As the four-by-four drove away from the team of Shadowrunners, leaving the emptying roads of the warehouse district and joining the still-flowing evening traffic of the Lord Street thoroughfare, Gregor rested the nondescript silver case on his lap, his oversized fingers struggling for a moment as he input the code.
The lock beeped once, the light switching from red to green, and Gregor gingerly lifted up the lid. Inside, cocooned in foam packaging, was a single wristwatch. To his untrained eye, the watch was an anachronism – with mechanical hands rather than a digital display.
To the trained eye, those anachronisms would only become more apparent. The watch had no presence in the Matrix, no battery or electronic components of any kind. Its internal mechanism was clockwork, and the spring that drove it would have to be periodically wound up to ensure it kept the proper time. Nor had any electronic tools touched it during the manufacturing process; each component had been made by hand by Swiss artisans, practicing their trade in the same way as their forefathers would have centuries ago.
It was as close to perfection as metahuman hands could manage, and it had a price tag to match. Gregor reached into his jacket pocket and drew out a pair of white gloves, slipping them onto his hands before taking the watch out and looking it over, checking for any obvious damage from what it had endured. He was struck by how small it seemed; even if the strap were twice as long it still wouldn't be enough to circle his wrist.
Satisfied that no harm had been done to it, he gently set the watch back into the case and closed it, the lock beeping again as it reset. He took off the gloves, folding and returning them to his pocket, and took out his commlink.
The number he wanted was in his contacts under "GC", and he received an answer after his comm had rung four times.
"Ares Arms, General Cantarelli's office, how may I direct your call?"
The voice was young, male, and in all likelihood human.
"I must speak to the General on a personal matter," Gregor stated, as his driver deftly overtook a greyhound bus, cutting off a sedan in the process.
"I'm sorry sir," the man replied, his tone a textbook example of a feigned apology, "the General is in a meeting right now. I can take a message?"
"I see. To whom am I speaking?"
"Marcus Wright, sir. I'm the General's PA."
Gregor paused for a moment as he deliberated how best to proceed.
"Simply inform the General that his lost property has been found."
"Oh!" the man exclaimed. "Is this about the Patek Philippe?"
Gregor relaxed slightly.
"That is correct. I am calling to inform the General that it has been successfully retrieved."
"I'll be honest, I'd given that up for lost," the personal assistant said, though he sounded relieved all the same. "I only reached out to your organisation to do the due diligence."
"So you put out the contract?" Gregor asked. "We were informed this was a request from General Cantarelli."
"The General asked me to look into it," he explained, "but I think he'd written it off. This'll be a feather in my cap, that's for sure."
"I am happy for you," Gregor said, noncommittedly. "All that remains is to fulfil the first part of your payment, then I shall dispatch the watch by courier. Would you prefer it to be delivered to the General's office, or his private residence?"
"Office, definitely," he replied. "I'll collect it and hand it over to the General myself. After delivering the second half of your payment, naturally."
"Naturally. Our courier will contact you when he is on route. A pleasure doing business, Mr Wright."
Gregor hung up the call, tucking away his commlink and watching out the window as his driver turned off Lord Street, up the exit ramp and into the hills. The streets here were narrower, with four lanes of traffic turning into two in places, and the corporate office blocks began to give way to franchise chains and small businesses.
"Pull in here," he said to the driver as they approached a small family-run deli. The driver had already been halfway to making the turn – this was a fairly frequent stop. Once they were parked, Gregor wordlessly handed the driver a disposable credstick and waited patiently until she re-emerged with a plastic bag full of sandwiches.
She made a half-hearted to return the stick, which Gregor waved off, and soon they were making their way through the streets again, as the neighbourhood changed once more. Gone were the small businesses and office blocks, and in their place were wide avenues lined with bars and clubs.
Among the mass of gaudy neon signs and impossibly-large AR artwork, one club was conspicuous by its inconspicuousness. It was tall, but its front was plain and unadorned save for glowing yellow letters spelling out 'Palanquin' in an almost intentionally plain script.
There was a long line in front of the building, kept separate from the street by simple chain ropes and separate from the club by a more elaborate gate and a pair of burly bouncers. The driver pulled up in front of that gate and Gregor, sandwiches in one hand and briefcase in the other, stepped out as one of the bouncers wordlessly opened up the entrance.
"What the hell?" one of the girls near the front of the line complained. "We've been waiting for forty-five minutes and you let that fat trog through just like that?"
