Crossroads (7 page)

“In another place and time.” she said, “I could almost enjoy this.” My snort of derision brought a peal of laughter from her as we drove off into the night.

The safe house owned by Assets, Inc. wasn’t the Taj Mahal by any means. It wasn’t even as nice as my own apartment (which was definitely going to need a new door, if I ended up moving back there), but the little three-room doss in a quiet and isolated part of town was still nicer than all the places I’d lived before joining up with Assets, and larger than most of them put together. It was tucked away just across the border into North Virginia. It had second-hand furniture, a small stash of food, weapons, and other gear, and a telecom unit rigged up by Jane to be virtually untraceable, provided it didn’t get used too often. All the comforts of home for a shadowrunner on the run.

I let Trouble remove the blindfold as soon as we were inside. I took enough unnecessary turns along the way that I was reasonably sure she hadn’t a clue to where this place was, even if she knew the DeeCee area well, which I suspected she didn’t. She made her way over to the threadbare couch and threw herself down on it, taking the whole place in (which didn’t take very long).

“Not bad.” she said. “Is it yours or Assets'?”

It shouldn’t have surprised me that she knew who I worked for, but the question did catch me off guard a bit. Deckers had an annoying tendency to know things about people they shouldn’t, kind of like mages, in fact. I reminded myself that she’d been hired by someone to
look into my background, and wondered briefly what else
she knew.

“It belongs to Assets.” No sense in lying about it. Knowing the truth didn’t tell Trouble anything she hadn’t already figured out. I didn’t bother to ask how she knew. I dropped my kit bag next to an overstuffed chair with a couple of patched-up holes and settled into it.

“Now, then.” I said, “before we were so rudely interrupted, you were telling me about something that involved me and Jason Vale.” Trouble nodded and curled up on the couch, tucking her legs underneath her and resting her hands on her knees as she began to speak. I got up and walked over to check the windows before settling down again. I wanted to make doubly sure we weren't interrupted this time.

“I’m a decker.” Trouble said. “I work out of Boston. Things have been busy since Fuchi broke up and Nova-tech came to town, with plenty of work to go around for someone who’s good at getting the right data. I was hired by a Mr. Johnson to run a background jacket on Jason Vale, check into his known associates, activities, that sort of thing.”

“Not an easy job.” I said. “Jase was a blank, SINless.” In the modern twenty-first century, everyone was tagged at birth with a SIN—a System Identification Number. It was used for record-keeping of all kinds, especially in the government databases. The only people who didn’t have SINs were the have-nots, born in neighborhoods like the Rox in Boston or the Barrens of Seattle, or people who managed to find a decker skilled enough to wipe all traces of them from the world databanks. I was one of the former. I never found out which Jase was, but he’d told me he didn’t have a SIN. Being outside the SIN system was vital for most shadowrunners. It made us virtually untraceable, ciphers, ghosts in the government recordkeeping machine.

Trouble gave a knowing nod. “No, it wasn’t easy, but the Johnson wouldn’t have hired me if it was. There were no records on Vale in the state or federal systems, nothing in the public networks. That meant doing a lot more legwork and digging into more protected systems. All I had to go on was that he lived in South Boston ten years ago and that he was some sort of magician.

“So I started digging. One of the few things I turned up was a report by Knight Errant about Vale’s death. I learned he was killed by a gang near the Rox. His only SIN was issued to him at the morgue and tagged Deceased. The number was connected with a police investigation, so it wasn’t accessible from the public nets. I also found out you were with him when he died.”

“Yes.” I said, keeping my face expressionless.

Trouble studied me briefly, perhaps expecting me to elaborate, then shrugged and continued when I offered no further information. “You’ll be pleased to know that you’re just as tough to track down as Vale. I found out you went to MIT&T on a Mitsuhama corporate sponsorship after Vale died, and that you were expelled for cheating three years later. Then you disappeared into the shadows. I patched together some additional information on your activities over the past seven years or so, not very much, actually. I did manage to track you to DeeCee and crack the cover identity you’re using here.”

