Four Rules of Shadowrunning

Story by Arlen Blacktiger on SoFurry

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In the dystopian future, even Shadowrunners have lines they won't cross. But when the chips are down, how blurry will those lines get?

Note to the Shadowrun lovers out there: I took a lot of liberties with the setting, and am not 100% familiar with Shadowrun. If I messed something up, many apologies. Mea culpa!

Shadowrun is property of FASA entertainment, which I'm pretty sure is a subsidiary of WizKids.


Where's the fucking aircar, Dellia?!

_ _

I lost my link with it, stupid shit! I TOLD you to replace that transceiver!

_ _

Haven't had the time!

_ _

More like haven't had the cash...

William threw himself out the office window anyway, air car or not, folding his arms over his head as he did so that the heavy faux-wooden covered carbon-steel decorative shutters wouldn't shatter his head just as badly as the raging cyborg behind him was trying to. At two hundred floors above the city's pavement, he flew straight forward twenty feet, trailing a stream of office debris sucked out by the wind, before gravity grabbed on with its insidious hold even as stinking industry-aroma'd wind blasted into him like a heavyweight boxer's fist.

Bullets zipped past his head, as the security 'borg chasing him stopped at the open window and unloaded a sinister-looking little black boxy machine gun in William's general direction.

Oh brilliant, the crisp British-accented voice said through the uplink in his skull, Well done, idiot.

_ _

Shut up, Dellia, I'm falling to my death AND getting shot at here, let me think!

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Think quick, dog, or you'll be dead and I'll be out of a job!

_ _

The husky twisted his lithe, fluffy form in the air, and threw his arms and legs wide to catch the wind, as the sinister sooty depths of New Chicago reached for him, beckoning the rapidly falling creature to plummet into its sweet, polluted grip. That way lay death, just a pawful of seconds away. Worse, that way lay failing the job he'd taken, and that just wasn't going to cut it.

Wind hit him all across his front, as the white-furred dog threw his arms wide, nearly tearing his beloved retro leather longcoat straight off his body. Another spray of bullets zipped past, missing him thanks to the sudden change in trajectory. Meanwhile the quick-witted 'runner sent a command to his own internal electronics, flexing the 'muscle' he'd spent months after the surgery acclimating to.

The cyberware in question was a simple short-boost rocket system, built into the reinforced bone structure of his legs. Wrapped in carbo nano-tubes and infused with nanites designed to disperse force and rapidly repair micro-fractures, his leg bones and knees creaked as they locked tight and immobile. Then an explosion lit off behind him, filling the air with a gout of fire as his momentum suddenly changed from straight-down to mostly-forward, at pulse-thundering speed.

Straight towards the armored window glass of another corporate mega-tower, one of the shining monoliths that soared into New Chicago's brilliant purple twilight sky. It rose from the thick smog layer like a leviathan from the depths, and at that moment would be just about as deadly as that mythic monster.

This wasn't what the booster packs in his lower legs had been made for, and Will knew he had about three more seconds of boost before they cut out and needed at least a minute to recharge from their micro-hydrogen batteries. The ports on his back were supposed to be attached to an external battery pack for extended use of this kind. He cursed himself inwardly for screwing up the job; the job had been going so well, until he'd gotten caught.

Well...Out of the frying pan, into the fire...

_ _

He grabbed at the weapon sling under his left arm while angling himself forward and slightly upward, and as his boosters sputtered and cut out, brought his trusty auto-pistol forward. It let rip with a vomitous belch, shaving ammunition off a block of carbon nano-tubes to send the flechettes out in a hail of armor-penetrating shot. He didn't have time to brace before impact.

Dak Stevens loved his job. He was corporate head of security for the PEM Conglomerate (Pan Eurasia Machinery, top manufacturer of carbon-fiber reinforced coolant cladding in all of Western Asia! Also owner of dozens of smaller companies they'd driven out of business and bought out on the cheap.) And as the corporate head of security for PEM Conglomerate (PEM for the FUTURE!), he had a lot of wonderful perks.

First but least importantly to the big alpha wolf, he made a seven-figure annual paycheck. Not that it wasn't nice, of course. He loved having the cash to throw around on his off hours, when he wasn't busy stressing out about protecting the mega-conglom's new tech acquisition of the week from all the corporate or freelance saboteurs and spies that were endemic to the business world. He had a whole collection of vintage Life Model dolls at home, for instance, with which he spent endless hours of careful restoration work and carnal naughtiness.

The second benefit of his job was having a corner office on the hundred and twelfth and highest floor of the PEM Building. Though it was far from the tallest office tower in New Chicago, it nonetheless had one hell of a view of Lake Michigan's mostly-open waters, one of the few remaining natural(ish) features in the continent's greatest hub of transport and computer industry (according to New Chicago's Burea of Public Affairs anyway). Of course the view was partially blocked by the much-taller MegaVolt Industries Tower, but even Dak Stevens found reasons not to mind. Sure, there was someone bigger and richer than him, but he'd never see their faces. MegaVolt and PEM weren't competitors in any meaningful way. MV manufactured energy weapons, parts and targeting microchips, while PEM was far more involved with engines and reactor pieces.

The third job perk, though, was the one he really loved, and made use of just about every day. As head of security, it was his job to constantly monitor and protect PEM's interests, both from external contractors, or "Shadow-runners", hired to steal their technology or sabotage their operations and from employees who might be 'incentivized' to leak information to PEM's competitors. On a daily, the job was pretty intense, and Dak was damn good at it. In between crises, though, he got to 'review' corporate employees 'suspected' of engaging in activities that 'went against PEM's interests.'

That he tended to send his security agents down into the massive complex's many office floors to bring him brand new employees to interrogate wasn't a surprise to anyone. Not even suspicious. After all, new hires were often the most easily manipulated by outsiders. The fact that he tended to find pretty young females the most suspicious went un-commented upon by his colleagues. After all, Dak held in his paws the authority to detain and fire whoever he liked, on 'suspicion of anti-PEM activities.' Besides, other executives and unit managers figured, he never killed the young women, and a bit of judicious fear spread amongst the rank and file employees kept them on their toes.

In any case, all of that aside, what he really loved most was the wide variety of shocked, scared, doe-eyed expressions he could get out of the new employees when they were accused of corporate espionage in his nice, crisply clean office, with all of its intimidating guns-behind-armored-glass decoration. It was a look that almost always went to tearful shock when he told them how they could convince him of their loyalty. It was a look that reminded Dak Stevens that he was, above all else, In Charge.

Some of those young employees started crying and undressing immediately, desperate to keep a job whose loss would label them as unemployable even to other corporations. Some, like the one he'd already had a few hours ago, had pleaded their innocence first, then cried, then begged with some sob story or another, then more or less demanded to prove themselves with their pert little bodies.

The rarest of the rare, like Lita Surname-Already-Forgotten, responded by raising their ears, glaring at him with eyes full of fire and spunk he just couldn't tolerate from a low-level wage slave, and told him what spilled from the black cat's sharp-tongued muzzle.

"I'm your new net admin, not your personal sex toy. Go blow it out your ass. I haven't done anything wrong, and I'm not going to let you fuck me just to prove your 'power'. What is it, too small to get girls to take it without using threats?"

Dak Stevens, a cybernetically enhanced former soldier, stood six foot eight inches tall, and was quite proud of his ten-inch cock, with its knot that scared most women that saw it. He'd never admit the ten-incher was a grafted implant. The thick, powerful muscles that corded his body were every bit his own, though, and often enough to intimidate even the sauciest new hire. So her outburst surprised him, and for a moment the wolf just stared at the growling feline, slight like a willow tree, as she started to get up out of the supplicant's chair he kept bolted to the floor in front of his raised desk.

The movement broke him out of his surprise, and he was on the delicate feline before she could so much as shout. Her conservatively-cut headfur flopped over the cyber-jacks in her skull, as Dak charged like a rampaging bull, grabbed her by the wrist, twisted it behind her back, and marched her toward the massive glass windows that rose fifteen feet high from the floor to the ceiling of his corner office.

She tried to kick him with unaugmented legs, jamming him in the thick part of his thigh with her high heeled shoe, which broke on the dermal armoring laced through his once-natural flesh. Then he smashed her into the glass, hard enough to chip a tooth and leave a blood streak across the shining sheet from her lip. She thrashed and shrieked like a feral cat, lashing back with her free elbow. The strike actually clipped him, striking the big wolf's snout straight on and bloodying his nose. Unfortunately for her, he'd long ago had his pain receptors deadened via neural implant, and merely smiled as he smashed her head into the glass a second time.

He could have crushed her skull against the glass like a raw egg on concrete, if he'd wanted. Dak Stevens had killed plenty of times before, though never as part of his little office sex game. He knew he could get the body disposed of, no muss no fuss. But he only hit her against the glass hard enough to stun the cat, mostly because fucking corpses wasn't his style. He did, however, twist her left wrist until it dislocated with a crack and a moan of pain from the half-conscious girl.

Leaning in, he whispered in her ear, voice full of threatening growl.

"I was going to have you just suck me off, little kitty girl. Now I'm going to fuck your pretty little ass until you can't walk. Don't worry, though, I'm not going to kill you or even fire you. I like your style too much...We'll be doing this plenty of times, to make up for you being out of it right now."

The cat didn't speak in response, instead making a confused and muffled grunting sound, her face pressed against the glass. Dak had her nice little company-uniform skirt flipped up in a jiff, holding both her wrists now with his off paw. Then he tore her little black panties off with a quick flick of his muscular wrist.

