I know how it feels, chummer… "So how did you escape? It's not like Televisa would ever mention something like that."
Manuel served himself some tequila. He looked at it for a while before answering. "I was rotting away in the Gorgon's belly, hoping for death to come soon. Then, one day, a strange guy came out of nowhere with an offer from an old friend of mine. Sound familiar?"
"Very."
"Anyway, it's not me or our mutual friend that we should be talking about now. I'll ask again: interested?"
"Yes."
"Good. It will take some time, but I suspect my employer has already set things in motion. She has this habit of making things fall her way, you know."
"What about you?"
"I'll be gone tonight. I need to make sure that Manuel has a terrible accident with his gas oven while sleeping his siesta."
Dr. Martin frowned. "Is that necessary?"
"What would you do for your daughter? For the future?"
Touche. "Anything."
"Then you just answered yourself. Do you have any other questions?"
"No, I just need another shot of tequila."
"Sure, it's on the house."
Manuel watched as Dr. Martin stumbled out of the cantina, half drunk with tequila and hope. His mistress had been right: the doctor was a survivor, ripe for extraction and recruitment. Oh, she would require a little guidance and a few adjustments, but that wouldn't be much of a problem – it hadn't been in his case, at least.
*A phonetic joke; Texans frequently pronounce it "tuh-KILL-ya" or "tuh-KILL-er."
DOG DAYS
by Robert Derie
It's the first real dog day of summer, and the streets of Seattle are baking. Somewhere up above, the sun is a baleful red eye floating above the haze of smog that had descended on Downtown. Puddles of last night's filth evaporate quietly in the gutters outside my destination: Club Penumbra. A few late patrons stumble out, blinking at the glare, and I caught a draft of cool, stale air. I enter, eager to get indoors.
I haven't visited Club Penumbra in years. The stereotypical place-to-be for shadowrunners had finally become cliche. But it's been too long since my last mission, and cred was running low. This is where the principal wanted to meet. My eyes adjust to the darkness and the scattered lights. I take off my respirator to taste the air: sweat, booze, and the faint tang of ozone. It's colder and cleaner than outside.
My Mr. Johnson is occupying a booth, drinking what looks like a red martini with a cherry in it. I study him before approaching: Anglo, with silver hair and blue eyes. By the lines in his face and the slightly-prominent veins on his hands, I guess him to be in his forties-though with modern medicine, he could well be twice that. He was corporate, and that meant cred. I walk over to introduce myself.
"Good morning. They call me Sticks. Our mutual friend said you wished my help in a certain matter, Mr. Johnson."
I sit down opposite him, hands visible and flat on the table.
"Mister John…? Oh, yes. He did say you were someone who could help." The man sighs. "I do hope you can help me, Mr. Sticks. I'm in a terrible state about the whole matter."
Great. A newbie. This close, I note a few more details: a slight Australian accent and a string tie held by a clasp that combined a Celtic knot with a circuit board. Maybe Mr. Johnson worked for NeoNET. Or maybe he'd worn it so I'd think that.
"I'll do what I can. Our friend only spoke in very general terms about what you wanted me to do. Something about a missing family member?"
I couldn't see any weapons on him. He could be wearing form-fitting body armor, though.
"Yes, in a manner of speaking. It's my dog, Chester. He's been kidnapped!"
Mr. Johnson dexterously pulls a hologram out from the inner pocket of his jacket.
"Chester is very rare, you see. A male Australian kelpie. He just came into his full growth and is ready to breed. The Australian kelpie has become very rare now, what with the troubles down in the old commonwealth, you know. I bought him from a farm in New South Wales. He's such a dear animal. Very close to me. It would be horrible if anything happened to him."
Mr. Johnson sniffs, then pulls out a monogrammed handkerchief to dab at his eyes.
I study the hologram. Brownish-black fur, a somewhat long neck, lean body, thin limbs and very prominent erect ears. It looked like any other dog to me. The hologram went through a three-second loop of the canine's ears swiveling to some sound from an unseen source, eyes following the ears by a fraction of a second.
Johnson leans close, his voice no more than a whisper.
"Personally, I suspect foul play. Many other dog fanciers were very jealous of him, and just recently I received a very generous offer for Chester from an anonymous buyer, which of course I turned down. Unfortunately, circumstances prevent me from investigating through… normal channels."
I nod at that. I was a corporate citizen once, and I know how it works. If he asks corporate security to investigate, his superiors see it as a waste of resources – and they'd think far worse of him if he resorts to contacting Lone Star. Apparently Gio, our mutual acquaintance, has convinced him I'm a private and confidential investigator of some sort. Works for me, so long as the Johnson's cred is good.
"I will recover your dog for you, Mr. Johnson. The cost will be a hundred and fifty nuyen per day, five days payable in advance, and a thousand nuyen when I return the animal to you. Do you find those terms acceptable?"
If he wants his dog back, he's probably willing to pay for it. Hopefully, he's too damn green at this to know he can haggle.
"Well… yes, that sounds reasonable. Send me your account number and I'll forward your advance."
We spend a few seconds tapping codes into our respective commlinks, and somewhere in the Matrix a couple of numbers shift from one databank to another. A pop-up window appears on the edge of my vision, confirming 750? had been transferred into an account I hold under a fake SIN at First Nations Bank. The download completes almost instantly.
"Does the dog have an implanted RFID tag or anything of that sort?" I ask.
"Oh, yes. It was the very first thing I tried when I discovered he had been abducted. But the tracking program hasn't been working." He sighs and takes another sip of his drink.
"I'll need a copy of the program, the hologram, a list of anyone you suspect might have been interested in the animal, and your commlink number. I'll keep you informed of my progress," I say as I stand up to take my leave of Mr. Johnson.
I watch him order another drink – his eyes fixed on the hologram in his hand – while I strap on my respirator. Business done, I step out into the heat. It isn't a big score, but it is something to tide me over until I get a real mission. Time for a little legwork.
Data mining isn't my specialty, so I kill hours trawling the Matrix with word, trideo, and image searches. Mr. Johnson's list reads like the membership rolls of two or three breeding clubs… hell, before I started searching, I didn't know what a breeding club was. No Australian kelpies had suddenly appeared on the market for sale or breeding, and no one who was looking for one had suddenly stopped looking. The image search turns up a match: a hologram of Mr. Johnson and his dog at a competition one month ago. Looks like his real name is Hutchison.
The RFID's tracking program looks simple: let it run, and it'll ping the RFID implanted between the dog's shoulderblades and give you a location within a meter. It wasn't working. Either the dog was out of range of AR, or the chip had been removed or blocked. I could hire a hacker to crack the program apart – and I might end up doing that – but hackers are expensive and I wasn't exactly flush with cred. So far, the Matrix wasn't providing many leads.
I go to visit the Seattle Metroplex Humane Society. Rows on rows of mutts stuck in smelly little cages, waiting for their turn to die. The worker I meet is wearing a HazMat suit and insists I sign a release before I can browse the cages. The dogs near the front aren't too bad. Usually pups – clean, healthy. A couple kids are there, picking out one to adopt. The sick, crippled, old, and just plain mean are kept in the back. Monsters throw themselves against the cages as I pass, working themselves into bloody froths, and I can pick out gang signs tattooed on their flesh. One dog must have come from Glow City; its flesh is a mass of tumors and weeping sores, and it's pissing something pink as I stalk by.