Hunting Shadows
By
Fade
Chapter 9
Silk rolled over on her lumpy mattress for what seemed like the thousandth time. Hammer had led his two teammates through the most filthy, run-down, garbage-filled parts of Seattle for three hours before stopping at a very rundown bar. A few drinks and forty nuyen later, the team had a name and a location for a minor fixer.
Hammer hadn't been very excited about the prospect of trusting someone with whom they hadn't had any past dealings, but the troll hadn't felt like it was safe to call Peter, and purchase the use of one of Azetlander's safe houses. Shiver knew that Peter was their obvious source for a new place to stay, so if the elf wanted to get to them badly enough, he would likely be able to find them if they stayed in one of Peter's flops.
Silk agreed with the logic, but she was having a very difficult time sleeping in the new apartment, especially on the exceptionally poor mattress that she had claimed. At least I have a mattress, there isn't a single piece of furniture in the place that will support Hammer, so he'll be sleeping on the floor once he decides to try and get some shut-eye.
Shadow didn't seem to be having any problems sleeping on the couch, but Silk was starting to get the idea that the weir-tiger wouldn't have problems sleeping anywhere. Whatever problems and worries might plague the shape shifter during the day, when it came time to sleep nothing else really mattered to him except getting enough rest to attack the next day.
Silk finally decided to get up and go talk to Hammer, only to find the big troll meditating. The mage let out a small sigh, and turned to go back to her ramshackle bad when Hammer shifted slightly from his position on the floor. "Can I help you," inquired the battered troll.
"I couldn't sleep, so I thought that I would come and talk. Maybe see how you were doing."
"You mean you thought you would come and see how I was handling having my most promising, only-surviving student attempt to murder a teammate," observed the troll with a sad smile.
Silk shrugged uncomfortably. "I guess something like that. I wanted to apologize for coming in and being so well...me I guess. I kind of pushed him over the edge. I didn't mean to, but I was just so tired of the way he was acting. It was like he didn't have a heart, and all he could think about was himself."
Silk realized that her apology had come out sounding more like an attempt to justify her actions, and opened her mouth to try and correct what she had just said, but Hammer held a hand up. "What is done is done, and there is no going back. I've been fearing for a little while that this is where events would lead us, I just didn't want to believe that the Shiver I knew had slipped so far away from the child I rescued from the streets."
Silk looked at the sagging floor uncomfortably for a moment. "It isn't you fault you know. Everyone chooses their own path. Shiver chose his, just like you've chosen yours."
Hammer shook his head slowly. "There is no doubt but that I have contributed to where he is now. The money that was used to send him to Chiba was nuyen under my control. We've both seen the reports that the megacorps have been suppressing for years. Cyberware tends to push people over the edge. The flaws that we are seeing now probably never would have come to light if I hadn't pushed him into such a drastic set of modifications so quickly."
Silk shrugged unable to argue with the fact that being turned into a demigod overnight might have contributed to Shiver's drastic change in personality, but she was unwilling to place the blame wholly on Shiver's mods.
"From what you've told me, you have more cyberware in you than he does, and you are one of the more stable people I know."
Hammer sighed and gave Silk the same sad smile that he had given her earlier. "It has been my experience that all of use have a 'edge' as you call it. If events push us hard enough, we will each tumble. I fear that my actions helped move Shiver closer to that edge. I had years to adjust to my cyberware, and plenty of people around who could humble me when I started to forget that I was only metahuman. The elf got everything all at once, and when it came right down to it, there is no guarantee that any of us could have defeated him."
Silk opened her mouth again to try and argue with Hammer, but as her brain caught up with her reflexive desire to argue, she realized that she didn't really have a good comeback for what had just been said. It was likely that the mage had contributed to Shiver being pushed so close to the edge. The only question was whether or not Hammer was trying to insinuate that very thing. The mage shot Hammer a disturbed look before turning around and heading back to her unyielding mattress.
