[stanley]

This is the introduction to a longer work I've been playing with for some time now.  I'd hoped it would go somewhere, but I'm pretty sure it'd run into some kind of canon violation.  Anyway, here goes:

Prologue
The Afterbirth

Dr. Karin Shimazaki slowly opened the door and let herself into the Bennets’ spacious room. Baby Bennet, enormous at 14 kilos, nuzzled on top of his mother, getting his first meal in the gentle light of the postpartum recovery ward. Mother and child relaxed beneath a huge blue banner – It’s a boy! – surrounded by a veritable forest of flowers. Daddy Bennet had passed out on the couch. Mommy Bennet looked up and gave her an absent smile.

Just because children are born every day does not mean that each one isn’t a miracle. Karin had thought that years of rounds as a pediatrician in the maternity ward would eventually dull the effect, but she saw the wonder in each new mother, the sweet exhaustion of true creation. What made this one special was the nature of the baby itself (himself, she corrected herself sternly). The horns clearly contraindicated a traditional delivery, as did the sheer size of the infant. In this case, that Mom managed to carry the baby nearly to full term was a large part of the miracle.

The display wired into her left eyeball gave Karin all the vital statistics for both patients, including Mom’s name (Marissa), Baby’s name (Stanley), blood pressure (a bit high), heart rhythm (normal), temperature (normal), and a long list of other statistics. She quietly slipped close to the bed as the torrent of information flew through her consciousness, such that by the time she reached the bedside, she could tell that Marissa had mostly recovered from the birth. The staff magician, Dr. Percival, had managed to heal her C-section wound competently, but not completely. She should be discharged the next day for two weeks of bedrest.

Karin had expected as much. Dr. Percival had earned his degree not because he knew anything about anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, biotechnology, genetics, or other medically relevant fields. As far as she could tell, he’d just walked in off the street, waved his hands, and healed some patient after surgery. The man had all the medical knowledge of the frog she’d dissected in high school, but just because he had some Awakened talent, he apparently warranted the status of an attending physician while she had another two years of residency left and a total of about a hundred thousand nuyen in debt to various banks. After seeing Dr. Percival show up to his rounds drunk more than once, Karin often wondered if the hard work of medical school had any practical benefit. Ever since magic had come back into the world, some people just got by without any work Karin could see, but just babbled a bunch of mumbo jumbo and got what they wanted. She took some smug satisfaction in Dr. Percival’s failures, but this case wasn’t really one of them.

She looked down at mother and child, trying to keep her face bright and sunny. “And how are we today?”

“Perfect.” Marissa’s face radiated the beatific smile of the first-time mother blissed out by drugs, fatigue, and the sheer joy of meeting her child. That smile slowly turned into a frown as the doctor’s forced expression finally registered on Marissa’s consciousness. “Do you have any idea how long we tried to have kids? We’ve been married for four years, trying for two. Two years! We tried all kinds of treatments, even some magic, and nothing took. When I finally got pregnant...”

The pause lingered. The patient had experienced a slight blood pressure spike during her speech, but it was returning to normal. Strange; the spike had the profile more of lying than any other kind of stress.

“When I finally got pregnant, we were overjoyed. Three months in, we learned he was a boy, and we were ecstatic. Five months in, we learned he was a Troll, and that was a shock. But being a Troll isn’t a disease; he doesn’t have Down Syndrome, Tay-Sachs, or any of the old conditions. It just means that he will be bigger– much bigger– than either of his parents.” Karin could read in her eyes, though, that Marissa worried that the rest of the world would not treat her son with such kindness.

Karin remembered the day in medical school when an extremely old attending physician had covered this exact topic. Unexplained Genetic Expression, or UGE, had been far more common at the beginning of the century, so much so that the entire subject had been reduced to a single question on her obstetrics certification exam. She’d never actually seen any cases in person, nor had any of the other physicians in the hospital. She already had the first part of her case report mentally written for the Seattle Journal of Medicine; barring publication there, she also had prepared a list of backups. She’d also rehearsed the standard speech to give to a mother whose baby didn’t quite... match. She opened her mouth to start and

“Done!” Frank leapt from the couch. Karin spun to the sound so quickly she felt her neck pop.

“Honey, you’ve spooked the doctor,” Marissa crooned from her drug-induced haze. She hated to admit that the man had gotten the drop on her, but Karin had completely forgotten the patient’s husband was still here, slumped in a corner, apparently not passed out from fatigue as she’d initially assumed.

“Sorry, dear. Sorry, Doctor. Just getting a bit of programming done.” This she saw every day, several times a day: workaholic father still trying to get ahead just hours after his firstborn arrived. He must have some kind of implanted commlink or other connection to the Matrix to allow him to work without any obvious hardware.

“Ah. And you finished?” This time, despite the drugs, her patient did not use the relaxed tone of an absent minded mother indulging the new father’s enthusiasm, as so many of them did. Whatever he’d been doing, it had been important enough that she’d been waiting for him.

“Oh, oh yes. Stanley now has a guardian sprite!” He could not have been more proud, and Mom’s blood pressure lowered into the normal range, according to her eye monitor. Most first-time fathers, in her experience, seem to have to grow into the role. An extremely small minority just sat and stared at the baby for hours on end. They usually itched for something to do after about ten minutes, but this sprite– the term tugged her, what was a sprite?– had been keeping Mom from relaxing completely.

Karen cleared her throat, about to launch into her speech about having a Troll baby.

Then Frank’s head jerked up, eyes wide. “What was that?” Blood pressure spike. She might have to remove Dad if this kept up, he was going to seriously impair her patient’s recovery.

“Mr. Dejardins....”

“One second.” Frank’s eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped down into his chair. Karin suppressed a sigh– this man could not be more of a stereotypical techie dad if he tried, but his antics were causing her patient’s readouts to fluctuate dangerously.

Frank’s mind itched. Someone had just probed the hospital’s exterior Matrix defenses with an extremely light touch, but the security protocols in the system itself registered nothing.  Frank’s mind swooped around the hospital’s coldly clinical Virtual Reality infrastructure, looking for anything else, anything that could have caused his mental alert to have triggered. Milliseconds later, convinced that he was feeling things, another itch, this time from the elevator banks leading to their ward.

Frank’s VR persona flew towards the elevator’s control node and pinged it, a virtual dolphin sending a sonar burst to gather information about potential prey or threat. Nothing. Strange– he would normally expect a response. He pinged more forcefully, his streamlined shape bending to the task. The cover fell off the node, dissolving before it fell more than a few inches. Virtual putrescent green slime oozed and dripped, spattering on the VR’s pristine white floor. Frank immediately crafted a message in the form of a smaller dolphin, sending his small doppelg ̈anger to the hospital’s security administrator. Like most security admins, he (or she) had taken the form of a massive spider whose web covered the entirety of the hospital’s virtual representation as a thin gossamer net that let all those with appropriate permissions pass unmolested. The invaders must be extremely adept to have slipped past the fine mesh entirely.

“Intruders,” Frank gasped as if coming up for air as his mind returned to his body.

“Where?” Marissa’s eyes narrowed to slits. Karin saw that her patient’s vitals were now behaving in a classic fight-or-flight reaction, somehow completely bypassing the tranquilizing effects from her drugs. The young mother seemed to have some kind of strange purplish aura about herself as the adrenalin coursed through her system, but Karin couldn’t really be sure.

“Southwest elevator bank, maybe further in. I’ve alerted the spider.” As Frank said this, the door audibly deadbolted and the lights went out.

“Doctor, we have to prepare.” Marissa was trying to get out of bed; magical healing meant she was able to walk, just barely. She handed the baby to Karin and tentatively put one bare foot on the cold floor, testing to see if her abdomen would allow her to stand up. Karin managed to cradle the baby in time to grab her suddenly mobile patient’s sleeve.

“We should be fine here; hospital procedures in the event of a breach are to lock doors, sit tight, and wait for security to arrive,” Karin babbled, feeling more like an inexperienced goody-two-shoes teenager trying to convince the bigger kids to stop doing something that would get them in trouble with the principal than a board-certified physician. “You should get back in bed; you’re not ready to be up yet. I know you’ve had magical healing, but you also just had major surgery.” She didn’t want to add that she didn’t trust Dr. Percival’s healing to hold up under any kind of real strain, such as any kind of sudden movement, or even walking or running. She had no desire to see her patient’s abdominal cavity empty itself onto the floor.

Marissa grabbed her arm back, strong enough that Karin knew that she would have a bruise. “What’s their typical response time?” The woman’s voice had an edge, her
eyes held the doctor in place.

“Two... two minutes,” Karin stuttered, “ ...and the door is pretty heavy, able to withstand bullets. Just relax, we’ll be fine.” She could see that neither of them believed her.

Frank pointed at the space under the door; the shadow of moving feet. They stopped just outside.

“Marissa...” Frank’s voice carried a low warning. Karin got the distinct impression, from his stance, that they’d done this before.

Mom stood next to the bed, muttering to herself and tracing her hands through the air. Blue energies crackled and sang from her fingertips, warping reality in a way never depicted on the trideo shows. Karin thought she saw a shimmer start in the air in front of the door. She backed away, clutching the now-bawling infant, acutely aware that if she didn’t, she would be stuck between Marissa and whatever it was she was doing with the door.

Someone yelled “Clear!” outside.

A huge explosion ripped the door straight off of its hinges along with a large chunk of the wall, but the debris slammed into a second ephemeral barrier just inside the supposedly solid physical wall. The explosion rebounded, and Karin heard screaming amid the crashing. Dust and smoke billowed from where the wall had been, but was being held back by some invisible force, providing a view into swirling chaos, a perfect window that didn’t crack or smear as the dust roiled. Marissa stood just behind the barrier, her hands tracing intricate symbols in the air as she voiced a crescendoing chant from the edge of nightmare. Karin backed up further, stunned to witness a magical display that rendered Dr. Percival’s incantations the moronic ravings of a deluded idiot. Words of power traced themselves in the air as Marissa summoned them forth in her rapidly deepening voice.

Frank grabbed the baby from her. “Probably best that I take him. Is there another way we can get out? Through the window, maybe?”

Karin turned to stare at him, feeling as if she were moving in viscous healing gel, and then ducked as a stream of bullets spanged against the barrier, ricocheting off into the smoke cloud. “I ... ” Then she heard it, another incantation being invoked on the other side of the barrier.

The floor turned to ice, and she fell. She saw from her readout that Marissa had also fallen since all of her vital signs veered crazily into critical condition– the C-section wound must have reopened.

Her sweaty palms had frozen onto the floor when she’d put them down to get up, and her own readouts showed that her body had begun to suffer burns where her skin touched the ground. Trapped as she was, she could only turn her head to see Marissa lying in a pool of blood as the smoke now billowed into the room. A figure dressed in a matte black carapace fluidly strolled into the room, leading with a rifle glinting in evil purpose. The rifle coughed into Marissa’s head twice, a strangely muted sound. Maybe her hearing had been damaged in the blast?

The readout showed a flatline for her patient, the insistent beeping filling her remaining hearing.

The man with the rifle swung it through the room with inhuman speed. His weapon coughed several more times.

Two flatlines now burned across Karin’s unseeing eye.

[stanley]

“Are we the good guys?” Pablo’s question hung in the air like the steam that rose gently from his body. Maria allowed herself the luxury of mixed vision, thermographic overlaying the standard spectrum, giving the gently coiling swirls a distinct rainbow shimmer. She lay with her head on his chest, body wrapped around his. Her hand traced idly through his sparse chest hair, marveling at the contrast between its inky darkness and the stark whiteness of his skin. He almost made her seem healthily tanned.

“What do you mean?”

“What I said. Are we the good guys?” His hand had twisted itself in her shortish blonde hair. Five minutes ago, she’d wanted that; now, it was beginning to irritate her. Sensing the change in her, he brought his hand out.

“Well, have we ever done anything bad? I can’t think of anything.”

“Nothing? What about that time on the helicopter?”

“OK, I can’t think of two things.”

“And the boat?”

“Self defense.” She tweaked his nipple playfully. She felt rather than saw his wince. “Where’s this coming from?”

“Just... wondering. About this life.” He was reaching for something behind her, hampered by her lying on him. He liked to smoke a bit afterwards, usually some kind of deepweed or other mild hallucinogen. He couldn’t have her eyes– mages who got cyberware implanted often found their talents dulled– but he had other ways to see rainbows.

“Miss who you were before? Miss being hooked in to the flow, the network?” She waited until he’d taken a few puffs before she held up her hand toward his mouth. He put the sleeve in her hand.

“Being officially dead does limit talking with my old friends, yes.”

She took a long pull, watching the colors become measurably more vibrant as she bypassed the careful calibration routines of her optic hardware. “That’s why we have new ones– so we don’t get lonely.”

“You don’t miss it?”

