Reflection (Downtime I)

December 22, 2075
Seattle Metroplex
1145

Heartbreaker sat in the back of the beat-up old cab, gazing out the grimy window at a sky gone steely-grey from which the occasional half-frozen drizzle fell and wondered what the frag to do next. The cab was taking her down by a circuituous route. The final destination didn't matter, as long as it kept her out of her apartment and away from Aodhfionna- Whitefire- and Michelle.

Heartbreaker had already gone and put on her "other face," the flighty fashion model persona of Victoria Dean and raided her posh Vashon Island apartment and its equally exclusive shopping accounts for food, toiletries, and clothes that fit the quiet young elf, dropping them off an hour ago. She hadn't stayed long, Michelle clearly didn't like her, and had left the apartment with a quick word to Aodhfionna, telling the little redhead to call her if anything happened and to check in every few hours. As long as Aodhfionna kept her updated, Heartbreaker promised that she would stay out of the apartment for a few days while they figured out what to do with Michelle.

Heartbreaker gathered her lavender her over one shoulder, stroking the flowing locks idly with one hand while she contemplated this last, nearly-disastrous job. A ghoul den, a blood mage, a captive elven aristocrat...she shook her head. This was worse than a bad trid plotline. She shuddered, remembering how close it had been. Jet had almost bought it in the opening few seconds, Matador only a little later. She herself had dodged a visit to Tarislar memorial- grave or hospital- by the thinnest of margins, her life saved by her armor and her genetically enhanced reflexes.

It had been bad, very bad.

Fragging dead-eyed monsters.

Heartbreaker shuddered again, fighting down the urge to curl up into a ball and tremble in the aftermath. She hated ghouls, as most rational people did, but her fear of them bordered on the pathological. Growing up in Glow City did that to a person, and she'd seen the gory aftermath of ghoul attacks firsthand more than once. She needed a perspective, needed the opinions of someone more experienced on the whole matter, someone whose thinking wasn't tainted by childhood nightmares of flesh-eating monsters. Something had to be done about Michelle, and Mr. Johnson, and Heartbreaker was in no fit state to dwell on the matter alone. She chewed one purple-painted lip for a moment, then nodded and accessed her 'link. Valkyrie could help. Valkyrie would know what to do.

Valkyrie always had, ever since Heartbreaker had just been little Callie Vallie, a mutant kid and runner for anyone with a few nuyen in their pocket.

>>>>>Hoi, V. Wondering if we could talk about the Tarislar pest control services and how we can best liaise with the client in the future. Ping me if you're free.<<<<<

"You got lucky," the dwarf said, his tone very serious. He looked like he was in his prime, but he behaved like a grumpy old man.  He was clean-shaven, and his expression seemed fixed in a permanent scowl. "Jesus, Alex," he said. "The hell were you thinking, letting ghouls get within arms reach of you?"

"Clearly I wasn't," Sigrún replied.  Alex - another fake name.  She's got a bunch of those.  She was at Doc Jimmie's - Doctor James Carter's - clinic in Redmond, about a mile out from Touristville.  

"Clearly," James echoed. He grumbled a bit, and then conceded, "Well, at least you came right here. I'm not detecting any trace of the virus, but I'm giving you some zeta-interferon just to be safe."  He shook his head in disgust. "Fragging ghouls," he said. "Fragging damn-fool drekhead elves who think they're immortal..."

"I know I'm not immortal, Jim," Sigrún said, rolling her eyes.  Her Tir accent was thick today, making her sound very Irish to anyone who isn't actually from one of the Tirs. "And I don't plan on letting it happen again.  But seriously, thank you."  

The doctor harrumphed. "You can thank me in Nuyen," he said, but the twinkle in his eye took the edge off of his words.

