It was 3:17a.m. when Christopher Wray's commlink vibrated against his wrist. The bracer-style device was mostly screen and the glowing display lit-up the small alcove where he sat. He grabbed one of the tethered earbuds from the concealed spool and played-out about a meter's worth of thin cable. Snugging the tiny speaker into his ear, he tapped the screen to accept the call.

"Chris, good; I thought it was gonna go to voicemail," Lynette said.

Lynette Talloak Chesterfield's face floated above the commlink as a freestanding hologram created by the tiny trideo projector at the front of the device. One of the Native Salish and a lifelong Seattleite, she was a handsome woman in her early thirties. And like most enduring BTL addicts, she appeared a little haunted and somewhat underfed.

"No, I'm here Lynn; what's up?"

The moment he realized it was Lynette on the line, Christopher rose from his seat and turned toward the door. His table flashed a couple times and his commlink vibrated in sympathy. A light in the corner of the device's screen blinked and showed ¥13.25 below 'Thank you, come again' in tiny letters.

Lynette snorted derisively; "What's up? It's three o'clock in the morning and I thought, 'Hey, I wonder what Chris thinks about the Mariners' new free agent.' So, you know, I dropped everything I was doin' and just had to call and find out. So tell me, Chris, wh—"

"You've made your point, Lynn. What and where?" he asked.

Exiting through the lounge's automatic doors put him 3.5 meters in front of the elevator. It arrived by the time he crossed that short distance and automatically pre-programmed his destination level by scanning his commlink.

"Twenty-ish human female; she's black, got very little cyberization, and it looks like she's in pretty good shape, too," Lynette told him.

He stepped inside and tapped the 'Close Door' button. The elevator plummeted 24 floors in seconds, driving his empty stomach up into his diaphragm. "Okay. Where at?"

"You know where the Squatters' Mall is?" she asked.

"Of course," he replied. He stepped out of the elevator and onto the pedestrian bridge's moving walkway.

"'Bout one'n a half kilometers north of that, just off two hundred forty-fourth avenue," Lynette told him.

The pedestrian bridge carried him high above NE 8th Street in the heart of downtown Belleview. Even late at night the city was brightly-lit with neon, dazzling lights and glowing holograms. "I'll leave right now; I should be there in a half-hour, maybe forty-five minutes, tops."

"Wiz…but, listen Chris, um…" Discomfort was evident in Lynette's voice and the hologram of her face winked out. It was immediately replaced by her two-dimensional photo on his commlink's screen.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"Nothing's the matter. But look, it-it's gonna be five-kay this time," Lynette told him.

"Why so much?" Christopher enquired. He already knew the answer; regardless of their vice, addicts never have enough money to feed their cravings. Better than Life addiction was worse than most because its users quickly became desensitized to its heightened stimuli. They either have to continually switch the type of chip they use or else get stronger and more extreme experiences – until one finally kills them.

Lynette huffed indignantly on the other end of their connection. "It's getting harder t…I've got a lot of expen…it just is, okay? Just this one time it's gonna be five grand and if you don't like it you can frag-off and find someone else to hunt y—"

Christopher stepped off the moving walkway and strode through a small lobby toward a series of doors, one of which opened to a parking garage. "Take it easy, Lynn; I didn't say I wouldn't pay it; I just wondered if everything was okay."

"S-sorry," she mumbled. "I guess it's just bein' out here in…just move yer ass, alright?"

"I'm on my way, but I have to stop and get another 'stick." He paused before entering the parking garage to allow the laser eye positioned above the door to scan his commlink. It took less than a second, after which there was a permissive-sounding musical chime and the automatic doors slid open.

Lynette exhaled sharply; "Fine. Lemme know when ya pass the Mall and I'll give ya directions. Matrix ain't shit out here for GPS."

"Leaving now. Bye."

"Yeah, see ya soon."

Christopher walked briskly through the parking garage toward his Saab. Without breaking stride, he pulled a pair of AR-capable glasses out of his breast pocket and put them on. He then fished a set of leatherette gloves out of his coat and worked them on over his hands. Tapping his commlink to wake it, he said, "Car start. Load pre-set dest...um, shit…um…oh! Load preset fifteen. Request advanced speed cap. Go."

From 20 meters away he heard the Saab's motor turn over and saw the green-blue lights of the interior begin to glow.

Sliding into his seat, he tapped the GridGuide's glowing AR button and the car automatically backed out of the parking space. A gate opened at the far end of the garage as a bright red ¥59 scrolled through his field of vision. Passing the security booth without stopping, the Saab pulled onto the street and accelerated through Belleview's late-night traffic.

