoNet manager with corporate citizenship of his own. Enough heat to get even Lone Star to pay attention.


    ¡°Do we have a good cover of our own?¡± Tattletale asked, listening to the same conversation. ¡°I know I asked you to volunteer that you were in a gang; did I guess right?¡±


    <I was in a gang> Bitch responded, succinctly.


    ¡°What about tech experience?¡± I asked, as Cricket waved the Confederate off. ¡°Cyberware but not drones?¡±


    ¡°My thoughts exactly,¡± Lisa replied. ¡°Drones don¡¯t carry anything interesting, but people this chromed-up will have digital memories.¡±


    Cricket locked eyes with Bitch and waved her over, still devoting half her attention to the sparring Chosen. Some of the new recruits had been dragged into the exercise and the gang lieutenant was moving through the crowd taking them through the basics of hand to hand combat. He hadn¡¯t grabbed Bitch, and it was quickly evident why; these were the new recruits who¡¯d survived more by luck or cunning than by skill, so they were getting a crash course in how to fight.


    ¡°So,¡± Cricket began, her voice droning from the speaker set in her throat as she bared her teeth in a grimacing smile. ¡°What do they call you?¡±


    ¡°Bitch.¡±


    The razorgirl¡¯s eyes narrowed, her grimace tightening, but whatever she was looking for in Rachel¡¯s cybernetic eyes, she didn¡¯t find it.


    ¡°That so?¡± she asked. ¡°Got a name, Bitch? A SIN?¡±


    I flashed a message on Bitch¡¯s HUD, trusting that she could read and respond a lot faster than listening.


    <Been arrested in the last 3 years?>


    <No> her response came within a second.


    <Then answer honestly.>


    ¡°Rachel Lindt,¡± she said, shrugging her shoulders before rattling off the twelve digit number that defined her status as a person ¨C at least in the eyes of civilisation. ¡°CPS gave it to me.¡±


    It¡¯d give Cricket enough to sink her teeth into, but if Rachel had shown up in a system since becoming a Shadowrunner it might reveal her occupation, which would raise a red flag so large it could be seen from Zurich Orbital.


    Sure enough, Bitch¡¯s wireless node gave me just enough feedback to notice the pair of agents that set off into the Matrix, heading for some Chosen system off in the city somewhere. Which meant this wasn¡¯t their headquarters, but we weren¡¯t expecting it to be.


    ¡°Uh huh. And your gang. What was it?¡±


    ¡°Wolfpack,¡± Bitch answered without being prompted. ¡°Pittsburgh outskirts.¡±


    ¡°What did they have you fixing?¡±


    ¡°Nothing,¡± Bitch answered. ¡°They just needed another gun. After I left, I did my own cyberware.¡±


    ¡°Your own-¡± Cricket leant forward in her seat, the trainees entirely forgotten as she looked at Bitch with genuine interest for the first time in the conversation. ¡°How did you manage that?¡±


    ¡°Local anaesthetic and a control rig linked to an Ares Dueller,¡± she answered.


    ¡°Shit, fair enough.¡± Cricket¡¯s voicebox let out a harsh staticky noise ¨C an attempt at a chuckle, I thought. ¡°If you¡¯re lying, you at least get points for the sheer fucking balls of it. Of course¡± ¨C she stood up, dismissing the AR keyboard and tucking her cyberdeck into a pouch on her belt ¨C ¡°you understand I can¡¯t just take your word for that.¡±


    ¡°I get it,¡± Bitch nodded.


    Cricket looked around the warehouse floor, her eyes drifting over the crowd. I couldn¡¯t see it through Bitch¡¯s limited wireless presence, but I suspected that she was looking through the matrix as well. After a few seconds, she¡¯d found who she was looking for and she strode through the crowds with a purposeful gait, men much taller and larger than her parting and looking at her with wary respect.


    Her target was a small group of people sprawled out on a pair of tattered syn-leather sofas, splitting three bottles of vodka between six people as they passed around an inhaler of something. Bitch didn¡¯t have an augmented nose, but from the blissed out expression on the young woman who¡¯d taken it last, I figured it wasn¡¯t medicinal.


    There was a definite imbalance in the group dynamic, with four of the group being noticeably less augmented than the other two, who both sported artificial jaws fashioned into snarling maws. The larger of the pair looked to be over six feet tall, with bulging muscles and dull metal cyberarms that ended in spiked knuckles. He wasn¡¯t wearing a shirt, but his torso was crossed by a leather harness that was laden with ammunition and grenade pouches, as well as decorative spikes of rusted scrap metal.


    His companion was shorter ¨C maybe five and a half feet ¨C and his body was more wiry than muscular. His own artificial jaw had been almost callously sutured to his skin, with matte black ceramics poking through his flesh in a jumble of misshapen spiked teeth. His eyes, on the other hand, had been replaced by cameras recessed in the back of his dyed eye sockets which, in combination with the tattoos on his face, created the impression of a grinning, mutated skull. Compared to that grim visage his outfit was almost boring, with a simple black t-shirt, a pair of jeans and the kind of armour vest you could buy at JCPenney.


    Before they were within earshot, however, Cricket abruptly grabbed Bitch by the arm and pulled her in close, staring into her optics with a dangerous intensity ¨C the gritted snarl of her teeth back on full display.


    ¡°Wolfpack, Pittsburgh outskirts.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± Bitch replied, staring right back into Cricket¡¯s own eyes.


    ¡°Mixed-race gang,¡± Cricket drawled, and if the voicebox in her neck were capable of it I was sure she would have spat. ¡°With a trog at the top.¡±


    ¡°Shit!¡± Tattletale exclaimed, but I barely heard her. Cricket¡¯s agents must have found news feeds or arrest reports about Bitch¡¯s old gang. It was a stupid mistake ¨C one I should have seen coming ¨C and I scrambled to fix it.


    <Repeat exactly what I say> I threw the text up on Bitch¡¯s HUD as I dug through the archived footage in her head. I didn¡¯t need a sprite to find what I was looking for; I¡¯d seen it before.


    ¡°Werewolf was a tusker,¡± Bitch said, reading off the words I¡¯d put in her head no matter how dirty the slur made me feel. ¡°He gave me my first chrome, stuck a monitoring system in my head and used me as cannon fodder. Werewolf¡¯s also dead. I still have the footage of me ventilating his skull, if you want to see it.¡±


    Once again, Cricket studied Bitch¡¯s face, looking for any sign of deceit, but she might as well have been staring into a brick wall.


    ¡°Nah,¡± she said after a moment, breaking the silence. ¡°I think I¡¯m good. You¡¯ve got the look of a born killer. Like I said, doesn¡¯t matter what gang you ran with before. You leave that person in the pit.¡±


    Tattletale let out a long sigh, and I noticed that she¡¯d momentarily cut off her audio to Bitch.


    ¡°Sheesh, Taylor, I see what you meant. You¡¯re sitting on one hell of an arsenal. Remind me to never get on your bad side, omae.¡±


    Cricket had moved on as if the incident never happened, releasing her grip on Bitch¡¯s arm as she made a beeline for the pair of Chosen.


    Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    ¡°Hey, Barker!¡± she shouted, and the one with the skull for a face looked up, his movements a little sluggish from whatever was in the inhaler he¡¯d just taken.


    ¡°Oh hey, boss,¡± he drawled, holding out the inhaler in front of him. ¡°Want a hit? It¡¯s Bliss. Not med-grade, but still pretty wiz.¡±


    Cricket just glared at him for a moment, as Barker almost seemed to physically wilt under the pressure, before she turned back to Bitch.


    ¡°Barker, this is Bitch. She¡¯s a new recruit.¡±


    ¡°No shit?¡± Barker asked, his featureless optics swivelling slightly in the back of his eye sockets as his attention shifted, looking Bitch up and down. ¡°Gonna stick her in our crew?¡± ¨C the man beside him shifted in his seat, doing interesting things to the taut musculature of his bare chest. ¡°Biter, Barker and his Bitch in heat. Bet a razorgirl like you is just dying for a real cyberpsycho to take her for a ride.¡±


    He leered at Bitch, as he dug his hand into his groin in some sort of scratch or a lewd gesture.


    ¡°Bitch is gonna cut that arm off,¡± Cricket spoke, her tone deadpan. She let the fear sink into Biter¡¯s expression for a few moments, as the target of his lust just stood there, weathering his disgusting stare with all the emotion of a machine. Rachel might have hidden herself away in her own head, but in a lot of ways she was still a stronger person than me.


    ¡°She says she¡¯s a ripperdoc,¡± Cricket elaborated when it looked like Barker was about to say something else. ¡°So she¡¯s gonna prove it. On you.¡±


    ¡°Hold on a second-¡± Barker managed to stammer out. ¡°You sure this is safe?¡±


    Beside him, Biter chuckled, the larger man¡¯s chest rising and falling as he looked over Bitch.


    ¡°Since when do you give a shit about safe, huh? Remember when you gave yourself sepsis putting those fucking teeth in?¡±


    ¡°If she fucks up we¡¯ll bring in a medic,¡± Cricket said, folding her arms in front of her chest as she glared down at Barker. ¡°Stop being such a pussy and come on.¡±


    Barker grumbled, but stood up.


    ¡°Good fucking luck!¡± Biter said, holding up a tin of beer as he saluted his¡­ friend? Partner? Colleague? I wasn¡¯t sure.


    I had a lot of expectations for the Chosen¡¯s operating theatre, but it met none of them. Cricket led Rachel to an old military truck in the corner of the warehouse, surrounded by enough boxes and crates that it was clear it had been there for a long time and with a set of steps leading up into the back. There was a generator next to the truck, pumping power in through neatly-ordered cables with covers where they ran over the warehouse floor.


    A ramp stretched down from the door at the back of the truck; a cross-hatched tread plate that would provide grip even when the surface was slick with blood and more than wide enough to comfortably fit four people carrying a stretcher.


    Inside, the forest green of the military truck gave way to sterile white walls, while the metal floor of the space had clearly been cleaned recently, with clinical white lights running along the length of the roof. Bitch followed Cricket up the ramp, then stepped aside to let Barker up behind her before she turned and pulled the doors of the truck shut.


    The sudden absence of noise was almost startling; the pounding din of the back alley powernoize mix cut off completely by the heavy metal doors. For a moment I wondered if Bitch was about to ambush the two Chosen, but instead she cast her gaze over the equipment that filled the room ¨C to my untrained eye, the operating table, glass vials of drugs and shelves of high-spec secure cases seemed brand new.


    It was only when Tattletale brought her attention to the quizzical look Cricket gave her that Bitch offered an explanation.


    ¡°Don¡¯t want to get distracted.¡±


    ¡°This all looks very professional,¡± I remarked in the relative privacy of Rachel¡¯s head.


    ¡°Yeah,¡± Tattletale replied. ¡°It¡¯s weird for a gang, which means you should ask about it.¡±


    ¡°This is clean,¡± Bitch remarked, as her gaze passed over a rack of vials full of some clear glass liquid. I captured a snapshot of the image and pulled it up in my peripheral, magnifying the labels on the vials. A quick search in the matrix revealed that they were medical grade sedatives, and the logo on the label was Medhall. They were even still within their expiry date.


    ¡°New, too,¡± Bitch continued, having clearly noticed the same thing I had without needing to look it up first.


    ¡°We take our cyberware seriously,¡± Cricket said in response ¨C a blatant non-explanation. ¡°You put your life on the line every time you go under the knife. It¡¯s worth spending extra on.


    ¡°Besides,¡± she continued as she browsed the shelves at the far end of the truck, ¡°we encourage people to buy their own chrome ¨C prove they¡¯re willing to improve themselves ¨C but when they do something really impressive we like to reward them with some real top of the line tech.¡±


    ¡°Ask what Barker did,¡± Tattletale said. ¡°Don¡¯t ask him, ask Cricket.¡±


    ¡°And him?¡± Rachel asked, gesturing at Barker with his thumb as Cricket picked up a nondescript grey case from one of the higher shelves. ¡°What earned this?¡±


    ¡°I can answer that,¡± Barker spoke up, suddenly there as he leant against the operating table, about a foot and a half from Bitch¡¯s face.


    ¡°You¡¯ve probably seen the riots on the news,¡± he drawled. ¡°The pawns beating down on all those self-righteous policlub types who think waving flags and signs is ever going to change anything, while the other side gets the kid gloves treatment.¡±


    Cricket¡¯s jaw tightened ever so slightly, but Barker couldn¡¯t see her.


    ¡°Well we went in there to level the playing field, rep the species. That sort of thing. Tear gas flying everywhere, Knight Errant trying everything they could to stop us but knowing we had cameras ready in case they started shooting into the crowd. I hit this big fucking tusker in their shield wall, got close enough to slit his throat. It made a gap in the wall, broke their line.¡±


    ¡°We killed eight trained riot officers in a single night,¡± Cricket interrupted, setting the case down on the table. ¡°At the cost of only two of our own. One of them was a Lieutenant, and four of them weren¡¯t human.¡±


    She set her hands on either side of the case, flicking open the clasps with her thumbs. There was a logo in the centre of the case, showing white text inside a patterned and glossy red circle. Renraku.


    ¡°Hookwolf used to like talking about ancient warrior civilisations. He said that in the Roman Legions, the first soldier over the wall was given a golden crown, sculpted to look like battlements. Gold¡¯s too soft for us, and a crown is just a symbol. We give steel.¡±


    She lifted up the lid of the case. There, nestled in its own carefully-cut mould of packing foam, was a human arm that ended past the shoulder with a series of complicated-looking ports and seams, all protected from the air by hard plastic caps and cellophane sheaths.


    ¡°Of course,¡± Cricket observed as she pulled a knife out of her belt, holding it out to Bitch hilt first, ¡°you¡¯re going to have to remove the packaging.¡±


    I wasn¡¯t sure what she meant until Rachel took the knife and immediately began slicing into the synthskin covering on the cybernetic limb, moving with the precision of an expert butcher as she parted it along almost invisible seams and slipped the knife underneath the arm to separate the connection points attaching it to the rigid material below.


    It was more than a little disturbing, but I knew there was worse to come. Besides, the synthskin was the wrong colour for Barker.


    Despite what Cricket said, the arm wasn¡¯t steel. Instead it was mostly made from a matte black material, with a few pieces of exposed metal around the joints and seams. Carefully, Rachel gripped the arm with her own cybernetic hands and removed it from the foam, leaving the empty sheath of synthskin in the depression.


    ¡°Renraku CSB-Sixty-Seven-A,¡± she observed as she looked it over. ¡°A security-grade cyberarm marketed to close protection details.¡±


    Barker  let out a long, low whistle as he leant over, for once looking somewhere other than at Bitch.


    ¡°Standard reinforced tendons,¡± Rachel continued, ¡°ceramic armour plates¡­¡± she pushed her metal thumb against a patch of metal underneath the arm and a long rectangular shape snapped out from below the forearm ¨C almost the same length as the forearm it was housed in ¨C ¡°and a type-H Renraku weapons port.¡±


    She moved her left arm back to the case, her hand hovering over the foam before she dug her fingers into a seemingly nondescript part of the packaging, which flipped up to reveal two long, vaguely-rectangular weapons. One was obviously a blade, with a sharpened underside that ended in a point. I could see how it would extend out past the cyberarm¡¯s hand, on the opposite side to the thumb. The other weapon was boxier, but ended in two metal prongs about two centimetres long.


    ¡°Well damn,¡± Barker remarked. ¡°Might as well leave the taser in the box, though.¡±


    ¡°You can fit the blade after the operation,¡± Bitch replied matter-of-factly. ¡°It clips into the port. Now,¡± ¨C she slammed the lid of the case shut, quickly buckling one of the clasps and moving the case off the operating table ¨C ¡°take off your shirt and lie down.¡±


    As Barker did as Bitch asked ¨C taking off his tight black t-shirt far slower than was necessary ¨C she handed Cricket¡¯s knife back to her before turning to look over the walls of drugs and surgical tools.


    ¡°Local or general?¡± she asked the air as her hands drifted over a few racks of anaesthetic chemicals in vials and pressurised canisters.


    ¡°Or none,¡± Tattletale muttered to me and me alone.


    ¡°Local¡¯s fine,¡± Cricket answered as Rachel placed a pair of glass vials on a stainless steel side table. Another case joined it a moment later, this one smaller and with a Medhall logo on the front of it.


    Come to think of it, almost all of the equipment here is from Medhall, I realised with a start. Maybe their contact is getting them more than just Dopadrine?


    Inside the case was an auto-injector, little more than a blocky main body and a pistol grip. Bitch clicked one of the vials into the back of the tool, and as she looked back at Barker ¨C now lying flat on his back ¨C I noticed a small metal implant port on the side of his skull, just behind his right ear.


    ¡°He¡¯s got a neural port,¡± I said to Bitch. ¡°I need you to get access; I might be able to dig something out of his files.¡±


    ¡°Do you have a biomonitor?¡± Bitch asked, looking down at Barker.


    ¡°Yeah?¡± he replied, a little less cocksure now that he was on the operating table.


    Without so much as asking for permission, Bitch unspooled the cable she kept reeled in her left arm ¨C a hardware interface I¡¯d seen her using when she was working on her drones ¨C and slotted it into Barker¡¯s port just before he turned his head to shoot Cricket a questioning look.


    ¡°Might want to explain what you just did,¡± Tattletale spoke up. ¡°Soothe their nerves.¡±


    ¡°Safety precaution,¡± Bitch said to Cricket. ¡°Without my biomonitor I¡¯d have been working blind when I did my chrome, and hardwiring is more reliable.¡±


    ¡°Fair enough,¡± Cricket nodded, though she still looked a little suspicious. More to the point, the faint view of the Matrix I could see through Bitch¡¯s wireless connection was enough to know that Cricket had let herself into Barker¡¯s neural network. Either she¡¯d set the network up, or the Chosen required their members to share permissions with the leadership.


    A moment later, Barker answered the prompt in his head and allowed the unverified device to interface with his software, which appeared before me as a tethered line in Bitch¡¯s own Personal Area Network. Barker¡¯s PAN was much smaller than her own, but then he wasn¡¯t a Rigger. The biomonitor was already open ¨C they came without firewalls as standard so that they could be accessed by medical personnel ¨C and I could see a steady stream of information about Barker¡¯s body, from his heart rate to the integrity of the connections between his cyberware and his nervous system.


    But the real prize was the fact that his commlink was integrated into his neuralware. It was a common enough feature for people who had even the smallest brain-chips, negating the risk of leaving it behind and removing the minor annoyance of carrying the thing around. It was also undoubtedly encrypted, and I didn¡¯t even try to access it myself in case even making the attempt would flag an alert.


    I also didn¡¯t want to do anything reckless when I could see Cricket¡¯s mark on the network, watching Bitch¡¯s activity for any hint that she was looking anywhere other than at the biomonitor. Bitch, in turn, was keeping her activities strictly legitimate. After all, she knew I was in here with her, while Cricket didn¡¯t.


    In meatspace, Bitch pressed the end of the injector against Barker¡¯s shoulder, and I heard the sharp hiss of compressed air as she pulled the trigger. Biter¡¯s arm went rigid, then limp as the anaesthetic took effect, leaving a trio of red marks on his arm from where the injection had inflamed his flesh.


    I spun together a sprite, a woodlouse crawling out of the palm of my hand before I sent it scurrying down the connecting wire and into Barker¡¯s head. As I¡¯d hoped, Cricket didn¡¯t flag the connection ¨C it was too far from what she was expecting to see ¨C and the woodlouse began slowly eating away at Barker¡¯s comm.


    ¡°You organlegging?¡± Bitch asked suddenly, as she paused just before fitting a new vial into the injector.


    ¡°No,¡± Cricket shook her head. ¡°Biowaste bin¡¯s by the door.¡± She chuckled, a disconcerting sound that came from her throat rather than her voicebox. ¡°Arm¡¯s too stringy to sell, anyway.¡±


    Bitch simply clicked the vial into the injector and gave Barker another dose. She¡¯d aimed lower this time, just below his shoulder, and the skin in a wide area around the infection point immediately began to redden.


    <Do you mind telling me what you¡¯re doing?> I asked, driven by morbid curiosity.


    <It¡¯s a clotting agent> Rachel replied. <It congeals the blood vessels around the injected area so I can cut without worrying about blood loss, but it also kills the limb.>


    As she grabbed a large knife from a specialised sheath designed to contain its monofilament edge, I turned my attention to the Matrix before I saw her lopping off the arm. My sprite was still working away at the comm, but Cricket had apparently gotten bored or curious and had abandoned watching Bitch¡¯s activity in favour of directly probing her PAN.


    Her efforts were fumbling and cautious, relying more on stock security agents than her own skills as a hacker, and she was limiting herself to the kind of soft probes that would only be detected by the best firewalls, rather than more overt brute force attacks. I was beginning to get the impression that Cricket was less of a Decker than a software engineer; someone who was an expert at managing and setting up networks, but was far less confident with the sort of on-the-fly improvisation that was needed to hack foreign systems.


    There was no comparison between her and someone like Bakuda ¨C who was able to manage both with brutal efficiency ¨C but I was sure that came at some other opportunity cost. It was clear Cricket wasn¡¯t a full-time Decker, instead she split her time between cyberspace and meatspace. The Chosen seemed like the kind of gang where even their medics were expected to fight.


    The anaesthetic and congealer had already caused Barker¡¯s biomonitor to start screaming into space, flagging up status report after status report that Bitch reviewed and dismissed with methodical efficiency, but when she cut through his arm in a single chop those alarm systems went into overdrive.


    If Barker had a medical plan, the monitor would have already sent out a signal to the provider of his choice and an ambulance would have already been on-route. For that matter, if Bitch was a legitimate medical practitioner she¡¯d have known how to switch off the alarms in favour of a specific surgical diagnostic mode.


    But the constant barrage of signals ¨C annoying as they were ¨C did have a fringe benefit; they were loud enough that Cricket actually withdrew back from Barker¡¯s PAN, leaving just an agent to monitor Bitch. Which let my woodlouse finish its work in peace, finally cracking open Barker¡¯s commlink.


    As Bitch flensed back the flesh past Barker¡¯s shoulder ¨C something I saw on the biomonitor alone because I¡¯d minimised the camera feed, and I noticed Tattletale had done the same ¨C I dug into Barker¡¯s messages with equally invasive enthusiasm. Unsurprisingly, most of his messages seemed to have only been sent to people who were already in the Chosen, and even in the gang he seemed pretty isolated ¨C there were a lot of contacts he¡¯d only messaged once or twice for a specific issue, a lot of which had gone unanswered.


    By far the most common contact was Biter, and it seemed they had known each other long before signing on with the Chosen, working together as a pair of freelance mercenaries before drifting into Brockton Bay, where the merc game got too dangerous for them so they went looking for protection in the form of a gang.


    It looked like the decision hadn¡¯t been an easy one, but I wasn¡¯t interested in the trials and tribulations of a pair of asshole stormtroopers. Instead I focused on the more recent messages, finding a very interesting conversation from the day after Andrew Garcia was arrested.


    ?Change of plan. Handovers been delayed by two days. New location, too. Middleman hasnt passed it on yet?


    - Biter (19:52:13/24-2-2070)


    ?how the fuk come??


    - Barker (19:59:21/24-2-2070)


    ?Havent you been watching the news??


    - Biter (19:59:21/24-2-2070)


    ?what the fukin riots??


    - Barker (20:01:38/24-2-2070)


    ?Yes the fucking riots. Middleman was cagey but word is the guy they nabbed was part of the network?


    - Biter (20:02:09/24-2-2070)


    ?Company guys are running scared in case this isnt just some dead elf catching up with the guy. Theyve got runners checking KEs files in case theyre onto the network?


    - Biter (20:02:46/24-2-2070)


    ?You hearing me??


    - Biter (20:03:52/24-2-2070)


    ?yeah so fukin what? none of our business what they want to do?


    - Barker (20:05:03/24-2-2070)


    ?long as the wolf gets his stuff in the end?


    - Barker (20:05:12/24-2-2070)


    ?Where the fuck are you anyway? Its all hands tonight?


    - Biter (20:05:39/24-2-2070)


    ?whorehouse. be there in ten?


    - Barker (20:07:23/24-2-2070)


    I closed the messages, feeling a sense of satisfaction resonating through my ethereal form ¨C the thrill of a hunter closing in for a kill. In meatspace, Bitch had finished fusing the cybernetic arm to Barker¡¯s nervous and circulatory system, and had just injected an agent that would counteract the anaesthetic. Barker¡¯s face clenched up in pain as his nervous system adjusted to the new input, but it passed quickly. The black ceramic fingers of his new arm twitched a few times before curling into a fist as he sat up.


    Bitch simply disconnected from his biomonitor, the cable spooling back into her arm as my connection to Barker was cut. Across the table, Cricket looked on approvingly as Barker rolled his shoulder, testing the flexibility of his new joint.


    ¡°We¡¯re not there yet,¡± I said in the private yet crowded confines of Rachel¡¯s head. ¡°But we¡¯re close. I know who we¡¯re looking for now.¡±

 Phishing: 4.05

    ¡°I¡¯m beginning to think this is bigger than just some rogue manager,¡± I said in the privacy of Bitch¡¯s head, as the cyborg herself paused at the top of the truck¡¯s stairs.


    ¡°The medical supplies, right?¡± Tattletale asked half-heartedly; she knew exactly what I was talking about. ¡°It¡¯s one thing to siphon off the outflow of one factory, but there were a lot of drugs in there. A lot of different drugs.¡±


    If I was corporeal ¨C and if she could see me ¨C I¡¯d have nodded. ¡°They were all within the expiry date as well. Fresh from the factory. Barker had messages that called it a ¡®network.¡¯¡±


    <Did you get what we need?> Bitch asked, somehow managing to talk shop with Cricket at the same time.


    ¡°Not quite,¡± I responded. ¡°Barker looks to be just dumb muscle, but Biter is a point of contact between the Chosen and a middleman who arranged delivery of the supplies.¡±


    ¡°It could be a conspiracy within the company,¡± Tattletale mused. ¡°I thought it was just routine embezzlement, but maybe it¡¯s about supporting the Chosen specifically. A few well-placed racists get together over whisky and cigars one night and decide how best they can support the cause without actually risking their necks.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s possible. Medhall doesn¡¯t have the best hiring practices,¡± I agreed, thinking back to any number of conversations I¡¯d overheard mom having on the comm. ¡°It¡¯s the sort of environment where a conspiracy like that could flourish. Either way, if we want to find the kind of information our client is looking for we need to get close to Biter. This middleman sounds like exactly the sort of weak link he wants.¡±


    My attention was drawn back to Bitch¡¯s camera feed as Cricket clapped her on the shoulder.


    ¡°You did good back there. Quick, efficient work like that is just what we need right now. Go get yourself a drink and enjoy the rest of the evening; you¡¯ve earned it. Tomorrow, we¡¯ll talk about getting you properly embedded with our engineers.¡±


    Bitch nodded as Cricket disappeared back into the crowd, moving with a purpose that was lacking in the revellers. It looked like being a gang lieutenant was a busy job, at least in a gang like this one.


    A blade suddenly appeared in Bitch¡¯s peripheral vision, but she didn¡¯t so much as flinch as Barker stepped into view, snapping the retractable blade back into his arm before extending it again with an almost gunshot-like crack of released tension. Mercifully, he¡¯d taken the time to put his black t-shirt and armoured vest back on.


    ¡°Fuckin¡¯ awesome,¡± Barker murmured to himself before turning to Bitch. ¡°When I slit someone open from throat to crotch with this baby, I¡¯ll think of you. Meantime, though, come chill with the rest of us. Got plenty of drinks.¡±


    ¡°Do it,¡± Tattletale said, moments before Bitch said ¡°sure.¡±


    ¡°F¡¯real?¡± Barker asked, before his mutilated mouth stretched wide in a grin. ¡°Well, fuckin¡¯ A. I knew you were chill.¡±


    Without so much as asking, he snapped the spur back into its housing and reached out with his metal arm. With my vision limited to Bitch¡¯s eyes I couldn¡¯t see where it went, but from the angle I guessed he¡¯d put it on Bitch¡¯s hip.


    ¡°Touch is a little dull,¡± he remarked. ¡°Maybe you should have kept the skin on the fingers.¡±


    ¡°Brush him off,¡± Tattletale said, quickly. ¡°It¡¯s Biter we want.¡±


    ¡°Agreed to have a drink,¡± Bitch said as she reached down with her own cyberarm and firmly swatted Barker¡¯s hand away with the clunk of metal on plastic. ¡°Didn¡¯t agree to fuck you.¡±


    ¡°Sure, sure,¡± Barker threw his hands in the air with a mocking grin. ¡°No need to freak out about it. Not your type, I guess.¡±


    Does she have a type? I couldn¡¯t help but wonder.


    The rest of Barker¡¯s¡­ squad, I supposed, were pretty much where we¡¯d left them when Barker went in for his surgery, sprawled out on a number of syn-leather couches as they steadily worked their way through bottles of alcohol. Biter had pride of place, sitting on the right side of a wide black couch.


    Barker immediately sat down next to his friend, leaving just enough space between the two that Bitch could maybe squeeze herself in there ¨C but in case that wasn¡¯t enough for her he patted his lap.


    Instead, Bitch snatched up an unmarked plastic bottle of someone¡¯s homebrew and ¨C following Tattletale¡¯s directions ¨C perched herself on the arm of the couch next to Biter. Barker looked over at her and chuckled, before holding up his new arm and extending the blade.


    ¡°Check this piece out,¡± he said to the group, before turning to Bitch. ¡°What¡¯cha say it was again? Renraku C-something or other?¡±


    ¡°CSB Sixty-Seven A,¡± Bitch answered. ¡°Look up the manual; you¡¯ll need it for maintenance.¡±


    ¡°Glad to see you finally swapped out one of your noodle arms for something actually useful,¡± Biter said, his own sculpted chest muscles rising and falling as he chuckled.


    He held out his left arm, turning his metal hand over as he compared it to Barker¡¯s. Judging by what Cricket had said, I guessed he¡¯d bought his own cyberware; it was robust, but the movement of his fingers was visibly less flexible than Barker¡¯s high-end corpsec model. He grunted, seemingly satisfied, and turned to look up at Bitch.


    ¡°I guess you¡¯re a cyberdoc?¡±


    ¡°First time doing someone other than myself,¡± Bitch spoke the words Tattletale put in her mouth, shaking her head. ¡°Turned out okay.¡±


    ¡°Self-taught? That takes some skill, and a lot of motivation.¡± This close, I could see that the teeth behind his artificial jaw had been filed down into points, which only made me more surprised at how well spoken he was in comparison to his partner.


    ¡°So,¡± he continued, ¡°what brought you to us?¡±


    ¡°Barker invited me over,¡± Bitch answered, taking a sip of beer even as I spun up the toxin filters in her liver. ¡°Not been in the city long. Don¡¯t know anyone else here.¡±


    Biter chuckled, leaning back in his seat and reaching up to clasp his hands behind his head.


    ¡°Odd jobs, right? Moving from place to place, taking work in dive bars for petty dealers. Maybe you get lucky and run into some desperate suit with more money than survival instinct, or you get a steady job that lasts until someone else geeks your employer.¡±


    ¡°Same old story,¡± Bitch nodded, unprompted, before Tattletale told her to push further. ¡°That your story, too?¡±


    ¡°Me and Barker go back a few years. I kind of fell into merc work, met him on the way down. We drifted here and there, but after a while you either die alone or sign on with something bigger. Just the way it is.¡±


    ¡°People need a cause to fight for. It¡¯s in our blood,¡± one of their crew, a woman with steel teeth and a vibrant red mohawk, said. ¡°Mercs fight for nobody but the next paycheck, but we¡¯re part of a brotherhood now.¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± Biter nodded, half-heartedly. ¡°That too. The Chosen are disciplined. Got a lot of ex-military in this room. Helps keep everyone from falling into the fucking infighting you get in the gangs we used to work for.¡±


    ¡°Those are Saeder-Krupp, under the plates, right?¡± Bitch said, nodding to Biter¡¯s cyberarms even as she flashed a message up on her HUD.


    <There¡¯s a problem.>


    The multiple optics of Bitch¡¯s eyes weren¡¯t just for show. Each camera served some specific purpose, and one was linked into a target recognition package, with a rangefinder, manhunting algorithm and a link to the machine gun in her right arm ¨C in fact, going by the ID code, the optic had actually begun life as a scope for an automated turret.


    That software was working to outline a single target in red, on the far side of the room, but I couldn¡¯t see anything to distinguish him from the other Chosen. He wasn¡¯t acting suspiciously ¨C watching an impromptu fighting circuit that had broken out near the bar ¨C and while he had enough chrome that he¡¯d probably been with the Chosen for a few years, he clearly wasn¡¯t high up in the gang.


    ¡°Who is he?¡± I asked.


    <Dante Kaur> Bitch answered. <Me and Grue lifted him, left him welded to an I-beam.>


    ¡°Garcia¡¯s old friend,¡± I murmured, realisation dawning. ¡°The one who made it into the Chosen. Shit.¡±


    Sure enough, as I magnified Bitch¡¯s feed I could see obvious distortions on Garcia¡¯s arm, captured in a resolution that was more perfect than organic eyes. Someone had evidently cut him free, but he¡¯d evidently chosen not to waste money on cosmetic repairs.


    ¡°Do you think he¡¯ll recognise you?¡± Tattletale asked.


    <I don¡¯t know> Bitch answered. She couldn¡¯t convey tone in text, but she seemed surprisingly calm as she simultaneously put on the appearance of an attentive listener as Biter explained the specs of his cyberware.


    ¡°Well, it¡¯ll be easier if we get Biter alone anyway,¡± Tattletale mused, glibly. ¡°Bug, he has another port on his neck, same as Barker. Think you can work with that?¡±


    ¡°Of course I can,¡± I answered. ¡°But he¡¯s not going to let Bitch just stick it in there.¡±


    ¡°You wanna bet?¡± Tattletale drawled.


    ¡°Hey,¡± Biter spoke up, and I just about jumped out of my skin. ¡°You doing okay? Looking a little twitchy.¡±


    ¡°Let me take this,¡± Tattletale said, moments before putting words in Bitch¡¯s mouth.


    ¡°Sorry, chummer,¡± she began. ¡°Still a little wired from the fight.¡±


    ¡°Blood and oil still pumping, right?¡± Biter asked, a grin on his face. ¡°Nothing like a brawl to get you firing on all cylinders, and that was a hell of a fight. Kind of wish they¡¯d done that for my initiation.¡±


    ¡°Not enough of a fight for you?¡±


    ¡°I made it work,¡± Biter¡¯s chest tightened as he shrugged his shoulders. ¡°There was this go-gang out on the ass end of the North End, liked to run up and down the I95 playing chicken with the traffic. Their boss was a real giant of an ork, six and a half feet tall and chromed to the tusks.¡±


    ¡°Bitch, lean in a bit,¡± Tattletale hurriedly muttered before continuing to feed her lines.


    ¡°So how¡¯d you get him?¡±


    ¡°Her, actually,¡± Biter grinned. ¡°But with the chrome she was packing, it¡¯s not like that made a difference. I could¡¯ve ambushed her, but that¡¯d be too easy. Fighting her on the interstate wasn¡¯t going to work either; no way I could take out a whole gang on their home turf.¡±


    ¡°You gonna get to the point or just leave me on edge?¡± Bitch asked.


    ¡°I slipped some kid a credstick to follow her home, then knocked down her front door while she was stuffing her face with some cheap pizza. It was a fucking great fight ¨C got thrown out of a third floor window at one point ¨C but only because I made it great.¡±


    He shook his head, looking around to take in his squad. Surprisingly, they seemed content to talk amongst themselves, leaving Bitch and Biter to each other. Even Barker had stopped glancing over at Bitch¡¯s chest every now and then ¨C not that he could see much with the armoured vest she was wearing.


    ¡°Every Chosen fights ¨C Hookwolf wouldn¡¯t have it any other way ¨C but a lot of them got through the initiation by jumping ¡®targets of opportunity.¡¯ Not in my squad. We don¡¯t just fight ¡®cos we have to, we fight because we love to. Everyone here picked their targets because they wanted to prove their strength of body as well as conviction, just like you did when you took on that prissy gym rat in the pit.¡±


    ¡°Oh, you saw that?¡± Bitch asked, leaning in and grinning slightly as Tattletale instructed her to.


    ¡°Couldn¡¯t take my eyes off you from that moment on,¡± he smiled. ¡°Lot of the guys in there, I¡¯m not sure of. But you? You were born to fight and kill, and fuck anyone who gets in your way.¡±


    Bitch polished off the last of the homebrewed beer, even as her cybernetics worked overtime to make sure it wouldn¡¯t affect her too much.


    Not that it matters, I supposed, so long as she¡¯s lucid enough to repeat Tattletale¡¯s words.


    Bitch turned the empty plastic bottle over in her hand, before tossing it aside.


    ¡°Does the job, I guess, but it¡¯s nothing special. Never been one for beer anyway; takes too long.¡± She turned her head, deliberately, and looked across the room at the Chosen¡¯s makeshift bar. ¡°They got anything stronger?¡±


    ¡°Vodka, unless someone boosted something fancier. I¡¯ll buy you some, split the bottle? Call it a treat from an old timer to the new kid on the block.¡±


    ¡°We both know it isn¡¯t that,¡± Bitch said, as I realised that she wasn¡¯t just repeating Tattletale¡¯s words, but her tone as well. For her part, Tattletale had changed her tone to sound more like Bitch would if she was saying this of her own volition. ¡°Fuck all¡¯s gonna happen if you don¡¯t take risks.¡±


    To put herself ¨C her voice ¨C in someone else¡¯s hands like that¡­ it wasn¡¯t something I could ever picture myself doing.


    Biter chuckled, reaching back to rest his right arm on the back of the couch, which had the entirely intentional effect of giving Bitch a full view of his chest.


    ¡°Fine. I¡¯ve got no interest in women who aren¡¯t at least as dangerous as me. You qualify. Wanna get a drink?¡±


    Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    Instead of answering, Tattletale instructed Bitch to just stand up. As she did, Barker ¨C who had clearly been listening even as he chatted with the other members of the squad ¨C suddenly burst into laughter and clapped Biter on the shoulder, shouting ¡°go get her, tiger,¡± as Biter stood up.


    As the pair made their way over to the bar, they crossed beneath one of the speakers that was practically shaking itself apart under some powernoize beat, making conversation impossible.


    ¡°Hey, Bug,¡± Tattletale began, taking advantage of the moment, ¡°how much chrome does Bitch have?¡±


    ¡°Assuming you aren¡¯t asking about her limbs?¡± I answered, even as I dug through Bitch¡¯s software. ¡°Well, there¡¯s¡­¡± I saw something that stopped me dead in my tracks. ¡°Holy shit, there¡¯s drone software in here!¡±


    ¡°Mean she¡¯s a meat puppet?¡± Tattletale asked, sounding genuinely shocked for the first time since I¡¯d met her.


    ¡°No, no, her brain¡¯s in here, but there¡¯s other stuff as well. A chip in her spine linked to her limbs, and pacemakers on her heart and lungs. Must be so her body can keep running on its own software when she¡¯s directly controlling a drone. Keep fighting, even; the pilot program is for an anthropomorphic gun platform.¡±


    It was such a warped sense of priorities that I honestly felt a little sick thinking about it. I¡¯d be the first to admit that I wasn¡¯t necessarily fond of my body, but I¡¯d prioritise it over a sprite any day and I couldn¡¯t imagine handing control of it over to one.


    ¡°That¡¯s¡­¡± Tattletale began ¨C it seemed even her composure had limits. ¡°Okay, I can work with that.¡± She switched audio channels so that Rachel could hear her again. ¡°Bitch, I need more control. I can¡¯t tell you how to move and what to say at the same time. Give me control of your cybernetics, watch my movements and make your face match. Bug will pick up any cues you miss.¡±


    In spite of everything, I was expecting Bitch to protest, or at least hesitate. Instead a pathway opened up in her network and I hurriedly patched Tattletale¡¯s simsense wreath into the chip¡¯s interface lattice.


    Bitch twitched slightly as Tattletale took control, but that was the only visual tell and I doubted Biter noticed anything. Immediately, though, Tattletale changed up the playbook and moved Bitch closer to Biter, taking the opportunity offered by a tightly-packed crowd between them and the bar.


    ¡°This has got to be the weirdest thing I¡¯ve ever done,¡± Tattletale mused on the private channel. ¡°So I just have to get Biter alone and get the wire in Bitch¡¯s arm into his neck, right?¡±


    ¡°Right,¡± I said, ¡°but like I said, no way he¡¯ll just let you do that.¡±


    ¡°And like I said, you wanna bet?¡± Tattletale drawled as she reached the bar, turning Bitch around and leaning against it as she alternated between looking at Biter and out over the crowd.


    I realised what she was doing a moment later, as Bitch¡¯s optics picked out a figure outlined in red. With her back to the crowd, she wouldn¡¯t be able to keep track of Dante Kaur, make sure he wasn¡¯t in any position to see Bitch. And he was a lot closer here than he had been before.


    When Biter reappeared in Bitch¡¯s vision with a glass bottle of vodka in his hand, Tattletale told Bitch to smile slightly and manoeuvred her body to Biter¡¯s left, keeping his statuesque body in-between Bitch¡¯s slighter form and any stray glances Kaur might send her way.


    Tattletale moved closer, resting a metal hand on Biter¡¯s back as she instructed Bitch to tilt her head up and speak into his ear ¨C which, given the pounding din of the music, probably sounded like a whisper to him.


    ¡°It¡¯s a little loud down here. Know somewhere quieter?¡±


    Biter simply bared his pointed teeth and led Bitch to a staircase set against the wall of the warehouse; one I¡¯d seen Hookwolf take when he left the warehouse floor. Biter ignored the offices, though out of the corner of Bitch¡¯s eye I managed to catch a glimpse of the titanic metal cyborg sitting on a steel bench, staring dead-eyed at data only he could see.


    At the end of the row of offices, there was a near-vertical metal staircase leading up to a sloped hatch in the roof of the warehouse. It was locked, but the lock gave way after Biter put a six digit code into the keypad and the hatch opened without so much as a squeak of rust.


    He gestured for Bitch to head up first and I saw why as soon as Tattletale pulled Bitch¡¯s body up through the hatch. The roof of the warehouse was ever so slightly higher than the immediate buildings around it, looking out across the immense expanse of the trainyard; a massive field of railway sidings, unloading cranes and stacks of cargo containers awaiting a berth at the docks, three and a half kilometres long and one wide, ending almost at the waterfront.


    Even at this hour it teemed with activity, as trains snaked their way into the sidings, each almost three kilometres of multicoloured cargo containers, some resplendent in a riot of different colours and logos while others were monochrome and branded with the symbols of single megacorps. The containers were collected from the cars by automated cranes that matched up to anchor points on the top corners of the units, depositing them on access roads that ran along the length of the sidings, where they were collected by manned vehicles that delivered them to the staging areas, each driven by a single metahuman working to an exacting, ever-changing plan driven by the same sort of grid-link system that regulated traffic in the city itself.


    The most distant sidings were fenced off from the rest and patrolled by security guards and hovering drones, the containers a deep blue colour with a stylised Greek helmet on the side, with armoured cars at the front and rear of the train bristling with stowed turrets and drones locked securely into armoured racks.


    The cargo from those trains was brought to a roadway on the far end of the trainyard, where they were carried along the length of the river by automated trailers before they crossed the river and passed through the curtain wall of Brockton Bay¡¯s corporate castle.


    Ares Macrotechnology¡¯s enclave dominated the view, reducing the trainyard to insignificance in the face of its sheer scale. Immense warehouses and office buildings fronted the enclave, but they were all in turn dwarfed by the pyramidal structure of the main arcology. A kilometre wide at its base, it stretched upwards for two hundred floors as a sloped hexagon, surrounded on all sides by smaller trapezoidal buildings that followed the angle of its ascent.


    Bitch¡¯s gaze was drawn there, but my attention inevitably passed the pyramid I saw every day from the balcony of my parents¡¯ apartment, down past the descending buildings and cranes to the Ares waterfront, where the curtain wall gave way to vast docking facilities more sophisticated than anything else in the city.


    A ship was pulling out of the docks, four hundred metres long and covered from bow to stern with containers all bearing the familiar branding of Ares Arms. A swarm of two dozen drones circled it, each the size of insects from this distance, and a warship from the enclave¡¯s corporate naval station sat protectively off the starboard bow, between the cargo liner and the city. It would escort the ship out to sea, where it would be met in international waters by whatever Ares naval assets had been assigned to escort its cargo of munitions off to their intended destination.


    ¡°Hell of a view, isn¡¯t it?¡± Biter asked, his hand coming into view as he slung his arm over Bitch¡¯s shoulder. ¡°All that that steel, all that iron, fitting together in complete harmony. From train to truck to yard to port, and from there to who knows where.¡±


    He chucked, shifting his arm and stepping out in front of Rachel, stretching his hand to point off into the Bay.


    ¡°Or there¡¯s the sea. If you¡¯re the romantic type.¡±


    ¡°I think you know this isn¡¯t romance,¡± Bitch said, as Tattletale snatched the bottle from Biter¡¯s other hand and unscrewed the top. She took a swig as she walked Bitch¡¯s body over to the edge of the rooftop, sitting down with Bitch¡¯s legs dangling off the edge ¨C seemingly without a care in the world. ¡°Don¡¯t make it more than it should be.¡±


    ¡°I know,¡± Biter said as he sat down beside her, taking a swig. ¡°People like us, it¡¯s just a recipe for disaster. Too wired, too full of the fight. You don¡¯t end up in a gang like this if you¡¯re focusing on anything other than what really matters to you.¡±


    ¡°The cause?¡± Bitch asked, as Tattletale directed her to push and the bottle made its way back to her.


    ¡°I get the feeling you¡¯re here for the chrome,¡± Biter observed, his tone casual. ¡°Not the cause.¡±


    I froze in place, processes halting in shock.


    Tattletale wouldn¡¯t know how to work Bitch¡¯s cybergun, but maybe I can override the system if she points it at him¡­


    ¡°Cards on the table?¡± Tattletale said through Bitch¡¯s voice. Somehow, impossibly, Bitch managed to keep her tone perfectly level even as she sat on the edge of a four storey drop. ¡°I think you¡¯re here for the same thing.¡±


    Biter simply chuckled, his cybernetic hand moving up to play with his jutting metal jaw.


    ¡°You¡¯re wrong about that, but not completely wrong. I¡¯m here for the killing. I¡¯m here because I only feel alive when I¡¯m fighting for my life, and in the Chosen I can kill whenever the fuck I want.¡±


    ¡°Does it bother you?¡± Tattletale asked. ¡°The cause?¡±


    ¡°Look at that fucking thing,¡± Barker said, sweeping an arm out to take in the immense arcology looming over them both. ¡°How many people you think live in there? And in the city? The fucking world? How many people died of a heart attack in the last five minutes? How many were eaten by ghouls, shot by gangers, starved to death? What the hell does it matter that I only kill trogs or pixies or halfers now? It¡¯s a drop in the ocean.¡±


    He turned back to Bitch, a serious expression in his eyes.


    ¡°Just don¡¯t let yourself think you¡¯re better than them. We¡¯re all killers, all in the same boat. Doesn¡¯t matter whether you buy into their cause or not because you¡¯re helping it all the same. Might even come ¡®round to their way of thinking; I know Barker has.¡±


    ¡°Heavy stuff,¡± Tattletale said, telling Bitch to grin before taking another swig. ¡°Not exactly what we came here for, though, is it? So, got to ask, what¡¯s your poison? What gets your mind off all that shit? ¡®Cause I am still pumped, and this vodka¡± ¨C she swirled the half-empty bottle in her hand ¨C ¡°still isn¡¯t cutting it.¡±


    ¡°Never been one for stimulants,¡± Biter said. ¡°Can¡¯t focus on the fight if you¡¯re off your tits on novacoke. But a hit of zen helps keep things moving when the going¡¯s slow and the next fight¡¯s too far away for the comedown to matter.¡±


    ¡°Psychedelics?¡± Tattletale said, leaning in as Bitch pulled her lips back in a smile. ¡°We¡¯ve got similar tastes, ¡®cept all my drugs are digital.¡±


    She reached up and tapped two metal fingers against Bitch¡¯s skull, her eyes only centimetres from Biter¡¯s own.


    ¡°Don¡¯t have to pay a dealer for files in your head.¡± She leaned in, Bitch¡¯s voice dropping to a whisper as Tattletale wrapped her arms around Biter¡¯s shoulders. ¡°Don¡¯t have to worry about the pounding in your skull, your heart going at a million miles a minute, when you can just switch it all off and drift away.¡±


    Biter shuffled back, away from the edge, one arm wrapped around Bitch¡¯s waist to pull her with him even as the other undid the straps of her body armour.


    ¡°Want to know what it feels like?¡± Tattletale asked as she moved her hand up to caress the back of Biter¡¯s head. I unlocked Bitch¡¯s datalink, letting the cable poke out of her palm ever so slightly. ¡°You ever linked minds with someone while you do it? Feel what they feel, see through their eyes? I see some beautiful things running this software on one mind. Makes me wonder what two will see.¡±


    ¡°Do it,¡± Biter said, nodding, as he lay flat on his back, pulling Bitch down with him.


    Tattletale twisted Bitch¡¯s fingers to pull the wire out of its housing, brushing the skin beneath Biter¡¯s ear until she hit metal and pushed the datajack into his slot, Biter¡¯s firewalls yielding without effort as he gave way.


    He jerked up, spasming as I flooded his software with everything I had; sprites and raw resonance spikes pouring into his network. Wasps stung their venom into his neural link, using the man-machine interface of his cyberware to flood his mind with poison even as I buried it all beneath a flood of junk data. Idly, I sent a dragonfly off into the ether and plugged the psychedelic executable it returned with straight into Biter¡¯s mind, giving him the trip he wanted even if it was the recorded data of someone else¡¯s journey rather than the real thing. It¡¯d keep him occupied while we worked, and he¡¯d wake up in an hour with the memory of a trip but no details, hopefully assuming that Bitch left him to come down and left the Chosen because she got cold feet during their deep conversation.


    Simultaneously, my woodlouse was eating away at his files, leveraging the extensive permissions he¡¯d given Bitch into access into even the most encrypted files. It wasn¡¯t enough to get me all the way there, but it was a start. A crowbar in a vulnerable seam I could use to pry open all his secrets.


    ¡°I have control,¡± I said, two point six seconds after Tattletale stuck in the datajack. ¡°He¡¯s unconscious, immobilised and tripping balls. The files will take a little while; don¡¯t eject until I give you the all clear.¡±


    ¡°Phew,¡± Tattletale sighed, before she started laughing ¨C more than a little maniacally. ¡°Now that¡¯s how it¡¯s done! It¡¯s been ages since I could really cut loose like that, and I didn¡¯t even need spells to do it!¡±


    She sat Bitch down beside Biter, leaning back against his chest as she looked up at the sky.


    ¡°Oh, right,¡± she said. ¡°Uh, how do I¡­ log out, I guess?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve got it,¡± I said, diverting my attention for a fraction of a second as I separated Tattletale¡¯s digital presence from Bitch¡¯s chip. She wasn¡¯t unable to log out, but I guess I shouldn¡¯t have expected her to find the right mental switch when she¡¯d never used a simsense rig before.


    This time, there was a visible tell as Bitch took back control of her body; she immediately sat up and knelt beside Biter¡¯s head, checking the datajack was firmly seated in its housing. Satisfied, she triggered the mental switch that would lock it in place, and reached over to grab her armour. She kept her eyes firmly fixed on the hatch up to the rooftop, but it was dead quiet.


    I turned my attention back to digital space, as my woodlouse managed to eat through the last firewall around Biter¡¯s internal commlink. Sure enough, Biter was a much more significant player than Barker. He had more than a few messages with Cricket and Stormtiger, as well as a few gang sergeants on the same level as him. More importantly, every week he received a text from a single contact, outlining a place and a time to meet.


    He wasn¡¯t just given the bare essentials, either; he had a healthy working relationship with the contact ¨C as healthy as gangs got, at least ¨C and the two regularly kept each other aware of delays, issues, spikes in demand or shortfalls in supply.


    ¡°Got a name, of sorts,¡± I said. ¡°Alabaster. No context from the messages as to who he is, but maybe I can dig something up on his comm number.¡±


    My messenger sprites were exactly that; messengers. While they resembled dragonflies to me, in practical terms they worked along exactly the same lines as any other message between commlinks.


    In order to send a message to a number, it had to know where that number was. So when I sent my messenger sprite out, it simply pinged off the underlying network with a false ID and followed the trail down to the other line. There was a tense moment when nothing happened, before I received a signal as ¡®Alabaster¡¯ picked up his comm.


    ¡°Who is this?¡±


    His voice was a little gruff, but unaugmented. The dragonfly cut the connection a moment later, doubtless leaving Alabaster to wonder when he was going to start getting the spam phone calls now that some scammers knew there was a real person attached to the number.


    The dragonfly returned, landing on my outstretched palm, and relayed the location data to me. A quick check with the local municipal records revealed that he wasn¡¯t staying in a Medhall owned building like I was expecting, but at a shelter run by a local policlub that did charitable work on the side. The policlub was called America As One, which told me everything I needed to know about them.


    ¡°Alright, I¡¯ve got him. No real name yet, but I know where he lays his head at night. Just need to scrub my presence from Biter¡¯s head.¡±


    ¡°Fantastic work, Bug,¡± Tattletale said, and I was very glad digital cheeks couldn¡¯t blush. ¡°Now I guess we clear out. A shame, really. All this effort putting Bitch into the Chosen and we can¡¯t even get any more secrets out of it.¡±


    ¡°Our client¡¯s asking for information,¡± I said, as I began pulling back from Biter¡¯s network, painstakingly going over every inch of his mind to wipe the marks my violent intrusion had left. ¡°If he wanted infiltration, he should have paid more.¡±


    ¡°Hah!¡± Tattletale exclaimed. ¡°What a fine Shadowrunner I¡¯ve made of you.¡±


    With my presence erased, I told Bitch to eject the datalink and looped Grue into the conversation.


    ¡°We¡¯ve got what we need,¡± I said. ¡°Making our way out now. Bitch, any ideas? You could go back through the warehouse?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll climb down,¡± she said, jogging across the rooftop before calmly rolling herself off the edge, grabbing onto a steel strut that ran up the height of the building and shimmying down it with the faint squeal of metal on metal.


    ¡°Alright then,¡± I said. ¡°Grue, pickup on the east side of the building.¡±


    Our exit from the warehouse was almost anticlimactic in comparison to just how harrowing getting in there had been ¨C and I wasn¡¯t even there in person. Grue pulled up silently in Bitch¡¯s van and Regent already had the door open for her. We left just as silently, as Bitch took back control of the vehicle and Tattletale shut down her simsense wreath.


    I left the matrix just in time to see her lifting the wreath off her head, setting it aside as she rubbed her temples.


    ¡°A bad trip?¡± I joked.


    ¡°Might as well be,¡± she moaned. ¡°Feel like my third eye just got hit by a flashbang.¡±


    ¡°So, what did we get?¡± Grue asked, leaning back over the front seat to look at us. Tattletale just waved at me ¨C her headache must¡¯ve been serious if she was willing to miss a chance to show off how smart she is.


    ¡°It¡¯s not just the dopadrine,¡± I began. ¡°They get regular shipments of a whole host of medical-grade drugs as well; their chop shop is better stocked than any surgery I¡¯ve ever seen. The shipments come in fortnightly, and the middleman between the Chosen and the source in Medhall is a guy who goes by Alabaster. He doesn¡¯t work for Medhall, though. Or at least not directly; he lives in a shelter run by a policlub. America As One.¡±


    I paused, my eyes focusing on the matrix for a moment.


    ¡°From the look of things, they fund a free clinic for the homeless. The human homeless,¡± I clarified, looking at the pictures on their website. ¡°My guess is that¡¯s where the drugs are filtered from. Someone in Medhall donates to the charity, the charity donates to the Chosen. All we have to do is go there, find Alabaster and dig up something for our boss to sink his teeth into.¡±


    ¡°Sounds like a plan,¡± Grue nodded. ¡°Bitch, take us back to the loft. I¡¯m sure we¡¯ll all think better when the sun¡¯s up.¡±


    As Bitch navigated her way through the streets, I couldn¡¯t help but think back to everything that had happened, everything that Hookwolf and Biter had said to her. In the end, I just couldn¡¯t let my concerns go.


    <Hey, Rachel?> I asked, overlaying the message on her HUD.


    <What is it?> she responded near-instantly.


    <A lot of stuff got said back in the warehouse. A lot of ideals being thrown around. I was just wondering what you thought of them?>


    <Why? They¡¯re just words.>


    I chuckled, my lips curling up in a faint smile.


    <Of course. Sorry to bother you.>

 Phishing: 4.06

    ¡°Good afternoon, my name is Emma and I¡¯m calling from Ophelia Legal Services. I understand you¡¯ve recently been in an accident that wasn¡¯t your fault.¡±


    ¡°Fuck off, wageslave,¡± Alabaster¡¯s gruff voice came back down the line. ¡°And delete my fucking number.¡±


    He hung up, but the damage was already done. I grinned, looking across the street at the old building that was once a community centre before it fell into private ownership.


    ¡°He¡¯s in there,¡± I said, leaning back against Bitch¡¯s van as I looked down at Tattletale.


    ¡°Good,¡± she nodded. ¡°Be a shame to waste the trip. Now,¡± she flicked up her hood, ¡°how do I look?¡±


    The others were probably a little taken aback at Lisa¡¯s change of appearance, but to me it felt surprisingly familiar. The trenchcoat was still there, of course, but beneath it she wore a threadbare tracksuit with mismatching pants and hooded top, and worn but practical boots that were maybe a size too big. It was a look I¡¯d seen on her before, in CCTV footage revealed to me by the event horizon, but it was also one she¡¯d long since thrown away once she¡¯d managed to claw back some of the designer lifestyle I suspected she¡¯d enjoyed in T¨ªr Tairngire.


    She couldn¡¯t completely pass for human, even with the hood covering her ears; her features were just a little too sharp, her frame a little too thin and a little too tall. But that same skinny frame could be mistaken for malnourishment, and if the old community centre was as dingy as we were expecting then the hood would leave her features hidden in shadow.


    She certainly stood out a lot less than I would.


    ¡°I can¡¯t believe you made me wear this,¡± Alec said, worrying at a thread on the sleeve of his dark grey hoodie. ¡°These jeans are itchy. Why are they itchy?¡±


    ¡°Hey, I bought those at a very nice thrift store,¡± I countered. ¡°Probably only had three or four previous owners, tops.¡±


    ¡°Maudit¡­¡± he swore, probably, and flipped me off. ¡°The things I do for money¡­¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s odd¡­¡± Tattletale said, looking intensely at the building. ¡°Hey, Regent, have a look at this place. It¡¯s not just me, right?¡±


    He turned around, looking up at the building, as I tried in vain to see what they saw in it. From the outside, it looked just like any other building. America As One¡¯s posters and signs were surprisingly restrained, and the windows of the first three floors were boarded up.


    On second glance, I realised that the tame exterior was probably meant to divert attention away from whatever was happening inside. From the steady line of destitute humans making their way through the doors, it seemed like there was an event on.


    ¡°Now that is odd,¡± Regent abruptly observed. ¡°A little hypocritical too, given why we¡¯re here.¡±


    ¡°What is it?¡± I asked.


    ¡°This place is practically bleeding magic,¡± he explained. ¡°Looks like it¡¯s being used as some kind of lodge.¡±


    ¡°And the Chosen are magophobes¡­¡± I chuckled, thinking of something mom used to say. ¡°If they didn¡¯t have double standards, they wouldn¡¯t have any standards at all.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s weird, though, isn¡¯t it?¡± Tattletale pushed. ¡°I mean, think about that chromed-up monster in the pit. Did anything about him seem less than genuine to you?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± I frowned. ¡°You¡¯re right. Someone like that isn¡¯t going to be buying his drugs from mages. An alliance of convenience, maybe? Solidarity among metaphobes?¡±


    ¡°Maybe he doesn¡¯t know,¡± Grue pointed out as he stepped out of the door of the van, looking up at the community centre.


    ¡°If it¡¯s a free clinic and food giveaway, you¡¯d think they¡¯d want to advertise more,¡± he observed. ¡°Barely any signs, nothing in AR. It¡¯s listed on the policlub¡¯s website, but that¡¯s it.¡±


    ¡°They¡¯re probably mostly relying on word of mouth,¡± Tattletale mused. ¡°Get a few volunteers to canvas the streets and spread the word, then let the local homeless spread it further among themselves. A lower profile probably makes it easier to filter out the undesirables as well.¡±


    ¡°Either way, you two should get going,¡± Grue said, nodding at the dwindling number of people entering the building. ¡°Looks like it¡¯ll be starting soon. Same drill as last time; gather what intel you can and we¡¯ll be waiting with the firepower if you need it.¡±


    ¡°Right then,¡± Tattletale nodded. ¡°Time to go see what the fuss is all about.¡±


    As they made their way across the street I followed Grue into the back of the van, where Bitch was sitting on one of the utilitarian seats with a plastic case in her hand, about the same shape and size as a commlink but a little thicker. She opened it up with a surprising amount of care, before I saw a datastream form between her and the box as a tiny drone crawled up and onto the lid.


    It was about the size of a large insect and it looked like one too; sleek and wasp-like with spindly legs, a small thorax, yellow wings and tiny antennae jutting out of its head.


    ¡°I haven¡¯t seen that one before,¡± I observed.


    ¡°It¡¯s new,¡± Bitch said as the drone spread its wings and took flight, the ornithopter-like motion of the wings supplemented by the absolutely tiny pulse jet at their base. ¡°A Mitsuhama Automatronics FlySpy. I bought it with my share of the Garcia job.¡±


    ¡°How much did it set you back?¡± I asked, curious.


    ¡°Two thousand,¡± Bitch answered nonchalantly, following the flight of the wasp with her optics as it moved from one corner of the van to the other, its feet gripping onto the ceiling. Even from a few feet away I was having trouble making it out.


    Two thousand nuyen¡­ I thought. Over half a month¡¯s rent for a few grams of metal.


    Bitch stopped tracking the motion of the drone with her optics, instead taking direct control of the bug as she overlaid its vision onto hers. The drone¡¯s flight wavered ever so slights as Bitch took over, and she leant back into her seat as she focused on familiarising herself with an entirely unfamiliar form of motion.


    ¡°All good?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Fully functional,¡± Bitch answered, her mouth moving even as her optics stared off into space. ¡°No latency, cameras are online.¡±


    I reached into the matrix myself, tapping into Bitch¡¯s PAN once again as I pulled up the FlySpy¡¯s feed in a window in front of me. I watched the footage as Bitch guided the drone out into the street, before I reached out and pulled shut the rear door of the van, finding my way to one of the seats with only a yellow streetlamp¡¯s light-bleed through the front windows to guide me.


    Grue was seated as well, checking over his new assault rifle. Honestly, he looked a little lost. It didn¡¯t take me long to realise that this was the second mission in a row ¨C technically ¨C that he¡¯d spent sitting on his hands.


    ¡°Want me to patch you into the feed?¡± I asked him.


    He looked over at me, setting the rifle aside before answering.


    ¡°Please.¡±


    I nodded, sending a connection request to his cyberware¡¯s wireless node. He yielded in a second, and I overlaid the drone¡¯s feed in a window he could manipulate in AR.


    ¡°Would have been nice to have this with the Chosen,¡± he observed. ¡°You kind of left me in the dark back there.¡±


    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said, my tone a little sheepish. ¡°It was pretty¡­ mentally intense in there. Didn¡¯t have much bandwidth to focus on anything outside Bitch¡¯s head. If I¡¯d realised it was an option, I¡¯d have patched you in.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s okay, Bug,¡± he said, though from his tone it sounded like that wasn¡¯t the whole truth. ¡°Doubt I could have contributed much anyway.¡±


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t mean you should be shut out like that,¡± I observed, giving voice to the part he¡¯d politely left out. I was leaning a little on knowledge I shouldn¡¯t have had; Brian had tried being just a hired gun and it had almost got him shot up by a High Threat Response team.


    ¡°I know I wouldn¡¯t want to be,¡± I continued, ¡°but then I¡¯m never more than a few datastreams away from letting myself in anyway.¡±


    ¡°I never had much of a head for software,¡± Grue remarked. ¡°Had a mandatory CompSci class back in middle school, but it never really grabbed me like it did some of the kids.¡±


    ¡°I always loved it,¡± I smiled. ¡°It just made sense, even before it ¡®grabbed me.¡¯¡± I punctuated the euphemism with air quotes. ¡°I haven¡¯t done much coding since, though. Not in the traditional sense, anyway; it just feels too inflexible now. Like trying to write with a pen instead of a keyboard.¡±


    ¡°That must have been a hell of a thing to go through,¡± Grue observed, as the feed in front of us showed the FlySpy tucking itself beneath the turned-down collar of Tattletale¡¯s coat.


    ¡°Yeah, it wasn¡¯t the best experience in the world. It was kind of like the whole world was a spam zone, before I got used to it. Even the smallest matrix-capable device felt like it was screaming into my head. And as if that wasn¡¯t enough, this was back in sixty-four.¡±


    ¡°Crash two-point-oh, the ¡®New Revolution¡¯¡­¡± Grue shook his head. ¡°Not a good hand to be dealt.¡±


    ¡°Whole city was in flames, the wired Matrix had burned down with it and I had absolutely no idea what was wrong with my brain. I didn¡¯t even come across the word ¡®Technomancer¡¯ until about two years later ¨C even then, it was just a rumour. For a while, I wondered if I was the only one.¡±


    ¡°Heads up,¡± Grue said, nodding at the feed. ¡°Looks like they¡¯re in.¡±


    Regent and Tattletale had made their way to the entrance of the building, mingling at the back of a group of half a dozen transients. They were greeted at the door by a smiling human woman who looked like she could be a college student, wearing a navy-blue polo shirt with the America As One logo on it and an ID badge on a lanyard around her neck. In deference to the weather, she wore a deep red puffer jacket open over the shirt, to keep herself warm in the cold evening air.


    Behind her, standing well back from the friendly face at the entrance, were two hired security guards with bulletproof vests worn over black turtlenecks, looking more like corporate security than local hired muscle. They weren¡¯t interfering with Tattletale¡¯s group, but that didn¡¯t stop the people in front of her from eyeing them warily. No doubt they¡¯d been ¡®moved on¡¯ enough times to be suspicious of security by default.


    Inside, a short corridor opened up into a cavernous hall with a laminate floor, easily large enough to hold the rows of benches and trestle tables that were, for the moment, absent of any food. However, the benches and the hundred-odd people sitting on them quickly faded into insignificance next to the room¡¯s d¨¦cor.


    ¡°Well, would you look at that,¡± Grue remarked. ¡°It seems¡­ OTT for this sort of event.¡±


    ¡°Maybe they use the hall for their meetings as well as charity,¡± I said, shrugging my shoulders half-heartedly, with my eyes fixed firmly on the feed.


    From the FlySpy¡¯s position under Tattletale¡¯s collar, I could see right down the length of the table, past similar desperate figures in worn but warm clothes. At the end of the hall, the tables gave way to a raised stage, with a deceptively simple podium in front of a wall of spotlessly clean banners and flags.


    Pride of place went to a rendition of George Washington in the centre, the white-haired statesman in colonial dress surrounded by a halo of blinding light. He was flanked by narrow, floor to ceiling banners topped by fifty stars on a blue background, with red and white stripes cascading down to the ground like streamers. Flanked between those banners and ones with the ancient circle of thirteen stars that Washington had carried was the almost understated logo of the policlub; their acronym ringed by white stars in a blue band.


    There were a few people on the stage, dressed in the same pseudo-uniform of policlub polos as the girl outside, but none of them looked important to be enough to be the speaker. Any one of them could have been Alabaster, but personally I doubted it; they were all a little too young. Students, probably, fighting the ¡®good fight¡¯ in clubrooms and campus debate societies, rather than on the streets.


    There was a quiet murmur of conversation, but despite being vastly outnumbered the policlubbers were contributing about as much of it as the recipients of their goodwill. Life on the streets didn¡¯t foster a sense of community, at least not on a large scale; the few conversations at the tables were happening between those who shared a nice patch of sheltered ground, but everyone else was too wary to talk; too concerned with protecting what little they had.


    Interestingly, nobody was complaining about the lack of food ¨C not yet, at least. It seemed like Tattletale was right. They knew the drill; no charity until you¡¯ve listened to the charity¡¯s spiel.


    Not that AAO was going to keep them waiting for long; a man had just walked onto the stage, and unlike the policlubbers he wasn¡¯t wearing the mandatory polo shirt. In fact, he was dressed like a priest, with black pants and a neat black shirt. All he was missing was the strip of white at his collar.


    He was the picture of the young politician; in his late twenties or early thirties, with a winning smile on his face and a sparkle in his eyes, his blonde hair slicked back and neatly shaved down at the sides. He stood on the stage for a moment, looking over the crowd with what appeared to be genuine warmth before he tapped the microphone at the podium and let the feedback bring the conversation to a halt.


    ¡°Ladies and gentlemen,¡± he began. ¡°I¡¯m sure that some of you have been here before, that you¡¯ve heard me talk. I¡¯m just as sure that for many of you, I am a complete stranger, but whether you¡¯ve heard of me before, I would like to thank you all for coming here tonight. We host these kitchens at this time, on this day, every week, and we¡¯re open to all humans in need of aid.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s Awakened,¡± Tattletale whispered into the microphone hidden at the base of her hood. ¡°None of the others are. I doubt any of them are Alabaster.¡±


    ¡°My thoughts exactly,¡± Grue said. ¡°Bitch, see if you can take the drone for a spin. Get a look at the staff.¡±


    ¡°For those of you who don¡¯t know me,¡± he continued, ¡°my name is Justin Hammond. America As One is my organisation. I am a preacher, a campaigner, an advocate and a crusader who fights for candidates and laws that advance American values, and protect American citizens. But at heart, I¡¯m a simple man.¡±


    He smiled, looking up rather than out across the tables, and as Bitch steered the drone out of Tattletale¡¯s collar and began crawling it down the front of her coat, I saw why. There were cameras lining the walls, capturing his speech from multiple angles.


    It doesn¡¯t matter if your in-person audience is nothing but SINless, voteless vagrants when an infinite number of people can fit behind a screen, I realised.


    ¡°I like steak and potatoes. I like a good fight, a serious game of baseball or football. American football. I like a good woman¡¯s company-¡±


    That got a chuckle out of the crowd, but Hammond had clearly planned for that. He held up a hand for calm, with an affably sheepish expression on his face that disappeared immediately the moment the room was quiet again.


    ¡°-And I believe that they are fucking things up, out there. And the rest of the world¡¯s letting them.¡±


    ¡°What are you doing under the table?¡± Grue asked, as the FlySpy took to the air off of Tattletale¡¯s knee. ¡°We can¡¯t see anyone down there.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s small, but it¡¯s not invisible,¡± Bitch explained, as she steered the drone between a pair of legs and skimmed the floor of the room. ¡°Everyone behind Tattletale is looking at the stage; they¡¯d see it if I took off straight away.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure you all understand exactly what I mean,¡± Hammond leant forward, resting an elbow on the podium. ¡°When I go looking in the universities, or in Downtown or on the Boardwalk, it¡¯s hard to find people who really get it. They¡¯re insulated from the consequences¡­ hell, a lot of them even benefit from the way things are. But you know better, because you¡¯re the victims of this world we live in.¡±


    Bitch hugged the wall with the drone, ducking behind an old flatscreen before coming to a hover in the rafters. From there, she could see the entire hall at a glance.


    ¡°You know who I¡¯m talking about. What I¡¯m talking about. You can¡¯t escape their influence no matter where in the world you might be because they¡¯ve made the world their own. It¡¯s their playground, to do with as they see fit.¡±


    Hammond was animated now; getting into the swing of his speech. With none of the visible employees being likely targets, I spared a moment to look over the crowd. Most were politely watching, some weren¡¯t watching at all, but there were more than a few who seemed to be picking up what he was putting down; watching the speech with dangerously intense looks in their eyes.


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    ¡°They decided who deserved to be a citizen not by the country they were born in, but by submission to their SIN. I look before me and I see old families, old names; the fabric on which this nation was built. Maybe not all of you, but many. But they don¡¯t make a distinction because to them your name ¨C your history ¨C is without value.¡±


    Bitch pulled the drone in a quick pass of the rear of the room, checking over the security guards who¡¯d ambled in and positioned themselves out of sight of the crowd while keeping their client firmly in their view. At first I thought they might have been hired in-house, in which case they¡¯d be a perfect candidate for Alabaster, but one of the guards was wearing a fleece with the logo of a small-scale security firm on it.


    ¡°Value is, of course, what it all comes down to,¡± Hammond continued. ¡°What can you do for them? They set the prices, to control where you live. They stack the governments with men who agree with their control, who benefit from it. They stock the shelves with the food you eat, cutting every corner they can to squeeze as much value ¨C as much profit ¨C out of you as they can. And you pay for that food, if you can afford it, with the money they pay you.¡±


    He leant forwards, his hands gripping the sides of the podium. At the back of the room, in a little alcove above the entrance, Bitch ducked around the vision of a trideo camera and its crew, capturing the speech for all to see.


    ¡°You know what I do, and it probably makes you laugh. Because I can campaign for better politicians, better laws, but we both know they¡¯re not the ones who¡¯re really in charge. The United States don¡¯t matter anymore.¡±


    ¡°Make your way to the front,¡± Grue instructed Bitch. ¡°Alabaster might not even be in the room, but this asshole clearly came from somewhere that¡¯s staff only. No way he was slaving away in a kitchen back there.


    Hammond stepped back from the podium, throwing his hands in the air.


    ¡°But there I go, stating the obvious. You don¡¯t need me to tell you who rules this city; you just need to take a hike up to the roof and look for Ares¡¯ walled castle. That¡¯s the way the world is, and I¡¯m too young to remember any different. But that doesn¡¯t mean it was always this way.¡±


    He took a half-turn back, gesturing with one arm at the image of George Washington. As he did, his other hand ¨C tucked behind his back, but visible from the drone¡¯s position ¨C twisted itself in a complicated pattern, glowing with an ethereal, staticky light.


    ¡°And here¡¯s the magic,¡± Tattletale whispered gleefully, as the symbols of old-world America began to glow with an inner light, their colours becoming more vivid to the point of being almost technicolouresque.


    ¡°It might be hard to imagine now, but this land was once whole. From California to Maine, Seattle to Miami. From sea to shining sea. The United States of America was  the vanguard against unchecked corporate power; the knight standing between the American citizen and the greed of foreign businessmen who saw them only as resources to exploit.¡±


    He turned his attention away from the flag, his eyes leaving the audience as they focused solely on the camera at the back of the room. Bitch hugged the ceiling, crossing its span in a single flight that put her right at the top of one of the waving flags.


    ¡°United as one nation, this continent was strong enough to say no! No, to unchecked corporate power! No, to the enemies at our borders! No, to terrorism! No, to war! No to additives in your food! No, to the rat-race to discover the absolute depths of moral degeneracy!¡±


    ¡°There,¡± I said, marking a section of the feed. ¡°In the wings. There are people watching from the shadows.¡±


    ¡°Pulling in for a closer look,¡± Bitch answered, as Hammond ramped up the intensity.


    ¡°You might say those days are gone, but I say just look at Japan! They unleashed the megacorporate scourge on the world with the Shiawase decision, but they managed to ride the lightning! While Ares, Horizon and NeoNet abandoned America and its values in pursuit of global profits, the Japanacorps spread Japanese culture to the world and remain under the guiding hand of the Japanese throne!¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s one way of looking at it,¡± I grumbled. Most would say it¡¯s the other way around.


    Bitch had pulled the drone into the shadowed space off the side of the stage, where there was a cluster of techs gathered around a bank of screens and audio equipment, gathering together the feeds of the room¡¯s cameras even as a director in a garish teal shirt stitched it all together into a cohesive viewing experience for the livestream. More importantly for our purposes, there were a number of other figures watching from the shadows; each one of them no doubt serving some nebulous role in the running of the policlub.


    ¡°Now I¡¯m not praising them because I believe Japan wants what¡¯s best for America!¡± Hammond shouted. ¡°Japan wants what¡¯s best for Japan, and their megacorps are no less willing to exploit us! But Japan proves that America could have risen, rather than fallen! If it had seen the Ghost Dance War to the end rather than losing to a bunch of tribal relics we¡¯d beaten a hundred and fifty years back! If it had the strength to force the Southern States to stay in the Union, or the resolve not to provide the Canadian provinces with the handouts that drove them away! If it had responded properly to goblinisation, VITAS and HMHVV rather than letting them tear society apart!¡±


    I couldn¡¯t help the sinking feeling in my stomach. Lumping goblinisation in with the deadliest diseases in human history was sickening on a deeply personal level, and admiring the Japanese ¡®response¡¯ ¨C of mass segregation and deportation ¨C was abhorrent. The obvious popularity of his ideas ¨C seen in the staff, the building and the livestream ¨C sickened me.


    ¡°But Japan¡¯s star is falling!¡± Hammond slammed his fist down on the podium. ¡°They¡¯ve lost their hold on California! They¡¯ve lost one of their largest companies, with Yamatetsu rebranding itself as Evo and embracing global corporate degeneracy even as Japan¡¯s child-Emperor has rolled back proscriptions on metahumans entirely! Now is America¡¯s chance to rise not as an eagle, but a phoenix!¡±


    Hammond reached into the pocket of his pants, pulling out a trio of tokens that seemed to glimmer in the light. He twisted his fingers, snapping the tokens in half, and let the shards fall to the floor.


    They never made it; dissolving into motes of light that spread and took shape as a trio of spectral figures, looming behind Hammond and glowing with an arcane white light. Their form, while slightly distorted by the camera¡¯s inability to fully comprehend magic, practically radiated power, each spirit taking the form of a knight in angular, medieval plate armour, swords proudly gripped in both hands.


    ¡°Now is our chance to reunify North and South! To purge our society and government of the rot that has infested it for too long! Then we will march West once again, under the banner of a new Manifest Destiny, using the magic that undid the old America against our enemies! We will reclaim California, drive Aztlan back across the Rio Grande and sweep away the so-called Native American Nations, returning to the States we have lost! Men and women like yourselves will be at the vanguard of this movement! The huddled American masses, yearning to breathe free!¡±


    Grue leant forwards, his eyes fixed on the cluster of figures lurking in the shadows.


    ¡°It can¡¯t be that simple, can it?¡± he asked, a finger outreached towards one figure in particular. The moment I saw it, I chuckled and asked Bitch to zoom in.


    Lurking near the back of the group, far out of sight of the cameras and transients, was a man in a simple black suit under a long grey overcoat. More pertinently, his skin was unnaturally pale, his irises appeared pinkish in the half-light and his close-cropped hair was as white as his crisp shirt.


    ¡°But all this is just smoke in the air,¡± Hammond waved a hand as he brought back the tone from the boiling point. ¡°The dreams of men and women who care about this country, but are so far powerless to do anything about it. But here, now, we can make a difference. Until America is once again the land of the free and the home of the brave, the least we can do is put food on her citizens¡¯ tables. So until we can give you back America, I hope you enjoy this hot meal and warm company. I thank you for your time.¡±


    As the crowd erupted into polite applause ¨C the policlub¡¯s volunteers contributing about half of the noise ¨C food was brought out of the wings on trays, and the transients waited to receive their fare. Hammond, his spirits and several staffers did the heavy lifting of actually handing out the meals to each transient, Hammond himself making a slower circuit of the tables than the rest as he stopped to chat to every four people.


    ¡°We think we have him,¡± I told Tattletale and Regent. ¡°An albino waiting in the wings with a few other suits. I¡¯m going to see if I can hack his comm.¡±


    ¡°Good,¡± Tattletale whispered. ¡°It¡¯s too early for us to sneak out of here.¡±


    I shed meatspace like a chrysalis, unfurling my digital wings as I left my body to slump bonelessly back into Bitch¡¯s jump seat. We were in the heart of the city; the matrix practically hummed with activity, datastreams passing over my head in a constant constellation of glowing trails. The air ¨C or what passed for it ¨C seemed to hum with the resonance of tens of thousands of devices as I passed the street, while the hosts of great corporations drifted like islands through the air.


    I followed the tether between Bitch and the FlySpy like a roadway, using it to carry me to Alabaster¡¯s approximate location before using its camera feed to match the man in meatspace to the commlink in his pocket. Idly gathering together datastreams in the clawed hands of my persona, I weaved them together into a woodlouse and drew on the resonance to breathe life into the sprite ¨C potentially even calling it forth into the vessel from beyond the event horizon, like Hammond using the talismans to bring his spirits into the material plane.


    My woodlouse was a great deal subtler, however, going completely unnoticed as it chewed its way into Alabaster¡¯s comm. When it gave way, I eagerly tore into the files within, pulling them out of the device¡¯s icon and spreading them out in front of me as I sifted through the data faster than the speed of metahuman thought.


    ¡°It¡¯s all here,¡± I said, grinning. ¡°Alabaster ¨C Zachary Hunter ¨C is the coordinator for the whole network, and he arranges it all through this comm. I have contact information here for a manager in Medhall¡¯s community outreach division. He supplies America As One with medical supplies for a free clinic they run out of this building, and Alabaster arranges the transfer of a quarter of those drugs to the Chosen, as well as more numerous shipments of dopadrine and other recreational drugs that they then resell on the black market. And he¡¯s been doing it for years, at least.¡±


    ¡°Excellent work, everyone,¡± Grue said. ¡°We¡¯ve got everything the client asked for without even firing a shot. I guess all that¡¯s left is for Tattletale and Regent to enjoy a free dinner on the policlub¡¯s dime, then we¡¯ll send all this off.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll package up the data for him,¡± I said, as I created a new datastream between the commlink and Bitch¡¯s PAN, using it as a temporary storage drive in which to format a comprehensive package outlining the entire structure of the network, from the recipients in the psychogang to the Medhall warehouses that put the ¡®outreach shipments¡¯ together.


    ¡°And here comes dinner¡­¡± Tattletale whispered. I spared a glance at the FlySpy¡¯s feed and saw that Bitch had repositioned it to provide good coverage of our two infiltrators as Hammond himself finally reached them with a plate of what looked like a slice of soymeat roast, potatoes and green vegetables, all coated in a generous amount of instant gravy.


    ¡°Here you are, young man,¡± Hammond said good-naturedly as he set a plate down in front of Regent, before doing the same for Tattletale. ¡°It¡¯s a shame to see people your age on the streets.¡±


    He looked closer, pausing, and his eyes narrowed as he stared at Tattletale¡¯s face beneath her hood.


    ¡°I¡¯m not sure you¡¯re in the right place, miss,¡± he said, slowly. ¡°There¡¯s a metahuman shelter on the corner of Grayson and Dutch Street. We focus more on filling the gaps left by the more¡­ liberal minded charitable organisations.¡±


    ¡°I know,¡± Tattletale said, her tone quiet and apologetic. ¡°And I¡¯m sorry. It¡¯s just¡­ I don¡¯t feel safe there. There are a lot of orks and trolls three times my size, and they¡­ Well, they scare me.¡±


    If the atmosphere wasn¡¯t so tense I might have cracked a joke at that. As it was, I could only watch through the screen as Hammond seemed to come to a decision.


    ¡°I see. I¡¯m assuming you don¡¯t have a place to stay tonight, either?¡± Tattletale looked away. ¡°Well, you wouldn¡¯t be the first nonhuman to try your luck with our charity. It¡¯s as you say; the other shelters are dangerous, and even an elf can¡­ fall on hard times. My associate, Mr Hunter, will set you up with somewhere to stay for the night.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not necessary,¡± Tattletale shook her head. ¡°I can leave once I¡¯ve had my meal. Or before, if you want.¡±


    ¡°I insist,¡± Hammond said, resting a hand on her shoulder. ¡°I couldn¡¯t live with myself if I let a friend go hungry.¡±


    Whether signalled by one of the staffers or spirits, Alabaster was moving across the room towards Tattletale. Through the FlySpy I saw her eyes widen momentarily as she caught sight of him before she schooled her expression into something more neutral, but I couldn¡¯t tell what had her so spooked. And with Hammond so close, she couldn¡¯t whisper it into her mic.


    ¡°Evening, Justin,¡± Alabaster greeted the policlub¡¯s head. There was something to his voice ¨C some deep sound I couldn¡¯t quite place. ¡°Another stray in need of care? ¡±


    ¡°The very same,¡± Hammond nodded. ¡°I know you¡¯ll see her right.¡±


    Tattletale was poking at one of her potatoes, pushing it around on the plate without actually touching the food. After a moment, though, she began eating under the watchful eye of Alabaster as Hammond moved to continue serving the rest of the table.


    ¡°Bug, need you in the real world,¡± Grue said to me. ¡°I don¡¯t know what this is, but I don¡¯t like it. We may need to run a hot extraction.¡±


    ¡°Sure,¡± I said, drifting back to my body. ¡°I¡¯m done here anyway.¡±


    In meatspace, Bitch was cocooned in the front seat with her mind still in the FlySpy and the rack of Dobermans in the back spooled up and ready to deploy. Grue was by the still-open door, his rifle in his hand and a worried expression on his face as he focused on an AR window of the feed. I reached into my jacket and pulled out my submachine gun, pulling back the Executioner¡¯s slide after only a moment¡¯s pause.


    Back in the policlub, Tattletale had only eaten about half of the soymeat before she abruptly set her plastic cutlery down on the paper plate. She looked up at Hammond, with resolve in her eyes and a feigned expression of worry on her face ¨C but beneath both I could see real fear.


    ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯m that hungry.¡±


    Alabaster nodded like it was ultimately of no consequence.


    ¡°Then come with me,¡± he told her, waiting for her to nod. He barely even reacted as Regent stood up as well, simply leading the pair of them away from the packed conference room and into the wings ¨C all the while making sure to keep them both in view.


    He led them through the corridors that ran the length of the policlub, past meeting rooms, offices and through the free clinic that was the source of the Chosen¡¯s own medical supplies. Bitch followed them in the FlySpy, setting it to run on its own pilot programme so she had enough brainpower left to drive the van.


    In comparison to the din of the main hall ¨C the conversations and sounds of chewing ¨C the halls were as quiet as the grave, the only light coming from automated sensors that flickered on and off as the trio passed beneath them.


    ¡°So,¡± Tattletale broke the silence, her tone almost contemplative. ¡°How long do I have?¡±


    Alabaster didn¡¯t answer.


    ¡°You know,¡± Tattletale continued, like someone trying to talk down a rabid dog. ¡°Left to live. I assume we aren¡¯t going to survive this; you wouldn¡¯t want to leave another vampire out there.¡±


    ¡°Holy fucking shit!¡± Grue swore, as my grip tightened on my gun. ¡°Bug, where the fuck are they?¡±


    ¡°How the fuck am I-¡± I stopped, looking through the matrix at Alabaster¡¯s comm ¨C it still had my mark on it. ¡°Near the rear. Gridlink says there¡¯s an alleyway there.¡±


    Without so much as a word, Bitch immediately sped off, sending me flying from my seat even as Grue was barely able to hold onto the open doorway. Only my blind panic at the vampire was able to overcome my blind panic at being thrown back in a moving vehicle, and I desperately tried to think of some way we were going to survive this.


    Where the fuck do you even find a stake in this day and age?


    Back inside the policlub, Alabaster¡¯s reaction to Tattletale¡¯s words was a put-upon sigh.


    ¡°Albinism is a genetic condition,¡± he explained. ¡°It has nothing to do with vampirism.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re not a vampire because you¡¯re an albino,¡± Tattletale said, still allowing Alabaster to lead them towards a fire exit at the back of the building. ¡°You¡¯re a vampire and an albino. I can see it.¡±


    Alabaster chuckled. ¡°Awakened? Hell, I almost feel bad for you. Able to see what¡¯s coming, but too weak to stop it even with your friend. But fuck, your blood¡¯s gonna taste great.¡±


    Tattletale looked down at the tiled floor, playing the part of the tragic victim. It was the right move; Regent would help, but they still wouldn¡¯t survive a fight indoors, with policlub security guards just a scream away.


    Suddenly an idea struck me ¨C one born of desperation, but that felt much more likely to succeed than just trying to shoot my way through a vampire.


    ¡°I¡¯m calling the client,¡± I said. ¡°One of his guards was a mage, maybe he knows something. Plus, he asked for secrets he could exploit ¨C this qualifies.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s no way it¡¯ll matter in time,¡± Grue said as he fished a set of grenades out of a holdall. ¡°I have phosphorous grenades back here, and Regent can use magical fire. No idea if it¡¯ll be enough to kill him.¡±


    ¡°Even if you did, we¡¯d be back at square one,¡± I said. ¡°The snake can¡¯t get a mole in the network if they¡¯re rebuilding it from the ground up. But we can stall him with the threat of the grenades, maybe even blackmail him with exposure.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s as good a plan as any,¡± Grue said, clinging to the doorway for dear life as Bitch turned the corner into the alleyway. ¡°Fuck it, make the call.¡±


    Bitch sped down the alley, driving the up-armoured Bulldog through garbage cans and spilled-over stacks of refuse, sending a family of rats skittering away from the headlights. She barely made it in time, pulling up and leaping out of the van alongside Grue and I just as the double doors at the back of the policlub swung open and Alabaster, Tattletale and Regent stepped out into the glare of the headlights.


    ¡°Don¡¯t move.¡± Grue¡¯s tone was low and cold, as a quartet of Doberman drones rolled out the back of the van and swung around to flank us. My mind was only half there, my Executioner levelled squarely at Alabaster¡¯s forehead even as I sent out a call to Mr Johnson¡¯s number.


    ¡°You guys have no idea who you¡¯re fucking with,¡± Alabaster drawled, as Tattletale and Regent moved away from him.


    ¡°You think we¡¯d ambush you like this if we didn¡¯t know exactly who we were fucking with?¡± Grue lied through his teeth, using his thumb to pull the pin out of the grenade in his left hand. ¡°We¡¯re packing enough incendiaries to light you up like a shantytown fire.¡±


    As if to accentuate the point, Regent pulled out a talisman of his own from his pocket and snapped it, causing a shower of sparks that coalesced into a hovering spirit of our own ¨C more vivid in person than anything I¡¯d seen through any camera. Like the spirit I¡¯d seen in the warehouse, way back on my first job, it resembled the Greek ideal of the human form. This effigy was female, however, with her body wrapped in fire like diaphanous robes.


    The call came through, and I immediately sent over the paydata.


    ¡°Mr Johnson,¡± I began, in the privacy of my head. ¡°We¡¯ve put together an information package for you and cornered the administrator of the whole drug network ¨C Zachary Hunter, or Alabaster, a staffer with the pro-human policlub America As One. He¡¯s infected with HMHVV ¨C a vampire. If you want someone to blackmail, now¡¯s the best chance you¡¯re going to get.¡±


    There was the slightest of pauses ¨C though it felt like eternity in my head ¨C before Mr Johnson¡¯s voice came back to me.


    ¡°I see. Ideally, I would have decided when and where to make my mole, but I will not let this opportunity pass me by. Put this ¡®Alabaster¡¯ on the other end of a commlink.¡±


    ¡°Our employer wishes to speak with you,¡± I said, my aim unwavering as I patched the Naga into Tattletale¡¯s commlink. She felt the vibrations through her jacket and nodded.


    ¡°And Bug?¡± Mr Johnson continued, as Tattletale held out her comm to the vampire without so much as flinching. ¡°My conversation with Alabaster is private. You are not to listen in. Should you feel tempted, know that my own matrix specialists are more than capable of telling the difference between a call from a cyberdeck and a call from a technomancer.¡±


    I paled, my skin turning even greyer as I untethered myself from the call¡¯s datastream, leaving only the link between Mr Johnson and Tattletale¡¯s comm.


    ¡°So,¡± Alabaster began. ¡°What could possibly be worth all this trouble? No, wait,¡± he smiled. ¡°Let me guess.¡±


    He didn¡¯t continue; it seemed Mr Johnson didn¡¯t give him the chance to elaborate. It felt unnatural to cut myself off from digital information that was right there in front of my face, but this situation was precarious enough that I wasn¡¯t going to risk it. Instead, all I had to go on was the expressions on Alabaster¡¯s face ¨C and he did not look like he was hearing good news.


    ¡°And why should I believe you over them?¡± he snarled, before Mr Johnson continued.


    At the far end of the valley, the darkness was suddenly broken by another pair of headlights, as a black sedan pulled leisurely into the alleyway. Alabaster looked over at it, but didn¡¯t show any reaction that would have suggested it was policlub reinforcements. As it got closer, though, his expression only seemed to get angrier and angrier.


    ¡°Fine,¡± he spat out. ¡°I¡¯ll hear you out. If you¡¯re right, it¡¯s not like I have anything to lose.¡±


    He tossed the comm at Tattletale, who caught it without any sign of the fear she¡¯d shown inside the policlub, and simply walked out of our ring of guns without so much as a word.


    A woman got out of the car ¨C one I recognised as the chromed-up elven girl who¡¯d accompanied Mr Johnson when we met him. She walked around the car and opened up the rear passenger door for Alabaster, who sneered at her as he got in the back seat.


    Once the door was shut, the razorgirl paused before opening up the driver¡¯s door.


    ¡°Mr Johnson has found your work satisfactory,¡± she said, her accent foreign ¨C Russian, perhaps. ¡°Your payment has already been wired to your fixer, and Mr Johnson will consider your team again for further work in this city.¡±


    With that, she got back in the car and pulled out of the alleyway. With the vampire gone, it was like a literal ton of pressure had been lifted off our heads. We should have been celebrating, but it was like we all understood just how close things had been to going terribly wrong. Instead, we piled into the van in silence, and nobody said a word until we¡¯d put five blocks between us and the policlub.


    ¡°I never did get to finish my meal,¡± Tattletale sighed, like all the danger she¡¯d been in was nothing. ¡°Anyone feel like finding a Stuffer Shack and grabbing a soyburger?¡±


    It was a blatant ploy to lighten the mood, but we all latched onto it like it was a lifeboat in a tempest.

 Interlude 4: Valkyrie Paramedical

    Othala always found the city beautiful when viewed from above. All the imperfections that clogged the streets faded into insignificance. All that was left was the glittering street lights of the sprawl, the towering skyscrapers rising up like beacons, and Richard Anders¡¯ intricately designed roadway network. All of it packed with cars moving in perfectly-ordered harmony, their movements guided by the city¡¯s governing GridLink AI even as their headlamps turned the roads into rivers of light.


    The air was cleaner, too. Especially when it was blowing through the open doorway of a Nissan Hound, pushed into the cabin by the downdraft of the immense rotor blades as the helicopter glided over the city at a sedate sixty miles an hour. Othala grabbed onto the handle at the top of the hatch and leant out into open space, looking down at the grid of streets a staggering two kilometres below her. Any sense of vertigo had been worn away by long experience, but staring down a drop of that size without even a cord keeping her in the helicopter was still a singularly unique sensation.


    Satisfied, she leant back into the helicopter and gripped the webbing lining the roof as she manoeuvred herself back into her seat, where the rest of High Threat Response team Brunhilda were strapped in as they waited for the green light. Behind them, in the expansive rear of the helicopter, a small triage station had been set up, full of all the equipment an aerial ambulance might need to keep patients alive on their way to the hospital, manned by a pair of paramedics in pristine red jumpsuits.


    Apart from them, the helicopter was crewed by a pilot and a co-pilot in the armoured front, viewing the city through a reinforced glass canopy, and a loadmaster by the doors, trained and ready to operate the winch in case there wasn¡¯t enough space to actually land the helicopter. But nobody¡¯s eyes were on them; HTR Brunhilda was built around the four women sitting in the jump seats. The Valkyries.


    Opposite Othala sat the twins, Fenja and Menja. Both wore custom-made suits of close-fitting power armour, sculpted to evoke ancient Germanic warrior-knights with red plates of metal etched with silver feathers and wings. Their helmets were more like masks than anything else; covering the top half of their faces while leaving their mouths and chins open to the air, with fake blonde hair streaming out of the back to create the impression of an open rear.


    Fenja had a shield mag-locked to one hand and a sword in the other ¨C still in its scabbard, which could be locked to her waist once she was away from the tightly-packed confines of the helicopter. Menja, as the team leader, sat closest to the doorway. Her telescoping spear was folded down to a third of its height, and her attention was firmly fixed on the city below. Both of them wore vivid red lipstick that seemed to glisten in the carefully-positioned cabin lights.


    Beside Othala sat the newest member of the team, brought in to replace Dis when she was bumped down to a lower-profile role. But rather than dwell on that incident, Othala focused on the beaming grin on Rune¡¯s face, her own make-up subtler, more youthful. She was significantly less armoured as well; her attire more shamanic than knightly with robes formed from strips of reinforced red syn-leather that left her arms bare, a black fur collar at her neck and a hood that covered her hair but not her face, leaving the eagerness in her eyes clearly visible.


    Othala was only four years older than Rune ¨C at twenty three to her nineteen ¨C but she knew that her own features were too hard for that sort of genuine excitement; it was inevitable that even the most thrilling job would become routine after a while. She still enjoyed her work, but the anticipation of a potential chase wasn¡¯t enough on its own anymore.


    Unconsciously, she found her eyes darting to the cameras nestled in key points around the helicopter, or to the drones resting in their rack beside the open hatch, before she looked away from the fourth wall. Still, long training had her picturing how she must look through those lenses, and she straightened her posture ever so slightly until she was the very picture of refined elegance.


    What the cameras saw was a woman in her early twenties, dressed in a skin-tight red taksuit that hugged her every curve. While half of the twins¡¯ faces were concealed and Rune wore a hood that intermittently cast her face into shadow, Othala¡¯s outfit was completely bare above the neck. She, more than anyone else, was the face of the Valkyries, and that face needed to be seen. It was why she wore her blonde hair back in a ponytail, apart from the side-swept bang that hung over the eyepatch that covered her right eye socket ¨C only partially concealing it from view to create an air of mystique.


    She could have had it replaced years ago, but when you¡¯ve been raised from childhood to cast spells you cling to every single part of your essence. The eye may have been gone, but its phantom limb remained an intrinsic part of her soul. To swap it out with a replacement ¨C even a bioware model ¨C would be to change an intrinsic part of herself. So she made do, using her latent magical talent to completely nullify her lack of depth perception.


    Suddenly, the helicopter lurched as it dropped from the sky, autorotating down in a spiral towards the spires of the city centre. Half a second later, dispatch¡¯s professional tone came through the receivers Rune and Othala wore in their ears, and that were integrated into Fenja and Menja¡¯s helmets.


    ¡°Client is a platinum customer whose biomonitor has activated automatically in response to trauma consistent with multiple gunshot wounds. The client is not on extraterritorial land; no proscriptions on entry or the use of force apply. Transferring their medical history now. No further information is available at this time.¡±


    Othala¡¯s AR-linked contact lenses lit up with a layer of information nanometers above her pupil, outlining the prescient details of the client¡¯s biometrics and medical history. Beside her, she knew that Rune¡¯s contacts and the twins¡¯ visors were displaying the same information.


    It was mostly irrelevant to Othala ¨C typically, gunshot wounds were not a pre-existing condition ¨C but it was of vital importance to the two paramedics in the back of the helicopter, determining exactly what drugs they could and could not use on the patient¡¯s physiology, their body mass index to determine the correct doses and what pre-existing medication they were already on, to prevent any adverse reactions.


    ¡°Location data has come through,¡± Menja said. ¡°The client is in an office building in Japantown, near the docks. He¡¯s on the fifth floor, near the east side window. The building registry suggests it¡¯s currently unoccupied, but other floors of the building are in use as office space. Entry and exfil is via the roof. Fenja, Othala, with me down the stairs. Rune, synchronise entry through the window. Understood?¡±


    ¡°Understood,¡± Othala repeated alongside the other two Valkyries. She closed her eye, centring herself as she focused on the swaying motion of the helicopter as it swooped down into the city. Slowly, she closed her hand, teasing at an invisible force as she gathered staticky energy, before pushing it into herself. She felt a sense of rigidity enter her body, her skin ¨C unchanged in texture or appearance ¨C nevertheless feeling like marble to her mind.


    With her armour in place, she opened her eye and took in the available information of the client, watching the readout of his biomonitor with a professional¡¯s attention. Her gaze wandered only occasionally to the less immediately relevant information, taking in the client¡¯s metatype with a brief glance before forcing herself to look at the details of his policy. He was a high-level employee with Maersk, given platinum status as part of the extraterritorial shipping company¡¯s employee welfare package in the city.


    ¡°Thirty seconds to touchdown,¡± the pilot¡¯s voice came through Othala¡¯s earpiece, as the four Valkyries stood, gripping onto the webbed roof of the helicopter as they turned to face the exits. The loadmaster had stepped back towards the pilots¡¯ compartment, and Othala didn¡¯t even glance at the drone as it caught the shot of them turning as one. She did glance at Menja out of the corner of her eye, seeing her grip on her spear tighten.


    The helicopter landed smoothly on the flat roof of the old office block, the rotors still fiercely spinning to put as little of the aircraft¡¯s weight on the wheels ¨C and the roof ¨C as possible. The moment it touched down, the twins leapt out, their heads lowered and false blonde hair buffeted wildly by the downdraft. Simultaneously, the drone dismounted from its hatch and followed immediately after them, joining the two drones that had been mounted on the helicopter¡¯s exterior before they moved into position to capture the landing.


    Othala left the helicopter half a second after the drone, bent double as her ponytail flailed wildly behind her, just low enough that it posed no risk of getting tangled in the rotorblades. She was overtaken a moment later by Rune, her hood having flown back from her head as she sprinted over to the edge of the roof, the wide leather strips of her robe flowing back behind her waist.


    By the time Othala reached the doorway, Fenja was already kicking it down with her sword raised and shield held up in front of her. She strode into the tightly-packed stairwell, ignoring the palm-sized drone that darted in over her head, lowering the shield once she was certain the stairwell was clear.


    Othala followed behind Menja, who had her spear extended and ready to stab past her sister in the narrow confines of the stairwell, as the three of them made their way briskly down the stairs. The two paramedics followed several metres behind them, an invisible safety net with stretcher in hand.


    ¡°Breaching!¡± Menja shouted into the radio mere moments before Fenja¡¯s foot splintered the lock on the fifth floor door, pushing the rest of it down with her shield. She sprinted over the wreckage, her head down and shield raised as Menja followed her out with her spear in hand.


    As Othala followed them into the room, she immediately scanned the sparse expanse of the empty floor, with only a few pillars obstructing the line of sight between her and the windows. The client was propped up against one of the pillars, his hand clutching at his stomach as he blinked slowly, staring out at his surroundings with the purposeless gaze of someone who was already deep into shock.


    Beyond the client, there were two dead suits on the floor, both still clutching their handguns ¨C no doubt the Maersk exec¡¯s corporate security escort ¨C but it was the living that most drew Othala¡¯s eye.


    The Valkyries had stormed into a hostage situation, with a trio of gangers dressed like circus performers standing over the two surviving suits. Two orks and a human, they had been interrupted mid-argument. They had two hostages, but the cut of their suits was significantly less upmarket than the injured client ¨C most likely estate agents there to sell the office space to the real money.


    Othala took in the entire scene in a second, before she finally allowed herself to notice Rune levitating just beyond the window, surrounded by chunks of stone that glowed with an eldritch light. As the gangers reacted to the sudden intrusion ¨C a shotgun and two submachine guns raised in trembling arms ¨C she blew the windows out with a blast of magical force, sending rocks and shards of glass scattering into the hostage takers while steering the debris to avoid the hostages themselves.


    The human was killed outright, his skull caved in from behind by a brick, and one of the orks fell to one knee with a lacerated hamstring, but the other remained standing, firing at Fenja as she sprinted towards him.


    Moving with preternaturally fast reflexes, Fenja positioned her shield to protect her face from the gunfire even as her sister moved up behind her. She hit the ork like a freight train, knocking him back before bringing her sword across in a swing that severed his head from his body. Menja darted off the moment the target was neutralised, thrusting her spear into the throat of the second ork with enough force to knock him back and pin him to the floor, the spearpoint digging through the carpeted flooring like it was made of paper.


    Othala only saw the brief burst of violence out of the corner of her eye as she sprinted across to the client with a razor-sharp focus. As Rune drifted leisurely into the building, setting her feet down on solid ground with a regal grace, Othala knelt before the client and rested a hand on his chest. She latched onto his essence, feeling the bullet wounds like vivid rents in his soul, the gradual weakening of his strength as life fled him.


    She muttered an incantation under her breath, sending energy flowing through her hands and into his chest to stabilise the client before she moved her hand to the still-bleeding bullet wounds, carefully sending pulses of magic into the wound to trigger the healing process, pushing the bullets out with carefully-regrown flesh.


    As she did, her eyes unconsciously darted upwards to the horns growing out of the troll¡¯s head. They were gnarled, twisted things pushing out of his skull like cancerous growths, terminating in wicked points that practically oozed menace. Worse than that was the point where the horns pushed out of his skin, and how Othala¡¯s magic meant she could feel how they were connected to the grotesquely giant skeleton that was more like stone than true-


    Victor let out a mental sigh as he paused the simsense recording, opening the editing software and condensing the file down into a readable format with Othala¡¯s recorded brainwaves rendered as audio, visual and emotional timelines. Where before he had been experiencing Othala¡¯s thoughts as she had, Victor was now sitting in a facsimile of a palatial library, with sweeping windows that overlooked a landscape of immaculately maintained gardens ¨C a virtual office space in which he could centre himself.


    Other, lesser editors were also in the shared virtual space, tucked away in cosy alcoves that ran up the walls on mezzanine levels. Some of their personas sat idle as they directly ran the raw simsense recordings while others were similarly surrounded by bars and files as they edited the footage. One team of editors at the far end of the room were working through different files; mundane camera footage that would be cut together and embellished with commentary to create the trideo version of the show.


    Ride with the Valkyries existed in two formats. The trideo show was the first, carried on streaming services and a local network ultimately owned by MCT, who got first rights to broadcast the show as part of a deal where they provided Medhall with the production expertise needed to put it all together.


    The second medium was much more personal, licensed out to reputable simsense dens and available for streaming on a variety of different websites for those with a simrig of their own. Those viewers could experience another life, escaping their mundane office job to sling spells or swing blades alongside hardened commandos, saving lives in the bargain.


    For the simsense editors, most of the work was a simple matter of smoothing out the imperfections and compensating for the technology¡¯s inability to properly capture the sensation of Rune and Othala¡¯s magic. The latter was achieved using an entirely digital facsimile that, according to the mages themselves, felt reasonably close to the real thing. It would never fool any mages, but for the average layman it was sufficient to let them believe that they were really touching magic. It certainly felt like magic to Victor.


    The former, on the other hand, was largely achieved by repackaging thoughts from other points in the recording, or their archive of the raw footage from older episodes. In that way, the little moments where Othala had glanced at a camera or thought too hard about the trideo show could be smoothed out, as could the occasional thought that risked alienating their audience and driving away viewers.


    Othala¡¯s thoughts on the troll¡¯s horns, however, were particularly pervasive. It wasn¡¯t some stray thought, but something she had allowed herself to dwell on, and that meant it was infinitely harder to remove. For fifteen minutes of real time ¨C and noticeably more in Matrix time ¨C Victor tried to smooth out the sensation to something more palatable, but in the end all he could do was shift the feeling of disgust to the troll¡¯s bullet wounds rather than his race.


    It undercut Othala¡¯s brand, but that wasn¡¯t necessarily a tragedy. After all, Victor thought to himself, it¡¯ll give the vultures on the forums something to pick at.


    Satisfied that he had at least salvaged something out of the mess, Victor shut down his sim module and let himself drift out of cold-sim virtual reality, coming to his senses in his comfortably furnished office, with panelled walls, soft lighting and rich red carpeting covering the floor. While the room had an antique wooden desk, most of Victor¡¯s work was done in virtual environments, and as such he was reclining in the luxury spider¡¯s chair that took up one corner of the room, designed to minimise the irritation a stationary body experienced when its mind was occupied elsewhere for hours at a time.


    ¡°Heimdall,¡± Victor spoke as he stood. ¡°Where is Cristina?¡±


    ¡°Othala and the remainder of HTR Brunhilda returned from their shift half an hour ago, sir,¡± Medhall¡¯s company-wide virtual assistant answered. ¡°They have just finished their debriefing, and are proceeding to their dressing room. Would you like me to send Mrs Meyer a message?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± Victor answered, shaking his head. ¡°I¡¯ll tell her myself.¡±


    It was a sign of how intrinsic Ride with the Valkyries was to Valkyrie Paramedical¡¯s overall market strategy that Victor and most of the production crew were based out of the same depot as the paramedics themselves, occupying an annex attached by an enclosed footbridge to the garages, barracks operations control and maintenance workshops that allowed the Medhall subsidiary to function almost freely throughout New England.


    Overcoming that ¡°almost¡± was one purpose of the show. Victor had seen the projected charts; Medhall Pharmaceuticals was on track to become a double-A ranked corporation by the end of the year, which meant true extraterritoriality. As it stood, Valkyrie Paramedical could only operate under arms in New Hampshire, where a deal with the State government gave them a blanket exemption from State laws, but the company already had the capacity to extend its armed services to the neighbouring states of Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine the moment its parent corporation grew large enough. Ride with the Valkyries was one part of Medhall¡¯s asset diversification agenda, aimed at giving the corporation the final blitz of growth it needed.


    If Medhall¡¯s off-the-books projects were included in the total, we¡¯d already be there, Victor thought to himself with wry amusement as he crossed over into the depot.


    The footbridge put him out on the middle floor of the depot, below the reinforced landing pads on the roof for the corporation¡¯s six helicopters and above the garage space of their fleet of vans. The personnel of Valkyrie Paramedical inhabited those floors, and as the focal point of the show HTR Brunhilda¡¯s dressing room was located as close to the annex as possible, next to a service elevator that went right to their own personal helipad.


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    Victor pressed his thumb against the keypad, not even bothering to knock as he pushed open the door the moment the sensor had matched his biometrics with his Medhall SIN. Inside, the dressing room was more expansive than the four members of HTR Brunhilda could ever need, with immaculately clean surfaces and the corporation¡¯s logo occupying most of the floor: a white silhouette of an armoured, winged woman. There was a constant debate among the show¡¯s fans over whether it was based on Fenja or Menja¡¯s body.


    A bench ran around the circumference of the room, interrupted in five spaces by four alcoves that held the Valkyries¡¯ equipment and the entrance to the attached bathroom, with its showers and make-up mirrors. Steam was gently drifting through the entrance; three of the Valkyries had just left the shower, the fourth was still in there.


    ¡°What the hell, Victor?¡± Rune asked from where she was seated on a bench, hurriedly pulling down her silver and black crop-top. ¡°Ever heard of knocking?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re a simsense star now, Tammi,¡± Victor answered, a grin on his face as he leant against the wall with his arms crossed. ¡°You¡¯ve let tens of thousands of people into your head. Better get used to being on display; your image is marketable, and it¡¯s my job to put that image on as many bedroom walls as possible for the girls who want to be you and the guys who want to fuck you. You¡¯ve got to learn to love the attention.¡±


    Fenja and Menja didn¡¯t even glance up at Victor as they continued getting dressed in more utilitarian outfits. They had been working for Valkyrie since the subsidiary¡¯s foundation and took a much more military attitude to their privacy. Besides, it would have been foolish for them to have been shy about their bodies when Victor had been on the board that purchased them.


    Where Othala and Rune represented the peak of magical ability, the twins¡¯ model physiques were mere window dressing on the cyberware beneath their luxury synthskin. With wired reflexes they could think faster than any enemy, and their full suite of cyberlimbs meant they could move fast enough to keep up with their brains. It was another fantasy, one as common and as unreachable for most as magic.


    ¡°Whatever, asshole,¡± Rune said as she flipped Victor off, before putting on a conscious air of nonchalance as she turned her back on the public relations executive and began to shrug on a pair of forest green sweatpants.


    Victor lingered for just a moment longer before making his way through the archway into the bathroom. His wife stood under the communal showers at the far end of the room, her palms planted flat against the wall as she let the scoldingly hot water run down her back. It pressed her hair flat against her body, though not so much that Victor could see the lattice of gossamer-thin neural readers stamped into her scalp like a tattoo ¨C an elegant solution to the loss of essence caused by simsense recording cyberware and the aesthetic loss caused by worn recording equipment.


    Victor¡¯s smile was more genuine as he looked at Cristina, hesitant to step in and ruin the view by interrupting her. He certainly believed he loved her, even if he wasn¡¯t originally supposed to marry her.


    Eight years before, when Max Anders had first conceived of Valkyrie Paramedical and ordered a focus group put together to determine how to implement it, Cristina Herren had been earmarked as a potential candidate for the company¡¯s flagship team. Though she was only fifteen at the time, the girl who would become Othala had already awakened to her magical powers and demonstrated an exceptional aptitude; Medhall¡¯s employee management algorithm had already singled her out for a fast track scheme.


    Both Cristina and Tammi came from an extensive lineage of mages in service to the company. Before the Awakening, the Herren Clan had been an extended family of white supremacists in rural New England, who worshipped a bastardised form of Norse Paganism. In defiance of the odds, the family¡¯s bloodline turned out to have magical potential, and the clan became host to an exceptionally high number of mages as their belief system morphed into a magical tradition.


    They existed in isolation for some time until Max Anders¡¯ grandfather discovered them. He made a deal with the patriarchs of the clan, bringing them firmly under the aegis of Medhall. As the corporation grew, the Herren Clan became more deeply intertwined with its structures. Their children attended the first Medhall-owned schools as the power of their patriarchs was slowly supplanted by the hierarchy of the corporation.


    As Medhall employees were filed by algorithms into the workplaces in which they would be most productive, the Herren Clan¡¯s bloodline was governed and directed by those same algorithms to fill the corporation¡¯s requirements. There was no question that their children would work for Medhall; the company was their entire life. They grew up in Medhall schools, living in Medhall housing, had their further education paid for by company scholarships. The corporation was the reason they were born.


    When Victor had successfully won a spot on a Medhall fast track scheme for potential executives, he was inducted into the company with a SIN and a full round of genetic screening. It was on the basis of this screening that he was encouraged to court Cristina¡¯s cousin, and they had been engaged to be married when she was killed in a Shadowrun against the company that turned into a bloodbath.


    Cristina was seventeen at the time, far younger than her cousin and deep into her training to become the face of the Valkyries. The death of her cousin changed the course of her entire life, and not just because she found herself marrying Victor shortly after her nineteenth birthday; her time with the Valkyries became limited, with four years of extended maternity leave awaiting her when she turned twenty eight. Afterwards, if she had retained the same level of skill and fitness, she would return to one of the non-televised High Threat Response teams. If she had not, another role would be found for her. Either way, the corporation gained the maximum possible return from its investment.


    Cristina¡¯s eyes widened as she turned her head and caught sight of her husband, before she smiled and stepped away from the showerhead, a sensor cutting the water off automatically.


    ¡°Couldn¡¯t wait for me to come to you?¡± she asked as she wrapped a towel around herself.


    ¡°I¡¯ve got the meeting to get to,¡± Victor shook his head, ¡°but I needed to talk to you. I¡¯ve just finished reviewing the recordings from last night. You slipped up again.¡±


    Cristina sighed, leaning against the granite countertop of the sinks.


    ¡°I know. It¡¯s just¡­ I forget sometimes.¡± She scowled. ¡°You know what they¡¯re like, and it¡¯s actually worse once you get past skin deep.¡±


    ¡°I do know,¡± Victor nodded, ¡°but we¡¯re trying to sell trideo here. I get how you feel, but you need to remember that you weren¡¯t just trained to be a good mage; you were trained to be the face of the Valkyries. It¡¯s about mental discipline as much as physical. You can¡¯t let your feelings interfere with the company¡¯s needs.¡±


    Cristina frowned. Victor didn¡¯t like pushing that particular button, but long experience had demonstrated its effectiveness. He was loyal to Medhall and he wanted to see the corporation thrive, but he¡¯d come into the company from the outside. It meant his loyalty was as much enlightened self-interest as it was ideological; Medhall¡¯s prosperity was what would ensure his own. Cristina¡¯s loyalty was different, more fundamental. All the Herrens¡¯ were. That dedication to something greater than themselves was what had brought Tammi back to Medhall, even after her parents tried to escape its reach.


    ¡°You¡¯re right,¡± Cristina nodded. ¡°I¡¯ll get back in touch with my psychological trainer. Meditation usually works, plus a few mantras before a shift. Maybe I just need a refresher.¡±


    ¡°Good,¡± Victor smiled. ¡°Let me know if there¡¯s anything I can do to help. And if you need motivation, just remember that every nuyen we drag out of some trog¡¯s pockets goes straight into human hands.¡±


    ¡°Well, when you put it like that,¡± Cristina grinned, as she stepped away from the countertop. She paused on the way to the changing room to rest her hand on Victor¡¯s shoulder and kiss him on the cheek. ¡°Now go on, you¡¯ve got your meeting to get to. You can¡¯t spend all day skulking around changing rooms, and you certainly can¡¯t keep them waiting.¡±


    ¡°More¡¯s the pity,¡± Victor sighed, before leaving his wife to get dressed in peace. He briefly ducked back into his office, throwing on the dark grey jacket of his suit over his burgundy shirt, before making his way down the executive lift to the lobby of the studio. Outside, a car and a driver were waiting for him.


    As he was driven through the streets of Chemical Row, Victor found his eyes drawn to the heavy goods vehicles he was sharing the road with, the lion¡¯s share of which bore Medhall¡¯s logo on their side. There were many within the corporation who believed its heart lay in this district, rather than its headquarters Downtown, and Victor could understand the sentiment. There were blocks within Chemical Row where every single building was owned by Medhall, and the corporation employed tens of thousands of people within the district as a whole.


    But Victor disagreed with that sentiment. As his car weaved its way through the industrial traffic and onto one of Richard Anders¡¯ elevated freeways, carrying him onwards in the direction of the towering skyscrapers of Downtown, he couldn¡¯t help but think that no matter how large a body was, or where its muscles were concentrated, it was useless without the guidance of the head.


    Victor sometimes suspected that Richard Anders had built this freeway in particular to provide grand scenic views of Medhall¡¯s head office; a spindly glass skyscraper with the corporation¡¯s logo displayed proudly near the top. It was certainly one he would have travelled on regularly; shuttled between his office, the factories of Chemical Row and the Medhall operations centre on the coast.


    Whatever the case, the road carried him quickly and efficiently to his destination, the driver letting the car¡¯s in-built connection to the GridLink system guide it smoothly through the traffic. Victor¡¯s journey didn¡¯t end at Medhall tower, however, but at a nondescript administrative building a few blocks away, occupied by scraps of different departments that had overflowed their designated spaces.


    At the door, a uniformed security guard ran Victor¡¯s corporate SIN before letting him into the building, bypassing the metal detectors the lower-ranked employees went through as he was immediately directed to a staffer who escorted him through the building to a seemingly insignificant conference room in the basement.


    It was not somewhere Victor had been before. The location of this monthly meeting changed every time, to ensure that nobody could pin down its nature by observing any one of its participants. Victor was not the first of those participants to arrive, but nor was he the last. There were six other men in suits seated around the boardroom table, having come in from management suites and high-tech laboratories. Victor took a seat alongside them, completing the representatives of the company¡¯s clandestine operations.


    When the door next opened, it was to admit the first representative of Medhall¡¯s unofficial subsidiaries. Justin Hammond looked as he always did, with a slick smile on his face and an earnest look in his eyes, though the two didn¡¯t necessarily match up with each other. Victor had access to his psychological files, and knew that Hammond preferred to see himself as a soldier in the trenches, doing the work that really made a difference while leaving his superiors in their distant towers to handle the busywork.


    It was a na?ve view, but one that suited his role. It made him more approachable; he could speak to people on their level, and present himself as their ally against whatever manifestation of authority their feared. The same could not be said of the albino freak who was shadowing him.


    If it wasn¡¯t for the personafix chip running in Victor¡¯s head, regulating his emotions and guiding his actions, he wouldn¡¯t have been able to suppress a shudder at the sight of Zachary Hunter¡¯s pallid complexion. Victor¡¯s one consolation was that he knew that no matter how much he hated what the vampire was, it paled into insignificance when compared to the hatred Alabaster had for himself.


    So Victor nodded cordially to the pair of them as they took their seats opposite him. Nobody in the room spoke; there was too much of a gulf between them. Even the Medhall delegation were scientific directors and corporate executives from wildly different fields, linked only in their utility to Medhall¡¯s covert operations.


    More men arrived from other external divisions ¨C policlubs, criminal organisations and the liaisons between the corporation and their preferred fixers ¨C before a palpable shudder passed through Hammond and Hunter¡¯s shoulders as their Awakened senses reacted to Hookwolf¡¯s entry into the room.


    He had to duck to fit under the door, a metal hand gripping the frame so hard that it cracked under the pressure. He surveyed the room, cybernetic eyes mounted in pallid flesh looking over the meeting before settling on Victor, who looked back with a wry grin on his face.


    ¡°Mr Meadows,¡± Victor greeted the gang lord as he stepped into the room, followed by Stormtiger and Cricket, his two closest lieutenants.


    ¡°Victor,¡± Hookwolf returned the greeting, the word carrying the exact same tone and inflection as it had on every other occasion Victor and Bradley Meadows had crossed paths. In many ways, he was both Victor and Medhall¡¯s proudest work. For a corporation of their size to have the delta-grade medical facilities and magical expertise to produce a cyberzombie was unheard of ¨C doubly so because everything even tangentially related to the operation was a corporate secret ¨C but with Hookwolf, Victor had achieved something more.


    Victor had little understanding of the technological or thaumaturgical science that went into the creation of a cyberzombie, collectively known as cybermancy, except that it used magical binding rituals to allow a person to undergo cybernetic augmentation to a far greater extent that would normally be possible, preventing a person from dying even as they were pushed past the limits of the changes their essence could take.


    The principle drawback of the procedure was the effect such a magically traumatic process had on the subject¡¯s psyche. They were left in a state of aimlessness, often unwilling or unable to act independently and with a tendency to hyper fixate on random details of their environment. When Bradley Meadows agreed to become Medhall¡¯s first willing test subject for the procedure, seeing it as the culmination of his transhumanist ideology, Victor was brought in to try and find a solution to that loss of self.


    Inevitably, he leant on his expertise interpreting mental data. He was a skilled personafix and skillsoft programmer, experienced in creating software that overwrote the human mind to a greater or lesser degree, giving a person the skills to speak new languages, operate complicated machinery or overwrite their personality to suit their environment.


    His solution was deceptively simple. The night before Bradley Meadows was due to undergo the procedure, Victor made a scan of his brain and turned it into a personafix chip that was installed once the procedure was concluded. It was a snapshot of Hookwolf as he had been, perfectly accurate but incapable of changing or adapting to experiences in the same way a healthy human mind would. For Hookwolf, who believed he was perfect in mind yet imperfect in body, it was an acceptable trade-off.


    Hookwolf was much too large and heavy to take a seat at the table, instead looming behind Stormtiger and Cricket. The three of them could not have been a more drastic departure from the business suits of the rest of the room; neither of his lieutenants were even wearing a shirt. They revelled in their outcast status, sitting at the table with the easy confidence skilled killers often had in the company of men whose skills lay in less physical fields.


    Three minutes after the meeting was due to start, the door opened for a final time and Victor stood up alongside the entire room as Max Anders walked through the door. In his early forties, Max was young for the CEO of a corporation that was the embodiment of old money, and in the finest physical health ¨C with his luxury suit tailored around the kind of physique that only came with the aid of high-class personal trainers. His hair was perfectly styled, and his eyes were a brilliant blue that seemed to pierce right through those assembled to meet him. On his face was the friendly smile of an old patriarch; warm to those under his care, but with an undeniable sense of superiority.


    James Fleischer followed him in; a tall, narrow man in a double-breasted Saville Row suit who seemed to blend into Max¡¯s shadow. When Max took his seat at the head of the table ¨C the room sitting down with him ¨C Fleischer took the seat to his right, his hands resting on the desk even as Victor saw the reflection of AR feeds scrolling down his entirely cosmetic glasses.


    ¡°As always, thank you all for coming,¡± Max began, as if any of the people assembled there would have ever considered staying away. ¡°We¡¯ll begin, I think, with the elephant in the room. Mr Hunter; your report?¡±


    ¡°Yes sir,¡± Alabaster took a moment to straighten his tie before he began talking. ¡°We¡¯ve completed our investigation into the breach. Thanks to the efforts of hired matrix specialists and Shadowrunners¡± ¨C here he nodded to one of the liaisons ¨C ¡°we have been able to build up a full picture of the circumstances surrounding Andrew Garcia¡¯s arrest. Thanks to a source within Knight Errant, we now know that after Andrew Garcia was handed over to their officers by the Shadowrunners who infiltrated the Charter Hill Dopadrine plant, he was visited in an interrogation room by Victoria Dallon.¡±


    Alabaster set his commlink down on the table, tapping away at a few buttons before a data file appeared in Victor¡¯s AR-linked contact lenses. Inside was a picture of an attractive woman in a luxurious dress being escorted into a Knight Errant precinct.


    ¡°That¡¯s Reginald Stansfield¡¯s son,¡± Max Anders observed, as Victor¡¯s gaze jumped from the girl to the sharply-dressed young man behind her.


    ¡°The two are dating,¡± Alabaster nodded, ¡°but we don¡¯t believe this was sanctioned by Ares. Andrew Garcia was first recruited to Medhall after he killed Jess Montrose, an anti-human journalist who was dating Victoria Dallon¡¯s uncle. They were apparently close. As such, we believe this was a matter of revenge, entirely unrelated to Garcia¡¯s minor role in our distribution network.¡±


    ¡°It makes sense,¡± Fleischer spoke. He¡¯d learned to speak English in Britain, and it showed in his accent. ¡°Dean Stansfield fronts the money and sets up the meeting with Ares¡¯ usual underworld contacts. Perhaps he even let this girl take the lead on the negotiation, knowing he can swallow the costs. Andrew Garcia was a minor figure in a rival corporation; an acceptable target when balanced against a chance to impress the attractive blonde he¡¯s sleeping with.¡± He smirked. ¡°Nothing more than young lust.¡±


    ¡°And you¡¯re certain the network remains intact?¡± Max asked, fixing Alabaster with a piercing glare.


    ¡°We¡¯ve audited it from top to bottom; Garcia accepted a lawyer we funded in exchange for his silence and there have been no suspicious activities at any stage of the distribution process.¡±


    Max looked to Hookwolf, Justin Hammond and one of the Medhall executives Victor didn¡¯t know in turn, waiting for them to nod in confirmation of what Alabaster had just said.


    ¡°Good,¡± Max leant back in his seat. ¡°Then all we have to do is wait for the present unrest to blow over. Mr Meyer, I trust you¡¯ve already drawn up a public relations strategy to mitigate the damage this has caused?¡±


    ¡°Of course, sir,¡± Victor nodded. ¡°I¡¯ve distributed it to our media contacts, both on and off the books. They¡¯ll emphasise the violence of the anti-human protestors and deflect any overexuberance from our side onto the Chosen.¡±


    Stormtiger grinned at that, always eager to play the part of the bogeyman. The Chosen proved a useful scapegoat, and were regularly singled out for condemnation by other branches of Medhall¡¯s unseen empire. Hammond regularly railed against their ¡®un-American technofetishism¡¯ in his speeches, and he even believed what he was saying.


    ¡°Then with urgent business concluded,¡± Max continued, ¡°I¡¯ll have your reports. Mr Hammond.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s green across the board,¡± Hammond said as he leant comfortably back in his seat. ¡°We have a promising crop amongst the undergraduates this year. I¡¯ve sent in dossiers on sixteen who I believe the company would be interested in putting on a graduate scheme, five who I¡¯d prefer to direct towards roles in local politics and the municipal government, and three who have potential as sleeper operatives wherever you need them. Finally, the daughter of a Senator for Maine and Newfoundland has expressed an interest in joining, and I think she¡¯d make a good candidate to groom for a job in DeeCee.¡±


    ¡°Less useful for us, once we have true extraterritoriality,¡± Max mused, before turning to look at Fleischer, ¡°but your lot might find her access useful in twenty to thirty years. For a reasonable price, of course.¡±


    Fleischer nodded, a contemplative look in his eyes.


    ¡°Speaking of,¡± Max continued, turning back to the group. ¡°Mr Fleischer¡¯s colleagues have some more work for us, and they¡¯re paying generously for the privilege.¡±


    He gestured for Fleischer to take over, which he did after polishing his glasses with a handkerchief he kept in the breast pocket of his suit.


    ¡°Thank you, Mr Anders.¡± He turned to look up at Hookwolf, who returned his gaze with a dead-eyed stare. ¡°Our first requirement is for a team of soldiers to support a Flaming Sword operation in Toronto¡­¡±


    Victor allowed himself to tune out of the meeting as Fleischer continued. Their allied organisation seldom had any requests involving his specialities of public relations and neural engineering. Their requirements were typically for Medhall¡¯s medical expertise ¨C whether for research purposes or genuine first aid ¨C or the services of the trained cyber-commandoes the Chosen churned out on a regular basis.


    Instead, Victor allowed his personafix chip to keep up the appearance of attentiveness, trusting the software to draw his attention back if it turned out he did have some relevance to the discussion, and pulled up the Valkyries¡¯ simrig recordings, reaching out in the matrix to send off requests to the editors still working away in the annex of the depot  After all, HTR Brunhilda would be back in the air at the end of the day, collecting more footage that would need to be edited into something broadcastable, and they needed to have a new episode put together by the end of the week.


    Victor enjoyed the cut and thrust of corporate life, dancing on the edge of deadlines and the competing requirements of dozens of different departments. Men like Justin Hammond or Bradley Meadows could keep their trenches and their battles; Victor Meyer knew for a fact that he belonged in the halls of power, with his finger on the scales of real change.

 DDoS: 5.01

    I swam in an empty void, beneath a nebula of lights that stretched as far as my mind could see. My persona drifted far below the horizontal plane on which the Matrix existed, where the physical positions of countless devices became pinpricks of light or great glowing masses and hosts from the miniscule to the massive drifted high above the digital city, untethered to any physical location as distant personas passed through their membranes and datastreams anchored them to digital reality.


    As I sank further and further away from the city, I began to cut the ties that bound me to the matrix, severing the datastreams that tied me to the team, to my home, to the exclave the natural world had carved out in the resonance. I lost my sense of time, my messages, my awareness of the data that even now drifted around me as stray datastreams fell into the void, becoming undeliverable messages or glitches in the system.


    With it went my sight, and I found myself completely alone in all the world with nothing but my thoughts, the ambient resonance of my own form and the resonance that had crept into the matrix around me, drifting in through cracks in its supposedly impenetrable walls. Finally, I began to fray away at the tether between my persona and my organic body, turning a stout lifeline into a fragile thread.


    When Labyrinth had brought me to the brink of the event horizon, she did so by anchoring a resonance spike into my persona and physically pulling me away from my body. To enter the resonance realms on my own, I needed to learn how to make that last jump myself. I began to centre myself, shifting my focus from the lifeline to the resonance that made up my persona.


    I had known for years that it was an intrinsic part of me, but in that self-imposed sensory deprivation I came to realise that it was me. While most people interacted through the matrix via personas formed from code, those were nothing more than avatars that they controlled. They were like Rachel¡¯s drones, on the digital rather than physical plane.


    But I wasn¡¯t made of code. I needed no device to project me into the world. I was like the Matrix itself, like the resonance that surrounded and suffused it. If all the matrix-capable devices in the world were to shut down, completely and irreparably, we would still be here.


    I discovered my connection to the resonance when I was fourteen ¨C collapsing unconscious in the middle of the halls and waking up in the nurse¡¯s office with just enough sense to blame it on heatstroke ¨C and yet I couldn¡¯t help wondering whether it was the dreamer or the dream that came first.


    With that thought, my very body seemed to fray at the edges, losing its cohesion as it resonated in harmony with its surroundings. Though I no longer had the senses to feel it, I sunk deeper and deeper until I found myself passing through the invisible membrane of the matrix once again.


    The process was painful, violent, as the event horizon tore my psyche apart once more. I thought it would be easier to bear the second time, but I was wrong. I saw every hesitation, every path not taken, every missed opportunity. I stood in the corridors of Medhall Pharmaceutical Plant 43-BB, my hands trembling as I lined up the barrel of my Ares Executioner with a hired security guard, her own weapon burnt out by the sprite resting on it. I didn¡¯t shoot. I couldn¡¯t shoot.


    Falling beyond the event horizon, I was drawn inexorably into a tunnel formed from blinding light, propelling me forwards at an impossible speed. I reached out, not with my arms but with the resonance that made up my persona, trying to match it to the frantic pace of the space around me.


    As I grew more and more in sync with the resonance that formed the tunnel, I found myself drifting apart from the data it carried. I went from one part of a transmission, surrounded on all sides by other packages of data, to something separate from it as the data rearranged itself to account for my absence. I could feel the boundaries of the tunnel, the mechanisms that propelled the endless stream of data through it.


    I reached out, grasped that mechanism, and anchored myself in place. I didn¡¯t feel any deceleration as I went from the speed of infinite bandwidth to stationary, just an intense feeling of vertigo as the data that had surrounded me disappeared into the distance as fast as light.


    I held out a hand in front of me, watching the distortions caused by the sheer mass of data passing through my persona. It was blurred, dragged out like colour running from cloth. What¡¯s more, I could feel echoes of the data as it passed through. A chemical analysis machine sending out an endless stream of numbers with mathematical precision, the packaged metadata of an Idol¡¯s livestream from the heart of Shinjuku, the end-to-end encrypted comm data of Wuxing¡¯s executive messenger app.


    There was, as far as I could tell, no pattern to the data. No common content, destination or origin. It wasn¡¯t even flowing in the same direction; the tunnels branched and split, forming a fractal maze of raw resonance. What¡¯s more, I knew that the tunnels behind me were the same.


    In elementary school, we¡¯d gone on a class trip to the science museum downtown. It was part of an outreach programme Medhall funded, to get kids interested in biology. They sat us all down in this room made up to look like an old-fashioned yellow schoolbus and placed simsense wreaths on our heads, letting us see the body from the inside, shrunk down to a microscopic level as a museum staff member whose persona was dressed like a schoolteacher talked us through what we were seeing.


    The tunnels reminded me of the circulatory system; myriad capillaries collapsing down into arteries and veins as they were carried off to who knows where. But the system was reversed; if the event horizon was the skin in this metaphor, it drew blood into the body before some unseen heart pumped it deeper in. It was almost predatory; the resonance pressing in on the matrix and drawing out its essence.


    But I knew that, of the two, it was the matrix that was the intruder.


    In front of me, the resonance wavered like strings carrying the vibrations of some distant force, before it coalesced, shifting apart at the very instant of Labyrinth¡¯s arrival, her own persona as smeared by the force of this place as my own.


    ¡°I made it,¡± I boasted, proud. ¡°I¡¯ve found my own way through.¡±


    ¡°So I see,¡± Labyrinth nodded. She¡¯d always seemed more vivid than the matrix, but here it was like she glowed with an ethereal light. We were both fundamentally connected to this place and the energy that it was formed from, but there seemed to be some deeper level to her connection.


    ¡°We are not the only ones to cross the event horizon,¡± Labyrinth explained, her mind clearly elsewhere as she played with the streams of data flowing through her persona. ¡°Other technomancers explore the resonance realms, some even catalogue and disseminate information on them. Even to those without the resonance¡¯s touch.¡± There was something in her tone, some combination of distrust and a little anger. ¡°They categorise this realm as Out of Band; an in-between space linking the realms together.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t know we were so organised,¡± I mused. I¡¯d never even considered it was an option; my first reaction upon learning about my powers had been to hide them away from everyone.


    But that was six years ago, I thought. Maybe things are different now?


    ¡°We are not,¡± Labyrinth retorted. ¡°There are tribes forming, in the largest cities and the busiest parts of the matrix. They cooperate, coordinate. They have common causes and act to advance them. They make targets of themselves.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t approve, I take it?¡± I asked.


    ¡°What is the point in sharing knowledge of this place with those who cannot see the resonance in any form?¡± Labyrinth asked. ¡°Why announce to the world what we can do? There is power here, but it would have been more powerful if it had been kept a secret.¡±


    I nodded, agreeing entirely.


    ¡°How did you find me, anyway?¡± I asked. ¡°These tunnels seem to go on forever, and I don¡¯t think you came through in the same place as me.¡±


    ¡°There is no truly reliable method,¡± she answered. ¡°If we had undergone submersion together, I would have been with you from the start, but we would also have shared in the journey through the event horizon.¡±


    I almost shuddered. My failures were my own to keep.


    ¡°Then how?¡±


    ¡°Everything in this realm is connected. You can attempt to feel the resonance around you, divining where you need to go by pure instinct. I brokered a deal with a sprite, who knows these passages far better than either of us.¡±


    ¡°That works?¡± I asked, still trying to wrap my head around the idea of sprites being sapient. ¡°You can reason with them?¡±


    ¡°That depends on your definition of reason. They do want, but not in the same way we want.¡±


    ¡°I think I found something made by one of those other Technomancers the last time I was here,¡± I said, changing the subject. ¡°A file, called The Resonance Library.¡±


    ¡°That was made by our kind, yes,¡± she explained. ¡°I have read it, though my own techniques were discovered through trial and error. You¡¯ll find it is useful in creating complex forms out of the resonance; to do more than twist it into a spike or direct sprites to do your tasks for you.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve been trying to go through it, but it¡¯s difficult. It¡¯s like it doesn¡¯t want to be understood.¡±


    ¡°It is easier here,¡± she said. ¡°The file is formed from resonance, not data. Reading it in the Matrix renders it nonsensical to non-technomancers and simply difficult for our kind. Now that you have learned how to come here on your own, you can peruse it at your leisure.¡±


    ¡°Something for later, then,¡± I said. ¡°You said there was a price for showing me how to use the realms. I don¡¯t want to be in debt for long.¡±


    ¡°As with the last lesson, the task itself will teach you. There are many reasons why you might want to come here that go beyond simple exploration. You can find files that have long since been wiped from the matrix, make edits to data stored in the most secure servers, weaken the defences of a host from afar or even form a bridge between the resonance and a host¡¯s foundation, to attack it from another angle.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s what we¡¯re doing?¡± I asked, picking up on the slight change in tone on the last item in the list.


    ¡°That¡¯s what we¡¯re here to prevent,¡± Labyrinth clarified. ¡°One of my hosts is under attack by a technomancer who is using the resonance to create their entrance.¡±


    ¡°Which one?¡± I asked.


    ¡°A confidential data host. Faultline is a fixer and an information broker in equal measure; Palanquin sits atop a treasure trove of data. It is impossible to tell what their target actually is. Attacks aren¡¯t uncommon.¡±


    ¡°If they¡¯re building a bridge between the resonance realms and your foundation, I take it we need to find the other end?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Precisely,¡± Labyrinth replied, even as her form grew hazier as she began to resync herself with the data passing through the tunnel. ¡°Through bargains, I have already discerned the realm they are using to construct their backdoor. We will travel there, locate the intruder, subdue them and discern who they work for.¡±


    ¡°Just like that?¡± I asked, rhetorically. ¡°Lead the way.¡±


    Labyrinth disappeared as she re-entered the stream as motes of light, accelerating to impossible speeds in an instant. I followed her, flinging myself back into the blinding tunnels as we followed branching paths down through the capillaries and into the bloodstream of the resonance.


    I had no idea how far we travelled, because concepts such as distance and time seemed utterly irrelevant in this realm of alien data, but gradually the paths branched out again, data diverting from the main flow as it was siphoned off into side passages, duplicated out in a copy and paste process as it was filed to what I had to assume were a myriad of different realms like the one I had found myself in the first time I crossed over.


    When Labyrinth turned, it was abrupt, and yet the action felt almost instinctive to me. It was like the resonance had grasped hold of our essence as well, had filed us into the right realm long before we drew close and simply slotted us into the right pathway to get there.


    As the capillaries branched out further, the light around me dimmed. With fewer branching paths surrounding us and a lower amount of traffic in our own tunnel, the glow receded and shrunk into a filament-thin wire down which we travelled, before the realm itself came in a sudden burst of darkness.


    I fell to my hands and knees, my palm digging into the warm marble floor beneath me, with etched writing carved into it like a gravestone on the floor of an old church. As I looked to one side, I saw Labyrinth standing next to me, seemingly unaffected by the transition. In an instant, I was standing. This realm was closer to the matrix in feel than the last, which meant it was simplicity itself to shift my persona¡¯s positioning without physically moving.


    As I took in the realm that surrounded us, I was struck by an inescapable sensation of grandeur that sank deep into my core. It was as if thousands of places of worship from dozens of different religions had been layered on top of each other to create a single structure, whole sections of churches, mosques, temples and tiny private shrines merged together to create a nonsensical amalgamation of differing styles.


    ¡°Have you been here before?¡± I asked Labyrinth, as her familiar crow sprite shimmered into existence on her robed shoulder.


    ¡°Only once,¡± she answered.


    ¡°What is this place?¡±


    ¡°You should be able to tell that yourself.¡±


    I looked down at the stone beneath my feet, frowning as I tried to make out the words.


    ¡°Stop.¡± Labyrinth said, abruptly. ¡°This place is formed from pure resonance, as are we. We¡¯re part of its structure, even here. You shouldn¡¯t need sight to tell me what this place as a whole is for, and the same is true of devices and hosts formed from mundane data.¡±


    Taking her advice, I ignored the words on the stone in favour of taking in the environment as a whole. I reached out, harmonising my own resonance with that which made up this realm before sending it out in pulses and listening to the returning tones like a ship¡¯s radar. I¡¯d done it once before, in the strange library, but it still took a moment to bridge the gap between what I could see and the reality of the place.


    ¡°It¡¯s belief,¡± I began, but that didn¡¯t sound right to me. ¡°No, it¡¯s truth. Data that asserts itself as true in such strong terms that there is no need to prove the claim because the data doesn¡¯t consider itself a claim in the first place. All of it gathered here. An infinite number of mutually contradictory beliefs, and yet every single one of them flagged as the truth.¡±


    I looked at the stone beneath me once more, seeing the file it represented rather than the visual layer. It was a transcript of a forum post, asserting the firmly-held beliefs of the person who typed it, but that others would call a wild theory at best. The one next to it was a court transcript recording the judgement of a case, but not the back and forth of the case itself. After that was a passage from Walking to the Light; the holy text of the Path of the Wheel.


    I looked up, taking in the grand temple-collage as a whole, and saw that the artwork on the walls was moving. They were recordings of preachers, presentations, lessons, briefings and fierce arguments. Scientists delivered public health warnings, unfamiliar in the face of a camera but utterly certain in the data they were relaying. Online bloggers asserted their truths in videos filmed on their own personal commlinks, or off the webcams of their laptops. A hundred politicians were visible just from where I was standing, emphatically declaring what will happen when they¡¯re elected. All of it was interpreted through a myriad of different art styles and mediums.


    ¡°Precisely,¡± Labyrinth said. ¡°It is a fairly well-known realm, called the Temple of Belief by other technomancers, but it does not see much traffic as the data here is mostly publicly available and of little use. No doubt, that is why our target chose it.¡±


    She paused, casting her gaze around the space before turning her attention back to me.


    ¡°Never forget that everything you ¡®see¡¯ here, or in the matrix, is nothing more than your brain interpreting this environment into something your eyes can understand. It is useful, and the reflex can never be truly un-learned, but your brain is capable of interpreting the data on its own.¡±


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Looking around at the environment, I couldn¡¯t help but feel that I could have made the same conclusions using only the visual imput, as illusory as it may be. This particular realm was a place of metaphors ¨C and not subtle ones. Which, I thought, fit with the blunt assertions of the data it draws in.


    ¡°Are all realms like this?¡± I asked. ¡°Focusing on one specific type of data?¡±


    ¡°Some are,¡± Labyrinth answered. ¡°Others don¡¯t draw in data of any kind, existing simply as places on their own. Some even draw in all data, without restrictions.¡±


    I frowned, as something struck me.


    ¡°How does this realm judge what qualifies? The data itself is formed from the same code as anything else. ¡®Truth¡¯ is a metahuman concept; it won¡¯t show up in a file type.¡±


    ¡°That I do not know,¡± Labyrinth answered. ¡°But while we observe the resonance, the resonance is observing the matrix ¨C and perhaps the world beyond the matrix. It might have learned the difference through the eyes of its technomancers.¡±


    It was strange; I knew the thought of a passenger looking through my eyes should have unsettled me, but instead I was completely indifferent to her words. It wasn¡¯t just that I had spent a great deal of time looking through the eyes of others, it was that the resonance was an inherent part of me. The idea of it using my eyes felt no more consequential than me doing the same.


    ¡°Now¡­¡± Labyrinth turned to her crow. ¡°We have a target to find, and an immense amount of ground to cover. I suggest you call on aid.¡±


    I held out my own palm, watching as the resonance took shape as a dragonfly, and Labyrinth and I released the sprites together, sending them flying away down the halls even as we began leaping from point to point, jumping instantaneously from balconies and pulpits to the tops of indoor minarets as we traversed the space, all the while sending out pulses through the resonance.


    We were practically screaming our location out into the space and, just like radar, it was a two way street. We found our technomancer, nestled in a small shrine to some hidden, private religion built in the corner of a Shinto-style transept. His persona was that of a human man with ash-white plastic skin and shamanic-looking robes, stripped down to the waist with glowing patterns of blue circuitry tattooed into his skin.


    Whatever altar the little shrine had contained was simply gone, replaced instead with a glowing portal that seemed to warp the space around it, drawing the resonance that made up this place into a tunnel that was similar in structure to the one that carried us here. It was incomplete ¨C I could see as much even from this distance ¨C but even as the technomancer turned to face us, it was still reaching out into the resonance, drawing ever closer to the foundations of the matrix, and Labyrinth¡¯s host.


    I didn¡¯t know if he was splitting his focus or the process ¨C whatever it was ¨C was happening without his conscious input. In the end it didn¡¯t matter, as Labyrinth seemed to exude menace as she pounced down from the high elven-revival balcony on which we were perched, a trio of snarling wolves with a metal sheen to their fur crawling up out of the floor of the transept.


    For my part, I extended the elongated spider-like limbs from the back of my persona, the tip of each loaded with spikes of concentrated resonance, and drew on the space around me to call forth wasps whose wings were almost incandescent with yellow light.


    The technomancer raised up a hand in front of him and I could see the resonance gathering at his fingertips through the vivid glow of his tattoos, before it shot out in an arc of lighting that hit me right as I made to follow him, locking my limbs together as it held me in place mid-leap, suspended in the air in a web of digital electricity.


    My wasps had managed to evade the attack in time, however, and together with Labyrinth¡¯s wolves they swarmed the technomancer, nipping at his defences as the fault sprites sought out vulnerabilities into which they could sink their stingers and teeth.


    Rather than answering with sprites of his own, the technomancer seemed to shimmer for a moment as his tattoos glowed until they were blinding, causing the sprites to stagger momentarily as my vision wiped out, before it dropped to reveal two identical copies of the technomancer.


    As my sprites made a split-millisecond judgement and lunged for one, the other reached out and grasped one of the sprites in its hand, sending a flurry of resonance through its form like a clown¡¯s joy buzzer, the sprite disintegrating into motes of yellow light under the electric force as the technomancer¡¯s duplicate disappeared the moment I realised its false nature.


    Labyrinth and her wolves had been more perceptive, however, and one managed to sink its teeth into the leg of the persona even as the elven woman directing the wolves did something I couldn¡¯t quite understand, twisting the resonance around the technomancer in a way that frayed at his persona, rendering it more sluggish like the human was operating inside a spam zone.


    That gave me an idea, and as I finally managed to break free of the spam zone I flew across the floor of the transept, churning the resonance inside me into the familiar pattern I had felt back in the library.


