What a thrill...
With darkness, and silence, through the night...
What a thrill...
I'm searching, and I melt into you.
What a fear in my heart,
But you're so supreme...
I give my life,
Not for honour, but for you.
In my time, there'll be no one else
Crime, it's the way, I fly to you.
I'm still in a dream,
Snake Eater...
-Snake Eater, Metal Gear Solid, Cynthia Harrell
Redmond, Seattle 2046, six years ago (Susan and Harry)
The lack of shopping malls in Redmond, along with power and clean water, didn't stop Christmas. There was a basement party, with basement homebrew synthol diluted with cola. Some echo-electric, chrome-edged tunes on the speakers that howled shadowrun. It was the year Shield Wall's first album came out and Harry had a chocolate-coloured elf teenybopper to dance up against him all night. At least until Susan had stopped awkwardly loitering near the wall to punch out a drug dealer, and the party broke up with gunfire.
"This town has done us dirty
This town has bled us dry
We've been here for a long time
And we'll be here 'till we die
Let's finish off the leavings
Of BTLs and beer
And burn this fragging city down
Every summer of the year!
Going Transmetropolitan, yip-ki-yay…"
All that day, she'd put him through a kind of dancing. Hard sparring practise, broken by uncertain silences as they sat together. She'd greeted his date with the sincere smile and hard eyes she had with all his girls–his Kung Fu princess was protective of everyone, Harry knew. He might have asked her out as a friend, except she was going to the same party anyway; he hadn't a clue why.
"I know, I blew your date," She muttered, after they'd run three blocks, "Sorry, but–"
"–you took out that dealer like the trash he was. Novachill!"
"That isn't a word."
"It'll catch on. Hey, do you want to watch the sunrise?"
The Japanese TriD channels had given Harry the idea, between seasonal ads. They took the stairs to their apartment block's roof, with their least threadbare blanket. Susan took more than half, for her bare arms, and still shivered. They peered at the smog that choked Seattle's predawn skyline.
"Are we even going to see the sun?" Susan muttered. "Hope you take your dates someplace better."
"This isn't a date...?"
"Don't you forget it."
Harry dodged Susan's offhand shove. His childhood friend, best friend. Rival and teacher. Fellow shadowrunning dreamer. All of it surged between them, like a flower between two stones, and there was the seed of a new universe in her dark, defiant eyes…but fullness and fruition did not live in the Redmond Barrens.
Harry stared past the skyscrapers like prison bars, toward the epic shell of the Renraku arcology. Still under construction after six years; all dreams and no deeds. His life felt the same, right now – but that would change, one day.
"Hey. When they finish that huge thing, what'll they put in it?"
"Everything," Harry answered readily, "Factories, schools, hospitals, shopping malls. Another nest of happy wageslaves, except bees fly out and see the sun."
"Nice place to visit though? We could go to a sushi bar. You could switch up that tatty jacket, I could pick a dress…" Susan leaned back with a wide smile, "Think I'd look good in a dress?"
As if she were shifting her weight back for a snap-kick, Harry knew there was no safe answer. But he wasn't a coward; he said 'maybe' and got a slap with another smile.
A point to them both, in their endless, invisible sparring match. She had to be the smartest, the strongest, to live and get out of the Barrens one day and so did he. Would be nice not to get slapped so much, though. Maybe her beautiful honesty was all in his head, since he knew her so well…although Harry could think of no one else whose chain she jerked even a bit but him.
"They wouldn't let slummers in there anyway. Except for us; we'll both be Prime Runners before they finish it."
"Probably, yeah. So, we could sneak in, but they wouldn't let us in–"
"Only if we went as security, or executives, or simsense stars," Harry's smile flashed; he was leaping ahead to where his heart belonged, "Shadowrunners can be anyone, do anything. No Corp will ever tell us where we can go. Whatever happens, wherever we are–let's meet at that pyramid, when we both make Prime, and make a Run on them for everything they've got!"