"Out of the line," the closest doorman, a seven-foot tall ork with muscles almost bursting through his suit jacket said, his voice bored.
"The hell? Why?"
"You just dissed a shareholder, fuckwit," the doorman told her. "Out of the line. You and your friends are banned."
Gregor smiled and shook his head. It was truly amazing how power could reverse so many barriers, especially in this city.
At many of the other clubs in this district, the line was nothing more than a carefully maintained illusion used to create the impression of a thriving establishment, regardless of how many people were actually in side. No such deceptions were needed in Palanquin; even on a Tuesday evening, the main floor of the club was packed.
Gregor made his way through the tightly-packed crowds of dancers and drinkers, his grip like iron on the handle of the case. He ignored the stairs up to the VIP section, instead ducking behind the bar and making his way towards a nondescript elevator in the club's backrooms.
Four floors later and he stepped out of the elevator into the Palanquin's private rooms, ones that were the private preserve of the organisation's members. Their home, sanctuary and fortress all in one.
In theory, at least. In practice, the woman staggering out of the first door on the right was definitely not part of the team. With pink highlights in her hair and blue lipstick, Gregor could have been fooled into thinking the blonde human had just stepped off the dance floor for a moment, were it not for the crumpled dress she was adjusting with one hand while her other had a tight grip on her high heels.
She was followed, to Gregor's slight surprise, by another woman – an ork with darker hair and a European cast to her features – in a similar state of dishevelment. The first girl looked mortified as she found herself face to face with Gregor, while the other gave him a wry smile.
At the sound of their footsteps slowing, the last occupant of the room poked his head out the door.
"Gregor, my boy!" Newter stepped out into the corridor, his arms outstretched. He was a lithe ork, perhaps twenty years old – though he himself was not sure – and as skinny as a rake with tawny brown skin. He was shirtless, revealing the results of careful exercise and hard labour, and had clearly only just thrown on the sweatpants he was wearing.
"I brought your dinner." Gregor said, holding up the carrier bag of sandwiches.
"Thanks, chummer!" Newter replied, even as he walked the women to the elevator.
"I also need to speak with you," he continued, as it seemed like Newter would go down the elevator with the girls.
"Right…" he turned to his companions. "You girls take care. See you again, Laura? Mary?"
"Maybe," the dark haired girl – Laura – replied. "Maybe not." The last two words were said with a meaningful wink at Gregor.
As the elevator door closed, Newter turned back to Gregor with the same easy smile he'd shown the women.
"Does Faultline know you're bringing girls up here?" Gregor asked, pointedly.
"It's cool," Newter shrugged. "She swung by while we were in the lounge and joined in the conversation, so she's obviously okay with it." He stepped forward reaching into the bag and retrieving one of the sandwiches.
"So, what's the job?"
"Courier," Gregor said simply, holding up the case so Newter could see it. "I need you to drive to the head office of Ares Arms, in Baltimore. You'll hand this case off to a man named Marcus Wright, from the outer office of the Executive Vice President."
"The watch job," Newter nodded. "I remember. Seems a lot of effort to go through when he could just look at his comm if he wanted to tell the time."
"It was a great deal of effort for the team who retrieved it, and less effort for us, but for the client? For them, it was no effort at all."
Newter snorted. "'Aint that the truth. Alright, I'll set off first thing tomorrow morning. Don't want to drive drunk, after all."
"Very well. I will pass on the contact details and store the briefcase in my safe."
As Newter nodded, stepping back into his room and closing the door, Gregor knocked on the door opposite.
"Come in!"
The apartment was well furnished, and filled with clutter. The walls were covered in posters, pictures, overflowing bookshelves, a trideo screen and a wall-mounted sound system that was loud enough to drown out the sound of the club. A computer was set aside on a desk, and much of the remaining space was taken up by a long couch.
At first glance, it would appear as if the occupant on one of the apartment's beds – set on opposite sides of the room – had allowed her sense of style to completely overcome the other, but Gregor knew the balance of décor would be reversed in augmented reality.
The girl who lived in the real world was lying back on her bed, surrounded by stacks of glossy magazines. She was younger than Newter – but only just – and human, with curly brown hair and a dense covering of freckles on her face and hands.
The girl who lived in the virtual world was seated in the corner, staring into the wall. She was elven, and as such could be anywhere between twenty and two hundred, with platinum white-blonde hair. Her clothing was simple; designed to be easy to put on.
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"I brought your dinner, Emily."
