Never deal with a Dragon

PROLOGUE
Into The Shadows
2050

The soft roar of the surf slowly dissolved into the murmur of voices and the breathy huff of the air-conditioning system. The sharp salt smell mutated to the harsh tang of disinfectant. The return to the waking world brought awareness of the ache in Sam’s skull. His brain felt too full, pressing against its boundaries like a helium-filled balloon under a fathom of water.

The voices stopped as he let out a groan. Whoever was out there in the world beyond his closed eyelids seemed to await another sign, some indication that he really was awake. But Sam was not yet ready to accommodate them. The light was painful enough through the thin flesh that shielded his pupils. He had not the least desire to open his eyes.

“Verner-san,” a disembodied voice said. The tone was questioning, but held a hint of command.

He forced his eyes open, only to snap them shut again as the fluorescent stabbed for his brain. His involuntary wince and moan brought an immediate response from one of his visitors. The lights dimmed, encouraging Sam to venture a second attempt. Squinting, he surveyed his four guests.

Standing by the door, her hand still on the dimmer switch, was a woman in a white lab coat. His doctor. Her benign smile left no doubt that she was pleased with her handiwork. The other three people in the room were males. Two of the men Sam recognized at once. The third was apparently a bodyguard.

Seated at his bedside was the impressive figure of Inazo Aneki, master of the sprawling Renraku corporate empire. The old man’s presence was as surprising to Sam as the obvious concern on his lined face. Sam was no more than a minor employee of Renraku, and he had yet to make any significant contribution to the corporation. Nor had his implant operation been anything out of the ordinary, by twenty-first-century standards. It was true that the director had sponsored Sam into the company, and some said he looked on Sam with special favor. However, the old man and his supposed protégé had not been in personal contact since that brief introductory interview. All the more surprising to find Aneki-sama here in the recovery room.

Standing behind Aneki was Hohiro Sato, Vice President of Operations and the director’s current executive assistant. In some ways, the dapper Sato’s presence was even more astonishing. The pinch-faced official had a reputation of indifference to any subordinate’s problems unless it affected the company’s profits. In his infrequent encounters with Sato, Sam always came away chilled by the man’s distant manner and perfunctory politeness.

Why were they here?

“We are pleased to see you awake, Vemer-san,” Sato said briskly. Belying the words, his gold-irised Zeiss eyes speared Sam with the contempt for non-Japanese that Sato rarely displayed before his superiors. If his voice held any emotion, it was certainly not pleasure. Sato was obviously not at Sam’s bedside of his own volition. He was here, as formal protocol compelled, in the role of Aneki’s intermediary to one of a lower social position. “We have anxiously awaited your return to the waking world.”

“Domo arigato.” Sam’s dry voice rasped out the formal thanks. His attempt to rise and bow was stifled by a head shake from the doctor and a raised hand from Aneki. “I am unworthy of your attention.”

“Aneki-sama is the best judge of that, Verner-san. The doctor assures him that your datajack implant operation was routine and totally successful, but he wished to see for himself.”

At the mention of his new addition, Sam reached up to touch the bandages. His head did not register the touch, but his fingers could feel the hard lump on his right temple. He knew from the pre-operation interview what it was: a chromium steel jack designed to accept a standard computer-interface plug. The addition of the datajack was intended to increase his efficiency in handling computer files and accessing data. Sam would have preferred to continue operating through a terminal keyboard, but the corporation had mandated a datajack for someone of his position and rank. Sam had, of course, agreed.

“I guess I’ll be ready to get back to work soon,” he mused aloud.

“A week or so of rest would be advisable, Verner-san.” the doctor said softly. “Limited-access familiarization at first.”

“Sound advice,” Sato cut in. “Renraku has too much invested to permit an ill-timed return to a normal schedule. But all will work out for the best. You would have little time to resume your researches, with all the details of your move.”

Move? Sam didn’t understand. He wasn’t planning a move.

Ignoring Sam’s questioning look, Sato barely missed a beat. “It is perhaps regrettable that you cannot return immediately to work, but the timing is fortunate. Your transfer to the arcology project in Seattle-”

“Transfer?”

Sato’s face soured briefly at Sam’s interruption.

“Indeed, this is so. I hasten to assure you that Aneki-sama does not intend it as a demotion. He continues to hold you in the highest esteem. Nevertheless, he believes that your particular talents will best serve the corporation in Seattle.

“The company has taken the liberty of transferring your apartment lease. All your goods, save those you will need for the rest of your hospital stay and for the trip, have been packed for shipment.” Sato nodded as though being reminded by a secretary. “And your dog has already begun the journey. She seemed in excellent health and should pass easily through the local quarantine kennels.

“As an expression of Aneki-sama’s regret at the suddenness of the transfer, Renraku Corporation will absorb all travel and relocation expenses. Your tickets for the JSA sub-orbital flight to North America are waiting with your personal effects. You will leave as soon as the doctor certifies you sufficiently recovered.”

Sam was dazed. How could this be? When he had entered the hospital two days ago, he had been a rising star in the staff operations office of Renraku Central. What of all those rumors that Aneki was a patron of Sam’s career? He had seemed assured of great things with the company. Now they were exiling him to the corporation’s North American operation. Even though the transfer was to the relatively prestigious arcology project, it would take him away from the main office, the heart of the corporation, away from Tokyo, his chosen home. It was clear that he had fallen… no, been kicked… off the fast track. What had he done?

Had he offended Aneki-sama? A covert look at the director’s face showed only sympathy and concern.

Had he crossed a rival or insulted a superior? In a rapid mental review of his recent activities and projects, he dismissed that as well. He had been courteous to all, often beyond what was expected. That was his way of trying to make up for the fact that he was not a native Japanese. In all his time in Japan, Sam had never encountered more than the ordinary distrust and dislike the natives accorded any non-Japanese. Surely, his behavior was not at fault.

Nor could his work have given cause for what Sam could only perceive as a demotion, despite Sato’s denial. He routinely put in long hours, completing his assignments with

thoroughness and on time.

So what had he done?

He searched Sato’s face for a clue. If the man’s expression hinted at anything, it was impatience and boredom. Sam suspected that Sato had no personal interest in Samuel Verner and must consider this visit an interruption of other important work.

“Perhaps the director…" Sam began haltingly. “If he would be so kind as to inform me of whatever fault has occurred, I could correct it."

"Your request is impertinent,” Sato snapped.

Aneki looked distinctly uncomfortable, then rose from his seat before Sam or Sato could say any more. He sketched a bow to Sam and headed for the door, oblivious to Sam’s own return nod, the best he could manage while lying in the bed, and the doctor’s deep formal bow.

“Enjoy your rest,” Sato said as he followed the bodyguard toward the door. He, too, ignored the doctor. As the vice-president reached the doorway, he paused and turned briefly toward Sam.

“Condolences on your recent loss.”

“Loss?” Sam was more baffled than ever.

“The regrettable incident with your sister, of course.” Sato’s expression was of utterly feigned innocence.

“Janice? What’s happened to my sister?”

Sato turned away without another word, but not before Sam caught the vicious smile that lit the man’s face when he thought no one could see. As Sato retreated down the corridor, Sam’s repeated questions echoed vainly after him.

Sam tried to stand, intending to follow and force an answer, but a wave of dizziness slammed him the moment one foot touched the floor. Head spinning, he fell limply into the arms of the doctor. Struggling with his weight, the woman returned him to the bed and insisted that he lie quietly. He let her rearrange the bedclothes for a few minutes before he reached out to grab her arm.

The doctor stiffened at his presumption. “You are overwrought, Verner-san. You must rest quietly or risk damage to the delicate connections in your neural circuits.”

“Damn the circuits! I want to know what’s going on!”

“Impertinence and physical coercion are not the recommended methods of polite inquiry.”

Sam knew she was right, but he ached with concern for his sister. She was all he had left since their parents and siblings died on that terrible July night in 2039.

He unclenched his hand and lowered it slowly. He was shaking with the effort to control himself. “Please excuse my improper behavior.”

The doctor massaged her arm briefly and smoothed down the sleeve of her immaculate, white lab coat. “Severe emotional states can result in uncontrolled behavior, Verner-san. Such behavior among the wrong people or at the wrong time could be disastrous. You do understand this?”

“Yes, doctor. I understand.”

“Very well. You had a question.”

“If you would be so kind?” He waited for her nod of assent. “Doctor, do you have any idea what Sato-sama meant about my sister?”

“Regrettably, I do.”

She seemed reluctant to continue, but Sam had to know. No matter how bad it was. “Tell me, doctor,” he prodded. “Please.”

The doctor gave him a long, steady look. “Two days ago, your sister began kawaru. We felt it best not to inform you before the operation.”

“Lord, no.” The horror of it washed over Sam. Kawaru… the Change, as the Japanese so politely named it. Goblinization was the word that the English-speaking world used for the process that distorted and restructured an ordinary person’s organs and bones into one of the metahuman sub-species known as Orks or Trolls. Occasionally, the unfortunate victim was warped into something far worse. “How can it be? She’s seventeen. If she were going to change, it would have happened before. She was safe.”

“Are you an expert on kawaru, Verner-san? Perhaps you should instruct the scientists at the Imperial Research Institute.” The doctor’s face was stem. “The best of our researchers have yet to unravel the mystery of kawaru.”

“It’s been thirty years,” Sam protested.

“Not quite. But it has been long decades of frustration for those seeking the cure. We know so little even now.

"When the somatic mutation event first struck, it affected some ten percent of the world’s population, but, in the chaos, few had a chance to study or understand the phenomenon. We are able to make observations now, but because kawaru has become less common, we have less opportunity to do so.

“We lean a little bit with each case studied, but we still grope in the dark of ignorance. There is so much variation. The best we can do is identify those who might change. And even that only after lengthy genetic testing.”

“Testing that Janice and I never had.”

“Even if you had, the results are not completely reliable. Families of ordinary background still produce children who might undergo kawaru.”

“Then there’s no hope.”

“We are still studying the biological changes in the strange new races of man that kawaru has unleashed upon the world. Their reproduction, and the continued occurrences of the mutation event, remain a puzzle to our best minds. How is it that some of the Changed breed true, perpetuating whatever form they have taken, while others produce children who are perfectly normal humans? Still others have offspring who appear to be normal humans, only to experience kawaru later in life, when they metamorphose into some thing else. Even the best genotyping cannot predict who will be affected or what he will become.”

“It must be magic, then,” Sam whispered.

One of Sam’s earliest memories was of a man’s face coming on the family tridscreen to talk with conviction and emotion of a new world, an Awakened World. The man said that magic and magical beings had reawakened in the world to challenge technology-not just for supremacy, but for the very survival of the Earth. The man called on people to abandon their technology, to go back to the land and live simply.

