Anvâr (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} anvar) wrote,@ 2008-01-12 20:33:00 |
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| Entry tags: | au100, in gotham's shadow |
Shadows of the Past (Batman Begins AU/ Shadowrun crossover)
Fandom: Batman Begins AU/Shadowrun crossover
Prompt: 085. Missing
Wordcount: 4146
Beta: by temve
Shadows of the Past
The vast floor-to-ceiling glass window allowed Bruce Wayne a spectacular view of Gotham. The evening sun threw long shadows over the cityscape. With half an ear he listened to the news trid reporting about the last hours of the elections. Nothing was yet decided. Dunkelzahn and his main rivals were extremely close in the polls.
The world has so much changed since the Awakening. Magic has returned, we have had to get used to metahumans and paracritters. Technology has blurred the line between men and machine. He glanced at the trid screen where the report cut to Dunkelzahn's speech. Dragons run for presidency. Sometimes it feels too strange. I belong too much to the old world of my youth. And at other times it feels the same, Gotham with its glittering outside, corporate and political battles hidden behind smiles, afflicted by barely restrained corruption and crimes inside.
Someone knocked at the door and then entered without waiting for an invitation. Wayne was expecting him. Gordon, his head of security, was a lean man in his forties and born into this new, the Sixth World where one needed either magic or technology to gain an edge. The datajack at his temple and the inhumanly smooth movements betrayed that he had boosted his natural abilities with cyberware. Although the characteristics Wayne valued him most for were his loyalty and efficiency.
"It is missing, Gordon."
"Yes, sir, we were able to verify that the box was transferred with the others from Wayne Manor to the warehouse of Gotham Storage and Logistics. Our records prove this. The hardcopy of the shipping manifest and the gap in the box numbering have also convinced GS&L even though their electronic records don't show this item and their deckers could not find any trace of a data manipulation.
"GS&L offers their deepest apologies and immediate compensation as soon as we let them know the value of the content."
Bruce Wayne frowned at his head of security. Gordon knew his boss well enough that it was in thought and not in displeasure. It didn't serve to lessen his tension. The contents of those boxes had been private, even he didn't know their contents in detail.
"It was a keepsake, Gordon. It had no actual monetary worth."
He stood up and slowly paced the length of his office. A bad sign, Gordon knew. This wasn't a small matter any more.
"But it wasn't accidentally misplaced, it was stolen. Who would target such an item? This item. And why?"
Gordon offered a theory. "Possibly for ritual magic then, sir?" It was a slim chance, usually such a magical attack needed an actual body tissue to work. Nonetheless he made a mental note to strengthen the magical security, he wasn't taking any chances.
"That makes the question of whodunnit even more important, doesn't it?" Wayne's grin was humourless. "I'm not interested in settling a claim. GS&L need to give us full access to their system for an investigation. Put your best men to the case. I need answers."
A trio of human men awaited them. Kim Larsson identified the one in the middle as the CEO of GS&L. He looked nervous, eyes flickering between him and his colleague. Two men flanked the CEO, the grim-faced head of security and an emaciated man in a rumpled suit. On the latter's face the corporate smile slipped repeatedly to make way for worry and resentment in turn. By his out-of-place look and the gleaming datajack in his temple he was probably a security decker, dragged from his familiar booth by this emergency.
Dan Burke, his colleague from Internal Investigations, accompanied Larsson. Burke was an orc with an unflappable temper. Larsson was glad to have his reassuring bulk at his side. Especially in those situations when he was uncertain of the required etiquette and manners. He hated being regarded as socially inept but such skills did not come easily to him. He always needed to pay careful attention to social rituals such as appropriate greetings to avoid embarrassing or, worse, offending slip-ups.
After a few awkward moments the formal greeting seemed to give the CEO a grounding and he slid into the familiar routine by introducing the two other men. No surprises here, Larsson had already read their files from their database.
