A/N: Kat Berg is probably from the 2070s, but I wanted to include her anyway. Canonically, there isn't a Krieger strain anti-virus, but in the Shadowrun PC game getting hit with infection doesn't change you into a ghoul, and ghouls would be ridiculously dangerous if it did. My fanon anti-virus only works within a few hours after infection (before the transformation), doesn't always work, and is not readily available to the SINless slummers and bottom 90% among whom the Krieger strain proliferates.
Sunset Boulevard, jackpot boulevard,
Getting here is only the beginning.
Sunset Boulevard, brutal boulevard,
Once you've won you have to go on winning.
-Sunset Boulevard
Downtown, Greater Los Angeles, seven months earlier.
A sprawling grey toybox city, glittering in the dusk between the hills and the sea. The towers of Arcology Mile faced the high walls of the El Infierno ghetto. Susan looked back towards Tinseltown. Harry leant on her back and his arm held her.
"Harry, love, tell me again how you thought it was for Prime Runners? Saving the world every week, partying in L.A. …?"
"…mixing with the stars, the CEOs and power players, me and my superhero girl. You'd be the hottest star in heaven or Hollywood. We'd show them what it means to be alive, because we are."
"Alive, for as long as we hide in the Shadows …but it's enough just hearing you talk about the bright lights. Now, get off me and get in character, or these guys will think we're a couple of lovebirds."
In fact, their contacts had heard all about the heroes of San Francisco and weren't surprised to find them visibly in love. The deference of the first-year L.A. Runners was rather awkward–sometimes getting famous felt as stiff as going straight.
"Boss?" One ork asked Hotspur (They seemed wary of speaking to Fighter), "Chip truth, New Line are optioning a movie about you, right now?"
Harry tried not to look completely stunned as they set off.
Soldier and Jabali were both orks and El Infierno natives. Their fixer, Kali's friend in L.A., had procured the team a pass for the walls. However, with drifts of rad-sludge from the wave of '45 still choking miles of street, running machine-gun battles with toxic spirits, and a different gang lording over each cinderblock housing project, Fighter and Hotspur wouldn't have lasted a minute in the megaslum without guides.
El Infierno was three cities worth of the poor and SINless, ringed with concrete and turret guns. Filled with the smog of burning trash, rising up to the shiny, speeding autos on the Downtown-Carson flyover. Rubble and broken walls like a bombed-out town. Dark, stunted children peering from the filthy doors and steps–half of them metas and nine-tenths of them black or Hispanic.
Hotspur saw a light in every fifth broken window, however, and each street had a patrol of guards. For Redmond there was no power but what the mob stole for their Touristville bars. No law but street gang protection money. Though these uniformed guards had the tattoos and swagger of gangers–the more things changed…?
"Corps lay on power, water, basic medical," Soldier answered him, "They get a nest of guinea pigs for testing drugs and face cream–I got these scars when I was a kid. Corps arm the gangs to keep it all in line, gangs keep the locos out of the safe zones. Gangs are the real power here. The best of them ain't so bad, so long as you keep buying their drugs and selling them your kids."
"And there ain't no war on." Jabali added, "Still, you're Redmond grads?"
"…the Puyallup rad-zones are worse than Redmond." Fighter's face was a hard mask, avoiding the eyes from the street, "Children starving or killed in drive-bys is terrible anywhere."
"Redmond doesn't have a wall," Hotspur glared up at the miles of razorwire, "Caging humans like they're animals is the worst kind of evil."
"…could be, boss." Jabali failed to sound convinced.
"Wall came down tomorrow?" Soldier went on, "Beverley and Hollywood would drown in blood. There was the rising of '23. The Battle of '46, when those Sacramento fraggers sent in death squads, then kicked the whole sprawl out of Calfree when they couldn't kill us all. You could only un-frag this city by dropping it into the sea, and not even then."
"We've got a job to do," Fighter's clear voice brought them all together, "Let's save an innocent kid, get out of here and get paid."
"Yeah." Hotspur tore his eyes from a scarred teenage streetwalker, looked ahead, "Let's be heroes."
Soldier and Jabali grunted agreement and re-checked their guns. There were as many dreamers in the ghetto as in Hollywood, though it crushed dreams far quicker; getting paid, getting out and being heroes was what they were ready to kill for.
There was a slow circles-of-hell progress through the streets, as Soldier and Jabali checked ahead for shifts in territory and dickered with gangers over tolls. Fighter felt the eyes behind them, and the guns in the windows. There was one street gang the L.A. Runners didn't recognize, loud and aggressive. Hotspur had to step up and tell them calmly to find another street, hand on his sword. From their manner and loose formation, he could tell the gang had formed last week and would be chewed up by the bigger fish before Friday.
La Muerte were another matter. Former shadowrunners, survivors of the Battle of '46 against the Calfree Guard, a gang who brought real medicine and food into their block of El Infierno. By snatching rich SINers slumming it up in San Bernardino. Saving a sixteen-year old girl from kidnappers was the Run Harry and Susan had both dreamt of since they were twelve. The reality was a little different–few pro L.A. Runners would have taken the job–but it was still a Run, and it paid.
Soldier's prayer to his Dog totem found them a sewer route into the derelict shopping mall. Jabali's hand-cobbled drone disabled the shock trap. Fighter and Hotspur couldn't have taken four veteran Runners and six young guns together; hacking through room by room was still one of their tougher fights. Surprise and stun grenades counted for much; the flamethrower on Jabali's drone did damage, even when it exploded.
The walls of the hideout shook. Brick, wood and filth puffed out from the striking bullets. Bodies hit the floor. The La Muerte boss had been more machine than ork since '46; his steel fangs and buzzsaw arm were still first-gen cyber, dark-age vicious. The rest was Alphaware, and Fighter knew his skill should have torn her apart. Except that he was old and tired; she was young and on fire.
