Chapter Twenty
"There is no terror in a bang, only the anticipation of it."
-Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)
Downtown, Seattle
November 7, 2059
1:00 am
"Lenny?"
"Yes, Tart?"
"Still nothing."
Lenny bowed his head in resignation. He taped his commlink to the open channel. Reluctantly, he spoke into the microphone clipped to his collar. "Plan B is a go."
Those words started the ball.
In a previously empty hallway four figures shimmered into form as the mystic energies that hid them from view faded from sight. A tall man with pitch black cybereyes, a average human brandishing a sword, a eccentric samurai with a smile that could kill, and a lithe elf who with sweat beaded up on her forehead from holding magic in place.
"Time. Fifteen minutes." Riggs reported silently over their commlinks. The tightly scheduled course of events was in motion.
"Front?" Lenny asked.
Gideon came over the commlink. "All quiet."
Lenny breathed a single word. "Door."
Nightsky immediately slid a maglock passkey through the magnetic lock. The panel blipped a red light. "No dice."
"Break it."
The adept popped a snap blade and tore off the lock's external cover, gaining access to the internal wiring. He removed a multitool from his coat. A snip here, a twist there, one more snip, and a connection there. The lock clicked open.
"Through."
"Two-by-two."
Smiley and Nightsky entered the room as Lenny did a juryrig job on the maglock's cover before following Shard inside. Their eyes adjusted easily to the low illumination. The foyer was empty.
"Astral search." Lenny said. Nightsky and Smiley immediately broke off to the left, taking up a defensive position behind a sturdy looking couch. Lenny and Shard took off to the right. The mage looked to have her attention focused elsewhere as her body went limp.
Her astral form rose in the room. It wasn't possible to do this search from the outside the condo. Watcher spirits kept and eye out for astrally projecting mages. The building's outside wall was covered with a dual-natured vine.
This was the home of Sergi Soyuze, a antique collector and somewhat shady business man who worked out of downtown Seattle. Hector's connections in the gray market of the art world lead him to suspect Sergi has the possible buyer of the Orb of Voices. He had even been spotted in the hotel where the rigger from Haiku's team, Austin, had been found dead. Under normal conditions Lenny would have liked to do some of his own legwork in the matter. However Cliff and Hector had insisted that the team investigate this lead immediately. The two of them already had the layout for Sergi's penthouse and a detailed file on his business activities.
For a moment Lenny found himself thinking how many lives had been lost over the past week. Seven days ago Haiku's team was double crossed and brutally murdered in the middle of no where. Perch and Abbott, the two shadowrunners Cliff had said were with Haiku, were dead. Haiku would probably never walk again. Austin, the greedy rigger, died a few days later in the bathtub of a downtown hotel. Findler, an ork who Lenny thought he could trust, died at the hands of Smiley just yesterday. So many people were now gone. Lenny tried to think of what made them stand out in his mind so clearly. Then he realized that it was because he knew their names this time. Suddenly they weren't statistics or nameless faces. They were people.
"There." Shard said as her consciousness returned to her meat body. Her slender finger pointed to a room off to the side. "One person."
Lenny looked towards Smiley and Nightsky. "Watch the front door. Shard, you're with me."
Shard and Lenny took up positions on either side of the door the mage had indicated. Lenny pulled the Ares Predator II from its holster for the first time and attached a silencer to its cruel looking barrel. The weapon was loaded with special capsule rounds filled with chemical cocktail that included gamma-scopolamine. The mixture could put a troll unconscious inside of three seconds.
The door was open. Lenny went through first, bringing his weapon onto anything that moved. Shard was right behind him. She whispered words of power, causing a brief flicker of green light around them as the emerald in her hand glowed with unnatural light.
There was no flying hail of gunfire. There were no screams of surprise or fear. In fact, it there was nothing at all. The office the two shadowrunners found themselves in was brightly lite. The decorations were immaculate and expensive just as the other room. The plate glass windows offered a spectacular view of Seattle. In the distance the Renraku Acrology loomed like some monolithic idol.