"Thanks," the freckled girl responded, catching the sandwich he threw to her and unwrapping it from the packaging.
"Is she here?" he asked, gesturing to the girl in the corner.
"See for yourself," Emily replied, before tossing Gregor a pair of AR sunglasses. Gregor held the glasses up to his comm for a moment, syncing the pair, before putting them on.
The appearance of Elle's space changed every day, as she meticulously tore down and recreated features as the whims led her. At present, the bedroom had been replaced by a meticulously-crafted zen garden of neon-pink cherry blossoms and sand carefully raked into impossible visual illusions. The walls had been torn down, or switched out for illusions that stretched the garden off into infinity.
In the real world, Elle was wearing a plain sweater and jeans that were easy for her to put on, but in her world she was not bound by such mundane constraints, and instead wore ephemeral silk robes that shifted impossibly in an intangible breeze.
As Gregor's commlink recognised the presence of the AR glasses, it automatically replaced its icon with that of his persona; a carbon-copy of the man himself. He became visible in the matrix, and Elle's eyes immediately snapped to him.
"Hello Gregor," she smiled.
"Hello, Elle," he returned the smile. "May I come closer?"
"Of course," she answered, warmly. "But please do not disrupt the sand."
Gregor nodded, placing each foot on the stepping-stones placed in trails throughout the garden, careful to ensure both that he did not disrupt her world and that he did not stub his toe on Emily's furniture.
Once he was in front of Elle he knelt down, gently grabbed her hand, and uncurled her fingers before placing her sandwich in her grasp.
"I have brought your dinner, Elle."
The Technomancer brought her hand up to her eyes, staring at it intently.
"There's nothing there, and I already ate." She gestured to an apple tree a few yards away, one formed from crystals and coloured glass.
"It is a beautiful fruit," Gregor admitted, "but there is no nourishment in it. You have food in your hand, Elle. You must eat it."
"Okay. But only because I trust you."
She brought her hand up to her mouth, jumping a little as she brushed the sandwich against her lips. That was enough to get her to start eating it, in slow, deliberate bites.
After Gregor had been running for about a year, a job took them deep into the heart of a Mitsuhama Consumer Technologies research facility in the territory of the Pueblo Corporate Council. They had gone in search of information, but in the chaos of their entry they had unintentionally caused an escape attempt amongst the test subjects contained there. Elle had been one of them, and she had helped the team make their exit. Afterwards, she had joined them, and had taken on the name Labyrinth.
Whatever MCT had put her through, she had responded by using her Technomancer abilities to retreat into the matrix, almost entirely withdrawing from the real world.
Gregor sat there watching Elle until she was most of the way through her sandwich, then stood up, leaving Emily's glasses at the foot of her bed and nodding as she waved goodbye.
Before pressing on, he made a detour into the next door on the left. His own apartment had been sparse once, but was slowly filling up with the flotsam and jetsam of a settled life. Shamanic totems sat next to holiday photos, there was a gun rack next to the coat hooks, and two corners of the space had been set aside for ritual work and meditation respectively. The furniture was split evenly between normal-sized pieces and custom orders made to fit a troll's bulk.
He set his own sandwich down on his desk for later as he knelt to put in the code for the safe, carefully placing the briefcase on the shelf above his emergency cash and gold reserves before resealing both the mundane and magical locks.
A door opened behind him, and Gregor stood up, turning quickly before calming as he saw who had just walked in. Her skin-tight taksuit was covered in grime and brick dust, and her face was clammy with sweat, but, looking at her, Gregor still felt his heart quicken.
"Gilmar," she greeted him, using his real name rather than his handle. "Have a quiet night?"
"As quiet as can be expected, Sinéad" he replied as he crossed the room, holding out his second last sandwich. "I bought dinner."
"No, you bought a sandwich. Dinner involves menus, waitresses and hot food. Maybe a candle if you're feeling fancy." She smiled sardonically. "Besides, it's Shamrock when I'm dressed like this. You're the one who drilled that into me."
She waved off the offered meal.
"Not right now; I'm sweaty and disgusting. We'll eat together, once you're done briefing the boss."
"You have already briefed her?" Gregor asked as he went to set her sandwich down beside his, and Shamrock locked her rifle into the gun case.
"I have," Shamrock answered as she began to unzip her taksuit. "They're an impressive bunch, for amateurs.
Gilmar snorted, even as he stepped over to help her reach. "What a difference a few years makes. Sometimes I forget we were ever anything less than professional."
