Deadly Game
Chapter Two
Shadow entered the access code and opened the door to the apartment hoping like crazy that Silk was home. Shadow knew nothing about treating wounds, and the troll had been unconscious for the last twenty minutes. It had been all that the elf and Shadow had been able to do to stop the bleeding, and muscle the gigantic troll from the rundown taxi into the building.
As fortune would have it, Silk was home and she didn’t even complain about the blood the troll left on her couch as she helped drag him there and cast a healing spell. Shadow watched in interest as the troll’s wounds healed, frustrated as always that there wasn’t anything else he could see occur.
After Silk finished with the healing spell, she cast what was probably a sleep spell on the troll, because he seemed to settle into a much deeper sleep. Unfortunately the elf seemed to take this as some kind of underhanded ploy, and he blurred into motion intent on attacking Silk. Shadow happened to be standing between the two, and while he had to admit that the elf was slightly faster, it didn’t really matter. Somehow in a way he hadn’t ever been able to fully explain to Silk, he knew that the elf was going to attack before the other had even started moving. As a consequence, it was a relatively simple matter to intercept him.
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Silk looked up as she finished the sleep spell. Consequently, she saw the elf explode into motion, but she wasn’t sure why. The mage’s brain registered that the elf was probably going to kill her, and she began what she knew was going to be a futile effort to summon the energies required for another sleep spell. Although Silk was focused wholly on her attacker, a corner of her mind registered that Shadow was moving also. Where the elf moved with an explosive speed, Shadow seemed somehow to be moving with an effortless grace, and yet to make it to some predefined spot before the elf. Almost casually her friend brushed the attacker across the neck, as the elf blew past still intent on reaching her.
Inexplicably, the elf was now falling-he hit the carpeted floor and slid into her knocking her down. Instead of following his unorthodox takedown with some exotic strike, the elf just sat there unmoving. Silk finally felt the energies gather she needed for her sleep spell, and released them sending the elf into a deep sleep. As time started moving normally again the mage rolled out from underneath her attacker.
Struggling not to cry, Silk found herself screaming at Shadow. “What were you doing? This psycho pointy-eared cyborg comes after me with murder in his eyes, and you trip him. Some tough fighter you are, I may as well have been here by myself.”
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Shadow had seen Silk become distressed before, and had found that the best policy was to remain silent, and just let her scream at him until she felt better. Another meta-human would probably be upset by her vocal attacks on them, but in the jungle, he had found that such displays meant nothing. Unless a creature physically attacked him, it generally did him no harm to let something try to convince itself that it had come out on top in an exchange.
In this instance however, Shadow could tell that Silk was truly bothered by what happened. Consequently, he decided that he needed to try and re-assure her. “I hit the elf with a nerve strike as he went by, paralyzing him so that he fell down and couldn’t hurt you.” “Why are you so distressed, you face death when you go out on a hostile extraction for Doc Wagon-how was this any different?”
Silk knew that Shadow had a point-she faced death when working, but it was a different when you were surrounded by your team, and it was just people shooting at you from far away. It was quite different when you were in your home, saw death approaching and weren’t able to do anything about it. Silk felt like a child who had been attacked by a pit bull, only to be rescued by a trusted pet who also turned out to be a pit bull. She was glad to have been saved, but didn’t know if she could ever feel at ease around Shadow again. Regardless, he was missing the whole point.
“You don’t get it,” screamed Silk pointing at the elf. “This guy is faster than you-I’ve worked with some top muscle, and it looked like both of you move faster than anyone I’ve ever seen.” As she finished the first portion of her diatribe, the mage grabbed a pistol from the pile of weapons that Shadow had deposited after entering the apartment. Ejecting the clip she resumed yelling, “Do you know what this is?”
With the sigh of someone who knows that he is setting himself up for additional abuse, Shadow nodded. “That is a pistol clip filled with 9mm stainless steel jacketed rounds.”
“Bingo,” yelled the mage as she threw the clip at Shadow. “Plus two points for knowing what they are, you just won an all expense paid trip to the morgue because you don't have a clue what that means.” Marching over to the troll Silk used one hand to point at the spot where one of the rounds had exited the troll’s chest, while the other hand picked up the round that had been pushed out of the troll’s body when Silk healed him. “How many times was this monster shot? Wait I’ll tell you-two. And how many exit holes do we have? ONE! Guess what, the round that got stopped was armor piercing too!” Raising her voice even higher to cut off Shadow who was now trying to get a word in edgewise Silk continued. “Do you realize what it takes to stop one of those monster rounds? These guys are out of our league!”
