Veiled Extraction: Shadowrun, #56, page 30
He wasn’t sure he believed his own words—which was probably why he wasn’t usually the one giving the pep talks.
Vyx leaped nimbly from one pile of broken fixtures to the next, running along the wall, looking for a shot. The Wolf spirit was fixated on her father, while the other four shamans, including the troll woman, and their remaining spirit battled the rest of the team.
Anissa, Henrik, and Gus had two of them pinned down behind cover with heavy fire. They’d been throwing around a lot of ammo—she knew they’d have to finish this soon, or they’d run out and then they’d all be screwed. Flea crouched in the far corner—she knew that only because his dot was on the AR display. There probably wasn’t much he could do in here—as a decker, the place’s lack of Matrix connectivity and the opposition’s lack of technological gear made it hard for him to affect the fight. Maybe he was just trying to stay out of the way, which was probably smart. That left Ocelot, also out of sight except for his dot, and Bronwyn near the door. She wasn’t throwing spells—maybe she’d tired herself out, or was focused on protecting the group. Vyx wasn’t sure which.
She was about to move again, intending to slip up behind one of the other shamans and jump her, when the troll woman in the ratty robes turned toward Winterhawk. She snapped something to the Wolf spirit, who suddenly rose on its hind legs and began to howl, its gaze still fixed on her father.
But the troll had her back to Vyx now.
She wouldn’t get a better chance. Everyone was ignoring her because she hadn’t done anything yet—now was the time she could prove she could handle this. “I’ve got an opening,” she said over the comm. “Going in!”
“Vyx!” Winterhawk’s voice rose above hers. “No. Don’t—”
She leaped.
It was one of the things she loved most about being an adept—the way she could jump great distances and land, feather-light, exactly where she wanted to. It was almost like flying. She used it a lot with the Ancients, sailing across the gaps between buildings, or from bike to bike, and never once had she lost her balance or fallen. She supposed she could fall—of course she could—but she refused to believe it. This was what she was meant to do.
She fixed her eyes on the troll. It wasn’t hard—the shaman had to be three meters tall, taller than even the male trolls Vyx had met, with a wide, broad back and long, greasy hair. As Vyx got closer, she raised her katana.
One of the shamans spotted her and yelled something, but he was too late. Vyx was moving too fast—she knew she was only a blur to anyone moving at normal speed, and these slowpokes didn’t have a prayer of stopping her now. She landed neatly on the troll’s back, caught her shoulder with one hand, and, in a smooth and fast movement, sliced her katana across the troll’s throat.
For an agonizing second, she thought it might not work, and once again her recklessness would get people killed—and probably herself as well. The katana’s sharp blade encountered resistance: magical armor, the troll’s natural physical defenses, or both.
The troll screamed a series of guttural syllables, raising her huge, clawed hands, trying to grab Vyx and throw her off. A stream of steaming, reeking liquid shot from her fingers, but once again Vyx was too fast for her: instead of hitting its mark, the stream shot upward toward the room’s high ceiling.
Vyx redoubled her strength, as some of the liquid pattered back down onto her armored coat, sizzling and burning holes into it. She pressed the slash hard, pulling back with everything she had. Prodigious strength was not one of her adept abilities, and she certainly couldn’t match physical power against a troll, but she didn’t need to. Her dislike of guns had forced her to learn the right places to slash if she wanted to injure, to maim—or to kill.
Her blade, honed to an impossibly sharp edge, slipped beneath the troll’s chin and sliced her throat open, sinking in deeper and deeper until the troll’s head nearly separated from her body. Blood, looking black in the unhealthy green light, sprayed out in a fan in front of her.
“YES!” Vyx yelled, raising the bloody blade and riding the troll’s body down as it toppled. She prepared to leap free and return to cover, suddenly aware of how exposed she was out here. An instant before she did that, though, she happened to glance directly upward, where the shaman’s toxic magic stream had gone wild.
The ceiling was cracking apart.