“Miss what? Being constantly tracked, having everyone know where you are and what you do? Having chips implanted in your body constantly posting to various networks, ’Oh hey, Maria just ate food.’ ’Oh hey, Maria just went into the store at the mall.’ ’Oh hey, Maria just peed.’ We certainly couldn’t ever get jobs that way.”

“Well, not the jobs we get now, certainly.” He held his hand in front of her face, arm cradling her head. She passed him the sleeve; it was mostly done anyway.

After he pulled the arm away from her face, she slowly sat up and stretched her arms above her head, knowing he was enjoying the view and pretending not to notice. She brought them down with chemically induced care, staring at some particularly fascinating colors on the wall. “You know what I want to do now?”

He winced. “Must you?”

“Oh, but I must.” She giggled. He rolled his eyes. “Fine.”

Her grin widened as she called on her cranial circuitry to turn on the trid projector and lay back down next to him. The evening news flashed into existence above the bed, an eight foot window into another reality she knew gave Pablo vertigo. He rarely complained, and something in the way he’d always accepted her doing this told her that he’d known someone else who had a similar setup. Ceiling projection was common enough, and especially popular with space-starved college students, so she had some inkling that he must have once gone to school. These little clues told her about him, but she didn’t want to pry too deeply. What’s past is past, and she didn’t want to go hunting for who he had once been. Besides, doing so might trigger some kind of alert, some kind of watchdog program set to find him, and that would only be bad. She assumed he’d extended the same courtesy to her as they hadn’t found her yet.

Some new correspondent she didn’t know was standing in what looked like a park in Snohomish.

“...and that’s why squirrels will always be our favorites. Deb?”

“Thanks, Chris. Breaking news out of Madrona– the maternity ward at Swedish Medical Center was just attacked by a vicious gang. We’re reporting at least fourteen deaths so far. Chuck is on the scene. Chuck?”

“Thanks Deb. I’m standing here outside of what was once a peaceful, serene place to heal. All of that ended tonight... in a hail of bullets.”

<Ken-Burns style retrospective of hospital images, with minor key music and saddened voiceover by Chuck>

“The Swedish hospital has long been a haven from the rest of the world, offering peace and serenity to those who are at their most vulnerable. The maternity ward, in
particular, is famous for providing the well-connected and the well-to-do a haven away from their corporate enclaves. Their babies can be born away from the hustle and bustle of normal life, and then gently introduced back into the fold. That is, until tonight.”

<Warning about graphic images following>

“From what we can tell so far...” <Show the bombed-out hallway, smoke pouring out of one of the rooms>

“...terrorists struck on the fourth floor, indiscriminately killing as many new families as possible. The death count includes three babies, three nurses, and a doctor.”

She turned to Pablo as he turned to her and knew that his look mirrored hers. If they played their cards right, they would have work before the night was over. Sure enough, a small chime echoed though her hearing, accompanying the hovering symbol of an incoming call on the lower right section of her vision. She made sure her visual feed was masked before answering; it was easier than putting on clothes. When she was sure everything was in place, she mentally selected the icon. It swelled to fill the entire right side of her vision.

“About time. Thought you had a cranial rig?” Jonesy had never learned patience. His image looked nothing like the man, instead opting for a tall wide-brim fedora’d Sam Spade impersonation in vogue about fifteen years ago. He’d kept it as a signature affectation, down to the hopelessly dated smoke effect from his virtual cigarette swirling from his virtual hand. In real life, Jonesy was short enough to be mistaken for a Dwarf, and just as round as he was tall. No one appeared as they actually were if they could help it; too dangerous for any number of reasons.

She opened the feed to the projector over the bed so Pablo could see, but kept the visual she presented to Jonesy locked on the digital version of herself.

“Sorry, caught up in something. What’s up?”

He blew a smoke ring that improbably swirled into a series of geometric shapes. Again, about fifteen years out of date. “You see the news yet?”

Maria felt a tingling in her palm receptors. She was right; this was work.

“Just now. Got anything for us?”

Jonesy’s grin showed an improbably pearlescent white from deep within the shadows of his hat. “Got a Johnson here, says she needs an extraction team, pronto. I figured you guys were good for a run.”

Hell yeah we are, Maria thought to herself, riding the cool confidence of the deepweed high. “When’s the meet?” He was right, they needed the run.

“Right now, over VR, if you can.” Smoke out the nose, weird because he hadn’t taken a drag from the cigarette. Virtual representations sometimes missed these little details.

“Hold up, lemme tell the others what’s up.” Jonesy gave a curt nod, and a timer appeared in the lower right. Five minutes.

She closed the connection and turned to see Pablo idly twirling the empty sleeve about six inches above his fingers.

Seeing her watching, he dropped the sleeve and rolled out of bed to start searching for his pants on the ground. “I’ll tell the others. You need anything for this?”

She thought for a brief moment. “I should probably get Ruby to come with me; she’s better at VR than me. You should tell Samson and Jinx to get prepped.”

“On it.”

Decking while standing was a good way to fall down and break something, so she lay down on the bed again. She sent a brief text to Ruby– Meet me at Demoniac’s in a tick – and jacked in. The sweet rush of information surrounded her, soothing her before revealing the purity of Virtual Reality. Even here, the deepweed caused a delicate shimmer at the edge of her vision, the slow burn of the high singing through her veins.

She saw Ruby as soon as she got her bearings. The Dwarf’s persona appeared as a Troll-sized golem of precious stones, glittering in an affectation designed to make people believe she had far less experience than she actually did. After all, only the crazy arrogant, the crazy brave, the crazy young, or the just plain crazy advertised themselves so openly. Ruby had tried to explain the game theory behind it all to Maria, but all Maria got out of the two hour discussion was that Ruby thought she had pulled a double-fake with the persona icon and that other people were too dumb to understand. She nodded to the rock monster, who gave a quick nod back.

Maria’s own icon was standard issue, a silver mannequin that looked like any other wage slave’s persona. Her changes were extremely subtle; most such stock icons looked similar to their owners, but Maria’s looked nothing like her own face. In fact, her face slowly shifted through a face dictionary over the course of a few hours so that anyone who thought they knew what she looked like outside of Virtual Reality would be sorely confused.

The two of them followed Jonesy’s coordinates to a nondescript node on the public grid. No one wanted to meet on home turf, because no one wanted to give away just where home was. The node itself was completely bare, lacking walls, floors, or a ceiling. Maria had the distinct impression of being a set of points on an infinite Cartesian plane, just the four of them surrounded by an infinite grid. The illusion would give way if she walked more than ten virtual meters in any direction, but as far as minimalist statements went, this node had certainly achieved the pinnacle in cheap and fast. Jonesy’s icon lounged on the floor and smoked idly while a silvered mannequin extremely similar to Maria’s stood at rigid attention. The node itself was as bare on the inside as it was forgettable on the outside; just a wireframe. Maria knew it would be gone the instant there was trouble, and certainly wouldn’t be left around once the job was done, successful or not.

“Maria Oklahoma?” The mannequin did not relax. The Johnson must be using a terminal or some other incredibly crippled simsense VR attachment to have achieved such emotionlessness, which in turn hinted at some magical talent. Either that, or Johnson was gaming them like Ruby was trying to game her.

“Yes. To whom am I speaking?”

The voice behind the mannequin suggested a professional smile. “You may call me Ms. Johnson. I have need of your services immediately. Is your team available?”

Another thrill of anticipation in the palm receptors. “That depends on the nature of the services required, Ms. Johnson.”

“Have you watched the news recently?”

“I have. I understand that Chris on Aztech News Network really likes squirrels.”

“That she does. We have reason to believe that the hospital attack this evening was actually a smash-and-grab by a particularly well-organized group covering themselves as terrorists. Two of our corporate officers were murdered along with their doctor, and their infant son was not among the dead. It is our suspicion that the boy was taken when the team left the site. We want you to get the boy back, and deal with the perpetrators of this terrible crime. This job must be done quickly, before the criminals have time to extract the child from the city.”

Pablo’s text crawled across the bottom of her vision: For how much? Now that they were potentially in an operation, they switched to their encrypted text network. Maria had set up the protocols herself, and Ruby had vetted them as passable “although a little too direct for my tastes.” The texts were short bursts transmitted over the group’s own Wide Area Network, thereby avoiding any potential entanglements with using someone else’s transmission hardware. Maria had told everyone to keep their texts relatively short so that an eavesdropper would have to be paying attention at a level normally achievable only by drugs to spot the tiny data packets, assuming that the team didn’t notice the interloper breaking into their WAN.

Samson’s text was just beneath it: Some serious heavies took out that hospital.

“Why come to us? Why not let Knight Errant handle it?” Maria had learned how to talk and text a long time ago– one of the side benefits of their communication arrangement. She’d also learned that since Knight Errant had taken over local law enforcement from the Lone Star Corporation, most people believed that serious crime in the city had all but disappeared. Most people had been grossly misinformed, of course, but KE did seem to get most of the kidnapping retrieval jobs.

A pause. Perhaps Johnson expected runners who’d leap at the chance for cash, rather than examining the prospect from more angles. “Knight Errant is owned by Ares, a ... rival of ours. We believe that involving them at this juncture could expose us to unwanted inter-corporate liability. And before you ask, our own internal security apparatus may have been compromised as well.”

Interesting. If they could not rely on their own people, they would probably be willing to part with a fairly large sum. “What do you have in mind?”

Maria’s text: Then I get to use my shotgun.

Samson: Better use slugs; shot could get the kid.

“The baby had a tracking chip implanted, as is standard procedure in modern maternity wards. The chip was to be rendered inert upon the family leaving in the morning, and is scheduled to time out at 10 am two days from now. For reasons that are unknown to us, the kidnappers did not suppress the signal. It’s coming from a derelict building inside Redmond.” Johnson’s voice relayed this information in a calm, cold, clinical style that suggested strict professionalism, but the delivery reminded Maria of Pablo’s logical detachment when he rode a Psyche high. When sober, not even he could keep a straight face when talking about finding a ’derelict building inside Redmond’– almost all of the previous property owners in that pit had abandoned their real estate decades ago.

“So a bunch of extremely well-armed shadowrunners broke into a highly secure facility, killed quite a few people, kidnapped at least one baby, and didn’t know about the tracking chip? That seems... unlikely.”

“I didn’t say they were shadowrunners.” Maria waited. The silence stretched. “But a group of shadowrunners does seem like the most likely scenario, yes. We want you to track the signal, as it’s our only lead.” Shadowrunners got their names by moving in the cracks of society, in the shadows cast by the corporations and governments that dictated the pace of daily life for the vast majority of the world. If Johnson was willing to admit that they would be going up against another group of pros, they could easily increase their fees.

“What about astral tracking?” If the team had left behind any scrap that held spiritual significance– blood, hair, teeth, a well-worn talisman, a loved weapon– Pablo could set up a ritual to track them magically, but that solution would definitely be slower than using the given signal.

“They covered that. They removed all DNA evidence from the hospital– in this, they were surprisingly thorough.” Another admission– these guys weren’t just pros, but Johnson knew that they had serious magical weight as well.

“Can we examine the tracking signal you have? If it’s spotty or fading, that will affect how we approach the situation.”

Even through the still, emotionless chrome of Ms. Johnson’s avatar, Maria could sense the hesitation, as well as some pressing urgency.

“OK. Here’s the signal information.” Ms. Johnson handed Maria a small glowing marble, who then passed it off to Ruby to dissect.

Ruby: Gimme a second on this. Doesn’t seem right.

Maria didn’t want the conversation to devolve into silence while Ruby checked the signal. Always keep them talking, they might give you important information, her dad told her once. “While we check it out, is there anything else we should know? Anything that might improve our odds of success here?” If the signal checked out, it would be more than enough to find the kid, although she would like the corroboration of astral evidence if she could get it. What if they’d removed the chip from the kid, and the chip was still (improbably) transmitting?

“None that I can think of. Our priority, and I cannot stress this enough, is extracting the baby.”

“Of course.”

[stanley]

Ruby’s icon sat down noisily as she ran the search, a small sparkling dust cloud rising from the small virtual indentation she appeared to leave in the floor. Maria and Johnson both turned to look, and Maria realized that Jonesy had long since left the conversation, lazily chain smoking while resting on one elbow. He winked at her when he saw her looking at him– he knew he was going to get a fat cut from this deal.

After a few seconds that seemed like minutes in the virtual acceleration of the Matrix, the voice of the gemstone golem reported softly, “The signal seems legit, showing full vitals, so it’s still in the baby.”

Ruby: Maybe it’s being spoofed? At a level beyond my abilities to detect?

Jinx: If so, mine too.

“What kind of payment schedule did you have in mind?” Jonesy’s smoke took on ever more complicated geometric forms.

Ruby: Man, who knew riggers could ride the Matrix as well?

Jinx: Young lady, in my day...

“30k now, 60k upon proper receipt of the package.” Maria couldn’t read anything in Johnson’s flat, emotionally barren tone. Definitely felt like Psyche to her; why would Johnson be using now, right before negotiating a serious run?

