The music bumped and pounded around the pair as they made their way through the wildly
thrashing bodies. The stage at the front of the bar was filled with dancers, much as
the floor around them, and the strobe lights gave a dizzying affect that washed over
the two as they neared the table.
The music blasting from the speakers was so loud that Jacob Laramie -- Canis Latrans,
now -- could barely think. The pulse of base pounded through his feet, giving him a
headache that throbbed in time to the ancient music. Boots would love this place. He
liked the Death Metal from the end of the last century.
As the pair started up the steps to the upper level where their destination sat, he
placed the song. 'It's on!,' he thought to himself, placing the song. 'Beef? Corn?'
He shook his head, clearing it of the unimportant information.
They came to the top of the steps, Sam in the front, Canis Latrans, Latch to his friends,
following and to his right. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Mage, and somewhere
Decker would be riding matrix overwatch, while Rigger kept the car outside. Just in case.
The crowd separated as Sam moved forward with practiced ease, his black trench coat
billowing out slightly behind him loosely. Latch followed carefully, his eyes scanning
the crowd nervously, excited by the prospect of completing his first shadowrun.
The table, their target seated behind it surrounded by beautiful women, came into view
over the indulating bodies. The song changed suddenly to a loud screeching wail of a
guitar, and the target seemed to notice them for the first time. His eyes went wide, his
jaw slack.
Sam reached across his body to the under arm holster. The world seemed to slow as he
pulled forth his Ares Predator.
Their target leapt forward with inhuman grace, his features twisting. He didn't seem
to strain at all as he shoved the table before him with all of his might sending it
spinning end over end toward the two runners. It caught a dancer in the back sending
the table to the ground and the girating man into a knot of his peers.
Their target moved unnaturally smoothly, twisting to grab one of the women. Latch
called the mana to him, focusing his mind as a weapon, and cast it. The woman's
weight seemed to increase, but their target compensated, lifting her unconscious form.
Too late.
Sam fired a pair of blasts from his hand gun. The first shot caught the man in the
throat, and the second in the forehead. The target didn't seem to notice for several
seconds as he stood there, a stunned, angry look on his face. A third round of thunder
that was drowned out by the music, and the man looked down at the newest hole carved
through his chest.
His fingers began to disintegrate before he'd hit the floor, and within minutes the
body was nothing more than a pile of ash surrounded by terrified women. Latch smiled
wolfishly at their success and caught sight of Mage giving him a thumbs up.
"The kid can handle this." The old ork's voice was so firm that it left no room for
argument. Latch had more than one argument, but he didn't voice them.
"Fine." Sam -- team leader and street samurai Raymond Jeem's team designation -- didn't
sound happy, but he wasn't about to go against the older shaman. It was never a good
idea to bother the Coyote shaman, especially when he got like this. "He can go out on
his own, but I'm gonna have Sarah," that was the team's mage, a beautiful ork with
dark brown eyes and hair, "watch him. In the astral," he added quickly, seeing the
shaman's look of annoyance.
Boots nodded, turning to look at Canis. "Don't disappoint me, kid. You did good on
that vampire hunt. Now it's time to geek some ghouls." He chuckled at his alliteration,
then leaned back in his chair. "You think you can handle it?"
Canis nodded eagerly.
Another fifteen minutes passed while the team readied him, handing out advice and,
in Boots' case, sarcastic reminders. Sarah didn't like that he would be going after
the ghouls alone, but she understood that he needed to build confidence if he would
ever truly be a part of the team.
So, after slipping the ancient Colt Manhunter he'd been loaned by the street samurai
into his belt, Canis was on his way.
The walk was short, and it gave him time to think. An hour ago he had been sitting in
the front of Maxine's, the small diner where the team made it's home base. A Johnson
had come to the table where he and Boots were seated after the latest run he'd gone
on, nodded at Boots, and told Canis about the run.
Not Boots. The Johnson hadn't even consulted with the senior shaman, instead focusing
all of his attention on the seventeen year old human. He'd explained the situation --
a group of ghouls had begun praying on residents near the diner, and he had been
selected by the locals to hire a shadowrunner. Unable to gather the funds for the
whole team, the Johnson had heard about Canis' most recent escapade in the death of
the vampire, and wanted to know if he was interested in, not only the reward put up
by the citizens of the area, but also the reward money being offered by the government.
