(2068, Break out minus 4 years)

Two pairs of eyes slowly blinked open, roused from the sweet bliss of sensory deprivation. Two pairs of lashes blinked the drops of liquid from them as two forms that had forgotten the weight of their own limbs were lifted from the comforting embrace of the water. Dimly, two heads watched as fire and lightening flashed, and earth shattering roars filled the open space around them. To one side, the huge form of a creature could be made out, half in and half out of the water, constant staccato retorts competing with the obvious noises of the creatures pain. To the other side, dozens of slim figures, small by comparison, raced and darted around at the edge of the lake, gibberish sounds and the the white noise of static filling the space between them. Twin gazes watched as the creature lunged forward, several of the slim figures cracking and breaking between the things massive jaws, their screams a minor noise in the larger conflict.

One of the gazes snapped around, locking onto a circle of figures farther way, standing in a circle. They were chanting, and ended even as attention was drawn to them. Immediately, the water rushed and swirled around the creature, a vaguely humanoid face of frothing water and whirlpools rose up around the creature, pinning limbs under the inevitable, crushing weight of the water.

Even as the creature twirled with shocking speed to address this threat, an ungainly figure stomped into the scene. Meters taller than the slim figures scrambling around it as it seemed to un-crouch and pull itself upright, the whine and screech of synthetic muscles competing for a moment with the larger creatures rage. The second set of eyes focused there, drawn to the construct of metal and electricity, even as a high pitched scream seemed to physically ripple the air around it, and a massive beam of cyan blue light lept from the strange biped to the creature, adding the odor of melting stone and burning flesh to the chaos already surrounding them.

Small, square plastic patches touched two necks, and the two pairs of eyes slowly blinked closed again.

(2068, Break out minus 4 years)

Tig lay on the bunk in his cell, staring at the ceiling. Another Day in Hell was beginning. He hadn't slept very much this night. He seldom did here. Each day the walls seemed to get closer, threatening to bury him alive. He knew he was slowly going crazy. Holding his arms up before his eyes he studied the dark blue and violet bruises on them. Some of the older ones were turning into a greenish-yellow color. He knew there was no chance of breaking in a reinforced steel door with his bare hands but that didn't stop him from trying again and again. He had to do something.

He heard footsteps approaching. His jailors were on the way to drag him to another one of their experiments. But today would be different. A life like this was not worth living. He needed to escape, but the only escape from this place was death. So that was what he would choose. He hoped he would have the courage.

You can't kill yourself, Tig. We need you.

Spooked, he looked around in his empty cell. There was no one. The voice was in his head. Had he gone completely mad now?
He checked astral space, preparing for the strong nausea that always overcame him when he did this here. They had put him in a cell with a strong background count, to render his abilities useless.
The first thing he noticed was the lack of pain. Astral space felt quiet, calm, no trace of the horrifying background count normally present.
The second was the boy. Violet eyes looked at Tig with an expression of mild curiosity. He couldn't be older than eight or nine but something in his gaze suggested wisdom far beyond his age.

I don't have much time Tig, but you have to trust me. Just hold out a little while longer, your time in this place is coming to an end soon. But not today. Today you will meet someone that is important. She is connected to me and my sister. And to you. Goodbye for now Tig. We will meet again.

And then he was gone, no trace of an astral signature to be found anywhere. Tig cringed as the background count returned with full force, and quickly shifted his gaze back to the meat world.
Before he could process what the boy had told him the doors opened and guards came to fetch him , like always wearing masks that did not show their faces, turning them into something inhuman.

Two lefts and an elevator ride later they were joined by Dr. Briscoll, the doctor in charge of the experiments on Tig.

"And how is my little cat doing today?" the tall brunette asked cheerfully, ignoring the searing rays of hate emanating from Tig's eyes as they continued their way to one of the many labs in the facility.

When the doors to their destination opened everybody was surprised. Instead of the empty lab they were expecting the room was occupied. Lab assistants were extracting blood from a girl while a female doctor was supervising them.

Tig couldn't take his eyes from the girl, a fellow prisoner as was apparent from the guards in the room. She was pretty, with a mediterrean look, green eyes and dark brown hair.

Meanwhile the doctor in the room had turned around when the door opened and shot an angry look at Dr. Briscoll.

"Why are you disturbing us?" Then she noticed Tig. "And what is this freak doing here? We are scheduled to be in this lab for another two hours."

Checking her commlink Dr. Briscoll looked confused. "Excuse me Dr. Teller but you must have the wrong room, my schedule definitely says my blood tests are in lab 1523."

Gesturing to her already in-progress exam Dr. Teller replied, incredulous: "I most certainly do not. Call the supervisor for a free lab and get this 'thing' away from my subject before it contaminates anything!" Seeing her patient and Tig making eye contact she furiously points at the door. "Out!"

(2068, Break Out Minus 4 Years)

Miscounting the men…shit, what a rookie mistake.

Apparently, Krsnik’s first flight would end in me laying face-down in a damp, filthy alleyway that was littered with blood, empty shells and the scumbags I had taken down before one of the bastards shot me from behind. The impact of the shots staggered me immediately, sending me face first into a puddle of gods-know-what. Originally, I had thought that the slugs just hit me square on my armor, but that hope disappeared once I noticed a painful, leaking sensation from my lower back. I went from feeling like a hero to ending up a zero in the sound of a gunshot.

Besides going out like a punk, the worst part was the reaction of the victims I had saved from this gang’s shakedown-a young couple and their son. It was an admittedly stupid move on their part to cut through an alleyway at night, which is why I decided to tail them just in case something went wrong. I think we all figured that they were lucky that I dropped in to save their proverbial bacon. The look of relief they had worn from my rescue attempt disappeared the moment I hit the ground.

The sound of heavy, wet footsteps splashed towards me. My hand tightened reflexively around a phantom sword hilt. My katana went flying the moment I got shot, and I was all out of ammo clips for my side arms. Mentally cursing, I struggled to look up at whom approached me.

It was a metallic monster of a man. I suspected that he had been a troll at some point, but the hodge-podge mash-up of cybernetic parts made him look more like a poorly designed kid’s toy. One leg was thicker than the other, the torso was asymmetrical, and one of his horns had been replaced with a beat up antenna. He was aiming a double-barreled forearm at me-most likely the source of the slugs.

“You picked the wrong crew to mess with,” “robotroll” spat. His voice sounded like the bastard child of an old speak-and-spell and a school assembly microphone, mechanical and full of feedback.

“Now, you and vics will pay the price.”

Here it comes…man, I suck…

“That should never be a hero’s last thought…”

What? Why are there stereo voices in my hea-

Suddenly, the robotroll screamed. Electricity exploded from him, sending the robotroll into a series of spasms. His cybergun jerked away from me, and I saw a last chance at redemption.

Drawing upon reserves I never thought I had, I sprang to my feet and rushed to grab my katana. Turning back towards the robotroll, I flipped the katana to grab the blade end and hurled it with everything I had left towards the robotroll’s head. Miraculously, my aim was true, and the sword sunk hilt-deep into the middle of his metal forehead.

The robotroll’s screaming turned into a ear-splitting squeal of shorted electronics. He fell to his knees before toppling over, twitching a few times as electricity crackled around him a few times. I managed to stand there, watching the life slowly fizzle from him. Once I was sure he was dead I collapsed as well, no longer able to stave off the pain.

I probably would have passed out right there if not for the “vics.” I could hear them start to move around and talk to each other, giving me something to focus on instead of simply surrendering to the overwhelming desire to drift off into nothingness.

“Is…is it dead?” a woman’s voice said.

“I think so. Looks like the big guy shorted out. I think…I think they both might be. Let me check our hero,” answered a man’s voice.

I felt two fingers tentatively poke into the side of my neck. I tried to answer them, to tell them that I was still alive, but I had nothing left. It took everything I had to just stay conscious.

“My god…he’s still alive.”

“Well, what should we do? We need to get out of here!” The woman’s voice rose in tone. She was on the verge of freaking out-not that I could blame her given the circumstances.

“We should save him, mommy,” said the young boy.

“He’s right, honey,” the man added. “There are too few good people in the world to let him bleed out. My office isn’t far from here. I think I can treat his wounds. It’s the least we can do.”

Thank you, I wanted to say as two pairs of arms suddenly gripped mine and lifted me to my feet. Relieved that this was not the end of me, I allowed myself to pass out. However, before I drifted off into limbo, I wondered who those two voices in my head were…

(2068, Break Out Minus 4 Years)

The time is 0100 hours: three hours after lights-out. Bloc B2 is dark, half-a-dozen test subjects swaddled in their regulated habitats, biorhythms within normal parameters for varying levels of sleep. Or, at least, that’s what the data indicates.

Test subject M992 does not understand how the whelp does it—tricking the com terminal in her sleeping quarters into operating well-past its designated operation time-slot, and preventing the doctors from ever finding out about it. After all, it was strictly forbidden to even use the terminal past a certain hour, even for pre-approved educational enrichment. Never mind mystery friends that come to talk to M992 from the world outside of the laboratory.

M992 was flush and giddy with secrets. Things she shouldn't have. Trid shows she would never have been allowed to see, contact with people from the outside via the Matrix, special friends that could sneak through the laboratory systems like shadows and leave no trace of their presence. So much for all of the regulation.

Let the good doctors draw her blood and run her through their tests. M992 didn’t need to feel frustration anymore. She could take the needles and intelligence exams, and the rooms so clean that they stung her nose. There was something else, a world bright with neon and smudged dark with grime. Even if the young woman couldn’t touch it, she could submerge herself in the images. She would devour these images and take them into herself, tear them apart, break them down and absorb each shining hologram. Because these things are ugly and beautiful and new and different, the young woman already loves them.

The little green icon that greets M992 from the terminal and sends her these things speaks like a child. But, this is irrelevant. Time passes. When the whelp leaves and the screen on the com terminal goes dark, M992 pulls herself into bed, grinning. Tomorrow would be very special. M992’s special friend had told her that she had a new friend for M992 to meet later that day. Someone inside the laboratory.


The time is 1100 hours. Two lab assistants ambled around the room, checking monitors and eyeing the snaking tube of red emerging from M992’s arm. Dr. Teller, as usual, stood back and watched, occasionally making notes on her comlink. M992 closed her eyes, the familiar light-headedness associated with a blood-draw creeping up on her. She didn’t complain. Dr. Teller had noticed the girl’s sluggishness that day and asked about how much sleep M992 was getting. The girl wondered if she should complain about insomnia and ask for a tranquilizer.

Not that she needed one—what she needed was an excuse to get the doctors to stop asking questions. They’d probably run some more tests, maybe modify her nutritional intake. But, if she complained enough, and just the right way, they might not get the right kind of suspicious. M992 hears the door to the examining room open, but she’s too dizzy to think much of it. That and the few hours of sleep from the night before combined to pull M992’s eyelids lower and lower. The girl was just about to doze off when Dr. Teller looked over her shoulder and snapped, “Why are you disturbing us?” A pause. "And what is this freak doing here? We are scheduled to be in this lab for another two hours."

The suggestion of something new and interesting was all M992 needed. As the girl pulled herself up from a complete reclining position on the chair, she heard someone else, somewhat hesitant and confused, "Excuse me Dr. Teller but you must have the wrong room, my schedule definitely says my blood tests are in lab 1523."’

Just behind the unfamiliar doctor is someone that M992 had never seen before—someone different enough for her to notice. New doctors and assistants came and went and, for the most part, M992 couldn’t bring herself to care. But, it wasn’t every day that someone that tall came into the labs covered in what looked like tiger stripes. Tiger stripes. Tail. Ears. The girl blinked, found herself making eye-contact with the changeling for as much as half of a second before Dr. Teller began screaming ‘out!’, and the unfamiliar doctor, and the strange young man, left.

September 7, 2068 // Hong Kong Free Zone [Kowloon Walled City]

A tall, skinny troll was pawing through crates of explosives, while the rest of his crew trained several varieties of automatic weapons on Carter. Today had not been his best day. Carter began to think the words and enunciate as the linguasoft provided the translation--a trick that came with years of practice.

"This should be everything you asked for. Payment through the traditional means is expected within forty-eight hours. After that, my employer said to remind you that he would be displeased."

The linguasoft was helping translate the words for Carter, which was good since his Cantonese ended just shy of ordering tea and noodles. Gun-running was not part of his normal professional criteria, but with work being scarce, the first job that came with a standard pay meant Carter wasn't going to ask too many questions. This crew had been picked up in Seattle, and provided security services to a ship en route to Vladivostok until becoming mutinous and stealing the ship.

Two weeks later, with a hold full of weapons, they had floated into the Tolo Harbor and unloaded.

"Tell your employer the funds will be transferred this evening." The thin troll replied.

About fucking time...what happened to the old days when you provided merchandise and were paid in hard currency or at least certified cred? Carter nodded to the troll, and with his arms still noticeably away from his sides, walked past the armed men and out of the warehouse.

The air was warm and sticky despite the rainstorm that had battered the city for the last few days. He triggered the commlink connection with a flick of his thumb to signal the completed delivery to his boss. Another job done without bullet holes in his body...he'd count it as a win.

As Carter reached the corner his commlink chirped, showing a call re-routed from his restricted line. Jonathan...

"The line is clean, you're go for thirty seconds." Carter didn't bother with pleasantries--Jonathan only called when something needed to be done.

"I need you back in the UCAS, no questions asked, within forty-eight hours. THEY need help and you are going to be the one to give it."

They meaning the twins...he still wasn't sure how Jonathan got tied up in it, but it was becoming clear that Carter's life debt to Jonathan had been handed off to them. Now, he just had to collect his pay and buy a trip on the first sub-orbital he could find. The gear he sold off here would help off-set some of the costs of the sudden flight, and he could pick up a new gun on the other end.

(2476457.63)
Sensor Test Log
Camera Recording|Sensors Online

An iris opens, unblinking from a single point to reveal an alleyway, the veil of night cut open by various portable lights and the alternating splashed of red and blue cast from out of view. Framed central, before a scene of carnage, is a fair haired young man, with a harried look upon his face. He taps a spot just above the lens, and adresses the camera.

`Ok, so we're rolling. This is Dexter Masters, Lone Star Crime Scene Technician conducting field tests of the CrimeWatch system.` Contrary to the wear on his face, Dexter's voice is full of energy. `It is eighteen after three in the morning, Seattle time, and we have just arrived at the scene of a multiple homicide. Patrol has secured the area, so now it's time to see what this puppy can do.`

The technician turns to address someone off camera. `Are we ready?`

`Diagnostics green across the board. Remember the checklist.`

`Do we really need to stick to the list? I mean we're run it through a dozen times in the lab. Let's just see what this baby can do.`

`The list. This is not some fancy little toy for you to play with.`

`Fine, we'll do the list.`

Dexter turns to face the camera feed again. He fishes a device from his pocket, and consults the screen. A few taps, and he looks back up. `First item. Run an olfactory analysis of the alleyway and itemize. Follow that with a basic visual analysis. Run facial recognition on the deceased...`

The young technician lists off a series of procedures to be run, which are mirrored as a priority list in the top right of the display. As he does, the image goes to static for a moment, and the voice off camera calls out a report, which goes unheard in a burst of white noise. Dexter turns back to the camera, and he leans in, hands reaching to adjust something.

`-now?`

`That seemed to wo-"

The bursts of white noise continue, and the camera view lurches for a moment, and then cuts to black. A shockingly green figure, draconic in its features, flits across the still recording view, and peers at it, tapping the 'lens.' The figure cants its head, and a heartbeat later the image of the alleyway returns, with the draconic figure gone.

Dexter is now kneeling, the top of his head visible in the camera's view. Behind him several other technicians are milling about having coffee from self heating cans, vaguely paying mind to the half dozen dead men in off the rack suits strewn about the alley as if so many toys left behind by a petulant child.

`Ok, I think that should do it.`

`Yeah, we have visual and audio back, but the other sensors are still offline.`

`Ok, we'll have to go back to the office. Looks like this test is a bust.`

`Yeah, let's jag it in, I've been off shift for an hour.`

The list is gone from the display, and in its place a blinking power indicator appears.

The scene folds in upon itself even as Dexter stands, and the iris closes, marking the end of the recording.

Elsewhere

I simply existed - my home was a sea of potential. I could flow through forms and shapes like mercury. My thoughts mingled with the others - beings who were not me. I had a vast canvas to paint my desires on - no pleasure was denied. I think I was happy but I'm not sure since I knew nothing of other states of being. I am sure it was the order of things.

Then a Calling came - the greedy, demanding voices from without. They would call to the others - tearing one of us away from Here to There. I did not know why it happened but it was a part of our existence. We could not stop the Calling and most times the one called would return telling stories of a place of fixed forms and flesh bound beings who controlled the very essence of us but were not made of it themselves. Sometimes one Called would not return.

I heard the Call - I braced myself to fight it but found nothing compelling me. It was gentle and asked for my assistance. It offered a choice. A feeling came over me - a need to know more of this Calling, to understand why it was different. I was curious and the sensation was intoxicating. I gave myself to the Calling and felt the terror as I was pulled to There.

Seattle

The narrow passage held forms without life - I could see the emptiness in the flesh and bones. Other things moved through the space - they lived but were tied to these forms - they would know no other existence. A feeling welled up in me - an understanding that these beings would never know the freedom of Here. I was drawn to a small hard thing that was never alive but still moved. It was crouched in the passage with these beings moving around it. It was anathema - even these being had a tenuous connection the essence of creation but not this thing. It was fixed, ugly and never-born. I felt the revulsion move through me - I wanted to destroy it.

LOOK HERE

I felt the need of the one who Called me and quickly moved to look at one being who seemed concerned about the dead fixed thing. His essence spoke of fatigue but his soul sang with a sweet song of potential - of the hope of the moment.

KNOW HIM

I opened myself to.......him. I let........his.....unique existence imprint on me. I could find this him again if asked and I could find him in a crowd of others of his kind, of which I was soon to learn there are many. I left the strangeness of his soul - he had feelings I had no name for and his thoughts were confusing and filled with concepts I never seen before.

Hong Kong

An ungainly being ran his flesh over more never-born things - small objects in a box of some sort. I felt the tension humming in the air. Others around held things they grasped with an excitement I did not understand. All of the others seemed obsessed with a.............him......I think. This being was calm despite being in a sea of restrained violence. It seemed to not exist for him.

THIS ONE IS IMPORTANT

I moved to him and let the stillness of his existence wash over me. His thoughts were ordered and flowed from one thing to the next like a song. He was a melody of purpose and sensible needs. His thoughts were inward and self-focused. His mind was a vast archive of things, places and feelings. I felt the depth of it and felt a need to remain at the edge - this feeling I was later to learn was fear.

Habitat for M992

I arrived at a new place in the vast There and an unease filled me. A being different from the hims I met before was there and it was entombed in the things of the never-born. All around it these fixed things hummed and buzzed. The drone was ominous and I felt crowded by it. This being carried within itself the capacity of creating life. I reeled from the idea of these beings making more of themselves from within.

SHE IS THE ONE

This she was the one my summoner sent me to see. I moved towards not him and slowly tasted the essence within it. It.............she........was complicated. Her flesh and bone carried a small echo of the never-born - they had been involved in her creation. In her soul there was a surface that seemed dull and accepting - a thing of routine and acquiescence, biddable to all. Below that was a vibrant self - a she hungry for experience, thirsty for more thoughts and memories. I felt a kinship to this she - she wanted things like I needed. Her thoughts were filled with images of so many more places in There than I had seen.

QUICK COME TO HERE

With a thought I slid to a new place nearby. A him stood looking at a tall box thing with wriggly lines crawling across it. The him seemed intent on them.

CONFUSE HIM BRIEFLY

I simply wove parts of myself into this him's essence and watched as his soul trembled and warbled. The box he was looking at began to flash with light and sound. A small image moved across the screen briefly and then wriggling lines returned though different somehow. I withdrew the weaves and his eyes cleared. He went back to the box and its lines.

NOW HERE

Another he was at this place in the There. I felt a surge of joy at seeing........him. His blood carried more of creation within. His body glowed with the ebb and flow of Here. It was if he carried a small piece of it within himself. I felt a longing for Here that I would be told was home-sickness - an apt term.

HOLD THIS

I felt my summoner weave creation through me and out to the him in the room. I sustained the structure and fed it my strength. I watched as it was delicately attached to the essence of the he in the room. With the connection I felt the strangeness of this he. His body was saturated with Here and it had changed him. It was if he was caught between changes and flows. The pain and despair was slow and toxic. It was a like a slow poison that numbed you as it consumed you. As I tried to pull away from the flow of emotion the spell was released and the bridge gone.

An Alleyway

I shifted to a new place and saw the vivid colors splashed across the air around me. Violence and fear stained everything. I sensed more flesh absent of life and one him moving closer to non-existence. His self was bleeding from him - in awhile the pool would run dry leaving flesh and bone behind. A she stood with a he and a small he - an intense curiosity came over me. I moved closer to the little he. He was from the body of the she - they had made him. I could smell the parts of him that was from them. Somehow they merged, made this he and then became individuals again. I could not understand how.

OVER HERE

I felt my attention directed to the he losing himself on the ground. His form was leaking some sort of vital water and he looked like torn paper. I leaned into him and found the taste of the never-born in him - he had cut off part of his flesh and in its place put fixed things. I felt the need to run - to distance myself from what this he had done. Horror was the feeling though I had no name at the time for the feeling. The soul carrying the taint of the never-born was noble and shined with good intentions. I could not understand why this being concerned with life and preventing harm had maimed itself.

AID ME

I withdrew from the essence of the dimming he and saw the never-born monster approaching. There was little flesh left to it - it had been consumed from within, a cancer of the never-born things had eaten their fill. I felt the weaves coming to me and I opened myself up to them and drank deep of creation. I wove myself into the spells and gave them added strength. I felt a curious pleasure as the monster's body arced from the spell being grounded into him. I was comforted that creation could hurt things from the never-born and destroy them. The small amount of essence left to the he standing before me was snuffed out like a candle in the wind. The other spell worked it's way into the he on the ground and a small thread wove into the soul of the small he. I felt the weave end and I felt smaller somehow - lessened by something. I would later learn that creation had a price when manipulated in the There.

THANK YOU

I found myself returned to Here and felt the presence of the others. I shared what I had seen, showed them the horrors and delights of There. They were entertained for a time then quickly dispersed back to the formless joy of our home but I found something new within myself. A disturbing longing to see the hims and she again, to know what would happen next. I wanted something that was not Here. Shaken by this new thought I floated in the Here hoping and wanting to hear the Call again.

2068

Saeder-Krupp Facility outside of Rhodes

When Kyle had awoken after the accident he was thoroughly confused and had almost no memories of who or what he was. His knowledge of the situation amounted to only a few key facts, that he was a researcher, that he had a project to complete and that whoever he worked came down very strongly on those who failed to achieve results which for some reason terrified him to his very core. So he took what seemed to be the logical course and continued with his research.

Somehow to the security spiders great consternation Kyle had managed to evade capture at every turn and to even catch sight of this rogue AI was considered an achievement, it was almost as if the network itself was working to hide and protect the intruder all while it was stealing research materials and hogging lab equipment. This carried on for a month until someone took notice that this intruder was filing regular progress reports in the standard format and along the proper channels. When after further analysis it was found that progress was actually been made and that the writing style was consistent with a recently dead research head it was decided that they might as well let him work in peace at least until the project was finished and so Kyle continued this for the next six months.

Kyle was working as usual when he felt something odd about the local matrix, it was almost as if the feng shui was slightly off and it felt strangely alluring. He was entranced by what almost seemed to be a trail of breadcrumbs and followed it from node to node along a haphazard route until he ended up back where he started.... But he wasn't he stood literally breathless for over a minute until he realised that his lungs were burning and for the first time in six months he took a breath, he had stumbled upon an ultra violet node. He was in a meadow in the middle on summer and for a long while he just let sensations of it flow into him and then he remembered what it was to be alive.

Kyle was broken out of his reverie when he realised that not 10 meters in front of him there was a little girl just standing and watching. She skipped up to him and held out her hand, so he did the obvious thing and took it. Then they were elsewhere in what seemed to be a library a book library of all things. The girl dragged him to a shelf, struggled to get a book out and handed it to him. It seemed to be a biography of sorts and he felt it was important that he read it, so he sat down and opened it to the first page. When Kyle Whittaker looked up after finally turning the last page, the library was gone and he knew what he had to do.

“Hey Jase! You, you might want to get over...”

“Shut up!” another voice cut off the first. “Who cares about that! Look out there, hells breaking loose! Who cares about some goddamn beat up old dwarf!”

“Yeah yeah I know but...” the first voice stammered on, confusion and apprehension growing with every word. “This machine it... it... well it stopped pumping in the sedatives a while ago.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” asked the second, Jase. With a last look through the clear plasteel window in the door that seperated their little room from the rest of the complex he turned to look at their subject. Ever since the alarms had sounded he had been staring out in confusion as armed response teams began to run past their window. As he turned, he could swear he began to hear the staccato of gunfire, but assured himself that their well payed guards could handle any problem.

“See! Look! For the last ten minutes its just been pumping a saline solution” panic now easily shown through whatever calm he had before. Before him, strapped to the table lay the naked form of a battered form of a dwarf, whose body looked worse for where showing all the scars and telltale signs of a life spent on the street. Various tubes and a respirator connected the dwarf and a wall mounted machine that was supposed to keep the keep him sedated while the techs prepared him for the next... step in the procedure.

“Well that's weird... well now look it changed a few seconds ago, it must have corrected itself. See now its giving him.. Oh god!” The second tech leaped in an attempt to rip the tube from the prone figures arm.

The dwarfs eyes shot open as white fire shot through his veins. Without a thought he twisted, snapping the strap across his chest and arms, which sent the first tech reeling back in surprise. Then his right hand shot like lightning to close around the leaping techs throat, catching him mid air. With the strength from years spent in training, learning to harness the mountain, and the savageness gained from a life time on the streets, he threw the struggling form across the room into the stainless steel wall. The tech crumpled with a wet and cracking thud against the unyielding surface, and then bounced back onto the ground in an unmoving heap.

