Hunting Shadows
By
Fade
Chapter 14
Silk caught herself fumbling for another piece of gum, and resisted the urge to swear as she clenched her fist to stop from fidgeting. Not like it matters, even if I could somehow get it out of my pocket, and figure a way to get it past this infernal helmet, as fast as we are moving, it would get ripped out of my hand before I got it halfway to my head.
Silk was currently strapped to a helicopter, with Shadow on one side of her and Mercury on the other, and there was no question but that they were moving quickly. At least 200 kph felt quick when there wasn't anything but a couple of wires holding you to the aircraft, and you were scared of heights.
Suddenly the helicopter dropped to within twenty feet of the ground, and Silk decided that it was definitely the speed which bothered her rather than how heigh they were.
A few decades ago pilots would have sworn that it was suicidal to fly through the city like the team was currently doing, but that was before the advent of rigging. Now a person could have cyberware installed that allowed them to plug their brain straight into whatever they were driving or flying.
The direct feed of a rigger interface allowed a person's senses to do double duty, or even more. Speed could be translated as wind streaming past one's face, temperature as the rigger's core body temperature, and rpm's as the driver's heartbeat. All these cues added up to allow a good rigger to do things that made Silk want to loose her breakfast, and Two-Prop was very good.
The helicopter suddenly surged forward, and the mage bit off another oath. "Hold on there campers," chuckled the rigger over the team radio channel. "We are about thirty seconds from the drop site, and Lonestar is just finally putting a couple of birds in the air. They still aint upgraded their radar enough to pick me up until I'm right on top of them, even with you four out there messing up my radar profile."
The helicopter swung around a corner, giving the runners a closeup view of a building as the rotor blades above them howled in a barely successful effort to avoid dragging all four members of the team along the brick surface at high speed. "Drek yeah, that was a close one," chimed the rigger as Silk swore that she would never again place herself at the mercy of a redneck adrenaline junkie. "Ok, we'll come in low and fast to avoid giving them any more response time than we have to."
As the ground got slightly closer and streaked past even quicker, Silk heard Shadow start to chuckle, and added the shape shifter to the list of people that she needed to get even with later on.
Looking to her left, Silk saw the walls of the Society's compound a split second before the helicopter started clawing for additional altitude. The sudden g forces almost caused Silk to blackout, but this was the one part of the insertion that the mage was wholeheartedly in favor of.
The runners had verified that the compound didn't have any anti-aircraft defenses, but everyone agreed that the Society was likely to have some fairly heavy magical defenses. By coming in from higher up everyone figured that they would be able to avoid most if not all of the elementals that would be stationed to kill intruders.
As Silk's field of vision narrowed down to a small circle, and she flirted with the ragged edge of blacking out, Two-Prop brought the helicopter to a standstill thirty meters above the ground.
Normally Silk would have been ecstatic about the idea of the bone-crushing forces stopping, but she knew what was going to happen next. As soon as the sonic rangefinders on the aircraft had established the distance between the runners and the ground, the wire reels which were supporting them suddenly released, spinning on nearly frictionless mounts to allow the team to drop at something very close to free fall.
One second after Silk started falling she had covered nearly ten meters. The next fifteen meters took less than a second to cover, and then the breaks on the wire spools kicked in, and Silk felt the harness fastened around her torso try and rip the rest of her body away from her various appendages.
Four squealing meters later the mage came to rest a scant meter above the ground. Silk blinked the spots out of her eyes as she reached for the release on her harness, but before she could trigger the special mechanism, the already taut wire jerked her skywards, accompanied by a change in the pitch of the engine overhead. The mage had a brief second to wonder what was going on before the wire went slack, hurling her to the ground where she bounced once before being pulled up again.
Silk was groping disorientedly for her harness release again as she came down the second time, but suddenly Shadow was there, slapping aside her hand, deftly triggering the release, and catching her before she could hit the ground. The pretty elf looked around for someone to yell at, but bit back the insults as she saw Mercury hit the ground for a second time.
Above the runners, Two-Prop and the helicopter were shaking violently surrounded by a hazy, spot in the air. As Silk realized that the aircraft was being attacked by an air elemental, a line of black fire materialized between DeVries and the elemental. The elemental seemed to dissolve, and suddenly Two-Prop had the helicopter sitting motionless as Mercury hit her harness release and dropped a meter to the ground, crying out as her arm made contact with the surface of the earth.
Silk shrugged off Shadow's hands, and rushed over to the other elf. Grabbing the mage, Silk sent tendrils of energy into her, verifying that Mercury didn't have anything worse than a broken arm, before finishing up the healing spell.
