Dirty, spiteful faces surrounded her, leering. Rough gutter voices called her names and mocked her. The faces were laughing, split with snag-toothed grins, taunting her. She had spent her whole life trying not to be part of their world, hating its helplessness. Helplessness—what she hated even more than those faces.
They were scum. The same all over the world, the hopeless and the lost huddling in the shadows of the great metroplexes. They were street people, chippers, drudges, and bums. They were petty criminals, pimps, sleazers, and whores. Some of the scum thought they were better than the rest, malcontents who called themselves shadowrunners and played at being noble idealists. As though a fancy name could change what they were—thieves, two-bit terrorists, and parasites on the body corporate.
Sometimes the scum got the upper hand, caught someone before he or she could get out with enough skin intact for the corporate doctors to rebuild. But revenge was possible if one awaited his chance, worked for right time to strike like a tiger from ambush. That was the way a professional handled it. Sooner or later, the vermin always made a mistake and a pro would hand them their heads. At least, that’s what he would do if some sniveling traitor didn’t sell him away.
In the dark, the flashes of sweaty, grunting bodies fueled her rage. Filthy, fetid room. Grimy, groping hands. A bad-toothed grin under mirror eyes. Slobbering mouths. Pain.
She hated traitors. Weak-minded perverts who sold away their company’s heritage and fellows for their own gain and sold off their fellows for their own comfort. She hated the slime that let others do the dirty work they were afraid would dirty their hands. Worse than those, she hated the ones who got away with it; the ones who went crawling back to their corporate cocoon as though nothing had happened. As if they had betrayed no one.
One by one, the faces changed, their features flowing and coalescing until each face had a single set of features. A broad, dirty face with mirror eyes that belonged to a gutter animal. Street scum. A sleazer. She would never forget that face.
The leering visage splintered like a glass mask, the shards falling away to reveal another face underneath, deceptive in its ordinariness. Blond hair close-cropped in a salaryman’s cut, a chromium steel datajack on the left temple. Square jaw. Straight nose. Hazel eyes. She knew that face, too. She knew it as well as her own, knew all the wrinkles and blemishes. Placid, dog-stupid, trusting, and innocent, it was a traitor’s face, mocking her and her helplessness.
She hated it.
Blam!
The Ruger Super Warhawk in her right hand roared, blasting 11mm slugs into a jeering visage. No more datajack.
Blam! Blam!
No more hazel eyes. No more pearly toothed smile.
Blam! Blam! Blam!
Faces splintered under her bullets, the traitor sent to oblivion. Atonement for her shame.
No traitor. No shame. If only it were so easy to expunge him and the memories in the real world as it was to imagine his face on the range’s targets.
“Nice shooting, A.C.”
Crenshaw spun, acquiring target without a thought as the smartgun link fed data through the induction pad in her hand. The gun’s snout homed in unerringly on the speaker’s face. He blanched as she increased pressure on the trigger.
The hammer fell with a click.
She smiled at the terror on his face. Her link had told her that the gun was empty, but he didn’t need to know that. Let him think she was a little wild. It wouldn’t hurt her reputation. She was slower than most of the other Renraku special operatives, and her cyberware was at least a generation behind. If fear would give her an edge, she’d take it. Any edge was better than none. She didn’t care if the grunts thought she was crazy; the people upstairs knew she did her job. They were the ones who counted, only their opinion mattered.
“Frag it, Crenshaw! What’re you doing?”
“Anybody who sneaks up on me regrets it, Saunders. Don’t forget it, because next time the gun won’t be empty.”
Saunders stepped back, face rigid and eyes wide. Crenshaw slipped off the sound-suppressor headset and walked away from the firing line. As she passed the armorer’s counter, she tossed him the gun, not bothering to see if he caught it. On her way through the door to the lockers, she grabbed a towel.
“You’re frizzed! You know that, Crenshaw?” Saunders called out to her back. “Totally glitched.”
She could hear the forced bravado in his voice. She smiled.