Silk spent the next half hour trying to go to sleep, but her mind had latched onto what Hammer had said, and she couldn't relax enough to drift off. She just kept wondering how someone could go from relatively normal, to trying to kill the only friends that they had. What could she have done differently to change the flow of events? Just as Silk started to fall asleep, she heard a tiny voice that she initially ignored thinking it was part of a waking dream.
"Master, master, the bad guys, the bad guys."
Silk suddenly realized that the voice was one of the watchers that she had left to help keep watch on the apartment. As the mage shot out of her bed, the second watcher popped into the room, and began echoing the first's alarm.
As Silk grabbed the bugout bag that Hammer had helped her prepare, she heard activity in the two rooms next to her, and then something hit her in the shoulder, throwing her to the floor.
Hammer's cybernetically enhanced hearing had picked up the watcher's cries as soon as the magical construct had appeared, but the razor had been so lost in thought that like Silk he hadn't realized what was going on for a couple of seconds. The couple of seconds had nearly been enough to cost the gillette his life.
Hammer had jumped to his feet as the flimsy door to the apartment had been reduced to splinters, and bullets had come pouring into the room. Hammer still had a light flak vest on, which combined with his synthetic skin was enough to help shed most of the fire, but he still felt his pain editor kick on, shrouding him in numbness while indicating that he was injured.
Hammer dove to the side as he drew a pair of heavy pistols. Shadow chose that moment to come out of his room pursed by a line of bullets coming from outside his now-shattered window. A pair of grenades bounced into the room, but one passed close enough to Shadow that he reached down in a blur and tossed it back through the warped doorway.
Hammer watched the remaining sphere roll towards him in seeming slow motion. The pineapple shaped grenade was obviously high explosive, and specifically designed to cut down groups of people in confined spaces like the tiny apartment.
The troll tried to throw himself back, but he felt the force of the explosion pick him up and hurl him into a wall. Shadow, being further from ground zero would have fared better except for the fact that the shape shifter was only wearing the spider silk outfit that Silk had bought him the week before.
Red blossomed all over the physical adept as shrapnel tore through him hurling him to the floor. A second latter the dark figures outside the apartment stopped shooting at the two unmoving runners
A pair of seven foot orks entered the bloody room, replete with gang colors and piercings. The two gangers were followed by three burley humans who were pushing a greasy elf in front of them. The center human pointed at Shadow. "Dats da one. Fragger fragged us up good. Right Blitzen, your information was good, so we'll get you your money."
The two orks walked over to Hammer and kicked him a couple of times. The bigger of the two hauled back to kick Hammer again only to find himself flying through the air. Before anyone could respond to Hammer's attack, Shadow sprung from the floor, katana blurring, and cut down two of the humans.
As the last human hit the ground, Hammer faced off against the closest ork. The ganger raised the club he had been carrying and launched himself at Hammer.
Shadow felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up at the thought of something as big as that ork throwing itself at him. The ork weighed at least 180 kilos, and he was moving incredibly fast for an unmodified person. There was no way that the shape shifter would have been able to generate enough force to stop the ganger. It was obvious that the ork was an experienced street fighter who know how to use his size and strength to best advantage.
The tough obviously hadn't counted on the fact that he was completely and utterly outclassed by the runner. Hammer was bloodied and only moving with a fraction of his usual grace and speed, but he still outweighed the ork by nearly 7 0 kilos, and had a height advantage of nearly half a meter.
As the ganger brought his club around, Hammer stepped into the blow, checking his opponent's swing, and hitting the ork with an uppercut to the chin. As the strike connected with the ork's pierced face, his neck snapped and knees collapsed. Lost in the numbness his pain editor cushioned him with, Hammer grabbed the ganger's club wielding arm, and smoothly directed the falling ork to the side.
As the troll looked up, he saw the second ork fall down with one of Shadow's throwing knives in his throat. Turning to the elf, Hammer recognized the shaking wreck before him as the fixer that had set the team up with the safe house. Hammer was about to walk over and deal with the fixer when he realized that the breathing coming from Silk's room was getting steadily weaker.
