.
Sixth Night, PM
They were right on time, and Kate was on post as well. She had loads of questions and these two had better be forthcoming, because she was getting tired of not knowing, of people only giving her half-truths and withholding information. The two Runners didn't seem like a bad sort, but just like everyone else in this damn place, they had to weigh what information to impart and what to keep to themselves. Nobody trusted anyone these days. The adage "never, ever cut a deal with a dragon" they so loved using might have been more suitable when changed into "never, ever cut a deal with anyone".
"Hello again," the redhead said with a relaxed smile. Kate saw it as a good sign, meant the whole digging into her background had produced favourable results. "Did you meet our mistress of dark beauty?" The mocking undertone was unmistakable.
"Met 'er? Damn near killed 'er."
The Orc chuckled. "She'll never learn, will she? Still putting on her little show?"
Kate nodded. "Yeah. She became much more convivial after a few gentle taps to the face."
Fire Ant grinned. "You didn't hurt her too badly, did you?"
"Oh, no, no, she'll be fine. I hurt her less than she deserved, that much is certain."
Gun Show nodded, completely serious. "I can understand the sentiment."
With a shrug, the redhead merely said, "She was just doing what she thought it took to survive. You never know what motivates people until you know them."
"Bullshit," Kate snapped. "Nothing excuses slashing an innocent person across the gut and leaving them to die. And I've been meaning to ask you… how did you know I was infected in the Walled City? And by this kooky accountant? I don't recall seeing you people there."
"Yeah…" Fire Ant said, visibly uncomfortable. "About that…"
"Look, we just have to be honest," the Orc cut her off. "Look, Katie, we uh… we saw it happen."
Wait, did they mean… "You saw what happen? What she did to me?"
"Yes." The guy raised his hands to try and get her to stay calm. "But listen, before you get angry, circumstances were – "
Kate felt her head lower and she grunted, "What did you see? Tell me exactly what happened."
Fire Ant sighed, brushed her red hair away from her face, almost looking like she was being deliberately snooty, and said, "We ran into Ku Feng just as it happened. You came trotting up to her, full of hot air, telling her to leave the Walled City because it wasn't safe."
"Then what?"
She told it like it was the most normal thing in the world. "She turned, hacked you across the gut, and drank her fill. We weren't in time to stop it or do anything, so it's not like we let it happen."
"You could have checked to see if I was dead or not!" Kate shouted. They hadn't even stopped. Hadn't even stopped to check.
"Katie," Gun Show said carefully, "the situation was chaotic, the city was in flames, people were shooting each other left and right…"
Fire Ant continued, still on her casual tone, "… and when she cast you off, you were motionless, with your eyes open and your plumbing in your lap."
The Orc stared at his feet. "You looked dead, Katie. We had to move, try to save as many people as we could."
"And no offence," Fire Ant added, "but you weren't the first dead Tsang rent-a-cop we saw that day. Or the days before. In case you forgot, you guys were still the enemy. Shooting us on sight and all that?"
Wait, something didn't add up. She wasn't surprised she hadn't been told about the K.O.S.-policy regarding these guys, because after all, she was just a lowly security guard, but why had the policy been there in the first place? Her anger temporarily forgotten, she blinked and asked, "Wait… why were we the enemy?"
Fire Ant and Gun Show exchanged a surprised look. "Uh… because we'd broken into Tsang a few days before? The big data theft, you know, the one that went south and turned into a firefight?"
"The data theft… that was you?"
She shrugged. "Well… yeah."
The anger returned, doubling in intensity. Kate felt her hands ball into fists and her jaws clench together. "Do you realize you've killed seven or eight innocent people?" she growled through gritted teeth. "Just wageslaves, trying to make a living? People like me?"
"Yes, Kate," the Orc said. "And believe me, it weighs on me every day. It's… it was necessary, but I'll feel the guilt over it until my dying day. Because… I still see those guys as colleagues, even though I'm not Lone Star anymore. And I know they were just doing their jobs, that just makes it even more fucked up. For what it's worth… I'm sorry."
