Burning Bright s-15

  Burning Bright

  ( Shadowrun - 15 )

  Tom Dowd

  Tom Dowd

  BurningBright

  Synopsis MISSING: Mitch Truman, heir apparent to an entertainment megacorporation. He may have fled his parents for the sake of love, but is magic is involved the reason could be darker…

  WEALTHY: Dan Truman, CEO of media giant Truman Technologies, doesn't care how much it costs-he wants his son back. He'll hire the best to find his heir, even if their motives are suspect…

  EXPERIENCED: Kyle Teller's done this job before. He knows the tricks of the trade, and not only because he's a mage. He thinks finding the missing boy will be easy. Why shouldn't it be?

  Part I Chicago 14 August 2055

  1

  watching her, he thought of the thunderstorms of his childhood… He'd grown up on the Plains, far west of the Mississippi, but not far enough that the Rockies were anything more than an imagined wisp on the horizon on the clearest days. Thunderstorms were common the year round by then, and he and his friends would run along the edges of those freak storms as they raged across the prairies. It was thirteen years since the Great Ghost Dance had broken the power of the United States of America, and Kyle Teller was nine years old.

  The storms were a sign the Great Spirits were pleased the land had been restored to the People, the tribal shamans said. Running, yelling, and chasing each other in the cool of early evening, Kyle and his friends would each take the part of one of the powerful totems that had returned to rouse the people from their oppression.

  Listening to the growing winds and gauging the smells in the air, they'd celebrate the re-Awakening of magic, and watch to see from where a powerful storm would spring and in which direction it would run. Then, energies spent with the storm's, they would return home, finish their chores, and prepare for the next day at school. Kyle didn't need to study as much as the others did, but he still had to prepare. His mother was Anglo, which meant having to face worse things than class work at school.

  When it came to running a storm, though, Kyle was the best. There were times when he could feel its energy deep within him long before any clear signs of it appeared. And when the storm finally did rise, to him it was an elemental flower unfolding, slowly, inevitably, until nothing could keep it from bursting free over the land. He saw the progression, felt the patterns, and could see how the storm would arise and how long it would last. In the games of the children, he was always Coyote, for only the Trickster would gift such sight upon a half-breed.

  Often he heard the elders sing powerful songs of how the great Winds and Rains were spirits beyond the control of Man and unfathomable by Reason. Once, Kyle had even seen one of those spirits with his own eyes at a Calling near Salina that he and his sisters had attended with their grandfather.

  There, the spirit had been summoned by three young shamans. Proud and brash, they reveled in their new power to make the legendary spirit appear at their call. This was a great and mighty being, full of the heart of the air and the sky, one of the shamans had said. A power to be respected and honored, said the other. Kyle had watched as the supernatural tower of swirling, glistening air, vapor, and majesty that was the spirit became visible to the thousands gathered in the decaying parking lot of an abandoned K-Mart.

  The spirit, one of the shamans said, danced with the energy of life. Unbound, the spirit was the storm, inexplicable and beyond comprehension. Even as an awed and frightened child, Kyle had thought their words strange.

  He had watched many a gathering storm back home, out in the weed-choked fields behind the house, felt them as they raced across the plain, and seen only forces he could understand. It was true the storms were beyond anyone's control, but he could see how they grew from changes in temperature and the play of other forces. He could see the lightning build, feel it jump from ground to sky, and understand. That knowledge thrilled him, but he felt no mystery, no urge to dance in its presence.

  It was only years later that he would know why he saw things as he did, as few others could. Even the shamans to whom his parents took him when they finally realized his talent at first refused the ultimate truth. Could the Great Spirits have been so cruel as to put a boy of power among them and not give him the gifts of dance and song?

  They could, and perhaps had. The boy had the ways of magic Awakened within him, but where inspiration and spontaneity fueled the shamanic magic of his people, he used logic, reason, and deliberation. Kyle Teller, to the final humiliation of his father, was a mage.

  ****

  The forces shifted, the balance changed, and he felt the storm in her quiet.

  ****

  "Ironic, isn't it?" she said, her voice calmer than he'd expected as she scooped the last of the bread crumbs from the counter and into the long, outstretched fingers of her other hand. "For years we barely saw you because of your work."

  The stark lights of the kitchen made her pale and darkened her hair to nearly black. He knew she hated the lighting in the room but that it was too expensive to change the fixtures.

  "And now you only see me when I'm in town on business," he said.

  She nodded, now busily brushing away the wrinkles creased into her fashionable suit from sitting. The fabric responded, its freshness jumping back to life at her touch. Kyle wasn't used to seeing Beth dressed for me corporate world. It was wrong for her-too restrictive. She was an artist, a dancer, not the secretary she now pretended to be.

  She spoke, but had already turned to another task. There were, after all, dishes to be done. "Sometimes I think we see you more now."

  "You know that's not true."

  She bent carefully to rearrange the contents of the dishwasher. "Maybe not. But it does seem that way."

