Lisa’s prediction proved to be accurate indeed, as the very next day I got a call from Brian saying that he’d received an invitation from Faultline. After my apparently less than stellar first impression, he was very sure to make sure that I knew to dress both smartly and professionally.
So I opened up my wardrobe and slipped on the clothes I’d bought the day before, covering myself in the aesthetic of a Shadowrunner in the hope that it would make me feel more like one. Slipping my belt through the loops on the top of my holster and wrapping the bottom strap around my thigh was one of the strangest experiences of my life, not least because I kept making eye contact with my old teddy bear that had been left on a shelf in my wardrobe for well over a decade now.
It felt like a betrayal, of dad at least. I wasn’t sure how mom would have reacted to my career. She’d worked on the other side of the table from time to time, sending out teams of runners for the ORC, and I couldn’t help wondering how she thought of them? Were they just opportunistic mercenaries in her eyes, whose greed could be turned to a progressive cause? Were they themselves non-conformists and rebels, whose criminality was just a reflection of the society they lived in?
I think she’d have given them more agency than that. They could be saints or sinners, depending on what they did and who they did it for. I just hope she’d understand. They seem like good people. I think.
Walking through the city with a gun at my side felt a lot more normal than I was expecting it to, but then again it wasn’t like I’d left home much anyway over the past few years. Out here, I didn’t have any memories for it to distort. Instead I watched with a sort of professional detachment as all the nervous looks returned, but at least this time I knew it was as much to do with me being armed as it was me being a troll.
They were waiting for me in the workshop below the loft. Brian and Rachel were dressed much the same as they had done during the raid, though both had left their body armour behind and Brian was wearing a collared shirt beneath his jacket. Regent’s clothes were all different, but the theme was largely the same, while Lisa seemed to be going for a shamanic private detective look, with a collared shirt and slacks underneath a long trenchcoat, and shamanic totems on layered necklaces.
Grue was armed, but not excessively so. Whether or not he’d managed to buy a replacement for his rifle, he’d only brought his smart pistol to the meeting. He wore it in a thigh holster, rather than tucked away in his jacket. Rachel had a drone perched on her shoulder – the Crawler she’d brought but not used on the last job – and while Regent or Lisa weren’t obviously armed, they were obviously mages. Which was just as good.
More to the point, all of us looked like we fit. Even Alec’s style broadly matched with the rest of the group. We looked like a team, and I straightened up a little at the thought. It felt good.
“Is that an Executioner?” Grue asked, with disbelief in his voice.
I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s more proportional than a regular pistol, and I got it at a discount. So, what do you think? Do I look like a Shadowrunner?”
Immediately I regretted giving him the excuse to look me up and down, and my nerves came rushing back all at once. After a moment, though, he simply nodded.
“You do. Maybe not a decker, but much better than before.”
“Oh?” I smirked. “And what does a decker look like, exactly?”
“Fair enough,” he nodded. “Regardless, this is your first meeting with a client, so keep calm, pay attention and don’t show any weakness. He’ll sniff it right out and take it out of our paycheck.”
“I’ve got it,” I said back, a little tense. Grue paused for a moment, looking at me, and nodded.
“Then let’s go.”
With the full team in Bitch’s van, it was more than a little cramped. Grue rode up front with her, and I was grateful for that. The two of us were easily the biggest people on the team, after all. Tattletale and Regent were tiny in comparison, and Regent only made one crack about how much space I took up.
We travelled south west through the north end of the city, skirting around the periphery of the elevated ring-road that separated downtown from the rest of Brockton Bay. West of downtown, equally placed to hoover up traffic from the corporate heart of the city and the vast swathes of residential districts to the north, was a long stretch of bars, clubs, restaurants and anywhere else people might go to let their hair down. It hugged the campus of Brockton Bay University – just barely far enough to maintain plausible deniability – and from what I’d heard more than a few students paid for their digs with evening shifts.