She snatched her foot from a grasping claw, flicked it back out at his head. Spinning away from the buzzsaw, twisting a low back-kick into the rear knee, then knife hands into the side and brow, punches to the head until the blood ran.
The ork cursed her as a pawn of Hollywood with his last breath, but Fighter had a righteous cause as well. Snatching a keycard, she hauled open the security door at the back. Dropped to her knees before the blonde human girl chained to the wall.
"Are you hurt? Did they hurt you?"
"Ugh…no. They talked like they would. And my dress is ruined, I've missed three parties and Yvonne's eighteenth, I was so, so…those filthy animals!"
Susan held her shaking hands, told her she was safe. Her hair and both their hands were covered in dirt, like everything this side of the wall.
Jabali had other concerns; a masked La Muerte had put four bullets in Soldier before Hotspur could cut the elf down. Then the sword-adept had darted away to geek an enemy mage, as Jabali shrugged off dumpshock and tried to save his chummer with a medkit.
The last two kidnappers had hauled hoop. Before pursuing, Hotspur had darted back and snapped a Docwagon transmitter on Soldier's wrist.
"Ach…can't pay you back, boss."
"Null sweat; one Runner to another. Frag it, we couldn't have done this without you."
"Frag that, you're Hotspur! You beat the Tir Ghosts, you took on the Yellow Lotus Triad and lived…!"
"HARRY! You okay?"
"…yeah."
Susan had felt that Harry wasn't okay. His chummers had died fighting the Lotus, but all the Shadows remembered was his valiant attempt–his heap of drek. Even poor Douglas had told him he'd tried, and clung to that drek with her last breaths, while the glory Harry had longed all his life for went rotten from within. He stared across the gloomy lair at Susan, as if at his light.
"Fragging great Run." Soldier chuckled, delirious, "Ach…just like a Trideo! Next time…hire a decker gang, film our Runs, build up our rep that way, Hermanos! This is Hollywood, understand …?"
The ork coughed blood and fell unconscious. Hotspur rose to make sure the enemies who'd fled were really out of the picture. Jabali stayed by his chummer.
-0-
Beverley Hills seemed to be full of Shadowrunners; armoured jackets and spiky hair were in fashion. Women in softer clothes, clopping along white sidewalks, seemed to favour tacky, broad-brimmed hats and big sunglasses–after dark? Susan and Harry hadn't seen so many live trees and flowers as lined the streets since their honeymoon by Lake Tahoe. Whatever pollution-resistant gene-mods the city had laid on seemed to work.
"They're pretending to be incognito Trid stars; it's the latest trend," Their new fixer, Kat Berg, explained about the hats, "Most of them aren't anyone special, just filthy rich."
It amused Harry; Susan had given him a whole lecture to the effect that a disguise shouldn't look like one. With their appearances mildly altered, they had moved steadily from crowded streets to alleys without cameras, to reach the back room of a particularly famous L.A. nightclub. There was a celebrity jazz quartet onstage, and limousines parked bumper-to-bumper out the front, but there were also enough news snoops and camera phones that it would have been suicidal for them to join the party. They really were in hiding; no players in L.A. were looking to kill them yet, but the networks of Saito, Tir Taingire and Aztechnology had a long reach. They should never have been in a AAA security zone, even for a meet–but they'd wanted to see Tinseltown, for the sake of childhood dreams.
By contrast, Katyana Burgeshova, star of the world-famous Trid show Blackstone, had moved through the club like a barbarian queen. Exchanging whooped greetings and fist-bump with the rich and cultured, before retiring to the private room for an ostensible chat with investors. She was possibly the most beautiful woman Susan had ever seen, never mind the most beautiful ork. Nearly two meters of Amazonian limbs and silk evening gown, with jewels strung over her arms and kanji carvings ringing her tusks. As well as the throat augments for perfect pitch and power that all A-list starlets got, dental work had freed her voice from the distinctive orkish growl. Fighter knew both Anya and Orion disliked 'tusk jobs', as they despised the miserable orks or elves who let a Renraku clinic 'humanise' them with surgery. She doubted either of them could have turned Kat Berg aside from her choices, however. Kali had her faults, but she had some useful friends.
Harry tilted his glass to Kat Berg across the table, smiling with 'here's-looking-at-you' urbanity. Susan didn't know whether to smack her or him, even if she was a Hollywood megastar. Actually, that made it worse; fame and glory had been Harry's light in the Shadows for a long time. And maybe it really made her racist, but seeing her husband give looks like that to an ork woman stabbed deep.
"Miss Bergeshova." Harry smiled, again, "It was a surprise to us, seeing our first shadowrun in L.A. all over the news sites and rumours of our involvement all over the shadownet. We thought the girl's family would want her ordeal kept quiet, and we're trying to lie very low ourselves right now."
"So you came to L.A., of all cities?" With a megawatt grin, Kat shook her head, "It really wasn't to set the town on fire, like Hong Kong and San Francisco, before you ride off to the next city like cowboys and Indians? Anyway, sorry about the rumours, but the girl wants to go into movies. She's milking her rescue by two famous shadowrunners for the publicity–I would've done the same. Do you know, one of my girlfriends wanted you to stage her abduction by La Meurtes, complete with heroic escape, to help her break into action trids?"
"You remember we're shadowrunners?" Susan fought to keep her voice light, "Our world is death and life, not…trid show drek."
"And yet I hear they're talking Penny Wong and Donaldo Diamanté for your movie, maybe in two, three years? I've got friends queuing up who'd pay you solid nyuyen just to swing by their parties and show what mixers they are. People with Knight Errant on speed dial, who could protect you from your enemies–a bit of safety and comfort? Maybe star in that movie yourselves one day?"
