Impulse Control

"Detective Dawson," she offered. "You might remember me, I had a hand in saving your life a few hours ago, before you drank my champagne and pissed in my bed."

"I didn't piss myself," Alenia protested, while also lifting up one of her legs to look down between them and make sure she had not in fact done so.

"That's because you're dehydrated," Dawson chided. "You didn't drink enough water, and you made it worse with the champagne."

"It was really good," the elf mumbled.

"I can't believe the things I put up with for cases sometimes."

"It's more than the case!" slurred Alenia.

"What?"

"I think youuu like me!" the elf exclaimed, grinning stupidly into the damp spot of the pillow. "The human likes the elffff! How orrrriginal!" She pursued her mockery by kissing the pillow several times in rapid fashion.

"Oh you're right," Dawson said, nodding, "What's not to like? When you're not melting your own skull for the price of three cups of soykaf you're passing out drunk and naked in a stranger's bed. You're a real catch."

Too inebriated to accept scolding, Alenia wriggled in the invaded bed. "So come catch me," she invited.

"I'd definitely catch something," Dawson said, turning away and heading back downstairs. After taking off her coat, hat and gun she filled Alenia's water glass back up and returned to the site of the elf's drunken conquest. The decker had almost fallen back to sleep and Dawson had to touch the shaved side of her head to get her eyes to open.

"Hey, drink this. You'll thank me later."

It took some physical coercion to get her lips on the glass but eventually Alenia had drained it. One belch was all she offered in thanks before her snoring resumed. Dawson retrieved a pillow from the as-yet clean side of what she had previously considered her bed and returned to the downstairs area couch. Sleep was easy to find after the night's events.

= = =

When she woke late the next morning it was to a message from Lone Star. Brandt had sent her a pair of reports about two other murders in the last month, one in Sacramento and the other in Bakersfield. Both were accountants, both had previously worked for a subsidiary of Azetechnology and both had been completely bloodless. Local investigations had turned up nothing since they'd also been a part of robberies in which illegal off-the-record materials were stolen. The reports didn't state what they were, but Brandt had annotated what he could find out: orichalcum.

Though she was a stone's throw from a mess, Dawson had to admit that at present Alenia was her only lead. Rising from the couch, she washed her face in the kitchen sink and started cooking. After setting the pans on the heat zones she went over to her stereo and let the shuffle feature pick the mood for the day.

"I hear you are singing a song from the past... I see no tears. I know that you know it may be the last, for many years."

As it always did, music calmed Dawson's mind and made it easier to think and reason out the problems in front of her. And it made it easier to cook, muscle memory taking over for the motions of flipping, stirring and shaking pans.

"You'd gamble or give anything to be in with, the better half... But how many friends must I have to begin with, to make you laugh?"

She stepped out into the hall and walked to the soykaf machine, retrieving two cups and returning to her apartment with them, sipping one as she did so. She set both on the counter and then took one of the two plates she'd prepared, loaded with soy-eggs, toast and real bacon.

"Will you still have a song to sing, when the razor boy comes and takes your fancy things away? Will you still be singing it on that cold and windy day...?"

At the top of the stairs she saw that Alenia had rolled onto her back in her sleep, legs spread wide. The snoring indicated she was still asleep, so Dawson quietly made her way to the side of the bed, holding the steaming plate in one hand and using the index finger of the other to ever-so-gently turn Alenia's head so that it faced the food.

It only took eleven seconds for Alenia's eyes to crack open and a groan to escape her mouth. "Foooood..."

She opened her mouth and tried to lick the toast but Dawson moved it out of her reach just a moment before. "Hey, come back here..." the elf groaned plaintively.

"If you want it," Dawson said, "You have to get out of my bed."

"No way," Alenia spat defiantly, turning her head back to the orientation it had been before. "It's my bed now, chummer. Should have joined me when you had the chance."

"There's no food in my bed," Dawson reminded her, slowly turning away and heading back for the stairs.

A drawn-out groan followed, and then noises of bouncing springs and sliding blankets.

"And put your clothes back on," Dawson added as she began the descent.

"But they're filthy!" came the complaint.

"So are you," Dawson retorted.

Several minutes later the two were seated at the low table. Alenia was displaying the worst manners Dawson had ever seen since Dawson herself at nineteen, gulping her soykaf as loudly as possible and eating the eggs with her hands. She didn't hesitate in swallowing the bacon nearly whole, chewing only to avoid choking.