"Watch him," commanded the runner as he turned and limped to Silk's room.
Hammer kicked the door to the room open and dove into the room. The sniper Hammer had expected to take a shot at him never materialized, and the runner was able to drag Silk out of the room. As the troll grabbed a medkit out of his bugout bag, he saw Shadow circling the fixer like a hungry shark. Hammer slapped the medkit on the exit wound, while he pulled a Synth-Skin TM patch from a pocket, and placed it on Silk's back.
Hammer picked Silk, up placing her over his shoulder, grabbed her and his bugout bags, and then pulled an Aries Predator out. The troll motioned Shadow through the door. "Take point, I'll bring this undesirable."
Shadow looked at Hammer, and when the troll saw the rage bubbling in his teammate's eyes, he realized that he had gotten used to the civilized face that the shape shifter generally presented to the world. Shadow had been pushed too far though, and the killer instincts that had been a part of him since he had been born were dangerously close to the surface, after seeing that Silk was hurt.
To the troll’s relief, Shadow seemed to shiver for a second, and then he nodded and turned to walk out the door.
***
After getting out of the immediate area, Hammer had pressured Blitzen into giving them the name of a nearby mage, Rocky, who occasionally dabbled in the shadows. The runners had dragged Blitzen to the mage's flop, and paid a fairly handsome sum to get Silk and Hammer healed back up.
By the time Silk was up and moving around, Shadow was calmed down enough that Hammer decided it was time to go ahead and decide what to do with the greasy fixer.
Hammer turned to address the elf, and something in the troll's eyes must have tipped the fixer off to the fact that his status was about to change. Hammer had dismissed Blitzen as a relatively low grade threat, so he was taken completely by surprise when the fixer tugged on his finger, and then seemed to throw the now-detached digit to a point left of where Shadow was standing.
The slight shimmer trailing behind the finger was enough to tip Hammer off to the fact that the fixer was using the finger as an anchor for a monofilament whip. Shadow apparently saw the trailing strand of fiber as well, but the shape shifter didn't seem to understand the fact that monowire, with a width of just three or four atoms really could cut through just about anything.
Shadow raised his katana to parry the attack only to watch in extreme slow motion as the wire started slicing into his beloved blade. Hammer watched in terror as the monofilament strand finished cutting through the high carbon steel, and began arcing around to slice into Shadow's neck.
With a speed that the two mages couldn't possibly hope to follow, and which Hammer never could have duplicated, Shadow threw himself to the side, tilting his head such that the wire only nicked a portion of his ear.
Hammer was angling for a clean shot with his Predator, when the dog shaman let fly with a powerbolt that knocked Blitzen into a wall.
"I never trusted that slimy son of a slitch..." growled the dog shaman as the elf's corpse hit the hardwood floor. Whatever else the mage had been about to say, it was drown out by the howl of anguish from Shadow as the shape shifter realized that his beloved weapon, an heirloom passed down for hundreds of years, had been destroyed. The physad rounded on the fixer’s corpse, but Hammer got there first, pulling the smaller man away before he could do anything more than hiss and spit. It took the runners a half an hour to get the shape shifter calmed down enough that Hammer was able to release him.
At that point Shadow rapidly became despondent, and in the end Hammer all but carried the other runner out the door, while Silk followed with the two pieces of the ancient katana.
***
The next couple of days were spent in a hotel in one of the middle class areas of Seattle. The fact that there were maids in and out all day meant that a hotel was normally not a good place to try and lay low, but Hammer managed to find a place that was willing to accept relatively untraceable paper notes instead of demanding payment from a credstick. That combined with the fact that there was no electronic surveillance of the building had been enough to finally convince Hammer that they would be better off staying in the hotel rather than trusting another fixer who was likely to sell them off to the highest bidder.
