Easy come

The following story is a primer for a full-length Shadowrun adventure posting on my website on May 21, 2001. Stop by and check it out, let me know how it plays!

The heavy roar of crowd noise pushed through the tin and ferrocrete walls of ‘Casa Rockers’. Cigarette smoke and alcohol tinted the air with a sour fragrance. It was home to a thirteen-year-old curly haired boy named Manuel Kiley. He’d spent his first twelve years hanging in bars and down home clubs like ‘Casa Rockers’ that played the kind of down-home music that was a mix between country ballad and grass roots rock song.

He didn’t like the music.

More to the point, he couldn’t stand it. Manuel glanced passively at his watch then hunkered down away from the dance floor where Northern Aura was winding through the heavy riffs of their rock debut “Love Smashing”. Nine P.M. and it was a full house. Nowadays Manuel wore earplugs to drown out all of that ambient noise. It helped him focus on why he was really there. Like his dad, Manuel had a gift for reading people. He could tell what kind of work you were in just by looking at you. Manuel squirreled his five-foot frame into a spot where a small group of shadowy types had gathered. Like his dad he usually wound up right near ground zero of where the trouble was. Like his dad he liked to get his nose all the way into it. Like his dad, he could read lips.

“Five million. That’s one million a piece less expenses.” Five million? Had he heard right? Manuel moved in closer to the broad faced speaker. It was a man. A troll really, with bull horns nesting in a tangled black afro. He was seated with four other fingers all dressed in the drab earth tones of the bar’s other patrons. They stood out to Manuel though. Like a chocolate chip in a sugar cookie. Everyone else was rocking back and forth to the beat but these people—they had a purpose. The boy skulked even closer to the table. He wove his way along the graffiti covered wall leading to the back hallway of the bar. He slowed occasionally as though to read the gang tags and cheap band primers. He stopped behind a fat man who was waiting for the bathroom down the narrow hall.

“It’s a lot of money Street.” Manuel’s eyes fell on a woman’s face. She had black lipstick and tiny braces. She was the only woman in the group of five, but carried herself like someone in charge. The lady concluded, “I don’t know how we can pass a job like this up.”

There was a black man with them as well. He had a bald skull, lined with tattoos. His mouth was full of broken teeth. “I believe in this deal Rilo,” he said. “Five million dollars for a snatch and grab. I’ve been doing those since I was nine.”

Manuel was staring now. His small brown pupils squinted to see the two other members through the haze of smoke and people. They were the real thing these people. They didn’t look anything like what he saw on the trids. One of them was a white man, southern by the way he rolled his thin lips into a drawl when he spoke. “We shouldn’t be worryin’ about how sweet of a deal this here is Kareem. We should be ponderin’ why someone wants to pay us so much ta break inta this lady’s safe.”

The man next to southern was also white. He had long stringy hair, which masked most of his features. Not his puffy red lips though. “The target is magically active. Her name is Adriadne Thomas and she is considered to be a heavy hitter by Ghost’s Arcanum watch. The file says that she collects things of magical value such a-“

Bodies cut in front of him, people flowing out of the bathroom and back towards the low stage at the far end of the club. Manuel cursed them loudly. Then he slithered around the fat man coming to a stop away from the bathroom line and even closer to the runner’s table than he had been before. Still, he hadn’t been fast enough to catch the rest of what stringy hair had been saying. Damn! The woman they called Rilo had begun talking again.

“-a good enough deal, provided we can handle the security.”

The bald one, Kareem answered her, “It’s a Bellvue location so the security is Lonestar, plus Optimus, Knight Errant, or whatever PSI is handling the building. Like I said, it’s worth the risk.”

Manuel leaned back against the wall closest to the table and bent his lips into a smile. He liked the way they talked. Cool, coded like in the trid shows. They were all silent for a while then the troll, (Street?) asked a question, “What if the target is more than we can handle?”

Manuel’s eyes searched the table anxious to see who would fire back a response. And when his vision returned to the troll, the troll was staring right back at him, eyes calm and inquisitive. Manuel’s heart leapt. He turned away quickly, starting down the hall. He darted around a hairy Mexican and then through a pair of skinny blondes who were taking their turn at the bathroom together. Then he slid into the empty men’s bathroom.

Did the Troll see him? Maybe he saw something behind Manuel that caught his attention. He couldn’t have seen him. If he had, the runners would have followed him into the bathroom and done their worst. The boy stood at the sink for a moment rinsing his hands in the lukewarm water. He stared at the dingy reflection in the mirror and spoke to it out loud. “You’re safe. Tu no es muerte.” Outside the heavy thump of “Sin and Celine” was matching the lightning beats in his chest. He tried to take a deep breath.

“Tu no es muerte.” He had to make a call.

These weren’t glory-starved gangers like last time, or cunning security guards like the time before that. They were Shadowrunners. Real ones. And they had a job planned. That sort of information was worth a lot of money to the right person. Manuel wiped his hands on faded black slacks, cleared his throat and stepped back into the hallway.

The shadowrunners were still there, hammering out details and drinking. Manuel did his best to ignore them. He moved further down the hallway towards the back exit and the pay-com situated there. He pulled out his earplugs. He dialed a number.

“Yeah?” The screen remained blank, save for the number balance of the near-empty credstick Manuel had slotted.

“I have data for you. It’s big yen.” He tried to make himself sound older, but his voice still squeaked. He tried to mimic shadowspeak the best he could.

“Ok, the usual price.” The voice on the other end was husky, uninterested.

Manuel said, “No. This is worth more. Twenty times more.”

The voice on the other end of the pay-com fell silent. The bass-claps were building behind Manuel, Northern Aura rocking towards their climactic finish.

“This is real this time. This is good data!” Manuel whined over the music.

After a moment the voice said, “Ok, Earn it.”

Manuel broke into a triumphant grin and recanted the story of how Rilo and Kareem’s shadowrunners were going to break into Ariadne Thomas’ safe in Bellvue.

“Big yen.” He beamed.

“Ok, it’s worth it”, said the voice before the man on the other end hung up. At that moment the numbers showing Manuel’s credstick balance spun upward. Five hundred and four Nuyen. It was the most cash he’d ever had at once. This was good living. This was being a shadowrunner. Easy come.

“Gracias” Manuel said and he pulled the credstick out of the slot—and into the waiting hands of the troll.

The bald one, Kareem was beside him, face contorted in rage. “Is this the one who was watching us? Listening?”

The troll nodded.

“Smart kid. You were listening to our conversation weren’t you?” Capture. Manuel’s eyes darted around scanning the hall for a bolt hole. There was nowhere for him to run though. These shadowrunners had him. “No no!” he pleaded and flailed his arms wildly.

“Then what the frag is this?” Kareem grabbed the credstick out of the troll’s hand. He checked the balance. “Five hundred yen? A lot of cash for a street rat.”

Kareem’s street lingo didn’t sound so cool up close. “Is my momma’s card I stole!”

“Bulldrek” Kareem sneered. Then he asked very slowly, “Who did you call just now on that com?”

Manuel’s mouth made the shapes of words but shock, and the wetness forming at the V of his pants sucked the breath from his lungs.

“I said who the frag did you call!?” Kareem grabbed the boy by the shoulders and shook him violently. A few heads turned at the sound, but no one seemed interested in coming down the troll-filled hallway to find out what was going on.

“I’m going to ask you one more time. Then I have to break something you’re going to want to have when you’re older. Who-did-you-call-on-that-phone?”

Manuel’s eyes swelled with tears. Nervous, stammering, he uttered the only name he knew.

Ronin.