Sinéad shrugged off the rest of her taksuit, tossing it into a laundry basket before stepping into the bathroom. After a moment, the sound of a running shower filled the apartment. Gilmar paused, leaning against the open bathroom door. He couldn't help his eye wandering to the ring on Sinéad's finger; an exact copy – size excluded – to the one on his own.
"Go on, you big lug," she said as she stretched out an arm to nudge the door closed. "It doesn't do to keep the boss waiting."
Gregor nodded as he recentred himself, striding out of his apartment and down the hall to Faultline's office, passing the shared kitchen and living room.
Faultline was standing before a floor-to-ceiling window, wearing a white business blouse with the sleeves rolled up and black slacks tucked into shiny black riding boots. Before her, past the panes of glass, the city stretched out. Palanquin was not the tallest building in the neighbourhood, but it was at the top of the hill and, as such, held a commanding view of the city's skyline, out past the towering edifices of Medhall and Ares to the endless expanse of the Atlantic.
She turned as Gregor crossed the room, her features sharp and her wavy black hair tied back in a ponytail. Her expression was severe, and Gregor's unconsciously shifted to match her, even as he held out the last sandwich.
"It was seven o'clock. Nobody had eaten yet."
"Thank you. How's Elle?"
"Lost in the matrix, but here rather than elsewhere. She has eaten now. Perhaps tomorrow will be better."
Faultline sighed, even as she moved to sit behind her oak desk. Genuine oak, not a synthetic imitation – it was a spoil of war, from a long-distant job.
"Let's hope. But at least she's happier these days. Regardless, we have business to discuss. Pull up a chair."
Gregor nodded, grabbing a chair from the wall as Faultline hit a button on her desk. Immediately, the floor to ceiling window blacked out, each pane of glass coming back online as a panopticon of news feeds, stock reports, chat logs and elaborate grids displaying engaged, resting and available Shadowrunners, both teams and solos. A separate grid displayed potential, pending and current clients, their details obfuscated by codenames.
"First, the state of the city," Faultline began, the pair falling into a familiar and comfortable routine as the fixer used her second in command as a sounding board. She hit another button on her desk and the centre retracted to reveal a holographic display, set to show a map of the city with extraterritorial zones marked out and numbers floating over each notable company, great and small, showing current stock prices.
"Ares and Medhall are largely in a holding pattern. Mayor Christner's re-election was a political victory for Ares, and Medhall have yet to determine a suitable response. The Dockworkers Association will likely be running damage control after the recovery of so many stolen shipping containers. They've been minimising the issue, and the high-profile return of so much stolen property has highlighted the scale of the problem."
"Do you think this will affect the smuggling routes?" Gregor asked, manipulating the hologram as he scrolled through files. "We have several pending shipments, and if the Marche are about to renege on the deal…"
"They won't," Faultline reassured him. "Any loss in their legitimate income would only make them more determined to squeeze as much illegal income out of the docks as possible. No, if there's any part of the corporate landscape that concerns me, it's this."
She pulled up an intercepted communication lifted from the matrix by Labyrinth. Gregor's eyes darted over the details; it was a fairly standard report, listing the delivery of an additional twelve ambulances to the city, along with the authorisation needed to hire on more drivers, paramedics and security guards to crew them.
"CrashCart?" Gregor mused, stroking his chin. "They're expanding?"
"When all logic and good sense would have them cut their losses and leave," Faultline nodded. "Either they have inside information we don't, or Evo Biomedical are planning something that will change the situation."
Gregor was silent, staring at the graphs and figures as if he could somehow discern something from the numbers. Not for the first time, he found himself frustrated by the secrecy of their new profession. They moved in a world of shadows, and though they had a clearer picture of events than the Shadowrunners who worked for them, that only made the dark corners of the world stand out all the more.
"In more immediate news," Faultline drew his attention back to the present, as she gestured to a rolling newsfeed playing on one of the screens behind her, "Knight Errant have claimed full responsibility for securing both the stolen containers and the bunraku cyborgs. Grue's team has been entirely omitted from their press releases."
"And the Yakuza?"
A satisfied smile crept across Faultline's face.
"We seem to have only escalated their internal conflict. Lung is still the king, of course, but Bakuda seems to have hoped her… experiment would give her an edge over Oni Lee. Both factions have covertly reached out to us with jobs aimed at sabotaging the other."
"Can we accept work from both without running afoul of a conflict of interest?"