Sigrún laughed. "I'll do that," she said.  Her commlink beeped, then.  She glanced down at it, saw Heartbreaker's message, and then typed out a quick response:

>>>>>I'm free in thirty minutes.  Feel like ramen?<<<<<

Heartbreaker checked her comm'; no alerts, no new messages. She tapped the cabbie on the shoulder and said, "New plan. Take me to The Daikiku in The Verge, please." The ork nodded over his shoulder and grunted, turning the cab around without a word of protest or a syllable of question as to why the pretty girl with the plans downtown suddenly wanted to head toward the barrens. Heartbreaker smiled and made a mental note to tip him handsomely, the little reminder hanging in the corner of her view, red to grow and turn red to make sure she didn't forget when the cab reached its destination.

Plans changed and reminder set, Heartbreaker replied to Valkyrie briefly, then settled back to wait.

>>>>>Ramen's good. Kiku in the V?<<<<<

>>>>>I'll be there.<<<<<

------------------

The air is thick with ashes - the legacy of Mt. Rainier's most recent eruption that no one had either the resources or the inclination to clean up.  So ashes hang in the sky above the verge like smoke.  Like fog.  Sunlight diffuses through it, lending the Verge a distinctly washed out look.  Almost everything is grey, and what people can be seen on the streets wear masks.  It renders the buildings difficult to discern one from another, except in those few places where someone continues to spend the effort, day after day, to keep things clear.  

Daikiku is such a place.  The ramen shop seems almost out of place, and though its black-painted wooden front is smudged with ashes, it is a place that is well cared for.  Across the street is Nathan's Drugs, and next to that, a dying park with ash-choked fields and a playground where children used to play before the volcano began to drown the area in its refuse.  Visibility is more limited than usual today on account of the snow: the breeze doesn't help, constantly stirring the ashes as it does, sending them swirling up into the sky only to fall back to earth in gently drifting grey flakes that are equal parts snow and ash.  A white sign above the door announces the place in black Japanese letters, "Daikiku Ramen."

Heartbreaker arrived at Daikiku to find that the inside of the ramen house was as clean and warm and comfortable as the outside was desolate. Worn wooden floors were half-hidden by low tables and tatami mats, and the large space of the ramen house was divided by sets of traditional shoji panels that could be slid open or closed as needed, and panels and walls were decorated with Kanji, smallscenes from Japanese myth, or reproductions of Yoshinori woodcuts. Along the back wall of the main room was a western-style bar and a double-dozen stools, maybe half of them occupied along with most of the tables on the floor. Daikiku was a popular place for sararimen in or near the verge, as well as Yakuza and other ethnically japanese groups, with its emphasis on traditional japanese fare and ambiance. That it was run by a blonde gaijin elf with a pronounced British accent often went unremarked.

Heartbreaker strolled through the front door with a breezy smile that she didn't feel pasted on her pretty features, idly brushing a couple flakes of ash from the shoulder of her Ace of Coins jacket, the black juggernaut hide gleaming in Daikiku's brightness. Only her coat and her hair set her apart from the everyday crowd, her navy jeans and grey babydoll bearing no designer labels and her black boots more functional than stylish. Her strange eyes were covered by Vashon Island wraparound mirrorshades, and her pistols were well concealed inside her attire.

She approached the podium by the door and the slight young japanese woman- a human, with black hair, dark eyes, and china-doll features- bowed slightly. "Konnichiwa." She greeted Heartbreaker softly.

Heartbreaker bowed in return, a bow both deeper and longer than the other woman's. She was a guest here, and it was appropriate to this place's japanese sensibilities to comport herself as such. "Hajimemashite." She replied, forming her lips carefully around the syllables.

The other woman giggled. "Genki desu." She answered, then shook her head. "Your pronunciation is getting better, but 'Hajimemashite' is usually used for meeting someone for the first time." She smiled slightly. "Its not wrong, but it could have been more right."

Heartbreaker blushed. "I'm out of practice." She admitted. "Has anyone been in asking for me today, Yuki?"

Yuki shook her head. "Not today. Should I expect someone?" At Heartbreaker's slight nod, Yuki's tone sharpened. "Trouble?" A headshake this time, and Yuki relaxed. "Very well, then. Where would you like to be seated, miss...?" She trailed off, letting Heartbreaker fill in the name. Miss Dean would be a nice table somewhere visible. Miss Sylatria would be a seat at the bar, like anyone else.

