Hunting Shadows
By
Fade
Chapter 10
Silk stuck another stick of gum in her mouth, spitting the old piece into the wrapper of the new piece. Mom would be pissed off if she could see me now, thought the mage. A lady doesn't indulge in disgusting habits like smoking, or chewing gum. Well a lady doesn't wait in a dark alley so she can ambush a bunch of gangers, so I guess I don't qualify as a lady any more.
After issuing his ultimatum to Peter, Hammer had spent a couple of hours trying to get a hold of another fixer. Silk had been a little confused why the troll had been going to a fixer when the team, or what was left of it, had suffered from such poor luck with Peter and Blitzen. When the mage had asked, Shadow had looked up from the 2000 calorie meal he was consuming and answered for Hammer. "The quickest way to get our money back will be to have another fixer approach him and tell him that unless the money is returned to us, the second fixer will destroy Peter's rep."
Hammer had nodded in agreement, "This should also make it no longer profitable for Peter to put a contract out on our lives in an effort to silence us."
Silk had half expected Shadow to shoot her a knowing look, but the shape shifter had already returned to his meal. At another time Silk would have been grateful that her friend wasn't pointing out her stupidity, but Shadow had been so subdued since his katana had been destroyed that a little ribbing would have made the mage feel quite a bit better.
Silk would have turned to Hammer for help in bringing Shadow back out of his funk again, but Hammer wasn't doing a whole lot better than the shape shifter. The troll obviously was trying not to let Shiver's departure affect him, but it was just as obvious that the gillette was struggling. Silk probably should have tried to do a little more to help the two men out, but she found that she was still in a little bit of a funk herself. She had just been starting to like hanging out with Shiver when he had snapped. Having something like that happen didn’t tend to help build up your faith in your remaining friends, there was no telling when the next person was going to go off the deep end and try and kill you.
Silk was half convinced that the team's current course of action was Hammer's way of subconsciously avoiding having to deal with what he was feeling. Although Silk agreed that it was probably a good idea to try and take the gang that had hit them out, she wasn't sure that it was a good idea to do it now. The team hadn’t even finished dealing with Peter. Going offensive against the gang without more backup just seemed like an invitation to get mauled or killed.
Some bloke named Gabriel had set Hammer up with the information that they needed, but it didn't seem like Hammer had put as much time into planning this hit as he normally did. In fact, the only thing that was really reassuring about the whole mission was that Hammer had agreed to bring Mercury onboard for the night's activities. After the ritual sorcery that had been done to get the little girl back, Silk had a very good idea what exactly the other elf was capable of, and she figured that between the two of them they should be able to overwhelm whatever meager magical assets the gang might have, and then proceed to create havoc among the mundane gang members.
For the reasonable fee of fifteen thousand nuyen (Mercury had confided that she liked the team) the dark haired beauty had agreed to help the team. All of which lead to Silk crouching on a rooftop in the dark waiting while Hammer determined when the best time to move.
Mercury was handling the astral scouting for this hour, so Silk didn't have anything to do but wait. The mage's boredom was alleviated slightly when Mercury came back over the group's radio channel.
"We are still clear, there aren't any mages moving around the perimeter, and I don't see any unusual mundane activity in the area."
Silk expected the other elf to stop there, but Mercury continued in a slightly puzzled voice. "I walked by that low-level ward they have on their building, and something doesn't look quite right. I get the feeling that there might be a stronger ward behind that piece of drek down there, but I couldn't be sure without making it obvious that I was too interested in things that normal people wouldn't have been worrying about."
Hammer thought for a minute, before replying. "Multiple wards are pretty typical as a way to try and throw people off. We'll just have to go in ready for a little more magical resistance than we initially planned on."
Hearing Mercury's prognosis, Silk was even more glad that they had the mage along. If she says that she thinks there is a second, more powerful ward, there is a second ward. The way that Hammer dismissed the possibility of additional resistance bothered Silk a little, but Mercury hadn't said anything else, and it was too late to do anything about it now anyway. Silk tried to put thoughts of military hit mages lying in wait behind the ward out of her mind, but there was no denying that multiple wards was a strategy used only when one had mojo to burn, and something very important to hide.
