I do not own Shadowrun or aim to make any money from them as a result of this story. The setting is used without the permission of the appropriate corps, and is simply an exercise in amusement. Please don't sue me.

CHAPTER 9: LAUNDRY OF THE DAMNED

The place was a large room, with what looked like blast doors in the floor. There was litter and grime around the place, and there were no visible windows. A pair of thoroughly vandalized cameras hung from the back corners of the room, and there was a single door back there that read "NO ENTRY, EMP OY S ONL. The only other thing around was a dust-covered monitor, covered in glasstic sheeting. It had something like an ATM screen, and I approached and squinted at it through the smeared glasstic.

It seemed to be showing a couple of grids, with letters and numbers alternating on them. Where the letters and numbers met, there were green or red circles, with prices next to them. I assumed they were prices… They had the letters NY next to them, and my distant memory told me that meant nuyen.

The cheapest one I could find was red. I tried poking it, and the screen flashed "OCCUPIED", and reset. Fair enough. Poking a slightly more expensive green one got me a prompt asking "TIME IN HOURS?", and a slider. I set the slider to 48, and the screen demanded that I "AUTHORIZE TRANSACTION: 8 NY".

Poking the authorize button on my commlink got me a notice from the screen "KEY TRANSMITTED. THANK YOU USER NAME HERE"

I heard a strange humming and grinding from behind me, and instantly whirled around, tucking the commlink away and fumbling at the gun in my jacket, before relaxing. The blast doors in the floor were grinding open, revealing stairs leading down.

I took them cautiously, but sped up as the doors suddenly started to close while my torso was still above floor-level. Bending low, I hurried down the stairs, and came out into a water-damaged concrete room, with a single security guard wearing a visor staring into nothing sitting in a cheap chair, and fiddling his hands in midair. Beyond him was a grilled doorway. I looked around, and approached the guard.

"Hi. I rented a room…"

He smirked. "Funny. First time here, huh? Alright sweetheart, what coordinates?"

I blinked. "It was green."

He sat up and took off the visor. For the first time I noticed just how tall he was, and just how stretched his features were. His ears were long and pointed, and his face, bored as it was, had high cheekbones and the most perfect eyes I'd ever seen.

This was an elf, I was pretty sure of it. But I put that fact aside. Elf or no, he was also a rent-a-cop, and he was glaring at me.

"Cute. Don't remember the coordinates? A-4? B-12, that kind of thing?"

I shook my head. His smile changed.

"Well, it'll say on your comm, cutie. Hand it here, and I'll confirm it for you."

I looked at him for a long moment, watched his veins pulse under his skin, his slightly-warmer-than-human body heat grow a bit, as he studied me.

No. He'd gone from annoyed to friendly way too fast. I didn't trust that.

"Thanks, but I'll pass."

I walked toward the grille like I knew what I was doing, turning my back on him.

"Have a nice day… Slitch." That last bit was barely a whisper. I ignored him, and heard him put the visor back on his face, and heard his chair creak as he settled back into it. Much to my relief, the grille opened as I approached, saying "Key Confirmed", in a somewhat-motherly voice.

The inside of the bunker was lit with hanging bulbs, showing crumbling concrete, puddles of dark, oily water, and steel girders. There were cameras here too, but these seemed to function just fine, judging by the way they tracked back and forth, and the red lights at their bases. Cramped tunnels lead off in three directions, with letters and numbers and arrows printed all over them, along with tags proclaiming the greatness of people and things I'd never heard of.

Crap. What WERE those coordinates that I'd picked?

I tried to visualize the grid again… I'd gone with one towards the top middle… Okay, so it was probably over in the S-Z range… I followed the arrows, walking past banks of what looked like big washing machines. Each bank was set into the wall, and had a green or red light glowing from it. Green and red lights… Waitaminute…

I walked down past three aisles, and checked down each one. No doors here, no other people, just banks of washing machines, at least 16 to an aisle on each side.

The highest number on the grid was 16. I hadn't rented a room at all!

Or had I? As I crossed one aisle, I saw a machine with its door open and the light glowing red. An old man was pulling himself out of the machine, hunched over so he could step out onto the floor. As his feet touched the ground the light on the machine switched from red to green.

RPM had called this a coffin motel, now I saw why. I reached the S-aisle, and wandered up and down it, trying machine doors. None opened for me. At one point I passed a doorway labeled TOILETS. The smell emanating from that doorway made me glad I was undead.

