The Forever Drug

"Watch"

I shed my shirt and unzipped my pants, letting them fall around my ankles. As I dropped to my hands and knees, I heard the girl's voice, "Likes to show off what he's got, doesn't he?" Then I changed.

I swivelled my ears and caught the troll's sharp intake of breath as he watched my body shift into wolf form.

"You're the dog I saw in the garage," he whispered.

I panted happily, my tongue lolling. Then I shifted back....

SHADOWRUN : 37

THE FOREVER DRUG

Lisa Smedman

Acknowledgement

Many thanks to John Hart and Dana Noah for sharing their memories and stories of the Maritimes, and to all of those whose enthusiasm and ideas contributed to this novel.

1

There's no mistaking the "heroin nod." I could spot the junkie two blocks away. She was coasting, floating half in and half out of consciousness, struggling to keep her chin from bobbing down on her chest like a person who's trying to resist falling asleep. Dressed the way she was, I figured she was working tonight. Tight black pants, thigh-high red leather boots, and a blouse made from hair-thin optical filament, woven in an open spider web pattern. The material pulsed softly with light, illuminating her breasts like a marquee.

Business had probably been good. The UCAS aircraft carrier
Leviathan
had berthed that afternoon after two months at sea, and the four-thousand-plus sailors that made up its crew were out on the streets of Halifax in force. One of them was leaning over the back of the bench where the junkie slumped, eyeing the merchandise appreciatively. The working girl's breasts were fully developed, but from her size and bone structure I guessed her age at eleven—too young for a human to have reached puberty. Selective hormone treatments will do that.

The sailor noticed me looking at the girl and gave me a threatening glare. It was clear that he'd fight any man foolish enough to try and pick up "his" girl. I ignored him, deliberately looking away from the girl.

I felt sorry for the kid, but there was nothing I could do for her. Even Lone Star's Drug Enforcement Division wouldn't bother with her. Soft drugs like heroin didn't interest them. They were concentrating on BTL right now and the rash of overdoses that had occurred in recent weeks. But not in the North End, of course. In this part of town illegal simsense chips are sold openly on street corners and in restaurants, deals going down and chipheads slotting up in full view of anyone who cared to watch.

I continued down Gottingen and turned right. I had Duffus Street all to myself, aside from a pair of ork sailors who were half swaggering, half staggering, arms wrapped around each other while they sang lewd songs. The sidewalks were never crowded in this part of town, even on a hot summer night like tonight. The North End of the city isn't the sort of place you want to be after dark. Not unless you're SINless and desperate. Or a sailor wanting to mix it up with the bad boys.

The street lighting was almost nonexistent, the buildings dull and soulless, save for a splattering of graffiti on the walls. The city had replaced the antiquated public housing in Mulgrave Park a decade ago, finally tearing down the block houses that had been built back before the turn of the millennium. The "new" buildings were just as ugly: prefab concrete-slab structures painted in the same dull shades of gray, off-yellow, or government green.

The idea behind the project had been to give those without System Identification Numbers a warm, dry place to sleep. The residents were housed in "micro suites"—sleeping rooms with dimensions about those of a medium-sized closet, stacked horizontally. These were quickly dubbed "coffins," and that's what many of them became. Rumor had it there was more than one body stashed away behind the featureless plastic door of a Mulgrave Park micro suite.

I stopped at the intersection and left my mark, splashing it across some faded gang graffiti. The North End used to be my territory, back when I worked with the Star's K9 department, a part of its Division of Patrol. I hadn't patrolled these streets since I started working as an "irregular asset" for the Tactical Division, but I still liked to take a jander through them every now and then, just to freshen up my mark and let them know I'm still keeping an eye on things. I doubted anybody here would recognize me. In the old days I never used to patrol in human form.

It had been four months since my "promotion" to the Tactical Division. Technically, I wasn't really
employed
by Lone Star. I was more of a free agent, kind of like a bounty hunter. I got paid a flat fee: so much per containment, depending upon the size of the para.

Paranormal animals are my specialty. That's why I was assigned to the Magical Task Force. Although the Force falls under the Tactical Division, we work closely with the Division of Paranormal Investigation. The DPI officers are the ones responsible for anything with a thaumaturgical twist to it: magically capable criminals, nosferatu gangs, toxic spirits—the works. They also handle paranormal animal control.

I kept hoping that, one day, I'd get the call to go out on a really important assignment. Like the case DPI handled two months ago when a megalodon, a gigantic "prehistoric" shark the size of a whale, took a chunk out of a frigging
freighter
, for spirits' sake,
right
there in Halifax Harbor, and then feasted on all of the nice little bite-sized lifeboats that were launched as the ship went down. If I could take down a dangerous para like that, somebody might bend the rules a little for me, maybe even let me officially join the boys and girls in blue.

But I mostly got the small stuff. Like that assignment two weeks ago. Containment of a blackberry cat, a paranormal animal someone had illegally imported from Europe as a
house
pet
, of all things. The magically active feline used its powers of mind control to amuse itself by causing its humans to "play" with knives. An entire family in the hospital, and I wasn't allowed to ice that little furball. Not when blackberry cats had been declared threatened under the Endangered Species Act of 2054. The best I could do was chase it up a tree—then hang tough after it used its magic to render me blind. Thank the spirits for my keen sense of smell or I'd have lost it entirely.

I hate cats.

I was the only shifter among all of Lone Star's irregular assets in Halifax. Which wasn't surprising in a corporate security force noted for its speciphobia. If you took a gander at the demographics of the actual employees, you'd see the scan laid out for you. More than eighty percent of Lone Star's officers were human, with only a smattering of metahuman. The only way most of the patrol officers and detectives felt comfortable with me was when I was in human form.

It helped that my human form was attractive. I've got dark hair and a beard that's longer and lighter near the chin and mouth, giving me a whiskered appearance. My eyebrows meet in the middle and curve up at the sides, accentuating what the ladies describe as a "wolfish" grin. My ears have a slight point to them—though nowhere near as defined as an elf's ears—and are topped with a tiny tuft of hair on the tip that's so pale it can only be felt, not seen. But although I mostly use my human form in the city, it's my true form that pleases me most. Long and supple, fast and sleek, with lush, gray-brown fur and clean white teeth. The epitome of animal power.

Were I to lope about in wolf form, however, I'd stand a good chance of being picked up by the DPI as an unlawfully-at-large paranormal. By unspoken agreement with Lone Star, I'm allowed to assume animal form within the city when on assignment. Otherwise, I maintain human form. Which is a bit ironic, since legally I'm defined as an "animal" by the UCAS government.

Maybe someday, shapeshifters will be granted metahuman status. But probably not in my lifetime.

Rubber squealed on pavement and a horn blared loudly in the street. My reverie broken, I looked up. A dwarf who was jittering across Duffus had stepped into the path of a Ford Americar. The dwarf, dressed in a stained track suit, had the purposeful, focused look of a cocaine user looking for his next fix. Single-minded in his pursuit, he was oblivious to the still-blaring horn and the shouted curses of the driver as the car swerved around him and off into the night.

I could smell the dwarf from where I stood, even over the thick smog that had built up during the course of the heat wave we'd been having recently. He had the sour smell of someone who hadn't bathed in a long time. Normally, sweat has a pleasant, earthy smell. But this fellow stank of nervous fear, city grit, and, faintly, of sweet crack smoke.

The dwarf's gaze skittered up to meet mine. He assessed me in one frenzied heartbeat as
not-a-dealer
, and his focus slid back to the sidewalk in front of him. In another moment he'd speed-walked down the block and out of sight.