"A date in the Shadows? Maybe."
Harry chattered on, bright eyes fixed on his dreams. Susan watched him with a faint smile, through some heavy emotion that made her eyelashes dip.
"Yeah, if it's just the two of us we could take on a dozen Red Samurai? Stealth the rest. With a chill song on earphones like 'Geek the Creeps', or 'Runners never die', you know? They were on at the party…maybe we'd need mic implants, not earphones…"
"Idiot. What about this?"
She pushed a headphone into his ear, tapped her old PDA. It was just one of the cheesy girl-power songs he'd always known she liked. Never known why, when her fists and her heart were the strongest in Redmond…she was simply a girl beyond his understanding.
"I know you think that I shouldn't still love you
Or tell you that
But if I didn't say it, well I'd still have felt it
Where's the sense in that?"
Couldn't they get into the pyramid as simsense stars on their honeymoon? Susan in a glittering black gown, as she kicked through a Samurai's neck . A dress to show off the snow-smooth plain of her back in the moonlight, before they abseiled off a balcony. Then her breasts like twin worlds filled with comfort, as she turned to him. The heaven of her eyes within reach…
"I will go down with this ship,
I won't put my hands up and surrender…"
Her eyes were gazing up from his shoulder, where she'd rested her head. Couldn't she see…? Though if she saw all his raging desire, he'd be a smear on the street. Susan Lei. The girl he couldn't have and couldn't ever lose; the only one.
"Sun's up," It was; a bloody smudge through the fog. Harry's face withdrew from Susan's lips, as he stood, "Don't even feel tired. Let's get down, find out how we're going to get breakfast?"
"Hope you find something before tomorrow, idiot," She still smiled at him, "You need to notice things a bit more, if we're going to be shadowrunners."
Her untouched lips burnt him through–but he'd have held back, even if he'd let himself see. He didn't just want kisses, didn't just want her, when they were so much more. They would be Prime Runners; deadly, invincible, chill. After their greatest shadowrun, on top of the world they'd saved, miles from Redmond …it would be a moment worth the weight within, to ask her if she dreamed of him. One day...
-0-
2052, Club Eclipse, San Francisco (Harry 'Hotspur' Fawkes)
Harry stared at the video where Susan had fallen into a walking assault flashback, between a crowd of furious metahumans and a squad of marines. She had killed three orks, Orion told him. But she hadn't lain down to weep and get trampled, she'd fought. Harry could only be glad of that; she wasn't dead.
More metas had been shot at the march. More had been 'casualties' of the subsequent 'crackdowns' in San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley–
"–in plain words, the victims of metahuman xenocide."
The old ork's eyes were black, howling fire, to raze a hundred trog-hating kingdoms. Harry personally thought 'xenocide' too strong, but what he put to Orion was that Susan had been trapped in a flashback, out of her own control. Wronged, wounded, fallen and always fighting, but for frag's sake–
"–only human?" Orion growled, "An Adept holds superhuman power; we must be more than that. I taught her to break mind control! I gave her the tools to break free from her past. What answer is 'only human' to those three orks, or their families? At this time, in this city, as deportation and murder herald xenocide…one question stabs through to the truth. What was she doing? What are you doing? What will I do? I sincerely hope that I will do nothing but speak plainly and severely, when I meet with Susan Lei again…but in this city, at this time, there is nothing I might do for my people that I will baulk from!"
"You'll find a better way, Dad." The PDA buzzed, shocking Harry yet again, "You're better than this. Susan's better than that fragging video. Alpha Base. She saved both our lives."
"Yet she is only human, as are we all. That is the unhappy truth."
Ilsa Tresckow, still in her dancing gladrags, had come up to the bar while the video had been on. Her gaze swept severely over the two Adepts and the PDA, as she adjusted her glasses and crossed her arms under her breasts.
