Shadowrun, p.33
Shadowrun, page 33
“Give us a sec….” Lou peered all the way out from behind the bin, and her eyes followed a rather expensive-looking couple getting out of a swanky black limo of some kind. Him, an ork in a broad-shouldered, night-blue suit; her, a nicely coiffed raven-haired elf in a slinky crimson dress, holding a ruby-encrusted clutch. Amid the neon-and-smog bustle, the man held his companion’s satin-gloved hand to help her out of the car, all genteel-like.
The display made Lou want to gag.
Something seemed dodgy about the pair—but then again, all rich slots seemed dodgy. Getting all that money without really having to work for it, all while Lou and her buddies had to nick and scrape and hoodwink just to keep themselves warm and fed? Just wasn’t right, so she never felt guilty about tagging marks, casing joints like this. Rich slots with millions of pounds in the bank weren’t gonna miss a few pence nicked from their pocket. Rich slots like those two oblivious wanks walking up the temple steps. She’d seen a lot of folk wander in so far, but these two were by far the richest.
Lou let a mischievous smirk bloom across her face. “All right,” she said to Skint, “let’s go see what we can see. Once I give you the signal, you run distraction for me, yeah?”
The young ork nodded and melted back into the alley shadows. They each went their separate ways, her down Great Queen Street, him doubling back around and heading west down Wild Street, so no one would ken they were together.
Lou jaywalked across traffic, right in front of a slightly overweight constable who seemed more interested in keeping an eye on all the rich wanks who got their jollies showing how kind and charitable they were. The bobby paid her no mind—until she tried to stroll right past him toward the Mason temple entrance.
“Nothin here for you, kiddo,” the copper said, shooing her with a collapsible baton.
She noted the holstered pistol, stun gun, and pepper spray on his belt. “Just passin’ through, officer,” she said with a shrug and a what-can-I-do-about-it smirk. “Tryna get to the sweet shop down the way.”
To most people she looked like riffraff—and she was, no two ways around it—but wide eyes and a half smile went a long way. Always used to work on her parents.
The bobby frowned, but waved her on through. “Just keep moving.”
When he looked away from her, she turned and playfully stuck her tongue out at him. Then she nonchalantly juggled the matte-black can of pepper spray she’d nicked from his belt just because she could. This would certainly come in handy. Pistols were nice and all, but they could wake up a whole neighborhood. Quieter and less violent options were always preferable.
Of course, if she could sling spells—real spells, not the rubbish tricks she could already do—that’d be a whole different game of cricket. Bam! Out like a light. Bam! Head exploding in a ball of fire. No one would mess with her mates then. If only she could afford to attend proper magic school…
For now, pepper spray would do. Fiery juice in a can.
Lou disappeared into the pavement crowd so the bobby wouldn’t hassle her anymore. Once out of sight, she focused on the real mission. Each of the boxes on the tables lining the sidewalk overflowed with clothes donated to the charity drive. For most rich folks, this was an excuse to toss out their grotty, outdated fashions, replace them with the latest trendy outfits, and feel like they’d done the world a favor without really sacrificing anything.
Of course, most needy folk like Saint Louise and her mates had no use for adult-sized expensive designer outfits that had only been worn once. Some fussy frock with a leg slit all the way up to here wouldn’t stave off a wintry cold, and most of the trousers and shirts and jackets would fit comically large on her or any of her pals.
But even old fashions could fetch a good price from the right buyer. Lou had seen folk beat each other half to death over a Mortimer of London handbag at least two or three seasons out of style.
Surrounded by a flood of pedestrians, Lou strolled past the boxes as casually and innocently as she could, looking like she had some destination in mind but taking her sweet old time getting there. Stop and smell the smog. Inhale…
And fake-cough as loud as she please. Just give these wanks a good show. A few passersby stepped aside as though she was the poster child for the next VITAS outbreak, but everyone else ignored her. Even among these richie-richs, she’d turned invisible. Which was how she used the coughing fit to cover reaching in one of the boxes and coming out with…
One—uno—black-leather Armanté glove.