"It wasn't personal," Fire Ant said gently. "Please understand. We tried to keep it quiet, but when the alarms went off, we had to push through. There was too much at stake. Not nuyen or loot, but innocent people. All the people in the Walled City were threatened. The lost lives of your colleagues are a terrible thing, but it was only a fraction of the innocent civilians who died during the Walled City fiasco. And because we made that Run, we were able to save dozens, maybe even hundreds of people."
There was a whirlwind of emotions going on inside Kate, she wanted to tear them both apart for killing her fellow guards and for leaving her to die like a dog in the Walled City, but on the other hand, they looked sincere, and if what they were saying was true, then how could she judge them for having to take drastic measures? In disasters like these, too many people died or made things worse trying to save everyone. It was a numbers game, and you had to know which lives to save, which ones to leave, and sometimes, which ones to end. Rationally, she knew she shouldn't hate them for what they'd done, but her heart still throbbed with anger.
The best thing now would be to make sure she knew exactly what the context of all those tragedies had been. If her people had had to die, she needed to know exactly why. "I… need to know everything that happened at the Walled City."
The redhead let out a long sigh. "Fair enough. Come on, I s'pose there's no harm in letting you onto the Bolt Hole. We can talk in my cabin."
"I can trust you on this, right?" Kate said, not entirely eager to enter an old ship with these people, who were still responsible for the deaths of several of her co-workers. They might just want her off the streets to murder her in private.
"Katie," Fire Ant said, looking insulted. "If we wanted you dead, you'd be dead."
Gun Show nodded. "If anything, we're glad you're alive. A little less burden on our conscience."
"My brother likes to word things dramatically," the redhead said with a slight smirk, "but he's right. We're not just being nice to you, we're trying to make up for what we did, at least in some small part. Now come on, let's have a chat."
"It's cool, Katie. Really," the Orc ensured her.
Fine, then. She followed the two onto the ship and let them lead her into the interior. The inside of the ship was as run-down as the outside, but they'd seemed to make a cosy little home of it. The bridge had been repurposed into a common room, with chairs and even a grungy sofa set against the walls, and on the far side was a desk with a computer on top of it, a top-of-the-line model that looked out of place in the badly-maintained vessel. The screen currently showed its screensaver, a photo of Fire Ant and three other women, their arms over each other's shoulders, all of them smiling broadly, the sun on their faces. Fire Ant looked different than what Katie had seen from her so far, less aloof and reserved, and much more like a happy-go-lucky, fun-loving college student, her white teeth smiled bare. It was the same person, and yet she looked completely different. Younger, definitely, at least a few years, but also more open and warm. This was probably what she was really like when she wasn't weighted down by all this Shadowrunning tripe.
"Happier times, those," Fire Ant said with a wistful smile when she noticed Kate looking at the screensaver. "I miss those days, you have no idea."
"Old friends from school?" Kate asked, genuinely intrigued.
Fire Ant's face grew melancholic. "No, we uh, actually met in prison, in Seattle. I was a bit of a wild one back then," a brief grin appeared, then vanished again. "We were put in the same jail cell, started talking, and became fast friends. We were inseparable for a while. But then… you know, life happened, I suppose."
"I know how it feels," Kate said, but in reality, she didn't. Fire Ant motioned towards the sofa and Kate sat down. "Looks like, what, a few years ago?"
She nodded. "Three. We were like the Three Musketeers back then."
Kate chuckled, "There were even four of you, like the actual Musketeers."
"Yup. And just like the book, there were three of us, with a fourth joining later on."
"Okay, now I want to know more about it," Kate said, her anger left alone for the time being. She wanted to focus on something less gloomy right now, and the girls on the photo really did look intriguing. It'd be nice to have a chance to see more than the cold, distant leader persona this woman kept projecting.
"Oh dear," the Orc said with a grin. "She'll talk your ear off now."
