Stray Cat Strut 3 E-Book

RavensDagger

• Herausgeber: Podium Publishing
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Stray Cat Strut
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 580

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

A wave of kidnappings leads cybernetic samurai Cat LeBlanc deep into the labyrinthine tunnels beneath the city in this action-packed cyberpunk adventure.   In the megacity of New Montreal, those with wealth and power live in towers high above the teeming masses struggling to get by day after day. When the poor and destitute vanish, the police can't be bothered to spend time and resources investigating. But Franny, a nun who isn't afraid to practice what her religion preaches, sets out to find the missing by confronting street gangs with nothing but a baseball bat . . . and a lot of pent-up frustration.   Afraid for Franny's safety, pyrotechnic nun-samurai Gomorrah recruits Catherine "Cat" LeBlanc to protect her zealous friend and get to the bottom of the mysterious mass disappearances. And get to the bottom is exactly what Cat must do when she discovers the gang known as the Sewer Dragons has been abducting people into their underworld.   Within the cavernous channels that spread below the entirety of the city, the Dragons have created their own society of towns and nations. Their bodies have been augmented to withstand the poisonous toxins of waste so they can work cleaning out sewers and ensuring New Montreal has fresh water. In return, the city authorities leave the Dragons alone.   But Cat isn't willing to sacrifice people, simply because they lack money, just to keep the plumbing on. And when she, Gomorrah, and Franny descend into the Dragons' lair, they'll uncover the horrific truth behind the kidnappings—and be led into battle with not only sewer-dwelling cyborgs but also the dirtiest of politicians . . .   The third volume of the hit LitRPG sci-fi series—with more than five million views on Royal Road—now available on Audible and wherever ebooks are sold!

Leseprobe

RAVENSDAGGER

To Brandon “Venom” Wade

for being there every day

and for bullying me to take breaks,

even if I still never did

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior written permission from Podium Publishing.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2023 by Edgar Malboeuf

Cover design by Edink

ISBN: 978-1-0394-1810-3

Published in 2023 by Podium Publishing, ULC

www.podiumaudio.com

CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter One

Bliss

Chapter Two

Because Being a BAMF Is Easier in Power Armor

Chapter Three

Taxi

Chapter Four

Below the City

Chapter Five

Rac

Chapter Six

Queen Takes Pawn

Chapter Seven

Knocking Over the Board

Chapter Eight

The Bar at the Bottom of the City

Chapter Nine

Halfstar

Chapter Ten

Tensions

Chapter Eleven

Playing with Gomorrah’s Franny

Chapter Twelve

STP-44 The Oasis

Chapter Thirteen

What Old People Say

Chapter Fourteen

Mally

Chapter Fifteen

The Cultures Beneath

Chapter Sixteen

Fun in the Washroom

Chapter Seventeen

Shit Bureaucracy

Chapter Eighteen

Flush Prime

Chapter Nineteen

Humanity Degraded

Chapter Twenty

Up Shit’s Creek

Chapter Twenty-One

Disposal

Chapter Twenty-Two

Piracy across the Shitty Seas

Chapter Twenty-Three

Surprise!

Chapter Twenty-Four

Ingenious

Chapter Twenty-Five

Sneaky Ghillie Lemon Squeezy

Chapter Twenty-Six

Bip Bap Bam

Chapter Twenty-Seven

A Good Job

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Stepping Up and Out

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The Po-po

Chapter Thirty

Bypass

Chapter Thirty-One

Saying Hello to the Good Doctor

Chapter Thirty-Two

The Doctor’s in the House

Chapter Thirty-Three

No Surrender

Chapter Thirty-Four

The Edge of the Sword

Chapter Thirty-Five

Void Terminus

Chapter Thirty-Six

Wrapping Shit Up

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Heading for Greener Pastures

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The Rat and the Hungry Tiger

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Meetingus Interruptus

Chapter Forty

Real Politics

Chapter Forty-One

Physical Comfort in the Presence of Another

Chapter Forty-Two

R&R

Chapter Forty-Three

Nothing but Cuddles

Chapter Forty-Four

Sword Talk

Chapter Forty-Five

Mall Day

Chapter Forty-Six

A Bit Fancy

Chapter Forty-Seven

In Which Lucy Does Politics

Chapter Forty-Eight

Family Matters

Chapter Forty-Nine

Peter

Chapter Fifty

Sans but Lucratif

Chapter Fifty-One

Community Feelings

Chapter Fifty-Two

Collar and Leash

Chapter Fifty-Three

The Gem

Chapter Fifty-Four

Moments

Chapter Fifty-Five

Dancing to the Music

Chapter Fifty-Six

Speaking Up

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Assassination

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Interrogation

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Popularity

Chapter Sixty

Emoting

Chapter Sixty-One

Introspection

Chapter Sixty-Two

Attempting Common Sense

Chapter Sixty-Three

A Very Nice and Civil Discussion

Chapter Sixty-Four

Trying Out That Stealth Stuff

Chapter Sixty-Five

Reckless

Chapter Sixty-Six

Return to Form

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Things Get Better

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Things Get Worse

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Nice

Epilogue

Preview: Stray Cat Strut 4

About the Author

PROLOGUE

I refused to sit in the back, out of principle if nothing else.

