Besides, I have little patience. These have been sitting on my HD long enough.

False Flag

The clock radio clicked and began to play the voice of a Spanish-language news correspondent reporting on the current meeting of the Sovereign Tribal Council. Gisele was sprawled flat across the bed, and blinked before staring above at the ceiling. She reached over and turned off the radio in mid-sentence as the Sioux representative was discussing the Tsimshian situation, and smiled. She was excited. They were going on a job after a month-long drought. Jumping out of bed, she walked over and began picking pills out of the assorted bottles on her dresser. Before she swallowed them, she let her mind wander for a bit as her eyes fell over an old holo of herself and another young girl in front of Lombard Street in San Francisco.

-----

"Goddammit, get off me!" The man with his knee on Gisele's neck had her pinned to the floor, but that didn't keep her from trying to fight him off. This was the second time in a month that she had been taken down, but this time the people who got the drop on her weren't going to be so kind as to drug her and leave her in a Seatac coffin motel.

"If you don't stop fighting, I'm going to break your fucking arm," the one on top of her said. Just for good measure, he grabbed her left wrists, and twisted it back as he brought her arm behind her back. With his elbow against hers, he could easily push it the opposite direction it was supposed to bend.

"Fine," she replied as she stopped fighting. It wasn't the first time she was arrested, but never like this. "Who the fuck are you, anyway?"

"That's none of your business, bitch. Just shut the hell up."

Once she was handcuffed and on her knees, someone shoved a hardened rubber bit into her mouth hard enough that she began tasting blood. After that, the rest of the mage hood went on — first, the thick hood, and then the ear protection to block out sound.

-----

"Gee," Roddy called out as he smacked Gisele on the thigh, "heads up." The Japanese hacker was staring out the window, waiting for the replacement while Gisele was reviewing the intel they had acquired. Hiding the windows in her field of vision, she looked over as he walked into the coffee shop.

Diego had just bailed on them after the Vegas job, letting them know through one of his contacts going by the name Aufheben that the Dominican had some other commitments to attend to. The rest of the crew assumed that it had to do either with the pirate-warlord conflict back home, or his extracurricular activities with Black Star, a collective of shadowrunners, mercenaries, and anarchists with similar skill sets who perform direct action jobs.

However, he didn't leave them completely high and dry. Diego left them a list of potential temps. The top of the list was an elf who was a pro at infiltration, and who was now their way. His name was Josh Ballard, and Gisele couldn't help but notice that he was the first nondescript elf she ever laid eyes on. Roddy and Leni — the crew's mage — had vouched for him after doing some background legwork on ShadowSea and their own networks of contacts. In spite of his bad luck upon first arriving in Seattle from Boston, Ballard had proved himself as a silent, invisible killer.

-----

Gisele was crouched against a wall with the hood and handcuffs still on her, only now she was attached to the wall. They had the decency to remove the headset and bit, which was something. Her cybercomm was being jammed, hacked, and God-knows-what-else, so she wasn't even sure how long she had been sitting against the wall because it was just safer to deactivate it.
Finally, just about the time she had gotten accustomed to the discomfort of being against the wall in the dark, a door opened and she heard footsteps as they walked in. She could hear at least two sets of footsteps as they walked in and grabbed her by the arms, lifting her up as the handcuffs detached from the wall. After walking down a hallway, a flight of stairs and then another hallway, she was dumped on a hard chair while they left the hood on.

"Good afternoon, Ms. Vasquez." It was a woman's voice. Her accent wasn't local. It was mainland UCAS. Midwest. Maybe Illinois or Iowa. No further north than the Quad Cities. Regardless, Gisele didn't reply. Her face scrunched up in a mix of confusion and disbelief behind the hood. As far as the world knew, Gisele Vasquez ceased to exist — if she even existed at all — in 2064 after the Crash wiped out her SIN and official records.

"You should take comfort in the fact that we found you most easily. The rest of your crew has been scattered to the wind. The culpability for accessory to treason falls on you and you alone." Nodding to herself, Gisele acknowledged just how bad this situation was. But even still, it was also so absurd that she couldn't help but smile. If this was about who she thought it was, she was now being accused of aiding a person she failed to kill.

-----

This was going to have to be discrete. The offices of Roth, Capelli & Adkins comprised the top five floors of the Bank of North America building in downtown, near the ACHE. Benjamin Roth was probably the most prominent financial power-broker in the Seattle Republican Party, having raised well over one million nuyen for the RNC in the last presidential campaign. If this was to go after him, they would already be fucked sideways. Instead, they only had to compromise one of his attorneys, who was basically running a 'plex-wide campaign out of his office with Roth's approval.

Security had been pretty lax beyond the gauntlet of MAD and cyberware scanners just to get into the building, and soon Ballard and Roddy had disappeared, making their own way up. That left Gisele and Leni with all the fun of walking through the firm's front doors.
Before they got on the second elevator to take them to the top of the tower, Gisele had excused herself to disappear into one of the public restrooms. Inside one of the stalls, Gisele sat on a toilet while chewing on a couple of heavy-duty painkillers. Some of the pain was real, lingering from the beating she suffered during her "detention." Some was from the beating she suffered in Vegas and the gel round to the chest before that. But mostly the drugs just made her feel good.
Stepping out of the stall, everything seemed to slow a bit as she settled into the high. There weren't many people in the marble lobby as she waited for the elevator. The building was pretty spectacular, even when compared to the opulence of the Wynne Las Vegas: a building with marble stall doors in the public restrooms. One of those people, however, was the Persian-German elf mage. She was still a corp brat at heart, but on the job her focus to the magical side often made her oblivious to certain facets of what was going on in the real world. In this case, she was unaware that her teammate was high.

