The neo-Goth club RoostHaus was jumping that evening. No wonder, since it was Retro Night; some Voodoo Dolly by Siouxsie was playing down by the dance floor. Everyone was in high spirits, at least for this type of crowd. Supernova stood out a little in here but her partner Tobias acted like a fish in home waters.

Bastard is way too good at this.* The sullen technomancer thought to herself. *Hope my sister ain't here...

Still, Nova could appreciate the club's Matrix metaphor. It had stunning vaulted Gothic ceilings and delightfully cliche haunted paintings to symbolize the entrance to associated nodes. Reflexively she started mentally poking around the datawaves...

"Hey Nova, focus will you?" Tobias hissed at her. "Jarrock just said he's got his spot at the bar. We're supposed to meet the Johnson near one of the stairs to the private loft rooms and I hear the Dread hates tardiness."

She rolled her eyes and sneered, "Oh switch off, Toby. His front is all rumor and bullshit I'm sure."

Tobias shot her a look but only said, "Just keep the temper to yourself this time around while I do the talking; this guy is really not someone you should fuck with. If we're gonna pull off this trick we need to do it flawlessly."

Suddenly Jarrock's harsh voice came through their encrypted 'link channel. "Shit. Guys, I thought you said he'd be alone this time?"

Tenebra scanned the club's interior from her vantage point on the outside stairs. They were supposed to meet these 'runners here and then talk business in one of the private meeting rooms upstairs. She was calm enough, but her mood was starting to feed off of her boss' terse and angry demeanor. Something was off, and the shadowrunners he was meeting tonight were late.

It was a blessing they were out here instead of in the dark club. As much as she liked the music, her sensitive changeling ears could barely take just how loud it was. Incidentally she got a lot of headaches in the sprawl.

"Finally they're here." He muttered in the subsonic spectrum that only their ears could pick up, "They better have a good goddamn reason for wasting my time."

She was too busy watching the crowd to look at him but she knew he was focusing on the shadowrunners approaching in her peripheral vision. She caught sight of someone over at the bar suddenly and tensed a little.

"I thought you said there were only going to be two of them?" She asked in the same audio frequency he used earlier. She hazarded a glance at her boss, the one that people on the streets dubbed "the Dread."

His face retained its contemptuous impassiveness, but she could almost feel him smiling under it. His right hand flexed behind his back.

"Expect the unexpected, Tenebra." He said savagely.

In my other galleries I named this same piece "Predators" but the file actually is the name above; I don't really know which is the better title, but I kinda like the ring to this one more. It describes a lot of the denizens and characters of the Shadowrun universe.  Plenty of flaws I know, but this also was my first crack at a proper cityscape in many years and it's the first time I've tried this tinting technique with colored pencils and graphite. Well, maybe not the first time, but definitely the first time I've used it to such an extent.

Done with various graphite pencils, Derwent Coloursoft colored pencils, Staedtler pigment liners and some white gel pen on off-white sketch paper. Oh, and a paper stump.

The character Tenebra belongs to myself, Rilvor aka "the Dread" belongs to my boyfriend. Shadowrun the tabletop RPG belongs to FASA Corporation, Catalyst Game Labs and Fantasy Productions.