"Hmm, sounds better than El Infierno–but, chip truth? Just another cage."
Kat smiled at Harry's riposte; Susan didn't smile.
"Okay, just testing you a little. You should know, the father of the girl you saved is business partner to one of Blackstone's key producers, and also a significant donor to Mothers of Metahumans." Another brilliant flash of fangs, "You've truly made the future a better place."
"We saved a girl. We didn't do it for your policlub, or your Trid show."
"Is that so?" Kat inclined towards Susan like a lioness playing with her cub; powerful, but calm, "MOM lobbies against discrimination and racist violence at every level of government. We give low-interest loans to meta-run businesses; we set up slum clinics and shelters for metahumans, staffed by metahumans."
"And Blackstone? Do orks even watch it? Nikki Blackstone, rich goblinized heiress in her manor, moaning about prejudice? The orks we know live on the streets; they're gangers, dockers, shadowrunners or janitors."
"And this never bothered you? It bothered me. I meant for Blackstone to be a painful show, because turning the world upside down takes pain, effort and nyuyen. Blackstone tells orks and trolls they can be whoever they want–frag that Orksploitation ganger rap drek!–and MOM gives them all they need to do it. Even the criminals from El Infierno can rise, like Soldier and Jabali. Like a poor Russian ork girl who loved Hollywood movies–like a couple of street adepts from the Redmond Barrens. More to the point, I've pledged MOM half my salary from Blackstone's third season. Millions of nyuyen, for a future worth living in."
"You just need enough to keep yourself in diamonds?" Through her rage, Susan felt Harry staring–this was really no way to talk to their fixer, "And it was you who convinced the newssites that La Meurtes was sending their nyuyen to Humanis terrorists, not poor slummers?"
"Sometimes the truth isn't enough, to marginalise an international hate-cult. The lies of Humanis are a millstone on the neck of every innocent ork alive. Why shouldn't we say they had a rich white human kidnapped for money, if that's what it takes?"
As MOM spokeswoman on the world stage, and serious power in the Shadows for the good of metahumanity, Kat Berg was palpably capable of whatever it took. Even as Susan found it very hard to even speak.
"…yeah, it's just, for my first year, every ork and troll in Seattle thought that being–beaten–by a troll had made me a Humanis trog-killer!"
Fast as ever, Harry gripped Susan's hand under the table with both of his. She saw Kat Berg instantly fallen out of his world, and squeezed back with love under her eyelashes. The Hollywood fixer gave the Runners their moment, before she dropped the truth on them.
"Used to? My girl, you spent your first year killing ork gangers. You killed metahuman protestors in 'Frisco, before you took down a troll terrorist. You're on the MPA's deathlist, and you're Humanis Policlub's favourite female shadowrunner. It's not your fault–no one who'd met you would ever say you're a tortured soul, driven into the Shadows to kill the trogs that raped you. But that is what half the rest of America thinks, and when your movie comes out, that will be the story of you. Let's just say that more humans than orks will be getting tickets."
Susan clung to Harry's hand. Shot him a glance to say, she had this, but it took her a moment, again.
"I…hated orks for the longest time. Their gangs, their manners, even their faces…long before I was assaulted, even before I wanted to be a shadowrunner. I didn't deserve it, no one does–but my Shifu, my chummers Anya, Sarah, Sandra, all of them who smacked some sense into me–they deserve the truth more than I do."
"No, babe, you beat all that drek!" Harry whispered, "I messed up, I never deserved a fragging thing, but you were always you…!" Harry glanced back at Kat, and recovered himself with a tremendous effort.
"You're not a bad kid." The Hollywood fixer pronounced, "Heroes are meant to reassure, and bishie hetro white boys do that for a lot of folk. As for you, Fighter–have you ever considered that not all heroes Kung-Fu trolls to death? Have you thought about standing up and telling your story?"
"I told you, I'm a shadowrunner. I couldn't…I don't talk, I act! I'm not a story for the trids, a soundbite, some celebrity spokeswoman, I'm just me!"
"No, you're a great deal more than that. You have a public image, and you can leave it for Hollywood and Humanis to play with, or you can send a message to young orks who think all humans are the enemy. To slum kids thinking of joining Humanis for the sake of 'our women', and to all women who've lived through what you have. SeerauberJenny tried to do it, but you didn't go deep enough, and it went to drek in the end. The world doesn't need a singer, or a token ork in Hollywood, or Hollywood heroes running from city to city. It needs us to take a stand, work by the rules for years, and build something that matters–a cause that can truly change the world. If you take the right path, Fighter, I truly believe you could be a real hero."
Susan stared from Kat Berg to Harry. Her eyes were bewildered, almost pleading. Before the world-spanning force of Kat's conviction, knowing that what she said was right–telling the shames of her past to the world was something she could not do.
There had been interviews in her SeerauberJenny days; she had hinted, evaded, tried, but never said what the world did not want to hear. And was her story so simple that she could just spill it in fifteen minutes to a Trideo interviewer? She was more than assault, racism and even shadowrunning; she had fought through three years to believe that.
"Since this discussion is getting a bit personal," Harry hadn't let go of Susan's hand, "Can I ask if you were ever married, Miss Berg?"
"Never was." Kat smiled brilliantly as ever, "Guess I never found an ork who measured up to the cause."
"You'll understand if we spend some time lying low, together? Some time to think about what kind of work we want to do in future?"
"Of course." Kat's handshake was firm, of course, "Sorry, I got a bit carried away there. You have an opportunity right now, while you're still in public eye, and I feel quite strongly about some matters. There's plenty of regular Shadow work in L.A., if you want to go back to plain old datasteals and extractions."