When the elevator doors opened, Gisele was faced with the sight of what a major law firm really can buy. A young and attractive elf woman greeted the runners within six paces off the elevator and led her through the glass doors and into a two-story lobby. The whole time, her brain was trying to tell her that it was way out of their league, but she didn't listen.

-----

"You fucked up one of our operations in Las Vegas. Two years pissed away because of your actions," the woman said with disdain.

"How can I be an accessory to treason? I'm SINless."

"Shut the fuck up. You provided aid to a traitor. Not that the penalty is any less severe."

"Oh, what the Hell? I thought this black-bag, kill or disappear everyone who pissed you off shit went away when Colloton moved into the White House."

"Your aunt would have been ashamed of you. A criminal. A street mercenary no less."

"What the... Yeah. Sure. Whatever. Like you know anything."

"I know that Samantha Madison murdered her, and now you're doing her dirty work." Gisele clenched her teeth behind the mask. She wasn't sure if this was a lie, but either way the whole mess was beginning to piss her off. Her head began to ache along with the rest of her body. She needed her painkillers. The woman laughed as the whole experience began to disorient and confuse Gisele. "You were content to work for the woman who let your friend die, but this upsets you. Fascinating.

"We will make an arrangement if you cooperate. You get a new SIN; a new life — a life away from her. I'll even give you proof that what I say is true, and you can do what you like with that information." Gisele couldn't see through the hood as the woman gave a sinister-looking smile.

-----

"You were disposable." The woman said it without a shred of empathy. "It's the same reason I'm hiring you this time."

Gisele looked into her employer's crystal blue eyes and knew she was telling the truth. The black Armante suit. The quiet office lined on three sides by bookshelves. To Gisele, it felt like the last time she met with her attorney. However, the comparisons ended there.

Ms. Madison was a retired colonel who spent over twenty years in counter-intelligence for the Army and DIA before she was nearly killed during the New Revolution uprising. Afterwards, Samantha became a minor celebrity thanks to her testimony in Congressional and investigative commission hearings due to her admission that she was involved in illegal and quasi-legal operations, some of which co-opted official counter-terrorism operations. She never apologized for what she thought was the right thing, which in many people's eyes made her just as much of a traitor as Senator Braddock.

Both women were professional liars and manipulators, but frankly Gisele was outclassed by decades. This was a woman who not only survived Gisele's attempt to murder her, but convinced Gisele's crew to work for her. However, unlike the Vegas job, she handled the hiring herself instead of through an intermediary. Having just been dumped back into her apartment when the call came, Gisele couldn't help but think that something was askew.

"Fair enough," Gisele replied. "You must really trust us."

"No. I trust that I can have you disappear if you hint at my involvement." Damn. That's cold. She suddenly wished a painful death on this woman.

"So, you want us to... What, exactly?"

"Kidnap Francisco Hernandez."

"Come again?"

"He's running the campaign for Senator Royer's re-election basically out of his office."

"Okay," Gisele replied cautiously.

-----

After waiting five minutes, a well-dressed man stepped out from behind the door and past the receptionist towards Gisele and Leni. "Good morning, ladies. I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. I'm William Connelly. You must be from the Spiros Foundation."

The women introduced themselves under their cover identities, and then followed the lawyer through the doors and into what seemed like another world. As he led them to one of the conference rooms, they passed by dozens of people who seemed transfixed in their own little worlds. When she told them what they were hitting, Roddy couldn't help but laugh. Lawyers, he said, love all sorts of new tech gizmos, but it drives their IT people nuts because all that tech makes security — namely, client confidentiality — a nightmare. And that doesn't even include whatever the clients or visitors themselves bring in. Gisele seemed to guess that the lawyers were the ones with datajacks, especially the older ones who probably had legacy jacks from before the second Matrix Revolution that they upgraded over the years.

Their destination was the third floor conference room, in the very heart of the firm. Roddy had used the intelligence they bought off a more-reputable info broker to build them identities as representatives of one of the firm's clients — a nonprofit which had provided millions to the University of Seattle for nanoscience research. It was risky, but their target's office was also on this floor, and they would in fact pass it. As they did, Gisele looked over at the office and saw Javier Hernandez sitting at his desk. She also saw Ellen Danquist sitting across from him, with two well-dressed men standing behind her.

["We have a problem"] she announced over their network.

-----

"It's a pleasure to meet you," The lawyerly icon stood tall in the representation of a bespoke navy suit with pinstripes made of tiny red dots. "I had to meet you after I got word of your search. This job involves things with which you shouldn't yourself."

"I just need the intel, Kay, not commentary." Gisele's icon stared blankly ahead, seemingly through Kay St. Irregular's icon.

"I think you do, actually. You're asking for the kind of information for an extraction which will provoke the wrath of God to come down on you. Your reputation is already teetering on the abyss of irrelevancy after what happened with Colonel Madison."

"I — We — took a shot. I guess it was a combination of factors, but I felt that we didn't have a choice at the time. I stand by it."

"And so... Here you are."

"Will you help me, or should I take my business elsewhere?"

"Yes. As it so happens, while everyone is focused on the gubernatorial race and the dispute between Danquist and Kenneth Brackhaven, most people seem to ignore the fact that she's also become involved in a disagreement with Senator Royer. He and Brackhaven are sort of competing to be at the top of the ticket, but in doing so Royer has shifted his fundraising towards the archconservative faction of the party thanks to his new campaign director. This doesn't make a lot of sense given that his director works for one of Angela Colloton's biggest supporters, but some people have taken it as a sign that the old man is hedging his bets in the event that Brackhaven manages a Republican sweep. Meanwhile, Ellen Danquist is trying to kneecap him by going straight to the RSCC. It's complicated, but she can and he can't deal with the national party directly. They get to leave Royer and Hernandez out of the loop."

