Shadows and Light Fiction

Cutter hoisted the mug to his lips and sucked the milky froth away from his brew. It was dark enough in the booth that one could barely see with an unaided eye. Just beyond the booth, in plain view of Cutters cybernetic eyes, Club Horizon thrummed with life. Music slammed in the background. Their table shook with its up-tempo vibrations. The heavyset man set his drink down after all the foam had been cleared from the glass and browsed the table from left to right.

The man to his left looked like someone who should have been named ‘Tobias’ or ‘Sinjon’, or perhaps even something as regally commonplace as ‘Ethan’. His real name could very well have been any one of those things but instead, he used the moniker 'Koto'. Cutter had no idea what that meant. Koto was dressed in a pair of blue jeans that were faded with dirt and what perhaps were oil stains? A flannel shirt kept him dry while the acidic October rains raged outside. He had a hard jaw all but lost beneath a forest of thick black hair. His eyes shone like deep blue marbles. They worked their way across the table like searchlights, stealing attention away from his cautious smile and pasty white skin.

?Vlad sat directly across from Cutter. He was dressed more professionally for the occasion. A black suit jacket rested atop a beige turtleneck. Vlad’s skin was tanned to a golden brown color and like Koto, his eyes were blue, but they weren't the same as Koto’s. They were slightly lighter and in that way, more revealing. It was fortunate that Cutter could read the dark-haired man by his eyes. Vlad hadn’t said more than two words since he’d completed their threesome. He just listened, nodding along and dropping a monosyllabic comment when it seemed appropriate.

?"I wanted to meet with the two of you before the others show up. I needed to make sure of a few things about each of you before I agreed to let you operate on this job." Cutter said.

" What you two boys are all about for starters. Don't get to thinking that throwing five random shadow types together in order to take a score is the way I do biz. I don't like doing this job cold anymore than you do. " Cutter sighed breaking the brief eye contact with Koto, only to lock eyes with Vlad before he continued. " But, the window of opportunity is closing fast and we need the extra heads."

?That much Vlad knew. Standard procedure was to work only with the ones that you know, and within that group, only the one's you trust. Not too many people deviated from the norm and continued to commune with the living.

" Do either of you have a problem working with Trolls?" Koto shook his head before Cutter could even finish asking the question. Cutter nodded a silent acceptance and then posed the question to Vlad again.

Vlad had Studied the history of the United Canadian-American states before he'd moved here. He knew about how Italian and especially Irish settlers were once looked at as being a different race from their British counterparts. It stayed that way until the Blacks decided to take what was theirs. Suddenly it wasn't Irish, Italian and white. It was white and black. People are predictable that way and history always repeats itself. When the chips are down, you look to the person who appears the most like yourself and then deal them in for support. Factor in Trolls, and Orks and Dwarves and even Elves and being human starts to mean something entirely different. Black, white, slant-eye, spicano all fade into one in the face of something greater. So in the big picture, Trolls were just modern day niggers. Strong, tough and presumably unintelligent. Just what society needed, someone for fathers to keep their daughters away from. Someone to be afraid of. " What's there to have a problem with?" Vlad replied nonchalantly. "They do the job just as well as the next guy."

" Racism is for stupid people who ain't got nuttin better to do with their time." Koto added his two cents. Cutter sipped at his beer again, studying each of the two men in turn as if he could pry the truthfulness from their eyes. He put his drink down softly and then lapsed into silence. Koto twisted uncomfortably in his chair, hanging on Cutters cryptic silence. Vlad gazed past them, letting the lithe bodies gyrating across the dance floor occupy his thoughts. Cutter waited a full minute before continuing to speak.

" Ok then, I'll trust you guys. Just so long as you'll trust me. Keep to what you said and we should have no problems putting you two with the others. Shimmer and Cliff round out our group. They'll be along soon enough. They're preparing some background for the job. "

Vlad, who had only been passively listening to the conversation, fielded the question before Cutter could pull his thoughts together. " A ritual sample is a tissue sample that a security company takes from you. With it, a mage can track you through the astral plane because he has a piece of what he's looking for."