Her hidden, pink little pussy was dry like the desert, he noted, though he jammed a thumb against her lips anyway, laughing as the cat girl found enough of her spunk again to squirm and make a weak hiss, her tail lashing up to strike pointlessly against his face. He just took advantage of the move, biting onto its tip to prevent the thick flag from coming back down.

Quick movements of his deft fingers had his own fly open, and then he had his hard, lubricant-seeping cock tip against her puckered anus. It clenched instinctively, trying to fight off the augmented invader, as he flexed an implanted muscle and splattered clear, water-soluble lubricant across the pulsing pink tail star. Then, to the sound of his new sex toy squealing at the top of her vocal range, he shoved his tip against her anus and parted it open, before slamming half his considerable length into her fluttering, spasming depths.

The chuckle started in his toes, it felt like. This was what Dak Stevens loved most in life. The feeling of power over a helpless, overpowered little fuck toy, there solely for his amusement. He flexed the implanted muscle again, and kept it clenched this time, until the sprays from his lubricant reservoir had filled the squirming, weakly squalling black cat with so much of the clear stuff that it was leaking out around his hefty cock and dripping to the expensive marble floors.

Sliding the rest of the way in, to cement his conquest, was a contest of seeing just how hard he could push against that impossible, vice-like tightness, before he was left no choice but to flood her with even more self-generated lubricant. Dak liked to think of his ever-productive cock as being 'manly' enough to give him all the pre-cum he needed. It wasn't convenient to remember that it was all on behalf of his Dr. Stud Genital Enhancer, and that the fluid wasn't pre-cum at all.

Finally, as the girl's squeals had trailed off into soft grunts of pain and discomfort, the bulging base of his shaft kissed little-miss-Lita-defiant-bitch's well spread anal ring. Dak leaned down again, making sure to push his suit coat out of the way so it wouldn't dangle into the mess slopping out of her rear. He spat out her tail to speak, while nibbling roughly on her rounded feline ear.

"I think I'm going to tie you. If your ass can take it. If not...Oh well."

"FUCK you, you son of a bitch!" she belted out, though she wasn't able tot ake another swing. The pain radiating out from her dislocated wrist had gone into her voice, which was high and constricted, almost hysterical with rage.

The Dr. Stud implant let him do all sorts of interesting things. Like decide whether or not to be fertile, whether or not his orgasm would be massively productive or shoot nothing at all, and even how engorged to make his impressive knot. When he shoved it into her, Dak had it half-inflated, enough that it was like pushing a normal-sized person's fist into the rather small girl's impotently resisting asshole.

The moment after he had it in, though, he let it swell up, until the girl's hoarse squeaks and fluttering innards told him he couldn't puff it up any bigger without doing harm that would make the whole thing less fun. Having her die of rectal bleeding would be inconvenient.

He was just letting the all-natural rush of orgasm work its way up through his oversized balls when something hit the window just to his left, hard enough to scratch the armored glass. Dak ignored it, and fired off the first rope of his cum with a dominant howl of pleasure that made the feline's ears turn and flatten back with rage and shame.

Another 'SPACK!' sounded from that leftward window, but Dak was too busy humping the black cat's impaled, abused, bruised anus and blasting it full of his over-volume of cum to pay any attention. Not until a dozen more 'spackSPACKSPACK!' noises sounded all at once, an instant before the window exploded inward like a limpet mine had just taken it out.

Dak lost track of his orgasm, letting it pump the suddenly yelling, startled girl full of his thick lupine spunk, as he stared in shock at what came through.

A black-clad husky, in a covert ops jumpsuit and long black leather trench, covered in a smattering of black dust, flew through the window so hard he bounced off that expensive marble floor twice, before crashing hard into Dak's hand-carved mahogany desk, shattering the antique thing's center instantly. The creature rolled as he hit, though with a shout of pain, coming to a stop only when he'd gone through the desk and smashed hard into the armored wall, before lying there momentarily stunned, upside-down, with his legs against the wall and his face pointed at Dak and his cum-leaking victim.

Then, before Dak could get his head together, the husky's two electric-blue eyes seemed to take the scene in, and narrow nearly to slits. The canine kicked off the wall into a backwards somersault, even as Dak yanked the black cat's face away from the wall and spun them both to face the dog. In Dak Steven's mind, this was nothing less than a corporate assault. Someone here to assassinate the head of PEM's security force.

Lita let out a cry of agony, as the sudden movement yanked his knot against her punished anal ring, and somehow managed to rear back, smashing the back of her head into Dak's already-bruised snout. He howled in anger, and stumbled a step away from the display he'd been reaching towards.

Will was on his feet in a near-blur of movement. Though he wasn't as cybered-up as some of the less subtle 'runners out there, he'd have been a fool not to have his reflexes wired up. Charging across the room fast enough that his leather coat cut the wind with a whip-crack, the wiry husky leapt on the tied-together pair, slamming them both to the ground with a pained yelp from the speared feline, and a snarl of startled anger from the wolf.

The 'runner had his vibro-knife out before his opponent could even try to grab at his wrists, and had its deactivated tip pressed against the wolf's balls in an instant.

"Okay, chum, here's how we'll do things. You aren't going to call your guards, b'cause if you do, I'll be cutting this here Mark 9 Doctor Stud out the hard way. Nod if you grok me, chum."

The wolf's glare could have melted steel...If he'd opted to have a capacitor laser installed, which he hadn't. But he nodded, once, to the strange, filthy 'runner that knelt there on top of his thigh, with a paw on his newly-used balls, apparently giving not one damn about the thick cum that was spunking up his fingers and knife blade as it dribbled out of Lita's ass.

"Okay, good, glad we understand each other. Now deflate that thing, or I'll do it manual-like."

Lita pulled away with a hoarse gasp, as the wolf's knot immediately deflated, and crawled away from him with tears in her eyes. Despite her best efforts, the abused anal muscle wouldn't close, and instead let out a mortifying belch as it started to expel the over-pressure that had been rammed up into her so very much against her will.

William's electric-blue gaze didn't follow the girl, instead staying pinned hard-eyed to the massive cybered-out executive he had under the knife.

"Girl, you any good with computers?"

"Y...Yes...Ahh..." she cried out softly, curling up into the fetal position on the soiled marble floor, clutching her gut.

"Get up," he ordered stiffly. "I need you to get his security console open. You're gonna give us the codes, mister rape-wolf, and then we're gonna walk outta here, clean as can be. Grok me?"

"What guarantee do I have that you aren't going to kill me anyway?" the wolf snarled out, glaring death and daggers at the male holding his favorite two organs hostage. In response, the husky gave him a rather vicious toothy grin, squeezed the two low-hangers tight enough to make even the pain-dampened wolf gasp and wince, and spoke.

"You don't. But think about it. If you don't help me, you can be sure I'll cut these and everything else I can reach off before your goons can take me down."

Lita, in the meantime, had managed to get herself up to a sit, then with a lot of pain and hissing, managed to stand. Then the cat wobbled over towards her boss' smashed desk, and slipped to land on her hip with a yelp of pain, while trying to sit down and start sifting.

"Ah, fuck!"

Will still didn't look up.

"Kid, find that fucking deck and do it now. My getaway is getting to the ground level any minute, but it ain't gonna do us a bit of good if we get shot by the guards on the way down!"

"I know! Ungh..." She shouted back, dizzy and in pain, as she began knocking bits of ruined desk out of her way. Locating the computer deck she was searching for, the net expert had it open in a jiff, and pulled the cybernetic leads from its underside to link into the jacks on the back of her neck with shaking paws. "I'm gonna...Get the emergency elevator open...Then you're gonna have to carry me."

"Good idea. Okay, rapey, what's your username and passcode?"

"Fuck you!" the wolf growled, flexing his paws as the husky started to twist his oversized balls. He kicked his feet as much as he dared, hoarsely husking in a breath through pain even his dampeners couldn't handle.

"Wrong answer," Will growled.

"No! No seriously! Username Fuck You! Passcode Cumbubble!"

Will blinked, and tilted his head like his feral cousins might at the squirming wolf.

"God. You are a real piece of shit, aren't you?"

Lita pumped a paw in the air.

"Yeah! Got it! Shut off the cameras, too. Oh, and we've got two minutes before everything else in the building loses power so they can't auto-turret us in the parking lot."

Will raised his head up, looking towards her with a grin.

"Girl, I like your style. What's your name, anyhow?"

"Um. Lita Rickter."

"Well, Lita...Sounds like you're getting fired here. Probably getting put on the shit list too. Care to tag along?"

"If...You carry me," she said, looking away in sudden embarrassment. She was sitting in a puddle of cum, her legs feeling like they were going to fall off after the brutal beating her ass had taken. Just then, her voice hitched up, and she started to sob, struggling against the urge even as it happened.

Will shook his head, and without even looking back, flicked his vibro blade on. Its hum, high and whining, made Dak's eyes go wide and his paws come up in desperate effort to supplicate his captor.

"No NO NO NOAUGHKKK!" he shrieked, as Will's vibro-blade slid through his scrotum without resistance, instantly severing the dangling orbs. The husky flung them away, even as his opponent tried to roll away toward the gun case. Another jab of the knife laid the wolf's guts open. A third one jammed the blade up through his armored sternum, slicing right through dermal armoring meant to stop bullets and fists. One more twist, a yank, and Will was up and moving, away from the blood-spurting, gurgling, dying wolf, and towards a wide-eyed and terrified young cat in her disheveled office-wear.

"Welcome to my world, kid. Time to go."

