Catch & Release (updated 2018/07/20)
Deacon split her attention between the news ARO in her vision and an attractive blond girl of thirteen or fourteen years of age as she ordered lunch. She was a bit taller than Deacon, by five centimeters, though slimmer of build, her lightly tanned skin just a bit darker than the cornrow braids of hair that reached partway down her back.
Also just as distracting were her two friends, though her new facial recognition complex form was suggesting that the other blond girl may be related. She had a similar wide button nose, graceful neck, and similarly shaped ear with connected lobe. She was a bit taller than the girl with cornrow braids, her hair cut in a bob and partly long enough to have it parted on the left to seductively cover the right part of her face. She looked much more athletic in build, the kind you would expect to see in gymnasts or cheerleaders.
The third girl was a rather stark contrast, shorter than the other two with swarthy skin and hair the color of black soykaf that was worked into a single French braid secured by a red ribbon that dangled at the small of her back with a green ribbon woven into the braid closer to the base of her skull. Her face was more oval compared to the rounder features of the blondes, and her nose looked a little pinched. She had a much slimmer build than the other two and probably could have passed for twelve, though Deacon knew better.
One thing all three girls had in common were the synthleather high school letterman jackets they wore, all predominantly green in color with red trimmings, a large red 'M' in courier new font trimmed in silver over their left breasts, and at the left pocket was a similar '75' in red and trimmed in silver. The taller blond wore a similarly colored pleated skirt while the other two wore denim blue jeans; all wore white sneakers.
And that was before she got a better look at them through the sensors built into the drone hands of her secondary arms. These arms were hidden within the bulky red and orange coat she now wore, but that did not stop them from being useful. Both of her drone hands had a camera that included a terahertz ray scanner, a feature that let the drones (and via her connection, herself) see through objects and materials, including a 'Superman' setting that penetrated clothing but not flesh or cybernetics.
What she was doing was socially considered wrong, but not quite illegal since the girls, herself, and numerous others were all at a Nukit Burgers on Lake City Way NE, north of the Northgate and Matthews Beach neighborhoods. The road itself was virtually the marker between the respective middle class and upper class neighborhoods, and not quite the likely place you would expect a shadowrunner like Deacon to be. But it was because of that sense of security (rated between B and AAA, depending on how close to Matthews Beach you were) that made everyone calm and less aware of who might be watching at such a public place.
And then there was the omnipresent augmented reality, where people could be staring at private augmented reality objects that no one else could see, paying no attention to the real things and people on the other side of those AROs.
And Deacon's cybernetic eyes were bouncing between three AROs of different news feeds, all of them covering relatively the same thing, and she was able to easily track all three at once as well as watch the achingly pretty young teenagers through her cybernetic hand drones.
The KSAF reporter in her center ARO was continuing on about recent events in Cali, an Amazonian city many kilometers south of the border with Azlan, and on the southern edge of territory disputed between the two nations. It was barely an hour ago that an assault led by the Great Western Dragon (your classic European dragon), Sirrurg (a.k.a. Sirrurg The Destroyer) had ended. The assault included feathered serpents (think giant snake with a pair of rear legs, no front legs, a pair of rainbow feathered wings, and a blocky head with a crest of similar rainbow feathers), wyverns (up to fifteen meters in length, with a single pair of legs, bat-like wings, and a stinger tail), and a horde of drakes, spirits, and lindworms (giant snakes at least eight meters long, with a third central eye, and capable of flight by "slithering" through the air).
The attack had reportedly started at an Aztlan military base in Cali at about 10am local time, lasting about three hours before the green Great Dragon and his forces withdrew, having decimated the base and its compliment of personnel.
That was far from the worst of it, as at 12.58 local time Sirrurg had cast one final spell before leaving Cali. Numerous drones had captured a bright blue flash that enveloped a large portion of the city, and everyone that had been caught within it simply dropped dead.
And even the pirate news feed, the one in the right ARO, had little more information at this time. About all it was good for was the less censored trideo footage they had managed to acquire. It was really too soon now to know more, or for any governments to find and bury what they did not want anyone else to know.
A chime only she could hear interrupted her split attention between the girls (who had now moved on to a booth to chat and eat) and the news AROs. With a thought she connected her mind to the commlink and answered the call.
"Hey Deacon, it's Shiloh." a woman said, "Got a job for you tonight. Team needs a matrix specialist and I think you might be right for the gig."
"What kind of gig?" Deacon silently asked.
"Johnson didn't give me much in the way of details. Snatch 'n grab, I think. Might require some tracking too."
"Where at?"
"The Alabaster Maiden, at seven tonight. Be there ready for work."
She was trapped, confined in a dark space that had no door or hatch of any kind, and it was shrinking all around her.
Just when she thought that she was going to be crushed to a singular point of infinity there appeared a crack, jagged and full of light. She pushed against it, lacking any room to try and punch or kick her way out.
With a cascade of cracks her prison completely shattered around her. Chunks degraded to fragments all around. Looking around she found herself naked in a very large bowl lined with red and brown downy feathers…
And looked up into a very large golden eye!
She shrieked, scrambling backwards, tearing away feathers for twigs.
The eye pulled back to a bird's head; a bright yellow sharp beak framed by bright red feathers.
Well, not quite what I expected, it said, its voice in her mind, that of a man and a woman speaking together.
Seraphina looked down at her naked self. Flat chest, almost no hips, she looked like she normally did. Then she looked back up to regard the giant bird that could snap her up whole in a single bite. Beyond was a clear blue sky.
"Well… What'd ya expect?" she asked the bird.
How you want to really look. This is your dream world after all. You could be as you desire yourself to be.
"So…. what're you?"
It cocked its head a little to the left. I guess you could say I'm a spirit. Of sorts.
"So what the hell do you want?" Seraphina growled, thoughts of toxic spirits and dark pacts, the promises of power to walk down shadowy paths filling her mind.
It cocked its head over a little to the right. Don't you know?
"Not a fuckin' clue."
It straightened its head, turning it to look at her with one eye. You made some wonderful things, ideas, some time ago, it told her.
"I… what?" she asked, noticing she was starting to breathe heavily. Was it the giant bird making her nervous?
The giant bird took a few steps back, standing at least three times as tall as Seraphina. It passed one wing between them, and in orange fiery lines there appeared a sword framed in glowing runes and archaic formulae and symbols, the blade straight for about two thirds of its length before curving a little. It looked like, if it were a real blade, it could be wielded with one hand yet had a grip long enough to accommodate a second hand.
I don't quite like violence, but I appreciate beauty in all things, it told her, and I found this quite interesting.
Seraphina looked again at the image between them, the fiery lines like thin tears in the fabric of reality itself. It was more than just an image or artwork of a sword, but an enchantment formula for a magic sword.
It's just the most striking is all. Everything else you did then was also quite interesting.
It passed a wing between them again and again, replacing the sword with a collection of images, some half completed but all of varying degrees of apparent skill ranging from grade school child with crayons to the surreal to the practically real.
She could feel her heart pounding in her chest. The weapon focus formula and images it showed were all created while she was under the influence of several infusions, her brain chemistry scrambled like jell-o in a blender and had been on a creative binge for a week. She wanted to forget this time, move on, to try to get her life back to normal.
It doesn't matter if you weren't yourself. It's the passion to create that drew me, and don't think I care about your skill. It tipped its head to the left. What I want is to help you rekindle that passion, that power you had.
Her vision began to blur, colors starting to run.
You don't need to choose now. Think about it. I'm always close by.
The sun was less than two hours from the horizon when Seraphina managed to get out of bed. She had awoken alone, but the savory smell of cooking bacon filled the place.
She softly walked out of their bedroom, and she could hear music playing from the speaker of Cypher's commlink, a song from Isabelle Mercurial's debut album.
"Hey, hope I didn't wake you." Cypher told her when he saw her.
"Naw, you didn't." she replied, walking around to a counter and climbing up onto a stool to sit. Then she noticed the pair of eagles standing partway down the counter. "You get them finished?" she asked.
"Yeah, everything's installed and working. Including the wide band RF transceiver."
The eagles only looked like birds, for they were actually falcon drones, an affiliation payment from Horizon while they worked in New York City, and an attempted bribe to keep their affiliation (it almost worked). There had also been a clumsy attempt to get something to monitor them, and Cypher had found and disabled that software.
And finally he had managed to get improved trideo cameras, microphones, and an olfactory and motion sensor installed into the synthetic birds. He had also even installed a touch sensor system, integrating it into the drone's pilot program so they could more realistically emulate real birds. The new transceiver also meant that they could use the drones remotely with less chance of detection by using radio frequencies outside of the normally used range.
"How'd you like your eggs?" Cypher asked.
"Scrambled, with cheese."
It was not quite a surprise, Cypher cooking breakfast. It was Seraphina's eighteenth birthday today, and he had opted to splurge on real food for breakfast though she had insisted on nothing too extravagant.
What Cypher had prepared would not be considered extravagant in the least by many chefs, but the fact that he had personally cooked up hash browns with diced ham, scrambled eggs with melted cheese, and even fried up some bacon (even managing to not overcook it to super extra crunchy) had made her smile. And on top of it all was that it was real food, nothing soy based, which to the common man was a luxury in of itself.
As she waited she logged into her falcon drone, accessing its color controls, and started toying with the manual settings.
"Lookin' almost like a phoenix there." Cypher commented as he placed two plates of food down on the counter.
"A what?"
"Phoenix. You know, red birds on fire?"
Seraphina looked back to her drone. She had ended up tweaking the colors to match the giant bird-spirit-thing in her dream.
"Saw it in the news. Big deal over in Sardinia right now, there's been several phoenixes spotted there."
"Sardinia?"
"Island north of Africa, in the Mediterranean." Cypher told her. He took a bite of his eggs before adding, "Apparently they're not normally seen there."
Seraphina nodded silently as she began to eat. With a thought she brought up a browser window to do a search on phoenixes, finding almost right away the news articles Cypher had been talking about.
Seraphina was by no means like most of the girls Cypher had known. She rarely wore dresses, though not out of any dislike for the garment as she seemed to really enjoy dressing up when the occasion called for it.
Dinner at a bar and grill called Reno's was also not quite the kind of place for dressing up, so what they wore was more casual; their usual clothes, less the bright technocolor lines. Aside from looking like children they seemed to fit in with the rest of the dinner crowd. Reno's itself was like a sports bar, sporting a variety of combat biker memorabilia and focusing particularly on the Timberwolves, Seattle's local team, and the food itself was a mixed choice of Sioux, Pueblo, and Aztec-Mex.
Then it was off to the Tacoma Dome, where the Tacoma Timberwolves were hosting the New York Marauders. Cypher had managed to secure some very good seats at the middle area of the arena. They had a good view of all the lanes and the skyway (an arcing bridge that went over the arena, with no safety rails, and was unofficially called the "launch pad"). The quality of the view was like getting that perfect spot at the fifty yard line in an American football game.
The visiting Marauders had gotten set up first, lined up and ready to start when the Timberwolves rolled onto the arena. The four linebikers for the Marauders were all mounted on Suzuki Mirage motorcycles, each carrying their allotted mace and riot gun and also a bola. Behind them were the four lancebikers on Yamaha Growlers, also armed with maces, riot guns, and a two meter lance in hand. Just behind them was the thunderbiker also on a Suzuki Mirage with a mounted grenade launcher. In the two meter circular goal zone was their goalie, wearing heavy riot gear armor and holding a tetsubo in one hand; in his other hand was a riot gun and a mace hung at the ready at his belt.
