The next afternoon, once my hangover had subsided, I made my way to the loft. At first I tried to relax, watching trideo with Alec or losing myself in some casual Matrix browsing, but in the end I found myself hanging around Rachel in the garage to try and escape the nervous anticipation that was building up in my gut. Not wanting to feel like I was imposing, I spent most of the afternoon following her directions as I lugged around bulky components, mechanic’s tools and thick armour plates as Rachel worked on the finer circuitry and welding.
By the time Brian showed up with a bag full of Chinese food, Rachel had finished synchronising her control rig with the drone’s software and was looking through its optics as she tracked one of my sprites around the old garage. The fully-restored Steel Lynx was an angular, militaristic machine with a predatory lean to the way it crouched on its four wheeled legs, as if it was ready to pounce at a moment’s notice.
Bitch had spray-painted it matte black, hiding the fact it had been cobbled together from salvaged or bought components over the course of a year, and the rotary-barrelled machine gun mounted in its turret bristled with murderous promise.
After a quiet dinner in which even Alec seemed subdued, I jumped in the shower to wash off an entire drone’s worth of engine grease before retreating into my room and putting on the same black suit lined with yellow that Lisa had bought me.
This time, without Lisa’s obvious urgency or the pounding noise of the Palanquin, I had enough bandwidth to note that this was the second time I’d worn a suit in my entire life. It wasn’t exactly the sort of thing middle school girls were into, and when I made it to high school the thought of wearing anything even remotely formal couldn’t have been further from my mind. I hadn’t worn any kind of formalwear since mom’s funeral, and that was a dress.
When I stepped out into the hall, I saw Brian helping Rachel with her own suit; smoothing out the crumples as best he could and making sure she’d tucked her shirt in. I knew it wasn’t that Rachel was incapable of dressing herself, it was just that she didn’t see the point. Formalwear was another metahuman affectation she’d never had the chance to properly understand.
Lisa and Alec, on the other hand, wore their suits with the instinctive comfort of high society, with Lisa seemingly able to walk for miles in high heels and Alec’s ruffled shirt perfectly placed so that each ruff looked like the product of deliberate effort to create the effect of random chance. It took a lot of skill, or inborn instinct, to dress like you didn’t care what you looked like while still looking like the heartthrob on the cover of some teen girls’ magazine. Most other people who didn’t care just ended up looking like Rachel had before Brian straightened her out, or like I did until a few weeks ago.
For my fourth visit to the Palanquin, we’d been directed away from the main entrance and into a narrow passage in the block that might once have been an alleyway, before the buildings around it cannibalised its airspace and turned it into a tunnel. Faultline had capitalised on the privacy of the entrance, blocking off a section of the tunnel to act as a private drop-off point. Her laid-back knife wielding maniac, Newter, was waiting there for us, dressed in a low-cut tanktop from a Bad Canary concert, depicting a stylised version of the singer’s face screaming into a microphone with her feathered mohawk flared up behind her.
We followed the mercenary’s mercenary into the Palanquin, as Bitch sent her van off to circle the block until we were done. He led us past storerooms full of the tools of all the facets of Faultline’s business; cleaning supplies for the building, crates of drinks for the club and heavy metal armoury doors holding who knows what for the Shadowrunners.
On the way we passed bustling staff members who almost flattened themselves against the wall to make way for us, before we were finally brought into the elevator that ran up the spine of the club, ascending past the VIP area on our way up to the same corridor of private rooms as before.
This time, our client was waiting for us in the Sultan suite, past the small airlock-slash-antechamber where the claustrophobic sensation of the room’s faraday cage clamped around me like a vise, cutting me off from the resonance in a way that felt rather like being cut off from my soul. It hurt worse this time.
Maybe it’s because I’m more in-tune with the resonance? I thought, before the inner doors opened to reveal the black-scaled serpent coiled up on a red-leather couch.
He’d gone for a different décor; the floor to ceiling screens that made up the walls of the room had been set to display a view of Downtown’s skyline from the other side of the Bay, a man-made forest of gleaming spires reflected in a mirror image on the still waters of the Bay.
Somewhere near the Ares docks, I observed. It’s recorded, not live.
His bodyguards were different. The elf razorgirl was still there, but instead of the shaman Mr Johnson was flanked on the right by a broad-shouldered human in tactical gear, with a submachine gun worn on a sling over his chest and a wooden stake poking out of a loop on his belt.