"Valentine." Heartbreaker replied after a second's hesitation. Fred, the owner of Daikiku, had known her for even longer than Valkyrie had, and knew of her activities both over and under the table. Using her real name would open doors closed to normal people, and it cost her nothing here.

Yuki's eyebrow rose. "Hai, miss Valentine." She said quietly. Putting down her pen- without, Heartbreaker noted, writing a name- Yuki led Heartbreaker around the podium and through the main dining room to the right hand wall, sliding one of the shoji panels aside to access a second dining room that was usually reserved for peak hours. Heartbreaker and Yuki went through, and Yuki shut the panel, then turned immediately and slid aside another shoji panel, exposing a short hallway. She took a half dozen steps and turned, sliding aside another panel, but this one exposed an expanse of bare stone wall.

Yuki placed a hand on the stone, the biometric reader verified her identity, and the "wall" slid aside, revealing a small room with a western table and four chairs of dark wood. A small wet bar was to the right of the door, a secure comm terminal to the left. The room was all in off-white with cream carpeting, and as Yuki showed Heartbreaker in and pulled out a chair for her, Heartbreaker could see the telltale glitter of pulse-weave around the edges of the wallpaper.

"Will you be needing lunch?" Yuki asked softly as Heartbreaker slipped off her jacket, pointedly ignoring the holsters now openly visible under Heartbreaker's arms.

Heartbreaker nodded. "Please. The Tan-Tan Men and a glass of water, if you would." Yuki nodded and Heartbreaker said, "If a tall blonde elf with legs that go for miles comes looking for me, please bring her back here. If anyone else comes looking for me, you haven't seen me in a week."

"Of course." Yuki said. "I will return with your order in a few minutes." She bowed again and excused herself, sliding the door shut, and Heartbreaker settled back in her chair, content to wait in the secure room until Valkyrie arrived.

Sigrún's arrival comes perhaps ten minutes after Heartbreaker's. There aren't many tall nordic, athletic blonde elf women in Daikiku; in a crowd of sarari-men and assorted ethnically Japanese individuals, even apart from her white-blonde hair and pointed ears, there is basically no way for her to not stand out even if she wants to. She is dressed today in a burgundy leather jacket with a slightly lighter undershirt worn over a pair of very dark blue jeans and black shoes, and as she enters the restaurant, she, too, is greeted by the young Japanese woman - Yuki.

"Konnichi-wa," Yuki says with a slight bow.

"Tráthnóna maith duit," Sigrún replies, and though she knows almost nothing of Japanese culture or its politesse, she knows at least enough to bow in turn, though the gesture is unpracticed. When Yuki's features crinkle ever so slightly in dismay at being greeted in Sperethiel, Sigrún smiles apologetically. "Apologies," she says, her words lightly accented. "I am meeting a friend here for lunch."

Yuki's eyes flicker down to Sigrún's legs, then back to her face, and she nods in understanding. "What is your friend's name?" she asks.

"Sylatria," Sigrún replies.

"And yours?"

Sigrún smiles. "Silverstaff."

To her credit, Yuki does not roll her eyes at the name. Instead, she smiles politely and says, "Please follow me, Ms. Silverstaff," turns, and leads Sigrún back to the same area she showed Heartbreaker, through the same stone wall which opens to her biometric reader. Sigrún enters the room where Heartbreaker is waiting, and once she's thanked Yuki, she walks in.

Heartbreaker rose as Sigrún entered the room, and when Yuki glanced at her she held up two fingers. Yuki nodded and the panel hissed shut, leaving Sigrún and Heartbreaker alone.

"Se'sesterin, Sigrún." Heartbreaker said. It wasn't quite morning, but it was close enough for the greeting to be appropriate, and her amethyst lips curled up as she came around the table to briefly hug the taller elf, kissing the air near Sigrún's cheek. Withdrawing, she gestured at the chair opposite her own, then reseated herself.

