The Mega-city loomed out over me as I sat on my perch on the tallest building. I enjoyed the view for a little bit as I munched away at my breakfast. I had pulled off my mask and hood, letting my short black hair out to cool its sweat in the warm breeze. I was just over the smog layer and the air was chilled and crisp. The first rays of the sun broke through the buildings and shone deep into the smog. It would never reach the streets below, but it still tried.
The cityscape below was one of turmoil and strife. People could barely get by with the work they could get, while the wealthy lived above it all and hardly lifted a finger to help. Nearly everything in this city was owned, or run by Ares Macro. From old New York to Detroit, it was in their hands. Even me sometimes, but only if they paid through the nose. I was the best at what I did.
I was a Shadowrunner. I was an off the books consultant, information broker, gofer, and assassin for anyone with the creds. Most of the people I worked for or with were “Smiths”; no name, no face, no trace handlers that hand down jobs or missions to the cheapest or the best runners. Not a one of us were in the system or in the books. We worked for cash, cred sticks, or favors.
If you were a Runner, you were free. Nothing tied you to one place unless you let it, and no one owned you. I was in this part of town for two reasons, work, and the view. The work was the mini disc in my belt pouch, and the view was spectacular. I popped the last of my bagel into my mouth and rose to my feet. I brushed the crumbs off my gray gi and dawned my hood. I pulled up the mask as I stepped over to the edge of my ledge and gazed down at the passing cars below.
I felt at peace up here. This was the only place to see the sun, in all its glory, as it rose in the morning or set at the end of the day. I checked the time with my Ocular implant's HUD; sixteen hours till sunset, two till Mac's opened and thirty minutes till I had to meet “Mr. Smith”. Taking a deep breath, I leaned forward and jumped.
For most of my life, I had trained. Stealth, computer use, hacking, mystic defense, fighting, weapons, and guns were all I knew for fifteen years. From the time I was five, I was taught to be a ninja. My teachers were kind but firm with my training, making sure not to break me but strengthen me. Ninjutsu and Bushido were drilled into me, each with their own skills that I mastered. So a fall from this height was nothing I couldn't handle.
I felt like I was flying as I fell. The wind roared past my ears and my heart raced with adrenaline as I plunged into the smog cloud. Soon the darkness of the smog gave way to the lights of the city below me. Neon signs and flashing ads for drinks and food, filled my vision as I came to my first obstacle, rush hour traffic on the Sky Bridge.
The Sky Bridge was less a bridge and more a path through the air that the traffic takes each day. Hover cars, Cargo transports, and Metro transports rushed by as I plummeted toward them. I could see the look of some of the drivers as they saw me, falling at full speed right at them. I smiled under my mask as I got closer.
Horns blared as I zipped through the first layer with little resistance, but the next three layers of traffic required some twisting and shifting of my weight to slow down. As I hit about midway through traffic, I pulled out a thin cable with a small grappling hook on one end. Still falling, I spun the hook and tossed it onto the underbelly of a passing hover car on the lowest level of traffic. The cable pulled tight and changed my fall path, slowing me to a more manageable speed.
I felt the pull in my shoulder as the cable pulled taut, burning as the socket fought to stay in place. To ease the pain I let the cable slide a bit, dropping me a bit as I swung at the nearest building. I pulled up and snapped the hook off the hover car with a flick of the cable. I fell at just the right angle to hit the wall and start to slide down the face of the building until I hit a ledge I could stand on.
I was three stories up from the street and looked around for “Smith”. A street gang of Trolls and Orcs stomped up the road, pushing aside anyone that couldn't get out of the way fast enough. This gang was nothing to worry about, but it was their boss that I had to keep my eye on. He was a tall troll that went by the name of Danny “Tripod” O'Dowd. Tripod had risen to their leader in just under a month using his fist, hammer, and Peacekeeper.
They passed me by without looking up, something most people don't do nowadays. I let out a quiet sigh and resumed my scan of the street for my “Smith”. People passed underneath me going about their daily lives, never noticing me. No one ever looked up, ever.
“Mr. Smith” came strolling around a corner into my view. He wore a black tailored suit with a with undershirt and a black tie. If you passed him on the street you would think nothing of him, even if he bumped into you. He was average in every way, making him perfect for his job.
I grinned under my mask as I silently dropped down into the early morning crowd, unnoticed. I shadowed him right up to the bar where we were to meet, easy even with my gi on. The bar was called the Long Shot, and it was small, smoky and dark. Just my speed.