So, with my legs bunched up, feet digging into the cloth upholstery of the bench, and my arms crossed over my knees, I watched as New Montreal flew by.

The soldier next to me kept his mouth shut, eyes focused on the skies as he diligently obeyed every traffic law. That was probably because of the officer on the bench behind us. The lieutenant was in a bad mood; being seated in the back like a kid didn’t suit his sensibilities. He wasn’t saying anything, but I knew he’d shared a glare or two with the driver in the rearview.

Maybe it was the large mechanical cat sitting next to him, a helmet carefully held between teeth that could spit plasma.

I watched the neon glow of advertisement-covered buildings scroll by, the signs turned into blurry messes by the constant downpour across the windshield that the car’s wipers were only just managing to clear out.

The rain in New Montreal always left things with a rainbow sheen. And it was always raining.

I guess it made it a colorful city, in a way.

We crossed over a section of the city that was little more than slums. You could always tell. The ads there were brighter, if only because everything beneath them was so much darker.

We drove past those soon enough. The traffic always moved a bit faster above the shittier parts of the city, it seemed.

The hotel loomed tall above us some blocks later, and even with the driver keeping to the speed limit, we eventually turned into the large tunnel cutting its way through the entire building.

“Stop here,” I said when it became clear the driver intended to get in line and wait. “I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

The officer said some pleasant-sounding things that I didn’t listen to, and then I was out of the car and walking around it, pants flapping about my legs from the hot air pouring out from under the hoverpads. I went around and opened the back door, letting out my mecha-cat, who landed next to me with a click of metallic claws on whatever sort of concrete they were using for the landing zone.

I held back a yawn as I started toward the main entrance, which seemed somewhat calmer than usual. Still plenty of people moving in and out, but not as many as I’d seen before, and the valets looked just as done with everything as I felt.

After Gomorrah left me in Black Bear, I had to threaten the local mining corp, then sit down and pretend to care about some briefing put on by the military brass. Half of them were sitting in offices across the country, calling in their orders over webcams while I was stuck in some tent in the ass-end of nowhere.

I would have complained, but that would have made things take even longer than they did, and they at least tried to placate me with free food and a ride back home, especially after I briefed them on the nasty shit we’d encountered in the mines under the city.

My current goal was to find a nice, hot shower, and a nicer, hotter Lucy to share it with.

The valet by the door took one look at me, in my mud-and-bloodstained coat, frowned, and seemed to want to make trouble.

I fumbled around with my aug, the digital display hovering over my cybernetic eye twitching this way and that with a few stray thoughts until I found the tag I used to open my room door and sent it to him.

He opened the way with a bow. “Welcome back, ma’am,” he said. “Um.”

“Um?” I repeated, pausing by the door.

“No . . . animals allowed?”

I stared at him, then at the cybernetic tiger standing perfectly still at a pace behind me. “It’s a service animal,” I said. “The service it renders is killing people that annoy me. Want to see?”

“Uh” was his reply before I moved past him, the mecha-cat close on my heels.

I think a few of the people in the lobby were in a mood to test my patience, but something about my look dissuaded them. Maybe the new full-face helmet, shaped like the face of a growling cat, was giving them pause.

Or maybe it was all the alien blood and sh . . . stuff.

I desperately needed a shower.

My cat and I got in the elevator, and then it was up to the top. I was bouncing on the balls of my feet the entire ride. I was getting eager to arrive, to hug Lucy until she squeaked, and to annoy the kittens to make sure they were all right.

When the doors opened with a ding, I rushed over to the penthouse’s door, then knocked twice before barging in.

It was chaos.

Two of the kittens were rolling on the floor, screaming. Another was watching television at a volume that would render most deaf within the week.

Catkiller, the dog, was rubbing his ass across the carpet, and Junior was eating cereal with Katerine, both girls eating out of the same bowl with two spoons, a rifle partially disassembled on the table next to them.

“Cat? Cat!” came Lucy’s cheer a moment before she tried to run into my arms, then tripped over nothing and ended up stumbling into me.

I sighed, tension bleeding off me as I let the cat in and then closed the door with a heel. Home at last.

The peace wouldn’t last, but I’d take what I could when I could.