"Thank you for meeting me." Heartbreaker said softly. "I hope I'm not taking you away from anything too pressing?" Her voice was quiet, reserved, almost childish, a lingering affectation of the days when she was just a street kid and Sigrún was the big, bad Witch of Redmond.

Sigrún returns greeting and hug alike. "Se'sesterin, Heartbreaker," she replies, and then settles down into the indicated chair with a smile. "Any time," she says in response to the thanks for the meeting. Then, when Heartbreaker finishes speaking, Sigrún shakes her head. "Nothing pressing, no, and I was more or less finished by the time you messaged me in any case. What's up?"

Heartbreaker giggled. "Please, Sigrún, you can call me Callista. You've known me for far too long to use a street name with me, especially one as vain and stupid as that one."

Heartbreaker shrugged minutely and continued. "I wanted to check in, partly. I know you've been doing this since before I had my first training bra, but tangling with a pack of ghouls, three knife-handed monsters, and a blood mage is no picnic no matter how good or how old you are." She smiled, a tad apologetically. "I may be senselessly worrying, but I wanted to make sure you were all right, and to maybe talk about the merry cluster that was that last job."

"No picnic, no," Sigrún says. She looks thoughtful. "There are a lot of things I would have done differently in retrospect, but we all survived, and Doc Jimmie tells me I haven't contracted HMHVV, so there's that, at least." A pause. "Callista, what did you think of the ghouls we fought?"

Heartbreaker frowned. "Fast." She responded after a second. "Like, really fast. Strong, too. That lead-off one went through Jet like a monowhip." She shook her head, and on the tabletop, her right hand trembled slightly. "I've seen ghouls before, growing up. They're savage and nasty but those..." she shivered, then looked up at Sigrún. "I am genetically modified, bioware-enhanced, superbly trained, and in as good a condition as I can possibly make myself, and they still almost got me." She said quietly. "They were terrifying." A beat. "Why do you ask?"

"Because Seattle's favorite lepers are normally nowhere near that strong or that fast.  I'm not familiar with the 162, but I'd bet money none of them are in the same league as what we bagged and tagged."  She thought about it for a moment. "You could get a ghoul up to that level with tech, but it would cost a fortune, and considering who was in charge, it doesn't seem likely."

Heartbreaker nodded in agreement. "It'd leave scars, too, or marks of some kind unless they were rocking delta-grade cyber. I didn't see any while I was collecting bounty on them, and even if it was delta, why leave them blind like that?" Heartbreaker paused for a second, then reached into a pocket and withdrew a slim silver credstick, setting it on the table. "That reminds me," she nodded at the credstick, "There's your cut of the ghoul and harvester bounty, six thousand nuyen."

Heartbreaker slid the 'stick across the table and leaned back in her chair, frowning. "So that leaves what, then?" She asked. "Magic?" She shook her head. "You know that hoodoo drek is beyond me, but even I know enough to realize that getting almost a dozen ghouls up to that kind of power is almost as heavy an investment of mojo as it would be metal, unless someone's figured out an easier way. That means either these ghouls were an investment of some kind, or someone's figured out how to...weaponize them." Heartbreaker bit her lip and, apparently liking the taste, chewed it for a moment, then shook her head. "No. Mustn't jump to conclusions." She told herself firmly. She took a long, slow breath, then met Sigrún's eyes. "Sorry. I have a thing about cannibalistic horrors."

Sigrún nodded, taking the credstick and slipping it into her jacket pocket. "Perfectly..." She hesitated, trying to think of the right English word.  Then she just continued in Sperethiel. "... understandable," she said. "I'm not fond of ghouls, myself. I know they didn't choose to be infected, and that they can't help what they are, that they're victims of a disease.  But when I look at them, I still see a predator species whose food is us, and I am not okay with meta-humanity serving as someone else's prey animal."  

She let a beat pass. "It isn't necessarily, though.  A huge investment, I mean.  Granted, the number of sustaining foci necessary to maintain that many spells is prohibitively expensive even if you cheat the process by artificially enhancing a spell through powerful reagents or just plain blood magic and hanging it on low-powered foci, but there are other ways to do it.  