First for the timberwolves were their own linebikers riding on Thunder Contrails, armed with maces and riot guns, two having additional whips and two with nets. Next came the lancebikers also riding Yamaha Growlers, armed the same as their Marauder counterparts. Next, popping a wheelie as he drove out, was the Timberwolf thunderbiker, riding a rather new looking Shiawase Motors Shuriken, also with a mounted grenade launcher. His showboating was short lived, not because he screwed up but more because he knew when to quit when rolling into position. Last to walk on was the Timberwolf goalie, an imposing figure with stylized horns on his helmet, until Cypher realized that the goalie was really a troll.
Once all the announcements were done and both teams were lined up everyone's attention focused to the center of the arena where the drone, called a bogey, would be lifted into the arena, and the first round would begin…
Deacon watched their targets through the Tacoma Dome's security systems. She and Screwloose, the team's other hacker, had spent a few hours probing the arena's network for a weakness, only to turn around to create themselves hidden administrative accounts to appear as more legitimate users.
And it had taken a fair amount of time just to find them, so much in fact that both Bear and Wolf were growing impatient. Gator, however, seemed to have the endless patience of a stalker.
It was not until the start of the second quarter when Screwloose found them, halfway down the field and several rows back; very good seats. He then loaded up a facial recognition program, disguising it as a Knight Errant monitoring program within the network, and pretty much went back to monitoring things for the others in the meat world.
Deacon did spend time tracking down their commlinks while the combat biker match went on, glad to stay in VR and not deal with the smell and stuffy air of Screwloose's van. One would have thought it would have been easy, security required identity broadcasting in and around the Tacoma Dome, but finding two specific commlinks in a sea of tens of thousands was a near monumental task. It was close to the end of the game by the time they were identified. Deacon kept it to herself when she noticed their names matched what they had two months ago. She wondered if they were truly legitimate identities after all.
Gator had a few ideas on how to catch the kids, and the plan they had settled on was a close and more personal approach. Another of their team, a heavily cybered man who went by the name Stinger, would slip into the crowd just behind them. For reasons Deacon felt better unknown, Stinger had a pair of modular cybernetic hands that had a modified version of the Ares S-III Super Squirt built into them, and he would discretely shoot them with dimethyl sulfoxide laced with neuro-stun. If a drop of the binary chemical hit their skin it would render them unconscious. Once the kids were stunned, Stinger and Gator would be right there, acting like relatives helping the exhausted children to the family car. Bear and Gator would also be in the crowd, acting only if there was trouble.
Deacon felt split, torn not in half but in several pieces. The professional part of her hoped this snatch-n-grab went without a hitch, that no one would have time enough to question the mismatched names in their broadcasted identities. The caregiver in her wanted the kids to escape, to see them coming and mange to make a break for it. The coward in her (yes, she acknowledge this aspect of her more than others) hoped that they would not react the way she knew they could, the way she had seen when she first met them
Even in VR she felt a shiver run down her spine at the very thought of the destruction she knew the boy was capable of. It did not matter what Gator had said after checking their auras, his assurances that only the girl was awakened and not as strong as either he or Wolf. Deacon knew what she had seen, and that the girl alone did not, could not have killed several infected with her bare hands. Awakened or not, he may have had help, and that help could come again at the worst possible moment for the crew.
A digital tentacle moved the AROs around, bringing around one security camera for another as the spectators began the collected task of filing out of the stadium, all so she could keep track of the kids… The two targets. It still made her heart sink, trying to think of them as their objectives and not people.
Cypher felt like he was in a blender, his head spinning wildly. He groaned as he tried to straighten himself out, his arms and legs not responding.
"Looks like someone's finally awake." said a male's voice.
Taking a deep breath, Cypher tried again to move. This time he felt resistance at his wrists and ankles. He put all his strength into moving and felt a sharp bite into his body.
"Null persp, twerps." said another male's voice, "You ain't breakin' those cuffs."
Cypher forced himself to relax, to take stock in his surroundings. When he finally calmed himself down he could feel the handcuffs at his wrists and ankles, and the harsh fabric of the blindfold tied about his head. At least he was sitting upright, but his hands were stuck behind him, pressed between his back and the chair he was sitting in. From the smell of things he was either in a lounge chair in some skanky living room or the back seat of a van.
Beside him he heard Seraphina groan. With a thought he accessed their private chat program. She was also restrained; he could hear her fighting against them just as he had while the chat tried to get her to connect.
"Feisty ones, aren't they?" asked another.
"Still seems too easy." commented a fourth, "For what she's asking for these two."
Still Seraphina struggled, and the chat awaited her acceptance.
"Could you please settle down, girl?" asked the first voice.
"Fuck you!" growled Seraphina. She was way more pissed off than Cypher expected, and being told to settle down apparently made her struggle all the harder. At the moment he opted to not say anything, figuring if she got a rise out of them he might find something to exploit.
Cypher sensed some kind of motion near them, and Seraphina grunted as she was shoved back into her seat.
"Easy Wolf," the first voice said, "Johnson wants them unharmed."
"Null sheen." Wolf said, walking away. Cypher's voice recognition program automatically updated its registry with the alias.
"Yeah Wolf. Wouldn't want to damage the goods now, would ya?" chided Seraphina.
"Shut it, slitch!" yelled Wolf. "You're lucky I don't hit girls."
"Neither do I, but for you I'll make an exception!" Seraphina yelled back.
Someone chuckled.
There was motion, and Seraphina grunted again, this time from the floor.
"Wolf, get out of there now." ordered the first voice.
"Never said I wouldn't shove ya 'round." Wolf growled.
"Wolf!" yelled the first voice.
"Null sheen, Gator." Wolf replied nonchalantly, sounding like he was walking away. Maybe it was a van they were in after all. His voice recognition program updated with this alias as well. "Besides, it's not like I mixed up the neuro-stun for leál."
Leál? That anything like laés? Cypher wondered. He could go online to search, but that connection would be easily detected.
"Assholes!" yelled Seraphina, "Fuckin' with our memories?"
Cypher checked the chronometer of his implanted commlink. It was just after midnight now, over five hours since the start of the combat biker rally, a rally he realized he could not remember.
"Maybe I should give them a dose when Johnson gets here." suggested the fourth voice.
Gator sighed. "Might be for the best if they don't remember this."
"Motherfucker!" Seraphina yelled.
"Oh, and don't think to try any of your sorceries, girl." Gator said, "We've got several spirits here, and if you think of going astral or calling something yourself they'll pounce on you."
Guess they don't know I can do magic, Cypher thought. If those spirits were tasked to focus on her only, he could potentially get the drop on them.
From the darkness of his own blindfold he turned his mind inward. Something similar to when he compiled sprites in the past, when he was a technomancer, but this time he tried tapping into the mana instead. He had thought he was finding out how to draw on this energy, and while now may not have been the best of times to try, it was that or nothing.
Like compiling a sprite, Cypher focused on what he needed of a spirit, which was not really much, nor would it be too powerful because of his nascent abilities. He knew he could take a spirit within him, make its power his strength, and that he focused on. He drew up as much mana as he could, feeling the burn starting from the back of his mind, like the draw of resonance, channeling it as best he could.
The earth hears your call, summoner. Three tasks this one will perform until the sun rises.
Cypher could feel it entering his body, the astral world opening up to him through the spirit. He could see the four, their auras, and several others as spirits flitted about.
First order of business were his restraints. Again he forced his arms against the cuffs that bound them, feeling the chain links beginning to give against his enhanced strength. He felt hot from the effort, his chest and back starting to sweat, and suddenly the cuffs broke free.
"Hey, you smell something?" asked the second man.
Cypher reached down for his ankles, the handcuffs that would keep him from even walking properly, and he felt his blindfold fall away. Blinking against anticipated bright lights, what he saw was darkness and embers of burning fabric that had been his blindfold. Even as he reached for the cuffs at his ankles he noticed the stainless steel began to sag and warp. He tore them away like they were made of clay, the steel seeming to melt at his touch.
"The boy!" the fourth man yelled, but it was too late. Cypher was free.
The closest man, likely Wolf, turned to look, but already Cypher had leapt at him. Together they went tumbling away from the Bulldog van he and Seraphina were being kept in.
"Get him! Banish his elemental!" Gator yelled.
Cypher looked to the man, saw him, and his facial recognition software updated the profile with his alias, linking in his voice record. He planted a foot on Wolf's chest and kicked off, leaping at Gator.
A spirit came at him, and although it was only in the astral it would be as obstructive as any critter in the real world to him. Cypher growled as he backhanded it, putting his willpower into the strike. It tried to evade, and it broke apart like smoke.
"His spirits are nothing!" Cypher yelled as another such spirit rushed at him. This too he batted away like a wisp of smoke.
"Waters of life, quench the flames!" yelled Gator.
It felt like Cypher had his heart ripped out of him from behind. The colors of the astral faded and the building suddenly felt arctic cold. With the sudden loss of momentum he fell to his knees.
Slow clapping hands filled the air. Cypher looked to see Gator was the one applauding. The man was tall, solidly built, wearing what looked like a more tribal buckskin jacket and pants. His hair was brown, dark and stringy from never being washed.
"I have to say you have guts." Gator said, "Risking yourself with a spirit like that. Quite a surprise."
Cypher was struck from behind, stars filling his vision as he tumbled forward. He hit the concrete floor on his hands and knees.
"Easy there, Bear. We don't want to rattle his brains too loose now."
"Natch. Just a love tap." said the second man, Bear.
"Cypher! Run for it!" Seraphina yelled. Her voice was immediately followed by the crunching sound of crumpling metals.
Cypher did not run, not right away. The natural reaction was to look first, and when he did, as he was regaining his footing, he saw a large earth elemental, a humanoid body of jagged rock studded with large ruby spikes, tear its way through the front half of the Bulldog van. It shoved the engine aside like a troll would a vespa.
Light refracted through those ruby shards, like lasers in some sci-fi trid, the gemstones were gathering and re-directing the light, focusing it into a single red beam that it unleashed like a fat laser beam from one outstretched limb. It struck a pallet of crates that were next to the wall. One of the crates must have been filled with something explosive, the detonation blasting a fair sized hole in the concrete wall.
"Don't look. Just run!" Seraphina yelled as she ran towards the hole.
Not bothering to look back he followed her. He felt the heat of another explosion just as he reached the hole. For a moment thought the Bulldog's fuel tank had just been hit by the spirit's laser beam, feeling the heat chasing after him.
It was still over two hours before even the twilight of dawn, the moon so low behind them it could not be seen, and Seraphina was feeling dead on her feet. Cypher was confident that following the train tracks would get them home, that trying to call for Ironhide might still lead their pursuers to them. He did not feel they had gotten clean away, that the men would still come after them.
They walked in total silence nearly the whole time, no wireless signals between them. With their camouflage clothing and holo hoods the only mark of their passage was whatever dust they kicked up or rocks they stirred with each footfall.
But still she broke the silence, figuring now they were probably safe enough to talk. Along the tracks ran grass covered berms of earth, a sound barrier against the train for whatever homes or housing developments might have been close to the tracks.
"Getting a handle on your magic?" she asked.