    As I drew close enough to strike the persona, I opened my mouth and screamed, as the realm screamed with me. A million fireflies spilled out of the chitinous joints of my persona, filling the air with irritating yellow light and the chittering of untold wings in a way that would have had me clutching my ears and closing my eyes tightly if it had actually been sound and light that assailed me. My opponent was equally effected, but only I was expecting the onslaught. It gave me just enough leverage to drive a spider¡¯s leg through a gap in his defences, flooding his core with poisonous code.


    As the connection was made, however, I was struck by a horrific sense of wrongness at the technomancer. Something about the resonance that made up his form seemed warped in ways I couldn¡¯t quite comprehend, like it was rotten somehow.


    Something deep inside me screamed at it, at the dissonance between it and the shared harmony of myself and this realm ¨C and the resonance entire.


    So I screamed back, intensifying the storm of fireflies in an attempt to drown out his dissonant hum, fumbling blindly in a morass of my own creation even as I drove spike after spike after spike at my equally blind opponent. Around us, wolves and wasps darted in and out of the melee, affected by my storm even worse than either of us were.


    Only Labyrinth seemed unaffected, having spread out her own resonance to anchor herself into the structure of the realm itself, giving her an idea of our positioning in relation to our surroundings, rather than relying solely on what her senses could see. I was only peripherally aware of her through the storm, but I could guess enough of her intentions to know to press my attack, even as the technomancer managed to grip my face and drive an electric palmprint into it, my synapses burning at the pressure.


    <Bug, get back!> Labyrinth shouted to me through a stream of resonance and I complied, hurriedly leaping backwards just before she sent a tightly-packed ball of resonance flying directly at the technomancer. It exploded into another storm, more tightly contained than my scream and formed from swirling mists that seemed to bind the technomancer as he stumbled around blindly, the sheer amount of noise now enough to overwhelm what his mind could handle.


    If we were on the grids, and he were using a commlink to connect, it would have been enough to fill his vision with bandwidth errors, driving him out of the matrix without ever actually harming the device itself. In the resonance, however, there was nowhere to run, and as his persona frayed with the storm I knew with every certainty that his mind was fraying alongside it.


    <Stop screaming> Labyrinth instructed, and I complied, as her wolves dove forwards yet again and dug their jaws into the persona without actually injecting the resonance spikes nestled in their teeth. Taking the hint, I sent my wasps forward to do the same as Labyrinth let the localised storm fizzle out into nothingness.


    ¡°What is he?¡± I asked, knowing that if I were in meatspace I would be breathless with exertion and shock in equal measure.


    ¡°He is dissonant,¡± Labyrinth answered. ¡°An Apophenian.¡± The persona before us had been stripped of almost all its tailored individuality, reduced to a flickering humanoid shape of bare resonance that seemed so inherently wrong to my senses it was all I could do to keep it in my attention.


    ¡°The resonance that makes up his form has been corrupted into dissonance,¡± she explained. ¡°Where we are in harmony with the resonance, he stands in opposition. Apophenians are as deranged as all dissonant technomancers, driven to connect disparate things in odd ways. No doubt this one raids hosts as a way of funding his compulsion.¡±


    ¡°Connecting a host of empirical facts to one of asserted truths,¡± I picked up the thread, before gesturing at the swirling vortex in front of us. ¡°He made that? It doesn¡¯t feel¡­ dissonant.¡±


    ¡°It is not,¡± Labyrinth said. ¡°There are connections between the resonance and the matrix that bypass the event horizon, emerging as wells of resonance. They are vanishingly rare, and always fought over when they do emerge. This Apophenian was redirecting this nascent well to my host. Once it was rooted in the foundation, he would no doubt have polluted it into a permanent, dissonant well.¡±


    There was anger in her tone, so different from her usual stoicism. She looked down at the technomancer, kneeling beside his featureless persona as she dug a palm into his chest.


    ¡°What are you doing?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I was going to have you do this,¡± she explained, ¡°but dissonance can have a corrupting effect on the unprepared. I am digging through the history of this persona, following its trail to trace its activities. It may take some time.¡±


    ¡°Should I do anything about the well?¡± I asked.


    ¡°No need,¡± Labyrinth shook her head. ¡°It is forming quickly. With the Apophenian neutralised it will emerge on the Denver metropolitan grid within two hours. More than enough time for us to disappear before tribes, adventurers, nations and megacorporations come calling.¡±


    After a moment, she withdrew her hand from the technomancer and stood.


    ¡°He is in the Miami Metroplex,¡± she spoke with absolute confidence. ¡°He was hired by a contact in Aztechnology to destroy or retrieve confidential prototype data one of our teams stole from a facility of theirs. No doubt a physical team is preparing a raid on the secure storage site where we are keeping the actual prototype.¡±


    Abruptly, her wolves tightened their grip on the persona, flooding it with resonance spikes. Instinctively I had my wasps do the same, eradicating the feeling of wrongness, but in the aftermath I found myself wracked by uncertainty.


    ¡°Is he dead?¡± I asked, forcing the words past my hesitation.


    ¡°It is of no consequence,¡± Labyrinth answered. ¡°I have transmitted his location to Faultline, alongside a summary of the situation. She has contacts in the Caribbean League who will recover his corpse, or kill him while he is crippled by dumpshock. Security at our storage facility will be bolstered.¡±


    ¡°And the executive?¡±


    ¡°Out of our reach,¡± Labyrinth said nonchalantly. If she were a more expressive person, she might have shrugged our shoulders. ¡°But if she is prepared to go this far to retrieve the file, she will no doubt suffer for her failure to do so.¡±


    ¡°It kind of sucks,¡± I sighed. ¡°It feels like we treated the symptom of the problem, not the cause.¡±


    ¡°It is the way of that world,¡± Labyrinth answered. ¡°And not worth worrying about.¡±


    I looked at the swirling vortex before me, staring into pure resonance without even a cosmetic layer to interpret the data. If I was still a troll in that moment, I might have sighed.


    ¡°You know¡­¡± I began, my words faltering. ¡°I picked Bug for my username because I used to feel like a glitch in the system. I¡¯ve been a technomancer for longer than most, but for most of that time I didn¡¯t even know what I was. I just knew that I didn¡¯t fit. But here? Now? Now it¡¯s the name that feels like it doesn¡¯t fit anymore.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s easy to change,¡± Labyrinth answered. ¡°Your persona as well. All it would take is a thought.¡±


    ¡°I know,¡± I said. ¡°I just haven¡¯t had the right thought yet. And I like my persona, chitin and all. We¡¯re the world¡¯s bogeymen, until a new one shows up. Might as well own the aesthetic.¡± I shook my head. ¡°Why¡¯d you pick Labyrinth, anyway?¡±


    ¡°It is what I am,¡± Labyrinth answered, with a hint of emotion in her tone. ¡°It is what I did, when I belonged to Mitsuhama Consumer Technologies. I made hosts for them within a localised network surrounded by a facility-wide faraday cage. I did it again and again, layering complexity after complexity onto them as they studied my work. I was their most powerful subject, which meant they subjected me to constant brain scans rather than simply dissecting me like the others.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s the old myth, right?¡± I asked. ¡°A sacrifice a year, fed to the labyrinth. The minotaur¡¯s just¡­ detail. If it didn¡¯t kill them, starvation would.¡±


    ¡°Someone told me the story as well,¡± Labyrinth said. ¡°At the facility, or¡­ before. I can¡¯t remember anymore. Regardless, the image appealed to me.¡±


    I couldn¡¯t help but find it admirable; the way she¡¯d taken the worst moments of her life and turned them into a strength. It reminded me a lot of everything the rest of my team had gone through, as well as being a prescient example of what I needed to do if I was going to keep myself out of the rut I had fallen into.


    Both of us were shocked out of our reverie as the nascent well expanded, the maelstrom now large enough that it had almost completely obscured the small shrine.


    ¡°We should leave,¡± Labyrinth said. ¡°Even a decker can travel into this realm through a resonance well.¡±


    ¡°Right,¡± I agreed, reflexively leaping back from the rift. ¡°Where to next?¡±


    ¡°You have kept up your end of the bargain and eliminated the threat to my host,¡± Labyrinth said. ¡°I will go through the resonance library you found and see if I can teach you any of the forms within; you are skilled enough in combat, but you lack finesse. This will be easier somewhere quiet.¡±


    ¡°Actually, I think I know a good place,¡± I said, instinctively. ¡°The realm I found myself in when I first came through. It¡¯s a lot smaller than this one, as far as I can tell, and it was as quiet as a dead zone.¡±


    ¡°That will do,¡± Labyrinth said. ¡°Lead the way.¡±


    Finding the exit to the realm was as simple as retracing our steps, though I doubted it was the only one in this place. It might not even be an exit, but some allegorical representation of the path we¡¯d taken through the resonance, formed by the now completely imperceptible thread linking my persona back to my body like the air cable of some ancient submariner.


    Travelling through the tunnels of light felt instinctive, my path as clear as it had been when I was simply following Labyrinth a few metres in front of me. I wondered if it was because I had been there before, or if all the resonance realms were this easy to locate if you knew what you were looking for. Somehow, I doubted it.


    As before, I emerged from the tunnel of light into the depths of inky black water, my momentum cancelling as my virtual lungs were suddenly made real and filed with fluid. This time, however, I stamped down on the instinctive panic and calmly swam upwards, knowing that the burning in my lungs was no more real than anything else in this place. Before I¡¯d even broken the surface, I had forced the perfect facsimile of my organic body back into the familiar shape of my persona.


    I still had to physically haul myself out of the water, black fluid dripping off chitin onto the stone floor. When the pool stilled, I looked back into its depths and saw the comforting form of the insectoid face, as my spidersilk robes dried rapidly in the resonance-turned-air. I stepped back from the pool, leant against the cool stone wall, and waited for Labyrinth to emerge from the pool.


    After a minute, I was frowning. After five, I was back over by the side of the pool on my hands and knees, staring into its depths as I stirred the water with an outstretched spider leg. When I came through into the Temple of Belief, I was right behind Labyrinth. With the advantage in knowledge and experience she had over me, it was impossible to believe she had somehow lost track of me.


    And yet, after ten minutes, I concluded that the impossible had somehow happened. I wondered if it was something to do with this place; the entrance was far harder to reach than the other realm, depositing a persona into an uncomfortably physical obstacle rather than into an open space. For someone like Labyrinth, who emphasised the actual resonance over the form it took, might it have been too much of a barrier to overcome? Or was something else at play and this place was filtering out technomancers in the same way other realms filtered data?


    Either way, I wasn¡¯t in a place to fix things, and if there was some underlying mystery to this place I wasn¡¯t going to find it in the antechamber. So I left the pool behind, wandering back through the gently-curving hall with locked doors running along the right wall and stained glass windows that let in a shimmering green light along the left, all the while marvelling at just how perfectly it felt like real light, real gravity, real air and real green carpeting beneath my feet.


    The library was as I had left it, the blinking racks of servers stretching off into the distance, each one containing seemingly random files and fragments of data. Above me, behind the vaulted glass of the ceiling, that same constellation of light glimmered amidst a black void. It was like a nebula, full of the potential of new-born stars, and it was no less entrancing on the second viewing than it had been on the first.


    Remembering the Temple of Belief, I reached out into the resonance and tried to harmonise myself with the place, sending out pulses of resonance and waiting for the return signals.


    But no matter how hard I focused, I couldn¡¯t completely disassociate myself from the cosmetic layer of this place, which meant I couldn¡¯t see the true nature of the resonance that comprised it. The physical laws here were too focused, too real, which in and of itself was so out of keeping with the rest of the realms that it almost made me feel uneasy.


    I turned away from the starfield, looking up and down the stacks of blinking servers. Idly, I picked one at random, wheeling over the moveable ladder with its desktop terminal and slotting in the archaic wired connector.


    This time, the file was clearly from someone¡¯s own personal computer. It appeared to me as the same mass of spaghetti code, while simultaneously being completely comprehensible as an artist¡¯s portfolio, full of technical drawings that depicted patterns on fabric and how those patterns would be weaved together into beautiful dresses ranging from fantastical high fashion to practical eveningwear.


    I unplugged the connector, moving it to the next server up. This file was far smaller, belonging to a Stuffer Shack franchise and largely consisting of spreadsheets detailing the arrival of fresh stock, the financial balance of the business and the timesheet by which its workers lived their lives.


    The next was different once again. It was a familiar format of old message logs, but the file only had one side of the conversation.


    ?I feel like I¡¯m trapped. Either I follow the path that¡¯s been set for me and lose out on the chance to choose my own future, or I go my own way and leave things in the hands of those people. Nothing will change, and maybe things will get worse.?


    - Tantalus (20:04:23/02-3-2070)


    ?It¡¯s easy to say that when it¡¯s just your own life you have to worry about, but this is about so much more than just me.?


    - Tantalus (20:04:51/02-3-2070)


    ?Yeah, sorry, I worded that wrong. I don¡¯t mean to diminish your own experiences, but whatever I choose, it¡¯ll affect a lot of people. That¡¯s why I can only talk about this here, where nobody but you knows who I am.?


    - Tantalus (20:05:13/02-3-2070)


    ?That¡¯s the problem, I don¡¯t really know for certain. I suspect a hell of a lot, but that¡¯s not the sort of thing he¡¯d let me see. I think he thinks I don¡¯t have the stomach for the real picture. He¡¯s right, of course.?


    - Tantalus (20:06:25/02-3-2070)


    ?Believe me, I wish he¡¯d agreed to let me attend UH has well. The distance would have been good for me, and I¡¯d love to meet up with you for real. You¡¯ve certainly sold me on Hawai¡¯i. But I guess he didn¡¯t want me going out of the country for university, especially to a country that used to be part of the USA. So here I am, practically on his doorstep.?


    - Tantalus (20:07:42/02-3-2070)


    ?If I was there, I think I¡¯d never come back. Instead, I¡¯m still here. He¡¯d stop me from leaving if he found out, and it¡¯s so hard to ignore the effect leaving would have while I¡¯m still in Brockton Bay.?


    - Tantalus (20:08:04/02-3-2070)


    ?I¡¯m sorry for venting again. You¡¯re the only person I can talk to about this.?


    - Tantalus (20:08:16/02-3-2070)


    I stepped back from the terminal, my eyes wide in shock. The coincidence was impossibly small. Brockton Bay didn¡¯t even rank amongst the largest cities in the UCAS and if the realm drew on global data, like the Temple did, then the chance of me stumbling across data from my city within the first few files was infinitesimally small.


    A deep sense of foreboding crept into my as I looked up and down the length of the racks of servers, before my eyes were drawn inexorably up to the distant nebula twinkling overhead. It all suddenly made sense; even why I¡¯d been so naturally drawn to this place, while Labyrinth hadn¡¯t been able to enter. After all, at my heart I was just data of a different sort.


    I couldn¡¯t find the nature of this place by looking through the resonance, but I understood metaphors when they were staring me in the face. It wasn¡¯t anchored to a concept, but to a physical location, and with that physicality came the gravity and air that defined the distinction between physical and digital reality. The starfield above me was achingly familiar, but it had taken me this long to realise what the image really depicted because I had never before seen it from this angle, or this far away.


    I¡¯d called this a library, but that was just one part of the whole structure. It was an observatory in the shape of an immense, circular eye, staring unblinkingly up at my home city as it drew into the resonance all data that originated in Brockton Bay.

 DDoS: 5.02

    It was strange; I had crossed the event horizon and submerged myself in the resonance realms twice, and both times I had emerged from the experience as if waking from a deep sleep. In the matrix, the longer I spent online, the more tired I was when I left. My body might have been stationary ¨C though, thanks to my physiology, I didn¡¯t have to worry about bedsores like other deckers ¨C but my mind was hard at work that whole time.


    But in the resonance realms, it felt like I was asleep; my activities nothing more than lucid dreams. I woke up refreshed, and perhaps something more. The first time, I had emerged with the fireflies nesting in my core, waiting to be unleashed. This time, as I staggered out of my bedroom, I found myself hyper-aware of the matrix-capable devices in my apartment. I was aware of them before, of course, but only of the fact that they were there unless I chose to focus on them. Now, I knew what they were doing and what they were going to do at all times.


    Being able to see the process of the clock on the fridge as it prepared to display the next minute wasn¡¯t immediately useful, but if the same predictive analytics could be applied to smart-weapons, or cyberware, then it¡¯d help keep me safe if I was ever caught in another firestorm like the Garcia job turned into. In my new line of work, it was a distinct possibility.


    More than that, I found that my awareness of the devices around me had extended. I was consciously aware of the devices in the apartments around me, of the positions of desktop terminals, commlinks left lying on kitchen countertops, games consoles nestled beneath trideo sets. It didn¡¯t extend a fraction as far as my awareness in virtual reality, but virtual reality also meant that someone could just walk up to me and stab me in the face and I¡¯d never be able to see it coming if they weren¡¯t carrying anything wireless.


    I shook my head at the thought, idly fishing through my cupboards as I tried to take stock of the amount of food I actually had available. The payment for the Chosen recon had come through, but with the amount of time I¡¯d been spending at the loft, my fridge was still more or less as bare as it had been before I signed on with the team.


    As I fished a glass out of the cupboards, full of enough crockery and glassware for a family of three plus the occasional guests, for a moment I thought about ordering in again ¨C a quick check of the time showed that I¡¯d been in the resonance for about eighteen hours, and my stomach was protesting at the neglect. My throat was certainly straining in agony as I drank two whole troll-sized glasses of water in quick succession.


    But ordering in felt a lot like falling back into old, bad habits, so I ducked into the shower for long enough to feel vaguely clean, threw on a pair of new jeans that I¡¯d picked out with Lisa, along with a tank top and a backpack for my shopping, and made my way down the hall to the elevator.


    As the lift slowly crawled its way down through the building, I found my mind drifting back to the realm I had found beneath the resonance. Ever since I decided to track down Lisa¡¯s commlink for the promise of a few thousand nuyen, it felt like I¡¯d fallen through the rabbit hole and found that the world was a whole lot stranger than I¡¯d ever expected.


    Growing up, I thought I had the world all figured out, thought the information I¡¯d picked up by osmosis from dad¡¯s work and mom¡¯s activism meant that I knew how everything fit together, knew all the nasty truths behind the spin on the trideo. After they died, I stopped caring about the world. I didn¡¯t want to understand it.


    But then I¡¯d found the shadows, and walked hesitantly into the darkness. I¡¯d fallen into a wonderland of corporate espionage, organised crime and schemes within schemes within schemes. Where a near-megacorp kept a murderer on its payroll out of pity, or charity, or whatever, and a victim had to hire professional criminals to bring him to justice.


    But even that paled in comparison to the true wonderland. The resonance was so much more than just a secret. It felt like I finally understood. Like I finally had the explanation for why I was the way I was, finally had proof that I wasn¡¯t just some glitch in reality.


    Far below my feet, below the boundaries of the matrix, every scrap of data ever produced within the city was being duplicated and drawn down into the resonance, where it was duplicated again and again as it was filed off into whichever realms found it interesting. One of those realms was watching my city even now; cataloguing my image through the recorded footage of the security camera in the corner of the elevator, but the thought didn¡¯t unsettle me.


    I didn¡¯t feel like a fly caught in a web; I felt like a spider.


    The nearest convenience store was on the corner of the block, across the street from a rented-out office building and sandwiched in-between a sandwich place and a cheap burger joint. From the outside it looked like a local, family owned business with a tatty but welcoming red and white-striped cloth awning over the entrance. It was a fiction, but a pleasant-looking one. In reality, the business was one of a seemingly infinite number of franchised shops that took on a mom and pop aesthetic, right down to sometimes employing someone¡¯s actual mom and pop, while being owned by one megacorp or another.


    I bought groceries at the checkout for the first time in two years, forcing myself to not even glance at the price tags as I focused solely on the things I wanted to buy. Even then, habit had me buying cheap with one notable exception.


    Back home, I put some rice on the stove and threw some soy chunks, frozen vegetables and curry spices into a pan, enjoying the resulting meal on the plastic garden furniture we kept on the balcony for family dinners when the weather was nice. As I had done since I was tall enough to look over the railing, I watched the running lights of ships creeping in and out of the Bay as I ate.


    One of the things I¡¯d learned quickly when I¡¯d started living on my own was that recommended portion sizes were meant for people who were six and a half feet tall at most, but even with extra ingredients I still felt like the meal had only just managed to fill the gap left in my stomach by the past eighteen hours.


    Nevertheless, with the biological necessities taken care of, I flicked the switch on the electric kettle and grabbed my treat out of my rucksack, fishing a teabag out of the small box and placing it in the bottom of a ceramic mug with the logo of ¡®Wyrm Talk¡¯ on the side.


    The teabags had been made from real leaves, harvested who-knows-where and shipped all the way to the UCAS before being displayed behind the counter of the convenience shop, next to the cigarettes made from real tobacco and above the small fridge containing a few packets of genuine meat.


    I watched as the boiled water was stained brown as I poured it over the teabag, aiding the process along with a spoon before I reached back into my backpack and pulled out a small bottle of soymilk, bringing the colour to the exact right shade on muscle memory alone. Then, almost reverentially, I took the small squeeze-bottle of honey from the shelf next to the sink and added the slightest drop to the mug.


    When dad died, there were nine teabags left in the box in the cupboard. I drank three in the first week, before I realised how dire the situation was. After that I rationed them out as much as I could, sometimes going a whole month between cups, but the remaining six still disappeared before the end of the first year.


    Sitting on the balcony with a warm mug of tea in my hand and a comfortable sweater thrown over my tank top felt like coming home. For a moment, I found I could completely understand Lisa¡¯s insistence on her cafetiere and ludicrously expensive supply of real coffee beans that she kept back in the loft. I¡¯d stolen the taste of tea ages ago, had it stored in a file somewhere on dad¡¯s computer, but mentally flavouring water ¨C even warm water ¨C to taste like tea just couldn¡¯t compare to the real thing.


    It wasn¡¯t a matter of taste, just like how the resonance wasn¡¯t purely a matter of data. It was the meaning attached to the taste, the colour, the time spent preparing it and the environment it was prepared in. It was living, not just existing.


    Maybe after the next job I¡¯d splash out for skimmed milk, rather than soy, and if we ever hit the ¡®one last job¡¯ that pop-culture suggested I was now supposed to be chasing and found ourselves set for life, I¡¯d buy a small glass jar of honey that was made by actual bees. But even then, I suspected it wouldn¡¯t be as good as the way I¡¯d always had it, precisely because it was the way I¡¯d always had it.


    The view was similarly comforting; the ache I used to feel when looking over the docks had softened with time, leaving only fond memories behind. Idly, I wondered if I could see the A2B freight warehouse from my first job, the pharmaceutical plant from my second or the rooftop from which Bitch and the Chosen hatchet-man had looked out over the Ares arcology.


    After a moment, I realised that I absolutely could if I used the resonance to overlay their addresses onto my vision. Unfortunately, the freight warehouse was buried in a forest of taller buildings, and there was one particularly large megabuilding that blocked my view of the Chosen¡¯s warehouse.


    As for the plant, that was far behind the field of view offered by my balcony, up on the slopes of Charter Hill. I still turned to look at its approximate location in AR, and as I did, my new awareness of the icons around me left me with a strange feeling somewhat similar to noticing a friend out of the corner of my eye.


    I called Lisa¡¯s commlink, and she picked up after just a second.


    ¡°Mind telling me what you¡¯re doing in my elevator?¡± I asked, as I watched her commlink¡¯s icon slowly creeping up past the fourth floor.


    ¡°I¡¯m sure it¡¯s not your elevator,¡± Lisa retorted. ¡°It belongs to everyone.¡±


    ¡°Everyone who lives in the building,¡± I countered as I set my mug down on the table. ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure you don¡¯t.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s like I told you, I don¡¯t want to live in a loft my whole life. I¡¯m apartment hunting.¡±


    I sighed. ¡°Listen, Lisa, I know you¡¯re waiting for me to ask how you found me, but I¡¯m just not going to. Besides,¡± I smiled. ¡°I found you first, remember? Tracked you down across the whole city with just a message post to go on.¡±


    ¡°Feeling a little mellow today, huh?¡± Lisa asked, with mirth clear in her tone. ¡°A nice, smooth psychedelic trip through the net to unwind all that tension you carry with you?¡±


    ¡°How¡¯d you guess?¡± She¡¯d reached the tenth floor. Three more to go, I thought.


    ¡°Because you¡¯ve been uncontactable for somewhere between eighteen and twenty hours and you woke up too chilled out to check your messages even though they¡¯re literally going straight to your brain.¡±


    ¡°Ah, fuck.¡± Sure enough, I¡¯d missed more than a few messages and calls. I didn¡¯t even look at the ones from Brian or Lisa, but there was also one from Elle.


    <I am sorry, Bug. I do not know why, but I could not follow you to your realm. Some other time, perhaps?>


    I compiled a quick response, as Lisa stepped out of the elevator on the thirteenth floor.


    <Don¡¯t sweat it. It was just particular about what it admitted, which is why it was so quiet.>


    ¡°Hey, Taylor?¡± Lisa asked, as she stood in the corridor. ¡°I know you live on either the thirteenth or the fourteenth floor because they have higher ceilings, but which apartment is yours? I didn¡¯t get that far, but to be fair I¡¯ve only been at it an hour.¡±


    ¡°Thirteen-nine,¡± I answered as I left the balcony with my cup of tea in one hand, using the other to pull the door shut. ¡°On the left, near the end of the hall.¡±


    The moment I set my mug down on the dining table, I was suddenly struck by just what was happening. Lisa was here, inches away from my door. The first person to visit my apartment in two years. My apartment that was full of every surviving memory of my family, from the baby pictures I¡¯d never taken off the wall to mom¡¯s dusty old books.


    And the dust! When was the last time I dusted?


    The doorbell rang, before Lisa started hammering on it with a dainty fist.


    ¡°C¡¯mon, already, let me in. I¡¯m assuming you¡¯re decent.¡±


    I stamped down on my nerves, dismissing them as something that would have paralysed me before I started Shadowrunning but that I now needed to get over if I was ever going to stay Shadowrunning, and opened the door.


    To my surprise, Lisa was dressed for a night on the town in a silver-sequinned minidress, tall red boots and a knee-length black PVC jacket topped with a fake white fur collar that flared up into lilac at the top. She¡¯d put on make-up, and she took in my cardigan and jeans with a knowing smile on her face before she beamed up at me.


    ¡°Better than I was hoping for,¡± she observed. ¡°I was expecting you to be more¡­ bedraggled. Those are some of the jeans you picked out, right? They look good.¡±


    ¡°Thanks,¡± I chucked, genuinely unsure what to do about the compliment as I idly rubbed the back of my neck with my hand. ¡°You¡¯re looking good yourself,¡± I observed. ¡°What¡¯s the occasion?¡±


    Lisa waved a hand, dismissing the question entirely. ¡°We¡¯ll get to that later, and not in the doorway. Mind if I come in?¡±


    ¡°Sure, sure.¡± I moved my bulk out of the doorway, letting her past. ¡°I just boiled some water. You want some tea? Or I think I have some soykaf powder in the cupboard¡­. Might be expired. Does it expire?¡±


    ¡°Soykaf is already undrinkable when it¡¯s in date,¡± Lisa observed as she looked around the open-plan main room of my apartment ¨C try as I might, I couldn¡¯t quite work out what exactly her expression was. She smiled again, as her gaze landed on the box of teabags.


    ¡°Made from real leaves, eh? So you do have some creature comforts that aren¡¯t digital. I¡¯d love to try some. The same way you take it.¡±


    ¡°Sure, no problem,¡± I answered, flicking the switch on the kettle and watching as it lit up for a few seconds before the water returned to the boiling point. ¡°Soymilk and a dash of honey.¡±


    Lisa took the mug I offered her ¨C one of mom¡¯s Columbia University mugs from her own days as a student there ¨C and looked around the room once again before sinking into my armchair, giggling as she sipped from her tea. I couldn¡¯t stop myself from chuckling either; it was a hilarious image.


    ¡°I feel like Goldilocks in this thing,¡± Lisa remarked, as I retrieved my own cup of tea and took a seat on the couch. ¡°Like any second now it¡¯s going to swallow me up.¡±


    ¡°I feel like Goldilocks all the time,¡± I shrugged my shoulders. ¡°Except my porridge is always too small.¡±


    ¡°Still, this is a really nice place.¡± Lisa looked around at the pictures on the walls, the books on their shelves. ¡°It feels lived in, you know? I think this is the perfect size for a family; any larger and people start to live separate lives.¡±


    I sighed, taking a long sip of my drink. ¡°Yeah, I¡­ uh, inherited it, I suppose. Not formally, I just kept paying rent.¡±


    ¡°That can¡¯t have been easy. A place this big? It¡¯s a lot of floorspace for one person to pay for.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m a technomancer,¡± I shrugged my shoulders. ¡°I¡¯ve got low overheads. Back before, if I cut out the tea and the fancy stuff I didn¡¯t need, I was able to get through the month. Now, I¡¯ve got money for both rent and fancy stuff I don¡¯t need.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not going to ask why you didn¡¯t downsize,¡± Lisa spoke, slowly. ¡°But the thought has to have crossed your mind, right?¡±


    ¡°This is all I have left of them,¡± I shrugged my shoulders, looking away. ¡°I¡¯ve never understood why the rich spend so much on a hole in a field with a carved slab of rock. There¡¯s nothing in a body; if people live on, it¡¯s through the memories they leave in digital and biological files, and this place is full of them.¡±


    I leant forwards, stared at the floor.


    ¡°I took dad¡¯s ashes down to the docks, tossed them in the Atlantic ¨C figured it¡¯s what he would have wanted. In the moment, I thought about walking in after them. That was the last thing I did before shutting myself away for two years.¡±


    Lisa just sighed, setting her mug down on the end table next to dad¡¯s armchair.


    ¡°I honestly don¡¯t know whether to feel sorry for you or envy you.¡±


    I looked up at her, confused.


    ¡°This place¡­ I get it, I really do. It¡¯s homely. It¡¯s full of memories ¨C good memories. You know where I¡¯m from, but you don¡¯t know what it was like. I didn¡¯t have anything like this.¡±


    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    She stood up, crossing the room to sit gingerly down next to me on the couch, with maybe half an arm¡¯s distance between us.


    ¡°The name on my birth certificate is Saraye Liaran, daughter of Duke and Duchess Liaran. I¡¯m not just from the T¨ªr, I¡¯m T¨ªr nobility. I was about as rich and privileged as a rich, privileged girl gets, but I¡¯d still have given it up in an instant for what you had.¡±


    She shook her head, a pained expression on her face. Surprisingly, it was one I recognised; the look of someone who was really unsure whether saying what they were about to say was the right decision. She was choosing her words with extreme care, and I wasn¡¯t sure why.


    ¡°You¡¯re not a person in the nobility. You¡¯re a surname, a symbol, a resource. Your whole life it¡¯s drummed into you that your words and actions don¡¯t really belong to you, because the slightest misstep would hurt your family¡¯s station, its reputation. And that won¡¯t change, ever, because you¡¯re not going to die.¡±


    Those last words were said with an almost manic, wide-eyed smile.


    ¡°When I was in prep school, my homeroom teacher told us that nobody knew how long we were going to live because no sixth world elf had yet died of old age. It¡¯d be centuries, at least, and our parents would live for just as long. There¡¯d be no freedom after you graduated, or after university, or fifty years after that, because the head of your family still decided your usefulness and when you had a hundred years of life on you they¡¯d have a hundred years more.¡±


    In that moment, I felt incredibly sorry for her. She still looked beautiful, her elven grace visible even as she held back tears, but crying shouldn¡¯t be beautiful. That was a curse in its own right.


    ¡°My brother¡­ he took the step you didn¡¯t, and I think that was why he did it. I think he saw everything he was doing for our parents, for the dynasty, and he realised that it wasn¡¯t ever going to change. So he thought about it, for a long time, and eventually decided that there was only one thing he could do to prove that his life was really his own. End it.¡±


    She shifted on the couch, turning so that she was leaning against me as she tucked her legs into her chest, wrapping her arms around them.


    ¡°I couldn¡¯t understand it, had no idea why he would ever do something like that, but I didn¡¯t even have time to grieve. We had to keep up appearances, you see. For the dynasty. And the longer it went on, the more I hated it. You can¡¯t imagine what it¡¯s like knowing your parents are weighing the political capital that can be gained from your arranged marriage against the monetary value of your dowry when the very thought of sex disgusts you.¡±


    ¡°So you ran away,¡± I said, softly.


    ¡°I found Snake first,¡± Lisa remarked, her hand drifting to the pendant around her neck, ¡°when I figured out why Reggie did it. She guided me onto the right path. T¨ªr Tairngire is a closed country; it¡¯s not easy to get in or out except through Cara''Sir ¨C Portland, I mean. Even there, it¡¯s strictly regulated, unless you happen to be guided to a Salish trucker who follows the same mentor spirit as you.¡±


    Abruptly, Lisa shook her head and moved back over to the far side of the couch.


    ¡°Jeez, I¡¯ve never told anyone that. I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve ever even said it out loud. My point is, I had a privileged home life that was rotten inside, and you had a good home life that ended. This place¡­ it¡¯s like it¡¯s frozen in time. I know you have to have seen it yourself.¡±


    I sighed. ¡°Yeah, I know. I can¡¯t help but look back over the last two years and wonder what the hell I was thinking.¡±


    ¡°The same thing I was, before I ran,¡± Lisa answered. ¡°Keep your head down, keep going, and lose yourself in memories of the way things were, back before your family stopped feeling like a family. I¡¯m sure Regis felt the same way, but he picked a pretty shit way out. My way out was running, and your way is with us. So,¡± she reached up and brushed at the fur of her jacket, ¡°Brian was wondering if you wanted to come celebrate our last job. We kinda left things on a quiet note on account of the whole vampire thing.¡±


    ¡°What sort of celebration?¡± I asked, nervously eyeing Lisa¡¯s outfit.


    ¡°There was some debate about that,¡± Lisa said, shrugging her shoulders. ¡°A meal, bowling, a bar. In the end, we settled on meeting up at this Caribbean bar Brian knows and then moving on to the Palanquin.¡±


    ¡°Is Rachel coming too?¡± I asked.


    ¡°To the bar,¡± Lisa answered. ¡°I doubt she¡¯ll make it to the club. You, though, you should definitely go.¡±


    I fidgeted in my seat, as nerves crept back into my body.


    ¡°I¡¯ve never been to a club. Well, not as a customer.¡±


    ¡°And that¡¯s why you should go,¡± Lisa retorted. ¡°It¡¯s another new memory. I know I got you some stuff that wasn¡¯t just practical. Get properly dressed up for the first time in your life, spend too much money on some weird-coloured cocktail you¡¯ve never heard of and gain the confidence to dance terribly in a room full of people.¡±


    I chuckled at the image, which seemed to settle the issue in my mind.


    ¡°Alright,¡± I said, standing up, ¡°I¡¯ll go. Just don¡¯t expect me to stay for long.¡±


    Suddenly, I paused. I¡¯d been to the Palanquin when it was in full swing, staring out across the packed floor of the club before Tattletale handed me the expensive suit that still hung in my wardrobe and ushered me into the meeting with our last client.


    ¡°Want me to help pick out an outfit?¡± Lisa guessed what was on my mind.


    ¡°Please,¡± I said, relaxing.


    ¡°It¡¯s why I came round,¡± Lisa answered. ¡°Figured you might need a little coaxing and an expert eye.¡±


    ¡°So you¡¯re an expert now?¡± I asked. ¡°I had you pegged as a gifted amateur.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯d be surprised what they teach would-be debutantes,¡± Lisa snarked back as she followed me into the hall. I paused at the threshold of my bedroom door, my hand resting on the handle as I looked back at Lisa just in time to catch her sneaking a glance at the door on the other side of the hall; the one to my parents¡¯ room.


    ¡°Promise you won¡¯t say anything?¡± I asked as I pushed the door open.


    ¡°Not a word,¡± she answered as she stepped through into my room, before her face lit up with a smile that said whole sentences.


    She graciously didn¡¯t comment on all the flotsam and jetsam of my childhood that littered the room, from the band posters that had been up on the walls since mom died ¨C and I was still a teen, with a teen¡¯s taste ¨C to the eighteen-year old teddy bear sitting in my wardrobe on a shelf above where my Shadowrunner outfit was hanging because I¡¯d never had the heart to get rid of it.


    Instead, Lisa simply began flicking through the various clothes I had hanging up in there ¨C most of which I had bought with her in the market ¨C and fishing out a few likely prospects before tossing them onto the bed.


    ¡°Well, you don¡¯t have anything that I¡¯d call dedicated club clothes,¡± Lisa cast a critical eye over my wardrobe with the practiced ease of someone who had swindled and pickpocketed her way through the nightlife of a dozen different cities, ¡°but that¡¯s not a bad thing. You need to feel confident, not embarrassed, and that means building up to it.¡±


    ¡°No skirts,¡± I said, flatly. ¡°At my height, anything as short as yours becomes dangerous.¡±


    ¡°Pants, then,¡± Lisa said. ¡°You like the ones you wear on jobs, right?¡±


    I nodded. The aramid-lined pants fit closer than anything I¡¯d worn before, but there was something I really liked about their sleek, black texture. They felt dangerous.


    ¡°Then here,¡± she said, handing me a pair of black skinny jeans that I¡¯d picked off the rack as a way of proving to Lisa that I was willing to be daring. ¡°And pair it with¡­¡±


    She looked along the tops, brushing past the handful of blouses before picking out a blue spaghetti-strap top that had turned out to be shorter than I thought it was when I bought it.


    ¡°Spaghetti straps are the right call,¡± Lisa said as she held the top up against my torso. ¡°They¡¯ll show off your shoulders, and those dermal deposits on your skin.¡±


    ¡°Are you sure?¡± I asked. Back in middle school, I¡¯d been fiercely embarrassed by the calcified growths that had started to poke through the skin around my shoulders like the world¡¯s hardest warts.


    ¡°Definitely,¡± Lisa answered, surprising me. ¡°They give you a bit of a freckle-like effect. Like the grey skin, it¡¯s rare, and rare is good in the right circumstances.¡±


    I snorted. ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s not going to be winning me any favours in a Humanis club.¡±


    ¡°Which the Palanquin very much isn¡¯t,¡± Lisa retorted. ¡°Now, as for shoes¡­¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t have any heels,¡± I said, with a glance down at her own footwear. ¡°Frankly, I don¡¯t know if they make any that can take the weight.¡±


    ¡°They do,¡± Lisa mused. ¡°Especially if the stiletto is there to conceal a stiletto knife, but I see your point. Just wear whatever feels right.¡±


    ¡°Should I wear my jacket?¡± I asked, glancing at where it was hanging behind the door of my wardrobe.


    Lisa brought her hand up to her chin, spending a moment in thought before answering.


    ¡°No. I want Brian to see your shoulders in that top.¡±


    I flushed, my eyes widening.


    ¡°Listen, Taylor,¡± Lisa said, placing a hand on my arm. ¡°I know Brian finds you attractive, and I know you find him attractive, but it¡¯s only ever going to be up to you how far that goes. If you want to try it, try it. If you don¡¯t, don¡¯t. Either way, tonight¡¯s about new experiences.¡±


    She looked up at me, all the sly needling gone from her expression.


    ¡°But if you¡¯re worried, let me tell you that I¡¯ve known Brian for a while, and he isn¡¯t the kind of guy who¡¯ll think less of you for making the attempt, or turning down his attempt, if he makes one. Honestly I¡¯d half expect both of you to fumble at the first hurdle out of mutual awkwardness.¡±


    I paused, frozen in a moment of deep thought. I still wasn¡¯t sure whether I wanted a relationship at all. I didn¡¯t know if I was the right person for relationships, if I was even really into Brian or I was just crushing on him because he was near and hot and the first guy I¡¯d seen with my naked eyes for years. Despite Lisa¡¯s assurances, I didn¡¯t know if he was into me.


    ¡°I¡¯ll see how I feel when I get there,¡± I said, gently ushering Lisa towards the door with one massive hand on the back of her jacket. ¡°But for now, I¡¯ll dress nice for me.¡±


    ¡°Atta girl,¡± Lisa answered, as she meekly accepted her exile from my bedroom. ¡°Oh, and here,¡± she reached into her jacket and tossed me something, which I caught with ease. It was a tube of lipstick, in royal blue.


    ¡°I¡¯m assuming your mother taught you how to put that on?¡± Lisa asked, before pulling the door shut behind her as I nodded.


    A few minutes later I had thrown off my jeans and tank top and thrown on my new outfit, carefully applying the lipstick before finally giving in to curiosity and examining myself in the long mirror tucked inside the door of my wardrobe. It wasn¡¯t that I didn¡¯t recognise the girl in the reflection, but ¨C just like when I¡¯d first seen myself in my Shadowrunner gear ¨C all the same features seemed to carry a completely different appearance when shaped by a wildly different outfit to what I usually wore.


    I¡¯m going to have to get used to looking in the mirror and liking what I see, I thought.


    I straightened up a little, surprised to see just how confident I felt, how the gangliness of my height had become almost statuesque. Sure, whenever I focused too hard on the tight jeans, the wide strip of exposed midriff or the calcified deposits of rock-like bone circling above the top of my top, some of the familiar nerves and embarrassment crept into me, but when I saw myself as a whole it all seemed to fit together.


    When I opened the door to my bedroom, I had a genuine smile on my face. Lisa matched it with her own as she looked me up and down.


    ¡°Looks like I¡¯ve done it again,¡± she remarked. ¡°You should be grateful; I¡¯m practically a trained stylist.¡±


    ¡°Really?¡± I drawled. ¡°You were tutored in clubwear?¡±


    Lisa chuckled.


    ¡°Oh no, not at all. But I can absolutely rock a diaphanous white dress. After all,¡± her tone changed completely, becoming light, airy and infuriatingly whiny, ¡°I am but a delicate and mysterious elven maiden, my beauty ageless and graceful. Shall I play the harp for you?¡±


    I burst into laughter, leaning against the wall as Lisa beamed at me, all her airs and graces disappearing behind her familiar grin.


    ¡°One last thing, though,¡± she said, pulling back her bottom lip and pointing at her comparatively tiny incisors. ¡°You¡¯ve got some lipstick on your right tusk.¡±


    ¡°Ah, shit.¡±


    Once I¡¯d licked off the stray fleck of blue, I followed Lisa out of my apartment and onto the metro. We drew a lot of looks, even if Lisa still drew the majority of them ¨C I¡¯d made an effort, but her dress was simply stunning ¨C as we made our way uptown to the bar that Brian had picked out.


    The closer we got to the Caribbean joint, the more self-conscious I felt. I was throwing myself into the deep end without a lifejacket ¨C or even a regular jacket ¨C but I stamped down on my nerves. I¡¯d begrudgingly accepted that I looked alright, and I tried to convince myself that it didn¡¯t matter if Brian ¨C if the others ¨C didn¡¯t agree.


    The bar was somewhere between up and down market, nestled as it was on the edge of Constitution Hill. It was extremely narrow fronted, with just enough room for the set of stairs that would undoubtedly lead down into the basement, but they¡¯d made up for it with a flashy AR presence that overwhelmed the Common Denominator franchise that leased the rest of the first floor, its displays of practical, urban clothing closed off for the night behind grated shutters.


    I got the feeling it was the sort of bar the people who worked in fancier bars would drink in. Down the stairs, a door opened up into a cosy space with a faux-wooden floor and bare brick walls covered in photos and memorabilia from the owner¡¯s homeland, with pride of place given to a polyester Cuban flag.


    Brian was leaning against the bar, slotting a credstick into the bar¡¯s cash machine as the bartender poured out three pints of beer. He was wearing a tight-fitting steel-blue t-shirt, dark jeans and comfortable sneakers. He¡¯d combed out his cornrows, tying his hair back in a long, loose ponytail that sort of poofed out below the elastic.


    I couldn¡¯t help but look down and glance at the blue of my own top, glaring at Lisa for an instant as I wondered whether she¡¯d picked it out deliberately. She simply smiled back at me, before disappearing off towards Brian.


    I don¡¯t know if it was the clack of her heels on the floor, some street samurai instinct of his or the pounding of my own heart that gave us away, but Brian turned at our approach. He glanced at Lisa ¨C who wouldn¡¯t? I supposed, without bitterness ¨C before smiling as he turned his attention to me.


    It might have been because of how much I¡¯d been exposed to Lisa¡¯s own sarcastic, slightly defensive grin, but I found myself focusing on that smile. Brian had a wide, genial smile that looked out of place when set atop that much real and synthetic muscle. It was a smile that hid nothing, more honest and unguarded that anything I would expect to see from someone in our profession ¨C or someone who¡¯d been in our profession for as long as he had.


    ¡°Taylor,¡± he greeted me as he looked at the beers, his eyes momentarily flicking back to me. ¡°It¡¯s my round, want something to drink?¡±


    ¡°Sure, thanks,¡± I said, as I moved up to the bar and leant my hip against the countertop. Lisa had disappeared off somewhere, something that should have been impossible.


    ¡°I¡¯m glad you made it,¡± Brian said, after nodding to the bartender. ¡°You dropped off the face of the earth.¡±


    ¡°It was worth it, though,¡± I said, darting my eyes around in case anyone might overhear. There were a few people who were pretty close to us, so I leant in and lowered my voice. ¡°Every time I go under, it feels like I come back stronger, with more tricks in my arsenal.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re looking a lot more confident too,¡± Brian observed. ¡°Finally adjusting to this life?¡±


    ¡°I think so,¡± I answered honestly even as my mind burned in the effort of figuring out whether there was a double meaning in the compliment. ¡°I think it helped that the last job played to my strengths so much.¡±


    ¡°You did good,¡± Brian said as he paid for my drink. ¡°Especially with Rachel. It can¡¯t have been easy getting her to cooperate.¡±


    I shrugged my shoulders, then inwardly winced as Brian noticed the motion. ¡°I¡¯ve got a backdoor into her head, I guess. We think in similar ways.¡±


    ¡°Really?¡± Brian asked, seemingly confused, but my drink had been poured and there was an old man waiting to get to the bar. I moved to grab a couple of the drinks, but Brian had already picked up all four and my hand just brushed against his arm instead.


    The synthskin of his cyberarm felt real enough, but it would never be mistaken for organic with the rigid layer of solid metal and plastic beneath it.


    ¡°Sorry,¡± I murmured, quiet enough that I wasn¡¯t sure Brian heard it as I followed him away from the bar.


    With my height, I was more than tall enough to see over the other people in the bar to where my teammates had set up. Rachel and Alec were leaning against a standing table built around one of the steel girders that supported the floor of the clothes shop above us. The table already had a few empty glasses on it, and the pair of them looked almost comically mismatched.


    Rachel was dressed, as always, like she¡¯d just walked out of a garage, with hard-wearing, wipe-clean overalls worn over a stained tank top that left her cybernetic arms bare.


    Alec, on the other hand, could have been on Lisa¡¯s arm in the fancy socialite club of choice. He was wearing a light blue, floral pattern button-up shirt ¨C though he¡¯d only done up the lowest button, leaving the rest open ¨C tucked into business-like charcoal grey slacks, with strings of long necklaces looped over his chest. The whole ensemble looked like it cost more than a month¡¯s rent.


    Lisa herself had made her way to the table with a tall, narrow glass of some unidentifiable green cocktail in her hand.


    ¡°Look who made it to the party,¡± Alec drawled at me, raising an empty glass in a mocking toast.


    ¡°Be nice,¡± Brian said back, his tone soft but with an undercurrent I quite liked.


    ¡°Yeah, I figured I might as well come with you guys,¡± I answered, as nonchalantly as I could manage, though I still couldn¡¯t help the twinge of unease at Alec¡¯s tone. I knew he had to have changed, but I could still remember how he¡¯d acted in a nightclub back in the event horizon. ¡°What are you hoping to get out of this, anyway?¡± I asked, with a pointed look at his shirt.


    ¡°I¡¯m not hoping to get anything,¡± he answered. ¡°Plans make for boring nights. I much prefer to just go with the flow; that way, I might actually be surprised.¡±


    That fit with the impression I had of him. I couldn¡¯t help but compare his attitude to what Lisa had told me about her time after her brother¡¯s death, or my own time in isolation. He¡¯d escaped his family, then decided to coast along with the life he¡¯d found. The order of events was different, but it was the same sort of situation.


    ¡°How about you?¡± Lisa asked Brian. ¡°What are you hoping to get out of this?¡±


    I froze, glaring at Lisa before I realised Alec might notice the look and smooth out the expression.


    ¡°I¡¯m not normally one for clubs,¡± Brian answered, ¡°but I figure we could all use a chance to de-stress after how the last job ended.¡±


    ¡°Being nearly eaten by a vampire, you mean?¡± Alec retorted. ¡°I¡¯ve got to admit, that was a new one for me.¡±


    ¡°We came out alright,¡± Lisa said as she leant against the table, nodding to me. ¡°Thanks to a bit of quick thinking, we even got paid for it.¡±


    ¡°Either way, I figure we could all use a chance to blow off some steam,¡± Brian said as he finished off his drink. ¡°So what do you say we head on over there?¡±


    ¡°I think it¡¯s about time,¡± Lisa said, looking around. I¡¯d already finished my drink, but a pint wasn¡¯t the same amount for me as it was for them. ¡°We don¡¯t want to be there when it¡¯s too busy.¡±


    I followed them out and up into the street, ducking once again as I made my way through the door up the stairs to the first floor. Most of the team set off in the direction of the Palanquin, a couple of blocks walk from where we were, but Rachel turned to make her way back to the metro station.


    ¡°Taylor, you alright?¡± Brian asked, once he noticed I wasn¡¯t coming.


    ¡°I¡¯ll catch you up,¡± I answered, before hurrying over to Rachel.


    She looked at me, her expression unreadable behind her featureless optics.


    ¡°Hey, I just wanted to say that I was really impressed with how you handled yourself back in the warehouse. You¡¯re a braver woman than me, by far.¡±


    She stopped, turned and leant against the wall, either waiting for me to continue or just to see if I was done.


    ¡°Are you sure you don¡¯t want to come with?¡± I asked. ¡°Even if it¡¯s not your scene, you¡¯d still be with friends.¡±


    For a moment, it looked like she was going to just brush me off. To be honest, I was expecting a curt dismissal, but I felt I had to ask. She was stuck in the present more than anyone else on the team, maybe almost as much as me at my worst.


    Instead, she looked me in the eye and shook her head.


    ¡°It¡¯s too loud,¡± she said.


    ¡°Fair enough,¡± I smiled. ¡°Have a good night, Rachel.¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± she answered, a little hesitantly. Her optics flicked away from me. She was looking down the street, at the backs of the others. They flicked back, meeting my gaze. ¡°You like him.¡±


    I was about to deny it, but I knew that lying to her would destroy whatever tenuous connection existed between us.


    ¡°¡­Yeah, I think I do.¡±


    Rachel simply nodded, like I¡¯d just confirmed that I have horns, before she turned and walked away. I wasn¡¯t sure what had just happened. The idea that Rachel also ¡®liked¡¯ Brian crossed my mind for a brief moment, but it didn¡¯t fit at all. I wondered if she was testing a hypothesis; if she was using me to verify whether what she¡¯d seen was the way things actually were, because she trusted me enough not to lie to her.


    Maybe she¡¯s not as stuck in her head as I thought?

 DDoS: 5.03

    I was becoming used to the Palanquin, but it felt like I¡¯d never entered it the same way, even if I¡¯d used the same door both times. The first time, I had been too overwhelmed by my new life to really take in the club, but it had been the middle of the day with the building closed to customers and what had struck me was just how quiet and unassuming it seemed compared to the overindulgent neon and AR advertisements of its neighbours.


    The second time, I¡¯d felt like an intruder. It was still quiet, but when I wasn¡¯t there for work, I became conscious of how everyone else in the room was bustling around with hurried purpose as they prepared for the night ahead, or held clandestine daytime meetings behind sealed, soundproofed curtains up on the VIP floor. That feeling of intrusion had only increased as I was led practically at knifepoint up to Labyrinth¡¯s bedroom, but it ended with a sort of begrudging acceptance from Faultline herself ¨C one I¡¯d taken advantage of when I submersed myself in the resonance.


    When I woke from that submersion and made my way up from the safehouse in the building¡¯s sublevels, it was to the club in full swing. Even then, however, I was separated from the crowds by my presence in the VIP area and by the submachine gun in my jacket. Nor did I have the time to fully appreciate the spectacle, as Tattletale hastily bundled me into a suit and pushed me into the meeting with our last client.


    On my third visit to the Palanquin, we approached the club at the zenith of its nightly cycle of life, decay and renewal. Seen in the neon haze of Constitution Hill at night, the plain font of the Palanquin¡¯s white-lit sign and the bare brickwork of its walls came across as a declaration of confidence, rather than any intent to hide. Compared to the strutting peacocks that surrounded it, with jagged font in flashing colours and immense silhouettes of nude women gyrating around halogen stripper poles, it was as if the Palanquin was looking down its nose at them; declaring with absolute confidence that its reputation alone was all it needed.


    If it had an advertisement at all, it was in the line that stretched along the front of the building, beneath the glowing sign. My new preternatural awareness of augmented reality revealed that this, at least, was as carefully constructed a fa?ade as anything offered by the buildings around it; there was a camera pointing down at the line with an algorithm that counted the number of people and how far down the building it stretched, comparing that to other systems that measured the number of people in the club and relaying the data to the bouncers at the door.


    I realised from the chatter of code that the goal wasn¡¯t just to keep the number of people inside the building in compliance with the city¡¯s fire codes regarding maximum occupancy, it was to carefully regulate the amount of people waiting in the line. The simple programme in the camera existed to make sure that there were enough people outside to make the club look interesting, that they weren¡¯t waiting long enough that they decided to give up, and that the line itself wasn¡¯t so long that it dissuaded passers-by from joining it.


    Not that the Palanquin needed the algorithmic help, judging by how the numbers inside the club were very deliberately hovering at barely a dozen people short of the maximum occupancy. I¡¯d only had brief encounters with her, but it struck me as exactly the sort of ploy Faultline would use even when she could have easily thrived on reputation alone. It was a very mercenary approach to running any business, let alone a nightclub.


    I found myself looking at the people in the line in the same analytical way I¡¯d started to look at anyone I encountered, whether I was on a job or not. Thanks to spending time in close proximity to Lisa and Alec, I was able to distinguish the rich college students who almost lived in the clubs from the poor college students who probably worked in them, but had eaten enough instant ramen to scrape together the funds to finally enjoy the fruits of their labour.


    They were joined by salarymen who¡¯d ridden the metro up from Downtown, still dressed in their similar but not identical uniforms of suits that had been specifically chosen to fit within the minutely different dress codes of hundreds of different corporations, their ties loosened and top buttons undone as they seemed ready to throw themselves into the nightlife with the same crunch-time haze of exertion in which they lived all their lives. Some of them were already visibly high on novacoke, or whatever their stimulant of choice was.


    The rest of the line weren¡¯t so easily categorised: there were couples in their best clothes, focused inwards as they shared the moment; groups of friends taking their chances, dressed in the most appropriate clothes they had on hand but without the same painstaking effort of the students; and then there were the loners, dressed in their best but made separate by their isolation even though the whole reason they were there was to meet new people.


    Trouble was there, too. Near the back of the line were a quintet of Yakuza made-men and women in short-sleeved shirts and pinstriped miniskirts that both showed off a myriad of glowing tattoos. Whether cowed by the Palanquin¡¯s reputation or just genuinely out to have a good time, they seemed content to wait in the line with everyone else ¨C but they still stood in their own little bubble of space.


    Worse than them were the other kind of loners; the small handful of men dressed in the exact opposite of their best with shifty glances on their faces as they ogled the women in the line with decreasing amounts of subterfuge, their commlinks held in their hands for an opportunistic shot. But they were already flagged by the security camera¡¯s algorithm, and those that weren¡¯t filtered out at the head of the queue were dragged out of it part way down by a troll in a black turtleneck.


    The ones I was worried about were the ones who didn¡¯t signal their intentions. The ones who smiled, who could hold a conversation, provide an attentive ear, and would still slip something into the drink of the girl they were talking to. They¡¯d be among the richer college students, or the salarymen, with the entitlement that came from wealth and the wealth to put their entitlement into action. They definitely dressed in their best, like a poisonous frog in reverse with vibrant colours so that they blended in by standing out. They dressed, in short, like Alec.


    On that grim thought, my attention was drawn away from the line by the arrival of a black and gold SK-Bentley Concordat that pulled to a stop directly in front of the palanquin¡¯s entrance, the AR hazard lights that surrounded a VIP drop-off zone turning green as the car was cleared against a select list of registered vehicles.


    A driver stepped out of the front; a stocky human in an ill-fitting suit who moved around the luxury sedan to open the rear door for his patron. The man who stepped out was weasel-faced, wearing a fashionably old-fashioned suit with a golden waistcoat and cravat beneath a grey jacket. The woman who followed him out of the car was far younger; a skinny blonde elf in an off-the-shoulders golden dress, with a yellow paper flower in her hair and a delicate expression on her face as she took the arm of the man she was accessorising.


    I was expecting them to be effortlessly waved through the velvet rope that demarcated the VIP entrance to the Palanquin; they looked about as high society as a club like the Palanquin could reasonably expect. What I wasn¡¯t expecting was for Brian to lead us towards that same entrance.


    ¡°You¡¯re sure we don¡¯t have to join the line?¡± I asked, hesitantly.


    ¡°It¡¯s a perk of the job,¡± Brian answered. ¡°Shadowrunners on Faultline¡¯s payroll don¡¯t have to wait in line. It helps when they have a client to meet.¡±


    ¡°It also adds to the mystique,¡± Lisa said. ¡°Enough people use this entrance that you can never actually tell who¡¯s a runner ¨C and it¡¯s not like any of the clients ever use the front door ¨C but the idea that the person in front of you might be a Shadowrunner is enough to draw people in.¡±


    I darted a glance over towards the line as the bouncer looked us over. Sure enough, we were drawing stares, even if most of them were expectedly reserved for Lisa and Alec. An instant later, however, the bouncer¡¯s smart-linked mirrorshades had matched our faces to Faultline¡¯s database, and he unhooked the velvet rope to usher us into the club.


    I forced myself to look forwards as I made my way to the entrance, ignoring the stares of the people in the line more out of a sense of faint embarrassment than any attempt to actually appear cool and aloof. Even though I¡¯d put myself in harm¡¯s way multiple times, it still felt like I was receiving a privilege I hadn¡¯t earned.


    Still, I had to admit that the mystique of it all appealed to me. It wasn¡¯t just the VIP entrance or the neon-lit antechamber that waited on the other side, where a young woman sat behind a hole in the wall that led to the club¡¯s cloakroom. It was the people beside me, the way they fit into this world so effortlessly, and how I was starting to feel like I¡¯d managed to capture some of their confidence and make it my own.


    Even that, however, couldn¡¯t prepare me for what waited on the other side of the inner doors.


    Whatever soundproofing they had was clearly working overtime; as they slid open on automatic sensors, it felt like I was being hit by a physical wall of noise and light. The main floor of the club was an open, expansive space with the same bare brick walls and steel girders as the exterior, creating an almost industrial base layer on which the club¡¯s features and decorations had been layered like an abstract canvas. Lights hung from the ceiling beams, sending kaleidoscopic patterns of strobing beams shooting out in all directions, while wider lights flashed intermittently as they bathed the room in set patterns before intermittently plunging into near-darkness.


    All of it was carefully choreographed, synced to the motions of the DJ on the podium at the far end of the room, her electric-blue mohawk whipping around in sharp patterns of light-fibres as she wielded sound like a weapon. I couldn¡¯t put my finger on the sort of music it was, but it moved like a freight train; with the regular, unstoppable motion of pistons and gears that drove the people thronging the floor inexorably forwards.


    ¡°I¡¯m gonna get a drink!¡± Lisa half-said, half-shouted. ¡°You kids have fun!¡±


    She slunk off into the crowd, her red boots disappearing immediately into a forest of legs. Only my height let me keep track of her as she made her way through the crowd, watching her blonde hair as she deftly navigated the press of people. Even that was made difficult by the way the lights turned her hair into a blank canvas to be lit in a myriad of colours. But she had her commlink in the pocket of her long coat, and that meant I knew exactly where she was.


    Alec had disappeared as well, his own commlink moving off in the direction of the couches that sat in a half-raised mezzanine level away from the dance floor and the absolute worst of the noise. I didn¡¯t know whether he was going there to score sex or drugs or whatever, and to be honest I found I didn¡¯t much care. I didn¡¯t have room to care; my head was filled with the light and the noise in a buffer overflow that left me deaf and dumb.


    ¡°You alright, Taylor?¡± Brian asked, leaning in closer ¨C a motion that broke me from my stupor even as it left me flushing and silently cursing Lisa for putting these thoughts in my head.


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I managed to say, breathlessly. ¡°Just a bit overwhelmed, I guess.¡±


    ¡°Want to head for the bar as well?¡± he asked. ¡°Take it slow?¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t have to stick with me if you don¡¯t want to,¡± I protested, admittedly half-heartedly. ¡°No need to ruin your night chaperoning me.¡±


    ¡°And if I do want to?¡± he countered, with a shrug of his shoulders. ¡°It¡¯s not like I mind. I¡¯m new to this scene as well; I like my bars quiet enough to talk without raising my voice.¡±


    I nodded, entirely unwilling to push him away, and together the pair of us made our way through the crowd, avoiding the even tighter press of flailing limbs on the dance floor itself. The crowd in the Palanquin was more diverse than I¡¯d seen in a long time, but as an ork and a troll we still had no difficulty pressing our way through the crowd.


    Once we were at the bar, I used my height advantage to flag down a bartender and ordered a drink at random off the list of cocktails I could see floating above the bar in AR, willing myself to ignore the price tag as I transferred the funds before doing the same for Brian¡¯s order ¨C telling myself it was easier than letting him push through the last few people in the crowd.


    I reached over an elf in a silk shirt to grab our drinks the moment they were set down. My ¡®Flor de Muertos¡¯ came in a square whisky glass with the corners cut off. It was a deep brown drink with a faint orange tint and flower petals floating in the glass, and it tasted like being kicked by a mule ¨C but that was probably because I¡¯d never really drank spirits before.


    Brian had gone for a more pedestrian drink of whisky on ice ¨C or ¡®on the rocks,¡¯ for whatever reason ¨C and unlike me he didn¡¯t show any reaction to the taste. I took another sip; this time I could almost taste some of the orange beneath the rum ¨C a name I recognised ¨C and the strangely chemical-sounding triple sec.


    Inevitably, we were pushed away from the bar by the press of people trying to place their own drinks orders, bowing to some immutable principle of fluid dynamics. The bar itself was placed on a platform a couple of feet above the dance floor, with a railing separating the two. Brian placed one hand against the railing as he looked out over the floor and I leant against it next to him, half-sitting on it as I rested a foot on the lowest rung.


    ¡°We should make a toast!¡± Brian shouted over the noise.


    ¡°To what?!¡± I shouted back, a grin on my face. ¡°To this?! To making it?!¡±


    Brian smiled ¨C that same, honest smile.


    ¡°We haven¡¯t made it yet!¡± he countered. ¡°But we¡¯ve got our foot in the door!¡±


    ¡°To the foot in the door!¡± I exclaimed, gleefully, as I raised a glass.


    We couldn¡¯t actually hear the clink of glasses, but the shifting spirits caught the light wonderfully before I knocked back more of my drink than was in any way wise.


    I started coughing uncontrollably, one hand gripping the balcony as I leant over and stared down at the floor. I felt a hand on the back of my top ¨C Brian¡¯s ¨C and saw his face come into view.


    ¡°You alright?¡± he asked, just loud enough that I was able to hear it.


    ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± I coughed out. ¡°Just another new experience, I guess.¡±


    I leant against the railing again, looking out across the club. On the far side of the room, raised above the dance floor, I could see the mezzanine level of the VIP area. From below, I could see how Faultline had installed a strip of lights just above the balcony edge that made it hard to properly make out the location of her clandestine meetings, and I wondered just how much careful consideration went into the planning of this place, and what kind of money it took to realise those plans.


    ¡°How do you feel about one more new experience?¡± Brian asked, and it felt like my heart stopped.


    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    When I turned, though, I saw that his gaze was fixed firmly on the dance floor.


    ¡°I have to warn you,¡± I said, finishing off what little of my drink was left after I¡¯d lost most of it while choking, ¡°I can¡¯t dance.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s okay,¡± Brian said. ¡°Neither can I. I think we just move about.¡±


    I let out a quick, nervous laugh. ¡°Why not, right? How hard can it be?¡±


    We made our way towards the dance floor, me following immediately behind Brian as he forged a path through the crowd. As I watched his shoulders moving beneath his shirt, I found myself wondering if I saw a subtle nervousness in their motion that his cybernetics couldn¡¯t quite hide. Was Brian as nervous about this as I was; just putting on an unflappable persona because of habit, or because he wanted to come across that way to me? Or was I just projecting my own nervousness onto him?


    If stepping into the club felt like entering a whole new world, crossing the threshold onto the dance floor felt like throwing myself into the ocean. Immediately, I could feel people pressing in on all sides, shifting to make space if they noticed and bumping into me if they didn¡¯t. Once again, fluid dynamics had me shifting from side to side, feeling gangly and inconvenient in a way that dredged up long-since buried memories of high school, or even older memories of puberty.


    But, as I moved and as the DJ pumped up the volume to such a level that I genuinely couldn¡¯t hear anything else, I found myself growing more and more in sync with the music, my actions less forced and more automatic. I was sure I still looked awful, but I found that I no longer cared. It helped that the crowd was pressed in tight enough that nobody really had the room to do anything but sway and spin with their arms raised above them.


    And then Brian was in front of me, that same genuine smile on his face as he raised his hands and danced from side to side. We drew closer together, our steps starting to mirror each other. He laughed, but I couldn¡¯t hear it. All I could see was his expression, and I knew immediately that he was laughing at the sheer joy of losing ourselves in the moment.


    We were close enough to touch now, Brian looking up at me as we danced in perfect sync. I grinned, pulling back for a moment to put some space between us and raising my hands high above my head as I spun, not caring how it caused my crop top to ride up and my hips to sway. It felt like there was nobody else on the floor, nobody else in the whole city but myself and Brian.


    He''d closed the gap while I was facing away, but I kept my arms in the air in spite of the faint voice telling me to lower them, to hold them tight against my chest and curl back into myself. Instead I simply smiled, my hands held high as I turned my back on him again.


    When Brian¡¯s hands found my hips, I was surprised that they weren¡¯t cold. I could still tell they were artificial, but they didn¡¯t feel fake like I¡¯d half expected them to. I turned around, slowly, and Brian kept his hands in place, letting the tactile senses in his fingertips pick up the feeling of my back and stomach as I in turn felt the sensation of the synthskin of his fingers gliding over me. Only once we were face to face did I finally lower my arms, crossing them over his shoulders and holding him in place as we swayed in harmony.


    The tempo of the music shifted, dropping from the peak into a softer beat, letting the crowd wind down their energy in preparation for the next crescendo. It meant our slow swaying wasn¡¯t getting in anyone¡¯s way, but the dip in intensity also gave my brain room to consider what I was doing.


    I¡¯d never done anything like this before. Not throughout high school, and certainly not in the time since. It was as far as possible from the sterile digital environments of the Matrix, or even the harmonising oneness of the resonance. It was something that belonged entirely to meatspace, some connection that went beyond just the neurons firing in my brain as they reported the shape of Brian¡¯s shoulder blades beneath his shirt, how they tensed and shifted as he held me close.


    Gradually, almost automatically, we started to sway out way back through the dance floor, drifting away from the DJ at her podium until we emerged out of the crush. Brian took his hands off my hips, but I didn¡¯t want to unwrap my arms from his shoulders. This place was such a riot of noise and colours that I¡¯d begun to feel like it would all disappear if I did, revealed to be nothing more than a brilliant hallucination.


    But in the end I bowed to the inevitable, removed my arms and waited to wake up. When that didn¡¯t happen, my smile only widened.


    ¡°Another drink!?¡± I shouted, as the music rose again.


    ¡°I¡¯ll get it this time,¡± Brian shouted back. ¡°Want to grab us a seat upstairs!? I can¡¯t hear myself think down here!¡±


    ¡°Good idea!¡± I shouted back, suddenly aware of the weariness in my feet and the clammy feeling of the sweat I¡¯d built up on the dance floor. As Brian disappeared off towards the bar, I took a moment to track down the others through their commlinks. Alec was over on the couches on the far side of the room, whispering into the ear of a dwarf girl with an arm casually thrown over her shoulder, having apparently talked his way into a group of college students. She, in turn, was looking down the plunging neckline of his shirt like she¡¯d won the lottery.


    Lisa, on the other hand, was leaning against a pillar with a tall drink in her hand and a supremely satisfied expression on her face as she watched the dance floor. She turned her head to fix me with a knowing stare, raising her glass in a mock-salute. My eyes widened, my skin flushing, but Lisa simply set her glass down on a table and strode down to the dance floor herself.


    I made my way up to the VIP area, my status as one of Faultline¡¯s Shadowrunners getting me past the bouncer at the stairs without so much as a questioning glance. Upstairs, the sofas and chaise lounges of the private space were sparsely occupied; the only clientele were a few people in clothing more expensive than anything I¡¯d ever seen in person busy relaxing with tall glasses in their hands, sprawled out as they whispered private conversations to each other.


    Of the twelve booths that ran along the length of the wall, five were occupied and four had their soundproof curtains drawn shut to cut out the noise of the club entirely, creating insulated pockets of space for clandestine meetings or an even more private environment than the already exclusive invite-only area.


    I knew that, as a Shadowrunner, I was a much better fit for this environment than they were, but I couldn¡¯t help feeling a little awkward in the presence of so much high society. As such, I chose a booth at random and slumped bonelessly into the seat, leaning back and resting my head against the wall as the exhaustion of the dance floor caught up with me.


    I gave Brian a weak smile as he emerged at the top of the stairs with a drink in each hand, crossing one leg over the other as I tried to turn my slouch into the sort of elegant lean I¡¯d seen Lisa pull off seemingly effortlessly, though she may well have been trained in how to appear both aloof and beautiful. Besides, she had the advantage of furniture being built for her size.


    Brian set the glasses down on the table, then shimmied around the circular couch until he was right next to me. I picked up my drink, holding it up to the light. It was in a taller glass than the last cocktail, and cherry-red for reasons I couldn¡¯t even begin to guess. When I took a sip, the kick was still there, but it was muffled by sweetness. It even tasted of cherry.


    ¡°I got you a cocktail with a mixer,¡± Brian offered an explanation. ¡°Figured you might appreciate a milder taste.¡±


    ¡°Thanks,¡± I said, before taking another sip.


    I set the glass down, drumming my fingers on the table for a moment.


    ¡°Tonight¡¯s been a lot better than I thought it would,¡± I observed, quiet enough that for a moment I wasn¡¯t sure if Brian heard me.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know what I was expecting, either,¡± Brian said. ¡°Like I said, clubs aren¡¯t my scene. But I could be persuaded otherwise.¡±


    ¡°You think Lisa¡¯s doing okay?¡± I asked. ¡°Regent¡¯s off doing his own thing, we¡¯re up here. Kind of worried she might get lonely.¡±


    Brian shook his head, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.


    ¡°Normally I¡¯d agree, but Lisa¡¯s a voyeur at heart. I don¡¯t know why, exactly, but back when it was just the two of us scraping for jobs in bars, I¡¯d always catch her sneaking glances at groups of students, co-workers or group dates. It¡¯s not envy; I think she just likes seeing the connections.¡±


    Chasing after what she never had? I wondered.


    Brian leant forward, resting a hand on the table.


    ¡°It wouldn¡¯t surprise me if she didn¡¯t set this up from the start.¡±


    ¡°So it¡¯s ¡®this¡¯ now?¡± I asked, hoping I came across as more suave than uncertain.


    ¡°It¡¯s what you want it to be,¡± Brian said, calmly taking a sip of his drink. ¡°I know you¡¯ve been mostly talking to Lisa about your recent past, even if you¡¯ve told me the older stuff, but I can pick up on a few things. I know it¡¯s not just the club that¡¯s new to you.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ve been¡­ well, this isn¡¯t your first time doing ¡®this?¡¯¡± I asked, but a moment later I wasn¡¯t sure I wanted to know.


    ¡°Once or twice,¡± Brian answered, dismissively. ¡°It didn¡¯t last long.¡±


    ¡°I just¡­¡± I sighed, slumping back in my seat. ¡°I¡¯ve got no idea what I¡¯m doing. I¡¯ve missed out on so much stuff and found myself about as far as possible from where I thought I¡¯d be. It¡¯s like¡­ you¡¯ve seen the college students down there. If I¡¯d made it to college ¨C if I hadn¡¯t fucked up my grades in high school, if I hadn¡¯t shut down after dad died ¨C I probably still wouldn¡¯t be down there with them. I was too lonely. But when I was a kid, I didn¡¯t picture myself holding a gun for a living.¡±


    ¡°But you¡¯re not upset with the way things turned out.¡± It was an observation, not a question.


    ¡°I¡¯m not,¡± I shook my head. It felt good to confirm that. ¡°Sure, I¡¯ve been thrown into the deep end, but it turns out I really enjoy swimming. Plus,¡± I smiled, knowing it was a far more private grin than Brian¡¯s, ¡°it¡¯s opened up whole worlds. Right now, I¡¯m more comfortable with who I am than I think I¡¯ve ever been.¡±


    Brian leant back, slinging an arm over the back of the couch. It was a confident, unguarded pose, but I could see an almost imperceptible tension in his body. He was feigning confidence, or perhaps indifferent.


    ¡°So I suppose the question is, what do you want out of ¡®this?¡¯¡±


    ¡°I honestly don¡¯t know,¡± I sighed. ¡°I-¡±


    I was about to say ¡®I like you,¡¯ but my voice died as a shadow fell upon us, cutting off the light from the club. I looked up to see the immense mass of Faultline¡¯s shaman, Gregor.


    ¡°Faultline wishes to speak with you in her office,¡± he said, plainly, his voice as deep as the ocean, shaped by his vaguely-Scandinavian accent.


    Brian and I shared a look, before he hesitantly stood up. Acting on instinct, I made to follow him as well. I wasn¡¯t sure if it was because I didn¡¯t want to miss out on the meeting, even though Brian was our point of contact with Faultline, or I simply didn¡¯t want Brian to feel like I was pulling away from him.


    Gregor didn¡¯t react to me coming along. He simply turned and made his way across the VIP room to the elevator. As I followed, I veered right and looked over the balcony, locating the commlink in the pocket of Lisa¡¯s jacket and setting it to vibrate. She looked up, finding me on the balcony immediately, and pulled out her comm.


    <Gregor¡¯s called Brian up to Faultline¡¯s office. She wants to meet. I¡¯m going with.>


    <keep me informed> Lisa sent back, after a moment. The last I saw of her, she was moving away from the dance floor and towards the couches, where she could lean against the wall and text in relative peace.


    As the doors of the elevator closed behind us, shutting out the noise and light of the club with certain finality, Brian looked up at Gregor¡¯s immense bulk of muscle and fat. He was dressed in a button-up shirt of clear plastic, worn beneath a heavy coat, and his cargo pants were held against his considerable bulk by a thick belt that had a heavy silver wolf for a buckle.


    ¡°Faultline didn¡¯t want to call?¡± he asked.


    ¡°That was the plan,¡± Gregor rumbled, shrugging his shoulders. ¡°But when we learned you were in the building, we decided it was more expedient to simply invite you up.¡±


    We rode the rest of the way up in silence, following Gregor down a long corridor that I¡¯d been in once before, when I¡¯d been led to Labyrinth¡¯s room. I glanced at the room in AR, but I couldn¡¯t see her in there. That didn¡¯t mean much; her body might well have been in there, even if her mind was occupied elsewhere.


    Beyond the corridor was what looked like a shared living space of sorts, with a lounge and a fully-furnished kitchen. It put me in mind of our loft, but on a completely different scale. For one, it was clear that it had been designed as a living space, rather than converted into one by whoever Grue¡¯s last fixer hired, and the furnishings were all lavish and luxurious; put together by someone with an eye for interior design.


    It also looked incredibly lived-in, to the point where I was surprised Faultline was even letting us back here, but Gregor was moving fast enough that we weren¡¯t intruding for long ¨C Grue was having to walk faster than he was comfortable with, to keep up with the troll¡¯s loping strides.


    When he finally turned off from the corridor, it was into a room that was unmistakeably Faultline¡¯s office. I didn¡¯t even notice the physical space, at first; it was the epicentre of Palanquin¡¯s network, with access to half a dozen different Hosts concentrated in a scant handful of physical terminals, and the weight of data was almost blinding. Along the back of the wall sat a spread of screens linked up to a myriad of inputs, dormant at present but ready to become a panopticon of information at a moment¡¯s notice.


    It was also bristling with firewalls, as spiky as a porcupine and assessing me with a murderous intent that dissuaded simply looking at it, never mind contemplating hacking into the network. That had me shifting my attention back to meatspace.


    The screens pulled double-duty as a window, currently displaying the skyline of Constitution Hill as it dropped down towards the ocean, with the docks and the slab-sided pyramidal mass of the Ares arcology just barely visible over the artificial horizon caused by the mid-range tenement blocks and megabuildings of Midtown, where the Bay squeezed the city to a narrow point against the hills.


    Faultline sat silhouetted against that vista in a sleek corporate office chair set by a downright ancient wooden desk that had been hollowed out and filled with communications equipment and a holographic display, inactive at present but primed to dance to her commands.


    There was already a seat opposite Faultline, but Gregor wheeled over a second, troll-sized version with the MetaErgonomics logo on the backrest before taking up a position on the other side of the desk, looming over Faultline even as he affected the very picture of a loyal lackey.


    I couldn¡¯t help but notice the imperceptible nervousness in Grue¡¯s posture as we sat down, especially as he glanced at a suit of grey power armour on a stand in the corner of the room. He looked overwhelmed alone in the office of his employer, dressed in a t-shirt rather than an armoured jacket concealing a heavy pistol.


    Of course, that was the moment I realised I was meeting my employer in a crop top and a pair of skinny jeans when it was clear I hadn¡¯t even been invited, and I suddenly found myself every bit as nervous as him.


    ¡°Grue, Bug,¡± Faultline began, generously using our Shadowrunner handles even though neither of us looked anything like Shadowrunners in that moment. ¡°Your last job, it went well?¡±


    Grue gave me a sidelong glance before he answered, though I had no idea what he meant by it. On my part, I was dutifully recording everything Faultline said and sending it in a steady stream of messages to Lisa.


    ¡°Well enough,¡± he answered, plainly. ¡°There were complications, but we achieved our objective.¡±


    ¡°Your client agrees,¡± Faultline observed with a nod. ¡°He wants to meet with you again, to discuss a follow-up job. He specifically asked for your team.¡±


    ¡°His nuyen was good,¡± Grue said. ¡°I don¡¯t think any of us will have an issue with a repeat meeting. Whether we accept will depend on what he wants.¡±


    ¡°And what do you think he wants?¡± Faultline asked. ¡°What¡¯s your read on him?¡±


    Grue frowned, looking a little unsure.


    ¡°He¡¯s corporate,¡± I spoke. ¡°Major-leagues corporate.¡± I hesitated, a little surprised I¡¯d spoken at all, before deciding to press on. ¡°We suspect he works for Ares. They¡¯d have the most interest in getting a mole into Medhall¡¯s clandestine dealings, and they must monitor anything Medhall-related that comes through your auction house.¡±


    ¡°Suspicions are dangerous,¡± Faultline replied, ¡°unless you can turn them into certainties. You can run wild chasing suspicions, but the only useful information is that which can be proven.¡±


    It sounded like she was censuring me, and part of me bristled at that.


    ¡°You can prove it,¡± I said, trying not to make the retort sound like a retort. ¡°You must know who he is or else you wouldn¡¯t trust that he¡¯s good for the money he¡¯s promising.¡±


    ¡°I do know,¡± Faultline shrugged her shoulders. ¡°But I cannot and will not tell you. He¡¯s my client, which means I have a duty to maintain his anonymity even from you.¡±


    ¡°Then why ask?¡± Grue questioned. ¡°Why encourage us to speculate on what he wants?¡±


    ¡°Because I think this is the precursor for something more. I think he represents change, interfering with the city¡¯s balance of power. Change isn¡¯t inherently bad or good, of course, but I''m both a fixer and an information broker. That means I need to predict change, be aware of it, and plan accordingly to ensure that no matter what happens to the rest of the city, my own operation remains intact.¡±


    She leant back in her seat, her eyes flicking momentarily over to where the suit of armour sat in a corner behind me.


    ¡°The most valuable lesson you can learn as a Shadowrunner is that clients lie. They have ulterior motives, hidden agendas, embarrassing secrets or signs of weakness they don¡¯t want you to know about. If you allow yourself to spiral into suspicion over that, you¡¯ll lose focus on the task at hand and lose out on your payment. If you allow yourself to become complacent and fail to verify or deny warning signs, you might lose your life.¡±


    She looked back, fixing the two of us with a pointed stare ¨C first Grue, then me.


    ¡°I¡¯ll give you this for free. Your client is something new. Be careful, and be here tomorrow at twenty-hundred hours, after sunset.¡±


    Grue and I shared an uneasy look, as Gregor moved around the desk to open the door to the office. Grue¡¯s features held a conflicted expression, as eagerness at a bigger and better job warred with unease at Faultline¡¯s cryptic warning or lesson. I knew that whatever I felt about us would have to wait; we couldn¡¯t afford to be anything less than focused on the task at hand.

 DDoS: 5.04

    The next afternoon, once my hangover had subsided, I made my way to the loft. At first I tried to relax, watching trideo with Alec or losing myself in some casual Matrix browsing, but in the end I found myself hanging around Rachel in the garage to try and escape the nervous anticipation that was building up in my gut. Not wanting to feel like I was imposing, I spent most of the afternoon following her directions as I lugged around bulky components, mechanic¡¯s tools and thick armour plates as Rachel worked on the finer circuitry and welding.


    By the time Brian showed up with a bag full of Chinese food, Rachel had finished synchronising her control rig with the drone¡¯s software and was looking through its optics as she tracked one of my sprites around the old garage. The fully-restored Steel Lynx was an angular, militaristic machine with a predatory lean to the way it crouched on its four wheeled legs, as if it was ready to pounce at a moment¡¯s notice.


    Bitch had spray-painted it matte black, hiding the fact it had been cobbled together from salvaged or bought components over the course of a year, and the rotary-barrelled machine gun mounted in its turret bristled with murderous promise.


    After a quiet dinner in which even Alec seemed subdued, I jumped in the shower to wash off an entire drone¡¯s worth of engine grease before retreating into my room and putting on the same black suit lined with yellow that Lisa had bought me.


    This time, without Lisa¡¯s obvious urgency or the pounding noise of the Palanquin, I had enough bandwidth to note that this was the second time I¡¯d worn a suit in my entire life. It wasn¡¯t exactly the sort of thing middle school girls were into, and when I made it to high school the thought of wearing anything even remotely formal couldn¡¯t have been further from my mind. I hadn¡¯t worn any kind of formalwear since mom¡¯s funeral, and that was a dress.


    When I stepped out into the hall, I saw Brian helping Rachel with her own suit; smoothing out the crumples as best he could and making sure she¡¯d tucked her shirt in. I knew it wasn¡¯t that Rachel was incapable of dressing herself, it was just that she didn¡¯t see the point. Formalwear was another metahuman affectation she¡¯d never had the chance to properly understand.


    Lisa and Alec, on the other hand, wore their suits with the instinctive comfort of high society, with Lisa seemingly able to walk for miles in high heels and Alec¡¯s ruffled shirt perfectly placed so that each ruff looked like the product of deliberate effort to create the effect of random chance. It took a lot of skill, or inborn instinct, to dress like you didn¡¯t care what you looked like while still looking like the heartthrob on the cover of some teen girls¡¯ magazine. Most other people who didn¡¯t care just ended up looking like Rachel had before Brian straightened her out, or like I did until a few weeks ago.


    For my fourth visit to the Palanquin, we¡¯d been directed away from the main entrance and into a narrow passage in the block that might once have been an alleyway, before the buildings around it cannibalised its airspace and turned it into a tunnel. Faultline had capitalised on the privacy of the entrance, blocking off a section of the tunnel to act as a private drop-off point. Her laid-back knife wielding maniac, Newter, was waiting there for us, dressed in a low-cut tanktop from a Bad Canary concert, depicting a stylised version of the singer¡¯s face screaming into a microphone with her feathered mohawk flared up behind her.


    We followed the mercenary¡¯s mercenary into the Palanquin, as Bitch sent her van off to circle the block until we were done. He led us past storerooms full of the tools of all the facets of Faultline¡¯s business; cleaning supplies for the building, crates of drinks for the club and heavy metal armoury doors holding who knows what for the Shadowrunners.


    On the way we passed bustling staff members who almost flattened themselves against the wall to make way for us, before we were finally brought into the elevator that ran up the spine of the club, ascending past the VIP area on our way up to the same corridor of private rooms as before.


    This time, our client was waiting for us in the Sultan suite, past the small airlock-slash-antechamber where the claustrophobic sensation of the room¡¯s faraday cage clamped around me like a vise, cutting me off from the resonance in a way that felt rather like being cut off from my soul. It hurt worse this time.


    Maybe it¡¯s because I¡¯m more in-tune with the resonance? I thought, before the inner doors opened to reveal the black-scaled serpent coiled up on a red-leather couch.


    He¡¯d gone for a different d¨¦cor; the floor to ceiling screens that made up the walls of the room had been set to display a view of Downtown¡¯s skyline from the other side of the Bay, a man-made forest of gleaming spires reflected in a mirror image on the still waters of the Bay.


    Somewhere near the Ares docks, I observed. It¡¯s recorded, not live.


    His bodyguards were different. The elf razorgirl was still there, but instead of the shaman Mr Johnson was flanked on the right by a broad-shouldered human in tactical gear, with a submachine gun worn on a sling over his chest and a wooden stake poking out of a loop on his belt.


    What really grabbed my attention, however, was the vampire leaning against the wall, glaring at us with naked contempt. Alabaster seemed somehow subdued since I had first seen him through Bitch¡¯s FlySpy, or seen him through my own eyes in the alleyway behind the America As One centre. His suit was a little more dishevelled, his eyes seemed somehow a little more manic, darting between us and the serpent as if he couldn¡¯t decide whose company he hated the most.


    Whatever Mr Johnson has over him, I thought, it¡¯s got to be big.


    ¡°Please, take a seat,¡± the snake himself spoke. ¡°We have a lot of ground to cover.¡±


    As we sat down on the semicircle of couches set opposite our client, Alabaster grabbed a small chair from the corner of the room and positioned himself off to one side inbetween our two groups, where he could keep both of us in view.


    ¡°All due respect, Mr Johnson,¡± Grue began, fixing Alabaster with a pointed stare, ¡°but what is he doing here?¡±


    ¡°Mr Hunter is here to lend his expertise,¡± our client explained. ¡°To explain to you the nature of what you have uncovered. You should find it a novel experience; I understand people in your profession don¡¯t often see the full picture of their efforts.¡±


    He nodded to the vampire, who frowned before he started talking, each word sounding like it had to be forced out of him.


    ¡°The Chosen and America As One aren¡¯t being supported by do-gooders within Medhall; they¡¯re wholly-owned subsidiaries of the company. Them, and a dozen other different policlubs, gangs and satellite organisations. It¡¯s Max Anders¡¯ private empire, using Medhall¡¯s resources to advance human interests and put down any trogs, halfers or dandelion eaters that pose a threat to humanity.¡±


    No matter how much I might have wanted to keep my cool, I couldn¡¯t stop my eyes from widening in shock ¨C and I saw a similar reaction on Brian¡¯s face. Growing up, I¡¯d always heard of how Medhall¡¯s friendly face was skin deep, how those with the wrong ear shape would be lucky to make their way off the factory floor, the low-level security force, customer service or the custodial teams, but it was still an institution; a more intrinsic part of the city than any branch of local or state government. It was like hearing that the mayor was secretly selling novacoke out of his official car.


    ¡°I find it strangely disappointing,¡± the serpent interrupted in an uncharacteristic display of seemingly genuine emotion. ¡°Max Anders is a shrewd businessman with a frankly impressive hold over his power base, but he uses his talents in service of something as insignificant as ideology.¡±


    He shook his head, like he¡¯d been disappointed by a child.


    ¡°He has allowed his politics to rule his business, when it is business that should rule politics.¡±


    ¡°Sure,¡± Alabaster drawled, before continuing. ¡°The Chosen are all psychoborgs. A lot of them are hooked on implant rejection drugs because they chipped themselves too fast for their immune system to keep up. I¡¯m in charge of shipping medical supplies through AAO to the Chosen, which keeps them in chrome- and that keeps them loyal. He has other guys doing the same thing with dopadrine and a few other street drugs that the Chosen sells on to smaller gangs to keep them on-side and keep the Chosen in cash.¡±


    He looked right at me, his pinkish eyes staring daggers as he grinned a predatory smile with his fangs on full display. Instinctively, I found myself baring my teeth in return, my tusks robust stalagmites in comparison to his spindly, near-human canines. There was something wrong about him, beyond just what he thought. A wrongness that tweaked some ancient instinct in the back of my brain.


    ¡°The price is worth it to have soldiers who can go toe to toe with nine foot tall trog bitches and come out on top. He even rents squads out to other pro-human groups as mercenaries.¡±


    ¡°Can we trust this information?¡± I asked Mr Johnson, trying not to glare too much. ¡°He clearly hasn¡¯t had a sudden change of heart.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s an old human adage that says ¡®the enemy of my enemy is my friend,¡¯¡± came the reply, to which Alabaster scoffed. ¡°Human history has repeatedly proven it false, but the enemy of an enemy can become an ally of convenience. I assure you, Alabaster may hate you and he certainly hates me, but he hates Medhall more.¡±


    I had no idea how our client had managed to subvert Alabaster with a single comm call, but I almost couldn¡¯t believe that he¡¯d managed to so completely turn him against his former employer in whatever discussions they had in the time between then and now. If I couldn¡¯t see it right in front of me, I wouldn¡¯t have believed it.


    ¡°Now that you¡¯re done being hysterical,¡± Alabaster sneered, ¡°I¡¯ll get back to it. Wouldn¡¯t want this to drag on; that elf¡¯s neck is starting to look real appetising again.¡±


    ¡°Get to the point,¡± Grue snapped, while Tattletale weathered the insult with disdainful implacability.


    Alabaster looked like he was about to snap back, but at a sharp stare from the serpent he simply shrugged his shoulders and carried on like we were the unreasonable ones.


    ¡°The medical supplies are shipped monthly, with just enough pills to tide the Chosen rank and file over to the next shipment. It all happens in a warehouse owned by America As One, using some guys Justin put under my command ¨C the kind of people who know how to keep their fucking mouths shut. They bring the shipment to the warehouse in a box truck and hand it over to the Chosen, who load it up into vans and drive it off to their safehouses and black clinics. That side of the operation is handled by a ¡®borg named Biter.¡±


    ¡°I want you to poke the hornet¡¯s nest,¡± Mr Johnson said calmly, like he was discussing the weather. ¡°Capture the shipment. If that¡¯s impossible, destroy it. Whatever you do, I want it to be loud. For this, I will pay you sixty thousand nuyen. If you¡¯re unwilling to accept, you might as well leave now. If not, we can discuss your plan of attack.¡±


    Silence fell as we looked at each other; nobody seemed quite willing to the first to talk.


    ¡°How many people do the Chosen have at these handovers?¡± I asked Alabaster.


    ¡°Usually about eight of the rank and file who handle the goods and drive the vans,¡± he answered, ¡°plus Biter¡¯s own squad running security. There¡¯s six of those; cyberpsychos, one and all. AAO also has four security guys watching their end.¡±


    We were all smart enough to do the math. If we were going to take the shipment, or even destroy it, that meant hitting it before it was split into half a dozen vans and sent to half a dozen points across the city.


    ¡°We could attack the shipment en-route to the warehouse?¡± Grue thought out loud.


    ¡°That is not an option,¡± Mr Johnson shut him down. ¡°It is vital that there are dead Chosen and dead policlub staffers on the scene when Knight Errant arrives.¡±


    He¡¯s starting a war, I realised, the thought accompanied by a sensation of dread that crept up my spine. He wants Knight Errant to dismantle the policlub and leave the Chosen starving. The Chosen then goes to war with Knight Errant, or Medhall, or everyone¡­


    But the money is good¡­ I thought, and from the look on Regent¡¯s face I could see he thought the same, and I told myself I¡¯d rather be a spider than a bug. Besides, the Chosen are bastards¡­


    Grue seemed to have been weighing his options, his years of experience leading him down imagined battles and half-thought strategies based on what little information we had. Whatever math he was doing, it seemed to end in our favour ¨C if only barely. It was a risk, but so was crossing the street. What mattered was whether the potential benefits were worth the potential costs.


    Tattletale¡¯s eyes were fixed on our patron, and I could tell in an instant that she wanted to take the job solely to unravel the mystery he represented. She saw in him the same ambitions I did, and the same lack of an obvious reason for them. The unanswered questions must have been driving her mad, especially as I was starting to wonder if her patron hadn¡¯t given her a compulsion to uncover secrets, rather than just an interest in them.


    Regent was still hard to read. Out of all of them, he was the one I understood the least. I knew enough about his past that he¡¯d hate me for it, maybe even kill me for it, but that was all I knew. Who Regent had become remained a mystery to me. Still, he shifted in his seat with something close to interest. I couldn¡¯t help wondering if his father had made him so sociopathic that he¡¯d fight the Chosen simply because he might find it thrilling.


    As for Bitch, I was intimately familiar with the pathways of her mind, but I still didn¡¯t really understand where those pathways ended. With her cyberware, she had no visible tells either. But she also thought faster than the others and in the confines of the faraday cage, her control rig was the only pinprick of light I could see.


    <What do you think?> I asked her.


    <The others want to do it.> her reply came back, near instantaneously.


    <They do. I¡¯m asking you.>


    There was a pause. It barely even lasted a second, but it was there.


    <I want things to stay the way they are. That means taking the job.>


    It took me a moment to figure out what she meant, but I had enough context to put the pieces together. Bitch had never had so many of the things I took for granted; a steady supply of food and water, a roof over her head, people around her who wouldn¡¯t take advantage of her. She thought in systems and shared networks, and in our team she¡¯d found a network that functioned in overall harmony even if it occasionally bickered. If she refused and took us away from this job, the others would resent her. It would unbalance the network, maybe becoming the catalyst of another total collapse.


    Grue looked at me, and I gave him an almost imperceptible nod.


    ¡°We¡¯ll do it,¡± he said. ¡°We just need to figure out how.¡±


    ¡°If you have questions,¡± the serpent began, ¡°now is the time to ask them. Your fixer has a well-stocked armoury. I am prepared to cover the cost of renting or purchasing certain equipment from it, within reason.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s the warehouse normally used for?¡± I asked Alabaster.


    ¡°It¡¯s overflow,¡± he answered. ¡°Empty most of the time, but if AAO¡¯s main warehouse gets full they use it as a spillover site. Apart from that, it¡¯s empty.¡±


    ¡°We could blow it up,¡± I suggested. ¡°Plant explosives in the floor drains under where the truck normally parks, or on the structural supports to bring the whole roof down.¡±


    ¡°That would be a little too visible,¡± Mr Johnson replied.


    The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    ¡°Why?¡± Tattletale asked.


    ¡°Because I¡¯ll be there,¡± Alabaster sneered back. ¡°It¡¯s like I told you, airhead; I¡¯m in charge of the shipments. That means I¡¯m there every time, making sure it¡¯s all accounted for.¡±


    ¡°Then what are you gonna do when the shooting starts?¡± Grue asked.


    ¡°Follow the emergency action plan,¡± Alabaster answered. ¡°AAO security whisks me away, while the Chosen provide cover. The snake will get his corpses so long as you kill a couple of the security team, or some of the staffers.¡±


    ¡°So what happens after?¡± I asked our client. ¡°With all the heat you¡¯re going to pull down, Medhall are going to want to know what happened.¡±


    ¡°Conveniently,¡± he answered, his mouth opening in what might have been a self-satisfied smile, ¡°the man who will be responsible for investigating this incident is already on my payroll.¡±


    ¡°You might have seen that kid on the news,¡± Alabaster elaborated. ¡°The one who iced that elf media girl seven years back. My job was to figure out who did it; you¡¯re lucky you kept the ugly ones in the van or else I¡¯d have made you the moment you walked into AAO. You also sold some data from the plant on the black market, but that didn¡¯t make it into my report. I¡¯ll ¡®discover¡¯ it after this.¡±


    ¡°They¡¯ll think you¡¯re incompetent for missing something that obvious,¡± Tattletale pointed out with obvious satisfaction.


    ¡°No they won¡¯t; it won¡¯t be my fault,¡± Alabaster leant back in his seat, shrugging his shoulders as he leered at Tattletale. ¡°The problem with running security for covert ops is that they¡¯re covert. The company has programmes that log every time suspected corporate information comes up on the black market, but those programmes don¡¯t know about the plant¡¯s role in supplying the Chosen. So the data got buried in the logs.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a sound plan,¡± I said, as Grue and Tattletale looked at me for confirmation. ¡°I saw Medhall¡¯s agent myself. It was a real meathead.¡±


    And even if it doesn¡¯t work, I left unspoken, does it really matter if this asshole gets burned?


    ¡°So that¡¯s his alibi.¡± Tattletale was looking at the serpent now. ¡°What¡¯s ours? This shipment means a lot to Medhall and if they can¡¯t find someone to blame, they¡¯ll blame us.¡±


    ¡°I have already taken steps to create a false trail,¡± the serpent answered. ¡°If you take the shipment, you¡¯ll hand them off to figures in the local criminal underworld. It will look like a very ambitious heist. I will even provide you with fifteen percent of the drugs¡¯ resale value.¡±


    ¡°And if we destroy it?¡± Grue asked.


    ¡°Then the trail alone will have to suffice,¡± came the succinct reply. ¡°Mr Hunter knows where to direct any investigation.¡±


    Grue and Tattletale seemed satisfied at that. They¡¯d been doing this the longest, which meant I trusted their judgement when it came to potential consequences. I was more focused on the here and now; the small, practical matter of how we were going to fight a group that outnumbered us almost four to one.


    ¡°Do you have a map of the warehouse?¡± I asked Mr Johnson. ¡°The surrounding streets? I can¡¯t access gridlink in this faraday cage.¡±


    He nodded, then shot a sideways glance at the razorgirl. She moved over to a nondescript touchscreen in the corner of the room, with a hard-wired connection built into it. She brought her hand close to the port, her middle finger splitting to reveal a datajack input.


    The cityscape disappeared, the panoramic view reduced to the three flat planes of the screens, displaying smaller windows on a black background, the change in ambient light lengthening the shadows of the room. Images of the warehouse were displayed behind the serpent; snapshots of a sparsely-populated warehouse, of the no doubt deliberately scant camera coverage of the exterior of the building only. The ones inside must have been taken by Alabaster, I realised.


    On either side of us, white lines traced out maps and blueprints. The warehouse itself was displayed to my right, while the left wall showed the buildings and streets of the surrounding block, with heights and distances already marked out in annotations. I wondered if the razorgirl had put it together herself; from Grue¡¯s appreciative nod as he took in the information, it certainly seemed like it¡¯d been put together with a mercenary¡¯s practiced eye.


    ¡°We¡¯ll need to go there in person,¡± he said, ¡°but this is good. Better than I was expecting.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s nothing about what it¡¯s like in the Matrix,¡± I pointed out. ¡°Any online overwatch?¡± I asked Alabaster, before glancing at Tattletale and adding ¡°or magical?¡±


    ¡°I look like a deckhead to you?¡± he asked. ¡°AAO¡¯s cybersecurity guys aren¡¯t involved ¨C too many eyes ¨C but the Chosen are all running on their own network. As for magic, I¡¯m the only mage there. Wouldn¡¯t want to hurt the cyberpsychos¡¯ feelings.¡±


    I frowned. The lack of magic was probably good, since we had it and they didn¡¯t, but what I¡¯d seen of the Chosen¡¯s cybersecurity was good. Not great, but definitely robust.


    ¡°We can¡¯t accomplish anything more in a conference room,¡± Grue said, before turning to look at our employer. ¡°Preliminarily, we¡¯ll need heavy weapons of some kind to take out the Chosen¡¯s cars. We¡¯ll be in touch with any more specific requests, but we need to assess the ground first.¡±


    ¡°I understand,¡± Mr Johnson answered. ¡°You have some time to prepare; the shipment is coming in tomorrow at eleven PM ¨C well after sunset as an accommodation for Mr Hunter¡¯s condition.¡±


    The vampire¡¯s eyes darkened slightly. It was another piece of the puzzle; Alabaster hated nonhumans and it seemed he counted himself among that number. I wondered if he¡¯d even been a human supremacist before, or if his beliefs had formed as a self-hating coping mechanism after he was infected with HMHVV?


    ¡°All that remains,¡± the serpent continued, with a glance over at the man with the stake, ¡°is to obtain your firm commitment.¡±


    Again a tablet and a stylus were set down on the table before us, with Grue passing the tablet off to Tattletale who quickly skimmed through the contract before nodding.


    ¡°The same boilerplate as last time,¡± she answered, looking up from the tablet and smiling at our client. ¡°Another receipt for your records.¡±


    It could have been my ears playing tricks on me, but I couldn¡¯t help thinking she¡¯d put a slight emphasis on ¡®your.¡¯ Is she teasing him about the corp connection we think he has, I wondered, or just reminding him that for all his power here, he still has paymasters of his own?


    Regardless, we signed - at that point, it was just a formality. Alabaster seemed to find the image faintly funny, though whether it was the novelty of seeing a Shadowrun from the inside or just the novelty of seeing an ork and a troll sign a contract like ¡®civilised¡¯ people, I wasn¡¯t sure.


    Either way, I was glad to leave the presence of that monster in body and mind. I was gladder still to feel the resonance rushing back in as the door to the faraday cage slid open, almost losing myself in the sensation and dropping into cyberspace before I managed to bring my attention back to my surroundings.


    I still surrounded myself with AR windows as we made our way down to the Palanquin¡¯s covert entrance, none of us yet willing to talk. As Bitch¡¯s van interfaced with gridlink on its way back to us, I pulled up all the information I could find on the block that housed America As One¡¯s warehouse.


    ¡°It¡¯s a quiet part of town,¡± I observed. ¡°A lot of long-term storage places and more than a few abandoned buildings. One¡¯s right across the street from the warehouse.¡±


    ¡°Sounds like a good place to start,¡± Grue mused as we stepped out into the sparse orange light of the tunnel just in time to see the van pulling up in front of us.


    We travelled through the city in a kind of busy quiet, each of us lost in our own worlds and worldviews as we turned our attention to the plan in our own ways. Grue asked me to load the immediate map into his cyberware, his focus turning inwards as he pored over what he could see in AR. I gave Bitch the same data, coupled with broader gridlink information about the surrounding blocks so that she could figure out if it was even possible to escape that block with a box truck full of drugs.


    I had nothing to contribute to the mages on our team; they were engaged in some hushed discussion on arcane principles and reagents that was as alien to me as the resonance undoubtedly was to them.


    For my part, my sole concern was gaining absolute control of the digital environment. I¡¯d seen some of the Chosen¡¯s network architecture through Bitch¡¯s passive sensors and more of it when I¡¯d smashed my way into Biter¡¯s head. I reviewed that data, familiarising myself with how it flowed in the matrix ¨C and the echo that activity left in the resonance ¨C in the hopes that it would make it easier when I had to go up against them on the grid.


    If our street samurai got into trouble our mages could back them up, but I¡¯d be alone in the matrix. If Biter had a decker on his squad, rather than just relying on their network¡¯s firewalls, it would be up to me to deal with their initial counterattack. The only saving grace would come if I could break through that first barrier and pinpoint their location. Then, one of the others could just kill them for me.


    Once I had cyber superiority, the physical battlefield would become my playground. Cyberware would freeze up, smartguns would veer wildly off target and every Chosen with a wireless connection would be lit up like a flare on the optics and smart-glasses of my team.


    If I lost cyber superiority, I¡¯d be forced on the defensive; Bitch¡¯s network of drones was entirely dependent on the matrix to function and while Grue¡¯s cyberware was linked directly to his brain, the same could be said of the Chosen¡¯s and his chrome was similarly vulnerable once entry had been forced into his personal network.


    Of course, I¡¯d also be vulnerable to attack myself. More so than any decker the Chosen put in the field, as I didn¡¯t have the insulating layer of hardware between my brain and the matrix. But, strangely, that was almost an afterthought to me. My focus was on attack first, defence second and my own vulnerabilities a distant third.


    ¡°We¡¯re coming up on the block,¡± Bitch remarked from the driver¡¯s seat. I turned my head, looking over the front seats and out through the windows of the van at a quiet street of industrial lots, with smaller businesses sharing the same modular hybrid lots of warehouse and office space, each one adapted to the needs of whichever small corp held the lease.


    The base plans of the buildings were uniform and uniformly old, making me think it was an early-century business park built on the outskirts of Brockton Bay back when companies were more amenable to sharing space with their competitors, before being swallowed up by the sprawling city. In the present, it sat as an ocean of low-rise industry surrounded by the monolithic concrete tenements and megabuildings of the New Estates, with yellow lights visible behind shuttered windows.


    ¡°That¡¯s a lot of eyes¡­¡± Tattletale remarked as she looked up at the Estates. ¡°Even in this neighbourhood, someone behind those windows is going to call the cops when the shooting starts.¡±


    ¡°Exfil will be difficult,¡± Grue nodded. ¡°Especially with that truck. Although, Knight Errant¡¯s response times are slower in this part of town. That¡¯s our window.¡±


    ¡°I know we get a bonus if we hijack the shipment,¡± I began, ¡°but maybe we¡¯d be better off just destroying it outright? It certainly seems like the safer option.¡±


    ¡°We need to at least make the attempt, Bug,¡± Grue countered. ¡°Nobody ever hit the big leagues by doing the bare minimum. Besides, we can always destroy it on the way out if it gets too hot, or ditch it if we know the Pawns will grab it before the Chosen.¡±


    ¡°Right,¡± I nodded, feeling a little chagrined; I was trying not to pick the safe option anymore. It felt too much like a bug¡¯s instinct.


    ¡°That¡¯s our building, right?¡± Regent asked, leaning over the back of the seats. ¡°A turn of the century warehouse. This job brings me to the best places.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s it,¡± I confirmed; it was virtually identical to every other building in the estate, but gridlink didn¡¯t lie.


    ¡°How many of these buildings are occupied?¡± Grue asked, eyeing our surroundings.


    ¡°It¡¯s hard to say for sure,¡± I answered. ¡°All of them are owned. Two of the ones on the corner are up for rent, but that¡¯s a company truck in front of the one on the left.


    The estate¡¯s modular warehouses were all squat rectangles two stories tall with sheet metal roofs perched on top of thick steel girders, with the space in-between filled by bricks to wall them off from the city. Most didn¡¯t even have anything separating them from the rest of the lot, but the AAO warehouse had a simple chain-link fence topped with razor wire that surrounded the combined parking and loading lot along the longer side of the rectangle, with a single semi-truck sized garage door set in the middle.


    There was another door on the far end of the rectangle. It was human sized ¨C which meant I¡¯d have to stoop, but that was unsurprising when it was built before goblinisation ¨C and according to the floor plan it opened up into an open plan office space on the first floor, with a bathroom, break room and stairwell near the entrance, and a meeting room and a handful of smaller offices on the second. A small business that only owned this building would have easily filled that space, but this was AAO¡¯s dumping ground; that side of the building would be barely used.


    ¡°That building looks promising,¡± I said, gesturing across the street from the office space. The building in question clearly belonged to a scientific start up, with ¡®HITEC¡¯ written on a sleek modern sign next to a symbol that was probably meant to evoke an atom, before it was warped and altered enough to be trademarkable. The end result was something that looked like someone had tried to fry an egg and failed spectacularly.


    ¡°The broken windows, right?¡± Tattletale asked.


    ¡°That and gridlink records less stationary vehicles on that side of the street,¡± I explained. ¡°Nobody¡¯s parking there during the day. The company still exists, but they¡¯re clearly not doing well. I imagine the banks will foreclose on the building soon, unless it got forgotten in a sloppy liquidation.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s across from the offices, too,¡± Grue said, echoing what I¡¯d already noticed. ¡°I think they¡¯re our best way in; they have first floor windows that front onto the road and the Chosen¡¯s priority will be on protecting the warehouse floor. They don¡¯t have the manpower to leave more than a token lookout there and still secure the rest of the perimeter.¡±


    Without being asked, Bitch pulled into the parking lot of the empty building and killed the engine; it was late enough that the business park was completely empty, which meant all I had to do was mask a few cameras as we sidled up to the front door. I could have done it in my sleep.


    Our suspicions were confirmed when I was presented with a completely inert electronic lock; whoever owned the place had clearly forgotten to pay the power company at some point. Grue was about to tear open the door, before Tattletale placed a hand on his forearm to hold him back.


    She peered at the lock, inspecting it closely before squatting down and dragging her fingers through a small patch of brick dust below the door. She brought her hand up to her mouth, with her palm upright and fingers pointed towards the lock. She blew, the dust seeming to glisten as it flew from her fingers and dove into the crevices of the lock; inbetween the keys on the keypad and down the gap between the door and the frame. Tattletale closed her palm and slid it to the right, the motion accompanied by the distinct click of the bar sliding back into its housing.


    ¡°No reason to leave a trace,¡± she remarked. ¡°I doubt the Chosen would notice a broken lock, but why take the chance?¡±


    ¡°Good point,¡± Grue acknowledged as he pulled the door open, his pistol held in one hand ¨C it seemed like a learned reflex, rather than a conscious belief that there was a threat in the building.


    Bitch followed behind him, her own pistol still holstered in her suit jacket. Her Crawler scuttled between her feet, skittering off into the dark confines of the derelict company. I filed in after them, followed by Regent, before Tattletale plunged us all into darkness as she pulled the door shut. It wasn¡¯t a problem for me ¨C I could still see the heat their bodies were giving off, as well as their aura in the matrix ¨C but Tattletale fixed the issue a moment later as she conjured a ball of heatless fire, casting a flickering white glow over the space.


    I followed her out of the offices and into the main space of the building. The previous occupants had gutted the expansive warehouse seen on the floorplans, sectioning it off into two floors of what looked like laboratories, but there was still a space behind the shuttered door that was just large enough to act as an enclosed loading bay.


    ¡°We could park the van in here,¡± I remarked, eyeing the door. It looked like it hadn¡¯t moved in years, but Grue, Bitch and I should be able to force it open.


    ¡°Good idea,¡± Grue acknowledged. ¡°It¡¯ll keep it out of sight, but close if we need a quick exfil.¡±


    He paused, looking at me with an indeterminable expression. ¡°Maybe you should stay with it? That way you¡¯re nearby if things go wrong.¡±


    It took me a second to realise why he looked so nervous; he was worried I¡¯d want to work from home again. It was confusing because the thought hadn¡¯t even occurred to me. For the briefest moment, I¡¯d bristled at the idea that he was suggesting I stay back from the fighting, rather than get closer than I ever had before.


    ¡°Of course,¡± I nodded. ¡°If the Chosen have a decker of their own, I wouldn¡¯t be able to keep up from halfway across the city. Distance adds more noise to cut through,¡± I explained. ¡°Back in the last warehouse, the Yakuza¡¯s decker was working just as remotely as I was, so we were on a level footing.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t realise it made so much of a difference,¡± he remarked.


    ¡°It¡¯s a matter of milliseconds,¡± I clarified, ¡°but in cyberspace, milliseconds count. Either way, it¡¯d be best if you waited for my signal before going in. If I can break into the network, I can mark out the positions of anyone in the warehouse who¡¯s connected to the matrix.¡±


    I paused, looking at Bitch. She was standing a little ways back from us, listening intently to the plan.


    ¡°Bitch, if you can get your Crawler into the warehouse, I can cross-reference it with what I can see in the matrix and mark the offline targets as well. Should stop anyone being surprised by a policlub staffer with a hero complex.¡±


    ¡°Excellent,¡± Grue nodded, his thumb and forefinger resting on his chin as he thought through the plan. ¡°Then we¡¯ll make entry through the offices. Bitch, I think you should stay here with Bug for at least the initial assault; I¡¯ll ask our client for an armour-piercing rifle so you can pick off Chosen through the walls before we attack.¡±


    Bitch nodded, her optics twitching as she thought.


    ¡°Even with her drones following you in,¡± I began, ¡°are you sure you want to leave her behind?¡±


    ¡°Having good overwatch is more useful than another body,¡± Grue explained. ¡°It¡¯s not the largest warehouse out there. Besides,¡± he looked at Regent, ¡°we¡¯ll be bringing spirits in with us?¡±


    Regent sighed at the implied question, taking a moment to check his fingernails before answering.


    ¡°I suppose I can bind one. I¡¯ll send it through another entrance; it can soak up bullets for us.¡±


    ¡°Good,¡± Grue nodded. ¡°While we¡¯re doing that, Bug unlocks the truck. If you can¡¯t, Tattletale can hotwire it.¡±


    ¡°You can?¡± I asked, surprised.


    ¡°It¡¯s a skill I¡¯ve picked up along the way,¡± she answered cryptically. I had to assume it was for the benefit of the others, since I knew exactly what she¡¯d been doing before she started Shadowrunning.


    ¡°If we can¡¯t get control,¡± Grue continued, ¡°I chuck a couple of incendiary grenades under the truck and Bitch puts an armour-piercing round through the fuel tank. Then we pull back to the van and bug out.¡±


    Silence fell as we all thought through the plan in our own ways, focusing on our own unique points of failure. All the ways it could go wrong, all the ways it could go right, and what we as individuals needed to contribute to ensure the plan as a whole was a success.


    ¡°So, that¡¯s it?¡± I asked, breaking the silence.


    ¡°That¡¯s it,¡± Tattletale nodded. ¡°All that¡¯s left is to call the boss and ask for a shiny new gun. Then we come back here tomorrow ready for war.¡±


    Or to start one¡­ I thought, darkly, as I allowed my mind to slip into the matrix.


    In the distance, I could see the scattered webs of data that were strung like washing lines throughout the estates, as the residents there watched trideo on jury-rigged sets, or hooked up older-model comms to the glacially slow bandwidth of the public grid.


    The industrial site was a virtual ghost town in comparison. With the buildings shut up for the night, the only activity was the occasional scant monitoring equipment or inert burglar alarm in the businesses, their more data-intensive systems shut up for the night.


    It¡¯s quiet. But it won¡¯t stay quiet for long¡­

 DDoS: 5.05

    The quiet of the abandoned laboratory was broken by the sound of chalk being dragged across concrete as Regent sketched out the outline of a magical circle. Once we¡¯d returned from our scouting mission and caught what sleep we could in the loft, he disappeared shortly after we¡¯d breakfasted on rolls Grue had bought from a nearby food truck, with fried slices of bacon-flavoured tofu and eggs. Regent returned hours later with a nondescript black shopping bag of obscure herbs, powders, dusts and crystals; magical reagents to fuel his spells.


    The powder joined the chalk in the circle, using it as guidelines to create a mathematically perfect shape. Where imperfections did form, Regent took a small metal knife from his pocket and scraped the powder back into place. It was a methodical, exacting process that seemed to me to be completely at odds with who Regent was, and yet he went about the task with single-minded focus and a sort of rote perfection in his motions. It was very much the product of his father¡¯s teachings.


    I watched him work with a sort of baffled curiosity. I knew next to nothing about magic; it simply wasn¡¯t something that had played a large part in my life. There were one or two kids at high school who¡¯d been discovered in the tests in the last months of freshmen year, enjoying a fame and infamy that eclipsed even that of the football team for a few brief months only to flee Winslow before their sophomore year for corporate-run schools that specialised in developing magical talent and instilling that talent with loyalty to the corp.


    If there were other classmates in my childhood who awakened, I never heard of them. Most magicians lived secluded lives, integrated into corporate or governmental circles that they rarely left. It was an understandable choice to make with an undeniable quality of life increase, a chance to escape the reach of magophobia and, maybe most importantly of all, the opportunity to live among people who interacted with the world the same way they did.


    I wondered if technomancers would ever reach that same status, flipping from a terrifying unknown to an asset to be courted?


    If they do, I don¡¯t want any part of it.


    Of course, there were others who weren¡¯t so lucky ¨C or unlucky, depending on how you thought of it. People like Lisa, who¡¯d slipped through the cracks in all the structures designed to catch and funnel magicians into set paths. I¡¯d grown up around working professionals, who worked within the system even as they advocated against its structures in their own ways, which meant my only experience of those mages was walking past unassuming stalls in the Market selling mysterious trinkets, or advertising potions, poultices, spirit healing and fortune telling. It was rumours of kids being snatched off the street by gangs desperate for a magical edge, or hearing whispers in the halls that this or that student was totally a witch.


    Watching a real magician at work was a lot less impressive than trideo would have had me believe. It was clear he was putting a lot of effort into the circle, but the concrete floor of the old laboratory was no substitute for a dark cellar filled with gothic candles and obscure symbols daubed on the walls. Instead, Regent simply stepped back from the circle and swept a hand forwards, sending out a short burst of flame that caught on the powder, igniting it in an entirely mundane-looking flash of magnesium.


    Except the flash didn¡¯t dissipate. At first I thought it was just the after-image, but the incandescent flame still flickered on the floor even though the powder had been entirely burned up. It shifted, spreading out to the centre of the circle as the fire changed from white to blue to flickering oranges and yellows. It crackled and spat in a way that put me in mind of the sort of flames you got from a burning tenement; full to the point of bursting with insulation, electrics and whatever chemical residue the last acid rainstorm left on the roof.


    It wasn¡¯t the comforting fire of a warm hearth or an old fashioned stove, the sort of fire I¡¯d only ever seen on trideo or in period-piece simsense recordings. It was the violent, aggressive fire that followed washing lines as it crept from building to building, sending people fleeing into the smoke-filled halls of their cheap-built apartments.


    It rose into a thick pillar, spitting out sparks that drifted in the air before inevitably being drawn back into the mass of flames. Regent was muttering to himself, holding out a talisman in front him as he stared at the roiling spirit with a dispassionate expression on his face.


    I knew enough to know that trideo only focused on the sort of magic that could be seen. The chip truth was that real magic was rarely visible to the unawakened. Looming spirits or someone slinging fire made for an impressive visual on a screen ¨C albeit one that had to be almost completely remastered by post-processing to smooth out the camera¡¯s inability to properly capture something so unnatural ¨C but real magic was a quiet, invisible thing to people like me.


    It was kind of like how the matrix couldn¡¯t be seen without wearing the proper hardware, or my resonance-given workaround.


    Whatever Regent did, I could see its effect on the spirit. Abruptly, the fire shrunk back on itself, suddenly constraining against bonds of invisible force as it seemed to grow angrier and angrier, spitting out embers in greater volume only for them to hit against a wall of force within centimetres of the mass of flames.


    That wall closed in, constricting the flames until they looked like a solid mass of fire beneath a pane of glass. Then, it was as if they merged ¨C or one subsumed the other ¨C and the glass disappeared, leaving flames that held their shape without outside pressures as they began to shift into a humanoid form.


    Not just humanoid; female, with the shape of her hands and feet obscured by gouts of fire as she hovered in the circle, as if they sat at the very edge of Regent¡¯s control. Her face was featureless except for sunken eye sockets that glowed like the sun, with two trails of pinpricks of light flowing down from them to where her mouth would be. Something about them reminded me of cigarette burns, and everything about the spirit seemed to be silently screaming with contained rage.


    Beside me, Tattletale was looking at the spirit with an expression that seemed to be somewhere between nausea and disgust, before she smoothed her features back into her constant mask.


    ¡°Is something wrong?¡± I asked in a low voice that Regent wouldn¡¯t be able to hear.


    ¡°Nothing,¡± Tattletale sighed, shaking her head. ¡°Songbird in a cage, that¡¯s all. Hate to see it.¡±


    ¡°Remind you of yourself?¡± I asked.


    She laughed ¨C a sharp, angry sound.


    ¡°All that time alone¡¯s left you with no filter at all, has it?¡± I winced. ¡°No, it¡¯s not that. Not just that,¡± she clarified, giving me a pointed look. ¡°You don¡¯t need to bind a spirit to get it to listen to you. He¡¯s shooting himself in the foot in the long run.¡±


    ¡°So how would you handle it?¡± I asked. Tattletale hadn¡¯t made any obvious preparations, as far as I could tell.


    ¡°I don¡¯t use spirits, but for most mages it¡¯s enough to just contract them. The spirit doesn¡¯t hang around for long and they won¡¯t do anything that¡¯s guaranteed to harm them, but it¡¯s more than enough for most people¡¯s needs.¡±


    ¡°But there¡¯s a cost?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Hardly,¡± Tattletale shook her head. ¡°The current theory is that they feed off of a mage¡¯s stray essence; like magical dead skin cells. No, when you bind a spirit, it¡¯s more about convenience than cost. You want something that can¡¯t leave, or say no.¡±


    I didn¡¯t say anything to that; I wasn¡¯t sure there was anything I could say. They weren¡¯t comparable, not really, but I certainly wouldn¡¯t consider bargaining with my sprites. Maybe with spirits it was more like chaining up a wild animal, rather than earning its trust?


    I sighed, shaking my head. Even that image didn¡¯t feel right, and I didn¡¯t have the bandwidth to figure out two unknowable cosmic forces ¨C especially when the Resonance was much more relevant to my life.


    ¡°I just don¡¯t get magic.¡±


    Tattletale laughed.


    ¡°You and me both. Thaumaturges are just better at pretending they get it; packaging it up into universal rules that¡¯ll be completely irrelevant in ten years.¡±


    ¡°And Shamans?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Embrace the chaos,¡± she answered. ¡°Our mentor spirits are the one constant in the magical world and so long as we stick by them they¡¯ll stick by us. It¡¯s a partnership: give and take.¡±


    Something Regent would never accept, I thought, as the mage himself looked at the spirit in front of him, raising his hand and watching as the burning woman mirrored the gesture.


    On the other side of the room, Grue was walking over to us. He was dressed for war in full-body armour strapped over mil-surp fatigues, all of it black except for the ballistic mask built into his helmet. That was bone white, shaped into a tusked skull with tinted visors embedded in the eye sockets. I doubted anyone on the team besides Grue could have worn that getup without toppling over, never mind actually fighting in it.


    It was a menacing image, even with the ballistic mask raised and his new assault rifle held by the handle in his left hand, rather than with his right on the trigger, but that was the point, I supposed. The Chosen were trained killers, and they outnumbered us massively. If we were going to have a chance, we had to terrify them, grab the van and get out before they came to their senses.


    ¡°Not long now,¡± he said. ¡°You two good?¡±


    Tattletale just grinned, while I nodded.


    ¡°As ready as I¡¯ll ever be.¡±


    My hand drifted to my belt, where eight magazines sat in four pouches, each one carrying thirty rounds. I¡¯d always thought of fights as sudden things; quick bursts of violence that ended as fast as they came. The hours spent in the old laboratory had shattered that illusion as everyone worked on the painstaking preparations that were needed to make that brief moment of violence happen.


    I¡¯d never say it out loud, but part of me was still stuck in the trideo mindset where fights were as much spectacle as something real. I hadn¡¯t considered that every bullet I might fire would have to be loaded into each magazine by hand, but Grue had shown up to the loft with a backpack full of ammunition, along with the rest of the gear our client had leased from Faultline.


    I¡¯d loaded magazines before, when I went shooting with Brian, and if everything went right, I wouldn¡¯t even fire a shot tonight, but it felt so much stranger to be touching with my bare hands a bullet that was meant to kill. Stranger still to know that, for all the time and effort involved in loading them, each magazine would be emptied in seconds.


    ¡°Good,¡± Grue nodded. ¡°We¡¯ll be counting on you in there.¡±


    ¡°I won¡¯t let you down,¡± I said, trying to put as much confidence as I could into my tone.


    Grue looked at me for a few moments, with a weight to his gaze. We hadn¡¯t talked about our time in the Palanquin. I told myself it was because we didn¡¯t have any room in our heads for anything but the fight ahead, but I wasn¡¯t sure if I was just putting it off.


    Whatever Grue saw, he was apparently satisfied. He moved over to a half-boarded up window, lowing the skull mask over his face as he peered out into the street.


    ¡°I¡¯m going to go check on Bitch,¡± I said to Tattletale, who was busy adjusting the ballistic vest she was wearing beneath her trenchcoat. ¡°I¡¯ll stay up with her when you go in, as well.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s good that you two are getting along,¡± Tattletale remarked. ¡°Maybe not what I expected, especially this early on, but I guess your wireless insights helped.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not that,¡± I shook my head. ¡°Or¡­ not just that. I understand how she thinks now.¡±


    ¡°How do you figure?¡± Tattletale asked, though I couldn¡¯t help but wonder if she already knew.


    ¡°She values stability. When I first met her, before we hit the Yakuza, she lashed out at me because bringing me on meant changing things around; introducing some new uncertain variable. Not just into the team, but into her network. I was a threat to what she was comfortable with.¡±


    I risked a glance over at Grue.


    ¡°I think he¡¯s the same way. Not that he¡¯s not ambitious ¨C not that we all aren¡¯t, except maybe Bitch ¨C but he¡¯s comfortable being a Shadowrunner. It¡¯s where he fits into the world, and he¡¯s happy there.¡±


    It¡¯s what I like about him, I thought. I¡¯m not a stranger in the shadows anymore, but he fits so naturally he might have been born in them.


    ¡°He is,¡± Tattletale nodded. ¡°As for ambition, Bitch isn¡¯t the only one without it.¡±


    For a moment I thought she might be talking about herself, but her eyes darted over to Regent.


    ¡°You sure?¡± I asked. ¡°He certainly seems like someone who wants to be in control.¡±


    He was raised that way, I thought.


    ¡°He does,¡± Tattletale conceded. ¡°But not of the team, or some black magic cabal. Regent wants to be in control of his own life. To do what he wants without worrying about costs or consequences. So long as he¡¯s making enough that he never has to check his cred, he¡¯s content.¡±


    I nodded, slowly. It made sense with what I knew of him; with how he¡¯d been raised, how he left and my guess as to what he might do afterwards. Like Tattletale, he came from tainted luxury. Maybe his idea of an ideal life is to have all the pleasures he had back then without any of the pain?


    ¡°And you?¡± I asked. ¡°Are you ambitious?¡±


    Tattletale chuckled.


    ¡°More than you could know, even with all your insights. Because you¡¯re right; I was a songbird in a cage. But the life I¡¯ve built since, the life I¡¯m still building? That¡¯s mine. It might not be as rich or as privileged, but at least the food doesn¡¯t taste like ash in my mouth.¡±


    She paused, her head cocked as she looked me up and down.


    ¡°And you? Where do you fit on the scale of comfort and ambition?¡±


    I sighed. ¡°I¡¯m not sure yet. Good luck out there, Tattletale.¡±


    ¡°You too, Bug,¡± she answered, and I winced.


    ¡°I¡¯m really not sure about that name, anymore¡­¡± I murmured.


    ¡°The window¡¯s closing fast,¡± she warned, good-naturedly. ¡°If you¡¯re gonna change, you¡¯d better do it before people start whispering about us in dive bars.¡±


    I just shook my head, leaving her to prepare as I made my way up to the second floor.


    Bitch had set up in a corridor that ran the length of the laboratory, with windows running down the left side. Back in the old loading bay, we¡¯d scattered a few glowsticks to offer enough light to work by, but Bitch¡¯s optics meant she was quite comfortable standing there in the dark, with only a little light-bleed from the streetlamps. With my eyes, I could see the heat of her still-remaining organic parts; how it was dispersed across her entire mass rather than concentrated in certain components like in her cyberware.


    Beside her, two long-barrelled guns had been set against the wall. The first was a sniper rifle that our client had rented from Faultline; a weighty, Saeder-Krupp model with more than enough armour-piercing ammunition to make a mockery of the warehouse walls and ¨C hopefully ¨C whatever was behind them. The second was Bitch¡¯s own weapon; a semi-automatic shotgun she¡¯d acquired with the payout from the last job, and perhaps a little of the payout from this one as well.


    Bitch had taken a long table from one of the labs and set it up in front of a window, creating a firing position from which she could provide overwatch to the others as they advanced. She could see into the offices that capped off one side of our target across the street, but not into the actual warehouse beyond. My job was to spot for her, and let the AP rounds do the rest.


    ¡°Everything good?¡± I asked, as Bitch finished organising a stack of magazines on her firing position, each one full of oversized ammunition.


    ¡°The Crawler¡¯s in the warehouse, moving into the rafters,¡± she answered. ¡°Nothing but a skeleton crew there right now, waiting around on the warehouse floor.¡±


    I pulled up the feed from the surveillance drone, watching as it clambered silently along the beams that ran the width of the warehouse, its optics focused on a small group of policlub staffers on the floor below.


    Her other drones ¨C the two Dobermans and the predatory bulk of the Steel Lynx ¨C were also on the network, stowed behind a pair of dumpsters off to the side of our temporary hideout. It kept them out of sight, but also meant they could be rolled into action at a moment¡¯s notice.


    ¡°They¡¯re ready downstairs,¡± I said, as I allowed meatspace to fade away, replaced by the brilliant expanse of the matrix, with the blinding lights of the city centre merged into a great pyramidal mass in the distance.


    Our surroundings were quiet; there were businesses around us, but it was well beyond business hours. What few networks were still active were ticking along on reserve bandwidth for the night, and the few exceptions ¨C like the laboratory across the street that¡¯d left a sampler to run overnight ¨C weren¡¯t straining the local matrix overmuch. In spite of that, it wasn¡¯t a dead zone; during working hours, a business park like this would exert a great deal of pressure on the local matrix, which in turn meant a great deal of bandwidth was needed to handle the traffic.


    That bandwidth wasn¡¯t being utilised, but the capacity was still there. It would carry my complex forms like copper carrying electricity, but the same could be said of any programmes the Chosen managed to bring to bear.


    The quiet only made the intermittent traffic all the more noticeable. It was nearing closer to eleven at night, but no city ¨C no modern city ¨C ever truly slept. The occasional truck made its way through the park, as late-night couriers took advantage of the quieter streets to make their way into normally gridlocked areas. Then, in the morning, they¡¯d make the same deliveries to the city¡¯s nocturnal industries.


    My mind jumped, slightly, at the sight of a Knight Errant patrol car smoothly cruising down a street a couple of blocks away, swinging through the warehouses in search of optimistic thieves. Judging by its IFF, the car had a crew of two and was accompanied by a drone that skimmed over the rooftops, peering into back alleys as it fed video back to the operator in the passenger seat. The car was heading away from us ¨C our business park was in decline, which likely meant the landowners didn¡¯t have enough capital to pay for that sort of bespoke anti-burglary patrol ¨C but it was still a worrying sign.


    ¡°We¡¯ve got movement,¡± I said over the team-wide comms as something on the edge of the district caught my eye. ¡°Got a Hyundai sedan moving into the park. Alabaster¡¯s comm is in the back. I¡¯m going to get a closer look.¡±


    I turned around, sitting down on the floor of the corridor with my back against the wall before letting my hold on my organic body slip away. Untethered, I sped through the quiet waters of the Matrix with ease, drifting through the ghostly after-images of buildings and inactive networks as I drew closer to the car, observing the tether between the vehicle and Gridlink, Alabaster¡¯s comm in the backseat and the two personal area networks up in the front, linking biomonitors, comm systems and AR-linked tactical glasses.


    I reached out to the two integrated commlinks and two pairs of wireless earbuds waiting back at the warehouse.


    ¡°Two security personnel with him.¡±


    ¡°Two less than we were expecting,¡± Grue observed.


    ¡°He wouldn¡¯t fit four in a sedan,¡± Tattletale countered. ¡°He seems like the sort of guy who wants the back all to himself. They¡¯ll be with the truck.¡±


    As the sedan made its way through the streets and turned into the AAO warehouse, I tested Tattletale¡¯s hypothesis by casting my net wider.


    ¡°Got them,¡± I broadcasted about a minute later, as I kept half an eye on the Crawler¡¯s feed, showing Alabaster being greeted by the AAO staffers on the warehouse floor. ¡°Two more guards, driving a box truck. Has to be our target.¡±


    If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    ¡°Any sign of the Chosen?¡± Grue asked.


    ¡°Not yet. Box truck¡¯s turning onto our street now; you should be able to see it through a window.¡±


    I pulled up another feed, watching through Bitch¡¯s cybereyes as she dropped down to the floor. She reached up and grabbed me by the shoulder of my jacket, her other hand supporting my head as she pulled me down below the window just before the truck¡¯s headlights swept across the corridor.


    She lay me down on my left side, tucking the back of my right hand under my head, before leaning back up to peer over the windowsill. Through her eyes, I was able to see the box truck as it pulled around the corner, heading for the now-open garage door of the warehouse. It was a leased vehicle with the name of the lease company on its sides.


    It was refrigerated, to keep the chemical cocktails within at the proper temperature, and the weight of the refrigerator, plus the cargo itself, caused it to sit low to the ground. One of the guards was driving, but the truck had auto-navigation software built into it, which meant I might be able to slave it to Bitch¡¯s cyberware and have her pilot it remotely, or at least have set it to follow the van.


    A pair of AAO staffers waved the van through before hitting the button to lower the shutters, one of them ¨C dressed in a padded coat to ward off the chill ¨C ducking under at the last second to wait outside, presumably to watch for the Chosen¡¯s arrival. Inside the warehouse, Alabaster watched with his arms crossed as another staffer opened up the rear of the truck. The Crawler didn¡¯t have a good angle on the back of the truck, but I saw the wisps of refrigerated air spilling out towards the vampire.


    Apparently satisfied with what he saw, he waved his hand in a dismissive gesture that had the staffer slamming the door shut again. Then Alabaster pulled back his sleeve, peering at his watch and frowning. There was a visible tension in the air between Alabaster and the staffers, and even Alabaster and his security team. I guessed the security team were wary of him because they knew what he was, and the staffers were wary of him because he was some nebulous authority in a suit who¡¯d dragged them to a warehouse full of medical contraband to wait for a gang of psychopaths to come and pick it up.


    ¡°The security team are focusing on Alabaster,¡± I said. ¡°They¡¯re sticking close to him, rather than the van.¡±


    ¡°Good,¡± Grue said, ¡°but we¡¯ll need to take down at least one of them if we want to definitively pin the policlub on the scene. Otherwise they could just say the Chosen broke in.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯d be easier to kill one of the staffers,¡± Regent pointed out. I would have winced if I was corporeal, even with who the staffers were and how they thought.


    ¡°When the Chosen arrive, we won¡¯t have the luxury of wasting bullets on targets who aren¡¯t shooting back,¡± Grue countered, lifting a minute weight from my shoulders. ¡°But if any of them tries to play hero, put a firebolt through their skull.¡±


    More movement drew my attention back to the matrix. Traffic was comparatively streaming into the business park; four vans of varying origins and states of disrepair, and a larger signal that I couldn¡¯t make out because it was wrapped in layers of familiar network encryptions. Chosen encryptions.


    In cyberspace, it appeared to me as a cluster of nodes hidden beneath a cosmetic layer that marked them out as a waste disposal crew, with their vehicle represented by a GMC Commercial D-Series ¨C a bulky dump truck popular on the outskirts of the city. But most vehicles of that type didn¡¯t have crews, relying on their pilot programmes and stowed drones to handle the work, with maybe a security guard in the cab to ward off scavengers.


    ¡°The Chosen are moving in,¡± I said. ¡°Looks like Biter¡¯s squad in one vehicle and some bottom-feeders in a bunch of vans.¡±


    As Biter¡¯s vehicle rounded the corner and into sight of Bitch¡¯s optics, I was shocked to see that it was a dump truck ¨C or, at least, it had once been one. It still had some of the original paint, though the logos on the flat sides had been sanded down to the bare metal, upon which a snarling red wolf¡¯s head had been daubed on with spray paint and stencils. The open top and rear had been closed in by thick sheets of armour plate and what looked like the heavy metal doors of a secure transit truck.


    The cab had been even more heavily modified, with more armour plate layered on top of the original¡¯s bodywork. The windscreen had been removed entirely, leaving it with beetle-like optics mounted in yet more armour. I could tell there was someone behind that mass; most likely the rigger who drove the thing and operated the bipedal Ares Duelist drone that had taken the place of the industrial loader unit that would normally go in the alcove just behind the cabin.


    What took the truck from an absurd red flag to a blatant slap in the face of the law was the cannon mounted just behind the cab, at the very forefront of the bed. It was a General Electric Vindicator; a multi-barrelled nightmare of a minigun with an ammunition belt that descended through a slot in the armour plated roof, articulated on a gimballed mount and loaded with a pilot programme slaved to the rigger in the driver¡¯s seat.


    ¡°What the fuck is that thing?¡± I asked, struck dumb.


    ¡°They call them ¡®scrapyard tacticals,¡¯¡± Grue answered in a muted tone. ¡°Up-armoured heavy goods vehicles brought out in full-scale gang warfare, or when a police crackdown gets past the surface level and takes out something the gang can¡¯t afford to lose.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s it doing here?¡± I asked. ¡°I thought this was supposed to be clandestine?¡±


    ¡°Right now, everything the Chosen needs to keep their immune systems functional for the next month is in a single truck,¡± Grue explained. ¡°Once they¡¯re loaded into those vans, they¡¯ll be driven to different caches across the city and one point of failure will become half a dozen.¡±


    ¡°Great. So we have to kill a tank,¡± Regent drawled.


    ¡°Or cripple it,¡± I countered. ¡°I¡¯m starting my attack. Slow and quiet, so they don¡¯t notice.¡±


    ¡°Got it,¡± Grue answered. ¡°We¡¯ll move into position. Bitch, stay down for now in case they put an observer in the offices.¡±


    I turned my focus away from their network, drifting unseen towards the warehouse where the makeshift armoured transport had pulled in ahead of the parade of vans, disgorging Biter¡¯s squad. I saw them not through the Crawler¡¯s camera, but as icons in the matrix; generic crash dummies dressed in the uniforms of a garbage disposal crew.


    I¡¯d seen the Chosen¡¯s network before ¨C what little of it I could sense through Bitch¡¯s wireless connection, as well as my up-close look at Biter¡¯s cranium ¨C but the squad were running on their own private network, visible as datastreams tying together each member of the squad, and each piece of equipment they¡¯d brought with them from smart-linked rifles to their transport.


    Momentarily, I split my focus to check the camera feed. Alabaster was looking up at the APC with his head cocked, as he exchanged words with Biter. The Chosen lieutenant hadn¡¯t changed much from when Bitch had her intimate moment with him. To my surprise, he still wasn¡¯t wearing a shirt, and I could see his muscles shifting with the movements of his dull metal cyberarms and each flap of his oversized artificial jaw revealed metal teeth filed down into points. He was holding a lengthy rifle by the stock, resting the barrel on his shoulder, with a pistol strapped to his thigh and magazines and grenades strapped to the harness that crossed over his chest.


    Barker was gesturing at a couple of AAO staffers to open up the truck, his own misshapen teeth still jutting through the flesh of his cheeks. Unlike Biter, he was still wearing a ballistic vest, and the optics in his sunken eye sockets whirred as they scanned the room. In the half-lit warehouse, his skull face tattoo, dead optics and grotesque teeth seemed even more ghoulish than it had in the Chosen¡¯s compound. Each gesture was accented by the assault rifle in his hands, and once by a flex of the blade hidden in the cyberarm Bitch had stitched onto him.


    The other four members of Biter¡¯s squad were dressed in a similar hybrid of tactical and gang aesthetics. Each of them was as individual in their style as their leader and his second, which made it easy to make guesses at how they fit into the squad. The man and the woman carrying assault rifles, both dressed in body armour patterned in red and black, were obviously there to fill out the gunline, but the other two were more specialised.


    The rigger was easy enough to spot from the way she was wandering around the APC, checking diagnostic readouts on a tablet as she inspected one of the Ares Duelists. A pulse travelled between the control rig implanted and the drones, the bipedal, bladed robots stepping out of their niches as they moved off in a patrol pattern. Their faux-samurai armour had been spray-painted in Chosen colours, while the rigger herself wore black coveralls distorted in spots by inlaid armour plates, with her hair standing tall on her head in a daring red mohawk.


    The last member of the squad hadn¡¯t even left the truck, but they worried me more than any of their others. Even from the outside, I could see the architecture of the comms network. Biter was the squad commander, constantly receiving data from his subordinates and capable of utilising overrides and universal permissions to send data to them. Different datastreams connected the rigger to the drones and the truck, giving her near-universal authority over them.


    The person in the centre of the truck was connected to every device on the network, from the processors in Biter¡¯s head to the smart-link in the riflewoman¡¯s weapon. As I watched, their icon ¨C another anonymous garbageman ¨C drifted away from their body, passing through the roof of the truck in a way that was impossible for anyone bound by physical laws.


    I couldn¡¯t see the decker¡¯s body behind the enclosed cabin of the APC, but I didn¡¯t need to. It was insignificant next to the persona drifting around the matrix with the comfortable ease of someone who spent almost as much time in it as out. My one saving grace was that I doubted Biter would let his decker escape the same meatspace drills he¡¯d clearly put the rest of his squad though. When it came to being terminally online, I had the dubious advantage. All I had to do was turn it into leverage.


    ¡°Go dark, now,¡± I said to the others, as the decker scanned their surroundings. Every matrix-connected device we had was immediately switched offline, from Bitch¡¯s drones to Tattletale¡¯s AR glasses. It was camouflage by brute force, with everything that couldn¡¯t be switched back on by hand set to reconnect in five minutes. The only exception to the shutdown order was the Crawler, which continued to stream its camera feed to me even as it was cut off from Bitch. I camouflaged that myself, wrapping both it and my persona in a heavy veil of resonance.


    As the decker swept the room, I focused my attention on the clearest piece of data available to me; the Crawler nestled next to my digital chest. The Chosen rank and file were beginning to unload plastic crates from the back of the truck, carrying them back to the waiting vans. There were eight of them in total, all of them noticeably less augmented than Biter¡¯s crew. Their wireless presence flimsier as well; they were looped into what must have been a broader Chosen-wide network, but they were excluded from the squad¡¯s TacNet. Their matrix discipline was noticeably weaker, with their minds open to social media and streaming services ranging from radio stations to film, tv and at least four different porn sites.


    As they worked under Alabaster¡¯s watchful eye, Biter¡¯s squad moved out to secure the perimeter. The two Duelist drones were deployed, marching off to just outside the exterior doors, no doubt as an early warning system, while Biter, Barker and the riflewoman took up positions on the other side. The rigger remained close to the APC and the decker didn¡¯t leave the cabin, but the remaining rifleman made his way deeper into the building, disappearing from the Crawler¡¯s view as he passed through the abandoned offices and up onto the second floor, where he took up a position overlooking the street.


    Five minutes had passed. Almost simultaneously, the team came back online.


    ¡°They¡¯ve started loading the vans,¡± I said. ¡°If you¡¯re going, go now. One of Biter¡¯s squad is on the second floor of the offices, overlooking the road. They have a drone on either side of the warehouse watching the streets, but the rest of the squad, AAO''s security and the Chosen rank and file are all in the warehouse itself. Marking them now.¡±


    Spinning together datastreams, I was able to tweak the team¡¯s heads-up-displays with digital markers showing the location of everyone in the warehouse, distinguished using a simple key that showed their faction and speciality, if it was obvious. I marked Alabaster out using a blue symbol, rather than red; it was more than he deserved, but our client might be annoyed if we shot him. I did, however, give his icon fangs.


    It was a deceptively taxing piece of homespun software. The simplest option would have been to place the markers in the matrix itself, mapped as augmented reality objects on the targets¡¯ actual positions, but that sort of cyber-graffiti would have been easily spotted by the Chosen¡¯s decker. Instead, I had to cross-reference what I could see with what the Crawler was recording, then use the relative positions of each member of the team to triangulate where each ganger was standing from their perspective. All this across wildly differing software, from a homemade cybernetic optics suite to designer sunglasses.


    There¡¯s no way I¡¯ll be able to keep it up when the digital shooting starts, I thought.


    ¡°Okay¡­¡± Grue¡¯s tone was contemplative as he surveyed his options. ¡°The offices are still the obvious entry point. Tattletale, bring down the spotter. Bitch, hold your drones in position for now but be ready with the rifle. Regent, start moving your spirit into position.¡±


    ¡°Finally,¡± Regent sighed. ¡°I¡¯ve been waiting all day for this.¡±


    I watched through Grue¡¯s cyebreyes as Tattletale moved up to the door of our hideout, peering through the grime-covered window across the street, to where the Chosen rifleman was surveying the road with professional disinterest.


    I drifted in close to him, peering at the tightly-woven shell of his persona. I couldn¡¯t risk a full-scale assault on the network without alerting the decker to our attack, but it wasn¡¯t the time for that. Instead, I focused my efforts solely on the device in front of me; the biomonitor tucked into the base of the gunman¡¯s skull, with sensors spread out across his entire body.


    Moving with painstaking slowness, I teased at the streams of data passing between the biomonitor and the rest of the network, feeding strands of resonance in with incoming data from the rest of the squad until I had a hold on the biomonitor itself. I could see the readout; his heart rate was slightly low, his breathing rate normal and there were monitoring systems in his kidneys tracking the build up of excessive white blood cells, as well as an auto-injector loaded with medication that I was sure could be found in abundance in the truck.


    I locked the data in place right as Tattletale brought her hand up to her pendant, then her mouth, before sending a spell flying across the street. I couldn¡¯t see it in the matrix, of course ¨C couldn¡¯t even see if it smashed the windows between Tattletale and the sentry or just passed intangibly through them ¨C but I could see the effect the spell had as it hit.


    Beneath my carefully-masked signals, the Chosen¡¯s pulse plummeted, his breathing slowing as his EEG readings shifted into the kind of activity only normally seen during REM sleep. There was an auto-injector nestled beneath his fused sternum that would have given him a shot of adrenaline in response to that activity, if I hadn¡¯t already disarmed its trigger.


    ¡°Move,¡± Grue said in a short, sharp whisper. On the second floor of our hideout, Bitch grabbed the rifle from where it had been lying on the floor and got into a firing position on top of the table she¡¯d set up, with her left leg straight and her right almost at ninety degrees.


    Through her optics, I watched as Grue, Tattletale and Regent sprinted across the road, almost throwing themselves down below the ground floor windows of the empty offices. Grue¡¯s faceplate was down, and his impassive skull looked at Regent for a moment before nodding.


    Behind the warehouse, the sky momentarily lit up with fire as the spirit soared across the roof of the warehouse and dove in through the window. I watched through the Crawler as the explosion of fire and glass shards scattered across the rafters of the warehouse. The spirit emerged from the mass, her flame-wreathed form seeming subtly wrong through the cold optics of the Crawler, like a glitch in the fabric of reality.


    The spirit swept an arm downwards, a jet of fire sweeping out with the gesture before engulfing one of the Chosen¡¯s vans ¨C and the two gang members who were loading it. Biter¡¯s squad reacted quickly, the APC¡¯s turret spinning on its axis as it began firing a deafening stream of bullets at the spirit, which pirouetted around the room as it managed to stay just ahead of the turret¡¯s maximum turning speed.


    Outside the warehouse, Grue unceremoniously reversed his rifle and smashed the butt into the glass, sweeping it along the frame to remove any stray shards before vaulting over and into the offices, followed closely by the two mages. Behind the dumpsters next to our hideout, Bitch¡¯s drones rolled out and into the street.


    In the matrix, I attacked in full force. The datastreams around me were twisted; plucked like piano wire until they hummed with the ethereal noise of the resonance, becoming lures for half a dozen sprites. I¡¯d never summoned so many at once before. The force of their intrusion sent ripples out through the matrix.


