Blood & Neon (updated 2019/10/18)
As far as the neighborhood kids were concerned it was now officially summer. Seraphina sat on top of a picnic table, holding her jacket closed against a chill breeze as it washed over her while she watched Cypher and some of the other boys around his apparent age play a game of football. Despite the height of the noon day sun in a cloudless sky the Seattle summer was turning out to be much cooler than she was accustomed to. It had something to do with the ocean currents, how arctic waters chilled the air as it moved south along the continental coast.
The finer details of meteorology did not matter to her. All she knew was the north wind brought moisture and that brought cold.
Not for the first time she adjusted the zoom feature on her new contacts, the lenses digitally making what she was looking at appear much closer at her mental command. It would not help her for casting any spells at long range, but she was practicing something that might help in other ways.
And so she got a closer look at Cypher and the boys at his sides as they lined up for a play. He and the two, and a few more on his team, were topless in the June sunshine. Unlike the others, however, his chest and back bore scars. There was the pronounced one at his right shoulder where a Vory sniper had gotten him almost two years ago. Close by were three smaller ones where he had been shot a month later. There might have even been more if she had not healed him.
But the other kids did not know this. What they had been told had been kept simple, for several reasons. All the kids were told they had been tortured by the Vory smugglers they had been rescued from. Naturally the kids had been curious, asking all sorts of questions and posing some crazy theories as their imaginations went into overdrive, but in the end the two had successfully managed to come off as too distraught to talk about it.
Seraphina kept her gaze focused on Cypher as the boys erupted into action. Cypher managed to weave between two shirted boys and broke away from the group. He had gotten a good distance before another threw a football high into the air, but a little too high and hard so the ball was well out of Cypher's outstretched fingertips as he tried to catch it. As he turned, leaping to try and grasp the ball, she saw the long scar running from his shoulder to the base of his spine, another reminder of another night when they were nearly killed.
"He's not so creepy when you get to know him." commented Beth. The zoom feature of her contacts reset itself when Seraphina glanced at the dark haired girl, noticed her gaze was still rather intent on Cypher as he trotted back to the others with the football in one hand. Beth had invited her and Cypher to her birthday party at Cedar Rivers, and Seraphina was sure she was one of the first kids to get over the creepy feeling that Cypher seemed to exude by his mere presence. Her home was one of two that shared the fence to their back yard.
Beth's step brother was also among the boys, on the Skins team. She thought he was kinda cute, though maybe she might have a crush on him if she were a lot younger. On the flip side, he was quite distracted by any pretty girl, be it Seraphina or any of the others in the neighborhood.
"Hey! Look at what I found!" cried another neighbor girl, Danielle. She and her older brother (on the Shirts team) lived just next door, south on the same street.
When Seraphina turned to look at what Danielle was so excited about, she shrieked.
Cypher slowed his breathing as he trotted over to where the football had ultimately stopped. He knelt down to scoop it up, taking a moment to look around as he slowly stood back up. Not that he was paranoid and looking out for trouble, though part of that was in his mind, but to just take in a bit of the simpler beauty of a nice neighborhood. The grass of the park was soft and strong, with no patches of mud or dirt to scar it, the trees were full of life, and the sun felt nice and warm on his skin.
No, if anything it was more nostalgia than anything.
He did not take too long, turning to head back to the line of scrimmage so they could setup for another play. That was when he noticed one of the other neighborhood boys, Nate (Shirts team, wearing a Seahawks jersey), seemed a little distracted.
"Hey, Nate!" Cypher called out, "You okay?"
"Huh? Yeah." Nate replied, recovering quickly from whatever fugue state he might have been in.
And not for the first time his implanted commlink popped up an alert of a device it could not identify. Cypher had to mentally click it to make it go away, noting that the mystery device had only shown up for a few seconds before disappearing.
"C'mon! Hurry up!" called one of the other boys.
Cypher and Nate both picked up the pace.
There was no score keeping in this game. Practice was more or less what they were doing. Several of the boys wanted to try out for the school football team come the next school year, so those willing to play were also here so they could try and drill several plays.
Cypher did not mind this too much, having missed out on sports like this when he was their age. He had kept up just barely through the physical education courses, having more of a head for numbers and tech than anything. Now was a bit more like a second childhood (or third, if you counted last summer in Queens), though he had to act to not reveal his true age and intellect to the other boys.
Now that was not to say the others were complete idiots. They still felt something when he was close by, some more than others. The other kids in Queens had noticed it too later last year, after his near death experience. But he had been nothing but friendly with all the neighborhood kids, and it was paying off.
They had set up for the play again, and were just about to start when an ear piercing shriek filled the air. They all stood up out of reflex, though Cypher's gaze when straight to the picnic table where Seraphina and some of the neighbor girls sat watching them. Something was off, so he bolted straight for her.
"Isn't he pretty?" Danielle asked, holding up a massive moth in her hands.
Pretty the insect might have been in its shades of woodland browns, but Cypher knew that was the farthest thing from Seraphina's mind. He took hold of her, pulling her up off the bench seat to turn her away from the insect to look at him. She was breathing hard, and terror filled her eyes. Then he pulled her into a tight hug.
"What's wrong?" asked one of the boys as they all came over to the table.
"Panic attack." Cypher answered, still holding onto Seraphina tightly, her body stiff against his.
"Get that away." hissed Beth.
"But…" Danielle started to protest.
"Git!"
Danielle looked rather dejected as she hurried off back towards the trees. Cypher was not upset with the younger girl. He figured that she had forgotten, again, that Seraphina was afraid of insects.
Seraphina had not always been terrified of bugs, but like many people they did unsettle her in the past. After seeing the experiments and all the hybrid insect spirit hosts in Manhattan last summer she had developed a strong phobia of pretty much any creep crawly insect or spider. She seemed to do pretty well, as long as she never saw them. The only time he had seen her react worse to seeing any kind of insect was when she had seen Roger Willis, former editor for NBCNN in New York City, for the wasp spirit he really was.
"It's okay. It's gone." Cypher whispered into Seraphina's ear. He had to repeat himself before she began to relax.
"I don't get it. Just a moth." Beth's step brother, Rick, said.
Seraphina suddenly put her arms around Cypher, squeezing fiercely.
"You don't have to." Beth snipped back, "It's 'cause they were kidnapped."
Seraphina shifted her grip, her hands running up his back and he felt her fingernails scrape over the long scar running down his back. It made him shiver. She whispered, "I wanna go home."
"Okay."
It had taken a lot longer for Seraphina to ultimately calm down from Danielle's presentation of a poplar sphinx moth than Cypher expected. So much so that she had kept close to him for most of the evening. He was glad that she had not truly freaked out and used the shot from her personal defense sprayer on the poor little bug, or Danielle. As far as the other neighborhood kids knew the sprayers were really just remote panic button bracelets. To the kids they were like a safety blanket, but Cypher knew it was probably much closer to the truth as far as Seraphina was concerned when it came to insect spirits.
It was now well after dinner now as Cypher sat on the family room couch, idly plucked the strings of his guitar, slowly working his way through a simple practice song. In another chair sat Seraphina, legs crossed in an attempted lotus position so she could meditate. Furtive glances told him it was not working too well. She had even dug out her Bust-A-Move doll, clutching the furry bear-like drone tightly to her chest. The last time he had seen her holding it so was when she had discovered Roger Willis was a wasp spirit, hugging it like it was a life preserver for her sanity when she didn't have him to hang onto.
After finishing the song Cypher stood and headed around towards the kitchen. He paused at Seraphina's chair to gently put a hand on her shoulder. She did not look away from whatever it was she was looking at. After a bit he moved on from the room.
Steve was standing at the top of the stairs, almost as if he had been waiting for Cypher.
