Kay seemed to be regaining some of her former confidence with every step she took. She still looked traumatised to Pedro, but he could see that she was walking a little taller, that her crying had stopped, and that her beautiful brown eyes, though red raw from crying had a bit of their old fire back.
‘How did you both find me? Did, did someone tell you where I was?’.
‘Na, well kinda I guess? Wilde had a ganger buddy’ve his ask around about the fraggers that grabbed y’ based offa what y’ told ‘im. Got the name “Nitro Mizuchi” from ‘im, so I asked ol’ Chuck ‘bout ‘em. He told us roughly where ‘bouts they were holed up in the barrens and we started drivin’ down. Wilde summoned up a… Spirit?’. She looked questioningly towards Pedro, looking to see if she got the terminology correct, which he gave a small nod to confirm. ‘A spirit. T’ look ‘bout for you. Time we drove up here the spirit’d found y’ and we fought our way through. Heh, betcha never expected ‘t see both us show up for y’!’.
Pedro was thankful that Kenda had neglected to inform Kay about their fruitless excursion to Sophia in her summation of what they had done. He had told Kay something of the source behind the drama between himself and Sophia, but he didn’t want to delve into it now. Or ever if possible. He wondered if she had talked around it out of a genuine desire to avoid bringing up something awkward for him, or if she just hadn’t considered it pertinent.
‘No, I really didn’t. Thanks though. Both of you. It… I… Thanks for coming for me I guess is what I want to say’.
There was something she was holding back, but Wilde couldn’t puzzle out what it was. He could only guess that there might be something that she wanted to say to him without Kenda looming nearby, but his gut told him that wasn’t the case. With every step she took down the escalator she seemed a little more like her old self yet there was still something off with her. Pedro told himself it was simply due to the traumatic ordeal that she had just gone through and that she would be fine soon enough. There was no point in trying to press her further on the matter while they were in the middle of escaping from enemy territory anyway, they had more immediate matters to deal with.
Bouncing down the last few steps Kay took the lead of the bedraggled trio, turning to look at the other two as she wiped away the last of her tears and once again became the woman Pedro had fallen in love with.
‘So!’ She said, clapping her hands, ‘Who wants to get some Taco Temple? My treat. You guys have earned it and I’m famished’.
‘Always been more’ve a Bucket Burger fella myself, but to each their own I guess’.
A cold chill ran down Wilde’s spine as an unknown figure casually sauntered out from underneath the escalator they had just walked down. A handsome orc of native American heritage in his mid to late thirties from what he could tell, with his long dark hair tied back in a ponytail. The man was dressed in a suit with some native American flair to it that was far too nice to be in Redmond, even if Pedro could detect the tell-tale signs of it being armoured. The turquoise cufflinks and bolo tie also served as massive red flags that the man did not belong in the barrens. Even the people who went down to Touristville for an evening of debauchery didn’t wear valuable jewellery out of fear of it being stolen or marking them as a target to the disgruntled locals.
What provoked true concern from Wilde though was what the stranger had in his hands. In each of them he held a fistful of multicoloured crystals that he was in the process of crushing as they dissolved into a rapidly evaporating smoke. Pedro recognised that they were regents; substances that were naturally rich in mana and could be used as fuel to power spells. Whoever the stranger was they were magically active and about to cast what he suspected to be a powerful spell.
Without waiting for the man to give an explanation Kenda drew her Aries Predator and pointed it at the man who arched a single eyebrow in response.
‘Now that won’t be necessary miss. I promise. Put it down’.
The hardness in the man’s tone in that statement sounded as much of a threat as a command, but without questioning him she lowered her gun as soon as he told her to. Pedro decided to move his hand slowly towards his machine pistol while the man’s attention was centred on Kenda. It might have been that she had seen something that made her hesitant about aggravating the situation or she was concerned about Kay being too close to a potential firefight, but he wanted to be able to act in a moment’s notice.
But Pedro’s hand did not move when he told it to.
It didn’t so much as quiver as he tried to shift it. A cold sweat of terror broke out on him as he realised what magic the stranger had cast not just upon Kenda, but all of them. It was a manipulation type spell; the man was controlling their bodies.