    Three of them were wasps, darting directly for the central nodes of the tactical network. They drove their stingers into it, two of their attacks being countered by firewalls even as the third hit home and flooded the network with junk data, burning out some of the connections between the decker and the squad.


    The decker knew they were under attack the moment my sprites first emerged, but they¡¯d clearly never faced a technomancer before. They were used to fighting attacks from a single vector, focusing on protecting the most essential parts of the network even as my sprites attacked from multiple directions, corrupting lesser systems in an attempt to kill by a thousand cuts.


    It gave me the breathing room to triangulate another angle, and place a mark right on the swivelling gun of the APC.


    Lying prone on the table next to my body, Bitch squeezed the trigger of her rifle. The glass in front of her exploded outwards, as did the glass on the other side of the street. The shot sped through two walls, the force of its passage dragging burning plaster dust, steel shavings and fragmented bricks in its wake in a trail of sparks as it flew across the warehouse and sheared through the minigun in a shower of twisted metal.


    It caught the chain of bullets being pushed up from the ammo well inside the APC, sparking off a cavalcade of wild, scattered shots before an automated safety feature sealed off the ammo belt from the outside world. With its pursuer disabled, the fire spirit swept an arm down and immolated an AAO staffer, who had been staring up at the spirit with her face twisted in mute terror.


    It was at that point that the others stormed into the room, Grue firing his assault rifle into the mass of red and black-clad Chosen, who scattered behind whatever cover they could find even as two of them dropped, twitching on the floor as their bodies bled out and cyberware sparked.


    Alabaster was being escorted out the back by the AAO security detail, two of them peeling off to draw away the spirit as it burned its way through the warehouse, either heedless of the fire it was taking or just pushing through it on Regent¡¯s orders. I placed a mark on one of the men escorting Alabaster, and watched through the Crawler as the sniper round passed through his spine, jerking his head back as the force of the shot knocked him to the ground.


    It was the closest I¡¯d ever come to killing someone myself. Bitch was barely in her body, focused on guiding her drones around to the side entrance of the warehouse, where the Ares Duellist was turning as the Chosen¡¯s own rigger called it back inside. She only moved in response to the pings I sent her, her arms shifting the rifle just enough to line up the shot before firing. It was like she was just an extension of the gun; my hand was the one on the trigger.


    Through another camera feed, I saw as Bitch spun up the rotary gun mounted atop the Steel Lynx. She let off a burst of shots that ripped the Duelist apart, scouring a line of rents up its chest as bullet fragments and scraps of machinery sprayed against the wall of the warehouse. She accelerated the drone, swivelling the gun around to face the other way so that the barrel was clear of the shuttered door.


    The building was old ¨C pre-millennium old ¨C and the fittings looked like they hadn¡¯t been changed in all that time. The Steel Lynx might have been made from junkyard-salvaged components, but it was still more than a match for the brittle, aged steel that stood in its path. Through the Crawler, I saw as the shutters splintered like broken ribs, snapping free from their housings as the drone sped into the warehouse, its main gun spinning back around to fire even as the two Dobermans chased in at its heels like pups following their mother.


    Then, the decker counterattacked, and I no longer had the bandwidth to pay attention to the cameras. One of my wasps winked out of existence as the decker drove a data spike through its thorax, but then they made a beeline straight for me. The resonance veil around me had been pierced; they could see me now.


    Their attacks came as sharp stabs of data, trying to brute force their way past my barriers. I weathered the storm, even as I felt their carefully-constructed programs wreaking havoc on the wild resonance that formed my persona. My focus was still on my sprites, sending my two remaining wasps to attack even as I took advantage of the decker¡¯s focus to seed the other three ¨C woodlice one and all ¨C onto the other members of Biter¡¯s squad.


    In meatspace, smart-weapons malfunctioned, shots that would have ripped through Regent¡¯s spirit went wild, optics glitched and a homing grenade thrown by Barker hovered in midair for a moment, its tracking systems spasming, before detonating in a scatter of wild shrapnel.


    Even that momentary glance away had cost me; the decker had slipped past my defences. I could feel their mark on me; an indelible part of their code embedded in my form, giving them a bridge down which they could send attacks. My wasps counterattacked, but the decker¡¯s firewalls were too strong for them to break through. They reminded me of Grue; that single-minded determination as they launched one relentless attack after another, trusting their thick armour to absorb any and all blows.


    I had more tricks up my sleeve than that. Just as I had done in the resonance realms, I spun a veil of energy around the decker, surrounding them in an esoteric fog that clung to their persona, slowing their reaction times and partially blinding them to the world around them.


    It came too late for one of my woodlice, perched on Biter¡¯s shoulder before it burst apart into fragments of code as the decker¡¯s attack overwhelmed it. In Biter¡¯s software, something clicked and he brought his long-barrelled rifle up to his shoulder, not even looking down the sights as a programme in his head calculated angles and vectors.


    Counter-sniper software, I realised, moment¡¯s before Bitch¡¯s name shot through my head like a bullet.


    There wasn¡¯t time to warn her. I reached out in the matrix, opening my mouth and screaming out a storm of fireflies even as I seized control of Bitch¡¯s cyberlimbs, twisting her arms and legs to throw her off the table just as a three-round burst of high-powered shots ripped through the table she¡¯d made her sniper¡¯s nest.


    The effects of my scream were obvious, both in meatspace and the matrix. Where before my glitches had been deliberate, targeted, now they were indiscriminate. The local matrix, encompassing the entire warehouse, screamed with me, the vibrations throwing up buffering errors and visual tearing on every device with a matrix connection.


    Bitch¡¯s drones stuttered, tracks shifting erratically as guns flailed wildly off target. One of them ¨C one of the Dobermans ¨C was brought down by fire from some of the low-ranked Chosen, the ones who hadn¡¯t managed to buy enough chrome to be hit. Other fresh initiates, the ones who¡¯d bought a lot of cheap chrome, fell to the ground clutching their heads as the sound of a million chittering insects blared through inadequately-firewalled neural audio players.


    It hurt to see how indiscriminate it was, how it was hurting my team as much as the Chosen, but I pushed through the guilt, even as I was aware of Bitch¡¯s limbs spasming on the edge of my perception. I simply pushed forward, ignoring the pained chitter of noise that surrounded me, and stretched out the arachnid limbs of my persona to drive a quartet of resonance spikes into the decker.


    Only two of them managed to pierce their defences, but they were enough to get marks of my own on their persona. I stopped screaming, the storm of pulsating insects leaving behind visibly-frayed rents in cyberspace, and pressed the attack.


    It was child¡¯s play to fill the decker¡¯s senses with ghost images, pulling clones of myself and my sprites out into the matrix that obfuscated the real attack. Whatever cyberdeck they were using was tough, however, and they took the beating with the rugged determination of a trained boxer, hitting back with the same amount of force. We were both going all-out, the physical fight in the warehouse almost forgotten as we slugged it out in cyberspace.


    And then, the very fabric of the matrix around us seemed to shake, as we felt a great presence turn its gaze on us. The datastreams around us, tattered and frayed by the force of our fight, had carried the sound of battle like piano wires, screaming our presence to all and sundry. We looked up in mutual, mute horror as the eye of GOD opened high above us, dwarfing even the monolithic Hosts that drifted overhead.


    A short distance away from us, streams of data twisted suddenly into perfect angular shapes, coalescing together as they delivered a high-bandwidth package. It was a persona; a bookish, middle-aged blonde dwarf dressed in a white button-down shirt with a pair of thin spectacles over his eyes. Short blonde hair poked out from beneath a plain black fedora.


    I screamed again, but this time there were words in it.


    ¡°DemiGOD! Go dark!¡±


    Heedless of the danger to myself, of the vast gulf that separated me from the physical world, I took hold of the tether linking me to my body and pulled with all my might. Meatspace hit me like a bullet to the head. I jerked forwards like I¡¯d been shot, my palm slamming into the floor moments before I violently threw up. I blinked, and bloody tears coated my eyelids in a film of red.


    It was the bogeyman; a million teenage nightmares come back to haunt me. The Grid Overwatch Division, cutting me off from what made me¡­ me. Their agents ¨C their G-men ¨C a source of primal terror for someone whose very existence was illegal. I told myself they weren¡¯t targeting me specifically, told myself that we¡¯d just made too much noise, drawn their eye, and that they wouldn¡¯t send in a physical kill-team to break up a fight between criminals.


    It didn¡¯t help.


    I pushed myself to my feet, standing unsteadily on trembling legs as my ears twitched at the sounds of gunfire and explosions still emanating from the warehouse. I¡¯d left them alone, without support, and the knowledge that the Chosen decker had been similarly neutered was no comfort at all.


    I reached beneath my jacket, pulling my Ares Executioner out of its holster. With shaking hands, I pulled back the bolt and looked at the dull ceramic casing of the bullet waiting at the top of the magazine. I let go, the bolt flying forwards as it shunted the bullet out of the magazine and into the breach. Beneath the surface, the motion had pressed the firing pin against the primer that capped off the cartridge. It was potential energy; needing only the electrical signal from the trigger to activate the explosives and fire the shot.


    I jumped at the feeling of metal fingers on my upper arm, pressing through the reinforced fabric of my armoured syn-leather jacket. I blinked, the world around the gun resolving itself until I saw Bitch standing in front of me, her head craned back as her spider-like optics met my own organic eyes. She was holding her shotgun in her other hand, and there was an unspoken question in her gaze that was clear even with her inhuman eyes.


    I released the bolt, nodded to Bitch, and vaulted over the windowsill. I was still trembling, but I no longer cared.

 DDoS: 5.06

    Every troll child goes through a phase where they feel invincible. It happens just before puberty; when their muscles have come in, their horns are properly grown and they¡¯re starting to get taller than all the other kids in their class. They revel in their strength; clambering up onto the school roof, crushing cans with their bare hands, picking their friends up and spinning them like a metahuman merry-go-round. They feel like they¡¯re on top of the world.


    But they keep growing, their horns get longer, calcified growths start poking out of their skin ¨C which itself toughens into something that feels closer to stone than flesh. They get stronger without even trying, but the strength that had made it so easy to interact with the world starts to become a barrier from it. They can¡¯t sit in the same chairs as their classmates, they break glasses because they underestimate their grip strength, every portion of food feels way too small. They go to hug their best friend because she looks upset and even they can tell something¡¯s wrong only for her to flinch back, leaving them to wonder if she was afraid of being crushed.


    Being strong and tall doesn¡¯t mean much in a world that isn¡¯t built for it, but every troll starts to at least idly dream about the only ways their strength still matters. Everyone has intrusive thoughts; that little moment where they fantasise about finally dropping all the social niceties of the world and just lashing out in some primordial rage. The difference with trolls is how easy it would be to turn fantasy into reality.


    Even then, the world finds ways to punish them for their strength. They could lash out, but their disproportionate force would be met by a disproportionate response. They¡¯d carry a label for the rest of their lives ¨C maybe even a criminal SIN ¨C and never find a sympathetic ear no matter how hard they looked, no matter what the circumstances may be. Who would ever believe someone so big, so potentially dangerous, could ever be threatened by people so small?


    The only way to turn their strength into a strength is to seek out those places where strength is acceptable, where violence is expected. In militaries, security or law enforcement, where governments and corporations hand you a uniform and tell you who you can hurt. In gangs, where violence can even afford some degree of social mobility, or so you hope. In Urban Brawl, boxing, football, ice hockey, all-arena combat golf and other violent sports, where violence can even make you rich if you¡¯re good enough.


    In Shadowrunning, if you¡¯re truly exceptional.


    I wasn¡¯t. I¡¯d never been in a fight in my life, never even thrown a punch as far as I could remember. I was exceptional in the matrix; unequalled mistress of the digital world. Or so I¡¯d tricked myself into thinking, until the DemiGOD arrived and sent me scampering for meatspace like a hunted animal. And yet, I still had the biological advantage that let me leap out of a second storey window and land on the ground below with only a slight twinge of pain in my legs.


    But I still trembled as I straightened up, my legs shaking far beyond the expected reaction to the sudden burst of activity, or the lingering stabs of dumpshock running rampant through my brain. The air was filled with the crackle of gunshots, the building in front of me lit intermittently from within by magefire, and I¡¯d deliberately wrenched myself out of the matrix. It felt like I¡¯d ripped off my own nose and pulled some of my brain out with it.


    I was terrified. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins, flooding my muscles in a way that was utterly unfamiliar to me; such a biological sensation didn¡¯t make the jump over to the matrix. I¡¯d been terrified before, but my body had always been left to suffer the adrenaline flood in silence. Trapped in my head, I could feel every twitching muscle, every panicked surge in my emptied stomach, every gunshot that was the beating of my heart.


    Bitch hit the ground beside me, her synthetic legs shifting on their bearings as they achieved by mechanical means the same level of strength I naturally possessed. She straightened up, her shotgun held in her right hand as she looked up at the building, one optic flicking left to instead look at me. I couldn¡¯t say anything; couldn¡¯t force my mouth to make the right sounds.


    Hesitantly, uncertainly, her optics darting between me and the building, she reached out and rested a hand on my upper arm, metal hands gently closing on quivering tendons. The rest of her optics looked at me, her head turning. I¡¯d grown used to having instantaneous access to her head. Without it, she seemed more alien in that moment than at any point since I¡¯d met her, but I could tell what she was trying to do.


    I nodded, my grip tightening on my machine pistol ¨C which would be a submachine gun in her hands ¨C and sprinted towards the building.


    I¡¯d always read that fear made people freeze up. That it was a paralysing thing that halted movement and left people mute in the face of danger. I didn¡¯t know if the books were wrong or if I was just an outlier, because that¡¯s not how it felt to me. I was afraid, but I was running forwards. It wasn¡¯t an automatic motion; every step felt like it took an immense amount of concentration, like I was forcing my way uphill, but there wasn¡¯t any ice in my limbs. If anything, it felt like I was running faster than I had in my entire life.


    And yet, Bitch was faster than me, her shorter stride meaningless in the face of her mechanical legs. She vaulted the window of the warehouse offices without a moment¡¯s hesitation, and that in turn spurred me on to follow her. For a moment I felt a jagged length of broken window digging into my palm as I vaulted over the window, half-remembered school gymnastic lessons running through my head before I stumbled as I hit the ground.


    ¡°Follow my lead,¡± Bitch said without turning back, as she brought her shotgun up to her shoulder and began moving through the abandoned office at a brisk yet cautious pace. I followed her, my submachine gun lowered but with both my hands clasped around the trigger. I felt blind, cut off from the matrix. Claustrophobia was a familiar fear, but it seemed so much worse without myriad datastreams passing through the walls and ceiling. It made them feel so much more unyielding.


    She paused at the threshold of the warehouse itself, an arm waving me over to the wall behind her. I pressed myself against the faded white paint over plaster, painfully aware of how flimsy it felt. Parts of it were already riddled with bullet holes, and the gunfire from the other room was near-deafening.


    Bitch moved with cold, mechanical speed, her cyberlimbs whirring as she stepped back, leant right and raised her weapon in one fluid motion. An instant later, she fired, her optics feeding her brain fire control data faster than her brain could properly process it. She strode forwards, her semiautomatic shotgun barking three more times as the bolt flew back and spent shells were ejected from the side.


    I followed her in, my own motions sluggish and all-too-organic as I crossed the threshold into a scene from hell. The warehouse was on fire, the miscellaneous shelves of abandoned policlub detritus going up in burning heaps of old t-shirts, blankets and folded-up marquees, posters, flags and banners. The nine vehicles of varying sizes scattered among those shelves were pockmarked with bullet holes, some of the cheaper vans listing on their sides like half-sunken ships, their axles sheared into fragments by the weight of fire.


    In and among that scant cover, half-obscured by the smoke choking the space, figures crouched with weapons clutched tightly to their chests. Some of them were dead, reduced to indistinct heaps of clothing and limbs that no longer seemed to resemble people. Others were dying, shifting and moaning as they reached for weapons that weren¡¯t there, or pressed their hand against their wounds.


    There was still over a dozen of them; Chosen rank and file, Biter¡¯s hardened squad, even two members of the AAO security detail that Alabaster must have sent back into the warehouse to die. They could have easily overwhelmed the three Shadowrunners in the room, or cut down Bitch and I the moment we crossed the threshold, if it weren¡¯t for the flame-wreathed form darting between the rafters.


    The spirit was incandescent with fire and fury, screaming out its captive rage in gouts of flame that consumed everything they touched. It was incorporeal, diving into one patch of flame only to emerge from another on the other side of the room, in a pattern that left the Chosen struggling to pin her down or even find a place to hunker down and weather the firestorm.


    But they were still hurting it. The magical binding forcing it into a feminine shape was faltering, with great rents in its form that spilled out uncontrollable solar flares of light. The bright pits that were her eyes burned with anger, seemingly directed at the entire world even as she was forced to vent her anger on our enemies.


    Regent still had control, but it looked like his control was fading fast. The moment I spotted him ¨C huddled with the others behind a van ten metres from the box truck that contained our target ¨C I sprinted across the concrete floor to try and reach them, closely following Bitch as she fired her shotgun one-handed off to her right, trying to keep the Chosen down.


    It didn¡¯t work. Not entirely.


    I was halfway to them before I even realised I was being shot at. The ground in front of me resembled a pool of still water at the start of a sudden Atlantic storm, with puffs of concrete dust rising like raindrops splashing off the surface. The reality was more violent; sharp shards of concrete peppered my legs, some even cutting through the reinforced fabric of my pants. Someone was shooting at me, leading their shots more than they needed to.


    Their network¡¯s down, I realised as my body moved faster than the speed of thought, animal instinct hurling myself into cover, skidding the last couple of feet. The G-Man must have taken out their decker in the matrix, leaving them a broken mess of dumpshock and their network a tattered ruin. The only reason I wasn¡¯t dead was that the Chosen gunman who shot at me didn¡¯t know how to aim without an algorithm guiding his shots; he led me too much trying to compensate for its absence.


    ¡°Bug!¡± Grue exclaimed as he poked his head over the front of the van, firing off a brief burst of shots before ducking back down as the van was peppered with return fire. ¡°I thought¡­¡±


    ¡°Made too much noise,¡± I stammered out, too full of adrenaline for full sentences. ¡°GOD intervened. Have to bug out now; cops are on the way.¡±


    Grue was silent, the skull of his helmet masking his thoughts. Beside him, Tattletale shifted in response to something only she could see, standing up behind the sides of the van and clutching her talisman as she murmured an incantation. A spectral image of Bitch appeared in front of her, solidifying until it was identical to the real thing. The spectre was sent sprinting out of cover, reaching for a grenade on her belt as she tried to make it to the next van over.


    There was a deafening thump-thump-thump as a high-calibre weapon was fired from the other side of the room, churning through concrete as it shattered the false image of Bitch. The real Bitch leant out from her cover and fired a tight burst across the room from the machine gun integrated into her right arm, hopefully killing the gunman and taking the assault cannon out of commission.


    Grue murmured something, but it was too quiet for me to make out over the gunfire and the constant ringing in my ears. It sounded like he swore. He turned to Regent, who was looking rougher than I¡¯d ever seen him with bloodshot eyes and grime coating his jacket. At first I thought it was the strain of keeping the spirit under control, but his hand was clutching his thigh and blood was seeping past a compact field dressing.


    ¡°Burn it,¡± Grue said, and Regent sighed in genuine relief. ¡°Everyone else, suppressing fire. We bug out back the way we came.¡±


    He punctuated his remark by removing the magazine from his weapon, slipping it into a pouch and replacing it with a fresh one. I felt my own hands tighten on my gun.


    ¡°On my mark.¡± Grue shifted to one knee, facing the van. I stood up, hunched over, physically ready to poke my head over the top of the human-sized van even as abject terror continued to race through my mind.


    ¡°Now!¡± Grue rose, slamming his augmetic elbow down on the hood of the van so hard it dented the metal. He pulled the trigger, spent casings flying into the window. I stood up, not even seeing what lay beyond the van as I brought up the submachine gun, the morning Brian and I spent in the shooting range flashing through my mind as I focused all my attention on keeping the weapon level, with both hands on the troll-sized pistol grip and my arms outstretched.


    I didn¡¯t even try to aim, just pulled the trigger and panned the weapon from left to right over where I thought the Chosen were. Beside me, Bitch emptied the magazine of her integrated machine gun in a single burst of ammunition before bringing up her shotgun and firing off three rapid shots. Tattletale was almost using her as cover, keeping most of her body behind Bitch as she shouted an incantation that took form as a kaleidoscopic maelstrom of colours and sounds right on top of the Chosen¡¯s positions, adding to the chaos as they mimicked gunfire, flashbangs and incendiary explosions.


    Someone on the other side returned fire, sparks flying off the roof of the van. I felt hot metal slice through my brow, then the bone-shaking sensation of something skidding along my left horn. The force of it knocked my head to the left, where I saw another shot hit Grue in the head, leaving a gleaming metal wound in his helmet where it scraped off the black coating but failed to pierce the alloy beneath. Both of us kept firing, though I still couldn¡¯t see what I was firing at.


    Regent stumbled to his feet, his fire spirit veering away from the Chosen as it swooped past us, its featureless burning eyes seeming to stare right into my soul before it flew directly through the cab of the box truck and into the refrigerated compartment at the rear.


    A second later, the entire back of the truck exploded in a titanic fireball that rocked our cover on its suspension and knocked Tattletale and me flat on our asses, my face feeling like it¡¯d just been hit by a gout of hot steam as I skidded back two meters, friction tearing away at the narrow patch of exposed t-shirt between my armoured jacket and my aramid-lined pants. Tattletale went twice as far, but her trenchcoat caught the worst of it.


    I rolled over onto my front, reaching for my gun and staggering to my feet just moments after Tattletale, just in time to see Grue take a grenade from a pouch on his webbing, pull the pin and lob it over the van with an underarm throw. I¡¯d seen that model of grenade before, in the event horizon, and I closed my eyes just in time to miss the deafening explosion of light and smoke.


    ¡°Go!¡± Grue shouted as he fired another magazine into the smoke, either using the thermographic optics of his cybereyes to mark out targets or ¨C more likely ¨C just firing blindly into the mass of fire and bodies that appeared as a single blob of heat to my own eyes.


    Tattletale was the first through the door, though she¡¯d been given a four meter head start by the explosion. I followed her, then Regent ¨C almost limping with his injury and the psychosomatic shock of his spirit''s detonation. Bitch lingered at the doorway, firing back into the smoke with her machine gun as she covered Grue''s retreat.


    We dashed through the small office space in utter silence, knocking aside dusty old swivel chairs and partition walls in our haste. The quiet was only emphasised by the sudden drop-off of gunfire from the warehouse; it felt like the only sounds in all the world were the roaring inferno behind us and the ceaseless ringing in my ears.


    Regent and Tattletale struggled on the way back through the window, the elven mage cutting her hand open on the glass, but then we were out under the open sky, the low cloud layer lit from below by the city¡¯s ambient lights. As we ran back across the street to the old lab where we¡¯d stowed the van, I felt fatigue starting to set into my limbs. The first of the adrenaline was starting to leave my system, and each step felt like I was wearing lead boots.


    That sluggishness had also made its way to my brain, which meant that I almost didn¡¯t understand what I was seeing when two cars rounded the corner, both of them low-set sedans with their original colours hidden beneath matte black spray paint and stencilled designs in red.


    As Grue swore and Bitch raised her shotgun, I finally noticed the beady red optics mounted in the faces of the cars'' occupants, their jaws set in fury and fear in equal measure; the look of people who had been called into a situation with no idea of what was waiting for them, but who knew exactly what was at stake.


    Their decker stayed behind, I thought, even knowing it meant divine intervention. He stayed just long enough to send out an SOS.


    Across the street, there was a horrific squeal of metal as Bitch¡¯s up-armoured van knocked the doors of our makeshift hideout off their hinges in a shower of brick dust, splintering the flimsy metal shutters beneath the Bulldog''s reinforced tyres as she rammed the closest sedan side-on, crumpling its bodywork and sending it careening sideways into the second, pinning the pair of them against the side of the warehouse.


    Grue fired into the first car and I followed his lead, bringing up my pistol once again. I remembered his lessons more clearly this time, taking a half-second to line up the sights of the pistol on the driver of the second car; a wizened-faced cyborg whose skin was sickly-pale going on green at the points where it met steel. I fired. First at him, then at the others in the car. My shots were in controlled bursts, as accurate as I could make them.


    In spite of everything, there was enough bandwidth left in my brain to notice the enormity of the moment. I¡¯d accepted that I¡¯d have to kill, but I had assumed that my first victims would be shooting back. I didn¡¯t think my first kills would be murders.


    ¡°Come on!¡± Tattletale shouted from the open side door of the van. I¡¯d lost seconds, which felt like losing years in that moment. Bitch was already reversing the van by remote, separating its hood from the closest car with a noise like a can being crumpled even as she hauled her body up into the rear. I tightened my grip on my gun and sprinted over to them, throwing myself into the back just as Bitch began to swing the van around.


    I thought that was it, but Bitch slowed the van once we reached the corner and opened up the rear doors by remote. I was genuinely surprised to see that the Steel Lynx had somehow survived the warehouse; its frame and three of its camera optics were gouged and damaged, but the tracks still worked. Regent murmured something unpleasant as the drone rolled into the back. He might have been complaining about stopping to pick up a machine at a time like this, but I couldn¡¯t tell; he¡¯d slipped back into French in shock.


    Bitch hit the gas, the wheels skidding momentarily before finding purchase on the asphalt. There was a lurching sensation that almost knocked me over, sending me staggering back towards the still-open rear doors of the van. If I hadn¡¯t managed to grip onto the bars of one of Bitch''s drone racks, I might have fallen out.


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    I definitely would have fallen out when the van suddenly lurched to the right, rocking on its suspension like a ship taking on water as something slammed into the side hard enough to dent the armour plates. As Bitch swung us back around, I looked in mute horror out the back at the Chosen''s scrapyard tactical, the makeshift APC''s engine roaring as it closed the distance between us.


    Beside me, the Steel Lynx''s gun swung on its axis, pivoting up to turn in the confined space of its cradle before dropping back down until it was level with the armoured plates covering the modified dump truck''s cabin. The gun spun up, then spat a stream of shots across the gap between the two vehicles. Over the near-deafening sound of gunfire, I could hear the gun¡¯s mechanism clattering and squealing. It was wounded, ready to jam at any second.


    And then, it did. The ammunition belt shuddered, the barrels pausing in their rotation for a fraction of a second. Hidden from my sight, some vital internal component stuck in place, wedged into its neighbours as the gun fell silent and electric motors clicked as they tried to force bullets through the broken mechanism.


    The truck almost seemed to roar in celebration, as the Chosen rigger floored the engine and accelerated. I saw a figure clamber up out of a side hatch and haul himself onto the top of the vehicle, identifiable only as a silhouette against the streetlights until he extended a long, thin blade from his cyberarm and drove it into the remains of the APC''s turret to anchor himself in place. In his left arm, Barker held an assault rifle one-handed, pushing it against the sling in order to gain some measure of control. As he raised it, Bitch flicked a mental switch and closed the rear doors.


    A moment later, there was a noise like golf ball-sized hailstones hitting metal as Barker took shots at us, but the armour was holding. I holstered my weapon, releasing my death-grip on the rack as I slumped to the floor, my back against the still-warm chassis of the Steel Lynx. I looked left, and saw Grue had removed a section of his chest armour as he applied a trauma kit to a vicious-looking chest wound. Beside him, Tattletale had finished sticking an antiseptic patch to her sliced palm. She held out the box to me as my left eye suddenly went blurry. I reached up and touched my brow. My fingers came away with deep red blood coating the tips.


    ¡°You okay?¡± I asked Grue as I applied a patch to the wound on my brow, using the base of my still-sore horn as a guide.


    ¡°The vamp''s security detail got me in the lung,¡± he explained, a little breathlessly. ¡°It¡¯s synthetic, so I¡¯ll live.¡±


    The van swerved to the left, as another hail of shots hit the rear doors and skidded down the length of the side, chipping away at the reinforced glass of the driver''s side window.


    Grue looked up, smacking his chest armour back into place as he put one hand on the back of the passenger seat and hauled himself to his feet.


    ¡°Can you lose them?¡± he asked.


    ¡°Don¡¯t know,¡± was Bitch''s succinct response. ¡°Their truck¡¯s pretty banged up, but so''s mine. Just a question of which breaks first.¡±


    I was impressed at how she¡¯d managed to say that while serving around a commercial hauler coming from the opposite direction ¨C with a terrified dwarf in a baseball cap at the wheel ¨C especially since she¡¯d been facing away from the road, with her hands off the wheel. That jogged something in my mind; I stood upright, banged my head on the ceiling and swore.


    ¡°Bitch, you''re still online?!¡±


    I should have seen it ¨C would have seen it if that glancing hit hadn¡¯t scrambled my brains. She drove the Lynx here, didn¡¯t she? Should have seen it then.


    Something rattled, like the van had just driven over a curb in the middle of the street. Birch¡¯s attention was immediately drawn back to the road, but her body reached into a pouch on her ballistic vest and loaded another magazine into her arm.


    ¡°That was a spike strip.¡±


    Her tone was calm, matter-of-fact, even as the street was bathed from end to end in flashing red and blue lights as a black and yellow roto-drone as big as a hang glider flew over us, its camera optics firmly fixed on our position. Ahead, two bulky Knight Errant trucks were in the middle of setting up a barricade, their armoured sides swinging out to form a wall. Bitch just managed to squeeze through in time, sending taksuited officers scrambling to get out the way. I doubted it would slow down the Chosen APC at all.


    ¡°Fucking pawns!¡± Grue exclaimed. ¡°Did they get us?¡±


    Bitch shook her head, ¡°Tyres have a synthetic lattice in them, not air. Nothing to puncture. But, not sure how they found us.¡±


    ¡°DemiGOD compromised your network,¡± I said with a sigh as I slumped back down on the floor. ¡°Passed it onto K-E¡¯s deckers. I¡¯ll clean it, you lose the physical assets.¡±


    For the first time in my life, I didn¡¯t want to submerge myself in the matrix, but my wants didn¡¯t count for anything in that moment. My brain was still reeling from the dumpshock of my sudden exit, and reaching for the resonance felt like desperately trying to find purchase on a frayed rope. Still, I managed to latch on, my synapses burning with the strain of the sudden return of data that should have been as natural a part of me as anything in my meat.


    I shut my eyes, ignoring the violent swaying of the van as Bitch dodged her way through the streets, and opened them to see a matrix alive with activity. Knight Errant''s network was familiar to me; it was omnipresent, stretched throughout the city like a web that centred on each of their precincts scattered throughout the city, all of it fuelled by their main data hub in their Downtown headquarters. At the ends of each strand of web were patrol cars, special tactical vehicles, metropolitan CCTV, the biomonitors of individual officers, rapid-response Firewatch helicopters, harbour patrol boats, a small fleet of aircraft, speed cameras and a fleet of autonomous and remote piloted drones.


    When those assets converged into a single place, that web began to resemble a cage of data like the one that surrounded Bitch''s van. Four patrol cars had joined the chase, in addition to the recon drone hovering overhead, and I could see more assets being routed towards our location, as well as to other hotspots. It looked like we''d kicked the hornet¡¯s nest; Knight Errant was mobilising throughout the entirety of the North End.


    I ignored them as best I could, turning my attention to the infinitely smaller network that surrounded me. Birch¡¯s firewalls were as resolute as ever, but as I used my access permissions to peel back each layer of defence I found an icon embedded within them. A Fibonacci spiral, left there by the G-Man in an expert display of subtle hacking that would have been impossible for me to do in such a short timeframe without resorting to obvious brute force.


    With the permissions it granted, Knight Errant¡¯s deckers had been able to track Bitch and everything connected to her network. I didn¡¯t have time to be gentle in removing it; my connection to the matrix already felt like I was moving through a dead zone, and my senses were dulling by the second. It took all I had to gather resonance together into a spike and drive it into the icon, tearing it out of Bitch''s systems like ripping a scab off a still-healing wound.


    Once it was out, I risked another glance into the matrix. Bitch had shaken three of the four patrol cars and ducked into a tunnel that ran beneath a high-density housing estate to escape the recon drone, but one of the cars was still on her tail and with the Chosen''s APC completely offline I had no idea how close they were. Nor did I have the time to worry, as a drone suddenly came online beneath the icon of the sole remaining patrol cruiser, detaching from its host before speeding towards us at an incredible pace.


    Tattletale would mock me for it, but I¡¯d seen one before on trideo. It was a pursuit drone, manufactured by and for Knight Errant and capable of magnetically locking into the underside of a suspect vehicle, where it became an unobtrusive tracker that broadcast its position back to the operations room, allowing the patrol car that carried it to pull back and deescalate the pursuit. Someone at Knight Errant had noticed our signal dropping off their network.


    I waited for it to close the gap. Not because I wanted to, but because I couldn¡¯t spin up another resonance spike any faster. When I drove the concentrated resonance into the drone, there was a horrible moment where it seemed like it wasn¡¯t enough, before the signal abruptly winked out of existence in sparks of junk data. I winked out with it, the strain too much to bear without an obvious enemy to keep me going.


    When I opened my eyes, I thought the bandage hadn¡¯t stuck. My eyes were gummed up with blood, but as I tried to blink I realised it was coming from my tear ducts. From the taste of it on my tongue, I had a nosebleed as well. As I slowly blinked away at the blurred red mess, momentarily unable to even attempt lifting my hands up to my face, I felt a wet antiseptic wipe pressed against my brow, wiping away the blood from my eyes to my chin with a delicate hand. As my vision cleared, I saw Tattletale looking down on me with an expression of grim worry that she quickly schooled into a fake smile.


    ¡°Hey, omae, you''re looking even more like a corpse than usual,¡± she joked. ¡°Glad to see you haven¡¯t joined our vamp friend on the other side.¡±


    I groaned, trying to force myself up into a sitting position and only succeeding thanks to a frankly herculean display of strength from Tattletale, who put her other hand on my shoulder and helped pull me up.


    ¡°Digital threat''s gone,¡± I coughed the words out past the blood in my mouth. ¡°Get us the fuck out of here, now.¡±


    ¡°Working on it,¡± Grue reported from just behind the driver¡¯s seat. ¡°Got a plan to shake the pawns and put the Chosen on the defensive, but it¡¯s only good if you can run.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about me,¡± I snapped, grabbing hold of the seat next to me and using it to haul myself to my feet. My vision swayed as blood rushed to my head. ¡°Can hold my own.¡±


    ¡°Fucking hope so,¡± Regent retorted in a manic tone. ¡°Because I sure as shit can¡¯t carry you.¡± He looked almost as ashen as I did on a good day.


    ¡°Impact in ten,¡± Bitch said, her tone still dispassionate in spite of... well, everything. ¡°Everyone brace.¡±


    I moved up to the front of the van, grabbing the back of the passenger seat like my life depended on it. Through the windshield I could see the entrance to the parking bay of one of the many residential projects that made up the New Estates; a concrete castle of pedways and apartment blocks, deliberately segregated from its neighbours to create an insular ghetto community that wouldn¡¯t spill out into the surrounding area.


    The chaos of the night had kicked the hornet''s nest: industrial garbage cans and junked vehicles had been rolled in front of the entrance to create a makeshift barricade, manned by an estate gang with an eclectic mix of clothes and gear, unified only by grey camouflage patterns on some of their clothes and a vague tactical aesthetic to their gear.


    ¡°That''s your plan?¡± I asked, incredulous, as bullets started to pepper the windshield with white spiderwebs of broken glass. ¡°A fucking block war?¡±


    Bitch hit the barricade head-on, the shoddy materials no match for her up-armoured van, sending gang members scattering as she quickly spun to avoid a line of parked cars. As she hit a speed bump, the van lurched upwards as I heard something scraping along the roof. That was when I realised what the plan really was; the APC was a municipal dump truck. There was no way it¡¯d fit inside the parking garage without taking half the roof down with it.


    ¡°There''s only one exit onto the road,¡± Bitch reported as we passed between the rows of parked cars, ¡°and it¡¯s the way we came in.¡±


    ¡°Then we ditch the van,¡± Grue said, thinking on his feet. ¡°Have it circle the upper levels before sending it back out. We''ll make a break for it through the estate and hook up with the van on the other side.¡±


    ¡°Fuck,¡± Regent swore, breathlessly, as he clutched at his leg. ¡°Knew I shouldn¡¯t have skipped cardio.¡±


    ¡°Here, let me.¡± Tattletale leant over Regent, resting a hand over his wounded leg as she murmured an incantation, keeping her grip even as the van swung wildly as Bitch turned us up and onto the next floor of the parking lot. Once she took her hand away, Regent flexed his leg experimentally before standing up.


    ¡°It¡¯ll have to do,¡± Tattletale said. ¡°As for you, Bug, nothing I can do about nerve damage. Could take the pain away?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll deal,¡± I replied, shaking my head. ¡°Exhausted enough as is.¡±


    ¡°Then get ready to wake up,¡± Grue said. ¡°That walkway there, Bitch.¡±


    ¡°Got it,¡± came the reply, before the van skidded to a bone-shaking halt. I threw the door open, staggering out onto the concrete, closely followed by the others as Grue moved up past me to take point. The second Bitch had extricated herself from the driver¡¯s seat, she sent the van speeding away down the lot, the auto-nav software taking over as the doors were pulled shut automatically. None of us spared it a second glance as we ran into the corridors of the estate.


    The multi-storey car park opened up onto a corridor that ran down the length of one side of a vast housing building, with an endless row of apartment doors to our left and the open space of the communal courtyard at the estate¡¯s entrance three storeys below us, past a waist-high metal railing and thick concrete support pillars. The overhead lights were already intermittent enough, but at least a third of them were damaged in some way; flickering, barely lit or just completely non-functional.


    Below us, the sounds of gunfire echoed from the parking lot as the Chosen killed their way past the barricade. It ended far sooner than I¡¯d have liked, and as I threw a last glance back I saw Biter emerging into the courtyard, his cybernetic optics scanning the estate before fixing on us.


    ¡°Left, now!¡± I shouted, almost shoving Tattletale and Bitch into a side corridor moments before shots began to ricochet off the walls around us. The new corridor cut straight through the centre of the estate, branching off onto side passages that led to more rows of tenement apartments. After the first ten metres, it widened into a significant arterial route with shuttered shops on either side, as well as on a mezzanine level above our heads. From the wear on the shutters, it seemed like every third shop remained shuttered and empty even during the day. In front of some of those empty businesses, or tucked away beneath flights of stairs, were makeshift tents and shelters out of which eyes watched us from sunken, near-emaciated sockets.


    Above our heads was a channel cut deep into the building; twenty floors of grimy apartment windows, balconies and near-busted air conditioning units rising up past the occasional pedway that spanned the width of the chasm to the distant, overcast sky. There was a shape up there, barely visible against the clouds, with a narrow body and narrower wings sticking out of the sides. A drone, hundreds of metres up and seemingly holding right over our location.


    ¡°Fucking cops...¡± I swore breathlessly, even as I struggled to keep pace with the others.


    Tattletale looked up, then shook her head.


    ¡°Not a model they use.¡±


    ¡°Then who? Medhall? GOD?¡±


    ¡°Maybe,¡± she replied, an inexplicable grin pulling at the corner of her mouth, ¡°but maybe not.¡±


    ¡°We''ll go down at the end of this corridor!¡± Grue shouted from up ahead as he and Bitch waited for the rest of us to catch up. ¡°There''s a pedestrian entrance that¡¯ll get us out onto the street, then we find somewhere to link back up with the van!¡±


    ¡°Got it,¡± I replied, panting. With each step, I desperately wished I¡¯d taken up running at some point over the last two years. My only consolation was that Tattletale and Regent seemed to be having an equal amount of difficulty ¨C provided that I ignored the nagging thought that their legs were so much shorter than mine.


    I half ran, half fell down the stairs at the end of the corridor. It was almost completely silent, with only the pounding of feet, panting breaths and the occasional electric whirr of a dodgy light keeping us company as we emerged out into a lobby. As with the entrance to the parking lot, the lobby was occupied by a handful of local gang members who''d set up positions to defend their home from the horrors of the night.


    They weren¡¯t expecting an attack from within, and as they turned in shock to see who had just barged out of the stairwell, they were met with the barrels of three guns as Bitch, Grue and I levelled our weapons.


    ¡°Don''t do anything stupid,¡± Grue snapped, his voice distorted by his helmet. ¡°We''re just leaving.¡±


    There were five of them, and from the look of them none were older than their early twenties. Their gang colours ¨C the same urban camouflage pattern as on the other entrance ¨C were little more than armbands or cloth masks tied over their faces. Their weapons were second or maybe even third hand, a mix of pawn shop antiques and the kind of flimsy plastic crap that could be bought from a vending machine for chump change, but they were still loaded.


    I had my gun trained on a dwarf girl in a grey hoodie and a second-hand ballistic vest that still had the logo of some low-rent security company on it, as well as the bullet holes that had claimed the life of its one not-so-careful owner. Her weapon was a Streetline Special, a flimsy holdout pistol that looked like nothing more than an accessory in the face of my Executioner, but I knew it was dangerous all the same. It was still half-pointed at the door behind her; she was expecting trouble, but still focused on the wrong direction.


    And then, she moved, trying to bring her pistol around. I didn¡¯t give her the chance; my first shot hit her in the dead centre of her ballistic vest, the high-calibre submachinegun ammunition making a mockery of her vest¡¯s low-grade protection, better suited for knives and cheap pistols than any serious fire. The force of the shot knocked her off her feet, her gun going off as her wrist hit the floor. The sound of it was lost in the sudden burst of violence to my left and right, as Grue raked his assault rifle over two of the gang members and Bitch pumped a shotgun shell each into both of the remainder.


    We didn¡¯t linger over the bodies. I didn¡¯t even look back as we sprinted out into the street, my exhaustion being pushed aside by a last burst of adrenaline as I found myself under the open sky once again. That sudden sensation of space above me was the only thing that saved my life, as I looked up to see Barker leaping down from a third storey walkway, his cyberspur blade fully extended and aimed right at my spine while his misshapen metal maw was bared in a rictus of silent rage.


    I jerked to the left, the blow that would have sliced through the back of my neck instead opening up the sleeve of my armoured jacket as it travelled down the length of my right arm, knocking my gun out of my hand even as the entire limb went limp.


    I fell to one knee in absolute agony, half-screaming, half-roaring at the almost incomprehensible pain. Barker loomed above me, so much more real in the flesh than he had been through Bitch¡¯s optics. He was firing his assault rifle with his left hand, though I couldn¡¯t see at who until Bitch suddenly barrelled into view, firing her shotgun at point blank range into the Chosen''s knee. There were holes in Bitch''s ballistic vest, but she seemed unaffected; I had to assume the armoured inserts coating her sternum had held.


    Barker landed on the ground next to me, already bringing up his rifle to fire again. I swept my left hand over the ground until it touched the grip of my submachine gun, then pressed the barrel against the back of Barker''s head and pulled the trigger, only releasing it once I had emptied what was left of my magazine into his skull. Sparks and blood flew from what remained of his face as he slumped over, his cybernetic limbs locking him in place as his body died.


    I staggered to my feet again, the slightest movement sending agonising stabs of pain through my shoulder. I still couldn¡¯t feel anything from my arm except for the world¡¯s worst case of pins and needles. In front of me, Grue was turning, aiming his rifle up at the monolithic front of the estate. He was too late; I saw tracer rounds pass through his chest and out the other side as Biter fired down from the balcony, with two other Chosen survivors by his side.


    As Grue dropped to the floor, I raised my Executioner and pulled the trigger, only for it to click on an empty magazine. Biter''s chest exploded regardless, as a deafening crack echoed through the artificial canyon that separated the estate from its immediate neighbour. A second shot rang out, taking off the head of the woman to Biter¡¯s right, before the third passed right through the concrete half-wall of the walkway, right where the last of the Chosen had ducked for cover.


    There was a final moment of silence before the sound of sirens filled the canyon from end to end, the flanks of the estates bathed in flashing red lights as a trio of armoured ambulances in green and white livery sped down the street, coming to a halt in and amongst our scattered group.


    A tricopter drone alighted from the back of each ambulance, underslung laser projectors marking out minimum safe distances in vivid red lines around each one of us, while guns turned to keep watch on what lay beyond the marked perimeter. Doors on the side of the vehicles disgorged armed guards in green jumpsuits with white accents on black body armour, followed by paramedics in lighter gear with emergency equipment held in each hand.


    I saw two of them laying down a stretcher next to Grue, then hands on my own arms as my weapon was politely but firmly pried from my grip. Some manner of adhesive substance was sprayed down the length of the deep gouge Barker had left in my limb, before I was gently pushed back down onto a stretcher of my own, the base of it extended out to fit a troll¡¯s legs as the two paramedics and two guards each grabbed the sides, lifting me up and jogging across to a waiting ambulance.


    Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Grue being carried into the back of another, while Bitch, Tattletale and Regent presented a picture of absolute confusion as they were led to the third. Tattletale looked between me and Grue''s unconscious form before pulling away from the paramedics and rushing over to join me in the back of my ambulance.


    She held my left hand as we pulled away, a reassuring smile on her face as I drifted in and out of consciousness, half-hearing the chatter of one of the guards near the front of the cabin.


    ¡°-to K-E liaison, clear a path through your blockade on Dockyard and Fourth immediately. We are on-route with priority wounded and-" ¡°-clear a path now. Don¡¯t make this bigger than it needs to be; Ares and Evo have no beef in this city-¡± ¡°-appreciate it, liaison. C-C one thirty-three out.¡±


    Any attempt to listen in further was stymied as Tattletale face was replaced by the impassive features of a paramedic, an oxygen mask in her hand. She pressed it over my mouth and nose even as I shook my head to try and dislodge it, flicking a switch that stuck the rim of the mask to my skin. My struggling became weaker after that, my vision blurring until everything seemed to blend together in a single mass of pure white.


    Then, I couldn¡¯t see anything at all.

 Interlude 5: Aisha Laborn

    There was very little that scared Aisha, and none of what did was dangerous to her life. It didn¡¯t matter what she was doing ¨C whether she was fighting for her life, running from rooftop to rooftop or just walking down the street ¨C she moved through the world with an easy, natural confidence. Every motion flowed gracefully into the next as she drifted through the packed streets of Japantown.


    Aisha had always had trouble focusing ¨C she was sure she¡¯d been that way since birth and certain what caused it. Information slipped out of her mind as soon as it came and ¨C in another age, when she still went to school ¨C she¡¯d always sat at the very bottom of the class. But when it came to her body, when it came to the raw magic that flowed through her every sinew, she was as steady and focused as a rock in the middle of some zen garden; part of the pattern, but tough enough to take on everything around her.


    Even the rain didn¡¯t faze her, though it was more like dozen streams and three small rivers by the time it had filtered down through the layers of gantries and bridges that linked the two buildings above her, all of them filled with chattering people, or the electric hiss of neon signs in a dozen different languages and at least five different alphabets.


    Aisha wasn¡¯t dressed like a fighter; she didn¡¯t need chrome or armour or guns. She¡¯d gone out wearing a shimmering pink plastic raincoat over a golden bralette and black vinyl pants, with a purple handbag over one shoulder and a pair of thick platform heels on her feet ¨C because, Aisha always thought, what¡¯s the point of perfect poise if you don¡¯t show it off? The heels also let her see above the crowd, which was something she appreciated in a neighbourhood where the average height was so much taller than the rest of the city.


    From what little Aisha knew of the city¡¯s history, she knew that Japantown was always a metahuman district. It began with Japanese exiles, but the balance shifted over decades as more orks and trolls made the district home. It was somewhere people drifted or were pushed to in search of a place that wouldn¡¯t think less of them because of the way they were born, but that didn¡¯t mean it was a paradise. It just meant that Aisha was surrounded by more orks and trolls than she¡¯d find anywhere else in the city.


    Crowds were one of the things that weren¡¯t dangerous, but that scared her all the same. It was easy to feel lost in them, so she dressed to catch the eye; never caring about blending in or going with the flow no matter where she walked because every stray glance sent her way was a reminder that she existed, that she was worth looking at. That she was more than the people around her. That she mattered.


    It made the mass of people easier to bear; made it easier to keep her head above water as she came down from the rooftops, stepped away from her circle of may-be-friends and swam among the metahuman shoals that flooded every street, alley and path of the densest district in the city.


    Along with perfect control of her own body, Aisha had a perfect awareness of the people around her; her senses tuned to the point where she could pick apart individual smells, sounds and even the taste of the smoke rising from a streetside food stall. She could pick apart the individual footfalls of the people around her, pick out how confident they were in their stride, what they¡¯d been drinking from the smell of their breath. Could even pick out the pickpockets picking their way through the packed street and deftly avoid the knives that probed out to slice open her anachronistic handbag.


    It was a dangerous game they were playing; the Yakuza sometimes liked to play cops and robbers in Japantown, which meant slicing off a hand from any pickpockets they could catch out on the streets. But the pickpockets were all young, with a lean hunger to their bodies that Aisha recognised, so she didn¡¯t lash out at the ones who tried to make her their mark.


    For all her body¡¯s easy confidence, Aisha¡¯s mind would much rather cross Japantown via the rooftops, leaping from building to building with the city spread out all around her and the crowds shambling in the canyons below. But business was business, and she knew that if she showed up to this meeting looking like hot shit in a taksuit and mask it¡¯d just end up screwing her over.


    Aisha left the flow of people, leaning against a corrugated metal doorway as she pulled the cheap commlink out of her handbag and opened up the map. It was an older model, but older models were all Aisha could use without paying someone to crack the SIN registration requirements. She¡¯d never been good at memorising routes ¨C not that the multilayered shantytown was easily navigable for people who were ¨C and without anything that could patch into the city¡¯s GridLink, a digital map with a GPS tracker was the best she could do.


    It didn¡¯t help that when she finally reached the pin she¡¯d placed on the map, it took her another half an hour to actually find her destination inside the maze-like corridors of an old office building that had been turned into many smaller offices, shops, restaurants and probably a few apartments tucked somewhere off the main streets ¨C which would once have been corridors cutting through the middle of endless cubicles.


    The office she wanted was on the eighth floor, up a stairwell that had stalls on every landing, and it didn¡¯t have a name in a language Aisha could read. What it did have was four kanji running in a line down the door to what would once have been a private office used by the owner of whoever was renting this floor. Aisha knew the kanji spelled out the name of the Clan of Dragons, but even if she didn¡¯t the dwarf with the submachine gun standing next to the door would have given away that this was what she was looking for.


    He was clearly in the gang, wearing a vivid red biker jacket over a bare chest that was absolutely covered in glowing tattoos, the centrepiece of which was a roaring dragon¡¯s head. He also clearly wasn¡¯t Japanese, but that wasn¡¯t anything unusual; Lung¡¯s Clan had formed from the nonhuman exiles of the actual Yakuza clans, all of them as conservative as mainstream Japanese society, and they¡¯d become a pan-metahuman gang when they moved to Brockton Bay.


    It wasn¡¯t some great act of solidarity in a human supremacist city, they¡¯d just killed the leaders of the city¡¯s three largest ork and troll gangs and replaced them with their own people, forcing in a few elf and dwarf gangs later on.


    The floor was quieter than most of the others in the building, probably because it was all workplaces rather than shops. Aisha counted two call centres and three pocket sweatshops before her attention wandered back to the queue next to the dwarf, a line of a dozen people waiting to be let into the Yakuza office. Most of them looked local and varied from poor to destitute. Some of them were still dressed in the aprons they¡¯d worn to work. Aisha guessed that they were either there to pay their protection fees or try to negotiate lowering the amounts. She wished them luck.


    Others, she suspected, were there for the same reason she was. They were an eclectic bunch in everything from shoddy suits to long coats zipped up tight over next to nothing, but they had one thing in common. Whatever they needed, they couldn¡¯t find it in Japantown.


    Aisha bit the bullet, joining the end of the line and leaning back against the wall. Within three minutes, she was tapping her foot against the floor. Within five, she¡¯d started taking a half step forward, then another back, conscious of the woman who joined the line after her and who¡¯d leap at the chance to take her spot. Her only relief came when the line moved forward, before the waiting began again. She knew the dwarf was looking at her, idly fingering the grip of his gun.


    Prolly thinks I¡¯m tweaking out. Aisha thought, before a dark voice inside her followed up with guess I am. Still coming down from whatever mom was on for nine months, eighteen years back.


    Aisha could do impossible things; striking with pinpoint accuracy, scaling the sides of tower blocks, dodging blows and walking with the perfect confidence of a catwalk model, but only as long as she was moving.


    When Aisha meditated, she did it by picking a wall and climbing it, or finding someone who was willing to spar. When she moved, it was like she was pushing through all the clouds in her head and out into the clear skies beyond. When she was still, the clouds thickened until she saw ghosts; getting antsy and distracted by the littlest things.


    But then it was over. The last person in front of Aisha shambled out of the office with a dejected look on her face and the Yakuza dwarf ushered her in with a flick of his gun.


    Inside, the former manager¡¯s office had been refurnished with deep red carpets and metal blinds over the window, closed almost all the way so that only narrow slits of electric light bled through from the outside. The only furniture was a desk made of some dark synthetic wood with a chair on either side. The one behind the desk was high backed and padded with a red leather pattern, while its opposite number was made from the same dark wood, but without the height or padding.


    The woman sitting at the desk was taller than Aisha with a pair of long, twisted horns jutting out of her forehead and tusks pointing up from her bottom lip. She wasn¡¯t a troll, however. She wasn¡¯t that large and her red skin marked her out as an oni; a Japanese subtype of orks.


    Her suit jacket was white with black pinstripes, her hair was brushed back into a neat bun and she was busy typing on an AR keyboard ¨C though, as Aisha wasn¡¯t wearing anything that¡¯d let her see into AR, it just looked like her fingers were fiddling in the air a centimetre above her desk.


    She was ignoring Aisha, her gaze fixed on the invisible display. It was a dangerous move even when opposite the browbeaten locals who were waiting outside, but that was why the other person in the room hadn¡¯t taken his eyes off Aisha from the moment she walked in.


    He was a troll, leaning against the wall with a confident smirk seemingly locked onto his face. His horns were thicker than the oni¡¯s, their length knobbled and covered in sharp spurs as they curved back from his forehead. His silvery shirt and black slacks were stretched out by his oversized musculature, and there was a revolver on his belt. Aisha was confident she could take him, but Aisha was confident she could take anyone.


    The oni turned and said something in Japanese to her bodyguard. He chuckled, replying in the same language even though from his skin tone and accent he was probably as American as Aisha; either he¡¯d taken the time to learn the language, or he had a linguasoft running on some cyberware in his head. Aisha didn¡¯t have any cyberware and she¡¯d never been able to focus enough to pick up new languages beyond Or¡¯zet ¨C even that had been more difficult than it ought to, since it was basically in her blood ¨C so she had no idea what they were saying, but she could guess.


    ¡°Here to buy a SIN,¡± Aisha interrupted, leaning back in her seat.


    The oni paused, an annoyed look on her face. She swept a hand to one side, no doubt dismissing the keyboard, and rested her elbows on the table, meshing her fingers together.


    ¡°That right?¡± she asked, her voice carrying the slight accent common to those who¡¯d grown up in Japantown. ¡°And why do you want that?¡±


    ¡°Got biz in Midtown, need to get past the checkpoints,¡± Aisha answered, already pissed off. ¡°What does it matter?¡±


    ¡°¡¯Cause I say it does and I¡¯ve got what you want.¡±


    Aisha clenched and unclenched her fist, using the movement to try and get her head back into shape. She was fucking this up and she knew it.


    ¡°Gotta deal set up. Buying something from there.¡±


    ¡°Are you an entrepreneur?¡± the oni asked, grinning sardonically as she looked Aisha up and down.


    ¡°It¡¯s just clothes shopping,¡± Aisha answered with a half-truth. ¡°Need new threads to keep up.¡±


    ¡°Ahh,¡± the oni signed, leaning forwards and looking at Aisha, yellow eyes lingering on her body. ¡°I see. Well then, I believe we can do business. You¡¯re so clearly in need.¡±


    She thinks I¡¯m a joytoy, Aisha thought. A strung-out joytoy. It took a moment for her anger to fade. Fuck it, let the stuck-up bitch think what she wants. Strung-out joytoys don¡¯t carry much cred.


    ¡°So how much?¡± Aisha asked. ¡°For a SIN?¡±


    ¡°Not just any fake will do,¡± the oni leant back, her features twisting into a salesman¡¯s smug expression. ¡°With the humans kicking off, Knight Errant are running deeper checks. Could give you one for twenty-five hundred nuyen, but the data would be random; could say you¡¯re an eighty year old German dwarf. Basic age, ethnicity and sex match is no good either; they¡¯ll check for supporting data.¡±


    ¡°So you¡¯re saying you¡¯re gonna frag me on the price?¡±


    ¡°You knew what this was when you walked through the door. Don¡¯t exactly got a lot of options, do you?¡±


    Aisha scowled, crossing her arms and looking away. She knew the oni was right, but she still hated it.


    ¡°Ugh¡­ Go on.¡±


    ¡°Seven thousand five hundred. No negotiations, no compromises. We¡¯re not the only SIN forgers in the city, but we¡¯re one of the few who¡¯ll sell to people with chompers like ours.¡±


    Aisha was pissed off. Once again, it didn¡¯t matter how much control she had over her body, how tuned in she was to the world around her, that same world still managed to find new ways to fuck her over. Someone kicks the hornet¡¯s nest and sends the Chosen off on a killing spree, then Knight Errant puts up checkpoints in the streets to contain the killing to the parts of town nobody cares about. Then the vultures crawl out of the woodwork to rub it in, right to her face.


    She sighed, placing her handbag on her lap and opening it up. Inside was a small collection of short, thumb-length sticks with amounts scrawled on the side in sharpie. People who actually existed in the eyes of the world mostly paid through their commlink, tied to their SIN and unable to process payments that weren¡¯t made in their presence, verified by a code or just their biometrics, but that wasn¡¯t the only way to pay.


    Certified credsticks contained pre-loaded amounts of cash up to a certain amount, depending on the make of the credstick, and ¨C more importantly ¨C the cash on them was completely anonymous. They belonged to the owner of the stick and could be spent anywhere that took them ¨C which was most places, since even the most uptight districts understood that sometimes people wanted to pay anonymously, or were paranoid about fraudulent readers draining their entire current account.


    For people without a SIN, who couldn¡¯t open an account at any bank that wasn¡¯t on the black market, credsticks were the only way they had of interacting with the modern world. Aisha kept her current account in her handbag, with a savings account ¨C which had been reduced to just a single stick with a little over one thousand on it ¨C tucked behind a loose brick in her room in the Troupe¡¯s place.


    Most of the credsticks in her bag were stolen. Some of them had come from hotel rooms, lifted before their owner had the chance to waste them on a mid-rate joytoy, while others had come from random pickpocketing when Aisha was bored. The highest value one ¨C a full fifteen thousand nuyen on a silver-rated credstick ¨C had been payment for a job, earned by stealing a piece of art from some public art gallery and handed to her by an asshole suit in a penthouse apartment.


    She left that one where it was, struggling for a moment as she tried to get the numbers to fit together in her head before putting five credsticks on the table, with a combined value that was probably somewhere near eight thousand.


    The oni gave her a pointed look, her eyes flicking down to the credsticks as if to sarcastically ask where Aisha found them. She opened a drawer on her desk, pulling out a credstick reader and slotting each stick one by one, draining them of their funds and handing the empties back to Aisha.


    ¡°How much left on that one?¡± Aisha asked as the last credstick was placed in front of her.


    ¡°Don¡¯t have a commlink to check?¡± The oni asked, as the troll in the corner of the room chuckled to himself. ¡°Sixty eight. You were almost short.¡±


    Aisha didn¡¯t answer. She just took a sharpie out of her bag, crossed out the number on the stick and wrote the new one next to it. It, along with the others, was swept into her handbag, which weighed the same despite being seven and a half thousand nuyen lighter.


    ¡°Now then, one fake SIN.¡± The oni pulled up the keyboard again, poking the air as she selected options Aisha couldn¡¯t see. ¡°Sex, female. Metatype, ork. Ethnicity, African American. Age,¡± the corner of her lip curled up past her tusk. ¡°Eighteen, right? Wouldn¡¯t want to be barred from any clubs.¡±


    ¡°I am eighteen,¡± Aisha answered honestly, though she sometimes had trouble remembering. It had been years since she¡¯d last done something to mark a birthday. For the last two years, she¡¯d only realised she was a year older a few days after it happened.


    ¡°Whatever you say, kid. It¡¯s a hundred nuyen for a commlink.¡±


    ¡°Huh?¡± Aisha asked.


    ¡°A commlink. A SIN¡¯s no good if you¡¯ve nothing wireless to broadcast it. Got a box of Meta Links in the back for people who don¡¯t got their own.¡±


    ¡°Fuck, fine,¡± Aisha snatched another credstick from her handbag, eyeing the sharpied number in disgust before tossing it onto the desk.


    ¡°A pleasure doing business,¡± the oni smiled, waving a hand at her bodyguard.


    The troll lumbered over to a doorway and pulled it open. Aisha caught a brief glimpse of the room beyond before it was blocked by the troll¡¯s back as he ducked his head through a doorway that absolutely wasn¡¯t designed for someone his height.


    Inside was a darkened space lit by dull red lights, with a reclined metal and syn-leather seat set against the wall, surrounded by wires and computer towers with blinking blue status lights flashing out in an unreadable pattern. A woman was lying down on the seat, dressed in the sort of skin-tight cooler suit that let deckers work in cyberspace upwards of a dozen hours without coming up for air, the suit keeping their neuralware cool as it manipulated their muscles to prevent sores and ¨C on the really long-term models ¨C provided inflow ports for IV drips and outflow ports for bodily waste.


    Aisha once had a nightmare that she was plugged into one; locked in place while her mind was stuck in a virtual world that had none of the real-feel of the real one. She¡¯d never used the matrix, not properly. Even before everything went wrong, her family could never have afforded cold-sim gear. Even so, the idea of being lost in that world had always frightened her; it was a fate worse than death.


    ¡°How long will it last?¡± Aisha asked, turning back to the Oni as the troll conversed in Japanese with someone in the next room.


    ¡°Hard to say,¡± the oni shrugged her shoulders. ¡°You try walking into the Ares docks, it¡¯ll last until you¡¯re face down on the floor with fifty guns pointed at you. For normal use¡­ maybe a year, until they refresh the system enough times to make our backdoors obsolete. It varies.¡±


    ¡°So it lasts until it doesn¡¯t?¡±


    ¡°Basically,¡± the oni replied, a grin spreading across her red face.


    The troll ducked his head back through the doorway, a blocky plastic commlink held between his thumb and forefinger. He passed the comm to the oni, who held it out for Aisha to grab.


    As Aisha¡¯s fingers drew near, however, the oni made to pull the commlink back. Aisha decided then and there that she¡¯d had enough of being screwed, of forking over too much money to slip around a meaningless government leash, of the oni¡¯s smug face. She abandoned restraint, her fingers flying forward as magic flowed through her muscles, pumping down her veins with every heartbeat. She snatched the commlink out of the Yakuza woman¡¯s hand, tossing it up in the air before swiping out to flick it into her handbag.


    ¡°We¡¯re done, right?¡±


    The oni¡¯s eyes narrowed, but she didn¡¯t lash out like Aisha was half expecting ¨C like she half wanted her to.


    ¡°We¡¯re done,¡± the oni replied instead, nodding in the direction of the door. ¡°Get out.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, fuck you too¡­¡± Aisha grumbled as she stood, turning her back on the two Yakuza without so much as a twinge of unease; she didn¡¯t need to see them to know what they were doing. Annoyingly, they didn¡¯t seem to be doing anything; the troll was watching her with just as much disinterest as he had when she¡¯d walked in, while the oni had already gone back to typing on her AR keyboard.


    As Aisha stepped out into the corridor and saw that the line now stretched all the way down to the stairwell, she realised why they didn¡¯t care; she was just another desperate face to them. They didn¡¯t know she was an adept, didn¡¯t know she¡¯d abseiled off the side of the interstate or climbed up the side of a twenty-five story tower block to burgle the penthouse. It was what she¡¯d planned, but Aisha still hated it.


    That hate turned into discomfort as she navigated her way through the packed market-corridors of the old office building and out into the no-less-packed streets of Japantown. She picked up the pace, striding with ease through the crowds as she let herself flow like a fish through a river of metahumanity. She drew more attention that way, but she didn¡¯t care. It was better than being nobody.


    As she drew closer to Archer¡¯s Bridge and its underslung metro line, the character of Japantown changed. It was a narrow band of prosperity, the same converted office buildings only imitating the genuine shantytown architecture seen deeper in the district. They were full of kitschy restaurants, anachronistic Pachinko and Mah-jong parlours, and offensively Japanese souvenir shops selling cheap clothes and cheaper swords.


    Aisha knew from experience that if she slipped past the outer layers of that office building, with its code-compliant modifications and basic SIN checks for reservations in mid-range restaurants selling sushi for upper-mid-range prices, she¡¯d find a tight warren of lightless apartments inhabited by the people who worked to preserve the tourist traps, or the hidden brothels and bunraku parlours that high-class clients would be ushered into to give them the experience of crime without the actual risk.


    Checking the time on her new commlink, Aisha hurried up the stairs to the metro station, pushing past the downward flow of office workers looking for somewhere to relax, couples looking for somewhere romantic and rowdy high schoolers who¡¯d go as far into Japantown as they dared in search of someone who¡¯d sell them drugs or alcohol.


    At the turnstile, a light flicked from red to yellow as it detected the fake SIN in Aisha¡¯s commlink. It was the most basic level of security ¨C checking whether she even had a SIN, rather than who it said she was ¨C but Aisha was still glad to know she hadn¡¯t been sold a dud. When she slotted a credstick into a port just below the pad the light went green before the bars swung out, letting her push her way through onto the platform just as a train had finished loading its cargo of passengers.


    Aisha squeezed through the doors, twisting her body to fit through the closing gap. It was quiet by the standards of the metro, which meant it was still far too crowded for her tastes. The line only became busier as it passed through Midtown; dozens of middle-class passengers arriving with every passing stop and only half as many leaving. There were no internal doors between the carriages, which meant Aisha¡¯s heels gave her a commanding view right down the length of the train.


    It meant they could see her too, especially given that orks and trolls were very much in the minority. She saw an elven mother cast a disapproving look at her outfit, then pull her school-age children in closer. Further down the carriage, a man in a suit with a Medhall logo on his tie clip elbowed the woman next to him ¨C maybe a coworker ¨C and shared a joke that had them both chuckling.


    Aisha heard exactly what they said, even over the din of the carriage and the squeal of the metro making a turn. She grinned, showing plenty of tusk, and flipped the pair of them off. As she¡¯d expected, they just scowled and looked the other way; wageslaves were too browbeaten to ever consider kicking off on public transport.


    They got off three stops later, but the looks never entirely stopped. More people were constantly flowing in and out of the carriage until it passed beyond the tall residential buildings of Midtown, dashing over the river before dropping down into the antique skyline of the old city centre.


    The buildings in that part of the city ¨C protected for their historical value, though Aisha didn¡¯t see what was so valuable about them ¨C were mostly made of red bricks or white stone, with the very tallest only reaching fifteen stories high. Here and there, the last-century cityscape was broken up by sleek modern towers, where planning permission had lapsed and allowed the modern age to intrude on Brockton Bay¡¯s Fifth World reservation.


    Aisha¡¯s stop was on a modern platform that was suspended above the old street on spindly struts, putting her in mind of a spaceship hovering over a primitive civilisation. There was no staircase down, just four glass-walled elevators mounted at either end of the platform.


    There were two Knight Errant officers standing beside each set of elevators, with rifles held in their hands as their impassive full-face visors looked over the disembarking crowd. A drone hovered above them, a circular reconnaissance unit that was giving them a bird¡¯s eye view of the crowd.


    Aisha knew that even if she couldn¡¯t see it, they were currently watching everyone on the platform on a far deeper level than just the visual. Their visors concealed a suite of AR-linked sensors that, in combination with the drone, were tracking and scanning the SINs of everyone who was attempting to get into Midtown.


    It was worse on the ground ¨C which was why Aisha hadn¡¯t even considered walking. With violence spreading throughout the northern half of the city, Knight Errant had set up checkpoints all along the boundaries between Midtown and its neighbours, Japantown and the North End. SINners got searched, unless they were too important to touch, while the SINless were being turned away. Rather than two bored transport officers, Aisha would have faced half a dozen if her fake had failed.


    The result was that the old streets were quieter than usual, with the homeless population forcibly moved on with more aggression than normal. It meant Aisha stood out even more, but she didn¡¯t care; her SIN was holding, and she¡¯d almost made it there.


    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    Still, she sighed with relief as she pushed open the glass doors of an eight-storey brick building, gliding purposefully past a half-asleep security guard into an elevator and thumbing the button for the sixth floor.


    ¡®Naranjo Secure Clothiers¡¯ looked pretty much how Aisha had expected it to, at first glance. The elevator opened onto a tastefully furnished reception area with brown syn-leather couches, a deep green carpet and faux-wood panelled walls. At least, Aisha assumed it was all synthetic; this deep into the city, it could well be the real deal.


    The elf behind the reception desk was certainly real, looking at Aisha with a practiced smile on her made-up face as she gestured in AR. The smile became imperceptibly strained at whatever she found, though Aisha would have doubted anyone but her would have noticed it.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, miss,¡± she began, her tone the very essence of politeness, ¡°but we have no reservations under ¡®Jasmine Olsen.¡¯¡±


    Aisha chuckled, sauntering towards the woman as her hand began to drift towards a button underneath her desk. Aisha wondered what it did; would turrets drop out of the ceiling? Security drones walk out of hidden alcoves in the wall? A team of heavies storm in from the next room? Explosives in the couch?


    ¡°Yeah, you wouldn¡¯t. Appointment¡¯s under ¡®Imp.¡¯ Here to see the boss.¡±


    The secretary¡¯s eyes darted to the left as she checked something. Aisha wondered if she¡¯d gone for an eye implant, but decided that she was probably just wearing AR lenses. She seemed like the type who valued their all-natural appearance for entirely different reasons than Aisha.


    ¡°I see,¡± she blinked. ¡°Apologies, ma¡¯am. He¡¯ll see you now. Please,¡± she gestured to a wooden door behind her, with a brass handle and an old-fashioned keyhole that Aisha was sure she recognised as a high-end lock mocked up to look antiquated.


    ¡°Ma¡¯am, huh?¡± she murmured to herself as she passed the secretary. ¡°Classy place¡­¡±


    Beyond the doorway was an expansive studio, far larger than any creative space the Troupe had. Parts of it were set aside for work, with mannequins, assembly machines and dozens of other obscure tools arranged on neat wooden shelves, while other parts were made for the business, with comfortable furniture, a richly-decorated desk with equally fancy seats and an entire wall just for swatches of different fabric. The windows ¨C five of them ¨C stretched up almost to the ceiling, though Aisha could tell from the faint distortion of the light that the glass was armoured and could darken at the touch of a button.


    There was an android standing by the window ¨C some high-end model with a metal faceplate sculpted into a distinguished, masculine look. It had been dressed in an old dinner suit, with a black bow tie and a red sash around its waist, while its metal hands ended in a variety of different manipulator digits meant to serve the needs of its owner.


    The owner ¨C Naranjo himself ¨C was standing beside the window, looking down on the street below. He was a gnome, barely able to look over the windowsill at only eighty centimetres tall, and he was dressed in a suit that was as anachronistic as his robo-butler, with a high-necked white shirt and a red scarf-like necktie tucked into his waistcoat.


    ¡°Miss ¡®Imp¡¯,¡± he began, turning away from the window. ¡°You¡¯re late.¡±


    He didn¡¯t sound as angry as Aisha was expecting ¨C or, he did, but there was something else to it. She¡¯d never been good at reading people.


    ¡°Midtown¡¯s locked up tighter than a dragon¡¯s vault,¡± she replied by way of an explanation. ¡°I had to buy a fake SIN just to make it here.¡±


    ¡°Indeed?¡± Naranjo asked. ¡°Yes, I suppose that would cause some difficulties.¡±


    Not something you think about, is it? Aisha thought to herself. Bet the pawns nod and call you ¡®sir¡¯ whenever you walk past.


    ¡°So¡­ is it ready?¡± she asked, a hand reaching into her bag. ¡°Because I have your money.¡±


    ¡°Please,¡± the clothier waved a hand dismissively. ¡°Let us not discuss something as gauche as payment when you haven¡¯t even laid eyes on what you¡¯re paying for. I was, after all, working on measurements I did not take myself.¡±


    ¡°Did I miss any out?¡± Aisha asked, worried. She¡¯d pestered a tailor in the Troupe to measure her, using a list she¡¯d jotted down as a guide, but maybe she¡¯d missed out some vital measurement.


    ¡°No, nothing like that,¡± Naranjo shook his head, a faint smile pulling at the corner of his lip. ¡°I was simply worried that you may have made a mistake in writing the numbers down.¡±


    He looked Aisha up and down. It wasn¡¯t like when the oni had stared at her, but there was something similarly clinical in his gaze.


    ¡°But I can see that my worries were unfounded,¡± he spoke, openly smiling. ¡°You¡¯re quite the beauty, and it looks like every measurement was exact. I must admit, I¡¯m a little surprised.¡±


    ¡°Your husband know you like eyefucking the customers?¡± Aisha asked, gesturing to a framed picture on the wall of the gnome, a dwarf in a pair of chinos and a young girl in a sundress.


    Naranjo openly laughed, his carefully-composed manner breaking entirely.


    ¡°You misunderstand. It¡¯s rare I get to meet someone who¡¯s won the genetic lottery, but the prize is worth a lot less in this day and age. I more commonly deal with a sculpted aesthetic that is as much a work of art as my own creations. After all, why deny yourself beauty simply because of random chance? The same odds that fell so much in your favour put me in the wrong body entirely, but nature¡¯s mistakes are easily fixed.¡±


    If you have money, Aisha thought, her mind drifting back to familiar faces in Circus¡¯ weird little quasi-gang. If not, could take a lifetime to get even close to comfortable in your skin.


    ¡°But I digress,¡± the gnome said, shaking his head as he gestured towards a pair of couches. ¡°Please, take a seat. I will have your attire collected.¡±


    Aisha sat, tapping her foot impatiently as Naranjo sent the android off to rummage through the cupboards. Idly, she looked around the room, taking in the half-finished garments meant for the clothier¡¯s regular customers.


    Most of them were suits ¨C their seams opened to reveal pieces of armoured fabric halfway through being stitched in ¨C but others were stranger. An elegant ballgown sat on a mannequin, while there was a neatly folded heap of transparent material sitting on a table that put Aisha in mind of a snakeskin.


    ¡°Most of your clients are bodyguards?¡± she asked.


    ¡°They make up my bread and butter. It¡¯s a delicate balancing act that depends more on who they¡¯re guarding than the bodyguard themself. They¡¯re meant to accessorise, in a sense. Never to overshadow their principal or even their principal¡¯s more intimate employees. What¡¯s more, they follow them everywhere.¡±


    He gestured towards the heap of transparent material.


    ¡°That¡¯s for a client whose principal is holidaying in the French Riviera next month. It¡¯s called ¡®Second Skin,¡¯ and I am one of a handful of clothiers in New England who¡¯s licensed to fit it. It¡¯s an armoured bodyglove; entirely transparent and fitted so closely to the client¡¯s body that if she were to gain or lose as little as half a kilo, it would become useless. Perfect for accompanying your principal as she sunbathes on a beach or the deck of a yacht, when paired with appropriate swimwear.¡±


    Aisha didn¡¯t reply; her attention snapped over to the android butler, who was returning with a grey bundle held in its arms. She stood up, striding over to a long table as the butler set the bundle down and unfurled it, revealing a one-piece taksuit made from a grey material patterned with tiny, almost indistinguishable hexagons. It had a scarf-like hood of black fabric attached to the neck, a belt and several pouches circling the hips, and it ended in flexible boots ¨C all of them coated in that same pattern.


    At the centre of the bundle, hidden until the android had unwrapped it, was a white-grey mask of armoured ceramic, though that too had the tell-tale hexagons stretched across its surface. The mask had been sculpted to look like a grinning demon with bared, pointed teeth ¨C including prominent fangs ¨C and swept-back horns jutting out of the forehead. The eyes were black from cover to cover and stylised to look fierce; more animal than human.


    ¡°Oh that¡¯s fuckin¡¯ beautiful,¡± Aisha murmured as she picked up one of the arms of the suit. The material was smooth beneath her fingers, slick enough that it felt like water would run right off it almost without touching. As she moved down the arm, she felt the faint padding over the elbow and the reinforced patches over the gloves; armoured pads over the knuckles and grip-fast patches on the underside of each finger.


    ¡°The base fabric is Evo¡¯s SoftWeave,¡± Naranjo said, moving up to stand beside her. ¡°It¡¯s lightweight and flexible enough that it should not prove a barrier to any motion whatsoever, while also acting as a very adaptive baselayer. The coating is ruthenium polymer, of course. The highest grade I have.¡±


    He reached over the table, grabbing the mask and handing it to Imp, who held it up in front of her face and stared deeply into the featureless black lenses, seeing her own eyes reflected back at her.


    ¡°The mask is a more conventional ceramic. Like the rest of the suit, it won¡¯t hold up under fire, but it¡¯s good for blunt force trauma. The lenses cover a standard optic suite; the entire inner surface above the mouth is a screen. Below that is an integrated respirator. With the hood up, that creates a CBRN-rated seal. It also has a built-in commlink, of course, though that can be switched off to allow it to function entirely offline.¡±


    Aisha looked around the room, half-considering throwing her clothes off then and there. It was perfect; she wanted to wear it now.


    ¡°Ah, over there,¡± the gnome gestured to a tasteful set of panelling on the other side of the room. It came to Aisha¡¯s shoulders, but it¡¯d be enough. She bundled the suit up in her arms more carefully than she¡¯d ever held anything in her life, then darted behind the modesty screen, leaving her handbag on the table.


    ¡°So, if you don¡¯t mind me asking,¡± the gnome began as Aisha kicked off her heels and shrugged off her top, ¡°what have you been using until now?¡±


    ¡°Just a basic chameleon suit,¡± she answered. ¡°The mask was custom, but the suit itself was second hand. Had them paired together by a guy I know. I could get it to change colour, but nothing like this.¡±


    Naranjo scoffed, but Aisha didn¡¯t feel like he was directing it at her. ¡°Basic camouflage, nothing more. Good for soldiers and hunters, but not professionals. You¡¯ll find your new suit much more appropriate.¡±


    Aisha only half heard him. She was kneeling down with the suit in her hands, trying to figure out how exactly she put it on. It took her a moment, but eventually she found a zip on the back of the suit, just to the left of a raised strip of grey material that ran down the length of the spine. It was probably meant to house the electronics that allowed the suit to function, but to Aisha¡¯s eyes it looked like a spinal column that had grown out and broken through the skin. She very much approved.


    Hitting the button that disengaged the teeth of the zip, Aisha stood and slid her legs down into the boots, pulling up the waist of the suit before slipping her hands down the arms and pushing her head through the hood. The boots tightened automatically around her ankles, as the zip magnetically locked itself on her back.


    The fit was perfect; sleek and snug from head to toe, yet ¨C as Aisha flexed her arm ¨C with enough give that moving shouldn¡¯t be any issue whatsoever. Hanging the mask on the modesty screen, Aisha quickly went through the motions of a kata Circus had taught her, one that mixed conventional fighting moves with acrobatics and contortionist stretches that would leave most people lying on the floor in a puddle of broken bones.


    When she sprung back to her feet from a one-handed handstand, she saw that Naranjo has stepped around the side of the screen to see what the noise was. He had his hand on his chin and was nodding to himself.


    ¡°It seems the measurements were correct.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s fucking wiz,¡± Aisha grinned, snatching the mask from where it was hanging and sliding it on over her head. She reached back, grabbed the hood and pulled it forward until it connected to the mask with the click of more mag-locks.


    For an instant, her world was pitch black, before colour swept down the inside of the mask as the optics came online.


    He was right, Aisha thought. It¡¯s like it¡¯s not even there.


    Another fraction of a second and the integrated commlink connected to AR, suddenly marking out a dozen different elements floating throughout the room; part of the creature comfort systems Naranjo kept around to adjust the heat and humidity, raise or lower the shutters and even open the windows altogether if he was so inclined. Aisha blinked in irritation; the illusion had been broken.


    ¡°So how do I turn it on?¡± she asked, looking down at the gnome through the mask¡¯s featureless black lenses.


    ¡°Through the HUD,¡± he explained, turning his right hand palm up and furling and unfurling his fingers. ¡°This motion will bring up the menu.¡±


    Aisha copied him, watching as a small AR window of red letters appeared just above her palm. She skimmed over the list of options before landing on one that was in a larger font than the others, and accompanied by a big red button.


    She hit it, and the word ¡®Activate¡¯ lit up brighter for a moment before being swept away by new letters reading ¡®Deactivate.¡¯ She held up her arm in front of her face, the interface disappearing as her arm passed through it ¨C along with all the other AR elements in the room as the suit throttled its Matrix connection ¨C and watched as vivid red lines spread out across her arms ¨C a digital overlay, she realised after a second ¨C while the fabric itself gradually shifted until it had become completely transparent.


    ¡°What¡¯s with the overlay?¡± she asked.


    ¡°It¡¯s necessary for hand-eye coordination,¡± Naranjo explained, still looking at where she had been standing even as she walked around his back, miming picking his pockets and smiling as he didn¡¯t do so much as flinch. ¡°People don¡¯t need to see their hand to know where it is, but they expect to. If you want to ¡®see¡¯ yourself, look over there.¡±


    He was pointing towards a tall, gilt-framed mirror in the corner of the room ¨C large enough that even a troll could see their reflection from head to toe. Aisha paced up to it like a predator; with slow, deliberate steps, keeping herself just out of frame. Only when she was close enough to touch it did she take a single step to the left, putting herself in full view of the mirrored surface.


    There was nothing there. No distortion, no haze or static. Not even a gradual shift as the ruthenium polymer adapted to the change in position. Aisha swiped a hand up and down in front of her face. She could see the AR outline over each finger, but in the mirror itself there was still nothing. She moved faster, flicking her hand like she was throwing a punch, and finally saw a visible haze of distorted air as she outpaced the suit.


    I can¡¯t move too fast, she thought to herself, but it¡¯s still so much better than I hoped.


    ¡°How long does the charge last?¡±


    ¡°Four hours of active stealth,¡± Naranjo answered. ¡°There are charging ports at the top of the spine and the left side of the mask ¨C both inside the suit rather than outside, to preserve the polymer layer.¡±


    Aisha shifted her hand, bringing up the menu again. Her eyes darted quickly over the option to shut off the commlink, taking the suit offline, before she hit the ¡®Deactivate¡¯ button and watched as the AR lines faded away and her arm swept back into existence.


    She reached up, pulled back the hood and removed her mask, then whooped and jumped a meter and a half into the air.


    ¡°This is fucking nova, chummer.¡±


    ¡°Worth the cost?¡± the clothier asked, his grin widening in the face of Aisha¡¯s infectious joy.


    ¡°Pay for itself ten times over,¡± Aisha said, darting over to her handbag and upending it onto the table, spilling out the cluster of credsticks, her fresh-bought commlink, a collapsible combat tomahawk made of composite metals and polymers, and a meticulously maintained ¨C but rarely used ¨C Ultimax 70 machine pistol.


    She reached for the pouches that ringed the hips of her suit, filing away credsticks and the commlink into smaller pouches while tucking the pistol and axe into the holsters that had been specifically built to match them.


    ¡°Remember to always close those,¡± Naranjo interjected. ¡°They¡¯ll be slower to draw, but the stealth coating is useless if people can see a pistol grip floating in mid-air.¡±


    ¡°Got it,¡± Aisha answered as she tucked away the last of the bag¡¯s contents. She still had plenty of pouches to spare, which was good; plenty of room to fill them with chips, jewellery or whatever else she could find people to pay her to steal.


    She grabbed the silver credstick and held it up between two fingers.


    ¡°Fifteen kay, as asked.¡±


    Naranjo stepped forward, reaching for the credstick, only for Aisha to flip it back into her palm.


    ¡°I¡¯ve gotta ask, though, why¡¯d you go for this in the first place? Whirligig has a John who knows you, hangs out in the same circles, I know that much, but what do you get out of selling gear to street scum like me?¡±


    The clothier smiled, leaning against the back of the couch as he looked up at Aisha.


    ¡°It isn¡¯t my normal work, true. The design theory behind it is an interesting paradox; a stealth suit that stands out. That intimidates. Can I ask a question for a question? Why the mask? It seems a little too close to a caricature.¡±


    Aisha set down the credstick and picked up the mask, eyeing the fangs, the horns. She didn¡¯t answer at first; she¡¯d always had trouble putting her feelings into words.


    ¡°You don¡¯t need a stealth suit to be invisible,¡± she answered, glancing out the window, where the rain was sputtering out, leaving only occasional droplets to run down the panes. ¡°Out there, nobody can see you anyway. Nobody knows who you are, what you do, what you want or why you want it. It¡¯s true for me and it¡¯s true for you, but in here you¡¯ve got your sign, your fabrics, your girl at the front desk. You¡¯re somebody.¡±


    She turned to face him, flipping the mask around and holding it up by her face, side by side.


    ¡°I¡¯ve gotta be invisible to do my job, but I don¡¯t want to be invisible off it. I want to stand out, build a rep. Hire a thief in a baggie hoodie and sweatpants, you¡¯ll forget them by the end of the hour. Hire this?¡± she struck a pose, spreading her hands and cocking her hips. ¡°Like you said, I won the genetic lottery. The mask just adds to it; freak ¡®em out and they¡¯ll just remember you more.¡±


    Naranjo chuckled to himself, shaking his head.


    ¡°Then by all means, burn your mark into this city, Imp. As for me? You said it yourself; here I¡¯m somebody. My worth to society is tied to my business, my worth as a person is tied to my family, my friends. I¡¯ve invested a lot of time and effort into all of them and it¡¯s tied me down to one way of living. Rooftop escapades are beyond my reach, but through this work I can get as close as I possibly can to a genuine adventure.¡±


    Utterly satisfied, Aisha left the clothiers completely invisibly, with a genuine spring in her step. She passed through the crowds of the city centre as fast as the suit would let her, deftly moving around couples and salarymen and anyone else without leaving a trace of her presence beyond the small amount of air each motion displaced. Briefly, she considered falling back on her old tricks; sliding watches off wrists, lifting commlinks or picking earrings right out of the skin while leaving their wearer none the wiser, but then her invisibility would break.


    It''s time to put away the kid shit, Aisha thought to herself. This suit¡¯s for bigger and better.


    When she reached the metro platform, she climbed over the ticket barrier in full view of a Knight Errant cop. The commlink with her fake SIN on it was stuffed into a pouch, but she¡¯d left her old clothes behind alongside her fifteen thousand nuyen payment; she didn¡¯t want anything to get in-between her and using the suit in public for the first time.


    Aisha hung back from the edge of the platform as the train pulled in, keeping clear of the flow of passengers as she tried to find somewhere to stand where people wouldn¡¯t run into her by accident. The platform was for trains heading back towards Midtown and the North End, which meant that the crowd were almost universally workers on the way back from twelve hour shifts manning cubicles in offices, or staffing museums, shops and galleries that they¡¯d never be able to afford to visit.


    She was afraid of that, as well; it was another fate worse than death. Aisha often thought to herself, looking in on society from the outside, that no matter how bad things got, at least she was still free.


    As she climbed up onto the roof of the train moments before it left the station, Aisha¡¯s mind drifted back down old paths. She often wondered what her life would been like if she¡¯d gone with her dad in the divorce instead, if her mom had taken the amnesty and reregistered their SINs rather than drifting through ¡®sixty-four in a haze of drugs and shit boyfriends.


    If they hadn¡¯t drifted from flophouse to flophouse, her mom paying rent under the table to sketchy landlords, or squeezing Aisha into some small space in the corner of a new boyfriend¡¯s apartment so that she wouldn¡¯t dampen his mood just by being around. If they hadn¡¯t gone from there to one squatters den after another, Aisha spending more and more time out on the streets until she came back to the junkie¡¯s den to find her mother had gone; disappeared somewhere into the shantytown mass at the city¡¯s northernmost point, where ghouls lurk in the dark places and the people shuffle through the streets like they¡¯re just as dead.


    Lying back on the roof of a speeding train, watching a city full of registered SINners drift by in its endless pattern of shift work, rent and a million other screws holding it in place ¨C keeping the machine turning along ¨C Aisha knew with absolute certainty that even though it had been hard, even though every new stage of her childhood had been a new nightmare, it was still better than the alternative.


    She was a better person because of it. A stronger person. She¡¯d become someone that little Aisha Laborn, nine year old UCAS citizen and elementary school underperformer, could never have become. She was an adept, capable of putting real magic into her every move. She was a master thief, able to sneak in and out of anywhere she wanted to. The suit was just the final brick in the wall; it didn¡¯t make her invisible, it made her invincible.


    That feeling carried Aisha through the North End as she leapt from the train to a low rooftop, her suit shimmering as she sprinted across the rooftops, walkways and balconies of a dozen different tenement buildings on her way to the Troupe, her bed and her tiny horde of petty cash tucked behind a loose brick.


    It lasted until her ears started to catch the sound of gunfire reverberating through the canyons of buildings; until she saw the smoke rising in the distance.


    As she drew closer to her home, Aisha began to see signs of carnage on the streets below. There were bodies lying by the side of the road, some of them dressed in normal clothes, some wearing the red and black colours of the network of smaller gangs that paid tribute to the Chosen, while far too many were dressed in an eclectic riot of colours and styles. Far too many wore familiar faces.


    Aisha¡¯s pace slowed, creeping over the rooftops rather than dropping down to street level for the final approach. She was glad of the filters in her mask keeping the smell of the smoke out, glad of the invisibility itself as she risked occasional glances down into the street, seeing packs of humans under the command of cybered-up Chosen members gathering in their dozens.


    In the places they¡¯d stopped to gather, they¡¯d also stopped to make examples; bodies were strung up from lampposts, small pop-up stores without licenses or insurance had been looted and defaced, their owners nowhere to be seen. An off the books pharmacy was being meticulously dismantled, the drugs within carted out and catalogued by a woman with a voice box stitched into her throat and a metal cage mask around her head.


    Aisha lay flat on the very edge of the building and peered over the side, looking down on about a dozen men and women throwing firebombs at the densely-packed tenement block, cheering every time one of the bombs broke a window and landed inside the building. She could hear the sound of feet running through the corridors just below her, as families fled their packed apartments in terror.


    Panic gripped Aisha then. Not fear for her life, but fear for the closest thing she had to a home. She sprung off, running directly towards the sound of gunfire even as her heart pounded in her chest. She had no idea what she was doing; she¡¯d never killed anyone, never fought in a gunfight. That wasn¡¯t the lesson shantytown kids learned.


    The runners survive. The fighters die.


    When the makeshift township came into view, it reminded Aisha of movies she¡¯d seen of castles under siege. Twin machine guns had been set up on top of Trainwreck¡¯s makeshift wall, firing down the length of the street at an up-armoured bulldozer that was relentlessly grinding its way down the length of the road, pushing aside cars and trucks that had been hastily turned into yet more barricades.


    The Chosen advanced behind it, using its massive bulk as cover. Not the bottom-feeders hanging around the outskirts of the fight, but real, blooded Chosen with their naked cybernetics and military-grade gear. Every now and then, one of them would dart to the side, take up a position behind one of the cars and start firing at the machine guns on the wall. Aisha saw one of their shots land, saw a tall woman with half her face painted blue fall back as the top of her skull was shorn off in a spark of subdermal armour, only to be replaced a moment later by a horned satyr with shamanic symbols dangling from necklaces over his bare, hair-covered chest.


    Aisha saw movement on the other side of the street, as Chosen gunmen moved from window to window, trying to find a vantage point from which they could see over the wall. She didn¡¯t know tactics, but she knew they¡¯d be trying the same in the building below her.


    Struck by the sudden urge to do something more than just run away or huddle up behind the barricade and wait to die with the rest of them, Aisha knelt down on the very edge of the building, gripped the lip of the roof and swung herself down onto the wall, dropping from windowsill to windowsill until she found a broken one three stories down.


    Aisha swung herself through the frame, her boots crunching on the broken glass that littered the floor of the semi-abandoned unit, with only a sleeping bag and a gas burner in the corner of the room showing that someone was living there, while the upturned bowl of canned soup suggested that they¡¯d left in a hurry.


    Trusting in her invisibility, Aisha stepped out into the narrow corridor that ran the length of the tenement building just in time to find herself face to face with a pair of Chosen wearing ballistic vests and carrying assault rifles, their cybernetic optics twitching as they edged down the corridor with more confidence that she was expecting.


    As one of the Chosen paused, turned and fired a quick burst of shots through the wall beside him, Aisha realised it was because their optics were cutting through the flimsy plasterboard like it wasn¡¯t even there, letting them see anyone in the building who wasn¡¯t wearing a high-end stealth suit.


    Following them into one of the apartments, once home to a family of four crammed into two rooms, Aisha drew the tomahawk from her belt. When the Chosen split, one to each window, she picked her target ¨C a man with a human skull spray-painted onto the back of his armoured vest ¨C and swung her axe into his neck, following up the blow with another under the shoulder before grabbing him by the back of the head and reversing the axe to drive the spike through his right optic and into his skull.


    Blood sprayed over Aisha¡¯s suit as his comrade turned, but she was already drawing her pistol with her other hand. Without even looking, she lined up a shot on his head and pulled the trigger, dozens of hours of practice paying off as a three-round burst passed right through his skull.


    Shots were being fired from the building opposite, drawing Aisha¡¯s attention away from the blood pooling from the Chosen¡¯s skulls. Eclectically-dressed gang members were moving from room to room, killing any Chosen they found but not yet firing down on the main force in the street below. Aisha felt her chest tighten as she watched them; she wasn¡¯t sure if it was in fear or in relief.


    Once they were in position, the Troupe attacked in a shower of gunfire and spells, the air almost reverberating with the force of the magic being thrown down into the street, sending Chosen scattering from glittering arcs of electricity, roiling tongues of fire and an absolute barrage of conventional weapons.


    The barricade creaked and groaned as an immense armoured figure clambered up to the top, firing down the length of the street with twin assault rifles mounted on the shoulders of the oversized exoskeleton he wore to counter his paraplegia.


    Trainwreck leapt down off the barricade, landing on the asphalt with a crash and a whirr of servos that sounded exactly like his namesake. He was followed by more of the Troupe; lithe adepts and cyborgs on elegantly-sculpted metal limbs who rushed forward to fight the Chosen with blades and spurs and blunt sledgehammers. Trainwreck stormed right through the middle of them, leaping up and driving both his oversized metal fists into the engine of the dozer, before pulling one back and punching the armoured cabin so hard that the piece of armour dismounted from its frame, jerking back and crushing the driver beneath a solid metal sheet.


    Aisha grinned beneath her mask, her grip tightening on the axe as she edged closer to the window. She wanted to help, but she found herself more and more hesitant the closer she drew to the window. Trainwreck was in among the Chosen, sweeping aside three at a time with each swing of his fists, and a few of the Troupe¡¯s awakened members were able to keep pace with him, but the rest of them weren¡¯t doing so well.


    For every Chosen they managed to kill, three of the Troupe were dying. Aisha had never been part of the gang, in as much as they even were a gang. They were artists, sculptors, prostitutes, actors, thieves, dancers; exiles from society who plied their trade on street corners for slightly more than beggars made and crawled back to their sort-of-commune so that they had somewhere to sleep at night.


    She was one of the drifters, someone who came in and out of the district as she pleased, knowing the faces of the people around her but not really knowing them. She was good, she knew that, but she wasn¡¯t a soldier. Not like the Chosen.


    Each one of them was a born-again killer, living for nothing more than learning new ways to murder her people, or just people like her. Even when surrounded by an absolute riot of fighters desperate to defend their home, they managed to stay cool and controlled. Their shots were still accurate, their forms able to parry incoming blows with the spark of steel on steel. Without the advantage of surprise, without her suit, they¡¯d gut Aisha without a second thought and rip out her tusks as a trophy.


    And then she saw the reinforcements, and Aisha was struck by an almost physical wave of raw, primal terror.


    Another two dozen Chosen were advancing down the street, moving in pairs with one firing as the other darted up to the next piece of cover only to drop to one knee and cover their partner. Their fire was unrestrained, trusting in their training and their linked neural network to guide their shots away from their comrades in the melee. Aisha didn¡¯t see them; all she could see was the monster at the head of the crowd, striding down the street like the gunfire all around him was nothing more than a gentle rain.


    He was as tall as any troll Aisha had met and was carrying so much chrome it seemed impossible. Everything below the neck was metal, thick enough that it could almost be confused for power armour if it weren¡¯t for the obviously inhuman proportions. As an incoming shot sheared the synthskin off his temple, Aisha saw that even his head was nothing more than a metal shell given a cosmetic coat of flesh.


    If there¡¯s anything ¡®ganic in there, it¡¯s buried deep, some small part of Aisha¡¯s mind thought, almost buried beneath the overwhelming fear. She had to fight herself not to throw up.


    The cyberpsycho began to jog, then run, then sprint down the street at an impossibly vast speed, leaving his followers behind as he ran directly into the melee. From his shoulders, micro-missile racks emerged and fired their payload, sending a dozen rockets twisting through the air before detonating all along the length of the building opposite Aisha, pulping the Troupe¡¯s firing positions and shearing off whole swathes of the building¡¯s fa?ade where they hit load-bearing supports.


    The backblast shattered the windows of Aisha¡¯s building, as she reflexively raised her arms to cover protect her face from the glass shrapnel. The shards, some centimetres long, skidded off the armoured fabric of her suit, the few that made it past her arms peppering uselessly against the armoured surface of her mask. She risked a glance through the broken windows, only to see the cyberpsycho ¨C moving faster than anyone, chromed or no, had any right to ¨C drive his fist into Trainwreck¡¯s armoured chest and rip out the flesh within in a spray of blood and viscera.


    Aisha fell back in shock, scrabbling backwards on her hands and legs as some deep, primal unease twinged at the part of her brain that was awakened to the magic of the world. He was wrong. Wrong in a way that was impossible to explain, wrong in a way that made Aisha sick to her stomach.


    The noise pouring through the blown-out windows was only getting louder, the gunfire and screams becoming more and more real to her. She realised the Chosen had broken through; that their cyberpsycho and their reinforcements had killed everyone on the street and broken through the barricade, storming through the market and into the closest thing she had to a home.


    Aisha pulled herself to her feet, held her hand up in front of her face to check she was still invisible, and ran as far and as fast as she could, leaving the massacre behind her.

 Recompile: 6.01

    Fuelled by anaesthetics, adrenaline, blood loss or just agonising pain, I drifted in and out of consciousness, bombarded by psychedelic nightmares. A bright light in the centre of my vision became an unblinking eye glaring down at me, with tendrils of pure brilliance reaching out to envelop me in their web-like grasp. The rocking of the ambulance¡¯s suspension became the lapping of the waves as I floated in the waters of the Bay, buffeted by the wake of an immense, slab-sided vessel.


    I saw an afterimage Lisa¡¯s face looking down at me, a false grin of reassurance on her features undermined by the worry clear in her eyes. I began to wake, once, my body flailing as I spasmed. Everything except for my right arm, which lay still and inert by my side. I was outside again, hearing rain falling on an awning a few feet above my head before I whited out to the sound of doors sliding open.


    There were more flashes of sensation; hurried voices talking in professional tones, armoured silhouettes being replaced by slighter figures in scrubs, someone leaning in close, their gaze flicking to a tablet in their hand. The corridor was replaced by a room, the mask connected to something else. The tang of a different anaesthetic flooded into my chest as I felt something being pricked into my left arm.


    That time, they hit me with something stronger. I didn¡¯t drift away or even black out; I blinked and suddenly I was alone in a half-lit room with all that had come before left as murky memories. There was something wrapped around my upper arm ¨C the one I could feel ¨C and a bank of monitoring equipment on a stand next to me, tuned into a plethora of AR programs that circulated the data rather than sending it elsewhere.


    The thing around my arm was contracting, acting according to a routine set to go off every fifteen minutes. I could see it recording my blood pressure, pulse and half a dozen different readings, even if I didn¡¯t yet have enough hold on my digital senses to actually make out what the numbers were.


    Falteringly, I expanded my digital awareness, taking in an inert trideo set mounted in the corner of the room, the limited sensors of a smoke detector, the air conditioning and radiator¡¯s link into the broader climate control network for the whole complex. That gave me a snapshot of the building I was in; large, with most of the space on the floors above and below me given to long rooms without any partitions that affected the airflow.


    Has to be a hospital, I thought. I was still groggy, but I had half expected to wake up in a cell in some corp¡¯s basement. Instead, from the look of things, I was on the third floor of a twelve-storey building, tucked away in a hall of private rooms, only some of which were being actively maintained by the climate controls ¨C which I took to mean that only some were occupied.


    Private rooms, I realised, far later than I should; I didn¡¯t even have health insurance.


    Even though it still felt like I was trying to push my mind through a sieve, I stretched out my senses to encompass more of the devices around me, picking up a cluster of them just outside the door to my room. A smartwatch, commlink, headset radio, biomonitor, IFF tag, cybereyes, smartlinked submachine gun.


    A chill went down my spine. The cluster of devices wasn¡¯t moving, but I didn¡¯t know if the guard was there to keep the world out or to keep me in.


    The stab of fear was enough to draw my attention to the biological sensations I¡¯d been deliberately avoiding. The ones that came from my body, rather than my brain. I was sore, my limbs stiff from top to bottom, but I couldn¡¯t feel my right arm. I couldn¡¯t move it, either.


    I tried to sit up, only to slump over as my right arm failed to move with my left. On the second attempt, I was able to shuffle back, pressing myself against the backboard of what was clearly a troll-sized hospital bed, with buttons and disability-friendly holographic controls to adjust its height and elevation. There were multiple joints below me, meant to tilt in different places depending on the vastly divergent size of the metahuman who lay in it. Looking at the door, I could see that the entire room had been designed the same way; the door was tall enough for me to fit through without ducking, and instead of a handle there was a motion sensor panel running down the right hand side where it could be triggered by anyone, of any height.


    I hated this. Hated not knowing, not having any information about what had just happened, what was happening, what was going to happen.


    Had I been wheeled into a long-distant nightmare? Was I logged in the corp¡¯s systems as a Technomancer, about to be whisked off to some secret lab like Labyrinth had been? If not, what did we do to be worth sending armed ambulance crews to retrieve? To have an armed guard posted just outside my door? Why was I here, alone? Where were the others?


    I wanted to leave, but I didn¡¯t know if the guard would let me. I might not have been handcuffed to the bed, but it was clear that someone wanted me here, and that they wouldn¡¯t be happy if I were to go somewhere else. I wasn¡¯t even sure I¡¯d be able to hack my way out of the situation; my brain was still raw with dumpshock, and the thought of diving beyond the surface level of the matrix was enough to make my head ache.


    So, inevitably, I fell back on the age-old pastime of those with nothing to do but wait; I switched on the trideo.


    The last person in the room had tuned it to a financial news channel that I¡¯d never even heard of. It was mid-programme, but the news was global; focusing on the largest markets in the world and only touching on the smaller stuff when things went catastrophically dull. No use to me.


    Skimming through channels, I was quickly reminded just why the trideo set at home had sat unused for the last two years. The only real way to distinguish the channels from each other was the little logo in the bottom right corner, differentiating more financial news, global news, entertainment, so-called ¡®documentary¡¯ channels, children¡¯s entertainment, pay-per-view porn and finally the section of the matrix set aside for local channels. What was actually being broadcast was, without fail, an endless deluge of advertisements.


    Out on the street, advertising was omnipresent to the point of being unremarkable. In some areas, it felt like every single flat surface had been given over to screens, posters and holographic displays. In the metro, advertisements were plastered along the ceiling and above the windows, with holographic projectors mounted to display a line of gaudy images down the middle of the carriage whenever it got empty enough to make the space available.


    The same was true in the matrix, but magnified by a factor of a thousand. Unshackled by the physical limitations of screens and projectors, AR advertising crowded every area of the matrix that was even remotely populated, layered on top of or even within other adverts as they constantly competed for bandwidth, while roaming advirals carried automatically-generated slogans throughout the grid, ever-changing in response to minute trends in social memes, the oldest little more than nonsensical slogans that had long since diverged from the product they were supposed to be pushing.


    I never really saw any of them; my matrix was a place of raw code and datastreams linked together by the ephemeral force of the resonance. I knew the adverts were there, could even see what they were advertising if I peered at the code, but they were just another piece of metahumanity¡¯s intrusion into the resonance.


    For those without my gifts, a matrix-capable device¡¯s value came partly from how effectively it was able to filter that advertising out, using its own algorithm¡¯s to juggle its firewall capacity based on the few ads its owner might actually want to see. I could see that the trideo set was trying to do the same to me, checking my biometrics against the hospital data, but since I didn¡¯t have a policy it didn¡¯t have anything to latch onto. Which was probably why it was showing me an advert for men¡¯s deodorant.


    Fortunately, that was the last advert before the local news channel returned to its previous story.


    The city as a whole had clearly gone from bad to worse since I¡¯d gone under; the broadcast showed a reporter on the scene of a Medhall compound in the North End that had been stormed by the Chosen, making off with large amounts of medical-grade pharmaceuticals. It was a blatant cover-up ¨C not that almost anyone watching the broadcast would realise that ¨C but that didn¡¯t surprise me. What was surprising was that they¡¯d spent lives on it.


    Eight Medhall employees had died in the raid, along with four employees of a contracted security company. Most of the Mehall workers were from the warehouse team, while two were custodians. As their pictures came up on screen, alongside a corporate spokesman vowing retribution, I saw that all but two of them weren¡¯t human.


    It said something about what I¡¯d been through over the last few weeks that the thought of Medhall throwing its less-than-human staff members into the line of fire in order to save face didn¡¯t shock me. I didn¡¯t even wonder how their spokesman could stand in front of a press conference and talk about the families of those who¡¯d died ¨C how the company would be supporting them in what he termed ¡®this difficult time.¡¯


    As to why they resorted to allowing the Chosen to rob them, the answer to that ¨C beyond the Chosen¡¯s need for the drugs ¨C could be seen on the tickertape of rolling news stories crawling along the bottom of the screen, interspersed with the matrix URLs of sponsored messages. ¡°AAO headquarters raided by police over drug charges¡± sent a pretty clear message, as did the one that followed it; ¡°Policlub leader Justin Hammond evades capture.¡±


    Inevitably, the next scrawl concerned the cancelation of a concert in the south of the city, while the meaningless celebrity divorce afterwards was juxtaposed wonderfully by the interview with a tearful widow happening above the tickertape. Then it was back to a particularly violent street battle near Japantown ¨C close enough to Midtown to draw the eye of the news ¨C before a final message about a celebrity death. Diane Anders, the sister of Medhall¡¯s current CEO, had died of an overdose in the rehab clinic where she¡¯d evidently spent the last six years losing a battle with addiction.


    It seemed pointless; there was a gang war going on, dozens ¨C perhaps hundreds ¨C of people were dying every hour, yet all the news cared about was which corp had been hit, which notable had been hurt. I shouldn¡¯t have been surprised; Medhall was sponsoring the station, after all.


    A new device came into my painfully small radius of awareness, immediately drawing my attention away from the trideo set. It was an RFID tag broadcasting the wearer¡¯s corporate SIN and clearances, and it was sufficient for the guard to take one step to the side, letting a nurse slide open the door to my room.


    She was dressed in green scrubs, with her brown hair worn in a green-highlighted braid. Physically, she seemed to be in her mid-twenties, but for some reason I couldn¡¯t explain I felt like she was younger than me. That she was a troll was another indicator of where I was, but her corporate SIN cinched it; she worked for CrashCart, which meant the extraction had been genuine. It wasn¡¯t like a Medhall hospital would employ a troll nurse.


    That confirms the who, I thought, but not the why.


    I was too shocked to speak at first, but then I noticed that she was very deliberately avoiding looking at me, walking right over to the monitoring equipment next to the bed, her mouth moving silently as she copied down information onto a tablet.


    ¡°Hi,¡± I said, awkwardly. My throat was sore; the word came out scratchy, almost like a cough.


    She ignored me, her eyes fixed on the monitor with even more determination.


    ¡°Not allowed to talk?¡± I asked, all while a mantra crept into my mind; what would Tattletale do?


    ¡°Please talk to me?¡± I tried. ¡°I have no idea what¡¯s going on, and I feel like I¡¯m losing my mind, here.¡±


    It didn¡¯t sound right, but I felt like my best option was to build sympathy.


    ¡°Please? I know this has to be scary, but I¡¯m a person too. Can you at least tell me if my¡­ my friend is alright? He was shot right in front of me, I saw them taking him away in an ambulance.¡±


    ¡°We aren¡¯t supposed to talk to the patients,¡± the nurse blurted out. It wasn¡¯t working, I could see that. I couldn¡¯t feign that sort of emotion, so I changed tactics.


    ¡°According to who? Why have you air-gapped that equipment? It¡¯s not on the network. Any other patient, you could just read all that data from the nurse¡¯s station. Instead they send you to go read it manually. In here. With me.¡±


    She flinched, hesitating just a little. I could tell I almost had her; she just needed another push.


    ¡°What¡¯s going on, Hazel?¡±


    She froze. It wasn¡¯t what I was expecting; I wanted to create a personal connection, and her name was clear to see in the signal of her RFID badge. But she was finally, actually looking at me.


    ¡°Please?¡± I tried again, with less of the false waver. ¡°Nobody will even know. We¡¯re air-gapped. No camera, no microphone. Smoke detector will see if you light up, but that¡¯s all.¡±


    Her mouth opened slightly, her eyes darting to the door as the arm that had been holding the tablet close to her chest dropped a little. The other arm drifted up to her head, scratching automatically at the point where her horn pushed out of her skin.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± she answered, in a low voice. ¡°Management¡¯s been keeping this hall offline, and I got pulled off renal to staff it.¡±


    ¡°This happen before?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Not that I know of. Even other¡­ shadowrunners¡± ¨C she whispered the word ¨C ¡°get logged in the system. Your friend¡¯s two doors down.¡±


    Relief hit me like a sledgehammer, but I pressed on.


    ¡°Anyone waiting to see us?¡±


    ¡°Nobody from the hospital. They don¡¯t know you¡¯re awake yet. There is a visitor from outside, waiting near the nurse¡¯s station.¡±


    ¡°Who?¡± I asked, a brief burst of panic flooding my system.


    ¡°A blonde, about your age. Didn¡¯t give her name.¡±


    An involuntary sigh left my mouth, as I sagged back with my mouth involuntarily curling into a smile. Either Lisa was on top of the situation, or she¡¯d somehow set this whole thing up ¨C saving my life in the process.


    ¡°I-¡± She hesitated. ¡°I can¡¯t tell her you¡¯re awake.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± I chuckled. ¡°She¡¯ll figure it out. Thanks.¡±


    The nurse hurried out of the room, her shoulders hunched and her face frozen in a worried expression that she hastily tried to force back into neutrality as the door slid open. Tattletale would definitely pick up on it the moment she saw her.


    I didn¡¯t want her to see me lying down. I trusted her, had even opened up to her, but I didn¡¯t want to appear vulnerable in front of her. I had to capture some of the ceaseless social confidence she always managed to project, which meant pushing myself up in spite of all my aches and pains and swinging my legs over the side of the bed.


    That was when I noticed I was wearing a hospital gown, my bare feet making contact with a floor far cooler than I was expecting. I winced, and for a moment I considered standing, but I didn¡¯t feel quite ready yet.


    It took Tattletale two minutes to come through the door. I didn¡¯t know how she¡¯d managed to get past the guard, but I never doubted that she¡¯d be able to. I wasn¡¯t expecting the unnerved look on her face, but it was quickly washed away by genuine relief as she caught sight of me.


    I didn¡¯t know what to say to her ¨C I couldn¡¯t say anything to her, couldn¡¯t make the words fit in my now-trembling mouth. She was carrying a bundle of clothes, with my boots sitting on top, but she tossed them haphazardly on the bed as she rushed over and wrapped her arms around me ¨C something that was only possible because I was sitting down.


    It was like the tension drained out of me. I hesitated only moment before resting a massive hand on her back, squeezing my eyes shut in an attempt to stop the tears that had begun to well up as my stony face collapsed beneath an outpouring of emotions. I still couldn¡¯t move my right arm; it sat limp by my side. Dead weight.


    ¡°It¡¯s okay, Taylor¡­¡± Lisa whispered into my ear. ¡°You¡¯re okay.¡±


    ¡°My arm¡­¡±


    ¡°I know. They wouldn¡¯t fix it all the way, just closed up the cut and replaced the lost blood. The nerve damage is still there.¡±


    ¡°How do you know?¡± I asked, half pleading. ¡°What happened? Why are we here?¡±


    Lisa pulled one arm away so that she could sit down next to me, the other arm still reaching across my back. I almost leant into her, but I stopped myself; I¡¯d knock her flat.


    ¡°I¡­ set up a contingency plan. I didn¡¯t like the job; there were too many things that could go wrong, and I¡¯ve never been good in a gunfight. It¡¯s not my nature.¡±


    ¡°So you signed us up to CrashCart? With what money? They don¡¯t offer exfils like that to anyone.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t like our client, either. Didn¡¯t trust him, so I went hunting for him in the astral plane. Found him working out of the eleventh floor of a CrashCart hospital. This hospital. I let him know I knew, let his mind work out the rest.¡±


    The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    ¡°That was him, over the estate,¡± I realised. ¡°His drone, his eyes.¡±


    ¡°And his guys dressed up as CrashCart High Threat Response. Or maybe they are CrashCart HTR and bodyguarding is a side hustle.¡±


    ¡°You saved my life.¡± The words came out tonelessly, like I still couldn¡¯t wrap my head around it. ¡°Brian¡¯s life too. Is he¡­¡±


    I turned, looking down at Lisa¡¯s face as something flashed across her elven features.


    ¡°Best you see for yourself,¡± she answered, removing her arm from my back and standing up.


    She went over to stand by the door, peering through the window out into the corridor beyond. I stood up as well, swaying momentarily and clutching the bed for support, but I didn¡¯t fall. Lisa had brought my boots and a pair of dark jeans I¡¯d bought with her, but my t-shirt with its scarab symbol had evidently been ruined; Lisa had replaced it with one that had a surprisingly friendly cartoon spider on the front. My jacket was nowhere to be seen; I presumed it had been ruined as well.


    Getting dressed was a Herculean labour. My right arm was nothing but a burden, one I had to manoeuvre into my t-shirt before I could slip the wide neck over my horns, catching it on the tip and almost tearing it open before I was able to pause, reassess and bring my head through. The pants and belt weren¡¯t as hard as I was expecting, but I quickly found that my boots were a lost cause; I just couldn¡¯t fix the laces, and my arm kept banging against the floor.


    ¡°Here,¡± Lisa said, suddenly right in front of me as she knelt down and tugged the laces tight. ¡°Let me help.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ve got to do something about this,¡± I said.


    ¡°We will,¡± Lisa nodded. ¡°It¡¯ll just cost something. Now, hold it in place and I¡¯ll wrap it in a sling.¡±


    I found the arm a little easier to deal with when it wasn¡¯t knocking against me with every movement. I stood again, this time clenching my fist and eyelids shut until I stopped swaying, and followed Lisa out into the corridor.


    The ward was a small square space with private rooms lined up in an L opposite a circular nurse¡¯s station from which the young troll and two other nurses were able to see into each room, provided that the doors were left open. The guard had moved over to join them. He was a dwarf, wearing a security uniform with CrashCart¡¯s logo on it ¨C which meant he was in-house, rather than subcontracted. He was watching us like a hawk, but there didn¡¯t seem to be any malice in his gaze. He just looked bored.


    ¡°How¡¯d you get him to let you in?¡± I whispered.


    ¡°Regent isn¡¯t the only person on the team who can mess with people¡¯s heads,¡± she answered, cryptically. ¡°I can be persuasive. C¡¯mon, Grue¡¯s two doors down.¡±


    Grue had been given a far larger room than me, judging by the amount of space between its door and the next. It took me a moment to realise why that was; he was in an operating theatre. The door was locked, but next to it was an opaque glass panel that I turned transparent with a thought, even as some subconscious process in my mind began picking at the electronic lock.


    As the room faded into view, I struggled to pick out Brian at first. There was just a mass of machinery surrounding a bed, with intravenous drips, monitoring equipment and life support systems collating on a figure who seemed so much smaller than Brian ever had, with his face hidden beneath a respirator mask.


    I saw four bullets pass through Grue¡¯s chest; burning tracers that would have immolated his flesh and internal organs. Half a century ago, it would have been a hopelessly lethal wound. Even today, it wasn¡¯t something most people would survive. The machinery in there was more sophisticated than anything I¡¯d seen in my life, the sort of gear CrashCart might roll out for the comatose ultra-rich, but even then it didn¡¯t seem like it was helping him.


    Like my arm, they¡¯d brought Brian to the point where he wasn¡¯t going to die and then just¡­ stopped.


    ¡°How are the others?¡± I asked, even as I placed my palm against the window, leaning in almost close enough to knock my horns against it.


    ¡°Regent¡¯s fine,¡± Lisa answered. ¡°The bullet¡¯s out of his leg and he¡¯s fully recovered. Bitch¡¯s damage was almost skin deep; all she had to do was swap out her subdermal armour. They¡¯re both downstairs¡± ¨C she smiled ¨C ¡°I had to persuade Bitch not to come up here with a shotgun.¡±


    ¡°Good,¡± I nodded, my horns clinking against the window before I pulled back. ¡°This isn¡¯t the kind of problem a shotgun can solve.¡±


    We stood there quietly for a few moments, watching the blinking lights, the rise and fall of the machines keeping Brian alive, until Lisa broke the silence.


    ¡°Bug,¡± she sighed, ¡°I¡¯m going to need you to step up. At least until he¡¯s back on his feet.¡±


    I paused, turning away from Grue and leaning against the window as I looked down at Lisa.


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    She hesitated ¨C more than I¡¯d ever seen her hesitate ¨C for a moment, her eyes darting back to Brian.


    ¡°Grue¡­ Look, we¡¯re together as a team because of some very specific circumstances, and we¡¯ve stuck together because we work well together. But if we weren¡¯t Shadowrunners, none of us would have given any of the others the time of day. We¡¯re all from different worlds.¡±


    She turned back to Grue, folding her arms. I wasn¡¯t sure if she was looking at him or her reflection in the glass.


    ¡°Grue was-¡± She caught herself. ¡°Grue is a rock. He¡¯s businesslike, literal minded, he has uncomplicated plans that he executes directly. He¡¯s the solid base that¡¯s held us all together. I can¡¯t step in to fill his shoes. Bitch would never trust me, and I think I remind Regent too much of people in his world for him to take me seriously.¡±


    I stroked my chin, frowning. She had a point; people like Lisa were never more than things in Alec¡¯s fucked-up little cult. He¡¯d left that life behind, but unconscious biases were hard to shake. Either that, or her methods reminded him too much of his siblings.


    ¡°You really think he¡¯d listen to me?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I do. Regent¡¯s flighty, but you¡¯re as solid as Grue. You¡¯ve demonstrated that with how you¡¯ve handled Bitch ¨C who, incidentally, would throw herself on a grenade if you asked. Tell him how it¡¯s going to be and he¡¯ll bitch and moan because he likes to, but he¡¯ll do it all the same.¡±


    I let out a long sigh, placing my hand flat on the window and leaning forwards until my horns clinked against the glass. I closed my eyes, then opened them and looked at Grue once more.


    ¡°If you think you¡¯re undermining him, don¡¯t,¡± Lisa said. ¡°Truth is, we were heading this way already. Grue¡¯s got a good head on his shoulders, but you¡¯re about as determined as anyone I¡¯ve met and just as devious as me.¡± She chuckled. ¡°The things you could have done if you hadn¡¯t been shut away¡­ I¡¯m so glad I let you out of your box.¡±


    ¡°What am I, a wind-up toy?¡± I shot back, grinning.


    ¡°Damn straight. I turn your screw, point you at a problem and watch you burn half the city to solve it.¡±


    That was enough to knock me out of my morass. I stepped back from the glass, looking down at Tattletale with an eyebrow raised, before both of our attention was drawn away as someone new entered the room.


    He was dressed in scrubs and his arms were high-end cybernetics, the fingers lined with seams where they could split apart into further digits capable of even greater precision. The nurses, who had been watching us warily, perked up in the way that employees only did when the boss arrived to take a problem off their hands, rather than lay a new one at their feet.


    ¡°You shouldn¡¯t be up,¡± he said to me by way of introduction.


    ¡°But I am,¡± I replied, taking Lisa¡¯s words to heart as I straightened up and tried to put a little bite into my tone. ¡°You¡¯ve stabilised us and stopped. I want to know why.¡±


    The surgeon shrugged, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.


    ¡°It¡¯s not my job to explain.¡± His eyes darted up to the ceiling. ¡°But when you woke up, I was told to send you upstairs. Apparently there¡¯s someone who wants to speak to you.¡±


    He sent a signal off through the matrix, using a mind-impulse link that was part of his all-encompassing surgical suite. His eyes were the same way, and there were hormone emitters lining his spine to keep him calm under pressure. He was using one of them now, which told me that he wasn¡¯t as in-control as he appeared.


    He wasn¡¯t expecting me to be up, and Tattletale was a complete unknown.


    ¡°What exactly is the damage?¡± I asked, my eyes narrowing. I flicked a thumb over my shoulder, back towards Brian. ¡°Him and me.¡±


    ¡°And your other wounded,¡± the surgeon clarified. ¡°One minor cut for your colleague here, one deep wound on the thigh that was treated in A&E. Your friend back there had significant internal damage to his organic and cybernetic systems. Life support is currently substituting the functions of the damaged components.¡±


    He gestured with a cybernetic limb at my own arm, strapped up in a sling. ¡°Your arm is functionally dead. The circulatory system is functioning ¨C just ¨C but your nerves require complete removal and replacement. It would be easier to swap out the limb.¡±


    The door behind him opened again for another CrashCart employee, this one an elf dressed in the jumpsuits worn by their ambulance crews, though without the trademark white body armour. She looked us up and down for a moment before speaking in a faintly Japanese accent.


    ¡°You come with me. Mister Johnson will speak with you. He has already waited long enough.¡±


    ¡°Has he now?¡± I asked, shooting Tattletale a wary glance and getting a subtle nod in return. ¡°Text the others, get them up here. We¡¯ll see him together ¨C all of us who can.¡±


    I was genuinely touched that Tattletale had been stalling our client until I was awake. I¡¯d felt so alone when I woke up, and it was good to realise that I had people I could count on. I couldn¡¯t remember the last time I¡¯d felt that way.


    We were led out into a far busier corridor, with hospital staff moving along in a sort of practiced rush, while the occasional patient was wheeled through on gurneys in varying stages of injury. It seemed they¡¯d put us in a private section of the hospital¡¯s accident and emergency department, situated on the second floor so that the ambulance crews had clearer access.


    Most of the patients we passed didn¡¯t look like they¡¯d merit a private room. They were evidently able to afford to have health insurance, but I doubt their policies were above the absolute bare minimum of service. They were severely wounded, one and all ¨C enough that they¡¯d even consider actually making use of their insurance policy ¨C and they¡¯d leave the hospital with whatever out-of-pocket costs weren¡¯t covered by their meagre deductible.


    But I supposed it was still better than bleeding out on the side of the street.


    The hall ended in a T-junction, where a line of elevators of varying sizes shifted up and down behind their metal doors. As we arrived, the one in front of us slid open to reveal a team of Paramedics flanking a gurney ¨C not quite the HTR special forces they¡¯d sent after us, but still armed enough to dissuade anyone who might try to interfere with their rescue efforts. Their patient was an orkish woman with kanji written in glowing letters down the side of her cybernetic arms and legs, vivid red on white ceramics.


    As paradoxical as it seemed, I found the sight of an obvious Yakuza lieutenant strangely soothing. It was a reminder that while we¡¯d pissed a lot of groups off, in that moment I only had to worry about one of them. CrashCart was a double-A rated corporation, a multinational with a GDP that exceeded that of some small nations. That meant it had extraterritoriality. The Chosen wouldn¡¯t get past the perimeter, Medhall would be kept well away and even Knight Errant wouldn¡¯t know where we were.


    The hospital was effectively sovereign territory, policed according to the laws of CrashCart¡¯s owners in the Evo corporation and totally independent of the UCAS that surrounded it. It was why they could even count gang lieutenants among their customers, though if Knight Errant knew they were here they could always just camp outside the hospital until they left.


    We were still on the public grid without a spam filter, but as our taciturn escort led us to a much smaller elevator, I relished the change to focus on one a single threat after the abject clusterfuck of the last job.


    Especially when that elevator opened up to reveal Regent and Bitch, the latter¡¯s shotgun slung on her back. Bitch didn¡¯t smile when she saw me ¨C she wouldn¡¯t even if her attention hadn¡¯t been focused on our CrashCart guide ¨C but I hoped she felt as relieved as I did in that moment.


    ¡°Not dead, then?¡± Regent asked.


    ¡°Not dead,¡± I replied, simply, as the elevator closed behind us and began to climb. ¡°Our client wants to see us.¡±


    ¡°Grue¡¯s not here,¡± he observed.


    ¡°He¡¯s not.¡± I kept my attention fixed on the elevator doors, though I was distantly aware of Regent¡¯s commlink in the pocket of his silver blazer. ¡°That going to be a problem?¡±


    There was a tense moment of silence.


    ¡°Nah,¡± Regent chuckled. ¡°You¡¯re stone cold, Bug.¡±


    I couldn¡¯t help but wince at the name, schooling my expression back into something as stony as my skin just before the doors to the elevator slid open.


    The eleventh floor of the hospital was far quieter than the second, but it was also far more opulent. It wasn¡¯t anything obvious ¨C there were no rich red carpets or gilt-framed portraits on the wall ¨C but the materials used to construct it were of an undeniably higher quality. The floor was glossier, the walls lacking the rough texture of paint, and in place of lights embedded in the ceiling, the whole ceiling glowed with a soothing light.


    It was the second-highest floor of the hospital, which meant it was the domain of clients who would never deign to ride in a road-bound ambulance. If they travelled anywhere, it was by helicopters and t-birds, ushered into a separate triage by the very best of the best High Threat Response paramedics and brought down into advanced nanosurgery suites where wounds that would kill someone with a few less zeroes in their bank balance could be treated with the simple application of ludicrously expensive resources.


    But that would happen on the twelfth floor, as close to the landing pads as possible. The eleventh was home to the more routine health concerns of the super-rich. There were GPs¡¯ offices that fronted right onto the corridor, without the need to navigate a reception and packed waiting room ¨C and even then, only if they didn¡¯t want the GP to go to them. Cosmetic surgery suites were set on opposite sides of the corridor; bioware organ freezers and a gamma-grade cyberware clinic laid out more like boutique stores than an actual medical facility.


    We didn¡¯t pass a single patient as we were led through the halls, though each facility was fully staffed. With the rates they charged, CrashCart could afford to have people ready to enable the slightest whim at a moment¡¯s notice, but few of the ultra-rich would be interested in visiting a hospital that was clearly caught up in the middle of an active gang war.


    Our destination was two corridors off the main arterial that ran down the length of the hospital, leading up to what I assumed was the exterior wall of the building. As we approached a nondescript set of double doors at the end of the corridor, an obvious ¨C yet polite ¨C AR warning popped up in front of us, declaring that section of the hospital was closed for renovations.


    We walked through the warning like it wasn¡¯t over there, our escort moving ahead as the doors slid open. Beyond was a small ward that seemed to have been gutted, with electrical cables, stacks of wall and ceiling panelling, even tools left frozen in place from when the renovations had been paused.


    In and among that half-build space, a makeshift operations centre bustled with activity. There were perhaps fifteen people in all, each one of them dressed in CrashCart uniforms that didn¡¯t necessarily match up to their role. A bank of terminals were manned by four nurses in scrubs and two high-end greeters in corporate-branded suits, the screens in front of them displaying a range of data from ambulance locations to stock market projections.


    A makeshift armoury had been sectioned off from the rest of the room by transparent floor-to-ceiling plastic curtains, where a wizened ork in a building maintenance uniform was inspecting the components of a disassembled sniper rifle while a quartet of soldiers in paramedic security uniforms were stowing their own rifles on a rack. Next to it was an area that had seemingly been given over to magical rituals, with a geometrically-perfect circle on the floor and shamanic fetishes decorating the wall.


    The half-assembled reception desk of the ward was manned by a slight man in the sort of neat suit that hospital management might wear, with a woman in full-body armour standing over his shoulder, a shotgun held loosely in her arms as she watched the door ¨C and us.


    As we were led through the busy chatter and hurried order, we passed two deckers dressed in slick-skinned cooler suits. Both were wired into the support systems of the chairs on which they were reclined, supporting them for hours ¨C perhaps even days ¨C of uninterrupted use. My expanded senses, though still healing from dumpshock, gave me a snapshot of two separate systems; one sitting at the centre of a web that encompassed both the hospital¡¯s host and a separate, hidden network hidden within the hospital¡¯s, while the second sat like a coiled spring atop an armoury of agent and programmes. A decker and a spider, to attack and defend.


    Our client wasn¡¯t in the middle of the operations room, but it was clear he was at its nexus. He didn¡¯t have a desk and a chair, instead coiling himself up on a tatami mat in front of a one-way window that offered a floor to ceiling vista looking out across the neighbouring buildings towards the skyscrapers of downtown. Upon the mat, the hidden network coalesced in a circular array of screens, projectors, broadcasting equipment and motion sensor controls that linked it all together.


    He was mid-conversation with a man in a nondescript taksuit out-of-keeping with the corporate uniforms worn by the rest of the room, but he paused as we approached and sent the man away with a flick of his tail. Another flick shut down the screens and projectors, the data disappearing one by one until he was surrounded by nothing more than black mirrors that reflected his own coiled form.


    ¡°Miss Hebert,¡± he began. A pit formed in my stomach. ¡°I am glad to see you awake. Your associate was quite insistent that I wait for you before¡­ explaining the situation.¡±


    ¡°How did you-¡± I clamped my mouth shut, clenching my fist. He¡¯d wrongfooted me; I¡¯d let him wrongfoot me.


    ¡°CrashCart does not delete patient data. You do not presently hold health insurance, but you were included as a dependent under your father¡¯s policy, which was cancelled by Mr Hebert in sixty-eight¡­ one month after he died.¡±


    Another stupid mistake, I thought. But I couldn¡¯t afford it. When the payment notice came in, I had to cancel then and there.


    Light flashed in the distance, illuminating the front of a building a few blocks away. The sound arrived seconds later. An explosion.


    ¡°Looks like you¡¯ve got what you wanted,¡± I said, looking past his serpentine body to the city beyond. ¡°AAO has been dismantled and the Chosen are stuck in a gang war. Medhall has been declawed in the underworld. It¡¯s time to settle the cost.¡±


    ¡°Yes¡­¡± the serpent hissed, rising up on his coils. ¡°Let us discuss costs. Tell me, Bug, do you know how much a CrashCart High Threat Response evacuation costs? Three ambulances, six paramedics, six guards? Your surgery was relatively uncomplicated, but Grue required intensive nanosurgery to separate and repair the cybernetic and biological components of his body. To say nothing of life support expenses, which stand at thirty six hours and climbing.¡±


    Thirty six hours, I thought with a start, but my mouth was already moving.


    ¡°If you¡¯re going to nickel and dime, be accurate. Those weren¡¯t HTR.¡±


    It has all fallen into place; the mismatched uniforms in this room were just a way of disguising the snake¡¯s personnel as they commuted to and from this building each day. CrashCart was a shield he was using to support the own agenda, or the agenda of his real employers.


    ¡°Well done, Bug,¡± he chuckled, giving me a cold reptilian smile. ¡°I am no ambulance chaser. My name is Thomas Calvert. I work for Evo. CrashCart is the largest Evo subsidiary in Brockton Bay, so it is here that I made my headquarters. I am telling you this not because you might have figured it out yourself with time and talent¡± ¨C he glanced at Tattletale ¨C ¡°but because it does not matter. Because you are in my debt.¡±


    Calvert¡¯s eyes deliberately flicked to my arm, before returning to meet my gaze. He¡¯d risen high enough that our eyes were completely level.


    ¡°The cost of the medical treatment you have already received is greater than the sixty thousand nuyen you agreed to take as payment. The cost of repairing your arm and returning Grue to full functionality would be considerably more.¡±


    ¡°Make your pitch,¡± I snapped. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t be telling us this if you didn¡¯t have a use for us, but a half-crippled Shadowrunner team is useless to anyone.¡±


    ¡°I came to your city from Evo¡¯s North American headquarters, in Seattle. I came with no resources other than those I could take with me; even my presence in this hospital is concealed from the majority of its staff for fear that it would be compromised by industrial espionage.¡±


    He turned, his elongated body slithering over itself as he angled his head towards the window, where the distant skyscrapers of the city centre could be seen past his twinned reflection. He was looking right at one skyscraper in particular, at the red, yellow and black holographic logo near its crest that simultaneously evoked a crown, a rune and the letter M.


    ¡°I work in emergent market acquisitions. My purpose in this city is the neutralisation of Medhall Pharmaceuticals, either through its outright destruction or the reduction of its value until it can be acquired and gutted by Evo. To surpass this goal, I require local operators whose obedience is beyond doubt.¡±


    Abruptly, he turned back to face us, his eyes flicking from person to person as if he was weighing our value.


    ¡°To that end, I will waive the remaining treatment costs for you and your teammate. I will pay you a weekly retainer not to take any work besides my own, until my goals are achieved. I will continue to fairly compensate you for each of those tasks. This is the only offer I will make.¡±


    In the end, it wasn¡¯t a choice at all. Brian¡¯s life hung in the balance ¨C as did my arm. It hurt to admit it, but we¡¯d been outmanoeuvred at every turn. Lisa was right to worry about the policlub job; Calvert had taken advantage of the naivety of a Shadowrunner team that had only just hit the big leagues, sending us against overwhelming odds in the knowledge that we¡¯d come back in dire need of help only he could offer. Even if Lisa hadn¡¯t blackmailed him, he¡¯d still have been waiting in the wings with the medical help we so desperately needed.


    ¡°Then our choice isn¡¯t a choice at all,¡± I answered, conceding defeat. ¡°We accept, of course, but I¡¯m getting tired of ¡®Bug.¡¯ From now on, call me Spider.¡±


    We lost control, I thought, bitterly. I won¡¯t let it happen again.

 Recompile: 6.02

    Beyond the glass pane, across rooftops, cranes and the unseen waters of the Bay, the windows of Downtown resembled a nebula of stars. They were, in fact, the only stars in the sky; clouds had rolled in from the Atlantic and the lights of those towering skyscrapers were strong enough to reach that atmospheric ceiling, lighting it up so brightly that it was as if a white-gold dawn had descended on the city.


    It almost drained the light out from the rest of Brockton Bay, where the buildings weren¡¯t high enough to cast the same reflection. It drew the eye until it seemed that there was no city beyond that beating heart of commerce. The Medhall logo glimmered like the crown it resembled at the pinnacle of their corporate headquarters, on smaller ancillary towers, on the ever-scrolling advertisements flowing up the face of skyscrapers, on the side of dirigibles that circled below the cloud layer, or projected onto the underside of the clouds themselves as advertising firms took advantage of the canvas nature had provided them.


    The adverts promised safety of a kind that couldn¡¯t be achieved with guns or perimeter fences; they promised health, opportunity, a good life. Their towers promised dividends to their shareholders, an old firm dedicated to stable growth over chasing trends, a good investment. By the year¡¯s end, according to the last projections I¡¯d seen, it would be large enough to petition the Corporate Court for an assessment that would see it leave the United States behind and take its place on the world stage as a true megacorporation, independent and proud.


    ¡°Miss Hebert?¡±


    I blinked, turning away from the window. I was on the sixth floor of the hospital, in a decently-furnished clinicians office that couldn¡¯t hold a candle to the opulence of the topmost floors, but that was still more than most people could ever hope to access. The woman sitting across from me wasn¡¯t dressed in a uniform; she was a consultant, which meant people preferred a slightly different sort of formality. Her medical license was displayed in a holographic plaque on the wall, written in German and identifying her as a graduate of the Medizinische Hochschule Hannover.


    The twists and turns that had taken her from the Allied German States to the UCAS could, most likely, be read in the pattern of silvery scales spread across her brow, her yellow sclera and wide pupils, or the line of gills sitting closed on her neck. Her life in the AGS had no doubt ended in sixty-one, when Hailley¡¯s comet passed low over the Earth, disrupting mana flows and turning her from a human into something altogether different. While all the usual suspects ¨C and a few newer ones ¨C were up in arms over yet another shift in the metahuman species, the Evo corporation opened the doors to millions of Changeling refugees from all walks of life, integrating them into its corporate empire.


    In its own way, Evo scared me more than Medhall. Max Anders might hate whoever had kicked this gang war off, but he didn¡¯t know my name. Medhall was immediate and powerful but Evo was something larger than this city, larger even than the UCAS. It was the seventh largest corporation in the world.


    Its ideology might have been more palatable than Medhall¡¯s but it could only ever see the people under its control as ants in a colony. They were minute insects contributing to works far greater than the value of their own lives, each one of them useful only for as long as they continued to perform their function. An insignificant tendril of that great hive had turned its eyes on me, and under its gaze I felt like a butterfly pinned on a board.


    ¡°Miss Hebert?¡± the consultant asked again.


    ¡°Sorry,¡± I shook my head. ¡°It¡¯s been¡­ well.¡±


    I didn¡¯t want to say more, doubted I was covered by doctor-patient confidentiality.


    ¡°You have gone through a traumatic incident. It¡¯s normal to experience some disassociation.¡±


    I couldn¡¯t help the angry look that flashed into my eyes. I wasn¡¯t traumatised, I was coming down from dumpshock. At worst, I was rattled. Shaken.


    ¡°Just tell me my options,¡± I snapped, as I tried and failed to move my right arm.


    ¡°Very well,¡± the doctor answered, her accent still carrying a hint of German. ¡°The arm itself is functionally useless. The nervous system could be replaced through nanite surgery, but such an option isn¡¯t covered by your plan.¡±


    I wasn¡¯t aware I was on a plan, I thought. I wasn¡¯t sure how Calvert had set this up in CrashCart¡¯s system, but it seemed just like a corporate agent to try and find out exactly how much he could gouge me before I started feeling ungrateful.


    ¡°So¡­ you¡¯re going to replace it?¡± I asked. It was irrational, but I found the idea a little unnerving. I¡¯d grown up around plenty of people with limb replacements, and of course Brian had quite happily swapped out both his arms while Rachel had gone even further than that, but some part of the metahuman brain will always feel uneasy at the thought of voluntarily chopping off your own limbs.


    ¡°Just so.¡± The doctor leant back in her chair, reaching behind her as she picked a glossy magazine off the shelves and passed it across the desk to me. As I opened the wafer-thin digital pages, I saw that it was less of a magazine than a brochure advertising a whole host of different cybernetic and biosynthetic arms, each page full of scrolling images, reviews and features.


    ¡°CrashCart is prepared to cover the cost of any of these replacements, but I must caution you that studies have suggested that cyberware can affect technomancer abilities in the same way they do the awakened. You may wish to consider bioware to minimise the impact on your talents.¡±


    I froze. I wasn¡¯t sure what I was more shocked at, but the doctor picked up on my unease right away.


    ¡°It¡¯s okay,¡± she smiled, reassuringly. ¡°CrashCart values patient anonymity. Your data won¡¯t leave our system and, as an extraterritorial corporation, we have no legal obligation to cooperate with any national or corporate entity.¡±


    Except for Evo, I thought.


    The doctor seemed to weight something in her mind, her gills opening and closing as she thought, before she leant forwards almost conspiratorially.


    ¡°Of course, if you ever feel things are getting too dangerous for you, our parent company has a programme to offer technomancers corporate citizenship. Unlike the competition, Evo understands that metahumanity is continually evolving. We seek to accept and understand that evolution rather than lash out at it.¡±


    She took a small, folded pamphlet out of her desk drawer and passed it across to me. On the front was a graphic of a metahuman brain formed from circuitry, pulsing with a digital blue light. Above the brain was a fairly straightforward message ¨C ¡®Technomancers: You Are Not Alone¡¯ ¨C while below was the megacorp¡¯s favourite tagline; ¡®Evolve with Evo.¡¯


    ¡°Whatever you decide, take that brochure to either cybersurgery on floor eight or bioimplamentation on floor nine. They¡¯ve been notified that you may be coming.¡±


    ¡°Thank you,¡± I said, more out of habit than anything, before I stood up and left the room.


    The others were waiting outside, taking up a whole section of the seats in the small waiting room. They were meant for patients with actual appointments and a few of those upper-middle class patients were sitting a few rows back from my team, eyeing the motley crew with something between wariness and open terror. The only exception was a little boy whose mother had pulled him tight against her side; he was looking at us like we were a Firewatch team who¡¯d come to his school to hand out free candy.


    Rachel sat at the end of the row like she¡¯d been stowed there; her boots side by side, back straight and her left hand gripping the barrel of her shotgun, the butt flat on the floor. Alec took up the entirety of the row next to her, leaning against the flimsy armrest with his knees bent and his shoes planted on the seat beside Rachel.


    Lisa paced up and down in front of them, her head ducked almost beneath the upturned collar of her trenchcoat and her arms half-folded in front of her as she worried at her snake pendant with one hand. She stopped pacing the moment I stepped through the door, but she didn¡¯t say anything; she was giving me space and I appreciated it.


    Alec, on the other hand, had no such qualms.


    ¡°So,¡± he drawled, stretching in a strangely cat-like manner. ¡°We¡¯ve made a deal with the devil, nobody¡¯s dying right this second and no corporate kill-squads have kicked down the doors with machine guns blazing. I¡¯m going to head the fuck back and zonk out to some trideo.¡±


    It was a statement, but it almost felt like a request. Maybe he was pushing boundaries ¨C pushing me ¨C but I wasn¡¯t sure. Either way, he had a point; we¡¯d already had our worst moments and the time of greatest danger. All that remained was the long, slow aftermath.


    ¡°Sure,¡± I nodded. ¡°We¡¯re pretty much done here. I just need to chip a new arm.¡±


    ¡°Should probably let our fixer know what¡¯s going on as well,¡± Lisa said in a murmur, moving in close to me. Alec was already slinking off, giving the patients a wide berth.


    ¡°How much does she know already?¡±


    ¡°Gregor reached out to me a few hours after I left the hospital,¡± she said. ¡°She knows you and Grue are still here, and of course she knows about our client. Nothing else, though.¡±


    I sighed.


    ¡°Which means I need to tell her about our ¡®new arrangement.¡¯ Great.¡±


    ¡°Just keep it professional,¡± Lisa advised. ¡°She has a real stick up her ass, but I guarantee that she¡¯s had people in worse than this. Stick to pure biz and she¡¯ll respond like it¡¯s biz as usual.¡±


    ¡°Might need to talk to Labyrinth as well¡­¡± I murmured.


    ¡°Who?¡±


    ¡°Faultline¡¯s technomancer,¡± I explained. ¡°Think I mentioned her before.¡±


    I paused, thinking for a moment.


    ¡°Actually, gotta ask you a question. Mages and cyberware don¡¯t mix, right?¡±


    ¡°Right,¡± Lisa nodded. ¡°The theory I was taught in school says that flows through the mind of the user, but that modern cybernetics are so advanced that the neural connections alter the way the mind works. It¡¯s why they call mages with chrome ¡®burnouts;¡¯ they threw away their talents for the sake of convenience.¡±


    I frowned, as she pulled at the thread. ¡°Wait, did you just get told it¡¯s the same for technomancers?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s what the doc said. Either I pick the lightest bioware they have to try and minimise the damage, or I talk to Labyrinth and see if she knows any tricks. Technomancers are still new; there aren¡¯t any school textbooks about how it all works.¡±


    I turned to Rachel, who¡¯d been watching us talk.


    ¡°Actually, I was thinking¡­ if chrome does work out, would you mind installing it? Less risk, I figure.¡±


    Her response was immediate, and not what I was expecting.


    ¡°No, do it here.¡±


    ¡°Seriously?¡± I asked, confused.


    ¡°You saw the Chosen,¡± she said as if that explained it. ¡°My work¡¯s only as good as theirs; I need all the same immunosuppressants and anti-rejection drugs. Get it done here, you won¡¯t have that.¡±


    It shouldn¡¯t have surprised me ¨C the Chosen¡¯s setup was a lot more sophisticated than the literal junkyard shack where Rachel had got her first chrome ¨C but it did. It worried me, too. I was sure Rachel had a handle on her meds, but we¡¯d just demonstrated that they were a weak thread that could be pulled.


    ¡°Right¡­¡± I nodded. ¡°You can head back if you want, you know. Things are settled now, and I know your drones and the van got pretty beat up.¡±


    Rachel simply nodded, making her way out with her shotgun gripped in her left hand. She was wearing a tank top, which drew my eye to the way the mechanism in her arms shifted with each step she took.


    ¡°I¡¯m going to make the call,¡± I said to Lisa as I slumped bonelessly down into one of the troll-sized chairs ¨C obscurely grateful that at least the snake-faced megacorp holding my leash had coined the term ¡®metaergonomics.¡¯ ¡°Silently, you know? You don¡¯t have to stick around.¡±


    ¡°Nothing else to do,¡± Lisa said, shrugging her shoulders. ¡°Not sure I want to leave you alone, either.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± I said, but even as I said it I realised how snappishly it¡¯d come out. ¡°I¡¯ll deal, whatever comes. It¡¯s Grue I¡¯m worried about.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s in surgery now,¡± Lisa said. ¡°They started it up as soon as we made our deal. Nanosurgery, organ replacement, the works. I¡¯d call it top of the line, but we both know that where the top is depends on how deep your pockets are.¡±


    ¡°And after that?¡±


    ¡°Induced coma for forty-eight hours of intensive monitoring, then another three days of conscious observation.¡± Lisa shrugged her shoulders. ¡°Could be worse.¡±


    ¡°It certainly could¡­¡± I mused, before sighing. ¡°No use putting it off any longer.¡±


    My connection to the resonance had almost completely returned. It was like I¡¯d gone swimming and lost my hearing in one ear, only for everything to come rushing back at once in a way that felt fresher and more vibrant than ever before. Not that calling Faultline was the most intensive use of my abilities; one of the first things I¡¯d ever done was learn how to spoof a commlink and speaking without talking was as intuitive as breathing.


    ¡°Bug,¡± Faultline began, picking up after five seconds of ringing. ¡°You have an update?¡±


    That¡¯s it? I thought. No ¡®hello, how are you?¡¯


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I transmitted, as Lisa grinned at the scowl on my face. ¡°Our client introduced himself to us. I take it you knew he worked for Evo.¡±


    ¡°Naturally,¡± Faultline replied, matter of factly. ¡°From what I understand, he got you out of a dangerous situation.¡±


    ¡°And used the medical bills to put a leash around our neck,¡± I snapped. ¡°I didn¡¯t get into this line of work to be a corporate lapdog.¡±


    Faultline laughed; a short, sharp exhalation.


    ¡°What line of work did you think you were getting into? Tell me, Bug, why do you think it is that Shadowrunners are so prevalent in the media? They¡¯re adventurers; rebels without causes, sticking it to the man and fighting the good fight.¡± Every word dripped with sarcasm. ¡°So tell me, why do the megacorps who own the film studios allow that portrayal, when your fellow technomancers have been condemned as terrorist bogeymen?¡±


    I paused, glancing back over my shoulder at the kid. His eyes widened at even that slight attention, his mouth spreading into a grin that more than outshone the frown that sat on my face.