Bollocks.
Gloves were nice and all—she’d nearly lost a finger to frostbite during that first winter out on her own—but you really needed a pair of them. And it was too late to swing back past the box to look for the other one without drawing suspicion. Ah, well. Mismatched gloves weren’t no big deal in the long run, and better to have one glove than none, even if it was a little on the large size.
Maintaining her blissfully unaware smirk, she quickly jammed the glove in her coat pocket and pressed on past the veritable shopping mall of donated designer threads. All the rich wanks assumed these donations would find their way to those who really needed them, but not many needy folk had much use for cocktail dresses or dry-clean-only tuxedos. These donations would just get shipped off to some so-called charity shop where people would buy them for a substantial markdown—like five pounds for a high-end Liverpool footie jacket that probably cost three hundred or more originally. But street kids generally didn’t even have two pence to rub together, let alone five quid, so all these donated items would just get bought on the cheap by people who didn’t really need them, and then the charity shop would allegedly give some of that money to the needy. Lou had never seen a single penny of that money, so she and her mates were merely cutting out the middlemen.
Besides, nicking stuff without getting caught was fun.
After her parents had left her at the Tube station years ago, she’d tried to get a real job of some kind, but no one would hire an eight-year-old kid. Something about child labor laws or other drek. She knew she had a System Identification Number, but couldn’t rattle it off—honestly, what eight-year-old could?—so no one could look her up in the system: there were apparently a billion “Eloise Smiths” in the UK’s SIN registry. And a shop hiring an effectively SINless kid under the table apparently looked bad in all kinds of ways Lou didn’t quite understand yet.
So this was what she’d come to. Didn’t hurt nobody, and she could at least make sure her mates stayed warm, and dry, and fed.
But wandering past all of this glitz and glamour outside the Grand Lodge—the neon lights, the brilliant cars, the dashing men in suits that cost more money than she’d ever see in her lifetime—what she really wanted was to go to magic school at King’s College. One of her buddies once boosted a commlink, and before the battery died, she had borrowed it to look up how much their magic program cost. Lou hardly ever cried—she’d cried it all out when her parents had abandoned her at Victoria station three years back—but that night she had bawled herself to sleep.
The glove and pepper spray juggled around in her pocket as she idly fiddled with them.
Someday…
Lou glanced over her shoulder at the now-distant box she’d nicked the glove from. Lo and behold, there was its mate just sitting on top of the clothes pile, pretty as it pleased.
“Ah, frag it,” she said under her breath.
All of her concentration focused on that glove until she could see nothing else—not the oblivious pedestrians bumping into and saying rude things to her, not the distant copper, the sidewalk, the box, or even the other clothes. Colors muted, and everything else became a slight shimmer at the edge of her awareness.
A determined smile cracked her lips.
The glove wiggled ever so slightly, as though catching a tiny gust of wind.
“That’s it,” she said, slowly walking backward with the flow of foot traffic. She repeatedly curled her index and middle fingers toward her, beckoning the glove to follow. “That’s it. Come to mummy…”
As though imbued with a life of its own, the glove slithered atop the clothing pile. Lou wasn’t quite sure how she did it, just that it worked. It just felt right. And she had to really, really concentrate on it. Only worked with small objects, which was a great help in picking pockets. Maybe if she could get to King’s College and show them this, show them she could magic an object with her mind, like invisible fingers, then maybe they’d give her some kinda scholarship.
The limp glove wriggled along through the clothes and worked its way onto the lip of the box. Just one more nudge, and it’d flounder onto the sidewalk, where she could snatch it up before anyone could notice. Just a little more…
A series of disturbing pops came from behind. Before she could turn to look—
Pow! A freight train rammed her right in the back of the head. Bowled her over. Exploded colors in her eyes. Sent her reeling into the sidewalk. Right elbow struck cement hard. Sidewalk grit ground into her left palm. A table clacked over—a paff! of a cardboard box exploding from being struck by the same freight train, and unwanted designer clothes fluttered down around her like a swarm of butterflies.