"So, basically the same thing that's happening with the governor's race?"

"Not exactly. There are angles to that which are only going to get uglier as the race proceeds. For one, there isn't anyone in the party with enough support to replace Royer on the ballot through intra-party machination. However, that is another matter. But mostly, the RNC can do whatever it wants, including subverting any attempts to curry favor with the archconseratives."

"So what about Hernandez? I can't seem to find much about him."

"He's something. His family back in Spain are very much arch-conservatives and supporters of the militarist party in Spain. He's a good fit with Brackhaven and with whatever Royer's up to. He turned out to be a rainmaker for the firm and for the Senator's campaign, so he gets a lot of breathing room."

"This doesn't make any sense."

"Danquist is a canny manipulator. That's how she became and has remained mayor of Auburn. She oversaw a hell of a grassroots machine, focused on microtar— on getting the vote out by using peoples' friends to sell her to the undecided and independents. The party loves her. The President admires her efforts, but hey, shit happens sometimes, and she lost the primary. That doesn't mean that she isn't still trying to ensure that when the Republicans sweep Seattle, they are under her control."

-----

The lawyer led Gisele and Leni into the conference room, and showed them to their seats.

"I'm sorry, William, but could you excuse us for a moment?"

"Sure." He walked out of the room, and let the glass go opaque as the door closed behind him.

["So, what's the deal?"] Josh asked. The men said, speaking from a loosened panel above the conference room above them.

"There's no problem," Josh said as he looked around the room, minimizing his profile with relation to the furniture in the room, in the event that the liquid crystal was translucent and not opaque.

"Yeah. There is. He's meeting with a Republican party bigwig." Gisele began to pace around the table slowly, more for emphasis than out of concern.

"And?" Josh blurted out. "We're already in the middle of crowded office on the one-hundred twenty... third floor. They aren't going to matter when we drop in on them."

"He's right, Gee." Roddy looked her in the eyes and nodded. "I mean, okay, the woman is a mayor, but the other two are just staffers from the Republican National Committee. It's no thre—
"Shit." Everyone turned to look at Roddy as he was suddenly consumed with his heads-up display imagery. He sent the other three a live uplink. Gisele opened the link in her cybercomm, and a group of small windows quickly cascaded on the left side of her field of vision. On top was a live video image of four men in suits walking through the hallway towards the firm's lobby with purpose. "They're Feds."

"Move," Gisele ordered. Josh and Roddy pulled back from the panel, sliding it back into place. After it was closed, Gisele opened the door and let the room become visible to the outside world, and she called in William as well as the rest of the group of lawyers assembled outside. The Martel Foundation was not an insignificant client. But the rest of the windows in her field of view showed that several of them were headed downstairs. "We're done in here."

Turning to look at her teammate, she was now certain that they had betrayed her. It made sense in a way, but it also showed their hand. In the hallway, the others continued to stand around while William walked into the room. Closing the door, the glass walls frosted into a massive silvery sheet.

["Abort."] Gisele spun around in her chair, and closed her eyes as the video played and the agents approached Hernandez's office. "I'm sorry. Something's come up."
William looked across the table at her with a dour look on his face. "Indeed. It has." Gisele could barely hear the click coming from the doors as the magnetic locks engaged.

-----

"Do your job. And do it ASAP." Samantha took on a commanding tone the likes of which Gisele had never encountered, and the sudden impulse to kidnap Hernandez was overwhelming.

"He works for..." She paused, instinctively opening up a search window before she realized the connection was blocked. Looking down, she saw a business card. "Wait. Isn't this firm..." Samantha said nothing, but the look on her face as they sat eye to eye was enough to convince Gisele to stop talking immediately.

"It's half the price of Vegas. Minimal risk." Never trust a Johnson. That was the rule, and rules exist for a good reason. The colonel was probably the most notorious government Johnson in the last decade, at least, and Gisele had the scars to prove that 'minimal' was quite relative.

"I'll have to check with the others." Stall. Don't do anything without finding out more. This woman doesn't practice the art of the straightforward deal. All manner of intuitive and learned lessons of the deal entered her train of thought; anything not to agree to this. It seemed bad at the beginning, but now she knew it was.

"You're already in. You accepted the moment you took that card."

"That's not how we work."

"Fine. But let's look at this rationally. Your reputation in the shadows has bottomed-out, and you nearly had a Johnson poached in the middle of a meet. Have you even had any offers since then? The others will follow you because they trust you."

Maybe she did kill Sonia, she thought, but she does have a point.

-----

"What are you doing here?" Connelly spat out. Suddenly, the feeds went dead. The comm's signal was dead, which seemed a pretty obvious security tactic under the circumstances: Isolate and alienate. Leni probably didn't notice, though. Gisele was grateful for that because it meant that she was focused on the lawyer's sudden change. He froze up, and then collapsed. By the time he hit the floor, both women had leapt to their feet and were walking towards to the spot beneath where Roddy and Josh had appeared.

"I'm glad I wore pants," Leni said as she grabbed one of the chairs and stood on top of it. Gisele muttered something under her breath, but the elf was too busy getting them out to notice. One the ceiling panel was removed, she reached up into it as a hand reached down and grabbed her wrist. Once Leni was in the crawl space, Gisele followed.

