Unwillingly, Doc Dicer nodded. "Turbo," she confirmed.

"What dosage? About fifty milligrams?"

She nodded again.

"So two hundred mil would see me through the night."

"And kill you by the dawn," she snapped.

He nodded acceptance. "But I'll be able to function tonight."

"Yes. If I gave you that dosage. Which I won't."

Nightwalker was silent for several seconds. Falcon could hear Doc Dicer's rapid, angry breathing, could hear his own pulse in his ears.

Finally Nightwalker said quietly, "There's something important that I have to do, Doctor. I can't tell you what it is, but I've sworn my life to seeing it through. Do you understand? I need two hundred milligrams of turbo."

"It'll kill you," the doctor said again. "I can't do it. . . ."

"You can't not do it," the runner pressed. "Everyone has the right to choose the time of his own death, the right to give his life as he sees fit. Who are you to take that right away from me?"

There was silence in the room for almost a minute. Nightwalker just lay there on the bed, watching Doc Dicer with almost inhuman calm. The doctor couldn't meet his gaze. Falcon's eyes flicked back and forth between the two of them.

Finally the doc moved. Reached down into her belt pouch to pull out a hyposprayer and a small ampoule of violet liquid. She still couldn't meet Nightwalker's gaze as she fumbled the ampoule into place, adjusted the hypo. "Two hundred milligrams," she rasped.

Falcon turned away as she administered the drug.

"What do you expect to do?"

Nightwalker turned at Falcon's question, looked down at the young ganger.

"What do you expect to do?" Falcon asked again. Before you die, he wanted to add, but didn't. "What if this meet's a setup too?"

The runner just shrugged. They'd taken an autocab, one of the cybernetically controlled vehicles just beginning to proliferate in the sprawl, to Boren and Spruce, and were now walking the last couple of blocks to Kobe Terrace Park.

Nightwalker was having no trouble keeping up with Falcon's purposefully fast pace. He moved so smoothly, so easily, that the ganger could almost forget how injured the runner was, about the drug coursing through the other man's veins, burning up his body from the inside. Nightwalker seemed young again, almost as young as Falcon himself. In some way, maybe that was appropriate for the night before he died.

"And so what if it isn't a setup?" Falcon pressed. "What the frag can you do?" Before you die.

Nightwalker answered calmly, ignoring the anger in the young man's voice. "With Marci and Cat-Dancing gone, there's just the tribals left. They don't know the sprawl. I can tell them how to make it back to the Salish-Shidhe lands without getting stopped-either by the Border Patrol or the corp armies. I can give them some contacts."

"What if they've already gone?"

"They won't be."

Falcon shook his head angrily. "Then what if the corp already got them? You've killed yourself for nothing."

"Then I die," the Amerindian answered simply. "The decision's made, why torture myself about roads I didn't take?" He looked up at the clouds reflecting the lights of the city. From the runner's expression, Falcon might almost have thought Nightwalker was looking through the clouds, at the stars. "Tonight is a fine time to die." At twenty-two thirty hours, the downtown core was humming. The suits and the beautiful people were out to see and be seen, eating and drinking, catching a show, cruising the clubs. The energy was high; the night almost buzzed with it.

Not in Kobe Terrace Park, though. The ground rules were different here. By day it was a safe place-as safe as anywhere could be in the plex-a spot to sit out on the gra.s.s on the rare sunny day, to eat lunch, to relax.

Like so many other parks it became a war zone after dark. Two-legged predators prowled the concrete terraces, lying in wait behind bushes and trees for any prey foolish enough to wander into view. Lone Star-all too often outgunned by the first-tier gangs who used the park as a venue for settling scores-left the place alone once the sun went down.

Falcon didn't know the park well, having been there only once by day. Never at night. Only gangs like the Ancients and the Tigers, the heavy-hitters of Seattle, came out to play there after dark. The First Nation wasn't anywhere near their league-being second-tier, or even third.

These and other uncomfortable thoughts rattled around Falcon's mind as they reached the park. Nightwalker seemed totally unconcerned, jandering south from where Tenth Avenue ended at the park proper. (And why the frag not? Falcon asked himself bitterly. He's got nothing to lose.) The young ganger tightened his grip on the b.u.t.t of his Fichetti, which was reloaded, c.o.c.ked, safety off, ready to party. (He was still somewhat surprised that it was Doc Dicer who'd sold him two clips of ammo. Shadow cutter and gunlegger?) "What if it's another setup?" he hissed to Nightwalker.