What really grabbed my attention, however, was the vampire leaning against the wall, glaring at us with naked contempt. Alabaster seemed somehow subdued since I had first seen him through Bitch’s FlySpy, or seen him through my own eyes in the alleyway behind the America As One centre. His suit was a little more dishevelled, his eyes seemed somehow a little more manic, darting between us and the serpent as if he couldn’t decide whose company he hated the most.
Whatever Mr Johnson has over him, I thought, it’s got to be big.
“Please, take a seat,” the snake himself spoke. “We have a lot of ground to cover.”
As we sat down on the semicircle of couches set opposite our client, Alabaster grabbed a small chair from the corner of the room and positioned himself off to one side inbetween our two groups, where he could keep both of us in view.
“All due respect, Mr Johnson,” Grue began, fixing Alabaster with a pointed stare, “but what is he doing here?”
“Mr Hunter is here to lend his expertise,” our client explained. “To explain to you the nature of what you have uncovered. You should find it a novel experience; I understand people in your profession don’t often see the full picture of their efforts.”
He nodded to the vampire, who frowned before he started talking, each word sounding like it had to be forced out of him.
“The Chosen and America As One aren’t being supported by do-gooders within Medhall; they’re wholly-owned subsidiaries of the company. Them, and a dozen other different policlubs, gangs and satellite organisations. It’s Max Anders’ private empire, using Medhall’s resources to advance human interests and put down any trogs, halfers or dandelion eaters that pose a threat to humanity.”
No matter how much I might have wanted to keep my cool, I couldn’t stop my eyes from widening in shock – and I saw a similar reaction on Brian’s face. Growing up, I’d always heard of how Medhall’s friendly face was skin deep, how those with the wrong ear shape would be lucky to make their way off the factory floor, the low-level security force, customer service or the custodial teams, but it was still an institution; a more intrinsic part of the city than any branch of local or state government. It was like hearing that the mayor was secretly selling novacoke out of his official car.
“I find it strangely disappointing,” the serpent interrupted in an uncharacteristic display of seemingly genuine emotion. “Max Anders is a shrewd businessman with a frankly impressive hold over his power base, but he uses his talents in service of something as insignificant as ideology.”
He shook his head, like he’d been disappointed by a child.
“He has allowed his politics to rule his business, when it is business that should rule politics.”
“Sure,” Alabaster drawled, before continuing. “The Chosen are all psychoborgs. A lot of them are hooked on implant rejection drugs because they chipped themselves too fast for their immune system to keep up. I’m in charge of shipping medical supplies through AAO to the Chosen, which keeps them in chrome- and that keeps them loyal. He has other guys doing the same thing with dopadrine and a few other street drugs that the Chosen sells on to smaller gangs to keep them on-side and keep the Chosen in cash.”
He looked right at me, his pinkish eyes staring daggers as he grinned a predatory smile with his fangs on full display. Instinctively, I found myself baring my teeth in return, my tusks robust stalagmites in comparison to his spindly, near-human canines. There was something wrong about him, beyond just what he thought. A wrongness that tweaked some ancient instinct in the back of my brain.
“The price is worth it to have soldiers who can go toe to toe with nine foot tall trog bitches and come out on top. He even rents squads out to other pro-human groups as mercenaries.”
“Can we trust this information?” I asked Mr Johnson, trying not to glare too much. “He clearly hasn’t had a sudden change of heart.”
“There’s an old human adage that says ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend,’” came the reply, to which Alabaster scoffed. “Human history has repeatedly proven it false, but the enemy of an enemy can become an ally of convenience. I assure you, Alabaster may hate you and he certainly hates me, but he hates Medhall more.”
I had no idea how our client had managed to subvert Alabaster with a single comm call, but I almost couldn’t believe that he’d managed to so completely turn him against his former employer in whatever discussions they had in the time between then and now. If I couldn’t see it right in front of me, I wouldn’t have believed it.
“Now that you’re done being hysterical,” Alabaster sneered, “I’ll get back to it. Wouldn’t want this to drag on; that elf’s neck is starting to look real appetising again.”
“Get to the point,” Grue snapped, while Tattletale weathered the insult with disdainful implacability.
Alabaster looked like he was about to snap back, but at a sharp stare from the serpent he simply shrugged his shoulders and carried on like we were the unreasonable ones.