Shard's slender finger pointed to a corner. "There."
Lenny nodded and moved quickly across the room, taking cover behind an leather chair in front of the desk. He edged his head up just enough to get a look. In the corner sat a shivering man wearing a fine suit and impeccable hair. On the street one might mistake him for a well-to-do stockholder. The man didn't flinch at their presence. He stayed huddled in the corner clutching some small trinket.
"Sergi Soyuze?" Lenny called.
He looked at Lenny with fear filled eyes. "You're real? Did you see them? Out there? I haven't seem them for hours. I think they are gone."
Lenny looked at what the man was holding and immediately brought his the barrel of his gun up. The smartlink system in his skull lit up a red targeting reticle in his vision. "Drop the trinket."
"No. They might come back."
"Drop it." Lenny insisted, fearful that it could be some kind of offensive magic. That was the problem with the Sixth World. Magic made things unpredictable. The trinket could have a spell anchored to it that would turn Lenny into a memory. Then again, it could be a piece of junk sold for pocket change by a street vendor.
Shard's hand rested on Lenny's shoulder. "Lenny, wait."
"Huh?"
"He's scared."
If anyone else in the world had said that Lenny would have ignored them, but Shard wasn't just anyone. Her talent with magic gave her insights that he could only dream of. If she said that he was scared, she meant it because of some clue her awakened senses had given her. As Shard knelt beside Sergi Lenny kept the pistol on him. Listening to Shard was one thing, but dropping his guard was something else entirely. Shard didn't say anything for a moment. Her eyes looked unfocused as she viewed Sergi on the Astral Plane, carefully gauging his aura.
"Mr. Soyuze?" Shard spoke in a calm, soft tone. "We're not here to hurt you. We want something you bought recently. Do you understand?"
Sergi nodded.
"Where is the Orb of Voices?" She asked.
"Gone." Sergi waved his hand in a shooing motion. "Far away now. The thing that brought my pain is gone. Thanks to the old crone."
"Gone?" Lenny looked confused. Sergi was a business man. He knew that Sergi paid a hefty price for the Orb. To hear him say it was gone was uncharacteristic.
"Why is it gone?" Shard asked.
"It made me see. I did not want to see them. I told them to go away, but they kept coming. I thought I was going mad." Sergi shivered with fear.
"Who did you give the Orb to?"
"The old crone."
"Who is the crone?"
"The crone, the old woman. She made them go away." Sergi sounded relieved at that. Even happy that he did not have the Orb of Voices anymore.
"He could be lying." Lenny said.
"No." Shard shook her head, her fingers lightly tracing some arcane symbol on the floor. "I don't think so. He's telling the truth." She placed her hand warmly on top of Sergi's, trying to calm him. "It's okay. No one here will hurt you. Can you tell me where the crone is?"
"She left when I gave her the cursed thing. I wish I had listened to her warnings. I was so glad when she took it away. She promised they would never come back to haunt me."
"Who would never come back."
Sergi lifted his head, looking her in the eyes for the first time. His mouth worked up and down, but no words came out at first. "My children."
The was a loud sound as Smiley slammed the door to the office opened. The eccentric samurai had a twisted look on his face. The occasional twitched of wires on edge made his movements jerky. "What the frag is taking so long?" He sneered. "Grab the thingy already. I'm fragging bored here."
"He doesn't have it, Smiley. Go back on watch."
Smiley frowned and stalked across the office. "Doesn't have it? The frag he does. He's just not telling you. Want me to talk to him? Heh, I got a real good way with words. Ask Findler. Oh! That's right, Findler's taking a dirtnap. Guess you'll have to ask him later."
"He doesn't have it anymore, Smiley. Shard would know if he did."
