Anthology: SHADOWRUN: Spells and Chrome

"Easy." A man's voice. "Take it easy."

"Daniel?" A woman. Far away, like they'd stumbled onto a bad bandwidth. "Daniel?"

"Ungh," he croaked.

"Daniel." Then to someone else: "What's wrong with him?"

The man: "He clocked himself pretty good. Still bleeding."

"Oh God." Alana pressed her hand to Daniel's head just behind his left ear.

"Ow," Daniel said.

"Hey now," said the man. "That's better."

Speak for yourself. Daniel's eyes slowly cranked open and for a second, he thought maybe his head injury was way worse than he thought because, except for a single ball of excruciatingly bright light spiking his eyeballs, everything was shadowy, inky black.

Then he got it. They were still in the water. In a cave. Well, a lava tube. Same diff because they were still screwed.

"Get that fucking light out of my eyes before I break your arm." He was appalled by how he sounded: weak and sick.

The light angled down, and then Alana said, "Daniel, you hit your head pretty hard. There's a rip in your suit, and you're taking in water."

"Uh-huh." Talking made him dizzy, and trying to move made him want to throw up, but he let her help him sit up. The lava tube was cramped, with just enough room to hunch and turn but not much more. His buoyancy had changed now that his suit was heavier, and every movement made the darkness spin. Thank God his vest was waterproof…

The man, again: "How are you feeling?"

"Like shit." He slicked his lips, winced as a squirt of fresh blood coated his tongue. His stomach lurched, bile burned the back of his throat, and he thought: Fuck, no, not into my facemask. He swallowed back a mouthful of puke, grimaced. "Who are you?" He answered his own question: "Harriman?" He threw a glance at Alana, regretted it when his stomach rebelled at the sudden movement. "You've got to be shitting me."

"No bullshit." She touched the other man's arm, and Daniel's chest went just a little tighter. "I didn't believe it at first either."

"I don't," he said flatly. But when he viewed Harriman with his astral sense, the man's aura was there. Not real bright, but… He said, not very charitably, "You ought to be dead."

"Tell me about it." Harriman sounded both flustered and relieved.

"No, why don't you tell us?"

"Stop bullying him," Alana said.

"You don't think this is a little fucked up?"

"Of course, but before you go around slinging accusations, look at your dive computer."

He did, asking for his HUD. He expected his air to be low; it felt like it should be. Maybe a half hour left, max (which, no, wasn't good). But his HUD said his fill was virtually unchanged from when they'd arrived at the seamount: a couple hours' worth.

That wasn't right. How much time…? He scanned the readout, looked at the elapsed time… and then looked again. Told his computer to do a systems check and read the impossible.

When he didn't say anything, Alana said, "See? Time's slowed down. For all intents and purposes, time has stopped."

"That's crazy." He wasn't a physicist, but… "Even if we're trapped, time should be passing normally within the bubble."

"Well, it's not." Lee Harriman wore a drysuit as well, and a full face mask. His cyber-eyes were silver-blue and very bright. "It's been, what, two weeks? My fill's only gone down an eighth."

"Yeah, but what are you eating? What are you drinking? Why haven't you died of thirst, or hunger?"

"Daniel," said Alana.

"Alana, they found pieces of his suit. They said sharks." He thought of the sharks above the seamount. Christ, what if they had gone after Harriman to protect her?

Alana was saying: "We don't know that it was Lee's suit they…"

"Fuck this." Harriman broke in, his voice edgy. "Alana said you're a practitioner. So either I've got an aura, or not, right?" When Daniel didn't answer, Harriman said, "Right. So back the fuck off, okay? I don't know why I'm not dead, but I'm not real sorry to disappoint you."

"Bullshit." Daniel couldn't read Harriman's eyes, but he hadn't spent time reading body language for nothing. "You do know, or you've got a pretty damn good idea."

"Lee?" Alana was a small woman, and light-and for the first time, Daniel noticed that she was riding a little high and something dinged in the far reaches of his brain, but he couldn't chase the thought down. Alana reached a hand to her lover then seemed to think better of it. "Tell us."

Harriman was staring at the virtually featureless curve of lava arcing over them, his weirdly blue eyes clicking right then left. Finally, they settled on Daniel's face.

"I don't know for sure," he said. "But I think it's been waiting."

"Waiting for what?" said Alana.

Harriman stared at Daniel. "You." • • •

Harriman led the way, following a guideline through a maze of narrow lava tubes that led into the guts of the dead volcano. Daniel had visions of the tubes crumpling under the pressure, the full force of the seamount crashing down. His breathing was shallow; he was hyperventilating but not getting much air. His headache was worse, and his chest was one continuous burn.

Calm down. He tongued salt from his upper lip. You've been in way worse situations. The fact that he couldn't think of any off the top of his head wasn't reassuring. This was like something out of a childhood nightmare: visions of being trapped underground, in the dark, where going up wasn't an option.

And something else: He'd never wished for the Rebbe to find them quite as much as he did now. Some kind of irony there.

"How… how much… further?" Alana sounded as winded as he felt. He craned his neck but could only manage a few degrees: enough to see her laboring in the glow of his headlamp. Her tanks clanked rock.

"Not much." There wasn't enough room for Harriman to turn around. "Just another dozen meters or so."

It was less. Inching along, and then Daniel felt the roof of the lava tube soar away, had the sense of space opening before them. He switched to his astral sense; saw Alana's orange glow-washed out, weaker than before, like a sunset bled of color, on the cusp of night. Harriman was even dimmer, just a silvery wisp.

But now above and beyond Harriman, an immense space in which something pulsed and glowed now white, now purple, now green…

The tube spat them out and the sudden drop was like tumbling out of an airlock into outer space: nothing above, and a long way-forever-down. He was having trouble with his buoyancy, the added weight of the water dragging him down and he scuttled back, kicking until his tanks banged rock. Grappling for a handhold, he hung-and stared. He'd seen pictures of the Watergate's Great Rift and of course, he'd seen-and repaired-much smaller tears in the fabric between metaplanes. Still, he wasn't prepared.

Ragged, gaping, the rift was easily ninety meters long, fifty meters wide. It undulated like something alive; gossamer-thin tendrils of mana coiled in its depths, glimpses of an adjoining metaplane. Bolts of light fitfully pulsed between its shredded, swollen lips, like blood spurting from a wound hacked into the skin of the earth. Something moved in the rip. Not mana. He squinted. The effect was like peering through a flawed pane of milky, runny glass. He could make out shadows, silhouettes and as he watched, one pulled together, solidified-

Oh shit…

A shedu.

"What is this, Harriman? What…?" He swung his head toward the other man and his voice died in his throat because he saw two things: Harriman-and Alana, hovering at an angle, her feet higher than her head, working hard to keep from drifting.

God, no…

When a diver's tanks empty, the paradoxical happens. Compressed air, trimix, heliox are all heavy. As tanks are depleted, a diver usually dumps air from her buoyancy compensator, or expels air from her lungs in order to maintain her trim. Only when a diver's air is completely gone and the lungs filled with water will the body sink. The only reason a dead person floats is because of tissue bloat from gases released with decomposition.