"What counts is you're back. You ready to run again, chummer?"
"All cylinders."
Dodger thought it sounded likle false bravado, but
Willie obviously took it at face value.
"Good 'cause the ante's going up and you're the last magicker on-line."
"The last… what's happened?"
"Just had a drone in for a meet with Herzog. He's dead. Somebody raided his sanctum, but he put up the good fight. Made 'em pay. Took out four or five, my count on the body parts was a little iffy."
"The Circle?"
"Neg. Not unless they've got a lot broader of mind while you were gone. The hitters were all elves."
Sam turned to stare at Dodger. "Say again."
"I said the guys who took out Herzog were all elves."
"Elves," Sam repeated softly. "Talk to me,
Dodger."
Jenny's check on the power draw for the squat confirmed that either Dodger or Willie was still operating out of the apartment. There wasn't enough usage to supply both the elf's cyberdeck and the rigger's board. One of them had moved out. The broad-band receiver Hart carried didn't show any unusual broadcast activity, so she assumed it was the elf. As far as she knew, Willie didn't use booster stations to hide her location.
Hart's surveillance hadn't picked up any activity for over an hour. Jenny confirmed power draw, so that meant Dodger was decking and the others asleep. It was time to move.
She left her perch and made her way down through the building, exiting around the corner and out of sight from the runners' lair. Timing her crossing to coincide with traffic, she crossed the street screened from the apartment's window. Once on the same block, it was easy to move unseen through an adjoining tenement and up onto its roof. She leaped across the gap between the tenements and landed with satisfactory silence. Crossing the rooftops, she hesitated only a moment near the brick shack that Sam had tried to use for cover against her shots. She shook off the thoughts that threatened to upset her centering and proceeded to the cornice at a position above the flat's biggest window, where she set her bag down. In a few minutes, her gear was rigged, and she sat down to do an astral scout of the squat three floors below her; she didn't want any surprises. She got one.
The flat was astrally warded! Unable to penetrate the protection to view the interior, she returned to her body. She would have to go in blind, relying on the mundane reconnaissance she had already performed. There was no reason to delay. She shed her long coat and clipped the drop line to her harness. Satisfied that it was secure, she went over the side, walking the wall past darkened windows.
The winter air was chill, but she barely felt it. Her doubts kept her warm. Was she doing the right thing? With a swiftness born of familiarity, she squirted lubricant into each side of the window frame. She let it penetrate for two minutes, then tried to lift the sash. It moved smoothly and silently; as she had remembered, there was no lock.
With the kitchen window open, the blackout curtain was the only impediment to entrance. She folded her legs, then straightened them, pushing off from the wall. The extra force from her right leg angled her return so that she would pass through the aperture. Her feet brushed aside the curtains and as her hips went through the frame, she hit the friction clamp and released its tension. She hit the floor and tucked herself into a forward roll. The soft clack of harness buckles against the floorboards was the only sound she made. She came up into a crouch and froze, listening.
The apartment was silent save for the soft background hum of an active computer system. The soft glow from a terminal screen was the main room's only illumination. No one moved in what she could see of the room.
Hart remained in place for five minutes or more, and heard nothing else. Satisfied that she had alerted no one, she stood up and stepped forward. Her curse broke the peacefulness.
There was no one there. The computer hummed only to itself, but there was a message on the screen: It read:
"Not what you expected, is it?
"Too bad.
"There's a new twist in the game.
"Press ENTER for more."
She knew better than that. She left the way she had come in.
"A return to old haunts when the other side is on to you can be fraught with danger," Glover said pedantically. "But then, I suppose you have already learned that. The restraints are not too uncomfortable, I hope?"
The captive had only one eye, since the other had been closed by the purplish black bruise covering most of one side of his face. Still, he glared. Glover found it amusing.
"It would have been better for you had you simply kept running. You could hardly expect to succeed where your associates had failed. You are only one person and nowhere near as skilled as they were. But don't feel too impotent. Your friends did some damage, and they might have done more against us had we not already been alert for those who would sabotage our great work."
"God will see you punished," said the prisoner. "God? Whose god, my pathetic friend? Yours? In the olden days, they believed that the stronger god would overcome the weaker and set his people above all others. You can see the motif in so many stories that one must think in the days when myths were made, before the old magic lessened, that there was a factual basis for such replacement. Today, you sit defeated, and I stand victorious. Your god has forsaken you, but the Sun shines on me."
"Your pride will be your fall." "Stubborn." Glover chuckled. "One might almost think you still held hope for a rescue. Do not. The rest of your little band have gone the way of all flesh and, in doing so, have strengthened our cause. You shall join them when the appointed hour comes. Perhaps I myself shall wield the sacrificial knife that drinks your blood."
"You are deluded. Your murders bring you no power. Your path is corrupted."
"How could you know? Our rituals are steeped in a tradition that antedates your pitiful church. We have reached back to touch the old ways, the true ways of power. I have felt it." "You have felt lies, murderer." Glover backhanded the prisoner, rocking him back and almost toppling the chair to which he was bound. Blood spurted from the prisoner's nose to spatter the white cuff of Glover's shirt with incarnadine stars.
"I had thought you an educated and intelligent man, Father Rinaldi. Your fellow Sylvestrines spoke so highly of you in interrogation that I thought you might be able to see beyond your prejudices, once confronted with the truth. I see I was mistaken. Still, your soul will fuel our paean to the Sun." "Your blasphemy will be stopped." "Your faith is touching, father. Would it be shaken if you knew one of your fellow priests told us everything we needed to know about your communications with Rome? As far as your superiors know, your team has found nothing as yet. You are, however, pursuing a most diligent investigation. By the time any of the fossils in Rome suspect that they are being fed false information, the cycle of rituals will be complete and our Circle shall no longer need to be Hidden. We shall set the king on his throne, and the restored land shall be as it was."
"You're mad. Corrupted by evil."
"And you're powerless. Consumed with envy." Glover laughed loud and long. "The weak will never understand the strong. Never having tasted power, they are incapable of it. You and your weakling breathren will never know the true power the Circle has touched. Even when we reveal it, you will see only a shadow of the truth. Well, your fellows will see. You, my dear father, will be long gone."
"It shall not be. Even on earth, you are opposed." "Perhaps you refer to the meddling of shadowrunners. They had been causing us some difficulty, but their masters are too ill-organized to control their minions and insufficiently committed to maintain bothersome pressure. Their bumbling runners ran afoul of their own internal factions, and the team crumbled away, leaving only a handful of pox-ridden elves to annoy us. Stings only. Why, just last night we swatted one of the annoying insects. Their importance diminishes to insignificance as we grow in strength. When we have established the new knigdom, we will deal with the shadowmasters and they will regret opposing us."