Shadowrun by Bryan CP Steele

Author:Bryan CP Steele
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs

“Hez ain’t been ’round yet,” the bartender, a smarmy-looking goblin with a face like a lost dog fight and a prosthetic ear two sizes too big, stretched his neck up to look Rude in the eyes. “Buys y’rself a drink, a dance, or a private. I don’ care, just get t’steppin’ on somethin’, hightower. Ye’r spookin’ the ladies!”

Horneez Gentlemeta’s Club was a favorite hangout in Renton for those metahumans that really stretched the limits to the “human” part of that nomenclature. It was one of the only places where, if you had the nuyen, you could have a drink with a half-shaven sasquatch, get a lap dance from a centaur, or—as Rude was hoping—get the dirt on a nasty piece of work that had nearly gotten one of his teammates killed.

“One of those,” Rude pointed his finger at the dark brown lager disappearing down another patron’s gullet. He checked off the AR swipe, his eyes going wide for a moment when he saw nineteen nuyen vanish from his account, and jerked the glass out of the goblin’s hand. The bartender stood there for a moment, the green “add tip” flashcode blinking in the air between them. Rude smiled his favorite “screw you” smile, and turned away toward the main body of the club.

Horneez was pretty busy tonight. People from all walks of street-level life danced, caroused, drank, and seemed to be committing a variety of other activities in the flashing lights and sickly-sweet vanilla scented fog machine exhaust. Three different stages lifted a beautiful elven woman, a perfectly sculpted ork male, and a heavily animalized modified human that seemed to be more feline than either male or female above the crowd. They danced with great skill to use their bodies seductively and suggestively to the intensely loud music flooding the entire building. Glowing payment receivers blinking in the AR around their stage platforms allowed patrons to tip the entertainers of their choice, possibly opening up alternate “option tabs” for additional services closer to the end of each dancer’s set.

Maybe if I had the extra nuyen, watching the gyration sync up with the beat of the music, he lifted his pint in three fingers and took a sip, thankful for the numbing chems in the slap patch on his arm. Even so, Rude rubbed the cold throb in his bicep, pulling his hand away and looking at the thin crimson film on his thumbprint.

“Hoy oy, chum.” A familiar voice broke through the bassline, half a laugh in his tone. “Might wanna get that checked out, mate.”

Hez was small for an ork, but nearly every inch of his exposed skin—and even more that wasn’t—was covered with tattoo work. He was a living gallery of arts varying from jailhouse tats done with ink and a razor, watercolor-styled paintings that look like they stepped out of the Nu Louvre, and bio-luminescent patterns engineered from some deep-sea beast. “In’na spot of trouble, are ye Rude boy? What cannae help ye wit’, and what does’t pay?”

Hez

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