SHADOWRUN HONG KONG MEL ODOM BASED ON A STORY BY HAREBRAINED SCHEMES PROLOGUE RAYMOND BLACK The Redmond Barrens Seattle United Canadian and American States 2044 I’ll never forget the night I met Raymond Black, mostly because I’d believed Duncan was going to die and leave me all alone. Raymond Black changed that. He changed a lot of things. Me and Duncan, we’d been alone for a long time. I was a couple years older than him, so I could remember back farther than he could, but every time I did, all I could recall were the foster homes I got bounced out of regularly. The longest I’d ever stayed in one was with the Croydon family for two years. They taught me how to pick pockets, hotwire a car, fight with a blade, and pick a lock. When I turned thirteen, I used those skills to get away from them and escape into the shadows. A few months after that, I found Duncan Wu living on dumpster food in an alley. He hadn’t run away from his foster home to find something better. He’d run for his life. His foster parents had set up a deal to sell him and the three other kids to a sex slave ring. He was the only one who’d gotten away. Part of me wanted to leave him there, but I couldn’t because I knew from the shape he was in, starving and covered in sores, he wouldn’t make it on his own. So I’d taken him with me, fed him, sheltered him, and gotten him as healthy as we could be under the circumstances. For two years, we ran the streets. I stole and robbed enough to keep us going. Sometimes I ran with one of the gangs when the prizes were big enough, but not too big. You gotta stay small in the shadows unless you have the muscle, cyber, or magic to stand up against people who would take whatever you had from you. Mostly I was on my own because I didn’t trust anybody. I kept Duncan fed and safe and out of harm’s way. He didn’t like what I had to do to keep us going. He’s got this do-gooder streak that just doesn’t work in the shadows. So I didn’t tell him everything I did for us to survive. Looking back, I guess I was protecting him all the way around. Even what little innocence he held onto. We lived rough, moving from squat to squat, all off the grid and in places where older gangers would have taken what little we had and beaten us to a pulp. Or just killed us outright for poaching on their turf. But me and Duncan did okay for two years. I learned more about moving and grifting in the shadows, and he stayed safe. The area we lived in, it was more likely he’d end up bleeding out from a knife or cut down in a crossfire between gangs. Instead, he got sick. That’s something you can’t see coming. Disease is invisible, just reaches out and grabs you whenever it wants. It grabbed Duncan, knocked him flat, and left him drained and burning up with fever for a week. I knew he was gonna die, and part of me was gonna die with him. What’d be left of me wasn’t worth keeping, and I knew that. Still, I’ve never been able to just lie down and quit. I dossed us under a bridge near the Snoqualmie River, back in land so rough and toxic not even the gangers fought over it. Duncan had made us a lean-to out of flattened containers he’d taken from trash sites. He’d patched them together with plastic bags he melted into place. It was rainproof, mostly. I’d smeared it with mud so it wouldn’t look like something anyone would want. After all the work Duncan had put into the structure, he’d hated that. But he understood. We weren’t strong enough to hold a Styrofoam shelter that looked good. That night, Duncan stared up at me with wet, red-rimmed eyes, and I was certain he wouldn’t live to see daybreak. I was just wishing he’d live till morning. He always seemed happier during the day, even though the weak sunlight showed all the scars in the Barrens from the gangs and the Trojan-Satop power plant meltdown. Me, I lived for the nights. That was when the shadows covered all the ugly, and neon lit up the places where the grifting was good. We were different, Duncan and me, and I wondered if it would have always been that way, even if we hadn’t been orphaned. I’d scrounged up cast-off bedding and coats to keep him warm, but the chills rolled through him like seismic tremors. He was little back then, hadn’t come into his growth yet. Not like he was later. “I don’t feel good,” he croaked. His thick black hair lay plastered to his head, and his skin looked pale as pizza soydough at a Stuffer Shack. “You don’t look good either.” I smiled, trying to make him think everything was gonna be okay. “And you smell even worse.” My voice almost quit on me then, cracking and sounding jagged. “Are you sick too?” Duncan shifted under the covers and squinted at me. There he was, dying, but still worrying about me. I wanted to grab him and shake some sense into him. But maybe I was just mad because he was gonna leave me. I tried to hang onto being mad at him, telling myself it would be better if he did die, because then I only had to look out for myself. He was just a mouth to feed. And that was when I realized I was starting to think like all those foster parents must have been thinking. I didn’t feel guilty, but I was shocked. I shook my head at him and made my voice work the way I wanted it to. “I’m fine.” “I’m still cold.” Duncan pulled his pile of dirty bedding and ragged coats up more, almost covering his head. I couldn’t build a fire because that would draw human predators, so I tucked him in a little tighter and told him he was gonna be okay. He believed me. The Croydons had taught me how to lie too, and I was good at it. Some days, I almost fooled myself. I got him some more water when he asked for it, and saw we only had a couple bottles left. I hoped they’d last till morning. I had some water purification tabs I’d lifted from a military surplus store, but nobody wanted to drink from the river if they could help it. After Duncan drank his fill, which wasn’t much, he went to sleep. I sat there in the shadows, staring at nothing, thinking I’d probably said the last words to him I’d ever say. I made myself stay beside him, even though I wanted to run as fast and as far away from him and this place as I could. I have to admit, I almost got weak enough to call Lone Star and ask for help. I didn’t because I wasn’t convinced they could—or even would—save him. Duncan was just gonna be another statistic in the Barrens. One that probably wouldn’t even be noticed by most people. And if he lived, he was only thirteen. He’d have to survive another five years in foster care. I didn’t think he could do it. Mostly, I didn’t want him to. I was gonna take care of him. Even if it meant burying him in the morning. So I sat there and made myself really small, just listening to him breathe, hearing the gurgle in his lungs that didn’t sound good at all. The thunder of a straining engine grew closer. Cars passed by over the bridge west of us, but most never came this way. These were practically on top of us. I sat there listening to them get nearer, then I heard sharp blasts over the motor noise that I knew were gunshots. Crawling to the entrance, I drew my combat knife from its sheath on my right thigh and looked out, hoping whatever was going on would pass us by. Duncan stirred only a little, but the fever had him now. Then tires screeched, metal crumpled, and lights danced crazily in the treetops on the west side of river. A motor growled in a sudden frenzy just before something slammed through the stone ramparts of the old bridge. Broken concrete rained down from above and a battered Ford Americar shot over the side, dropping four meters to the sloped riverbank and landing—somehow—right side up, hard enough to blow out all four tires. The driver fought the wheel, managing to dodge the big trees while plowing over several small ones. A ruby taillight gleamed in the darkness as it skidded to a stop, leaving deep ruts in the rain-soaked ground. Stunned, I sat there for a moment, thinking maybe some guy had got himself a skinful of booze or inhaled too much Cram and wrecked his car. But only for a moment. When you live like I did, you learned to seize any opportunity you came across.