Hammer had made Shadow and Silk throw away their wrist phones, to make sure that they couldn't be traced. The troll had then spent a couple of hours setting up a message drop so that the team could safely communicate with the outside world, albeit in a limited manner.
That accomplished, the runners had set about getting a hold of Peter. Silk had been all for contacting the tiny fixer as soon as they had finished up with Blitzen, but Hammer hadn't felt right about increasing their dependence on the fixer. The troll hadn't expected to get involved in Seattle's shadows so quickly, so he hadn't set up the appropriate network of contacts in the area, and the team had been paying for that lack during the last few days.
In the end, Silk had agreed that they should make some new contacts, even if she didn't think there was anything wrong with Peter. Shadow, still depressed because of the destruction of his katana, was willing to go along with whatever his teammates decided, so the mage's acceptance had clinched things. The next evening the team staked out a public vidphone and put in a call to the fixer.
"Peter le habla," responded the fixer on the voice-only link.
"Peter, it is Hammer. This gang is turning up the heat."
Hammer could almost see Peter nodding earnestly. "Peter wondered if that business with Blitzen involved the three of you."
The three of us, not the four of us. Something in Hammer seemed to tighten up, and the pieces to something that had been puzzling him started fitting together. Shiver had indicated that he had an offer for employment, but Hammer hadn't realized that it was from Peter. "How is Shiver," asked the troll as nonchalantly as he was able.
There was a pause on the other end of the line as Peter considered the best way to respond. "Senior Shiver is doing very well-he has an incredible amount of potential as you already know." Now certain that Peter hadn't been playing things straight with the rest of the team Hammer decided to push the fixer a little.
"No, I'm afraid that Shiver had an incredible amount of potential. Unfortunately he has chosen to throw his lot in with those of questionable honesty." While Peter was still trying to decide how to respond Hammer continued. "We will be withdrawing our share of the money that is on account with you. We would like to take delivery tomorrow."
"Peter will arrange for thirty thousand to be delivered wherever you would like tomorrow."
Additional warning bells started going off in Hammer's head. "No Peter, I said all of it-thirty thousand is not acceptable."
"Peter does not have anything more than thirty thousand right now. Take the thirty thousand and be grateful that you are able to collect anything. Peter has been more than fair with you."
Hammer shook his head even though he knew that Peter couldn't see the gesture. "The yakuza boss didn't pay you did he Peter? Under different circumstances I might have been willing to work with you a little, but you've proved yourself untrustworthy. If we don't have the full amount that you owe us deposited in a bank account by tomorrow at five, we'll ruin your rep. You’ll never work in this town again." The big runner typed in a phone number and flashed it to Peter. "Here is the phone number to the mail drop where you can reach us to give us the account number."
***
Shiver smiled at the edgy Novatech security guards as they finally decided to let him through the checkpoint into the more elite part of the corporate mall. The security equipment had detected the fact that the elf was wired, and the extensiveness of the mods was enough to tip even the dumbest of guards off to the fact that Shiver had to have more than just standard quality cyberware.
Science had quickly proved that a person's body could support only so much cyberware. At some point the drain of powering everything with the body's nervous system just became too much. Of course here were ways that the effects of cyberware could be reduced. Alpha, beta, and delta cyberware all represented metahumanity's best efforts to pack increasingly more metal into someone's body. Deltaware, available only in a few elite clinics, used the highest possible grade components as well as special methods of matching the cyberware to the person receiving the modifications. Consequently, on average people could be given nearly twice as many mods for the same strain on a person's body. Of course improving so drastically on nature tended to be expensive.
As a general rule only elite corporate agents, or others with drek-hot connections and excessive amounts of money were ever able to obtain deltaware. Ironically, it was this fact that had convinced the Novatech guards to let Shiver through.
The elf's forged credstick was good enough that the guards were being told that he was a "special security consultant" for the corp. Under normal circumstances that would have raised a few eyebrows, and caused the guards to call up the chain of command seeking verification that Shiver was really who he said he was. With the scanner confirming that the elf really was the most lethal person any of them had ever seen, the guards were heavily inclined to believe that Shiver really was some kind of corporate black ops agent.