He had an arm under her aching rump before she had time to come up with a response. Then she was draped over his shoulders in a fireman-carry. She had the presence of mind to grab onto Dak's expensive silver-clad computer deck and pull it up to her, the wire still tied into her neural jacks. Will had the presence of mind to flip her miniskirt down to cover her still cum-splattered rump.

Lita was blushing as a section of paneling opened up to reveal Dak's emergency escape elevator. The irony wasn't lost on the cat, despite how much pain was trying to cloud her mind.

Thirty minutes later, Will's aging hover-car pulled into the abandoned warehouse he'd been squatting in the last few months. What with the MegaVolt contract currently fucked all to hell, he was pretty sure there was no chance of moving out of the rat and cockroach-infested shit hole. Or the Combat Zone, for that matter. Luckily, even the local Black Lace Gang weren't stupid enough to pick a fight with a known Shadowrunner. Sure, he was no full-borg Street Samurai, but unlike those walking monstrosities still had enough sanity to fight smart. As a few Black Lacers had found out, to their short-lived chagrin.

The building's rusty old lift gate came down behind him, as Dellia ordered it to do so and simultaneously turned on floodlights he'd had to scrounge together from garbage dump parts, illuminating his dust-and-concrete-chic home.

In the bucket seat to his right, Lita had curled up in a little ball, the black cat holding her stomach. Will reached over to touch her shoulder, hoping she hadn't died of internal hemorrhage during the trip somehow. A few victims of corporate bullshit had done just that, in cars he'd owned in his younger and more productive years of Running. A few of his own victims had died like that too, after he'd tried to save them in rare moments of regret.

She jerked, though, and he breathed a sigh of relief as she opened her somewhat-glazed eyes.

"We're here. Home sweet home for now. I'm gonna have Dellia give you the once over if you don't mind."

"I d-don't...I just want a shower..."

"Well, you can have one, just as soon as we check you out."

Lita curled up a bit more, dark eyes peeking out from her dark fur.

"I'm n-not sure I can let a doc touch m-me right now..."

"She's not a doc. Hey, Dellia!" he shouted. "C'mon out!"

An electronic voice, filled with all the inflection of an annoyed librarian, issued out from one of the walled-in offices.

"Oh fuck you, Will. You know I'm stationary. Bring her in here, I'll check the poor thing out."

Lita's eyes near bugged out of her head, and she sat up a bit too quickly, trying tog et a glimpse before her inner ear crapped out. When she came out of the sudden, seconds-long faint, she was being carried against Will's strong if slender chest, smelling sweat and ozone off his plush but filthy white fur.

"Dellia's a..." she asked.

"An AI, yeah. Real deal, too. Rescued her, a few years back."

"Years? Try a decade," the acerbic computer retorted. "And he treats me like a slave, don't let the nice-guy routine fool you. Also, I seem to recall it was I who rescued you."

Will rolled his eyes over top of a grin, an old argument they'd had plenty of times being as good as a "welcome home, master!" any day.

Two days later, and Lita had already shown her chops. Ten years of accidental neglect were responsible for Dellia's trouble connecting with that air car and piloting it remotely. Lita Rickter took all of ten hours to fix the vehicle's remote connection, largely by pulling the part out, breaking it down, and re-building it from scratch. Given she did so with little more than an antique toolkit from the 1990's and a soldering iron Will had bartered off a buddy for her was just damn impressive.

On top of that, the street-skinny cat hadn't shown any sign of freaking out about her situation. Away from home, possibly being hunted by corporate security, she was cool as a cucumber and twice as crisp with her quick sardonic wit. Being confined inside the safety of a worn-down warehouse, off the grid and out of sight, seemed to be just fine by her.

Will walked into the warehouse's main office area just as the black housecat's tail disappeared inside a console enclosure, down at floor level underneath Dellia's main monitor. On screen, a see-through stream of brilliant green characters made up a female lupine face, Dellia's chosen 'avatar' for communicating with biological life forms.

She fixed him with a glare.

"Did you know that the source of my communication woes was partly a bad transceiver and partly a PILE of MOTHS stuck in my MOTHERBOARD?!"

Will quirked a brow, while walking over to the office's old beater of a fridge, checking the purring generator on his way, then cracking open a SynthSoda with his thumb after grabbing it from its cooling enclosure.

"Uh. Boards have mothers?"

A bang sounded from under the console, and he heard Lita's voice cursing through laughter. Will grinned and shrugged.

"Sorry, techies. I'm a simpleton when it comes to this stuff, remember?"

"How could I forget," the computer huffed. Then she fixed him with a discomfort-inducing sunny smile. "So, tell me I'm a genius."

"Um...You're a genius. Why?"

"Because I think I've found a fix for your problem with MegaVolt."

Will set the soda down, and leaned back against a rusty filing cabinet, raising his brow at the computer.

"Well that's good. I wasn't looking forward to telling Smith that we blew it. No telling what he'll do.'

"Right. Well, there's excellent news. MegaVolt is holding its major office party early this year, in its penthouse operations suites. The CEO's son has just returned from a stint in the Japanese Empire, and his father intends to throw quite a bash for his boy."

"Lucky, then, that my face didn't get on any of their security cameras. But getting an invite isn't going to fly, Dellia. I'm a nobody as far as this megacorp is concerned."

The computerized face smiled coyly, eyes half-lidded.

"Which is why you aren't going as a guest. I talked to Wataro for you. You're going as part of the entertainment. His way of repaying that thing you did for him last year."

Will blinked, and tilted his head doggishly at the computerized female. Her lupine smile was positively foxish, he decided with a bit of trepidation.

"I can't dance, I don't sing...What do they want, a demonstration on killing as entertainment? Wataro runs strip clubs and Virtual Brothels, Dellia, not corporate events catering."

"Apparently the CEO's son enjoys male strippers. You'll be going as one of the serving staff, carrying drinks during the show. Your costume is a bowtie and tight-pants, so not much chance you can sneak equipment in."

Will was about to worry at that detail a bit, when Lita stuck her head out from under the console, blowing a dust bunny off the tip of her pink snout.

"Which is where I come in. There'll be a lights and special effects setup for the strip review, and that requires a lot of gear. Boxes and boxes of it, in fact. While the strip show's got them looking, I'll make a few little malfunctions that will get security up in the tech booth. Meanwhile, you and I can slip away," the cat grinned, before disappearing back into the console. A few seconds later, some compressed air puffed, and more dust came billowing out. Will stepped away from it, feeling there was no sense getting dirty when he didn't have to.

"Okay, so I'll be on the floor putting on a bit of flirt-and-serve, until I can get away from the crowd. Let's not do anything until the party's more than halfway done, though...Gives the guards time to get tired and off the ball. I'll link up with you, Lita, and we'll infiltrate from the penthouse downward. One little problem, though."

"What's that?" the cat queried, muffled by computer entrails as she worked on sorting them out.

"You aren't a Shadowrunner. Do you even know how to defend yourself? I respect your skills as an electronics tech, but..."

She cut him off with curt, businesslike words, not slowing down her work inside the guts of that electronic bay.

"First, it's irrelevant. You need a teammate for this, or the plan just won't work. Second, if we can't interface Dellia with MegaVolt's internal security, we'll never make it past the first retinal scanner. Since you don't know the difference between a toaster and a quantum processor, you need my help. Third...The only reason that asshole got me was that I went in there without any tools to defend myself with. I'll be packing a few little toys that should slip right under their metal detectors and bomb sniffers."

Will was surprised enough by her confident tone and evaluation of the fact that she'd been raped less than a week ago that he couldn't come up with any good retort. So he just nodded his head, sighed in resignation, and rubbed the back of his neck while looking up at Dellia again. The damn AI was smirking smugly.

"Alright. Let Wataro know I'm in. Also, do a search and find me someplace I can get a bowtie and armor-woven skinny pants. Preferably a bowtie thick enough that I can hide a mono-wire emitter and a lockpick in it. I'm not going in totally unarmed. MegaVolt's a weapons manufacturer and developer, I wouldn't put it past them to have some jackbooted thugs who like to beat on hired entertainment."

The computer fixed him with a glower. "Will, if you slice someone to pieces with a mono-wire, you'll blow your cover. Need I remind you, while you're at the party, you're on camera and surrounded by armed enemies? You'll just have to put up with whatever they throw your way until you get a chance to slip away."

He sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck again, grimacing when his fingers slid over some old, old scars. The memories attached to them hurt a lot worse than the flesh.

"Yeah. I get it."

The MegaVolt tower's penthouse suites held a towering view over New Chicago from the height of the MegaVolt building, a marvel of modern design. Soaring two hundred and ninety stories, it was the tallest building in North America that wasn't an orbital elevator or similar unoccupied structure. That night, it positively thundered with sound and light, as multi-trillionaire Robert Volta celebrated his son Simon's return from the Orient.

In the MegaVolt Megacorp's suite, which sprawled all the way from corner to corner of the vast super-structure, sixteen stages had been set up, each catering to a different taste in male flesh. Underage feline boys, with girlish features and flashing eyes, danced their hearts out in the southeast corner, occasionally rendered in silhouette by fireworks firing up from the corporate plaza thousands of feet below. Opposite them in the northwest, burly wolves danced in various stages of undress, showing off the lethal strength of their massive bodies. To the southwest and northeast, more and more heavily cyber-ized bodies showed their own light shows, displayed amazing feats of dexterity and obedience, to the amusement of the many party guests.