"Shush you," the woman said, and looked back at the photo. There were four women on there, three of them bearing expressions so cheerful they looked like they were about to burst. The fourth looked peeved to be in the photo, as if she found herself too cool for trivial things like posing for a group picture. "Alright, so, the grumpy one on the left, that's Flare. She stayed in Seattle. Last I heard of her, she'd been following up on a friend's will, something to do with a serial killer who harvested organs or something. Nasty business."
"She doesn't look too happy to be in the photo."
Fire Ant laughed, and Kate saw a glimpse of the photographic version briefly shine through. "That's Flare, she was always too cool for school. The one who acts like this whole friendship thing is childish, but who secretly treasures it down in her heart of hearts?"
There was always one, wasn't there? "Oh, right. Your tsundere."
Her eyes lit up. "Yes! Exactly!"
She looked the part too, with stark white hair parted to one side in a rebellious haircut, a crude but efficient leather outfit complete with chains and spikes, the visible part of her chest covered in tattoos, and a cigarette dangling out of the corner of her mouth. She wasn't good-looking, but somehow Kate suspected she didn't want to be either. "I know it's bad form to ask for the meaning of street names, but come on, why Flare? Is it because she uh, has a lot of flair?"
The Orc burst into laughter. "No, not exactly."
Laughing along, Fire Ant said, "No, flair wasn't her strong suit, heavens no. No, she got the name from always rushing headlong into things, always storming at things like a bull instead of dosing her power so she'd be a whirlwind of destruction for a short while and then run out of energy far too soon. Her friend Coyote, that's the one who took the picture, by the way, always kept telling her that the flare that burned twice as bright burned half as long. Hence 'Flare'."
"Which is ironic," her brother imparted, "since apparently this Coyote chick is even worse at rushing into things without thinking."
"Then there's me," Fire Ant went on, nudging her chin at the photographic version of herself, "My nickname isn't as imaginative, sadly."
Kate shrugged. "It works, right?"
"Yup. You already know me, so not much to tell." She looked at the picture again and her eyes grew cloudy.
"Hey Richelle, maybe we should focus on the task at hand?" the Orc said, noticing her change in mood as well. "You know, keep our heads clear?"
"No, no," the woman said. Huh, so her name was Richelle. Kate always preferred real names to those silly street names. Neither the redhead nor her brother had noticed his small slip. "I'm not going to pretend they don't exist because it makes me feel bad. They deserve more."
Gun Show sighed. "Alright then. I just… don't like seeing you sad."
"It's alright." The two remaining women on the photo apparently had less pleasant backstories attached to them. They both had platinum blonde hair, but one had hers tied back in a ponytail, the other had the sides of her head shaved, the hair on top wild and unruly, and dyed with a single broad blue streak. The girl with the ponytail looked the youngest of the four, and she was gorgeous, looking like a supermodel with her bright smile, cute nose and flawless skin. The one with the shaved head looked a bit older, but she was still pretty, although the attention was primarily drawn by the cleavage window in the front of her leather suit, which showed off a considerable bust. "That's Dex and Mon. We met Monika through Dex, they were old friends back in Berlin, and Monika became like, our fourth musketeer. We didn't see her as often, because she was real busy back home, but every time she visited, we had loads of fun. And Dex, she…" tears appeared in her eyes. "She was the youngest, and people always assumed she wasn't too bright, because she had those supermodel looks, but she had a sharp mind, and a heart the size of the entire UCAS. She wasn't just fun and smart and good with her hands, she was… pure. She was like goodness compressed and chiselled into a cute young girl. Hell, she was even in jail due to a case of mistaken identity."
"You're uh… speaking in the past tense?" Kate remarked, knowing the probable reason, but still hoping to give Fire Ant a comfortable opportunity to either explain or decline to go into it.
"Yeah, they're… in a better place now," Fire Ant said, her lower lip trembling. "We were all close friends, but those two… they were like soul mates, even more than the rest of us. Monika always called her 'Ace'. It was cheesy, but sincere. We'll never really know how close they were, but…" she gave a short chuckle through her tears, "we all suspected there was more going on between them than just friendship." She sniffed. "That Run they did in Berlin, we all knew it was bad news, but Monika wouldn't listen. Insisted it was a milk run and that she was just borrowing Dex from us for a few days at most. I swear, there's nothing I hate more than the words 'milk run'."