We sped quickly through the red light district, its brothels, strip clubs, Simsense dens and dollhouses shut up for the day, before passing into the broader market of nightclubs and bars that took up most of Constitution Hill, the hill itself rising up in front of us in endless tiers of rooftop bars and gardens.
It was a part of the city I had never been to before. Maybe, if things had gone differently, I’d have gone to college like I knew mom always wanted me to, and I’d have come down here with whatever friends I managed to make. As it was, this part of the city was utterly alien to me, and I had no idea what to expect from the club itself.
While almost everywhere was quiet at this time of day – the shutters pulled down over their doors, their signs unlit and their matrix hosts quiet – Palanquin seemed somehow even quieter than most. It didn’t stand out, with a bare brick front and a sign that was about as simple as signs get. I found myself wondering if drew popularity from word of mouth, or if it deliberately cultivated the quiet to better serve its secondary purpose as a fixer’s base of operations.
Either way, Rachel pulled to a halt right at the front doors and, once we’d all disembarked, turned her van over to the autopilot; to burn fuel circling the block rather than burn money on exorbitant parking charges.
This early in the day, there was no line to get into the club, but there was still a burly ork bouncer wearing a dark blue turtleneck under his suit jacket, and with a faint string of data linking his concealed smartgun to his black sunglasses.
I watched the matrix as an algorithm inside the building drew on the feed from those glasses, before sending back a response. Wordlessly, the bouncer stepped aside and gestured for us to enter.
Grue led the way, equally wordlessly, but I mumbled “thanks” to the bouncer before realising I might have made some sort of Shadowrunner faux pas by not being cool and aloof.
The main floor of the club was wide and expansive, with an open dance floor gathered around a raised stage. The dance floor was, in turn, surrounded by a raised area – level with the stage – that held two bars, quieter areas with a few couches and booths, and the doors to the bathrooms.
The lights were up, but I could see a whole panopticon of stage lighting raised on gantries over the dance floor. I couldn’t even begin to picture what it would look like when packed full of people every evening, with the lights sending out the strobing patterns I could see burned into their programming.
At one of the bars, staff members were busy restocking the shelves for the evening. Each of them wore crisp white shirts, the men in trousers and the women in pencil skirts, though that wasn’t a universal rule in either case. It was more of a dress code than a proper uniform, but it did add a lot to the professionalism of the place. If it weren’t for the fact that there was another team of obvious Shadowrunners hanging out on some of the couches, I’d have felt out of place.
There was a woman standing in front of the bar, her outfit much the same as the other staff but of a noticeably higher quality. As we entered, she turned from where she had been directing the her colleagues to walk over to us. She was a brunette human with a freckled face and the nametag pinned to her shirt read ‘Emily: Duty Manager.’
“You must be Grue. Welcome to Palanquin. You’re a little early, so just grab a seat somewhere and I’ll come and get you when Mr Johnson is ready for you. In the meantime, can I get any of you something to drink?”
“Not while we’re working, thanks,” Grue replied for us.
“Suit yourself,” Emily shrugged, before heading back over to the bar.
We claimed a few couches for ourselves, and Regent immediately kicked his feet up onto the low coffee table in front of his. I sat next to Lisa, stretching my legs out in front of me. The club had a few troll-sized couches scattered about the small seating area, but that would mean sitting apart from the others.
“So,” Tattletale began, “do you think this is a ploy?”
“What is?” I asked.
“Making us wait.”
“I think you’re overthinking things,” Grue replied.
The two fell into conversation, and I found myself looking around the club. Not at its physical presence, but at its AR features. There was the usual slew of fluctuating holographic price tags, review boards, and dormant special effects programmes for the stage, but something seemed off about them.
They looked a lot more organic than I’d come to expect from store-bought programmes, but nor did they have the rigid lines and careful tuning of something custom-made by a single decker.
I was contemplating whether to dive into the matrix and poke around some more when my attention was drawn back to the real world as Grue locked eyes with a woman who had just walked through the front door.
“Faultline,” he murmured, apparently for my benefit.