Shadow had been impressed with the elf’s speed, and there was no denying that it took an incredible amount of cyberware to stop a full metal jacket round, but he still didn’t see a cause for quite this much concern. “I think you are over-reacting, Master Chin was faster than this elf as well as being considerably more skilled.”
Silk looked around in frustration for something else to throw, and finally settled on the pistol that she was still holding. Shadow casually caught the pistol, just as he had the quickly moving clip seconds before. Madder now that it was obvious she wasn’t getting through to Shadow, and denied even the small satisfaction of hitting him with either of her projectiles Silk started screaming again. “You don’t get it, these guys could take both of us apart without even breaking a sweat.” Raising her hand to stop Shadow from responding the mage continued. “Don’t tell me they are nice-they could be saints and it wouldn’t do us any good. People this dangerous have equally dangerous enemies-we are going to get squashed while they are all playing, and Brutus and the Flash here won’t even notice.”
At that moment Silk went completely white. Before Shadow could ask her what the problem was, she threw herself into a chair and appeared to pass out. As Silk hit the couch, Shadow realized what she was worried about. He was fairly certain that the group hadn’t been followed physically, but with the heavy hitters who might be after them, it was almost certain that they had been followed on the astral plain.
Running into Silk’s bedroom, he grabbed a first aid kit from her workbag. Pulling out stimulant patches, Shadow was about to wake up the odd shaking elf when he realized that the other was likely to react violently upon awakening. Instead, Shadow moved everything that could serve as a weapon away from the two unconscious forms, moved Silk to the corner of the room furthest from the elf, and then applied the patch to the troll. Dropping the second patch next to the troll, Shadow moved several feet back so as not to register as a threat for the now-waking giant.
Once the other’s eyes opened, Shadow bowed. “My name is Shadow Cat. I do not wish you any harm, but we may be in extreme danger here.”
Hammer looked down at himself and registered that he had been healed. Following the lead of Shadow he responded in Japanese as well. “Thank you for your assistance, my name is Hammer, and my student is named Shiver. What should we do?”
Shadow motioned to the stim patch, “we should wake Shiver and flee this location as soon as Silk returns to her corporeal body. I should warn you that Shiver thought we were trying to hurt you, so we had to render him unconscious-he might need to be restrained upon awaking.”
Nodding Hammer prepared to revive the elf when the mage convulsed. Shadow saw her nose start to bleed, and dived towards the pile of weapons he had left by the counter. Hammer picked up Shiver, and started moving towards Silk.
The events of the next few seconds slowed to a crawl as Shadow’s combat sense told him there was going to be trouble, and his time sense automatically adjusted. He picked up a pistol and threw it to the troll as he grabbed his katana from the wall.
Hammer saw the door explode inward and heard the soft thumps of grenades being launched into the room. Realizing that the mage was extremely vulnerable, the huge troll picked her up and put her and Shiver under an overturned couch just as the grenades went off.
Shadow saw the troll take the full blast of two of the grenades and go down. The third grenade bounced off of a wall, and shredded a chair upon exploding. Sparring a brief thought about how pissed Silk was going to be about what was being done to her apartment, Shadow hid behind the counter as the sound of steps entering the room told him there were three attackers.
As the first intruder rounded the counter Shadow sprang up and hit him in the neck at the location of his favorite meridian. The disruption of the razor’s chi resulted in him loosing all control of his muscles. Before the heavily armored gillette could fall down Shadow grabbed him with one hand and held him up as he moved towards the next attacker.
The attacker furthest away reacted quickly, seeing his companion was hanging limply, he decided the other was dead, and fired a burst through him trying to hit Shadow.
The second attacker was caught mid step by Shadow’s attack. Luckily the gillette, who went by the name of Slim, was running Nova Tech’s most popular wire system. The interface between his body and the processor was flawless, and the processor was considered to be the best performance value for the money of any chip on the market. Unfortunately, the important phrase in this instance was “for the money”. When Shadow appeared, the series 6 processor tagged him as a threat, and slowed Slim’s time sense down to the point that he could follow what was happening.