Whatever the official scientific position, every guard there had dealt with enough people packing heavy amounts of cyberware to know that they generally weren't very stable. That last fact had been enough to convince the guards not to give Shiver any possible reason to turn violent than was absolutely necessary.
Shiver walked past the guard booth fully aware that the security detail would have at least two of their more capable members following him around the mall, but the elf considered it a slight price to gain admission to his target.
Of course things would have been much easier if Hammer and the rest would have been along. The troll probably wouldn’t have been able to make it past the security, but Shadow and Silk wouldn’t have had any problems. Between the three of them they could have quickly neutralized the target while Hammer distracted the security forces by sowing confusion throughout the parts of the mall that were open to the general public. Of course that was all irrelevant. If Shiver never saw the rest of the old team again, it would be too soon.
Shiver, working from memory, slowly walked through the high-class mall towards Hongyan's Massage Parlor. The elf stopped off at a Sunglass Hut, and tried on a pair of sunglasses to help place his minders at ease. On a sudden whim, the kind of impulse buying that Hammer had always frowned upon, Shiver went ahead and bought the Solar Flare TM glasses, pocketing them for later use.
They had all turned on him. First that holier than thou shape shifter, then Hammer and finally the slitch princess. As many times as Shiver had saved them all, they didn’t have any room to hold a momentary mistake against him. Killing was what they all did. Dress it up in pretty phrases, and abstract philosophy if you want, but they got paid, almost invariably paid well, for hunting out the ‘bad guys’ and killing them.
Shiver had tried to follow all of the ridiculous rules of conduct that the troll had set himself. When you owed someone as much as the elf owed Hammer, you did what you could and didn’t complain, but at some point the troll should have been willing to cut other people some slack. Shiver had done quite a bit to pay back the debt, so it had shocked him when the troll had tried to slap him down. When that slitch had rubbed his face in the fact that he had given up the magic out of a sense of debt to someone who more and more was taking his servitude for granted it had been too much.
It hadn’t surprised Shiver when Shadow had stepped in to protect his minder, but Hammer’s interference had been an unquestionable statement of where his loyalties were placed.
Not even the greatest debts had to be honored when the one you owed them too didn’t acknowledge some kind of reciprocal responsibility.
A couple more stops at various stores placed Shiver of Hongyan's at precisely ten to three. The elf checked the time display on his cybereyes, and then entered the massage parlor.
Half an hour latter the razor was stretched out on a table receiving a massage from a delicate Chinese lady who happed to be one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen in real life.
Shiver was so used to working out with Hammer and Shadow that he had been on the receding end of the massage for fifteen minutes before he realized that there was no way a normal person could be as strong as his masseuse, and still look like she was going to blow away if a particularly strong wind hit her. She must have muscle replacement-insures that she has the strength to massage all her clients, while still allowing her to look like a normal woman.
It followed that the young woman was probably modified in other ways-some low level synthetic pheremones probably accounted for some of the attraction he was feeling for her, and her flawless face had probably been helped along by some pricey biosculpt surgery.
The razor was struck by an appreciation of just how much Novatech pampered his target. Peter had hired Shiver to kill one of Novatech's top scientists. Normally, Frederick Alstien would have been all but impossible to get to. Novatech didn't have the best security in the business, but they were one of the biggest corps nonetheless, so trying to get to anything in the heart of their corporate enclave would have been the next best thing to futile.
Mr. Johnson however had provided Peter with some vital information. It seemed that Frederick had a great love of quality massages in general, and Hongyan's in particular. The corporate heads had tried bringing the owner of the establishment into the top secret area where Frederick was housed, but she was adamant about working only in the familiar surroundings of her shop.