Canis had, of course, accepted.
His destination was an old abandoned warehouse five blocks from Maxine's. To one side stood
an abandoned car lot, and to the other side a warehouse. In the middle stood the Automated
Industrial building, broken windows gaping. The paint had long ago peeled or been washed
away, and a fire had left the northern wing black with soot.
The lot in front of the building, once a carefully manicured lawn surrounded by a high
fence, was now an overgrown tumble of weeds, bushes, and stunted trees. The vegitation
stank of rot, and even the birds seemed a little afraid to go to near the building.
Canis shrugged off his unease and hurried past the single section of chain link fence,
walking up the cracked stone path to the smallish white door near the center of the
building. Pulling thte Manhunter, he forced the door in with a dull jingle from the
rusted bells above the door, which refused to swing shut after him.
He breathed a silent request to Coyote for aid in finding his targets, then looked around.
He stood in a foyer with three halls extending away from him. To either side was a small
hallway, carpeted and leading to what were probably offices. The main hallway, stretching
before him and sloping downward, was only fifteen meters long and ended at a pair of
metal double doors, both of which hung loosely in their frames. A sign hanging by
one rusted metal hook from the cieling proclaimed the room beyond to be "workshop,"
and so Canis ignored it -- for now.
Instead, he glanced first right, then left. The hallway to the right was covered in
cobwebs he noticed, while the left hand hallway was surprisingly clear. Both appeared
two dozen doors at intervals, with an elevator at the end of each. Taking one last
look down the right hallway, he decided that his best bet was to go left.
As he passed them, Canis looked into the offices. Most were empty, though one had an
old desk inside, and another had a couch that no longer had any stuffing and who's
springs poked through the fabric. Other than these, and a line of bullet holes etched
across the left wall about three fourths of the way down the hall, there was nothing of
interest.
The elevator opened easily under a little applied pressure from a knife loaned to him
by Rigger, and he looked up and down to find the top of the cage sitting a floor and a
half beneath him. Replacing the knife into his pocket and keeping a secure hold on the
Manhunter, the shaman leveraged himself over the side and dropped to the top of the
elevator. It groaned loudly, rocking unsteadily, then was still.
Breathing a sigh of relief that it had held, and cursing his not having tested the
cable's strength, Canis knelt down over the grill in the top and peered in. The elevator
was empty except for a patch of blood that had seeped into the carpeted floor, staining
it dark brown, so he lifted the half meter square and dropped through.
He took another moment to collect himself, then used the knife once more to force the
door to the elevator.
Assuring himself that the outside hall was dark and empty, the young man stepped out of
the elevator, raising his pistol first one way then the other. Nothing.
Listening, holding his breath, Canis waited for some sound to reveal itself, peering
into the inky darkness that made him all but blind five meters ahead. Minutes passed
without movement, the only sounds a distant drip and the skittering of mice and rats
through garbage down the halls in the darkness.
Moving slowly, carefully, Canis talked to himself quietly, forcing his mind from the
sudden realization that he was all alone in an unfamiliar place and without backup or support. 'Latch, you got yourself into this mess, you can get yourself out.' He smiled as his mind reached out for details, and a vague memory of an old flatscreen horror film he'd seen once surfaced momentarily. 'C'mon, chummer, you've seen a vampire, beat a toxic, and become a part of the best group this side of Downtown. You can handle a few drips, some rats, and a ghoul or three.'
His resolve strengthened, Canis started forward. He raised his off hand, readying it
to cast a spell should he need to, and silently asked the spirits of this place to
keep him safe.
There was no response, only silence.
Canis was swallowed in silence almost immediately, and wished he'd brought a flashlight.
The gloom was impenetrable, and he had to use his sense of hearing, relying on the
second sense rather than his primary. It made him uncomfortable.
But he knew that it made no difference. He had a job to do.
Frowning in distaste as he stepped in something soft and wet, he wiped his boot off and
continued moving. The shaman kept one foot on the ground, testing each step before he
made it, aware that any misstep would probably mean his death. Although being eaten
by ghouls sounded interesting, it was not something he wanted to try any time soon.
After several minutes of sightless wandering, had a thought. He didn't trust this place
enough to leave his body and go wandering around the astral plane searching for his
target, but if he used his astral sight to see, he decided that it would probably give
him some forewarning in the event of attack or trap. And at least it was something to do.