Slipping out the back of the club, Susan and Harry turned to each other.
"I'm sorry–"
"I'm sorry–!"
"Next time, you do the talking–"
"I was an idiot."
Susan burst out laughing and linked her arm with Harry's.
"Come on, Donaldo Diamante. Let's have a novahot party for two back at the safehouse."
-0-
They had a small apartment in San Bernardino, the Renton to El Infierno's Redmond Barrens–a dangerous slum, but not a hellhole. They'd actually left San Francisco with a lot of nyuyen; they'd been married just two months, and they were in L.A. Still lightly disguised, Susan and Harry toured Universal Studios, laughing at the action Trids. They saw Shield Wall at the Hollywood Bowl, and the Los Angeles Bolts onscreen at the coliseum. After three years of death, Harry was less of an Urban Brawl fan than he'd been–but it was still a gentleman's game compared to a bad night in Redmond, and maybe a lighter substitute for the true combat rush. Chinatown was out, but they did meander across the sprawl to Fun City, the former Orange County.
The whole district had been bought out by Amalgamated Studios and converted into a theme park–even residential blocks were decked out as castles. At Virtual Disneyworld, they walked through the lightshows, robot pirates and holographic dragons. They made the teacups spin too fast, and found a quiet closet in the haunted mansion for some gentle adult fun. Whenever Susan looked over the crowds of chattering families and helplessly wept because she couldn't believe it was real, Harry rubbed her back and waited. He bought her a plastic Mulan sword and Minnie ears. She leant on his shoulder in the tunnel of love.
Between various themed attractions, Fun City was an All-American homage to the once-great nation. White picket fences, white timber houses, wide grid-patterned streets with the old Stars and Stripes on every corner. The other tourists weren't completely homogenous, but it still didn't take Susan long to notice that all the animatronic models and period-costumed staff had a common metatype and race. She raised an eyebrow at Harry.
"Is this supposed to be…?"
"…whitey-town? Nothing I recognise. I guess there weren't any metas in the 20th century, and American humans were all white…? No, you told me Chinese people came over hundreds of years ago, and there must have been Amindians…maybe they all lived out in tents? I don't know, we could ask Ilsa?"
There were a few buck-toothed robotic Chinese railroad workers in Wild West Land, which Harry had been looking forward to. It turned out Amindians did live in tents, where they mainly seemed to get drunk and high on peyote. No Hispanics, and no black people until Plantation Land. They got a nauseous feeling at that point and moved rapidly on from the twang of banjos to Fantasy Kingdom. Where they finally saw some orks, both robotic and living, roaring about like cartoon monkeys until the human heroes wiped them out. The elves' forest village was more of the same. Orion had mentioned to Susan that Professor Tolkien had a great deal to answer for, but she wondered if people weren't just people. They'd seen worse, but they weren't sorry to head home.
Of course, famous places meant cameras; they did their best to be another couple of tourists in baseball caps, shades and shorts. Whatever they did, unless they'd holed up in a cellar, they knew they'd have to run sooner or later.
-0-
Actually, shacking up in a cellar would have had its attractions. Susan couldn't resist asking Ilsa, during their weekly Net chat (less traceable than a comm call, through the right sites) whether too much mind-blowing sex could seriously drive you crazy.
"…all these sexy adept techniques. We're literally having magic sex. I'm a spirit of lightning and earthquakes, bursting out of my flesh to meet him in the universe–and I've still got so much to learn! I love feeling his strength and care, I think he could make me do anything for him. I told him my out hole's off-limits, but, chip truth? He could charm me into giving him my hoop or anything, and he doesn't. He loves and respects me, and I love him, I LOVE HIM SO MUCH! Seriously, do you think I'm going crazy? Magic is magic, and flesh is just flesh."
"And you're a lovestruck dummkopf, but don't worry. Sex magic has its victims–there was a tenured professor at Heidelberg whom the female students were warned to avoid. Sex potions are controlled substances, for all the good that does. Spells and adept techniques, however, normally avoid the dangers of a button wired to the pleasure centre, a tab of Jazz or a BTL chip. Reaching the heights offered by magic requires proportionate skill and effort."
"Oh, that's true. Never tell H. this, but I actually get why all those girls fall for him. I'm sure some men have as many women, and they're still drek in bed. I know too many Redmond boys think being a man is just power; hitting women, and even worse. But my idiot husband got this idea, somehow, that making women happy makes him a man. I'm his woman, and he tries so hard for me…he always tried. That's his love, that's what makes him so good!"
"Pleasure can be about power, as well as love, but power can be put to good use. For example, I will research a spell to smack your head from the other end of the country, unless you stop bragging about your husband."
"Sorry! Wiz, you must have some sex spells you spice things up with?"
"I experimented lightly at university–but sex that lasts for hours is perhaps worth less than a man you might spend your life with. Much can be done with a couple of added hands; simple telekenesis."
"I can imagine. Actually, I could use them. I still can't ever manage to take control in bed; that honestly is frustrating. He always just overwhelms me, but I want to do the same for him, or I'll feel useless…it feels like him making love to me, when I want us making love to each other."
"My heart bleeds for you. Why not simply tie him to the bed?"
"Wiz! Dare I ask?"
"It's a bit of a fantasy, but Henry wasn't comfortable with it. I didn't mind. Our sex life is quite satisfactory, thank you."
Satisfactory would never have satisfied Susan, with all the stress that loving a shadowrunner brought–and she'd never known Ilsa to be satisfied with it either. She was still thinking faintly about it an hour later, looking up at the bedroom ceiling and clasping Harry's hands around her breasts.
