Chapter Text
“Hi. It’s Raymond.”
The old voice crackled in the elf’s earpiece, its volume and static drowning out the din of conversation and the drone of a suborbital’s engine as it carried her and a hundred others across the placid Pacific Ocean.
“I hope I have the right number.”
Azzy Esper scowled down at the remains of her in-flight meal. Of course he’d had the right number. He’d set up the account himself, and paid for it out of his own pocket all these years. If anything, she was more surprised that it still worked.
“Look, I know we haven’t spoken in a while, but...I need your help.”
She looked out the rounded window at a gathering mass of moody gray on the horizon, and hoped that wasn’t their destination. The pilot had announced arrival in about fifteen minutes. The jet was beginning its descent.
“Remember the day I took you and Duncan in from the street? I told you the past is just a story. That if you could just accept that, your past loses all power over you.”
The recording paused there. More static swept the elf’s skull as the speaker had picked up Ray’s breath. She closed her eyes and slowly shook her head. Words to live by, those. But apparently they weren’t meant for him.
“I was wrong.”
The sentence still chilled her, even now. Raymond Black wasn’t a man who ever admitted he was wrong. No matter how many fights she’d settled with him, how much evidence she’d dropped in his lap, how cold and cutting her words could be. He’d always just fallen silent and walked away. Never once said it aloud.
Until this moment.
“I’m on my way to Hong Kong now to face something I should have faced a long time ago.”
He also never talked about his past, where he’d come from or how he knew what he knew. But he’d needled everything he could out of her over the years, dangling desires like dinner scraps in front of a starving wolf pup, demanding truth after truth until her soul lay bare and slept belly-up at his feet by the fire.
“I need you with me. I know we’re not blood, and we didn’t leave things in a good place, but you and Duncan are the only real family I have.”
Thankfully for Mr. Raymond Black, local philanthropist and estranged foster father, the wild beast inside her had never truly been tamed. And the mention of Duncan’s name helped a lot. She missed her baby brother more than she thought she would, and the knowledge that he was still alive filled her with a hope and anticipation that had surprised her with its strength.
“Please…if our past means anything to you…meet me in Hong Kong right away.”
The attendant came around and collected her plate, and she thanked the gentleman and readied herself for touchdown, masking the twisting thing that teethed at her chest every time she heard that tremulous, cracked begging.
The past is just a story, after all.
“I’m almost out of time...”
But, after a long interlude, Esper was ready to continue the tale.
The recording ended there. She shut off her PDA and slipped it into a pocket. The elf had replayed the message at least half a dozen times now, trying to make any sense of it. Raymond sounded weak and scared, so different from the troubled hardass who’d spent five years trying to force something civil into her, but she hadn’t seen him in just as long. A little longer, she realized. Six years now, she’d been gone.
But money was money, and enough had been wired to her account to pay for the flight and then some.
She hadn’t exactly had much going in Seattle, either. Before or after the corporate lockdown.
The suborbital rumbled beneath her, turbulence jostling the craft as gray swallowed the view outside. The seatbelt light had been on for a while, but Esper and a handful of others only now strapped themselves in. The pilot’s voice smoothed over the murmur of discontent, warning the passengers that a bumpy landing was inbound, and he was very right.
The carrier plunged through the clouds into the storm they were dumping on Hong Kong, shaking as water and wind battered its hull. Everyone on board could feel the pilot fighting the controls, and the elf deeply regretted the food she’d been served. She stared out the window, squinting to see the ground, but the solid sheet of rain left everything an indistinct, murky glow. With a ragged shudder the plane slammed the ground and skidded to a halt at the edge of the Chek Lap Kok tarmac. It seemed to take a moment to gather its wits, then taxied to the terminal.
Esper swallowed the bile rising in her throat as she filed out along with the other passengers, waiting patiently for a heavy troll to maneuver his way between the narrow aisles. She’d never been on a suborbital before, and frankly, she’d be happy if the return flight was the last she ever had to handle. The elf wasted an hour at interminable security checkpoints, each agent eyeing her less-than-stellar SIN with a scrutiny that wore on her already faltering mood. She hadn’t planned to exact much revenge on the scrawny little dwarf who’d sold her out and landed her in prison in the first place, but if the whole of this godforsaken little rain-soaked island treated her the way these self-important sec men did, that might have to change when she got back to Seattle.