“The medical supplies are shipped monthly, with just enough pills to tide the Chosen rank and file over to the next shipment. It all happens in a warehouse owned by America As One, using some guys Justin put under my command – the kind of people who know how to keep their fucking mouths shut. They bring the shipment to the warehouse in a box truck and hand it over to the Chosen, who load it up into vans and drive it off to their safehouses and black clinics. That side of the operation is handled by a ‘borg named Biter.”
“I want you to poke the hornet’s nest,” Mr Johnson said calmly, like he was discussing the weather. “Capture the shipment. If that’s impossible, destroy it. Whatever you do, I want it to be loud. For this, I will pay you sixty thousand nuyen. If you’re unwilling to accept, you might as well leave now. If not, we can discuss your plan of attack.”
Silence fell as we looked at each other; nobody seemed quite willing to the first to talk.
“How many people do the Chosen have at these handovers?” I asked Alabaster.
“Usually about eight of the rank and file who handle the goods and drive the vans,” he answered, “plus Biter’s own squad running security. There’s six of those; cyberpsychos, one and all. AAO also has four security guys watching their end.”
We were all smart enough to do the math. If we were going to take the shipment, or even destroy it, that meant hitting it before it was split into half a dozen vans and sent to half a dozen points across the city.
“We could attack the shipment en-route to the warehouse?” Grue thought out loud.
“That is not an option,” Mr Johnson shut him down. “It is vital that there are dead Chosen and dead policlub staffers on the scene when Knight Errant arrives.”
He’s starting a war, I realised, the thought accompanied by a sensation of dread that crept up my spine. He wants Knight Errant to dismantle the policlub and leave the Chosen starving. The Chosen then goes to war with Knight Errant, or Medhall, or everyone…
But the money is good… I thought, and from the look on Regent’s face I could see he thought the same, and I told myself I’d rather be a spider than a bug. Besides, the Chosen are bastards…
Grue seemed to have been weighing his options, his years of experience leading him down imagined battles and half-thought strategies based on what little information we had. Whatever math he was doing, it seemed to end in our favour – if only barely. It was a risk, but so was crossing the street. What mattered was whether the potential benefits were worth the potential costs.
Tattletale’s eyes were fixed on our patron, and I could tell in an instant that she wanted to take the job solely to unravel the mystery he represented. She saw in him the same ambitions I did, and the same lack of an obvious reason for them. The unanswered questions must have been driving her mad, especially as I was starting to wonder if her patron hadn’t given her a compulsion to uncover secrets, rather than just an interest in them.
Regent was still hard to read. Out of all of them, he was the one I understood the least. I knew enough about his past that he’d hate me for it, maybe even kill me for it, but that was all I knew. Who Regent had become remained a mystery to me. Still, he shifted in his seat with something close to interest. I couldn’t help wondering if his father had made him so sociopathic that he’d fight the Chosen simply because he might find it thrilling.
As for Bitch, I was intimately familiar with the pathways of her mind, but I still didn’t really understand where those pathways ended. With her cyberware, she had no visible tells either. But she also thought faster than the others and in the confines of the faraday cage, her control rig was the only pinprick of light I could see.
There was a pause. It barely even lasted a second, but it was there.
It took me a moment to figure out what she meant, but I had enough context to put the pieces together. Bitch had never had so many of the things I took for granted; a steady supply of food and water, a roof over her head, people around her who wouldn’t take advantage of her. She thought in systems and shared networks, and in our team she’d found a network that functioned in overall harmony even if it occasionally bickered. If she refused and took us away from this job, the others would resent her. It would unbalance the network, maybe becoming the catalyst of another total collapse.
Grue looked at me, and I gave him an almost imperceptible nod.
“We’ll do it,” he said. “We just need to figure out how.”
“If you have questions,” the serpent began, “now is the time to ask them. Your fixer has a well-stocked armoury. I am prepared to cover the cost of renting or purchasing certain equipment from it, within reason.”
“What’s the warehouse normally used for?” I asked Alabaster.
“It’s overflow,” he answered. “Empty most of the time, but if AAO’s main warehouse gets full they use it as a spillover site. Apart from that, it’s empty.”
“We could blow it up,” I suggested. “Plant explosives in the floor drains under where the truck normally parks, or on the structural supports to bring the whole roof down.”
“That would be a little too visible,” Mr Johnson replied.
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“Why?” Tattletale asked.
“Because I’ll be there,” Alabaster sneered back. “It’s like I told you, airhead; I’m in charge of the shipments. That means I’m there every time, making sure it’s all accounted for.”