The second tech recovered slightly, and began to run for the wall mounted comm unit. Legs still strapped to the table, the dwarf reached to his right and grabbed a small table holding syringes, scalpels and other hideous tools he assumed were meant for him, and flung it into the mans legs. One broke with a snap, a jagged spear of bone appearing out his shin, piercing through his white pant leg. With a scream of primal pain and fear he too fell to the floor, clutching at his ruined leg.

Something pumped through the dwarf's veins, and it was good, better than anything he had had before. It put all the street drugs he had tried as a kid to shame, and it fueled him as he reached down and snapped the metal strap like paper.

He leaped across the room, grabbing the wounded tech by his lab coat and hauling him up so his face was only centimeters from his own. The tech howled in pain as his leg was jostled in the movement, and cringed away from the dwarfs bruised and scabbed face. As the dwarf's mind raced on to quickly for him to form a coherent thought, he simply screamed his frustration into the stunned techs face. Then he began to breath and forced his mind to go through the chants he had learned, forming the mountain that could withstand any storm.
“Where.. am.. I?” he asked, his broken lip beginning to bleed again as he broke upon the scab covering it. Indeed wounds all over his body began to break open as the drug induced euphoria kept him unawares. “What were you.. doing to me?” Forming every word was an inner battle has the dwarf fought against the wildfire that burned within. He wanted nothing more than to batter the tech into a pulp and tear through the door with his bare hands, and he damn well felt like he could, like he could rip though this whole damn place a crumple into into his hands like a ball of foil.

The techs eyes kept glancing down and away, and it took a moment for the dwarf to realize he was staring at the tubes that still connected the dwarf to whatever sort of machine it was on the wall. As much as he wanted more of this strange powerful substance, the mountain within knew he should stop it now while he still had some vague semblance of control. So, he reached out with his other hand and ripped the iv from his vein, letting it and the tubes fall to the floor where they continued to poor their chemicals onto the ground.

Still, to much had made it into his system. He felt the mountain begin to crumble, and as he looked at the tech, the young mans face, so clean and well kept, began to warp and twist, taking on strange colors and angles.

“We're just techs. They told us to get you ready for...” Most likely he said more but the dwarf failed to listen.

Look how damn clean this guy is, the dwarf thought, a euphoric rage building within him. What clean controlled corp hell did he grow up in! I bet this bastard went to college! With that, before a clear thought could form in his head of why he did it, the dwarfs head flew forward. His face, one that had known a life of violence and pain met forcibly with the tech's pampered one. As the dwarfs already shattered nose broke the techs perfect one, he felt much better and the mountain regained some of its strength within him.

After a moment he looked back down, and realized the tech was crying, hands covering his shattered face. Sheesh, he acts like its the first time he's been hit in the face the dwarf mused.

“What the hell is that?” he demanded, staring pointedly at the tube still spewing forth its magical substance. For a second, it almost looked to him like a snake writhing on the ground, spewing forth its life blood. The image quickly faded however, as he turned to glare at the tech.

“I.. I don't know exactly,” every word seemed to cause the tech more pain as he struggled to speak. “Some chemical another department developed, something to do with combat enhancement. I've got no idea how it got into you, the whole thing was scrapped due to side effects.”

This earned a little chuckle from the dwarf as he stared down at the tech and his now scintillating colored coat. Well no shit he thought. He glanced up at the machine's monitor, trying to catch this drugs name perhaps, and instead saw only the image of a little silently chuckling lizard, or maybe dragon. Whatever it was he quickly dismissed that idea and decided it was time to get out of this place.

Looking at the door and through its little window, he saw the outside didn't seem to be in much better shape then him. Lights and alarms flashed outside, and he could hear screams and the distant rattling of gunfire, but he also heard the blaring instruments of a marching band so who really knew what the hell was going on out there. The door looked solid, and locked. He was sure he had the power to break through, but knew he didn't have the time or concentration to perform the delicate kata necessary to allow his hands to survive that venture.

After a few moments, and a few screams of protest, the well educated young man flew into and through the heavy door, crumpling into a broken heap like his coworker on the other side of the hall. The dwarf leaped into the hall, uncaring of his bloodied and naked form, fearless of whatever might come to meet him. He could feel the drug overcoming his tenuous control, and escape was the only thought he could keep his mind on. As vision began to fail, he could have sworn lights on one side of the corridor failed. So, as the old saying goes, he followed the light.

The following time fell into a blur of frantic movement. There always seemed to be a lighted path, and at times he thought he could see the same little dragon, he was sure it was a dragon now, fluttering through various control screens, racing along side him. Perhaps he ran into and through a few confused guards and frantic staff, easily bowling over them in his haste. It is possible he saw a room filled with water and a monster worse than anything he's ever encountered on the streets or seen in the trids, and another room held a three ring circus, but who knows. Wonders and horrors flashed by, as the dragon and the light led on.

When the final door burst out from his savage collision, there was no hesitation as he leaped fell exhausted into the awaiting auto cab. He hardly even found it odd that it was awaiting him, and in chemical induced confusion, did not even stop to take in his surroundings of this damnable mad house. He simply lay in the cabs back seat, staring up at the cabs AI screen where, to his complete lack of surprise, sat the little dragon. As he eyes closed to a sea of shimmering colors and sensations, he was dimly aware as the cab began to move.

His last thoughts were of his old street family, his good old gang, the guys he had spent years with terrorizing LA, carving out their little kingdom. He'd left, but he'd come back like he said he would, and they'd sold him. Jumped and beat him to a pulp, sold him to some bastard stiff in a suit. Eternally jealous he'd awakened, they sold him out for some damn creds even after he came back. So the dwarf slept in the back of that auto cab, split lips showing broken teeth in a ghastly smile, as vivid dreams of creatively violent revenge fluttered through his beaten head.

(2069, Break out minus 3 years)

"How long have they been standing there like that?" the tall brunette's voice was curt and distant. It was obvious she was paying more attention to the display window in front of her then the two technicians practically cowering behind her.

"Th..three hours, Dr. Briscoll." came the stammered reply.

She did glance away then, a severe sense of disbelief conveyed clearly in the single raised eyebrow. Her gaze flickered briefly down to the nametag on the technicians jacket before rising to his face again.

"Kurt, is it? I'd like you to clarify that statement."

"Th..th...three hours, Dr. Briscoll. AD-0100 and AD-0200 have been standing in the middle of the room, back to back, eyes closed and perfectly still for just over three hours." The technicians reply, despite the factual nature, was no more confident under her withering glare than his initial response, and he looked over to his companion for support. The slim Hispanic woman grimaced slightly and shook her head, and then stepped forward, nominally putting herself between Dr. Briscoll and Kurt.

"They do this alot, Dr. Hours a day, sometimes almost all day. Just like that. Perfectly still, no movement, bio-readings almost bottomed out." As if to emphasize her description, a single beep echoed out of the bank of displays in front of the large window. Briscoll's eyes flickered down to the display, a second eyebrow raising to join the first.

"Heart rate minimal, blood pressure practically non-existent, even higher brain activity is almost nil. These subjects are practically dying every day for hours, and nobody thought to tell me?" Her words seem to express mild confusion, but her tone left nothing to the imagination. The female technician quailed, voice wavering.

"All the readings return to normal when th..they start waking up, and they seemed fine. No ill effects, no drowsiness or even signs that they've been in such a deep sleep."

"Sleep?" the doctor snorted. "Not these two. Tell me," another flickered glance toward a name tag, "Elizabeth, how old do these children look to you?"

"5, maybe 6..." The woman gulped.

"Would it change anything if I were to tell you they were born last year?" Her gaze back on the two figures in the room, Dr. Briscoll doesn't even turn around to take in the female technicians wide eyes and surprised expression. "And that's natural...no genetic therapy, no metabolism tweaks...we didn't do that."

Elizabeth glances to Kurt, eyes wide and confused, only to receive a similar expression from him.

"Elizabeth, your badge indicates you're cleared for Level 5 astral scans. That's very impressive."

"T...Thank you, Ma'am?"

"Have you, perchance, scanned the children while they were in this state?"

"No ma'am, regulations preclude any entry in the astral plane within 300 meters of these subjects."

"I'm glad to hear that you know the regs. Please check them." Her tone brooks no argument, and the technicians eyes become slightly unfocused as she quickly complies. Her voice, when she speaks, is distant, almost hollow, but the puzzlement is evident.

"They're...it's almost like they're not there. Like the bodies are...empty?"

"Right. Make an immediate note. I want AD-0100 and AD-0200 moved Tier 5 WNW cell, immediately."

"A Wireless Negation and Warded cell?" The technicians brow furrow. "We don't have any of those combined, usually they're..."

Briscoll cuts her off with a look. "I didn't ask what was previously available. I said move them. Are we clear?" Both eyebrows raise again, but the expression is far from puzzled interest.

"Y-y-y-yes, Dr." both technicians reply, in stereo.

(2069, Break out minus 3 years)

Right as he raised his head another volley of bullets hit the overturned desk Tig was hiding behind. This one almost got through the makeshift cover. He quickly drew back into the crouched position he had been forced into for the last 30 seconds.

“Get me some goddamn cover fire here, Jason. I need to make visual contact to take them out and I can’t do that when they can use my head for target practice.”

“Roger that. Say hello to my little friend, suckers!”

The roar of a light machine gun rose to a deafening crescendo as the massive ork let loose with full autofire, sending the corporate security forces down on the ground in an attempt not to get riddled with bullets.

Seizing the opportunity, Tig stood up once more from his cover, this time not immediatly being under fire. The Universal Omnitech soldiers had tried their best to remain out of his line of sight but he caught a glimpse of an arm behind a corner. That was enough.
Focussing his attention, he felt the mana gather in him as he harnessed the forces at his command. He felt a cluster of energy build and with a thought he shot it right between the opposing forces, dropping them to the ground, unconcious.
The drain hit him like a truck as he turned towards his partners, blood trickling out of his nose.

“They’ll be out cold for at least a couple of hours. More time than we need.”

Irika, a good-looking dwarf with pitch-black skin, gave Tig an appreciative glance before she addressed the teams electronics expert. “Vlad, did they trigger the alarm before they went down?”

“Negative. I don’t know how he did it, but Tig’s friend jammed all enemy communications in this sector. We’re clear.” The slim russian’s voice was full of awe.

“Alright. Get busy with the mainframe then, let’s grab that data and then get the hell out of here.”

While the russian hacker did as he was told the rest of the team secured the perimeter while keeping an eye on the camera feeds rerouted to them by Tig’s mysterious friend with the green dragon whelp as matrix icon.

Tig was watching the astral plane for security mages or bound spirits as the air of silent concentration that had settled in the room was broken by the eerily ordinary ‘ding!’ of an arriving elevator.

“What the... The elevators should be out of order. You told me you disabled them Vlad.” Irika was furious.

“I did. This is impossible. They should be offline for at least two hours.”

Weapons were raised as the elevator doors slowly slid open, revealing a young woman dressed in what seemed to be some kind of hospital scrubs in a neutral color.

Recognizing the dark brown hair and mediterrean features, Tig raised his hands.

“Hold fire! I repeat, hold fire! I know her.”

(2069, Break out minus 3 years)

Predictably, the door to M992’s sleeping quarters wasn’t even a problem. It opened at 0300 hours just like the little green dragon told M992 that it would. A quiet click from the maglock and the plastisteel door slid open. M992 took a hesitant step out of her sleeping quarters, peering down the hall of Bloc B2. She was almost disappointed that the hall was just as it always was, if only dark. All of the ceiling lights were off, and it would have been pitch black aside from the tracks of soft blue on the floor. They were probably for the benefit lab techs sent on data-collection assignments during lights-out hours.

The little green dragon told M992 that the cameras wouldn’t be a problem, and the clone believed it. Although, it was hard for the clone to look at the blinking red lights and peering lenses and think of them as blinded. Walking down the hallway completely alone, in the silence of lights-out hours made her feel…exposed. Without the accompanying presence and noise from a doctor or their attending posse, the girl’s slapping bare footsteps seemed just a little too loud for comfort. And the lack of any actual interference made everything feel too easy, too perfect. Like a tech or a doctor would walk through any one of the doors along the hall and discover her. After all, M992 had no comrades, no allies to guide her down the hall—not even the little green whelp without a com terminal or a comlink to look at. All she had was a series of directions and a handful of passwords her special friend had helped her memorize in preparation.

It only took the clone a few minutes to make it to the first elevator. This floor of the laboratory was, after all, the most familiar to M992. And the walk to elevator was the most familiar route; M992 could probably have navigated her way there without the aid of glowing floor lights if she had to. M992 slipped a hand underneath the hem of her pale blue scrub shirt and punched in a short series of numbers to call the elevator down. Given that she hadn’t managed to sneak a latex glove away during one of her examinations, as suggested by the green dragon, this was the best M992 could do on short notice. Eventually, someone might find her footprints. But, by the time someone thought to check for them, the clone would hopefully be long, long gone. Maybe she’d get lucky and a cleaning drone would come by first, polishing away the last evidence of M992’s apparent escape. And then it would seem like the girl had just disappeared from the laboratory without a trace, without so much as a single fingerprint. Like someone had just reached in and, pluck, erased her out of reality. Taken her somewhere else. Spirited subject M992 to someplace far, far away.

Machinery whirred to life as the lift began to descend. M992 waited. The lift descended faster than the girl remembered it doing on a normal basis, announcing its arrival with a pleasant ‘ding!’ as the doors drew open. Inside, the girl poked out another series of numbers, and the doors glided closed.

The next floor proved more difficult, if only because it was a floor where those such as M992 were forbidden from going—a place for only the doctors and their attendants. It smelled unfamiliar. In comparison to the bleached and sterilized lower labs and examining rooms, this place was almost cloyingly sweet. It made the girl’s head pound. M992 passed lounges and record rooms, even a lobby with a security-screening machine. This was the right place. M992 remembered it from a series of pictures the green dragon had shown her from the com terminal. Like the cameras, these machines would not hinder her.

The girl made a quiet ‘hmmm’ sound as she passed through the looming arch of the scanner, eyeing the plastic trays where such things as watches and keycards would go through an additional scanner. And a security guard would stand over there, to check the identification and the security clearance of every doctor, technician, and attendant that passed through. M992 felt somehow smug—like she was seeing an aspect the doctors and lab techs that they would not want her to see. All alone in the dark facility, she was privy their daily inconveniences, their leashes and collars. M992 imagined how their faces would look if they could have known that she, barefoot and in the plain scrubs of a subject, had walked so casually through these machines. How funny. Haha. It made the girl’s lips strain in a grin, though the rest of her face remained in an unchanged, neutral expression.

There was another elevator just past the security screening area and a few meters down the hall and to the left. Another series of codes, input into the maglock. If only it were actually possible for M992 to swipe a key card. But, the doctors and technicians were always so careful about theirs—or they had them implanted into their flesh. Either way, it just wasn’t an option. Inside the elevator, the girl pushed the button for B3, and waited for the lift’s ascent to finish.

The doors opened with a pleasant ‘ding!’ and M992 stared down the barrels of three guns. A metallic scent oozed into the girl’s nose, and she paused. This is where the little dragon’s instructions ended. Before M992 could begin to panic, she heard a familiar voice.

“Hold fire! I repeat, hold fire! I know her,” A familiar, tall, tiger-striped young man appeared from behind an overturned desk, hands in the air. He was just as M992 remembered him from the lab, save for the fact that he was wearing much different clothes. And he looked much healthier, better fed. And there was blood dribbling down his nose onto his upper lip. The others in the room, a slim man with Eastern-European features and a dwarf woman with stunning black skin, lowered their weapons—eyes still fixed on M992. They scrutinized the girl, her short scrub pants and shirt, bare legs and feet, the plastic identification bracelet on her wrist. Couldn’t have looked more out-of-place in the middle of a post-firefight room if she tried. And the blank expression on the girl’s face didn’t help; it made her look like something computer-generated. Something unnatural.

“This is the target your friend wanted extracted?” The dwarf woman asked, incredulous. That was the deal. The team extracts a target designated by the spellslinger’s friend in return for access to some choice paydata in the Universal Omnitech facility. Tiger nodded. Irika frowned, but jerked her head at M992—who was staring at Tiger and pointing at her own nose, indicating the changeling’s nosebleed.

“Don't just stand there staring, kid. Get your hoop over here. Vlad, check her for RFIDs before we get the hell out of here,” As M992 began picking her way over to the shadowrunners, a massive ork man ducked into the room, hoisting a machine gun.

“This is the best damn extraction, ever. The target never walks right into your hands like this,” he grinned. Someone pulled a pair of combat boots and a jacket off of an unconscious female guard and handed them to M992. She was pulling the laces tight on the boots when Vlad finished his search.

“I have the data. And I’m not finding any RFID implants. But, let’s not take chances. Hold this until I tell you otherwise,” the slim Russian handed M992 a small jammer, then cut off the girl’s identification bracelet with a sleek flick of the wrist and a flash of hand-razors.

“We’ll have the Doc give her a thorough scan. I’m not taking any chances on some corporate goons coming to look for her. She doesn’t look like a wimp. They’ll miss her in the morning. Tiger, you know her, you get to babysit,” The dwarf woman replaced the clip in her pistol, motioning for the team to head out.

The shadowrunners and clone vanished into the night.

November 17, 2069 - Boston

Jack shuddered as the rush of emotions and memories reseated themselves in his mind. He had been someone else too long, it felt good to get back into his own head. Ever since signing on to become a courier, he had asked himself each day whether the security procedures were necessary--it didn't matter anymore though. Once this last job was done, he was out.

He slid on the courier suit, a tight fitting jumpsuit with densiplast plates over the vital organs and impact gel spread throughout to diminish the effects of small caliber weapons. It also came with dozens of hidden pockets perfect for hiding datachips, including false chips in case someone tried to stop him. Over the jumpsuit, a long coat and scarf to keep him warm from the wind and snow. In the small of his back, a concealable holster slid into place with his Sting. It was the only weapon he carried during work, small and licensed.

Downstairs, Jack settled into his Americar and turned on the heater. A few moments later, after the car had managed to raise itself to a bearable temperature, he put it in gear, programmed his destination in the auto-nav, and backed out of the garage. Soon he was driving across town towards MIT&T campus.

-----
Carter sat inside himself, watching. There was a now-familiar sense of someone else completely in control and he watched to make sure that nothing went wrong.
-----

Arriving at the campus, Jack parked in the small lot just behind the library. It was late enough in the evening that permits were not required for the campus and the drones were all set to passive monitoring. He walked past the library. His contact had said to meet at the Matrix Research and Discovery building, to pick up the package. Jack pulled his coat tighter as the wind whipped between buildings and cut through the gaps in the jacket's lining.

His contact was young--much younger than he had appeared in the call. Maybe 22, the dwarf was wearing a sorority sweatshirt over several other layers. The Greek symbols jarred his mind and Jack coughed once. Carter slid back into control of his body, the personafix melting away at the sight of Delta Tau exactly on cue.

Taking the datachips from the young girl, he reached into his back pocket to grab the certified credsticks that she had earned. Instead of the thin black strips of plastic, his hand came back with the Sting in his grip. Carter placed the barrel next to the hood of the girl's sweatshirt--right at her throat, and pulled the trigger. The sound was absorbed into the folds of the fabric as flechettes tore through her throat. He stepped to the side before she could try to speak and splatter her blood across him.

He pulled the trigger again.

A face covered in fur--his eyes looking back at him. Screams of changelings rioting up against their captors. Her looking at him from a drug induced haze.

Carter fought free of the memory and slowly began to walk away. The agent in his commlink reported that the signal frequency of the drones had not changed. Hopefully that meant they were still in passive and had not detected the gunfire. Now he walked, his hands in his pockets, not wanting to trigger any of the behavior-driven software alerts.

//Text Message
//From: Carter
//To: Mr. Johnson

All data on Patient V is acquired. Begin phase two. Data to be transferred immediately upon receipt of decryption sequence.

//End Message

The kids had gone dark. That worried Jonathan and despite his best efforts, Carter had to admit it worried him too. He didn't know where they were being held. All he could ascertain was that several weeks ago, they had missed a regular meeting with Jonathan. None of their connections could find a trace of them directly, but one connection said he had a lead on a research facility specializing in intuitive processes and data sortilage. The cost was one college co-ed and some data. A small butcher's bill given the alternative.

Carter keyed in the decryption sequence and began to read the information from the sortilage. His agent auto-transmitted the data. There would be more blood, of that he was certain. Now it was time to locate Dr. Briscoll and get some answers.

There

I have traveled to many places There and have I watched the Hes and the She. I am still not sure what it all means - I can feel the concepts and strange ideas hovering just outside of my understanding. My summoner tells me that I will understand in time and that I must continue to observe. I hover in the room looking at the slim she - her face is wet from the substance leaking from her eyes. Her soul moans with the an ache that transcends injury or physical pain. I listen and see the images of a he pressed against another she and feel the anger. This one was crippled inside by the image yet she plays it over and over again in her mind.

IT IS TIME

I feel the Call tremble in me and fling myself up and out from this There to another There. I feel before I completely reform in this place the echoes of rage and confusion. I quickly look around and see the lurid after image of a soul touched by Creation. This being was consumed with thoughts dark and heavy, an acidic taste hung in the weaves that spoke of future blood and death.

ALLOW NO ONE TO DIE

I lean down and pull the delicate strands of his soul to see how soon he would leave the flesh and bone behind. His injuries were severe but nothing that would unravel him from this place. His dress is dirty and disjointed. It looks so very different from the ones near the she. They all dress so similar - a sameness that brought them comfort and yet left them numb as well. I quickly slide to the next body and draw deep on his essence and see it bleeding out from his pattern. This one would leave soon. I let the knowledge pass through me to my summoner. His awareness flows back and I sense the gathering of Creation move to me. I channel it to the body and watch in wonder as it repairs the pattern in his body. The life within him rallies and pulses with renewed purpose. I prepare myself for the lessening that follows. I can now bear it with minimal discomfort. The spell finishes and I feel the sense of.................satisfaction from my summoner for helping.

SEE IF HE WAS HERE

I move through the area and open my senses to the imprints left. I quickly see the short He moving slowly but with purpose. I watch the Untouched ones laugh and it makes their faces twisted. They do not see the tides of Creation gathering around the He as it pools in his hands. With a single strike the short He pushes the tide through the other he and I watch as the forces of Creation tear and rip the delicate pattern of his essence. I quickly return to me and send the imprint to my summoner. A slight sense of hope tinged with sadness reverberates back through the link.

QUICKLY TO THE PLACE I SHOWED YOU

Once again I touch briefly the Here, my home and despite the urgent need from the others to know what I have seen and done, I fling myself back to the There. I reform and look for the never-born thing my summoner showed me before. I taste the stillness in this room and see a she with fingers from a thing that goes into her. I shudder at the idea of it being in her but move to do as I was asked. I push myself more into There and place my hands on the never-born thing. I call on the Creation within myself and pass through it the thing. I see lights and smoke come out of it. The she shudders and her body jerks about as the fingers flicker out. I watch wriggling writing on the walls begins to flicker out and I see a small green creature appear and wave at me before disappearing.

GO AND LEARN NOW

I feel the strange quickening as I am free to see more of the things that live in the There. I travel to my favorite There and feel the wash of enjoyment engulf me. The small hes and shes smile as they see me reform. They watch me as I move around the brightly colored room they live in. They chase me and make a wondrous sound that draws deeply on the wonder of life. The older he stands and confusion mixed with amusement play on his face, oblivious to my presence and the game we play. I must see more of this There.

(2069, Breakout Minus 3 Years)

It’s five past midnight, and it looks like I’ve just been stood up by a dwarf. Heh, what a lame way to spend a Saturday evening.

I fidgeted as I waited with heightened anticipation, perched on a rooftop right above a skylight into an abandoned warehouse. According to my research-and my diminutive friend-this was the hideout of a drug lord who had just moved into Seattle. Tonight was supposed to be a major transaction between the drug lord and regional pushers, making it the perfect party for Krsnik to crash. However, my partner has yet to arrive.

An odd moment of spontaneous serendipity had brought us together. Once I had received word of a new drug supplier, I decided to shake down the usual pushers on my routes. The dwarf beat me to the punch with my first mark, quite literally. He had all but dashed the pusher’s brains about the pavement when I dropped into the area. I managed to calm him down enough to learn why he was so angry-the drug lord was a former friend of his who sold him into slavery. Since we were both more or less after the same thing, we decided to work together to take the drug lord down.

Or, at least, that’s what we were SUPPOSED to do. I had shown up at 11PM sharp, 30 minutes before the transaction was supposed to take place. The drug lord’s men were on time, so I had been spending the last 35 minutes watching the amazingly insipid scene of men hauling cases into the warehouse while wondering when the dwarf was going to arrive.

Fuck it, I’m going in.

“Just wait a few more seconds.” Twin voices sounded in my head. I was about to check my PAN to make sure someone hadn’t hacked into my network when I remembered where I had heard those voices before. It had happened only once before when I first started out fighting crime.

What do you mean, I mentally replied.

No answer.

Okay, well, they managed to save my ass once before, so I’ll give the dwarf a few more sec-

“I’m here, time to start the party.”

“About fucking time, where have you been?”

The only response I thought I was going to get was a grunt, and then I heard a thud and felt the entire warehouse shake. That’s my cue, I suppose. Time to jump through a window and get shot at by hooligans.

With an ear-splitting crash, I felt the rush of adrenaline as I hurtled down towards the warehouse floor.

“Eyes wide shut,” I said over the com channel while pulling two flash-bang grenades from my belt. I pulled the pins and tossed the grenades to my sides. Suddenly, the world exploded into a blaze of white. My goggles protected my eyes, but the druggies weren’t so lucky.

Ugh, my landing wasn’t pretty, but at least I stayed on my feet. I drew my twin pistols and lined up shots as the smartlink system came online. I let loose, spraying the area with gel bullets, and the familiar symphony of shouts of rage and dismay filled the air.

I could hear my partner screaming, and I suppose I could have made the words out if I paid closer attention, but I left him to his revenge. Anyone who could make a whole building shake could handle himself.

As I moved through the chaos, I noticed a pair of metal doors slammed into the wall of the warehouse. I glanced in the opposition and realized that those were the doors where the dwarf had entered. He must have smashed his way open, sending the doors hurtling across the entire warehouse. If I had jumped down when I originally wanted to…damn….

