Lone Wolf (28 page)
Which in real life is rarely the best tactic in a tight situation, no matter how many times you see it on the trideo. The snoring—or whatever—is steady and deep. There’s a kind of hitching sound—more like a bubbling click, actually—after the exhalation and before the inhalation, and from way out of left field the thought suddenly strikes me that that’s exactly where the breathing’s going to eventually stop. Breathe out, click . . . and nothing at all, ever again. I shove that thought away violently, and slowly open the door with my left hand. The H & K’s ready and the wire’s humming, ready to pop anything that threatens me.
There’s nothing threatening inside the room, not immediately threatening at least. Drek everywhere—chip carriers, empty flash-pak food containers, beer cans, the usual—piled on the two low tables and the handful of chairs. Everywhere except on the single big couch under the window and across from the trideo set.
And that’s because there’s a figure on the couch who’s the one doing the snoring. But with the door open now, it doesn’t sound so much like snoring anymore as someone trying to breathe through scuba gear clogged with porridge. More than disconcerting. I feel claustrophobic and smothered just to hear it.
The figure looks small—not a kid, but a small-framed adult human, I guess—and it’s so bundled up in coats and stained blankets and the lounge’s curtains, for frag’s sake, that I can’t tell who or even what sex it is. The most important thing at the moment is that nobody else is in the room, so I move forward on cat’s feet. The H & K’s leveled at the center of the figure’s forehead, just in case, but that’s more out of habit than because I’m really worried about facing any problems here.
There’s no change in the breathing—none at all—as I get close. I get a whiff of something unpleasant—biological, kind of like rotting meat, but not quite. And a whole bunch of different ideas all fail into place with an almost-audible click, and I don’t like the picture they make. Not one little fragging bit. Using the H & K’s flash-suppresser, I push a fold of curtain back from the figure’s head so I can see the face.
It’s Paco, and he looks like drek. His skin’s not so much white as a faint tinge of blue, except for two big, dark smudges under the eyes, I could almost convince myself those smudges came from somebody blacking the young ganger’s eyes for him, but the truth is those marks didn’t come from external trauma. His lips are cracked and peeling, showing fissures here and there so deep they’re down to pink meat. There’s thick, yellow-white mucus trailing from his nose, and now I know why his breathing’s got that underwater sound to it—his lungs must be full of that drek. He stirs and coughs, and his breath on my face is thick with that rotting-meat reek. “Frag!” I mutter, backing away, stifling an impulse to retch.
His puffy eyes blink, then slowly open. They’re so bloodshot I can barely see any white at all. They roll wildly, blindly for a moment, then they settle on my face. “Larson.” Paco’s voice is a tortured, horrible thing, bubbling like a man being drowned in a swamp. “Larson, ’choo?”
Oh Mary Mother of fragging God. I move closer—if whatever this drek is gets transmitted by breath, I’m already infected. “It’s me, Paco,” I tell him softly.
“I’m sick, ’mano,” he says. “I never feel this bad. Help me, huh?”
I nod—I don’t trust myself to speak. “I’ll help you,” I tell him, though I haven’t got a fragging clue how to go about
it.
“Help me,” he says again, like he hasn’t heard me. “I got the bug, ’mano. I think I’m gonna die.”
I’ve never liked doctors, and I’ve never liked hanging in places where doctors are around. Sure, I’ve dragged chummers, comrades, perps, and strangers into more emergency rooms than I really care to count, but I’ve always hated the experience. I suppose because some irrational part of me is drek-scared I’m going to catch whatever the other guy’s got—even if he’s not diseased, but shot, cut, broken, or otherwise injured. Frag logic. I can tell myself a hundred times that bullet wounds are not contagious, but I still want to get the frag out into the open air as fast as I can.
So, imagine how I feel when the other slag actually
is
diseased? Infinitely worse, priyatel. And if that weren’t bad enough, it’s not a real hospital where I’m hanging, and that motherfragging Argent is fragging late ...
