Shadowrun 01 - Never Deal With A Dragon (9 page)

Alone on the plain outside the Wall, Sam considered his options. If he reported the incident to his superiors, he would have to confess to following the Jiro icon instead of reporting it immediately. It would also mean revealing that he had observed Renraku's ownership and use of illegal black ice.

Sam's head ached and his fingers were cold as they hung poised over the keyboard. He stared at the Wall, half-seeing images of destruction in the volatile surface. He could do nothing here. Instead of retracing his path to the datastore he had been researching, he jacked out.

His icon disappeared from the Matrix as his awareness returned to the cubicle where his body sat hunched over his cyberterminal. With a sigh, he pulled the plug from the datajack on his left temple. He rubbed his face with both hands, trying to banish the nagging headache that always accompanied his forays into the Matrix. Usually the rubbing replaced the dull pain with a clean tiredness, but today his head continued to throb.

Black ice.

That was what protected the Wall. Killer-countermeasures intended to wreck an intruder's equipment and quite possibly take his life. The presence of such deadly software meant that Renraku so valued whatever was behind the Wall that the corporate masters had no compunction about sending deadly electrical impulses through the lines to fry the brain of anyone who illegally accessed their system. Killer ice was illegal, but its use was never reported to the authorities because it was always directed against criminal intrusion. The corporate world of the twenty-first century relied on the old adage that dead men tell no tales. But now Sam had seen the killer ice in action, and lived to tell about it.

He would never have believed that Renraku would stoop so low, showing such callous disregard for human life. How could Aneki-
sama
allow it? Sam suspected that the shrewd old man was not aware of what his underlings were doing here in the arcology, and he believed his duty was to inform the director-
sama
of this terrible turn of events. But how to do so? He guessed that the samurai's last look meant that those behind the black ice knew Sam had witnessed their villainy. If he made an attempt to reveal what he had seen today, at the very least, they would use their power to block or alter his report. If Sam tried to go public with the information, even if only within the Renraku corporate structure, he would be making enemies. Powerful and deadly enemies.

Dirty, spiteful faces surrounded her, leering. Rough, gutter voices called her names and mocked her. The faces were laughing, split with snag-toothed grins, taunting her. She had spent her whole life trying not to be part of their world, hating its helplessness.Helplessness—what she hated even more than those faces.

They were scum.The same all over the world, the hopeless and the lost huddling in the shadows of the great metroplexes. They were street people, chippers, drudges, and bums. They were petty criminals, pimps, sleazers, and whores. Some of the scum thought they were better than the rest, malcontents who called themselves shadowrunners and played at being noble idealists. As though a fancy name could change what they were—thieves, two-bit terrorists, and parasites on the body corporate.

Sometimes the scum got the upper hand, caught someone before he or she could get out with enough skin intact for the corporate doctors to rebuild. But revenge was possible if one awaited her chance, worked for right time to strike like a tiger from ambush. That was the way a professional handled it. Sooner or later, the vermin always made a mistake and a pro would hand them their heads. At least that's what she would have done if some snivelling traitor hadn't sold her out, had her drugged, and traded her bodily integrity for his own.

In the dark, the flashes of sweaty, grunting bodies fueled her rage.Filthy, fetid room.Grimy, groping hands.A bad-toothed grin under mirror eyes. Slobbering mouths. Pain.

She hated traitors. Weak-minded perverts who sold away their company's heritage and fellows for their own gain and sold off their fellows for their own comfort. She hated the slime that let others do the dirty work they were afraid would dirty their hands. Worse than those, she hated the ones who got away with it, the ones who went crawling back to their corporate cocoon as though nothing had happened. As if they had betrayed no one.

One by one, the faces changed, their features flowing and coalescing until each face had a single set of features.A broad, dirty face with mirror eyes that belonged to a gutter animal. Street scum. sleazer. She would never forget that face.

The leering visage splintered like a glass mask, the shards falling away to reveal another face underneath, deceptive in its ordinariness. Blond hair close-cropped in a salaryman's cut, a chromium steel datajack on the left temple.Square jaw. Straight nose. Hazel eyes. She knew that face, too. She knew it as well as herown, knew all the wrinkles and blemishes. Placid, dog-stupid, trusting, and innocent, it was a traitor's face, mocking her and her helplessness.

