Chapter 1
Shadowrun is a catch all term for illegal activity. Someone wants some private info off a corp computer? It’s a shadowrun. Need something stolen? Shadowrun. Want an assassination? It’s a shadowrun, though hopefully not one I’ll ever have to do.
A shadowrunner is, by definition, someone who completes shadowruns. That’s me, now. I swallowed. And this was my first shadowrun.
Our job was to plant a bug. Plant a bug, and either keep it on the down low or make it look like a robbery. The client would prefer it if there was no incident, but knew that wasn’t always possible, so they had offered an alternative.
In the van, I shifted nervously. My gear was the best money could buy. Smartgun pistol made of light, undetectable polymers? Check. Bulletproof vest? Check. Bulletproof helmet with trodes for matrix connection? Check. Goggles, with smartgun targeting, nightvision, heatvision, vision magnification, and vision enhancement? Check. Biomonitor, connected to a super platinum Docwagon contract? Check. Top of the line commlink? Check. Experience with this kind of drek? Uncheck. Nope. None.
Beside me, Jazz was, as usual, bopping to music only she could hear. The spikes of her purple hair bobbed as she nodded her head, and her purple sparkly nails flashed in the light as she waved her hands to the beat. Eyes closed, she silently sang along to the words. Key word, silently. No one wanted to actually hear her sing, not even Shark, her boyfriend.
While Jazz was human, like me, Shark was a troll. He had to crouch on the floor and hunch to fit in the back of the van, and, even then, his horns brushed the ceiling. He looked uncomfortable. I flashed him a sympathetic smile, and he flashed me one back. His tusks plus the dual rows of sharp teeth that gave him his name looked intimidating as all hell, but I had known him long enough to know he was a softie at heart.
He was our street samurai. One mechanical arm held a machine pistol. The other held a electrified katana. Top rated wired reflexes, plus some reaction enhancers, made him insanely fast. His muscle augmentation made him insanely strong. Muscle toning, insanely agile. Titanium bone lacing added to his natural troll toughness, as did his orthoskin. The shark like roughness of the orthoskin was the other source of his moniker. I wasn’t sure what else about him was modified, and I didn’t really care. Despite being more chrome than flesh at this point, he had a big heart in more than the literal sense.
The van stopped. Alpha, our genderfluid team leader, turned and gripped my shoulder. Tonight she was female, though small busted, with red hair in a waist length braid. She’d decided to add a tat to her tanned skin, a butterfly covering all of one cheek. As I watched, its wings fluttered slightly. “You ready, Song?” she asked me.
Jazz smirked nastily. “Yeah, Songbird, time to show us what you’re made of.”
Alpha gave her a dirty look. “Jazz, shut it. Remember, you were new once, too.”
“We all were,” rumbled Shark.
“Well, the rest of us were never pampered corporate-” Jazz stopped at the look on Alpha’s face. “Sorry, boss.”
“It doesn’t matter what we were,” Alpha said firmly. “All that matters is what we are now.” She turned to me. “Song, go.”
I closed my eyes and slid into the astral plane. Shark was the muscle. Jazz was the hacker. Alpha was the brains. I… I was the magic.
Everything always looks so different on the astral plane. Alpha’s aura shone the bright, martial colors of a powerful adept. Shark’s was dim, almost smothered by the chrome. Jazz’s was pretty normal, at least at first glance. It took some really deep assensing to see her true power.
Astral travel was fast. Slower if you were sneaking, but still fast. Within seconds I was inside the compound. Most places had security against exactly what I was trying, but I thought I could get around it. Provided it was a mana barrier or critter, that is. Spirits, I wasn’t so sure.
Something about my aura made me more visible to spirits of all sorts. It also made them like me more, but the added visibility was a big problem. When I’d been a kid, Dad’s ally spirit, Willow, could always find me, no matter where I tried to hide. Mom’s fettered spirit, Tenriu, could do the same. Now that I was a runner, my added visibility was more than just a nuisance, or a way for parents to track me. It was dangerous.
And it looked like my luck was in. Their version of magical security was hellhounds. The dogs patrolled with their handlers outside the building. I counted six. Ok, not good, but doable. Definitely doable.
Walls were no barrier to my astral form, so I melted through them, into the building. It was a research facility, full of labs and top notch security. The security tonight seemed to consist primarily of the hellhounds outside and a few patrolling guards. Well, the magical and living security, at least. The technological security was Jazz’s problem. I knew that, as I scouted the astral plane, she scouted the Matrix.
I decided to check the labs, just to be thorough. I poked my head through one of the lab doors.
Immediately, I jerked it out again. If I had a body, my heart would be pounding. As it was, it was a good thing there was nothing around that could look into the astral, because I had slipped abruptly into full visibility. Shaking, I slipped into astral sneak mode once more, and peered through the door again.
The wrongness about the lab that had shocked me before was still there. Four silent, vaguely humanoid forms were the source. I couldn’t tell what they were, but something about them was so very, very unnatural. I shuddered.