They she sighed, screamed and wept, as her husband's tongue circled and stroked. She poured rainbow slicks over his cheeks and arched up her back, until climax like L.A. earthquakes threw her down. Overwhelmed, helpless, weak in his arms–and love made it feel like heaven. Crazy love…
"Susan?" Harry pulled himself up over her, earnest and eager "Babe, was it good?"
"...frag did it sound like, stud? You're the best, Harry. Always."
"Then I need to be better for you. Frag, you're so beautiful…"
".. no...ah! No, you need to let me blow your mind sometimes! Like you always do for me…Harry, listen! Get off me a minute."
Harry's hand froze on her breast. He drew back, quenched. It had been his joy to treat Susan like his princess, ever since their first night, but she still felt him holding back. Still afraid that he could hurt her…she needed to do something about that. Shadowrunners and marriages survived by nipping small problems in the bud.
After their first shadowrun as husband and wife, she'd bought a bottle of cheap champagne and offered to pour it over her breasts and stomach in the bathtub, for Harry to lap up. He'd gone stone cold and completely silent. Tying the knot was supposed to have drawn a line for them both, but it had hurt. He didn't want to do things with his wife that she was sure he'd enjoyed with loose women in Hong Kong.
"It sounds like a fairly mild Madonna-Whore Dichotomy." Ilsa had told her, "Associating love with purity and female sexuality with corruption, based on his past experiences. Try to talk to honestly about what you both want."
They were silent for a minute, both afraid to speak. Then Susan asked Harry if he could get dressed and give her five minutes in the bathroom.
Five minutes. He whispered her name.
"Harry." Her voice, through the bathroom door, "Save me, please."
He slammed the door open. Susan was crouched on the floor, still bare and faintly shaking. Her right foot was tied with rope to an exposed pipe.
"Work with me, Harry. Just listen. The gangers that captured me are in the next room–"
"No, they aren't; I already killed them. Susan, frag's sake, are you–?"
"Now you're here, tiger. I'm okay. I'm shaking…but you saved me. You're my hero, and this is the only way I can show you how I feel..."
Harry stood still; Susan gripped his belt, pulled him in. He had seen her beaten down by gangers in blood and terror. Drunk and guilty in Hong Kong, he had betrayed her, never saved her. He'd dreamt of saving Susan Lei, the woman who'd ruled his world since they'd been kids in Redmond. Save her, hold her completely, be her world. Her hero. Worthy.
Now all of that meant nothing, except for Susan, his wife, here and now. The strongest woman; bound, on her knees. Facing her fear with weakness, trust and joy, for him–telling Harry again, he could not possibly hurt her. This was what she wanted. This was right.
His hands drifted from her shoulders to Susan's long dark hair, guiding her gently. Her tongue tasted his head, her lips slid down his shaft. His fingers stroked in her scalp and his mouth hung open. His grip shook, as he moved her hand to join her suckling, vigorous mouth, and begged her.
It took a bit longer than Susan had expected and tasted a lot worse. Harry started moving in her mouth towards the end, but quickly realised she hated that and stopped. Sex in bondage, even with Harry, did come with fear; but she didn't stop. Her first blow job left her man clinging to her on his knees, wearing a silly, helpless grin.
"Was it really that good, love?"
"Susan, you've been bossing me since we were kids. You're the strongest, you could take me down with just your thumb...but you went down for me. I always wanted it, love...was it okay, are you alright? You're the best, angel, I fragging love you, the best...!"
"I get it. Thanks. Looks like I got the best of you," She spread and sunk her fingers into the muscles on his chest, smiling, "Nice we can both get what we want."
What Harry wanted next was both Susan's arms tied to the pipe. She consented to try for him, but it held too much nightmare. As soon as he'd tied the knot and stood up, she very nearly screamed out the safe word; NO.
Harry instantly pulled the knot loose. Freed her. Susan instantly shoved him flat on the bathroom floor. Squatted down with her feet planted either side, and hammered out the most fierce, brilliant, life-and-death sex with her husband they'd ever had.
She howled with passion, from her muscled, rippling stomach. Her limbs shook with power and pleasure. She leant in, whipped her black ponytail through the air as joy gripped her, and even shook her breasts above Harry's worshipping eyes. She wanted to give him a show, while he filled her body with joy, though his pleasure already seemed to be more than his head could hold.
Harry writhed down to his toes. Panted, clung to Susan's planted feet, and urged her on through a barrage of orgasm. She screamed Harry's name, clawed at his chest, and spent every atom of her strength staying upright on top of him. Until he spurted every drop left in his cojones up through her strong, shining body.
"Ah Harry…don't be afraid. You couldn't ever really hurt me." She whispered, resting on her man in hot, sticky bliss, "If I'm strong, I'm going to be strong for you in bed."
"I was terrified of getting a really embarrassing injury, love…and it was still incredible. Frag, I'd better get used to being a beautiful Amazon's plaything."
"Oh yeah. Only your amazon needs a lot more practise going down on you, stud, if that's okay? Nothing we both want can be wrong, Harry. You're my man, and I'm fragging proud of all of you."
-0-
Not quite a month after arrival, Hotspur did accept a free invitation to the one kind of celebrity event in L.A. with no cameras. The host was a senior producer at Amalgamated Studios, with his name attached to some of the biggest Trids of the last decade. Two other producers, a studio executive, three Trid actors and a casting director completed the party. Some of them had bought wives or mistresses; Fighter had not been invited. Merely getting married–a small thing in this modern age–had done little to dispel Hotspur's old reputation, however.
Circulating round the penthouse apartment, Hotspur pleasantly told stories of minor Runs and Hong Kong brothels. He'd entered with a cry of 'Nobody move, this is a shadowrun!', which had set the party at a roar. Real whiskey was flowing freely, and the novacoke came out within the first hour. A few couples and one threesome had got started on the evening's real activity rather too early.
