Shadowrun 44 - Drops of Corruption Read online

  “Sorry, James,” he said. “Didn’t mean to explode. It’s early. I must be confused. I beg your pardon.”

  “No matter,” Shivers said. “I’m truly sorry I don’t remember. Look, why don’t you come by later this afternoon? We can talk more in person.”

  Bannickburn felt like a complete fool, a pathetic amateur. How could he be dumb enough to try to set up a meeting with an illicit drug dealer over a cell phone? A determined decker, like the one sharing the room with him, could have hacked into the conversation without breaking a sweat. He had thanked James for the nice evening, then proceeded to put him at risk of an unpleasant run-in with any security forces that might be eavesdropping.

  “I’d love to come by. Maybe I could even see you this morning,” Bannickburn said hopefully.

  “My schedule won’t allow it. Drop by Carlyle’s at three or so. We can have a late lunch.”

  Carlyle’s wasn’t far from the docks. Shivers had known exactly what Bannickburn was talking about the whole time.

  “Fine. Thanks,” Bannickburn said, and disconnected the call.

  It was nine thirty now. It was five and a half hours until three, and he’d have to eat, and then go to the docks, then pull off the transaction. It could be seven hours before he had what he was looking for. Bloody hell.

  “Take a fraggin’ codeine.”

  Bannickburn hadn’t even realized he’d closed his eyes until he opened them to look at Jackie. Each blink moved through his head like thunder. “Beg pardon, my dear?”

  “Take a codeine. Stay away from Jimmy’s friend.”

  “Do you even know Jimmy’s friend?”

  “I know the type,” she snapped. “You’d be best off far, far away from him.”

  Bannickbum’s skull rattled again. He winced. “I think I can decide what’s best for me.”

  Jackie stared at him for a moment. Bannickburn considered saying how nice her eyes looked when she was angry, then thought better of it.

  “If you come here with any trace of bliss on you,” she finally said, “any at all, you can sleep in a dumpster. Or anyplace else. Anywhere but here.”

  “And when did you get to be such an upstanding citizen?” Bannickburn asked mockingly.

  “Anywhere but here,” she repeated.

  Bannickburn knew she was serious. And he knew that if he used Bliss, there would be no way he’d be able to hide it from her.

  Grumbling to himself, he grabbed his coat and walked out in search of codeine. Hopefully, he could at least ease the pain in his head enough so he could take a shower without the water feeling like a million needles poking his skull.

  Sunrise had been maybe three hours ago. Any dust and grime that had settled overnight was wind-stirred into the air, a sea of black dots scattered in front of the clear blue sky. Not many people were out in Avondale at this time of the morning, and those who were didn’t want to be. They slunk in dark corners, throwing resentful glares at anyone who dared to notice them.

  What do I need James for? Bannickburn thought. I’m surrounded by people who are likely dealers of illicit substances. And the nearest law enforcement personnel were most likely miles away.

  Sadly, though, he had no idea how to approach a potential dealer without an introduction. He had picked up several new skills in his time in New Seattle, but that wasn’t one of them—and Jackie didn’t seem inclined to teach him.

  He sighed and continued down the road.

  The Body Mall would carry what he wanted and might even have some bliss. But it was a ways away, and he’d have to go through or around Glow City to get there. Somewhere in Avondale there was someone selling what he wanted. The trick, with Avondale’s rapidly changing retail—stores opened and closed every week, sometime within the space of a single day—was finding the right place.

  The flea market south of Jackie’s cellar had been shut down a week ago, a victim of a battle between gangers over the market’s meager profits. Most of the retailers hadn’t found a new location yet—a good number of them were still confined to their beds.

  He’d heard of a tent city that had been hitting vacant lots recently, keeping on the move so they could sell goods lifted from other residents of the Barrens. As soon as one of their victims caught up with them, that outlet would shut down, too, but as far as Bannickburn knew, it was still running.

  The wind shifted and brought the usual smells of concrete dust and smoldering rubber, along with something else. Bannickburn sniffed sharply. Popcorn.

