Shadowrun 01 - Never Deal With A Dragon (30 page)

Sam took the professor's response to mean that he would do what he could for Janice. No promise of success, but Sam couldn't reasonably expect one. He had no plan for what to do once he found his sister, but now at least he had a hope. Or rather,
she
had a hope, a chance of returning to a normal life. Sam also had hope of being able to meet the professor's price, for he sensed that Laverty was a compassionate being.

It's all moot, the voice of doubt told him. You don't even know where she is.

He refused to surrender to despair. I will, Sam promised himself. First Hanae's killers, then I find Janice.

As he had told the professor, the trail was getting colder. He stepped up to the bench and took the chip case with a bow.

"Thank you," Sam said, pocketing the case. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got things to do."

The Elf looked completely out of place standing within the rough-hewn walls of the cabin. His suit was strictly plex wear and his shoes were beyond salvation after their meeting with the local mud. His accent was pure metroplex and his hands were soft, unmarked by any dirty work.

"I am only the messenger," he said in a cool and distant voice.

Hart bit back a retort. What was the point? Her earlier outburst hadn't affected him. He was slick, riding the smooth edge. She should have been equally so, but she hated it when a job went sour. This one had had enough problems. She lifted the gun from the table and holstered it.

It should have come as no surprise that the touted Tir border patrol had muffed it even worse than she had thought. That they should miss her was understandable. That had happened often enough. But to miss that corporate pigeon made them look like noids. It was a fluke, a bad toss of the dice. Pure good luck for that suit Verner and bad for her.

The messenger was still there. "Get out of here," she snapped, still caught up in her annoyance.

"Do you wish to make a response?"

"To your nameless principal? Get serious."

"He has the continued health of your reputation at heart."

"But won't let himself be named? I'm touched."

"His name would be quite familiar, I assure you. It would only be unwise for you to know it at this time. I was told to say that you would find his favor most useful in the future. His good will is easy to earn. All he asks in return for the information I have brought is a general outline of your plans."

"Smoke and mirrors."

"Excuse me?"

"Tell him that. Smoke and mirrors."

The messenger drew himself erect with indignation. "Very well." He turned and strode from the cabin, his expensive leather loafers squishing slightly with each step.

Got through the shine at last. A petty victory but better than nothing. Let the Elf take her answer back to his Mr. Mystery. Two could play at the confusion game.

Whoever sent the messenger could have any of a dozen reasons for passing the information to her. Mr. Mystery could be playing on just about any side in the conflict. Or he could be someone not directly involved but using the opportunity to turn things against a rival or to twist them in favor of a friend. Without more information, she could not tell. Whatever someone's reason for giving her the information, now that she had it there was no time to look into the source. The only source she could rule out was the ornery old worm that was her own contractor. Had he known of Verner's survival, he would have sent an army of goons to convey the message that she had failed in her contract.

Tessien needed to know; it had the same contract. Hart shrugged on a jacket against the cool night air. She didn't bother to lock the cabin; there was nothing to steal and no one here to steal it. She took the trail further up the mountain to the dry cave where Tessien lay coiled and dozing. The feathered serpent awoke as she entered its lair.

"Bad news, Tessien."

"
Anything that disturbs my rest is bad
." Annoyance washed through the cave.

"Well, rest time is over."

She felt the serpent's curiosity even though it
said
nothing.

"Verner, that suit we pulled out of Renraku as cover for the doppelganger plant, is still alive. The Tir border guards didn't get him, and he's popped up in San Francisco in the company of a runner called Dodger. This runner is some kind of wiz decker and the two of them are snooping around the Matrix. Sounds like their search is still mostly random, but they've got our names and will follow that up sooner or later.

"They've got Drake's name, too."

"
Does
he
know the suit is alive?
"

"Don't think so."

"
We must take care of this quickly
."

"My sentiments exactly. I hate fragging loose ends."

The serpent growled its agreement.