The darkness brightened as he concentrated on his heartbeat. He remembered the first few
times he had tried simply watching the astral plane, how it had been so difficult, but
gotten easier as time progressed. Now it was almost second nature to him, though he still
preferred his astral jaunts without his body.
Emotions flowed over him, colliding and reforming, whispering. 'Death,' they said, 'sadness,
pain and death.' The colors of the astral plane seemed to scream 'I am LOST!' and he
understood them. Somehow he knew that this was a place of mourning, a place where lives
had been lost and people had cried in sadness and pain.
He shuddered as the emotions tore at him, then forced himself to ignore them. 'No time,'
he told himself, 'only time to kill the ghouls before they can cause any more pain.'
And so he hurried forward, the world now lighted by the colors of the astral plane.
An uneventful half hour passed, during which time Canis amused himself with not only his
search, but by pretending he was a Lone Star cop -- this entailed not only mentally
conversing between himself and his "unit," but also by slipping around corners and
into doorways with his weapon at the ready, eyes searching.
He knew that he never would have done it had he been with the team, but here, alone,
he was getting bored and more than a little anxious, so he allowed himself some play time.
That stopped when he found the first astral imprint.
Canis stopped and looked at it for several long minutes. It was definately out of place.
Instead of sadness and depression, boredom and grief, the feelings were less intense.
They were -- what? He couldn't understand them at first because they were so foreign to
the environment.
And then it hit him. 'Anger,' he thought to himself, studying the mental imprint, 'not
strong, but anger nonetheless. And something else. Fear? Worry?' He frowned at that.
Had the ghouls captured another local? Or had they FAILED to capture a local, and were
angry? Or was this something else entirely?
Now that he had found something, his desire for revenge -- not for himself, but for the
community -- had been rekindled. And he felt a stirring of greed, though that had long
been subdued beneath the desire for more and more knowledge. But it wouldn't hurt to
kill these ghouls, a threat to metahumanity, AND to gain some funds.
He smiled as he moved forward quietly, weapon still held ready.
He knew that he had to be nearing the opposite end of the complex, though the twisting and
turning passages had fragged his sense of direction without his normal vision. He could
tell, however, that the rats were no longer in front of him, and that the sound of
dripping pipes had vanished some time before. So there could not be much farther to go
before the end of his search.
Could there?
He shook his head, clearing it. 'Focus, boy, focus.' The words of his mentor and friend
came into his head unbidden, and he smiled. of all the people to order him to focus, the
least focused of them all had always been the one to order him to keep his mind in the
present.
A whisper of sound caught his attention from nearby. Canis spun, weapon and hand raised,
both ready to fire off it's own brand of lethal justice.
Silence.
Listening carefully for any movement, Canis remained rooted to the ground. 'A rat?' he
wondered. Seconds passed, and then minutes. Still nothing.
Canis made barely a sound as he moved forward. The corridor was still illuminated in brilliant color, though it had changed subtly, taking on more life, hiding the pain and loss in a cloak of comfort. 'I am near,' he thought to himself, hugging a wall as he came to a door.
Something was wrong with the door. Something was stranglely out of place.
It took him a moment to realize it, but when he did, he nearly gasped. This door was solidly
shut. There didn't appear to be any rust on it, and the door frame was whole and intact.
The first of it's kind, and certainly not a coincidence.
Canis wanted to leave his body so that he could see the other side of the room, but he
realized that if a ghoul was watching him -- which he suspected was the case -- then he
would be dead before he returned. 'Damn,' he swore, 'damn, damn damn.'
Taking a deep breath, Canis mentally readied himself to attack the lair of his enemies.
He didn't know how many there were, had no idea the layout of the room, and didn't know
if this was an ambush. He let out a quick breath of air instead of laughing, and thought
to himself, 'Boots is gonna love this if I survive.'
Before he could change his mind the shaman reached out and grabbed the door handle, pressing
with all of his might and jumping inside the door, gun at the ready. Immediately he swung
around, seeing that the single occupant of the room was standing holding a bag, and
focused his sights on the ghoul before stepping to the side to protect his back.
"Well, well well," he said, a smile spreading across his face, "what have we here?"