Burke took over the introductory talk, listing the locations and systems they might need access to. Larsson didn't need his main focus there anymore; instead, he mentally reviewed the known facts of the ongoing investigation and the disturbing lack of evidence.
They knew there had been a repelled shadowrun about two weeks ago. It didn't come anywhere near the high security storage rooms where Wayne's boxes were kept, but the current theory was that it had been a staged distraction for a far more covert run.
Conventional or magical forensics had turned up nothing at all. That was not surprising if the assumption about the time was right. Professionals hardly ever left any traces. After two weeks even those would be unidentifiable.
But cyberspace didn't have such a decay time. A clue left there might still be available; although the matrix investigation had also come up negative so far. But because Wayne's own records and all hardcopy seemed untampered with, all evidence appeared to point to a highly expert matrix run in GS&L's own system. No wonder that the security man and the decker looked that grim: it didn't give a favourable impression of their departments when such a run wasn't noticed at all, not even after the fact.
They had been given full access to all of GS&L's systems, of course. As with many other medium-sized businesses in Gotham, Wayne Industries was, through various investment and shell companies, a major shareholder.
Larsson had requested to use the same jackpoint from which the previous matrix investigation had taken place. With disdain he looked at the workplaces of the GS&L deckers. Small cubicles, six foot square, lined a narrow corridor in a bland office space. To make it worse, the one he was shown into was cluttered with empty paper cups and pizza cartons. This was so like a bad caricature of the decker cliché that it wasn't funny any more. How anyone who lived for the perfect simulacrum of the matrix could be so messy was beyond him. Fortunately at least the chair appeared reasonably clean.
He connected his cyberdeck to the matrix port and reluctantly sat down - only to suppress a wince immediately. GS&L obviously cut costs when providing their employees with office furniture. He would get backaches for certain if he stayed for more than half an hour. Longingly, he thought back to his couch in the comfortable working lounge he shared with a few colleagues. But a job was a job. Hopefully he would be done before his back took too much harm.
As always he enjoyed the abrupt change from the meat world to cyberspace. This was the world he understood and ruled. One glance around was enough to orient himself. GS&L's sculpted reality was ergonomical and economical. In Larsson's not so humble opinion it was also simplistic and unimaginative.
Little, rough pixeled manikins pushed boxes around a grid, busily storing those data files in their intended locations. Different colours marked them as belonging to different departments. There were also one-way passages representing access controls and floating mines that were obviously IC programs monitoring the system. At times, colourful balls with gaping mouths bounced around – the users of the system.
It reminded him of the computer's stone age. Then, the technical possibilities had been restricted. Now? Simplistic, he sighed. And ugly.
The glass sphere that represented his persona in the matrix rolled along the blinking lines that led to the different departments of the logistics and storage firm. Because he had been given unrestricted access, the ICs didn't bother him. The first routine check confirmed GS&L's results: nothing seemed out of place.
It was time to dig deeper. This doesn't need to be a fast job, he reminded himself, just a thorough one.
In the meat world his fingers flitted across the keys. In the electron world the glass sphere sweated drops of quicksilver that rolled like silvery pearls over the floor to the little transport boxes where they seeped into the cracks and vanished. Larsson waited patiently what his search programs might find.
For a long time there was nothing. The quicksilver drops reappeared one after another - showing no results - only to vanish into the next cracks. They had checked almost all the little boxes in this department and Larsson was beginning to suspect that there wouldn't be anything more to find here when suddenly they coalesced into a puddle and covered a certain datafile.
Larsson grinned. An anomaly, finally. He called up his analyzing tool and pointed it at the singled out box. At first the anomaly didn't look to be more than the remains of a correction. Someone had edited a wrong input. But as his tool went deeper and deeper through the code a trace was uncovered. Like a puzzle it led to other files and from there to other ones still. It must have been a strangely complicated method to hide an illegal modification. But the unusual and completely unobtrusive pattern the enemy decker had left had been not recognized by the Intrusion Countermeasures and the deckers of GS&L. Larsson grew excited as he started to follow the trail. He could probably trace the way the break-in had taken, maybe even right back to its source.