"A little, I think." He paused to think before adding, "It's different than what I did as a technomancer. Then it was more… just do it. Then I could just whip the code around, it formed as I thought it. But now I have to… be more… here. More… focused."
"You just thought the code?"
"Yeah. Had to be careful because of the fading. Not what happened to my abilities, but if I dug too deep into the resonance it… hurt."
"And… mana?"
Cypher paused to think a little. "It's different. Like I got all this energy around me and it'll burn me up from the inside."
"That's the drain. Spells, sprits, pretty much the same when you use too much power."
Cypher simply nodded.
"At least you seem to have a good handle on that. I don't know if I can teach you any kind of centering, though. I think our magic's different. My spirits don't possess people like yours do."
"They don't." Cypher softly said. "They can't possess people or things. Only me."
Seraphina stopped to look at Cypher. He took three more steps before he stopped to turn and look at her.
"You?" she asked, "But… they possess you. They take over and…"
Cypher interrupted, "That's just it, they don't take over."
Her eyes lost focus as she tried to think, her mind racing to try and process everything she knew about spirit possession and similar spiritual effects. Everything she knew was that it was immutable that when a spirit took over a host the spirit was in total and absolute control of the body. It had everything, short of implants requiring a direct neural interface, or a technomancer's natural access to the matrix.
"It's something Lion showed me," he said, "how to meld with a spirit, become one with it, and retain myself and control."
"So, just now…"
Cypher nodded.
"And that last time in the Barrens?"
Again, Cypher nodded. "And that vampire, too." he said, "I had a spirit's strength, but I was in full control. I told you that last time, remember?"
It took a moment for Seraphina to recall. It was after having to deal with a human only gang called the Troll Killers, though then it looked like he was not in complete control with whatever spirit had possessed him then. Still, it had departed entirely when he ordered it.
"Oh, yeah, right." Seraphina said softly, looking up at Cypher as he stepped closer to her. He took her into his arms, welcoming her to lean against him, and out of reflex her arms slipped around him.
When she felt a little better she stepped back, slipping from his embrace. "And… Lion?" she asked.
"It's a spirit guide. Helping give me strength with some magic 'n spirits 'n such. It's the one that sent that first guardian spirit to help me with the vampires. Don't think I'd've been strong enough without it."
A shiver ran down her spine.
"Cold?" he asked.
Seraphina nodded. "A little." She lied. Well, she was cold but that was not why she shivered.
"Guess I can call Ironhide now. Hope it's safe."
"Me too." she softly said.
He doesn't get it, Seraphina thought, He's so much stronger than I am. He felt as hard, as strong as the iron rails she had walked on as he held her. She turned her head to rest it against his chest.
After a brief silence Cypher spoke. "It's almost ten K away to the crossing just ahead. We can wait for it there."
"Think we'll have to move?"
"Probably should."
Seraphina sighed. Their place was starting to feel like their regular home, and now they would have to pack up everything and find a new place. "I see why this's the 'big leagues' here. Never had this shit in Denver or New York."
"We didn't have a bunch of crazy psychopaths hating us before."
"True. Whoever we pissed off before seemed content to leave us be. Too much trouble? I guess, as long as we didn't cross paths or whatever."
It was not long before they got to the crossing. There they stood, waiting for their truck.
Cypher suddenly perked his head up, like he heard or was listening to something. "We've got trouble." he announced, "Launch combat programs and log in, someone's tryin' to hack Ironhide."
Seraphina's mind raced as she tried to think of what programs she would need. Several she had left running all the time, per his suggestions. Armor, the biofeedback filter, analyzer, and more, they were on constantly. With a thought she activated the attack and black hammer programs, and then brought up the access ID for the truck Ironhide.
Cypher had walked over to the shed that used to house the controls for the train track crossing arms. He was sitting down to lean against it, which looked like a good spot to look like he was resting and still be well out of the way of any traffic that might just happen to go by. She joined him, sitting at his side, as the connection to Ironhide resolved itself. Her stealth program was also already running by the time she mentally clicked on the command to switch over to full virtual reality.
The real world was washed away by the virtual environment within the truck. Cypher had intentionally left it largely practical, a large and blocky room decorated with icons that represented the various systems and sensor readouts of the truck.
She could see Cypher's icon, the large robed figure in heavy armor, largely unchanged since first she had met him, seen it online. Though the armor was originally pure black it now seemed to shift a little at the very edges, appearing a very dark blue or dark green.
In contrast Seraphina was still working on her icon, trying to find something that suited her. Currently she had something that was a more mature version of herself, an idealized view of her at her true age, tall and lithe, with a not so slender figure, wearing a skin tight body suit of such dark red material it was almost black with armored boots and gauntlets of a more medium red color. Her attack programs rendered as fire enshrouding her hands.
In her field of view, really just data inputed directly into her brain as opposed to a created ARO in the virtual space, Seraphina could see detail of raw data, most of which made little to no sense to her. Maybe in time she would come to understand it like Cypher did, but for now for the most part it was just gibberish, unrendered data that came to her through the analytics program.
But two lines of code she saw struck her as a little odd. Faster than a mental click they were selected, focused upon, and almost within the rendering she saw two more user icons started to appear.
One of the icons looked like a comical toy robot, with blocky body parts, stray wires, and loose screws, all of it giving it the illusion that it was just threatening to fall apart.
The other icon looked like a female reptilian, covered in green scales, with four arms and a plethora of tentacles.
Cypher was more than a few steps ahead of her, his black hammer program loaded, the shining silver sword in hand and descending upon the ramshackle toy robot. There were no sparks where blade met armor, no cutting gash to mark its passing, but the toy robot reacted all the same as lethal biofeedback signals were burned into the hacker's brain. Only the person's biofeedback filter software would offer any protection,
Figuring the other icon also belonged to a living hacker, Seraphina selected her black hammer program, ruby flames turning to obsidian. She threw a black fireball at the lizard woman first as she closed the distance, solidly striking her icon, tongues of black flame melting away like snow on hot flesh.
She could see it as the lizard woman went reeling back, a thin line of code that was almost invisible, the secondary effect of a black ice program that jammed the target's connection to the node and kept them logged in. Security hackers used it to ensure a trace to the target's physical location, but that was not something she was concerned about. No, she was more interested in pounding these hackers to pixels. It was no coincidence to her that these two hacked into Ironhide just after Cypher had called it, that four other men just happened to be hunting them right now. Two of those men were magicians, and she had figured they were supposed to tag team on her, two-on-one odds to overwhelm her magically. But they were caught off guard when Cypher revealed his own magic to them. It made sense that these two other hackers were to double team Cypher just the same, but she would catch them off guard just the same.
Seraphina could see it in the lizard woman's face, the slow realization that it was a more even cyberfight.
Then the toy robot completely ceased to exist. Seraphina guessed that the user had completely severed the connection, which meant suffering a dumpshock.
"Let her go." Cypher silently told her, his icon turning to face the reptilian woman.
It was not all that hard, a thought, a flip of the wrist, and the slight tether of data was released.
The lizard woman vanished, her icon fading to digital dust before completely disappearing.
"Think they're with the others?" she asked.
Cypher brought up an icon, looking at the lines of code. Seraphina came over to him to look. Her best guess was that he was looking at an access log, the various other devices that might have, even in passing, pinged the truck. "No such hacking attempt until after it started moving." he said, "They waited for one of us to call it."
"Then they were."
"And it wasn't random. They targeted us."
Seraphina felt numb at first, the shock slowly giving way to anger. "The Neo-A's." she said.
Cypher nodded. "Best bet it's them, somehow." Even in the digital world, his chorus of voices all had an edge of menace to them. He was mad, she could tell, but just how deep did that anger go compared to hers?
"Fuck!" Seraphina cussed. "How close could they be?"
"Out! Now!"
Deacon's head hurt. Her brain felt too big for her skull, like it would crack as she pressed two of her hands against her ears to try and stem the pressure she was feeling. Her other two hands of her lower arms held her face, obscuring the light from her eyes.
It was hard to look at the physical world, light feeling like fire in her eyes. If only the window's in Screwloose's van would darken, black out the outside world and shroud them in darkness. Even the light that filtered in was too much for her to bear.
She had wanted to try the virtual world, retreat within that space within her mind where she could shut out the pain. Once she actually had, just as Screwloose had managed to program an address into his van's autopilot. Not only had the pain followed her there, but it had grown worse.
The fire had to be psychotropic, Deacon thought.
After the kids had managed their escape Screwloose had gone back through the matrix to the Tacoma Dome's parking lot. There were only a few vehicles left, and figuring one of them had to belong to them he had pulled her into a virtual stakeout. It had taken a few hours, but eventually one of them started moving on a remote command.
At his insistence they had taken the direct, hard and fast approach to hacking the GMC Timberwolf. It had taken a little long for them to get through, but Screwloose thought it was nothing despite whatever Deacon felt, dismissing it as nothing but newbie jitters.
She figured they had triggered a silent alert in breaching the firewall, that it was Cypher that came on first, his icon appearing from almost nowhere, a blur of digital code as he swung a polished silver sword at Screwloose's icon. Even despite the high end stealth program the dwarf had been running he was easily hit.
After the strike she had seen the attacker. Some kind of sci-fi power armor, black in color, with burning red eyes, and about his shoulders was a beige cloak. Running armor and stealth programs, she figured without analyzing them. Then she had figured the sword was an attack program. It would be after the cyberfight was over that she found out it was no conventional attack program but a black hammer.
Then came the other, and even Deacon had been caught completely unaware. They had expected one hacker, Cypher, and getting burned by a second was not even a planned contingency.
When the second hacker's icon resolved itself Deacon had seen a full figured woman, decent hips and good sized bust that were far from exaggerated, wearing a slightly red tinted body suit of otherwise black material. She had futuristic looking boots that reached to her knees, and gauntlets that were slightly redder. She wore no helmet, her wavy red hair past her shoulders, and had a pretty face; Seraphina if she looked to be about twenty years old. In her hands was a black hammer attack program, baseball sized orbs burning with fire that absorbed light.
If Screwloose had noticed Seraphina's icon he likely dismissed it as a dog-brained agent program. Considering the girl's skill it might have been justified. That was assuming he had even seen her icon, since he had been dealing with Cypher and the kid's surprise attack.
Luck, a moment of natural talent, or something else, Deacon did not know. What she did know was that her initial cyber attack had struck, and struck hard. The fire, however, did not burn. Whatever it was coded for, it sucked the heat from the target, chilled it in an unnatural way. It was not like getting hit with a snowball in the dead of summer, but like your life force was being sucked out of you.
It had taken a lot for the two of them to get away, and likely Screwloose had suffered a hefty dumpshock after managing to completely kill the wireless signal to his implanted commlink. Deacon would swear that she had been intentionally let go just afterwards.
If there was any blessing to this, it was that the pain in her head distracted her from the itching she normally felt while disconnected from the matrix. Still it took her a substantial effort to keep the wireless away, that soothing and comforting feel of the signal that normally washed through her mind, body, and soul. No, she had to keep herself offline in case they came after her. That was why their commlinks were off, and even Screwloose's van had its transceiver switched off as it drove on its own. For what she could see on the trid screen in the center console, it was relying on old fashioned GPS, a recently downloaded map, and its own passive sensors to tell it where it was and where it was going.
The tables had turned, the hunters had become the hunted, and Deacon prayed they could find someplace to hide.
