Tails You Lose (14 page)
Alma
waited until the ork who was using the bench press finished his set and then asked if she could work in. The ork, a squat East Indian with a dense black mat of curly hair covering his arms and legs, grinned up at her with chipped tusks. His face was heavy with five o'clock shadow, even though it was not yet 10 a.m.
"You sure you can handle it?" he asked, wiping his face with a tattered towel. "I've got a hundred and fifty kilos on the bar."
"I'll manage,"
Alma
said.
"Want me to spot you?"
Alma
shook her head and settled back on the bench. "No thanks." She reached up and wrapped her hands around the bar, activating the release pedal with her foot. The bar gradually grew heavier in her hands as the automated system gauged the resistance in her arms and released with a sudden click.
The ork hovered next to the machine as Alma began slowly to lower and raise the bar; he stood with one hand near the override lever as if he expected her to drop the weight onto her chest at any moment. By the time she'd completed twenty reps, his hand fell away. By the time she'd done forty, his eyes were bulging. When she'd finished sixty reps, he wet his lips.
"Frag me," he whispered. "You haven't even broken a sweat. What kind of enhancements have you got?"
Alma
smiled up at him as she flicked the foot lever. The bar locked in place above her, and she sat up. "Yamatetsu muscle aug," she answered. She flicked a finger against a flexed bicep. "Delta grade."
She stood and gestured at the empty bench press. "Your turn. I need to rehydrate."
A tremble started in her left hand—just a slight flutter in the fingers this time, but it lasted for fifty-eight seconds. The tremors were getting worse; with each day that went by, they seemed to be increasing in duration, and each one seemed to take something out of her, leaving a feeling of lethargy in its wake. She was glad this one hadn't struck in the middle of her set.
Balling her hand into a fist, Alma walked toward the drink dispenser and slotted the credstick that she'd pinned to her tights. She chose a tube of Electro Lite and stood by the window to drink it, watching the rain pour down on
An Asian woman with bleached-blond hair nodded at Alma as she bought a drink from the dispenser. A blue plastic rectangle—a permit for travel within the Salish-Shidhe nation—hung from an elasticized band around her left wrist, next to a bracelet-shaped cellphone. She was shorter than Alma, but just as slender, with a washboard stomach and good muscle definition in her arms and legs. She carried herself as if she expected trouble—and was prepared to meet it. Her eyes had a guarded look about them, as if she'd spent time on the streets.
The woman's eyes ranged up and down Alma's body with an almost sensual appreciation. "You're fit," she said. "And you walk smooth. I bet you're fast."
Alma
nodded and continued sipping her drink. She wondered what the woman wanted. She'd walked over to the dispenser with the perfect balance and springy step of someone trained in the martial arts; Alma hoped she wasn't going to try to pick a fight. She hoped the woman would be as easy to dust off as the ork—she didn't want a stranger listening in when Mr. Johnson pitched his assignment.
Alma
continued scanning the room, casually sipping her drink. If no one approached her in the next five minutes, she'd do another sixty-rep set in the hope that the Johnson would notice. It was the signal that she'd told Tiger Cat to pass along when he confirmed the time and place of the meeting.
The blond woman's eyes narrowed. "Speed and strength won't mean squat on this run, unless you can get close to your target."
Alma
turned, realizing at last that
this
was the Johnson she was to meet. She gave the woman a closer scrutiny, quietly focusing her eyecamera on the woman's distinguishing characteristics. The only one visible was a tattoo above her left breast, partially hidden under her sports bra: a black wolf's head, with what looked like an Asian character superimposed in white across it.
,
"Do you speak Korean?" the woman asked.
Alma
scanned through the menu of her headware memory. She'd loaded it with the contents of more than a dozen linguasofts that covered all of the most common languages in Vancouver: Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi, Hindi, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Korean, Spanish—even Salish, in case Mr. Johnson turned out to be a Full Blood.
"ye," Alma answered, switching to Korean. "I speak it."
"
Choun
," the woman said. "Follow me."
They walked through the changing room toward the whirlpool. A sign hanging from a mop propped in a bucket proclaimed it to be closed for cleaning and rechlorinating—the blond woman flipped aside the mop like a turnstile and entered. When they were both inside the tiled, echoing room, she shut the door and flicked on the whirlpool's bubble jets. Alma had to activate the noise filters in her cyberear to hear the woman's voice above the gurgle of the water.
"Tiger Cat says you're an expert at extractions," the woman said.
"That's right," Alma lied smoothly. "I helped with a run on PCI awhile ago." She watched for a reaction. If the woman knew about Gray Squirrel's extraction, she might also know the name of the woman who had framed Alma, and where to find her.
The blond woman merely shrugged.
"I asked Tiger Cat for someone who could pass in high-cred circles," she said. "Our target is heavily insulated by nuyen; he's going to be a tough one to access. But you'll pass as a society slitch. If it wasn't for Tiger Cat's endorsement, I'd swear you were corporate."
"Who's the target?" Alma asked, wanting to deflect the conversation.
The blond woman cracked a smile. "Not so fast, Cybergirl. I want to make sure you can deliver first. How do you take down your targets?"
Tiger Cat had warned her to anticipate this question. Some Johnsons wanted their extractions "chem free" and insisted that non-lethal magic be used; others wouldn't care if the target was delivered minus a limb. Alma hoped that the blond woman wasn't one of the purists.
"Gamma scopolamine," she answered. "I'll use a compressed-air injector. He'll never know what hit him."
The blond woman's smile was feral. "Perfect," she said. "That should prep him for us nicely. Just make sure you deliver him before his lips start to loosen. We'll want him at his most talkative."
Alma
nodded. "Where do you want me to bring him?"
