Fade to Black

20

The slag in the elaborate red uniform frowned in puzzlement as Filly and Rico got out of the big blue and white sedan and moved across the sidewalk toward him. Filly didn't know his name, but she sized him up at a glance. Doorman. Very decorative but probably not a threat to anybody. Maybe a little basic training in security procedures, such as how to call for help when something bad came down.

Filly motioned at him with her chin. "Security super."

"Right inside," the doorman replied, waving a thumb at the transparex-fronted lobby of Forty East Seventy-third. "What's the name?"

"Rasheen. Mo."

"Thanks."

The doorman smiled and nodded and put his key to the lock that set the double transparex doors to the lobby sliding open. Filly stepped on inside, Rico at her right. She took the lead because she knew the drill. She'd spent nine years on patrol with Winter Systems in the Bronx. She knew the procs, the lingua, and most importantly the attitude-casual, matter-of-fact, like she had every right to do whatever the hell she was doing and there was no fragging question about it.

The lobby was big and open, a dunkfield worth of carpeting, small gardens in the corners. A broad, semicircular counter sat at the rear of the space. The slag seated behind it wore the dark gray uniform of Fargo Security. He smiled and stood up as Filly and Rico approached. From his position at the security desk, the guard could have no trouble seeing the sedan at curbside, marked for the NYPD, Inc., or the matching uniforms worn by Rico and Filly.

"Hoi, chummers," the guard said, still smiling.

"You Rasheen?" Filly inquired.

"Yes, that is right. I am called Mo. Is there something for which I can help you officers?"

"Got a little problem," Rico said, as Filly walked around to the rear of the security counter.

"I am very sorry to be hearing that," Rasheen said, glancing back and forth. "How can I be helping you, please?"

The rear of the security counter was one big console equipped with monitor screens, two keyboards, and a suite of other controls. Those controls had complete override authority for the street doors to the lobby and the lobby doors to the elevators. No one got through the lobby unless the guard here tapped the appropriate key. Piper could commandeer the console from the matrix, but that wouldn't stop Rasheen here from calling a security alert.

Every guard on site carried a radio. Rasheen had a portable right on his console. Also, Fuchi internal security had assigned a special detail to watch over Surikov's wife up on the thirty-fifth floor. That detail would go on full alert if they caught even a whisper of strange things happening. One radio call about a malfunctioning security console would do it.

Filly stepped up beside Rasheen, and "said, "Turn and face the wall."

"We got a warrant," Rico said.

Rasheen went wide-eyed. "I am begging your pardon-"

"Do it NOW Filly ordered.

"Please explaining to me-!"

Filly grabbed Rasheen's arm and twisted it. That made him turn to face the wall or lose the arm. Rasheen turned. Rico came around and relieved Rasheen of his sidearm and various defensive weapons. Filly forced Rasheen down to his knees and applied handcuffs.

"You must be erroneously arresting me!"

"I don't think so."

"Please letting me call my director!"

Rasheen would not be calling anybody.

The building at Forty East Seventy-third Street on Manhattan's Upper East Side was called the Crystal Blossom Condominiums. The mainframe running the building's utilities and monitoring security functions was a Fuchi machine, but had only the most tenuous of connections with the machines installed in the Black Towers of Fuchi-Town. It was operated by the Manhattan Property Management Corporation, a Fuchi subsidiary. Code Orange security. That was tough, but not nearly as tough as the Black Towers' Code Red cluster.

The System Access Node to the Crystal Blossom mainframe looked like the anteroom to a bank vault. The iconic room was gray, the vault door gold. This was standard matrix imagery and it indicated little or nothing about the security status of the system beyond.

Piper entered the node with her masking utility on-line. The guards in their sky blue Fuchi blazers didn't react at all to her presence. From inside her jacket, Piper drew out a huge magnifying glass and examined the guards' program code. The guards-mere access IC-still did not react. Piper drew out a pair of glowing red and green lollipops the size of tennis rackets, each winking with the legend, in orange, ENTRY REQUEST. She held the pops out to the guards, and now they noticed her. They looked at the lollipops and accepted them. And began licking them.

