The room was small and squarish, the decorations rather crude and the furnishings threadbare. The walls had been painted to look like a forest. A few dying plants slumped here and there in colored pots. The air smelted of incense. The pair of sleeping bags on the floor provided the only place to sit.

Farrah Moffit ran her eyes around the room one more tune, just to prove to herself again that she had no way to escape.

Even if she could get out of this room, she would need to find a working telecom, then manage to stay alive and free long enough to be picked up. The odds on that seemed long. She had seen and heard enough to guess that she was somewhere in the New York-New Jersey megaplex, but where exactly she did not know. Queens, the Bronx, Westchester-they all looked the same to her. One great ma.s.s of grimy ferrocrete. Outside Manhattan, she was lost.

Certain smells in the alley had made her think of Manhattan's Chinatown, but that probably meant nothing. A great many Asians lived in the urban Northeast. Practically every metroplex in the region had some sort of Asian enclave, some quite large.

The runners who held her captive had done a very good job of keeping her in the dark.If only she could believe the leader's promises that she would not be harmed. Her time with Fuchi had cured her of any such naivete. She would be kept alive for as long as that served the runner's purposes, then, in all likelihood, she would be killed. She had never previously dealt with shadowrunners herself, but she had heard enough and read enough and seen enough on trideo to be acquainted with the breed. Most were glorified gangers, criminals by another name, and quite vicious. They would not allow her to live for the simple reason that she could point them out in a police line-up, should police become involved, and she could testify to their crimes, should matters ever reach a court. They would not leave her behind. They would not simply let her go. Eventually someone, probably that Asian girl, the decker, would come into this room, put a gun to her head and pull the trigger.

If only she knew more of what was happening. What she would give for just a few minutes in front of a trid.

She felt so isolated, so alone.

This, of course, was part of the runners' strategy. They wanted to keep her in a state of mental uncertainty and emotional turmoil, this to persuade her of the value of cooperating fully, of being compliant.

Submissive. Weak. An elementary stratagem, a common technique for interrogations. The leader kept a.s.suring her she would be safe, while other members of the group threatened her with violence, and, in one case at least, made good on the threat. A neat little twist deliberately designed to add to her fears and her confusion.

To her chagrin, it was all working very nicely, though only to a limited extent.

Certain inescapable facts kept coming to mind. As a hostage held for ransom, she would be as good as dead. Fuchi did not pay ransom. That was the corp's stated official policy, and it held true for all but the highest corporate officials. The entire draconian apparatus in charge of Fuchi security worried little about humanitarian values or the sanct.i.ty of human life. For someone in her position, a fairly low-raking member of the corp's Special Administration, Fuchi would be more likely to send in a corporate a.s.sault team, kill everyone, sacrificing certain corporate a.s.sets rather than submit to extortion.

That put her life in her own hands exclusively, and that frightened her. Pleading would do no good.

Deceptions would get her only so far, and might get her killed before she was due.

No, Farris realized, she wouldn't get out of this alive unless she offered the runners something, something substantial, something that she alone of all their contacts had to offer them.

Deciding what that was did not take long.

The food Dok and Piper brought was not bad. It was mostly fish and rice, warm and easy to eat and quickly finished. Bandit liked his food that way.

Once done, he picked up the flute, surveyed it astrally, ran his fingertips over the polished wood. It appeared to have been made by a highly skilled craftsman. It had no flaws that he could detect. As soon as he had the time, he would return to his special place, his place of long magic, and bind the instrument's energies to his own. He would enhance its power, too.

Now, he lifted the flute to his mouth and played a few tentative notes. He did not know how to play a flute, but he would learn. He stopped when he noticed the others in the room-Rico, Shank, Dok, and Piper-all looking at him.

"When did you get so musical?" Shank grumbled.

Bandit thought about that, and said, "Ask me later."

"Sure. Maybe next year."

Bandit nodded. A year from now would be fine.

"If we're still alive."

"If we aren't, how would you ask?"

Shank stared at him a few moments, frowning. Apparently, he had no answer. That was good. It a.s.sured Bandit that Shank had not suddenly become so "magical" that he could speak from beyond the grave.

Orks should stick to weapons and combat and leave questions concerning magic to others.

"What?" Piper said, looking confused.

Rico stood, and said, looking at Bandit, "I'm gonna question our guest. I want you to watch her for lies."

Of course.

Reluctantly, Bandit followed Rico into the bedroom, where he had found the flute. The woman was in there now, the one with the unusual aura. Latent magical ability. Marena Farris.Rico closed the door.