Broadly speaking there were five type of magic a spell could fall under. Combat spells involved damaging something, health spells involved healing or enhancing the body, detection spells were used to find or perceive things, illusion spells involved fooling perceptions, and manipulation spells manipulated their subjects. Manipulation spell’s covered a broad range of options, they could involve creating a physical barrier, transforming the caster into an animal, levitating a person, or animating inanimate objects.
But the most reviled form of manipulation spells were the ones that granted the caster the power to control other people. This spell seemed to only control a person’s physical body though, their thoughts were still their own which was small comfort in the moment. It occurred to Pedro that this type of spell was probably the closest thing magic had to the cybernetics that made a person into a Bunraku puppet. That cold fear that he had felt when he realised he couldn’t move grew to chill his bones as he realised the extent of how inescapable their new prison was. The spirit of man that was protecting them had made no attempt at helping them either. Apparently so long as the spell didn’t directly harm them it was content to let it affect them. The only thing they could do now was wait for the mysterious spellcaster to eventually drop his spell; Pedro had no way of overpowering the spell in his exhausted state. Even if he was fully rested, he doubted he would be capable of countering a such a spell that was enhanced with regents.
‘Wha-why can’t I move?!’
‘It’s a manipulation spell. A powerful one. Also, extremely illegal to cast’.
‘Correct on all counts, tho-‘.
‘WHO THE FRAG ARE Y’! WHAT’RE Y-‘.
‘Quiet, please!’.
Kenda shut her mouth and stopped talking mid-outburst, her face Pedro could just see in the upper corner of his eye, gradually turning red from rage.
‘Thanks, I appreciate it, really.’ He said with a wide grin and enunciating with his hands now that the crystals he had used as regents had all been used up. ‘Honestly, I just enjoy getting the opportunity to monologue for once. It’s not often in my line of work a chance like this comes up so I sort of want to enjoy the moment, y’know? Anyway, as I was saying, you’re right on all counts, though I’d say my way of subduing the opposition is a touch less… violent than your method?’.
He gestured in an exaggerated manner around the mall space still covered with blood, bullet holes and bodies.
‘Not that I’m getting at you for it. If anything, I’m kind’ve impressed by you two’, he gestured to Pedro and Kenda. ‘You managed to locate a kidnaped person with no matrix capabilities between you, break into the place holding her, wipe out all your opposition, and you did it all without any harm coming to the person you were here for! Not bad seeing as you had no prep time or warning about it’. He slipped over to Wilde’s side and said in a whisper loud enough for everyone to hear. ‘I’ll admit, I especially liked your use of spirits for this. Having one act as both a diversion for your entrance and to make a hard strike on the main force and its leadership while having another maintain an overwatch on your primary target was a solid use of spirits. Could maybe be a bit more precise with the wording of your orders though, and amp them up a bit more’.
Looking up above the group where Wilde figured his spirit “guardian” would be floating in the astral the mysterious man waved his left hand dismissively at it. Instantly Pedro felt the link he shared with the spirit vanish; without needing to glance into the astral he could tell that it had been banished back to its home plane. The act appeared to have been effortless for the stranger.
‘But hey, like I said you were operating on a short timeframe and kinda going off the seat of your pants. All in all, you two pulled off a solid job here’.
His overly friendly nature did nothing to assuage Pedro’s concerns about what was going to happen to him and Kenda, but more importantly Kay. Wilde wasn’t sure who the stranger was or who they were affiliated with; Yakuza didn’t like associating with non-Japanese, he was too well dressed to be a ganger, and something about his flippant manner didn’t strike Pedro as being especially corporate.
‘Phff! Easy Grin, this is not that impressive. They found a ganger’s hideout in the barrens and shot up everyone in it. Couple’ve liquored up hobos with shotguns could’ve done the same thing. Frag, this is Redmond! This drecks probably already gone down five times today by now!’.
