Tails You Lose Read online

  Only the upper body of the dragon was visible—the rest was bisected by the floor of the ruined warehouse, as if the dragon had erupted from the earth. Wu, the ganger who had been holding Night Owl with his magic, was just to the right of the dragon, resting on one knee as if paying homage to the creature. His eyes were wide and glistening and his expression enraptured, as if he were looking upon a god. Night Owl could see the ganger clearly, even when the dragon's body passed in front of him. The dragon was here in astral form only, manifesting itself visually so that Night Owl and the troll could see it—but that didn't make it any less dangerous.

  Night Owl knew without being told that she was in serious drek now. The Red Lotus obviously served this dragon—this worm must be the "eldest brother" the troll had been jabbering about. The gang was also working for the Johnson whose intermediary had hired her—the one whose property she had deliberately trashed. It didn't take a major synaptic leap to figure that the dragon and her Johnson were one and the same. Dying in the troll's magical grip was nothing compared with what she faced now. A dragon could think of far more exquisite torments than a metahuman shaman ever could. Night Owl's life and soul were balanced on a razor's edge.

  She chose her words carefully. "How can I . . . serve you, great one?" Her right eye was twitching like crazy, and only by concentrating all of her effort on it could she make it stop.

  The dragon smiled, baring teeth that looked like ancient bits of bone filed to needle-sharp points. You are a close friend of Akira Kageyama. Although it was speaking to her telepathically, its "words" had a throaty gurgle.

  "I've done runs for him," Night Owl admitted.

  He trusts you. He showed his appreciation, after you extracted the dour from the Technology Institute, by making you an honorary member of PETAB.

  Night Owl was stunned. The dragon seemed to know even more about her biz than the other runners she sometimes hung with. She hadn't told any of them about the Technology Institute run—she'd done that one solo.

  After hearing the skinny on that run—that she was to set free a half-dozen dour that cybernetics students at the institute were performing vivisection on—she'd told her Johnson she'd do the job for free. Dour might be little more than animals—they were magically active chimpanzees that were transformed by the Awakening—but that didn't mean they didn't suffer and feel pain. Cutting into their living bodies was the same as experimenting on children.

  Two weeks after the dour were liberated, Night Owl had been summoned to a party in one of Vancouver's most expensive condoplexes. Akira Kageyama was its host, and the guests were a small but exclusive group: a half-dozen of Vancouver's elite who contributed to the coffers of People for the Ethical Treatment of the Awakened Beings. The group was a legitimate charitable organization that vehemently denied any connection with the recent rash of raids on research facilities and testing labs, but the gleams of gratitude in the eyes of the PETAB members as they shook Night Owl's hand had confirmed her hunch they were the ones who had hired her for the Technology Institute raid.

  Night Owl never did tell them that her decision to waive her runner's fee had been based on a flip of the token in her pocket.

  The dragon watched her patiently, its eyes as still as pools of dark liquid. Its head remained perfectly level, despite the fact that its sinuous body was gently snaking back and forth.

  "You know a lot about me," Night Owl said.

  Be thankful of that, the dragon said. If you weren't so useful to me, I would have let Wu end your life.

  The shaman folded his massive arms across his chest. His grin extended to the tips of his horns.

  You are alive because there is something in Kageyama's home that I want—something you will get for me, the dragon continued. It is a piece of jade: a statue. You will remove it and convey it to Wu, at a location that you and he will arrange.

  Night Owl thought that one over. She had no qualms about doing a run on Kageyama, or about using his misplaced trust to steal from his home. She was a shadowrunner, and biz was biz, after all. "Kageyama's an art dealer—his place is full of expensive drek like that. How will I know which statue you want?"

  The dragon gave a bubbling sigh. The jade has engraved upon it the character fu—happiness—and is hollow. It may feel lighter than it should when you pick it up, and it may rattle. Do not be tempted to look inside. If the statue is damaged in any way, I will let Wu finish what was begun here tonight.

  "And if I deliver the statue intact, you'll call off the Red Lotus?"