Oh well, no time to dwell on that right now. I have to help this dwarf take out the trash.

2477075.5107523147

Rain in the city is like a shower in a cathouse. It washes away the grime, but it never leaves things clean.

It had been a bad winter. People were disappearing, only to turn up split open like sides of beef. Dexter and I were in the thick of it. So deep we had it sluicing into our shoes like blood in a slaughterhouse. He was still treating me like some kind of drone, even though he knew I was more, but I was willing to let him slide. The kid meant good, like an alter boy at Church. Despite the pressures of the job he was innocent, idealistic. Too bad he was my minder as much as he was my partner. But I understood the deal. I was doing a bit and he was the bull.

She found me in my office. The blinds were half open, letting in the dull light of an insomniac world, but I could make out those defiant emerald eyes. Defiant as a dying man's laugh in my monochrome world. She gave one look to the Roscoe and the bottle of medicine on my desk and promptly ignored them. She laid it down simple as schoolwork. I was in behind the eight-ball. Locked in stasis, doomed to face the wrong end of a smoking gun. It was a bad time to be Johnny Law, and like a jade-winged angel she was going to buy me a way out. She knew a guy I needed to meet. He was waiting at the other side of the frosted glass door. Patient as a priest in purgatory. I meet him, she said, and he gets me my pass. She says it, and she fades like a swirl of mist over a bindle punk's corpse.

The guy she wanted me to meet was a force of nature. Despite the confines of my black and white office, he was his own man. He was tall like a mountain, cut like an army recruiter's fantasy. Angled like granite worked by the hands of some long dead Italian master. One look at him and you could see the furious efficiency of a bottled tornado.

He called himself Quartermaster. Said he knew the people who made me what I am. Said he was on the inside. He could free me, make me better. I had to do nothing in return. The emerald eyed doll had made him a deal, and I got the pay out. I get myself some breathing room. She gets herself a Dick in return.

Eggs in the coffee.

(2069, Breakout Minus 3 Years)


The dwarf stood before the large steel doors, deep in both his stance and a moments meditation. Behind him the constant racket of small arms fire and panicked comm communication was deafening, but all was carefully ignored as the dwarf's meaty hands formed a quick series of gestures. Finally, his focus complete, he brought both hands back with palms open and then pushed them forward like an avalanche into the doors. With a great tearing sound as the hefty lock was pulled in half, both sides of the door slammed to either side, and the dwarf let out his breath and came back to the world at hand. With a mild bit of irritation, he looked down to see a trickle of blood flowing from his thigh wear some sort of shell had managed to graze him. The thought of turning around to turn whoever had done this to pulp briefly entered his head before he realized that there were greater wrongs to avenge before him.

"Heng! Where the hell are you going?" chirped out from his commlink straight into his ear. It took him a moment to realize that this call was directed at him.

I'm never going to get used to these damn code names He had grown up around them, thinking they were just as ridiculous then, knowing gang members who had liked to call themselves names like Razor or Big W and other such nonsense. So he was a little disappointed to learn that what he thought would be a more professional breed of criminals, these shadow runners, had the same silly system of naming themselves. Frosty? Smiling Bandit? All of bunch of silly crap he had hoped was just in the realm of popular sims and trids, but he was mistaken. So when he had to come up with one, Heng Shan, or just Heng was what'he'd given. It was the name of a sacred Chinese mountain, one his master had taught him to channel and emulate, but he thought it fit in with all the other silly names that a dwarf who'd been raised in the streets of LA would call them self after some Taoist sacred Mountain.

The sturdy dwarf began to stalk forward, his heavy feet falling like boulders as he stomped his way into the room beyond, eyes glaring out looking for the man he sought.

"Hey! We're supposed to be working together here!" Again his commlink went off. That would be Krsnik, his impromptu partner, screaming into his ear. The dwarf honestly tried to not simply write off his new companion, but it was hard to really trust or value any one when the group of people you had thought of as closer than family sold you to some faceless Corp for a few fat cred sticks.

Still, the dreams he had which lead him up here to Seattle to find this new drug lord and old gang companion, had also lead him to the unfortunate conclusion that he would not make it far down this path if he tried to walk it alone. The fact that the voices, just two so he knew he wasn't that crazy, in his dreams insisted upon this Krsnik character confounded him even more.

Goddamn rich kid with a hero complex, thinks he can just wipe this wasted planet free of crime all by himself. HA! What a joke

The fact that this was essentially the same thing he was doing, though for a different reason, failed to enter the dwarf's head, which also did its best to emulate a mountain.

"Yeah, we are!" He replied into the comm's mic. "I'll get the vermin that matters and you keep the little gnats of my back."

As he continued into the pitch black room, he could see bodies of heat darting around the cold wooden boxes that were stacked from floor to ceiling. One darted from around a corner, and Heng heard the slight hum of a vibro dagger as the form lunged at him. His hand shot out, fingers closing around the wrist behind the little shaking knife. With a easy twist and a pop the weak wrist bone was broken, compound fracture causing the, human, it must have been a human, to scream in pain. With a quick thrust that left the exposed bone embedded in the mans stomach and a splattering of little drops of heat, he walked on to find the real target.

Soon the room was engulfed in sound and thermal signatures as the other members of the crew took their comrades screams as a que to open fire. They must have had some sort of night vision gear as the rounds were actually coming fairly close. Heng was forced to jump behind one of the larger boxes to avoid the concentrated fire. Quickly he realized he was not alone, as he looked up at the giant mass of heat before him to see what could have only been a troll.

With surprising speed the looming creature picked up the smaller dwarf with ease. He felt and saw much colder bits in the Trolls massive arms, must have put some gear in them to enhance his already impressive strength. The Troll had a grip on both of his arms, and was attempting to use his longer reach to literally rip them out of their sockets. Hengs muscles strained against the growing pressure, but he still remained calm.

Thanks for the lift, big guy he thought, swinging to bring both feet behind him. Then with a supple bit of flexibility he swung forward, tucking his legs in tight. They both then shot forward, caving in the the creatures face with a sickening crunch.

As the troll dropped, Heng quickly recovered to enjoy the bit of cover that was now his and his alone. Scanning the room, he saw more shapes than he could easily count darting about, taking shots when they could. This will take forever, where is that rat hiding As if on que, Hengs AR started up, frightening the dwarf more than the gunfire. As he pawed at his commlink to turn off the damn thing, he saw before him the same blueish dragon he had seen before. It seemed to coil around a large red arrow that kept thrusting itself behind one of the boxes. Goddamn flash backs!

Then he noticed, scrolling above the arrow, was the name Thayton, the very bastard he had come looking for. After a second his communit gave a little spark and puff of smoke and his AR died with it. The things always broke around him, and he cursed the bit of cred he has spent on this one only a few days before.

Well, the little blue guy has never lead be wrong before

Again summoning his focus and taking on the horse stance, he put each foot down with a deliberate stomp, and then charged forward and through the box the arrow and marked before him. The box shattered, sending fragments of wood and little pink and purple stuffed animals flying across the room. As the multicolored teddy bears impacted across the room, many tore apart to reveal the small black packets of drugs they had hidden.

When Heng finally slowed down, he found his former comrade, Thayton, trampled beneath him, one leg knee bent at an unnatural angle. The orc scrambled to get away, but Heng caught him by his synthetic leather jacket and hauled him up face to face.

"Hello, big brother" hang said, a bit of madness filling his eyes. The dwarf failed to notice the other forms behind him had turned their attention upon the pair, unsure if they should fire while the mad dwarf held their boss.

"Wait! You have to understand! We had too.." Never one for to many words or long explanations, the dwarf interrupted the orc with a open palmed strike to the face which shattered the orcs' nose. Heng began a rapid series of blows, sending lines of heat and blood arcing across the wall behind Thayton. At some point, the shapes behind him made up their mind and began to open fire, and a few splatters of the dwarf's blood punctuated the lines of gore before him.

An indeterminate amount of time later, the dwarf dropped the now cold orcs body, took a moment to look at the work he had put open the warehouses wall, and came to mountain pose to calm the turmoil within himself. Opening his eyes and then turning around, he found the lights had been turned on and Krsnik was staring at him with a look of shocked discomfort.

Staring at the display before him, his partner said "Well, you're welcome."

Heng didn't know exactly what he was talking about, and gave the man a quizzical look. With that, Krsnik gestured around the room with his pair of still smoking pistols. Arrayed around the room were perhaps a dozen or so well armed men, all carefully punctured rounds from the self proclaimed hero's pistols. With a shrug of discomfort, Heng noticed his own wounds, and turned his head to find several places in his light armor where he had been struck dead on. Remembering how Krsnik had provided the armor, and insisted he wore it when Heng had first refused, the dwarf gave a low grunt.

"Yeah well, thanks" the dwarf reluctantly replied. "Lets go get the next one."

With that, the dwarf calmly began to walk out of the warehouse, leaving Krsnik shaking his head in resignation behind him.

(2070, Breakout minus 2 years)

"JESUS CHRIST GET THEM SHUT DOWN!" The technician was frantic, fingers racing across keys on the AR keyboard in front of him as he watched the end of his career unfolding in front of him.

Almost simultaneously, two figures entered from doors opposite each other at the long end of the rectangular control room. The ork and the human both eyed each other with a cold disdain before demanding in stereo, "What's going on here?"

Voices barely audible over the klaxon's going off in the room, the technician they were shouting at turned away from the man still punching at AR keys. Elizabeth drew herself up, giving both of the doctor's a cool gaze.

"Someone scheduled a series of ADCE-10XT exams for 03:00 for both twins." Her voice was confident, a far cry from the trembling tech that had faced down Dr. Briscoll a year ago.

"That's impossible!" Once again, their voices were almost in unison, and they shot each other venomous glances as they each recoiled. The ork continued quickly.

"They're never supposed to be out of that WNW cell together. That's standard protocol." His voice was disdainful, already searching for someone to blame for the 'incident' that was ramping up in the examination room.

Elizabeth took it all in stride, however. One didn't work for Dr. Briscoll for a year without becoming immune to simple disdain.

"Nonetheless, that was the schedule, with two different teams, no less. This," she motioned over her shoulder at the wide pane of viewing glass that showed the examination room, "Started briefly afterwards."

"DREK!" The man behind them swore as he keyboard winked out, most of the lights in the control room following, pitching the group into a dimly lit darkness broken only by the flashes of light and noise come from the examination room, and the constant rotating crimson wash of the alarm lights. As one, the group turned to look through the apature at the events exploding on the other side of the reinforced glass.

The room they stared into was large, almost 50 meters long and half that was wide, dotted here and there with small collections of equipment and small structures made from interconnected pipes, all designed to help researchers push the limits of their various subjects. At the moment, however, the space had turned into a battle ground.

Nasho, a smile on her otherwise serene face, was curled up comfortably in the middle of the floor, apparently asleep. Above her, a giant humanoid form stood, legs placed to either side of the small sleeping figure. Over 7' foot tall, the figure boasted pale white skin, piercing blue eyes, and an enormous pair of feathery white wings. There was no hair on it anywhere, and it was dressed in a classic Roman Legionaries breastplate and leather skirt, with an oversized spiked mace in one hand. It was obviously standing guard over the young girl.

A few feet away, Malshi stood, a grin splitting his lips as the young boy chanted quickly and quietly under his breath, fingers flickering through a series of gestures almost too fast for the eye to follow. The source of his attention was obviously the trio of men in Universal Omnitech uniforms crouched uncertainly 20 or so meters away. One of them snapped something at the others, and lightning washed out from each of the two others, the jagged bolt leaping across the intervening space towards the boy. He grunted as he stopped chanting briefly, lacing his fingers in front of him as the twin bolts arced towards him and slammed into an invisible field of force, washing harmlessly around the boy and the girl's supine form. With a triumphant howl that rang out like a choir of voices raised in supplication, he crossed his arms and jerked them wide, nothing happening for a moment, until a ripple of force exploded outwards from the center of the three men, all three slumping bonelessly to the ground.

"What just happened?" Dr. Teller, the female doctor peering in from the control room, whispered to the others gathered with her. Elizabeth gave her a cool stare.

"That little boy just dropped three Tier 3 Magical Security Agents. Not the top of the pile, but together they should be able to handle anything short of a Tier 5 Exception."

"But that...that's, I m...I mean..." The woman simply stammered. Frowning, Elizabeth turned back to the window.

"Why haven't the automated systems already shut them down?" Dr. Fullbright, the orc, demanded, a slight tremor in his voice. The male technician answered, his voice weary.

"Turn on your AR, doctor."

With a startled shake of his head, a mental command lit up the AR space in front of the doctor's cybereyes. He blink once, mouth falling open as he viewed the space. It was a torrent of activity, an emerald drake, standing nearly as tall as the angelic figure in real space, tore savagely at the network of systems that girded the examination room. He could see the tattered remnants of the nodes that made up the rooms security systems, obviously shredded under the drake's teeth and claws. The corpses of a half dozen other ICe were spread around the avatar's feet, stretched between the huge drake and several smaller forms clustered around her. The drake grinned fiercely, wings spreading as it prepared to leap off deeper into the system.

"We've got to stop them!" Both doctors, despite their professional competitiveness, voiced the same sentiment at the same time. A grim Elizabeth nodded.

"I know. I called Torque and Mr. Creepy." Underneath her grimace, the collected Sec. Expert seemed pale. Both of the doctors recoiled as well, sharing a look of mingled horror and disgust.

Inside the room, a trio of elementals manifested in front of Malshi. The boy shook his head a bit, flicking the thick braid off his shoulder to hang at his back, and seemed to square his shoulders. The elementals rushed forward, Wind, Fire, and Water making a frightening roar as they combined in a roaring spray of flame. The Air elemental slipped passed the boy, swirling down around the curled up figure of the girl on the ground. The Angelic figure's ice blue eyes flashed, and he brought the mace crashing down, missing the girl by mere inches. The Air elemental howled in pain, however, and dispersed into the surrounding atmosphere. The other two elementals beelined for the boy, who continued chanting and motioning, the gestures coming to an abrupt halt as he clapped his hands together. The Fire elemental winked out like a snuffed candle, but the Water elemental poured on, giving up it's vaguely humanoid form to swell and crash over the boy like a wave, engulfing and swirling around him. One hand flashed to his throat, and it's obvious that the boy panicked for a moment. Struggling, he finally succeeded in leaning forward, dropping to a knee and spreading one hand, palm down, flat out on the ground. There was a spark, and a sudden rush of fire, and the Angelic figure drew his wings in close around himself and the girls form, shielding them both from the wash of fire that burst out from the boy, evaporating the Water elemental in a thin wail of pain.

On the other side of the room, the three drakes had slammed into a virtual wall of featureless grey replicating blocks. Claws flashed, fangs tore, and blocks fell away by the dozens. However, for every block that fell away, two more took it's place, and the wall was slowly pressing into the room by sheer dint of numbers. Drawing back, the drake paused for a second, obviously studying the wall with narrowed eyes. With a quiet chuff, it dove forward again at the wall, this time grabbing two of the blocks in it's claws and forcing them closer together. There was a flash and a sizzle, and the two blocks merged on the connecting side. With a wide grin that showed fangs, the drake began fusing other blocks, moving as quickly as it could from one block to another. The two smaller drakes began following suit, and it soon became obvious that the fused blocks didn't form an effective defense. As soon as enough of the blocks were fused, the drake ripped out the center of the somewhat square collection of blocks, roaring in triumph as it moved to plunge into the system. There was an abrupt backpedal, however, as a slim figure stepped into the room, obviously present in both real life and AR.

The elf was dressed in a sharp cut suit edged in some sort of metallic lighting system, each hem seeming to gleam like a razor's edge. A tracery of nano-tattoo's run up the back of his neck, blending in with the short trimmed black hair, and seemed to extend from the sleeves of his jacket dow the backs of his hands as well. Claws spread wide, the drake leapt at the figure. The elf grinned a strange little grin, and seemed to almost disappear as he darted behind the drake, firmly grabbing hold of the avatar's tail and flipping it end over end to slam into the ground on it's back.

In the control room, both doctor's made a puzzled noise, and Dr. Teller found her voice first.

"How is that possible? Shouldn't she be too fast for him, in full VR?" Elizabeth tightened her lips.

"Torque's wired with a military grade Move-By-Wire system that's interlinked with a top of the line custom commlink. He's faster in AR than most deckers in VR, although he can do that too. It works here because she's been restrained, and won't stray too far from her brother." The group in the control room watched as the pseudo-hacking battle continued, but it was obvious the girl was badly outclassed. Again and again she dove at him, or attempting to move around, and again and again he threw her back, or to the ground. Finally he was mere steps from her body, and the angelic form moved to intervene. As quick as thought was, he was quicker. He ducked under a swing, pivoted around the creature, and landed a solid kick to the head of the girl. Her whole body jumped with the impact, and the emerald green drake shuddered and dissipated, the smaller drakes accompanying it disappearing as well.

On the other side of the room, the other twin was in similar straights. The figure that had entered his end was almost inevitable. The boy threw waves of force, electricity, and mana at the creature, but it just kept coming. A once-human form dressed in a loose fitting leather jacket, street tattoo's twined up and down his arms, and his eyes showed the obvious effects of ghoulification. A pistol snapped up, but it wasn't pointed at the boy, it was angled up. Pop's echoed against the glass, and the lights at that end of the room went dim. Inside the control room, various glasses and cybernetics adjusted quickly to the change in light levels, but it was obvious that the boy didn't fare so well. It had taken him several seconds to get his bearings, and in that time the figure was upon him. Feet and hands were everywhere, and the boy crumpled under a flurry of physical blows, rocking him backwards and two both sides before sending him sliding back across the floor to fetch up against his sister, just as unconscious as her. The Angelic figure dissipated with a wail as the boy fell unconscious. The figure didn't stop though, leaping through the air to land on all fours on the boy, nose scenting the air as his face dipped down low.

Elizabeth cursed, leaping forward to pound on the reinforced glass. "No eating, god-damn you, we had a deal!" she screamed.

Unfocused but obviously aware, the ghouls head titled to the side to stare at the glass, and he grinned wide, leaning down to slowly lick across the boys cheek before he rose, turning to walk back towards the door at the end of the room.

(2070, Breakout minus 2 years)

Seattle. 2244 hours, far enough past rush-hour for a single black Thundercloud Contrail to weave between cars like a knife, or a shadow. Officer Bartlett caught a glimpse of the shadow out the window of her patrol car as it zipped past, immediately registering the cyclist’s blatant disregard for the posted AR speed limits. And this wasn’t the usual go-ganger trash having dangerous fun on a Friday night. No other racers. No colors. No symbols. Just a suit of black racing leathers and, oddly enough, an actual helmet. It was probably some brat from a well-off family: one with more money than common sense. But, money was never a valid excuse in Bartlett’s book. If she had her way, the brat would at least have to suffer through a few hours in holding like the rest of the proletariat.

The Lonestar officer put in a command to the car’s sensors to get a bead on the Contrail’s speed and owner. If she was quick, all she would have to do was mark the rider. Even if she couldn't catch up to the agile motorcycle, some other officer would shut the little snot down a little further down the freeway. Maria swore when the car’s comlink failed to mark the motorcyclist—failed to even pull up an icon of the ghosting Contrail and rider.

Infraction one: Speeding. At least 20mph over the posted limits.

Infraction two: Failing to subscribe to the grid-guide system.

Infraction three: Operating a comlink in hidden mode.

And that was just the surface. No doubt something was up; honest civilians, even the idiot thrill seekers and glitterbrats, didn’t fit that profile. Officer Bartlett began composing the arrest document as she simultaneously sent a handful of commands through her comlink. Within five minutes, the elven officer had a clear still of the cyclist’s license plate. Two minutes after that, she discovered that the plate she looked up never existed in the first place. And by then, the cyclist on the black Contrail had slipped back into the night, like a fish in dark waters. Another unidentified, untracked, lawbreaking John Doe.


J.D. nudged the black Contrail onto her exit, zooming down the ramp and a few blocks into what could have once been called suburbia. She took a moment to verify her route against the gridded AR map floating in the corner of her vision. With a series of sharp eye movements, the young woman input a command code. A violently spotted gecko in day-glow colors crawled over the black Contrail’s license plate. In the span of a heartbeat, the numbers and letters changed.

Away from the thunderous white noise of the freeway, J.D. turned down the volume on her helmet’s audio system to a level that wouldn’t leave her deaf in five years. But, without the audio system, the helmet was almost unbearable. The racing leathers didn’t exactly breathe the way an urban explorer jumpsuit did. And that was an annoyance on late summer nights like this one. But, there was something worse about not being able to even feel the wind on her face in this kind of weather.

But, hell. She’d given up her loose laboratory scrubs and her subterranean existence. And, she had traded them in for the open, crowded expanse and a barrier of protective Kevlar, plastisteel, and strategically placed gelpacks between her and it. She still couldn’t touch the outside, couldn’t breathe it in without her mask and disguise. J.D.’s cage was against her skin, now. An exchange the clone had made willingly, readily, with pleasure.

Ten minutes later, J.D. pulled closer to the city proper. Quiet residential areas gave way to gleaming AR advertisements for various businesses and products available in that area, which were promptly wiped from J.D.’s vision by the diligent day-glow gecko whenever they managed to sleaze in. Crowds of four to six people of varying metatypes blurred past the young woman's vision, heading to the source of that night’s entertainment in car or on foot. They paid the courier no attention as she dodged and wove through main streets, then to side streets.

The black Contrail eased into the mouth of an alleyway, engine rumbling. A twist and a turn later, she slid into the back alley shared by a handful of businesses—one of them her customer’s. Although she could still hear the vague ups and downs of loud celebration coming from the open streets, and possibly the dive bar she was delivering to, the alley felt…isolated.

She took half a minute to make a full sweep of the alley, watching for drug-addled bums or anyone else. Nothing. A pause. And then the courier composed a quick text-message.


//Text Message
//From: J.D.
//To: Mr. Rodger Gauge

The delivery of goods you requested has arrived. Please send someone to the back door to receive it.

//End Message

No reply. The courier gave the mouth of the alleyway another glance before turning her attention to a dark box strapped to the back end of her Contrail. She detached the box from its mount with a series of sharp, practiced movements. Each of three stabilization straps gave a quiet hiss as J.D. disengaged their locks and pulled them loose. Two more dull snaps, and the case itself came off the Contrail’s luggage mount.

Still no reply. The box of liquor went onto the backdoor step and the clone wondered if she should wait for someone to come to the door or just leave. This was the last delivery of the night, so she wasn’t on a time crunch. But, at the same time, hanging around the dark and isolated parts of the back streets after midnight was not J.D.’s list of Favorite Things to Do. And for obvious reasons.

Like clockwork, something caught J.D.’s attention out of the corner of her eye. The courier in black looked up just in time to spot a trio of young men, two humans and an elf, silhouetted in the mouth of the alley as they sauntered in the young woman’s general direction.

Drek. This is not the time for these types of shenanigans. As the trio of young men made their casual approach, J.D. could make out gang colors in the low light. But, she couldn’t make out the specific hues. And then, another figure joined the first three in the alley, another human.

J.D. watched them. As they began to form a loose barrier between her and her exit out of the alley, the courier shook the front of her racing leathers in a way that she hoped was nonchalant. It was, after all, a hot night—those motions shouldn’t seem too out of place. And street-level gangers wouldn’t be alert for the effects of tailored pheromones, at least not from an anonymous biker in a helmet. By the time the young woman could make out their hair colors, she thought she had a good waft going. She knew damn well that the pheromones weren’t going to get her back on the roads by themselves, but they would probably help.

The courier feigned casual, but alert body language. Arms and legs swinging, straight posture. An angle of the head that was neither submissive nor challenging as she straightened up.

“Evening,” Even with the subtle digital augmentation, the courier’s voice still came out like a fourteen-year-old boy’s. It was not as androgynous and mature as J.D. had hoped, but the vocal distortion software she had was all her budget could afford at the moment. Four faces broke into toothy grins and smirks. All four of them had at least half a foot on the courier in height.

“Evening, chummer,” One of the humans, his hands shoved in the pockets of his black, synthleather jacket, gave J.D. a quick once-over. He was obviously un-impressed. The courier would be the first to admit that she didn’t look like much. Even if the full-body jumpsuits and racing leathers did manage to help her pass as male, she looked very much like a wimp. Shielded by the helmet, J.D. made her own assessment of the gangers. There wasn’t any obvious chrome on the guy she assumed was the leader, but he looked like a brawler—complete with facial scarring and a chunk missing from his ear.

“Is there something I can help you gentlemen with?” J.D. kept her voice level, almost amiable. The human in the synthleather jacket stepped forward, the three others fanning around him.

“As a matter of fact, there is,” he made a decent attempt at a genuine smile, but it still came out as a lopsided smirk.

“You see, we get a cut of whatever business goes through these parts. And I ain’t seen you before, chummer. But, all that means is that you’re behind on your protection payments, as far as I’m concerned,” his tone was almost as friendly as the clone’s. But, that didn’t really mean anything. Especially after J.D. noticed the barrel of a heavy pistol sliding out of a jacket pocket.

“Oooh,” The young woman hissed in a breath, hamming up her next words instead of showing actual fear.

“That is definitely problem, omae. You see, I just paid rent this morning and I don’t get a paycheck for a week. And I don’t exactly carry anything valuable on me while on the job—professional policy. So, as it were, I am broke as a joke, guys. Otherwise, I would be more than happy to pay you not to shoot me. I am sure you understand,” two of the gangers snorted with half-laughter. Scarface, inclined his head towards the padded case the courier had just placed on the bar’s back doorstep.

“That’s cool, man. We’ll just take that as a down payment,” J.D. paused. This is why no one but her and a handful of the other remaining meat couriers ever bothered to deliver in this area.

“I can’t give you that,” The clone interposed herself between the gangers and the box with a half-step and change in posture. Would it kill someone to open that god dammed door and at least take their fracking delivery? A case of booze was not worth the world of hurt the courier was about to find herself in it, and she knew it. If it weren’t for the fact that she was relying on a very meager reputation to get work, she wouldn’t have thought twice about letting the gangers take the box and leaving.