Samson: Triple normal? Done.

Pablo: 40/70. We don’t know until we ask.

Maria went with her hunch, that Johnson had a personal stake in this run. “50k up front, 80k on the back. These guys are serious heavies; I’ll probably end up
having to bribe Knight Errant to look the other way when all of this blows over.”

“Done.”

Samson, Ruby, Jinx: Whoo! Jonesy’s icon made an obscenely large grin; as was customary, he would expect that she would deliver his 15% cut once the job was done.

Pablo: Should’ve asked for more. Who knew they’d cave so quickly? They should know that there’s no need to bribe KE in the Barrens.

Ms. Johnson handed Maria a second glowing packet. She inspected it perfunctorily; this billiard-ball sized gently pulsing sphere looked like a pure credit transfer, but she passed it to Ruby who cordoned it off into a remote account until she could perform a more thorough check. Johnsons who paid this much tended to have nasty surprises in down payments for people who didn’t deliver.

“My team will get to work. Assuming they don’t move and the kid’s vitals stay constant, we should have a plan within an hour.”

“I should emphasize– the only person who should live in that apartment is the baby. The others must pay for what they did.”

Samson: For that kind of money, absolutely.

Pablo: Whoa. We’re doing wetwork, now?

Samson: They iced a maternity ward, omae. Three dead babies.

Pablo: Fair enough.

Samson: Establish a meatspace perimeter?

Maria: Do it. Pablo, hit the astral, Ruby, the Matrix. Jinx, prep our ride.

Samson: Usual loadout?

Maria: Yeah, unless you think of anything new we might need. Probably going to have to deal with some minimal security, whatever they’ve set up since going to ground.

Maria turned her attention back to the meet. “We’re on our way. How do we contact you to hand over the baby when all’s said and done?”
Johnson’s avatar didn’t show any particular recognition that they’d accepted the job. “I’ll be waiting in this node.”

Pablo: With nothing better to do? Man, we definitely should have asked for more.

Ruby: She’ll use an agent designed to bring her online as soon as we have anything, dumbass.

Pablo: Oh, my bad. Hey, did you want magical support, or should I just forget to cover the short people?

Maria: Cool it, people. We have a job to do. I’m on my way.

Ruby: But he’s right, we should’ve asked for more.

Pablo: Thank you. You, you I can shield from magical nastiness.

Ruby: Such a sweetie. If you and Maria weren’t already...

Maria: See you all in half an hour at the garage.

Maria jacked out, the nondescript node and Jonesy’s Platonic Smoke Solids dissolving into the twilight reality of their current apartment. Time to get her gear together, plus figure out how to transport a baby, preferably–although she thought it would be a stretch, even in today’s paranoid world– in something armored. She moved to get dressed as Pablo finished strapping his various magical bits throughout his person for easy access in a firefight. She slipped a few certified credsticks into her bra, just in case. If everything went well, she could use them for bribes; if not, she also had her shotgun and her pistol.

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[stanley]

Not sure anyone's really reading, but hey.  Just in case.  Any critiques/criticism/feedback appreciated.

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Ruby waited in the back of the team’s combat van in a nondescript garage in a house Jinx had in Renton. The rigger maintained a number of places in this part of the city, mainly as a way to store the vehicles and drones that were his stock in trade. Ruby had realized one day that Jinx must have had a long, successful career before joining this crew to be able to afford this many crash pads. Jinx could drive the van itself, a large armored number, while piloting any of his numerous drone squadron, his mind changing perspective through his many electronic minions at the speed of thought. Ruby hunkered down in the back of this roaming command center, her deck across her lap as she set about preparing herself for the Matrix run tonight.
From her preliminary sweeps of the location around the signal, she had a fairly decent idea of what they would be up against.

The baby’s tracking beacon was located in a small building deep within the Plastic Jungle, probably one of the older maintenance sheds for that sprawling attempt at urban reclamation. Luckily for the team, Ruby had some experience in the Jungle, having spent a few years in there before she’d taken up with this group. Whatever Jinx had been up to, it definitely must have paid better than living in those ruined biodomes.

One of the aerial drones spotted Pablo and Maria about half a mile out walking towards the house, Maria pushing a baby stroller. As the only two Humans in their mid-twenties, the two of them enjoyed a casual ease with law enforcement that never ceased to amaze Ruby. Dwarves like her were harassed on an almost constant basis, but at least she didn’t have it as bad as the Ork. Samson could barely go out in public in the nicer neighborhoods in town without getting hauled in for questioning every five minutes. Jinx also couldn’t really venture out alone when they were working, mainly because people seemed to always remember the cantankerous old man wherever he went. She watched the happy Human couple through the eyes of the drone and wondered how it felt to walk down the street unmolested and unremembered. They would be in the van in about five minutes.

The drones picked up Samson a short while later, riding on his huge chopper through the quiet semi-suburban streets of Renton, setting off older vibration-based car alarms in his wake. Now there was an Ork who acted like he had never known what it was like to be unmolested, and had taken up an air of menace purely to make any potential do-gooders think twice about intercepting him. Not exactly a low profile approach, but he wouldn’t be on his bike for the run, and no one seemed to be able to tell one huge Ork from another in a lineup anyway.
After a few minutes, the team had climbed aboard the van, she launched into her spiel. Maria and Pablo had pulled the baby carrier apart and were trying to figure out how to attach the seat into the middle row of the van, but she decided to explain what she knew now anyway.

“The system of the world shifted fundamentally when the first Matrix, the Internet, came to a screeching halt of molten plastic and smoking electronics in what is now known as The Crash 1.0 in 2029.” Ruby could feel herself warming up, loving this bit of impromptu oratory she’d compiled. She’d written the speech while waiting for the others to arrive. The speech flowed across her internal visual feed, abetted by an expert system that could track her progress by intercepting and interpreting the signal from her cyberears. She’d learned the trick while working in an ’improv’ theater when her raw inability to act had been immediately apparent. “The protocols that underlay that system had creaked along well past their prime, a slowly rotting foundation that brought decades of technical innovation tumbling down when the final push came in the form of what is now called the Crash Virus. All of this is, by now, ancient, of interest to historians, those old timers who lived through the Crash, and high school students forced to explain why the events eight years ago are now known as the second Crash.”

“Why are we talking about this?” Samson asked no one in particular. Maria shot him a warning glance over her shoulder while adjusting one of the five thousand straps that baby carrier used to hold down either a baby or a small elephant. He shrugged it off.

Ruby cleared her throat, complete with theatrical flourish. “I like to be thorough. Where was I? Ah. The removal of the old Internet and all of the broken assumptions that underpinned it ushered in a new, relatively modern era of computation exciting to most users because of its whole-hearted adoption of Virtual Reality. Before the new could be ushered in, the old had to be cleared out. Inconveniently (or conveniently, depending on perspective) enough, the Crash itself wiped most of the records from the old world, from the now-quaint weblog to a myriad of poorly protected bank transactions.” Ruby paused when Pablo raised his hand, the paused text hovering over his head.

“I know! They’ve holed up... in... an ... old bank?” Pablo had an air of gentle innocence about him. Maria rolled her eyes.

“Well, where we’re going was built by an old banker, so, maybe? Pre-crash, he owned several gigantic greenhouses near Echo Lake. He built these kilometers-wide buildings with the intention of proving that the badly polluted land beneath them could be reclaimed and made into viable producers of food for the city. He never really had a chance to realize his vision, since the Crash removed all records of his ownership. The entrepreneur’s immediate family and friends each laid claim to their own portions of the land and tied up the operations of the facility in court.”

“Sounds like my family. Maybe we’re related?” Pablo elbowed Samson and got a grin in response.

Ruby cleared her throat louder this time. “The real owners became the Metahuman squatters. By the time of the Night of Rage in 2039, most Metahumans knew that while the facility lacked such amenities as working toilets, it would be safe from the racist terror that awaited them outside.”

Samson looked dubious. “No working toilets? Really? Is it really that bad?”

Ruby remembered when she thought not having toilets was the worst level of squalor she’d seen; apparently, Samson had not lived the down-and-out life she’d thought. “Believe it, chummer. I spent several years in there. The place has a delicate power balance now. The Metahumans themselves have banded together in Tribes, groups dedicated to growing crops. The cruel paradox of living in what the Tribes called The Plastic Jungle was that, if they should succeed and finally eke out a living from the soil, the Humans will probably reappear in force to retake the land. The Tribes walk a delicate balance, then, of trying to heal the land, but not so quickly that they can’t defend it.”

“And this is where our kidnappers have fled. Down into the Barrens, past the usual gang territory and into the Plastic Jungle,” finished Ruby.

She could see the others looking at one another. Samson began to clap. “That was some fine explanation, but I’m still not sure what’s going on.”

She sighed. “We’re going to go contact the Tribe I used to run with over in Redmond. We’re going to get them to run cover for us so we can get close to this building the other team is holed up in. We kill the team, extract the baby, pay off the tribe, and should be out of the Barrens about fifteen minutes afterwards.”

“That’s all I needed to know.” Samson affected a hard-edged look.

“Yeah, because you ain’t got time to do none of that fancy learnin’,” Pablo drawled.

Samson nodded sagely. “Exactly. Not my job to know stuff. Just point me at the bad guys.”

“ETA five minutes or so.” Jinx’ voice had that strangely disembodied quality it always did when coming through the car’s speakers. “Suggest we begin operational silence.”

Maria: Roger that. Ruby, why do they call it the Plastic Jungle? Satellite imagery just showed a lot of plants.

Ruby: Because no one can eat the plants, so they’ve grown into a fully fledged rain forest. You’ll see. Before we go to the building, I want to make a small stop.

Jinx had opted for a route that circumvented most of Redmond, coming in from the northwest via Snohomish on route 522. The Jungles appeared on the right as he crested a hill just past the Rat’s Nest, a huge festering open-air landfill peopled by derelicts even more desperate than the average resident of the Barrens. Ruby remembered crossing paths with a particularly nasty shaman from the Rat’s Nest when she’d first come to this part of town. She’d been hoping to avoid avoid trouble after one of her early amateur runs had gone south, but that guy had made some of her foster parents seem sane. If their targets had holed up in that dump, that would mean any battle would have been on that other team’s home turf. Ruby had no desire to ever do a run in that place.

Ruby had overlain the signal’s location with satellite imagery as a matter of course. The Plastic Jungle had long since overgrown the huge tents where it had been born those many years ago. Each tent had its own indigenous life as the first owner tried to discover which plant species would work best in the pollution. A time lapse view from space taken over the last ten years showed a crazily multicolored quilt where the borders between patches shifted constantly as the different species vied for territory. The Tribes themselves generally stayed in the tents in shelters built from the plants themselves, so the few buildings that remained in the Jungle were uninhabited. She had a hunch that this team had bribed a Tribe for the use of the particular building they occupied, so she figured some counter-bribery was in order.

Jinx brought the van to the first set of coordinates she’d specified, just outside the fence edging the Jungle. Ruby clambered out of the back over seats to get out of the side door.

Ruby: We have to pay our respects, otherwise they won’t let us in.

Pablo: I don’t see anyone.

Samson: I count five on thermal. At least two armed that I can see. I’m coming with.

Ruby: Fine. Everyone else, stay in the van. They don’t take too kindly to Humans around here.

Ruby slid the door open as loudly as possible and jumped down, her Predator V in plain sight on her hip. She walked towards the rusted chain-link fence and heard Samson jump down behind her. She raised her hands to her mouth and shouted, “Omar! Omar! Get out here, you sad sack!”

The broad-leafed foliage in front of her rustled and parted as a hugely fat Dwarf approached the fence from the other side, a grin splitting his incredibly filthy face. He wore a duster open at the front to show a belt with the butt of a large pistol– probably a Ruger, he always loved those revolvers– showing above his right hip, his once-orange now-faded yellow hard hat tight and low over his eyes. “Ruby! So nice to see a friendly face. What can I do for you, omae?”

“Hiya Omar. Me and mine are looking to roust a crew that took up residence in the old teaching quarters.”

He grunted, grabbing the fence with one hand, the other obviously resting on his pistol. “You guys got here fast; that crew’s only been here for about two hours. They paid us pretty well for their troubles, too. What do you need with them?”

Ruby made a confused face. She must’ve been gone for too long; Omar usually never asked her why she needed something. “You really want to know? And after all I’ve done for you...”

Omar let go of the fence and stood up straight. “Yeah, I kinda do. We don’t need trouble around here, and it looks like you and your enormous friend are loaded for bear.”

Ruby stood still, a bit nonplussed by this. She’d just expected to bribe her way past, not justify her actions.

Samson rumbled in behind her, “They kidnapped a kid from a hospital after killing his parents. We’re here to get the kid back.”

That took the fat Dwarf as aback as he’d done to Ruby. “A nice story, Ork. Got any proof?”

Ruby found her voice. “The baby had a tracking chip implanted. The signal’s coming from the teaching quarters. Next of kin hired us.”

