31Epilogue (posted 2014/02/11; updated 2017/06/14)
Day or night, he could not tell when he awoke. All that was evident was that the room was dark. That, and he was in his underwear in someone's bed. At least he was not sharing it with a complete stranger this time.
The room was also completely unfamiliar. It was very clean, but sparsely decorated. It kind of reminded him of the Horizon lodge at the Winterland ski resort.
Slowly he sat up, partly because he felt a little dizzy. His left arm felt numb. When he looked at it he saw a wrapping of bandages around his upper arm. He figured something happened to him recently, and whatever that was was the reason his arm felt like it was asleep.
With a thought he created an ARO to try and look up where he was and what time it was. He breathed a sigh of relief when he found he was still in Denver, in the Hub, really. It was also 03.13 in the morning of the sixth of September. With a thought it was closed.
He took his time before sliding out of bed, finding his legs were not too steady as he tried to stand, and the bed unusually high off of the floor. But at least he managed to keep himself upright without using anything for a crutch, or falling over before his feet were flat on the floor.
There was a dresser along one wall, but it was empty.
Thinking he might need to take a blanket to wrap himself up in he found that a robe was neatly folded at the foot of the bed. So he put it on. The robe looked like it should have fit him properly, but it was larger than he expected. His hands were hidden up in the sleeves, and he thought he might trip on the hem if he was not careful.
At least looking halfway decent, he decided to look around to see where he was.
Penthouse apartment or luxury hotel room, he could not quite tell as he left his room and walked down a short hallway. The lighting was subdued and the air cool feeling.
Sarah was in the next room, a family room he guessed. She looked like she was ready for bed, wearing a high cut and sleeveless gray top and matching loose shorts. She was lounging in a recliner, her attention seemed to be elsewhere until she noticed he had walked into the room.
"Finally awake?" Sarah said softly. "You've been asleep for over a day."
"Yeah, I know. Feels like it's been longer." he said, dropping himself down onto a couch.
"So, how're you feeling?"
"Little dizzy." he honestly answered. His head rolled back and he closed his eyes. "Still tired, too."
"Place's safe. Mina's resting in another room. She's been worried about you, stud."
His heart went sideways for a beat as he remembered Mina.
"And I don't think it'll be a good idea if you try sneaking off into her room. Maybe I shouldn't've cut you any slack on our last job…"
"Not like when I walked in on you and Gregg." he said without thinking. He could not explain the memory of him walking into a bedroom, a girl's room, to find an eleven year old girl with a boy that he knew as the Gregg he had mentioned. And why did he know the girl was Sarah?
Suddenly he was feeling a little extra dizzy. If he had not been already reclining on a couch he would have sworn he was about to fall over.
When his head cleared and he looked at Sarah he noticed her intently staring at him. Something more clicked.
"At least Mina wasn't as young as you were when Gregg popped your cherry."
"How the fuck do you know that?" Sarah asked, her voice maybe a little louder than she might have intended. "Only me and two others know…"
Something was racing through his mind, a whirlwind of information and he was right at its center. But something was missing, like the corner to a puzzle or the key to a cipher. Again he felt like he was going to fall flat on his face.
"Skyler?" Sarah asked.
That one word, that name, and everything snapped to crystal clear reality.
"Yeah, it's me." he said, not quite believing it himself as his memories started flooding back.
Sarah looked like you could have knocked her over with a feather. It took at least three full seconds for the realization to hit her before she launched herself at him.
Skyler found it completely embarrassing to be picked up by Sarah as she hugged him. He managed to hug her back.
"Holy shit!" Sarah exclaimed when she finally eased her grip on him. "How the…? What the fuck…?"
"I don't know!" Skyler said. "I mean, how the hell should I know?"
"And your ears! Jesus! No wonder you'd rub them!"
Even though he had his memories back, not everything had come all at once. When Sarah mentioned his ears he remembered why he kept rubbing them. The odd habit had been because his ears were not supposed to be rounded, but pointed. He was really not human, but an elf.
"John!" he heard Mina cry out. He turned just in time to almost get bowled over by Mina as she rushed to embrace him. She also wore a white robe similar to his, including being too big.
Carefully he put his arms around her. Now the hard part was trying to figure out how to tell her that he was about ten years older than he looked.
"Hey, sorry if we woke you." Sarah said, sounding a little nervous.
"Sounded excited. What's up?" Mina asked. She broke her hug, but kept an arm around Skyler.
"I got my memory back." Skyler told her.
"Wonderful!" Mina beamed as she looked at him. "What's wrong?" she asked. Guess it was written all over his face there was something bothering him.
"I'm older than I look." he said.
"Just how much older?" Mina asked.
"Ten years older."
"Yeah, right, and Ghostwalker's a shedim."
"He's not lying." Sarah said. "He's really twenty-three. And he's… He's my brother."
"What?!" Mina exclaimed, looking back and forth between the two of them.
"He's a changeling, like you." Sarah said. "Well, sorta."
