Jak Koke - Stranger souls

Nadja stared at him for a minute, a barely discernible expression of suspicion on her face. She seemed surprised that he was telling her about his mission. Then it passed and she said, "Yes. Only recently we had a security breach connected with that item."

"What?"

"A team of burglars stole it from one of the chambers near the treasure." She paused, thinking. "The warding and protection on that room was very strong. They obviously came well prepared for it."

"They got away?" Ryan found it hard to believe that anyone could steal something from a dragon's lair.

"I'm afraid so. But something else strange happened that you should know about. During the burglary, when security was trying to track down the infiltrators, a free spirit of some sort came to me. It possessed one of my security men, telling me that it had been sent by a being called Thayla and talking about something called the Dragon Heart. Insisting that it must deliver the Dragon Heart to a barren place of light and song. It sounded like lies at the time, and then the spirit killed my sec man, burned him up before my eyes." Her voice cracked at the end; she obviously cared for the dead man.

"It's true," Ryan said. "My mission involves the Dragon Heart, and I must find it."

Nadja's eyes went wide. "Oh, that's what it means," she said.

"What?"

"There's a line in Dunkelzahn's will," she said. "To Ryanthusar, I leave my heart…" "Oh," was all Ryan could say.

"He must have meant the Dragon Heart, don't you think? And now, I've let it slip through my fingers. I'm so sorry, Ryan."

"It's not your fault," Ryan said.

"But it's obviously very important. What do you think this spirit wanted with it?"

"If he wasn't lying to you," said Ryan, "then the spirit's mission is the same as mine."

Nadja's face went slack. "I'm sorry, Ryan," she said. "I wish I'd known that spirit was telling the truth."

"Would it have helped you get the Dragon Heart?"

"No."

"Then don't fret it," Ryan said. "The Dragon Heart will turn up. What I don't understand is why Dunkelzahn included it in his will?"

"He was a bizarre old wyrm," she said. "And perhaps a bit paranoid. The will was updated constantly, just in case. He left you some other things, too, not mentioned in the public will, including Assets, Incorporated."

"What?"

"The corporation that employs the runners who got you out of Aztlan." Nadja frowned. "I wonder why Dunkelzahn never mentioned the Dragon Heart to me."

Ryan knew that last was a rhetorical statement, but he responded anyway. "Did the dragon tell you everything?"

Nadja smiled at him. "No, but I believe I knew more about his agenda than anyone else. Except maybe Jane-in-the-box. I was his voice, his connection to the public. It's just a little surprising to learn about another aspect of his plotting, and to discover that he kept me totally uninformed about it."

"I'd like to talk to Jane," Ryan said. "She might be able to track down the Dragon Heart."

"Yes," Nadja said. Then she smiled broad and full, beaming at him.

"What?"

"Nothing really," she said. "It's just that you're so motivated, so driven. You haven't changed at all."

But he had changed; he didn't feel driven or motivated. He felt lost and out of control. As far as he could tell, he had almost nothing in common with his rapidly growing picture of his previous self. His physical adept abilities were mostly gone, only a fraction of his magic remaining. His connection to Dunkelzahn, which supposedly had made him an unques-tioningly loyal minion, no longer existed.

He admired the dragon, but he didn't idolize him like the previous Ryan supposedly had. He would no longer blindly follow orders; that was for robots and automatons. Ryan's dedication to this whole quest was waning. Even though it was obviously very important, he couldn't find any reason of his own for putting his life on the line. He just didn't care that much. He couldn't care until he'd figured out who he was.

In fact, the only thing he seemed to have in common with his former self was an affection for this attractive elf, Nadja Daviar. She had hired people to save his life. She was warm and open, and so damned sexy it nearly drove him to distraction, clouding his judgment. But there was more than all that, or at least he thought so. Nadja and he were alike in some basic way that separated them from others.

And that is why, after a medical exam proclaimed him to be well and fit, he made arrangements to travel back to DC with her. She had important business, what with the Will reading, the Scott Commission hearings, and preparations

for becoming Vice President of the UCAS. But she wanted Ryan to come along, to be her temporary companion. He was inclined to oblige her.

Ryan had no home. Even the room in the lair that he used was temporary, and was occupied by someone else now. His previous self had led a transitory existence, always on the move. He had never collected memorabilia.

For Ryan, now, that meant there were no clues about who he had been. Who he was. It seemed that his previous self had been a chameleon, a mimetic creature able to adapt to any situation and environment. That helped him infiltrate and spy on corporations and governments. That had been his most distinctive trait, versatility.

Now, however, it left him nothing to latch onto, no distinctive characteristics. Nothing except the elf who loved him. Nadja was the closest thing to an anchor in his life. And there was no way he was going to let her get away.

Burnout stood, alert and focused, scanning the darkened room of the rundown restaurant where Ryan Mercury had been tortured. Musty blue wall-to-wall shag carpeting, patterned with gray diamond patches. Old curtains the same color, hanging from threads. Tables and chairs of rotting wood scattered like defunct cyberware. Bone-dry aquarium, filled with spider webs.

Burnout concentrated hard to keep his attention on what the people around him were saying. There were three others close by, talking and planning. They weren't speaking to him directly. In fact, they spoke about him as though he weren't there.

He was used to that, and he didn't care. Because much of the time, he wasn't aware of them anyway.

Two others stood inside the room's perimeter. Burnout had catalogued them by their heat signatures, had isolated their weaknesses and was ready to destroy them if it became necessary. They held weapons and therefore they might need to be neutralized.

"Burnout! Pay attention!"

The voice of Slaver came as if from a great distance, like a cry from outside, even though the man stood right next to him. Burnout turned his head, feeling the nagging itch in his neck again. Psychosomatic, he'd been told. None of his original neck muscles or nerves remained, all of it replaced with synthetic tissue and microhydraulics. He nodded to Slaver to indicate that he was listening.

Slaver was his commander, someone he knew he had to protect. Someone he had to obey. Slaver was a mage and short for a human. Much shorter than Burnout, who no

longer thought of himself as human. Burnout was easily the size of a large ork and weighed more than a troll.

Slaver's head was bald, covered only by an elaborate tattoo of a coiled snake that began at the apex of his scalp and spiraled out in greens and blacks and blues. He wore a loose-fitting jumpsuit of tan silk, ridiculous clothing that offered no protection against ballistics but let him move freely, which Slaver insisted was important for his spell-casting. There was a Jaguar Guard shoulder patch on the jumpsuit, and for a moment Burnout lost himself in the filigree detail of the jaguar design on the patch.

Burnout had been a powerful mage like Slaver. In a past so distant, so alternate and removed from his current state that Burnout remembered it not as part of himself, but as a history of someone he knew well. It was like channeling the spirit of another person, or a past life. Burnout had loved the mojo, had lived for astral conduit, the electric thrill of pumping all that juice through a tiny circuit to blow the living drek out through some poor slot's nostrils.