Shadowrun: Hell on Water, page 9
“Sit down, sit down,” Hippo said, waving them over with great sausage arms that continued to shake long after he had stopped moving them. “You are Halim’s out-of-town friends! Come, come, have some good Nigerian food! You look like you could use it!”
Cayman may have been new in town, but he’d be damned if he’ll look like he doesn’t know his food. “Pepper soup, fufu, and palm wine,” he said to the first server he saw. X-Prime ordered some roast goat, then got down to business with Hippo.
“How’s business?” he said.
Hippo beamed. “The city is lawless, the oil pipeline is rich. How bad could business be?”
“I wouldn’t think there’s enough to go around,” X-Prime said.
“Of course there’s not. There are many people who struggle. Many people who fight over scraps. But for the best—for us, there is plenty. Plenty for me. Plenty for you. Plenty for your friend Halim.”
“Not my friend,” X-Prime said. “I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting the gentleman. He knows Cayman, though, and Cayman doesn’t say bad things about him, which is good, because usually Cayman has bad things to say about anyone.”
“Halim must like your friend as well, to fly you all the way out here.”
Cayman’s eyes narrowed as he chewed a piece of goat meat (the food was not exceptional, but it was delivered very fast). Hippo was fishing. He may not even have known why he was fishing, or what he hoped to catch, but it’s reflex. When there’s something you don’t know in this business, you try to know it. You may not know how you will use it, you may never use it, but it is always better to know than not know.
Cayman, though, would not be trusting X-Prime to talk if he didn’t think the boy had learned his way around a conversation with a fixer. X-Prime did not disappoint him.
“Oh, I can’t speak for what Halim was thinking when he asked us to come out. If you want to know that, you should ask him.”
“Then I will! I will!” Hippo said. “And I suppose you would like to know where to find him?”
“That might be a good thing to know, at some point. But we’re in no hurry. Especially when we have good quality palm wine to sample.”
That wasn’t strictly true—Cayman at this point would much rather be talking to Halim and planning the mission than sitting in some little buka, and also the palm wine was too young, too sweet for him to consider it top quality. But he had learned long ago that he was too blunt and direct in these matters, which is why his mouth was not moving except to chew and drink.
“Wonderful!” Hippo said. “Then we have plenty of time to talk! I can tell you about the city, about all that is happening, about anything you want to know! And when you are ready, we can talk about what you want to know, and how grateful you will be to me when I tell it to you.”
What followed was a half-hour of indirect bartering. Rather than directly haggle over what Hippo would charge to direct them to Halim, X-Prime tried to be entertaining enough so that Hippo would consider him a friend and, when it came to it, lower the price for his services. Cayman spent that time balancing the spiciness of the pepper soup with the mild fufu and the sweet palm wine, keeping an eye on everything around him in case someone decided to do something interesting.
They did not. But then, before he knew it, X-Prime was standing and shaking Hippo’s hand, and some data was, he hoped, flowing from Hippo’s PAN to X-Prime’s, and they were done. X-Prime may have been the first to stand, but Cayman was out the door before him.
“Where do we have to go?” he asked as soon as they were outside. “Can we go on foot?”
“I think so,” X-Prime said. “It’s only three kilometers or so.”
Cayman nodded. “Okay. We’ll walk. Have you sent me the data?”
“Yep.”
Cayman looked in front of him, and sure enough there was a floating green arrow pointing east. “Let’s go.”
He had hoped, when he set out on foot, that walking would be easier than riding the okada. That he would be able to slip through gaps easier, that the crowds and throngs would not be a problem. The masses of people turned out not to be a life-threatening problem, as they were when he was on the cycle, but they were still unpredictable and annoying. They surged here, they pushed there, they followed no logic or order. They pushed and fought each other, they tripped and stepped over and on each other, they ground each other into the dust, but they also refused to stay down when stepped on.
Cayman grew progressively irritated as he walked, and he started relying less on his glare to move people out of his way and more on his arms. He swung them freely, throwing an elbow or a forearm when he needed to, not worrying whom he knocked down, because most of them were being hit from so many sides that they would not know which one had actually knocked them over. He followed the green arrow as it led him through twisty streets, through narrow streets, and through streets that once were narrow but now had only demolished buildings on either side in which squatters sat, as if they hoped that someday the building might heal itself and again provide them with shelter. He followed the green arrow until it led him to a whitewashed brick wall, a dead end of a small alley.
X-Prime smiled at the wall. “That wouldn’t happen to be Halim, would it?”
“Damn map’s out of date,” Cayman snapped. He looked at the wall—it was a good five meters high, and Cayman had no faith that there would be anything passable on the other side of it. “Reprogram the maps.”
“You got it.” X-Prime fiddled here and there, and then the floating green arrow abruptly changed, helpfully indicated that maybe Cayman wanted to travel away from the wall and leave the alley.
Cayman kept up a steady stream of curses as he followed the arrows, and no one seemed to care, because most of them were talking to themselves too, and only a few of them were more coherent than him. They were so loud that Cayman cursed louder just so he could hear himself, until he was almost yelling his curses into the crowded street.