Marena Farris looked like she'd been crying: red eyes, shiny brow and cheeks. A few wet-looking curls of hair stuck to her cheeks. She looked at him with an expression that seemed to mix grief and fear into something intensely vulnerable.

It would've been easy, too easy, to walk over, crouch down, talk to her soft and low and try to rea.s.sure her. Any woman in Farris' position probably deserved no less.. Just for being a woman caught in a bad situation. Yet Rico forced himself to plant his feet in front of the door, then crossed his arms and looked at Farris long and hard, like he'd be taking no cirek from anybody. He had more to consider than just this woman's feelings. "Okay," he said, "you got my attention. What'd you know about all this?"

"Did you talk-"

"We talked," Rico said, interrupting. He had heard what Piper had to say about her talk with Farris.

"Now I wanna hear it direct."

Farris wiped at her eyes, then looked at him and said, "Where shall I start?"

"How do you know about Prometheus?"

"It was part of my job as a member of Special Administration-"

"Of what?"

Piper had mentioned this, but Rico wanted to hear more. Farris elaborated. She made the Fuchi "Special Administration" sound like a corp within a corp, a special network designed to monitor practically every phase of the corporation's business. Part of Farris' job, apparently, was to covertly stick her nose into different Fuchi departments' business.

"Get back to Prometheus."

Farris nodded. "Fuchi has done extensive psycho-profiling of all its primary compet.i.tors. There's an entire department devoted to compet.i.tion research. I partic.i.p.ated peripherally in several studies, including a recent study of Prometheus."

"Convenient."

"It was essential. I served as liaison between the infiltrator program and compet.i.tion research. We weren't about to choose the target for our infiltrator by random selection. We viewed our first insertion as a sort of beta test-model. We wanted to ensure that whoever we sent would enter an environment where he or she would have a high chance of success."

"You said the meet with Prometheus wouldn't work out Why?"

A wary, almost fearful look entered Farris' eyes. Rico wouldn't be surprised if she was aware that Surikov wasn't the only one who had died at the meet with Prometheus. She had to know that others had been wounded. Rico, for one, had a bandage on his left arm that couldn't be missed.

Farris hesitated, then said, "When was the last time you heard of Prometheus accepting someone from a competing corporation?"

"I'll ask the questions."

Farris flushed. "Excuse me," she said. She spent a few moments regaining her composure, that or figuring out what to say next. Rico wondered how much of the wary, fearful act was real. Bandit offered no clue. Not yet anyway. "Well ... my point," Farris said, "is that Prometheus has a very strong intra-corporate program. They develop their personnel resources from within. They've taken a few special individuals who desired to change corporate affiliations, but those were exceptional people, primarily mages with very arcane specialties."

Rico could accept that, as far as it went. Magicians were special. They weren't half as common as most people seemed to think. Ones with Bandit's ability were d.a.m.n rare.

"Typically," Farris continued, "the corporate mindset views a change of affiliation as a sort of betrayal.

Would you trust someone who betrayed their corp? Trust them with proprietary data? Your edge against the compet.i.tion? Corps guard their secrets very closely. They scrutinize personnel recruited from other corps scrupulously. Prometheus more than most."

Rico nodded. Never trust a traitor. He'd heard that before. "Why'd they kill your husband?"

"Because," Farris said, seeming stung, "they'd rather deprive a compet.i.tor of the value of an Ansell Surikov than risk recruiting a potential traitor. Another corp's loss is their gain. That's how Prometheus sees it."

"And that's how you knew the meet wouldn't go right."

"That was my a.s.sumption."

"So why didn't you say something?"

"Would you have believed me?"

"Does it matter?""Of course it matters. Everything I do influences what you think of me and that matters quite a lot."

Abruptly, Farris seemed on the verge of tears. Her eyes got moist and her lower lip quivered. "If I had said they might try to kill you, and they didn't, if your meet had gone as planned, you'd see me as a schemer.

You'd think I had some hidden agenda, that I had tried to deceive you." Her breath caught. "It may not seem very brave, but I want to get out of this alive. I'm horrified over what's happened, over Ansell's death, but nothing scares me more than the power you have over me. I'll do anything I have to do ... to get through this."

Some slags would take a statement like that and run and never stop, especially with it coming from someone who looked like Farris. Some slags would use any situation to take advantage of a woman. Not Rico's style. Not even on his worst day. "One of my people might still be alive if I'd known what you know about Prometheus."

Farris' expression grew anguished. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's hard to know what to do. If I, had it to do over, I would take my chances and tell you. I was afraid. I'm still afraid."

