A bed, a desk, a computer system, a rack of chips. Nothing on the walls, nothing to tie to the past. Or even the present. Like father, like son. Peter wanted to say, “Dad, we’ve got to stop this,” but instead he said, “Dr. Clarris. I’m in the employ of Ms. Amij. She hired me to get a message to you.”
“Yes,” his father said plainly, “I thought…I wondered if she would ever find me. The plan…didn’t work out,” and again he smiled that joyless smile.
“Well, I did find you. And she wants you to leave with me now.”
His father’s eyes narrowed, just slightly. “What?”
“Your life is in danger here. We have reason to believe that another faction is on its way to get you.”
The slightest bit of anger flared up in his father’s eyes. “Does everyone know where I am?”
Peter suddenly felt frightened, on the spot, fearful of his father’s wrath, even though his father didn’t know who he was. “There have been complications. But the simple truth is that many people want to get you.”
“The mercenaries from Seattle. They’re here because of you…” his father said.
“And because of the other faction. And because of you. Now, if you don’t mind—”
“No. No, I’m not going.” Peter noticed that his famer’s hand was shaking. He stepped over to the desk and sat down in the chair.
“Da… Dr. Clarris. I don’t think…” Peter was momentarily at a loss for words. “There are professional killers coming to extract you,” he said. “If you don’t come with me, I—”
“They brought in magicians and bodyguards—I don’t know if you’ve seen them, but they look quite professional. I’m staying.”
“You are an employee of Ms. Amij’s.”
“Her company refuses to approve the research I’m working on. I’m staying here.”
Peter froze for only half a beat. “Is it going well?”
“What?”
“The research. Is it going well?”
Peter’s father blinked at him. He became carefully guarded once more. “Well enough. It’s a start.”
“Impressive facilities.”
“Yes.”
“I understand you have test subjects.”
His father stared at him for a moment, still apparently indifferent. “Yes. We have test subjects.”
“Lucky that you could get volunteers.”
“What…? What are you getting at?”
Peter realized that he was coming dangerously close to blowing the whole run. And yet, he wanted to know who he was dealing with. Those women… He reached into his jacket and pulled out the chip labeled CW.
“What’s that?” his father asked.
“A bribe, just in case you didn’t want to come. I’ll show it to you in a minute. This metahuman research is very important to you.”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. It’s very important. I have my reasons.”
“Reasons?”
“Yes, reasons!” His father was quite cross now.
“A son? You had a son, yes?”
His father stared at him. “Yes. I had a son. If you know that, why are we playing this game?”
“What happened to him?”
“What business—”
“What happened to him? After he became a troll, what happened to him?”
His father looked down. “I don’t… He died…. I don’t know.”
“So why the work? Why the pursuit of the meta-gene cure?”
His father looked up, eyes cold, a fury behind them. “No one should have to go through what I did. What he did.”
“And what was that?”
“Just who do you think you are?”
“A man who brings you an offer from Ms. Amij for you to run your own project at Cell Works.” He held up the chip between his thumb and forefinger. “This stolen research document will put you on a new track.”
“I’m already on a track.”
“But how is it going? Don’t you at least want to see what this chip has to offer?”
His father leaned forward, just a little, a cat waiting to pounce on a piece of fuzz. “Maybe.”
“But before I give you the chip, you have to answer me a question. Why? Why get rid of metahumans?”
“I don’t want to ‘get rid’ of metahumans—I want to give the people the choice of how they will be. Some control of their destiny.”
“So Peter could have controlled his destiny.”
“…Yes.” The word came out like a footstep on a creaky floorboard.
“And if he hadn’t become a troll, if it could have been changed, what would have been his destiny?”
“A career in academics. Applied sciences. Whatever he wanted. He could have done something.”
“And as a troll he couldn’t.”
“Of course not.”
“How did you know?”
“What?”
“How did you know? How did you know what he could and couldn’t do?”
“He was a troll.”
“So, even though you don’t want to ‘get rid’ of metahumans, everyone would be better off if they didn’t exist.”
His father paused. “I suppose.”
Wrong answer, thought Peter. “Here.” He placed the chip on the table. It was a copy of My Cure, but one altered by a night’s work of careful errors. Brilliant errors. Four of them, all very subtle, so subtle that they would lead anyone off the right path and into years of wasted work.
His father picked up the chip and placed it in his computer. Peter turned around and placed his finger against the chip in his right breast pocket, the P. Clarris chip, the last remaining copy of his work. He applied firm pressure and felt the chip shatter between his finger and his chest. The pressure against his chest as the chip shattered carried reverberations into his heart. He turned back to his father and said, “Look it over. You’ll get to use all of it if you go back to Cell Works.”
Peter took a position against a wall and stood patiently as his father scrolled through the document. He couldn’t help but compare how his father read the text against the way Kathryn had. Kathryn was alive when she read, she leaned in, engaged. His father seemed devoid of energy, all life focused from his eyes, which sucked in the light from the screen and gave nothing back.