She hated it.

Blam!

The Ruger Super Warhawk in her right hand roared, blasting 11mm slugs into a jeering visage. No more data-jack.

Blam! Blam!

No more hazel eyes. Nomore pearly toothed smile.

Blam! Blam! Blam!

Faces splintered under her bullets, the traitor sent to oblivion.Atonement for her shame.

No traitor. No shame. If only it were so easy to expunge him and the memories in the real world as it was to imagine his face on the range's targets.

"Nice shooting, A.C."

Crenshaw spun, acquiring target without a thought as the smartgun link fed data through the induction pad in her hand. The gun's snout homed in unerringly on the speaker's face. He blanched as she increased pressure on the trigger.

The hammer fell with a click.

She smiled at the terror on his face. Her link had told her that the gun was empty, but he didn't need to know that. Let him think she was a little wild. It wouldn't hurt her reputation. She was slower than most of the other Renraku special operatives, and her cyberware at least a generation behind. If fear would give her an edge, she'd take it. Any edge was better than none. She didn't care if the grunts thought she was crazy; the people upstairs knew she did her job. They were the ones who counted, only their opinion mattered.

"Frag it, Crenshaw! What're you doing?"

"Anybody who sneaks up on me regrets it, Saunders. Don't forget it, because next time the gun won't be empty."

Saunders stepped back, face rigid and eyes wide. Crenshaw slipped off the sound-suppressor headset and walked away from the firing line. As she passed the armorer's counter, she tossed him the gun, not bothering to see if he caught it. On her way through the door to the lockers, she grabbed a towel.

"You're frizzed! You know that, Crenshaw," Saunders called out to her back."Totally glitched."

She could hear the forced bravado in his voice. She smiled.

A poke from Kiniru's wet nose was usually enough to wake Sam, but today the akita had to resort to planting one of her huge paws on his stomach. The sudden pressure forced all the air from Sam's lungs in an explosive burst. He sat up, gasping.

Kiniru, a canine grin on her usually somber face, sat gazing at him eagerly. A glance at the wall screen, which he always left set for a view from the outside, showed him the gray clouds hauling a threat of rain in from the Pacific. That gloom would soon banish the morning sun, making the day suitable for a funeral. He flicked the control, and the trideo set boomed to life. While Heraldo Fong's
Enquiring Eye
raked through the story of some sensational thaumaturgical murder, Sam tossed back the covers, shaking his head in wonder that the arcology programming director would broadcast such hysterical drek at this hour. As Sam swung his legs over the side of the bed, Kiniru stood and skipped back. She padded to the door and looked back expectantly.

"Hold on. I've got to get some clothes on."

Kiniru barked her impatience.

"Go talk to Inu. He knows enough to keep quiet."

Instead of obeying and joining Sam's other dog, Kiniru sat down, tail beating against the doorway. Ignoring her impatience, Sam clicked Fong off in the middle of a tirade against unlicensed magicians in order to use the screen for the room's computer. There were no messages waiting, so he started a check on his continuing inquiries concerning his sister's whereabouts and condition. The screen flickered, displaying the status of his programs as he dressed. The same as yesterday—nothing. Sam ignored the flashing symbol from the expert system monitoring his apartment's computer. He knew what it wanted, but he was not yet ready to let it send the message he had composed for Sato-
sama
. It had possibly become irrelevant; Sato was due to arrive at the arcology in a few days.

Kiniru butted his leg.

"All right. Let's go."

Inu was exactly where Sam expected, sitting calmly by the door. The brindled black and white mongrel barked its greeting and stood. As Sam palmed the door open, the dogs squeezed past him, jostling their master to the side. He watched them run down the corridor toward the open area at its end. The Level 82 park was big enough for the akita to get a good run. Because the other residents knew and liked the dogs, they never complained about them running free. Inu stopped just inside the shadows of the corridor to glance back reproachfully at Sam.

"Go on, Inu. I'm staying here."

