Chapter Thirty One
Devils and Angels
The Old Farmhouse
November 7, 2059
9:30pm
Tart's screams of agony burst from her lungs in a feverish wail as she held her savaged hand, dripping with blood, out from her body. The anguish filled every terrified shrill of her voice as she called out for help. The flesh had been ripped away, leaving chunks of meat hanging from bones that had been sliced neatly in two. Two fingers dangled from loose flaps of skin. The slightest movement of her arm caused them to sway limply from side to side.
Alona wrapped her arms around the younger woman and held her tightly. She ignored her own broken nose and aching mouth. She kept telling her that it would be alright. Shard would heal her soon. There was nothing to worry about. Anything to comfort to take her mind off the stomach churning wound. Alona hoped she wasn't telling Tart a lie. Shard and Riggs were working hastily to save Gideon. Smiley had torn the ork apart. Alona had no idea what had caused the shadowrunners to turn on each other. When Riggs, Alona, and Tart came into the farmhouse they found Shard trembling in a corner. She believed that the building, that she herself, were on fire. It was only when Riggs gave her a good hard slap and a tranq patch that she returned to her senses enough to realize that she wasn't. Alona glanced over to where Gideon lay. Riggs furiously bandaging the ork's bloody, mangled arm while trying to attach sensors from a medkit. Shard was knelt over the ork with both hands placed over his head. Her eyes were closed and she chanted in a quiet whisper, begging arcane forces to save the mercenary.
Smiley lay on the floor a few meters away. The twisted samurai wasn't moving. A pool of blood had collected around his body. Alona didn't know if he was alive or dead. She hoped he was dead.
"Breath damnit!" Riggs slammed his fist on Gideon's chest. "You cold hearted son of a bitch you breath or so help me I'll kick your hoop so hard you'll wish you were dead! Now breath!"
Shard's gentle whispers rolled quietly between the dwarf's curses. "Leis an lurgainn beul an anamoich hi. Seachad Aros o hi bah I gabhaidh o ho'n fhairge laidir o hi suas gu barr a' chroinn-sgoid."
"Gideon, goddamnit, you still owe me twenty 'yen!"
Alona shut her eyes as Tart wailed in her arms. It was a strange seen. Two people working feverishly to save the life of a cold blooded mercenary while the deranged madman was left to bleed on the floor. The only sanity from the whole scene was a terrified young woman screaming in the arms of another, equally terrified young woman.
Suddenly Gideon let out a gasp. His eyes opened wide in shock. Either from the severity of his wounds or surprise to find that this was the afterlife. Shard immediately put her soft touch to his chest without breaking her chant. It eased his urge to move as the mage pumped life giving mana into him. The fabric of the auras intertwined as the mystical forces on the astral plane enveloped the crippled man. The washed over his body, pushing at the pieces of metal and plastic to reach his flesh and bone. Shard swayed, her aura dimming as she reached inside the ork's body and pulled the shattered rib from his aorta and mended it back into place. She pushed the pooled blood away from his heart, giving it room to beat again. She began light headed from the drain, but she wasn't finished. Her ethereal fingers felt their way up his battered arm of flesh. Ghostly fingers tied the arteries back together, stemming the flow of live giving fluid. Gideon grunted in pain as Shard tried to maneuver the shattered bones of his arm. They would not budge. The metal in the ork's nerves kept her healing touch away.
Shard slumped suddenly, swaying to far over to the point that she fell over. Her forward was beaded in sweat. The ache from her fingers and head matched the gasping screams that poured from Tart's lungs.
Gideon blinked. He was in intense pain. His arm, the one not covered in chrome, was on fire. Yet he had his senses about him. He looked around. Marking Shard's exhausted form next to his and Riggs as he slapped a patch across his tortured flesh. He tilted his head a little, much to his discomfort, and beheld Smiley's unmoving figure a few meters away. Somewhere in the background his ears registered Tart's voice which had become a bawling cry of despair.
"Oh frag yes, Gid, you're still here!" The dwarf was overjoyed.
"Whu-....what happened to me? I was on the porch?" Gideon grumbled.
"I don't have a clue, ole fellow, I just got here. Shard how about....Shard? Shard!?"
Riggs reached over Gideon and shook the mage who was still laying on the ground. She offered her hand weakly in protest.
"It's okay." She assured. "Just too much out of me. Let me catch my breath."
Shard's words were drowned out by Tart's pleading cry. The decker's face was red and streaked with tears. Her mouth was gaped open in never ending torment. Her good hand was gripped tightly on the wrist of her injury. She held it out from her body as if that would make it go away. Alona held her tightly, doing all she could to keep Tart from rolling around in pain.
"Help her, Shard! Please!" Alona begged, with no thought to her own injuries.
