CLAP!

The loud noise echoed throughout the entire building as Grin stood beside Kay having just clapped his hands to grab everyone’s attention. For a moment Pedro had forgotten about him and Chromatic, caught up in everything with Kay. He wasn’t sure if the two had stepped to the side while they had been arguing or if he’d simply stopped registering their presence. In any case it seemed that they were no longer content to sit on the side-lines anymore.

‘Well, this has all been… very awkward to be honest. But I think at this point my friend here and I will take our leave with our target. I think that’ll be best for everybody. So, we won’t be accepting your job offer; if it’s any consolation thought I won’t rob you for your focus though, so that something right?’.

The man smiled at his own poor attempt at lightening the mood but said smile faded once he realised that it had failed. His teammate just rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. He shrugged and carried on as if nothing had happened.

‘I’ll be keeping my spell on you two until we’re clear just to ensure nobody gets any funny ideas. After that your free to go. Go ahead and rob the place blind while you can. It’s what I’d do if I had the time. Unfortunately, Ms Johnson doesn’t like waiting around so my loss is your gain. See you later!’.

And with that Grin and Chromatic flanked Kay and started to walk away with her. Kay didn’t even bother looking at Pedro or Kenda one last time, her head low and eyes fixed on the trash strewn floor as she listlessly followed the shadowrunners directions. Chromatic was the only one to look back to him and Kenda, the faint look of pity visible on her face before she turned and walked away with the others. The pity from the stranger only served to make the ache in Wilde’s chest that more painful though.

Pedro was prepared to say something to Kay as she walked away. He didn’t know what it was going to be, but he knew that he couldn’t leave things as they stood. Tears were welling in his eyes, and he could already feel his throat cracking, but he had to say… something.

But as soon as he tried, he found himself unable to speak, Grin having apparently deciding that he didn’t want him to say anything else. Pedro wondered if he’d done that to him while Kenda had been yelling at Kay or if was only now as they were leaving, he’d decided on his silence.

So it was that Pedro Wilde stood in a crumbling corpse of a mall filled with disassembled cars and dead gangers, watching the woman he loved but never knew walk into the smog-stained streets and out of his life.

He stood there for some time; he didn’t know how long. Time lost its meaning with everything else.

THUD!

Wilde collapsed to the ground, the spell paralyzing him finally released by Grin or he was out of range to maintain it. Kenda might have fallen as well. He hadn’t been listening. He didn’t care.

Then he heard it. Faint sobbing nearby. Without looking he could tell it was Kenda and as if she had granted him permission he began to cry as well. Pedro cried and let all the grief and pain that he had been fighting to keep in check finally burst out in hoarse sobs.

There, on the floor stained with aged motor oil, brake fluid and blood Pedro finally allowed himself to breakdown and greave over the end of a relationship that had defined him since it had begun. As he absentmindedly wiped his face with the sleeve of his red armoured jacket, he felt something sticky come from it. Examining his hand, it dawned upon him that it was blood.

His stomach churned as he furiously attempted to wipe away the blood he’d accidentally smeared upon himself, his own tears serving to clean his face. The smell of blood seemed to cut through the stink of pollution coming from the open hole where a door should have been.

A few hours ago, Pedro had never killed another person before. How many had he murdered now? Dozens by his estimation. He would have killed more as well. A few hours ago, he would have fought an army to rescue Kay. He had been ready to die for her. She… didn’t feel the same way about him. She hadn’t even been willing to fight for him, for what they had. What he thought they had he corrected himself.

How much of Kay had been real?

She had said that she’d tried to tell the truth where she could, that she’d never wanted anyone to get hurt. That she loved him. Wilde wanted to believe her, a part of him still did despite everything, but in the end, it didn’t matter he supposed. Kay had made her choice and it wasn’t him. She had chosen to walk away. She hadn’t even tried to convince Pedro to come with her. It would have been impossible he knew, and even if she had offered, he never would have taken her up on it, but… it would have meant something, wouldn’t it?