"If you fellows have decided not to kill each other," She went on, "Perhaps you'll see the wisdom of discussing our enfant terrible more circumspectly?"
"If you're Susan's chummer–" Harry got out, "–if she vanished after that, then what the frag are you doing here, prancing around?"
"Why else, except that I know she is safe! She sent a message–but where she is now, I do not know. I engaged a decker, I searched, and after two months…I needed to drink, and not to think. Haven't you had needs of that sort at times, Warrior?"
"Oo! Need a medkit for that burn." The PDA gave a digital snigger. Harry realised that both Ilsa and the unseen speaker knew exactly as much about him as Susan did. Because she had told them. She had talked about him...
"You had best tell us all you know, Tresckow," Orion grated, "And also this decker of yours."
"Oo, is that, like, my cue?"
Harry turned toward the cheerful, trilling voice, and waving hand. The slim brunette he'd noticed on entering the bar had sashayed up beside Ilsa. Her bodysuit went with her figure so well, she might have been born to wear it, and the Matrix goggles perched on her fringe were high mid-end. She looked about eighteen, however, and her smile might have born into a world of sunshine yesterday.
"Hi there! I'm Hailey. Just a simple San Francisco decker girl–so far! And my folks are natives too, everyone says that's totally rare, you know? Chip truth, gotta say it...I'm, like, totally stoked to be mixed up in this biz, chummers!"
"Don't doubt you are. Welcome aboard." The PDA chirped. Harry guessed it would've been making some doubtful faces, if it'd had a face. Orion did glance very dubiously at Ilsa, who feigned blindness.
Harry picked up bitter tension between the Mage and the ork–and the digital ghost of his daughter Anya on the PDA, whom Harry was quietly introduced to as the party made their way to a booth. He was scarcely more floored to be speaking with a bona-fide A.I. than by Orion's unguarded revelation. He realised later that Ilsa, Anya and even Orion regarded Susan Lei's friend as family. On the basis of a few hours, the shadows of Calfree held as many shocks and wonders…as the shadows anywhere else, at their black richest. But it was simply natural, that his beloved Fighter had pulled together a party like this.
-0-
Ilsa's boyfriend had been sent home to Berkeley in a cab by her, with a trusted acquaintance. San Francisco wasn't a safe city for a dwarf scholar of 19th century history to wander alone. So the council of war in the quiet, leather-lined booth consisted of Harry, Ilsa, Orion, Hailey, and Anya. It quickly came out that the orks had rolled into Frisco only a few days ago. Being hunted by Saeder Krupp was a hindrance to fast travel or keeping an eye on the news. Ilsa managed to cut off Hailey's squeeing about a real life A.I. by ordering her to explain her part in this drama.
"Well, I've been, like, looking for my first shadowrun at Eclipse, and I talked to Miss Susan a bit between her songs. She was, like, mega chill, a real shadowrunner! When she vanished after that awful march and Miss Tresckow came looking for her, I, like, promised to make good and help find our chummer. Runner's honour!"
Harry suspected there was more than that, from a sudden dimming of Hailey's sunny manner. But forging on with her story, it shone out again.
"So, at first I hacked comms on those grumpy-pants Marines–"
"You did what, now?" Now Anya's synthetic voice sounded plainly disbelieving, "I'd have started with the Metahuman People's Army, anyway. Since they've been looking for our girl from day one, with a price on her head."
Anya helpfully projected a small hologram of the infamous Baysprawl pro-meta terrorists' netsite. A grim-jawed ork with an axe on one shoulder, and an AK-97 on the other. Harry could only imagine one response from him to three dead orks, or anything else that offended…no. His killing angel had killed regular people, not guards or gangers; she'd crossed a line. But wasn't the blood on his own hands from Hong Kong so much thicker? He'd said he'd run to her through hell; he'd meant it.
"Um, the Marines are looking for Susan as well," Hailey was saying, "And not to pin a medal on her, you know? Like, you have seen the bodycam footage from the march?"