Silk's train of thought was cut off as Hammer stood up and signaled her to follow him. The troll signaled Shadow and Mercury to begin their approach as he and Silk came out of the building.
In the time that the four runners had been waiting, they had pinpointed only two sentries. Hammer smiled as the sentry on their side of the building bent down to pick up another beer. The pair of runners ghosted across the street, little more than shadows in the dim light provided by the occasional aging street light.
A couple of seconds later Mercury checked in to let them know that she and Shadow had made it into the building unseen as well.
Hammer and Silk started through the building, working off of plans filed with the city twenty years before. The plan called for the runners to sneak into the gang headquarters, and execute the Night Feeder’s leadership.
Hammer had indicated that he would prefer to avoid killing most of the rank and file of the gang, an idea which Silk agreed with in principle, but the mage wasn't as confident as Hammer that losing its leadership would cripple the gang, or that the runners would be able to reach the gang leaders without having to leave more bodies behind them than she cared to think about.
Despite Silk's further misgivings, she and Hammer made it to the second floor before encountering any resistance. Hammer had crept up a some sagging stairs, only to have them creak under his massive weight.
A slightly drunk voice had called down asking if whoever was coming up was bringing any beer. Silk had been amazed by how quickly Hammer had reacted. A person that big shouldn't be able to move that quickly.
By the time Silk had taken three steps, the troll had bounded up the stairs four at a time, rounded the corner, and fired two silenced shots. Silk reached the top of the stairs to find two dead gangers surrounded by empty beer cans.
Ten minutes later Silk heard gun shots from the level below her. A muttered oath over the radio told the mage that Mercury and Shadow were the ones being shot at. Silk checked an impulse to run towards the firefight and help her friends, as Hammer motioned her onward.
As Hammer went up the last flight of stairs, Silk was only seven feet behind him. As soon as the troll hit the top step, gunfire erupted from the hallway. Hammer staggered back around the corner bleeding profusely as additional bullets impacted on the wall behind where he was standing. Silk ran up the stairs trying to reach Hammer, as Mercury came back over the radio. "Drek, they were waiting for us. There are way too many gangers popping up for it to be anything other than a trap."
Silk replied as she reached Hammer. "They just opened up on Hammer, we've got to get out of here."
Hammer had stumbled all the way down to the landing, nearly falling in the process but along the way he had pulled out the assault rifle that had been slung across his back. The big weapon, looked like a toy in the troll's hands, but it was still deadly. The under mounted-grenade launcher coughed, sending a deadly sphere up the stairway, where it ricochet off of a wall, and bounced into the corridor.
The explosion as the grenade went off would have deafened Silk if she hadn't had been wearing the combat helmet that Hammer had handed her for the run. As it was, Silk missed the first part of Mercury's next message.
"...ek, they've got nova-hot magic backup. I just hit a group with one of my best spells, and nobody even stumbled."
Silk heard chanting, and looked up to see a ball of fire come streaking down the blood-slicked stairway. The mage reached out to Hammer, trying to drain the heat and fury out of the magical flames just before it hit the wall next to them, and the world went black, as the self polarizing glass on Silk's helmet kicked in. As the glass became clear again, Silk heard Hammer launch two more grenades up the stairwell, and she felt a trickle of blood make its way past her nose. Fighting a sudden sense of vertigo, Silk felt a part of her gibber in fear.
The elf had managed to ground out the some of the power in the spell, just like the gang mage was doing to Mercury's spells downstairs, but the shear power of the spell had caught Silk by surprise, and she was suffering the effects of trying to channel too much power through her slender body in too short a time.
A single grenade bounced down the stairwell in reply to the ones that Hammer had been sending up. Hammer grabbed Silk and spun to interpose his body between the mage and the shrapnel that reached out to claw at the runners.
_____
Hammer grunted as a huge fist seemed to hit him and throw him into the wall. The troll managed to throw and arm up and stop from crushing Silk between him and the wall.
