They were scum. The same all over the world, the hopeless and the lost huddling in the shadows of the great metroplexes. They were street people, chippers, drudges, and bums. They were petty criminals, pimps, sleazers, and whores. Some of the scum thought they were better than the rest, malcontents who called themselves shadowrunners and played at being noble idealists. As though a fancy name could change what they were-thieves, two-bit terrorists, and parasites on the body corporate.
Sometimes the scum got the upper hand, caught someone before he or she could get out with enough skin intact for the corporate doctors to rebuild. But revenge was possible if one awaited her chance, worked for right time to strike like a tiger from ambush. That was the way a professional handled it. Sooner or later, the vermin always made a mistake and a pro would hand them their heads. At least that’s what she would have done if some snivelling traitor hadn’t sold her out, had her drugged, and traded her bodily integrity for his own.
In the dark, the flashes of sweaty, grunting bodies fueled her rage. Filthy, fetid room. Grimy, groping hands. A bad-toothed grin under mirror eyes. Slobbering mouths. Pain.
She hated traitors. Weak-minded perverts who sold away their company’s heritage and fellows for their own gain and sold off their fellows for their own comfort. She hated the slime that let others do the dirty work they were afraid would dirty their hands. Worse than those, she hated the ones who got away with it, the ones who went crawling back to their corporate cocoon as though nothing had happened. As if they had betrayed no one.
One by one, the faces changed, their features flowing and coalescing until each face had a single set of features. A broad, dirty face with mirror eyes that belonged to a gutter animal. Street scum. A sleazer. She would never forget that face.
The leering visage splintered like a glass mask, the shards falling away to reveal another face underneath, deceptive in its ordinariness. Blond hair close-cropped in a salaryman’s cut, a chromium steel datajack on the left temple. Square jaw. Straight nose. Hazel eyes. She knew that face, too. She knew it as well as her own, knew all the wrinkles and blemishes. Placid, dog-stupid, trusting, and innocent, it was a traitor’s face, mocking her and her helplessness.
She hated it. Blam!
The Ruger Super Warhawk in her right hand roared, blasting 11mm slugs into a jeering visage. No more data-jack.
Blam! Blam!
No more hazel eyes. No more pearly toothed smile.
Blam! Blana! Blam!
Faces splintered under her bullets, the traitor sent to oblivion. Atonement for her shame.
No traitor. No shame. If only it were so easy to expunge him and the memories in the real world as it was to imagine his face on the range’s targets.
“Nice shooting, AC.”
Crenshaw spun, acquiring target without a thought as the smartgun link fed data through the induction pad in her hand. The gun’s snout homed in unerringly on the speaker’s face. He blanched as she increased pressure on the trigger.
The hammer fell with a click.
She smiled at the terror on his face. Her link had told her that the gun was empty, but he didn’t need to know that. Let him think she was a little wild. It wouldn’t hurt her reputation. She was slower than most of the other Renraku special operatives, and her cyberware at least a generation behind. If fear would give her an edge, she’d take it. Any edge was better than none. She didn’t care if the grunts thought she was crazy; the people upstairs knew she did her job. They were the ones who counted, only their opinion mattered.
“Frag it, Crenshaw! What’re you doing?”
“Anybody who sneaks up on me regrets it, Saunders. Don’t forget it, because next time the gun won’t be empty.”
Saunders stepped back, face rigid and eyes wide. Crenshaw slipped off the sound-suppressor headset and walked away from the firing line. As she passed the armorer’s counter, she tossed him the gun, not bothering to see if he caught it. On her way through the door to the lockers, she grabbed a towel.
“You’re fizzed! You know that, Crenshaw,” Saunders called out to her back. “Totally glitched.”
She could hear the forced bravado in his voice. She smiled.
3
A poke from Kiniru’s wet nose was usually enough to wake Sam, but today the akita had to resort to planting one of her huge paws on his stomach. The sudden pressure forced all the air from Sam’s lungs in an explosive burst. He sat up, gasping.
Kiniru, a canine grin on her usually somber face, sat gazing at him eagerly. A glance at the wall screen, which he always left set for a view from the outside, showed him the gray clouds hauling a threat of rain in from the Pacific. That gloom would soon banish the morning sun, making the day suitable for a funeral. He flicked the control, and the trideo set boomed to life. While Heraldo Fong’s Enquiring Eye raked through the story of some sensational thaumaturgical murder, Sam tossed back the covers, shaking his head in wonder that the arcology programming director would broadcast such hysterical drek at this hour. As Sam swung his legs over the side of the bed, Kiniru stood and skipped back. She padded to the door and looked back expectantly.
“Hold on. I’ve got to get some clothes on.”
Kiniru barked her impatience.
“Go talk to Inu. He knows enough to keep quiet.”
Instead of obeying and joining Sam’s other dog, Kiniru sat down, tail beating against the doorway. Ignoring her impatience, Sam clicked Fong off in the middle of a tirade against unlicensed magicians in order to use the screen for the room’s computer. There were no messages waiting, so he started a check on his continuing inquiries concerning his sister’s whereabouts and condition. The screen flickered, displaying the status of his programs as he dressed. The same as yesterday-nothing. Sam ignored the flashing symbol from the expert system monitoring his apartment’s computer. He knew what it wanted, but he was not yet ready to let it send the message he had composed for Sato-sama. It had possibly become irrelevant; Sato was due to arrive at the arcology in a few days.
Kiniru butted his leg.
“All right. Let’s go.”
Inu was exactly where Sam expected, sitting calmly by the door. The brindled black and white mongrel barked its greeting and stood. As Sam palmed the door open, the dogs squeezed past him, jostling their master to the side. He watched them run down the corridor toward the open area at its end. The Level 82 park was big enough for the akita to get a good run. Because the other residents knew and liked the dogs, they never complained about them running free. Inu stopped just inside the shadows of the corridor to glance back reproachfully at Sam.
“Go on, Inu. I’m staying here.”
Inu waited until Sam made a shooing motion with his hand before gamboling out into the sunlight to join Kiniru and some of the level’s children in a game of chase-and-tumble. Sam wished he could be as carefree as the former stray. It was Inu that had followed him back to the arcology that night of a year ago, making a place for himself in Sam’s world as though it were sheer destiny. While Kiniru was pure-bred, this creature of the streets was almost feral, yet he had settled into arcology life as though he’d been whelped there.