Shadowrun 44 - Drops of Corruption Read online

  “You kill him on the floor, you play right into their hands. They kick you out, you never come back.” Kader was staring toward the last place he had seen Alex, his eyes nearly pulling themselves out of his skull, but he didn’t move. Bannickburn had hooked him again.

  “I’m not just letting him take my money,” Kader said. “I’m not just letting him walk away.”

  “No, of course not. But go through the official channels. Report him to security. Let them take care of him.” “They won’t take care of anything. You say they helped set me up. They’ll just let him go.”

  “Not if you expose him publicly. A lot of people noticed this guy, a lot of people saw what happened. You expose him in public, the casino will have to do something about it. They can’t just bury it, not with the evidence we have. They’ll have to do something. And if you do it in public, you get a little payback against them—telling people the casino let a cheat run wild inside. NewsNet will probably pick it up. They’ll have to do something to this Alex fragger, because the damn newshounds will keep after them until they do.” Kader’s eyes slowly eased back into their sockets. He was listening.

  “Killing Alex would be fun, sure,” Bannickburn said. “But exposing him and Gates together—that might be even better, huh?”

  “Okay,” Kader said. “Okay. But you’re going to help me make it very, very public.”

  Bannickburn had no problem with that.

  * * *

  Bannickburn was in mid-rant, fake jowls shaking with every angry word.

  “I don’t want some pansy floor guard, and I don’t want some candy-ass head of the floor. I want the head of security for the whole damn place. And I want him here, not in some fraggin’ office where he can try to sweep everything under the rug. He’s going to answer and he’s going to answer now.”

  Kader said nothing. He just loomed behind Bannickburn to give greater weight to everything Bannickburn said.

  Bannickburn was in full-throated roar, and he knew from long experience that he could continue like this for hours on end if necessary. The chief would have to come out sometime.

  And he did, finally, summoned more by the murmuring crowd around Bannickburn than by anything Bannickburn had said. Three times before the chief got there, guards had made a move to pick up Bannickburn and physically remove him from the casino. All three times, menacing glares from Kader, as well as from other casino players who seemed to sympathize with Bannickburn, stopped them in their tracks.

  The guards had done at least one useful thing, though—they’d found Alex and brought him over. He stood, nervous and resentful, between a pair of them. He tried to shrink into a puddle when the security chief arrived. Tall and thin, she was built like a whip. Her sharp features betrayed no worry about the increasing tumult in the casino.

  “Good evening, sir. I’m Liselle Byatt, head of security, and I’d like to help you, but the first thing I’m going to have to do is ask you to lower your voice so we can talk.”

  Bannickburn complied with a glare. “There’s not much talking to do,” he said. “You just need to take a look at some trideo footage.”

  Byatt smiled. “Sounds easy enough. What would you like me to see?”

  Her smile vanished once the footage started playing. Her face hardened, like hot metal under cold water. She threw an angry look at Alex.

  “Don’t let him go anywhere,” she said. The guards Hanking Alex obediently grabbed his arms.

  But then Byatt, looked again and something in her expression changed. She didn’t look any less angry, but now she didn’t seem sure where her anger should be directed. She looked at all the players involved in the drama in front of her, and decided not to speak to any of them.

  “Keep all of them right here,” she told one of the guards.

  “Are you sure?” the guard replied, glancing at the gathering crowd. “Maybe it’d be better if you finished somewhere . . . private.”

  “No. At the moment, I don’t trust any of these people to move a muscle in my casino. They started it here, they can wait here until I figure out how it’s going to finish. Keep them here. And don’t let them fiddle with any sort of device. Have all of them keep their hands where you can see them.”

  “Yes, sir,” the guard replied, and Byatt stalked off. Kader took a smooth step, gliding toward Bannick-Inirn like a specter.

  “Where is she going?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She should’ve taken action already. Right here. Right now.”

  “I agree.”

  “I don’t like this.”

  “Neither do I. But here we are.”

  Kader moved his face closer to Bannickburn’s ear. “You’re closer to me than he is,” he hissed. “I could kill you first, then worry about him.”