Cypher had no idea how close the men could be to them, and there was no sense in staying in VR while their physical bodies were vulnerable. Seraphina's elemental would be concealing them, but would it warn them if they were potentially in danger? Would it even know the men were to be considered dangerous?
When reality came back to his vision he saw Wolf glaring down at him. His first reaction was to try and get away, turning on the ground to try and get his feet beneath him. A blunt pain erupted in his right side and he went tumbling.
Then he felt himself being picked up. Figuring it was Wolf, Cypher whipped his head back. It was more a grazing blow, but still he caught part of Wolf's nose and cheek, and suddenly he was free. He gave Wolf a good elbow jab to the gut before making a break for it.
When he turned around to look he saw Seraphina scrambling around the other side of crossing control box, one of the other men down on his knees as he held his crotch while a good stream of blood flowed from his nose.
At the speed of thought he sent a command to Ironhide: Command Override – Speed Limit – Ignore.
"Bad place to take a nap." he heard Gator say.
Keeping a wary eye on Wolf, Cypher tried to locate Gator. It was not until he heard the telltale double click of a handgun's hammer that he realized Gator was behind him.
"Stall, if you can." he silently sent to Seraphina.
"Spirit finally tracked us down?" Seraphina asked.
"Took long enough." Gator said. "Wasn't too bad, that one you had to conceal you two. Maybe if it was a bit stronger it might've actually worked."
Cypher glanced to an ARO in his field of view, a close map of the area showing where they were in relation to Ironhide. The truck was reporting its speed as close to 200kph, likely not going flat out because of other traffic. It was currently on the old I-5, and would have to slow down to take the off ramp. He sent an additional command: Command Override – Route – Direct – A.S.A.P.
Immediately the projected route disappeared. Three seconds later a new one was plotted. It was longer, but it was straighter with less turns, and skipped the off ramp entirely. The speed also kicked up another twenty-five kilometers per hour.
"Oh, and don't think about calling anything for help." Gator added, "That little stunt you pulled off back there won't work a second time."
"So what're you gonna do with us?" Cypher asked.
"That depends a little on you two. Behave, and we'll just tie you up. If you don't, well, I think Bear and Wolf would be more than willing to beat some sense into you."
Cypher scowled. He was starting to care less of the risk of getting shot by Gator and making sure Wolf spat blood if he had to go up against the larger man. He knew Seraphina would fight, but wondered if she would try pitting her sorcery against them. She had left her power focus at home. Like their handguns, which were hidden in Ironhide, they had not anticipated the need this night.
"Ya think we'll let ya?" Seraphina asked. Glaring at Bear she added, "Touch me and I'll neuter ya with my bare hands."
Bear only grinned.
Cypher heard the crunch of gravel behind him. It sounded like Gator was walking up closer to him.
"Seems like your ride's on the way." Gator said offhandedly. "You really think you can get away?"
"You thought we wouldn't try?" Cypher asked back.
"Honestly I did. But you're mistaken if you think it'll work."
"Gonna try to get Bear tired. Get ready to jump in." he told Seraphina. Then he issued a target command to Ironhide to run over Bear when it got closer, overriding the dog brain's usual safety protocols in this matter as well.
"Really? Why's that?"
"You really think we came magic heavy just for her?" Gator asked. "We know you're a hacker, and a good one. We've kept our comms as brief as possible so you can't hear them. And as soon as your truck was in motion we had hackers of our own to commandeer it."
"Oh, that toy robot and mutant lizard?" Cypher asked. "They're brain fried fucks now."
"Oh?"
"Yeah." Cypher said, turning to face Gator. He saw the man holding an aged looking Ruger Super Warhawk, leveled right at his chest. "See, I'm way better than you thought. Wrote a custom firewall that caught them breaking in. We both already hit them with black ice and dumpshocked their sorry asses before we smacked the whelps around."
Then they all heard Ironhide, engine roaring as it barreled down the street.
For a moment Gator was distracted by the racing truck, the look on his face telling Cypher the man was pondering the truth of what was said, which if it were true, meant that Gator's hackers were not in control of the truck barreling down on them.
Cypher lunged at the man, slipping around the revolver to slam his cybernetic fist into his side. As Gator reeled back, Cypher spun around to face Wolf. Seeing the larger man closing fast he balled a fist and drove it home into the man's side. Then he backhanded Wolf with his cybernetic hand. Without waiting to see the results of his handiwork, Cypher bolted across the street as Ironhide came rushing up. He barely noticed Bear and Seraphina moving.
A gunshot rang out, and Cypher felt pain erupt near his back. He stumbled, but managed to keep his feet as he rounded Ironhide, the truck automatically opening its doors for them.
Another gunshot rang out just as both of them were getting in. "Floor it!" Cypher yelled to Ironhide before he or Seraphina had even managed to get into their seats.
Following the verbal command, all four of Ironhide's smart tires tore at the road. Even such tires, designed for the best traction possible, slipped against gravel.
It was not long before they were seated more safely in the truck, leaving the three men behind.
Angela's shoes clicked as she walked across the garage's concrete floor, her eyes cold as she surveyed the scene.
The remains of a van, a Bulldog her report told her, lay strewn about with the largest chunk of it a twisted and burned out hulk, having been parked just inside the vehicle door. Oddly enough she could identify the engine, what was left of it, elsewhere.
Along another wall was a large hole that made her thing a rocket or RPG had hit it. Even she could tell the explosion had came from inside. There was evidence of other explosions around, and overall it was looking like several million nuyen in damages.
The wind seemed just right this morning to flood the warehouse with the famed 'Tacoma Aroma' the area was so well known for. Once the sun rose above the horizon she expected the winds to change, but for now it was only a crimson glow to the east.
Behind and to her left was Sabrina Rinne. The blond Irish dryad was here because of her magically enhanced senses. She wore loose clothing of a rich green color, including a heavier coat to fight the late January chill.
To her right was a large female ork, Kimber Robertson. Like most who were close to her, Kimber was awakened and a registered felon. And like Golem and Sabrina, Angela had found Kimber's criminal record to be highly exaggerated.
And so Angela had managed to hire Kimber on as a personal bodyguard. The black skinned ork was not simply there for intimidation, though she did well at that, especially to those that knew she was a houngan, a practitioner of voodoo, and a follower of Shango. Still, she was solidly and shapely built at just over a meter-ninety. She wore a golden yellow jacket that barely hid the armor plating beneath it, and matching pants.
But they were not the only ones in the wrecked garage. It was likely an explosion that had contributed to the damage, and caused witnesses to call Knight Errant and Franklin Associates. Law enforcement had been too late to catch any suspects while the fire department had little in the way of fires to put out. While it had been concluded that the arson was magically based, who or what that had wrought the sorcery was still an unknown.
Knight's going to be next to useless here, Angela thought, eyeing a crime scene investigator as he took measurements of the engine's location in relation to where it should have been.
"There's been too many people through here," Sabrina said aloud, "'n the air's too stale 'n muggy to get anything useful."
Angela pulled a commlink out from an inside jacket pocket, a personal commlink she used only for business that was not above board. She looked up the commcode for Tom Sullivan, a technomancer she employed for matrix security, and hit the option to send him a voice message.
"Tom, I want you in the Hansen garage node and get every megapulse of security data you can scrounge up no matter how corrupted. And I don't care what any Errant white hat has to say." With the message recorded she hit [Send].
Next was another contact, one whom Angela called directly.
"Tomes Employment Agency." answered a man.
"It's Cairns." Angela announced without preamble. "I have need of some special investigators. Skilled. Noon. Kubdel's."
"Yes ma'am, I'll get right on it." Joss Tomes told her, ending the call.
Angela slid the commlink back into the pocket it came from. She took one last look around before saying, "We're done here. Back to the Gallery."
Cypher did not care how the men found them, he had some guesses but they did not matter. It also did not matter that there were only three of them now. What he did care was their persistence in pursuing them. There were few things he could think of that could make things even worse, yet one of them was not a shift in the weather to Seattle's stereotypical pouring down rainfall.
He and Seraphina had managed to get a little lucky. They both had problems trying to sleep at the abandoned quarry they had found, managing some fitful rest instead in the now ramshackle office building. When dawn came Seraphina had conjured up another air elemental to help conceal their presence and stand watch for any intruders. It had barely managed to warn her before it had been disrupted.
But this time they were armed, though against the potential of magic any handgun often felt inadequate. On the flip side, a good or lucky shot could geek a mage and completely change the balance of power between two opponents.
Only problem here was that there were two magicians, and no idea if either of them was capable of in the way of sorcery. Seraphina thought Wolf might be the more dangerous with combat spells, but even she had to admit that this might have been more from his willingness to use such magic.
But she had turned out to be right. They had opted to try shooting from the building, but apparently as soon as Wolf had seen them taking aim he had leveled a rod of his own at them. They had gotten hit with a wave of nearly invisible magical energies, and their handguns had begun to melt. Cypher had thought he managed to get one shot off, but the barrel of his left hand Predator had sagged just a little, catching the slug and ultimately making the barrel explode from the side instead. It was like a tube of stiff potter's clay had tried to contain a large firecracker.
They had tried to make an escape, but the three had done a little too well to get in the way. With limited options they could see they had tried to fight their way through. Cypher had thought that if they could get to Ironhide they could make their getaway. It had not worked, with Wolf more than capable of other magic, including a spell that had effectively destroyed their clothing and swords as well.
Cypher took one last look at the lump of composite metals that had once been his sword. He gave the grip one last squeeze, feeling how warm and soft it was as the material threatened to ooze between his fingers, before letting it drop to the ground as he fell to his knees.
Off to his left he could see the clouds beginning to lighten as they shielded the metroplex from the rising winter sun. Its rays would be ineffectual at warming them as ice water continued to fall. Not that it mattered how hot he was already feeling from the fight.
"Chip truth," said Gator, "you two… have been quite the pain in the hoop." He almost sounded tired, more winded from this fight than outright exhausted like Cypher or Seraphina.
"Glad to be your hemorrhoid." Cypher wryly told him.
Gator chuckled. "Ever the wise cracker, even now."
Cypher looked over the other two men he could see, Bear and Wolf. The two looked like they had seen better days, and were even looking better now than hours ago even despite the soaking they too had received.
"Why didn't you give it up earlier?" Cypher asked. "I gotta know."
"My spirit guide pushes me to finish what I start." Gator told him. "Nothing personal, but I also hate leaving anything unfinished."
"And finished is what you are." Bear added. "It don't matter if you somehow miraculously get away again, we'll keep coming after you, again and again and again."
"There's no place we won't find you." Wolf told them.
Bear took a few steps towards them. "We'll pound the drek out of the both of you." For added emphasis he pounded a fist against his other palm.
Cypher looked at Bear, his empathy program listing high levels of aggression and pleasure from the man as he looked at Seraphina. He pushed himself up to his feet, gritting his teeth as he took a step to rush Bear…
And found himself flying backwards, tumbling to the ground like a rag doll and sliding a few meters.
"Cypher!" yelled Seraphina.
"Wolf! Take it easy, we need them alive!" Gator yelled.
"Easy, omae, it was light. Can't kill him with that low level a spell." Wolf said offhandedly. "Ya know I can land 'em precisely with these." He raised a gloved hand, flexing his fingers.