On her laptop, Hailey quickly called up the footage she'd hacked over a month ago from a marine's standard helmet camera and bio-monitor. It showed the Mission District march; Susan standing up before the marines, steadier in the frame than before, and the massacre that followed. Orion watched with terrible resolution as first an orc woman, then a teenage elf, entered the sights of the unseen gunman and fell. Hailey couldn't look at it for a second time; Harry thoughtlessly squeezed her hand, as his eyes stared and searched.
As the elf child fell, the camera jerked. And then there was Fighter's dark-eyed face. A glimpse of horror and fury, before the cam fell and an unknown soldier's lifesigns called cut. Harry couldn't have stopped smiling to save his life.
"She killed three orks and four marines." Hailey told them, "I bet she saved a load of metas …and we can guess she got the frag out of Dodge, you know, ahead of the Marines and the MPA."
"Only Susan." Ilsa sighed, "She meant well, as always. And for once she didn't drag me along."
"Of course, the Marines didn't want anybody to see a girl in heels kick their hoops," Hailey babbled on, "And the MPA didn't want their big outrage story getting confused, so they smashed PDAs and censored news-sites. They only let the first vid get out all over. Like, you know, stupid hate is business for both of them? I've always thought, you know, that trust–"
Orion raised a claw to cut her off.
"Miss Hailey. I advise you to think a little more before preaching cheap trust to one who has watched his family murdered for their metatype…and has outlived, at least, senseless hate. But not mistrust, even of his student, and what old fool could escape his own ignorance? Thank you for correcting me. Anya?"
"…thanks. You're going to go far, chummer." Anya's mortified shame blazed from the PDA.
"So, everyone's looking for Susan to kill her," Harry rounded on Ilsa, "But you've got a message that she's alive. Can I see it now?"
"Since I came to San Francisco with Susan, I have been giving basic magic classes in Oakland and Berkeley, with the People's University. A young ork I had not seen at my classes before or since left me a handwritten note, nearly a fortnight after Susan vanished. We have found nothing to tell us where she is since then."
With noticeable reluctance, Ilsa retrieved the paper from her bag. Harry snatched it from her. It was actual handwriting. Misspelt without a Comm's autocorrect, of course–Susan's writing. Bad as back in the Redmond basement school, when they'd reluctantly learnt what a pencil was for–and thought of love, someday, as they flicked spitballs at each other's hair.
Ilsa. Not ded yet. With ppl who dont like humans. Safe, but u woodnt be. Cant leeve atm. Dnt worry abt me. When Harry comes, tell that idiot we'll meet in the Shadows, if he can remember when we had dreems.
When we had dreams. When Harry comes. Two years of nothing without her, all his frag-ups and drek he'd left her for, and now…
"'When...?'"
"It seems I must explain in simple words." Ilsa's cold voice was a bell in Harry's heart, "Why did SeeräuberJenny truely stand up on live TriD, for all her enemies to see? Because you would see her and come to save her. Didn't you hear her song? The ship coming in to make her a pirate queen? That poor fool didn't plan for all this, I hope–but here you are. We are going to find Susan Lei, and that idiot still wants you to save her. The pure, SINless boy in her nightmare. The dream that sustained her life, two years. The man who left and was nothing to her, for two years. Which one are you, Hotspur? If you even think of hurting my wounded friend again…then I am a mage, and death may not be the worst you should fear."
Harry stared at the message of the woman he loved. Who he'd left and failed, again and again, who still loved him…because two minutes and three fragging gangers had broken a deep trust in her, and left nothing but the dream they'd shared? Because their nightmare first Run, his stubborn stupidity, mean no one could save her…but him? He wanted to weep…but not at this table. He was a Runner. He had to protect her. That was all that mattered.
-0-
"No word in over a month. We do not know she is safe." Harry finally got out, "She said 'people who don't like humans'–is she hiding with metahuman militants?"
