Chapter 13

A trickle of dirty brown water splattered into the kitchen sink, slowly strengthening into a stream of fetid liquid. The building's ancient plumbing system groaned and quivered for a moment before the flow evened out. I held my glass under the faucet and watched as it filled with the dun-colored water like so much sewage gushing into a gutter. As soon as the cup was full enough, I turned it off and grabbed the pill bottle off the counter, shaking out a pair of tablets into the palm of my hand. I held the glass aloft, watching as the swirling motes of dirt and grit slowly settled to the bottom like the little pieces of drek and refuse that always seemed to filter down through the muddied waters of the 'plex.

Finally I sighed and bit the bullet, popping the pills into my mouth before chasing them with the glass's contents. The water washed down my gullet like a flushing toilet, and I had to grit my teeth together against the foul taste that invaded my mouth.

"What was that?" I heard Sugar ask from behind me.

I turned to where she stood at the entrance to the kitchen, her arms folded across her chest and a weary look plastered upon her face. "Longhaul," I said with a choking breath as I dumped the rest of the glass down the sink. "Sleeping isn't going to be an option any time soon. This'll help keep a body in motion for a couple days. You should probably take some too."

"Maybe later," she muttered, moving across to the room's single grime-streaked window. She gave a sigh, gazing out the glass at the pre-dawn cityscape as the sounds of the Pakistani couple next door filtered through the building's paper-thin walls.

"Something wrong?"

"No," she said without looking at me.

"Sure doesn't sound that way."

"It's nothing."

"C'mon. Talk to me."

She sighed and turned away from the window. "I don't like it—any of it, any of this. We should have just turned her over to Michelson as soon as we laid hands on her and ended this clusterfrag once and for all."

"Waiting a couple hours isn't going to kill him," I retorted with a snort.

"Yeah, but it might kill us. You know the first two rules of running the shadows—never trust a Johnson and never deviate from the contract. Right now you seem to be doing both. It isn't good business, and it isn't smart."

"He can wait," I repeated more forcefully this time. "I want my answers. I want to know why she stabbed me in the back."

"Goddamn you, Peaches," she swore, her face contorting into a mask of anger. "That thick skull of yours is going to get you killed some day."

"I could live with that," I growled. "At least then I wouldn't flatline with my head buried in the sand."

"Yeah, well what about me? What about Blitz and Diana? Are you ready to see us dead to get your answers?"

"It won't come to that. Once I find out what I want to know, we'll turn her over. I promise. No one else is going to die."

"How can you know that?"

Before I could respond, another voice spoke from behind us.

"Ahem."

Diana stood framed in the doorways, arms braced on either side of the portal. "When you two are done, you might want to come in here. She's awake."

I gave Sugar a momentary glance and then nodded to Diana, following her into the living room. There Diana and Blitz had taken a chair from the kitchen and set it up in the middle of the room in front of the coffee table. Rei sat in it, bound hand and foot with enough duct tape to hold someone twice her size. At the moment she had a pillow case cinched over her head and around her neck.

Slowly I moved toward her, drawing the Predator pistol I'd claimed earlier that night. She stiffened as I approached and leaned forward to set the pistol on the table.

"Who's there?" she breathed in that voice that sounded as if she was trying to enunciate just a bit too much.

My hand went to the holster at my shoulder and drew forth the Warhawk with calm deliberance. I reached out, grabbing a handful of hair and pillow case all at once. She flinched like a dog that had been beaten one too many times as I thrust the revolver against the side of her head, painfully grinding the muzzle into her scalp.

"Wh-what do you want?" she stammered fearfully

"I want to know why you fragged us over—before I blow your brains over the wall," I sneered.

"What are you talking about? Who are you?"

I jerked the pillow case off of her head, flooding her light-deprived eyes with a deluge of illumination. She squeezed her eyelids together, averting her tear-streaked face from the overhead lights.

"Take a good look," I growled.

It took her a moment, but finally she cracked open her slanted eyes, raising her gaze to meet mine. Her mouth gaped as realization struck. "Oh my God. Peaches? What's going on? Where am I?"

"What's going on?" I gave a cold laugh. "You of all people should know."

"But—"

"Shut the frag up, bitch," I growled through clenched teeth. "I'm asking the questions now."

