Free Shadowrun: Spells & Chrome by John Helfers Page A

corrective gene therapy or maybe a little brain surgery. If Doc was going to go back in Moses’ brain, maybe he could finesse something with the memory center or somesuch. Moses really wanted to remember his sister’s address.
    Taddeus had called Moses an aug-ad, an augmentation addict, and said he wouldn’t go on anymore runs with him until he got his head straightened out. Moses figured Tadd just didn’t understand about not being satisfied with being human. Moses was almost there … satisfied … but not quite. He just needed a few more adjustments. He had mood swings because wasn’t quite happy with things they way they were now. Sure, he was better-than-human, but he could stand to be a little bit better than simply better-than. Tadd was probably just pissed about the mood swings. He’d be back. Him and the others would come crawling to Moses for help on another dip into the shadows.
    Crawling, like the cherry-grape snake was crawling. Moses watched it slither to another puddle. He followed it.
    “Gotta go this direction anyway,” he said. “Up the hill.” His internal GPS told him he had two more blocks to go, all uphill. “And the Lord said unto Moses, Get thee up into this mount, and see the land which I have given unto the children of Israel.”
    Two more blocks up, around the corner, and then down an alley and he’d have plenty of nuyen for the hair and the swim fins and … what was he going to have fixed? His fang implants? Only one of those had snapped off.
    “Two more blocks for the nuyen.”
    The snake obliged him, slithering along as if a guide, though a few storefronts later it changed color, turning yellow now, and then green. When it split in two and turned sky blue, Moses realized it wasn’t the same snake, and it wasn’t nearly as pretty. He’d go back and find the cherry-grape one later, after he scored his nuyen.
    One more block. “Just one more, and what—”
    Just short of the next corner Moses saw the rude troll who’d called him a vatjob. He was leaning over a human woman sporting rabbit ears and a fox tail, vulching her, maybe hitting her up for drugs or nuyen or … .
    “Oh, it’s the vatjob.” The troll turned to face Moses and stuck out his jaw to look menacing. He had a submachinegun in his right hand, barrel pointed at the pavement. The other passersby on the sidewalk gave him a wide berth. “Mind your own business. Bit-brain bakebrain whackjob nutjob vatjob.” The twin blue snakes cavorted around the troll’s big sandaled feet.
    Moses cleared his throat: “And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting a human … er Hebrew, one of his brethren. Exodus two-eleven.”
    “Definitely a nutjob vatjob.” A line of drool spilled over the troll’s lower lip and extended to the pavement, striking the head of one of the blue snakes and sending Moses’ temper flaring. “This is between me and Foxy Foxtail, so move it.” The troll raised the gun in threat.
    “And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand. Exodus two-twelve.”
    “What are you talking about you—”
    “King James Version.” Moses’ wired reflexes kicked in and he bent and pulled a combat knife from a sheath in his boot and hurled it using all the strength in his synthetic cyberarm. Should have been wearing body armor, Moses thought as the troll dropped to his knees. The troll shouldn’t have relied only on a secure long coat that he hadn’t even bothered to button. Moses threw a second knife from the other boot, finishing him.
    “And he killed it,” he quoted. “And Moses sprinkled the blood upon the altar round about. And he cut the ram … err, troll … into pieces; and Moses burnt the head, and the pieces and the fat. Leviticus eight-nineteen and twenty.”
    The fox-tailed human squealed and sprinted across the