But Sam’s father had never accepted the way the coming of magic had twisted the ordered scientific world beyond anything recognizable. He had raised his son in traditional ways, avoiding almost all contact with the Changed world. Even on their trips to zoos, the family had avoided the paranatural exhibits that displayed grilfins, phoenixes, and other creatures once thought legendary.

“Magic?” the doctor scoffed in perfect imitation of his father’s tone. “There may indeed be magic loose in the world, but only a weak-minded fool relies on it as the explanation to every mystery. Your corporate record indicates that you are no simpleton who believes magical spells are all-powerful and that mystical energies can accomplish anything. The so-called mages who infest our corporate structures have their limits. They may manipulate energies in ways that seem to contravene the physical laws we understood in the last century, but their alleged sorceries must have boundaries and will be understood in time.

“Progress has been slow. We lost so much valuable data when research facilities were destroyed in the chaos that followed the first massive outbreak of kawaru. How could dedicated scientists cope with the unnatural and unexpected when all order was crumbling around them, swept away in the hatred, fear, and loathing that engulfed the world as men, women, and even children were warped?

“Those days of chaos are behind us now. In time, we will understand kawaru, perhaps even be able to prevent or reverse it. But we will do so scientifically. The ephemera of magic offer no hope.”

The doctor was voicing beliefs that Sam had grown up with, but the words had a hollow ring. He felt empty, scoured by despair at what had happened to his sister. Their father had tried to protect his family from the twisting of the Change, but now it was thrust upon them with a violence that tore both Sam’s and Janice’s lives out of joint. Whatever perverse power fueled goblinization had taken his own sister. How was it possible? Sam fought down a scream of anguish.

“How is she, doctor? Will she be all right?”

The doctor touched his shoulder in a gesture of sympathy. “It is difficult to be sure, Verner-san. She is undergoing a lengthy Change. Her vital signs are strong, but the ordeal seems far from over.”

“I want to see her.”

"That would be ill-advised. She is comatose and would receive no comfort from your presence.”

“I don’t care. I still want to see her.”

“It is not in my hands, Vemer-san. The Imperial Genetics Board permits only the attending medical teams to enter the Kawaru ward. It could be dangerous should a patient suddenly complete the Change and go berserk.”

“But you could smuggle me in, couldn’t you?” he pleaded. “I could wear an orderly’s gown… pretend to be a medical student.”

“Perhaps. But discovery would be a disaster. For you. For me. Even for your sister. It would almost certainly result in revocation of her relocation funds, should she survive. Her adjustment to the new life she faces will be difficult enough. And you would surely lose whatever status you have left with your corporation.”

“I don’t care about myself. She’ll need me.”

“She will need you to be working and bringing in a salary. You can help her best by obeying your superiors. There is nothing you can do here in the hospital.”

“You don’t understand…”

“No, Verner-san, you are wrong.” The physician shook her head slowly, her eyes wells of sadness. “I understand too well.”

Her image swam before his eyes as she spoke. For a moment, Sam thought it was tears for his sister that blurred his vision, then he realized that the doctor must have directed the bed to inject a tranquilizer.

His earlier dream of the ocean returned, and he was dragged down by an irresistible current, down into a yawning darkness where grinning Trolls and Goblins reached for him. Struggle as he might against it, he only continued to tumble deeper down. A new lassitude crept through his limbs and flooded toward his brain. The visions of monsters faded with his awareness, leaving only a bright circle of pain throbbing at the side of his head. Then that too faded, swallowed up in oblivion.

Darkness had covered the land for some hours when the Elf stepped out under the sky to relieve himself. The forest was full of soft sounds, its life undisturbed by the presence of the lone Elf. A slight breeze meandered among the great dark boles of the trees, tickling their leaves into a soft rustle. The same wayward air played with strands of his white hair and caressed his skin, making the Elf smile with pleasure.

Though he did not call this forest his home, as did many of his kind, he always felt its powerful lure. There was great peace among the looming wooden giants, peace even amid the nightly games of survival unfolding all around him. Sometimes he even wished to remain here, but that did not happen often. His work was important to him, and it was work he could rarely do here.

He looked up at the sky, rejoicing in the multitude of stars showing through the gaps in the clouds to shed their light on him. So many, burning through the cold of space with tantalizing promises of their hoard of universal knowledge. Someday, he promised them, we will come to you.

A slight motion caught the Elf’s attention. A falling star, he thought. Changing his focus, the Elf saw it was not a falling star, but a craft moving across the heavens faster than the celestial objects themselves. Time in motion.

Time.

The thought broke his communion trance and returned him to the mundane world where seconds passed inexorably, hurrying past the now that was the forest’s life. A quick check of star positions told him that the others would be already in place, waiting for him. He stepped back under the canopy and knelt by the small, low table.

He snugged the surgical steel jack into the socket at his temple and his fingers flew across the keyboard of his Fuchi 7 cyberdeck, launching him into the Matrix. His vision shifted to that dazzling electronic world of analog space where cybernetic functions took on an almost palpable reality. He ran the electron paths of cyberspace up the satellite link and down again into the Seattle Regional Telecommunications Grid. Within seconds, he was well on his way to the rendezvous with his companions inside the Renraku arcology.

The lights of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport vanished behind the craft, only to appear again in front of it. The plane was circling. Sam briefly wondered why, but dismissed his concern, sure that the pilot would inform the passengers of any problem. His own life seemed to be circling, too, returning him to the country he had so willingly left for a scholarship to Tokyo University. Around and around he went, chasing his own tail and getting nowhere.

Three hours ago, he had gone through the latest in a week-long series of brush-offs of his efforts to learn the state of his sister’s health. They wouldn’t even tell him exactly where she was being treated. He had lost his temper when his Renraku escorts began to hustle him away from the telecom and along a boarding corridor to the waiting JSA space-plane. It was only the fear that, once away from Japan, he would lose all contact with Janice that allowed him to give in to his anger. His escorts, members of the famed Red Samurai security force, had simply taken his histrionics in stride and deposited him, per their orders, on the aircraft.

Two hours later, Sam was on the ground at his destination, being greeted by a Renraku employee in a fringed synth-leather jacket, floppy pilot’s cap, and pointy sequined boots. The clothing was no less outrageous than the woman’s overly familiar forms of address and rude jokes. First she led Sam through the intricacies of Seattle customs and security checks, then she took him onto the field to a waiting Federated Boeing Commuter marked with the Renraku logo. The woman assured him that the tilt-wing shuttle plane would take them to the arcology in the most expeditious manner. When Sam had boarded and taken his seat in the luxurious passenger cabin, his escort vanished through the forward door to the cockpit. A few moments later, the craft lifted from the ground. Take-off was accompanied by the pilot’s commentary on minor faults in the lower control’s procedure.

Sam decided for the twentieth-or was it fortieth? — time that there was little he could do at the moment. To distract himself, he turned his attention to his fellow passengers. Like him, all were bound for the Renraku arcology.

Seated at the bar was Alice Crenshaw. She had sat next to him during the trip from Japan, but had said little, which suited Sam’s dark mood just fine. What Crenshaw did tell him was that she, too, was being transferred to the arcology project. She was equally unhappy about it, insulting the steward who politely inquired about the reason for her transfer.

Crenshaw had boarded the Commuter a moment after Sam, saying nothing to the others already aboard the VTOL transfer shuttle and ignoring their friendly attempts at conversation. Instead, she had busied herself almost immediately with a bourbon and water.

Chatting quietly on a broad bench seat were a couple who introduced themselves to Sam as Jiro and Betty Tanaka. He was Nisei, a second-generation Japanese born in the Americas, and she was from the California Free State. Sam envied the simple hopes and fears of the salaryman and his wife. For the young Jiro, an assignment to work as a computer specialist in the Renraku arcology would actually be a step up in his career.

The only other passenger was a Mr. Toragama. Put off by Sam’s distraction and Crenshaw’s disdain, he had buried himself in his middle-manager concerns, alternately tapping the keys and studying the screen of his lap computer.

Sam turned his head to gaze out the window again. The Commuter had left its holding pattern and was moving across Seattle toward the glitter of lights that marked the heart of the metroplex.

There, looming ahead was the Renraku arcology, its massive presence dwarfing the tall office buildings of the nearby central business district. Even though portions were still under construction, the arcology already enclosed a dozen city blocks. Beyond it in the distance, Sam saw the garish neon of the Aztechnology pyramid proclaiming the arrogance of the corporation’s Atzlan owners.

The Commuter banked, gliding past the sloped southern face of the arcology. Diamond reflections of the aircraft’s landing lights glittered from the banks of solar concentrators sheathing the surface and again from the dark waters as the plane moved out over the Sound. Though the noise was muffled by the cabin’s superb sound-proofing, the vibration of the shift from horizontal to vertical flight mode permeated the cabin, The craft dropped a little altitude as it moved over the Renraku-owned docks and warehouses skirting the water-face of the arcology. The VTOL tilted in toward one of the many landing pads.

Sam could see the landing lights getting closer, but the pad seemed deserted. No official greeting party waited, not even the usual scurrying ground crew. As they neared touchdown, the aircraft gave a slight lurch before steadying itself and settling slowly to the pad.

No word came from the pilot’s compartment as the passengers waited. The Tanakas pointed out sights to one another through their window overlooking the Sound. Mr. Toragama stowed away his computer to the accompaniment of tinkling ice as Crenshaw mixed herself a last drink. Unwilling to move, Sam sat staring at the still-spinning rotors. A sharp clack resounded in the cabin as the outer hatchway latch turned.

“About time,” Crenshaw groused.

The hatch eased open and the gangway rattled into position. The noise level in the cabin suddenly increased as the sound of the Commuter’s idling engines swept in. Smells came in, too, the tang of the ocean permeating the harsh odors of aviation fuel and heated metal and plastic.

Then all ordinariness died in a thunder of gunshots and automatic weapons fire. Crenshaw dropped her drink and started to reach into her suit jacket but stopped in mid-motion as a massive figure dove through the hatch and rolled quickly to his feet. Bulky with muscle and armor, the intruder was an Ork. The cabin lights glinted off his yellowed tusks and blood-shot eyes, but the blue steel of his HK227 automatic rifle gleamed with cold perfection.

“Move and die,” the Ork snarled in barely understandable English.

His words were garbled, but the yawning muzzle of his rifle spoke clearly. Crenshaw eased her hand out of her jacket, but no one else moved. Betty Tanaka began to hiccup softly, and Jiro, shivering fearfully, did nothing to comfort her.

Satisfied that he had cowed them, the Ork moved cautiously into the plane. A swift sidestep took him past the closed door of the pilot compartment. His movement made room in the doorway and two more invaders quickly filled it. The one in the fringed leather duster was a woman. The other, ragged in surplus military gear, was an Amerindian male. Sam barely had time to register all that before an eerie howling filled the air.

