Outside of our home it was gloomy like it often was in Seattle, but the rain was still stuck up in the dark clouds overhead. A gust blew down the alley tossing the lighter bits of garbage around. I turned away from home and headed towards the street. It was early, but not so early as to still be clogged with wageslaves on their way to their corporate jobs. The street was only lightly populated by those with either too much or too little, the former not even recognizing the latter’s existence. 

As I approached the nearest subway entrance I saw flashing lights, imposing cars and goons in uniform. Lone Star, what happens when cops go for profit. They were all over the UCAS (United Canadian American States) and after a brief lapse in contract they were back here in Seattle and in force from the looks of their damn armored patrol cars. 

As I got closer I felt sweat bead on my forehead. There were three Stars, two humans and an ork. The ork had an elven woman in cuffs while the two humans examined a dead human male. He had a tear across his midsection, jagged and deep, but that’s not what caught my eye. What really stood out was the Humanis tattoo on his neck. I looked back over to the elf, she was shaking. Her face and neck had bruises that were beginning to bloom. The picture of what happened here began to come together and it wasn’t pretty. What’s worse is what I saw on the neck of the older of the two, the same tattoo.

While the two human officers were examining the body and dealing with other observers I got as close as I could to the ork. He appeared in his early 20s and aside from the standard uniform he wore reflective sunglasses. 

I looked at his badge. “Officer Hopper, may I speak with you?”

Hopper placed the woman into the patrol car and closed the door. “What do you need? You do know this is a crime scene?”

I nodded. “Yes I do, but I also noticed the victim was a member of the Humanis Policlub.”

Hopper’s face scrunched up at that. “He’s dead and she killed him, what difference does it make?”

“Remember what was on the trids a couple weeks ago?” I gestured with a hand as I got a little closer to him.

His upper lip twitched in disgust. “No, don’t watch that trash.”

I stared directly at the reflective glass covering his eyes. “Dead metahumans found in a shipping container and on the inside the logo of the policlub spray painted on the door.” 

He shifted, clearly uneasy. “It’s my job. I can’t just.” 

“You can’t just what, Officer Hopper?” I leaned in towards him.

“She still killed a man, I can’t,” he stammered.

“Look at the neck of your colleague, the one with grey hair.” I pointed over to the older officer.

He turned and the color seemed to drain out of his face. “I…”

I smiled. “I’ll make this easy on you.” 

I kicked on my adrenal pump.

Everything slowed down.

Hopper’s face contorted as my fist impacted his jaw. As he was falling I whirled around, one of my forearm blades deploying. I thrust it through the locking mechanism on the patrol car door then ripped it open. 

I grabbed the cuffs the woman inside was bound by. “Don’t move yet.” I cut through the chain. “Run.”

She nodded and ran out across the street. The other officers noticed what had happened. Grey hair already had his gun leveled and was taking aim. I dashed. He fired. A moment later I lifted him into the air by his midsection, my blades erupting from his back. The crowd screamed and dispersed as the remaining officer was fumbling for his comm. I slid out of grey hair, withdrawing my blades and clocked the other officer across his face with a backhand. He spun and fell flat onto the concrete.

Scanning the crowd I noticed one of them was on their commlink. They could have been calling in what just happened and I wasn’t going to take a chance, I began a dead sprint down into the subway terminal and hopped over the turnstiles setting off their alarms. I pressed through the crowd of people waiting on the subway and onto the service pathway. I ran until I was sure I wasn’t being actively followed. Then used my secure line to contact Trix.

“Hey, uh,” I panted, “Trix, I need a map of the Subway system with service exits.”

I heard her slap her forehead. “You what, Burnout?”

“Look, I had to.” I kept walking down the tunnel.

She hissed. “Had to what?”

I clicked my tongue. “There’s a dead Star near the subway and I’m getting blamed for it, so I’m in the service tunnels and could really use a map.” 

“Sure, not your fault. Gimme a minute.” I heard the click and clatter of her deck. “Got one, be careful, okay?”