"If we're careful," Faultline shrugged. "We'll use different teams, and only accept discreet jobs that aren't likely to cross paths. I'll justify it as us not wanting to publicly tie our flag to one side."
"And what of Grue and his people?" Gregor asked. "I know Shamrock has given her assessment."
Thanks to Labyrinth's efforts in the matrix, Faultline's network had been aware of the location of the case before they'd even delivered the first brief to Grue. Faultline had decided – and Gregor had agreed – that it represented an opportunity to test the up-and-coming team to see if they were worthy of being added to Palanquin's roster.
Consequently, Shamrock had spent several days stalking out the warehouse in a cloaked taksuit, waiting for Grue to make his move.
"They weren't subtle," Faultline began, a little dismissively, "but we already knew that would be the case. They lack an infiltrator, after all, but they do have a disproportionate amount of firepower. Shamrock said they fought well, but with some coordination issues. They're gifted amateurs, in short."
"That concurs with my assessment," Gregor added, thinking back to the dishevelled troll who had presented herself as the group's decker, and the obvious tension that existed between her and many of the others. "Were you able to vet them?"
"Partially," Faultline frowned, bringing up a number of files.
"Grue was simple enough. Brian Laborn been hired muscle for years now, all within the city. Bitch has an intermittent history in several cities, and I've managed to dig up a real name. Rachel Lindt. She's removed her SIN since then."
Their files were short, with the kind of brevity that comes from an uncomplicated history. Grue's had a list of prior employers, starting out with street gangs and finishing up with a few solo jobs before he'd gathered together his team of waifs and strays. Bitch's file, in contrast, had a long list of enemies, as she left or was driven out of city after city on her perpetual journey north-east.
"It seems she has run out of land…" Gregor mused.
"Quite," Faultline said with a grin, before gesturing to the next file. "Regent was harder to track. He goes by 'Alec,' but his real name is Jean-Paul Vasil. He ran away from a cult in Quebec, run by his father."
"For ideological reasons?" Gregor asked. "Moral ones?"
"For reasons of control, I think," Faultline said. "Or a lack of it. He paid a fixer in Montreal to change his identity before crossing the border, then cropped up in Ontario as 'Alec Lauren.' His current identity is pretty high quality – I think he must have stolen some of daddy's money on the way out – but it's nothing compared to Tattletale's."
"Another runaway?" Gregor asked.
"I have no idea," Faultline replied, visibly frustrated. "Lisa Wilbourne is a fake identity, I've been able to establish that much, but as far as I can tell she simply appeared out of thin air a year ago, in Kansas City. Since then she's been slowly travelling east, getting by on cons and hired mage work before finally deciding to stop here. Who she was before is a mystery."
"She wouldn't be the first enigma we've employed," Gregor pointed out.
Faultline sighed. "True. She's not even the only one on Grue's team."
"You're talking about their Decker."
"Grue surprised us there," Faultline said, with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "I assumed he'd reach out to one of the independents, not find someone new. As far as I can tell, 'Bug' has been active for two years now, doing odd jobs on the net. If she hadn't shown up to the handover, we wouldn't even know what she looks like."
"If it is a concern, I could talk to Labyrinth and ask her to see what she can dig up."
Faultline shook her head. "Labyrinth isn't subtle, and the reputational damage isn't worth the risk of discovery, especially if she's just the shut-in hacker she seems to be. Just run her face through the system until we get a match."
"Very well," Gregor said, as he stood up. "Shall I inform Grue that we have agreed to sponsor his team?"
Faultline nodded, turning her attention back to the information arrayed in front of her. Gregor began to make his way out of the room, but paused at the threshold, turning back to look at her.
"Do you ever miss it?"
There were a great many things he could have been talking about. On the outside, Faultline's body was entirely human in appearance, but in reality very little of her humanity remained. There was not a single part of her body that had not been touched by the surgeon's knife, through both injury and deliberate sacrifice as she sought any way to gain an edge in the field. Her body was a shell of bioware and cyberware, nestled around her still-human brain.
But Gregor was not looking at her. His eyes were drawn to the suit of armour on a stand in the corner of the office, kept in Faultline's constant view. The power armour was pockmarked and scored, the decorative light grey cloth charred and burned. It stood upright and proud in spite of its injuries, and small lights were arrayed around it to emphasise it even more.
Faultline, surrounded by the tools of a far more subtle trade, looked up from her work. Her smile was gone; her expression steadfast and resolved.
"Not at all."