Many of whom weren't interested in the beautifully gyrating walls of carnality around them, of course. But they pretended, for the sake of the boss's son. Or, more accurately, for the sake of showing 'company spirit,' and not drawing the ire of their notoriously temperamental CEO. They didn't need to know that the CEO himself hadn't even shown up. His son, however, tall handsome Simon Volta, was very much in attendance.

At nearly seven feet tall with features that seemed chiseled from marble or stolen from some classical Greek museum, Simon could have stolen any conversation he chose. With the massive fortune he stood to inherit from his father, he could have had any partner he liked, for whatever he wanted, Platonic or not. The 20-something mega-rich heir wasn't that classless, though, and was spending his night shaking paws, chatting up both enthusiastic old acquaintances and company employees obliged to appear at the event. Of course, he also took plenty of time to view the show, not wanting such a display to go to waste. His team of bodyguards, all six of them massive, burly, and cyber-enhanced to the state of the art in lethality, made sure the crowd gave him space when he wanted it.

Which was how he had a moment to himself, sitting on the raised platform at his own private all-glass table, to gaze out over the crowd. He had a little secret, to how he handled these events. He wasn't there to watch the dancers - he was there to watch the staff, and the guests, enjoying their reactions to such blatant displays of masculine perfection.

As dancers performed, taking requests for whatever the guests had in mind, Simon watched and catalogued what his guests asked for. When he saw a massively fat old bear 'request' that one of the young male dancers masturbate for him in front of the whole crowd, Simon made a mental note to himself not to do business with that one. Such people generally didn't make their decisions based on sense, but rather on hunger for power and for demonstrations of control.

When another had a dancer come down to his private table, and talked with the fur, before arranging to go off with him somewhere more private, Simon noted it as a good sign; that person knew how to do respectable business and not make a foolish spectacle of himself.

His usual routine was a bit derailed, though, when he saw something a little unusual. One of the female guests had been hitting on a server, a topless husky with the most delectably sleek muscles and fresh-driven snow pelt, totally unlike those chiseled surgically-perfect physiques of the stage dancers. Unlike most servers at these events, the arctic white husky seemed to be both embarrassed and amused, an obvious newcomer to the scene of carnal performance. He turned her down, but brought her fresh drinks, managing to charm the woman and her party despite their disappointment.

Simon liked the unusual ones. The ones who had pretty, pretty eyes, like the sky blues that husky possessed. The big equine leaned over to one of his bodyguards, a massive silent giant of a tiger who was more machine than person these days.

"Hans, I need a bit of time away from the party. The music is getting to my ears. Go invite that husky server, the one with the red and black skin-tight pants, to join me in my antechamber."

The tiger nodded his head crisply, and with the sound of finely-tuned metal parts sliding over one another in properly-lubricated synchronicity, disappeared into the crowd. Meanwhile, Simon slipped smoothly to his feet, straightening his fine silk suit with a pat of his paws. Soon, he was leaving the party floor with its throbbing synth-music and strobing lights, for the opulent private rooms his father kept for him during his rather rare state-side visits.

William was waiting on Lita to signal him, via their networked in-skull communications implants, when he noticed security headed towards him. They were still at least an hour from their agreed-upon distraction, and he was about ninety percent sure they hadn't made any mistakes that could get him noticed. Lita had also maintained the strict communication silence they'd agreed on for safety's sake. So, with his stomach doing a flip-flop that ten years as a Shadowrunner still hadn't managed to exterminate from his body, Will put on his best I'm-totally-supposed-to-be-here doggy grin and turned toward the massive cat.

Even in a very nice tailored suit, Will could read the big cat's ominous posture and deadly features like a book. First, this was an ex-soldier, someone who took his appearance very seriously, and didn't give a flying damn for fashion if it got in the way of his job. Secondly, though wraparound shades obscured the feline's eyes, he had the face of a heartless and dispassionate killer. Only the finest of plastic surgery kept his heavy cyberization hidden; this guy was a walking tank of artificial and enhanced parts, likely including armoring and on-board enhanced combat systems that could take William apart like a Lego castle in a straight-up fight.

He was just raising the platter of fine, expensive champagne, hoping the big cat just wanted a drink, when the big security fur nabbed it from his paw and nimbly handed it off to another passing server. It was nothing more than a demonstration of sleek and deadly skill and wired reflexes, meant to tell the topless, vulnerable husky who was in charge. Will had to swallow more than a bit of pride to respond with a smile, an affected blush, and words that sounded more excited and deferential than ready for a fight.

"Can I help you, sir?"

The tiger nodded, and reached out, nabbing Will's wrist with a steel vice of a paw. It took a lot of will and a great deal of training not to duck away. Every reflex said that a clinch was the last place he wanted to be with this mountain of cybernetic implants and murderous intent. He couldn't afford to blow his cover, though, so the husky played his part, making a little gasp of excitement, putting on a clearly-affected grin of enthusiasm, and going with the wall of death and metal as he was more or less gently maneuvered off the floor and towards one of the many side rooms.

Ah fuck, he thought, remembering what those rooms were being used for. On the one paw, they weren't secure enough for holding infiltrators. If the security staff thought he was a problem, he'd be headed for the elevators and down into the building's underground dungeons. On the other paw, he was pretty much sure those rooms were well-outfitted for anyone who wanted to fuck one of the hired help. A quick glance back towards that gyrating floor told him there was security everywhere, though. Even if he broke out the toys he had hidden in his bowtie and in the compartment surgically concealed in his left arm, there wasn't a chance in hell he could fight his way out of this mess.

Dellia, I'm going to fucking kill you when I get home...

_ _

Will was down on his knees in a posh room full of fine dark hardwood furnishing and Hunter green leather before he quite knew what was happening. If there was a noisy, music-filled Baccanalian going on behind the door he'd just been ushered through, there wasn't a peep of it audible now, through all the high-tech soundproofing and isolated ventilation systems. Not that he was going back there, he immediately knew, unless whoever had summoned him here was satisfied with letting him go. Three other security furs, all tigers, all just as beefed-up and wired-out as the one holding his wrist, were spaced around the room. Not one of them was distracted with a drink or a 'friend.'

In fact, the only male here who looked like he wasn't a trained killer was the tall, muscular horse sitting on a no-shit throne in the middle of the room, wearing the nicest and most expensive suit Will had ever seen in person. The black and grey horse positively sparkled with fine, tasteful jewelry; a Bulova watch worth more than all of Will's cyberware put together, worn just loose enough to show a lack of real attachment. His fur also shown like sable velvet, glossy and displaying his perfect health. The smile that rested atop steepled paws looked quite sincere, too, straight and white teeth shown off in a gesture of friendly pleasure that sent a chill down Will's spine.

The fur in charge of the room took one long, sweeping look over the topless, slightly panting husky who'd been pushed down on his knees in front of the throne, and seemed to figure out what he wanted to know.

"Hello. Sorry for the abrupt invitation, I hope he didn't hurt you. My name is Simon."

Will stared in surprise for a moment, as a manicured paw was held down towards him. He took it, though, and shook it firmly, meeting eyes with the handsome horse. Will's muzzle went dry, knowing he was meeting face-to-face with the son of his most dangerous current enemy. The dog almost wished males were his type. The rich velvety chocolate color of those eyes was enticing, the grip of that paw confident but not overbearing. Seemed like a nice guy, though no doubt just as dangerous as his old man.

Will found his voice.

"I-I'm Billy, sir. S-simon. Sir. Um..."

The horse laughed, letting his head tilt back carelessly as he did, before bringing it forward to meet eyes again while releasing Will's delicately shaking paw.

"Just Simon. Volta is my father's name, until I get the chance to earn that title for myself someday. I'm Simon, and you're Billy, and that's all we are. Last names are for business partners."

William bobbled his head the way he'd seen a lot of overwhelmed and terrified serving staff do over the years when cowed by their 'betters.' Simon broke the trend immediately, though, by leaning down and cupping his chin with a firm but gentle paw, coming so close that Will could have bitten him right in the snout by barely moving. His breath smelled like fresh mint.

"Do you like males, Billy?"

It was an honest question, to the Shadowrunner's surprise. Few corporate aristo's cared what the 'little people' wanted. Unfortunately, he couldn't say 'no.' He couldn't risk this turning into a fight, or his own ejection from the party, or any of the number of ways this could go bad if Simon wasn't as nice as he pretended to be.

"V-very much, s-sir!"

"Good, I'm glad. You turned Mrs. Dowling down so very gracefully, I was quite impressed. It would have been a shame to find out that she just wasn't offering to pay enough."

"P-pay sir?"

Simon blinked and tilted his head, then started to chuckle again, a warm and friendly sound. He still hadn't released Will's chin.

"That weasel Wataro really was telling the truth...You ARE brand new to this. I'll tell you what, Billy. I like being good to my men, and they all have some...Shall we call them 'stress issues' to work out. If you can relieve their issues for them, and for me when you're done, I'll pay you twenty thousand Euro and have my people drop you off wherever you like. That's more than a year's pay, and you'll even get to go home early. How does that sound?"

Great...

_ _

"I um..." He looked around at all the big males, and found his butthole already clenching at the thought. "H-how...?"

Simon nodded to his security furs, and the first of them, the one who'd brought Will to the private room, began unzipping his nice suit trousers.

"I won't ask you to bottom for them, either. Just use your muzzle, cute little husky. I want to see how much cum you can drink in the next hour, hm?"

I'm ready! Lita chirped, through Will's inner ear implant. He managed to smile, even managed to make it look enthusiastic, and licked his chops delicately. His response to Lita made his gut clench up with anticipation.

Hold off. Maintain silence until I signal you. I'm indisposed.

_ _

She didn't respond, knowing every transmission increased their chance of getting caught.