Two-Prop jettisoned the apparatus that had lowered the runners, and flew off into the night, throwing his aircraft through jaunty salute just before he disappeared into the moonless night. Silk had a brief moment to be envious of the rigger, who was now safely out of the line of fire, and then DeVries was next to her, urging the team into motion again.
With Shadow running point, backed up by the vampire's hefty magical muscle, the team penetrated the main complex with ease, clearing out most of the ground floor before running into anything resembling coordinated resistance.
The first knot of guards didn't have any of the society members with them for backup, and consequently fell quickly, but after that the runners started encountering increasing numbers of powerful mages.
Shadow cut people down almost faster than Silk could register. Guards and mages alike fell to the shape shifter as he let some of the rage and frustration he'd been feeling over the last couple of weeks surface again.
Silk saw her friend stagger a couple of times, taking damage from a spell, or stray round but Shadow's sheer speed and ferocity was sufficient to keep anyone from capitalizing on those brief pauses.
As much damage as Shadow was doing, DeVries was matching him hit for hit. The vampire worked in a methodical, seemingly emotionless manner that nearly made Silk sick until he turned to check on her. The self-loathing the vampire was feeling was sufficient to penetrate even his nearly dead eyes, and Silk started to glimpse a fraction of the price that Martin had paid in his quest to hunt down his undead kin. As Shadow cut down the foma; mage in the latest group opposing the runners, DeVries made a guttural sound in the back of his throat, and every remaining mundane guard in the room fell to the ground with bruises forming on every visible inch of their skin.
The team descended another level, and DeVries dispassionately snapped a man's back, leaving Silk’s skin crawling as she wondered if there was any price that the vampire wasn’t willing to pay along the way towards fulfilling his personal crusade. At that moment resistance behind the team firmed up and the tired elf drifted back to help Mercury deal with the guards who were trying to cut off their escape, abandoning any further thought of just how stable DeVries really was.
The two elves finished off the guards that had collected behind the team, and ran to catch up with DeVries and Shadow. The shape shifter stepped halfway around a corner, only to recoil a split second before a hail of gunfire shredded the opulently-decorated wall to his left. DeVries made as if to step up to the corner and throw a spell, but Shadow's combat sense must have still been tingling, because he screamed something intelligible, warning the vampire off just before a massive ball of fire ricocheted off of the wall and surrounded both of the runners in orange flames.
Both Silk and Mercury had seen the hostile spell, so they managed to ground out enough of the energy it was carrying to leave their teammates with nothing more than smoking clothes.
Realizing that it the group ahead was supposed to serve as an anvil for whoever was coming up from behind, DeVries sent Mercury back to stall the hammer, while gesturing for Silk to come up to help him and Shadow. With a feral grin Shadow threw his arm around the corner and opened up on full auto with his submachine gun.
A split second after Shadow started his blind suppressive fire DeVries stuck his head around the corner, followed immediately by Silk. As the elf released a powerful ram spell, she saw DeVries go a couple shades paler than usual, and suddenly something was howling past her spell.
In contradiction of every experience in Silk’s life, the pitch of the howling got higher as it got further away, and then it was upon the guards, who dropped their weapons and collapsed to the floor screaming in pain as something seemed to be pulling their astral selves from their bodies. For a second the elf thought that DeVries had succeeded in overloading whatever mages were trying to ground the spell out, but then the sickly green light that had accompanied the howling ball of light started to fade.
By the time that Silk’s ram spell reached the other end of the hall, the defending mages had succeeded in weakening it to the point where it didn't do anything more than ruffle people's clothes as it blew past.
The pretty elf bit off an unladylike curse as DeVries pulled her back behind cover, just before bullets started heading back down the hall in response to the team's spells. Shadow blindly fired off another full clip, only to have his weapon, and part of his hand go tumbling into the other wall when someone connected with a short burst.
The amount of fire coming from the other end of the corridor redoubled at the same time that Mercury came over the radio channel to report that she had run into a large number of guards. "I'm turning loose my two elementals, but there are a couple of mages with them-all I'll be able to do is slow them down by another thirty seconds or so."
Silk looked over at DeVries as the vampire looked up from watching Shadow's hand finish regenerating. "Do you know how to throw up a bullet barrier," came the passionless inquiry.
As soon as the elf nodded, DeVries pointed at Shadow. "Please do so on the shape shifter, then hold the spell and do what you can to assist Mercury. We'll need a few more seconds than she'll be able to buy us by herself."
The mage summoned her rapidly depleting energies to weave a protective spell around Shadow, as the vampire turned to explain his plan to the physad.