She shut up. Bewilderment and panic showed in her eyes. She was a good actor. That was for sure. Too bad I wasn't in the market for bulldrek tonight.

"Now why'd you do it?"

"Why'd I do what?" she asked, trying to sound genuinely confused.

"Things getting too hot for you? Did you decide to slot and run and cut your losses?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Cut the crap. We know all about it—the investigation, the nanites, all of it. We also know how you tried to geek us to save your own ass."

"What? No, of course not!"

"Don't lie to me!" I dug my hand in my pocket and pulled out the two rumpled Polaroids I had taken back when this all started. I shoved them beneath her face. "You want me to believe these goons just dropped in on us for a fragging tea party? Come off it. Michelson told us everything."

"What did Michelson tell you?" she asked, looking around at the others in the room.

"Only that you've got the Corporate Council all over your ass. And that you're looking for a way to save your own hide before they take away your company and lock you up for a decade or two."

"And that we were the only thing that concretely linked you to the theft of those nanites," Diana said coldly, speaking for the first time since the interrogation began.

"No, that's not true!"

"Another lie," Diana snarled.

"Yeah, just like you lied to me when you told me that apartment didn't exist anymore—that you were going to take care of things. But you didn't do any of it. You didn't have any intention of it. You just wanted to have your own little pocket ace."

"Where are you getting all of this? I deleted them. I deleted all the records. There wasn't anything left!"

"That's bullshit and you know it." I looked over to Sugar. "D'you still have that file?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Hold on a sec." She went back into the bedroom and came back with the Ayanami memo in hand.

I took it from her and held it before Rei. "Now what do you have to say?"

She paused a moment, scrutinizing the crumpled paper. Finally she looked up at me. "I didn't write this."

"Yeah, right."

"Peaches, you have to believe me," she implored

"I don't have to believe jack shit."

"You really think I sent those people after you?"

"What else am I supposed to think?"

"Wake up, Peaches. I was the only one in Ayanami who knew about your place. Why would I try to kill you when hardly anyone knew about you, let alone knew where to find you? And if I was going to kill you, I sure as hell wouldn't have sent a couple of two-bit hitmen to do the job. I know you, and I know what you can do."

I was silent, mulling over her words.

"Peaches," she continued, "Michelson set us up. He was the one who set up this whole investigation with the Corporate Council. If he can get me prosecuted for industrial espionage, he can get me out of the way and seize enough shares of the company to gain control of it for himself. He wants to make a display of it with a public trial, and that's why he needed you—to flush me out. And I'm sure he knew that the only way you would get involved was to make it personal."

Outside the apartment I could hear the sound of a low-flying helicopter passing over. The window frames rattled from the reverberating noise, but the helo passed on and the sound began to fade.

"Why would he need us?" Sugar asked. "I know at least a dozen other shadowrunners who could have done the same job we did in tracking you down. It doesn't make sense for him to stir up a bunch of drek on the off chance that we'd be able to find you."

"He needs more than hearsay if he's going to convict me in an actual trial. He needs concrete evidence. He needs you." She leveled her gaze at me.

"And he can't just manufacture more evidence like he supposedly did already?" I scoffed.

She shook her head. "He needs something that will stand up to scrutiny—like you. You were there Peaches. You participated in the whole operation. You don't think they can't just get a magician to rifle through your mind and find the information they need?"

I opened my mouth to give Rei another retort, but Diana shushed me to silence.

"You hear that?"

I strained my ears, dialing up my hearing amplification and select sound filter. Then I heard it. It took me a moment to realize what that whoosh-whoosh sound was, but then it hit me—the chopper was headed back. Something wasn't right.

"Blitz," I ordered, "Take a look outside and see what's going on."

Blitz moved to the window and pulled the blinds apart, peering out into the early morning night. He craned his neck toward the sky, seeking some glimpse of the whirly bird above. "Uh, this doesn't look good. That's not a civie transport up there. It's military, except all painted up in blue and white colors."

"Blue and white?" Rei asked breathlessly.

Blitz nodded. "Yeah. And I don't think it's going anywhere. It's hovering over the roof."

Rei turned to me, her face deathly pale. "That's not just any chopper. That's an Ayanami strike team."