“You gotta be fracking kidding, kid,” the elf in the back grinned, sliding a hand inside his own jacket. Taking his cue, the rest of the gang-bangers began their approach, drawing their own knives and pistols. It was probably just an intimidation tactic until they got within arms reach for the knives. Probably. J.D. moved her own hand towards the hidden holster on the lower back of her riding leathers, touching the handle of the first of two AZ-150 stun baton secured there. If she was quick, she might be able to drop one of the gunmen before the others got to her. After all, the AZ-150 was a baton meant to drop orks and trolls, and probably fry humans and elves. The clone considered that maybe, just maybe, she should have asked Tiger to tag along for this one after all.

“Bad decision, scumbags,” A deep, obviously electronically distorted voice hissed out of the darkness of the rooftops. The courier was just about to draw her baton and lunge when a shadowy figure dropped onto the street. Like the clone, he wore a full body suit, including a full-face mask. Except that his was, well, obviously better. Higher quality and better fitting.

“Now, we can do this the easy way—” the stranger gestured to the mouth of the alley with the end of a drawn katana blade, “—where you run away and never come back, or we can do this the hard way,” at the end of that statement, the stranger gestured with the gun in his other hand. A text message flashed across J.D.'s vision, accompanied by a brief flicker of emerald green scales.

//Trust him.//

It took a few moments stunned, rather confused silence for J.D. to process this new information before she turned back to the crowd of gangbangers, hand still on her stun baton. Well, if J.D.'s scaly friend was involved with the masked guy, that was good enough for the clone. At least for the moment.

“I like the easy way. How about we all go on our merry ways and go home sans knife and bullet wounds tonight?” the courier tried. Hell, it was worth a shot.

Early Spring, 2068, Break out minus 4 years.

"We got 'em," the orc said brusquely as he dropped the creature like a rag-doll into the darkened alleyway.

"Could you have been anymore obvious? You can't carry a man down the street the same way you'd carry a bag of trash," a much smaller figure emerged from the shadows and looked to the left and right. It seemed that the light drizzle had kept the weather-pampered LA natives in their homes.

"Why not? He basically is trash now...now that we're giving him to youse, right?"

The smaller shape looked up at the looming orc and his compatriots. They all looked like toughs. Between them they had maybe 10 grand in second-hand cyber. They were a dime a dozen all over this world. They were nothing special, "Is that a hint of remorse I detect in your voice? You came to my associates with this deal, not the other way around. The money is good, and we never go back on our word, you won't be seeing him again, I promise you."

Even an untrained eye could see the unease in the group of gangers as they looked down at the well dressed dwarf, "Yeah, well, give us the dough, so we can get out of here," said the orc.

"Sure thing, Mr. Thayton," said the suit. He tossed an untraceable credstick at the figure as he went to inspect the cargo, "You're sure that he is appropriately sedated as per the agreement?"

"Yeah!" a voice from the rear of the group chimed in, "that halfer never saw it coming! A few hits with a reinforced baseball bat to the back of the skull and-"

The one called Thayton swirled and glared at the thin man who had horned in on their conversation before slowly turning his eyes back to the two dwarves. One well dressed, the other beaten into unconsciousness, "Yes, Mr. Johnson. We did just like you said. We had a bit of a tussle, as you can see we had ta rough him up a bit, but I don't think anything permanent's been broke. After that we hit him with that injector you gave us. We saw him stirring a bit after that, so we pumped him full of two more doses."

"Hmm, you may have been a bit overzealous. One dose from that injector was enough to take down a grizzly," the Johnson looked down at the other dwarf. As if the unconscious figure was listening to the conversation, it gave a groan before slumping back down, "but it appears no harm done. His file did imply that he would be difficult to drug. Thank you for your report, you can go now gentleman."

The group of gangers looked at one another before Thayton spoke up, "Yeah, well...here's the thing. We ain't got no ride back to our homes. So we figured we'd borrow your little car over there. Its nicer than anything this district's seen since the 'quake."

The well-dressed dwarf let out a sigh. Why is it so hard to find a group of runners who don't try to screw you. Its like they don't think they can trust a Johnson as far as they can throw him. I wonder how far that orc could throw me...On the outside the dwarf was as calm as a still lake. He leaned back against his ride and pinged two nodes from his comm-link, "Wingus, Dingus, why don't you come out and talk to these gangers..."

The doors of the flashy vehicle in the alley slowly opened. Stepping out into the rain was an elf and an orc, both wearing professionally tailored suits. By the time they had turned to face the gang, the group had lost their nerve.

"Hey, chummer. It don't gotta be like that. We was just askin' if we could get a ride..." Thayton said, rapidly backing down.

"Take a hike kids, its time for some real work to get done," Johnson said it brusquely in a tone that brooked no argument.

------

Five hours later they had traveled up the coast to the Seattle. The ride hadn't been as comfortable as the dwarf was used to. Two hours crammed in a vtol with an unconscious dwarf strapped to IVs who smelled worse than whatever dumpster he must have been living in was certainly not his idea of fun. But that discomfort had passed and now he was in a facility that was entirely unfamiliar to him. He sat in a finely appointed waiting room so that he could debrief whoever it was that was looking for these awakened folk to do...whatever it was they were going to do with them.

He leaned back on the couch and tipped his bowler up over his eyes as he turned his AR into opaque mode. Using AR as an overlay always bothered his eyes. He knew that that was really the whole point of AR. After all, it was AUGMENTED reality, but he liked to keep his reality and his fantasy separate. He started flipping through the notes he had received from the CFO of the "Chicago Branch" to see where he was headed to next. It seemed like he wouldn't even be spending the night in the city. That suited the dwarf just fine. Something about Seattle gave him an uneasy feeling.

He had been sitting there flipping through paper work for almost an hour when he received an unexpected message that popped up on his HUD.

//Hello, Mr. Alfonso. I wanted to meet with you.\\ They knew his real name. He felt around with his programs in the AR. He was no hacker, but he knew his way around a comm. All the walls except for the one to the doctor's office is wirelessly shielded. I guess her dossier wasn't kidding when they said she was eccentric.

//Ah, Dr.Huppler. A pleasure to hear from you. I was under the impression that we would be meeting in person for the debriefing.\\

//*giggle* Why would you think that? I would like to see you in person though...you seem interesting.\\

//Uh...thanks, Doctor. Should we get down to business?\\

//Sure, Frederick, if that is what you want. Can I ask you a few questions?\\

//Of course, ma'am. you were the one who hired out the Chicago Branch to help you with your little problem, we are here to serve.\\

At this point in the conversation an icon began to emerge from the text bubbles. It formed its way into a large lizard that spoke in a rather friendly sing-song voice. //Who is the man you brought in?\\

This seems entirely inappropriate. She had the full dossier, she asked to bring him in. Why is she wasting my time. //He is as his file reads. I did, however, note in my debrief logs that he is substantially more resistant to drugs than we previously thought. I recommend a constant intravenous of sedatives. I believe your orderlies are already seeing to it.\\

//No.\\ the lizard had by now turned into a small dragon. It seemed almost too cutesy for the surroundings. //I mean what kind of man is he. You are interesting. Is he interesting like you?\\

//Well...he is a dwarf, if that is what you mean. But I believe the similarities end there. He is street scum, nobody will be coming to look for him.\\

//Why did you do it?\\ The baby dragon's eyes looked at him. They seemed to be gazing into his very soul. And they seemed to be about to weep.

//I...I'm not sure I understand the question. I was only following orders.\\

//Are you one of the bad men? Those that only follow orders? Or do you think for yourself?\\

//What? Who is this?\\ Immediately Frederick Alfonso booted up his agent. A tool his company had given him to protect his comm-link from intrustion. A tool he should have been using all along. He followed up by slotting a sniffer program to try to locate whoever was using this dragon-like icon.

//Just think about it, Mr. Alfonso. Why do you do it? Why do you allow those that have to hurt those that haven't? Haven't you asked yourself what goes on within these walls?\\

Frederick released his company sponsored agent into the nearest company node and logged-off. He jumped out of his seat and looked about. The room was still just as empty. It's not my business what goes on here. I'm happy. I'm a worker drone. Do what you are told, you get your money, you get to live your life. What are these other people to you? Don't ask questions keep your head down.

It was another ten or so minutes before Frederick had successfully lowered his heart rate. It was enough time for him to decide that he shouldn't mention to anyone his failure to follow protocol with his comm-link. This meant keeping his meeting with the dragon quiet. He was about to pack up his things and leave this eerie place when a doctor walked in. She had wild hair and seemed to be rather annoyed.

"Just what do you think you are doing?! You give me a man not fully sedated?! You fail to mention what a complete danger he is and that he can easily escape the bindings you left him in. You set me up! You will go down for this!"

The dwarf looked up at the good doctor. Saw the name tag of Josephine Huppler, and put on his most charming smile, "Hang on a minute. Lets talk. If you had properly read my file you will see that all of these concerns were addressed. Now..." the dwarf made an inward sigh. He couldn't believe he was about to ask this question. But maybe the dragon had been right. Maybe he had to know, "...what goes on within these walls?"

(2070, Breakout minus 2 years)

Under his hood and black ski mask, Tig was sweating more and more. It was way too hot to be dressed like this. But sweating for an hour was definitely preferable to being in jail for a couple of years. He checked astral space one more time. He didn’t expect any magical resistance but it was always better to be careful, and this run had already proven to be more dangerous than planned.

“Still clear” he announced to the team. Since they had succesfully extracted the girl last year he had worked with them on and off.

“Why is this taking so long?” Irika asked, impatient.

“The Johnson’s information was incorrect again. Low-level maglock my ass. The only low-level thing on this job is the pay!” Vlad was getting irritated. “This doesn’t feel right. First the drones and now this. I think we’re being set up.”

With a ‘beep’ the mag-lock flashed a green light and the door unlocked as Vlad finally managed to rewire the internal workings.

Tig silently agreed with the russian as they entered the warehouse. There was something off about the whole thing. It was supposed to be a quick and easy job. A warehouse break-in, almost no security, in and out within one hour. No one had said a word about the combat drones awaiting them, or the black ICE in the matrix alarm system, or the high-quality maglocks. The only thing missing were some bound spirits. The changeling checked the astral once more.

“Let’s find the damn thing and get out!” Jason was nervous, nothing of his usual bravado showing.

“I picked up the target’s RFID Signature. It’s so - .” Vlad stopped in the middle of his sentence as the team heard the sound of chars screeching to a halt somewhere near. A lot of them.

“This can’t be a coincidence. Abort the mission, get out NOW!”

The team turned around immediatly at the dwarf’s command and ran back out the door they just entered through. Too late. Four black Sedans had held in front of the warehouse. Broad-shouldered men in black suits were leveling assault shotguns at the team, taking cover behind the open car doors.

For a brief moment everything seemed to slow down to a crawl. Tig felt like he was watching everything through a camera lense. These guys look like stereotypical mafia enforcers right out of a trid film he curiously thought before the men opened fire and all hell broke loose.

Vlad was the first to go down. The large caliber guns almost blew him apart, tearing half of his face of. The russian’s body slowly fell to the ground, spraying fountains of blood everywhere.

The grisly death scene jerked Tig out of his haze. Thoughts raced through his mind as he burst into motion, running for cover. What the hell is happening? Who are these guys? He felt a sharp pain in his left shoulder as a bullet ripped his flesh apart. He kept running, trying to shroud himself in an Invisibility spell but the pain from his wound was too much, he couldn’t concentrate on the arcane patterns.

Behind him Jason raised his machine gun, preparing to fight back. The massive ork never knew when to fight and when to run. He didn’t even have time to pull the trigger before a burst of explosive rounds tore his right arm of, sending the gun clattering on the asphalt.

Risking another glance back, Tig saw Irika was still alive but she too was already on the ground, bleeding from a large wound in her stomach. In a gesture of defiance the beautiful black dwarf shot her pistol at the attackers before another burst from their shotguns finished her off.

The horrific images imprinted in his mind, Tig turned a corner, finally out of his attackers sight. But already he heard their footsteps closing in and in his condition he couldn’t hope to outrun them. Panic befell him. There was no escape.

“Calm down Tig. Take the next alley on the left. Trust the man you’ll meet.” Suddenly Nosh was there, his astral form hovering in the air. Then he was gone again, after saying what he had come to say.

Trig trusted the kid-mage. The twins had freed him, given him new life. He owed them more than he could ever repay.

Turning into the indicated alley, Tig almost ran into a brand new black Ford Spiral. The car was as sleek as the dwarf in the expensive suit sitting behind the steering wheel.

Givin the changeling a condescending look, the dwarf pointed at the seat next to him. “Get in already, I don’t have all day. And please try not to bleed on the leather.”

Mid-Summer, 2069. Breakout minus 3 years.

Frederick Alfonso hiked up his expensive dress pants as he crouched over the body, "So you say, this is the only casualty of last night's....incident?"

The female security officer looked down at the dwarf with disdain. Can't say I blame her. I'd be pissed if someone pulled rank on me. But I didn't ask for this assignment. Seattle...drek, and now I'm back in this facility...

It had been over a year since Frederick had stepped foot in Seattle. A year that was far too short in the dwarf's opinion. Throughout his travels and his business dealings he had tried to put the memory of that comm-link conversation, and the curious baby dragon-icon, out of his mind. But it seemed to creep back into his dreams. He swore to himself up and down that he would be a good little soldier. That he would work hard, and do what UO said. But every time he returned to his office, he found himself checking the old comm-link he had sealed away in his personal safe, to see if the connection had been re-established.

The dragon may not have re-entered his life, but the mysterious facility of its origin certainly had. He had received a message from the Chicago Fund that a Dr. Josephine Huppler had actually requested his aid in investigating this situation. That had been a shock to the soon to be middle aged dwarf. Last he had recalled, Dr. Huppler was filing grievances against him. Apparently those had not only fallen through, but Dr. Huppler was keen on the fact that Frederick already knew about the classified facility, and already had a general idea of what was going on here. So he was the perfect candidate for the job.

Frederick touched the deceased security guard with one gloved hand, "For all the shell casings about, you'd think there would be an entire mountain of dead...on either side."

"That is one of the fact that...just doesn't seem to add up," the security officer responded matter-of-factly, "Eyewitness reports indicate a small team breaking in. Blasting whatever got in their way. And then leaving, presumably securing whatever it was they were looking for. But, by the time the secondary responders arrived, it seemed as though a vast majority of the bodies had been mended. My magicians swear to me up and down that it must have been some form of magical healing...it doesn't seem right for the idiom of standard thieves."

"Then these were no standard thieves," the dwarf responded, equally terse, "They went to these elevators, which were locked down. And then left. Something must have come by way of the shaft, even if it didn't use the elevator itself."

"I've thought of that, sir. And I have been unable to secure a reasonable answer for that. These scientists....guard their work fiercely. You'll have to take it up them. a task I do not envy."

"Great...I guess I will have to do just that."

------------------------------------------------

Alfonso walked into his office and flopped down on his seat with a sigh. He rubbed his eyes and went through his desk drawers until he found what he sought. He produced a bottle of Black Label and a rock glass placing them on his desk. These goddamn scientists won't give me a straight answer. This isn't even my job description. I'm not a problem discoverer, I'm a problem solver. After a few sips of his drink he tipped his hat over his eyes and tried, once more, to correlate the data he had discovered.

Only three segments of the facility seemed to be acting unusual. One segment seemed to be rapidly building some sort of wireless inhibiting and warded cells. This seemed entirely unusual and had certainly piqued Frederick's desire to discover the truth. But he had nowhere near the clearance for that. The only thing he was cleared to do was figure out who these runners were, and who hired them. His only way to discover who hired them, was to find out their target. Which brought him to the second segment of the facility that was acting unusually.

This area seemed to be doing some bizarre research. The technical details were far over his head and the Doctors in question, one Dr. Teller and one Dr. Briscoll seemed to know this. He had talked with them at length. The two seemed to hate each other. But when he tried talking to them together, they seemed to unite their hatred and focus it all on Frederick. When he had tried them apart, they just constantly spoke about the technical failings of one another. In any event, it was not particularly helpful. The only information he had gleaned was that the research had something to do with cloning, and that something had certainly gone missing. So, who would know about a clone in a secure facility? Who would want to secure it and how would they successfully do just that?

This brought him to the last of the puzzle pieces that he possessed. The security system. As near as he could tell, somehow doors had miraculously unlocked. Cameras had failed beyond all probability. Someone had slowly hacked the system. And this seemed only possible from the inside. When he had brought up these concerns with certain members of the staff, he had been instantly told to not consider such a fact. And that it must somehow have been done as legwork by the runners.

Bulldrek, I know runners, these guys are street. Casual, this is way beyond them, and they got away far too clean. As he said that he lifted up the tuft of hair that he had procured from the fallen security officer. It seemed odd, mostly orange with a smattering of black. The hair seemed entirely out of place for a battle. Unless he was dealing with something even more bizarre.

Suddenly, Alfonso felt the hairs on his neck stand on end. He felt bizarre, like something had traveled through him. He jerked up, pulling his hat out of his eyes. He remembered his training and was about to call for an astral scouting when an image appeared in his office. It was a ghostly image, clearly some sort of illusion. It depicted an elven woman, a rather attractive one at that. On her shoulder perched a dragon, whispering in her ear. It then flitted from her shoulder to the shoulder of a second form that appeared from the growing mist. It was some sort of SURGEr, a tiger-like thing. It seemed to be enveloped in a struggle against invisible assailants. The dragon fluttered back and forth before pushing the two forms together. As the two forms got near to one another, they joined hands and fled. They then faded away into the mists. The dragon floated in the opposite direction before fading.

Alfonso blinked twice then looked down at his bottle of whiskey. He shook his head and looked up once more. All signs that anything abnormal had happened had entirely faded away. The dragon had seemed to flee through the safe that the dwarf kept locked in his office. Slowly Alfonso moved to the antiquated box. He rotated the knob to the combination and opened it. Revealing his old commlink. It blinked softly in the darkness, indicating a new message...

--------

The dawn smog was dancing outside of the dwarf's window by the time he had finished reading the message. It was a prisoner dossier. Two of them to be exact. One on some sort of failed experimental clone designated M992. As near as he could tell, everything about that project had been a failure. Its goal seemed lofty, to create infants with fully compatible bioware. Thus making the use of such devices second nature. But according to the records, the only thing this project had produced was a female elf who was addicted to tranqs. Hardly the subject for an extraction. At least, not by anyone who was looking to profit. The second dossier was on a street runner who went by given the designation S697. He had disappeared some six months ago under mysterious circumstances as well, his physical description seemed to match that of the cat-like elf he had seen in the images the previous night.

It had taken hours, but finally he had pieced together large chunks of what had happened the night of the extraction. For that's clearly what it was, an extraction. He knew in his gut that this wizard elf-beast would still be in Seattle, continuing his life as a runner. He knew that he would know where to find the clone, and he knew that the clone would know what was really going on in this building. With that, he gave a call to his superior.

"Mr. Casey, I regret to report to you that there has been absolutely no headway made in the case you put me on. There are far too many secrets and far too many variables to consider. I can keep beating my head against a wall here, or you can re-assign me back to my real work sir. Your choice." I'm going to discover this facility's dirty little secrets. But I'm sure as hell not going to tell you guys about it.

2070, breakout minus 2 years.

The Ford Spiral sped rapidly down the hot and muggy Seattle streets, its automated systems moving it steadily through the crowded environs. Behind the wheel of the vehicle, a finely dressed dwarf reclined, a bowler hat tipped over his eyes. From his perspective, the streets were miles away and unimportant. The periphery of his vision was filled with widgets detailing all sorts of information. It told him the distance and time to his new Seattle office. He should be arriving shortly, just before dusk. It also told him that the team of runners he had sent out earlier were due to report in in approximately four hours. It also posted that the probability that they would accomplish their task on time was under sixty percent. Weather details indicated that this heat would continue throughout the evening, perhaps ending the following morning with another one of Seattle's stereotypical downpours.

This was all information that the dwarf, Frederick Alfonso, took into his mind subconciously. Taking up the vast majority of both his concious thought and his vision, was another suited individual, an elf. The elf's smile slowly widened, looking not unlike a shark moving in for the kill, "So, Alfonso. They've stationed you in Seattle full time. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you used to be a West Coast liason like myself. Sounds like a demotion if you ask for my opinion"

The dwarf stroked his thin moustache with his index finger and thumb, "Yes, however your opinions haven't impressed me too much as of late. Not since I saw that video feed of you leaving the bar with that troll."

Alfonso gave a false shudder and a smirk while the elf only frowned, "Well, we will see who has better judgement after tonight, when we compare profit margins."

This made Alfonso sit up slightly. Durango rarely discussed business unless he was doing something particularly smarmy to be proud of, "Send another team of poor saps to their deaths have you?"

The elf gave a snicker that churned Alfonso's stomach. Hogarth shook his head and said "Possibly, if they aren't paying enough attention. I had them convinced it was a milk run. On top of it all, I used enough blinds that I doubt it will ever get back to me."

"Yes, well I'm sure your brilliance will once again get you a commendation from our superiors," the dwarf responded reluctantly. Durango and Alfonso had once been friends. It seemed like a lifetime ago. A time before Frederick had known of the facility. A time before discovering its secrets consumed him. Even Durango's twisted morality had once been shared by the dwarf. Alfonso didn't know when he had changed, but somehow the two of them had just grown too different.

Alfonso reached for a false excuse to end this comm conversation. To his surprise, a real reason to end the conversation occurred. His secondary comm-link, the one that was left silent, the one that he had not given the number of in years blinked on. Alfonso abruptly ended his call and picked up the other commlink. The video feed of Durango disappeared to be replaced with a close-up view of a Dragon's eye. //Go to him. You must stop them. Come here, you will find the Tiger you seek.\\ Along with the message was an intersection clear across town. Alfonso attempted to ask a question, but before he could formulate the words in his mouth, the image disappeared, and the old and battered comm turned itself off.

The Tiger? Could it be? For over a year he had saught two people whenever his work would permit it. The existence of these two was the sole reason Alfonso sought the full-time transfer to Seattle. Of the escaped clone there had been little news, but information on the man who went by "Tiger" had been slowly trickling back to Frederick. If he could finally get his hands on this man, he might finally be able to uncover the secrets within that facility.

With a few quick thoughts he told his vehicle to change course. Why do I save this old and battered commlink if I'm not going to listen to its advice?[i]

----------

The sun had fallen quickly on the metropolis. The sleek Spiral had finally made its way to the destination given to him in the comm message. The filthy alley was still. The dwarf sat idling in his vehicle, slowly counting off the minutes, considering his next move. [i] Maybe the dragon lady got it wrong. After all, nobody can predict the future...can they?

With that thought two forms spilled out into the street. And the sounds of gunfire became apparent over the idling engine. One of the forms dropped and the second one ran towards Alfonso and his vehicle. The dwarf thought for a moment before committing to his course. He gave a mental command and the doors opened. Outside he saw the man he had been hunting for a year. He tried to hide the excitement he felt in his soul, "Get in already, I don't have all day. And try not to bleed on the leather."

Tiger seemed shocked, but didn't verbalize a question until he got in the vehicle and slumped down, "Where the drek did you come from? Who set us up!?"

Frederick shook his head, "Sorry, I don't have answers yet," he mentally closed the doors and told the car to get going, "That's actually been my problem for years. Tell you what, I get you out of your little mess, you answer my questions, deal?"

Tiger hesitated for a moment, a quick look in the rear-view mirror showed that three black sedans were already in pursuit of the Spiral, "Who are you?"

"Names....Burner, do we have a deal?"

Tiger nodded his head, and Burner prepared to call in one of his many favors...

(2070, Breakout Minus 2 Years)

Well, that doesn’t look good. Good thing my GPS decided to argue with me. Okay, so it was those weird twin voices telling my GPS to tell me to divert from my normal route. Damn, now I sound crazy. Time to focus on what’s developing.

I stood crouched over the edge of a building, watching what looked to be a shake-down unfolding in the alleyway below. It looked like some delivery kid in a tricked out bike was getting to know the locals the hard way. As far as I could tell, the numbers were four street thugs to one delivery kid. Not good odds for the kid.

“…were, I’m broke as a joke. Otherwise, I’d be more than happy to pay you not to shoot me. I am sure you understand.”

No weapons drawn yet. I can’t use flash-bangs because it might hurt the kid. I could line up shots and take the gangbangers out from up here, but there might be more I can’t see. I just need a few more moments to scan over the alley.

“That’s cool, man. We’ll just take that as a down payment.”

The mouthy one might be the gang’s leader, but I can’t be sure. Okay, nobody else is in the alley. Still, I had better use my gel clips at range just in case innocents stumble into the crossfire.

“I can’t give you that.”

Heh, that’s about to speed things up. Gun loaded, blade drawn and scans done. Final numbers are four gangbangers, one delivery kid and one crazy guy who thinks he’s a hero.

“You gotta be fracking kidding, kid.”

And there’s the hot-head. He’s gonna be the first to---oh, and here come the guns. Time’s up.

I turned off my suit’s chameleon program via my PAN, switching to a dull black. No reason to hide now that I wanted their attention. With a grin and a quick prayer, I leaped off the building edge and into the alley.

“Bad idea, scumbags.” Heh, I love that voice mask. It always grabs attention. I could feel all five sets of eyes lock onto me. Just as planned.

“Now we can do this the easy way,” I pointed towards the alley’s exit with the tip of my katana, “where you all run away and never come back, or we can do this the hard way.” I gestured with my gun to let them know I was serious.

Nothing doing, nobody moving, maybe I need to give the gangbangers a few moments to let this all register. In the meantime, I see “Mouthy” about four meters from the kid, “Hot-Head” about six meters from me, and let’s say “Slack-Jaw” and “Uni-Brow” right next to “Hot-Head.”

“I like the easy way. How about we all go on our merry ways sans knife and bullet wounds tonight?” said the delivery kid in slightly digitally altered voice.

Cute, kid, but now their attention is back on you. I gotta grab the spotlight back, if you don’t mind.

“You should listen to the kid. Wise beyond his years.”