At the end of two hours, William Clarris was still reading when an explosion rocked the walls.
“They’re here.” said Peter.
His father whirled around, confused. “What?”
“The other faction who’s looking for you…some mobsters, actually, they’re here. Now. Are you coming?”
His father looked back at the screen hungrily. “This is good,” he said. “Very good. This is an approach I’ve never seen before.”
“Do you want it?”
His father nodded. “Yes. Yes, I’ll come with you.” He shut down the computer and took the chip.
A sadness and happiness passed through Peter. Happy because the plan was working, which meant Kathryn might get Cell Works back. Sadness because his father was gone. All that remained was a man, a fearful, hateful man with whom Peter knew he could not afford any connection. He would fall through life without a dream of his father during the plummet. Would that be all right? Yes. Maybe.
They rushed out into the corridor and turned left back toward the cafeteria. Speakers blared a toneless message: “Attention. Attention. The facility has been infiltrated. Report immediately to your designated secure station.” Peter reached out and kept a tight grip on his father’s lab coat.
They reached a stairwell, and Peter opened the door. From upstairs came the sound of gunfire.
“New plan,” Peter said. He thought there might be a back entrance for the kitchen, something used for supplies and food. He moved toward the cafeteria, half-carrying his father as he went. He forced his way through the crowd also trying to get out and to the shelters. By the time they entered the cafeteria, Peter and his father were far ahead of the pack. They moved quickly across the empty eating area to the kitchen, getting about halfway across the room when the door slammed open behind them.
Coming through the cafeteria doors were the street samurai Peter had seen earlier, followed by a woman in a scarlet suit. Pinned to the lapels of the jacket were spell fetishes.
The mage looked at Peter and her gaze turned glassy. “Waste him!” she said as her eyes snapped back into focus.
“Get down!” the samurai shouted to Peter’s father as he brought up his AK-97 toward Peter.
Peter knocked his father to the right and dove for cover behind some tables to the left. As he skittered across the floor, three slugs pounded the ground beside him.
He pulled his Predator from the holster at his lower back, then kicked over a table to use for cover. Raising his head to get a shot on the samurai, Peter spotted the muscular warrior working his way closer.
Where was the mage? He glanced to the right and spotted a wall of gray ooze rolling across the floor toward him. For a moment he froze. He’d never seen such a thing.
He tried to jump out of the way as it rushed up to him, but his confusion made him panic and stumble to the floor. The bulk of the ooze splashed off to the right, but a few drops hit Peter’s legs and ate into his skin. Peter writhed on the ground and bit his lips in agony as the material of his pants and shoes melted into his flesh. Corrosive fumes billowed up around him, the acid splashing onto the floor, the wall, and the plastic tables and chairs.
Breathing heavily, Peter scrambled up and ran for his father, his legs aching with sharp pain. They could still make it out, but it would be tough. Limping along, he took wild shots at the samurai and the mage, keeping them down for cover.
“Come on!” Peter said, scooping an arm around his father and rushing toward the kitchen. His father’s stone face finally broke and revealed terror. The situation was that bad.
Peter glanced back. The mage, exhausted from the spell, was kneeling on the ground, holding her head. He hoped she’d be out of the fight.
Still making for the kitchen, Peter and his father were rounding a corner when they slammed into a massive weight. It was the samurai, and all three of them tumbled to the ground. Before Peter could get his bearings, the samurai was slamming his fist into the acid-melted flesh of Peter’s right shin. The pain was so great he nearly blacked out.
The samurai stared hard at Peter, for the briefest moment sizing up the situation, then, with a smile, he raised his hand again, this time driving his open palm into Peter’s face, slamming Peter’s head into the tiled wall. A headache bubbled up from his spine and filled his skull. Out the corner of his eye he saw the white flash of his father’s lab coat as the old man tried to crawl away.
The samurai slammed Peter in the face again. Peter realized he was quickly losing the ability to feel the blows. The samurai coiled back for another punch. He smiled again, and three long blades emerged from the edge of the man’s fist, turning his hand into a deadly weapon. The samurai jabbed that hand toward Peter, and the blades rushed closer. Peter, struggling to remain conscious, thrust his hand up and knocked the blow aside. Then came a strange sensation as something seemed to slip away from his body. The samurai’s eyes grew wide. Suddenly there was a troll beneath him. Breena must have let the spell down.
Peter smiled, as if they were going to share a moment of adversarial admiration, then reached out and pulled the samurai’s body close. Opening his mouth wide, he chomped down on the samurai’s shoulder. His massive teeth drove deep into the other man’s flesh, and warm blood filled Peter’s mouth.
The samurai screamed loudly, right into Peter’s ear. Peter bit down harder. Then he released the bite, and the samurai fell back, clutching his shoulder.
Peter grabbed his Predator from the floor and dragged his father into the kitchen. His father was staring at him in terror. Peter imagined what he must look like: his terrible troll face, the mouth and lips smeared with blood. The shock he’d given his father made him giddy.