They would continue licking forever-caught in a virtual loop.

Piper drew out a pouch, marked Movable Holes. The hole she selected took the form of a slim black disk whose diameter was about equal to the height of her iconic self. She slapped the disk against the vault door. READY began winking in neon red at the center of the disk. She stepped through-through the hole, through the vault door-and into the dataline beyond.

She had the entire Crystal Blossom system under her command in something just under a millisecond. It was more than just "too easy."

Kami save them. It seemed impossible.

The doorman started tapping on the transparex doors out front and lifted his hands as if to ask what was going on. The doors wouldn't respond to his key. That would be Piper's doing.

One of the elevators dinged, and a uniformed guard came walking into the lobby. He was dark-skinned like Rasheen and the look on his face immediately turned to shocked surprise.

"What is happening here?" he asked, voice lilting wildly up and down.

Rasheen blurted something in some foreign lingua.

The newcomer stopped, looking back and forth. "Why have you arresting my brother?"

"Come're," Filly said.

"Answer please!"

Something from the security console started bleeping. Filly let Rico worry about that. She stepped toward the newcomer, Rasheen's "brother." She laid a hand on the butt of her sidearm. Any normal corporate would take that as a hint and act accordingly. "Don't give us any trouble," she said adamantly. "Put your hands on the wall and shut up."

"You're not arresting me!"

The slag went for his gun.

Filly lunged forward, seized the guard's gun arm, and pounded a shock glove-covered fist into his face. That quickly, she had a full-scale brawl on her hands. The shock-glove treatment didn't seem to affect the fragger. She twisted his arm and slammed him back against the lobby's rear wall. The slag managed to tug his gun free of its holster. Rico stepped up on her left and rammed a fist into the guard's mid-section just as the gun detonated.

All this just to keep up appearances, the likeness of a legitimate arrest by police, to keep that special detail up on thirty-eight unawares.

The roar of the gun affected Filly like the peel of a siren. She felt the adrenaline surge even as Rico staggered back, turning half a circle. She went animal. She pummeled the guard. She slammed his elbow back against the lobby wall to maybe numb the gun arm, and then tugged the pistol out of his hand. She rode him down to the floor on his chest, dragged his arms behind his back, and applied a pair of cuffs.

Panting for breath.

Looking for Rico.

The bossman stood leaning against the rear of the security counter. He shook his head as if to clear it. A dark spot was forming around the tear in the thigh of his right pants leg.

Fragging great.

When the elevator doors slid open, Bandit had the spell waiting, held in the palm of his hand. He saw the lengthy corridor stretched out ahead of him and the two men in dark suits standing near a door on the right. Bandit opened his hand. A noise like an alley cat shrieking arose quick and raw from the distant end of the corridor. The suits looked, and a pair of thumps sounded from Bandit's left and right. The thumps were from Shank and Dok's automatics. The bullets they fired were not lethal, but the pair of suits up the corridor slumped to the floor anyway.

Not dead. Just unconscious.

Shank and Dok hustled up the corridor. Bandit followed along at his own cautious pace. He saw nothing of any interest in the corridor. Shank motioned for him to hurry.

The door marked 35-8 slid open. Shank and Dok hustled inside, automatics thumping again. Bandit followed. A small, richly decorated foyer led into a luxurious living room. Another suit lay sprawled on the floor of the foyer. Bandit followed Shank and Dok into the living room, running his eyes around, taking in the wealthy furnishings: paintings, drapes, vases, bonsai, crystal goblets, deluxe trideo with simsense. All very deceptive. A mundane could probably live here for years and never realize that he or she was actually living in a crete and plastic coffin, all but cut off from the essential energies of the universe. A quiet exclamation came from another room. Nothing to worry about.

Bandit considered the situation, then took a small, velvety pouch from his duster pocket and laid it on an end table. The pouch contained the extracted essence of a number of herbs and roots used in ritual magic by mages. Bandit had once thought that the combined essences might prove valuable for him, but the expectation had turned out to be false. Useful perhaps for a mage, not for a shaman.

It would make for a fair exchange.