Then he felt a hand on his elbow. He whirled. It was X-Prime.
“What the hell is the matter with you? Late onset Tourette’s?”
“Shut up,” he said. Then he scowled. “I don’t like this place. First thing you do when you go someplace new is figure out the rules. Figure out how it works. There aren’t any rules here. We can’t predict a damn thing.”
“Yeah, I know. Neat, isn’t it? You get the feeling that you never know what’s going to happen next, and it could be anything.” He smiled, a smile so young and happy that Cayman wanted to punch all his teeth out. “I like it.”
“That’s because you’re an idiot,” Cayman snapped. “This—all this here?” He waved his arm wildly, in the process knocking over a tall, thin man who happened to stumble into his way. “This is no way to do business.”
Chapter Twelve
But that sentiment did not carry the day, as Cayman obviously found a way to do business in this city, as the only reason he has taken himself to the bridge is because of a damned job. And the bridge is where we left him as he looks at the grappling hook, thinking maybe it could be an anchor and perhaps would keep him on the bridge when the large wave that is bearing down on him hits. But how will it hold all six of them? There is not time to get them all tied down.
He can keep himself on the bridge, though, then worry about finding the others later. Cayman secures the gun on his hip, then lies down, holding the cable in his hands. He gives the rope an experimental tug, and it holds. He takes a look to see how much time he has before the wave hits—
Water wallops his face. Then he is tumbling and desperately trying to float.
He has enough sense to push up, up, up, because he does not want to hit the other railing or anything solid. He reaches for the cable, hoping it can pull him somewhere safe, hoping it is still attached. But it probably is not. It is likely loose and tumbling, like everything else in the world now seems to be. He thinks he is moving up, but he cannot tell. He cannot see the sky, the sun, or anything. He closes his eyes so that no more lagoon water gets in them.
He keeps hoping he will feel a pull of magic, that Agbele Oku will do something to get him out of this. But he does not know where she is, what she is doing. Before the wave hit, he was trying to take care of himself and only himself, and it is very possible that she was doing the same.
He feels wind on his face and knows he has a moment to take a breath, so he takes advantage of it, an explosion of air out and a whoosh in, but the end of the whoosh is water and he is back under, his lungs wanting to cough, but his brain firmly saying no, no, you cannot. His legs move when he tumbles, because he knows that the lagoon is not very deep, and despite the size of the wall of water, he should eventually be able to find the ground. It cannot go on forever. He has to find land eventually.
But the ground remains elusive. His lungs are burning, they want to heave, he swears he can feel the liquid inside him, he swears it is poisoning his blood, but there is nothing he can do. He holds his breath and holds it and holds it, he keeps his eyes firmly shut as if that will help his mouth remain sealed, he holds and holds and holds until this small red knot that is building in his head gets bigger and bigger and then it explodes into yellow and white, burning white that overwhelms everything, takes away everything he can see and hear and feel, everything is that white explosion, and then he is gone.
And then he is back. But slowly. For a while he just concentrates on the simple pleasure of breathing, of feeling air in his lungs and nothing else. His mouth doesn’t feel right, so he reaches up and touches it and there is something dry and crusty around it. He wipes that layer off and it is damp underneath. He does not want to know what it is, but he has a guess, as there is only one natural reaction to swallowing a large quantity of filthy water.
When he is done wiping his mouth, his hand drops to the ground and it is sandy. Or dusty. Or both. There are some plants there, too, long, rough-edged blades of something. He does not rub them too carefully. He has not been in Lagos very long, but even a few days are enough to teach you that most plants in the area do not respond well to being touched, and your skin tends not to like it either, especially when your skin is pasty and weak.
He decides it is time to open his eyes. They sting. He blinks a few times, then he moves his head because he is looking almost directly at the sun. He sees that what he is lying on is not exactly a beach—it’s an empty lot, the base of some building or another, that had the ground erode out from under it, and then collapsed down into the lagoon. It happened long enough ago for sand and dust to pile up on top of the concrete, which at least made it a more comfortable place for him. It was mostly enclosed—there were buildings to the north and south, the lagoon to the east. The only way out, assuming he did not want to go back into the polluted water that may already be poisoning his system, was west.
There is someone not too far away, legs slightly spread apart, his back to Cayman. Cayman’s eyes cannot quite focus yet, but he knows it is Halim.
The sight of another member of his team gets his mind moving. Where are the others? Where are the boxes? Did they lose any of the boxes? If some of the boxes are floating in the lagoon, how will they recover them?
But before he gets to those questions there are perhaps more immediate things he should address. Such as, what is Halim looking at?
Cayman pushes up, tries to get to his feet, and finds his legs surprisingly wobbly. His knees even bonk together once, but they don’t cave. They firm, then he pushes with his arms again and he is standing entirely on his own.
His steps toward Halim are cautious and halting, and he considers calling out his name, but since he doesn’t know much about what is going on around him, it probably is not a good idea to draw attention to himself.
He coughs. There must still be water in his lungs. He coughs again. Halim does not turn around.
