"...in a new mining district the rough element predominates, and a person is not respected until he has "killed his man." That was the very expression used. If he had, the cordiality of his reception was graduated according to the number of his dead...when a man came with the blood of half a dozen men on his soul, his worth was recognised at once and his acquaintance sought...The deference paid to a desperado of wide reputation, who "kept his private graveyard,"...was marked and cheerfully accorded...They were brave, reckless men, and travelled with their lives in their hands."
-Mark Twain, Roughing It
Early on the morning of the Run, Ilsa was sleepless. She gazed over her boyfriend's neat little Berkeley apartment. Then at Henry, breathing gently into the mattress beside her. Still asleep from their evening of intense and mindful lovemaking–she'd told him she would be gone for a week or so, he'd known she might not be coming back.
It was a comfortable relationship, and a loving one–even if she didn't believe it was love. She cleared out for a week, when his next book on the Civil War got to a tricky chapter–he didn't call when a demanding magical experiment or shadowrun demanded her attention. Though in a crisis like this, when she needed love and sex at once, he had always been there for her. She might not have been for him; but she told herself that such things were less urgent for over-forties.
After drifting into 'Frisco with Susan, Ilsa had come to the People's University with the idea of finally embarking on her doctorate. What she had found, beneath the outrageous disorder, was the wisest and kindest body of boffins, geeks, hippies and passive resistors she had ever known. Her chance to do some good. Free classes in magic, open to any half-starved, bright eyed Oakland slummer with a glimmer of talent, didn't redeem all her crimes in the Shadows. But it was a better thing to devote her life to than revenge–or the next shiny academic medal. She had begun that doctorate after all, and Henry had introduced her to simply going out and having fun, so she'd filled her days up very sufficiently. It was wonderful to have somebody to take out for dinner, and the money for a decent place; better than drinking cheap synthol alone in Redmond. Sometimes, she even forgot that one evil minute could burn this life away.
When they had first got chatting in the library, she had inquired if everyone asked him what use were history lectures, in a violent occupation? With that charming dwarfish twinkle, he'd said that everyone asked but her. He knew she knew that survival without thought was not life.
"It is a beautiful thing, Ilsa," He'd told her, when they finally retired to his flat together, "That a human and a dwarf can love each other, in these troubled times. It is…beautifully right."
Of course, he liked her brains and her body as well as her metatype. A caring heart, an insightful mind, surprisingly good in bed…there wasn't the passion she had shared with Paladin. But she was fairly sure that hadn't been love either. A fated bond, like Susan and Harry, doubtless made everything simpler. Though it had done them little good so far.
And now Susan was possibly embedded in a group of psychotic terrorists. It hadn't been lost on Ilsa that the note to her, then the bombing tip-offs, then that crazy message through a song, marked a narrowing of communicative ability. Susan was not safe. They would find her. But she, Ilsa, definitely wasn't getting back to sleep.
Anya would be awake. Calling the digital ork, for the first time since Alpha Base, was predictably unsettling. A simple comm call, with the knowledge that there was no body on the other end because of her choices.
"Hello there, Wiz." Anya synthetic voice had somehow kept her old sass, "This sure is a surprise. Did you know Norton's Army are supposed to be a front, for either the MPA, the Azzies, or fragging Humanis? Roaches always come back."
"Much as Pyramid Holdings acts as a front for Aztechnology. As above so below. There are certainly worse things in the Shadows here than urban legends," Though easier to talk about than themselves... "That peaceful march through the Mission District, into the guns of the Marines, was almost certainly organised by a terrorist group or foreign power, looking for a match and powder keg. I suppose you've been researching the situation?"
"What else would I be doing?"
"Anya..." Ilsa sat up in bed, hugging her knees, "I called to ask how you were. In yourself...?"
"…have I gone crazy yet? If it isn't so, why did I frag up with the bodycam footage?" Anya sighed. Ilsa wondered if the fleshy reaction was habitual or deliberate, "Being hunted by a Mega is like living in a hole. I know about that, from the Alpha Base years. Only Dad's in it with me now…I suppose when he saw Susan going crazy, I went along with him. He truly has no one left but me, understand? And I've got no one but him in the meatspace, metahuman world."
