doubt, have only a battalion or two of mundane guards. What have we to fear from them?'
'Dump it, Dodger.' Sam didn't need the elf's sarcasm. They might not know exactly what they were getting into, but they had all studied what information they had. They all knew who the target was. The time for cold feet had been two hours ago. Dodger may not have had anything to do with Herzog's death, but he was not yet back in Sam's good graces. 'You know why we're here.'
' 'Twas your choice.'
'You didn't have to come.'
'Pray, tell. What would you have done without me?
Scaled the building?'
'We'd have managed,' Sam replied. Dodger's whining was beginning to get to him. 'Willie's good with electronics.'
'Take it easy, Twist. Dodger's just nervous like the rest of us. I gotta admit, I don't like moving on this guy when we don't know if he's dead or alive.'
'Alive. Dead,' Dodger scoffed. ' Tis a difference that makes no difference to this run.'
'It'll make a difference if the fat man's waiting for us,' Willie observed, gripping her weapon tighter.
'The villain is dead. Did not Sir Twist see Hyde White go down during the raid on the ritual?'
'But there was no body,' Sam said. ' 'Twas present if you accept the wendigo corpse as his. Such a hypothesis explains the more grisly aspects of the Circle's operations. 'Twould account for the sluggishness of GWN's business reactions as well.'
'Jeez, Dodger. You can't still believe that,' Willie said. 'The druids are still doing their Bone Boy stuff. That dead wendigo ain't the answer. I think HydeWhite is still alive, but wounded. That would fit with the business problems.'
'A clattering fit to the facts, Mistress. The wendigo is dead. Hyde-White is missing. Therefore, HydeWhite is dead.'
'That's pretty shaky, Dodger.'
Sam interrupted Willie before she could get rolling. 'Whether Hyde-White is alive or dead, OWN is still functioning and serving the Circle. That's more than enough reason to hit it. Since the company's a potential target for more than the opponents of the Circle, we'll be able, with a little lucik, to hide our incursion under the guise of an ordinary shadowrun against the corporation. Besides any damage we do to GWN, we should be able to find out the truth about HydeWhite.'
'And if he's alive, Twist?' Willie asked.
'We cut him out of the Circle.' Dodger waited a moment before asking, 'Sir Twist, are you saying we shall kill him?'
Sam kept his gaze riveted to the doors, but he could feel Dodger's eyes on him. 'There are still too many druids to take them on all together. We need to chip away at them.'
'You have not answered my question.' The slowing of the elevator was an answer of its own.
'Get ready,' Sam ordered.
As they had hoped, the guard at the station was sluggish. He had no time to do more than catch a glimpse of them from the corner of his eye before Sam cast his spell. Sam knew it was a success as a puzzled look crept over the security man's face. He had succumbed to the illusion and was seeing an empty elevator car.
The guard stood up and started around from behind his desk, muttering about technical malfunctions. Sam shot him with the Hypnos as soon as he was out from behind the desk. The guard's puzzlement slipped into bafflement as he sank to the plushly carpeted floor. He was snoring when the runners stepped over him to get |to the desk controls.
Willie ran her hands along the controls. Her stubby I fingers touched each lightly as if she could divine their function by mere contact. She nodded to herself, tongue sticking out to touch her upper lip, as her roaming hands came to rest on a row of buttons beneath a flat metallic panel. She tapped the first, and the panel clicked, its left side separating from the desk's surface. Willie flipped the panel open, revealing a hidden set of switches and a datacord receptacle.
'Rig option,' she announced. 'Ain't it nice when the info ya buy is right?' Her partners didn't bother to answer her question,
but she didn't seem to mind as she settled into the stillwarm chair. In thirty seconds she had jacked in and switched the security system management over to rigger control.
Sam had never understood how a rigger made the translation between body sense and the diverse components of a building's systems. Rigger security control was even more alien than the way they piloted vehicles. 'Nothing to it,' she had said when he proposed the raid. 'It's just like a big body; ya get itches where something's happening.' The concept was creepy to Sam. It lacked the purity of the Matrix or even the more understandable body-control concept of vehicle rigging. But Sam didn't have to understand or like it. It was Willie's joba151all Sam had to do was count on her to do it right.
'What's going on in the residence?' he asked. 'Quiet,' she replied. 'I don't think anybody's home.'
' 'And no signs of recent occupation,'' Dodger added confidently.
'Wrongo, elf. Plenty of signs: dirty dishes, rumpled bed, private line call logged out less than two hours ago. But nobody's there… wait a min. There's something funny about that level.' 'Looped broadcast?' Sam suggested. 'Neg. All eyes are live. But they're not seeing everything.'
'Alternate sensors tracking something?' 'Neg on that. There aren't alternate systems anywhere but on this level. I think… yeah, it's got to be. There's part of this level that isn't covered by the security system.' 'A black room?' Sam speculated. 'Could be.' Willie agreed. 'Looks like you two will be doing an in-person visit after all.' 'Thrilling,' Dodger said.
'You can handle the locks, Willie?' 'Null perspiration. You want to go up by lift or stairs?'
'Stairs. More options for retreat.' 'Allow me,' she said. Across the lobby a doorway opened. Through the arch, Sam could see stairs.
He tapped Dodger on the shoulder and started for the stairs. Sam could hear the elf grumbling under his breath as he followed. The unprofessional bitching stopped as they reached the landing below HydeWhite's residence. Guns ready, they advanced up the last flight. When Sam signaled their readiness to the stairway camera, Willie opened the door. Dodger went through low while Sam covered him. They got the drop on an empty room. When nothing reacted to their presence, Sam said softly, 'You there, Willie?'
'Affirm.' Her voice came from the building intercom speaker. 'I see you but they won't. I dumped a copy of an all-camera scan, just in case we need to know the layout of the place for some future op, and I'm using it to run refeed on the room cameras from the five minutes before you got there. If anybody notices, it'll look like a digital overprint. Just let me know if you need more time. But try to be quick, a second blip'll start looking suspicious.' 'We'll do that. Now where's this blind spot?' Hyde-White's residential level was made up of a bewildering arrangement of spaces demarcated by freestanding walls and half-walls and room dividers. There were also several spaces which were completely enclosed. Willie directed them as well as she could, but it still took them five minutes to isolate the area that was in the rigger's blind spot. Dodger found the door hidden behind a tapestry.
'Sir Twist,' his muffled voice called. 'You must needs see what I have found.'
Sam pulled aside the tapestry preparatory to entering the hidden chamber and immediately felt the tingle of magic. Warily, he leaned against the outer wall and probed with his astral senses. The room was surrounded by the rosy glow of an astral barrier. Something coiled about the top of the domed-shaped protection, but it seemed inactive. Sam sensed no threat from it. Concluding that the ward was only a protection from astral intrusion, Sam returned to his mundane senses and probed the open doorway with a tentative hand. Nothing happened, so he followed Dodger into the chamber.
The stench was the first thing he noticed. The place smelled as though something had died there. Rotting meat was Sam's first thought, but the temperature was so low that meat would have been unlikely to spoil. Sam was already chilled despite his winter clothes.
