Rico had never heard this story before, not these particular details. Piper didn't talk much about herself. And Rico didn't expect a self-effacing Japanese and word-wary decker to give away any more than she might need, certainly no more than she wanted. He'd always been willing to accept whatever she chose to give and just forget the rest. He struggled to do that now. He struggled to see what this excerpt from her life story had to do with almost murdering somebody. Was shame the key point? Had she suffered so much of it that a little more didn't matter? He knew well enough that she wouldn't stand here and ask forgiveness because she'd had a rough We. Please feel sorry for me and forget what I did… Piper would never say that, not intentionally, anyway. Piper wanted nobody's pity.
"Shame is my Ms, jefe. It is all I am capable of. I have failed you twice on this run, and that is my shame. And I will fail you again, no matter what I do. Or how hard I try." She hesitated, then blurted, "You should leave me. For your own good. You should have nothing to do with me."
Rico clenched his teeth. He didn't believe in "fate." Luck, maybe, but that was different.
Piper had been acting under impulse, he decided. The shock of seeing Filly dead, the heat of the moment. Every body got that way sometimes, and these hadn't been a great couple of days. The run had become an abortion. "They were all feeling the pressure, and pressure had a way of bending people outta shape.
It all came down to one point, though. The same point that had been there from the start. "I don't work with killers," Rico said lowly. "Murderers. I won't live with one neither. Work like that, wetwork, it's for scum. The garbage you see in the gutters. That's your choice. You decide what's gonna be."
Piper started breathing hard before he got halfway done. He barely got out his last word before she said in an anguished voice, "I choose you, jefe. I choose you…" Her breath caught and she. grunted, almost crying. "I just… I'm just afraid… the corps, corporates… they're going to kill us this time!"
It was a distinct possibility. But it changed nothing.
Rico drew Piper into his arms and held her. They weren't dead yet, and Rico wasn't about to give up. Too many lives, too much at stake. His job was to find a way outta this mess they'd somehow come to own. Quitting wouldn't work. Neither would lying down and dying. "Just don't gimme any more problems, chica," he said. "I got enough already, Comprende?"
Piper nodded, face buried in his shoulder. "Hai. Wakarimasu, jefe," she said. "I understand."
29
The room was small and squarish, the decorations rather crude and the furnishings threadbare. The walls had been painted to look like a forest. A few dying plants slumped here and there in colored pots. The air smelted of incense. The pair of sleeping bags on the floor provided the only place to sit.
Farrah Moffit ran her eyes around the room one more tune, just to prove to herself again that she had no way to escape.
Even if she could get out of this room, she would need to find a working telecom, then manage to stay alive and free long enough to be picked up. The odds on that seemed long. She had seen and heard enough to guess that she was somewhere in the New York-New Jersey megaplex, but where exactly she did not know. Queens, the Bronx, Westchester-they all looked the same to her. One great mass of grimy ferrocrete. Outside Manhattan, she was lost.
Certain smells in the alley had made her think of Manhattan's Chinatown, but that probably meant nothing. A great many Asians lived in the urban Northeast. Practically every metroplex in the region had some sort of Asian enclave, some quite large.
The runners who held her captive had done a very good job of keeping her in the dark.
If only she could believe the leader's promises that she would not be harmed. Her time with Fuchi had cured her of any such naivete. She would be kept alive for as long as that served the runner's purposes, then, in all likelihood, she would be killed. She had never previously dealt with shadowrunners herself, but she had heard enough and read enough and seen enough on trideo to be acquainted with the breed. Most were glorified gangers, criminals by another name, and quite vicious. They would not allow her to live for the simple reason that she could point them out in a police line-up, should police become involved, and she could testify to their crimes, should matters ever reach a court. They would not leave her behind. They would not simply let her go. Eventually someone, probably that Asian girl, the decker, would come into this room, put a gun to her head and pull the trigger.
If only she knew more of what was happening. What she would give for just a few minutes in front of a trid.
She felt so isolated, so alone.
This, of course, was part of the runners' strategy. They wanted to keep her in a state of mental uncertainty and emotional turmoil, this to persuade her of the value of cooperating fully, of being compliant. Submissive. Weak. An elementary stratagem, a common technique for interrogations. The leader kept assuring her she would be safe, while other members of the group threatened her with violence, and, in one case at least, made good on the threat. A neat little twist deliberately designed to add to her fears and her confusion.
To her chagrin, it was all working very nicely, though only to a limited extent.
Certain inescapable facts kept coming to mind. As a hostage held for ransom, she would be as good as dead. Fuchi did not pay ransom. That was the corp's stated official policy, and it held true for all but the highest corporate officials. The entire draconian apparatus in charge of Fuchi security worried little about humanitarian values or the sanctity of human life. For someone in her position, a fairly low-raking member of the corp's Special Administration, Fuchi would be more likely to send in a corporate assault team, kill everyone, sacrificing certain corporate assets rather than submit to extortion.
That put her life in her own hands exclusively, and that frightened her. Pleading would do no good. Deceptions would get her only so far, and might get her killed before she was due.
No, Farris realized, she wouldn't get out of this alive unless she offered the runners something, something substantial, something that she alone of all their contacts had to offer them.
Deciding what that was did not take long.
The food Dok and Piper brought was not bad. It was mostly fish and rice, warm and easy to eat and quickly finished. Bandit liked his food that way.
Once done, he picked up the flute, surveyed it astrally, ran his fingertips over the polished wood. It appeared to have been made by a highly skilled craftsman. It had no flaws that he could detect. As soon as he had the time, he would return to his special place, his place of long magic, and bind the instrument's energies to his own. He would enhance its power, too.
Now, he lifted the flute to his mouth and played a few tentative notes. He did not know how to play a flute, but he would learn. He stopped when he noticed the others in the room-Rico, Shank, Dok, and Piper-all looking at him.
"When did you get so musical?" Shank grumbled.
Bandit thought about that, and said, "Ask me later."
"Sure. Maybe next year."
Bandit nodded. A year from now would be fine.
"If we're still alive."
"If we aren't, how would you ask?"
Shank stared at him a few moments, frowning. Apparently, he had no answer. That was good. It assured Bandit that Shank had not suddenly become so "magical" that he could speak from beyond the grave.
Orks should stick to weapons and combat and leave questions concerning magic to others.
"What?" Piper said, looking confused.