A new figure walked out from beneath the escalators and joined the magically active native American, “Grin” she called him Pedro noted to himself. This Asian woman was about his own age, in her early twenties he guessed as she glared at everyone through hard grey eyes. Her attire was more suitable for the barrens with her “street-chic” torn jeans, colourful but well-worn armoured bomber jacket, and a T-shirt with the logo for some band Wilde had never heard of. Her hair was short but dyed almost every colour imaginable and he noticed a nondescript chrome nose stud and another on her right ear. It was her attitude that was the most distinctive difference between the two though; she seemed more… intense than the man, as if there was some great pressure within her that she was barely keeping in check. And while the man appeared to be oddly good natured and happy to engage with the trio, she seemed more focused and less interested in talking.
Something about her appearance still struck Pedro as unusual though, something about her and “Grin” both. Then it hit him. They were both walking around the barrens unarmed. It could perhaps be argued that a person capable of casting spells was never unarmed, but even Wilde carried a gun with him this deep into the barrens. There was always the chance that a person could find themselves in a position where they couldn’t cast spells or summon spirits anymore. The position he himself was in now. If nothing else, it scared off the run of the mill gangers who didn’t know or care who could cast a spell. They might have both been magically active and trusted in that alone to protect them, but something still didn’t seem right to him.
‘Heh! Your just pissed ‘cause you owe me three hundred nuyen!’. “Grin” made a flamboyant gesture to cover his mouth and spoke at a volume that let everyone hear what he was saying. ‘She bet me one fifty that you’d never get here and double that if you got the girl without either of you dying’.
Frowning at her… Partner? Work colleague? They didn’t act like friends from what Pedro could tell. She looked like she was going to say something but was holding back. He decided to try and take advantage of the situation and glimpse into the astral in order to learn more about the pair. Wilde doubted that it would tell him much that could help him out of his situation, but he couldn’t do anything else.
Realty waivered as Pedro pulled back the curtain behind the mundane world and looked into the astral. He staired at the two before him and looked for any information he could from their astral signatures. The man “Grin” was magically active, although he already knew that from the spell he had seen him cast. There was also no trace of any cybernetic augmentations in his body which was to be expected in a spellcaster; no sane magically active person would ever damage the natural essence of themselves that helped them manipulate magic. What he did learn was that he was more powerful than himself in terms of raw magical ability. And if his body controlling spell and the ease at which he banished his spirit were anything to go from Grin also possessed a great deal of technical skill to back up his power. Wilde would most likely struggle to fight against when he was going up against him at his best. In his present exhausted state, he would never be able to defeat him.
Grin’s aura showed that he was just as calm and confidant as he presented himself to be. There was no fear or concern in it, only a general contentment with little flashes of excitement and flairs of anticipation. Pedro could detect a certain… maliciousness within the aura though, even if it wasn’t significant. It made him think of cats that liked to play with mice before deciding to let them flee from it.
Stolen novel; please report.
More worrying were the stones that made up Grin’s cufflinks and bolo tie. Seeing them blazing with power in the astral revealed that all three stones were focuses of some power, equal to his own health spell sustaining focus. He couldn’t determine what precisely they enhanced, but any spellcaster attuned to three focuses would be very dangerous to face, especially as Grin was already more powerful than Wilde. Pedro had hoped that the man’s use of regents being a sign that he was weaker than his spell would suggest were utterly dashed. He made a point of memorising Grin’s astral signature all the same, even if he couldn’t beat him, Pedro wanted to be able to spot him if they crossed paths again.
The astral form of the young woman showed no signs of her being magically active in any way, nor of her having any cyberware whatsoever. That came as a surprise to Wilde. She had no magical ability, no weapons and no augmentations at all. Whoever she was she was about as helpless as a person could be in the barrens, but you wouldn’t know it to look at her aura. Where Grin was filled with a relaxed confidence, she was filled with drive and passion and... defiance? It was difficult to be sure, her aura had a strange quality to it that Pedro had never seen before. It wasn’t magical, he was sure of that, but there was something that made it seem more than mundane. There were sparks of frustration crackling throughout her aura, but they never threatened to overwhelm it. That did suggest that she was as annoyed as she seemed though. Was there any way he could use that to his advantage?
‘You know staring can come across as rude, don’t you?’.
All the mirth and candour dropped from Grins voice as Pedro looked back into the mundane world and found the man glaring into his eyes.
‘HA! The look on your face! Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’ll let it slide this time’.
And just like that he was back to his “normal” self, wide Cheshire smile on his face as he looked at the group before him.