Lou glanced up just in time to see that ork bloke in the dark-blue suit running into the street like the devil himself was after him. He whirled around in the middle of the street, just long enough to raise a chunky, mean-looking pistol and squeeze off two deafening shots aimed somewhere behind her. Two heartbeats later, that elven doll in the crimson dress dashed right after him—clack clack clack went her stiletto heels on the pavement. The dress, all torn up, didn’t look quite so slinky anymore.
But that wasn’t what caught Lou’s attention. Amid the screams and chaos, the elf, she was waving her hand—the one not clenching her ruby-encrusted clutch—like she was having a seizure or something. And from where Lou was trying to push herself up from the sidewalk, it looked like the elf was mouthing some words—something clearly not the Queen’s English.
A whoosh and a wave of heat burst from behind Lou, and a man in an inexplicably burning security guard uniform stumbled down the lodge’s front steps with a shriek. The scent of charred meat would’ve watered Lou’s mouth had she not known where it came from.
Lou’s head snapped back to the elf fleeing the scene. Her eyes went so wide she thought they’d pop right out of her head. Her jaw hung slack.
Magic.
She’d just witnessed someone use real magic, not the stupid little spells she used for nicking stuff. Forget hold-out pistols or pepper spray. Setting someone on fire would be the perfect way to keep folks from messing with her mates.
Part of her wanted to follow the elf, ask her how to do that fireball trick, but her survival instincts, long honed from three-plus years on the street, told her that bobby would be by any second now. She knew better than to stick around an active crime scene. All it’d take would be one funny look, and the copper’d make her turn out her pockets, and she’d get in deep drek even though she clearly wasn’t the biggest fish on the scene.
If she didn’t know any better, it looked like those two were running like they’d stolen something, but that was a ridiculous notion. What could rich wanks want to steal from a place like this? Enough money could buy anything.
The second glove, wherever it had ended up in the chaos of pedestrians running for their lives around her, wasn’t worth it. She’d find another.
Pushing herself back to her feet, Lou looked up and saw Skint coming her direction, a look of terror on his face. They locked eyes and shared a knowing look that translated loosely as Get the frag back to the alley before we get arrested too.
Lou swallowed and ran across the street, ducking and weaving through confused and angry drivers like an old pro. She didn’t stop until she’d reached the alley from where she’d scoped out the charity drive. It wasn’t the most ideal spot, but the back of the alley formed a t-shaped junction with the surrounding buildings, so it offered plenty of options for skipping out if the fuzz spotted them. Winded and jittery from the whole ordeal, Lou braced herself against the overflowing, foul-smelling bin and stumbled around it to get out of sight.
Lying there in a mound of rubbish, all disheveled and pale, was the elven doll in the crimson dress, ruby-encrusted clutch still grasped in one hand.
Lou had seen dead bodies before, but not up close like this.
She flinched when the elf gasped like someone had forcibly pumped air into her lungs. So she wasn’t dead. What now?
Lou glanced around her. Where was this lady’s companion, the ork in the blue suit?
“M-Miss?” she said, cringing. She’d helped her mates clean up scrapes and bruises, but this was something totally different. Judging from the elf’s pallor, she’d been shot, but the dress’s color and the near-darkness of the alley hid any bullet wound.
Blood burbled from the elf’s lips.
If this woman died, she’d never be able to teach Lou magic.
“Sakes alive, Saint Louise,” Skint said from over her shoulder, also out of breath. “What a horror show that w—”
“Go on home, Skint,” Lou cut in, not taking her eyes off the dying elf in the rubbish. “Meet you there.”
She swallowed hard and knelt, unsure what to do. Touching the woman might do more harm than good.
The blue-suited ork rounded the alley’s back corner with purpose in his steps, a scowl twisted across his lower tusks. He stalked toward her, hard enough that she felt the cement shudder beneath his bulk. Even in the alley darkness she got a good look at him, immediately regretting it. His left eye glowed with unnatural blue light, and the skin around the damaged cybereye had torn away to reveal a shiny, chromed skull underneath. Clicks and whirs and buzzes accompanied his approach.