Hotspur had managed to drink as little as possible when the host called for attention. The Hollywood set sprawled back on the plush silver couches and looked over the four women that entered the room, like wolves in a meat market.
They appeared to be–Maria Mercurial, silver-limbed and unmistakable. Amanda 'Euphoria' Lockhart, simsense actress. Christy Day, teenage singing star, and Kat Berg, in the costume of her first major role as a teenage ork streetwalker.
The Hollywood ripperdoc's surgery had left hardly a trace on them, but the slightly fixed expressions and reflexive eyes screamed personafix chip in Hotspur's face. Bunraku. The original women had been brought or taken out of El Infierno, naturally, to be bound and transformed, mind and body, for as many of the Hollywood elite as wished to enjoy them.
"Ready?" Harry whispered into the mic under his collar.
"Born ready, tiger." Susan whispered, outside the door.
Fighter had already dealt with the building's security, cracking skulls and tearing out wires. Now she finally kicked the door open, took in the scene, and punched out the first man as he fumbled for his panic button.
With phones and Net cut off, panic buttons were the only danger. Fighter and Hotspur only needed their fists, half of the guests were too drunk or high to do anything. One of them still put the distress call through to Knight Errant before Hotspur could sink a knife-hand in his throat.
The bunrakus naturally went with the shadowrunners when told to–but two of them were shot down by the KE patrol in the lobby, not having been programmed to seek cover from gunfire.
Fighter pushed the ork woman down, knowing the deaths were on them, but still leaping from the stairway through the bullets. Charging, punching, killing, in the moments they had before the Knights called for backup and everything really went to drek. Hotspur cut through the squad at her side and drove the van as they sped away. Fighter, in the back, searched the eyes of the bunraku women.
"Hi, I'm Kat! How old would you like me to be?"
Some terror had seeped in during the flight, to mildly scramble 'Kat's' behavioural tree. She automatically responded as Susan embraced her, sobbing.
"We'll get them help, love. It's okay!" Harry called back to her, slowing the white van as they reached a main street. He could hear sirens–but distant enough that they could still switch vans and escape.
Going off rez, after all this time–making their own Run, over their fixer's head–felt like an L.A. earth tremor had dropped them back to their year one. Susan knew already, the two they hadn't saved would stay to swell their nightmares. As her choice to kill that fragging producer with a straight punch would always linger–should she have killed them all, even the helpless drunks, like so many trafficking gangers? She would never know any more of the two girls she'd rescued than blank eyes and programmed reactions–but saving even these two was something she wouldn't regret.
Boys in Redmond thought power made them men; running with a gang, dealing drugs, abusing women. Harry had somehow got the idea that protecting women made him a man, when he'd always been her man, always tried–she loved that in him. But the bunraku had been stolen and twisted by twisted men, who didn't just loathe metahumans and women, but any sign of their strength. At the top of the world, they still couldn't be happy until they'd degraded innocent people and boasted to their friends about it. Striking a blow at them–couldn't Prime Runners do anything?–had seemed such a good idea at the time.
-0-
"So. Another chapter in your legend?" Kat Berg, the real ork this time, regarded Fighter and Hotspur with a mixture of faint amusement and stern rage, "You had to rescue bunraku, who really can't be saved, from the last people in town you should have ticked off. You could have hit a brothel in El Infierno and saved a dozen girls, if you'd got out alive, but you just had to make a scene, frag everything up."
"I think you know why he had to frag things up, Miss Berg," Harry answered deliberately, "You were right that L.A. isn't somewhere we'd want to settle down."
"Do you think I was ever ignorant, of the bunraku parties, the sex abuse and racism? I've always lived in this town. Those perverts play golf with Blackstone's producers, their friends send nyuyen to MOM that saves every ork and troll in America. Sometimes I've had to laugh along, pretend not to see, for the sake of building something worthy of my place. And you threw that path away for–two girls?"
"We understand your work saves more people than we ever could–you're our heroine, just about–but there are some things only cowboys can do. I had the invitation in hand; we didn't involve anyone else. Even if we could never fix what was done to those women–Susan knew you could save them and believed you would."
"Bold thing to ask of your fixer. Of course, you fools switched off their personafixes?"
"Reality is better than a lie. We knocked them out to stop them hurting themselves," Fighter remembered the ork woman's dislocated, horrified eyes–her body transformed, her will stolen and her family lost. She shut her eyes for a moment, then forged on. "You know one of them was altered to look like you, Miss Berg?"
"…that fragging producer. He couldn't even cope with one ork in Hollywood." Kat shook her beautiful head, clasped her claws together, and spoke carefully, "You know…the first big role I got there was a rape scene? I had nightmares for months, I was in therapy for a year, even as Blackstone was taking shape, and I couldn't stop climbing to the top of Hollywood…chip truth. But I don't know what you've lived through either, Susan Lei, and the same goes for this poor ork girl you saved.
"I'll make sure both the women you saved are safe; they'll have the years of help they'll most likely need, to live as themselves again. But I'm afraid I won't be working with you again; there's no rulebook at our level, and personal differences get more people killed than ever. Get out of L.A., and you might just outlive the month."
-0-
Leaving L.A. proved harder to do than say. Leaving openly would have been too great a risk; the best smuggling routes were controlled by the Mafia, who were hand-in-glove with the Hollywood elite. Susan and Harry were still trying to find a route they could trust when the first hit squad attacked their safehouse.
They geeked those gunmen together, without ever finding out who they'd been sent by, but staying ahead of the killers was what kept you alive in the Shadows. However good you were, one bullet was all it took.