"Sorta?" Skyler asked.
"Well, you two got a similar condition that's hit some changelings. It's called neoteny, although I think it's hit the both of you differently."
"Wait, what?" Skyler asked.
"You're both changelings, and you're both older than you look." Sarah explained.
Skyler looked back to Mina, then to Sarah again. His mind was already quick to figure it out, that Mina was not the twelve year old girl she looked like.
"How long've you known?" he asked Sarah, now wishing his voice was not sounding like some whiny little brat.
Mina slipped her arm free, stepping back from him.
"Almost three months now." Sarah said heavily. "I had been trying to get her to tell you the truth."
"I couldn't figure out when to tell you." Mina said, looking down at her feet. "You just seemed so… take charge. Like you…"
"Why don't we sit, kay?" Sarah asked.
Thinking it was probably a good idea, Skyler sat back down on the couch again. Mina sat down on the same couch, but kept a little distance between them.
Sarah ungraciously let herself drop heavily back onto the recliner she had been sitting in earlier. Then she chuckled.
"What is it?" Mina asked.
"What you said, about how he was so take charge." Sarah said, "Guess it came from how long he's been in the shadows. Certainly explains his hacking skill."
Skyler caught Mina looking at him again. "I left home a few years ago, doing jobs like what we've done before." he explained.
Mina looked down at her hands on her lap. "And I…" she said softly.
"You want me to tell him?" Sarah asked.
Eyes clenched shut Mina nodded vigorously.
"She also ran away from home," Sarah said, "back just this spring. Apparently her magic just erupted when someone attacked her,"
Already Skyler's mind was racing on could have erupted, and why Mina was attacked. His first thoughts on the later chilled him to the bone.
"so she fled, ran for the shadows." Sarah continued. "Told me she snuck into the trailer of a truck, and almost got caught when it was being unloaded in Denver."
"Then I guess we met." Skyler reasoned.
Mina nodded.
"So what makes her different than me? You know, looking like a kid?" Skyler asked.
"She expressed as a changeling about the time she probably should have hit puberty." Sarah explained, "Instead of all those changes that should've happened, she stopped growing up."
"Guess I'll be a little girl forever." Mina said wryly.
"She's also an elf." Sarah said.
This did not seem to surprise Skyler as much. After all, he too was an elf that looked human.
"Mom didn't like metas." Mina explained, "But she couldn't… She… She took me to a doc and had me… altered when I was born."
"Reconstructive surgery. Minor stuff. Happens more often than you might think." Sarah added.
"So she'll never hit puberty." Skyler said, digesting this knowledge. At least he was feeling better about what the two of them did together a month ago, now that he thought about that.
"And to think I oughta be a high school senior." Mina said with a nervous chuckle.
"But what about me?" Skyler asked.
"She's like a Peter Pan neoteny." Sarah said, "You had to've been a Cannibalistic neoteny."
Skyler looked at his younger sister.
"Means that when you SURGEd, your body, in an effort to change, turned on itself. Your body shrank and regressed to make you a prepubescent boy." Sarah told him.
"Sounds painful." Skyler said softly.
"It is." Sarah told him.
"I think I missed out in all of that." Skyler said.
"Well, we've got a lot of catching up to do, and plenty of time, so why not regale us with the story? I'd love to know what happened to you."
"It was some time after I left home," Skyler said, "And I came straight here once I heard that technomancers were supposed to be safe in Denver."
"So you were here before Jane McCrory's story broke." Sarah said.
Skyler nodded. "'Bout a year or two. I had gotten hooked up with a team here before that. One of 'em knew I was a techno, but she kept it secret from the others."
"She?" Mina asked slyly.
"Yeah, she." Skyler returned. "Regular girl. Light on the ware. But she figured it out.
"Anyway, when the UCAS passed that techno registration bill, and Brackhaven got elected as Seattle's governor, I knew I couldn't go back."
"So what happened to you? How'd you change?" Mina asked.
Sarah sat in silence, though Skyler could see it that she also wanted to know.
"Last thing I can remember before that, we had finished a job. Data steal and such." Skyler told them, "Me and… Trance, I think I woke up when someone busted in our door. I think I got hit with… something… A spell, maybe? I don't know. Next thing I know is that the next thing I see is Tabby."
"Tabby, as in the cat woman fixer Tabby?" Sarah asked.
"The same."
Sarah nodded. "So you woke up, seeing her, and…"
"And I had no memory of who or what I was." Skyler finished. "Fuck, I didn't even know I was a technomancer. I just saw the AROs and heard their WiFi chatter and thought it was normal. A month later I was on my own and meeting you at Denim."
"What about the others?" Mina asked softly.
The realization hit Skyler hard. When he had first woken up in March he had not known a single person. Waking up naked next to a dead woman you did not know from Eve was freaky enough, but realizing now who it was hit Skyler hard.
"All dead." Skyler said softly.