Turning to fire another grenade up the stairs, Hammer hoped that Silk was up to making it back out of the building. The runner had been around long enough to realize that as woozy as Silk was, if she hadn't shielded him against the fireball that had just gone off, he probably be dead, instead of just having smoking clothes.
"Down the stairs," instructed Hammer as Silk shook her head clear. The two runners backed down the stairs, staying ahead of the flames that were beginning to devour the walls and ceiling.
Once Hammer and Silk made it around another corner, he turned and picked her up, breaking into a sprint. With his massive legs and expensive modifications, Hammer streaked down the hall faster than Silk would have believed possible. Pointing his assault rifle blindly back the way they had come from, Hammer fired another couple of grenades back behind him to detour any possible pursuit.
Despite the fact that she was getting jostled around in Hammer's grip, Silk must have decided that she wasn't going to get a better chance to heal Hammer before he passed out from blood loss. The troll felt a warm flash flow through him as wounds closed up.
A door swung open ten feet ahead of the runners, but by the time the half-dressed ork had stepped out of his filthy room, Hammer had already covered the intervening distance. The ork was still trying to figure out what was going on when Hammer's titanium-laced fist knocked him into the wall.
"We're coming towards your position," panted Hammer as he reached the stairs. Setting Silk, who was now covered with his blood, down, Hammer turned and opened up on the gangers who were just now making it down the stairs. A burst of fire took down a pair of the most eager gangers, as Silk started running down the stairs.
Following Silk down the stairs, Hammer could hear gunfire coming from below them. "What is your situation," requested the team leader as he and Silk made it down to the third floor.
"We are taking heavy fire," came the reply from Mercury. “Shadow managed to take down the first group, but these punks are pouring out of the woodwork. We are retreating down to the first floor right now."
"Firm up for a second, and we'll pin them between us," instructed Hammer as he and Silk continued pounding down the stairs.
The amount of gunfire coming from below increased, and Hammer passed Silk up so that he was leading as they came around the last corner separating them from the gangers attacking Mercury and Shadow.
The gangers had expected anyone coming from above them to be on their side, so they hadn't even begun turning around when Hammer opened up on them at full auto. The unarmored figures fell like toys, and Hammer yelled down the stairwell that he and Silk were coming around the corner.
The four runners all but flew down the last set of stairs, and took off at a sprint towards the door. As Hammer reached the door, he pulled a pair of smoke/heat grenades from his pockets, and threw them out the door. Under the cover of the grenades, the four ran out the door, and down the street. Dodging the rubble and litter that seemed to appear out of the smoke as if by magic, Hammer frantically tried to come up with a way for the team to escape the gang, when every member would be chasing them on bikes.
Two blocks and a corner later, once the runners were out of the smoke which had been impairing their vision, Hammer pulled out another pair of smoke grenades, and a reel of monowire. The troll pulled Silk, who was starting to stagger a little, to the side, and handed Shadow one of the grenades, and one end of the wire spool. Listening to Hammer's instructions, Shadow nodded quickly before racing across the road, Mercury following at a respectable distance.
After setting off the smoke grenades, the runners had only seconds to wait before the roar of motorcycle engines informed them that the part of the gang that wasn’t back fighting the fire was in pursuit. Hammer took a breath, and braced himself as he heard the first pair of bikes come around the corner and drive straight into the deadly monowire that was stretched directly in their path at chest height.
_____
The shape shifter was nearly overcome by the rage that had been triggered by the ambush that had nearly killed him and Mercury, but even buffered by the bestial fury that filled him, he found the wanton destruction which ensued enough to nearly make him ill. One after another, gangers sped through smoke to find death waiting for them as the strand of monowire cut through bodies like they didn't even exist, and Shadow wondered again if his life justified the kind of killing he was being forced to commit to save it.
As the eighth biker went down, Hammer came running through the now dissipating smoke all but dragging Silk, who looked like she was trying very hard no to be ill. "We need to split up, and try to confuse our pursuit. Move to the northeast, and we'll try to support each other.
***
The next three hours were a nightmare. Shadow had never felt as pursued and hunted as he did while he and Mercury fled through one of the rundown squatter towns that lay at the heart of the Pallyup Barrens.