Sam woke to the smell of soy sauce and hot broth. He opened his eyes and turned his head. The source of the odor stood on the rickety table by the window. Dodger must have been down to the noodle shop on the corner, because two foam containers sat steaming, while a third empty one rolled back and forth in the fitful breeze from the open window. Sam was halfway through what remained of the soba when Dodger returned from a trip to the only functioning John in the semi-abandoned tenement where they had set up shop.

"Ah, Sir Twist, you are awake."

With a mouthful of noodles, Sam mumbled a garbled reply.

"No need to offer such effusive thanks for the food. Think nothing of the expense or time involved, for are we not in this run together?"

Having swallowed the last recalcitrant noodle, Sam was free to reply. "It was your turn to get the food, anyway."

Dodger's wounded look was pure mockery, but the Elf's light mood didn't quite mesh with a sudden seriousness that Sam felt. Maybe it was the mention of expenses.

"Dodger, I'm grateful that your friend the professor arranged to get us here, but won't he expect some kind of repayment."

The Elf shrugged. "The passage was no strain on his resources. Mayhaps in the fullness of time, he will command a reckoning, mayhaps he won't. I would find it no surprise were he to rely on your own conscience to weigh the balance of benefits and services, and to repay his efforts as you see fit. He is quirky that way."

That didn't make Sam feel any better. "My conscience is weighing a little too heavily lately. I wish you hadn't stolen that money."

"Operating capital, Sir Twist. Can't run without it. The funds were ill-gotten gains anyway, lost long ago to their true owners. We merely prevented some unscrupulous corporate defilers of the landscape from the profit of their crimes."

"It's still theft."

"Liberation."

"Semantics."

"Necessity," Dodger laughed.

Sam found himself grinning along. The Elf's mood had finally infected him, despite his misgivings about their actions. They had arrived in San Francisco with only a hundred nuyen on Dodger's credstick, ten more in corporate scrip, and another fifty in UCAS currency. The last was mostly paper and next to worthless in the Free State of California.

They had to live while they sought justice. Was it not also justice for them to subsist off criminals?

Money was a problem for them, but it was their hope as well. The world's banking was mostly electronic now and money transfers left a trail that they could follow through Matrix. The trail had already connected Hart and the serpent Tessien to Drake, the man who was pulling the mercenary runners' strings. Dodger had made no secret of his relief when Sam agreed they should concentrate on the man behind the Elf runner and Dragon. He had seemed impressed by their reputations and reluctant to tangle with them.

So they hunted Drake now, but so far he had proved to be a mystery man. They knew he was often seen with Nadia Mirin, president of Natural Vat foods. That information had come during a general data search of the news networks, and from the society section, of all places. Calling up a datapic had confirmed that the Mr. Drake who escorted Ms. Mirin was the same man Sam had met in the abandoned car lot. The connection stubbornly remained a random data point. Nothing they tried ever linked Drake to Mirin in any way other than socially. He was not connected with Natural Vat, its parent company Aztechnology, or any of the subsidiary or sibling companies that Sam and Dodger managed to check. That was unusual and intriguing. Executives of Mirin's stature usually kept their romances within the corporate family.

"Are you ready to crack those files we hooked on the last run?"

"I think so. The nap and the food have pretty much taken  care of the headache." The files in question were filched copies of transaction records from Transbank. The run through the bank's security had been exhausting, with even Dodger admitting that he might not be able to crack the locks on the files and extract the data safely. By now, Sam that for the Elf to make such an admission meant the task at hand was extremely tricky. These files must be heavily protected.

The files turned out to be just that. It was hours before they determined that Drake had certified several credsticks through Transbank. It seemed hardly worth the effort and headache to achieve such a dead end. A certified credstick was the electronic equivalent of cash. The money could still be traced once it reentered the financial network, but would be no record of who had received the credstick.

" 'Twas a small hope that he would be so careless."