Frozen with unreasoning fear, Sam stared in horror at the massive shape bounding into the cabin. The huge, hound-like beast shouldered aside the Amerindian to land with a snarl at the feet of the female invader.

Yellow teeth snapped at her, catching the fringe on the left arm of her coat. She shoved that arm straight into the beast’s mouth, jamming it back into the hinge of the animal’s jaws. The beast backpedaled, seeking to disengage, but the woman’s free hand whipped around to grasp the studded collar around its neck. The hound reared on its hind legs, lifting the woman off the floor.

Suddenly the animal arched violently as a yellow, sparking glow ran along its collar, the light revealing the Renraku logo etched in the band. Throwing itself away from its antagonist, the beast slammed against the bulkhead with a yelp of pain, then twisted and bit at itself as though trying to fend off its agony. The animal howled again, but this was not the bone-freezing sound that had paralyzed Sam and the others. Only pain and the animal’s own uncomprehending fear remained. It crashed to the floor and whimpered once as it died. The stench of singed fur was overpowering.

Had the woman dispatched the beast with magic? Sam couldn’t be sure, never having seen a magician in action, but he could think of no other explanation.

Hollow-eyed and panting, the woman spoke softly, almost to herself. "Damned Barghests. Why don’t they ever go for the muscle first?”

Weapons sounded outside the aircraft again, filling the cabin with sudden death. The woman threw herself to the cabin floor and the man dodged back against the Commuter’s bulkhead. The Renraku employees were slower to move. Betty Tanaka jerked and tumbled backward as slugs ripped into her. Jiro spun, blood spraying from his shoulder, and crashed into Toragama before the two of them pitched to the floor. Sam dropped behind his seat just as bullets chewed through the padding and light aluminum frame over his head. Crenshaw, out of the line of fire, stood still and eyed the Ork, who also remained standing, saved from the fire by a kink in the bulkhead.

The male invader made a sudden jump and snatched the hatch handle, tugging it closed. By the almost superhuman speed of the man’s movement, Sam realized it had to be cyberware enhancing his reactions.

As the woman picked herself up from the floor, her duster gaped open, revealing an athletic body clad in little more than weapon belts and amulets. She cursed softly as one of her feet caught on her scabbard. Sam stared at the weapon it held. Though he had never seen one before, he guessed that this ornate and intricately decorated object had to be a magesword. For the first time in his life, he stood in the presence of a magician. The idea brought cold sweat to his brow.

This was a most dangerous gang if one of them could perform actual magic.

“Where’s the pilot?” the woman demanded of the Ork.

The big ugly jerked his head toward the forward door. “Hiding up dere.”

“Go get him moving. Those trigger-happy Raku goons aren’t going to wait forever before bringing up the artillery to pry us out of here. We need to get off this synthetic mountain now.”

The Ork gestured toward the back of the cabin with his gun. “Can’t leave dem here on our ass.”

“We’ll watch them.”

“Should geek dem now,” the Ork grumbled around his tusks.

“No time to waste. Get to the pilot.”

The Ork snarled, but the woman, who seemed to be the leader of the band, did not budge. Giving in, the Ork readied his weapon and threw open the door. When nothing happened, he slipped into the passageway. His bulk blocked the view, but Sam could hear the faint voice of the craft’s computer as it repeated over and over, “Please signify if you wish engine shutdown.”

The woman ran her gaze over the carnage left by the short burst of gunfire that had followed her into the Commuter. The stench of death hung heavily in the cabin. Betty Tanaka lay sprawled across the bench seat, her blood soaking the cushions and splattering the wall and window behind it. Sitting on the floor by her side, oblivious to his own wound, Jiro held his dead wife’s hand and wept. Mr. Toragama was a huddled, lifeless lump in the main aisle.

“No one has to get hurt. Take your seats and buckle in,” the woman said quietly. When no one moved, she repeated the words in crisp Japanese.

Sam was amazed. Hadn’t they already been hurt?

“And keep your hands in sight,” the man added in broken Japanese. He emphasized his point with a slight shake of the Ingram machine gun in his left hand. The one he held in his right remained rock steady and aimed at Crenshaw.

“We’re hosed real good,” the Ork bellowed from the cockpit. “De flygirl had a window open and took a stray shot. She’s ready for de meat locker.”

The woman flicked a glance at the man, who nodded and moved to join the Ork. As he passed behind her, she reached under her duster and slid a short-barreled shotgun from a holster.

Sam tried to watch Crenshaw. The obvious attention the attackers were paying her suddenly lined up with the deference the Red Samurai had shown back in Tokyo. She was likely a special corporate operative, what the sereamsheets liked to call a company man. He wondered if she would try something against the reduced odds. The magician looked exhausted, drained from using the powerful spell that killed the Barghest. That would surely slow her reactions enough to give the veteran Crenshaw an opening. The invader’s leveled shotgun seemed to be threat enough to restrain Crenshaw, however. She complied with the orders, found a relatively gore-free seat and buckled herself in.

Sam felt betrayed. Of them all, Crenshaw should have taken the lead. She was trained to deal with thugs like these. Why hadn’t she protected her fellow employees instead of folding in the face of danger? What more could he be expected to do? Resignedly, he pulled Jiro away from his wife’s corpse and into a seat, but the man seemed not to hear Sam’s attempts at soothing phrases.

Sam was buckling himself in when the Amerindian called from the cockpit. “We’ve got real problems, Sally. This damn thing only has rigger controls.”

“Told ya we shoulda brought Rabo,” the Ork whined. “He coulda skimmed us out real wiz.”

“Rabo’s not here,” Sally snapped. “The veetole’s dog-brain will never be able to get us past the patrols.”

The two male invaders reentered the cabin, dragging the limp form of the pilot.

“We can use dese suits as hostages or shields,” the Ork suggested with an evil grin, as he dumped the body on top of Mr. Toragama.

Sally’s only reply was a look of disdain.

“What about the Elf?” the Amerindian asked. “Could he take us out by remote?”

“I don’t know,” she said. Taking a small black box from a pocket, she flipped up the screen and pulled out a cord, snapping it into the jack port on a bulkhead intercom panel. She tapped in a code.

“At your service,” said a voice from the crackling intercom speaker. “Where are you? Your signal is quite poor.”

“We’re cornered in a veetole, with a handful of Raku employees. Pilot’s dead and the damn ship is rigger only. Can you get into the autopilot and fly us out?”

“I wish it were otherwise, Sweet Lady, but what you ask I cannot do. I’m a decker, not a rigger. I don’t have the wiring to control the aircraft.

“I do suggest that you find an alternate means of transportation. And quickly. Their deckers are starting to move now and my position becomes more precarious by the microsecond. I have been able to isolate the communication attempts by the varlets who pursue you, but I fear that central security will soon become aware of the blind spot in their coverage. Even maintaining this communications link is a danger.”

“There must be something that you can do, hotshot,” the Amerindian insisted.

“As you have had to abandon the planned route out, there is very little.” The Elf’s faint voice paused. “Perhaps one of the passengers is a rigger.”

Suddenly, Sam felt the group’s attention focus on him, all eyes on his datajack.

“What’s your name, boy?” Sally asked.

“Samuel Verner.”

“Well, Verner, are you a rigger?” the Amerindian demanded.

Should he lie? If he did, could the magician read his mind and know? Perhaps he could pretend to have trouble with the aircraft. If he could delay these brigands long enough, Renraku security would catch them. But surely not without a fight. Two people had already died for simply being in the way. Sam shook his head slowly. “It’s a datajack. I’m a researcher.”

“You ever flown anything?”

“Gliders. Used to have a Mitsubishi Flutterer.”

“Great,” moaned the Ork. “A toy pilot. I’d rather trust de dog-brain.”

From the intercom, the Elf’s faint voice spoke. “Oh thou great lump of flesh, the boy might not be a rigger, but he does have some experience in flying. His input could add the necessary randomness to the autopilot’s rather limited repertoire of behaviors. Even if he is no pilot, it might give you enough edge.”

“That’s right.” It was the Amerindian who spoke up. “We might have a chance if the Elf could redirect their anti-air and send some of the patrols on the wrong vector.”

Sally looked thoughtful for the briefest of moments. “Well, Dodger. Can you do that?”

The intercom crackled softly as the Elf considered the plan. “It will not be easy, given that they are on alert, but I shall endeavor to do as you wish, Fair Lady.”

“Then it’s time to fly,” she announced. “All right, Verner. Up front.”

Sam looked to his fellow Renraku employees for support, Jiro’s eyes were locked on the body of his wife, and Crenshaw’s face was wholly noncommittal. As for the dead, they were offering no advice. He unbuckled his seatbelt and stood.

The cockpit stank as much of blood and feces as the cabin. Trying to ignore the blood that stained the pilot couch, Sam lowered himself into it. The Amerindian slid into the co-pilot’s seat.

“I am called Ghost Maker in some parts,” he said. “I may not be a pilot, but I know something about this stuff. Try anything and we will find ourselves relying only on the autopilot. Wakarimasu-ka?”

“I understand.”

“Good. Jack in and get us going.”

Sam slid the datacord from its nesting place in the control panel. He had never been given the limited-access familiarization exercises with the datajack that the doctor had recommended on the day after his operation. He was scared. He had heard how a rigger melded with his machine, becoming a brain to direct the body of the vehicle. He had also heard that some couldn’t handle the transition, losing their minds in communion with the soulless machine.

This machine was built strictly for rigger operation, a monument to the hubris so common among the pilots of powerful machinery. No one without a datajack could do more than request a destination and departure time from the autopilot. Hardly the way to make a fast getaway.

These brigands wanted Sam to jack in and override the decision-making functions of the autopilot. Without the special vehicle control implants that would link a pilot’s cortex to the operations of the machine, he could do little more than make decisions about direction, flight altitudes, and when to take off or land. The autopilot would still do the flying. Without him in the link, though, the Commuter would communicate with Seattle air traffic control, following some controller’s directives and restricting itself to well-defined flight paths and low-risk maneuvers and speeds. The invaders wanted him to make their escape easier, and they cared little what it might cost him.

Sam understood that this hookup would allow him access to only a limited selection of controls, but it still seemed a dangerous risk. Sensing the man beside him becoming impatient, however, he decided that not jacking in would soon become an even greater risk.

As Sam snugged the plug into the jack in his temple, pain flashed through his skull, but faded swiftly. Like an afterimage, dials and control information appeared in his mind, projected onto his optic nerve by the aircraft’s computer. He could shift his head and “see” different portions of the imaginary control panel. Spotting the help panel, he reached out toward it, mentally “pressing” the button. The computer fed him instructions on basic aircraft operation. The machine’s voice in his head was cold and alien, unlike the tones it gave through the speakers. The uncanny nature of his rapport with the Commuter unnerved him and the back of his skull began to ache.

Bullets pattered against the armored cockpit glass in a hasty rhythm seconded by the Amerindian’s urgent, “Get moving!”