Inside the crawl space, Josh took the lead. He was fast for someone crawling on all fours, and Gisele especially had trouble keeping up. However, he was the stealth expert, so they had to follow him and hope that no one caught them as they made their way through the space to an elevator shaft. It was dark and cold, and also noisy as the sounds of the entire tower echoed around them. Looking down, Gisele couldn't help but notice that there didn't seem to be a bottom. It was one of the express elevators that went directly up to the law firm from the garage, which meant a nearly 400 meter vertical drop.

"Going up," Roddy said as he dropped a pair of harnesses down to the women. Looking up, she could already see them climbing up to the elevator housing on the roof. It was a simple four-point harness, but it was only a precaution in the event of a fall from the greasy ladder rungs. Still, she couldn't help thinking about the drop.

-----

Gisele sat on her bed, head still pounding and body aching, the pill bottles were lying next to her. Relief would come, but not soon enough for her. It was the idea — the very suggestion, even — that Madison had killed her aunt that convinced Gisele to play these people's game. Sonia Vasquez never discussed what she did, but Gisele always knew she was involved in some sort of clandestine government work. She disappeared in the summer of '64, and it wasn't until a year later that her family knew for sure Sonia was dead. No one would, or could, explain the circumstances, and the now-SINless girl had other things to worry about by then.

As the drugs kicked in, Gisele relaxed and let her mind wander. Life in the shadows had ceased to be worthwhile, and the shadows were growing ever less interested in her worth. Madison had a point about their rep, especially Gisele's. Two catastrophic failures to complete the same wetwork job did them in. Having to fend off a Johnson poacher was bad enough. Both occurring publicly in a runner bar was a cherry on top of the sundae of suck. They could use Madison, or her money anyway. But there was some principle pulling at her to deal with the midwestern woman.

When her commlink rang, she suddenly felt that the decision had been made for her. She answered, and heard the midwestern woman on the other end.

"We're supposed to kidnap Javier Hernandez from his office in two days. So, you send someone to stop it, and then I flip and give Madison up in exchange for, you know."

"Inside the firm? That's rather bold."

"Well, I figure it will be especially embarrassing to her that she sent runners inside the same firm that represented her."

"Yes. Yes, it will be. Thank you."

The line went dead, and Gisele heaved a great sigh. The photo of Gisele and her friend seemed to be staring back at her as she looked at her dresser, and she suddenly felt any doubt vanish as hate crept in and began to gnaw at her in her drugged state.

-----

Standing on the roof of the tower, Gisele finally got an appreciation of how windy the city could be. Then again, at 400 meters above ground level, just about everywhere is windy. Roddy and Josh made their way towards one of the ledges where a large machine the size of two refrigerators sat at an angle. It was a crazy escape route, but that's also what made it so appealing. Riding down the window-washing machine would be fast and direct down to ground level while the mage provided visual concealment.

The problem was that it wasn't going to carry them all in one pass, which meant two of them would be standing on the roof waiting for it to return, and hopefully before security arrived. Gisele made the decision to stay behind. She got them into this mess, after all, and if those agents were with the people who grabbed her then she would have a chance to make it out alive.

"I'll stay," Josh said as Roddy was finishing his hack on the machine's operational instructions.

"No. Go with them." Gisele wasn't much for debate during a job, especially with a replacement.

"Have you ever killed a God-chipped merc?" he asked. "I didn't think so," he added before she could answer. "I'm staying behind."

"Fine. Leni. Rod. Go."

The mage and hacker were barely harnessed in when it began to descend over the edge of the building. Once they were out of view, Gisele turned around and gazed across the helipad on the center of the roof. When she looked over to Josh, he had already disappeared, inexplicably managing to find concealment.

-----

"What do you know about Madison and her relation to civilian intelligence?" This time Gisele was on Kay's turf, deep within the Puzzle Palace — the DeeCee sprawl's equivalent to ShadowSea. It was a maze of white doors in a maze of featureless white halls. It was bureaucratic Hell hiding goodies behind anonymity.

But there was an area deep within, much like Olympus, that was designed to look like a marble palace to something left unsaid. Her footsteps had echoed through the chamber filled with translucent "ghosts" holding court in side halls and alcoves as Gisele's icon walked through until she had found Kay St. Irregular in an alcove that turned into a patio with the Capitol in the background.

"That's pretty vague. She was involved with a lot of things." Kay St. Irregular seemed in her element. A somber icon in a somber virtual environment.

"I've come across some information, but the source is... shady, to say the least. Did she ever murder anyone?" Someone from an intelligence agency, like the CIA?" Kay's icon remained motionless, waiting for more. "Did she murder Sonia Vasquez."

"Sonia Vasquez was killed after a failed assassination attempt on Antonio Popé in '64. They were close friends. Adepts in the intelligence community tend to stick together, regardless of agency. There just aren't that many working for the UCAS itself.

"I don't know. Someone had to tip off his bodyguards, or else after twenty years she suddenly got so sloppy it killed her. The colonel always talked about making sacrifices against the NR, and one spy would have been worth a high-value target like one of the Popé boys. Why does it matter, anyway?"

"Just principle, I guess. It seems like every time I turn around, it seems she was trying to destroy the country and not save it. Someone slipped and told me about her. If it's true, then wow, that's unconscionable."

-----

Time seemed to stand still as Gisele waited on the roof. She had found cover near one of the air conditioning housings, and just waited. Suddenly she could hear the sound of rotors beating, and looked behind her in time to see a small black helicopter bank towards the tower's helipad.
She looked back, trying to raise Josh on his comm and only finding horrific static and interference. She couldn't raise him or even keep the connection alive, and the others were already halfway down the building and incommunicado. "Ballard?" she finally called out loud.