So intent was he in following the faint traces that he was taken by surprise as the trail looped back to meet itself and then suddenly took shape. Like a lasso or a giant snake, it caught him in its coils. A trap! An intense pressure built up around his persona that threatened to squash him. Immediately he activated his defenses and the coils slid loose on the curves of the slick glass sphere. But nonetheless, they whirled him around and around until his surroundings blurred beyond recognition.
When he came to a halt again, he was somewhere else.
Cold. It was freezing cold. Instinctively he took a step back and paused. A step? He looked down at himself. His persona had changed. The reflecting sphere was gone, he now appeared as a man packed in thick layers of worn clothes with scarf and gloves that were not enough to keep the cold from creeping into him.
He tried to revert to his own persona but the change persisted. That was worrisome. The sculpted reality of this system node should not be able to override his Master Persona Control Program. Only UV hosts could do that and he didn't want to contemplate the implications if he was really caught in one. In search of a clue, he looked around.
He stood at the foot of a majestic mountain on a stony trail that wound through a vaguely Asiatic-looking village consisting of a few modest houses with curved roofs and some wooden huts. He had no idea if there were actually people who lived this backward or if it was entirely a product of the system designer's fantasy. The huts looked as if they would fall apart in a winter storm. People of different ages scurried around. If this was built like a traditional system these must be data packages or utilities. He moved to intercept one of them but those closest to him shot him furtive glances and retreated into the huts. The doors slammed shut, bolts were drawn.
He rubbed his hands together, partly in frustration, partly to get them warm again. Again he tried to access any of his deck's utilities. But all that materialized was an old Swiss army knife with broken blades. Not good.
He started wandering around; the village was tiny. But whichever direction he turned, the streets emptied before him. Then he stood at the edge of the settlement, the trail led up the mountain. Halfway up there was an abandoned-looking castle built from stone and dark wood. Before him intensely blue flowers grew between the stones. He bowed down and plucked one of them to take a closer look. The stem and the leaves were hard and bristly even through the glove. The sensory detail was extraordinary. Whoever designed this had been a master. Not to forget the computer power it took to sustain such a system at this detailed level.
"Turn back!"
He wheeled around and found a wizened old man staring at him.
"Turn back," the old man repeated. He pointed to the fortress. "There are tzelanit there." Then he turned and also vanished in one of the houses.
The decker looked at the motley collection of modest houses and huts and then up at the forbidding building above. "I have no idea what a tzelanit is but down here I won't find any answers."
The way up looked fairly easy from below but the wind picked up and drove snow like tiny shards into his face. The trail was covered in sleet and sometimes he crawled on hands and knees over slippery spots. His hands and feet were numb from the cold. He persisted by distracting himself with the calculation of just what kind of system resources someone would need to duplicate this.
Finally he stood before the heavy, wooden gates. After the warning from the old man he was wary to enter by the obvious way. He walked the length of the wall looking for a backdoor, either one more or less obvious or one that was hidden in the code. He desperately wished for his analysing tools, but as before he couldn't access them. His hands felt for the tell-tale lines of a hidden door but he found nothing. The fortress leaned against the rock of the mountain. When he craned his neck he could see small openings, arrow slits, if he remembered it right from the historical sims.
The gaps between the stones looked wide enough to hold. He dug his frozen fingers and the tips of his boots into the cracks and pulled himself up. But for the first time the simulated world broke its 'realism'; the gaps vanished, forcing his fingers out and he slid back down. He muttered a few curses under his breath and tried again in a different place, then another. Always with the same result. Obviously this wasn't the right way in.
"I feel like I'm in a fragging roleplaying sim."
Full of unease he stared at the gates. Their carvings were almost covered by ice and snow but he believed them to be demonic faces that tauntingly grinned at him. Finally he raised a fist and pounded on the wood a few times. It echoed ominously. The gates swung open.
