shadowrun 40 The Burning Time (17 page)

All of Roy’s requests to speak with someone else from the company were met with the same response. They could not allow it "for security reasons" until they’d learned as much as possible about the crime perpetrated against Cross.

By the time they finish interrogating us, Roy thought glumly, those shadowrunners will be retired. He probably would be, too, though much sooner than expected. No one had said so, but Roy was starting to realize that his involvement in this affair had somehow tainted him in the eyes of others. Though there was no evidence of wrongdoing on his part—except, perhaps, that he hadn’t reported his suspicions immediately because he wanted a shot at investigating them himself—Roy felt like he was being treated like a criminal.

He could only guess at how they were treating Dan Otabi. It was hard to tell. Deprived of his simchips, Otabi spent all his time either watching the trideo like a zombie or staring off into space, responding only when the guards arrived to take him for another "debriefing."

Otabi’s career with the company was finished, of course. He could easily end up out on the street when this was all over, still hooked on chips—assuming the enforced isolation didn’t cure him of it (which Roy doubted). So, if Otabi was finished with the company, what did that mean for him?

The strangest thing of all was the focus of the questions. Roy had thought that Gabriel would be most interested in tracking down the shadowrunners and recovering whatever it was they stole. But his questions focused more on Roy’s own actions. The questions also seemed to be directed at finding out how much he knew about what the shadowrunners took and why, even though Roy hadn’t a clue. It was as if Gabriel wanted to pretend that the shadowrunners didn’t exist and focus the investigation on him and Otabi.

He’s setting us up, Roy thought. Gabriel needed a scapegoat to pin this on because he’d hosed up and let those runners get away. That had to be it. After all, the Seraphim took their duty to the company very seriously. The fact that Gabriel had let a band of street-runners not only steal company property, but steal it right out from under him, couldn’t look very good. Gabriel was probably trying to divert attention from himself by making it look like Roy had misled him, in cooperation with Otabi.

Well, if Gabriel had another thing coming to him if he thought he was going to set Roy up for a fall.

He got up and went over to where his few belongings were stacked up in the corner of the room. Company personnel had recovered his things from the hotel where he’d been staying and brought them here. He took his deck out of its case and sat on the bed with it in his lap. The sounds of the trideo coming from the other room told him that Otabi was occupied, and probably would be for a while.

He jacked into the deck and plugged the connector into the wall-jack. It was time to find out what was really going on. He booted up the deck’s systems and hit the Go button. Instantly, his senses were filled with a wall of hard static before he emerged into the virtual reality of the Matrix. He was standing next to the small, glowing, white pyramid that represented his cyberdeck, and around him saw the various polygons of the local computer systems. He started with them. They were strictly low-level systems, but they told him that the security at the housing facility was fairly light. It looked like no security cams were spying on him and Otabi, at least not any connected to the main computer systems of the building. That, thought Roy, was a ray of hope.

He sped through the Matrix at light-speed to the Cross Bio-Medical offices in Boston. The building’s icon loomed up out of the virtual cityscape, topped with the golden cross of the corporate logo. Roy’s pass codes got him through the public section of the host into the employees-only areas. Naturally, the inter-departmental bulletins and such had no mention of the incident in the Merrick Valley bio-med facility or any sort of theft. He’d have to dig deeper than that.

Think, he told himself, think. There had to be something to go on. He turned up some routine information by inputting a search relating to the research facility, but it was nothing he hadn’t seen before leaving Montreal. He thought about the Whitehorse and the airport, but those searches also came up blank. He even did a search on Gabriel, but it was no surprise that he could learn nothing. The Seraphim were top-secret, as were most of their activities.

Then he thought about the cylinders that got loaded into the Whitehorse. He recalled the biohazard symbol, indicating that their contents was potentially dangerous or infectious, and the lettering on the sides. He focused and tried to remember what the writing said.