Nothing to do but pace, my boots clicking dully on the scarred linoleum floor. (Linoleum! Tells you how old this fragging place is.) There’s a tattered vinyl couch in the waiting room, but I’m not in the mood for multiple puncture wounds from the springs. Sit on the couch and you suddenly become another patient for the doc to patch up and charge you a hundred nuyen for doing it. I keep finding my gaze drawn back to the ancient twelve-hour-style digital clock on the wall. It reads six oh-three, which translates to 1803 in real time, only a minute or two since I last looked. Time fragging flies when you’re having a drekky time.
Okay, so I’m probably not having as drekky a time as Paco. The shadow doc has been working on the poor slot in the operating room or clinic or whatever ever since I got him here three hours ago. The fact that the doc hasn’t come out yet probably means that Paco hasn’t snuffed, but that’s about all I can say. Not a fragging clue about how serious the situation is or what the diagnosis and prognosis are. The doc told me—ordered me, more like—not to so much as touch the OR door, and that’s one order I’ve got no real desire to buck.
Looking around at the decaying shadow clinic, I feel kind of guilty about bringing Paco here. Sure, the kid’s Cutters, and according to the Lone Star canon that makes him a scumbag. But I always kind of liked him, on a personal level. He always dealt straight with me. Frag, he was the one to warn me when my cover was first blown. He put personal loyalty to me—a chummer, a comrade—above loyalty to the gang. That’s got to count for something. It surprises me, but I’m feeling like Paco’s a friend, and I don’t have too many of those. Like, none, if he bites it, and that’s a sad fragging thought.
So, all in all, I’d be much happier if I'd dragged him off to Harborview Hospital. Out of the question, of course. Paco never mentioned it, but I’m assuming he’s SINless. Harborview wouldn’t touch anybody without a System Identification Number. Plus there’s always a major Star presence in the Pill Hill area. Dragging Paco into the lobby would probably have only got him booted out, and me bagged or geeked. That, of course, left a street doc, a shadow cutter, as the only option.
The one I picked—one Dr. Mary Dacia, known to the street as Doc Dicer—had a good rep among the Cutters, and was even mentioned as a “resource of last resort” in my Lone Star briefing when I was transferred to Seattle from Milwaukee. Apparently a real-and-for-true M.D., specializing in trauma cases, with publications in the academic literature and everything. (So, why the frag is she working as a shadow cutter and not a real doc? Got me hangin’.) Doc Dicer works out of a defunct restaurant on Blanchard, within sight of the Space Needle. A small, well-built woman with short red hair, she's tough, competent, and has a real frosty edge. And yet I sense a caring human being under that street-hard façade. Best I could do for Paco, and maybe good enough.
The door from the alley—Dicer’s “front door”—swings
open, and out comes my H & K. I put if away when I see it’s
Argent. “Took you long enough,” I grouse.
The chromed runner shrugs. “Jean told you I was busy when you called,” he says reasonably. “I only got the message”—he glances at his watch—“twenty minutes ago.” He crosses to the couch and slumps down wearily. Hitting the treacherous springs doesn’t make him jump back up again. Either he’s too tired to react to multiple puncture wounds or his hoop’s as armored as a tank. “You said it was important,” he notes.
“Maybe.” And I tell him about my visit to the Cutters safehouse.
From his expression I can tell he’s not too thrilled to hear about my decision to go to Ravenna, but he keeps listening, then nods as I explain the rationale. “Risky,” he says, “But I’d probably have done the same. Go on.”
So I do, telling him how I brought the Westwind around back, dragged Paco out of the house wrapped in curtains, and blasted downtown to Doc Dicer’s establishment, whereupon I called him. When I’m finished, he nods slowiy. “Interesting,” the runner muses quietly. “I’ve heard about this super-bug. You can imagine the wild rumors on the street. But it’s all been ‘friend-of-a-friend-of-an-acquaintance’ kind of thing. Nobody I know has caught it, or even knows anyone personally whose got it. I just wrote it off as this-year’s-model flu epidemic and a huge whack of hysteria.” He glances toward the door. “Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate.”