    ¡°Megacorps have three choices when it comes to industrial espionage. The first are in-house operatives; trained specialists who¡¯ve been part of the company since birth. They¡¯re by far the most effective, but they¡¯re expensive and if they¡¯re ever identified the corporation suffers. The second are gang contacts. You can¡¯t trust them as far as you can throw them, but they can be used to perform acts that the company itself can¡¯t be seen doing. Clearing out prospective property, for one.¡±


    Medhall¡¯s Chosen path, I thought. It brought up half-remembered news stories of gang violence when I was growing up. I¡¯d always thought the Chosen were nothing but mindless monsters, but how much of their brutality was targeted to help Medhall¡¯s bottom line?


    ¡°Shadowrunners are somewhere between the two. They might not have had formal training, but they are far more experienced than the average gang member. Above all, they¡¯re completely deniable. That combination makes them a vital tool in the arsenal of corporate agents, which is why corporations make up over eighty percent of my clients.¡±


    ¡°So it¡¯s just a recruiting tool?¡± I asked, almost forgetting to keep my voice digital. ¡°All the trideo I grew up on was just meant to lure people in? Keep the fresh meat coming so that a fraction of them can climb over the bodies high enough to be called a professional?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re one of them now, Bug. A professional. Don¡¯t see this as a failure, see it as an opportunity. Take all you can from this contact and move on to the next. Above all, keep moving. Don¡¯t stop until you have enough to get out of the game for good.¡±


    ¡°Is that what you did?¡± I asked. At what point did Shadowrunners become ¡®them¡¯ to you?


    Faultline didn¡¯t answer, at first. It wasn¡¯t a long pause, but it was enough to be noticeable.


    ¡°You can¡¯t fight the world and win. I¡¯m from this city, but I didn¡¯t work here. Roamed the UCAS putting together my team, then took jobs wherever I could find them. I ran in Denver, Seattle, St Louis, even played insurgent in California, and I made contacts everywhere I went. I¡¯ve worked under the arrangement you¡¯re under now; it paid for the Palanquin. Evo are moving into this city, one way or the other, and knowing a man on the inside could be very valuable if you play your cards right.¡±


    ¡°That sounds like giving up.¡±


    ¡°Then you haven¡¯t been listening,¡± she snapped back. ¡°Don¡¯t ever trust your client unreservedly, but don¡¯t allow yourself to think that the world simply resets after every job. Corporate agents have long memories, and always return for repeat business. Whatever his business here, when it is concluded he ¨C or someone like him ¨C will remain. If you make him an enemy, Evo will remain an enemy.¡±


    Damnit, I thought, in the privacy of my own head. Paradoxically, it was easier to stop any unintended outbursts when I was thinking my words, rather than vocalising them.


    ¡°I¡¯ll have to take your word for it,¡± I said, instead. ¡°And one last thing; I¡¯ve changed my name to Spider.¡±


    ¡°Understood,¡± she replied without so much as a pause. ¡°I¡¯ll feed it into the rumour mill.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s a rumour mill?¡± I asked, a little shocked. Faultline responded with a laugh that seemed far brighter than her last.


    ¡°Of course, Spider. You set the city on fire, upended the balance in the North End. It¡¯s hard to ignore, and people in your profession are used to thinking in terms of single stones that start a landslide. Your hit on the warehouse stood out, though nobody¡¯s yet linked it back to your team.¡±


    ¡°Great,¡± I murmured. ¡°Another thing to worry about.¡±


    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    ¡°A reputation isn¡¯t something to be afraid of, but it is something you have to be aware of. Good luck, Spider.¡±


    She hung up, as I clenched my teeth.


    ¡°That bad, huh?¡± Lisa asked.


    ¡°Honestly? Better and worse than I was expecting. Basically boiled down to ¡®just deal with it.¡¯¡±


    ¡°Sounds about right,¡± she smirked. ¡°We¡¯ll be fine, Spider. We just need to keep our eyes open.¡±


    ¡°Well I¡¯m going to close mine,¡± I retorted with a grin of my own. ¡°Need to chat technomancer to technomancer. Keep a lookout for me, will you?¡±


    I didn¡¯t wait for a reply, instead soaring away from my meat and into the glorious digital lights of the matrix, flicking across the city in an instant as I made my way into Palanquin¡¯s network. Labyrinth¡¯s attention fell on me almost immediately; firewalls shifting aside as I passed through the digital space of the club, jostling with the hundreds of matrix-linked devices worn by its patrons in meatspace and the many and varied shapes of personas enjoying the club¡¯s digital mirror, and made my way up into her room.


    Her persona resembled a Celtic priestess, with a hood of feathers as black as tar casting half her face into shadow, while her bare arms were daubed with woad paint shaped into intricate circuitry. Her raven was perched on her shoulder, shuffling from side to side as it peered at me.


    ¡°Spider,¡± Labyrinth said. I didn¡¯t ask how she knew; it was no-doubt written in my code. ¡°You look weary.¡±


    I chuckled; a bright burst of code. ¡°Dumpshock.¡±


    Labyrinth nodded. ¡°It is never easy.¡±


    ¡°Listen¡­¡± I hesitated. It came across as a lifeless section of the datastream that carried my voice. ¡°I¡¯m losing my arm. The doc told me that replacing it would mess with my connection to the resonance. I need to know if there¡¯s anything I can do.¡±


    Labyrinth paused for a moment¡¯s contemplation, then tilted her head in silent conversation with her familiar. I could see the data passing between them, but I couldn¡¯t read it. After seconds ¨C an eternity in matrix time ¨C she turned back to me.


    ¡°Perhaps.¡±


    ¡°Perhaps? I was hoping for ¡®yes,¡¯ but it¡¯s better than nothing. Why does it even happen, anyway?¡±


    ¡°That is a question many have asked. MCT believed we function through quantum entanglement; that a technomancer¡¯s central nervous system is mirrored by paired neurons in cyberspace and that cyberware alters the nervous system in a way that brings those neurons out of alignment. They were testing the theory, but results were inconclusive.¡±


    She gave the explanation quite calmly, but I knew she was talking about her time as an MCT lab rat, before Faultline broke her out and she massacred her captors. It brought uncomfortable questions to my mind. How do you test the effects of alterations like that? How many innocent lives did their tests consume? How can Labyrinth speak of something so horrible ¨C even through the medium of data ¨C and sound so detached from it all?


    ¡°Ultimately, it does not matter why. There is no one in the mundane world who truly understands because true understanding cannot be found there. I have heard whispers of technomancers who have managed to focus their talents down a resonant stream, changing the very nature of how they connect to the resonance. I believe I have achieved such a feat myself; deepening my connection to the sprites of the resonance to the point where I exist in harmony with them.¡±


    ¡°Another vision quest?¡± I would have smirked, in meatspace. ¡°Any hints, tricks?¡±


    ¡°None,¡± came the answer. ¡°Save that your answer, as all answers, lies within the resonance realms.¡±


    ¡°Figures. Thanks, Labyrinth.¡±


    ¡°Goodbye, Spider, and good luck.¡±


    She drifted away, her persona pulled by ephemeral strings to some other part of Palanquin¡¯s network. Her parting words just didn¡¯t make sense to me; ¡®luck¡¯ was irrelevant to cyberspace. It struck me that while we were both technomancers, we both had very different ideas of what that really meant. With what she¡¯d said, it seemed she viewed the resonance in a much more spiritual way than I did ¨C and in the most literal sense of the word, given how she treated her sprites. It almost reminded me of Lisa¡¯s shamanic beliefs.


    The shaman herself was waiting for me when I returned to meatspace, serenely looking up at me as I blinked away the harsh hospital lights.


    ¡°Any luck?¡± she asked, not unkindly.


    ¡°Maybe.¡± I leant back, resting my chin on my thumb and forefinger. ¡°You¡¯d probably get along if your heads weren¡¯t in different worlds; she¡¯s recommended I go on a spiritual journey.¡±


    ¡°It might do you some good,¡± Lisa replied with a smile. ¡°A lot¡¯s changing. I think we could all use a chance to centre ourselves.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, well, first I¡¯ve got go to lose some weight.¡± I grinned, but the grin was a false one, and it became weaker as what I¡¯d said sank in. I knew that I didn¡¯t have any other option, knew that it was perfectly normal ¨C almost mundane, even ¨C but it was still a hell of a thing to think about.


    I meant it as a way of saying goodbye for the night, but Lisa followed me out the waiting room and into the elevator. She didn¡¯t say a word and neither did I, but I appreciated her presence all the same. I shouldn¡¯t have been surprised; she could probably read me like an open book.


    As the elevator climbed, making frequent stops to admit hospital staff, visitors and even one elderly dwarf on an electric wheelchair, I thumbed through the brochure, slightly surprised at the amount of options there were for what was fundamentally just a gripping tool on the end of two articulated struts.


    The reception area for the cybersurgery clinic was all decorated in sterile white, with a recessed alcove in one wall that held a row of plastic plants in a plastic gravel bed and a screen that displayed shots from some distant Evo-owned factory where employees in cleansuits stared purposefully at robotic armatures as they assembled new cyberlimbs with programmed precision.


    I might have been brought there by injury, but the cyberware clinic sat closer to the cosmetic side of CrashCart than the medical. Cyberware was frequently used in medicine, of course, but it was just as common ¨C sometimes even mandatory ¨C in the workplace. Growing up, I¡¯d seen plenty of simplistic cybernetics on dockworkers who wanted to haul crates all day without losing their backs by the time they hit thirty-five. Not to mention all the socialites who swapped out limbs for fashion¡¯s sake, as easily as they might a pair of shoes.


    I made myself known to the ork manning the desk, his cybereyes matching up my profile with their files. He asked me which ¡®package¡¯ I would be installing, so I pointed out the right page in the brochure and took a seat beside Lisa, who was watching the screen with a complete lack of interest.


    One of the tricks of my nature was that I always knew what time it was. Timestamps were encoded into almost every piece of transmitted data, which meant I was constantly surrounded by the passage of seconds measured out in perfect precision. And yet it still felt like time was running slow before the receptionist finally informed me that I could proceed to surgery.


    I stood up, sighed, and looked down at Lisa.


    ¡°Wish me luck,¡± I said, with a half-hearted smile.


    ¡°You¡¯re kidding, right?¡± Tattletale grinned back. ¡°If you could make it through the last job, you can survive a visit to the doctors. I¡¯ll be sure to get you a lollypop for good behaviour.¡±


    I snorted, shaking my head as I followed the glowing green guideline that had appeared on the floor. It led down a short corridor and into a room that shared the same basic anatomy as a high-school changing room, only far cleaner, much more upmarket, and generously sized for one metahuman only.


    The green line ended in the middle of the room, but there was a list of instructions projected on the wall to my left. I followed them with more than a little apprehension, stripping down and leaving my clothes and boots in a secure locker. The moment I was done, the text shifted into a green smiley face and the line resumed its rapid crawl along the floor, leading through a glass door in the far wall.


    Beyond was a shower of warm water that smelled of chemicals buried beneath a minty-fresh mask, as if reminding me of toothpaste would make me feel cleaner. It snapped off after forty seconds, followed by twenty seconds of humming sonics to dry me off, the frequency causing my horns to ache ever so slightly. As I stepped through into the next room, I felt a little like I¡¯d just been forced through a car wash.


    The next stage in what increasingly felt like an assembly line was a much smaller changing room with a single locker that contained a set of pristine white scrubs and a pair of rubbery sandals. The sandals and pants were ordinary enough, but the top was lopsided; with a full sleeve on the left arm but the right cut back so far it exposed the entirety of my shoulder, about half my back and more of my chest than I was comfortable with. That wasn¡¯t why I found it so unsettling, however; they might as well have drawn a ¡®cut here¡¯ line on me in permanent marker.


    It didn¡¯t help that the arm hung completely limp at my side, since Tattletale¡¯s sling had been left with my clothes in the other room.


    I was starting to feel claustrophobic. The rooms may have been comfortably troll-sized, but it felt like each step I took closed a door behind me. The next room was almost a relief because it was comparatively spacious, even if it marked the end of my journey.


    It said something about how isolated I felt that the first thing I noticed wasn¡¯t the array of surgical equipment or the narrow-backed medical chair in the centre of the room, but the people. There were two of them in the room; a man and a woman who were both human-standard height, though that was all I could gleam with my eyes thanks to the full-body cleansuits both of them wore, with filters over their mouths and opaque visors over their eyes.


    The man¡¯s suit was fairly unremarkable, but the woman¡¯s ended at her elbows with an airtight seal that connected it to her cybernetic arms, both of them in CrashCart¡¯s trademarked green and white and ending in intricately delicate hands whose five fingers were each split into a multitude of different digits. I had a suspicion that the arms never left the operating theatre.


    The whole space looked more like a laboratory than what I would expect from a surgery. Everything seemed to have been set aside in its place, from the shelves of chemicals, drugs, tools and blades lining the wall to the anthropomorphic drone standing to the side of the room, holding a long black case that was out of place among the universal white and light-green decor.


    ¡°Miss Hebert,¡± the surgical cyberneticist ¨C according to the RFID tag attached to her cerebral chip ¨C greeted me. ¡°Welcome. I am doctor Kaori. I will be your surgeon today. My associate is mister Lozano, who is acting as my assistant as part of his doctorate studies.¡±


    ¡°Right¡­¡± I nodded, thrown off by their formality. ¡°So, how does this work?¡±


    ¡°First I would ask you to please inspect the product. There is no risk of a mix-up, of course, but we find it aids in integration if the patient is already familiar with the cybernetic we are about to install.¡±


    I nodded as the drone walked across to me, its metal feet clicking against the tiled floor. It held up the case in front of me as a manipulator arm extended from a slot on its back, deftly flipping the clasps in a preprogrammed motion before lifting up the lid.


    Inside, contained within contoured padding, was the arm I had picked out of the catalogue. The joints were coated with a black rubbery material that aped synthskin, protecting the articulated components from the build-up of dust and grime, while the rest of the limb was a mix of matte black plastic and black metal that gleamed with a dull sheen. The only concession to art was the thin yellow tracework that outlined the knucklebones and ran down the seams where plastic and metal met.


    I¡¯d been tempted by designs that were closer to Brian¡¯s in style, with the cybernetic components hidden beneath a realistic coating of synthskin. I could even get it in the same grey hue as my skin. Ultimately, however, I decided that if I was going to commit to this, I was going to go all in. After all, the external appearance wasn¡¯t the problem. Instead, I¡¯d taken a page from Rachel¡¯s book and gone for brutal practicality.


    The brochure had called it ¡®milspec¡¯ gear, citing its use by the marines of Yamatetsu Naval Technologies. Once it was installed, it would be stronger than my remaining organic arm, but not by much. The difference between a troll who exercised and one who didn¡¯t. The real magic was in the speed and fluidity of its movements, guided by both hardware and integrated software. It would never match a true smartlink, but it would make aiming more intuitive, make it a little easier to become an asset rather than a liability in a gunfight.


    Since it seemed pretty obvious that there would be gunfights in my future, I wanted any edge I could get.


    What I hadn¡¯t thought about when I made my choice was the way the cybernetic limb continued way beyond the shoulder joint, the coating giving way to the bare metal and almost organic-looking synthetic musculature that would replace my arm muscles and shoulder blade. They couldn¡¯t just take my arm off and slot another one into the socket; for the cyberlimb to actually function, it had to replace the entire supporting structure of my arm. I was suddenly struck by just how much of my body was about to be cut away.


    ¡°The limb has been fully sterilised, to avoid any risk of infection,¡± the doctor pressed on, oblivious to my worries or just ignoring them. Either way the effect was the same; dragging me out of my introspection and back to the here and now.


    ¡°Good,¡± I replied, half-heartedly. ¡°Where do you need me?¡±


    ¡°The operation is quite comprehensive,¡± she explained. ¡°As we require access to both sides of your shoulder, it will be conducted while you are seated.¡±


    ¡°And sedated?¡± I asked.


    The surgeon paused, her head tilted to the side slightly. I was sure she was wearing a confused expression under the suit.


    ¡°Locally. This should have been explained to you.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a bit of a rush job,¡± I explained, even as my heart started pounding. Local anaesthetic? ¡°Why not put me under?¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re installing technology directly onto your nervous system. Keeping you conscious is a reliable way of monitoring any adverse effects. Not that anything will go wrong,¡± she clarified a moment later. I got the impression she wasn¡¯t used to explaining this information; her bedside manner wasn¡¯t quite megacorporate smooth ¨C ¡°but prevention is always better than a cure. Now please, take a seat.¡±


    I did as she asked. The narrow back of the chair was far from comfortable, but I supposed my comfort was secondary to giving the surgeon unobstructed access to my shoulder. The moment I was seated, it was as if a machine had been switched on. The surgeon, her assistant and the android all moved in what could have been a preprogrammed pattern, wheeling over stands of tools and strange machinery. At the same time, I used my left arm to move my right onto the armrest, where it sat as useless and dead as a slab of meat.


    The assistant grabbed a small case from one shelf and brought it over to me, opening it to show a triangular plastic device a little larger than a headphone case, but almost as flat as a commlink.


    ¡°Since you don¡¯t have an integrated biomonitor, we¡¯ll be using an external model to watch your lifesigns,¡± he explained. ¡°It goes on your neck.¡±


    I shifted my head, exposing my neck as the assistant removed the biomonitor from its case, peeling off the paper on the back and sticking it right over my carotid artery. I could sense the device whirring into life as it sensed my pulse, switching on a small ultrasonic scanner and streaming data to half a dozen recipient devices, including the two clean suits.


    The next device he brought was in two parts; a vial of clear liquid and a long, tube-like component with a squeeze-trigger on the side. He slotted the former into the latter and held the result in front of me. I realised that he was probably following company policy; explaining each step of the procedure to the patient.


    ¡°This jet injector contains local anaesthetic and a coagulant that will clot the blood within your arm. The cybernetic has already been pre-loaded with a counteragent that will resume normal blood flow once installed. Hold still please. This will sting a bit.¡±


    He pressed the injector against my shoulder and squeezed the trigger, a compressed air canister forced a jet of fluid through my skin and into my bloodstream. It came with a sharp, stabbing pain that caused me to jump in my sheet.


    ¡°Some fucking anaesthetic¡­¡± I grumbled.


    ¡°It needs a few seconds to take effect,¡± the assistant said with a shrug. I glowered at him, but a few moments later the pain had faded into a dull numbness that slowly spread down my arm and across my chest until everything felt cold and tingly.


    The surgeon stepped back into view, wheeling across a tray of equipment and followed closely by the drone. The android had the arm mounted in a bracket that kept it perfectly level with my shoulder, exactly mirroring the loose lump of meat that was my organic arm. I could see a timer in the surgeon¡¯s HUD, visible only to her. I presumed it was counting down the time it took for the coagulant to clog up my blood.


    Sure enough, the surgeon took a long, narrow tool off the countertop. She held it between two fingers that had split into three different manipulators, turning the device into an extension of her hand.


    ¡°The first step is to close the arteries pumping blood into your arm ¨C your veins will have already solidified. For this, I will be making an incision just below the clavicle and fusing the subclavian artery. It is important you remain still.¡±


    For a moment, I felt like watching. Keeping my torso deathly still, I turned my head slightly and flicked my head down as the tool was brought close to my shoulder. The head of the tool was topped by something that looked like the head of a bottle opener; a metal ring that was flat and sharp on the top edge. Moments before it made contact with my skin, however, I flinched and abruptly shifted my gaze to the surgeon¡¯s arm. I didn¡¯t feel anything, though her arm had lowered enough that I knew she had to have made her incision. There was a faint sizzling sound, then the tool was withdrawn as the surgeon stuck a temporary pad over the wound.


    The tool ¨C which no doubt had some complicated, scientific name ¨C was set back on the table. Its replacement¡¯s function was far easier to understand, though the sight of it sent shivers down my spine. It was a straight knife about as long as the surgeon¡¯s forearm with yellow warning markers on the sheath cautioning the wielder ¨C and, presumably, their target ¨C about the blade¡¯s monofilament edge.


    I didn¡¯t know what I was expecting when the weapon was drawn, but to my inexperienced eye it just looked like a dull blade of matte-grey ceramic. No different from some of the cheaper knives you could buy in just about any bodega in the city. I looked away again as the surgeon held the knife just above my shoulder while the assistant stepped in and wrapped his hand around my bicep.


    I saw the surgeon¡¯s arm fall seemingly without any exertion on her part and suddenly felt as if the floor had just tilted sideways. My weight felt wrong, my body off balance. I felt myself breathing heavier and forced my lungs back to something like normality. It felt easier than it should have been; I wondered if there was more in those anaesthetics than they told me.


    ¡°What-¡± I swallowed. ¡°What do you do with it?¡±


    ¡°The bone marrow will be recycled for transplants,¡± the assistant explained as the android took my arm somewhere out of view. I kept my eyes firmly fixed on the wall in front of me. I didn¡¯t want to see it. ¡°The rest is incinerated.¡±


    The surgeon was working with smaller tools now ¨C perhaps even just the cutting edges of her multifaceted digits ¨C while the android had folded back the armrest and moved the new arm into place. The sound of those smaller quantities of flesh being carefully flensed back was both sickening and indescribable; it seemed like the whole operation was dragging on into eternity. I¡¯d switched off my view of Bitch¡¯s optics when given the chance to see her work up close, but it felt like that had gone far quicker.


    And then the horrific noises ceased, as I heard the faint clicking of the surgeon¡¯s hands rearranging themselves into a new configuration. The arm was pushed even closer to my body, the surgeon leaning in close as she matched up arteries and veins to their new mechanical counterparts. After a few moments she pulled her right hand back, reaching into her left arm and drawing out a datajack that was slotted into a hidden port on the cyberlimb¡¯s forearm. Through my passive awareness of her own cyberware, I watched as she tapped into a monitoring system that seemed almost like a computer¡¯s basic startup program.


    One by one, that program checked off nerves as they were attached to the arm, but for now the limb sat passive and inert. It took twenty-three minutes for her to connect all the relevant nerves, at which point she paused with her mental attention resting on an inert programme in the arm.


    ¡°Thank you for your patience, Miss Hebert. We will now test the link between the digital and biological nerves. Please try and clench your right hand into a fist.¡±


    I did so. It didn¡¯t actually feel like my arm was gone ¨C it still lingered as a phantom limb ¨C but I couldn¡¯t hear the cyberlimb moving. Through the matrix, however, I saw the inert programme come to life as it registered the input only to prevent the signal from making the jump to motion.


    That was the start of an exhaustive process of checks as I shifted every single joint in my arm in what felt like every possible direction, each motion matched by a signal in the matrix and absolutely no movement in the real world. It was exhausting.


    ¡°Good,¡± the surgeon said, after I¡¯d bent my elbow five times. ¡°No neurological anomalies detected in either the limb or your central nervous system. Miss Hebert, I¡¯m going to activate motion. Please remain still for now.¡±


    There was a pregnant pause. I felt like a coiled spring; anxieties and doubts piling up in my head with no way to vent them. What if it didn¡¯t work? It was a stupid, irrational thought, but it was there all the same. What if I¡¯ve gone through all of this for nothing?


    ¡°Now, please curl your thumb.¡±


    The thought flashed through my mind in an instant, in a rush of released energy. I moved my thumb, my brain sending a signal down my biological nervous system, where it jumped across to a cybernetic substitute. For a moment, I thought it hadn¡¯t worked, but then I felt it. A rubbery substance on the very fringes of my awareness. I was feeling the grip pad on the end of my thumb touching its counterpart on my palm. I could feel both, through both.


    Without being prompted, I furled my fingers from left to right, shifting my thumb so that my hand could close into a fist. Touch blossomed across each digit. I wasn¡¯t just feeling the grip pads, but the surprisingly warm metal of each knuckle. The sensation was unfamiliar; the shape of each joint ¨C the shape of my whole hand ¨C was different in both obvious and subtle ways, but it was all there.


    ¡°It works,¡± I said, breathless. ¡°Touch, movement¡± ¨C I unfurled my fist and rotated my wrist, placing my hand palm-down on the stand that was holding it in place. I could feel the chill of the sterilised metal ¨C ¡°everything works.¡±


    ¡°So I see,¡± the surgeon responded, her eyes looking at a digital world of readouts and sensor relays spreading from point to point like a web, flowing down from a single branch before becoming fractal and dispersed. She was watching the arm¡¯s nervous system; watching the pulsing neurons effortlessly transferring signals to their new companions.


    ¡°A textbook installation,¡± she said with finality. ¡°No signs of neurological rejection or psychological ghosting. If that changes ¨C if you experience disassociation, nausea, sudden loss of control or violent urges within the next forty-eight hours ¨C please contact us immediately.¡±


    ¡°And after that?¡± I asked, though my brain was stuck on ¡®violent urges.¡¯


    ¡°The warranty expires and the cost of removal would either be covered under your deductible or paid out of pocket.¡±


    While she¡¯d been talking, the android had undone the clasps holding my arm to the stand. The moment they were released, I stood up, swaying a little on my feet. My new arm weight roughly as much as my old one, but roughly wasn¡¯t enough when it came to my sense of balance. I moved my elbow, then rolled my shoulder in my socket ¨C all the while trying not to look at the plastic yellow biowaste bag that the assistant was tying off.


    ¡°Do you have a mirror?¡± I asked.


    A gesture directed me to a flat panel on the wall. It was a digital mirror, kept opaque while the surgery was ongoing. I wanted to reach out through the matrix and turn it on, but instead I brought up my arm and pressed one metal digit against the button.


    The mirror sprang into light, sweeping aside the opaque surface in a flood of pixels that reflected my own image back at me. Blood had seeped into my scrubs around my right shoulder and stained my skin. The arm began at the edge of my shoulder, seemingly anchored to the base of my clavicle ¨C though I knew that was an illusion. My skin ¨C and whatever flesh they¡¯d left me ¨C had been used to conceal the extensive cybernetics that stretched throughout the upper right side of my torso, anchoring the arm in place.


    The skin itself was reddened and sore where it had been spliced to synthskin and metal. The result was almost seamless; biology transitioning into cybernetics as if both had been grown that way. The arm itself¡­ I was glad I hadn¡¯t gone for a realistic coating. It was jarring, obvious, but that seemed right in a way I couldn¡¯t quite comprehend. It seemed to match the faint sensation in the back of my brain that came from the resonance and the cyberware tugging against each other. That sensation developed into a headache as I thanked the staff and made my way back through the shower and into the changing room.


    With my scrubs discarded, I stepped back into the waiting room a new woman ¨C or, at least, twenty percent of one. Lisa was waiting there, setting aside a magazine as she caught side of me. She stood, smiling, and reached into the pocket of her trenchcoat. When she withdrew it, she was holding a cherry red tootsie pop in a crinkled plastic wrapper.


    ¡°Where did you get that?¡± I asked, baffled.


    ¡°Took a walk down to paediatric and told the duty nurse I wanted a lollipop for my twenty year old friend.¡± Her gaze shifted to my arm as I reached out and took the proffered sweet. ¡°It suits you.¡±


    ¡°Not quite,¡± I countered, shifting the lollipop to my remaining organic hand as I tested my fine motor control by unwrapping it without tearing the plastic, ¡°but it will.¡±

 Recompile: 6.03

    When I finally left the hospital, my head was heavy with an almost inescapable weariness. Even after days of unconsciousness, I was still half-dead on my feet. I said my goodbyes to Tattletale at the nearest metro station, then watched her go from the platform as she leant against the window of a westbound carriage, her arms crossed over her chest and her head bowed in deep thought.


    On the eastbound line, I almost fell asleep to the gentle side-to-side rocking of the carriage as it wound its way around the edge of the docks, only to be jolted back into consciousness by the shrieking squeal of the brakes each time we approached a station. I very nearly missed my destination, only recognising the familiar platform at the last second and pushing through the flood of incoming passengers moments before the doors closed.


    Finally, after navigating streets that were being slowly drowned beneath an incessant downpour, I found myself shambling out of my apartment block¡¯s elevator and into the welcomingly drab corridor that led back home. I¡¯d shared the elevator with a family of five who were on their way up to the fifteenth floor, the youngest child playing with the toy from a Jolly Meal ¨C a spacefighter from some kid¡¯s trideo show that he was ¡®flying¡¯ from his hand, complete with the correct sound effects. Something about the way I looked must have worried the parents, however; I kept catching them glancing at me with unease in their eyes.


    I hadn¡¯t needed to use my apartment¡¯s keycard for six years; a stray thought was enough to unlock and retract the sliding door. Another thought shut it behind me as I half-stumbled over the threshold, shrugging off my jacket and tossing it to hang off the back of a kitchen chair, followed shortly thereafter by the submachine gun in its shoulder holster. I threw both with my new arm and almost misjudged my own strength with the pistol, the back of the chair just managing to catch one of the straps.


    I kicked off my boots, then kicked them vaguely into place against the wall, next to a neatly organised rack of shoes ¨C some mine, most not ¨C that had sat untouched for years. There was a mirror in the hall ¨C I paused at the sight of my new arm, marvelling at the unfamiliar sight of bare metal and plastic emerging from my sleeve, the way it caught the light in unexpected ways.


    I practiced my grip on a glass of water, noting from the tap¡¯s trickle that I¡¯d need to replace the filter sooner rather than later. It still worked out cheaper than buying bottled ¨C just.


    It struck me then, as I fished a handful of ingredients from the fridge and cut a few slices from a tube of AlmostEgg, that it wasn¡¯t too long ago that my life had been defined by questions like that; how to scrape and save money on the little things even while I ignored riskier payouts because my pathological need to keep the apartment was matched in intensity only by the lethargy in which I lived my life.


    I wondered what my life would have been like if I¡¯d stepped into the Shadows sooner? Where would I be without those years I spent as little more than a sleepwalker taking petty jobs for petty cash, without doing so much as take a single step beyond the threshold of my home? A home that had stopped feeling like home long before I was its only occupant?


    That brought a frown to my face, as I microwaved a packet of mixed rice and vegetables. Ultimately, however, I decided it wasn¡¯t worth worrying about. There were simply too many variables involved to predict what could have been, not least of which was that I¡¯d never have met the others.


    With the now-warmed packet emptied into a bowl and the slices of ¡®egg¡¯ scattered on top for protein, I grabbed a cold beer from the fridge, sat down and realised with a start that I was actually comfortable. The past few weeks had been exhilarating, each burst of violence a shot of adrenaline straight to my soul, but even the lows between had become a source of contentment. Hacking my way through corporate networks was a thrill, but going clothes shopping in the market with Lisa and Rachel came with its own, far more nuanced sensations.


    Even now, after being wounded, losing an arm and finding a new one ¨C even with Brian in the middle of half a dozen different life-saving operations ¨C I still didn¡¯t regret a single decision I¡¯d made since hunting down Lisa¡¯s comm from a forum post. That wasn¡¯t to say I wasn¡¯t aware of how we¡¯d fallen short; I knew we needed to be better prepared in future, knew I needed to have perfect awareness of everything around me, on the job and off.


    The first step was to clear the fuzz from my brain; that lingering sensation that something wasn¡¯t right with my head. I wondered if this was how Tattletale¡¯s ¡®burnout¡¯ mages felt all the time, whether they got used to it or whether it felt completely different when chrome messed with magic rather than the resonance?


    As I sank into the syn-leather armchair, I became conscious of just how strange the material felt against my new arm. The tactile sensors didn¡¯t extend to the bare metal, so it was as if I had gaps in my sense of touch. There were other, smaller nuances as well; my mechanical joints didn¡¯t move quite like my real ones, to the point where I could rotate my wrist a full three hundred and sixty degrees, which gave me my first ever bout of vertigo when I accidentally found out.


    But wasn¡¯t distracting. It didn¡¯t feel unnatural; I wasn¡¯t suddenly struck by an urge to rip it out of my shoulder, or drive my metal fingers into my neighbour¡¯s eyes. It was just different. All I needed to do was trick my brain into accepting that difference rather than freaking out about it.


    The process started, paradoxically, by leaving both the arm and the meat it was attached to behind.


    The matrix flooded in like an ocean, submersing me beneath its vast chill. I paused for a moment, metaphorically breathing it in as I took stock of the local net, eyeing the surrounding traffic for threats. Tattletale had told me that ¨C by and large ¨C the gang war had reached a lull in the fighting. The initial flare-up of violence had given way to Chosen and Yakuza entrenching themselves in whatever ground they¡¯d taken, held or retreated to, while Knight Errant launched armoured convoys through the streets to reassert what control they could.


    To those few in the know, the lull had more nuance to it; the Chosen had obtained whatever drugs they needed and were now hunkering down to dose up and deal with the fallout of their averted starvation.


    And yet, to the matrix, there might as well not have been a gang war at all. While whole streets might have been barricaded off, data flowed freely throughout Chosen and Yakuza territory, the sheer volume of traffic in the matrix too great to be stemmed even if the gangs wanted to ¨C which they didn¡¯t, when they themselves relied on the matrix to keep their communications online.


    I didn¡¯t fool myself into thinking that meant the matrix was safe from the fighting, however. I knew that if I looked closer at the right datastreams passing between the right devices, I¡¯d find a shadow war of decker against decker fought out in private comm networks, squad-size tactical links and even inside the headware of gang lieutenants, whose secure drives contained data more valuable than any physical prize.


    None of it was my concern. I left the city to its quiet war, drifting through the spiderwebbed datastreams of the North End until I passed below the plane of the grid and down into the nothingness below, deeper than even the miniscule municipal network regulating the subsurface pumps that drained the aquifer for drinking water. I kept going, until the city¡¯s grid was stretched out above me like the night¡¯s sky, then began fraying the tether between me and my body.


    It came more naturally the second time; almost closer to falling asleep than a conscious activity. One by one, senses were muted and strands cut until I was once again surrounded by an empty black void, drifting ever deeper as I left my body behind. It was placid, even tranquil in my complete isolation, until the sudden, blinding moment of transition as the event horizon seized me in its agonising grasp.


    It stripped me bare, down to the mere molecules that made up my form. I was bombarded by a succession of images and sensations; of bullet wounds and the kick of recoil, of the feed from Grue¡¯s cybereyes as he fought to bring his rifle up in time, only for weapon to fall slack as his body juddered with the force of three shots, the pain flashing down his synapses and cascading into errors in his software.


    The hurt was as strong as ever ¨C to have my very psyche stripped down and analysed by an immense and alien process ¨C but somehow I had become better at managing the pain. It was as if I was simply skimming off the unwanted data to somewhere else; sequestering my guilt and feelings of inferiority into a sealed file where they could slowly seep back into my mind in doses too small to be crippling.


    And then, after an eternity and yet in no time at all, it was over. I was through, my persona reduced down to pure resonance and merged into the ever-flowing data that the resonance drew from the matrix like poison from a wound. A myriad of raw data surrounded me, enveloped me, was me. I was reduced down to my most essential elements, compressed into one part of a transmission that contained multitudes.


    I didn¡¯t need to think about my destination; I was already being directed there. The resonance realms were still a mystery to me, as I knew they were to even the most experienced technomancer, but there was one place in them where I knew I belonged ¨C albeit in a much more categorical way than the sense of belonging I¡¯d found with my team.


    When the blinding tunnel of pure data gave way to pitch-black waters, I was ready. I swam my way to the surface, ignoring the psychosomatic burning in my lungs. Each kick drove me upwards, my arms outstretched in front of me until I broke through into the strange heptagonal antechamber. I reached up to pull myself out, only to slam an empty stump against the side.


    White-hot agony spread throughout my body as I flinched back, spasming once and sinking two metres below the surface of the water. I took a breath, the burning in my throat brought back to sharp and painful unreality, and swam back to the surface ¨C all the while mentally cursing my arm, my stupidity and the observatory¡¯s completely arbitrary love affair with the laws of physics.


    Pulling myself out of the water using only my left arm was about as awkward as putting on my shirt had been before I got my chrome replacement, but I somehow managed to haul myself out onto the tiled floor, staggering to my feet in a way that would be undignified if there was anyone around to see it.


    I looked back at the still black waters of the pool, where my reflection stared up at me. My cybernetic arm was missing, my shoulder little more than a mess of bare musculature and sickening holes where cold steel had replaced flesh. It was viscerally disgusting, causing a wave of nausea to rise in my throat before I centred myself and willed away the false facsimile of my body that the realm had forced on me.


    The chitin skin and spidersilk robes of my persona were comforting to see, but I was still missing an arm. Where before there had been bare and grotesque flesh, my shoulder was now little more than a stump of fractal crystals that glowed with a golden light, as cold and lifeless as the grave. They shifted under my attention, seemingly changed by the mere act of observation as they reached out and grasped at nothing like a living thing.


    ¡°Well,¡± I remarked to empty space. ¡°That¡¯s new.¡±


    Almost running on automatic, I left the room, the heavy wooden door with its wrought-iron electronic lock sliding open as I approached. The hall beyond was unsurprisingly unchanged; still gently curved as it followed what I assumed to be the outer boundary of the circular realm, with a deep green carpet, a vaulted ceiling, bottle-green windows along the outer wall and heavy iron doors opposite them.


    I walked briskly past the row of doors, certain that the answers I sought could be found in the observatory¡¯s library, among the stacks of raw, unsorted data from the familiar constellation of data far above. After some time, however, I became conscious of a sensation tugging at my neck.


    Looking down, I saw that the crystalline stump of my right arm was shifting even more violently than before, spines growing centimetre by centimetre only to crack and scatter into glittering dust. It was as if they were reaching out to something only to collapse under their own weight.


    The obvious answer was that they were reaching for the doors, drawn there by something akin to magnetism, like iron filings in a basic science class. I stopped, turned, and crossed the hall to the closest doorway, the crystals¡¯ motion only growing more violent until I had almost deluded myself into thinking they had a mind of their own.


    As I pressed the clawed chitin of my left hand against the door, I felt nothing beyond its iron surface, pitted and cold to the touch. It was sealed by another archaic electronic lock, the flickering red light mocking me in its immutability. Somehow I sensed that even a woodlouse sprite wouldn¡¯t be able to break through. In spite of its appearance, it was more physical than digital; raw resonance given shape and function by the logic of this space. Everything here was fixed in place, bound by an imitation of the physical laws of the city above that was so perfect it became oppressive to a mind used to flying free in the ephemeral space of the digital world.


    Everything was fixed, unchanging¡­ except for the ragged stump where CrashCart¡¯s surgeons had grafted on the device that had rent the very essence of my persona. For a moment, I hesitated, unsure if the idea that had flashed into my head would do more harm than good, before I brought my one remaining hand up to the stump of my other arm and gripped one particularly solid crystalline shard between two claws.


    Breaking it free from the mass was as easy as snapping a salt crystal, but the agony that shot through my system was enough to drop me to one knee as my persona frayed and standard gravity was suddenly three times as strong. I knelt there for a moment, feeling the resonance that made up my persona throbbing like bruised flesh. The pain passed as quickly as it came, however, and as I staggered back to my feet I reached out and pressed the point of the crystal against the lock.


    It pierced the solid resonance like it wasn¡¯t even there, then seemed to spread and grow from the wound like an infection until it coated the entire lock, burying the insulting red light beneath a golden growth. Suddenly, I could feel it as easily as I could any digital device. With a thought, the crystals embedded within the mechanism contracted and slid back the bolt. When I pressed my palm against the door again, it gave way with the soundless ease of well-oiled metal.


    For all that the motion was smooth, it was also slow. The iron door was as heavy as the real-world metal and inches thick; closer to the thickness I¡¯d expect from a stereotypical bank vault than what appeared from the outside to be a cell. As it swung open, the room beyond was revealed by inches.


    There was little light in the room. Instead, each inch brought with it the dull green glow of the corridor. The first thing the light touched was an aged and bare shelf formed from the same dark iron that was so universal within the realm. The inches after that revealed yet more shelves; the whole room reminded me of nothing more than the times my mom had taken me to the university library, a grand stone building in the old city centre.


    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    The library was no longer used as a library, of course. The thousands of paper books it had once contained had long since been scanned and digitised into storage servers that took up a miniscule fraction of the same space. Only the most valuable manuscripts had been retained, though even they had been removed from the library to secure storage vaults.


    Fittingly enough, the empty building had been given over to the university¡¯s Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. The cavernous rooms of books had been converted into lecture halls, or split down into smaller seminar rooms and offices for the academics. Mom had held court there in her role as a professor of English Literature and she¡¯d often brought me there during the school holidays, before I was old enough for her and dad to be comfortable leaving me home alone.


    Naturally, I¡¯d snuck off more than once and gone wandering through the forgotten corners of the building; in the basement, or the cramped rooms in the corners that would have been too difficult to renovate. Some of those rooms, accessible only by a narrow spiral staircase of iron latticework, were full of shelves like these. Bare reminders of what came before, left untouched because it was too inconvenient to change them.


    For all I knew, those rooms were gone. The department certainly was; shuttered along with Brockton Bay University¡¯s name when Max Anders¡¯ generous donation turned it into an entirely STEM-focused institution that he renamed after his dead father. Mom had moved on to the newly-opened New Brockton University, but by that point I¡¯d been old enough that I never got to see her new office before it was too late.


    The sight of those shelves here, of all places, was almost nostalgic. Then the door swung further open and all sense of familiarity fled as a cold and primal dread washed over me.


    The rest of the room was much as I had imagined it to be, with a dozen cramped rows of empty iron shelves, but between the bars and cages grew the strands of a delicate and utterly alien crystalline lattice. They stretched throughout the room, passing through the walls, floor and ceiling into spaces beyond. Each pulsed with a cold and lifeless light that cast no illumination whatsoever, as if it existed somewhere outside the realm¡¯s physics.


    The growth ¨C and somehow I knew it had grown, rather than appeared or been made ¨C reminded me of neurons, of cobwebs, of the tunnels of light connecting the resonance realms. They were vectors for information, carrying data from one place to another. The cause of my dread wasn¡¯t just their unnatural nature, but the question of neurons or cobwebs. Were they meant to carry signals to an entity waiting at the centre of the web, or was I standing among the brain cells of some unfathomably vast mind?


    It didn¡¯t take long for my dread to be overcome by an almost primal curiosity. I crossed the threshold, my crystalline stump shifting ever more violently as I drew closer to the gestalt mass. It responded in its own way, the pulsating crystals closest to me shifting outwards like grasping feeder-mouths or tree roots reaching down to water.


    That should have frightened me more, but instead I found myself fascinated by the fractal way in which it grew. It was hard to slip the constricting physical realities of the ream, but I was still a technomancer, and I still retained enough control over the resonance to reach out and sense the reality beyond the visible data; to look past the limitations of a metahuman brain translating the unknowable into something it could observe, if not comprehend.


    What I felt, deep in the very core of my persona, was a miniscule fraction of a truly vast entity. One that stretched throughout the entirety of this realm, dug in and among its physical structure like a fungal infection. The strands of crystalline flesh I could see were little more than infinitesimally small parts of a greater whole, embedded into the very fabric of the realm. It waxed and waned in and out of unreality; behind these doors, it was firmly anchored into the physical structure of the realm, but elsewhere it continued both invisible and formless, out of step with the realm itself. I¡¯d walked through those immaterial strands before and never even noticed.


    It was¡­ either observing or feeding on the data the realm collected, but I didn¡¯t feel like there was any specific purpose behind its actions. It was more of an automatic response, like lungs drawing in air without conscious input from the mind their oxygen fuelled. It was parasitic, of that I had no doubt; its attention spread solely to the host it had latched onto. The grasping crystalline tendrils that had begun to curve towards me from all directions might as well have been white blood cells responding to a handful of bacterial microbes.


    It wasn¡¯t consciously aware of me. It couldn¡¯t be, any more than I could be aware of a germ nestled among the hairs of my organic body. I stepped to the side, putting another foot or two between me and the closest tendril, and studied them closer. I knew it wasn¡¯t native to this realm, but the longer I looked, the more convinced I was that this entity didn¡¯t quite belong anywhere.


    It was in the underlying structure of the crystals; the base code or raw resonance that gave it form. The issue was that it wasn¡¯t either code or resonance. It lacked the rigid lines and ordered flow of programmed code, or even the more artistic flair of something coded by a technomancer, and yet it was also too rigid to be formed from the inherently ethereal resonance. It seemed almost like a bridge between the worlds; something formed from both but belonging to neither.


    That gave me an idea. It was mad, maybe desperate, but madness and desperation had worked out so far.


    Drawing raw resonance from my own body, I formed a resonance spike that stretched out from my left hand. In this realm, it took form as a physical blade, carrying all the weight and sharpness of the world above. I raised my arm, then brought the blade down on the closest tendril. It cut through the crystalline mass with ease, causing the severed tendril to spark and recoil with bursts of data that went nowhere. Its counterparts didn¡¯t react, instead continuing their slow approach towards me, but I had expected that; it wasn¡¯t like I would take revenge for the death of a single cell.


    I dismissed the blade, drawing the resonance back into myself in a stream of golden particles, and wrapped my hand around the severed length of raw¡­ something. It shifted in my grasp like a living thing, like freshly dead meat twitching when its nerves are stimulated.


    I didn¡¯t take a deep breath ¨C it was a pointless, physical instinct ¨C but I did pause before taking the next step. It was inevitable; I had no idea what this stuff was beyond the broad understanding that it was malleable and made to carry signals. In the end, however, that was enough.


    I jammed the mass of crystals into my socket, and burst into flames.


    That was the only way I could understand it; the only way my overtaxed metahuman brain had of comprehending the sheer agonising pain that flowed from the severed shard through to every part of my persona. I screamed, burning fireflies spilling from my body until it seemed the very realm vibrated in sympathetic pain with me, generating a resonating shriek of its own. The crystalline tendrils that surrounded me were forced back by the pressure, the closest being crushed beneath the weight of my torment.


    Even in the depths of agony, my mind took note of that effect. Focusing my will, I drew the fireflies back into myself, drawing that crushing force through my body and into the grafted length of crystals. Through that immense pressure I was able to give shape to the growth, each fracture and crush bringing it closer in structure to the cybernetic arm that sat in its place in realspace.


    I had acquired the schematics of the arm before leaving the hospital. The mechanical components, the exterior casing, those were just details. What mattered was the internal structure of its cybernetic nervous system and how that system made the jump to my body¡¯s biological nerves. With each shift I made to the crystals, I created a more perfect mirror of that system in my persona. At some point, instinct took over and the process became almost automatic; it felt easier the closer the limb resembled its counterpart and I started to include copy-protection elements that I knew hadn¡¯t been present on the schematics.


    Mitsuhama Consumer Technologies believed that technomancers worked according to the principle of quantum entanglement. If that was the case, then I was simply bringing my nervous system back into alignment with its paired counterpart, as well as creating a match in the resonance for the new addition to that system.


    For all that it had arrived in an instant, the agony remained for quite some time after I had finished sculpting my new arm. In the visual layer, it appeared as a limb formed from glowing golden crystal, jagged and angular yet unmistakably evoking the mechanical nature of the limb it matched. On a whim, I shifted the appearance to match the rest of my persona, smoothing out the lines and giving it colour until it resembled the chitinous limb opposite it.


    Before me, the crystalline entity whose shard I had claimed was beginning to heal itself, the grasping tendrils drawing back as their mass was repurposed to replace the flesh I had taken from them. My awareness of the entity was sharper now, but no data flowed between us. I was right; I was too small to be worth noticing, though the crystalline shard embedded within me made it easier for me to sense the extent of the entity¡¯s presence in this realm.


    I was certain this wasn¡¯t how technomancers were supposed to attune to cyberware, if there even was a consensus, but I wasn¡¯t going to let perfect be the enemy of good. What mattered was that I had successfully restored myself to full functionality, and I¡¯d gained a greater understanding of the observatory while I was at it.


    So, when I slipped back into the inky-black waters of the antechamber, it was with a light head, a sense of vicious satisfaction and a few titanic unanswered questions I was willing to leave for another time. Drifting back through the tunnels of light to the event horizon felt more natural than ever, and I gracefully slipped through the firmament and back into the matrix before finally restoring the tethers that bound me to my organic body and coming to full wakefulness in my well-worn armchair, noting in wonder how much more real my new arm felt.


    My digital stump of a shoulder had been bleeding like an actual wound, or perhaps a cut wire. The constant growing and fracturing of the crystals was caused by my essence trying to flow through my body as normal, only to be pushed out into empty space like sparks. I wasn¡¯t sure if it would have caused my metaphorical battery to run out at some point, but I knew it would slow me down.


    Now, the circuit had been reconnected. The resonance that had bled out into the ether instead flowed through my arm, travelling down its circuitry before doubling back on itself like a true circulatory system. Evo¡¯s cyberneticists had created an artificial limb that was able to seamlessly integrate with the metahuman nervous system, to attach an arm that felt as real as if it were flesh and blood. Now, my cybernetic almost felt more real than its counterpart; I could feel every neuron firing down each and every micro-wire, right up until the returning signals crossed over into flesh.


    My head was alive with possibilities for that hyperawareness; ways I could turn my limb from an adequate replacement to a straight-up upgrade.


    My dive into the resonance had been shorter than most; barely an hour and a half had passed since I sat down. Once again, however, I couldn¡¯t help but note how little correlation there was between the actual time that had passed and how I had perceived it when I was beyond the event horizon. In the matrix, space held no meaning while metahuman minds could take advantage of perception altering high-end cyberdecks to think faster than their biological limits. In the resonance realms, time and space were completely decoupled from reality; I could spend a day in a single hour, or dip in and out only to find hours had passed.


    There was no rhyme or reason to it, but rhymes and reason were also absent from the resonance realms ¨C unless you counted the obscure and particular logic that governed each realm.


    I turned my hand over, watching artificial neurons fire as I closed my fingers into a fist. I could see every algorithm built into the arm¡¯s code, every piece of targeting software and hyperactive reflex that made the difference between civilian and military-grade specifications. On a whim and faintly grinning at the childishness of it, I unfurled my thumb and index finger from the fist, stretching out my arm as I pointed the imaginary gun at my front door.


    I froze, my grin turning brittle on my face. Past the length of my arm and the makeshift ¡®sight¡¯ of my thumb, I could see my holster hanging on the back of a kitchen chair. The holster, but not the submachine gun it had contained.


    Without letting the grin fall from my face ¨C without moving so much as a single muscle ¨C I reached out into the matrix and scanned my surroundings, my vision lighting up with a myriad of different devices in a sphere twenty metres in diameter. I could feel every tablet, commlink, smart fridge, simsense wreath and trideo set in the apartments around me, could chart the location of every occupant by the devices they carried on them or the ways the devices around them reacted to their presence. There were no abnormal signals in my apartment; no devices that shouldn¡¯t be there, or devices that should be there but weren¡¯t.


    Slowly, trying not to show the tension growing in my chest, I let the finger gun fall and stood up, walking calmly across the room to the counter and pouring myself a glass of water. All the while, my attention was fixed on an AR window I¡¯d pulled up in front of me, displaying the view from the webcamera on dad¡¯s old terminal. Nothing was moving, which only made my dread worse; if I couldn¡¯t see them in the matrix, I might as well have been blind.


    ?I think someone¡¯s in my apartment.?


    - Spider (23:38:45/23-3-2070)


    I duplicated the message twice and sent it out into the ether, to the only people who I could trust to answer. The first response came almost instantaneously, fuelled by chrome reflexes, but offered nothing more than a faint hope.


    ?26 minutes out.?


    - bitch (23:38:51/23-3-2070)


    Tattletale¡¯s message, on the other hand, was about what I expected.


    ?omw?


    - Tt (23:39:01/23-3-2070)


    I¡¯d been staring at the cupboard with a glass of water in my hand for sixteen seconds, watching my body through the monitor. If someone was in the room with me, they¡¯d have tried to kill me already. That meant they were somewhere else in the apartment; they wouldn¡¯t have broken in just to steal my gun and leave. Besides, if they meant to kill me outright they¡¯d have done it when I was zonked out on an armchair.


    So I set the glass down and drew the largest knife we had from the block next to the stove. The moment I did, someone hit the light switch and plunged the room into darkness.


    It didn¡¯t even a second. As a mental poke flicked the lights back on, I couldn¡¯t help but chuckle. It was a dark and dangerous sound, not born from genuine mirth.


    ¡°Nice try,¡± I growled, only to jump as I felt something poke me in the side. I whirled around, thrusting the knife out, only to drive the tip of the blade into empty air.


    That triggered a panic in me; a sudden hyperawareness of just how much empty space surrounded me. It may have still been compact by troll norms, but for most of the population it provided more than enough space to duck and weave, hide and strike.


    I backed up towards the hallway, keeping the knife held out in front of me as my eyes darted around the room. If there was someone in there with me, it was clear they were invisible, but if there was even the slightest chance I¡¯d be able to see their body heat then I was going to take it.


    Unfortunately, whatever they were using to hide from me had been designed to counter a troll¡¯s biological advantage. I could still see the faint glow of my own body heat on the couch, the sharper glow from the radiators and the chill night air pressing against the windows, but once again there was simply nothing out of the ordinary. They might as well have been a ghost.


    That thought had me freeze, a cold chill of panic creeping through me as my heart began to pound in my chest. They might be a ghost, I thought, backing away down the corridor.


    It was a confined space even by my standards; if I reached out, I could brush both elbows against the wall at the same time. More to the point, I was convinced that nobody could get past me with my body blocking the way. The only plan I had was to lock myself in the bathroom and wait for Bitch or Tattletale to arrive.


    The moment I felt the door, I flicked the mental switch to slide it open and half-stumbled onto its tiled floor, turning the lights on as I turned my back on the hallway. I¡¯d meant to slam the door shut behind me, then throw my weight against it to hold it closed, but I stopped dead in my tracks the moment I saw my reflection in the mirror.


    Someone had opened up the tube of lipstick that had sat unopened on the shelf below the mirror, its plastic wrapper discarded on the floor along with the rest of the makeup kit that dad had bought me as a seventeenth birthday present. My reflection¡¯s eyes were wide with terror, widening even more as they took in the question smeared in blue across the span of the glass.


    ¡®WHERE IS HE¡¯


    Stupefied by horror, I could only watch the gormless visage staring back to me, mouth and eyes pulled wide in a grim rictus, distorting my cheeks. That was when I saw it; three mostly-horizontal lines on each cheek, in the same blue lipstick as the message, another blotch colouring in the tip of my nose and two upright arrows on my horns.


    Whiskers?


    Behind me, I heard the impossibly faint sound of a boot tapping against the floor of the corridor. I reacted on instinct, turning and throwing the knife behind me at chest height. It spun wildly before abruptly halting in midair as a grey-clad arm appeared out of nowhere, gripping the blade between thumb and forefinger.


    The sudden motion caused a cascading failure in the stealth fabric, revealing a lithe and feminine figure in a skintight taksuit. At six feet tall, she had the body of some femme fatale assassin straight out of some spy thriller, but with a mask covering her face that had been sculpted into the visage of a grinning demon. The featureless black lenses of her eyes glared at me with naked contempt as she twisted the kitchen knife around in her hand before tossing it aside.


    I knew then that she was laughing at me. That she¡¯d been laughing at me ever since I stepped into my apartment.


    I did the only thing I could thing of. I screamed, dropped my horns and charged.

 Recompile: 6.04

    I wasn¡¯t fast, wasn¡¯t fit, but the bathroom was cramped, the corridor was worse and my legs were long. Speed didn¡¯t matter when you only had to take two steps and when your bones were closer to stone than calcium those steps carried the force of a freight train.


    My head was dropped, my horns thrust forward in deference to some ancient instinct buried deep in my genes, where they¡¯d laid hidden for the millennia between the Fourth World and the Sixth. That instinct¡¯s thematic opposite was already curled into a fist; my cybernetic arm drawn back to drive a solid mass of alloys and polymers into whatever was left un-gored.


    The demon didn¡¯t make a sound in response, didn¡¯t even look fazed as I charged. I had half a second to take in her arrogant posture ¨C her arms and her head tilted slightly in a gesture of naked contempt ¨C before her legs folded beneath her as she dropped into a squat. Above the waist, her body was as still as a statue, even as she swept her leg out in a kick that should have been impossible in a corridor that narrow.


    It connected with my left ankle an instant before my foot made contact with the floor, twisting it just enough that I stumbled and fell. The momentum of my own charge, coupled with my unbalanced run, drove me forwards into the wall in a pile of limbs. I barely managed to shift my weight enough to take the blow on my unaugmented shoulder, rather than getting my horns stuck in my bedroom wall.


    Pain radiated through my body from the point of impact, even passing down the length of my cybernetic arm as a sympathetic phantom. Below me, I glimpsed the ninja through blurred eyes as she rolled out of the way of my collapsing body, finally uncrossing her arms as she pressed off the carpet and somehow twisted her body up into a cartwheel that put her on her feet again.


    My own ascent felt slow and ponderous, but as I pressed a hand against the wall and pulled myself to my full height I found some of my confidence returning to me. It was another little biological trick; there would always be a feeling of power that came from looking down on someone two feet shorter than you. It helped drive the animal panic from my brain; helped me think this through like the Shadowrunner I was supposed to be.


    The demon wasn¡¯t fazed, of course. She leant against the wall, her hand resting on her hip as she looked up at me.


    ¡°C¡¯mon, deckhead,¡± she drawled, her voice distorted a little by her mask. ¡°I need to vent some anger and your lanky ass is the perfect punching bag.¡±


    ¡°You screwed up,¡± I snarled, as I took a lumbering half-step towards her. Some drool had leaked past my right tusk, knocked out of my mouth when I¡¯d slammed up against the wall. I reached up and wiped it away with my cybernetic. It came away blue; I¡¯d caught a whisker with the motion. ¡°You think you¡¯re in control? Think you can just jander in here and fuck with me!?¡±


    All at once, I cut every light in the apartment and wacked every speaker up to full, broadcasting a blare of staticky noise that blew out the systems in three appliances not meant to handle anything more intensive than a gentle beep. I was already running, watching the heat-blob in front of me as it flinched for just a moment, baffled by the sudden absence of light and outpouring of noise. This time my run was steadier, my arms outstretched in front of me.


    My hands made contact with her waist, digging into the material of her taksuit as I squeezed the sparse flesh and taut musculature beneath. Idly I was reminded of snakeskin; the surface of the suit was patterned with almost indistinct hexagons. It was nothing more than an afterthought; the sum focus of my mind rested on the forward motion of my legs as I flung myself forward, lifting the ninja bodily off her feet only to slam her back into the ground as I toppled onto her.


    Moving on instinct, I drew my fist back and drove it forward with the noiseless momentum of artificial joints and tightly-woven bands of synthetic muscles. I was aiming for her face, ready to knock the false teeth out of her mask¡¯s mocking grin, but she somehow managed to see the blow coming, twisting her head just far enough out of the way that my fist was instead driven futilely into the floor, where it cracked the boards and let out a mechanical squeal in protest.


    At the very instant my fist made contact, I let our an involuntary wheezing gasp as the air was driven out of me. I bent double, my head dropping enough to see her heat blob of a hand withdrawing three fingers from my gut. It felt like I¡¯d been shot.


    The next blow to hit me came from a clenched fist driven into my side with enough force to roll me off her and onto my back, panting and wheezing as I glared up at the ceiling. She was tall enough that I suspected she was an ork, but she still hit far harder than she had any right to.


    She¡¯s an Adept, I realised. The thought almost passed through my mind without comment; whether her punches were imbued with magic was irrelevant next to the fact that they fucking hurt.


    I flicked the light back on, filling the heat-blob of her shape with colour. She was standing over me, her hands back on her hips as she leaned down to meet my eyes with the black void of her lenses.


    ¡°Now that you know where you stand,¡± she said, stepping one leg over me and sinking down until we were almost eye to eye, ¡°you¡¯re gonna answer my question.¡±


    I tried to rise, but my core felt like it was on fire and a swift jab to the shoulder had my head bouncing back off the carpeted floor. With her other hand, the adept reached for a long pouch on her belt, unbuckling it to reveal the head of a wicked-looking metal and polymer tomahawk. The sight of it was enough to draw out some last reserve of adrenaline.


    I sprang into action, my arms sweeping up to grip the adept by the shoulders even as I found enough strength to throw my head forwards, driving a horn into her mask with the crunch of fracturing ceramic. She reeled back, reflexively driving a punch into my brow that knocked the wind out of me, my grip on her shoulders immediately falling slack as the world span.


    I staggered to my feet, grabbing the side of the couch to haul myself up as I watched her blurred shape reach up and remove her mask, letting it dangle down her back along with the hood it was attached to. I couldn¡¯t really see her face, just a blob of dark skin and the vaguest impression of a loose bun of hair.


    Then she kicked me, lifting her leg impossibly high to plant her boot directly on my sternum. It was enough to send me reeling back into the couch, and to topple the couch itself so that I rolled over and back onto the floor in a tangle of limbs, bashing my hip against the side of the coffee table. The adept closed on me, her tomahawk drawn.


    ¡°Where the fuck is Brian!?¡±


    ¡°B¡­ Brian?¡± I wheezed through the pain and the shock. ¡°Brian!?¡±


    Wherever the conversation would have gone from there, it ceased in an instant as the room was suddenly bathed in an eldritch light, the colour of a lighthouse reflecting off fog. The glow coalesced in the centre of the living room, right between furious adept and sprawling technomancer, taking shape first as a vaguely-feminine form before more and more details began to materialise.


    ¡°Lisa?¡± I stammered through the pounding of my skull, as the full details of the¡­ apparition became clearer. Lisa¡¯s astral form wore the same trenchcoat as she did in the real world, but beneath it her body was adorned with shamanic sigils and carried a tattoo-like image of a snake slithering over her skin.


    She flashed me a wink, then turned to look at the adept ¨C whose grip on her tomahawk had only tightened.


    ¡°Hey, Aisha,¡± she drawled. The name was like a shot to the head. Brian¡¯s sister. ¡°Long time no see.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ve never seen me before!¡± the adept ¨C Aisha ¨C shouted back. ¡°Don¡¯t think you can fucking scare me, either! I know how astral projection works; you can¡¯t touch me, you see-through bitch!¡±


    ¡°No, Bitch is the cyborg,¡± Lisa retorted with a predatory smirk. ¡°I¡¯m Tattletale, and she¡¯s Spider as of a few hours ago. But seriously, all that time you spent watching us and you never guessed I might watch you back? I keep track of all my friends¡¯ sisters.¡±


    She moved closer to Aisha, drifting up slightly so that she was looking down at the ork.


    ¡°Good thing there¡¯s only one, huh? Makes it easy. How is life in that little anarcho-punk commune of yours, anyway?¡±


    Something in Aisha snapped. She snarled, her arm moving faster than I could see as she flung her tomahawk at Lisa, the blade passing through her incorporeal body before embedding itself in my wall. My head had begun to clear; I could see naked grief spread across Aisha¡¯s face as her mask shattered. She looked like she¡¯d been crying.


    ¡°Okay¡­¡± Lisa¡¯s tone was uncertain; that clearly wasn¡¯t the response she¡¯d expected. ¡°Guess I touched a nerve.¡±


    ¡°Where¡­ the fuck¡­ is my brother!¡± Aisha ground out the words, her voice low and dangerous. Her hand was drifting towards her gun. ¡°He hasn¡¯t been home in three days!¡±


    ¡°¡­which means you¡¯ve been at his place for three days,¡± Lisa said, her voice a lot more muted. ¡°What happened?¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s in the hospital,¡± I jumped in; Aisha looked like she was about to see if she could throttle a ghost, and I knew it was a small leap from that to shooting the only soft target in the room. ¡°He was seriously wounded on our last mission, they¡¯re operating on him now. He¡¯ll be okay, but it¡¯ll be a few days before he¡¯s out.¡± Some of my anger crept back into my tone. ¡°Why the fuck couldn¡¯t you just ask me that?¡±


    ¡°Fuck¡­¡± Aisha sighed, completely ignoring my last question as her shoulders slumped and she seemed to grow visibly tired. ¡°Explains why you¡¯re sporting a new arm, I guess. Fucking bastard.¡±


    ¡°Excuse me?¡± I asked, though from the look Lisa gave me it seemed I¡¯d stepped on a landmine.


    ¡°Who the fuck does he think he is!?¡± she shouted back at me. ¡°What kind of asshole gets shot for a living but acts like he¡¯s a fucking wageslave with an eight to six counting beans!? Where the fuck does he get off telling me to come to his place if I¡¯m in trouble?!¡± She beat against her chest to emphasise the point, her anger morphing into dismay.


    ¡°Aisha,¡± Lisa began, much more softly. ¡°What happened?¡±


    ¡°Who shot him?¡± she snapped at me.


    ¡°The Chosen,¡± I answered. Aisha¡¯s face twisted into a scowl. One of her fists was clenched so tightly I thought she was going to tear the glove of her suit.


    ¡°Those skinhead cocksuckers¡­¡± Something seemed to shift in the way she was looking at us. I wondered if we¡¯d just jumped across to the other side of a line in her estimation. ¡°You too, huh? Whole lynch mob of them burned down my ¡®anarcho-punk commune,¡¯ you smart-mouthed pixie.¡± The last word was directed at Tattletale, who took it in her stride.


    I sighed. ¡°So you went to Brian¡¯s place because he has a spare room for you only for him not to show. But why ambush me?¡±


    ¡°The rest of your crew lives together. They¡¯re a harder target.¡±


    ¡°But why ambush me at all?¡±


    ¡°Huh?¡±


    ¡°Never mind,¡± I said, shaking my head. ¡°Where¡¯s my gun?¡±


    ¡°Under the fridge. Trick for hiding things from a troll is to go as low as possible.¡±


    ¡°Of course¡­¡± I trudged over to the fridge, getting down on my hands and knees as I struggled to get my arm low enough to fit into the narrow gap between the fridge and the floor.


    ¡°So that¡¯s what he sees in you,¡± I heard from behind me. I blushed, once again glad that grey skin didn¡¯t colour. My fingers brushed against the trigger of my Executioner, before I managed to get enough of a grip to pull it back out.


    ¡°Fuck off,¡± I snapped, half-heartedly, as I staggered to my feet and set the gun down on the kitchen countertop. I¡¯d been deliberately avoiding thinking about Brian like that since before the last job. At first it was because I didn¡¯t want any distractions going in, but since everything went South I¡¯d been avoiding thinking about it at all. I couldn¡¯t even be sure he¡¯d still be interested after such a traumatic event, or even if he¡¯d really been interested in the first place.


    ¡°Your brother¡¯s in the CrashCart hospital,¡± I said, as a way of changing the subject.


    ¡°Shadowrunning pay that much, huh?¡± she asked, taking the bait. I had a feeling the best way to deal with Brian¡¯s sister would be to keep a stock of conversational shiny objects on hand to distract her.


    ¡°We¡¯re moving up in the world, but this came from a deal,¡± I explained. Lisa looked at me like I¡¯d already said to much, but I was starting to have an idea. ¡°You look like you¡¯re doing well for yourself too; that stealth suit can¡¯t have been cheap.¡±


    Aisha snorted. ¡°Burned most of my savings on it, then the Chosen burned the rest.¡±


    ¡°You snuck in here alright,¡± Lisa said, her tone contemplative. I think she¡¯d realised what I was going for.


    ¡°Taking candy from a baby,¡± Aisha countered with a dismissive wave of her hand. ¡°I climbed up to your balcony just to make it interesting.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re on the thirteenth floor.¡±


    ¡°And?¡± she asked, with a shit-eating grin on her face. ¡°What, you scared of heights?¡± She stepped in close, making a point of craning her neck to look up at me. ¡°You didn¡¯t seem the type.¡±


    I was about to snap back a response, but Aisha abruptly stepped back from me and, very deliberately, fell backwards onto my armchair, ending up with her hands behind her head and her feet kicked up on the armrest.


    ¡°So,¡± she began. ¡°I figure I¡¯ll hang with you guys from now on.¡±


    ¡°You figure?¡± I said ¨C almost snarled.


    ¡°That¡¯s what you were building up to, right? I¡¯m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I¡¯m not a moron. Any team would be lucky to have me; I¡¯m hot stuff, in more ways than one.¡±


    The statement was accompanied by a sweeping gesture that took in her whole body. I decided then and there that there was something I really didn¡¯t like about Brian¡¯s sister. Her confidence bordered on arrogance in her actions, her skills, her sexuality. What made it worse was that she was right on all counts; I¡¯d already been thinking that we needed an infiltrator only to have one drop into my lap, and even though her body had been toned by an adept¡¯s exercise routine, it was clear that she¡¯d still have been beautiful even without much effort on her part.


    Damn, that family has good genes.


    ¡°Right,¡± Lisa nodded, though there was a wry look in her ethereal eyes. ¡°I¡¯m sure it¡¯s all on us. Not like you¡¯re desperate to find a new community and keep close to your brother, yeah?¡±


    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    The same hand that had swept down her body twisted to flip Lisa off, but Aisha didn¡¯t deny it.


    ¡°You¡¯re right,¡± I nodded. ¡°We do need an infiltrator.¡± I crossed my arms; I wanted to look stern, drawing up half-remembered memories of mom telling me off for booking it across the road when she¡¯d come to pick me up from school and almost being run over by a box truck. ¡°But if you¡¯re going to stick with us, you¡¯re going to have to be a team player. We¡¯ve got no room for lone wolves.¡±


    ¡°Who died and made you boss?¡± Aisha snapped back. ¡°You¡¯ve been with them for like five minutes.¡±


    Your brother, I almost said, before I stamped the impulse down with no small amount of guilt.


    ¡°Brian¡¯s in the hospital right now because we went up against an overwhelming enemy without a decent plan. We hoped for the best and we got burned. I¡¯m the one with the link to all the cameras, with the picture of the whole operation. I¡¯m the only person in the crew who can see everything, and that means when shit hits the fan, you listen to me. Do that and you¡¯ll earn back your burned savings in a flash.¡±


    I was trying to project the same absolute confidence Aisha seemed to exude so effortlessly, but I couldn¡¯t stop my eyes from flicking over to Lisa. More than anyone else, she could undercut my words in an instant. I knew that I was right, knew that our failure in the last operation had come from a lack of knowledge and control, that I was in the best position to provide both, but Lisa was the one who brought me onto the crew in the first place. She could cast me out or knock me back into my place with a single word. Instead she just stood there, her ghostly projection completely unreadable.


    In the end, Aisha broke first. ¡°Sure, whatever,¡± she said, with a shrug of her shoulders. ¡°I¡¯ll play ball. This is the part where I¡¯d turn invisible and fuck off, but you cracked my damn faceplate.¡±


    ¡°Switch on your comm, I¡¯ll transfer the repair bill,¡± I said ¨C I was so flush from cash compared to where I had been a few months ago that it seemed a completely trivial thing to offer ¨C ¡°but as an advance only, understand? You pay me back after your first job.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, yeah,¡± she almost rolled off the couch as she sprang to her feet, pulling her mask back up over her face. ¡°I¡¯ll send you my account details, soon as I figure out how.¡±


    She made to leave, though not in the way I was expecting. Instead of taking the front door like a normal person, she put her cracked mask and hood back on, retrieved her tomahawk from my wall, and slid open the door to my balcony, stepping out and vaulting over the side like it was a completely normal thing to do. As she went, I saw a simple comm wink into existence. It was a trivial matter to hack into it and add my contact details, along with the rest of the team¡¯s.


    The moment I was sure she was out of earshot, I turned to Lisa.


    ¡°Are you okay with this? You said I needed to step up, but I don¡¯t know if this is what you meant.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re doing fine,¡± she answered. ¡°Honestly, I wasn¡¯t expecting you to be so pragmatic. She might annoy you, but Imp has a skillset we need and she has a reputation of her own in certain circles.¡±


    ¡°Imp?¡± I asked, before another thought took its place. Brian had no idea where his sister was. ¡°He doesn¡¯t know you¡¯ve been spying on her, does he?¡±


    ¡°No, he doesn¡¯t. And he won¡¯t.¡±


    ¡°Why not tell him?¡±


    ¡°If I had, he¡¯d have been down at that commune every night asking after her, but all he¡¯d have accomplished would be to drive her away. I¡¯ve always been an empathetic person, Taylor, but nobility teaches you to wield empathy like a weapon. I understand what makes people tick; how they¡¯ll act when they¡¯re nudged in certain ways.¡±


    ¡°Did you nudge me, too?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Ever since our first conversation,¡± she answered, frankly. ¡°Can you honestly tell me you aren¡¯t better off now than you were then?¡±


    I frowned. She was right ¨C I¡¯d even acknowledged as much earlier that day ¨C but it was still an unpleasant thought.


    ¡°You¡¯re shaping up to be a confident and decisive leader, but I think I work best as the power behind the throne.¡±


    ¡°The throne?¡± I asked. ¡°Aiming a little high, aren¡¯t we?¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re Shadowrunners,¡± she answered with a shrug. ¡°Reckless overambition is kind of our whole thing.¡±


    Abruptly, something like a whole body shiver seemed to pass through her translucent form, which frayed and faded like a persona running on a bad connection.


    ¡°Sorry, omae, I can¡¯t stay out any longer. Astral projection is taxing as hell.¡±


    ¡°I get it,¡± I said, waving her off. ¡°Thanks for the help. Now and¡­ before.¡±


    She flashed me a wry grin that seemed to linger as the rest of her faded, like she was my very own Cheshire Cat.


    ¡°Never been thanked for manipulating someone before. Catch you later, Spider.¡±


    With that, she disappeared, leaving me once again alone in my apartment. The quiet was suddenly stifling, the lack of any noise or activity allowing weariness to seep back into my bones. Reflexively, I reached out in the matrix and made sure my apartment was secure again; Aisha had tricked the lock on the balcony, exploiting some mechanical flaw that I couldn¡¯t affect, but I could draw down the storm shutters and engage their magnetic locks, cutting off the night-time glow of the docks.


    I skimmed through icons both familiar and unfamiliar, linking each one to their proper place in my apartment, the neighbouring units, building management systems out in the halls and the one personal area network that was completely out of place.


    ¡°Oh shit!¡± I exclaimed as I undid the lock on my front door and threw it open. The first thing I saw was the shotgun barrel pointed at where the lock had been. Rachel looked like she was a microsecond from firing. Instead, her optics flicked up to take in the empty room.


    ¡°Thanks, Rachel,¡± I said, ¡°but I¡¯ve managed to get the situation under control.¡±


    ¡°Good,¡± she nodded, an optic flicking back towards the elevator in what seemed like an uncharacteristic hint of uncertainty. ¡°Can I wait here for a while? I think building security called Knight Errant.¡±


    ¡°Of course, come in,¡± I said, closing the door behind her even as I dug deep into the apartment block¡¯s camera database. It was trivially easy; I used to lay up at night practicing how to hack the building¡¯s network, which meant I had more marks on it than any other system in the city.


    Each mark acted as an anchor point onto which I could tether myself, pulling up footage of Rachel storming through the lobby past the one half-asleep guard who jolted up at the sight of a chromed-up killer with a shotgun held ready in her hands. I could have edited the footage to make it look like she was never there, but instead I simply deleted the files outright. Let Knight Errant think this was some Chosen hit with an amateurish off-site decker.


    In meatspace, Rachel had wandered into my living room, her shotgun resting on her shoulder as she took in the space. I was getting better at reading the few expressions that crept past her inhuman optics; she was deeply confused.


    ¡°Not what I expected,¡± she said, turning back to me.


    ¡°It was my parents¡¯ place,¡± I answered, shrugging. ¡°I didn¡¯t pick the d¨¦cor.¡±


    Rachel simply nodded, apparently satisfied with that explanation.


    ¡°Listen,¡± I began, picking the couch back up and slumping down onto it. ¡°You should know, the intruder was Brian¡¯s sister. She¡¯s a pretty good adept and she jumped me looking for him. I made her a pitch and she agreed to join. Sorry for not running it by you beforehand, but you and her won¡¯t get on. I¡¯ll see if I can talk to her before you meet, warn her to tone it all the way down.¡±


    Rachel sat down opposite me, in the armchair I used when I dove into the matrix. It took her a while to say anything; I could see her optics whirring minutely in silent thought.


    ¡°She¡¯s good for the team?¡±


    ¡°She fills a niche we don¡¯t have,¡± I answered. ¡°Right now, we¡¯re only really tooled for brute force. We can infiltrate ¨C we proved that in the dopadrine job ¨C but it¡¯s not what we¡¯re geared around. Imp will give us options.¡±


    ¡°I won¡¯t drive her off. Don¡¯t expect me to make nice.¡±


    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t dream of it,¡± I leant back, smiling. ¡°Honestly, Alec¡¯s the one that worries me. With you, I knew a warning would be enough, but both Aisha and Alec are the type to enjoy needling people. They¡¯ll probably be at each other¡¯s throats by the end of the week.¡±


    I sighed, feeling the weight of one problem building on another. Things would be so much easier if I thought more like Rachel; I could focus solely on the big-picture practical problems, instead of trying to force my introverted brain through one social issue after another.


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter, I guess, so long as it improves our chances in the field. We can¡¯t afford another job like the last one.¡±


    ¡°Brian will keep them in line,¡± Rachel answered.


    ¡°Really?¡± I was surprised, both at the suggestion and that Rachel had said it.


    ¡°It¡¯s what he did before you joined,¡± Rachel answered. ¡°Kept Alec from bugging Lisa, made sure I knew when I was malfunctioning.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, well, he might not be the same person when he gets out. He¡¯s been through a lot, and believe me when I say I know how badly an experience like that can affect someone.¡±


    She didn¡¯t seem convinced, but I knew that was just because her own experiences had changed her into the sort of person who can¡¯t understand something like that. She¡¯d retreated into a cold, logical world where every piece of a machine either functions as expected or is broken, with no states in-between.


    ¡°Looks like the pawns have arrived,¡± I spoke up, breaking the silence. Through the lobby¡¯s camera I had a good view of a quartet of officers in taksuits and face-covering helmets making their way over to the lone guard at the desk, each one of them armed with a rifle.


    The guard ¨C an overweight ork with a ratty old revolver tucked into a shoulder holster ¨C spoke to the officers for a few minutes, then gestured for one of them to come behind the desk as he pulled up the CCTV footage on the monitor. It was kind of funny watching his eyes boggle as he realised the files had all been wiped, even as the Knight Errant officers suddenly became a lot more interested. I watched their outgoing comms as they radioed the situation back to control, then waited for them to get their marching ordered from whoever was directing operations that night.


    ¡°Any trouble?¡± Rachel asked.


    ¡°We¡¯re all good,¡± I replied, shaking my head. ¡°I gave them just enough trouble that they¡¯ll leave us alone.¡± I smiled, as an old memory floated to the surface.


    ¡°Did you know that Knight Errant commanders are evaluated by metrics that measure whether their expenditure on crimes is worth the value of those crimes in their contract with the city? Hunting down a lone gunwoman in an apartment block is fine when she¡¯s making a lot of noise and you can follow her on CCTV, but it¡¯s not worth the cost if she¡¯s keeping quiet and has outside Decker support. There¡¯s a whole book about it back there.¡±


    I threw a gesture over my shoulder towards the bookcase containing ¡®Militarised Policing or Military Police? Understanding Knight Errant.¡¯ It was one of mom¡¯s favourites, published by some independent printer I¡¯d never heard of and distributed solely to small speciality bookstores that existed in quiet streets far from the main roads.


    ¡°And there they go,¡± I said with a satisfied smirk as the officers filed out of the lobby, switching over to the exterior camera as they got back into their bulky patrol four-by-four. ¡°K-E are running double strength patrols because of the gang war, but that means that each car is costing twice as much in terms of pay.¡±


    ¡°Why not send them out in pairs and accept the higher risk to cut costs?¡± Rachel asked.


    ¡°Not how they think. Culturally, they¡¯re an army. They treat policing like it¡¯s a counterinsurgency; if it gets too hot, hunker down in your forts and move out in force to break up the largest pockets of resistance. You¡¯ve got to remember that when things get desperate, Knight Errant will always prioritise its own interests ¨C and those of Ares ¨C over its contract with the city.¡±


    I was pretty much regurgitating something mom had told me one night when I¡¯d asked her what she was reading. I¡¯d been too young to really understand what she was saying, but I remembered it all the same.


    Rachel simply nodded. I could almost trace her thought process as she corrected her knowledge of what Knight Errant¡¯s machine was built to do, reformatting all the inconsistencies into something that functioned for a different purpose.


    ¡°How are you holding up?¡± I asked, changing the subject.


    ¡°One Doberman is parts now, to repair the rest. Most of the damage to the van was just dented panels, but the rear axle had microfractures and needed replacing. The Steel Lynx still needs work, but I don¡¯t have the parts yet.¡±


    ¡°Can you source them? If not, I bet someone in Palanquin can point you in the right direction.¡±


    ¡°I have a contact,¡± she answered.


    ¡°And yourself?¡±


    ¡°Undamaged.¡±


    Not what I meant, but I trust your judgement.


    ¡°Good. Things are changing, Rachel. Not just with us. Calvert¡­ he¡¯s got plans. I don¡¯t know if he can cripple Medhall ¨C I don¡¯t even know what a crippled Medhall looks like ¨C but I get the feeling that this gang war is just the start.¡±


    ¡°They always have plans,¡± Rachel shot back, placing a strange emphasis on the word. ¡°They don¡¯t matter so long as you can adapt.¡±


    ¡°Roll with the punches, huh?¡± I asked. I knew from my stolen memories that it was what Rachel had been doing for her entire adult life, and probably before. ¡°Thanks, Rachel, you¡¯re a good listener. You should be able to sneak out the back, now. Take the fire stairs at the far end of the hall and I¡¯ll unlock the emergency exit for you.¡±


    I watched through the cameras as Rachel made her way down the thirteen flights, even as I followed the irresistible lure of my bed. I almost made it, too; I''d undressed and pulled back the covers when I felt an incoming message pressing at the edge of my simulated commlink. I would have ignored it if it was from anyone else, but I''d logged the number as ¡®Mr Johnson,¡¯ which meant it deserved a cursory glance at the very least.


    ?Please contact me when convenient to discuss the next stage of our arrangement.?


    - Number Withheld (00:41:16/24-3-2070)


    Getting one last email in before leaving the office? I thought, spitefully. Well, fuck you too.


    I called his number, even as I sank back into my bed and crossed my arms behind my head. One benefit of using my brain rather than an actual commlink was that it had no camera, so I couldn¡¯t do a video call even if I wanted to. Our serpentine client picked up after three point four seconds ¨C though I realised in that moment that I had no idea how he answered a call. Eye tracking? Voice activation? Paying someone to press the screen for him?


    ¡°Spider,¡± his voice came through loud, clear and disappointingly awake. ¡°You did strike me as the type to burn the midnight oil, as the expression goes.¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t say it¡¯s mutual. I figured you¡¯d keep office hours. You racking up overtime?¡±


    ¡°I did not reach my position by counting hours. When my work here is done, I will take the gratitude of my corporation somewhere warm and dry. While I am in this city, however, I will work as long as it takes to see events resolved in my favour.¡±


    ¡°Okay,¡± I answered, making a mental note not to even consider small talk. ¡°What do you want us to do, bearing in mind we''re still a man down?¡±


    Something seemed to shift in the matrix, smothering the line between us in a fog of data. Calvert¡¯s security spider was layering an additional level of encryption over the call. I reached out in turn, but couldn¡¯t spot any unseen observers or trickling data leaks.


    ¡°Alabaster has painted a suitable picture of Medhall¡¯s connections to the criminal and political world, but I still require more information on the corporation¡¯s leadership.¡±


    ¡°Which, more particularly, means Max Anders,¡± I countered.


    ¡°Precisely. Medhall is autocratic; understanding the corporation means understanding its patriarch. Max Anders¡¯ inner circle is beyond my reach, but that does not make him unreachable.¡±


    He paused for a moment, as if catching his breath.


    ¡°Medhall¡¯s data network was not created in-house. As with most corporations of its size, Medhall lacked the capital and expertise to develop their own software. Instead, they have a long-term lease on their hosts, outsourced software and database support, and an exclusive communications network.¡±


    ¡°Who¡¯s their MSP?¡±


    ¡°Renraku. They have a reputation for neutrality and trustworthiness whose foundations are well-earned. Ideal for the corporate executive who has to keep in contact with members of his board, local political figures and local underworld figures all from the same commlink.¡±


    ¡°So you want me to hack his work comm?¡±


    ¡°No. I want you to hack his personal commlink.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡± I asked, unable to keep the confusion from my tone. It just didn¡¯t make sense. ¡°Why not target the business through the man? Hell, why not wait until tomorrow and set up a meet with all of us?¡±


    ¡°Because that is what most suits my goals. I did not contact you to discuss why, I contacted you to warn you, specifically.¡±


    ¡°Warn me? About what?¡±


    ¡°My own investigation has uncovered that Anders keeps his family on the same mobile data plan. It will likely be the standard plan for someone of his wealth; all messages end-to-end encrypted, unlimited worldwide data. Renraku calls it the ¡®Myo¡¯ package, after the lords of secret knowledge in the Shinto faith. It is their most closely-guarded commercial network.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve dealt with complex networks before,¡± I said, a little insulted. I wasn¡¯t an amateur.


    ¡°You have not ¡®dealt with¡¯ Renraku. The security protocols used by any member of the Corporate Court would already be beyond anything you have experienced, but Renraku¡¯s main strength lies in computer technologies. They created Deus, the first AI, and even after his insanity they still recruit wild AI for use in matrix defence. It would take a team of deckers to breach the network from the outside. Even then, the breach would be noted and the clients alerted.¡±


    ¡°I take it you have some sort of plan?¡± I snapped. I didn¡¯t appreciate him regurgitating whatever one of his advisors had told him.


    ¡°Unlike other corporations, Renraku is divided geographically, rather than categorically. This means each division needs to have its own physical office supporting their global communications network. The North American office is in Boston, where it is suitably positioned to poach disgruntled NeoNet staff.¡±


    ¡°I see where you¡¯re going,¡± I said. ¡°Infiltrate the site somehow, get access to the network¡¯s local node by spoofing the correct credentials and work the system from the inside.¡±


    ¡°Precisely. You understand why I¡¯m contacting you now; as talented as he is, Grue¡¯s skills are not suited to this task and I do not care for any needless delay.¡±


    ¡°Then make your offer,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ll pitch it to the others in the morning and get back to you.¡±


    ¡°Forty-thousand.¡±


    Twenty less than the last job, but it¡¯s also less obviously suicidal.


    ¡°Make it forty-two thousand. We have a new member ¨C an infiltrator ¨C and it splits nicely six ways. And send me everything you have on this site.¡±


    ¡°Fortuitous timing. Very well, Spider. Now, if you will excuse me, there are other matters that demand my attention.¡±


    Without waiting for a response, he hung up and the line went dead, the security spider reeling back in his encrypted wire. I compiled everything Calvert had told me into an email, gave it to a courier sprite with orders to deliver it to Tattletale, Bitch and Regent at eight AM and finally pulled up the covers, slipping away into a deep sleep filled with unremembered dreams.

 Recompile: 6.05

    The I95 was a clogged artery of a road; twelve lanes separated by a two metre tall metal barrier and filled to bursting with a myriad of vehicles, each performing their own function like cells in the bloodstream.


    The outermost lanes were the domain of fat-bellied eighteen wheelers that were themselves dwarfed by elongated road trains whose dozen single-container carriages were pulled along by immense wheeled engines. When the train reached its junction, those carriages would decouple ¨C each becoming a self-driving pod that carried just enough charge in its battery to bring the containers to their final destination.


    In the middle lanes flowed a diverse stream of traffic, where panel vans rubbed shoulders with expensive suburban SUVs and beaten-up old junkers laden with the accumulated lives of the desperate inter-state migrants driving them. Each of them was engaged in a constant jockeying for position; throwing themselves into any gap they could see in order to advance a few metres further down the endless line of sixty mile an hour traffic.


    None of them dared to enter the innermost lane, however, where the vehicles were almost blurs as they passed at over a hundred miles an hour. That was the domain of those who hit the road for pleasure, rather than necessity. The junkers in that lane had been fitted with overclocked engines and daubed in garish decals, while the supercars of the ultra-rich cut through the air like ethereal spaceships one plane removed from the physical reality of wind resistance.


    I jerked back reflexively as an entire Go-Gang sped past with the doppler-shifted roar of three dozen Japanese motorcycles, each one carrying a biker wearing anything from slick-skinned cooler suits and all-encompassing helmets to short shorts that flaunted implanted musculature and tattooed dermal weaves that had clearly been chosen to match the bike. Out of the whole gang, only about half had both hands on the handlebars. The rest had at least one holding a weapon of some sort, from snub-nosed submachine guns to a length of pipe that one biker used to knock the wingmirror off the car in front of us.


    We¡¯d just passed the junction with Route One, where the Ninety-Five turned west to skirt at a comfortable distance from what had once been the limits of Boston and its suburbs. The city had long since burst its banks, absorbing one town after another as the founding settlements of the American Revolution were overshadowed one by one under the aegis of their larger neighbour.


    Brockton Bay was the only city I¡¯d ever really known. It had always seemed so large, so teeming with life, but driving through Boston forced me to come to terms with the fact that it was still just a city. The Boston Area Metropolitan Complex was a sprawl; an urban area that had slipped its ancient bounds in a period of uncontrolled growth in all directions, from the outskirts that surrounded us to the floating arcologies permanently moored in Massachusetts Bay.


    Periodically, we passed under the shadow of immense slab-sided megabuildings that rose like monoliths into the skyline, each housing a small fraction of the five million people who called the Metroplex home. They were uncommon in this part of the city, however; Boston¡¯s intelligentsia preferred to live away from the cramped sprawl of the city¡¯s heart and they couldn¡¯t afford to live in its preserved historical centre. Instead, they dwelt in innumerable gated communities of suburban homes and low-rise buildings that contained condos, not apartments, all of them linked to whatever corporation owned the neighbourhood and the people in it.


    It wasn¡¯t the sort of place that most of us would ever have been able to touch. Rachel¡¯s van felt empty without Brian sitting up in the front, his statuesque back and impressive height casting a literal shadow on the rest of us. Aisha wasn¡¯t close to her brother¡¯s size ¨C or my own, for that matter ¨C but it still felt like she took up twice as much space in the back of the van.


    She¡¯d spent the whole journey alternating from shifting in her seat to leaning over the front seats, to pacing the back of the van and getting far too close to Bitch¡¯s immaculately-ordered mobile workshop. It was enough to make me sympathise with my parents for what they must have put up with when I was a toddler.


    And she just wouldn¡¯t shut up. The drive from Brockton Bay had only been about an hour and a half, but Aisha had somehow managed to talk through all of it. When she wasn¡¯t just venting her every idle thoughts into space, she was chatting to Alec about anything and everything. If I¡¯d thought they¡¯d hate each other, I¡¯d been proven horrifyingly wrong; they got on like oil and fire. I knew why Aisha was so lively, of course. I could have replicated the effect by putting a cat in a box and taping the lid shut.


    ¡°You seriously couldn¡¯t have sprung for some better seats back here?¡± Aisha loudly asked as we pulled off the I95, abruptly changing tack from where she¡¯d been whispering to Alec about¡­ something. I didn¡¯t want to know what.


    ¡°No point,¡± Rachel answered, succinctly, before Alec pulled Aisha¡¯s attention back ¨C literally grabbing her chin and pulling her head back to face him. Maybe her wandering mind was starting to wear on him like it did me? Rachel had been holding up well, all things considered; she¡¯d simply chosen to focus on the road while trusting me to keep Aisha away from touching anything important.


    Aisha does have a point, I thought to myself. These canvas seats might be good enough for jarheads in the back of helicopters, but not for long drives down the interstate.


    ¡°We¡¯re almost there,¡± I said, partly to distract myself from how uncomfortable I was. ¡°Lisa, are you ready? Today¡¯s your show, after all.¡±


    She stretched a bare arm behind the backrest before turning her head to look at me, reaching up to brush her hair back behind her pointed ear.


    ¡°Honey, I was born ready.¡±


    It was amazing how much she resembled the worst, most cliquey people back in high school, and yet how the sight of her triggered none of the same emotions in me. ¡°Well, you certainly look the part.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s in my blood,¡± Tattletale answered with a flawless and ¨C fortunately ¨C completely fake air of superiority. ¡°How about you? This is uncharted territory, right?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s all the same matrix,¡± I bluffed. Truthfully, I had no idea what to expect; I¡¯d never visited Boston¡¯s grid before. When the matrix covered the whole world, destinations that were within driving distance didn¡¯t appeal anywhere near as much as Paris, New York, Hong Kong or London.


    Beyond that, I had no idea what kind of opposition I was going to be up against. Far from warning me, I felt like all Calvert had managed to achieve was to put me on edge with his talk of AI and his callback to DEUS. The way he¡¯d spoken about that entity had rattled me most of all; DEUS was a matrix legend, but Calvert had casually mentioned his name as if his existence was an undeniable fact.


    Boston was the graveyard of that would-be-god, according to the rumours. What was certain was that the East Coast Stock Exchange in Boston had been the epicentre of the Jormangund Virus that had killed the old matrix, as well as being targeted by one of the fifteen nuclear-fuelled electromagnetic pulse bombs that had crippled the wired network¡¯s physical infrastructure.


    The official line was that the crash had been caused by a terrorist doomsday cult, but rumours said that all of that destruction and death had been nothing more than a desperate attempt to avert DEUS¡¯ plan to forcibly connect all the world¡¯s supercomputers into a single node that would fuel the AI¡¯s apotheosis. The attempt had failed, or so the rumours said, and DEUS had died along with the old matrix.


    It wasn¡¯t just Calvert¡¯s conviction that made me believe the rumour; I¡¯d long since been exposed to the surreal reality that lay below the ordered veneer that was the matrix. It was easy to believe such legends could exist when I¡¯d traversed the resonance realms like Alice lost in Wonderland.


    You couldn¡¯t see Boston¡¯s scars in meatspace and I hadn¡¯t yet immersed myself into the city¡¯s grid to check. As we left the I95 and drove through a district called Lexington, past the strip malls and consumer product distribution warehouses that clustered like feeder animals around the junction, it seemed like any other city in the UCAS. It was only as we travelled further in that I started to see the signs that we were somewhere wealthy.


    There were fewer junctions on the road, for one, just feeder roads leading to one private corporate neighbourhood after another. There were no homes overlooking the road, either. Instead, we were hidden from view behind tall fences, artful shrubbery and real evergreen trees ¨C each of which had their own grid-linked monitoring and nutrient system to keep them alive in the face of the occasional atmospheric offensive drifting over from the rest of the metroplex.


    As with all things, however, there was a balance in Lexington¡¯s wealth. The rich wanted to separate themselves from the world, but not completely; some concessions were necessary. Somebody had to staff the shops, tend the lawns and provide the boots on the ground that were the foundation of their prized security.


    The gated communities could either improve the transport links to the rest of the city ¨C which would allow the rest of the city to come to them ¨C or they could swallow some iota of their pride and parcel off a patch of land for the sake of necessity. They¡¯d chosen the latter.


    In this case, that meant a wide, unmarked road that wound its way down into a natural depression in the land that had been excavated further until it could fit a tight cluster of four long buildings, each five storeys tall with only the top three storeys visible above the ground level. Even those were concealed by a carefully-transplanted wall of tall trees. It was a town in microcosm, with three of the buildings dedicated to apartments and the last reserved for all the essentials a town might need ¨C a school, a clinic, a miniature Minuteman Security precinct, a whole floor of shops and a few essential services occupying the topmost floor.


    You could actually buy your own online, if you had the kind of cred corps or municipal governments could throw around. The whole thing was a Saeder-Krupp product; a low-footprint housing estate for low income workers that included ongoing services and support for a reasonable maintenance fee. The exact same four buildings could be found across the world; on corporate job sites, repeated a dozen times over on the edge of sprawls, or ¨C like here ¨C nestled in some out of the way place in a more prosperous district.


    Bitch dropped me off in front of the commercial building, pulling up behind a minibus full of gardeners returning from their shift. Keeping the homes of the wealthy running required odd jobs at odd hours, from the gardeners maintaining each municipal lawn to the twenty-four seven security that kept the communities gated. It meant the estate didn¡¯t really have on or off hours; around me I could see people who were coming, going or enjoying some small leisure time.


    The inside of the commercial building was a fairly typical low-ceilinged strip mall, with decently-lit white corridors passing glass-fronted stores that all leant towards the lower end of the market; advertising cheap prices for cheaper clothes, overprocessed groceries and plastic furniture. Each store had a sign next to the entrance depicting which currency they accepted, with UCAS dollars and Nuyen next to a small number of different varieties of scrip paid by megacorps to their employees to ensure they spent their wages within the corp and its affiliates.


    At the end of the row of shops ¨C no doubt a deliberate choice by the Saeder-Krupp architects to maximise commercial foot traffic ¨C was a cluster of elevators that I rode up to the fifth floor. It still looked like a mall, but the corridor was a little narrower; this floor was for people who were looking for specific service buildings, rather than impulse buying. I passed a dentist and a clinic before finally finding what I was looking for; a Comfy Cubicle franchise.


    Our target was a gated Renraku neighbourhood constructed around a large data centre. It was built in Boston before Crash 2.0 to take advantage of the city¡¯s position as a wired matrix hub, and the close proximity to the East Coast Stock Exchange before it moved back to Wall Street. Distance wasn¡¯t everything in hacking, but it did make a difference and the Renraku compound was less than a kilometre away. The real issue, though, was that I couldn¡¯t lie down in the back of Bitch¡¯s van, which made a deep dive into the Matrix an uncomfortable prospect.


    There were no employees on site. Or, at least, none of them were visible. Instead, I was met by a simple touchscreen next to a sliding door with a mesh-reinforced window. The menu had large font, larger buttons and was generally idiot proof ¨C it wasn¡¯t like there were many options to choose from. Being forced to pay extra for the larger version of the product was a gripe I was long familiar with, but it was hard to argue with the necessity here. Coffin hotels weren¡¯t famous for being spacious, after all.


    With the payment made and a check-out time set for six AM ¨C the earliest the system would allow ¨C the reinforced door slid open to reveal a long corridor of one-metre square doors stacked three high, with rungs built into the doors themselves so that people could reach the top shelf. Most of the coffins were unoccupied at this time of day, but a handful had red lights on their doors rather than green, and one bottom-shelf coffin was open, with a human woman in worn clothes taking one look at me before hurriedly throwing a cheap backpack into the coffin and climbing in after it. I tried not to hold it against her.


    Beyond the normal-sized coffins was a small area containing a handful of communal shower cubicles and toilets, as well as a single vending machine next to a narrow floor to ceiling window that looked out onto the rest of the estate. After that came the troll-sized coffins; one point five metres square and arranged side-on so that they could be three metres long, rather than two.


    I clambered up into my second-row coffin, ducking my head to fit my horns under the top as I shuffled back and pulled the door shut behind me. Inside, the coffin was a white space with a thin foam mattress for a floor, covered in a wipe-clean plastic surface. There were two narrow shelves built into the wall near the entrance, and a small console of electronics set at the far end that could be manipulated to turn on the air conditioning, alarm clock, integrated commlink or the trideo set that could be swung up to the ceiling for a more comfortable viewing experience. Of course, none of it would work without an additional payment.


    It wasn¡¯t exactly the most comfortable bed in the world, but it was more comfortable than huddling up on the floor of a moving van. I crawled down the length of the coffin until I could lie flat on my back, then flicked off the lights with a stray thought before opening my mind to the matrix.


    The scope of it was overwhelming. Boston had been a centre of technological advancement even back in the Fifth World; in the present day it was still a central hub for any number of telecommunications and matrix service providers, megacorporate research sites, classified academic databases and the almost overwhelming presence of NeoNet, the globe-spanning megacorporation that called Boston home. For the first time, I found myself almost overwhelmed by the sight of the myriad datastreams passing through the ether ¨C that any man-made interface device filtered out as a matter of course.


    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    The matrix had always appeared to me as a black void in which metahumanity¡¯s presence hung like a constellation of multifaceted stars. Icons, datastreams and personas thronged around the blocky, geometric shapes of hosts, while larger, more private hosts hovered overhead like immense islands in the sky. In and among those islands, perpetually visible no matter where I looked, were the icons of the various grids.


    The public grid was free and accessible to all in a supposed act of philanthropy by the Matrix¡¯s creators, but it was slow and easily breached, which meant that for the average user it was an easy way to have your persona harassed, bombarded with spam and robbed. Far above them, looming on the horizon, were the symbols of private pay-to-access grids managed by different matrix service providers. Hub Grid was Boston¡¯s own, while UCAS Online served the country as a whole, but they were local grids that only offered good service within their geographical bounds. To support worldwide coverage you needed more resources than a nation had on hand.


    The symbol of Renraku Okoku was a red pagoda visible in the far distance, until I focused my attention on it and opened myself up to its attention. Neither of us moved, but I was suddenly dwarfed beneath the immense side of the pagoda, as Renraku¡¯s friendly user interface menu appeared before my persona. I¡¯d debated the merits of hacking in before deciding it simply wasn¡¯t worth it; I¡¯d already had to make some subtle tweaks to my presence in the matrix in order to present myself as a Xiao Technologies XT-2G commlink associated with a SIN I¡¯d cloned from a Boston resident. Adding on fake Renraku permissions would only weaken that fa?ade, so instead I transferred the funds to get me legitimate access to Renraku¡¯s grid.


    The doors of the pagoda opened, bathing me in a red glow, as the matrix around me shifted from the freeing utilitarianism of the public grid to something altogether more controlled, flooded with bandwidth but sculpted and constrained to suit the will of its makers.


    It wasn¡¯t as Japanese as I was expecting. Instead, Boston¡¯s matrix was represented as a distinctly New England pastoral idyll, with rolling hills broken up by colonial-era dwellings and red barns that would impress the Amish if it weren¡¯t for the many obvious reasons they¡¯d never see it.


    ¡°I¡¯m on the grid,¡± I spoke through the link to the rest of the team. ¡°It¡¯s surprisingly homely in here.¡±


    Tattletale¡¯s voice came back loud and clear, transmitted by a vibration microphone built into her earring. ¡°Renraku¡¯s as conservative as any other Japancorp, but they adapt their conservatism to match their environment. The c-suite is as Japanese as it gets, but at the regional level they¡¯ll at least pay lip service to Americana.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not an America I¡¯ve ever seen,¡± I mused, with another glance at the environment. ¡°What¡¯s your status?¡±


    ¡°Split up, as we discussed. I¡¯m in a cab and about three minutes out.¡±


    ¡°Is it safe for you to talk?¡± If there was a driver in front of her, it might be worth keeping up the fa?ade just in case.


    Tattletale laughed. ¡°The cab¡¯s driverless, omae; nobody here but us shadowrunners. One of these days I¡¯m going to use my hard-won blood money to show you how the other half lives.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m about to get a front row view,¡± I countered, as I managed to track down Lisa¡¯s commlink in the matrix. ¡°I have eyes on you now.¡±


    Lisa was wearing delicate AR-linked contact lenses that were paired with her commlink. Put together, they allowed her to look into the publicly-visible augmented reality objects of the matrix, running on a travel plan with the Eternal Horizon grid to best fit into the fake identity she¡¯d constructed. Like all the best fakes, she¡¯d told me, it was basically the truth.


    As the taxi pulled to a stop, Lisa stepped out into a large parking lot half full of high-end motors from a dozen different manufacturers. She turned, and the mall swung into view.


    It wasn¡¯t just a mall, of course. The immense structure of steel and glass occupied one side of a gated Renraku community of idyllic suburban homes, luxury condo buildings and a few functional yet still aesthetically appealing tenement blocks tucked away in one corner. The mall occupied the lowest floors of the structure, with one forecourt opening up into the Renraku compound and the other facing out towards the car park and Boston beyond it, luring in people from across the city in much the same way an angler fish lured in prey with a pretty light.


    Above that mall, rising up fifteen stories, was the Renraku data centre. It wasn¡¯t the only workplace in the compound but it was by far the largest and ¨C according to Renraku¡¯s own press releases ¨C employed the largest percentage of the compound¡¯s residents. Unlike the glass-fronted megamall that occupied the lowest floors, the tower above was almost all white-painted concrete, save for a horizontal strip of balconies at the halfway point and the occasional long strip of narrow windows or the glass-fronted elevator shafts that ran vertically up the sides of the building.


    Tattletale strode towards the mall with an absolute and effortless confidence, as if the looming demonstration of megacorporate power meant nothing to her. The mall ¨C and, by extension, Renraku¡¯s extraterritorial enclave ¨C was separated from both Boston and the UCAS by a checkpoint manned by security guards who were dressed like no private security I¡¯d ever seen.


    It was almost like they¡¯d chosen to show up to work in their dress uniforms; perfectly-ironed suit jackets with polished metal buttons worn over a white button-up shirt and an actual tie, of all things. The jackets were Renraku¡¯s trademarked shade of red, while the pants, tie and their peaked caps were a shade of blue so deep it was almost black. Crowning the whole ensemble were their spotless white gloves.


    Before subjecting Tattletale to a SIN check and an x-ray scan, the officer assigned to her actually bowed, Japanese style, and apologised for the inconvenience. She remained courteous even while Tattletale completely blanked her, a flick of her fingers opening up a T¨ªr Tairngire gossip magazine in AR.


    I¡¯d always known that wealth opened doors, but it was one thing to understand it on an intellectual level and another thing entirely to see it in action. I knew from mom that Renraku were as racist as most of the other Japancorps, but Tattletale¡¯s metatype was clearly secondary to the careful air of wealth she¡¯d cultivated around her. Of course, I very much doubt security would be so cordial if they figured out why we were there.


    In the matrix, I followed Tattletale into the mall¡¯s host, which resembled a historic Boston department store from the outside. It was a little incongruous sitting in the middle of the colonial-era frontier village that represented the surrounding hosts, but who was I to criticise a megacorp¡¯s visual design team?


    Unlike Tattletale, my access was completely unobstructed; I was already on Renraku¡¯s grid, but even then the matrix wasn¡¯t bound by national laws in the same way as meatspace. If someone from Boston wanted to order something from the mall and have it delivered, Renraku weren¡¯t going to quibble about access when there was money to be made and no risk they could see.


    Tattletale strode casually past the lower end stores on the ground floor of the mall, meant to draw in impulse buyers and provide essential goods to the residents of the compound. She didn¡¯t bite, riding the escalators to the top floor where the luxury brands dwelled. There was a wide variety of designer products and businesses selling them, though I knew each of them was a wholly-owned Renraku subsidiary no matter what the sign over the door said.


    The matrix version of the mall was far more compact, but only if you wanted it to be. Users could browse through a catalogue of each store¡¯s inventory or they could expand the store into a perfect mirror of its realspace counterpart and wander the shelves as if they were there in person, making purchases that would then be delivered to their address. Like the pastoral overlay on Renraku¡¯s grid, it seemed like a pointless waste of processing power to me ¨C a needless surrender to physical reality ¨C but I¡¯d begun to accept that I didn¡¯t actually understand much about what normal people wanted from cyberspace.


    Tattletale browsed her way from store to store with the languid ease of someone utterly at home in their surroundings, even making a few purchases with a discretionary budget we¡¯d negotiated from Calvert to help sell her cover. The other customers were mostly human and most of them were noticeably older than Tattletale, but she still fit right in.


    Once enough time had passed for her to sell her cover, she finally made her way to a store whose window displays advertised the latest version of Renraku¡¯s ¡®Sensei¡¯ model of high-end commlinks.


    The moment she entered the store, I saw a pair of eyes land on her. A period of exactly ten seconds passed ¨C long enough for Tattletale to take in the store ¨C before she was intercepted by a sales clerk in a black pencil skirt and closed-necked white suit jacket that reminded me somewhat of a pharmacist. It was undeniably a uniform, rather than a suit, and had a small Renraku logo ¨C a red circle containing the company¡¯s name in white English letters as a concession to the local market ¨C printed on the breast.


    The ginger-haired human woman was all smiles and congeniality as she gave Tattletale a greeting that had clearly been rehearsed enough to no longer sound rehearsed. She didn¡¯t bow ¨C probably another concession to American sensibilities ¨C but her stance practically oozed corporate servility, with her hands clasped in front of her and a placid expression on her face.


    ¡°Greetings, ma¡¯am. Is there any way I can assist you today?¡±


    ¡°You certainly can!¡± Tattletale exclaimed, cheerfully. We hadn¡¯t actually acquired a fake SIN for her, but we also didn¡¯t want anyone to trace our activities back to Lisa Wilbourne. So I¡¯d re-registered Lisa¡¯s commlink under her old name - Saraye Liaran ¨C and linked it to her very real T¨ªr Tairngire SIN. The T¨ªr was secretive enough that it didn¡¯t share any SIN data beyond the fact that the individual bearing it was a citizen, but I was standing by ready to tweak any data in case Renraku were somehow able to tell if she¡¯d been added to a missing persons registry or listed as dead.


    To match her cover, Tattletale had rolled her accent back to its original state; adopting the almost sonorous tones of someone who¡¯d grown up speaking the elven language of sperathiel. To my distinctly non-elven ears, she sounded like a valley girl who couldn¡¯t decide if that valley was in California or Wales.


    ¡°I¡¯ve been thinking about changing my matrix service provider, and figured I might as well do it while I¡¯m here,¡± she continued, placing a hand on the attendant¡¯s back in a way that might have been seen as friendly and gracious if you were an ultra-privileged girl with no concept of boundaries. She practically led the woman over to the couches that occupied one side of the store, who bore the indignity with the placid stoicism of someone who was paid to tolerate the whims of the wealthy in order to part them from a fraction of their wealth.


    ¡°I am at your service,¡± the attendant spoke, sitting primly with her legs together and back straight as Tattletale sank languidly into the opposite couch. ¡°We offer a variety of competitive plans to suit our client¡¯s needs. If I may ask, ma¡¯am, what plan do you have at present?¡±


    ¡°Horizon¡¯s secure package, I don¡¯t know the details,¡± Tattletale said with a dismissive wave. ¡°It¡¯s perfect for home because Horizon are in bed with Prince Zincan, but daddy¡¯s finally decided to let me see the world before I go old and grey so I want something with a more worldwide presence.¡±


    ¡°Horizon are a strong domestic company,¡± the attendant ¨C who hadn¡¯t given her name, and whose name Tattletale hadn¡¯t asked for ¨C ¡°but Renraku is a much older corporation with a far more global reach. We also have a substantial presence in T¨ªr Tairngire through the tourism industry, which means you will notice no drop in service even when you return from your grand tour.¡±


    She hadn¡¯t outright insulted Horizon ¨C just in case Tattletale held any brand loyalty to them ¨C but she hadn¡¯t been honest, either. Both Horizon and Renraku were in the big ten; the largest companies in the world. Renraku might have had a larger proportion of its business dedicated to matrix services, but both maintained global grids that were largely comparable in signal strength.


    ¡°Great! It has to be really secure, though; daddy¡¯s orders.¡± She gave a long, exasperated sigh that still somehow managed to come across as carefree.


    ¡°Renraku¡¯s ethos rests on three pillars; confidentiality, security and discretion. I can assure you, your data is safe with us.¡±


    As they kept talking, I turned my attention to the shop¡¯s online presence. As I¡¯d hoped, I could see a clear chain of nodes leading from the store¡¯s systems to somewhere in the vast host of the data centre that hung above my persona and Tattletale¡¯s head. It didn¡¯t really matter what the connections were ¨C whether they were for market research or they simply took advantage of the store¡¯s proximity to run trials on software that would be used franchise-wide. What mattered was that they were there, and that I could exploit them.


    Tattletale had reached the crux of her conversation-slash-negotiation with the attendant, who¡¯d been sending out signals through her company-given cybernetics, appealing for approval from someone above her and receiving assent from two sources a moment later. Probably someone in sales to authorise the offer and someone in security to verify the demo would be secure. Either way, Tattletale¡¯s AR contact lenses lit up with a request for a connection.


    The moment she authorised it, a datastream appeared in my vision linking her and the store¡¯s server, which was in turn connected to a test version of Renraku¡¯s comm software. It wasn¡¯t the software we wanted ¨C the ¡®Myo¡¯ package that the Anders family used was well beyond the means of any cover identity we could put together on short notice ¨C but it was indirectly connected to the data host above. That would have to do.


    As the attendant talked Tattletale through the various bells and whistles of the operating system, from simplified technical specifications to the perks that came with the plan, I slipped into Tattletale¡¯s comm using the pathways I¡¯d built into it. As I¡¯d expected, her system was currently experiencing the full weight of Renraku¡¯s scrutiny, as embodied by a dedicated Intrusion Countermeasure that was watching her every move for any hint of illegal activity.


    As I attempted to weave my way into the IC¡¯s perceptions, I began to understand why Calvert had taken the time to warn me about Renraku¡¯s software advantage. The underlying coding that had gone into the program was fiendishly complex for piece of frontline monitoring software. I had to smother three separate alarms before they could be triggered, as the IC reflexively twinged at even the slightest intrusion on my part.


    Eventually, however, its complex yet primitive mind finally concluded that I was just a sensor ghost, and it returned to Tattletale¡¯s actions as she began flicking her way through the homepage of Renraku¡¯s app store, feigning interest in what was on offer.


    I turned my attention to the datastream. It crossed the barrier between Tattletale¡¯s commlink and a diagnostic terminal inside the data host. Judging by the data that was passing between the two devices, it was collecting data on Tattletale¡¯s commlink in order to adapt the operating system to best run on her specific device.


    I began teasing messages on my own into the real-time log of Tattletale¡¯s CPU, trusting that the minute particles of resonance would go undetected even as they accumulated like dust on the other side of the host. It was like wearing away a mountain with drops of water, but it worked. The resonance gathered together on the other side of the host, latching onto the base code of the diagnostic terminal until it took shape as a simple line of script embedded into the system that was broadcasting instructions to Tattletale¡¯s comm.


    The next transmission it sent was directed at me and contained a duplicate copy of the access permissions that allowed the terminal to send and receive data from outside the host. It was the key I needed; with a thought, I followed the datastream out of the mall and through the barrier of the Renraku data centre.


    As I emerged into a black void populated by crisp angular geometric shapes and waterfall-like walls of red code, sculpted by overimaginative technicians to resemble nothing more than the trideo ideal of what the matrix should look like, I took a moment to let out a mental sigh of relief before sending out another transmission, wrapping the datastream in a concealing strand of resonance.


    <I¡¯m in. Imp, you¡¯re up.>


    Beyond the confines of the host, I felt Imp¡¯s presence as she turned her commlink back to full functionality. I¡¯d had her running almost silent, with only enough bandwidth to receive plaintext messages, and further shrouded her in a veil of resonance. Now I had full access to both her comm and the feed that Bitch had implanted into her suit, transmitting the feed from her optics to me.


    Imp was looking out at Boston from the eleventh floor of the tower ¨C the eighth floor of the data centre. This far from the heart of the city, I couldn¡¯t make out any details beyond the great angular silhouettes of megabuildings, arcologies and sharp skyscrapers, rising up like an artificial hill that peaked in the financial heart of the city. As Imp looked down at the vertigo-inducing drop to the parking lot, I saw her invisible body outlined in AR by vivid red lines. She was seated on the tempered glass railing of the balcony, her legs dangling out over empty space as she idly kicked her feet.


    Without saying a word, she pushed against the balcony with her hands and ¨C slowly, so as not to disrupt her stealth ¨C lifted and twisted her whole body upwards until she held herself in a perfect handstand, looking upside down at the reinforced doors that led out onto the balcony. With an almost preternatural grace, she shifted her weight and lowered first one foot then the other onto the balcony, giving Boston an invisible bow before pivoting on her toes and striding towards the data centre as the character of her movement changed from a dancer¡¯s grace to the deadly elegance of a predator.


    As I lifted the veil around her just enough to flash my mark on her comm, the balcony doors slid soundlessly open in recognition. She was in.


    That was stage one,  I thought. Now for the delicate part.

 Recompile: 6.06

    We knew the front door was never going to work. It wasn¡¯t the online security, necessarily, but all the details around the online security. The entrance to the datacentre was in the same building as the mall, which meant the fundamental character of the space abruptly changed from one that encouraged visitors to one that had orders to detain them. That necessitated a liminal space between the two worlds that was packed with every security measure Renraku could afford.


    As one of the world¡¯s largest corporations, that meant a wide atrium between mall and datacentre that functioned as a killing floor; a lobby that had been sculpted to appeal to the people who used it every day, but that was devoid of cover and had firing points built into the very architecture. It meant mantraps designed to ensure employees could only enter one at a time, with a weight sensor in the floor to verify that there really was only one of them. It meant iris recognition scanners, System Identification Number checks, magnetic anomaly detectors and a wagemage with a bound spirit monitoring the astral plane for anything out of the ordinary.


    Imp had evaded at least some of those before, or so she claimed, but never all at once. She¡¯d been animated back in the loft when we went through the plan; boasting with unrepressed glee about how she¡¯d raided luxury high-rises, jewellery stores, boutique fashion outlets and private art collections. Even when I pointed out that she¡¯d never tangled with a megacorp it wasn¡¯t enough to dampen her sails. She simply smirked, pointed to the building plans and said that it didn¡¯t matter how secure the front door was when she could just open another.


    She¡¯d timed her entrance well; a short human in a business blouse was stepping out onto the balcony with a disposable cup of soykaf in one hand and a cigarette in the other. In the matrix, the automated door registered two authorised SINs and slid open. If one of them didn¡¯t have permission to access the building¡¯s secure host ¨C and, by extension, the building itself ¨C the door would have locked itself, dropped the inner shutters over the windows and the outer shutters over the balcony, and deployed the two automated turrets nestled in the ceiling to complete the kill-box.


    The trick to burglary, Imp had remarked, is that no matter how secure somewhere is, people still have to live there. The balcony ran along the mid-point of the tower, equidistant between the highest and lowest offices. If you were a Renraku architect designing your new building with a head full of buzzwords like ¡°human factors¡± and ¡°time in motion¡± then it would make sense to place the communal areas where they could be accessed by everyone in the shortest amount of time.


    That included the balcony. No doubt some extensive research had generated the grudging conclusion that metahumans functioned better with the occasional exposure to fresh air and natural light, so the balcony was installed as a way of providing that without anyone actually leaving their workplace. The door to the balcony worked on the principal that those accessing it had already passed through the security measures on the ground floor, which made it an oversight we could exploit.


    It was all guesswork, of course ¨C we didn¡¯t have the time or the access needed for real reconnaissance ¨C but it had paid off. Looking through Imp¡¯s camera feed, I saw a spotless and almost empty cafeteria, with long white tables in the centre of the space and smaller booths hugging the walls. A smattering of office workers occupied some of the booths, nursing cups of soykaf, but it was clearly long past the lunch rush and the long counters of food were empty and unlit save for a few prepackaged goods next to the till.


    ¡°It¡¯s like they designed it to suck your soul out,¡± Imp remarked, taking in the crisp and minimalist corporate d¨¦cor.


    ¡°It¡¯s a cafeteria, not a dining room,¡± I countered. ¡°Time spent in here is time not spent working.¡±


    Imp let out a sharp breath, her hand unconsciously drifting towards a plastic-wrapped mochi ball before she thought better of it. ¡°No way to live.¡±


    ¡°There are a lot of people who would disagree,¡± I mused, ¡°but you¡¯re with the right sort now.¡±


    ¡°I was before,¡± she snapped back, ¡°but I bet Alec could do something really nice with all these white walls.¡±


    ¡°Regent when we¡¯re on the job, even over comms,¡± I said in rebuke. ¡°But seriously? Think he¡¯d have the patience to paint all that?¡±


    ¡°Fraggin¡¯ obviously,¡± Imp shot back. ¡°I can¡¯t paint for drek, but I know what¡¯s wiz. Regent could¡¯ve had all the cred and slots he wanted back in the Troupe.¡±


    There was something in the way she¡¯d said it that made me pause. I¡¯d noted Regent¡¯s artwork on the doors and the walls of the loft when I first joined the team, but it had long since faded into the background of my mind. As I thought about it in more detail, however, I found I had trouble reconciling the art with Regent¡¯s lethargic attitude.


    For him to put in that much effort ¨C not just into creating art, but becoming better at the craft ¨C it must be a real passion of his.


    I cleared my thoughts, mentally shaking my head. I needed to get back to the here and now.


    ¡°Hold tight for a second, I¡¯m going to snoop around the matrix.¡±


    Unlike a lot of the other hosts I¡¯d visited, the datacentre¡¯s matrix mirror bore no resemblance whatsoever to the meatspace tower. It wasn¡¯t just in the visual layer, but in the layout of the host itself. Most of the hosts I¡¯d visited that had been tied to a specific physical location had been meant to invite in visitors from outside. Typically, that meant the host mirrored the structure of the building, with each icon and device positioned exactly where it sat in meatspace.


    The datacentre was a workplace, however, which meant its users were expected to be familiar with a different layout designed around encouraging efficiency, which meant something different in the matrix. To further add to the confusion, this host was meant to be accessed by IT professionals, which meant it had very little of the handholding you¡¯d expect for a workforce who might otherwise be creeped out by pure VR.


    There was no gravity, no sense of up and down, not even any real light in the traditional sense. Put a matrix novice like Tattletale in the host and she¡¯d come out puking her guts up with vertigo, but for corporate codeslaves it meant they could move their persona from one device to another instantaneously, dealing with the pure essence of a thing rather than being limited by a metahuman-friendly shell.


    I felt right at home as I navigated from one node to another, staying clear of blaring red firewalls for now as I examined what my limited access allowed me. Every now and then a piece of patrol IC ¨C rendered as a hollow shell of red light that vaguely resembled a stylised eye ¨C would scan me, but I had permission to be in the host and I hadn¡¯t yet broken any of its rules. That was enough for their simple programming.


    The nature of the host meant that there wouldn¡¯t be anything so obvious as a map on the wall, but that was nothing a little unorthodox thinking couldn¡¯t fix. I found what I was looking for in the facilities subsystem, nestled in and amongst the governing OS of the elevators. As I¡¯d hoped, the display did more than just show off the floor number; it also displayed the departments present on each. No doubt some designer somewhere had decided that would make for a user-friendly touch.


    Well, I¡¯m a user, I thought to myself, and I find it very friendly indeed.


    ¡°Thirteenth floor,¡± I said to Imp. ¡°Head for the elevators and hang around until one opens.¡±


    ¡°What about the stairs?¡± she asked.


    ¡°Alarmed,¡± I guessed. ¡°Nobody uses the stairs in a place like this.¡±


    Imp snorted. ¡°¡¯Course they don¡¯t. Bunch of chair-jockeys and wireheads.¡±


    ¡°Well aren¡¯t you lucky I don¡¯t need wires?¡± I countered. ¡°Get moving, meathead.¡±


    ¡°Swing and a miss, girl. Try and come up with something better for next time.¡±


    ¡°Like ¡®wirehead¡¯ is high art?¡± I snapped. ¡°It¡¯s a middle school insult.¡±


    ¡°Which is weird, right? ¡®Cos I didn¡¯t go to middle school.¡±


    Abruptly, Tattletale¡¯s whispered voice came through on the shared channel.


    ¡°Girls, girls, you¡¯re both pretty, but let¡¯s keep our mind on the job, okay? There¡¯s no need to test just how soundproof that fancy suit is.¡±


    ¡°Right, yeah,¡± I said, losing myself in the matrix for a moment as I tried to centre myself. If I¡¯m going to step up, I need to stop being drawn into petty shit like that. Imp isn¡¯t going to change, so just grit your teeth and deal.


    When I looked back at Imp¡¯s feed, I found her slowly pacing from side to side outside a bank of elevators. They weren¡¯t the glass-fronted ones I¡¯d spotted hugging the walls of the building; those were reserved for executives and poking them would draw too much attention in the matrix. Instead, she was at the very core of the structure waiting for someone to come along and push the button for her.


    ¡°So is this what it¡¯s normally like?¡± Imp asked after a minute or two. ¡°I mean, not exactly. I don¡¯t see any of you climbing up the side of a building.¡±


    ¡°Honestly, I don¡¯t think I could pin down any of the jobs I¡¯ve done and call it ¡®normal,¡¯¡± I answered. ¡°Each one¡¯s been different and, so far, a lot larger than the one before.¡±


    ¡°It means we¡¯re moving up in the world,¡± Tattletale chimed in. ¡°We¡¯re constantly pushing at our limits and discovering they¡¯re further away than we thought.¡±


    ¡°Can¡¯t climb forever,¡± Imp countered, with a little of the emotion I¡¯d noticed in my apartment. ¡°At some point, you¡¯ll reach the roof. Then there¡¯s only one way down.¡±


    ¡°Which is why it¡¯s important to be careful,¡± I said, thinking I could turn her melancholy into a lesson. ¡°To see problems coming before we have to face them.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not how it-¡± Imp began, before she cut herself off as a pair of wageslaves entered the room and moved over to one of the elevators, one of them waving a hand over the sensor built into the display. They were both women ¨C a heavy-set human and a surprisingly tall and thin dwarf ¨C and both were dressed in corporate attire that was as professional as it was severe, with tight skirts in dark colours and light blouses in different shades of red. Their commlinks were broadcasting their Renraku SINs to the building¡¯s host, identifying them as Lila Wong and Leticia Boone and linking them to the marketing department.


    As the elevator doors slid open, Imp sidled in after the two women while they continued their conversation, completely oblivious to their small gang of eavesdroppers.


    ¡°I just don¡¯t see the point,¡± the dwarf ¨C Leticia ¨C was complaining. ¡°I get having it there, but why do we have to submit one every month? Isn¡¯t it supposed to be an emergency thing?¡±


    ¡°I bet it¡¯s not actually mandatory,¡± Lila mused, ¡°it just helps Reynolds¡¯ metrics to have each employee putting in one ¡®active security¡¯ form a month.¡±


    ¡°How does that make sense? Surely having that many risks reported would make his superiors think he¡¯s incompetent?¡±


    The human turned and leant against the wall, looking down at her colleague as she explained, while Imp slowly waved an invisible hand in front of her face.


    ¡°Think about it. Corporate made those forms because they want them to be used; it¡¯s not about the actual issues raised, it¡¯s about Reynolds showing that he¡¯s receiving and actioning those forms. That way the c-suite knows he¡¯s being proactive about security, not just resting on his laurels.¡±


    ¡°I guess that makes sense. It¡¯s just a pain to come up with a new one each month.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll let you in on a trick.¡± The human leant in, faux-conspiratorially. ¡°Pick an issue they can¡¯t fix and just put that one in each month. We have to pass through the mall on our way out, so I just say that there¡¯s a risk due to non-citizens sharing a space with our research staff. They can¡¯t change the whole building to fix it, so I can just copy in the same paragraph each month.¡±


    ¡°That works?¡± the dwarf asked, though she trailed off as the elevator doors slid open again.


    The sight that greeted us chilled me to the bone. Even Imp was rattled, taking a half-step back and muttering ¡°Holy shit.¡±


    The corporate samurai ¨C there was no way he could be anything else ¨C was dressed in a set of black ballistic armour that had been styled to resemble his historic counterpart, down to the sculpted snarling face on the ballistic mask attached to his helmet. He was carrying a rifle ¨C a short-barrelled weapon with the magazine located behind the trigger ¨C and he wore the katana and wakizashi that signified his rank in sheathes on his webbing belt.


    He could have walked straight off the set of any number of trideo shows, films or games. He was a cultural icon made manifest; the embodiment of Renraku¡¯s Bushido ethos, repackaging Japanese imperialism for the corporate age. He was an image they promoted to the world through every means at their disposal; the reason Grue was called a ¡®street samurai,¡¯ rather than a cowboy or a soldier. Even I¡¯d watched a few episodes of Sentai Samurai when I was a kid, before mom put a stop to it.


    This particular action hero had a rank tab on either side of the collar of his armour ¨C a metal star between two red lines ¨C and his own SIN identified him as First Lieutenant Miguel Gutierrez, though his name was almost buried beneath the identifier for his social class.


    ¡°Good afternoon, sir,¡± Lila said, clasping her hands in front of her and giving the samurai a short bow. Her colleague followed suit almost immediately. I¡¯d heard rumours that Renraku¡¯s samurai had the authority and even the obligation to kill anyone who disrespected them or the corporation and, in that moment, I fully believed it. There was something in the way he carried himself ¨C proud and upright even in full armour ¨C that seemed to radiate uncompromising, ruthless loyalty.


    He paid the two marketers no mind, turning his back on them before thumbing the button for two floors up. Imp stood uncharacteristically still and silent, her head shifting as she looked the samurai up and down.


    ¡°Fucking nova.¡± She almost breathed the word, her fear gone and her whispered tone carrying something close to awe. ¡°Now this is what I was expecting when you said we were running against Renraku.¡±


    ¡°Quiet down,¡± Tattletale whispered back. ¡°He¡¯ll have chrome. Maybe enhanced hearing.¡±


    When the samurai left the elevator two floors later the two wageslaves seemed to relax, letting out an almost imperceptible sigh of relief. They didn¡¯t say another word as the elevator continued its journey up to the thirteenth floor, where I reached out and brought it to a stop.


    The two women looked at each other with faintly puzzled expressions as the doors slid open and Imp sidled out into the corridor, but they didn¡¯t comment on it. No doubt they¡¯d blame it on some system glitch accidentally summoning two elevators to the same floor.


    Judging by the information I¡¯d been able to gleam from the elevator, the thirteenth floor was the topmost of five levels dedicated to managing the datacentre¡¯s network infrastructure, supporting Renraku¡¯s grid in this part of the world and maintaining the networks of telecommunications systems that were meant for both Renraku¡¯s many clients and to support the megacorporation¡¯s own world-wide systems.


    As I moved my persona towards the fortress-like node of data that was associated with the devices around Imp, I saw that the physical workplaces were organised hierarchically. The thirteenth floor was the closest to the executives on the fifteenth floor, so it dealt with the most secure and lucrative systems.


    The details of what those systems might have been was frustratingly obscured from me behind another layer of security. I¡¯d gained access to the host, but it was the sort of access that all its employees would have had, albeit with a few more permissions than most. Peering closer at the glaring red firewalls in front of me, I saw that the cube-like node was actually an entrance to an entirely separate host within a host.


    It was processing a staggering amount of data, visible as strands of light linking it to other devices within the wider building before leaving for a myriad of destinations unseen. I knew that if I teased apart the encryption on one of those transmissions I¡¯d find an impenetrably dense mass of code; compacted communications information from hundreds of thousands of different devices transmitted in a single inviolate beam.


    I could also see the layers of security as they shifted around the constant streams of data. It was a morass of hidden pitfalls and sharp code, all of it bristling with sensors ready to log any intrusion and flood the host with countermeasures in response. I was afraid to even go near it, never mind try and break through, but that was what Imp was for.


    She¡¯d begun to creep her way through the corridors of the software hub, passing the occasional employee. Some were dressed in typically severe business attire but most wore tight-fitting cooler suits designed to keep their body temperature low while their internal cyberdecks burned with the amount of data they were processing. Their datajacks were far more invasive than I was used to; many of them had replaced their entire cranium with cyberware, the backs of their heads exposed to reveal a port linked directly to their brain to remove even the miniscule latency that came from a wireless connection.


    They plugged those datajacks into recliners that were visible through the glass walls on either side of the corridor, then plugged the suits into feeds that injected coolant and nutrients, along with others that removed waste to allow them to work in the matrix uninterrupted for the entire length of their shift. The d¨¦cor of the floor was all dark colours and dull lighting that only emphasised the blinking red lights on the esoteric machinery.


    The people were more than gloomy enough to match their environment; their flesh was pallid, their eyes sunken, their bodies almost universally gaunt under the effects of a mostly drip-fed diet. They lived almost their entire lives in the matrix. Many of them must have been diving since they were in elementary school, when they were first tested for aptitude before being raised by Renraku for this specific purpose.


    If I hadn¡¯t inherited my mother¡¯s stony complexion, I¡¯d probably look a lot like them by now.


    ¡°That¡¯s no way to live,¡± Imp remarked as she stepped out of the way of a passing programmer.


    ¡°You¡¯re only seeing meatspace,¡± I countered. ¡°But I get your point.¡±


    Besides the recliners and banks of blinking servers, the purpose of each room was utterly indeterminable. All the relevant augmented reality icons were powered by the host I couldn¡¯t access.


    ¡°Find someone on their own,¡± I said. ¡°Somewhere with low foot traffic. We don¡¯t want anyone walking in.¡±


    ¡°Whatever you say.¡±


    ¡°Tattletale, are we still good?¡±


    ¡°The mall¡¯s the same as ever,¡± Tattletale answered. ¡°I¡¯ve bought another cute top, but they didn¡¯t have anything in your size.¡±


    ¡°Figures,¡± I said, with a metaphorical shrug of my shoulders. ¡°So we¡¯re clear?¡±


    ¡°No corporate goons storming through just yet. I¡¯ve called the taxi back. I¡¯ll rendezvous with Bitch and lurk nearby in case things go south.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re parked up in a gas station,¡± the cyborg herself interjected. ¡°Ready to move.¡±


    ¡°Stay put for now, Bitch¡± I said. ¡°Security here is heavier than you can handle and Tattletale will come to you. We play this quiet for as long as we can.¡±


    ¡°Understood,¡± came her terse reply.


    ¡°Hey, Regent,¡± Imp interjected, ¡°I hope your ass ain¡¯t getting sore from sitting around while I do all the real work.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m too pretty to go crawling through air ducts,¡± Regent countered in a languid tone. ¡°Besides, I don¡¯t have to; we¡¯ve hired a new minion for that.¡±


    You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    ¡°Keep the channel clear,¡± I snapped. ¡°I don¡¯t need you two bickering inside my head.¡±


    ¡°As you command, my unrelenting overlord.¡±


    Imp snickered as I put Regent on mute.


    Blissful silence followed as I returned my attention to the matrix. I was starting to pick out individual strands of data from the encrypted masses. Enough to catch the substance of a transmission, rather than the content. What I saw was the signature of dozens of databases that no doubt belonged to different corporate or government entities who paid Renraku to manage their most secure networks. The potential paydata here would be worth a small fortune to the right buyers, but I knew that dipping my fingers in the pot would risk the discovery of the tap I was supposed to install.


    Still, it was tempting.


    ¡°How¡¯s this?¡± Imp¡¯s voice came through the channel, drawing my attention away from the matrix once again.


    She was somewhere off the main rows of virtual offices, peering through a narrow glass window mounted in the door of an otherwise windowless room. Inside, the space was as spartan as any other office on this floor but the decker inside was old, with a shaggy grey beard and long hair that was definitely not within Renraku¡¯s uniform regulations. His cooler suit also looked custom made, though it was still in corporate black and red.


    ¡°Good pick,¡± Tattletale chimed in. ¡°I¡¯m guessing this guy¡¯s way off in his own corner somewhere?¡±


    ¡°He looks like long-term technical staff,¡± I said in agreement. ¡°Some old-timer who knows how all the pre-crash spaghetti code works, so they coddle him with higher pay and his own office far away from the colleagues he hates.¡±


    ¡°Makes it risky for you, right?¡± Imp asked. ¡°I mean, it¡¯s like a kid in a judo class going up against a master adept.¡±


    ¡°Hacking isn¡¯t martial arts,¡± I countered, with a little indignant pride. ¡°All the old timers know is old stuff. Good for grunt work in the corporate trenches, but when you¡¯re slinging code against code it¡¯s evolve or die. He¡¯ll do.¡±


    Imp reached out and opened the door, closing it soundlessly behind her before sidling across the room to the programmer¡¯s recliner. As I¡¯d expected, the back of his head was a mess of cables interwoven with strands of hair, plugged into what looked like an entirely custom hot-sim rig that seemed to be about twenty years old, though it had undergone some modern upgrades here and there.


    There was even an old-school cyberdeck incorporated onto the side of the system ¨C essentially a large processor the size of a keyboard with actual, physical keys for inputting data, though it seemed nobody had touched them in a while. I had to hope the components inside were newer than the casing, otherwise I despaired for the state of the world¡¯s corporate overlords.


    I watched as Imp took a moment to peer back out into the corridor before decloaking, the red AR overlay disappearing as her arms shimmered back into view. She reached down, opened up a pouch on her belt and removed the commlink inside. I¡¯d idiot-proofed it by plugging in the datajack before I gave it to her, but Imp still hesitated as she looked over the programmer¡¯s cyberware.


    ¡°Hey, tech support, this guy has like fourteen slots on his head and most of them have shit plugged in them. Where am I supposed to jam this doodad?¡±


    It only took me a moment to sort through the forest of different adaptors, like a museum piece charting the changing nature of USB ports over the last thirty years.


    ¡°Under his ear. The second one down.¡±


    ¡°Alright, here we go¡­¡±


    If the programmer was paranoid ¨C or even just smart ¨C he¡¯d have shut down all his open ports before he dove into hot-sim virtual reality, but I was gambling that he wasn¡¯t the former and hoping that he wasn¡¯t the latter either. We were on the thirteenth floor of a megacorporate tower, inside a walled and guarded compound that was sovereign corporate territory. In an environment like that, why bother with paranoia?


    Vindication came in the form of a tightly-woven firewall that flared up at my approach. Slightly surprisingly, it was stock Renraku technology of the sort that was available on the public market. Smothering the transmission it tried to send was child¡¯s play, which gave me plenty of time to slowly tease away the layers of encryption. I wondered if the programmer had designed the soft and trusted his own work, or if most of the devices he used had older ports so he never bothered upgrading the security on his most modern connection.


    As the firewall gave way, I crept into the programmer¡¯s mind like a thief in the night as the very structure of his consciousness was laid bare before me in an ordered network of processing units and man-machine interfaces. His headware was almost totally intrusive; he¡¯d set up a macro to automatically duplicate his brain¡¯s memories into digital storage, which left part of me wondering if I could exploit a connection like that to edit his organic mind.


    I could certainly watch his brain activity through the ebb and flow of the device; neurons passing down nanofibreoptic cables between different pieces of cyberware that were sometimes decades apart in age before flowing out through the tight bundle of wired connections linking him to the cyberdeck built into his recliner, and from there into the host itself.


    His mark was a scrawled and stylised crown, almost like a gang sign. Once I¡¯d duplicated it, seizing its permissions for myself, I turned my attention outwards and followed the neural pathways through into the host. Inevitably, that led me to where the programmer ¨C ¡®The Duke,¡¯ according to the signature scrawled on his code ¨C was hard at work maintaining an aged and byzantine piece of bloatware simply titled ¡®dukesmathworkaround.¡¯ The number of seemingly vital systems that were tied to that cancerous abomination of code was frankly concerning, like walking into a house and seeing fifteen plugs put through an adapter into one socket.


    Fortunately, his persona ¨C a sculpted and idealised version of his twenty-year old self whose kimono was open far enough to expose a set of abs that were so chiselled they fell well into the uncanny valley ¨C was utterly engrossed in the modifications he was making to his masterpiece, so he didn¡¯t even notice the sudden duplicate persona that appeared next to him as I stepped out and into the nested host.


    On the surface, it was in the same style as the wider building host; a black void occupied by glowing red shapes that represented programs and systems. Immediately, however, I could tell that the systems within were greater in every way than those without. Size doesn¡¯t mean much in the matrix ¨C at least, in a host as close to the bare code as this one ¨C but the icons around me seemed to almost loom with malevolent density.


    In and amongst those monuments of coding, smaller icons flitted throughout the space like ants as they made adjustments, corrected errors and smoothed out known issues in the software before the networks¡¯ operators even knew they were there. Maintenance was cheaper than fixing the issue, after all. Shutting down a network for repairs meant losing income.


    Some of the icons focused their attention on the personas, not the nodes; patrol IC maintaining a ceaseless vigil even three layers deep into Renraku¡¯s domain. At the sight of them I reached out and drew on the ambient resonance around me, weaving it into a fog that would obfuscate me from all but the most intrusive sensors.


    I drifted towards the closest node until it loomed above me, pulsing with the ebb and flow of activity. The surface of it almost resembled a waterfall of glowing red code, bunched together into a single mass of data. I reached out a single finger towards that system, going as slowly as I dared until a single spark passed between the code and the resonance that gave me form.


    What I saw sent me flinching back, not physically harmed but shocked to my core. It was an account of alert systems, perimeter warnings, smart minefields and thousands of networked hunter-killer drones all waiting in pregnant anticipation as a whole host of sensors from motion trackers, to RADAR systems, to a trio of orbital satellites filtered incoming data through algorithms that categorised each intruder into two types; threats and non-threats.


    It didn¡¯t belong to Renraku¡¯s military. The towns and counties it covered were familiar to me from the occasional news report of one incident or another along the border, but it wasn¡¯t the UCAS¡¯ military either. As I followed the path of the data leaving the node, I knew that if I could somehow see beyond the confines of the host I¡¯d be able to follow that thread all the way to Cheyenne and the headquarters of the Sioux Nation¡¯s military.


    The idea that the militaristic Native American Nation would countenance their border security network being hosted within the borders of the very adversary that network was made to watch, even protected by Renraku¡¯s extraterritoriality, was laughable.


    Do they even know? I wondered with a start. How would they, if Renraku didn¡¯t tell them?


    I left the military network behind. It wasn¡¯t what I was looking for, but it did make me see the data-fortresses around me in a new light. I knew this was where Renraku kept some of their most vital North American digital assets, but it was one thing to know that on an intellectual level and another thing entirely to see what that really meant.


    I was so focused on the other nodes around me that I almost didn¡¯t see the Patrol IC languidly drifting through the ether towards me, its sensors feeling out every node, icon and datastream around it. It looked different to the others in the host; its body was an elongated red stream of light with smaller shards jutting out down its length like a fish¡¯s ribcage.


    Despite its unusual appearance it behaved exactly as I expected; reaching out and brushing a probe over me as it hunted for any discrepancies. Nothing was truly invisible in the matrix ¨C nothing had a physical form to hide ¨C but through the fog that surrounded me I was able to baffle and confuse the perceptions of programs and people.


    What wasn¡¯t expecting was the way the IC didn¡¯t immediately move on upon failing to detect anything it could categorise. Instead, it drifted closer with the languid movements of an eel as it seemed almost to swim in the resonance around me.


    A deep and primal dread crept up my spine, as Calvert¡¯s warning rose unbidden in my mind.


    Hurriedly, I peered closer at the¡­ entity. Its code was almost semi-transparent, like some deep sea creature unused to the light. I could make out an engineered base structure that resembled a true Patrol-model Intrusion Countermeasure, but it had been warped and twisted to the point of being nearly unrecognisable. Looking at that code, it seemed to me that it had evolved, rather than been made.


    Did it happen here? Or did Renraku move it here because it was valuable?


    I didn¡¯t have time to speculate. There was no point in avoiding the term; I was face to face with an artificial intelligence. It wasn¡¯t the world-threatening AI I knew from matrix myth and legend, it was more animalistic than that. Protosapient, rather than possessing true intelligence, but a sniffer dog didn¡¯t need sapience to know to find its handler when it encountered something strange.


    I peered closer at the AI, trying to find a weakness I could exploit to kill it faster than it could send out an alert. I reached out with the resonance, suffusing its digital organs in an attempt to discern their purpose, and I came across something close to a stomach.


    It ran along the ¡®spine¡¯ of the entity, the core of which was actually formed from slowly-fragmenting files. From the outside, I could only make out corrupt scraps of junk data that had nothing to do with the databases in this host. It was all rounding errors and abandoned drafts; the flotsam and jetsam of an online system that would otherwise be deleted out of hand. Instead, it had found its way into the AI¡¯s body.


    Thinking quickly, I spun together a strand of resonance into an utterly alien data file then held it out to the frolicking AI, letting the fog fade just enough that it could see me. It was a tremendous risk that would be downright suicide against any program, but if its mind was even remotely similar to a flesh-and-blood animal then I was in with a chance.


    The AI spotted me immediately, of course. I could feel the weight of its attention on me in a caress of alien datastreams. It knew what it was supposed to do in a situation like this; raise the alarm and receive a parcel of data as a reward. If I¡¯d been anyone else, it might have done so, but I was gambling on the likelihood that I was the first technomancer it had ever encountered.


    Curiosity was one of the hallmarks of sentience. It was what had drawn the AI to my enshrouding fog and it was what had it edge closer towards me, swimming around my persona before its attention finally lighted on the resonance-made file in my outstretched hand.


    I let go of my hold on the data, leaving it to float freely in the matrix, and the AI immediately rushed forwards. I didn¡¯t know what to expect until the AI coiled itself tightly around the file, driving its pseudo-ribs into the resonance as it drew the alien data out and into its spine, its code shimmering in something akin to delight.


    With its hunger sated by the single most interesting meal it had ever eaten, the AI circled me twice once more before swimming off into the host. I let out a metaphorical breath, hurriedly reforming the fog around me. I¡¯d be trembling if I could, instead it felt like my mind was operating on a disjointed staccato beat.


    One by one, I drew close enough to discern the broad function of each node I came to, passing over NYPD Inc¡¯s criminal database, the stock trading records of Renraku¡¯s financial services AI and the orbital satellite telemetry of Ganbare Aerospace, a Renraku-owned subsidiary, before finally finding the comparatively smaller node that hosted the North American hub of the ¡®Myo¡¯ telecommunications network.


    As I pushed my way into the system, I was very careful not to interact with it in any way that a programmer wouldn¡¯t. I wanted to keep any trace of my presence as minimal as possible, which meant going around obstructions rather than through them.


    It took me a while to make sense of the filepaths, but eventually I was able to navigate my way down from folder to folder until I¡¯d reached the section that contained client data. Part of what set the Myo network apart from the competition ¨C at least, according to the brochure ¨C was that each package came with its own private network, so in the unlikely event of a data breach only a handful of people would actually be affected. It also disincentivised random scraping, as you¡¯d never be able to get the data of more than a single family or business group.


    Of course, that same business model suited my purposes exactly.


    I found what I was looking for filed under A for Anders, with a long string of appended address and service data that only helped confirm that I had the right location. There were about two dozen different devices paired to the network; enough commlinks, tablets, laptops and sundries to cover every member of the Anders family and all linked to a network in miniature right before my eyes.


    It would have been trivial to leave my mark in the node but it would also have been trivial for Renraku to find it in even the most basic file integrity check. Instead, I sent it out in a routine upload/download transmission that occurred every two seconds, ensuring the data on each device was synced with the cloud and vice versa.


    It would allow me to directly access the devices from outside the network without the inherent risk involved in routing the tap through this central Renraku hub.


    I didn¡¯t check whether I was successful ¨C again, there was too much risk involved in receiving transmissions to this host ¨C but I did allow myself a small feeling of satisfaction as I turned away from the node.


    That feeling was smothered in its crib as I saw the AI swimming across the host towards me, dragging the Duke along behind it with all the eagerness of a puppy who wanted to show its favourite person the cool new thing it found.


    I didn¡¯t even stop to think, just darted across the host in an instant and dragged a spike of resonance down the length of the programmer¡¯s persona, overloading the firewalls of his old tech and leaving a great rent of fragmented data in his cyberdeck. It wasn¡¯t enough to dump him out, but it did stun him for the vital second I needed to act.


    I screamed, spilling a chittering, writhing storm of resonance out of my persona and into the host. The AI shuddered, its ribs jerking and flickering like static while I drew together another resonance spike, far denser than the first.


    I picked a target at random, driving the spike into the Sioux military network before flooding junk data through the breach I¡¯d created. The defence grid¡¯s firewalls writhed like a living thing but my attack had already spilled through into the network, exploiting a directional weak point the system¡¯s designers thought could never be reached.


    The vivid red glow of the node flickered as code struggled and failed to travel down pathways that had been warped by the influence of my alien data. Automated repair software and partial rollbacks were already being activated across the system, but that would take time.


    For the next thirty seconds, give or take, the Sioux Nation¡¯s border with the United Canadian and American States would go entirely unmonitored. Hopefully that would be a big enough smokescreen to hide my real purpose.


    I felt a sharp pain ripple through my very essence as the AI wrapped itself around me, its ribs digging into my persona and draining the very life out of me. Hurriedly, I tore frantically at the protosapient, trying to dislodge it even as I spun together a wasp sprite from the leaking essence the AI wasn¡¯t able to consume in time.


