Tails You Lose (16 page)

He pulled an optical memory chip from his computer and held it out in Alma's direction. "I've downloaded some newsclips about Kageyama that you can scan later," he said. "I think you'll find them quite interesting."

Alma
was only half listening as she took the chip.

She couldn't shake the hunch that Kageyama was somehow gang-linked. The woman who had hired her was Korean, not Japanese, but she'd had the arrogant confidence of someone who ran with a pack . . .

That was it.

"I need you to do one more Matrix search," Alma said. "This time, I'm looking for information on a tattoo: a black wolfs head, with an Asian character—probably Korean—superimposed in white across it. I suspect it's gang-related. I want to know which gang."

"That should be easy enough," Bluebeard said. "The NAN intercouncil police task force keeps detailed records on organized crime."

Once more, his body slumped.

While Alma was waiting, wondering how Bluebeard was going to access a secure police grid, her left hand began to tremble. Before she lost her grip on it entirely, she popped the chip Bluebeard had given her into a pocket. Whatever was wrong with her was getting worse: the tremors were still occurring only two or three times a day, but when they did, they bunched up like an earthquake and its aftershocks, leaving her feeling weak and muzzy. Before Alma could time this tremor, however, Bluebeard was back.

"The wolf-head tattoo is part of the initiation rite of a Seoulpa Ring, based out of Seattle: the Komun'go. There's a lot of data on them, but most of it is pretty fuzzy; I'll just give you the highlights.

"The gang has only a toehold in North America; its base is in Korea, and there's a shadowy puppet master there who pulls its strings. Shadowbuzz says the head honcho is some kind of sentient paranormal, although the jury's still out on whether he's a vampire or a dragon.

"There may also be a corporate connection. According to the Salish-Shidhe immigration department, a Komun'go gang member was arrested in Vancouver five months ago while using a false travel permit that listed him as an employee of the Eastern Tiger Corporation. The corp claimed the ID had been stolen, but it seems to have a special relationship with the Komun'go: its Seattle subsidiary is the only Korean-based firm that the Komun'go protection racket hasn't leaned on."

Alma
digested that information. She still had access to the corporate data she'd stored in her headware memory; Hu hadn't erased anything that wasn't directly linked to PCI. Eastern Tiger, a prominent member of the Pacific Prosperity Group, concentrated on heavy manufacturing and petrochemical processing—areas of the corporate sector that were far removed from Akira Kageyama's areas of expertise: banking and investment. What did they want with Kageyama?

Alma
suddenly realized that she was still thinking like a security professional, and not like a shadowrunner. Her job wasn't to puzzle out who wanted to extract Kageyama and why—it was to carry out the extraction.

Bluebeard shifted in his chair, obviously impatient for Alma to leave, but Alma wasn't finished yet.

"Just one more thing," she told him. "I need you to go back into the Executive Body Enhancements Matrix host and book me an appointment at the clinic—immediately before Kageyama's appointment, if possible. Can you do that?"

"Of course," Bluebeard snorted, as if the job she'd asked him to do was as easy as entering data into a personal daytimer. "What name do you want to use?"

"Jane Lee," she said, giving him an identity she'd used several months ago while on a routine surveillance assignment. She still had a resident's ID permit for the fictitious Jane Lee—it was one of the things Hu had overlooked when he'd made his sweep of her apartment.

Bluebeard nodded. "And what reason should I give for you visiting the clinic?"

Alma
held up her left hand, which was quivering slightly. "Temporal lobe epilepsy."

Bluebeard stared at her hand as if mesmerized by it. "Very convincing," he said. "I'm sure the chopdocs will believe it."

His eyes met hers for a moment, and then he added: "Is Tiger Cat giving you a decent cut from this run?" Alma wasn't sure why he'd asked, but she nodded. "Good," Bluebeard said. "Because you're going to need it. That kind of cybersurgery doesn't come cheap."

"But I don't—"

"I had you on zoom when you were talking to Stoker, and your hand was shaking then," Bluebeard said. "That's twice in less than an hour. I'm no chopdoc, but I've seen TLE before—I used to have a move-by-wire system myself. I figure you've got a week or two, at most, before your entire nervous system seizes up. When you see the chopdoc tomorrow, you'd better ask about it. You're going to need surgery, and soon."

Alma
felt a hot rush of anger. Who was this—this shadowrunner, of all people, to be telling her what to do? Her cyberware wasn't some off-the-rack street-grade junk. It was delta-grade, the best money could buy.

Bluebeard gave Alma the time of her appointment and the doctor she'd be seeing and then slumped back into his chair. He was still there in the flesh, but his mind had once again departed into the world of the Matrix.

Maglocks in the hatch overhead clunked open, and a crack of gray light filtered into the room. Alma realized that her meeting with Bluebeard was at an end. It was time for her to go.

Thankful that her hand had finally stopped shaking,

Alma
turned and climbed the ladder that led outside. As the rain hit her shoulders, she realized how cold she was and shivered. Her move-by-wire system immediately rerouted the reflexive action, auto-stimulating her muscles until they were warm again, but the feeling that had caused the shiver stayed with her.

She tried to tell herself that Bluebeard was a shadowrunner, not a cybersurgeon. What did he know about TLE? As soon as Alma had tracked down the woman who had framed her and proved her innocence to Mr. Lali, she would get PCI's physicians to give her a thorough physical and book her in for cybersurgery.

But a horrible thought kept nagging her: what if Bluebeard was right about the TLE progressing to the seizure stage in a week or two? He said he'd had a move-by-wire system himself—and the operative word there was "had." His jerky movements and lack of mobility all added up to one thing: a TLE-damaged brain.

