Back among the living.
Now, Billy lay on his back, shackled unceremoniously to a metal operating table. Technicians and doctors had probed and studied him, apparently interested in the technology of his body. A few hours ago, they had left the room, leaving him attached to machines that monitored his brain patterns and the electrical activity of his cyberware.
The room was quite secure, he knew. His mind had automatically analyzed it for avenues of escape. He had done this without thinking, the possible scenarios running like a subroutine in the back of his mind, and he had marveled at himself for it.
I am built to kill and to destroy. A combat machine.
“Someone’s coming,” Lethe said, his soothing voice dropping into Billy’s mind through a device in his cybernetics called the IMS—Invoked Memory Stimulator.
Billy opened his eyes to the darkened room. It was night, and moonlight shone through the barred and fenced-over windows, the crisscrossed shadows rippling over the floor and table next to him. Like hatch-marked silver.
“Not the same as before,” Lethe said. “I sense stealth and barely contained aggression in those who approach.”
Billy yanked at the heavy bands that anchored his legs, arms, chest, and head to the table, but he couldn’t even turn his head, and much of his connection to his cybernetics had been disrupted by the doctors. “Can you tell if they’re coming to kill us?”
Billy sensed laughter through the IMS. “No, my friend, I cannot read minds. I can only sense auras. Here they come.”
The door to the room opened and someone entered, perhaps several people. Billy could hear them only when he cranked up the sensitivity on his cybernetic ears to their maximum. He could sense the slight pressure shift in the room as well.
“Señor, aqui!"
The words were barely audible, subvocalized into a throat mic or headware, but Billy understood what they meant. “Over here, sir.”
The Azzies have found me, finally.
Several people surrounded him. Billy couldn’t see them and suspected that they had hidden themselves magically. He felt pressure against his chest and a compartment popped open. Then something was jacked into him, running diagnostics.
Billy knew that in his past life as the cyberzombie, Burnout, this had happened to him on a regular basis. Just a routine systems check. The portable deck was speaking to his brain, telling him exactly which parts were malfunctioning, which parts worked, and how much damage he had sustained in his quest to destroy Ryan Mercury.
A quest that now seemed so distant, so remote as to be unimportant. In fact, it was Ryan Mercury who had brought Burnout so close to death that he had lost his identity. Or rediscovered it. His previous incarnation had died in the massive fire in Dunkelzahn’s arboretum only hours ago, and Billy was not sad about it.
Perhaps Ryan Mercury did me a favor by almost killing me.
The irony did not escape Billy.
The diagnostic program indicated that his homing signal had been destroyed, probably when he had fallen into Hells Canyon. Another confrontation with Mercury that seemed like eons ago even though it had only been a week or so.
“Remarkable,” whispered one of the invisible people standing over him. “He has sustained a huge amount of abuse, but he lives on. I think we should abort termination and take him back with us.”
“Sí, ”
came the response.
The paralysis started in his toes and moved up rapidly, system by system through his knees, legs, waist. Up through his torso and chest it traveled, the sheer absence of feeling. No tingling numbness, just a digital erasure of his sensory perception.
His taste turned off with a click, then his sight, hearing, until finally he was alone inside a vast ocean of darkness. A brain in a sensory deprivation tank.
Lethe,
he thought.
Yes, Billy?
Could you show me Thayla again?
Billy felt the spirit smile inside and suddenly the darkness gave way to a brilliant light. The silence yielded to the glorious song of the goddess Thayla who stood on a cracked plane of rock. The light shone from her like a beacon against the darkness, a wondrous sun in the blackest firmament. The song and the light were one and the same. Her voice rang out, rising and falling in beautiful melodious waves, washing over him like warm surf. Until he cared not who he was and why he was there.
He merely wanted to stay forever.
Lethe’s memory of Thayla was flawless, the sensation of the experience overwhelming Billy until he knew that he must join his guardian angel in his quest to help Thayla. The beauty must not be destroyed.