There only seemed to be fifteen gangers in pursuit, but the pair of mages running astral over watch meant that the pair of runners couldn't just go to ground and hide. Instead, they were forced to keep moving as they tried to stay ahead of the groups of four and five gangers.
Shadow wanted to just turn and attack his pursuers, but Mercury kept him moving, afraid that any pause would result in the pair being overwhelmed by gangers that they didn’t know about. Dodging around a dark lump that looked suspiciously like a corpse, Shadow heard Hammer’s voice come over the radio channel linking the two teams together.
“They are herding us, Silk is about done for and I’m getting dangerously tired as well. We are going to have to hope that we’ve spread everyone out enough that they don’t overwhelm us when we turn and fight.”
_____
Twitch was panting, beer and narcotics didn't lend themselves to helping keep one in shape, but he knew that they were catching up with the huge troll that had eluded them for the last hour or so. There were only thirty or so gangers who'd decided to join in the chase, drekless fraggers want to just stay in the base and pretend like nothing happened, but they outnumbered the runners ahead of them by a sufficient enough margin to chase them down despite the fact that the gangers were slower.
The ganger turned a corner, tattooed chest heaving, only to realize that Kitten had disappeared. The tiny norm female was one of the loudest people Twitch had ever met, and he couldn't believe that she had tripped, or otherwise stopped pursuit without announcing the reason why to every person within two blocks.
Realizing what must have happened, Twitch looked around in alarm as he realized that in the pursuit, he had outdistanced nearly everyone else. There wasn't anyone else in sight, and the ganger belatedly realized that there was no way he wanted to run into that massive troll by himself.
Heavy breathing from behind cued Twitch in to the fact that someone, probably Venom, had almost caught up with him. Taking an unexpected solace from the fact that he was no longer alone, the ganger started backing towards the sound of Venom's panting, when it suddenly turned into a gurgle.
Twitch spun around so that he faced the direction where Venom had been when he died, and started backing up the way that he had come. The ganger realized that he was only seconds way from dying, and his mind spun with ideas, none of which would suffice to keep him alive. The massive predator stalking him could probably take him at any time.
Backing into a pile of trash, Spider heard someone hiss in pain. Acting on a sudden impulse that he didn't really understand, the terrified human kicked aside the refuse, as a knife appeared in his hand. The two children, street urchins by the look of them, were so terrified that their hiding place had been discovered that they didn't even struggle when Spider drug them to their feet, and positioned a knife at the throat of the little girl.
Pulling the pair into the center of the room, the ganger started yelling. "I know you are out there, you can kill me, but I can kill these two brats before you can get me."
Hammer watched from the shadows of one of the doors behind Spider, listening to three hearts beat in terror. The runner's cyber ears were sharp enough that he could separate out the slightly softer beats of the two children from those of the large man that held them.
Realizing that there was no way that he could launch a hand to hand attack before the ganger killed the kids, the troll silently eased his pistol up. As the laser-like red dot of Hammer’s smartlink indicator slowly traveled up the ganger, the punk’s right arm suddenly jerked, and Hammer momentarily froze as a tiny figure fell away in a shower of blood.
Hammer watched as the dark-haired child hit the floor, heard her heart beat once or twice more, and then stop with a finality that was underscored by the increase in the ganger's heartbeat.
As tears started to stream down the rough skin of the troll's face, he finally finished brining his pistol up. The Predator heavy pistol spoke once, placing a bullet directly through the point where the nerves from the left side of Spider's brain and the nerves from the right side of his brain crossed over to go to the opposite sides of his body. The ganger dropped to the ground, completely unable to move, or in anyway harm anyone else in the three seconds it took his body to realize that it was dead.
_____
Mercury was winded. The mage was in good shape, but there was no way that she could maintain the grueling pace that Shadow had set in their flight once she had convinced him that he couldn't just turn around and charge the gangers that were following them.