Pandora, he recalled. That’s what was stenciled on the sides of the cylinders. He inputted a new search with expanded parameters, feeling his heart beat faster back in the real world while he waited for the search to run. A screen appeared in front of him with the results:

Pandora, Cross Bio-Medical Project No. X140-762, Security Clearance, Level Three or above.

Bingo. Roy didn’t have the necessary security clearance to access the file, but he knew a few tricks. He’d been working on company security files and systems long enough for that. He quickly started piecing together a program to do the job. It wasn’t as elegant as he would have liked, but he didn’t have a lot of time. The shape of a silvery key took form in front of him in virtual space as he completed work on the program. He touched the key to the screen to activate it, then held his breath.

There was a moment where he thought he’d hosed it, that the system was going to lock him out. But then the screen cleared and turned into a small white cube spinning in space—a data-packet. Roy reached out and touched the cube, commanding it to open and display the data it contained. He glanced over the index of the file, and his eyes widened. Then he touched parts of the index to scan highlights of the file.

Cross Technologies wasn’t going to find the shadowrunners, he realized. They weren’t even looking for them. It all made sense to him now: Gabriel’s presence at the MV facility, the theft of the Whitehorse, Gabriel’s apparent lack of concern about the shadowrunners or the loss of company property. He understood why his interrogators were focusing on his and Otabi’s actions during the incident. They were building a scaffold from which to hang them.

He collapsed the file back into a cube and put it into his pocket. That triggered the file to download onto his deck. Then he quickly backed out of the system and returned to his starting point, hoping he’d done enough to cover his tracks.

Back at his jackpoint, he investigated the relatively simple computer system of the building he was in. It handled routine functions like telecom traffic and simple security like electronic locks and such. Roy didn’t find it difficult to gain access to the system as an authorized user. The program he’d used in the Cross system worked just as well here, and this one’s security was childish by comparison. He made a few adjustments, then made sure they were set correctly. Once things were set in motion, there would be no going back. He pressed the virtual button that would start his program, then logged off the system and jacked out.

Nothing had changed back in his room. No Seraphim agents or security personnel were trying to break down the door, and the trideo was still blaring in the other room. He briefly regretted not having done more to help Dan Otabi, but there wasn’t much he could do. Otabi had probably been doomed from the start, before Roy ever spotted anything unusual in the logs of the MV facility. He quickly gathered up a few necessities and put his deck into its carrying case.

He was just finishing up when he heard the scream of the fire alarm. He knew the windows in the room would lock automatically, so he dashed over and threw one open to climb out onto the fire escape. As he ran down it to the alley three floors below, he could see other people starting to emerge from the building. He didn’t look back, but focused on getting to the ground. The metal fire stairs rattled, impossibly loud, and other occupants of the building poked their heads out to see, but he ignored them.

He hit the ground running. There were a fair number of people on the sidewalk, but a large enough crowd to disappear into. He headed for the subway station they’d passed on the way here. Only when he reached it did he dare take a moment to look over his shoulder. He saw no sign of pursuit, but that wouldn’t last long. He rushed down into the station and fumbled for his credstick, which he slotted into the turnstile like all the other people on their way to the trains.

Please, God, he prayed, let there be a train. He was in luck. One was filling up as he reached the platform. It sounded the all-aboard signal, and Roy dashed for the doors, slipping in just before they closed. As the train began to pull away from the station, he dropped into a seat and looked out the scratched and dirty window. He thought he saw a familiar figure in a long, dark coat come racing onto the platform in time to see the train pull away. Roy hunched down in his seat, but tried not to be too obvious about it.

He got off the train a few stations later, just long enough to use the bank machine in the station. He slotted his credstick and downloaded all but a few francs from his personal account onto a certified stick, converting the funds into nuyen. The certified stick was almost as good as cash and virtually untraceable, since it contained no ID codes. He pocketed both sticks and boarded the next train, which would take him to downtown Boston.

