“Remember, you aren’t really ready for this, so try not to get separated.”
“I know and I will.” The chromed head bobbed in agreement, mimicking the action of its controller. There was no real reason for the icon to do so. No program had been executed, no command given. The motion was an artifact of the consensual hallucination that allowed the human mind to function in the alien space of the Matrix. “I appreciate this, Dodger.”
“Your words will be proven true only if you perform as an astute and attentive student.” Dodger winced inwardly. The Professor would have laughed to hear him utter those words. Though his mentor had used a somewhat different phrasing, the intent was the same. Had the old elf felt the same emotions that tugged at Dodger now? Fear that his student’s nascent skill would be insufficient warred with the need to see him stand on his own. There was a very significant chance that Sam would fail disastrously on this run. And the blame would be Dodger’s for not demanding that one last drill, driving home a procedure until it was reflex. Or it might be his failure to describe some seemingly obvious trick of the trade that would lead Sam to make a mistake and pay with his life or his sanity. If there were more time, Dodger could train him better, but time, even for an elf, could be a more implacable foe than even the blackest of ice. There was no more time. Sam, ready or not, would wait no longer.
Anxious over his student’s capabilities, Dodger could not let him face the Matrix alone. Not against the powerful, and almost certainly hostile, Renraku System. Even without the IC, Sam would be a fast meal for the rawest Raku deckhound roving the system. Without Dodger’s experience, Samuel Verner, neophyte decker of the shadows, was likely to get his brain fried.
Dodger led the way. Their path ran through the fiber lines to the antennae hidden on the upper floor of the mission, then by microwave uplink to a satellite nexus. They shunted through the regional telecom grid connections and were beamed down into Seattle. They zapped through the local telecom grid to hover in an exchange junction box on Wharf Ten. The business system they had invaded was a minor client of the Renraku Corporation. The arcology Matrix was only a single, well-guarded step away.
They did not experience their journey as such. To their Matrix-bound perceptions, they simply stepped out and away from their home systems and seconds later stood at the foot of an enormous pyramidal icon. Its deep, non-reflective black was marked with a disk of glowing blue that regularly pulsed out an expanding ring of bright neon. The wave grew until it met the edge of the construct and another wave was unleashed. The first continued to expand, vanishing when the planar surface could no longer contain it, leaving arc segments to grow until gobbled themselves by the more distant edges of the construct’s surface.
“Bring up the masking utilities,” Dodger instructed.
He keyed his own, knowing without needing to see that his normal icon, a small ebon child with a glittering silver cloak, had been overlain with a simulation of the standard Renraku corporate decker icon. Sam’s Matrix imagery, having originally been one of those icons, underwent a less visible shift. The facial features blurred and smoothed as replicated corporate symbols and identification markings shimmered into existence.
The badges borne by Sam’s icon were faintly smudged, darkened as though slightly burned. With more time, Dodger could have done better, but he had to settle for unregistered duplicates of Renraku access authorizations that were imperfect. Though not foolproof, their disguises should withstand casual scrutiny by ordinary anti-intruder programming.
“’Tis time to see if your back door really opens our way into the castle.”
“Dodger, I don’t think I should let you see the code.”
“’Tis a place whose secret paths I have trodden before.”
“But you got in by yourself then. I wasn’t opening the door. I...well, it just doesn’t seem right that I should. Even now. What if we’re mistaken and Renraku has nothing to do with the killings? It would be wrong for me to give away this secret.”
“Do as your conscience bids, Sir Corp.”
“I just wanted you to understand.”
“Shall we get on with it?”
“All right.”
Sam’s icon moved ahead. They floated upward until they hovered at one edge of the pyramid, about a third of the way to the apex. Sam placed his hand at the point where an arc racing along the edge had revealed a slight discoloration. Just before the next wave hit that point, Sam’s icon swung between Dodger’s and the point of contact with the pyramid. As the wave passed, the faint glimmer of an outline appear in the surface of the Renraku construct.
Dodger opened his eyes. Usually there was nothing to watch while decking. His gaze drifted to where his companion’s fingers tapped code words into the Allegiance cyberdeck. Dodger’s fingers tapped an identical sequence on his own Fairlight deck. When Sam’s fingers ceased their frantic motion, Dodger’s hit one more key and the sequence was locked into storage on his deck.
Part of the price, he thought. The passgate was too valuable a piece of data to be denied him by Sam’s scruples. He refocused his full attention on the Matrix.
They entered the Renraku complex into a backwater slave module that was overseer for a bank of elevators. Such a node should not have allowed access to the system but it was, after all, a backdoor. The appearance was that of a small guardroom. Its smooth walls flashed infrequently with light as the elevators went about their business. A samurai dozed in one corner of the imaginary room, his neon armor dull. Because the elevators only connected a small spread of floors in areas of minimum security, the guardian ice would normally be activated only in an alert.