I figured as much, which told me she was a very good decker. I couldn’t think of many who could crack IDs set up by Jane. I’d have to discard that ID and see about getting another one. Oh well, I could use a new place to live anyway. I didn’t fancy explaining the thing with the door at the condoplex in the first place.

Trouble continued on. “After I got as much information as I thought I was going to, I made arrangements with my Johnson to make the trade—the complete jacket for the rest of the nuyen he promised.” She paused, biting her lip. She had just admitted she was going to sell the scan on me to someone else. Not exactly unexpected—after all, that’s what people hired deckers for—but it still didn’t make for a lot of mutual trust. I made no comment, but simply let her go on.

“The meet was a setup. The Johnson sent some freak-gangers instead of showing up himself. They said they only wanted the chip with the data, but I could tell it was more than that. There was no way the Johnson was going to let me walk away from it. I was a loose end that needed to be cut off. I’d been expecting something like that, so I went to the meet prepared. I walked out, the freak-boys didn’t. But I knew I needed to find out why the Johnson wanted me geeked and what was so important about the information. It doesn’t make any sense. It just doesn’t seem that important.”

She had good reason to be worried. Johnsons didn’t go around scragging shadowrunners who did a good job. It was one of the unwritten laws of the shadows. Employers who treated runners as disposable didn’t remain employers for very long, just like shadowrunners who got a reputation for double-dealing ended up unemployable. Or floating face down in the nearest body of water.

“So you came to find out why your Johnson is willing to kill you over a simple background jacket?” I said.

“That about sums it up. You’re the only one of Vale’s associates who’s still alive and the only one of any real significance I was able to turn up. I had to get out of Boston while things cooled down, and you were my best bet. I didn’t think my Johnson would manage to track me here so fast.”

I shook my head. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t have a fragging idea what this is all about. I was just a kid then, and Jase was a street magician. Did you do a check on your Johnson’s ID? Who is he?”

She made a face that said of
course
she had checked out the Johnson. Mr. Johnsons, people who employed shadowrunners, liked to remain anonymous. It was considered bad form to ask a Johnson too many questions about his (or her) real employer or interest in a run. Like Jase had told me, real names had power, and Mr. Johnsons preferred a mask of anonymity. Behind the scenes, of course, any good shadowrunner tried to dig up as much as possible on a prospective Johnson to know the angles and, maybe, gain a little more leverage where the Johnson was concerned. It kept me from being left to swing in the breeze plenty of times before.

“His name is Garnoff.” Trouble said. “Anton Garnoff. He’s a high-level mucky-muck wagemage with Manadyne.”

I frowned a bit. Manadyne was a medium-size corporation in Boston, specializing in magical research and development, along with providing magical services to other corporations. I’d never worked for or against them. Honestly, they were too small and not involved in any of the stuff Assets was dealing with. They
did
receive some money in Dunkelzahn’s will, as I recalled, but who the frag didn't?

“Doesn’t ring any bells.” I said. “I don't think I’ve ever heard of him. So what’s Garnoff’s stake in all of this?”

“That’s just it.” Trouble said. “I haven’t a clue. Whatever it is, it seems to include taking one or both of us out of the picture.”

“Well, then, I think we just might have to have a little talk with Mr. Anton Garnoff about that. Let me make a call and I’ll see what I can do.”

I didn’t want to do it, but I used the telecom to patch in a call to Jane-in-the-Box. Jane had access to more comm lines than PacRimTelecom, so it wasn’t hard to get through to her, and I knew the priority codes to get her attention from the dozen or so different things she and her various expert systems were probably overseeing at the moment. At least one was probably tracing my whereabouts, since I was sure news of what had happened at my condoplex must have reached Jane’s ever-listening electronic ears by now.

The display lit up with an image of Jane’s virtual self, all in tight leather (black this time), a total electronic fantasy girl. The concern and relief at seeing me written on the face of her electronic image continued to impress me with Jane’s programming skills.

“Talon!” she said, “what the frag’s going on? I’ve been trying to call your headphone . .

