File 003: Fathers and Daughters

I used to have this drinking buddy by the name of Quinn. If you were to look up the phrase "mean fragging troll" in the dictionary, you'd find a picture of Quinn with a beat up Ares Alpha slung over his shoulder. I met him in the Yucatan back in '62 when I was working as a liaison for Argus, right before the drek hit the fan. It's amazing what a couple weeks worth of facing down toxified jungle critters can do to further a new friendship, but I digress.

Turns out Quinn was a Seattle native, just like yours truly. So, we kept in touch after we both got back to the Sprawl. Quinn tried normal life for a bit, but it just didn't work out for him. Quinn went to the shadows. Fish gotta swim, and runners gotta run, I suppose.

The thing about Quinn, he was the consummate professional. You know that romanticized "shadowrunner's code" bulldrek you hear coming from the mouth of every fresh-faced conclave boy who hits the streets looking for adventure after slotting one too manysims? Quinn lived that to a T: Always honor your contracts. No wetwork. No making the runs personal. No emotional involvement with clients or members of your crew.

However, people's needs being what they are, Quinn broke one of his rules. He and a chica from his crew hooked up a few times, and went their seperate ways. Two ships passing in the night, that sort of thing.

Fast forward, two years. The chica shows up at Quinn's door with a little girl by her side. She says "This is Natalia, your daughter. Take her. I need to lie low for a while." Quinn had no real proof the girl was his daughter, but he was areall stand-up hombre, and didn't want this kid to get thrown to the proverbial wolves, so he took the kid.

As it turned out, "a little while" turned into a little over a year. Still no word from the mother, but that didn't really bother Quinn. He'd taken a liking to the father role. Unfortunately, his chosen profession wasn't exactly conductive to his new gig as full time breadwinner. So, like everyone in shadows eventually does, Quinn started looking for that last job; that final fat paycheck which would allow him to leave the life and give this little girl the chance she deserved.

The fates must have been smiling upon him, because such a job fell right into Quinn's lap. All he had to do was a little dirty work for The Star; help them muscle out some local competition, and that was that. Quinn pulled the job perfectly. He showed up, played the part of the mean nastytrogg and sent the marks running.

The Star was so impressed, they told Quinn they wanted him on their list of regular deniable assests. A retainer of sorts, with all the company perks inherent therein. Quinn jumped at the offer. He figured he could work the Star for a while, build up enoughnuyen to play the stay at home daddy, then pull a quick fade.

But things didn't work out like that. On his second job for them, Quinn saw something he didn't like. He never told me exactly what it was, but it had to be something really bad, because when they wanted to hire him out for a third job, he told Lone Star to go frag themselves.

The very next day, a Star SWAT team kicks down his door, whisks Natalia away and throws Quinn into lockup. Sometime over the night, a man in a suit lays it out real plain to Quinn: do the job and get the girl back. Quinn doesn't like it, but he agrees. What the hell would you do, if you were in the same situation?

Needless to say, he does the job. When the time comes to go pick up his daughter at the redezvous, Quinn finds nothing there but a courier. Before the messenger even says a word, Quinn knew the score, but let him say his piece anyway. Just as he thought, they were going to use his daughter to keep him on a short, obedient leash. Quinn was absolutelyfragging livid, and used the courier to deliver a message of his own. The kind only two hundred kilograms of royally pissed off, cybered, father troll can deliver. From what i hear, the doctors at the ER thought he was hit by a truck.

He was backed into a corner, and he broke another of his rules. He made things personal. I can only imagine the fire raging in his mind at that point, but he used it. He took it, and focused it; first into unbridled will, and then into action. And if Quinn were anything, it was a man of action.

He went to work immediately. He made connections, greased palms, and when he had to, he cracked skulls. Never question the efficiency of father, when his child's well being is at stake. A hair over a week later, Natalia's location was found. She was being held in a Star station house. On the books, she was being held there as a witness to a violent crime, or some other drek cover story.

As much as Quinn wanted to charge in alone, all guns blazing, he stayed smart. Suicide would hardly be productive when it came to getting his daughter back, right? So he comes to me, and I find him some well-armed, kind hearted souls willing to work pro-bono for a good cause, and they cooked up a plan to hit the station house.

The night before the job, Quinn pulls me aside and shoves a stack of envelopes in my hand. Real envelopes, mind you, with real handwritten letters inside. He tells me that should something happen to him, and he doesn't make it, he wants me to give each of these letters to Natalia as denoted by the event written on the front of the envelope: one on her sweet sixteen, one upon graduating high school, one for getting married, and one for her first child.

I was humbled. I've let friends down before, but this was one charge I was going to make god-fragging-damned sure i saw through.

I'll be honest, I spent the next twenty four hours on pins and needles waiting to hear from Quinn. Finally, he contacted me. There were some small snags on the job, but they improvised, got the girl and made it out in one piece. You might remember hearing something about a station house in Renton that got shot up by a bunch thrill gangers. Moderate property damage, several officers wounded, but no fatalities. Yeah, that was Quinn.

Anyway, that call was the last i heard anything from Quinn. He took his daughter and got the hell out of the 'plex before the Star could come down on him. By the time they rounded up a posse, he was probably halfway to CalFree.

I still have the letters Quinn wrote his daughter. I've never read them...it's none of my business, but at the same time, I just can't bring myself to throw them out. We live in a nasty, violent world. Too many times, good people come to bad ends. Too many times, people just seem to fall through the cracks into nothing. You hear so much about the bad, that you forget that a flower can still bloom in a pile of garbage, and that once in a while the good guys really do win.

When things get me down, when the drek piles high, when I feel like just giving up...I look at that stack of envelopes, and smile. I think of Quinn and Natalia, living the good life someplace where the air is clean, the sun shines, and the big bad sprawl is little more than a distant memory.