Chapter Text
I think I'd always known we'd run up against a case worse than Randy's. We deluded ourselves, believing it would always be easier without the victim being one of our own, and maybe Peter Pan was an outlier in a world filled with sick fucks.
Well, this one had finally proven us wrong after at sixteen dead kids in three months – at least the ones we knew about – and two failed attempts corner the bastard.
Maybe third time would be a charm. It fucking needed to be.
“Nothing on my end yet.” Randy’s voice on coms. I knew River was right there with him, probably pacing like a starving animal. As much as he wanted to be in the thick with me, stealth was our best ally now, especially after we’d been made twice already.
I pinged him back, text only. All quiet here.
“Let you know as soon as anything changes, but V…” Randy hesitated, which made me still. He’d come miles since our bar conversation a few years back and if he kept it up, he’d outpace my own netrunner skills in another year at most. He had damn good instincts and I trusted him fully at my back. “Everything is quiet as shit. No movement, no alerts. Might fucking have the fucker this time.”
Fingers crossed. I leaned forward, peering into the roof access, trying not to let my heart race at the excitement in Randy’s voice. Wouldn’t do anyone any good to get ahead of ourselves, but I really fucked hope his was right. Drop down looks clear.
“After you’re in, map says a short catwalk to vents then a drop down to stairwell access.”
Preem. Dark for now.
I took one more breath, in and out like Misty always talked about for those damn meditations, and I counted to ten before I slid the latch and slipped inside the warehouse. I’d done this shit a thousand times, often deep inside heavily armed operations. A big part of my street cred at this point came from my practiced ability to get in and out unseen. I could do without Dino calling me Twinkle Toes as a result, which had spread like wildfire among the other fixers, but they could call me whatever the fuck they wanted if this run yielded results.
I slipped down to the catwalk, silent and when the camera’s rotation pivoted, I darted into the light and vaulted onto the ventilation duct. Needed to keep everything untouched; whoever the killer was, they were very skilled. The first time we’d found a footprint and chased down the location, turning a camera off remotely triggered a cascade which wiped their systems and warned them. The entire place was empty by the time we reached the servers.
The second time, they’d known we were coming and left the doors open, the hard drives bare and laid out in neat pile, with generic greeter shard about trying your best.
Now though, I thought as I waited for the camera to finished turning before balancing my way across to the next junction, now it felt like we had the advantage.
I sniffed the air, no missing the scent of explosives. I didn’t scan, just used my enhanced vision without pinging anything. Saw the first mine right where I needed to jump down. I knew River and Randy were watching through my eyes, probably just as frustrated I couldn’t disarm it and move on, but I didn’t dare risk it. Who knew if it was tied into their main system.
I flattened myself against the ducts, my netrunner suit equipped with an active cameo unit, temperature mask and sound dampening weave. The loadout had cost an arm and a leg, and so far no regrets. I blew out a hot breath, steadied myself for the next camera pass, and then sprang between the duct, landing on the stairway rail above the landmine with my bare feet. I swayed, catching the bar with both hands in a crouch.
No beeping. Didn’t waste any more time, keeping on the rail like a balance beam until I could flatten myself against a wall. I shot the text out: Next
“My uncle says to stop showing off. And if he starts swooning, he’s going to make me sick, so please.” I grinned despite the tension, at the attempt to lighten the mood which had been drowning us for weeks. “Three floors to go, but you’ll have the walls the rest of the way down. And before you waste bandwidth replying, yeah, yeah that was pretty fucking preem, Auntie V. Moving on.”
I fucking wished this was a normal run, where I was flipping over and showing off to try and get a laugh in the middle of heist. Instead, I crushed the levity and made my way deeper in the warehouse.
When I smelled blood, my stomach did an uncomfortable flip. We hadn’t found any bodies at the other locales. They always turned up in the river, the oil fields, dumpsters, which was part of what made this whole thing so frustrating. At this point, the only real link between the dead was no link at all, just dumped bodies which had barely been touched beyond superficial bruising. Cause of death always seemed to be natural causes – which obviously made no fucking sense for a kid klepped and dumped.