Of course something like that wasn't usually enough to give any corporate vice president pause, but Frederick had intervened on Madam Hongyan's behalf. The scientist demanded to be allowed to visit the high security section of the mall three times each week. In return he continued to be a good little worker drone and produce marvelous things that would help pump up the corp’s bottom line.
In the end the head of the Seattle division of Novatech had intervened personally to make sure that security was tightened up in Madam Hongyan's on the days where Frederick came for a visit.
Today was such a day, and Shiver owed his present opportunity to flatline the scientist to the fact that all the security in the world was only so effective when anyone with an appointment was still allowed into Hongyan's regardless of the corps desires.
As the timer on the corner of Shiver's field of vision approached zero, the razor started to turn over only to find that his masseuse had positioned a pair of razor sharp spurs under his throat.
"Mr. Fiel," purred the beautiful woman. "I'm sorry, but as you were told earlier, all of our guests are required not to leave their table."
Shiver sat unmoving for a second calculating the odds that the cybered masseuse would be able to cut this throat before he could move.
Offering a smile that didn't quite make it to his eyes, Shiver slowly held his hands up and laid back down on the table. As the Asian woman let her spurs slide back in their sheaths, Shiver spun around extending his hand razors, and cut her throat.
Rolling off the table, Shiver grabbed his clothes and donned them quickly pausing only to throw the 'hidden' camera a wink. Fifteen seconds after he left the table, the razor heard footsteps outside the room.
Ah, the calvary shows up, thought the gillette as a pair of uniformed security men burst through the door. The two guards had been following Shiver just as he had expected. Solid company men, both of them had been born into poverty only to be given good jobs by the company as they proved their worth.
Both men had gone into security because they wanted to protect the various members of the corporation that had given them so much. Gifted with fairly high quality modifications and righteous fury that someone would so casually murder someone they were supposed to be protecting, the pair set upon Shiver. Had the elf been the kind of punk gang member that the two were used to dealing with, they no doubt would have subdued him in short order. Their mods made them quick enough that even the fastest human had a hard time following their attacks let along matching their movements.
Unfortunately, superhuman as they were, Shadow was as far above them as they were above an average metahuman. Their modifications were good, Shadow's involved technology so bleeding edge that most ‘experts’ didn't even realize that it could be installed yet. The sec men were good, but Shiver was Death given form and allowed to walk among mere mortals. The elf tore through the two like they were made of paper, and exited the room pausing only to retrieve the weapons that they had been carrying. They entire process took less than two seconds.
Alarms started sounding, but they were far away, signaling to Shiver that the other members of his team were doing their job and creating a sufficiently large distraction to tie up all the security people that otherwise would have been headed towards the parlor looking for his head.
Coming up on the room where Frederick always received his massages, Shiver brought up his recently acquired pistols and placed a pair of shots on each side of the door. A scream rewarded the elf as the bullets tore through the flimsy, decorative walls used to separate the clients from each other. Someone should have been worrying about more than just sound dampening when they put those pieces of drek up, though the razor as he threw himself to the side.
Shiver's evasionary move came just in the nick of time, as a pair of bursts came through the wall in response to his shots.
Shiver targeted the point where one of the bursts had originated from, and let fly with a pair of shots one of which his acute ears informed him struck flesh.
People were screaming now, a gurgling sound from behind Shiver indicated that at least one of the bursts from the guards had taken out a bystander in one of the other rooms.
Shiver dove to the side as another hail of fire tore through the wall, just missing the grinning elf. It was obvious that the remaining guard didn't have augmented hearing, or he would have been able to track Shiver by sound. They always go for bigger muscles and forget that you can't shoot what you can't see or hear.
Not suffering from the same lack of preparedness, Shiver tracked his target's breathing and fired four rounds, spacing them so that he would hit no matter how his opponent was standing.
Drifting to the side, Shiver was able to look through the holes that the gun fire had ripped through the wall and pinpoint the two guards. A couple of shots latter Shiver was positive that both guards were dead, and he hit the wall at very nearly a dead run, crashing through it to find Frederick cowering in the corner of the room.
