Leon, Brandon, and Sylvia broke into the abandoned building, with flashlights attached to their armor illuminating the darkness within. Leon saw signs of ghoul activity strewn all about: dried bloodstains overtop a faded company logo, bones piled up near the walls, and the stench of rotting flesh.

"Sylvia, where's the welcoming committee?"

Sylvia reached out with a sensory spell, and zeroed in on a group of eight ghouls running towards them from the other side of the building.

"Most of them are upstairs, but we got eight coming at us from 10 o'clock."

The trio got into position for a triangular assault. Eight feral ghouls came charging in, hopeful at the prospect of fresh meat. But the ghouls got bottlenecked by the entranceway they were trying to get through, and were cut to ribbons under the firepower of three assault rifles.

Leon was very confident going into this job, for whatever reason. His instincts told him this would be mildly troublesome at worst, and now that he entered the building it seemed like this ghoul pack wasn't co-ordinated. A magically-skilled ghoul would've had his minions performing sentry work, and may have even sensed the Fire Ball that Sylvia casted to get themselves in.

Perhaps they were asleep? This would be right around bedtime for a ghoul, given their sunlight allergies......

"Sylvia, what are they doing upstairs?"

"Just shambling around or lying down. A few ghouls upstairs seem to be on the move though."

"You think their mage is asleep? If there even is one?"

Sylvia paused and focused hard for a minute.

"......I think theres a magically inclined something up higher, but we need to get closer."

"Alright, don't overdo it though."

"This much is nothing Leon, I'm fine." said Sylvia, rather tersely.

The trio moved on, finding a crrumbling but still somewhat functional staircase up to the second floor. Leon wondered how the hell the ghouls went down this thing without tripping over the missing steps, or the concrete landslides. Ghouls couldn't see well at the best of times, and instead relied on an innate ability to perceive the astral plane, as well as enhanced hearing and smell.

The second floor was cleaned out without much worry. Although the quantity of enemies was high, these ghouls had a tendency to rush headlong into enemy fire. It would be dangerous to a ragtag bunch of runners with Streetline Specials, but to veteran runners with nerve and assault rifles, this was live target practise.