I tried to tell what the forms were, but something about them kept sliding my astral sight away from them, like my brain didn’t really want to believe they were there. After a few long minutes, I gave up, and headed back to my body. Alpha had to know about this.
“So what’s the scoop?” Alpha asked me as, back in my body, I opened my eyes.
“There’s something...” I realized I didn’t know how to explain what I’d seen. “There’s something horrible in one of the labs. Something… wrong.” I remembered what I’d seen, and I felt sick. “Excuse me…”
I opened the door of the van, leaned over, and puked onto the asphalt. Alpha placed a concerned hand on my shoulder. “Breathe, Sara. Just breathe.”
Behind me, I heard Jazz ask, “What the frag is up with Song?” Shark rumbled a quiet answer.
I sat up. Alpha handed me a water bottle and a packet of tissues. I swished some water, spat out the door, and took a big gulp. Then I wiped my mouth with a tissue. “I’m good,” I mumbled.
“Is the run off?” rumbled Shark.
Alpha looked thoughtful. “Can you tell me more about the… whatever it was you saw, Song?”
I shook my head. “It looked wrong!”
“So you said. Did it also look dangerous?” Alpha asked.
“No, but-” I began.
“Was it near the camera plant site?” Alpha asked.
“Well, no,” I admitted. “But, Alpha, I’ve never seen anything like it! It was-”
“Wrong. So you said.” Alpha chewed her lip thoughtfully. “Provided you don’t look at it in the astral again, it shouldn’t be a problem.” She looked to each of us. “The run is a go.”
I frowned, but didn’t object further.
After a brief discussion of Jazz’s recon, in addition to the other things I’d seen, the four of us filed out of the van. Alpha nodded to Jazz. “Lights out.”
Jazz closed her eyes for a few seconds, and, suddenly, the lights within the perimeter went out. In the distance, I heard swearing, and a dog howl.
“You’re certain the guards were all human?” Alpha asked me. I nodded. “And, Jazz, you took out their nightvision glasses?”
Jazz grinned. “The idiots slaved them to the same comm. Easy.”
Alpha nodded. “I’m on point. I want Songbird right behind me. Shark, you’ve got our six. Go.” With that, she vaulted the recently de-electrified fence. Shark boosted me up, and then Jazz. Then he hauled his own bulk over, making the fence groan under his weight.
“Who’s there?” A voice nearby called. “You’ve got 5 seconds to identify yourself, and then I sick the hound on you!”
Alpha drew her pistol and fired several silent shots. The dog yelped, and went down. Its handler swore, and punched a button on his comm. Nothing happened. Then Shark took him out with a fist to the head.
We were almost to the door when Jazz hissed. “Alpha! Their security spider is online!”
Alpha grimaced. “Hold them as long as you can, Jazz. Shark, stay with her. Song and I will-”
And then all hell broke loose.
The lights snapped back on. Jazz collapsed with a scream, clutching her head. Someone shouted, “There they are!” and suddenly every hellhound was racing toward us. But the worst, the worst, was the thing that came through the door.
It looked like regular, augmented human, but there was way, way too much chrome. And the eyes… There was something incredibly wrong with its eyes…
It opened fire. Shark grabbed Jazz and looked around for cover, but there was none in sight. Alpha went down under the barrage, bleeding from several bullet holes. Three more of the things burst through the door. Shark shoved me and Jazz behind him, and opened fire on them. The hellhounds were getting closer.
I tried to attack the things with a manaball spell, but it just bounced off. I gaped. My manaballs weren’t the best, but they usually had some effect.
My dad’s mentor spirit had been the Firebringer, but I had no mentor. It would have been nice, right about now, to have something to pray to. We needed help.
Help… I looked at my hands. I had the training to summon spirits, but I didn’t do it very often. Spirits I summoned tended to act weird. Some hovered over me and fussed like hens with only one chick. Others got tense and angry, deliberately misinterpreting my commands as often as they could. Still others got nosy, trying to find out as much about me as they could. They asked lots of questions, and often seemed unsatisfied with the answers.
A force 12 spirit should be able to turn this fight around. I grimaced. Summoning a force 12 spirit would also likely take me out of the fight, not to mention probably hurt. However, my manaballs didn’t affect the things with the weird eyes, and Shark’s bullets didn’t seem to have much effect either.
It didn’t look like the things had much protection against heat. A fire spirit, them. I closed my eyes and began the summoning.
There was a crack as the spirit appeared, and I collapsed to the ground. I had only one service, but, with luck, that would be all I needed. I wet dried lips, and tried to speak.
The spirit, a man made of flame, looked at me. “Yes?”
One of the things threw a concussion grenade. As the shockwave rocked Shark and I, dizziness threatened to overwhelm me. I felt myself begin to lose consciousness. I managed to gasp out, “Help… me…” Then everything went black.