  They were getting bold, easier to find. They must have been stealing from people in other neighborhoods lately. Bannickburn walked faster.

  The patched tents sat amid crumbled brick walls and looked like a circus in a war zone. Merchants sat on rickety stools but kept one foot on the ground, ready to scatter at a moment’s notice. A few of them had sparse collections of wares on display, but most of the interesting and valuable goods were carefully packed away. That way, the important merchandise could be on the backs of the merchants when they fled.

  Bannickburn looked for the red cross that most merchants with medical goods displayed near their tables. Before he saw it, a collection of wood chips caught his eye—especially the white-speckled black bark on one long piece. He sidled closer.

  He tried to appear disinterested, but as just about the only customer on the lot, he couldn’t deflect attention to anyone else. The merchant next to the table, a dwarf woman with a rough burn scar covering the right side of her scalp, watched his every move.

  “You’ve got a good eye, chummer,” she said when she saw Bannickburn staring at the black wood. “Best piece of the collection.”

  “Can I touch it?”

  “Go ahead.”

  He picked it up. The bark was still quite rough—it hadn’t been handled much, which was good. If this was what he thought it might be, rougher bark meant more potential power locked inside. In the right hands, a piece of wood like this—unless it was fake—would suck in a spell like an elephant inhales water. Most of the time, creating a focus—an object that holds a spell for later use—takes considerable effort and more than a little personal cost. Enchanting something like midnight wood, though, is only slightly more difficult than striking a match. At least, that’s how it used to be for Bannickburn.

  Chances were, though, that if it was what it looked like, it wouldn’t be sitting on a table in the middle of the Barrens. Unless the merchant was too dumb to know its true worth, which was always possible.

  “I don’t suppose you picked this up yourself,” Bannickburn said.

  “No sir, I don’t leave these parts much. I’ve got one of those, how do you call ’em, networks? Supplier networks? Bringing me stuff.”

  “Must be a good network, to bring you pieces of this quality.”

  “Yes, yes, top quality.”

  “Not many networks can get this deep into Aztlan,” Bannickburn said, running his fingers over the rough bark.

  “No, of course not. But that’s what I pay the good money for, isn’t it? To bring valuable items to discerning people like you.”

  It was a fake. Bannickburn now had no doubts. If it was real, the merchant would not have allowed him to give the bark the smallest rub, for fear of robbing the piece of some of its potency. And the Midnight Forest this wood supposedly came from was in Amazonia, not Aztlan. Any merchant skilled enough to get his hands on a real piece of midnight wood should know its country of origin. Bannickburn sighed in disappointment and moved on.

  He’d almost forgotten his headache as he focused on the wood, but once he started moving again it returned, throbbing like an infant’s heart. Thankfully, he spotted a red cross only two tables away.

  He walked quickly even though he felt like crawling, then fell forward, catching himself on the table and using it for support. “Codeine,” he croaked.

  “Looks like you need more than that,” said a slender man who was far too clean to have been in the Barrens long.

  Bannickburn almost s
napped at the man to just give him what he wanted, but then a note in the man’s voice registered in his brain.

  “What do you suggest?” Bannickburn asked casually.

  The man raised a narrow eyebrow. “There are many options. So many options. It all depends on how much relief you want and how much you’re willing to pay for it.”

  “Bliss,” Bannickburn said. He was in no mood to joust. “I want bliss.”

  “Don’t we all,” the merchant said sardonically, but quickly returned to business when his joke made no impact. “I can get that for you,” he said in low tones, though he probably could have shouted the words and no one in hearing distance would care. “Takes time, though. You come back, I’ll have it for you. Fifty nuyen.”

  The price alone was almost enough to make Bannickburn walk away, but he took one more stab at it. “How much time? This afternoon? Later this morning?”

  The dealer held up his hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa.

  No miracles. Tomorrow afternoon, maybe. Two days, definitely.”

  “Two days? I’m hungover now!”