As she stared in horror, a massive fissure formed and widened, shooting out smaller tributaries. Bits of acid-etched plascrete rained down on her, and an instant later, another loud rumble passed through the room.
Oh, holy shit…we’re all gonna die in here!
A growl sounded, closer to her, and a fetid, hot stench filled her nostrils. She jerked her head around to face the source.
The Wolf spirit had turned away from Winterhawk, and its glowing, malevolent stare was now fixed on her.
Winterhawk had braced himself, reinforcing his magical defenses and preparing to once more leap out of the way of the Wolf spirit’s attack—it was getting harder now, as the air got worse— and hurry to Vyx’s aid before she got herself killed, when suddenly someone screamed behind it.
“Vyx!” Oh, spirits, the shaman had killed her—
But she was there, crouched on top of the troll’s body. The troll’s twitching, dead body. “She’s done it!” he announced over the comm. “The shaman’s dead!”
But then Winterhawk’s world compacted to only two things as the Wolf spirit whirled away from him and fixed its attention on Vyx. If he’d had any hope that the spirit would dissipate at the troll’s death, it was gone now. Whatever else was going on around them—the gunfire, the yells, the stench, the rumbling—he didn’t care. That thing wasn’t going to hurt his daughter, not as long as he was alive.
Roaring in rage, he gathered magical energy and flung a fireball at the Wolf spirit. It might not kill it—it might not even hurt it—but it would get its attention. If he could keep it focused on him long enough for the others to finish mopping up the other shamans, then—
The fireball fizzled and died, as the curtain that had lifted away dropped again, filling his head with magical static.
“Boss!” Maya’s voice was urgent. “They can’t hold it anymore! The ritual’s collapsed!”
He hadn’t needed Maya to tell him that.
The Wolf spirit was still facing Vyx.
Right, then—this is going to hurt.
He gathered more energy—more than was safe. He didn’t care. He had to get its attention. He had to get it away from Vyx.
And then her voice was on the comm: “Run! Guys, we have to go! This place is coming down any second!”
He looked up, and froze. She was right. The ceiling fissure was widening as he watched, and more plascrete pelted down. The shamans continued fighting, apparently oblivious to the danger. The gateway shimmered and shifted.
All at once, he he saw his opening. It might not work, but nothing else was working and they didn’t have time for subtlety. “Get out, everyone! Head for the door! Go! Go! Henrik—get ready to hit that ceiling with everything you have on the way out!” He marked the fissure, even though he didn’t think it was possible to miss it.
“You got it!” Henrik’s voice was triumphant as he caught on to Winterhawk’s plan.
The Wolf spirit leaped toward Vyx, but she was already moving. It was fast, but she was faster. By the time it landed hard where she’d been standing, its massive diseased paws crushing the body of the troll shaman, she was already nearly to the door.
“Come on!” she yelled.
Ocelot joined her an instant later, shoving Flea and Bronwyn toward the door. Gus’s roto-drone continued to lay down covering fire as he too backed toward the door. By this point, the whole wall was starting to come down, and the intermittent rumbling echoed like a heavy cargo train rolling through a tunnel.
Winterhawk ran. Flea, Anissa, and Bronwyn were already through and out in the hallway. Ocelot and Vyx slipped through next. Gus followed, but not fast enough: one of the shamans’ toxic streams hit him a few feet from the door. He fell, screaming.
“Now!” Winterhawk yelled to Henrik as he too darted through the doorway. More hunks of ’crete crashed down onto him, hitting his shoulders and back. He whirled just in time to watch what happened next.
Henrik pointed his grenade launcher at the fissure and let fly. The little orb flew unerringly upward and disappeared into the crack; an instant later an earth-shattering boom shook the area. For a second, it seemed as if the explosion wouldn’t have the power to take the ceiling down fast enough, but then the rumble grew louder and louder until it was almost deafening, and the whole thing cascaded down. The Wolf spirit made one last desperate leap for the door, but it was too big to get through. The last thing Winterhawk saw before he turned to leave was the thing going down under a pile of plascrete chunks, each one as big as a small car.
