Trial Separation (posted 2015/06/17)
Senior Agent Douglas Whitman looked at the unconscious child before him, a myriad of questions running through his mind.
The boy was blond, maybe eleven or so years old, and had been packing more firepower than even law enforcement officers and military police typically carried. Actually, it might have been a little light considering that the boy had been pulled out of the rubble of the Jordan Aerodynamics building in the Terminal district over a week ago. The boy now lay in bed with a collection of monitoring equipment and IVs plugged into him.
It had been a stroke of pure luck that the boy had even been found at all, or that he had even survived. The best scenarios had put the boy on the roof at the time of the building's collapse. Someone had been with him, Whitman was sure of, as someone had cried out after the building had collapsed, drawing the attention of some of the Rangers that had been outside at the time. That particular person had not been found, but the fact that it had drawn attention back to the remains of Jordan Aerodynamics meant that someone had noticed a lot of blood where there should not have been any, and a quick search had turned up the young boy that now lay before him.
The boy's luck had come with a cost, however. It had taken a fair amount of blood to be noticed at night in the rain, and that much blood had come from his severed left arm. What had made things even more difficult was that his clothing had been made with a ruthenium polymer coating that had been set to active camouflage, making him virtually invisible. Several hours of surgery to rebuild his arm just below the elbow, repair two broken ribs, a punctured left lung, and dislocated right knee, and almost as many units of synthetic O-negative blood, had ultimately saved his life, but the remains of his lower arm was never found.
Then came the mysteries, for when he had been found it had looked like the boy had a cybernetic arm. It turned out that he had been wearing a case mod to make it look like he had a cybernetic arm.
A knock at the door broke Whitman from his reverie, and he stepped outside. "How's Cameron doing?" he asked.
"Stable, but still in critical condition." Agent Alana Olmos said, "That data bomb wasn't like anything they've seen, and his defensive software barely saved him."
Amongst the boy's possessions was a commlink, last year's model Emperor by Sony, which had been damaged in the explosion but was apparently still functional. The most a technician could manage with it so far was to try and enable the wireless functionality, which then prompted it to refuse to connect to anything else. That technician had opted to jack in directly into the Emperor to hack it, and had walked straight into a data bomb that nearly killed him.
A second, and more cautious, hacker went just far enough to get a scan and quickly jacked out again when he found it was a military grade black hole, the kind of data bomb left on the ultra super top secret files and networks in places like the Pentagon. An equally careful scan of the boy's two Predator IV handguns turned up that they too were protected by similar data bombs, though his other wireless items taken from him were not so protected. The technician that had found the data bombs had tried spoofing them, impersonating a valid device, to try and slip his way into the boy's commlink, but the connections had been rebuked. The tech figured the odds were good that the commlink they had was a secondary one for daily use, as many hackers (the smart ones, anyway) always did. And that meant that somewhere out there was the child hacker's master commlink.
"Completely original software, yeah, I know." Whitman replied. "What'd you find out about the boy?"
"We ran his DNA and biometrics, and the best possible match we found was to an Alton Leonhart. No listed family and a last known address out in the Zone. No commcodes on record to try, but we did manage to contact someone there. A Rei Kanzaki, an arcane forensics expert for Knight Errant. She never heard of either of him."
"Did you try giving her a description or trid image of the kid to make sure?"
Olmos shook her head. "Didn't bother. According to her record at Knight Errant she's blind. A neurological disorder in the occipital lobe of her brain. She can't even 'see' simsense or in virtual."
Whitman did not even feel like asking how a blind woman could be working forensics for Knight Errant.
"So I guess we're to take it the kid's a shadowrunner." Whitman softly said.
"He's not even a teenager!" Olmos said.
"And the government's courting some of the best hackers ever before they finish high school." Whitman returned, "Just wonder how good he could be in a few years."
"And some training."
Whitman shook his head. "Kid's probably this good because he wasn't trained."
Athena had originally only intended to peek in on Firefly when she had suddenly showed up at the brownstone. Firefly was in the middle of a binding ritual now, her power focus clutched tightly in one hand as she sat cross legged on the floor, and she dared not look directly at the inferno of a spirit the girl was binding.
It was well over a week since things had gone to Hell at the Jordan Aerodynamics building, and Athena and Roadblock had not seen nor heard anything about Cypher or Firefly since. It had taken her some time to recall that the two had claimed they could really disappear if they wanted to, and she had started to wonder if they truly had.
She had no idea who, but someone had inadvertently tripped a silent alarm or alerted the Switchblades to an intrusion. Nocturne was pissed about the lost bonus, but she had said it was more important to find the kids and get out with what they had discovered. As far as she had known for certain only she and Roadblock had actually made it out alive and only because Roadblock had been able to do some impromptu redecorating of the ground floor, making new doorways in the walls, to make their escape. Nocturne had gotten shot up pretty badly during their escape, and Athena had not managed to escape unscathed either, but last she had seen the razorboy he was laying in a pool of blood on the floor. If the Switchblades had not taken him prisoner and patched him up they had likely left him for dead before the building came down on him.
Even now Athena was not quite sure how she and Roadblock had gotten out of Terminal. NYPD Inc. had locked down all four of the chokepoints in and out of the district. They had holed up with one of Roadblock's friends, the greasy and foul mouthed elf whose name she did not want to learn (it was Glenn), somewhere in the Bronx for a week before figuring the heat had died down. They had not contacted Mr. Johnson regarding the job, partly because she felt they needed to lay low, but also because she had not managed to get much in the way of data before all hell broke loose.
They had barely been back at the brownstone a day when a soaked (for it had been raining heavily again that night) and miserable looking Firefly showed up at their front door with a simple duffle bag slung over one shoulder. The little redhead did not say a thing as she walked inside and straight to her lodge upstairs.
Athena had left her alone for the most part. A little after seven in the morning she had brought the girl some breakfast and found her with her fire elemental already in a binding ritual. She had simply left the plate of scrambled eggs and hash browns for Firefly and left. Checking back again at noon she found the plate cold and untouched, with Firefly as focused as ever in the binding.
She grew worried when dinner came and Firefly had not yet come out of her room. It had been well over ten hours now when Athena checked on her, and was not too surprised to find she was still binding the same elemental. She knew quite well herself the time and effort it took, and the more powerful the spirit the longer the ritual.
But this time she did not leave. Instead Athena had quietly walked around to the side of the room to look at the two, opening up her sketching program and opening up a new project file with a full color pallet. She stretched her perceptions to the astral again and began to record what she saw. The raw power and beauty of the astral flames at the center of a pentagram of razor thin lines of flickering red and orange flames.
Firefly was really living up to her name as well. No simple naked girl sitting on the floor was she, with tiny tongues of red and orange flames flitting about her astral body. Even her hair, short as it really was, was incredibly long in the astral, glowing and flickering with the same fires, flowing gently as if billowing against warm underwater currents.
The elemental was also strikingly beautiful in its own way. Times past Athena had seen it summoned, an inferno of rage and power restrained by an invisible bottle in humanoid form. In binding she saw a change to its form; two jets of flame had erupted from its head curling back and tall like a pair of horns, and smaller tongues had broken through its feet and fingertips like claws of solid fire. Bands of molten gold wrapped about its neck, ankles, and crown like baroque armor, with matching pauldrons floating at its shoulders and a breastplate at its chest. It took her a minute to realize what was really going on between Firefly and the elemental she called Astorath, and the prospects terrified her.