Sam reached out to the control yoke. Whether it was real or a computer simulation, he no longer knew. He ordered the engines to rev, and pulled back. The counter-rotating blades of the Commuter’s twin engines spun faster, quickly creating enough lift for the craft to clear the pad. With the autopilot doing the real flying, Sam commanded the Commuter up into the night sky.

“Where to?” he asked Ghost Maker.

“North over the plex. For now.”

Sam complied.

They had been in flight for five minutes when Sam decided that the anti-aircraft missiles he had been expecting were not coming after all. The Elf was evidently as good as his word. Calling up the radar, Sam could find nothing that looked like pursuit. He was equally surprised at the lack of challenges from the Seattle Metroplex air traffic controllers. The Elf decker must have inserted a flight plan into their computers as well, concealing the hijacked shuttle VTOL among the normal traffic.

They were passing over a suburban residential district when Ghost Maker ordered Sam to extinguish the running lights and change course to head for the Redmond Barrens, that desolate sprawl of shanty towns and abandoned buildings. The autopilot attempted to turn the lights back on, but Sam overrode it.

As they headed across the district, the lights of the apartments and homes of corporate salarymen became rarer, replaced by the garish neon and corpse-gray glow of advertising tridscreens near the edge of the Barrens. Out beyond the commercial zone, the lights were few.

Sam watched the Amerindian scan the darkness below. He wondered if his captor had augmented eyes to go along with his reflexes. Most of the adventurers and museleboys who called themselves street samurai did. This Ghost Maker was certainly one of that breed.

“Lower,” Ghost commanded.

As Sam directed the Commuter to comply, the autopilot whined, “Altitude becoming dangerously low. Do you intend a landing?”

“Shut it up.”

Sam flipped the rocker switch to silence the cabin voice. “Are we landing?”

“Not yet. Head northeast.”

Sam adjusted the craft’s headings telling the autopilot that landing was not imminent and that the altitude was intentional.

They flew for another ten minutes, making several more course changes, some to avoid the burnt-out shells of buildings and others to satisfy some unknown whim of Ghost Maker. When the samurai finally gave the order to land, Sam was glad to engage the Commuter’s automatic landing routine. The long minutes of dodging the darkened hulks had worn him down to where, even had he been familiar with the aircraft, he would not have wished to land it manually.

“Damn it! Kill the lights," the samurai snapped as the autopilot engaged the landing lights.

Startled by the man’s vehemence, Sam complied, cancelling almost as quickly the Commuter’s complaints about safety and FAA regulations. The VTOL settled unevenly on a field of rubble, close by a row of boarded-up tenements. The samurai popped the jack from Sam’s head and urged him out of the pilot’s seat. Sam reached to cut the engines.

“Leave them.”

Sam shrugged and headed for the cabin. The others had already deplaned, leaving the interior empty save for the dead.

“Why can’t you just leave us alone?” he heard Jiro say. The response came from the Ork. “Let’s just call it a little insurance.”

The Renraku employees were hustled into one of the derelict buildings just as the Commuter lifted off again. From the doorless entryway, Sam watched as the VTOL went straight up until well clear of the low buildings, then turned south and shifted to horizontal flight mode. The Commuter climbed away into the sky, its dark bulk eclipsing the few stars that shone through the breaks in the cloud cover. A shadow ship, crewed by ghosts.

The samurai materialized in the the doorway, silhouetted briefly before slipping inside. Once safe in the darkness, he spoke. “The veetole’s on its way out to sea.”

“Think it was on the ground too long?” Sally asked.

“We’ll know soon enough if it was,” he replied.

In the silence that followed, Sam could hear the Ork changing magazines for his HK227. The other two followed his example, then silence fell again.

It was less than a minute before the Ork complained, “We can’t just haul dis lot down de street.”

“Cog is sending a car.”

“We’re supposed to wait around? Frag it! If de badges or de Raku samurai are on our tail, we’re meat sitting here.”

"We can’t move our guests safely without a car," Sally insisted.

“So who needs dem? We’re back on our own turf. De’re dead weight now.” The Ork’s slight emphasis on “dead” made it clear what he considered the proper way of disposing of the Renraku prisoners.

“I think you underestimate their value.”

“We did de job we was paid for. And we got de disks dat Ghost grabbed. Dat’s plenty. You’re looking for too many extra creds.”

“I have expenses to meet.”

“I ain’t paying your expenses with my life.”

“You want to buzz now? Give me your credstick and I’ll give you your cut,” Sally said, holding out her hand. “Of course, you’ll only get the standard one on ten for leaving before the goods are fenced.”

Sam could feel the tension mount as the magician and the Ork stared into one another’s eyes. Finally, the Ork looked away. He shrugged, mumbling, “Job’s a job.”

“Sally smiled. “Don’t worry, Kham. This one’s going to finish just fine.”

The Ork snapped her a sullen look as if he had heard it all before, then he vanished, grumbling, into the dark interior of the building.

While they waited, Sam looked after Jiro’s wound as best he could, ripping up a piece of his own shirt for a bandage. The salaryman seemed dazed by the loss of his wife and still said not a word as Sam worked over him. Having done what he could, Sam sat down cross-legged on the filthy floor, his thoughts as dark as the room.

Ghost appeared in the doorway again, startling Sam, who had not seen the Amerindian leave.

“Car’s here.”

Sally gestured to the door with her shotgun. “Let’s go.”

The car was a stretched Toyota Elite, its opacity-controlled polymer windows set to dark. The driver’s window was down and a broad-faced Korean kid grinned a, gap-toothed invitation. He flipped a switch and the rear door yawned wide.

The Renraku employees climbed in, taking the plush synthleather and velvet seat while Sally and the Ork settled into jumpseats facing their prisoners. Ghost Maker slipped into the front seat on the passenger side.

As soon as the doors closed, the driver babbled something in a street dialect from which Sam only made out the name Cog. Sally nodded and switched on the audio deck. The voice that came out was rich and deep.

“Your friend’s call caught me just in time, Ms. Tsung. I’ve been unavoidably called out of town, but I am most happy to provide this small service before I leave. The driver is one of my regulars. You may rely on his discretion.”

There was no more to the message, but Sally seemed satisfied with its content. At least the noises she made to the driver sounded agreeable.

The privacy panel slid up from the seat, cutting off Sam’s view of the street ahead and the driver’s rearview screen. The blackened windows wrapped them away from the world and held them in silence as the vehicle proceeded on its twisty path through the Barrens. Only once did something from outside impinge on them as a heavy thump struck the right rear quarter panel. Their captors remained unperturbed.

Perhaps an hour later, the car slowed and the privacy panel dropped, revealing a litter-strewn alley lit fitfully by the intermittent violet flashes of a neon sign just out of sight on the cross-street ahead.

The doors opened on both sides, but the car did not stop.

“Out,” Sally ordered.

Were they being released? Sam could hardly believe it. Crenshaw was up and out the door while Sam was still struggling to extract himself from the embrace of the soft cushions. The Ork’s foot helped him on his way, sending him sprawling headfirst into a noisome pile of trash. Sam emerged in time to see Sally leap gracefully from the car and five shadowy figures scramble into the vehicle. The doors snapped shut just before the Toyota cleared the alley mouth. It turned left, away from the neon sign, and was gone.

So, their captors were not releasing them, after all. In fact, their numbers had grown. At least a dozen youths, male and female, were in the alley with them. In the flickering light, he could see that many wore fringed and beaded garments, and all wore feathers in their headbands. The smallest of the bunch sauntered up to the tall shape of the street samurai. A flash of neon threw his features into silhouette, revealing a profile as hawklike as that of the man he addressed.

“Hoi, Ghost Who Walks Inside. Welcome home.”

He knew he ought to be hungry, but he couldn’t feel it. The sight of the bowl of krill wafers and soycakes their captors had left the night before only turned his stomach. The water bag, however, was flattened and limp, almost empty. Water he must have, even this tepid, foul-tasting stuff.

The day had passed in a sweaty haze. Their captors had left them in a room with a single door and windows sealed with opaque rigiplastic sheets. A little light crept through where one of the panels had lost a corner. Sam’s attempts to peep though were rewarded with a limited view of graffiti-covered bricks. He recognized the general pattern of the taunts and protection slogans, but found the gang’s symbols unrecognizable. It was still enough to confirm his suspicions that this turf belonged to a gang of Amerindians.

Jiro moaned, awake again. The salaryman had been drifting in and out of fitful sleep for hours now. “What is happening?” he murmured groggily. “I do not understand.”

Crenshaw harumphed her annoyance. “Quit your whining. It gets on my nerves.”

The woman’s utter lack of feeling was getting on Sam’s nerves. “I suppose you don’t object to what’s happened.”

“I’ve been in worse situations.”

“How could it be worse?” Jiro moaned. “Betty is dead.”

“You could be dead,” Crenshaw retorted.

“Perhaps that would be better.”

“Don’t talk that way, Jiro,” Sam said.

“What difference does it make?” Jiro said listlessly. “We will be killed by these… these… terrorists.”

“Terrorists!” Crenshaw scoffed. “Kid, you don’t know the meaning of the word. These clowns are garden-variety shadowrunners. Their best card is that street mage, but they’re still petty criminals hiding from the bright lights of the corporate world and scavenging whatever pickings they can. They’re human rats.”

“Even if they are not terrorists, they still hide from the law,” Jiro said weakly. “How can they let us go when we have seen their faces and heard their names?”

“Don’t matter much,” Crenshaw shrugged. “The names are just street names, and the faces can be changed easily enough. These runners have no records in the databanks, so what’s to trace? They’ll let us go if we behave ourselves. All we’ve got to do is wait.”

"Wait? The only end is death,” Jiro said in a flat voice. He lay down again and was asleep in moments. Sam wondered how the man did that. Crenshaw picked a soycake off the plate on the floor.

“You should eat, kid.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Your loss.”

Crenshaw popped the cake into her mouth and wolfed down a few krill wafers before upending the water container and draining it. Sam was appalled at her selfishness. Suddenly he wanted to be someplace else. Any place. Just so long as he was away from the suffocating presence of his fellows.

He got to his feet and began pacing. Crenshaw watched him for a while, but soon lost interest and closed her eyes. Shortly thereafter, she began to snore.

Sam wanted to escape more than ever.

Without hope, he tried the door and was surprised to find it opened to his touch. Cautiously, he swung it wide. The outer room was as bare and dilapidated as the inner. Sally lay asleep along the inner wall. The door to the hail was open and he could see two of the gang’s warriors standing guard. They were chatting quietly in a language he didn’t understand.

This room had windows to the outside world. Desperate for fresh air, Sam moved to the open one, beyond which a fire escape formed an inviting balcony. He was halfway through the frame before he noticed Ghost standing on the iron grillwork, leaning against the wall.