"Where are you from?" Dawson asked evenly. Alenia didn't stop her elated feasting but eyed the detective warily.

"What's it to you?" she said back, though with far less venom than the first few times.

"I've never seen an elf so excited about bacon, even if it's real."

Licking her fingers, Alenia's melon-green eyes maintained contact with Dawson's cool grey ones. "If you must know," she said, "I'm from Redding, and not from when it was on the north side of the border. Not all elves have the luxury of being picky about their chow."

"I can see why someone in your position would join the Ancients," Dawson volunteered. Alenia regarded her suspiciously but not suspiciously enough to stop eating her food.

"What brought you to San Francisco?" Dawson asked. After yet another flattering low belch the decker deigned to reply.

"Gang came here to rebuild, find elves in need, put the hurt on the competition. It's been a while since the Japanacorp slugs pushed us out of San Fran but our colonel thinks it's time to recover the old glory."

"Green Lucifer," Dawson said. Alenia squinted in mild surprise.

"Yeah. You know your stuff, huh?"

"It is part of the job."

"Then you know what we're about," Alenia went on, setting down her plate and crossing her arms.

"Sure," Dawson said calmly. "Equality, prosperity, security. Same as... everyone else."

"No!" Alenia said suddenly, leaning forward and putting a finger in Dawson's left breast. The detective looked down at it briefly, then back up to her

"That's not what everyone else wants! Everyone else wants to be on top! They want to be above us! Equality isn't enough for them!"

Dawson had heard a lot of speeches like this before, from orks, trolls and of course no small number of humans, even when talking about other humans. She said the same thing she'd always said.

"So what's your solution? How would you fix things? Would you be on top and everyone else is equal below you?"

A faint blush spread over Alenia's face, even reaching her ears. She retracted her hand from Dawson's chest and crossed her arms, looking away and mumbling an evasive answer.

"Well maybe that wouldn't be so bad," she suggested. "It's not like we aren't qualified to run things."

"And then," Dawson said, closing the trap, "You could be the one deciding who gets double-crossed and left for dead."

"Ugh!" Alenia said, blushing hotter. "Are you gonna hit me over the head with that forever?"

"Just until it stops getting a reaction out of you," Dawson advised.

The way Alenia averted her gaze and chewed on her lip indicated that she was remembering that stretch of time where she was stuck in cyberspace waiting to die, nothing but a timer measuring her life in minutes before her heat sink finally exceeded its temperature rating and melted one side of her face.

As she always sought to do, Dawson turned this into a teachable moment.

"I know I'll never convince you to play it safe. I'm not convinced there even is such a thing as safety in the world we live in. But in the future, bring a friend. Even if you have to split the money, having someone you can trust beside you is the difference between life and death."

Without turning to face her, the elf mumbled back "Then why do you work alone?"

Dawson thought for just a moment and then sighed before answering. "Everyone I trust is either dead or doing something that makes more money."

She let the silence stretch and, as people tended to do when they were uncomfortable and felt as if they were under scrutiny, Alenia supplied more information.

"You ever been broke?" Alenia started. "I mean like, not a cred to your name, nothing in your pockets but your hands, nothing but your clothes and the deck on your back and even that's not really yours because your captain gave it to you to use?"

Dawson sat back in her chair and inclined her head slightly. "Yeah, I know what that's like," she said softly. "I was like that before I started shooting people for Knight Errant."

Fidgeting uncomfortably, Alenia continued defending her actions that led her to the apartment the previous night. "Any time the go-gang eats, it's like they're tossing a ball around. 'Who's gonna feed Hollowheart? Well I fed her last night, someone else ought to do it tonight.' When we go to look tough on the corner so the slammers or the kings don't get antsy, it's always 'Who's gonna give Hollowheart a gun?' Like they're afraid I'm gonna shoot someone's foot off or something."

"Have you?" Dawson asked.

Alenia looked at her sharply. "What, shot a gun?"

"Shot someone's foot off."

"If I had, it would have been on purpose!" It sounded as if Alenia was trying to convince herself more than anyone else.

"So you wanted money of your own," Dawson said, moving the focus back to the investigation. "To be less of a burden on your gang-mates. That's admirable, even if you sold yourself a little short."