The car cruised autonomously until it arrived at an ATM owned by the Zurich-Orbital Gemeinschaftsbank. As the Saab slowed, Christopher tapped the GridGuide icon again and said, "Double-park, five minutes." The icon blinked green and ¥25 showed on his glasses.

Hopping out of the car, he approached the ATM terminal and said in a loud, clear voice, "Blank credstick." A pair of neurofoam sprayers emerged from a hidden recess in the wall above the ATM and audibly pressurized. The weapons' nozzles focused on his chest as the laser eye scanned Christopher and his commlink. When the eye turned from yellow to green, the turrets depressurized and retracted into the building. At the same time, a pinky-sized credstick popped out of a small tube in the terminal and his glasses blinked ¥14.75.

Hopping back in the car, he said, "Northeast eighth street and two hundred forty-fourth avenue northeast. Go."

As the car reentered traffic, Christopher tapped the blank credstick against the screen of his commlink. A series of AR menus opened in front of him and he navigated them to move ¥5,000 from one of his discretionary accounts onto the credstick. He then encrypted it with a simple PIN and coded it to auto-open only when pinged with Lynette's commlink in close proximity.

The Saab merged seamlessly onto I90 and rocketed east toward Redmond.

Christopher pulled off of 244th Avenue NE into what, prior to the Crash, had once been an affluent suburb. The majority of the houses remained standing, but they had a completely different set of tenants. Some of the braver squatters, often those with access to some form of transportation and familiarity with firearms, took-up residence in the houses. Typically, several related groups or families would move into adjacent homes to pool resources and defense. If they prospered, they created tiny enclaves of civilization in the suburban wilderness; if they failed, they became just one more cautionary tale and another place to scavenge.

The overwhelming majority of homes, however, succumbed to nature. Everyday plant life destroyed the houses and fungi feasted on the rotting remains; wild animals took refuge under dilapidated roofs and turned old garages into warrens. Hidden among the vanilla dangers, mutated or Awakened plants and animals made the reclaimed forest even more dangerous than it already was.

Lynette's ambulance hovered above the driveway of a home that 50 years ago would have cost half a million dollars. But no longer; trees grew through the roof, wind and dry rot knocked all the windows out; the forest had reclaimed the old manicured lawns and animal tracks were everywhere.

She waved to him as the Saab struggled over the chunks of crumbling concrete that used to be a driveway.

Reaching over, he opened the glove compartment and stuck his hand far in the back, feeling for the hidden print scanner. When he found it, Christopher held his thumb in position for it to read his print and cause the hidden compartment in the dash to pop open. He reached inside and grabbed the Predator V and a pair of magazines; one he loaded into the pistol, the other he slid into his back pocket.

"Jesus, Chris; you drove that through Redmond? Are you stupid?" Lynette asked as he walked to meet her at the ambulance.

Christopher shook his head as he nestled the pistol into the waistband of his belt. "No, but I got the impression that you—"

She snorted disparagingly; "I guess you ain't exactly got a lot to be afraid of from a carjacker, though, do ya?"

"Just as much as you do," he contended.

A thin veneer of perspiration had formed along Lynette's forehead and upper lip. As she wiped it off with the short sleeves of her CrashCart uniform, she muttered, "Pffft! Yeah, right," under her breath.

Christopher looked at her with genuine concern; she seemed pale, and despite the relatively clement temperature of the evening, she shivered intermittently. "You okay, Lynn? You seem kinda shaky."

"What the fuck difference does it make how I am?!" she shouted. "This ain't a fraggin' date, Chris; we're here to do business. Now, you got my money or are you just wastin' my time?"

"Here," he pressed the credstick into her outstretched hand, "you know, most people like it when other people express concern for their wellbeing, it's ca—"

Lynette yanked the credstick away, and as she stuffed it into her pants pocket, she muttered, "Since when are you people?"

He tried his best not to let the pain of it show on his face, but judging by Lynette's gasp and wide-eyed expression, he failed. Speaking with the fingers of one hand covering her mouth, Lynette whispered, "Jesus Christ, Chris; I'm so sorry. I shouldn't've said that."

"It's okay, I get it." Christopher put on his best facile smile and took a few steps back from Lynette. "Hurts a little bit to hear it out loud like that, but…hey, it is what it is, right?"

