“Car’s here.”
Sally gestured to the door with her shotgun. “Let’s go.”
The car was a stretched Toyota Elite, its opacity-controlled polymer windows set to dark. The driver’s window was down and a broad-faced Korean kid grinned a, gap-toothed invitation. He flipped a switch and the rear door yawned wide.
The Renraku employees climbed in, taking the plush synthleather and velvet seat while Sally and the Ork settled into jumpseats facing their prisoners. Ghost Maker slipped into the front seat on the passenger side.
As soon as the doors closed, the driver babbled something in a street dialect from which Sam only made out the name Cog. Sally nodded and switched on the audio deck. The voice that came out was rich and deep.
“Your friend’s call caught me just in time, Ms. Tsung. I’ve been unavoidably called out of town, but I am most happy to provide this small service before I leave. The driver is one of my regulars. You may rely on his discretion.”
There was no more to the message, but Sally seemed satisfied with its content. At least the noises she made to the driver sounded agreeable.
The privacy panel slid up from the seat, cutting off Sam’s view of the street ahead and the driver’s rearview screen. The blackened windows wrapped them away from the world and held them in silence as the vehicle proceeded on its twisty path through the Barrens. Only once did something from outside impinge on them as a heavy thump struck the right rear quarter panel. Their captors remained unperturbed.
Perhaps an hour later, the car slowed and the privacy panel dropped, revealing a litter-strewn alley lit fitfully by the intermittent violet flashes of a neon sign just out of sight on the cross-street ahead.
The doors opened on both sides, but the car did not stop.
“Out,” Sally ordered.
Were they being released? Sam could hardly believe it. Crenshaw was up and out the door while Sam was still struggling to extract himself from the embrace of the soft cushions. The Ork’s foot helped him on his way, sending him sprawling headfirst into a noisome pile of trash. Sam emerged in time to see Sally leap gracefully from the car and five shadowy figures scramble into the vehicle. The doors snapped shut just before the Toyota cleared the alley mouth. It turned left, away from the neon sign, and was gone.
So, their captors were not releasing them, after all. In fact, their numbers had grown. At least a dozen youths, male and female, were in the alley with them. In the flickering light, he could see that many wore fringed and beaded garments, and all wore feathers in their headbands. The smallest of the bunch sauntered up to the tall shape of the street samurai. A flash of neon threw his features into silhouette, revealing a profile as hawklike as that of the man he addressed.
“Hoi, Ghost Who Walks Inside. Welcome home.”
He knew he ought to be hungry, but he couldn’t feel it. The sight of the bowl of krill wafers and soycakes their captors had left the night before only turned his stomach. The water bag, however, was flattened and limp, almost empty. Water he must have, even this tepid, foul-tasting stuff.
The day had passed in a sweaty haze. Their captors had left them in a room with a single door and windows sealed with opaque rigiplastic sheets. A little light crept through where one of the panels had lost a corner. Sam’s attempts to peep though were rewarded with a limited view of graffiti-covered bricks. He recognized the general pattern of the taunts and protection slogans, but found the gang’s symbols unrecognizable. It was still enough to confirm his suspicions that this turf belonged to a gang of Amerindians.
Jiro moaned, awake again. The salaryman had been drifting in and out of fitful sleep for hours now. “What is happening?” he murmured groggily. “I do not understand.”
Crenshaw harumphed her annoyance. “Quit your whining. It gets on my nerves.”
The woman’s utter lack of feeling was getting on Sam’s nerves. “I suppose you don’t object to what’s happened.”
“I’ve been in worse situations.”
“How could it be worse?” Jiro moaned. “Betty is dead.”
“You could be dead,” Crenshaw retorted.
“Perhaps that would be better.”
“Don’t talk that way, Jiro,” Sam said.
“What difference does it make?” Jiro said listlessly. “We will be killed by these… these… terrorists.”
“Terrorists!” Crenshaw scoffed. “Kid, you don’t know the meaning of the word. These clowns are garden-variety shadowrunners. Their best card is that street mage, but they’re still petty criminals hiding from the bright lights of the corporate world and scavenging whatever pickings they can. They’re human rats.”
“Even if they are not terrorists, they still hide from the law,” Jiro said weakly. “How can they let us go when we have seen their faces and heard their names?”
“Don’t matter much,” Crenshaw shrugged. “The names are just street names, and the faces can be changed easily enough. These runners have no records in the databanks, so what’s to trace? They’ll let us go if we behave ourselves. All we’ve got to do is wait.”
"Wait? The only end is death,” Jiro said in a flat voice. He lay down again and was asleep in moments. Sam wondered how the man did that. Crenshaw picked a soycake off the plate on the floor.
“You should eat, kid.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Your loss.”
Crenshaw popped the cake into her mouth and wolfed down a few krill wafers before upending the water container and draining it. Sam was appalled at her selfishness. Suddenly he wanted to be someplace else. Any place. Just so long as he was away from the suffocating presence of his fellows.
He got to his feet and began pacing. Crenshaw watched him for a while, but soon lost interest and closed her eyes. Shortly thereafter, she began to snore.
Sam wanted to escape more than ever.
Without hope, he tried the door and was surprised to find it opened to his touch. Cautiously, he swung it wide. The outer room was as bare and dilapidated as the inner. Sally lay asleep along the inner wall. The door to the hail was open and he could see two of the gang’s warriors standing guard. They were chatting quietly in a language he didn’t understand.
This room had windows to the outside world. Desperate for fresh air, Sam moved to the open one, beyond which a fire escape formed an inviting balcony. He was halfway through the frame before he noticed Ghost standing on the iron grillwork, leaning against the wall.
“Wouldn’t be thinking of leaving, would you?”
Sam stammered a negative response, surprised to realize he hadn’t been thinking of escape. Though he wanted to get away from his fellow Renraku employees, he had not thought of abandoning them. “I just wanted to get some air."
“You’re welcome to your fill of what passes for it around here.” The samurai seemed pensive as he leaned back against the wall and looked out across the sunset-painted stretch of battered tenements. Ghost said no more until Sam was beside him. “You really are a strange one.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, for one thing, you weren’t lying about trying to leave.”
"I couldn’t run out on the others.”
“So ka,” Ghost said with a knowing nod. “I can understand loyalty to your friends.”