"Shard's too nice and thus to easy to lie to." Smiley leered as he grabbed Sergi by the collar, lifted him off the floor, and slammed him into the wall. Sergi was like a limp sack. He dropped the trinket as Smiley manhandled him. The twisted samurai put his Predator against the Sergi's chin."Where the frag's the thingy, meatpuppet?"
Nightsky peaked through the office door. "What's going on?"
"Smiley, put him down!" Lenny ordered. "Nightsky! Watch that front door. Smiley, let him go. Now!"
"Awe, frag, bossman, let me just ask him one question. Come on. I'll get a good answer."
"Now, Smiley."
"Yes, fearless leader." Smiley released his grip. Sergi slid to the floor. "Take away all my fun why don't you?"
"You two start searching the flat." Lenny told Smiley and Nightsky. "Look for something about an old woman and where she might be."
"That's no fragging fun."
"Just do it, Smiley!"
Smiley huffed, and tromped out. "Yes, fearless leader."
Lenny groaned slightly as the eccentric samurai left. Smiley was getting worse, there was no denying it. One of these days it was going to get him killed. He turned back to Sergi, but saw him huddled in the corner again. He wasn't saying anything. Lenny began to doubt he really knew they were here. It was like the man was trying to shut out the world around him.
Shard picked up the trinket that Sergi had dropped. She looked at it with a curious eye. To any other person it may look like a piece of junk, but it was filled with mystics to her awakened eye.
"Shard?" Lenny asked. "What is it?"
"This." She motioned at the trinket. "There's something odd about it."
"What do you mean odd?"
"It has magic anchored to it, but I haven't seen this kind very much. If I'm right, this tradition isn't even practiced in Seattle."
"Think it belonged to the old woman Sergi was talking about?"
"I don't know, but whoever left this here has also left their signature on it."
Lenny rubbed his chin. "Can you use it to find whoever left it?"
"Yes, I think so."
"No!" Sergi exclaimed. "You can't take that away! They might come back if I don't have it!"
Lenny reluctantly pointed his pistol at Sergi. "Sorry, chummer, but I've got a job to do." He pulled the trigger. The capsule round splattered against Sergi's skin. The chemical cocktail went to work and the man collapsed onto the floor.
Yes, Lenny did have a job to do. A job that was becoming more complicated by the minute.
Roundhouse Dance Club
Auburn, Seattle
5:05 am
Alona slide her tray onto the bar for the last time. A long stretch and a hefty yawn reminded her of how busy her shift had been. The sun was just starting to rise. The club was winding down after a energetic night of dancing and celebration. She hated the midnight to dawn shift, swearing that one night she would demand her boss give her midday hours. The nights were just too crazy and wild for her to handle after the year she was having.
At least tips were good tonight. That's one thing about the night crowds, they tip generously. Sure, her hourly wage was a little under six nuyen an hour, but tips let her go home with two-hundred nuyen a night. That's eight-hundred nuyen a week. Not quite enough to afford her lifestyle each month, but Nightsky took care of that. She could spend her money however she liked.
The thought of Nightsky bothered her, thinking back to when her friends had come by to pick her up for work. Alona had walked into Nightsky's room to tell him goodbye. Instead she he nearly took her head off. Literally. He was on edge, she decided. Too much so. Ever since the party at the Prenumbra she had noticed a marked changed in his personality. Not that he was the nicest person to be around in the first place. She wondered if he was losing his mind? If all this shadowrunning was finally eroding away his grasp on humanity?
"Alona!"
She turned to see who called her name. It was Darrel. He came running up with an all too eager look on his face.
"Hi, Darrel. What's up?"
"Not a thing. Going home?"
"Yeah, my shifts over. I'm going home, get some breakfast, then going to sleep. I have to work again five to midnight tonight."
"Wiz, need a ride? I'm taking Jaxx and Leslie home too."
"The new girl?"
"Yes."
Alona thought for a moment. Nightsky took the care with him when he ran off last night to do who knows what and she didn't want to waste money on a taxi. Darrel always gave Jaxx a ride home. They were best friends. "Sure. I'm ready."
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