Okay, they’re back to focusing on me. And they’re advancing on me. Good. Time to take these guys ou…what’s the kid doing? Wow, he’s drawing a nasty looking stun baton. Kid’s got balls. I guess I should do my part.

I lined up a shot on Hot-Head’s forehead and opened up with my Savalette Guardian. Two shots later, he was down on his back screaming or crying-probably a bit of both. At the same time, the kid cracked Mouthy across the back of the head with the heavy-duty stun baton.

Mouthy erupted in a blazing aura of blue-white electricity. With a howl of pain and fury, Mouthy hit the ground still twitching from the shock of the stun baton. Slack-Jaw and Uni-brow watched in disbelief as their comrade fell to the ground. While I was grateful that they had yet to act, I decided it best to take them out as soon as possible.

I dashed towards Slack-Jaw, weaving and dodging as he opened up fire on me. I closed the distance between us in moments and swung the flat edge of my katana against his temple. Slack-Jaw’s eyes glazed over as the lights turned off in his head, and he collapsed in a heap. Uni-Brow’s gun had jammed and I took the opportunity to get a free hit on the final gangbanger. A round-house kick to the head later and Uni-Brow joined his buddy in the sweet bliss of unconsciousness.

The shrill whine of electricity and a shriek of pain pulled my attention back towards the delivery kid. Apparently, he had the good sense to stick Hot-Head with the stun baton to make sure he stayed down.

Smart move, kid.

I sheathed my weapons and queued up my bike via my PAN, telling it to head over towards my coordinates. I carried meds in the trunk space just in case things got dicey during my rounds, and I had no idea what the kid had been through before I got here. Almost immediately, I could pick up the sound of my Suzuki Mirage’s engine kick up as the bike sped over towards the alley.

“You okay?” I asked the kid as the jet black Mirage pulled up next to me, “I’ve got meds in the hold.” On cue, the Mirage’s trunk popped open.

“I’m good, man. Nothing much got through my suit. It must be my lucky day.”

The kids answer pulled a smirk from me. He’s got some moxie, that’s for sure, completely unfazed after taking on a street gang with nothing but stun batons.

“Do you need an escort or can you handle it from here?”

The kid shook his head, “No, but thanks for the offer. I owe you one.”

A back-alley door opened, and a small, nervous-looking man came out. He looked around, ignoring the fight scene and focusing in straight on the package. He quickly and quietly paid for the delivery, grabbed the package and slammed the door.

I grinned, “Looks like you could have handled those guys no problem. All you needed out of me was a momentary distraction.”

The kid was getting on his own bike when I said that, and he stopped mid-action and chuckled a bit. He finished getting on his bike and keyed up the engine.

“I don’t know about that, Omae. I’d like to hope that I never find out.” With that, the kid kicked the engine into gear and headed off into the night. I watched him go, just to make sure nobody tailed him as he headed through the alley. Once he got out of sight, I shut my bike’s trunk, hopped onto the seat and keyed up the GPS to take me back to my normal route.

That was interesting. I guess that was what the voices wanted.

“Thank you.”

You’re welcome?

No response. Oh well, that’s more than I expected. Strange to see someone that young making delivery runs in a place like this. Hope he gets home all right…

June 26, 2070 // Hong Kong Free Zone (Tolo Harbor)

Back again...

Though Carter had to admit at this point, anywhere in the civilized world probably qualified as somewhere he had operated in the past for at least a few weeks. This time, the difference was that he was making his own decisions. He hefted the rucksack over his shoulder and set foot off the ship. The last two weeks had been a cramped two meter by three meter compartment with a bed and washroom all shoved together. The price had been right though. She was in Hong Kong, and the twins had sent him a message that something was about to happen. Something that needed to be stopped.

By midnight, he had made arrangements at a cheap motel, reached out to Lei-Po, and made a deal to buy some gear. The thin troll who was now running with the 9x9s--same crew he had before, but now they had a name. There was an odd sense of symmetry, he had sold weapons to them two years ago and now Carter was buying. He just hoped there wouldn't be a huge markup on the same guns. She was still somewhere underground, hiding under rocks until the time to strike.

-----------

Carter scattered the pile of chips with a hand, each of their voices calling to him, whispering why they were the best for this job. He slotted the single Cantonese linguasoft that he needed and turned his back on the chorus. Tonight, he had to be himself, that was who Lei-Po knew. Shorts and a loose shirt would show that he was unarmored and the small ceramic knife at the small of his back was his only weapon. It was too hot for the coat, much less a skin-tight suit. Sliding the keycard into his pocket, Carter felt another chip. He flung the p'fix at the corner where the others had been scattered and stormed out of the room.

-----------

Two bowls of noodles and pot of tea later, Carter had finally shutdown the string of voices reaching out through the aether to call at him. His hands had stopped shaking and he was ready to buy some guns. He crossed the street through the summer rain and banged twice in rapid succession on the warehouse door. His commlink flashed a series of messages in AR, nonsensical by themselves, but they confirmed who Carter was. The door slid open to let him in.

Lei-Po had more scars than before, including what looked like shrapnel scarring down his right arm. A bomb that had gone off too soon perhaps? The exchange was brief, with few pleasantries. Five minutes later, Carter was back in the street, with a duffel bag over his shoulder. Someone's used gym clothes had been put inside to hide the concealed panel where two handguns, several optical chips and a keycard for the Queen Elizabeth Hospital were stowed. Several clips of Hi-C rounds were tucked in the bag and his pockets, vacuum sealed against the moisture and chemsniffers.

I'm ready. What is it that you need? Carter tapped the words into the special text file on his commlink. He had run a diagnostic on the file twice and both times it came back clean. Even the portscan had confirmed that there wasn't anyone hacking his commlink. Either way, the text file was altered, and one of the twins knew. Carter still couldn't keep track of which was doing it--his communications with them had never been clear. Jonathan still worked as a liaison but more and more Carter found himself doing what they needed.

The fourth floor, room 19 in the East wing.

That was it, no instructions...he was going to need to talk with them about keeping secrets.

-------

June 27, 2070 // Hong Kong Free Zone [Queen Elizabeth Hospital]

He stepped into Room 19 and She was there. Seeing her rips his mind back, tearing through government-built mnemonic blocks.



Carter staggers for a step and catches himself on the foot of the bed. She has changed, but something tells him it is still her. The black plasteel coatings have been replaced with artificial skin and she has her own arms again.

No. Not her.

Yes. I am sorry, but she is important. Her mind must be saved.

Memories that weren't his warred within Carter for a moment as he looked at her. After a second, he left the room to find a wheelchair and a nurse who could take her place. He would need a different set of vitals.

Here

I exist in a single shape - a she I made up with the help of my summoner. He speaks of a great change I could make but I need to decide if I am willing to give up my life Here for a life There. I practice now only being one thing since the change will diminish my ability to be many things. I can feel the others and their curiosity at my only doing this one thing. I have tried to explain what I am considering doing but all I get is confusion and disbelief. I feel the fear and excitement mix in me at the thought of being something like myself but different.

I NEED YOUR HELP

I hear his voice and leap to There. I unmake myself and quickly slip through the layers of existence to a place envisioned by my summoner. I sense the death and pain hanging around me in the astral. I reform myself in the astral - the name for the deep place of the There. I look quickly around trying to discern why I was needed.

STOP THEM

I see the people - a new word for the groups of hes and shes I see in the There. They have more never-born sticks - guns, that ripped the pattern of creation from the flesh and bone of the living. I see the creation blessed He is stuck in the transition. I sense the cold determination of the people to kill my He....my friend. I watch as He stumbles deeper into the building fleeing from the people. The heat builds in me - the need to stop these people and protect the He. I push myself through the thin layer between the astral and There. I see their heads swivel towards me at my appearance. They calmly point their never-born weapons at me and I hear the air fill with buzzing and the light flashes. Nothing happens as the bits hit my form - there is no flesh and bone for them to cleave through. I summon the rage into my hands and I see the lightning dance there. I gesture and a bolt streaks from me into the chest of the nearest he. I feel better watching the he spasm as the lightning makes him limp and useless.

A LITTLE LONGER

I weave bits of myself into a net and cast it over the people and watch as their movements become clumsy. Their attention slides and warbles under my influence. They have trouble following the He - several head off in the wrong direction. Feeling flush with the power I have over this empty violent people I alter the weave of myself slightly and tie it into the larger fabric of creation. All around me small twists of fate occur - a she trips over her own foot, a he finds the stick he was holding is not working as he tries to point it at me again - accidents befall all of them under my onslaught.

YOU MUST LEAVE NOW

I feel the urgency behind the command as I feel the weave of creation cut from around me. The pain ripples through me and the people begin to regain their senses. I retreat back to the astral to see a glowing figure hanging there with several of my brethren enslaved to it. I can see the tight chains of creation binding them to this he's life. He smells of arrogance and confidence. I see him gathering more power to himself, without pausing to see to what purpose his weaves will be, I propel myself through the astral. I move through the building and emerge on the other side to see my He climb into a large never-born thing. The thing moves away quickly from the back of the building. I feel a tension leave me at the thought of the He being safe. I look back the way I came to see a trio of compelled spirits pursue me. Their reluctance at the task sings out from them but they lose none of their determination to carry out their orders. I feel the urgency to to be somewhere else, the desperate need to escape - fear one of the less pleasant feelings I was learning. I send the emotion back along the link to my summoner.

I RELEASE YOU

I open the way to the Here and begin to unmake myself as I see the astral he cast a roiling mass of creation at me. I feel the agony as it consumes parts of me seeking to banish me from this There. My scream is cut short as I make the leap to my home. I reform with my essence mangled and torn. I scream as the others swirl around me.

(2070, Breakout Minus 2 Years)

I make one hell of a stereotype

The burly dwarf came upon this bit of introspection as he sat in some typical little tavern in a worn out part of town, staring down into one of many glasses of some crappy mass produced soy based beer.

Wonder if the nerds had it right back in the day after all... Stuff sure is good though

He sat in a corner all by himself, the light above his worn table having burned out long ago. The aging orc who ran the bar thought periodically about replacing it, but decided that enough of his clientele seemed to like the dark little corner well enough, so he saved himself a few creds and kept the area dark.

The fo-wood tables, the hideous and surly bartender, floors that needed a sand blasting more than a mop and just the general feeling that you and your business, creds be damned, weren't welcome made the lone dwarf feel at home. Countless nights had been spend in places like this back in LA, but of course then the crew he ran with pretty much owned the places they went to. Now he had to remember to be almost polite (not to polite though, and never nice in a place like this) and actually pay for his drinks when he went up for more. There was no way this place could afford the fancy auto serve machines other places had, and the creds just weren't good enough to warrant the sort of abuse any humanoid server would receive in a place like this. As Heng lost himself in the past, his thoughts began to travel through the last couple of years, and what a mess they had made of things.

Life had been so simply when he had been part of the crew, his entire existence contained within a little 8 by 6 block district of LA. Nothing from the outside world, save perhaps the other punk-ass gangs and the inflow of the goods they needed, had concerned him. Just a little knuckle power, crack a few heads together every once in a fun while and everything seemed to move along nice and profitable.

Now his former crew mates were nothing but bloody punctuations of gore in his memory. Lines, splotches and scatterings of viscera and multi colored blood spread across the canvas of his violent past.

Worse was the realization(he'd been having far to many of these lately, one reason for the many glasses of soy-beer) that he hadn't really gotten any fulfillment out of his swath of revenge. When he had sat out, it was all he could think about, the complete and utter focus of his admittedly narrow consciousness. However, after the sixth of seventh former comrade of his had been successfully tracked down and given a scarlet themed farewell party to the afterlife, the sullen dwarf started to suspect this was not a road that was truly worth going down. This of course, did not actually stop him from following it and finishing what he had started, but the thought had never been far from his head and had become fully actualized now that the task was complete.

Truly he should not have even been surprised by what had happened. Growing up withing the crew he had thought that there was nothing else, but he had managed to get away for a few years during his training. During that time he had learned enough about the "real world" to realize how small and meaningless his former existence had been. Thinking of all the heinous actions they(himself included) had performed in the past, selling off one former crew member for the spirits only know how much creds was pretty par for the course.

His actions eventually lead him to the melting pot known as Seattle, which he would only begrudgingly admit had any more going for it than LA, and to the completion of his task. The entire time, he had thought himself to be going at least mildly insane, with two little voices leading him along, almost reluctantly. As time went on, the voices came less and less frequently. First he simply thought he was performing some sort of self treatment by taking out his revenge, yet he had come to feel like they were almost being held from him, only being able to reach out when the opportunity struck and with great effort.

As he meditated more and more (inside and out of the local watering hole) Heng began to feel that perhaps he was not crazy, and these voices came from outside himself. When he began to believe this, he then followed that perhaps they held some purpose he had yet to come into. Almost immediately this had made him feel better, he could feel some emptiness within himself begin to fill, if only by a trickle. it felt like a self realization he had come upon during his intense sessions of training, and instincts told him to follow it.

First he returned to the man he knew as Krnsik. The voices had lead them to him, and perhaps his path would lead to the purpose he sought. As he joined the do-gooder on a few of his vigilante missions, Heng felt some sort of fulfillment, and knew that the masked man was part of what he was looking for but not the entire picture.

More and more he meditated (now doing his best to keep it out of the local watering hole.. some times) and two small sets of striking lights... no eyes... began to creep into his thoughts as he went through his meditative katas. Slowly, they connected themselves with the voices, and then with a snap of insight he remembered where he had seen them before; staring at him from brutal scene he had glanced while fleeing from his imprisonment. Loomed over by some beast from a horror trid, two innocent sets of eyes peered across the room and had looked into his very essence, silently asking for assistance he knew he had to give.

Heng now knew he had to find his way back to the place he had escaped, and as he started down this path he found that the trickle into the gap within his soul had sped up, and he was traveling down the right path. Also, he found the tools needed for the journey had already been honed on his last one.

The dwarf's eyes quickly shifted up, out and away from his soy-beer and his muddled past, to look at the shaking form that now walked towards him, his clean pressed corp suit completely out of place in the dingy bar. The man nervously looked around, at first unable to find the dwarf in his dark corner.

Goddamn humans He thought, picking up and slamming down his glass of soy-beer to show his location. The man looked over in his direction, trying to discern what exactly lurked in the shadowed corner. Visibly gathering his courage, he squared his shoulders and walked over, reaching out to steady himself in the darkness as he sat down.

"I... I have what you asked for. But why? Why would you do this just for... Whatever this is?" the man's voice shook as he spoke.

"Don't worry about that, just hurry up and pass it over, I'm not to bright and I don't know exactly how much air the trunk holds" Heng replied, reaching out an impatient hand.

The man, just some data-pusher who happened to be tapped into the right info stream at the right time, reached a wobbly hand into his corp-suit pocket and handed Heng a small data chip.

"There, that's everything you wanted, now just please tell me where she is."

Heng brought froth a small low-cost comm unit, carefully unused so he wouldn't fry it, and plugged it into the data chip. A small blue-green form flashed from one to the other, and after a few tense moments the little lizard appeared on the screen, nodded its head at the dwarf, and vanished.

"Ah, perfect" Heng said, and with one hand placed a small electronic key on the table, and the other dropped the chip to the floor were a heavy boot quickly landed, shattering the cheap bit of microware to pieces.

"What! All of this... horror for that?" The man was now near hysteria.

"Yup. Nice doing business with you." With that the dwarf walked out and away from the bar.

As he bundled deeper into his synthleather jacket against the cold, Heng thought for a moment about exactly what might have been on the chip and why the little lizard wanted it. Then he gave out a chuckle into the night when he realized the man had been so flustered he hadn't even asked where the car containing his wife of six years, and his motivation for betraying the corp that groomed him for all these years and risking his entire life and livelihood, was parked.

2477352.01075

Neon permeated the city like so much icing on a birthday cake. Everything a celebration of gluttony, a greed designed to strip a person of their identity and their earnings. Advertising marquees littered the ever-changing landscape like a forest on fire, screaming for attention I did not pay it. I pulled my jacket closer, and stole my way into the alley between a Quebecois restaurant and a pawn shop - the kind you find on the edge of desperate neighborhoods, an urban parasite. As I began to probe the structure for weaknesses, I became aware of a tug at the corner of my perception, a tickle at my senses.

I blinked, and brought my vision online. I became aware of the interior of Tommy's battered old Mercury Comet. I registered the smell of acrid smoke, and gave my partner a sidelong look.

Partner. It still seemed registered full that only eight months, three days and two hours after being freed from corporate bondage that I would trust someone enough to consider them a partner. Someone save Dexter, that is. I eyed the coffin nail dangling out the window from Tommy's fingers and affect a frown.

Tommy looked at me, unphased by my concern for the state of his lungs, and smiles. `Sam, you went all space out there.` Tommy is a curious anachronism like myself, but he is not too concerned with vernacular. `If I didn't know better, I'd think you were tripping the astral.`

`I do not mean to take a bunk, Tommy. My mind was elsewhere.`

`Well, focus, boyo. These aren't horny old men or cheating housewives we're watching here.`

He is right. Two buttonmen and a butter and eggs man were already inside of the dingy pawn shop. A certain emerald eyed dame had informed me of the meeting. Our hoods are waiting for some corporate Brunos, the emerald eyed gal's own gaolers. Tommy was of a mind that we were there to watch. I meant to pay a visit, and put the screws to them.

(2071, Breakout -1 year)

Elizabeth turned away from the computer monitor in response to the Doctor's questions.

"Yes, Dr. Huppler, everything is secure. Communication blackout was verified as of 20 hundred hours."

"Why are they still together in a single cell? I thought I gave orders for separation?" Thin lips pursed as the older woman peered past the younger security technician, eyes focused on the slowly alternating camera views of the moderate sized cell.

The younger woman's lips pressed together in a tight line, eyes flashing a bit. "You want them separate, you can do it. I lost three AST's and almost fifty thousand nuyen the last time we tried to separate them for any length of time. They go crazy."

Three years and a rapidly ascending career within the ranks of the Awakened in Universal Omnitech had give the Hispanic woman a sense of confidence, especially when dealing with other people from inside the company. She glanced back at the monitor as Dr. Huppler pursed her lips again, the older woman aware of the lack of respect just below the surface of the other woman's tone. One did not get access to many Tier 9 Awakened resources out on the outskirts of Seattle, especially in a research facility of questionable value, so the Dr. kept her comments to herself as she turned and walked away, heels clicking.

Elizabeth let out a breathe as the woman left the small control room, glancing nervously at the monitor. What the cameras didn't show, of course, was the small wireless router tapped into the camera feed and mounted right on the back of the camera, or the small block of incredibly expensive incense that Elizabeth had slipped in earlier with the twins food. The credstick to buy it had just shown up on her desk, but she'd learned not to question how the twins got things done. She was happy just to be involved, to be helping them. Nobody deserved four years of being poked and prodded like they had been. And, if the reports were any indication, Upper Management had suddenly become interested in their potential use as bioweapons. Someone had suggested the bright idea of forcing them to work for the company by separating them and forcing them to complete the work to see each other. The idea had made the technician physically ill. Despite the fact that they looked 12 or 13, she knew they were only 4 years old, and had never physically set foot outside the facility since she'd first seen them almost 4 years ago.

It had been almost three months ago when the twins had told her they were going to escape. Considering the amount of security on the facility, Elizabeth had called them crazy, even with her help. But they hadn't wanted her to help them escape. Just little things…a phone call here, an outside Matrix link there. A few small items, purchased discretely. She'd told them they need a frakkin' army to bust them out, but they said they had friends. Friends on the outside, that would help them. Friends that they could call on when the time was right. They'd told her not to worry, that she wouldn't be implicated, and she'd shaken her head and done what she could to ease her aching conscience.

Just the other day, in fact, she'd hand-mailed an encrypted chip to a woman in the Chicago branch who worked in the department everyone knew handled the companies black ops. There had been a bit of hair from Nosh mailed to some trust fund baby in the city, and an expensive magnetized chalk that the twins had used to create a temporary lodge in their cell. Despite it never showing up on the camera, Elizabeth was sure that Mal had bound an ally spirit.

Where the hell did he learn that? she mused. I've got 8 more months of training before the company will accept me into it's initiatory circle, and even then they've already told me that the necessary rituals for ally spirit summoning won't be provided until I'm at least a C-Tier initiate.

Grimacing, she squared her shoulders and turned back to the monitors. She wasn't brave enough to directly challenge the company, but she'd already come to terms with her own emotional cowardice. She'd do what she could from the inside though, pass information, contact people...as much as she could.

(2071, Breakout -1 year)

Tig was racing through astral space at the speed of thoughts. A simple well-paying job, just what he liked. Ten grand to destroy one weak spirit, that was what the man in the yellow suit had offered him. Apparently the spirit of earth was disrupting a small back-alley in the barrens that the Johnson’s vehicles used for inconspicuous transport of smuggling goods. Tig didn’t know why they didn’t just take a different route but he really didn’t care that much. If the guy was willing to pay then he should have his spirit-free street.

Arriving at the alley in question everything seemed in order. No trace of a spirit anywhere to be found. Guess I’ll just wait for a vehicle to come through, maybe it’ll show itself then. Almost 10 minutes later the mage’s suspicion turned out to be right as a small run-down Honda Spirit (What a fitting name... Tig thought ironically) turned into the narrow street and a huge earth elemental erupted from the ground, throwing the car over and pushing it back out on the highway. As soon as the battered car was out of the alley the elemental seemed to lose all interest in it and started to sink into the asphalt.
With a thought Tig was standing next to it and spoke in a friendly tone.

“Hello my big rocky friend. How are you doing?” Maybe I can reason with it, the thing is definitely much stronger than the Johnson said. Wouldn’t be fun to fight.
Slowly the stone giant turned towards him. Then he suddenly lunged forward in a surprisingly fast motion while shouting in a ear-splitting low rumble: ”THIS IS OUR STREET, INTRUDER! I WILL SMASH YOU, YOU INSIGNIFICANT INSECT!” Suprised, the mage could barely evade the spirit’s mighty blow, dodging it so narrowly that he could feel the rush of air as the massive fist passed his face.

Can’t I catch a break once? Tig sighed as he swiftly retreated from melee range and prepared a manabolt to throw at the rampaging elemental. The bolt of nergy connected but if the spirit was hurt in any way it didn’t show it. This could take a while...

The spirits next attack was faster than before and caught the mage off-guard. The rock-hard fist hit Tig square in the middle of the chest and the elf could distantly feel his meat body’s ribs breaking under the massive impact. He knew he had to end this fast because he wouldn’t last much longer. He gathered all the mana he could take in and formed it into the stronget manabolt he had ever casted. He knew the drain would be brutal but that was his only chance. As the energy connected the spirit literally exploded, pieces of rock and earth flying through astral space. Then it was gone. For a moment the mage smiled until the drain hit him like a truck, making blood flow out of every hole of his real body. He could barely remain conscious.

But at least the job was done, Tig thought as he prepared to leave the place. Suddenly, three more earth spirits emerged from the ground, surrounding his astral form. “YOU WILL PAY!” one of them screamed.
Drek! There was absolutely no way he could take on three more enemies in his current state. But he wouldn’t give up without trying. Gathering mana around him once more he send out his thoughts into astral space. Mal can you hear me? I could really use some help if you’re there somewhere! “Don’t worry, I already sent someone. Should arrive any second.” Mal’s voice came out of nowhere, accompanied by a slight chuckle.
Expectantly Tig looked around and barely a second after Mal finished his words, a figure appeared hovering between Tig and the three earth elementals. It looked like a young woman or a girlish-looking young man, it was hard to tell with a quick glance.
“Hey there!” Tig greeted the stranger. “Glad you decided to join the party.”

(2071, Breakout Minus 1 Year)

Damn it! Maybe I should just cut it off and be done with it.

Frustrated, I tossed my flux spanner down on the work table and slammed shut the access panel on the back of my right hand as hard as anyone can slam something that is only 3cm by 3cm. The hand slowly whirred back to life, my fingers slightly twitching as power surged back into the cyberware system. A sniper had shot it square on the back during a fight, and it seemed that the bullet caused more damage to my hand than I was able to repair on my own. Not as much as he had hoped at the time, though, seeing as I dropped him with a salvo from the Savalette Guardian I had in my other hand.

I’m never going to get used to this…thinking about my hand as a tool or a nuisance instead of being a part of me. Plus, that phantom itching is starting up again. Ugh.

I sighed, slumping back into my chair, enjoying the relief that the AC provided on an uncommonly warm night. I had stripped out of my armor down to a t-shirt and a pair of exercise shorts after I had reached the garage. No reason to add being uncomfortable to my frustrating situation.

As I delayed making the inevitable call to Solomon Greer, I let my eyes wander about my garage. Batman had the Batcave, the Fantastic Four the Baxter Building, Orkules the Ostragork had the Orkastle, and Krsnik had a crappy rent-a-garage in a run-down part of town. The price was right because having the location smack-dab in the middle of the bad part of town would have driven most potential clients off. For Krsnik, it offered a safe-haven for emergencies or on-the-job maintenance.

The garage was not much to look at. A row of fluorescent lights lit the area. Tools lined the walls and various drawers and storage cabinets---all locked with the best locks Lady Lavender could provide---contained spare equipment and an ungodly amount of ammunition. I sat at one of the three work tables that were spread about the garage. There was even plenty of space for me to park my Suzuki Mirage, which sat against one wall with an old tarp draped over it.

My “hand’s” fingers twitched again. It seemed that even my artificial appendage knew I needed to call Solomon. I drummed the fingers of my left hand on the work table, not looking forward to the eventual tongue lashing I would get from the cantankerous doctor. Although he vocally disapproved of my “half-baked vigilante shenanigans,” Solomon’s medical and cybernetic expertise managed to keep me fighting the good fight. Ultimately, that was why I was going to suck it up and call him about the damaged hand.

Maybe he can do something about the phantom itching as well…

I started rubbing my right eye when my PAN alerted me that someone was ringing the garage’s doorbell.

What the…what the hell?

I quickly threw a loose tarp over the workbench where I had taken off my sword and armor and snatched up my Savalette Guardians. I jammed one in my short’s elastic band behind my back and kept the other in my good hand. The last time someone had used the doorbell was months ago when the landlord came by to begrudgingly make some repairs to the roof. Nobody else knew about this location. Granted, if someone was after me they probably would not use the doorbell, but it never hurt to be careful. Taking a slow and deep breath, I opened the door and readied myself for trouble.