The series 6 processor took a novel approach to threat response. Instead of performing a complete series of calculations to respond to every new development in the environment, the chip had a set of pre-programmed responses to the most common situations loaded into the processor cache. Unfortunately the processor had calculated that the only resistance likely to be met would be something big and slow that could withstand three concussion grenades. Consequently, it had the wrong set of instructions cached. Fortunately, Nova Tech made good cyberware, and had planned for such an eventuality. The chip immediately dumped the entire set of prepared responses, a process that took less than one hundredth of a second. Realizing that it didn’t have the processing power to perform full analysis of this situation, the chip instead simply analyzed the distance to the threat, and the readiness of the samurai in which the system was installed. Finding that the samurai was midway through one step, and that the floor was wet from the contents of a vase which had been shattered by the concussion grenades, the chip started it’s first shortcut. Where a standard processor would have performed further computations to determine the extent to which the samurai might have been able to move, the series 6 processor instead simply decided that it was unsafe for it’s user to change direction or speed for the next .3 seconds. Another processor would have followed its readiness analysis with a calculation on the speed and abilities of the threat. Again, this less powerful chip was forced to cut corners to handle the fact that it had been caught unawares. Instead of the full threat analysis, the series 6 processor took the already determined distance to the threat, and used a predetermined maximum speed to decide the amount of time that was available to respond to the threat. The chip designers had found that this entire process was actually finished in 95% of the time that would be required by a normal chip. Unfortunately, the maximum speed the chip designers had decided upon for the threat was only 330% faster than a normal human. Shadow however was an amazing four times as fast as a normal human.
The results of all this were that the top of the line components of the Nova Tech system slowed down the samurai’s time sense enough that he saw events unfold in liquid slow motion, but he never really had a chance. Slim saw Shadow explode out of hiding, and saw the point member of the team take the first bullet. By that time, the series 6 processor had dumped its initial set of instructions, and decided on a course of action, bringing up Slim’s gun to track the priority one threat.
As the assault rifle started moving, Slim watched the red dot from the laser sight move across the wall towards Shadow. Before the dot had moved even a quarter of the distance, Slim saw Shadow release his captive. As the now bleeding samurai started to fall, he was hit by two more bullets. Slim saw the physical adept take a step closer. A shiver ran through the samurai as he realized that while the dot from his laser sight was still gliding towards his attacker, it was doing so much to slowly to arrive in time.
The laser sight was only a foot away from the target now, but it wasn’t going to make it in time. As Shadow’s katana slid towards Slim, he had time only to marvel at the speed with which the other had moved.
Shadow completed his cut, and turned towards the last gunman even as Slim’s body started to fall. Before he had completed his turn, Shadow knew it was too late. The last samurai was moving in slow motion, but even as slow as the other seemed to be moving, he had been given too much time to aim.
The samurai changed his weapon to full auto mode with a thought, and squeezed the trigger. Shadow finished his turn only to be cut down by yet more jacketed rounds. Smiling slightly at his success in bringing such a powerful adversary down, the samurai sub vocalized, “clear” to the last member of his team only to be made a liar when a single armor piercing pistol round took him through the forehead killing him instantly.
The mage, who had just stepped into the doorway upon receiving the signal that hostiles had been neutralized, realized that the biggest troll he had ever seen had just eliminated the sole other member of the team. Panicking, he snapped off his most powerful spell and a line of force struck the troll throwing him through a wall. Reeling back, the mage almost blacked out.
“Got him,” he thought as he slumped down fighting off waves of dizziness. “There is no way he survived that, I should be safe until backup can arrive.”
Sadly enough, the universe decide it was time to show the mage just how ignorant he was of what was required for something to qualify as impossible. Sheer terror overcame the mage when he heard someone running down the hall towards him. Thoughts of trying to cast a spell in his exhausted state were discarded as the footsteps reached the door. The mage aimed the pistol that had been thrust at him at the beginning of the mission at the point where he figured the troll’s head would appear.
For the second time that day, the mage’s incompetence was proven, as the figure, which rounded the corner, proved to be much shorter than the mage was expecting.
Shadow, covered in blood, but seemingly unharmed, crossed the distance between him and the target in less time than it took the mage to squeeze the trigger. Slapping the gun aside, Shadow saw it discharge into the wall as his second strike knocked the mage unconscious.
Running back into the apartment, Shadow was relieved to see Hammer checking the two elves. Having eliminated the immediate threats, the physical adept was at a loss for how to proceed, and was glad that the street savvy troll was conscious and able to suggest a course of action.
Hammer handed an assault rifle to Shadow abandoning the polite Japanese he had been using previously for clipped English. “This apartment is compromised, do you have a safe house?” When Shadow indicated that he did not, Hammer shrugged. “Do you have any objections to my assuming tactical control?”
Running into the bedroom where Silk kept her work gear, Shadow grabbed two flak jackets. “Tactical is all yours,” confirmed Shadow as he threw a vest to Hammer, and started putting the other vest on Silk. The troll finished putting a vest on Shiver, and then checked Silk.