"I'm sorry we couldn't keep in contact. Saeder Krupp know me, and will not forget. If they called in an hour and threatened Henry, the University, Susan–"
"–or gave you anything you really wanted, you'd do anything they asked. No hard feelings. We're going to find Susan, finally get our chica her man. Then I'm vanishing again, with Dad."
"The University has many world-class deckers. You could make other contacts, other links." Considered silence. Ilsa forged on, "Your father is a humane, intelligent ork. He would do better with the People's University than the terrorists."
"Surely you mean freedom fighters?"
"They are not the same. The MPA are the Humanis Policlub for metas."
"Not the same. Humans started the war; humans taught the ork to kill and hate. Dad's writing a book, did you know? His diaries, our story–all we've lost and suffered since the start. You tell me, when you read it, if he could ever go too far for justice. I don't know how he holds back from killing them all. The humanis, the marines, the silent, ordinary fraggers behind them. I can tell you, whatever he does, I'll be with him."
"An ork and an A.I. against the world; but only human, still. As was Susan. The best woman we know plunged into this morass, and it took her, Anya. If you care for your father, I advise you to hold him back."
"Oh, we're in this war already; we can't change what we are. But Susan took a stand in the line of fire; she made that choice. We are going to save our chummer, meatgirl, and I surely hope you are 1000% online with that."
With little more to say, Ilsa severed the connection. She got up and covered herself with her dark suit and cloak. Checked her fetishes and foci, then left to meet the other Runners at Eclipse. She didn't kiss her boyfriend's sleeping, sunlit head goodbye; with all she'd done and was still doing, there was no point pretending she could fall in love. All she could do was find the girl in the Shadows who still might.
-0-
The high-end, but battered Buick (the best car Ilsa had found in 48 hrs that they could afford second-hand) screeched into the curb beneath Aztechnology's old pyramid. Calfree sun gleamed off towering black edges, and watching sentry turrets, as the green-armoured guards levelled SMGs. Ilsa stepped from the car and marched briskly to the front gate, wrinkling her nose. The approach to the pyramid was indeed sprinkled with un-fragrant Runner corpses. Extraterritoriality was a marvellous thing.
In her heels and suit, Ilsa was the image of a top-flight Wagemage. Her bodyguards–Hotspur and Orion–respectively wore their suits with charming scruffiness and like a sack. Hailey did her best to appear a heavily-laden and nervous PA. A sudden urge to pee her pants with terror helped.
"Dr A.E. Moritz; security consultant." Ilsa announced herself, "Since I was attacked on my way here by some ill-advised shadowrunners or terrorists–" (Harry had reinforced this excuse for their car's sorry state by emptying his Browning at it), "–it is doubly important that I am no later for my meeting with your MD than I am already."
A guard presently looked up from Ilsa's forged credentials.
"I'll call the front desk, Ma'am. We've had a drekload of incidents–"
"–hence, I do not wish to stand any longer in the street. While your front desk carries out the requisite security checks it is their job to perform, I will wait inside. Then I will be able to do my job, and you will receive the support to continue doing yours. Or I could call my dear friend Mr Tooms directly, now."
Harry mused on the frightening power of beautiful women, as the guard ushered them past to the air-conditioned, pot-plant-sprinkled lobby. A large fresco of a toothy Mesoamerican serpent stared down behind the receptionist. Who eventually steeled himself and told Ilsa that she had better call the MD, Morgan Tooms, or else he would.
"And how would your boss regard this, when you haven't even run level 4 checks on our SINs? That is standard procedure at Head Office, or weren't you aware?"
'Head Office', at Pyramid Holdings, meant Aztechnology. The receptionist started tapping out the level 4 checks. The good news was, this would take a while. Bad news–which made Hailey desperately press her legs together–was that her fake SINs would not have the history or cross-refs to withstand it.