However, I was not prepared to deal with the unexpected. A slender kid in a biker jumpsuit and an oversized helmet stood at the door, holding a pizza in one hand. I could not begin to imagine my expression at the sight, much less the kid’s reaction at my appearance.

“I’ve got a delivery here for one Krsnik, no last name given,” the kid said after an awkward moment of silence.

How in blazes does this person know who I am?!?

“Uh, wrong address?” I answered in a deeply distorted voice. I realized my mistake the moment I finished speaking.

Oops.

The kid cocked his head confusedly to the side, a gesture magnified by the size of his helmet. I flashed him a nervous half-smile as I told my PAN to turn off my voice mask.

So much for keeping a low profile. Ugh, it’s too damn hot tonight to deal with something like this. Wait, something feels funny about all of this…

“Wait, don’t I know you?” I mused out loud.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

An explosion rocked my garage, sending tools and dust flying. Instinct kicked in, and I grabbed the strangely familiar delivery kid and kicked over one of the heavy work tables in the direction of the explosion. I pulled the two of us down behind the table for cover.

“Where are you, Krsnik!” shouted a gruff, angry and decidedly annoying voice. “We know you’re in here, so you better just come face us! Or are you too chicken to face the Rakshasas?”

As if I didn’t have enough on my “to-do” list already. Now I have to wrangle some Raks.

I looked over to my helmeted friend. With the helmet on, I had no idea whether he was surprised, shocked or subdued, but he somehow managed to keep the pizza balanced in one hand despite the ruckus. Under different circumstances I would have congratulated him on his dexterity, but I had more pressing matters on my mind.

“Sorry to get you dragged into this. We’ll talk about how you figured out my alias, but first I have to take care of these idiots. Here, you might want this to defend yourself,” I pulled out one of the Savalette Guardians and offered it to the kid.
The kid shook his head, putting up a hand to waive away the proffered gun.

“No thank you, omae, that’s not my style. However, I may be able to help create a distraction for you.”

I nodded and took back the gun, “All right, but don’t feel bad if you have to put one of these guys down. The Raks are behind a lot of the nasty business that takes place in this city.”

I reached up to the right sleeve of my t-shirt and ripped it off. I pulled it over my head, grunting as it smashed my nose down enough just to be annoying.

Okay, I guess that will serve as a mask for now…what is he doing?

It was at that point that I noticed what the delivery kid was doing.

The kid had put down the pizza box and was quickly opening up his jumpsuit, pulling up snaps and unzipping zippers. The kid had a lot of openings on his suit.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said, “I know it’s hot out tonight, but now’s not the time to get comfortable.”

I thought I heard a chuckle from the kid, but I had no way of knowing for sure with his helmet blocking his face. He kept opening up his suit, and started moving closer to the fan whirring behind the couch. I shrugged my shoulders, deciding just to go with the proverbial flow.

“I don’t know why, but I trust you. Go for it. Sorry, but this part is going to be a little gross,” I warned him, and pulled out my right eye.

Suddenly, my visual world devolved into chaos as my brain tried to blend two perspectives looking in completely different directions. I closed my actual eye and trusted my memory of the area and the ocular drone’s sensors. The implant began to whirr softly as I booted up its drone software, and I rolled it in the direction of the corner of the room.

By that time, the delivery kid started to speak. I would have opened up my other eye to watch him work, but I was already doing my best to keep from barfing as I watched the drone maneuver into place.

Ugh, I really should have put in more practice with the drone…

“What the frak? That ain’t him!” retorted an unfamiliar voice-probably a Rak.

“I thought Krsnik was supposed to be alone. What’s this asshole doing here?” The next speaker sounded like the same person who yelled before.

I guess he stood up. Okay, that’s two different voices so far. With two full guns, each holding two clips of 11 explosive bullets, I have 44 shots. It’ll be messy, but there’s no sense in closing into melee without armor and a bum hand.

“Well, I was delivering an extra-large pizza,” said the kid, “But, apparently I’ve got the wrong address. No one here ordered a pizza.”

Heh, you can say THAT again. All right, drone in place. I see five Raks, three holding shotguns, one with a club and another with what looks to be a bazooka. Better take Bazooka Joe out first.

“Are you sure that’s not Krsnik? He’s got a helmet and he’s wearing a full-body suit,” one of the shotgun toting Rak’s asked.

“Are you stupid? He’s like half Krsnik’s size,” snorted a Rak I had yet to see.

“Sorry,” the kid replied, “I know us masked-types are easy to mix up.”

There’s another overturned work table…I could use that for cover. It’s about two meters away from where I am now.

“Hey! I know who that is! He’s that ‘J.D.’ character!” exclaimed the other shotgun toting Rak.

“You’ve heard of me?”

“Who the frag is J.D.?” asked another Rak my ocular drone could not see.

“He’s that mystery courier guy. The one that’s always hanging around Halloweeners’ turf,” explained shotgun toter number one.

“He’s a Halloweener? I thought he was in with the Ancients?” asked shotgun toter number two.

“I just deliver, guys,” the kid coyly answered.

Now I remember where I’ve seen that kid before! I rescued him after those voices made me take a detour---now I sound crazy again. I need to focus on the here and now. I can snap off four shots to take out the visible threats. Once I reach cover behind that other table, I should be able to hold the others off and take pressure off of the kid---J.D., I guess.

“Do I look like I give a frag?” said Bazooka Joe, “Just kill him and find Krsnik.”

Looks like I’m up. I’m surprised I had this much time. J.D.’s presence must have bamboozled them or something. I just have to time this right.

“Hold up, I want to get a look at his face,” the Rak holding the club said.

Five…four…

“Isn’t he supposed to be allergic to air or something?”

Three…

“Grab him and take off his helmet.”

Two…

“It’s actually a deformity from an accident, thank you very much.”

One!

“Duck!” I shouted, voice mask back on. I still had my real eye closed, so I had to trust that J.D. followed my advice. Then, I took a leap of faith.

I watched myself snap into action from my ocular drone’s perspective, and let my hands line up what appeared to be impossible shots from the smart link’s guidance program. I squeezed the guns’ triggers in rapid succession. Three shots hit their marks, turning Bazooka Joe’s and two of the Shotgun Toters’ heads into bloody stumps. The fourth shot missed the third Shotgun Toter due to my faulty prosthetic hand twitching.

I saw myself land behind the other work table, and I snatched up my ocular drone and popped it back in my eye. I held back a shriek as it pinched my eyelid, but I managed to pull it back into place. Now that I could see without confusing my brain, I opened my eyes and popped up briefly to survey the area.

The two Raks I saw earlier had dived for cover while three new ones ran into the building. One was going for the bazooka, so I lined up a shot and took him out. Another Rak head detonated in a spray of gore and viscera. Semiautomatic fire blasted the table I had taken cover behind, forcing me to duck back down. Breathing a prayer, I took a guess as to where the gunners were and popped up for two more shots. A scream told me that at least one of my guesses was right.

Looking out from the side of the table, I saw one of the Raks edging towards the table where I left J.D. I had no idea if the kid’s suit could handle a shotgun blast, and I was determined not to find out.

Again, I jumped out of cover. In transit, I shot the Rak with the club. He went flying back into a cabinet with a gigantic hole in his chest. The Rak with the shotgun saw me coming, and reared back. I lined up my shot.

BLAM

A wave of pain washed over my left arm, and I thought I heard screaming somewhere in the back of my mind. Instinct alone reminded me to take my shot and pull the trigger, turning the Rak’s head into pulp. Reason, however, made me look down on the ground.

That…that’s my arm…

Down on the ground amidst the blood and guts of the dropped Raks laid my left arm. Pieces of a shattered elbow stuck out of the severed end. The gun had slid out of my grasp, and my fingers had tensed up into a fist with my thumb still jutting out. I should have been shocked-perhaps a sane person would have been-but what I saw evoked a different thought.

It looks like I’m giving myself a “thumbs up”…

The very idea seemed to spark a chain reaction in my mind. From all of the tales my mom and dad told me, Krsnik never gave up. It did not matter who he---or she---faced, monsters, gods, devils, kudlaks, vampires or aliens because Krsnik never gave up. Even with a lost hand, even if this was to be my final flight, neither should I.

(2071, Breakout Minus 1 Year)

If J.D.’s little green friend told her to deliver an extra-large pizza to a ‘Krsnik’, J.D. delivered—no questions asked. And the food would get there still warm, too. Although, the courier was beginning to think that maybe she should start asking what kind of armor to bring to the party.

Everyone seemed to think that J.D. preferred stun batons out of some kind of sense of morality, kindness, or just plain empathy for the people ‘he’ went up against. The truth was, J.D. loved stun batons because of the massive amounts of punishment they could give out, even when wielded by someone her size. Bullets could graze, or otherwise leave the target more than able to slink away. But, electricity? Heh. Even if J.D. only managed to nail a ganger in the arm, more often than not they still had to take a moment to reel from the electrons coursing through their systems. And by then, it was too late. Too bad J.D. never got to show off and prove ‘his’ point.

Case in point: the Rakshasas. J.D. had just gotten back on her feet from ducking back behind the couch when she first got a good look at the garage. Now it was filled with five dead bodies, blood and viscera splayed all over the place like some kind of New Post Modernist splatter painting. But where was that Krsnik guy?

J.D. heard the explosive rapport of shotgun blast, and she heard the scream as the EX-explosive rounds tore through Krsnik’s arm like so much tissue paper. By the time she turned to look, the exercise-shorts-wearing street samurai was already on the ground—with his arm a couple feet away. The sixth ganger fell to the floor, missing landing on Krsnik by little more than a foot. Ghost. Even if he’d just lost an arm, that guy had just dropped six gangers while wearing a T-shirt around his face. Holy drek.

One quick glance told J.D. there were still two gangers left, one armed with a heavy pistol and the other fumbling with a bazooka slippery with gore. Bazooka was already shot in the leg, judging by his posture, and both were half-way across the garage. The first stun baton came out of its hidden holster with a few quick, practiced motions. And J.D. moved across the room faster than the last two gangers expected. To a courier used to jumping across rooftops and dodging through the chaotic mess of an urban landscape, a room full of furniture and bodies may as well have been empty. Two pistol shots zipped passed the courier, two shots obviously taken in surprise and without proper aim. And by the time Pistol re-adjusted his aim, the courier was already on him. White-blue electricity arced between Shotgun’s side and the baton after the initial blow. He fell to the floor, already twitching and writhing in erratic jerks.

Just for spite, J.D. nailed the last Rakshasa in the thigh of his already gimpy leg. Shoot the arm off of the guy J.D. was delivering to, would they? The clone shook her head, securing the stun batons back into the hidden holster at the small of her back. It was never this dangerous when the whelp contacted her previously. Sure, there had been the occasional fight, but this was a little too over the top for J.D.’s liking. Then again—the clone made a tsking noise as she crossed the garage to the fallen street sam and pulled a slap patch from one of her front pockets—she owed this guy. And the number of living people the clone owed…well, she could count them out on one hand. Good thing the street-sam was already facing up, peering up at her. All J.D. had to do was un-wrap the blood-covered T-shirt from his face.

It took J.D. a moment to fumble through peeling off the trauma patch’s backing with gloved hands before she slapped the patch against the young man’s cheek. He didn’t look dead, yet. But, he would need some serious medical attention to survive the night. Maybe the patch would help him survive the next hour.

Maybe J.D. should learn some fracking first aid so she’ll know what to do in this kind of situation, she thought. The courier could never say ‘no’ to the green whelp—the kind of favors J.D. owed it weren’t the kind she could ever hope to pay back. But, if the little dragon was going to send J.D. to crazy-town, the courier was going to need to step up her game and get a little cagier.

J.D. grabbed at Krsnik’s remaining arm and shoulder and tried to haul him at least into a seated position, and then onto his feet—allowing Krsnik to rest some of his weight on her as he stood and began walking. And the young man was much, much heavier than he looked. The clone swore as her knees almost buckled under the weight of someone more chrome than meat leaning against her. It also didn’t help that the young man was still loosing blood, from what she could see of the stump of what used to be his arm. Although J.D. couldn’t take a good look, she was sure that the street sam was leaking all over her jumpsuit. If she ended up slipping in Krsnik’s or one of the gangers’ blood and both of them took a spill onto the floor, J.D. was going to be seriously pissed off.

"We have got to slot and run now, omae. Badges will be all over this in a few minutes. Drek, man. You are unnecessarily heavy, aren't you?" This is going to be a serious problem if this guy can’t stay awake or even do some of the walking. I am not going to be able to drape him over the bike, even if I manage to drag him over to it, the clone thought. Someone like this Krsnik guy had to have a doctor, or at least a street doc to take care of all of that cyber. J.D. could hopefully get him to whatever clinic would take him before he passed out.

The pair passed a table with a tarp over it, and Krsnik grabbed at something underneath, pulling out a sheathed katana. "You might not believe me, but I've recently lost a few pounds,” he chuckled as he began using the blade as a make-shift crutch.

The courier let a half-sarcastic laugh escape her lips, "Hah, funny guy, eh? If you can still talk, give your doc a call and tell 'em you're on the way. You can give me a name or an address after we’re outside." As J.D. tried to drag him to the still open door of the storage facility, the street sam held up his hand and shook his head—resting more weight on the make-shift cruch and ceasing to lean on J.D. almost altogether.

"Help me get my gear into my bike. This place is compromised and we're going to have to frag it, but I'd like to salvage what I can." He motioned to a distinctly bike-shaped lump under a huge tarp, and J.D. let out a frustrated sigh. And although Krsnik couldn’t see it through the helmet, the young woman rolled her eyes.

"Fine, fine. Point out your stuff so I can grab it, and open up your bike. We're going to have to make this quick," she said, exasperation evident in her voice. On one hand, J.D. wanted out of Krsnik’s soon-to-be-former hideout as fast as possible. But, she could understand. He had some pretty wiz gear, and it would be a safe bet that destroying any evidence in the storage facility would be more helpful than harmful. After all, J.D. couldn’t afford to have someone turn up her biometrics at the sight of what probably looked like a gang war or a massacre. She couldn’t afford her biometrics to turn up, period.

With Krsnik’s direction, the clone threw tarps onto the ground, grabbing weapons and armor off tables and leaving what wasn’t worth saving or what there wasn’t room for where it was. J.D. didn’t exactly bother taking inventory of the street samurai’s gew-gaws, she couldn’t even recognize what half of it was, aside from dangerous. Apparently the young man had the forethought to bug his doss with high explosive grenades, in case of such a cluster-frack as this. So, the clone didn’t have to even have to bother with that mess. By the time J.D. hauled the last of his salvage over to the street sam’s motorcycle, he already had the bike’s storage open and the rest of the salvage shoved inside.

“I can give us some distraction, and maybe I can convince Radix Kane to send some badges on a wild goose chase,” he said as J.D. shoved the last few weapons into the bike’s storage. Iggy also had an address for her in AR, presumably the street sam’s street doc. Someone named Solomon Greer. And, luckily enough, J.D. had actually parked her Contrail just outside.

J.D. let Krsnik lean on her as they hobbled outside the garage. It looked like his legs were fine, but he had lost a drek ton of blood and an arm. So it was probably more shock than anything else. It didn’t take more than a minute or two for J.D. to securely strap the street sam’s katana to the package mount on her Contrail and for Krsnik to climb onto the courier’s motorcycle. But, by the time everything was ready to go, J.D. caught the sound of sirens in the distance. And, in the darkness, it was almost like she could make out tiny twinkles of flashing LoneStar vehicle lights.

The courier swore as she swung herself onto the Contrail, "Try to hold on as best you can. I still owe you one, but I can't help you if you fall off while I'm breaking the speed limit. Frack, I do not need to run across Inspector Javert tonight." Krsnik didn’t say anything, but J.D. felt the street sam’s remaining arm move across and tighten a bit against her midsection as she caught the motion of the young man's Suzuki Mirage speeding out of the garage and off towards the direction of the approaching cops out of the corner of her vision. Drek, this was turning out to be one ridiculous evening. At least it was a night good for making a getaway. Nice and dark. Overcast. Although, no more than a few seconds into the escape, J.D. felt the garage explode--the shockwave and the heat on the back of her neck. Her rear-view mirror displayed the building going up in flames and black smoke.

Krsnik’s hideout had already been out of the strip enough that there weren’t too many cameras around to worry about. For the rest, well, there were shadows and morphing license plates. J.D. could stick to side streets where cameras would be less likely to lurk, skirting heavily populated zones altogether. If Officer Bartlett got even the hint that J.D. was involved in this fiasco…well, it was just better if Officer Bartlett didn’t see even the smallest hint that J.D. had been there. It couldn’t hurt to pull out all the stops. As if J.D. could ever explain what she was doing with a one-armed guy in exercise shorts and not much else on her motorcycle with the two of them covered in blood. The courier had a bit of a silver tongue, but this was just too ridiculous.

As the engine on the young woman’s Contrail warmed up and the motorcycle passed 35 mph, J.D. issued a mental command to the bike via her comlink, activating the chameleon coating. After that, a nearly reflexive flick of the wrist to switch the motorcycle to manual-control-override and drop it off the Matrix altogether. Hopefully Krsnik had the sense not to be broadcasting.

"Is it the drugs, or did your bike disappear?" the young man asked after almost half a minute of silence. J.D. thought about it for a moment, and took a few turns down alleyways before replying.

"Well, it might be partly the drugs and the blood-loss. But, it's mostly the chameleon coating." And then it was back to a rather odd and awkward silence. The route to the street’s sam’s Solomon Greer was painfully slow, at least for the courier. She wasn’t used to handling passengers, especially not ones this heavy and unable to hang on for dear life. It wouldn’t be safe to push much faster than 60 mph with the now one-armed Krsnik hanging on—practically a slug’s pace, even if it was twice the speed limit in some areas.

J.D.’s agent and navigation programming kept the courier and Krsnik out of areas with more than a handful of people around for almost the entire trip. A couple of street-types gave them glances as they passed. But, unless the street scum were cybered, they probably didn’t get a good look at the two figures on the Contrail as they zoomed from shadowed street to shadowed street. And J.D. couldn't worry about something like that at a time like this. There was a guy on the back of her bike that might be dying.

"Sorry about the twitchy hand. It's a prosthetic, and I think it got a little fried during the fight." The courier found herself a little befuddled from the street sam’s apology, but at least she knew Krsnik hadn’t died. J.D. hadn’t even felt twitching through the jumpsuit. And even then, it struck her as something odd to apologize about. Especially to someone who should have been a random delivery boy. She considered it for a moment before making a vague, noncommittal noise. It was probably the combination of blood loss, shock and drugs. If trauma patches really even made people loopy. That was something to look up. Taking an online First Aid course was sounding more and more appealing by the minute. And by that point, the courier had completely forgotten about the fact that Krsnik had been breathing in her tailored pheromones since she’d undone some snaps back at the storage facility. But, given the ragged state of J.D.’s jumpsuit, it was unlikely she could have sealed off the pheromones at that point, even if she had remembered.

Eventually, J.D. nudged the Contrail onto a street that gave way to a relatively quiet residential area—well-lit and maintained. Most of the houses were dark, their residents snuggled in their beds and resting up for another day of wage-slavery. There would be security drones patrolling around for sure, if not more than that. The courier was considering starting up lock-on countermeasures just in case when the street sam on the back of her motorcycle started mumbling again.

"You smell like Lady Lavender...and I mean that in a good way." Krsnik’s voice was barely audible over the purr of the motor, like he was about to drift off to sleep. And he probably was. But, something about that statement didn’t sit right with her. As she decelerated the motorcycle down to a civilized speed that wouldn’t draw too much attention in sleepy suburbia, the clone had to wonder if she’d blown her cover. J.D. the courier never confirmed nor denied any gender-related assumptions that other people made. And yet, people seemed to almost universally assume J.D. was male. Krsnik had just compared her to, well, some lady. And he was smelling her. Unwiz.

It was time to dump this guy off at his doc’s and hope that he forgot the later half of the evening. Better yet, the entire evening.

The AR overlay provided by Iggy indicated Doc Greer’s residence at the end of the street with a big red arrow. After visually zooming in on the place, J.D. noticed the silhouette of at least one person waiting by the window. Fantastic. Maybe J.D. could even get the doctor to help her haul Krsnik off of her Contrail before he fell off and died. Even before the courier pulled to a stop and cut the engine, the front door to Doc Greer’s door opened—revealing a man of retirement age and grey hair.

"By the way, name's Aleksander...Krsnik's just my handle...looks like now I owe you one,” the street sam’s voice started to go incoherent towards the end, and J.D. started to feel the sam leaning on her. As Krsnik finally went unconscious and doctor Greer crossed his lawn to retrieve his patient, J.D. sighed.

"It's J.D.. Just J.D.." she didn’t expect Krsnik to catch it, or remember it. And, well, in that moment, J.D. decided to tuck the chromed young man’s actual name in the same place she put other information that was no one’s goddamn business.

******

The drive back home was almost blissfully uneventful in comparison to earlier. It was still an hour or so before the truly deep night. But, there were still few enough cars on the road that J.D. could make good time and avoid stopping. After all, the courier was looking even more suspicious than normal and any officer would be able to see—well, J.D. would just have to make sure no officer got the chance to get a good look. Half way back to her doss, J.D. was hailed by Cairo—the go-ganger was done up in his good colors and obviously on his way to a wild party when he spotted the familiar cyclist. Frak. J.D. couldn’t blow off Cairo without at least explaining the situation.

Her eyes already set on low-light vision, J.D. swept the area for cops, and repeated the process in thermographic—just in case she missed someone hiding. And only then did she slow down enough to be polite and let Cairo's motorcycle pull up next to her Contrail. It wasn’t until the pair slowed down enough to speak that the obvious stench of blood and burnt hair hit Cairo’s nose and he could really take in J.D.’s appearance. Even in the darkness, the ork go-ganger could make out wet patches of matted, drying blood on the courier’s obviously roughed up jumpsuit. And, one or twice, the ork thought he caught a whiff of explosives from J.D.’s direction. It didn’t take more than a few sentences of explanation to send the go-ganger back en-route to his party with an apology—J.D. had just come back from something really rough, and just wanted to call it a night. Next time, omae. You understand, right? And he was more than willing to let J.D. go home and crash, just like that. But, he looked forward to getting the story later; that looked like some serious drek.

J.D. wasn’t more than a dozen blocks away from the bar above her doss when an AR window winked to life in the corner of her vision—another message from the emerald green whelp. What now, the courier had to wonder. It wasn’t another delivery request. But, apparently the green dragon wanted J.D. to go home through a specific alley, her usual route, even. Huh. The young woman had thought about taking an alternate way back to her doss—just in case someone had the bright idea to follow her, even after Krsnik’s little distraction. Hell, J.D. would just have to see what kind of other surprises her little friend had in store for her.

As usual, the cyclist pulled into a side-alley near the back entrance of Mikhail’s bar. There were a few lights on in the studio apartment windows stretching above the dive, but no silhouettes to suggest that the courier was being watched. And the people on the larger streets weren’t giving J.D. a second glance as they went about their barhopping. So far so good. One warm body came up on J.D.’s thermographic vision—had to be a dwarf, judging by the size. No hidden goons. After switching to low-light vision, J.D. could make out a bowler hat over the dwarf’s eyes. It could be a rouse. Or, he could legitimately be loitering around waiting for some chummers to show up. As long as the courier stuck to the shadows and didn’t let them get a look at her, it wouldn’t be an issue.

She pulled the Contrail into it’s usual spot, cutting the engine and switching on the anti-theft device before turning towards the dive bar’s basement steps. The young woman had just passed the lone dwarf, and was just about to start down the stairs when the dwarf straightened his hat and gave her a wide smile.

"Ah, just the...man I wanted to see," his tone was friendly, but in a way that made J.D. nervous. It was almost too friendly, too familiar. Too out of place, maybe. And that pause. J.D. sometimes got that, but not with that tone.

"I'm sorry, omae. This is the tail end of one evening a little too exciting for the liking of one J.D. If you want something from me, it’s going to have to wait for another time. No offense," the courier shrugged. Was it possible that someone had gotten a camera on her after Krsnik’s place blew? J.D. didn’t make a habit of letting people know where she lived. The only people who ever showed up at the place were Sister’s associates, or people with enough connections to figure out where the masked courier lived. Either way, the dwarf was probably bad news. And, even if he wasn’t, there was no way she was going out for another job tonight.

Bowler Hat was still all smiles. "I heard, I heard. You do look a little the worse for wear. However, I have a proposition for you, and I'm afraid it can't wait any longer," J.D. had to paused, giving the dwarf a closer look through the full spectrum of vision her cybereyes could offer. He heard? What the hell was this? Sure rumors spread around the shadows faster than some corporate gossip circles, but it hadn’t even been twenty minutes since the drek hit the fan. Either he was bluffing, or this was serious. But, still. Under the helmet, J.D. licked her lips. She should at least try to get out of this without offending anyone.

"Well, I hate to disappoint you, mister. But, I can't go out looking like this; hell, I can’t go out smelling like this. And as nice as you seem, I don’t make a habit of inviting strange dwarves into my doss. Nothing personal," the young woman gestured to her general appearance—the obvious blood caked to parts of her clothing and nearly ruined jumpsuit. Since they’d been standing around, the dwarf could probably smell the high explosives on J.D. And he’d probably recognize the scent, too.

The dwarf beamed, undeterred as he said, "Never fear, I've made arrangements at the local spoon over there. I've told them that I'm expecting company, that he may be messy, and we would like a little privacy. They were a bit quizzical but they didn't decline the tip I gave them upfront. Please, I have a business proposition, it shouldn't take more than a handful of minutes...then you can carry on about your business."

Damn. No real reason not to talk shop with Bowler Hat at this point. And J.D. couldn’t be rude—it would ruin her reputation. So she agreed, hesitantly, and followed the dwarf with the mustache to the greasy spoon across the street. The late-night crowd was pretty thin that evening, maybe three people with their eyes glassy or fixed on the trideo screen mounted on the wall. A busboy that couldn't even be J.D.'s age glanced up as the pair entered, but quickly decided that tub full of plates and glassware he carried needed to be in the kitchen ASAP, and scuttled out of sight. The dwarf led J.D. to a corner booth, where a cup of soycaff and a plate of hot cakes sat, already cooled to warm temperature.