"Given the focus I recovered from the site, he probably used a variant on the method I used to make that enchantment you asked for permanent.  A single practitioner might be able to manage it, but he'd have to invest his anima into it.  Enough that I would be surprised if he were capable of anything but the most basic magical feats afterwards, unless he'd had months to recover afterwards, or months to prepare beforehand.  Forget about quickening a spell or setting up any kind of complicated metamagic. It gets more viable if he's an older, more experienced mage, but it would be far easier if he just had cohorts.  Even one other Practitioner working with him would make what we saw there considerably easier to accomplish. "

"Wiz." Heartbreaker said sourly. "So either the guy we slagged is some kind of powerful supermage and we've set god knows what in motion, or he's got friends that'll come looking for us." She sighed. "Why do we do this again?"

Sigrún was spared from having to answer by the sudden reappearance of Yuki bearing a carafe of water, two glasses, and a pair of steaming bowls on a wooden tray. She set the bowls and glasses on the table in front of the pair, the carafe between them, and bowed, then left without a word. Heartbreaker watched her go, smiling pleasantly until the door shut again, then her distantly cheerful look vanished.

"Well, this is just fragging great." She said in a tightly-controlled voice. "Blood magic, ghouls, vampires, an unknown enemy, and that's just the first run with this team!" She ground her teeth, shivered again, and looked up at the taller elf. "Any ideas for what to do next?" She asked. Her voice was suddenly serene, but Sigrún had known her for long enough to see the lie in her tone for what it was.

Sigrún took up the carafe, poured herself a glass of water, then poured another for Heartbreaker.  Then she took up her glass and had a sip. There was a playful note in her voice as she said, "Watch your back, shoot straight, conserve ammo, make no deals with dragons." Her tone sobered considerably as she went on. "Assuming you've already been tested for HMHVV exposure and gotten on a course of zeta-interferon just in case you've got it in your system but it's not a high enough concentration to be detected by a proper test?  Depends how much we want to get involved."

She took another sip of water. "Personally, I'd rather not have anything further to do with this situation.  I think what we do is we deliver the girl to the people who hired us to find her, we collect our pay, and we go on our merry way.  To that end, it's probably a good idea to have Matador assense the kid to make sure there aren't any lingering enchantments or malign spiritual influences affecting her.  Assuming he hasn't already done so; we did pull her off of a sacrificial slab.  If I were the Blood Mage, I would have a couple 'frag you' protocols in place that would go off in the event of the girl's rescue and my defeat. Depending on whether he had help or not, those could be anything from an anchored spell just waiting for the right condition to trigger it to having distributed material links to the girl to all of my allies so they can avenge me, continue my work when I'm gone, or both.  If the Blood Mage had allies, and he probably did, we can expect them to go after the girl at some point.  Just to be safe, we keep her at my warded safehouse until we're ready to make the delivery, and until that delivery is made, we keep her under guard from both physical and spiritual attack at all times."  

She gave Heartbreaker a serious look. "We've got this, Callista," she said. "We're going to be fine."

Heartbreaker snorted. "That's a comforting lie that adults tell children, right before the fecal matter hits the rotary impellers." She shook her head. "I know we're going to be fine, intellectually I do, really. You're the best, Matador's a grade A necromancer, Jet's got a half million under the hood, Saio's a fragging ghost..." She picked up her water glass, took a sip, replaced it. "We're a novahot team if we can stick together." She said after a moment.

Heartbreaker picked up her chopsticks, taking a mouthful of noodles. She chewed reflectively for several seconds, then swallowed and took another sip of water before she asked, "What if she doesn't want to be delivered?" Heartbreaker raised a hand to forestall comment and continued, "I know, I know, sometimes we shoot people in the face for money. I have a black AR Halo, remember?" She smiled gently. "And you taught me never to welch on a job, but...she's a kid, Sigrún."