"I'm right behind you," he whispered into her ear as the helicopter approached even more closely. She began to turn before she bumped into the muzzle of a suppressor with the base of her skull. She leaned forward so that only her hair made contact as it whipped around the suppressed pistol. "Sometimes, in politics, you have to put a gun to someone's head just to get their attention. Sometimes, it's exposing a major election law violation to the FBI when they would otherwise never be allowed to legally enter this building."

"And me?" Gisele winced. This was either when she got shot in the head, or the cavalry rescued her.

"Josh?" Repeating his name again, she finally turned to find that he had disappeared, and she was facing a half-dozen armed security guards.

"You're not the cavalry, are you?"

All Debts, Public and Private

Jay sat in one of the back booths inside The Hollow Point, nursing a bottle of Czech beer long enough that it had figured out how to insult him in English before he added the bottle to his spam filter. Resting his arms on the table, he tried to ignore everything going on around him. The Point was always rather hacker-friendly, but Ol' Dwight never bothered to take advantage of "that AR shit" himself. Reality was augmented enough in here, he'd say.

It didn't help his drink any that just being inside the bar required him to wear a breather. Ever since the shootout at Sea-Tac, he hadn't been the same. Between the trauma he suffered as well as a series of complications related to attempts to fix and later replace his left lung, followed by an infection which cost him his original right lung, he was loathe to come into smoke-filled dives. But, he admitted, this wasn't exactly his choice. The whole mess left him unaugmented and cost him the entirety of his nest egg.

Finally, the whole reason for his being here had come through the door. He watched as the runner walked past the crowded tables and equally busy pool tables to make his way to the back of the bar. As he approached, Jay noticed an elven woman following three steps behind. The two slid into the booth without hesitation, but no one said a word for at least two minutes.

"Thanks for meeting me here. I know it's not exactly under the best circumstances." The man looked Jay in the eyes with a mix of sadness and frustration. "But I couldn't think of anyone I'd rather have in on this than you." His name was Dale. He was a great fighter, but the rest of his life was a disaster area. Hence the elf.

"Except Michel. So," he added as he turned to look over the elf, "long time no see." Her name was Lissa, and her dark hair and features, as well as those entrancing green eyes, belied her Azeri heritage. She and Jay continued to stare each other.

"You understand," she said, "how important this is?" Jay simply glared at her. He wasn't about to start a fight he knew he'd lose over old shit.

"What happened to Michel, anyway?" Jay asked, breaking the staring contest long enough to focus on Dale.

"He got into a fight he couldn't back out of, and the other guy fried his brain."

"Smart. So, yeah, I'll do this."

"Thanks."

-----

Aw, fuck. Jay realized that he was getting fucked, and not in a good way, by his ex. Of all the goddamn things.

As he walked through the doors of the cargo container that had been snugly tucked among a dozen others just like it, he realized that this wasn't just an old debt being paid off. It was enough to pay off all of his debts to Dale in full, plus gaining a favor or two. The other runners had taken up sentry positions around the warehouse, and so he was supposed to enter the container alone. What he didn't expect was to find himself face to face with a fixer who had a price on her head.

"Good afternoon," the elf said in an all-too familiar sweet voice. Jay didn't say anything. All around his head had swirled a mix of visual, audio and semi-noticeable tactile sensations that were soon dismissed. It was enough that he could focus all of his being on wanting to commit bloody murder, at least taking slight comfort in the fact that he knew with absolute certainty her face, her voice, virtually everything about her was a façade. "I take it that you didn't know you'd be guarding one of us."

"What ever gave you that idea," he spat back sarcastically. "No, I didn't. It doesn't matter now. So, which one are you?"

"Corinna."

"Great. I guess this could be worse. You're one of the good ones."

"Thanks for the ringing endorsement."

"Let's just be honest here. I'm not too fond of you all. I expect that you can appreciate why. However, I also expect that you can appreciate the circumstances of why I dragged myself back into the field."

"Of course. I don't have to tell you to do what you will do." Jay nodded, and stepped towards her to shake her hand. "I'm keeping a Nadja alive."

-----

The Nadjas. Jay could have gone his entire life without dealing with them. They were all former bunraku parlor "meat puppets" altered to look physically identical to each other, and to their group's namesake — Nadja Daviar. Over the years, most of their kind got used-up, worn out, remodeled, or escaped one way or another. But the Nadjas were an even rarer number who had been particularly well-crafted. Their chipped programming or "directed" social, technological, or magical abilities make them particularly fit to work as faces and fixers. Since coming together, the Nadjas have formed complex social network and web of contacts that turned them into an independent fixer network.

The women were all elves, and to that end they have been known to have allies in the elven underworld, or with elves in the underworld syndicates. They have also associated with a number of liberal organizations whose fingers dig into the shadows, from the Sisters of Eglatine to the Empowerment Coalition. The Nadjas have quickly evolved into a very select, very secretive organization.

Their very faces made them different. Getting a skinjob to look like a celebrity was common, but this was something else. Their "creators" had been the exacting ones: the ones who went into great detail to craft their products using women who matched Daviar's physical and mental profiles, and who went beyond cosmetic surgery and implanted personafix software to augment their genetic structure. At times, one could easily come away with the impression that they were clones.

They were high-class and high-priced, even for most meat puppets, before they ended up in the shadows. They were the kind of puppets that were used as escorts and companions as well as fuck-dolls. No one is entirely sure who made them or how they ended up in the shadows, but there was a reason why men like Dale and Jay took jobs to protect them: they were being hunted. In the last five years, their ranks fell to a low of fifteen without a new Nadja appearing in over a year and a half. Whoever was after them had been frighteningly effective.