CHAPTER ONE

BLISS

There are seven megacities in North America. Cities so grand, so huge, that they’re impossible to map fully, with populations in the hundreds of millions, and with enough drama and waste produced in them every hour to drown anyone that goes looking for it.

There’s not a minute that passes where something terrible, and something just as magical, doesn’t happen.

Keep your eyes open, or you’ll miss out on all the fun.

—Three Swipes, 2037

“And then what?” Lucy asked.

She was tucked into my side, head heavy against my shoulder.

I had been enjoying that wonderful sensation of bare skin against bare skin, but then my arm fell asleep and all I could feel were tingles when Lucy played with my fingers.

My lips were also tingling, but in an entirely different, far more amusing way.

“Well, then I triggered the bombs. All of them at once. It was kinda cool. The whole tunnel caught on fire.”

She shifted a little, head tilting back to stare at me. “The tunnel you were in?”

“Well, uh, technically?”

“Did you do any research at all about the explosive you were using?” she asked. “Because I’ve just googled it, and that stuff is supposed to be dangerous.”

“It was. But mostly for the aliens.”

Lucy huffed. “Catherine,” she said. She never used my full name like that unless she was on the wrong side of miffed.

“What?”

“You’re . . . you’re a bit of an idiot.”

“Hey!” I said. I couldn’t help but chuckle. “I’m not an idiot. I’m, uh . . . inexperienced.”

“You’re going to blow yourself up,” Lucy said as she shifted, turning onto her side and wrapping an arm across my chest so that her face was resting just below mine. “You know, I can’t use you to satisfy my incredible lusts if you’re dead. I’ll have to settle for that nun friend of yours, and she looks all prudish.”

I snorted. “I’d pay to see that. I think Gomorrah would faint at the first sight of a bare leg.”

“I don’t want you dying, so that means you need to jam some smarts into that thick skull of yours.”

“Like some sort of education program?” I asked. “I think Myalis has something like that.”

“I was thinking more . . . school,” Lucy said.

“School.”

“Yes! I told you I want to go to some fancy school, get all educated and all that. That way I can get a fancy job and be rich.” She rose up, getting excited by the idea. Her leg dragged up mine and distracted me for a moment.

“Lucy, we’re already rich . . . rich-ish,” I said.

She flopped back down. “Boo! You’re no fun. You just want me as some sort of trophy wife.”

I laughed. “That would be hilarious. Can you imagine yourself meeting some fancy CEO types and trying to snob it up?”

She giggled. “Bet I could manage better than you. You’d punch someone.”

“Hey! The rumors about my violent nature are heavily exaggerated.” I leaned down and buried my nose in her hair, then relaxed there for a moment. “Do you really want to go to some fancy school?”

“Only if you come with me.”

“I have samurai stuff to do,” I said.

She snorted. “Oh yes, because the poor teachers will be so eager to scold you when you leave to save the planet for an afternoon.”

I considered it for a while. “All right.” If it made Lucy happy. And . . . yeah, I was a bit of a dumbass sometimes. So more thinking couldn’t hurt any. “But only if it’s one of those schools with a fancy uniform. With, like, skirts.”

“You hate skirts,” she said.

“I’m not going to be the one wearing the uniform.”

Lucy laughed. “But what if we want to do some role—what is it?”

I frowned up at the ceiling as the augs in my eyes went off. I had an incoming call, and somehow it was marked urgent. With Myalis around, I figured this wasn’t some telemarketer calling me about the urgent need to insure my nonexistent car with their extended warranty.

Gomorrah’s name hovered over the call’s number. “Gomorrah?” I asked aloud as I answered.

Lucy perked up, then glanced to the side where a fancy digital clock was reading the time as . . . a bit past midnight. If Lucy hadn’t been keeping me up with fun, I would have been long asleep already.

“Cat?” Gomorrah replied, turning it into a question.

“What’s up?” I asked. My arm finally freed from Lucy’s weight, I started to run my fingers through Lucy’s hair, scratching at her scalp in a way that had her falling back down onto me like a big bony cat.

I heard Gomorrah breathe, then pause. I had the impression she was rubbing her face. “This is . . . are you awake?”

“I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”

“I mean, I don’t want to . . . screw it. I need help?”

“You turned that into a question,” I pointed out. Bending down, I gave Lucy a kiss on the head, then started to squirm my way to the edge of the bed. There was a lot of bed to squirm across. “Okay, what’s up?”

“This is embarrassing,” Gomorrah said.

“You just interrupted my postcoital bliss; trust me, the last thing I’m worried about is how embarrassed you are. What happened? Did someone fail to convert to whatever you’re preaching? Did you stumble into atheism? Start a cult by accident?”

“Cat,” she said.

I sobered up. “All right. Tell me about it.”

“It’s a long story.”