"Some stuff on changelings suggests magic's a trigger." Sarah said. "Probably a hit team and a magician blasted you, thought you were dead and they left."
It sounded so cold when Sarah said it that way. Still, Skyler could not deny that her scenario was possible.
"And I'd heard a rumor that you ran off to Denver." Sarah said. "After high school I enlisted so I could get to Denver. Only way mom would've let me out of Seattle."
"Oh yeah." Skyler said, remembering about Colonel Benjamin and what he said just a few days ago. "Colonel Benjamin called you Lieutenant."
"You're still working for them?" Mina asked.
"Hardly." Sarah answered. "No. My psychological profile pretty much as me permanently off active duty. I've got… other arrangements. Let's just say I got a rush job to find you guys and the stone, and make sure you got to one of two places. I really can't say more than that."
"Why not?" Mina asked.
"Professional courtesy. Confidentiality. Stuff like that." Skyler said.
"He's right." Sarah said.
Mina yawned.
"Why don't you two go back to bed." Sarah suggested.
Skyler stood up, and offered a hand to Mina to help her up. He could not argue that it felt nice to feel her at his side, though it was still strange that she was at least three years older than she looked. Of course, he was nearly twice his apparent age, so he figured it was now just as strange to her.
"This is gonna be so hard to get used to." he heard Sarah say as they walked back to the bedrooms.
"So when were you gonna tell me?" Skyler asked when they reached the bedroom doors.
"After you'd grown and I didn't." Mina said softly. "Some guys…"
"Shhh." Skyler went, touching a finger to her lips.
Together they slipped into his room.
Something felt so different now when they took their robes off. It was not like they had not done this before for a long time, but maybe it was just the knowing that made things feel different now. Even now, watching Mina as she climbed into bed with him, looking at her, it was hard to believe that she was seventeen or eighteen.
"So now what're we gonna do?" Mina asked softly as she snuggled up close to him.
"I dunno. We'll talk about it in the morning."
That's it. The end of the Denver chapter. And as I'm sure this's gonna be a few of the questions on the minds of some readers (if in reviews or PM there are more I feel like answering, I'll update this chapter):
• Their payout is effectively their lives, compliments of Ghostwalker.
• Yes, from the first concept draft it was in Cypher's background that he had SURGEd and lost his memory at the same time. It was also planned that that he would recover his memories after having handled the Dragon Stone in the end.
• Yes, Firefly's SURGE was part of her first concept draft too. I had different thoughts originally about how she got into Denver, but after the final draft and posting of Take Out Service and how it ended I changed part of her original back story (which was to have some kind of connection to the Vory, which ultimately did not seem to work out). She and Hunter never met until Tunnel Vision, and had a chance for a little bit of girl time bonding while she was out for Wetwork Pure And Simple. There are some tidbits I have written from Hunter's point of view, but her story is incomplete and it is unlikely that I will publish anything of it.
• Yes, I actually do have working character sheets for each and every single shadowrunner in each chapter, keeping track of quite literally everything (thanks to Nebular of for his Chummer program, which made this incredibly easy). I also do roll dice to see the results of a character's actions most of the time (like when Cypher speed hacked Dahlgren's commlink in Primal Forces and set off an alert). Of course I'm going to take a literary license for a few things.
• Yes, from the first concept draft it was planned that Cypher & Hunter were brother & sister, even though Hunter's inspirational character had no siblings.
• No, as of the end of this story Cypher does not know it was Ghostwalker who took the Dragon Stone from him, nor does he have any idea of the connection between Ghostwalker and Aaron Drey (who works for Ghostwalker, something Cypher really did not know). He was going to say, "We had a deal with Aaron Drey, not you, asshole!" before blacking out at the end of Done Deal. Probably for the best that he never finished that sentence.
• No, it was not originally planned that Billy be killed off. As his character evolved it kinda came about that he had a hate/fear relationship towards technomancers. The idea of having him try to capture Cypher for a bounty paid by the yakuza was from reading the Spy Games supplement book.
• Yes, it was in the first draft that Cypher revealed his technomancer nature to the rest of the team near the end of Patient Zero. Thought it might be too unrealistic if everyone accepted Cypher for what he was.
• Yes, I have planned on taking Cypher & Firefly into the next missions released (New York & Seattle, definitively; Chicago, rather unlikely), and have planned on doing so since I went through Everyone's Your Friend. I have made no plans on having Hunter come with, and all things considered it's likely gonna be that she stays behind in Denver. As for the rest of the runner crew for New York, I've got more character concepts laid out than I know what to do with, or choose from. I might make a poll to try and get a feel for what some readers might want.
• Yes, a few of the chapters were based on actual gaming sessions, though not even close in player/character to story characters. I just borrowed ideas from how the sessions went.
• The supplement book Hazard Pay detailed some of the bounties for blood mages, which differs quite a bit from Dunkelzahn's Will. I also didn't know that DIMR was only open one day a month. Considering Enrico's power level compared to the bounties in Hazard Pay I would have written something completely different.