Shard pushed herself up, feeling weak and frail. She fought to get to her knees while Riggs worked to bandage Gideon's wounds and start an IV from the medkit. The ork had lost so much blood it was a wonder he was conscious at all. She caught a glimpse of Smiley laying on the floor. She had no idea if her spell had pushed Smiley over the edge. Her head hurt so much she couldn't even look on the astral for his aura. Was he alive? Was he dead? Shard's fevered mind labored on what do to. Who does she help? Who is worth saving? Smiley, with all of his evils and cruelties, or Tart with her childish innocence and kind nature? Does a devil deserve to live just as much as an angel?
In her fatigued haze Shard found herself remembering the shadowrun against Mauss Chemicals. Smiley had collapsed in the burned out factory while buying time for the escape. She had always thought he fought so hard and with such zeal because he enjoyed it. He was a savage, unthinking animal with no respect for life. She liked to think for a moment that he had given everything he had to save his teammates. There had to be a little good in the man. A man who had murdered hundreds without thinking had to have some compassion. Everyone was capable of kindness. Even if they showed it in strange ways.
Shard looked at Tart again. She was in horrible pain. Her aura bleed fear and anguish onto the astral plane so vividly that Shard did not have to be perceiving to sense it, but her wound wasn't life threatening. She would survive without immediate medical attention. Smiley may not. She sighed, thinking of what Lenny would do if he were here. He would want everyone to go home alive. Wether they were angels or devils.
"Riggs, take care of Tart." Shard pulled herself up into a groggy crawl to Smiley.
"Shard?" Riggs looked up, concerned.
She strained. It would take everything she had left to save the devil. She reached out to the samurai's unmoving body and lay her hand upon him. His skin was cold and hard, yet the cruel and vicious stench that hung over him was vividly real. It was his nature. She pushed with all her will, trying to mesh her aura into his body. She collapsed as blood seeped from her pores.
"Shard, speak ta' me!" Riggs shook the elfin mage with all the strength he could muster. Then he resorted to more sophisticated methods of diagnosing the problem. Somewhere in the middle the room grew silent as Tart stopped screaming and slumped limply in Alona's arms.
"What happened to her? Tart needs her!" Alona pleaded.
"It's okay, she just passed out from the drain." Riggs concluded as he rolled the elf over and dug out a stimpatch. He stopped just before applying it. Mages sometimes had a bad reaction to the drugs in stims. Riggs didn't know if it was a good idea to slap one on her or not. Instead he dragged her back to where Gideon was.
"Riggs! Do something! Tart's not moving!"
"Don't get yer panties in a bunch! I'm working as fast as I can." Riggs grabbed the medkit and pasted the biomonitor against Tart's skin. The device beeped briefly. A small screen on the top of the kit displayed directions and popped open a morphine injector. Riggs glanced over it. "She's passed out from shock." Riggs grabbed the injector and jammed it into Tart's thigh. Then he snatched up gauss and bandages. "Gideon, you still with me over there?"
"Mmrph, can't feel my arm." The ork grunted. "Something's busted in my cybernetics too. Fingers are jammed."
"Stay frosty." Riggs finished the field dressing on Tart's hand. It wasn't pretty, but it would keep all the pieces in the same place until they could get out of here.
"Is she going to be okay?" Alona's voice was strained with concern.
"I think so. No danger from bleeding to death according to the medkit." Riggs grabbed another injector that medkit popped up and glanced over the instructions on the kit's screen before jabbing Tart with the needle. "Got to keep her calm. How are you doing?"
"I'm okay."
Riggs held her by the chin and looked her over. "Congrats, Alona, yer got a broken nose. Welcome to the club." Riggs leaned over Shard's unconscious form to unclip the MP5 from her harness. Shoved it into Alona's hands.
"What's this for?"
The dwarf adjusted the remote deck on his belt. "Someone's got to find Lenny and Nightsky and I'm the only one with two working legs. My drone picked up a heat sig on the west wing of the house. That's a frag of a good place to start."
"You're going to leave us here alone?!"
"Hey I don't want to do it any more than you do! I'm the one that's sticking my stumpy neck out where it has no business being in the first place, but the halls in this place are just too damned narrow to fit a drone." Riggs grinned at the end, trying to calm her fears. "Don't worry though. If you can manage to pull the trigger on Smiley anything else that can come yer way will be a piece of cake."
Alona frowned at the stumpy little asshole. She grabbed the MP5's action and yanked it back. "I hope you don't think that if you lose your mind out there that I'm going to come looking for you."
"No worries. Of anyone, I'm the one that's got their head screwed on the tightest."