The runner just shrugged. "If it is, it is."

Just fragging chill, Falcon thought bitterly, stepping up his scrutiny of the impenetrable shadows around them. Right now he was wishing for eyes in the back of his head.

It was Falcon who spotted the figure first. A patch of deeper blackness in a pool of shadow. The ganger stopped dead, nudging his larger companion with an elbow. "There," he whispered, indicating the direction with a jerk of his chin.

He felt the runner tense up beside him. Nightwalker brought his left hand up to his waist, made a quick, curious gesture. The shadowy figure responded with another, similar gesture-not the wave-off that had cost Cat-Dancing his life, Falcon was glad to see. Nightwalker relaxed, strode forward to join the figure. Belatedly, Falcon scurried to keep up with him.

Now that he was closer and his eyes better night-adapted, Falcon could better make out the figure. His first impression was that the man looked a lot like Nightwalker. He was big too, maybe even broader across the shoulders than his comrade. He had the same straight black hair, the same aquiline nose, the same hard eyes. There was no doubt of his Amerindian blood.

The two men clutched each other's forearms. Falcon couldn't be sure, but he got the feeling Nightwalker was more pleased by this meeting than the stranger. "Hoi, Knife-Edge."

"Hoi, Walker. Thought you were hosed, man."

"Not yet." There was something about the runner's voice that made the stranger search his comrade's face.

But if Knife-Edge understood what he saw there, he didn't mention it. He flashed a hard glare at Falcon. "What's this?" Falcon bristled at the man's tone, but held his tongue.

"Stay chill. Edge," Nightwalker said quietly. "He's stone, chummer. He helped me out of heavy drek. We're tight."

Knife-Edge looked skeptical. "Tight with that?" He snorted. "Well, your funeral, omae."

"Yes," Nightwalker agreed simply, earning him a quizzical look from the other runner.

"Yeah, right," Knife-Edge muttered, turning away. "The others are here. Bring your chummer if you got to."

With a rea.s.suring pat on the shoulder, Nightwalker led Falcon deeper into the shadows.

The "others." There were three of them, all big, all Amerindian, all with the same air of competence as Nightwalker and Knife-Edge. They were squatting under cover of a small copse of trees in one of the park's upper terraces. As Falcon followed Nightwalker into the tiny clearing, he felt their hard eyes appraising him. One of the tough-looking men flexed his right hand, and three wickedly sharp spurs snicked out from the back of his hand.

"Chill," Knife-Edge ordered quietly. "He's with Walker."

The cybered runner shrugged, and the spurs retracted into their sheath of flesh.

Nightwalker looked around at the faces. "This is it?" he asked quietly. "What about the others?"

"Gone," Knife-Edge answered simply. "When the run crashed, we all split up. n.o.body from team one made it out. I saw Marci buy it, which means you were the only survivor of team two, Walker. Teams three and four . . . well, there's Slick, Benbo and Van"-he gestured to the other three runners-"and me, and that's it. I think Cat-Dancing made it out, but we lost track of him."

Nightwalker briefly filled the group in on the events of the previous night.

Knife-Edge nodded slowly when he was finished. "Yeah, that hangs together. We heard rumblings the meet was razzed, but of course we couldn't warn you. Or Cat."

"What about the Cowgirl?" Nightwalker asked. Falcon a.s.sumed he was talking about the decker.

"Never made it," Knife-Edge stated. "After we shook the opposition we checked out her doss. Found her still jacked in, dead as fragging meat."

Nightwalker seemed to collapse in on himself, the brittle, transitory energy lent him by the turbo ebbing away. "So it's over," he said quietly.

"Maybe not," Knife-Edge corrected him. "There's a strange buzz on the street-like, somebody else got hold of the pay data."

"Our paydata?"

"That's what the buzz says, Walker. Don't know how.

Maybe Cowgirl contracted herself some Matrix cover on the quiet."

"Who?" Nightwalker demanded. "Who has it?""Don't got a name," one of the other Amerinds spoke up for the first time. "Some local slag. Some runner."

"Is that true?" Falcon could hear the desperation in Nightwalker's voice, the urgent need to believe.

"That's what the buzz says," Knife-Edge confirmed. "So what are we doing about it?"

"Chill, friend." Knife-Edge laid a rea.s.suring hand on the other runner's shoulder. "We got feelers out all over the plex, trying to get a line on the local. We can't do much till we get an ident.i.ty, can we?"

