Anthology - From the Street

Since the lockdown and the battle to reopen it, however, the air freshener was one of the first things to go. Now, instead of the trademark Arcology FragranceTM, Marcelles' nose caught the acrid stench of cordite, machine oil, and smoke. It wasn't a scent that the veteran runner had never smelled before, but to smell it while gazing on the Arc's interior hallways jarred like a dissonant screech on Marcelles ' memory.

As Marcelles waved to signal to his companions that the concourse was clear, the elf could detect other odors adding to the Arc's new aroma: a heavy coat of antiseptic, masking the lesser stench of blood, bile, and decomposition. They were close to their objective. Marcelles glanced down to see his hands nervously fidget with the safety of his weapon. Right now he wished Renraku was still pumping that sedative as he always claimed; it would at least help to calm his nerves.

"There," pointed out Marcelles to the man closing on his side, "that's the place, Reese. It used to be a cafeteria for middle managers, but the otaku converted it into a biotech lab. After the Red Samurai took this floor back, they used it as a makeshift morgue to dissect Banded troops they capped."

"Wonderful. Don't think I'll ever eat at a McHugh's again," muttered Reese as he hefted his submachinegun. The once cheery cafeteria, originally themed in shades of green and bright blue, now had splotches of red, yellow, and brown on the walls. Most of the original furniture was gone; in their stead lay cold steel examination tables bearing equally cold cadavers, attended by medical devices of chrome and plastic. They stood perched like vultures over the tables, gazing down with their blinking multicolored LEDs.

"Any signs of our samurai friends, Ivan?" Reese turned to ask the ork standing behind him. Black Ivan shook his head.

"Nyet. Hacksaw seems to be leading them on a merry chase with his drones," replied Black Ivan, in a thick Russian accent. He glanced down at the gaunt form of the rigger seated on the floor, hunched over the remote control deck before him. Hacksaw only barely registered the ork's presence, as the rigger was preoccupied with directing his drone network. Several hundred meters away, several of Hacksaw's drones, modified to look like Deus' mechanical monstrosities, were distracting the Renraku forces that would normally be guarding the morgue. Only the medical staff remained behind to look after the bodies inside.

"Good," nodded Reese. He figured he didn't have to bother the rigger, so instead he turned to Alexandra. "Anything on the astral?"

Alexandra's wavy tresses of strawberry blonde quivered as the street witch shook her head. "Just the normal background count left over from past fights. It's not pretty, though."

"Well, just as long as there aren't any surprises, that's all I'm worried about." Reese's brow furrowed. "Marcelles, you keep a watch over our rear. You and Hacksaw will stay here while the rest of us rush the clinic; we'll signal you both to move in. Northwood, you and Ivan take point."

"Check, Reese," drawled Northwood from underneath his Stetson. The adept's tan long coat rustled as he produced a shotgun from within its folds.

"Okay, let's do it." Making one last quick check, Northwood and Black Ivan darted out from the side corridor where the group was hiding. The Russian ork leapfrogged from cover to cover, first crouching behind the wreck of a burned-out spider drone, then a stand of now-withered stand of decorative trees, until he was backed up to the left of the cafeteria entrance.

Reese momentarily lost sight of Northwood. Every so often he could catch the gunslinger's duster out of the corner of his eye, but the adept otherwise moved with an unnatural stealthiness that almost bordered on invisibility. By the time Reese caught Northwood again, he was pressed up on the opposite side of the entrance from Ivan. Northwood nodded wordlessly and motioned with his hand. Reese and Alexandra broke out in a crouching run, until they arrived at the other side, crouching low beneath Black Ivan and Northwood.

As Black Ivan withdrew his pistol, Northwood reached into his long coat and fished out a grenade, pulled out the pin, and lobbed it between the double doors. A split second later, a loud boom thundered from within, while flashes of light escaped from the doors forcibly banged open. The concussion grenade was mostly flash and bang, thus keeping physical damage to a minimum. However, it would knock out anyone in the immediate vicinity, while surprising the rest long enough to gain the advantage.

Black Ivan and Northwood swung around and kicked the doors back inwards, weapons leveled in front. Ivan bellowed out, "DROP EVERYTHING AND MOVE TO THE BACK NOW!!! MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!"

An intern in scrubs standing a few meters away dropped in a dead faint. Black Ivan was big for an ork, and his synthetic muscle augmentations made him even bigger. With the added shock factor from the grenade blast, Ivan looked to the medical staff like he could wrestle a dragon – and win.

As if on cue, Northwood suddenly swung right and hard with the butt of his shotgun. The stock connected squarely with the jaw of a guard sneaking up from behind. The guard's gun clattered on the floor, followed by a heavy thud from the cold-cocked Red Samurai.

"Move it, people. Now, before I hurt someone!" growled Northwood, as Reese and Alexandra swung around to back up the two. Like cowed sheep, the half-dozen medtechs shuffled backwards away from the shadowrunners. Northwood and Black Ivan herded them into a custodial closet, which Black Ivan shut and barred with a chair under the doorknob.

As the others moved into a defensive position securing the cafeteria-cum-morgue, Reese retrieved a communicator from his jacket. "Marcelles, Hacksaw. Objective secured. Get in here ASAP so we can start looking for our dead friend. It's going to take a while to sort through all the stiffs here."

"Nope, that's not him either." As Marcelles double-checked the holopic Mr. Johnson had given them, Reese unceremoniously rolled the cadaver off one side of the examination table. The corpse rolled a short distance before it came to a rest besides the four others they had previously examined. "You sure they brought him back here?"

"Well, Hacksaw verified that the late Mr. Wendy wasn't taken to Renraku's Bellevue complex," answered Reese, "and the Arcology is the only other place in Seattle that has an onsite morgue."

"But why bring him back here?" asked Alexandra. "If Renraku thought he was one of Deus' sleeper agents, why bring him back to the Arcology?"

Marcelles shrugged. "Dunno, Alex. I think the cover's a sham, anyway. Most of the people I know in Renraku swear Rich Wendy couldn't have been a sleeper. He was just a buyer in purchasing, and not involved in anything classified or really important. Most of them were surprised when they heard the Red Samurai shot him trying to resist arrest."

The speculation came to an halt as Black Ivan emerged from the kitchen with a body bag slung over one shoulder. He dropped it onto the examination table Reese had just cleared. "This is the sixth one."

"Any more left in the freezer, Ivan?" asked Reese.

"Da, another eight more. But two are oversized for trolls, and two are small: either dwarfs or children. That leaves five more to check." Renraku was using the walk-in freezer in the cafeteria's kitchen to store the growing backlog of corpses they were examining.

"Drek. We're running out of time. I hope we get lucky pretty soon." Reese unzipped the body bag. Although the cold of the freezer had retarded decomposition somewhat, a fetid odor nevertheless emanated from the inside as its contents were exposed to air.

"Bingo! That's him. That's Rich Wendy." Marcelles raised his sleeve to cover his nose from the stench of decay.