-----

"We have a six-man team in a diamond formation, which will be sufficient for this deal. Tip takes the point, and then the main group follows two meters back. Lissa has zero. Deph, you have three. Dale has the lead at six, and Rowan has nine. I'll be backing up the rear two meters behind Dale as cover. There will be six drones providing countersniper surveillance. They'll be maintaining their failsafe points in a six-meter radius from the principle."

"Call signs?"

"The principle is Liberty. The primaries are Honor one through four. Point is Hero, and Cover is Halo. Has everyone done the run-through of TBM?" Looking around, everyone nodded. TBM was a special program Jay had written to do exactly what it said it was – Total Battlespace Management. It integrated real-time satellite surveillance as well as traffic pattern analysis through a backdoor in GridGuide. It also utilized the feeds from sensors placed around the vehicles that watched for spikes in Matrix traffic and bandwidth. Astral space integration was the most difficult part, especially with an unfamiliar team. The idea was that with a pair of agents managing and filtering most of the data to provide an AR overlay that didn't interfere with the most important aspect of close personal security – natural metahuman senses.

"Transpo on-site will be two SUVs. We can't use three since we're short on manpower, and it's conspicuous to the point of counterproductivity. Neither of them looks alike, but they are both heavily armored. Three people to a car: Honor one and two and Hero in the copper Lexus. The rest plus Liberty are in the silver Chrysler."

"Move out."

Bodyguarding inside moving vehicles is a tremendous pain in the ass, especially in the city. Most notably this is due to the lack of control over the environment. The layout of a car, even if it has been refitted for rigging, prevents total information awareness, and the vehicles just cannot move with the same relative speed or maneuverability people can within crowded confines. Installing weapons was mostly useless because the intent was to escape and evade, not to fight it out in the middle of downtown Seattle. The addition of armor is beneficial ... to a point, but in the end there were only a few vehicles that could withstand virtually any punishment for an amount of time to successfully manage the situation, but none of them were easy to come by, let alone inconspicuous. They had to rely on the hope that any threats were limited to small arms.
The movement through the Metroplex involved watching for tactical anomalies in traffic as they drove up I-5 to Beverly Park in Everett. The Triple Tree Inn was the center of the world this afternoon. Pulling into the service/VIP entrance behind the building would allow them to maximize security along with the hotel detail and the other VIP's detail.

This was by far the most infuriating part of the job. It was always difficult operating with multiple security teams, but the nature of this meeting was apparently so clandestine that Jay didn't know who they were meeting or who would be providing security. For all he knew at the outset, this was going to be him facing a group of old enemies. He wasn't stupid, though, and so he was forcing a backdoor open inside the hotel's host. He created himself a superuser account and was letting a frame watch for pattern recognition of common security detail formations However, even as they were exiting onto Beverly, neither he nor his frame saw anything. This is bad.

-----

"What exactly is your problem with us?" Corinna asked Jay as they had piled into the SUVs. He didn't say anything, maintaining a hardened façade behind his wraparound black sunglasses and worn exterior. He was pushing forty, but had an almost immovable clenched-jaw expression combined with close-cropped white hair. It was quite apparent that he was growing more displeased as the job moved forward, and tried to disregard the interrogatory by his client.

"What makes me a 'good one' then?" She followed him as he was walking around the vehicles, ostensibly staring at them from behind his sunglasses. She could see as he bent down on the second pass that he had ear buds in both ears.

"Ma'am," he began before stopping to turn and look at her. "You shouldn't have to ask why I think you're a 'good one,' but it's because I do know about your little group. Every time someone on the Matrix mentions a Johnson or a fixer or some underworld or quasi-legit facilitator who looks like Nadja Daviar, I know about it.

I don't like your group because it offends me. It offends what I put my life on the line for every time I read about your groups' exploits, rare as those are, just as I do whenever I read these conspiracy nuts go on about how the real Nadja was corrupt, or double-dealing the government, or ... God-forbid," he began before heaving an obvious sigh, "she was behind the uprising."

"You were there, weren't you? At the airport."

"Yes," he said in a barely-audible rasp. Clearing his throat, Jay made an overly dramatic gesture of removing his sunglasses so that he could look her in the eye. "So when I read about you, or most of you, anyway, it's not that you're pissing on the reputation of one person, but everyone who died on that tarmac.

"You had this forced upon you, and yet of all the things you could have done, you kept that face; that voice." Leaning in close to her, he whispered into her ear, "You weren't molded into a mere simulacrum. You became her. You share her genetic profile. And yet all you've done with it is ... this," he hissed.

-----

Inside the penthouse of the luxury hotel, Jay continued to monitor the situation alongside the private guards who'd been paid extra to stay quiet and provide a force multiplier just by being there. Finally, he noticed in one of his AR windows as a trio of sedans pull up and disgorge its occupants. They were a mix of elves and humans who looked like the stylishly hip trying to get away from the "real" Seattle – but only just. They moved in a coordinated fashion, but without any focus on a particular occupant. Jay smiled as he watched from behind his sunglasses. Bellhops had pulled several large suitcases out of the trunk of the middle car, and wheeled them inside.

"That's them," Corinna said.

When they arrived inside the penthouse, Jay stood near the center of the room as Corinna sat on the couch with two individuals: a stunning blonde elf and her human, Chinese companion. The trio spoke little as two of the suitcases were set down on the coffee table in front of them. One of the other Chinese men opened them up, and let the three inspect the contents. From his vantage point, Jay could see that one of the cases was filled with all manner of bills of different denominations and origins. He recognized many of them quickly from his training as being real paper or plastiweave currency. But they were mixed in with simulations of paper currency with other images on them, and also mixed with bills that didn't look anything like official currency. Hell Bank Notes, he figured. The Nadjas – this one, anyway – were doing a deal with one of the Triads. From the size of the offering, it was for something pretty fucking big.

