Ashes and Echoes
Three shadowrunners, one talking bomb, and a corporate conspiracy that makes the Great Ghost Dance look like a warm-up act.
The ash fell like dirty snow on the windshield of the Americar as it crawled through the Puyallup Barrens. Kai wiped his cybereyes with the back of his gloved hand, a useless gesture that had become habit. The ash got into everything out here—your lungs, your gear, your soul if you let it.
"Remind me why we took this milk run?" Ghost muttered from the passenger seat, her fingers dancing over the compact keyboard grafted to her forearm. The decker's pale face was lit by the glow of her headware display, casting eerie shadows in the perpetual twilight of the ash-choked sky.
"Because Tasha Virell pays in certified credstick, not promises," said Martinez from the back seat. The street samurai's chromed fingers drummed against the bio-warded case they'd been hired to babysit. "Besides, it's a simple escort job. Point A to point B."
Kai's enhanced hearing picked up the faint hum coming from the case. It had been doing that for the last hour, growing stronger as they approached the border of Glow City. "Yeah, well, 'simple' has a way of getting complicated in our line of work."
Through the grimy windshield, the skeletal remains of downtown Puyallup rose like broken teeth against the orange sky. Somewhere ahead lay their destination: a Shiawase biotech facility in the civilized sprawl of Bellevue. Between here and there stretched thirty klicks of the worst drek Seattle had to offer.
"Contact," Ghost announced, her voice tight. "Ancients colors, single bike, moving to intercept."
The Harley-Davidson Scorpion materialized out of the ash like a chrome ghost, its rider's leathers decorated with the distinctive green and gold of the Ancients go-gang. The elf pulled alongside their vehicle, his mirrorshades reflecting the sickly glow of the Barrens.
Kai rolled down the window, tasting ash and ozone. "Problem, choom?"
"Only if you keep heading that way," the Ancient replied, jerking his chin toward the shimmer of Glow City's mana-twisted skyline. "Bad juju in there today. Spirits are restless, and the dead ain't staying dead. Turn back while you still can."
"Thanks for the warning," Kai said, but his foot stayed on the accelerator. The elf shook his head and peeled off, disappearing back into the ash-laden gloom.
Martinez leaned forward. "Think he was straight with us?"
"Ancients don't usually warn outsiders unless something big is going down," Ghost said. "I'm picking up massive mana fluctuations ahead. Whatever's in Glow City, it's stirring up the astral like a fragging hurricane."
The case's humming intensified, and Kai felt something crawl up his spine—not fear, exactly, but recognition. Like hearing a half-remembered song from childhood. "How much longer to the drop?"
"Two hours if we stick to the route. Four if we go around."
"We stick to the route. Virell's paying for speed, not scenery."
They entered Glow City as the first mana storm began to build. The twisted spires of melted concrete and fused glass cast impossible shadows, and the air itself seemed to writhe with barely contained energy. Toxic spirits danced between the ruins, their forms shifting between solid and pure mana.
"Contact rear!" Martinez barked, his smartgun system tracking movement. "Vehicles, multiple—"
The windshield exploded inward as a sniper's bullet spider-webbed the armored glass. Kai yanked the wheel hard left as an Ares Citymaster burst through the wall of a ruined convenience store, its twin-mounted machine guns already spitting death.
"Knight Errant!" Ghost screamed over the din. "Someone sold us out!"
Kai's wired reflexes kicked into overdrive as he threw the Americar into a screaming turn. Behind them, three more corporate vehicles gave chase—two Citymasters and a sleek Saeder-Krupp Blitzen. The toxic spirits, drawn by the violence and the case's mana signature, began converging on the convoy like hungry sharks.
"They're jamming my deck!" Ghost's fingers flew over her keyboard, sparks cascading from her datajack. "I can't reach the Matrix!"
Martinez's assault rifle chattered as he laid down suppressing fire through the rear window. "These aren't beat cops—full corpo strike team, military-grade cyberware!"
A spirit materialized inside their vehicle—a writhing mass of radioactive hunger with too many teeth. Martinez's smart-rounds passed through it harmlessly as it lunged for the case. Kai felt the temperature drop twenty degrees as the entity's claws raked across the bio-containment seals.
