Author’s Note: The city combination listed in this actually exists, and actually is currently somewhat united under a single government. It’s referred to as the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. And, yes, there really are three cities named Kansas City; they all border each other, too. This is actually extremely important if you work in the area, as one of them charges income tax and the other two don’t. All I did was take the unity to its logical conclusion and increase the population by a million people.
Julia followed the instructions she was given, even as odd as a couple of them were, and soon found herself facing a wooden door with computer code drawn on it in a way that looked like mystical symbols. The door opened as soon as she neared it, revealing the library-like room beyond. Every bit of wallspace was covered in shelves, which in turn were covered in books and the occasional small crystal or bit of rock. Not AR-projections of books or a hologram, but real books! The center of the room was taken up by a desk, which looked wooden until one glanced at the top and saw it was one massive display. The desk also had four trid projectors; one was projecting a human brain scan that was slowly rotating, one was a three-dimensional chemical formula, one was a combination of mystical runes in a pattern that didn’t make any sense to the girl, and the final displayed a strange plant. The desk’s main display held a massive mess of documents on it, though every title she spotted was in some way related to autism. In front of the desk were two chairs, both matching the desk in looking like they were made of wood; yet each desk had on it a small touch-screen control panel and the back of each chair had a trid projector.
The man behind the desk was… unimpressive. His brown hair was obviously thinning, and he wore glasses that were slightly smudged. He was wearing a cheap black long-sleeved shirt, with jeans of matching color that were faded and worn in the knees. His face was almost too thin, even with the unkempt mustache and beard that went almost down to his stomach. His commlink sat on his wrist and was slightly beat up in a few places and looked to be a model that was a decade old. His hands were folded on his lap and covered in gloves. The man’s eyes were closed, and for the most part he looked asleep, except for the fact he was talking.
“The Kansas City Metroplex is a combination of both cities named Kansas City, the city North Kansas City, and the cities of Overland Park, Independence, Olathe, Lee’s Summit, Shawnee, Blue Springs, and Lenexa. Containing a population of roughly three million people and covering nearly twenty-one thousand square kilometers…”
The man speaking paused for only a moment, then reached up with a gloved hand to touch a bit of empty air. “You can come in, Miss Martines.”
Julia widened her eyes, surprised. “You know my full name?”
“The RFID chip in your arm is broadcasting who you are, where you are, and which school you attend.”
Julia rubbed her arms, shivering at the thought. “I don’t remember them implanting a RFID chip.”
The man chuckled. “But you do remember getting a sudden vaccination booster shot last year, right? Odd they gave the same booster shot to everyone in your school…”
Julia facepalmed. “Fuck! That’s how they always know when we’re skipping! I thought they were tracking commlinks!” She sighed, then looked to him. “Did you hack their records?”
“No,” the man admitted. “I remembered my own high school experiences and guessed the most idiotic, intrusive, and disrespectful method possible.”
“You’re a pessimist,” she accused.
“If I were a mere pessimist, I wouldn’t still be alive,” the man countered. “Remember: in the shadows, paranoia is a survival trait. Despite what some runners believe, you can’t be too paranoid. There’s been too many incidents where the craziest, most outlandish conspiracy theory proved to be an accurate account of what’s really happening.”
“And do you have examples of this?” Julia asked, rolling her eyes. Okay, this guy’s probably nuts.
The guy sighed and opened his eyes, staring at her in obvious irritation. His brown eyes bore into her’s, though finally he shook his head when she merely stared back.
“Let’s say there’s religion that’s popped up. It’s national. It preaches love, acceptance, tolerance, and coming to understand the universe. It even takes in the poor and disenfranchised, houses them, feeds them, and works to improve their quality of life. Sounds like a good religion, right? I mean, the same thing is done by a number of them, including the Mormons in our city.” As he spoke, a hand reached up, moving from side to side with palm up. “Now let’s say I tell you that the religion is actually a giant conspiracy involving aliens from another dimension trying to invade our world. And that they’re using the very people the religion is recruiting as portals into our world. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”
“Very,” Julia agreed.
“And yet, that’s exactly what happened with the Universal Brotherhood.”