Carefully, the trio went up to the third floor......

~~~

On the third floor, in the closest thing to a habitable room in the abandoned offices, a ghoul woke up from his slumber, his head pounding with a vicious headache.

He felt like he had been asleep for weeks, and had a harder time than usual getting his thoughts together. In addition to the sleepy fog and pounding headache, he had that damn undercurrent of voices in his head again, screaming at him to feed, to rend flesh from bone, to hunt prey. It was hard on good days not to give in completely to this virus, like his "family" downstairs had given in.

Then the sounds rang out in his ears. With his hyper-sensitive hearing, it sounded like......silenced gunfire?

Did his fixer sell him out to a bunch of bounty hunters? He was sure he had paid him well for the last batch of bodies!

The ghoul tried to visualize what was going on in the warehouse through the astral plane, and saw three figures holding rifles, carving through his family. Before he knew it, they had busted through the door into his room.

"Don't shoot!" The ghoul exclaimed in his raspy voice as the trio burst in.

Leon lowered his assault rifle for a second and had his hand out in a hold motion to stop his comrades.

"Are you one of the townies they dragged off?"

"......What are you talking about?" said the ghoul. Deep down though, even through his wakeup fog and brutal headache, he had an inkling that something had gone wrong......

"He's infected!" whispered Sylvia. Signs of infection were indeed all over the ghoul, namely the discoloured flesh exposing his skull.

The ghoul looked at the trio in confusion.

"......Are you with the fixer? I paid him for the last batch of bodies, we had an agreement!"

At that moment, it hit Leon. He wasn't a hostage that had somehow not been chowed down on much, he was the leader. Leon knew that some ghouls worked through fixers and streetdocs to get bodies to feast on, in exchange for whatever the ghouls could scrape up.

"We're mercenaries hired by the government. If you were controlling this bunch of ghouls, we had to kill them. They dragged a few people out of their homes and ate them."

The ghoul's heart, or what was left of it, sank.

He had been awake for several days in a row, working on a new concept for a spell. The one time he fell asleep and let control slip over his family, they ran off and found bodies to chow down on, even though they had enough cadavers to feed them for a week.

"......I fell asleep, I've been up for days now. I swear, I didn't order my family to go after townies! I buy dead bodies from a fixer a couple towns over, he gets them from hospitals! They must've gone after the townies themselves!"

"Family? That's what you call them?"

The ghoul was on the verge of tears.

"......They're all I've got. All of them lost their damn minds to this virus......we were all strangers on a bus headed to Quebec. A pack of ghouls ambushed us during a stop to change a tire. We found guns and fought them off, but everyone got infected. We ended up driving til the bus broke down and found this place, and everyone lost their minds except for me......"

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

The ghoul started crying.

"I didn't want this to happen! We never hurt anyone else! You gotta believe me!"

"......Strangely enough, I do." Leon said. "But someone's gotta answer for this. You controlled them with magic? Once they got feral?"

The ghoul nodded, sobbing silently.

"The townsfolk want blood. I can try and sneak you out of here, but I don't know where you can go. We came here by chopper, and the pilot won't be keen breathing in the same air as you. I can get you into the grove of trees nearby, but then you're on your own."

All his family was dead, his community was broken, and now the ghoul's subconscious was buzzing again. Screaming louder than it ever had before, to rend, to kill, to feast. He could smell the mercenaries sweat, he could practically taste their flesh and blood on his tongue. Maybe he could pretend to go along with them, and zap them with that Mana spell he learned the other day, the one that let loose a circular stream of purple lightning, hitting everything in a ring around him. Maybe he could avenge his brothers, and chow down on these delicious drek-heads who killed his family. His dysfunctional, not even related, feral, crazy family. It was all he had. He had to get revenge, he had to kill, kill, KILL! EAT! FEAST! KILL! EAT! FEAST!

......No, he had enough of fighting this. There was nothing to live for anymore. No family, and the hunger was building. He might go feral soon, and be no better than the shambling corpses he had lived with. It was time for him to just end it all.

The ghoul stood up, and looked at Leon sorrowfully.

"I can't take this anymore. My family's gone, and my brain's screaming at me to eat and eat and eat cause of this damn virus! Just kill me now, so I don't have to live like this!"

Sylvia was really shocked and disturbed by the outburst, and even Leon and Brandon, hardened killers both, were put off by this. They could see the pain and suffering written on the ghoul's face. Living with a constant desire to eat people and the social shunning that came with it had to be unbelievably difficult. Even the shadiest corporate suits and most despicable politicians in the world weren't actually cannibals. They took a metaphorical pound of flesh, sure, but not a literal one.

But the moment passed for Leon. He exhaled, pointed his assault rifle at the ghoul, and looked at him with a complicated expression.

"If there is an afterlife, I hope yours is enjoyable. Sorry man."

Leon pulled the trigger.

~~~

(12 hours later.)

Humboldt's mayor Billy Shinestar was sighing in exasperation in the back of a local cafe he frequented, whenever he wanted to hide from the problems in his office. It was another dark day in Humboldt's history, the biggest single-day loss of life since the vampire attack last winter. Luckily both of these issues were solved by the same man. But Billy knew this represented a bigger problem......

"Here are your sandwiches, Mayor Shinestar. Would you like a cup of coffee to go along with them?"

The man serving him his late dinner was the cafe owner, Jack Porter. He was a British man who walked, talked, and dressed like some old timey British gentlemen from the 1900s. Characters like him didn't even make it to trideo shows anymore, but Jack persisted in his act. It added a unique flair to the cafe, at least.

"No thanks Jack, I'd need something stronger than coffee at this point."

Jack smiled. "Then how about a snifter of aged brandy?"

"Now we're talking."

Jack fetched two glorified shot glasses, and poured in the dark amber liquid.

"Quite the eventful day, eh Mayor?"

"Don't even get me started. At least we won't lose too much money today. But down the road......"

Billy sighed.