Cutter hummed "mm hmm" and stepped in to finish Vlad's explanation. " You could call it that. To use your metaphor, with the ritual sample, a mage has your 'scent', but a far more accurate version of it. From that point, picking up the trail is easy. That's why I had the others jack the sample. No sample, no 'scent'."

?It worried Vlad then that Koto wouldn't have known about ritual samples. Ritual samples were the gravy of magic. In this day and age, magic was the 'next big thing'. It was often compared to computer knowledge in the late twentieth century. Not everybody had what it took to wield it but if you didn't know about it, you were bound to get left in the dust. Everybody has their own expertise. Vlad thought. He wondered what Koto's was.

All around them the evening crowd of wage slaves, sarariman, were filtering into the club, meshing with the happy hour drinkers whose synthrum-soaked breath sent a pungent message that they were already far ahead in the drinking game. Faceless suits mixed in with short-skirted brunettes and blondes shuffling through the nightly rituals that all clubs were created for. A shapely redhead slid past their booth, lifting her pleated skirt playfully as she did.

?"Y'know, I've never worked with magic before." Neither of the other men heard Koto say the words. Each had found his own piece of eye-candy to occupy his attention. The short-skirted redhead sashayed back towards the dance floor, beckoning the threesome with black gloved hands. Koto cleared his throat noisily and offered his plea again.

?" What?" came Cutters slow reply. Koto prepared to tell him a third time before the older man shrugged the words off. He ran his fingers through a tussle of gray-streaked black hair and said: " We'll pair you with Shimmer, our mage. That way you'll know ahead of time if he plans to start using his wiz juice."

?" And you Vlad?" Cutter summoned him back to the conversation. " You work with magic before?"

?" Some." replied Vlad in a voice that sounded distant and dangerously uninterested. From Cutter and Koto's vantagepoint he still seemed to be transfixed on his eye candy, a leggy brunette, packed into a bright green body stocking. But Vlad was looking past her. His eyes were riveted on the rear entrance to the club. A light skinned human and a Troll entered through those rear doors. They split apart. The Troll started towards the bar with almost mechanical familiarity, calling out his order before he had even arrived. The other man, the one that had perked his attention, was moving towards their table.

?" Good. There's Shimmer now." said Cutter, watching the man approach. " Looks like the rest of our group has arrived."

'Shimmer' wedged himself into the narrow spot between Cutter and Vlad. He was bald, but most of the evidence of that was hidden beneath a Seattle Mariners cap that sat cocked sideways on his head. Barely out of his teens, he was the youngest among them as far as Vlad had been told. Even so, the worry grooves ran deep across his forehead and beneath his eyes.?

"Lets get this underway shall we?" Shimmers deep voice carried a British accent. When the muscled troll, Cliff, returned he had two pitchers of soy-beer. He used a straw to suck down the contents of the first and handed off the other to Shimmer. Each of the other four men poured a fresh glass and exchanged proper introductions. Cliff was at least seven feet tall with grayish warty skin and brown eyes the size of acorns. Cliff shook Vlad's hand first. The carefree troll squeezed with so much pressure that he left red welts where his fingers had been. Cliff grinned through yellowed teeth and apologized. It was natural for him, he remarked and then went on to say that he would have to find a way 'not ta hoit da liddle people' like the six foot one inch Vlad.

Shimmer produced a set of maps from inside of his black overcoat and laid them over the table like a set of placemats. " Right. It's more than I wanted to know actually. The Rhodendren Conservatory is located in one of the more affluent sections of Bellevue. Its campus encompasses one city standard block. By that I mean all four sides. A twenty-foot wall surrounds the campus in its entirety. The only way an auto can get in or out of the complex is through the front gate. Knight-Errant maintains the security. Two of their chaps guard the gate I just mentioned and anywhere from ten to twelve additional security personnel patrol the campus inside."

