Alright people, comments WANTED, let me know what you think.
Runner Noir
Chapter 1
I hate yankee winters! I thought as I walked across the quad of MIT&T my duster flapping in the wind as snow piled in corners of the quad between the buildings. I was here for the spring term as a guest lecturer and teacher for both modern history and dealing with hostile spirits as a physical adept. So as a lean bodied southern elf I found myself putting up with it. There was five minutes until my class started and I wasn’t going to be late for the second class of the term, so walking into the building where my class was to take place I took off the long coat and settled my book bag in my arms. I was still digging in the bag for his AR glasses as I entered the classroom and stepped up to the desk.
Looking around the room at the assembled class, I noted the missing, both physically and mentally and called the mentally to heel. “Miss Jones, if I catch you messaging in my class again you will be penalized.” This caused the young lady in the fourth row of the lecture hall to blush as her augmented reality display dropped too nothing more than the virtual representation of the same book that some of her classmates physically possessed. “Now class pull up your Word document programs or open the books that I see some of you have, to page one of section four and be prepared to advance both for your notes and your pages. I see Mr. Nakamura has decided not to join us today, do any of you happen to know why?”
A leggy brunette that I had seen walking around with the missing young man after classes raised her hand so I pointed to her causing her to rise and speak. “Mr. Bostwick, Yuji hasn’t been in any of his classes the last couple of days, nor has he been answering his phone. I’m actually starting to get a little worried about him.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about it Miss O’Leary,” I said trying to calm her down. “Things like this happen all the time, he might be sick, or else he might be having issues at home that is taking up his time. “ As she sat down clearly still worried but happy that an instructor had taken note finally of the young man’s absence, I addressed the rest of the class. “Whatever problem Mr. Nakamura happens to have however, this doesn’t absolve the rest of you from learning the material. Your end of the class quiz last week shows that you are woefully under taught about the happenings of the last hundred years. That however is my job to rectify, now,” at this point the earpiece to my phone buzzed in my ear and out of instinct I slapped it keying it to life with one hand while holding up a single finger for silence from my students. “I’m in the middle of class so this better be life or death important.” I grumbled almost sub-vocalizing as I had done for tactical radios for many years.
“I see you are not exactly a morning person Mr. Bostwick,” The voice on the other end of the call said in a slightly clipped voice. “Still, it is that important and I will not waste your time either. No doubt one of your electronic friends is searching for me as we speak. I have your student in my possession and if you wish him back unharmed you will cooperate with me in this. Now, you have one hour to reach the east end of Longfellow Bridge and await further contact. Be sure to be there alone or else the student will start coming back to you in small pieces.”
Apparently finished speaking, the voice went silent and the buzz of the ringtone signaled the end of the call. The person on the other end had been right about a couple of things, someone was trying to track them, something to be more accurate. Somewhere along my adventures of the years before I had managed to pick up a feral artificial intelligence that lived on my digital trash and took up residence in my commlink node. It made hacking my node an attempt in stupidity as well as futile. The thing had taken the appearance of a Wolf, so I didn’t have the heart to kick it out, or more accurately, just trash the commlink, and even as I looked the wolf form AI returned from where it had tried to track the previous caller.
I turned my attention back to the class in front of me, “Ladies and gentlemen, it seems there is a small emergency that I have to go deal with.” I told them. “I want you to read chapters four through six in your book and I will see you next week. Good day to you all.” That said I bolted back out the door and across the quad. The voice on the other end of the phone was niggling at my memory and I couldn’t place where or when the voice came from.
Forty-five minutes later I was standing at the required crossing waiting. I had changed clothes so that I was better protected since this was obviously something to do with the shadows, but at the same time not be too obvious about it. The jeans I had been wearing had stayed, as had the boots. The button down shirt that I had worn for class however was gone in favor of an armored polo shirt and my leather armored jacket. The jacket covered the one firearm that I had brought for this meet, my Salvette Guardian, and its spare magazines. If things went so far south that I needed more firepower than it, I was in the wrong place. Frankly I looked like I wanted to behind my mirrored shades, a motorcyclist or punk of some kind, waiting for someone to show up and finally, after waiting thirty minutes my phone buzzed again, so I answered it.
“It is good to see you can follow directions Mr. Bostwick,” the same voice said in my ear. “Now, three blocks to the north on the east side of the street is a bar called O’Malley’s. Tell the bartender that you need to see Walt.” Again as the speaker finished the call ended. The wolf form of the AI in my phone slinked back in dejectedly and lay down. It had tried once again to tag the person calling and failed.