‘We’re on the job Grin! Even if it’s a milk run. Let’s just finish up and leave, we’ve got…’ her eyes fluttered for a second before returning to normal as if nothing happened ‘thirty-nine minutes before the Nitro Mizuchi from Renton gets here. And unless you want to try an’ out do these dreck heads score for “who can kill the most gangers” in person we’ve no business stickin’ around. Let’s grab the girl and go’.
‘NO!!!’.
It couldn’t be happening, not like this. For him and Kenda to have gone through all that they had, to finally rescue Kay, only for her to be literally dragged away, with them powerless to do anything but watch? It had been one thing to have been too late to save Kay before, but this was worse. Now he had to watch it himself, all the while being unable to stop it.
‘P-please, I don’t know who you are, or who you work for, but believe me, I’m not worth whatever you think I am. Whoever hired you made a mistake! I’m nobody important! You’re not going to get paid what you’re hoping. Just let us go, please’.
‘I assure you that we are well aware of who you are Miss Katherine Yamashita. We didn’t just stumble our way to you. The team’s been keeping an eye on you for a while now. We were going to intervene earlier, but… Well, honestly some of us figured that these two might be useful for clearing out some of the gangers for us, or at least causing a distraction’.
Grin turned to Kenda and Pedro and spoke in his mock whisper.
‘I was the only one who thought you’d manage to do it’.
‘Come on guys, don’t send her back t’ the corps. She ran t’ the fraggin’ barrens t’ get away from them! Jus’ say y’ got here an’ she was gone! We’ll leave Seattle t’night! Y’ll never see any’ve us again!’.
As Kenda begged for Kay’s freedom and safety, Wilde’s mind raced as he took in what the two were saying. It sounded like they weren’t affiliated with any group so much as they had been hired to collect Kay. That would make them shadowrunners; mercenaries and criminals for hire. That did explain their rather eclectic appearances as ‘runners were known to be a diverse group of individuals, and it explained why Grin and the mystery woman who didn’t appear to get along, were working together. Shadowrunners tended to operate in teams where each member had skills that complemented the others, offering them a wide variety of options in how they approached a job. Or at least that was what little Pedro knew of them.
Eyes narrowing, Pedro ruminated on something that Grin had just said. They knew who Kay was, that was clear enough by the fact they had used her full name that Kay had only shared with himself and Kenda as far as he knew.But he’d claimed that they’d been “keeping an eye” on her for some time. If someone had hired shadowrunners to monitor Kay though, why hadn’t they moved in to grab her when the Nitro Mizuchi kidnapped her? In fact, why were they monitoring her? Kay was on the run from MCT, surely the runners had been hired by someone to take her back to them. If that was the case, why were they wasting time watching her when they could simply grab her and turn her in for their payday? The pair before him were clearly competent, and with his spell Grin could have had Kay walk away with him whenever he wanted. Something didn’t add up.
Then there was Kay. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that she was worried, but the expression wasn’t the same as it had been when they had freed her from the gangers. She still looked afraid, but it the same kind of fear that the Nitro Mizuchi had evoked in her. Pedro couldn’t work out what it was though.
‘Uh-oh’. Grin said with a crooked smirk breaking out on his face. ‘Tall girl hasn’t worked it out, but it looks like red jacket here’s starting to get there’.
‘N-no! Don’t say anything! J-just let me, let me think. I – ‘.
‘Ugh! You know what? I’m done with this. We got hired to take your sorry hoop back to your fancy little university if you got in too deep. We’re not getting’ paid extra to play along with your fraggin’ games!’.
‘No! Don’t! Please!’.
Speaking over the pleading Kay the woman with the rainbow hair ignored her and looked at Pedro and Kenda.
‘She never ran away from the corps! Girls just another tourist! The worst kind, the type that pretends that she’s invested but always makes sure she can drop out when she needs to. She just slums it down here a week or so every month to get material for her dissertation. You’re not her friends you’re her subjects’.
‘NO!!!’.
An ear-piercing wail of despair burst forth from Kay that ripped through Pedro’s heart. He wanted it to be a lie, some play by the shadowrunners to convince him and Kenda to give up on Kay. But he could see the expression on her face. One of fear and shame and guilt. Kay tried to look him in the eye but every time she tried, she failed.