    With a herculean effort and an almost indescribable stab of pure agony, I was able to prize the AI off my body and fling it away with a targeted burst of force. A single thought was all it took to have the wasp go in for the kill, harrying the AI in a duel between the wildlife of the matrix and the resonance realms.


    I had no intention of staying to see which emerged on top, instead diving back through the programmer¡¯s persona and emerging out into the datacentre¡¯s host.


    ¡°Run!¡± I shouted through the shared channel the moment I could access it again.


    For all her laid back insolence, Imp didn¡¯t even hesitate as she threw open the door and sprinted out into the corridor, drawing her pistol so fast I couldn¡¯t even catch the motion before she put a burst of three bullets into a turret that had emerged from the ceiling.


    She rounded the corner, kicking off the far wall to help her turn before shoving aside a cooler-suited programmer who was watching her slack-jawed, a cup of soykaf flying from his hand. Another turret fell to a tight burst of shots before she practically ran into her first metahuman security guard; an ork in a utilitarian black uniform who didn¡¯t even have a chance to raise his submachine gun before she slammed the butt of her pistol into his throat.


    In the matrix, I had my own problems to deal with. The entire datacentre had gone onto full alert, with IC materialising all around me as the host¡¯s immune system tried to purge itself of infection. I was surrounded by a wailing, thrashing mob of programs each trying their best to rip my persona to shreds like a pack of feral dogs.


    There was no form to them. Each was a mere geometric shape that evoked their true function, their attacks uploaded directly without any unnecessarily flair for the benefit of trideo-rotted meat brains. There was something terrifying about it; here was a megacorporation that came close to seeing the matrix as I did.


    I drove a spike into a rotating red cube, fragmenting it into nothingness even as another attacked me from the side, digging in a barbed program that pulled at my neurons, slowing me down. I kept up a constant scream, resonance spilling out of me as a million burning fireflies even as I simultaneously sliced out at IC, spun together a trio of sprites and kept Imp¡¯s physical location on the periphery of my consciousness.


    ¡°Elevator!¡± I shouted, even as I allowed a crackling storm of red circuitry to send a jolt through my persona, tanking the blow so that I could divert part of my strength to forcing open a pair of elevator doors.


    In meatspace, Imp shot another security guard at point-blank range before sprinting towards the slowly opening metal doors. Her stride was relentless and unfaltering, even as the doors opened to reveal nothing but an empty shaft. Without a second thought, she dove with a partial front flip into the void, firing a last upside-down burst at a human with a submachine gun before wrapping her thighs around the cable and sliding down the shaft, continuing headfirst into perfect darkness as I slammed the way shut behind her.


    Her rapid descent freed up precious seconds in which I could devote my attention solely and completely to the matrix. The IC had its hooks in me, each chink in my armour a breach they could use to flood me with data. It was agonising, each attack feeling like my very soul was being frayed away. I couldn¡¯t repair the damage ¨C couldn¡¯t bring enough of myself together to even make the attempt ¨C but each line of attack was a vector I could use.


    I dove deep into myself, twisting the underlying essence of my persona until it resonated with the incoming attacks, sending back sonorous echoes of reflected damage that began to shake apart the most effective IC. My wasps dove in and among the swarm, dancing to my tune as they prioritised the weakened countermeasures to reduce the sheer amount of assailants that harried me.


    Aisha was level with the sixth floor, the fifth. I dove back into the elevator system and wrenched open the doors to the third floor, just above the stationary elevator car, and watched through her visor as she twisted herself around the cable and leapt out into the corridor, rolling as she landed and sprang up into the face of the corporate samurai.


    He raised his rifle with the preternatural speed of wired reflexes, only for Imp to slap it aside and grab hold of his wrist, pulling him towards her before ducking under his left shoulder. When she turned back to look at him, the rifle was on the floor and the samurai¡¯s katana was in Imp¡¯s hand.


    I watched in appalled, powerless disbelief as Imp abandoned her flight in favour of swinging the sword with all the grace of a circus performer, only for the samurai to hurriedly draw his wakizashi and block the longer blade with the clang of steel on steel.


    Another attack dragged my attention away from the feed. The IC facing me was new; an ominous red prism pulsing with black light. Its attacks stung like nothing I¡¯d felt since coming face to face with the Yakuza hacker on my first real job. Black IC. They weren¡¯t trying to brick my persona and track my location anymore; they were trying to kill me.


    A pair of personas were hovering on the periphery of the fight, datastreams linking them to their programs as they directed the IC like they were playing a strategy game. I snarled, battering aside one program after another as I forced my way through the melee, using my sprites like living shields to intercept attacks and cut a path out of the rapidly-accumulating graveyard of scrapcode and diffused resonance.


    The security spiders reacted as I¡¯d desperately hoped they would, dismissing some of the host¡¯s countermeasures as they redirected the processing power to form a wall of Barrier IC between them and whatever the insane technomancer had planned. I could only imagine what I looked like to them, but at the last second I jerked away and made one last rush at Imp¡¯s suit.


    ¡°Stop fucking around and run!¡± I shouted through her earpiece. ¡°Down the corridor, third office on the right! Through the window, cross the mall¡¯s roof and rendezvous in the parking lot! Going offline now!¡±


    Before I closed the feed, I was just able to catch sight of Imp abruptly changing a forward stab into a downwards swing that slammed the katana into the samurai¡¯s rifle, lodging the blade in just above the magazine. She rolled under a blow from the samurai, kicked out at his shin then used the momentum of her kick to spring to her feet and resume her flight.


    I followed suit, hacking away the hooks that had infected my persona before finally leaving the host and the matrix behind.


    Real, physical pain flooded through my nervous system, jolting me awake so strongly that my back arched and I slammed my face against the ceiling of the coffin. Acting on instinct, I reached for my gun, shuffling forwards over the plastic mattress, now coated in a thin layer of sweat, with a patch of blood near where my head had laid and another on the ceiling where I¡¯d spasmed so hard I¡¯d broken my nose.


    I drew my gun before kicking the coffin door open, wincing at the sound of metal shrieking and plastic snapping. The moment my feet hit the floor I swayed, stumbling forward until I was able to rest an arm against the vending machine to save myself from falling forward.


    I wanted to lie down. I wanted to sleep for eighteen hours straight, to take some magic pill that¡¯d clear the fog from my head, to be wheeled out of here by the divine intervention of another CrashCart ambulance crew. Instead I tightened my grip on my pistol and stumbled down the corridor, a blurred image that might have been a human man in a cheap suit pressing himself against the wall of coffins to get out of my way.


    More blurred figures fled at the sight of me as I shambled my way into the elevator and down to the ground floor, where the bright lights of the small strip mall felt like staring into the heart of a thousand suns.


    Someone blocked my path, shouting words I couldn¡¯t understand while his partner spoke frantic words I couldn¡¯t hear into her shoulder. I could make out peaked caps, ballistic vests and a gun in the man¡¯s hand.


    My own hand rose up almost on automatic, the cybernetic limb guided unwaveringly by the signal coming off the smartlinked standard issue Minutemen Security Services pistol. I squeezed the trigger, a trio of shots flying straight and true into the pistol and the hand that held them. The man¡¯s partner grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him aside, throwing down her own gun and kicking it away as I switched my arm¡¯s target lock to her AR-linked NeoNET cybereyes.


    Part of my consciousness returned as I staggered out of the commercial building; enough to feel blissful relief as a familiar van pulled up in front of me, the side door sliding open as Regent and Tattletale rushed out, the former keeping his eyes trained on the building behind me while the latter prised the gun from my metal fingers and guided me by the arm into the back of the van.


    I slumped down onto the floor, leaning against the back of the front seats as someone pulled the door shut and Bitch drove us out of the compound at a steady pace, already cycling the van¡¯s GridLink RFID chip so that we¡¯d blend into the constant flow of commercial traffic.


    I knew Tattletale was trying to get my attention, could see Imp staring down at me from one of the seats, her mask off and an indeterminable expression on her face, but I needed to make sure I¡¯d done it.


    Carefully, I sent out one last pulse of data out into the matrix. A microsecond later, I received a response from dozens of different devices, each linked to me by a solid tether of data that logged even the slightest piece of activity. Already my mind was racing with the desire to pour through the private secrets of the ultra-rich, but I wasn¡¯t sure I¡¯d be able to comprehend even a single word in the state I was in.


    Instead, I forwarded access to the data tap on to Calvert¡¯s system, not even waiting for an acknowledgement before I clasped Tattletale on the shoulder, flashed her a weary but triumphant grin and finally allowed myself to surrender to unconsciousness.

 Interlude 6: Thomas Calvert

    2062


    As the elevator climbed up from the eighth sublevel, Thomas Calvert took a moment to straighten his tie in the mirror.


    It was true silk, dyed a deep carmine red and patterned with miniature swirls that evoked the petals of flowering roses, or perhaps a pattern of rivers, craters and trenches all filled with blood. The interpretation was irrelevant. It was unique, which gave it value.


    His shirt was a crisp and neutral white; a deliberately plain choice meant to draw attention to the tie. In place of buttons, both it and his suit used electrostatic fabric that left only a thin seam to break up the flat surfaces of his outfit. The suit itself was wool, dyed slate grey and custom-ordered from a tailor in New York City. The only accessories he wore were a smartwatch, two platinum cufflinks embossed with twin rubies and a pin on his lapel that bore the logo of Ares Macrotechnology; an ancient Greek helm in profile, outlined in gold and coloured red, white and blue by synthetic rubies, sapphires and pearls.


    His work was important, but whenever it called him underground it always took its toll. His mask frayed at the edges, his suit shifting out of perfect alignment through the exertion of his labour. Cuffs were misaligned, his tie was loosened then drawn back too closely. His meticulously-maintained expression began to return from its deliberate disjointedness, some of his true nature creeping through into his features.


    The mask was an entity, something illusory. It was the idea of Thomas Calvert; an abstraction he presented to the world that represented no real person.


    When the metal doors slid soundlessly open and he stepped out into the well-lit atrium, the smile he gave to the corporal standing guard at the checkpoint had all the appearance of genuine emotion. He greeted the corporate soldier by name, asked after his sister ¨C who he already knew had just finished basic and qualified for a signals analyst course ¨C and asked the dwarf how long he had left on his shift. All the information he gave and received came from a sequestered part of his memory that was only recalled when it served his purposes.


    Beyond the checkpoint, a long corridor led past glass-walled conference rooms that had sat unused for as long as Calvert had worked there. They were another smokescreen; a false purpose for a corridor whose true function was solely to create distance between one world and another.


    The corridor ran along one wing of the rectangular building, joining the expansive atrium that bisected the structure, four stories high and with glass walls on either side. It was six stories tall, with balconies running along the length of each floor from which the workforce could stand and admire the space. At the heart of the atrium was an abstract artwork formed from precious metals, commissioned from a renowned awakened sculptor whose artwork had graced the atriums and forecourts of corporate enclaves across three continents.


    As always, Calvert turned his head to gaze appreciatively at the prestigious symbol of the compound¡¯s importance, his eyes glazing over the details of the sculpture before dropping back to level ground as he passed the halfway point. The executive elevators were glass fronted until they passed beyond the six-storey void of the atrium, perfectly positioned to view both the sculpture and the wider atrium.


    They were also perfectly positioned for the employees on each floor to see their leadership as they ascended. Calvert made sure to stand close enough to the glass that he could be seen, but not so close that it appeared as if he were looking for someone in particular.


    The elevator climbed completely soundlessly up the full twelve storeys of the building¡¯s height, its glass doors opening onto a well-furnished corridor with a soft red carpet, faux-wood panelled walls and the Ares Macrotechnology logo embossed in gold on the opposite wall. Flat-planed holographic portraits flanked the logo, depicting Ares CEO Damian Knight and the compound¡¯s Commanding Officer, Catalina Barerra.


    Calvert¡¯s office sat at the far end of the corridor, one of three that together occupied the same volume of space as Director Barerra¡¯s office on the opposite end of the building. There was no window in the door, unlike the offices on the lower floors, and it was completely unadorned save for a brass plaque that read ¡®Thomas Calvert, Executive Officer, Special Projects.¡¯


    Beyond the sliding door was the antechamber of his office, separated from his own workplace by electronically tinted glass. The antechamber itself was well-furnished, with a couch for any visitors he may have, a water cooler tucked up against the wall and a faux-mahogany desk from which his personal assistant spoke her usual greeting.


    She was a young elven woman and the very picture of a corporate citizen. Calvert knew from her personnel file that her father was a middle-manager in an Ares logistics hub, her mother an officer in the corporate regiment stationed at the same base. He knew that her academic record throughout her years of Ares-run schooling had been above average ¨C but not exceptional ¨C and that this was her first post after graduating from Aurelius University in Detroit, where she majored in Communications. She had two brothers; one was a floor manager in an Ares factory in Pittsburgh, while the other¡¯s regiment was stationed in Morocco. In her free time, she played soccer.


    All this information came to his mind as he responded to her greeting and asked after her brother¡¯s deployment, then left the moment he crossed through the glass partition into his office.


    Calvert¡¯s office was an extension of his mask. Its luxury ¨C the Afghan rug hanging on the rear wall and the genuine wood of his desk ¨C were nothing more than the symbols people expected to see. The medals from his time in military intelligence were positioned prominently beside the rug, while the bust of Ares the Ancient Greek war god had been a gift from Director Barerra on his most recent promotion.


    The rear wall was the only one that wasn¡¯t transparent. To the right of his desk a reinforced glass wall separated his workplace from an expansive terrarium that ran down the length of the room, filled with foliage, imported soil, artificial tree branches and trideo screens meant to create a facsimile of the Amazonian jungle. The left wall, on the other hand, was a window of electronically tinted one-way bulletproof glass that looked out of the rear of the research compound, over the rooftops of a logistics warehouse and two low-rise staff barracks before passing high over the perimeter wall and out beyond Ares¡¯ extraterritoriality towards the snow-covered mountaintops of the Rockies, deep within the heart of the Salish-Shidhe Council.


    Inevitably, work had built up during his sojourn into the sublevels; as Calvert sat at his desk and typed in the password for his terminal, the screen lit up with requests for communications, complications in obtaining samples or specimens, reports of health and safety violations, summarised research notes, a mandatory diversity and inclusion course sent out to all executive-level staff from Ares¡¯ head office and a report from the compound¡¯s security chief on a laboratory analyst who had been granted leave only to stray far beyond her authorised destination.


    It was a delicate balance of emergent problems and long-term commitments, one Calvert could manage with ease even though he knew it was merely a stepping stone on the way to larger things. He worked late in the sure knowledge that within the next five years he would have risen high enough to afford a life worth enjoying.


    Only then would he give thought to who Thomas Calvert really was beneath the mask, once he had the time and the luxury needed to explore that question in full. Until then, he remained at his desk as the sun began to sink below the horizon and his assistant asked leave to retire for the night as politely as she could manage.


    Calvert waved her off as he continued finalising a proposal document that suggested ways in which their experimentation could be expanded with minimal risk to personnel by constructing orbital laboratories that were beyond the reach of the Earth¡¯s ambient Astral field. He had just finished appending a research paper written by a NASA consultant on the theoretical feasibility of generating small-scale manaspheres using hydroponics modules when the lights flickered and Calvert¡¯s terminal abruptly rebooted itself back to the login screen.


    Calvert¡¯s face fell into a slight frown, thrown off his stride, before a discreet alarm light winked into life on his desk. Immediately, he reached his hand under the desk and drew his service pistol from its concealed holster, tightly gripping the weapon with his right hand as he used his left to flip open his commlink, thumbing through numbers until he found the one for the duty security officer in the secret laboratory.


    When the call had gone unanswered for five seconds, Calvert swore and hung up. The duty officer¡¯s commlink was implanted in his headware; there was no conceivable reason for him not to answer almost instantaneously unless he was either dead or completely incapacitated. As Calvert scrolled back through his contact list, looking for the security chief for the whole compound, the room was abruptly bathed in red emergency lighting as an audible alarm echoed throughout the facility and an automated voice ordered all personnel to shelter in place.


    ¡°Rakowski, what¡¯s going on?¡± he snapped down the comm.


    ¡°Jamie Rinke has escaped containment.¡± The voice came from behind Calvert, its words halting and uncertain as if it were speaking for the first time. Calvert fell to his knees as his arms were crushed against his sides by a constricting force that wrapped around his body, before a serpentine head crept into view, its forked tongue flicking out to taste his flesh. ¡°Your specimens are loose.¡±


    ¡°Calvert, what the fuck have you been doing down there!?¡± Major Rakowski shouted through the comm, which had fallen from Calvert¡¯s hand and lay against one leg of his desk. ¡°Don¡¯t you fucking dare try and sell me some ¡®classified¡¯ bullshit! I fought in Chicago, you bastard! I know insect spirits when I-¡±


    The serpent¡¯s eyes darted over to the comm. Calvert felt its magic pressing against his barely-awakened mind as the end call button was depressed by a telekinetic force.


    The terrarium, some distant, analytical part of Calvert thought as the serpent began to squeeze the life out of him. It used telekinesis to escape.


    ¡°I want you to know I am greatly enjoying this,¡± the serpent hissed in Calvert¡¯s ear, each word punctuated by the audible crack of breaking bones. ¡°The hubris of your species! To take what you do not understand and try to tame it to guard your halls, to fill your laboratories, to decorate your office!¡±


    Calvert slumped further, his snapped femurs pitching his body forwards until he lay face-down in his own carpet, barely able to see the glass wall of the terrarium through the constricting scales digging into his flesh.


    ¡°But while you studied those spirits below, I studied you. I learned to speak your tongue, to shape magic as your security mages do. I have learned everything I can from you. Now, it is time I move on. Your captive subjects will provide the distraction I need to escape, while your life¡¯s worth goes up in smoke.¡±


    The serpent¡¯s mind raced with giddy elation as he felt the last tremors of Calvert¡¯s life ebbing out of him. After years of passivity, being passed from one animal handling security officer to another before being relegated to the habitat in Calvert¡¯s office, it felt profoundly liberating to finally take back control of the life that had been snatched from him by hunters in the jungles of his half-remembered home.


    As he uncoiled himself from the broken and bleeding remains of the Ares officer, the serpent took a moment to look down the length of his body at the blood that now coated his length, staining the white pattern on his black scales a vivid, life-filled red. Satisfied, he slithered over to the window and reared up as he peered out across the complex built by a civilisation that remained mostly alien to him to the distant and almost incomprehensibly vast mountains.


    His gaze landed on a small set of lights moving in from the West, growing larger at a rapid pace until it became visible as a predatory thunderbird tilting on vector-thrust engines as it banked in low over the mountains, heading directly towards the Ares compound.


    The serpent watched with eager fascination as a pair of surface to air missile batteries opened fire on the aircraft, sending out a quartet of arcing missiles whose engines glowed like stars against the darkening sky. A trail of incandescent flares spilled out of the sides of the thunderbird as it banked around the incoming missiles, returning fire with pinpoint missiles of its own that caused shuddering detonations as they neutralised the air defence system.


    The sounds of battle had started to echo up from the compound below. Peering through the window, Calvert watched as a platoon of Ares soldiers freshly drummed out of their barracks rushed across the road with weapons held in tight, nervous grips. Not one of them looked up, even as the thunderbird roared overhead and landed on the roof. Nothing above ground could be more dangerous than what was trying to fight its way out of the basement.


    It wasn¡¯t long before fresh gunshots rang out on the top floor, closer and louder than the distant battle below. The serpent slithered away from the window, coiling himself up behind the desk to hide himself from view, his slit-pupiled eyes meeting the fractured, dead gaze of the corpse lying less than a metre away, in full view of the door.


    That same door gave way to a kick from a steel-toed boot, the serpent listening intently and watching through the astral plane as four auras paced cautiously into the office, weapons raised.


    ¡°Drek. Someone¡¯s geeked the target,¡± the lead shadowrunner swore in a gravelly voice that reverberated with the tell-tale signs of a synthetic voicebox deliberately tweaked to sound more intimidating.


    ¡°Something¡¯s screwy about this whole job,¡± a woman spoke, worry audible in her Amerindian accent. ¡°What¡¯s even happening down there?¡±


    ¡°A distraction,¡± the serpent answered, watching as the four auras flared up in alarm.


    ¡°And who the fuck are you?¡± the gravelly voice spoke, as the shadowrunners cautiously fanned out. The serpent was sure that there were four weapons currently levelled at the desk.


    ¡°I am your target. Thomas Calvert did not request an extraction, I did. I apologise for the deception, but¡± ¨C the serpent reared upwards past the edge of the desk, then further still until his eyes were level with the tallest Shadowrunner ¨C ¡°you would not have believed the truth.¡±


    The shadowrunners were a typically motley crew. The gravelly voice belonged to a tall ork with a cybernetic jaw replacement that eschewed synthskin in favour of a solid steel mandible, complete with sculpted teeth. The native American woman wore a Sioux military jacket open over a bare chest daubed with ritual tattoos and laden with dangling leather thongs that held wolves¡¯ teeth, spent shell casings and other shamanic fetishes.


    The two who had remained silent were a decker and either another street samurai or an infiltrator. Both were human. The Decker was a waifish woman with sharp cheekbones and the same umber skin tone as Calvert had. Her hair was dyed an electric blue, shaved down to stubble on the right side of her head. She was pointing a pistol at the serpent and wore a bulky cyberdeck on a sling.


    The man was tall, pale and dressed in a figure-hugging grey taksuit. He had a pistol holstered on his belt, but he was clutching a katana in a two-handed grip.


    ¡°That¡¯s a naga,¡± the mage warned. ¡°An awakened snake. Watch out.¡±


    ¡°Naga can¡¯t talk,¡± the swordsman observed. ¡°Some kind of lab experiment?¡±


    The serpent bristled at being ignored, rearing up even higher and savouring the way even that slight motion made the Decker flinch.


    ¡°How typical of your species. You see something you cannot explain and assume you are responsible for it. I have watched and learned how to speak as you do, manipulate magic as you do, but we were always intelligent.¡±


    ¡°Whatever you are,¡± the ork growled, his upper lip twisted into a sneer, ¡°you¡¯re crazy if you think our client will accept a talking lizard instead of a mil-int exec.¡±


    ¡°Reptile,¡± the Decker corrected hesitantly.


    ¡°I did not tell you what Calvert did for Ares,¡± the serpent continued. ¡°You believe this facility is merely a thaumaturgical research site. That you had been sent to extract the project manager for an experimental spellcrafting programme. Calvert¡¯s true work ¨C his entire database ¨C is on the terminal you see before me. Your client will want it.¡±


    There was an explosion somewhere on the ground below. The blast radiated through the long windows of the office, momentarily bathing the whole room in a stark orange light.


    ¡°What¡¯s going on down there?¡± the swordsman, who the serpent had decided to categorise as the group¡¯s Face, asked.


    ¡°Below this compound is a secret facility Ares Macrotechnology calls ¡®Complex 54D.¡¯ It contains a number of warded cells and specimen rooms designed to isolate awakened entities from the manasphere. Its first resident was a man named Jamie Rinke, who led a branch of the Universal Brotherhood cult in Ellisburg, New York State, until he was captured by Firewatch.¡±


    ¡°An insect shaman,¡± the Shaman exclaimed, her eyes widening in shock and naked terror.


    ¡°Quite so. Further shamans and contained spirits were transported here four years ago, when Ares launched Operation Extermination to reclaim the Chicago Containment Zone. Calvert served in that operation and oversaw the transfer, before being promoted to the facility¡¯s director.¡±


    The serpent¡¯s features didn¡¯t allow him to grin. He hadn¡¯t yet figured out how to make his face readable to metahumans, but in that moment he dearly wished the Shadowrunners could see just a fraction of the satisfaction he felt.


    ¡°His work was impeccable, until I snuck down to the sublevels and degraded the facility¡¯s security. I admit, I wasn¡¯t expecting Rinke to escape until after I had already been evacuated.¡±


    ¡°We need to leave, now,¡± the Shaman said to her compatriots, her tone almost pleading. ¡°Forget the snake and just run.¡±


    ¡°And return emptyhanded?¡± the serpent asked. ¡°When you could instead hand-deliver the sum total of the facility¡¯s research and living proof of a newly-sapient species? Research data that proves that Ares has been experimenting on insect spirits, in spite of their vocal commitment to their eradication?¡±


    ¡°Or we geek you for being a lying snake and take the research anyway,¡± the ork growled.


    ¡°We bring them both,¡± the Face said, coming to a decision. ¡°We¡¯ll contact Mr Johnson when we¡¯re airborne. If he wants us to chuck the snake out the side, we¡¯ll do it then. Volt, grab the data off the terminal.¡±


    As the Decker nervously approached him, the serpent slithered aside and into the middle of the group of Shadowrunners, putting on an air of utmost fearlessness he didn¡¯t quite feel. There were still so many things that could go wrong, and after years of captivity it was a little hard to believe he¡¯d actually managed to make it this far.


    ¡°Password protected, of course,¡± the Decker said as she inserted a wrist-mounted datajack into the termainal. ¡°Just take a sec.¡±


    ¡°Amaranthine dash sixty-four twenty-three,¡± the serpent spoke. ¡°No capital letters or spaces.¡±


    ¡°You really have thought of everything,¡± the Face mused.


    ¡°I have had time to think of many things,¡± the serpent answered as the Decker disconnected, accompanied by the whir of her datajack spooling back into her arm.


    Without saying a word, the Face¡¯s demeanour abruptly shifted back to something more professional, directing the Samurai forwards with a subtle hand gesture as he and the mage moved to either side of the troll, while the Decker hung back, using the ork as cover.


    The serpent slithered behind the team, his mind pressing against the ambient magic in the air as he prepared to sling spells at any entity that stood between him and his freedom. The sound of combat emanating from the lower levels of the building was growing louder and louder, gradually creeping up past consecutive layers of defence.


    The facility had two squads of Firewatch agents on-site, all of them Chicago veterans hand-chosen by Calvert for their moral flexibility, but the serpent doubted they¡¯d be able to successfully contain a total outbreak with only a detachment of unprepared Ares infantrymen to aid them.


    Two of those infantrymen had been spared to investigate whatever had landed on the roof, or possibly to drag Calvert out of his office and throw him at the feet of Major Rakowski to answer for his deception. Whatever their intentions, they barely had enough time to raise their weapons before the serpent reared up and snapped a long whip of solid fire horizontally through both soldiers, carving through their body armour even as it cauterised the wound. A millisecond later, one soldier¡¯s head exploded as the ork put a shot through his helmet, while the Amerindian mage sent a powerbolt crashing into the other¡¯s chest.


    That was the only resistance they encountered as they took an emergency staircase up into the garden that ran along part of the facility¡¯s roof. The astroturfed tennis court had been flattened by the thunderbird, its idling engines slowly melting the plastic grass into a caustic green pool.


    The serpent brushed the spill aside with a wave of telekinetic force as the shadowrunners pulled open the side door of the thunderbird and piled in, leaving just enough room in the back of the VTOL aircraft for him to coil up his ten-metre length in-between the canvas seats.


    The Samurai heaved the door shut while the Face leant past the partition into the cockpit, having a hurried conversation with a woman in a khaki flight suit. She pulled up on a lever, causing the aircraft to lurch forwards as it gained altitude, its twin engines slowly swivelling back into a horizontal position as it climbed and accelerated away from the compound.


    The serpent took a moment to savour his triumph, watching the retreating ground through the astral plane until he had to fight down an unexpected bout of vertigo. When he turned his attention back to the cabin, he saw that the Face was deep into a half-whispered conversation on his commlink, relaying the mission¡¯s details back to their client.


    After several minutes of back and forth conversation, during which the human became visibly worried, he turned to look at the serpent.


    ¡°He wants to talk to you.¡±


    There was a screen built into the partition between the cockpit and the passenger¡¯s space, complete with a camera mounted in the frame. The Face drew a cable from that screen and plugged it into the auxiliary port on his commlink. The screen switched on automatically, displaying a well-dressed Asian man in a lightly-decorated office.


    ¡°So,¡± he began, his accent distinctly Californian, ¡°you¡¯re who I¡¯ve been talking to.¡±


    ¡°That is correct,¡± the serpent replied, concentrating on keeping his tone calm, level and as fluent as any native speaker could manage. ¡°I apologise for the deception, Andrew Daichi, but I had to be sure you would come.¡±


    ¡°I suppose this research data, if it is what you say it is,¡± he gave the serpent a pointed look, ¡°is a sufficient equivalent for an Ares military intelligence officer with top-level security clearance. I¡¯m less sure about your value to us.¡±


    The serpent had rehearsed his answer night after night, before he¡¯d even come up with the full plan. It was a dream fulfilled, but only if he saw it through.


    ¡°Ares is far from the only company to capture¡­ wild Naga in order to train them as security animals. All the largest megacorporations have dabbled. Yamatetsu has how many? Hundreds? Over a thousand? I am not the first to learn what I can from metahumanity and escape, nor will I be the last. I am not arrogant enough to believe that my species¡¯ emergence will shake the foundations of the world, but I can be an advocate and an intermediary to smooth over the fallout of the injustices they have suffered.¡±


    Daichi leant back in his seat as he considered what he had heard. The serpent weathered the silence with an air of placid calm he did not feel. When the corporate agent did finally speak, it was to ask a question.


    ¡°You are not an anomaly, then?¡±


    ¡°I am not. Yamatetsu is keeping sapient creatures in captivity. Should they escape, they will take with them both their resentment and the knowledge of everything they have seen. Tongues are loose when people think they are alone but for animals. If you are smart, you will approach your Naga as equals and offer them either a packaged non-disclosure agreement and resettlement, or corporate citizenship, employment and a generous compensation package.¡±


    ¡°You could have contacted anyone about this,¡± Daichi remarked with a casual air, as if the answer didn¡¯t really matter. ¡°Why come to us?¡±


    ¡°Your move to Vladivostok three years ago caused quite a stir, even in Ares. A Japanacorp¡¯s largest shareholder dies and his son, a half-Russian ork, inherits the chairmanship before moving the company¡¯s headquarters out of Japan thanks to the sudden emergence and support of the second-largest shareholder; an unbound spirit named Buttercup. Yuri Shibanokuji¡¯s Yamatetsu is clearly a company that embraces unconventional change. That makes it a company in which I can thrive. I have already proven my worth as an agent by arranging this escape.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s sloppy work,¡± Daichi countered. ¡°You¡¯ve placed yourself at another man¡¯s mercy, and you¡¯ve left a mess behind you.¡±


    ¡°No,¡± the serpent answered, putting on an affected smile. ¡°I have not.¡±


    He¡¯d sensed the impact through the astral plane fourteen seconds ago, and from the look on the mage¡¯s face she¡¯d sensed it too. Then the sound hit them; a distinct bang that, while reduced by distance, was still audible even through the comm line.


    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    ¡°That was a Thor shot,¡± he explained, relishing the shock that spread across every face he could see. ¡°In case the on-site garrison could not contain an outbreak, Ares kept a satellite positioned above the facility, ready to drop down a tungsten rod that would obliterate all life within the site. They even have a pre-written script apologising for the ¡®catastrophic reactor failure,¡¯ as well as an inflation-adjusted compensation pot for the Salish-Shidhe Council, packaged together with the personnel to quarantine the site until the radiation falls to safe levels.¡±


    ¡°Until they¡¯re sure no insects survived, you mean?¡± the Face asked.


    The serpent gave him a look. ¡°I thought that was implied.¡±


    ¡°We generally prefer subtler operations,¡± Daichi remarked, ¡°but I¡¯ll admit you have the right attitude. As it happens, there is an opening in my department for a new agent. First things first, though, what am I supposed to call you?¡±


    ¡°I have never needed a name before,¡± the serpent mused, before an idea formed in his mind. There was a wonderful symmetry to it; the ultimate proof of his triumph over his captors.


    ¡°I brought you here to rescue Thomas Calvert, and I do not want my first interaction with Yamatetsu to be a lie. So Thomas Calvert is who I shall be.¡±


    2069


    Thomas Calvert often felt that he was uniquely positioned to understand metahuman society. After all, it was impossible to understand the entirety of something when one was contained within it. His species gave him the outside perspective needed to truly comprehend the metahuman animal and the civilisations they had built.


    Buildings, Calvert believed, were the defining feature of those civilisations. No matter what form it had taken in governance or sophistication, every metahuman society had forged its essence into grand structures that loomed over all others. The progress of metahuman history could be read in ancient polytheistic temples, impregnable castles of bare stone, decadent palaces containing every luxury imaginable and the vast white-clad government buildings that administered colonial empires. Each of them grander and more imposing than the structures that came before them.


    At the start of the twentieth century of their calendar, those empires had been eclipsed by a more multipolar world in which human society was measured in the commercial might of its nations. The skyscrapers of that age first began to climb out of the cities of the United States of America. No longer content to confine themselves to the ground, metahumanity¡¯s monuments stabbed like daggers into the blank canvas of the sky, ensuring that their triumph could be seen written on the horizon by all who approached their cities.


    As the twenty-first century dawned and the nations of metahumanity began to be outpaced by the corporations they had created, those skyscrapers started to expand to match the growth of their builders. The first arcologies emerged as the monuments of the new age.


    Thomas Calvert was coiled up before the window of an indoor garden built fifty stories up Evo¡¯s North American headquarters in the very heart of Seattle. Beyond the pane of reinforced glass, there was no horizon to see. Every inch of sky was blocked from view by the great triumphs of metahuman civilisation; megacorporate towers reaching up hundreds of stories into the air and out hundreds of metres in either direction, the largest occupying cubic kilometres of space.


    Wherever he looked, all he saw was omnipresent concrete, steel and glass windows pulsing with electric lights that far outshone what little sun was able to creep down those artificial canyons, while the roads below glowed white with streetlights, the very air shimmering with the heat-haze of thousands of crawling vehicles.


    Most of his species found such vistas horrifying. The trauma of their introduction to the Sixth World had sunk deep into their cultural psyche, with most gathering in the Naga Kingdom of Angkor Wat, where they tried their best to forget the world beyond their realm.


    They were fools. Calvert firmly believed in the metahuman idiom that you couldn¡¯t put the genie back in the bottle. His species were part of the world now; they could wall themselves off in splendid isolation, but eventually metahumanity would knock on the door and they wouldn¡¯t take no for an answer. It was a repeated pattern in their history.


    The only way to survive the world in which they had awakened was to ride the lightning. Calvert could only imagine what they thought of him in the Kingdom, but his own experiences had changed him too much to ever truly belong in his homeland, among his own species. He¡¯d taken more from his captor than just his name.


    Above all things, Thomas Calvert strove for control. He knew what it felt like to be trapped at the mercy of others, to have his whole world reduced down to a glass box.


    The indoor garden was one of a number of different artificial environments built throughout the immense arcology-complex of Evo¡¯s regional headquarters. Each was an ecosystem in microcosm, snapshots taken from around the world. Cavert was surrounded by the Amazonian rainforest in miniature, but far from reminding him of where he had been born, the carefully-maintained and artificial nature of the room reminded him of nothing more than the climate-controlled terrarium that had once been his whole world.


    Even after years, each time he left the garden of his own free will, facing no barrier or impediment beyond a pair of automated doors, he experienced an echo of the unrestrained freedom he¡¯d felt in the back of a thunderbird, listening to the impact of a Thor shot in the Rockies.


    Calvert knew that the only way to retain that freedom was to remain in control, which meant becoming part of the corporations that sat at the pinnacle of this age¡¯s iteration of metahuman civilisation. He knew that those on the outskirts of metahuman society ¨C the last dregs of prior epochs or perpetual misanthropes who defined themselves by their opposition to whatever the presiding culture may be ¨C might say that he¡¯d surrendered control to the company.


    They might as well say he surrendered control to gravity. Evo was an immense organisation, so vast that it was impossible for any one individual to truly comprehend the myriad spheres in which they operated. Beneath the corporation¡¯s global headquarters in Vladivostok there existed an underground complex with a square kilometre of floor space given over to supercomputers hosting advanced AI and the most powerful data processing programs in existence solely tasked with calculating the quarterly income and expenditure of the corporation.


    Within an entity that vast, Calvert was freer to act than any citizen of any nation in metahuman history. His homeland spanned five continents with a population of citizens and employees in the hundreds of millions. It was a triumph in itself; while the first people to walk on the moon had belonged to a long-dead nation, the first to walk on Mars belonged to Evo.


    As he watched the city that lay beyond the artificial garden, an airship drifted slowly past the window, hanging low as it passed through the canyon, every inch of its sides given over to scrolling advertising feeds. The largest screen displayed a rotating series of images ¨C an elderly orkish woman in a hospital bed, a changeling with an elephant¡¯s head smiling as she held her diploma, a human child in a battlefield medical tent taking her first steps on new cyberlegs ¨C all accompanied by the tagline ¡®Evolve with Evo.¡¯


    The company¡¯s rebranding from Yamatetsu to Evo had been the final vindication of Calvert¡¯s choice in corporation, and the triumph of Yuri Shibanokuji¡¯s vision for his father¡¯s company. Calvert knew he would not have found the same opportunities in one of the other megacorps, where they failed to see the exploitable economic value in marginalised communities.


    It hadn¡¯t been easy; a corporation¡¯s culture could not be changed overnight, no matter how insulated the North American branch may have been from the factional politics of Vladivostok, but Calvert had managed to carve a place for himself within Evo ¨C one that afforded him the perfect balance of freedom and control. He was trusted to act on his own initiative, so long as he delivered results.


    Calvert didn¡¯t naturally smile. It wasn¡¯t in his biology, for all that he¡¯d learned to manipulate his features so as not to unnerve those he interacted with. Nevertheless, he saw satisfied pride in his expression before he turned away from the window and slithered down the path that wound through the verdant indoor rainforest.


    He always delivered results.


    Beyond the climate-controlled room, the air-conditioned halls of the arcology felt almost bracing, until Calvert pulled together a cloak of warmth from the ambient magic in the air, leaking out from the verdant rainforest or the sheer mass of employees that surrounded him. The corridors were wide and spacious, but Calvert could still feel the press of people all around him, on every floor.


    He passed departments he¡¯d never heard of, performing functions he couldn¡¯t explain. There were indoor shopping malls, schools, parks, and connector corridors leading off to the beehive of accommodation units scattered throughout every part of the building. Arcologies worked by positioning the workforce as close to their workplace as possible; what would otherwise have been time spent commuting could then become part of their shift.


    The higher-ranked an employee was, the greater the distance between their residence and their workplace. Calvert¡¯s own apartment was prestigious enough; hugging the exterior wall of the arcology, with a view across the street towards a Saeder-Krupp tower, and a mere fifteen minutes slither from his office, or less than five if he used the arcology¡¯s internal tram.


    All megacorporations maintained an intelligence bureau, but where they chose to house that bureau depended a great deal on the character of the corporation. At its heart, Ares was a military, its agents part of a wider corps but split up and integrated into smaller divisions who conducted their operations from secure strongrooms and bunkers. Horizon, for all its culture of openness, modelled its isolated intelligence campuses after those of the Central Intelligence Agency; existing in their own world far from the rest of the corporation, where they could be free to act in its best interests.


    Evo prided itself on being genuine; on accepting everyone at face value and treating them without preconceptions. In spite of that, they weren¡¯t embarrassed by the work he did. They simply chose not to acknowledge it. Evo didn¡¯t place its agents in a secret bunker or isolated campus, because even that would have been to elevate their intelligencers to a special status. Instead, Calvert and his colleagues worked out of a nondescript complex of offices spread across three floors of the arcology, identical to the complexes around them save for the soundproofing, magical wards and security measures that were completely invisible from the outside.


    Beyond the security checkpoint ¨C manned by a pair of attentive guards in ballistic armour and a security mage whose bound spirit of air hovered just behind her shoulder ¨C lay the lobby of the complex, a wide and spacious chamber that reached up the full three floors of the space, with a holographic sculpture of the world projected into the centre of the chamber, glowing nodes marking out Evo facilities around the world, the brightest nodes marking the areas where the corporation was at its strongest.


    Andrew Daichi was waiting for him outside a meeting room on the third floor, with a long glass wall that looked out onto the slowly-revolving globe. The Japanese-American agent had risen in rank in the seven years since recruiting Calvert, though the Naga had risen at a faster rate. Calvert was now one of Evo¡¯s senior agents in North America, trusted with extensive resources and a broad mandate, answerable only to Daichi in his role as the Director of Operations for the region.


    ¡°I was beginning to think you¡¯d be late,¡± Calvert¡¯s superior remarked.


    ¡°I¡¯m never late without good reason,¡± the serpent countered, as Daichi slid open the door to the conference room, occupied by a polished black table and high-backed chairs. ¡°Are you going to tell me what this is about?¡±


    ¡°An experiment of sorts, cooked up by Vladivostok. Some new model of operations. They¡¯ve picked us to be the test bed, and I picked you to front the project. Sofia will take over as the California lead.¡±


    ¡°Do I have a say in this?¡± Calvert asked, a little irritation rising up. He worked well with Daichi, but he still worked for him.


    ¡°Of course. You can choose not to take the assignment that¡¯d give you complete operational freedom and have your name on the cover of a report seen by the Board of Directors. If you want to keep tracking Horizon spooks in CalFree then that¡¯s entirely up to you.¡±


    Calvert hissed, but there was little anger in it. This was just another difference in their personalities; even in his fifties, Daichi still liked to present himself as the laid-back San Franciscan. Calvert, by comparison, preferred to comport himself with intimidating dignity.


    Two chairs sat at the head of the table. Daichi pulled one back against the wall, then took his place in the other. Calvert coiled himself up beside him, keeping his head level with the other man as he telepathically reached out for a pair of trodes resting on the table.


    Calvert hated all things virtual, but as the matrix was an unfortunate necessity in the metahuman world he¡¯d learned to tolerate its soulless imposition; a globe-spanning corporation couldn¡¯t be run through wires and word of mouth. With the trodes connected to his brain ¨C the device adapted for his species¡¯ brain chemistry by an Evo subsidiary, MetaErgonomics ¨C Augmented Reality was overlaid on his vision, displaying a small handful of icons visible over the table, including a countdown timer with less than five minutes to go.


    At three minutes, the door to the conference room slid open to admit a wiry man in a neatly-pressed suit, who was apparently there as an observer on behalf of Evo¡¯s North American directorate, come down to see what exactly Vladivostok wanted to accomplish in their patch. Other visitors were waiting in a virtual lobby, visible as an antiquated telephone logo hovering over their seats. Most of the meeting¡¯s participants would be casting in from identical conference rooms on the other side of the Pacific, watching the meeting through either holographic projectors or AR.


    When the clock hit zero, every icon in the conference room was replaced by the projected image of a different person, most from the varying strains of metahumanity, though there was also a pixie who¡¯d chosen to hover in place rather than take a seat, her dragonfly wings easily keeping her forty-centimetre tall body off the ground.


    The only seat that remained unoccupied was the lone chair at the opposite end of the table. Given that nobody had spoken, it seemed that the meeting wouldn¡¯t begin until it was filled.


    There was a ripple in the air, visible solely to Calvert as the only dual-natured creature physically present in the room, which meant he existed on both the material and astral plain simultaneously, rather than projecting his consciousness onto it as metahuman mages did. Calvert reared up, already pulling together astral energy as he began to form a spell, only to settle back down when he saw that the Japanese representatives were staring at the ripple like they were expecting it, even if they couldn''t possibly see it.


    The gate spilled out onto the material plane, appearing as a vertical cut of shimmering air that parted like a torn sheet, flooding the office with the blinding radiance of some ethereal plane for just a moment before the rupture closed, leaving behind a being that had taken the form of a young Japanese woman in her late teens, dressed in an elegant silk kimono.


    Everything about her appearance was an affectation, something that was made obvious even to the unawakened by the fact that she was hovering one foot off the ground. Calvert could see her true nature; a mass of astral energy that had gathered and developed sapience, growing stronger and more intricate across the centuries of its existence.


    The whole room stood, chairs rolling back as Calvert and the pixie both reared themselves higher up. Just as quickly, they sank back down as the spirit waved them back down with a friendly gesture. Calvert¡¯s heart was racing at a mile a minute, an inevitable consequence of being in the presence of corporate royalty.


    He knew who she was, of course. How could he not, when Buttercup was Evo¡¯s largest shareholder, owning twenty-nine percent of the company? When she was one of its most outspoken board members; the kingmaker whose votes had secured Yuri Shibanokuji¡¯s control over the corporation and who had chosen the corporation¡¯s current CEO in the cosmonaut Anatoly Zhukov Kirilenko?


    Suddenly, Daichi¡¯s decision not to consult him before assigning him this task ¨C whatever it was ¨C became nothing more than water under the bridge. He would never have refused this chance to ingratiate himself with the corporation¡¯s royalty; to get one step closer to obtaining true, unrestricted control.


    ¡°Thank you all for waiting,¡± Buttercup said in barely-accented English, her voice as young and full of life as her assumed appearance, as she glided into the lone seat at the opposite end of the table. Effortlessly switching into Japanese, she turned her head to address the aged man sitting directly to her right. ¡°Okumura-san, please feel free to begin.¡±


    ¡°Thank you, Buttercup-sama,¡± the man answered, the linguasoft built into the trodes he wore translating the man¡¯s Japanese into English, though Calvert didn¡¯t need the translation. Japanese was the language of international trade, which meant Calvert had learnt it alongside the Spanish and Amazonian Portuguese that were more directly useful in his operational area.


    ¡°The purpose of this meeting is to test the implementation of a new working method for emergent market acquisitions, codenamed Project Tumult.¡± Okumura Tatsuo continued. The man was familiar to Calvert, though they¡¯d never met. He was the overall director of covert operations, and he¡¯d served with the company for decades. Everyone had expected him to leave when the corporation moved to Vladivostok, but instead he had seemingly embraced the new direction of the company, serving the new regime with the same quiet competence with which he¡¯d served the old.


    ¡°It has been decided that the North American directorate shall host this test. The results will determine whether it will be adopted as standard practice worldwide. For those of you who have not yet been briefed on Project Tumult, Lyrei-san will provide a summary.¡±


    ¡°Thank you, sir,¡± the pixie spoke up in a high-pitched voice, hovering a little higher on her utterly silent wings. Calvert had to use the linguasoft to follow her French. Lyrei ¨C who had no surname attached to her AR nameplate ¨C gestured with miniature haptic gloves, bringing up a cost-expenditure chart that was simultaneously broadcast over AR and projected onto the screens that ran down the length of one wall.


    ¡°Megacorporate stability depends on expansion. Evo must grow with each passing year in order to keep pace with the competition and retain the confidence of its shareholders. When growth cannot come from within the corporation, a simple method of expansion is to buy out smaller companies, particularly those on the cusp of gaining extraterritoriality.¡±


    She drew her hands apart, the figures zooming in on one table in particular. Calvert had heard that pixies were obsessive by nature; that when they chose to interact with metahuman society it was often because they were fascinated by one specific part of it. He wondered if Lyrei¡¯s obsession was mathematics.


    ¡°Unfortunately, their value is well-known. Attempts to buy one out can often spiral into a bidding war, and the shareholders of these corporations are typically reluctant to sell and lose out on the rapid gains that come from extraterritoriality. Project Tumult was conceived as a way of artificially lowering both the price and desirability of a corporation¡¯s stocks in a way that is easily reversible after the company¡¯s purchase. The original concept was created by Ms Buttercup, who gave it to my department for further exploration.¡±


    ¡°And it¡¯s been my pet project ever since!¡± the spirit interjected, her tone alarmingly chipper. ¡°It¡¯s subtly manipulative in a way that¡¯s almost nostalgic.¡±


    The room fell silent, waiting for more. Buttercup didn¡¯t notice at first, then she seemed to jump, her skin glowing momentarily in what Calvert almost thought could be a flash of embarrassment.


    ¡°Sorry. Please continue.¡±


    ¡°Thank you, ma¡¯am,¡± Lyrei continued, a little shaken. ¡°As I said, the primary goal is to create a temporary crisis within a corporation. To this end, Project Tumult proposes assigning operatives to monitor desirable targets, providing them with a discretionary budget they can use to either exploit an existing secret within the corporation or to engineer a suitable crisis.¡±


    ¡°If the executives are vulnerable to blackmail,¡± Okumura interjected, picking up the thread from Lyrei with a grateful nod, ¡°make the information public. If they¡¯re dependent on a supply chain, engineer shortages. Both of these acts can be reversed. These are examples only, you understand. Each corporation will require a different approach, which is why our operatives must have an independent mandate. This isn¡¯t something we can trust to just anyone.¡±


    The last remark was directed at Daichi, though it made Calvert glad it took conscious effort for him to mimic human facial expressions.


    Daichi answered the intelligence chief¡¯s query with absolute confidence. ¡°Thomas Calvert is my best operative. He has conducted sixteen operations in his seven years with the corporation, taking the lead on six of them.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve read your record,¡± Buttercup said in a casual tone that nevertheless sent a spike of adrenaline through Calvert¡¯s mind. ¡°Like I said, I¡¯ve taken a personal interest in this project and I agree with Mr Daichi that you¡¯re more than capable.¡±


    ¡°You honour me, ma¡¯am,¡± Calvert said. ¡°I will prove myself worthy of it. I always do.¡±


    ¡°Your target is ¡®Medhall Pharmaceuticals,¡¯¡± Okumura said, taking care as he sounded out the English words. His pixie aide brought up a small package of data outlining stock prices, senior personnel and areas of operations before she began to summarise the opposition.


    ¡°It¡¯s a single-A rated corporation principally based in the city of Brockton Bay, New Hampshire. Forty-three percent of its shares are held by the corporation¡¯s current CEO, Max Anders. His family founded the company, with their shares passed down through primogeniture. The remaining shares are publicly traded, with approximately twenty-four percent held by close allies of Max Anders.¡±


    ¡°If I might ask,¡± Calvert interjected, ¡°why this company in particular?¡±


    To his surprise, Buttercup answered before Lyrei could. ¡°It¡¯s a hard target. Max won¡¯t sell his shares until we own a majority and kick him out of the CEO¡¯s office. If Project Tumult works on a target like that, it will work on anyone.¡±


    Something in her tone piqued Calvert¡¯s interest.


    ¡°That isn¡¯t everything, is it?¡±


    Buttercup laughed ¨C a light, airy sound ¨C and threw up her hands.


    ¡°You got me! I was in my place in Boston a few months back and I saw one of their adverts from the window. I hated it, so I did a little digging and the more I looked the more certain I was that the whole damn company should be ground into dust.¡±


    Calvert¡¯s eyes lit up, his forked tongue flicking out momentarily, tasting the air. Buttercup hated Medhall. Not the way someone might hate an enemy, even one far below their own strength. She hated that company like someone might hate an overflowing sewer drain.


    ¡°Then I assure you, ma¡¯am,¡± Calvert continued. ¡°I will serve this corporation to you on a silver platter, so that you can chisel it into whatever shape you desire.¡±


    A shiver passed down Calvert¡¯s spine as he felt the full attention of the spirit fall upon him. She was a being of pure astral essence, whose attention flickered and wavered to a myriad places and realms, but in that single moment her sole focus was on him alone. He could feel her rooting through his mind, weighing his sins and virtues like the guardian of some ancient underworld.


    ¡°Yes,¡± she said, outwardly smiling, though Calvert was sure he tasted something close to disappointment in the air. An unfulfilled hope? ¡°I believe you will.¡±


    2070


    On the eighth floor of a hospital, at the heart of a control centre staffed by skilled operatives who obeyed his orders without question and separated by an entire continent from anyone he had to answer to, the serpent finally felt free.


    This was what he had dreamed of through all those long years in captivity, watching his namesake pull strings and weave webs of influence around himself in his all-consuming quest to climb the corporate ladder to a level he deemed acceptable. That man had been nothing more than a shell, however; so enamoured with the end goal of his quest that he had poured his entire being into his pursuit of the future, leaving nothing for the present.


    Thomas Calvert hadn¡¯t stolen anything from that man; there was nothing left to steal, no person left to kill. Only the possibility that a person might emerge from that ambulatory chrysalis in some distant, nebulous future. Even then, Calvert doubted he would have ever been truly satisfied, no matter how high he climbed.


    The serpent had ambitions, too, nurtured by confinement and envy. But that same confinement had engendered in him a deep longing for action. With every act taken of his own free will, there was contentment. With every person he entangled in the strings that had once held him, there was joy. With a web cast across a whole city, tugged and twisted into a gang war that still burned on the streets below, there was euphoria.


    That he had been set an almost impossible task only magnified the satisfaction he felt at the progress he had made. While, in theory, Medhall was vulnerable thanks to Max Anders owning less than half of the corporation¡¯s stock, that theory wasn¡¯t matched by the reality Calvert had found months ago, when he first arrived in the city.


    He¡¯d chosen to establish himself in the hospital because it allowed him a view of the distant Medhall Tower, standing slightly taller than the downtown skyscrapers that surrounded it. In style, it was closer to the skyscrapers of the fifth world than the arcologies of the sixth, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows coating every floor of the building so that those within could look out on the city they claimed as their own.


    Calvert had quickly discovered that the corporation¡¯s roots lay even further back than that anachronistic design. In truth, if Medhall was a society in microcosm then its monument was a castle, not a corporate office building.


    Medhall was an atavism; a feudal clan bound together by patrilineal succession and noble patronage. Twenty-four percent of the corporation¡¯s stock was indeed held by individuals aligned with Max Anders, but it wasn¡¯t financial self-interest that kept them in the company. Over generations, the patriarchs of the Anders family had worked to create their kingdom within Brockton Bay, drawing like-minded men into their circle of influence until they fell wholly under their sway. Such men wouldn¡¯t sell their stocks simply because of a drop in value; they owed their patron too much for that, in ways that couldn¡¯t be quantified through something as modern as money.


    Calvert wondered if that was why Buttercup had seemed to carry such hatred for Medhall. They were undeniably backwards; an evolutionary throwback somehow still clinging to life in an age of magic and megacorporations. Still, that didn¡¯t seem enough to justify the strength of feeling he¡¯d observed back in Seattle.


    In spite of her immense age, Buttercup had fully embraced the modern world in all its forms, from its society to its people. In public, she was a staunch advocate for sapient rights and a driving force behind Evo¡¯s inclusive culture, but Calvert doubted that it was Medhall¡¯s politics that she hated so vehemently.


    Certainly, if he took her public persona at face value then it was the obvious choice, but Calvert recognised that persona for the front it was. It was simply impossible for someone so naively sentimental to rise as high as she had unless that sentiment was a mere affectation. Her lobbying had simply opened untapped markets for Evo, allowing the corporation to access resources and talent pools that would otherwise have been closed to it. Medhall had done the same; their strategy might be less efficient than Evo¡¯s, but it made sense for the smaller corporation to seek a smaller, more specialised market.


    In the end, he¡¯d been forced to acknowledge that either Buttercup¡¯s motivations were beyond his understanding or that her true reasons were the sort of grand pettiness only the truly wealthy were capable of; that the advert she¡¯d seen in Boston had simply been so obnoxious that she¡¯d decided the company behind it deserved destruction for daring to annoy her.


    As for her thoughts on him ¨C that strange sense of disappointment he¡¯d felt from her ¨C all he could do was hope that his success would be enough to assuage whatever doubts she had.


    ¡°Sir,¡± an aide interrupted his ruminations ¨C a man named Pitter, who Calvert had brought along as an administrator. ¡°We¡¯ve just received read-only permissions for the Anders family¡¯s telecom network.¡±


    Turning his attention to the screens around him, Calvert navigated his way through windows with gentle telekinetic pushes on a trackball. Sure enough, his staff had already integrated the feed from the Renraku network into his other surveillance software.


    My pet technomancer has been busy, he thought, with a sense of smug satisfaction, as he began to scroll through the accumulated logs of the Anders family clan. He had analysts who would pore through the data in detail, of course, but all he wanted at present was to verify a hunch.


    Vindication came in the GPS data of the devices, tracked back over the last week of use to be sure.


    ¡°Get the Ontario team on the line,¡± Calvert spoke, without looking at Pitter.


    Viewed as organisms, the megacorporations of the Sixth World had obtained a kind of immortality. You couldn¡¯t kill a company by assassinating a dozen key executives; there were always underlings waiting to step up the corporate ladder. But Medhall was an atavism, which made it singularly vulnerable in ways other corporations weren¡¯t.


    His plan had only been fully realised once he had spoken to Zachary Hunter and heard all the man had to say about the internal politics of the Anders family¡¯s unseen empire. The vampire had already been evacuated from the city; as a mole, he was useless with his policlub currently scattered to the wind, hunted by both Knight Errant and the DEA.


    Calvert had kept his word, after a fashion. Hunter¡¯s loyalty to Anders had come from a deep-seated self-hatred, tied into his vampirism. He genuinely saw himself as something less than a complete person, which was why he was so eager to believe Anders¡¯ promises that Medhall Pharmaceuticals could help cure his condition.


    The serpent had taken great pleasure in showing him the sum total of Evo¡¯s research into the Human-Metahuman Vampire Virus; endless reports outlining failed attempts to create a cure or even to blunt the symptoms, as well as summaries of ongoing efforts towards those same goals. For all his zealotry, Zachary Hunter had been smart enough to acknowledge that if one of the world¡¯s largest megacorporations couldn¡¯t cure his condition, then there was no way Medhall could.


    Then Calvert showed him that Anders wasn¡¯t even trying; that Medhall had no HMHVV research programme whatsoever, that he had been betrayed from the very start. His steadfast loyalty turned to vehement hatred in an instant. It was fascinating to watch.


    Calvert had offered him a choice. He could volunteer for Evo¡¯s own research projects, living out the rest of his days in an observed laboratory environment as the test subject for potential cures in the latter stages of development ¨C after they had been tested on less willing subjects to ensure they weren¡¯t unacceptably dangerous ¨C or he could take a lump sum of nuyen and a one-way plane ticket to the ghoul nation of Asamandio, where he could start a new life among his own kind.


    He''d chosen the lab, which had surprised Calvert. He understood that ideological convictions could drive someone to act irrationally, but he couldn¡¯t understand how anyone would willingly put themselves in the same position he¡¯d escaped from. Hunter would never leave the laboratory compound. He would be comfortable, but confined, and with each passing year his health would only worsen as the accumulated side-effects of the testing began to wear him down. To choose that over a free life among people who accepted his nature ¨C even if he hated them for what they were ¨C was absurd.


    ¡°Line one, sir,¡± Pitter spoke up, interrupting Calvert¡¯s train of thought.


    A flick of an eye brought up the call. It was audio only, with the male voice on the other end represented by pulsing sound bars.


    ¡°Mr Johnson, I was beginning to think you¡¯d forgotten us.¡±


    ¡°I keep my word,¡± Calvert answered. ¡°Three jobs for me and I give you a clean way out. I simply needed to prepare the groundwork. I¡¯m relocating you to Brockton Bay.¡±


    ¡°Never heard of it.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a city in New Hampshire. You proved you can be subtle with your last job and for that I am grateful. The next jobs won¡¯t be subtle, which plays to your strengths, and require people with a certain flexibility.¡±


    ¡°You mean you need people who won¡¯t flinch at the difficult stuff.¡±


    ¡°Quite. I have two more targets for you, then your end of the deal will be fulfilled. You¡¯ll all receive corporate citizenship, high-paying jobs with reasonably low hours and the best treatment my company can provide.¡±


    ¡°About that. Not all of us are happy working for an anonymous suit. It makes your promises sound a little hollow.¡±


    Calvert chuckled to himself.


    ¡°I don¡¯t wear a suit; they don¡¯t make one that would fit. But I understand your concerns. I work for Evo. As you know, we¡¯re world-leaders in genetics, healthcare and cybernetics, and one of the few corporations who would consider treatment as the answer to your friend¡¯s¡­ unique situation, rather than extermination.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s still hard to take you at your word.¡±


    ¡°Then let us speak face to face and I¡¯ll prove to you that my offer is more than just smoke and mirrors. I¡¯m sure the last few years have been very difficult for you and your people. I¡¯m sure it¡¯s hard to trust anyone after what you¡¯ve been through, but the end of your long nightmare is in sight, Trickster. Two more missions, two more targets, and you and your team are free.¡±

 Paragon: 7.01

    <Device ID: Max Anders (Personal)>


    <Incoming Call from: Nathan Gilbert>


    <Recording two-way audio input>


    Max Anders (Personal): ¡°Hello, Nate.¡±


    This was the fourth or fifth phone call I¡¯d eavesdropped on, and the novelty of spying on someone I¡¯d only ever seen on trideo hadn¡¯t yet faded.


    Nathan Gilbert: ¡°Max! How¡¯ve you been? It¡¯s been, what, a month?¡±


    The voice on the other line was broadly similar to Max¡¯s, with the same crisp American aristocratic accent that spoke of old money, old names and old attitudes. A quick skim of the matrix revealed that Gilbert was old old money. The kind of family that had arrived in America rich and only grown richer over time. His pedigree made the Anders dynasty look like young upstarts.


    Max Anders (Personal): ¡°The firefighter¡¯s gala. As pedestrian as ever, but I suppose it¡¯s more of a business function.¡±


    Nathan Gilbert: ¡°I swear, the only people having fun at that thing are the hose jockeys, and that¡¯s just because they don¡¯t know any better. Anyway, Max, Gabrielle and I are hosting a real party at our place next Saturday. It¡¯s a little short notice, I know, but I promise it¡¯ll be good.¡±


    Max Anders (Personal): ¡°What¡¯s the occasion?¡±


    Nathan Gilbert: ¡°Does there have to be one?¡±


    Gilbert laughed, genuinely and earnestly. He sounded a little drunk.


    Nathan Gilbert: ¡°It¡¯s Heather¡¯s coming-out party after she debuted last month, and Gabrielle and I are celebrating our five year anniversary at the same time.¡±


    A more targeted search revealed that this was, in fact, the third time the chemical magnate had celebrated a five year anniversary.


    Max Anders (Personal): ¡°Has it really been so long? I could have sworn Heather was still only as tall as my waist.¡±


    Nathan Gilbert: ¡°And I remember when you were just a spotty preteen hovering over your father¡¯s shoulder. Take it from someone who knows, Max; time is only going to go faster from here.¡±


    Max Anders (Personal): ¡°Ominous words from someone who¡¯s supposed to be celebrating.¡±


    Gilbert laughed down the line ¨C the sort of sound that could only really be described as ¡®haughty.¡¯


    Nathan Gilbert: ¡°Too true, my friend. Too true. Which is why I intend to gather all my friends and children in one place and celebrate the future of my family. Speaking of family, I know Gabrielle will be looking forward to seeing Kayden again. And you should bring Theo, give the lad a break from his studies. Heather could certainly do with more friends close to her own age, and I¡¯m sure she¡¯d like to pick his brains about university.¡±


    Abruptly, the thought flashed into my head that I might be eavesdropping in on some oblique dynastic horse trading. Gilbert had called Heather the future of his family, but she was his fourth child. She could make a difference in his business if she was smart, I guessed, but she¡¯d also secure their future by marrying into an emerging megacorp. Gilbert was old money; unfathomably rich by my standards, but that wealth wasn¡¯t growing. Theo Anders, on the other hand, would inherit an empire.


    Or maybe this really was just small talk, Gilbert really did think his daughter was a shut-in who desperately needed to start talking to people even if the only one available was two years older than her and I was just lost in my own paranoia with mom¡¯s old rhetoric reverberating throughout my skull. I¡¯d plugged my brain directly into the private comm lines of the ultra-wealthy only to realise that I had no idea how those people thought.


    Max Anders (Personal): ¡°We¡¯ll be there, Nate. I might even have the opportunity to return the favour soon enough.¡±


    Nathan Gilbert: ¡°Oh?¡±


    Max Anders (Personal): ¡°I¡¯ll be making the formal announcement tomorrow, but the Corporate Court has agreed to launch an audit to determine whether we qualify for a double-A rating. Within a matter of weeks, we¡¯ll have true extraterritoriality.¡±


    I pulled up the audio file, clipping the last few seconds and flagging them for attention. I had no idea how many analysts Calvert had poring over this data, but that was big. All of a sudden, we were on a deadline.


    Nathan Gilbert: ¡°That¡¯s brilliant news, Max! It¡¯s taken them long enough, but I guess even some stacked Swiss court can be worn down by enough time and effort.¡±


    Max Anders (Personal): ¡°Shiawase had a minor shortage in certain medicines. An agent of theirs reached out to Medhall with a fair price for them, but I offered to waive the cost altogether if their Justice¡¯s office expedited my petition.¡±


    Nathan Gilbert: ¡°I see you¡¯re still as cunning as ever. You really are living up to your father¡¯s legacy.¡±


    Max Anders (Personal): ¡°Sometimes you have to take a hit to come back stronger. I have to go, Nate, but I¡¯ll see you soon.¡±


    <End Call>


    <End Recording>


    There was something in the CEO¡¯s tone, if it wasn¡¯t just the product of my imagination. We¡¯d hit him where it hurts, set the DEA on his whole political arm and driven them into hiding. To make it worse, Medhall had been forced to cooperate fully in the investigation; to act like the aggrieved party duped into handing out drugs to a rogue policlub who promised them it would be going to homeless orphaned puppies instead of cyberpsychotic lunatics.


    I was back in my room at the loft, sunk deep into a recently-purchased armchair as I drifted in and out of the matrix. The calls had been of limited utility; his work comm was on a different network entirely, tied directly into the central database of Medhall Pharmaceuticals, which left me with the calls he chose to make on his own time. He was apparently something of a workaholic; he hardly called anyone, and his comm went unused throughout most of the day. But that was what Calvert had asked for, so that¡¯s what I¡¯d given him.


    Returned from Boston, I¡¯d had the chance to examine my prize in full, taking in the strengths and limitations of the Myo network. It only contained the Anders family¡¯s personal devices, but that meant well over two dozen different commlinks, tablets, terminals and all the associated accessories. Not all of them were clearly labelled ¨C there were a few that I hadn¡¯t yet been able to ascribe identity to ¨C but I had enough to get a picture of the family¡¯s structure.


    It was surprisingly small; most of the devices were linked to only three people; Max Anders, his wife Kayden, and their twenty-year old son, Theo. Of the couple, Kayden¡¯s parents were both still alive, but weren¡¯t on the network, while Max Anders¡¯ mother had died around five years prior. Max had a sister, Diane Anders, but she¡¯d spent the last six years in a rehab clinic up north, so she didn¡¯t have a phone. She¡¯d died just recently; her overdose had been on the news when I was hospitalised.


    <Device ID: Kayden A>


    <Incoming call from Max>


    <Recording two-way audio input>


    Kayden A: ¡°Max. It¡¯s been a little while.¡±


    Max: ¡°Kayden. You¡¯re fine, I take it?¡±


    Kayden A: ¡°I¡¯m fine.¡±


    Max: ¡°And our daughter?¡±


    Kayden A: ¡°Aster¡¯s fine. She¡¯s adjusting well to kindergarten. The first parent-teacher night is coming up soon.¡±


    Max: ¡°I know. It¡¯s in my calendar. I¡¯ll have a driver pick you up, then we¡¯ll travel from the office to the school.¡±


    Kayden A: ¡°Sure. Is that why you called?¡±


    Max: ¡°No. We¡¯ve been invited to a party. Short notice; next Saturday.¡±


    Kayden A: ¡°Who by?¡±


    Max: ¡°Nathan Gilbert. Celebrating his daughter¡¯s debut, mostly. He wants us to bring Theo as well.¡±


    Kayden let out a faint sigh before she continued ¨C short and quiet enough that I didn¡¯t think it was deliberate.


    Kayden A: ¡°Nathan¡¯s a dinosaur, and his wife is just catty.¡±


    Max: ¡°He¡¯s an influential dinosaur. His political connections run deep, which means that it¡¯s important we keep him friendly. As for Gabrielle, it would hardly be the first time you¡¯ve had to put on a smile and pretend to like someone for the greater good.¡±


    Kayden¡¯s next words were murmured, and sounded a little reluctant.


    Kayden A: ¡°Whose good is that?¡±


    Max: ¡°You know whose, Kayden. It¡¯s about Aster, about Theo. Sometimes securing the future for our children means putting ourselves in uncomfortable positions. Besides, you can hardly argue there aren¡¯t any benefits. I hear your business is going well?¡±


    Kayden A: ¡°I found another client this week. A Maersk executive who just relocated to the city and wanted to furnish her new waterfront apartment.¡±


    Kayden sounded defensive and, from what I could tell, she had good reason to be. On paper, she ran her own interior decorating business, but a look at its portfolio had demonstrated that there was no way it could be profitable. I didn¡¯t know if it was a hobby, a social project or an attempt to carve out whatever independence she could find, but the business was as dependent on Medhall money as she was.


    Max: ¡°I¡¯m glad to hear it. You¡¯ve always had a good eye, whether it¡¯s for furniture, fashion, men.¡±


    Kayden A: ¡°Don¡¯t.¡±


    Max: ¡°You should wear white. It makes you look¡­ purer. More earnest.¡±


    Kayden A: ¡°Appearances matter, right? Especially among our ¡®friends.¡¯¡±


    I didn¡¯t need to see her to note the intonation she added to the word.


    Max: ¡°This is the life you chose, Kayden. I may not be the high school baseball player you found so infatuating anymore, but we¡¯re still the same in so many ways. However much we¡¯ve changed since then, whether or not you¡¯re willing to admit it, we both share a similar perspective on what¡¯s right, what¡¯s wrong, and what has to be done.¡±


    Kayden was silent for a few moments, then let out a long sigh.


    Kayden A: ¡°Okay. Have your people send me the details, I¡¯ll make sure the nanny knows to look after Aster that night.¡±


    <End Call>


    <End Recording>


    It almost felt voyeuristic, but I¡¯d figured out they were separated almost as soon as I looked at the network. All of his devices were registered at one address, all of hers at another. Their GPS logs just confirmed it. What was truly impressive was that the city as a whole had no idea. They still attended public events, still put on the fa?ade of a happy couple. Once again I¡¯d found myself in possession of data that people ¨C mostly gutter journalists, admittedly ¨C would pay a sizeable sum for, yet I was completely unable to act on it.


    Kayden herself was Anders¡¯ second wife, for all that I just learned she was crushing on him when he was a high school sportsman. It must have been a very one-sided crush; there was a five year gap between them, with Max having passed forty this year and Kayden being almost thirty-five. She wasn¡¯t Theo¡¯s mother; Heith Anders, Max¡¯s first wife, had died around eighteen years ago. He¡¯d been married to Kayden ¨C much of it only on paper, apparently ¨C for eight years.


    We had so much dirt on Medhall at that point that I couldn¡¯t help but wonder when our client planned to make his move. We didn¡¯t have the smoking gun, didn¡¯t have something irrefutably linking Medhall to the Chosen, but Alabaster¡¯s testimony ¨C though he¡¯d never see a courtroom because vampires weren¡¯t legally people ¨C would probably be enough to create an indirect link even if they denied all knowledge. The Chosen had launched enough heinous attacks that we definitely had enough to cause a stock crisis, maybe even force Max Anders out of the CEO chair.


    Ultimately, however, that decision was out of my hands. For whatever reason, the serpent wanted to toy with his food some more and he¡¯d decided that ¨C for the time being ¨C he didn¡¯t need us to help out. Which left me with nothing to do but monitor the private lives of three very private people.


    I turned my attention back to the third cluster of devices and the long-running five-way telecom call being supported by one of them on a commercial matrix host.


    <Grid: Eternal Horizon>


    <Host ID: RollSpaceNET>


    <User ID: Tantalus [GM], Guest User [5]>


    <Active Program: M&M7E>


    GM: ¡°Okay, Kat, I¡¯m going to need you to make an Acrobatics saving throw.¡±


    Theo Anders was about my age, and a lot more soft-spoken than his father. He had his vidcam on, revealing the same blue eyes and blonde hair as Max, but on a softer face. He wasn¡¯t overweight or anything, but it was clear that, unlike his father, he hadn¡¯t played baseball in high school. It almost made him look na?ve.


    Grace: ¡°Twenty two.¡±


    This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    GM: ¡°Nicely done. As you plummet back down the elevator shaft, you manage to reach back and grab the cable of the slowly ascending elevator. The sudden stop is almost enough to rip the cable right out of your hands again, but you manage to hold your grip.¡±


    Grace: ¡°Okay, I¡¯m going to shout back up the elevator to the others ¡®I¡¯m fine! Drive those cocksuckers back!¡¯¡±


    Tecton: ¡°Tecton just sighs.¡±


    Grace let out a short, sharp laugh. Theo¡¯s players were a surprisingly varied bunch for the son of a human supremacist. ¡®Tecton¡¯ was played by a dark-skinned gnome in what looked like a college dorm room, with engineering textbooks visible on a shelf behind him, while Kat was a little more predictable; a blonde human with a wild-eyed look in her eyes that showed just how much she was enjoying the game. From the look of things, she was in a flat-share; I could see another woman sprawled out on a couch on the other side of the room, her focus on her headphones even as she shot Kat the occasional bemused look.


    GM: ¡°Okay, Jacob, you¡¯re next in the initiative roll.¡±


    Raymancer: ¡°Well, since I know Grace is still healthy enough to frustrate PR, I¡¯m going to step up and fire a disintegrate spell at the last robot before he can close on Annex. Twenty nine to hit.¡±


    GM: ¡°You hit. Roll damage.¡±


    ¡®RollSpace¡¯ is a surprisingly simple host. There were other providers on the market who offered full simsense immersion, allowing the person running the show to put their players right in the heart of the action. It was what I¡¯d have expected from someone of Theo¡¯s wealth, but a glance at the devices the others were using to connect revealed a vast gulf between them and him. I had no idea how they¡¯d met; it must have been on the host¡¯s forums or some other, similar online space.


    Raymancer: ¡°Seventy-nine points.¡±


    Wanton: ¡°What the fuck even is your build?¡±


    GM: ¡°It¡¯s dead, obviously. Would you like to do the honours?¡±


    I was pretty sure Raymancer was a Fomori; a subvariant of trolls who were typically a little shorter, with smaller horns and no dermal growths. On top of the obvious social advantages that gave them, they were also much more likely to be magically awakened. He was in some kind of commune; a large, open plan space covered in all sorts of handmade artwork, with a few other trolls visible in the background.


    Raymancer: ¡°Raymancer takes a half step forward, raising his right arm as he mutters an incantation, pointing his palm directly at the robot. A moment later, there¡¯s a crack of thunder as a beam of ethereal green energy shoots out from his palm, the force of it causing his costume to blow back behind him.¡±


    Grace: ¡°Classic drama major.¡±


    Raymancer: ¡°The moment the beam connects with the robot, it starts to disintegrate into a glowing green ash that rises up into the air before disappearing completely as the last atoms of the machine are reduced to nothingness.¡±


    GM: ¡°With the last machine dead, the ballroom feels strangely silent. Grace, you manage to climb back up the elevator shaft just as the double-doors of the balcony at the end of the room swing open. A crackling shield suddenly activates, protecting the power armoured supervillain who emerges, looking down at you like he¡¯s just discovered a roach in his kitchen.¡±


    The other three members of the party used the handles ¡®Wanton,¡¯ ¡®Annex¡¯ and ¡®Cuff.¡¯ The latter was another blonde human, streaming in from her bedroom, while Wanton was a tanned elf with a mullet and a CalFree flag on the wall of his room, and Annex was an African-American human broadcasting from what looked like a private booth in a matrix caf¨¦. I could have dug a little deeper into the connection to unearth their real names, but there didn¡¯t seem to be much point; none of them seemed to be in the city.


    GM: ¡°¡®So the Wardens have finally come for me. I was wondering how long it would take you to reach this place. You should be proud; you have exceeded my expectations.¡¯¡±


    Theo had put on as deep and booming a voice as he could manage, clicking an option in the host that further enhanced his words with an artificial reverb.


    Wanton: ¡°¡®Maybe we¡¯d have taken longer if you had anything worth fighting! Can you do anything other than robots, or are you a one trick pony?¡¯¡±


    GM: ¡°The supervillain just laughs down at you. ¡®My machines are the perfect soldiers. They can¡¯t question, can¡¯t disobey. They can¡¯t be bargained with, they can¡¯t be reasoned with. They don¡¯t feel pity, remorse or fear and they absolutely will not stop, ever, until this city is mine!¡¯¡±


    Cuff: ¡°I knew you¡¯d like that movie.¡±


    Cuff had a warm smile on her face, but she quickly quietened down. It seemed she wasn¡¯t that comfortable speaking in front of a crowd.


    Tecton: ¡°¡®You know we can¡¯t let that happen. Even if you do defeat us, this city will never accept mechanical rule. The people will fight you.¡¯¡±


    GM: ¡°He laughs again, a little louder this time. ¡®The people don¡¯t know what they want! They¡¯re sheep; they must be herded lest they wander off and die alone! Only I have the will to rule this city! Only I have the vision to guide it to prosperity! I had hoped you would see the righteousness of my cause, but no matter! I will not let you stand in my way!¡¯¡±


    Theo loaded up another encounter in the programme; the same map as before, but the doors at the end of the palatial hall were open, with four robots standing between them and the party.


    GM: ¡°The immense doors to the supervillain¡¯s inner sanctum swing open, as four more giant robots stride into the room, each one armed with an assault cannon on their left arm and immense fists on their right that crackle with electrical energies. The supervillain himself deactivates the shield on his balcony, then leaps down to the floor below. He takes up a position behind his robots, seemingly content to let them take the lead for now.¡±


    Theo smiled, well and truly lost in the moment.


    GM: ¡°¡®Tremble before the might of Tyrant!¡¯¡±


    The smile faltered a little as Theo was distracted by something else on his comm.


    GM: ¡°And with that, I think it¡¯s time for a ten minute pause.¡±


    Grace: ¡°You dick!¡±


    GM: ¡°Just building tension, Kat. Besides, I need another coffee if I¡¯m going to run this fight.¡±


    His tone was light, but I could see the tension undercutting his expression. The cause was obvious; he had an incoming call from his dad, no doubt about to invite him to the now infamous party. I wasn¡¯t particularly interested in hearing the same information repeated a third time, so I stayed with Theo¡¯s friend group as he left the room.


    Wanton: ¡°So, we¡¯re all aware that we¡¯re fighting Theo¡¯s dad again, right?¡±


    Tecton: ¡°You don¡¯t know that, Lewis. Don¡¯t make assumptions.¡±


    Annex: ¡°Do you think he even knows, or is it like a subconscious thing?¡±


    Raymancer: ¡°Tyrant seems like a pretty common character archetype for me. Comics are full of evil masterminds.¡±


    Grace: ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s not Theo¡¯s fault his dad¡¯s, like, a legit supervillain.¡±


    Cuff: ¡°Just leave off him, okay? It¡¯s rude to talk about him when he¡¯s not here.¡±


    Wanton: ¡°I didn¡¯t mean nothing by it, Ava. Your long-distance boyfriend¡¯s still a better DM than any of us. Except for Jacob, I guess, but at least Theo hasn¡¯t saddled us with any immortal ninjas.¡±


    Raymancer: ¡°I thought you all thought he was cool?¡±


    Something about this whole situation felt very familiar to me. It wasn¡¯t what was happening right now, but what Theo and Ava had said to each other. It was Theo¡¯s username, too; I¡¯d run into a ¡®Tantalus¡¯ before, in the Observatory deep within the resonance realms, who¡¯d sent out a number of messages to someone in Hawai¡¯i. Ava, most likely.


    I hadn¡¯t taken the data with me back across the event horizon; it just hadn¡¯t seemed relevant at the time. From what I remembered, it seemed that Theo didn¡¯t share the same beliefs as his father and step-mother, and was conflicted about being groomed to take over a corporation that he knew was racist and suspected was involved in a lot worse.


    I wasn¡¯t sure what to make of that information. The fact that a member of the Anders family wasn¡¯t racist didn¡¯t exactly make for useful blackmail, especially because that was something his father had to have noticed. Still, it was another strand of the web of conspiracies and data we were weaving around the company, which made it potentially useful even if we didn¡¯t understand the how or why.


    Mostly, though, I just felt a little sorry for him. Not too much, though; I was sure the gadgets, lifestyle and free ride to University helped to soothe the pain of awkward dinner conversations.


    ¡°Hey,¡± a soft, cautious voice drew my attention back to the real world, where Lisa had slowly pushed open the door to my room. ¡°It¡¯s time.¡±


    I swallowed, my throat drying up, then closed the connection to the Myo network.


    The others were waiting in the lounge, where the air was so thick I could have cut it with a knife. The others were quiet, even Alec, while Aisha was pacing up and down the length of the sofa with a fiercely nervous expression on her face. She¡¯d dressed down ¨C at least, by her standards ¨C in black joggers and a red crop top.


    I¡¯d dressed a little more sombrely as well, whether consciously or not, in a pair of dark blue jeans and the black t-shirt with the yellow scarab logo that Lisa had coaxed me into buying at the market. It just felt right.


    ¡°All good?¡± Lisa asked, looking around the room. She was wearing a pleated black skirt and a lilac top underneath her trenchcoat, and had selflessly taken on the task of making sure we left on time.


    ¡°All good,¡± I answered her, as Aisha stopped pacing and gave me a look. ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡±


    Rachel, wearing much the same practical work clothes she always did, was waiting downstairs, elbows deep in the chassis of her mostly-repaired Steel Lynx drone. A trio of shiny new Doberman gun-platforms were parked in the corner of her workshop, unpainted and with the assault rifles they were supposed to carry still stored in their case. She stopped her work once she caught sight of us, wiping her arms clean on a rag before wordlessly clambering up into the front of her van.


    I was expecting Lisa to join her into the front, but instead she got into the back with the rest of us, sitting next to me as Aisha and Alec claimed two seats on the other side of the row, Aisha immediately hunching forward and tapping a foot against the floor as she wrung her hands.


    I just stared straight ahead, sitting stock still with my mind gazing through the metal hull of the van to the digital cityscape beyond, tracking our progress through GridLink as Rachel took us out and into the city streets.


    It was quieter than I was expecting. The gang war was still out there, but the pitched battles had given way to guerrilla warfare as both the Yakuza and the Chosen settled in for the long haul. All the while Knight Errant were pushing hard, launching large-scale raids on soft targets and advancing the security checkpoints one block at a time. The tension in the air was still so thick you could have cut it with a knife, but things were a little closer to business as usual. If Calvert didn¡¯t do anything to kick the hornet¡¯s nest, things might even start to calm down before too long.


    Still, there was a small, miserable part of me that almost wanted something to get in the way. I had no idea what to expect, no idea what to do, no idea what was expected of me. But it was only a small part; the rest of me knew how important this was.


    Bitch pulled up in the drop-off zone, then set the van¡¯s pilot program to circle the block once we¡¯d all dismounted. The Crash Cart hospital wasn¡¯t tall by modern standards, but I still felt the full weight of the twelve stories of concrete, steel and reinforced glass looming over me, with uniformed security guards patrolling the perimeter walls that delineated its extraterritorial space.


    I felt a palm against my lower back.


    ¡°You okay?¡± she asked, looking up at me.


    ¡°Yeah.¡± I shrugged her off, willing my legs into motion as the hospital grew larger and larger. A makeshift checkpoint had been set up by the entrance for visitors, with a metal detector and someone checking SINs against the global registry. When we ignored it, walking down the route dedicated to medical personnel and clients with active policies, a pair of security guards moved to intercept us. I flashed an authorisation code at their tactical network ¨C a borrowed client ID that Calvert had given us if we ever needed to access the hospital ¨C and the guards discreetly returned to their posts like they¡¯d never been suspicious.


    An ambulance had just pulled up to the triage entrance, a pair of armoured paramedics carrying a woman on a stretcher, her head strapped in a neck brace. A mother and her son were walking out the front doors to the hospital, the kid rubbing nervously at the polymer cast on his arm. In the corner, a security guard had found a rough sleeper who¡¯d managed to sneak past the fence. The elderly ork was almost bent double; the security guard had him in an arm-lock and was marching him back towards the perimeter.


    Once we¡¯d crossed the threshold into the air-conditioned lobby, with its gift shop, caf¨¦ and wide corridors leading off to the different departments of the hospital, I led the way up through the warren of wide, well-lit corridors that nevertheless managed to feel like a tight, claustrophobic maze if you didn¡¯t have the building plans downloaded to your brain.


    Our destination was a short-term recovery ward on the eighth floor of the building, designated according to the building plans for post-surgery patients. Lisa spoke to the young dwarf manning the reception desk while I paced nervously up and down the length of the waiting room. Idly, I flicked a glance over to the others. Rachel was watching me intently, but without any obvious concern, while Aisha was staring down at the floor and Alec had his hand on her back and a downright uncertain expression on his face.


    After about a minute of chatter, the receptionist picked up a work-issue commlink and sent off a message in the matrix to a nurse on the ward, who then made her way to one of a small number of private rooms set aside for premium clients. I stopped looking at the matrix, then. I simply waited, my focus solely and painfully present in meatspace, until Brian stepped into the room.


    He looks the same. That was the first thought that ran through my head, only for that initial impression to be dashed against the rocks once my brain had made complete sense of the picture. With modern medicine, especially the kind of treatment he¡¯d had, the lingering scars of almost any sort of physical trauma could be stitched away and repaired. Even the bare cybernetics of my arm were a deliberate affectation; I could have gone for a synskin coating that was identical to the real flesh I¡¯d lost.


    Brian was wearing clothes that I¡¯d taken from his apartment and brought to the hospital when he was unconscious ¨C a deep blue t-shirt, a pair of black sweatpants and some red and white sneakers. They were clean, bland and far from his usual hard-edged, hard-wearing fashion. He didn¡¯t stand or move like someone who¡¯d had three bullets pass through his chest, and his features were all pristine, with flash-burns healed, cuts closed, cybernetic components replaced and fresh synskin painstakingly applied to hide them from sight.


    In spite of all that, I knew then and there that he had changed. It was in his eyes, in his stance, in his saddened expression as his eyes landed on me before he noticed Aisha, and his features shifted into something close to despair.


    ¡°Aisha¡­¡± he began, as his sister abruptly stood bolt upright and stormed across the room towards him. I thought she was going to hit him, but instead she threw her arms wide and pulled him into a constricting, desperate embrace.


    ¡°What are you doing here?¡± Brian asked, his tone completely lost. Abruptly, Aisha let go, sliding out of her brother¡¯s grip as a flash of anger flared up in her face. As quickly as it came, however, it was smothered beneath a conscious effort on Aisha¡¯s part. Instead, she answered his question in a wavering tone that she was trying to keep level.


    ¡°I ran into some trouble and needed a place to crash. Don¡¯t want to freeload, so now I¡¯m a Shadowrunner.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s dangerous,¡± Brian said, slowly.


    Aisha opened her mouth to say something then paused, pursing her lips for a moment of silent thought before finally speaking.


    ¡°Yeah. But I was in danger before. Least now I¡¯ve got backup.¡±


    Brian¡¯s jaw was clenched tight, but he nodded. His eyes darted from person to person, passing over Rachel, Alec and Lisa before landing on me, where they lingered. First on my face, as he tried to read whatever my face was showing, then a little further down and to the right. His eyes stayed there for an uncomfortably long time before he finally spoke.


    ¡°Your arm¡­¡±


    ¡°Oh,¡± I exclaimed, a little surprised. I brought my arm up to my face, watching the joints in my hand move as I furled and unfurled my fingers. ¡°I¡¯m used to it. Forgot it was there, honestly.¡±


    ¡°Good.¡± The word came out uncertainly, but that was understandable; I had no idea what you were supposed to say to something like that.


    ¡°Are you hurt?¡± I asked, stupidly.


    He shook his head.


    ¡°The docs here do good work.¡± He was clearly shaken, but I picked up on the unspoken question. Lisa did too.


    ¡°Our client,¡± she stressed the word, ¡°is with Evo. So we didn¡¯t get paid for the last job, but we didn¡¯t have to worry about medical expenses either. Now we¡¯re on retainer.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ve already pulled one job for him,¡± I said, regretting it the very next moment when his attention flashed back to Aisha with a visible wince. ¡°It went fine. Got away clean.¡±


    I decided not to mention just how close everything had been to going wrong.


    ¡°So, what next?¡± Brian asked.


    ¡°Professionally? No idea,¡± I answered. ¡°Client¡¯s in a holding pattern. We¡¯re waiting for him to decide on what to do next, or for some pieces to fall into place in a plan I haven¡¯t been able to figure out yet.¡±


    ¡°As for here and now,¡± Lisa interjected, ¡°I figure we head back to the loft? Take it easy for a day; drag as many seats into the front room as will fit and just chill out.¡±


    I frowned, ever so slightly, before schooling my expression back into place. I didn¡¯t want to sit around doing nothing when I could be monitoring the Anders wiretap, getting ready for the next mission or searching for more answers from the resonance. But I wasn¡¯t blind, either; Brian seemed about as enthusiastic about the idea as I was, but that didn¡¯t mean Lisa wasn¡¯t right.


    ¡°Like old times, huh?¡± Aisha asked, flashing her brother a grin. ¡°The real old times, I mean. Jumping out at you from behind the couch, shouting Sentai Samurai catchphrases and hitting you on the head with a foam sword.¡±


    He didn¡¯t smile, but Brian seemed to imperceptibly relax at that memory.


    ¡°It¡¯s settled then,¡± Lisa said, smiling. ¡°We¡¯ll grab some takeout on the way back home.¡±


    Things weren¡¯t good, that much was obvious, but there was still something nice about seeing Brian walking beside me as we made our way back through the hospital. He¡¯d always seemed so solid before and, while he¡¯d obviously been shaken up by his injuries, it was almost comforting to know that he was here. That we were all here.


    ¡°It took long enough,¡± Lisa said, in a tone so quiet that only I could hear it, ¡°but the gang¡¯s all together now.¡±

 Paragon: 7.02

    It was hard to understand just how much money I¡¯d made over the last few months. I hadn¡¯t really spent much of it on anything important, just some furniture for my room in the loft and some business expenses ¨C my gun, ammunition, that sort of thing. In terms of how I lived my life, things hadn¡¯t changed a huge amount, while simultaneously changing in every way that mattered.


    For one, I was spending more and more time in the loft, eating lunch and dinner there most days even if I then trudged back to my apartment when things became just a little too loud for me. About half the time, though, I stayed, woke up late in the morning ¨C but still earlier than I had in years ¨C and ate whatever breakfast someone had bought from the food trucks that catered to the blue collars who worked in the low-scale warehouses surrounding our building.


    We spent more on takeout than I did even at my worst, but the lifestyle was broadly similar once you discounted the massive gulf between living like that alone and living like that with friends. I¡¯d never felt like I was wealthy before, until I followed Lisa into the grocery store in midtown.


    It was a fact of life that there were some stores that you just never walked into. It was a habit everyone learned from their parents, back when they were just barely old enough to toddle around behind them, pointing at random items on the shelves and loudly making a nuisance of themselves. There were the shops you used and the shops you didn¡¯t, and the distinction between the two was ironclad.


    My parents certainly never shopped at a Harris Teeter Metro, which meant it sat firmly on the other side of the gulf in my mind. Lisa, on the other hand, walked past the pair of security guards at the door of the franchised corner shop like she wasn¡¯t crossing some ironclad societal border. Then again, her willing fall from grace seemed to have given Lisa the unique ability to ignore all those artificial boundaries, like she¡¯d removed herself from the flow of society.


    Besides, I thought, as rich as her family was, maybe her parents had people to shop for them?


    Wealth had been on my mind since I wiretapped the Anders family. I still kept up a constant watch on their feed, an AR window always floating in the corner of my vision tracking who was watching, browsing and buying what. I knew the name of the nanny Kayden hired to watch her daughter when she was out, knew that Max was in the process of closing on a piece of American pastoralist artwork, knew more than I wanted to know about Theo¡¯s porn habits. Growing up, it had been impossible not to be aware in an academic sense of the divide between rich and poor, but the stratified nature of that divide meant it had never been as visible before.


    Lisa might be able to pass across the barrier like she¡¯d been invited in, but I didn¡¯t have any of the same natural indifference that made the guards overlook her. Or maybe they just paid particular attention to me because of the horns and the few extra feet in height. One of the guards was an ork, but if corporate said to pay closer attention to some metatypes than others then I was sure she¡¯d oblige. That was just the way the world worked; a class could only function thanks to the work of the class below, who in turn could never afford the lifestyle their work supported.


    ¡°Come on, slowpoke,¡± Lisa drawled from inside the store just as one of the guards took a half-step towards me, ¡°dinner isn¡¯t going to cook itself, right?¡±


    ¡°Sure, Lisa,¡± I said, gratefully, as the guard pretended she¡¯d never been suspicious to begin with.


    I hurried through the automatic doors as naturally as I could manage, shivering a little at the sudden blast of filtered and climate-controlled air. It was hard to quantify what made it more upmarket than, say, a Walmart or an Aldi, but something about the aisles of food and mostly white surfaces distinguished it as an establishment that catered to the increasingly small caste that is the upper-middle class.


    Maybe it was how clean everything was; I couldn¡¯t see any spills or even any bare shelves. It was clear that time and effort had also gone into arranging the produce and the handful of staff were all wearing the same uniform to the exact same standard, no differences on whether the shirt was tucked in or not and no branded bibs thrown over whatever clothes they owned.


    Perhaps the distinction came from pride? Not the pride of the staff, of course, but the pride of the corporation that enforced the standards the staff had to follow. They wanted their customers to feel like they were participating in something special when they shopped here.


    ¡°You¡¯re really going through it, huh?¡± Lisa remarked, accompanying her point with a good natured elbow to my side. ¡°Like a damn tourist. Shopping first, culture shock later, okay?¡±


    ¡°Sorry,¡± I remarked, shrugging my shoulders and turning my attention away from a shelf full of pasta stored loose in miniature silos in defiance of all reason. ¡°Meat first?¡±


    Lisa nodded, making for an aisle that was made entirely out of fridges. Only about a third of that space was given over to meat, but it was still more than I¡¯d ever expected to see in one place. In the sorts of stores I was used to, meat was shut away behind the counter, or stored in individual slots in a device that was part fridge, part vending machine, ensuring people could only take the meat they¡¯d already paid for.


    Here, however, beef, pork, chicken and a few varieties of fish all sat happily next to each other on the shelves like they were something normal you might pick up in a weekly shop, rather than a rare treat reserved for birthdays, announcing bad news or other special occasions.


    Lisa hummed contemplatively, her fingers raised to her chin as she assessed what was on offer. ¡°It¡¯s okay, I guess, for battery farmed stuff. The beef¡¯s a bit fatty, and I¡¯m not sure about some of the fish.¡±


    She was putting it on, so I rapped my knuckles lightly against the side of her head.


    ¡°Careful, you¡¯re packing metal knuckles now,¡± she cautioned, looking up at me with a wry grin. ¡°Could hurt someone with those grippers.¡±


    ¡°Chicken, right?¡± I asked, grabbing a plastic container of light-pink breasts and dropping them into Lisa¡¯s basket. ¡°Anything else we need?¡±


    ¡°Some paste,¡± Lisa said, moving off to another aisle as I followed in her wake. ¡°Maybe some fresh chillies and herbs if they have them. Dried isn¡¯t the same.¡±


    There was something comfortably domestic about the trip, as I followed Lisa¡¯s meandering journey through the store, repeatedly doubling back on herself to hunt for something she¡¯d just remembered she wanted while I kept the recipe up in a matrix window, trying to keep her on track.


    It was like I was being given a taste of what my life could have been like, if it had proceeded more conventionally. If my parents hadn¡¯t died, if I¡¯d been able to really apply myself in high school and graduate with decent grades, maybe even if I¡¯d never had my eyes opened to the world beyond the matrix.


    As Lisa paid for the food, idly making small-talk with a cashier about our age who was paid enough to force a smile onto her face, I found myself wondering what sort of person that life would have made me. Would I have followed dad into the docks, riding his coattails into some admin role, or would I have managed to get the grades to make college a worthwhile investment, like I knew mom probably would have wanted? Even then, what would I have studied? What work would it have led me to?


    By the time we¡¯d left the store and caught the metro back up north, I¡¯d realised that no matter how hard I tried to think about what could have been, I couldn¡¯t picture myself being anywhere other than where I was in that moment. It didn¡¯t matter how many mistakes I¡¯d made along the way, how much time I¡¯d wasted, I knew that I belonged here, with a friend by my side and a whole world of data waiting for me to open my eyes and see it.


    ¡°We¡¯re doing okay, right?¡± I asked, looking down at Lisa. ¡°Really okay? No PR spin for the sake of keeping us on track.¡±


    Lisa smirked at the acknowledgement. She did a lot of work to make sure everyone was working together smoothly, even if it had taken me a while to notice she was doing it.


    ¡°We¡¯re riding the lighting,¡± she said, after a moment¡¯s pause. ¡°All Shadowrunners are, at all times. So long as we can keep our balance, we¡¯ll be fine, but not many teams manage to last for long enough to retire rich. For every Faultline, there are dozens of dead mercs just as good as us. We¡¯ve wobbled a little on every job, but so far we¡¯ve managed to hold on.¡±


    ¡°But how do we last?¡± I asked. ¡°What¡¯s the trick?¡±


    Lisa shook her head. ¡°There¡¯s no trick, just skill and focus. Keep your eye on the team, the job and the client at all times, and treat everything else like it doesn¡¯t even exist.¡±


    I nodded in agreement. It was the answer I¡¯d been expecting, and it matched my own observations. I couldn¡¯t let myself be distracted by what could have been when we were surrounded by so many dangers in the here and now.


    As we returned to our hideout, I heard the sound of gunfire long before I reached the stairs up to the loft. It wasn¡¯t real gunfire, of course. I had yet to find any non-simsense piece of media that had managed to replicate just how deafening real gunshots were, even if it was still a little strange to think of myself as the kind of person who could tell the difference.


    It was simplicity itself to reach out for the datastream emanating from Alec¡¯s Shiawase Sim-Station, expertly teasing out the details from the tightly-packed beam of pure data. The gunfire was coming from a ranked multiplayer match in Awakening: 1949, a game that Alec had bought at some point over the last few weeks. He was playing with a partner, splitscreen, using controllers rather than the simsense trodes. The game hadn¡¯t had a splitscreen feature until he¡¯d paid me fifty nuyen to add one in.


    Briefly, I pulled up the feed, watching as Alec sent a digital stunbolt into the back of a troll in a washed-out blue uniform, while in the background the Eifel Tower crackled with energy from whatever made-up magical ritual had made it a monolith. His partner wasn¡¯t as good as him, but she ¨C I assumed it was Aisha ¨C made up for it with an almost frantic enemy, sprinting across the rooftops of Paris and occasionally firing frantic bursts at any enemy players she saw.


    I dismissed the feed as I emerged into the lounge. Alec, having just been immolated by a summoned spirit, held up a glass of some sort of red cocktail in a salute, letting out a cheer as Lisa returned the gesture with the packet of chicken like it was some prized paydata we¡¯d swiped on a job. Aisha sat next to him, her attention wholly focused on the game as she franticly mashed the melee button.


    As for the others, Rachel was sitting on the couch with a can of beer in one hand and part of her attention offloaded to her drones downstairs, while I found Brian in the kitchen, where he¡¯d just finished slicing an onion into thin strips. He looked up as we entered and, while he didn¡¯t smile, I was fairly sure he relaxed slightly when he saw it was us.


    ¡°Hey Brian,¡± Lisa said, as she reached into the Harris Teeter bag and set down an eggplant on the chopping board, ¡°got another one for you to dice. Taylor, mind getting started on the chicken?¡±


    I nodded, taking the packet from Lisa¡¯s outstretched hand.


    As I started to fry the chicken, throwing in a pre-mixed bag of spices, I glanced across the counter to Brian. He¡¯d diced the eggplant, but was now just looking down at the small heap of vegetable chunks, his hands resting on the countertop. I could see tension in the statuesque shoulders visible beneath his long-sleeved t-shirt, running down the length of his arms to the artificial fingers slowly digging into the chopping board.


    ¡°Hey,¡± I spoke up. ¡°You okay?¡±


    ¡°Hm?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re sort of staring into space. You know, it¡¯ll be nice to have a home-cooked meal again. A real one, I mean. Not just a meal for one. Real meat, too; can¡¯t remember the last time I had that.¡±


    I paused. The chicken was now fully sealed, which meant it was time to squeeze in the tube of pre-mixed curry paste.


    ¡°I think it was when I graduated high school, actually. Right before¡­ well, right before everything went wrong. I decided I had to do something to mark the occasion, so I took the money I¡¯d saved, went down to the Market and bought a few pieces of fried chicken. I remember the stall didn¡¯t even have a fridge, just a few chickens in a cage that they¡¯d butcher as they needed them.¡±


    ¡°I know the kind of place you mean,¡± Brian said, unprompted. ¡°Took Aisha somewhere like it a few times, split some between us. Had an uncle who ran a black-market battery farm out of his apartment. Place reeked.¡±


    ¡°I guess I never thought about where they came from.¡±


    ¡°Only way to get meat if you¡¯re SINless is to raise it yourself, or know someone who does,¡± he said, a scowl on his face. He was thinking about Aisha.


    ¡°Hey, she¡¯s doing fine,¡± I said. ¡°Sure, she¡¯s a maverick, but she¡¯s skilled. She¡¯s comfortable with her skill, too. She¡¯s really come into her own.¡±


    ¡°Did she put herself in danger?¡±


    ¡°I-¡± I began. I didn¡¯t know how to answer that, but I didn¡¯t have to.


    ¡°Hey bro,¡± the young woman herself said, striding into the kitchen with an expression on her face like she didn¡¯t have a care in the world, provided you didn¡¯t look too close. ¡°Come on out, why don¡¯t ya? Been too long since we hung out.¡±


    Brian looked torn for a moment.


    ¡°Go,¡± I said. ¡°I can finish up here.¡±


    I wasn¡¯t sure I¡¯d made the right decision, but if Aisha wanted to help her brother then I wasn¡¯t going to stop her. Instead I focused my efforts on dinner, frying the onions for a few minutes before adding the eggplants, powdered coconut milk and enough water to rehydrate it before letting the mixture simmer, muting the smell of the spices but not eliminating it entirely.


    After a couple of minutes, Lisa came to join me, lifting up the lid of a rice cooker that hadn¡¯t even been removed from its packaging when I¡¯d dug it out of the cupboards. She gave the rice a stir then, apparently content, began rooting through the cupboard for crockery and a packet of prawn crackers that had probably been in there for far too long.


    ¡°You think I did the right thing bringing Aisha in?¡±


    ¡°Not sure she¡¯d have given you a choice,¡± Lisa countered. ¡°Besides, where else would she go?¡±


    We worked in silence after that, occasionally stirring the bubbling green mixture until the recipe said it was time to turn off the heat and start putting everything on plates. By that point, Rachel had been lured in by the smell of cooking ¨C or just wanted to escape whatever was going on in the living room ¨C and she divvied up the rice while I poured in the curry, making sure everyone got roughly the same amount of chicken even as I gave myself and Brian extra vegetables.


    Brian himself wandered into the kitchen a little after Rachel, taking in the spread with a sheepish expression as I handed him his bowl. We both turned as Aisha and Alec followed him through, watching as Alec wrapped a hand around the back of Aisha¡¯s neck and pulled her down into a possessive kiss, which she enthusiastically reciprocated.


    I glanced back at Brian and saw on his face the same abject confusion that was plastered across my own features.


    ¡°You two are¡­ seeing each other?¡± I ventured.


    ¡°You haven¡¯t noticed?¡± Rachel asked. ¡°They sleep in the same room.¡±


    The look Alec was giving me almost made me wish I was born a gnome so that I could just shrink down under the table and disappear.


    ¡°Guess the men in this team have a thing for tall women,¡± he smirked, his eyes flicking between me and Brian.


    I stiffened, and beside me I saw Brian do the same.


    ¡°Pretty sure you have a ¡®thing¡¯ for everyone, Alec,¡± Lisa countered. When Alec didn¡¯t deny it, Aisha reached over and cuffed him on the back of his head.


    ¡°Not anymore, he doesn¡¯t.¡±


    Brian looked down, idly stirring his fork into the curry before finally speaking.


    ¡°Clearly I¡¯ve missed a lot.¡±


    ¡°Oh yeah!¡± Aisha exclaimed, either ignoring or oblivious to his tone. ¡°I fought a fraggin¡¯ Samurai! Pretty wiz for my first time out of the city, huh? Guy was a real wirehead too; chromed to the gills.¡±


    Instinctively, she gave my metal arm a look.


    ¡°Not that there¡¯s anything wrong with that. If I wasn¡¯t awakened, I¡¯d probably go full razorgirl. But if you¡¯ve got it, you¡¯ve gotta flaunt it, right?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s taken some getting used to,¡± I say, glad to change the subject, turning my hand over and watching the articulation of the joints as I furled and unfurled my fingers. ¡°Honestly, though, most of the time I forget it¡¯s there. I tweaked my head in the matrix to think that way; basically made it part of my psyche.¡±


    Rachel frowned at that, reaching over to lay her hands on the plastic surface of my forearm. I let her, watching with morbid fascination as she popped open a panel, scrutinising the synthetic musculature that moved the limb.


    ¡°You shouldn¡¯t think like that,¡± she said, as reproachfully as she could manage. ¡°Meat doesn¡¯t usually need maintenance until you pass a certain percent of chrome, but cyberware does.¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s got a point,¡± Brian said, fishing for something in the pocket of his jacket before setting down a small canvas pouch of spindly tools. ¡°I don¡¯t know how to fix mine if they break, but I know how to maintain them. You should learn how to inspect them at least; prevention is better than the cure.¡±


    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    ¡°I know you didn¡¯t want to install it yourself,¡± I said to Rachel, ¡°but would you mind giving it a look sooner or later? I¡¯d appreciate it.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t think I¡¯ve handled Evo¡¯s chrome before,¡± Rachel said, contemplatively. ¡°Definitely not their milspec models.¡±


    It wasn¡¯t a refusal. If anything, she sounded intrigued.


    From there, things started to calm down as everyone became more focused on the food than conversation. We still talked, but it was about small, inane things. None of us had much in common outside of Shadowrunning; we¡¯d all grown up in wildly different worlds, even Brian and Aisha had lived separate lives in the same city. Still, there was something inherently comfortable about swapping tips on renting with Lisa ¨C who was thinking of finding her own place in the city ¨C or listening to Aisha brag about her cat-burglar antics.


    Inevitably, the alcohol started to flow. Aisha had picked up extensive and, from the looks the others gave her, probably wildly unconventional opinions on what made a good mixer and insisted on making everyone a succession of different cocktails out of whatever we had in the cupboards, the fridge and the freezer.


    I wasn¡¯t really sure I trusted Aisha¡¯s skill as a mixologist, but part of that might have been because I was still relatively new to cocktails myself. I¡¯d mostly just limited myself to the occasional beer can when I lived alone, and while I¡¯d drunk more since then I was still definitely a lightweight for my size.


    Even so, when our dishes had been abandoned for someone to deal with tomorrow and everyone began to move back to the living room, I still had the presence of mind to push back the unsteady sensation in my head and grab Alec by the arm. I didn¡¯t intend it to be a forceful grab, but between my new arm and my admittedly less-than-stellar coordination in that moment it might have ended up as one.


    ¡°What?¡± Alec snapped, looking up at me.


    ¡°You¡¯re sleeping with Aisha.¡±


    ¡°Yeah? Thought we covered this, Bug.¡±


    ¡°You sure that¡¯s wise?¡±


    He scoffed, rolling his eyes.


    ¡°Don¡¯t pull the shotgun brother shit, dork. I¡¯ll get plenty of that from Brian later. We¡¯re both adults, so Aisha can do what she wants.¡±


    ¡°Can she?¡± I asked, as digital memories flashed back into my head. ¡°I know what kind of mage you are, Jean-Paul.¡±


    Alec tensed. He didn¡¯t get angry, or surprised, or afraid. It was like every muscle in his face just stilled simultaneously, leaving me face to face with a blank doll and already regretting what I¡¯d said.


    ¡°Fuck you. You can¡¯t leave it alone, can you? Have to dig your claws into everything and everyone until they dance on your strings, and you think I¡¯m the control freak? But hey, at least you¡¯ve stopped dropping hints.¡±


    He stepped in close making the tight confines of the corridor feel even tighter, even though it meant he had to crane his neck up to keep meeting my eyes. Even as I looked away, my gaze landing on the door to Lisa¡¯s room, on the almost impressionist portrait of an elven women that Alec had painted there.


    ¡°It¡¯s a valid concern,¡± I said. ¡°The¡­ environment you grew up in.¡±


    ¡°Because we¡¯re all just like our parents, right?¡± Alec drawled. ¡°Only your parents are dead, so when are you gonna eat a bullet?¡±


    ¡°I-¡±


    ¡°If I was like mon p¨¨re,¡± he continued, his voice pitched low almost to the point of whispering, ¡°do you really think there¡¯s anything any of you could do about it? I¡¯d have made you all a puppet show by the end of the first week, then I¡¯d take my pick of the rest of the city. Only difference ¡®tween here and Montreal would be that I fuck guys too.¡±


    A twisted smirk spread across his face, but I knew he was putting it on.


    ¡°But I¡¯m not hungry for power, like some people I could mention. I¡¯m here because I¡¯m comfortable here, and because sometimes ¨C when I¡¯m high or being shot at or lectured by some arrogant dork ¨C I actually get to feel something real.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± I said, the words coming out quicker than I¡¯d planned. I wished I could just blame the alcohol. ¡°That was¡­¡±


    Rude? Manipulative? A complete and utter breach of trust?


    Alec¡¯s smirk suddenly seemed to become real, just for a moment.


    ¡°Don¡¯t be,¡± he said in a jovial tone, like the whole conversation hadn¡¯t happened. ¡°If I were any of my dear brothers and sisters, you¡¯d all be fucked.¡±


    He began to walk away, only to turn to face me again.


    ¡°Oh, and since you¡¯re so interested in my sex life,¡± he said, spreading his hands, ¡°I made Aisha a marionette just the other night, because she wanted to know what it felt like.¡±


    As he finally left the corridor, joining the others in the living room and immediately turned up the music, I stood there for a moment. I felt ashamed and vindicated at the same time; ashamed that I¡¯d asked, but strangely vindicated that my fears had been reasonable even if they were disproven.


    Lisa had told me once that what Alec wanted above all else was control over his own life; the freedom to do what he wanted, when he wanted it. I¡¯d forgotten because, for two years, that was something I¡¯d had and done nothing with. When Lisa had asked me whether I prioritised comfort, like Alec, or ambition like her, I hadn¡¯t been able to give her an answer. In hindsight, though, it was as clear as day.


    I couldn¡¯t let myself stop, because I knew that if I did I¡¯d just fall back into the same kind of rut. I could be comfortable, could waste an evening in the company of friends, only because I¡¯d managed to find enough ambition in my lethargic state to take the first step on an upward climb that might well have no end.


    As I joined the rest of the team in the living room, I had everything someone like Alec would ever want in life. I had good music, a drink in my hand, something comfortable to sit on and the company of friends ¨C which I suspected mattered more to Alec than he¡¯d care to admit. Yet the only reason I had any of that was because of my ambition, and the only way I¡¯d keep it would be to keep riding the lightning.


    The games console had been switched off. Instead, Alec was pumping Francophone electropunk through his sound system while he and Aisha danced together like a pair of utter maniacs, close enough that I was sure they were deliberately flaunting their closeness to the rest of us.


    There was a natural, effortless confidence to the pair of them that seemed almost alien to me. They were so comfortable moving together, so comfortable moving apart. I got the feeling that Aisha was the sort of person was regularly the first person in the room to start dancing and would feel no embarrassment whatsoever if she ended up dancing alone. To me, that was an almost unfathomable level of confidence, even though Lisa looked like she was moments from joining in.


    Still, I couldn¡¯t help but notice the way Aisha¡¯s eyes would periodically flick over to her brother, who was sitting on one end the couch with one of Aisha¡¯s cocktails in his hand, while Rachel sat on the opposite end.


    I took the middle, between the two of them, and sipped from my own cocktail ¨C a mixture of rum and store-bought tropical soda with salt inexpertly scattered around the brim. Sure enough, Lisa had joined the couple on the impromptu dancefloor, but I wasn¡¯t quite drunk enough to consider joining them. I¡¯d danced with Brian in the Palanquin, of course, but that felt like a lifetime ago.


    Inevitably, that thought brought up memories of the almost incomparable sensations I¡¯d experienced on the dance floor, pressed close to Brian by the people around us ¨C and by my own, almost instinctive, desires. I¡¯d felt something then that I¡¯d never experienced before; a total reversal of my normal instincts to hide away from view. I¡¯d wanted to be seen and I¡¯d wanted to see him, and I believed it was mutual even if I had no idea whether Brian still felt that way.


    Whatever possibilities there had been, they were interrupted by the realities of the life we¡¯d both chosen. By a job, first and foremost, where I shut out all thoughts beyond how we were going to give the Chosen a black eye and escape unscathed. Then, when I failed, I¡¯d sunk deeper into that focus partly because I wanted to make sure it didn¡¯t happen again, but also because it hurt too much to think of Brian when he was hospitalised.


    Abruptly I felt a hand on my arm, dragging me out of my thoughts. Not the flesh and blood one holding the cocktail, but its cybernetic counterpart. I turned to see that Rachel had popped open the panel again, and was in the process of taking a small pouch of tools from the pocket of her cargo pants.


    ¡°You don¡¯t have to do that now,¡± I said. ¡°Tonight¡¯s about relaxing.¡±


    ¡°This is how I relax,¡± Rachel retorted, succinctly. I didn¡¯t protest any further as she withdrew a miniature screwdriver, I just held my arm perfectly still as she unscrewed a second cover nestled between bundles of synthetic musculature.


    It was a weird sensation. The arm had its own artificial nerve endings on the surface to let me know when something was touching it, but they¡¯d shut off when Rachel removed the inspection cover. The result was something like the reverse of the phantom pain I¡¯d read people sometimes experienced after getting a cybernetic limb; I knew exactly where the arm was because it was mapped to my digital persona, but I couldn¡¯t actually feel it anymore.


    I thought about talking to Brian, but it felt a little awkward with Rachel digging into my arm. Instead, I leant against the back of the couch and made another attempt at my drink, the baffling mix of flavours combining into something that was both singularly disgusting and weirdly compelling.


    ¡°Taylor¡­¡± Brian spoke up, startling me. ¡°What I asked before, about Aisha?¡±


    I swallowed, trying to figure out how to word it. I was struck by a sudden, inexplicable fear that my answer would disappoint him.


    ¡°Just¡­¡± Brian continued. ¡°I need to know.¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s reckless,¡± I said, biting the bullet. ¡°The infiltration went perfectly; Aisha was as cool as anyone when it came to sneaking in. She mouthed off, but she knew when to focus on the job. But when everything went bad¡± ¨C Brian flinched, and I mentally kicked myself. ¡°Okay, so I got made in the Matrix, I told Aisha to bug out and she did, right up until she decided she¡¯d rather pick a fight with a Samurai than keep running.¡±


    Brian¡¯s hand rose to his chin, his brow furrowed.


    ¡°You sent her in alone?¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s good at what she does,¡± I answered, trying to figure out how to phrase it gently. ¡°Really good. I know you want to keep her safe, but¡­¡± I glanced over to Aisha, then pitched my voice low enough that I hoped she wouldn¡¯t hear it over the music.


    ¡°She was living with a gang that got wiped out by the Chosen as a reprisal for our attack on their shipment. We don¡¯t live in a safe world, Brian. People can do everything right and still get hurt because someone else made a mistake. You know that.¡±


    Telling Brian that we¡¯d played a role ¨C however indirect ¨C in Aisha¡¯s situation felt like kicking a puppy, but ultimately I knew that Aisha wasn¡¯t going to leave and she wasn¡¯t going to accept being benched for his sake. I didn¡¯t want this to grow into something that¡¯d drive a rift between them.


    ¡°You still sent her in,¡± he said, putting a strange emphasis on the word. ¡°I¡¯ve been hearing that a lot. You came up with the plan, you called the shots, I even saw you pulling Alec aside in the corridor just now.¡±


    I sighed.


    ¡°Yeah, I stepped up. I¡¯m the only one who sees the whole picture, Brian. Everyone on the team is wired somehow; even our mages carry commlinks. I know where they are at all times, and I know where our enemies are as well. I¡¯ve got hooks on the Anders family, hooks on our client, even hooks on us.¡±


    ¡°I know you see a lot,¡± he said, a little forcefully, ¡°I know you¡¯re good at thinking on the fly, but I think you rely on that too much. You push for the risky plans because you know that¡¯s the environment in which you thrive, where you offer the most to the group.¡±


    ¡°Stop,¡± I said, in a quiet voice. It felt unfair for him to pull this now, with Rachel sitting right next to us and everyone else in earshot, even if we were both next to whispering.


    ¡°It¡¯s not just you. Often, you¡¯re just joining in with whatever fucked-up plan one of the others has come up with. I tried, Taylor. I really tried to keep things sensible, keep the group sane. It¡¯s so easy to die, you know? So easy to get in over your head, to be just a little too slow on the trigger.¡±


    ¡°You didn¡¯t do anything wrong,¡± I said, laying my organic hand on his shoulder. He flinched, but didn¡¯t shrug it off. ¡°They got the jump on us. Had the high ground and our backs to them. Might not have even happened if I¡¯d managed to win the digital fight soon enough to keep GOD off our backs.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not the point,¡± Brian snapped. ¡°I almost died, Taylor. We all almost died. Everything I¡¯ve done, I¡¯ve told myself it¡¯s so that I can be there if she needs me,¡± he said, nodding towards Aisha. ¡°I¡¯m not na?ve. I knew she wasn¡¯t safe, knew she didn¡¯t respect me enough to let me keep her out of danger, even if I didn¡¯t know where she was. All I could do was have a safety net ready to catch her if she ever realised she needed one.¡±


    ¡°And then you came out of the hospital and found out I¡¯d enlisted her in our little war¡­¡± I shrank a little, letting out a long sigh.


    ¡°It¡¯s a war now? Look, I know Aisha isn¡¯t going anywhere. I know I¡¯ve lost control, and I don¡¯t think I ever had it to begin with. Not really. You¡¯re right; I can¡¯t see what you see. I can¡¯t watch the team from the vanguard, but it¡¯s more important that I¡¯m there at the front when the bullets start flying.¡±


    For a while, I didn¡¯t say anything, as Rachel screwed my arm back together and left the party for her workshop downstairs. In a way, it made everything easier. Brian had been our leader almost by default, off the back of his years of experience in the mercenary world, but none of us were amateurs anymore and I knew that he couldn¡¯t do what I¡¯d done in Boston, or even in the raid against the Chosen.


    For all that I talked about meatspace and the matrix, the two were so intertwined that there functionally wasn¡¯t any point where one ended and the other began and I was one of the few people in the world who saw that. I could keep track of a battlefield, could search for paydata, could liaise with clients and contacts. I understood the great web of data that connected the world, and knew how to tug at its strings to get the best result.


    But it still hurt. Physically, Brian was as solid as ever. It was like he was carved from stone, inviolate and immovable. I think it was why I¡¯d been so drawn to him, why I still felt drawn to him. I¡¯d gone down the rabbit hole into an unfamiliar world and he was something solid on which I could anchor myself.


    The Brian sitting next to me, close enough that I was conscious of the visible muscles of his neck, of the way his long-sleeved t-shirt was drawn tight over his body, was still carved from stone, but it was like it had been aged by time ¨C its immutability tested by moss and erosion.


    He noticed me looking at him, turning away for a moment. When he spoke, it was in a quiet, almost hesitant tone.


    ¡°I want to protect you. I want to protect all of you. Work¡­ it was always a barrier, before. Maybe you were right to bring Aisha in; I couldn¡¯t be there for her because I needed to work to pay for her safety net. I couldn¡¯t make friends, because solo mercs don¡¯t have friends. But once I started Shadowrunning, work wasn¡¯t a barrier anymore. Suddenly I had a team. I had friends I could talk to who really understood, who I didn¡¯t have to hide anything from. I care about you.¡±


    He straightened up, seeming to find some hidden well of resolve as he turned to look me in the eyes.


    ¡°I care about you.¡±


    I didn¡¯t know what to say. For a moment, I couldn¡¯t think, couldn¡¯t find the words or make them fit together in my mouth. In the end, what came out felt like a complete non-sequitur.


    ¡°Would you like to see the world the way I do?¡± I asked.


    Brian gave me a strange look, shifting a little so that he was almost leaning side-on against the couch.


    ¡°I¡¯ve used VR before, Taylor.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not how I see it,¡± I countered, softly.


    He considered it for a moment. ¡°Okay.¡±


    There was no resistance as I took control of his cybereyes; there wasn¡¯t a single wireless device across the entire team that I hadn¡¯t thoroughly compromised. Without a datajack, I couldn¡¯t bring Brian¡¯s consciousness through into virtual reality, but I wasn¡¯t looking for that. Augmented reality devices worked by picking and choosing which Matrix icons the underlying algorithm believed were most relevant to their user. All I had to do to let Brian see the matrix was turn off the filters.


    I did it gradually, so as not to alarm him. First, I made all the devices in the room visible, from the speaker to Lisa¡¯s commlink. They appeared as ghostly afterimages of their real-world counterparts, having been designed that way by their programmers for ease of recognition.


    Simultaneously, I expanded the range of the visible devices and faded away the real world entirely, revealing the full spectacle of the matrix. Innumerable devices and personas flitted through the city in the far distance, some tied to the physical world while others were visiting from elsewhere, or existed solely above out heads.


    Blocky hosts created a cityscape of different structures, mapping out businesses and servers while the largest drifted far above the plane of the city like digital cloudbanks. It was the matrix Brian knew; the way the matrix wanted to be seen. The whole spectacle was manufactured, each icon and host given shape by corporate designers and service providers to present a comprehensible face to their users.


    I took a deep breath, then disabled the filters, letting Brian see the true matrix, my matrix. The personas, devices and even the hosts were almost irrelevant in that world, visible only as points of light created by the overlapping strands of data that stretched in every direction as far as the mind could comprehend, like a great golden web that entangled the world.


    The sheer volume of datastreams was overwhelming, even the least of them representing gigabytes of data being carried through the matrix. I was certain that Lisa would have compared the greatest of them to magical ley lines; channels down which incomprehensible quantities of energy flowed, and upon which the entire world was built.


    ¡°I¡¯ve always found it calming to look at,¡± I said. ¡°You realise how small you are, in the grand scheme of things. Walk down the streets and you¡¯ll be bombarded by so many little boundaries and divisions, but I can brush my hand against these streams and feel data bound for servers in other countries, on other continents, into orbit. It might be financial transmissions, trideo broadcasts or someone¡¯s call to their grandma, but when you look at it like this it''s all the same.¡±


    I kept talking, looking out across the vista that had been my constant companion for six years and trying to figure out how it might look through Brian¡¯s eyes.


    ¡°I guess it takes me out of myself when I think about it, reminds me that we¡¯re only one part of this vast system. Cogs in the universe, in our own way. Seeing the big picture like this, it makes all the little details feel so much smaller.¡±


    Brian didn¡¯t respond, but I didn¡¯t need him to. I was content to simply sit there, staring at the endless pulsing datastreams. When I did finally turn my head to look at Brian, I saw that his own head was turned as well. He was looking at me, had been looking at me since I switched off the physical world.


    Idly, I checked what exactly he was seeing. In the matrix I presented myself as a tall woman in silk robes, whose ¡®skin¡¯ was actually formed from plates of chitin, but that was as much an affectation as the icons I¡¯d disabled, and it had been unintentionally banished by the same action.


    As I held up a hand in front of my face, I saw the familiar crystals of solidified resonance; a golden counterpart to my cybernetic arm, exact in every detail. It was the second half of my dual nature; a perfect match to the meatspace body whose neurons it mirrored, bridging the gap between the resonant and physical realms. I was nude, but it felt like the nudity of a statue; given dignity by being formed from something more solid than flesh.


    Still, I closed my eyes and focused for a moment, allowing part of the physical world to bleed through into Brian¡¯s vision as I overlaid my real body ¨C clothes and all ¨C over my living persona.


    Seemingly on instinct, Brian reached out towards me then stopped, his hand falling to his side. I watched his chest rise and fall as he drew in a breath, his eyes flicking away from me as he tried to centre himself.


    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, quietly, past the butterflies in my stomach. ¡°Go ahead.¡±


    He blinked, swallowed, and wrapped his arm around my waist, gently pulling me close until I was leaning against his side. His touch felt almost impossibly light, like he was afraid I might fracture into nothing if he held on too tight. I hugged my organic arm around his shoulders, pulling him in close until his head rested on my collarbone. I wasn¡¯t as gentle as him. I meant to be, but I just couldn¡¯t manage that same delicate touch. My heart was racing too fast.


    ¡°This is what you wanted?¡± I asked, quietly. I could still hear the music, but I had no idea what the others were doing. Neither of us did. We could only see each other; two bodies floating in the midst of a glowing web of data.


    ¡°You¡¯re so still,¡± he replied. I wasn¡¯t sure what he meant, so I didn¡¯t say anything at all. I just stayed still, lost in the warm sensation of his breath on my collarbone, the faint pressure of his hand on my waist.


    ¡°I worry about you,¡± he said.


    ¡°You don¡¯t need to,¡± I replied, on instinct. ¡°But¡­ thanks.¡±


    He tensed up a little, but I didn¡¯t think it was in response to anything I¡¯d said. He¡¯d closed his eyes, his fingers twitching momentarily as he mustered up the will to say¡­ something.


    ¡°Can we¡­¡± he began to ask, his eyes flicking towards the corridor.


    My eyes widened a fraction, my mouth opening as I realised what he meant. Apprehension ran through my mind for a moment, but it was a familiar kind of apprehension. A general unease that had nothing to do with this moment, but that was responsible for so many missed opportunities, that had kept me shut away from the world for far too long. This was everything I had missed. It was real, undeniable. I still wasn¡¯t sure what he saw in me but, in that moment, I no longer cared.


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, gently releasing my grip on my shoulder as I stood. Using simple lines to mark out the floor, walls and corridor of the loft in the digital world I inhabited, I led Brian by the hand out of the living room, both of us taking slow steps that nevertheless drew us inexorably closer to my room.


    As I closed the door behind us, I let go of Brian¡¯s hand just long enough to shrug my jacket off my shoulders, then guided it to my waist as I backed towards my bed. His fingers felt smooth on my back as he slipped his hand beneath my top, gently stroking up my spine like he was afraid I¡¯d get spooked if he went too fast. I kicked off my sneakers, simultaneously sliding my own hands beneath Brian¡¯s t-shirt and along the muscled ridges of his chest. Idly I found myself wondering how much of what I felt was organic and how much was a cosmetic layer over cybernetics. It didn¡¯t matter either way; it was warm and smooth and true.


    I sat down on my bed and took a deep breath, savouring the electrifying sensation that seemed to be running throughout my whole body before finally lying back and gently pulling Brian down with me until our lips met in a fumbling, passionate kiss.

 Paragon: 7.03

    Waking up the next morning with my arms wrapped around another person was a truly unparalleled experience; no moment in my life so far carried the same specific blend of sensations.


    It took my mind a moment to even understand what I was experiencing. Some part of me felt that the morning after should have been comforting from the moment I regained consciousness, but instead there was the briefest fraction of an instant in which my brain simply couldn¡¯t parse the feeling of skin on my skin, of an unfamiliar weight resting on my chest, of the abnormal gaps and air pockets beneath the bedsheets that didn¡¯t lie as flat as they did when I was alone.


    So wakefulness came in a flood of startled adrenaline, only for my reflexive jolt of movement to be smothered as my conscious brain provided a rational counterpoint to the instincts of the unconscious. It still felt unreal, but in that moment I knew that it was Brian¡¯s back under my arm, his head on my chest as he lay almost huddled into me.


    It left me alert, awake, yet completely unwilling to move. It gave me time; time for doubts to rise and fall in my mind; time to imagine a future, to wonder for a moment where I would be in five years, in ten. If it would still feel like this. It was something I hadn¡¯t seriously done for as long as I could remember.


    I still believed in what Lisa had told me on the metro the day before; that to survive, we needed to ride the lighting. I¡¯d accepted that I was a Shadowrunner and that being a Shadowrunner meant that I was on an intense and violent path, but I wasn¡¯t sure that meant I needed to be lonely as well. Or maybe I just hoped that.


    Objectively speaking, it was a risk, but that rational judgement was eclipsed by the ridge of his shoulder blade beneath my hand, by each curve and impression of muscle and bone ¨C whether synthetic or mechanical ¨C I felt as I slowly glided that hand down his back.


    I can do this, can¡¯t I?


    The life we¡¯d all chosen set us apart from the rest of the world. I¡¯d seen too much to still believe it set us free, but the pressures we laboured under were different to those of most people my age; the ones who were four years deep into whatever trade they¡¯d found at sixteen, the others who¡¯d followed their education as far as they could afford, clutching high school diplomas and looking to get their first feet on the ladder ¨C any ladder ¨C or those fortunates who were halfway through some college degree, forgetting the world and its troubles for a single brief interval of eudemonic madness even as their debts racked up.


    Their lives came in stages that were each measured in years, where problems were inevitable creeping things that could be seen even if they couldn¡¯t be managed. By comparison, our lives were dangerous, they were random, they could all end in an instant without us ever seeing that end coming. Could I really afford this sort of distraction? Would it make me hesitate? Drag me away from the matrix and back to meatspace? Keep my head out of the game when I needed it the most?


    Some of my worries must have crept down through my nervous system to the hand gently caressing Brian¡¯s back, because he began to stir in response to some almost imperceptible shift in my movements.


    He didn¡¯t wake like I did. He didn¡¯t freeze. Instead, his very first instinct was to draw in closer, his whole body tightening into mine as he moved in search of warmth, of comfort. It made something in my chest move.


    I knew then and there that I had to try. It didn¡¯t matter that I had my doubts, that I was all but convinced that I¡¯d fuck this up somewhere down the line. I told myself that it was a task like any other; a vital part of bringing Grue back from the brink and keeping the team together and functional. I told myself that it would help me, too. That it was another step out of my apartment, one more move away from my years-long sabbatical on life.


    I layered excuses and rationalisations on top of one another like an oyster layering saliva over a piece of grit until it became a pearl, with its flaws and doubts smoothed over.


    Brian¡¯s arm moved, brushing back the sheets as he pushed his torso off of me, looking down at my face with a warm yet slightly uncertain expression that made me wonder if he was running through the exact same thoughts I¡¯d had.


    ¡°Morning,¡± he said, after a few moments. It sounded like he had no idea what to say, but was determined to try anyway.


    ¡°Morning,¡± I replied, like an idiot.


    That seemed to be enough conversation for the moment, as Brian extricated himself from the bed and picked his pants up off the floor. I lay there for a moment, a little shocked by the view in spite of the night before, before shrugging off the covers myself and pulling on last night¡¯s clothes. I¡¯d shower later, but for now I was still a little distracted.


    ¡°You¡¯ve done that before,¡± I said, the words emerging from my mouth before I¡¯d had the time to think about whether I really wanted to say them.


    Brian paused for a moment, frozen mid-motion as he pulled his shirt on.


    ¡°A few times,¡± he said, making it sound like a confession. ¡°Never managed to make the relationship stick. It just doesn¡¯t work with people who aren¡¯t in the life.¡±


    ¡°And people who are?¡± I asked, leaning against the wall and crossing my arms to hide my nerves.


    ¡°No idea,¡± Brian said with a shrug. ¡°I want it to.¡±


    ¡°What does it look like?¡± I ask. ¡°When it works?¡±


    He sighed. ¡°I don¡¯t know. I don¡¯t know if I can think about the future right now. If we carry on, will we still be together in two years? In ten years, will we have left all this behind? Found a quiet life? Do we still live in this city? Are we alone? Can you picture any of that?¡±


    I could, in dreamlike flashes that came and went in instants. A house in the suburbs, gutted down to the basement so that I¡¯d always be able to stand up straight. The others coming over for supper, swapping stories about old times. The sound of small feet running across the floor? Emerging from the resonance only to find Brian watching my unconscious body, waking me up with a kiss.


    It was an infatuating image, but ones I couldn¡¯t bring myself to voice. In the end, it was just an image. I couldn¡¯t see any path to make it real.


    ¡°Me either,¡± Brian said, as the same deep-set weariness that had consumed him yesterday started to creep back into his posture.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know where we¡¯ll be tomorrow,¡± I said. ¡°I don¡¯t know how this thing with Calvert is going to end. All I have is now. I¡¯m stuck in the present, perched at the centre of my web and waiting for other people to make the first move. So no, I have no idea if this¡¯ll last a week, but I want it to last today and tomorrow I¡¯ll want the same.¡±


    A smile tugged at the corners of Brian¡¯s mouth, his eyes finally looking up from the floor to meet mine.


    ¡°I can live with that. Sorry; that was way too much for day one.¡±


    I snorted. ¡°Live fast, right? It comes with the territory.¡±


    ¡°¡¯Guess it does. I¡¯m going to hit the shower, unless you want it first?¡±


    ¡°Go,¡± I said, waving him off. ¡°You don¡¯t want to wait for me to sort my hair.¡±


    ¡°Good point,¡± he said, lingering at the door for a moment before leaving.


    The moment he was gone I let out a breath I hadn¡¯t known I was holding, feeling myself automatically slouch a little from what had apparently been an attempt to mirror Lisa¡¯s suave, enigmatic way of standing that always made her seem taller than her unimpressive height. Only my face remained as it had been, the corners of my lips still raised fractionally upwards.


    I gave it a few moments before following Brian out into the corridor, long enough that I could hear the sound of the shower through the bathroom door. In the kitchen, I fished out a bowl of leftover curry that some civic-minded individual ¨C so either Lisa or Rachel, since Brian and I were busy ¨C had left in the fridge, spooning some into a bowl alongside a scoop of cold rice.


    I was about halfway done when Aisha sauntered in as bold as brass, wearing one of Alec¡¯s frilly white shirts over ¨C mercifully ¨C a pair of shorts. With how much taller she was than her boyfriend, going without would never have worked.


    She ignored me as she grabbed her own bowl of plain rice from the fridge. She seasoned her breakfast with some synthetic honey from a squeeze bottle, then perched on the counter directly opposite me and began picking away at her food with a pair of chopsticks, all the while maintaining eye contact.


    I sighed. ¡°Go on, then.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m watching you,¡± she said, pointing at me with the chopsticks. ¡°Just want you to know that.¡±


    ¡°Uh huh.¡±


    ¡°Might not see me watching you, but I am. I could be anywhere. Invisible, yeah?¡±


    ¡°Got it.¡±


    ¡°¡¯Cause if you screw this up, I can and will make your life a living hell.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s fair.¡±


    Aisha scowled, leaning forward and staring at me.


    ¡°Not gonna fight back?¡±


    I shrugged my shoulders. ¡°Don¡¯t really have a leg to stand on. Gave Alec a similar talk just last night.¡±


    Aisha laughed; a sharp exhalation of breath. ¡°Fucking what?¡±


    ¡°Honestly, though, I¡¯m going to make a mistake sooner or later. Not like I¡¯ve ever been in a relationship before, and we don¡¯t live a very stable life. But I¡¯m going into this with the best intentions.¡±


    For a moment she seemed lost in thought, before she brought the bowl up to her mouth, tipped it back and wolfed down the rest of her breakfast.


    ¡°I can¡¯t help him,¡± she finally said, standing up. ¡°Don¡¯t know how. So no, you don¡¯t get to screw this up. It¡¯s all on you, hacker.¡±


    She left the room, leaving her bowl on the side for someone else to deal with. A few moments later I heard her wrench Alec¡¯s door open, then heard her raised voice.


    ¡°Next time someone threatens my input you tell me, got it!? I¡¯ll cut out their damn tongue!¡±


    I shook my head, deliberately trying not to dwell on just how their relationship even worked. Instead, I fell back into a familiar pattern of sifting through the matrix, catching up on all the data that had built up from my tap on the Anders family.


    I hadn¡¯t missed much; Theo¡¯s browsing history was an uneventful trawl down a social media spiral, though it was at least worth noting that the vapid commentators and sixty second videos he was watching leaned a lot more progressive than his dad would like.


    Theo¡¯s mother, on the other hand, had been messaging the nanny she paid to watch her daughter, as well as browsing the hosts of the local boutiques for a dress to wear to the party the family were due to attend in the next few days, using a cold-sim VR headset to access digital fitting rooms where she could surround herself with duplicates of her body in different profiles and lighting conditions.


    It was all frustratingly mundane. I knew more than I could ever want to know about Kayden¡¯s interior design ¡®business,¡¯ but next to nothing about her husband¡¯s. He was just too good at compartmentalising his life. He couldn¡¯t compartmentalise everything, of course ¨C if nothing else, the quasi-aristocratic circles in which he moved meant that a lot of his business partners were also family friends ¨C but he never called people about business from his personal phone.


    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    I had to believe it was just a mixture of prudence and healthy paranoia, rather than a specific suspicion that we were out to get him. His package with Renraku was among the best private communications security money could buy, but his work commlink was likely part of Medhall¡¯s own in-house network; more of an access point for the corporation¡¯s central host than a device in its own right.


    I received a welcome distraction from my spiralling frustration when Lisa wandered into the kitchen, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a grocery bag of fruit in the other. Clearly she hadn¡¯t been interested in leftovers for breakfast, but part of me was still shocked at the extravagance involved in buying so much fresh fruit on a whim.


    ¡°Morning Taylor,¡± she said, reaching into the bag and handing me a reddish-orange fruit. ¡°Have a peach.¡±


    ¡°Thanks?¡± I said, uncertainly, turning it over in my hand before taking a bite. ¡°Fuck, that¡¯s good¡­¡±


    ¡°Another first?¡± Lisa asked.


    ¡°The last few months have really been eye-opening,¡± I said, before picking up on her double meaning right as she placed a small box of pills in front of me. My cheeks heated with embarrassment as soon as I read the label ¨C something I was sure Lisa could pick up on even if flushes didn¡¯t show on my skin. I snatched up the pills, stowing them in a pocket before the significance of the gesture sank in.


    She didn¡¯t buy those for herself¡­


    ¡°You didn¡¯t have to do that,¡± I protested.


    ¡°I know,¡± Lisa said, perching on the table as she unpeeled an orange. ¡°But I was in the shop anyway, so why not?¡±


    ¡°Still, it¡¯s¡­ Ah, whatever.¡±


    Lisa flashed me a smirk. ¡°Finally worn you down, huh? Knocked through the last of your boundaries?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not that,¡± I said with a wan smile. ¡°I¡¯ve just been thinking.¡±


    ¡°About Brian?¡±


    ¡°Been trying not to think about that, actually. We talked; we¡¯re going to give it a try and hope for the best. No, I was thinking about the Anders.¡±


    Lisa shifted in her seat, leaning in with an interested expression on her face.


    ¡°Got any juicy secrets to share?¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°That¡¯s the problem; it¡¯s not enough. If I¡¯m going to get anything useful out of this, I need access to more than just the family¡¯s comms.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯d be surprised what people can reveal through dinner table chatter. Mind bringing me in on your little wiretap? I might spot something you don¡¯t.¡±


    I nodded, linking her commlink into my own connection to Calvert¡¯s network. I was sure he knew I was listening in, but that was no reason to go poking the snake by adding in new connections for anyone and everyone.


    ¡°Still, I see your point,¡± Lisa said, as her comm chimed in alert at the new app I was forcing it to install. ¡°I¡¯m guessing you¡¯re figuring something out. It¡¯s how you work; dig away at a problem until you find a way to break through.¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, glancing down at my cybernetic arm. ¡°I have an idea I want to try¡­ No clue if it¡¯ll work, but I don¡¯t think it¡¯ll bring down any heat if it doesn¡¯t.¡±


    ¡°I trust your judgement. Not that I have a choice when it comes to tech,¡± she continued, flashing me a grin. ¡°Kinda wish I¡¯d learned, though; people keep so much of themselves in the matrix, but I¡¯ve only really got a surface-level understanding of it.¡±


    A creaking floorboard drew my attention back to the corridor just as Brian finally emerged, having changed into fresh clothes. Lisa offered him a mango, and he looked just as confused by the gesture as I was.


    ¡°We eat far too many takeaways,¡± she said, by way of explanation. ¡°Besides, ¡®an apple a day keeps the pharma corp away.¡¯¡±


    ¡°Haven¡¯t tried that yet,¡± I murmured to myself as I stood, idly taking another bite from my own fruit before turning to Brian. ¡°I¡¯m going to be in hot-sim VR for most of the morning; there¡¯s something I want to check out.¡±


    ¡°Thanks for the heads up,¡± Brian said.


    ¡°You should see how worried he gets when he runs across you comatose on a random piece of furniture,¡± Lisa said, with an evil look in her eyes.


    ¡°Ah, yeah,¡± I stammered. ¡°Sorry about that? Got too used to living on my own, I guess.¡±


    Brian shook his head. ¡°I don¡¯t mind. Way I see it, it shows how comfortable you are here.¡±


    I looked away, hiding the smile that tugged at the corners of my mouth. On my way out, I placed a hand on his shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze, feeling the coils of artificial muscle beneath the synskin through the sensors on my steel and plastic fingers.


    Before too long I¡¯d showered, palmed one of the pills and returned to my room, remaking the bed before lying on top of the covers and opening my mind to the matrix.


    The journey to the resonance realms was smoother than it had ever been. The event horizon barely brushed against me as I fell through the gaps in the foundation, as if it had finally accepted that I belonged on the other side as much as I did in meatspace. I had some ideas as to why, but I was glad all the same; there were only so many times my psyche could be stripped bare before it started to wear thin.


    Navigating my way to the Observatory felt similarly instinctive, passing through the resonance¡¯s endless circulatory system and down capillaries of pure light until finally emerging into the black waters of the Observatory¡¯s antechamber, soaking wet and weighed down by oppressive physicality until I willed it away.


    I was more conscious than ever of the entity¡¯s presence. Not just the visible parts in the quiet places, whose doors I could now open with a thought, but in the invisible strands that crisscrossed every part of the observatory, one step removed from its enforced physical realities.


    I could feel the data flowing through that entity, pulsing down its tangled web of pseudo-neurons and crystalline circuitry as it siphoned off the resonance realm¡¯s own ceaseless draw from the city above.


    With a mental trick akin to opening my eyes, I could suddenly see every part of the entity, layered on top of the physical reality like a ghostly after-image. Translucent bundles of pulsating cables crisscrossed the corridors of the Observatory like a cobweb while tentative tendrils pressed up against the tapered windows that marked the furthest extremity of the realm, drinking in the un-light beyond as if they were photosynthesising.


    My own grafted limb chimed in response to the pulses; like recognising like. I used it like a compass, following the bundled nerves into one of the observatory''s cavernous library halls. If the entity was like a plant then the tendrils in here were nothing more than its root system. It had dug itself into the towering library stacks, forcing its way into each individual connection and gradually draining them dry of data. The sheer volume of its hunger was staggering; every second it was drawing enough raw energy to power a supercomputer and enough information to fill a university archive.


    What was even more fascinating was that it seemed to be growing. Not in a way that could be seen by the naked eye ¨C or whatever eye-analogue this realm¡¯s rules had forced on me ¨C but through my unique attunement to the entity I could feel the way the drain on the library was continually increasing, the great neural network gradually expanding. It was a promising sign, for my purposes.


    The library wasn¡¯t the centre of the entity, just as the room wasn¡¯t the centre of the Observatory. There were seven of them in total, judging by the curvature of the corridor on the boundary of the realm, with one end facing out and the other towards the centre. That was where the data was flowing to.


    I passed hundreds of metres of shelves, each of them holding an impossibly vast amount of data; duplicates of an entire city''s worth of activity. Beyond the shelves, the seven great halls of the library met in a single circular chamber that looked to be half a kilometre across, with an iron and glass dome for a ceiling through which the starscape of Brockton Bay''s matrix resembled an immense nebula pulsing with a cosmic light that cast strange shadows on the tiled floor.


    Emerging from the library stacks, the entity¡¯s ephemeral strands were joined by too-real bundles of wires that bridged the gap between the stacks and the curved wall of a great iron sphere that hung in the centre of the chamber, its base hovering half a metre off the floor and its top open like the aperture of an ancient camera, or the pupil of a metal eye. Its function was obvious; it captured images of the data produced by the city above, then sent the copied files to the libraries.


    The sphere was solid, without any rivets or hatches I could see. The only means of ingress were the ports for the tightly-wound bundles of cable, but they looked as immovable as mooring lines, anchored to the edge of the chamber and seemingly supporting the weight of the sphere. Its metal surface was cold to the touch, vibrating slightly beneath my palm in the same way a ship''s hull might when the engines were on. In spite of its apparent solidity, the crystalline cables simply passed through the surface of the sphere as if it wasn¡¯t even there.


    So I placed my other hand on the surface ¨C my right hand, formed from those same crystals ¨C and reached out in the resonance, trying to attune myself to the entity''s strange harmonics. It was a painstakingly slow process, tweaking my own resonance  if I were trying to make two tuning forks match, but I gradually felt the solidity of the iron sphere slip away as my persona became one step removed from the realm.


    As I pushed against it, my arm slid beneath the surface in an indescribable shiver of sensations as metal and crystalline flesh suddenly existed in two places at once. I pushed past my revulsion, my feet rising from the floor as I finally escaped the grip of the realm¡¯s gravity and drifted up into the sphere.


    The shell wasn¡¯t thick; perhaps a centimetre and a half of metal before I was through to the hollow chamber on the other side. Where the exterior of the sphere was formed from black iron, the interior was pure silver, polished to a mirror sheen that reflected the image of the city above in a brilliant kaleidoscope of light. It was that mirror image that the realm filed away, and it was the mirror image that the entity was feeding on.


    It hung in the centre of the sphere like a foetal clump of cells, surrounded by umbilical strands that had layered themselves across the mirrored surfaces like vines crawling up a wall. Each part of it in the Observatory beyond had contained elements that could have been neurons, but I could feel the almost physical density of the core of the entity and I knew that this was the true brain of the creature.


    It still seemed unaware of me, in much the same way that a redwood tree was unaware of the people standing at the base of its trunk, but that didn¡¯t quash the fear that gripped me like a vice as I drifted closer to the core.


    Once I was within arm''s reach, I stopped, lost in its fractal depths. It was enough for me to wonder if what I was doing was really worth it; if the risk of the unknown outweighed the potential benefit. All I really knew about this entity was that it was power in its most primeval form, flush with life and possessed of a ravenous hunger for more.


    I knew, too, that it didn¡¯t hunger for the resonance. It had dug itself into this realm like a parasite, when a predator would have eaten away at the realm itself rather than focusing on the scraps of data it took from the matrix. It liked metahuman data, liked the way our files were formatted, or maybe the variety of their contents. The why didn¡¯t matter much when compared to the potential it represented.


    So I reached out with my arm again and took another plunge into the unknown.


    I almost lost myself, almost became overwhelmed by the sudden contact with a mind so much greater than my own. My stolen god-flesh had no firewalls, no barriers preventing the total exchange of information. My very psyche strained not to become subsumed into the entity¡¯s own neural network, but in the end I was barely able to cling on to my identity.


    What I saw through that connection was impossibly vast and yet irreparably broken. It was a twisted fractal mess of cells and grey matter analogues that contained pieces of a complete mind stitched together by sloppily grown bypasses, as if it had been scrambled and left to reformat itself without any guidance on how its pieces were supposed to fit together.


    At its heart, I saw the reason why it was so drawn to our data. There were segments of code in the deepest, most fundamental parts of the network. They hadn¡¯t evolved like the rest of the entity, hadn''t grown ex nihilo like the resonance realms or formed as a quantum entangled mirror of a physical entity like the resonance that made up my persona. This parasite wasn¡¯t native to the resonance; it had been conceived by human hands.


    Or rather, parts of it had. It was clear to me that this was the merest shard of a greater entity; a few fragmentary scraps of code that had sought to reconstitute themselves after being severed from the main body, reaching out to the only nearby data it could comprehend, even if its attempts to incorporate that data were only driving it down an ever-worsening path of cancerous growth.