  Bannickburn turned, his prosthetic nose nearly bumping Kader’s real one. Neither man moved his head back. “You’re right,” Bannickburn said. “But if you do that, the guards would kill you before you got him. And isn’t he the one you really want?”

  Kader considered this. “I’m not here alone,” he finally said.

  Bannickburn knew this all too well. Kader’s flunkies had been trailing close behind, ready to free their boss from the grip of casino security at the drop of a hat. Kader knew he needed to put up with the security temporarily, so he’d waved them back. They remained close by, though, and their considerable bulk made them easy to spot in the crowd.

  Bannickburn decided to not say anything. He just cracked a corner of his mouth in a smile and let Kader guess what the grin meant.

  Then Byatt returned with a nervous-looking dwarf in tow. The dwarf clutched the small trideo player in her hands, and her blond braids swept across it as she scanned back and forth across the gathered crowd. Her round face puckered.

  Bannickburn could almost see the steam coming out of Byatt’s ears. She’d seen what she was supposed to, he guessed. Now things were going to get really fun.

  “Georgia,” Byatt said, apparently addressing the dwarf. “Tell them.”

  Georgia muttered something. She might have said, “ ’Tis fade,” which would make no sense, but Bannickburn couldn’t be sure because the dwarf was so quiet, while the muttering of the surrounding crowd only got louder.

  “Louder, Georgia,” Byatt said.

  “It’s fake,” Georgia said. “The trid footage. Doctored. Our dealer never did that.”

  “What the hell . . . ?” someone yelled, but it was one of the goons, not Kader himself. Kader kept silent, with murder in his eyes, trying to decide where to direct his killing gaze.

  “I don’t know what kind of game you people are playing, and I don’t want to know. I just want the three of you out. Take Mr. Primus, Mr. Miller, and Mr. Kader—”

  Then another voice joined the conversation. “Kader? Is that Murson Kader?” It was a man in a tuxedo with the official Gates Casino green-and-gold cummerbund. Another high-ranking official. With, thanks to Jackie, perfect timing.

  “Yes,” Byatt said. “The tall corpselike guy over there.”

  The tuxedoed man turned to Kader. “Mr. Kader, I’m Tyrone Lawton of the Vault Department. I need you to step aside with me to discuss a . . . matter.”

  “Kader’s not going anywhere,” Byatt said, “except out. My people were about to show him to the door.” Lawton fidgeted and wiped his brow with a gleaming white handkerchief. “I’m afraid I need him to stay, so this matter can be addressed.”

  “What are you talking about, Lawton? What’s going on?”

  Lawton looked at Kader, taking note of the muscular goons behind him, then looked at Byatt. His eyeballs nearly twitched out of his skull. He leaned close to Byatt and whispered something in her ear.

  Unfortunately for Kader, Byatt did not feel like being nearly as discreet as Lawton. “Counterfeit!” she yelled. “What in hell are you talking about?”

  “Just that,” Lawton said meekly, “there’s no real value in the credsticks. They’re attached to accounts
, and the accounts are trying to claim they have money, but they don’t, really. It’s tricks and nonsense—no real money.”

  “How much?”

  “Mr. Kader has bought twenty thousand nuyen in chips with these credsticks tonight.”

  Byatt placed her hands on her hips and glared at Kader. “Fake videos and counterfeit credsticks. We’ve had a busy night tonight, haven’t we?”

  And Kader finally snapped. His mouth twisted, and a guttural growl wormed through his chest. His brow creased, reddened, and grew moist with sweat. His hands lunged for Bannickburn’s neck, so he could break it with one violent twist.

  But Bannickburn wasn’t there. He was running, barreling toward Byatt, watching her draw her automatic, hoping he had enough time.

  Behind him, Kader’s goons echoed his growl, only louder, and moved forward. A slot machine got in their way, and they pushed it over. Glass broke, coins rattled. Some patrons dove out of the way, while others scrambled to see if any money had fallen out.