That was how he knew that it was true. That the basis for their relationship, the entirety of the relationship was nothing but an empty lie. Pedro felt lightheaded and his breathing became more difficult, his chest tightening, his throat burning. He could feel his eyes beginning to water and he couldn’t muster the will to try and hold back the tear or attempt to maintain his composure. If it hadn’t been for the spell Grin had over him, he doubted that he’d have been able to stay standing.
The woman rolled her eyes at Kay’s extended scream and looked over to Grin.
‘Can’t you shut her up? She’d killing my ears’.
‘Hm, yeah. I appreciate you are upset Miss Yamashita but please, try to be quiet’.
Instantly Kay ceased making any noise, though tears streamed down her face as she shot shame filled glances to Kenda and Pedro. He barely registered them. He was too preoccupied with his life falling apart before him. Every moment they’d shared together, every smile, every kiss, had they all been lies? Was it all just a joke to her, a game she was playing, a social experiment? Was the woman he fell in love with even real?
‘Na, na , na, this aint real! Y’ just made her act like that! Y’ used y’er magic t’ force her t’ do that! It’s not true! Kay say it aint true!’.
He wasn’t looking at Kenda, too caught up in his own crisis, but Wilde could hear the powerful woman’s voice breaking with emotion. She was desperately grasping for any shred of hope that Kay was who she claimed to be. Pedro tasted a bitter irony over the fact that he had watched the giant troll take bullets to the chest and not so much as flinch, but the revelation the shadowrunners shared almost without a thought had hurt her far more than anything the gangers had thrown at them when they were fighting for their lives.
‘Not true?’.
Grin chuckled as he slunk closer to Kenda.
‘Why would I lie to you? You think for a second that there’s anything you can do to stop us right now? What reason would I have for trying to trick you?’.
‘I dunno fragger! Y’ get off on it or somethin’!’.
Another dark little laugh.
‘Well, maybe you’re a little bit right there. But your still wrong about believing Miss Yamashita’s cover story… I mean, didn’t it strike you as kind of odd that she’d just vanish for weeks at a time?’.
‘She had t’ keep her head down ‘case the corps came lookin’ for her!’.
‘Yeah, but they didn’t, did they?’.
The female shadowrunner with the unusual aura cut in.
‘You ever hear about someone askin’ round about for her?’.
She jerked her thumb toward Kay, still frozen in place looking forlorn and ashamed.
‘You think word wouldn’t get around about that sort’ve thing in the barrens? And even then, didn’t it occur to you that she was talkin’ all that good dreck about just breaking away from MCT and didn’t know a damn thing about the real world, but she somehow knew how to hide out in the barrens without gettin’ geeked? What? You thought that they teach corp kids how to find safehouses in college? How to hide from gangs in preschool? No. When she was tellin’ you all that she was hiding out in the barrens she was just going back to the University of Washington to keep up with her classes and write up her whole dissertation. Whatever line she sold you about having to keep on the move and hide was a lie; she was spending her time in study parties and lectures, eatin’ real food while you two were suckin’ down whatever cheap soy-based dreck you could get. She ever offer you any’ve that good food when she got back? Didn’t think so’.
‘Y-your lyin’.
‘Look, I’m not him’, she gestured to Grin who reacted with an expression of mock offence. ‘I don’t like this or anything, I’m just tellin’ you how it is. You can believe me or not, I don’t care one way or the other. Me and my team were hired to keep an eye on her and pull her out if things got too hot, which they have. We were meant to come when she triggered a panic button in her boots which judgin’ from her bare feet, she couldn’t do’. She rubbed her chin with a hand and began to quietly mutter to herself. ‘I’m guessing that whoever tipped off the Nitro Mizuchi was a part of the university staff that knew about her little “research excursions”.’ She shrugged and removed her hand from her chin, looking up to speak once again to Kenda. ‘Whatever. Anyway, we just want to grab the college girl and take her back to the campus for a debriefing so we can get paid. She’s not going to a Bunraku parlour, and we’re not selling her to some other megacorp. We’re just sendin’ her back where she came from. From where she never really left’.