“I’ll be fine, probably just a little late, tell Jesse for me.” My commlink buzzed.

“Fine, but this mess better not show up at our doorstep.”

“It won’t, no one got a good look at me.” I rubbed my chin.

“Be safe, Burnout.” 

“I’ll be fine.”  I hung up and opened the map Trix had sent me.

The plan was to get out relatively quickly before any Lone Star drones swept the subway system. According to the map there was an exit a couple miles away that let out near Jing-sheng’s place. 

I bit my thumb, there was still blood on it. “That should be far enough.”

I took note of the number assigned to that exit and began to run along the service walkway. The tunnel was dark and the only illumination was from dim orange runner lights. As I was running, the tunnel began to shake. A train was coming through. I sprinted to a nearby alcove and tried to press myself into a corner. The train roared by and as it passed I could feel its wake trying to pull me towards the tracks, it would have succeeded if not for the hand that pulled me back.

I whirled around and deployed my arm blades.”Who the-” I saw only darkness. “Where are you?!” 

My thermal vision kicked on. There was something in the darkness, barely any heat. It held up a hand and spoke in a raspy, almost wet sounding voice.

“Hold on! My name is Trevor, please don't kill me!”

I lowered one blade and turned on my commlink light while switching back to standard vision. In front of me was a man in dirty clothing. His skin was mottled and had blisters in some places. I examined his face; elongated teeth, a clouded eye and one clearly artificial one. This man was a Ghoul, a victim of the Krieger Strain of the Human Meta-Human Vampiric Virus (HMHVV). 

He put both hands up in front of himself. “I’m not feral! I just didn’t want to see someone get sucked under the train.” 

I kept my eyes locked on his hands and mouth. “Do you have a food source? Where are you getting it, Trevor?”

Those with HMHVV need to consume flesh or blood in most cases. If Trevor was to be trusted I needed to make sure I wasn’t about to be a meal. 

“There’s a street doc topside that gets me food.” His eyes cast downward and his shoulders slumped.

I kept my blades level with him. “You haven’t been a ghoul long, have you?” 

Trevor shook his head. “No, been about a year.” He shifted uncomfortably. “Can you please lower those?”

“I’m going to trust you here, Trevor. Please don’t make me regret it.” I withdrew my blades back into my forearms.

He sighed. “Thank you, I know you have no reason to trust me.” He shifted slightly and grabbed his arm. “What are you doing down here…?”

“Burnout. It’s better you don’t know exactly why I’m down here.” 

Trevor pointed at my torso. “The blood is a pretty big clue.” 

I inhaled sharply. “I uh, forgot about that.”

Trevor suddenly looked to his left. “Get in here!”

He pulled me into the crack in the wall he was standing in. “Whoa, hey!” I shouted.

Trevor tugged on my arm and led me deeper away from the subway tunnel. “Drone engines coming, hurry up.”

He was right, I could hear them too as they got closer. I stopped resisting and followed him deeper through a series of fractures in the concrete and  into a small room that was furnished with a couple chairs and a dirty mattress. It was lit by a single hanging bulb spliced into the city powerlines. On almost every wall were sketches of Seattle and random people. There was another doorway that led towards a darkened room. 

Trevor waved an arm across the room. “So this is where I’ve lived since shortly after...” He gestured to his body. “This happened.”

“You noticed the drones before I did, they sweep the subways often?” I sat on one of the chairs.

“Not often, usually only when Lone Star or another group is looking for someone.” His artificial eye fixated on my bloody clothing.

“Yea, sorry about that.” I pointed to one of the sketches. “You do a lot of art? It's quite good.”

Trevor sat down on his mattress and propped himself against the wall. “I do, thanks and it’s no problem to have you here, really.” He pulled his legs up and placed his forehead against his knees. “It gets lonely.”