9:40pm
See them go. See them live. See them life and cry and rejoice with each coming day. Then see their horror, their screams, their terror and fear. See their lives wash away. That's life. That's all it is. A kindle. A fire. A brilliant flare. Then it dies. That's all.
Nighsky squinted his eyes shut, idly thumbing the action on his gun with one hand and the surface of the orb with the other. "Piss off."
That flare at the end is the finest of them all. All a persons hopes and dreams crying out one last time, knowing those hopes and dreams will never be met. All of them will be washed away.
Nightsky shook his head and kept strolling through the basement. His boots kicking up the thick gray dust on the floor as he mindlessly searched for a stairs. The old brick walls of this place, stained and moss covered, gave off peculiar shadows from candlelight. An active imagination could draw shapes out of those shadows.
He stopped abruptly, examining his environment. He was puzzled, unsure which was lead to the surface.
Drink in that last flare. The taste is so good. Warm, delectable. Like a fine meal. One seasoned with the expectations of the one who feasts. If it's the right meal, it will be enjoyed more. According to one's tastes.
Nightsky looked back and forth down two dark hallways. "I said piss off." His words were spoken aloud, though he only said them to himself. The fact that they traveled beyond the confines of his own thoughts wasn't apparent to him.
There was a flicker of movement off in the shadows. Just a whisper of a presence. Nightsky turned to face it on reflex. Red eyes came out of the darkness, the eyes of a bloodthirsty animal with a vaguely human face. Its mouth held a gap, filled with ragged teeth. Thick red blood and salvia oozed from the enamel. The stench of foul breath and moaning wail pored from the cavernous maw.
Nightsky jerked, cursing aloud with intention and triggering a muffled burst from his gun. His heart pounded fast in his chest as he depressed the trigger. Shell casings landed softly on the dusty floor.
The bullets collided with a brick wall, chipping off mortar and clay.
Motivation.
Nightsky shook his head as if to shake off an annoying insect. He depressed the trigger again, putting more bullets into the wall of the ghostly apparition.
They are always there. All around. They wait on the edge of the darkness for you to turn your guard. That's when they strike. They move like wind, becoming as the fog which rolls on undeterred no matter the obstacle. There is no shelter.
A rustling stir to his right drew his attention. He spun quickly, flipping his weapon's selector to full automatic and sprayed the darkness with hot lead. The barrel whined a muffle cry of solace. He chased the figment around the room until the barrel grew hot and the clip ran empty.
The HK227 dropped loosely on its strapped. He snatched the sword from his scabbard. He's eyes were wide, trying to take in every ounce of light and detail as he unlocked the empty clip with his free hand. It fell to the floor, smoke wafting from its spent shells. As he fumbled for a replacement his thoughts danced onto a thousand different subjects. He tried to force his feel onto one signal path. He needed focus, the determination of will. Will was what made the difference. It made a person able to do things without thinking. Essential for getting something done that was neither easy, or moral.
You can not see them. You are not looking in the right place.
"Shut up!" He pushed the new clip into the receiver and fumbled to depress the trigger. The action injected a new round into the chamber and locked into place.
Are you going to flail around in the darkness and beg for death!
"NO!" Nightsky swung around, opening fire at whatever happened to be in that direction. "I will not die in the darkness! I will not die!" The bullets smashed into another brick wall, splattering large portions onto the floor. When he was done his breath was running away from him. He was keyed up, nervous. Agitated beyond that of focused thought.
There was a pleasant silence. An un-poisoned peace without the clatter of the submachine-gun or the insidious remarks of a fool.
You expect to die.
Nightsky lowered his head.
You wanted it.
"I wanted a lot of things."
You were afraid to take it.
"No." He answered himself.
Yes
"I was afraid of change."
Change comes to you.
Nightsky backed up into he came into contact with a wall. He leaned against it, letting it support his weight. He slide down its length until he was on the floor. Gun in one hand, sword in the other. Both pointing aimlessly ahead.
"I don't want it to."
He kicked at the dust. Watching it stir up and settle back down. The comfort of the tools in his hands, his fingers familiarly wrapped over them, curled in the old positions that felt right. He took solace from their presence. His thoughts settled for a moment. He was able to focus himself, to search for a direction to go forth in.
You can come to change.
Nightsky lifted his head. "What?"
You can come to change instead of letting change come to you. Change is inevitable no matter what. Like fate. You can either be the song it plays, or the instrument that plays it.
He slowly stood, bracing himself up with the wall and the tip of the sword.
Would you like that?
"I-......." He licked his lips, finding himself focusing on one path. His thoughts didn't seem wanting to push him. It was a choice made free from any bonds. "I would."
To be the instrument is to choose the song that is played.
He stood under his own power.
Say that you want that. Say that you want to play the song.
"I do. I want to play."
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