Her brother stood leaning against the wall and sighed in agreement.
"They'd stumbled on… something when they did the run, and Monika, she… they told us later on that when she tried to jack into the security system, there was some kind of backlash, and her… brain just… fried. So hard she bit off half her tongue." Quietly, she said, "They said her brain literally… came dripping out of her ears."
Kate looked at the photo of the busty girl with the mysterious smile on the right side of the photo, unable to imagine how she must have felt, and could say nothing more than, "Oh geez, that must have been…"
"Yes. It must have been. And Dex, she… she was shattered, but she wanted to get to the bottom of it. We told her to drop it, to let it go, but she said she had to carry on, for Monika and for the Flux State. There was a group of extremists who'd been trying to bring back an ancient evil dragon, or something, and she was determined to stop it."
"But…?"
Fire Ant took a breath, her lip still trembling and tears standing in her eyes. "She'd almost pulled it off, too, but when she came back from a meeting with some kind of A.I., the subway train she was on suddenly stopped. There were at least seven of them, all mercenaries for those extremists. The Runners that travelled with Dex saw the security cam footage. Apparently you could see Dex roll her eyes and raise her hands while those flashlights were on her, probably saying she'd come quietly, and then the guy leading those mercs, some huge old Orc, grinned and said something."
"Richelle – "
"And then they just… unloaded on her. All of them. Their guns on full auto. Just… kept the triggers down until their guns were empty." Fire Ant's face was hidden in her hands, her voice reduced to a peep. "They had to… they had to identify her by her boots. Above her waist…"
Fire Ant's brother put a hand on his sister's shoulder. "Hey. Richelle. Come on, don't do this to yourself."
Kate could only sit in silence.
"She was the best of us, Katie," Fire Ant cried into her hands, her shoulders hitching. "And I'm not saying that because she'd dead. She was the best of us." Her face reappeared again, her wrist wiping her tears away. "And they just shot her apart," she said quietly. "Shot her to pieces. Purely out of cruelty."
"Her Runners completed her job in the end," Gun Show told Kate. "Dietrich, Glory, Blitz and Eiger. They were troopers. Went on without her despite losing both Dex and Monika, and they killed every single one of them. The Orc got burned alive by the dragon they were trying to enslave."
"Geez, I'm… I'm sorry, guys."
"Right after those four Musketeers hooked up, my sister and I got mostly separated, only talking over the phone, so I only knew them superficially, but yeah… It was tragic."
"It was," Fire Ant said, her tears wiped away and her composure mostly regained. She looked at the photo and said, "I still miss you every day, you two. Every single day."
Kate could say nothing, letting the red-haired woman take a few breaths to return to her old self.
"Well," she said with an embarrassed laugh, "that showed a much more emotional side of me than I would have liked."
"It's okay," Kate said quietly. "I think I like you better when you're being genuine anyway."
"I sure don't," she said with a chuckle. "Anyway, since my brother already let my real name slip, might as well dispense with the street names altogether."
"Good idea," Gun Show said. "Just call me Duncan, instead of that stupid nickname."
Duncan. That sounded a lot better than Gun Show, definitely. "Glad to be able to call you by your real names, Richelle and Duncan."
Fire Ant shot a furtive glance across the empty bridge. "Keep it to yourself though. You know, for security."
"Mm."
"So," Richelle said, "Now that I've blubbed like a little girl, let's talk about the Walled City. First I want to apologize to you for the damage we've caused, but there was no other way."
Kate felt her heart harden again. "We'll see about that."
"Fair enough. So, the Walled City. It's all a really long story, but I'll stick to the essentials. Our foster father was high up in the Tsang corporation, you know, your employer."
"Former employer," Duncan corrected.