Steinberg was staring at some bowl game on the trid. Tsugaru looked sound asleep, sprawled on the sofa. Steva Karris glanced at her wrist chrono for the fifth time this hour and mentally began ticking off the seconds.

There was nothing more boring than sitting watch on some corporate property, especially one that never went out, never left her assigned corporate quarters, for chrissakes. Steva didn't know the woman's name, didn't even know if she had a name. It was like playing nightwatch for some out-of-the-way corporate facility of dubious interest to anyone. A big yawn. That wasn't to say that she wouldn't do her damnedest to protect Fuchi corporate property. She'd just be a little more excited about it if she had some idea that she'd been posted to a job that made a difference.

Her wrist chrono dinged. She looked up as Devoe came up the hall from the bathroom. "You're on."

"So soon?"

Steva nodded toward the foyer. Devoe knew better than to argue. He straightened his suit and headed out.

Abruptly, he was back, whispering urgently, "Alert! Alert! Status five! Code Red!" -

Karris grabbed her Ingram SMG and lunged for the foyer, the others close behind.

Dok had met some wildly sculptured biffs in his time, but this one was the most outrageous he'd seen outside a Tomikon bordello. She was built for sex. Every curve shouted it.

Her name was Marena Farris. She was Ansell Surikov's wife. When the lights came on, she was lying there on her back on the broad black expanse of the bed. She wore some kind of sheer, silky nightgown that covered her to the ankles, but didn't hide a thing, not the rounded prominences of her breasts or even the broad, dark patches surrounding her nipples. Not even the part lower down, beneath her waist. Discreetly veiled in hair as fine as the whitish-blonde masses surrounding her face.

She lifted her head. A soft exclamation slipped from her lips. She sat up, one hand rising as if to defend her eyes from the lights.

"We're busting you out," Shank announced.

Farris gasped and blurted, "What?"

The woman was obviously overawed. Who wouldn't be? Dok thought Awakened from a sound sleep by the sudden glare of the bedroom lights? met by a pair of slags in full battle gear? Dok smiled and said, "We're taking you to your husband. He's safe, okay? Don't wor-"

It was too much.

Abruptly, Farris' eyes rolled upward and she fell back on the bed, limp. Dok hurried over and broke out his medikit. Farris' vitals were running strong, remarkably strong for someone in a dead faint, but not so strong that any kind of incident seemed imminent.

Shank grunted. "You carry her."

"Someone'll bust my skull," Dok said, grinning.

"Do it anyway."

"Hai, commander."

"Eff you. Hurry up."

Dok put one knee on the bed and gathered the woman into his arms. She was no lightweight, but then the best-looking ones never were. No doubt his chummer Shank would agree. He only wished that he'd gone for the stage two muscle replacement at mat clinic in Johannesburg, the one with the specialist direct from Chiba City.

Then again.…

Maybe not.

As Shank led back through the condo toward the corridor, Piper's voice came to him over his headset. "Time is oh-two-twenty-four," she said. "Condition Two."

That wasn't good.

Condition Two: Somebody injured. It had to be Rico or Filly, or Piper woulda called Condition Three, and that woulda been panic time because it woulda meant that Thorvin and their ride outta here wouldn't be on schedule-or might not be coming at all. Shank stole a glance back over his shoulder. Dok had caught Piper's warning, judging by the look on his face. Shank gave the old mercenary signal for double-time, pumping his fist. Almost in sync, the two of them leaned forward into a quick jog.

In the living room, Shank stopped, incredulous. Bandit was standing there looking around like a reviewer from Modern Condo. Shank cursed. "You're supposed to be watching the corridor!"

The shaman just looked at him, his face as blank as a wall. They'd gone over this part of the plan a dozen times, and Bandit still didn't get it. Shank felt a sudden surge of anger. Slotting sonovabitch. Frag it anyway. No time for jacking around. Someone was blooded-they had to move!

He hustled through the foyer to the corridor door, then immediately jerked himself back into the foyer and clear of the doorway. A female voice carried in clear and loud from outside. "Fuchi security! Throw your weapons into the corridor! Come out with your hands up!"