Heartbreaker rapped her thumbs on the table, falling silent for a second. "She asked me to pick a few things up for her today, I don't know what, but she promised me a thousand nuyen if I'd deliver the contents of a coffin doss down in Tarislar." She shrugged. "I took the job. It might have been stupid, but she looked so scared and hopeful and I'm a fragging sucker." She looked back up to Sigrún's eyes. "Can we deliver a scared kid to Mr. Johnson, if she really doesn't want to go?"

Sigrún takes up her own bowl and thinks as she eats.  Swallows.  Silence.  Her expression becomes utterly unreadable.  "We took the job," she says. "We didn't have to."  Another pause for eating.  Her expression remains completely inscrutable. "I suppose it depends on the kid, though, and on the Johnson.  If the Johnson turns out to be a group along the lines of Tamanous or the Azzies operating under false pretenses?  Of course not.  There are lines even for us." She gives Heartbreaker a sidelong look. "Want me to have a look at the coffin doss before you drive it down?  Make sure it's safe to handle, and not a magical explosion waiting to happen?"

Heartbreaker shrugs, takes another bite of ramen. "I suppose we did." She says heavily. "But in the hands of a blood mage? A bolthole in Tarislar? A false identity? That sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?" Heartbreaker eats a couple more bites then pushes away the bowl, suddenly no longer hungry. She picks up her water glass, rolling it between her palms as she thinks. "Here's the thing. We took the job, and we keep our word unless it crosses some kind of terrible line, you're absolutely right." She sighs. "So we deliver her to the Daisy Chain, and our contract is up. If she doesn't want to go after that, I won't let Mr. Johnson take her." She glances at Sigrún. "You can come along and see what it is I'm picking up if you like, but like you said, I took the job. Unless its a suitcase nuke or a vial full of smallpox or something, I'm delivering."

Helpless.  Bound.  The altar beneath her.  Pale hair streaked with sweat.   Chest rising and falling.  Serene green eyes.  The athame descending.

Sigrún shivers almost imperceptibly. "It sounds familiar," she concedes. Then her expression softens ever so slightly. It's a small thing, and only someone who knew her well would spot it; Heartbreaker knows her well. "All right, agreed," she says. "Once she's delivered, we've fulfilled the terms of our contract."  

She's not hungry anymore either, but she finishes her soup regardless;  at the moment, she's too poor to be able to afford to refuse a meal on account of something as minor as having lost her appetite.

"And if you don't mind," she says, "I think I will come along.  At least to make sure there's nothing immediately dangerous about transporting the thing.  You never know with magic."

The two finish their lunch quickly, and Heartbreaker pays the shot. The main dining room of Daikiku is still more than half full as they leave, the same gunsels, sararimen, and Verge locals eating as when the pair entered. Sigrún leaves first, Heartbreaker trailing her by ninety seconds. Nothing stands out in the restaurant itself, but parked next to Heartbreaker's acid-green Rapier outside are a pair of like-colored Suzuki Mirages, two slender young elves leaning against them casually. One casually nods at Sigrún as she exits, and she hears a low greeting in Sperethiel, and Heartbreaker's voice responding as she climbs astride her own bike a few meters away.

Half a minute later, the pair are on their way south, back into Tarislar. Lunchtime traffic turns a thirty minute journey into the best part of an hour, but the ride is uneventful. At some point, Heartbreaker's bike changes colors, going gunmetal grey with a black circle on the nose and celtic-style tracery along the tail, the identifying marks of the Laesa. Sigrún and Heartbreaker see rather more of the elven gang than usual, but their assistance with the Lasesa's recent problems and the obvious markings keep them from being hassled, the patrols, couriers, and go-gang packs giving them a wide berth.

The coffin hotel that Sigrún and Heartbreaker finally stop at is...well, "seedy" doesn't really encompass the totality of the place, but it is as apt a word as any. Without even the dignity of a name, the coffin cube stands five stories, at the corner 406th St and 191st Ave, a dilapidated place of slowly crumbling plasticrete and peeling paint that might have been red a long, long time ago. Just a glance dates the place back a hell of a long way, possibly even back to the Crash. The first Crash. Its squat, its ugly, its in a terrible part of town, and where the sign used to be is now a swatch of blue AR paint that projects an uneven, badly scrawled rates schedule by the month, the week, the day, and the hour.