Shiver paused for a split second. The elf hadn't ever set out to assassinate someone who hadn’t ever done him harm, and everything Hammer had ever taught him about the responsibility of the strong to protect the weak seemed to roar through Shiver's mind. The razor cocked his head slightly to the side and then placed a bullet through the back of the scientist's head.
"Frag that noble drek."
Shiver felt something change inside him as he turned and ran out the door. Slipping his confiscated pistols into his waistband, the elf ran out of the massage parlor, and began sprinting down the mall concourse. Dodging the shoppers, all milling about like the sheep that they were, a part of Shiver was amazed at the sense of power that he felt after killing the wage slave. I truly am the next best thing to a deity. Hammer has held me back for years, but no more-he has shown his true colors, and I owe him nothing.
The escape plan that the team had put together called for Shiver to make his best possible speed to one of the side exits, taking advantage of the confusion generated by the rest of the team's multi-pronged attack to avoid the scores of security men that would have otherwise descended on him in a matter of seconds.
Taki heard the shots from inside the massage parlor. The young Asian norm was fairly unique when compared to most of the rich corp employees that were walking around the mall that day. Among the rich and well connected, cyberware modifications were pretty much considered to be a given, but almost none of them opted for the kinds of changes that Taki had.
The fact that Shiver's hit had been conducted in one of the most elite shopping centers in Seattle meant that there were actually quite a number of people walking around the mall who were fairly heavily cybered, but even the rich and super well connected generally didn't get modifications as extreme as Shiver's. For one thing, any modifications expressly designed to make it easier for you to kill someone (smartlinks, hand razors and the like) officially required a permit before they could legally be installed. Of course the ultra rich would have just looked at the requirement as something applying to lessor people.
The real reason most people didn't choose to get modifications as extreme as what Shiver had was that mods to decrease someone’s reaction time were the hardest to live with on a day to day basis. Living in a world where everyone you meet is talking in what seems to be half or even quarter speed is incredibly frustrating to most people. Lines suddenly move slower, cars seem to creep along at walking speed, and basic transactions with unmodified people become an exercise in boredom.
Consequently, most people got muscle replacement, synthetic pheremones, and biosculpts, leaving the speed mods to those people whose lives depended on their cyberware. As a result, although Shiver had half expected to be forced to deal with a couple of would be heros, he hadn't expected any of them to be real threats.
Taki's uniqueness came from the fact that his mods were actually designed to make the human fast enough to survive a fire fight. Taki's parents had tried for years to convince him to get mods that would help him climb the corporate ladder, but the young man had stubbornly clung to his dream of becoming a guard. Taki's parents, both successful executives had finally agreed to let him pick his mods, and apply for a spot on the corps security forces.
Taki had done well in the physical tests he had taken the week before, and had been excited about his upcoming written tests. Unfortunately, it didn't appear that he had internalized any of the information that he had been reading, because he decided to try and stop Shiver on his own, without any weapons heavier than his recently installed spurs.
Taki launched himself at the fleeing criminal, timing his tackle perfectly so that he could bring his impossibly fast quarry down.
Shiver hadn't been expecting to encounter anyone as fast as Taki among the shoppers, so the attack surprised the elf. Shiver may have been startled enough that his reaction was delayed, but he was so fast that he had just enough time to recover. The tackler came in from the elf's right side, moving with such grace that the shoppers, those that could follow what was happening anyway, would have all sworn that there was no way that Shiver could have dodged the attack. Impossible as it seemed, somehow the elf slowed enough that Taki flew in front of him.
As the startled human flew past Shiver, the runner reached out and grabbed his arm. A quick pull changed Taki's direction of travel, but not before it dislocated his shoulder.
Taki screamed in pain as Shiver spun him around a half circle. The human had time to look his girl friend in the eyes before the gillette casually reached up and cut Taki’s throat with hand razors that had appeared as if by magic.