"Short's gotta be better than nothing," the elf said, rubbing the hairy side of her head. "I got the credstick right before we split up but with my deck trashed I can't access it to put it on a new one. 1200 nuyen I can't even spend. Some shadowrunner I am."

"I might be able to help with that," Dawson said, rising from her chair and moving towards the kitchen. There she retrieved the box she'd left slightly out-of-sight. The look of confusion on Alenia's face turned to one of shock when she realized what it must be.

"No way, you actually got it?! A Fairlight Excalibur? I can't believe you-- Er, that is... yeah, of course, that's what I need to access my cloud storage on the matrix, you know." Her wolfish beaming smile remained in place as Dawson returned.

"My supplier didn't have an Excalibur," Dawson explained. "He said it's too expensive to keep in stock, nobody buys it." The elf's previously ecstatic face melted into a look of disappointment, like someone had just slapped the soykaf out of her hand seconds before the first sip.

"But he did have this," she said, setting the box down on the table beside the plates. "He said it's made by the same manufacturer."

Across the black box was printed in bold neon green colors: Fairlight Gungir.

Alenia's eyes were like saucers. "Whoa..." She wasted no time in tearing into the box, exposing the pristine next-generation Cyberdeck cast in green, black and brown. In addition to the keys of the conventional deck, there were spherical gel-pads on the left and right ends for manipulating virtual objects in cyberspace, a feature that promised to aid a user's ability to craft, mask and plot trajectories.

"This is so delta," the elf whispered, tracing her hands over the keys and squeezing the gel-pads with obvious relish. Dawson put the box with the visor in it down on the table beside the cyberdeck.

"Picked up this part too." Alenia's gaze shifted to it and, to Dawson's slight surprise, she blushed upon seeing it.

"You... you did... That's chill... Real chill. I uh... I hope it didn't break the credstick?"

"Justifiable expense in pursuit of suspects," the detective told her. "But I also got you this." She dropped the rolled-up safety cable Rossman had put together for her onto the table. Alenia reached out to touch it, squinting at the contraption on one end.

"What's this thing?" she said, staring at it suspiciously.

"It's a spring-loaded actuator with a thermostat in it. If your deck overheats from biofeedback, it'll push a grounded rod out against the side of the deck and eject the data cord."

"Wha..." The decker's brows knitted together as she tried to make sense of it. "That's... genius. Why haven't I ever heard about something like this before?"

Dawson shrugged. "I guess people are more concerned with putting the tech in their bodies than they are with taking it out."

Alenia's mouth formed into an excited smile again. "You're a lot smarter than you look," she said, "And you look pretty smart already." She looked up at Dawson and seemed to study her face for the first time.

"Hey, what's your name?"

"Detective Dawson is fine," she replied.

"Oh come on, you saved my life! You gotta let me know your name, your whole name. When I tell people about the human that kept me from getting geeked I want the street cred to go to the right one."

Dawson frowned but after a tolerant sigh surrendered the desired information. "Impulse. My first name is Impulse."

"Oh that's so chill," Alenia said, smiling wide enough to show her teeth. Elves always seemed to have perfect teeth, even on the street. "Why'd your parents call you that?"

"I was told they picked it because the urge to make me was the one thing they ever agreed on."

"You were told?" Alenia said, looking puzzled.

"Never met them myself," Dawson said. "They didn't want me. I was raised by my uncle."

"Oh." Alenia's face deepened in a blush borne of embarrassment. "I'm... sorry. Guess I should have minded my own business."

Dawson steered things back to progressing the case. "You've got a new deck, and a visor for it. What can you tell me about your Johnson, whoever paid you?"

"I could tell you plenty," Alenia said in a conspiratorial tone, "But I can do better faster. I got a picture of him when he gave me the credstick. Snapped it on my old visor and loaded it right to my matrix cloud."

"Did you want evidence to incriminate him, in case you got caught?"

"Yeah, sorta," Alenia admitted. "I also just thought he looked kinda ugly and wanted to make fun of him later with my friends."

Situating herself comfortably on the couch, Alenia powered on her new cyberdeck and connected herself to it through her datajack using the new heat-safety cord.

"Oh drek," she whispered, "This thing's got a hundred times the processor power of my old deck. I could hack the world with this thing."

"I'll settle for seeing that picture," Dawson said, standing behind the chair with her arms resting on its top.