“Then what are you gonna do when the shooting starts?” Grue asked.
“Follow the emergency action plan,” Alabaster answered. “AAO security whisks me away, while the Chosen provide cover. The snake will get his corpses so long as you kill a couple of the security team, or some of the staffers.”
“So what happens after?” I asked our client. “With all the heat you’re going to pull down, Medhall are going to want to know what happened.”
“Conveniently,” he answered, his mouth opening in what might have been a self-satisfied smile, “the man who will be responsible for investigating this incident is already on my payroll.”
“You might have seen that kid on the news,” Alabaster elaborated. “The one who iced that elf media girl seven years back. My job was to figure out who did it; you’re lucky you kept the ugly ones in the van or else I’d have made you the moment you walked into AAO. You also sold some data from the plant on the black market, but that didn’t make it into my report. I’ll ‘discover’ it after this.”
“They’ll think you’re incompetent for missing something that obvious,” Tattletale pointed out with obvious satisfaction.
“No they won’t; it won’t be my fault,” Alabaster leant back in his seat, shrugging his shoulders as he leered at Tattletale. “The problem with running security for covert ops is that they’re covert. The company has programmes that log every time suspected corporate information comes up on the black market, but those programmes don’t know about the plant’s role in supplying the Chosen. So the data got buried in the logs.”
“It’s a sound plan,” I said, as Grue and Tattletale looked at me for confirmation. “I saw Medhall’s agent myself. It was a real meathead.”
And even if it doesn’t work, I left unspoken, does it really matter if this asshole gets burned?
“So that’s his alibi.” Tattletale was looking at the serpent now. “What’s ours? This shipment means a lot to Medhall and if they can’t find someone to blame, they’ll blame us.”
“I have already taken steps to create a false trail,” the serpent answered. “If you take the shipment, you’ll hand them off to figures in the local criminal underworld. It will look like a very ambitious heist. I will even provide you with fifteen percent of the drugs’ resale value.”
“And if we destroy it?” Grue asked.
“Then the trail alone will have to suffice,” came the succinct reply. “Mr Hunter knows where to direct any investigation.”
Grue and Tattletale seemed satisfied at that. They’d been doing this the longest, which meant I trusted their judgement when it came to potential consequences. I was more focused on the here and now; the small, practical matter of how we were going to fight a group that outnumbered us almost four to one.
“Do you have a map of the warehouse?” I asked Mr Johnson. “The surrounding streets? I can’t access gridlink in this faraday cage.”
He nodded, then shot a sideways glance at the razorgirl. She moved over to a nondescript touchscreen in the corner of the room, with a hard-wired connection built into it. She brought her hand close to the port, her middle finger splitting to reveal a datajack input.
The cityscape disappeared, the panoramic view reduced to the three flat planes of the screens, displaying smaller windows on a black background, the change in ambient light lengthening the shadows of the room. Images of the warehouse were displayed behind the serpent; snapshots of a sparsely-populated warehouse, of the no doubt deliberately scant camera coverage of the exterior of the building only. The ones inside must have been taken by Alabaster, I realised.
On either side of us, white lines traced out maps and blueprints. The warehouse itself was displayed to my right, while the left wall showed the buildings and streets of the surrounding block, with heights and distances already marked out in annotations. I wondered if the razorgirl had put it together herself; from Grue’s appreciative nod as he took in the information, it certainly seemed like it’d been put together with a mercenary’s practiced eye.
“We’ll need to go there in person,” he said, “but this is good. Better than I was expecting.”
“There’s nothing about what it’s like in the Matrix,” I pointed out. “Any online overwatch?” I asked Alabaster, before glancing at Tattletale and adding “or magical?”
“I look like a deckhead to you?” he asked. “AAO’s cybersecurity guys aren’t involved – too many eyes – but the Chosen are all running on their own network. As for magic, I’m the only mage there. Wouldn’t want to hurt the cyberpsychos’ feelings.”
I frowned. The lack of magic was probably good, since we had it and they didn’t, but what I’d seen of the Chosen’s cybersecurity was good. Not great, but definitely robust.
“We can’t accomplish anything more in a conference room,” Grue said, before turning to look at our employer. “Preliminarily, we’ll need heavy weapons of some kind to take out the Chosen’s cars. We’ll be in touch with any more specific requests, but we need to assess the ground first.”