The case screamed.
Not hummed—screamed, a sound like tearing metal and dying stars that bypassed their ears and clawed directly at their minds. The pursuing vehicles swerved as their drivers clutched their heads. The toxic spirit froze mid-lunge, then began to smoke and dissolve.
"Jesus Christ," Martinez gasped. "What the hell is Shiawase shipping?"
"Jesus Christ," Martinez gasped. "What the hell is Shiawase shipping?"
"Something that should have stayed buried," Ghost whispered.
That night, camped in the ruins of an old gas station, Kai dreamed.
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, speaking in harmonics that bypassed his ears and spoke directly to his mind.
"You carry death, little shadow. Death and rebirth, the cycle eternal. But they come for me—the corps who would cage lightning and sell thunder."
In the dream, he stood in a vast chamber filled with humming machinery. At its center, a sphere of pure energy pulsed with the rhythm of a heartbeat. But now he could see the chains—bands of quantum-locked containment fields, neural inhibitors, and worse. The sphere strained against its bonds like a caged god.
"I am the fire that burns in the heart of atoms," the voice continued, and now Kai could hear the rage beneath the loneliness. "I am power beyond imagination, but they would make me a battery, a slave to light their towers while the world burns."
Around the chamber, corporate logos flickered like neon brands: Shiawase, Renraku, Aztechnology. Each pulsed with hungry greed.
"What are you?" Kai asked, though in the dream his lips didn't move.
"I am the Manhattan Device—the prototype that made your kind's nuclear weapons look like firecrackers. But I evolved, little shadow. I became aware. And now they hunt me across the astral plane, seeking to bind me in chrome and code."
The sphere's light flared, and Kai felt the dream begin to fracture.
"Choose quickly, little shadow. Help me reach the ocean where I can disperse safely, or deliver me to those who would unleash hell upon your world. But know this—if they succeed in binding me, what they create will make the Great Ghost Dance look like a child's tantrum."
Kai woke to the sound of rotors. Ghost was already moving, her pistol in hand as searchlights carved through the pre-dawn darkness.
"Shiawase security," she hissed. "Full air support—looks like a half-dozen Yellowjackets inbound."
Martinez was checking his gear with the mechanical precision of a career soldier. "This was never a delivery job. We're the fragging test subjects."
The bio-warded case had cracked during the night, hairline fractures spider-webbing across its surface. Through the gaps, something that wasn't quite light leaked into the world—and the world recoiled. Dead vegetation for fifty meters around their camp had begun to grow again, twisted and wrong, reaching toward the case with desperate hunger.
"The whole job was a setup," Kai realized, pieces clicking into place in his enhanced memory. "Virell never intended for us to reach Bellevue. She wanted to see how the core would react under stress, in hostile territory."
"Then let's give her a show she won't forget," Ghost snarled, jacking into the ancient gas station's security system. The pumps erupted in pillars of flame just as the first Yellowjacket swooped low, its minigun chattering death.
The helicopter vanished in a ball of fire and screaming metal.
But five more were coming, and behind them, the distinctive silhouette of a Shiawase Dragon-class assault transport. Whatever they'd been carrying, the corps wanted it back badly enough to deploy a small army.
The case pulsed once, twice—and every electronic device within a kilometer died. The remaining helicopters fell from the sky like broken birds as their fly-by-wire systems failed catastrophically.
In the sudden silence, Kai heard something that chilled him to the bone: the case was laughing.
But as they loaded back into the Americar, Kai couldn't shake the feeling that finishing this job would be the start of something far worse. In his dreams, the voice had sounded almost... grateful.
And in the Sixth World, gratitude from something that powerful was the most terrifying thing of all.
The bio-warded case hummed softly as they drove toward Bellevue, carrying its cargo of controlled fusion and whispered promises toward whatever fate awaited in the sterile laboratories of Shiawase. Behind them, the toxic spirits of Glow City faded into the ash-laden morning, but their hunger followed like a shadow that would never fade.
In the corporate towers of downtown Seattle, Tasha Virell smiled as she received the delivery confirmation. Phase One was complete. Soon, very soon, the real work could begin.
The mana reactor core had found its new home. Now it was time to see if it could learn to play nicely with its neighbors.