“Wouldn’t be thinking of leaving, would you?”

Sam stammered a negative response, surprised to realize he hadn’t been thinking of escape. Though he wanted to get away from his fellow Renraku employees, he had not thought of abandoning them. “I just wanted to get some air."

“You’re welcome to your fill of what passes for it around here.” The samurai seemed pensive as he leaned back against the wall and looked out across the sunset-painted stretch of battered tenements. Ghost said no more until Sam was beside him. “You really are a strange one.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for one thing, you weren’t lying about trying to leave.”

"I couldn’t run out on the others.”

“So ka,” Ghost said with a knowing nod. “I can understand loyalty to your friends.”

“They’re not my friends,” Sam blurted. To the samurai’s raised eyebrow, he added, “We’re all Renraku.”

“So ka. The bond to the tribe is even stronger.

“My people here would never be called a tribe by those fancy ethnologists who wet their pants over the back-to-the-land dreamers out there beyond the plex. Those white-coats would call my kin a gang. But that doesn’t make them any less a family, a tribe that takes care of its own.

“We’re not like the Reds that live out in the Salish-Shidhe. Those dreamers can’t see that life in the world these days means life in a city. Red Men have to take to the concrete the way they took to the horse, or we will pass from the land entirely.

“Since the Whites came, some of us have fought them, some have welcomed them. Didn’t make much difference in the end. We lost control of the land and ended in misery, despair, and poverty. And then they threw us into the camps, where they tried to strip away our souls.”

Sam could see the pain in the man’s face. Ghost was too young to have been in those death camps that had been President Jarman’s attempt at a final solution to the Indian problem, but he seemed to feel the anguish of the camps as his own.

“When Howling Coyote came down from the hills with his Great Ghost Dance, he sure handed the Whites a surprise. Made the Man realize that Reds weren’t going to take it anymore. Broke their technology with his magic, he did. But that was then. The Whites have magic now, too, but some of my people don’t want to face it.

“The old men who led the Dance don’t understand what it did for us. It didn’t banish the White Man, as advertised, or the Black Man, or the Yellow Man. They’re still here. And so are their cities and works-weakened maybe, and pushed back by the magic and the power of the Awakened-but far from beaten. What the Dance really did was give us breathing room. It gave us a chance to beat the others at their own game.

“It ain’t going to be easy. It’s going to take real warriorship, but my people are ready for that challenge. We’ll show them. In the end, we will win. But to win, we have to survive, and surviving means nuyen. You ain’t got the bucks, the Man don’t listen. There’s lots of loose creds waiting around for shadowrunners to liberate.”

Ghost fell silent, seemingly exhausted by the long string of words. Sam didn’t know what motivated the man to speak so, but the speech gave him hope that these were not bloody-minded thugs who would as soon kill them as look at them. He began to think it was possible he might get out of this predicament alive.

Ghost’s next words startled him even more than had his confidences.

“Why am I talking to you?” the Amerindian snorted.

“I don’t know. Maybe you needed someone to listen to you.”

“Don’t need no drek from some soft Anglo corporate,” Ghost said gruffly. Giving the darkening skies a last look, he ordered Sam back inside.

The samurai’s sudden mood shift left Sam again unsure of what he faced among these shadowrunners. Nothing they said was exactly as Sam understood it to be. It made sense one minute, only to become totally alien the next. They seemed to live in another world. Confused, he climbed awkwardly back into the squat.

An Elf had arrived while he had been on the balcony. He sat cross-legged in a corner, his attention on a data-reader in his lap. From the jacks on his left temple, Sam surmised that the Elf was the decker who had been riding Matrix cover on last night’s shadowrun.

Sally still lay on the foam pad that was the room’s only furniture, but she was awake. She looked rested now, the hollow circles of exhaustion gone from her eyes. Ghost shouldered Sam out of the way and passed through a doorway hidden by a curtain that Sam had taken as a decorative wall hanging. The samurai returned with a tray of cold tofu and steaming soykaf, which he brought to Sally. She thanked him with a sad smile.

“I’m getting too old for this, Ghost.”

It seemed an old story between them.

“Drink your soy.” Ghost waited while she drained half the cup. “You haven’t told us yet what you plan for the Raku.”

“Avaunt, Lord Muselebrain,” the Elf ordered from his corner. “The fair Lady Tsung needs her rest before pressing on with this sordid business. You street samurai are all alike-no proper sensibilities, no understanding of delicate persons or sense of timing.

“All you want to do is flex your muscles. Once you impress us with your hyped resources, you only stay long enough to grab your blood money before scurrying back to your squalid dens.”

Thin, sparkling needles slid from beneath the fingernails of Ghost’s right hand. Sam guessed the Elf was pushing the limits of the Amerindian’s tolerance, imposing on his hospitality. Sally laid a hand on the samurai’s back, out of sight of the Elf. The needles vanished.

“Can it, Dodger,” she said. “Ghost’s not pushing. A decision has to be made.”

The Elf huffed his annoyance at the rebuff. Satisfied, Ghost walked to the window and stared out while Sally put her tray aside and sat up straighter. “So what’s on the disks we pulled?”

“Quite a bit actually, Fair One.” All trace of annoyance was gone from his voice, and was replaced by cool professionalism. “Production schedules. Some personnel files. A couple of patent applications. A fine swag, which would have considerable street value if the run had not terminated so noisily. As is, we shall have to wait until cooler weather before safely disposing of it.”

“Meaning we lost a lot of value?”

“Of course.”

“Well, at least we’ll get paid for the plant.”

Sam was confused. He understood that their stolen data would be less valuable on the open market if they waited to sell it, but he had thought they were simple thieves. “What plant?”

Ghost started to say something, but closed his mouth when Sally spoke.

"We made a little donation to the cleaning supplies of the computer systems research office. An aerosol generator disguised as cleaning spray. It will dispense a little bug called Vigid along with its cleaning solvent. In a few hours, a lot of Renraku wageslaves will be going home sick. The next few days will be somewhat uncomfortable for them and most displeasing to the Renraku management, what with the inevitable schedule disruption. While they limp along, our client, Atreus Applications, gets the jump on the competition. It should allow them to hit the Matrix with a new software package a full week ahead of Renraku.

“That was the real job. Atreus wanted us to snatch some prototypes to hide the nature of the operation. We picked up the disks as a fringe benefit.”

It all sounded straightforward-making allowances for the basically devious nature of shadowruns. But something nagged at Sam. Something about the delivery system of the disruptive bioagent. He ran Sally’s words over in his head. Why not simply spread the agent around? The runners could have been given an antidote beforehand. Why combine it with cleaning fluid? Simply to delay implementation? A tailored time-decay capsule could do that effectively enough. Why cleaning fluid, or was that important at all? Somewhere deep in his brain a synapse fired and a memory awoke.

"Excuse me,” he said tentatively, “But the solvent in the cleaning fluid. Was it acetone-based?”

"Who knows,” Sally said. “What does it matter?”

Sam took a deep breath. “If it was, I don’t think that the Vigid will do what you expect it to.”

“Ah,” sneered the Elf, “observe how the merchandise displays an extensive biotechnical knowledge. We may yet realize a handsome profit.”

“I’m not a biotech,” Sam said, letting his annoyance show. “I’m just a researcher. But I’ve got a good memory. I saw an article on Vigid once. Some researcher for the UCAS government had done an experiment. It got contaminated when an assistant spilled some acetone while cleaning glassware. The acetone interacted with the protein shell of the virus, stripping parts of it and causing the core genetic material to mutate in an isomeric form.”

“So it’s a different bug.” the Elf drawled.

“It’s a lethal bug. That lab assistant died. In a replication test, thirty to forty percent of the analog mice exposed to the isomeric virus died.”

Sally’s took became grim during Sam’s recitation. She placed her kaf mug on the floor in a slow and deliberate manner. “We weren’t hired for wetwork.”

“Certes, the fee was far too low,” the Elf agreed.

“Frag the fees!” Ghost snarled, needles flashing at his fingertips. “Somebody set us up.”

Sally nodded slowly. “I think we need to talk to someone about our recent employers before we go to meet them.”

Sam was not sure why the runners had brought him along, but he didn’t think it politic to ask. They had been rejoined by the Ork called Kham, who seemed outraged at the possibility of a set-up. He had to be dissuaded from bringing heavy weaponry along to the meeting with the fixer.

The walk to the meet-site was through a kind of place Sam had only seen on the trid. The streets were crowded, filled with rockerhaunts, gutterpunks, and chippies. Squatters held their miserable alleys and boxes against muscle-boys from the gangs, and razorguys hung tough behind their moneyed charges. The hungry and the thrill-seekers mingled cheek to chromed jowl in the harsh glare of the neon and public tridscreens.

The noise and crowd swirled around them, parting and reforming as they passed. Even the hardest-looking Street samurai and Ork bullyboys seemed to fade from their path without causing trouble. Maybe the mage had something to do with it, or maybe it was simply Sam’s imagination.

They stopped at an abandoned storefront in a less congested area. Through the smashed window, what little Sam could see of the building’s floor was as littered and stained as the sidewalk. Even from outside, the odor of stale urine and refuse was intense. No one on the street paid the least attention when the group entered the building.

Three men waited inside. All were tall and rangy. Hard muscles showed wherever their street garb exposed flesh.

All carried obvious weaponry. Street samurai, Sam guessed, but he saw none of the obvious cyberware the breed favored. Either they were so good they didn’t need enhancement or else their modifications were very subtle. Either way, they had to be dangerous.

The blond one on the left had a large dog by his side, at least half-wolf in its bloodline. The beast growled softly when Sam and the runners entered. While the others exchanged opening pleasantries with the men. Sam crouched and held out his hand to the animal. Cautiously, its posture indicating suspicion, the beast advanced to sniff at his hand.

“Freya bites,” one of the fixer’s men warned.

“I’m sure she does,” Sam returned, without taking his eyes from Freya. The animal gave the tips of Sam’s fingers a tentative lick. He smiled, reaching his other hand out slowly to ruffle the fur at the side of Freya’s head. “She’s marvelous. Where did you get her?”

“She followed me home one night,” the guard said sarcastically.

The sound of a man clearing his throat caused Sam to turn. The runners were already facing the newcomers. Two more rangy samurai flanked a bigger man. He was dark, even without the benefit of backlighting from the street. His richly tailored suit was out of place among the ruins, but he seemed completely at home. The man, obviously the fixer they had come to meet, stepped forward.

“Making new friends?”

Sam thought the raspy-voiced fixer was speaking to him, but Sally replied.

“Always. You know what a party girl I am.”

If the fixer was amused, his heavily pockmarked face didn’t show it. He simply turned his cold eyes on the magician.

“I’m glad you could spare the time for a meet,” she said. “I’m sure I can make it worth your while, Castillano.”

