Chapter Eight
The Country
The road was bumpy and hidden behind a cloud of dust kicked up by the Honda's tires. The ride up to Grubber's cabin had been a horrible experience. The car wasn't made to take this kind of off road punishment. Fortunately no permanent damage was done nor did they go careening off a cliff.
The sun began to peak of the mountains. Boxer and Kino had crossed the border in the middle of the night. They had no trouble entering the Native American Nations thanks to Kino's friend on the border patrol. They arrived at a lakeside house Kino kept. The house had surprised Boxer. It was huge by anyone's standards. It was the kind of place mid-level suits spent the weekend at. Boxer couldn't understand why Kino lived in Redmond when she was paying rent on a paradise just outside Seattle. Then she explained that it wasn't really her house. A smuggler she knew owned most of it. She just paid part of the upkeep to use it as a retreat if trouble ever came looking for her in Seattle.
"Wait here, I'll only be a second." Boxer said as the car rolled to a stop on in front of the cabin.
"Boxer-" Kino pointed at the front door which looked like it had been smashed. "Look."
"Frag." He pulled a Predator from its holster. The heavy automatic felt comforting in his hands. The smartlink came online as his palm wrapped around the gun, displaying ammunition and mode in the corner of his vision and a Surefire targeting reticle that responded to the position of the pistol's barrel. "Stay put. I'll be right back."
"I'll go around the back."
"No, I said stay put!" Boxer snapped, but knew yelling was pointless. The Browning was already in her hand and her door already open. That impulsiveness was going to get her killed one of these days. He remained acutely aware that this sort of thing was not Kino's specialty. She was a rigger, not front-line muscle. "Ah, frag. Why can't you do what I ask once in a while?"
"Last I checked you couldn't tell me what to do."
"You could at least pretend to hear me!" Boxer rushed to catch up to her. Kino was halfway to the door when he managed to grab hold of her arm. "Stay up front with me."
Kino looked at him with eyes of ice. The look could freeze his arm right off.
"Do you really think a 10mm is going to help if big, tall and gruesome is in there?"
She glanced at her Browning. "Point taken."
Boxer and Kino took up positions on either side of the door. A quick nod from her and he stuck his head through the door. Gun raised, smartlink reticle tracking for targets. The inside of the cabin was a mess. It looked like a tornado had torn through here, scattering clothes, furniture, even food around. The two made a quick sweep of the rest of the cabin. Boxer always made sure to enter a room first. If there was anything waiting for them he would rather be the one to take it.
There was no metal beast waiting for them. Only the ruins of someone else's life.
Kino holstered her Browning. "No one here."
Boxer pushed over a stack of papers on the floor. "Doesn't scan with me. Grubber would never leave this place."
"Who is this Grubber anyway?"
"He's a shaman. Use to run the shadows about a year ago, but he got into a bad run and decided that his totem was telling him that he should find a new line of work. So he moved out here and became a complete recluse."
"Being a recluse doesn't mean he's not going to bolt if he sees two tons of meat and metal coming his way." Kino remarked as she examined the smashed door. "That's what looks like came through here."
Boxer nodded, she was right about that.
"How do you know him anyway?"
"We were in a few shadowruns together."
"The same one that went bad enough to make Grubber change his ways?"
He looked at her. Kino didn't miss much. Despite her personality, she was quite intelligent.
"There's something you're not telling me, Box. What is it?"
Boxer put a chair right-side up lowered his aching muscles into it. He might as well tell her. Keeping it to himself wasn't doing either of them any good. "About a year ago I went on a run. With my brother, Trevor. Grubber was there too. We went into a corporate office to snatch some files. Simple, right? Trevor had it all planned out. That was what he was good at, you know. he knew exactly where the security force were, how they would respond, what the best way out was, everything. We went in with his plan. Everything was going fine, null presp. We got the files and were on our way out. That's when it all went wrong."
Kino leaned against the wall. A look of concern on her face.
"Corporate security closed in on us. We had to fade quick. We were halfway out when the facility went into lockdown. Their security forces caught up to us. They didn't send meat, though. They sent drones. We didn't stand a chance. After that we got separated. Trevor took a bad hit. I couldn't get to him. We left him there.
"This happened last year. This morning Grubber left a message in one of my dropboxes. He said that Trevor was back."
She was quiet for a moment. Maybe she was trying to absorb it all. Maybe she was thinking about what a horrible person he was for not trying to save him. Maybe she was thinking about saving everyone a lot of effort by simply shooting him on the spot.
Boxer looked into her doe-like eyes. It was hard to make out what was going on behind them. He tried to pick up signs of her thoughts by watching her body language, watching if she held her breath, breathed shallowly, or twiddled her fingers.
"Do you think Grubber was telling the truth?"
The question caught him off guard. She was doubting Grubber instead of him. It was hard for him to admit that he preferred it that way. "Grubber would not have taken the time to contact me if he wasn't. In fact, Trevor is the only reason I can think of that would have brought Grubber out of his self imposed exile."
"So your brother is alive?"
"I don't know."
"Maybe that creep at the Stuffer Shack is after him."
"I don't know that either. The only way to find out is to find Grubber."
"I guess that's what we will have to do, then."
Boxer looked at her. "We?"
Kino smiled. "That's right, we."
"Kino, I don't think-"
"Oh, come on, Box. You can't tell me what to do."
Boxer huffed. She was right about that.
It looks like he has a partner in this after all.
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