Shank glanced at Dok, standing right there beside him, and said, "We could be in trouble."

Dok smiled. "Glad you noticed."

It was always difficult to keep in mind what the others wanted. They designed complicated plans with ends he sometimes found obscure. Bandit ran with Rico and the others because the runs often proved interesting in various ways, but he was not used to concerning himself with others' desires. He had his own way of seeing the world. He knew that few shared his view of things. He understood that most looked at life in ways that were either flawed or illusory.

Why should he watch the corridor? He had seen it once already. There was nothing there of interest. There was always the chance that something might occur there that might pose a danger, but he had never encountered a danger that he could not escape.

The problem, of course, was that the others lacked his ability.

Quickly now, he hurried after Shank and Dok. He heard someone shout about Fuchi security. Shank seemed uncertain, unsure of what was happening or what to do. "We could be in trouble," he said.

"Glad you noticed," Dok replied.

Bandit projected astrally, sized up the situation in the corridor, then stepped to the doorway, announcing loudly, "I surrender. Don't shoot. I'm coming out."

"Keep your hands UP!" a voice shouted.

Shank growled, but Bandit ignored that. One step more took him through the doorway and into the corridor. The two suits who had been out there before were still lying unconscious nearby. Four other suits had appeared. They were scattered about to the right of the doorway, crouching low like animals in anonymous gray skins, ready to pounce. Bandit supposed they were professionals. They certainly looked like they knew what they were doing. They all held guns. Submachine guns, in fact.

"FACE DOWN ON THE FLOOR!" one shouted.

Bandit nodded, merely to sign understanding. He also murmured words of power, the song of a spell, one of the first he had ever learned. The spell mounted and ignited the instant he finished pronouncing the final word. The suits' arms all suddenly leapt upward. The guns they held jerked free of their hands and sailed back over their shoulders. Snatched away by Raccoon's clever paw. The guns clattered to the floor some distance to the suits' rear. The suits, in that instant, seemed too astonished to do more than exclaim and look around. Bandit's second spell triggered automatically. The suits' pants jerked downward to around their ankles. Another of Raccoon's wily tricks. The guards jerked and swayed and stumbled around, now shouting in alarm, hobbled by their own pants.

Bandit turned and looked back.

Shank and Dok both opened fire from the doorway. The guards all staggered and fell.

They were just knocked unconscious.

Shank grabbed Marena Farris by the shoulders. Dok looked at him in wonder, then took a new hold around the woman's hips. Together, they ran for the elevators. The elevator doors slid open barely two steps ahead of them.

Rico and Filly were already there, guns drawn. Rico's pants leg was wet from about the middle of his thigh to almost fee knee. "Got a bleeder!" Filly announced.

Bandit got on. The elevator went up.

Dok bent to look at Rico's leg.

Time is oh-two-twenty-seven," Piper informed over Shank's headset.

Farrah Moffit heard the helicopter and had a fair idea of what was going on, but she decided to do nothing about it.

It seemed like the only sensible course. She was keenly aware of both her deficiencies and her strengths, and she was no combat specialist With only minimal training in self-defense, she lacked both the physical stamina and the instincts to meet a man or even a woman head-on in any kind of physical contest. She had only an elementary knowledge of firearms. She would be a fool to offer anything more than the most token of passive resistance.

In the meantime, she gathered information, what little she could discern with her head hanging, her hair fallen across her face, her eyes closed, her body limp.

Her supposed rescuers had apparently disposed of the special security detail assigned to watch her, and had done so in rapid order. That made them highly dangerous. But not insuperable. She knew at least one of them was wounded. One was an ork. She'd seen him in the bedroom, along with an Anglo mala with grayish, razor-cut hair. And there was at least one female with the group.

Farrah remembered being carried at a run, presumably down the corridor from her condominium, and then the sound of the elevator doors opening. The timing seemed a little too precise to be mere coincidence. Perhaps it wasn't sheer coincidence. Perhaps these runners had matrix support.

As the whoop-whoop-whoop from the helicopter rotors ascended in speed and volume, she wondered where these people were taking her, and then all at once the truth struck home.

She couldn't believe it.