But in the other suitcase was something far more familiar. It was filled with real paper (or the closest thing to it) currency. A mix of government reserve notes and corp scrip still used by the paranoid and the people, mostly in the shadows, who couldn't get a bank account and weren't going to sell their lives for the privilege of using a syndicate-run "bank." It dawned on Jay that the six cases probably contained a similar mix, and altogether accounted for a hell of a lot of money.

Jay had gotten out of fieldwork to settle into the life of a shadow accountant laundering money for those, mostly shadowrunners and hackers, who preferred the relative honesty of someone like himself over that of a Mafia launderer who'd rape them at least twice on every transaction. Besides, he had been one of them, and was one of the few in the shadows who had been a CPA in a former life. Between investigating counterfeiting and financial crimes and his side, now primary, work committing those same crimes he saw this stuff all the time.

Ironically, on the back end most runners never even contemplated, it was easier to deal with than certified cred. No matter how hard one tries, it always leaves a datatrail. Cash, on the other hand, does not. And that is important when it comes to the actual laundering process where the money returns to the corps and banks. No bank, especially the non-extraterritorial ones that made quite a bit of revenue off the books, wanted to be the ones tied to certified credsticks linked to a dead shadowrunner, or worse, a live one. Aside from that, in the (frankly speaking) less civilized world, cash was still very popular. Since the nuyen was entirely electronic, precluding the existence of such thing as a 100-nuyen note, other government currency and corp scrip was used. So what he saw in the case was the holy trinity of cash deals: UCAS dollars, Euros, and Aztechnology scrip. There were also CAS dollars and Pounds Sterling among others inside the case, all in large bills. All still legal tender for all debts, public and private.

Corinna, on the other hand, retrieved her small brown leather purse from behind her, and pulled out five certified credsticks from the Corporate Bank of Santa Fe. Each stick read the same value on the side: 20,000¥. She nodded to her companions and handed them the sticks.

-----

"Change of plans," Corinna said as the SUVs pulled out of the alley. "We're going to take this to Master Chen." Fine, Jay thought, it's not that far out of our way.

Once back in Tacoma, the work of managing the situation became far more difficult. It was now rush hour, and the streets were filled with cars. TBM overlaid Jay's vision with AR symbols and metaphors. The GridGuide-controlled vehicles were white, and independent vehicles were green. The system was designed to be efficient, but nonetheless traffic could still easily slow to a crawl, especially due to independent-vs-GridGuide "conflicts." The vehicles around them were almost entirely overlaid in white, and the lead vehicle, the Lexus, was five cars ahead and in the right lane to the Chrysler's center lane. The autonav was fluctuating their relation to between five and three car-lengths to avoid the impression that they were a convoy.

Jay also left a window open down at his chest of an aerial view from a traffic drone. The overlay was the same there. TBM was tracking movements as it lit up three white cars in orange. They were acting abnormally for being under GridGuide control. Two were between the Lexus and the Chrysler and in the center lane, and one was headed in the opposite direction in the left lane. They had broken off from patterns of circling the block and driving in the right-hand lane respectively. The latter was especially odd because it backed-up traffic slightly, which was uncommon, to say the least.

Behind them, Jay and the program picked up the signs of two large independent pickups approaching, but staying four to five cars behind, but now edging their way closer. This was a commercial area with plenty of parked vehicles and narrow alleys. One such alley was almost parallel to the Chrysler.

"We're going to cut through here and divert around." Suddenly the SUV jerked and made a nearly ninety-degree turn past the sidewalk and into the alley. It's not like there was anything in there. His drones or the traffic drone would have picked them up by now. Two of the minidrones rocketed forward towards the end of the alley, scanning the area in thermographic and millimeter-wave radar before bursting onto the street. Nothing.

Then he noticed a sudden thermal shift coming from one of the drones' sensors. As they were about to pull out of the alley and into the street, the van parked near the mouth of the alley suddenly lurched forward, stopping right in front of them.

"Fuck." Jay couldn't tell if there was someone inside immediately, but the radar soon proved that to be a negative. Sniffing the airwaves, he couldn't find any sign of an open connection to the van, or indeed, any open port in which he could use to hack into it as the SUV's autonav brought it to a halt.

Just then over the comm, Jay heard a crashing noise. TBM was pinging like mad as he watched the aerial view of the orange cars turning to red and then black as they pinned the Lexus in. This, he decided, was very bad. Lissa, Deph and Tip were out, and that meant their astral and magical cover were as well.

"Black!" Jay yelled out loud. It was code for "Attack On Principle." It meant for everyone to do their job by dropping whatever they had been doing, and moving their client out of harm's way as quickly as possible.

Dale took over the SUV and put it into gear, slamming his foot down on the gas pedal as they began to speed off in reverse. They suddenly came upon the two pickups, which had entered the alley and were speeding towards the SUV. Before Dale could stop, they slammed into the lead pickup with a horrible crunch followed by the sound of metal twisting as the armor lodged itself into the grill guard. The pickup didn't entirely stop, and it instead pushed the SUV into the alley wall. Jay didn't have to see any readings to know that the other one would be positioned to keep anyone from entering — including the rest of the team.

Without thinking, Jay's drones fell into attack mode, designed to create interference while the humans escaped. One of the two drones behind them arced up in a sharp parabola before screaming down and into the windshield of the pickup with which they were entangled. The truck's cabin filled with orange and red flames as the drone's warhead detonated. Jay hadn't even realized that he was already on the floor of the SUV on top of their client.