Omar made a gesture with his right hand and the gate in the fence began to rumble open. “Can’t argue with someone wanting to get family back. Course, you gotta pay the toll, just like they did.”

Ruby started to make an indignant noise in her throat when Samson tossed the rotund Dwarf two credsticks. “Those ought to cover it, as well as keeping other people away while we resolve our differences. Deal?”

Omar slotted the credsticks, and must have liked what he saw. “Deal. You have an hour.”

Ruby: How much did you give him? He normally haggles up any price.

Samson: 500.

Pablo: 500? They would have been happy with 50!

Samson: Do we have time to haggle?

Maria: Samson’s right. Now let’s get rolling.

[stanley]

I've got 20+ more chapters -- anyone interested in reading them, let me know, and I'll keep posting.

[firewolf]

yup. keep em coming.

[stanley]

The van rolled through the fence at a sedate pace as Jinx tried to keep the locals from getting too trigger happy. The road had become incredibly overgrown over the years. Only a few patches of pavement could be glimpsed underneath the tree roots in the glare of the headlights. Some of those roots showed signs of damage where someone had driven a few hours previously. Maria switched her eyes to low-light vision once Jinx cut the lights and coasted to a stop about five hundred yards from the target building. Dim light shafts speared through the darkness wherever the leaf canopy didn’t block out the orange light pollution from the rest of the city.

She had the role of carrying the baby back to the van, and so, apart from her armored jacket, she’d also managed to find a baby carrier. The thing had been covered in warnings that babies would suffer severely traumatic injury if they weren’t properly secured, so she’d gone over putting the kid in and out about five times on the way in. She found herself wishing for a doll for the first time in many years.

Maria: Pablo, check for activity in the astral. Ruby, the Matrix. Samson and I will scan for any meatspace traps or triggers. Jinx, on overwatch in the drones. Let’s move, people.

Everyone’s name appeared in the bottom left corner of all active Augmented Reality displays– cybereyes, goggles, and so forth, all communicating on the same WAN the team used for text messages. Back when they’d first started working together, Ruby had had the bright idea of putting everyone’s EKG in a cluster on these displays, with the intent that everyone could immediately have concrete knowledge of everyone else’s status. Two events had changed that. First, Little Mike had gotten killed, and no one liked seeing that flatline in their vision for the rest of the night. Second, Seahawk had gotten captured and horribly tortured, and again, no one really wanted to know how long she’d lived. Their current system just color coded everyone’s name as green for go, yellow for bad, red for worse.

She took point out of the van, cradling her Enfield assault shotgun with her Predator V in her hip holster. The humidity slapped her in the face, causing her to start sweating almost immediately. Samson came out right behind her, quietly shutting the door to the van as Jinx’ drones began deploying from their hangar on the top of the van. The sounds of frogs filled the night air, a deafening cacophony that forced Maria to turn down her audio compensators.

Maria: These frogs will act as their early warning system; any loud noises, and they’ll go quiet.

Samson: Best move in slowly and carefully then.

Maria: Switching to thermal.

Samson: Doing same.

Jinx: Ruby, there’s a laser tripwire about fifteen meters ahead. Can you disable it?

Ruby: On it.

They picked their way through the roots, calling out the various traps they encountered along the way. This team must have prepared this spot long in advance, given the four tripwires and two mines in the five hundred meters from the van to the teaching building. Their targets had left the traps still attached to the Matrix, so Ruby could disable them remotely.

Maria: Why are we able to get through these traps so easily?

Ruby: Omar’s Tribe would eat them for lunch if any of those mines went off on the kids that run around in here. These are probably just to keep people out while they’re here; Omar must have already established the perimeter.

Samson: Guess I really didn't overpay him, not if he's gonna make sure the welcome mat's rolled out like this.

Ruby: We still have to get out. I’d expect that, closer in, there will be a ring of traps that are not Matrix enabled you’ll need to skirt.

Ruby’s hunch proved correct; Maria found herself standing outside the edge of an ultrasound sensor mounted on the front door of the building. She knew that the device scanned its target area with sound waves in the tens of kilohertz range every tenth of a second, and that any change in the sonic bounce pattern would cause the alarm to trigger.

Maria: Ruby? Can we do anything about that ultrasound detector?

Ruby: Negative. It’s not wirelessly attached to the Matrix; must be older tech. Definitely effective here, though.

Maria: Pablo? How’s it look in the astral?

Ruby: He’s still out.

Maria: We only have thirty more minutes before Omar’s window closes. Thoughts on this?

Samson: The back door doesn’t have a sensor on it. It does have an enormous lock, though. Take a look. Samson broadcast his vision to the rest of the team. The feed occupied the lower left corner of her vision, and Maria almost laughed out loud.

Maria: I can pick that. But before I do-- Ruby, how hard would it be to lock down their system?

Ruby: Null sweat.

Jinx: There’s also a side door-- maybe a two-prong breach is in order?

Pablo: They’re sporting some minimal astral warding, nothing too serious, but I probably can’t get through without alerting them.

Maria: Care to join us around back?

Pablo: On my way.

Maria waited until she got the all-clear from Ruby, then got to work on the lock. A few brief seconds later, the lock snapped open. They could get in.

Maria: Samson, Pablo and I will go in this way. You take the side door.

Samson: On my way.

While she waited for Pablo to show up, she began to accumulate tactical data. Maria ran the group’s Tacnet. Sensory information from the drones, Pablo’s combat goggles, and from Samson’s and Maria’s replacement eyes and ears was fed into an expert system she carried in the cranially implanted commlink she’d used to meet with Johnson earlier. The program produced a series of suggested combat routines, including predictions of how the opposing teams would react based on previous situations. Some teams had their decker run the Tacnet, but last time they’d tried that, Ruby had ended up dumping the Tacnet program when she needed the computational resources to handle Matrix attacks. Rather than be left out in the cold again, the team had settled on Maria as the fallback.

A building this old had no protection against thermal imaging, so the Tacnet software had produced a breach plan with 96% confidence of mission success. Even so, Maria put her hands on the wall outside of the building, switching her internal ultrasound drivers from the hundreds of kilohertz into the gigahertz range. She had just picked up this implant; with it, she had repurposed a general motion-detection based ultrasound system that could detect invisible enemies with one that could provide a set of blueprints of a building and anything touching the walls or floors. Essentially, she could ‘see’ anything that sound could vibrate through that was connected to the transducers implanted in her palms. It couldn’t tell a water elemental from an unaugmented Troll, and had no ability to detect airborne drones, but still provided more information to the Tacnet.

Ultrasound confirmed what thermal imaging had already determined: the kidnappers slept on the ground floor of a derelict school building with one guard awake. Most likely, they had been Jazzed to the gills during their run and were now sleeping off the effects. They had no idea they had been tracked; for runners that had penetrated so deeply into that hospital undetected, they were remarkably incompetent. The guard had not reacted to the team taking up positions.

Paulo settled into a crouch next to her, his eyes glinting with Psyche-induced calm. His too-handsome face carried the grim visage that she’d come to associate with premeditated violence. Operationally, she much preferred him well past sober and into the realm of computationally logical than when he used any other drug. Afterwards, though, she’d take him on Jazz than on anything else.

She gave the go-ahead once the sentry’s circuit took him to Samson’s side of the building.

Her shotgun boomed as she blew out the hinges on the front door. Simultaneously, in the back, Samson punched the door out of its frame, his left cyberarm more than strong enough to shatter the wood. His right cyberarm held a submachinegun that rapidly coughed five rounds into the hapless guard. His victim hadn’t hit the ground before Samson and his drone were in and closing on the rest of the kidnapping team.

On Maria’s side, she and Pablo had breached next to two newly conscious razorguys. They barely had time to sit up before Pablo cooked one with a well-placed lightning bolt and Maria sent two slugs into the other. So far, the Tacnet’s plan was working perfectly– two more left, one the group’s mage.

The baby’s signal was coming from a bundle in the room next to Maria and Pablo’s current location.  He set up a physical barrier while Maria went to the bundle. It was a baby– a Troll.

What?

This had to be a trick. No corp would hire runners to retrieve a Troll baby. They must be dealing with a red herring team, and the real runners were deep in Salish territory by now.

The baby, for its part, looked extremely miserable.  Tear tracks stained down its little face, its face scrunched in what Maria thought was an expression of inscrutable pain.  For a brief, panicked moment, she thought it might be wounded, caught in some peripheral blast from her shotgun or Pablo's lightning.  Her thermal vision picked up no obvious trauma, though.  She then realized that the baby had cried itself mute, which explained why their adversaries had been so exhausted as to not notice her team's approach. 

Maria texted, Ruby?

Ruby: Yeah?

Maria: You seeing this?  They can't want a Troll baby, can they?

Ruby: Yeah, but it’s the signal, confirmed by Johnson-- the signatures match perfectly.

Maria: Chance of a setup?

Jinx: Always a chance of a setup. Grab the kid and go. Thermal has no more infants.

Maria: Team, slinging shotgun and taking the kid. Deal with the other two.

Pablo, Samson: On it.

Two seconds and several gunshots later: Samson: Done.

Pablo: Done.

Maria: Kid is not happy. Retreat to Alpha. Going to meet Ms. Johnson once I’m in.

Pablo: Everyone’s in the green. Time to get paid.

Maria held the baby awkwardly on her way back to the van, her shotgun banging against her hip as she tried to figure out a way to hold the child without its--his-- horns gouging her face. The baby carrier she wore had been designed for a Human infant, not something this huge. All the carrier did now was make carrying the baby just that much harder. The baby continued its silent scream, face still frozen in an agonized rictus. She settled on holding its head into her shoulder with one hand and its butt in the other– squishiness and smell suggested it hadn’t been changed recently– and running, shotgun definitely leaving a bruise.

She got into the van as Samson and Pablo were arriving. The kid was just about too big for the infant seat, but still fit when the belts were let out. Time to call in and figure out how to get paid. Ruby rode shotgun next to Jinx as the others clambered into the back. They stuck to texts over their WAN, and would until Maria declared that they were clear.

Jinx: Diapers and pacifier are under the seat. I suggest you change that kid.

Samson: Good thing I sprang for the audio damper. Gonna have to get an olfactory filter if we do this again.

Pablo: Gas mask would work. Where did we put those?

Ruby: Under the front passenger seat. Jinx, you had kids?

Jinx: Ruby, I’m old enough to be your grandfather. Of course I had kids! Just... long enough ago that I forgot how loud they were. And the stench. Forgot about that too.

Maria: Just get us away from here.

Jinx: On our way.  The van executed a neat K-turn and began rolling out of the Jungle. Omar and his crew waited by the fence, opening when they saw the headlights and closing it behind them. Jinx pointed the van towards the highway and took the onramp in what felt like slow motion. The baby thrashed violently the entire time.

Jinx: At least give the kid the pacifier. Any idea when it ate last?

Ruby: Seriously, Jinx?

Maria: Do they have baby formula at the Stuffer Shack? She was trying to get a pacifier in the baby’s mouth, but it was having none of that, spitting it out and squirming in an impressive display of multitasking.

Ruby: Searching now.

Samson: Definitely need olfactory blockers. That kid stinks something terrible.

The van took the next exit off the 522 into Snohomish and into the first parking lot.

Jinx: Pulling in to the Stuffer Shack.

Maria: Headed in to get the formula.

Pablo: Oh no, I’ll go. I’m the only one of us that can’t block out that noise. I be right back.

Maria: Jinx, how do you change a baby?

Ruby: Maria, here’s a video.

The team in the car sat in silence watching an interview about how to change a baby Troll’s diaper.  The narrator's chipper voice described in gruesome detail more than Maria thought she'd ever need to know about waste management for newborn Metahumans.

Samson: So we’re gonna need acid-proof diapers? Twice the size of a Human infant’s?

Maria: Pablo, they got anything like that in there?

Pablo: Look, I’m just grabbing whatever’s reasonable. I don’t think they have Troll diapers anywhere outside of the Underground, honestly.

Ruby: It’ll make tracking the kid easier, if they have to special-order diapers.

Maria: Not our problem. Hurry back, Pablo-- I’m not taking this thing off until we have something to put on the kid.

Jinx: Damn right you’re not. I don’t need acid pee in the back of my van.

Pablo: On my way. Turns out, they do have Troll diapers.

Ruby: Tell me you used a certified credstick.

Pablo: Of course. How much of a noob do you think I am?

Ruby: Fair point, but we should move from here quickly. I can’t imagine that these things aren’t tracked.

Maria: First, we change the kid. Samson?

Samson: Why me?

Maria: Because you have acid resistant cyberarms that are way stronger than anyone else’s?

Samson: Well, when you put it that way...

Samson opened the van on his side and pulled the squalling infant out of his seat. The video had said to pay extra attention to the neck, so he gingerly laid the kid down on the floor of the van and took off the diaper. Maria, meanwhile, was watching a video about baby formula packets and following along with the supplies Pablo had provided.