“No drek,” I growl. Now that Argent’s here, I’m not completely sure why I called him in the first place. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now? Do I want to be cooped up in here with the shadowrunner if all he can do is help me wait?
As if in divine response to my doubts, the door to the OR-or-whatever-it-is swings open, and Doc Dicer appears. She’s scragged—I can see that in her face and the sag of her body—but she’s also worried. Not a good sign.
“How is he?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer immediately, instead turning to Argent, who’s already on his feet. A broad smile spreads over her face, and she suddenly looks a decade younger. They embrace, the petite woman dwarfed by the burly runner. His matte-black cyberarms hold her gently, almost tenderly. After a moment they separate.
“Long time,” says the doc.
Argent shakes his head slowly as he looks around. “Quite a change.”
She shrugs. “I can make a difference here,” she says, “and that’s a change worth making.” She raises an eyebrow as she looks pointedly at his arms. “Some changes on your side, too.”
“Can we, like, postpone old-home week?” I put in dryly. Both turn suddenly cold gazes on me, but I don’t back down. “How’s your patient, Doctor?”
“Dying, maybe,” she shoots back. “Every time I think I’ve got him stabilized, the retrovirus does this funky antigenic shift and he’s on the greased slope again.” She pauses, and her hard expression softens slightly. “A friend?"
"Yeah,” I say, and it’s the truth. “Yeah, a friend.” A new thought hits me. “Would he be better off in a real hospital?"
"Maybe, but it’s not a sure thing,” she replies. “Might just be a better-decorated place for him to die in.”
I nod. “Can I talk to him?”
She wants to say no, I can see it in her eyes. But after a second or two she nods. “I’ll give you two minutes,” she says sharply, casting a glance at Argent as if recruiting the big runner to help keep me in line.
“Two minutes,” I say, and Doc Dicer opens the door. Paco looks small in a bed surrounded by high-tech monitors and other drek. He’s got wires and sensors and other crap attached to his head and his wrists and also disappearing under the covers to reach his chest. He looks like a little fragging kid. The smudges under his eyes are darker and more pronounced, and his lips still look like hell, but at least there’s not any of that yellow drek pouring from his nose, and his breathing sounds almost clear. His eyes themselves and his cheeks are sunken, though, and it looks like he’s gotten thinner in the three hours since I dragged him in here. I feel cold.
“Is he contagious?” I ask.
The doc smiles humorlessly. “About time you asked that question,” she says. “He’s surrounded by laminar-airflow isolation, which should keep any bugs right where they are. Without that?” She shrugs. “I don’t really know, and I’ll tell you more about that in”—she raises her watch—“precisely two minutes. Mark.”
I move closer to the bed—not too close, I don’t know how
far out that laminar-airflow drek extends. “Paco.” Then again, louder, “Paco.”
His eyelids flicker, then open. The eyes fasten on my face immediately this time, and I’d have said that was an improvement if not for their glassy, unnatural sheen under the white lights, and the fact that one pupil is dilated maybe twice as much as the other. “Larson," he says, his voice sounding like he’s got gravel in his throat. “You didn’t leave me, ’mano.”
“Only long enough to get you to a doc, chummer,” I tell him past a lump in my throat.
“Yeah . . .” His voice trails off.
“Paco,” I say sharply, “stay with me, chummer. Don’t drift on me. Okay?” He nods, and I glance over at Doc Dicer, She’s pointedly watching the display on her watch.
No time for the gentle, subtle approach. Small she is, but I get the feeling the doc could chase even Argent out of her clinic if he broke her rules. “What the frag happened, chummer?” I ask him. “The house was empty. Why?”