DeVries finished explaining his plan to Shadow, and then cast a bullet barrier of his own as Silk stumbled back towards Mercury. Shadow unsheathed his katana as DeVries checked his submachine gun, and then the pair exploded around the corner.
Shadow was slightly ahead of the vampire, moving so quickly that he made a full two steps before any of the gillettes at the far end of the hall were able to respond to his unexpected presence. DeVries was moving as quickly as he could, but he still had only covered a step and a half by the time that the first bullets came whining in seeking the shape shifter.
As Shadow hit a full sprint, the air before him seemed to sprout spots, as his field of vision became dotted by spent bullets which had flattened out on Silk’s bullet barrier.
DeVries was sprinting now too, moving faster than a twentieth century Olympic athlete, but still falling steadily further behind. The vampire brought his firearm up and sent a burst towards his attackers, more in an effort to convince them to keep their heads down than out of a hope that he might hit something. Between trying to maintain his bullet barrier spell, and keep up with Shadow, DeVries considered himself lucky to even be able to pull a trigger and not hit Shadow who was now three full strides in front of him.
Shadow continued on at full speed, continuing to increase the gap between the two runners, as every opposing gillette opened up on full auto trying to bring the shape shifter down.
From his position behind the shape shifter, DeVries saw Silk’s barrier start to glow slightly as it tried to bleed off the energy that was being transmitted to it, and then suddenly the strain on the mage must have become too much, because the barrier failed with a spectacular flash, while Shadow was still a good twenty yards away from the opposing gillettes.
Shadow stumbled slightly from the force of the shockwave that had accompanied the failure of the barrier, and then a guard fired a burst that streaked unerringly towards the shape shifter’s head. DeVries fought off a wave of dizziness as the bullet barrier that he had cast on the physad took the impact of the burst which would have killed Shadow. Before the vampire could recover from the strain of holding the spell, the two opposing mages cast a pair of fireballs at his teammate.
Martin desperately reached towards Shadow, trying to ground out the energies at the heart of the flames, while the shape shifter continued gamely running towards the other end of the corridor, intent on reaching the metahumans barring the team’s progress.
The hostile spells exploded in an inferno around Shadow, as slivers of ice seemed to slice through DeVries' mind. The vampire stumbled and fell, nearly knocked unconscious by the effort of grounding out even a portion of the energies contained in the spells, and then Shadow appeared on the far side of the flames.
The shape shifter took the final step required to bring him in range of the razors, and struck with his katana. The first two guards were trying to bring their firearms around when Shadow's blade took them.
The next samurai had dropped his weapon and popped a pair of deadly-looking spurs, but Shadow cut him down as well, moving in a blur that was difficult for even DeVries, with his undead quickness, to follow.
As the vampire lunged back to his feet, Shadow eliminated another pair of guards, and hit a third with a throwing knife while dodging a three round burst of fire from a fourth opponent.
The two society mages had been initially unable to follow Shadow as he cut his way through their guards, but DeVries saw one of them, a stocky dwarf, start muttering, and make a throwing gesture in an effort to bring Shadow down before the shape shifter cut down the rest of the razors.
DeVries dropped the barrier he had been maintaining on Shadow, and reached out with his remaining strength as an iridescent line of force leapt into existence between the physad and the dwarf. The spell hurled the shape shifter into a wall only slightly weakened by the vampire’s efforts to ground it out.
Icy slivers made a more thorough pass through DeVries' skull, and his vision started to narrow as he struggled not to black out. Through the shrinking tunnel, the vampire saw Shadow bounce off the wall and sail through the air.
Unprepared for the unusual angle with which he hit the wall, Shadow for once didn't seem to be in control of his momentum as he flew backwards towards the last remaining guard.
The shape shifter buried a throwing knife in the dwarf mage’s throat before spinning partway around to face the hulking ork that was struggling to bring his Ingram Smartgun around. Shadow's left leg touched the ground, but apparently had been broken upon impacting against the wall, because it seemed to collapse, giving the ork the fraction of a second he needed to line up his weapon and send a blizzard of lead into the shape shifter.
DeVries was too exhausted to hit the ork with a spell, but he tried to bring his own weapon up as the ork's bullets tore into the physad. The first couple of bullets were stopped by the shape shifter's armor, but at point blank range the next set of slugs tore through Shadow's protection, and chewed into his side.
Martin finally brought a trembling arm up in line with the ork and triggered his own three-round burst as bullets tore through Shadow's chest leaving gruesome exit wounds.
As DeVries' bullets reached the last guard, Shadow fell to the ground leaving a throwing knife buried in his opponent's chest. The vampire watched the two fighters drop to the ground, and then shifted his aim towards the remaining mage.