  The dealer smirked. “Then maybe you should buy some codeine.”

  Bannickburn handed over a few bills (there wasn’t a credstick reader in sight), snatched the pills out of the dealer’s hands, and stalked off.

  “You know, if you’re thinking of taking bliss for a little hangover, you might have a substance problem,” the dealer called after him.

  Bannickburn whirled and saw a revoltingly condescending expression on the dealer’s face. Instantly he thought of a dozen perfectly lovely ways to wipe that look away. He particularly lingered on method seven— oh, that one would be quite rich indeed.

  But he couldn’t do any of them anymore, and he couldn’t come up with any new methods until the hangover was cured. He had no choice but to turn back around and walk away like a kicked dog.

  He clutched the pills in his hand and tried to think of last night. He wanted to bring back the swagger, the feeling of power. But it was entirely gone.

  “There’s an ork,” Jackie said through clenched teeth. Bannickburn opened his eye and was amazed to find that the light no longer hurt his brain. He blinked a few times. The pain didn’t come back. That much was right.

  Now he had to figure out what Jackie was talking about.

  “An ork where?”

  “An ork here. Outside. Looking for the way in. He knows someone lives here!”

  “He hasn’t found the way in yet, has he?”

  “No.” Red filled the hollows under her sharp cheekbones. “But he’s too close. Go talk to him. He’s on the west side of the building.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because I’m not clumsy enough to let an ork get this close. How do you think I stayed away from the fraggin’ assassins my lovely old boss threw at me? Because I’m careful!”

  “All right, all right. Back way?”

  “Back way.”

  Bannickburn was sulking toward the back of the cellar when a small pair of hands grabbed his shoulders and turned him. Warm lips left an enduring impression on his cheek.

  “Be careful,” Jackie said.

  Bannickburn patted her hand. “What else would I

  be?”

  It was nice, he thought, to have a reminder of why he was staying here. He continued toward the back of the basement and opened a narrow door with several broken slats. He smelled earth.

  A short tunnel—concrete walls and ceiling over bare ground—led to a staircase. He ascended six steps, then pulled open a small stone door, no more than one meter wide. He squirmed through and grabbed a piece of rebar set into the stone wall and climbed up. Just below the metal manhole cover, he crouched, listening. He couldn’t hear anyone moving in the alley just above him. Of course, the ork could have moved since Jackie last saw him, and might now be standing right where Bannickburn planned to come out, but he’d have to take that chance.

  He pushed the manhole cover up a quarter of a meter and scanned the alley. Nothing. Moving quickly, he shoved the cover entirely off, scrambled up, and replaced the cover. Hopefully it would look like he’d appeared out of thin air.

  He brushed some dust off his brown kilt and smoothed any obvious wrinkles. He didn’t think it would be necessary, but you never knew—sometimes even orks cared about appearances.

  He walked briskly out of the alley, turned left, and spotted the ork immediately. The stranger was wearing a suit. A nice suit. And staring right at him.

  “Robert Lionel Bannickburn?” the ork said in a voice that combined a low growl with clipped enunciation.

  Bannickburn was too confused by the ork’s appearance to ponder whether it was a good idea to conceal his identity. “Yes?”

  “Allan Tiberius Kross. I’ve been looking for you.” Having an ork looking for you was generally not a good thing, but Bannickburn was determined to regain his poise. “You’ve found me,” he said nonchalantly.

  “I believe you met an associate of mine last night? Quinn Bailey?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Kross smiled, an expression that, thanks to his lower fangs, didn’t make him look any friendlier. “No need to be elusive with me, Mr. Bannickburn. I’m here to help you. More to the point, I’m here to tell you that Mr. Bailey would like to meet with you if you’re available.” Bannickburn let a moment of silence pass so it wouldn’t seem like he was responding too quickly. “That can probably be arranged. When did Mr. Bailey have in mind?” Good God, he thought, I'm talking like the bloody ork.

  “Right now. I’m here to escort you.”