The sound of gunfire came thick now. He knew the Itami gang had come in, armed to the teeth, but were not expecting the shadowrunners from Seattle to be guarding the place. All he had to do was get out while both sides fired away at each other.
The samurai slammed into Peter’s back, sending both of them crashing into a rack of pots and pans. The metal cookware clattered against the floor and caused a terrible ringing in Peter’s head. His body was in worse shape than he thought.
The samurai had picked up a meat cleaver off the floor with his left hand. He moved his arms in some kind of martial arts gesture, the cleaver in one hand, the cyberware blades sticking out of his flesh in the other. Peter raised his hand to shoot, and realized his gun was gone again.
He scrambled up, thinking desperately that he needed a plan, anything to get him through the next five minutes of his life. A thick wave of heat rose off a grease-filled pan. He turned away….
And then turned back and grabbed the pan. The samurai rushed him, a bull in a rage.
The heat of the handle burned him, but Peter put his focus on the motion. He swung the pan and splashed hot grease on the punctured flesh of the bite he’d made in the samurai’s shoulder.
The samurai screamed and dropped to his knees.
His father was on the ground, stunned. As Peter approached, he raised his arms and tried to fend Peter off. Peter reached down, picked his father up, and carried him under his arm. The weight strained him, but he had no time for discussion.
He couldn’t spot his gun amid all the kitchenware, and decided to press on without it. Seeing a door that led out of the kitchen, Peter ran up and opened it. Just as he did, a ball of flame smashed into the wall beside him. The mage was back. He didn’t turn to look, but instead ran up the stairs beyond the door.
He moved as quickly as his painful legs and the burden of his father’s weight would let him. He just wanted distance. Distance from the mage. Distance from the Itami forces, the mercs. He just wanted out.
He ran up two landings, then opened a door into a corridor and stepped into it.
For a moment all was quiet.
Then three mobsters turned the corner down the hall. They spotted him and raised their guns to fire. Peter rushed down the corridor, holding his father in front of him. Bullets slammed into his back and numbed him. He slipped around a corner and fell against a wall.
“Come on,” he said to his father, spotting a freight elevator down the hall. “Just a little more to go.”
“This is madness,” his father said.
“Yup,” answered Peter.
He heard the hoods running down the hall behind them. He got up, dragging his father along with him. At the elevator he slammed the button, but the hoods were rounding the corner. “Give us the labcoat!” one of them shouted.
The elevator door opened. Peter let his body fall into the car, and he dragged his father to the floor with him. Bullets crashed into the elevator’s doorframe, then there was silence followed by the sound of running feet. Peter reached up and jabbed the button for street level. Please, he thought, please please please shut.
The doors closed. The sound of pounding came from the other side, and then the elevator rose. A moment later the doors opened. They stepped out into a loading area in an alley.
Peter keyed the Bulldog’s number.
“This is Anderson.”
“Anderson,” Peter wheezed, “This is Duckling. You ready?”
“Let’s do it.”
Peter rushed down the alley toward the street, still half-carrying, half-dragging his father. As Peter hit the sidewalk, the mobsters opened fire from cars parked across the street. The bullets cut through the air around him. As much as possible Peter tried to shield his father’s small frame with his own massive body.
Then suddenly one of the cars flashed into a ball of flame. Bits of metal ripped through their pursuers, sending them sprawling to the ground with massive lacerations.
Peter heard a squeal of tires down the street. The Bulldog rushed toward the building, the rigger in the driver’s seat. The boy leaned out the passenger window with a grenade launcher. He got off another shot, the grenade turning another car into a flaming wreck. The Bulldog squealed to a stop and the side door slid open.
Peter grabbed the doorjamb for support and shoved his father into the van. He was about to follow when he heard the building’s steel door open. He turned and saw the grease monkey, armed with a tripod-mounted Valiant machine gun set in the doorway, open fire. The bullets cut deep into his right side and he spun around and slammed into the Bulldog.
Grease monkey continued to fire, grinding the bullets into Peter’s chest. Peter couldn’t feel his limbs anymore and knew he’d never be able to climb into the van on his own. He didn’t have to. A strong pair of hands reached out from the van door and pulled him in.
Peter sprawled on the floor. The van door shut, and he felt the aggressive motion of the vehicle streaking down the street.
A few minutes passed and then Peter felt someone, the boy, lean over him.
“Oh, frag,” he said after a cursory examination.
“Clarris?” Peter gasped. “Is Clarris here?”
“The package in the lab coat? Yeah, he’s here.”
“Get him to Amij.”
“We got it, chummer, but when I saw those mob boys arrive, I really didn’t think you’d make it. Now we’ll get you back to Breena and she’ll…”
Peter never heard the rest. His eyes had closed and he lost track of the world around him. It was all right now; he knew that much at least. His body felt warm and strong around him, a part of him. He no longer longed for a future time. What he had right now was enough.