"Rai. I trust I'm catching you at good time?" Amsel speaks up over the noise of the metro.
"On my way back to Kreuzbasar. 'Sup?"
"In your absence I have made a contact with a client. A potentially very lucrative client. Elusive woman of Atzlaner descent, calling herself 'Frau Muller'. She refused to discuss specifics with me but she was clear about offering well-paid job. Thirty-six thousand nuyen is not something I could ignore even if it's dubious. For that sum, it is justified for her to be so secretive."
"Roight, she must have a really big problem and must want it solved sharpish...When and where would I meet her?
"In half an hour. You should arrive just on time." Amsel's answer makes me want to groan but I just rub my eyes that already burned like hit with a pepper spray. "I insisted for you to pick up a spot for the meeting."
"Uhh, the park with the talking statue." I reply after a second to gather my thought. "It's public enough to make her drop any atempts of making a stick up but it's secluded enough for this Muller lass to talk straight instead of trying to slip me a note written in cream if I'd ask her to meet in Cezve..."
"Noted. I will set up the meet." Amsel replies and tries to say anything more but then suddenly static fills my ear and train rattles to a stop.
"What the-Oh bloody hell, that ain't a coincidence when german tube stops unscheduled, ay?" I muse loudly, switching on my flashlight, only to realise the batteries were dead. "Well that's just a great beginning...Alright, everybody guns ready and follow me onto the station to see what is goin' on here." I switch to whisper but put enough steel in it to hear no objections whatsoever.
I really try to think positive things, even when I nearly trip over something that turned out to be an electrical fuse and said fuse fitting the fuse box nearby, powering up tracks of the train, ultimately allowing me to cross over and reach the main power control room.
"Blimey, it's darker than in Devil's arsehole in here..." I curse under nose but Dietrich managed to hear it, his snort echoes across the pitch-black room we stumble through when something irks me, making my gut twist and adrenaline getting pumped into my veins.
Having the worst feeling, I reach out by instinct and luckily, I grab cool, familiar shape of Glory's arm, only to gently slide up to fleshy shoulder. Funny, I could *hear* her arching eyebrow at me. I gave her a squeeze that she may or may not read the right way but I hoped her tensing up a bit was not just due to anger at me for touching her and she read me correctly.
"Oh fuckin' hell, even bloody german engineering isn't working properly these days." I chatter loudly to cover up metallic clang of pulling pin out of flahbang grenade and then finding where the reset fuse box was on the wall. "You know, I can't wait to just go back home and...KILL ALL OF YOU WANKERS!" I finish hitting the lights on and throwing the grenade at the, corretly presumed, ambush of thugs trying to jump us from the corners!
I've managed to clench my eyes shut when loud *BANG* erupted, effectively disorienting both my and their guys. My ears were full of painful shriek but my eyes were seeing properly, giving me advantage over everyone else in the room, all others stumbling around blind.
Closest one got shot right in the face, the hot splatt of the blood on my face was only indicator beside kick of the recoil, my ears stuffed with cotton and not picking up even slightest sound beside thump of my heartbeat and blod rushing through my veins. Cocking the shotgun, I've turned to the side and shot another enemy, hitting her in the legs. Ambushing like that was a dirty move, but very effective against 99 percent of the targets. I've belonged to one percent of crazy bastards training specifically how to fight blind, deaf or immobilized. And that'll make all of these sods pay the ultimate price of fucking with me on my bad day...
I've shot three times at lucky cunt that got around quick enough to start dodge around the place, lanky sod able to escape my aim until my gun emitted dry click. Before I could curse at myself, or at the guy now raising sawn-off at me, flames erupted and covered the fucker, making him scream so loud, even I've heard it.
Moving to the side, I've stared at Glory lowering her literally smoking gun.
"...Never caught up you have incindiary ammo, love." I've spoken two minues later, when my hearing was good enough for me to hear my own voice, and Blitz was done ruffling through pockets of our uninvited guests.
"Fire and I know each other in many ways." Glory replied cryptically, stoic as ever before, as if she did not completely broken out of it during previous job and snapped at me.
"Are we gonna-" Blitz tries to speak while we boarded the train back but stops, seeing my worn out face.
"Later, mate. We'll talk about it all later. All of it, down to last letter." I adress last words to Eiger who only nods at me grimly, surely still furious at my choice of playing along with messed up rigger back there on the run.
"So what do we know, Paul?" I ask from the couch twenty minutes later, I've slumped onto dilapidated seat right after giving encrypted PDA off dead thug to Amsel. I've fought with my head falling down for too long and I was getting really, really irritable at this point.
"The PDA was highly encrypted and secure. The moment I've sarted accessing it, it bricked itself." Amsel unplugged the slightly bloodied device from his laptop and dropped the PDA onto the floor. "I did managed to recover piece of commlink file..."
"Bachmeier, Audran here. What's your status?" I hear gnarly, haggard voice that makes hair on my neck stand up. That fucker...
I get up off the couch and lean above Paul's laptop, listening into the unmistakeable voice I've heard thousand times in my head already - voice of the steel-clad orc from Harfeld Manor. Orc instructed this Bachmeier lad, the very same one I've murdered personally with load of pellets to the head, to ambush me and my guys when I'll be coming back from a job. Easy targets, Bachmeier said. Serves you right you bastard, I say.
"So this is the elusive Orc from the manor..." Amsel correctly read my face that surely had to beam with bloodlust strong enough to rattle an army. "Winters was right afterall in the end, Firewing is behind it all." Paul adjusts his glasses and sighs. "Be on your guard at all times from now on, Rai. Dragon will not stop at anything before eliminating you. You're a tiny grain of sand that can stop cogs Feuerschwinge was moving for decades."
"For now, at least I know what name to write on the tombstone of that fucking orc...Audran. I'll caligraph it on his forehead with my knife."
"That name is just one of clues regarding our...friend." Amsel does not smile but instead hands me over a file. "Take a look at this."
I have no degree in this nor I'm a doctor but some basics of biotech managed to get into my grey matter along the way of spending nights on the net and reading up about weirdest things. Audran was given skin grafts in 2039, in legitmate hospital, without given any sort of ID. What caught my attention was that not only he was in critical condition from burns and blunt force trauma but was also heavily irradiated.
"To get that much milisiverts he either had vacation in sightseeing Chernobyl or...He was in SOX." I begin, trying to stretch theories to facts and not facts to theories. "Burns like that had to be from dragonfire. I mean unless somebody slowly roasted that cunt with a blowtorch, nothing else would compare...But why work for her then."
"Perhaps he serves her...Winters claims there were cults worshipping Firewing."
"What?"
"On the CD I've given to you-"
Ah fuck, I knew I've forgotten something.
"If so, then we're possibly are dealing with zealots. Nothing's more dangerous than unshakeable faith coming from rotten source." I sigh and flip over the medical charts once again.
"My thoughts exactly. If this Audran was a denizen of SOX and a cultist following Feuerschwinge...It may answer all the questions regarding his lack of ID. It's a longshot really but even more reason to find Vauclair AND to pay Alice's fee as fast as possible. Speaking of which, my pager called which means Frau Muller arrived. Go talk to her immediately, we need that money, Rai."
"I'm going..." I reply faintly, feeling my legs already half-turned into a jelly. "She better not be a pain the arse like lapdog Herr Fucks sent onto me in that lab...I'm not in the mood to be pushed around or pissed on nor off."