“Her breathing is back to normal, so it looks like she is back from astral, we need to go now that it is safe to move her. World-class ambush teams have backup that can arrive in seven minutes if all on-site assets are neutralized. These guys aren‘t world class, or they would have done things quite a bit differently, but they will have astral over watch, and we only have three minutes left.”
Upon seeing Shadow again indicate agreement, the troll slung a second assault rifle over his shoulder, and then picked up both elves. “Take point, give me a rundown of your capabilities as we move so I can take them into consideration.“
Adopting the other’s clipped tone, Shadow ran a quick check on his new weapon as he replied. “Phys ad, weir-tiger, I regenerate from any wound which doesn’t damage my central nervous system.”
Hammer didn’t ask, but as he followed Shadow towards the nearest set of stairs, he puzzled over why one of the notoriously reclusive shape shifters had left the jungles of China to come to Seattle.
* * *
Six hours later Shadow and Hammer found themselves in one of the poorest parts of the city, still trying to avoid pursuit. The Redmond area had long ago slid from wealthy and thriving, to the worst kind of slum. Since the awakening of magic, these urban disasters had come to be called barrens. Like most similar areas, Redmond was a combination of poverty, corporate pollution, organized crime, gang warfare, and an almost complete absence of law enforcement agencies.
On the plus side, Silk and Shiver were both awake and able to lend their considerable aid to keeping the group from being gunned down. On the minus side, the four metahumans had spent the last six hours hiding in the demolished remains of what had once been an apartment building. There were semi-regular patrols by their unknown adversary, who seemed pretty sure that they had gone to ground in the area, and the roof under which they were hiding provided almost no protection from the rain. Luckily, the spot in which they were hiding was so undesirable, that the group hadn’t been forced to evict any squatters from the building. None of the group had felt good about killing a squatter in cold blood, but there was no question that if offended, one of the street people was quite likely to sell information about the group’s location to one of the unmarked vehicles circling the area. Consequently, the six-hour wait had been not only miserable, but also dangerous. Hammer and Shiver both had extensive bioware enhancements, which granted them a variety of superhuman abilities. Unfortunately, the presence of artificial tissues placed a significant strain on their bodies, especially their immune system. A sickness that a normal person would shrug off as inconsequential, could very well put the elf or troll down for days, or in a serious case in the hospital.
During the wait, the group had discussed their best course of action. Everyone Silk knew was firmly established on the right side of the law, and consequently none of her friends had the ability to help the group go evade their hunters. Shiver didn’t have any contacts outside of Japan, and Hammer having arrived in Seattle only hours before his protégé, hadn’t had a chance to extend his contacts outside of Asia where he usually worked. Shadow had professed a complete ignorance of how the quasi-legal happenings of Seattle functioned, but finally produced a number that he said might be able to help them.
Dialing the number on Hammers wrist phone, Shadow hoped that the situation in which the group found itself was of sufficient urgency to merit calling the mysterious individual who had given the phys ad the number. Upon learning of Shadow’s trip to America, the eccentric elf had instructed the shape shifter to commit the number to memory, and use it only in a serious emergency. As the patron of the monastery where Shadow had stayed after deciding to learn about metahumanity, this individual merited a great deal of respect. When one also considered the fact that the elf was supposedly a mage of incredible power, who seemed somewhat unstable, Shadow was reluctant to request help lightly.
As soon as the call went through, it was answered. “Hello,” responded a flat voice that had been heavily disguised by electronic devices. Noting that the voice was unaccompanied by a visual signal, Shadow set about presenting his case.
“My name is Shadow Cat, and I was given this number along with instructions to use it in a time of emergency by -.”
“That is sufficient,” interrupted the voice. “Do not mention anything which could be used to identify your benefactor on this line, it is not secure. What kind of assistance do you need?”
A quick description of the situation in which the group found itself resulted in the voice pausing for a few seconds. “Call the number which is being displayed, and ask for Peter. Payment has been arranged, and a complete description of the situation has been provided. All that remains for you is to arrange the details of the extraction.” The voice paused again for a couple of seconds before making one last comment and then terminating the call. “It would appear that whoever is after your group is a fairly heavy hitter, there is a very powerful matrix presence trying to trace this call right now.”
While Shadow made the second call to Peter, who by all indications was a very good and successful fixer, Shiver and Hammer traded looks. Whoever they had just called had been very professional. Their ability to contact and arrange for what could be a very dangerous pickup with a very well connected fixer was indicative of a powerful and wealthy organization. If this organization said that the group’s pursuers had some impressive matrix muscle, then that was a fact to be more than a little worried about. An even more disturbing idea was the fact that although the computer distortion had made it impossible to tell very much about the voice, there was no doubt Hammer’s mind that the tempo of the words had increased slightly as the conversation concluded. Such a change was most likely caused by anxiety, or fear-and there was no question in the big troll’s mind that any organization that could scare that icy operator was an organization that Hammer didn’t want to tangle with any more than he had to.