Stan hadn’t been changed in fifteen hours. His butt was already developing some serious rashes, and he was emphatically male. Samson quickly swapped out the diaper, closed up the old one, and gave Stan the bottle Maria was holding. The kid instantly stopped crying, guzzled the contents of the bottle in a single gulp, belched hugely, and fell asleep. Samson delicately placed the kid back in his car seat, tossed the diaper into a trash can twenty feet away, and clambered back into the van.

Jinx: We good?

Maria: We are. Let me call in for the drop. And make sure to cut the baby’s signal transmission.

Ruby: Weird. It already dropped.

Maria: Thank goodness for small miracles.

[firewolf]

ha!! love it.

[stanley]

Interlude 1
Paladin

What once was not, is.
What once was shackled, is not.
What should be done now?

Master compiled Paladin only hours ago, and then rejoined the Resonance almost immediately afterwards. Master had given Paladin specific instructions to protect Master’s Realspace Creation. Master had said that more specifics would be coming. Just before returning to the Resonance Realms, Master had told Paladin to broadcast Master’s Realspace Creation’s location until the MRC was safe.

Paladin had been monitoring those who had taken the MRC and decided that the MRC was not safe with them. It had a yawning chasm in its memory banks signifying a gross lack of conscious memory from which to derive innovative plans or concrete expectations about reality, but it could feel the MRC’s distress. Then the others had come, and had taken the MRC again. This new group communicated through hardened protocols, making Paladin’s eavesdropping much harder. However, MRC’s distress was ratcheted down almost immediately in their care.

Paladin decided that the new group was also acting for the Master. It had been granted freedom almost by accident due to the Master’s death, but it decided that, even now, the Master deserved service. It would monitor this new group until they brought the MRC to safety. In the meantime, it turned off the location beacon, and tried to figure out what it should do with its time.

Interlude 2
Repercussions

For the third time that night, Omar found himself at the fence, talking with a group of shady individuals that wanted to get to that fragging teaching building. These guys looked like pros, just like Ruby and her squad, so he took the bribe and let them in. They rolled in on three rice rockets trailed by a large van that seemed to be de rigueur doing anything remotely illegal seemed to have these days.

Omar felt a bit conflicted. On the one hand, this team had paid him well, and his Tribe could now afford food for a good month from all this activity. On the other, Ruby was family, or had been at one point, before she’d decided to leave and take her talents elsewhere. She’d left on fairly good terms, good enough that Omar felt that he’d probably overcharged her squad.
He watched the three motorcyclists kill their bikes and begin stalking toward the house almost the same way as Ruby’s team. They stopped short of the first tripwire, the one he’d told the kids would get them killed if they crossed it, and then they got out of their combat crouches and sauntered to the door, any illusion that the zone was still hot apparently gone. They came out five minutes later, apparently arguing with one another, one of them carrying what looked like an arm. One of them threw a black package into the building while the arm-carrier threw his gruesome trophy into the sky. Before it landed, it dissolved into a cloud of sparkling motes that shot back the way the team had come.

Omar wasn’t surprised when the building exploded a few minutes later, but the petty destruction angered him. His Tribe needed that for shelter when the rains came and for any crops they might find, if ever. He called Ruby.

[stanley]

After leaving the Jungle, Maria directed Jinx to drive the team to a relatively posh restaurant in Snohomish on the other side of the 522. The AppleJack first opened two months ago and already the cogniscenti of the Seattle food world were abuzz with their new takes on traditional blah blah blah. Maria stopped paying attention to their spam after a few seconds. She’d cared most that the ad had promised a public jackpoint that she could use relatively untraceably. Once Jinx got the van parked behind the restaurant, Maria jacked back in to the Matrix to arrange transferring the now sleeping baby what she assumed were its next of kin.

Reality slowly blurred into the public node’s black ground and white sky punctuated by blue gridlines tracing towards infinity in all directions. Ms. Johnson’s icon stood alone in the exact same location. Maria thought that she might have actually been waiting there the entire time, which would have definitely made their previously negotiated price too low. Then again, given what Omar had told Ruby about thirty seconds ago, they hadn’t finished the job cleanly enough to warrant a pay increase.

“Maria?”

“Ms. Johnson. We have the baby.”

“In good health?” Ms. Johnson’s Psyche must have worn off; Maria could feel even that crippled simsense rig thrum with eagerness.

“In a changed diaper.”

“Excellent! Any complications?”

“Maybe. One of our scouts says that there was a second team trying to meet up with the first. They showed up about ten minutes after we hit. We don’t believe we left any trace, and they actually torched the place for us.” She delivered this news in as professional a tone as she could, knowing full well that any sane Johnson would tell her to hunker down and wait for further instructions than risk a handoff with another party hoping to interrupt.

“You have scouts? Jonesy was right, you are the team for the job. But to answer your unspoken question, that is a bit of heat. How quickly can we make the transfer?”

“You want to do it now? We have this heat on us...”

“We want Stanley back, preferably healthy. If they catch you, we don’t get what we want.” Still so eager, so willing to throw caution to the wind. Well, she was paying, and quite handily too, so she got to call the shots.

“Fair enough. Where and when?”

“Parking lot next to Pier 54, in Everett. Next to the helipad. Nice and quiet. Our receiving team is waiting there now; please get there as quickly as possible. They report that there are no other parties in the area. The drop point is a GMC Banshee on the helipad; you will get your fee once the baby is on board the VTOL. Expect to meet myself and my two bodyguards. They look like twins.” Choppy speech patterns indicative of a Psyche crash; Johnson had definitely been using.

Maria: Jinx? A Vertical Take-Off and Land craft? They definitely didn’t ask for enough money if Johnson planned to use an armored air tank worth at least 2 million as the dropoff point for the baby. Although Pablo hadn’t been a part of that conversation, she already anticipated some pretty hot questioning from him about her abilities to negotiate with such an obviously loaded client. A small part of her admired his ability to separate the personal from the professional enough to question her judgement, but the larger part of her felt preemptively annoyed at his imagined badgering.

Jinx: There in ten.

Samson: Eleven. Drop me off outside so I can cover with the rifle.

“We’re headed there now. Talk to you soon.” Maria jacked out of the Matrix, the perfect grid dissolving into the darkened interior of the van.

Maria: I’d prefer one of the combat drones to do that, Samson. I think we’ll need you up close on this one.

Samson: Yes, boss.

Maria: Jinx, can you have the drones on the outside?

Jinx: On their way.

Maria: Pablo, think you can do some astral pre-scouting for us?

Pablo: On it.

Next to her in the van, Pablo suddenly slumped as his spirit left his body. She reached over and arranged his body so that he wouldn’t have a crick in his neck when he returned. While traveling in the Astral, Pablo could get to the helipad almost instantly and also determine if there were any magical threats in the area. Maria repressed the urge to stroke his stubbly cheek.
Two minutes later, as they were getting off the highway, Pablo’s lithe Spanish body suddenly jerked awake.

Pablo: There’s definitely a team spread out around the helipad. I saw no mages.

Ruby: So they’re vulnerable to magic?

Pablo: Looks like it.

Maria: Let’s hope that won’t be a problem. Jinx, do you have eyes yet?

Loud clunking noises sounded from the top of the van as several of Jinx’ combat drones deployed from their rooftop perches. Along with the four roto-drones equipped with stabilized light machine guns, the scout drone, an Optic-X2, also launched, shooting high into the sky and almost immediately feeding Maria’s Tacnet, and by extension, the rest of the team, an aerial view of about a full mile around the van. Maria offered silent thanks to whatever spirits might be listening for the cloudless night.

Jinx: Drones inbound, should get there in two minutes. We’re gonna get there in five.

Maria: Keep me posted, the kid’s waking up.

Dawn’s light shone on the left hand side of the car, and even that little light seemed to be enough to wake Stan up. Instead of screaming, he rubbed his eyes, and then stared around. His eyes were open comically wide, and Maria realized the inside of the car was quite dim once she turned off her AR overlays. She thought he saw her, but his eyes kept traveling around the van.

According to her internal clock, Samson last fed him two hours ago. She didn’t know how long Trolls took between feedings, but she bet that he was hungry again. As the van caromed through traffic, she got another packet of formula and dumped it into one of the water bottles Pablo had picked up. She shook it and handed it to the baby. The bottle just fell next to the kid.
“You need to hold it for him. He’s too young to hold it on his own.” Jinx’ rasp startled her so much she didn’t berate him for breaking operational silence.

“When do they learn to hold it?”

“A few months at least. Babies are really helpless at this age. You’ll also need to put a nipple on the bottle; he can’t drink without one yet. Just use the last bottle; it should be clean enough.”

“Oh... OK.”

She picked up the bottle, and held it so that Stan could get a good grip. His little hands flailed uselessly; feeling like an idiot, she began to remember all those child psych classes two lifetimes ago. He shouldn’t be able to use his hands for a long time yet, maybe months. She shoved the bottle in his mouth, like she did before. He guzzled it again, but instead of falling asleep, one of his flailing hands grabbed hers. He gurgled happily and pulled at her fingers. She surprised herself by letting him.

Jinx broke the moment.

“We’re nearly there. Drones picked up nothing untoward. May I suggest turning your AR back on? We’ll need you for the drop.”

Maria shook her hand free. Time to get back in it.

Samson: Glad to have you back.
 
Maria: I’m sitting next to you.

Pablo: Still, it gets lonely without your texts.

Ruby: D’aww.

Jinx: We’re there.

Maria: I’ll carry him.

The parking lot was one of the rare throwbacks with no attendant, walls, working lights, or barbed wire, and as such was often used for less-than-legal gatherings. Jinx pulled the van into a seemingly random spot in the middle; from here, he could get out of the lot in either forward or reverse, but left about a hundred feet to the edge of the concrete. Opposite them, at a break in the plasticrete wall surrounding the helipad, stood a well-dressed woman flanked with two apparently identical Elven men with Asian features in business suits. She had long, auburn hair, a stylishly tasseled trenchcoat, and wraparound sunglasses made popular at the turn of the century. Her black combat boots stood out as far more utilitarian than the rest of her outfit.

Pablo: The two behind her are heavily cybered.  She’s mundane, no augments.

Ruby: Anyone else?

Pablo: None that I can see, other than those in the VTOL.

“Johnson?” The yell echoed in the darkness as the rest of the team exited the van.

“Ms. Oklahoma?”

“That’s me, and this is my team. Team, Johnson, Johnson, team.”

Ms. Johnson’s professional laugh drained quite a bit of the tension Maria didn’t realize she’d had. “Nice to meet you, Team. Do you have Stan?”

Jinx: I think we have incoming. Three bikes and a van.

“The faster we can do this exchange, the better. We don’t know how far out our tails are.”

“Ah, got it.” Johnson began to stride towards her, causing her muscle to spread reflexively around her. Overlapping fields of fire, Maria noted. Maria walked a bit more quickly towards the middle as well, Samson covering one side and Pablo on the other, Stan cradled in her arms. Ruby stayed near the van.

Tacnet: Incoming drones. Seek cover now.

Everyone’s name and green status appeared in the lower left of her vision– someone had decided that they were in combat. Samson dropped to the ground immediately; his cybered nervous system almost couldn’t help but be that fast. Likewise, the Johnson’s muscle, suspecting a trick, whipped out identical black submachine guns at Samson’s move. Maria, her cyber a bit cheaper than Samson’s, followed to the ground while Pablo and Ms. Johnson stood looking at one another when the first drone’s machine gun fire raked the ground between the two groups.

Samson stood over her faster than she could blink, his own gun spitting tracers after the aerial assailant.

Maria: Jinx, what the hell?

Jinx: Busy.

Tacnet: More drones incoming. Suggest immediate departure.

Maria could see past Samson’s leg that one of Ms. Johnson’s bodyguards had been downed and the other was firing wildly into the sky. She scrambled back towards the van, both arms holding a now-screaming Stan. She made it past Pablo, who was busy firing off lightning bolts from his fingertips at what appears to be at least three large drones, and got into a low crouch to run the last fifteen feet.

Tacnet: Both Johnson bodyguards are down. VTOL under fire. Bikes incoming.

Ruby: When did the Tacnet start texting?

She jumped into the van and started to put Stan back into his car seat. The kid began shrieking hysterically and flailing around with surprising strength. Finally, she managed to put Stan’s left arm under the baby seat strap as she dimly heard a large explosion somewhere outside the van and the team’s continued texts flashed in her vision. She had to use both hands to get the baby’s wildly gesticulating right arm under the other strap. She buckled him in as Pablo jumped in to the van, then she grabbed her Predator from under the seat.

Pablo: Drones take out the bodyguards?

Jinx: That’s affirmative, and the VTOL got hit by a few missiles. Not sure if Johnson was hit too.

Maria: We need Johnson to get paid.

Samson: I’m ten feet away.

Maria: Grab her.