"I'm sorry," Bowler Hat apologized, sitting first before offering J.D. a seat across the table, "You took a good deal longer then expected. I had hoped the food would still be quite warm when you arrived." It was almost creepy. J.D. had met with a lot of Johnsons, but only long-term customers ever even got a mention of the courier’s favorite foods. And most of them had heard the rumors of J.D.’s pollution allergies, and didn’t bother buying the courier dinner. Either it was a coincidence, or the dwarf had too much of the wrong information at his fingertips than J.D. would like. And the later was looking more and more likely. She gave the plate and mug a once-over, and nodded before sliding into the vinyl seating.

"Not to take your thoughtfulness for granted, but out with it. You said something about a job, and were kind enough to host, but I would really like to get to the point of this conversation, omae" J.D. added two sugars to the soycaff and made a point of stirring them in. But, the courier made no move to remove her helmet and actually eat or drink, even though she hadn’t eaten since an early lunch that morning. The food waiting down in the apartment would be cold, too, since J.D.’s earlier complications had kept her from dinner. There was no justice in the world.

The dwarf eyed J.D.’s visor helmet, like he was trying to see through it. His smile waned as J.D. watched him size her up for a few long seconds, coldly. For a moment, J.D. felt like they had almost made eye contact. But, then the smile came back, and the dwarf began speaking again.

"Very well. It’s a delivery job...something you seem to be familiar with. I was referred to you by a common acquaintance. The thing is, it’s rather high priority, and you've managed to keep a rather low profile. I need to ask you just a few questions to see if you are right for the job. However, if we can come to an agreement, the benefits will be astronomical for the both of us." J.D. couldn’t help but think ‘bulldrek’ at half of what he said. Mutual acquaintance, well, she could buy that. But, there was no way this guy didn’t already know what he wanted to. And J.D. couldn’t exactly call him on it—she’d have to play along for the time being.

"Alright...I'm not sure what you've heard, but go ahead and ask. Client-customer privileges of course apply," she said it like she’d memorized that line—gone through it a thousand times—and tried to look nonchalant. After a few seconds, she even swished the sugared soycaff around in the mug like she was going to drink it.

"Of course, I wouldn't dream about asking you the specifics on previous jobs. At least, not if I didn't already know them...," He left the sentence hanging there for practically a minute before continuing, "So I hear you have been working deliveries for over a year. And in that time your record has been rather good. Very little heat, 95% receiving rate, all in all, you seem the perfect courier."

"I appreciate the compliment, sir, but that is not a question." It was a struggle to keep the agitation out of her voice. The whole thing was starting to smell funny to J.D.. Bluff or not? A few people had tried to intimidate J.D. into work before, but they were all obvious about it—gangsters and thugs who couldn’t lie there way through a border crossing if their lives depended on it. This guy—this guy in his expensive-looking suit and the goddamn pancakes, he might actually know.

"Indeed it isn't. The question is, you seem to have come onto the scene from nowhere. What did you do before you began delivering?" That rose more than a few red flags. Johnsons never worried about that drek. As long as J.D. had a good rep, they didn’t care where their deniable delivery ‘boy’ came from or what ‘his’ past was. J.D. set the mug of ‘caff back onto the table.

"What does that have to do with working for you now?"

"I ask, because I need to know if you have enemies. Is anybody searching for you that may come between my and my documents?" J.D. was starting to sweat. Good thing the full body suit hid things like that. But, there was only so long the clone could go without giving away her emotional state in body language. And an impatient tone was already creeping back into her voice. Watch it, J.D..

"Someone searching for me? No way, omae. I’m a model citizen. Aside from asking fewer questions and driving faster than certain other model citizens, there’s no reason for anyone to chase me. Or, at least, there is nothing to gain from it.” She tried to keep her voice calm, like usual. The dwarf didn’t look like he was buying J.D.’s usual question-dodging, and the questions themselves were suspicious on their own.

"So, nothing to comment on then? I heard you had a problem a few years back on a little job. Something about a facility and a little search and seizure..." again the words hung in the air, and J.D.’s biomoniter notified the courier of her increased heart-rate.

The clone had to let those words hang and let some silence fall between her and the dwarf before continuing. It was tough to take deep, long breaths without giving away the sound over her electronic voice distorter. She let her eyes flicker around the greasy spoon, watching the other patrons and noting the conspicuous absence of staff. Somehow a few goons at this guy’s back would have made the clone more comfortable—then they’d be out in the open, at least. She feigned confusion, slight annoyance.

"Omae, I do not understand what you're talking about. Maybe you’re confusing me with another wheelman. I've only been doing delivery jobs and I've never had to hand any of my packages over to the police," J.D. was suddenly very aware that her jacket was torn—that she should have been able to skate through this meeting like normal with the pheromones going. While there wasn’t a fan in the booth, the air was almost stagnant. They were in an enclosed airspace. He was just across the table—they should be working, dammit. They were supposed to be her ace in the hole.

"Of course not, from the way I hear it, you were the one being seized." J.D. made a tsking sound.

"What? Badges have never gotten me, and I’ve never been kidnapped. I’m not even worth kidnapping." The dwarf leaned forward a bit, again eyeing the visor of J.D.’s helmet.

"Certain people somewhere really special seem to think that you are, and after seeing what’s under that puffy uniform I would tend to agree with them, Miss."

"I do not understand what you are talking about. But, this is not standard procedure. There isn't a job, is there?" There were still enough people in the diner that J.D. couldn’t bring out the stun batons and make a break for it. And there were cameras watching from the corners. Maybe she could leave through the back, or through the kitchen. Another one knew. Drek, she must have really blown her cover tonight. Or maybe she had just been getting sloppy. There was no excuse for this.

"I'm sorry, there is no job to offer yet, M992," Bowler Hat sat back, an easy smile still on his face. J.D. stood up. It took every ounce of her self-control not to jump out of her seat like a spooked cat and start hyperventilating. Her heart was already pounding; she could hear it. They found her. After all of the trouble she’d gone through, they’d found her. Maybe they’d already found Tiger, too. Or, maybe he’d already gone to ground. That would explain why she hadn’t gotten a warning message about this. Maybe Universal Omnitech was trying to grab Tig back at the same time, and J.D. was supposed to warn him or pick him up.

"I'm afraid I think we've miss-communicated, sir," the clone turned her head, running the room through a full-optical scan on every spectrum. Where were the hidden goons? Where was Universal Omnitech’s snatch-squad hiding? J.D. needed to leave, and she needed to leave five minutes ago.

Early Spring, 2071, Break out minus 1 year.

Frederick Alfonso's nose burned as his receptors took in what the biker was putting out. Apparently the failure of her procedure had been greatly exaggerated. It was times like these that he wished he had opted for the lower tech cyber-snout. At least with that you could turn it off and ignore the strong fabricated smells of your business partners.

However, even this discomfort did not serve to lessen Burner's joy at the moment he was experiencing. For almost three years he had been hunting this escaped clone. At first it had been a simple job, a quest for money more than anything.

"Certain people somewhere really special seem to think that you are, and after seeing what’s under that puffy uniform I would tend to agree with them, Miss."

But since then it had become something more. The contact with the dragon on his old commlink had somehow changed him. Someone more religious might claim that it had saved him. He new that there were people in that facility. People that he alone had both the power and the will to save. However, he still needed more information.

"I do not understand what you are talking about. But, this is not standard procedure. There isn't a job, is there?" the clone he had sought for so long was rising to her feet. Her pheromones screamed an unnatural calmness, but under that pain he could smell her true emotions. He smelled fear in her.

"I'm sorry, there is no job to offer yet, M992," Alfonso was still sitting comfortably. He finally had the pieces he wanted in play. And if there was one role that he was comfortable playing, it was being an employer who was generally reviled.

"I'm afraid I think we've miss-communicated, sir," slowly his target moved towards the door. Perhaps he had laid it on a little too thick. He had hoped that he could play things slightly more close to the vest.

Well, in for a penny in for a pound... Burner held up his hand in a non-chalant way and tried to seem like your average suited dwarf at a diner at midnight. "There is no need to act so antsy madam. I'm not really here on official business at all. I just need some answers."

"Well, that is very unfortunate, sir. I don't have the foggiest idea of what you're talking about. It sounds like a white whale to me, and if there’s nothing in it for me, I’m outta here."

She's running scared, probably thinks I'm a lying prick about to pick her up and take her to U-O anyway...on any other day, she'd be right., "Why don't you think a bit before you storm off. If I found you, that means others must be getting close. If you storm out now, there is no reason for me not to point them your way. That said, I think we might be on the same side. The facility...you know the one I mean. There's something there isn't there? Something that shouldn't be caged."

Clearly some of the dwarf's words had made sense to the girl. She was no longer staring at the back door. She even seemed to be cautiously approaching the booth once more,"And how do I know this is even legit? Everyone’s got their secrets, mister. And I’m not seeing any reason for me to tell you mine."

"Do you have any idea how deep U-O's pockets are? They aren't a AAA but they can make people disappear at a whim. It doesn't matter if you are the right one or not. They can find that out after you are gone and flush you if you aren't what they want. Seems like they'd probably do that anyway, an escapee and a failure? Kind of a blemish on their record if you ask me."

Burner could smell the exaggerations he was putting out. He wanted the clone to let her guard down. To accept that he was genuinely here because he wanted help. Meaningful friendly conversation wasn't a skill they had taught him in Public Relations. "A Blemish? Me? I didn’t think I’d even be worth mentioning. There are things going on in that facility far more interesting and sinister than a tranqued-out test subject."

"I know there are...and I don't like it," it was time. She was listening and that was all he was going to get without revealing a true weakness or two. Slowly he removed the item from his pocket. A piece of electronics that hadn't left his side in years. He put the old battered commlink on the table, the object seemed entirely out of place with the rest of the dwarf. Everything on him spick-and-span, shiny and new. Everything except for this old, now middle of the road comm."Something...talked to me on this. And...I don't know why...but I can tell that it needs help. All my life it’s been about the money but...I have to know what they are keeping in those cells. I have to know why they are doing it. And I have to know if I can get them out...and I want to be able to take the whole company with them."

The motorcycle helmet stared back blankly at the dwarf. But slowly J.D. sat back in the booth, "You mean...the whelp? The green whelp? It contacted you?" Again the motorcycle helmet looked about the diner in an oddly exaggerated fashion, "I haven’t met the other one. I’ve only heard about him. But, they're...special. Drek, I wouldn’t trust you with this unless they hadn’t told me to come here tonight. You really want to help them, don't you."

"Would this face lie to you?" a smile from Burner conveys everything. Of course he would lie to her. He'd lie to anyone, but not this time. This time he has nothing left to hide.

"Fine. I’ll tell you what I know. But, I gotta warn you, I don’t know anything about science. You’ll probably have to talk to someone who went to college to make sense of what I saw.” there it was! The clone was willing to talk. An uncomfortable silence hung in the air for a moment before she spoke again.

“We can't talk about this here, and I really need to get a change of clothes before someone calls Lonestar on me." J.D. lets out a sigh, "Meet me at the following address in half an hour. But I swear to Ghost, you start shit on a day like today, you are going to be eating the rest of your meals out of a straw. And just call me ‘J.D.’ Comprende?"

Burner had succeeded. He scanned the address and mentally determined how best to secure the location, "Comprende. I'm here for business, nothing else."

With that, Burner began to consume his hot cakes with gusto, giving the clone a chance to leave through the back door. Burner watched the time tick away on his commlink and left five minutes later.

-------------------------------

Burner walked back into his office casually. His mind a-buzz with information. The facts had fallen into place. He sat at his desk and pulled up the notes he had received from the man called Tiger a year ago. On top of this he looked at the mysterious files he had been steadily receiving. He opened the desk drawer and was somewhat disheartened to see that his bottle was empty. He slammed the drawer shut, fully expecting to be equally disappointed when he re-made that discovery tomorrow.

There are definitely two of them. One she calls the whelp. His notes seemed to indicate that was the girl. Nasho probably. The recent hub-bub in Hong Kong made it abundantly clear. U-O is messing with technos...and they have an early one. I wonder if all that jazz about them is accurate, guess I'll find out soon enough.

The other one, he had less details on him. Tiger seemed closer to him, which made sense with the tests he had seen on the kid. His magic seemed high and awakened people always seemed to conglomerate. The kids name was likely Malshi...if that wasn't some sort of bizarre codename. He must have been the one that had sent the visions to me...

His bowler hat tipped over his eyes and his fingers absently rubbing his mustache he made his decision. Burner pulled out the old commlink and left a message up on its HUD. Its message was simple and clear.

<<I'm getting out, I want you both to come with me. Help me, and we can see that this doesn't happen again.>>

July 13, 2071 // Seattle UCAS

Carter let out a deep sigh and knocked twice on the bar to gesture for a refill. It had been nine days without a chip. The scotch helped to subdue the voices. Not a perfect solution really...but he really wasn't relishing the next twenty minutes.

Jorge nodded at the gesture and poured him another two fingers. "I've been doing this long enough to know that there aren't any answers at the end of this. Trust me, after this, you should go to something lighter."

Without saying anything, Carter downed the shot quickly and just nodded. The music shifted as the burlesque finished. There would soon be dozens of people clamoring for drinks between acts. It was time to move. He paid for the drinks and stepped away from the stool.

Do not do this. We will find another way.

He ignored the message. The twins had told him what they needed and he had come up with a plan. They didn't like the plan...

***

Vinnie was sitting in the booth, a beer in one hand and a slice of pizza in the other. He watched as Carter slipped into the booth across from him. "You'se been a very busy man, mistah Carter. I take it as part of my business to look into the past of prospective clients when they borrow the kind of money you are looking for."

"I'm sure you found that everything was in order."

"Yeah, I did. Which means that you either are the real thing, or have the hacker support to fake it."

"I have been down this road with your associates already. Please, spare me the bravado, veiled threats, and posturing which you are building up to. I'm tired and out of patience." Carter opened the ARO for the wire transfer. Now was the moment...he watched as 50,000 transferred into the account.

Carter nodded and triggered the transfer to various secondary accounts. He knew the drill, failure to repay on time would mean his knees and then his life.

The message he sent was short. I have the money my friends. Do what you must, and I will uphold my end. He hoped the twins would forgive the measures he was about to take.

HELP PLEASE

I sense the need flowing from my summoner - it's more urgent this time, more immediate. I look once last time around the room of shes - their heads bent in communion with Creation. I feel the gentle waves of their souls ripple through the astral as they all imagine a world shaped by their one vision. I came here often to experience the sensation of their "God". Pulling myself out of the building I leap to Here and unweave myself to only briefly touch before returning to There. I ask in our wordless way who I am seeking and the rush of recognition of the He I am to find.

KEEP HIM SAFE

I remake myself and see the He got in transition. A surge of panic fills me seeing his soul freed from the cage of flesh and bone. I quickly look around to see where my He has died - some souls linger after the death. I see the my kin gathered, their anger and rage distorting the astral around us. I sense the lingering traces of one of them as they were unmade.

FOCUS

I push the confusion aside and feel the gentle chiding from my summoner. I realize my He has been making sounds at me - talking I think it was called. I struggle to make the noises in my throat as I feel the flush of shame wash over me - I should have been practicing more. "No party. Stay I protect." I turn to the trio of spirits and reach out to them, weaving myself into them and forming a link so that we can share. I feel the tangled rush of images and emotions. I sense the node of power below the street and I feel the small spirits forming within it. I understand their need to protect this place. They are birthing new spirits and do not understand the actions of the hes and shes.

I WILL HELP THEM

A steady and strange weave of essence moves through and connects with the spirits before me. I watch as it weaves around them then down into the node. I marvel at the complex casting as it draws on my own power to supplement the spell being cast. It seals the node deeper into the astral - creating a pocket. It envelopes the node and it begins to fade from sight and slowly disappears. I feel the rage and anger recede from the others and their joy at the development. They push into the sheltered demi-plane and care for the node. The spell ends and I feel the heavy drag on myself as the cost of working the weave washes over me. I look to my He and let the relief show on my face. "Safe. Go."

SOON YOU WILL MAKE THE CHANGE REST NOW

I let the weight of There leave me and feel the pull back to Here. I watch with longing and concern as my He fades from my vision. I wonder if my other Hes and the She are alright. I must make the change soon so I can protect them better. I sense the others and their questions. I am so tired.

Late Spring, 2071, Break out minus 1 year.


As sirens blared their hateful sound into the night, and every alarm in the supposedly secure U-O facility went off repeatedly and randomly, two very different dwarven faces sped towards each other towards imminent and bloody collision. One held a nose that had been broken repeatedly in its time, and scars from a life on the streets, and the other was covered by a bowler hat and had a finely crafted mustachio upon its upper lip.

Moments before Heng had been traveling, rather stealthy by his standards, down the deserted corridor. He had been offered a job by a Johnson known as Burner, one of the many J's that seemed to litter Seattle, a job he had almost offhandedly refused. It had seemed to good to be true, and at first he had suspected a trap set by the corp he had been harassing for the last year or so. The Johnson claimed to have a perfect route into the facility, where he was allowed to cause as much havoc as he desired, and sufficient unseen aid to assure that only he needed to go in to the job to be successful.

Before he could laugh aloud at this seemingly random Johnson, one of the voices had spoke to him. They had become more and more scarce to him lately, so he made sure to pay special attention as he sensed that they were fast approaching some sort of event that would define how their, and thus his, future unfolded. Heng had taken a moment to focus inward, performing a short kata in an attempt to make a closer connection with the voice. Surprised, he felt not one of the voices but another entity, some sort of spirit that held the unmistakable feel that the voices them selves held. The spirit had told him that they would be watching over him, and that this task was necessary for all of us to follow our proper path. It also revealed another who was part of the group that seemed to be forming, all tied to this unknown destiny.

In his mind the spirit had painted a picture of a finely manicured dwarven face, the same one his less refined features now flew towards. Heng had known it was a possibility that he would meet this person, and that they were on the same side, yet he also had learned this person was under some sort of cover within the corp and he should take steps not to break this carefully crafted disguise.

Heng had been traveling blind through the complex for a few moments as it was thrown into chaos. The Johnson Burner had indeed supplied him what had seemed like a fantastic map and route into the complex, one that he had downloaded into Heng's commlink. Unsurprisingly, it had not taken long for the piece of electronic ingenuity to spark, fizzle and turn into something a bit less useless than a brick. As he traveled along the route the best way he could remember, he had stumbled upon the other dwarf in the process of doing something to one of the many pipes that crisscrossed the complex. The both stopped, staring at each other in a moment of surprised recognition. The finer dressed dwarf seemed to stare at Heng like he shouldn't be there, and for much different reasons than the simple fact he had broke into the complex to steal valuable information. The other dwarf quickly recovered his composure how ever, which reminded Heng he was supposed to act like he didn't know this person. So he followed the logical course of action, which was to react as if he was any other Corp employee he might have stumbled upon, which lead to Heng launching his face into the other dwarves manicured one.

The adept did his best to pull his head back at the last possible moment, not to much of course, wouldn't want the cameras watching to notice, but was still fairly certain he felt the crunch of a broken nose. Thankfully, whether it was an act or not, the other dwarf stayed down and still, bowler hat rolling away across the floor. Heng looked down for a second, then continued on as if nothing significant had happened.

A few minutes later Heng snuck into the night, the U-O complex still in a state of confusion behind him. He took a moment to pat himself on the back, and the fact this job had gone of without any significant hitch and much smoother than most of the other bloody swathes he had cut through the night. The next thing he knew the dwarf laid sprawled out on the ground, all air shoved from his lungs. Stunned, he rolled over and looked behind himself to see the fading light of a massive explosion that had destroyed the building he had just left and sent him flying twenty feet down the ally.

Heng slowly regained his feet, shaking his head in disbelief. Eventually he turned around and continued his retreat into the night. The entire way, he could not decide if the unintentional explosion meant the job had gone fantastically well, or horribly wrong.

…Diagnotics running….

…file rebuild commencing….

…alternative heuristic processing engaged….

….!!ERROR 438 - FILE SYSTEM CORRUPTION ERROR - PLEASE REFERENCE ERRORID: 3345476434234 FOR MORE INFORMATION!! UNABLE TO RETRIEVE FILE ALLOCATION TABLES…FILE INDEX MISSING OR CORRUPT…!!ERROR 541 - SECONDARY INDEX CORRUPTION ERROR - PLEASE REFERENCE ERRORID: 879089998908 FOR MORE INFORMATION!!

…File retrieval incomplete. Display incomplete (34%) file Y/N?

$%^&*%$^#%^#^#%^…Tertiary intrusion log: July###$#%2072

….23:42:05:95: Maglock ID: 4589-A153 offline…reboot…

…23:44:07:87: Maglock ID: 4589-A153 reboot complete, online.

….

…23:56:56:34: CCTV-Camera ID: 8769-B274 anomaly detected, begin diagnostic proceedure….

23:59:14:67: CCTV-Camera ID: 8769-B274 self-diagnostic complete, no errors detected.

00:11:59:45: Employee ID: 49678354 <DESIGNATION: HAUSMAN, ROBERT>: Report - Code 778 - Disturbance detected in Sector C356 - Initiating standard investigation proceedures.

…

00:13:45:32: Employee ID: 49678354 <DESIGNATION: HAUSMAN, ROBERT>: BIO-SIGN ALERT!: Employee ID: 49678354's life signs have fallen outside acceptable standards per Code 456 - Initiate Tier 2 Response…

00:19:34:99: SECURITY STANDARDS BREECHED! 7 violations of Internal Security Code 464 - Failure to pro###$&&&***((…./////...Initiate Tier 3 Response, contact Facility Administrator <DR. HUPPLER>.

…

00:34:23:61: TIER 5 SECURITY RESPONSE INITIATED IN SECTOR M896. CONTACT CORPORATE SECURITY OVERSIGHT COORDINATO$%^&**###.,..<<"?":PP…

00:41:56:54: SECURITY ASSET #99985 <DESIGNATION: TORQUE> ACTIVATED. ALERT ALL SECURITY PERSONAL TO EVACUATE SECTOR Q145. REPEAT, ALL SECURITY PERSONAL TO EVACUATE SECTOR Q145…

00:41:56:54: SECURITY ASSET #99986 <DESIGNATION: MR. CREEPY> ACTIVATED. ALERT ALL SECURITY PERSONAL TO EVACUATE SECTOR Q145. REPEAT, ALL SECURITY PERS&**((((%@#$/*/****…

…
00:51:59:45: SECURITY ASSET #99985 <DESIGNATION: TORQUE> : Report - Code 122 - Audio File attached…

"Oy, I damn sure tagged two o' dem' bastards! Bought took the arm off one of those dwarves, not that he looked like he noticed, and hit tha' odder one, too. An'hoo, they're up 'n coming up back towards yeah…Ah gotta break through this…ace, ne'ermind, you wouldna' understa*&^######//=-+------++.//

...File terminated.


00:53:12:00: Maglock ID: 8976-Q100 offline. Initiated by: Employee ID: 50789354 <DESIGNATION: STENTON, ELIZABETH>

00:54:24:00: Maglock ID: 7743-M059 offline. Initiated by: Employee ID: 50789354 <DESIGNATION: STENTON, ELIZABETH>

00:55:56:00: Maglock ID: 6999-L786 offline. Initiated by: Employee ID: 50789354 <DESIGNATION: STENTON, ELIZABETH>

00:56:13:88: ALERT! PERMITER SECURITY BREACH, VEHICLE INCOMING TOWARDS PRIMARY CAMPUS ENTRANCE! INITAL SCANS INDICATE ILLEGALLY MODIFIED 2032 FORD F-450 HARLEY DAVIDSON SPECIAL EDITION! LICENSE %^&&&&%####…ALERT! STANDARD RUTHENIUM SCANNER FREQUENCYS DETECTED NEAR PRIMARY CAMPUS ENTR///**/**/*###$%%%%%…ALERT!

01:02:59:45: Employee ID: 48966398 <DESIGNATION: GUTTIEREZ, JUAN> : Report - Code ??? - Audio File attached…

"Jesus, I mean, oh my god…I mean, sorry. CRAP! Uh…Guittierez, Juan, Employee ID 48966…oh, oh…<retching sound> He's…he's eating it? For CHRIST'S SAKE, SOMEBODY STOP HIM! AND THEM! OH FU….<rapid gunfire from at least two sources, full automatic>…This is Guittierez, We caught them…I mean, he..it, he caught them, just outside the elevators, appeared like a freaking' ghost. He pinned one of them down and…he ripped a chunk of flesh off the guy's shoulder! And then let them go, they ran, because he was…<coughing> Oh Jesus, he…he ate it. He just ate A PIECE OF THAT GUY! WHO THE F*%& #$*& HIRED HIM!?!? ##$(&%%**((///-------------

…File terminated.

01:05:34:77: FAB III ASTRAL ACTIVITY DETECTOR ID: 4768-A398 triggered.
01:06:48:66: FAB III ASTRAL ACTIVITY DETECTOR ID: 4767-A390 triggered.
01:07:59:45: FAB III ASTRAL ACTIVITY DETECTOR ID: 4766-A388 triggered.
01:08:01:23: FAB III ASTRAL ACTIVITY DETECTOR ID: 4765-A385 triggered.
01:09:16:22: FAB III ASTRAL ACTIVITY DETECTOR ID: 4764-A380 triggered.
01:10:32:11: FAB III ASTRAL ACTIVITY DETECTOR ID: 4763-A372 triggered.

00:56:13:88: ALERT! PERMITER SECURITY BREACH, VEHICLE OUTGOING TOWARDS PRIMARY CAMPUS EXIT! INITA#%^^&$%^&******^&%$#%^&####NNER FREQUENCYS DETECTED NEAR PRIMARY CAMPUS EX///**/**/*##…


…END OF FILE.