Then she noticed that Ilsa's fingers were working behind her back, as she stood furiously and obtrusively at the desk. Hotspur and Orion had sat down to one side, unregarded–and their eyes were flicking over the positions of the lobby guards.
"Ready to roll, girl genius." Anya whispered in her earpiece.
Hailey rolled and dived, behind the lobby's hulking bag scanner, as Ilsa's fireball blazed and blasted. She heard Hotspur's lightning footfalls–gunshots–body falls. Hands shaking, but with no time for fear, she ripped open her bag. Her prized Strato-9 drone hovered up above the bag scanner. Its cameras sent her eyes a scene of death.
Hotspur, the dashing, gorgeous, very-sadly-taken Prime Runner of her dreams, had cut down two guards before they could aim their shots, with barely a splash of blood on his suit (Wasn't that the suspension bridge effect, where the touch of death made you wish you'd had sex just once more?). More guards were firing on Orion, as they dashed in from the gate. He ducked behind a bench, aimed three heavy AK bullets, and that gunfire ceased.
An enemy was moving, on the floor. At Hailey's thought, her drone pocked a little bullet into his head, and she had killed.
Ilsa was dropping around the solid slab of the front desk, as bullets rang off it; her flamestrike burnt another guard down. The receptionist came back up with a pistol; a firebolt from her off hand killed him. Then it was over, with no noise left except for alarms. Security shutters clanged down over the glass front doors, but they were heading up.
Orion tore off his suit jacket as he strode forward beside Hotspur, who was tying on his headband. Ilsa pulled Hailey up by one arm, as she kicked her heels away.
"If worst comes to worst, you can be the Runner who peed all over Aztechnology. You're doing better on your first Run than I did, at least."
-0-
Ilsa had grilled the sole survivor, minus his left hand and right arm, of a previous failed Run on the pyramid. His team had been surrounded in the Matrix room that the Runners had now reached. Orion covered the door, with a small Watcher spirit from Ilsa, who took a seat herself and dropped into the Astral. Hailey, silent and solemn for once, put her Renraku Kraftwerk cyberdeck on her knees and Jacked into the Matrix. Where Anya was naturally ready and waiting.
The floor was flooded with green uniforms, rushing down corridors, and thrusting FN HAR rifles round every corner. A team of Spiders on the security cams were bawling into their comms. Attrition had worn their numbers down, but there were more than enough squads in this arcology to shoot down four more bodies. All shadowrunners believed they always won–but after weeks of killing Mages, deckers and Street Sams, Pyramid Holdings knew they did not. However many Runner teams were in play, they would be found and crushed–even if the internal shutters that had trapped the last crew were already offline. But the sprawling blank corridors of the pyramid dizzied and deceived; there were cameras everywhere. Runners could only run so far before they fell.
Ilsa's plan demanded speed at every step; particularly locating the Director's office where the proof of Azzie ownership would surely be. From the Astral, she would confirm where guards were stationed, and where they weren't. In the Matrix, Anya and Haylee would go straight for the floorplans that would give them their route –and the maglocks or shutters that would bar it. They'd shot out all the cameras they could, on their way up–but Harry had proposed to confuse their location further with a dash around the floor. He was fast, he did not believe he could die, and getting surrounded in the Matrix room meant death. The instant the team could move, they would move.
Hotspur never stopped moving. He dashed in a half-crouch through another row of desks, as screens exploded behind him. He threw out shots from his Browning without aiming one, racing on. Shotgun pellets clipped him, but nothing stopped him. Susan had gone through fire and water, and she would be here–he was going to see her again! He would not die, their nightmares would end forever. If he killed as many fraggers in green armour as got in his way, and never stopped running.
All he feared was shooting one of the unarmed sararimen and women, shaking under their desks. He eyes had to move faster than his feet–he spotted the hooded Wagemage as the Slow spell hit him. Ilsa's Haste spell was long since spent. Hotspur darted on, from cover to cover. He hacked through the hand of a bruiser who grabbed him and kicked the Azzie down. He angled his route for the home sprint, back to the Matrix room.