"No, that was bullshit," she admitted. "It's just…lately I been having some trouble keeping things-I been kinda…"

"Having trouble keeping ahead of the curve?" he suggested.

Lynette nodded; "Yeah, it's making me nasty and…shit, I'm sorry I'm bein' such a bitch."

Christopher reached out and gave her arm a friendly squeeze. "S'ok, Lynn; if there's anybody that knows what it's like to have your appetites get out of control, it's me," he reminded her.

"Guess you would, wouldn't ya?" she acknowledged. "Alright, fuck it; let's get this over with. She's inside."

"Sounds good; we'll have to use your kit since mine's at home in the van." Christopher jerked his thumb over his shoulder as if his house was just around the bend, and not an hour's drive in the opposite direction.

Grabbing the tackle box-looking emergency kit from the ground by her feet, Lynette said, "That's fine, just so's long as you replace what we use before they inventory my rig."

"I'll have it dropped-off tomorrow when you're stopped for lunch," he confirmed.

"Good deal." Lynette then rattled her kit in Christopher's direction and pointed toward the dilapidated house, saying, "After you, boss."

Nodding silently, Christopher pulled the Predator from his belt and walked to the front porch. Keeping the pistol pointed at the ground, he turned the knob and nudged the door with his shoulder. When it failed to open, Lynette said in a low voice, "I just went in 'n' out through the window."

Christopher frowned. He then gripped the doorknob tighter and yanked the door hard against its frame. The door, the jamb, and a significant part of the frame itself came free and went clattering off into the overgrown yard.

Lynette jumped at the sudden noise and took a few stumbling steps backward. "What the hell'd you do that for?"

"You think the homeowners association is going to be mad at me?" Christopher asked. He gave Lynette a wry grin and grabbed hold of what remained of the doorframe. Squeezing it in his hand, the rotten wood turned to pulp and thick, brown-green liquid oozed our from between his fingers. "Everything's so rotten a baby could've pulled that door down. I don't know why you bothered climbing through the windows."

"I…"

Christopher turned his back on her and walked inside.

The trees that inundated the neighborhood created a thick overhead canopy that turned the interior of the house into a lightless cavern. As Christopher waited for his eyes to adjust, Lynette came up behind him and clicked on a flashlight that was large enough to pull double-duty as a club. Sweeping the beam across the marshland that had once been expensive carpeting; she shone the light on a young woman sprawled motionless on a pile of leaves.

Picking his way across the room with care, Christopher stood over her and asked, "Who is she?"

"Shadowrunner," Lynette told him.

He crouched next to the injured woman and whispered, "She's so young."

"Twenty-two, maybe twenty-three," Lynette guessed. "Some of 'em start runnin' when they're still in their teens, Chris. A lot of 'em got more kills under their belt by the time they're twenty than a fraggin' 'Star vet on retirement day."

"Life's not easy for anyone, is it?" Christopher asked. He meant it rhetorically, but it came out sounding like an honest inquiry.

Lynette looked from him down to the girl lying unconscious on a bed of moldy leaves and moss. Blood matted her hair to her head and stained the leaf litter in shades of rust. Attracted to the scent, insects had already started gathering on her body. Waving the bugs away with a rag from her back pocket, Lynette muttered, "Nobody I fuckin' know," under her breath.

"So, what happened to her?"

"Dunno," she admitted. "I got the call to pick up a 'Platinum Plus' client, which's a big-time bonus if we c'n get 'em to the ER under response time. If it wasn't for that, you can bet yer ass there's no way I'd've come out here. But it's a bogus account; she's got no SIN, no insurance, and definitely no money. Boss won't even let me put'er in the back of the rig to run to a free clinic; says she's a liability."

Without looking up at Lynette, Christopher asked, "She's going to die?"

She nodded; "Yeah…four or five hours, I think. She took a real hard beatin' across the head; looks like someone went to town with a baton or somethin'. Her skull's cracked and her brain's swelling-up."

"She in pain?"

Kneeling down next to Christopher, Lynette pulled the girl's sleeve up past the wrist to reveal a square plastic bandage affixed to her arm. "Nah, I gave 'er a heavy push off that Demerol stash you got for me and then I hit-er-up with a fentanyl slapper; she can't feel shit right now."

"Can't she overd—?"

Giving him a dirty look, Lynette said, "I know what I'm doin', Chris."

"Sorry."

She dismissed the perceived insult with a shallow shrug and a casual flip of her hand. "No worries. So? We good?"

"Yep. Here." He nodded while at the same time pressing a credstick into Lynette's hand.