"Oh, we thought of that!" Hailey gushed, wide-eyed, "But she's not with the October Alliance, and so many little resistance groups aren't techie enough to trace through the Matrix. I really haven't found anything solid. Sorry. Though, obviously, she's not with the MPA. Those monsters even threatened her when she was SeeräuberJenny, just a singer!"
"'Monsters?'" Orion only had to speak quietly.
"Racist murderers and terrorists." Ilsa likewise spoke evenly and with convicted force, "They blow up commuter trains full of humans, the Marines firebomb Oakland city blocks in response. They were behind the three suicide bombings of last week, according to my contacts–and do you want to see their messages for Susan?"
Hailey meekly recovered the messages on her laptop. The MPA had dug up SeeräuberJenny's past, fighting trog gangs in Seattle. Also, that she'd been beaten and almost raped on her first Run; most of their threats started from there. Harry resolved to consider killing every last one of the fraggers, if he were ever at a loss what to do with his life again.
Ilsa followed up with a news report on the recent suicide bombing and attempts. A gutted San Fran civic building, tiny corpses scattered like toys in the rubble. Harry could almost smell the brick dust and cordite. There were two other intact and crowded workplaces, where the bombers had been stopped, and a headshot of Colonel Saito, promising Swift Death to Evil. Then a guerrilla broadcast of a huge shadow-hidden troll.
"These blows mark a new dawn of vengeance for wounded metahumanity, the chosen heirs of the Earth. A new dawn of blood for false humanity. No peace but the peace of death. Hail Norton. Norton lives."
"What…?"
"Norton's Army." Ilsa glared down her nose, "They allegedly believe that America's destined king sleeps in the Caldicott Tunnel, or somesuch insanity. A convenient scapegoat; even terrorists do not wish their suicide bombings to tarnish their own public image." Hailey obviously wanted to dispute something, but the talk moved on too swiftly.
"No peace but death. Yeah, that explains why human 'Frisco does nothing, while Saito does his work." Anya commented. Hailey admitted her own parents felt that way, "We need justice, not vengeance. Strength and respect, not sugarcandy utopias round the bend. Though I'm reading the bombers were actually humans, brainwashed with magic, not ork kids brainwashed with drek."
"So, all is not lost." Orion mused, "Some of the Resistance have some measure of sense. With a message worthy of their cause, and restricted, strategic attacks…"
"The terrorists are not the Resistance," Ilsa snapped, "The People's University are teachers, journalists and doctors. People of thought and sense, like yourself. They teach displaced metas to sustain themselves, make use of their skills and survive."
"Until they are burnt or shot, with their families?" Orion shook his head, "I will speak with your university, and I will speak with the groups you call terrorists. I will decide what role I will take in this struggle–but in the face of such hate, I believe nothing can be changed without fighting."
"I'm ready to fight and kill right now, right here," Harry finally broke in, "If we can just find Susan before the Metas or the Marines do! That's what we're here for, isn't it?" Ilsa and Orion nodded, and dropped their argument for the minute.
"...there was one new lead," Hailey offered, "It was to do with those awful suicide bombings."
"Yeah, doesn't sound good. But go on."
"Well, the Marines only stopped the two attempts because there was some kind of tip off. And there was a Run on a building contractor's offices, about the same time, blocks away. Word on the net is, they took advantage of the distraction. And, um, a guard saw the Runners. A big troll, an elf decker, an ork gunner…and an Asian woman who looked like an Adept."
"…no. Susan would be stopping the bombing, nothing else."
"Couldn't she have been, like, mind-controlled as well?"
"No. Adepts can't be mind-controlled." Orion nodded in agreement, but Ilsa looked more cynical.
"You Adepts have your practised techniques and centuries-old traditions, pushing the same human qualities to the same superhuman limits, but wizardry is the bleeding edge that never stops cutting; metaversially speaking, it has no limits. However, since the bombings were the work of the MPA, I cannot imagine how Susan could have been involved."