But we’re in no position to help,
he thought.
When we wake, we will be in Aztlan.
If
we wake.
23 August 2057
Ryan Mercury woke. The fragments of his dream crashing through his skull like broken shards of a ceramic sculpture. A shattered nightmare of sharp edges and cold, hard clay.
Ryan shivered. The pre-dawn air filtered crisp and cool over his body as he slipped out of bed and walked across the chilly marble of his recovery room. In the aftermath of his confrontation with Burnout, he had been given a small, quiet room in the west wing of Dunkelzahn’s Georgetown mansion.
Ryan had recently used the Dragon Heart, which sat on the night stand next to his bed, to heal the bullet wound in his chest and the burns that covered his entire body. Now it was time to see what he looked like.
As he moved across the cold floor, he stared into the full-length mirror at his dark reflection—an apparition of shadows. A tattered mummy fluttering in the dim light cast by the reddening sky outside.
Ryan stood tall, trying to forget the dream, trying to discard the images of the horrible creatures attacking the goddess, ripping into her luminous flesh, like acid-soaked razors into unmarred skin.
With effort, he pushed the memory of their putrid stench from his mind and focused on the immediate. He looked at his reflection in the mirror as he slowly peeled off the bandages. He unwound the white gauze carefully, feeling no pain as the dried fabric pulled away from his healed skin. The Dragon Heart had worked its wonderful magic, bringing him to full strength in the passage of only one night.
Ryan’s body emerged in front of him from beneath the bandages. A two-meter chunk of humanity, dense and strongly muscled. Ryan was pure flesh, no cybernetic or biological augmentation. He gained all his extraordinary strength and quickness from well-toned natural muscle and reflexes that were enhanced by magic. Magic that came from the Silent Way—the physical adept path he had learned from the great dragon Dunkelzahn.
His hair caught the dim light from outside, its auburn color reflecting red. And as he leaned in close to examine his face, he saw that his silver-flecked blue eyes were clear. All the bloodshot fatigue had been washed away by the Dragon Heart’s magic.
Amazing,
he thought.
Tiny hairline scars crisscrossed the flesh of his shoulders and head, left over from the cuts made by flying glass shrapnel. It was difficult to believe that it had all happened last night. His confrontation of Damien Knight, his battle with Burnout, his effort to save Nadja. The explosion that had nearly killed him.
Ryan finished unwinding the bandages, feeling like a freshly emerged butterfly, his new skin sensitive and cold in the slight breeze that blew in through the open window. He threw the bandages on the bed and dressed in a piycra nightsuit.
Since I can't sleep anyway,
he thought,
I might as well get up and run through some katas.
As he pulled a dark shirt over his head, his wristphone rang. He walked to the bedside table, picked it up, and looked at the tiny screen to see who was calling.
The code for Jane-in-the-box flashed across the top of
the screen. Jane-in-the-box was the human woman who had been Dunkelzahn’s decker for many years. Now that the dragon was dead, she worked for Nadja Daviar and the Draco Foundation. And sometimes, she ran the Matrix for Assets Incorporated, Ryan’s team of shadowrunners.
Ryan strapped the phone to his wrist and punched the Connect button.
Jane’s persona appeared—a cartoon image of a blonde human woman with pouting red lips, giant blue eyes, and huge breasts encased in red vinyl. Ryan knew that the real Jane, who decked from a physical location deep underground in Dunkelzahn’s Lake Louise lair, looked nothing like the icon on his small screen. She was rail-thin and somewhat homely, had an acerbic wit and a razor-sharp intellect.
Jane smiled. “Quicksilver,” she said. “You’re awake, and I must say that you look none the worse for almost dying just a few hours ago.”
“Physically, I feel great. Mentally . . .”
“Something bothering you?”
“Bad dreams,” he said. “But you didn’t call me this early just to hear about my nightmares, did you?”