It was not a simple binding ritual Firefly was performing, sitting as bare and unprotected in front of as powerful as possible a fire spirit Athena had ever seen, but a ritual of invoking. Firefly was turning the fire elemental she normally just summoned into a great form spirit, an endeavor that was more perilous than simply binding a spirit.
That was not to say that she had never managed it before. Athena had seen her guardian spirit, named Baradiel, in action before and knew that these two spirits were at the maximum limits of Firefly's summoning ability. And Baradiel too was a great form spirit.
Firefly was sweating profusely by the end of the ritual, and Athena could see the fatigue in her dark and sunken eyes. It had been about twelve hours by her mark when the astral glow of the pentagram began to fade, the remnants of incense cones and other binding materials decomposing to worthless sludge and dust. She breathed heavily once and started to fall over, but Athena was right there to catch her. Despite nearly passing out she still had an iron grip on her power focus.
"'m alright." Firefly muttered.
"Like hell you are." Athena sternly said, "You almost took on too much to handle. Fuck, I'm surprised now that you managed to even invoke that guardian spirit of yours."
Firefly muttered something Athena could not make out. Weakly she tried to stand, but her body went limp almost right away. Rather than help her to her feet, Athena helped her lie down on the bed.
"I think your spirit might appreciate it if you could dismiss it for now." Athena said.
"No!" Firefly protested, sounding even more like the child she looked like, "I need it… to…"
"What you need to do is rest." Athena said, pulling a bed sheet over the naked girl.
"… find… Skyler." she muttered.
"Skyler?" Athena asked even though she was not sure she would get a coherent answer.
The crackling fire intensified. Firefly's eyes flickered as she tried to open them, to look upon her newly bound and invoked spirit. That look must have been enough as the fire elemental not only settled down, but vanished.
"Sent it back?" Athena asked.
"Yeah." she sighed.
"You just rest now, you hear? I'll get you something to wear in the morning."
Athena was not sure just how much Firefly had heard as she quietly gathered up her clothing for the wash, holding her nose away as she realized that Firefly had indeed been wearing them for the last week straight.
"He's been awake for about ten minutes now, Agent Olmos, but I doubt you'll be able to get a straight answer out of him right now." the doctor said.
"That's alright. I do have to try." Alana Olmos replied before stepping into the room.
It was not the first time the boy had woken up, but it was currently the longest so far. One of the times he had woken up he had found the controls to his bed and raised the head of it so he was more upright, and it had stayed that way ever since.
"Alton?" she asked, closing the door behind her. Each time she had asked that, and so far she had not gotten a straight answer as to if it was his name or not. Her continued research had not turned up any other names just yet so it was the only bit of information they had to go on.
The boy kept looking at the stump of his lower arm.
"Hey kid, you alright?" she asked.
"This isn't right." he said aloud, still looking at where his lower arm was supposed to be with dull blue eyes.
Those eyes, those solid blue eyes, she still had to fight to not stare at them. They were clearly not cybernetic nor bioware implants as more than one medical magician would attest to his aura being intact, so that left either minor biosculpting that did not scar a person's aura or the boy was a changeling. There currently was not enough evidence either way for proof as SURGE did not exactly show up in one's DNA very clearly. In that regard people whose DNA testing suggested were (or would be) changelings were normal, and some very obvious changelings showed up as normal after their DNA was examined. Then there were also the lucky kids who had very liberal parents, letting them get tattooed and body parts pierced long before they could even begin to realize their lifelong consequences.
Alana Olmos had seen a lot of body art in her day, and the more she looked at his eyes, the longer she looked closely into his eyes, the more she felt the kid was a changeling. There was just something about the coloration that seemed… natural.
She forced herself back to the here and now, saying, "You were lucky we even found you in the rubble. Sadly we couldn't find your arm." No doubt the boy was still experiencing phantom limb syndrome, his nerve cells still firing off signals as if his arm was still intact. "What's the last thing you remember?"
It was the third time she had tried asking that question. The last two times she had tried he had passed out before she finished speaking. This time she had some hope for an answer since he was still awake.
"I…" He swallowed, eyes drifting up to look at her. "I don't know."
"How about your name?"
"I… I… don't…"
"Hey, it's alright. Your brain's probably still sorting itself out. Just try and get some rest." Alana quietly slipped out of the room.
Whitman was outside waiting with the doctor. "Get anything?"
"Only that his name isn't Alton. He can't seem to remember anything, including his own name."
"There wasn't any sign of brain damage, so his amnesia should be temporary." the doctor said.
"So we're just going to call him John Doe?" Whitman asked.
"Unless there's something else he'd rather use." Olmos said. "I don't think that it'd be worth pressing him about it now."
"Any chance that he's faking this?" Whitman asked.
"Why would a kid fake this?" the doctor asked.
"Not likely. He's giving a lot of truth indicators. There's no way we're gonna know without someone using a truth spell of some kind." Olmos answered. She kept quiet about her feeling that if the boy was as smart as Whitman felt that he would be able to figure a way around such spells.
"We'll give him some time. Hopefully after he's healed up and conscious for more than fifteen minutes at a time he'll be able to remember more."
Like why he was on top of the J.A. building, Olmos thought.
Athena quietly cracked the door open to Firefly's room. No, not "Firefly" anymore and Athena wondered what had happened to make her want to abandon her name so suddenly.
Listening carefully Athena could hear the girl's fitful sleep. She barely ate, coming down to the family room only to lie on the couch and let her and Roadblock know she was still alive. She did not even use her commlink for anything, especially online as Athena had kept a scanning program running to pick up any activity.
A silent alert to a new text message prompted Athena to quietly close the girl's bedroom door again. She hated leaving her to her night terrors, but one attempted flamethrower spell to the face was all Athena needed to realize that the girl was better off left alone as she slept.
Softly walking back towards her room she opened the text. It was a message from Arnold Warnke, an officer with NYPD Inc., and he had some info for her. She dressed and swapped the identity chip in her commlink for another, sent Roadblock a text that she would be out for a few hours, and headed outside.
The meeting place was a McHugh's that was about seven blocks away from where they lived. Some shadowrunners might have felt that meeting a contact of any kind, let alone a cop, so close to home was too risky. If it had been a regular place for her to meet Arnold then she would have agreed with them. As it was, she and Arnold had a long running and professional relationship when it came to their occasional needs. Whoever needed the favor went to the meeting place of the other's choosing, and they never chose the same place twice in a row. Last time when he needed help, they had discretely met at a Nacho Mama in the Bronx.
After a long walk following the elevated metro in the cool night air, Athena made the left turn that would take her straight to the McHugh's Arnold had asked to meet at.
The inside looked much like any other McHugh's, brightly lit despite the late night hour and lack of customers and decorated heavily with their corny corporate logos and animated characters. She went straight to the counter to order a small meal, and casually looked around while she waited for it to be processed. Once she had her burger, drink, and fries she headed for a back corner booth where she had spotted Arnold. With a thought she loaded up her Horizon Mind Reader empathy and lie detector programs.
Arnold Warnke was human, and not really much to look at. He was usually fine with this as people often overlooked him, failing to notice the sharp mind that recalled most of whatever he saw or heard.
"Good to see you got out of there with your skin intact." Arnold said as Athena slid into the bench seat opposite of him.
"You have no idea how much of a shit storm it was." Athena replied, pulling a few fries free and biting down on them.
"When the G-man's alphabet soup's involved I do."