"But you don't know the channels. . .

Knife-Edge cut Nightwalker off. "We may not be locals, but we know how to work the streets. We've got the angles covered. It's just a matter of time." He checked his watch. "Look, chummer, let's blow. We got us a safe place to hunker down." He glared at Falcon. "What about . . . ?"

"He comes with me," Nightwalker said harshly. "I said we're tight. I vouch for him."

For a moment Falcon thought Knife-Edge was going to object. But then the Amerindian just shrugged. "Your call, Walker." He looked the runner over again. "You want to sleep in the van? You look drek-kicked." Nightwalker shook his head slowly.

"Later," he said, and only Falcon understood the meaning of his words. "I'll sleep later."

9.

0055 hours, November 14, 2053 Is it starting? Sly sipped at her gla.s.s of scotch, staring out the window at the lights of downtown. Corporate war. Is it starting already?

It had been a strange day. A difficult one, a nerve-wracking one. She needed information on what was shaking on the street, what the corps were up to, and who was involved in the plex-wide search for her. But, of course, she was limited by the very existence of that search. How could she know which of her contacts, her erstwhile allies and comrades, had taken the megacorps' credit and had joined the hunt? She couldn't. Sure, there were ways of putting out feelers without identifying yourself, but that was nowhere near as efficient as personal contact with people who knew and trusted you. Within an hour of leaving Agarwal's place, she realized how isolated she really was.

That was when she'd remembered Argent. A heavily chromed street monster and the leader of a shadow team that called itself the Wrecking Crew, he'd worked with Sly on a major run a few years back. Since then she'd kept in intermittent contact with the big man. Though they never got close enough to consider each other chummers, they did share a healthy respect for each other's competence. It came as a disturbing shock to Sly to realize that Argent was the only runner in the entire sprawl she could trust, even marginally.

It had taken her a half-hour of hard thinking before deciding to risk a call to him. What finally decided her was the fact that Argent had a strong-Sly thought obsessive-hatred of Yamatetsu, for some reason he never discussed with anyone. That personal quirk should be enough to stop him from ever getting involved in anything that might benefit the megacorp, she figured. Not the best basis for trust, but better than nothing.

Argent turned out to be a good choice. He answered her preliminary questions immediately, without having to go to his contacts, as though he'd already picked up on the changes happening on the streets. "Things are getting dicey," he told her, "in and out of the shadows. Lone Star's out in force. More patrols, better armed. Where there'd normally be a patrol of two Stars, there are six; and when they'd normally be riding in a light patrol car, they're packed into Citymasters. They're acting weird, too, like they know something's going down but they're not sure what.

"Corp forces are also out," he went on. "Up-gunned patrols, too, doing this strange kind of dance. Lots of rumbles all over the plex. The media says they're gang-related, but that's drek. They're not happening along turf borders. My reading is that it's the corp soldiers sc.r.a.pping it out." His face on her telecom screen took on a worried expression. "Something real bad's going down. Sly. I don't know what it is, and that scares me." That comment had hit Sly hard. If his street rep was any proof, it would take a frag of a lot to put a scare into Argent.

He'd also confirmed some of Agarwal's comments-as if Sly had really needed confirmation. All the major megacorps were in on it-whatever it was-but Yamatetsu seemed to be the key player.

"And they're all looking for you, Sly," he added without her having to ask. "Maybe not by name. I don't think all the players have ID'd you yet. But they're all asking the right questions on the street, and they're covering all your usual haunts." He'd chuckled grimly. "I take it you're not at home, or we wouldn't be having this conversation.

"I'll keep my eyes open and my ear to the ground," he said, "but until you hear from me you'd better find someplace real secure to hunker down." He'd paused. "Got a good spot, or do you want a suggestion?"

She took him up on the offer, and the suggestion had been surprising. Innovative, and possibly the best idea she'd heard in a long time.

Which was how she'd ended up at her present location.

The Sheraton, for frag's sake. One of Seattle's best, and most expensive, hotels, across the street from the exclusive Washington Athletic Club.

Sly would never have thought of it herself, but Argent's reasoning made immediate sense. First, who the h.e.l.l would look for a shadowrunner-particularly one being hunted by the corps-in a high-tone hotel that catered largely to corporate suits? The hunters would be searching the shadows, the squats and grimy flops in the rougher parts of town where the locals' hatred for the corps would interfere with the search. And second, once she'd checked into the Sheraton, the hotel's own highly touted computer and physical and magical security would help shield her. The only difficulty would be actually checking in.