"Is she gonna be alright?" he asked.
"Probably." Cypher answered with a sigh. "I just don't know how long she's gonna be like this."
"But you have seen her like this before?"
Cypher nodded. "About a day and a half to get back to… Well, as normal as we can get."
"And everything was okay?"
Again Cypher nodded. He figured it was best that Steve did not know that he and Seraphina had ultimately killed the insect spirit that had triggered her near catatonic state in the first place.
This time Steve sighed. "Hopefully the neighbor kids'll understand."
"They should. G'night." Cypher told him, heading off to his bedroom.
The guitar was propped up in a corner before he started stripping out of his clothes. Those went into a laundry basket before he climbed into bed. He was just on the edge of sleep when the door creaked open.
Cypher silently watched as Seraphina quietly walked into his room, closing the door behind her. Neither said anything as she stripped out of most of her clothes too, letting them fall where they may. All Cypher did was hold up the blankets for her to climb into bed with him. They pressed themselves together like a pair of spoons, Seraphina still clutching the Bust-A-Move to her bare chest.
He hoped that pleasant dreams would find her tonight.
Neither of them had gotten much sleep. Joss had apologized for calling them at such a late hour, but had a good paying job lined up for the both of them. Seraphina's near catatonia lifted a little when he mentioned a job to her. She had silently agreed.
The meet with Mr. Johnson was up in Redmond, a nice neighborhood where one typically doesn't go without body armor and a few large caliber handguns, or maybe bodyguards. For Cypher, he was glad that it was not too far off the 520, by the loading docks of an abandoned home improvement store on Redmond Way. Still he and Seraphina had both called a spirit to have ready, just in case.
They were not the first to arrive, nor did it look like they were the last. The place was not too deep into Redmond so there were places where artificial lighting pushed back the darkness, but the growth of trees that nearly surrounded this back lot cloaked the area in shadows. There was barely enough starlight for them to see by.
There were three others already there and as they walked up to them from the parking lot Cypher figured none of them were Mr. or Mrs. Johnson based on first looks. They were all male, two humans and one ork, and dressed more street casual than business professional. Cypher took a moment to extend himself into the astral, to read their auras and maybe learn a little something about them.
First was the ork, and he turned out to be such an easy read that Cypher almost did not believe what his senses were telling him. The ork's aura was severely damaged, a web work of life holding together around a collection of augmentations that went bone deep, his body struggling to maintain itself. Otherwise the ork was quite bored and almost uninterested in the two of them as they approached.
The first man was lean, wiry, and seemed to be curious about them. His aura was also somewhat damaged, more so than his own, but Cypher could not quite see from what. Overuse of drugs was one possible answer.
The other man was a bit bigger. Not body builder bigger, but more broad in the shoulders and all like your handsome, biosculpted trideo star, with a very short beard on a squared jaw.
One thing all three had in common, as far as Cypher could tell, was that they were not awakened.
"Looks like it's gonna be the usual." Cypher softly said, turning his head just a bit to direct his voice towards Seraphina. Her shoulders were slumped and her head down. Part of him wished that she had not wanted to go, to just stay home and do… whatever, to get a good night's sleep and try to get over the incident with the moth the previous afternoon. She still wanted to be alone with her thoughts so much that they were not connected through their usual encrypted chat.
"The usual?" the wiry man asked.
"And what, pray tell, would that be?" asked the bearded man.
"That we're the matrix and magic support." Cypher answered. With a thought he brought up his running scanner and analytics programs.
"Really? You two?"
Cypher identified a hidden commlink on each of the three, but turned his attention to the bearded man for an in depth scan. As the results started scrolling in his vision he said, "You're all ghosting your 'links. Yours," he pointed to the bearded man, "is a Novatech Airware, running Iris Orb as the OS, basic software but you've added a commercial grade encryption to it. A speed bump if I really want in."
"Not bad," the bearded man said, "but how do you know it's not a honeypot?"
"Maybe if you had another 'link," Cypher replied, "or had that Airware slaved to something better, but you don't. Just got a few peripherals and that's it."
"Sounds legit." the wiry man said.
"But you also said magic support." the bearded man said.
"You're biosculpted," Seraphina softly said, "and got some other bioware implants, probably all to make you more… appealing." She said that last word with an edge of disgust. Then she turned to the wiry man, saying, "You've got wires and your mood disgusts me." Then to the ork she said, "And you're almost dead you've got so much chrome and shit in your body."
"Got any other tricks, cutie?" the wiry guy asked.
"Forget it," the bearded man answered, "unless you want her to call up a spirit to send you to the nearest street doc."
"Alright, alright." the wiry guy cried out, throwing his hands up into the air as he turned to walk away a few paces. "So where…?" he started to ask.
Everyone went silent when they heard the crunch of car tires on cracked asphalt.
Cypher turned to see who was driving up to them. Even in the dark his eyes were able to pick out the lines of a black Mitsubishi Nightsky limo pulled up beside the other vehicles. After it parked four men got out, two from the front and two from the back. All were large, likely augmented, and dressed like business bodyguards. Cypher could tell they were checking out the area before letting their client out of the safety of the armored limousine. It had taken a little bit of doing, but Cypher did find that they were running a private network together on ghosted commlinks.
Apparently their paranoia was satisfied when an older gentleman got out. He almost looked like your classical grandfather, squared features and gray hair with hints of brown that was neatly trimmed short. Casually he walked towards Cypher and the others, giving them all a critical look, his gaze settling extra long on Cypher and Seraphina. He took this to mean that Mr. Johnson had not been given the heads up about their childlike appearances.
"I have a person that needs to be taken care of." Mr. Johnson said without preamble as he stepped closer. Cypher and Seraphina stepped closer to the others to make a semicircle facing the older man, putting Seraphina at the end and Cypher between her and the ork. "It needs to be done quickly and as discretely as possible. You'll each be given a certified credstick with twenty-five thousand nuyen upon satisfactory completion of the job."
Cypher looked over to Seraphina and noticed that Mr. Johnson had her attention. She quickly glanced to him and gave a quick, short nod.
"That's it?" the bearded man asked.
"Unless you're accepting the job." Mr. Johnson replied.
"Alright, we're in."
"Might as well, yeah." Cypher added.
Mr. Johnson's gaze fell over the five them. When he appeared satisfied he pulled out a small commlink and thumbed the touch screen. It was a Meta Link, as cheap and as low end as you could get before buying disposable commlinks. When it went active Cypher could tell it had also been modified as its signal strength was a mere tenth of what it was really capable of; just strong enough for everyone present.
From the Meta Link came a three dimensional ARO of a man, a trideo of the target person. By his features it was a little hard to tell if he was from one of the NAN or Aztlan, the business suit he was wearing had no corporate markings and could easily be found in one of a thousand boardrooms across the continent. About the only standout feature were his eyes, which were clearly cybernetic and fashioned in a way that looked like a collection of cameras were inserted into his eye sockets. Along with this image was access to additional information stored in the Meta Link, which Cypher downloaded to review.
"This is Joaquin Hernández." Mr. Johnson told them, "He is an Aztec shaman and a skilled combat mage."
"Just how skilled are we talking about?" the bearded man asked.
"Says in the data," Cypher read, "that his signature spell is called 'Ice Lance' and that he's been able to hit it up gun barrels at a hundred meters."
"Up gun barrels…?"
"As in there's an icicle sticking out of your rifle's barrel. Says he's got a special sensor and targeting glove that helps him hit like a sniper at long ranges." Cypher told them, reading the data on Mr. Hernández.
The wiry guy whistled.
"So why all the data on this guy?" Cypher asked.
"He's the target." Mr. Johnson answered. "All the data I have for you to scan to take care of him."