Athena had figured some government agency had been involved, guessing it was likely the CIA. Keeping a nonchalant expression she asked, "So, what'd you find for me?"
"Seems our boys in black caught something that night." Arnold said, "Something hurt pretty badly apparently. Heal magic only goes so far sometimes, and the Chelsea clinic down on sixth got a sudden request for four units of O-neg blood and no explanation why."
Athena unwrapped her burger and took a bite. She really wished that whoever designed the food had actually eaten a real dill pickle since the pick'ls in her burger tasted excessively dill. She opened up her burger and started plucking out the remaining pick'ls. "And is that where my friend is?"
"Would be nice if it were that easy, but no." Arnold said, taking another bite of his own burger. Athena waited patiently for him to chew, and decided to take a bite of her own when he said, "Rumor is these G-men got themselves a squat up in the Bronx up near that McHugh's where the monster was supposedly spotted last month."
The location did not surprise Athena in the least, especially if it really was the CIA as they seemed to favor the really bad shitholes they could wriggle into.
"Just how reliable is this rumor?"
"Pretty good that they've got it. Not so good that your friend's actually there."
"If he is I hope we can get him out of there without any fuss." Athena said before taking another bite of her burger.
"And why's that?"
Athena swallowed before answering. "Because if we can't, there's a pissed off girl that's gonna be Ghostwalker in miniature busting in to get him out."
Friday night was the traditional party night across the UCAS since long before there was a UCAS, from the school grades up to the corporate wageslaves.
Looking like a little girl would have made it rather difficult for Mina to get into any club, and that was assuming she wanted to go anyway. Even though she did not look it she was still technically a teenager and a juvenile by law. No, instead of going to some club like most wageslaves, or a party with friends, or even a sleepover at Cindy's (who did not know she was living in Queens for the time), Mina was once again quietly skulking about in Terminal. For the most part she kept to the edge of the shadows, her clothing set on camouflage mode to help conceal her.
Hours ago she had called up Peace Man with a simple question of who in Terminal was the best to speak with for information, especially information about what was happening in Terminal. He had pointed her to the leader of the Kings, a human named Crypt.
Bringing up the ARO for the controls to her clothing, Mina selected all black, deactivating the active camouflage for something that could have worked almost equally well on Terminal's dark and unlit streets. Without hesitation she pushed open the door to Gabriel's.
Heads turned to look at her as she pulled her hood back. With her goggles on it would be impossible for anyone to know who she was looking at, and even without their lowlight enhancement she could see quite clearly in the dimly lit pool hall. Ignoring the others she walked up to the bar and the fomori that was working it. She wished she was a bit taller than a meter-forty as she climbed up onto a stool to sit and be more easily seen.
"This ain't exactly a place for kids." the fomori told her, continuing to wipe down a drinking glass.
"I don't give a shit what kind of fuckhole this place is, I'm here to talk to a guy named Crypt."
"Crypt's busy." another man said as he slithered up beside Mina at her left side. "But if you like you can talk to me. Maybe teach you some manors?"
Mina had not really used the sensor software that Skyler had gotten and copied for her, and even now she did not really need the empathy program to tell her that the man next to her was exceptionally horny right now. She even managed to not cry out in shock as she felt a hand touch her shoulder to run down her back.
"Don't start this again, Sparks." cautioned the fomori.
"Take your hand off, or I will." Mina warned.
"Or you'll what?" Sparks asked.
As calmly as she could, despite the man's hand being at her buttocks now, Mina reached into her jacket and drew her Sakura Fubuki. An ARO of what the smartgun saw appeared as soon as her hand was around the grip, and with the handgun set for semiautomatic she shot a single APDS round into Sparks's left shoulder. The suppressed gunshot made almost no noise, though Sparks screamed like mad as he fell over backwards.
Chairs skidded on the floor as other members of the Kings reacted to their fellow being shot. Mina simply holstered her handgun, focusing her mind to call a fire elemental to her side, softly saying "Scarlet scales, body of lava, talons of steel."
"You bitch!" Sparks yelled.
Summoner, the fire elemental said as it came to her in the astral. There was a touch of fear as it communicated, but she did not care how afraid it might really be towards her.
You will defend me from those who would attack me until the sun rises or I say otherwise, Mina told it.
"What the hell did you do to him?" another Kings member said, boots thundering as he stomped up behind Mina. "Holy shit!" he exclaimed, and Mina felt a fire erupt behind her.
The fire elemental was not Astorath, not in the least. In its materialized form it took on the worst characteristics of man, dragon, and demon, hunched over like a werewolf from the age old flat screen vids of the early twentieth century. It had a dragon's tail with a frill that ran the whole length up to its forehead, a head that was half wolf and half dragon with a long snout of teeth that looked like the flames of a cutting torch and a set of four jagged horns jutting out from behind its blazing yellow eyes. Where one might have expected fur there were the short smoldering flames of a blacksmith's forge, with its arms and legs adorned with brilliant ruby scales. Its bare feet and hands each ended in three digits (it did not have thumbs) with white hot claws three centimeters long.
Mina pushed herself against the bar, turning around to face the others. From the look on the fomori's face she was certain that he would not try something while her back was turned. He had been close enough to hear the words she used to center herself for the summoning, and would have to be a fool to not realize that she had just summoned a spirit before him.
"I want to talk to Crypt." Mina said, doing her best to sound calm and reasonable. She paid no heed to one of Sparks's buddies as he came up to pull the injured ganger away, and neither did the elemental since he made no aggressive moves towards it or its master. "I'm not here to fuck around with child molesters."
"You didn't have to shoot him!" cried one of the Kings.
Now Mina glanced back to Sparks. Another was there to help, using a first aid kit to help stem Sparks's bleeding shoulder. "He'll live." she said bluntly, looking now to the ganger that had spoken out.
"And if he's busy?" the fomori asked quite calmly.
"I'll wait."
"And your spirit?"
"You don't want me to bring out his big brother." Mina warned.
A couple of the other Kings took a step back. Hunched over the dragon-demon fire elemental she had just summoned was about as tall at the shoulder as Mina, and had a build that American football lineman aspired for. Then of course there was the fact that it was wreathed in fire.
"What do you want with Crypt, anyway?"
"Info."
"Info ain't cheap."
"Do I look like I give a shit?" Mina asked, turning back to look at the fomori. "As long as no one does some stupid shit, it won't attack."
"Right now you look rather pissed off." someone else said. Mina looked over to this new person and saw a tall human with spiky hair, numerous piercings through both ears that included two spikes through the earlobes, and a chain of chrome steel around his neck. He seemed calmer than most as he walked up to the bar and sat down on the stool at Mina's right, and she could tell without reading his aura that his entire right arm was cybernetic (one of her sensor programs pointed that out, and it was clearly too large for him).
"You have no idea."
"So what's a little girl like you doing in a place like this?" the spiky haired man asked.
"Are you Crypt?" Mina asked, casting a sideways glance at him.
"Maybe."
That sounded like a "Yes" to her. "I wanna talk in private."
"Don't get the wrong idea, I think you're cute and all…" He stopped when Mina drew her Sakura Fubuki again. "Hey! Hey!" he said, putting both hands up, "I didn't mean it like that. Just that I don't want the guys getting the idea that I'm like Sparks over there."
Mina slid her pistol back into its holster. It was strange to her how threatening the small caliber handgun seemed to be. Of course she had already demonstrated that she was quite willing to shoot people with it.