"Right. He was canned and later targeted for abduction when he got second thoughts about something called the 'Prosperity Project'." The name rang a bell, but faintly. She'd head scuttlebutt about something with a similar name but had never learned what it was about, only that it was secret and sensitive. "To put it succinctly, the Prosperity Project was an idea was an idea thought up by our foster father and Josephine Tsang, to calm a refugee crisis in the Walled City by building a massive machine that could filter negative qi into positive, making life in the Walled City more prosperous."
Kate didn't believe in all the qi business, but she knew Tsang did, and they placed exorbitant importance on it, going so far as to reprimand workers who didn't arrange their workspaces properly or moved furniture to places it wasn't intended to stand. One guy in accounts had even been fired for trading desks with another employee without permission.
"The Project went bad," Gun Show took over, "like those projects always do, making the qi even more toxic instead of converting it, and Raymond saw what happened. He wanted out, telling Josephine to dismantle the machine. Of course, she wasn't at all prepared to flush the millions of nuyen sunk into the device, so she simply tried to ignore the problem until it went away."
"What she didn't know, at least at first," his sister went on, "was that the Prosperity Machine intoxicated the qi not due to a technical defect, but because some kind of astral being had… I don't know, latched onto it? Got stuck in it? Whatever it is that astral demon lords do."
So it was a damn demon lord after all! Kate knew of a cab driver who'd be slapping himself if he knew.
"Eventually Tsang did find out, and I suppose she decided to make the best of a bad situation, striking some kind of deal with the machine's inhabitant, siphoning off the good qi the machine did manage to produce for her company, and leaving the toxic qi to further rot the Walled City, giving the astral being time and energy to break into our reality."
"So who was the demon lord? Was it one of the Yama Kings, like some people claim?"
Fire Ant blinked, surprised at the question and the fact that Kate had heard of the Yama Kings. "Why… yes it was. Word travels quickly, it seems. Yes, it was one of the Yama Kings. Qian Ya, the Queen of a Thousand Teeth. Did you ever have nightmares in the nights leading up to the Walled City riots?"
As a matter of fact, she had. Many people had complained about nightmares and disturbed sleep, so much that the item had even been on the news, with the cause later explained away as a drug lab explosion throwing trace hallucinogens in the air. But this had been the real cause, apparently. "Yeah," she told the Runners. "I kept dreaming that my teeth fell out. So that was…?"
"Yup. The nightmares were a side effect of Qian Ya trying to enter this reality. And given her domain, well, no surprise that everyone dreamed awful things about teeth, heh. Had she gained entry into this reality, she probably would have made the Walled City her kingdom."
"At first," Duncan pointed out. "Pretty soon she would have found the Walled City too small, and you can bet she would have expanded as far as the world had let her. The world would have been in serious trouble, I'll tell you that much."
"We learned of all this," Fire Ant said, "just in time to intervene, but the night we confronted her, she had already succeeded in a few actual manifestations in our reality… this is what caused the Walled City riots. Toxic qi exploded in the City, and it turned people… crazy, I s'pose. This was all made even worse by the Tsang security forces, i.e. you, in the area who tried to both stop us from entering the heart of the City, and to maintain order at the same time."
"They succeeded in neither," Duncan said flatly. "We had to fight our way through your colleagues, through extra-dimensional horrors, and even through crazed citizens. In the end, there were Tsang forces as well as HKPF officers gunning down civilians, civilians storming security checkpoints, and planar monsters tearing people limb from limb." He shook his head. "It was a nightmare."
"Geez."
"You didn't witness most of it, because you were stationed in the outer ring, but you must have doubtless heard it on your radio. And yeah, by the time the riots completely blew up, you were, well… dead, but not really."
"Looking at it now," Duncan said, "It was probably for the better. They were things no sane person would have wanted to see."
"Mm."
"But yeah," Fire Ant concluded. "People were insane, all of them. Us too. The entire time I was there, I could feel this… craziness eating at me, trying to get me to do bad things. The Tsang and police forces must have felt it too. I can't even imagine how overpowering that must have been to the people who'd lived there all their lives."
Duncan shook his head. "Half the City was on fire, gunfire kept thundering from all sides, there were bodies and body parts everywhere. It was horrible."