"You got a deal, Simon!"

"Good," the horse rumbled out, finally releasing Billy's chin. Then he patted the husky on the shoulder, and made a spinning gesture with his finger. "Now turn around, and lose those pants. I want to see that pretty curly little tail of yours, while you blow all these nice big dicks."

Man, I know I look younger than I am, but this is ridiculous...

_ _

All the same, he was left with little choice. Shimmying around on his knees, the husky started unbuttoning the nearly painted-on synth leather pants, sliding them down his slim, toned hips as two massive blocks of metal and stripy fur moved towards him, the other two maintaining their guard positions for now.

Great. They're actually smart. This is going to be a pain in the ass...Or jaw...Well, at least if I blow the job, I'll still get paid.

_ _

Will was no sexual novice, but was about as straight as could be. So, the idea of slurping on the thick, veiny member that flopped against his snout a moment later wasn't precisely what he'd call 'desirable.' Nevertheless, he had to keep cover, so he grinned as the big musky thing with its fleshy barbs lay across his snout, and slithered his tongue along its bottom alluringly.

When the big tiger grabbed both of his ears like the handlebars of a motorbike, the husky gave a lusty whine, and accepted the cock that was being dragged across his lips straight in, curling his lips back over his teeth to prevent any unfortunate accidents. With a muzzle suddenly full of thick but luckily all-natural tiger dick, his snout full of male musk and tongue covered in slightly sweaty salt flavor, the dog put his paws on the big male's thick muscular armored hips, and settled in for some serious cock-sucking action.

With his long, heavy canine muzzle, Will was able to take the whole thing in on go without so much as a cough. That seemed to please the tiger just fine, who growled and let out a rolling, rumbling purr that somehow sounded tinny, likely a sign of a toxin filter in his lungs, Will guessed. Then all time for guess-work and empirical observation was gone, as the tiger grabbed his head and started maneuvering it about, pulling it in to mash against his crotch, balls on the Shadowrunner's chin, twisting it a little less than gently to get the right friction.

He lost even more of his control over the situation when one of his paws was taken, rather more gently than his maw was being used, and wrapped carefully around a thicker, shorter cock that pulsed with enthusiasm and was already dripping-wet. The slimy stuff on his paw pads left his fingers tingling, and Will tried to concentrate on that, rather than the cool breeze blowing across his exposed ass as someone took his curly husky tail and pulled it up high to give the horse in the throne-chair an unobstructed view of the dog's rump.

"I think we've scared him a bit," the horse observed gently, to the male whose cock Will was stroking slowly. "Make sure he enjoys it, alright?"

_What? _ The dog worried, not sure just what that meant.

Right then, the tiger humping his face grabbed on, gave a staccato series of grunts, and blew a copious, thick load of tiger spunk all over the back of Will's throat, finally forcing a coughing choke from the dog as he struggled to swallow the big cat's release. Unable to keep up with the gooey torrent running down his throat, Will coughed, and burbled cum down his chin around a forced but real-enough-looking grin when the big cat pulled away and immediately began zipping himself up.

His right paw was taken away from the leaky prick it was working on, and placed on yet a third one, this one smooth and knotted at the base. Will managed to glance sideways just long enough to realize the tiger he was now masturbating had a wolf's cock, and a sizable one at that. His eyes watered at the thought of having to take that one. Back in his youth, he'd sucked a few dicks just to see what it was like, but had never needed to swallow one. The husky wondered if he could pass off gagging and vomiting as nervousness, rather than inexperience.

Then the tiger who'd been told to 'make him enjoy it' was up front, and taking Will's ears in gentle fingers, squeezing and rubbing them in a way that made the husky want to wag his tail. It was polite, more than he expected from a cybered-out killer. Most heavily 'borg-ed out individuals lost a lot of what made them people in the process of being made compatible with all that gear.

The cock that slid up to his lips seemed natural enough, with the usual feline barbs and a slightly above-average but manageable size. Will pursed his lips at the tip in a kiss, grinning up at the cat whose eyes still hid behind sun-shades even at night and indoors. When he enveloped the head in his muzzle, though, he immediately knew something was off. Something about the taste, the scent, seemed strangely right, where until a moment ago it had seemed all sorts of wrong.

It was the taste's slightly sweet tang that clued him off, just as the first dribble of fluid slid down his throat. This guy's testicles were modified, not his shaft. Will felt his own tumescent sheath give a little twitch, and felt a spike of alarm, realizing he was being fed an artificially-generated aphrodisiac.

Enjoy it, he says...Oh great.

_ _

A quick glance back, without turning his head, told him the guards were still watching like hawks, though. He doubted they suspected anything particular of a naked, clearly unarmed husky with no obvious cyberware, but when it came to protecting the boss's only kid, they weren't going to drop their guard. Will fought down the urge to get up and try to escape, and just started swallowing and slurping, hoping the aphrodisiac wasn't intense enough to get him doing anything truly embarrassing.

By the time his newest subject's cock was starting to twitch and throb in lead-up to orgasm, the husky could feel his own hard-on's pointed tip touching the floor between his well-spread thighs. Without noticing while it was happening, he'd also arched his back, instinctively presenting to the furs behind him in a way that had Simon chuckling and talking in sotto voce with one of his bodyguards, saying things Will doubted he'd find particularly flattering, since he wasn't in fact a whore by profession.

His own balls felt heavy, though, and his cock twitched when he shifted on his knees, rubbing his pointed tip across the floor and leaving a shiny trail of husky pre. He felt his knot swelling, too, without having been so much as touched by a single paw. When his ears were grabbed and his face dragged into the aphrodisiac-laden tiger's crotch, Will almost lost it, feeling his own cock start to twitch before clamping down control over it by thinking of the most un-sexy things he could come up with. The cum that exploded out of this tiger's tip hit his soft palette in short, sharp shots, before gushing straight down his throat in a milky, vaguely sweet assault on the straight dog's senses.

When that tiger let go, the husky ended up on paws and knees, coughing and sucking in breath while trying to fight down the hip-jerking, nerve-tingling urge to hump the floor until he painted it white. Spunk dripped from his lips, and had slid down onto his chest fur in a line that pointed straight towards his crotch. Will was fairly sure he only noticed that because of the drug, but couldn't help staring down at his own throbbing, wet-tipped canine cock, muzzily remembering that he was supposed to be hurrying this along, so he could meet up with...Someone.

Something hot and wet splattered against the left side of his head with a splat-splat sound, and Will turned towards it, too dazed to make the connection between musky scent and circumstance until he turned enough to see for himself that the third tiger was jacking off a thick, bitter load all over the staring husky's cheek. Turning into it got it straight into his eyes, which suddenly flared with stinging pain. The last jolt of flying cum hit him right in the snout. All he could sense was spunk, with everything but his ears; his snout was plugged with the stuff, his tongue covered in its salty and strangely delicious tang, his sense of touch telling him mostly that it was slimy and warm to the touch, as he brought a paw up to try wiping it out of his eyes.

The tiger with the nine inch wolf cock grabbed him before he could get that done, though, and slid two fingers into the husky's maw at each corner, holding his jaw open and chuckling with a rumbly purr of authority.

"Had enough of a warmup, puppy dog?" this one rowled, while shifting his hips, sliding his monster of a tip through the mess of spunk on Will's face. "You're gonna need it. I ain't half the male the boss is."

Will should have felt terrified, he knew, by that thought. Or dubious. Even cybernetics could only do so much for a male; simple reality of the cardio-vascular system could only handle a certain level of added length, girth, and size. He blamed the aphrodisiacs for the fact that the thought made him feel like gobbling that wolf cock down fast, so he could get to see the promised monstrosity quicker.

Not that he had a lot of choice in the matter. The wolf-dicked tiger thrust right into his muzzle, ignoring the teeth that scraped along his shaft as if they were in no danger of cutting his insanely-sized meat. Which, Will realized, was exactly the case - he could tell the shaft had armored weave in the skin, just by the slightly sand-like texture to what should have been smooth skin.

Panic started to rise as the shaft went past halfway into his muzzle. Those fingers at the corners of his jaw were keeping his maw wide open, and he couldn't seem to command his paws well enough to get them up and try to seize control by grabbing hold of balls or knot. Testing those arms of his told him that someone had taken advantage of his drugged and dazed state, and cuffed his paws behind his back. At least the cuffs were padded, he thought, even as the first heaving gag rolled through his body when wolf tip jammed right into the back of his throat.

Making a choking noise for a moment, Will forced himself to start swallowing, knowing this was his moment of truth. If he couldn't prove he was a professional cock-holster and cum-dumpster, he might still find himself being dragged down to the dungeons as an infiltrator. Wataro wouldn't hold up the cover story under any real significant pressure, so one of his 'employees' suddenly acting uncharacteristically wouldn't necessarily end up being written off as a new guy panicking.

Precum was drizzling down his already-soaked throat directly from the wolf's cocktip, sparking a strange sensation not unlike swallowing champagne, a prickling jingle of nerves un-used to being stimulated. Nerves that were quickly becoming acquainted with direct meat contact, as the wolf let go of Will's jaw and grabbed onto the back of his skull, crushing his tall ears flat as he exerted inexorable, constant force to drag the husky forward.

Fighting not to struggle, unable to breathe now, Will just barely managed to slither his long tongue out from under the plug of flesh prying his paw wide, curling it up at the tip to play along the wolf's massive swelling of a knot. The husky thanked his lucky stars that this little 'game' didn't involve taking that up under his tail. Will just wasn't cybered up enough to survive that kind of trauma, especially not internally. As he stopped bothering to worry about scraping his teeth on the armored serpent forcing its way down his throat, the husky wondered just what sort of male spent that kind of money augmenting his prick.

