Crossroads (10 page)

“I was only a little girl when the soldiers came for my parents. They’d gotten a warning from some friends and we ran. I was terrified, and my mother kept trying to keep me quiet so nobody would hear us when we slipped out of our house and into the night. My father was very angry, I remember.”

Her voice took on a faraway tone as she recalled those times. “We managed to get out of the country and come to the UCAS. My father had friends in Boston, and we ended up in Southie. It wasn’t a very nice neighborhood, and my parents had to take menial jobs to support us. Both of them were educated professionals, teachers back home, but my father drove a delivery truck and my mother waited tables for years because there were no other jobs.

“I was a wild kid. I grew up with the trid and the telecom for friends and baby-sitters. The good thing about it was I was playing in the Matrix from the time I was old enough to reach a keyboard. We didn’t have a back yard or a playground, but in virtual reality, there was all the space you could ever want to play in. My dad thought it was good for me to know about the Matrix, and he worked extra hard to make sure we’d have at least some basic Matrix-access at home, so I could learn things. I suspect some of the things I learned my dad wouldn’t exactly approve of.” She smiled wickedly.

“A few years after we got to Boston, the troubles started here, too. Do you remember the Bloody Tuesday riots?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yeah. I was nine and living at St. Brendan’s. Southie was like hell for days, with all the fires, the rioting and the looting. It was one of the few times I was glad to be near the church, although I heard even some of the churches were damaged.”

Trouble nodded, resting her arm against the door and looking out the window. “I remember them, too. My mother was killed in one of the riots, trampled to death. My dad was never the same after that. He started drinking all the time and he pretty much left running the house up to me. Eventually, he lost his job and I started working the Matrix to get money to support us. Just small-time jobs at first, but I pulled in enough nuyen to help keep us going.”

I looked at Trouble, imagining the burden placed on a young girl trying to support what was left of her family and risking death in the Matrix to do it.

“Eventually I got political myself.” she ned on the Sidhe and their damned went on. “I blamed everything that happe fascist fantasy land.
Alfheim, alflieim uber alles.
They were the ones who forced my family out of Ireland, forced us to live in Southie, forced my parents into the jobs they worked. If it weren’t for them, there wouldn’t have been a Bloody Tuesday, and my mother wouldn’t have died. I was just a kid.

“To me, people like the Knights of the Red Branch were freedom fighters, trying to free our homeland from the evil elven overlords who took it from us. Even though they were the ones who touched off the riots. You believe stupid drek like that when you’re a kid and you’re looking for something, anything, to hold on to.

“So along with running the shadows, I started getting involved with the anti-Tír movement in the plex. At first, it was just an expression of my anger for what the fragging elves did to me and my family. I wore my anger on my sleeve and I hated elves as much as any policlubber you could find. There were a lot of gangs operating in Southie then around racial lines, mostly norms against metas, especially elves. Even the metas were split up, with the orks and trolls against everyone else.

“I did some work for a few gangs, but I didn’t join up. I tried to keep myself above all the little conflicts going on in the neighborhood. It was pure survival instinct. I figured as long as I kept neutral and provided what people wanted, they would leave me and my dad alone. And it worked pretty well, for a while. Then I met Ian.

“He was younger then, of course, but still had a good fifteen years on me. To a teenaged girl who ran the shadows from the Matrix, he was like a fairy-tale knight. A downtrodden hero exiled from his homeland and fighting for its freedom.”

I glanced over and smiled, and Trouble gave a sheepish grin, ducking her head and letting her dark hair hide her face for a moment. “I know, it sounds stupid, but like I said, I was just a kid. To me, Ian was perfect.

“I first met him when I helped score a shipping schedule for a local gang. Turns out they worked for Ian and he met with me personally to get the goods. Said he was impressed with my work and had more work for someone like me. I didn’t know he was involved with the Knights then, but he had such an imposing presence . . .”

She trailed off for a moment, lost in the memory. “Anyway, I started doing a lot of work for Ian and the Knights. At first, it was strictly a business relationship—I needed the money and they were willing to pay. After a while, though, it became more than that. I really needed somebody at that point in my life, and Ian was there for me. He listened to my troubles and paid attention while I poured my heart out about my mom, my dad, and everything else that happened. I think I was really looking for a surrogate father or a big brother back then, a substitute for my real dad. I fell in love with Ian because he was a protector and a friend. I suspect I reminded him of someone back home, too, someone he’d lost. It was no way to build a relationship, but it was all either of us had.

“So I threw myself into the cause and worked with the Knights of the Red Branch for a few years, working to free Eire from the elven overlords and running the shadows to pull in the money and the contacts we needed. It was an impossible fight. We were an ocean away from home with no support, few contacts, and very little hope, but we didn’t give up. Some of the people in the KRB had never even
been
to Ireland, but they had family or friends who lived there or who had died in the riots. Some just wanted to dream of reclaiming some kind of land to call home. I guess when it comes right down to it, that’s what the Sidhe wanted, too.

“Frag.” Trouble said, glancing over at me. “Tell me to shut up any time. I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this.”

“I have such a saintly face.” I said, eliciting a smile. “So what made you leave the Knights?” I already suspected the answer.

“I grew up.” she said. “When I first started out, everything was black and white, us versus them. The more things I saw and the more things I did, the more gray everything got. Some of the things we did were no better than the things the Sidhe did to us. I started to think about things like Bloody Tuesday. The Knights set the bomb that touched it off. Was all the violence really worth it?

“I started to have doubts, and that led to a lot of fights with Ian. He never wavered from the cause, never thought that what we were doing wasn’t the right thing. Eventually, I walked away from it all and became a shadowrunner. In the shadows, you know where things stand or, at least, you used to. It was always strictly business for me ... up until now, that is.”