He walks slowly toward him, still feeling a tickle in his lungs. The water is persistent. But then he smells the air, and he decides that maybe it is not water that is bothering him. And now that he can see Halim better, he sees that one hand is over his mouth and nose, and it looks like he is holding some sort of cloth.
Cayman straightens up and finally follows Halim’s gaze. There is a haze over the city, a grey haze, and it has an orange glow to it, like the sun is setting on the horizon underneath it. But it is the afternoon, the sun is not setting, so the glow is coming from something else.
“The city is burning,” Halim says, in the same way that he might tell a waiter that his goat is a bit stringy.
“Oh,” Cayman says. He looks at Halim to try to find a trace of emotion. “I’m…sorry?”
“It will make our journey south more difficult.”
“Yeah, fires do that.”
Halim briefly turns to him to shoot him a look of complete contempt, and Cayman is thankful that it does not last long.
“Downtown is clearing out,” Halim says, “so even more people are in the streets, coming north. Once we get by them, the streets will be empty.”
“And full of fire and smoke.”
“We can find a way through.”
“You’re crazy!”
But Halim is moving forward.
Cayman walks quickly to keep up. “Look, I want to get downtown as bad as anybody, but first of all, we don’t have any of the packages. Second, there’s a reason all of these people are coming out of the city. It’s because the burning parts of a city are not good to be in. I don’t care how determined you are, you can’t just plow through a bunch of smoke and fire just because you’re stubborn!”
But the only effect Cayman’s words have is to make Halim walk faster. That will stop soon, though. The small alley leading to the beach where Cayman washed up is ending, and ahead of him is the throng. The same crowds who had greeted him when he arrived in Lagos are there, only there are more of them, and they are angrier and more panicked. But they are just people, and they can be moved through.
Halim is trying to part them with the stare, but the crowd is too occupied with each other to notice. Many of them take a few steps down the alley before realizing it was a dead end, then they step back and try to rejoin the flowing stream of people.
Halim takes a step into the crowd and was immediately rebuffed, pushed back into the alley. Cayman blinked in surprise for a moment, but while Halim is an ork and a fairly strong one at that, he is still only a finite amount of biological material, and material can always be moved when enough force is applied.
Halim’s eyes narrow, and he steps into the crowd again. He is jostled, but he holds his ground. He is pushed, and he pushes back and sends someone down on his hoop. In a crowd packed this tight, a person cannot fall without hitting others, and many others around the hapless victim stumble and nearly go down themselves, and some of them do, in fact, fall to the dust.
This, then, results in a large number of unhappy people in the street, people who are unhappy they are being bumped, people who are unhappy they are on the ground, and people who are unhappy that they live in a diseased hellhole that has the unfortunate habit of having large portions of it go up in smoke. They start lashing out at whatever is convenient, and in some of these cases that thing is Halim, and in other cases it is Cayman, but both of them must fight off blows while delivering some of their own.
Halim, turning a bit after jabbing an elbow into someone’s gut, takes a forearm swipe across his cheek, jarring his head. It hurts only a little, but it is tremendously annoying. Halim has had enough. His forearm blade unfolds, and he stabs. He thinks he got the person who hit him, but he cannot be sure. A dozen people around him see his blade, they see blood, and they react in a dozen different ways. One drops to help the bleeding man, another draws a knife of his own, another screams, another tries to run away, and so on. But Halim is going to get through this crowd no matter what it takes, and he moves his arm blade in a way that he hopes convincingly delivers this message.
There are gaps that appear, as they always do for someone who is armed, but there are also obstacles that pop up, people reaching for his arm, trying to knock it out of the way, and there are limbs flailing around him, some of them lightly bumping into him, some of them hitting him quite solidly, even one fist impacting the back of his neck.
None of this angers him. His breathing is slowing. His focus is shortening. It will be a unique fight, this struggle against this single crowd entity, and all the pieces of it who think they are individuals, but are really just a part of this larger organism, this enemy that must be beaten. The corners of Halim’s mouth pull back, and he steps forward more aggressively.
Only to have a hand on his shoulder yank him back.
He whirls, armblade slashing while his other hand reaches for a gun. But his slash misses, and the person behind him already has a gun pointed at his head. Halim sees red, furious that he could have so badly miscalculated so soon in the fight, but then he realizes his mistake—the person who is now pointing a gun at him is one he did not consider carefully in this fight because it is a person who is supposed to be an ally.
Cayman is shaking his head. “No,” he says. “We’re not doing it this way.”
Those who might have wanted to attack Halim are backing off, making a wise decision to leave the matter in the hands of the big man with the shiny gun.
“That way is the Island,” Halim says without turning around or even gesturing in the correct direction. “That is the direction we want to go. You know that. You want to go there, too.”
“Not this way,” Cayman says. “Not by killing anyone who gets in our way just so we can walk through a furnace. Not without the people who have the actual goods we’re supposed to be bringing. We’re not going to accomplish much heading that way right now.”
Halim thinks about fighting Cayman. He bears no ill will toward Cayman, and he cannot even dispute the logic the other shadowrunner just laid out. But he cannot easily leave the state he is in. He has never built the temperament that can walk away from a fight.