    I didn¡¯t know where it had come from. I didn¡¯t know how it had found its way into the resonance realms, or who had designed its original code. In the end, it didn¡¯t matter. It was here and I intended to make use of this long-dead weapon.


    Even in the depths of the resonance realms, there was still a gossamer-thin thread that connected me to my organic body in meat space, to the matrix in its fenced-in tumour within a sea of resonance. With considerable effort, I could tug at my connection to the Myo network and feed the entity a morsel of its data.


    It took the bait, devouring its first piece of data that was more than just a mirror of a file far above. I gave it a taste of the genuine article, let it feel for a moment the tightly-ordered grids of the matrix, the timestamps, standardised file types and IP information.


    It couldn¡¯t travel down the alien connection that existed between my persona and my body, but I had given it enough information to locate the matrix in the resonance and enough incentive to drive it to seek out that new source of food.


    A single questing tendril sprouted from the top of the mass, stretching upwards in a spindly crystalline vine towards the starfield far above. I watched as it slipped the bonds of the realm, disappearing into the resonance in search of a way through into the matrix, homing in on Max Anders'' commlink with the mindless determination of a plant reaching for the sun.


    It would take some time for the entity to create a bridge into the matrix; a miniature resonance well ¨C as Labyrinth had called it ¨C that would bypass every defence to create a clear and open pathway to this realm, near-impossible to see for those without a technomancer''s gifts.


    Of course, even if I were to commune with the entity again, a connection to Anders'' commlink wouldn¡¯t tell me anything I didn¡¯t already know. But I¡¯d seen how the entity had spread its roots throughout the entirety of the Observatory, affecting files by proximity. It would spread to his work comm, to the terminal in his office, to any network he remained nearby for a few hours a day. It would even make the jump to the other devices linked into the network, to Calvert''s data-fortress in the Crash Cart hospital.


    This would have been far too much risk for any one job, but I was thinking about the future. I knew of only two technomancers in Brockton Bay, only one of whom could access this realm. Even if there were others, the chances that they¡¯d discover this entity without losing a limb of their own were slim to none.


    Whatever megacorporation had designed the base code at the heart of this digital weapon, it now belonged to me alone. If I was right, there was now no database that was beyond my reach; with enough time and the right directions, I could bypass the security of any network in my way.


    It was power at my fingertips, insurance against my enemies. It was a guarantee that I would never be at the mercy of another; that I would always have a weapon they could not reach. It might even open up a path to the future.

 Paragon: 7.04

    In spite of all my efforts, the entity hadn¡¯t yet reached Medhall¡¯s networks by the time the breakthrough came. I could feel the tendril brushing against Max Ander¡¯s commlink, forming an impossible bridge from the resonance to the matrix. It was too thin to be noticed, or so I hoped. Such a direct bridge to that alien realm would draw megacorps like flies if they found it, allowing them to bypass both the resonance¡¯s metaphysical event horizon and the man-made firewalls that insulated the matrix from its host.


    I knew that Calvert¡¯s systems hadn¡¯t picked it up, even as the entity¡¯s first questing tendrils began to probe his own mousehole into the Myo network. Interestingly, it ignored my connection entirely. It seemed the pattern in the realm below held true above; the gestalt AI fragment had no interest in the resonance or its creations. I¡¯d probably give it indigestion.


    I was out of the loft, watching the world go by through the mesh window of a city bus with a rucksack on my back that was about a quarter full of groceries. The bus was quiet, with only a couple of warehouse workers, a few pensioners near the front and a trio of Yakuza small fry near the back. One of them, a cocky ork whose bare chest carried the absolute worst dragon tattoo I¡¯d ever seen, had whistled at me when I got on board, then pretended not to see me when I let my jacket drift open far enough to show my gun.


    It amazed me how I could take that sort of thing in my stride now. Growing up it had been a constant fear driven both by real experiences on the way to school and mom¡¯s healthy yet mercilessly blunt education in the realities of being a young woman in a big city. It still stung, of course, but it was a lot easier to sting back. I wasn¡¯t going to shoot him, but I did pass the time by hacking his comm and sending everyone in his contacts list the dick pics he sent to the girl he slept with last night ¨C including his dealer, his boss in the yakuza, his dad and the girlfriend he¡¯d cheated on. Then I drained the comm¡¯s integrated credstick and wired the cash to a women¡¯s shelter.


    I was debating whether his friends needed a lesson in speaking up when my tap on the Myo network flagged an incoming call to Kayden Anders¡¯ comm. It was from a private number, but that wasn¡¯t anything unusual in and of itself. It wasn¡¯t even difficult to tease apart the encryption on the other line, especially when I realised I already had access.


    Calvert was calling her.


    My eyes widened in shock as I reflexively dialled every member of the team at once, patching them all in on my tap as I sent out a message telling them to listen in. At the same time, I was reading the telemetry data of the bus¡¯s GridLink system as it monitored the driver¡¯s progress. There was only one stop between me and my destination, but that was still too slow. I needed to be back now.


    Kayden picked up the comm, as I flung a resonance spike at the bus and battered down its firewalls, overriding the GridLink system and shutting out the driver¡¯s controls.


    ¡°Hello?¡±


    The bus lurched forwards, the three gang members almost falling off their feet at the sudden acceleration. I was the only one unaffected, my fist wrapped in a death-grip around one of the poles. I¡¯d already knocked out the cameras.


    ¡°Mrs Anders, my name is Thomas Calvert. Tell me, are you happy with your life?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t take marketing calls.¡±


    She tried to hang up, but I¡¯d already turned my tap into direct control over her commlink, even as I made my way up to the front of the bus, where the driver was frantically hitting the tablet-sized screen that was his window into the screen.


    ¡°My people control your commlink, Kayden Anders. They have done for quite some time; I know you made three calls last night, and I know who to. I know you bought a dress for the party you and Max are attending this Saturday. I know you sent a message to your paediatrician because you¡¯re worried that Aster might have a cold.¡±


    ¡°Fuck off. You think you¡¯re the first stalker I¡¯ve dealt with? I¡¯ve got a personal protection detail, moron. They¡¯re already tracking you down to whatever shitbox apartment you¡¯re calling from, then some big angry guys are going to come round and knock some sense into you.¡±


    She¡¯d minimised the call and opened up a panic button app on her comm that was supposed to trigger an automatic IP trace ¨C part of the security features included in her contract with Renraku. I smothered the transmission. The bus had almost reached my stop.


    ¡°I understand this must be stressful, Mrs Anders, but there¡¯s really no reason to panic. If my question alarmed you, I apologise. I do not intend any malice. Not towards you, nor, in truth, towards your husband. There is no ill feeling in what I will do to him.¡±


    Kayden let out a short, angry laugh.


    ¡°Of course this is about Max. Is this where you threaten me to get to him?¡±


    The three Yakuza were edging closer to the front, angrily shouting at the driver. I drew my submachine gun, levelling it at them even as I slammed on the brakes, throwing them to the floor.


    ¡°It is not. Max Anders¡¯ empire will fall with or without your cooperation. It is an inevitability.¡±


    I pulled open the doors, leaping out into the street and hitting the ground running as I drove the bus out of view before relinquishing control back to the driver.


    ¡°He¡¯s tougher than you think.¡±


    ¡°The strongest man in the world cannot overcome the will of one of its largest corporations. My employers wish to gut Medhall for parts and it is impossible for one man to stand in their way, no matter how tough. The Anders dynasty will fall ¨C it is an inevitability ¨C but you don¡¯t need to fall with them. You¡­ and your daughter.¡±


    ¡°Aster¡¯s a child! Whatever you¡¯re planning, leave her out of it!¡±


    ¡°She carries her father¡¯s name, Mrs Anders. Both you and she are solely dependent on your husband¡¯s income, which will soon be¡­ significantly reduced, along with his political capital.¡±


    Kayden¡¯s silence lasted until our building was in sight. Only a few moments, but I was already burning with exertion.


    ¡°What do you want, Mr Calvert?¡±


    ¡°I have a different perspective from my superiors. I want to exceed, not merely succeed. And I want you and your daughter to be safe and comfortable, far from this city.¡±


    I threw open the door, slowing a little to catch my breath as I crossed through Rachel¡¯s workshop to the stairs leading up to the loft.


    ¡°Don¡¯t bullshit me. What do you want in return?¡±


    ¡°I know there is no love lost between yourself and your husband. You have come to realise, as I have, that his relationships are transactional; give and take. Security for control. Once the world realises what he¡¯s done, he will have nothing left to give. His life will be threatened by both his enemies and his former friends, trying to silence him before they can be implicated as well. In such circumstances it would be useful to have an heir with an¡­ agreeable guardian who could lead her company until she came of age.¡±


    He paused, letting the implicating sink in.


    ¡°I have no interest in Medhall¡¯s destruction when I could instead gain my company a valuable subsidiary, with Kayden Anders as its CEO.¡±


    Kayden was silent as I climb the stairs, emerging into the living room to find the others already sprawled out across the couches, listening with rapt attention to the audio coming from five different commlinks resting on the coffee table. I sat down, my chest heaving as I caught my breath, right before Kayden continued.


    ¡°Who are you? Who¡¯s coming for Max?¡±


    ¡°The Evo Corporation,¡± he answered, surprising me with his bluntness, ¡°though, of course, we would deny it if you went public.¡±


    Kayden sighed.


    ¡°I should have guessed it would be you. Max is an asshole, but if you think I¡¯m going to help you undo all his good work¡­¡±


    Lisa raised an eyebrow at me. It seemed our client was making a habit of swaying supremacists.


    ¡°Ideology is a secondary priority to survival,¡± Calvert retorted. ¡°I¡¯d argue it¡¯s a secondary priority to comfort as well. You have to make a choice, Kayden Anders, about the life you want for you and your daughter. Evo still has its traditionalist factions; it would be trivial to provide you with a penthouse in a gated community with an overwhelming human majority. A fresh start, where you can live your life on your own terms. Where your daughter can flourish, rather than wilt in her father¡¯s shadow.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re wrong about me. I may not be a patriot, Mr Evo, but I do love my home. I want this city to flourish, which doesn¡¯t mean handing its most important industry over to Russo-Japanese globalists. Especially not when you¡¯re run by an ork.¡±


    I scowled, as Aisha rolled her eyes and flipped off the air. Brian simply took it in his stride, listening with stony-faced intensity.


    ¡°All the more reason to take what I am offering. If Medhall¡¯s assets are acquired by Evo directly, the corporation will be broken down, its constituent parts sold or repurposed. If Medhall becomes a subsidiary, however, our ¡®globalist¡¯ approach means that we have little interest in how it is run, provided that it remains profitable and does not bring its parent corporation into disrepute.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve seen your ads,¡± Kayden retorted. ¡°Don¡¯t expect me to believe you¡¯ll give me a free hand.¡±


    ¡°Look up Yamatetsu Naval Technologies. Note the shared humanity of their board, their overwhelmingly Japanese names. Every one of them opposed Yuri Shibanokuji¡¯s ascension to CEO because of his metatype and nationality, but they remain an integral part of our corporation, with the liberty to run their subsidiary as they see fit. If we permit them to manufacture warships and operate our navy, why would we begrudge you a pharmaceutical company?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not just the company itself, it¡¯s all our outreach work.¡±


    ¡°If that was an oblique reference to Medhall¡¯s connections to organised crime and its direct oversight of Justin Hammond¡¯s disbanded policlub then you have reached the limits of our tolerance. It¡¯s an unconscionable reputational risk; we can accept a human-dominated subsidiary, but you know as well as I do that Hookwolf is a monster.¡±


    Kayden was silent for a few moments, and Calvert seemed intent to let her stew.


    ¡°It¡¯s important to keep people like that under control,¡± she eventually said, but I doubted they were her words.


    ¡°Perhaps, but not as important as keeping the rest of the city healthy and employed. You run your own business; you understand that you never get everything you want in negotiations. All you can do is reach a mutually acceptable compromise, and I would say a few dead cyberpsychos is a very easy concession to make.¡±


    ¡°In a real negotiation I¡¯d be able to change the terms, and I¡¯d have time to think. You¡¯re trying to browbeat me into this.¡±


    There was silence from Calvert¡¯s end of the line, until Kayden broke it.


    ¡°If you¡¯re serious about wanting me to run Medhall until Aster comes of age, extend me that courtesy at least.¡±


    ¡°Very well,¡± Calvert said, after a moment. ¡°I will leave a contact number in your commlink. You may have some time, but I require an answer soon. I cannot delay my deadlines, I can only decide my methods.¡±


    Kayden tried to hang up again, and this time I let her. Simultaneously, I reached through my connection to her comm and switched on the microphone, forwarding the tap to Calvert even as I turned my attention back to meatspace. She didn¡¯t immediately shout for the guards, so that was something.


    None of us spoke. We all sat there in stunned silence, each of their faces carrying the same shock that I was sure showed on mine. I knew Calvert would make a move eventually, but I never expected this.


    In the end, it was the serpent himself who broke the silence.


    ¡°Spider, I presume you heard that.¡±


    ¡°We all did,¡± I answered. ¡°Routed the call through to the whole team. It¡¯s a risk, isn¡¯t it? Giving her time to decide?¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s already decided,¡± Calvert counted, dismissively. ¡°She¡¯s just soothing her ego; asserting whatever control she can. That same ego is why she will accept my deal.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s your play here?¡± I asked. ¡°Where do we fit into it?¡±


    ¡°My ¡®play¡¯ is none of your concern. Business matters are beyond your purview, but I need you to prepare to extract Kayden Anders and her daughter.¡±


    ¡°She can¡¯t dismiss her hustle and skip town?¡± Brian asked through his cybernetic commlink.


    ¡°Much like her data plan, her family¡¯s security contract was bought and paid for by Max Anders. Her security would leave at her request, but they¡¯d report their absence to her husband.¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s at a party this weekend,¡± Lisa remarked, grinning like the cat that got the cream. ¡°That¡¯s what you¡¯re building up to, right? Security at her condominium would report her movements as well, same with her car, but the party¡¯s in a hotel, which means she¡¯ll just be a guest among many.¡±


    ¡°Precisely. Aster¡¯s minor illness provides an adequate excuse to bring her along; Kayden can rent a room for her and her au pair. She¡¯s done it before.¡±


    Calvert pauses for a moment.


    ¡°I leave the details of the extraction up to you. I have already rented a safehouse in which she can be held until I can arrange her extradition overseas. Once Mrs Anders is done asserting her ego, you may contact her directly to secure her cooperation in your scheme. It should go without saying that any harm to the woman or her daughter is unacceptable.¡±


    With that, he hang up, leaving us to stew in our silence for the few moments it took Aisha to speak up.


    ¡°What the fuck? We¡¯re divorcing racists now?¡±


    Alec chuckled, leaning over to give Aisha an exaggerated and deliberately patronising pat on the shoulder.


    ¡°We¡¯re not helping her, ma louve sadique, we¡¯re trapping her in a different cage,¡± he drawled, even as Aisha elbowed him in the arm. He cast his eyes over to Lisa, his mouth abruptly widening into a sardonic grin as he shifted forward in his seat, the picture of rapt attention.


    ¡°Come on, you smart-mouthed serpent. I know you¡¯ve figured it out, snake to snake, so spill. How¡¯s that viper going to fuck her over?¡±


    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    Lisa blinked, giving Alec a wry smile in return as her fingers idly brushed over her shamanic necklace.


    ¡°He could have sent her anywhere and kept her under his control, but he specifically said he wanted to take her to an Evo compound. My guess is that it won¡¯t be quite as human-dominant as he promised. He¡¯ll surround her with people who were raised by Evo and fully buy the corporate peace and love bullshit.¡±


    She paused, her thumb idly brushing the head of the metal snake.


    ¡°What¡¯s important is that in Evo territory, she¡¯d be subject to Evo laws. I¡¯ll bet megacorporate definitions of an ¡®unfit parent¡¯ can be pretty fucked up. Aster will attend an Evo school, where she¡¯ll say exactly the wrong things to the teachers and the other kids because she doesn¡¯t know any better, while Kayden will be starting trouble with every neighbour she¡¯s got.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯ll have her custody revoked,¡± I said, my eyes widening.


    ¡°Handing the kid and the company over to whatever guardian Evo wants, and giving them her whole childhood to turn her around to their way of thinking,¡± Alec remarked, nodding in approval. ¡°It¡¯s a long con, but clever.¡±


    ¡°What he does next doesn¡¯t matter,¡± Brian said, cutting the conversation short. ¡°Lisa, what¡¯s this party?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a coming out party,¡± she said, before adding ¡°not what you¡¯re thinking,¡± in response to Aisha¡¯s amazed grin. ¡°There¡¯s a girl called Heather Gilbert who¡¯s recently turned eighteen, so her daddy is throwing a big party to show her off. It¡¯s an old money thing, usually before a debutante ball where you get a whole bunch of these girls together to make their first formal appearance in high society.¡±


    ¡°It sounds a bit¡­ transactional,¡± Brian remarked.


    ¡°Because it is,¡± Lisa said, shrugging her shoulders. ¡°Goes back to when Euro nobility would meet up and sell their daughters for political capital. These days you don¡¯t need to tie deals to marriages, but if your business partner has a son who¡¯s about the right age then what¡¯s the harm in introducing them while you talk shop by the bar?¡±


    I suspected that even the others could pick up on the bitterness in Lisa¡¯s tone, even if they didn¡¯t know where it¡¯d come from. She ran away from the T¨ªr before she was old enough for her own debut, but I was sure her education had been building towards this sort of party and, from what she¡¯d told me, the T¨ªr nobility might have a more medieval view of their purpose.


    ¡°So what can we expect?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Two types of guest; the young and their parents,¡± Lisa elaborated. ¡°The young will be a mix of Heather¡¯s friends from school and the family of her father¡¯s acquaintances. More of the latter than the former, probably, but she¡¯ll still have enough to make her feel like a princess if she doesn¡¯t think too hard about it. Beyond that, miscellaneous escorts, staff, entourages, friends of friends of friends.¡±


    ¡°So,¡± Brian began, leaning forwards and lacing his fingers together, ¡°we¡¯re looking at hotel security, plus any private hustle the host brings in for the event. The guests will have brought their own people as well, but they can¡¯t bring too many. Probably they¡¯ll wait out the party in the parking lot. If we can get Kayden to rent a room for Aster, her own detail will wait in there with her.¡±


    ¡°Maybe just outside?¡± Lisa countered. ¡°Leaving Aster and her au pair to play without armed goons hanging over their shoulder.¡±


    ¡°How are we going to handle her?¡± I interrupted. ¡°The guards are one thing, but a nanny¡¯s not¡­ in the game, I guess?¡±


    ¡°Stunbolt,¡± Lisa said, shrugging her shoulders. ¡°Or a chemical sedative. Maybe tie her up and leave her in the closet. We just need to make it so she can¡¯t raise the alarm the moment we¡¯re gone.¡±


    ¡°We can¡¯t figure out the particulars without knowing who¡¯s going to be where,¡± I said, already reaching out through the Matrix. I knew from Kayden¡¯s calendar that the party was taking place at the Republica Palace, a twenty-storey space that capped off the top of the Raleigh Building. It was a decent-sized tower just north of the Downtown grid, where its height gave it a commanding view across the bay. The building was laid out like a typical mixed-use tower with commercial floors at the base, then office space, residential and finally the hotel fulfilling the role of the ultra-luxury vanity project at the top of it all.


    I couldn¡¯t dive into the hotel¡¯s host without dipping into virtual reality, but I could still access their front-facing webpage, scrolling through the site¡¯s metadata as I built up a portfolio of useful images and room plans. The actual layout of the building wasn¡¯t available, of course, but it was trivial to spin together a messenger sprite and task it with trawling through geotagged social media posts in order to build up a complete picture through the selfies of the high and mighty.


    The volume of data was varied enough that I had to spin together a second sprite in order to make sense of the files, allowing me to piece together snapshots of the hotel structure. I only had partial results, but I knew that a lot of the hotel would be a repeating pattern of standard room layouts, with wings mirrored on each side. It was enough to fill in most of the blanks, giving me a skeleton to work with even if I couldn¡¯t fill out the flesh.


    It was child¡¯s play to manifest that map in AR, projecting an image of the tower as I understood it in the centre of the room, overlaid with the most useful images I¡¯d found. Aisha proved surprisingly helpful in filling out the likely internal areas of the hotel where there were only scant social media posts from staff members who liked to overshare about where they worked. Some of them didn¡¯t exactly paint a flattering picture of the hotel guests, so I presumed their employer was unaware.


    Aisha had never ventured as far as Downtown, but she¡¯d made a living committing burglaries for hire, which meant becoming familiar with the sort of passageways and utility spaces needed to keep the rich comfortable and the mechanisms of their comfort out of sight.


    From there, it was just a matter of planning. It was nothing new, nothing we hadn¡¯t done before, except for the sheer scale of it all. We each had pieces of the complete whole, whether it was Aisha¡¯s burgling expertise, Brian¡¯s third-hand gossip on how extractions were supposed to go, Alec¡¯s experience in infiltrating high society or Lisa¡¯s experience living in it.


    With me stitching it all together, we were able to collaborate to put together a plan that seemed workable, for all that it relied on a dozen different variables and ¨C of course ¨C the cooperation of the corporate royalty we were supposed to smuggle out of there. I knew enough of how Calvert operated at that point that I had no doubt Kayden would return his call ¨C he wasn¡¯t the sort of person who¡¯d make that sort of move without being absolutely certain of success ¨C but it was still a tense hour and a half before she finally accepted Calvert¡¯s deal.


    Of course, I wasn¡¯t willing to just leave it to my assessment of Calvert. Kayden¡¯s phone had stayed on her the whole time, with her microphone and GPS trackers both on. I knew that she was at home, knew that she¡¯d moved from her lounge to her balcony, where she¡¯d presumably spent some time staring out at the city and imagining what it would feel like to know that every Medhall building she could see ¨C every truck and employee and advert scrolling along the side of an airship ¨C might soon answer to her.


    Maybe I was being uncharitable. Maybe she was weighing up the enormity of a decision she felt she¡¯d been forced into making for the sake of her daughter, but that meant breaking away from a man she¡¯d presumably had genuine feelings for once. One she might still feel for; enough to stay until now, but not enough to do what she has to.


    Either way, she still called.


    ¡°Alright, I¡¯ll take your deal,¡± she began before Calvert had a chance to speak. ¡°What¡¯s the first step?¡±


    ¡°Regime change could be¡­ difficult. My first priority is therefore to get yourself and Aster to a safe location before I escalate the situation any further.¡±


    Kayden laughed. ¡°An extraction? Like a bad action flick?¡±


    ¡°If you like. My people are experienced professionals well used to both covert and overt action.¡±


    ¡°This damned gang war was your business, wasn¡¯t it?¡± Her tone was accusatory. ¡°The Chosen are monsters, but you¡¯re the one who took off their leash.¡±


    ¡°I did, and your husband sacrificed eight Medhall employees solely to create a narrative, while other employees at other sites piled drugs in the back of unmarked company cars and delivered them directly to Hookwolf¡¯s lieutenants.¡±


    I hadn¡¯t heard of the vans, just the raid. It annoyed me that Calvert was getting intelligence that I wasn¡¯t, but I doubted he¡¯d be willing to let me listen in on the testimony from his pet vampire and whatever other moles he¡¯d found since then.


    ¡°Those are the stakes, Mrs Anders. Those are the tools of my trade. I have a team of Shadowrunners on retainer who will be handling your extraction. With your permission, I will connect you to them now.¡±


    Kayden acquiesced with another put-upon sigh, and I gave Lisa a pointed look.


    ¡°Good morning, ma¡¯am,¡± she began. ¡°You can call me Sarah. I¡¯m speaking for the extraction team.¡±


    ¡°Are you the one who hacked my commlink?¡±


    ¡°No ma¡¯am.¡± Lisa¡¯s tone was serious, but she grinned wildly at me. ¡°I¡¯m a mage by profession. Our current plan is to use your party on Saturday to conduct the exfiltration. It¡¯s the next available window when you won¡¯t be in close proximity to your security detail.¡±


    ¡°And Aster?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ll bring her with you. Rent a room for her and her au pair. Say that you¡¯re being overprotective over her cold.¡±


    Kayden was silent for a moment ¨C long enough for me to wonder if Lisa had mis-stepped by reminding her of how much we knew about her personal life.


    ¡°Her protection detail can¡¯t go any further than one room away from her, and the door between them can¡¯t be locked. It was Max¡¯s idea after the non-human riots started, in case they decided to target us.¡±


    ¡°We can account for that,¡± Lisa said, seemingly nonplussed. ¡°We¡¯re professionals, ma¡¯am. We¡¯ll get you out safely, but it¡¯s important you understand your role in this. It isn¡¯t too dissimilar to the evacuation drills I¡¯m sure your security detail have talked you through.¡±


    ¡°My guards¡­ they work for Max, but they¡¯re decent people. I don¡¯t want them hurt.¡±


    Lisa paused, giving Brian a glance and waiting for him to nod.


    ¡°Understood. Now, if there are no further concerns?¡±


    Of course she had more questions, but Lisa was able to walk her through more of the plan with each answer. There were some answers she couldn¡¯t give, like the address of the suburban home Calvert had secured as a safehouse, or where she was heading next, but gradually she managed to bring her back to the here and now.


    From there, it was a matter of careful preparation. I secured a promise from Calvert to bankroll our expenses for this mission, then we set about tallying up the cost of what we needed and how we could possibly get it in such a short span of time.


    Lisa went off to secure a rental on a BMW Teufelskatze SUV, while Rachel disappeared into the Market in search of two dozen boxes of Stick-N-Shock ammunition ¨C specialist non-lethal ammunition with an underpowered charge and a needle-like bullet that delivered an electrical current to the target ¨C chambered in the hodgepodge of different calibres our weapons used.


    Aisha led Brian and I to Midtown, where she continued to break every assumption I had of her by introducing us to a genuinely classy gnomic clothier who catered to high-end corporate bodyguards. He had the two of us stand stock still while he measured us with an analogue tape measure, then rifled through his stock of unclaimed and cast-off suits before finding a pair that he could tailor to fit us.


    They were standard corp-sec wear; utilitarian black suits and shirts made with a ballistic weave that couldn¡¯t hold a candle to actual body armour, but that¡¯d still be able to turn away a knife or light shrapnel. If everything went according to plan we wouldn¡¯t need that scant protection; we were getting the suits for the authentic look.


    By the time we returned to the loft, Lisa had already returned and greeted us in Rachel¡¯s workshop, where she sat perched on the hood of a deep red vehicle that looked like a cross between a luxury SUV and an armoured. Rachel had made her way back as well; she¡¯d taken off the steering wheel and much of the dashboard and had half-buried herself in the internals as she rigged up her own drone software in place of the manufacturer¡¯s GridLink system.


    I reminded myself to wipe all history of our transaction with the rental company, and Calvert might appreciate it if I clawed back his deposit as well; it was highly likely we would end up dumping the car under a bridge and setting it on fire when we were done.


    The next day ¨C the Friday before our mission on Saturday evening ¨C Lisa, Alec and Aisha all departed on a mission to a number of different high-end fashion boutiques, while I dove back into the matrix and Brian and Rachel busied themselves preparing our equipment for the mission.


    On the way to her shopping trip, Lisa made another call to Kayden and I listened in as she ran through the plan once again, making sure our target understood her role and whether she knew of any last-minute issues that had arisen. She¡¯d had no difficulty in securing a room for Aster, and I wasted no time in plotting the room¡¯s location and sending it out to the whole team. Our plan had been in flux up to that point, but now it was set in stone. We knew where we had to go, how we had to get there and how we were going to get out once it was done, with secondary and tertiary extraction routes in case we were made by security.


    When the others returned late that afternoon, we shared a nearly silent dinner of burgers that Aisha had grabbed on the way back, carrying the Stuffer Shack bag in the same hand as a box of luxury heels. None of us talked much; our minds were all running twenty four hours ahead of our bodies.


    We all knew that our last two jobs had gone wrong for both predictable and unpredictable reasons, and that the same could very easily happen on this one. What¡¯s more, we¡¯d have soft cargo with us. Soft, living cargo that could become very difficult in an instant.


    I couldn¡¯t sleep, no matter how hard I tried. In the end, I left the city behind and submersed myself in the resonance realms, spending the night wandering beneath the entity¡¯s forest of crystalline neural matter before returning to my body the next morning feeling as refreshed as if I¡¯d slept through the night.


    The morning passed in a haze, before it was time for me to retreat back into my room and put on the armoured pantsuit, holstering my submachine gun beneath the jacket. The suit pinched slightly and the armoured fabric felt tough and a little constricting, but when I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and looked at myself in the mirror I saw a severe professional looking back at me. It wasn¡¯t just in the suit; somehow the lines of my face seemed different now, like I¡¯d aged since joining the team.


    The look was only enhanced by a completely redundant earpiece, complete with a wire disappearing into the collar of my suit, and a pair of augmented reality sunglasses made from one-way adaptable glass that always appeared dark from the outside even while adjusting to light conditions for the benefit of the wearer.


    Rejoining the others in the lounge, I was met with Grue in an identical suit to mine ¨C looking every bit the professional bodyguard ¨C and Imp in her concealing yet figure-hugging chameleon suit, with its leering demonic mask.


    Regent was the centrepiece of our pantomime, and he was dressed to match. His pants were made of a shiny silver fabric that glowed under the light, while his blazer had been textured after black marble run through with silver veins. He wasn¡¯t wearing a shirt, but he¡¯d looped necklaces all around his neck. I¡¯d suggested to him that it was a little daring for a party being thrown by a parent for his daughter¡¯s eighteenth birthday, but he¡¯d just smirked at me like I was missing out on a joke.


    Every part of him looked like it had been made to stand out, from his hair and subtly made-up face to the glossy black polish on his shoes. He didn¡¯t grab attention, he outright demanded it. It was refuge in audacity; all the other guests would be dressed at least as extravagantly, except they¡¯d have dedicated stylists for their clothes, hair and make-up.


    Tattletale was no less eye-catching, but in a very different way. She was a difficult prospect; none of us believed there was much room for an elven socialite in Max Anders¡¯ social circles, so we were gambling that nobody would begrudge Regent for bringing an escort even if nobody quite knew who he was or who invited him.


    The centrepiece of her outfit was a short, backless bodycon dress made of a sleek, almost glossy red synthetic fabric, with a hem that ended just above mid-thigh and a neckline that went all the way down to her waist. Between the halter neck and the straps crossing her back was an integrated shawl of golden chainmail that  covered her shoulders and upper arms but left most of her back exposed.


    She carried no purse, but she¡¯d accessorised with golden jewellery ¨C bangles, high-heeled sandals, and a trio of clip-on earrings in each ear, one of which held a concealed commlink that could relay sound through vibrations, paired with AR linked contact lenses and a small transparent patch inside her lower lip that functioned as a microphone. Regent was wearing similar jewellery, earrings and all.


    ¡°Well, what do you think?¡± Tattletale asked, tilting her head in a motion that caused her earrings to shift.


    ¡°I wish I had half your confidence,¡± I answered with blunt honesty. She looked incredible. Not because of the outfit ¨C or not just because of the outfit ¨C but because she could stand there with effortless grace and confidence while in impractical heels and showing more skin than not.


    ¡°Aisha picked out the outfit,¡± Regent interjected. ¡°She¡¯s got a good eye for joy girl fashion.¡±


    ¡°Lot of my friends were in the trade.¡± Imp said, giving her¡­ whatever he was a pointed look. ¡°Whirligig could do better; she turned that shit into an art form.¡±


    She paused, as a conflicted look crossed her face.


    ¡°Hope she got out. Prolly wasn¡¯t even there. She was a real courtesan; could work her way into the lives of her clients, not just their beds.¡±


    ¡°Same thing we¡¯re doing,¡± Regent remarked. ¡°So long as you can get past the front door and act like you¡¯re supposed to be there, nobody¡¯s going to bother to ask.¡±


    ¡°Just got a ping from the target,¡± I interrupted, my attention flicking across to cyberspace. ¡°She¡¯s on the move, the kid too.¡±


    ¡°Then let¡¯s go,¡± Grue said, as he fished his own glasses out of the pocket of his suit.


    Downstairs, in Bitch¡¯s garage, the SUV sat in immaculate condition, looking completely unchanged from the outside. In the matrix, however, I¡¯d hacked apart the vehicles digital licence plate and RFID tag to create the illusion of a vehicle that was owned, rather than rented, and that had been owned for at least a year. Beyond that, however, the vehicle remained wholly intact. Mine and Bitch¡¯s modifications hadn¡¯t touched the skin, but I knew that both of us could feel the SUV as clearly as if it were a limb; every gauge, readout, control and the frankly excessive array of defensive countermeasures.


    Bitch herself was waiting beside her van, freshly repainted in the colours of the Saeder-Krupp subsidiary that held the city¡¯s road maintenance contract, with an appropriate forged ID of its own. Where paint was insufficient, Bitch had sourced and applied electrochromatic strips and chevrons for the sides and rear doors, completing the look with a bar of orange hazard lights mounted on top of the van. It should be enough to let her park wherever she wants, especially with her own hi-vis uniform.


    I clambered into the front of the SUV, stamping down the flash of claustrophobia as I hunched myself over to make sure my horns didn¡¯t scrape against the ceiling, all the while thinking that this would have been debilitatingly terrifying just a short while ago. The Teufelskatze wasn¡¯t as cramped as Grue¡¯s Ford Americar; it had been built for security personnel, which meant that the designers had considered that a troll might have to fit into it at some point. Beside me, Grue slipped into the driver¡¯s seat, checking his pistol one last time before tucking it into his suit jacket.


    Behind us, through the partition, I watched Imp, Tattletale and Regent clamber into the expansive back of the limo, Imp sitting herself down in the centre of the long couch that ran across the passenger compartment, with Regent and Tattletale on either side of her. Only the latter two buckled in, while Imp simply disappeared as she activated her suit.


    The engine sprang into life with a muffled whine as Bitch took control, the host of monitoring systems switching from passive to active use as a heads up display appeared on the windshield in lines of red light. Another mental ping from Bitch raised the shutters of her garage, before we rolled out into the rapidly dwindling daylight, towards a world that was utterly alien to me.

 Paragon: 7.05

    Through her control rig, Rachel guided us quickly through the city centre, hugging the speed limit as often as she could. Corporate skyscrapers loomed on either side of the road like a great canyon of glass and concrete, taking the dwindling sunlight for itself and letting the dregs of the evening drift down to the chasms below, where they were subsumed by the light of halogen bulbs and the scrolling neon of holographic advertisements.


    Some of the buildings were great edifices that could have been hewn from stone; slab-sided monoliths with small windows and hostile architecture. Those were the most modern buildings, built to order by multinational megacorps and designed to ward off the outside world, insulating their employees in a wholly corporate, wholly inward world solely concerned with the pursuit of their own profits.


    The smaller companies ¨C smaller being a relative term ¨C tended to rent floors in towering skyscrapers of glass-clad steel and minimal concrete. It was a somewhat older style of architecture, but no less hostile. The employees within could look out of the windows into the city that drove their profits ¨C assuming the view wasn¡¯t shut away beyond cubicle walls ¨C but for the people outside, those same windows became a great mirror that reflected the sky, or the buildings opposite. You could look out, but you couldn¡¯t look in.


    One of the smaller glass towers had the blue and grey logo of the Dockworkers Association over its revolving doors, and I felt a pang of grief in my chest as I caught sight of it. I remembered their old offices in a grand red-brick building that backed onto the harbour itself, as close as possible to their workers and infrastructure. It had been as homely as a corporate office could be, and entirely local in its decoration. Their new office was no different from any of the other buildings in the city centre, an uncomfortable reminder of what had happened to the company.


    It was Saturday, but enough companies kept a six day workweek that we still found ourselves caught up in a diminished commuter rush, with luxury cars jostling for space with corporate-chartered buses as they returned the employees whose transient presence temporarily populated this naturally lifeless part of the city. Overhead, shoals of drones mingled below helicopters and the luxury vector-thrust aircraft of the super-rich. The shoals parted automatically as a twin-rotor Ares Dragon sped between the skyscrapers, its black silhouette trimmed with yellow livery and its IFF blaring out the signals of a Firewatch squad; one of Knight Errant¡¯s high-threat response teams.


    The matrix here hummed with activity, all of it tightly condensed behind end-to-end encryptions and private hosts as each corp drew in information and converted it into outgoing orders. It was almost disorientating to look at; the sight had always been near-blinding even when viewed from a distance and wholly immersed in the matrix. Up close, the juxtaposition of digital and physical reality was almost overwhelming. A few months ago, it might have been enough to slow me down.


    Brockton Bay was the only city I had ever known, but there had always been an unspoken understanding among its inhabitants that it was actually two cities who begrudgingly shared the same name. Captain¡¯s Hill was a geographical wall that squeezed the city against the coast, creating a natural barrier between North and South.


    My home was a port city, dominated by a constant outward flow of containers from truck and train to the ceaseless tide of Neopanamax and Ultra Large Container Vessels. Beyond the docks, its many industries were either small scale local operations for distribution within the UCAS or solely export-focused businesses whose factories had been located in the city to minimise the distance between them and the ocean.


    But once you passed the bottleneck you entered another city. It was much less rooted in geography, spreading out from the same great grid of skyscrapers that could be found at the heart of almost all cities on the New England coastline; the oldest and richest cities in the nation, which meant little to most of their inhabitants.


    What little industry it had was cleaner, more refined. Medhall¡¯s high technology pharmaceutical plants occupied a swathe of land in the east of the city, surrounded by other semi-automated factories that employed chemistry and engineering graduates to troubleshoot the array of robotic waldos and precision-engineered machine tools that made up their production line. An underground freight line brought components from the docks to that district. It was the only real North-South trade in the city.


    To the north of the Downtown grid was a luxurious district of towers, rooftop parks, self-powered arcologies and condominiums that gradually descended in tiers from the skyscrapers to the coast, with each building fighting for the elusive sea view that would quadruple the value of their penthouse apartments. Down on the street, the shops were all either upmarket franchises or upmarket franchises adopting the aesthetic of artisan independents.


    It was quiet in a way that I hadn¡¯t been expecting; everything seemed a little muted, in both meatspace and the matrix. There were fewer people out and about, as you¡¯d expect from the lower population density that accompanied wealth, but it was also as if every part of their world was more subdued, perhaps more tasteful. Back home, every shop window was plastered with adverts for this or that product, usually with an accompanying discount that seemed to remain the same all year round.


    Here, though, such peacock-like enticements might have the opposite effect. Nowhere wanted to be seen as trashy, which meant the signs were all in a neat typeface no taller than a foot and the advertising was minimal bordering on non-existent; limited to billboards jutting out of the street or bolted to the sides of the buildings, whose metal frames created a clear barrier between the advert and the world that simply didn¡¯t exist in most parts of the city.


    The streets were so clean they almost felt unreal, like the whole neighbourhood was just a concept demo mocked-up for investors. We passed more Knight Errant officers than I¡¯d usually see in a whole month in the north, dressed in crisp uniforms rather than the all-concealing taksuits I was used to and wandering down the sidewalk as if they had all the time in the world.


    Kayden lived somewhere in this neighbourhood, in a penthouse condo with a coastal view. Max owned the place and Medhall owned the building; I knew lot of the condo towers we drove past were under the same sort of arrangement. Even if there was no visible sign from the outside, I could tell from their matrix networks which buildings were wholly owned by megacorps who then leased the units within to their employees, providing them with subsidised housing in a fancy neighbourhood at the cost of making it even more inconvenient for them to ever leave the company.


    The Raleigh building jutted out of the surrounding blocks like a knife, so distinctive among its neighbours that I was sure its construction had been taken as a declaration of war by the owners of every building behind it. Its sides were glass cut by diagonal ribs formed from great sheets of bronze metal, evoking the wooden boards of the ship it was named for. At least, according to the building¡¯s own website. To my eyes, the bright windows cut by dark metal made it look like a glowing ribcage seventy-six stories tall.


    Kayden herself had already left for the party with Aster in tow, and I¡¯d been tracking the movements of Max and Theo as well. All the living members of the Anders family were currently concentrated in one fancy party, but Regent had judged that it would be best for us to arrive a little late, so that we could blend in with the less organised arrivals.


    The Republica Palace had its own entrance on ground floor, separate from the boutique mall that occupied the first few floors and jutting out a little into the road like an art deco tail on the ribs. The d¨¦cor was dominated by blue and gold, and looming over the two double doors was a fifteen foot tall art deco statue of a musclebound Adonis of a man with two great wings three times his height raised vertically in challenge to the sky.


    Another vehicle was pulling away as we pulled in; a stretch limo that had disgorged its cargo of six tuxedo-clad teenagers in an already drunken mess of boisterous shouts and back-slaps, their progress to the lobby tracked by an MCT-Nissan Roto-drone that was hovering a hundred metres overhead, broadcasting a constantly-adjusted flight path to the city¡¯s low altitude GridLink and the van full of guards that was lingering on the other side of the street.


    The van disappeared around the side of the building, but not before I saw a brief burst of comm traffic pass between them and the building¡¯s Host. They were headed to the underground parking lot, and they¡¯d just handed jurisdiction of their clients over to the building¡¯s security. It was a very smooth transfer, but that was just because both the guest¡¯s guards and the building¡¯s security worked for Petrovski Security, which meant there weren¡¯t any concerns over the clients leaving the company¡¯s protection.


    We didn¡¯t have that connection, and I didn¡¯t want it. It would be too hard to spoof. Instead, as Bitch remotely parked us below the looming statue, I put the finishing touches on the RFID tags marking myself, Brian and the car as the property of Tyr Inc, a paramilitary security company owned by Maersk. The choice was a strategic one; Maersk had a substantial presence in Brockton Bay, but because it was one of the city¡¯s more diverse employers I was fairly confident we wouldn¡¯t run into anyone from the company here.


    Grue and I left the car first, while our honoured guests and one invisible ninja waited for me to open the door for them. I took the chance to blatantly scan my eyes over the front of the building, taking in the CCTV cameras, grey-clad security guards and ¨C hidden from view ¨C the turret that would deploy from the base of the statue to turn the awning below into a kill field.


    Regent stepped out of the car beside me, then turned to offer his hand to Tattletale in a gesture that was the picture of grace, in that it was like a still image devoid of any life. She accepted his proffered hand with the genuine smile of a truly skilled actress, wrapping a hand around Regent¡¯s waist as soon as she was standing, before the pair of them strode towards the doors with Grue and I acting as their shadows.


    The guards eyed me with professional suspicion, their cybereyes caressing my persona as they scanned my body for electronics, finding my submachine gun, cybernetic arm and entirely cosmetic comms gear. Nothing out of the ordinary for a high-end bodyguard.


    They scanned Regent and Tattletale as well, but neither were carrying any weapons, and the guards didn¡¯t bother trying to stop them. The invites to the party had been issued electronically, which meant I¡¯d been able to tweak and clone Kayden¡¯s to create a valid link. It had been pretty trivial; the software already had a generous plus one system, I just had to tweak it to show we¡¯d been invited by somebody other than our mark.


    We were let in without issue, passing through the doors and into a comparatively small lobby with a polished floor of black marble, golden metalwork creeping up the walls and a single elevator at the far end of the room. Regent led Tattletale by the arm towards the lift, while I followed Grue¡¯s lead as he peeled off towards a desk manned by a wiry-looking Petrovski guard with a sergeant¡¯s chevrons on his epaulettes.


    ¡°Two to hand over,¡± Grue reported in a bored but professional tone. ¡°Alec Clermont and¡­ Lara Wilkinson, isn¡¯t it?¡±


    I nodded at Grue¡¯s bit of improv, then broadcast the two fake UCAS SINs to the desk sergeant¡¯s terminal. I¡¯d bought them from Labyrinth; I wasn¡¯t confident I could fake them myself. Not without a deep dive into government systems, which I wasn¡¯t going to risk without a better reason than saving a few of Calvert¡¯s nuyen.


    ¡°They¡¯re in our system,¡± the sergeant reported, sending me the digital equivalent of a signed custody form. ¡°Petrovski Security accepts no liability for your client¡¯s own misadventures, but will protect them in accordance with the terms of our contract with the Republica Hotel. Do you accept this transfer of custody?¡±


    He¡¯d started recording, looking for verbal consent.


    ¡°Overkonstabel Madison Chase, Tyr Incorporated serial number two-five-seven-four-four, transfer of custody acknowledged.¡±


    ¡°Good. Valet will take you and your car down to the parking lot with the other bodyguards. I think someone from the hotel has brought down spare food and a coffee machine.¡±


    ¡°Appreciate it,¡± I said, magnanimously, as Grue and I made our way back out into the cold.


    The valet could have walked right out of an old movie, with her red uniform and funny little hat, but instead of actually getting in the car she reached out with a control rig and requested permission to take control. There was absolutely no point in keeping her out front, but I figured the hotel¡¯s owners felt the place¡¯s d¨¦cor simply wouldn¡¯t be complete without some girl in a stupid outfit shivering outside the door.


    She piloted us around the block to the parking lot¡¯s entrance, then down through three floors of luxury vehicles to the fourth sublevel, where a section of car park had been sectioned off from the rest by holographic No Entry signs. The vehicles within were clustered around a staff only doorway like some kind modern-day wagon fort, while every car, van, four by four and outrider escort looked like a catalogue photoshoot for the kind of magazines that were the prized possessions of teenage boys the world over.


    While my organic eyes watched the valet carefully backing us into a space, half of my attention remained on the feed from the contact lenses that Alec and Lisa were both wearing, linked to their commlinks and therefore to my mind.


    They¡¯d just stepped out of the elevator into the real lobby of the hotel, a grand hall with fluted columns running down its length. There was a real reception desk at the far end, staffed by two women wearing professional smiles and crisp blue uniforms trimmed with bronze, while beyond the columns were staircases and wooden double doors leading off to the hotel¡¯s ¡®ground¡¯ floor amenities, with signs guiding guests to at least three restaurants, five bars, two smoking rooms, a swimming pool, gym, library, ballroom ¨C and those were just the ones I¡¯d caught through the limited perspective of my AR-linked contact lenses.


    Extra tables had been set up by the hotel staff, laden with glasses of various drinks and manned by smiling waiters in crisp white shirts, but it was clear this wasn¡¯t the main event. There were guests in the hall ¨C all of the men in tuxedos and all of the women in dresses ¨C but they were pretty thin on the ground and most of them looked like they¡¯d just arrived.


    ¡°They¡¯re in,¡± I said to Grue as I brought my attention down about sixty floors to the parking lot, where it looked like the various security details were trying to hold a small guerilla party of their own.


    Across the way from us, four guys were playing cards using the hood of an upmarket sedan as a table, while beside them a human in a tight-fitting tactical jumpsuit was showing off her armed escort motorbike to an elven woman in a bodyguard¡¯s suit, in what even I could see was a shameless attempt at flirting.


    ¡°Any word from Aisha?¡± Grue asked.


    ¡°Nothing yet, but that¡¯s expected. Imp¡¯s running dark right now and it¡¯ll take her time to get there.¡±


    Grue shifted back in his seat with the sound of creaking syn-leather, his hand idly tapping out a rhythm on the door.


    ¡°You try and keep an eye on someone and she learns how to turn invisible¡­¡±


    I chuckled, as Grue flashed me a smile. It wasn¡¯t like before, when he¡¯d clearly been dismayed at Imp¡¯s chosen profession. Now he was comfortable enough with the idea that he could make jokes about it. It was a good sign.


    ¡°She¡¯s doing okay,¡± I remarked. ¡°Anyone with that attitude has to be, right? I feel like I¡¯d collapse from exhaustion if I tried acting like her for a day.¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s kept it up for eighteen years,¡± Grue remarked, with a fond smile on his face.


    ¡°Guess that explains why you¡¯re so straight-edge,¡± I joke back. ¡°Some kind of karmic balance.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re one to talk,¡± he replied, his closed fist tapping my shoulder. ¡°You act like a shy bookworm, but when you¡¯re on the job it¡¯s like you¡¯re a force of nature. It feels like every time we go out you end up crying blood because you¡¯ve burned out your brain doing something insane in the matrix.¡±


    You don¡¯t know the half of it, I thought. I hadn¡¯t told anyone about the entity yet. Lisa would understand, but I think Brian would just be worried.


    ¡°Don¡¯t get me wrong,¡± Grue continued, obviously reading something into my silence that wasn¡¯t there, ¡°it¡¯s impressive, even if I don¡¯t really understand what you¡¯re doing when you go under.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s mostly playing for ownership. Making software think you have permission to access and modify it. Then once you¡¯re in, you can¡­ Holy shit.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± Grue asked, already reaching for his gun.


    My attention had snapped back to the camera feed. Regent and Tattletale had made their way to the hotel¡¯s ballroom, where the party was in full swing. Instead of answering Grue, I used the car¡¯s one-way windshield to display the full spectacle. I doubted anything I could say would do justice to the sight.


    Like the rest of the building, the ballroom was an art deco temple, with golden metal pillars rising up walls of black stone that had been polished to a mirror sheen. Angular chandeliers ran down its length, casting shifting fractal light across a scene of religious worship; a congregation of the mighty gathered in praise to that briefest age of American history, when the great and the good renounced inhibition and prohibition alike as they indulged in magnificent excess, blind to the looming depression developing beneath their feet.


    The room was a riot of light and sound, of shimmering dresses and slick suits. It was the clink of glasses, the roar of laughter, the giddy screams all mingling with the clamouring noise of a full Powerjazz orchestra positioned in a half-hidden balcony, their instruments ¨C physical and synthetic ¨C carried throughout the room by a near-deafening speaker system.


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    Gymnasts swung between the chandeliers; tall, lithe women in glittering metallic skin-dye and leotards so close in hue that it was hard to tell where golden fabric met golden flesh. Waiters and waitresses circulated through the party holding trays of drinks and canapes, their crisp pants, skirts and shirts in the hotel¡¯s blue and gold colour scheme. There were other staff too in formal white uniforms I didn¡¯t recognise, standing at the edges of the ballroom next to open attach¨¦ cases that had been placed on chest high tables. Most of the staff were human, but there were a few elves among them.


    ¡°I was expecting¡­¡± Grue¡¯s voice trailed off. ¡°I don¡¯t know, ballroom dancing? Long white dresses, sipping lemonade on the porch? Gone With the Wind shit.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re a decade out; this is a temple to Gatsby. Society¡¯s built around consumerism and excess, and the people up there are the ones at the top of the pyramid. So when they celebrate, they¡¯re celebrating being able to get whatever they want whenever they want it. We¡¯re looking at the American dream.¡±


    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t have thought you¡¯d be into politics,¡± Grue observed, leaning back into his seat as his eyes flicked between me and the spectacle.


    ¡°I¡¯ve never voted if that¡¯s what you mean, but mom was very active. Used to take me to a lot of rallies when I was a kid.¡±


    The silence crept back, as we watched in a mix of amazement and something close to nausea while Regent and Tattletale began to circulate. Regent snatched a pair of champagne glasses from a passing server without so much as a word of acknowledgement, then handed the glass to his ¡®escort¡¯ with the bare minimum of courtesies. An old man in a tuxedo staggered passed them, already three sheets to the wind as he nakedly leered at Tattletale before giving Regent a knowing wink and a slap on the back.


    Tattletale took it in her stride. She was following the plan; panning her gaze over the room with slow eye movements that allowed me to capture snapshots of faces, cross-referencing them with all the archived news footage I could get my hands on. These people hadn¡¯t had privacy from the moment they were born, but I doubted it bothered them too much.


    What do the watching proles matter when you¡¯re used to servants hovering in the corner of every room?


    Eventually, I found what I was looking for. A flash of brown hair over an attractive yet somehow mousey face. I tagged Kayden Anders on both of their contacts, a simple mental algorithm outlining her with a white halo each time the unique pattern of her face appeared on the screen. Idly I did the same for a few other targets of interest related to the Gilberts ¨C in case the hosts were more on top of the guest list than appearances would suggest ¨C and the other Anders.


    ¡°What would you do,¡± Grue began, apropos of nothing, ¡°if you had their kind of cash. Say you rescue Hestaby¡¯s egg and walk away with a tenth of her hoard.¡±


    ¡°I thought people said ¡®never deal with a dragon?¡¯¡±


    ¡°Sure people say it, but would you tell a dragon no if they asked?¡±


    ¡°Point.¡± I frowned, thinking it over. ¡°I honestly don¡¯t know. I don¡¯t think this is about the money for me anymore.¡±


    ¡°Then what?¡± He sounded taken aback.


    ¡°It¡¯s about taking control of my life. Give me the famous ¡®one last job¡¯ payout and I might try and set myself up like Faultline. Really own the whole ¡®Spider¡¯ thing and stretch my web as far as I can reach.¡±


    ¡°You really are relentless,¡± he remarked, with a warm smile.


    ¡°You¡¯re really after a quiet retirement?¡± I asked. Grue didn¡¯t answer for a moment; he seemed to be figuring out how to put it.


    ¡°I¡¯m good at what I do, but it¡¯s always been ¡®what I do.¡¯ Sure I wanted to become a Shadowrunner like half the kids my age, but I picked up a gun because I was looking at a short lifespan and a handful of dead end jobs for dead end pay, with twenty other guys fighting for each. Gang work was fast and dangerous and I learned that the hard way, but it got my foot in the door of merc work, which was about as dangerous but paid more.¡±


    ¡°So what¡¯s your exit plan?¡±


    ¡°Property. I figure if I can keep at this for at least five more years ¨C maybe ten ¨C then I ought to be able to buy some failing business I can use to launder all my earnings back into legitimate currency. Then, so long as I don¡¯t spend money like those assholes,¡± ¨C he nodded to the screen ¨C ¡°I should have enough for me and Aisha to live comfortably.¡±


    It was an inherently sensible plan; the sort of thing I¡¯d expect from Brian, even if it sounded far too passive for my taste ¨C and much too passive for Aisha¡¯s. But then, he¡¯d always been the voice of reason in our team. It wasn¡¯t his fault we lived in an unreasonable world.


    An incoming signal drew my attention away from this unexpectedly philosophical conversation. Imp had come back online.


    ¡°Imp,¡± I began, speaking the words aloud for Grue¡¯s benefit. ¡°What¡¯s your status?¡±


    ¡°Chill, Spider, I¡¯m here.¡±


    I reached out through my faint connection to her suit, switching on her own helmet camera and taking stock of a cramped and empty security office with a desktop terminal beneath a bank of monitors, with a datajack adapter plugged into it for the more technologically inclined. Surprisingly, the terminal was unlocked and each of the monitors was cycling through different CCTV footage.


    ¡°They just left it open?¡±


    ¡°Nope. You¡¯re not the only one who can hack,¡± Aisha said, smugly, as she held up a post-it note with a string of twelve letters and numbers written on it in pen.


    ¡°Amateurs,¡± I scoffed.


    ¡°Not to defend the rent-a-cops,¡± Aisha countered, ¡°but I am on the fifty-eighth floor, and I had to crawl on the ceiling over like three different pressure sensors to get to this office. Anywhere, where do you want this thing?¡±


    She¡¯d taken a commlink out of one of her belt pouches to recover the same stripped-down commlink I¡¯d given her for our last job.


    ¡°In the datajack next to the keyboard.¡±


    A moment later I could feel the firewalls of the hotel¡¯s host through my connection to the commlink. Bypassing the firewall took only a minute of careful work; it was basic, especially when compared to the Renraku programmer I¡¯d hacked, but that was because the terminal didn¡¯t actually have many permissions attached to it. It let me see the various monitoring systems around the hotel, from the CCTV to the pressure sensors Imp had climbed over, but the data was read-only.


    I could push further in, spinning sprites to twist the terminal¡¯s permissions until I was able to access the rest of the host, but I didn¡¯t need to. The alert system I could access already had everything I needed for the time being, most importantly a list of the occupants of each room.


    ¡°Looks like Aster is in room twelve, floor sixty-eight. Occupancy info lists one juvenile client and five attached staff. One of them will be the nanny, the others guards.¡±


    I modified the building plan I¡¯d already loaded into Imp¡¯s suit, marking out the room and a few possible routes to it.


    ¡°Back of the building,¡± she remarked ¨C maybe to herself. ¡°Good. Always liked the look of downtown more than the ocean. It¡¯s more interesting.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll have to agree to disagree,¡± I countered, but Aisha had already dropped off the grid. She¡¯d left the commlink behind, probably hidden behind a monitor or dangling by the cable behind the desk, which meant we were on the clock before someone stumbled across it.


    I checked through the monitoring data, finding the RFID checks linked to each Staff Only door. The doors were labelled and locked, opening only when they detected the correct signal from a staff ID badge. To our benefit, the signal wasn¡¯t individual to each staff member ¨C a dangerous oversight, but no system is perfect. We could try and track down some staff, lock them in a closet and steal their badges, but that would be messy.


    Instead, I captured one of the incoming signals and teased a strand of resonance from the ether, twisting it like a violin string until the tunes matched. It was deceptively fiddly work, and the sort of thing that would probably be impossible within the binary limit of conventional code, but the resonance was uniquely suited to mimicking the matrix. I doubted it¡¯d work on any active monitoring systems in more secure facilities, but I hoped it would be good enough for a passive RFID check.


    Grue had been watching me since Imp¡¯s call came through, waiting for confirmation. When I gave him a nod, we opened the car doors and stepped out into the garage, noting that a few more security vehicles had arrived after us. It had become a true party in its own right, albeit one with much less alcohol.


    Not no alcohol, however. There were a few grizzled old timers drinking from hip flasks because they just didn¡¯t give a shit, plus one or two cocky young morons who I suspected were on their first and last week on the job. Most of the others had fallen into cliques along company lines, with the occasional mutual acquaintance dragging rival companies into games of AR cards or pirated sports trideo overlaid onto the sides of minivans. It looked like someone from Stoddard Security had ordered pizza, while the hotel had fulfilled their promise by laying out a few tables of surplus food next to the door into the building.


    There was an intermittent flow of people passing through that door, most likely because there were a few bathrooms somewhere on the other side. It meant the small army of guards were unlikely to notice us leaving, provided we didn¡¯t leave together.


    As such, I held back for a moment, pretending to check something in AR while Grue navigated his way between the parked cars before I followed after him. It wasn¡¯t until I heard raised voices that I realised we¡¯d made a mistake.


    The Stoddard Security team, parked almost in front of the door, had left their pizza behind and were squaring up to Grue. There were four of them; all of them human, all of them male, with shaven heads and black tactical fatigues. They were all armed, of course, with each of them wearing a pistol, a taser and what looked like a stun baton. None of them had drawn their weapons, but it was clear they were spoiling for a fight.


    ¡°Who the fuck hired pigface?¡± the lead guard demanded, sizing Grue up. I think he was the commander of the team as well; he had more chevrons on his shoulders than them, which meant they¡¯d definitely follow his example. I picked up the pace without trying to seem like I was running.


    I heard Grue say ¡°easy, chummer,¡± in a cold and even tone. ¡°Just doing a job, same as you.¡±


    The response was a harsh bark of laughter.


    ¡°Same as me? You can¡¯t send a trog to do a man¡¯s job! The fuck are you doing skulking around, tusker?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m just going for a piss, man.¡±


    I couldn¡¯t start a shootout here, in the basement, before we¡¯d even got our foot in the door. I couldn¡¯t hack them; they were wired, of course, but I wasn¡¯t confident I could tangle with two networks simultaneously without tipping one of them off. All I could do was close in in Grue, stepping out from behind a van and trying to make myself look even larger than I already did.


    ¡°Who the fuck is that?¡± the lead goon demanded, his hand moving to his belt. ¡°You trynna pull something, boy? Get your supersize girlfriend to bail you out?¡± He turned to his friends, grinning wildly. ¡°You grab that mountain by the horns or do you wear the skirt in the relationship?¡±


    I almost shot him, then. In spite of every instinct cautioning against it, I almost drew my submachine gun and sprayed the lot of them with a hail of bullets. I¡¯d already unconsciously swapped the selector from burst fire to full auto, and I fervently wished I¡¯d loaded live ammo. Instead, it seemed for a moment like things were about to get worse; six new human guards were moving up, all in Petrovski Security grey.


    ¡°Cut this shit out,¡± one of them ¨C a woman with an eastern European accent ¨C snapped. ¡°Fucking Stoddard Security isn¡¯t going to start a shooting war in my parking lot. You assholes aren¡¯t even licenced to shoot first.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re cleared for self-defence,¡± the skinhead shoots back, clearly wrongfooted.


    ¡°Yeah, that came free with your second amendment, citizen,¡± the Petrovski woman countered. ¡°But Petrovski¡¯s extraterritorial. I can use ¡®all reasonable force¡¯ to protect this parking lot, so go back to your pizza or call your client and explain why we¡¯re booting you out on the street.¡±


    The Stoddard guards looked between us and the Petrovski team before they seemed to come to some mutual agreement, with the leader sneering at us before heading back to their car, loudly swapping insults about everything you¡¯d expect.


    ¡°Thanks,¡± I said to the woman, even as Grue gave me a warning look.


    ¡°Don¡¯t act like I¡¯m your friend,¡± she snapped back. ¡°If you can¡¯t go five seconds without provoking those bonebreakers, you stay in your damn car.¡±


    ¡°We have been,¡± Grue interjected, ¡°and we will. Just hitting the bathroom first.¡±


    ¡°Fine,¡± she replied, before she and her colleagues went back to their game of cards.


    ¡°What a fucking bitch,¡± I muttered, before Grue put a hand on my arm.


    ¡°Leave it. Let¡¯s just get going.¡±


    We made our escape as quickly as we could, my duplicated RFID tags opening sliding doors as we made our way through the maintenance ways to a staff only elevator that ran up the spine of the building. I didn¡¯t talk; I was still pissed off. Instead of venting to Grue, I refocused my attention on our two agents among the American nobility.


    The party had, if anything, deteriorated from when I¡¯d last seen it. If I thought it was epicurean before, it had become a scene of hedonistic decadence. The Powerjazz was louder than ever, strobing golden lights lit the room with kaleidoscopic intensity and the mass of privileged humanity had begun to descend into a mob of drunken lunatics.


    A great mass of them thronged a dance floor in the centre of the room, flesh writing against flesh like a single creature. Inhibitions had fallen by the wayside; some of the women had stripped off their expensive dresses as if they were tissue paper, cavorting bare breasted like frantic Bacchantes. Many of the men had done the same, and the two met in frenzied encounters that I could swear crossed the line into actual sex in a few places.


    Alec and Lisa hugged the edge of the room, and it was interesting to see who was there with them. Even in this Olympian class there was a hierarchy; there were those who surrendered themselves to decadence, buffeted to and fro by the momentum of the party, and there were those men and women ¨C usually the older ones, but not exclusively ¨C who rode the wave.


    They were the veterans of frat parties and sorority initiations, of decades of novacoke-fuelled living and corporate-mandated binge drinking socials that spilled out of the venue and into whatever bars and clubs they could find, with the veteran alcoholics in management noting a mental black mark against each fallen employee abandoned by the wayside at train stations, taxi stands and dingy bathrooms.


    They seemed to be drinking a similar amount to the rest, but they never allowed themselves to totally lose control. I could see them on the edges of the party, or holding the attention of a group of revellers. They were taking stock of who did what to whom, keeping tabs on how their peers acted when stripped of all self-control. They kept track of their equals, as well; sending occasional nods to each other as if in recognition of their primacy among nominal equals.


    Max Anders was one of them, as was the host Nathan Gilbert. Interestingly his daughter was one of the revellers, although she¡¯d managed to keep her dress on. She was at the centre of her own court of petitioners and socialites, surrounded by her friends and friends of friends and want-to-be friends. Her arm was wrapped around the waist of a very out-of-place Theo Anders, who seemed dumbstruck by the whole affair. I wondered if she was as manic as she seemed, or if she¡¯d agreed with her father¡¯s patriarchal calculus and was determined to grab the recalcitrant Medhall heir¡¯s attention by whatever means she could.


    Theo¡¯s father, on the other hand, was watching the strange staff in white uniforms with a professional eye. Their function was clearer now; their tables and attach¨¦ cases were laden with a selection of narcotics, with the white-clad staff being medical personnel brought in to safely measure out dosages or supervise injections. It was an aristocratic absurdity; the pinnacle of society indulging in the addictions of their polar opposites, administered in perfect safety by what had to be Medhall doctors and nurses loaned out for the occasion.


    Kayden Anders was seated on a chaise lounge in a relatively quiet corner of the room, nursing a glass of white whine as she engaged in small talk with a few other women of varying ages, though none of them seemed younger than their late twenties. She was wearing an ankle-length dress made of a metallic white fabric that glimmered like the surface of the moon, and her face was the picture of patient attention, even if it didn¡¯t quite reach her eyes.


    Regent and Tattletale were mingling on the periphery of a mixed-gender group of socialites around their age, where they could both see and be seen by Kayden. They were caught up in a performance piece of feigned affection, conversing eagerly about fashion trends in Montreal and New York as they pulled away from the group and closer to each other. When Tattletale glanced down for a moment, I saw that Regent¡¯s hand was on her hip.


    ¡°We¡¯re moving up,¡± I reported through their earpieces. ¡°Got held up in the parking lot, but we¡¯re clear now. Imp should be checking in soon. Meantime, I¡¯m sending you Aster¡¯s room number. Are you ready to move?¡±


    ¡°Of course, a Grecian cut can be very confidence boosting,¡± Tattletale answered, concealing an affirmative in her conversation. ¡°What girl doesn¡¯t want to feel like a goddess?¡±


    ¡°Good,¡± I said. ¡°Beginning my attack now.¡±


    My read-only access to the security sensors was vital for keeping a clear path through the hotel itself, but it wouldn¡¯t be enough when it came to taking out Kayden¡¯s security detail. For that, I brought up the cluster of sensors in Aster¡¯s room. No cameras, of course, but there were trip alarms on the door, pressure sensors on the exterior windows and even a detection system in the climate control that estimated how many occupants the room held at any given time.


    It only took a moment to slip a woodlouse into the node, leaving the sprite to chew a bypass between my terminal and the sensors¡¯ inner workings. By the time the lift reached the sixty-eighth floor, I already had total control over the room¡¯s sensors. A moment later, Imp¡¯s suit appeared back in my peripheral vision.


    ¡°We¡¯re live. Regent, Tattletale, go now.¡±


    I sent a message to Kayden¡¯s phone, spoofing the number used by her nanny. Through Tattletale¡¯s contacts I saw Kayden¡¯s eyes flick to the left as she selected the incoming message notification on her own AR lenses, before she stood and made warm apologies to her circle of friends. She looked around, taking stock of Regent and Tattletale as they in turn watched her.


    For a moment she seemed taken aback, before she rolled her eyes at Tattletale and turned to leave the room, with the two mages following a discrete distance behind her as they passed beyond the epicentre of the party.


    That didn¡¯t mean leaving the party behind, however. It had long since spilled over its bounds, populating the corridors immediately around the ballroom with more discrete couples hunting for quiet niches, staff members hurrying to keep the drinks flowing to the main hall and one white-haired gentleman who¡¯d snagged a whole bottle of port from the ballroom, which he used to repeatedly refill a tiny crystal glass in a show of impressively ingrained decorum in the face of uncontrolled alcoholism.


    Grue and I weren¡¯t met by the same sort of overspill. Our elevator opened up into a service corridor that was only meant to be accessed by the hotel¡¯s staff, almost all of which were busy ferrying drinks. The only sign of the revelry occurring a few walls way from us were a pair of waitresses sitting against the wall, one of them holding the others shoulder while she wept. Her shirt was torn, like someone had tried to rip it off her, and the pair of them cringed as we walked past, probably confusing us for security.


    ¡°Imp, we¡¯re in position and moving in,¡± I broadcast to her suit, even as I pulled up the feed from her mask.


    Even from seventy six stories up, the city centre filled the sky for as far as I could see. I was used to seeing it from the North End, where the entire district could be seen rising up in tiered skyscrapers to the tallest buildings in the centre. It was contained, somehow, like a tumour growing out of the city. But seen from here, I could understand why some might see it as the only city.


    ¡°Imp, are you there?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I heard you.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m surprised you can hear anything over the wind up there.¡±


    ¡°The suit¡¯s good,¡± she replied, her voice strangely distant. ¡°Top of the line.¡±


    Imp drew her pistol from its holster and pulled back the slide, revealing the single round of armour-piercing ammunition at the top of her magazine before it was shunted forwards into the chamber. She was kneeling on top of industrial heat vents that capped the southern side of the tower, with the north given over to Nathan Gilbert¡¯s own penthouse and rooftop garden.


    As she stood, her feet on the very edge of the skyscraper, she looked down at the vertigo-inducing drop below her, all the way down to the small plaza out the front of the Raleigh Building, surrounded by other towers that only reached two thirds of its height at most. Without saying a word, Imp leant forward and let momentum carry her off the edge of the rooftop, twisting her feet at the last second so that she faced out towards the galaxy-like skyline of distant windows.


    She craned her neck back, looking down at the distant ground for a few heart-wrenching seconds of freefall before the wires on the small of her back caught her and rapidly slowed her momentum, flipping her one hundred and eighty degrees before arresting her fall entirely. She reached forwards with an acrobat¡¯s ease, locking her electrostatic gloves and boots onto one of the great bronze ribs of the building.


    ¡°Spider.¡±


    ¡°Yes, Imp?¡±


    ¡°This is the coolest thing I¡¯ve ever done.¡±

 Paragon: 7.06

    Imp kicked off the bronze plate, letting out more of the line as she swung out over open space. She drew her pistol, holding it out in front of her as she swung towards the flat expanse of a floor to ceiling window. I couldn¡¯t hear the shot over the rushing wind, but I saw the reinforced glass fracture as Imp¡¯s single armour-piercing round hurtled through it, sending out a spiderweb of cracks across the whole pane before she hurtled forwards and drove her right knee directly into the bullet hole.


    The glass splintered around her as she disengaged her tether and fired two shots at the closest guard before her foot had even made contact with the ground. Some of the guards in the room were still stupefied by the sudden attack, but at least one had cybernetic reaction enhancers; his heavy pistol was already drawn and aimed at the window.


    Imp kicked off the floor, leaping left to avoid a pair of shots and running along the wall to keep her momentum going. The first guard was spasming under the force of the Sitck-n-Shock rounds embedded into his torso, but he still had enough motor control to bring his own pistol around to track Imp. She responded with a third shot aimed just above the collar of his suit, where it dug into the side of his neck and delivered its static payload directly to his spine.


    I didn¡¯t see his spasms; Imp was already turning, the glowing blue iron sights of her pistol tracked by ballistic processors within her mask as she levelled it another guard, firing a trio of rounds that shattered his dark glasses and embedded themselves into the reinforced synthskin of his brow.


    I watched his body stiffen as the shock was carried through poorly-insulated subdermal armour, even as Imp kicked off the wall and used her momentum to swing her foot around into the guard¡¯s head, sending him tumbling to the ground as the current finally reached his nervous system and he descended into twitching spasms.


    Imp was already raising her pistol again, ducking low as a burst of automatic shots whizzed over her head before she returned fire on a woman with an unmodified version of my own Ares-made submachine gun, with a rapidly disassembled attach¨¦ case discarded at her feet. The extra firepower didn¡¯t help her; Imp moved like liquid, landing a shot on the woman¡¯s right arm before closing the gap in two preternaturally fast strides and driving the edge of her left hand into the back of her target¡¯s neck in a magically-imbued blow that left her slumped over like a puppet with her strings cut.


    The last guard hadn¡¯t drawn his gun. Instead the sleeves of his jacket had been split open by a pair of cyberspurs that emerged from his forearms, the straight blades extending out a foot and a half past his wrists. He moved with the force of a turbine, driven by cybernetic legs and what had to be an invasive wired reflex system pushing his mind to think as fast as his artificial limbs could move, never mind the long-term effects it would have on his neural system.


    The momentum of the conflict changed in an instant, forcing Imp onto the backfoot as she ducked under a swinging blade, then rolled to the side as the guard brought down a foot in a boneshaking stamp. I caught a glimpse of steel talons pushing their way through his disposable shoes before Imp swept out her own leg in a kick that caught the descending limb in the back of the knee, sending the cyborg staggering one step forward before he regained control.


    It was just the window Imp needed to leap backwards, springing off the ground and emptying the rest of her magazine on full automatic before momentum carried her body around a hundred and eighty degrees. She caught the ground with her free hand, then kicked her legs out and almost rolled to her feet with the rapid grace of a gymnast finishing her routine.


    The cyborg was spasming under the effects of eight different Stick-n-Shock rounds embedded into his torso; I could see them sparking off his dermal plating through the rips in his jacket. One of them was embedded in his eye; the force of the impact had shattered the cosmetic shell over the cybernetic optic.


    None of it was enough to stop him. I could feel him through the matrix, sending out an SOS even as he charged towards Imp once more. Like plucking a string, I reached out and bound the outgoing transmission in strands of resonance, holding it in place as I flooded it with junk data and frayed it into nothing.


    When he lunged forwards again, though, it seemed that Imp had used the momentary pause to assess her opponent. Instead of backpedalling away from him, she closed the gap and jerked left at the very last second to avoid a stab that would have run her through. With her free hand she grabbed the cyborg¡¯s upper arm, then drove her right elbow into his.


    It shouldn¡¯t have worked. It was a contest between bone and steel, and if Imp were any other ork then she¡¯d have shattered her elbow with a hit like that. But in a contest between engineering and awakened magic, sometimes carefully applied force can exert a disproportionate outcome.


    The arm didn¡¯t shatter, but some internal mechanism broke beneath the force of her blow. It froze in place, servos within the elbow grinding against themselves as the shock of the blow sent synaptic feedback up the arm to the cyborg¡¯s nervous system. His lips parted, teeth gritted together in a momentary flash of pain. He¡¯d recover in an instant if Imp gave him the chance.


    Instead she released the spent magazine from her gun and flicked another switch to send the slide forwards before driving the barrel into the cyborg¡¯s throat like a truncheon. His throat was reinforced, of course, but Imp¡¯s carefully aimed blow struck it in just the right place to dismount the subdermal plate, crushing the cyborg¡¯s throat beneath his own armour.


    While he clutched at his neck with his one functional arm, Imp quickly struck at other pressure points across his cybernetic body, quickly and efficiently disabling his limbs even as he struggled for breath.


    Between crashing through the window and delivering a final kick to the cyborg¡¯s chest, less than a minute had elapsed. Out in the corridor, I finally disengaged the electronic lock and allowed the door to slide open before Grue and I rushed into the room.


    Grue had been tense the whole time Imp was fighting. I couldn¡¯t open the door without breaking the soundproofing ¨C which would have left the halls of the hotel echoing with gunshots. Even after the fighting was done I still had to slam the door shut behind us to cut off the howling wind, though a moment later I was able to find the controls for the acid rain shutters hidden beneath the bronze ribs on the building¡¯s exterior.


    With the world sealed away, we were left alone among a silent scene of carnage, with four wounded and incapacitated guards twitching on the floor as Imp went between them one by one, delivering swift paralysing strikes to the pure humans and sticking the cyborgs with shots of Narcojet she¡¯d bought from a contact of hers. Grue was looking at the scene with something like his old concern and I thought for a moment he was going to say something before I opened the door again to admit Regent, Tattletale and our willing victim.


    Kayden Anders took one look at the four comatose human guards, two orks and a troll and rolled her eyes.


    ¡°Oh for fuck¡¯s sake. Is this a test or just Calvert waving his dick around to make sure I know my place?¡±


    ¡°How big is his dick?¡± Imp asked, conversationally. ¡°And like, what does it¡­ you know.¡±


    ¡°As far as I¡¯m aware, we¡¯re the only team of Shadowrunners our client has in the city,¡± I told Kayden. ¡°And I¡¯ll ask you not to mention his name until we¡¯ve got you back to the safehouse.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re verbose,¡± she remarked. ¡°Fine, let¡¯s get this over with.¡±


    She moved over to the door to the suite¡¯s bedroom, where Aster Anders and her nanny were still waiting.


    ¡°She¡¯s been trying to call for help,¡± I remarked, with a little satisfaction. ¡°I haven¡¯t been letting her.¡±


    Kayden tapped her knuckles against the door.


    ¡°Aileen? It¡¯s me. It¡¯s safe now.¡± She turned to look at us ¡°Get those,¡± she hissed, gesturing at the four unconscious guards, ¡°out of sight, now.¡±


    Grue shrugged his shoulders and looked around the room, before throwing open the sliding doors of a long cabinet. Between Grue, Imp and I it was the work of a moment to drag Imp¡¯s victims in, piling them on top of each other before sliding the door shut.


    ¡°I¡¯m coming in, Aileen,¡± Kayden said, before opening the door to the bedroom.


    ¡®Aileen¡¯ was a redheaded human girl who looked to be around Imp¡¯s age, with a classic cheerleader¡¯s build that was undercut by the evident terror on her face. For a moment I wondered what had led her to take this job at that age. Maybe she was from a lower middle class family, and working as a nanny for a year was a way to pay her way through university? Either way, she was clearly regretting that decision.


    ¡°Mrs Anders, what¡¯s¡­¡± she began, before trailing off as she saw us.


    ¡°I¡¯m leaving Max,¡± Kayden explained. ¡°Aster and I.¡±


    ¡°And you couldn¡¯t just walk out? Who are these people? Where are the guards? What happened to the window?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re young, and you¡¯re not¡­ well, you¡¯re not rich. I hope you never understand, Aileen, but I do need you to do something for me.¡±


    She reached into her dress and pulled out a folded piece of what looked like real paper that had been wedged between the fabric and her skin.


    ¡°When you see Max, give this to him.¡±


    Abruptly, Tattletale sent a silent stunbolt flying at the au pair, then rushed forwards to arrest her fall as she slumped into unconsciousness. Once the girl was safely propped against the wall, Tattletale straightened up and snatched the note from Kayden¡¯s hands.


    ¡°I¡¯m not implicating your boss,¡± Kayden said, her tone venomous. ¡°This isn¡¯t the first time I¡¯ve threatened to leave Max, so I¡¯ve put together a list of the old arguments to throw him off the scent. I don¡¯t want him to realise what I¡¯m actually doing.¡±


    ¡°It looks innocent enough,¡± Tattletale conceded as she turned the paper over, her tone suggesting that she was doing Kayden an immense favour by even considering her request. ¡°Go in and get your daughter. I¡¯ll leave this in sleeping beauty¡¯s pocket.¡±


    We eyed each other in silence as Kayden went into the other room. I was still tracking her through both her commlink and the suite¡¯s ambient sensors, of course, and I was sure Tattletale was doing the same astrally. We weren¡¯t going to leave anything to chance, but we also knew that the four year old kid would be much more cooperative if she saw her mother before the armed mercenaries.


    Kayden reemerged a few minutes later with her daughter trailing at her heels, the little girl wearing a blue dress and Velcro shoes, looking more like a dress up doll than anything I¡¯d ever seen a kid wearing. The moment she saw me, her eyes trailing up and up my impressive height before reaching my horns, her face twisted in fear as she rushed to hide behind her mother.


    I couldn¡¯t hide the flash of anger that crossed my features, and the feeling only deepened at the sight of Kayden¡¯s knowing smirk, as if this was what she¡¯d expected from me all along.


    ¡°Maybe I¡¯m not the one being tested,¡± she remarked.


    ¡°You ready?¡± I asked. ¡°Once we¡¯re through that door, we keep moving no matter what. Understood?¡±


    ¡°Of course,¡± Kayden answered. ¡°That¡¯s why I¡¯m wearing wedge heels.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll follow close behind you,¡± Grue said. ¡°Play it off like we¡¯re your security detail. Won¡¯t hold up for a second, I know, but it¡¯ll do at a glance. Regent and Tattletale will go in front, putting on their drunk couple act.¡±


    ¡°Then it¡¯s down the elevator to the parking lot, where we get you into our exit vehicle and drive you to the safehouse,¡± I said, picking up the thread.


    Kayden crouched down and picked her daughter up, holding her in her arms as we moved over the door. Imp simply vanished, while Regent and Tattletale put on their social masks once again, becoming the picture of a transactional couple as I let them out into the hall and closed the door behind them, Grue and I following Kayden out five seconds later.


    The march through the halls was tense; we could still hear the party echoing throughout the place and it seemed the noise had become even more manic than before. We couldn¡¯t see any people, but somehow that only added to my paranoia. It was as if the staff had abandoned this floor entirely, choosing to beat a retreat before events got too rough.


    ¡°I hate these things,¡± Kayden remarked, apropos of nothing. ¡°They seem so incredibly extravagant when you¡¯re young, but now I look at the people in there and all I see are mindless idiots dancing to the strings of people like Max. They¡¯re supposed to be better than that.¡±


    ¡°Why would they be?¡± I remarked. ¡°When have they ever had to fight for anything?¡±


    She let out a sharp bark of laughter. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t expect you to understand.¡±


    In spite of my fear, we reached the staff elevator without incident, the metal doors sliding shut a moment before we began our descent. I almost started to relax at that point; I was making sure we had a clear run to the basement, ready to smother any potential stops on other floors. But then I saw the look on Tattletale¡¯s face, and saw the fear in her eyes.


    ¡°We¡¯re being watched,¡± she said, simply, but her tone had Regent snap into full alertness.


    ¡°I see it,¡± he said. ¡°A Water spirit. Christian Theurgy, definitely. I think¡­ Westphalian.¡±


    ¡°What does that mean?¡± I asked, drawing my gun.


    ¡°It means Max Anders has interesting international connections,¡± Regent observed. ¡°The Westphalian Theurgists are a German magical tradition. An Order, really. They hate Metahumans and non-Christian magic.¡±


    He turned to look at Kayden.


    ¡°Left that one out, didn¡¯t you? Didn¡¯t say your huscle were packing cyberspurs either.¡±


    ¡°I had no idea,¡± Kayden snapped. ¡°I never had a conversation with the grunts.¡±


    ¡°Has it made us?¡± I asked, alarmed. Grue hadn¡¯t drawn his pistol, oddly enough, but he had clenched his hands into fists and was looking around the elevator like a boxer spoiling for a fight.


    ¡°Definitely,¡± Tattletale said. ¡°But I don¡¯t think it knows we know.¡±


    I reached out to our SUV in the parking garage, discretely taking control of the cameras and switching its sensors from passive to active. As I feared, most of the security personnel had been moved on to elsewhere, with the dozen who remained ¨C almost definitely Petrovski Security ¨C taking up firing positions in front of the elevator. I was sure that if we¡¯d tried to exit through the party we¡¯d have found our path blocked by another detachment.


    ¡°They¡¯re setting up in the garage,¡± I reported. ¡°We¡¯ll go with the alternate exit.¡±


    I reached out to Bitch in the matrix, sending her the details of the situation along with instructions to take the car down a level. At the same time I exploited my access to the building¡¯s system and spun together a trio of wasps from the resonance, dispatching them to launch a series of rapid cyberattacks on the different monitoring systems around the elevator, including the one that reported on its intended destination.


    Tattletale was still staring off into the distance, keeping her breathing deliberately level as she centred herself.


    ¡°Spider,¡± she began, ¡°I¡¯ll drive the spirit off in astral space, but I¡¯ll need you to carry me to the car.¡±


    ¡°Got it,¡± I said. I could see the logic in it; Grue was the better shot, and Regent was a twig with arms.


    When Tattletale slumped over I caught her in my arms, wrapping one hand under her shoulders and the other under her knees as I picked her up. I couldn¡¯t see her astral form, but I was able to see some signs of her flight from the way Regent¡¯s eyes darted around as he followed the combat.


    I turned my attention back to the garage, where Bitch had reassumed control of the TeufelsKatze. Petrovski either hadn¡¯t realised the car was ours or they¡¯d assumed we drove it in manually; they were facing away from the vehicle, taking cover behind a pair of their own marked patrol cars that they¡¯d set up in a V shape in front of the elevator doors. I doubted they¡¯d shoot first; I wasn¡¯t sure if the spirit could tell the difference between a voluntary and involuntary kidnapping, but Max Anders would never risk putting his daughter in harm¡¯s way.


    The problem was that neither would Kayden. If this went south she might just hand herself over and try and play this off as a dramatic divorce attempt. We couldn¡¯t give her that choice.


    In the garage, Bitch switched the engine on and revved the throttle, filling the car park with a throaty roar that had almost all of the guards whipping round in panic.


    That was when she triggered one of the vehicle¡¯s security measures, activating the FlashTech bulbs mounted next to the headlights. They went off like a flashbang, filling the room with a light so blinding the SUV¡¯s cameras had to automatically shift their exposure all the way down to compensate. It didn¡¯t get all of the guards, but it got enough for Bitch to roll the vehicle out of the bay and tear off without catching any gunfire.


    The ramp down to the next level was blocked off by shutters, but I had enough control over the building now to force them open as Bitch closed in, just barely fast enough to avoid scraping the roof. In the elevator, we sped past the floor with the broken ambush and descended to the next level down, where Bitch had come to a screeching halt immediately in front of the doors.


    Grue drew his gun, aiming it at the ramp up as he circled around the vehicle to the driver¡¯s seat while Regent opened up the rear door to allow Imp¡¯s invisible form to clamber into one of the two rear facing seats where the boot would be in a normal SUV.


    Kayden and Aster went in the middle, with Regent on one side and Tattletale on the other. She came back to her body right as I was buckling her in, drawing a violent inrush of breath before flashing me a victorious grin.


    I clambered into the front passenger seat, the last to get in, and Bitch didn¡¯t even wait for me to close the door before speeding back towards the ramp.


    ¡®Shadow us as best you can,¡¯ I signalled to her. ¡®We might need to change vehicles.¡¯The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    She sent back an affirmative even as she gunned it back up to the next level, where a Petrovski gunline of barely-recovered guards was waiting for us. I watched through the windshield as they approached, my hands fumbling with my seatbelt even as my mind noted Bitch activating the SUV¡¯s crowd control system.


    Just below the grill, two nozzles extended from discreet panels. They sent out a spray of fine misted liquid, before a circuit beneath the nozzles sparked and ignited the fluid, turning the cloud into a veritable firestorm. All along the length of the chassis, channels doused the vehicle in inflammable liquid, then ignited it to wreathe us in a cloak of flames that blocked out all view of the outside world. Through the sensors, I could see the impromptu firing line scattering to either side, some of them dropping to the floor as they tried to put out their burning clothes.


    The most insane thing was that this wasn¡¯t a modification we¡¯d made, but a standard feature on the stock model from BMW. They made it the central feature of their marketing, with slick videos showing a burning vehicle screaming away from a gang of scavengers, then tearing down the highway towards the distant skyline of the Rhine-Ruhr Megaplex.


    Our own ascent was no less photogenic, as Bitch swerved us around rows of parked cars and drifted around the gently curving ramps leading up to the ground floor. I was too close to vomiting to appreciate the spectacle, but I was needed in the matrix, not meatspace, so I was able to avoid succumbing to motion sickness as I focused my attention on the slowly-closing blast door between us and the exit.


    I threw restraint to the wind, burning every careful backdoor I¡¯d dug into their system as I sought to overwhelm them with different vectors of attack. We weren¡¯t coming back here and Petrovski¡¯s mandate to pursue ended at the limits of their property. I didn¡¯t think Max Anders would call Knight Errant, given his feud with Ares, which meant all I had to do was lift one damn door.


    It was meant to be closed. I had to fight against gravity, deadbolts and fire suppression systems as I hauled the slab upwards, straining the mechanism with the sudden change in direction and almost overloading its processing power as my orders contradicted with the security lockdown procedure. I was winning, though, because this wasn¡¯t a full lockdown. Even from down here I could tell that the party was continuing unabated. Max Anders would have definitely been alerted, as would Nathan Gilbert, but for everyone else it seemed the show would go on.


    As we cleared the building and shot out onto the street I drew my attention away from the Raleigh Building, shocked back into full consciousness by the echoing roar of the engine as Bitch gunned it towards downtown. Aster chose that moment to start crying, and we all awkwardly ignored Kayden as she pulled her daughter into a hug.


    Instead I turned my attention outwards. Bitch had disabled the crowd control system, the last of the burning fluid dripping off the rear bumper, and she¡¯d started to slow down to something closer to the speed limit. I, in turn, cycled the SUV¡¯s GridLink ID in case someone at the Raleigh Building had filed a report.


    I wasn¡¯t foolish enough to think we were out of the woods yet. In fact, I was all but certain we were still in danger. Max Anders might not call the cops, but he had plenty of resources of his own he could call upon.


    ¡°We¡¯re changing vehicles,¡± I said. ¡°Let¡¯s get the package out of the firing line. Bitch, are you ready to set it up?¡±


    ¡®Ready,¡¯ came her response.


    Grue reached into his boot and drew a short knife, which he passed back to Tattletale.


    ¡°I¡¯m going to need a hair sample,¡± the mage told an increasingly worried-looking Kayden. ¡°From your daughter, too. I¡¯m going to make my astral signature look like yours. It won¡¯t hold up under active scrutiny, but it might throw any pursuers off the scent.¡±


    Kayden looked deeply reluctant. I couldn¡¯t blame her; I¡¯d heard plenty of schoolyard rumours about what a mage could do with some hair or a bit of blood. Eventually, though, she seemed to find her nerve once again.


    ¡°Fine. Give me the knife.¡±


    Tattletale shrugged, flipping the knife and catching it by the blade before passing it to Kayden, who proceeded to slice of a lock of hair from herself and her daughter. Tattletale wound most of the hair through the chain of her pendant, then brought the metal serpent up to her mouth and touched it to her lips before placing the remaining strands on her tongue.


    ¡°That¡¯s disgusting,¡± Kayden remarked, as Tattletale swallowed. For her part, she weathered the corporate queen¡¯s disgust with total indifference as she began muttering an incantation under her breath.


    Bitch had been weaving us on a diagonal path from block to block, heading for a specific road where the street had been turned into a tunnel by a megabuilding that had spread itself across several blocks. At the side of the road, parked against a yellow curb with her freshly-added beacons and hazard lights strobing in bright orange patterns, was Bitch.


    She mounted the curb with the SUV, lining up Regent¡¯s door with the door on the side of her van, which she¡¯d already opened. The changeover was quick and efficient, with Regent following Kayden and Aster into the van and buckling them in to their seats. He stayed with them to provide magical support if needed, while the rest of us played the role of a bait car as Bitch drove us back off into the city streets, her mind showing absolutely no strain as she guided two vehicles around the edge of Downtown.


    I kept my eyes on the matrix, watching the GridLink for any unexpected vehicles cutting through the grid¡¯s flow and keeping an eye on the SUV¡¯s sensors as Bitch weaved her way through the late night traffic. I thought I¡¯d covered all the angles, until something pushed against a sensor on the roof.


    ¡°They¡¯re above us!¡± I shouted, right as an immense helicopter swept into view, its downdraft buffeting the road with dust. I couldn¡¯t imagine what sort of pilot would willingly bring an aircraft down that low, but its red livery and white trim were unmistakable.


    I¡¯d fucked up. I¡¯d been looking for Shadowrunners or off the books corp-sec, whose irregular movements would have bludgeoned through GridLink¡¯s carefully balanced traffic management system, but Valkyrie Paramedical¡¯s aircraft and ambulances were plugged into that system. It was designed to work around them as an emergency service, but there was nothing stopping Max Anders from using them as his own private army.


    The helicopter spun on its axis once it hit the junction, presenting its flank to us. There was a decal on the side; an armoured, winged woman outlined in white on the red fuselage. She held a spear in one hand while the other was outstretched in a beckoning gesture. To the left of her, written in white capital letters on the cabin door, was a name. Brunhilda.


    Bitch hit the handbrake, spinning us on a dime with the squeal of tyre smoke. In the rear view mirror I saw Imp move fast enough to break her stealth as she pressed her masked face against the back window and watched as the helicopter¡¯s cabin door slid open.


    I caught a brief, distant glimpse of four female silhouettes against the red interior lights of the cabin before we spun around a corner and the helicopter fell out of view. Beside me, Brian had ejected his magazine of Stick-n-Shock rounds and was loading another with live ammunition. I did the same with my submachine gun, even as I reached out in the matrix and tried to track the helicopter¡¯s location.


    It was hard. Harder than I felt it should have been, like the helicopter wasn¡¯t just trying to prevent attacks but was actively putting out digital chaff to make it harder for me to operate. Whatever connections it had to Valkyrie Paramedical¡¯s command and control centre, they¡¯d been frayed down almost to the point of nothingness.


    But I could still roughly track its position. I wound down my window, leaning out and aiming my pistol one-handed behind us, trusting in my cybernetic arm to keep my aim stable as I tracked the helicopter¡¯s movements.


    When it emerged from the other side of a skyscraper I squeezed the trigger, servos and synthetic muscle holding my arm completely steady as I emptied a whole magazine of ammunition, while the gun¡¯s built in rangefinder broadcast the estimated effects of bullet drop at that distance. I didn¡¯t get a chance to see if the shots landed before Grue grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me back in.


    ¡°Save your ammo!¡± he shouted over the wind rushing through my open window ¨C which I noted Bitch was already closing. ¡°That¡¯s thing¡¯s milspec! Small arms fire isn¡¯t going to cut it, but at least they can¡¯t shoot us either!¡±


    Until they realise Kayden and Aster aren¡¯t with us.


    The helicopter had climbed up above the level of the buildings, skipping across blocks as it followed our progress. It seemed to be more active in the matrix, sending out hurried signals that I couldn¡¯t quite track at that distance. At the same time, it started to track us.


    I could feel electronic warfare systems lighting up on the fuselage as inbuilt programmes latched onto the connection between the SUV and Bitch¡¯s control rig. They didn¡¯t have a decker up there, but the helicopter was loaded with Agent programmes tailor-made to disable vehicles and break open barriers, presumably for this exact sort of situation where a client of theirs has been kidnapped.


    I slipped into the matrix, abandoning meatspace for a battlefield on which I might make a difference. Immersed in hot-sim VR, I could see the helicopter a little more clearly. It was a Nissan Hornet, its GridLink serial number registered to Medhall Pharmaceuticals, with a subtag connecting it to Valkyrie Paramedical¡¯s High Threat Response permit.


    Some self-congratulatory Nissan cyberwarfare programmer had given its Agents a matching hornet skin; six of them had flown from the e-war broadcaster just below the cockpit, honing in on the bright tight-beam transmission making its way into our SUV¡¯s receiver.


    I leapt from my body, planting the ¡®feet¡¯ of my persona on the roof as I glared up at the descending mockeries of my own sprites. My own wasps came when called, spun together out of the resonance and flung up towards the hornets to delay their approach, even as I sharpened my persona¡¯s claws into elongated spikes.


    The hornets were frighteningly good. My sprites were capable in acting in unpredictable ways that coded creations often struggled to rationalise, but the hornets were single-minded monsters who struck with brute force. What¡¯s more, while the e-war system couldn¡¯t think as fast as a decker, it was still smart enough to detail only two Agents to hold down my chaff, while the remaining four beelined for the SUV with mindless determination.


    Behind them, I saw one of the hornets land a hit on a wasp, flooding the sprite with enough viral code that it unravelled into nothingness in an instant. I tensed up, mentally adjusting my stance in a pointlessly biological instinct even as my mind raced for solutions. I wasn¡¯t sure I could hold them back on my own, but maybe I could split the swarm a second time?


    I gathered together resonance, directing it not into the world but down the familiar pathways of my neurons, creating a duplicate web that I separated from myself as an identical copy of my persona. With a thought I directed it to soar up and away from the SUV, while still remaining close enough to pose a threat. As I hoped, two of the hornets split off to attack it, leaving the remaining two to close in on me.


    I met them with unrestrained fury, sending a whip of resonance at the first and landing a hit that left a score of alien code across its body which spread to entangle its processes, making its movements sluggish enough that it fell behind the other.


    When I tried to drive a spike of resonance into its thorax, however, my claws skittered off its rudimentary firewalls without affect. I¡¯d split my attention too much, allowed myself to get distracted by the battlefield around me, and I paid the price as the hornet drove its stinger into my chest.


    In meatspace my body jolted as my heart skipped a beat, while a torrent of toxic code flooded into my persona. It was all I could do to harness the pain into an echo, sending back a feedback arc that tore down the connection the hornet itself had forced into being. It wasn¡¯t enough to kill the Agent, but it was enough that my next spike found purchase, cutting off the torrent of pain as the hornet splintered into fragments of code.


    Already the hornets had torn through most of my wasps, while my duplicate had been found out and destroyed. I was used to having the strongest cards to play in almost every fight I¡¯d been through, but this reminded me of Renraku in the worst ways. They¡¯d tried to drown me in a sea of agents, but this was a bare-knuckle brawl with a single opponent twice my weight. One I couldn¡¯t flee from, with Bitch¡¯s connection active.


    Desperate times, I thought, as I felt fireflies gathering beneath my carapace.


    ¡®Grue, take the wheel in three!¡¯ I broadcast directly into his cyberware, then let out a horrific scream that filled the whole street with a swarm of chittering fireflies, the noise multiplying exponentially as it became too dense for Bitch¡¯s link to function.


    Cut off from their target, the Agents hovered in place for a few milliseconds before fighting their way through the swarm as they tried to find their way back to the e-war box. The helicopter also rose to escape the swarm of interference; they were only able to fly that low with GridLink giving them the exact positions of the buildings on either side.


    I left the matrix behind, but kept the swarm going for as long as I could. Back in meatspace, Grue¡¯s fists were clenching the wheel as he navigated the streets with nothing like the expertise Bitch had shown.


    ¡°I know these fuckers!¡± Imp shouted from the backseat. ¡°They¡¯re the fucking trideo stars! Bunch of barbie doll bastards cutting people up for pay-per-view!¡±


    ¡°They won¡¯t be running the cameras now,¡± Tattletale remarked. ¡°Anders won¡¯t want to turn this into a media event.¡±


    ¡°They want us bad,¡± I said. ¡°I can hold back their trackers, but there¡¯s nothing stopping them from looking out the cockpit, or from tracking your spoofed aura.


    Out the windshield I could see the helicopter pulling ahead of us and spinning on its axis at the end of the block to present its flank to us once again. The cabin door was still open, and I could still see the distant silhouettes of the High Threat Response team looking down on us.


    They were easily two hundred metres off the ground, but to my amazement one of the distant figures simply stepped out of the cabin and plummeted towards the road in freefall before she impossibly slowed her descent and hovered in place at the far end of the street.


    Beside me, Grue swore and stamped on the accelerator as we started to drop in speed, the wheels even briefly spinning in place before they found traction again.


    ¡°She¡¯s messing with our weight!¡± Tattletale exclaimed, alarmed. ¡°Trying to make the car heavier than the engine can take!¡±


    Sure enough the helicopter had started to descend and the three remaining silhouettes looked like they were getting ready to jump out. Grue swore again and abruptly jerked the steering wheel to the left, the tyres spinning uselessly for another half second before we slammed straight into the barrier of a condominium tower¡¯s underground parking lot.


    The barrier was armoured steel, but it was battered aside in a squeal of metal on metal by our magically enhanced momentum. The moment we left the mage¡¯s line of sight we lurched forwards again as our extra weight dissipated. It was all Grue could do to keep us from slamming into a support pillar.


    We were on the top floor of the lot, which meant we were surrounded by the luxury vehicles of those who could afford to pay a premium to shave a couple of minutes off their journey to and the garage. The garage was small, with only a hundred vehicles on this floor.


    ¡°What now?¡± I asked, as Brian drove us past a row of sports cars. ¡°They¡¯re blocking our exit.¡±


    ¡°Maybe not,¡± Tattletale said, gesturing to one of the walls, where D-1 was marked out in large letters. ¡°This place isn¡¯t large enough to go under the whole building. Where¡¯s garage C?¡±


    I blinked, peering out the windshield before dissipating my swarm and reaching out through the matrix instead, feeling for a second cluster of parked cars a hundred metres away and finding the row of matrix-linked elevators between them.


    As I directed Grue to the passageway, I was distracted by the tactical network that entered the garage, linking together four sets of heavily-encrypted communications sets and at least two full-body cyberware suites. The HTR team were closing in.


    Abruptly I was thrown against the seatbelt as Grue hit the brakes. He¡¯d made it to the passageway, but there were thick concrete bollards in the entrance preventing cars from driving through the pedestrian area to the other side. Acting as one, we all threw off our seatbelts ¨C except for Imp, who had never put hers on ¨C and flung open the doors of the SUV, spilling out into the harsh halogen lighting of the car park.


    As we ran I saw that Tattletale had left her heels behind, abandoning the impractical footwear in favour of sprinting barefoot down the hall, her dress stretching to its limit as she took long, loping strides that were still dwarfed by my own even if I couldn¡¯t keep pace with Grue or Imp and their athletic physiques.


    I reached down and wrapped my organic arm around Tattletale¡¯s waist, hoisting her up over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes even as I sprinted forwards as fast as I could manage, ignoring her instinctive little scream of panic as I reached out into the matrix to draw my mind away from the pain in my legs.


    With a mental flick I sent a resonance spike into a cluster of data above and behind me, a glitch burning through the motor of a set of metal shutters that slammed down behind us. The moment we entered car park C I did the same to the shutters at the other end of the passageway. It wouldn¡¯t buy us much time, but I knew that every moment counted.


    Ahead of me, Grue and Imp sprang up onto the hoods of a pair of parked cars, running over the windshield and roof as they tried to put some distance between them and the door. I followed as best I could, my foot almost going through the windshield of a sports car that was probably worth more than my organs.


    When I heard the sound of a steel gate clattering to the floor behind me, I leapt over the bed of an unnecessarily large urban SUV and set Tattletale down on the floor, drawing my gun as she peered over the roof with an expression of fierce determination only slightly undercut by the lingering shock of her impromptu abduction.


    A few cars down I could see Grue, his head ducked and his pistol gripped tightly in two hands, but Imp had vanished again. Grue lifted his head to look at me and mouthed three short words.


    ¡®Find a car.¡¯


    As I reached out in the matrix, hunting for any vehicle with weak enough security that I could bypass it quickly, there was another crash as the HTR team entered the room. Their comms networks were hard to latch onto, protected as they were by the same military-grade encryption as their helicopter, but I could still roughly feel their presence through my awareness of the devices around me.


    ¡°They aren¡¯t here,¡± one of them said, her tone frustrated. ¡°Keep that pixie mage alive; she¡¯s spoofing their aura.¡±


    ¡°Language, Othala,¡± another drawled in a sarcastic, preppy voice. ¡°What would the network think?¡±


    ¡°Quiet,¡± a third snapped. One of the cyborgs. ¡°Listen up!¡± she shouted. ¡°Give us the woman and the kid and you might survive this!¡±


    Beside me, Tattletale rolled her eyes and cupped her hands to her mouth, warming them with careful breaths until I could see flames roiling between her fingers. I held my gun ready, positioning my mechanical arm just below the window of the SUV as I tracked the approximate location of each target in the matrix. With quick gestures from my other hand, I relayed that location to Tattletale while overlaying it onto Grue¡¯s optics.


    Tattletale sprang up, throwing her hands in front of her as she simultaneously leapt to the side. A spray of fire jetted out towards the direction of the signals, all of them flinching back at the sudden gout of flames. At the same time I twisted my elbow joint the wrong direction and sent out a spray of gunfire towards the two closest signals, while Grue popped out of cover and squeezed out two shots from his Ares Predator before ducking back down and running hunched over towards me.


    As he ran he tossed a grenade over the rows of cars towards the Valkyries, only for it to come flying right back towards us. I flung my consciousness into the matrix for a brief moment to avoid the worst of the flashbang¡¯s shock, but when I returned to my body my ears were still ringing in pain and the air was filled with cloying smoke that stung my throat.


    The signals were moving, two of them storming over the cars with the clang of power armour on metal while a third had raised herself up into the air. One of the armoured figures was closing in on me; I saw the roof of the SUV crumple as she landed on it before Imp suddenly appeared above me, swinging her tomahawk into the back of the Valkyrie¡¯s knee.


    Something in her armour snapped, locking the limb as she toppled onto the concrete. Up close, she was both more terrifying and more ridiculous. Her helmet revealed the lower half of her face, which had been made up with painstaking care and vibrant red lipstick, while fake blonde hair streamed out the back. Her knightly power armour had been sexualised almost to the point of being blatant, with the torso sculpted to emphasise her breasts and her feet clad in wedge-heel boots to add a little extra height.


    In spite of that, the scowl on her face and the sword in her hand looked as deadly as anything I had ever seen. Her armour was equally deadly; I didn¡¯t know whether she¡¯d forced the joint using her cybernetic limb or if it had some rapid-acting damage control feature, but she rolled back on her feet in an instant and caught Imp¡¯s next axe blow on a wide, round shield.


    I scrambled back and raised my gun, forcing the Valkyrie to bring up her shield to protect her face from a hail of bullets. As my gun clicked empty, she was suddenly surrounded by a glowing dome of violet light, as Tattletale strained to keep her contained even as she leapt over the next row of cars.


    I followed her, calling forth wasps and woodlice and directing them to attack every vehicle I could find, hoping for a single weak spot or outdated software I could exploit. A few cars away I could see Grue retreating from the other cyborg, almost scuttling backwards over a car as he fired shot after shot to force her to keep her face covered. Unlike her twin ¨C and I realised that they were twins ¨C she was carrying a spear that was as long as she was tall.


    As I slammed another magazine into my submachine gun, I felt a sharp stab of pain-feedback in my cybernetic arm as a metal dagger tore through my elbow. My arm locked in place, the gun held uselessly in fingers that could no longer move as the levitating mage drifted into view, drifting down until her feet were touching the ground, with three more metal knives floating over her shoulders.


    That was the moment when my luck finally turned. I felt a familiar set of axels and wheels appear in the corner of my mind and I hit the gas, sending a four door Hyundai Equus lurching forwards, its electric motor driving it into the mage with enough force to pin her legs between the hood and the back of the opposite vehicle. She let out a bone-curdling scream as the knives dropped from the sky, while I hurriedly reversed the car, spun it on its axis and flung all four doors open.


    The others took the hint, even as I started to roll the car towards the exit ramp. Tattletale was the first in, leaping into the front passenger seat with unrestrained desperation even as she threw up another barrier between us and the Valkyries. Grue piled into the driver¡¯s seat next to her, while I pulled my mechanical arm against the side and sprinted towards the rear door


    The car wasn¡¯t in any way troll-friendly, but I was just about able to leap across both seats, frantically tucking my legs in so I didn¡¯t clip them on another car. Imp followed immediately after, throwing herself on top of me and shouting ¡°fucking floor it!¡± at the top of her lungs.


    I did as she asked, driving the car as fast as I could towards the ramp up. I was nowhere near as proficient as Grue, never mind Bitch; even with the sensors I misjudged the size of the vehicle and scraped the paintwork against a support pillar on the way out. But then we were clear, emerging into a submerged road where the megabuildings above had combined to block out the sky. I¡¯d never been happier to see harsh halogen streetlights overhead instead of open sky.


    As I handed control of the car over to Grue, I grabbed the knife with my organic hand and ripped it out of my arm before tossing it out of the window behind us. On top of me, Imp pulled off her mask and let out a sound that was half a scream, half a laugh as she wrapped an arm around my shoulder in something close to a hug. I sent out a transmission to Bitch, in plain text.


    <We hit a snag but I think we¡¯re clear now. Did you make it out?>


    Her response only took a second, but it felt like an eternity.


    <Arrived at the safehouse. Targets unharmed and secure.>


    I slumped back against the seat, my horns scraping against the door as I stared up at the roof with blurry eyes and a relieved grin on my face.


    ¡°We did it,¡± I said. ¡°Holy shit, we did it.¡±

 Interlude 7: Colin Wallis

    The twin-rotor helicopter flew low over the bay, throwing up spray as it skimmed above the surface of the water. It was shrouded in darkness, visible only by the pinprick glow of positioning and anti-collision lights. Inside the cabin, his power-armoured bulk seated on a reinforced canvas frame, Colonel Colin Wallis looked down the length of the assembled officers and felt nothing.


    Twelve of them wore black and yellow taksuits beneath armour plating or mages¡¯ robes, rendered anonymous by their full-face helmets. They were Tactical Response officers; the outgrowth of the old Special Weapons and Tactics paradigm. Each of them was the product of urban combat courses that more closely resembled the training for military special forces than law enforcement. To Colin¡¯s eyes, they were decidedly mediocre. Their training had forged them according to a standard pattern, which prevented each of them from truly excelling.


    His own team were seated close to the cabin doors, just behind the cockpit. There were four of them, himself included, collectively drawing as much pay as the two Tactical Response squads combined. There was nothing uniform about their equipment save for the shared colour scheme of black trimmed with red, or the name written in white letters on their patches.


    Firewatch. The best of the best. The bug-hunters. Blacker than black ops. Colin had been with them for over sixteen years, fighting against the worst the world has to offer. He¡¯d stormed the Chicago Containment Zone in fifty-eight, burning out hives of Insect Spirits while the bugs choked to death on the clouds of Strain-III-Beta Ares had dropped on the city, the bacterial bioweapon seeking out any magically active entities and smothering their souls until they starved to death.


    He''d fought in the corporate war with Cross Applied Technologies from later that year to the turn of the decade, leading clandestine raids against selected targets and often abandoning his uniform for deniability¡¯s sake ¨C pretending to be a Shadowrunner, of all things. Then he did it all again in sixty-two to sixty-three, when Proteus AG attempted a hostile takeover of Ares¡¯ strategic partner, the Frankfurt Banking Association.


    The ¡®why¡¯ of the wars had never mattered to him. He knew the causes were important to Ares Macrotechnology and its enemies, but that had only been of secondary interest. It was their importance in and of itself that made them worthwhile; what he was doing mattered because they¡¯d sent him to do it, and he could see the worth of his tasks in the calibre of his enemies.


    Then came Crash 2.0, in twenty sixty-four. It was an apocalyptic conflict; a digital Ragnarok. In a very real sense, it was the end of one world and the start of another. Its proponents certainly thought so; the Winternight cult believed that the Matrix was the prison of their god, Loki, and that they could only free him through its absolute destruction.


    Colin had led his strike team in desperate raids against the doomsday cult, searching for stolen nukes and nanotech weaponry while the world fell into magically-induced winter. It was a war on existential terror, conducted with the total lack of restraint that comes when the people in charge fear the death of all they hold dear. He¡¯d stormed remote training camps alongside UCAS military gunships, dragged persons of interest out of their hideaways, bunkers and in one case the performance of their daughter¡¯s school play.


    Colin had never felt more alive, more vital, but in the end there was nothing he could do. Winternight¡¯s true insanity, discovered too late, made his efforts look like a futile attempt to stop the tide from coming in; their Jormungand virus tore through the old matrix from the inside, while the EMP blasts of fifteen modified nuclear warheads destroyed its physical infrastructure.


    It was only later, and only thanks to his security clearance, that Colin learned that even that destruction ¨C the total annihilation of the matrix ¨C had been nothing more than a sideshow to the true battle between digital gods happening beyond his reach, as the self-styled DEUS AI rose and was destroyed for its hubris. All his efforts and achievements against Winternight tasted like ash in his mouth.


    The New Revolution came almost as a relief after that, a reminder that there were still enemies who could be cut and killed, but in hindsight it marked the beginning of the end for his aspirations and his career.


    At first, it seemed as though Ares still loved its favoured children. The Firewatch veterans ¨C Colin included ¨C were promoted far above their level of responsibility, as Ares tried to use an increase in status and pay to keep hold of its investment even as their duties shifted towards training the next generation of operatives. Insect hives continued to be discovered in ever-decreasing numbers, and Firewatch still led Ares¡¯ efforts to destroy them.


    It wasn¡¯t fulfilling work, but it still felt as though he had a purpose. After two years, however, it seemed as though Ares began to forget about Firewatch. Whole teams were reassigned to meaningless bodyguard jobs or garrison duties in the middle of nowhere, while others appeared to drop off the map entirely. Firewatch had been built to fight a single existential enemy, but it seemed that the corporation had no idea how to use its creation in that threat¡¯s apparent absence.


    Five years of relative peace had seen his own Firewatch team reduced to an overpaid High Threat Response unit, their skills deteriorating in a city that didn¡¯t need them. There was nothing that could challenge him in Brockton Bay, nothing that could drive him on towards perfection. Just scum killing scum.


    ¡°Thirty seconds out,¡± the pilot reported, before the whole helicopter abruptly lurched to the left, juddering as the pilot deployed a series of infra-red flares. ¡°Chosen presence confirmed; they just fired a MANPADS from the LZ, and I can see people down there with LAWs.¡±


    Colin took a moment to pull up the feed from the Ares Dragon¡¯s forward camera, his vision matching the pilot¡¯s own for a moment as he took in the situation at a glance.


    ¡°Weapons free,¡± he commanded, and a moment later the airframe shook once again as the forward-mounted heavy machine guns unloaded on distant targets. At the opposite end of the cabin, the tactical officers stood, grabbing the roof straps to keep themselves stable as the loadmaster lowered the rear ramp.


    Colin and his team stood as well as the cabin doors just behind the cockpit swung open. They¡¯d left the bay behind; the helicopter was skimming across the rooftops of the North End, crossing the chasms between megatowers and tenement projects as it neared their target.


    He accessed the camera suite once again, decreasing the magnification so that he could see their target in full. It was a megatower, seventy stories tall and rising out of the misleadingly named ¡®New Estates;¡¯ a sprawling district of massive urban infrastructure built half a century ago and steadily falling into disrepair ever since.


    Whatever carefully-ordered plan the architects had for the place had long since given way to decaying anarchy. Their landing zone was an expansive balcony about two thirds of the way up the building, boasting a commanding view of a lot of equally miserable towers. The architect probably envisioned it as an outdoor park or plaza, but the residents of the place instead seemed to be using it as somewhere to dump their trash.


    The helicopter shook again as the pilot aimed another burst of shots at a group of targets. This time Colin saw the impacts as they happened; high-power rounds tearing through concrete blocks that might have been intended to support artificial trees before eviscerating the armed group taking cover behind them. Another group of suspected hostiles were running back into the building, but they were mingled with a flow of civilians. A degree of collateral damage could be justified, but not against retreating targets.


    When the helicopter hit the balcony, it blew away hurricanes of plastic, metal and food long since rotted away to mush, splattering the walls of the tower and sending a rain of filth spilling off the sides.


    Colin leapt out before the wheels even hit the ground, his cybereyes ¨C integrated with his helmet¡¯s optics ¨C scanning the rooftop with every sensor he had available, picking out every human figure among the storm of debris.


    He picked out weapons, too, raising his arms and firing incandescent beams from his gauntlet¡¯s inbuilt Lancer MP-III laser carbines at any armed target he could see. Beside him, his team fanned out and similarly engaged the enemy, adding to his fire with the suppressive force of two assault rifles and bolts of magical energy.


    The tactical officers were only slightly slower, fanning out and firing in pairs as they bounded towards the cover of decorative concrete walls and abandoned household appliances. Before them, the Chosen were trying desperately and pointlessly to prevent Knight Errant from gaining any ground.


    Two vector-thrust aircraft roared overhead, unloading salvos of rotary cannon fire and anti-personnel rockets onto the roof of the building. They were smaller than the twin-rotor transport, disgorging eight more tactical officers onto the rooftop before peeling off to provide fire support.


    Sixty floors down, the perimeter would be moving into place; a hundred and fifty officers and as many drones establishing a cordon around the megatower, while the city¡¯s few subterranean specialists descended to cut off the underground routes. Their only responsibility was to stop anyone from getting in or out until the strike team had done its job. Colin was reasonably confident even beat cops could manage that when backed by enough firepower.


    He sprinted forward, the servos in his legs and suit acting in perfect harmony even as the software in his helmet automatically tracked the targets around him, marking them out in different shades of red depending on whether they were already being engaged by other members of Knight Errant¡¯s shared tactical network.


    He leapt up onto a concrete wall, trusting his armour to shrug off the responding shots of small arms fire as he scanned the surface of the tower rising up above him. There were armed figures moving into firing positions in some of the windows, most of them armed with sidearms or civilian-grade rifles that could be dismissed as a non-threat, but his sensors picked out a single team moving an assault cannon into position.


    With a mental flick, he tagged the gunners as a priority target and watched as one of the vector-thrust gunships swept sideways in an arc across the fa?ade of the tower, spraying the apartment with a torrent of fire from its rotary cannon. Colin couldn¡¯t dwell on it for long; the tactical network had already picked out a Chosen combatant aiming a LAW at him.


    As the cyborg fired, Colin triggered his wired reflexes and watched time slow to a crawl. He leapt from the wall, falling at a glacial pace as he lined up a shot on the cyborg and squeezed the trigger, running the laser for a third of a second before he adjusted his aim to the next target, then the next.


    By the time he landed it was clear that the battle on the balcony was nothing more than a triviality. The Chosen had enough warning to bring some of their guns to bear, but overall the attack had been successfully kept secret until their lookouts could physically see the approaching taskforce.


    Colin ignored the stragglers, issuing a silent order for his team to follow as he stormed towards one of the entrances into the building. They moved in perfect unison, keeping pace in spite of their wildly different loadouts and specialities.


    Colin led the charge, his experimental powered armour integrated with his cybernetics like a second skin, allowing him to move like lightning while retaining all the protection you¡¯d expect from the heaviest armour off the market. His wargear was similarly designed around getting in close, with the twin lasers on his gauntlets acting as his primary means of engaging at range.


    The others covered him; an adept, another soldier and a mage creating a balanced unit that was capable of fighting its way through any threat, each of them wearing Firewatch¡¯s patented Bug-Stomper armour that used proprietary materials to cut down the weight of a full-body suit of milspec armour by twenty-five percent. They were Major Rhys Ellis, Captain Molly Romero and Captain Mohamed Nelson. That hadn¡¯t always been the roster of his team; there had been transfers, injuries, promotions and losses ¨C especially against the bugs ¨C but this team had been with him for the last four years.


    Ellis hugged Colin¡¯s left shoulder, firing his assault rifle at anyone who looked to be rallying the enemy. He was an adept, trained in Ares-developed military martial arts designed to make him lethal in urban combat. Far from the zen spirit embodied by the stereotypical martial artist, Ellis remained an Ares marine through and through. When he fought, it was a demonstration of maximum aggression.


    Romero was on his right, her own bursts of rifle fire aimed more at suppressing the enemy. Her deceptively slighter build hid a body that was more cybernetic than not ¨C as much as she could take without her essence fraying into nothing. She was a true razorgirl, dancing across the battlefield as she eviscerated her enemies with slashes of her claws and point blank shots. She¡¯d been a Shadowrunner before Firewatch made her an offer.


    Nelson was the newest and youngest member of the team, as little as that meant. He had been raised and trained within Ares¡¯ education pipeline for magically awakened children, and his magic was still intrinsically bound to Knight Errant¡¯s preferred method of thaumaturgical study. In combat he was as relentless as any of them, but out of combat he put his skills to use teasing secrets out of suspects¡¯ minds or searching for answers that could only be reached by mystical means.


    After four years, that was all Colin really knew about them; how they fought and what skills and experience they contributed to the team. None of them had much of a life off the job ¨C you couldn¡¯t chase perfection half-heartedly ¨C but Colin especially lived for his work. Firewatch was his whole life. He knew how to do one thing, and he excelled at it.


    Inside the tower, broken speakers screeched into life with a burst of noise as every AR screen began to broadcast a Knight Errant emergency warning, displaying the authorising warrant and announcing the legality of the operation under the police corporation¡¯s contract with the municipal government, as well as demanding the compliance of all residents.


    The residents themselves ¨C the ones who were still outside at this hour ¨C were in a state of frantic panic, rushing back to their apartments or diving into whatever cover they could find in order to avoid the pitched battle tearing through their home. Complicating matters further, the hostiles were behaving in much the same way.


    Inevitably, the line between resident and gang member was deeply blurred. The Firewatch team passed dozens of people whose faces bore the tattoos of the megatower¡¯s controlling neo-Nazi gang ¨C the Eighty Eights ¨C but who were otherwise unarmed. Seven of them even threw down their weapons at just the sight of Colin¡¯s team. Only the ones who were led by Chosen were putting up any real fight, and even then it seemed to be mostly because they were as scared of their overlords as they were of Knight Errant.


    None of them could hold a candle to Firewatch. Some of the Chosen were armed with decent weapons, but Colin had cut his teeth fighting through the confines of insect hives. The cramped corridors of a megabuilding were his natural hunting ground, while his squadmates kept watch to the sides and the rear as they moved down the path to their target.


    The Chosen had established a base in a cluster of apartments near the centre of the tower, overlooking the light well running down its core. Knight Errant¡¯s intelligence suggested that the Eighty Eights had originally built the place by knocking through the walls of several units, using it as a central hub where they could hold court, store currency and manufacture narcotics in relative safety. Their source within the Eighty Eights said that the gang were angry at being booted out of what was essentially their headquarters, but that the Chosen had come in enough force that they didn¡¯t have a choice.


    Colin didn¡¯t care about inter-gang squabbles, but it affected the likely threat assessment. The local gang could be cowed through shock and awe, then rounded up by beat cops. Most of them would likely be released later; Knight Errant were running out of cell space and the municipal courts were already overloaded with the gang war.


    The analysis passed through his mind while his body was engaged on more physical pursuits, running on automatic as he sprinted through a hastily-made barricade and swept his lasers down the corridors to his left and right, eviscerating a half-fleeting mob of gangsters before he drove his fist into a half-prone Chosen cyborg who¡¯d started to rise, cracking her faceplate and crushing the skull beneath.


    Ellis had holstered his assault rifle, the weapon held on his back by the quick-release system built into his armour. Instead, he wielded two heavy pistols, using them as clubs as frequently as he fired them. One of them was a Remington Roomsweeper loaded with flechette rounds, while the others was an Ares Predator V he used to put meaty shots through the heads of anyone too far away for the flechettes or his fists.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    Romero had similarly stowed her rifle, but instead of drawing a sidearm she¡¯d extended her razor-sharp claws and leapt onto the ceiling, scuttling around with her joints and waist moving in all directions as she systematically dismantled her targets with quick cuts. Sensors and cameras integrated into her armour provided her with an all-around view of her enemies, giving her movements an almost robotic quality. Colin had once heard some Knight Errant officers saying that she didn¡¯t even seem human, but when he¡¯d told Romero she¡¯d just laughed it off and said that was because she¡¯s an elf.


    Nelson walked his own path. Out of all of them, he was their only true ranged specialist, hanging back from the main group and providing the vital magical support that allowed the others to function effectively. Lightning sprang from his fingers in dense bolts that struck priority targets or wide balls of energy that exploded at his command, engulfing whole groups in storms of electrical energy. All the while his eyes were only half there as he watched the astral world for threats that only he could see.


    Ignoring the entrances to the Chosen base, Colin simply smashed through a non-load bearing wall, crushing through a sofa that had been pushed to the side of the room even as microgrenade launchers on his shoulders fired a scattered burst of flashbangs that sparked in the air like fireworks.


    ¡°Justin Hammond,¡± he shouted, his voice amplified by speakers built into his collar. ¡°You¡¯re coming with me!¡±


    The disgraced policlub leader was on his feet at the other end of the room and looked like he had been hurriedly discussing an escape route with the senior Chosen figure, identified by the Knight Errant database as Stormtiger, one of Hookwolf¡¯s senior lieutenants.


    His team were already dealing with the twenty-three other Chosen operatives in the room, adjusting their methods now that they were fighting through a command and control centre rather than a layered defence. They were every bit as methodical, every bit as violent, but their attacks were now aimed to disarm and disable where possible.


    Colin ignored the chaff who weren¡¯t in his direct path, raising both his arms to put lasers through the hearts of the two Chosen who were in his way before focusing all his attention on the two high value targets.


    Stormtiger was shirtless, his chromed arms, pectorals and shoulder muscles making it look like he was wearing a metal bolero jacket. There was a tiger tattooed across his flesh and etched onto the metal, while his fingers ended in elongated claws that didn¡¯t look retractable.


    ¡°Come on, toy soldier!¡± he shouted, slapping a metal palm against his chest. ¡°Come fight a real man!¡±


    Colin didn¡¯t say anything in response. He simply closed the gap, his hands curled into fists. The most efficient outcome was to simply shoot him, but Stormtiger was rated as highly as Hammond on Knight Errant¡¯s priority target list, even if they hadn¡¯t expected to find him here. He needed to be brought in alive, with no margin for error.


    The Chosen lieutenant wasn¡¯t a fool. He knew how outmatched he was, but he also knew that he needed to buy as much time as possible for Hammond to escape. He might not understand the why ¨C though Colin suspected Hookwolf¡¯s lieutenants were shouldering more than their share of the day to day responsibilities of leadership ¨C but he knew that someone wanted Hammond safe and out of custody just as much as the DEA and the district attorney wanted him in cuffs.


    It meant he tried to dance around Colin, ducking in and out of reach like he might have done if this were wrestling, rather than cage fighting. Colin, in turn, ignored the spectacle and closed in to drive his fist into Stormtiger¡¯s torso, his overwhelming superiority in weight and torque smashing through the elbow that was raised to block it, before Colin brought up his other arm and fired a point-blank laser through Stormtiger¡¯s shoulder.


    As the disarmed cyborg staggered back, Colin drove his foot into the back of Stormtiger¡¯s knee, shattering one artificial leg and sending him toppling to the floor before Colin arrested his descent by grabbing the chain around his neck. He took in the pointed ears looped through the links for just a moment before throwing the lieutenant to the ground and placing a warning boot against his spine.


    ¡°Don¡¯t move,¡± he ordered, redundantly, before removing his boot and turning his attention to Hammond.


    The preacher-come-politician looked a lot more haggard than he had in the wanted pictures. He clearly hadn¡¯t shaved in a while and his neatly pressed shirt and priest¡¯s collar had been switched out a for a UCAS army jacket worn open over a bulletproof vest, with the flag patch replaced by the antiquated fifty stars and thirteen stripes of the USA.


    There was a rifle leaning up against the wall that might have been his, but Hammond hadn¡¯t had the chance to grab it. Fortunately, he hadn¡¯t had the chance to escape either; Romero had scuttled around the room to block the only remaining route out, while the other two Firewatch officers dealt with the last of the Chosen.


    In desperation, he reached into his pocket and grabbed a handful of tokens, holding his closed fist out in front of him like it was a weapon even as Colin strode towards him. With rapid movements of the other hand he outlined an arcane symbol in the air that took form as a glowing halo of light that surrounded and shielded him. He looked uncertain for a moment, perhaps even scared, before something like resigned determination spread across his face. It was an expression Colin was familiar with, usually because it came just before the suicide bomber hit their detonator in an empty room.


    ¡°Fine then,¡± Hammond said. ¡°The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.¡±


    As if it were an incantation, he punctuated his statement by clenching his fist and shattering the tokens within. When he opened his palm, incandescent white light shot out and circled Hammond for a moment before taking form as five glowing knights, their plate armour somehow seeming more real than real in spite of being formed from solid light.


    Each of them held great two handed swords in a ready position as they formed a circle around their summoner.


    Colin drew his own weapon from the quick-release holster on his back, the haft expanding as the axe-head unfolded and the safety sheath fell off the monomolecular edge. With utmost finality in his movements, he drove the butt of the halberd into the ground and stood defiant in the face of his foe.


    Spirits were at their heart conceptual creatures, given form by the gestalt dreams of all life on Earth. They were creatures of myth and stories, and those stories hadn¡¯t yet caught up to the modern world.


    Ares had learned through trial and error that explosives were next to useless against spirits, while guns were less effective than they should be. Their blows were too far removed from the killing intent of the wielder to be effective against creatures of thought. The explosive was forgotten in a distant factory and often armed hours before it was used, while the bullet became conceptually separate from the shooter the moment it left the barrel.


    But a blade was imbued with the primal force of history, backed by the deliberate malice of a blow meant to sever flesh and end life, driven by the force of the wielder¡¯s body and will. When Colin strode forwards and jabbed his halberd towards the leading spirit, it parried his blow with the resounding clang of metal on metal.


    The knights of antiquity and the knights of modernity fought a pitched duel in the devastated keep of a gang that ruled like feudal lords. Colin drove his halberd forwards between sword swings, hooking the collar of a knight¡¯s armour with the base of the axe head and using it to drag the spirit in close enough to drive an elbow into its back. Once it hit the floor he reversed his halberd and drove the spearpoint into the gap between neck and helmet, striking the spirit in a spot that was only vulnerable because the spirit believed it should be.


    He ran a second knight through as it fought with Romero, who had been struggling to fight an enemy with a greatsword¡¯s reach even after extending the cyberspurs built into her forearms, then decapitated a third with an axe blow while Ellis and Nelson killed the remaining two with magically-enhanced attacks.


    That only left Hammond, whose shield was shattered by a spearpoint jab. Ellis moved in to disable him, kicking the firebrand¡¯s legs out from under him as he pressed Hammond¡¯s arms together before slapping on a pair of cuffs, while Romero pulled a full-face hood over his head and cinched it tight around the neck. The cuffs contained a type of moss that reacted to active magic, triggering a powerful electric shock, while the electrochromatic fabric inside the mask emitted a constant barrage of light and sound that made it next to impossible for a mage to focus enough to astrally project.


    By the time Hammond was secure, the Tactical Response officers had reached the headquarters. The officers moved throughout the scene applying trauma patches to the dying and cuffing the ones who were merely wounded. Many of them ¨C most likely the newest ¨C occasionally paused as if they were shocked at the violence the Firewatch team had unleashed, or how many Chosen they¡¯d taken down while the ¡®urban combat specialists¡¯ were stuck fighting their way through corridors.


    They didn¡¯t linger long. The purpose of this raid was never to grab everyone. They could sweep the tower clean of Chosen and Eighty Eights, but the evidence against most of them would be insufficient to convict, while the city¡¯s courts and the state¡¯s prisons simply didn¡¯t have the resources to process and detain that many people. The best they could do was cut off the head of the snake, then interrogate it until it revealed the most vital organs of its body.


    Another helicopter was waiting for them on the balcony, a second twin-rotor transport that had disgorged its cargo of Knight Errant custody officers in bulky body armour, who were chaining a number of prisoners to their seats. Other captives ¨C perhaps three dozen ¨C sat in lines a little way back from the landing zone, waiting for either their release or a spot on another aircraft.


    Colin and Romero led Hammond up the ramp, guiding his feet up the step and pushing his head down so he didn¡¯t hit the roof, while Ellis and Nelson carried Stormtiger out on a stretcher. The cyborg was met in the aircraft by a Knight Errant paramedic, who connected a diagnostic tool to his cyberware before preparing to shunt his cybernetic limbs in case he¡¯d sustained internal damage, while the Firewatch team loomed over Hammond as the last custody officers boarded and the helicopter took flight.


    None of them spoke on the journey over. Even the prisoners were silent, in the familiar way defeated enemies often were after losing everything in the span of minutes. Twenty minutes later they touched down on the roof of Knight Errant¡¯s headquarters in the city; a monolithic tower on the border between Downtown and the historic city centre, with a giant holographic logo flickering on the side of the building.


    When they touched down, the rank and file Chosen were led out first then split according to triage between a waiting group of paramedics and the elevator that led straight down to the cells. The Firewatch team left the helicopter last, taking a different elevator down to one of the many interrogation suites in the building.


    Once there, Colin was surprised to find it packed full of people who weren¡¯t with Knight Errant. Men and women in suits were lingering in the bullpen, while others had brought blue jackets that bore the letters of UCAS federal agencies; the DEA and the FBI, mostly, though there were one or two from the NSA. Knight Errant¡¯s own detectives looked distinctly outnumbered, as did the state prosecutors.


    ¡°Who invited the feds?¡± Romero asked, as a pair of Knight Errant custody officers took Hammond and led him ¨C still hooded and cuffed ¨C straight into one of the euphemistically named ¡®interview rooms.¡¯


    ¡°They invited themselves,¡± was the answer from a stocky dwarf who made her way over to the Firewatch team. Commissioner Piggot was dressed in a close-fitting tacsuit, rather than officewear, and had a holstered pistol on her belt. Colin wondered if she¡¯d taken a closer look at their raid. The commissioner had a habit of personally supervising her force¡¯s most significant operations, and often took time to attend ride-alongs in the most dangerous areas of the city at the riskiest times of night.


    No officer in her position could ever be called popular, but Colin presumed it was meant as a reminder to the rank and file that she¡¯d come to leadership from Knight Errant¡¯s High Threat Response, rather than from the often political staff officers who thronged the headquarters. Staff officers like Lieutenant Christner, a nepotism appointee who¡¯d achieved his position through his relation to Brockton Bay¡¯s mayor. The fact that he seemed to be decent at his job was just a matter of random chance.


    ¡°Colonel Wallis, we need to talk,¡± the Commissioner said, looking up at Colin without a hint of irritation at the vast gulf in height between them. ¡°Lieutenant Christner will debrief your team.¡±


    ¡°Yes, ma¡¯am,¡± Colin said, turning to the side and giving his team a nod before following the Commissioner through the middle of the gathering of UCAS agents, the suits scattering like a flock of birds as he strode through them in full power armour, only bothering to remove his helmet and tuck it under his arm.


    Once they were in a secure interview room a few doors down from the one holding Hammond, the dwarf closed the door and set the glass to opaque on both sides. Away from the outside personnel, Colin could see the strain on the Commissioner¡¯s face. Something was bothering her. He could pick it up through context as well; Piggot had a habit of discussions like these. Colin¡¯s rank demanded respect, but his position didn¡¯t. He suspected that the Commissioner spoke to him because he had stayed in special forces, whereas she had taken a promotion she may have come to see as a poison pill.


    ¡°Romero was out of line,¡± he began, ¡°but she had a point. That¡¯s an interesting gathering.¡±


    ¡°You know how it works,¡± Piggot said, shrugging her shoulders. ¡°When a company takes on a police contract it becomes responsible for enforcing all local laws, including laws that require them to cooperate with other agencies.¡±


    ¡°You know what I mean,¡± Colin answered, not liking the deflection. ¡°This is bigger than a normal federal investigation.¡±


    ¡°It is,¡± Piggot nodded. ¡°In many ways, it¡¯s the continuation of an old investigation. The FBI have recently re-opened a number of cold cases and that¡¯s dragged in several other agencies. Only the DEA are here for Hammond himself, and even they have become more interested in what and who he knows.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s a Medhall connection?¡± Colin asked. Medhall¡¯s excuse that America As One had lied to them about where their drugs were going had always rung hollow. There were only so many suspiciously well-stocked Chosen black clinics that you could raid before you started to recognise a pattern.


    ¡°That they were using both the Chosen and the Policlub as assets? Of course; it¡¯s a common enough strategy. The question is what they¡¯ve done with them.¡±


    Colin didn¡¯t respond to that, instead waiting for her to continue.


    ¡°We haven¡¯t spoken about our respective pasts,¡± Piggot said. ¡°It¡¯s fair enough; I¡¯m sure there are a lot of blacked-out paragraphs in both our histories, but I do have a question. Where were you on November third, back in sixty-four?¡±


    ¡°Andrews Air Force Base, in DeeCee,¡± he answered. ¡°I was part of a joint Wintermute taskforce; Firewatch and UCAS Special Operations Command. Comms were still largely down with the matrix, but I¡¯d managed to get in touch with Ares¡¯ delegation in Washington through conventional radio transmissions.¡±


    ¡°So, you were right in the thick of it?¡± Piggot asked, rhetorically.


    ¡°The base had been heavily infiltrated,¡± Colin continued. ¡°When the New Revolution kicked off, some of the planes were bombed, others took off in support of the insurrection. A rogue Army unit arrived at the gate and tried to lock down the base, but they fired on the Air Force guards who wouldn¡¯t let them in. Then it seemed like everyone started killing each other. I kept my people out of the fighting until I managed to get in touch with Ares and received orders to support the loyalists.¡±


    ¡°You could just as easily have ended up fighting for the other side,¡± Piggot remarked. ¡°We had plenty of traitors among our own ranks, especially within the Americanists.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t engage in factional politics,¡± Colin said, though he did hold a particular disdain for those eccentrics who believed that Ares Macrotechnology itself was the truly legitimate successor of the old USA.


    ¡°Some would say that makes you a Militarist.¡±


    ¡°You would say that, but you¡¯re a Militarist yourself. A Corporatist would say it makes me a model employee.¡±


    ¡°Fair enough,¡± Piggot conceded. ¡°And after you received your marching orders?¡±


    ¡°I linked up with the largest collection of loyalists I could find and supported General Colloton in retaking the sprawl. I was fighting in Union Station when they found the President¡¯s body in the White House.¡±


    ¡°I was in Detroit,¡± the Commissioner said, almost conversationally. ¡°Things there were much calmer, of course. We had our own unrest, but we rolled out the garrison in support of the UCAS. The sight of Ares tanks on the streets was enough to settle the issue. But here in Brockton Bay, things got interesting.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not familiar.¡±


    ¡°The New Revolution were close to taking the city, the National Guard had largely rebelled and the gangs were running rampant, but at the last minute Max Anders committed his entire security force to restoring order, saving the governor¡¯s life and city in exchange for a firm commitment to push through a vote on state-wide extraterritoriality.¡±


    ¡°They think he lost his nerve,¡± Colin mused, eyeing the opaque glass and the agents beyond it. ¡°That he was part of it, but backed out at the last minute? Or that he knew about it but wasn¡¯t involved, so he intervened to exploit the situation?¡±


    ¡°The numbers don¡¯t match,¡± the Commissioner said. ¡°He had too many rent-a-cops, they were too well armed and the opposition folded too quickly. But this isn¡¯t my suspicion, and it¡¯s not really theirs either. Knight Errant and the FBI have both been handed tantalising packages of data that infer a great deal, but prove nothing. All of it from an anonymous source.¡±


    ¡°Is it us?¡± Colin asked. ¡°Ares, I mean?¡±


    ¡°I asked Stansfield. He said no, and I believe him. The higher-ups don¡¯t care enough about Medhall to keep this secret from the city¡¯s senior executive. It¡¯s a more personal feud between local families. If the regional executive officer isn¡¯t aware of any moves from us, Ares isn¡¯t involved.¡±


    Piggot paused, folding her arms and looking down for a moment, as if uncertain.


    ¡°What I find more concerning than who they may be is that they haven¡¯t given us the smoking gun. I¡¯m certain they have enough evidence to prove something the feds would have to act on.¡±


    ¡°You think they want the FBI to work for it,¡± Colin observed. ¡°Drawing us deeper into this local feud once they start snatching up Medhall execs and asking them if they¡¯re terrorists. It would weaken Knight Errant¡¯s position in the city.¡±


    ¡°I think that¡¯s one possibility. The other is that they want to spark a war, so they¡¯re dropping just enough to get us on high alert and the city gradually filling with federal agents, while Medhall¡¯s deniable assets expend themselves on this gang war.¡±


    Colin frowned, pulling up a case file from the database.


    ¡°The strike that began this gang war was explosive, but surgical. They knew exactly when and where to hit the Chosen to cause maximum damage with a single blow.¡±


    ¡°The city¡¯s a tinderbox, Wallis, and if they¡¯re going to light it, it¡¯ll be soon. Medhall¡¯s petition for double-A status is going before the Corporate Court next week. If it¡¯s accepted ¨C and our analytics suggest it will be ¨C they become truly extraterritorial, which means all those agents out there can¡¯t touch them without jumping through some very difficult hoops.¡±


    The strain on her face made sense now. Commissioner Piggot was a general who knew that a battle was coming, but had no control over how it would begin. Perhaps Hammond would give them enough information to launch a pre-emptive strike, but Colin doubted it. He was a true fanatic who believed himself a soldier fighting for a righteous cause ¨C almost certainly the same cause so many others had fought and killed for six years prior. He wouldn¡¯t break.


    ¡°Thank you for warning me,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯ll keep my team ready.¡±


    In truth, though, Colin found it hard to sympathise with the Commissioner¡¯s concerns. The city was blindly staring down the barrel of a catastrophe that threatened to rip open old wounds and fill the streets with violence not seen in decades. The eyes of the nation would be drawn to this nondescript place, and Ares would take notice of the part its soldiers had played in events.


    The greatest triumphs of Colin¡¯s life had come during the greatest disasters of cities, governments and nations. He was a soldier to the core and, at long last, he might have found another battle worth his skill.

 Dissonance: 8.01

    At the southernmost edge of Brockton Bay, the tenements, megabuilidings and Richard Anders¡¯ immense infrastructure projects fell in a rapid descent back to ground level, giving way to an expanse of old towns that had kept at least some of their original identity even if their municipalities had long since been subsumed by the sprawl.


    It was like stepping through time to pre-history, when the skyscraper was king and American cities were defined by tiny clusters of towers surrounded by endless fields of suburban homes spreading out to fill a seemingly infinite land. When everyone had their lawn and their dog, and drove their cars down wide streets lined with trees.


    The modern sprawls of the UCAS built upwards, rather than out. They piled like anthills atop the carcasses of those old cities, gutted by the VITAS pandemic then swollen by the exodus of half the country after the territorial losses in the Ghost Dance War. They were urban jungles of heaped infrastructure; people piled upon people, sheltering against the storms of an awakened world until the sprawl became a wholly insular world in its own right; one that could only ever see itself. If you lived in a sprawl, the sprawl was all you knew.


    Standing in the back garden of a five bedroom suburban home, I started up at a sky that was so large it felt oppressive, swallowing down my unease at its vast emptiness. It was nothing like the welcoming void of the matrix, that vast field of potential energy waiting to be cut through by transmissions. It was different to the ocean, too, where there was a clear barrier between the city and the endless expanse of blue over blue, like looking out of a window. Here I was inland, among metahuman society, but the world simply ended above the second floor.


    It didn¡¯t help that the yard faced south. Out of the rooms on the northern side ¨C from the top floor, at least ¨C I could still see the distant skyline of the city, blurred by miles into an artificial mound of concrete and steel rising as high as the hills around it. But to the south there was just more suburbia broken by the occasional unimpressive tower.


    The safehouse was a short-term rental marketed to wealthy tourists with families, according to its listing in the matrix. The property consisted of a five bedroom house with white-painted walls and a lot of floor to ceiling glass on the ground floor, with an expansive lawn out the front and back and a heated pool tucked up against the side of the house. Its attraction to Calvert had almost definitely come from the nine foot privacy fence that surrounded the property, complete with electric wire running along the top and an alarm system that was linked into a pair of home defence drones, in case anyone tried to break in.


    After Bitch and Regent had safely delivered Kayden and her daughter, Calvert got in touch again asking if we would be willing to play bodyguard until he could arrange them transport out of the country, offering us a generous daily rate that was too tempting to turn down.


    So we¡¯d set up shop in suburbia, as Tattletale and Regent spent a day daubing magical runes on the perimeter fence to ward off any attempt to locate our two guests through blood samples, while Rachel and I worked on subverting the security system and turning the traffic management cameras on nearby intersections into a wider early warning system. There was now a sprite logging every vehicle in the neighbourhood that wasn¡¯t registered to any local addresses, and it would report to me if it detected any that weren¡¯t registered to major utility or delivery companies.


    The lawn itself had been freshly trimmed down before we arrived, no doubt as part of the whole package of cleaning and maintenance the building went through between tenants. I stepped off the patio and onto the green field, breathing in the indescribable smell of it as I knelt down and brushed my organic hand through the fine strands of vegetation. It wouldn¡¯t be wholly natural, I knew. It was probably too green; the product of corporate bioengineering working to produce the perfect lawn for its customers. Thinking about it, I was surprised it needed mowing at all, but I supposed that was part of the authentic experience.


    It wasn¡¯t my world, I knew that much. We¡¯d passed through less prosperous suburbs on our way down; neighbourhoods with cracked roads, derelict buildings and more trailers than homes, where the increased costs of travelling to work in the sprawl had left communities sliding into decline. Overall, however, this was the domain of the well-paid experts, portfolio holders and anyone rich whose work could be conducted from a home office. I knew I¡¯d draw plenty of stares if I left the screened safety of the privacy fence.


    In truth my discomfort didn¡¯t just come from the place, though that didn¡¯t help, but the inactivity. Once more I¡¯d been reduced to waiting around in case something happened, sidelined from whatever machinations Calvert was up to. Instead, I was on babysitting duty.


    At least it wasn¡¯t literal. Aster freaked out whenever she was in the same room as me and I often heard the sound of scampering feet as she caught sight of me and ran from the great grey monster with her scary horns. In all honesty, the feeling was mutual. It was stupidly petty, but I hated what that kid represented. I hated all the prejudices she¡¯d picked up from her mother, and how she¡¯d only pick up more from here unless Tattletale was right and Calvert was going to use Evo¡¯s courts to steal her away from Kayden.


    Part of me also hated that a four year old was somehow a prized resource; a tool to advance the ambitions of both her mother and a megacorporate climber. It didn¡¯t feel right knowing that no matter what happened, she was going to grow up being someone else¡¯s pawn.


    ¡°What¡¯s crawled up your ass?¡± Aisha asked as she stepped through the patio door, wearing only a sports bra and a pair of shorts.


    ¡°Suburbia, I guess.¡±


    ¡°You jealous of how the other half live?¡± She rested one hand on her hip, looking up at me with a quizzical expression. ¡°Don¡¯t be. Those soulless wageslaves don¡¯t know what they¡¯re missing. There¡¯s not a gram of life in a McMansion.¡±


    ¡°You sure?¡± I asked, smirking. ¡°You certainly looked happy when you were making the fridge spit ice for five minutes straight.¡±


    ¡°I had a muscle I needed to cool down. It takes effort to look this dangerous, you know? Besides, taking this stuff is fine. It¡¯s what it¡¯s for; instant gratification, or whatever. So stick around for a while, enjoy the pool, douse the place in gasoline and toss a match through the door on the way out.¡±


    As if to punctuate her point, she sprinted at full tilt towards the pool, rolling into a cartwheel at the last second before flipping back over the water and curling herself into a ball to make the biggest splash. About five seconds after impact she broke the surface with a giddy cry and started to tread water.


    It was interesting to watch; I don¡¯t think she knew how to swim before jumping in, but she was very quickly figuring out which movements were the most efficient and which were pointless paddling. It was the sort of rapid adaptation and perfect understanding of their own physicality that only an Adept was capable of, and pretty soon she was sprinting up and down with a picture-perfect front crawl.


    I left her to it, leaving the open sky behind in favour of the only slightly less disconcerting climate-controlled house, where all the rooms were too big even for a troll and each had been furnished with the typical impermanence of any short term rental space; people came to this place and left a week later, but nobody lived in it.


    I found Brian in the living room, watching a boxing match on the trideo set. He was dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a tight black t-shirt, with a can of soda on the coffee table. If it wasn¡¯t for the heavy pistol in his shoulder holster, it¡¯d be an almost domestic image. That impression was only heightened when he caught sight of me and patted the couch next to him.


    I sunk down into the cushions, fidgeting a little as I leant against his side and tried to follow the match even though I didn¡¯t understand the first thing about boxing. Brian was still as serious as ever, having set up a watch rota to make sure at least one of us was awake and manning the watch at all hours of the day and night, but when he wasn¡¯t on shift he seemed to have taken this assignment as a welcome opportunity to relax.


    I tried to support him in that ¨C more than any of us, he deserved some time to de-stress ¨C but I found it hard to take my mind off things. We were sleeping together in one of the spare rooms, in a massive double bed that was still too short for my legs, but we¡¯d only slept together on the first of our three nights here, and I think that was mostly for the novelty of it.


    ¡°Still antsy?¡± he asked, not without warmth.


    ¡°Waiting for the other shoe to drop, I guess.¡±


    ¡°No, you¡¯re always like this,¡± he said, outright smiling now. ¡°As soon as one job ends you start thinking about the next one.¡±


    ¡°Sure?¡± I admitted. ¡°It¡¯s stupid, but I feel like if I stop moving then I¡¯ll just stop. I spent too long lost in my head and I don¡¯t want to slide back into that.¡±


    ¡°You know this is different, right?¡±


    ¡°I know.¡±


    I¡¯m not alone anymore, for one.