Castillano shrugged. “Why me? Cog’s your preferred connection.”

“Cog’s unavailable.”

The fixer’s face remained expressionless. “I’m second-best,” he said, making his question a statement.

Sally gave him a light laugh. “Let’s just say I thought you were the best choice tonight.”

“You need a specialist?”

“What we’re most interested in right now is information.”

“A target?”

“An employer.”

Castillano rubbed his hands together meditatively. Had his face shown any interest, Sam might have thought him a merchant scenting an easy sale. The fixer opened his month slightly and ran the edge of his tongue along the lower lip. “That sort of information is in high demand at the moment.”

The shadowrunners exchanged glances. “Something come down that we haven’t heard about?”

“Maybe,” Castillano responded noncommittally.

“Add it to the bill.”

The fixer nodded in acceptance. “Smilin’ Sam and Johnny Come Lately.”

Sally cocked her head to the side, her expression slightly annoyed. “News about the firefight at the After Ours Bar is hardly a commodity. The screamsheets were full of it.”

“Screamsheets don’t mention the rifle.”

“What rifle?” Sally asked in sudden interest.

“Arisaka KZ-977. Sniper model. Not silenced. Lone Star Security picked it up in the street in front of the building where your two acquaintances were killed.”

“They don’t use anything big,” Ghost interjected.

“Yeah,” the Ork agreed. “Johnny never did like loud noises. A real runt pup dat way.”

Castillano stared at the Ork.

“What’s the point, Castillano?”

“Mr. James Yoshimura died of a single shot to the head as he left the After Ours. Pair of Lone Star officers saw Yoshimura go down and heard the shot. They spotted Sam and Johnny. One of the runners panicked and shot at the cops. Cops shot back. The rifle fell. The runners died.

“Lone Star ballistics matched the gun to the lethal bullet. Trajectory puts the shooter in the vicinity of the runners. The rifle survived the drop better than Smilin’ Sam.”

“No other witnesses?”

“None,” Castillano confirmed.

“Dirty cops,” Ghost concluded. “Sam and Johnny were bagmen and cats. They didn’t do wetwork.”

“Maybe. The Lone Stars have clean records. Apparently incorruptible. Just quick to shoot.”

“Then Sam and Johnny were set up.”

Castillano shrugged.

“And you know something about it.”

“I never said that. Enquiries into the matter are likely to be unhealthy.”

“It seems to have been a bad week for running the shadows. We had someone twist us around too.”

“Looking for a connection?”

“If it’s there, we’ll do something about it. If not, Sam and Johnny were big boys,” Ghost declared.

“What exactly is it you want?”

“Let’s start with a bioproduct called Vigid.”

“Anti-riot agent. Fast-acting incapacitant with pronounced after-effects similar to a bad stomach virus. Aerosol vector. How much do you want?”

“Had more’n enough already.” the Ork snarled. “We want to know what might happen if the substance were subjected to an acetone bath.”

If Castillano was surprised or curious about the request, he didn’t show it. He walked across the room, avoiding the debris as though by instinct. From a countertop, he lifted what looked like a moldy pile of garbage to reveal a telecom port. He took out a pocket computer and plugged it in. After a few minutes of plying the keys, he announced, “This will take awhile. When do you want to meet?”

“Check UCAS Chemistry Today. December 2048,” Sam said. “Theres no time for you to replicate it.”

The fixer entered a document search. “Wilkins and Chung?”

“That’s it,” Sam confirmed, nodding to the runners as well.

Castillano stroked his mustache as he studied the screen. “Looks like Vigid reacts badly to acetone. Gets very toxic.”

“Do you believe me now?” Sam asked of the runners. The Elf, silent until now, answered him. “You gave the reference, Sir Corp. The document could be a plant.”

“Unlikely,” Castillano said. Even Sam was startled by the fixer’s uncharacteristic free offering. “He didn’t get the month right.”

“Let’s assume the damn stuff really does mutate. Who makes it, Castillano?”

“Genomics holds the patent. Exclusive manufacturing contract for Seretech.”

“Seretech!” Ghost spat.

“Fraggin’ hellfire!” the Ork howled.

Sally and Dodger just looked worried.

“What does it mean?” Sam asked.

“We’ve had a few misunderstandings with them in the past,” Sally said softly.

“Then you think they might have been behind this? That they deliberately set you up?”

“Indubitably,” the Elf put in. “They must have used Atreus as a cut-out to allay our suspicions. They probably arranged for Renraku security to find out about our mission.”

“But not until after we had placed their dirty little toy,” Sally added bitterly.

“How would it help them to have you caught?”

“Dey don’t like us, Mr. Suit,” the Ork growled. “Dat’s enough reason for anybody.”

“They didn’t even have to get us geeked on the way out,” Ghost expanded. “Any of us that got caught wouldn’t know that they had hired us, so there’d be no link to Seretech. We also didn’t know what their bug would really do, so we wouldn’t have said anything. A simple break-in and lift of those prototypes would have been easy enough to squirm out of. Attempted robbery and breaking and entering. Light stuff. Until people started dying. For that, we’d have been blamed, and they probably thought we’d finger Atreus and take them down with us.”

Sally picked it up. “Seretech would have been in the clear and sitting on fat street. They’d have hit their rivals at Renraku and gotten us too. Any of us that the Raku samurai didn’t take down would be facing mass murder charges ‘cause nobody would believe we didn’t know what kind of stuff we were placing. Seretech pays back two debts at one. Maybe even three, if they’re got a beef with Atreus. Once again, the megacorp comes out on top.”

“So what happens now?” Sam prodded.

“We take our losses and stay out of the light,” Sally sighed. “Seretech’s bad business.”

Sam was appalled. “What about those people at Renraku? They’re innocent. You can’t just let them die.”

“Can’t we?” said Ghost.

Flushed with outrage, Sam spun to face Sally, stabbing an accusing finger. “I thought you didn’t do wetwork cheap. Pretty flexible honor you’ve got. Things get tough, and you fold. You must enjoy being somebody’s fan guys. What’ll happen to your hot-shot reps when the Street finds out how you let yourselves be used?”

“Stuff dat. Nobody’ll know,” the Ork muttered.

“He will!” Sam shouted, pointing at Castillano. He swung his arm about to take in the guards. “They know, too!”

“Uh, Lady Tsung,” the Elf said quietly, “perhaps we could go back and pull out the cans.”

“It’s too late,” Sally said. “They’ll already have used some of it.”

“You could just tell Renraku what’s going on,” Sam suggested.

“They wouldn’t believe us. Even if they did, they’d still come looking for us, figuring we had something to do with it. They’d be right, of course, and when people start dying, it would turn into a blood feud. We’re better off keeping quiet.”

“Wait a minute!” Sam yelped. “Castillano, let me see your computer.”

The fixer simply stared at him, keeping a proprietary hand on the keyboard.

Sally sighed. “On the tab.”

Castillano handed over the keyboard.

Sam fiddled with it, cursing its slowness. He felt a featherweight touch on his shoulder. He turned to find the Elf offering a cyberdeck.

“Faster this way,” Dodger said.

Sam looked at the device the Elf carried hidden beneath his coat. Save for its special function keys and carrying strap, it looked like an ordinary computer keyboard. He took it gingerly.

This would not be like plugging into the Federated Boeing Commuter. This was a real doorway to the Matrix. There would be no autopilot insulation from the terrifying glories of cyberspace.

“Jack’s over here,” the Elf said, pointing.

Sam slid back the cover panel and pulled out the telecom connector. With a quick switch of plugs, the Elf’s cyberdeck took the place of Castillano’s computer. He reached for the datacord that would connect his socket with the deck. He almost changed his mind, but found courage when he remembered the innocents in the arcology who would suffer if no one tried to help. He slipped the plug in, steeling himself against the expected pain.

It came, flashing through his brain faster than before and leaving a distant malaise in its wake. Sam focused his mind on the task at hand. Turning a blind eye to the gleaming spires and pulsing data paths that surrounded him in cyberspace, he charged forward to the massive Renraku construct. Using his company passwords, he opened a portal into the main database.

Glittering rows of stars lay in serried ranks and columns all around him. Each point of light was a datafile, its tint reflecting the filing category. Sam fed the cyberdeck the key words and executed the search function. His point of view shifted with dazzling speed along the rows. He paused briefly at each file suggested by the deck, discarding useless information as he searched.

In what seemed like only a few minutes, he found it. He copied the file and fled back to where he had entered the Matrix.

“There is a counteragent,” he announced to the circle of concerned faces as he pulled the data cord from his temple.

“Where do we get it?”

“That’s the problem. It’s not being manufactured. It only exists in the machine.”

There was silence in the room. Sam could feel the runners’ resolve to right a wrong slipping away.

Castillano cleared his throat.

“Biotech I know has a lab. Full computer-assisted design facilities. I can arrange an introduction. Standard fees.”

Sam’s spirit soared with new hope. He looked to Sally, who stood with hands pressed together in front of her chest. The tension in her arm muscles was evident as her hands trembled slightly. For the first time, Sam noticed that the magician was missing the last joint of the little finger on her right hand. She released the tension with an explosive sigh.

“Let’s do it.”

“Nice of you to drop in,” Crenshaw said with mock politeness as Sam entered the stuffy room. He closed the door, shutting off the gray, predawn light from the outer room. The stink of wastes from the corner was overpowering.

“I’ve been trying to help the company.”

“By sucking up to those criminals. Trying to help yourself more like,” Crenshaw grumbled. “Do you think you’re any better than us? That they’ll treat you any different because you fawn on them?”

“You think I was trying to cut my own deal?’ Sam was incredulous.

Crenshaw gave him a grin that said it was exactly what she thought.

“Just because that’s the way you operate doesn’t mean everyone does. Some people do care about others.”

“Yeah, and I’m St. Nick.”

“You’re wrong. Crenshaw. I’m hoping to save some lives.”

“Starting with your own.”

“No. Starting with some of our fellow employees at the arcology.” Sam told her how Sally’s group had been duped, and their decision to do something about it. “I’m going with them when they take the counteragent in.”

“Trying to be a hero?”

The thought hadn’t crossed Sam’s mind. “They need my help.”

“Heroes get dead, kid. Those clowns got in once before. They don’t need you to do it.”

Sam supposed she was right, but surely Renraku security would have found and closed-whatever entryway the runners had used last time. “Maybe I just want to be sure they really do it.”

Crenshaw looked unconvinced. “Stow the hype, kid. Let’s pretend you’ve convinced me of your noble heart. Sentiments are worth a fused BTL chip when the shooting starts. You aren’t trained for this stuff, It’s dangerous, you know.”

“I don’t care.” Sam was surprised by the conviction in his own voice. “It has to be done.”

“Crenshaw-san is right,” Jiro whispered from the corner where he was huddled. Sam had not even realized that the salaryman was awake. “Let it go. You will jeopardize your position with the company.”