-0-
Within the Matrix, as Harry ran, a naked ork made of blue light-points stared at an animated clownfish. Hailey shyly noted that it was her favourite movie. A step-pyramid of golden blocks towered above them; she wiggled her tail in joyful awe. If it was only thinking that, like, made the world good or bad or ugly, why shouldn't a world of the mind look totes splendiferous?
"Whatever. Try and keep up, girl genius."
The avatars leapt toward the pyramid, fast as thought, and Anya's digital fists moved much faster. Shimmering blocks scattered and burst. Each level of the virtual pyramid formed an plaza studded with data pillars, like a silently, majestic ruin. And like spreading moss and insects, the scuttling calculations of profit, experiment and blood moved along every edge. Anya romped past it could barely trace the zig-zag path between authorisation nodes and level gates to follow her ascent.
Golden shards clustered into rising serpents, and more ICE shaped like eagles dropped from the empty sky. Hailey fired streams of bubbles at the few which Anya didn't immediately smash to their component digits–Hailey would have been breathless with awe, if avatars breathed. She did call up her Shield ESP, just in case, shaped like a little jellyfish.
Then a snake as black as obsidian rose at Hailey's side. It struck faster than she could read; her mental world shuddered and charred. It was only the second time she'd ever hit Black ICE. Her shield and her Recovery program were no defence.
She threw a Killer program, shaped like shark teeth, but the serpent slid aside. Could she take another hit, wouldn't she…die…?
"JACK OUT!"
Hailey thought that would have totally been the best idea, as the Black ICE hit her again. Reeling, sensing a ghost of tremendous pain, but ungeeked, she fired another Killer. It hit and killed. She then leapt to help Anya against the two Corp deckers that had risen up to bar her path; snakes with human faces and bodies. She didn't know if they were already surrounded, lost...no, she could totally do this.
An enemy decker threw a Blaster attack, shredding at both their avatars' code. But Anya had already frayed down both hostile avatars with a Degrade program; Matrix combat was carefully planned and over in miliseconds. Two bubble streams blew both the dataslaves out; they would dropping down in meatspace with awful dumpshock.
"Jack out next time. You've still got that choice." Anya growled.
Hailey earnestly promised to remember, as she Recovered the damage to her avatar. Then they quickly moved ahead to the pillar that held the floorplans.
-0-
From what Ilsa had read, she actually preferred the contrived order of the Matrix to the swirling emotions of the Astral. Not that the rows of cubicle offices had much deep emotion attached anywhere, save for purple-yellow pillars of greed and fear–a manager's door–as well as some rosy smearings of spilt lust. And of course, the angry soul-lights of the guards.
Freedom from her silly, demanding flesh was always pleasant, for a while. Finding a gap between the mana walls which covered the top floor was an absorbing challenge, as always. The shadow of an Astral wagemage, flinging a manabolt at her back, was a predictable distraction. She swung her body around with a thought, as if on a spindle, and flung back the manabolt she'd been careful to prepare.
Back in meatspace, with his back to the doorframe, Orion fired on the massing guards and ground his tusks, cursing his age. He roared at Ilsa to give Haylee another medkit, as soon as the Mage returned to her body. The young decker found herself covered in nasal blood and smellier matters, as she Jacked out and staggered up. She had to admit that maybe shadowrunning wasn't always a glamorous job.
Orion charged from the Matrix room as Hotspur raced back to it; the squad of guards were crushed between them. The Runners ran, as the pyramid's battered defenders pulled back.
They dived into the first empty office without breath for speech. Anya and Ilsa swiftly combined the floorplans from the Matrix with the Astral vision of the guards' stations, on her PDA.
"We forced two doors on the east side open, so most of the Azzies will head there. We'll head to the west side, unlock the doors when we get there at another Jackpoint."
"…which is, in fact, there? Anya, are you aware that Megacorps use fake floorplans to confuse Runners? Our combined plan has two squads of soldiers stationed in a toilet."