Eventually she was free to go, and by the time she headed to the bay to hail a water taxi, she was almost happy for the spattering storm to wash the memory of a dozen searching, groping hands from her body. The roaring wind was electric with energy, pulsing like the heartbeat of some great beast kept alive by the sprawling neon that loomed in the distance. A handful of boats floated in the bay, and the elf followed the crowds toward them, searching the signs for destinations. Near one that advertised a trip to Victoria Harbor she spotted a miserable-looking young asian man holding a glowing LED panel to his chest that scrolled her name on an endless, lazy marquee, and she frowned and approached him.
“Esper?” His black hair was matted to his narrow forehead. An arc of cyberware curved across his right brow and disappeared behind his ear. Wires from a panel in his neck tucked themselves neatly into the soaked collar of his shirt. Their outline snaked over his shoulder and disappeared down his back. His voice was as tired and rain-drenched as he looked, and when she nodded his language promptly shifted to Cantonese. He spoke slow, but even then she struggled to understand his words. Something about an ork and a nuyen payment and a...gift, maybe? Or the act of giving? It had been a long time since Raymond’s endless language lessons. It was the only thing the old man ever spoke at home.
A worn brown duffle bag sat in a growing puddle beside the guy. He nudged it with his right foot. “You got ID?”
She caught that, at least.
Esper pulled it out and flashed it at him, and he sighed and wandered away, leaving the bag behind. Relieved that she herself didn’t have to try to speak, the elf picked it up and filed onto the taxi, swiping in to pay for the ride. She claimed an uncomfortably moist chair and dumped the wet bag into her wet lap. A note dangled from the strap.
Better safe than sorry. -D
D?
An ork, and a gift.
Baby bro was already looking out for her.
She unzipped the bag. Stiff new body armor and some nice black casting gloves were piled inside. The chest piece bore the stamped logo of Lone Star, a discovery that unsettled her deeply. He’d either stolen it, bought it surplus, or killed someone for it, though she couldn’t detect any residue from a previous owner. Physical or astral.
The taxi finished loading, and unmoored from the pier. Its idling engines rumbled to speed.
Maybe it was some kind of sick joke, she thought, closing the bag again and heading below decks to find some privacy to change. Duncan knew how she felt about the CAS/UCAS security firm and what they’d done -- or, more importantly, what they’d failed to do -- years before she’d ever met him. Maybe it was a sign he was still mad about what had happened. Or maybe he’d left the straight-and-narrow that Raymond had put him on. It was good quality stuff, and if he had stolen it, he’d picked some solid merch to lift, she had to admit. The taxi was big enough to hold a bathroom, and she slipped the gear on under her clothes. It was painfully tight, maybe a size too small for her, but it was better than nothing.
At least it didn’t hurt when she headed back to the upper deck and the rough sea threw her against a doorway.
The trip was short but the waves were unforgiving, and between them, the cinching armor, and the quavering suborbital landing, Esper felt positively green by the time she stepped off the churning taxi and onto the ponderous rocking of the docks of Victoria Harbor. Her stomach lurched and saliva wet her mouth with the very real possibility that she was about to donate her dinner to the local late-night fish.
While she caught her breath and tried to keep everything down, the crowds around her dispersed into the rain, going about their business. She didn’t have Duncan’s number and he didn’t have hers, and she didn’t see him or Raymond anywhere as she looked around. Smog-thick clouds hung low in the sky, reflecting the lights of the city in a nauseating swirl. There was a strange taste to the air as she sucked it into her lungs, a heady stew of diesel, sea salt, street food, and filth. It didn’t do her constitution any favors. She’d never been far from Seattle before. This place felt alien and oppressive. There was something unwelcoming about it. Something that threatened to churn her up and crush her to a fine pulp if she wasn’t careful. It raised her hackles and set her teeth on edge.
Why would Raymond come here? What business had he left unfinished?