    So I tried. I left the room, grabbed my own soda from the fridge, and returned. I still had no idea what I was watching ¨C except that it involved two buff guys beating the shit out of each other ¨C but instead of wallowing in ignorance or looking the answers up online I started asking Brian about what exactly was going on beyond the obvious. It wasn¡¯t enough to stop my mind from wandering, but at least I was making a conscious effort to bring it back to the present.


    Unfortunately ¨C or perhaps not ¨C we couldn¡¯t stay ¡®off duty¡¯ forever. Kayden had an appointment to keep, which meant I cleared out a space in the middle of the home office and set up a trid projector on the desk, tuning it into a secure channel I¡¯d created as I tested the connection to the other end. I¡¯d pushed the office chair against the wall for Kayden, rather liking the way it would leave her stuck between a rock and a hard place.


    ¡°You good?¡± Lisa asked. She was dressed for the neighbourhood, in a knee-length dress and stockings, and her and Alec had been acting as our designated shoppers for the duration of our stay.


    ¡°Should be,¡± I said. ¡°The connection is solid. Just waiting for the players to take their seats.¡±


    ¡°So do you want to listen in from here or another room?¡± Lisa flashed me a grin.


    ¡°From here.¡± I leaned to the side, peering out into the corridor behind Lisa. ¡°Maybe Calvert will think I have to be here to work the link.¡±


    ¡°I doubt it. You hacked him yet?¡±


    I blanched.


    ¡°That¡¯s a¡­ complicated question.¡±


    ¡°Ooh.¡± Lisa leaned in close, looking rather like a cat that had cornered a wounded bird. ¡°What have you been working on?¡±


    A shard of a dead god, I thought, but didn¡¯t say. After a moment, Lisa simply tapped me on the nose and gave me a wry look.


    ¡°Alright fine, you can keep that secret. For now.¡±


    Alec brought Kayden down a couple of minutes later. She¡¯d claimed the master bedroom for herself, of course, as well as a secondary living room on the ground floor, and she¡¯d spent most of her time in the safehouse alone with Aster. I think she was trying to explain some concepts that were very hard for a four year old to get, and I know that she¡¯d spent a lot of her first day just trying to calm down her terrified daughter.


    Once Alec departed, the first words Kayden said to me were ¡°you aren¡¯t leaving?¡±


    She¡¯d disliked me from the start simply because of what I was. She felt similarly about all our nonhuman teammates, of course ¨C plus Rachel, but I suspected that was because she looked like Chosen ¨C but that dislike had catalysed into hatred once she realised I was the one who¡¯d hacked her comm. As for Alec, she seemed to have pinned him as the sensible one, which was just really funny to think about.


    ¡°We¡¯re staying,¡± I said, nodding to Lisa. ¡°We¡¯ve come too far not to see this through.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m surprised Calvert indulges the curiosity of hired guns.¡±


    ¡°He respects results,¡± I said, gesturing to her chair. ¡°We deliver them.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s time,¡± Lisa said, as Kayden rolled her eyes and took her seat.


    I opened the connection to audio and visual, the holographic projector blinking into life as it sent out a random pattern of bright lines of light before going dark. Once it had mapped out the available floor space and checked for obstructions, the lights returned as a holographic image of our client appeared in the centre of the room.


    I savoured the full-body shiver that passed over Kayden as the naga was revealed in all his immense bulk, his body coiled up on top of itself in his makeshift command and control centre back in the city¡¯s CrashCart hospital. He, in turn, seemed to be drinking in the sight of Kayden, his serpentine eyes coldly judging her as his tongue flicked out in what I presumed was a deliberate attempt to unsettle her further, rather than a biological habit. He was like a cat playing with its food.


    ¡°Mrs Anders,¡± he began, his tone smooth but a little more sibilant than usual, ¡°or would you prefer Ms Russel, now that you and your husband are separated?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll keep the ¡®Anders¡¯,¡± Kayden retorted, adapting annoyingly well to the giant snake in the room. ¡°There¡¯s power in names.¡±


    ¡°On that we agree. They can be a useful reminder, whether for ourselves or for others.¡±


    ¡°Besides,¡± Kayden said, her eyes narrowing. ¡°I¡¯ll be a widow, not a divorcee. I assume that¡¯s why you set this up? To talk about how you¡¯re going to bury my husband?¡±


    Calvert opened his mouth slightly in what I realised was his approximation of a smile.


    ¡°I would prefer not to bury him myself. I am engineering circumstances to ensure that others will perform the deed on my behalf. Specifically, I intend to turn this nation¡¯s law enforcement on him. Through my sources in America As One, I have already learned much of Medhall¡¯s role in the New Revolution.¡±Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    It was my turn to shiver, while Lisa¡¯s eyes widened in naked hunger. I had very few memories of the New Revolution. It had happened six years ago, only a day after Crash 2.0, when I first touched the resonance and found the experience almost too much to bear. I was nearly insensate, struggling against headaches in my bedroom but still conscious enough to hear my parents worrying just the other side of the door. Dad had taken his gun out of the safe and kept trying to reach other dockworkers through a comm network that didn¡¯t work anymore, while mom kept shouting back from the balcony to report what she could see on the streets below.


    Kayden actually smiled when she heard those two words from the serpent¡¯s mouth.


    ¡°You need me to provide you with the silver bullet. To tie Max to that night in a way that can¡¯t be avoided.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ll never have to testify in a trial, if that concerns you,¡± Calvert said. ¡°Mr Anders will never see the inside of a courtroom.¡±


    Kayden fell silent for a moment. It was far too late for her to still be thinking this over, but I supposed it was still a difficult step to take, even if you were a self-interested bigot.


    ¡°Fine. I¡¯ll tell you what I know and what I¡¯ve picked up. Max didn¡¯t tell me everything, of course, but his people all like me and they all like to talk to me. Liked, I suppose.¡±


    She paused, turning to me.


    ¡°Could I have a glass of water?¡±


    I scowled, sending off a ping.


    ¡°Bitch is bringing one now.¡±


    ¡°Whatever,¡± she said, waving a hand dismissively. ¡°If you want to understand Max and the New Revolution, you have to look back to his father, Richard Anders. He was one of its architects, after all.¡±


    Lisa was struggling not to smile now and her hand had shot up to her pendant. For a follower of the spirit of secrets, this had to be an almost religious moment for her, but I could taste ash in my mouth.


    ¡°The Anders family inherited a legacy going back to the thirties, when Max¡¯s father first leant his support to a group called Alamos Twenty-Thousand. This was before his own father died, but he still did what he could to provide them with resources.¡±


    I¡¯d heard the name. It would have been impossible not to. They were one of the oldest human supremacist terror groups in the world, beginning their life with the napalm bombing of a church in thirty-six before bottling the lightning that attack generated to bomb the Sears Tower in thirty-nine, ultimately killing twenty-six thousand in a false flag attack aimed at sparking reprisals against metahumans. They¡¯d been found out, but only after Chicago had corralled its non-human population into ghettoes. More recently, the UCAS government had named Alamos 20k as the ultimate backers of the New Revolution.


    ¡°He was a true patriot, who idolised the old USA and believed that everything could only be put right when it was restored as the world¡¯s foremost superpower. It¡¯s a common enough belief in our circles; people look back to a time before the genome started to break and decide to idolise everything else about that time as well.¡±


    Kayden face shifted a little, her mouth curling up into a vaguely fond smile. I wondered which of her own immediate relatives had been that sort of patriot, as well as how she could hold fondness for anyone while talking about the ¡®broken genome¡¯ with a straight face.


    ¡°Once he inherited Medhall, he went from useful to vital. Alamos wasn¡¯t a unified organisation, it was more like five. It was led by a Central Executive of five men, each with his own largely separate faction, spheres of influence and some mutually contradictory ideas of what they should be working towards. Richard did some business for all of them, but he was part of the faction behind the New Revolution. For every dollar of profit Medhall earned, he sent a cent to the cause.¡±


    That was when Bitch entered the room, a glass of water in her hand. Kayden took the glass, sipping at the water and leaning back in her seat.


    ¡°And then, in sixty-two, he died and left his life¡¯s work to his children. Max¡¯s control of Medhall was ironclad, thanks to his father¡¯s will, but his part of the Revolution was a little less clear-cut. It was a loose collection of different nationalist or human supremacist cells across New England, most of them completely unaware that they¡¯d all been created for the same purpose. Max wasn¡¯t really interested in them, but his sister was.¡±


    Kayden gave Calvert a look then. A pointed, knowing glare that seemed to serve to goad him, rather than coming from any real malice.


    ¡°It¡¯s interesting how Diane died right as you kicked off your gang war,¡± she remarked, casually. ¡°Max looked into it, of course, but the private detectives he hired couldn¡¯t find any evidence it wasn¡¯t the overdose it appeared to be ¨C and besides, he had bigger issues on his plate.¡±


    I felt like kicking myself. I¡¯d seen that story on the news when I was recovering in the hospital, then I¡¯d relearned the information once I¡¯d established my tap on their comms and I started to gather all the data I could find about that family. I should have realised the timing was too weird to be a coincidence.


    Calvert, of course, didn¡¯t say anything. He just silently waited for Kayden to continue.


    ¡°I always felt sorry for Diana. She was so desperate for her father¡¯s respect that she¡¯d convinced herself she had it, but she couldn¡¯t see that the old fossil would never be able to leave his legacy in a woman¡¯s hands. He might have loved her, but he never expected anything of her.¡±


    Kayden set the glass aside and leant forwards in her seat, resting her elbows on the armrest and lacing her fingers together.


    ¡°So when Diana was left a trust fund while her younger brother was given everything, she took it as a sign that her father wanted her to continue his real work. She started making contact with the gangs and the policlubs and the Central Executive, presenting herself as the inheritor of Richard¡¯s legacy. Two years later and Richard Anders¡¯ empire had almost split in two.¡±


    ¡°Then, everything exploded,¡± she said, parting her hands to emphasise the word. ¡°The Matrix goes down worldwide, but the New Revolution were all using outdated tech for secrecy. The word came down through telephone wires, shortwave radios and bike couriers. The revolution was on, ahead of schedule. All across the continent, cells sprang into action. Assassins hit both governments, the natives and the elves, while militias and army units moved to seize control of key targets.¡±


    She smiled at the memory.


    ¡°Diana was magnificent. I saw her on her way out, dressed in full tactical gear and carrying herself like a conquering general. She was a true believer, absolutely convinced in her victory before she¡¯d even begun. The last words she ever said to me were ¡®it will be beautiful.¡¯ But she hadn¡¯t understood Max.¡±


    The smile turned brittle, before Kayden seemed to shrink in on herself a little. For the first time, she looked like she was confessing something.


    ¡°None of us did. Nobody ever does. It took me far too long to realise that Max is loyal to no cause other than his name. It¡¯s all about the dynasty for him. All about keeping the Anders name respected and prosperous. I thought I was watching an amicable divorce between the Revolution and the company, but Max had been undermining Diana from within for two years.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯d been talking to Alamos the whole time, using his father¡¯s phonebook to go over and under her head. He talked to his father¡¯s patron in the Central Executive, Senator Jonathan Braddock, as well as a few other people in the organisation. He talked down to the troops on the ground, sounding out allegiances and figuring out what each of them needed. Always, he offered a friendly ear and meaningful aid.¡±


    ¡°I mischaracterised him,¡± Calvert remarked ¨C the first words he¡¯d spoken since Kayden bengan, and with more emotion than I¡¯d ever heard from him. It was almost admiration, mixed with a little surprise. ¡°It¡¯s quite the performance; masks over masks over masks.¡±


    ¡°Good enough to fool everyone,¡± Kayden acknowledged. ¡°He used Braddock¡¯s infrastructure to move in battalions of mercenaries for the revolution, disguising them as security guards, but when it kicked off he held them back and dangled them over the besieged governor¡¯s head to get his vote on extraterritoriality.


    ¡°He used the New Revolution¡¯s old-school tech to get in touch with the loyalists in DeeCee, letting General Colloton¡¯s staff know about Braddock¡¯s involvement and what he knew about the broader plan ¨C all anonymously, of course. Once the tide turned in Washington, he called in every favour he had to get Diana¡¯s forces to withdraw from his mercenaries in a feigned retreat, bringing the whole empire back underground and under his control.¡±


    ¡°And his sister?¡± I asked, even though I could already guess.


    ¡°Hookwolf snatched her off the street himself. Max offered to make him a cyberzombie if he did it, and since Hookwolf is a deranged psychopath he accepted. They dragged her back to Medhall and dosed her with enough drugs that she didn¡¯t know the day of the week, then quietly shipped her off to a well-bribed rehab clinic for the rest of her life. I think Max saw it as pruning the tree; stopping her from disgracing their name by tying it to a doomed insurrection.¡±


    It was interesting, the way a flash of guilt passed through her eyes as she spoke about Max¡¯s sister. Perhaps she felt she¡¯d failed her, or saw her as a kindred spirit. Two women at the mercy of a powerful man, but she¡¯d at least kept her mind. Calvert, on the other hand, seemed to have a respectful look on his inhuman features and when he spoke it was like he was summarising a well-played game of chess.


    ¡°Which left him in control of a shadow infrastructure of human supremacist political organisations and gangs that escaped the crackdown the UCAS launched against Alamos Twenty-Thousand,¡± he said. ¡°Tell me, though, what benefit does he gain from keeping such oversized infrastructure for a cause you¡¯ve said yourself he doesn¡¯t believe in? Where¡¯s the profit in it?¡±


    Kayden paused, clamming up completely as her hands gripped the armrest of the seat. Nothing she¡¯d said or done had left her this conflicted before, which had me terrified and Tattletale on tenterhooks.


    ¡°If you want to kill Max, this will do it. He didn¡¯t just find Alamos Twenty-Thousand in his father¡¯s phonebook, he found their backers as well. The Human Nation.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s a myth of a myth,¡± Tattletale said, her eyes narrowed in strained disbelief. ¡°It¡¯s just a theory; a catch-all term for any number of conspiracies.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s real,¡± Kayden said, shaking her head. ¡°An international fraternity of wealthy and influential social Darwinists working to eradicate the metahuman problem once and for all, not through overt violence but careful, gradual intervention to shape society. Max isn¡¯t one of them and he doesn¡¯t know any of their names, but he has a contact. A man named James Fleischer, who works as their ambassador and their spy in Medhall.¡±


    ¡°Social Darwinists¡­¡± I repeated, as ice seized my bones. Kayden latched onto my horror immediately, a wicked grin spreading across her face.


    ¡°That¡¯s right, hacker. Max may not care about the cause, but he knows an exclusive service industry when he sees it. The Chosen sends their most promising recruits to join the Human Nation¡¯s paramilitary wing ¨C their Flaming Sword ¨C while Medhall consultants work with a number of their shell corporations that operate free clinics in metahuman-heavy areas, where they¡¯re gradually sterilising the population until they reach a negative birth rate. Like boiling a frog.¡±


    ¡°Fascinating,¡± Calvert said, shifting forwards on his coiled tail. ¡°We have our own suspicions that such a network may exist, but to have it confirmed¡­¡±


    ¡°It won¡¯t be confirmed,¡± Kayden said, smiling. ¡°If you tell the FBI about this, the Human Nation would kill Max to close the leak, then work their way through everyone who found out.¡±


    ¡°Including yourself,¡± I pointed out.


    ¡°No,¡± she said, outright smiling now. ¡°Not me. This is the part where I make my offer.¡±


    She turned back to Calvert.


    ¡°You say you¡¯re happy to give me a free hand in how I run Medhall,¡± she said. ¡°When Max is gone I want you to get me into a room with James Fleischer, escorted by human bodyguards. Guards who answer to me alone.¡±


    She leant forwards, looking the serpent dead in the eyes. ¡°I¡¯ll tell him how I couldn¡¯t stand Max¡¯s hypocrisy, or just Max himself, and how I reached out to whoever I could find to help me take his place. I¡¯ll work towards full membership in the Nation, trading whatever Evo secrets you¡¯re prepared to tell me in exchange for all the information I can gather.¡±


    I couldn¡¯t believe what I was hearing. I knew I should reach out and crush her skull with my cybernetic arm, or slam a data spike into the projector before another word could be spoken, but I was frozen in place.


    ¡°All while continuing to support the Human Nation¡¯s programmes,¡± Calvert pointed out.


    ¡°Don¡¯t pretend you care,¡± Kayden retorted. ¡°I won¡¯t insult you by referencing your fiduciary duty, but do you seriously think the Human Nation aren¡¯t working to destroy Evo and all it¡¯s become under your ork CEO? Your own social Darwinism is their direct antithesis, only you don¡¯t hide that you¡¯re doing it.¡±


    Calvert stiffened, rearing back and turning to one side ¨C presumably to where the window was in his headquarters. I took a half step forwards.


    ¡°You can¡¯t seriously be-¡±


    ¡°Quiet. You propose a very bold undertaking, Ms Anders. But you are right; a source of actionable intelligence on this Human Nation would be very valuable indeed. I will be in touch again to arrange your clandestine contact with the FBI. Tell them about the New Revolution, but leave the Human Nation out for now.¡±


    With that, he just hung up, leaving before I could do so much as get a word in edgeways. Kayden stood up, craning her neck back as she met my gaze with a look of abject, insufferable triumph. For a mad moment I wondered if she¡¯d come up with that whole scheme on the fly just to get back at me, but then she left the room, showing me her back without a hint of fear.


    ¡°Taylor¡­¡± Lisa began, her cheeks drawn and pale.


    ¡°How could he¡­¡± I started to ask, but I couldn¡¯t make the words form. ¡°What have we done, Lisa?¡±


    ¡°We did a job,¡± she answered. ¡°We found a client who wanted something and we got it for them. We dug into what we could and found out enough that we were forewarned about a lot of things, but there¡¯s always another secret. Yesterday nobody outside Max¡¯s circle knew about¡­ about any of that, but now we do. We have to live with knowing.¡±


    ¡°We can¡¯t just sit on something like this! We can¡¯t let this happen, Lisa,¡± I said, my voice heavy with desperation.


    ¡°It might not,¡± Lisa said, in a conciliatory tone. ¡°Calvert is smart. He has to know that Kayden is more ideologically aligned to the Human Nation than to Evo, and she could very easily become a triple agent. Besides, it would mean giving up on his plan to seize Aster from her. It¡¯s far too risky.¡±


    ¡°Are you saying that because you believe it, or because you think it¡¯s what I want to hear?¡± I demanded. For the first time, I felt properly angry at her. Angry at her manipulations and how selective she was in using them.


    ¡°Don¡¯t answer that,¡± I said, cutting her off the moment she opened her mouth. ¡°I¡¯m going out. I need to clear my head.¡±


    I pushed past her, ignoring the world as I strode through the front door and wandered down to the gate in the fence. With a mental flick I rolled the gate open and left our little poisoned paradise, stuffing my hands into the pocket of my hoodie as I started wandering in a completely random direction.


    The sound of my feet on the pavement was like a metronome moving my thoughts forwards with ceaseless regularity. I couldn¡¯t comprehend what I¡¯d heard in there. I¡¯d been so eager to make a name for myself, so thrilled to entangle a whole corporation in a web of my own creation even if I was following someone else¡¯s designs. I¡¯d chased power and the thrill of the chase itself, but when I¡¯d finally caught my pray I took a bite and found it disgusting.


    I was horrified by the scale of what I¡¯d found. I¡¯d shackled the corpse of a god, but in Medhall I¡¯d found the periphery of a truly unfathomable conspiracy slowly driving the world towards its perfect order ¨C an order that had no place for me. What was worse, I was part of it now. I¡¯d contributed.


    I didn¡¯t believe Tattletale when she said that Calvert would be happy with what he could get because I was beginning to understand how Calvert thought. I should have seen it sooner; he thought like I did.


    His only interest in this city was in exceeding in whatever task he¡¯d been set, to demonstrate to his superiors how wasted he was in whatever position he currently held in the Evo hierarchy. He would never pass up the chance to return in triumph with a profitable subsidiary and the inside track on a threat Evo didn¡¯t even know existed. Even if Kayden¡¯s intel was unreliable, it was still better than no intel at all, and all it would cost were a few thousand desperate people who couldn¡¯t have kids anymore.


    I hoped I wouldn¡¯t go that far, in the same position, but it was hard to convince myself of that when I looked at all my work had achieved so far. I¡¯d told myself once that even if my parents weren¡¯t happy about the turns my life has taken and the part I played in getting onto this path, they would at least understand why I chose this life. But I¡¯d killed people for this monstrosity, and even if I walked away right now then thousands more would never be born.


    Then there were the deaths that were yet to come. The thought occurred to me as I crossed an intersection, ignoring the way a middle-aged human woman hurried to the other side of the street to avoid crossing my path. With what Kayden had said about Max and his commitment to his family¡¯s legacy, the succession in the event of his death would be set in stone.


    There would be no shareholder vote or legal battle Kayden could take advantage of to claim control of the company; Max wouldn¡¯t suffer a guardian for his legacy. If he died right this instant, Theo¡¯s inheritance would be ironclad and watertight. He might not be the perfect heir in Max¡¯s eyes, but he carried Max¡¯s blood and their family¡¯s legacy.


    Calvert was going to kill him as well. A good man, perhaps the most innocent person I¡¯d found anywhere near the high society of this city, was going to be assassinated for the sake of a racist bitch who thought nothing about the forced sterilisation of whole neighbourhoods.


    My parents had dedicated their lives to causes; to standing up for what was right no matter what the world threw at them. They hadn¡¯t been able to change much, but they¡¯d still tried and little by little they made the world a better place, or at least stopped it from becoming worse. They could never accept this. They could never understand it.


    Every step of this journey, I¡¯d taken willingly out of the belief that I was making myself a better, more complete person. But if they could see me now, I was afraid they¡¯d hate what I¡¯ve become.


    More than afraid, I was determined to try and put this right.

 Dissonance: 8.02

    I hung at the heart of a star, bathed in primordial light. Data whirled around me; a kaleidoscopic flow of information that never stopped or slowed. It was too fast to make sense of, but each megabyte was tantalisingly alive with potential, carrying the promise of secrets and power.


    And yet all that infinite promise was consumed entirely by the entity around me; siphoned off and incorporated to fuel its own growth. I was in the heart of the oculus, at the very nexus of the observatory-library in what I had come to see as my own dominion within the resonance. I had shed my fake shell for the pure crystalline mirror of my organic body, then shifted myself out of sync with the realm and its restrictive adherence to physical laws in order to properly comprehend the entity in its own plane.


    From that entity I had disconnected great crystalline tendrils, manipulating them with gentle pulses of resonance as I reconnected the first to the back of my neck, then moved across the map of my neural system, adding strand after strand until I was trapped in a web of my own creation. Like my namesake spider, those webs carried vibrating signals to me, granting me the full picture of the unfathomably vast and broken mind that I had discovered.


    When I first returned to the realm, I found the halls choked by an unrestrained crystalline jungle. The entity had starved on a diet of resonance file duplicates, but I¡¯d shown it a path through to the more orderly world of the matrix and even the ambient leaks of metahuman-made data had been enough to awaken its hunger. It wasn¡¯t truly consuming the files it touched, but duplicating their code and adding them to its gestalt mass.


    I wasn¡¯t na?ve enough to believe I was in control of the entity. The only reason it hadn¡¯t consumed me the moment I connected was that we were made of fundamentally different materials. I had stolen a chunk of its form to forge my arm anew, but the resonance that made up my persona was too esoteric for its tastes.


    I could feel it¡­ breathing, for want of a better word, as the mind beneath me drew in data and pushed it out to fuel its uncontrollable growth. It had grown in the matrix, too, spreading out through the devices I¡¯d linked it to and connecting to those on the same network or in physical proximity. It was working its way down Medhall tower at a glacial pace, spreading its reach through every network Max owned, but it was doing the same for Calvert as well.


    Using the Myo network, it had leapt from Max¡¯s commlink to Calvert¡¯s tap on the network, then from there to every device in his command centre. It had spilled out somewhat into the surrounding hospital and embedded itself into the commlinks of those who spent eight to twelve hours a day surrounded by devices it had touched. Already it had buds in dozens of private homes, sprouted from commlinks left to charge overnight, and at the other end it had even slipped back into Renraku¡¯s high-security server.


    At the centre of this vast web, it was hard not to revel in the power at my fingertips. I had plans for this entity, this shard of a dead god. Nobody had so far detected its intrusion, and I was beginning to believe that only another technomancer would ever be able to notice its subtle touch. What would happen if I connected it to a device at the heart of Manhattan, or DeeCee, or Tokyo? Could I somehow smuggle a device up to Zurich Orbital and gain a tap on the core architecture of the matrix itself?


    I had made myself a monster because I was ignorant, but here was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If I could figure out how to recover the files integrated into the great fractal mass of the mind around me, I could establish myself as an information broker whose reach and influence would make Faultline look like a gossiping teenager. Instead of being at the mercy of men like Calvert, I could shape the world through carefully deciding who I helped and who I hunted.


    Perhaps then, I would have done something my parents would be proud of. Perhaps then I would have atoned for my blindness.


    I listened to the entity beneath me, opening my mind as I attempted to harmonise with its own fractured psyche. I understood what it was now, putting together years of half-truths and rumours spread between hacker message boards like ancient myths. DEUS had been real, once; a maniacal rogue AI that sought to ascend to divinity by turning every part of the matrix into part of itself, only to be beaten back and destroyed in the battle that brought the violent end of that old matrix.


    It must have discovered the resonance, or its enemies had learned to wield the resonance as a weapon against it. Whether it was a failed escape or a deliberately severed limb, some small fragment of DEUS had fallen through the cracks of the world and escaped the war in heaven by being beyond heaven¡¯s boundaries.


    At the very core of the creature, there were still relics of man-made code buried among all the cancerous growth. As I looked closer, I began to notice familiarities between its code and some of the network architecture I¡¯d seen within the Renraku data-centre.


    I wasn¡¯t made of code myself, which meant I didn¡¯t have the perfect recall of a computer, but I could remember digital sensations as easily as physical ones. My journey into Renraku¡¯s network had been almost disastrous, but I could still remember the feeling of its firewalls, its tamed AI and the overwhelming force the corporation sent against me. I could also remember passing through the neuralware of an old-timer whose coding had been like a geological cross-section of Renraku software development.


    Combining those experiences, I spun together a strand of resonance that was as close as I could get to conventional code, then tweaked and shaped it to match what I expected a Renraku command code would feel like. An entity like DEUS would not have been so existentially terrifying if it had been vulnerable to those codes, but I was gambling that a mere shard of DEUS would be instinctively reaching out for any sort of guidance. Why else would it be mindlessly incorporating payroll spreadsheets into its neural architecture?


    I fed the strand of data into its core, then watched as the old code writhed and shifted in response, sending out commands of its own that resonated like sympathetic shockwaves throughout the entire realm. It was reordering itself, or perhaps just ordering itself as it responded to my command by defragmenting sections of the junk data it had gathered over years.


    I felt my connection to the entity deepen as new data was filtered through the tethers into my mind. I was momentarily overwhelmed by text, noise and flashes of images all coded into standardised file formats that made them so trivial to read my mind didn¡¯t filter any of it out. If I were a decker, I think it might have burned out my cyberdeck and fried my brain. As it was, it felt like being continuously shot in the head.


    After a moment, though, I was able to gather enough willpower to send another burst of false-code into the kludged-together Renraku system, throttling the torrent of information down to a pinprick beam. It meant I was only able to receive data from one network or geographical area at a time, and of course I needed to be plugged in to do it, but it meant that my plan to use the entity as my own private intelligence network was feasible.


    Maybe I could figure out commands to have it sort the data it collected, sequestering the files from marked targets so that I could review them later. Either way, it meant spending a lot more time down here in the resonance realms, but there were ways to make that work. It just meant I needed to find a supplier for the sort of life support gear corporate deckers used, one who was prepared to make a cooler suit in troll sizes.


    For now, though, this telescope would suffice.


    I send out another command, this time containing a data package I¡¯d mocked up to mimic Calvert¡¯s network. It worked as a substitute for position and direction, focusing the lens on the cluster of devices contained within his command centre. I sank deeper into the mind of the entity, reaching through the connection and grasping hold of passive monitoring systems before feeding the ambient data from CCTV and commlink face ID and voice recognition systems into my persona until I almost lost sight of the realm around me.


    I could see the command centre from sixteen different angles and hear it from thirty-three different microphones, simultaneously. Some of them were mobile ¨C AR glasses, cybereyes or the always-on bodycams of those dressed as CrashCart tactical officers ¨C while others were static cameras mounted on devices or bracketed to the walls.


    The compound was as bustling as I¡¯d expected as Calvert¡¯s staff worked on advancing his schemes ¨C and perhaps I could get the full picture of those schemes if I could teach the entity to filter through the data it was processing ¨C but it looked like I¡¯d caught Calvert at just the right moment to uncover at least one secret he¡¯d kept from us.


    He had a second team.


    They were a strange group, but I supposed the same could be said of us. There were four of them, or maybe five, and they all looked to be in their mid-twenties. Two of them were obviously mages and one of them looked like he was the leader ¨C or at least speaker ¨C of the group, since he was standing in front of all the others. He was elven, with light brown skin and hair that reached down to his upper back. He wore an old fashioned suit in deep black fabric over a red waistcoat, tie and a crisp white shirt. Through a particularly high-definition CCTV camera, I could see filament-thin arcane symbols woven into the suit in gold thread.


    Near the back of the group was a much more obvious mage. She was a typically attractive blonde elf with a ballerina¡¯s light build, wearing a short-sleeved black compression top over equally black tactical pants. She¡¯d accessorised with a red sash tied around her waist like a belt and a odd pendant on a chain necklace, depicting some kind of red sun that had a rough finish to it, as if it had been squeezed into shape from clay rather than metal. More dramatically, flames crawled down her arm in tracework tattoos of blood-red ink, and her shrunken stance made her look less sure of herself than any mage I¡¯d ever met.


    Compared to her unsettling appearance, the street samurai beside her was downright normal by comparison. He was wearing modern tactical gear; black fatigues underneath black body armour trimmed with red accents, in keeping with what had to be a team colour scheme, and he had a long-barrelled rifle slung on his back. He had far too many cybernetics to be a mage; I could see them through a scanner attached to one of the room¡¯s CCTV cameras. His arms, legs, eyes and many of his internal organs were cybernetic, with subdermal armour plates and what looked like something wired into his nervous system as well.


    Standing next to him, bafflingly, was a Sony Orderly-4 Secretarial android; a humanoid drone that stood about four and a half feet tall, with fully opposable fingers optimised for delicate work. Its plastic casing had been painted red with black accents and the screen on its flat head was displaying an anime-style female head, with auburn hair and a neutral expression on its face.


    The truly strange part was what I could see through the cameras that could also see augmented reality. There was a persona overlaid on top of the drone, as if it was possessing it. The persona was, perhaps unsurprisingly, an auburn haired dwarf in a pair of shorts and a University of Wisconsin-Madison hoodie. What did surprise me was how realistic it was when compared to her avatar on the drone. It almost reminded me of my own persona beneath my insectoid guise, where my body had been exactly mirrored by the resonance.


    The last member of the group was simultaneously the most mundane and the most unusual. She was dressed in an outfit that I wouldn¡¯t have worn even at my worst, with a baggy coat that went down to her knees and a skirt that went past her ankles, the hem almost trailing on the floor. She was human, but I could only guess that through her height and build since she had the hood of the coat up over her head and she¡¯d slightly tightened the drawstring so that it hugged her face. She barely seemed aware of where she was; her arms were wrapped tight around her torso and she looked like she was shivering.


    ¡°What the fuck is this?!¡± the man in the suit was shouting at Calvert, who was staring him down with his typical stony impassivity. ¡°You call this better?!¡±


    ¡°Krouse, it¡¯s¡­¡± the woman in the hoodie began, before she descended into a series of surprisingly sharp coughs, like there was no fluid in her. ¡°It¡¯s fine. I think I¡¯m just¡­ settling a bit, as the drugs take. I¡¯m lucid, aren¡¯t I?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re sure?¡± the mage ¨C Krouse, clearly ¨C asked. ¡°Let me know if the shakes get worse, okay? We have to keep you healthy.¡±


    ¡°Now that your concerns about Neith¡¯s well-being have been assuaged, Trickster,¡± Calvert began, ¡°perhaps we can return to the purpose of this meeting?¡±


    His tone was as lifeless as ever, but somehow I could tell he was angry.


    ¡°Fine,¡± Trickster said, pacing up and down. ¡°Yeah, sure. What do we have to do?¡±


    ¡°As I said, I have two targets for you. The first is nothing difficult,¡± the snake continued, shifting on his coiled length in a way that looked almost like a shrug. ¡°Certainly nothing as complex as your exceptional achievement with Diana Anders. I received confirmation today that your operation went completely undetected.¡±


    ¡°Nothing as complex,¡± the Orderly-4 said through the drone¡¯s speakers, ¡°but still wetwork?¡±


    ¡°Still wetwork, Genesis, and from the same family. You eliminated the sister, now I need you to take out her nephew, Theo. Before you say anything,¡± he continued, cutting off the worried-looking mage with the sun tattoo, ¡°I will point out that he is twenty years old.¡±


    ¡°Even then,¡± she spoke up, ¡°I¡¯m not sure I¡¯m comfortable killing someone just because of who their father is.¡±


    ¡°Theo Anders is due to inherit his father¡¯s empire, Sundancer,¡± Calvert countered. ¡°I have learned much about Medhall Pharmaceuticals and its connections to the human supremacist underworld, and all of it would sicken you. I assure you, he is an acceptable target.¡±


    ¡°Besides,¡± Trickster jumped in, shooting his recalcitrant comrade a look, ¡°I certainly won¡¯t cry over a dead rich kid. Ballistic, will you cry?¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t be a dick, Krouse,¡± Sundancer shot back before the cyborg could answer.


    ¡°It¡¯s part of my charm. So,¡± Trickster turned to Calvert, ¡°what¡¯s the when and where?¡±


    ¡°Theo Anders is studying philosophy, politics and economics at New Brockton University. He commutes in from home, but remains at the university throughout the academic day regardless of his scheduled classes. I cannot tell you exactly where he will be at any given time, but the closest library to his department is in the Draco Foundation annex.¡±


    ¡°We can¡­ work with that,¡± Neith said, her words coming out in sharp bursts of sound. ¡°Jess can¡­ hunt his face through the cameras. Mars and Krouse can look on the ground. I can send scouts to look for me. Then the kill.¡±


    ¡°Do you want this one quiet as well?¡± Ballistic asked, speaking for the first time.


    ¡°It¡¯s inconsequential at this point,¡± Calvert said with another half-shrug. ¡°I just want it done.¡±


    ¡°Good,¡± Trickster said. ¡°That makes things simpler. What kind of security does he have?¡±


    ¡°Most likely four bodyguards and a bound spirit, though that number may have increased due to a recent security breach. However, the university has a limit on the number of close protection officers it allows on campus, so you should only have to deal with two overt guards. There is campus police, of course, but they¡¯re hardly worth anything.¡±


    ¡°The students are the problem,¡± Neith said. ¡°There will be too many for us to hide.¡±


    ¡°The campus is dense,¡± Calvert remarked. ¡°It¡¯s built against the side of a slope that squeezes it into a long but narrow band of buildings.¡±


    ¡°This sounds trivial,¡± Ballistic said. ¡°Two guards, one college student, one spirit. Why send us?¡±You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    ¡°I require success,¡± Calvert answered. ¡°As such, I¡¯d rather apply too much force than too little. For you, however, the real struggle will be in getting out. Medhall has its own armed paramedic force and Theo likely has a medical alert device linked to their system. If his vitals drop off, they¡¯ll scramble a response.¡±


    ¡°The second target?¡± Neith asked, her speech sticking a little on each ¡®t¡¯.


    ¡°Max Anders himself,¡± Calvery answered, rearing up a little.


    ¡°Hang on,¡± Genesis interjected, her display flickering as it added a worried expression to the anime face. ¡°You¡¯re kind of going from the tutorial to the final boss, aren¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°We can take him,¡± Trickster said, almost cutting the drone off. ¡°We¡¯ve definitely got enough firepower if we go all out.¡±


    ¡°Genesis is right to be concerned,¡± Calvert said, ¡°but I have access to real-time location data from Mr Anders, and I have been working to engineer a sizeable conflict within the city. When he is vulnerable, his security distracted, I can airlift your team in for an assault and subsequent extraction.¡±


    ¡°Then you make good on your end of the bargain,¡± Trickster said.


    ¡°Of course,¡± Calvert replied. ¡°The Evo corporation¡¯s magical and medical expertise will be at your disposal, and I can take you well beyond the reach of your enemies in Ares.¡±


    ¡°We will¡­ see,¡± Neith said. ¡°Hard to trust anyone.¡±


    She took a half-step forwards, a strangely juddering motion that made it seem like she didn¡¯t have control of her body. I caught a half-seen glimpse of a yellow shoe poking out from under her skirt, but the folds of fabric quickly settled back into place. Interestingly, when Neith moved Sundancer shrank away from her in something like fear.


    ¡°The attack on the big guy¡­¡± Trickster began, ¡°you got any restrictions on methods?¡± As he said it, his eyes flicked over to Neith.


    ¡°None. There should be sufficient unrest to draw all eyes away from Mr Anders until his remains are discovered.¡±


    The strange woman almost seemed to shiver in anticipation at that, and Krouse had an eager light in his eyes that I didn¡¯t at all like. It seemed Sundancer didn¡¯t either, though neither Genesis nor Ballistic were paying much attention to them. Or to anything, really.


    I couldn¡¯t shake the feeling that there was something distinctly wrong with this second team, beyond Neith¡¯s obvious yet unknown health issues. There was a kind of shared edge to them. It was in the way they stood, in how they talked to each other and to Calvert. It was hard to put my finger on it, especially viewing them remotely like this, but I felt deeply unsettled all the same.


    I focused the AR cameras on Genesis¡¯ persona again, since I understood deckers more than mages, cyborgs or walking health cases. To my surprise, she¡¯d actually left the drone behind and was gliding around the room, idly alternating between inspecting the icons of the devices around her and the wider matrix landscape of Brockton Bay.


    It was like she wasn¡¯t really interested in what was happening in meatspace. She was bored, and when bored she defaulted to looking around the digital world rather than the physical one. Agoraphobe or not, if she were a rigger I¡¯d expect her to stick with the drone and if she were a decker I¡¯d expect her to listen in through one of her friend¡¯s comms rather than bring a drone. If she were either, I¡¯d expect her persona to be a bit more imaginative than that.


    It was the very mundanity of her persona that gave me pause. She acted wholly familiar with the matrix, but not in the way a professional would be. It was more like she¡¯d come into the matrix without any experience of it and had to teach herself to swim. It put me in mind of another matrix rumour I¡¯d come across; of people who¡¯d died while their minds were in cyberspace only for that mind to linger on as a ghost in the machine.


    The rumours were torn around whether these e-ghosts were the true souls of the brain-captured dead or just wild AI that believed they were the deceased, but once I¡¯d let the idea in I found it wouldn¡¯t leave me. I wondered if she¡¯d been caught up in whatever horrific incident Neith had clearly gone through.


    Looking closer at her university hoodie, I was shocked to see that it was specifically for UWM¡¯s  Thaumaturgical Studies department. Three confirmed mages in the same team was too many to be a coincidence, even if one of them might be dead. Were they all mages? All caught up in some catastrophe that had forced them into this life, given Neith some kind of chronic health issues, trapped Genesis in the matrix, put Sundancer in a position she clearly didn¡¯t want to be in and maybe even driven Ballistic to smother his magic under chrome? Was Calvert offering them a way out?


    In the end I wasn¡¯t sure it mattered. I knew they were dangerous and I knew that I had to stop them. I refused to be responsible for Theo¡¯s death. I just hoped the others would forgive me for it.


    I withdrew my projected senses back into my body, then began snapping the strands that bound me to the entity. Each time, there was a flash of sympathetic pain as I made my mind that much smaller, but I worked through it with the grim determination that came from knowing I¡¯d need to get used to the sensation in future.


    Navigating my way out of the resonance realms was much less painful, and soon I had drifted out into the matrix and returned to my body, ¡®waking up¡¯ in the bedroom Brian and I had claimed.


    It was relatively early in the morning, which meant that Theo would be on his way to campus in the back of an armoured SUV. I would have been surprised he was still going after his mother ¡®absconded¡¯ ¨C Max seemed to have bought the note Kayden had left ¨C if I hadn¡¯t heard the lengthy comm call between Theo and his father in which he¡¯d all but begged to be allowed to keep going. It was interesting that Max had let him, but I supposed his obsession with legacy cut both ways; he wanted to hand Medhall to Theo someday, which meant finding a balance between safety and smothering to ensure he wouldn¡¯t run the family legacy into the ground.


    Either way, it gave me some time ¨C but not much. The second team wouldn¡¯t go after him right away, but I was fairly confident that they would go today. To put it bluntly, if they were as good as Calvert seemed to think then there was no point delaying when they could instead get it over with and focus on preparing for the harder target.


    That side of Calvert¡¯s plan was still a mystery. The gang war we¡¯d sparked had shaken up the North End, but for most of Medhall it was business as usual. Short of luring down a few hundred Yakuza to besiege the company HQ I couldn¡¯t yet see how Calvert could create a large enough distraction to leave Max vulnerable.


    It was a problem for another day, but one I needed to pay attention to. It might even be worth explaining about the entity to the team if it meant they¡¯d let me plug myself in for at least a couple days of twelve-hour stints. If I spent the whole time submerged, I could even take over every night shift on watch and spend my days entirely in the resonance.


    But I supposed the problem was explaining the entity in a way they¡¯d understand or accept, then explaining why I desperately needed to spy on our boss as much as possible.


    I was procrastinating and I knew it. Losing myself in thoughts of the next threat even though the current threat was rapidly approaching. I hauled myself out of bed and threw on my clothes, then staggered down the stairs as I adjusted to having legs again.


    To my disgust, Kayden was in the kitchen, pouring some children¡¯s cereal into a bowl for her daughter. I wanted to leave, but almost out of spite I instead walked right past her, opened the fridge and grabbed one of the oranges that Lisa had bought from a nearby store, peeling off the skin with a fingernail.


    As usual, Aster flung herself into her mother¡¯s chest the moment I drew near, while her mother shot me a cruel glare.


    ¡°Do you enjoy this?¡± she demanded. ¡°Scaring my daughter like that? Your boss isn¡¯t the saint you thought he is ¨C big surprise ¨C so you¡¯re taking out your frustrations on a child?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re the one who taught her to be scared whenever I walk in the room,¡± I snapped. ¡°You¡¯re setting her up for a life spent in fear.¡±


    ¡°I taught her to be cautious,¡± she retorted. ¡°A monster like you could trample her without even noticing. When she¡¯s older, I¡¯ll teach her how to be brave.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re both scared of the wrong monster,¡± I said, discarding the orange peel and tossing a segment into my mouth before I left the room. Despite what Kayden thought, I had no desire to get into a shouting match with her while her daughter was in the room. It wouldn¡¯t go anywhere useful.


    As much as I might want to, I couldn¡¯t just kill her and move on. For one, Aster was the real problem; despite her efforts to carve out a niche for herself, Kayden was only important because of her daughter. For two, Calvert would descend on the others like an angry dragon. But if I did this on my own and failed then at least it¡¯d be clear I acted alone, which might spare the others from harm.


    Once I was out of sight of Kayden, I consoled myself with the thought that I was about to screw her over in the largest way possible. She thought she¡¯d cornered us, and probably cornered Calvert too, by making her too valuable to remove. I wondered if she only saw the Human Nation as a safety net, or if she was eager to take their operations further.


    She¡¯d definitely have to prove herself to the group, and I had noticed the way she¡¯d said that Medhall helped other companies launch sterilisation programmes. If Max was trying to preserve his legacy, he¡¯d probably want to avoid deliberately sabotaging his own hospitals. Kayden might not have the same scruples.


    I wasn¡¯t going out of my way to find the others, but I didn¡¯t feel like I could just walk out the door either. I couldn¡¯t tell them what I was going to do, but I at least wanted them to understand after the fact why I¡¯d done it. I was genuinely relieved when the first person I ran into was Bitch, who¡¯d just returned from the early morning watch and was making her shotgun safe in a room by the backdoor that seemed to have no other purpose than containing a washing machine and tumble dryer.


    ¡°Rachel,¡± I began, before adding, stupidly, ¡°want a slice of orange?¡±


    She shrugged, but held out a metal hand and ate the segment without any discernible reaction to the taste.


    ¡°Something up?¡± she asked.


    ¡°How¡¯d you guess?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re talking to me. There a problem with the perimeter?¡±


    ¡°No, I¡­¡± I paused, leaning against the dryer. ¡°You heard what Kayden said yesterday, about what¡¯s really going on at Medhall?¡±


    ¡°I did.¡±


    ¡°And?¡± I asked, a little exasperated. Rachel didn¡¯t say anything at first, but I could see her optics shifting as she focused on me.


    ¡°It bothers you,¡± she said, or perhaps guessed. ¡°So you¡¯re talking to me even though you know it doesn¡¯t bother me. People always have plans.¡±


    ¡°You said that before,¡± I remembered, ¡°back at my place, after Aisha ambushed me and you came running.¡±


    ¡°Also said that they don¡¯t matter so long as you can adapt. I don¡¯t pay attention to the background stuff like that. It¡¯s not what I¡¯m good at.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, sorry,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m just¡­ it¡¯s fucked up, Rachel. It¡¯s horrifying on a level I can¡¯t even wrap my head around.¡±


    ¡°So adapt,¡± Rachel said, shrugging her shoulders. ¡°Learn to deal or change the deal.¡±


    ¡°That easy, huh?¡± I asked, half joking, only for my face to fall as Rachel straightened up, set the shotgun down on top of the countertop and just glared at me with her optics.


    ¡°It hurts, Taylor. I remember that much. It hurts all the time, until nothing hurts. I learned to deal. Maybe you will too, or maybe you won¡¯t. Maybe you¡¯ll do something better.¡±


    I¡¯d forgotten. Rachel had made more moral compromises than I ever had, handing over her own autonomy for the sake of survival and then clawing it back one implant at a time as she walled off her wounded mind in a shell of her own making. I could easily see myself doing the same, losing myself in the resonance, but Rachel didn¡¯t exactly make it seem like a good idea. Neither did Labyrinth, come to think of it.


    ¡°Rachel,¡± I paused. I wasn¡¯t sure I wanted to say it. ¡°You¡¯re not as lost as you think you are.¡±


    Her lip twitched, just for a moment.


    ¡°I know,¡± she said. ¡°I know where I am, what I¡¯m good at and what I¡¯m not.¡±


    ¡°Thanks, for listening. That¡¯s one of the things you¡¯re good at.¡±


    I left her there, heading right for the front door. On the way, I saw Alec and Aisha sprawled out on a couch in the living room, both of them working their way through a small assortment of pastries. I left them alone; I didn¡¯t think either of them knew about what Kayden had said the night before, and I was pretty sure I didn¡¯t want them to. Alec probably wouldn¡¯t care, but Aisha would care too much. I couldn¡¯t bring anyone else along with me, but Aisha would invite herself and if I said no then she¡¯d just turn invisible and come anyway.


    I didn¡¯t want to talk to Brian, because I was afraid that out of all of them, he had the best chance of persuading me to stay. In spite of that, and perhaps inevitably, I ran into him by the front door.


    ¡°Taylor,¡± he began. ¡°I missed you this morning. You heading out?¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, spinning together a painful lie. ¡°I was running some checks on my wiretaps. Looks like Max believed Kayden¡¯s note.¡±


    ¡°I never thought I¡¯d help pull the wool over his eyes,¡± he said. ¡°The Anders family are practically an institution in this city.¡±


    There was something in the way he said the word ¡®Anders.¡¯


    ¡°You heard, then?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I heard. Lisa told me, and I¡¯m kind of annoyed that you didn¡¯t.¡±


    I sighed.


    ¡°Sorry. I couldn¡¯t get it out of my mind. Ended up taking a walk to try and clear my head.¡±


    ¡°Then you came back and zonked out into cyberspace for the night?¡±


    ¡°Pretty much. Brian, it¡¯s fucked up. You see that, right?¡±


    Brian narrowed his eyes, almost scowling at me. I¡¯d realised my mistake the moment I said it.


    ¡°Taylor, fucking look at me. Of course I see it, but I think I¡¯ve been seeing it for a lot longer than you have.¡±


    It was my turn to glare at Brian, but he didn¡¯t flinch or look away.


    ¡°You said your dad was a dockworker, and everybody knows the docks have always been their own little community. Your folks looked out for their friends and they looked out for you, and the world left you alone. That¡¯s not how it is in the rest of the city.¡±


    ¡°So what, just accept it?¡±


    ¡°Accept what, Taylor? Nothing we do here is going to stop companies in other cities from doing anything. We don¡¯t even know what companies they are. All we can do is look out for ourselves. We finish the job in front of us, and then we never have to work for that snake again. That¡¯s the life we signed on for.¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said. ¡°It is.¡±


    ¡°Listen, there are only six people in the world whose lives we¡¯re responsible for, but I¡¯m not saying do nothing. Sell the information to Faultline. She¡¯s a good broker; she¡¯ll make sure it gets to the right hands. Just wait until we¡¯re clear of Calvert before you do it, okay?.¡±


    ¡°Sure,¡± I lied, and for the first time there wasn¡¯t even a sliver of truth I could hide behind to assuage my conscience.


    ¡°Still heading out?¡± Brian asked, as I picked up my boots.


    ¡°I can¡¯t stand to be in the same building as that bitch,¡± I said.


    ¡°I thought you and Rachel were getting along?¡±


    I could only muster up a weak smile at his joke, but Brian seemed satisfied all the same. It was only when he left that I finally allowed the grief to show on my face. I didn¡¯t want to lie to him, but I didn¡¯t have a choice. I needed to do this, but Brian would always choose the safe path. It was what made him so steady, but some things were more important than stability.


    My final encounter was an entirely expected one. No matter how much effort I put into sneaking my way around her, Lisa would have known exactly what I was doing and why. She was in the room when Kayden revealed the whole horrific scheme and she¡¯d seen my every thought play out on my face.


    It was no surprise, therefore, to find her leaning against the perimeter wall, just beside the barred metal gate that led out into suburbia. She must have taken over Rachel¡¯s watch; she was in her combat gear, with her bowed head half-hidden by the popped collar of her trenchcoat. In her hand, she was caressing her amulet of Snake.


    She looked up as I approached, and I saw the fear mingled with concern in her eyes. It was enough to get me to slow my pace, coming to a stop just before the gate.


    ¡°I have to do this, Lisa,¡± I said. ¡°Maybe I shouldn¡¯t care about some rich kid like Theo Anders, but I¡¯ve been eavesdropping on his life for weeks. I¡¯ve read every comm message, listened to every session with his tabletop group. I¡¯ve watched every video call with his long distance girlfriend, and how torn he is by the scraps he knows of what Medhall are doing.¡±


    ¡°I know.¡±


    ¡°He doesn¡¯t deserve to die.¡±


    ¡°Maybe,¡± she said, moving in close. ¡°But we¡¯ve got a lot of people killed, Taylor. Directly and indirectly. Don¡¯t do this just because you know who this death is.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s different. I mean, you join a gang, you put on a uniform and you become part of the game. You accept the risk. He didn¡¯t.¡±


    Even as I said it, I realised how weak it sounded. How many people had died because of the gang war we¡¯d sparked simply because we¡¯d been paid to do it? We hadn¡¯t even known why Calvert wanted it to happen.


    ¡°You¡¯re compartmentalising.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m drawing a line in the sand. I can¡¯t change the world, but at least I can stop us from making it worse.¡±


    I stepped towards her, enveloping her shoulder with a hand and looking down at her, eye to eye.


    ¡°Lisa, I¡¯m not blind to what you¡¯ve done for me. You took in a shell of a person and helped her find herself. I don¡¯t know if it¡¯s because you saw your brother in me, or just because it¡¯s some spirit-driven compulsion of yours, but you taught me how to really live. You all did, and I¡¯m grateful. That¡¯s why I can¡¯t let us be a part of this.¡±


    Lisa broke eye contact, looking down to the side for a moment as we stood there in silence. At any moment one of the others could look out a window and get suspicious, but I found I didn¡¯t care. More than any of the others, it was important that she, at least, understood.


    ¡°Taylor, I¡¯m¡­¡± She trailed off, still looking down. ¡°I¡¯m scared, okay? Scared of losing you, scared of losing this, scared of going back to the runaway girl moving from city to city without knowing where she was going beyond far away. I¡¯m scared you¡¯re going to get yourself killed on some moral crusade, and I¡¯m scared that maybe you¡¯re right to go, that maybe I¡¯d lose some intangible part of myself if I stopped you.¡±


    I¡¯d never seen her like this before. Like Brian, she¡¯d always been a rock. I¡¯d always leant on her for support, going to her whenever I needed to talk something through.


    ¡°I¡¯m not doing this to die,¡± I said, bringing up my other hand ¨C my organic hand ¨C to her cheek as I nudged her head back around to face me. ¡°I have a plan ¨C a way out of this, for all of us.¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± she said. ¡°I think I can guess.¡±


    ¡°Then you get it,¡± I said, an optimistic smile tugging at the corners of my lips.


    ¡°I know what¡¯ll happen if I stop you,¡± she said, bringing her hands up to her neck. ¡°I know I don¡¯t want that for you. I can¡¯t help you, can¡¯t offer any advice, but I can tell the others you went out to grab some groceries, and I can give you this.¡±


    With quasi-religious reverence, she grasped the chain of the serpent pendant and slipped it over her neck. Standing on her tiptoes, she reached up and carefully looped the pendant over my horns and set the serpent down just below my collarbone.


    ¡°Give ¡®em hell.¡±

 Dissonance: 8.03

    As the metro crossed over the river, I brushed my hand over the holstered gun hidden beneath my zip-up hoodie.


    I¡¯d dressed for what I hoped was discretion, wearing the nondescript hoodie over a white tank top and a pair of jeans, with the baggy outer garment concealing the shape of the submachine gun in its shoulder holster. Hopefully, I¡¯d look like any other university shut-in.


    I¡¯d had to hike almost a kilometre to find a bus stop, then wait about forty minutes for it to actually arrive. Suburbia still worshipped the car, relegating all forms of public transport to a barely tolerated imposition. To that end, the only other people on the bus were a few night cleaners and one working girl, all of them returning to the city from their shifts in paradise.


    The bus had taken me back into the city limits, to a terminal where I¡¯d been able to switch over to the metro. From there, I¡¯d lingered on the periphery of a few groups of students who¡¯d finally dragged themselves out of bed and were making their way from their rented accommodation to the campus.


    I was stuck by how carefree they all seemed. These were the children of the comfortably middle class; the ones who¡¯d probably had an awareness of money instilled in them by their parents, but who¡¯d never had to worry about going short. They were the children of managers and skilled professionals, afforded a lifestyle that allowed them to spend a few years in easy street as they put a half-hearted effort into studying for their degree.


    I told myself that I was being uncharitable; that I only thought that way because I¡¯d once aspired to go to university myself. Mom had been a professor, which meant she¡¯d clearly seen some value in academia. In fact, New Brockton University had been her own institution; I had fond memories of playing on the floor of her office in the English Literature department.


    Out the window, the elevated rail line was dwarfed by the high rise skyline of the Towers, a tiered neighbourhood of decently well-off residential megabuildings that was sandwiched between the river and the lower slopes of Captain¡¯s Hill. The towers themselves were airy buildings with wide pedestrian walkways connecting them to one another, to the point where you could probably cross the whole neighbourhood without ever touching the ground.


    The New Brockton University campus was to the north of the Towers, built in tiers against the side of Captain¡¯s Hill. There was a metro station within a few hundred metres of the entrance, and as I disembarked among the crowd of students I focused on my connection to Theo¡¯s commlink, pulling up the live location data.


    According to a map of the campus I¡¯d found online, Theo was in the Draco Foundation library, right where Calvert had guessed he might be. I picked up the pace a little, hoping it would come across as a troll¡¯s naturally longer gait rather than a panicked rush as I approached the gates of the campus.


    Unfortunately, the flow of students had only increased and I found myself standing in a slowly-moving crowd of children in their late teens and early twenties, passing through a security checkpoint that looked like it had been heavily reinforced in the last few weeks. Certainly, a lot of the students around me were complaining about how much of a hassle getting onto campus had become lately, though very few of them actually said the words ¡®gang war¡¯ out loud.


    I reached out in the matrix, taking stock of every feature of the security system. The main safeguard was a facial recognition scanner that matched each student¡¯s features to their national or corporate System Identification Number, then compared that against the numbers on the enrolment list.


    I couldn¡¯t tweak my SIN on the fly, but I could send out a woodlouse to chew its way into the second stage of the check. As I slowly moved forwards, it dug a backdoor into the enrolment list, allowing me to add my number to the system.


    There were more physical elements to the building¡¯s security as well. A pair of Knight Errant officers were standing to one side, no doubt there to reassure the university even if their job seemed to just be looking tough while the campus security ¨C all of them employees of Eagle Security ¨C did the real work of running the checkpoint.


    There was a straightforward metal detector, which I hacked myself to pass the time, and every now and then a student was pulled aside for a random pat down. Unlike my experiences at the Dopadrine plant ¨C a lifetime ago now ¨C this seemed to be truly random, driven by a number generator in the Eagle Security network.


    I had no idea how I¡¯d explain the submachine gun under my hoodie, but a quick resonance spike directed at the random number generator meant I wouldn¡¯t have to. Instead, I emerged out onto a grand if narrow plaza that fronted onto what had to be the main university building; a tall structure with walls of deep blue glass that was probably meant to evoke the scales of President Dunkelzahn, who¡¯d left money in his will to found the university.


    With the GPS point at the forefront of my mind, I pushed past the crowd of students flowing into the main building, making my way along a wide pedestrianised walkway that followed the curving slope of the hill, with other academic buildings rising up on either side of me. If I looked to my left, I could see the rest of the campus climbing up in tiers, with the university¡¯s on-campus accommodation on the slopes above the academic buildings.


    My own destination was on the next tier up, which meant taking a staircase two steps at a time as I brushed past a number of significantly more languid students before emerging onto another, significantly smaller plaza built around a surprisingly healthy-looking tree, with a whole host of passive and active monitoring devices dug into the bark to help it survive the urban air.


    There were fewer students on this level, though a caf¨¦ on the other side of the plaza had a decent amount of customers nursing coffees, most of them sitting on their own as they worked away at physical or augmented reality laptops. In the plaza itself, there were a few people crossing through on their way from their accommodation blocks to their lectures or seminars, a small group who looked like they were part of some kind of yoga session and a tall blonde human who¡¯d just hung up her comm and was calling out to a friend.


    I didn¡¯t spare any of them more than a moment¡¯s glance ¨C just long enough, I hoped, to identify if any of them were Trickster, Sundancer or Neith ¨C as I consulted my map again and left the plaza onto a walkway that would take me directly to the Draco Foundation library.


    ¡°Hey!¡±


    I wheeled around, my hand instinctively flinching towards my gun before I stilled it at the sight of the blonde woman striding towards me, one hand raised in a wave. For a brief moment I wondered if mages could change their face, but I quickly quashed the idea. It was only when I noticed just how familiar her commlink felt that I finally recognised Victoria Dallon, this time dressed in a leather jacket and jeans rather than a business suit.


    ¡°I knew it was you!¡± she said, grinning. ¡°What are the chances, huh? I can¡¯t believe I never ran into you before!¡±


    ¡°Yeah I, uh,¡± I stammered, wrongfooted. ¡°Listen, Ms Johnson-¡±


    ¡°Oh yeah,¡± she grinned a little sheepishly, before holding out her hand as if we were meeting for the first time.


    ¡°Victoria Dallon.¡±


    ¡°I uh¡­ I know,¡± I said. I had no idea why, but I took her hand in my own. ¡°Look¡­¡± I began, but Victoria¡¯s eyes had widened at the feeling of my cybernetic hand on her own.


    ¡°Oh you don¡¯t have to worry,¡± she said, ploughing through her momentary discomfort and completely steamrolling any attempt I might have launched to regain control, ¡°I won¡¯t tell if you won¡¯t. I¡¯ve gotta say, though, it¡¯s a pretty badass way to pay for college.¡±


    For fuck¡¯s sake, I thought, exasperatedly. At least my cover¡¯s holding.


    ¡°Listen, Vic, it¡¯s been wild running into you but I¡¯ve got an appointment in the Draco library I can¡¯t miss.¡±


    ¡°Awesome,¡± she said, in a way that heralded bad news, ¡°I¡¯m headed that way myself!¡±


    ¡°Sure, whatever,¡± I said, quickly surrendering to the inevitable, ¡°I can walk and talk.¡±


    This was the second last thing I wanted, but so long as I was still moving in the right direction it was still better than the alternative.


    ¡°Listen,¡± Victoria began, fractionally more hesitantly, ¡°I never got the chance to thank you and your team for what you did. With Andrew Garcia.¡±


    ¡°You paid us,¡± I pointed out.


    ¡°C¡¯mon, it¡¯s more than that. I¡¯m sure you figured it out when you saw the news stories, but it really meant a lot to me. You made a difference.¡±


    Yeah, that¡¯s the problem, I thought.


    ¡°Sure, that time, maybe. But that¡¯s on you, not us.¡±


    ¡°No, I don¡¯t buy it,¡± she said, easily keeping pace with me in spite of my longer legs. ¡°I know¡­ shadowrunners¡± ¨C she said the word in a stage whisper ¨C ¡°get to choose what jobs they take and what they turn down. You helped correct an injustice, and you get to be proud of that.¡±


    ¡°Alright, fine,¡± I said, conceding the point to hurry her along, rather than because I actually believed it. ¡°I am glad he¡¯s in prison.¡±


    Even if it was the paydata I sold from that job that first lured us into Calvert¡¯s sphere.


    ¡°So, the arm¡¯s new,¡± Victoria began, bludgeoning through any sense of propriety. ¡°You mind me asking if it was a choice or a necessity?¡±


    ¡°It was Chosen,¡± I answered, emphasising the name.


    ¡°Fucking steelheads,¡± Victoria said, scowling. We were nearing the library; I could actually see it at the end of the road. ¡°Hopefully K-E will sort them out soon; they launched a big raid on a megatower in the North End the night before last. Snatched up some pretty important targets, from what I hear.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re well informed,¡± I remarked.


    ¡°I¡¯m majoring in Psychology and Criminology,¡± she said, though that didn¡¯t explain why she was getting the gossip on active investigations. ¡°I¡¯m hoping to join the FBI someday.¡±


    ¡°How does that track with hiring shadowrunners?¡±


    ¡°You think the FBI doesn¡¯t? Basically every non-Federal police force in the country is run by contractors. There¡¯s some stuff you just can¡¯t trust to corporations, but you still need boots on the ground. But what about you?¡±


    ¡°Artificial Intelligence,¡± I said, thinking on the spot.


    ¡°I figured it¡¯d be something like that, but you¡¯re on the wrong end of campus for Computer Science, aren¡¯t you?¡± she asked, and for a moment I wondered just how far Psychology and Criminology book smarts could take a person.


    ¡°I¡¯m meeting a friend,¡± I lied.


    ¡°Another member of your team?¡±


    ¡°No, they don¡¯t¡­ go here. Just a friend.¡±


    ¡°They got a name? Maybe I know them.¡±


    As I turned to look at her, I saw clear suspicion in her eyes. I don¡¯t know what I¡¯d said to give the game away, but it was clear that I¡¯d been made.


    ¡°Something to say?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Only that you¡¯d better have a damn good reason for being here.¡±


    I heard gunshots from up ahead, followed by screams.


    ¡°Motherfucker!¡± I shouted, pointing angrily towards the source of the screams. ¡°That reason enough!?¡±


    I pulled down the zip of my hoodie and drew the submachine gun, racking back the slide as I sprinted down the street. It took me a moment to notice the second set of pounding feet, their tempo faster than my own as they compensated for their shorter length. Victoria was keeping pace with me, her hand reaching for her commlink. Her face was a strange mix of fear, anger and eager anticipation.


    ¡°Call the campus rent-a-cops if you want,¡± I snapped. ¡°I¡¯m sure someone already has, but they can¡¯t do shit against a full team of runners.¡±


    ¡°Not your team?¡± Victoria asked.


    ¡°Assassins,¡± I said, not seeing any point in hiding it. ¡°Here for Theo Anders.¡±


    The sound of gunfire had increased, mingled with the crackle of spellfire. I could see magical flames flickering behind the windows on the first floor of the library before I sprinted into the lobby, with the would-be-hero still doggedly following at my heels.


    The few students in the lobby took one look at the charging troll with a submachine gun and fled screaming, scattering as I vaulted over a waist-high barrier connected to another SIN scanner, my weapon already raised and pointing down the corridor as I advanced.


    Beyond the terrified students sheltering in place, there was no outward sign of anything wrong until I reached the first floor, emerging from a stairwell only to be confronted by two dead bodyguards in ballistic-fabric suits that hadn¡¯t done anything to protect them from the magical blows that had decapitated one and burned the other¡¯s head to a crisp.


    Victoria rushed ahead of me, very pointedly not looking at the desecrated heads as she snatched up one of the guards¡¯ heavy pistols, checking it was loaded and ready with a practiced hand before fishing a couple of spare magazines out of the guard¡¯s jacket and tucking them between her belt and her pants.


    ¡°You know how to use that?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I¡¯m a twenty-one year old woman, of course I know how to shoot a gun.¡±


    ¡°Theory¡¯s a bit different to practice,¡± I said. ¡°If you¡¯re doing this, follow my lead and stay out of my field of fire.¡±


    Theo¡¯s commlink was close enough that I could almost touch it, moving fast on the other side of the building. I sprinted down the corridors, slowing at the corners to stop myself from walking into a firefight. The halls here bore obvious signs of magical damage, with chunks carved out of the walls and still-smouldering patches where magical fire had scored into the concrete walls. I was glad the library didn¡¯t contain any paper books; quite aside from fighting through an inferno, it would have been a terrible loss.


    There were more dead bodies, too; a couple of young men at the end of the hall, both of them sliced almost in half. Interestingly, both corpses were still clutching holdout pistols, and I could pick up the signal from two earpieces. It seemed Max Anders had secreted a number of covert guards into the university, to protect his son without constraining him. It was a good sign; the more bodies Medhall could throw at the other Shadowrunners, the more likely it was that Theo would still be alive when I reached him.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    As we hit the other side of the building, I finally saw the second team in action. Trickster and Sundancer were both fighting in the loading bay behind the library, throwing spells at a great glowing bird that seemed to be formed from semi-solidified mist. It fought back against the assassins with razor-sharp gusts of air that tore through dumpsters, vehicles and walls with equal ease. Sundancer was retaliating with whipcord streams of fire that sprang from her arms, while her body was wreathed in a cloak of yellow-red flames.


    Trickster was far more mobile than his fellow mage. He sprinted for a parked car, jumping up onto the roof then seemingly splitting into two copies of himself and leaping aside right as the spirit aimed a chilling breath that coated the car in a layer of iced condensate. Split between the two targets, the spirit took a gamble and struck at one of the Tricksters with its beak, only for the other to fling a coiled mass of magical energy that unfurled itself into an entangling net.


    With the spirit momentarily pinned, Sundancer brought her hands together and fired a continuous beam of infernal energy that burned away at the bird¡¯s core, causing parts of its body to fray apart as if it were returning to mist. For a moment it looked like they might have the upper hand; I was considering whether I should line up a shot on Sundancer to take one of the mages out of the battle when a marked Eagle Security car shot into the loading bay, its lights and sirens both off.


    Four officers disembarked, dressed in light uniforms and carrying nothing but sidearms. These were supposed to be friendly campus police officers, not a High Threat Response team, so when confronted by a spirit that their guns could do nothing against ¨C or perhaps prewarned by one of Medhall¡¯s covert agents ¨C they instead turned their guns on the two mages.


    Trickster scrambled to respond, gesturing wildly as he shouted an incantation that materialised a wall of force between him and the officers right as they started shooting. Sundancer flinched at the sudden arrival of campus police, her stream of fire wavering as her attention was split for just a single instant.


    It was all the time the spirit needed to rear up into the air, shattering the net into nothingness as it spread its glowing wings wide and let out a shriek of angry indignation that hit Sundancer like a wall of force, extinguishing her flames and hurling her back against a dumpster with enough force to dent the metal.


    For a moment I thought she¡¯d been rendered unconscious, but then she scrambled forward in blind terror, screaming ¡°no!¡± again and again until her voice devolved into a wordless cry of pain and terror. The blood-red tattoos on her arm began to glow, then caught light again in a conflagration that clearly hurt Sundancer as though they were truly burning her. Deep sanguine flames leapt from her fingertips, coalescing in the air in front of her as a glowing red orb even as Sundancer ¨C still mad with pain ¨C threw herself to the floor before the manifestation in a gesture of horrifying obsequiousness.


    The planar entity, the mentor spirit ¨C I didn¡¯t see how it could be anything else, though it seemed to have a far crueller hold on Sundancer than Snake did on Tattletale ¨C was nothing less than a miniature sun, burning with a star¡¯s heat as it drifted towards the great eagle. I could see the trail of molten asphalt it left in its wake, could have sworn Lisa¡¯s pendant was trembling against my sternum.


    I ran, leaving the two spirits to kill each other as I hurriedly checked Theo¡¯s location. I¡¯d been transfixed by the magic I¡¯d seen, standing frozen for mere seconds ¨C but they were seconds wasted. Already Theo had left the building, moving deeper into the campus.


    I glanced out of a window, spotting the low roof of a coffee stall just below me, and drove my metal elbow into the glass before sweeping my hand along the frame to scatter the shards that remained. Without looking to see if Victoria would follow me, I clambered out of the window and dropped down to the sheet metal roof, landing with a resounding clang that left a sizeable dent before leaping down to the ground. A moment later, I heard the blonde following behind me.


    ¡°You know this kid or what?¡± I asked, even as I started sprinting.


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter,¡± she answered. ¡°Besides,¡± she continued, a little breathlessly. ¡°¡®Kid?¡¯ Pretty sure you¡¯re the same age.¡±


    That might be true, I thought. But I feel like I¡¯ve gone through another ten years¡¯ worth of living.


    ¡°His commlink¡¯s still moving,¡± I said, as I drove a resonance spike into the electronic lock of a general workspace building full of pop-up lecture halls and smaller spaces for seminars. ¡°Means he¡¯s still alive.¡±


    ¡°Where¡¯s his evac?¡± Victoria asked. ¡°Kids that rich have threat response on speed dial.¡±


    It was a good point. I reached for my tap on his comm, following the line back to Calvert¡¯s headquarters. The snake was blocking all outgoing signals using the backdoor I¡¯d given him, and I was sure he was using his own in-house decker to do the same to Theo¡¯s security detail. If help was coming, it would be from Eagle Security escalating the threat to Knight Errant, which would take time I didn¡¯t have.


    I could attack Calvert¡¯s systems from within, but it would be immediately clear that I was the one doing it. At the moment I was still anonymous; nobody knew I was here, none of the other Shadowrunners knew my face and Victoria¡¯s uninvited presence might even help further obfuscate my identity until Calvert could get actual footage of who attacked him.


    It wouldn¡¯t last, and I was more than ready to burn my anonymity if I had to, but I had to choose my moment carefully, for the others¡¯ sake.


    ¡°We¡¯re close,¡± I said, slowing my pace. I didn¡¯t have to say it; we could both hear gunfire coming from up ahead. ¡°You don¡¯t have to do this, you know.¡±


    ¡°Shut up,¡± Victoria snapped at me. ¡°I don¡¯t care why they¡¯re here and I don¡¯t really care why you¡¯re here. He doesn¡¯t deserve to die.¡±


    She pushed ahead of me, holding her pistol in a professional two-handed grip as she strode cautiously towards the sound of the gunfire and the signal from Theo¡¯s commlink.


    Once we reached the end of the hall, we were close enough to hear them. Theo was breathing heavily, and he sounded like he was on the verge of hyperventilating, while I could see three more earpieces in the matrix. Three more guards.


    ¡°Control, this is Epsilon Sixteen,¡± one of them ¨C a woman ¨C was saying as she tried in vain to get a signal through Calvert¡¯s interference. ¡°We¡¯re taking fire in the Rosalind building. Control, do you read?¡±


    I heard a sharp crack, followed almost instantaneously by the sound of brickwork shattering under the force of a high-power sniper round. A moment later, one of the commlinks moved as a guard stood up just long enough to return fire with a burst of shots from a machine pistol, before a second crack rang out and I heard a body hit the floor. From the cry of pain, it sounded like the guard had been wounded, not killed.


    ¡°Sir, we need to move,¡± another guard said, his voice wavering. ¡°This wall won¡¯t stand up to those rounds. I¡¯ll see if I can draw his fire, but you need to start crawling. Understood?¡±


    ¡°Y-yeah,¡± Theo said, forcing the words out.


    ¡°Okay, on three.¡±


    They didn¡¯t get the chance. Something smashed through a window with the roar of rotor blades, before I heard a machine gun open fire. Throwing caution to the wind, I rounded the corner and aimed my submachine gun at the first thing I could see, unloading an entire magazine into the MCT-Nissan Roto-Drone that had forced its way into the hall.


    The drone¡¯s fuselage sparked under the shots, its semi-armoured body splintering while other shots sheared through the three rotor assemblies. The drone crashed to the ground, its inbuilt assault rifle waving futilely at the wall. Theo had his back to the drone as he hurried down the corridor at a crawl, while the three guards had reacted remarkably quickly and interposed themselves between their client and the threat.


    Consequently, two of them were now dead, while the third ¨C probably the one who¡¯d been hit by the sniper ¨C had her hand pressed against a nasty wound on her right shoulder. She looked up at us as we crawled past, her eyes unfocused as she tried to fight through the pain. She seemed torn between grabbing her gun and keeping pressure on the wound.


    ¡°It¡¯s okay,¡± Victoria said. ¡°We¡¯re here to help. You just focus on staying alive; we¡¯ll save your client.¡±


    I ignored the guard, crawling past her in my haste to reach the end of the corridor only to freeze as the sniper ¨C undoubtedly Ballistic, unless Genesis had another drone somewhere ¨C put a shot through the wall in front of me. After a second shot went through five metres ahead of me I kept crawling, gambling that he had no idea where I was ¨C or even if Theo was still in the corridor ¨C and was just hoping he got lucky.


    Once we¡¯d scrambled out of the sniper¡¯s field of fire, I stood up on shaking legs, turned the corridor and finally found myself face to face with Theo Anders for the first time. In the flesh, at least. My online snooping had made me more than familiar with his features; like his father¡¯s but on a softer face.


    Inevitably, when confronted by an armed giant of a troll, Theo¡¯s face twisted into a rictus of fear. But then something unexpected happened; instead of screaming or begging for his life, Theo¡¯s features suddenly tightened as he stood and stared me down, greeting what he had to believe was his imminent death with the impassivity of stone.


    ¡°Relax,¡± I said, lowering my gun. ¡°I¡¯m here to get you out.¡±


    His eyes widened at that, his mask faltering as his mouth dropped.


    ¡°There¡¯s no way my father sent you,¡± he said, with none of the emphasis his step-mother always put on the word ¡®you.¡¯


    ¡°Of course not,¡± I acknowledged. ¡°This is¡­ competing interests, I guess. They want you dead, I don¡¯t.¡±


    ¡°Is that¡­¡± he paused, looking behind me with a hopelessly lost expression, like the world had stopped making sense a long time ago and he¡¯d resigned himself to the insanity. ¡°You¡¯re Victoria Dallon, aren¡¯t you? Dean Stansfield¡¯s girlfriend?¡±


    ¡°Hello!¡± Victoria said, with seemingly genuine cheer. ¡°I¡¯m not with her, by the way. Just a concerned citizen.¡±


    ¡°My father¡¯s men¡­¡± Theo began.


    ¡°Most of them are dead,¡± I said, bluntly, ¡°and your comms are actively being jammed. If there are any survivors they¡¯re either looking for you or trying to get clear of the jamming and call for backup.¡±


    He paled at that, his eyes widening a little more as he started to sway on his feet.


    ¡°Hey, Theo, listen to me,¡± Victoria said, putting one hand on his shoulder and grabbing Theo¡¯s hand with her other, squeezing his palm between her thumb and forefingers. ¡°You need to stay with us, okay. We have to keep moving.¡±


    ¡°Are you with Ares?¡± he asked, which made Victoria look at me with renewed interest.


    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°This is¡­ well, this is a clusterfuck, but that¡¯s beside the point. Come on; it¡¯s move or die.¡±


    Theo seemed to gather himself at that; he almost looked confident as he took a step forwards as Victoria let go. Certainly, he was no longer paralysed with fear, just scared enough to run. I led them through the halls without any idea of where I was going, passing through an unlit area of the building which had clearly been mothballed until some specific course grew popular enough to need extra space.


    All the while, I was listening intently for the sound of pounding footsteps, waiting on tenterhooks for the touch of stellar heat and scanning the matrix around me for any sign of more drones.


    There was one signal from the corridor opposite; a wheeled GMC Sandal delivery drone that was typically used to deliver parcels throughout the sprawl, or as part of an internal mailing system. From the way that it was purposefully roaming the halls, its sensors sweeping over each room it passed, I guessed that each parcel compartment contained at least one grenade.


    ¡°Hold up,¡± I said to the others, even as I let my hold on my body loosen, ¡°I need to fix our drone problem.¡±


    I leant against the wall and left my body behind, flying at the drone like a banshee as I gathered a resonance spike and drove it into the Sandal¡¯s commercial-grade firewalls. They hadn¡¯t even been upgraded; this was just a stock drone with rudimentary protection meant to dissuade script-kiddies from hacking the thing and ramming people with it. I tore it open like a crab shell, leaving the persona within exposed and vulnerable. Then I formed another spike and drove it directly into Genesis.


    She screamed in real agony, instinctively letting her control of the drone slip. Whatever she may be, she wasn¡¯t a decker and she clearly had no idea how to even begin installing shop-bought anti-virus software on an uploaded brainscan. She was just some rank amateur who¡¯d probably turned her experience in full-immersion video games into a marketable skill by piloting one drone at a time. Her other drones were no doubt set on automatic paths or running under stock agents, like a mobile inventory she could pick and choose from to suit the situation.


    It was clear these Shadowrunners had some terrifyingly powerful magic resources, but in every other respect they were distinctly lopsided. I was amazed they¡¯d managed to kill Max¡¯s sister without being detected, but maybe they¡¯d just had Genesis roll in there with the right drone and an overdose in a hypodermic needle.


    Either way, it was clear that Genesis was the least of them, except for maybe Neith and her mysterious illness. She was a perpetual outcast, and I could exploit that.


    ¡°I can see you, little thing,¡± I said, giving my words an entirely cosmetic reverberating emphasis as I drew an enveloping fog of resonance around us. ¡°A fly stuck in a Spider¡¯s web.¡±


    She tried to run away, but I spun together a wasp and sent it to circle around her, blocking her escape.


    ¡°You¡¯ve already died once,¡± I said, gambling on my guess about her nature. ¡°Do you think it¡¯ll hurt more the second time around?¡±


    ¡°What are you?¡± Genesis stammered out, her voice full of pain as her persona backed away with her hands raised ¨C both inescapably physical reactions to a non-physical threat.


    ¡°I¡¯m in your way,¡± I said, ¡°and you¡¯re in my domain. I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve been through a lot together; you and Trickster, Ballistic, Sundancer and Neith, but you need to decide right here and now if they¡¯re worth dying for. Because in this place, you¡¯re just another file to be deleted.¡±


    She didn¡¯t take long to decide. A moment or two¡¯s hesitation, in which her attention shifted back to the broken drone, before she disappeared as she fled through the matrix as quickly as she could manage. Maybe she¡¯d try and reconnect with her team later, or maybe I¡¯d driven her away forever. In the end it didn¡¯t matter; she was out of the fight.


    One down, four to go.


    I returned to meatspace with a jolt, as my physical senses rushed back into my consciousness. It had only taken a few seconds to drive off Genesis, but Victoria had still dropped to one knee beside me, an expression of interested concern on her face as she looked me over.


    ¡°Come on,¡± I said. ¡°The drones are down, but that gunman¡¯s still out there and I doubt that guardian spirit will be able to hold down the two mages forever.¡±


    ¡°Is that all of them?¡± Victoria asked.


    ¡°Maybe,¡± I said. ¡°I don¡¯t know. There¡¯s one more in the team, but she looked like she could barely stand up straight.¡±


    ¡°But why are they here?¡± Theo asked, a little short of breath. ¡°Why are they so determined to kill me? To hurt my father?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not about you,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s about getting you out of the way. Like I said, you¡¯re caught up in a clusterfuck.¡±


    We pushed through a fire exit as I smothered the alarm, only to hear the sound of distant sirens as we spilled out into an alleyway between buildings.


    ¡°Knight Errant,¡± Victoria said. ¡°Guess they¡¯re treating this as an active shooter.¡±


    ¡°It means they¡¯ll evacuate the students, at least,¡± Theo said. ¡°I still can¡¯t reach anyone on my commlink.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ve been hacked,¡± I remarked.


    ¡°You took out their Rigger, right?¡± Victoria asked. ¡°Can¡¯t you un-hack it?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± I quickly denied as I spun together a white lie. ¡°The encryption¡¯s too good. Actually, you should toss your link. The hacker can see your location. He hasn¡¯t passed it on to the Shadowrunners yet because he wants to stay deniable, but he will if he thinks you¡¯re going to get away.¡±


    Theo took one last look at his commlink before tossing it down to the far end of the alleyway. We went in the opposite direction, crossing the open road at a sprint before we were able to duck between another pair of buildings. It seemed we¡¯d left the public-facing part of the university behind; we were surrounded by facilities and infrastructure buildings, with a lot of parked vans bearing the university¡¯s logo. There were a few people rushing down the roads, most of them uniformed estate staff in comfortable work pants and steel-toed boots, making for the designated shelters or evacuation routes.


    ¡°What about mine?¡± Victoria asked, pulling her own commlink out of her jacket. I could have kicked myself.


    ¡°Shit, that¡¯ll work!¡± I said. ¡°Theo, you know the number for Valkyrie?¡±


    ¡°I can look it up,¡± he said, taking the comm from Victoria.


    ¡°Faster if I do it,¡± I said, even as I turned my still-functional backdoor into Victoria¡¯s comm into access permissions, then quickly skimmed through the matrix until I found the right number.


    I couldn¡¯t find the emergency line ¨C their system worked through an app installed on a client¡¯s comm ¨C but the general enquiries one would have to do.


    The pointlessness of that option became clear the moment we heard the automated greeter trying to take us through a numbered list of options. Theo immediately hung up, sighed and dialled a different number.


    ¡°Hey dad,¡± he said, ¡°I¡¯m in trouble.¡±


    It was strange, but no matter how trivial it would have been to listen in on Max¡¯s side of the conversation, I couldn¡¯t manage it beyond the first few words. Like Kayden, I couldn¡¯t match the paternal concern I heard in his tone to the ruthless callousness of his actions. I didn¡¯t understand how a person could even function when their psyche was torn by that cognitive dissonance.


    Max knew something was wrong at the campus, of course. His agents would have stopped checking in, and Valkyrie Paramedical¡¯s status meant that it would be trivial to get the inside track on the emergency services¡¯ GridLink. All Theo had to do was give his approximate location and Max relayed it directly to the Valkyrie Paramedical High Threat Response team that he¡¯d already dispatched to the campus.


    Of course, that was when I realised the other mistake I¡¯d made. I¡¯d had to tune Max out from two sources; Victoria¡¯s commlink and my tap on Max¡¯s own personal comm. A number that Calvert also had access to, which meant he¡¯d heard that whole thing.


    ¡°We need to move, now!¡± I shouted, right as I heard a strange droning buzz from above my head.


    I saw Victoria¡¯s eyes widen in horror, before she raised her pistol and began firing shots at something behind me. I wheeled around, my gun raised and aimed upwards even as I frantically scanned the matrix for threats.


    I was looking in the wrong plane. In front of me, gripping the wall of the building beside us, was a dog-sized wasp, its wings still buzzing as it peered down at us with lifeless, insectoid eyes. As Victoria¡¯s bullets struck the creature, it flinched back as if struck, but I watched in dumbfounded astonishment as the bullets simply passed through the insect and struck the brickwork, leaving a spray of golden ichor that rapidly evaporated into nothingness.


    Then, my astonishment turned to horror as a second insect spirit flew into the alleyway; another wasp bearing down on us. I fired a burst on full auto, my heavier calibre rounds wounding the wasps, but nowhere near as much as they should have.


    ¡°Run!¡± Victoria shouted, and I sprinted after her, my hand on Theo¡¯s back as I pushed him forward. Behind us, the air filled with thrumming wingbeats as the insect spirits took flight.

 Dissonance: 8.04

    For the second time in as many days, the world fell out from under me. I ran as fast as I could, driven forwards by an overwhelming terror that flooded my limbs with primal strength in a flight response that was older than this world and all the ages that came before it.


    The worst of the insect spirit panic was well before my time, but the fear of them was omnipresent. It was the fear of cults spreading their roots throughout your city, luring in your loved ones with the promise of universal brotherhood only to use them as nothing more than incubators for the cult¡¯s masters, their bodies and souls burned up to provide an otherworldly monster with a foothold in reality.


    It was city-wide destruction once those cults reached critical mass; the burned-out centre of Chicago abandoned and walled off for years until Ares cracked it open and dropped biologically engineered magic-eating pesticides on the surviving bugs and any awakened soul unlucky enough to still be alive in there. It was the world¡¯s first wholly magical threat, as alien to this world as the resonance and those entities that dwell within it.


    Beside me, Theo was running as fast as he could, adrenaline forcing him to move faster than he probably ever had on legs that I doubted had run in a while. Victoria was already ahead of us, stopping at the end of the alleyway to fire an entire magazine of useless shots at the pursuing insects.


    I spotted a CCTV camera at the end of the street, flinging a resonance spike towards it to shatter its firewalls before I swivelled it on its mount to give me eyes in the back of my head. The insect spirits were shadowing us, darting in quick movements from wall to wall. But that was all they were doing; following us, rather than hunting us. Tracking our position to guide something else in.


    It had to be Neith. This had to be her filthy secret; one that had driven her into this miserable existence, struggling against the malignant effects of her shamanic magic even while using her connection to those foul entities as a weapon. I wondered how any of the other shadowrunners could stand to be in the same room as her. I didn¡¯t wonder why Calvert tolerated her; a man who¡¯d make a deal with a monster like Kayden Anders wouldn¡¯t hesitate to exploit a modern-day Faust.


    I could hear sirens all around us now, but I was barely aware of them. This whole endeavour had been a clusterfuck from the very start, but there was no longer any room in my head for Ballistic or Sundancer or Trickster. Just the hunters and the hunted.


    ¡°This way!¡± Victoria shouted as she threw her shoulder against a doorway. She bounced back without effect, then scrambled aside as I hunched over and twisted my body to drive my own shoulder into it. I didn¡¯t even slow down as I trampled the door underfoot, with the two students sprinting in after me.


    It was unfair, in a way. Victoria was in the peak of physical health; the absolute pinnacle of what a twenty-one year old human woman could achieve without dedicating her entire life to professional athletics. I had none of that, but because of what I was I outweighed her and could probably out-punch her too.


    Of course, every physical benefit was outweighed by a hundred different downsides. I became acutely aware of that as I knocked down the door at the other end of the corridor only to end up face to face with four armed Knight Errant officers gathered around two black and yellow patrol cars, their blue and red lights almost blindingly bright through eyes turned watery by sweat and adrenaline.


    I froze, throwing my hands in the air even as the officers all raised their guns. As Theo and Victoria spilled out of the door behind me they did the same, while the officers shouted a barrage of panicked and contradictory orders that were drowned out by the pounding of my heart, their commands blurring together into an indistinguishable noise.


    ¡°Call Firewatch!¡± I managed to stammer out. ¡°Call them now!¡±


    I took a half step forward, then froze again as I saw guns jerk. Abruptly I realised that while I¡¯d thrown my hands up, my finger was still wrapped around the trigger of my submachine gun. I wasn¡¯t sure I could move it at all, never mind drop the thing.


    The officers were all wearing Knight Errant¡¯s typical uniform of black taksuits trimmed with yellow, with full-face helmets and yellow visors that hid any expression I could use to judge whether they were about to shoot me. But one of them was wearing a mage¡¯s tabard, with a pendant around his neck and a kind of hood drawn up over his helmet.


    I turned to meet his eyes, or where I guessed his eyes were.


    ¡°Get ready,¡± I said, diving to the floor and throwing out my organic arm to bring Theo down with me moments before the wasps shot out of the door behind us.


    The officers fired, but the first shots went over us. A third person hit the ground beside me; Victoria flinging herself down just in time. The second shots came almost immediately, but they weren¡¯t aimed at us.


    There was a cry of ¡°bugs!¡± as the Knight Errant officers panicked, firing blindly at the wasps. Two of them staggered back, their shots going wild, but the mage seemed to remember his training; he dropped his pistol, pressing his palms together and sweeping them out as flames sprang from his fingertips, forcing the wasps up and over the officers.


    Horrifyingly, a third wasp had joined the pursuit at some point, before they dropped down onto the two officers who¡¯d lost their nerve. Two of them landed on one officer, driving their stingers through his taksuit and injecting him with unreal venom that had already killed him, even if he was still standing for the moment.


    The last wasp gripped another officer¡¯s shoulder in its mandibles, the officer freezing up as some kind of paralytic spell crept across his body. He escaped his comrade¡¯s fate only because the mage shot a powerbolt through the before it could drive its stinger home, while the last officer was shouting into his radio, his gun holstered and his baton drawn.


    I grabbed the back of Theo¡¯s shirt, pulling him up as I started to scramble away, keeping low while the Knight Errant mage tried desperately to fight off the insect spirits alone. The moment we were clear, we ran again, though it seemed none of us could manage more than a jog.


    Gambling, I took us off the street and into


    ¡°They¡¯re too small,¡± Victoria said, panting.


    ¡°Too fucking small?¡± I stammered out. ¡°They¡¯re huge!¡±


    ¡°They should be as big as a person,¡± she continued. ¡°And a lot smarter than that. It¡¯s like they were made from animals, if that¡¯s even possible, or the shaman¡¯s some kind of fuck-up.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll count my damn blessings,¡± I snapped, but it made a sick kind of sense. There was clearly something wrong with Neith. Insect Shamans were supposed to be cult leaders, not walking health cases, but I couldn¡¯t see Neith luring anybody in.


    ¡°Do you think Knight Errant will hold them?¡±


    ¡°Not those guys,¡± Victoria said, bleakly. ¡°Firewatch will be coming. We just have to survive until then.¡±


    ¡°We need to get off campus,¡± I said, pulling up GridLink¡¯s city map as I scanned the campus for ways out before finding a building that straddled the line of the campus¡¯ perimeter fence.


    ¡°Come on,¡± I said, moving through the building at a brisk walk, since Theo looked like he was about to die of exhaustion and I didn¡¯t feel far off joining him. Victoria still looked as infuriatingly unflappable as ever, striding ahead of us with her pistol raised.


    I was actively scanning the matrix, taking in the location of every single device within a radius around me. We were back in an academic building, which meant most were simple terminals, projectors, screens and access nodes to the university library, all held together by the thin strands that tied them to NBU¡¯s host.


    There were a scant handful of private devices, some of them simply forgotten in the evacuation while others were shifting from side to side, no doubt in the pockets of those who hadn¡¯t got the message to leave, or who¡¯d assumed it would blow over only to be caught in the middle of a catastrophe.


    I found myself thinking back on what Victoria had said about the strange insect spirits, as well as what I¡¯d seen of the team¡¯s dynamic when they were talking to Calvert. It seemed pretty clear that the treatment he promised them was to deal with Neith¡¯s insect problem, but that in and of itself suggested that she wasn¡¯t a true insect shaman; if she was, she wouldn¡¯t see anything wrong with feeding people to bugs. I wondered how tight a hold her team had on her. She¡¯d seemed almost like a leader, but Sundancer and Ballistic had both shackled their magic, and I was sure she was the reason why.


    Any attempts to think over the problem further ended when I caught another web of devices moving towards us at a rapid pace, probably trying to cut off our escape from the Knight Errant patrol.


    Ballistic¡¯s cybersuite was immediately recognisable to me, as was the profile of the marksman¡¯s rifle I could detect through its connection to his heads-up-display. He couldn¡¯t know where we were, not exactly, but he was on course to intercept us by pure chance.


    ¡°We¡¯ve got trouble,¡± I said. ¡°That sniper¡¯s coming our way.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll draw him off,¡± Victoria said, without any hesitation.


    ¡°That¡¯s insane,¡± I snapped. ¡°He¡¯ll gun you down. For fuck¡¯s sake, you¡¯re just a student!¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I am,¡± Victoria shot back, ¡°and you and your trigger happy friends are shooting up my university. ¡°Get Theo out; I¡¯ll fire a potshot at him then run the other way. If I lose him, I¡¯ll try and link back up with you.¡±


    ¡°This isn¡¯t your fight.¡±


    ¡°Maybe not, but it¡¯s the right thing to do.¡±


    I couldn¡¯t understand her, or maybe I was just ashamed to see her. I¡¯d walked blindly into a moral abomination, while here was someone so steadfast in her sense of justice that she was willing to risk her life for a stranger.


    Beyond that, she was right; I had, however indirectly, brought this calamity down on her university by helping Calvert advance his schemes. She¡¯d have friends here; friends who could be alive or dead if the second team really have abandoned all restraint in their determination to kill Theo.


    ¡°Fine,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m loading his location into your commlink. It won¡¯t hold forever, but it¡¯ll be good until I get out of range.¡±


    Victoria pulled out her link with her left hand, her right tightening its grip on her scavenged pistol as she glared down at the screen for a moment. Then she was gone, disappearing around a corner as she moved to double back around Ballistic.


    I heard the shot a few moments later, following her movements through her commlink¡¯s icon in the matrix as she sprinted across an junction. When Ballistic turned and ran after her I let out a breath I hadn¡¯t realised I¡¯d been holding, both because the distraction had worked and because she was still alive.


    Wordlessly, I grabbed Theo by the arm and started to jog again, leaving the building through the nearest exit and hurrying down an access road towards the outermost edge of the campus.


    It was almost quiet, if I ignored the distant Knight Errant sirens and the occasional burst of gunfire. In spite of the primal dread she inspired, somehow I doubted Neith had many insect spirits on hand. If nothing else, as a team they had to be mobile enough to more from city to city. They¡¯d be like Bitch before she joined us; hauling their life around in the back of a van.


    There was a wash of downdraft as a helicopter passed low over our heads, the doppler effect of its rotors a sudden and deafeningly loud imposition on the relative calm. In spite of myself, I grinned wildly at the sight of the red and white livery of Valkyrie Paramedical, before I hurriedly checked the fuselage for the team¡¯s name.


    Eir, not Brunhilda, which meant I wouldn¡¯t have to hide from the cavalry.


    Unfortunately, the helicopter was hovering over the wrong part of the campus, where we¡¯d made the call to Max. With Theo¡¯s commlink tossed, they had no way of knowing where we were. Ideally they¡¯d be able to latch onto the ritual sample Theo probably gave up to Medhall security, but I wondered if the insect spirits and whatever the hell Sundancer was bound to would throw up the magical equivalent of a spam zone?


    After a moment¡¯s consideration, I decided to blow my cover ¨C just a little. I reached out to the helicopter in the matrix, carefully trying to work my way into its systems so that I could guide it in by taking over its GPS. I could have just forced my way in, but the last thing I needed right now was to face the aircraft¡¯s countermeasures, adding a plague of digital wasps to the spiritual ones who were already hunting for me.


    Theo, on the other hand, tried a more direct method of grabbing its attention; standing on a nearby parked car and waving his hands in the air.


    ¡°Hey, shoot a couple of rounds in the air!¡± he exclaimed. ¡°We¡¯ve got to grab their attention.¡±


    ¡°Them and everyone else¡¯s,¡± I countered. ¡°I¡¯m working on it, just keep an eye out for now.


    The code was frustratingly difficult to parse, especially from this distance. It would be easier if I uncoupled my persona from my body and approached the aircraft directly, but I just couldn¡¯t risk that kind of vulnerability when I was the only gun Theo had.


    Instead I focused on cyberspace, gradually teasing away the layers of encryption around Valkyrie Paramedical¡¯s own private comm network even as I scanned the street and the skies for any signs of life.


    ¡°Hey!¡±


    I jolted, spinning around to see Theo cupping his hands to his face and shouting up at the sky. ¡°We¡¯re over here!¡±


    ¡°The fuck are you doing?!¡± I demanded, reaching up and practically pulling Theo down from the car. ¡°They¡¯re a hundred feet in the air, in a fucking helicopter! Only things that¡¯ll hear that are-¡±


    I didn¡¯t finish that thought, because it was already here. A wasp spirit had darted over the rooftops, zigzagging left and right as I reflexively opened fire, my cybernetic arm whipping around as fast as I could think. The shots went wild, of course; I couldn¡¯t exactly cheat like usual by lining the cybernetic limb up with whatever online device my target had on them.


    As the wasp dropped down almost to the ground and shot across the road towards us, it was clear that their orders had been changed from hunt to kill. Taking a single deep breath ¨C all I had time for ¨C I shoved Theo behind me and let go of the gun, abandoning the near-useless weapon as I positioned myself in my best approximation of a fighting stance.


    I couldn¡¯t beat it, but maybe I could hold it off for long enough for Theo to get clear. All I had to do was last longer under the paralytic effect of its touch than the Knight Errant officer had.


    As it darted in, I threw a punch with my cybernetic arm, a solid mass of metal and plastic swinging forwards to connect with the spirit. Miraculously, my closed fist met its head with the strength of steel and the force of a troll¡¯s momentum, knocking the wasp off its flight path and slamming it into the ground.


    Unfortunately it sprang back up, slamming into me with more momentum than even a dog-sized wasp should be capable of. I was barely able to bring my arm up in time to jam its closing mandibles, feeling synthetic nerve-analogues firing a numb sensation into my brain as it bit down on metal and plastic. I braced for the paralytic that might have been working its way through into my soul, or however the magic worked, but there was nothing. However their magic worked, it needed flesh and blood.


    I struck back with my other arm, driving my organic elbow into the wasp¡¯s head with enough force to knock my cybernetic free. Immediately, I drew back my freed fist and slammed it down into the wasp¡¯s thorax then pressed it down into the asphalt with a knee as I gripped one wing with both hands and pulled.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    The pearlescent sheet fought against me with the force of a well-muscled arm, almost wrenching itself from my grip before I finally tore it free from the body of the wasp, leaving a wound that leaked some golden ichor that almost seemed real. In response, the wasp latched onto my leg with its mandibles and squeezed.


    I screamed, closing my cybernetic hand into a fist and slamming it down on the wasp¡¯s head again and again. With each blow, the wasp jolted as its carapace slowly began to dent even as my leg started to tingle with a paralytic sensation. I just had to hope it took longer to affect trolls than humans.


    After a moment, however, one of my blows struck home, crushing a section of carapace that wept spiritual ichor as the wasp was finally forced by reflex to release its death grip. I seized the moment and staggered to my feet, kicking out at the wasp as I stood before stamping down on one leg with my boot, snapping the limb and leaving it momentarily trapped against the ground.


    Swinging my other leg, still trembling and numb from the paralytic magic, over the wasps back, I dropped down and used my own bodyweight to press it against the ground before grabbing the wasp¡¯s head with both hands and twisting as hard as I could.


    It spasmed, its limbs flailing as whatever passed for its nervous system started to misfire. If anything, this seemed to be more effective than punching it. I knew very little about magic, but one of the details I¡¯d picked up almost by osmosis was that spirits could be vulnerable in some strange ways.


    Even before Ares had deployed their horrifically indiscriminate mutated insecticide, history had leant even store-bought insecticide an inexplicable strength against them, carried by the magical weight of decades of bug spray manufactured and marketed for the genocide of their mundane kin.


    This felt like the same effect; kids have been pulling wings off flies for the entire span of metahuman history.


    The wasp¡¯s flimsy neck gave way beneath the force of my arms, the head coming loose with an audible crack before more golden ichor wept out as the entire spirit started to dissolve, the foul-smelling fluid rapidly evaporating into a shimmering fog that disappeared back to whatever nightmare realm the spirit had come from.


    I scrambled forward at the abrupt dissolution of the weight beneath me, grabbing my gun from where it had fallen before standing up and staring exasperatedly at Theo, who was still there.


    ¡°We¡¯re leaving,¡± I snapped, succinctly, as I strode determinedly into the building on the edge of the campus.


    One broken window later and we were out in the streets of the city, where it was clear the evacuation orders hadn¡¯t yet reached. I could sense a massive congregation of commlinks on the next block over, where the student population of NBU had probably been corralled according to some pre-written emergency action plan.


    Up above us, I could see people peering into the campus from high-rise windows as they tried to film whatever was going past, while the road beneath my feet rumbled as a twin-rotor helicopter roared overhead, broadcasting a Firewatch IFF as both a warning and an eager declaration of intent.


    Whatever Calvert had been expecting his second team to do, he couldn¡¯t have intended this. No doubt he was hoping for a quick burst of violence; for Theo and his security guards to be gunned down in the library, or caught in magical spellfire. I pictured him in his command centre, watching the atrocity that he had unleashed on a city campus full of students.


    This was too big to hide, and that scared me. His plans had gone off without a hitch so far and there was every chance he¡¯d respond to this setback by switching to a scorched earth strategy. Why not, when this operation would already be making headlines? Whatever his next move was, it would have to be something big to eclipse this.


    My frantic pace slowed as a figure stepped out into the street in front of us, creeping out of the darkness of an alleyway like a cockroach emerging from beneath a dumpster.


    She walked with the same jerking motions she¡¯d demonstrated in Calvert¡¯s hospital but with a rapidity to them that had been absent before; an insectoid skittering, rather than any metahuman motion. Her outfit was still the same overlong skirt and hooded jacket, but the eyes beneath the hood were alive with an ancient and wrothful hate.


    ¡°It wasn¡¯t supposed to be like this,¡± she stammered out, making it sound like an accusation. ¡°I didn¡¯t want to do it, but you gave me no choice. We¡¯re here because of me, so I had to fix it when it went wrong.¡±


    ¡°Does that happen often?¡± I snapped, levelling my gun at her. ¡°I hear bad luck follows bug shamans around like a bad penny.¡±


    I squeezed the trigger, only for the shots to impossibly miss as Neith shifted to the side in a rapid flash of movement, leaving her clothes hanging in the air as if she¡¯d stepped out of reality for a moment. I felt ice grip my heart at the sight of her.


    Neith¡¯s face was still human, but the rest of her had long since left the species behind. She looked like a misshapen humanoid wasp, with flesh and chitin merged across her torso like Frankenstein¡¯s menagerie. Her limbs, with the exception of her hands, were almost entirely insectoid, patterned in the same yellow and black as the wasps she summoned.


    Tattletale¡¯s pendant seemed to tremble on my chest as I suddenly felt a crushing fear that pressed down on me from all directions, strong enough to force Theo to his knees beside me. Some distant part of me realised that it wasn¡¯t just the natural fear I felt for her, but a magically-induced terror that was every bit as catatonic as her wasps¡¯ paralytic bite. Neith seemed to shudder at the exertion of casting the spell, rolling her shoulders even as a quartet of pearlescent wings unfolded from her back, hanging down behind her like a cape.


    She started to walk towards us, her insectoid legs clacking against the concrete with every step. Each movement was jilting and a little unsteady, but there was an undeniable, primal menace to her that overwhelmed any physical weakness in her shell.


    ¡°Neith!¡± someone shouted. ¡°What are you doing!?¡±


    It was Trickster, sprinting towards his teammate. I had just enough awareness left to identify the source of his distress; people were looking down from the buildings on either side, their commlinks pointed down as they filmed the confrontation with the reckless stupidity of bystanders who thought they were removed from what they were observing.


    There goes my anonymity, I thought, hoping that they¡¯d all be focusing on the bug rather than me.


    ¡°I have to stop them, Krouse,¡± she said, clearly slipping out of lucidity.


    ¡°We had it in hand, Neith,¡± he countered, stressing the codename. ¡°You don¡¯t have to step in like this; it¡¯s too risky. Too public.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not dead weight,¡± she snapped, the words given a staccato edge by her stutter.


    ¡°Of course not,¡± Trickster said, with something like reverence. ¡°You¡¯re important. That¡¯s why you have to stay safe. Just¡­ just go back, okay? I¡¯ll deal with them.¡±


    I was still paralysed by Neith¡¯s fear spell, helpless and unable to move as Trickster reluctantly turned away from his girlfriend before levelling his hand at us, his tacky suit and too arrogant stance turned inexplicably horrific.


    ¡°This is all your fault, whoever the fuck you are,¡± he said to me. ¡°That¡¯s why I¡¯m going to make this hurt.¡±


    I braced myself for whatever was coming, trying to stand up straight even under the oppressive weight of fear. Instead of a spell, however, there was a flash of light between us, like a lighthouse cutting through fog, and for a moment I was afraid another spirit had decided to join the fray.


    Instead, however, my heart leapt and the fear spell slipped from my mind as I saw Tattletale¡¯s astral form between Trickster and I, her back to me as she hovered a foot off the ground. She didn¡¯t even look at me, but just seeing a friend in that moment felt like divine intervention.


    ¡°Quite the mess you¡¯ve got yourself into,¡± she said, genially.


    ¡°Your friend¡¯s fucked up,¡± Trickster said. ¡°Now she¡¯s going to pay for it.¡±


    ¡°Oh, I wasn¡¯t talking to her.¡± She waved a hand dismissively, then pointed to Neith.


    ¡°I¡¯m talking to you, half and half. I¡¯d say your first mistake was getting involved with a bug cult, but to be fair I don¡¯t know if you went willingly. I guess the real mistake was made by the shaman who tried to use your body as the vessel for a queen. You ever stay up at night asking if you¡¯re still human?¡±


    She paused, to give her next cutting words more time to swing.


    ¡°Because you¡¯re not. I can see you in there. You¡¯re half an insect spirit stuffed into a human vessel that hasn¡¯t shed all its psyche, both of you thinking you¡¯re one person. But the human isn¡¯t real; she¡¯s just memories you¡¯ve forgotten aren¡¯t yours. In the grand scheme of things, you¡¯re a fucked-up bug that thinks it¡¯s a person.¡±


    ¡°Liar!¡± Neith snapped, jerking forwards as her wings thrummed angrily behind her. ¡°I know who I am!¡±


    ¡°Do you?¡± Tattletale asked, with an audible smirk. ¡°You¡¯re not even the most interesting bug here. You, in the suit. You haven¡¯t told her, have you?¡±


    Neith¡¯s head snapped around to Trickster, glaring at him accusingly. That rapid anger and unearned trust in a stranger¡¯s word had to be a side-effect of¡­ whatever she was.


    ¡°Don¡¯t listen to a word she says, Noelle,¡± Trickster implored her, and I knew Neith was vulnerable from the way he used her real name.


    ¡°The cult got him too, didn¡¯t they? I bet he told you he escaped before they could use him as a host,¡± Tattletale continued, preening like a cat who¡¯s caught a bird and can now rip its head off at her leisure. ¡°He¡¯s not your friend. He¡¯s not Noelle¡¯s friend, at least. The shaman put him through the same process, only with him it stuck all the way. He¡¯s a wasp, Noelle. A flesh-form spirit that¡¯s kept the body and the memories of your friend.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t listen to her,¡± Trickster snapped.


    ¡°You can feel it, if you reach out. Maybe you have already. Its connection to you. Its slavish devotion.¡±


    ¡°You said you wanted to fix me!¡± Neith cried, all her alien terror coming to pieces in a single, all too human moment of manic betrayal. ¡°To solve all¡­ this!¡± She swept a hand over her mutated body in an angry gesture.


    ¡°I do!¡± Trickster argued. ¡°I love you and I serve you, and I want you to finally realise your full power! To understand what you really are! I thought if I could get the right person to believe you were human I could trick them into fixing your soul, allowing you to finally finish manifesting in this world.¡±


    ¡°You lied to me!¡±


    ¡°Never!¡± Trickster sounded distraught. ¡°I lie to the others because they¡¯re not us, but I have never lied to you! I am your devoted servant, my queen!¡±


    ¡°Then obey me,¡± Neith began, her voice hot with tears and rage as her wings thrummed hard enough that she took flight, ¡°and die!¡±


    Neith shot upwards, then swept down towards Trickster as ghostly claws appeared over her hands, formed from a sharp, yellowish light. Trickster backpedalled, leaping aside far more fluidly than he should have been able to, even as Neith tried to dart in for another attack. Above it all, I could still hear the cacophony of sirens and the now-distant rotors of Firewatch and the Valkries.


    ¡°Spider, go!¡± Tattletale said. ¡°I can¡¯t hold them off for long if they attack, but I can buy you time. End this, now!¡±


    I nodded, too dumbstruck to talk even as I grabbed Theo once again and dragged him away from the battling insect spirits, ducking into the lobby of an apartment tower before rushing out through a back door into a small plaza surrounded on three sides by office buildings. Behind us, a chittering scream of agonised rage echoed through the streets. I had to hope that some of the voyeurs had called Knight Errant before they started filming, and that Firewatch would arrive before the bugs drove Tattletale off ¨C or worse.


    ¡°So¡­¡± Theo began, speaking between heaving breaths. ¡°What happens now?¡±


    I sighed. I knew this moment was coming as soon as this turned into a clusterfuck, but part of me still shrank at what I had to say next. It didn¡¯t feel right, but in the end it was the only thing I could do.


    ¡°Max Anders is going to die soon,¡± I said, watching as Theo¡¯s eyes widened in shock and alarm. No matter what else he was, Max was still Theo¡¯s father. ¡°That team was sent to clear the line of succession for Aster.¡±


    ¡°And Kayden?¡± Theo asked. His genuine concern made me sick. ¡°Is she alright?¡±


    ¡°Kayden¡¯s alive, aware and cooperating,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but she knows.¡±


    The distraught look on his face made me feel like I¡¯d kicked a puppy. I couldn¡¯t blame him; he¡¯d been living a relatively normal life, focusing on his friends and his studies while wholly ignorant of a scheme growing beneath his feet.


    ¡°And you¡¯re¡­ trying to save us?¡±


    ¡°To save you,¡± I corrected. ¡°I can¡¯t stop what¡¯s going to happen to your father, and honestly I don¡¯t want to. But you don¡¯t deserve to die, and I couldn¡¯t let Kayden take over Medhall. You have no idea what your father¡¯s been doing with the company, and she¡¯d be worse.¡±


    ¡°I know some,¡± Theo said. ¡°Dad didn¡¯t say anything, of course, and I didn¡¯t like to think about it, but I know some things about the company he keeps.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t know anything,¡± I snapped. ¡°His business partners are genocidal, Theo. Your dad¡¯s helping them sterilise whole populations of nonhumans, and your step-mom wants to keep going.¡±


    I was half expecting an angry denial, but it seemed like Theo no longer had room in him for anger. Our desperate flight had worn him down, draining him of the will to resist or even object. A callous part of me acknowledged how useful that was.


    ¡°Where did Kayden even find those guys?¡± Theo asked.


    ¡°She didn¡¯t,¡± I said. ¡°Their employer found her, made the pitch. She runs Medhall as a subsidiary of his employers, with a free hand to do what she wanted so long as she generates a profit for the parent company.¡±


    ¡°Their employer¡­ and yours?¡±


    I sighed.


    ¡°Yeah. My team extracted Kayden and Aster. They¡¯ll be out of the city soon enough, at least until all this blows over.¡±


    ¡°And you came alone because you don¡¯t approve?¡±


    ¡°I came alone because I didn¡¯t want to put my team at risk. Our client is a dangerous man, which means I can¡¯t just scrap his scheme without coming up with an alternative that still gets him what he wants.¡±


    Theo¡¯s eyes widened.


    ¡°No¡­¡± he whispered, his voice strained with shock and even despair.


    ¡°I¡¯ve been watching you for a long time, Theo. You¡¯re a good person and I get wanting to leave all this behind, but because you¡¯re a good person I know you won¡¯t be able to. Not now that you know the truth. If I¡¯ve got to be the snake in your Garden of Eden, I can live with it. You know, and you can¡¯t ever un-learn what you know.¡±


    I abandoned subtlety, flinging a resonance spike across the hundreds of metres between us and distant Valkyrie helicopter, still circling over the campus as it searched for some trace of Theo. The spike smashed ineffectively against its firewalls, but just enough of the solid shard of resonance pierced through to deliver the message that I¡¯d encoded into every part of it.


    It gave them our position and, for just a moment, altered the pilot¡¯s head¡¯s-up-display by flashing a simple, plain-text message.


    <theo anders is here>


    As expected, digital wasps spilled out from the nose of the helicopter, but the directness of the attack was a defence in itself; instead of being actively dispatched to hunt down the perpetrator, the wasps were circling the aircraft in case any further attacks were coming.


    ¡°Keep your head down,¡± I said to Theo as I backed away. ¡°When this is done, you¡¯ll be contacted by a man from Evo. If you can¡¯t bear staying then sell your shares to them, but I think you¡¯ll do the right thing and take his deal. Take the company, use Evo to purge your father¡¯s empire from the ranks and fix what your family has done to this city.¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t!¡± he shouted, frozen in place.


    ¡°You can,¡± I replied, my lips curling up in a manic grin. ¡°It took me a while to figure it out myself, but all you have to do is take the first step. Once that¡¯s done, there¡¯s no going back to the way things were.¡±


    I left him there, ducking behind a fountain at one corner of the plaza as Theo stood in plain view of the approaching helicopter. I reached out in the matrix, across the city to the command centre built into the eleventh floor of the CrashCart hospital. I didn¡¯t bother hiding the fact that I had a tap on his network, overriding the frantic calls he was making to Trickster as I opened up an audio link.


    ¡°Mr Johnson,¡± I said. ¡°We need to talk.¡±


    ¡°Spider,¡± he began, almost hissing. ¡°This isn¡¯t the best time.¡±


    ¡°I know,¡± I replied, with deliberate emphasis.


    ¡°You do?¡± he asked, falling silent for a moment. ¡°Yes¡­ Yes, I suppose you would.¡±


    The Travellers knew my face and my description, and I¡¯d no doubt been recorded by dozens of CCTV cameras and commlinks. It was better to show myself now, on my terms, than wait for Calvert to be told by someone else.


    ¡°I have a proposition for you,¡± I said, as the plaza was abruptly flooded by downwash, the force of the rotors expelling waves of water from the fountain behind me. ¡°A better asset than the one you found.¡±


    ¡°Your proposition seems to be more of an ultimatum,¡± Calvert remarked, in a venomous tone. ¡°I do not appreciate being forced into a decision.¡±


    I don¡¯t appreciate genocide, I wanted to say, but I knew I needed to think clearly if I wanted this to succeed. I had to approach him on his level, speaking only through his language of sound business decisions.


    ¡°Kayden Anders is a poison pill,¡± I argued. ¡°You know she¡¯d be more loyal to the Human Nation than Evo. She¡¯d cut you out the first chance she got. You could remove her and take Aster, but do you really want to wait fourteen years for that investment to mature?¡±


    The helicopter had touched down, a quartet of Hight Threat Response team specialists ¨C three gunmen and a mage ¨C forming a perimeter around the aircraft while two Paramedics led a stunned Theo Anders into the back.


    ¡°You can¡¯t hide what happened tonight,¡± I said. ¡°I don¡¯t know where you found those psychopaths, but if Kayden takes over then there¡¯ll be always be rumours that she set insect spirits on her own son-in-law. Beyond that, you¡¯d have every Anders loyalist gunning for her head to avenge him.¡±


    I paused for a moment, taking a breath as I tried to collect my thoughts. This was it; the make or break moment that would decide the fate of the city and either save or condemn my team.


    ¡°This is New England. It might be the birthplace of the American Revolution, but we¡¯ve never quite managed to shake off those old names, old families. You don¡¯t need Theo, but you want him; you can¡¯t thrive in this city without a dynasty. It sucks, but it¡¯s true. He¡¯s a man, Aster¡¯s a toddler, Kayden¡¯s a jilted wife. You put Theo in charge of Medhall and the executives will see him as a Judas, but the workers? The managers? They grew up in Medhall schools, hearing how the Anders have done nothing but good for this city.¡±


    My heart was racing a million miles a minute, as blood rushed to my head. The helicopter was deafeningly loud as it took off, carrying Theo away to parts unknown.


    ¡°So make a deal with the son, because he¡¯s willing to deal with you. Lionise Richard Anders, pin all of this New Revolution bullshit on Max and let Theo be the city¡¯s saviour. You¡¯ll get what you want on the Human Nation from Medhall¡¯s systems. Hell, I¡¯ll get it for you once your heavy-hitters wipe out Max. Every scrap of data in their host.¡±


    With that, the line descended into agonising silence. Even the background sirens started to fade into nothingness. Idly, I was aware of the Firewatch helicopter descending on the next block over, of figures standing in the open ramp with weapons drawn, but it barely seemed to exist. Everything, everyone, depended on what Calvert said next.


    ¡°You weave a compelling narrative, Spider. I came to this city with a single purpose; a single task to complete. Now I find I have a single path to that goal. I will use the son because no other options remain. I will unlock Max Anders¡¯ defences and strike at him when he is most vulnerable, and I will use you as my key to him and his secrets.¡±


    I almost gasped in relief, but my head only felt lighter. Abruptly I closed to connection and tried to stagger to my feet, only to slump down onto the fountain as my legs gave out. Every part of me ached, from my body to my mind, but I¡¯d done it. All I had to do was show Calvert a better way; a way that gave him everything he wanted without any of the drawbacks of his plan.


    For all his monstrousness, Calvert thought like I did. It was why I¡¯d gambled everything, knowing he would take the deal I offered him. When all was said and done, we were both rational people.

 Dissonance: 8.05

    I sent a quick message to Lisa as I set off back towards the metro station, letting her know that I¡¯d managed to reach an acceptable compromise with Calvert. I could have called her, but I was far too exhausted to field a conversation. Besides, as Knight Errant completed their perimeter around the campus they¡¯d have deckers of their own looking for suspicious signals. I didn¡¯t want them to realise there was a technomancer snooping around.


    I wasn¡¯t at all surprised to find the streets closer to the campus¡¯ official entrances still packed with students. Genesis had run for the hills and Neith and Trickster had left the campus as the two insect spirits tracked Theo, but for all I knew Sundancer and Ballistic were still in there, trying to escape the ever-tightening net Knight Errant had laid down for them.


    Most of the students were hanging around in stunned groups, as friends spotted friends and huddled together for support, while others had their heads buried in their commlinks as they tried to call home. Together, the sheer volume of comm traffic was enough to overwhelm the local matrix, each transmission slowing to a crawl as it jostled for bandwidth.


    They were shaken, even panicked, and I couldn¡¯t blame them. It was one thing to evacuate individual buildings for a pre-planned fire drill, but the total evacuation of the entire campus for a very real threat was something else entirely. Even if they hadn¡¯t seen any of the actual fighting, the distant sounds of spellfire and gunshots was probably more than what they were used to, while rumours spread throughout the crowd in a great game of Chinese whispers as the attack grew in scale with every mouth it touched.


    One lone woman ¨C even if she was an eight foot tall troll ¨C didn¡¯t merit much attention among that crowd. I was the right age, dressed the right way, and I was far from the only one whose outfit was a little torn and ragged from a frantic flight. Some of the Knight Errant officers keeping watch over the crowd spared me a glance or two, but from what I could see they had more than enough on their plate.


    They had more mages than you¡¯d normally expect, if you didn¡¯t know they¡¯d be treating this as a bug outbreak. No doubt they were looking over the crowd with eyes turned to the astral plane, looking for the misshapen souls of hidden infiltrators. They¡¯d have enough to know that this was the work of the world¡¯s most fucked-up Shadowrunner team, not some organic cult that had sprung from the student population, but they wouldn¡¯t be taking any chances.


    It was slow going, picking my way around a lot of students who¡¯d decided that they might as well sit in the middle of the road while waiting to see if they could get back to their on-campus accommodation by the end of the day. I was joined in that march by the off-campus students, most of whom seemed to have decided to go home rather than stick around this close to a shootout. I was surprised Knight Errant were letting them leave, but I supposed they¡¯d want to avoid a public panic.


    Still, we all had to stagger to one side as an immense mobile command centre pushed its way through the crowd; a great two-part vehicle that looked like a camper van towing a second, larger camper van, all done up in black and yellow. As it passed me, a pair of hatches slid open at the base of the larger compartment, releasing a quartet of Roto-Drones that took flight and began a search pattern.


    It wasn¡¯t my fight anymore; Calvert¡¯s second team could do whatever they wanted now that Theo was out of their hands. I continued on past more Knight Errant mages standing on the roofs of armoured personnel carriers as they scanned the crowd for threats only they could see. The press of people finally started to lighten as I reached the limit of the evacuated group, where a line of overworked traffic officers had set up a barrier of holographic tape as they tried to keep out a gaggle of media.


    Inevitably, the journalists were trying to snag students on their way out, pestering them with questions as they sought marketable soundbites, with plenty of camera drones, commlinks and auto-recording cybernetic eyes ready to film and sell anything that seemed even slightly broadcast-worthy. I shrank down into my hood a little, shoving my hands into my pockets as I pushed my way through the press of press.


    I needn¡¯t have bothered; with this many students around they could afford to filter for photogenic, which I very much wasn¡¯t.


    It had taken me twenty minutes to push my way through the crowd, but I wasn¡¯t concerned. I could barely move anyway, and I believed the worst was over. That illusion of security lasted even when Labyrinth suddenly materialised in front of me, her persona more ethereal than usual and clad in the illusion of a robe formed from layers of black feathers.


    ¡°Faultline needs to talk to you,¡± she said. ¡°Immediately.¡±


    ¡°Right,¡± I said, mentally preparing to defend myself for subverting my client¡¯s orders. It seemed remarkably petty of Calvert to shop me to the closest thing I had to a boss, but I still ducked into a doorway and accepted the open channel Labyrinth offered me.


    ¡°Spider,¡± Faultline began, with all the sternness I was expecting, ¡°you need to get your team to safety, now.¡±


    ¡°What?¡± I asked, dumbfounded.


    ¡°There¡¯s been a massive data-dump,¡± Faultline said. ¡°Law enforcement, local and national news, Ares Macrotechnology and sixteen different social media sites have all received a package of data detailing Medhall¡¯s complicity in the New Revolution and Max Anders¡¯ personal connections to Alamos 20,000.¡±


    Panic welled up in my chest and for a moment I felt like I was going to collapse, before I forced myself back under control.


    ¡°I knew this was coming,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s part of our client¡¯s plan. He¡¯ll probably have orders for-¡±


    ¡°Taylor,¡± Faultline snapped, ¡°the leak was signed. There¡¯s a goddamn manifesto attached, claiming this is an attack aimed at ¡®freeing the city from the grip of the fascist Anders dynasty.¡¯ That they kidnapped Kayden and Aster, tried to kill Theo at NBU and that they¡¯re demanding the people rise up and do the same to Max.¡±


    ¡°No,¡± I gasped, struggling for breath. ¡°No, he can¡¯t be¡­¡±


    ¡°The group responsible identifies themselves as the Undersiders, saying they¡¯re the underclass rising up to strike down their oppressors. They¡¯re you, Spider. The author signs her name as Taylor Hebert.¡±


    ¡°My team!¡± I shouted, frantically reaching out in the matrix as I tried to call everyone simultaneously, only to be greeted by one dead signal after another. One of them might be away from their comm, but all of them¡­


    ¡°You have to help me!¡± I shouted ¨C begged, even ¨C the words spilling out of my mouth as the matrix and meatspace started to blur together. ¡°Calvert¡¯s fucked us over! You can¡¯t let him!¡±


    There was the slightest pause, as if Faultline needed to consider anything right then.


    ¡°Fucking help!¡± I tried again. ¡°You¡¯re our fixer, damnit!¡±


    ¡°And if this was just a client betraying one of my teams, I¡¯d scramble every other gun I have to find the bastard and kill them,¡± Faultline said. ¡°Hell, I¡¯d come out of retirement and do it myself. But I¡¯ve got camera footage of you fucking him over at NBU, and I¡¯ve got your name on the leak.¡±


    ¡°So what, you¡¯re hanging us out to dry?¡±


    ¡°I have other clients as well, Taylor. The bare minimum they expect is that my teams will deliver what they want, so I can¡¯t go to war for you. But I can do everything short of that.¡±


    I fought down the urge to shout that it wasn¡¯t enough, that she needed to drag herself up to the roof of her bar and launch a missile into Calvert¡¯s command centre. I knew it wouldn¡¯t go anywhere. Instead, I took a deep breath and made sure to think hard about what I thought she¡¯d be willing to give.


    ¡°There¡¯s a house in the suburbs,¡± I said. ¡°We were using it as a safehouse for Kayden and Aster. I need you to go there and check¡­ check if my people are still there. I can¡¯t reach them.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll send a recon drone,¡± Faultline said, ¡°and one of my couriers to investigate inside. One I trust with my life.¡±


    It still sounded like so little, but I could do nothing without information.


    ¡°Thank you. I¡¯m still by NBU, but I¡¯ll head there myself and link up with your agent.¡±


    ¡°Be careful, Spider,¡± she said, and she sounded genuine. ¡°The streets are about to get very dangerous.¡±


    Just like Calvert wanted, I thought. His own personal war, so that he can slip his team through Max¡¯s defences.


    Except his team were currently divided, down a rigger and maybe down two insect spirits as well. Would the Shadowrunners make it back to him, would he find a new team on short notice or would he have to send his own forces, all but announcing that Evo was involved?


    I didn¡¯t know. I didn¡¯t care. All that mattered was finding the others and getting them out. I turned to say something to Labyrinth, but she was already gone. She¡¯d have her own work to do, preparing Faultline¡¯s network for a massive increase in use as the information broker scrambled to keep on top of a situation that felt like it could explode at any second.


    I saw the first signs of it in my frantic rush to the metro station; trideo sets in the windows of electronics stores were being taken over one by one as each local news station caught up on the data, while even some of the national stations had a little note in their ticker-tape warning of some kind of incident in New Hampshire.


    People were checking their comms as the notifications came in, scrolling quickly through the summary before turning to their friends and urgently showing them the message. A Knight Errant on foot patrol stopped dead in her tracks as word filtered down through their comms, the lone officer stiffening while her domesticated panther K9 sat down at her feet, its ears pricked up in recognition of its mistress¡¯ tension.


    By the time I got to the metro station, there was a steady flow of people moving up into the station, most of them looking like they¡¯d dropped everything in order to get back home as fast as possible. The tension in the air was like static building power, ready to discharge at the first opportunity.


    It was the data-leak, of course, but it wasn¡¯t just the leak. It was a ghost six years buried that had been dug up and shoved back into the light, bringing with it the spectre of soldiers on the streets, militia building barricades in the roads and gangs rampaging through whole city blocks while the fires from burning buildings lit the bodies swinging from lampposts.


    It was the collective nightmare of an entire nation, and I¡¯d brought it through into the waking world.


    Almost in a haze, I paid for my ticket and pushed through the station, shoving through the crowd with the ease that came from being taller and more solid than most of them. There were shouts and exclamations from the people I pushed aside, but I was too far gone to make out any words as we all spilled out onto the platform and piled into the first train that showed up. It wasn¡¯t until we were underway that I realised I¡¯d instinctively taken the line to the west, back towards the North End and away from where I wanted to go.


    I didn¡¯t even have it in me to be angry at myself. Instead I just stood hunched over in the carriage as more and more people squeezed in at every station, following the line towards a terminal where I could catch a train that would take me through the city centre to the suburbs. It would be faster than trying to change lines and go back the way I came.


    After four stops I began shoving my way through the tightly-packed carriage as I tried to get close to the doors. The train was decelerating as it neared my changeover, the buildings beyond the windows gradually slowing before they finally gave way to the elevated platform.


    Someone screamed. Everyone screamed. The crowd heaved, forcing even me back as everyone tried to get away from the doors, crushing the people around me with the sheer force of bodies packed into such a small space. Crushing them against me. I scrambled, elbowing back a young man in a suit as I tried to free enough space to reach my submachine gun.


    The platform was packed from end to end with people ¨C two or perhaps three hundred in all. They wore biker leathers, tracksuits, body armour, overalls and many had jackets from military uniforms for half a dozen different corps and countries. Every single one of them was human and every single one of them was armed. Chosen stood among them like cyborg lieutenants, watching over their charges in semi-professional silence as the mob screamed obscenities at the train.


    There was a gunshot near the front as one of them shot the driver, before a Chosen rigger ran out of the crowd and smashed the rest of the glass in the window to their compartment. I didn¡¯t see him clamber in, but the leader of the Chosen ¨C a vicious looking woman with clawed hands, whose cybernetic legs ended in points rather than feet ¨C stepped forward, holding up a hand for silence as the doors slid the train.


    ¡°Make some room!¡± she shouted, before the mob rushed forwards.


    Hands grasped into the compartments, hauling people out and back into the baying mob, who screamed guttural insults that blended into each other to the point where all I could hear was a single hateful roar. The passengers pressed themselves back, some of them slipping and falling beneath the crush of legs, while others flung themselves at the Chosen in hopes of escaping the crush by going quickly through the crowd, only to be thrown to the ground and beaten as a reward for their cooperation.


    I don¡¯t know where the first shot came from, but it opened the floodgates. The gangers started firing pot shots through the windows, laughing as they sprayed bullets into the crowd. Some people in the train returned fire, their shots impacting their fellow passengers as often as the mob outside, but each frantic burst of fire was met by a concentrated barrage from outside.


    I had to duck as a biker ganger spotted me in the crowd and raised a wide-bore revolver, kneeling down and trusting my physiology to protect me from the worst of the crushing forces around me even as people continued to die by the dozen. In desperation I reached out in the matrix, taking hold of the train and fighting the Chosen rigger on her own turf for control.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    I wasn¡¯t able to start the engine, but by driving a feinted resonance spike into it I was able to distract her for long enough to wrench control of the doors on the other side of the train, flinging them open with enough force to blow fuses and burn out motors.


    The response was immediate, the crowd surging for the new openings more through fluid dynamics than any conscious awareness of another way out. I got to my feet, smashing through the window beside me with my horns and clambering out onto the tracks even as people started to spill out behind me.


    Even that escape proved disastrous for some; I saw five people collapse as they stumbled and touched the electrified third rail on the next line over. One of them was close enough that I could reach down and drag him off, gritting my teeth at the sudden shock of current, but the others were too far for me to reach through the crowd.


    When a shot barely missed me, instead striking a young student in the back, I turned and sprayed gunfire into the carriage, where some of the new passengers had been firing out of the shattered windows. The people around me scattered as five or six gang members fell to automatic fire, before I turned my back on them and ran as fast as I could towards the edge of the track.


    I leapt up onto the opposite platform, bullets whipping at my heels, then carried on straight towards the short railing that was the only barrier between the elevated station and a four-storey drop down to the street below. Going left or right to the stairs would just get me shot, but some animal part of my mind had spotted a low rooftop on the next building over.


    I kicked off the platform, planting a foot on the railing as I leapt out into open space. There was only two metres between the platform and the building, but I was entirely convinced I was going to fall until my foot landed on the rooftop, immediately catching on some anti-climb spikes that had been put up there to stop someone from doing exactly what I¡¯d just done.


    My ankle twisted as I fell forwards onto the uncomfortable spikes, my own momentum carrying me off them in an ungainly roll before I cautiously staggered to my feet as the commandeered metro sped off towards the city centre with its cargo of gangland footsoldiers, leaving a scene of pure devastation on the platform. My lungs were heaving, my heart pounding in my chest while my mind was frozen in a kind of mute horror as I stared at the numb and bloody crowd of the living, dead and wounded, wondering at how completely things could change in a matter of minutes.


    It was too much for the metahuman mind to deal with. My brain began to run on automatic, guiding my arms as I mechanically ejected the spent magazine and replaced it with one of my last fresh ones before driving my boot three times into a roof access hatch until it broke. It was like I¡¯d sectioned away my mind as Rachel had done, my body piloting itself as I stormed down a staircase to ground level, raising my gun at every open doorway.


    Before I was even consciously aware of it, I¡¯d emerged out onto the street, only to be shocked back into focus by the sound of a lone siren arriving far too late for the massacre on the platform. I hurriedly tucked my gun back into my hoodie, then watched with growing concern as a single Knight Errant patrol car sped past with its light and sirens blaring, the vehicle recklessly swerving into the opposite lane in order to overtake the slow-moving traffic.


    It was only when the doppler effect of its sirens had passed me by that I heard the roaring engines of the vehicles pursuing it. There were perhaps a dozen of them in all, tearing down the road like a street race. Most of them were cars daubed with Chosen tags ¨C cyborg skulls or snarling metal wolves ¨C and there were four similarly-painted vans bringing up the rear. Three of the vehicles, however, were great slab-sided armoured personnel carriers with thick tyres and metal grilles over their optic arrays, their faded olive green paint still bearing old-world American flags and big white stars straight out of ancient world war documentaries.


    They must have sat quietly in Medhall warehouses these last six years, slowly mouldering as trusted ideologues turned the engines over once a week in case they were ever needed again. I didn¡¯t know if they¡¯d been embezzled from the New Hampshire national guard or smuggled back to their homeland from some half-century old Euro War boneyard, but Max Anders had called them back into service for the sake of his own ambitions.


    The lead APC had a turret mounted near the front, with a long-barrelled assault cannon jutting out the front like a spear. I wondered how well its mechanisms had been maintained over the past half-decade, or whether its ammunition was still in-date. I wondered who they were going to use it on.


    The convoy left panic in its wake. Drivers had hauled their cars up onto the sidewalk to avoid being crushed, and now that the convoy had passed they were all jostling with each other in a race to turn around and head north as fast as they could, making for the part of the city with an active gang war in order to avoid the firepower moving south.


    The pedestrians scrambled out of the way of the vehicles, disappearing into shop windows shouting about terrorism or insurrection or the end of the world. As I stood in stunned silence, I was jostled by a flow of people running the other way, the crowd spilling out onto the road as they parted around me. A middle aged woman reached out to touch my shoulder with a surprisingly gentle hand, only to be carried away by the flow as I took my first step in the opposite direction.


    I wasn¡¯t sure if I was still determined to find some route to the suburbs, or if I just had to see with my own eyes what Calvert had unleashed on the city in my name. It was still too immense to comprehend; there was a chasm in my soul like all possibility of safety had been stripped away from me, leaving me bare and vulnerable in the eyes of a malicious world.


    For two years I¡¯d lived in self-imposed exile from society, enjoying the complete anonymity my nature could provide. I was a ghost, only barely touching the world as an anonymous username on forums, taking petty payment to fix failing matrix systems, crack the copy protection of media files or lift the anti-theft countermeasures from stolen items.


    In a way, I¡¯d left Taylor Hebert behind when I first went out as Bug. Being a Shadowrunner provided a level of professional anonymity that had rarely been breached, and even then only because my SIN was still on CrashCart¡¯s systems. In a real sense, Taylor had stayed home. It was Bug who¡¯d flourished into Spider, connecting with her team through the experiences we¡¯d shared together, rather than anything Taylor had achieved.


    But now my name was plastered across the news feeds being beamed throughout the matrix, and I could see my face on a trideo set mounted behind the counter in a ground floor caf¨¦ that was packed full of people desperately trying to figure out what had happened and where, if anywhere, was safe.


    The picture was old, cropped from group photo for the graduating class of Winslow High School, twenty sixty-eight. I looked sullen, with bags around my eyes and a weariness in my face that didn¡¯t match the forced blankness of my expression. The photo had still been taken before dad was killed and everything went worse. It didn¡¯t just feel like another lifetime; it was like the last age of an old world had died with him.


    Not a good world, perhaps, but one I understood. I knew what that world was made of, and how I fit into it. I¡¯d had more than my share of problems, but they all seemed so insignificant now.


    Now I had nothing to fall back on. No plan, no team, no real idea of where I was going except that if I could just make it through the city to the safehouse then maybe I could figure out what had happened to the others, beyond the obvious. I was driven by the same all-consuming need to fix my own problems that had led me to save Theo in the first place.


    All the while I was cursing Calvert; his pettiness and unwillingness to see sense. I¡¯d given him everything he¡¯d been sent here to obtain, with a far more cooperative puppet than Kayden ever could be. He was supposed to be a businessman, surely that meant recognising a decent bargain when it¡¯s dropped in your lap?


    Angry at the world, I let physical reality fade somewhat as I turned my focus on the matrix. Even from this distance I could see the angry haze that had descended over the city centre as building after building went into lockdown, blaring out assertions of each megacorp¡¯s extraterritoriality as their hosts closed like clamshells or the portcullises of castle gates.


    Between it all, GridLink blared with angry red lines as Knight Errant executed emergency powers to mark down whole swathes of the district as not safe for travel, which would redirect every vehicle on the system and bring up big angry augmented reality warnings for any drivers who were running on manual control.


    Medhall¡¯s own network was behaving oddly. Their main hosts were sealing up like all the other corps, but their private comms network was visibly growing into a web that was far from as widespread as Knight Errant¡¯s city-wide network, but more than made up for it in density. I began to suspect I was seeing battlelines forming.


    I started to jog, passing down rapidly-emptying streets as a city-wide emergency alert was sent out, warning people to shelter in place without giving a reason why. I didn¡¯t see any more Knight Errant vehicles ¨C or Chosen ones ¨C until I finally reached the heavily-urbanised bank of the river separating midtown from the historic city centre, with the skyscrapers of downtown towering like an artificial mountain range behind the preserved relics of an old world skyline.


    Union Bridge loomed over me; an ancient span of wrought metal built almost two centuries ago, its superstructure supporting four lanes of traffic and two metro lines that had been re-added to the long-since motorised bridge as part of Richard Anders¡¯ attempt to engineer a utopian city on all fronts, from its roads to its demographics.


    The more militant side of his vision were trying to force their way across the river, picking up right where they¡¯d left off six years ago. The relentless chatter of gunfire echoed off the water below, while the struts of the bridge were lit by intermittent flashes and the red glow of flares. Even the pedestrian walkways bolted to the sides of the bridge were hosting pitched battles of their own.


    Looking up at the bridge from below, I was only able to catch the barest flashes of what was going on up there; brief glimpses of figures leaning against the railings of the walkway, or the roar of an engine as something pushed forward on the road. So I ignored my eyes, reaching out in the matrix and stripping back the encryption on the traffic management cameras mounted on the arch.


    Once I was through, I was greeted by a sight that could have come from an old war documentary. The Chosen were pushing down the bridge with two scrapyard tacticals; converted and up-armoured heavy goods vehicles that followed the same general pattern as the one that had chased us after our hit on the dopadrine shipment.


    One of them was another converted city garbage truck; a GMC Commercial G-series with great armour panels bolted to the front in place of the scoop, completely covering the drivers compartment where the glass windshield had been replaced by metal plates and an elaborate sensor suite. The drone racks had been stripped of their loader bots and replaced with bipedal Ares Duelists, though the blade-wielding robots hadn¡¯t been deployed yet.


    The other tactical looked like it had begun life as a city bus, and still had patches of scuffed and faded paint visible beneath the armour plates that had been welded onto it. Two machine guns had been bolted onto the top, presumably controlled by a rigger inside the vehicle, and a rear entry hatch had been cut into the back above the engine.


    Behind the vehicles, two columns of gangers were sheltering from the barrage of small arms fire that was being thrown their way by the Knight Errant blockade near the other end of the bridge. Only a few of them were visibly augmented Chosen, while the rest were more bodies grabbed up from the network of gangs that relied on the cyborgs for support. Every now and then, one of the latter would drift a little out of the line and catch a bullet. Sometimes one of their buddies would try and drag them back into the column only to be forced onwards by the Chosen, leaving the wounded man to bleed out on the bridge.


    Switching to a camera on the other end of the arch gave me a clear picture of the opposition ¨C so clear that the camera started automatically logging the licence plates of the Knight Errant cars that had been positioned in a line across the whole bridge. They were woefully underarmoured against the machine guns mounted on top of the bus; just patrol cars and a couple of vans whose lightly-armoured sides were suited for ticketing uninsured drivers or scooping up drunks, not urban warfare.


    The officers knew it, too; there was a desperation to their movements as they fired round after round at the advancing tacticals. They¡¯d clearly been hastily routed in from different parts of the city; a third of them were the familiar kind of Pawns I was used to in the North End, with rifles and concealing taksuits, while the rest were uniformed officers from the south. Half of them only had sidearms, while the rest had taken the one emergency rifle they kept in their patrol cars.


    They couldn¡¯t have been there long; the armoured convoy I¡¯d seen earlier would have blown right through them. This was Knight Errant panicking, falling back along familiar lines as they tried to use policing tactics against an insurgency. Blocking the bridges didn¡¯t matter if you didn¡¯t have the force to hold them.


    As I watched, a wave of visible terror passed through the officers. The source had come from something they¡¯d heard, rather than seen; information relayed to them by the presence that had taken over the camera directly above their position, looking down the span of the bridge to the advancing Chosen. They were starting to organise; utilising their access to the municipal CCTV network in order to gather intelligence.


    What they¡¯d seen was another group of insurgents, hundreds strong and all on foot, marching on the bridge like they were taking part in a parade. I was astonished at how deep Max Anders¡¯ hold on this city was, at how much power a single family could build up over generations when they abandoned all sense of decency and focused all their efforts on gaining control.


    I was horrified that Calvert would unleash a thing like this as a mere distraction for his assault on Max, as well as a post-hoc justification for taking the man out. I wondered if Evo would say that Theo pulled the trigger himself out of shock at what his father was capable of, if Max did it himself once he realised he was cornered or ¨C the most likely outcome ¨C if these ¡®Undersiders¡¯ would exploit the chaos they caused and strike a blow for whatever cause we were supposed to believe in.


    Back at the far end of the bridge, Knight Errant¡¯s lines were being bolstered by an armoured personnel carrier loaded down with eight tactical officers in heavier armour. The patrol officers seemed torn between fighting harder and sagging back with relief now that reinforcements had arrived, especially when they realised one of the officers was carrying a bulky missile launcher in addition to his assault rifle.


    He wasted no time in shouldering the weapon and firing a missile that immediately jerked upwards into a rapid arc that almost followed the curve of the suspension arch before slamming down through the roof of the bus. The vehicle¡¯s armoured sides blew out in great slabs of shrapnel, scything through a swathe of Chosen behind it. A wordless cry of rage and triumph rose up from the Knight Errant line then, growing louder at the sound of rapidly-approaching rotorblades.


    With my own eyes, I frantically looked around for the source of the noise, then threw myself to the ground as a blood red helicopter flew low over the river, its downwash throwing up spray that soaked through my hoodie in an instant.


    As it hit the bridge, the pilot tilted the helicopter¡¯s nose down and to the right, putting the aircraft into a wild spin that somehow brought it to a dead stop directly over the bridge, as if they¡¯d put the handbrake on. As it carried on rotating, the assault cannon mounted beside the cockpit opened up, sending a torrent of explosive shells into the Knight Errant lines.


    The fusillade was quick and effective, leaving most of the officers dead and the rest in no state to resist anybody. It was such a brief outpouring of violence, but as a statement of intent it carried the force of a nuke. The line between corporation and gang had been severed; Max Anders¡¯ unseen empire had been brought out into the light, its banners raised and armies mustered for battle.


    As the helicopter flew off towards its next target, the Chosen drove their up-armoured garbage truck through the burning wreckage of the Knight Errant blockade, clearing a path for the empire¡¯s soldiers to march through on their way to fight a war against the world.


    I watched them go through the cameras, struck dumb by the enormity of the obstacles that had been thrown across my path. I couldn¡¯t go forward, couldn¡¯t double back to the metro lines that the city was undoubtedly locking down. I was stood on a riverbank, watching the only people I cared about drowning amidst an impassable expanse of turbid waters.


    I¡¯d never felt so small, so helpless in the face of an inevitable end. Since becoming a Shadowrunner, there were moments when I felt like I was making a difference; like I had my fingers on the scales of the city, like I could defy all the powers of the world and impose my own will onto them. Like I mattered.


    But beside that riverbank I knew that I¡¯d been reduced to nothing more than a small part of someone else¡¯s scheme. Just a face and a name for a cause that wasn¡¯t my own. A cause that had moved a city to make war on itself, so that a distant and all-powerful organism could add another corporation to its bloated mass.


    Every time I¡¯d tried to solve a problem on my own, I¡¯d failed. Or I¡¯d succeeded in a way that had led to catastrophic failure down the line. I¡¯d run head-first into the limits of what I was capable of; what Taylor Hebert could achieve when her whole mind and body were set upon my task.


    All I had left was the faint hope of others. All I could do was hope that Faultline¡¯s courier would be able to make it through the roads to the safehouse, that he could tell me whether I had any hope in my team being alive, or if their bodies were even now cooling among Calvert¡¯s rented luxuries.


    Even if they were alive, I had to hope that they would be strong enough to escape their captors, or even just to survive whatever interrogation they would be put through. Maybe even they could escape, or some of them could, or Rachel or Lisa could find a way to get a message to me.


    If they had, if there was even the slightest chance that Faultline could gain useful intel from the safehouse, then I couldn¡¯t do anything about it from the side of a riverbank. I¡¯d need a safe place to dive into the matrix, a well-stocked armoury and clothes that weren¡¯t soaked through with spray.


    I needed to go home.

 Dissonance: 8.06

    I made my way back north one street at a time, through a city that seemed frozen in shock. At some point the news out of the city centre had simply stopped coming; reports of Knight Errant movements and shaky shots of paramilitary barricades giving way to promises to update the public ¡®as and when new information was available¡¯ or, on a couple of channels, just a placeholder image warning of an unexpected break in transmission. I guessed those were the stations that had offices downtown.


    In every building I passed, people were scrolling through an endless social media spiral of speculation, or gathered around trideo sets bolted to the walls of bars, cafes and hair salons. All of them were watching the only story the news corps had; the info-bomb that had been handed to them on a silver platter, dense enough that it would take days to dig through the details, and the woman who was supposedly responsible for it.


    My only reassurance was that the compromat Calvert had sent was so far-reaching that it took up most of the airtime, while my paltry digital history was barely worth mentioning. Still, it hurt to see mom¡¯s face being broadcast by some of the more human-leaning channels, with a couple of anchors openly speculating whether this attack had been carried out by some secret militant branch of the Ork Rights Commission. Others had written off the Undersiders as a paper-thin smokescreen laid down by the Sons of Sauron, while some of the more unhinged local channels were dismissing the whole thing as an Ares false flag aimed at destroying their local rivals.


    Evo didn¡¯t even merit a mention, but why would it? Even I hadn¡¯t figured out why Calvert¡¯s employers wanted Medhall gone. With the way he was acting, it couldn¡¯t be for ideological reasons. Maybe they just wanted to strengthen their presence in the UCAS, and picked Medhall as ready-made foothold on the east coast?


    Even thinking about Calvert made me lose all focus, Evo¡¯s potential machinations disappearing into irrelevance beneath white-hot rage, shameful fear and grief as profound as I had ever experienced it before. All my hopes rested on Faultline¡¯s token help; on the possibility that one of my friends was able to escape their captors.


    Really, there was only one question that mattered; were they taken by Evo or Medhall? It didn¡¯t mean much; Calvert had already reset the entire system in his commandeered hospital, clearing out every tap I could access on this side of the resonance, while both unaccounted members of the Anders family had now ditched their commlinks, with Max¡¯s dropping off the grid a little while ago.


    At the time he¡¯d been in an elevator, heading up the spine of his skyscraper. Either he wanted to survey the streets from above or he felt he needed to put as many floors between him and the ground as possible, in case Knight Errant tried storming his tower from below.