"I'll give you a number to call. We'll be ready to take delivery anywhere in the Lower Mainland. Once he's in our hands, I'll give your second payment to your laundry boy."
It took Alma a moment to figure out what the woman was talking about. Then she got it: the woman thought that Tiger Cat was laundering the credit, ensuring that it was untraceable. It was a nice touch on his part; it explained why Alma wasn't insisting on a personal transfer of credit.
Now that she was actually negotiating the details of the shadowrun, Alma suddenly realized that she'd have to carry it out. She hadn't allowed herself to dwell on the ultimate outcome of her actions, but now she found herself wondering what would become of her "target." She had a hard time getting Gray Squirrel's slashed throat out of her mind.
"Who's the target?" she asked.
"He's a financial advisor. Akira Kageyama."
Alma
nodded, relieved that it wasn't someone she knew. She was familiar with the name—few in Vancouver weren't, after Dunkelzahn's will was read. She also had a vague idea of what Akira Kageyama looked like—she'd seen him once on the society channel but had never met the man. Although he mixed in corporate circles, he'd never attended a PCI function.
"Any more questions?" the blond woman asked. "Just one," Alma said. "After I've delivered Akira Kageyama and you've gotten the information you want, what happens to him?"
The blond woman gave a hard laugh that was answer enough. Whatever she had planned for Kageyama, it wasn't pleasant. She flicked a hand impatiently at Alma. "Give me your cell."
Alma
checked it first and saw that the memo function was clear. Her nemesis, it seemed, had been too busy to send any more taunting messages. She handed the cellphone over and watched as the woman keyed a number into its autodial menu.
"What tag do you go by?"
Alma
had considered a number of nicknames, but none of them seemed to fit her as well as the nickname this woman had just given her. " 'Cybergirl' will do," she said. "What should I call you?"
"Don't worry about that," the woman answered. "Just call the entry marked 'Johnson.' I'll be the one answering the phone."
She handed the cell back to Alma. "Tiger Cat said you could handle a rush job—that's why we're paying the big nuyen. You have until midnight tomorrow. If you don't manage to bag Kageyama before then, the deal is off.
Chakbyol
insa
—goodbye."
Chuckling to herself, she strode out of the room, slapping the button that shut off the whirlpool as she left. In the sudden silence, Alma heard the faint beeping of a cellphone being dialed. Realizing that it must be the blond woman using her bracelet phone, she boosted her hearing just in time to catch a fragment of conversation: "—worry. We'll know where it is soon eno—" Then the voice was gone, lost in the clank of exercise machines.
Alma
had the feeling that, after the blond woman questioned Kageyama, he'd be disposed of—permanently. Alma didn't want to be responsible for an innocent man's death. That would put her in the same gutter as the woman who had killed Gray Squirrel. But she needed this run—it was her window into Vancouver's shadowrunner community.
She hadn't realized that she might have to break the glass to get in.
Alma
threaded her way along a floating walkway that bobbed and dipped with each step she took. Built from scavenged wood and kept afloat by a collection of styrofoam blocks, beer kegs and driftwood logs, it weaved its way like a sidewalk among the hundreds of small boats that were anchored in False Creek. Home to a motley collection of squatters, these ranged from small aluminum speedboats with jury-rigged tarps covering them to fishing boats and cabin cruisers; there were even a handful of aging yachts. Most were in rough shape and rode low in the water, their hulls crusted with barnacles and tendrils of seaweed, their rusted upper decks dotted with tape-patched windows and splashes of graffiti. There were also a number of houseboats, some of them little more than log rafts with decrepit prefab shelters or even tents perched on top of them.
Rain dappled the surface of the water to either side of the floating walkway, stirring up smells of raw sewage and oil. The boards underfoot were rain-slick and slippery; Alma wondered how anyone managed to negotiate them without a move-by-wire system. Those who passed her, however, walked along the unstable, slippery surface like sailors on a rolling ship. Only when she looked down and saw that the boards underfoot were perforated with thousands of tiny holes did Alma realize that they must be wearing cleats.
The squatters who lived here were a mix of races and metatypes, with a high percentage of orks and trolls—"yomi" who had been exiled from Japan in the 2020s after the first big wave of goblinization hit. They eyed Alma suspiciously through cracked windows as she went past; strangers weren't welcome here in the False Creek Floats. More than once, the city had tried to clean out the "floaters," the council police sweeping in and arresting as many squatters as they could get their cuffs on and then towing the boats away and sinking them well offshore. But somehow the floaters always got wind of the raids in advance, and only the slowest and least seaworthy craft were caught. The rest upped anchor and fled, scattering like dandelion seeds and then rooting themselves in tiny clumps all over the city's waterfront.
Eventually, after the floaters had reduced property values along several areas of the city, the council herded them back to False Creek, where they could at least be contained. The tribal police still made periodic raids, however, forcing their patrol boats through the maze of walkways and boats whenever the council ordered a crackdown on BTL chips, illegal immigrants or prohibited weapons, all of which were as plentiful as fleas on a rat in the False Creek Floats.
Alma
at last saw the boat she was looking for: a battered Surfstar Marine Seacop patrol boat with a superstructure pockmarked with rusted bullet holes. The holes must have been made by armor-piercing slugs; the metal armor on the boat looked several centimeters thick. The weapons had been removed from its firmpoints before the vessel was sold for scrap, and the current owner had replaced them with vidcams. Large patches of gray primer covered the boat's original Coast Patrol markings, visible now only as the slightly raised outline of a stylized killer whale. The boat's original spotlight and hailers were still in place, however. Hanging from one of the antennae that bristled from the upper deck of the boat were the two flags Tiger Cat had told Alma to look for: a pirate's skull and crossbones, and the red flag slashed with a line of white that meant "diver below."