“No. I just got word that Hamilton Asylum has been breached.”
“Is that where they took Burnout’s body?”
“Yes.”
“He’s escaped?”
“No, but someone just broke in. I think they might be after him.” Jane’s icon smiled. “I thought you’d want to know.”
“Thanks,” Ryan said. “I did want to talk to Lethe.” Lethe was a powerful spirit who had alternately helped and hindered Ryan’s efforts concerning the Dragon Heart. But ultimately, Ryan believed the spirit wanted the same thing he did: to deliver the Heart to Thayla.
Lethe has seen Thayla. He’s spoken with her, and despite past differences, he might be willing to help.
Lethe was trapped inside Burnout, who by all accounts should be dead. The cyberzombie had not only taken a high-caliber sniper round through the chest, but he had been caught in the middle of the arboretum during the oxygen explosion.
Lethe may have had a hand in keeping Burnout from stepping beyond the pale, but whatever the case, the cyberzombie had not succumbed to the final sleep. He had slipped into a comatose state, but all his vital signs were normal.
If Burnout does escape
,
or is taken away, Lethe goes with him. I can’t let that happen.
“Jane, I’m going there right now. Where’s Dhin?”
“I took the liberty of waking him; he’s enroute to you. Flying the Draco Foundation’s new Hughes Airstar.”
Ryan smiled. “Remind me to kiss you next time I see you in the flesh. What's his ETA?”
“Two minutes.”
“Perfect,” Ryan said. “I’ll be prepped and ready to roll.”
He punched the Disconnect and turned to lift the Dragon Heart from the velvet pillow on which it rested. The Heart was large, the size of a child’s head and shaped more like a real four-chambered heart than an idealized valentine. Made from pure orichalcum, the color of bronze-tinted gold, and enchanted by some unknown magic, the Dragon Heart was the most powerful object Ryan had ever encountered.
Mana seemed to flow through it like a lens, channeled from astral space and focused wherever the Heart’s wielder wished. Ryan had used its magic to accentuate and increase his own abilities, but he would no longer try to keep it for himself, no matter how much its power enticed him. It had another destiny.
Ryan placed the Dragon Heart into a pouch that he attached to a broad sash tied around his waist. When it was secure, he dug through the closet for his running gear. He found his flexible Kevlar Ill-slatted light body armor, which he pulled over his nightsuit.
He gathered up his carry bag and moved out. angling toward the helipad behind the house. He moved quickly out into the hall and down past the library. He walked along in silence, looking to avoid encounters with security agents or mansion personnel.
He didn’t want anyone to notice his departure. Not right away. If someone saw him, Nadja would find out. Ryan didn’t know if Nadja was awake or not, but even though he desperately wanted to see her, he couldn’t take the time to tell her goodbye. Hopefully, he’d be back before she realized he was gone.
Nadja Daviar was an elven woman of considerable power and beauty. She had been Dunkelzahn’s translator and aide and was now the head of the Draco Foundation. She was also nominated to become the new vice president of the United Canadian and American States.
Ryan was in love with her.
By the time he had made his way through the mansion and out the rear entrance to the helicopter pad, he could hear the deep
thwup thwup
of the Hughes Airstar approaching. The craft descended in a rush of wind and bone-shaking thunder.
Ryan saw Dhin through the foreshield, a huge grin on the big ork’s tusked face. As soon as the helo’s runners touched tarmac, Ryan ran over it and climbed in next to Dhin. “We’re on a tight schedule,” he yelled over the roar of the rotors.
Dhin turned and nodded. “Got the whole scan from Jane,” he said, simultaneously lifting the chopper into the air. “We should make Hamilton in three minutes.”
“Good.”
Dhin sat in the pilot’s seat. He wore a loose-fitting black jumpsuit and a crash helmet over his bony skull. A thin fiber-optic cable plugged into the datajack behind his right ear. The cable’s other end disappeared into the control console in front of him.