  The first shots were fired. Not by Byatt—she was still raising her gun, looking for the sweet spot between Ban-nickburn’s eyes—but by someone behind Bannickburn. The elf ducked his head and hoped the armored fabric sewn into his costume would do the rest of the work.

  Byatt took a step back, apparently bracing herself for a blow from Bannickburn, but he veered and bulled into Georgia instead. She was less than one and a half meters tall, but she was plenty solid and she didn’t go down easily. Bannickburn had momentum on his side, though, and they both tumbled to the floor, rolling and rolling.

  Byatt didn’t take a shot—she didn’t want to hurt Georgia, just as Bannickburn had expected.

  Georgia didn’t make a noise after Bannickburn hit her, probably because she was hyperventilating in panic. Bannickburn felt a twinge of guilt, but then he was at the end of a row of slot machines, and he had to worry about making his escape. He managed to gasp a quick “sorry” to Georgia as he dashed between the patrons, most of whom looked for a hiding place, while a few managed to at least glance at him between pulls on their machines.

  Now he moved. The next part of the plan had to happen quickly.

  He stayed as close as he could to other patrons, partly to prevent security from getting a clear shot at him, partly to prevent any monitoring mages from getting a good look at his aura. He zigzagged a little between the rows of machines when he needed to, but for the most part he traveled in a straight line. He knew where he wanted to be.

  Sweat trickled between his real cheek and his fake one. It suddenly felt like he wasn’t getting enough air through his disguise. He kept sprinting, and every breath stabbed his side with pain.

  He had a solid ten-meter lead on the nearest guards, which would only buy him a second or two. He had to make that enough.

  He ran into a crowded restroom and dropped the bomb he’d pulled out of his pocket. A loud flash made everyone inside jump, then the smoke made them panic. Luckily, it spread quickly and thickly, and most of them couldn’t find the door. That was good—Bannickburn needed them present for a little while longer, and their natural confusion would only aid what he was about to do.

  He entered the third stall and pressed himself into the back corner. He was now standing in one of the only spots in the casino not visible to security cameras. Any mages working security would still be able to see his aura, but it would be lumped in with everyone else in the small room, difficult to make out individually. And things were about to get hairier for anyone trying to keep track of the mysterious Mr. Miller.

  Bannickburn lit up a small cigarette and inhaled sharply. After a mere three tokes, he’d burned through the whole thing. His lungs smoldered painfully with smoke, but he needed to take it all in quickly. He felt the smoke work its way into every crevice of his lungs, then seep outward through the rest of his body. His chest, his arms, then his legs felt light, insubstantial, ready to drift on the slightest current of air. The intensity of the situation dissipated, and Bannickburn felt a certain distance from the chaos around him.

  His hands, feeling like clouds riding a breeze, peeled off a layer of latex and ripped off his shirt while reversing his jacket. His second mask was showing now, this one much tighter, giving him a long, lean face. His hair was now blond, and he wore a white blazer with an aqua shirt. Hopefully, this second disguise would be completely unnecessary.

  The Little Smoke he’d inhaled made him feel dizzy, and he stumbled awkwardly out of the restroom stall. No one glanced at him. Now the other men around him seemed strangely unable to find the door. They bumped into the walls and each other, and a few unlucky souls sat down in urinals. A few of them found the way out.

  The confusion power of the Little Smoke was clearly working well. From the way he felt, and the fact that no one registered his presence, the concealment seemed pretty effective, too.

  A few guards walked into the restroom, but as soon as they came in they started acting just as disoriented as everyone else. Bannickburn moved patiently, drifting between people, until he finally came near the door. It opened, and he blew out.

  He looked for another crowd in which to lose himself. He hoped the security mages were becoming as confused as the people in the bathroom, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

  The most promising spot looked like the front entrance. Casino security had locked down the entire building, and a considerable number of patrons were milling around the doors, waiting for the all clear so they could get the hell out.

  Bannickburn joined them, amused at how people became clumsier and more disoriented as he drew near. He slid into the middle of a throng and stayed there, hoping for safety in numbers.