A gust of warm air shot out and enveloped him with the smell of incense and the heavy dust he associated with old ruins. Carefully he took a few steps forward. Behind the gates waited almost-darkness that betrayed nothing of what lay behind them.
He waited a few more breaths, then stepped forward.
The darkness gave way to a hall lit by torches and ornate braziers. The low ceiling added to the feeling of oppressiveness. But the warmth was a welcome change from the iciness outside. He pulled the scarf away from his face. With some effort he pulled the gloves from his fingers.
He had moved just a few steps deeper into the hall as the gates fell shut. He jumped, then gathered his composure. "Fragging sound effects." His whispered words were far too loud.
"This is not a game." The disembodied voice resounded from a raised platform at the end of the hall. Try as he might, the decker couldn't make out more than a shadowy shape on a throne-like chair.
Something tugged at his sash. The blue flower slipped from its folds and rose into the air. It hung in the centre of the hall, perfect and glowing with an inner light.
"Have you come to dedicate yourself to the eradication of injustice and evil? Have you come to leave your old life behind and vanquish your fear?"
"What?" he stammered. It had to be a password protection of some kind but he had no idea what the voice was talking about.
"Are you ready to begin?"
"Ready... I just arrived... I can't..."
"You can't?" The voice turned threatening. "Evil does not wait for you to ready. Evil is not fair or considerate."
"If you are not ready now, you will be destroyed."
From the four corners of the hall shadows coalesced into black-clad, masked warriors who drew swords. He retreated but they drew the circle closer. Desperately he tried to activate some of his defense programs but they didn't even shimmer into existence. All he had was the Swiss army knife and that was close to useless. A sword arced toward his head. Somehow he managed to dodge. He tried to jack out. But even that didn't work. Despair turned into hysteria as a sword sliced his arm open. The pain burnt like fire through his body. He imagined his flesh body lying dying over his deck as another blade bit into his side. He stumbled and fell onto his side. The warriors raised their swords for the killing stroke as everything went gray-black.
He returned to consciousness shaking. The nerves in his arm and his side hurt from phantom-pain. A growing headache made him see double. Dumpshock, he noted dimly. Can't remember when I had this the last time.
He recognized Burke standing over him. The orc held his datacable in his hand. At his side the GS&L decker was wringing his hands.
Larsson managed a smile and croaked, "Well, that was interesting."
The investigator smiled in relief. "It looked liked your brain was about to cook when I pulled the jack out. You found something then?"
"Yes, and thank you. The rescue came in the nano-nick of time."
A medic checked Larsson over while the Ares Dragon carried him back to Wayne Tower. He rejected the offered stim tabs and opted for a strong coffee instead.
On arrival he was hustled straight to the executive suite. Obviously news of his accident had preceded him. He felt only faint surprise as he was shown into the presence not only of Gordon but also the Old Man himself. The previous events had dulled him against unusual happenings today. Still, he bowed out of reflex. Wayne dipped his head in response. Gordon's expression was dead serious.
"Mister Larsson, Investigator Burke's preliminary report indicated that there was a serious incident in the GS&L matrix," said the head of security. "Please give us a verbal summary first."
"Yes, sirs. Whoever broke into GS&L's records was a prime decker. He covered up his tracks nearly perfectly but intentionally left a hint that could only discovered upon closest analysis. It turned out to be the bait for a trap."
"To attack the decker who discovered the hint: you."
"Not directly, sir. The trap displaced me into another host."
"I didn't know that this was possible," Wayne said.
"It isn't, sir. Or rather, it shouldn't be possible under normal circumstances or happen to a skilled decker with the equipment I had available.
"But it did, and I could not access my programs. The metaphors used to sculpt that host's reality were rather peculiar and extremely naturalistic. I got the impression that the symbolism had a certain meaning and that I was being given hints. But I don't know what about."
"Describe the symbolism, please."