  The dragon gave her a wet smile. Of course. They will trouble you no more.

  Night Owl nodded, even though she knew she was as good as dead. The shaman would flatline her as soon as she handed the statue over to him.

  Realizing she had little to lose made her bold enough to speak her mind to the dragon. "Let me scan this straight: I'm supposed to show up uninvited at the condoplex of a millionaire I barely know and ask him to look the other way while I search his doss from top to bottom for a statue that even you wouldn't recognize if you saw it. You can't even tell me how big the statue is or what it looks like. Kageyama has some pretty big pieces of art in his place. What if I need a crane to haul the fragger out of there?"

  The troll shaman had risen swiftly to his feet as

  Night Owl spoke. His face held a mixture of anger and outrage, as if he was amazed by her impertinence. He glanced at the dragon beside him, as if expecting it to blast Night Owl with its magic. Wu's master, however, gave only a gurgling chuckle.

  There is an ancient proverb in my country, the dragon said. "If a woman is strong in a meeting, do not try to marry her." Unfortunately, you are the only "bride" available to me at this time. You are a resourceful person—I am certain you will think of some clever way to accomplish the task I have set for you. How you do it is not my concern. All that matters to me is that you deliver the jade to Wu.

  "When?" Night Owl asked.

  No later than tomorrow night. I will leave you and Wu to work out the details of the transaction.

  The dragon's astral form suddenly collapsed onto the floor, deflating like one of the cloth dragons that dancers carry during the Lunar New Year celebrations. When it was gone, Night Owl and the troll shaman glared at each other.

  Wu spoke first. "When you have the statue, bring it to me at—"

  "Delete that," Night Owl cut in. "Here's how it's going to be: I'll get your master's statue, but I'm not going to be your delivery girl. Give me a telecom number, and I'll call you when I've got the statue. I'll tell you where I've stashed it, and you can go and fetch it for your master, like a good boy."

  The troll raised a gnarled fist and growled, and for a moment Night Owl thought she'd pushed him too far. Wu was smart enough to realize, however, that harming Night Owl would limit her usefulness to his master. He eventually smiled—but Night Owl knew that the source of that smile came from the shaman imagining what he'd do to her after the statue had been boosted.

  She smiled back. Let Wu threaten all he liked. By the time the statue was in his hands, she'd be safely tucked away inside the most effective bolt hole of all.

  "You can call me at the Triple Eight Club," Wu said, naming a popular downtown casino. "But be certain it is early in the evening. The more I spend, the less patient I become. When my patience has run out, I will come looking for you. Rest assured that, no matter how far you run, I will find you."

  Wu threw his hands out in front of him in a dramatic gesture, reactivating his invisibility spell—and in the split second before it activated, Night Owl saw the round circle of plastic he held in his right hand. As the shaman vanished, so did Night Owl's smile. Her hand flashed down to the pocket of her jacket, confirming her fears. The pocket had been torn open, and her lucky SkyTrain token was gone.

  The token wasn't really lucky—it was just one that happened to have been issued in 2032, the year that Night Owl was born. She'd found it on the street a couple of months ago and had used it exclusively as her
heads-or-tails decision maker since then.

  But the token was unlucky now. It had Night Owl's astral "scent" all over it. No matter which bolt hole she ran to, the shaman could use it to find her.

  3

  Innocence

  Two figures were waiting for Alma behind the frosted glass door of Boardroom Four. She glided down the hall and palmed the maglock next to the door. The green recognition light failed to switch on, but that might have been due to the slight tremor in her hand. She wrapped her other hand around it, forcing it into a fist. Thirty-eight seconds later, the shaking stopped. She flexed the hand and wiped a trickle of sweat from her temple. The effort of trying to control the tremor had left her feeling drained. This time, when she palmed the lock, a green light blinked and the lock clicked open.

  Boardroom Four was a vast expanse of red carpet dominated by a massive faux-mahogany table with ornately carved legs. Floor-to-ceiling windows faced east, giving a view over Vancouver's high-tech industrial park toward a highway choked with rush-hour traffic. Although it was well past dawn, the skies were still a dark gray. Rain beat a steady rhythm against the thick glass, making the stream of headlights on Highway One waver as if they were underwater.