"Really?" Hailey piped up, "It wasn't Norton's Army?"
"For the last time," Ilsa glared at Haylee severely, "There will be persons, in days like these, foolish or desperate enough to believe any insanity. Our concern and Susan's, however, is with terrorists, armies and Megacorps. Not what I believe you call the tinfoil hat brigade!"
As Hailey had warned, none of her other leads had gone anywhere. They were in this dead end thirty minutes later, when a comm call summoned Hotspur to Kali's office.
"Of course, you are here for business, as well as love," Ilsa's face was enigmatic, as Harry got up, "Aztechnology?"
Her assumption was naturally correct. The Japancorps had found ample pretext in Atzlan's invasion of Calfree to ban Aztechnology from San Francisco, seizing another substantial piece of the Baysprawl pie to carve between themselves. All Aztechnology assets, however, including their towering main building, had been snatched up by the newly created Pyramid Holdings. That this was a shell company for the Azzies was an open secret–only proof was lacking. In the uneasy months since the march and the crackdowns, the Japancorps had resolved again to give one tottering threat to their dominance a final push.
"The old pyramid has been virtually under siege by shadowrunners for weeks." Ilsa informed Harry, "But Aztechnology's death grip on it appears secure. They've actually started throwing the bodies of Runners out the front door, to hang on through terror a little longer."
"If they're hanging on, we'll kick them over the cliff. That is, if you want in?"
Ilsa, Orion and Anya had better things to do, including lead hunting. Hailey practically threw herself forward.
"I've hacked into Corp subsystems, and the Marines, I just need a shadowrun! I mean, a Run like this! I've got a drone as well, and I won't slow you down! I know Runners get shot at sometimes; I've been practising running and a bit of Judo, I know how to duck! I'll throw in a fake Calfree SIN–you'll need it with all the checkpoints. I've, like, been doing fake SINs since I was twelve, for my girlfriends to buy movies and synthol and stuff…I know I can be a real, novahot decker! I only need a chance."
"…you are a novahot decker, but keep up that running practise." Harry sighed, "I'll think about it."
Harry left Hailey wiggling in excitement, as Ilsa and Orion looked at each other warily. A smile twitched under Harry's wistful but unyielding eyes.
-0-
Kali's office was smaller and less sumptuous than her old one in Antumbra. It was covered in suspect vintage instruments and framed posters of rock stars, including a faded one of the woman herself. Impressive decor meant different things in Seattle and San Francisco. Kali leaned back at her desk as Harry walked in.
"Change of plan, Hotspur–I assume you have made a plan? Rather than pining for your lady love? There's a time factor regarding this unbelievably significant Run, and on both counts my contacts require, as they so often do, additional assurances. The Run on the pyramid must be made at eleven thirty in the morning, before the shift change, no later than the day after tomorrow. I'll throw in an extra thousand–"
"–in broad daylight. In two days. Who do you think I am?"
"If you're not the Runner for this job…"
"You brought me here from Seattle, because I can cut through an army and I'm not a meta. I don't have contacts in this city to get a route into the pyramid, or floorplans, within two days. I'll need both those things from you, after you convince me I'm not on the fragging decoy team."
"Look, Hotspur, there was a Run under cover of the bombings, last week. What do you suppose a building contractor would be holding? The last set of floorplans for the pyramid, excluding fakes, in the whole city. Tick tock, get the picture? Another team will bring down the Azzies, unless you act now."
"In two days, at eleven thirty? I'm not an idiot! The best Runners in Hong Kong taught me, a time demand always means you're the decoy! Getting trapped and geeked like rats, while the team with the plans escapes in a rotorcraft!"
"Not such a hothead as you act, eh?" Kali's lip curled, "If you won't be there for your date in the Shadows, I suppose I'll have to find some other fools. Though I do wonder what you will do in San Francisco, after welching on your first Run."