Maybe someone else would have figured it out sooner, or maybe gotten the sinking feeling about this job sooner than Cypher did.
"So it's a hit." Cypher said, "The five of us to try and kill one man?" He could just about feel Seraphina's mood grow as cold as a Rocky Mountain blizzard as he spoke. Ever since the double job involving Sottocapo Omar Chavez of the mafia and Lin Yao of the Yellow Lotus triad in Denver the two had agreed that they would never do an assassination job again. They had even taken this so far as to do their best to minimize the possible number of casualties when they took the job to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge the following year (which NYPD Inc. had claimed was a miracle that there were no fatalities). Now killing gangers and others to defend themselves, usually the 'kill or be killed' kind of situation was one thing, and Seraphina had come to accept this facet of life since the first time she had blown the head off a Godz gang member in self defense.
When it came to dealing with Roger Willis it had been something completely different. He was not a person, but a wasp spirit, a hostile being from another dimension that saw humanity as a resource.
However, killing a person just for the money was a line they were not going to cross.
"Yes. I want you to kill this man." Mr. Johnson sternly confirmed.
It only took a few thoughts though for Cypher to cut out the data from the Meta Link, to wipe the data from his own implanted commlink, and to blacklist that particular commlink to make the AROs he could see disappear. He wholly expected Seraphina was doing the same thing. "Yeah, we'll be going now." he said, "Good luck."
"What?" Mr. Johnson asked.
"Hold on." the bearded man ordered.
Cypher stopped when the ork stepped up into their path to their motorcycles. He did not turn to face the other man.
"You're in this with the rest of us." the bearded man continued, "We'll be needing her magic skills if we're going…"
"If you're going to." Cypher interrupted, looking up at the ork's face. "We're off the job."
"Now that's rather rude of you to do. You've agreed to the terms, you're committed to doing the job." Mr. Johnson told them.
Cypher's gaze flitted over to Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson had taken a few steps away from the runners and the four men that were his bodyguards had moved in to protect their client. They gave him the impression of cobras ready to strike. With a thought he called the air spirit he had summoned earlier.
Ready, my lord, it told him.
"Yeah. Be rude to bail on us." the ork said, drawing Cypher's attention again. He did not like the grin he saw.
"Oh, you want rude?" Seraphina asked with a snarl.
Cypher could feel it, as close as he was to Seraphina, the pull of power as she was about to cast a spell. Though he lacked the power and skill himself, Cypher quickly gathered a fair amount of power, shaping the spell with his mind and channeling the energy through to his cybernetic hand. Almost as quick as a cobra he struck the ork standing before him with as vicious as a left hook to the side as he could muster.
Orks are tough, tougher than the average human by far. Cypher had no illusions that this cybered up ork had a few layers of body armor, dermal plates implanted into his flesh, and a heavily reinforced skeleton, all of which would mean that a blow from his cybernetic hand just might leave a bruise. In fact, he was counting on the ork believing that.
The ork took the physical blow, not even flinching. Despite the crackle of magical static that Cypher knew would have surrounded him, a visual aspect of any magic he worked, the ork did not even try to dodge the punch. His smug look turned to surprise and pain as he dropped to one knee from the blow. Cypher stepped back to give the ork some room as he held his side with one hand, using the other to keep himself from falling face first to the asphalt. His teeth bared, Cypher fought back the urge to let the ork experience another shot of that spell.
Seraphina's demonstration of her magical prowess had been much more powerful and impressive to say the least. Cypher saw Mr. Johnson's four bodyguards were down, three of them lying on the ground while the fourth had gone to one knee like the ork had. None of them looked to be in any condition to fight. He hazarded a look to her. It looked like Seraphina was in a bit of pain, but she was still upright with a glower of absolute defiance on her face. Slowly she started walking towards their motorcycles, doing her best to conceal how painful such movement really was.
Cypher turned to look at the other two humans, realizing that he must have had an angry look on his face when they both took half a step back. Mr. Johnson was a little more stoic when Cypher looked back to him. Tersely he said, "We were never here." before following Seraphina.
"I still can't believe you let that kid sucker punch you like that." Slink said, grunting as he helped his ork friend up onto the examination couch.
The ork groaned as his body came to rest, still holding a hand to his side where the little blond kid had struck him. "Just a weedy little human boy." he grunted. With a hiss of pain he took in a deep breath and said, "How's I supposed to know he was magic?"
"You can cut that drek, Rusty, since we all got played." Slink countered.
"Just settle down, both of you." an elderly ork woman said as she walked into the room, holding a wand like device in her hands. "Now sit still while I use this. You're supposed to have titanium in your bones." She calmly walked over to Rusty's right side, pulled his hand away, and started waving the wand over his side. Slink did his best to wait patiently for the results.
"I don't know how it happened, but two of your ribs are cleanly broken." the doctor reported. "It's going to take some doing to get them back in place."
"I… uh… I'll wait outside." Slink told them. He quickly left for the waiting room up front. He could hear Rusty arguing with the doctor about the broken bones behind him.
It was still early, early enough where the street clinic was not technically open, and Daemon was the only other person there. When he noticed Slink coming in he gestured with a finger that he still needed a minute. Slink instead walked over to a counter and pulled the decanter from a Mr. Soykaf and poured himself a cup. He had added a healthy dose of sweetener and powdered creamer substitute and was on his way to sit down when Daemon finally sighed.
"How's Rusty?" he asked.
"Two broken ribs." Slink answered. He was surprised when Daemon did not react with surprise. Instead it was more of an understanding expression that came over his face. "You're not surprised?"
"I was just talking to our fixer," Daemon said, "same one that called the… kids. Wouldn't tell me much other than he understood why they reacted the way they did."
"So what's the plan with them? They costed a good job. Not like they'll last long if they're never gonna kill anyone."
Daemon chuckled.
"What's so funny?"
"Fixer said those two are hardened killers." Daemon answered.
Slink felt his eyes widen. "Bulldrek." he cussed, recovering his composure, "If they were…"
"They're killers, not murderers." Daemon interjected, his eyes turning to focus on Slink to give him a hard look. "Those two won't take wetwork jobs, and the fixer told me if he knew this was gonna be wetwork, honest to ghost he wouldn've called someone else."
"And I suppose we're just gonna let 'em walk?"
"Yes." Daemon said with dead seriousness. "And make sure Rusty gets the scan. We're gonna let Johnson be pissed, and we're gonna walk away from this one. Fixer's gonna help us out on this, make sure we can get work and all that."
"But he's not gonna pay us."
"Right."
Slink sighed. "Alright, but we're gonna have to have something really good for Rusty."
"We can remind him that the girl laid out the four bodyguards around Mr. Johnson in three seconds, and if she wanted to she could've just as easily torched them." Daemon said. "We also don't know what spirits they had there, though I was told she's got a few super nasties at her beck and call."
Slink felt a chill shiver run down his artificial spine. He had almost forgotten that most spellslingers also had spirits at their disposal, and a powerful enough beast or earth spirit would be worth much more than a wired troll in a fight.
"And don't deny it, that chill you felt when he glared back at us." Daemon added. "I saw it. And I felt it." He looked away before adding, "Almost like the devil himself was gonna goad him into attacking us next."
Seraphina accepted the steady hand down to their makeshift bed in their workshop safe house. Cypher could tell she was still in pain from her magic earlier, with an all too obvious groan as she settled herself against his chest so they were lying together like a pair of spoons.
"You threw around a bunch of spells last week. What's different about this time?" Cypher asked.
"Too much too fast." she tiredly answered. "Had to hit them… hard… and…"
"Like what you did to that air spirit at the party?"
Seraphina grunted an affirmative. "But… bigger. And doubled."