  Bannickburn’s only plan for the afternoon was to recover from his hangover, and that seemed to have been accomplished. Oh, and he was supposed to meet with James, but the need for that seemed to have disappeared. He could cancel.

  He wasn’t particularly anxious to go off alone with an unfamiliar ork, but the day he let a lone ork intimidate him would be a sad one, indeed. And he wanted to talk to Bailey again.

  “Lead the way,” he said, and gave a quick wave to where he thought one of Jackie’s cameras was, to let her know he wasn’t being taken against his will. Then he was off.

  4

  Bannickburn had seen lots of kinds of nice in his time. There was subtle-nice, luxurious-nice, ostentatious-nice, and nice-considering-the-circumstances (which was the most common kind of nice in the Barrens). Bailey’s office belonged to the category he called “academic-nice”—dark wood desk to match the pervasive bookshelves, volumes that looked pristine, either because new additions were constantly being made, or because none of them had ever been touched. There was even a globe (with tan oceans, not blue). Every chair in the room was leather and padded. Every person in the room— Bannickburn, Bailey, Kross, Shivers, and two unnamed, armed flunkies—squeaked when they sat down. As it turned out, Shivers had called to cancel their afternoon meeting before Bannickburn had the chance. Both had received the same summons.

  “Good to see you, Robert,” Bailey said. He looked even more dapper than he had the night before, a burgundy silk vest showing under his black suit. “I’ve gotta say I’m impressed that you can even walk today. The last time I saw that much alcohol disappear was when my friend Vida drove a beer truck off a cliff.” Bannickburn, leaning on one elbow, waved his hand casually in the air. “Was nothing,” he said modestly. The size of the flunkies in the room made him a little nervous, but he was far too seasoned to let anything show.

  “James here has been filling me in about your background, and while he was talking I had some thoughts. So I decided I’d invite you in, share the thoughts I had, see what they inspired in your mind, and we’d take it from there.”

  “Okay,” Bannickburn said, since he couldn’t think of a better reply. There were at least eight guns in the room protecting Bailey (Bannickburn counted two apiece on the flunkies, two on Kross, and one each on Bailey and Shivers), but the man himself sounded like nothing so much as a low-budget trideo director. What kind of business went on here
?

  “Now normally I wouldn’t be in a position to go outside my organization for tasks like this, but, you know, in the shipping business, things don’t always come in regular intervals—especially when you’re dealing with goods from Asia. The train shenanigans alone out there give me hives. So sometimes things come in all at once, and my resources are stretched way too thin, and I have to look around and find someone who may know something about Siberian Blood Ice.”

  “Well,” Bannickburn said. “Well, well.”

  “Wonderful,” Bailey said. “I see you’ve heard of it.” “I told you,” Shivers said. “This is what I told you.” “You know how valuable it is, I assume,” Bailey said. Bannickburn knew. Three years ago, a shaman in a small Siberian village lost control of his ayami, a powerful but jealous spirit that, in ideal circumstances, teaches a shaman all he or she needs to know. The shaman saw his ayami becoming too powerful, too controlling of him, and broke the bond between them. The ayami's jealousy spiraled into insanity, and she brutally assaulted the shaman, tearing him into extremely small pieces. Then, for good measure, she killed every last person in his village. The magical energy expended in the spirit’s vicious attack left traces that lingered to the present day.

  The massacre was not discovered until several months after it had occurred, by which time the blood of the villagers was firmly frozen into the snowy ground. The rest of the remains had been devoured by wolves.

  The ice holding the frozen blood of the shaman had tremendous talismanic power, and sold for as much as three thousand nuyen per crystal. It made the midnight wood Bannickburn had been thinking about at the tent market seem like a plastic four-leaf clover.

  The trick, though, was being able to tell the ice with the shaman’s blood from the ice with the ordinary villagers’ blood from some random piece of ice with a spot of chicken’s blood, or possibly red paint, frozen in the middle. Another difficulty, of course, came from making sure the ice remained frozen—but most mages who knew its strength could usually find a way to keep it cold.