Inu waited until Sam made a shooing motion with his hand before gamboling out into the sunlight to join Kiniru and some of the level's children in a game of chase-and-tumble. Sam wished he could be as carefree as the former stray. It was Inu that had followed him back to the arcology that night of a year ago, making a place for himself in Sam's world as though it were sheer destiny. While Kiniru was pure-bred, this creature of the streets was almost feral, yet he had settled into arcology life as though he'd been whelped there.

Sometimes Sam wondered if this were only a veneer, a canine version of his own resignation. When Sam had returned to Renraku after the kidnapping, he'd expected the corporation to treat him as a disgrace. Instead, he and Jiro had been sent for evaluation to certify that the kidnapping had not unbalanced them. No accusations of wrongdoing. In fact, not a single mention of the events. Stupefied, Sam had gone along with official efforts to ease him back into corporate life, expecting at any moment to be denounced by the guard he had shot. Censure never came. It was as though nothing had ever happened.

But that didn't mean Sam could forget. Inu was always there to remind him. Sometimes he awoke in the night, the guard's face frozen in his memory and the accusing voice saying over and over, "I was Mark Claybourne. You took my life from me." Surprised and frightened when Claybourne penetrated Sally Tsung's illusion, Sam panicked. He had shot at the young guard, but had only intended to wound him. It was Sam's agitation and unfamiliarity with firearms that left Claybourne so horribly injured that modern medical science had been hard-pressed to save the guard's life. When the doctors were unable to restore full nerve function, Claybourne committed suicide. Claybourne may have taken his own life, but Sam took the blame.

It was only after Sam's return to the arcology that he discovered the identity and fate of the guard. It had not been an easy job. Someone had sealed Claybourne's medical records as though actually trying to hide Sam's deed. Once Sam had the information, Claybourne took up residence in his dreams, a ghost of the mind. Unable to atone, Sam struggled daily with the guilt, praying for forgiveness and understanding and vowing that his hand would never harm another innocent life.

What about the shadowrunners whose schemes had so enmeshed him? Did they feel any remorse? Did they care that they had made a killer out of Sam? Not likely. Like Inu, they were almost feral, their way of life at complete odds with Sam's corporate world. He presumed the bunch was still out there somewhere, cooking their deals and running their shady scams. They probably didn't even remember him. He was just a suit to them, passing briefly through their shadow lives. They were runners and he was corp, an alien in their world.

Renraku, one of the corporations that made the world go round, had taken care of him and his sister after their parents died. Having grown up thinking of the corporation as both home and family, Sam's loyalty had been fierce. The events of last year, however, had left him numb with shock. Now came another severe blow to his image of the corporation he called family. What he had seen in the Matrix two days ago raised painful questions of ethics and responsibility. Questions to which he hadn't the vaguest answers. Hell, questions he didn't even want to think about. But it was becoming harder and harder to make Renraku resemble his old beliefs.

When his wake-up alarm chimed, Sam let the demands of the moment push all these disturbing thoughts into the background. Hanae would be here soon and he still hadn't eaten or showered up. He stepped back inside. He was dumping the empty packets from breakfast into the disposal slot when the door chirped. "Who's calling, please," he said into the intercom, at the same time hitting the switch to send his refuse down to the arcology's recycler.

"My, we are formal this morning. All right. Hanae Norwood, sir. Perhaps you remember me? We met at the Independence Day celebrations last year."

Sam palmed the door open to a giggling Hanae. The jet black helmet of her hair set off her bright Eurasian features, but the drab gray of her very proper suit was out of character. Though suitable for a funeral, it was a far cry from the bright colors she favored. Lifting herself onto her toes, she kissed Sam's cheek as she entered.

"This would have been much simpler if I had stayed here last night."

"I wanted to be alone."

"Don't sound so worried. I understand," she assured him as she fished through her purse. "I've got an armband for you here somewhere."

Mumbling his thanks, he took the black band she held out. It was so like her. Knowing he'd probably forget the band, she'd taken it upon herself to keep him from making a gaffe of corporate etiquette. Like a good helpmate, she understood those little details that seemed so meaningless but were worth points on the corporate ladder. Loyal, attentive, ambitious for him, and not least of all, charming and pretty, she was everything a salaryman could want in a woman. He should formalize their relationship, but something inside him held back.