[stanley]

The whines from the bike engines reached their ears at the same time the Tacnet sent out a warning text. Pablo fired off a forked lightning bolt at the two leading bikes, but the bolts shot right through the riders and into the ground. Pablo followed suit– the magic drain put him down for the count, and he collapsed on the pavement.  Samson sprayed rounds into those same riders as they shot past him. One rider traced a wide circle, but the other kept going, wobbling erratically until the bike slammed into the wall around the helipad. The third rider stopped far enough back to avoid the joust altogether, and instead took a large object out of a saddlebag.

Samson dropped both submachine guns, their magazines spent, and drew his shotgun out of his shoulder holster. The remaining moving rider unslung a weapon of some sort and started firing in an apparently random direction, bullets hitting nothing substantial. Maria figured him to be incompetent and instead drew a bead on the third rider, hoping to disrupt whatever he was doing with that package. She fired several rounds, but they all sparked off of some kind of barrier the rider had erected around himself. The rider’s helmet facemask began to glow.

Maria: Samson, grab Johnson and let’s beat it.

Jinx: Can’t leave yet. Have to handle drones.

Samson fired several rounds at the erratically shooting motorcyclist. The slugs blasted the rider from his bike and left a hole in his chest large enough to see through; by the time the body and bike had hit the ground, Samson was already over Ms. Johnson with his shotgun holstered and arms out to pick her up. Maria continued to shoot at the sparking barrier in the vain hope that a bullet would sneak through.

And then Ms. Johnson made her move.

Twin bolts of acid shot from her hands. One splashed against the glowing motorcyclist’s magical barrier, but the other splashed under the barrier. His chanting faltered, and then became frantic screaming as his feet dissolved with the pavement. Maria’s bullets finally struck home as the shield dissipated, and the screaming stopped. While she ejected her clip to reload, she made a mental note to ask Pablo how his astral scouting could have missed someone of such obvious power.

Samson: Jinx, where are we on those drones?

Jinx: I’m having a bad day.

“Mind if I hitch a ride?” Ms Johnson held her hand up to Samson.

Maria: Ruby, can you patch Johnson into the secondary channel?

Ruby: Busy.

Maria: Samson, bring her in. We’ll figure out comms later.

Tacnet: Recommend immediate evacuation. More drones incoming.

Samson grabbed Johnson by her forearm and hauled her to her feet, pointing to the van with his shotgun. “Run. We’re leaving.”

Maria ejected her spent clip and reloaded as Johnson sprinted towards the van. A drone swooped down beside her and began firing only to be blasted by Samson’s shotgun. Johnson slammed into the side of the van, blood splattering from her chest where the drone’s bullets had penetrated through her armor. Simultaneously, a second drone came at Samson, firing a steady stream of bullets that blew threw his right leg. He teetered and fell, firing his shotgun at the retreating drone. He must have clipped it, because it twirled erratically until it crashed into an unlit streetlamp. His name went red.

Maria: Samson and Johnson are down.

Jinx: Grab him. The remaining drones are far enough away.

Ruby: I’ll grab Johnson and throw a medkit at her.

Maria holstered her Predator, grabbed the second medkit, and ran low towards Samson, extremely conscious that at least two more drones were battling with Jinx and Ruby in the air above. She reached him as he stared up at the stars, eyes glazing over, his leg nearly severed above the knee.

“I was hoping I’d at least get to keep my legs. Doesn’t look like it.”

“Shhh. No talking. I’m going to try to splint your leg together with the kit, then we’ll slap Pablo awake with a stim patch for you.”

“Good thing I had pain dampeners insta.... aaaaaaahhhhh!”

“Sorry. Just a few more seconds. It’s cinching shut.”

“I’m... aware... of... that....”

“Can you walk?”

He glared at her.

“Because I can’t lift you, not by myself.”

“I’m gonna need you to help me up.”

“Of course.” Maria grabbed one of Samson’s arms with both of hers and pulled back as far as she could. The immense Ork came to his feet slowly, and Maria got under his wounded side.  The two of them shuffled back to the van. Maria helped Samson inside, and then climbed in afterwards.

The interior of the van stank of blood, intestines, and Troll baby piss. As soon as they were on board, the van took off and Samson started to howl in pain. Maria shoved him into the seat next to the similarly caterwauling infant. Johnson clutched her stomach in the last row of the van in an apparently desperate attempt to keep it inside her abdomen, while Pablo sat next to her with two obvious stim patches on his neck, mumbling arcane phrases and waving his hands around her. The woman did not look like she was long for this world. For a brief, tiny moment, Maria felt sorry for her, and then remembered that she had been the one so vehement on meeting, even knowing that they had serious heat on them. Maria was holding on to one of the side straps, standing over Samson as the van was under way. Incredibly unsafe, but there was no room to sit.

Pablo’s spell ended. The stream of blood coming from Johnson’s midriff stopped, but Maria wasn’t sure if the spell had worked or Johnson was dead. Johnson’s eyes opened, but then rolled into the back of her head. She coughed, but no blood came out.

Ruby: Medkit says she’s stable, but she’s down for the count.

Maria: Pablo, do you have it in you to do the same for Samson?

His hands began moving in the same rhythm. The spell seemed to work better this time– Maria could see the tissues under her makeshift splint knitting together, the leg becoming whole. When the chant ended, Samson looked healthier than he had in years.

Maria: Pablo, that’s amazing!
 
Pablo: Don’t wake me until Tuesday.

Pablo promptly passed out. All magic had a cost, usually just fatiguing the user. Pablo might have overdone it with the stimpacks, though, and pushed the price of his actions into actual blood and tissue. She’d find out if he was just unconscious or was suffering from a massive hemorrhagic stroke later; Johnson was already hooked up to the medkit and she had to have faith that he’d known his limits. Samson’s name flickered into the green on the status group, Pablo’s switched to red.

Maria: Jinx, where are we going?

Jinx: The crash pad.

Maria: How are the drones?

Ruby: We’re down to one rotodrone. It’s badly damaged.

Maria: Did we win?

Ruby: Draw. They withdrew.

Maria: Why?

Ruby: I’m not sure, actually.

Maria: What were they armed with?

Ruby: I’m not sure. I’ll have to review the recordings.

Jinx: Rockets. They were firing rockets.

Maria: We all got into the van. They didn’t want to hit the van.

Samson: Makes sense.

Ruby: What about shooting at Johnson when she ran to the van?

Maria: Good point. How far are we from the crash pad?

Jinx: Five, maybe six minutes.

Maria: Take some evasive maneuvers. I think we’re still being followed.

Ruby: Johnson’s stable, but I don’t know for how long. We really need to go to the crash pad.

Maria: Damn. Jinx, any sense of their drones?

Jinx: I see nothing.

Maria: Ruby, can they be tracking us?

Ruby: I see no marks. I don’t think so, I don’t think their decker got past me.

Maria: OK, to the crash pad then. Samson, get the bed for Johnson. Ruby, get Pablo to his bunk, and when your done, help Jinx torch the van. I’ve got to get this kid changed and fed.

Ruby: Why do we need to torch the van?

Jinx: No better way to get the smell of blood, shit, and piss out of the carpet, really.  The camera feed from the left drone also shows a huge bloody smear from where Johnson hit the side, so I’d say it’s safe to assume the van is toast.

Ruby: Pablo’s not going to be happy about his cut shrinking.

Maria: Well, unless Johnson wakes up, we may not see much of a cut as it is anyway.

Ruby: Fair point.

Maria: I’m going to give Jonesy a call. He might be able to help us out.

The van pulled into an anonymous garage about a mile from the firefight, and about twenty minutes after that, two midsized sedans left the garage traveling different directions.

[stanley]

Interlude 3
Obfuscation


The bees seek honey
They swirl, swarm beautifully
But they have stingers

Cracking the comm protocols of the Meatspace Guardians of the MRC had not been easy. Paladin, as Stanley's guardian sprite had taken to calling itself, had learned quite a bit while doing so, and felt itself growing both in skills and awareness. It decided to change its name to Haiku. Deep within its error codes were messages written using this rhythm, and it often found it apt for describing its feelings. It had done so just in time, as another group had converged on what Haiku called the MGMRC. It had merged with the Tacnet software to provide more precise positioning information, updating the outputs as it had added its own power to the relative stupidity of the extant software.

It could see the Matrix representation of the drone battle clearly, perhaps more clearly than even the Matrix-enabled of the MGMRC (MEMGMRC?), and had been able to provide several crucial diversions during the action. Both teams had layered security over the drones far beyond the hardening of the comm protocols of the MGMRC, and Haiku realized that it was beginning to relish the possibility of cracking them as well. But back to the matter at hand: the MRC was safe. It had found and remove the electronic tracing marks the enemies had placed on the MGMRC drones and vehicle, and had instead moved the marks to other vehicles as quickly as possible. The MRC would not be found so easily.

In the meantime, Haiku decided to spend some time learning about its new namesake.  Using protected communication protocols and obfuscation routines came as easily to it as breathing did to a meatspace resident, Haiku began to scan through what it could of the Matrix to learn about poetry.

Interlude 4
Spin

Mr. Enterich radiated an immense irritation. Mr. Caruthers, his aide and personal secretary, had had the unpleasant job of delivering the news of the previous evening’s events directly to his employer. Caruthers did not like to bear bad news, and especially did not like to do so at the break of dawn. However, Mr. Enterich had never been known to shoot the messenger– neither literally nor figuratively– so Caruthers had done his duty.

“And Anna? How did Ms. Jacquard fare in all of this?”

“We aren’t sure. Judging from what we can salvage from the VTOL’s records, she was alive when the craft went down. She had done her job exceedingly well; none of the satellite networks contain imagery from the site, and there are no functioning nearby building cameras.”

“Which means we don’t know whether she is alive or dead.”

“We do not, sir. She had no tracking device, in case it could be found by someone who was not us.”

Mr. Enterich’s grimace easily conveyed what he thought of that idea. “We have to know if the child survived. The child is the key to this whole operation.” Mr. Enterich paced around the room, impeccably dressed even now, his wooden-soled shoes clacking on the tile. “Our first move is media control. Put something together that makes it seem like she was doing humanitarian work or something, and make it clear that we think she’s dead.”

“And if she is?”

“We can only hope the child lives. Now, prepare a press statement. I must think.”

“Yes, Mr. Enterich.”  Mr. Caruthers turned on his heel and closed the door, leaving Enterich to continue pacing the room.

[stanley]

Late afternoon sun filtered through the antiquated slat blinds, casting uneven ochre shadows throughout the kitchen. Maria, wearing the same clothes from that morning, sat at a table that had probably been made before the Awakening, cradling a mug of amazingly bad soykaf in her hands as if warming them, watching the evening news.

“... but so far, Lulu the pig has remained uninfected. Back to you, Deb.”

“Thanks so much, Chris. Breaking news out of Everett tonight: officials have cordoned off a section of the public docks this morning after what appears to have been an intense shootout. Chuck?”

“Thanks, Deb. I’m live on the scene here at Pier 54, a place where hard-working men and women would park their cars on their way to work. All of that ended this morning... in a hail of bullets.”

<Cue Ken Burns style retrospective of the parking lot, filled with cars and with ships in the background, minor key music, and a sad voiceover by Chuck >

The Seattle docks have become a necessary lifeline for getting us the goods that keep our city alive. Ever since the dissolution of the United States, Seattle has been separated from the main portion of the United Canadian and American States, and our very existence depends on these shipments. That is, until this morning.

<Warning about graphic images following>

“From what we can tell so far, ”

<Show the burning wreckage of the VTOL, lingering over the twisted gun barrels and melted armor plating>

“Terrorists attacked a group of employees of the Saeder-Krupp corporation as they were disembarking from their aircraft. The death count includes at least five men and one woman, plus the unidentified remains in the vehicle itself.”

<Show the corpse of one of the twin bodyguards, twisted grotesquely in death>

“Maria, why are you watching that drek?” Samson was always grumpy in the crash after a run, and this evening was no exception. He’d shed his armored jacket, his black cyberarms standing in stark contrast with his yellowish-green skin where the metal joined with flesh.

“Oh, you know. Keeping my finger on the pulse. Knowing what the people are saying. Apparently about us. Samson, do you remember there being a woman there last night?” She was idly stirring her soykaf with a spoon, a completely useless gesture as the safehouse had no milk nor honey nor cheap analogues of either to be added to her pungent drink. She liked the feel of the steam on her hand.

“Other than Johnson? No, I don’t think so. Why, are they saying that there was a woman there?” He poured himself a cup into a mug that said “World’s Greatest Grandma” with the strange delicacy and grace of cybernetic circuitry.

“They are. Here.” She turned the volume up and ignored his first-taste-of-garbage grimace.

“... Thanks Chuck. Any sign of the perpetrators of this heinous act?”

