Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Seventy-Seven - Drowning in Mediocrity

"So... we're just gonna try to turn it on and off again? Like a computer that's not working?

Yeah, no, I get that...

Okay, but this is the entire government, are we... okay, okay, fine."

--Overheard conversation from a White House staffer, 2034

***

"Ah, great. I love this kind of place. Really where I was looking forward to being today," I grumbled as the elevator lurched to a stop.

I was talking to one of the Velvet Wheel's security guys, sorta. It was 'sorta' because this was a one-sided conversation. I didn't give a crap what he taught, and he was keeping silent for the most part, like one of those people raised on a screen who didn't know how to small-talk.

That worked just fine for me. I had a lot to complain about and could use someone silent to just listen to my ranting, and he'd done that so far.

The elevator was nice and sleek and modern, which made the contrast as its doors opened all the worse. "Holy crap, what an absolute gorgeous view," I said. "Fuckin'... can't wait to explore every inch of this place. Really putting the best foot forward. Does it come with complimentary tetanus shots?"

"We're here," the guard said.

I stared at him for a moment, then sighed and stepped off. "Keep the elevator here," I said.

"Um. It's needed above," he said.

"Above can bend over and kiss my ass. Keep it here," I repeated.

The casino was obviously built onto one of the city's platform plates, which meant that underneath all the ritzy and glamorous exterior was... this. A confusing mess of tunnels and maintenance shafts, all of them darting off every which way.

I looked around, trying to peer down the branching corridors and figure out where to go. Then I heard the elevator doors starting to shut and spun around. The guard was staring wide-eyed, fingers stabbing at a button. The doors froze, then reopened. "Yeah, that's right," I muttered before turning around. "Myalis, where am I heading from here?"

Bybyt narrowed down the location of the suspect security readings to a few key locations, all of which draw a rough line right under the auditorium that the main portion of the event will be held at.

It took me a moment to remember who Bybyt was. That was Grasshopper's AI, wasn't it? I don't think I'd ever talked to them directly. They couldn't be all bad if they picked someone like Grasshopper to work with.

Like, if I wasn't me, I'd judge Myalis pretty negatively for picking me as her Vanguard or whatever. But Grasshopper was good people.

"Alright, let's get there?" I asked.

Certainly. Be advised that this is one of those situations where you might want to ask questions first.

I had to ponder that as Myalis threw up some instructions onto my Augs. I was kind of distracted as her 'guiding line' was less of a yellow beam to follow and looked more like little glowing paw prints on the ground leading away. The dumb bitch. It was cute, too, which only made it more frustrating. Nya could never know.

Huffing a little, I stomped after the little pawprints, the back of my mind still working out what Myalis meant.

The passages went from relatively clean, for all that they were dull, to... well, less clean. There were vents and boxy... it wasn't piping it was passages for air. What were those called? The ones people crawled through in b-rated action movies. Anyway, there were those above, alongside coolant pipes and... heatant pipes. Probably plumbing and shit like that too. Also, lots of wires, all in organized rows with the occasional bar-code label or piece of tape.

The place didn't feel lived-in, but it didn't feel new either. This was a space visited by the occasional underpaid maintenance crew, coming down to fix something bothering the schmucks above, but that was it.

Kinda liminal, or whatever.

Then I heard noises ahead that weren't clinking ventilation and thumping pipes. Talking, coming from at least two people. I felt my cybernetic ears adjust atop my head, the gain picking up so that I could make things out better and giving me a decent sense of where the talking was coming from.

Ah. So that's what Myalis meant.

I came around a corner to find a small gang hanging out. No, not gangster, maintenance workers. Or at least, people wearing the right kind of costume for it.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

There were seven of them, most in overalls and jumpsuits, with tool belts on their hips. A small android stood nearby. It looked like it could have been old BitchBot's older brother. All hard plastic and scuffed paint, with a rack welded onto it that held onto more tools and a basket on its back.

The group turned my way, and I saw eyes going wide and a few hands reaching for whatever was near and dangerous.

"Hey," I said, hands raising in surrender. "You guys maintenance?"

As it turned out, yeah, they were. The leader of the bunch, this gruff older guy with a bit of an Indian accent to him and the look of someone who'd been doing this kind of stuff for too long, came over and politely asked me if I was lost.

When I said that I was a Samurai looking for something down here, he got even more polite, but also nervous. I had to reassure him that there weren't any aliens around, and that he was safe. I was just down here because the security system was on the fritz and Important Samurai Business was happening above.

Somehow, only one of them had heard about the conclave, though maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. It probably didn't make the cut on Maintenance Man News Weekly or whatever they had in their media feeds.

When I asked them what they were here for, they stepped back and showed me.

I hadn't noticed, but there were two corpses on the ground just within this room with a large pipe running through it.

"Huh," I said. "Does that happen often?"

As it turned out... kinda? Like, it wasn't a weekly thing, but every so often they'd find a corpse down here.

The timing had me a little suspicious, of course, so I looked into it. The bodies were 'fresh' enough. I pushed one of them around so that I could grab a photo of his face. "Anyone we know?" I asked Myalis.

Kevin Miller and Imran 'Kneebreaker' Hakim. Both have records with New Montreal police forces. Minor altercations. Both linked to a small-time gang, the Ball Busters.

"Seriously?" I asked.

I crouched down, then flopped one of their jackets open. It was still wet and sticky. At least they hadn't been in a sewer out pipe. The guys had cheap overalls on, the sort someone working around biowaste might wear, but Kevin at least had some tools strapped to him.

I pulled one out and turned it this way and that. It looked like a detonator. "What's this detonator-looking thing?" I asked.

It's a detonator.

Well... yeah, okay.

"Hey, any of you guys notice any bombs around?" I asked the maintenance crew. There was a lot of looking at each other, and some sudden tension in the air. "I'll take that as a no?"

I stood, then carefully looked the detonator over. It looked a bit homemade. Some parts were 3D printed, I could see the little lines and such on the plastic, and the main... bits inside looked like they'd come from a phone or something. Basically, this shit was jury-rigged.

"Myalis," I started. "Think you could do a quick search on these two? Any enemies, friends, something that'll show that they weren't here to blow the place up?"

I'm afraid that I'm finding a lot of the opposite. Kevin here, especially, seemed like a very smart, resourceful, petty, and angry man. You should see some of his social media posts.

She flashed a few up on my augs, and just skimming through gave me an idea of the kind of dude Kevin was when he had a bit more of a pulse. His username was BallsDeepGirthDemon, and he spent a lot of time being a bitch online and complaining about some other gang that had stepped onto his turf.

It seems like Kevin hatched a plan to get revenge on some rivals. He was surprisingly proficient with technology. I suspect that if you look around here, you'll discover a few explosives tucked away.

"Any chance that they can only go off manually?" I asked.

Sure, there's a chance.

I grimaced. Yeah, not a risk we could take.

Now... how did these two morons end up dead?

I asked the maintenance guys, but they said that they'd found the bodies jammed up against a filter. They were messing with the water's flow around here, which set off a sensor to replace the filter, and then when one guy found the bodies, he'd called over two more, and then they called over some senior guys who called over even more hands.

What a mess.

But it was my mess, now.

***