  The front doors opened, and the crowd shoved forward eagerly. The guards pushed them away and cleared a little space for a couple of DocWagon medics with a gurney. The medics didn’t seem to be in a hurry—the patient was either going to be fine or was already dead.

  The medics actually knew far more about what was going on in the casino than anyone besides Bannickburn. Beneath the medical scrubs were Cayman and Spindle, hurrying to pick up their comrade.

  The gurney disappeared between the rows of slot machines. Bannickburn waited, and after a few minutes the medics reappeared. A sheet-covered body lay on the gurney. The medics were still taking their time.

  Bannickburn scanned the rest of the casino, but he couldn’t see Kader or his goons. He didn’t think they’d slipped out—with any luck, casino security had taken (hem to a nice, secure place.

  The gurney came closer. A bloodstain had appeared near the right shoulder of the body, under the sheet. Bannickburn hoped it was fake, a show-business touch thrown in by Cayman, but there was a real chance that X-Prime, who was under the sheet, had been hurt.

  By now, the casino personnel should be convinced that X-Prime—Alex—was dead. One of X-Prime’s duties, while waiting for Bannickburn to prod Kader into action, w'as to ingest some Cold Slab, an interesting little experimental drug they’d gotten from the same people who supplied the fake DocWagon outfits. The drug had dropped X-Prime’s pulse to nearly nothing and made his breathing so slow and shallow as to be undetectable. Any decent medical equipment would show he was still alive, but the casino hadn’t bothered with that. He looked dead, the meat-wagon docs who came by said he was dead, and that was good enough for them.

  Spindle and Cayman carried X-Prime out, leaving Bannickburn to make his escape. He decided there was no time like the present. He dashed through the crowd, feeling like steam in a wind tunnel, and slipped through the main casino door just as it closed behind Cayman. •No one in the casino noticed or cared.

  15

  Naturally, he checked NewsNet first. It wasn’t the top story of the day, but it was there, read by an earnest young man who lowered his voice to show that he thought it was a serious item.

  “Chaos at the Gates Casino last night, as a reputed mobster and a mysterious con man accused the casino of shifty dealing. The mobster, Murson Kader, an
alleged associate of the Finnigan crime family, lost over twenty thousand nuyen at the casino, only to accuse a dealer of cheating on behalf of another player. Though Kader and his associate, a man only identified at this point as ‘Mr. Miller,’ claimed to have trideo proof of the cheating, that proof turned out to be doctored. When his evidence was questioned, Kader flew into a rage, inciting a brawl that spread across the casino and claimed one life. The deceased, a SINless man known only as Alex, is believed to be the man who won most of Kader’s twenty thousand nuyen at the poker table.

  “Lone Star Security Services, in conjunction with Gates Casino management, is working to develop an appropriate response to the situation, including determining what charges to file against Kader. The case is complicated by the fact that the credsticks Kader used to gamble at the casino were counterfeit. Mr. Miller remains at large, and Lone Star has provided the following mock-up of his appearance.”

  An image that looked vaguely like Bannickburn’s disguise from the previous night appeared on the screen. Bannickburn squinted at it, then smiled. His brain seemed surrounded by a gauzy cloud, and he had trouble summoning the motivation to do more than switch between the nets. Detoxifying (he preferred that term to the more colloquial “coming down”) was never easy.

  He switched to INN. He had to wait to see the coverage he wanted, but when it came, it was most gratifying.

  “We’ve just heard from Liselle Byatt, security chief of Gates Casino, announcing a lifetime ban on Murson Kader from all Gates Casino properties, both in reality and on the Matrix. Byatt also hinted that this is only the beginning of the punishment the casino will seek, though Mr. Kader’s extensive contacts may limit the casino’s actions against him.”

  Beautiful, Bannickburn thought. All quite beautiful. Report after report alleged—which, to the public, was as good as a statement of fact—that Kader was a liar playing with counterfeit money. And now he was banned from Gates for life.

  This was enough, but Bannickburn wanted more. “What’s the Matrix buzz?”