  Something was bothering her. He could sense it in the timbre of her voice, in the way she avoided his eyes, in the attention she paid to tidying up after dinner. And whatever it was had to do with her, not him, or else she'd have said something by now. Kyle played back in his mind all the events of the past hours: his arrival, his surprise at seeing Beth in a business suit, the gifts for Natalie, the details on Beth's new job, playing with Natalie and talking with the two of them, eating dinner, after dinner…

  "I saw a bottle of your sister's medication in the bathroom," Kyle said. Beth stiffened, but something made him blunder on. "How's she handling things?"

  Beth turned toward him slowly. She didn't snap at him and her eyes showed only the barest sign of the anger Kyle knew he'd evoked. "All things considered, Ellen's probably managing better than I might have."

  He tried to force himself to wait. There was more. He thought he knew what it was, but he'd let her tell him. Let her speak her own words. For a change.

  She crossed her arms and leaned back against the kitchen counter. "But I am worried. She's-"

  "It looks like they increased her dosage."

  Bern nodded. "I don't think she's taking it, though."

  "She left the bottle here."

  "Exactly. And I think she's started meeting with some of the people from her group. She says she needs someone to talk to."

  That didn't surprise Kyle. "The conditioning she was subjected to is hard to erase. The drugs should reduce most of it, but if she's stopped taking them…"

  "I don't understand why she won't talk to me," Beth said, her anger turning to pain. "I've told her to stop by or call anytime. But instead she sneaks off…"

  Kyle took a step toward her and gently laid one hand on her shoulder. Beth didn't look up. "She goes to them because-right or wrong-she thinks there's no one else who understands. You read that report I had sent to you. That's exactly the kind of dependence the Universal Brotherhood tried to create in people to keep them vulnerable and beli
eving the Brotherhood was their one and only hope.

  "They taught their followers that the government and the corps were never to be trusted, but that's exactly who shut down the Brotherhood and had the leaders thrown into jail. None of the UB members believe any of the official statements that have been given out. They think it's all part of a massive cover-up. And now that all the Brotherhood chapterhouses have been closed, Ellen and the others believe they are all that's left of the Brotherhood."

  "I went with her to the government meeting," Beth said. "We both saw the same trideo. How couldn't she believe?"

  "Because it really doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense on any level. Ask yourself, why in god's name would the Universal Brotherhood be conducting illegal medical experiments on the homeless? Financially, it makes no sense. Not scientifically either. They didn't have the resources to really do much of anything. That story could have been-and probably was-faked because the corps don't want anyone threatening their hold on things. The Brotherhood was starting to get mighty powerful."

  He took her hand. "She thinks she's going to be alone again and doesn't want that to happen. She's not going to shake off their influence easily."

  Beth nodded. "I know. I'm just worried she'll do something desperate."

  "I doubt it. The Brotherhood taught dependence, not escape." Beth looked up at him with a hesitant smile. "Do you want me to talk to her?" he asked.

  "Would you?"

  "Of course. My work here shouldn't take up all my time."

  She looked visibly relieved. "Thanks, Kyle. It means a lot."

  "I know you're worried, but I don't-"

  "Daddy!" They both looked up at the childish shout from the other room.

  "Yes, honey?" Kyle called back.

  "Daddy! I need your help! I'm at the sixth level and the Corrupted Ones keep chopping me in half even though I hit them with the ashes!" From where he was standing Kyle could see his daughter sitting on the couch. She looked frustrated and was madly adjusting the sim-reality glasses on her head, apparently hoping that doing so would somehow help her win the game.

  "I'll be right there!" he called out, then said softly to his ex-wife, "Do you think I should have gotten her a doll instead?”

  "She'd only have traded it away for the chip."

  Kyle laughed. Beth was right. He gave her shoulder a squeeze. "Be right back." He turned toward the living room, but his attention was inexplicably diverted down. It must have been the flicker of motion, the scurrying passage of a small cockroach almost underfoot. Kyle took a step forward to crush it, but the insect darted clear and "behind a cabinet. Kyle wondered idly if he knew a spell that could reach back there and incinerate the bug, but Beth spoke, distracting him again.

  "Did you know she wants a datajack implant so she can play the games 'right'?" she said.

  "Great Coyote," Kyle said, his fingers unconsciously jumping to the datajack in his own temple that had been implanted only after he'd begun his hermetic studies at Columbia. "She's only eight!"

  Beth frowned as Kyle turned and walked off down the hall. "I didn't say I was going to get her one, did I?” she said.

  No, maybe not. But Kyle was sure she would. For Christmas, if he knew his ex-wife at all.

  2

  A suite had been arranged for him at the Marriott SkyTower down near where 1-57 crossed 103rd Street at the edge of the financial Core, and Kyle had ended up there earlier than he'd expected. Both Natalie and Beth had tired early, and he could see Beth wrestling with her own desires about where she wanted him to stay that night. He'd solved the problem by saying he had an early-morning meeting and some research still to prepare. He'd also wanted to ask if she needed more money, hating the idea of her jacked in a desk at Fuchi America. But she hadn't mentioned money problems, so he resisted the urge to offer. There would be time enough later.