Cypher had learned quick the toll magic had on the body, and while he had been blessed with an exceptional mental fortitude in handling that power he was still unable to work any spells as powerful as Seraphina could. Her stun spells earlier would have laid low the weakest of minds, but if he could cast that same spell he would have to work it twice to get the same results. And then there was the extra difficulty in quickly casting a spell or working more than one spell at a time, which required even more power and was inherently more risky.
"We'll just take a day." Cypher softly said, "Rest up. We'll go home tomorrow."
A little rest seemed like a good idea.
One of the many things Seraphina liked about virtual reality was the ability to be in a world to do things while letting her body rest and heal. Unfortunately her aches and pains followed after her.
The virtual world she was in now was a recreation of an ancient video game, set in a retro-futuristic post apocalyptic setting, revamped to fit the races of the modern world. It had drawn plenty of flack and hate from many of the pro-meta groups, but that had only helped fuel its popularity in the long run. It certainly did help when game modders came out with "fixes" to the racial metatypes, so that not all trolls were super mutants and all orks raiders, but if she was honest with herself she really did not care. Deep down Seraphina wondered if she had been born an ork or a troll instead if she would have cared at all.
Regardless of that her virtual body was of an attractive adult elf with curves to die for, actually enjoying the weight of her ample breasts as her military chest piece pressed against her body. It was the kind of body she wished she had, that she sometimes dreamed about when she grew weary of looking like a little girl, flat as a washboard (something she had heard, but had no idea what a washboard was).
She stood at the edge of a relatively short cliff with a clear view of the nuclear blasted landscape. It was supposed to be late in the year, but the wind was rather warm as it came blowing in from the north. Many trees looked dead and lifeless, especially with the pine trees looking like dark stilettos as they reached for the sky.
Hefting her semiautomatic shotgun, Seraphina started down the trail that the navigation icon said would take her to the next settlement. The easy path might have been more enjoyable if the real world soreness in her joints could not be felt here.
She had no warning when a creature burst from the ground ahead of her, a scorpion the size of a small car, with a dark crimson carapace with jagged edges. It snapped its claws at her a few times before it rushed her, whipping its stinger up and over its body.
Seraphina had frozen in shock at the monster's sudden appearance, and did not recover in time to try to jump aside from its slashing claws. Her first reaction was to scream in pain as the stinger plunged into her shoulder, scraping the edge of her breast plate. As the game recorded the venom being injected into her, it disabled her right arm. She tried to shift the shotgun to her left hand as the scorpion pressed its attacks. She managed to get off a single shot, a wild blast of pellets sent into the air, before the scorpion's claws came down on her.
Her vision was reset to the game's title screen, and almost at the speed of thought she ejected herself to the real world. Despite a spinning head, pounding heart, and aching body she forced herself to sit upright. Reality was their safe house, a hard mattress, and a thin blanket more than large enough to have wrapped up her tiny body like a burrito.
She flopped back down, panting heavily. She just felt too tired to want to move right now. Maybe another nap would be a good idea. She rolled over onto her side to try and get comfortable, and ended up curling up into the fetal position before crying herself back to sleep.
"How's the oil level?" Cypher asked as he held the bottle of oil, slowly pouring it into the fill spout of Ironhide's engine.
"Just about in the sweet zone." the truck answered.
Cypher waited a few more seconds before he stopped pouring. He put the cap back onto the bottle before setting it aside. Just as he was putting the oil cap back on he noticed Seraphina meandering into the room, wrapped in their blanket.
"Hey, how ya feelin'?" he asked.
Seraphina nodded, grunting something.
"It's probably a bit cold, but I got pizza." he told her, pointing over to a counter and a cardboard box with a Street Pizza logo on it. "Soda's might be a bit warm, too." He then climbed his way out from underneath the truck's hood and collected his tools and other things. Once he had everything out he dropped the hood with a rather satisfying bang. After cleaning off his hands he helped himself to his fourth piece of pizza.
Seraphina sat on a stool by the counter, slowly nibbling on a piece of pizza, looking lost in thought.
"Ya know, I hear getting too much sleep's not good for you." he said.
She grunted. It sounded noncommittal to Cypher.
"Everything alright?" he asked as he walked around the other side of the counter, stopping when he was directly across from Seraphina.
Only her eyes twitched to acknowledge his presence there. "I wasn't just sleeping." she told him, speaking softly. "I… I tried to do some other stuff. In VR."
"Something happened?"
He could see Seraphina fighting to maintain her composure, but it was a losing battle. The piece of pizza fell from her grasp as she burst into tears. Cypher bolted around the counter to her, taking her into his arms.
"I thought I could… I tried to…" she sobbed.
Not quite sure what to do, Cypher just held her as she wept. It took a while before she finally seemed to calm down.
"I tried playing in one of those VR remakes," she told him, "and when this giant scorpion popped up… I… froze. It was a fucking game and I froze!"
Cypher sighed, but gave her a reassuring squeeze. "We'll figure a way through this." he told her, even though he really had no idea how they would manage that.
Maybe it was time to start learning a little psychology.
Among the other things Cypher had done that Saturday had included a call to Tomes to give his side of things regarding Johnson and the assassination job he wanted. He was not really surprised at all when Tomes had told him he already knew. Cypher was glad that there would be at least one fixer they could still get work from, though he had a feeling MacCallister would also understand the situation as well (he too knew their condition of no wetwork jobs).
Once that had been set it was then to see about getting an introduction with someone who could help provide him with ammunition for his drones. Tomes told him that would take a bit of time, and that he'd get back to him in a day or two.
So with some time to burn, and Seraphina pretty much doing nothing but resting to recover from that morning's magic, he took Ironhide out to get and food and drinks, and supplies for an oil change. He had just finished that when Seraphina had come out of their bedroom and had her breakdown. Considering the things they had faced in the past he could understand how much she hated herself for being terrified of anything that remotely looked like an insect. Too bad the hard part would be trying to find a therapist that was sympathetic to shadowrunners.
Sunday mostly came and went without incident, and late that evening they both decided that it would be best to head back home. It was more than an hour past sunset, the waxing crescent moon almost due west, as they drove down the last street to the driveway of their Renton home. Like the rest of the homes on the street the only illumination came from the various street lights. All in all it looked like no one noticed their after curfew return home.
Steven and Tanya both were waiting for them in the kitchen when the two came in through the door. Not staring at the door in, but just sitting at the island counter with worried expressions.
"Oh crap. What happened?" Cypher asked. He was pretty sure what was occupying their thoughts was not for either of them.
"Nate's been kidnapped." Steven somberly told them.
As quickly as he could think, Cypher brought up data on all he knew about Nate, his older siblings, and his parents.
"Why would someone kidnap him?" Seraphina asked. "Not like he's Damien Knight's kid or something."
"How's the rest of the family?" Cypher asked.
"Not really doing all that well." Tanya said, "It was like some kind of trid. A truck plowed into them, and while they were stunned someone grabbed Nate and they got away in another car."
"So whoever did it planned it." Seraphina said.
"And didn't care how loud they did it." Cypher added. He clamped his eyes shut as a memory came to him.
"And Knight Errant?" Seraphina asked.
"All we were told was they're looking into it." Tanya answered.
"Hey, you alright?" Steven asked.
"No." growled Cypher through gritted teeth.
"Catherine?" Seraphina asked.
"We're going after them." Cypher declared, opening his eyes to look at the others. "We're bringing Nate home, and gonna make those kidnappers pay."
"Drek, this is serious." muttered Steven.
"Just where's all this coming from?" asked Tanya.