"Can you at least tell me what kind of info you're needing?" he asked, "I might be able to help you out."
"Jordan Aerodynamics."
His expression changed right away. "Right this way, then." he said, sliding off his barstool.
Crypt led her to a back room, and her fire elemental followed. When Mina saw the relatively cramped scale of the room she ordered the elemental to hang around in the astral while she took a chair to sit down.
"So what do you really know about Jordan Aerodynamics?" Crypt asked as he sat down in a chair of his own.
"Why do you want to know?" Mina shot back.
"Knowledge is power, and the best currency for info is info."
"The CIA was using the place to experiment on bug hosts." Mina said.
"And everyone in the country knows that they and Ares were trying to make a new super weapon using insect spirits. Try something new."
"NBCNN's feeding bullshit. I was there, I saw the… things being done. Scans. Probes." She paused before adding, "Vivisections. It was all to find better ways to kill the bugs."
"You were really there?" Crypt asked, not believing her at all.
Mina took her goggles off and glared at Crypt, looking him dead in the eye. Despite looking like a little girl he apparently saw it in her expression, the haunted look in her dark eyes like she had stared into the proverbial abyss, forever changed.
"I used to go by the name 'Firefly.'" Mina said. "Not anymore."
"Do you have a name then?"
Mina shook her head.
"Right, so you have proof other than your word about what you said being true?"
"A… good friend was there with me. He has evidence. I'm looking for him."
"Does your friend have a name?"
"Cypher."
Crypt's head went back a little at that. Apparently he had heard of the two of them after all, or at least Cypher.
The door behind them busted open, and an ork wearing the purple and gold of the Kings came rushing in. "Crypt! You gotta check out what I found!" he cried.
"Collin, you chip head!" Crypt yelled back, "This's supposed to be a private meeting!"
Mina glanced at the ork, but her eyes quickly locked onto what he was carrying. "Give that to me!" she yelled, staring at the remains of Skyler's fake cybernetic arm.
"Fuck off kid." Collin barked, hardly even looking at her.
Without thinking Mina tapped into the mana that surrounded them, drawing upon as much energy as she safely could, envisioning the invisible tendrils of her levitation spell to reach out and entwine the cybernetic casing.
The ork, feeling the arm slip from his hands, held firm. Mina reversed her pull on the arm, shoving it up into the ork's face and smacking him twice with it to free it from his grasp. She then spun it around as fast as she could, backhanding the ork across the cheek. The arm calmly floated over to her outstretched hands while the ork stumbled to keep his footing.
Mina had expected to feel just the weight of the casing itself, but this felt a lot heavier than she expected. Turning it over to the torn end she looked in, and her blood froze when she saw and smelled the rotting remains of Skyler's left arm. Worse it looked like something had been clawing and chewing at it.
With clenched fists the ork looked like he was about to strike Mina, but Crypt stopped him with an open hand.
"What's so important about a cyberarm?" Crypt asked her.
"Where is he?" Mina asked, growling.
"He who?" Collin asked, looking equally upset.
"Cypher, you fucking retarded tusker!" Mina yelled. "This ain't cyber! It's a casing!"
Crypt went pale. Collin stared at her in disbelief.
Pulling a connecting cable from her commlink Mina plugged it into the commlink port in the fake cyberarm. She then sent a particular prompt to Skyler's commlink, and right away got a request for a password. The trick of it was that the password was not exactly a sequence of letters and numbers, like what most wageslaves used, but something more intrinsic to thought instead. With the codes to access the commlink the first thing Mina did was to unlock the arm. With a snap the casing expanded, and out slid the rotting remains of Skyler's arm. Even though she was already expecting it she nearly gagged on the stench.
Crypt started to look green, but it was Collin who lost it, turning aside and vomiting onto the floor.
In a move that almost made Crypt vomit, and Collin empty the remains of his stomach, Mina rolled up the sleeve of her jacket and slid the arm casing on. It took a few seconds for it to close, adjusting to her slightly smaller arm, and she found that it pinched just a little at the end where it had been torn in half. It felt odd to her, never having worn it before, like wearing a long and heavy glove.
Crypt swallowed.
Neither she or Skyler had anticipated something like this (who would?), so it took some time for Mina to setup a profile of her own within the commlink, and soon it was the master device of her PAN.
Once the arm was set, everything appearing seamless with his commlink, Mina flexed her fingers, pulled the plug from her commlink, and asked, "Right, where's the pistol?" She looked straight at the ork.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't fuck with me, tusker!" Mina yelled, "It's a Morrissey Élan and it would've been on this," she pointed at her left arm, "by a hidden slide! I know Cypher better than you ever will, and he had one on each arm, so cough it over!" When the ork did not look at all motivated to unburden his soul Mina drew her Fubuki and aimed it at him.
"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" cried Crypt, waving his hands. When the confused looking ork glanced at Crypt, he said, "She already capped Sparks in the shoulder, so she will shoot you if you don't give the chip truth."
"The gun?" Mina asked, glaring at Collin.
Collin glanced to Crypt, then back to Mina. Finally he said, "I sold it."
"Then go buy it back. Return the money or do whatever, but get it back!" Mina flatly said.
"It… It's not that simple."
"Get it back, or I will kill you." Mina threatened.
"Hey, maybe we can…" Crypt started to say. He closed his mouth tight when Mina swung her Fubuki around to aim it at his face.
"I can't. Not just yet." Collin told them.
"I really think you ought to when you can." Crypt told him, his eyes still bouncing between the four barrels of Mina's handgun.
Collin nodded.
Though she was not feeling too satisfied about the missing handgun, Mina did holster her Fubuki.
"So, um, how'd you get in?" Collin asked, "It's got some kinda funky data bomb or somethin'. Crashed three 'links trying to hack it, and the last one got fried as well."
"Guess Cypher shared some things with you." mused Crypt.
"Do you even know what I went through to get that hunk of hardware?" Collins asked.
"Fuck off." Mina told him as she looked up the most recent downloads Skyler had made to the commlink, and Collin backed down again. She wondered what Crypt would find most valuable in the way of information. Then she found something that made her smile. "How about some tradecraft?" she asked Crypt, "Data on how the CIA was bypassing corp matrix security."
Crypt's eyes went wide with surprise and desire.
Mina accessed one of the files that looked like had some bits of info, though she did not quite understand the hacker code being used, and forwarded it to Crypt.
The wild look in Crypt's eyes did not fade as he looked over the information. "Holy shit." he cussed, looking to Mina, "Chip truth you got this just two weeks ago?" he asked.
Mina nodded. "You can have the entire download for everything you got on Cypher." she said. "He didn't make it out, but he's alive."
"Um… I found a ghoul chewing on that." Collin said remorsefully. "I don't think he's…"
"Ghouls will eat amputations." Mina forcefully said, "I could cut your arm off," she said as she drew her Cougar Fineblade, "and one will eat it for dinner while you're getting cybered up."
Collin took a step back from Mina, but she knew distance was not a factor. If she could see him, she could blast him with magic before he knew it.
"Leave us." Crypt said.
"You sure?"
Crypt looked at Collin, then the door, then back to the ork again. Collin simply nodded and left.
"Don't make me regret this." Mina said, tagging the entire download that pertained to the CIA's matrix infiltration of the MDC and corporations and forwarding it to Crypt.
"I've seen the trideo of that spirit you got with the hammer and shield." Crypt said, "When you sent it to stop that speeding van head on. Trust me, I don't wanna see it here.
