Jak Koke - Clockwork asylum

Ryan followed Dhin down onto the hard tarmac, and walked across to meet Axler, who stood by the newly constructed entrance to the underground facilities.

Axler came forward to meet them. "Ryan, were you serious when you said Burnout survived the fall into the canyon?"

"Jane got vid of him a good hundred klicks from here."

"Frag," she said. "I never would've thought."

"Me neither, chummer. Me neither."

"You got details?"

"A few," Ryan said. "But I've got some things to say first. What's the status here?"

She talked as they headed back to the building, her tone formal. The modifications Ryan had ordered to the com- pound were far from complete. It would take the mining crew at least another week to finish cutting the medical facility out, and then about two days until all the equipment arrived. The crew was on leave until the following day, and they were being bunked in Dhin's workshop.

Ryan nodded his approval. When Dunkelzahn had left Assets to Ryan in his will, it was only a ramshackle collection of buildings on the narrow ledge. Some improvements had been made by Axler, but Ryan had decided to go a few steps further.

Once the search for Burnout was in full swing, Ryan had ordered a discreet mining company to cut into the canyon with the ultimate goal of enlarging the compound to four times its original size. His plans included provisions for a cybersurgery lab, a mage library, and a training facility that would be the envy of Knight Errant.

In the back of Ryan's mind, he'd started planning again. If this mission didn't kill him, he had to think to the future. His intention for Assets was to make it the most effective, far reaching organization of shadowrunners the world had ever known.

If Dunkelzahn wasn't here to put together an army, Ryan would do it for him. At least part of it. The voice of the spirit that had carried Dunkelzahn's instructions came back to him. After Axler and company had freed him from Roxborough's clinic in Panama, Ryan had met with Nadja in Dunkelzahn's Lake Louise lair in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, in what used to be British Colombia.

Nadja had taken Ryan to a sealed chamber deep inside the lair where he would be protected from any ritual-magic assassination attempts. A spirit spoke to him in Dunkelzahn's voice, like a ghost of the old wyrm, telling Ryan of his mission, of taking the Dragon Heart to the metaplanar spike created by the Great Ghost Dance.

There will be no hiding this time, the spirit had said. There will only be war. We must build up our defenses; we must gain the time we need to build up our technology so that we have the ability to fight the Enemy when it can cross.

The Dragon Heart would give them the time, but now Ryan figured he'd help prepare for the war by making Assets the covert-operations arm of the Draco Foundation. And the plan was going smoothly so far.

As they stepped inside, he brushed the hair out of his eyes, silently thanking the spirits that at least something was going smoothly. He turned to Axler. "Is there power in the command room yet?"

Axler nodded. "It's all set up, and we're on-line with Jane. Grind and I finished the equipment installation last night after the wind made further recon of the canyon impossible."

"How's the new mage?"

Axler snorted. "Miranda's still got too much of a corporate attitude, left over from her days at Fuchi. But otherwise, she's chill and she knows her biz."

Dhin came in, bringing dust and wind with him, and dropped Ryan's bag to the floor. "What's the schedule?"

Ryan looked from Dhin to Axler. "I want the whole team assembled in the command room in five minutes. We're on a tight schedule."

Axler turned away. "On it."

Dhin nodded and headed over to the command room.

Ryan picked up his own bag and moved deeper into the rock face of the canyon. The miners had strung crude lights down the hall, but when he stepped into his private quarters, he was pleasantly surprised.

Still spare in the furnishings department, the large room consisted of a single bed, a small bathroom, and a desk with a Fuchi Cyber-6 cyberdeck and a telecom set up and ready to roll. Ryan never cruised the Matrix himself, but he did run tactical simulations and made use of some of Jane's smartframes from time to time.

After splashing some water over his face, he stepped back out into the corridor and turned left, going even further into the rock. He came to the massive double doors. They were heat-shielded and made from twenty centimeters of duracrete, backed by another twenty of plexan. They could take a direct hit by anything short of an antitank missile and not even scratch.

Ryan hit the palm lock, and the doors slid silently open.

The command room was a cavernous circle, dominated by a huge oval table. The table itself contained a powerful holographic generator that could either display a main presentation to the whole table or act as a heads up display for each individual seat.

It was a testimony to Ryan's far-reaching plan that the table could easily seat fifty.

The runners were scattered around the large area, and Ryan picked up the immediate clue by how they were seated. They're tired of the boring search.

Nearer the door, Axler and the dwarf Grind sat together. They glanced up as Ryan entered, but continued to talk in low tones. Dhin sat opposite them, and he gave a grin and a shrug.

The new mage, Miranda, was seated by herself at the far end of the room. She was a small human with a broad oval face and a shock of jet black hair streaming down her back. She cradled a steaming cup of coffee in her hands and looked as though she was barely awake.

Ryan stepped into the room. "Miranda?"

She looked up, startled. "Travis? Travis, is it really you?"

Ryan smiled. "You look good, Miranda," he said. "But my name's not Travis. It's Quicksilver or Ryan. And I lead this team of shadowrunners."

"And at Fuchi…"

"I was working undercover."

Miranda scowled. "You left so suddenly. They said you'd been transferred to Kyoto, but I couldn't get word to you."

"No," Ryan said. "It was just a temporary assignment so that I'd have a solid identity when Aztechnology stole me away. It's a lot harder to infiltrate the Azzies."

Miranda sighed and took a sip of her coffee. "You went to Aztechnology? That's heavy drek," she said. Then with a glowing, intimate smile, she said, "I'm glad you made it out alive."

Ryan remembered working next to her in the labs at Fuchi. She was all professional on the surface, toeing the corporate line on the outside. But he'd seen something underneath, something that had come through in the few moments when they'd had a chance to get closer. A hidden wild undercurrent.

Ryan had never let himself become intimate with her; he'd been in love with Nadja even back then. Even if he hadn't been, he never allowed himself to get too close to anyone during the time he was undercover. He and Miranda had become friends. Friends on the verge of more.

There was something alluring about her life-the corporate life. The safety and simplicity of it, protected by the huge corporation. A life of carefree happiness.

Ryari could never let himself think that such an existence would even be remotely satisfying. He'd left abruptly and without a word, regretting he couldn't say goodbye. That he couldn't give her an explanation.

"I'm going to talk about what happened," Ryan said, walking to the head of the table. "Jane, you with us?"

"In the next best thing to the flesh, Quicksilver." Jane's voice came through the room's speakers.

"Good, let's get this show rolling," Ryan said. "Time is short, and we've got a lot of ground to cover. First of all, I have something to say."

He got nods from Axler and Grind. Dhin grunted, and Miranda peered through the steamy haze rising from her coffee.