Which, it turned out, wasn't hard at all, thanks to Modal. Over the last few years, he'd collected a wide variety of fake ident.i.ties-including names, histories, and even SINs-for both males and females of almost all the major metahuman races. Presumably he'd had a thriving business selling these to runners and others who found their real ident.i.ties something of a liability. As soon as she mentioned the problem, the black elf had produced a credstick for each of them, carrying all the data necessary for an almost watertight cover. He didn't say where he got them, and she didn't ask.

Then it had been only a matter of marching into the Sheraton lobby, bold as bra.s.s, and taking two adjoining rooms in the names of Wesley Aimes and Samantha Bouvier. Even though Sly was sure the clerk would hear her heart pounding, the bored dwarf had merely slipped the credsticks into the registration computer's slot. When they read out as good, he issued them the magnetic cards that served as keys, mumbling, "Welcometoth.e.s.h.eraton, hopeyouenjoyyourstay."

While riding up in the elevator, they learned that a convention was booked into the hotel tonight. A convention of representatives of private law-enforcement agencies. Execs from Lone Star and that corp's equivalent from around the world filled the rooms on the fifteenth and part of the tenth floor. At first that had scared the drek out of her. But then, on deeper thought, Sly realized it increased the level of their security. What corp hunter would expect his quarry to hole up in the midst of a bunch of cops? And even if somebody did track her to the Sheraton, they'd think twice about pulling anything shadowy when a significant percentage of the hotel guests were armed to the fragging teeth.

Once the initial fear was gone, she found the whole concept funnier than h.e.l.l. What do cops do for fun at a convention? she wondered. Arrest each other? Beat each other up? Sly relaxed so much that she had difficulty not bursting out laughing when a British Aide Firm exec-a dwarf wearing a bright scarlet jacket, a sash, and a kilt- boarded the elevator on the tenth floor on his way up to a hospitality suite on the fifteenth.

So here she was, in room 1205, looking out the window and enjoying a gla.s.s of single malt from the minibar. She looked over at Modal, who was sprawled on the bed, looking indecently comfortable as he idly zapped through the channels on the trideo.

She didn't like having him here. It didn't matter that she was confident-as confident as she could reasonably be-that any attempt to sell her out to the corps would just get him whacked. But his involvement made her seriously uncomfortable.

Why? she asked herself. He was a skilled street op, a good, steady gun to have at your back. He'd be an a.s.set no matter what she finally decided was the best course.

Was it just that they used to be lovers? She chewed on that for a few minutes, taking another swallow of scotch to turbocharge her brain.

No, not really. It was just . . . just that he reminded her of a zombie. Modal had always been so pa.s.sionate about things. Not just about her, or about s.e.x. But he'd always seemed personally involved, deeply involved, in everything he did, even though he didn't let emotions interfere with a run. And now?

No emotion at all, courtesy of the violet pills he was popping every couple of hours. And that was it. He looked like Modal, he talked like Modal. But it was like he wasn't Modal. He reminded her of the horror trids that had scared her so as a kid, the ones where the walking dead came to hunt the living. It was almost as though Modal were one of those animated corpses, brought back to only a semblance of life. She shuddered.

Sly looked at her watch, saw it was oh-one hundred. Time to call Agarwal for an update. She wished there was some way to relay incoming calls to room 1205, but she couldn't think of one. Cellular phones had locator circuits in them-otherwise how could they register with the cel network?-so she'd ditched hers hours ago. Some electronic genius might have been able to kluge together some untraceable relay, but she knew it was way beyond her capabilities. She walked through into the adjoining room, closing the connecting door behind her. Settled herself down on the edge of the bed and placed the call.

Agarwal answered immediately. His face on the telecom screen looked tired, his soft brown eyes bloodshot behind his gla.s.ses, as though he'd been staring at a computer screen for hours without a break. Which he probably had. The background was out of focus, but she could recognize the decor of his study.

"Sharon." He gave her a tense, worried smile. "Are you all right, Sharon?"

She nodded with a smile, tried to make her voice rea.s.suring. "I'm still kicking, chummer. No ha.s.sle. Did you get anything?"

"Several things. But it may not be anything you want to hear."

Her mouth went dry, but she kept her smile in place. "Did you break the encryption?"