“I understand,” Mr Johnson answered. “You have some time to prepare; the shipment is coming in tomorrow at eleven PM – well after sunset as an accommodation for Mr Hunter’s condition.”
The vampire’s eyes darkened slightly. It was another piece of the puzzle; Alabaster hated nonhumans and it seemed he counted himself among that number. I wondered if he’d even been a human supremacist before, or if his beliefs had formed as a self-hating coping mechanism after he was infected with HMHVV?
“All that remains,” the serpent continued, with a glance over at the man with the stake, “is to obtain your firm commitment.”
Again a tablet and a stylus were set down on the table before us, with Grue passing the tablet off to Tattletale who quickly skimmed through the contract before nodding.
“The same boilerplate as last time,” she answered, looking up from the tablet and smiling at our client. “Another receipt for your records.”
It could have been my ears playing tricks on me, but I couldn’t help thinking she’d put a slight emphasis on ‘your.’ Is she teasing him about the corp connection we think he has, I wondered, or just reminding him that for all his power here, he still has paymasters of his own?
Regardless, we signed - at that point, it was just a formality. Alabaster seemed to find the image faintly funny, though whether it was the novelty of seeing a Shadowrun from the inside or just the novelty of seeing an ork and a troll sign a contract like ‘civilised’ people, I wasn’t sure.
Either way, I was glad to leave the presence of that monster in body and mind. I was gladder still to feel the resonance rushing back in as the door to the faraday cage slid open, almost losing myself in the sensation and dropping into cyberspace before I managed to bring my attention back to my surroundings.
I still surrounded myself with AR windows as we made our way down to the Palanquin’s covert entrance, none of us yet willing to talk. As Bitch’s van interfaced with gridlink on its way back to us, I pulled up all the information I could find on the block that housed America As One’s warehouse.
“It’s a quiet part of town,” I observed. “A lot of long-term storage places and more than a few abandoned buildings. One’s right across the street from the warehouse.”
“Sounds like a good place to start,” Grue mused as we stepped out into the sparse orange light of the tunnel just in time to see the van pulling up in front of us.
We travelled through the city in a kind of busy quiet, each of us lost in our own worlds and worldviews as we turned our attention to the plan in our own ways. Grue asked me to load the immediate map into his cyberware, his focus turning inwards as he pored over what he could see in AR. I gave Bitch the same data, coupled with broader gridlink information about the surrounding blocks so that she could figure out if it was even possible to escape that block with a box truck full of drugs.
I had nothing to contribute to the mages on our team; they were engaged in some hushed discussion on arcane principles and reagents that was as alien to me as the resonance undoubtedly was to them.
For my part, my sole concern was gaining absolute control of the digital environment. I’d seen some of the Chosen’s network architecture through Bitch’s passive sensors and more of it when I’d smashed my way into Biter’s head. I reviewed that data, familiarising myself with how it flowed in the matrix – and the echo that activity left in the resonance – in the hopes that it would make it easier when I had to go up against them on the grid.
If our street samurai got into trouble our mages could back them up, but I’d be alone in the matrix. If Biter had a decker on his squad, rather than just relying on their network’s firewalls, it would be up to me to deal with their initial counterattack. The only saving grace would come if I could break through that first barrier and pinpoint their location. Then, one of the others could just kill them for me.
Once I had cyber superiority, the physical battlefield would become my playground. Cyberware would freeze up, smartguns would veer wildly off target and every Chosen with a wireless connection would be lit up like a flare on the optics and smart-glasses of my team.
If I lost cyber superiority, I’d be forced on the defensive; Bitch’s network of drones was entirely dependent on the matrix to function and while Grue’s cyberware was linked directly to his brain, the same could be said of the Chosen’s and his chrome was similarly vulnerable once entry had been forced into his personal network.
Of course, I’d also be vulnerable to attack myself. More so than any decker the Chosen put in the field, as I didn’t have the insulating layer of hardware between my brain and the matrix. But, strangely, that was almost an afterthought to me. My focus was on attack first, defence second and my own vulnerabilities a distant third.
“We’re coming up on the block,” Bitch remarked from the driver’s seat. I turned my head, looking over the front seats and out through the windows of the van at a quiet street of industrial lots, with smaller businesses sharing the same modular hybrid lots of warehouse and office space, each one adapted to the needs of whichever small corp held the lease.