“Run!” Ocelot yelled. “Go! Go!”
“Wait!” Vyx screamed, skidding to a stop as all around her the other runners pelted down the hall in the direction of the stairway. The floor under her feet shook; bits of the ceiling out here began to fall as well. “What about Virago?”
“She’s not here!” someone yelled back.
She almost didn’t recognize the voice—it sounded very young and very scared. Flea? “You’re lying! You don’t know!” Tears streamed down her face, as much from the bad air and dust as from her despair.
Winterhawk grabbed her arm and was trying to drag her down the hall. “Come on,” he urged. “We have to get out of here before this bloody place comes down around our ears!”
She yanked her arm back. “I’m not leaving without her!”
Flea looked as if he were about to go to pieces. “She’s not here, Vyx! I promise!” He held up his deck. “I was searching the files I found! She’s not here!”
A head-sized chunk fell toward Vyx, and Winterhawk swept it away with a spell. He reached for his daughter again, but she danced away.
“How do you know? Where is she?” she demanded, whirling on the young decker.
“I don’t know where! Somewhere in Boston! Come on!”
This time she did allow her father to drag her along after the others. She felt suddenly numb. “Boston? Why—” Why would they take her there?
“They’re gonna infect her,” Flea said, hurrying along next to her. Behind them, a massive, muffled crash signaled the rest of the ceiling falling in on the huge room, and the hallway behind them was starting to go as well. Choking dust filled the air, mingling with the stench from the toxics. Everyone coughed now, doubling over, staggering along as fast as they could manage.
They reached the stairs and hurried up. “Infect her?” She stared at him—at least as much of him as she could see—in terror and disbelief. “With what? Is she gonna be like—” She thought of the malignant, disgusting abominations downstairs.
Flea didn’t answer, dissolving again into a coughing fit. He stumbled up the stairs, clutching the railing with one hand and his deck with the other, his eyes streaming. Vyx grabbed his arm and helped him.
Virago wasn’t here. She could wait for the rest.
Fifty-Two
They burst out into the clearing a few seconds later. It was still dark—Winterhawk felt as if they had been underground all night, but it had only been less than an hour since they’d gone in. Rain poured steadily down, but it felt good, washing away the muck and the stench and the dust. He dropped to his knees and took deep, gulping breaths of the fresh air.
He took quick inventory of the group as they did the same. Ocelot, of course, didn’t let himself rest, leaning against a tree in watchful wariness as if expecting someone else to jump them. Henrik, Anissa, and Bronwyn had dropped into heaps next to each other.
Melinda and Gus and Tweak, of course, would never come out. He’d mourn them later.
Where was Vyx? For a moment he didn’t see her, but then he spotted her across the clearing, focused on a slumped Flea. What were they talking about? He’d heard her yelling something at him on the way up, but couldn’t make it out over the rumbles and cracks of the dying building. He dragged himself to his feet and moved toward them.
His comm buzzed.
“CFD,” Flea told Vyx. He looked miserable, his pale face streaked with muck, his bright-red hair hanging limply over his forehead in the rain.
She stared at him. “No! No way! They—”
“They planned to use her as a test subject.” He broke into a fit of coughing, then indicated his deck. “It’s all in here. They infect ’em someplace in Boston. It just refers to their ‘Boston lab.’ I think that’s the corp end of things, not the toxic end. Then they send ’em down here so the toxics can try to cure ’em.”
Vyx’s whole body went numb. CFD? Those toxic fraggers were going to turn her girlfriend into a headcase? “Oh, god…” she moaned, and gripped his arm.
Flea shook his head. “I’m sorry…” he said. “But maybe they haven’t done it yet. Or…you know she might be able to fight it off. It can be done—you know that. Everybody knows that. If they get her and she can make it through seventy-two hours—she’s strong, right?”