"Mother fuckers." Seraphina growled. Cypher was pushing himself upright when he saw her, standing wobbly on her own, feeling the power she was drawing upon herself. "Flames of Hell, fires of wrath, make my rage manifest, SAMAEL!"
Seraphina was suddenly engulfed in flames, natural crimson and orange swirling about her in a vortex. The heat was intense enough to make Bear stop and take two steps back. Most summoners did not call upon fire elementals during such weather, the rain naturally weakening the materialized spirit. But still it was here, resilient enough against the rain by the very heat it generated.
Cypher could see it now, feel it in the fiery flow of mana that surrounded Seraphina. This was no ordinary summoning that she had performed.
Hear me. No more running. Now you fight. Fight, and live, or die trying.
Gator held up his right hand, rings glowing a rich blue hue as he gathered power. "Waters of life, quench…"
"CRY THUNDER!" Cypher yelled, quickly mashing up power of his own, channeling it into raw electricity through his cybernetic hand at Gator, the power coursing through his body and burning his nerves.
Gator saw the spell coming, swinging his hand wide to bat the feebly attempted spell aside like one would an annoying insect. Still the concussive blast made him take a step back or be knocked over. He glared at Cypher, who only grinned back amidst the uncontrolled mana burning his outstretched arm. Then he realized Cypher's spell had worked nonetheless.
The swirling flames began to simmer, and twin jets of raw magical fire erupted from Seraphina's back, rich crimson to match her hair. Like a totem mask over her head was an eagle's head, feathers of crimson flame wreathing her features. Cypher knew this was new, completely different from her past summonings. There was beauty within the terrifying flames, beauty of such a level that did not normally exist with her horrific spirits.
Wolf leveled his blasting rod at her. Despite the burning he felt, Cypher drew in more power, gathering what he could as he focused his gaze on the club. It felt tentative at first, just a flicker of connection as the magic began to manifest.
With an explosive crack! energy went coursing from Cypher to the spell focus, a literal lightning rod as electricity jumped from Cypher's outstretched flesh and blood hand to the wet metal weapon, and through Wolf to ground itself out. He staggered back from the blow but kept his feet.
"We… Will… Not… Submit." Cypher growled, slowly pushing himself upright, panting heavily for breath with each spoken word. "We… Will… Fight…" The words were more than just for Gator and the others, more than himself too.
Something sparked close to Seraphina, by her shoulder, followed by a loud gunshot. She did not even look to the trees behind her, turning her left hand towards the source of the sound, a bolt of crimson fire flashing laser quick into the darkness.
Cypher clawed the ground, his fingernails scratching pitifully against the packed earth that was just below a thin layer of mud as he drew more power, this time calling for a spirit, one that would help him fight. His answer struck him like the lightning he threw, and his vision turned red as he looked at Wolf.
Cypher had his target, his enemy, his prey, and only death would stop him. Light as a feather he was up on his hands and feet, like a sprinter at the gate. It almost seemed to be no effort at all to launch himself at Wolf.
Bear stepped in his way, and Cypher led with his cybernetic fist to strike him. The larger man deflected the blow while bringing his own knee up into Cypher's stomach. Cypher went flying, but Bear roared his outrage as electricity crackled around him.
In a literal flash Seraphina was on Bear, flame enshrouded fists hammering away at the large man.
Now, the wolf, before he recovers.
Time seemed to slow for a moment as Cypher charged Wolf, covering the distance with incredible speed. He turned his shoulder into the larger man, bodily plowing into him. Electricity crackled and danced over their bodies, though it seemed only Wolf was in pain for it.
Cypher pushed himself up, half bent over the downed man. Up came his cybernetic fist before crashing down at Wolf's face.
Wolf got his hands in the way, catching Cypher's left hand in both of his with a sharp crack. Flesh and bone may have been more easily stopped, and Cypher knew he had broken bones in the man's hands, their connection bringing about another discharge of electricity through Wolf. The repeated shocks were too much for him and his arms went limp.
Teeth bared, Cypher grabbed Wolf's head, flesh and blood hand over the man's eyes. He lifted Wolf's head up, holding his skull tightly, his fingertips threatening to slip on the man's wet flesh, and slammed it back down to the packed earth a few times. After the third or fourth blow he noticed the blood pooling beneath them, running thin with rainwater. Satisfied, he slowly stood back up, towering over Wolf in the burgeoning sunlight. With eyes filled with rage he turned his gaze towards Gator and Bear.
Seraphina was standing up from the charred and burning remains of Bear, her wings of fire moving as if they were physically real, their motion impacting her balance, crackling their heat and energy even against the pervasive rain.
Cypher could also see the fire elemental within her, the raging inferno barely contained within her petite form. She was extremely pissed off right now, and it was made manifest through her spirit.
Powerful emotions fuel her magic. Such is also your magic.
Rather than attacking them Gator had made preparations. Around him was a powerful barrier in the astral, thick enough to almost hide him inside it, while outside stood three spirits, elementals of air, water, and earth. His spirit guide was more evident here, the spirits each looking like their elemental counterparts of something half man and half alligator.
"You two…" panted Gator, "are going to wish…"
"Stun water!" Cypher yelled, charging the water elemental.
Speed of thought there was an incandescent bolt of power that struck the water elemental. It reeled back, dazed just long enough for Cypher to close the distance. He turned his shoulder to the spirit, meaning to plow himself through it entirely, pitching his will, his might, his rage, and his whole sense of self against it.
Electricity crackled as the two collided, sparks going wild as water sprayed all over. The elemental lost its cohesion, water crashing down in a brief waterfall around him. There was little more it could do, being already soaked by the rain.
Gator took a step back, but kept himself within the barrier's circle. Cypher could see it in the man's eyes, a realization of many thoughts at once. The water elemental would have had an advantage in the rain, not as much as if they had been closer to a larger body of water, but an edge nonetheless.
"Even the Lion fears the shallows!" Gator yelled.
Cypher turned on Gator's earth elemental next, rushing it and slamming his small but spirit enhanced body against the larger spirit's material form as he imposed his will against its existence. The two struck hard, Cypher tearing away a good chunk of its body in the passing. The earth elemental was not quite out, managing a hard blow to Cypher's back to send him crashing to the ground at the same time.
The elemental came at him, stomping the ground like an overweight troll. He rolled to avoid getting crushed underfoot, getting an opportunity to regain his feet when he suddenly reversed direction and rolled away from the spirit. It almost had him under a rocky foot, and he suddenly reversed direction, rolling clear.
In the moment of the elemental's confusion Cypher pushed himself around, grabbing its leg with both hands. "Be gone!" he yelled, pushing his mind against its existence on the material world. The pulse of magical energy that came back at him was overwhelming, and he clenched his eyes shut as he focused his mind, his consciousness against it. Fueled by his anger he would not succumb.
The elemental ripped its foot free of Cypher's grasp, backpedaling several paces.
Cypher pushed himself back to his feet, but only managed to get off one knee. He felt sick, he wanted to vomit but could not. He felt tired, wanting to find a nice warm bed to sleep.
Sleep meant his death, and he realized it just too late when the earth elemental backhanded him, sending him flying a few meters.
"Cypher!" Seraphina yelled, her voice sounding distant, almost hollow.
Tears threatened to blind Seraphina when she saw Gator's earth elemental backhand Cypher, her vision through the flames around her briefly clear just when he hit the ground, unmoving from where he landed.
You cannot mimic what he does, said a familiar pair of voices. Either you do it or you don't. If you accept my guidance I will show you the way. You have the strength, the power, and you know what to call upon for your aid.
She clamped her eyes shut, feeling the tears streaming from her eyes despite the flames around her and the encroaching elemental. She wanted to scream her outrage to the heavens, pound the very rock to dust with her bare hands. Despite it all, Seraphina could not see any other alternative other than surrender.
The sprit knew her heart, her acceptance. She felt lines of fire trace within her mind, a spider's web that almost looked like the fiberoptics of a commlink, and within those glowing crimson runes she saw it.
Samael, destroy his air elemental, Seraphina ordered, her attention fixated on Gator's spirit.
The flames fled her, rushing into the monstrous cloud shape of Gator's air elemental.
At the top of her lungs, Seraphina yelled skyward, "ASTORATH!"
Gator could not help but grin when he saw Cypher finally go down. His earth elemental had spent a few seconds to reconstitute itself, his air elemental harrying Seraphina all the while. Then something changed, and he could not quite put his finger on it.
The flames of her fire elemental suddenly rushed out, leaving her uncovered as it moved to attack his air elemental. The two vanished from the material, taking their fight wholly to the astral plane. It was under orders to attack them, but tactics were still up to the spirit and…
"ASTORATH!" she yelled, and new flames erupted around her. Red like blood, fire infused her body instead of surrounding her, with bands of gold appearing at her chest, crown, shoulders, wrists, and ankles, and a pair of large horns of fire flowing from her temples upwards. It looked like she had called upon a demon of Hell itself to actually possess her this time.
Slowly, almost casually she started walking towards him, leaving black footprints behind her, her eyes blazing as bright as the sun as she glared at him. He might have added sultry to the way she walked, if she were not a ten year old girl.
With a thought he ordered his earth elemental on her to subdue her. His heart lodged itself in his throat when she seemed to casually backhand it when it got close, doing more damage in that singular blow than Cypher had managed when he bodily tackled it. Just how powerful was this new fire elemental in her?
Then she reached his barrier spell, and not breaking stride tore through it like it was shrink wrap. The ease of the act gave Gator a close answer, that even with his greater magical strength than hers he would be pushing his skill to summon or command such a spirit.
Gator backpedaled, doing what he could to make sure he still had an avenue of escape. Close proximity had revealed the power difference between these two fire elementals, where the last one had crackled under the downpour this one was so hot it was vaporizing the rain well before the drops could hit it. Even the ground around her feet was bone dry, like a blowtorch against the sheen of wet metal the rainwater was boiled away to leave dry dirt around her.
He put what power he could gather into another barrier, focused, a wall of pure energy between him and the girl. This too she tore asunder like it was paper.
He felt it when his air spirit was vanquished. He hazarded a quick look, but saw the other fire elemental had also vanished. Likely it had just completed its last task, but that still left Seraphina with her new fire elemental.
Gator thought a quick prayer to the waters of the Earth and life, calling into existence a wall of perpetually cascading water. It was as ineffectual as spitting at a forest fire, the water boiling away before it even got close to her.
Such ferocity, the raw power of her rage, he could see it in the dark magician. At his best he knew he could call spirits even more powerful than what she had bound to herself at this moment, but he would need time that he did not have.
Suddenly he fell over backwards. Scrambling to recover he saw it was Wolf he had tripped over, and Seraphina drew ever closer. He could see the irony in her name, something so angelic with the demon she had invoked…
The realization hit him, knowing what she had done with this fire elemental yet not able to believe it as he could feel this spirit was beyond her power. Gator tried a more direct spell of his own. He waved his hand, and a stream of high pressure water issued forth.
Seraphina did not even try dodging. Instead she held up one flame enshrouded hand, the water spraying with the force of a fire hose seemingly nothing more than a squirt gun.
Again Gator tried, a bolt of raw magical power, and again the energy was dispersed.
Gator had only a moment to feel her final strike, the intense flame that turned his flesh to ash. His power may have been the greater, but he had never expected someone a third his age to have the skill to bind a great form elemental of such power, let alone actually contain its power within her body without being incinerated herself.