I drew a deep breath, counting to ten, forcing my rage down to a manageable level. Pulling myself back to the merc with the longstanding rep for keeping her cool and being super fucking effective. I pulled Lizzie from the suit holster.
“V, your vitals are jumping. All good?”
Smell blood.
“Copy.” Randy’s voice was all biz. “All signs point to the third door down this hall. Larger room, warmer on the scans. Far as I can tell, the doors aren’t locked.”
Bird eyes still clear? Recording?
“Stream is running clean, copying and uploading to our backup net as it flies. River is on deck.”
Going in.
I crept along the hallway to the third door, the concrete damp and the air chilled. If things went to shit, River would be here in minutes. We were deep in Padre’s territory, so we’d looped in the fixer before we started this run, and he had resources standing by if things got out of control. He’d even said a blessing for our success over the halo. Although it wasn’t fear driving my thoughts to backup; it was the burning desire to bury this fucker for good.
Flattening myself against the door, I tried to get a peek through the windows into the next room. They were covered in reflective plastic, and I couldn’t get a good look. I nudged with my elbow, the door swinging silently inward. Kept my body low, my toes to keep the door from tapping when it closed.
Definitely the room with hardware; the temp jumped as soon as I moved inside and so did the smell. It went beyond fresh blood, some of it old and stale, rancid. A moan came from my left, and my heart about stopped.
A teenager, about as old as Randy when he was grabbed three years ago, the boy tied to the gurney with a braindance wreath and his neck jacked in. He convulsed a few times, the wreath flickering, the lights bright red.
It took everything in me to keep from ripping it off his head; my mind jumped to Evelyn Parker, how Judy needed to jack her out to avoid doing more damage.
The kid started seizing.
“Fuck, V, that doesn’t look good.” First time I’d heard a shake in Randy’s voice over coms.
I didn’t answer, didn’t trust myself to keep control, instead slinking along the gurney, which blocked my view around to the computer set up on the far side of the room. Looked like the cables from his neck ran along the floor with about a dozen others, connecting to other slabs, tables and a netrunner chair. I tried to take inventory of the room, but then the kid jerked violently, and the BD wreath flared before going dark.
I grabbed the kid’s wrist, desperately searching for a pulse and…nothing. He was still warm, he’d been right there a second before, but now…
The sound of chair pushing across the concrete floor jarred my senses and I launched upright, gun honed. “Don’t move or I will fucking end you.”
At least six bodies were laid out in the room, from what I could tell all dead like the boy I could have saved, that I should have saved. The computer hub glowed brightly, casting sharp shadows around the figure in between, who slowly raised their arms.
Fuck, my hand was shaking. I wanted to fire, bury them full of lead, but we needed info. “Get on the fucking ground!” I screamed. Randy’s voice crackled in my ears, but I shut it out, because this was it. I was going to get answers and then put this son of a bitch in the ground.
“Better,” the figure said. A man’s voice.
Right before he ducked hard to the left and the room’s lights flared to nova. I fired, emptying my clip as I vaulted the gurney half blind.
“He’s running out the back!”
“V! V fucking stop, he’s set everything to wipe, you need to grab what you can now, get me over there now! River is already out the door!”
River’s voice joined the com, cool and level to my shrieking and Randy’s yelling. “I’m all over this asshole babe, get what we need from those drives.”
I raced to the screens, but what I saw stopped me fucking cold.
I knew exactly what this was, even though I watched the program running in reserve, the information flagging and deleting. Knew was actually wrong; I didn’t really understand what I was looking at, not in terms of the lines of code or the way they ran like an ocean over the monitors. I knew it because I’d lived it, and I’d died it.
I was an engram and I knew when I was looking at the same damn thing, deep in the recesses of my mind, my data, myself. The part of me which had been saved, then reinserted into my body after I died.
Soulkiller. These braindance wreathes were running Soulkiller and turning people into engrams. I raced forward, not sure what I could do, just needing to do something, especially if this deletion included the engram of the boy who just died right in front of me.
I attacked with every hack and counter I had, Randy in the background yelling other suggestions and telling me to just keep looking at everything and recording, all of it happening in seconds, when an electric burst rattled from the computer into my body.
My heart stuttered and stopped, and I collapsed as the world went dark.