Hope—a faint little thing, fragile and tentative—welled up within Vyx. “She’s the strongest!” she said fiercely. “And the most fuckin’ stubborn bitch there is! If anybody can fight it, she can! We’ll—”
She stopped as something caught her eye. Her father was approaching her, but he suddenly stopped, his expression going unfocused as if he were paying attention to something else. Who was he talking to?
The buzz wasn’t a call—it was an indicator of urgent voicemail. Three of them, in fact, all from the same LTG. He listened to the last one first, and went still at the sound of the voice on the other end.
“You’re a hard man to get hold of,” Damon’s voice said. “You must contact me as soon as you get this if you want a way out of the Zone. I’ve secured transportation for four as you requested, but it’s very time-sensitive. If you can’t get back to Boston in four hours, I’m afraid it will be forced to leave without you. I might not be able to get something else put together for weeks—it’s not easy to get people out without a great deal of preparation, even for me. Call me as soon as you can.”
Winterhawk glanced at the chrono in the corner of his glasses’ display: They had less than two hours to make the rendezvous. That would be cutting it damned short.
Quickly, he returned Damon’s call. The dragon himself didn’t answer, but he told the person who did that he and the others would be on their way. The woman, who seemed to know exactly what was going on, sent him the coordinates to a rendezvous point in Boston, near the harbor. “Don’t be late,” she cautioned. “They won’t wait for you.”
“Got a way out,” he told Ocelot over a private comm channel. “But we have to move fast. See if you and the others can get that Bulldog functional again. I need to talk to Vyx.”
His daughter was still sitting with Flea when he approached them. She looked shell-shocked, but he couldn’t tell if that was because of something the decker had told her, or merely because the enormity of what had just occurred was finally catching up with her and she was in shock. “Vyx…”
Her gaze came up to meet his, but she didn’t speak. She looked pale beneath the rain-streaked grime on her face.
Flea got up and gathered his deck. “I’ll give you two some space,” he said, and hurried after the others.
“Are you all right?” Winterhawk asked her. He crouched down next to her, mindful of time ticking away.
She shrugged. “I dunno.”
“Listen,” he said. “I just got a call—we’ve got a way out, but we need to act quickly. The transport leaves in two hours.”
She stared at him. “You’re leaving?”
“We’re leaving,” he said gently. “All of us. We’re getting out of the QZ. Back to civilization.”
“In two hours?”
“Yes. In Boston. We have to get moving.”
She shook her head. “No. I’m not leaving.”
Now it was his turn to stare at her. “What do you mean, you’re not leaving?”
“I can’t go!” she said, glaring. “Virago—”
“Virago’s gone,” he said, keeping his voice gentle. He put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Vyx. Truly I am. I wish it weren’t so. But staying here won’t help—”
“She’s not gone!” she protested, flinching away from him. “She’s alive! She’s somewhere in Boston, in some lab, and I’m gonna find her! Flea found the records in that stuff he grabbed. They’re gonna infect her with CFD. They’re gonna make her into one of those—things.” She gestured toward the ruin of the lab. “But maybe they haven’t done it yet! Maybe if I can get to her before they do—I can’t just leave her here!”
Winterhawk rubbed his forehead. “Vyx, listen. You can’t stay in here. Once you’re out, you can do whatever you like. You don’t have to go back to your mother. I can talk to Damon—his people can find Virago. Maybe they can even get her out, if she wants to go. But—”
She leaped to her feet, her smooth brow furrowing in anger. “You don’t get it, do you? You don’t just abandon the people you love because it’s easier for you! Even if she doesn’t turn into a headcase, she’ll never leave here. The Ancients are her family. I told you that! And I belong with her!”
Winterhawk studied her face. Her eyes, the stubborn set of her jaw—so much like his own. For a long time, he didn’t say anything; then he let his breath out. “All right,” he said softly. “If that’s the way you want to do it—I’ll stay too. I’ll tell Damon to get Ocelot out, and fill the other spots with anyone else who wants to go. I’ll stay here and help you find her.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re not serious. You can’t do that.”
“You just told me you don’t abandon the people you love because it’s easier…” he pointed out.