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

From within an interior pocket of his armoured jacket, Wilde’s commlink made a cacophonous racket, vibrating violently and forcing him out of his sorrowful stupor. He was prepared to turn it off, to fall back into his introspective despair. But as he was grabbing it, two things occurred to him. One: he had never seen his commlink act the way it was, and two: Kenda’s commlink seemed to be doing the exact same thing in tandem with his own.

Forcing himself to sit up, Pedro looked over to Kenda. She was sitting on the floor nearby, her back against a rusting hulk of a truck. Unlike himself she hadn’t bothered to wipe away her tears, though they had stopped now. The other source of beeping was definitely coming from her jacket which seemed to confirm that her commlink was having a similar issue as his. Far from explaining things it made it odder to Wilde. Outside of… her, Wilde and Kenda had no mutual friends or acquaintances who would attempt to call them both. What’s more the noise their commlinks were making didn’t sound like either an alarm or an incoming call.

Kenda seemed to have trouble finding her commlink in the cavernous pockets of her vast jacket and her efforts to recover it seemed half-hearted at most. He considered asking her if she knew what was happening with their commlinks thinking her as the more technologically savvy out of the two of them. But Pedro couldn’t find it in himself to follow through on that; everything felt too raw to him, like an open wound. He suspected Kenda felt the same, they were both trying to process what had happened, what it meant for themselves, for their futures. Trying to focus on something else for a second, to get some mental distance from what happened he opened his commlink and looked at its holographic screen to see what was going on with it.

OPEN NOW

The entire holographic screen that normally appeared when he opened his commlink had been consumed by a single glowing green button. It wasn’t the normal one that appeared when he had to answer a call, nor was it like any other he had seen before. There was no caller id, or any other form of identification attached to the button, no sign of what it could be at all.

There were two options in Pedro’s mind as to what it could have been. A scam call or some other form of malicious digital swindle was his first thought and struck him as the most likely, but it was still strange for both him and Kenda to be targeted simultaneously. They were also out in the middle of the barrens, there was barely any matrix signal to be found let alone enough for a spam message to override a commlink. And while Wilde didn’t know much about the digital world it seemed to him that any matrix-based scam would make more of an effort to look less suspicious. The other possibility was that it was some kind of mass alert being sent out to everyone in Redmond or even Seattle. The more Pedro considered that though the more laughable it became. The local government scarcely acknowledged Redmond as a part of the Seattle metroplex let alone supported it. If there was some imminent disaster the city council would be more likely to let it happen and save themselves the trouble of helping the SINless of Redmond rather than issue a mass warning.

No, something felt all too suspicious about the mysterious message. Pedro turned off his commlink, ending its incessant beeping and looked over to Kenda, prepared to finally break their shared silence to tell her to do the same.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Pedro’s hand physically shook from the intense vibrations of his commlink as it once again resumed its racket, louder this time and activating the vibrate feature in tandem with the sound it was making. He had hit the manual power button; he was sure of it. Worry began to creep down his spine. Whatever was happening with his commlink was beyond some prank or spam message.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

All around them now the beeping came now, ringing throughout the mall from various sources. Wilde glanced over to Kenda, about to ask her if she had any clue what was happening. But the colossal woman had already picked herself up and had drawn not her commlink, but her pistol, head snapping left to right as she looked for the sources and potential enemies.

Listening carefully Pedro pinpointed one of the many sources of the beeping, discovering that it was coming from the corpse of a nearby ganger. He frowned in confusion before he realised what it was. Whatever was trying to message him, and Kenda was now also messaging every commlink in their immediate vicinity. He didn’t understand the matrix or technology especially well, but whatever was happening seemed to be because of his trying to disable his commlink. Without any other options and more than a little curious Pedro opened his commlink, bringing up the glowing green holographic button once again. It was flashing now. He didn’t know what was going to happen, but he gingerly pressed the insubstantial button to see what would happen.

Instantly the beeping stopped, and silence reigned in the devastated gang hideout once more. On his commlink the button had dematerialised and in its place a window displaying a message.