They retreated to the one place in the sprawl where Knight Errant, the Mafia and any other enemy would think twice about following; El Infierno, the most dangerous place in Calfree. Harry poured out to Susan that he'd been a reckless fool–nothing had changed since their first shadowrun, and he'd finally gotten them both killed.
"Harry, we cut through a whole KE squad with hardly a scratch, and we saved two women who no one else could've saved. We were both idiots, but we'll deal with it together–don't you dare ever give up on yourself, Harry Fawkes."
He'd still brooded, which had made her furious. It had been a week that shook their foundation, when a careless word could have toppled them into oblivion–but if their bond broke they would both die, and punishing the one you loved for your own idiocy was just stupid. They fought together, stayed together; after a week they finally came together to love their guilt away.
Their luck finally came in, though the unpromising happenstance of a major Krieger strain outbreak in El Infierno's Compton district. In a time of relative peace, the gangs would have chewed the Runners up–but with hordes of flesh-eating monsters roaming the streets, they accepted the help their city needed. A number of unemployed Runners were already gathering for the bounty money, though nothing like anti-virus was ever sent by the city or megacorps.
Fighter and Hotspur found a squat on the edge of Compton; they boarded it up, and dug in. Over the next month they killed a lot of ghouls. They met many more El Infierno people, good, bad and ugly, most of whom finished up eaten alive, or losing their minds to HMHVV. The pain and futility wore Fighter's resolve down to a nub, but Harry always held her spirit up.
"The gangs only care about their turf, the corpers don't care at all. But we're defending the people here from monsters." His face was dirty and grim, but his eyes were bright, "Even if no one remembers, we've got a chance to make a difference here."
"Yeah. A chance."
When Harry found the stray dog sprawled behind a rubbish heap–starving, bleeding from her haunches, lapping oily water from a puddle–he knew he had to call Susan over. She'd fought for the life of every sick and wounded chummer she could, wept when they'd died, and kept fighting. Also, she'd had a heart for dogs for as long as he'd known her. Even in a drekheap in Remond, she'd said, a dog could be happy and should be.
The dog growled and snapped at Susan, as she knelt with one of their valuable medkits. She told her, No, and pushed down her neck from behind. The dog still struggled, but too weakly to stop herself being treated.
"…can dogs get HMHVV?" Harry asked.
"Bit late there." Susan squeezed his hand, gazing at their new chummer, "Also, don't care. Hey, would you shoot me, if I started to turn?"
"Hmm, getting eaten by a beautiful woman sounds okay…"
"Not happening, idiot. Families stay together."
Harry felt Susan's heart in her voice. Shadowrunning meant parting from friends and burning through chummers; it had always got to her. But she'd hold on to family, no matter what; even legendary lovebirds needed somebody else.
Susan stayed up with their new chummer all night, and the next day, singing gently to her as she growled–it was more like taming a wild animal. Finally, Pup would lick Susan's hand instead of bite it, and push a shoulder against her chest for a hug. As if determined to be useful, she showed herself an alert watchdog and expert scavenger. She could hold her own against a single ghoul, but Susan felt much happier when her chummer was running ahead of some shamblers, drawing them off from the horde.
Ghouls were too tough to easily kill with guns–they'd seen too many gangers try and fail. Ghoul super-senses forestalled ambushes and charging into a pack would've been the worst idea. It fell out that Susan spent more time fleeing down dark, filthy alleys than 'some horror trid bimbo'. Pausing to back-kick through one ghoul that had surged too far ahead, or fling a knife, before racing on. If they made sure to avoid blocked streets, until they'd whittled the pack down, and not repeat the frag-up when they'd run into a second pack, it worked like perilous clockwork. Better than dodging inventive assassins from every side–better than watching the carnage from on high like the rest of L.A.
Soldier and Jabali helped Hotspur and Fighter get settled into their old 'hood, but quickly made a pile of their earnings and set off for Seattle. The Ork Underground held out a land of milk and honey to them both. Soldier explained their idea that Running briefly with Prime Runners would build up their rep and skills, while hanging round Fighter and Hotspur too long would surely get both the orks geeked.
"You're going all the way, chummers. See you– and thank you." Harry embraced them both, and clasped hands; Susan shook their hands warmly, "Anything we can do? Everything chill with you and Kat Berg?"
"Since we helped you? Nah, that woman knows when to turn a blind eye. Chillest chica who ever lived. You know she's sending medkits and Kreiger anti-virus into the ghetto, on the down low? If it came out that she was working with street gangs to do it–nothing gets done in El Infierno without the gangs–her name would be mud in this town."
-0-
A month into the outbreak, most of the other shadowrunners or ghoul hunters had gone down or got out. Central Compton was still ghoul city; the faded, ravenous shamblers seemed endless. Susan and Harry were talking about getting out themselves, when rumour drew a certain blonde-haired street-sam in milspec armour to the door of their squat.
Susan shocked herself as much as Harry by throwing her arms around the man, before introducing her husband to David 'Paladin' Steiner, former Knight Errant.
"…then, you really became a vampire hunter?"
"I had to make an honest living." His smile was pure and easy, "While making the world a safer place."
"Sounds chill." Harry grated, "Tasing my wife back in the day was part of that?"
"Harry! Be nice." After Susan had made sure of this, she offered Paladin a chair in the snugly squalorous living room of their barricaded home. Pup growled until Susan shushed her–she wasn't very good with strangers yet.
Since arresting Susan in London–and more importantly, arresting and falling for Ilsa in Berlin–Paladin had worked briefly in Europe before heading to America, seeking more monsters to slay. Vampire hunting, compared to shadowrunning, was more dangerous, bleakly unglamorous and underpaid. A month of geeking ghouls had been enough for Fighter and Hotspur–but they understood why Paladin looked happier in his work than he had as a cop.