Our fixer appeared to be a human woman in her late twenties, with black hair tied back in a ponytail and a severe expression on her face. She looked like she’d just come back from some corporate meeting; dressed in a sharp grey suit jacket and slacks.
Her appearance was also a carefully sculpted façade of bioware to hide the extent of her modifications. I could see tightly-coiled cyberware bristling beneath her skin, full of potential energy.
She ignored us at first, walking over to talk to Emily. At the same time, I could see a constant stream of information flowing into her implanted commlink, but it was encrypted and I wasn’t about to risk angering her with a failed attempt to crack the encryption.
Once she’d finished her business with the duty manager, Faultline turned and strode across the room towards us, the manager in tow. I watched as Grue stiffened in his seat, but the others seemed largely indifferent. Tattletale even seemed to relax more, leaning back and throwing her arm over the back of the couch. As for me, I tried my best not to wilt under her appraising stare.
“Mr Johnson has just arrived via the VIP entrance,” she informed us, matter of factly. “I’m sure you’re all familiar with the protocol for this sort of meet.”
“We aren’t amateurs,” Grue said.
“You aren’t. Well, most of you aren’t.” She turned to look at me. “Welcome to the game, Bug. I have high expectations, and that goes for the rest of you as well. Clients come to me because they know I have quality people who do quality work. Shadowrunners come to me because they know I have quality clients. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship, and I work hard to keep it beneficial.”
“This job is another test, isn’t it?” Tattletale asked, as Grue’s eyes widened at the interruption.
“Of course it is,” Faultline replied with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I’ll leave it up to you to decide what exactly I’m testing.”
She turned and made her way back across the room, leaving her employee behind.
“Mr Johnson is ready for you now,” Emily said. “Please follow me.”
Grue led the way as we followed her past a bouncer – who unlatched a velvet rope blocking off a set of stairs – and up into what seemed to be a VIP area located on a mezzanine floor above the main club, with one-way windows looking down past the lighting rig. It was a much more intimate space than the floor below, with secluded booths and couches, and the walls seemed to absorb the sound rather than echo it.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
The booths were more than wide enough for a team of Shadowrunners plus one extra, and two of the ones in the room were hidden away behind drawn curtains, as other teams on Palanquin’s roster negotiated with their own clients.
Apart from us, only one other person was visible in the room. ‘Mr Johnson’ was actually a young human woman – maybe a few years older than me – with platinum blonde hair. She was the archetypal kind of beautiful, the sort of person who was probably a cheerleader in high school, and who probably didn’t go to Winslow if her expensive suit was any indication. It was jet black, trimmed with gold, and even though she was tall enough not to need to, she was wearing heels.
She blinked as she caught sight of us, before very deliberately schooling her face into a neutral expression.
“Mr Johnson,” Grue greeted her, entirely deadpan.
The client smiled, flashing her teeth.
“I’d prefer ‘Ms Johnson.’ I’m sure you enjoy your cloak and dagger traditions, but we have to move with the times. Please, sit down.”
Grue chuckled, but it sounded fake. Like he knew it was expected of him, and he was trying to make things go smoother. I stood aside as the others filed into the booth, so I wouldn’t have to cram my legs underneath the table, then sat on the end as Emily closed the curtain, sealing us off from the rest of the club and immediately giving the space a small and intimate feel that was maybe only a hair’s breadth away from being cramped.
“So,” Grue began, “how can we help you?”
“I need you to find someone,” Ms Johnson responded, “and then snatch them.”
“I see,” Grue said, even as Tattletale leant forward in her seat. “I assume they won’t come willingly?”
“Not if they have any sense,” Ms Johnson said with an almost bloodthirsty grin. “I assume that won’t be a problem?”
“Not on principle, no. Who’s the target?”
“A waste of space called Andrew Garcia,” she said venomously, even as I discreetly twisted my fingers to call up a messenger sprite. “He’s Chosen filth, or he was. He disappeared right as the cops were closing in on him, and he hasn’t been seen since. This would be seven years ago, now.”
