Nyx Smith - Fade to Black

That didn't help Dok.

"She lived how she wanted, amigo," Rico finally said, "She was true to herself and true to you. She was real. She had to be there. She wouldn't've let you go alone. No effing way, compadre."

Shank grunted, nodded agreement, and told Dok, ', "We're with you, bro."

Dok turned his head toward the ceiling and closed his eyes and said nothing. Clamped his eyes tightly shut and clenched his teeth together till the muscles in his jaw were twitching. Trying hard to keep things inside. Rico knew what that was like. He also knew it was no use. Some feelings were just too powerful.

It was almost dawn when they got to Little Asia. Thorvin turned the van down the narrow alley to their latest bolthole and parked. No sign of pursuit or surveillance. Rico got out, looked around. The van's side door slid open and Bandit stepped out, also looking around. Inside the rear of the van, Dok sat staring at Filly's body. "Come on, bro," Shank said.

"I wanna be alone," Dok said harshly.

"Come on, chummer."

"Leave me alone!"

"Dok," Rico said, letting an edge slip into his voice, "you're still bleeding. Shank's bleeding. We're all bleeding. You come inside, take care of biz. You want time then, you got it."

The speech seemed to work, but the minute Dok stepped out of the van he started cursing. Getting mad, crazy with fury. His words rose into snarls like an animal might make. He turned and began slamming his fists into the side of the van. Then he rammed his head into the metal. Once wasn't enough. He couldn't stop. Probably, he wanted Filly so bad he'd do anything, take any risk, go up against anybody, kill anybody, to get her back. He couldn't just quietly accept the truth. He had to do something.

A woman was always a woman, even just lying in bed asleep. It wasn't like that for most men, and, Rico knew,

it wasn't like that for Dok. He was a soldier as much as one was a doc. He was a former mercenary. Just saving lives was never enough. He had to prove himself as a man. He had to do things. Crazy, dangerous things like shadowrunning, even if it got him killed. It was more than just machismo. It was pride and self-esteem and an essential part of his identity. He had to do something about Filly, even if anything he could do would be futile.

Even if it was just pounding himself bloody against the side of a van.

Rico watched for maybe three seconds, then grabbed Dok by the arm, jerked him around and thrust him back bodily against the van. Dok struggled, pounding at Rico's shoulders and shouting, but Rico kept shoving, pinning him against the metal. Shank helped. Grief ultimately beat out fury, and that grief was too much to contain.

A man strong enough to love, really love, opened himself to the possibility of pain. A man who could do that didn't give a damn who knew how much it hurt or how the pain showed.

The flood subsided abruptly. Dok sagged, his eyes going wide, his face turning pale. Rico caught him up hard, gripping him around the body.

"I'm hit," Dok murmured. "Christ…"

Rico said nothing.

Shank helped carry Dok inside.

The moment Piper heard the rumble of the van, she snatched up her automatic and hurried up the hall to the alleyway door. A brief glance through the peephole confirmed her suspicions. She pulled the door open, then stood and watched as Dok climbed out of the van, as he cursed and shouted, and, finally, as Rico and Shank carried him toward the door. Glancing back and forth, she felt only confusion until she saw the reddish stains on Rico's cheek and hands, and then the lower legs of someone lying just inside the open sidedoor of the van. On those legs was a pair of dark hi-top boots. Filly's boots. Piper looked at the blood staining Dok's jacket and the rips in Shank's armored vest and the scratches on his arms and knew right then that the meet had gone very badly.

It took her a moment to put it all together: Dok's rage, Filly's boots. No sign of Ansell Surikov.

The slotting corporates had fragged them again. Now someone was dead, another good person was dead, and more were wounded. Piper couldn't just stand there and watch the wounded bleed. The anger and the frustration that came welling up from inside demanded that she respond. It was her duty.

She turned and hurried back down the hall. From her knapsack, she took a clip containing hard ammo, twelve armor-piercing rounds. At the touch of a switch the clip full of soft ammo dropped from her Ares Special Service. She thrust the new clip in, pulled on the slide, and released it. One soft round popped out and fell to the floor. A hard round took its place.

She stepped into the bedroom.

Farris lay there on the floor, on her side, arms cuffed behind her back. The little trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth was nothing compared to what she deserved, and what she was going to get. Those who served the megacorps were no better than the nefarious scum who ruled over the corporate hierarchy. They were the enemies of every moral person, of all metahumanity. They deserved no mercy. For their crimes against the Earth and every future generation, they deserved to die. They deserved to rot in hell.

"Kuso-jitsugyoka," Piper snarled.

Farris looked at her, gaping, and then shrieked.

Piper pointed the auto at Farris' face and squeezed down on the trigger, but them something brushed her side and bumped her back. A huge hand swept along the outside of her arm, encompassed her forearm and tugged it upward, lifting her right off her feet.

"You fragging bent?" Shank growled.

He tugged the gun from her hand.

Dangling above the floor, Piper cursed at him wrath-fully in Japanese.

Then Rico was there in the doorway, looking from her to Farris and back again. Piper stopped, stopped struggling, stopped cursing. Contained herself. Completely. hank lowered her to the floor. She rubbed her aching arm and glanced at Rico, but could not meet his eyes.

"What's this?" Rico said.

Piper shook her head, said nothing.

"What the frag's going on?"

"It was necessary."

Rico glared and curtly motioned her out of the room.

As Piper stepped into the main room, Dok looked up from the couch, met her eyes and said, "Filly punched out."

Piper couldn't help but be moved by the emotion in his face and voice. Despite her most immediate difficulty.

Despite Rico's anger. She had known Filly for several years, almost as long as she had known Dok. She regarded them as friends. She knew how close the couple that been. "I'm sorry," she said softly. "Very sorry. I'll pray for her. Pray that the kami are kind to her spirit."

Dok nodded, looked away.

In that moment, Thorvin came into the room, hopping forward on one leg. Blood was dripping from the engineer's boot on his left foot. He paused and leaned against the wall. "Freaking slug came right through the door!" he growled. "Musta found a gap in the freaking armor."

Suddenly everything seemed to be going wrong.

They must have offended the kami.

She most of all.

Dok was hit, but no worse than anybody else-of them that survived the meet. They'd all been blooded, all except Bandit, who had the devil's own luck.

Getting Dok to tend the wounded took some work. He kept staring into space like he was in a trance or something. He kept forgetting the names of things he needed out of his kit. He made such a mess of one bandage he tried putting around Shank's arm that he had to pull it off and start over. He wasn't all there. Rico could understand that, but he also understood that none of them could afford an infected wound or the loss of any more blood than they had already shed.

Once the team was patched, Rico drew Dok into the bedroom to check on Marena Farris. She was on one of the sleeping rolls, sitting up and free of the cuffs. She looked anxious, upset. Rico didn't blame her. He'd be upset too if somebody pointed a gun in his face.