Despite their best efforts the runners hadn't managed to lose their pursuers. The gangers didn't make a habit of spending time in the squatter town where they now found themselves, but they still knew the area much better than Mercury or Shadow. That knowledge combined with their greater numbers had let them stay just a few corners back from the runners.
As Shadow bounded over a pile of wreckage, Mercury tripped and fell. The shape shifter heard his companion fall, and spun back around. With a teeth barring grin and a hiss the physad charged back past the mage. “No more running.”
_____
Two-bit waved her group back from their headlong charge through the decaying building. The four gangers had been hot on the trail of the punks that had attacked the base, but Two-bit was pretty sure that the rest of the gang had given up long ago. All things considered, it didn't look like the four of them were going to catch the runners, so the ork figured she may as well just call the hunt off before they wandered into the lair of some crazy squatter who would start taking shots at them. Besides that, the victory party back at the base was probably in full swing by now. If the gangers started back now, there would probably still be some beer left when they arrived.
A slight whisper of cloth against cloth was the only warning that Two-bit got before Shadow sprung out of a doorway, into the center of the group and attacked. The shape shifter was a blur of feet and steel, moving from ganger to ganger with such speed that none of them even had their weapons up before he had cut them down and left them dying in the dimly-lite alley.
Watching from the hiding place that she’d found fifteen feet back, Mercury was astonished. She had heard that Hammer's students were good, and Shadow had handled himself fairly well earlier, but nothing had prepared her for the speed with which the shape shifter moved. The ranges involved in the earlier fight, had combined with the wide open halls to make it all but impossible for Shadow to close with his opponents. This however was the physad's preferred type of fight, and Mercury made a mental note to stay well clear of Shadow when he was mad. The mage knew she was good, probably in the top ten mages running the shadows in Seattle right now, but if Shadow was within ten feet of her, and he wanted her dead, there was nothing she would be able to do about it.
Mercury watched, waiting for the fire to die out in Shadow's eyes. As the shape shifter started to calm down, Silk came over the team's dedicated radio channel. "Guy's, I need a hand, it is Hammer."
***
Ten miles away, Shiver watched a mousey blond human lug a bag full of groceries into an apartment building. The elf had spent the last couple of days hunting down the members of the team that had supported him on the wage slave hit. The runners had all been fairly easy to take out.
Even the kind of low level runner that Peter had hired to support Shiver would have done a pretty good job of dropping out of sight if they had expected anyone to come after them, so Shiver didn't think any of them had been involved.
That suspicion hadn't stopped Shiver from killing each of the other four runners. The last runner had admitted to hiring a free-lance decker to cover him on the run. Peter had managed to put an address to the name that Trey had provided before Shiver had killed him. The only thing that remained was for the gillette to ice the last person that could have tried to sell him out to the gangers.
After the decker disappeared into the building, Shiver waited ten minutes before making his move. The elf crept silently down the rusting fire escape, ghosting down to the third story, where he pulled out his sten knife. The super-hard crystal tapered down to a thickness of between ten and twenty atoms thick at the edges, making it a near perfect cutting tool.
A few minutes work sufficed to allow Shiver to cut through both the glass in the window, and the steel bars protecting the glass. Slipping into the bedroom, Shiver could hear the human putting away groceries in the next room.
The razor checked his pistol one more time before creeping into the modestly decorated living room. At the far end of the room the female was just sitting down at a cyber deck as Shiver appeared. Another gillette would probably have tried to fight back, but the decker simply raised her hands above her head.
"What do you want," asked the woman as she looked sideways to where a child was scrambling to its feet.
"I got sold out to a bunch of gang bangers on my last run," sneered the elf as he circled to make sure that there wasn't anything hidden behind his target. "I came to pay the favor back."
"Did that son of a slitch Trey tell you that I sold you out? I ran over watch, during that run, but I didn't have anything to do with selling anyone out. If anyone sold you out, it was him."
The pudgy little girl, who was all of six years old, had ran over to her mother when Shiver appeared. The sight of the gun combined with her mother's obvious distress to cause the child to start crying.
"Please don't hurt my little girl," pleaded the now shaking mother. I didn't frag you over, and she is even more innocent than I am."