"This has to go quick, " said Cutter. " Bellevue isn't anything like Pullyalup or Redmond. If we make too much of a fuss here, the cops will be on top of us in a heartbeat." Everyone exchanged nervous glances before nodding in agreement. They all knew that the police didn't pay nearly as much attention to slums as they did to the rich areas of Seattle like Bellevue. In a neighborhood as wealthy as the one they were planning to make their hit in they had to expect police patrols to go by at least every five minutes. That didn't leave them a very large margin of error. If things got noisy, they would be hosed.

Cutter set down his beer and wiped his hands dry. He waited for the others to do the same. Once he was certain he had the group's full attention he continued. " Ok, we haven't had a lot of time to go over this but everyone agrees that we can't afford to make any mistakes. That's why I'm putting each new guy with one of the regulars in order to make certain that this goes down the right way. Koto, I know that you and Vlad don't have any idea what the plan is or how we plan to move the girl out under such heavy security, so I'm gonna ask you to listen for a while. Look at the maps and try to absorb everything we're saying. Like I told you before, Koto, you'll be with Shimmer, and Vlad, you'll be with Cliff so it's not like I'm sending you out there with no idea what to do. Do you the rest of you know what you're supposed to do? Shimmer?"

The dark skinned brit adjusted his hat so it sat bill facing front on his head. " If I'm not mistaken, I am the cover man alongside Koto here. " He motioned elegantly to his new partner. " We wait along the tree line while Clifford and our new fellow, Vladimir go inside of the dormitory complex. If the officers should take unfortunate notice of them or perhaps even casually stroll across the escape route, we are to neutralize them. Quietly of course."

Cliff tugged the chewed up beer straw out of his mouth and began to thread it between his massive fingers. Using his other hand he began to rub the bone colored tusk that protruded from the side of his head. He scrunched his eyes closed as tightly as a child making a birthday wish and repeated his assignment to the group. " Da bladeboy and I enter da barracks through da side door. We work our way up to da third flo' where da goil is gonna be. We narc her nice and easy like and bring her out along the path dat da two of youse'll be watchin. " his eyes popped open and he jabbed a pair of meaty index fingers towards Koto and Shimmer.

"Perfect." Cutter cleared his throat and then recounted his own assignment. " I am the control man and the driver. I'll be stationed in the command vehicle about a block away from the school. I will also be wired to each of you through my commlink. If anything even looks like its gonna go wrong, call out 'No Joy' over your headsets. I will coordinate to correct the problem, whatever it may be. If the situation is terminal, I'll go in myself and pull you out. Any questions?"

The dark-haired man shrugged. " Nothing really, just something I was wondering about." It had been in the back of everyone's mind. Either no one had the guts to ask it, or no one else really wanted to hear the answer. But Vlad did. It never hurts to prepare for the worst. It never hurts to think through a backup for when everything else falls to drek. He found no bleakness in acknowledging his own mortality. It reminded him of how critical, how final, any slip up could be in a business such as theirs. That paranoia kept him on edge and ahead of the others, who would rather ignore the fact that if Cutter somehow died, they would be trapped inside. Their mission would be over and they would have to find their own way out. Licking his lips and still taping his fingers Vlad asked: " What happens if you call No Joy?"

The background noise of the club overcame the groups' sudden silence. Even so, one could hear the nervous shifting of bodies and the distant hum of flat conversations at the other tables in the specter of the pounding base. Beneath it all was the discerning 'tip-tip' of Vlad's fingers bouncing against the table.

Cutter shook his head and with that short action shed the weight of the question Vlad had proposed. " We don't have time for this drek Vlad so trying to figure out what to do in a situation that isn't gonna happen isn't worth the time I spend tying my shoes in the morning. Nobody needs to worry about me calling 'No Joy' because I won't be. I don't frag up. Now there's a big payoff in this for us if we can get the girl and hold her while the guy that's gonna negotiate the ransom for us, does. He expects us to go tonight. So, we go tonight. Let's just get moving and get this thing over with."