"Now about Cypher…"
It was extremely late judging by the soft red glow of the holographic clock at Skyler's bedside. He had no windows to see outside, and the constant glow from underneath his room door was interrupted only when someone walked by.
And not like he could go very far if he even wanted to. The small room did have a semi-private spot with a sink and toilet, but the door itself was locked from the outside.
His mind was split on trying to figure out how to escape (which was seemingly impossible right now) and dealing with the loss of part of his left arm. He knew he had to somehow manage an escape as it was only a matter of time before someone figured out how much bullshit he was feeding them with his "amnesia."
The display of the holographic clock flickered, which it sometimes did when it advanced the time (it only showed hours and minutes), but when Skyler noticed that it was flickering and the time was not advancing it had his attention.
Then the display changed entirely, scrolling the numbers 5, 24, 9, and 20 and followed that with a dash. Skyler thought about this for a little bit, and then it hit him. The display was so simple it was limited to making numbers float in the air, and someone had managed to hack into it to change the display with the numbers corresponding to the English alphabet.
As quietly as he could Skyler slipped out of bed and crept to the door. Even with the sliver of light leaking in under the door he could clearly see everything in the room as if the lights were on.
The light suddenly went out, triggering his eyes to switch to thermographic and a view of the world in black and white in the near absence of visible light, and the door lock clicked. As quietly as he could he opened the door and peeked out.
The hallway off to his right was still lit, but off to his left was dark. As quietly as he could Skyler slipped out the door and closed it behind him.
Walking quietly was not too difficult, going barefoot and stepping on the balls of his feet alone. Part of him wondered who was helping him right now, shuffling the lights to help hide him as he went, and also why.
Suddenly the lights went on, and Skyler froze, his heart pounding in his chest from the adrenalin surge, and he instinctively pressed himself up against the wall he had been creeping against.
Behind him he heard a click. Feeling around he found a door handle and as quickly as he could he went through the door. It locked the instant it was closed.
Boots thumped as someone walked up to the door, and Skyler carefully took two steps back. Now he realized it was a cleaning supplies closet that he was locked in.
The person outside tested the door and found it was locked. Under the door Skyler could see the shadows of the person's feet. Soon someone else came up and it sounded like they were talking about something unrelated to working here. They seemed to take forever before they both walked off in separate directions.
It was not until the light outside went out that Skyler slipped out of the closet. Like before the lights ahead of him were doused to guide him.
The next door he stopped at was labeled "Laundry Storeroom" and found that it was unlocked. Thinking his clothing might be in there he went in. After looking around for a few minutes he managed to find a container (it was unlocked) that had his clothes. Right then and there he stripped off the gown and underwear that he had been wearing for his own clothes, taking much longer to get dressed than he was used to since he only had one hand to work with.
As soon as he had his contact lenses on an ARO appeared. Since they were powered by his body's own bioelectric field there really was no off switch to them, and it was a little odd as his contacts were not synchronized with anything.
» YOU HAVE FRIENDS COMING. I AM HELPING YOU.
Of course he had someone helping him. You would have to be completely stupid not to figure that out.
The text then disappeared, replaced with a new ARO that was cut evenly into a two-by-two grid of security camera feeds. The light outside went out and again Skyler slipped out into the hallways.
Skyler's view of the security cameras kept changing as he went, with the top two showing what was ahead of him and the bottom two showing what was behind.
And not for the first time had he wished he still had his arm. It meant he would have had his better commlink with the software he had spent a month and a half speed coding, but also the commlink that would have let him use the ruthenium coating of his clothing to better hide himself. While he knew how to bypass the data bomb of his daily use commlink (currently in his pocket, which had surprised him) he would have to hack it in order to stop it from actively trying to set itself as a slave to his missing commlink.
Maybe it was a miracle, or just dumb luck, but whatever it was Skyler had managed to make his way to the weapons locker where his guns and sword were, and after that the exit.
By the time he felt the prick at his neck it was too late.
"Why the fuck am I doing this again?" Glenn asked, not for the first time.
"Because you can, and if you don't there's a very angry redhead girl who'll fuck you over the worst way possible." Athena answered, also not for the first time.
Mina looked up, but returned her gaze to Skyler's fake cybernetic arm when it was clear that Glenn was not going to look at her. She ran her bare fingers over the back of her covered hand, thinking more about how it used to be Skyler's hand in there.
She did not really care how Collin had come across the arm, or how the CIA had apparently missed it while finding Skyler in the rubble. No, what mattered was that Skyler was alive, that she had more evidence than a feeling in her heart, and nothing was going to stop her from rescuing him.
"Hey, hold up here." Athena suddenly said.
Glenn was mercifully quiet as he pulled over to the side and parked. Mina propped herself up so she could look over the greasy elf's shoulder to see.
Mina guessed they were at their destination, but it certainly did not look like what she expected. They were around at the back loading entrance of a building, one that both she and Athena had found was being used by the CIA, but there were two marked cars of the NYPD Inc. there with officers and people talking outside. The back doors looked like they had been ripped of their hinges, and she could not tell if something had broken out or broken in.
"Wait here, I'll check it out." Athena said. "And I mean wait." she added more sternly, and Mina noticed she was looking straight at her.
"Fine." Mina said, sounding more putout than she expected to.
As soon as Athena closed the door behind her she completely disappeared. If Athena was doing what Mina guessed, and what she would have done if she were more inclined to be sneaky, then Athena would have had a spirit skulking alongside to help hide her more than her invisibility spell alone could manage. After some time she reappeared back at the door and climbed back into the SUV.
"Well?" Mina impatiently asked.
"Apparently someone tried sneaking in to extract someone, and the shit hit the fan when he didn't want to go." Athena told them, "I didn't get a lot of details, but I think the target was Cypher. Someone mentioned a blond boy with solid blue eyes was missing."
"He was here?" Mina asked, looking back to the building.
"I think so. It sounded like he had help getting out, too."
"Whoa, all this shit just for him?" Glenn asked.
Mina did not have to touch the ruby studded earring at her right ear with her hand or do anything obvious to activate it. Unlike its twin on her left ear this one had as strong an enchantment as she could make, magic woven to hold any illusion spell she could cast into it. The choker about her neck she touched, more unconsciously than anything as she activated it too.
Her door flew open and Mina bolted out of the SUV and down the street. In two steps she had pulled and woven magical energies about her to make her invisible. Three more and she had a summoned air elemental trailing behind her, hiding her from prying eyes. She was not paying much attention to how far she had gone before she turned a corner down an alley and about halfway down before stopping.
Leaning against a building Mina called to the water elemental she called Sapphon. Like the flow from a decanter the elemental appeared beside her in the astral.
Mistress, it whispered, feeling like warm dripping water.
I need you to find someone, Mina told it, sending a mental image of Skyler to the spirit but it got more than just that. Find him and lead me to where he's at.
The spirit spun itself upwards, like water in a drain going against gravity.
Mina did not wait there for Sapphon's return, instead walking down the alley to the other end.
Despite the pitch blackness Skyler saw stars as a blunt pain erupted at the side of his head. When he tried to move he found his arm and legs were bound, which did include what remained of his left arm by a rope around his chest.
"Careful you idiot!" cried a man's voice.
"Whatever." another man flatly said. "Look, this job wasn't as easy as you said it'd be."
His vision cleared quickly, though it really did not matter when Skyler realized his head was in a sack.