The run suddenly looked a lot more feasible. If Renraku had really been in an uproar over a major tech theft, the entire system would be on alert. Even here, the guard would be awake to watch the physical elevators and to report intruders to security. Such a monitor assignment was usually considered superfluous in such an unimportant node, but the presence of guardian ice was an indication of the thoroughness of the Renraku Matrix. At least, that was the most reasonable conclusion if one assumed that Matrix security didn’t know about the back door. Dodger didn’t think such ignorance likely. He certainly wouldn’t want to bet his brain on it.
Though the guard was asleep and everything seemed peaceful, it might still be a trap. If their own programs weren’t successfully hiding their identities, the countermeasure programming might be sophisticated enough to present a pacific image until the intruding deckers could be drawn so deep into the system that escape was impossible. Corporate deckers could already be jacking in to hunt them down, or a tracer might be back-tracking their signal to detect their physical location prior to targeting a strike team. Dodger hadn’t survived years as a shadowrunning decker without caution. But he had some experience with this particular corporate Matrix and he found nothing to indicate that all was not as it seemed. Somewhat assured, he signaled Sam to press on.
Sam leading, they left the elevator control node and stepped out onto the ethereal pathways that connected the components of the internal Matrix. In the infinite darkness, subsystems glowed like distant stars of arcane geometry, while pulses of data blazed comet-like across those subjective heavens. Before and behind them, their own path faded away, leaving them walking an insubstantial flare of light that came from nowhere and went to nowhere, until they reached the next node.
During the transit, Dodger noticed that Sam’s icon limped. His brow furrowed as he tried to understand the phenomenon. He had seen nothing in the persona programming that indicated such a visual interpretation for the construct. Once the run was over, he would have to re-inspect the chips.
As the limping chrome mannequin led him through node after node, Dodger’s confidence grew. He began to feel assured that there really was no alert. They had only encountered one roving corporate decker and Dodger’s programs had masked them from him. If an alert were in progress, they wouldn’t have gone three nodes without bumping into some deckhound. This might be an easy run after all.
Finally, they reached Sam’s goal, a datastore for medical files on non-human assets. When first told of it, Dodger had questioned the worth of such data to their quest. Would not personnel files, though harder to penetrate, be more useful in identifying whether the feathered serpent worked for Renraku? Sam had assured him that Renraku would classify a dragon, even a sentient one, as an asset rather than an employee. The distinction was foolishness to Dodger, but then he wasn’t Japanese like Renraku’s directors. Asians sometimes had different ideas about how the world worked. He’d seen enough of such skewed attitudes from Sally Tsung, and she was only half-Chinese.
The walls of the datastore were aswirl with alphanumeric characters. Symbols flashed different colors and danced at varying speeds, the pattern complex and ever-shifting. The image represented the code systems locking the data away from unauthorized access.
Sam’s icon stood transfixed. “I think you’d better handle this. I might trip an alarm.”
“Technomancy of the simplest sort. Keep watch.”
Dodger’s icon dropped its mask and an ebon hand flourished a matte gold case. Slim fingers snapped open the lid and delicately removed a tool. Kneeling before the flickering wall of alphanumerics as though before a lock, Dodger inserted the slim instrument into the flow. After a few minute adjustments, he selected another tool, slipping it into the flow to use with the first. A careful twist of the wrist and the symbols slowed, their color pulses becoming longer. Another twist, and they slowed further and further, until they froze.
“Which file, Sir Corp?”
“I need to scan them.”
Sam’s icon stepped to the wall and placed a hand on the seemingly solid light. The chromed head bowed as if in deep concentration and file names flickered briefly as a fairy fire fled across them. After a minute, the glow steadied and highlighted one of them. “That one.”
The ebon boy nodded and adjusted the angles of his tools. The wall moved again, sequences rippling past until the chosen code lay under the position of his hands. He returned the tools to their case and it vanished under his cloak.
Dodger extended his hand into the wall. It disappeared into the light as if cut off at the wrist. After a moment, he withdrew it. He held a fat green book. Dodger flipped quickly through the pages. “No serpents.”
Sam sighed.
Dodger tossed the book back through the wall and tapped twice on the glowing file code. The alphanumerics of the wall resumed their manic rush, but their clarity was reduced.
“Dodger, I think we’d better get out of here.”
“What is it?’
“I don’t know. I just think that we might be pushing our luck if we stay.”
Dodger’s suspicions were roused by Sam’s sudden concern, an indication that he was withholding information. He reactivated his masking program. “Very well, but I’ll lead. We shall move faster that way.”
They did, indeed, move faster, retracing their route toward the exit, until Dodger pulled up suddenly. He gazed in shock at the walls of the node they had just entered. Vertical slabs of mirror reflected their icons to infinity. It was uncanny, unprecedented. What made it worse was that Dodger’s reflection showed the jet outline of a boy crouched under a shimmering cloak and the markings of Sam’s chromed mannequin were dark pittings in the smooth surface.
Dodger felt uneasy. He had never encountered anything like this node in all his years of running the Matrix. His fingers flew across the keyboard, improvising programs to analyze the nature of the hardware in which their programs were operating.