Alma
had the sinking feeling that she didn't have much time.

6
Conflict

Night Owl jandered past the block-long line of people who were waiting impatiently outside the nightclub. Most of the "magers" who huddled under the sidewalk awnings to avoid the rain were in their late teens through early thirties, but there were a handful of older hopefuls as well. All were geared out in anything they thought would get them in the door: chill black leathers with chromed spikes, sequined button blanket capes, hoop skirts made from glow tubes, LoGo wear that flashed corporate logos like a billboard across their chests, and gold foil suits. Some were flexing cyberware, but most were unenhanced, their near-naked bodies hung with fake magical foci or tattooed with "mystic" sigils. They jostled for position in line, all eyes straining toward the door each time it opened with a rush of music and noise. Not many people were leaving; even at 3 a.m. the club was still revving.

The club was located in a warehouse on the city's east side that was three stories tall and covered with a dense, carefully tended growth of ivy. The club's owners didn't want anyone sneaking inside; the doors were warded and would only admit astrals who had paid the cover charge in advance.

The bouncer was a Caucasian troll whose curving, ram's-head horns brushed the top of the doorway she stood in. Her iron-gray hair was buzzed short. Both of her lower tusks were capped with gold, and the fingernails on her massive hands were also gilded. She wore jeans, cowboy boots with built-in spurs, and a long-sleeved black T-shirt with the words MAGIC BOX down each arm; the letters kept changing color and emitted a haze of fizzing sparks. A shock glove covered one blocky fist; she kept the other hand on the red-velvet door rope as she eyed the crowd.

" 'Lo, Tatyana," Night Owl greeted her. "Busy night."

Tatyana grinned and waved Night Owl in out of the rain. "Long time," she rumbled. "I nearly didn't recognize you—the makeup looks good. You workin'?"

"Not tonight." Night Owl ran hands through her wet hair, combing it back out of her eyes. "I'm just here to unwind and spend some cred."

Thunder grumbled in the heavy skies above the buildings, and the rain increased in intensity. Night Owl heard a hoarse
caw-caw
from somewhere up the street as she stepped into the shelter of the doorway—it was probably another of the fraggin' storm crows that Hothead had talked about. She glanced back over her shoulder nervously. She'd already had her fill of "evil deities" and didn't want to meet up with any more dragons.

As the rain thundered down, the crowd waiting outside the door drew back to avoid the drops that were splashing up from the sidewalk. A couple at the back of the line gave up and ran to flag a cab.

"You want in?" Tatyana asked.

"Sure do." Night Owl glanced back at those in line but didn't see any hostiles. "I'm trying to keep a low profile—the Red Lotus are gunning for me. Any of them inside?"

The troll shook her head. "The R.L.S tend to hang at the Triple Eight. But if any of them show, I'll send in word."

"Thanks."

Tatyana unhitched the velvet cord and stepped aside. Night Owl jandered in through the door, chuckling as she heard the troll close it on the protests of those in line. Tatyana wasn't the brightest trog on the planet, but she owed Night Owl one, and that meant she'd be extra-watchful tonight.

Night Owl climbed a short flight of stairs to a room that had been painted to look like the inside of an Egyptian tomb. Hieroglyphs framed the club's inner door, which had an illusion spell cast on it to make it look like a velvet curtain. The door was actually armored steel, as more than one overrevved chiphead had found out after trying to slip past the inside bouncer by running through the "curtain." Music pulsed behind it, only slightly muffled by the heavy door.

The inside bouncer was a young shaman dressed in skintight, black vinyl pants that bulged suggestively. A snakeskin was knotted around his neck like a tie, the empty-eyed head hanging loose against his bare chest. His scalp was shaved except for a forelock of ink-black hair, which he flipped back with a nervous flick of his head. He motioned Night Owl forward.

Night Owl stood quietly as the shaman lifted his hands to either side of her shoulders, palms facing her. He slowly sank to his knees, sweeping his hands down to the level of her feet. Night Owl's skin tickled, as if invisible snake tongues were flickering across her flesh, and then the feeling disappeared as the shaman stood and held out a slender hand.

"You'll have to check the handgun."

Night Owl reached behind the waterproof duster she wore and pulled the Ares Predator out of the holster at the small of her back. She made sure the safety was on and handed it to the shaman. He stuck his hand into the wall to his right, and the gun and his arm up to the elbow disappeared. His hand came out with a token. Night Owl took it from him and turned toward the curtain-door.

The shaman slid in front of her, blocking her way. "You'll also need to check the shuriken."

Night Owl grinned apologetically, but the shaman's face remained stony. The throwing star pinned to her duster was disguised to look like a starburst brooch; she'd worn it so long that she had almost forgotten it was anything more than a piece of jewelry. But the tranq hidden inside the star's hollow center and the needles concealed in the arms of the star must have screamed "weapon" under the shaman's detection spell.

"Can I check the entire coat?" she asked.

The shaman nodded, took the coat and pushed the entire thing through the "wall," returning with another token, which he held out to Night Owl.

The shaman then pulled aside the velvet curtain, revealing a credit-transfer machine that was set into the door. Night Owl slotted a credstick—a clean one that she'd transferred the creds from Kageyama onto, just in case the one he'd given her included a tracer chip—and watched as its balance dropped by one hundred nuyen. Then the door swung open, and Night Owl was engulfed in a wave of overamped music as she stepped out onto the crowded catwalk that circled the central dance floor.