The front door is ballistic glass gone foggy, and it currently stands open. Through it, Heartbreaker and Sigrún can see a courtyard of sorts, with tables and chairs on one side, a line of appliances down the center, and a few shower stalls to the other side. Lining the courtyard are the coffins themselves, stacked three deep on each floor, each coffin door a a meter across. The walls are lined only with steel grating catwalks, and staircases at the corners. There is a ladder to the right side of each coffin stack to allow entry to the higher doors. Directly across the courtyard from the door is the front desk, a single podium with a bored looking elf sitting on a stool behind it, seemingly paying no mind to Sigrún, Heartbreaker, or anything else.

Heartbreaker stops before the door in order to run her hand through her hair and adjust the collar of her jacket, her arms brushing over her various concealed weapons and devices as she moves. Then she takes a good look through the door and grimaces. Glancing over at Sigrún, she mutters, "Frag, what a crapper place this is." Her eyes flick to the elf, to the few guests at the tables, up to the catwalks, and back down again, looking, searching, cataloging. In a voice just above a whisper, she tells Sigrún, "Coffin eleven-eighteen. That should make it the right side, fourth floor, about halfway down, in the middle row. How do you want to play this?"

Sigrún's eyes flicker towards the catwalks, then back down.

"You know me," Sigrún says, her voice only carrying through her subvocal mic to Heartbreaker's commlink, and not through the air. "I always think it's a trap. Assuming we get that far without any trouble, once we're closer, I'll check the coffin for any magical traps, then have one of my allies take a gander from the astral plane. Wanna bet on whether or not we'll see a pair of elves outside with some color of Suzuki Mirage?"

"No bet." Heartbreaker says. "The odds on that are way too lopsided." She shakes her head. "Let's go." She leads the way over to the stairs to the right of the door, letting her features relax into her best resting bitch-face. Its pretty good; none of the other tenants hassle her, most looking away after a single glance, only turning their eyes back to her after she passes. She climbs quickly but not hurriedly, even though her instincts are screaming at her. This is too easy.

No crazed ghouls leap out, no snipers fire, blood doesn't start pouring from empty air to draw eye-tearing sigils on the walls and ceiling. The climb, like the ride, is uneventful. Heartbreaker and Sigrún reach the fourth story of the coffin cube without trouble, and seeing that the numbers on the cubes to their right start at 1001, 1101, and 1201, begin proceeding down the catwalk. The only other person they can see is a woman in front of a coffin directly ahead of them, about fifteen meters distant, who shoots them a pleasant smile as they start moving toward her.

It isn't until they are close enough to see the sequencer in her hand that they can see that she is trying to gain access to coffin 1118.

The woman stiffens as she realizes she's been made. Close now, they can see that she's a tall, pretty thing, a human apparently in her early twenties. She has lightly tanned skin and softly-curling hair that hovers somewhere between sandy brown and dishwater blonde. Her wide, pink-glossed lips are set in a thin line, and the nostrils of her patrician nose flare slightly as she flicks her gray-green gaze in their direction. Then she sighs and turns, stepping back and holding her hands out to the sides to show that she's not holding any weapons. Dressed in a stylish, close-fitted brown jacket of real leather over a blue v-necked shirt of real cotton, and designer jeans over expensive running shoes, she's obviously moneyed, and suspended from the silver necklace around her neck is a spherical, many-faceted ruby the size of a small marble. She nods her head at the pair, having to look down slightly to look Heartbreaker in the face, having a good five centimeters on the lavender-haired woman even in ten-centimeter heels.

"Ladies." She greets them. "You must be friends of Ms. Telestrian's." Her voice is low, cultured, and upper-crust British. "I'm afraid you've caught me at a bit of an awkward moment." She smiles disarmingly, her eyes twinkling as she looks back and forth between the two shadowrunners. "Still, all's well that ends well. I'll just be going, if you don't mind."