Somewhere in the depths of the mirrors, Dodger saw something move. It was distant and furtive. There was nothing in the apparent chamber to account for the fleeting glimmer.
Analysis programs received abort signals and new instructions were entered at frantic pace: Cut and Run, Stand by for Execution.
He reached across the room, batting Sam’s hands away from their poised position above the Allegiance cyberdeck. He keyed in the run code and punched Execute.
The chromed mannequins in distant reflections winked out. The vanishing images continued through closer and closer planes of reflection at an ever-accelerating pace. The last images vanished, and with a pop, Sam’s icon dematerialized from the node.
Dodger was alone with whatever was moving in the mirrors.
How he knew he wasn’t sure, but he was certain that it was coming closer.
His finger stabbed the Execute key.
His own reflections began the fugue of vanishing. The presence reacted, moving closer as well, racing the disappearing Dodgers. Its masking chrome dropped, the ebon boy raced around the room as though moving the icon itself might give his reflections the speed they needed to escape the presence. He felt the other nearing, but dared not look back. It was almost upon him as the last reflection vanished—
Pop.
He was panting and bathed in sweat, but he was safely back in the real world. He jerked the datacord from his jack. Sam was looking at him, bewildered. He didn’t know enough to be scared.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it before. In fact, from everything I do know, it was impossible.”
“But you got us out anyway.” Sam pulled out his jack and tossed it on the counter. “I guess it doesn’t matter what it was. We got what I wanted, and now that we’re out safely, they can’t trace us.”
“So it would seem.”
“The headache is worth it. I’m sure now that Renraku didn’t order the killings. If the feathered serpent had been working for them, its medical data would have been in that file.”
“Mayhap they could have hired it for the occasion.”
Sam shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not if they wanted to stay legal.”
“Pray tell, why not? The contract courts would have let them invoke a termination clause on Hanae and yourself. The villains who rule there rarely check too deeply into whether said employee was really sufficiently valuable to warrant such a clause. Renraku could easily create the fiction that you were both important enough.”
Sam looked discomfited by the idea that his former corporation might do such a thing. “No. They wouldn’t do that. Even if they did, wouldn’t the dragon have to be part of the corporation? Everyone knows that the courts are scrupulous about proper form during the invocation and execution of such clauses. The law states that any actions taken against the renegade must be taken by bona fide corporate officers.”
“The beast could have been a bounty hunter.”
“The law also says that bounties must be set and registered in court. You yourself found out that there was none.”
“Alas, Sir Corp. The legal record does not always match reality.”
“I won’t believe there was an unrecorded bounty,” Sam said, shaking his head vigorously. “Renraku wouldn’t dare risk the sanctions for disregarding the regulations, especially since I didn’t take anything. The cost would be far too high.”
“You seem well-informed on the law concerning these matters.”
“Let’s say that I recently had a sudden awakening of interest in the legal status of corporate runaways. I thought the knowledge might have a bearing on my future.”
“As it has.” Dodger shifted his chair back and stood. Placing a hand on Sam’s shoulder, he said, “With this run against Renraku, you have stepped fully into the shadows. You are now divorced from the corporations. I strip thee of the name Corp and formally dub thee Twist.”
“Thanks, I think.” Sam looked taken aback. “I guess we did okay, huh? At least I no longer have to worry that Renraku is after me, and I don’t feel guilty that the other guy took something out, making me an accessory to his theft. Like you said before we decked, if there had been a theft, the whole system would have been on alert.”
“Be not so sure that it wasn’t.”
Sam frowned, then offered a tentative smile. “Why not? I used to work there. Remember? There was no alert.”
“Then you can tell me what those mirrors were all about.”
“No, but I can tell that there were some glitches in the system. Stuff like the fuzziness in the medical datastore. You know, resolution problems. The mirrors were probably some kind of diagnostic subroutine.”
Dodger didn’t buy it, but there was no point in saying so. The phenomenon was obviously well beyond Sam’s appreciation as a decker. The young man also didn’t appreciate Dodger’s concern.
“Whatever was going on there won’t matter. I don’t think we’ll have to go back. What we learned tells me that the murderers are somewhere outside Renraku. That’s where we’ll have to do the rest of our looking.”
“First,” Dodger said firmly, “we get some sleep. You may take the first shift in the bed, Sir Twist, for I have some thinking to do.”
Actually, he had some worrying to do. Not just about the puzzle of the mirrors or the riddle of the murderers. Sam’s reaction to the Matrix wasn’t normal. Dodger had gotten a look at his datajack when he was checking Sam out on the Allegiance. The port cover had the maker’s signature: Soriyama. That name proclaimed it as one of the most expensive pieces of tech Dodger had ever seen. No street doc or hack corporate implanter had done that job. It had been put in by the best, a real cutting-edge cybertechie, and there should have been a flawless man-machine interface. Sam’s headaches were anomalous, strange enough even without the limping icon. Could the two be connected?
There was more to Samuel Verner than met the eye, cyber or otherwise.