Seraphina fell to her knees before coming to rest with her buttocks on her heels, staring at the charred remains of Gator, soot and blackened bones marking where he died. With the elemental gone the rain was free to wash over her, soaking her and chilling her to the bone as it began to wash away the charred remains of the dead man.
She felt tired, a deep and soul wrenching tired. It had taken all of her ability just to contain the invoked fire elemental. Something told her it would have been impossible without whatever guidance Phoenix had just passed on to her, opening up a new affinity of fire.
Then she saw Cypher. She wanted to stand, but only managed to crawl over to him. He was alive, if barely, but unconscious. She needed to know if he was alright, leaning over him to touch her lips to his. Tears threatened to come again when she felt his lips purse against hers.
When she finally pulled back to look at him she saw his eyes were barely open. He was looking at her, but his gaze was unfocused.
It took barely a thought to call Gabriel, her bound earth elemental. It came to her like it had in times past. She was too tired for words, but managed to give it the impression they needed its help, its protection.
It nodded its great metal head.
With her mind starting to feel fuzzy, Seraphina opened up the command software in her commlink, opening a connection to Ironhide. With a wireless order she had the truck drive over to them, doors opened.
Figuring her needs, Gabriel scooped up her and Cypher in its great metal hands. It carried them to the truck, gently depositing them in their respective seats. Once the spirit was clear Ironhide closed the doors. She thought it said something through the stereo speakers, but it sounded distant, warbled, and incoherent.
"Guy's… Place…" she heard Cypher say.
It took more effort than it should have for Seraphina to figure who he was talking about. She did manage to find Guy's commcode in her list of contacts, the number Cypher had intercepted when another runner had called the mechanic for a place to crash. She barely worked a text message to send.
She did not even feel the truck move as she watched it back away from the remains of the rock quarry. Ironhide had apparently taking what Cypher said as where they wanted to go.
The last thing she saw were the trees that flanked the drive to the main road.
From the first time the kids had made their escape Stinger had thought it was a really bad idea to chase after them. Especially considering just how much the bounty the Neo-Anarchists were looking to pay on these two. Fifty thousand nuyen for the both of them, alive, was too little when one of them had conjured up a troll sized pile of rocks and rubies powerful enough to tear apart a four ton van like it was aluminum foil.
But Gator had insisted that they had to finish the job. Though Stinger did not agree he had decided he was not going to just bail on the others.
When they had caught up to the kids at the train crossing on 70th Avenue East, Stinger had managed to convince the others that it would be best he hang back with his truck, that he could better cover them with his Shiawase Arms Police Response rifle with a magazine loaded with neuro-stun capsule rounds. What he had not told them was that the rifle was modified with a second magazine, and that one was loaded with regular bullets. If things went well he would not have to fire a shot.
Murphy had showed up, and the apparently sleeping kids had woken up at just the wrong moment. A fight had ensued, and to make matters worse the kids had managed to call themselves a ride. He had tried squeezing off a regular round at the truck, realizing after the shot that it had some kind of run flat tires. Another shot at the truck had proven equally useless. It was apparently more armored than he had expected, and he had no APDS rounds at all.
After Gator had gotten done venting about Stinger's lack of shots, finally accepting that his placement and their incidental maneuvering had ruined any good shots, he agreed to keep with them for yet another try at capturing them. Several hours later had left him on a wooded hill with what Gator had promised would be a great vantage point. Stinger had doubted that, but went along with it anyway.
The shaman had ended up lucky, Stinger figured. The spot was actually good, and though it might have been late he had actually managed a stun shot at the girl. The power of the fire spirit had proven greater than he expected, even in the rain, the spirit interdicting on the projectile and incinerating it with its very presence. The return shot had proved to be much, much better.
Stinger felt he had been incredibly lucky. After the shot he was already picking himself up to move, and the spirit's fire bolt had missed him entirely because of that. His rifle, on the other hand, had not fared quite as well. The last quarter of the barrel was a melted mess and the weapon would be useless until it was replaced. Still, it could have been worse.
He had traveled barely two kilometers as the crow flies, doing his best to stay within the stretch of trees and brush that ran relatively straight south from the quarry. Granted he was still rather close to many homes, but if he kept to the shadows and waited for nightfall he would not be noticed. The rain would also help cover his presence, with kids less likely to come out and play during such inclement weather.
The odds were good that he would make his escape. If they were not after him now they would not be giving chase at all. And as far as he was concerned Johnson could suck it if she came bitching about the failed job.
Guy sighed as she closed the garage door behind the GMC Timberwolf, swearing to herself that she was going to start charging rent whenever she agreed to let anyone hide out at her residence of business. The hiss of rain on concrete vanished when the door was finally closed.
And the only reason she had even accepted the request this time was because it came from two kids.
Guy started walking to the driver's door of the black racing truck, saying, "Just to let you know I really hate…" She stopped when the door opened and Cypher fell out.
As quickly as she could move she was at his side, well too late to try and stop his fall to the concrete floor. His jacket and clothing looked like it had been doused in several liters of acid, and he was not moving to try and push himself back up. He felt cold, looking like he had just come out of the rain despite the heat she could feel coming from inside the truck's cab.
"What the hell happened to them?" asked Hank.
"Drek." Guy cussed. She passed Cypher to Hank and rushed around to the other side of the Timberwolf. She was just too late to grab Seraphina, who had managed to open her door and had also fallen out of her seat. Her own clothing was just as melted as Cypher's. The material even seemed still pliable, like hot plastic or wet clay.
"Hank!" Guy yelled, "Help me get them upstairs!"
Guy led the way upstairs to her home, carrying Seraphina as she shivered. They went back to Guy's room where she laid Seraphina out on her bed.
The upstairs apartment was a little cramped for Hank, who stood more than a meter taller than Guy. Still he managed a crouching walk to help bring Cypher with. He passed the boy to Guy so she could lay him on her bed.
"I'll take care of things downstairs." Hank told her.
"Okay."
Guy clicked on her electric blanket, setting it to the hottest setting. Then she stripped the kids out of their wet and ruined clothing before stripping off most of her own clothing. She hissed when she noticed how badly bruised Cypher was, and not just his face from having been punched once by someone, but his chest and back were spotted all over. She found herself suddenly careful in how she manhandled him, like whatever pain her touch might induce would chase him into whatever dream he might be having now.
By the time she had gotten herself and the kids under the blankets she had to turn the electric one down. Once she had herself settled down, lying between the kids with them pressed up to her body for extra warmth, did Guy let herself finally begin to relax. She could feel them breathing, slow and regular. Part of her mused how lucky Cypher would feel if he was awake, lying next to her like this. Last year a customer had suggested that she could make some extra cred posing nude, and while inwardly she was a little pleased at the compliment she had wholly let the pervert feel her rage at the suggestion.
Part of her wanted to know what had happened to them, their clothing, and why they needed a place to lay low. The last part seemed quite obvious, someone was chasing them, had likely attacked them, brutally, but who and why?
Letting her mind drift away from the real world, Guy partly slid herself into the matrix, gathering up threads of resonance to see what the news feeds around Seattle had to say, just on the off chance that there might be something.
Jean Luc Kubdel was not exactly a legal immigrant from France. He and his wife, Cloé from Italy, had fled Europe for reasons mostly their own. Not because they were a mixed race couple (he an elf, she a human), nor because of their twin human girls, but for something much deeper.
Angela Cairns had managed to figure that out, not that it was really all that important to her. Part of her was truly altruistic, looking to help decent people down on their luck. It was partly why she had several registered felons in her direct employ. But she was also far from a fool.
In Jean Luc and Cloé she had seen people more like the salt of the earth, honest and hard workers, and both of them rather skilled cooks. Angela had given them cover, fronted a restaurant and a start to set up roots in Seattle where they could live.
And they were no fools either. Both had figured out Angela's ties to Seattle's organized crime, but even Cloé could not quite deny what she felt was a deal with the devil. Still, it had turned out more favorable for the Kubdel's in the long run.
Their restaurant was in Renton, on Petrovisky Drive just off of the 515. It was a mid-range family establishment, serving a fusion of French and Italian cuisine, that drew in solid and regular business. Even with a modest tithe to Angela they were rather well off. Of course, it was not always money that Angela asked of the Kubdels for her favor. The restaurant had a few private rooms in the back, usually used for family dinners and such, and she sometimes called upon them to use one for meetings with shadowrunners or other criminal figures.
Angela could even remember the moment things had turned around for them, especially Cloé in their arrangement. It had been less than a year since they had gotten established when some Yakuza thugs took it upon themselves to kidnap their girls. Angela had personally fronted the money for the team to rescue the girls and deliver the Yakuza a message. The head of one of those Yakuza thugs had been delivered to the Murdered Mime (a Yakuza establishment almost three kilometers south), along with a note stating that Kubdel's was protected. The rest of the thugs, and the remainder of the one's body, were never found. Aside from some heated words between the Yakuza and the Finnigan family nothing more came of it, and Kubdel's had been left alone since.
Now Angela sat in the private party room, waiting for the shadowrunners to arrive. Chairs had been arranged for them, three in total. Tomes had given her very brief details on whom to expect.
Kimber patiently stood just behind Angela's right shoulder. Jean Luc had been instructed to provide drinks for the runners, and that she would compensate him.
It was just a few minutes before noon when they arrived. Not one-by-one but all together. Cloé held the door for them as they walked in.
First was a human, tall and well built. He was solidly built, with an obvious cybernetic right hand and likely cybernetic eyes behind the solid chrome covers.
Next was another human, a little shorter and slighter of build. His jacket was open, showing an unusual pendant that hung on a silver chain. Three crystal shards hung from it, one red, one blue, and one clear. For a moment she wondered if they were real gemstones, but figured they were likely colored quartz.
Last was an elf, tall but more average of built, a bit like the second human if he were stretched up about another twenty centimeters. His eyes seemed a little unfocused, like he was following the others a little more on instinct than conscious thought.
As they took their seats Jean Luc came back with a tray in hand. He placed a drink by each of their sides
"Thank you for coming." Angela told them after taking a sip of her own glass of wine. "There was an incident at a warehouse this morning, a business I have a vested interest in. Knight Errant's investigating what happened, but I want more answers than they'll find, and sooner."
"Purely investigative?" the chromed man asked.
"Not entirely. I want to know who was involved and why." Angela answered. She already had some information herself, thanks to Tom, but she wanted confirmation that only people like these three could reliably get. And she wanted results.
"So if we manage that, depending on what we find it could mean more."
"Depending, yes." Angela answered. "For starters your pay will be thirty thousand nuyen, with a thousand now for each of you." Her eyes drifted over the three of them, gauging their reactions. All were rather calm. Good.
"Alright, we're in." he said. There had been no mouth movements to indicate any subvocalizations, so either they had planned in advance who would negotiate what terms or they somehow had a wireless communication link going. Either way it did not matter now.
Angela waved to Kimber. She walked around the table, handing each of the men a credstick. To the spokesman went a data chip.
"The data chip has the warehouse's address on it, some credentials, and a contact number to reach me at once you've solved this. Depending on the results, we can potentially negotiate for further work. For now we all will have to wait and see what your investigation results in." Angela downed the last of her wine, smoothly setting the glass down before standing. "You are free to use this room to discuss your plans for the next hour. I hope to hear from you soon." she told them before she walked around the table to leave the room. Kimber followed close behind.