TIME UNTIL NITRO MIZUCHI BACKUP ARRIVES – 17:47

The number was constantly counting down until the rest of the Nitro Mizuchi arrived from Renton. With all the lies exposed, the misery, the pain that the last hour had brought about he had completely forgotten about the Nitro Mizuchi and the danger that was rapidly approaching.

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Presumably this warning was from Chromatic, or one of the other members of the shadowrun team that he hadn’t seen. A final act of pity perhaps? Wilde shook his head, that didn’t matter, the only thing that did was being far away before the gangers got there.

Kenda looked down at him questioningly with her matte black mechanical eyes.

‘It’s from the ‘runners. We’ve got about seventeen minutes before a small army of fragged off gangers show up lookin’ for who killed their buddies. Think we should be long gone by then’.

She blinked once and looked around slowly, as if only just remembering where they were and what they had done to get to… her.

‘Oh. Yeah… Lets, let’s get goin’ then’.

Her hand still tightly gripping her heavy pistol Kenda began to march towards the gaping hole in the wall that served as a door to the outside. Wilde followed in her wake before stopping to look behind him.

‘Come on! We gotta get some distance tween us an’ the gangers. They see us drivin’ away their gonna chase us, an’ my ol’ pickup probably aint gonna outrace one’ve their cars. Fr’m what I can see here they like their rides modded up’.

Knowing little about cars Pedro accepted that Kenda could divine the vehicular preferences of the Nitro Mizuchi from the mass of partly assembled and disassembled cars scattered throughout the malls ground floor. A mechanical slaughterhouse of the modern age. But it did not make him resume his exit.

‘No’.

‘Wha - Sigh. Look man. Don’t… don’t try an’ do some dumb suicide by ganger thing alright? I’m… still dealin’ with all this dreck I don’t need another thing t’ go with it’.

‘What?! I’m not going to – I was going to say that we should do what that ‘runner suggested; try and steal something valuable from the place before we go… May as well get something for all we’ve been through’.

‘Like what?’.

‘I don’t know?! You’re the car person, any of them look valuable to you? We don’t really have much time to search for hidden safes or stuff like that’.

‘Yeah, guess y’ve gotta point there’.

Turning around, Kenda trudged towards the back of the mall, far from the entrance and from where they had explored in their rescue attempt. It appeared to be where the cars that the gangers had finished working on were kept, or perhaps these were their own personal vehicles, all of them were in the gangs’ colours with the water serpent and eastern dragon imagery that they preferred.

He didn’t know what features or qualities made one car superior to the other, so Pedro simply kept close to Kenda as she gave them all a cursory glance before moving on to the next one. His commlink remained in his hand as the young mage continued to keep an eye on the ever-falling countdown marking the progress of the Nitro Mizuchi. In truth they had no way of being sure that the countdown was accurate or if this wasn’t all some twisted joke. But judging from the efforts they had taken to get them to see it, and the non-existent benefit to the shadowrunners Wilde chose to believe them.

TIME UNTIL NITRO MIZUCHI BACKUP ARRIVES – 14:53

Of course, he had been proven wrong about who he thought he could trust. He pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind. For a while Wilde wanted to, if not forget what had just happened, then at least… not have to confront it any more than he had to.

Kenda stopped before a massive SUV, bright blue in colour, but with no decals or gang signs marking it as the Nitro Mizuchis. It might have been something they’d recently stolen and hadn’t stripped down yet, or they perhaps were only partway through making it one of their own. Either way the SUV seemed like it was in good repair to Pedro. It was one of the few relatively clean things in the mall and bore no hint or rust nor sign of significant wear. Even the tires looked new.

‘This’ll do. Don’t wanna stick ‘bout too long anyways’.

With that she opened the door and slid into the driver’s side, Pedro mirroring her on the passenger side as he jumped into the large vehicle. The interior was as clean and still had the lingering hint of “new car smell” which led Wilde to suspect that it was stolen from Renton; gangers rarely bought new cars and nobody was selling anything new in Redmond. The upholstery was all in pale creams along with the dashboard and steering wheel, the almost sterile cleanliness of the SUV’s interior clashing with the dark, decaying environment it was parked in.