Alenia nodded and picked up the visor, which unlike her old one didn't have any over-the-ear hooks or on-the-head band, instead featuring two small clear cups with visible circuitry on their interiors. These affixed to Alenia's temples without difficulty and apparently without discomfort; the visor, thin enough to be nearly weightless, was connected to them and could still be flipped up or down, but as Rossman had mentioned it looked to be translucent when not engaged.

With all the equipment on together, Dawson had to admit that Alenia looked the part of an expert decker. Only the side-shaved colored hair, awful shirt with the spray-painted on A and the too-big pants betrayed her nature as an Ancient go-ganger.

"Alright," Alenia said at last. Her hands began to tap along the keys of the cyberdeck as if she'd been using it her entire life rather than having just pulled it out of the box. The visor darkened, becoming a black stripe across her face that Dawson could see her own reflection in and which presumably showed something straight to the wearer's optic senses. "Bam, instant connection! This new hardware... so delta! The matrix is gonna be my playground."

"The picture," Dawson reminded her, trying her hardest to sound patient.

"Right, right," Alenia said. Her left hand went to the appropriate squeeze-sphere and manipulated something virtual. "Got it. Man, he's even uglier in this definition than he was in person." She paused and licked one corner of her mouth, then slowly asked a question.

"You... want to try on the visor?"

"No thanks," Dawson replied. "Just send it to my commpad. Det.Dawson@SanFranhub."

"Right," the elf said, with a peculiar note of disappointment. Dawson raised an eyebrow. Had she been hoping to share her new tech? Her hands moved again, just a few times, and the message arrived chime played on the commpad in the chair below. Dawson reached down to the pad and pulled it up into her hands, opening the picture.

To her genuine dismay, it was a face she recognized.

"I never heard anyone say his name," Alenia said, "So I don't know who he might be. I'd never seen him anywhere in our turf before.

"There's a good reason for that," Dawson said softly. The visor on Alenia's face lightened up again, showing her melon-green eyes as she peered at the detective.

"What do you mean?"

Dawson stared down at the face on the paid, a still image taken against the backdrop of the dingy, tiny apartment that she'd found Alenia in last night. The scorpion tail tattoo curling around his right eye was new, but everything else was the same.

"I know who this is," she explained. "His name is Jason Pickers. Did you know that the man who hired you is the street coordinator for the local chapter of the Humanis policlub?"

Alenia's hand flew up to her face, pushing the visor up into her hair. "What? Are you fragging joking? You know that drek-head?"

"Yeah," Dawson admitted. "Or at least I used to. We worked together for Knight Errant during the occupation years. By the time it was over he'd come to believe the imperials had the right idea about how to treat metahumans."

"How could someone think that?" Alenia asked incredulously, pulling the visor cups off and unjacking herself.

"Some orks from the Bloody Tusks killed one of our teammates, a man named Vic Reyes, a few days before the fighting ended. It had nothing to do with Vic being human, they just wanted his gear. But Pickers saw it as proof that the protectorate had been right all along."

The elf was briefly at a loss for words. "Well... You... You're not still friends with him, are you?"

Dawson closed the picture and let out a sigh. "Depends on your idea of friendship. The last time I saw him he was shooting at me from the window of a moving car. Though to be fair I was standing in front of sergeant Sokoth at the time so it's possible he was just shooting at the ork behind me."

"Can't believe it... A humanis slug right in front of me and I helped him do a job... why? Why would he recruit an elf?"

"Probably wanted a decker he could consider expendable," Dawson speculated. "No qualms about killing a metahuman, tying up a loose end."

It was clear Alenia felt even more like a fool for learning this. "Well... What are you going to do?"

Dawson tapped the top of the arm chair in contemplation. "I don't know where he is, but I can get Sokoth to put out an APB, see if a patrol car catches sight of him. Based on where they see him I can visit the Humanis hang-outs nearby and question their members until I track him down."

"They'll just tell you where he is?" Alenia asked suspiciously.

"My ears aren't pointed," Dawson reminded her, "And once word gets around that I'm looking for him, he'll probably contact me. Pickers might be full of anger but he isn't stupid. He probably stole that orichalcum but I highly doubt he killed that accountant, and he definitely wouldn't have had a reason to drain his blood. There's more going on here than I'm seeing."