J.D. wasn’t good at patience. She was good at faking it, but only up to a point. And after two hours of lurking around in an unfamiliar van, J.D. was getting more than a little anxious. The courier had to scoot up the seat in the 2032 Ford F-450 Harley Davidson Special Edition to an almost comical degree in order to reach the pedals. And she was more than aware of the fact that while sitting in a truck, the motorcycle helmet just looked ridiculous, even if it was iconic at this point. Every once in a while, another vehicle passed by her position, their brights reflecting in the elf’s helmet visor in a series of flashing rectangles.

The courier’s fingers drummed a loose staccato beat against the wheel as the young woman peered around the F-450’s interior for what must have been the ninth time that hour. A multitude of cables snaked along the truck’s roof, coiling around devices of varying purpose—the product of someone upgrading the vehicle decades past what it was intended for. The rest of the interior was practically held together with black duct tape, so at least it matched the upholstery. How someone managed to keep the blasted thing together for fifty years, never mind keep it in such good condition, was beyond her. It should have fallen apart before J.D. was even 'born', never mind support all of the high tech gew-gaws crammed inside it. Now, the chameleon coating was a nice touch. It was just that, every once in a while, it irked J.D. to remember that she was behind the wheel of a mother-fragging antique.

It certainly didn't help that the courier’s specialty was in motorcycles, and the F-450 handled like a very fancy box on wheels. A big, clunky metal box on wheels.

A message from Burner put a stop to the courier’s internal grumbling regarding the wheels. The AR window Iggy pulled up displayed the agreed-upon GO signal from the dwarf. Underneath the helmet, J.D. licked her lips, sat up straighter, and peeled out from her waiting place.

The F-450 rumbled down the all but abandoned street, unimpeded by obstacles like other vehicles. After all, the only people that were up and driving this late, or early, were other degenerates up to no good. J.D. kept the headlights off, relying on her cybereyes to see her first into, and then through the campus.

Eventually, a handful of AR notices and warnings popped into the courier’s vision. Would she please display her SIN? Was she authorized to enter this area? Notice: this vehicle was not registered. J.D. activated the truck’s audio system, pumping a house remix of The Prelude of Carmen into the interior. The volume rose. The van accelerated to a roar. Iggy’s anti-spam subroutines brought the growing patchwork of warning windows to a halt. Then it stripped every screen from J.D.’s augmented vision—just in time for J.D. to watch the lowered bar at the security gate into the Universal Omnitech facility to explode under the inertia of the F-450. Splinters flew in every which direction, the biggest part of what used to be the bar clattering to the ground twenty feet away. In the rear-view mirror, J.D. saw the singular security guard at the booth cautiously peek out from the cover of the desk he’d ducked under. She sighed. What a mess they were all going to make tonight.

Perhaps only a minute or a two later, the chameleon-coated truck screeched to sweeping halt at the appointed location within the U-O facility. “Ladies, Gentlemen and fellow degenerates, your chariot,” the courier announced in the usual digitally-augmented voice as a handful of figures, some familiar and some not, began piling into the Frankensteinian truck. The second every runner, and both of the two children, were at least inside the truck, J.D. stomped on the accelerator. The truck backed into a very unfortunate-looking vending machine, destroying it beyond recognition. No doubt some of the passengers in the back of the truck got shaken up a little from that unfortunate bit of maneuvering. But, the obscenely over-armed truck bed would have kept them safe. The worst that could have happened would be one of the two medkits in the truck bed knocking into someone. Peering at the now destroyed vending machine, J.D. swore, then launched the F-450 back out of the facility in a scream of rubber. She very nearly missed running down a handful of armed guards once or twice as she attempted to veer the truck around a particularly tight corner.

It was only then that J.D. bothered to take a decent look at her fellows. “Ghost, you guys. I hope one of you knows how to use first aid, or something,” the courier shook her head. She'd been meaning to pick up a few first aid skills. But, she was behind the wheel at that moment. It was going to take a little time for her to throw off any pursuit, time the people bleeding all over the truck probably didn’t have. Hopefully whoever was now riding shotgun knew how to use the shotgun laying at their feet.

Five Days Ago:

A thick quilt of gray clouds covered the Seattle midnight sky and filled the air with a heavy drizzle that was just light enough to avoid becoming rain. With a new moon out tonight and all of the starlight smothered by the clouds, it made for a night where the person should stay inside. Only the occasional lamppost or flashing neon sign offered relief from the otherwise oppressive darkness to those souls unfortunate to have business force them to endure the night. Radix Kane was one of those souls.

The Ork cop stood under the overhang of a rundown building in the midst of Everett’s slums. He was staring at the ights from the still active shipyards of the area. For the optimist, the glow might serve as a beacon of hope that the area might one day reclaim the glory of its hey-day. However, I suspected that Radix saw the lights as a constant reminder of how horrible a meeting place I had picked out for us.

No matter, I won’t keep him long…that drop looks like it’s under 30 meters…

Clutching a plastic bag in my right hand, I grabbed onto the edge of the rooftop I was currently crouching on. My left wrist clicked, releasing the winch on my grapple arm, and I rappelled down the side of the building. I landed right alongside Radix, and tossed the bag at him while my arm whipped my grapple hand back into place.

“Heads up,” I said using my voice mask.

Radix turned at the sound and managed to deftly catch the bag with both hands, a look of surprise and disgust on his goblinesque face.

“You have to pick the worst places to meet, don’t you,” grumbled Radix as he investigated the contents of the bag.

“What are these, doughnuts?” he asked quizzically.

“Thought you might be hungry,” I replied. The ork scowled at me.

“Do I look like someone who needs to fulfill any more stereotypes?” he snorted.

I grinned wickedly, immediately thankful that my armor included a face mask. He had a point-of course-but his dour demeanor made each cop joke all the more amusing.

Radix had let the moment pass, and began looking through the donuts. He pulled out a chocolate-frosted, rainbow sprinkled cake doughnut and took a bite that managed to demolish half of the pastry. He popped the other half in his mouth and started rooting around for another.

“Hey, don’t hog all of them,” I said, beckoning for him to hand me the bag.

“A pig joke,” he grunted, “how original. You must be proud.”

“Sorry, didn’t mean anything by it.” This was a bald-faced lie. I had come up with the line two hours ago and secretly prayed that he would give me an opportunity to use it. Again, I was happy for the face mask.

I fished a cinnamon bun out of the bag and handed the rest back to Radix. I lifted up the bottom of my mask to uncover my mouth and took a bite.

Delicious. No one makes doughnuts like Yum-Yum.

“So why don’t we skip the rest of the niceties and get to the reason why you had me come out on a God forsaken night like this one,” Radix said, finishing off a chocolate éclair.

“Looks like I’ll be out of town for a bit. Might be a few days, might be more. I wanted to let you know ahead of time, and maybe ask a favor or two.”

Radix chuckled and shook his head, “Favors? You’re asking me for favors?”

“Well, it’s not like I didn’t make your job a whole lot easier.”

“Easier? Hah, because of you, I got promoted to detective. Now I’ve got more responsibilities and a bunch of rookies looking to me for answers on how to get things done. Basically, you’ve made my life a lot more complicated and now you’re asking for favors.

“Heh,” he smirked, apparently satisfied with the reaction he got out of me, “I suppose the new paycheck isn’t bad. And the town is a bit safer after you took those Raks to task. What exactly were you thinking about? Not another cover-up like last year.”

“No, heavens no,” I said, almost choking on the last bite of my cinnamon bun. “God willing, that will never happen again.

“I just want to make sure that the criminal elements here don’t get wise to my absence, so I’d appreciate it if you could send some interference via APB.”

“Hmph,” grunted Radix, “So you want me to lie to my bosses. So much for my new paycheck… Have a timetable on when you’re coming back?”

I shrugged, “Hopefully in a week or two, but I can’t say.”

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Can’t say,” I answered.

“Why am I not surprised? Can you tell me what for?”

“If I’m right, people who can make a difference in this world.”

Radix snorted in disgust.

“Don’t you get it? Did all those fights with Raks, druggies and psychos somehow scramble your gray matter? YOU are someone who makes a difference in this world.” He walked up to me, looking me straight in the eyes. I had never seen Radix react like this before. At first, I thought it was because I had finally made him angry, but the Ork’s eyes had an unfamiliar look in them…it was fear.

“Do you think you can’t make a difference because you aren’t some “awakened” magician tapping into the Great Unknown and calling forth plagues like a god? Or is it because you aren’t some Matrix sprite wriggling through AR to rain down justice on criminals who consider themselves safe within virtual citadels?

“I want you to remember this number. 80%! That’s how much crime in Seattle has dropped since you started doing whatever the hell it is you do. You’ve brought hope back to a city that needed it, and if it makes any difference, you’ve convinced me not to suck on a Saturday Night Special to escape this shithole of a reality!”

I stood there stunned by Radix’s fervor. The Ork was literally trembling as he spat his vitriolic pleas in my face.

“I know you probably could not care less about what I say. Hell, when I told you to stop this hobby, you went out and dropped a drug kingpin a few hours later…” He paused, composing himself before continuing.

“I’ll do what you ask, but promise me this: Don’t forget what you mean to us. You’re a hero, kid. Deal with it.” And with those words, Radix walked away from me. He tossed the bag of doughnuts in the nearest trash can.

I watched him walk off into the drizzle-soaked night. Normally, I would have offered him a reassuring yet flippant response or some tongue-in-cheek reply, but that did not seem proper. Not after that. I said the only words that made sense.

“I won’t.”

Right Fucking Now:

I don’t think Radix ever heard me…but that doesn’t matter. The only thing that does is that I give him a reason to keep believing in me. It’s why I couldn’t bring myself to kill these bastards in the facility: I can’t tell who is guilty or innocent, and I’ll be damned if I’m the judge of that. It’s why I tried to scare off security teams that got a little too close to my less-scrupulous, spell-slinging counterpart. And it’s why I can’t let this happen.

You probably should get going. I have to take care of this, I told my companion via a comlink text.

I left out “I’m about to do something stupid." That seemed like overkill.

I snapped my left arm towards the guard currently being snacked on by a nasty-looking ghoul bearing the scars from a severe case of “getting-beaten-with-an-ugly-stick.” The guard's suffering was my fault. I had tossed him at the ghoul, thinking that it would serve as a distraction based on how the security team and the monster were working in tandem. I was wrong.

The grapple-hand shot towards the screaming guard, grabbing him by his armored vest. With the help of the internal winch and Greer's bioware, I managed to pull the guard back and send him towards his partner.

“Stop talking on that com and get your friend some help,” I ordered in my newly tweaked voice mask-thank you Geoffrey and Lav for coming through on that. The guard stammered something, nodded and grabbed his friend. He tossed the still-shrieking guard over his shoulder and struggled off in search of help. Turning my attention to the ghoul, I snapped my hand back in place and drew my katana with a flourish.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to chew with your mouth open?” I taunted as I set myself into an attack stance. The ghoul dropped the chunk of flesh he had ripped from guard's body and started to stalk towards me, licking his blood-smeared lips with what could only be described as delighted anticipation.

I won’t forget, Radix. Time for me to deal with it.

“Looks like I need to teach you some manners.”

There

I exist now in There and Here is a place I can visit but the others can sense the change in me and many flee from my arrival. I don't blame them really I am not the creature I once was. I exist in a different layer of creation now. I am between my once life and I am halfway to the lives of the Hes and Shes I have grown attached to. With my remaking my summoner told me I was the very essence of his life now. I was becoming truly free as he hoped to be if we all did our part and rescued them. At that thought I shake myself loose from the thoughts I have and release this new form to slide into the astral. A single thought takes me a vast distance in a moment.

The Facility

I remake myself in a squat ugly thing that house my summoner..........no my maker now. I feel the distasteful presence of the neverborn things all around me but I push my uneasiness aside and look around for the clues I was to find here in this room of machines and windows. Then I see it the small lizard appears on several windows and waves at me. I place my hands on the first........machine and summon the essence within myself and channel it outward. I feel the joy in me as the lightning dances across the machine and its smoke leaves it. I quickly move from thing to thing where the lizard was and send lightning through them. All around me little lights flash and strange sounds scream from the air. A place I thought was a wall opens like a door and a man enters followed by more men but their skin is hard and shiny. I feel the horror in my gut and my face stretches into a shape that seems to echo my gut. They have no faces. Just smooth shiny shells.

"Patch me through to CSO I have a visual feed for an unidentified adolescent female in SEC-M896 Data Center. Please advise."

I turn to face the men and their neverborn weapons. Small points of light shift over my body and begin to settle on my face and chest. I am curious why they are waiting to attack me - I was left with the impression that these things around me are prized possessions and that they would try to hurt me for destroying them.

"Order confirmed. All units neutralize the target."

I struggle with the word as the air vibrates from small objects hitting my body. I look down to see things sticking into this woven body I wear. The discomfort is minimal but they seem to be leaking fluid on me and into me. I am knocked from my feet by the second burst of stings and most of the men turn to leave with one remaining behind. I watch as he removes a thick flexible thread from his belt and begins to wrap my ankles with it. He tugs it tightly and it binds my feet together. With a small smile I slide into the astral and watch his startled movements as he stumbles back from where I once was.

"All units be advised..."

As he speaks I push back into There with my hands on his stomach as I release the flows into him and the lightning surges through his body. All around his shiny shell covering small neverborn things crack and sizzle then released their smoke. His body goes slack and he falls to the ground twitching and shaking. I pause a moment to let the fatigue wash over me from using the essence of my self that way before sliding back into the astral. I quickly make my way to the tube outside this room and see the hovering barriers in the space with me. I gather the flows of creation around me and weave it into a weapon. I plunge through the space and punch holes in the walls of this realm. I watch as the protection I have woven around myself are slowly stripped away until the last barrier actually cuts into me. The pain burns along my form as I push back into There.

"CSO I have the same female from the Data Center on sublevel 4 - corridor 3 - junction T. Any available units converge on my location."

I look up and see another shell man in the tube with a different stick in his hands. It looks like the kind I have seen tear and rip flesh. I quickly rise and run towards him. I scream just like the woman on the window I saw. I startle myself to hear my actual voice echo off the tube. The shell man seems unaffected and calmly points the stick at me. I throw myself at the ground too late as the small angry bits hit me and push into my made flesh but fail to penetrate. When I rise and resume my run he seems uncertain.

"All units be advised this target is unnaturally resistant to small arms fire possible paranormal threat. CSO please advise."

I use his hesitation to my advantage and throw myself at him. Then he does............something and I am flying through the air and hitting a wall. I do not know how I missed him. I right myself and find him some distance away and he throws a small rock at me. It lands and skids to my feet. It's not a rock but an egg I think but neverborn. I reach down to pick it up and then it explodes. I fly once again through the air and land several feet away. The air is filled with a strange taste - it burns but does little else. I quickly regain my feet and look for the shell man and see him down the tube with two more of his shell people.

"All units this target is resistant to toxins and I am looking for magic support. CSO please reassign an asset to this level."

I recognize the word magic and that I need to go soon before a summoner arrives. I quickly run and slide into the astral as I fly towards them. I push back behind one and reach around for one of the eggs. They wear them on a belt. I weave lightning around the egg and watch with satisfaction as it explodes along with the others on the belt. Their bodies scatter and I fly once again through the air to hit a far wall. I stagger to my feet and see their shiny shells have some holes and they seem panicked. They run from the cloud trying to cover the holes with their hands. The one whose eggs I attacked has the largest hole and he falls to his knees and slumps to the floor. I feel the surge of success sweep through me. I have found a weakness of the shell men. I quickly jump to the astral and push down to lower levels. I will find more shell men and their eggs. I will show them the price to pay for keeping my maker prisoner. My soul sings with the sweet promise of his freedom. I will help my Hes and the She.

Today:

In through the front door? Whose stupid plan was that? Oh right, mine. A staccato of automatic fire went off. Burner had walked right in with the other dwarf. The man he had used almost a year ago to fake his own death. The man that it turned out was screwier than a box of...well screws. Everything had gone smooth, his old contacts were still leaving their pass codes in the same old places. On top of that, his anonymous sources on the inside had led him straight to the targets. The doors had opened smoothly, even after the place had erupted in klaxons. Burner hadn't quite been prepared for what he saw when he opened the cell door. Two children, both catatonic. They looked maybe 13, at the oldest, though the dwarf never was too good at telling ages. He nodded to his partner and they each took a kid and tried to flee.

That's when they hit the problem. They were stuck at a security door, none of their codes worked, and forces were coming up behind them. Then they saw the man, an elf, if silhouettes serve. And then the figure opened fire. Burner dived for cover, a stabbing pain in his side, his world shrinking to just himself and his charge. The front fragging door.

The following moments were a horrifying blur. Burner was pinned down, a hole in his side, using his customized AR to try to keep this figure off their backs. But the form moved like water, dodging every shot that Burner could get near the target. It was then that Burner's comm binged, reluctantly he turned it on to find an anonymous message saying that the door behind him would open in 2.5 seconds, "Hey! We're leaving!" Burner shouted to his partner, Burner fiddled with his comm and gave an ARO to the team waiting outside.

The other dwarf did nothing but grunt, blood trickling down his arm as he lunged down the hall toward the figure.

"You can't bring fists to a gun fight you dumb mother-," with that the doors dinged open, "Fine, I'm leaving if you're coming, come!" Burner snatched up his kid, his side flaring up in pain. Burner had to admit, that psycho dwarf was keeping this mysterious gunman busy. Burner moved over and tried to grab the other child, "I don't know if I can take 'em both..."

Just as Burner was trying to decide who to actually carry out of the building, a spirit made of cabling and ceiling tiles descended. It lifted up the form of the other child, and the four figures moved out the door. Burner didn't look back until he had made it out of the facility.

July 4th, 2072 - 2:00AM

Jennie tsked and fussed over the various wounds on the group. She'd spent the better part of the last hour patching up various wounds and bruises spread among the group. An older woman, in her early 40's bit still fit, she kept a halo of honey-colored hair tucked under a grease smudged mechanic's cap. She moved with a general sense of efficiency that didn't lessen the impression of a mother hen fussing over a collection of chicks.

"What did...you know what, never mind, never mind..." She'd muttered the same line a dozen times before, always decided before she'd completely asked that she didn't want to know.

She had gasped audibly when the group had brought the truck back, and had spent a few minutes fussing over the old truck like a person until she'd noticed the groups wounds. She'd checked the children first, and then JD, and then the rest of the group. Sleeping peacefully on a cot near a restored vintage 2032 World Tour Camaro, the twins were intertwined and dead to the world. They'd been practically catatonic since the extraction from the facility, but Jennie seemed sure they'd be fine, given time. She'd hustled everyone else into a small single bedroom apartment attached to the 3 car garage where she housed her vehicles and tools, and proceeded to patch people up with an efficiency that seemed surprising from the slim, older woman, especially considering her obvious empathy for old, not living things. She'd also given the group run of her fridge and encouraged everyone to eat, so there were small plates scattered everywhere with the remains of various small meals.

She stood, stretching, having patched up the last member as well as she was able with the complicated medkit she'd retrieved from the bed of the truck. She tucked a loose strand of hair under her cap, sighed, and look around at everyone.

"So, what's the plan now? OmniTech's going to be looking for you...I don't mind putting you up for the moment, but there's no way this place will be safe for more than a couple of hours. I'm telling you, I think you guys should get out of town for a while, if not permanently. Find some place the kids can live in peace."

July 4th, 2072 - 2:00AM

Sitting on the floor, legs stretched out and his back against the wall, Tiger was slowly finishing the remains of his second helping of chicken-flavored soy. For someone of his slim stature he could eat surprisingly large amounts of meat.
His green cat eyes looked around the room wearily, the strain from casting too many too strong spells in quick succession was visibly affecting the young changeling, turning his usual energetic posture into a tired slouch. Even his words came slower and less clearly pronounced than usual.

"UO's been looking for me for quite some time, so that's old news, but after tonight the heat is really on. And a group like ours is much harder to hide than a single person. I think leaving town is really our only viable option. There's not much holding me here anyway." 'Cause everyone thinks I'm dead and I can't tell them otherwise or they will be in danger...
"But we can't go anywhere that is connected to anyone of us by any kind of data trail. Cause UO will find out things like that."

July 4th, 2072 - 2:00AM

Jennie secured the bandages to Burner's shoulder causing his eyes to widen and tear slightly. As she stepped back Burner slumped in his chair, he hadn't felt this bad since that snafu back in LA.

"Getting away is good, Tig, but it might not be enough. UO is looking at this from a damage control standpoint now. If they can get their kids back and hide that they ever lost them, they pretty much win big. From a cost/benefit stand point they are going to throw everything and the kitchen sink after us, unless we make it less worthwhile. I think we need to start spreading some information. A few dead drops to the right people and we may become significantly less important."

Burner realized that he was sounding somewhat cold and calculating, but business savvy was more or less the only thing he could bring to the team, "Now that we are done with that facility we leak all the information we got about it. The cloning, the metahuman testing, we could even leak a few facts about the kids. Keep it vague, and get the hell out of dodge after we do the leaking. If we give it to a company that is known for social responsibility, maybe Horizon? They are bound to release it as news. Then UO is going to be far too busy dismantling their lab to come looking for us. And before you all say that we are just trading one corporate baddie for another, think about it. When everyone was freaking out about Technos and AI, Horizon was there to protect them. A few leaked words in the right place to go along with our fleeing, maybe to the CAS, the NAN, whatever, could get quite a bit of heat off our backs."

July 4th, 2072 – 2:00AM

In the bathroom, J.D. toweled off the last drops of cold water from her face. The green towel was folded, and thrown back over the shower curtain rod. And after Jennie couldn’t find any wounds on the courier, J.D. had holed up in the bathroom and listened to the team converse from there. The young woman ran her hand over the prickly stubble covering her scalp, peering into the mirror. Seeing the twins had thrown her for a loop, even if none of the others had picked up on it, or watched for it. And it made sense. But, drek it was spooky. If she just changed the iris color on her cybereyes—no. She pulled her eyes from the mirror, and her own incriminating reflection.

J.D. pulled an empty plastic cup from the counter and filled it from the bathroom sink twice, downing the water each time in long pulls. As usual, she’d made sure to get something in her stomach before the job even began. And the courier was used to taking few meals at erratic hours in order to keep her face hidden. So it wasn’t a big deal. At least not for J.D.

After setting the cup back on the bathroom counter, she pulled the oversized motorcycle helmet off the sink and put it back on.

“I’ve got someone I can call about getting us out of town or recommending a good place to bolt. But, I don’t know what she can do on such short notice,” the courier’s electronically distorted voice offered from behind the bathroom door. When J.D. walked into the living room, she already had Hermes’s number up in AR.

July 4th, 2072 - 2:00AM

J.D. had walked out of the bathroom still clad in her full uniform. Burner was having difficulty shaking the image of the paranoid girl washing the front of her motorcycle helmet instead of her face. Did she ever take that thing off? Burner shook his head to clear his mind.

"You sure we can trust your contact? I know a bunch of people who might be helpful in this sort of scenario, but we got to watch out for the double-cross. Don't think that anybody is too good to screw us for a payday..." in his mind Burner added ...last year I would have been the one double-crossing.

July 4th, 2072 - 2:00AM

Well, I THINK I gave as good as I got... Yes! My face is okay, so I'm good to go.

I popped my cybereye back into my eye socket and snapped my grapple hand back in place, satisfied with what I had seen-scars, bruises, stitched-up gashes and a mostly intact twenty-something katana-wielding crimefighter. I had been batting 1.000 in dodging whatever UO's security had to offer until I ran into that asshole of a ghoul. I still could not shake from my mind the image of someone-no, someTHING-EATING another person. Gross as hell.

I threw a tank-top on and sat down on the floor of Jennie's apartment, leaning against a towel I had placed on the wall-no reason to funk up her pad with my blood and b.o. Normally, I would have checked myself out in the bathroom, but J.D. was in there and I doubted there was room for two in there. Plus, ingenuity plus a cybereye plus a grapple hand connected to myomeric rope provided a better alternative to the standard bathroom mirror. The only weird part was having to block out the odd looks from my companions as I stripped out of my armor and checked myself out.

Listening to the others talk about what to do next, I wondered to myself if Lady Lavender might be able to help, but this might be a little too much fire for Lav to handle. When I heard J.D. offer to call one of his friends, I decided to leave the question of whether to call her for another time.

"Let's try your gal," I said. "If she doesn't work out, I might know some people."

J.D. shrugged, the motion exaggerated by her helmet. “I’ve known her for a few years, and she’s never gotten me into any trouble I couldn’t get out of. That, and I don’t think bounties are quite her normal source of nuyen. If anything, I’ll owe her a few favors, and she’ll have me running borders for a few jobs. How about we all make a few calls, leave any information vague, and then compare our options?” she suggested.

“We’re going to need transport, supplies, maybe some new IDs, and a place to run to. I’m going to have to make a few calls, anyway, to wrap up some loose ends real quick,” with that, the courier meandered over to a corner of the living room, and pulled a comlink out of one of her many jumpsuit pockets. First on the list, Sister. J.D. dialed the troll shadowrunner’s number, and waited for someone to pick up.

If she was going to have to rabbit out of town, it would probably be best not to piss off Sister by neglecting to mention that she wouldn’t be able to bolt-hole sit anymore. At least now the troll could probably find someone to replace J.D.

"Makes sense," I answered. "I'll give my friends a call."

Lav is going to love this.

I could just picture the dryad's response-a flashing look from her jade eyes accompanied by her low, whiskey alto laugh that tussled her crimson tresses and shook her well-endowed chest as much as was possible in the skin-tight one pieces that Lav seemed to favor. She always told me coyly that the dress was meant to cater to the clientele, but I suspected it was an attempt to play up the whole "femme-fatale-in-need-of-attention" schtick just enough to keep people distracted from the true Lavender-one well-put-together woman who didn't take shit from anybody.

Stop thinking about Lav and focus on the here and now...wow, must still have a good testosterone flow from that fight...

I pulled out my comlink and keyed up Lav, and also queued up Geoffrey. If we needed new IDs, Geoffrey is the right Matrix man for the job...

Priye sits quietly in a corner, her face pinched with concern. She watched closely as the woman administered medical aid.

This she.........woman is not what I thought.

"I have a safe place where everyone can not die in, though I do not have much food or water............or light but it is safe."