  At the far end of the boardroom table sat Herbert Lali, president of Pacific Cybernetics Industries. A heavyset man in his early sixties, he was dressed in a white buckskin suit that brought out his dark skin tones. He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on the table and fingers steepled together. On his left little finger was a heavy gold PCI ring, set with microprocessor crystals. A fiberoptic cable that snaked up from the table was plugged into one of three gold-plated datajacks that studded his right temple. The right side of his scalp was shaved, but on the left hung a long black braid that was streaked with gray.

  In the chair to his left sat Salvador Hu, head of security for PCI and Alma's boss. Hu had close-cropped black hair and a blocky build, and he sat with the relaxed confidence of a man who could handle anything or anyone. He was wearing casual clothes: jeans, cowboy boots, and a short-sleeved dress shirt that showed off his arms, which looked natural but were heavily cybered. At least three weapons that Alma knew about—and probably several she didn't—were concealed under their precisely tone-matched skin.

  Alma bowed a greeting to both men. Hu nodded, but Mr. Lali remained silent. His eyes were impassive chips of black stone. Alma had expected Mr. Lali to be as saddened by Gray Squirrel's death as she was, but she hadn't anticipated this cold, angry silence. A reprimand wasn't required—she'd already chastised herself a thousand times since yesterday for not finding the missing researcher sooner. Turning to the shadowrunner had been a mistake—his information was accurate, but the wait for it had cost Gray Squirrel his life.

  Mr. Lali shifted in his seat as Alma closed the door behind her. A frown creased his high forehead, puckering the skin around his softlink ports. "Sit down," he said, indicating a chair halfway down the table.

  Alma settled into the leather chair, eyes flicking back and forth between the two men. She wondered why Hu had insisted on her coming to the PCI complex this morning. She'd already encrypted a full report of yesterday's events and sent it to a secure mailbox on his telecom. She decided that Mr. Lali must have wanted to hear the report in real time and ask questions. The REM inducer was PCI's pet project, after all. Gray Squirrel had been within a week or two, at most, of running the final diagnostics on the beta-test models. With its project leader dead, the REM inducer's release could be set back several months.

  Mr. Lali cleared his throat, and Alma took it as an invitation to speak. She pushed the gruesome image of Gray Squirrel from her mind and spoke in as professional a voice as she could muster.

  "Mr. Lali, I must apologize for my failure. As you must have seen from my report, Gray Squirrel was killed at approximately the time that he was placed in the stabilization unit. Perhaps if I had made better use of our corporate resources, I could have reached him before—"

  Hu held up a finger, and Alma immediately fell silent. She knew his favorite admonition by rote: there are no excuses, only reasons. Hu didn't want to hear excuses. That wasn't why she had been called into the office.

  She waited for Hu to ask her a question, but instead it was Mr. Lali who spoke. His words surprised her.

  "How are you sleeping?" He said it in a casual tone, but Alma's instincts told her the question was anything but offhand.

  "Quite well, thank you," she answered. She glanced at Hu, but the head of security gave her no clues as to whether she'd answered correctly. Hu seemed to be studying her carefully, weighing each word she said. She suspected that he was using his voice-stress analyzer.

  "Have you activated your REM inducer during the past week? Skipped any nights of sleep?" Mr. Lali's attitude appeared to be that of a concerned parent, but Alma could hear the edge in his voice.

  "No," she answered. It had been one hundred and eighty-seven days since PCI's physicians had implanted the beta-test version of the inducer inside her brainstem. The tiny cybernetic device lay deep inside her pons, waiting for her mental command to trigger an increase in serotonin, acetycholine, and other sleep-inducing neurotransmitters. By activating it, she could cause her body to enter a highly accelerated version of its normal sleep cycle, one that would compress an entire night's sleep into fifteen minutes.