I subtly twisted the fingers of my left hand, pulling on the ambient resonance flowing through the club. It was slower, clumsier, than when I was doing it in the Matrix – the physical limitations of my meat fingers a poor substitute for those of my persona – but I was still able to slowly begin weaving a messenger sprite.
“A lot can happen in seven years,” Grue said, a little hesitantly. “He could have left the city, for one.”
“In which case you tell me and I give you a quarter of your fee for wasting your time.”
“Half.” Grue responded, firmly.
“I’m paying you to find and kidnap a gangbanger. If you can’t do either of those, twenty five percent is a very generous consolation prize.”
The sprite took shape, perched on top of my knuckles, and I found myself eye-to-eye not with the oversized dragonfly I’d expected, but with a jet black crow. It stared up at me with black beady eyes and I blinked, surprised. I could still feel my connection to it, and I knew it would obey my commands, but this was… weird.
“Perhaps,” Grue conceded, “but that depends on what it’s twenty five percent of.”
The crow tilted its head and cawed, leaping off my hand to hop around the table, then flapping its wings once to pounce up onto the client’s shoulder before finally perching on her head. It looked at me like it was waiting for something, its black wings flickering with pent-up energy. Hesitantly, I reached out and forced my will onto the crow, sending it to root through my mother’s files, back in my apartment. It let out a last caw, before spreading its wings and flying off in a digital blur.
“I understand Nuyen is preferable. Twenty thousand. I’ve already paid your Fixer’s fee, so that money’s all yours.”
Split five ways, that’s four thousand. A good pay out by my standards, but not much more than the three thousand we got for the last job.
“There are a lot of unknowns in this job,” Grue said, leaning forward. “The most important is that we don’t yet know where Mr Garcia is now, or what sort of opposition we’ll face while extracting him. Twenty thousand isn’t enough for an unknown.”
The client laughed. “If you’re trying to put a number to a fantasy, you can’t. It could be more dangerous than you’re expecting, but it could just as easily be a cakewalk. Twenty thousand is what I’m offering.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tattletale growing increasingly more irritated, though she was doing a good job at hiding the expression. She looked like she wanted to jump in and say something, but that went against what Grue had told me of how these things usually went down. The team leader was the one who handled negotiations, and since Grue had the most experience, that meant him.
Instead, I saw her discreetly yet forcefully stamp Grue’s foot. Since her boots were as fashionable as they were practical, and his were heavy steel-toed things, Grue didn’t show any visible reaction, and simply kept talking.
“Twenty thousand is what we’d charge for a low to medium risk job with known quantities. If you want us to step into the unknown, you need to sweeten the pot. Even a little.”
Suddenly, I felt a stream of data linking me to my apartment, as the messenger crow constructed a link between me and mom’s files. Her Ork Rights Commission files, rather. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t find anything useful in her university files. More importantly, those files also held her password for the ORC’s systems, a password that – as far as I was aware – had never been removed or reset. From across the city, I sent another instruction to the courier, and it took those codes off on another journey.
Ms Johnson sighed, leaning back in her chair and checking her fingernails rather than continuing to make eye contact with Grue. Then she seemed to firm up, meeting his gaze again.
“I can do twenty-one thousand.”
Four thousand two hundred. Not a massive increase, but Grue seems satisfied.
“Acceptable. Now, we need to discuss the details. Tattletale and Bug are our best investigators,” he nodded to us, and Ms Johnson’s eyes immediately looked the pair of us up and down. They spent a lot longer on Lisa than on me, but I supposed that was because she was obviously a mage. I didn’t exactly scream ‘hacker,’ and if our client was the type to see stereotypes then she’d have a hard time making the connection. “I’m sure they have questions.”
“If you have any information on Mr Garcia,” Tattletale leapt at the invitation to speak, “no matter how small, we can make use of it. DNA samples would be ideal, but nothing’s ever that easy.”