"It isn't my fault if you weren't up to the task." the first man said. "And clearly you weren't since you only grabbed one of them."
Grabbed one of them? Were they targeted for an extraction? Why?
"You've got no idea what we went through just to track him down." the second man said, "It took us two weeks just to track down where he went to, and believe me we were scouring for everything. We might've had more luck finding out Damien Knight's real name."
Damien Knight, one of the major stockholders of Ares Macrotechnology, did not exist prior to his hostile takeover in January of 2033. Rumors abound on who he was prior to then to this day, all with no real evidence beyond conjecture, and likely would well after the day of his death.
"Excuses aren't going to get you the rest of your pay." the first man, apparently Johnson after all, said.
"Then give us a day and we'll get the girl." the other man said.
Girl? Did they mean Mina? It would not make any sense at all if they were talking about someone else.
"We'll talk about that later." Johnson said, "First take that sack off of his head."
Skyler clenched his eyes shut, not sure what to expect when it was removed. The first thing to assail his senses was the smell of used motor oil, the tang of iron dust, and other smells that made him think of an automotive garage.
Opening his eyes he found that the place was moderately well lit, with just enough light for humans to see well, and elves to see perfectly. He was also lying in the middle of an automobile work area.
"Oh… Oh no. Oh hell no!" Johnson went.
Twisting his head relatively up, Skyler saw that Johnson was an elf. He also looked familiar. "Oh, hey!" Skyler said, realizing how dry his mouth was now, "Never really thanked you for the ride. Or the loads of spyware that was installed in it."
"Wait, you know him?" the second voice asked. Looking over to him Skyler saw that he was human, and at least moderately augmented with cybereyes and a full on cybernetic left arm. Not only was he sounding like the team leader but he also looked like a street samurai.
"Shit!" the elf cussed, hands to his dark hair ready to rip what he could grab by the roots.
"What's going on?" someone else asked, and Skyler could not quite tell if the speaker was male or female.
"Either ya kidnapped the wrong kid, or Johnson didn't do his homework before hiring you." Skyler said with a grin.
"We didn't kidnap the wrong kid, Damien." the street sam said.
"Well then Johnson didn't do his homework."
"I'm dead. I'm fucked." Johnson said as he started pacing back and forth. Was this his first time at being a Johnson?
"What about our pay?" a woman asked, speaking with a Spanish (and not Aztlaner) accent.
Johnson apparently did not hear the question as he continued pacing, muttering to himself.
Skyler groaned. "Well, since I've got no fucking clue how I got here, thank you, and Mr. Johnson's brain's fried, I guess I oughta let you in on a secret."
The street sam grunted. "A double dose of leäl and you're gonna tell us a secret?" he asked.
"Fuck, that's what it was?" Skyler asked, remembering the memory wiping date rape drug, and its bigger brother laés. Laés was an awakened drug that would render a subject unconscious for up to half an hour and wipe away up to two hours of your most recent memories, memories that were forever gone as the drug changed the chemical structure of the memories themselves. Leäl was a cheaper and less effective version of laés, but the memory altering aspects were still the same.
"So what's this big secret?" the third asked.
Skyler managed to roll himself over onto his back, his arms now underneath him and not feeling too comfortable. At least now he could see all three speakers. There were two others more into the shadows, a human that looked like had literally gone through hell with some really bad looking burns to her face, and a rather large looking troll with black skin that almost blended him into those shadows.
He still could not tell the gender of the third speaker, with rather androgynous features and short brown hair. Pointed ears and almond eyes did scream elf, though.
"I'm a runner like you guys. Name's Cypher." Skyler said, "And Mr. Johnson apparently knows me and my girlfriend better than you should've known."
"Your girlfriend?" the street sam asked. "What could she do? Cry?"
"Her name's Firefly, and it ain't for nothin'. She can have a really bad temper sometimes, and if you let me go before she gets here and unloads a real holy hell on your asses then we can just go our separate ways and forget all this happened."
As far as Skyler was concerned he was willing to live up to his end of the bargain. Mina might take a little convincing, but it certainly would be a lot easier if they did release him. If not, well, he would not even try to stay her wrath.
The street sam gave him a none too gentle kick to the ribs. "Our mage can handle her just fine." he said. So they did know, or at least knew them by name and reputation. And they had only one magician, which meant that the others would have Mina's spirits to deal with, and Skyler knew that two of them were far from being pushovers.
"Yeah, maybe, but can your magician also handle Firefly's spirits at the same time?" Skyler asked. "You can't just yell 'You shall not pass!' to make 'em back off…"
"Shut up!" the street sam yelled.
"… and I've seen one of 'em bitch slap a truck onto its side…"
"I said shut up!" the street sam roared.
"and that doesn't even compare to Astorath or Baradiel. They'll chew up tanks like…" He grunted when the street sam kicked him again.
"Ashtaroth." the woman in the shadows said, "It's pronounced Ash-ta-roth. He's a crowned prince of Hell…"
"Look, she says its name is Astorath," interrupted Skyler, grunting in pain, "and if you really wanna argue with her about how it wants its name pronounced when she gets here, fine. But don't expect to get a word in edgewise while it's torchin' your asses."
The street sam knelt down beside Skyler. "I should tell ya about her boyfriend there, Panther." he said, looking away from Skyler. Skyler followed his gaze to the black skinned troll. "Panther, you know, like the cannon? Well, he's also awakened, and quite fireproof when it comes to dealing with fire elementals."
Skyler was the first to notice it, a flickering light that looked like someone had suddenly revealed a bonfire at the other side of the garage. And it was moving. He wondered if it was Astorath, which hopefully meant that Mina was close by.
It was not Astorath, but Skyler felt relieved and honestly scared at the same time when he saw Mina step out from behind a rack of wrenches. Bright red and orange flames raged about Mina as she calmly walked up to them, looking like she was the heart of an inferno, but he could see the rage in her eyes. Even the old grease stains on the floor recoiled from her presence, thin wisps of smoke rising as the flames surrounding her burned them away.
"Let him go!" Mina bellowed. Yep, she was really pissed off. If she had Baradiel and Astorath with her in the astral then the others were well and truly fucked.
Panther yelled a battle cry and charged Mina straight on. With one meaty hand clenched in a rock hard fist he swung at her, a strike that was a little too wild and too high for the half sized Mina, and which missed Mina as she ducked down much more than she needed to. Her return attack was less than spectacular as she tried to spin and backhand the troll in passing, and was more than just a little late.
As Panther stumbled to regain her feet, Mina flourished her arms like an orchestra conductor. Twin jets of brilliant red flames erupted from her open hands, and while the troll almost evaded one of them the other slammed into him full on. The supposedly fireproof troll went stumbling as he held up a hand in a futile effort to ward off her spells. He was badly burned and smoking as he fell to the floor. Apparently he was not quite as fireproof as the street sam's boasting had suggested as Skyler knew she could throw out even more intense flames than she just had. Had she gone all out Panther would have been a pile of charred flesh and bone.
Baradiel appeared a split second before the first gunshot rang out, its large and heavy looking shield up to take the first of many slugs meant for Mina. It was the other elf that had pulled a light caliber pistol, squeezing off rounds as quickly as possible, and apparently oblivious to the guardian spirit that had gotten in the way.
"Dios mío." the woman said aloud, sounding quite afraid.
"Talk to me, woman." the street sam barked.