Large troll hands began to rummage around the vehicle, checking the sun visor, the glove compartment and other miscellaneous places. It took Pedro a second to realise that Kenda was looking for the keys to the SUV without which they wouldn’t be driving away with anything. He glanced at his commlink.

TIME UNTIL NITRO MIZUCHI BACKUP ARRIVES – 13:29

‘Might need ‘t – ‘.

‘Wait!’.

Pedro furiously searched through the pockets of his armoured jacket, dropping old napkins, loose bullets and used ticket stubs to the floor as he did so. Then with a smile and a flourish he pulled out the ring of keys that had been carried by the cybered-up ganger, the one that was crammed to capacity with a variety of car keys. In his hurry and excitement to free Kay Wilde had absentmindedly dropped them into his pocket, something he had only half realised at the time. Handing them off to Kenda he watched her flick through all the keys with robotic precision until she stopped at one and rammed it into the ignition, starting the SUV which gently purred to life.

‘How’d you find the right key so quick?’.

She looked down at him with an arched eyebrow.

‘Cuz it was the only one f’r a Toyota Talon?’.

He ignored the embarrassment of such an obvious reason and instead begun looked around them as Kenda carefully manoeuvred out of the maze of assorted vehicles and detritus that littered the ground floor. Wilde couldn’t see any gangers nearby, nor anyone else for that matter. As Kenda drove them out of the Nitro Mizuchi’s now completely abandoned Redmond base and into the streets it looked like they were the only two people alive in the area. There was no trace of where the shadowrunners had taken Kay or even how they arrived. Pedro told himself he didn’t care about any of that and instead looked back to his commlink.

TIME UNTIL NITRO MIZUCHI BACKUP ARRIVES – 09:57

‘We need to get going now’. He raised his commlink up towards Kenda’s face to let her see the holographic timer counting down as his right foot tapped out an erratic beat on the floor. ‘What’ll happen to your pick-up?’.

‘Happen t’ it? I’m drivin’ it outta here! I’m gonna hitch this t’ the pickup an’ drive that outta here. I aint gonna leave my truck f’r some gangers t’ smash up!’.

Again, he’d asked another question with an obvious answer. Wilde felt frustrated but kept it to himself continuing his self-appointed task as lookout as Kenda quickly drove around to her pickup truck. It had been unmolested during their battle through the ganger’s hideout and the aftermath of it, though Pedro thought he could see a faint coating of ashy smog already beginning to coat the truck. The two of them got out and begun to attach the SUV to the pickup with a winch, a task that was mainly achieved thanks to Kenda’s great stature and cybernetically enhanced strength, but Pedro was just happy to have something, anything to do to keep his mind occupied.

As they jumped into the rusted pickup Wilde checked his commlink once again.

TIME UNTIL NITRO MIZUCHI BACKUP ARRIVES – 07:49

‘Ok, now we really need to move’.

‘Don’t need t’ tell me twice!’.

With that the engine of the pickup roared to life and the tires screeched as Kenda tore away from the rundown street with all the speed she could muster from the truck. Wilde noticed that for all the engine’s noise they didn’t seem to be driving that much faster. He assumed that the SUV they were towing behind them was the reason for that, but it didn’t make him feel any better. There was a convoy of what Pedro assumed were going to be pissed off well-armed gangers looking for a fight coming their way, and if they saw them towing one of their stolen vehicles away the gang wouldn’t let them get very far in one piece.

Off in the distance he could hear the telltale sounds of gunshots and small explosions that were the normal background noise for the Redmond barrens. On their own they wouldn’t have concerned Wilde but given their present circumstances he was worried over the fact they were growing louder and closer made him grip his holstered machine pistol. Not that it would likely have done him much good against the numbers that were rapidly approaching.

Whether sensing Pedro’s alarm or to assuage her own Kenda begun muttering loud enough for him to hear, though he didn’t know if she intended for him to hear her.