“Sorry. I turned it off.” I said. “Things have been busy.”

“What happened?” Jane asked. “I caught a police call about your apartment being broken into and shots fired.”
I told her the story of Trouble’s unexpected arrival at my condoplex and the subsequent uninvited guests who showed up. I didn’t bother telling her where I was. Just calling from the safehouse telecom was enough to do that. The line was designed to be untraceable to standard countermeasures, but Jane knew ways around all of her own stuff. She probably knew my location the moment my call came in. There was no reason to clue Trouble in about our location right now. I also left out exactly why Trouble decided to show up on my doorstep, other than the fact that she was from Boston.

“Have the DeeCee cops managed to ID the goons who showed up at my place?” I asked.

Jane’s virtual self nodded, and I admired her handiwork again. Probably keyed to respond even to her unconscious gestures and reflexes.

“They have. I pulled the data about twenty minutes ago. All small-time muscle-for-hire in the DeeCee area. All with modest rap sheets.”

Not professional shadowrunners then. Runners didn’t get rap sheets, at least, not good runners who managed to stay alive and in business for very long. That tended to imply the hit attempt at my place was planned quickly, drawing on whatever talent was available, or else the Mr. Johnson didn’t have enough contacts down in DeeCee to get the best muscle.

Moving on to my next question before I even asked it, Jane said, “The interesting part is that all of them have some low-level connection with the local yakuza. Not
kobun
or even initiated members, mostly errand-runners. They were paid in certified credsticks, which pretty much dead-ends the trail. I’m checking into which bank issued it, but . .” The electronic girl shrugged, another fantastically subtle gesture. Even for a decker of Jane’s caliber, the data-trail on certified credit was colder than a Mr. Johnson’s heart, particularly one Johnson I could think of.

“Don't worry about the data-trace on this one.” I told her.

“What are you talking about, Talon? Of course I’m worried. Somebody just tried to ice you
”

“This doesn’t involve you, or Assets.” I said. “It’s personal.”

“Talon.” Jane said slowly, like she was trying to explain something to a child, “you’re one of us. If someone attacks you, they attack Assets. That
makes
it my . . . our concern.”

I shook my head as firmly as I could.

“No. This doesn’t involve you, or Mercury, or Axler, or Grind, or anyone else. It’s something I have to deal with myself. It’s personal.” I said it again like a magic phrase to try and make Jane understand.

“C’mon, Talon, don’t pull that macho lone shadowrunner drek on me. I gave you credit for more brains than that. It doesn’t matter what it is, you can use our help to handle it. We’re a
team,
dammit! We stick together. Don’t let some stupid pride start messing with your judgment.” She paused. “This isn’t about that blowup with Quicksilver, is it?” Jane used the code name for Ryan Mercury instead of his real name as I had just done. I blushed a bit at the unspoken rebuke and the memory of the argument.

“No, it’s not that. . . exactly. Look, Jane, it isn’t that I don’t appreciate everything you’re trying to do, you and Assets. This is seriously old business, long before I met any of you, long before I was even running the shadows. It’s a path I have to walk alone and I can’t bring anyone else into it. Do you understand? It’s my karma, no one else’s, and I’m the one who has to straighten things out.”

There was a long moment of silence on the line. The features of the blonde bombshell displayed on the screen were an electronic mask, unreadable.

“All right.” she said finally. “I’ll talk to Quicksilver and tell him you’re all right.”

“Tell him I’m going to need some time to work this out.”

“Take as much as you need.” Jane said. “That’s what he’ll say.”

I knew she was right. If Ryan couldn’t help directly, he would tell me to do whatever I had to. That’s the kind of guy he was.

Her voice took on a slightly different tone, quieter and less brisk. “Is there anything else I can do?”

I thought for a moment. Maybe Jane felt responsible for getting me involved in the whole business with the Dragon Heart that had led to my working with Assets, or maybe she really considered me a chummer. Good friends were rare in our line of work, and I was honored to think Jane might view me as one.