'That's right.'
›ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL YOURSELF?
'That would seem unwise,' the yak said.
'Against other runners? Absolutely. Those gangers we just left? Get me nicked and sold off without a second thought.' Deke shrugged his shoulders to reseat the peacoat over the bulge of his subgun at the small of his back. 'Here? Just what the doctor ordered.'
'You're insane,' Lincoln said.
'They have to have a front,' Deke said. 'People must wander in off the street, arrows or no. They're a medical office, for dragon's sake. I'll just walk in for a consult.' He grinned a nod at he ork and started walking, head down, hands deep in the peacoat's pockets.
›HE'S GOING TO KILL US.
›Not before we get the kid.
›RIGHT AFTER.
Deke snorted.›Probably. He glanced around the sidewalk as he came around the building he'd parked behind. There was no one else on the streets, and a quick flicker of his overlays confirmed no active sensing. He shut back down as quickly as he could, content to do more than zip-squeal text with Lincoln. It was maybe a hundred-meter walk to the clinic.
›Get on the Matrix. Get us a rigger, right now. We need a drone here in ten minutes. Pay whatever you have to. But we need wheels.
›THAT SHORT WILL COST.
›Death costs more. Pay it.
›THE PLAN?
›Find a hide. Somewhere you can bear on the roof and the front of the building.
›I CAN'T LOOK TWO DIRECTIONS AT ONCE.
›Watch the front. You don't need to watch the ork until I've got the girl.
›ROG.
Deke clicked the messager off and concentrated on the task at hand. The front of the Leaf clinic was brightly lit, just like most of the other 'corp clone businesses around here. Deke walked just beneath the sign and into the front door without hesitation.
A white-coated receptionist looked up when Deke entered. He was young, maybe twenty-four, a dwarf. He was sitting on a high stool, short arms manipulating an AR keyboard in front of him. Deke's mesh registered a query from the dwarf but returned nothing, not even a carrier.
'May I help you?' the dwarf asked.
'I need a doctor,' Deke said.
'Your SIN?'
'It's my hand,' Deke said, holding up his right arm.
'I understand, sir,' the dwarf said. The nameplate on his uniform read SANCHEZ. 'But I need your SIN to begin processing your application.'
'It hurts,' Deke said. He stepped to the desk. A meter of countertop separated them, but Deke didn't doubt there was at best an alarm button-at worst a gun-beneath the countertop. He poked his arm across the desk. The dwarf frowned.
'Sir, I'm afraid-' he gurgled the rest, as the monoblade in Deke's hand penetrated his forehead.
'That's better,' Deke said.›It's on, he sent to Lincoln.
Alarms screamed to life around him. An armored door collapsed near-instantly across the entryway he'd just passed through, and doors snapped shut across the exposed corridors. Deke blinked his overlays up. His mesh came up and his AR went haywire with warnings.
'Bloody hell,' Deke murmured, and crouched in front of the dead dwarf's desk.
'Sometimes they're ready for you,' Deke's father had once said. 'Despite surprise, the buggers find out you're coming or they're ready to be surprised. Then all you can do is cause as much chaos as you can and hope you slip through amongst it.'
Deke shrugged out of the peacoat and flung it toward the door. He brought his subgun around and chambered a round. Then he reached into the baggy pockets on the thighs of his dungarees and pulled a small gray charge. He rolled around the corner of the desk, slapped the charge against the nearest blast door near where the latch would be on a normal door, and then smashed a flat metal plate overtop it. Then he rolled back around to duck and cover behind the desk.
He tripped a control in his mesh.
The explosion was a small one, but even small explosions are loud in small rooms. Deke's ears-well, his real one, not his cyber-were ringing, but he staggered to his feet and smashed his shoulder against the door. The plate groaned and then snapped with a crack. Deke shoved his way through and led with the subgun.
Overlays washed across his vision as his mesh interrogated the arrows and dots and other RFID tags in the building. A sketchy map began to take shape in wireframe, but Deke ignored it for now. There were no doors off this corridor, so he had only one way to go. He went.
A man stumbled across the T of the corridor in front of him, moving right to left. It could have been an elf, or even an ork. It wasn't a girl. Deke didn't hesitate. He triggered a three-round-burst from his subgun, two of which removed the person's head at the throat quite nicely. The third buried itself in the surprisingly sturdy door.
The reports of the gun were quite loud, loud enough to penetrate the ringing in Deke's left ear. He reached behind him again and came back with a flash-bang, which he primed and rolled down the corridor. He came to a stop against the opposite wall of the T-junction. Deke crouched and opened his mouth. His overlays flickered to masking, and he closed his left eye. The explosion was even more devastating than the door charge had been.
›TWO DOWN IN FRONT. Lincoln was getting some work after all.›SWEEPERS.
That left nine, one of which was the bunny's little girl. Deke ground his teeth and moved toward the junction. Sweepers from around back of the building-sweepers being those blokes who'd try to come around the building and get behind him-in less than thirty seconds meant a disgustingly high state of readiness. Either these Leafs were real pros, or they were real nervous having the bunny's daughter getting her organs removed in their building.
Either option would get Deke killed.
Two more forms loomed out of the darkness ahead as he went left at the T. He brought the subgun up and fired twice, six rounds. Three to each form. Both of them collapsed as Deke darted forward behind his bullets. They were women, in hospital greens. Harmless.
Still dead.
'There's two kinds of people in the world, lad,' his first sergeant in the SAS had told him once. 'The kind that matter and the kind that don't.' Deke had frowned then, and the sergeant had clapped him on the arm. 'On an op, there's those you're there for and those you aren't, and those you aren't are disposable. They get in your way, you move them. You don't leave problems behind you.'
Deke stepped past them. He didn't look down twice.
Seven.
›THE ORK IS DOING SOMETHING.
Deke swore and shouldered a door open. An empty breakroom, full of spilled coffee and dots screaming fire warnings. Deke swung around.
A flicker of light made him jerk back, but not far enough. Something tugged at the subgun for an instant, right before the front half of the barrel dropped off. Another flicker of light, and Deke looked away from the end of his gun lying on the floor and down the hallway. A man in heavy gloves twirled a length of line. Monofilament. As sharp as the blade in Deke's fist.
'Runners,' the man spat.
'Corps,' Deke spat back.
'You're not getting out of here,' the sec man said.
'Darn,' Deke said. He dropped the remains of his submachine gun and held his hands out toward the man. The sec guard snarled and swung his line. Deke, his overlays ready, tagged the line in flight and stuck his right hand