"Maybe if we can find some other transactions of the same monetary value as were assigned to Drake's certified sticks, we can pick up the trail by following it from wherever Transbank sends the funds. Sure, some of the matches will just be coincidence, but some might actually be the recipients of Drake's generosity. If we're lucky, some of the names attached to those transactions might mean something.

After two more days of data slogging, they had eliminated likely coincidences. That left three names. Each one connected to at least three transactions whose amounts equalled one of Drake's credsticks.

The first, Nadia Mirin, was no surprise. In her case, the amounts were the smallest, suitable as gifts to one's paramour. The second name was totally unfamiliar, but the pattern of intervening transactions was interesting. Each amount went through a series of transfers, all for the exact value of Drake's credstick. Each thread led to a sealed account in a Denver data haven. Dodger pronounced the data trail to be a record of the laundering of Hart's payments. At Sam's suggestion, they traced a similar trail from deposits made by a known client of Hart's and got the same sealed account number, confirming the Elf's supposition. The last name sat at the end of a similar, but much less well hidden, trail. The destination account was registered to A.A. Wilson.

"A. A. Wilson." Sam shook his head. "Why does that name seem familiar?"

"Familiar or not. 'Twould seem that Mr. Drake finds something about Squire Wilson worth a lot of money. But what?"

"If we knew who A. A. Wilson was, we might have a clue."

"How many people can there be with that name?"

Dodger sighed. "We don't know that it is a real name. Whether it is or not, there could be quite a few. 'Twill be another time-consuming task."

"So?"

"I thought you would say that, but it would help if we could narrow things down."

Sam thought about it for a minute. There really was something familiar about the name. "What if Wilson is a Metahuman?"

" 'Twould help, if 'twere true. How have you come by that revelation?"

"I don't know. Something in the back of my mind says Metahuman when I hear the name. Maybe I read it somewhere. Something medical."

"Mayhaps Wilson is a doctor specializing in Metahuman physiology?"

"Could be." Sam shook his head in puzzlement. "It's a place to start."

The AMA files for Seattle yielded no A. A. Wilson. A check into the complete database for the UCAS did no better.

"Try the Salish-Shidhe Council," Sam suggested. "Let's not go too far afield yet."

An hour later, Dodger had something. "A. A. Wilson is licensed to practice in Salish-Shidhe. He is listed as residing in Cascade Crow lands on an extraterritorial reservation belonging to the Genomics Corporation."

"Genomics? Run a check on medical literature. See if Wilson has published anything."

Dodger hacked into the public datanet and pulled the files in a flash.

"Squire Wilson appears to be an accomplished man of letters. He is principal or subsidiary author of several papers." Title by title, Dodger began reciting the list. "Variational Effects of Albinism . . ."

"In Metahumans. D. Nyugen, M. T. Chan, and A. A. Wilson,
Biophysiology
, 2049," Sam finished for him.

"Verily. How did you know that?"

"I scanned it as part of the research I was assigned in setting up the arcology's Metahuman medical library. That project was how I knew about the medical files when we did the run to see if Tessien worked for Renraku."

"An amazing memory, Sir Twist, but it gains us little."

"Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't." Another memory , prodded him. "Dodger, there was an albino with Hart's I team in the arcology."

"Coincidence?"

"What do you think?"

"I believe an investigation into Squire Wilson and Genomics is in order. But first," Dodger said with a grin, "it's your turn to get the food."

Sam acquiesced with good humor. They had a lead now, their first hope of penetrating whatever had set off the chain of events that led to Hanae's death and his own exile from corporate society. Knowing what Drake was really involved in would make a difference. They would bring him down to pay for the murders he had arranged and all his machinations with him.

The noodle shop was closed. They had worked so hard and long that night had become early morning. The only thing that would be open now was a Stuffer Shack, and Sam found one three blocks over. The selection was dismal, but he thought a couple of packets of self-warming Nutrisoy soup would at least offer some nutritional value. By the time Sam got back to their squat, Dodger was finishing a run on the public datanet. The Elf looked glum.