  "The beta-test model is working well," she added. "I'm still following the schedule that Gray Squirrel laid out, despite his . . . extraction: for the past twelve days I've left it in passive mode. I haven't experienced any ill effects that can be directly attributed to the inducer—no insomnia, sudden loss of muscle tone, drowsiness, or any of the other glitches reported by the alpha-test subjects."

  As she spoke, she suddenly felt the urge to yawn. She wasn't tired—the yawn was probably triggered by her nervousness, and by talking about the REM inducer and its side effects. She stifled it, but a moment later, she felt something that couldn't be attributed to the power of suggestion: a slight tremble that coursed through her left hand. She tightened her grip on the arm of her chair, and it stopped.

  Hu leaned forward. "Where were you between the hours of ten-thirty and midnight, five evenings ago?" It was Alma's turn to frown. "The night that Gray Squirrel was extracted?" she asked. "At my apartment, in bed. Asleep."

  Mr. Lali coughed softly and touched an icon, activating the table's cyberdeck. Flush-mounted monitors illuminated in front of himself, Hu and Alma. "I'd like us to review the recordings that were captured on the night of the extraction. Hu thinks there may be something we missed."

  Alma saw Hu tense and braced herself. Watching the vidclips of Gray Squirrel's extraction hadn't been easy, even when she still believed that her friend was alive. Now that she knew he was dead, they stung even more. She was ashamed to have failed Gray Squirrel, and to have let PCI down—and now Hu was going to rub salt in that wound.

  The monitor in the tabletop glowed a solid blue and then flashed a series of codes as it loaded the vidclips they were to view. A long string of numbers appeared briefly—81, 64, 49, 36, 25, 16, 9, 4, 1—and then a date/ time sequence that flashed by so quickly Alma was unable to read it. Then the monitor checkerboarded into a dozen squares, each showing a freeze-framed vidclip of the PCI parking garage from a different angle. Some showed rows of parked cars, while others were aimed at exit doors. Still others showed the stairwells and ramps. One of the split-screen images had been shot by a remote-piloted drone and was currently freeze-framed at an angle that showed an empty access ramp.

  Alma and Hu had been over the security cameras' recordings dozens of times already, in second-by-second, image-enhanced slow play. She didn't think another byte of information could possibly be wrung out of them.

  Hu touched an icon on the monitor screen in front of him, and all of the vidclips began to play.

  Alma watched a vidclip near the center of the screen—one that showed Gray Squirrel entering the garage through a secure door that led to the elevators. Accord
ing to the clock superimposed on the vidclip, it was 11:05:02 p.m.—the same time, plus or minus one minute, that the overly punctual Gray Squirrel always left the building. The researcher walked to his car—a four-door Toyota Elite—and activated its door locks by voice command. Settling into the cushioned leather seat, he reached for the car's control cable. He was just about to plug it into his datajack when the intruders appeared.

  There were four of them, and they came out of nowhere, emerging from behind a concrete pillar into the vidclip that showed Gray Squirrel's car. How they had gotten into the garage was a mystery that PCI security had not yet solved.

  First to appear was the man Tiger Cat had put a name to yesterday morning. Wharf Rat was an Asian male, recognizable by his oversized, protruding incisors and his mange of black hair. One of his eyes was brown, the other gold. He jittered as if he was on kamikaze or some other combat drug.

  Wharf Rat was followed by two Caucasian males, one dressed in Native buckskins and sporting what looked like animal paws woven into the ends of his dirty blond dreadlocks, the other a dwarf wearing an Okanagan Ogopogos combat biker T-shirt and black leather chaps. The dwarf carried an HK227 submachine gun, while Dreadlocks held what looked like an oversized grenade launcher with an enormous barrel.

  The faces of all three had been captured by the securicams at a number of different angles. They'd been wearing nylon stockings that squashed their noses flat against their faces and distorted the rest of their features, but it had been easy enough to program the computers to account for the tensile strength of the nylon and produce a true rendering of each face. Alma had stored these digital mug shots in the headware memory that was hardwired into her brain and could call up profiles or full-face visuals on any of them at will. By now, she knew their faces better than the Superkids she'd grown up with.