  Kyle knew Chicago fairly well, but let the autopilot on the Ford Americar he'd been provided do the driving. Moving through the night, the car took him south from Irving Park Road on the Northside, down a short distance along Lake Shore Drive, past me rows of ritzy lakeside developments mat barely hid the blight of the sprawl stretching to the west. Traffic was light, and except for the fly-over of a police helicopter, its lights blazing and clearly illuminating the Eagle Security logo on the side, uneventful.

  At North Avenue, the view changed as the Drive wove itself along the eastern edge of what had come to be known as the Noose. Victim to the migration of Chicago's economic heart to the south side after the fall of the IBM Building in 2039, the area was a mecca for the city's criminals and underclass. Kyle turned away to watch the faintly rippling waters of Lake Michigan, not looking west again until the Drive crossed the Chicago River.

  There, in the now black and dead former heart of the city, he could just barely make out the Shattergraves area among the rubble of the hundreds of buildings destroyed or burned when terrorists had demolished the IBM Building following the anti-metahuman Night of Rage. Even more than the Noose, the Shattergraves was ungoverned and left to rot. Few lived there, for not many could retain their sanity against the thousands of ghosts and lost souls that haunted those broken, deserted streets. Still, small fires and other lights were visible in the area flanking the river. Despite the horror of the place, some apparently called it home.

  The Noose continued past the Shattergraves, but now the near horizon was dominated by the new corporate towers of the transplanted Downtown area. The car continued on to the end of the Drive at 67th Street-and then continued down Stony Island Avenue to 103rd. There it turned right and approached me northern edge of the corporate Core.

  The sleek corporate vehicle in which he rode traveled unrestricted into the area of chrome, steel, and glass. Here and there, Kyle saw a local vehicle being checked out by Eagle Security, but everyone knew better than to delay a car bearing the ID tags this one had. Truman Technologies was the Chicago corporation, and even the police were smart enough not to play games with them. Perhaps the biggest non-multinational corporation in the United Canadian and American States, Truman Technologies all but dominated segments of the mega-nuyen entertainment industry. It produced, marketed, distributed, and sold the technology for the truer-than-life sensory-encoded simsense chips that had replaced CD-video decades earlier. In Chicago, there were few more powerful than Daniel Truman and his corporation.

  Kyle's room on the ninety-second floor of the Marriott was high enough to give him a view of the lakeside campus of the University of Chicago near where Lake Shore Drive ended. He could also see the mist-shrouded lights of Elemental Hall, the corporate-sponsored metaphysical research park half a kilometer offshore from the University. Though Kyle had a standing invitation from a former classmate at Columbia to visit the Hall anytime, he wasn't sure whether he'd take him up on the offer. The idea of visiting Elemental Hall was more man intriguing, and he would certainly profit from a grand tour of the U of C's metamagical and conjuring facilities, but Kyle wasn't that anxious to renew his former classmate's acquaintance. He'd decide later. There'd be plenty of time.

  ****

  It was long after midnight as he scanned the on-screen catalog of the programs offered by the hotel's in-house trideo system, and Kyle wondered if he really did need to do any research for the morning. The meeting was set for ten o'clock, which left him more than enough time after breakfast to refresh his memory on information pertinent to Truman Technologies and the situation the powerful Truman family had hired him to remedy. Despite the gravity of the situation, Daniel Truman didn't seem to be in any hurry. Kyle decided to set his notepad computer to browsing several pertinent online services and databases while he slept.

  ****

  The hold-image for the United Canadian and American States Federal Bureau of Investigation's Department of Paranormal Affairs faded from the screen to be replaced by the image of Dave Strevich as he approved the telecom connection; "Sorry about that," the burly man said as he dropped heavily into the chair behind his
desk. "I was taking a crap."

  Kyle chuckled and leaned back in his own chair as the image of his friend, cybernetically superimposed over his normal vision, rose ghost-like through the air to sit among the vines that hung down from the ceiling over the cafe in the Marriott's courtyard atrium. The system took a moment to compensate and darken Strevich's image against the brighter background.

  "I hope I didn't rush anything," Kyle said.

  Strevich shrugged. "Nothing the next guy can't clean up."

  "Pleasant image."

  Strevich waved the compliment away. "For you, only the best."

  "Thanks, Dave. That's why I'm calling to ask a favor." "You mean you aren't calling to find out how my love life is going?"

  Kyle smiled. "I know it's touchy, but I need you to cross-reference a name in the FBI's files on the Universal Brotherhood mess."

  Strevich raised his eyebrows. 'Touchy?" he said after a minute. "You have no idea."

  "Care to tell me why?"

  "Can't."

  Kyle sighed. "Look, I understand it's sensitive. I wouldn't ask, not even for my best client, except that it's personal."

  Strevich's eyes softened. "Your sister-in-law?"

  "Ellen Shaw."

  "Okay, hang on." Strevich leaned forward and Kyle could just barely see his hands tapping at the flat keyboard built into his desk. He was done quickly and then leaned back. "I've only got a membership listing for her… address, personal data, financial contributions, that sort of thing. Nothing deeper."

  Kyle felt himself tense slightly. "You pulled that data up fraggin' fast, Dave. Have the computers gotten a lot wizzer since I was there?"

  But for the slightest narrowing of the eyes, Strevich's face would have been unreadable.