Ten minutes later I stepped through the door of O’Malley’s Bar. It was a dive of a place to be generous, a neighborhood bar stuck at the bottom of a rotting set of concrete stairs in the basement of what could, with a little help, be called a tenement. As with most dives it was a small dark affair, the actual bar against the back wall with a door allowing patrons back to the restrooms and maybe a meeting area beside it. Along the right wall stood booths including the back corner which was an overlarge affair for the local wise guys, to the left was open tables along with a stage slash dance area and a pool table with the requisite ripped felt. Behind the bar a seedy looking orc male talked quietly with an equally seedy looking elf waitress the woman droning on with her story as the orc looked past her at me walking in. “What’ll it be bub?” the bartender asked, his Boston accent and tusks mangling the question almost beyond comprehension and his question causing the tired looking elf woman to turn around.
“Need to see Walt.” I said walking over towards the bar and letting the duster flap slightly. It was a play at being ominous, but honestly I don’t think I impressed either of them. Even as I walked forward I was assensing the room, the elf was a low level magic user, her body shot through with the blackness of a long time BTL user, if she could pierce my masking it would be a miracle. The orc was mundane but one of his arms was cyber, maybe some hardware there, all in all no problem.
“I’ll get him,” the elf woman replied leaving her tray at the bar and walking toward the back door. “Just have a seat and he’ll be right with you I’m sure.” She smiled in that way that was meant to entice men, I just gave her the same cold face that I had been using since I got the phone call, I wasn’t in a mood to be patronized.
I nodded and sat down at the edge of the corner booth, the back door opened into a hallway that sure enough showed two signs for restrooms over the elf’s left shoulder, and a sign that read “Private” over her right. After a couple of minutes the door opened again admitting three new figures to the room. The first two looked like gorillas stuffed into cheap suits, the typical mob muscle, gotten more for their mass and loyalty than for their intelligence. Their job was simple, in fact, if someone could have convinced a gorilla to do it, they probably would have, but convincing a gorilla to protect a person who was just as likely to sell them to the zoo as to a corner meat vender isn’t likely to happen. That was especially true with the person that walked out in front of the waitress but behind the gorillas, Johnny Valentine.
I remembered that mission, almost twenty years before I was just getting started in the shadows when I was called in by my fixer for a job that had two priciples. One was the local Yakuza boss who wanted his daughter returned to him and the other was this guy, a local mafia strong arm by the name of Johnny Valentine. Johnny was at the time your typical young wise guy, a few connections thanks to his late father and enough pull that he was going to eventually move up the syndicate’s power structure so long as he survived, he was also a brash jackass with a overweening sense of self importance. He and the Yakuza boss, an older gentleman by the name of Nakamura wanted Nakamura’s daughter and Johnny’s brother returned to them and separated. Each was willing to “lose” the other’s loved one but while Nakamura was only ambivalent to James Valentine’s fate, Johnny wanted the girl to disappear if at all possible. “And if you can’t bring yourself to see to it just get me my brother and I’ll see to the rest.” He told us, “No way some yak slitch is going to steal my family.”
Well, my companions and I found the two lovebirds held up in some sleazebag hotel in the Redmond barrens planning their escape. When we confronted them we managed to convince them to come with us and they convinced at least most of us to help them talk to their respective families. All it seemed to take for her father was for James to vow never to join the mafia, something I had learned that he was dead set against anyway, Johnny on the other had wasn’t having any of it and almost started an honor war right on the spot by insulting Nakamura’s daughter. I managed to keep it from starting by laying his dumb ass out on the floor of the diner where we were meeting. Nakamura became a good source of information and work for the Yakuza from that point until I left the shadows and Johnny swore revenge on me and never delivered, until maybe now.
Stepping up the booth where I sat the mobster started to talk. “Ah Mr. Bostwick, so good of you to join us.” The mobster sleazed out, “Your student has now been returned to the bosom of his family and will not be harmed. I apologize for using him to grab your attention. Now that I have it however, I have some work that I need you to see to.” The mobster had seated himself opposite me while he had been speaking, his two body guards taking up positions at the end of the booth’s U.
“Go frag yourself with a light pole!” I told him standing up and leaning over the table. My movement caused the gorillas to reach for the weapons inside their jackets but he held up a hand stopping them in mid turn. “I remember you from all those years ago and if you’re to dumb to recognize me, maybe laying you out again will jog your memory. I swear, you must be the luckiest son of a slitch in the mob, because the stupidity you demonstrated that night was epic. I mean, what were you thinking or were you even. You insulted a Yakuza princess not only in front of her future husband, who was also your own brother, but in front of her father, and then you declare vengeance on the one person who helped you keep your head. Maybe I should have let…..” My sentence shut down as the door to the hallway jerked open and a regal looking Japanese woman walked out flanked by two young but deadly looking men. A quick look at the three showed the family resemblance between them, but after a minute I realized that the two young men also resembled the mobster in front of me slightly, enough so that I figured I knew who they were. “Hello Yukino” I sputtered out in Japanese.