Dale didn't have to think before switching to four-wheel drive and flooring the accelerator, creating a cloud of smoke as the rear tires burned in their attempt to free themselves from the truck. The SUV suddenly lurched forward as it came free only to tear into the right-side wall as the truck kept moving towards the van. Then, as suddenly as they began to move, Dale hit the brakes. Ahead of them was the materialization of a white and yellow fire elemental standing ahead of a crimson red samurai. No one breathed.

Suddenly a gold and red figure materialized between them as it flew towards the samurai with its own sword, punching through the spirit without even stopping. Even from behind the armored windows, they could hear an ungodly scream as it was cleaved in two before being torn from the physical realm.

Back in the virtual realm, Jay had the rest of the drones sweep for any potential hostiles, such as whoever conjured the spirits. It was the fire elemental's turn now, and it moved quickly to engulf the exterior of the SUV, setting detritus scattered across the alley alight as well. It only lasted a few seconds, but then it also roared, but still maintained cohesion, and settling below them.
The next thing Jay knew was happening, he was being pushed out of the sunroof, and let himself sprawl onto the windshield. The elf came out next and landed on top of him as Dale dragged her off the roof and landed on the pavement. Jay rolled onto the hood, and felt himself get lifted off into the air as he realized the Brit, Rowan, had him in a fireman's carry as the ork jumped and bounced off a wall before catching the rung on a fire escape and dropping them onto the landing. The next thing Jay sensed was the sight of the exploding SUV.

If he had the time, Jay would have cursed his unaugmented reflexes. As it was, he only had time to react as he and Rowan landed inside a massive storeroom. Jay rolled onto his hands and knees in time to watch the black ork from Merseysprawl crouch over him. They jumped to their feet and rushed over to the shattered glass as flaming bits of the varied and colorful cash and Hell Bank Notes rained down on the alley. Below them, he heard gunshots as Dale had already engaged several Japanese men.

"What the fuck," he said as he felt Rowan fling them bodily out the window towards the attackers.

Fuck 'em. If they were in the alley and he didn't know them, they were the enemy. He managed to come down mostly in the right angles as he was dropped, planting a knee between one man's shoulder blades before landing on the pavement. The two other runners were fighting off at least four Japanese men, keeping themselves between the Japs and Corinna as Jay's instincts kicked in. Black ... Evacuate the Principle.

Jay pushed off the body hard, sprinting as fast as he could towards the elf and nearly tackling her from behind. It was sad but true that in these instances, comfort is a very low priority as he half-pushed, half-carried her ahead of him, reaching around and crossing his left forearm over her heart and center of mass. It was of little comfort that there was a forearm guard in his armored suit, but it meant the difference between life and death sometimes. With his right hand, he drew his pistol and fire two quick shots into the passenger window of the van, slamming his charge up against the door.

Before he could reach in to unlock the door, he suddenly felt two wet jabs to his ribs, and for a moment nearly lost his footing. Reaching inside, he opened the door and effectively threw the woman into the van, pushing her over the middle console and into the back as he followed. She figured out the plan, and once free moved quickly on her own to exit through the rear of the van. The doors burst open, and they were immediately upon too many bystanders. Too many unfamiliar faces. He pushed forward through the people as he held onto the elf's right elbow, pinning her right hand in to ensure a grasp on his belt while she kept her left hand on his shoulder.

And they ran.

Jay’s vision became a blur of movement as he pushed forward down the sidewalk until they couldn't run anymore. The two found themselves surrounded by people as he forced his way fell to his knees, tripping on something. He suddenly realized the buzzing in his ears wasn't just his blood pressure, but the voices of the rest of the team. He recognized the voice behind him as Tip's. It figured that the elven point man would be able to catch them.

But the elf didn't stop. He moved past Jay and caught up to Corinna, grabbing her from behind as she let go of his belt. Tip pressed on, leading her further down the street towards anyplace not there. Fuck, the old man thought to himself as he tried to catch his breath only to cough up spittle and blood. You owe me, he said in his mind to no one in particular. Big time.

Deefnitely like the first one. Some good classic stuff, like nasty johnson's and betrayals. Written well, seems to flow. I like the break up in the story telling. As always, I like your politics , like pulling in the stuff from RH w/ Danquist. Very good stuff man. Liked the ending. Sorry for the brief reply, tired night.

Only read the first one so far. I can't help but get the feeling that it'd be better as a movie. The flashbacks seem to interrupt the reading a bit, and it'd help to have some extra visual imagery. Solid story though.

Well it was worth it at least. I liked it.

i'd read the first one before, but i must've been distracted. it's thickly-plotted and pretty fast-paced. i had to stop and think a few times to keep track of the time jumps, but that's not a bad thing.

second story was really nice. i like the Nadjas, really cool idea.

The disorienting nature of the time jumps was intentional.

agreed, just finished the second. Left me wanting to know more. WHich Isuppose is a good thing, but still doesn't tell me any more. ergh. I liked the combat scenes, I liked how well you meshed every day writing stuff with the SR tech, and very much liekd the idea ofthe Nadja's . Very neat ideas. Liek I said though, now I want to see more on it.

edit: God I wish I could type properly tonight. I blame the new keyboard.

It's all good.

It's interesting. I've only read the first one at present as they are both quite long.

The plot is very sophisticated and the jumping meant I had to really concentrate. But the thing that struck me is how little visual imagery there is in the story. If I were to offer constructive criticism it would be that it needs more solid description. The human brain needs to visualise events in order to track them and that's especially important in something with a plot as involved as this that runs on several time tracks concurrently. Plot is carbohydrates. Description is fibre. You need the latter to slow it down and aid digestion.

But I'm glad you posted it.

Regards,

-K.