Looking at it in confusion, she asked, "What's this?"

"It's the original 'stick I had on me tonight; use it to…you know, keep the wolves at bay," he recommended.

Lynette closed her hand into fist and her face darkened by several shades. She gripped the flashlight with enough force to turn her knuckles white, and through clenched teeth she snarled, "I ain't a charity case, Chris; I don't need y—"

Grabbing the flashlight to alleviate the temptation of striking him with it, Christopher said, "Here's what's going to happen: You're either going to take it or I'm going to back over it with my car when I leave. You choose which."

Unable to look him in the eye, she stared at the ground as she slid the credstick into her pocket. Embarrassed tears rolled down her cheeks and Lynette's shoulders slumped. "…thanks, Chris."

"You're welcome; now you should get the hell outta here before you lose your job," he suggested.

Standing, Lynette sniffed noisily and then wiped her eyes with the rag she held. Still unable to meet his gaze, she asked, "You gonna be okay out here by yourself?"

"Me? I'll be fine," he assured her. "Who's going to bother me all the way out here?"

Christopher's Saab exited the Outremer Express Corridor's elevator at the southern tip of Bainbridge Island. Driving manually, he navigated to Fletcher Bay and the large house he owned that abutted the water. The garage door opened automatically as his car approached; once he was safely parked inside, it closed and locked, likewise without instruction.

"Lights!" he said. In response, several banks of fluorescent lights flickered to life and bathed the four-car garage in a harsh, blue-white glow. "Gwaha! Shit! My lights! My lights!" The fluorescents immediately turned off and a multitude of xenon lamps blinked on, illuminating the garage with warm red light.

Walking around to the passenger side of the car, he stretched and cracked his back, twisting first at the waist and then again at the shoulders. He then opened the door and reached inside to disengage the seat belt from around his passenger. Sliding his left arm behind her neck and his right under her knees, Christopher gently lifted her up and out of the car.

Pushing the door closed with his hip, he carried the unconscious woman through the garage and toward the short flight of stairs that led up to the house. Instead of going up, however, he slid the toe of his shoe under the bottom tread and pushed a hidden button. The staircase then swung upwards on concealed, motorized hinges to reveal a second staircase that went down into a basement.

Walking downstairs, he paused to hit a pair of switches with his elbow; the first caused the stairs overhead to return to their original position, the second turned on more of the red lights to illuminate the staircase and the rooms down below.

The area into which Christopher carried the unconscious woman bore many striking similarities to a medical examiner's room. Various tools and chemistry paraphernalia covered the counters on two of the four walls; in glass cabinets above them were all sorts of medical equipment, and below the counters, in stainless steel cabinets, were supplies of a similar nature. A pair of large sinks hung next to a side-by-side refrigerator on the wall opposite the staircase. And in the center of the room there stood a stainless steel autopsy table complete with plumbing and overhead lights.

Gently placing her on the table, Christopher went to one of the cabinets and retrieved a pillow that he slid under the injured woman's head. Touching her bloody forehead, he asked, "Can you hear me?"

The young shadowrunner did not speak, but she rolled her unfocused eyes around the room. She tried to raise her hand, but it just flopped around like a dying fish. Tears rolled down her bloody temples toward her ears.

Christopher gripped her hand in his own and smiled at her. "Are you in pain?" Again she tried to speak, but the damage to her head – and the brain within – made it impossible. Instead, she squeezed his hand as hard as she was able. He reciprocated, saying, "Okay, I understand; I'll be right back, don't worry."

Walking over to the refrigerator, Christopher retrieved a slim glass vial and a mechanical injector from the counter. Returning to the table, he loaded the device and set it down next to the young woman. He then grabbed her pants and ripped them to expose her thigh. Placing the needle against her skin, he said, "This will burn for a moment, but then the pain'll go away, okay? It won't hurt anymore."

Inserting the needle into the thick muscle of her thigh, Christopher Wray injected a just-shy-of-lethal dose of Demerol. The young woman made a strangled hiss and started to kick her legs, but he held her still. As soon as the drug took effect, the tension left her muscles and she ceased her kicking; releasing a gurgling, moaning exhalation of relief, she fell silent.

Slowly, and with great care given to her injuries, Christopher undressed the young woman. Then, he took off all her accouterments and laid them on the counter next to her neatly-folded garments. And finally, he folded her hands across her chest and draped a sheet over her body, saying, "I wish I could've learned your name."

He gave her a light kiss on the forehead before burying his fangs in her throat and drinking her life away.