"She's got two more spirits with her." the woman said, her Spanish accent thickening with her nervousness. "Two of them are great form, and just above her level of power. She's way more powerful than I am."
"You fucking serious, bitch?" the man asked.
Johnson suddenly laughed hysterically. Skyler had figured he had just completely lost it, but if the Spanish woman was telling the truth then Mina was even angrier than he had expected if she had taken the risk of invoking another spirit. And if that spirit was Astorath…
"You think I'd… what's the word, bullshit you about something like this?" she yelled back. "That girl's twice my power!"
Mina's twice her power? She's that weak? Skyler thought as he looked at the woman now.
"Let him go and maybe I'll let you live." Mina told them. Skyler could hear it in her voice, she was right at that razor's edge and the slightest nudge could tip her over.
"Oh shit." Skyler said softly.
"Astorath!" Mina yelled.
"Oh shit." Skyler said again.
Materializing in a brilliant flash a fire elemental streaked towards Panther like a comet. Already burned and hurt the troll was no match for the great form spirit, his body a charred husk as the Spirit passed by unimpeded. In a flash it was back at Mina's side, still materialized in all its terrifying glory.
And now Skyler got a good look at the spirit. He recognized a few things that he had seen in the summoned Astorath, but the fire elemental beside Mina now almost looked like a completely different thing. It stood as tall as the troll sized Baradiel, with a pair of large horns rising from its head that reminded him of the old Hellboy movie. Astorath also wore bands of molten gold about its wrists, ankles, neck, and crown, and it wore similar pauldrons and a breastplate of gold. The normally restrained inferno of fire had also broken out through its feet and fingers, giving the impression of flaming claws made from numerous cutting torches.
"Guess he wasn't so fireproof after all." Mina said in as condescending a tone as she could manage.
"Believe it or not she's being really generous." Skyler said, looking up at the street sam. "You should just go."
The street sam kicked Skyler, and stars filled his vision as he thought the blow cracked a rib.
"Astorath!" Mina yelled.
Through tear filled Eyes Skyler saw Astorath lift its left arm to unleash a bolt of fire at the street sam. A beam of white flames edged in crimson shot out at the man, so intense that Skyler felt for an instant that he might burst into flames from being too close, and the street sam's chest and head were atomized. His arms still existed, held to the remains of his torso by skin and muscle only.
The pacing elf stopped and stared at Mina. She shot him a look back that made him take two steps back. He tripped on something and went tumbling backwards.
"Told ya her name's Firefly." Skyler said.
"No! Don't call me that anymore!" snapped Mina and Skyler felt the blood drain from his face.
The flames abated as Mina stepped closer, drawing her Cougar Fineblade as she knelt beside Skyler and began cutting the ropes that bound him. He wondered why she did not seem at all surprised about his left arm.
Once free and on his feet, and holding his sore side, Skyler walked over to where Johnson had tripped. The elf had apparently hit his head and knocked himself out when he fell. Two good slaps by Skyler, one of them a bitch slap, and the elf was awake.
"Talk." Skyler barked.
Johnson's eyes were wild, looking at Skyler, then Mina, and around.
"Hey, look at me." Skyler ordered, bitch slapping the elf again. "Why'd you hire these jackasses to kidnap us."
"Us?" Mina asked.
"Yeah, us." Skyler said, "Seems he hired them to snatch us, and I wanna know why."
"Get back." Mina said calmly. Skyler did and watched as she pressed the tip of her Fineblade to Johnson's crotch. "Talk or you'll be a eunuch like that other elf."
"You better, 'cause she will cut you." Skyler added.
Johnson glanced over to the other elf and woman, whose prayers were being repeated for the umpteenth time.
"We ain't the little angels you might think we look like." Skyler added, "Hell, the Ancients down in L.A. call us 'Fallen Angels' and you can be sure as hell that we earned that name."
The woman's prayers became more frantic.
"And I don't think God will be sending you any help."
"Here." Mina said, pulling out her Sakura Fubuki out with her left hand, handing it to Skyler. He took the pistol, fumbling just a little before he got it properly by the grip.
"She keeps armor piercing loads in this." Skyler said, leveling the four-barreled pistol at Johnson's face. "I used it once on a guy wearing S.W.A.T. armor. All four at once and the slugs punched through him like paper."
"Okay! Okay!" Johnson yelled. "All I got were a… two names. Child geniuses that didn't have parents. Once I had 'em I was to turn them over to someone in HR at Horizon!"
"Those two names?" Skyler asked.
"Damien Gibson and Crystal Wilcox."
"Fuck." Mina muttered.
"Who tipped you off to these 'child geniuses'?" Skyler asked.
Johnson's eyes were wild with fear, dancing between Mina and Skyler.
"Who tipped you off? Who?!" Skyler repeated, his voice ringing off the walls.
Johnson clenched his eyes shut before saying, "Doris Bohman."
"You believe him?" Skyler asked quite calmly to Mina.
"Yeah, and your lie detector software says he's tellin' the truth too." Mina said darkly.
Skyler knelt down on Johnson, pressing his left knee hard onto the elf's chest. "You know you screwed up, fucked up really big time, don't you?"
Johnson nodded.
"Now you better think of what you're gonna tell your boss," Skyler said softly, his voice deeper and quite menacing sounding, "'cause we're gonna cut off our little deal if they don't do something to make up for this." He pressed the muzzles of the Fubuki to Johnson's cheek, and the elf clenched his eyes shut again.
Leaning in really close Skyler whispered, "Hope you live long enough to cut a deal." He paused before yelling, "Bang!"
Johnson gasped, eyes wide in terror and dripping tears and the first thing they saw was Skyler's own blue-in-blue eyes.
Skyler leveraged himself against Johnson's chest as he pushed himself back to his feet. Glancing at the others as he and Mina began walking towards her spirits, Skyler saw the other elf still standing where he/she had been the whole time, still holding the empty handgun. The woman was still at her prayers, eyes held tight against whatever terrors she thought she might see. Neither of them tried to stop the two as they left.
It was late Saturday night their first night back in the Park Avenue penthouse in over three weeks. The sky was clear and the moon bright and full as it hung high in the blue-black void. Here or at the brownstone, either place felt like it was home to Skyler.
And at least Athena now knew that the two were relatively safe. After Mina's disappearance in the Bronx she had almost went straight out in search of her herself, and quickly realized that maybe it would be better if she did not.
Sometime during the last three weeks Claudia had returned to the penthouse after lying low from a job of her own. At least hers had been successful, but that was already more than what Skyler or Mina really wanted to know.
And again Skyler stood at the window to look out over Central Park and the Westside. Changing clothing was still proving to be difficult with only one arm, and he had spent a good portion of the day researching what options he had about replacing his left arm, weighing the benefits against the risks and drawbacks.
First and most obvious was cybernetics. Shadowrunners that were not awakened or emergent frequently chose this option, sometimes even if they had not suffered such injuries. This was not exactly something he was looking forward to.
The first true cybernetic implant was unveiled by the Transys Corporation on the 27th of September, 2019 and it was not long after that when the awakened community discovered that such implants disrupted a person's aura, the connection between spirit and body. Sometime later it was discovered that not everyone found that their bodies accepted cybernetic implants easily. The holistic impact upon the body had pretty much reached the limit by the 2050's, with relatively cheap basic cyberwear and alpha grade cyberwear that was easily 'fitted' for the person, all the way to the expensive and custom tailor made delta grade cybernetics that reduced the effects of being implanted in a living body by fifty percent (negating it entirely was found to be impossible). Some people were even lucky enough to be even more accepting to such implants, and if you could even get the transgenic treatment that modified the body's immunosuppressant response (first available in early 2071) the holistic impact was mitigated to often as low as thirty percent of normal.