"You got reason."

Farris seemed to shudder. "Yes, I know," she said quietly, almost in a whisper. "I know I have reason to fear you. That's why we must talk. I have something that you might want."

"Like what?"

"Ansell Surikov."

30.

"Surikov is dead."

"No. He's not."

Farris looked scared, but she spoke in the dead-calm tone that people used when they know exactly what they're saying, and know that they're right.

Rico looked at the stress a.n.a.lyzer on his wrist. If Farris was lying, she was d.a.m.n good at it.

A long silence followed. Farris' eyes never wavered, despite her fearful expression. Mentally, Rico ran down the short list of possible explanations. Farris could be lying. She could be nuts. Desperate enough to say anything or too far gone to notice. Even if Surikov had been revived, magically resuscitated, or his apparent death only some magician's illusion, Farris would have no way of knowing that.

Rico could think of only one other explanation and it wasn't a good one. Possibly, just possibly, he and his team had been not only double-crossed, but reamed right from the start. Tricked somehow. He didn't see how. "Surikov's not dead?"

"No." Farris shook her head.

"Then who was the slag we busted out of Maas Intertech?"

"Michael Travis. One of Ansell's research a.s.sistants." It didn't seem likely. "No way," Rico growled.

"No fragging way. We had retina scans. We had fragging DNA scans,"

"Yes, but how did you confirm those scans?" Farris asked softly. "Based on data obtained from Fuchi?"

"I'll ask the questions."

Farris just watched him a moment. The fear in her expression seemed to mix with sadness, maybe regret "Not even Fuchi datafiles are immutable," she said. "The infiltrator program antic.i.p.ated the possibility that certain relevant datafiles such as personnel files might be surrept.i.tiously accessed. These files were altered. Datasets were exchanged. Michael Travis' retinal and DNA patterns were inserted into Ansell's files. The real Ansell Surikov, his codes and patterns, are now part of the datafiles that originally belonged to Michael Travis."

Rico said nothing. He guessed that what Farris was saying was possible, but she made it sound too easy. There was more to changing ident.i.ties than just a swap of data in computer files. "Surikov's face is all over the datanets. He's been at conferences. He's been on trideo. People know what he looks like."

"Yes, that's true," Farris agreed, as softly as before. "And that is one reason why Michael Travis was chosen. He and Ansell have similar physical parameters. Similar physiques. Only a modest amount of cosmed surgery was necessary to complete the likeness."

Rico shook his head, tempted to sneer. "You can't cut a slag into a disguise like that. You can't make him a duplicate of somebody else. It's been tried. Surgery leaves scars. You can't cover up the traces. Not all of them."

"You're correct," Farris said. "Ordinarily, any surgery would be detected by a close medical examination. Precluding an attempt at deception. In this Case, however, it was possible to disguise the cosmetic alterations as necessary surgical reconstructions." Farris hesitated a moment, then said, quieterthan before, "Ansell has always been something of a baccha.n.a.lian. And rather ^discriminate. It was a simple matter to modify his files to show an episode with Gray's Syndrome."

Rico grimaced. "That's real convenient."

"Efficacious. And therefore essential."

Gray's Syndrome was one of several virulent, s.e.xually transmitted diseases that had arisen over the last five or ten years. People said it had come with the Awakening. Elves seemed to be particularly p.r.o.ne, but no one was immune. Gray's was nasty, though usually not fatal, given the right medical care. It corrupted a person's appearance. Made him or her look old and sick and deformed. And it happened fast, in just days. By the time a person realized he had it, his hair could be falling out and his teeth turning black and jutting out of his mouth like the fangs of an ork. The pain was said to be horrendous. Some people were transformed practically overnight. Some people, those who couldn't afford surgical corrections, killed themselves rather than go through life looking like some simsense-inspired horror. Some people just went insane. Rico supposed it would take a lot of surgery to restore a man from an episode with Gray's. That much cutting might well be used to cover the surgery needed to turn some slag into a near-duplicate of Ansell Surikov.

Clever.

"Okay," Rico said. "Say you made this slag Travis look like Surikov. He pa.s.ses the scans. That doesn't make him Surikov."

"That is where headware comes in."

"Yeah?"

Farris nodded. "The base implantation involved some highly advanced bionetics to boost the cerebral functions. This provided a framework for implanting a new form of semi-organic skillsoft, the bionetic equivalent of personafix BTL, encoded with Ansell Surikov's persona matrix."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning that Michael Travis not only looked and acted like Ansell Surikov, he believed that he was Ansell Surikov."