This wasn’t no man. This was a slotted-off robot of some kind.
And it was coming right for her.
Heart pounding in her neck, Lou fell back on her arse and tried crab-walking away from this mechanical monstrosity—
And felt herself lifted up into the air, dangling by her coat from the robo-ork’s surprisingly strong grasp.
“Lemme go, ya big oaf! Lemme go!” She fumbled around for the pistol at her back, the pepper spray canister—anything—but couldn’t reach either.
“I don’t have time to mess with you right now, street rat,” he barked.
“You…hurt that girl, Rook,” the elf spluttered between ragged gasps from the garbage, “and I’ll cack off just to spite you.”
“Sorry, Starling.” The ground slowly descended to meet Lou’s worn shoes, and the ork let go of her jacket. “G’won. Scat.”
Lou pulled her arms back into her coat sleeves and stuck her tongue out at the ork when he wasn’t looking. And then for revenge—and just to prove she could—she nicked from his pocket a small cylinder with a metal ring at one end. She glanced down to realize she’d boosted a live grenade. It got tucked into her other pocket—so it wouldn’t clink against the pepper spray and accidentally go off…
“Told you going out the front door was a bad idea,” the elf said, grimacing.
Rook stared down the alley mouth and growled. “Agh! Where the bloody goddamn hell’s Royce? And why in the flaming frag are you still here?”
Lou ignored the scary ork and knelt next to the elf again. She looked bad. Real, real bad.
“Look,” Lou said, “I can help. I got pals ’round here. We can get you to a doctor or something, help you get ’round the cops or whoever you’re running from.”
Starling lifted her head, a struggle that required the last of her reserves. “Help us…?” Her irises reflected light like a cat’s. “Why … would you help us?”
Lou swallowed, then took a long hit off her adult-sized respirator. “I wanna learn magic.”
A wet cough bubbled from Starling’s throat—no, she was trying to laugh. Gallows humor. Her eyes flagged and deadened, and for an instant, Lou thought she’d given up the ghost.
Then she blinked. “So…the street urchin’s got the gift, eh?” Her throat twitched with a pained swallow. “You…wanna help us? You turn…you turn and you run…Forget you ever saw us…”
Lou understood all too well. This was an adult-sized world. Kids need not apply.
Without a word she stood and wandered farther down the alley, toward the t-junction. She refused to show either of them the stinging tears forming in her eyes. It was Victoria station all over again—just two more adults telling her she wasn’t wanted.
Not until she ducked around the corner did she bother investigating the ruby-encrusted clutch hidden under her jacket. Starling probably hadn’t even realized she’d nicked it. The purse itself could fetch a few thousand pounds to the right buyer—assuming these were even real rubies—but Lou was honestly more interested in its contents. What in the world could those two have stolen that would cause this much fuss?
Aside from some normal adult-lady items—lipstick, an unmarked credstick, a commlink—the purse held only one real item of note: a black, wooden case about the same size as the commlink, carved in all manner of strange, unreadable symbols. Starved by curiosity, Lou popped the case open widthwise along the hinge and pivoted it toward the nearby streetlight so she could see what they’d scored.
Inside, on a bed of wine-colored velvet, lay what looked like an oversized playing card. The swirling design, bright green and black on a gray background, resembled some kind of primitive-looking art of two dragons locked in some eternal struggle. Lou grimaced and flipped the card over.
The scene depicted on the reverse lay upside down, so she turned it right-side up.
In the card image she saw a young girl clutching a large teddy bear. She sat outside a tube station with a suitcase, looking abandoned and angry and sad and worried all at the same time.
Lou’s heart stopped.
She knew exactly what this girl was feeling because it was her—Eloise Smith, long before she’d become Saint Louise. This wasn’t some artist’s rendering. It was damn near a photograph of that moment.