I slipped into the bar smoothly, ducking into the dark bar room and found where he had sat down. I slid into a chair opposite him, started to hack his network connection, and sent him my opener.
What is the music of life? I sent the text and waited for him to reply with his part.
“Silence, dear brother, silence,” he said as he set aside the menu. “Did you get it?”
I set the mini disk on the table and waited for him to check it. He picked it up and plugged it into a reader and waited for the info to pop up on his HUD. He skimmed over the info and nodded.
“Good work, same payment as last time?” He asked as I nodded.
He slid a credit stick across the table to me and went back to his menu.
I turned to leave he stopped me.
“We have one more job if you're interested?”
I stopped and looked at him.
“It's a basic breaking and entering,” he said. “My client wants something broken and we think you're the best for this kind of thing.”
The lab I was to hit was high in the Ares building, the 65th floor. The ledge was just big enough for me to sit on, just under the smog cloud. I held myself close to the window's field and waited for my hacker bug to get through the firewall. My HUD flashed that I had gained control of the field and could take it down when I was ready for entry. I turned down the tint, just enough to see inside, checking for guards on patrol inside.
No one passed by as the sun sank behind the buildings in the west. I hit the command and rolled into the building as the field flashed off for only a second. That should only appear as a glitch on the network, letting me work without interruption. The room I had gained access to was a small office, just a desk, and some chairs. I slipped around the desk and to the door.
The hallway outside the room was dark and quite. I cleared it before I went to a terminal that could give me a map to what I needed. The download went easy, I didn't even need to hack into the computer to find it. The map said that the R&D Department was just down the hall and to my left, but locked tight. When I arrived at the door, I spotted the card reader that kept people like me out.
Tech was easy to pass if you knew where to fiddle with it. I popped it's faceplate from the card reader and got a look at the circuitry inside. A few crossed wires and one flick to the power source and I was in the door, no fuss no muss.
The lab was a little on the small side, only a few tables with equipment and beakers and one large object covered in a tarp filled it. I double checked the sign on the door, just in case I was in the wrong room. “Ares Weapons R and D,” was what it said. Too bad this whole thing felt like a bad prank or a trap.
I walked up to the tarp, it being the only thing in this room that I could assume I was to break. I pulled the tarp off and stared at the thing. Several keystones with runes carved into them formed a circle, and each rune was joined by circuitry and copper coils. The runes seemed to glow with some unknown arcane power that resonated within the keystones. This thing was a meshing of technology and magic never seen before.
As I stood there shocked, the lights came on and two beefy hands grabbed my shoulders. Before I knew it I was sitting in front of the keystone ring with my hands tied behind my back, and standing there before me was none other than Damien Knight, the second largest shareholder of Ares Macro. He was a full head taller than me, even though I was only five foot four. His face made me think of a wolf, with his predatory blue eyes and sharp jaw line. His nose had a hook to it and looked like it was broken a few times in the past. But what got me the most was his mane of white hair.
He looked to be in his mid twenty's, but that hair gave it away. This man was much older than me, maybe even than my master. I didn't panic at his presence, but he still unnerved me.
“Good work, Danny,” he said calmly. “You can leave now.”
“What 'bout me pay,” a gruff voice behind me replied.
Damien pulled out a black cred-stick and tossed it to him, over my head.
“That should suffice.”
As the troll left, I looked up at my captor. Damien Knight. He leaned against one of the tables and looked at me. His tailored suit was a dark blue, pen striped with light gray lines, and a red tie. He oozed power and grace with every move he made. His eyes loomed over me watching for any sign of movement as he waited for something.
“You know, finding you was harder than I thought it would be,” he said. “You should be proud of your skills.”
As he spoke I grasped the fingers on my cybernetic right hand and pulled. It popped off without a sound and let the ropes keeping me tied slide off my wrist.
“It was like a game of chess that I played with an old friend. I had to let several things fall just to see catch a glimpse of who you were, and even then you were still hard to see.”
I reattached my hand and pulled out one of my knives, letting it slide up my sleeve as I readied to move.
“It took three tries on an old security camera just to get a clear view of you. I even had to find an old VHS player with hookups for modern computers.”
With my other hand, I readied a smoke bomb and waited for him to finish.
He pulled out a small remote and pushed a button on it. The keystones began to hum as power was given to them. A purple light began to emanate from the air in the center of the ring as the power surged and swirled about. Soon the fabric of reality itself ripped asunder and a vortex of color spun within the ring.