Julia opened her mouth, then closed it. Maybe he’s not so nuts after all…
“So, any questions before we get to business?” His tone was… odd. It had the veneer of being pure professionalism, but beneath it an honest curiosity and yet had a certain falseness to it; in some ways, it was like everything about the question had been practiced and rehearsed many times before.
“Why doesn’t my commlink get Matrix access in this building? I was checking it earlier and it kept saying it wasn’t getting a signal.” And how are you accessing it?
The man chuckled and stood. “The building is a giant Faraday Cage. It was remodeled back in ’59 as part of a deal with Renraku.” He then waved for her to enter the room. “The entire building was upgraded to the latest Matrix equipment of the time. The entire building was even wired with wireless transceivers; you can access the building’s network wirelessly anywhere inside it. And please get the door, won’t you?”
Julia nodded. As she stepped into the room, she shivered involuntarily and the hair on her arms stood on end. Crossing the threshold felt like walking through a wall of static electricity. Inside, she could feel it: the room thrummed with power, the air itself charged with energy that flowed and ebbed and swirled around the room. She glanced around and, for a moment, it seemed like the physical objects were less real; the walls and floor were overlaid with some kind of energy, while the man glowed. Several other objects around the room also glowed, along with what looked like two human-sized fairies composed entirely of clouds.
How did I not notice the fairies?
The door itself was easy enough to close; it was a simple door on hinges, much like she saw in historical trids. There were no electronics or other obvious mechanisms for opening the door and the hinges were extremely cheap and obviously lacked any sort of electronic component. She glanced in puzzlement at the door for a moment, then back at the fairies, one of which nodded in answer to the question she had not yet asked.
“Are you alright?” The man’s voice was concerned, and his face matched. At some point during Julia’s distracted state, he had pulled a book off the shelf and turned towards her.
“Y-yes. Just, the magical effect you used. This room is glowing.”
“Glowing…” And then his face shifted to alarm. “Aw shit. You need to lay down before-”
Suddenly everything went black and all sensation faded.
“Welcome to the shadows, Sprite Dancer,” a female voice said.
======================================================================================================
Julia woke and groaned, reaching up to rub her head. It was pounding, feeling almost like a set of jackhammers were working her brain in tune to a Trog Rock album. She groaned again as the pounding got worse for a moment, then subsided. She groaned again and opened her eyes. And, to her complete lack of surprise, she was in a completely different room.
The room itself had walls of various types of padding, ranging from the kind of padding one would see on an asylum’s walls to seat cushions and pillows, attached to the wall, resulting in a dingy patchwork of color. The bed she was on amounted to a pile of mattresses, with the least-decayed one on top, with a sheet of some sort directly beneath her. The carpeting of the room appeared to be made of random mis-matched swatches, and the only other piece of furniture was a cheap plastic chair. Lighting came from a cheap overhead fluorescent light that obviously hadn’t been upgraded in close to a century. The man whose office she had entered was there, sitting on the chair with the gloves she had seen earlier on. He was obviously using AR, given his fingers were moving in the air as though typing.
“Are the glasses for AR?” Julia asked.
“The glasses are because I’m nearsighted. They only include an AR display because you can’t do anything without AR these days.” He then looked towards her, stabbing a finger at a spot in mid-air. “How is your head?”
“Fine.” Julia reached up to rub her forehead; the headache still remained, though it was fading. “What happened?”
The man looked pensive for a moment, then grabbed something from beside him and stood. As he leaned over, Julia could see it was a plastic cup with a pull-off lid. The cup itself had the cheap, badly-colored label of Orange-brand Orange Juice. It took her a moment to remember where she had seen the orange juice before; it was sold in the local Cowboy Pit Stops, which were themselves a very low-end grocery store. She ripped the top off and sniffed it. It smelled like an orange, only… wrong somehow. A quick sip confirmed the juice was entirely artificial; she made a face at the horrible imitation of orange juice that had just entered her mouth.
“How can you drink this stuff?” Julia asked.
“We’re SINless; we have no choice,” the man answered. “Same with medical care… that’s whatever you can get, and never at a legitimate hospital. If you’re lucky, your doctor is an actual doctor or a former military doctor. Otherwise, you have to make due with medical school drop-outs, nurses going far outside their training, veterinarians, and the occasional street doc who got his education through old-fashioned trial and error. And you can forget it if your health issue is mental.”