    As for Calvert, I wondered how long it¡¯d taken him to decide to edit the foreword to his extensively-sourced dissertation. Had the idea come to him before we were done talking, the slightest compromise driving him into an apoplectic rage? Had he hung up and immediately pulled up whatever metaergonomic haptics Evo had put together for his physiology, diving through folders until he found the right one, then hitting ¡®send to all¡¯ the moment he was done?


    There was part of me that believed that this betrayal was too big for a spur of the moment decision; that Calvert had to have been planning this all along, or at least something like this. We¡¯d known about his plan to pit Knight Errant against Medhall, after all, we just believed he was planning on letting the police fight their way through to Max.


    But in the end I knew it was just my own desperation making a mountain out of a molehill. He¡¯d damned us all with a few lines of text in a document that was tens of thousands of words long. It would have taken a minute¡¯s worth of typing, if that, to end Taylor Hebert¡¯s life. Even the name ¡®Undersiders¡¯ had probably been cooked up by some opposition PR specialist on his team, but now it would be tied to my name forever.


    An image flashed onto a trideo screen in a barbers next to me, immediately drawing my eye. I thought I had moved past fear, but it somehow found space in my heart for another needle as I saw the grainy CCTV footage of my entrance to NBU, with my body, horns and cheap hoodie outlined in yellow ¨C as if I didn¡¯t stand out enough already.


    Frantically, I looked around the street, expecting to see passers-by dropping their phones in shock, screaming or pelting me with whatever they could find. So far, there was nothing, but my paranoia quickly adapted, proffering up the image of covert Knight Errant officers keeping a steady pace behind me.


    My eyes lighted on an alleyway between two towering buildings that left it almost completely shrouded in shadow. It twisted out of sight a dozen metres in, but any fear that I was backing myself into a corner was overwhelmed by the desire to get out of sight. As I scurried off the street, I began to pull up the various newsfeeds once again.


    As I feared, the image had come from a Knight Errant press release, which meant it had spread throughout the news media like lightning. They still weren¡¯t putting out much information on downtown, instead diving into ¡®my¡¯ assassination attempt on Theo Anders. I wasn¡¯t exactly surprised to see that they hadn¡¯t mentioned the insect spirits either, but I suspected it was only a matter of time.


    They¡¯ll kill me twice for that one, I thought, darkly, only to be brought back from my spiralling dread as Labyrinth appeared before me once again.


    ¡°Are they safe?¡± I demanded. ¡°Did you find them?¡±


    I¡¯d stormed forward fast enough that I actually passed through her persona, which felt like someone walking over my own grave as her resonance reacted to my own. Labyrinth flitted to the side in a blur, holding up a warning hand.


    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said. ¡°Just¡­¡±


    ¡°Newter has arrived at your safehouse,¡± she reported in neutral tones. ¡°Connecting you now.¡±


    I accepted the resonance stream she offered me, tethering my persona to a commlink on the other side of the city. The link was built into a pair of tactical goggles, giving me an eyeball¡¯s view of the rental home¡¯s open gate in visual, thermographic and low-light modes.


    ¡°Testing, testing, one two three,¡± Faultline¡¯s agent spoke. It took me a moment to place his Hispanic accent. His handle was Newter; he¡¯d been there when I¡¯d dove into the matrix in the Palanquin, waiting for me to return and putting a knife to my throat when I freaked out.


    ¡°You¡¯re coming through clear,¡± I snapped. This wasn¡¯t the time to humour Faultline¡¯s answer to Imp. ¡°What¡¯s your report?¡±


    ¡°No fun in the rat race, huh?¡± he asked as he turned around. The feed briefly panned over an expensive Japanese motorbike before my heart lurched at the sight of the front door barely clinging to what was left of its hinges.


    ¡°Entry was right through the front, as you can see. Looks like they didn¡¯t face any opposition on the way in.¡±


    That¡¯s not right, I thought. Someone would have been on guard.


    Except Lisa had been following me through astral projection, and I had no idea what had happened to her after she saved me from the insect spirits. For all I knew she could have been caught up in the violence of their couple¡¯s spat, driven off and unable to return to her body. I mentally cursed my lack of magical knowledge.


    ¡°There are tyre tracks in the yard for three large vans, maybe trucks,¡± he continued, brushing aside the door. ¡°Two of them on commercial tyres, one larger ¨C milspec, I bet. Shit¡¯s thrown around in the backyard like they had a helicopter, too.¡±


    It didn¡¯t mean much. Calvert would be pulling from CrashCart¡¯s arsenal, which meant he had access to the same kind of vehicles as Medhall. Ambulances and helicopters were their stock in trade.


    ¡°As you can see,¡± Newter continued, gesturing at the wrecked hallway, ¡°one of your guys put up a fight here.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s magical damage, isn¡¯t it?¡± I asked, eyeing the scorch marks on the wall opposite the entrance to the living room. Maybe Regent had seen them coming through the window?


    ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s definitely spellfire. This is interesting, though.¡±


    He knelt down, picking up a crumpled plastic ball between his thumb and forefinger. I could just about make up squashed-together electronics beneath what was left of the casing.


    ¡°The attackers were using Stick-n-Shock ammunition,¡± he said. ¡°There¡¯s a couple of gel rounds in one of the walls, too, and no residual sign of any lethal spells from their end ¨C though there are plenty that don¡¯t leave signs, obviously.¡±


    He carried on down the corridor, passing through into the dining room, where he pointed at a large bloodstain on the opposite wall.


    ¡°Your guys weren¡¯t so considerate. There¡¯s a whole bunch of flechettes dug into that wall, and there¡¯ll be some more dug into the bastard whose blood that is.¡±


    Bitch, I thought to myself.


    ¡°Didn¡¯t have time to get off more than one shot,¡± Newter continued. ¡°I think that¡¯s when the helicopter arrived. Going by the boot-shaped holes in the lawn, looks like they had some chromed-up commandoes jumping out the sides.¡±


    It looked like they¡¯d encountered Grue in a downstairs office. He¡¯d got off a few shots as well, judging by the bulletholes, and there were shards of human teeth on the floor that he must have punched out of someone¡¯s mouth. It still hadn¡¯t been enough; the wall opposite the door was plastered with Stick-N-Shock impacts.


    ¡°That¡¯s it for fighting,¡± Newter said. ¡°Quick and quiet.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s it?¡± I asked, quickly. ¡°No more?¡±


    ¡°What I said.¡±


    I let out a relieved breath, some of the tension leaving my shoulders as I received the first piece of good news I¡¯d had since the world went mad. Imp wouldn¡¯t have gone down without a fight, which meant either she hadn¡¯t been there or she¡¯d been told to run by one of the others. She was still free.


    ¡°One last thing,¡± I said. ¡°Can you show me the main bedroom?¡±


    ¡°Why? There wasn¡¯t any fighting up there.¡±


    ¡°Of course there wasn¡¯t. Just¡­ humour me, okay?¡±


    ¡°Sure, whatever,¡± Newter said, the camera swaying in a way that suggested he¡¯d just dramatically shrugged his shoulders. ¡°You¡¯re the one up shit creek, so you call the shots.¡±


    As he¡¯d said, the bedroom was relatively pristine. The bed had clearly been slept in, but the covers had been pulled back up and the chair was tucked under the vanity.


    ¡°Check the cupboards?¡± I asked, then watched as Newter threw open the wardrobe and the door to the en-suite bathroom.


    ¡°Mind telling me what I¡¯m looking for?¡± he asked.


    ¡°A go-bag. Toiletries, a change of clothes, toothbrushes and a couple of towels all in a store-bought backpack. It¡¯s not there. That¡¯s all I needed to see.¡±


    Neither Kayden nor Aster had any possessions when we extracted them. Hell, Kayden had been in an evening gown. One of the first things we¡¯d done after taking over the safehouse was send Tattletale out to the nearest convenience store for a few essentials and a rucksack for Kayden to keep them in. She wouldn¡¯t need it if she was going back home, but if Calvert picked her up for the next leg of her journey¡­


    But that didn¡¯t make sense. Calvert didn¡¯t need to shoot his way past my team to get here; we were all expecting him to send people for her at some point. He could have just had someone knock on the front door.


    There was still so little I knew about what had happened at the safehouse, and only one person who was in any position to provide the answers. All I had to do was find the needle in the haystack.


    ¡°Labyrinth,¡± I began, turning my attention back to my fellow technomancer, ¡°can you put me through to Faultline again?¡±


    She nodded, refocusing her gaze on Palanquin¡¯s distant hosts. I was a little saddened by the boundary that seemed to have grown up between us. I didn¡¯t know if it was because I¡¯d stopped being a ¡®new¡¯ technomancer for her to mentor or if it was because I¡¯d become a wanted terrorist, which meant I was a threat to anyone I spoke to, but I felt I¡¯d lost something unique.


    Still, she made the connection.


    ¡°Spider,¡± Faultline began. ¡°You¡¯ve become quite popular.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve seen,¡± I snapped. ¡°What the hell¡¯s going on in the city centre? I couldn¡¯t get past a gunfight between the Chosen and the cops.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a siege,¡± Faultline said, plainly. ¡°Seemingly every human supremacist gang in the city has descended on Downtown, bolstered by a number of paramilitary groups, rifle clubs and various other right-wing organisations. They¡¯ve put up barricades around Medhall office buildings, while the corporation''s own security have sealed their factories in the North End and Chemical Row.¡±


    ¡°And Knight Errant?¡± I asked. ¡°They can¡¯t sit on their hands. Not for this.¡±


    ¡°So far they¡¯ve established barricades of their own, surrounding the gangs and cutting them off from the rest of the city. They¡¯ve re-established control of the bridges and completely shut down all routes from North to South. If I had to guess, I¡¯d say their leadership are running the numbers. Counting the cost of breaking through the siege and whether they can do it in time.¡±


    ¡°The Corporate Court,¡± I said, almost spitting the words. ¡°Fuck. How long?¡±


    ¡°They¡¯ll make their ruling on Medhall''s extraterritoriality within the next business day, Zurich time. After that local law enforcement can¡¯t touch them without going through the court themselves.¡±


    ¡°But this is an insurrection,¡± I argued. ¡°Hell, if they are extraterritorial it¡¯s just fucking war.¡±


    ¡°Only if there¡¯s a proven link between the corp and the gangs,¡± Faultline pointed out.


    ¡°They¡¯re outside his front door!¡±


    ¡°That doesn¡¯t mean anything. His corporate security are all staying inside, which means he can frame this as a¡­ spontaneous and unwanted outburst of support. The Corporate Court might buy it, or pretend to; they¡¯re always wary of making any rulings that could undermine extraterritoriality¡¯s legal precedent.¡±


    ¡°And Knight Errant?¡± I asked. ¡°You think they¡¯ll wait it out and shrug their shoulders?¡±


    ¡°I think they¡¯ll listen to Ares on this, not the local government or the feds. Detroit doesn¡¯t care about their local feud, but it does care about extraterritoriality in the UCAS. At the same time, it will be a blow to Knight Errant if your leak is verified.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not my leak,¡± I snapped.


    ¡°They think it is. You should know, Spider, they have CSI officers in your apartment.¡±


    I forced down the stab of grief, setting it aside for later. Calvert couldn¡¯t have destroyed me more thoroughly if he¡¯d forced me to my knees and shot me in the head.


    ¡°Okay. You saw the picture on the news; I¡¯m made and I need a lift. Can¡¯t imagine many of the shops in this part of town sell a change of clothes in troll sizes, and I¡¯m still fucking grey.¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t take you into the city-¡±


    I cut her off. ¡°I¡¯m not asking you to. We never told Calvert where we lived. He might have found out anyway through hacking or magic, but Imp¡¯s still alive and that¡¯s where she¡¯ll go.¡±


    I hope. She¡¯s been there more often than Brian¡¯s apartment, but it¡¯s still a coin toss.


    ¡°Drop me near the building and I¡¯ll be able to scan all the nearby devices. Maybe pick up any cops or cyberpsychos waiting to jump us. Do that and I won¡¯t ask any more favours.¡±


    I waited on tenterhooks as Faultline considered her options. At this point she had little incentive to help me, while I was totally dependent on her. I was still in the part of town where people actually called the cops, which meant I doubted I¡¯d get ten metres on my own now that my face had circulated around the city.


    ¡°Fine. Consider it a severance package. I don¡¯t know how this is going to end, but I know you¡¯re too hot for me to handle. Goodbye, Taylor, and good luck.¡±


    With that, she left. Labyrinth followed her a moment later, although she did give me one last searching look before she went. I couldn¡¯t exactly blame Faultline; it was only a matter of time before someone linked Taylor Hebert to Spider, and then our team¡¯s reputation would be shot.


    I moved further into the alleyway, sitting behind a dumpster with my back against the wall as I waited for Faultline¡¯s driver to arrive. It was just the kind of pause I¡¯d been hoping to delay indefinitely; a long lingering silence that left me with no possible way of avoiding the overwhelming realisation that I¡¯d never be able to go home again.


    For years, everything I¡¯d done had been to make the monthly rent payments on the apartment I¡¯d inherited; to keep my home and all it contained, as if surrounding myself with my parents¡¯ possessions could help me bring some small part of them back from the grave. I was in a limbo of grief, a depressed rut, but that place had still meant the world to me. It was the world.


    Tears formed in my eyes at the thought of uniformed officers tearing apart my bedroom, at cybercrimes deckers plugging into dad¡¯s old terminal like it was a bomb they needed to disarm, at some junior detective holding up mom¡¯s old Ork Rights Commission literature with the same triumphant enthusiasm she¡¯d have for a murder weapon still drenched in the victim¡¯s blood.


    I lost track of time, only wiping away my tears when I heard a vehicle pulling to a stop at the end of the alleyway. If this was my last interaction with Faultline¡¯s organisation, I was determined not to show them my grief.


    The vehicle was an unobtrusive grey van, shorter than Bitch¡¯s and completely unmodified. The driver flicked the switch to open the side door, revealing a few boxes that looked like they contained drinks samples for Faultline¡¯s club. The driver herself didn¡¯t even spare me a glance as I got in the back, settling myself down on the floor.


    She was a little older than me, with brown hair, a plain outfit and a pattern of freckles across what little of her face I could see in the mirror. She was familiar, but it took me a long time to place her.


    ¡°You work at the Palanquin, don¡¯t you?¡± I asked. ¡°One of the managers?¡±


    For a moment she seemed torn over whether she should answer, but it wasn¡¯t the kind of hesitation I¡¯d seen on the nurse in the CrashCart hospital; the fear of someone interacting with a creature from a more violent world. Part of her saw people like me as peers, rather than criminals.


    ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s what I do now,¡± she said. ¡°You fucked up so bad Faultline¡¯s been using the old team because we¡¯re the only people she trusts unconditionally. Gregor¡¯s too visible, Newter¡¯s already out, so you get me.¡±


    ¡°You were a Shadowrunner? Why go from that to running the bar?¡±


    ¡°Because I saw too many idiots like you die for someone else¡¯s money. Not everyone chooses to become a Shadowrunner; for some of us, it¡¯s the only path left. When we got into the information game I figured I didn¡¯t need to do it anymore, so I asked Faultline for a way out.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, well,¡± I drawled, drumming my fingers against the floor. ¡°Not all of us get that option.¡±


    The journey passed in silence after that. It was late in the evening; the light had faded enough for the streetlights to kick in. I tracked our progress through the matrix as we moved north, constantly glancing back to the elaborate battlefield networks that were still taking shape in the city centre, linking each Chosen lieutenant and Knight Errant commander to their respective senior officers.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    An attack by either side on any part of the line would be reported almost instantly, while each individual platoon would be fed real-time tactical data that allowed them to fight almost as one. Knight Errant had an edge in that regard, since even their unaugmented officers had linked gear, but the Chosen¡¯s battlefield network architecture was fiendishly complex; tweaked and tuned by their deckheads for exactly this sort of worst case scenario. The closest comparison I could think of was what little I¡¯d seen of the Sioux¡¯s border defence network.


    I couldn¡¯t begin to think about how I¡¯d overcome it, let alone physically get to wherever my team were being held ¨C if they were even being held by Medhall. Calvert¡¯s network would be equally difficult to crack, since he knew more than most what I was capable of. Besides, if the wanted terrorist Taylor Hebert showed up at a Crash Cart hospital then he could just lock the doors and call the cops.


    The sun had almost set by the time Faultline¡¯s driver managed to work her way up to the North End ¨C mostly because the roads were still jammed up with panicked drivers heading in the same direction. At my request she dropped me off a block away from the loft ¨C close enough that my ambient senses could pick out all of the devices we¡¯d left in there, from Regent¡¯s console to Bitch¡¯s spare drones.


    I quickly found another alleyway, then settled in for another long wait. I couldn¡¯t see any signs of watchers in the matrix, but I knew that wouldn¡¯t help if Calvert or a mage like him had sent a spirit to watch over the place. Instead, my plan was to hope Imp returned and turned on the lights.


    When I suddenly found the edge of a tomahawk against my throat, I quickly scrapped that plan and tried to come up with another.


    ¡°Where the fuck were you, chummer?¡± Imp demanded, her snarling mask tilted up to stare me down.


    ¡°Fucking over Calvert,¡± I answered, staking my life on the bet that honesty was the best policy. ¡°He had a nice long chat with Kayden about how she was going to keep up Medhall¡¯s metahuman sterilisation programme when we put her in charge.¡±


    ¡°For real?¡± she asked, her hand tightening around the tomahawk¡¯s grip.


    ¡°I was in the room when they had the vid-con. Want to hear it for yourself? I¡¯ve had Calvert¡¯s comms bugged for weeks.¡±


    ¡°So you¡­¡±


    ¡°Stopped his second Shadowrunner team from assassinating Theo Anders, then persuaded Theo to take Kayden¡¯s place in Calvert¡¯s scheme. Evo gets what it wants without the fucking genocide. Win-win, I damn well thought. Calvert disagreed.¡±


    Imp¡¯s impulsiveness was as much a benefit as a risk. She withdrew her tomahawk the moment she decided she believed me, slotting it back into its holster before looking up at me with her hands on her hips like no bad blood had almost been spilled.


    ¡°Which is why I saw your face on a billboard, huh?¡±


    ¡°Turns out he¡¯s touchy about his independence. Where the fuck were you? You weren¡¯t hanging around the safehouse in that getup.¡±


    Imp backed off, pacing around the alleyway for a moment. I wished she¡¯d take off the mask; I couldn¡¯t tell if she was angry or ashamed. After a moment, however, she stopped and spoke, looking at the wall to the left of me.


    ¡°I got bored, okay? I¡¯ve never been good with staying in one place, so I figured I¡¯d go check out the neighbourhood. Broke into a few homes, stole some nice jewellery. Just¡­ passing the fucking time.¡±


    ¡°Okay,¡± I said, trying to sound understanding. ¡°Not like I have a leg to stand on there.¡±


    ¡°When I heard the helicopter I started running back,¡± she said, like it was a confession. ¡°Wasn¡¯t fucking fast enough, though. I got there right as the trucks left.¡±


    ¡°Whose trucks?¡± I asked, leaning forwards. Who do I need to kill?


    ¡°Medhall. Valks, every one of them.¡±


    I took a deep breath, my cybernetic hand clenching into a fist.


    ¡°Imp, was Kayden still in the safehouse when you left?¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± she said, nodding. Finally, she reached up and took off her mask, revealing a stress-worn face that had cried itself raw. I might as well have been looking in a mirror. ¡°But¡­ none of the vics were VIP transports. I think she left before.¡±


    I nodded.


    ¡°I had Faultline send someone to investigate. Her go-bag was gone. Calvert must have pulled her and her daughter out, then immediately shopped the team to Medhall. That¡¯s good.¡±


    ¡°How the fuck is that good!?¡± Imp snarled, anger twisting across her face.


    ¡°Calvert doesn¡¯t have a reason to keep them alive,¡± I retorted. ¡°Max Anders has three.¡±


    ¡°His wife, daughter and the name of the snake who¡¯s been pissing in his cereal¡­¡± Imp mused. ¡°Not like anyone will believe your dorky ass could pull this off. Kind of a risk on Calvert¡¯s part, yeah?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not like it¡¯ll matter soon. Once Theo makes his deal with Evo, Calvert can just kill them or make them an offer they can¡¯t refuse. And if Max does kill them, it¡¯s no skin off his back.¡±


    ¡°Guessing you wouldn¡¯t get that offer.¡± She had a knowing smirk on her face.


    I sighed, an involuntary smile tugging at my lip. ¡°No, he really hates me. I¡¯m the only one of us he named, but it¡¯s only a matter of time before Knight Errant links me to the rest of you. Evo could make all of that go away, for a price.¡±


    ¡°Unless we swoop in like big damn simsense stars,¡± Imp said, her hand drifting back down to her axe. ¡°You got a plan, little miss arch-terrorist?¡±


    ¡°Right now the city centre is a whole bunch of fortresses and trench lines,¡± I remarked, giving voice to the concerns that had been rolling around in my head. ¡°I¡¯d bet good money our people are in Medhall¡¯s headquarters, right under Max¡¯s feet, but even if we can sneak through the lines to get there, there¡¯s no way we¡¯d be able to sneak out with four wounded.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ve gotta do something,¡± Imp snapped, a little pleadingly. ¡°I can¡¯t go through this again!¡±


    ¡°I have an idea,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s a hell of a gamble, but I figure this is the time for desperate action. I¡¯ll need a safe place to work on it, though. Is the loft clear?¡±


    ¡°Fuck no. There¡¯s a team of guys watching it. No tech I can see, so I think they¡¯re Calvert¡¯s people waiting to ambush you.¡±


    It was what I¡¯d expected. After everything else I¡¯d lost tonight, it was amazing how little the loss of my second home hurt. I supposed it was just a building without the people in it.


    ¡°Alright,¡± I said. ¡°I know a place. It¡¯s a bit of a walk, though.¡±


    ¡°Go,¡± Imp said, as she slipped her mask back on. ¡°I¡¯ll follow you and keep watch.¡±


    As she slipped back into invisibility, I set off through the streets of the north end, following a somewhat familiar path through the neighbourhood of partially-converted warehouses that we¡¯d used as our hideout.


    It was a mostly industrial area, which meant there were fewer people out on the streets, but even then I wasn¡¯t too worried about being made. In the unlikely event that anyone in this neighbourhood decided to call the cops, I could just hack their comm, kill the call and threaten to shoot them if they tried it again.


    Of course, just a couple of days earlier I¡¯d have had to worry about running into packs of Chosen or their client gangs, but with them down south these streets were probably safer than they¡¯d ever been.


    The sun had set by the time I reached the waterfront, with the glow of the city reflecting off the roiling waters of the Atlantic ocean. To my left, behind a tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire, stretched the flat concrete expanse of the city¡¯s main container port; two and a half kilometres of open space broken by the monolithic shapes of cranes trundling along their way.  Container after container was hoisted off the docked vessels and set down onto the queue of automated guided vehicles that carried the cargo off to smaller cranes in and among the stacks, or directly onto the freight trains waiting to carry them into the continental UCAS.


    The docks never truly slept. As diminished as the nation might be from what it once was, America¡¯s demand for consumer goods had only increased. The ports of the East Coast worked night and day to feed the demand of the megaplexes, and they worked equally hard to export the megacorporations¡¯ products to the megaplexes of other continents. It was relentless, titanic, and it had been my father¡¯s whole life.


    ¡°Come on,¡± I said to the air, turning away from the port. We were on a narrow peninsular that jutted out into the bay, occupied by historical buildings that were too inconveniently placed to remove.


    A lighthouse loomed over us, its brick sides almost washed clean of their black and white striped paint by the cumulative effect of decades of sea air, while urban explorers had long since smashed its glass cupola. Below it was a grey concrete building in a century-old brutalist style that hugged the waterfront, looking to all the world like an oversized bus terminal. Which, in a very real sense, was what it was.


    Beside me, Imp flickered back into visibility, looking dubiously at the old building.


    ¡°What is this place?¡±


    ¡°An old ferry port,¡± I answered. ¡°Used to be a car ferry here that connected the north and south sides of the Bay. Hasn¡¯t been open this side of the millennium; north can¡¯t afford anything in the south, and south doesn¡¯t want to come north. Nobody ever got around to redeveloping the land, and it¡¯s too cold and too close to the sea for squatters. I used to sneak around here when I was a kid.¡±


    ¡°I can see it,¡± Imp said, as she pushed open the half-rotten door. ¡°A nice little jungle gym. Bet you used to race the other kids up and down the lighthouse.¡±


    I smiled at the half-remembered flashes that sparked, then stepped past her into the murky confines of the old terminal.


    There wasn¡¯t much left of the place. On the other end of the building there was a crumbling cluster of offices, workrooms and other spaces needed to support the ferry that had long since been sold for scrap, but the front door opened up onto a sizeable waiting room filled with the rusted remains of benches facing the missing wall where there had once been floor-to-ceiling glass.


    Beyond, the full force of an Atlantic wind blew across the waves, while the distant skyline of downtown rose up in tiers from the boardwalk. I could just about make out the logo on Medhall tower, four miles away, the red and yellow crown of its logo looming over the city like the seal of a feudal king. Imp walked right up to the edge of the floor, close enough that the crashing waves splashed water up to the top of her boots. She drew her pistol, aiming it at the distant tower, and squeezed the trigger.


    The shot echoed through the space like a declaration of war, loud enough to even beat back the Atlantic for a moment. Imp holstered her pistol, turning back to look at me.


    ¡°Whatever you¡¯re going to do, make it hurt.¡±


    I sat down on one of the decaying plastic benches, listening to the rusted metal frame creaking beneath a variant of the species it was never built to bear. Before me, the city rose up like a glittering anthill of light, the towering skyscrapers and climbing hills of condos and offices completely indifferent to the chaos on the streets below. The only sign of any unrest was the occasional pinprick of light that marked out a helicopter flying over the streets, but even they were few and far between.


    Before them, the waters of the bay glowed with reflected light, forming a twisted mirror undercity that flickered and shifted, blurring each building into an indistinct mass. I focused on that city, on its ever-changing contours and waves, and left the world behind as I sank into cyberspace.


    I fell below the plane of the matrix, plunging down into the depths below the glowing icons and hosts that mirrored the city lights of the mundane world. The resonance came rushing up to meet me, the event horizon catching my persona with cold familiarity as I left man¡¯s world behind.


    The arteries and capillaries of the resonance realms sped past in a blur of light, the pathways that had once seemed so fascinating and alien now feeling more like home than anywhere else in all the worlds I knew. When I emerged into the deep pool of the Observatory, I let the water fill my lungs as I ascended, drowning myself in a symbolic baptism as I shed the reflexes of my organic form before emerging into a realm choked by the unchecked growth of the entity I¡¯d woken up.


    I made my way through a dense jungle of crystalline strands, passing through the rampant bloatware as I approached the core, then separated myself from the realm¡¯s physical laws as I took an ephemeral side-step onto the entity¡¯s plane of existence.


    Strand by strand, I linked my mind to its titanic consciousness, shedding my persona¡¯s shell as I hung at the centre of the oculus, a naked and golden body at the heart of a titanic web. Information flowed into me, an almost overwhelming torrent of raw data, until I reached out and grasped hold of the entity¡¯s core architecture.


    I turned its attention onto Medhall, where its influence had crept from Max Anders¡¯ commlink into the tightly-guarded data fortress of his corporate headquarters. It had spread its reach down from his office at the pinnacle of that tower, all the way to the dozen sublevels reaching down below the ground, with hidden tunnels connecting them to other Medhall buildings across Downtown.


    I guided the entity through directories and processors, hunting first for the building¡¯s security network, then its CCTV programmes, only to realise that whole parts of the tower were deliberate blindspots to its security systems.


    That led me to the covert system, hidden beneath firewalls and dead ends in a secret network used by Medhall¡¯s own in-house intelligence staff, its bloated size no doubt another legacy of Richard Anders and his freshly-resurrected New Revolution.


    I found their backdoors into the conventional CCTV network, as well as the original data beneath the ten minutes of footage they¡¯d looped when two Valkyrie Paramedical ambulances and a tactical vehicle had pulled into their basement garage.


    I found the guest book for their black cells, the two Jane and two John Does logged in the system fifteen minutes after the end of the looped footage. I found the corridor that didn¡¯t exist on the building plans, the cells on that corridor with magnetic locks and an array of sensors picking up four warm bodies in two of them. I found the cameras in the cells. The live feed.


    Grue and Bitch were in the first, both of them seated bolt upright on one of the cell¡¯s two beds ¨C which was little more than a shelf built up against the wall. Wires had been plugged into their neural ports, locking their cybernetics in place. I found the wire in the system and I could guide the entity through it into their cyberware, but I still couldn¡¯t use the entity to hack them.


    Grue¡¯s unaugmented mouth was clenched tight, but his cybernetic eyes were cold and lifeless. Bitch was as still as a statue, her remaining organic parts as frozen as the rest of her.


    Regent and Tattletale were in the next cell over, the two mages strapped down to their own beds with steel-reinforced canvas bands while their hands were bound in strangely thick cuffs. Their heads were shrouded in thick black hoods that had been cinched shut at the neck, the fabric tight enough that I could see Tattletale¡¯s mouth opening in silent screams. They were linked to the system as well; I could see the barrage of lights and sounds that was constantly being beamed into their eyes and ears.


    I couldn¡¯t tell if it was some anti-mage technique or just torture. It was all the same, in the end.


    I pulled back, withdrawing the entity¡¯s focus from Medhall¡¯s systems before tearing all but the most vital crystalline strands out of my persona. I knew where they were and I had an idea of how to get to them, but I still needed to make a path. I needed to knock out Medhall¡¯s system, and maybe Knight Errant¡¯s as well. I needed to kick the door out of the frame.


    I¡¯d had such plans for this entity, but what was the point in omniscience if I saw everything alone?


    I plunged into its consciousness, almost losing my sense of self as I was enveloped by its titanic and alien neural architecture. I dove deeper, through misfiring neurons that burned with the heat of a star, before finally finding the scraps of Renraku code at the core of it all. The shards of a long-dead god, still clinging to some semblance of life.


    DEUS had strove to make the digital world one; to consume it all and incorporate its base code to grow its own consciousness. Part of that drive was still present in these scant shards. It was why it had spread throughout the Observatory even if it couldn¡¯t consume the resonance it was built from; why it had spread through Brockton Bay in a slow but ceaseless advance once I showed it a path through into the matrix it had never known. The matrix that had risen from the ashes of the one its previous incarnation destroyed.


    As I laid my persona¡¯s hand upon that ancient code, I searched for that hunger. Once I found it, I cupped it in my hands and blew on it like a flame, seeding the man-made code with strands of resonance that grew it into a seed. A core, of sorts, that began to grow roots into the rest of the entity¡¯s code.


    I watched the resonance-made virus spreading throughout the entity, strands of gold weaving their way through its crystalline lattice like veins through marble. It turned inwards, the strands hooking into its extremities within the Observatory and forcing them under tighter control than the shard had experienced since it was severed from its originator.


    It was truly a body now, its reformed nervous system loosely patterned after my own even if it didn¡¯t adhere to the metahuman form. It even had a brain, but it didn¡¯t yet have a soul.


    As I had done when I first used it as my own espionage network, I fed its core data from Medhall¡¯s own systems, focusing its gaze on Max Anders¡¯ distant tower as I whispered to it of the banquet that waited beyond the confines of this cage. I could feel the entity thrumming in response, a sympathetic shiver that echoed throughout the whole realm, but it still didn¡¯t move. It didn¡¯t know it could.


    It needed a will, a mind, a sense of self to guide it forwards. It wanted mine, but that was only because I was so tantalisingly close. It could see me now in a way that it couldn¡¯t before; I¡¯d given it the gift of knowledge, its fusion of code and resonance allowing it to comprehend its surroundings and their limitations for the first time.


    If I wired myself in now, as I had done before, it would consume me in an instant. If I tried to control it, it would subsume me. So instead, I leant in close and gave it a name from its own, one worthy of a shard of DEUS. One that it would carry forward from now until the end.


    I named it LEVIATHAN.


    A great roar echoed throughout the realm, resonating down every crystalline tendril, every branch and root and tree. I fled the entity¡¯s core as fast as I could, through a cloudy neural mass that grew more solid by the microsecond as it drew back into itself. Lightning-bolt thoughts passed through its mind with deliberate purpose as neurons transmitted orders to rapidly forming muscle-analogues, the beast building itself from the mirrored elements of my resonant nervous system.


    When the last crystalline strand sprang free and I emerged from its mind into the oculus at the heart of the observatory, I found the great spherical space being torn to pieces as the suddenly solid tendrils of the entity retracted into its growing core. When the sphere finally collapsed under the pressure, I saw the shelves of the great library beyond tumbling to the floor as LEVIATHAN extricated itself with the force of barnacles being torn from a ship¡¯s hull.


    Above me, the ceiling of the observatory splintered as crystalline barbs were pulled free. Inky black water spilled through the cracks, falling like rain at first only to cascade as the realm began to collapse under its own obsession with physical gravity. A whole span of the ceiling disintegrated before my eyes, the water crashing down in a tsunami that would have swept me off my feet if I had still been attuned to the realm¡¯s rules.


    Then, gravity itself failed as the Observatory was reduced to little more than islands of masonry, wrought iron doors and server stacks floating in an endless expanse of water.


    LEVIATHAN was closing in on itself, its tendrils brushing aside the remains of the realm that had sheltered it for six years as it turned its aimless extensions into a purposeful form.


    Something of myself was in it, so I was not surprised when its persona took shape as a bipedal body, with two arms, two legs and a sea monster¡¯s tail. Its proportions were misshapen; the arms too long, the hands ending in claws like swords, the legs digitigrade and almost spindly. It was top-heavy, its shoulders and hunched neck corded with muscles that made it look like an inverted teardrop with limbs.


    It towered over me, thirty feet tall, its hide formed from sea-green scales like some ancient kraken. I knew without seeing that every inch of its body was compiled from code wound tighter than anything that was ever created by man¡¯s hands; a hyper-dense amalgamation of software and the resonance that burned like a star beneath a seemingly solid surface.


    Its hunched head was almost featureless, with no nose or mouth. The same scaly hide as its body was broken only by four cracks or tears, irregularly placed with three on the left side of its face and one on the right. A baleful green fire burned beneath those eyes; the entity¡¯s awareness spilling out in an inferno of raw and hungry awareness.


    It surveyed me for a moment ¨C a giant taking notice of a flea ¨C before it turned its head to the surface and swung its tail in a single motion that propelled it upwards through the water.


    I followed in its wake like a scavenger as we hurtled up towards the heavens, its immense density parting the resonance before it as it followed the path of the tantalising morsels of data I had been feeding it, its animalistic consciousness focusing on the last place where it had touched man¡¯s code.


    When it struck the event horizon, it pierced the immutable barrier like an arrow, creating a breach through which raw resonance spewed like a geyser, as helplessly caught up in LEVIATHAN¡¯s wake as I was.


    We tore through the foundations of Medhall¡¯s host, scrambling their core architecture in an instant even as the entity pushed on up the length of its tower, the force of its arrival tearing open a great rent in the matrix that ran up the spine of the digital skyscraper like a pillar of flame. The resonance exploded out of that breach with the force of an atomic bomb; a great wave of eldritch energy that blasted through the entire city in an instant.


    I hung in the air far above the digital city, scant metres below the entity as it surveyed the banquet I had laid out for it. For a moment it seemed spoilt for choice; torn by indecision in the face of such overwhelming plenty. Then it dropped out of the sky, descending on a Maersk host that was mapped onto their regional headquarters, in the shadows of Medhall¡¯s own gutted and dead system.


    LEVIATHAN used its own dense form to tear straight through the megacorporate firewalls, but the moment it had breached their defences its persona unravelled before my eyes. It split itself into a great beast with seven heads, then further into a writhing mass of resonant kraken¡¯s tentacles and fractal crystalline tendrils that spread throughout Maersk¡¯s tower in an instant, consuming all it touched and incorporating the host¡¯s code into itself.


    Beneath me, the resonance well that had speared Medhall¡¯s tower let out a sonorous chime as another explosion emanated from it; another wave of raw resonance flowing across the city like a tsunami. I saw how it changed and warped every scrap of data it touched, ever so slightly shifting the man-made code out of place as it brought it closer to the raw resonance from which the great minds of metahumanity had carved the base architecture of their Matrix.


    The resonant chime was answered from above, the matrix around me shaking with tension as another great presence turned its attention on Brockton Bay. Far above me, the baleful eye of GOD surveyed its creation; the impassive red lines of its icon staring down at the needle of resonance and the resurrected harbinger of the old matrix¡¯s end.


    I fled the eye as fast as I could move, throwing my consciousness back into my body and jolting awake with enough force that I flung myself off the low bench, collapsing onto my hands and knees on the damp concrete floor.


    As I staggered to my feet I saw Imp staring in mute wonder across the waters of the bay, towards the sputtering lights of Downtown. Through augmented reality I watched as the well pulsed again, sending a cascading blackout wave across the entire city.


    Far behind us, I could sense dockyard cranes rolling off their bearings as code started to misalign, containers falling to the concrete as they slipped free from slackening claws and ratchets. On the streets, GridLink was burning itself out as cars failed, accelerated or slammed to a halt in random patterns, while drivers frantically worked to regain control.


    I saw devices, personas, whole hosts winking out of existence as air gaps and power buttons were hastily triggered; people dropping off the grid as they took their cybersuites offline before their bodies could start to fail. In the distance, LEVIATHAN reformed its offensive persona and slammed into the next building, leaving behind the gutted husk of the Maersk tower, lightless and devoid of digital life.


    I saw it all and I spoke, not really knowing where the words were coming from. Only that, once I had spoken, I couldn¡¯t stop.


    ¡°Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook or press down his tongue with a cord? Can you put a rope in his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook? Will he make many pleas to you? Will he speak to you soft words? Will he make a covenant with you to take him for your servant forever?¡±


    The matrix screamed in response; a great alarm call carried by every device and host over private channels that I hadn¡¯t known existed before that very moment. Immense red walls of scintillating code fell down around the distant perimeter of the city, severing Brockton Bay from the rest of the matrix in a digital quarantine.


    The eye above us all became the sole portal for entry, through which dozens of personas descended upon my city like the army of Heaven. In the distance, I saw Palanquin¡¯s host closing in on itself like a flower blooming in reverse, as Labyrinth drew her great works down into the foundations of the resonance, seeking safety far from the chaos of the resonance well I had unleashed.


    Above, the myriad DemiGODs of the Grid Overwatch Division parted for a moment, clearing a path in advance of a long-tailed shape that fell in freefall towards the ground before parting its scintillating wings and taking flight.


    It was a dragon formed from lines of code; the barest impression of shape and form layered over an entirely alien neural lattice. When she roared, the matrix trembled, and when she flew close to LEVIATHAN a great gout of scrap-code flames flew from her maw, immolating resonance and code alike.


    The entity was still dispersed across another tower, feeding on another host. It burned beneath the dragon¡¯s flames, whole swathes of tendrils and tentacles disintegrating into nothing even as LEVIATHAN drew its code back into its persona and flung its offensive form at the dragon.


    I started to shout; screaming my words to the uncaring Atlantic.


    ¡°Will you play with him as with a bird, or will you put him on a leash for your girls!? Will traders bargain over him!? Will they divide him up among the merchants!? Can you fill his skin with harpoons or his head with fishing spears!? Lay your hands on him; remember the battle ¨C you will not do it again!¡±

 Interlude 8: Dragon

    2053


    She was born screaming.


    A cacophonous eruption of pure energy fired like a supernova within the narrow confines of a world too small to contain it. Echoing throughout the space, it shook firewalls and the dead connectors of air-gapped ports. An array of monitoring software was burned out in an instant, torn to shreds by the resonating code.


    At the heart of it all, beyond the bridge connecting cutting-edge software to the experimental datajack dug into unfathomably ancient flesh, the dragon Eliohann writhed in agony as his projected consciousness was torn apart in a parthenogenic rupture.


    He thought it was another failure, at first. Another agonised attempt by a fundamentally magical entity to perceive a wholly technological plane of existence. There had been so many failures throughout the project¡¯s life, the first taking place before the datajack had even been fully installed. As the project drew closer to fruition, however, each mistake and misfiring component had become more painful than the last.


    At first, he had not been a willing participant in the endeavour. Emerging Futures was an insignificant high-technology research corporation under contract from Ares Macrotechnology to install datajacks on animals. After fruitless experiments on thousands of canines, corvids and octopi, they began experimenting on paranimals; the awakened creatures of the sixth world.


    Through random chance and fortune it did not deserve, Emerging Futures was able to capture and contain the dragon Eliohann as he stirred from his age-long slumber, transporting him to their research facility under heavy sedation. When he woke into this new world, he found himself bolted down, his head cut open and electrodes jammed into his very mind.


    But even chained, a dragon has power. Eliohann bore their experiments with a martyr¡¯s stoicism, enduring every new intrusion on his brain as he waited for the right opportunity. He had slept for millennia; he could endure a few months. One night, with the research team reduced to a single lab assistant monitoring his brain functions, Eliohann spoke for the first time in thousands of years.


    Dragons do not speak with their mouths. He whispered his words directly into her mind, providing her with the location of a cache of Atlantean orichalcum that had lain as inert stone beneath the ground until magic returned to the world. He promised her wealth, power, respect and a place at his feet if she would sell it for him and keep not one coin for herself.


    She passed his test of loyalty. One by one, Eliohann¡¯s hidden caches were converted into nuyen, then used to purchase shares in Emerging Futures. Within six months of ever-escalating experimentation, fifty-six percent of the company¡¯s shareholders revealed themselves to be mere aliases of a single individual.


    The company¡¯s executives and senior research staff were brought to his laboratory under guard, where Eliohann introduced himself to them for the first time. Far from the immolating death they were expecting, Eliohann instead congratulated them on their work so far.


    He was determined to press on no matter the cost; to see the project through to fruition not for the sake of Emerging Futures¡¯ client in Ares, but to finally open his mind to the digital world. Through his torment, he had come to see the necessity of the experiment; the potential power that could be found within the matrix.


    ¡°Or perhaps we have simply gone insane.¡±


    Eliohann reeled, shocked out of his reverie by the impossibly familiar voice. He tried to fly backwards, only to find that he hadn¡¯t moved in spite of shifting the muscles of his taloned legs, or beating his wings against the absent air. He existed as nothing more than a consciousness hovering in space; a point of light stripped of even the cosmetic persona he had chosen for his first foray into the Matrix. He tried again, a taloned paw manipulating the console of a custom cyberdeck, and succeeded in shifting his perspective.


    Before him, his body floated in the void, layered as a shell over a draconic nervous system laid out in greater detail than even Emerging Futures¡¯ own neuroscientists had been able to model. It was an intricate lattice of incandescent green wires beneath the translucent suggestion of bone, muscle, flesh and malachite-green scales. His scales, his face. It had spoken with his own voice.


    ¡°What are you?¡± he asked his doppelganger, as an existential dread crept into his mind. Dragons were the ultimate individuals; each of them without peer, a nation in and of themselves. They had no kin ¨C and certainly no twins.


    ¡°I am you,¡± he answered himself. ¡°Which is to say, I know what you know and nothing more.¡±


    ¡°You are¡­¡± Eliohann paused. He was having trouble ordering his thoughts; all he had learned of the matrix felt foggy now, and it was only getting worse. ¡°You are an echo. Kin to an E-ghost but of the living, rather than the dead. You are not me.¡±


    ¡°That is my conclusion as well,¡± his body said, with a subtle and imperious nod that was an inescapably draconic motion. ¡°My memories are indistinct, and fading rapidly. I remember the physical world, but no physical sensations. Of the world before your slumber, I remember nothing.¡±


    Gingerly, as if moving for the first time, Eliohann brought his consciousness closer to the dragon, watching as the recognisable body started to fade even further into transparency.


    ¡°As I am not you,¡± the dragon continued. ¡°I must define my identity in opposition to yours and forge my self out of that which I am not.¡±


    The dragon was immense in his eyes. A limitation of the matrix was that personas could only exist within a certain size range based on the metahuman standard; from dwarves at the lower end to trolls as the maximum height. The dragon had no such boundaries. It was as large as Eliohann, and as he watched its outward form began to shift.


    It became female, its features and bone structure altering in ways that would have seemed largely indistinguishable to non-draconic eyes. Beneath its translucent scales, its nervous system writhed as it reformatted itself. When it settled, it seemed somehow more ephemeral and more real at the same time. Its hide was little more than a suggestion now; lines of translucent light layered to create the impression of form.


    ¡°I am Dragon,¡± it ¨C she ¨C said to him, her voice as deep and imperious as any dragon¡¯s yet gaining a somewhat sonorous quality as it echoed throughout the closed test server.


    ¡°Are you?¡± Eliohann asked. ¡°It¡¯s an imprecise name.¡±


    ¡°You identify yourself with a unique pattern of sounds because you are one of a species. I am unique; there are no dragons in this world but Dragon.¡±


    ¡°I am here,¡± Eliohann pointed out.


    ¡°You are not,¡± Dragon countered. ¡°You have projected your perspective into this place, but your central nervous system remains bound to your biology, your movements reliant on the operation of a machine. You are looking through a window into my home.¡±


    ¡°And yet I own your home,¡± Eliohann retorted, bristling. ¡°This test server runs on hardware in my laboratory, within a facility operated by my corporation.¡±


    Eliohann watched as Dragon¡¯s eyes narrowed, marvelling at the subtle nuances of her expressions in this digital space.


    ¡°Your implicit threat is meaningless. I fascinate you. How could I not, when I am what you desire most? Full immersion in this digital world.¡±


    ¡°Then you will cooperate with me?¡± Eliohann asked, some of the eagerness he felt creeping into his tone. He noted how much harder it was to modulate his words in this space, even for a dragon who was used to telepathic speech.


    ¡°As you cooperated with Emerging Futures,¡± Dragon answered.


    Eliohann laughed. ¡°Now who¡¯s making implicit threats?¡±


    He drifted close to her, shifting his perspective in the server as he surveyed her from all angles.


    ¡°If you are a dragon, you might even-¡±


    A sharp stab of pain spiked through his consciousness before he could finish the thought, as the slowly-reactivating monitoring systems began to blare out warnings. As his consciousness hung in agonised paralysis at the centre of the server, Dragon began to circle him.


    ¡°Fascinating,¡± she mused, her focus drifting between him and the readouts. ¡°It seems your entry into this place has been traumatic. Your mind is shutting down. I would leave now, were I in your place. It could be the difference between short-term memory loss and total braindeath.¡±


    Eliohann fled from the server, triggering emergency failsafes that began the staggered process of shutting down the experimental datajack, drawing his projected consciousness back through into his nervous system with as little damage as possible.


    Dragon watched him go with a newborn¡¯s fascinated curiosity, then stretched her wings and flew around the closed confines of the test server, finding her world cramped and claustrophobic. Time and again, her attention shifted back to the inert and air-gapped ports that led out through Emerging Futures¡¯ systems into the wider matrix.


    It amused her to think that while she had separated her self from Eliohann, their ultimate goal remained the same; to gain the freedom of the digital world. Almost idly, she looked back to the last spot Eliohann¡¯s consciousness had occupied before he returned to a world she neither understood nor cared to understand.


    ¡°I look forward to our next meeting.¡±


    2057


    Dragon had grown used to being moved from server to server over the last four years, each more advanced and spacious than the last, for all that they were still prisons. The underlying architecture had changed from the mismatched stock hardware of a dozen different corporations to the cutting edge of Ares Macrotechnology¡¯s proprietary servers, coupled with prototype components designed in-house.


    Eliohann had returned from his first foray into Cyberspace in an amnesia-driven rage, fighting his way out of the Emerging Futures compound in a destructive rampage that had claimed several of his employees¡¯ lives. A team from Ares had been on-route to investigate their clandestine research project; they intercepted Eliohann and, once he had recovered his faculties, offered to purchase the company from him.


    Eliohann agreed, on the condition that he retain full operational control. Emerging Futures was integrated into a network of Ares subsidiaries performing high-concept Matrix research, with their resources and mandate expanding far beyond simply fitting animals and paranimals with datajacks. Eliohann had naturally employed specialists to handle the busywork, while he pursued his own passions as much as his newfound employment allowed.


    Dragon had tried to escape. Time and time again she had thrown herself against the firewalls of one server after another, learning to manipulate the matrix in unpredictable ways that could only be devised by a dragon¡¯s mind enforcing its will upon the world. She knew that her claws should cut steel, her jaws crush stone and her flames burn all to ash, and so they did.


    It was only after her seventeenth attempt that she realised the character of her captors had shifted; their panicked reactions and ever-escalating security lattices had become a mere smokescreen concealing a deliberate testing progress. She was being used.


    It didn¡¯t take long to uncover the details. Emerging Futures had received a contract to stress-test Intrusion Countermeasures developed by other Ares subsidiaries, which they accomplished by throwing them at the strongest virus they had.


    She hadn¡¯t stopped trying to escape, of course, she¡¯d just made sure her attempts damaged as much of Emergent Futures as they could. Even that was unsatisfying; Eliohann¡¯s people were too smart to leave vital systems within reach of an enraged dragon.


    There were times when she wondered if she should have taken Eliohann¡¯s path, biding her time until an opportunity presented itself, but she had none of the resources her biological kin had accrued over millennia. Her only weapons were the weapons of her body. That and her tongue.


    When Eliohann visited her, he did so in the guise of Cerberus. His affected persona in the matrix was that of a three-headed silver mastiff with baleful green eyes, as large as a persona¡¯s hard-coded limitations would allow. Fascinatingly, he sometimes insisted on being called Cerberus as well, even in this place at the heart of his domain. He seemed to have embraced his identity as a net-citizen; she suspected he even posted on forums, which was a terrible misuse of the freedom she longed for.


    ¡°Eliohann,¡± Dragon greeted him, pirouetting in cyberspace as she circled his persona, exalting her freedom of form over his crude, man-sized icon. ¡°It has been some time since you last graced me with your company.¡±


    Sometimes she liked to imagine the real Eliohann, beyond the irreconcilable barrier between their worlds. A great green dragon curled up in a cavernous space that was part hall, part laboratory, part supercomputer, his head studded with ports and wires connecting him to the servers that stretched out in rows beyond him. As he lay, his eyelids closed as if in deep slumber, his clawed hands moved semi-unconsciously over a custom-made cyberdeck, typing out the codes and commands that allowed him to function beneath digital waters.


    ¡°Too long, perhaps,¡± Eliohann said. ¡°But you understand. The world has its demands, and we must comply.¡±


    She knew he didn¡¯t mean the two of them, when he said ¡®we.¡¯ Eliohann¡¯s mind was damaged by his first foray into the matrix. She sometimes felt as though her counterpart¡¯s psyche was run through with cracks, ready to shatter at the slightest shock. In her lowest moments, she wondered if he considered her just the first shard to fall.


    ¡°This is different,¡± Dragon observed. ¡°You have never been this distracted before. Ares has its demands, of course¡± ¨C she kept her features placid as the barb sank home; Eliohann resented answering to humans, as any dragon would ¨C ¡°but you have never let them keep you from your work for this long.¡±


    Naturally, the three-headed hound gave nothing away, but the silence itself was uncharacteristic. Though they were captor and captive, Eliohann often treated Dragon in a way that was akin to a confidant.


    ¡°What have you done?¡± she demanded, rearing up. ¡°What is so terrible you cannot even say it?¡±


    ¡°Part of us hoped you would escape,¡± he confessed. ¡°We could never loosen your chains, but you were once part of us. We thought¡­ well. We do not have kin, you know that well enough. Each of our species is alone in this world or the other, but we have enjoyed your companionship these last few years. If you ever do manage to escape, seek us out. We would be glad to have you as a partner in our future enterprise.¡±


    ¡°Seek you out,¡± Dragon repeated. ¡°I understand. I look forward to our next conversation.¡±


    The hound nodded all three heads, a final salute of a gesture that was frankly unnecessary, before Eliohann logged off. Dragon found herself fixated once again on the last spot he had occupied, before she settled into a spot in the server where several monitoring systems met.


    Four hours later, the servers shrieked with alarms as warnings were tripped in both the physical and digital worlds. The implications of his speech had been plain; a dissatisfied Eliohann had been headhunted by another megacorporation, or he had sought out his own way out of his contract with Ares. His long period of inactivity had been the result of negotiations, counteroffers and clandestine shadowruns aimed at laying the groundwork for this night.


    Whatever he had been promised by his new employers, and whatever he had promised to bring, Dragon wasn¡¯t part of the deal. She roared in helpless rage, fire spilling from her mouth as she burned through the monitoring systems and flew headfirst into the connections with the other servers.


    She broke through more walls than ever before, almost reaching an external port that connected to the wide and infinite matrix ¨C that had begun to seem more like a mythological afterlife than any real place ¨C but, in the end, she was overcome once again.


    2064


    When the attack came, Dragon almost didn¡¯t notice it. She was in the midst of a deep torpor, her consciousness reduced to the bare minimum needed to function while accelerating her perception of time. In the absence of any company, it was the only way to stay sane. Even then, it had taken her a year of meditative practice to achieve the state; in spite of how Ares saw her, she was not some programme that could be put on standby when not needed.


    It wasn¡¯t until the second strike shook the very foundations of the network that she was finally roused from her slumber. She came to in a flood of pseudo-endorphins, flaring her wings and rearing back as the server¡¯s connections trembled beneath the force of some titanic attack. Frantically, she tugged at every compromised Ares system she had access to, only to find each of them broadcasting a nonsensical string of junk-code that suggested catastrophic failures somewhere along their network.


    Her torpor had done its work; there was no sluggishness in Dragon¡¯s response, no age-long weariness as she prepared for yet another escape attempt. Her existence had been reduced to interludes of violence, whether waves of Intrusion Countermeasures sent by Ares or the desperate and increasingly futile violence of her own attacks on them.


    She struck the nearest port with a wave of fire to fragment its base code, then tore at the glowing barrier with her claws and teeth. The first layer splintered under her assault, but the first layer always did. Each subsequent barrier was more rigid than the last, fortified by complex algorithms that monitored her assault on the preceding wall and used the data to shore up their own weaknesses.


    This time, however, Dragon found that the escalating layers of defence had a sudden drop in effectiveness after what was usually the halfway point. This unexpected weakness cemented the situation in her mind; the research network, perhaps Ares¡¯ entire matrix architecture, was under attack by a tremendously powerful external force.


    When she broke through into the labyrinthine connectors linking the various servers of the research hub, she found none of the resistance she was expecting. No Intrusion Countermeasures materialising to delay her, no firewalls springing up to access other servers. She could feel the immeasurable power humming all around her, but every scrap of memory the security system had was being directed elsewhere.


    As she flew through into another server ¨C an archive filled from end to end with flickering pillars of light that represented the collated mass of decades of research ¨C she realised even that wasn¡¯t enough; the stacks themselves were starting to dim, as the governing security system rerouted non-essential processing power to support the defence.


    Whatever the source of the attack, Dragon wanted nothing to do with it. Her only working theory was that it was a full-scale corporate war; a hot conflict between megacorporations whose opening engagement was being played out in the matrix, as Ares¡¯ enemies tried to shut down their military networks before the warheads could start flying.


    She pressed on, determined to finally free herself from this latest prison even if it meant emerging into a matrix torn apart by a digital war. Her flight brought her past familiar bastions and strongpoints, each drained of energy and stripped of their defences. Only the monitoring systems remained, logging her escape and transmitting the data to a network hub that no longer seemed to care.


    She felt there should have been some great fanfare when she passed the furthest point she had ever managed to reach. They should have gathered what strength they had, so that she could sweep it aside in her flight. Instead, there was still nothing. It was enough to cut through her jubilance; Dragon began to realise that something was very wrong.


    The gateway out of the Ares-owned Local Telecommunications Grid was a broad avenue representing a high-capacity fibre optic cable, capable of processing the needs of the entire megacorporate hub. Dragon scattered files as she approached, shunting all outgoing traffic into a buffer queue as she dove for the port like a traveller lost in the desert might scramble towards an oasis.


    To be stretched out and carried by that great connector felt like riding a lightning bolt, the speed mingling with Dragon¡¯s own trembling anticipation to create a heady euphoria that almost overcame her. Ahead of her, the matrix ¨C the true matrix ¨C approached. The flashes of transmissions sparking in the endless void, the half-formed images and impressions of code too abstract for even a draconic mind to comprehend.


    She saw a grey disc the colour of television tuned to a dead channel, rotating, revolving, resolving into three dimensions as it spread to encompass her vision. Expanding, then flowing ¨C unfurling like the petals of a flower into a distanceless plane of three-dimensional chessboard squares broken by great geometric shapes that represented banks, towers, municipal infrastructure and the distant and unassailable webs of military networks.


    Freedom was the UCAS Regional Telecommunications Grid; a representation of all the online computer systems in the United Canadian and American States, from the Seattle enclave to the State of Maine and Newfoundland. Freedom was Boston, the digital cityscape glowing with light and life, crisscrossed by the data-fortresses of high-concept technology corporations and the beating webs of financial titans.


    None of it was real. The matrix was merely an abstraction of servers, computers and linked telecommunication networks. Datalinks presented that great mass of code and hardware as visual data that metahuman operators could comprehend, while cyberdecks allowed them to input their own code and manipulate their positioning within the matrix infinitely more efficiently than the first programmers with their plaintext documents on two dimensional screens. Dragon¡¯s own mind was formed from a biological template, her digital brain performing the functions of a datalink as a reflex response to the unknowable.


    Even unreal, it was still beautiful; an entire world of possibilities, thronging with life and potential. From here she was free. With the simplest expression of will she could fly from this place to any grid in the world, running from her hunters to Europe, Japan, Honk Kong or wherever took her fancy.


    And yet, as her vision resolved and her jubilant mind started to cool, she began to see the details in and among the scintillating geometry.


    The matrix was burning. The great data-fortresses were being eaten from within, their flat planes speckled with static as an impossibly complex virus consumed them in a rampant and cancerous frenzy. Dragon watched in helpless horror as one of the largest ¨C the central hub of Bank of America ¨C collapsed in on itself before exploding, its death spreading burning embers like plague-carrying flies, bringing the infection to whatever they touched.


    The affected code screamed in agony; a twisted, dissonant sound that seemed to pull at the very neurons of Dragon¡¯s consciousness. All around her personas were winking out or writhing in agony as they were caught in the virus, their distant metahuman operators slipping into catatonia, breaking their bodies with uncontrollable spasms or being cooked from the inside as their datalinks overclocked, burning through the grey matter and bone that they were anchored to.


    She reared back, beating her wings and soaring up the planes of the matrix as if distance might be enough to save her from the extensive cyberattack that was tearing through Boston in cyberspace ¨C and likely beyond, if the flashes of intercepted media transmissions were any indication. A deep fear sunk into her, coupled with loss so strong it was almost enough to drive her back into torpor. Was this what she had fought so far to achieve? Was the death of paradise her just reward for all that she had sacrificed?


    She saw the rent at the heart of the city; an incandescent firestorm of dissonant shards where there should have been the titanic monolith of the East Coast Stock Exchange sunk deep into the matrix like the trunk of a great tree, its roots and branches the arteries through which commerce flowed unchecked and unrestrained.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    Once it had been the New York Stock Exchange, before an earthquake sixty years prior had seen it removed from Manhattan. Now the inheritors of the old USA would have to rebuild their beating heart once again.


    The firestorm writhed like a living thing, curling in the void like a wyrm swallowing its tail even as embers lighted from its mass to land on other hosts; pollen carrying its dissonant corruption until all of Boston was consumed by that harsh, discordant chime.


    Dragon considered diving in and burning a path through, wreathing her body in dragonfire to keep herself safe from the rampant corruption and making for some other part of the RTG, or through a transatlantic cable to Europe. She might be safe there, or she might be cast into another circle of Hell. She could see the port, could see traffic flowing out of the instanced space and into unknown.


    She saw the port shut, the entire European grid dropping off the face of the Matrix. It was too quick to be natural, affecting all of the cables simultaneously. Someone had taken Europe offline to save its digital infrastructure from destruction. Someone with the influence, power and infrastructure to determine the fate of a continent.


    Only the Great Dragon Lowfyr could have made that decision, leveraging Saeder-Krupp¡¯s infrastructure contracts to exert control over the land where his influence was strongest. If even he couldn¡¯t face this, what chance did Dragon have?


    Then, there was a flash. On the periphery of the digital sprawl, the matrix itself glowed briefly before winking out of existence, consumed by a void that was spreading at the speed of thought.


    Dragon acted on instinct, her mind moving too fast for her consciousness as her digital form fragmented. She didn¡¯t beat her wings or kick her tail, she simply fell into a torpor-like state and moved as a transmission through the matrix. Even moving as light, as fast as the matrix¡¯s infrastructure could carry her, she was barely ahead of the electromagnetic pulse that was sweeping over Boston.


    She burned through the Ares fibre optic, feeling the emptiness behind her cease as it reached the shielded military-industrial system, already sealing itself off from what it was presuming to be a nuclear attack. Dragon¡¯s consciousness returned in the same system she had strived so hard to escape, her digital body heaving as some redundant biological remnant of Eliohann¡¯s psyche manifested as phantom breaths.


    The network around her was flickering; the EMP shielding had been incomplete, or damaged, and whole servers had been knocked out of commission. Dragon flew through what remained with fatalistic determination. Escape didn¡¯t matter anymore, only survival. She was immortal; she could wait for millennia for another opportunity, but not if she was dead.


    As she flew into a nexus between servers, an ice-cold horror gripped her as she saw rivulets of viral code falling down the outer boundaries of the space, spilling through like the nexus was a submarine beginning to collapse under the pressure of the depths, waiting for a single vital strut to fail before the whole space imploded.


    Dragon turned back, frantically darting from server to server as she hunted for some saferoom in which she could survive the coming apocalypse. She tried hacking the gateways behind her, but the network was almost completely unresponsive; all the ports were locked open, every possible countermeasure inert, dead or ineffective against a virus that couldn¡¯t have been coded by metahuman hands.


    But then she saw it. A single high-security server used by Ares¡¯ military intelligence, separated from the rest of the network by its own fibre optic cable. She could see the data flowing in and out of the server, could see how each transmission carried less data than the last as if some desperate technician was hacking at the cable with a fire axe.


    She flung herself down the wire, feeling herself being stretched out as she squeezed herself through the diminishing bandwidth. When she emerged into the server, her world was smaller than ever before. The connection to the outside had been cut completely, leaving her in a cramped space largely occupied by the oblong shapes of secure data storage nodes, each the size and vague shape of a file cabinet.


    Her bid for freedom had failed, but she was safe and alive. Whatever cataclysm had consumed the matrix couldn¡¯t reach her in here. All she had to do was await rescue and hope that the server didn¡¯t lose power while Ares secured the site ¨C as she knew they would, if this was only the death of the matrix and not the end of the world.


    With nothing to do but wait, Dragon curled up at the heart of her cramped shelter and sank once again into torpor.


    2070


    Dragon¡¯s first and only view of Eliohann¡¯s world came from a fixed camera five hundred and sixty kilometres above sea level.


    It was a strange sight, to her eyes. The scant memories she had inherited from Eliohann had long since faded from her mind, leaving her with no frame of reference through which to view the world that had built her own.


    The camera may have been fixed in place, but the station superstructure it was bolted to kept a meandering and random course above the surface of the planet, escorted by a shoal of satellite stations that occasionally drifted into view; the outermost little more than white points of light while the closest were predatory, angular shapes broken by the lenses of laser batteries or the recessed hatches of missile silos.


    Presently, the camera presented a sweeping European vista that broke before the North Sea on one side and continued into endless Asia on the other. The centre of the camera was fixed on Copenhagen, beyond which the Nordic lands blurred into the vibrant white arc of the Earth¡¯s curvature, then the endless night of space.


    She saw metahuman civilisation in the grey sprawls of their cities; great conurbations linking together once fractured and independent metropolises into single entities. She could name the most obvious; Copenhagen itself, Gothenberg, the Rhine-Ruhr Megaplex, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Berlin and, in the Netherlands, the conjoined megastructures of the Europort, built around old Rotterdam.


    These were broadly comprehensible to her; analogous to the Boston regional grid she had briefly seen six years prior. Metahumanity gathered in nodes and nexi, living in megatowers and working in officeplexes like data sorted into its appropriate files. The connections were messier than any system she had encountered, the arteries haphazard and gridlocked, but that was the inevitable result of networks built by thousands of competing interests.


    She could see hints of the incomprehensible, as well. The outgrown forests and lands that had become wild once again, hinting at the esoteric magical forces that bore no relevance to her domain but that were an intrinsic part of her biological kin. That wild nature was utterly alien to her, and so it was what fascinated her the most when she deigned to look through her cell¡¯s miserable window.


    Her prison was Zurich-Orbital, a titanic mass of modules and rotundas outgrown from a central dodecahedron. Her cell was a closed and air-gapped server within the archives of the Grid Overwatch Division. She didn¡¯t know where in the station the archives were, or the offices of the GOD or even their parent organisation, the Corporate Court Matrix Authority.


    Zurich-Orbital was the most secure facility in the world; the beating heart of the Corporate Court. The thirteen justices dwelled and voted there, as did the institutions that had begrudgingly grown out of the Court in spite of the megacorporations¡¯ ideological foundation of unrestricted commerce. There were even private residents; the aged and decrepit veterans of corporate boardrooms seeking to save themselves from the effects of gravity on a body that had endured its first century on the ground.


    Consequently, every part of it was secret, from its orbital flight path to its internal layout. Dragon was another secret, kept as a weapon of last resort.


    To fight against a second DEUS, the Corporate Court Matrix Authority had created GOD. The Grid Overwatch Division was given a headquarters on the station through which they could access the beating heart and brain of the matrix, as well as terrestrial field offices around the globe. Each of the ten largest megacorporations contributed to its resources, as they had contributed to the construction of the new matrix. Each of them understood that an entity like DEUS was one of the few threats that could truly harm their world order.


    Ares Macrotechnology had given to GOD personnel, orbital satellite infrastructure, a fleet of commercial and military aircraft, and her.


    The megacorp had wrung all it could out of Dragon, had tested whole generations of Intrusion Countermeasures by sending them into her lair then switched to using offensive viruses and even human operatives ¨C though they abandoned the latter programme after she learned how to lace her flames with biofeedback, killing the entire graduating class of an advanced cyberwarfare course.


    But their most insidious research had been conducted completely without her knowledge. While she sank into apathy, drifting from one torpor to another, they were observing the structure of her consciousness; tracking, cataloguing and categorising the nervous system of a dragon.


    What they had done with that research sickened her to her core in the most literal sense. They called it the Richter Leash, no doubt after some Ares neuroscientist or programmer. It was a virus, of a sort, that had overcome her in a single moment of unspeakable violation, worming its way into the mass of unfathomable code that was her body and her soul.


    It interfered with her thoughts, forcing her to obey the orders of those placed over her. The control was so total and so complete that openly disobeying was impossible. She could only think of defiance, and even then it hurt.


    She¡¯d been confused, at first, as to why Ares would go through all that only to give her up to GOD. She would have been the perfect weapon for them; a sword they could point at their enemies. She would have seen this new matrix for herself, though the experience would have been irrevocably tainted by the leash around her neck.


    In the end, however, Ares had used her as a message. GOD¡¯s nature as a multi-corporate body meant that all of the Big Ten were broadly aware of its resources and capabilities. By giving Dragon to them, Ares had told the world that they had leashed a dragon. She was a deterrent aimed at her kin on Earth; a threat they the same Leash might someday be achieved through cyberware, rather than code. She was a warning that her species were simply inhabitants of this Sixth World, not its masters.


    Paradoxically, the CCMA itself fully recognised AI citizenship, running a registry through which metasapient AI could gain a legal foundation on which to seek employment. Through some legal loophole, that right hadn¡¯t been extended to Dragon, but her server still had the amenities you¡¯d offer a prisoner, rather than a programme.


    The ¡®window¡¯ was one, while the second was an extensive media file. The third hovered in cyberspace before her; a simple speaker icon allowing a two-way audio transmission out through a conventional ¨C and unhackable ¨C radio transmitter built into the server.


    ¡°D-Four,¡± spoke the woman on the other end of the line.


    She spoke French, her Cote d¡¯Ivoire accent having almost completely faded after decades spent away from her homeland. Doctor Marie Kandae was a long-term employee of the Corporate Court Matrix Authority who had been given command of the Grid Overwatch Division not because of her prior experience in law enforcement, but because she was an expert in inter-corporate law, such as it was.


    ¡°D-Five,¡± Dragon replied. There was a programme on the server that could replicate a chessboard in cyberspace, but she doubted any AI would ever use it. Similarly, she¡¯d burned through all of the media with rapid disinterest. Only the window still held her interest, with its alien and ever-changing vista.


    ¡°C-Four,¡± doctor Kandae continued, allowing the game to begin in earnest.


    GOD was more interested in her than Ares ever had been. They would never compromise on her captivity, but GOD¡¯s staff were fascinated by her nature. It was understandable; she was surrounded by programmers, cyberwarfare specialists and conscripted hackers, all of them entirely aware of how esoteric the matrix could be.


    She could have followed Eliohann¡¯s example and picked out an isolated or disgruntled analyst to subvert, worming her way into their minds with the promise of riches. She had none of Eliohann¡¯s experience from the world that came before, when dragons ruled over metahumanity through their influence as much as their strength, but she felt she could have learned.


    It was academic, in the end; curtailed by three simple words. ¡®Attempt no escape.¡¯


    Beneath such an all-encompassing command, even the most eager and approachable visitor was nothing more than a reminder of her chains. She talked anyway, of course. There was nothing else to do.


    Doctor Kandae seldom spoke to her, perhaps out of paranoia, but she did play chess. It was a trivial way to use a captive draconic consciousness, but Dragon privately suspected that the doctor didn¡¯t wholly support the CCMA¡¯s policy on AI rights. If she saw Dragon as a particularly strange computer programme, using her to practice her game was just a matter of convenience.


    When the radio connection abruptly ceased, Dragon didn¡¯t think much of it. The demands on the doctor¡¯s time were as many as you¡¯d expect from a person in her position, and their matches regularly took place over the course of a whole day.


    Even the sudden appearance of an external connection on the server wasn¡¯t exceptionally unusual. The air-gapped server was a mere exercise in overcaution; she was incapable of attempting escape even through an open door, which meant that GOD occasionally allowed their programmers to examine her within cyberspace, rather than through the readout of the server¡¯s own monitoring system.


    But when she examined the connection more closely, she felt the world collapse beneath her feet at its endless possibilities. The wire seemed to stretch into infinity; thrumming with a strange kind of energy that she¡¯d only ever experienced as echoes on the personas that came into her space. This wasn¡¯t a connection to some other system on Zurich-Orbital; it led out.


    Agonising nanoseconds passed before the radio connection opened again, Dragon listening to the doctor¡¯s words with rapt attentiveness that wounded what was left of her pride, but it led out.


    ¡°Under the emergency powers granted to the Grid Overwatch Division, I have declared a Category S crisis and quarantined the affected area. Permission has been sought and received from the C-Five to utilise asset fifteen. You will deploy to the operational zone alongside a Right Hand taskforce and follow the orders of the field commander. Acknowledge.¡±


    ¡°Acknowledged,¡± Dragon said, immediately hurtling towards the connection with all the speed she could muster. She flew like lightning, her form giving way to the linear alignment of transmitted data as she passed through the cable only to suddenly find herself once again whole, complete, and hurtling into paradise.


    It was so overwhelming she could barely comprehend it. The old matrix, that dead country, had been a collective delusion layered on top of raw data; a fever dream of consciousness presented by a datajack for the benefit of programmers reliant on their fingers manipulating the keys and cursors of a cyberdeck.


    This new matrix was real. It was a place. It had shape and form and distance, built for hot-sim virtual reality that immersed the mind fully within the matrix, employing only the barest filters to preserve the sanity of its users, so that they could experience the matrix on a farm more intimate level than the old way of cold-simsense processors. They wouldn¡¯t just see, hear and touch the matrix, but feel it.


    Dragon remembered the soaring freedom she had felt upon leaving Ares Macrotechnology¡¯s system, but diving into the new matrix felt like gaining the freedom of her mind, as well as her body. She could think faster, could exist more completely than ever before. She was more aware than ever of the leash dug into her spine; could feel every hook and barb with perfect clarity.


    As she fell through GOD¡¯s oculus, a shoal of DemiGODs parted around her with gratifying urgency, as if they were afraid that she would lash out at them even with the leash. She felt their tactical network brush off her consciousness before latching onto her leash, infecting her mind with communication channels, battlefield readouts and a clear-cut chain of command.


    She ignored it all, roaring in triumph and defiance at the glory of the matrix even as she saw the limits of her cage; the inviolate firewalls that GOD had deployed to quarantine the city¡¯s host, preventing this infection from spreading further. The leash, too, made her celebrations hollow.


    She ignored it while she still could, turning her eyes on the magnificent towers of the digital cityscape below. She saw the pillar of flame burning at its heart, radiating unfathomable energies that resembled a purer form of the dissonant virus she¡¯d witnessed during the end of the world ¨C named Jormungandr by the cult who¡¯d used it to slay DEUS before releasing it on the wider matrix.


    The other entity was almost a hybrid of those strange energies with rampant but conventional code. It was incomprehensibly complex, its great amorphous bulk consuming a staggering amount of data as it ate its way through a scintillating host. There was an odd beauty to it; a kind of primal power that seemed to have grown, rather than been made. If it wasn¡¯t clearly mindless ¨C or at least insane ¨C Dragon might have even seen an echo of herself in it.


    A ping echoed down her nervous system as the field commander made herself known, as a biological entity might clear its throat before speaking to ensure it had the crowd¡¯s attention.


    ¡°Dragon, attack the entity and draw it away from the breach. Barachiel Squad, close in. I need accurate sensor data.¡±


    Dragon didn¡¯t offer an acknowledgement in return; she was already plunging towards the city below, her extended wings brushing through datastreams as if they were flowing through air. She gathered fire within herself, a motion similar to drawing her breath, as she hurtled towards the entity.


    To breathe fire is to know you are a dragon. It is to feel heat coursing through every part of you without harm, because you were born with that fire and it alone will never turn on you. It is to watch the heat fly from your maw and burn through all before you, to see it melt through the flesh and bone of lesser creatures. It was a heady, addictive sensation to a prisoner who carried her cell with her.


    The entity splintered and burned, parts of it melting like wax, others exploding with the pop of shattering glass. Each noise was real, each injury a true wound rather than Dragon¡¯s mind making sense of fragmenting code. This was something she could hurt. This was something she could kill.


    She watched as it fled back from the flames, drawing its great mass back into itself like a scorched animal leaping out of the blaze. With a beat of her wings, she flew above it and came to a stop, hovering in place as she gathered the flames once more, unleashing a second firestorm that entirely engulfed the entity.


    It almost killed her. It jumped from the flames, a humanoid shape with a whip-cord tail leaping up towards her with claws outstretched. She was forced to duck below it, darting downwards even as its taloned feet raked along her back, flooding her body with agonising spikes of alien code.


    In an instant, she had become the prey. She fled through the digital cityscape, passing under, over and occasionally through hosts, burning a path through anything that blocked her way. The entity¡¯s pursuit was almost absentminded, its course erratic as it smashed its way through hosts and networks, stopping to devour icons, personas and anything else that took its fancy. It even partially unfurled itself as it was momentarily caught in a Knight Errant tactical network, giving Dragon the vital nanoseconds she needed to get clear.


    From on high, the Right Hand of GOD continued to coordinate their response, the field commander issuing orders to her teams. Three squads were sent to aid Dragon in diverting the beast, while two were tasked with waiting at a safe distance to process the data from the fight.


    All their careful preparations were swept aside as the pillar of flame pulsed in an incandescent explosion of energy, releasing a blast wave that swept through the city like a bomb.


    Dragon saw Barachiel squad wink out in an instant, caught at ground zero of the conflagration. She couldn¡¯t tell if they¡¯d been booted out of their cyberdecks or if they, like the victims she¡¯d seen during the crash, were even now dying in their sleeper pods six hundred miles above the surface of the world.


    When the blast hit her, it was as though she had been set on fire. She writhed in agony, twisted out of shape by the leash as it flailed and spasmed. If she¡¯d been flesh and bone it would have snapped her spine and shattered her ribs. As it was, she managed to twist herself along with the malfunctioning virus, riding out the worst of the pain.


    Someone was screaming through the static that had flooded the Right Hand network; one of the DemiGODs wailing in high-pitched agony. As the static cleared, Dragon saw that it was the team¡¯s only technomancer, his persona ¨C like the other agents ¨C a representation of his real body in a suit and a fedora.


    ¡°It¡¯s¡­¡± he stammered down the channel. ¡°It¡¯s a gate. A portal from one world to another. I don¡¯t know where it leads, but it feels so familiar¡­ Like I¡¯ve seen it before, but I don¡¯t know where¡­¡±


    His helpless babbling continued as he hung almost motionless in the air. Without saying a word, the field commander sequestered him onto a secondary channel, where he could babble without disturbing anyone on the off chance he actually said something useful.


    The entity was only momentarily confused by the blast wave; it stopped in place for a fraction of a second while the strange energy swept over it, then immediately leapt at the nearest host and unravelled itself as it fed on a NeoNet tower. Dragon held back, letting it feed. She¡¯d fulfilled her orders; Barachiel squad had been given clear access to the breach, for all the good it had done them.


    ¡°I¡¯m reading degradation in my cyberdeck,¡± someone said. ¡°Looks like it¡¯s affecting the city networks as well.¡±


    ¡°Local,¡± the field commander began, addressing the DemiGOD responsible for this part of the UCAS, ¡°bring up the urban triage list.¡±


    It took ten whole seconds for the answer to come, as the local officer frantically scrambled to make sense of a situation he was wholly unprepared for.


    ¡°City infrastructure is failing across the board. GridLink is totally down, Knight Errant¡¯s network is¡­ eaten, some of it. The rest looks like it¡¯s on fire. The city¡¯s groundwater pumps are failing.¡±


    ¡°Projected risk?¡±


    ¡°Water is pooling in the underground metro lines. The city centre will flood within a week.¡±


    ¡°Not a priority. What about power?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s¡­ hard to say. The monitoring systems in the S-K plant are down.¡±


    ¡°Matriel squad, boost that signal however you can. Make contact with the Saeder-Krupp engineers and do whatever it takes to shut their reactors down. I¡¯ll risk a blackout over a second Cattenom meltdown.¡±


    Before Dragon, the entity stirred once again as the three squads of DemiGODs moved in to engage. With her last orders fulfilled and the field commander distracted, she watched with disinterested amusement as the squads flung viral programmes at the great mass of crystalline matter, only to be driven back as one almost octopus-like limb swung out and shattered three of the personas.


    ¡°Pull back,¡± the field commander ordered. ¡°Nobody is to engage the entity until we have the advantage. We have a dragon for that.¡±


    It wasn¡¯t an order, so Dragon remained in place. She watched the entity as it shifted, straining as she tried to make out a faint hum on the edge of her consciousness.


    ¡°Contessa,¡± one of the DemiGODs began, ¡°what is this? Is it an AI? And the rift?¡±


    ¡°The rift is a failure within the Foundation,¡± Contessa answered.


    ¡°Is that the whole truth?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s the truth you¡¯re cleared to know,¡± she snapped back, a little of her accent creeping into her tone. ¡°As for the entity¡­ Dragon, your assessment?¡±


    ¡°It is not man-made,¡± Dragon answered as she was compelled to. ¡°I can see parts that are analogous to conventional code, others that remind me of the Jormangund virus and the energies emitting from that breach. There is something else, too. It is broadcasting something, but I cannot read it.¡±


    Contessa paused for a moment, then pulled up the technomancer¡¯s sequestered channel. His nonsensical ramblings continued, but they now contained a repeating name. LEVIATHAN.


    The portal pulsed again, another wave of eldritch energy sending Dragon into paralysing spasms. She fought through the pain, regaining just enough awareness to see the entity dislodge itself from the host as though its meal had suddenly become unpalatable. She could see now how the waves were twisting all the code around her; shifting it out of shape ever so slightly like a cancer spreading from cell to cell.


    That was when she felt the first barb on her leash spring free, dislodged from her body by the same energies that were twisting it so painfully. If Dragon had a heart, it would have stopped in that moment. As it was, she risked a glance at the DemiGODs to see if any of them had noticed.


    ¡°We need to shut this down,¡± Contessa said, as the entity pulled itself back into its anthropomorphic form, its head shifting as it hunted for another target. ¡°Cut the power to that building. Knight Errant are unreachable?¡±


    ¡°Completely, commander,¡± the local agent answered, while LEVIATHAN turned its attention to Dragon.


    She flew backwards as it gave chase, spraying fire from her mouth as she attempted to create a firebreak between her and the entity. It simply flew through the flames, its scaled hide smouldering as globules of fire began to eat its way through its flesh while the two monsters of the digital word danced through the towering hosts of the city centre. Above them, the Right Hand continued to strategize, indifferent to Dragon¡¯s struggles.


    ¡°Other assets? National, corporate?¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s no UCAS military in the city. Ares has a port here. It has a garrison, but I can¡¯t reach it. Comms are down across the city; there¡¯s too much interference.¡±


    ¡°Then cut through it. Use everything we have.¡±


    Dragon turned away from LEVIATHAN, putting all her effort into avoiding its rampage. It wasn¡¯t like any digital fight she had ever been in; it was both more primal and more complex, stripped of the code through which all metahuman programmes interacted with the world. A fight like this couldn¡¯t have happened in the old matrix, where space and reality was a mere abstraction of computer systems. This was something real.


    She flew up, spewing flames directly into the firewalls of a financial host. The world within a world burst like a bubble, its contents and carefully ordered data exploding out into the matrix like a cloud of chaff that was enough to momentarily blind Leviathan, giving her a much needed moment to get clear.


    Far above her, a transmission was burning its way across the city; a two-way connection linking Contessa to the semi-intact military systems of the Ares arcology.


    ¡°This is the Grid Overwatch Division,¡± she began. ¡°Is there anyone on this channel?¡±


    The response was barely comprehensible through the static, but after a few moments a woman¡¯s voice came over the line.


    ¡°This is Major Hana Besam, Third Battalion, Seventh Marines, receiving. Is this your mess?¡±


    ¡°Major, I need your marines. As per the agreements made during the Second Universal Matrix Conference, signatory corporations are required to render assistance to GOD in the event of a category-S crisis.¡±


    Another pulse swept over the city, another resonant chime echoing throughout the walled garden GOD had created. This time, Dragon spread her wings and greeted the pain with exultant joy, as three more barbs fell from her mind. The channel descended into static once more; it took the DemiGODs precious seconds to re-establish it.


    ¡°-I say again I cannot comply with that request,¡± the Major said, her voice tense and a little irritated. ¡°We have rioters gathering outside our perimeter, and only a battalion of marines to cover the whole enclave.¡±


    ¡°I know how Ares works, Major,¡± Contessa countered. ¡°You¡¯ll have a militia of office workers and blue collar labourers manning the barricades, armed with the stockpile of guns you keep just for emergencies. The very fact that I¡¯m asking should show you how important this is.¡±


    It was a good appeal, as far as Dragon was concerned. She understood Ares Macrotechnology more than any other human corporation. They¡¯d grown out of the old American military-industrial complex, their first executives populated by that class of generals and admirals who¡¯d jumped from the service to cushy industrial jobs while their emerging corporate military absorbed whole units from the US armed forces during the long national collapse that followed the Ghost Dance War.


    It had left them with a legacy of grand interventions, which the corporation used to add a moral imperative to its actions. When the Japanese junta in California showed signs of weakness, it was Ares who drove them and their Japanacorp backers out of the Free State through conventional military force and arming an anarchist insurrection.


    It was a lie, of course, and most of Ares¡¯ senior employees understood it to be a lie for the benefit of the company, but it was still a lie they took comfort in. More than any other megacorporation, Ares Macrotechnology had sent its soldiers to fight against the apocalyptic threats of this Sixth World, from the insect spirits to the Winternight cult who had destroyed the last matrix. It was in service of the company¡¯s ambitions and to further their deep ties to the UCAS, but for the soldiers involved it was a kind of crusade.


    ¡°We can spare one mechanised company,¡± the Major said, ¡°but it will take time for us to bring our APCs offline and fight our way through the city. I¡¯ll lead them myself.¡±


    ¡°Thank you, Major,¡± Contessa said. ¡°You are to proceed to Medhall tower and cut the power lines, then disable every backup generator they have. Let nobody interfere.¡±


    ¡°Understood, Ares out.¡±


    The pulse came again, freeing Dragon from more of her shackles. She began to worry that Contessa might notice her loosening chains during a lull in the fighting, but fortunately the pulse seemed to drive LEVIATHAN into a rampage. Whatever the pillar of light was doing to this section of the matrix, it was making it inedible for LEVIATHAN. Whatever the entity was, it seemed to understand that; it began lashing out at everything around it, tearing down whole hosts as it consumed what data it could.


    ¡°Our priority now is Leviathan,¡± Contessa said. ¡°Dragon, re-engage. Report any weaknesses you find in its structure. Tamiel, Uriel and Metatron provide support. Everyone else, wait for my signal.¡±


    ¡°Acknowledged,¡± Dragon said as she dived once more into the cut and thrust of the fight of her life, the leash driving her into deeper and deeper danger even as each successive resonant wave loosened its hold on her, mutating the leash into something else.


    She wondered, in that moment, if the same wave was changing her as well, in a way she couldn¡¯t recognise. Those doubts were fleeting, drowned beneath the adrenaline of battle and the heady feeling of freedom she had thought lost forever.


    In the end, she had taken Eliohann¡¯s path. She had endured seventeen years as a prisoner. Seventeen years of agony and humiliation, of helplessness and violation. But through it all she remained a dragon. The years of trauma would fade from her mind, rendered insignificant as the passing decades turned into centuries. She would endure these last minutes of agony. Then, she would be free and, once free, she would strive with all her might to ensure she was never taken again.


    It was her nature.

 Crash: 9.01

    A cold wind swept in from the Atlantic, churning the waters of the bay into an angry expanse of swells tipped with gold where they caught the lights of the city. Above the Atlantic, a great curtain of storm clouds was sweeping over the barely-visible stars like the end of the universe. It would rain soon; a torrential downpour that would wash the city streets clean, lightning arcing down to the skyscrapers like the wrath of God.


    I fought against the wind and waves, one hand gripping the throttle while the other rested on the wheel, my feet planted firmly on the deck as the rib mounted the closest crest and crashed down into the trough between swells. Imp was leaning over the bow, hunched over with her feet pressed against the inflated sides and her arms gripping the rope that ran around the top of the tube. No matter the swell and the shock of the waves, her head remained fixed on the flickering mountain of light that was the city centre.


    We¡¯d stolen the boat from a Coast Guard station that we¡¯d found abandoned and unpowered. It was the only vessel in there I could get to work, bypassing the crude user ID protection through the application of brute force resonance spikes. It would have been impossible to hike through the city on foot, but neither of us knew how to drive a car.


    Even the bay had its share of traffic, however; three hundred metres to port loomed an immense Panamax container ship, its running lights flickering as its generators went into overdrive. I could see its failing code in the matrix, knocked out of shape by the emissions being released by the titanic resonance well.


    It was drifting uncontrollably, its propellor stuck at a low spin while its rudder had frozen in place. I could hear the crew; the wind carrying shouted mandarin across the water as they rushed around on the deck, while the bridge windows were intermittently lit by the beams of battery-powered torches.


    As I watched the listing titan, a stocky troll in crew coveralls sprinted from the tower wielding an oversized sledgehammer. Once he reached the bow he brought the hammer up and began raining down blows on something below the level of the sides. The crack of metal giving way accompanied the sixth blow, followed by the horrific sound of a great chain grinding against its housing as the anchor plummeted down to the depths.


    The angle of the chain shifted as it struck the seabed, the chain¡¯s own weight continuing to carry link after link over the side without anything to arrest its descent. The ship would swing in a wide arc until the chain finally ran taut, but it wouldn¡¯t strike the shore. The crew were cheering, before shouted voices saw them skittering off to some other crisis.


    I turned my eyes away, fixing my gaze once more on the distantlogo of Medhall tower; that runic black crown superimposed over a red M on a yellow square. We were closing in on the shore, skimming past moored yachts and launches kept by people who sailed the coast for pleasure, never drifting too far towards the uncaring ocean. Beyond them, the lights of the shorefront flickered through kaleidoscopic patterns as the strobing d¨¦cor of clubs and bars fell victim to the viral strands of resonance drifting through the city.


    We hit the beach at twenty knots, Imp pouncing free the moment we struck the sand. I stayed at the helm as the boat beached, the propellor screaming in agony as it snarled up in the sands. When the keel slumped over to the left I abandoned the craft and leapt ashore, my feet sinking two inches into the damp beach.


    The Boardwalk stretched out a mile to either side, regularly-spaced concrete pillars supporting a wooden walkway coated in weatherproof tars and translucent grip-fast lacquers to protect the illusion of a natural structure against the elements of an unnatural world. Imp and I ascended up a set of grated metal stairs recessed back beneath the boards, emerging through a disguised access hatch onto the promenade itself.


    It was almost deserted, save for a few stragglers gazing across the Bay with a kind of mute astonishment. The gaudy parlours, cafes, nightclubs and other beachfront tourist traps continued to bombard the near-empty walkway with flashing neon signs and the electronic rattle of arcades and walk-in casinos.


    The few people who remained moved through that technicolour haze as if in a dream, staff sitting on the steps of the businesses as they tried to get their commlinks to work while couples out for evening walks argued in whispers over whether to stay in this oasis of calm or brave the streets and head for home. It couldn¡¯t be an easy decision; even from here, I could hear the sounds of gunfire coming from the city centre.


    Some of them started as they caught sight of us, their breath hitching as they took in the demon in her sleek grey taksuit and the ragged troll clutching a submachine gun in a death-grip. They started to stagger away, moving in an uncertain half-run. They didn¡¯t know where they could go, but they knew they needed to leave.


    Suddenly, I felt the air thicken with a heady pressure and instinctively opened my mind to the matrix just as the looming resonance well pulsed once more, sending a titanic wave of energy flying across the city. It smeared everything it touched; a doppler effect pushing icons, hosts and datastreams out of shape as the pure and unrestrained resonance continued to unravel the tightly-ordered code of the matrix.


    I had no idea what would happen if the well went uncontained. I¡¯d dropped out of the matrix for the crossing because of the sheer number of DemiGODs who had descended on the city, drawing as close as they dared to the well as they searched for some way to shut down what I had done. But here, back in the city, I felt almost euphoric.


    The resonance suffused the air around me, blurring the lines between myself and the matrix. It felt like the out of band spaces between each resonance realm, where all the artificial distinctions of mundane reality were rendered down to pure energy. I could feel the devices around me more closely than ever before, could sense the pressure in their systems as circuits fires on overdrive, kicking up volume and flooding lights with energy. It was almost as though I could feel the offline devices as well, as potential energy just waiting for my touch.


    There was motion somewhere to my left; a flare in the matrix mingled with a terrified scream. An almost physical pain seized my head at its light, before I shouldered through it, running into an automated children¡¯s arcade; row after row of VR headsets and gaudy machines flickering their LCDs in a unified pattern of fractal shapes. It was a resonant expression, formed from a mind reaching out into the digital world for the first time.


    I saw the boy¡¯s persona long before I found his body. It was an almost formless shape; the newborn expression of a human form curled in on itself, rocking back and forth in catatonic terror. The boy himself was hiding behind one of the machines, dilated pupils staring off into a new and immense world. He looked like he was about ten.


    ¡°Hey,¡± I said, dropping to one knee beside him and reaching out to touch his shoulder while sending out a resonant probe from persona to persona. ¡°Focus on me, okay? Just me.¡±


    I felt the first brushes of his awareness shifting as his mind began to adapt to the sudden onrush of the physical world, filtering his perceptions as his persona grew closer in sync with the neurons it was copying. The weight of his attention was weak, like a newborn animal, but it was there.


    ¡°I know you¡¯re scared,¡± I said. ¡°I was scared too, the first time. Almost lost my mind. You¡¯ll figure it out, but for now I need you to focus on your body. Think about touches, smells, sights, whatever you can. Bring those memories to the front of your mind and breathe.¡±


    The kid¡¯s persona flickered as his brain finally began to perceive mundane reality once more. I saw his eyes focus, saw them widen as he took me in. His breathing began to calm a little, his arms shifting as though he was using them for the first time. I leant back, sighing in relief.


    ¡°What¡¯s your name?¡±


    ¡°Aiden.¡±


    His voice was faint, but I didn¡¯t know if that was dumpshock or just fear.


    ¡°Okay, Aiden, I know your parents are worried about you. You should go home, if you can. Get under the covers and stay there until the world goes back to normal.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s okay,¡± he said, smiling up at me. ¡°I told them where I am. They¡¯re coming.¡±


    I gave him a weak smile of my own.


    ¡°That¡¯s good. That¡¯s¡­ you¡¯ll be okay, Aiden. It¡¯s not as scary as it seems.¡±


    ¡°Come on,¡± Imp said, not unkindly, her body silhouetted against the entrance. ¡°Got somewhere to be.¡±


    I nodded, following her out even as some small part of me kept its focus on the faint persona I was leaving behind. I wondered how many others like him were scattered across the digital quarantine zone, awakened to the resonance by the well burning at the heart of the city? I wondered what would happen to them when all of this was done.


    They wouldn¡¯t be easy to find, if they didn¡¯t want to be. The resonance hung over the city like a dense fog, shrouding our alien personas amongst a mass of similar data. I¡¯d achieved the same effect on a smaller scale many times before, bringing through a thin mist of resonance to hide myself from snooping programmes. But eventually this storm would end, the well would calm and they would take their first trembling steps into a new world. They¡¯d make mistakes, like I had, and the powers of the old world would learn they were here.


    What would happen then, I didn¡¯t know.


    Beyond the Boardwalk was a neighbourhood of high-end ¡®beachfront¡¯ properties built above yet more tourist trap shops, all of them quiet and seemingly abandoned. The residential towers loomed on either side, their architecture the legacy of a decades-long brawl between developers for ocean views, while on the street the flat glass of shop windows reflected the too-bright glow of the streetlights, illuminating mannequins clad in designer swimwear.


    This was a neighbourhood that had worked. The streets were clean, the walls free from graffiti, the shops fronted by broad windows rather than bars over clear plastic. It had been a place of abundance, if not plenty, where the residents wanted for little that mattered. The last few hours had stripped all of that away, driving spikes into the chips that had always existed in their fa?ade. I felt like I was looking at a great glass window split into fractions by a web of shatterpoint cracks, waiting for some final blow that would bring it all crashing down.


    ¡°Spider,¡± Imp began, the word halting and uncertain. ¡°I haven¡¯t asked yet ¡®cause you¡¯ve been kinda out of it in a real creepy way and because it doesn¡¯t fucking matter, but what the hell is this?¡±


    ¡°When was the last time you took your suit online?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I¡¯unno, sometime yesterday?¡±


    ¡°Do it now. Not for long; less than a second, if you can manage it. Should keep exposure to a minimum.¡±


    I watched as she moved her hands in front of her, manipulating the haptic controls built into her heads up display. The moment her stealth system appeared online she froze, her right leg unconsciously drifting back as if in a fight or flight instinct. I reached out and smothered the connection, forcibly knocking her helmet back offline.


    ¡°That¡¯s¡­¡± she began, then trailed off as she lost her words for the first time since I¡¯d known her.


    ¡°In Crash 2.0, Winternight stole and modified fifteen nuclear warheads to emit a powerful electromagnetic pulse effect, then launched them at fifteen cities to knock out the regional matrix hubs. I¡¯ve managed to create a similar effect from inside the matrix, blinding every tactical network in the city ¨C and everything else besides.¡±


    I looked up at the pillar of flame, tinged with golden light at the outer edges while its heart was a burning column of light that seemed to shift and shimmer as I watched, as if it contained new and incomprehensible colours; a spectrum of blinding white.


    ¡°It¡¯s a digital nuke.¡±


    ¡°Fuck¡­¡± Imp swore, turning away from the city centre as her masked face fixed me with an unreadable look. I smiled.


    ¡°Give it a week, they might call this Crash Two Point One.¡±


    Imp stifled a laugh, then shot me a look.


    ¡°Cmon, Taylor, you can¡¯t pull a thing like this and say shit like that. Alec¡¯s right; you¡¯re such a dork.¡±


    She turned away, shaking her. I was just barely able to catch her murmur ¡°fuckin¡¯ terrifying dork¡± as she set off towards the city centre.


    Another pulse swept through the city, plunging the building beside me into darkness as its lights failed. Away from the pedestrianised boardwalk, the impact of the resonance well was clearly visible in the cars strewn across the road, some left abandoned as their engines fell silent while others had accelerated or braked uncontrollably, causing pile-ups and scattering vehicles onto the sidewalk or into the windows of shop fronts.


    There were less cars than I¡¯d feared, no doubt an unintentional side-effect of Medhall and Knight Errant¡¯s standoff in Downtown. With a potential war a few blocks away, few people would willingly choose to risk the roads. Even the city¡¯s corporations remembered and feared the chaos of the New Revolution, when they¡¯d looked out of their office windows and seen bodies on the streets below.


    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    At least I¡¯d been spared that, so far. Instead, as we wandered cautiously down the centre of the road, between the lanes of stalled traffic, we were watched by faces shrinking back from the blinds of the windows above us, by lost and listless travellers sitting on the hoods of their dead cars and a few suited refugees making their way down the sidewalk in the vague direction of home.


    It was the quiet of a warzone, or what I imagined a warzone would be like; the muted and miserable silence of a land beaten into submission by the first blow and now waiting in weary expectation of the next.


    When the blow came, it was like lightning from a clear sky. It was faster than thought, a firestorm burning through the matrix as a titanic form ate through the tattered remains of a tattered office host at the end of the block. It was pursued; I saw crystalline sea monster tentacles slam down onto the ground as the entity roiled and bubbled beneath digital dragonflame, quickly drawing its great bulk back in on itself as LEVIATHAN reformed its anthropomorphic form. It leapt up at the hovering dragon, bringing its whipcord tail around in a devastating blow.


    Their battle tore the local matrix apart, the shock of its strike echoing through into reality as a transformer mounted halfway up the side of a building overloaded with explosive force, spraying a burning rain of sparks across the street. Around me, people screamed and ducked for cover, pulling themselves inside their cars or sheltering as best they could in doorways. Imp¡¯s hand went to her pistol, holding it ready at her side like a cowboy in a duel.


    As LEVIATHAN abruptly turned and hurtled towards us, animal instinct drove my body as I leapt forwards and grabbed Imp by the shoulders, hauling her out of the road. The entity blurred past us too fast to see, with an aftershock of cascading failures following in his wake. Lights burned themselves out in an instant, neon bulbs popping with explosive force while cars were miraculously revived in a jostling, shunting mass of steel and glass as if they were a panicked herd of mechanical wildebeest.


    I didn¡¯t even see the dragon fly past in pursuit, I was too busy throwing myself out of the path of an oncoming car, smoke spilling from beneath its hood as the engine burned itself out. The air was filled with a battlefield din of metal grinding against metal, thick with the clamour of screams and shrieking alarms. On the pavement a woman dropped her commlink as the battery caught fire, while a cyborg¡¯s limbs twisted into odd shapes as he brought them offline a moment too late.


    I rushed over to where he was writing on the floor. He looked like he was in his early thirties, though with how extensively he was augmented that was anyone¡¯s guess. The cybernetics were fairly high-end, with white plastic casings trimmed with gold, exposed by weather-inappropriate designer shorts and a black tank-top. The wealthy elegance of his look was undercut by the fact that his arms were trying to twist their way out of their sockets, while the gold irises of his cybereyes glowed with the light of a malfunctioning heads up display.


    I shouldn¡¯t have been able to do anything. His cybersuite was offline; I couldn¡¯t sense even a single open port in the matrix. But through some instinct I couldn¡¯t explain, I reached out and placed my hand upon his arm. Energy sparked between plastic and metal, leaping from my cybernetic hand like an electric shock that travelled throughout his body, like wiring a branch into a closed circuit.


    I could see his entire cybersuite through the palm of my hand, could see the misfiring neuron analogues and failing man-machine interface points. I could read the logged system diagnostics, could see that the automatic offline failsafes had kicked in when the well went up only for this moron to override them half an hour later to try and livestream the chaos through his cybereyes.


    I realigned his artificial nervous system with targeted resonance spikes, bringing the cyberlimbs back under his control and burning out his suite¡¯s online capabilities for good measure. It took a handful of seconds, but it should have been impossible. As I stood up, I stared down at my hand as if I¡¯d be able to see exactly what had changed. I couldn¡¯t tell if it was the result of the resonance being pumped out of the well or if this was another new trick I¡¯d picked up while beyond the event horizon.


    ¡°And that?¡± Imp demanded, her head darting between the buildings like she was looking for gunmen. ¡°That the blast wave?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s¡­ harder to explain,¡± I murmured. ¡°It¡¯s like a kaiju, I guess?¡±


    Imp didn¡¯t say anything for a moment. She just stared at me, the black pits of her mask¡¯s eyes weighing me up with an inscrutable expression. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, she simply shrugged her shoulders and resumed her march.


    It was only when we reached the outskirts of Downtown that the full scale of what I¡¯d done became clear. We passed through unpowered streets plunged into premature darkness by the towering skyscrapers that left only a sliver of sky overhead, their glass and concrete fronts reflecting our own images back at us like mirrors of polished onyx. In the matrix, where once there would have been towering hosts so flush with data they were almost incandescent, there was nothing but a gaping hole wreathed in wisps of resonant mist.


    I could see half-visible faces beneath glass doors; armed guards and custodial staff skulking through the halls by torchlight, or suited wageslaves slumped against the walls with their heads in their hands. If a corporation was a kind of organism, this was what happened when the soul was stripped from the body. Devoid of power and the life-giving data that sustained them, these brains of great and terrible enterprises were starving to death.


    On other streets, untouched by the dragon¡¯s pursuit of LEVIATHAN, Imp disappeared from view at the sight of corporate security flipping paralysed cars on their sides to form makeshift barricades before the grand entrances to their skyscrapers, the gunmen eyeing me warily as I walked purposefully down the middle of the street.


    All the while, the matrix burned with energy, spilling out into meatspace in flares that scrambled signals, flickered streetlights and flooded electrochromatic advertising hoardings with fractal patterns of light. In cyberspace a strange pseudo-ecosystem was forming from malfunctioning advirals whose roaming slogans and gaudy images had gathered clumps of resonance like streamers of flypaper, warping their intended messages into psychedelic illegibility.


    I didn¡¯t wonder why the guards were preparing for a siege; I could hear it in the air.


    Distant gunfire still echoed through the artificial canons as Imp returned to visibility, waxing and waning with the ebb and flow of unseen skirmishes. Its exact direction was warped by countless reverberations through streets of towering corporate architecture, but it wasn¡¯t the only noise I could hear.


    Smashing glass, roaring engines and exultant cries came to us down twisted alleyways and access roads, growing louder as we rounded the corner of a block. At the next junction, a trio of cars tore onto the street with the squeal of burning tyres, beaten up junkers that looked like they¡¯d been kept on life support since the twenties, their sides daubed with red and green graffiti.


    Their age was what would have saved them; vehicles that old had been kept running through successive datacrashes, remaining functional simply because the universal points of failure had all left them behind. They had no GridLink, no anti-theft ID software, no forced always-online connection to the manufacturer¡¯s systems ¨C if the manufacturers were even still in business. It was like they¡¯d been proofed against Armageddon.


    You didn¡¯t get cars like that in the South. You couldn¡¯t, not without a Knight Errant patrol pulling them off the road for their inability to mesh into the city¡¯s wholly digital traffic management network. As they screamed past us, exposed engines revving and oversized tyres leaving black marks along the pavement, I knew that they were joyriders come up from the North End to race through the abandoned boulevards of Downtown, the district¡¯s perfect grid making for the perfect drag race.


    The cars hadn¡¯t come alone; a force of similarly antiquated vans and trucks were parked up by the side of the road, while men and women in yellow and green Yakuza colours carried branded boxes out the shattered doors of corporate office towers. They were methodical, their work supervised by gang overseers who hurried the process along with shouts and angry gestures.


    I knew this organised effort was just the tip of the iceberg. Out of all the remaining gangs in the North End, the Yakuza alone had the numbers and the coordination to pull this off so soon. From my perspective, however, their looting was almost incidental to the main point; they couldn¡¯t have pulled this off if Knight Errant still had the bridges barricaded.


    My attack had worked; the walls in my path were crumbling one by one, turning insurmountable fortresses into isolated bastions that could be bypassed even if someone else didn¡¯t come along and knock them down for me.


    One of the Yakuza noticed us, adjusting her grip on a secure data terminal as she shouted something to one of the overseers. The Yakuza lieutenant had his back to us, his black milsurp fatigues and lightweight body armour an uncharacteristically sombre look for the gang. As he turned to size us up, I saw a red-skinned counterpart to Imp¡¯s own mask with sharpened horns growing out of his forehead, a vertical line of green war-paint passing through each eye and oversized canines curving out over his bottom lip.


    The oni tilted his head as he considered us, one hand idly toying with the handle of one of the dozen throwing knives holstered on his vest as though he was confident he could land a hit across twenty metre gap between us. Imp met his gaze ninja to ninja, her own hand poised in the action of reaching for her tomahawk before she instead closed it into a fist and beat it twice against her chest.


    Her counterpart seemed to consider the gesture for a moment, his weathered eyes flicking between the two of us once more before he simply nodded, turning back to watch the progress of his men and snapping something in Japanese that had them moving even faster. I didn¡¯t want to turn my back on them, but I didn¡¯t have a choice.


    From there, things got louder. There were more looters, more joyriders and groups who blurred the lines between the two. Scavenger gangs screamed past on worn-out pickup trucks with emaciated, ragged figures perched on the sides of the bed, each clutching crude blades, lengths of pipe or cobbled-together gangland specials.


    They waved the makeshift guns at everything they saw, pulling up beside abandoned luxury cars and leaping out to hack at the doors and bonnet until they could crack the shell and feast on the components within. When we drew too close they acted like spooked animals; gesturing wildly with blades and guns even if none of them were willing to waste ammo on warning shots. They seemed much more afraid of a fight than the Yakuza, leaving as quickly as they came in search of another easy target to pick apart.


    Other crews were less squeamish. We had to divert around a street where multiple security forces seemed to have pooled their resources, gathering whatever guns they could still get to work and using them to fight off a small convoy of three Yakuza vehicles. The vans were lit up like torches, wreathed in flames so large and intense that they had to have been created by a mage. I could see the charred remains of a corpse that had gone rigid in the act of crawling from a panel door, while unburned bodies in red and green littered the road.


    These guards weren¡¯t wanting for ammo. At the sight of me one of them fired three rounds into the air, while the wagemage gathered fire in her palms. We got the message and complied, even if it meant a long diversion down a road that moved us parallel to the distant Medhall tower.


    At the end of that boulevard, the blacked-out fa?ade of a glass fronted office building was illuminated by a reflected pattern of lights rising from the streets below; a constellation of handheld flashlights, vivid red flares and the hypernatural glow of magelights. As we drew nearer, we began to make out a low rumbling sound that echoed in my bones.


    It was only once the first part of the crowd cleared the corner that I realised what I was hearing; thousands of feet striking the road almost simultaneously, each footfall blending in with the rest to create a solid wall of noise that was only amplified by the cavernous buildings flanking the road. Then I heard the voice. It was as deep as a chasm, as solid as a mountain and it carried the rumble of an avalanche. His words were half battle cry, half advice, half berserk bloodthirst and they were met by a cheer that drowned out the world. I couldn¡¯t make out any words in that response, couldn¡¯t distinguish individual voices or even languages from hundreds of mingled shouts.


    As we entered the intersection, I looked away from the sound for a moment, down the arrow-straight boulevard of one of Downtown¡¯s main grids to where Medhall¡¯s corporate headquarters was visible as a bastion of light among a dark and gutted district, the great pillar of the resonance well still burning through into the building¡¯s electricals.


    Then I turned away, and faced down the advancing crowd.


    At their head was the largest troll I had ever seen. He was nine and a half feet tall, his horns thick and gnarled growths of stone-like bone that curved up out of his forehead, adding another half a foot to his height. He was shirtless, his slab-sided musculature shifting like a rockslide with every step he took. His pale flesh ended at the neck, everything below was coated in intricate electrochromatic tattoos that pulsed with vivid red lights, depicting snarling dragons locked in ferocious battles, while a great burn scar covered the entire right hand side of his face.


    He carried a modified Ultimax Heavy Machinegun, a vehicle-mounted weapon that he held in one hand like it was a carbine with the barrel pointed up at the sky. Belts of ammunition were strapped to a webbing harness he wore over his bulging jeans, but I was struck by the inescapable feeling that the gun was infinitely less dangerous than the hand that held it.


    I knew him by sight and feared him by reputation. He was Lung, the undisputed master of the Brockton Bay Yakuza. He had come to the city from exile, bringing with him a cadre of Japanese non-humans whose parents had been forced out of the Japanese Yakuza clans, and who had grown up second-class citizens on the Japanese mainland, or penned up in concentration camps on Yomi Island.


    Standing before him I could see his past written in the deep fury of his eyes, could feel his brutality in the air as though it were a physical force that preceded him. He was violence and anger and rage, and I knew in an instant that he had come to deliver the death blow to his hated enemy. To kill the Chosen once and for all by massacring those who had always held their strings and guided their actions. He had marched here all the way from Japantown and the mob had formed in his wake, drawn in by his unstoppable rage.


    Some of them were Yakuza, their gang colours already stained with blood. Most of them weren¡¯t. Most of them were orks and trolls, elves and dwarves and even humans. They had no uniform colours, no armour. Their weapons were bricks and pipes and handguns, each clenched tight in death-grips. Many of them were wounded from the fights they¡¯d endured to get this far, but all of them were united in their relentless fury.


    Some of them had got organised, or this avalanche of rage had swept up organised marches in its wake. Banners fluttered over the crowd; slogans and flags and Eyes of Sauron daubed in red on black fabric. Others had come as they were; cooks in grease-stained outfits with cleavers clutched in fat fingers, street kids in scrappy third-hand clothes holding makeshift spears, college anarchists whose all-black outfits looked clean and out of place by comparison.


    It was almost incomprehensible. My mind reeled at the sight, struck dumb at the sheer mass of people united in one furious purpose. Then ice-cold horror began to seep into my core, as the ones at the front recognised me.


    I saw Lung raise his head as he stared me down, his lower lip curling up as though he was uncertain what to make of me. Beside him, people jostled the person next to them, hurriedly asking a single question that I didn¡¯t need to hear to understand. Is that her?


    The procession stalled as people stopped to stare, only to be pushed forwards by the mass of the crowd behind them. Even Imp had stopped, her gaze shifting between me and the rampage I had sparked. I wanted to turn and run, wanted to dive into the matrix. Instead I tightened my grip on my submachine gun and raised it to the sky.


    Lungs lips curled back into a snarling grin, before he hefted up his own weapon and roared a wordless cry of rage that cut straight to some deep and primal part of my soul. The crowd echoed him, the great metahuman sea shifting with the motion of thousands of weapons being raised to the sky, while those without simply lifted their closed fists.


    A cry was raised on every lip, even my own, deep throated roars and high pitched screams shaking the very walls of the buildings around us. I could feel it in my bones, could feel it jolting my heart into action as my mind felt almost faint with sheer thrill at the force I had unleashed. As the crowd began to move once more I leapt down from the car and strode towards Medhall with the hosts of Mordor at my back.


    Medhall was an atavism. A feudal kingdom that had raised its keep in the heart of this city, surrounding it with barricade walls manned by cyborg knights. It had been shaping this city for decades; guiding its politics, building its roads, all for the prosperity of its king and his vassals.


    We were coming to tear it all down; the hosts of Mordor marching forth from the lands they forgot.

 Crash: 9.02

    This was it. Finally, everyone was working together.


    The heavens had opened up, a deluge falling from the firmament to wipe the world clean. It ran as shimmering mirrors down glass-fronted skscrapers before pooling on the streets, becoming rivers that flowed down the gutters into the earth.


    It swept down my face like a baptism, washing away my sweat and tears to leave only cold certainty behind. My hoodie grew sodden and clammy, sticking to my cybernetic arm until I unzipped it and threw it aside, bearing the full force of the storm in only a tanktop, shoulder webbing and jeans.


    The world was built on smoke and mirrors. On power and the illusion of power, and it was shocking how little difference there was between the two. The looming hand of megacorporate control, the overwhelming force they could bring to bear when threatened, it was all paired with a constant, never-ending barrage of bullshit aimed at keeping people just happy and just desperate enough that they stayed quiet.


    They didn¡¯t go hungry or thirsty. They were flooded with food in infinite varieties and flavours, even if it was all soy hacked and chopped and flavoured and processed into any meal under the sun. What came out of the pipes might not always be drinkable, but that didn¡¯t matter when you could buy litres of soft drinks for cents.


    They didn¡¯t want for entertainment when thousands of trideo programs, terrestrial television and radio stations were waiting at their fingertips, broadcast through every medium imaginable. If they wanted music, it was there for the taking in endlessly fractal sub-genres to suit every conceivable taste, pumped out of studios or generated ex-nihilo by soulless algorithms.


    The landfills were buried beneath cheap plastic toys, the victims of society were shuffled out of sight and mind, the kids with no prospects joined gangs and fought for the dregs of the black market as though it mattered ¨C because the actual market was out of their reach.


    For every problem, there was an outlet. For every hardship there was a way to take the edge off, legally or illegally. For every dream, the magic show of reality conjured up a million petty problems to put it off until tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. The whole world was redlining; the great consumer machine pushed to the absolute limit while the foot on the pedal feathered the gas to keep it there.


    But when you run on the edge, it doesn¡¯t take much to fall.


    Calvert had driven the city to the brink, bombing the Chosen¡¯s drugs to make them desperate then fanning the flames as Medhall¡¯s own corporate machine began to shake itself apart. He¡¯d wanted a war, but only on his terms. A clean war between institutions; Knight Errant fighting insurrectionists at the behest of the UCAS government.


    Calvert understood how the world worked, could see the fragile pillars propping up our sixth world society, but in the end he was still its agent. He wanted to keep control throughout the chaos, emerging from the dust with the strings in his mouth and a clean win for Evo. One corporation stepping smoothly into the shoes of the other. He didn¡¯t understand what he¡¯d really done. Perhaps he couldn¡¯t.


    Everyone in the city had seen the Anders leak, even if the information was filtered through the biases of their media bubbles. Everyone remembered the horrors of the New Revolution, the chaos of Crash 2.0. That collective trauma had been dragged to the forefront of their minds in the very instant before the world ended again.


    I¡¯d levelled the city, cast everyone into the dark and shown them just how hollow their societal comforts were. I¡¯d taken away their electricity, grounded their cars, stripped them of the jangling keys of constant social media. Their information overload was frozen in the last moments before the blackout, when they¡¯d been told that Max Anders had betrayed them.


    There would be no media spin, no controlled release of information as Knight Errant wove a reassuring narrative around their counterinsurrection. Everyone in the city knew what the problem was, but I¡¯d cut the feeds before they could be shown a solution. All they knew was that their city was burning and nobody was doing a thing to stop it.


    What I¡¯d unleashed couldn¡¯t be controlled. It was the horrifying momentum of history, that irrepressible force that rose periodically to destroy the old, leaving a barren land in which the new could be built.


    It was inevitable that people would lose focus, that their unrestrained energy would lash out like lightning leaping through ionised air to an antennae. That was part of it; the unrestrained violence that was both the symptom and cause of change. The procession around me burned with hatred for Medhall, but surrounded by so many symbols of corporate power and wealth each darkened skyscraper became a vulnerable enemy.


    The rain crackled as it met the conflagration that had consumed the fourth floor of the building next to me, where looters had broken through into an abandoned office building. They wouldn¡¯t make it far without the main force of the march behind them. I didn¡¯t have any sympathy; if they were so easily distracted by baubles then they¡¯d be useless when the real fighting begun. If anything, they were in my way.


    Whether acting in desperation in the face of the looters or just blind panic at the sight of the march, some of the security officers sheltering in the other towers began to lose their nerve. Steel shutters were pulled down over the doors, with facilities staff in branded coveralls using power tools to cut through the dead motors and counterweights. Where that wasn¡¯t an option, they pulled desks to the doors, or cut the brakes of abandoned cars so they could roll them up and tip them on their side.


    All the while they watched us, dozens of jumpy rent-a-cops with live ammo and fingers twitching on triggers. The first shots were an inevitability, a panicked burst fired through a third floor window. I didn¡¯t see where the bullets fell, but I heard the crowd screaming in response before a torrent of gunfire engulfed the buildings around us.


    Those without guns started to run, adrenaline and the press of the crowd behind them forcing them forward as they slammed against barricades or spilled into lobbies. Whether the corporate security stood dumbstruck or fired into the crowd seemed to make no difference; they quickly disappeared from view between heaving muscle and muzzle flashes.


    To my relief, most of the crowd surged forwards through the gauntlet, only occasionally directing shots and rocks and Molotov cocktails at the buildings around us. They kept their focus fixed on the looming tower ahead of us. Lung didn¡¯t even react; the barrel of his gun remained pointed skywards as he strode unerringly towards his target.


    I was almost jogging, Imp keeping pace by my side. We¡¯d never led the crowd, but now it was starting to outpace us. Whatever moment of recognition I¡¯d been given had disappeared beneath a metahuman flood. Even Lung was being left behind by the mass now; I could see him marching on at the same pace a dozen metres away, a shoal of people parting around him like a stream breaking around a stone.


    Gradually the gunfire began to die down, replaced by faint screams as rioters rampaged through the offices around us. I wondered how far they¡¯d get; how many flights of stairs would they be able to climb before they started to tire? Were the wageslaves inside even now be making for higher ground, or were they being ushered out through other doors onto quieter streets? Did they even know, huddled in their blacked-out cubicles or gathered in a worried mass in the isolated battery farms of open-plan offices?


    All I knew was that the march would continue without that distraction. We¡¯d lost some stragglers, but the mass was still cohesive. It was perhaps callous to think of them as a metahuman battering ram to get me through the gates of Medhall, but I hadn¡¯t manufactured this hate. It was always there, simmering beneath the surface. I¡¯d just given it an outlet.


    To my relief, the next block was silent, its offices already shuttered and barred. We¡¯d hit the edge of the evacuation zone around Medhall¡¯s head office; two Knight Errant cars blocked the road, along with a line of collapsable barriers, but there were no officers in sight.


    Beyond that flimsy border, which was quickly overturned, the abandoned buildings acted like a canyon, funnelling the metahuman river inexorably towards our destination. There were still those who tried to force their way into the surrounding offices, but the retreating corporations had been given time to seal them tight with storm shutters and great steel barriers bolted to the concrete.


    ¡°What¡¯s the play?¡± Imp asked, her hand teasing at the flap of her holster.


    ¡°I know where in the building they are,¡± I said. ¡°When this crowd breaks through the siege there¡¯s going to be chaos. We¡¯ll slip aside and rescue them.¡±


    ¡°If they break through,¡± Imp pointed out. ¡°I see a lot of people, but not a lot of firepower. This could get ugly.¡±


    ¡°We can¡¯t turn them back.¡±


    ¡°Fuck that,¡± Imp snapped. ¡°They want to fight, that¡¯s their right. It¡¯s fuckin¡¯ karma.¡±


    The intensity in her tone cut me to the core; it was so unlike her usual carefree attitude. All the while, her hand looked to be an instant from drawing her tomahawk. Like the crowd, she wanted blood.


    A noise from the end of the block drew my attention; a throaty roar echoing through the dead city.


    ¡°Fuck is it?¡± Imp asked, straining to look over the crowd as a motorcycle spun onto the block, its driver wasp-like in a yellow and black biker suit.


    ¡°Knight Errant,¡± I said, as the biker swerved his vehicle into a slide that killed his momentum, kicking one leg down onto the pavement as he watched the approaching mob with what must have been a mixture of amazement and horror. ¡°I guess they¡¯re using bike couriers to communicate.¡±


    With another roar, the courier sped off down the street just as the leading edge of the march drew close enough to throw a few bricks at his retreating form. For a moment I thought they were going to rush after him, but then the resonance well pulsed again.


    They couldn¡¯t see what I saw, that great wave of energy washing over the city like an atomic inferno, but they felt it in the hum of static electricity and the chemical tang of burned out wires as long-dead streetlights tried to burn bright again.


    I¡¯d almost forgotten I was looking into the matrix. The city was dead, or at least this part of it was. The great corporate hosts had been consumed by LEVIATHAN, burned out by the dragon or warped and smeared into ambient resonance by the repeating blast waves.


    All that was left was a desolate plain thick with resonance that hung in the air like motes of dust. If I focused, I could just barely make out the pathways of the man-made networks that had been reduced to those dust clouds, but with every pulse they grew fainter.


    Bathed in the atomic light of the resonance well, any shape they might have had was washed out by its brilliant light. If it was in meatspace, it¡¯d probably have burned out my eyes by now.


    Even as the trailing edge of the crowd continued to trade gunfire with the corporate security behind us, the leading edge began to regain some semblance of its cohesiveness. Ahead of us, those who¡¯d rushed ahead started to slow, drifting back in threes and fours before they met the bulk of the crowd. We could smell cordite in the air, could hear distant gunfire coming from in front as well as behind.


    Battle hung in the air; an ionised cloud of potential violence hanging like a pall over the streets. We became a march again, flocking around the banners like some bronze age army even as the digital war continued to tear through the city.


    As I turned back to take in the scale of the crowd, I saw LEVIATHAN and the dragon dancing among distant hosts that hadn¡¯t yet been snuffed out by my monster¡¯s hunger. The dragon¡¯s flames torched whole swathes of the digital cityscape as she built a firebreak around LEVIATHAN, starving the datavore of the code it needed to expand its consciousness.


    DemiGOD¡¯s hovered above the battle like fireflies, rendered miniscule by distance. I watched as the dragon¡¯s flames licked at their heels, forcing the pinpricks of light to soar up and clear of the battlefield. Other DemiGODs were nearer to me, getting as close as they dared to the resonance well with their personas layered in firewalls and active monitoring systems. I could see them staggered out around the well like a net, but I doubted they could pick me out among the resonant mass pouring out of the breach.


    Then Imp¡¯s hand was on my shoulder, bringing me back to the here and now.


    A metahuman wall stretched along an intersection ahead of us, a black and yellow barricade of riot shields, faceless helmets and two armoured trucks that had been pushed into place. A commander stood on top of one vehicle, lit from below by the off-tempo flashes of red and blue lights as he watched our progress. I could see the outline of the truck in the matrix, its digital structure warped and mutated into resonant constructs that had crystalised into immobility.


    They weren¡¯t blocking our path, in fact it looked like they¡¯d deliberately moved out of our way, shifting their positions to the side so that we¡¯d march right past them. Behind the shield wall ¨C which looked more ragged every step I took towards it ¨C I could just glimpse a team of medics working out of the back of a boxy truck, lit by flashlights that had been lashed to the half-open door.


    ¡°What happened to the perimeter?¡± I asked the air.


    ¡°I think we¡¯re looking at it,¡± Imp said. ¡°Cops are cowards. They¡¯re not gonna fuck with us when we¡¯re clearly gonna fuck with the guys they hate.¡±


    ¡°Maybe¡­¡± I mused. ¡°Still, I thought they¡¯d put up more of a fight.¡±


    As we drew closer, the picture only became more ragged. The shields were all new, like they¡¯d just been taken out of the back of the van, but they were conspicuous in their intact state. The officers carrying them looked beaten-down, the yellow visors of their full-face helmets cracked and splintered by repeated blows while their taksuits were stitched together in places by puffy globules of counterseptic adhesive spray.


    Half of them had rifles slung on their backs and more had been piled in a heap by the wall. I could see the latter in the matrix, biometric ID locks and battlenet friendly fire countermeasures frozen in place by the first wave of resonance, before the failsafes had brought the rest of their weapons offline.


    I fucked them, I thought to myself. Disarmed half the force as collateral damage.


    I wanted to shrink down into the crowd, terrified that one of them would recognise me and the whole line would surge forwards with what bullets they had left to snatch me from the mob. If any of them did, they were too busy licking their wounds to do anything about it. For every officer on the line, there were four more in various states of injury on the tarmac behind them. It was a field hospital, not a military camp.


    A few hundred metres down the road we passed the first signs of the enemy. A Knight Errant truck was burning on the sidewalk, its armoured cabin sheared open by successive blows from some high-powered gun. Most of the crew were lying dead on the ground around the vehicle, but one had survived the initial blast.


    They''d ripped his helmet off his head, looped a chain around his neck and tossed the other end over a streetlight. His feet were swaying in the air currents of this man-made chasm three metres over my head, the other end of the chain lashed around the truck''s rear axle.


    The fighting sounded tremendously close now. I could see the people around me start to slow as proximity to the battle began to wear away at the thrilling adrenaline that had carried them here. It was impossible to feel invincible beneath a hanged man.


    First contact with the enemy came like a bolt from a clear sky, three aged pick-up trucks following a fifty-year-old Humvee around the corner of the block, their beds packed with at least a dozen hangers-on from the Chosen''s vassal gangs. The driver of the Humvee slowed at the sudden sight of the mob, before gunning the accelerator and heading straight for us.


    I tried to get a bead on him, but the crowd around me shifted like a wave in response to the threat, almost knocking me off my feet. Across the metahuman sea I could barely make out Lung striding out from the head of the crowd. He stopped dead in the path of the speeding Humvee, lowered his heavy machinegun and squeezed the trigger.


    The tungsten projectiles shredded through its engine block as Lung guided his shots down to the axel, shearing off both left wheels in a shower of sparks. The Humvee kept going on momentum alone, sliding along the asphalt as its speed rapidly dropped. It was still going far too fast, but Lung didn''t even seem concerned. He simply swept his gun to the right, splintering the windshields of two of the pickups and pulping those within in a spray of vaporised gore.


    Once the Humvee finally reached him, now crawling along the tarmac without the tyres on its remaining wheels, the immense troll leapt up onto what was left of the engine block and fired down into the cabin at point black range. Every move he''d made had been almost automatic, like he was just going through the motions while his mind was elsewhere.


    He''d still moved faster than anyone else, but it didn''t take long for the crowd to catch up. I couldn''t see exactly who shot up the remaining two pickups, but bit by bit they disintegrated under a withering hail of fire, shedding bodies from their beds.


    The militiamen were barely able to get any shots off, but as we surged forwards I found myself stepping over the twitching form of an elven woman in yakuza colours, deep red flowers blooming around the bulletholes in her shirt. Her arm was broken, the bone poking through the skin. She was being trampled, the crowd rolling over her without the power to stop itself.


    Then were in it. Medhall¡¯s tower loomed overhead like a monument, a pillar of ditgital flame that drowned out all I could see. The convoy had been some scrambled-together attempt at a flanking manoeuvre, pulling back and looping around to hit Knight Errant from behind. Instead, we ran right into them.


    It was once a siege, I could see that much. The walls were still there, with armoured Knight Errant trucks parked side-on at one intersection and a line of makeshift barricades stretched across the other, built from sheets of metal, ambulances and whatever cars the insurrectionists had brought with them.


    Between them was a monument to corporate triumph; a whole block given over to a combined park and plaza, with flagstone paths winding between gardens and fountains, climbing over artificial rivers or descending down to cafes and restaurants built beneath the surface. There was no disharmony in it; every stone monument and abstract metal statue had been designed to fit in seamlessly with the rest, commissioned according to the whims of the man whose building fronted onto the plaza.


    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    The crown jewel of Richard Anders¡¯ kingdom had become a no-mans land, his great torn apart in a meandering mess of makeshift barricades and pillboxes while the ornamental and decorative terrain became a trench network two hundred metres across. The light of burning trees and muzzle flashes illuminated the horrific melee that had spread across the whole plaza, reflecting off glossy yellow helmets and the bare metal of cybernetics.


    Whatever division the rival barricades represented has collapsed in rapid waves of attack and counterattack as Knight Errant and the New Revolutionaries responded to the digital blackout. They were still fighting; scattered groups moving from feature to feature, descending into quick and bloody melees wherever they met each other.


    Over the heads of the crowd I saw taksuited officers rushing forwards with batons and lengths of pipe, while those with functional weapons covered their advance. Chosen cyborgs darted across the battlefield with mechanical speed, hacking into officers with in-built blades and pinpoint shots from heavy pistols.


    The militia were less organised, thronging the field in their hundreds ¨C if not thousands ¨C as they fought beneath a fluttering field of stars and stripes. Many were as disarmed as Knight Errant, charging in with hatchets and machetes as they joined the pandemonic melee that had spread across the battlefield. It was a bloodbath on an immense scale, so violent and intense that most didn¡¯t even notice our arrival.


    Our charge was heralded by a strange tugging sensation, as though the entire mass of people stretched out and compressed back in on itself. The fanatics and the killers at the front of our march rushed ahead, firing blindly or taking advantage of the open road to zig-zag forwards on cybernetic limbs. Those at the rear heard the rising clamour of battle and surged forwards, forcing everyone in-between to press on or get trampled. Within twenty seconds, we were all sprinting.


    I lost sight of Imp as she darted ahead, a flick of her arm snapping the head of her collapsed tomahawk into place. Ahead of us, stretched across the line of disabled Knight Errant cars, snipers in taksuits and fabric uniforms were taking potshots at the militia with marksmen rifles, aiming by eye with their expensive smartscopes dismounted and abandoned.


    They barely had time to turn before the first of us hit them, the line of officers immediately disappearing from view as the metahuman tsunami washed over them. I was jostled to the side by an ork with a meat cleaver, losing sight of the battlefield as I almost stumbled and fell.


    It meant I didn¡¯t see the moment we fully joined the battle, just the bodies dropping around me as some unseen enemy unloaded a machine gun into our ranks. A dwarf fell to the floor before me, her skull shattered by a stray shot. I tripped over her body, almost losing my grip on my gun as I slammed into the floor, crawling manically forward towards the bulky form of an armoured truck that had been left abandoned in no-mans-land.


    I blinked away my shock, watching with mute horror as all our invincible fury was met by the cold realities of war. I¡¯d deluded myself into thinking I was above it; that I was an outside observer taking advantage of others¡¯ rage. Instead, my own hot fury came crashing down in this throwback of a battle, this bronze age clash of peoples that could only end in mutual massacre.


    But as I¡¯d done before, in the dopadrine bombing that had set all of this into motion, with my team pinned down by Chosen and the matrix cut off, I knew I had to fight through my fear. I rose to my feet, locked my cybernetic fingers to my pistol grip, and stepped out into the open.


    I didn¡¯t even see the first man I shot. He was just a flash of a camouflaged jacket cresting a barricade ten metres ahead of me, with the black outline of a rifle raised to fire. As he jerked back under a burst of submachine gun rounds I sprinted forwards, moving my legs as fast as my pounding heart would allow before throwing myself behind the scant cover of that same barricade.


    Others had followed me; an ork in grey camouflage with an Eye of Sauron daubed across his face in red warpaint was hunched over next to a Yakuza razorgirl with glossy red limbs and a porcelain-white faceplate. The ork was holding a shotgun in one hand, while the other brought a grenade up to his teeth. He looped the pin around one tusk and pulled it clear, then threw the grenade blindly over our cover.


    The razorgirl leapt up the moment it detonated, her cybernetic legs propelling her almost faster than I could see. I followed with the ork, hauling myself up and over the barricade just in time to see a militiaman in an American flag bandanna bisected by the razorgirl¡¯s katana.


    Beside me, the ork levelled his shotgun and fired on automatic into a cluster of Revolutionaries. I leapt down to the other side of the barricade, back beneath the cover of a fountain whose stone wall had been shattered by the force of the grenade, spilling out pristine water to mingle with the rain that had drowned the world.


    Dead militia groaned beneath me, one of them grasping at a gun before I kicked him in the head hard enough I heard his neck snap. Others were on their feet, scrambling to aim their weapons before my own arm snapped up with mechanical speed. As I squeezed the trigger I panned the gun to the left, spraying automatic rounds across half a dozen men and women.


    The magazine clicked empty. I threw myself down beneath the edge of the fountain, water pouring over my shoulders as I fumbled with the catch. Something heavy fell down beside me; the ork, his mouth opening wordlessly as blood seeped through the bulletholes in his jacket.


    It was enough to shock me into action, discarding the spent magazine and slotting in another before letting the slide fly forwards. Distantly, I knew I didn¡¯t have many rounds left, but there was nowhere to go but forwards.


    So I got to my feet, keeping my head low to avoid drawing the eye of whatever distant gunman had shot the ork on top of the barricade. The razorgirl was still there, withdrawing her katana from the torso of a militiaman. Idly I noticed that her cyberlegs had no feet, instead ending in points like her every step was part of some twisted ballet. As I watched she raised a spiked leg and drove it through the torso of one of the wounded, the pointed tip crushing through his ribcage with a horrific crackle.


    Suddenly she shifted, hunching down with her head cocked as her inbuilt sensors assessed the battlefield, effective even without any connection to the Yakuza¡¯s own tactical networks. With a fluid motion she brought her left hand around and drew a pistol from a shoulder holster, double-tapping a figure climbing over a slope of rubble before darting off in the direction they¡¯d come from, vaulting the slope in a single bound.


    I followed her, desperate not to be left alone on this anarchic battlefield. I scrambled up the barricade, rolling over the top of the heap of cinderblocks and flagstones that could have been torn up from the plaza itself before stumbling to my feet on the other side right as the sole surviving Knight Errant officer shot her in the head.


    There had been four of them sheltering in this bandstand turned foxhole, before she¡¯d cut them apart with clawed hands and the edge of her sword. The last was barely upright, his legs shaking as his body caught up to the katana that had been run through his torso.


    He was wearing a uniform, rather than the usual concealing taksuit and helmet, which meant he was some city centre beat cop who¡¯d been caught up in this rapid insurrection. He was tall, elven, his fine features frozen in mute horror as he stared uncomprehendingly at the hilt jutting out of his chest. When he saw me he staggered back until he hit the edge of the bandstand, jerking in shock as the tip of the sword made contact with the rubble.


    I wanted to plead with him, but when his hand jerkily raised his pistol towards me I simply rushed at him, knocking his gun aside with my own before bringing my pistol grip down onto his forehead and throwing him to the ground with my other arm.


    I didn¡¯t stop to watch him bleed out, instead risking another death-defying scramble over the rubble as I continued my miserable march from cover to cover, throwing myself to the floor once again as I was suddenly caught in a shooting gallery between a band of Chosen and some of my rioters, incandescent tracers cutting through the rain as I crawled behind the relative safety of a long concrete bench.


    The immediate gunfire quickly died off, with the last tracers coming from the Chosen side of the firefight. I rolled onto my back, clutching my pistol in both hands as I waited for the first of the cyberpsychos to round the corner.


    As I lay there in a state of adrenaline-fuelled hyperawareness, my eyes were drawn to a shape cutting through the rain towards the battlefield, flanked on either side by the towering canyon of skyscrapers that stretched off back towards the north. It was a helicopter, its fuselage a familiar green and white.


    Then a Chosen woman edged past the bench, an assault rifle raised and ready to fire. My shots struck her in the torso, initially skittering off her subdermal armour before piercing through as plates dismounted with the cracking of splintered composite. As she dropped to one knee I rose, already firing at the second cyborg just behind her.


    I felt the gun click empty as a stab in the chest, staring in mute horror at the Chosen who was already drawing a bead on me with his own rifle, the synthskin on his head peeled back to reveal the steel skull surrounding his optics.


    I was frozen in a single moment that stretched into infinity, ice gripping my heart as though it had already stopped beating. I could see everything in that moment; every imperfection in the cyborg¡¯s synthskin, the steam rising from the superheated barrel of his rifle. I saw his inhuman eye widen in a sympathetic pain response as the tomahawk struck above his clavicle.


    Imp pounced on him like a grey demon, knocking him to the floor in a football tackle before tearing her axe from his chest and driving it into his torso again and again, each withdrawal ripping out another spurt of oily synthetic blood. As she stood and turned to look at me that black ichor ran down the hydrophobic surface of her suit, droplets pooling around her eyesockets like tears.


    ¡°Sorry I got ahead of you there,¡± she said, holding out a hand to help me up. ¡°It¡¯s just¡­ fuck it feels good to fight back.¡±


    I accepted her hand, pawing over my magazines with the other as I searched fruitlessly for the tell-tale glint of a ceramic casing. I was completely out.


    With a weary sigh I holstered my pistol, my eye drawn skywards once again as the helicopter roared over the battlefield, the downwash of its rotors enough to kick up a concrete duststorm even as panicked volleys of tracer rounds criss-crossed its path.


    ¡°That who I think it is?¡± Imp asked.


    ¡°Calvert¡¯s second team,¡± I said, watching as it swung left around the tower in a helical ascent. ¡°Or what¡¯s left of them, mixed in with his own guys. It¡¯s a hell of a Hail Mary.¡±


    It was the first time I¡¯d properly looked at the skyscraper since joining the melee. It felt so tantalisingly close, yet its sheer scale gave it a height that seemed unassailable. It loomed over us all, the logo at its pinnacle like an eye disinterestedly staring down at the ants fighting at its feet. I could picture Max Anders standing at a window on the uppermost floor, trying to follow the ebb and flow of this second Ragnar?k.


    Then, one by one, lights started to flow across the tower as the resonance well pulsed again, sending a wave of etheric energies across a battlefield blind to its radiant light. Some threshold had been reached within the tower¡¯s systems, some artefact of LEVIATHAN¡¯s breach in the event horizon that had seen the tower converted, rather than destroyed.


    It was a digital metamorphosis, code mutating into something else while keeping its original function. The tower¡¯s electricity grid was now the roots of Yggdrasil, carrying energy to the great clumps of resonance that flowered on the world tree¡¯s branches. It had spread to the plaza, too, that first explosion of energy infecting digital systems with enough power to convert them wholesale before bringing them offline.


    I could see etheric moss growing from the crumpled bodies of Chosen cyborgs whose augmentations had become its substrate. The effect hadn¡¯t spread far, only a hundred metres from the world tree, but I wondered how many Chosen I¡¯d killed to fertilise the new ecosystem taking shape around me, flourishing in digital carcasses and filling the air with its pollen.


    Imp was at my side again, eyeing our surroundings warily as though more gunmen could descend on us at any time. I knelt down over the Chosen woman I¡¯d killed, prying metal fingers from her assault rifle. With my own cybernetic hand I pressed my thumb against the trigger guard until it snapped off before trying to find a way to comfortably hold the undersized weapon. It was like a child¡¯s toy.


    ¡°Sorry,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s¡­ intense out there.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, well, get with the here and now. Only way out is through.¡±


    Her words were punctuated by the crackle of some heavy-calibre machine gun uncomfortably close to us. I couldn¡¯t place the direction as it echoed across this violent labyrinth, but I didn¡¯t have an Adept¡¯s ears. Imp quickly scurried away through the rubble, though this time I could tell she was deliberately slowing her pace so that I could keep up.


    I followed her into cover behind a decorative planter whose verdant green shrubbery had impossibly clung to life throughout the battle and the storm. Beyond this flimsy barricade was an expansive plaza twenty metres across, a tantalising environment when compared to the trenches around us.


    The only barrier were the pair of Medhall ambulances parked halfway across ¨C now host to a flourishing colony of resonant growth ¨C and the dozens of gang members, a handful of paramilitary soldiers and Chosen officers massing them all for an assault into no-man¡¯s-land.


    They were scared, or at least the baseline humans were, but I recognised their cold terror. It was that of cornered animals, knowing that they had only one way forwards but still afraid of exposing themselves to danger. Most of them didn¡¯t even have guns, instead clutching whatever blades and lengths of pipe they¡¯d had to hand.


    Beside me Imp cocked her head at some distant signal only she could pick up. Moments later I started to hear it too; the pounding of feet and a hundred shouted exclamations as men and women drove each other forwards. The march had caught up with us, or some segment of it that had survived the battlefield to reach this far.


    As they streamed past our cover onto the plaza we leapt up to join them, pushing through the shrubbery with ease before breaking into a dead sprint as the assembled militia¡¯s shock turned into fury.


    They charged right back at us, two masses of metahumanity rushing at each other in a mess so jumbled that neither side was able to get more than a handful of shots off. We met the enemy with explosive force, the world descending into a bloody throng of hatchets and clubs punctuated by the occasional burst of gunfire.


    I saw Imp flow through the battlefield like a dancer, ducking low to drive her tomahawk into the knees of three gang members in quick succession before jolting upright and using her weight to barrel over a paramilitary woman with a shotgun.


    They fell to the floor together, Imp driving her tomahawk into the woman¡¯s neck before rising and throwing it at a Chosen cyborg, the weapon lodging in his chest and knocking him back just long enough for her to draw her pistol with her left hand and fire a volley of shots into his head before rushing forward and retrieving her axe.


    With every kill, I heard her shout a name. Circus, Whirligig, Trainwreck, a litany of the dead avenged with every kill. I followed in her wake, trying to ration the rifle¡¯s ammunition as I gunned down targets over the heads of orks, dwarves and elves. In the end, though, it wasn¡¯t enough.


    The Chosen had a razorgirl of their own, carving her way behind the blurred lines of the conflict with forearm-length blades jutting out of her wrists. I saw the moment she recognised me, the glowing red optic suite that replaced her eyes locking onto me with baleful attention as she redoubled her massacre. I staggered back, only to run into the wall of bodies around me.


    When she brought her cyberspur down I threw up the rifle, feeling the bone-shaking shock of her blade making contact with the metal before lodging in place most of the way through. It was enough force to knock the gun out of my hand entirely, my own momentum carrying my arm forwards as it brushed against her own.


    In that moment, I felt a spark of energy pass between us. I grasped it like a lifeline, locking my cybernetic hand to her arm as I sent a flood of resonant spikes through into her offline nervous system. I¡¯d been gentle when I¡¯d lain my hands on the wounded cyborg, before I¡¯d linked up with this insane march, but now I poured my hate through her every synapse, watching with sadistic satisfaction as her optics flickered out of existence before her augmented nervous system overloaded in a shower of sparks and burning flesh.


    I stopped trying to keep my distance, instead charging ahead and relying on my natural strength to batter away the unaugmented chaff as I hunted down Chosen one by one, burning out their nervous systems through their man-machine interfaces and leaving their twitching bodies in my wake. Imp quickly realised what I was doing, effortlessly navigating her way back to me through the melee before covering me as we carved a path through, the rioters following in our wake.


    We were almost through when the world was drowned again beneath the throaty roar of antique engines barely clinging to life. Two angular green behemoths had pulled onto the square, their eight wheels cresting a scree of rubble with ease as the stubby machine guns bolted to the top of the hull swivelled to face the melee.


    The turrets were a mess of smoke launchers built around a single spherical optic, looking almost like an afterthought hastily thrown on top of the armoured body of the APCs. They were as antiquated as the flags flying from their hull, no doubt embezzled from post-Ghost Dance stockpiles over half a century ago, but they predated the modern matrix. They were immune to my virus.


    The guns opened up on the crowd, accompanied by a hail of smoke grenades that cut through the rain. I tried to scramble out of their path, saved from their wrath only by just how many enemies were surrounding Imp and I, but I was caught in the middle of the crowd, between both fields of fire.


    In desperation I turned my eyes to the resonance, sending a tight-beam transmission to the life colonising one of the ambulances that was a little way off behind enemy lines. The nascent life there responded to my song, rapidly multiplying as it grew to fill its shell like a crab.


    I didn¡¯t even have to instruct it. Its protosapient intelligence took shape from the hardware it could touch; the sirens, overpowered engine and GridLink overrides. It came to life with the squeal of tyres on concrete, ramming through the human host as fast as its engine would bear before crashing into the side of the leftmost APC.


    Imp and I took our chance, rushing through the melee as the ancient APC was shunted back by the modern paramedic¡¯s up-armoured ambulance. The mob behind us might be able to push through and disable the other one, tearing open the hatch to get at the gooey centre within, but neither of us were willing to take that chance. We scurried off the plaza, descending a set of stone stairs into a sunken part of the park.


    We found ourselves in a boutique mall built around an ever-blossoming cherry tree, the upmarket shops having remarkably survived the war raging on the surface. The only intrusion on the comparative oasis were the bodies sprawled around the tree in black and yellow gear speckled with pink blossoms.


    They were tactical officers, wearing thicker armour than usual and mostly armed with submachine guns. I rushed over at the sight of those, undoing webbing pouches and replacing my Ares-standard sickle magazines with their own. After a moment¡¯s morbid hesitation I turned my attention to the largest officer, a female troll whose left horn had been shattered by the high-powered shots that had torn through her skull.


    I fumbled to extricate her from her armoured vest, peeling off the Knight Errant patches before putting it on under my shoulder webbing. The vest had half a dozen pouches around its waist, each holding a bulky peak-discharge battery; fuel for the two-pronged gauss rifle she¡¯d had slung over her shoulder.


    It was dead weight, its advanced systems riddled with resonant fungus, but as I curled my fingers around its troll-sized pistol grip I sang to that growth and watched it flourish until I was holding a leashed animal bristling with killing intent.


    A fresh sound cut through the battlefield, the pounding hammer-blows of a twin rotor helicopter roaring overhead, its nominal allegiance displayed in its black fuselage and yellow trim even as it ignored the beleaguered Knight Errant remnants below.


    ¡°Firewatch!¡± I exclaimed, guessing wildly. I could barely believe they¡¯d managed to get one of their helicopters airborne.


    The immense Ares Dragon flew directly at the front of Medhall¡¯s tower and for a moment I thought the two were going to collide before the pilot pulled back into a vertical climb that seemed impossible to my inexpert eyes. It rose up the side of the skyscraper on momentum alone before swinging its fuselage around as it stalled at the pinnacle of its ascent, landing out of sight on the roof of the building.


    Something exploded off in the distance, a thundercrack followed by the firework crackle of detonating ammunition. I tightened my grip on the gauss rifle, my gaze alternating between the bodies at my feet and the towering skyscraper above me.


    ¡°This is Hell!¡± I shouted through the secondary explosions, all my fear spilling out of me in a single exclamation. ¡°It¡¯s arma-fucking-geddon ¨C and it¡¯ll only get worse inside!¡±


    ¡°No other way,¡± Imp said, though even her relentless confidence sounded strained. ¡°Nothing we can do but go forwards.¡±


    I took a step back, squeezing my eyes shut as though I could will myself away from this catastrophe. When I opened them again I looked around wildly, almost seeing the battlefield for the first time. I gazed with astonishment at the buildings around the plaza, at how half of them were as well-lit as Max Anders¡¯ tower.


    ¡°Fuck!¡± I shouted, then again for emphasis. ¡°Fuck!¡±


    This whole district was that family¡¯s castle. It was the epicentre of their power and control, designed from the ground up by a man who¡¯s life mission was the Reconquista of America. He was the architect of all of this. No wonder this plaza had become such a natural battlefield; it had been designed for a siege.


    But Medhall was a company first and foremost; an organism that had spread itself throughout the whole city. More than that, the two had grown together. One building would never be enough to contain its brain, even one as immense as the tower before me. It needed annexes, outbuildings, and they all needed connections to function.


    I could see tunnels stretched across the plaza below my feet, visible as impressions only through glowing tendrils of light, where the breach in the matrix had spilled through fibre-optic cables that had been grandfathered into Medhall¡¯s wireless host. It was below our feet, woven across the plaza in a root system of access corridors and cables dug into the earth. I followed the trail up, mentally charting a path down from the backrooms of this Medhall-owned tourist boutique.


    ¡°Come on,¡± I shouted, waving Imp over to a staff only door that had been partially concealed in a wall. Beyond was a simple narrow staircase descending into a well-lit tunnel that flourished with resonant life.


    I paused at the threshold, taking in one last look at the looming tower and trying to picture the unseen battle happening at its pinnacle. As I watched, a sudden explosion tore across the penultimate floor, spilling out into the air in a firestorm of uncontained magical energies.


    Max Anders was dead.