“This is what you were meant to break, right,” Damien asked me. “This is a gateway. To where we don't know. Everything we put through it loses signal the moment it goes through. Now normally we would just throw in the towel on this project. But I see potential in it! If we know where it went we could find new weapons. Technology! Or even magic! It would finally put us on the map in those markets. The money alone from discovered slaves we could bring through would TRIPLE our stocks.”
This man had lost his mind! His face held a manic grin that could put the Grim Reaper to shame. I had no choice, this thing had to go, no matter the cost. I crushed the glass ball that was my smoke bomb and let the concealing miasma fill the room.
Ninjas. Never give us time.
I jumped to my feet and ran to the ring. When I found it I had only seconds before my smoke would clear and Damien would find me. I drew forth my katana and cut the circuitry between stones, shattering the circuit board and breaking the circle. The whole thing shuttered and sputtered as the power stopped.
It was at that moment that my world exploded. Power jumped through my sword and into my arm, burning the flesh and numbing the nerves as it went. The gateway began to draw in my smoke, clearing the air for Damien to see my handy work. As my smoke cleared, parts of the broken ring were sucked into the portal, and then it got even more hectic. The portal grew in size and power. Papers from the table flew about in the room as a powerful wind began to draw everything towards the destabilized hole in reality.
“You fool!” Damien screamed over the din. “What have you done?!”
He gripped the table he was leaning against as the wind started to pull him off his feet. It had grown strong enough that he was struggling to keep a hold on the table. I, on the other hand, had nothing to grab onto or to weigh me down. I was swept off my feet and into the portal I went.
The last thing I saw as I left that world was the mouth of the gateway slamming shut behind me.
If I had a voice I would be screaming in terror and pain. Light and dark assaulted my sight and screams and whispers filled my ears. It felt like I was being torn apart by demons and rebuilt by angels. The final torture was the taste, I could taste colors and smell thoughts, my brain could not process all of the information and it was making me sick. Vertigo took the last of my sanity as I fell, pulled in every direction and weightlessness at the same time.
I was in hell.
I don't know how long I was like that until I felt the solid pull of gravity on my body. I fell a short distance and was meet with cold, hard ground. When my vision came back, all I could see was white. Then I felt the cold wet sensation of snow on my skin and through my gi. I was laying in a snow drift about three feet high.
My gi was not meant for winter, so I could feel every aspect of the cold. The air was chilly on my now wet gi and I could fee the burns on my arm starting to hurt and sting from the water and cold. I rose enough to see where I was but fell back as my head spun from the experience I had just had. That was when my stomach decided to have a word with my mouth and attempt empty its continence. I ripped my mask down and began to violently empty my stomach onto the snow covered floor.
After I finished retching, I sat back, let out a grunt and spit the nasty taste of bile out of my mouth. I looked at the place I landed in and cringed, all the colors were bright even in the dying sunlight. In the distance, I could see a small gathering of buildings that must be the start of a city, so I stood and made to go to it.
As I rose I felt the pain in my leg and looked down. It was broken. The bone protruded from the skin and had torn the leg of my gi, which was now turning red. I must have broken it when I fell, but why didn't I feel it. Then it hit me, I was in shock from everything that had happened to me.
Steeling my resolve, I started to crawl through the snow to the buildings.
As I came closer, I started to shake from the cold and loss of blood. As my sense of pain came back, I let out a mute scream. I grunted and growled the last few feet until I fell into a street. Bloody, bruised and now concussed, I tried to make noise for help. The knife in my sleeve slipped out as I flailed about and I grabbed it. I slammed it into the rocky road I lay upon as hard as I could.
The ringing metal got something's attention. A pony, in a stetson hat, filled my vision. It had large green eyes and a rather emotive face, having a look of concern on it. I was ready to see the rider when it spoke.
“You don't look too good, sugar cube,” the heavy southern accent made my mind go blank.
I looked on in fear as she looked me over.
“Burns and a broken leg. I wonder if you were one of the pit fighter humans? Was there a fight near here,” a second softer voice chimed in. “We need to get him to the hospital right away!”
The orange one nodded and moved to get under me. Instead, I used her to push myself up and leaned on her back. I could walk, just as long as it stayed by my side. That was when I saw the source of the second voice.
A butter yellow, winged pony with a pink mane and tail stared at me as I leaned on the orange one. She began to fret over me as I tried to get the orange one moving when I toppled over. Pain crawled up my leg, burning away any other feeling I was having at that moment. I had shattered my leg before, but something was off about this pain.
Before I could do anything, the yellow one scooped me up and dragged me off. Before we arrived, I had blacked out.