Shiver dropped the human, secure in the knowledge that his opponent was dead even if his body hadn't realized it yet.
Turning and resuming his run, Shiver made it to the emergency exit that was his destination without running into anymore guards. The pair of sec men guarding the exit didn't even have a chance to draw their weapons before being shot, and seconds later Shiver was on the street and headed towards the rendevous point where the rest of his team would pick him up.
Once the elf was three blocks away from the mall, he ducked into a second shopping establishment, purchasing a dark jacket from a store to help change his appearance. The sunglasses that Shiver had purchased earlier finished changing his appearance, and fifteen minutes after entering the mall, he let through a different set of doors, passing a pair of Lonestar cops who were comparing the people that were walking past them to a fuzzy picture that was all that the Novatech Mall had been able to capture of him.
Calmly presenting the image of a good wage slave, Shiver smiled briefly at the officers as he passed.
Shiver had almost completely relaxed by the time he made it to the designated meeting point. That relaxation almost killed him. As Shiver rounded a corner a crawling sensation manifested itself between his shoulder blades. Shiver hadn't ever felt anything like it, and feeling was so incredibly strong that the elf actually stumbled.
As Shiver regained his balance, a brick next to where his head was exploded from the impact of a high powered rifle round.
Surprised that the police would risk taking a shot at him in such a crowded street, Shiver broke into a sprint as the pedestrians surrounding him started screaming and diving for cover. Two more shots nearly hit the razor before he made it to an alley that took him out of the sniper's line of sight.
Shiver rounded the corner expecting to hear sirens at any moment, only to take a baseball bat to the chest. The razor's pain editor kicked in immediately, cushioning him from the effects of the pain, but he hadn't been wearing any impact armor under his shirt, and the pain editor couldn't do anything about the fact that some of the broken ribs in Shiver's chest had punctured his lung, slowing him down.
Recoiling from the blow, Shiver didn't have a chance to draw any weapons before the big ork before him swung a second blow trying to drive him back out to where the sniper could take another shot at him.
Giving up another precious few feet, Shiver realized that his opponent not only belonged to a gang, but he was wearing the same colors as the gangers that Shadow had dragged him into a fight with not too long ago.
The ork, was drawing back for another swing, when shiver decided to make his move. The fact that his opponent was a good six inches taller than the elf, as well as wielding a fairly good sized metal bat combined to mean that Shiver couldn't risk closing like he normally would have done. Letting the bat slide past a couple of centimeters in front of his face, Shiver sprung forwards before the bat could be brought back around. Rather than trying to close all the way to his target, Shiver just extended his hand razors and raked his opponent’s arms. The ork wasn't wearing anything that would have protected his arms, so the elf's weapons cut deeply, managing to severe arteries and veins, as well as the muscles and tendons that allowed the ganger to hold onto the bat.
As the metal cylinder hit the ground, Shiver pressed his advantage, finishing off the ork as another ganger came running forward from deeper in the alley. The tattooed youngster hadn't even finished zipping up his fly by the time that Shiver had planted a pair of bullets between his eyes.
Two hours later, after finding and paying a only marginally competent street mage to heal him, Shiver slid into a taxi and dialed Peter's number. "The target is dead," announced the elf as soon as Peter answered the phone. The fixer hissed in displeasure. "You shouldn’t say such things. Peter is not willing to be hauled away by the Star because you aren't intelligent enough to make sure that you are on an encrypted line before opening your mouth."
Shiver leaned back against the car seat. The smile that the elf flashed Peter was cold enough to make even the hardened fixer shift slightly. "You set me up, there were fifteen gangers waiting for me at the pickup point. I just spent two hours picking them off in pairs and singletons."
Peter started shaking his head vigorously. "Peter had nothing to do with that. Why would Peter sell you out when his survival is based in no small part around the fact that you can perform missions that no other fixer in the city can promise his clients?"
Shiver considered the tiny man shown on his screen. "In that case, there is only one other set of people that could have betrayed me.
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