The ghoul was a tall man, cadaverously thin with light, ashen skin and thin blonde hair
that had begun to fall out in clumps. He wore a dress shirt, and when he turned, Canis
could see that he held a black gym back in one claw-like hand. The room smelled of
rotting flesh, but incense covered it surprisingly well.
The ghoul's yellowing eyes were sunken, sickly specimens that lacked focus. His face
showed a mixture of disbelief, horror and fear. "S-"
Before the monster could speak, Canis shook his head. "Shut up, slot. I wanna know where
your pack is, then I'm going to kill all of you. Rid the world of you monsters." His jaw
clenched angrily as the ghoul backed away. "And take another step and I won't bother to
get the info from you. I'll blow you away now." That brought the creature to a hesitant
stop.
Canis took a moment to glance around the room. When AI had been a factory, this had been
a large, plush office, and still showed signs of it's original purpose. Candles scattered
around the room created a hazy light for the room, giving it a "homey" feel. A small
hallway vanished off to the right, and Canis imagined that there were probably more ghouls
down there. He nodded to himself. "Drop the bag."
The ghoul hesitated, but when Canis lowered the Manhunter toward it, he tossed it aside.
"Sir, if I-"
"Didn't I tell you to be quiet?" Canis ignored the man-thing for another few moments,
studying the room. It wasn't very spacious, but it was large enough to have an old
wooden desk, a pair of chairs, and a long couch, all situated around a beaten old
flatscreen TV.
Before Canis could say anything, a young girl raced into the room. "Mommy! Mommy,
daddy's ho-" he broke off when she saw the look of abject terror that had come over
the blonde man's face, and turned to see Canis standing with a gun pointed at him,
eyes rivited on the newcomer. She swallowed and backed away fearfully.
"H-honey, y-you get behind, behind daddy, sweety." The thin ghoul reached out a hand
slowly, grasping at his daughter, shuffling his feet until he could reach her, then
pulling her until she was hidden partially behind his too thin frame. "N-now you don't
hurt you, okay? S-she didn't do anything. I-I'm the one y-you want." He swallowed
painfully, still trying to keep the girl from being seen.
Canis, for his part, suddenly felt ill. The gun wavered, and he knew that he'd never be
able to concentrate enough for a spell. He only hoped that this wasn't some kind of trick.
The pretty young ghoul, her thin skin barely hiding bones, her blonde hair held up in
pigtails didn't look like a monster. And, now that he thought about it, the blonde man
didn't look like he had the strength in his body to hurt anything besides himself.
The blonde's aura swirled with anxiety.
A third ghoul entered the room quietly. She seemed to have known that he was present, and
she just stood there, hands held up to her chest, too frightened to speak, her eyes pleading.
'Oh, drek,' he thought, his Manhunter swaying in his hands, 'What now?' "Don't move, any
of you. Where are the others?"
"What others?" This was the young girl, who now tugged at her father's pant leg. "What's
he want, daddy?"
"I-I dunno, dearest." The ghoul spoke to Canis again. "L-let my wife and daughter go.
L-let them go!" This was punctuated by a threatening step forward, but a shake of Canis'
head brought the advance to a halt. "P-please, sir."
"Where are the other ghouls?" Canis repeated, straining to keep his sudden anxiety out
of his voice.
"What other ghouls?" the woman asked quietly, glancing between her husband and the intruder.
"Maria, h-he thinks that we've been attacking the above grounders." Canis frowned at this
but said nothing, letting the ghoul explain. "We don't go above, above ground s-sir.
It's t-too dangerous. W-we live off of m-monkey meat. It's not as healthy as h-human,
but," he shuddered and silenced himself before he could say anything more.
Canis' frown deepened. "Then why did Johnson say you were?"
"I-I don't know. Maybe I wasn't c-careful enough last time I went out to get s-supplies.
M-maybe I got c-caught and didn't know it." The ghoul's chest seemed to deflate even more. "I-I deserve whatever you give me. But p-please let Maria and Tara go. P-please?"
Mentally kicking himself for not having checked the information he had been given before
starting out, Canis nodded slowly, lowering the weapon. Almost instantly the girl, Tara,
peered around her father's side. "Are you a shadowrunner?" The excitement in her voice
was evident, but Canis merely nodded distractedly. "Billy told me about shadowrunners!"
She leapt out from behind her father, and instantly the Coyote shaman was on his guard,
weapon aimed at the father again.