‘Gonna be fine… Nitro Mizuchi’s gonna be comin’ from Renton in the south… Their gonna be movin’ double time an’ that means they’ll be drivin’ in a straight-line t’ get here. Means I know where their comin’ from an’ where t’ avoid. Just gotta take a nice big detour an’ they’ll never know we were here’.

‘Pretty sure they’ll notice we were there’.

Pedro thought back to all the devastation they had wrought to the Redmond chapter of the Nitro Mizuchi. His knowledge of gangs and how they operated were limited but the number of gangers that had died seemed a massive blow to a group like theirs, if not unsurmountable. He tried and failed to think of all the faces of people whom he and Kenda had killed to rescue Kay. How pointless it had all been in the end.

‘Yeah. They’ll know somebody was there. Won’t know it was us though, that’s all I care ‘bout’.

‘Fair point’.

As he examined the well lived in pickup to occupy his mind, Pedro detected something… unusual. There was something about the pickup that reminded him of the SUV they’d just acquired, but he couldn’t work out what. They were different models of different vehicles and frankly speaking Kenda’s was much worse off, but there was something… similar that he couldn’t put his finger on. As he squirmed in the oversized seat designed for trolls trying to get comfortable it hit him.

‘Kenda? Did you decide to take the SUV only because it was troll sized?’.

‘Huh? Well yeah. I wasn’t gonna cram myself in some tiny convertible with y’. Were other reasons too I mean’ she hastily added. ‘Things armoured t’ frag as well, an’ from how it drove I’d say its handlings been suped-up too’.

‘It’s armoured? How could you tell?’.

From what Wilde had seen it looked like just another run of the mill SUV, albeit a newer model which was rare to see in Redmond.

‘Y couldn’t tell? When y’ opened the door? It felt way heavier than it shoulda, could see the door was thicker than it needed t’ be s’well. Felt weightier when steerin’ too, but y’ probably needed t’ be drivin’ t’ notice that’.

Glancing out the windows Pedro watched the urban decay of the Redmond barrens pass in a dull grey blur. He could still hear shooting and screaming in the distance, but it didn’t seem to be drawing any closer to them for the time being, the troll wheelman, or wheelwoman, was skilled enough to avoid the usual violent trouble that driving in the barrens normally brought about. He looked down at his still active commlink with its countdown.

TIME UNTIL NITRO MIZUCHI BACKUP ARRIVES – 05:49

It was difficult to judge their location in an unfamiliar part of the barrens, especially as they were going at high speed. But from what Wilde could tell it looked like Kenda was following through on what she had been muttering and taking a longer route away from the old mall than they had taken to get there to minimize the odds of them crossing paths with the Nitro Mizuchi. He saw the occasional small group of gangers stalking down the crumbling streets, but none in Nitro Mizuchi colours and outside of a couple taking some pot shots at them that went too wide to so much as scratch the paintwork on either vehicle they paid them no notice either. Gangers out in the deeper parts of the barrens were generally more violent by nature, but they tended to focus on easier prey than a fast moving truck. The more effort it took to take out a target, the more likely it was that another gang would try and steal their prize while they were weakened.

He looked at the countdown again:

TIME UNTIL NITRO MIZUCHI BACKUP ARRIVES – 03:19

They were at least three miles away from where the Nitro Mizuchi called home in the barrens now, maybe more. They could have been further away, but Kenda was taking a snaking route as she weaved them between the patchwork of gang territories marked out with garish gang signs painted on slowly disintegrating walls and what little rusting signs remained on the street. The only splashes of colour to be found in this part of Redmond outside of the streaks fresh blood that occasionally stained the concreate.

TIME UNTIL NITRO MIZUCHI BACKUP ARRIVES – 01:38

Unable to come up with anything better to do and incapable of maintaining anymore of a conversation with Kenda as she focused on the cracked and scorched road ahead of them Pedro watched the glowing green holographic numbers rapidly countdown to zero. He didn’t know what, if anything would happen once it was over, he just wanted to have something to occupy his mind with for a time.

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