As it turned out, V was the aisle I wanted. As I started down it trying doors, the light on number 7 turned from green to blue. I approached, and found that it opened easily. Inside, I could see a cramped space, maybe ten feet long, five feet wide, and four feet tall. The walls were scratched plastic. The floor seemed to be soft and gave under my foot, and there was a monitor on the ceiling. There were a couple of handles on the walls.

Beggars couldn't be choosers, and I'd already paid for the place, so I hunched over and crawled in. I tugged the door shut behind me, and the smooth CLICK of an internal latch catching made me smile. There were at least four locks behind me and the outside world now. Finally, I felt a little more secure. The immediate goal of SURVIVE had been achieved, now I could move on. Now I could focus on other things.

I sat down on the floor, which was surprisingly comfy. Now that I was up close, I could see stains in the vinyl-like floor, and there were a few lingering smells that I wasn't too sure about. Still, compared to my last lodgings, it was paradise.

Looking up, I saw words on the monitor that read "WELCOME USER NAME HERE, with a timer ticking down from 47:51:09, along with a smaller sentence that read LOCAL TIME 4:42 AM.

Below it were a list of options.

-EXTEND TIME (1 NY/6 hours)

-BATH (.05 NY)

-BASIC STATIONS (free)

-LAUNDRY (.10 NY)

-PAY 2 VIEW (.10 NY/hour)

-MATRIX UPLINK (.5 NY/hour)

-ALARM (free)

-HEAT/COOL (free)

-LIGHT/DARK (free)

-MUSIC (free)

I played with the free options for a while. The music had three songs, and none of them were familiar to me. I let them play anyway I put the coffin to as warm as I could get it, and dialed down the lights. Didn't see much point in setting the alarm.

Thinking it over, a bath sounded good. I'd been in water earlier, true, but it hadn't been the least bit clean. And I was wearing a dead man's clothes…

After I picked the bath option, I had to authorize it with my commlink. The monitor's text switched to BATH STARTING IN 45 S. 44 S. 43 S.

Some frantic fumbling revealed that one of the handles opened a small storage compartment in the side of the coffin. I barely stripped off and got my clothes and commlink in there before water started coursing out of the walls, hosing me down and sluicing out of hidden drains with a greedy gurgle. The water was followed by soap, and I scrubbed with the suds as best I could. Finally, another round of water washed the soap away, and fans behind the vents blew hot air over me.

The overall effect was like a warm car wash. To me, it was glorious. Finally, for the first time in I don't know when, I was free of filth.

Almost. I pulled the clothes out of the compartment, sniffed them, and made a face. Okay, these needed work.

Touching the laundry option opened up another compartment, and the screen ordered me to PLEASE REMOVE ALL NON-FABRIC POSSESSIONS FROM YOUR CLOTHES PRIOR TO ACTIVATING.

Right.

The gun and commlink were duly removed, and the clothes added. Machinery in the wall started chugging and grinding, and I lay back and let it work while I studied the screen again.

Basic stations… That was the only free option left.

I had a hunch I knew what that option would do. Still, I couldn't bring myself to touch the screen.

This had been like a cheap hotel so far, down to the stains of uncertain origin on the mattress. The basic stations option would probably get me the equivalent of local channel access… Kid's shows, reruns, and local news. It was that third thing which gave me pause.

See, if I caught a news program, it would tell me the date. That bit of uncertainty that plagued my mind would be gone. I'd know without a doubt just how long I'd been in Master's clutches.

I wasn't sure that I wanted to know.

I was scared.

If it had been only a few months, then it would mean that I was weak, that I'd gone crazy, and my mind had stretched out the tortures and made me feel every bit of them, for as long as possible. I didn't want to be weak.

If it had been longer, if it had been a few years, then I would have a really hard time fitting myself back into the world. It would mean that the people I'd known had moved on, gotten on with their lives, probably wouldn't remember me. It meant that I'd have trouble ahead, and that scared me worse than being weak.

If it had been longer than a few years… I didn't know. I just didn't know, and that scared me the most of all the options.

So yeah, I didn't want to deal with that tonight. Tonight, I'd sleep in a place all to myself, in warmth, wearing clothes for the first time in forever, with soft music playing in my ear. Twenty minutes later the laundry stopped, and I pulled my hard-earned clothes over me, enjoying the warmth and relative cleanness of the fabrics.

Two hours of tossing and turning later, I ended up stripping down, turning off the music, and turning down the heat.

Then I slept.