Cypher sighed deeply. "Two years ago I was with a team to… extract a ten year old girl. Job went without a hitch, and in the confusion just after school we got her out without anyone knowing what happened. Sedated, we got her to the drop off to another team, got paid, and went our separate ways.
"Lone Star managed to track her down to the safe house, and after a standoff the other team let her go. She was halfway to the Star when she was shot in the head."
Tanya gasped.
"There was a firefight and the other team was wiped out." Cypher continued. "A month later Johnson hired us back to try and track down the girl's killer. We did, and he was executed."
"So… Why the job? Who?" Tanya asked.
"The girl's father was yakuza." Cypher said, "Why the job was to draw him out of hiding. Turned out, he was the one that shot her."
Steven groaned. Tanya gasped and went a shade pale.
"And before you try saying it, I don't care that it's not the same or whatever." Cypher snarled, "I'm not gonna sit by and do nothing." And with that he turned for the basement stairs. He went straight to where they kept their handguns and ammo when they were not on a job. He pulled out his gun belt and put it on. Then he pulled out a rather ordinary looking Predator IV handgun. He pulled the slide back to check the weapon's action.
The Predator itself had belonged to Kazuya "The Dragon" Hotomi, Yakuza assassin and the man that had killed his own daughter just over two years ago. On the job that had ultimately led to his capture Cypher had taken the handgun from him. It was nothing special, really. Completely unmodified and looking like any other of the thousands of similar pistols that Ares had manufactured.
But there was more to that one particular handgun to Cypher. Hotomi had infuriated him to such a primal level that he had been more than willing to pound the shit out of Kazuya once he had learned everything. He had even managed a substantial punch on the assassin before his sister had pulled him off.
Since that night he had used it, actually shot it, only six times. He still had the magazines that had been taken off Kazuya, one of them only half full as he had never bought more armor piercing ammo for it. One of the full magazines was loaded into the pistol while the other two he shoved into a pocket.
"You're going to go out now?" he heard Seraphina ask.
"Shit like this goes down quick." he told her as he holstered the pistol, "You've seen those crime trids, how quickly a kidnapping goes to Hell."
"And we're not gonna get it done in half an hour." Seraphina countered.
Cypher forced himself to stop, putting his hands at his sides. He could feel Seraphina stepping up closer, gently putting her arms around him to hug him from behind.
Then the magic came. He could feel the energy flowing to him from her, feeling a familiar refreshing sensation come over him. It was the same spell she had worked on him daily for several weeks when he had done a programming binge to create his current battery of custom programs that they now used. Only now did he realize how tired he really was.
They stood that way, together, just a while longer. Cypher figured she had redone the same spell for herself.
"You have any idea where to start?" Seraphina asked.
Cypher sighed. "Was thinking about where Nate was grabbed." He paused, then added, "I suppose you've already sent a spirit out to look for him?"
"Yeah." she told him, slipping his arms from his body as she took a step back. "But you gotta do something, and maybe we'll get some clues."
It turned out that the area where Nate was grabbed was not all that far away from their neighborhood. On the west side of Central Avenue North was a recreational park with a few tennis courts, a baseball field, and a few other facilities just north of an auto wrecking yard. On the east side of the avenue was a strip mall with various businesses. Cypher and Seraphina parked their motorcycles in the park's parking lot. With them, discretely in the astral, was an air spirit that Cypher had managed to conjure after some effort, and it would help conceal their presence until the next sunrise.
"Not many cameras around the park." Seraphina silently commented.
"Looked like there was a few over by the mall, but I'm not sure a lot of them have any coverage on the street."
The two kept close to the fence as they walked up to the sidewalk. Fortunately the mall was rather up-to-date with their security cameras, and they were just serious enough with their matrix security to keep out novice and casual hackers. Once he had chosen one and worked his way through the firewall he found that all of the cameras went to a centralized node. His icon zipped down the data lines to that node to query it for the day's security recordings. He softly growled when he saw the presented info.
"What is it? What happened?" Seraphina asked.
"There was an intrusion in the camera network. Whole thing's corrupted for a good thirty seconds, and it's not just the cameras that might've caught something, but the whole network."
"Sounds quick and sloppy."
Cypher noted the access ID of the intruder and saved the note in his internal commlink. He figured it was fifty/fifty odds it would be any good. Even early on, not long after his emergence as a technomancer, he had learned to quickly and frequently change his access ID after a hack. If the hacker was even halfway competent he or she would have already changed their own access ID, and maybe even those of the rest of the team involved in the grab. Just because Big Brother might be on sensory overload did not mean that everything went unnoticed.
"It is." Cypher agreed as he logged off of the mall's security network. "Though honestly I might've done the same if I was too pressed for time to get the job done. As long as evidence is obliterated, even if that's obvious."
"So we wait for my spirit?"
"Let me send Tosh a message. If he's up and all, maybe he can get us a copy of the police report."
"Couldn't you just hack Knight's network?" Seraphina asked, turning to look from the street at Cypher.
"Maybe, but that's a lot riskier than a strip mall with some rent-a-cop security spider. Not like the details would be publically available."
"And his… retirement fund?"
"Cheaper than the headache a speed hack will probably give me."
Despite the late hour they got a call back from Detective Tosh Athack. It was just after midnight now and he had gotten around to calling during his break. Ten minutes and three hundred nuyen later (which Cypher covered himself) they had a copy of the report on Nate's kidnapping. Unfortunately there was not much hard evidence, and though a lot of witness testimony some of the statements conflicted with others. Cypher managed to not vent his frustration on Detective Athack with the lack of any real leads.
But it turned out there was no more time for that as Seraphina's spirit had apparently located Nate. She took the lead as it guided her north.
Everett was not always a shit hole of a district. Before Mayor Samantha Tillian managed to draw in corporate interests in the 2040's the area had been a quiet suburban area of the Seattle Metroplex. Tax breaks, cheap land deals, and more drew in businesses, casinos and resorts, and industry.
All that changed during Crash 2.0 in 2064, when land ownership records, tax records, and just raw data was lost or corrupted beyond recompiling. Those businesses that could still afford to moved out, and others went under. In the nearly ten years since the place had underwent another kind of transformation to urban slum, with shadier casinos, smugglers taking over some of the warehouses and docks, and the homeless moving in to squat where they could.
Now that was not to say that Everett was as bad as Redmond or Puyallup. There were still parks where it was relatively safe to go at night, some neighborhoods were not completely decayed, and there was some industry and such that actually helped Everett avoid hitting bed-rock bottom.
But those nice places were pretty far from where Seraphina had led them. The buildings were not all that tall, and the matrix revolution seemed to have overlooked the area. Rather than using augmented reality and wireless networks for advertising ease a lot of places used harsher fluorescent lights and neon tubes that buzzed and filled the dark night with a variety of hellish glows.
The engines of their motorcycles rumbled with their restrained power as Seraphina slowed and turned down an alleyway, the building at far side of the street behind them proudly declaring itself a strip joint (if you believed that) with orange neon shaped to resemble a naked and buxom lady, animated to show off everything she had to offer, and filling the alley with a burning orange glow.
Seraphina passed a dumpster that was past overflowing with trash and pulled up next to the building behind it. Cypher was just behind her, noting that they were pretty well hidden from the street.
"Feels like this's too easy." Cypher commented. Deep down part of him wanted it to be easy, so they could bust in, kick ass, and help get Nate home.
"I know." Seraphina added softly as she climbed off her motorcycle, named Sunstreaker. "If I'm doing it right, I'm not finding anything wireless where I think Nate's at."
Cypher called up his wireless scanning program and checked the area for wireless devices. Basic matrix coverage was virtually nonexistent in this area, with no relays that were hardwired to the backbone of the matrix infrastructure. What few devices he was able to find were likely ghosting commlinks. Considering the neighborhood they were in they had switched off their regular commlinks, using radio frequencies outside the normal range to connect their implanted commlinks to their motorcycles.