Simon carefully surveyed the scene. The garage itself appeared to have been hit by a high explosive missile of some kind, if that missile had somehow managed to fly in through an open window to strike the opposite wall.
"Johnson's credentials gave me full access to the network here. Too bad it's worse than fragged." Radar said over a wireless connection.
"Get what you can and see about piecing it together." Simon said aloud. To the other man with him in the building he said, "Getting anything, Sync?"
Sync was technically a magician, but was one of those rare people who believed that 'magic' was really psychic phenomenon. The power did not exist without, it came from within, and a whole lot of other things that were routinely discredited by countless other institutions, most notably the Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Thaumaturgy.
"Something happened here within the last twelve… fourteen hours or so, that much's certain." Sync said. His eyes were closed so he could focus on feeling the 'psychic emanations' around them. "Someone performed a cleansing, so no one's gonna get anything."
"You're sure about that?" Simon asked.
"Ever seen an old flatvid that was censored, and the censor was removed?"
"Yes."
"It's like that. Everything's normal outside and in, but there's a crystalline barrier about this place." Sync finally opened his eyes. "There's just enough distortion to find, and the center was in here."
Simon was glad that some of the terminology psychics used was the same as every other magician on the planet. He knew about cleansing rituals, where an initiated magician could level out the buildup of mana around him or her, but the same would also wipe away all but the most powerful of astral signatures.
"Guys, I found something you need to see." Radar told them. Without prompting an ARO opened in Simon's field of view.
The three dimensional image was taken from one of the few internal security cameras, showing the wrecked Bulldog van before it had been trashed, and inside were two people restrained and blindfolded.
"Thought you said the node was fragged." Simon said.
"Yeah, the network's a wash, but scan this. Whoever fragged the network forgot the cache in the security cameras. Had to hack it to get it, and it's not much better, but at least there's some salvageable data."
"What else've you got?"
"At least three men, maybe four. Looks like they were just standing around and waiting."
"Extraction gone wrong?" Sync asked.
"I already did a size comparison. Those two aren't dwarves. They're kids."
"Kids? You sure?" Simon asked.
"Figure a meter-fifty tall give or take ten centimeters. That's already thirty centimeters above dwarf average. And they're not proportioned right for dwarves either. Good match for human or elfin kids."
Simon looked around again. "So, was it a meet gone wrong or what?" he asked aloud.
"Feels wrong for a meet." Sync said. "Those doors were blown out from the inside, and that van was too close to let even a Jackrabbit park behind it."
"Explosions from inside, but wiped astral traces." Simon mused. "Spells and spirits?"
Sync groaned, but thankfully kept his mouth shut about 'spells and spirits.' It was a few of their rules of the job: No magic vs. psychic arguments while on the clock, magical and psychic references will be ignored while on the clock. "If there wasn't any explosive residue, and with the astral cleansing, it'd make sense if there were powers and thought forms about to do it."
Here was another distinction of psychics against all other magicians. There were no such things as spirits and the sort to psychics. They were all called 'thought forms,' constructs of the mind given shape.
That distinction did not change what was in Simon's mind. Either the kids had a guardian angel of some kind, summoner or free spirit, or they might have awakened right then and there with their sudden magical might overwhelming their kidnappers. But there was one other thing he noticed.
"Radar, can you find any evidence of bodies?"
"The report I got says there weren't any casualties," Radar reported, "And it doesn't look like there's any kind of trace stuff to suggest someone died here."
"Outside security?"
"Am looking around already, but there's not much."
"Thinkin' they all walked outta here?" Sync asked.
"Probably." Simon said, turning to look out the garage door. "We still need answers…"
"Facial rec to try and find everyone involved." Radar said.
"I'll make something to try and guide us to the next destination." Sync added.
Simon simply nodded. They all knew what to do. And while they did their things Simon continued to survey the garage for more clues, thinking all the while about what likely happened.
"How're things?" Guy asked as she walked into the garage.
"Their truck's in alright condition." Hank answered, stepping around from the other side of the Timberwolf. "Looked like it took a few shots, but it's got more armor built into it than normal. Made a big difference for the kids. Worst was inside. Was he shot or stabbed or something?"
"No, but he's got some good scars." Guy told him, a shiver running down her spine at the thought.
"Must've gotten healed or something, 'cause there was a pretty good blood stain on the driver's seat." Hank told her. He opened the door for her to inspect the truck, and Guy could smell the odiferous cleaning solutions used to get dried blood out of the fabric.
"No other problems?" Guy asked, turning to look up at Hank.
"Only that I can't access its diagnostics to make sure everything's alright. Its got killer security."
"Nothing else?"
"Just the usual biz. No question callers, just oil changes and the like."
Guy silently nodded. For now it seemed that the kids were well hidden enough. If not that, then whoever was chasing them already knew their quarry was upstairs and simply waiting for the right moment.
"So, how're the guests?" Hank asked.
"Still sleeping." She sighed before adding, "Looked like he got really beat up. Bruised all over. Tellin' Ashlee they're hidin' from abusive parents."
"Look, if you're worried…" Hank started to say.
"Forget it. I don't want it obvious we've got something shady going on here."
Hank simply nodded. He knew how much she really disliked any shadow or underworld like business, and while that kind of business actually helped keep her business open she knew he did his best to keep things as quiet as possible. He might not call anyone know, but she knew he'd have friends here quick if the drek hit the fan, and that she would be grateful of.
She just hoped it would never come to that.
Simon carefully surveyed the scene as he stepped out of his pickup. They were apparently catching up. The carnage this time, for lack of a better word, was much fresher this time. They could see the remains of three bodies and a bashed pickup truck that looked like it was going nowhere without help.
The trail had led them in a roundabout path to an abandoned quarry. To the west was the setting sun, mostly obscured by the trees that also blocked the view to a residential area. It seemed a wonder that Knight Errant had not been called to this scene.
"Sync, are you able to pick up anything?" he asked. When he looked to the mage he saw him already doing his meditative trance, standing with his eyes closed, arms relaxed and wide, palms open with his index fingers and thumbs touching tip to tip.
Simon shook his head. Sync almost looked too comical to not ridicule. The only saving grace was that it worked. And according to a man named Murphy, "If it's stupid but it works, it ain't stupid."
So Simon walked closer to the remains of the carnage. He stopped when his foot kicked something that was not a rock. Looking down he saw the remains of a sword. The grip was bent and the blade looked like it had been melted down like a spent candle, but it was solid when he picked it up.
"There's a lot here." Sync announced. "Little hard to clear out the static."
"Try this." Simon said, walking back to Sync and handing him the sword handle. "Might be a good focus."
"Nice psychic lens, assuming it was involved in all this."
"I think it was."
"Hey, found something in that wrecked pickup." Radar announced, "Might wanna see it before doing that vision quest."
An ARO trideo window appeared in Simon's field of view, starting off with static.
"It's a bit corrupted, but there's a good chunk that's just fine."
The static resolved to show the quarry before its calamity. The view was pulled back, showing three men facing off against two kids, boy and girl, with rain pouring down heavily. Both kids looked like they had been run thoroughly worn out, both of them down on one knee and looking like they were ready to drop. In the mud at the boy's feet was the ruined remains of the sword that Simon had just found.
"Chip truth," one of the men said, "you two… have been quite the pain in the hoop."
"Glad to be your hemorrhoid." the boy replied.
The man chuckled. "Ever the wise cracker, even now."
"Why didn't you give it up earlier? I gotta know." the boy asked.
"My spirit guide pushes me to finish what I start. Nothing personal, but I also hate leaving anything unfinished." the man answered.
Another man spoke, "And finished is what you are. It doesn't matter if somehow you miraculously get away again, we'll keep coming after you, again and again and again."
"There's no place we won't find you." said the third, the one standing in the middle of the three men.
The second man stepped towards the both of them. "We'll pound the drek out of the both of you." He started pounding a fist into an open palm.
The boy was glaring at the middle man, pushing himself up to stand, and the second man pointed a club at him. There was a ripple of air, a change in the pressure and raindrops splattered to a fine mist, and it lanced out to strike the boy and sent him flying.
"Cypher!" the girl yelled.
"Wolf!" yelled the first man, "Take it easy, we need them alive!"
"Easy, omae, it was light. Can't kill him with that low level a spell." Wolf replied offhandedly. "Ya know I can land 'em precisely with these." He raised a gloved hand, flexing his fingers.
"Mother fuckers." the girl growled as Cypher slowly pushed himself back to his feet. She seemed to wobble a little as she pushed herself to her feet just before she yelled, "Flames of Hell, fires of wrath, make my rage manifest, SAMAEL!"
Intense fire erupted around her, raw and intense, like she was standing in the center of her own bonfire. It was enough to make the approaching man take a few steps back.
The first man held up his right hand, "Waters of life, quench…" he started to intone.
"CRY THUNDER!" Cypher yelled, a bolt of raw electricity arced from his black cybernetic hand at the man with a sharp crack like thunder. He turned to counter Cypher's spell, batting it aside with ease but still taking a step back.
The flames surrounding the little redheaded girl began to coalesce, with fiery wings erupting from her shoulders and a kind of eagle's head forming over her own. It was a little hard to tell if this was a side effect of the spirit's possession or not. What Simon could see was the water vaporizing off the elemental's body. It was apparently hot enough to withstand the rain, which spoke well of her own magical prowess.
Wolf leveled his club at her, and again there was another flash of electricity and crack of thunder from Cypher. It struck the club, and by the looks of it ran through Wolf like he had just been struck by lightning.
"We… Will… Not… Submit." Cypher growled as he pushed himself onto his own feet. He was breathing hard, like he had just sprinted a marathon just now. He sounded worse than tired, exhausted, so drained of energy that he could probably sleep for a week. Simon swore they both were running on sheer willpower alone at this point. It could only end badly.
"We… Will… Fight…"
Something sparked at the girl's shoulder, and a moment later we heard a gunshot. Her response seemed elegant, delicately lifting one hand to gesture towards something, not even bothering to look as she unleashed a bolt of crimson flames.
Static filled the ARO for a second or two before it winked out.
"Radar…" Simon started to say.
"Deep dive, see what I can find on those kids and their names." Radar finished.
"Sync…"
"Learn their psychic imprints, then wipe the area clean." Sync said.
Simon went back to surveying the scene. It was clear that there were three dead people. One man lay on his back, the back of his skull clearly bashed in from the blood tinted mud that had pooled around him. Another man had been heavily burned and pounded on, like someone had taken a flaming club or torch to beat him with. The last body he found was nothing more than blackened bones, and that was what he could identify as human bones in its own quagmire of blackened mud.
The building itself looked like it would hold clues. Walking around the bodies Simon went over to check it out. Inside he saw some evidence of it being briefly lived in, and on the floor the remains of three handguns. He picked one up, figuring it was a ruined Predator IV, and wondered what had happened to it. The main body of the heavy pistol was bent to the side, and the barrel had a gaping wound that still smelled of spent powder. He turned it about in his hands, and noticed that the barrel was plugged. Likely the slug had jammed, but the damage done was a whole lot greater than it should have been, especially for an Ares handgun.
He mulled the information around in his mind. Two of the identifiable bodies looked like two of the men from the warehouse. It stood to reason that the burned bones belonged to another from the same pic.