It definitely would, being a ghoul meant you were an outcast even by outcast standards. That’s without mentioning the ever looming threat of going feral… or being assumed feral and shot on sight. Memory of a job in the Redmond Barrens flashed through my mind accompanied by the roar of the van’s mounted gun and Dust screaming for me to get back inside. Ferals poured out of that flop house like a damn tide. The memory fell away as I looked back to Trevor in his dirty clothes, surrounded by sketches of a world he used to be a part of. 

I stood up then sat down next to him. “Hey, mind telling me about some of them?”

He looked up and over to me. “Sure. I can do that. Any of them catch your eye?”

I looked over the sketches and their varied subjects. Humans and Metahumans engaged in daily activities, rain falling on downtown and a few portrait style sketches. I began to notice a few repeating subjects; a man in a heavy coat and a woman with kind, but tired eyes. 

I pointed at the picture of the woman. “Can you tell me about that one?”

“That’s my mom.” He pulled his knees closer.

“Hey, I’m-” I reached out towards him.

“No, no. It’s alright.” Trevor swallowed hard. “And you shouldn’t touch me, I don’t want you getting infected.” I withdrew my hand. “She never saw me like this…” He looked at his hand. “Mom died a few years ago, back when the Prop 23 killings and riots happened. She worked under Attorney Beatty.”

I was mostly chipped out back then, but I got the summary from Trix after she got me off the BTLs. Back in 2074 David Beatty and his staff as well as several others pushing for the Ork Underground to be recognized as a full district were killed and the Underground itself was attacked with sections of it being destroyed. 

“I’m sorry, Trevor.” 

“There’s not much to be done about it.” He sighed. “When I first started to turn I was terrified. Ghouls were always just monsters to me, mindless things. My friend up topside, the street doc, he told me that supposedly the more active you keep your mind the less likely or longer it takes to go feral.” He swept his hand over the drawings. “This is one of the ways I keep myself from slipping and if I was to start to decline I wanted to at least remember her face.”

“I don’t know what to say.” 

He looked over to me. “You don’t have to say anything, just having another person down here is nice. Actually, why don’t you tell me about yourself, Burnout?”

My gaze rose up and fixed the bulb hanging from the ceiling. “I guess I owe you that.” I blew out a breath that puffed my cheeks. “I was a chiphead for years. Started just into high school on cal-hots and by the time I would have graduated I was on full blown BTLs.”

Trevor whistled as best his lips would let him. “That’s... a few college friends ended up like that. I can see why you chose the name Burnout. So, how’d you get out?” 

I bit my lip. “Bad memories. I was in a squat chipped outta my mind when it was hit by a pair of shadowrunners. One of them, an elf, pulled me out. I remember I clawed at her, begging her to let me go back, I told her I hated it here. The other runner, a troll, leveled a shotgun at me. She told me to back off.” 

I took a moment to breathe. 

“I pushed myself away from the gun barrel and into a corner. The elf, Trix, told her partner to calm down. She said I was just another victim and not to hurt me. Trix knelt down and looked at me. My exact memories from then aren’t too reliable, but she told me I was emaciated and covered in filth. I remember her reaching a hand out, telling me she’d help me.”

Trevor spoke up. “So you run with the two of them now?”

“Yea, I do, I owe them both my life.”

I wasn’t being entirely honest with Trevor, I did have pretty clear memories of what happened back then. I was almost dead, all the others there were already gone, rotting. If it wasn’t for Trix and Dust… I’d have not made it much longer.

Trevor and I talked for a while longer about his drawing and some of the runs I’d been on. Once I was sure the drones had passed I stood up.

“Hey, Trevor what size do you wear?”

He got to his feet. “I think I’m a large? Why?”

“I’m gonna try and swing back here with some fresh clothes for you. It’s the least I can do for you saving my ass back there.” I smiled at him.

“Hah, you really don’t have to.” He placed a hand behind his head.

I looked him straight in the eye. “I want to.” I heard a subway train roar down the tunnel. “I’ve got to get going, best of luck, Trevor!”

“You too, Burnout.”