The rainbow haired ‘runners last words echo out in the mall as they sunk into Kenda and Pedro. That was the final clue for him. It explained why the gangers would remove and destroy Kay’s boots along with her commlink and not try to sell them off later. It also explained why they had even considered cutting off wireless signals around her, they knew she could call in security and wanted to minimise the odd of them having to fight for their prize.
Wilde wanted to deny what they were saying was true. He wanted his time with Kay to have been real, for the person he’d fallen in love with to be real. But he couldn’t just call it all lies. Everything the runners had said made painful sense to him. A part of him had always wondered why Kay was so insistent on disappearing so often and where it was she hid, but he’d never pushed her on the matter. He’d thought, or perhaps more hoped that one day she’d open up to him about it. Pedro had assumed that MCT hadn’t considered Kay hiding out in the barrens and that was why he had never heard about people looking for her, but in hindsight if a megacorporation wanted Kay they would have put up a bounty on her. Every bounty hunter and shadowrunner that passed through the Redmond barrens would have had their eyes out for her; word would have gotten around to him eventually if people were looking for Kay. He hadn’t considered that though, too caught up in a whirlwind romance to pay close attention to the holes in her story.
What ultimately confirmed things for Pedro though wasn’t anything the shadowrunners said. It was Kay’s own reaction to her secret being revealed. He wasn’t an expert on manipulations type spells, but from what he could tell the one Grin had cast on them was only controlling their bodies, not their minds. He could order them to move and perform actions or not to, yet such actions would be stilted, robotic and very noticeable. He couldn’t make Kay say things she didn’t want to, and to have her act in such a realistic manner would be beyond a typical body controlling spell. That would have required controlling her mind, something that was possible with the right spells, but Wilde doubted that the runner would have been able to sustain a body controlling spell on all of them and a mind controlling one on Kay. Even if he could, why would he? The rainbow haired woman with the hard eyes was right. They had no way of stopping the runners from walking away with Kay, why would they bother going through so much effort for a lie?
And yet.
There was still a tiny part of him that wanted to believe Kay. To think that it was all a great conspiracy to rip her away from him. There was one way he knew of to find out for sure. He didn’t want to do it. He didn’t want to strip away the one last shred of hope that he had in Kay, in their relationship. But he had to. Pedro had to know, even if he understood that knowing would only hurt him.
Again, Wilde looked into the astral, but he paid no heed to anything within it other than Kay and her aura. He wanted to see the spell that was afflicting her, he wanted to see a spell that was compelling her to behave as though a dark secret had been revealed, he wanted to see her fighting against being forced to act as thought it was true.
Pedro saw nothing of the sort.
Instead, he saw a manipulation spell that had ensnared her just as much as it had him and Kenda. There was no hint of any magic that would compel Kay to behave in the way that she was. More than that though, Pedro could see her aura and what emotions were running through her. It wasn’t like reading her mind, he couldn’t see what the source of the emotions were, but he had hoped to see something that would suggest that she was being forced to act like the shadowrunners claims were true. Some surge of defiance, boiling anger, writhing frustration.
All Pedro could see though was shame. Profound as it was overwhelming, Kay was filled with an intense feeling of shame tinged with guilt. He wanted to believe that it was from being forced to act as though what the shadowrunners were saying was true, but he understood on a fundamental level that that wasn’t the case. They were correct. Kay had never run away from MCT or her university as she told him. It was a lie. How many lies had she told him? Was anything she said to him true? What had their entire relationship been to her? A game with herself to see how far she could take things? A distraction from her university life? Some meaningless fun that she’d forget about in a couple months?
‘Why? J-just tell me why?’.
‘Ugh! I just did! What d-‘.
Realisation set into the female runner’s face as it dawned on her that Wilde wasn’t talking to her, but rather Kay. Everything was crumbling down around him, and no answer could ever make him feel better about the foundation of deception that his and Kay’s relationship was based on, but he wanted to know, he needed to know, to hear in her own words why she had toyed with him so.
‘I’m willing to let this play out a little bit longer. We’ve still got time, haven’t we?’.
Grin glanced over at his teammate who gave a disgruntled looking nod after closing her eyes for a moment.