Larsson heeded the request. He tried to find the right words to describe the intensity of the experience. He didn't know if his listeners, who never entered the matrix, realized how extraordinary the details and circumstances had been.
Maybe one of them did - because Wayne's expression turned thoughtful and then grew impassive. Gordon's mien remained unreadable. When he got to the unseen voice in the fortress and its words, Wayne tensed and then interrupted his report.
"Thank you, Mr. Larsson, I think that's enough for now.
"Please deliver your report directly to Mr. Gordon. Include as much detail as you can recall."
Larsson was almost indignant; he was the one with the mnemonic enhancer. His ability to remember far surpassed the combined memories of those before him. But they were his superiors and they were right to be worried.
As Gordon escorted him out of the office and gave him detailed orders, the greater part of mental capacities was intrigued by the possibilities of those odd events and his bosses' reaction to them. There was not enough data to solve this riddle but one thing was certain.
Someone had wanted to send a message and this message had hit home.
Bruce closed the door of his private study. Although by far smaller than his office, it provided him access to all amenities his work might require. Still more important, it allowed him complete privacy and a place to be undisturbed.
Something he needed desperately right now.
It was strange how much the idea of crossing paths again with that man left him reeling. There were too many conflicting emotions. Surprise. Exhilaration. Dread. Joy?
He raised a hand and regarded the age spots on his leathery skin. He was extremely fit for a man of his age; a gift, he assumed, from their last meeting. But he had aged. Was he still fit enough to hold his own in a conflict with him?
I don't even know if it is really him, the cautious part of his mind whispered. But who else would know enough to do this? A successor in the League, perhaps. He hadn't been invulnerable.
Bruce hesitated. The thought didn't feel right to him but it was a possibility he couldn't dismiss. A successor might have access to all that information and believe that it could give him leverage over an old, rich and still influential man.
Whoever had started this game, he would deal with him. Age and experience always beat youth and beauty... And then he couldn't suppress a bitter laugh because this might just be the greatest irony ever.
But how to proceed? He could hardly let his security deal with this matter, nor Gotham's law enforcement. Not at this stage, with only a vague threat hanging in the air. It would require too many explanations. And that part of his past had better remain hidden.
Fortunately those days were not completely gone. It was time to talk to old friends.
He keyed a long number into his comm from memory. It took time to make the connection and then the display staid empty.
Tinny music came from the loudspeaker and an automated switchboard voice said: Please hold the line. The next available agent will be ready to take your call. Please hold the ... But Wayne didn't wait.
"There is a strong suspicion that the first entry on our watchlist has made a move to involve me. You will soon get the full report; try to find a trace. This is important."
Over the blabber of the telephone's hold pattern came a reply. "Has it got a higher priority than repelling Shiawase's takeover attempts of our biotech group?"
"No, but only because it will likely be a tedious search and take too much time."
"Consider it started, then."
"Thanks, Oracle, I owe you for this."
"You know how to show your appreciation, my prince." The title is spoken with humorous teasing.
The gray-haired woman pulled her datacable free and leaned back into her wheelchair. A fingernail tapped a sharp staccato on the case of her deck.
"Well," she addressed the old photos on the wall. "What did I expect? There hasn't been anything since this man and his organization appeared to vanish from the face of earth." Her smartframes permanently looked for data traces of everyone on the watchlist. But there had been no forewarning and there was also no sign of them right now.
"What now?" she asked the picture of her father. Sometimes she felt silly to speak aloud to them but it helped her to organize her thoughts.
Deception and secrecy are the main tools of the League of the Shadows, Wayne had emphasized in the file.
I won't find any trace of Râ's al Ghul then that he doesn't want to leave. With a sigh, she started to adapt the program code of the smartframes. They had to search for ripples his hidden actions might have caused, or the lack of ripples where some should be. 'Difficult' was an understatement.
Her hands stilled as a new thought took shape.
Why now, after more than forty years?