“So she has infected you now, Tanaka-san. Sam shook his head sadly. “I’m not worried about my position with the company. They will understand that my loyalty compels me to make this effort. I have to keep the shadowrunners from misusing their time within the arcology.”

Crenshaw smirked and Tanaka hung his head, listless again. Sam could see that his arguments would not affect them. It was just as well. His short cyberspace run, added to his lack of sleep, had left him exhausted. He needed rest. The run was to take place the next night and it was definitely going to be dangerous. He would have to be alert. Sam lay down where he was, stretching out on the hard boards. In moments, he was asleep.

Sam awoke to a hand on his shoulder. Red light flooded the room through the open doorway. The glow illuminated Ghost’s face as he leaned close.

“Time to move, paleface.”

Sam sat up groggily, shaking his head to clear it. For a moment, he was confused, but the smell soon brought it all back. A quick glance told him that he and the Amerindian were the only two people in the room.

“Where are the others?”

“We thought it best to move them to a safer place till we get back.”

Sam nodded as Ghost padded silently across the room. Perhaps the man spoke true. Or perhaps the runners were holding the others hostage for his good behavior. He didn’t want to believe that they had killed his fellows to be free of the need to guard them, but that possibility nagged, too. Crenshaw’s cynical voice echoed in his head. Could he really trust these people?

Sam creaked his way across the old boards. In the outer room, he found Sally, Ghost, and the Ork all strapping on various bits of gear and checking their weapons.

“Where’s Dodger?”

Sally gave him a smile. “Don’t worry. He’s in a place where he can jack into the Matrix undisturbed. He’ll be riding shotgun in cyberspace, just like last time.”

“Are the others with him?”

“Let’s not get too inquisitive,” she advised.

Having inserted a knife into his boot sheath, Ghost scooped a bundle from the floor and tossed it. Sam fumbled the catch, surprised by its weight. The black paper garment was obviously covering some bulky object. He poked at it, revealing the soft gleam of metal. Sam unwrapped it further.

“A slivergun,” Ghost informed him. “Can you use it?” Sam looked down at the evilly gleaming weapon. “No.”

“Great,” moaned the Ork. “He’s gonna get our behinds fried, Sally.”

“If he does, he goes with us,” she replied. “You do understand that, Verner?”

He did. All too well. He tried saying so, but the words stuck in his throat. He nodded instead.

“And don’t forget it,” the Ork snarled. “I’ll be keeping my eye on you.”

Under that watchful eye, Sam carefully placed the pistol on the floor and pulled on the coveralls that had enshrouded it. After sealing them closed, he buckled on the belt and holster he had missed in the excitement of discovering the gun.

“Ooh, look,” the Ork cooed. “A ferocious shadowrunner. I’m so frightened.”

“Dump it, Kham,” Sally ordered. “Verner will do all right if you ease up a bit.”

She settled her weapon belt across her hips and, in a swirl of fringed duster, turned for the window. Sam started to follow, but came up short as a hand gripped his arm. He craned his neck around to find Ghost’s ragged grin. A poke in his ribs directed his gaze down toward the gun the Amerindian was holding. Sam swallowed hard. He didn’t want it, but if they trusted him to carry it, he probably should trust their belief that it might be necessary. He took the weapon, settling its unfamiliar weight into the holster.

The fire escape creaked and rattled under the combined weight of the shadowrunners. Sam feared that it would rip loose from the crumbling brick wall and pitch them all into the alley. To his surprise, the rickety construct was still intact when they reached the bottom.

Three motorcycles waited in the alley. Two of the bikes were sleek Yamaha Rapiers, their chrome and plastic smooth and unmarked. The third was a heavy hog its nameplate proclaiming it a Harley Scorpion. The machine was all motor, iron, and mysterious clamps and fastenings.

“You ride with me,” the Ork grunted as he swung onto the big Scorpion.

Sam climbed up behind the odorous metahuman. There was nothing to grip but the Ork himself, a decision Sam had barely made when Kham jumped the bike forward. Sam nearly tumbled off as they rounded the corner. The petrochem roar of the Rapiers soon joined the howl of the Scorpion, and they cruised in vee-formation down the streets of the Barrens.

The ride through the streets showed Sam the same face of Seattle he had seen on their walk to meet the fixer, at least until they left the urban wasteland of the Barrens. Once into the more civilized districts, the street crowds thinned and the noise and glare diminished. Somehow the runners did not look out of place. There were still other bikers in leather and long coats. The hard-edged types that had filled the streets of the Barrens were leavened with more ordinary folks, salarymen, families, and ordinary workers out for a good time.

Seattle was a border town, isolated among the wild lands of the Salish-Shidhe Council. It was an outpost of the United Canadian-American States in the midst of a foreign land, a trading post within the world of the Pacific. As such, it could be a rough-and-tumble place, just like in the old days of the wild west, Sam decided, when a man or woman often carried the law in a holster.

Even so, the corporations frowned on anything that might seriously affect business, and so there were peace officers. Private cops and the Lone Star patrols kept the heavy weaponry from the streets and protected their masters. What people did to each other did not concern the corporations, but what they might do to corporate holdings or personnel did.

Sam found this balance of wildness and civilization strange after the ordered peace of greater Tokyo. The strangeness had a vitality that the Japanese capital, with all its culture, sophistication, and history, lacked. Maybe he was beginning to like Seattle.

The closer they came to the central business district, the more civilized the street traffic became. Electric cars and public transport became common sights as the bikers became rare in proportion to the prowl cars bearing the Lone Star logo. The numbers of folk on the street shifted more in favor of the corporate workers, but the outre element never quite disappeared. The odd and the strange hung at the outskirts of Sam’s awareness in a way he had never experienced on the streets of Tokyo. He found it exhilarating.

Well into downtown Seattle, they turned onto Alaskan Way and headed south. Ahead, dwarfing the nearby buildings, loomed the arcology. Shining out from the mostly darkened north face of the structure, the cool blue of Renraku’s name in English and Japanese complemented the gold glow from the company’s dot-and-expanding-wavefront logo.

Once, Sam had found those symbols comforting, a sign of home. They looked gigantic and unattainable floating above Seattle. And ominous. He imagined the circle that was supposed to be the source of the communication waves as a radar dish, its arc-shaped waves as all-seeing energy seeking out those who might harm the corporation. His earlier excitement fled, banished by nervous fear. Despite the crowded street, he felt naked and exposed. The Red Samurai must surely be watching their approach.

If they were, they took no action. The runners cut out of the traffic onto a side street, dodging through alleys among the dockside warehouses. They slowed as they neared the loading docks of their destination, Kinebec Transport, but the great corrugated doors remained unmoving.

“Damned Elf missed his cue again,” Kham muttered, his voice almost lost in the noise from his bike’s engine. “Probably off chewing dandelions.”

Ghost signaled a circle around the block, drawing an oath from the Ork. “We’ll attract attention.”

“No help for it,” Sally shouted over the bike’s noise.

On the second pass, the third of the six doors yawned open as they rounded the corner. The runners guided their bikes inside and killed the engines. The massive door rumbled down, swallowing the echoes and shielding them from the street.

Ghost led them unerringly through the darkened building to a maintenance panel. Some last work with a multi-tool had the panel down, allowing them to make their way to the lower level along a ladder of rusty rungs welded to the support girder. A hundred or so meters later, he took them up another ladder. The building they entered smelled of the sea. Sam could hear the faint lap of water against pilings.

“ ’Kay, paleface. We’re on the number one west-face dock, just seaside of Fast Freddie’s Surgery. It’s your lead now.”

Sam didn’t know where Fast Freddie’s was, but he recognized the dock designation from the maps of the arcology he had seen. He led the runners onto the street and up the dock toward the arcology. A bare thirty meters from the circumference road that ran along the walls of the structure, he indicated the gate to a construction site. Before Ghost could put his tool to work, Kham shouldered into the wire gate, snapping the thin chain and dropping the padlock to the ground.

“We’re in a hurry, ain’t we?” he said in defense of this lack of subtlety.

Leading them past the quiet machinery, Sam took them into the basement of the skeletal structure. A few minutes’ search located what he was seeking.

“This is a tap shaft to the heat-exchanger pipes that run under the arcology. We should be able to move along it and into the arcology through an uncompleted maintenance station.”

“You’d better be right, chummer. Dat don’t look like a comfy squirm.”

Sam hoped he was right, too. His plan to enter this way was based on a three-week-old construction schedule. That document had called for the station to be completed and secured by now. He was counting on the fact that just about everything at the arcology project was behind schedule. If the workers had been uncharacteristically efficient, they would be denied access.

The crawl proved every bit as “squirmy” as the Ork had feared. Twice the bulky metahuman got wedged trying to cross junctions without divesting himself of his equipment first:

Two sweaty hours later, they had worked their way through the steamy tunnel to the station. Faint worklights gleamed from a barrier-free opening.

Sam wiped his brow with a grimy hand. At least now he didn’t have to worry about what the runners would do to him if the way had been blocked. Per plan, they located the station’s terminal. Without jacking in, Sam turned it on and entered the code that would tell Dodger they had gotten inside the arcology’s boundaries.

Almost instantly, the Elf responded through the terminal’s speaker.

“You are late.”

Sally’s headshake forestalled any assorted retorts. “Are we all set for the next phase?”

“Assuredly, my lady. The bravoes manning the check points along your route have been instructed to expect a repair party. There are temporary access cards waiting for you at the main desk on alpha level, but you will need your special talents to pick them up. Unfortunately I don’t have the necessary codes to activate them and haven’t had time to make counterfeits, it really is quite a remarkable system they have here. Very sophisticated.”

“Save the admiration for later, Elf,” Ghost snapped. “What are we going to do about those codes?”

“No need to get testy, Sir Razorguy. I think there may be a solution. If the noble Sir Corp will enter his own code, I can copy it onto all the cards. I believe I can hide the multiple entries in the guise of a system hiccup.”

The runners looked expectantly at Sam. His mouth was dry. If Renraku had deactivated his access code when he disappeared, the plan was destined for failure. At worse, it would set off alarms. Either way, he would be compromising his confidentiality agreement with the corporation. As if he hadn’t already done that by leading these people here.

“Dodger?”

“Aye, Sir Corp.”

“If I put in my code, can you read it, or are you blind-copying it?”

“Have you so little faith? Am I not The Dodger, wizard of the Matrix? Once it is data, it is mine to do with as I please.”

No, Sam thought, I am demonstrating a remarkable amount of faith. Your feathers only seem to get ruffled when you’re bluffing about how good you are. “You’ll not keep a copy to use on another run?”

“Sir Corp. you wound me. Of course not. Expediency is the goad that forced me to this pass. A decker of my skill opens what he will, at will.”

“Glad to hear it, Dodger,” Sam answered. That probably means you can’t do it. “I’ll put it in.”