"Yeah, looks like you're doing it right." Cypher told her, adding a slight smile.
"Now I don't think he was behind a ward." Seraphina told him, "But that doesn't mean there isn't a magician or spirit or something anyway."
"Astral recon?"
Seraphina nodded. She cleared away some of the trash that had built up against the foot of the building before she sat down, then she and Sunstreaker both vanished.
With a thought Cypher accessed the camouflage functions of his own clothing and motorcycle, named Sideswipe. He then turned to sit sideways on Sideswipe so he could better look down the alley and forced himself to be calm and patient.
The oppressive feel of urban decay was much stronger in the astral side of things, Seraphina noted, as her spirit self floated up and away from her physical body a meter or two before she twisted around and passed into the building behind her.
In light, objects cast shadows. In the astral, everything physical had a shadow. Those shadows were flat, dull, gray things that she could not affect in any way, but they could block her senses, hide things, both living and spiritual from her. Now the shadows hardly hindered her movement, and in the astral she could move rather quickly, but if she was not careful she could slam herself into a ward.
But that was not to say that the astral was nothing but dull and gray. Everything living had an aura, a radiance that existed as a kind of light into the astral. It cast no shadows, and she could pass right on through the living as well as anything physical. But if she was not careful here too she could attempt pass through something that existed in the physical and astral at the same time. Hell hounds and barghest had quickly become popular choices in paracritter security measures because they were dual natured. She hoped this crew had hell hounds, as a barghest could instill magical fear to those in the astral as well as the physical. Assuming they had any paracritters at all.
After covering the first floor and finding nothing magical, Seraphina noted where the closest door was and the fastest path to a flight of stairs going up. This was the way she went, moving carefully just in case, and stopping when she was just about "eye level" with the second floor. She saw a hallway and four doors. She picked one and slowly floated to it. She was so close to the floor that she could see underneath the door itself.
Suddenly the door was thrown open, and before Seraphina could react a foot came down through her head. The person walked on, heedless of the intruder he had just stepped on.
Seraphina turned on the spot to watch the person and read his aura. He was frustrated about something, relatively light on the cyber as it worked through his entire body, and most important to Seraphina he was not awakened.
The man crossed the hall to the door directly opposite of the one he came out of, produced an old fashioned, physical key, and used it to unlock the door. Seraphina followed him.
There were three others in the apartment family room, and Seraphina gave each of them an aura reading. Most of them had cybernetics, and the only one of them that did not was awakened and looked to be, at best, as strong as Cypher. Now if only she knew if that person was a magician or not.
When it looked like the four people were going to just hang out, Seraphina moved deeper into the apartment. There she found a fifth person in a bedroom, lying in bed as if asleep. This person was moderately cybered, and she thought she spotted a few wires coming out of what were likely datajacks in the side of his skull. She moved on to check out the rest of the place.
After finding nothing more of interest in the second apartment, Seraphina went back into the first, floating more like an ethereal ghost as opposed to a cockroach.
There was no one in the family room or the kitchen, though she noticed a strange door at the end of the hallway. Carefully she floated up to it, gazing close to try and figure it out. Turned out it was a haphazardly installed door with a lock. As good an indicator of a prison as she had ever seen. Instead of floating right on through the door she went to pass through the wall beside it instead.
She found herself in a bedroom with three small and sleeping forms. None of them were Nate.
Moving on she found two more bedrooms, only one of which was occupied. Nate was with them.
Seraphina sank straight down through the floor and zipped back to her body.
Cypher's first clue that Seraphina was back was hearing her move. He waited until she was situated with her body and her surroundings.
"I found him." she told him, "And there's five other kids."
Cypher growled.
"There's a five person team watching them." Seraphina added, "Only one is awakened, and about your strength. There's no magical security anywhere."
Cypher looked down the alley, away from the burning orange neon. He had chanced using Buzzsaw, a yokujin drone he had modified for reconnaissance and tapping into fiber optic lines, to take a look around while Seraphina had done her astral recon.
"I did a little recon myself while you were out." Cypher told her, "Found a van that matches some of the descriptions in Nate's kidnapping report. I haven't tipped Knight off about it, yet."
"So we could try and let them handle this." Seraphina mused, "But then… What's going to happen?"
Cypher sighed. "Yeah, I know."
"And I know there's no way you're gonna back off on this. So let's just do it ourselves. But please, let's focus on getting the kids out."
Cypher's hand went to the Predator at his hip, fingers brushing over the rough textured surface of the slide. "Yeah, we can do that."
First thing Seraphina did was to conjure up another air spirit, something a bit more powerful than the others she had called earlier. Then she led the way around the building, through a carport, and to the door she had found from the inside. While he followed, Cypher went ahead and sent Athack a tip-off about the van (which they passed in the carport) and its location.
The door itself was old and worn, the lock busted, and the hinges squeaked just a little when Seraphina gently pushed on it. Looking around Cypher found no security cameras or any other kind of security measures that he could identify. With Predators drawn they carefully slipped inside.
The bottom floor looked much like a small apartment building. The door opened into a simple hallway with four doors and a flight of stairs going up. Seraphina immediately went for the stairs, her Predator in a double handed grip and pointed up ahead of her as she moved. Cypher watched behind, keeping the Dragon's Predator in both hands but down.
"The bottom floor was empty." Seraphina silently told him, "It's two of the apartments on the next floor they're using."
Cypher did not reply as he followed her.
"Kidnappers are behind the other door. This one," she lightly padded the doorknob, "is where the kids are."
"Seems odd they're not holed up in one place."
Seraphina tried the doorknob. It would not turn.
"Let me try." Cypher told her, putting one hand onto the doorknob. He closed his eyes, focusing on the mana he would need for his shatter spell, gathering all the power he could muster before unleashing the destructive energy into the doorknob. Despite the camouflage afforded by their clothing, his spell was visible as the power rushed down his arm to his hand and into the doorknob.
Nothing happened.
Again Cypher pulled in power for the shatter spell, the ripple of energy racing down his arm and into the doorknob. Still the doorknob remained.
Cypher was half tempted to simply shoot the doorknob, but reminded himself that the gunshot would be heard by everyone. Instead he took a deep breath to force himself into a state of calm, envisioning his spell puncturing the doorknob as he gathered up the power and unleashed it for a third time.
The doorknob crumpled in his hand, and wrecked mechanical parts and screws came away as he pulled his hand away. All it took was a good shove and the bolt inside broke, sheared off in the frame.
"I'll watch for the others." Seraphina told him, "They put up a door to lock off the bedrooms."
"Got it."
Cypher still moved quietly and cautiously as he made his way through the family room of the apartment. Spotting the added door was not all that difficult, and depending on how he wanted to force it open could be quite easy. He opted to go for a quiet method, and again to use his shatter spell to destroy the lock. Again it took three tries before anything happened, destroying the lock completely on the third casting. He wondered if Seraphina would have had as much trouble if she knew the spell.
The improvised door squeaked a little as Cypher opened it. He decided not to worry too much about that he left it wide open and went to one of the bedroom doors. It looked Nate was not in the room he chose.
Quietly Cypher crept up to one of the beds. A girl of maybe seven or eight years old, with curly locks of brown hair, slept peacefully. He knelt down beside her, quickly putting a hand over the girl's mouth. She was instantly awake, but any scream she could have made was stifled.
"Shhh." Cypher hissed, "I'm here to help. You wanna go home?"
The girl's eyes darted about, trying to make out Cypher's appearance through the active camouflage of his clothing. She was cognizant enough to nod.