The trail they had followed, Sync had told them, had been based off the men. The kids had apparently been trying to conceal themselves as best as possible as they ran. From the trideo Radar had found in the wrecked truck it was clear the men were chasing the kids, hounding them like wolves would a wounded moose.
The kids were clearly awakened, and for whatever reason had turned to fight their pursuers here, a fight to the death. Since the dead belonged to adults it stood to reason that the kids had ultimately killed them after the trido had run out. How they had managed that was still a mystery. But if those kids were still hurt and tired after their fight this morning, tracking them down could prove to be just as dangerous to the three of them now.
"Simon." Sync said, hurrying over to him. "I got more through that sword handle. It was the boy's, Cypher's. He enhanced himself before beating the drek out of Wolf."
Sync's choice of words, 'enhanced' in this case, meant that Cypher was somehow possessed by a spirit. He knew of some traditions of magic where the spirits worked through others to exist in the material world, the spirit's power enhancing a person physically and granting it much greater resistance to harm.
"And what about the other two men?" Simon asked.
Sync shook his head. "He didn't get to 'em. But the girl's signature's all over the both of them. Some super pyrokinesis there. She's not as good as I am, or quite as strong, but she's gonna be really dangerous."
Simon simply nodded. What psychics called pyrokinesis other magicians collectively called flamethrower or fireball spells. He looked over to the charred bones, marveling at the power the young girl had at her command to be able to practically cremate an adult.
It was something he had no problem agreeing with Sync about: the girl was really dangerous.
"Guys, I found something on the kids." Radar announced. "Not much, but I found a few trace references to a kid by the name of Cypher. Girl's name is Seraphina, and they work as a team. Believe it or not, they're shadowrunners."
"Bulldrek. Child shadowrunners?" Sync asked.
"It ain't bulldrek. New York's Neo-A's got a standing bounty on them. Twenty thousand nuyen for each of them. An extra ten grand if you actually bring them in together and alive."
"Explains the softer touch those guys were doing." Sync said.
"Find out anything else on them?" Simon asked.
"Barely. Neo-A's warn that he's a killer hacker. We already know her magic. Funny, they never said anything about Cypher being a mage."
"Probably what fragged these guys over." Simon said. "Fortunately for the kids they were underestimated."
"Fate: Protects fools, little children, and ships named Enterprise." Sync said.
Simon gave him a look.
"Heard it on an old flatvid somewhere."
"Whatever. Just go meditate or something while I call Johnson on this." Simon said.
Angela sighed after ending the call. It seemed impressive, after only a little over seven hours the three shadowrunners had managed to confirm some of her suspicions in their investigation. On top of that they had managed to dig up a whole lot more than she expected.
So she paid them accordingly and told them job well done.
"So it was basically a kidnapping gone wrong after all." commented Alice. She, and their bodyguards, had been in the room with Angela. They had already known, since Angela had found out after what Tom discovered.
"Seems that way, yes."
Alice sighed. "I don't know if we should reach out to them or not. Kids or not, they're gonna need help."
"We don't." Angela strongly said. "We're gonna let them be. Let them go to ground and rest. I'm sure if they want our help they'll ask." Already she was thinking, ideas percolating on what she should or could do.
"We're not going to stand by and just do nothing, though, right?"
"Hardly. But we need more data first. This isn't something we can just blindly blunder around with."
Alice simply nodded.
"You really want to do more for them?" Angela asked.
"He killed four infected with his own two hands." Alice answered, "Even taking out a single vampire is a big deal, neophyte or otherwise. And don't forget that one was a troll ghoul."
"That won't be enough to ask the family for protection."
"But it's enough to make you consider asking?"
Angela did not answer. Instead she looked out the window and the night sky.
Guy stared into her mug of soykaf.
It had been a good twelve hours since Cypher and Seraphina had gotten there, and the two had spent pretty much the entire time relatively unconscious.
She had found very little that could help her, nothing really useful, honestly. So instead she focused on the now, ordering some clothing for them from a Kong Wal-Mart for delivery, and once she felt their body heat was closer to normal had separated them, leaving Seraphina on her bed and delegating Cypher to the living room couch. Later, when the drone had delivered the clothes, she dressed them.
Explaining their presence to her daughter had turned out turned out a lot easier than she expected. Ashlee took one look at Cypher's bruised body as he slept on the couch, gave him a light kiss on the head, and wished him well. Too bad Cypher had been unconscious the whole time. At least she had not seen the long scar running across and down his back. Guy did not want to use the story she had come up with to explain that to her daughter. Abusive parents was more than enough to mentally scar an eight year old.
Motion drew her attention, and looking up she saw Seraphina as she slowly walked into the small kitchen. She gestured to an empty chair, and the girl slowly walked over to sit. She wore the oversized pink shirt Guy had put on her earlier.
"Thanks for letting us crash here 'n all." she said softly.
"It's a fault of mine, helping whoever asks." Guy said. "Would you like something to drink?"
"Sure. Black, two sugars."
Guy was surprised, but all things considered decided to humor her. She stood and walked over to the Mr. Soykaf to pour her a mug.
"We won't stay long. We'll leave in the morning." she told her. "No sense…"
"Cut the bulldrek, would you?" Guy asked, returning to the table with a mug of hot soykaf for Seraphina. "How 'bout you start with what's been going on?"
Seraphina sighed as Guy sat back down in her chair, holding the mug in both hands. She took a sip of her drink, Guy watching her intently.
"It's more a guess, but…" She looked down into his soykaf. "You heard about that Neo-Anarchist cell that tried to wipe out Manhattan?"
Guy nodded. She had seen the trideos of a man rallying people to rise up against the corps on Manhattan. His late night rants to stir up the downtrodden of the island had made the morning news feeds in Seattle, along with reports of his failure and death.
"The leader was Sid, and we were part of a four person team to stop him." Seraphina said. "I'm the one that ended Sid. Somewhere over Harlem, I think. Anyway, we left New York 'cause the Neo-A's put a price on our heads."
"Even though you're kids?"
A wry smile crept up on Seraphina's face though sadness colored her brown eyes. "Actually, yesterday was my eighteenth birthday." She took another sip of her soykaf. "And Cypher's older. Not many know that truth of us. Doubt the Neo-A's do. Don't think they'd care."
"Can't cut the bulldreck, can you? You'll have plenty of time when you're really eighteen…"
"Bulldrek?" Seraphina cried, slamming her cup down and standing up to her full, if petite, meter-forty. Still, Guy was stunned. "Bulldrek! I shoulda hit puberty years ago, but instead I've looked like… like… this!" She indicated to herself. "Even when I was pre-med no one took me seriously 'cause I look like a little girl!"
Some movement caught Guy's attention. Just barely in the kitchen light in the hallway was Cypher, and he still looked like hell with bruises all over, purplish spots almost blending in with the blue of his blue and green Seahawks sweats. But it was his expression that really got her attention. Not a child-like sadness or shock, but something deeper. Worry. Concern.
Seraphina noticed Guy's change in attention. She turned to look, and upon spotting Cypher practically leapt into his arms. He winced in pain as she aggravated his bruised flesh, but made no complaints. The way he held her anyway struck Guy, not just wrapping his arms around her in a simple tight hug, but with his cybernetic hand at her waist and his other hand up at her shoulder, cradling her gently as she embraced him tightly. And the way he looked at her was not a simple childish adoration, but something much deeper and more complex. And this was despite the creepy feeling she was getting from Cypher.
Something tickled Guy's mind, like trying to hear the static from silent but powered speakers, just on the edge of notice. At best she could figure it was coming from the two of them. She had found the datajacks at the back of their skulls, and while Cypher's was not quite a surprise, Seraphina's was a shock. Not many mages willingly took a hit to their magical abilities for any cybernetics, even those with extremely debilitating injuries. They were not even basic datajacks, she had noticed, though similar enough with engraved script circling the anchoring rim. She had to search for the lines online to get an understanding on their meaning.
His had come from an ancient flatvid animated program from Japan; "I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes." It was part of the tag of an elite super hacker in that program, though Guy wondered if he thought his skills were on par with the character, or was aspiring to be just as good.
Hers was even older still, coming from Faust; "One mind is enough for a thousand hands." She had pondered if there was a deeper meaning in this line to Seraphina, or if maybe it had just been chosen because it sounded interesting. Knowing she was a magician kept pushing Guy to believe there was something more to the girl's choice.
"I… I'm alright." Seraphina finally said softly, sniffing back the tears.
"You sure?" Cypher asked her.
Seraphina managed a weak smile, nodding.
She could see the fatigue in the both of them. It wasn't like when her daughter was worn out and crashed at the end of the day after hard play and such. This was the prolonged weathering, the runner at the end of a marathon, the utter exhaustion after being pushed beyond their limits, and something normally completely alien to preteens.
"Just so you know your cover story, you're hiding out here from abusive parents." she told the two. "Now go, get some sleep. We'll work things out in the morning. I'll sleep on the couch."
"Got it." Cypher said, nodding to Guy and gently guided Seraphina with him back to her room, noticing a slight limp in his right leg as he carefully walked. Guy could not help but shiver at the sight of his long, linear scar as it ran straight from his right shoulder down towards his left hip. She wondered if she really wanted to know how deep that wound had gone.
Guy sat there in silent contemplation for several minutes. She was finding it hard to believe the girl's statement about their ages, but even their actions and attitudes towards each other seemed more than just precocious. That question followed her to the couch and into her dreams.
She sat by herself on the roof of the Space Needle, facing south. She was just back enough on the top to be out of the light, her black clothing simply adding to her magic of concealment so she could be unnoticed.
The lights of Downtown twinkled in the night to her left, the A.C.H.E. looming in the distance, and the Central Basin of the Puget Sound stretching out like a glob of inky blackness, barely illuminated by the cloud covered waxing moon as it neared the western horizon. It smelled like the clouds were threatening to bring more rain to the city, but she knew well enough that it was more the smell of the bay, the wind coming off the Puget Sound, that carried the smell of water in the otherwise chill winter night.
Joelle had been quite pleased initially when the Neo-Anarchist leaders had placed bounties on the heads of the shadowrunners responsible for Sid's death. That had changed to despondency when she found out just how much the bounty was, and it worsened when they had managed to leave Manhattan before they could be dealt with.
When she had learned that someone had found the two kids in Denver, Joelle could not have been happier. Well, maybe if they were on their way back to Manhattan instead of further away to Seattle, but she could understand. Even the kids could not be dumb enough to return to Manhattan if they knew the Neo-Anarchists were pissed at them.
But by the time she could arrive in Seattle it was too late. The kids had gotten lucky and escaped capture from the bounty hunters that had been hired to "greet" them, and she was furious. It had taken all of her willpower to keep it in her mind that she knew where they were, still in Seattle.
It had been several months since, but she had managed to collect money and contacts enough to try and pay some shadowrunners to capture and deliver the two kids to her.
Clearly things ended up not going as planned, and it infuriated her to no end. Worse, she wanted to go back to Manhattan to deal with certain people who had told her about those two kids. The boy was a hacker, that much was certain, but there were those who had also believed he was a technomancer. Even after what she had seen in Manhattan she had a hard time believing that the boy was awakened. She had seen his aura, and while there had been something to it she had not seen before she knew it was not some form of latent awakening. However, she could not deny the evidence that had come before her. She had seen the results, the proof of his magic, and she had tasted its signature.
It would take some time before she could try again.
It was only a matter of time.