As long as he didn’t use his personal credstick, it would be harder for the company to track him. Now he was on his own in a strange city, with only limited funds. He’d probably given Gabriel more than he could have hoped for by running off. It would be proof of his guilt and complicity with whatever the Seraphim were trying to pin on him, and would probably damn Otabi by association, too. The hopelessness of his situation nearly overwhelmed him, and he gripped the support bar of the subway car as if his life depended on it.

No, he thought, he couldn’t give up. He had to get to the bottom of it, find some evidence that he could bring to the company brass so they would know the truth. Assuming they weren’t the ones who’d authorized this scheme in the first place. That was a sobering thought. If it were true, then Roy really didn’t have a single place to turn. Who would be willing to help him against a megacorporation like Cross Applied Technologies?

The answer came easily: the same ones people always called on when they needed to take on a corp.

Shadowrunners.

When the train reached downtown, Roy got off the train and found a public telecom. He slotted his certified stick and touched the screen for directory assistance.

"The number of the Avalon nightclub," he said when the prompt appeared. A few moments later, he had the number and a printout map with directions for getting there folded up in his pocket. He was glad to see that the address wasn’t far from one of the stops on the red line.

All he had to do was keep from getting caught before he got there.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Talon walked into the Avalon the way he always did, and the various bouncers acknowledged him with a nod. It was almost eleven o’clock, and things were just starting to pick up as a line of people began forming at the front door. Talon immediately headed up the stairs to Boom’s office on the top floor.

"All clear, boss," Aracos said in his mind. "Everyone’s there."

Talon thanked the spirit as he cleared the last few steps. He was thinking of what had happened when he’d gone to tell Trouble that he thought Gallow was back. As if he didn’t have enough problems without Trouble revealing that she’d been harboring feelings that were more than friendship for him.

Trouble had made no secret of the fact that she was attracted to him when they’d first met. At first he didn’t tell her he was gay because that wasn’t the kind of information he went around telling people he barely knew. They did talk about it eventually, and he’d assumed that was the end of it.

Jase was his first love and, in many ways, the only one. As he’d told Trouble, it was the only serious relationship he’d ever had. Besides, keeping a relationship going wasn’t easy even for a straight shadowrunner. Deep down, though, he knew that he never again wanted to hurt like he did when Jase died. Losing Jase had nearly killed him, though it was other people who died as a result of it. He took his revenge against the gangers who’d killed Jase and, in doing it, had unleashed an evil force that kept coming back to haunt him.

Seems like, where love is concerned, all I do is make a mess of things, Talon thought as he turned the knob of the door to Boom’s office.

Boom, Hammer, and Valkyrie were already waiting for him when he came in. He sat down near Boom’s desk, not bothering to take off his jacket.

"So, term, what’s up?" Boom asked. "Don’t tell me you managed to find more work for us already?"

"No," Talon said. "I’ve been doing some checking, and I think Gallow’s back." There was a pregnant pause as the words sank in.

"So, what’s the plan?" Hammer asked calmly. Nobody asked Talon if he was certain or whether they had to get involved. They simply asked what he wanted to do next, offering their help unconditionally, without question. He wondered what he’d done to deserve such good and loyal friends.

"Trouble’s doing some checking now," he said. His face got hot with embarrassment at the mention of her name. "She’s looking for Gallow’s usual pattern of kills. That might give us some clue about where it is and what it’s doing. Then we track it down and take care of it once and for all."

Hammer and Boom nodded their assent. Then Talon’s headware phone rang, and the incoming call icon flashed in the corner of his vision.

"I’ve got a call," he said. "That might be her now."

He sat back and mentally signaled his headware to answer the call. Instead of Trouble, however, he saw something else. It was a woman’s image projected directly onto his optic nerves by his headware display link. She was perfectly formed, beautiful and sensual like a woman straight out of a high-class erotic sim. She was dressed head to toe in leather as red as blood, and her lips were colored to match. She looked at Talon with soulful eyes, and he smiled at her. Talon knew that the real woman behind the erotic image used it as a little joke on those fooled by appearances.