Skyler had known from a young age (about when he really was twelve) that he was one of those whose body would more easily reject cybernetics, their holistic impact at least double that of the common person off the street. The condition was called Cybernetic Rejection Syndrome, or C.R.S. for short. If he could have gotten the transgenic treatment and afforded delta grade cybernetics (typically at least ten times as much as generic models) it still would have never been better than eighty percent of normal, which was just as good as anyone paying extra for something 'fitted' for their body.
Delta grade cyberware was incredibly expensive, and finding a doctor with the skill to perform the implantation could be difficult. There was also the time necessary for medical scans, fittings, and the precision building of the implant as a delta grade implant (always a custom job). Cutting out the time to find someone who would do the implantation, and the discretion shadowrunners needed, the rest of the procedure could take upwards of a week. Just going into a street doc shop and picking out an arm on a wall would take a day at most.
Another option was an augmented healing treatment. It was a form of genetic restoration as far as the procedure went, but it was a full body treatment. A person could be restored to full health, with missing organs replaced and even a destroyed spine restored to full function. One drawback was that it involved being immersed in a vat of fluids for up to two months. It was ideal to the awakened and emergent as there was no holistic impact, the tissue generated based on the subject's on DNA.
Last, and least desirable to Skyler, was cloning. Growth time could take as much as four weeks (maybe less since times were given for adult subjects), with only a few days for post-op recovery. Technomancers and the awakened also favored this method as the implant was grown from the subjects own flesh and there was no rejection or holistic impact to the body. It did, however, expose a shadowrunner to having his or her DNA on file with someone, evidence that could be later used against one. Then there were the stories of escaped clones, and Skyler did not want to think about a DNA doppelganger of him running around.
Out of the three, Skyler was actually looking at cybernetics despite how much more adversely his body would be affected. It did also open the possibility of having nasty surprises implanted within the cybernetic limb, and he had more than enough money even though it was the most expensive of the three choices.
"Something on your mind?" Mina asked as she softly walked up to him.
"Thinking about how to fix this." he said, raising the stump of his left arm.
"So when were you gonna tell me?"
"What's there to tell? I haven't really settled on…"
Mina stepped around to face him directly. "I mean this." she said, poking a finger between his eyes. "Sapphon said your aura changed, and I can only figure it meant you're burnt out." She looked truly concerned.
Skyler looked away from her, breathing a heavy sigh.
"I'm right, aren't I?"
"Yeah."
"So were you even gonna tell me?"
Skyler looked back to her. "After that job for Willis." he told her. In truth he was considering then, but still was not sure.
Mina looked down at her own bare feet. "When was it?" she asked softly.
"After the Guggenheim job."
She nodded, then stepped up to hug him tightly. He had been surprised about how un-squeamish she had been about his missing arm. Even when she told him about how she had almost literally stumbled onto his cybernetic casing, finding the rotting remains of his arm within, and then even put it on right away, he had been amazed at how calm she had been then and how she told the story.
It had also been an incredible stroke of luck that had saved him months of work. But he still had a few programs to finish, assuming that his ghost account at NYIT still existed, depending on how frequently an audit of the system was done.
With his good arm only he hugged Mina back, squeezing just a little more when he realized again just how much she had gone through just for him.
It was relatively early the next morning when they were awakened by having their blankets quickly yanked off. They both had been deep asleep, having truly gone to bed only a few hours ago.
"C'mon you two, day's wastin' away." Claudia loudly said. Not exactly a modest or prudish woman she did not seem to react to what she discovered underneath their covers.
"Two more hours." Mina mumbled, blindly reaching for the sheets.
"We need sleep." Skyler added, reflexively bringing an arm up to shield his eyes from the light, forgetting that he was missing his left hand and forearm to do it.
"What you two need is to get in the shower 'n get cleaned up. And girl, if you're gonna take care of that mornin' wood be quick about it."
Claudia was more than insistent about making sure they were up and active at 06.30 in the morning. Hardly dressed herself (having just gotten out of bed) she ended up hauling the both of them into the shower herself. It was lucky of her that Mina was too tired to even think of working any magic against her.
Skyler did not taste his breakfast as they ate. Looking over to Mina he saw that she too was looking as tired as he felt. If he had known what was in store for them today he might have tried talking Mina out of their late and very intimate night.
"You're what?!" Mina cried.
Skyler had expected her to be a bit upset at his decision on a cybernetic replacement. But that had only been the primer for what had been going through her mind.
"So it's going to be black and…"
"That's not the point!" Mina threw her arms up, turning away from Skyler and walking away from the kitchen.
"It's my body, my decision…"
"No!" Mina spun back around, her eyes fierce and blazing, "It's your body, but it's our decision."
"Our decision? Since when was it our decision what kind of arm I got?"
"Since when? Since how long have we been working together?"
"And your focus? Did you ask me anything about how it'd look when you had it commissioned to look like my signature?"
In the past there had been a few hacking jobs that Skyler had intentionally left something behind to identify himself by. It was a two dimensional image file that was mostly black with a silver geometric image of a sword pointing downwards flanked by a pair of wings. Most notable of the times he had left this behind was when he hacked the home network of Masatoshi Morikawa, a yakuza middleman that had been kidnapping technomancers, back in Denver last Halloween, having torn to shreds four military grade firewalls (not quite as powerful as he himself had coded) and simultaneously leaving the image behind on four nodes of that network.
Mina had opted to use that image as the centerpiece of a choker that was a power focus for her magic. Both Skyler and his younger sister Sarah had been surprised when that showed up in a delivery one day.
"Okay, okay, let's all try to calm down." Claudia said.
"I didn't ask 'cause I didn't think I needed your permission to get a replacement arm!"
"And didn't you think I'd've liked to've known? And something so fuckin' obvious too?!"
"So you'd have me go synthetic instead? Might as well show my ass off to some doctors while I float in a vat of pink goo for a month!"
"Ooooh!" Mina went, throwing up her hands and walking off.
"So, Calvin," Dr. David Wilson said, "we've finished your blood work and analyzing the scans of your arm, and we can't find any evidence to C.R.S. or anything similar."
"What're you talkin' about?" Skyler asked, "I was like eleven or twelve when I got tested, I saw the report, and there was a confirmed protein match to C.R.S."
"And I've got no explanation why, but in five blood samples we did not find any such proteins. Even in this day and age there's a lot of medical mysteries we can't explain. For whatever reason, you now do not have C.R.S. or any similar ailment. You are just like any typical wageslave or other average person for cybernetic implantation."
"Well, almost." Skyler said with a wry smile.
"True."
Dr. David Wilson was the doctor that had done Athena's implants, rarely working on other shadowrunners from time to time. He was also the only one that seemed available with the ability to perform the tricky surgery for implanting delta grade cyberware as well as the moral ethics to look the other way when it came to people like Skyler.
"Now if we want," David continued, "we can still continue with a delta grade forearm like you wanted."
"Do we have to do this now? All of this?"
"Not necessarily, but it might be difficult to reschedule depending on what you want done."
New possibilities ran through Skyler's mind, one of which was something that he had not really considered because of his C.R.S.
"I know I'll need to be scanned again, but here's what I had in mind."