"There's a van downstairs. Just outside the door. You know where it is?" Cypher asked, pulling his hand away.
Without saying anything the girl nodded.
"Good. The doors are open and the cops are on their way, and we need everyone in it, okay? Everyone hides in the van while the cops take care of the bad guys. Got it?"
Again the girl nodded. Cypher stepped away as the girl climbed out of bed and went to one of the other two. He half listened as she roused the other kids, not quite as stealthily as he had, but she did get them moving. And without even having to be prompted she went over to the other bedroom to rouse the others. He snuck ahead of them, making his way out first.
"Kids are moving and I'm having them go to the van." he silently told Seraphina. "They'll hide in it till Knight gets here."
They both stepped clear as the kids came out of the apartment, the girl with the brown curls leading the way as she hurriedly took the stairs down one-by-one. Nate was third, and looked like he was the oldest of the bunch as he tried to play big brother to a couple of the youngest looking kids in the bunch.
Cypher thought it was going to work, that by the time the kidnappers realized the kids were gone they could be long gone from this place. Or Knight would be busting down their door.
The last kid had just started taking the stairs when the other apartment door opened. The person was human, male, with short cropped dirty blond hair and a week's worth of scruff on the chin. His black leather jacket and other clothes also looked like they had not been cleaned in just as long. When he noticed the kids rushing down stairs he pulled a handgun, yelled, "Stop!" and squeezed off a round.
The kids screamed and panicked, rushing as best they could to get away. Cypher's eyes tracked the shot to see who got hit. His jaw dropped open when he saw it was the girl with the brown curls. His gaze flashed back to the man that had shot her, lifting his Predator, and shot the man in the head.
A new person came rushing to the apartment door, but Cypher was already making his next move. He focused his rage, his anger, directing it downwards towards the earth, practically demanding a spirit to come to him.
And right away one did answer, flowing into his body like magma to a volcano. It was powerful, the limit of what he could even dare try and summon, and he did not even bother trying to contain or restrain its power as it filled him.
He used it.
Like a sprinter off the line he rushed the person at the apartment door. The other guy was too slow bringing a handgun up, and Cypher shoulder checked him at enhanced speed.
It only got uglier from there.
Seraphina's first instinct was to go to the girl that had been shot. It was quick and easy to work a levitation spell on herself, the fiery aura of her totemic mask revealing her as she descended. "Keep going!" she yelled at the kids, and thankfully they did not stop.
But for the girl that had gotten shot it was already too late.
She turned to look back up at Cypher, and when she saw the blur that was him tackle another person with inhuman speed she knew that it was best now to not interfere. It was a drawback to having Lion as the totem, sometimes insanely driving him into combat. What really scared her was when it seemed that Cypher simply let himself go.
She barely heard a footstep behind her before she felt a pulse of power directed straight at her. More of a gesture of defiance, she spun towards it with a hand upraised as if to deflect it.
From somewhere a man had appeared behind her. He was simply dressed, something easy to try and blend into a crowd. He had short cut black hair and swarthy skin, and his eyes were obviously cybernetic, looking like a collection of cameras. From how he was lowering his right gloved hand, Seraphina figured that he had just tried casting a spell on her.
Then an ARO appeared by his face, identifying him as Joaquin Hernández, and it took just a second for Seraphina to realize that here was the man that she and Cypher had been hired to track down and kill. She and Cypher had wiped the data that Johnson had provided them, but his name and face were still stored in their facial recognition database, and she remembered what Cypher said about him being a combat magician.
"So, you've got…" Joaquin started to say, stopping to quickly bring his hands up in a similar defensive gesture just as Seraphina unleashed a stunbolt spell right back at him. At the moment she hoped to just dissuade him from fighting them.
Joaquin nullified her spell just as simply as she had done his.
They heard gunfire from the floor above them, and while it seemed that the man took pause to listen, Seraphina steeled herself for a harder and faster double stunbolt. The last time she had worked magic like this she did so to quickly disrupt a powerful spirit that had practically materialized right in front of her.
Maybe he was caught off guard from the sudden double stunbolt, but it looked like he weathered it just fine.
"I don't know who you are, but I can't play around with you." Joaquin said as he lowered his arms. Then he flashed out a hand as he threw another spell at Seraphina.
She was already on the move, pushing out with her left hand as she rushed to one side, pushing away the destructive spell. Ice shattered near her feet and frost quickly covered the floor.
"There's no sense keeping that invisibility spell on yourself." Joaquin told her, "Ultrasound doesn't care about light."
Seraphina said nothing, and instead brought up her left hand and her Predator, drawing in more power for a spell and focusing it straight at Joaquin. A quick stunbolt was one thing, but a quick bolt of fire took a lot more power. A crimson streak launched from her open hand just as she squeezed the trigger.
A neat tuck and roll got Joaquin out of the way of being shot and most of the fire, the rest of her spell being drained away. Then he brought his hands together and unleashed another spell right back at Seraphina, too fast for her to get out of the way. The kinetic blast hit her straight on, knocking her down and shoving her into the far wall. Her vision seemed to wink out for a moment, turning to a collage of blurred objects.
"So you're not just some gutter punk." Joaquin told her. Seraphina could hear his footsteps as he approached. Slowly her vision was already starting to clear, and it looked like he was holding his right hand out ahead of himself. Were there sensors built into it, like Cypher's old fake cybernetic arm had?
A humanoid spirit appeared behind Joaquin, an ancient Aztec warrior with a jaguar's head, an oval shield made of stretched hide, and an obsidian tipped spear. Its shield was held up as if to deflect an attack from behind Joaquin. There were a couple of thumps against the wall and stairs, and it tried to stab its spear at something she could not see. Cypher?
Ignoring the spirit, Seraphina tried aiming at Joaquin with her Predator in both hands when it looked like he was distracted by the spirit's sudden appearance.
Joaquin had not been distracted, and though he actually tried to avoid being shot he stumbled back as if he had actually gotten hit.
Something struck her hand, knocking her Predator away. Looking to her attacker Seraphina saw a water spirit. It was built like a serpent, thick like a constrictor, and covered with iridescent scales of a dark blue like deep tropical ocean water. Its head was blocky, and its mouth was hanging open to show long and slender fangs.
"This is getting quite tiresome." grunted Joaquin. "If you just roll over and die it'll be so much simpler."
"Go fuck yourself!" Cypher yelled, his voice sounding more alien and gravelly, just before a humanoid made of rock and gravel came hurtling at the jaguar headed warrior.
With a thought Seraphina set her air spirit on the water snake as Joaquin's attention shifted away from her. Behind the other two spirits she thought she saw a blur of motion that could only be Cypher. Rather than try to shoot Joaquin, Seraphina dropped her pistol and drew her knife. She rushed Joaquin, yelling an incoherent battle cry.
She must have startled Joaquin, who turned back to face her. His eyes stared incoherently at her as the hardened blade pushed through his gut. Then his back went taught as Cypher struck from behind.
Seraphina was none too gentle or careful when she ripped her knife back out, taking a few steps back as Joaquin dropped to his knees. With a few mental clicks she turned off the camouflage setting to her clothing, the holograms concealing her head disappearing in a flickering cascade of pixilated light.
Cypher slowly stepped around, also becoming visible. He stood just to Seraphina's right, holding a matching knife in his right hand. And like hers it was coated in Joaquin's blood.
The three of them just stood there in silence for a little bit. Then Joaquin softly went, "Oh." before falling over to one side.
The jaguar headed warrior and blue serpent spirits vanished.
"Well, fuck." Seraphina cussed as a realization hit her.
Cypher said nothing as he knelt down next to Joaquin's body and used the dead man's jacket to wipe his knife clean. Seraphina said nothing, simply watching him as he sheathed his cleaned knife. Then he stood and walked over to the girl's body and dropped to his knees. She let him sit there in silence as she cleaned off her knife on Joaquin's jacket.
