"I'll be fine," he says, lighting his cig up and taking in a long, slow drag.

"Yes, you will, because I have field medical training." Ehonté scrubs the alcohol over a long gash in the forearm that doesn't have a cigarette.

"...did the glamor wear off already?" Ariel asks.

"No. I'm a mage. With a sideline in decking. You're a shaman, I'd guess?"

"Yes. With a sideline in ripping people's faces off." Snikt. Unsnikt.

Jauhung shudders delicately at the touch of alcohol. The pain of the wound had mostly dulled, and she sharpness of the alcohol brings it back to the forefront of his mind pleasantly. It doesn't hurt very much, it's just slightly titilating, but still, he'll take what he can get.

"How do you two know each other, anyway?" Ariel asks. "The Jauhung I knew might've ended up with runners, but this one got lobotomized or something."

Ehonté shrugs, swiping the blood-runes off Jauhung's face. "He... hasn't made himself known, exactly. But he makes interesting art, and has interesting talents, and has an interesting outlook on the world. Shadowrunners tend to make friends with interesting people."

He shrugs. "We just ran into each other at some point. I don't even remember." A drag and a puff. "I've been working for a guy in a triad. You run into people."

"You work with the triads and you said you couldn't fight?"

"He's more... what's that American thing... a Hooters girl. Eye candy, affiliated with the 'legal' side of the business. No gunplay."

"Oh my God, Jauhung in a Hooters top. It'd come down to his crotch!"

He lifts an eyebrow. "I'm thin, not short." Drag, puff, swig. "I'm not affiliated. I'm just a waiter."

"They're made to hang off, like, F-cups. You don't have to be short."

"You are sufficiently affiliated to know their boltholes," Ehonté points out. "Speaking of which: we cannot really stay here forever. How far would your Zyu Hoi stick his neck out for you, do you think?"

"Not far enough to get his head cut off. What'd Raymond get into?"

"Something big enough to involve someone placing an extremely deadly spy in my team almost a year ago, and break her cover now, for this. Big enough to initiate the debacle at Port 44. I don't know what exactly that is, but I don't think a man who's afraid of losing his head will be the anchor we need... which means we need someone who isn't. And who, despite that, can effectively protect us."

He sighs explosively. "Do you two have any candidates who fit the bill so I don't have to call mine. If one of you has an in with a pack of sewer-dwelling ghouls, now is the time to mention it."

"All my ghoulfriends are back in Seattle. Also, you got me all curious."

"I could probably find a pack of sewer-dwelling ghouls. Don't have one that'd already be willing to stick it out for me."

"Fantastic. Alright. Ugh. ...does this place have a Matrix jackpoint, if it does it's sufficiently hardened I can't see it. Which is good, if it exists."

"Yes," he says with a sigh. He takes one last swig of his bottle—empty now—and gets up to walk over to the kitchenette. He starts rapping his knuckles against the wall at about eye level from there in the direction of the sofa until he hears or feels something relevant.

He touches that part of the wall with the palm of the same hand he used to touch the fake dumbwaiter door outside. From this angle Ariel and Ehonté can see a faint blue shimmer run along the skin of his hand, and that part of the wall sinks into itself and slides away to the side to reveal a concealed jackpoint.

Ehonté inhales, then presses the tip of his finger to the point.

(It takes him a few minutes to reach a relay node he feels safe using, in a coffeeshop three miles away. From there, he leapfrogs to an office building for some furniture company, and a public library, and somebody's home network, and the coffeeshop again... eventually he's ready to call her.)

Ten seconds later, a video call opens up, projected onto the wall from Ehonté's optical implants.

A middle-aged-to-elderly woman is on the screen. She's sitting in a nicely upholstered chair. Her wallpaper is printed with black and red lung, and hung with exquisite, slightly yellowing calligraphy.

She has a cigarette holder. A porcelain cigarette holder.

She's definitely going for a certain vibe.

"覥," she says affectionately. "How is my favorite gutter rat? And who are your grimy friends?"

Oh. Her.

At least the recognition isn't mutual, and he'd rather it remain so. He grabs another bottle of something alcoholic, takes another drag of his cig, and walks over to the sofa to slump back onto it.