The base plans of the buildings were uniform and uniformly old, making me think it was an early-century business park built on the outskirts of Brockton Bay back when companies were more amenable to sharing space with their competitors, before being swallowed up by the sprawling city. In the present, it sat as an ocean of low-rise industry surrounded by the monolithic concrete tenements and megabuildings of the New Estates, with yellow lights visible behind shuttered windows.
“That’s a lot of eyes…” Tattletale remarked as she looked up at the Estates. “Even in this neighbourhood, someone behind those windows is going to call the cops when the shooting starts.”
“Exfil will be difficult,” Grue nodded. “Especially with that truck. Although, Knight Errant’s response times are slower in this part of town. That’s our window.”
“I know we get a bonus if we hijack the shipment,” I began, “but maybe we’d be better off just destroying it outright? It certainly seems like the safer option.”
“We need to at least make the attempt, Bug,” Grue countered. “Nobody ever hit the big leagues by doing the bare minimum. Besides, we can always destroy it on the way out if it gets too hot, or ditch it if we know the Pawns will grab it before the Chosen.”
“Right,” I nodded, feeling a little chagrined; I was trying not to pick the safe option anymore. It felt too much like a bug’s instinct.
“That’s our building, right?” Regent asked, leaning over the back of the seats. “A turn of the century warehouse. This job brings me to the best places.”
“That’s it,” I confirmed; it was virtually identical to every other building in the estate, but gridlink didn’t lie.
“How many of these buildings are occupied?” Grue asked, eyeing our surroundings.
“It’s hard to say for sure,” I answered. “All of them are owned. Two of the ones on the corner are up for rent, but that’s a company truck in front of the one on the left.
The estate’s modular warehouses were all squat rectangles two stories tall with sheet metal roofs perched on top of thick steel girders, with the space in-between filled by bricks to wall them off from the city. Most didn’t even have anything separating them from the rest of the lot, but the AAO warehouse had a simple chain-link fence topped with razor wire that surrounded the combined parking and loading lot along the longer side of the rectangle, with a single semi-truck sized garage door set in the middle.
There was another door on the far end of the rectangle. It was human sized – which meant I’d have to stoop, but that was unsurprising when it was built before goblinisation – and according to the floor plan it opened up into an open plan office space on the first floor, with a bathroom, break room and stairwell near the entrance, and a meeting room and a handful of smaller offices on the second. A small business that only owned this building would have easily filled that space, but this was AAO’s dumping ground; that side of the building would be barely used.
“That building looks promising,” I said, gesturing across the street from the office space. The building in question clearly belonged to a scientific start up, with ‘HITEC’ written on a sleek modern sign next to a symbol that was probably meant to evoke an atom, before it was warped and altered enough to be trademarkable. The end result was something that looked like someone had tried to fry an egg and failed spectacularly.
“The broken windows, right?” Tattletale asked.
“That and gridlink records less stationary vehicles on that side of the street,” I explained. “Nobody’s parking there during the day. The company still exists, but they’re clearly not doing well. I imagine the banks will foreclose on the building soon, unless it got forgotten in a sloppy liquidation.”
“It’s across from the offices, too,” Grue said, echoing what I’d already noticed. “I think they’re our best way in; they have first floor windows that front onto the road and the Chosen’s priority will be on protecting the warehouse floor. They don’t have the manpower to leave more than a token lookout there and still secure the rest of the perimeter.”
Without being asked, Bitch pulled into the parking lot of the empty building and killed the engine; it was late enough that the business park was completely empty, which meant all I had to do was mask a few cameras as we sidled up to the front door. I could have done it in my sleep.
Our suspicions were confirmed when I was presented with a completely inert electronic lock; whoever owned the place had clearly forgotten to pay the power company at some point. Grue was about to tear open the door, before Tattletale placed a hand on his forearm to hold him back.
She peered at the lock, inspecting it closely before squatting down and dragging her fingers through a small patch of brick dust below the door. She brought her hand up to her mouth, with her palm upright and fingers pointed towards the lock. She blew, the dust seeming to glisten as it flew from her fingers and dove into the crevices of the lock; inbetween the keys on the keypad and down the gap between the door and the frame. Tattletale closed her palm and slid it to the right, the motion accompanied by the distinct click of the bar sliding back into its housing.
“No reason to leave a trace,” she remarked. “I doubt the Chosen would notice a broken lock, but why take the chance?”
“Good point,” Grue acknowledged as he pulled the door open, his pistol held in one hand – it seemed like a learned reflex, rather than a conscious belief that there was a threat in the building.