"Billy?" Anger dripped from his words. 'Lied to! And I believed it!'
A soft sob from Maria, and the male ghoul's downcast look, combined with a suddenly
somber Tara told him that perhaps that was not the case. "He's my- he was my brother."
Quietly the blonde man elaborated his daughter's explanation. "Billy is the reason we
are like this," he said, motioning to his wife and daughter. "He was in a gang and we
were all caught in the violence. Billy died, but our transfusions were . . . tainted."
"Transfusions?" Canis didn't believe a word of it. Not here, in one of the poorest
areas of the sprawl.
The man nodded sadly. "We used to live in Renton. When we transformed we had to run for
our lives. We came here." He sighed. "I just wanted to keep my daughter safe." Before
the shaman could say anything the ghoul spun and dropping onto the couch holding his
head in his hands. "Now, even that won't happen."
'Frag,' Canis thought. He lowered the Manhunter and slipped it back to it's place at
his waist. He could handle anything these ghouls threw at him, and from their auras,
they were truly upset by the loss of their son and brother. 'Frag,' he thought again.
Tara took the replacement of his weapon as a sign that it would all be okay, and she
began to near him again. Maria, who must once have been quite attractive, held her
breath as her daughter approached their captor and let it out slowly when he smiled
at her, gently putting his hand in her blonde hair.
It felt wrong, somehow. Dry. And yet right in another way, as though he'd just made the
right decision. Sure, they were ghouls. Sure, there was a reward. But this father
loved his kids, and the mother was well and truly afraid for her daughter. And Tara?
He smiled at the girl. Probably not much older than he had been when his sister had
left him for her gang. Patting her head once more he said, "Listen, ghoul. I don't like
you -- I don't like any threats to metahumanity. But," he stopped for a moment, trying
to choose his words, "but I guess that you're more of a human that some others --
people who would sell their daughters on the streets, and I guess if you're not going
to eat anyone. . . ." He grinned at the blonde who looked up, then his face returned
to a mask of seriousness. "But leave. Now. They know you're here, and I know you're
here, and my team knows you're here. Get out. Go away. Live somewhere that you'll be
safe and away from the temptations of man."
He let his warning sink in, then turned to Tara. "And you, watch yourself. You're a
brave little kid, but follow ol' dad's advice, and don't eat anyone. Or at least no
one I know." He grinned at the girl, nodded at the woman, then disappeared back through
the door.
Hurrying through the darkness, his astral sight lighting the way, Canis caught a flash of
astral presence from around a corner. Without thinking he pulled the Colt Manhunter and
followed, keeping to the shadows as well as possible, hunting whatever had caught his vision.
He rounded the corner to find a pair of spirits beaming at him proudly. Both orks, one
swathed in brown fur made entirely of light, the other a swirling morass of colors, beamed
at him. "Good choice, kid," the older said as he realized who he'd been hunting. The
second, the one with the swirling colors, nodded her assent. "You got balls, kid.
Turning down that kinda nuyen to save a buncha ghouls. Glad ya did. I knew I taught
ya better'n ya let on."
Canis grunted. Although his mentor had taught him nearly everything, their ideas of
"right" and "wrong" often came into conflict. 'I did it because I felt like it. Because
I wasn't about to kill some cute little kid, even if it was a ghoul. Because. . .'
He frowned, deciding he better not make the excuses which they'd all probably see
through anyway, and instead, made a grunt. "Help me get out of here."
Another forty-five minutes had vanished before he entered Maxine's again. The team
was seated around a table in the back, the two mages stretching from their long
astral jaunt. Canis met the Johnson's eye and hurriedly made his way to the table.
"Done," he said, "ghouls eliminated. No pay, my pleasure." He smiled as wiskedly as
he could. "Besides, there were only three. It gave me some good karma to work on my
spells with, and I'm sure your people will need the money more than I."
Ignoring the look of surprise, Canis turned away with a wolfish grin. A trick worthy of
Coyote. He had helped the ghouls escape with their lives, managed to gain karma by
helping save innocent lives -- even if they were ghouls -- then, to top it off, had
gained yet MORE luck in the spirit world, not to mention a good rep from the locals,
by not accepting cash for services. Not bad for his first solo run.
He sank into his seat between Boots and Sarah with a sigh. "You guys wanna hear my
version?" he said with another too-eager grin.