Kate could kind of understand how it would have been easy to overlook a security guard lying on the ground dying with her guts steaming outside her body. She understood enough, at least, to know she couldn't judge these guys for leaving her. They didn't seem like a bad sort, Kate was more and more convinced the more she talked to them, so she was grudgingly prepared to chalk it up to just an error in judgment. The virus must have kept her alive long enough for emergency medical help to arrive, but who had called it in, she'd probably never know. At least now she'd found out exactly what had happened to her. Slashed open and drained by some vampire, 'just because she could'.
"You have to understand, Katie," Fire Ant impressed upon her, "Even we weren't thinking straight at that point. All of us could feel the madness eating away at our minds, and we made some dumb decisions, just like your colleagues, the cops, and the citizens of the Walled City."
"Yeah, I… s'pose I'll have to give you the benefit of the doubt."
"That's all we ask. Now, Duncan and I have been talking and well, there's something we'd like to do for you in return."
"Oh?" This could be interesting.
"Seeing as how Tsang was our mortal enemy for a few weeks," Duncan explained, "we're pretty well informed of all of Josephine Tsang's doings. We've got some information that'll probably hammer the final nail into Tsang corporation's coffin, but before we deliver it to Kindly Cheng, we'll try to give you the chance to confront our good friend the CEO, concerning that unexplained order to bring her your head."
Ooh, this would be nice. It wouldn't be without danger, of course, but it might be her last chance to get it all straight from the horse's mouth. "Ah, awesome. So what do I do?"
"She's going to try and flee the country with her private jet in a few hours," Fire Ant said, leaning back in her chair. "We were thinking of crashing her party ourselves, but because we've got something to make up for towards you, you can tag along if you like. Only thing that matters to us is that she doesn't leave the country."
"Really? Cool." This was a big favour, she realized it all too well, after all, these were pro Runners, and they weren't prone to taking the risk of letting an unaffiliated person join them.
"Don't get the wrong idea, though," Fire Ant said, "it's not some big shootout we're expecting. We'll just be performing some minor acts of sabotage on their fuel systems."
"And maybe blow up the plane at some point or other," Duncan added with a grin.
This might be a problem, Kate realized. She wrung her hands and said cautiously, "Can I make one little request though?"
"Sure."
"No killing?" She knew it was a tall order, but she didn't want to be a part of any operation that might end in people dying. Well, except maybe the Cleaners. Because seriously, fuck those guys.
Fire Ant sighed, thinking, but her brother seemed to see no problem. "No killing's fine if we can help it. There's been too many people dead because of Tsang already."
"Yeah, fine," Fire Ant agreed. "But if we have to defend ourselves, I can't guarantee we won't use lethal force. I mean, you understand, right?"
"Yeah, I do," Kate had to concede. "As long as you don't actively look for or incite violence."
"We're not violent people by nature," Richelle said with a smile. "So if we can do it without bloodshed, so much the better."
"It's just going to be the three of us, though," Duncan told his sister. "Gobbet doesn't want to work with strangers, and Iz can patch into the airstrip's software without needing to be present. Racter's busy and Gaichu's nowhere to be found."
Kate had no idea who these people were, but it wasn't hard to figure out that they were probably fellow Runners.
"Well, unless you have some more questions," Fire Ant told Kate, "We can get ready to leave. Do you have anything in terms of weapons and equipment?"
"No," she had to admit sheepishly. "Your bitch-ass fixer took all my stuff except my spare clothes. I had an SMG, but that's gone. So's my money."
She nodded. "I've got some stuff you can borrow. Not the professional gear you're probably used to, but still decent. You can use my old FN HAR, and I think Duncan's got a bullet-resistant jacket lying around… right dear brother?"
"Sure do. Might not be your size, but…"
"Sokay, I'll take what I can get."
"Right. Let's get you outfitted, and then we'll pay Josie Tsang a visit."
For better or worse, tonight was her only chance to find out why she needed to die, and her only chance to put a stop to it.