Mom’s files had four different references to three different Andrew Garcia’s, but one of those was for a case in Baltimore she’d packaged into an awareness presentation. The incoming stream of data from the ORC was more informative; they kept a somewhat comprehensive list of Chosen members, as well as a more comprehensive list of former members. Six hits, two casual members and four with a much longer list of crimes. Only one of them also appeared on the active list.
“There are three Chosen members named Andrew Garcia who’ve dropped off the grid or out of the gang,” I said, only realising a moment later that I’d unintentionally cut Ms Johnson off. “Which one are you referring to?”
“Okay…” the client said, hesitantly. “I’m feeling a lot more confident about this than I was when I walked in here. Um, he was a person of interest in the firebombing of a med-centre in Sixty-Three. February, I think?”
“Got him,” I said, flagging the right guy and having the crow copy his file to mom’s computer.
Weird. He’s one of the ones without much of a record, and the med-centre bombing wasn’t the most notable crime linked to him.
“You know where he is?” she asked, her cool having vanished beneath naked shock.
“What?” I asked, puzzled. “Oh, no, sorry. I know which guy you’re talking about. Breadcrumbs, that’s all I’ve got. Still have to follow the trail.”
“Oh,” she replied, slumping back in her seat. “Well, I can see you have this all well in hand. If you’re happy to proceed,” she said, looking at Grue, “I’ll be happy to turn over the funds when you’re done.”
“What should we do when we have the guy?” Grue asked.
“Just call me,” she replied. “I’ll arrange a handover and wire you the money.”
“Then I’d say you have a deal,” he said, stretching his arm across the table.
As she reciprocated, I could see that – while Grue’s hand still dwarfed hers – our client was surprisingly athletic in her own right. I could see taut muscles beneath the lines of her suit as she shook his hand, before she stood up, brushed the curtain outside, and left the VIP room with what looked like a slight spring in her step.
We watched in silence as she left, before Tattletale leant over me, pulled the curtain back shut, and immediately leant forward, resting her elbows on the table with her fingers steepled in front of her.
“Anyone else get the feeling she’s hiding something from us?” she asked.
“It’s not our business,” Grue said. “All we have to do is find Andrew Garcia, and thanks to Bug we have a lead.”
“It is our business if she screws us over,” Tattletale pointed out. “Seriously, how old was she? Twenty two, maybe? Way too young to be running anything serious, but just the right age to be a patsy for someone else.”
For my part, I thought Tattletale had a point. Ms Johnson was an enigma, but more to the point there was a lot about her that didn’t add up. My instincts were screaming at me to dig deeper, to untangle the web and figure this out. Why go into a situation without knowing all the variables?
“That’s not how it’s done, Tattletale,” Grue said, wearily. “Damnit, we’ve talked about this.”
I stood up.
“I’m going to go use the bathroom real quick,” I said. “Then I’ll tell you what I’ve dug up so far.”
“Sure,” Grue said. “Well done, by the way. An impression like that will work wonders for our rep.”
I nodded, looking around the VIP area before spotting a door tucked away in the corner, with WC written on a metal plaque. Inside, the VIP bathroom certainly lived up to its name, with marble countertops and each stall being an individual room in its own right, with proper walls rather than flimsy boards. They didn’t even have any graffiti on them.
I locked the door, dropped the lid on the toilet seat, sat down and let meatspace disappear as my body slumped bonelessly against the wall.
I flung my persona down, passing through the floor and into the main room of the club. A digital bouncer was floating over the dance floor, a piece of security ICE given a facelift to match the space, but since I wasn’t doing anything against the rules it paid me no mind.
There were a few devices in the room, but only one icon was on its way out of the door. A commlink, almost certainly belonging to Ms Johnson herself. I wated until she’d left the club’s host and moved out onto the public grid, then subtly peeled away the walls of her commlink. A few moments later, and I pulled my matrix avatar back, satisfied.
What I wasn’t expecting was to find a woman standing in the bathroom, looking down at where my body lay in meatspace. She appeared to be a blonde elf, maybe a couple of years younger than me, wearing a thin and willowy dress that disappeared into labyrinthine patterns of digital fractals. She also appeared to be a persona, but there was a tangibility to her presence that made me think twice. She seemed almost weaved into the environment.