Drooling spittle, swallowing convulsively to avoid throwing up when something was jamming his wind-pipe shut, the husky felt himself being maneuvered, his head tilted just so, as someone gripped his hips and held that part of his body still.

Oh hell no...

_ _

Suddenly, he was being throat-fucked by the wolf-dicked cyber tiger, his ears used like the handlebars on an exercise machine. Or, more appropriately, if he'd been more able to think straight, like grips on a really complicated sex toy. With his head and neck at just such an angle, he formed a near-perfect fuck-tunnel for the rapacious fur, his spasming throat struggling and failing to keep up as he was plugged like a light socket, pistoned like an engine.

Mercifully, the brutal face-fucking didn't last long. Soon, the massive knot was bashing him in the face with every hilting thrust, and with what felt like the greatest surge of will in his life, Will managed to get his crackling jaw open around it, and bit down like he was trying to tear someone's arm off with his teeth.

With that armoring protecting it, sensation would naturally be dulled. However, the nerve-dense knot did its job when Will bit down with all his strength, and hit the 'go' button on that tiger's technologically enhanced orgasmic instincts. Balls the size of large chicken eggs surged, and Will wasn't left with the opportunity to wretch as what felt like a hose full of hot yogurt started spraying straight down his gullet into his stomach.

Pumping the captive husky full of piping-hot cum, the tiger let out a mating snarl that echoed through the sound-proofed chamber, the noise one of satisfied dominance and near-agonizing pleasure. When it was finally done, the tiger pulled Will back slowly, wriggling his head by that grip on his scruff, just to show the husky who was boss. The massive cock popped free with a 'schlup' sound, followed immediately by the cum-stained dog swallowing hard enough to be heard throughout the chamber, just to avoid vomiting up an overfull stomach full of rich male juice.

Will's own cock started spontaneously jolting and firing off blasts of hot, all-natural husky cum, even without having been really touched the entire time. He wiggled, and yelped, not having to affect surprise, as his balls emptied themselves and yet never seemed to stop feeling full and heavy. Panting, feeling exhausted like he'd been in a firefight all night, the snow-white and cum-highlighted husky ended up down on all fours, as his own messy orgasm tapered slowly down to nothing.

Behind him, barely audible through all the rushing-water sounds rolling around in Will's head, he heard the equine ringleader talking.

"Give me that towel, would you? Someone please turn him around, he needs something to lean against, the poor thing."

Strong arms maneuvered him, until Will found himself resting up against something warm and soft, silky, pliable...When he looked up, the husky found himself unable to immediately comprehend what he was seeing. Brown-black fur, he recognized, but the massive black tube that filled his vision just seemed like either a bad joke or a piece of industrial equipment.

Sometime during his dick-sucking reverie, Simon had stripped off, and after a minute or so of having his fur daubed off with warm towels, and his face and stinging eyes cleaned by the security tigers, Will realized the reason for his lack of recognition.

The tube was the biggest cock he'd ever seen. Wide around like a coke can with a flat, equine tip, the thing resting against his cheek reached all the way to his shoulder. Managing ot get up onto his still-shaky knees, Will gave Simon Volta an appraising look, as the horse stood. Someone's gentle paws slid around the dog's neck, right then, stealing his attention for a moment as a fine, synth-silk collar was clasped around his throat, and a long polymer lead was handed up to the horse.

That thing's three feet long! Oh shit!

_ _

Simon Volta chuckled as he took the leash, and gave it a little tug, forcing the still-cuffed husky up onto his knees fully. His stomach sloshed, it was so full of thick tiger cum, and the dog knew he was in deep trouble, if Simon was going to try to force that down his throat like the wolf half his length had done.

He met eyes with the tall, aristocratic horse, and just couldn't keep character any more.

"Seriously?" he demanded, chagrined beyond further stratagem.

Strait-faced, the equine looked him in the eye and said "Yep."

An uncomfortable moment passed, and Will realized he might have just stepped too far. Then the horse started laughing, and gave the leash a little tug, not enough to rock William off his knees, but enough to make the dog worry he might get dragged forward.

"You really are new to this, aren't you? One of Wataro's new acquisitions?"

Will folded his ears back, not an affectation, and looked down in embarrassment he hoped would be interpreted in a direction entirely different from its real origin.

"I'm um...Sorry, Simon. I just don't think I can take any more..."

As if on cue, the cum in his gut roiled, and the husky just couldn't stop himself from letting out a massive belch that seemed to come right from his toes. At least, he noted, none of the spunk he was tasting on his own breath decided to follow the explosion of gas on its way up and out.

The horse started laughing, though it somehow just didn't seem mean-spirited, and kept laughing for what felt like a little too long. Then he realized it was a strange laugh of pride. The young corporate's bodyguards had just throat-fucked a whore until the whore couldn't take it any more, and was belching from an overload of cum. The husky's face turned scarlet with embarrassed laughter, at the strange comedy of it.

Finally, Simon knelt down in front of him, that massive python of a shaft thumping against the floor. Will's cheek was caught up in a gentle paw, and his head shifted upward until he was meeting eyes with the devilishly handsome debutante. The horse kissed him, ever so gently, just a peck of soft fleshy equine lips against his own thin canine ones.

Before he could even start to reciprocate by rote, Simon had pulled away a bit, and gave the dog a wink.

"I'll get one of the others to finish me off. You've earned your pay. Boys, please get him cleaned up and escort him down to the lobby. I'll have a cab waiting to take him home. Pre-paid," he assured the supposedly working-class whore.

Will managed a weak but extraordinarily heart-felt smile of relief, as a credit chit's hard plastic was pressed into his paw, just after the cuffs were unlocked and removed. He couldn't possibly get out of that sex-stinking room fast enough.

Lita, send the 'bot to room 7877, get ready to pop it.

Unfortunately he also couldn't walk all that fast, after all he'd been through, at least not at first. Wobbly, dizzy from the still-active aphrodisiac, but at least wearing what passed for his clothes again, the canine was being more or less carried by two of Simon Volta's beefy bodyguards as they exited the party floor by a back entrance and headed for an elevator.

Once they were inside the sleek, all-metal thing, Will let his newly-washed cheek rest up against the tiger who'd been gentle with him before, and made sure the wobbling in his limbs was even more obvious than it actually needed to be. For all the world, he was an exhausted, physically spent canine, who'd just been the centerpiece of a five-male fuckathon, and was planning to play the part to a point.

When they were just reaching the all-important 78th floor, Will let out another belch, then turned his head and vomited on the wolf-dicked asshole standing next to him. With a yell of annoyance, the bodyguard stepped back, looking down at the cum and hors d'oeuvres mix that had just splatted onto his suit coat.

"Oh goddamnit!"

The gentler tiger grimaced, and wrapped an arm carefully around Will's side as the dog started to slump like he was losing consciousness.

"He's passing out, Wally, stop the elevator. Let's get him into a bathroom before he-"

"urrrpppp..."

Nothing came out the second time, but Will felt like it could have if he'd let it. The two cats needed to have an incentive to get him out of the elevator, and be distracted enough after punching the 'stop' button not to notice when Lita and Dellia's combined computer wizardry made the elevator skip just one more floor to open on the 78th.

To all appearances, it was just another floor in the massive office complex that was MegaVolt Tower - brown commercial carpet and simple but pleasant faux-wood paneled walls surrounded the trio, as two massive and cybernetically-enhanced guards carried the sagging husky from the steel utility elevator and towards an office suite. The vomit-splattered one angrily dug a key from his pocket and unlocked the suite door, gesturing annoyedly for his more compassionate companion to carry their nauseous charge inside and toward the private restroom within.

Lita had taken Will's training to heart, even though she'd only had a couple of days to learn his long litany of tricks. First off, she didn't kill the lights like an amateur - Cybered-up security would have low light vision in their optical implants anyway. She'd been smart enough, though, while directing her remote control vehicle through the ventilation shafts, to use its servo-hands to open a grate before the bodyguards were even in the room, so they wouldn't notice its soft whirring.

They sure as hell noticed the egg-sized device that dropped out of it, though, but didn't have time to react. Will only managed to because he knew it was coming, and had played possum well enough that the bodyguards just weren't expecting the exhausted husky to suddenly bolt and throw himself through the bathroom door.

A buzzing crackle like a microwave full of tin-foil slashed through the room, and dropped both too-cyber-ized goons to the floor, jiggling as their bodies went through seizures as the very expensive and very worth-it EMP grenade caused their cyberware to short circuit with spectacular effect. Just after the grenade had expended its charge, Will jogged back out of the restroom, leaning down to check the pulses of his captors.

He wasn't disappointed that wolf-dick didn't have one, but frowned when he found the blast had sent the gentle one's heart into rapid arhythmia. Concentrating for a moment, he gave the command to his cyber-interface to power up his one other major ace in the hole, and pressed his palm to the unresponsive tiger's chest. This device had been designed as a simple concealed self-defense weapon, but Will had used it more often for what he was about to do.

Will defibrillated the tiger with a blast of electrical current once, then a second time, breathing a sigh of relief when the tiger sucked in a hard, shaky breath. Luckily, he didn't regain consciousness either. Quickly looking around, Will grabbed the tiger's pistol, took the holster as well, and slid them into his belt. Then, as Lita's little remote control hovercar with its robotic claw-arm was floating out of the vent, Will drew the mono-wire from inside his bowtie, activated it with a hissing crackle of power, and drew it with extreme caution along the ball of his thumb. Splattering his own blood around would make this more confusing for the corporate security - They'd be less likely to suspect that the missing event staff member was involved if there were signs he'd struggled and been injured. When the mono-filament finished passing through a couple millimeters of flesh, Will winced and shook his paw, letting the bloody scrap of flesh fall to the floor amidst the bodyguards.