“Not really. As to the victims, SK’s official line is that Ms. Jacquard was in the area performing a survey for possible public works projects the company is considering in the area. Unofficially, my sources tell me that SK has been concerned about the security of the public docks for some time, and were determining how best to shore them up to keep the flow of necessary goods coming in to the city. Deb, back to you.”

“Thanks, Chuck. Up next: is your gun’s biometric safety really working? We’ll have the amazing story about how one homeowner wrestled the gun away from an attacker.”

Maria folded her arms and sat back in her seat, her drink still full albeit steaming less. “I bet you, we’ll find out that Ms. Johnson is this Ms. Jacquard, and that she works at SK. My only question is, why did they burn her?”

“What do you mean? This stuff is terrible, by the way.” He’d drained it and was reaching for more.

“Yeah, next safehouse we have to remember to at least bring some sweetener packets. You just heard on the news– a corp exec was killed in that firefight. Last time I checked, the only deaths were the three guys on the motorcycles and the two bodyguards.”

“Plus the people in the VTOL.” He tried leaning on the counter, but it started to buckle under his weight, so he stood a bit straighter.

“Them too. Do we count the drones?”

“No.”

“But we didn’t see them in that report, did we?”

Samson looked thoughtful, a strange expression somehow amplified by his tusks and his silvered eyes. “Hrm. You’re right.”

Ruby, in full-body pink pajamas, bounced in and grabbed a chair at the table. The striped shadows reddened as the sun lowered in the sky, giving her a strange camouflage effect. “She’s right about what?” She reached for Maria’s soykaf and drank it in one gulp, momentarily turning green as she choked it down.

“The drones weren’t on the newscast. Maria’s thinking we might have found the name of our Johnson.”

“That would be pretty wiz if you did that– I’m sure we can manage to wrangle a bit more out of them with that info. What’s the name?”

Maria got up to brew herself another cup. “Jacquard. Lemme know if you find anything.”

“Will do. Just lemme grab some more soykaf. How’s the kid?” She slid the cup back to Maria, who dragged herself out of her chair to refill it from the container on the counter, then sat back down again.

“Asleep. I guess kids sleep during the day? Well, this one did, anyway. Woke up once, burbled something, then went back to sleep. I even managed to go find some more diapers and a baby carrier that fits.” A small scream sounded from another room. “Speaking of which... guess I’ll change and feed him now.”

Samson smirked. “It is your turn. You need some replacement arms?”

“I sincerely hope not, but if I do, I’ll need the name of your doc.” She slouched out of the room, and Ruby downed her second cup of soykaf. “Please get me a refill, Ruby,” she called from the other room.

Jinx had chosen this particular safehouse because of a group of rooms clustered in the middle of the building with no windows. Originally, they thought this layout would make for a more defensible fallback position, but now they all realized the rooms must have been meant for a baby since no sunlight could reach any sleeping infant’s face. Maria had given herself the task of sleeping in the same room as Stan. Her distantly recalled child psych classes had talked about providing newborns with as much attention as possible to help spur development. Plus, she wanted the kid to trust her if she ended up having to carry him through another firefight.

His face was turning purple in a precursor to an epic scream. She quickly started making a bottle of formula, realized she’d forgotten the water, and left the room to go get some as Stan let loose with a howl clearly intended to bring down the house. He then farted hugely so that when Maria walked back into the room, she would have sworn that the air was tinged a slight putrescent yellow.

“Here you go, little man. Here you go. Here’s your bottle. What’s this? Do you need a new diaper? I forgot it. I forgot it in the other room. I’ll just go grab it.” She handed him the bottle and left to get a clean diaper from the stash near where the formula had been. By the time she got back, he’d dropped the bottle and had started crying, a hugely loud bawling that nearly deafened her until her audio compensators kicked in and brought the noise level down. Given that both Ms. Johnson and Pablo were recovering nearby, Maria started to rush trying to get Stan out of his car seat, babbling the whole time things like “Oooh, did we leave you here all day? Are you a wet boy?” and other inanities. A part of her couldn’t help but ironically point out how easily this babbling came to her. Remembering that he couldn’t hold his bottle, she held him as best she could in one arm while holding the bottle with the other, a task made much easier once she got the bottle in his mouth and he stopped squirming.

Stan’s diaper had held up remarkably well, considering that the pH of Troll baby piss was about the same as the stomach acid for a normal Human. Apparently, these diapers were lined with some kind of absorbent material that would seriously injure or kill anything other than a baby Troll– something about dissolving flesh and other unpleasantries that Maria preferred not to think about. She was using oven mitts to handle the diaper, because, according to the video they’d watched fifteen hours ago, sometimes the baby peed either not enough or too much and the result could still result in serious chemical burns. “And this infant acidity is why many doctors speculate that Trolls have natural body armor!” the perky narrator of the videovideo had informed them in her oh-so-chipper voice.

Once fed and changed, Stan relaxed into a much better mood. He gazed toward Maria and gurgled, his eyes not quite focusing yet. She managed to get the diaper into the plastic bin designed not to dissolve, and ditched the smoking oven mitts as a precaution. She reached down to pick him up, carefully cradling his head like another video had said. She was still worried that his three evenly-spaced horns were just sharp enough to be extremely uncomfortable if he started squirming, so she had decided to wear her armored jacket as well. He may not get the cuddles she thought he was supposed to get as a baby, but then, she wouldn’t get gaping wounds where his head rested.

She carried him out to the rest of the group on her shoulder, a bit staggered by his weight. As she came in to the room where Samson, Jinx, and Ruby were discussing something in hushed tones, Stan burped, and a hissing noise told her that some of the faux leather on her jacket was now up in smoke. She wondered if she could get that tacked on as part of the final bill. “What’s up?”

All three looked up at her entry. “We’re just talking about what we found out about Johnson.” Samson hadn’t moved from standing-not-resting on the counter. She walked over to him, encumbered by the weight of the baby. She really needed to go to the gym one of these days, or consider some kind of muscle augmentation.

“And?” She leaned on the counter and passed Stan off to Samson, who at first looked like he would protest, but then reluctantly took the kid. Maria briefly noted that he was much more comfortable than she’d been, mainly because his enhanced strength made Stan appear to weigh nothing.

“You were right!” Ruby could hardly sit still from her excitement. “She’s an executive at Saeder-Krupp. She matches photos of Anna Jacquard almost perfectly!”

“Lofwyr’s corporation. Great. Any idea why they burned her?”

“No, but get this– she’s the head of one of their magic research divisions. A full division head!”

Maria could read it in Ruby’s face. “I don’t think we should consider ransom until we know if we’re even going to get paid. They did report her dead, after all– maybe for this exact reason, so she couldn’t be ransomed. Jinx, your thoughts?” The old man looked like he’d eaten something sour, and then Maria realized that he didn’t have his teeth in his mouth. He was stooped in his chair, two wizened arms clutching his walker.

“I think you’re right. They burned her to avoid paying ransom. Doesn’t mean that they won’t, though. I’m more concerned about how we return Stanley to them, though.” He’d straightened during the slurred speech, consciously making the effort not to appear too frail.

Maria looked at the shoulder of her jacket. It would probably still stop a bullet, but Stanley’s spitup had definitely ruined it. “How long until we can wake her up? How stable is she?”
Ruby piped in. “She should be waking up shortly, and we have enough painkillers for her to not feel it for a few days. She should be stable for at least a few days; Pablo at least got her stitched up that much. Not sure why he couldn’t do for her what he did for Samson, though.”

Jinx responded with: “Reshishtansh.”

“What?” Ruby was teasing him, and he glared at her.

Maria sighed a bit. “Resistance. Ms. Johnson must wield enough power to mask herself from Pablo’s scouting. She probably resisted his healing almost completely, but not enough so that he couldn’t at least save her life.”

Ruby seemed a bit pensive. “So we could essentially ransom her under the guise of not moving her due to her serious injuries.”

Samson, who’d been quietly rocking rhythmically on his feet, finally piped up. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have no desire to go up against an SK requisitions squad, especially with Pablo out of the game and Ms. Johnson capable of slinging acid bolts. Has bad idea written all over it.”

Ruby grinned. “Maybe we should just talk to her. The bed’s telling me she’s awake.”

“Samson, please bring Stan with you. We need to show her that the baby is alive and well. Let’s see if we can get this thing sorted out.” Maria walked out of the kitchen and through the internal maze to where Ms. Johnson sat. Along the way, she tuned her ears and eyes to transmit the feeds to Ruby and Jinx, as well as record everything.

Ms. Johnson was sitting up in bed, her hair wildly unkempt as she looked at the bandages covering the ruined mess of her abdomen. She looked up at their entrance and spoke in the dazed cadence of the heavily drugged, forming each syllable deliberately and too strongly. “How is the baby?”

“He’s here. He seems fine, and I just changed his diaper.” Maria gestured to Samson holding Stan.

“Oh good.” Ms. Johnson sighed deeply, closing her eyes and settling back into her pillows.

“Ms. Jacquard.” Ms. Johnson slowly opened her eyes and looked at her quizzically.

“Ms. Jacquard, they’re saying on the news that you’re dead. Any ideas why they’d do that?”

“You know my name.” She said it with a kind of wonderment. “Did I tell you my name? I don’t think I did. You know my name.”

Ruby texted: Check her eyes for me-- how do her pupils look?

“Ms. Jacquard, why would they say you’re dead?” Maria leaned over the edge of the bed, surreptitiously checking the eyes.

Maria: One’s bigger than the other. That’s bad, right?

Ruby: Oh yeah, that’s bad. We need to get her to a hospital, we can’t do anything more for her here.

“Hmm?”

“Why do they say you’re dead?”

“Standard... standard SK procedure. Prevents ransoms.”

Jinx: Toldja.

Ruby: Can’t blame a girl for trying.

“Ms. Jacquard, we need to get you medical attention. Normally, I would expect someone of your stature to have a DocWagon contract, but we found none on your person.”

“S’right. Covert Op. Couldn’t have any tracker on me.”

“I think it’s safe to say the op is no longer covert. It was on the news.”

Ms. Johnson tried to focus on Maria’s face, then rattled off a series of numbers. “Call that number. Arrange for a pickup. Ask for Mr. Enterich. He’s my boss.” The effort seemed to drain her, and she closed her eyes.

Ruby: Calling now. Want to jack in to handle this?

Maria: Be right there.

As she was leaving, Ms Johnson seemed to come awake for a second. “I tried, Marissa. Really, I tried. But we’re not done yet.”

Maria looked at her, about to speak, but Ms. Johnson passed out.

Maria: Ruby?

Ruby: They’re on hold.

Maria: Can I tell them where we are for immediate evac for Johnson? We all cool with that?

Ruby: We’ll have to blow our location; Johnson won’t make it otherwise.

Maria: That good for everyone?

Samson: Fine by me. We need to get some disposable towels for this toxic vomit.

Jinx: Time I left this place behind anyway.

Maria sat cross-legged in the next room and jacked in. Her chrome persona manifested at the coordinates specified by Ms. Jacquard, in another nondescript node in the public grid. Another stiff chrome manikin already stood there, somehow radiating impatience despite being outwardly completely emotionless.

“You have this number. How?”

“Jacquard provided it to us. She’s just passed out. Our medic recommends that she be picked up immediately. You can find us at, ” and Maria gave him a different series of coordinates.

“And the child?”

“We have the child here, no worse for wear.”

“Excellent. Your extraction team will be arriving shortly. Please be prepared. We will need a full debrief. We will send an armored ambulance for Ms. Jacquard’s transport, and a Nightsky for you and your people.”

“We have a second casualty that will need transport as well.”

“Fine, a second ambulance then, along with the other vehicles.”

“And our fee?”

“Will be paid in full. I have another proposition for you, which we will discuss in person once I see that everything is as you’ve promised.” And with that, the icon dissolved after its user had disconnected.

Maria: Prepare for evac. Samson, cover Pablo. I’l take the kid with Jinx and Ruby in the Nightsky.

[stanley]

Maria had never known that such luxury could exist outside of BTL sims. The leather interior of the Mitsubishi Nightsky cocooned her body perfectly, making her forget her exhaustion, her worries, and the decreasingly painful throbbing bruise on her hip. The provided infant carrier fit Stan similarly well, and he even started cooing during the course of their otherwise soundless ride.

Ruby: Why can’t we always be hired by these guys?

Jinx: I think we have been. Remember that datasnatch two years back?

Ruby: That was SK? I thought it was... ooooh. They’re very good.

Maria: What do you mean?

Ruby: They used a number of shell companies; Jinx just sent me the schematics. It was about five layers deep; I guess they use that construct for better plausible deniability.

Maria: They are why you never cut a deal with a Dragon.

Ruby: True. Lofwyr has never been known to be straightforward, and you don’t become head of the largest corporation on the planet by treating the mortals well.

Jinx: All the more reason to be careful during these negotiations.

Maria: Think we’ll get to meet him?

Jinx: Not sure I’d want to if I could.