"Take a guess." Harry spread his hands, "I'll look for the woman I love." He spun around and walked out, under the acid gaze of Kali and her bodyguards–though something else was niggling at the back of his mind.
Ilsa and Hailey had already left the bar. Harry had rented a poorly soundproofed safe-room on the ground floor. Even if it gave Kali time to throw out his stuff, he resolved to go down and question the merchants in the lobby, until he dropped from exhaustion.
This meant he passed through the nightclub level, where he stopped dead. A particularly shmaltzy and old-fashioned song was pouring through the multi-shaded darkness. Some clubbers hurled abuse at the DJ, others cosied up to their lovers for a slow dance. And Harry...stood lost in a dream.
Ilsa and Hailey had already left the bar. Harry had rented a poorly soundproofed safe-room on the ground floor. Even if it gave Kali time to throw out his stuff, he resolved to go down and question the merchants in the lobby, until he dropped from exhaustion.
This meant he passed through the nightclub level, where he stopped dead. A particularly shmaltzy and old-fashioned song was pouring through the multi-shaded darkness. Some clubbers hurled abuse at the DJ, others cosied up to their lovers for a slow dance. And Harry–stood lost in a dream.
"And when we meet
I'm sure we will
All that was there
Will be there still
I'll let you pass
And hold my tongue
And will you think
That I've moved on…?"
He finally moved, charging through the thinning crowd to the DJ's booth. DJ Omphalous, a tall ebony elf lady with a nose chain, confirmed cheerfully that the song had been requested by PDA message.
"…someone's got to be sentimental round here, you know? If a schmaltz-fest from six years ago gets a request, you can be just about certain that it's a special song, for two chummers in L-O-V-E…"
"I will go down with this ship
I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love…and always will be."
Harry raced back to Kali's office, very nearly bursting in and getting shot. He leant over the unruffled producer's desk.
"'Our date in the shadows'. She called it that, didn't she? When you took her money, for supplying a decoy team–eleven thirty, at the pyramid–for Susan Lei!"
"You know I can't discuss my other clients–"
Harry smacked the desk, from pure surging excitement. He paced about the room like a tiger, shining with energy, burning with passion.
"'Our date in the shadows'–at the arcology, the pyramid! When we had our first kiss–at least, we should have– that was the song! She was on the team that took the floorplans, she set this up, she was right here! She's running the Shadows...no, she fell in with militants, a terrorist group–those bomb attacks, there was a tip! She'd do anything to save lives. There was no way to get a message out, but she found a way! She wants us to stop them, together, she wants me to find her! In two days, at the pyramid, she'll be there! We'll take the Run, all of us, get floorplans from the pyramid itself if we have to. We'll be your decoys and we'll cut through it all. We'll turn it the frag around, together!"
Kali might have told Harry that Susan had looked dark and harrowed as the path she was on, when she'd said what she had to, then ghosted out of Kali's office, untraced. But Harry was running to get Orion and call Ilsa. He wouldn't have heard. He saw Susan clearer than holograms, brighter than trideo. Pure and invincible, fighting in the Shadows–waiting for him, with a smile and her fists on her hips.
Harry found Orion still in the booth, writing in his diary. The ork listened, and then stood. He moved as if there had been enough bullets in him to cast a statue for his grave–but Harry felt his latent power, as they clasped hands.
"We will join you, Anya and myself. Susan is my student, and we may learn much ourselves, as we seek her."
"…very well." Ilsa sighed, finally, over Harry's PDA, "I must get Susan out of this absurd mess, though afterwards I may kill her for getting into it."
"This is so wiz!" Hailey sounded like she was bouncing with excitement, "We're going to kick a whole Megacorp out of San Francisco, and even reunite Susan with her lost love! My first shadowrun is totally going to be the greatest ever!"
A/N: The songs I've rather disingenuously presented as the biggest hits of 2046 are in fact 'Transmetropolitan' by the Pogues, and 'White Flag' by Dido.