"It's just......why the hell are we treated like this? Why does Long Arms not do their damn job and police these lands like they should? All us small towns get shunted aside. For what? For the goddamn corps, run by the white man?"

Billy paused for a second.

"......No offense Jack......"

"None taken, old boy. But that does seem to be the state of things these days......Have you heard that Saskatoon and Grand Rapids are the only two cities in this Council to grow in population over the last forty years?"

"Yeah, cause everyone's fleeing over there to get the good jobs. Or fleeing to other nations that they think will accept them. Or getting killed by all the pandemics...... But damnit, we're people too! We had four thousand residents after the Ghost Dance, and now we're down to two thousand! At least eight small towns nearby have disappeared off the map in the past decade, and probably more we haven't heard from elsewhere. What used to be Northern Ontario is gone except for corp mining towns. What the hell are we doing here?"

"At least Chief Hawksford saved our shirts."

"She won't do so forever. She's an elected official, and one of the only halfway honest politicians left in North America. What happens when she loses? What happens if she drops an election, and we get a Ceremonial Chief that tells us to frag off when we ask for help? Also, why are we reduced to asking her for help in situations like this when Long Arms should be handling it!?"

"Take it easy old boy. Anger is the last thing you need after a stressful day such as today. You have your life, and many townspeople were saved by a prompt and efficient response from the shadowrunners. The casualties are regrettable, but thats the state of affairs these days. Be thankful for the good things in life."

Billy shook his head, and pounded down a shot of brandy,

"And thats another thing! How many times on the trid news shows do you see that little muskrat David Longmiles talking about the great strides Long Arms has made in getting rid of all the shadowrunners. Why would we do that? They're the only ones saving the small towns. We have barely any crime here, and I doubt whatever crime gets reported is caused by secret shadowrunner gangs. Am I supposed to believe David would rather poke a hole in a life preserver rather than throw one out to save us? Why does he see the solution as the problem?"

"David has a point there, you know." said Jack cautiously. "There are no shortage of selfish, ignorant, up-jumped cutthroats in that line of work. Men who have no respect for the game and those who play it. Leon Eagles is one of the rare exceptions. Quite a nice chap, reliable, and does not kill innocent people, if he can help it. David has an unreasonable position, but letting the prisoners run the prison is not the best answer to it."

Billy looked at Jack quizzically.

"......Who are you, Jack? I mean, who are you really?"

Jack smiled.

"I'm the owner of a small town cafe. Best not inquire further, we all have elements in our past that are best left in the past."

Jack sipped his brandy, smacking his lips together and appreciating the taste. Billy reckoned that Jack had a point. He wouldn't be surprised to learn that Jack was a shadowrunner in the past. The word around town did seem to indicate he knew the art of gunplay at least: a would-be stickup man picked Jack's cafe for his next score, and had his legs blown out from underneath him by Jack's shotgun. Jack was an upstanding member of the neighborhood watch as well, and was present and guarding the perimeter of the abandoned ghoul haunt today.

Billy didn't doubt for a second that any onrushing ghoul would've been dealt with by this old-timer. He had probably faced worse......

"At any rate." said Jack, leaning back in his chair. "If you are worried about the state of Humboldt and other small towns in the Council, might I suggest calling a meeting with other Mayors, perhaps over the Matrix? Maybe a meeting of the minds could stimulate some ideas to fix the problems."

Billy shook his head. "None of us can make Longmiles do anything, even if we all shouted at him."

"Then don't shout at him. Take out his base of support."

"......Whats that supposed to mean?"

"Attack his reputation." said Jack. "Longmiles has a reputation of being a tough copper who upholds the law. If news reporters in the Council find out he upholds the law in a selective manner, his reputation will be tarnished. Perhaps a stronger law enforcement group could then take over the Long Arms contract."

"David is like teflon, nothing sticks to him."

"You owe it to your constituents to try." said Jack, getting up from the table. "Even if there is no hope, you must try to do everything you can to have Humboldt succeed. I rather like this town, and wish to continue my affairs here. Do your very best, dear Mayor."

Jack walked off to tend to his cafe, while Billy considered the idea. There was a slim chance of success, but Jack was right, they needed to try......