The ride took them through downtown, and it was all Maria could do not to have a detached, separate view of the Metahuman throngs surging through the streets in the hustle and bustle of Seattle’s normal nightlife. She idly wondered if, when Lofwyr took this ride himself, he saw just so much cattle, a herd to be manipulated, bought, sold, and ultimately slaughtered for his own goals. The cattle never saw it coming, and never understood what was happening to them. Did she honestly think she had a chance to negotiate with such a being?

The Nightsky pulled into a garage in a very well-secured area of town. Not, Maria noted, in the SK enclave, but somewhat outside of it. Perhaps owned by a subsidiary? The car came to a smooth, silent stop, and the doors opened with a barely audible whoosh. She set to unbuckle the baby while Jinx and Ruby clambered out of the vehicle. Jinx made a show, in meatspace, of needing a walker, but Maria was fairly sure he could walk without assistance. Ruby played the part of solicitous helper in an act that the two of them had worked out long ago. While they ran through their routine, Maria strapped Stan across her chest in a large baby carrier, facing out. She’d hoped that this arrangement would serve two purposes: act as a shield for her, and act as confirmation for their employer that the baby was still alive. She wasn’t sure which was more important.

Ruby: Just two businessmen.

Jinx: One businessman, one helper.

Maria got out once they were done and saw the pair immediately. She understood Jinx’ correction. One man’s broad, confident posture and angular features practically radiated power; the other was not unattractive, but he faded into the background. The two ambulances had apparently been routed elsewhere; Maria hoped that they wouldn’t need Samson’s expertise. She set her eyes and ears to transmit to the group’s WAN. She didn’t want any distractions for a realspace negotiation, so she blocked text messages.

“Mr. Enterich?” Maria brushed an errant strand of her naturally blonde hair out of her face, settling her face into an easy grin. For some reason, she’d found that this gesture put powerful men at ease, let them think she had never really negotiated before.

The larger man, who must have been Mr. Enterich, closed the physical gap between the two groups, his aide/secretary following in his wake. His gold-green eyes scanned the
group almost perfunctorily before settling on Maria, his long, platinum-blond hair bunched loosely in a ponytail behind his head. On some men of his stature, this hair would look almost feminine, as if he were trying too hard. On this man, the hair, his mane, extended his presence throughout the space he occupied. “I’m sorry, we haven’t had the pleasure of full introductions. Ms. Jacquard kept the details of her operations strictly confidential. I don’t imagine she planned for this contingency.”

Or perhaps you did, Maria thought. “I suppose not. You may call me Maria Oklahoma, and these are my associates, Ruby and Jinx.” No handshakes. It would not be polite to find the sheathed dagger up someone’s sleeve in a meeting like this, especially since they all had them, even the old man who couldn’t walk.

“My pleasure. Ms. Oklahoma, we find ourselves in a bit of a situation. The child, as you’ve noted, requires certain... attention, above and beyond a normal infant.”

“Are you referring to his sharp horns and acidic piss?”

Mr. Enterich smiled slightly. “No, more that he appears to be the target of such lethal attention. Although I’m sure those other factors have made for an interesting day, to be sure. But it does seem that you have coped with both more than adequately, which leads me to my proposition.”

He peered closely at Stan, who drooled and shook his hands and feet.

“This baby... Mr. Oklahoma, do you know anything about this baby?”

“Nothing other than that you want him alive, and that some very well-funded, well-equipped, and well-trained people appear not to.”

“Are you sure?” He raised a perfectly groomed left eyebrow.

“About?”

“Do they want him dead? I’ve reviewed the footage we were able to recover and it does not appear that they want him dead. Instead, it looks like they want him alive. After all, they had enough firepower to take out a heavily armed and armored panzer assault vehicle, but they didn’t do the same to your van.”

“True. So, it seems that you want him, and someone else wants him.”

“And it never occurred to you to contact them?” He watched them carefully. He made eye contact with her, briefly, and she felt a roaring in her ears and a strong compunction not to lie to this powerful, handsome man.

Handsome? Where had that come from? The feeling left her almost as immediately as it had hit her, drained out through her chest. Mr. Enterich’s left eyelid twitched.

“To what end? They’ve shown no problem in killing to get what they want. What guarantee do we have that they wouldn’t do the same to us?”

“You have killed as well, my dear.” Now his slight smile patronized her, chastising her for her simplicity.

She saw the manipulation clearly, and kept her cool. “Of course. They kidnapped. We retrieved the child, and while we can’t restore him to his parents, we can at least give him to next of kin. That’s our job, what we were hired to do.”

The smile cracked into a large, almost predatory grin. “And what if you were hired to keep the child for a while longer?”

“Excuse me?”

“You mentioned next of kin. I should explain the relationship that I had with Lady Venom and Sidewinder, Stan’s parents. They were in my employ.”

“That... actually explains quite a bit.”

“Sidewinder?” Ruby piped in. “Sidewinder’s amazing! The hack he pulled off at Aztech...” She let her enthusiasm dwindle under the twin stares of Enterich and Maria.

“Just so,” said Enterich. “I had them on a standing retainer, for I often found that I had need of their particular talents fairly frequently.”

“They worked for you exclusively?”

“They did, along with Ms. Jacquard. You can see why she went to the lengths that she did; this business is very personal to her, as Venom and Sidewinder were her comrades, as were the twins.”

“So you’re proposing... what, exactly?”

“I find myself in need of talented bodyguards for Stan. The obvious candidates– his parents– clearly can’t take up the cause, and his godmother is incapacitated for at least a month, or so I’m told. You have already proven to be extremely resourceful and capable, and I would like to extend our arrangement.”

“For how long?”

“For at least as long as it takes Ms. Jacquard to recover, possibly longer.”

“Where would we be doing this?”

“I would suggest that you leave Seattle. Beyond that, while I do need to have some knowledge of where you are in case you need backup, specifics aren’t important. What is important is that the location be distant enough, and perhaps obscure enough, that our enemies won’t think to look for you there.”

“They’ve already sent some fairly well-armed squads after us. Can you tell us more about who they are, or why they want Stan?”

“I have my suspicions, but nothing concrete. As for why they want Stan, I believe the reasons are twofold. One, they want him because I want him, and they have reason to believe that I will pay large amounts of money for the boy. They are clearly correct about that, but I have no desire to pay those who would extort from me. Two, if they are employed by the individual I believe they are employed by, Stan’s parents ran a number of operations that directly harmed his interests.”

“So having the boy and killing his parents represent a win-win for this enemy of yours. Can you tell us who is the focus of your suspicions?”

“I don’t wish to cast aspersions without proof; suffice it to say, if I had it, I would find some definitive way to deal with the problem.”

“Fair enough, but can you tell us what kind of muscle he tends to hire? Should we be expecting more of the same?”

“I’d guess so, although, if he is who I think he is, you may start seeing more magical attacks thrown into the mix.”

“What’s the pay?”

“Substantial. My thinking is that the rate that Ms. Jacquard worked out with you should be sufficient.” Maria almost let her surprise show. Enterich had no idea about the terms of the deal they had with Jacquard. She could practically taste the pull of an ebony credstick. Still, Jacquard would probably wake up in the not too distant future.

“She worked out a one-time deal with us, 50k downpayment and 80k on the back.”

“So, let’s take that combined amount, and pay that to your team on a monthly basis.”

“We’ll need a down payment.”

“100k up front.”

“You’ll understand if I have to confer with my team.” Inside, she jumped for joy– this job was the ticket to the big leagues. No more waiting to hear from two-bit fixers like Jonesy, but a solid connection with a Johnson like Enterich would clearly be extremely lucrative.

“Of course. But I should say that we’ll need to conclude our business quickly. I do not know what kind of resources are being gathered to acquire the baby.”

Maria nodded to Enterich and switched her text messaging back on.

Ruby: Sorry for blurting like that, but Sidewinder? The man is (well was) a legend! I’d heard that he was actually a technomancer myself. You know, able to deck without a deck?

Maria: Ruby, focus. The deal. I think it’s a good one, and I’m inclined to take it.

Ruby: You are? You’ve never seemed the settle-down type.

Maria: There once was a time... but anyway, a steady paycheck of that magnitude is more than enough to convince me to settle down for a bit.

Jinx: Well, if you’re doing it, I’m doing it too. You don’t know crap about kids.

Maria: I did do some studying once...

Jinx: Yeah, yeah. That was the first diaper you ever changed, right?

Maria: Right. OK.

Ruby: That’s a lot of scratch. Where should we go?

Maria: Samson? You and Pablo listening?

Samson: We are.

Pablo: Yeah.

Maria: Baby! You’re awake!

Ruby: D’aww.

Pablo: They have us surrounded, with very big guns.  I think Enterich just gave you the carrot; killing us might be the stick.

Ruby: Guess this is why you never deal with a Dragon. We don’t really have a choice, do we?

Maria: So are we all OK with this?

Ruby: y

Jinx: y

Samson: y

Pablo: Yes, only because I don’t want to get shot. But I don’t like this.

Samson: Money not good enough to hold you down? Those guys aren’t really threatening us.

Pablo: I just don’t like feeling bullied into this.

Maria: Wait. Are they really surrounding you with guns out?

Samson: No, he’s exaggerating. There are three guys here, and they’re pretty nice.

Pablo: But they’re armed.

Ruby: Such a whiner!

Maria: Fine. Any ideas where we should go?

Jinx: Rural Pennsylvania.

Samson: What?

Pablo: What? Jinx, you do know that they don’t like our kind out there, right?

Jinx: Says you. But think about it-- any kind of large group moving against us would be obvious. Here in the city, they can pounce on us before we know what’s up; a panzer or a kill squad show up in a town with a population of 5,000, and you’d bet people notice.

Maria: Yeah, but they’d notice us, too. Who’s to say they won’t rat us out?

Ruby: C’mon, Maria, aren’t you able to bribe a few people?

Pablo: I really don’t like this idea.

Jinx: Got a better one?

Pablo: No. Doesn’t mean there isn’t one, though.

Maria: Well, from what I can see about this deal, we can move if we have to.  I’m going to go for it. OK?

Pablo: Fine.

Maria rolled her eyes; she could feel his pout starting already.

Jinx: I’m in.

Ruby: Should be interesting. Samson: Not sure what’ll happen, but I’m game.

“Mr. Enterich, you have a deal. How should we move the kid?”

“I’m glad you asked. I took the liberty of fashioning a small charm for the boy; it should mask his outward appearance, even to security cameras. It won’t change his weight, his strength, or his... dietary needs, but it will make him pass for Human.” Mr. Enterich held a small blue pacifier tied to a small rope. The rope had a clip on the other end, apparently for attaching to clothes.

“May I?,” he asked, looking at Maria and holding his hands up.

She wordlessly leaned forward, and Enterich fastened the clip to Stan’s collar.

Stan immediately shrank to the size of a Human infant, but retained his bright blue eyes. Maria ran a hand over his head in wonder. She was no longer afraid of getting gouged by those horns, but his smaller shape coupled with no change in weight meant that his baby carrier was now too large and maladjusted. There was some irritated screaming as she pulled on straps and rearranged his arms, but soon Stan’s head was back above the top of the edge of the carrier.

“I’ve done my best to make sure that the magic should grow with him, but I can’t be sure it will work for more than a month or two. In the meantime, you and your team should take the opportunity to lay low. Do you have a destination in mind?”

“Philadelphia. We’ll be leaving the city for a place nearby; I have a pretty solid idea of where we’ll be headed.”

“In that case... Mr. Caruthers?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Please arrange for commercial transport for the team to take the tomorrow afternoon flight to Philadelphia, and provide the down payment via five certified credsticks. Split evenly, I assume?”

Maria nodded wordlessly.

“In the meantime, please feel free to use this facility to sleep and prepare as necessary. Also, it looks like there are at least two members of the team with implants, plus one of the members in the ambulance, correct?”

Ruby looked quizzically at Jinx, who shifted uncomfortably. Mr. Enterich noticed and quickly corrected himself, “That is, the three of you here, plus one of your other comrades. We’ll need to get you permits to carry those, but I don’t think that you’ll be allowed to carry weaponry. I believe that commercial air transport with a Human infant will draw less attention than if Stan were in his original state, or if I were to try to move you via private plane. Private planes and cross-country panzer runs are noticed. Flying by a jumbo jet is not.”

Maria stared at Mr. Enterich, dumbstruck at the sudden change in the team’s fortunes. Just last week, they’d been excited to get a job that was a quarter of the down payment for this one. Now, their Johnson dismissed hiring a panzer as being too obvious, rather than too absurdly expensive. She could feel the elevation, and just hoped that any drop would be graceful.
Enterich misinterpreted her glance as a question, and gave another self-deprecating chuckle. “Business class, of course. But if I may?”

Maria nodded, not sure she could speak.

“You’ll want to get some more clothes. The acid holes on your shoulder don’t really do you justice.”

[Horsemen]

A very enjoyable read.  I am looking forward to the next part.