Glyph

By S.Burns

Glyph

Born to unknown parents Glyph was dumped on the door of an Orphanage with no letter or information with regard to her age or identity. For the first few years of her life Glyph was kept in the orphanage and raised in a formal uncaring manner. She had been given the name Marie but she hated it and, even at the early age she was, decided that she wanted it changed. None of the people in the Orphanage, due to budget cuts and low staffing levels, we able to spend enough time with any of the children.

After being at the orphanage for 2 years Glyph was put onto the foster list awaiting a foster family to come forward and the following 6 months she was made to sit in with families and “act properly and well behaved” luckily Glyph was smart enough to be able to tell if a family were nice or not and for the first 12 months she was able to avoid being “selected”

By her 4th year in the Orphanage Glyph was asked to meet another family and by this time the whole process was becoming a nuisance rather than a hopeful endeavour. With reluctance Glyph stepped into the room with a young woman and a slightly older man. The woman was sitting across the table and the man next to her was holding her hand.

Glyph took one look at the two, ran across and threw her arms around the woman’s neck. It was a short lived interview, and after 30 minutes the woman who was named Jade agreed to adopt Glyph, the paper work was drawn up and the new family left the Orphanage. On the way back to the woman’s house Glyph just stared at Jade. She was beautiful and radiated something else, something she could not put her mind too.

Over the years Glyph learned a lot from Jade and her friends, especially one called Wisp, a soldier for hire that visited her mother on various occasions, normally at least once a week. Wisp was working with a group of mercenaries that Glyph heard called Shadow-runners.

Glyph learned that these Shadow-runners, people who operated outside of the “Law”, did various jobs for whoever asked and could do the job however they wanted as long as they got it done. Glyph could tell that her mother wanted to go with Wisp a lot of the time but was never able too, she helped from the back ground as opposed to being directly involved.

Over the years Wisp and Jade taught Glyph all she would need to know about how to sneak into and out of buildings, how to use blades and guns and Glyph’s foster Dad even helped out with the Weapons side of things, he was an ex weapons trainer for one of the Security companies a company called Red-samurai but left when he became disillusioned with their uncaring attitude towards both their clients and the general public, although Glyph always thought it was because of the conflicting interest between work and home.

By the age of 18 Glyph was old enough to forge a life of her own, she had built up a little shop customising weapons for Wisp and Jades friends but wanted more. She always felt that the only reason people used her shop was because Jade and Wisp asked them to go, not because of her ability and as such she told her mom she would be leaving and moving to San Francisco.

Jade and Wisp both knew people in San-Francisco and were happy that it was safe enough to let her go as she could be kept an eye on, even if it were not as close as they would like.

Within one year of arriving in San-Francisco Glyph had invested in a Facility. The facility was her only income and within it walls she spent her time customising weapons and Armour to any client’s wishes. She met a guy when he can in for a weapon and they hit it off immediately and within a few months he had moved in and was helping out in the shop.

Donnie was a Rigger, one from out of town originally but he had gotten involved in a garage not far from her facility that had been robbed so often that all of the staff were starting to arm themselves, needless to say he quit his job and learnt Glyphs trade and started to help out.

All was well for a number of months and the two were happy as could be, until a knock was heard at the door in the middle of the night. Glyph grabbed her Pistol and went to the door. Standing in the door was one of her customers, a shadowrunner that she had done some work for a number of times. The guy was beaten and was in a terrible state.

After talking to the guy, a runner by the name of Glitch, it turned out that Ares, a big Mega-corp has become pissed off that Glyph was customising their weapons and had threatened him if he used her services again he would “Dissapear” as normal the Corp had hired other runners to do the deed but one of the runners was a little outspoken and dropped the clanger that it was Ares who employed them. Glyph and Donnie patched him up as best they could and called his street doc a guy called Mal and had him picked up. Disturbed the two sat up for the night and wondered if any of their other customers had been “Roughed up”

Over the next could of days they heard from one of their other contacts although he was too scared to come and visit he told them some Ares goons had roughed him up and that he needed 12 stitches to his cheek, others just simply didn’t come back.

Two weeks after the initial report of threats to clients, Glyph and Donnie were working in the facility customising a heavy machine gun for a Security company vehicle, Glyph went to the Kitchen to get a drink for the two of them and heard a smash from the workshop. Running downstairs she saw flames billowing around her equipment and tools and Donnie unconscious on the floor. Running towards Donnie Glyph was hit in the head by something and blacked out.

When Glyph awoke she thought she was blind, initially she could not move and blackness was all she could see. After a few moments she was able to move enough to lift a huge piece of Aluminium sheeting off of her and get up. All around her were the remnants of a big fire, it appeared that the Aluminium sheet had acted as a heat shield and apart from a few minor burns she was largely unhurt.

After a few minutes with a muddled head Glyph remembered about Donnie and ran over to where she last saw him. As she reached the spot her stomach turned and she threw up. Donnie’s body lay where she had last seen it, charred and deformed. The gases in his stomach had expanded under the heat and his insides had ruptured out of his body blackening in the extreme heat.

Nothing was left of her facility and her Boyfriend had been killed. Glyph had found a piece of paper with her address on it and a phone number above it with the name Mr Johnson by the side of it. Phoning the number she got through to the secretary of an Ares executive and when she asked for mr Johnson she was told he was “unavailable”. Those bastards would pay. Anger started to build up inside her and she knew what must be done. It wasn’t like she could bring Donnie back and as she had no SIN (Jade had not re-applied for her after the crash of 2064 as she thought it was just another way to track people) so she had no insurance to re-build the facility.

One week after the incident Glyph was joined by her parents and Wisp. When they heard what had happened they moved down to the area to support her. They were not able to pay to re-build her facility but they would offer all that they had to help.

Glyph did not want them to put their lives on hold for her, she wanted to sort this out on her own, all that she requested was that if she needed help finding out any information that they would help her in that way. They agreed and were proud that glyph wanted to do this on her own.

Glyph cleared out the rubbish from the facility and arranged a funeral for Donnie spending some of her savings and vowed that she would keep the facility and build it back to how it was before remembering that he had said that he never wanted to leave her or the job behind.

Glyph then spent the rest of her savings on Cyberware. She had not been blessed as a mage or an Adept so she needed the edge in another way and she went for equipment she knew would help her. After weeks of recuperation she climbed into Donnie’s car put on her sunglasses and headed out, if she was to get back at Ares, she was going to need to have a team…..