Bitch followed behind him, her own pistol still holstered in her suit jacket. Her Crawler scuttled between her feet, skittering off into the dark confines of the derelict company. I filed in after them, followed by Regent, before Tattletale plunged us all into darkness as she pulled the door shut. It wasn’t a problem for me – I could still see the heat their bodies were giving off, as well as their aura in the matrix – but Tattletale fixed the issue a moment later as she conjured a ball of heatless fire, casting a flickering white glow over the space.
I followed her out of the offices and into the main space of the building. The previous occupants had gutted the expansive warehouse seen on the floorplans, sectioning it off into two floors of what looked like laboratories, but there was still a space behind the shuttered door that was just large enough to act as an enclosed loading bay.
“We could park the van in here,” I remarked, eyeing the door. It looked like it hadn’t moved in years, but Grue, Bitch and I should be able to force it open.
“Good idea,” Grue acknowledged. “It’ll keep it out of sight, but close if we need a quick exfil.”
He paused, looking at me with an indeterminable expression. “Maybe you should stay with it? That way you’re nearby if things go wrong.”
It took me a second to realise why he looked so nervous; he was worried I’d want to work from home again. It was confusing because the thought hadn’t even occurred to me. For the briefest moment, I’d bristled at the idea that he was suggesting I stay back from the fighting, rather than get closer than I ever had before.
“Of course,” I nodded. “If the Chosen have a decker of their own, I wouldn’t be able to keep up from halfway across the city. Distance adds more noise to cut through,” I explained. “Back in the last warehouse, the Yakuza’s decker was working just as remotely as I was, so we were on a level footing.”
“I didn’t realise it made so much of a difference,” he remarked.
“It’s a matter of milliseconds,” I clarified, “but in cyberspace, milliseconds count. Either way, it’d be best if you waited for my signal before going in. If I can break into the network, I can mark out the positions of anyone in the warehouse who’s connected to the matrix.”
I paused, looking at Bitch. She was standing a little ways back from us, listening intently to the plan.
“Bitch, if you can get your Crawler into the warehouse, I can cross-reference it with what I can see in the matrix and mark the offline targets as well. Should stop anyone being surprised by a policlub staffer with a hero complex.”
“Excellent,” Grue nodded, his thumb and forefinger resting on his chin as he thought through the plan. “Then we’ll make entry through the offices. Bitch, I think you should stay here with Bug for at least the initial assault; I’ll ask our client for an armour-piercing rifle so you can pick off Chosen through the walls before we attack.”
Bitch nodded, her optics twitching as she thought.
“Even with her drones following you in,” I began, “are you sure you want to leave her behind?”
“Having good overwatch is more useful than another body,” Grue explained. “It’s not the largest warehouse out there. Besides,” he looked at Regent, “we’ll be bringing spirits in with us?”
Regent sighed at the implied question, taking a moment to check his fingernails before answering.
“I suppose I can bind one. I’ll send it through another entrance; it can soak up bullets for us.”
“Good,” Grue nodded. “While we’re doing that, Bug unlocks the truck. If you can’t, Tattletale can hotwire it.”
“You can?” I asked, surprised.
“It’s a skill I’ve picked up along the way,” she answered cryptically. I had to assume it was for the benefit of the others, since I knew exactly what she’d been doing before she started Shadowrunning.
“If we can’t get control,” Grue continued, “I chuck a couple of incendiary grenades under the truck and Bitch puts an armour-piercing round through the fuel tank. Then we pull back to the van and bug out.”
Silence fell as we all thought through the plan in our own ways, focusing on our own unique points of failure. All the ways it could go wrong, all the ways it could go right, and what we as individuals needed to contribute to ensure the plan as a whole was a success.
“So, that’s it?” I asked, breaking the silence.
“That’s it,” Tattletale nodded. “All that’s left is to call the boss and ask for a shiny new gun. Then we come back here tomorrow ready for war.”
Or to start one… I thought, darkly, as I allowed my mind to slip into the matrix.
In the distance, I could see the scattered webs of data that were strung like washing lines throughout the estates, as the residents there watched trideo on jury-rigged sets, or hooked up older-model comms to the glacially slow bandwidth of the public grid.
The industrial site was a virtual ghost town in comparison. With the buildings shut up for the night, the only activity was the occasional scant monitoring equipment or inert burglar alarm in the businesses, their more data-intensive systems shut up for the night.
It’s quiet. But it won’t stay quiet for long…