Then he looked up at Lita's robot, and made a paw gesture. Lita knew that meant 'lead me to you.'

He figured they had just ten minutes before someone noticed something was wrong. Lita had been smart enough to alter the plan on her own, as she informed him through a direct link via her remote vehicle right then in a quick little data dump. The pyrotechnic malfunction had been put on a delay, to give them that extra few minutes when things got hot.

Then, following his command, it lowered itself to the floor and zipped off down a hallway, forcing the aching husky to jog in order to keep up.

Buildings with halfway-decent security had ventilation shafts about the diameter of a couple softballs, far too small for anyone to shimmy through. Even most remote robots had trouble, if they didn't possess the proper security codes to bypass electronic locking systems. Dellia had taken care of that, with Lita's help.

All the same, getting Lita from the penthouse down to floor 78 was a real trick. Redundant layers of electronic and physical security made trying to sneak through a MegaCorp tower nearly impossible and extremely dangerous. Luckily, young Simon Volta had a way of causing waves wherever he went, and as Will had predicted, that showed with security.

Lita was just finishing her auto-hack on the stairwell door when Will reached her, and the cat looked lathered, having run down more than a hundred flights of stairs with stops only to hack doors and evade guards patrolling the floors themselves. Without the help of an ultra-rare self-aware AI, it wouldn't even have been possible. The stairwell was full of automated defense turrets, there to blast anyone trying what they were doing to bits. Dellia had turned them all to so much worthless junk, by inserting into the devices and slagging their internal hardware.

The black housecat unplugged her neural jack and let the silvery wire slide back into the port at the base of her skull. She gave Will a sweaty grin and a thumbs-up as the door hissed and slid open.

"Where to n-mf!"

His paw had landed over her muzzle, and he pointed at his ear, working his jaw to communicate subvocally.

Don't talk, these places have voice sensors turned on when workers are off-shift.

_ _

O-okay, she responded, where to next?

_ _

When he released her muzzle, she rubbed at it, and gave him a sheepish look. Despite her skills and intelligence, Will remembered, this was in fact her first real Shadowrun. The lingering effects of that aphrodisiac also made him want to put his paw back over her muzzle, just to feel the delectably soft fur there. He shook the thought off immediately.

This way.

_ _

He could tell, by the way she was looking around and back at him over and over again, that she was really curious. Probably about what it was they were taking, since neither Will nor Dellia had given her even the slightest hint.

Will took the thick briefcase she'd been lugging for him, and unsnapped it, digging out all the gear he felt naked without. The last piece was his leather coat with its armored fabric weave. Finally feeling himself again, he gave her back the empty briefcase and lifted a tiny radio device, which he clicked once, then three more times in rapid succession.

Down below, on the teeming streets, the Black Lace Gang got their signal. Paying them to commit mayhem on a MegaCorp's office tower had come a lot cheaper than he expected.

The slight quake that signaled a more bombastic phase of the plan seemed hardly appropriate, considering a pair of RPG's had just hit the MegaVolt building, right around the 15th floor. Much more notable were the red emergency lights that blared to life, as Will and Lita turned the last necessary corner. She looked up, and with a worried face asked a question.

Shit, are we made?

_ _

Nope. Black Lacers just hit the building with a pair of rockets. They'll be taking pot-shots at corporate security soon. The alarms will unlock the lab's outer door for us. Once we're inside, you'll hack the retinal scan while I disable the guards.

_ _

What are we after anyway? So I know, in case I have to grab it?

_ _

It's a data drive about the size of your palm, should be marked with three red interlocking triangles.

_ _

Wow, that big? Either an antique or a ... Wait, three triangles? Are you...Are you fucking kidding?

_ _

Radio silence, they'll detect us if we keep chatting.

_ _

Her frown told him she didn't buy it, but wasn't about to argue when they could be moments away from running into a security patrol and having to fight for their lives. MegaCorps didn't bother calling cops when they caught intruders. They just killed them. Or captured and 'interrogated' them to find out who'd paid for the attack, theft, or whatever. Nevermind that New Chicago hadn't had a municipal police force in 25 years. Street policing was handled by LoneStar, yet another MegaCorp, these days.

If his intel was right, the door they were looking for looked like just another office, but had a tiny "x" drawn on it in a special ink. Will didn't have an optic implant for that, so he had to rely on a little piece of equipment. The pen light didn't show in the visual spectrum, but when it hit the spot on the fifth door they tried, the little mark glowed like the Illinois River; luminescent green.

With a soft whirr of implanted mechanical parts, Lita drew the jack wire from her skull and inserted it into the security lock's maintenance port. For a moment, the little black box with its red ring designed for retinal scans didn't respond. Then, a little green LED light clicked on, and the door unlocked with a smooth thunk of multiple deadbolts retracting.

Will never bothered to wonder overly much where his instinct for trouble came from. It wasn't cyberware, and so far as he knew wasn't any kind of magic, either. Somehow, he just knew to grab his mono-wire again, gripping the skinny ceramic handle that was the only part of the device that wasn't a cutting surface. Unfortunately, the danger sense hadn't given him enough warning to move Lita out of the way.

The door slid open automatically, to show a room that wasn't another office, as the door would have implied. It was a hidden laboratory, concealed within the building even from many of MegaVolt's own employees. Considering what it had been developing, that was no surprise - Most employees thought the company just designed and built plasma rifles and laser weapons. What Mr. Smith had sent Will to get was something entirely less healthy.

And, unfortunately, a lot more valuable. Valuable enough to be directly guarded by its own security team. A team for whom that EMP grenade had been intended. Unfortunately, improvisation sometimes wasn't convenient.

Lita's eyes went wide as the looming blackness of an SMG's barrel almost hit her in the face as it came forward. Then she toppled over backwards as Will snapped a kick out that took her in the back of the knee. The automatic weapon chattered armor-piercing flechettes in a spray of death that mercifully went high, riddling the hallway wall with holes as Will rolled over the black cat, under the arms of the wired-up corporate security guard, and whipped his mono-wire forward and up in a shining arc.

It flew through the air with a sublime sort of grace that belied its horrific capacity for carnage. That tiny little wire, that looked like nothing so much as a faintly glowing spiderweb, hit the security guard's weapon first and carved straight through it with all the resistance of a hot razor through butter, before whipping upward through the cyborg's face.

The wolf jerked back reflexively, and let out a gurgled warble of a scream as his entire muzzle slid right off his face, and blood fountained from the exposed bones at its cleanly-shorn-off base. He hit the ground half a second later, thrashing and squealing as Will got his feet beneath him and launched himself at the second guard who was coming through the inner laboratory door with a gleaming blade clasped in an all-metal paw.

Skin-jobs were one thing; at least the cyborbs who bothered to keep their gear covered up tended to have some vestige of their personality and ethics intact. They might be possessed of an infinitesimally slight hesitance to take a life, perhaps as much as any other professional gun-toting mercenary. The chrome-jobs were a whole other matter. First, they generally didn't give a damn about their appearance in the first place, and thus weren't the kind to look at themselves in the mirror and ask what kind of monster they were becoming. Second, they usually had a lot more cyberware, and much more pervasive stuff at that.

Which meant he couldn't rely on the mono-wire to cut straight through this guy. He was a walking tank, most of his fur missing and in its place blocky metal plating. Even his eyes gleamed with a hateful and unnatural scarlet luminescence, as the cyborg maintained vision on multiple spectrums including infrared. Its species wasn't even identifiable anymore. Will guessed it probably didn't remember anymore anyway.

Lita had by then enough time to realize what was going on and start rolling to one side. With his wired reflexes, the cat seemed to move like she was swimming in molasses. However, she knew what she was doing, and to his surprise hadn't panicked when the fighting started. The net specialist was headed straight for one of the lab's computers intending to jack in, trusting Will to keep her body alive.

The cybernetic monster came at him with all the subtlety of an enraged freight train, emitting a roar of rage rather than actually roaring, its maw never opening to let the sound come. It was trying to meet and overpower Will's own forward rush.

Will threw himself hard to one side, banging into a heavy poly-steel console as the monstrosity carved through the air where he'd been a moment before. It corrected so fast the husky almost lost his head to the whirring, humming vibro-blade in that beast's right paw. As it was, he still lost a bit of headfur to its tip when he threw himself between the monster's legs, able to just barely overmatch the speed of its reflexes.

When it spun and tried to smash him to fleshy ooze with its booted footpaw, Will rolled to one side and sprang back up, throwing his shoulders back against the wall and grabbing a console with both paws. The thing came at him again, swiping and roaring, and Will lit off the boosters in his legs for just the smallest fraction of an instant. His leap carried the husky straight up and over the lethal blade and more-lethal foe.

The Shadowrunner twisted in midair and came down hard, the ceramic handle of his mono-wire separated into its two snap-together halves. He landed on the thing's back, latched on with his legs, and gambled that yanking the wire back through the tank's neck with both paws would have sufficient force to cut through that dermal plating and get to something important.

A squealing noise told him he'd gambled wrong, as the mono-wire penetrated half an inch of solid polymetal armoring before catching fast. Will knew he was way up Fucked River and had just jammed his only paddle up his own ass.