It was a wavering moment. Haylee was about to sit down and cry, when Harry's swift words seized up all their hearts.
"There's one difference, or two; the Director's office is there. The paydata has to be there, Susan had got to be heading there! No time, no doubts, no stopping us! We're going to meet her!"
Desperate resolution shone from Harry's eyes; any doubt he'd had, he'd burnt. The Runners dashed out towards their target as if he had flung them from a catapult.
There was still a green line of guards in front of the west stairwell to the top, aiming their weapons over solid desks. A Wagemage readying a fireball; Ilsa fizzled his spell with a gesture and threw out a thundering earth spirit. Bullets plinked from its hide, and Hailey's little drone, as Orion threw his rifle away and charged with swinging fists. And Hotspur charged, katana raised at his side, crying out Susan's name.
His feet flashed until there was green on every side, and then he flung out three strikes fast as a trigger-pull. Through a neck, under a vest, a downward strike that cut chest and armour apart. Ilsa's heal stiffened his leg–a bullet had caught him, as he ran–and Orion snapped a neck with a punch at his side. Only a few guards fled, but none survived.
Orion's eyes were grim, looking on spilt and useless blood; Harry knew how he felt. But not now–this was for Susan. Nothing he did for her could be useless. Kicking a AAA Megacorp out of a sprawl city had never mattered less.
-0-
On the executive floor, they faced the Blood Mages. Ilsa dropped to the floor, white-faced, as a hooded woman cut down by Harry closed up her own chest with stolen life force. Hotspur fell to his knees under repeated Heatwaves–a bodyguard shot him in the chest, before he could cut the Azzie down. None too late, Orion wrestled down the blood-coated summon spirit, kicked it into red sparks, and punched two mages out. Surging up with a howl, Hotspur managed to chop down the woman again, and hacked her until she was entirely dead.
With their wounds from the floor below, they went on without medkits. But no chest wound would have stopped Harry charging ahead, to the antechamber of the director's office–
"Don't open that door! Four turrets, haven't got control yet!"
Harry almost collapsed against the door, a fallen knight. Two years of longing and fear burnt in him all at once, for the other side. Where Susan was. Wherever she was…
Orion supported Ilsa, shakily aiming his rifle one-handed, at the door behind. He was winded, Ilsa was bent and gasping. Running to the top of an arcology, fighting on the way, but they couldn't stop if they meant to live.
As more guards charged up from the floors below, Hailey Jacked out and ran after the others. Harry finally flung open the doors. All of them raced past the silent turrets, which cut down the pursuing guards in a storm of explosive shells. Harry gasped his thanks to Anya, as he raced to the Director's office and kicked in the door of the room at the top of the pyramid.
-0-
Morgan Tooms, Director of Pyramid Holdings' San Francisco operations–that is, Aztechnology's–had appeared quite unlike the crazed scientist or Blood Mage that the Megacorp's unredacted track record foreboded. He had affected a trimmed dark beard and a pin-striped suit; his work was to give the cheerful impression to shareholders that there was no blood on anyone's hands at all.
He was also extremely dead; laid out on the rich carpet of his office with a snapped neck. Fighter, in a shadowrunner's armour, stood over him.
Orion and Ilsa swiftly covered the huge, bearded troll glaring from Tooms' desk, who Ilsa quickly confirmed as a Mage. Also, the elf decker who had just finished with the desk terminal–stripping it of the Azzie paydata that was their goal, and all that Kali wanted. But Harry saw none of it. He made one faltering step toward Susan. A damned soul freed, struggling even to gaze on his angel. He reached out and said her name…
Then he saw that Susan's eyes were dull and dead. She did not move or acknowledge him at all, and the one thing she said was the final insanity.
"Hail Norton. Norton lives."
Then the troll raised a huge hand. As if in a nightmare, Ilsa saw lines of power reach for Susan and pull. Then the troll smashed the full-length window behind him, through which he, the elf and Susan made their exit. Harry and Ilsa were left in the office, with the storm of wind and nothing.