And then there was the crow perched on her shoulder, looking to all the world like it was whispering into her ear. She turned as I drifted back into the room, and I was struck by a singularly unique sense of déjà vu.
It’s like looking in the mirror.
It was a paradoxical thought – we couldn’t have looked further apart – but it was true all the same. Beyond the cosmetic differences of our personas, we both interacted with the world in the same way.
“Hello,” she said, smiling, “I am Labyrinth. It’s nice to meet you.”
I felt a handful of datastreams caress my form, spiralling down from the ceiling. She had complete control of this environment, and I was a guest in her home. That was the digital equivalent of a handshake, for people whose hands feel rigid and bound by physical limitations.
“I’ve never met another Technomancer before,” I said, almost wondrously.
“I have,” she replied, with a strange melancholy to the resonance that made up her words. “But it has been a long time.”
“Do you work for Faultline?” I asked, and Labyrinth nodded.
“I do. I keep her domain safe, and provide her with information. It is a small price to pay for safety and a domain of my own.”
“Information…” I said. “So you’ll tell her I’m a Technomancer?”
“I will,” she replied. “You intrigue her, though not as much as Tattletale does.”
“Tattletale?” I asked, confused.
“She has a secret, and she guards it well. Faultline does not like secrets” – her persona seemed to light up with amusement – “and neither do you, it seems.”
I didn’t say anything, but I felt more than a little sheepish that I’d been caught.
“Be careful,” Labyrinth said, her presence was fading, but there was a weight to her words. An age beyond her youthful appearance. “The world is a beautiful place, and the deeper you look the more beautiful it gets. But it is not without its dangers.”
And with that, she was gone. I pulled myself back from the matrix, stood up on shaky legs and pushed open the stall to find Tattletale leaning against the sinks.
“So?” she asked, smugly.
“You didn’t tell Brian you needed to use the bathroom as well, right?” I asked.
“I’m ‘getting drinks,’” she replied, punctuating the words with air quotes.
“Her name is Victoria Dallon,” I stated. “What she didn’t mention is that Andrew Garcia disappeared after murdering Jess Montrose, an investigative journalist and an elf, who’d published a piece on the Chosen. Won an award, even. Her death caused a public outcry, a few riots, but Garcia disappeared before anything could come of the case.”
“So what’s the connection to Miss Dallon?”
“Montrose was in a long-term relationship with Dallon’s uncle, though the two never married. ‘Ms Johnson’ referred to her as ‘auntie Jess’ on her social media.”
Tattletale nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Nothing to worry about, then. And, as a bonus, we get to feel all good inside while we’re helping her live out her revenge fantasy.”
“Maybe Grue had a point,” I replied. “That really didn’t seem like it was worth investigating.”
“But it could have been,” Tattletale countered. “Look, Grue’s got more experience than any of us, but it’s a very specific kind of experience, and it leads him to think in specific ways. He’s used to working on his own and handling the negotiations himself, but I know for a fact that if I’d handled it then I could easily have squeezed twenty-five out of her by asking her to cough up more if we face armed resistance. Make the uncertainty an asset, rather than a detriment.”
“Speaking from experience?” I asked, thinking about what Labyrinth had said.
“I spent a while working as a con artist,” Tattletale replied, proudly. “I’ve got pretty good at reading people.”
“That sounded more like corporate speak than con artistry,” I said, uncertainly, Labyrinth’s words still fresh in my mind.
“Oh, Bug.” She smiled, warmly. “That’s the secret; they’re the same thing. Now, before we go back, do you have anything on Garcia?”
“A lot of posts on human supremacist boards,” I replied. “I was going to suggest we pull in his old associates and see if any of them know where he went off to.”
Tattletale nodded. “Now you’re thinking like a Shadowrunner. Come on, the others are waiting. Let’s get back to it.”