She sipped her juice without further complaint and said nothing more.
After a bit, the man finally sighed. “This is a flop room; temporary stays only, and the people who use it are often on drugs. It didn’t used to be this bad. Originally, it was designed to be quite nice. What you see now is what happened after numerous repairs made on budgets of five credits or less. The padding wasn’t part of the original design, but after a dwarf on kamikaze seriously hurt himself by running into the walls, the padding became necessary. Unfortunately, it was the only bed open; except for myself and the spirits, this place doesn’t have permanent residents.” Then, he looked straight into her eyes. “Cheap food, bad medical care, no mental health care, violence, drugs, stealing Matrix access, cheap clothes… This is the kind of life a shadowrunner leads. It’s not like the trids; very few runners live long enough to worry about retirement. And you need very flexible morals; that drug dealer who sells novacoke to ten-year-olds may be the only source of VITAS meds when an outbreak hits. And that prostitute you may not look twice at normally may be the only one willing to save your life when things go bad. Are you certain you wish this life?”
He’s avoiding my question. She sighed. “Yes. Now what happened?”
The man sighed again. “First, how do your parents feel about magic?”
He did something magical to me, didn’t he? “My father doesn’t care. My mother is part of the church’s conservative circle. They think magic comes from Satan and metahumans are demons. They’re not happy with how accepting of Awakened people the rest of the church is.”
“That’s… problematic,” the man said, rubbing his chin as he thought. “We will need to get you a practice space with enough room for a circle… How do you feel about magic? And how do you imagine it being performed?”
Julia blinked. “A practice space? Circle? Wait, why are you…" And then it dawned on her exactly why he was asking these questions. She quickly curled into a ball while still sitting up, wrapping her arms around her legs. “We can’t… I can’t… if my mother finds out… Fuck!”
The man stood up and walked over, standing beside her. He hesitated at first, then reached to slowly wrap his arm around her, his touch light with uncertainty at first. And then it relaxed into a true hug. It was the most awkward hug Julia had ever received. It was also strangely comforting.
“Awakening varies a lot. Please don’t be embarrassed over passing out.” The man paused a moment, shifting uncomfortably. “When I Awakened, I turned bright purple. Stayed that way a week.”
Despite her best efforts, Julia could not help but giggle at the image.
“Things will be okay. Besides, if your mother can’t accept you’re not evil, I know of a costumer that specializes in demonic and witch-related outfits. He creates the uniforms for some of the Witch Covens.”
Julia giggled more. “The look on my mother’s face if I dressed up as a witch… She would go apeshit!”
The man grinned. “I also have a prayer you can read aloud if they ask you to say grace. It’s from my Dungeons and Dragons days and dedicated to Ornomath the Sticky, Lord of Evil Cotton Candy.”
Julia smiled. “Send a copy to my fake SIN?”
The man chuckled, moving his arm away from her and moving towards the wall, opposite her bed. “Door hand and door are here. Hard to see unless you’re up close.” He then looked back to her. “Also, we already tossed your fake SIN and got one more suited for you.”
“I worked hard for that SIN!” Julia protested.
The man chuckled. “Beating someone up and taking it is certainly a rare method of acquiring a new identity… but it tends to draw attention.” He then opened the door. “Besides, it was for a thirty-seven year old man named Jonathon. Coming?”
Julia stood and rushed to follow him out of the room. As she did, she noticed the only thing missing from her outfit was her gun and her commlink. “Where’s my gun?”
The man grinned. “Do you know how to use it?”
“I’ve seen trids,” Julia answered.
The man stopped, facepalming. “So you know how to shoot yourself in the foot, miss your enemies entirely, and accidentally shoot your allies. Do you even know when a gun is unloaded?”
Julia shrugged. “When it has no bullets in it?”
The man growled and looked up, then started walking purposefully. “Okay, new plan… firing range so I can teach you the basics of gun safety. Then education in hacking and magic.”
She cursed and moved to try to keep up with him; as out of shape as he looked, the man could walk fast and she was almost having to run to keep up. “Wait! Who are you?”
The man stopped and turned to face her, just as Julia barely stopped herself from crashing into him. “They didn’t tell you?” He then sighed and looked skyward for a moment before looking back to her. “Of course they didn’t. I’m SlowDeck. Now, firing range.”