While Sam entered his code into the datastation, Kham pulled Sally aside. They returned with four pairs of Renraku work coveralls and matching hardhats from the locker room. As the runners started to put them on, Sam just stood there, holding the set Sally had handed him.

“This isn’t going to work, you know,” he told them. “Sally and I might pass, but you two are obviously not Renraku.”

“S’matter, Raku not an equal opportunity employer?” the Ork rumbled.

“Not if they can avoid it.”

“Just put the stuff on, paleface. Sally’ll take care of it.”

With little other choice, Sam complied. “What do you means Sally will take care of it?” he asked, sealing the white suit over the black one they had given him.

“An illusion spell,” she said. “The guards will see what they expect to see.”

“If you can do that, why bother with the coveralls?”

“It’s easier this way. The less I have to twist to make them see what I want them to see, the easier it is to make them see it.”

“If you could do this, why didn’t we just walk in the front door?”

“Trid,” she said. “Now be quiet for a minute and let me concentrate.”

She closed her eyes and put her left hand on the hilt of her magesword where it poked through the slit pocket. Her right hand contorted through a series of gestures as she moved it slowly back and forth in front of her. Sam saw, or thought he saw, a vague glow shimmer briefly into existence, trailing the path of her mystic passes.

It was too strange. He turned away in time to catch an expression of nervousness on Ghost’s face. Was something going wrong? He turned to the Ork and found Kham staring in fascination at Sally. His ugly face showed a mixture of awe and lust. The Ork’s elbow gouged Sam in the chest.

“I love it when she does that,” he whispered.

Sally’s eyes snapped open and the spell was done. She directed them to gather tool boxes to hide their weapons. That accomplished, they boarded a shuttle cart and rode to the elevators.

The guard at alpha level received them incuriously. Handing over the passcards, he barely looked at the little group. Sam thought it just as well because Kham stuck his thumb up one nostril and waggled his fingers at the guard as he stuck out his paw to receive the card supposed to be his. Unbelievably, the guard failed to react.

As soon as they were safely inside another elevator car for the ride to higher levels, Sam leaned over and whispered

in Sally’s ear.

“Kham’s antics were hardly the expected behavior of a workman. Why didn’t the guard react?”

She chuckled softly. “I’m used to Kham. I just work extra hard on his part of the spell.”

When the car sighed to a halt, they exited onto a promenade. It was mostly empty. The few late-night strollers ignored them, just as they would a legitimate work crew. The same way, Sam realized, that he had always ignored work crews. He wondered if Sally’s spell was even necessary here. They soon came to another guard station, and Sam was glad of the spell’s effectiveness as Kham stuck out a deep purple tongue in the direction of the woman behind the counter. She only wished them good luck in an uninterested way before returning her attention back to the trid set squawking softly from below eye level.

Three more elevators and two guard stations later, they reached the Computer Systems Research office. They passed the guard there with no more trouble than before. Once inside, a quick check with the Elf got an all-quiet signal.

“It’s been too smooth,” Ghost declared. He pulled his Ingrams out of the toolbox, slipping one into his belt and keeping the other ready in his hand. Kham and Sally grabbed their own guns. They seemed to trust the samurai’s intuition more readily than the Elf’s report on the security conditions.

“Safety first, paleface,” the Amerindian said when Sam made no move to reclaim the weapon they had given him. “You won’t have time to come back for it if we get hosed.”

Reluctantly, Sam picked up the slivergun.

“Let’s be quick,” Sally said, passing out the containers of counteragent that Castillano’s biotech had supplied. “Spread it around. We don’t know how much and exactly where the stuff’s been used. I’ll clean whatever’s left of Seretech’s dirty toys out of the closet.”

They split up.

Sam was starting to spray his third room, a large work area for the system developers, when Sally joined them.

“Got them all,” she said before starting to spray the far side of the room with counteragent.

A minute later, a red-clad guard appeared. The man might have been making an unscheduled patrol, or he might have been on his way to the head. He didn’t appear to be in a hurry, and that encouraged Sam. After so many successes, he was almost comfortable with the completeness of Sally’s spell. He felt almost safe. With Sally in the room with him, little could go wrong. Her spell would keep them from discovery.

As the guard passed him, Sam raised the hand holding the gun and waved. The man waved back and continued on his way. The guard was halfway through the door when he stopped and turned around, his eyes going wide.

“Watch yourself, lady,” the guard shouted at Sally as he reached for his weapon. “Armed infiltrator!”

“N… No,” Sam stuttered, raising the slivergun.

The guard ignored him, clearing his holster and dropping into firing stance.

Sam’s finger tightened on the trigger of the slivergun. The weapon bucked as it unleashed a steady stream of plastic fiechettes. Closely grouped needles traveling at slightly subsonic speed stitched a crimson line across the guard’s chest and right shoulder. He tumbled backward, bright blood spraying from his mouth, landing sprawled and still. His gun struck the floor, its metal ringing with a clear note that seemed obscenely pure in the sudden gory disarray.

Sam’s own gun dropped to the floor with a harsh clatter. The sound of Sam’s shot brought Ghost and Kham running.

“Aw, drek! What happened?” the Ork barked.

“Guard must have caught a flaw in the spell,” Sally answered.

Sam was dazed, seeing the last few moments over and over again. He watched the guard turn, a puzzled expression on his face. No fear. No concern. Just puzzlement. Then the brown eyes had widened, focused on the slivergun.

“He seemed to see the gun.”

Sally spat a string of syllables that sounded like a curse and stamped her foot.

“He should have seen it as a tool. The intent wasn’t focused right. Since the slivergun wasn’t something you were used to, the intent couldn’t cover it as well.”

“It’s done now, Sally,” Ghost said in a placatory tone as he moved to check the body.

“I shot him,” Sam said. He felt numb.

“Don’t worry, chummer,” Kham said. “De corp will never know who did it.”

“But he’s dead,” Sam protested.

“Nope,” Ghost contradicted. “But he will be-without attention. If he gets that while we’re here, we’ll be dead.”

“Let’s finish and go.” Sally’s voice was brittle.

They went back to work, leaving Sam to stare at his victim.

The fallen guard looked young, not much older than Sam. A life cut short because a magic spell hadn’t done what it was supposed to do and because a foolish, scared Sam had panicked. It didn’t seem right.

This guard wasn’t some thrill-seeker from the streets. He wasn’t even one of the faceless Red Samurai, hardened to the harsh realities of life. This was just a kid, doing his job. He had even tried to protect Sally, assuming she belonged to the company and that only Sam was the intruder. What a foolish irony.

Why had Sam taken a gun from the runners? It had seemed unlikely he’d need it. Had he needed it? Whether or not, he had used it. The result lay at his feet.

How could good intentions have led him to this?

Some infinite time later, Sam became aware that Ghost was talking to him. He blinked, realizing that he was no longer in the Computer Systems Research Center. Somehow the runners had gotten him to the car pool on sub-level F. It was supposed to be their last stop inside the arcology. The Elf was to have arranged an assignment for a vehicle to take them away.

“Come on, paleface. Listen to me,” Ghost was saying. “The Elf has put in an emergency call for the guard. They’ll take care of him. Are you satisfied?”

“Satisfied?” Sam’s voice seemed distant, as if someone else were speaking. “I need to know if he’ll be all right.”

“Not likely.”

“You go on. I’ve got to go back and find out. You’ve done what you needed to do for your reps. You don’t need me anymore. Go on. Leave me here.”

“We ain’t leaving you behind to raise de troops.” Kham growled.

“I won’t,” Sam protested.

“You’re right,” the Ork said, aiming his HK227 directly at Sam’s belly. “Cause you’re sticking with us.”

Sam looked to Sally and Ghost, but their eyes were cold. Ghost plucked away the slivergun that had somehow found its way back into Sam’s holster. Sam hung his head and let himself be led along.

As the van they had liberated pulled onto Western Avenue, Sam heard the wailing of a siren in the sky above. He rocked his head back and caught a glimpse of a DocWagon sky ambulance banking around the arcology, bound for one of the landing pads. He wondered if it was in time to do any good.

Fragments of sensations and images touched him through the daze into which he had retreated. A dimly lit building and a grubby pile of white coveralls vanishing into a trash incinerator. Hashes of shadow and light. The Ork’s stink. The howl of a siren. Wind lashing his face and the throb of a powerful engine beneath his seat.

Abruptly, he was aware that the wind and the hammering pulse of the engine had stopped. He was seated behind Kham, the Scorpion’s roar muted now to an idle rumble. They were somewhere in the Barrens.

“Dis is where you get off, Verner.”

Sam swung his leg over the hog to stand in the midst of the three mounted shadowrunners. He faced Sally.

“What about the others? Will you release them now?”

It was Ghost who answered. “They’ve been on their own for half an hour. Should be reaching the arcology about now if they weren’t afraid to take the Third Avenue bus through Orktown.”

“What about you, Verner?” Sally asked softly. “Going to follow them back to Renraku?”

“Of course,” Sam responded automatically, “I work for the corporation.”

Kham stifled a guffaw. Sally lashed him with a frown and turned her eyes on Sam. “That might be a foolish move.”

“I don’t think so. I am confident they’ll understand.”

“It’s your funeral,” the Ork bellowed, revving his hog and roaring away into the night.

“Good luck,” Sally called as she gunned her Rapier and screamed in the same direction the Ork had taken.

“You are very loyal, paleface. I hope they deserve it.” Ghost tossed Sam the slivergun. “You might need this to get home, but I suggest you find it a nice trash compactor before you meet any badges.”

The Amerindian’s Rapier squealed as the tires fought to grab the pavement, then it sped away, chasing the echoes of the others.

Sam was alone on the street save for a mangy mutt scrounging scraps among the garbage and rats. Laying the gun between his feet, he sat on the curb.

He stared at it for a long time before realizing he had company. The mongrel had abandoned its search to sit beside him. It, too, looked at the gun.

“Don’t you know what to do, either?”

The dog whined and tried to lick Sam’s face.

“I haven’t got any food for you.”

The animal’s tail thumped the pavement, dismissing the gross oversight. Sam stood and so did the dog. It skipped down the Street a few meters, then stopped.

“Shall I run the streets with you, then?”

The dog cocked its head.

“No. Not tonight. Life in the shadows doesn’t seem to be for me.”

Sam turned in the direction he guessed would take him back to friendlier parts of Seattle. The glow in the night sky promised that he had made the right choice, He had taken only a dozen steps when the dog trotted to his side.

“Coming with me?”

The dog yipped.

“Well, friend,” Sam said, as the dog began to pace him. “Loyalty is no easy virtue. But I suppose that doesn’t frighten you. You will be true to your nature, after all.”

Man and dog walked on in silence. Behind them, drops of rain began to patter down on an abandoned gun left lying in the shadows.