After putting her knife away she softly walked over to Cypher and knelt down beside him. She opened herself up to the astral to look at him and saw a turbulent swirl of emotions within him, the unstable anger and frustration that was threatening to erupt. The last time she had seen his aura like this was two years ago, just before he had gone on the job to track down Catherine Westmore's killer. Saying nothing, Seraphina put her arm around Cypher, leaning into him.
They sat that way for a little while before Seraphina broke the silence. "We should get going soon. I'll take care of things."
"What's the situation?"
A Knight Errant officer turned around to look at empty space before glancing down to see "Proud Mary" Evans of the Special Crimes Task Force. She was far from what one might expect in a Knight Errant officer. Stocky for a dwarf she nearly seemed as broad as she was tall. The Amerind dwarf wore a tight black shirt underneath a baggy set of BDU's that could not hide her bulky and oversized cybernetic left arm. The datajack in her right temple flickered in the red and blue flashing lights of other Knight Errant patrol cars, washing away the burning light of the neon orange stripper that normally would be illuminating the area on its own.
"We've still got people interviewing the kids," the officer told her, "but from the looks of things it's an escape gone wrong. We found them hiding in the kidnapper's van, of all places. Told us that's where they were told to hide until we got here.
"And at least two people managed to sneak in to break the kids out, and as they were making a break for it one of the kidnappers happened to discover them. He shot, hit one of the kids. That's the most sense we're able to make. After that… Well, best you go see for yourself."
"That bad?"
"Maybe worse."
"Survivors?"
"Two." The officer bobbed his head towards the spot where several patrol cars were parked. "Might be able to talk to one of them. Heard the other's a babbling idiot."
Mary grunted her thanks and made her way over to the parked cruisers. There she got another officer to show her the one prisoner that currently was not sedated and strapped down to a stretcher. He opened and held the door for her.
The prisoner was female, elfin, and looking strung out on a potential number of drugs. Her coppery red hair was greasy and stringy, doing little to hide a pair of datajacks at each temple. Her pale clothing was stained with food, and she smelled like she had not bathed in months. The officer provided Mary with the woman's details they had acquired thus far.
"Tess, you still chippin' or can you talk?" Mary asked.
Tess's eyes twitched first, dull green orbs that did not quite focus on anything. "You t…ta…talkin'?" she asked.
"I am." Mary answered. "Can you tell me what happened?"
"I was j…ja…jacked in. Then I got d…dumped. C…Came out… and this… blur shot… Then it… it…"
"You just saw one of them?" Mary asked.
Tess nodded vigorously.
"But it was just a blur."
Again Tess nodded vigorously. "Like that Predator thingy in those trids."
Mary grunted and took a step back. The officer closed the door to his car. "She's been like that since we found her." he told Mary. "Not sure if it's the dumpshock or what."
"Is it bad in there?" Mary asked.
"Four dead, shell casings everywhere, almost like a war zone. Tess identified three of them as her partners in all this. Probably too chipped out to try and lie."
"I'm looking to see this for myself." Mary told the officer. Silently he escorted her into the apartment building. There Mary saw a body. He was cleaner and dressed a bit more nicely than Tess, and looked like he had been in a fight for his life. His body was sprawled out near the bottom of the stairs in a pool of his own blood. Behind him and just about hidden beneath the stairs was a door that Mary figured went to a basement level. Kneeling at the body was a medical examiner.
"We're not sure who he was." the officer told Mary. "Best we know is that he was a magician. His 'link had a fake SIN and a fake magician's license."
"Any theories as to what happened?"
"Can't be certain just yet," the ME answered, "but based on where the knife wounds are in the man I think a pair of dwarves tag teamed him, one from in front and the other from behind."
"And you're basing this, how?" Mary asked.
"Location of the wounds. One's in his abdominal cavity, and looks like it's going up. The other's in his back and going down. Their placement's too low for any meta but a dwarf to be likely."
"Right. Thank you." Mary said before following the officer up the stairs.
The next body was still lying there. This one looked to Mary to be likely one of Tess's crew. Unlike the other man, he had a single gunshot wound to the head and no other obvious injuries.
"Tess identified him. Went by the name 'Whipcord.'" the officer told Mary. "Had a Colt Coralsnake in his hand. Got one shot off, and we think he shot one of the kids. Just the one shot to the head. He was the lucky one."
"He was lucky?" Mary asked.
The officer simply waved for Mary to follow him into one of the apartments. Inside were two more dead humans, with someone from the crime lab working at something of interest in one of the walls.
The other two dead had not yet been moved, but it was how they were lying that had caught Mary's interest. Both were sprawled out and separated like they had been trying to coordinate against their attacker. Not only had they both been shot multiple times, but it looked like someone had also pounded on them heavily.
"We've already rendered the room and secured their guns," the officer told Mary, "and it looks like they both got several shots off. It doesn't look like they hit anything, though."
"How can you be so sure?" asked Mary.
"Partly because they both had small caliber handguns and we pretty much dug out as many bullets from the walls as we found shell casings on the floor." answered the CSI officer. "From the other slugs and casings I found, the mystery party used armor piercing ammo from a heavy caliber handgun. Probably a Predator or Manhunter."
"Any ideas why these two thugs look the way they do?" Mary asked as she knelt down to get a closer look at one of the two men. "This isn't just some killing. This was vicious, personal."
"Could've been a five kilo sledge, cybernetic fist, or magic." the CSI answered. "Mage on site identified some spell effects on the other apartment where the kids were being held. Said the spell simply destroyed the locks. Easy enough to use that kind of spell on people to do some serious damage. Found no signatures, though, so someone cleaned up."
Mary snorted. "Thanks." she gruffly said before standing to turn and leave on her own. She did not see much more to do now than give her report to Tosh.
Among the things Seraphina had taken as part of her 'cleaning up' had been the singular glove that Joaquin had been wearing. Turned out it was attached to a high end commlink and had a few sensors built into it. It had made her think of the fake cybernetic arm that Cypher used to wear.
Seraphina had taken it upon herself to hack the commlink that had been worked into Joaquin's glove. Cypher was more than glad to let her take the lead, working with her to the side to watch and help in case something happened. After a few hours at the slow, probing approach she had managed to break in. Decrypting it did not take too long, though he ended up fronting the money for an Aztlaner Spanish linguasoft so they could actually understand everything. Unlike most commlinks where the operating systems were programmed to show one of a hundred different languages, this one had been coded for only one. Otherwise there had been no traps or data bombs.
Like many people, Joaquin had put most of his life into this commlink. They had found another, simpler commlink in a pocket and had quickly found it was meant for public use. They too did the same, a basic commlink for show, with their identity on it for law enforcement to read from, used for general purchases, and more.
As for paydata that they could try to sell to the Mr. Johnson they had walked from the previous Saturday night, they found nothing. What they had found instead was a collection of magical data, numerous formulas for many spells that Seraphina figured Joaquin knew, and more. On top of it all the glove was not just a basic sensor package like Cypher had used but something that also contained a variation and specialized version of a smartgun system. Seraphina figured it out when she tried the glove on. Though it was oversized for her petite hand, the smartgun system had automatically tried to connect to her implanted commlink and the smartlink in her eyes. After some research, and an experiment, they had found the secret to Joaquin's accuracy with combat magic.
But that was not quite as important to Cypher now, as the summer sun beat down on his bare back, the grass wet beneath his fingers as he lined up with the other neighbor boys for a football play. He glanced over to his left, seeing Nate there as he too readied himself for the play, completely unaware that one of his rescuers was just beside him.