Shiver shook his head. "I tend to believe you, but making a clean sweep of everyone involved in the run has the combined benefits of ensuring that I don't in fact let the guilty party get away free, and helping to ensure that nobody else tries anything similar in the future. It isn't anything personal, just business."
The decker was still trying to come up with a response when Shiver shot her between the eyes. As the woman slumped in her chair, Shiver walked over and picked up her cyber deck.
Leaving the now screaming child where she was on the floor, Shiver walked back over to the bedroom. Pulling a pair of incendiary grenades from his pocket, Shiver turned back to the living room, pulled the pins, and tossed them into the center of the room.
***
Mercury followed Shadow around the corner and almost fell as she saw Hammer in the center of the run-down room. The huge troll was sitting on the filthy floor holding the body of a little girl.
Silk was tugging on the razor's arm, pleading with him to move. "We can't do anything for her, Hammer. We need to go now."
Hammer shook his head, as tears slid slowly down his cheeks. “We weren't quick enough, I wasn't quick enough. Again and again. It just keeps happening."
Silk looked like she was about to cry as she looked up and saw Shadow and Mercury standing in the doorway. "I don't know what to do, he just sits there. The little girl got killed by one of the punks when Hammer ambushed them."
Mercury looked around uncertain how to respond to Silk's plea. Hammer had only been in Seattle for a short time, but he had brought such an impressive rep from Japan that he already had near legendary status among the runners Mercury knew. To see such a powerful figure reduced to a sobbing wreck had thrown the elf for a complete loop. Consequently, Mercury didn't key in on the shuffling that had started to echo through the decaying building where they were waiting.
Shadow on the other hand, had much keener ears, so he had been listening to the squatters move around for the last five minutes. The shape shifter watched Hammer for a few more seconds, before stalking over to the troll.
Silk looked up, and felt a shiver run through her. The events of the day had brought Shadow's savage nature to the front. The coating of humanity that Shadow usually presented to the world was now ragged and worn through, but enough remained for the shape shifter to remember things like duty and honor.
Shadow's new katana seemed to materialize in his hand as he reached a position in front of Hammer. Seeing that he wasn't getting any response from the troll, Shadow let his weapon lick out and cut into the corpse in Hammer's arms.
Mercury blinked in disbelief, while a small gasp escaped Silk, but for a second it appeared that Hammer wasn't going to respond. The troll looked down and back up at Shadow a couple of times, seeming not to believe that Shadow had really done what his eyes were telling him the shape shifter had done.
Hammer placed the child on the floor, and stood up slowly. A massive hand reached for a pistol, which slowly pointed towards Shadow.
Silk made as if to try and intervene, but Mercury waved her off as Shadow hissed. "That is right, I cut her, but she is already dead." The were-tiger's eyes were shifting now, taking on a cat-like appearance, but filled with more rage than Silk had ever seen in any animal.
Shadow continued, never taking his eyes from Hammer. "She is dead, but if you don't remember your obligations to the living, others will die too. They come now, and we will be forced to kill them, and possibly be killed in turn. All because your friends won't abandon you to the fate you seem to desire."
The squatters were closer now, even Silk could hear them creeping nearer. Long used to being the bottom of the human food chain, squatters tended to keep a pretty low profile when gangs, runners, or the police were about. Individually, none of them could match the group of runners, but collectively they had a good chance. The dead gangers that were now scattered through the shanty town could be looted for weapons, loose currency, or in some cases even eaten.
The runners represented even more of a treasure trove. The cyberware in Hammer's body could be sold on the secondary market for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of nuyen, and it would only take one lucky shot, or a fortunate blow.
Shadow's words seemed to finally have penetrated Hammer's grief-filled mind. Listening to the approaching people, Hammer realized that they were ready to hurl themselves at the runners in the off chance that they would survive to cash in on the spoils that would be realized if they managed to bring someone down.
Hammer put his pistol up and nodded slowly at Shadow. Mercury sighed, and swayed a little bit as she released the bullet barrier that had been protecting Shadow incase Hammer had been just a little further gone than she thought he was.
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