I nodded. “Right. Now it’s personal.”

7

Landsdown Street, near the financial district of the city, held some of the biggest clubs in Boston, including the Avalon. The club dated back to before the 2005 quake, but it was smaller then. Before the quake, most of the major clubs in Boston were owned and operated by a single company. After the damage done to the city, the company decided to rebuild Landsdown Street bigger and better than ever. Most of the clubs were built up higher and grander than before, with all the latest tech and equipment to make them attractions. The new club space pumped up the city’s underground music scene, and plenty of small studios and record labels operated out of Boston. Although the big recording action was still in Los Angeles, the Boston club scene rivaled that of Seattle, and plenty of hot, new acts came out of the Hub on a regular basis.

The evening’s fun was long since over and most of the club-goers were off somewhere having an early-morning breakfast at one of the nearby restaurants. The clubs were being cleaned up and readied for another go-round tonight.

Trouble pulled into a space directly in front of the Avalon and killed the engine. “You friend is here?” she asked.

I nodded and smiled. “He owns the place.”

“You mean your friend is Pembrenton? The fixer?”

I laughed a bit at the mention of Boom’s real name. I got out of the car and Trouble followed.

“That’s right. Of course, he wasn’t always fixing. He used to be in a band called the Nuclear Elves back in Seattle, and before that he sometimes ran the shadows for a little nuyen on the side. There was a while when we worked some runs together and hung out together afterward. I haven’t seen him in, gods, it must be almost five years now. Definitely not since he inherited all of this.” I gestured to take in the whole front of the club. “Dunkelzahn left it to him in his will. I heard something about Boom hooking up with some high-class talent. I guess this is what it meant.”

Trouble looked thoughtful. “I remember scanning some data about it on Shadowland.” she said, referring to the premier pirate Matrix node for black information. “Didn’t he belong to some kind of network run by the dragon?”

I shrugged. “Hell, if someone had told me back in our running days that old Boom would end up a high-class fixer and club-owner in Boston, I would have told them they were crazy, but Dunkelzahn’s will put stranger twists into people lives.”

Just ask Mary Beth Tyre,
I thought. Or any of the people I’d met through Assets in the past couple years. The dragon’s will had definitely changed a lot of lives. It just remained to be seen if those changes were for the better or not.

The front door wasn’t locked, so we walked right in. Just inside was a medium-sized room all in black, with a coat-check area to one side, stairs leading to the second floor, a hallway out to the lower dance floor, and one of the biggest and meanest-looking ork bouncers I’d ever seen, and I’d seen quite a few.

“We're closed.” the ork said in a voice like he was gargling gravel. I ignored him and headed toward the stairs. There was a time when I knew the Avalon very well, and it didn't look like the overall layout had changed much in the last ten years or so.

The ork bruiser stepped between me and the stairs and put a beefy hand against my chest.

“What, are you deaf, chummer? I said we’re
closed
.”

I looked down at the hand, large enough to grab my whole head probably, and slowly followed up the arm until my eyes met with the dark, beady eyes of the bouncer.

“I want to see Boom.” I said quietly.

“Mista Pembrenton isn’t seeing anyone right now. He’s busy.”

“I want to see him
now.”
I said, keeping my tone calm and even.

The ork looked at me in frustration. “He’s not seeing anybody.”

“He’ll see me. Just tell him Talon is here.”

The ork shook his head and didn’t budge. With my peripheral vision, I could see another figure coming in from the main room, but I didn’t take my eyes off the ork.

“Look, chummer.” the bouncer said, “I don’t care if you're fragging Dunkelzahn come back from the dead. The boss don’t want to be disturbed, and I’m not gonna interrupt him. You’re gonna have to leave,
so ka!
”

“Some friend.” I heard Trouble mutter from behind me. I was definitely losing patience with the muscle-brained flunky in front of me.

“Chummer.” I said in a low, cold tone, “I’ve had a really long night and very little sleep and it’s making me very cranky. And when I get upset, I tend to lose my natural grace and charm, and when that happens people start getting hurt.”

As I spoke, power flared behind my eyes and I allowed bouncer-boy to see what I was. His eyes widened and he took his hand off me like my chest had suddenly become white-hot.

“Now.” I said, “if you don’t get the frag out of my way, this place is going to have to go wading into the shallow end of the gene-pool again, looking for a new piece of meat to replace you after you’ve been cooked to a nice medium-well.
So ka?"

The ork took a step back out of the way as an impression of flames seemed to shimmer in my eyes. I walked past him without a second look, Trouble following quickly behind.

“Nice play back there.” she said as we hit the stairs.

“Nothing much.” I said. “Just a little trick of the aura.”

“Would you really have geeked him?”

I shook my head. “Not over something like that. There are plenty of easier ways to use magic to deal with dim-brains like that. I prefer not to use magic at all in these cases.”

“You’re a better man than I am, Talon. If I had the Talent, I’d be using it all the time.”

“It’s not that simple.” I said.

We hit the top of the stairs and I turned right down the corridor, past some of the upper dance-halls and bars, where a few people worked, cleaning up the leavings from the previous night. “Magic requires some effort, often a lot of effort, and that can wear you out pretty fast. Despite what the trid and even other magicians might want you to believe, using the Talent doesn’t come without a cost.”

I went to the door at the end of the hall and tried the knob. It was unlocked, so I threw it open and stepped into the room. In an instant, I was engulfed in wads of Hawaiian shirt and steel-like muscles, heavy with the smell of expensive cologne and equally expensive cigars.

“Talon!” Boom yelled in a thunderous voice as he hoisted me off the ground in a crushing bear-hug. “Bloody ’ell! I never expected to see you, term!”