Shadow was just finishing up arranging the pickup, and didn’t have any experience with living on the wrong side of the law, or the shadows as it was called, so he hadn’t had a chance to get worried about their opposition. Even if he knew what they were up against he probably wouldn’t bat an eye-he seemed so curious about all things metahuman, that he would probably just consider it a fun experience. Shiver was handling everything very stoically. Since his friends and students had been massacred at the monastery he hadn’t talked much, instead trusting to Hammer to point him in the direction needed for him to inflict hurt on the appropriate parties. Silk was a completely different issue. Even now, she was starting to put things together. Hammer could see that she didn’t know enough to realize the implications of what had just happened, but she knew it was somehow significant.
Hammer had realized in the past few hours that Silk didn’t handle new developments very well, so he wasn’t surprised when she took a deep breath in preparation to begin complaining at a high volume. Hammer wasn’t quite as fast as Shiver, or even Shadow, but he was still able to cover the distance separating him from Silk, and cover her mouth with his hand before she realized what had happened. Having had her vocal diatribe preempted, Silk was forced to settle for delivering it with venomous looks. There was a tense moment when Shadow heard the heavily muffled yell, but upon seeing that what was visible of the elf’s pretty features were fixed in an expression of frustration instead of fear, he relaxed and tried to hide a grin.
Hammer quietly began talking, “I think that you would be very sorry if the hasty expression of your very valid concerns resulted in our being killed. Do you agree?”
Silk’s face took on a more humble cast and she tried unsuccessfully to nod against the pressure of the troll’s massive hand.
“Are you willing to remain silent if I release you,” asked Hammer.
The mage again indicated agreement, and was released by the samurai. Within seconds, Silk’s chagrin had faded, and been replaced by indignation. Walking over to Shadow, she did an incredible job of screaming at him while never raising her voice above a whisper.
“What is so funny fur brain? That oversized Conan could have killed me right there and you didn’t even do anything.”
As her voice started to creep up in volume, Shadow decided to follow Hammer’s lead, and cover Silk’s mouth with his hand. “He is on our side, and he hardly looked like he was going to hurt you-even by your own standards, he was impeccably courteous.” Shadow was about to tell Silk that he was impressed with how reasonable she was when physically restrained, but stopped as both of his eyes filled with tears. “You bit me,” whispered the shape shifter.
“Don’t touch me you feline bully,” whispered the elf as she turned away from the rest of the group. Shadow cradled his swiftly healing hand, and tried to ignore the imprecations being muttered by Silk who knew very well that the phys ad’s hearing was acute enough to hear even things she said under her breath.
Shaking his head in bafflement and anger, the shape shifter turned and began to explain the extraction plans to the other two members of the group.
* * *
The group had spent another cold and wet two hours avoiding the steadily increasing patrols through the area. A careful trip around the perimeter of the area in which they had been trapped revealed that it was too well guarded to sneak across. Hammer and Shiver had discussed Shadow’s idea of just trying to shoot their way out, but had decided that although it would be easy to eliminate the opposition in any one area, that such an action would have the entire group on their trail in quick order.
As the time for pickup approached, Hammer led the group to the north side of the four-block area, where they carefully scouted the opposition. The big troll indicated targets to each member of the group, in preparation for the arrival of the extraction team.
When the time arrived for the extraction team to show, three identical vehicles came down the street. A heavily muscled human waved the cars to a stop and walked over to tell the drivers that the street was closed. As the human reached the cars, things started happening so fast that even Shadow and Shiver had a hard time following everything.
The human took a three round burst from someone inside the car. Simultaneously, it appeared that no less than four snipers opened fire from the rooftops across the street. The snipers cleared the street in a matter of 3 seconds. While the snipers were clearing out the meat assets, three more marksmen opened up with anti vehicle, and anti drone missiles. The hail of missiles was augmented by the arrival of six vectored thrust drones, which also knocked enemy drones from the sky. From inside the cars, two powerful magicians seemed to be operating. A very powerful ram spell hit one City Master with a fist of force that caved in the armored plating, and knocked the riot vehicle into a building on the side of the road. The second mage seemed to favor fire because the other City Master was enveloped in a hell blast spell that instantly slagged the metal of the vehicle, before igniting the fuel, and causing a massive explosion.
While the last black-clad human was falling to the ground, Hammer scooped up Silk, who was still trying to understand what was happening, and the group ran towards the middle car.
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