"Hunted any ghouls that weren't monsters?" Harry asked, casually, "You know, thinking ones?"
"Intelligent creatures may still be monsters, as I'm sure you know–particularly when compelled to eat human flesh. Some of them wish to die. I work case-by-case."
"Ilsa's doing well…"
Harry glanced at Susan's sidelong, incredibly unsubtle smile, and burst out coughing.
"I am glad of that." Paladin's smile was like a wisp of fog over a stone, "She…is a beautiful, burdened soul on a treacherous path. I'd almost hoped she would be here with you. I certainly wouldn't like to think of her being alone."
Paladin, Susan quickly found out, was alone. Ilsa had bluntly turned down his marriage proposal nearly a year ago, he hadn't contacted her since then. As far as Susan could tell he was waiting, without hope. Some of it was his religion, or his honour, but she knew what love had made him give for Ilsa. She felt like running all the way to Halferville and hauling her chummer all the way back.
What Paladin spoke about, however, was his idea that a vampire, or several vampires, were laired in the heart of ghoul city. Disseminating the Krieger strain, controlling ghouls even more easily than they enthralled metahumans. If they turned the whole of El Infierno into their hunting ground–so long as the Megacorps could test their face cream on slummers before they were eaten–the outside world would just see one more hellish ghetto.
"I'm putting a team together. When I heard you were both on the scene, it seemed like the will of God. The bounty payments, even on top of a payment from the gangs, isn't so much compared to risks–but if you're ready to join the heroes…?"
"Born ready, choirboy." Harry stuck his hand out, "Let's make this hellhole a little safer, and some blood-suckers truely dead."
Paladin shook hands with Harry and Susan. Arranged to meet them the next day, and scratched Pup behind the ears before he left.
-0-
"Frag, I can see why Ilsa fell for that guy." Susan smiled at Harry, who wasn't smiling.
"Think I can see why she dropped him. Too good for his own good."
"Harry, you're not…?"
"Frag yeah, I'm jealous," Harry looked at her shamelessly, "I'm shaking here, I can't help it. I need you that much, baby."
Susan squeezed both his hands, gave him a deep, hot kiss, then disentangled herself to feed Pup before bedtime. Harry watched her hips move across the room with an adept's grace. A trace of sunset light through the boards on the window touched her, as she smiled at him over her shoulder.
Then the bullet punched between the boards, down the shaft of light, through her chest. Harry dropped to the floor as she dropped, under the paths of two more bullets. He crawled to her, Fichetti trembling in his hand.
Though the black mist of horror, he knew who shot like that. Cops, assassins and Mafia wouldn't set foot in El Infierno–but there was nowhere the Ghosts of Tir could not reach. Lowri Greenwood's ecstatic, predatory grin swam before his eyes. Desorm's faint smile, as the cloaked, silent figures surrounded the door of their home. Her face, it should have been full of strength, it was pale and chilled…
Pup growled in his ear, then bit it. Harry finally seized control as he pushed the dog down, then dragged Susan to the nearest medkit. Her docwagon bracelet was going off, her blood was flooding over the floor, but she was not dead, she could not be…there were shots outside. The moaning of ghouls. He was looking at the end, the price of all his reckless, idiot drek, three fragging months…fragged if he'd pay up yet. Fragged if his Susan would ever die.
Acid sizzled through the lock on the door. The first elf stepped through with a silenced rifle. There was a stun grenade stored with the medkits; Harry hugged the wall and made ready to throw it hard.
-0-
"It seems two of our elite SOS team were killed outright with headshots, while retrieving your wife. Ironic, isn't it? And since she appears to have the Platinum rather than Super-Platinum contract, I'm afraid you're liable for the cost of their replacement. There is a substantial extra fee for rotorcraft retrievals from El Infierno, of course. And it's fortunate you were shot to pieces yourself, or else riding out in the same rotorcraft would have voided both your contracts. Furthermore, the animal you insisted on retrieving was very irregular indeed. In layman's terms, expensive."
"Is she okay? Will she be okay?"
"Of course, this is Docwagon. The Platinum contract includes infallible life support, a vat-aged clone for tissue replacements and an electronic mind-map for reversing the serious brain damage, at least. It would be less trouble to give you the clone, but your wife will be up and about in a fortnight; you should be out of bed tomorrow. This is a maximum-security facility for our Platinum customers; if you wish to extend your stay here beyond your own treatment…"
"Expensive, I get it. Frag off, will you?"
The doctor trundled away. Harry winced as he shifted in the bed. They would have to get out of L.A. in two weeks time, whatever it cost. They'd left San Francisco with a small fortune from the Pyramid Run, and they'd been working ever since, but it looked like it was all going up in smoke. Two weeks would be enough time to snap up at least one solo Run; penury in the Shadows was dangerous.
But better than what should have happened, if Paladin hadn't dodged the Ghosts that had descended on him, as he'd left. He'd deliberately drawn a horde of ghouls into the mix, by firing an unsilenced gun. The Ghosts had pulled back as the ghouls swarmed in, and Harry had no idea if Paladin had made it. He was sure all the Ghosts had survived, except the one he'd geeked. Survived to snipe through the darkness at him, and the SOS team, as they were mowing down ghouls to get Susan on the rotorcraft.
It had been a bloody mess, and their future only held more of the same. Paladin, if still not geeked, would have to save El Infierno from the vampire coven himself. It would be his story, his quest. While Harry slot and ran, into Shadows without heroes or purpose.
He'd lived through a lot. Him and Susan, both. Frag, even Pup had lived through a lot. Did that mean there was something big they had to do? That was what Kat Berg had told them; that was what he'd believed when he was a kid. All he knew he had to do now was to go to Susan and hold her. Never let go of her again.