A few seconds later the elf's body hit the ground, and DeVries walked over to Shadow. The vampire knew that the shape shifter's powers of regeneration worked similarly to his own. As long as Shadow's central nervous system remained intact, he should heal fully from any wounds. However, the odds that anyone's spinal cord could have weathered the kind of destruction that had been unleashed on the physad's body were very slim.
Seeing that Shadow hadn't started moving, DeVries doubted that the runner had beat the odds this time. The vampire listened to Silk report the neutralization of the group of hostiles that she and Mercury had gone up against, and tried to decide how to break the news to the pretty elf.
I kind of liked the were-tiger. He was wonderfully unpolluted by the hypocrisy that is so much a part of the rest of us. That and he always just did what needed to be done. Without pausing to consider the personal cost. Stupid, just like me.
Kneeling to roll the ork off of Shadow's body, DeVries felt a small tremor of relief shoot through him as he saw the flesh of Shadow's chest slowly moving as it knit itself together.
DeVries backed away a little, the vampire had taken some wounds, and didn't want to risk any of his blood coming in contact with the shape shifter and infecting him with HMHVV. Were-tigers were rare enough that there was a pretty good chance that nobody really knew how the virus that turned humans into vampires would effect one.
With DeVries' luck, there was a pretty good chance that Shadow would turn into something even stronger and faster than he already was, with a hunger for vampire blood or something even worse. On the other hand, even ignoring the possibility that I'll infect him, it is a good idea to put some distance between us so that he doesn't try to kill me before he realizes that he is no longer in danger.
A minutes later the team was reunited, and moving again. Shadow was ravenous after regenerating from such severe wounds, and from the way that the shape shifter had eyed some of the fallen guards DeVries was pretty sure that the other was considering shape shifting into his natural form and having a quick snack.
The vampire had lost enough of his humanity that the idea didn't particularly bother him. After all a vampire that fed on other vampires didn't really have room to point fingers, but Silk seemed to come to the same conclusion about her friend's thoughts as Martin, and she was very much opposed to the idea.
After a moment’s pause Shadow allowed himself to be led away from the fallen, more DeVries suspected because he knew they needed to keep moving, than because he was interested in sparing Silk's sensibilities.
Then again after seeing her throw that fit when I told her we would be coming in strapped to the outside of a helicopter, maybe Shadow is just trying to spare himself hours of complaining. If you put that woman among savages, they would deify her within the month. Silk, the goddess of vengeance and punishment.
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Silk had indeed decided that Shadow was interested in filling his stomach before moving on. Of course she believed that Shadow allowed himself to be directed away due to the inherent rightness of her position.
A few seconds after Silk had managed to get Shadow around the corner from the carnage he and DeVries had created, the vampire and Mercury appeared, pockets full of credsticks and other personal valuables, and then the team was off on a whirlwind tour of the rest of the complex.
Silk quickly realized that everyone who planned on fighting the runners, was already dead. That didn't mean however that there wasn't anyone left in the sprawling collection of underground rooms. Aided by Shadow's incredibly keen hearing and sense of smell, the runners were able to track down four additional mages who had hidden everywhere from inside closets, to underneath their beds in an effort to avoid the runners.
Silk had been a little reluctant to kill the first mage, who had been little more than a sobbing wreck by the time Shadow pulled him out from behind a designer leather sofa. When the elf saw the pair of teenage orks who were bruised and bloody in the next room, any sympathy she might have had evaporated. Before her teammates could stop her, Silk whirled back to the quivering mage and hurled him up against a concrete retaining wall with her most powerful ram spell.
Already exhausted from the spells she had cast on the run, Silk passed out, and hit the floor at about the same time as the mage's deformed body.
Silk awoke a short time later with a splitting headache that was partly due to drain, and partly due to the fact that the mage was bouncing along slung over DeVries' shoulder.
Realizing that the elf had regained consciousness, her vampiric porter returned her to her feet with an injunction to carry out any further executions in a manner that would leave the mage self mobile.
Leaning on DeVries' cold arm so that she didn't fall, Silk did her best to keep up as the team continued moving through the complex. The vampire explained that he had picked up Lonestar radio transmissions indicating that the police were at the compound, and beginning to enter the building.
If Silk hadn't been so preoccupied by just putting one foot ahead of another, she probably would have thrown something at the vampire before he managed to explain that they had found some of the janitorial staff that had pointed the runners towards a quasi-secret exit that should get them past the 'Star.
En route to the exit the team took care of a couple more of the society's bully boys, and freed a few more of their victims. Five minutes after Silk had regained consciousness the runners pounded up a stairway and exited the complex.
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