The paw that grabbed him by the throat shouldn't have been able to bend that way - But cyberware in this chrome-job must have included multi-rotational joints. The knife that came at his face shouldn't have been moving at that kind of speed at that angle, either, but those same implants were likely to blame.

What really shouldn't have happened was the knife stopping just short of his eye, then dropping away, right before the vicious warrior fell backwards, landing on Will's legs.

The husky kicked, hard, shoving the massive and heavy metal-laden body away, fully expecting it to come right back at him. Instead it just lay there, a blank look on its face, the eyes glimmering out. Starting at the center of its chest and going down to where the crotch would have been on a Mk-1 Person was a glowing hole that smoked and stank of burnt meat.

A quick glance over told him that Lita had jacked into the computer, and was giving him a thumbs-up...An impressive degree of control, given most net-runners couldn't actually jack in and still move their physical body. The source of the life-ending energy beam smoked, up in its spot at the ceiling. An auto-turret. Lita had jacked in and taken control of it, then used it on his attacker.

Will checked his own balls real quick, to make sure the energy beam hadn't sliced through the guard and into his own flesh. Breathing a sigh of relief, he was on his feet and running over to a wall locker that was sliding open as if on its own.

Lita yelled out over the neural link.

Got it!

_ _

I see that. Good work. Now let's get the fuck outta here.

_ _

It took all of three minutes for them to exit the MegaVolt building. Most of the security teams had deployed to the lower floors, in case of need to repel an all-out attack by the Black Lacers. Such things had happened before, usually as some crazy drug-addled mass mob of screaming half-baked anti-capitalists trying to make a point by getting turned into hamburger by corporate 'jackbooted security thugs'.

Will and Lita, now able to see and modify the corporation's security cameras, were easily able to avoid guard patrols and keep their attention off the invaded lab by setting off door alarms across a quarter of the floor and moving accordingly. Blowing the armored windows out took as long as getting to them. Luckily, Will's last bit of equipment had just the right kind of oomph for the job, though Lita quirked an eyebrow at the labeling on the old composite plastique.

With the thousand-pound pane of armored glass flitting downward on the wind after being blasted clean out of its frame in one big piece, their skycar, piloted remotely by Dellia, zipped in close and popped its hatches. Will abruptly grabbed Lita and threw the yelping cat across the thousand-foot drop into the car's safe embrace, then followed the still-terrified feline with a quick little hop.

He climbed right over her, and belted himself in as the car took off at a sedate pace, for all the world just a passing air vehicle.

Lita whirled and punched him right in the jaw, close-fisted, causing Will's temple to smack into the window.

"Ow fuck! What was that for?"

"For throwing me, asshole! Coulda fucking warned me!"

"You were about to hesitate. We didn't have time. The tower's security was going to purge our control virus any second.

"I was NOT about to hesitate!"

"Well...You were either about to hesitate or pee your pants."

Her furious blush was so ridiculous the husky started laughing. She started punching, mostly ineffectively, which he guarded against with his forearms and laughter that eventually became contagious, taking the wind out of her attack as the adrenaline-addled cat joined in.

Lita paced back and forth by the roll-up door to the old warehouse, nervous butterflies turning over and over in her stomach. Will, that mysterious husky who'd saved her life and now gotten her into an all-new set of troubles (and career), had disappeared two hours ago to go turn in their score and get their pay. Now, tail lashing about in anxiety, she was wondering if the pay-or had double-crossed them, if Will was lying dead or wounded somewhere in the terrible hell-hole that was New Chicago's street level.

Or, even worse, if he'd taken the score and just walked off, abandoning her the way her own family had plenty of years before. Lita didn't want to believe that one, not after all the trouble Will had gone to in saving her hide. Carrying a hurt, crying stranger out of a security-laden office tower wasn't something someone did out of convenience.

There was no way he could have known she was a computer and web security expert, was there? Nobody was stupid or crazy enough to enter a building like that unless they had no other choice. Right?

The fact that Dellia had been silent since Will left certainly didn't make things any better. Of all the things Will had, only a few were really worth anything - His car, his mono-wire, but those were replaceable. A real honest-to-goodness AI wasn't something you just bought new down at the corner store. There were maybe two dozen truly self-aware AI's in the whole world. If he'd ditched the cat, Dellia wouldn't have been left behind. Her silence seemed to speak volumes to the nervous cat.

Then again, she doubted the skinflint husky would leave his car either, and she was sitting on its hood. He'd bummed a ride from a friend, and probably walked part of the way, likely for the sake of anonymity.

Lita was finally about to break the rules and go outside without Will's accompaniment, when the rolling door unlocked itself. The netrunner slid off the hovercar's hood in surprise, losing her seat with a yelp. Luckily, feline reflexes kept her from falling flat on her face.

Will looked handsome as always when the door rolled up, the all-white husky in his trademark black leather pants and coat dapper as always. Though she knew he was in his late thirties, the clever dog looked no older than maybe twenty-five. In his own words, he looked young due to 'good living, taking stupid risks, and getting as little cyberware as I can afford in this line of work.'

She flew across the pitted concrete floor and into his surprised arms, grabbing on hard with arms and legs both. Stumbling back a step, he somehow managed to keep his feet, even reached back to slam the 'close' button for the rolling door. In a moment of exuberant whimsy, she mashed her short muzzle to his longer one and kissed him.

Never one to turn down something good, Will grinned and kissed her right back, thoroughly, making sure to taste as much of her delicious and all-natural muzzle as she let him. When the cat finally drew her head back, panting and grinning with her tail whipping in relief, Will tilted his head, grinned, and spoke.

"So uh...Anxious huh?"

"Yeah! You were gone forever! I thought you were hurt o-or..."

"Or ditched you. Smart thinking, though you shoulda left earlier if you thought that."

"I didn't! N-not really!"

The husky chuckled, and slipped his paws under her rump to hold her up, since she was starting to slide down his smooth leathers. Lita stiffened up a bit, then relaxed again immediately as she recalled whose paws those were. She could trust him. He'd come back!

"Not that I have a problem with getting physical, but let me sit down for a minute first."

That's when Lita detected the slightest of trembles in the muscles she was pressed against. She let go, with her legs, and brought her feet to the floor while looking up at the husky's bright blue eyes. They looked slightly shadowed, a little harried, but all of that tinged with a profound relief.

"What happened?" she asked, while letting go of him with one arm, and leading the tall dog over to a second-hand couch he'd scrounged an unknowable amount of time before her arrival.

"You sure you want to know?" he responded, flicking his curved tail to one side as he sat, as not to crush it in the couch cushions. Lita considered that for a moment, hesitated a moment longer, then sat down next to him, side against side. Will didn't hesitate in accepting the closeness, just put his strong arm around his best accidental score in years.

"Yeah, tell me."

"Rule number one of being a shadowrunner. Never trust the person paying you. Their motives aren't always what you think."

Lita blinked, then scowled.

"Did this 'Mr. Smith' guy fuck us?"

"No. But he could have." With a tired smile, the husky held up a credit chip. It was black. Not the normal kind of black that meant 'Less than 100 Euro,' but the shiny, hologram-patterned kind that meant 'If you care how much is on this card, you can't afford to own one like it.' Her heart skipped a beat. Will continued without waiting for her response.

"'Mr. Smith' is a euphemism for 'Government Operative.' You know...The government that supposedly stopped effectively existing twenty years ago. A normal EMP grenade wouldn't have done shit to those guards you took out, and normal composite explosives would have done dick-all to that window. Anyway, half of this is yours. Couldn't have pulled this job without you. Second rule?"

"Yeah?" she whispered, awed by what she'd just heard. Such things had been talked of in hushed rumors in the corporate towers, of course. Whispers that the old United Canadian and American States government was trying to un-neuter itself by sabotaging the corporations that had legally and financially held its collective testicles for a generation now.

"Second rule of being a shadow-runner. If you're stealing something for someone, always know what it is, so you can predict the fallout and get ahead of it."

"What did we...I mean...I saw the three 'bio-hazard' triangles on that data drive, but I thought it was a joke..."

"It was the program for creating a nano-virus, Lee. A bio-weapon that would have eaten anyone exposed to it down to their smallest amino acids. Specifically, anyone not implanted with the new piece of friend-or-foe identifiers MegaVolt was about to start selling."

She blinked, and stared at him in shock.

"No fucking way...Who...Who DOES something like that?"

"People like Robert Volta. Fucking psycho."

Looking as horrified as she felt, Lita curled up next to the husky and closed her eyes, letting his slightly sweaty and very masculine smell lull her senses. Right up until an errant thought cropped up. She blinked and looked up at him, brows furrowing as she focused on in on the slightly shaky wolf.

"What're you so nervous about? The job's done, we got paid, everything's fine."

"Well...Uh..." She'd never seen him look embarrassed before, at least not like that. He was blushing, shaking his head, looking at the ceiling. "Simon Volta sent Wataro a message this morning, 'for the cute new husky named Billy who went home early.' He wants to pay me fifty thousand Euro to go out to the Barbados Free Zone for a month and be his live-in fucktoy."

It was so ridiculous-sounding Lita just stared for about ten seconds, then started snickering.

"We just got a huge payout. Are you seriously that much in need of cash?"

"Hey, I didn't say I'm considering it!" he defended, unconvincingly.

She smirked.

"Then why are you nervous about the idea?"

"Hey...Look...Third rule of Shadowrunning. Always repay your debts."

She tilted her head, not certain what he meant.

"Who do you owe that kind of money to?"

"Uh...Rule number four. Don't ask me that unless I'm really, really drunk."