“Do you need my emotional help or, like, my physical help? Do you want Lucy instead? She’s better at feelings and shit.” I fell back, legs over the edge, and landed with my head on Lucy’s stomach. She coughed, then wiggled herself to be more comfortable and started to play with my mechanical ears.

“I think physical? Or maybe I just need advice. My friend’s in trouble.”

“What sort?” I asked.

“She . . . she has a habit of sneaking out of the convent and picking fights with troublesome people. Drug dealers near schools, pimps that try to recruit in the wrong places. She takes the whole ‘fear of God’ thing into her own hands.”

“Sounds like a great person,” I said. I’d heard of vigilantes and the like before. They were nearly always vilified by the corps and the news—unless some corp was trying to look hip by siding with the “rebels”—and what they did varied, but usually beating up the worst sort of people and blowing up the homes of some bureaucrats was to be applauded.

Gomorrah shifted on the other side. “She left sometime today. Didn’t tell any of the sisters where she was going, and Atyacus can’t track her. Her augs are offline.”

I sat up straighter. “Oh. You’re going around looking for her?” I asked.

“That’s what I was doing,” she said, obviously frustrated. “She’s not at any of the places she usually hides in. None of her friends know, at least those I was able to get in contact with. Well, they said they didn’t know. I scared one of them into spilling the beans.”

“What’s she doing?”

“She’s attacking a gang, a bunch of idiots that call themselves the Sewer Dragons. They’re based in the lower levels, usually just a bunch of jumped-up nobodies, but they started kidnapping people around the edges of the incursion zone. I think they took someone Franny knew.”

“Okay, wait. Two things. First, Sewer Dragons? Really?”

“They live in the sewers. It’s not as stupid as it sounds.”

I snorted. “Sounds terrifically stupid to me. Okay, second, Franny?”

“That’s her name,” Gomorrah confirmed.

I had a mental image of a sixty-something woman with a crop and attitude.

I shook my head and got up, then started looking for some clothes. “So you need my help?”

“I can find her,” she said with conviction. “I just don’t know if I can find her before she gets herself killed. And I’m tired; I’ve been at it ever since Black Bear.”

“Hey, hey, it’s all right,” I said. “I’m on my way, okay? We’ll find your . . . whatever she is to you, and then you can scold her or whatever it is you nuns do behind closed doors. Quick in and out, it won’t take more than twenty minutes.”

“Thank you. I’ll have Atyacus send Myalis my geo-location. Text me if you get lost. It’s a mess down here.”

“All right.”

The line went dead, and I sighed as I bent over double, picked up my pants off the floor, then tossed them to the side. They were nasty.

“Heading out already?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah. Gomorrah’s . . . Franny, whoever that is, is in trouble, and she needs help saving her. I . . . sorry?”

Lucy rolled around on the bed until she was facing me. She also pulled some covers around, turning herself into a cocoon with just her head poking out. “Don’t be sorry. I’m not some bitch that’ll whine when her girlfriend needs to go save the world again.”

“Not the world, just some girl.”

“Oh, in that case, I’m going to bitch endlessly,” she said.

“All right, now help me find something to wear.”

“We’re buying clothes?” Lucy asked. She was suddenly out of bed. “Myalis! We’re buying shit, come on!”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I muttered, and then I laughed as Lucy grabbed on to me, and we both went crashing back onto the bed.

It was going to be hard getting to Gomorrah in anything like a hurry.

CHAPTER TWO

BECAUSE BEING A BAMF IS EASIER IN POWER ARMOR

Spacesuits evolved surprisingly slowly after their inception. For a long time, the same suits that were designed for the Apollo missions were being used by astronauts onboard humanity’s fledgling space stations.

It wasn’t until interest in space travel—and, more importantly, space defense—grew that the spacesuits started to evolve and change quite rapidly.

As with many other technologies originally developed for space exploration, this eventually meant that people on Earth had access to new technologies.

Of course, some military asshole had to weaponize our power armor!

—A Rant About Space Tech, WriteIt forums, 2026

“All right,” I said. “We need a bunch of things for the new place, once we move over. And a bit of cash wouldn’t hurt to pay for, like, contractors and such. Also, I do want to get to Gomorrah sooner rather than later.”

Lucy nodded. “And none of those excuses will work to stop me from shopping,” she said.

I sighed. “Damn. Fine. Myalis, want to get one of the Dumbasses over? We could probably use the projector.”

Certainly. One of them is on the way. You might want to open the door, though.

I bounced off the bed and opened the door a crack, then shut it when one of my little drones scuttled in on all fours and installed itself in the middle of the room. “All right, I’m going to put my armor on,” I said.

“Your armor wasn’t enough,” Lucy said.

“What? It was plenty!” I protested as I bent down and picked up the belt and neck pieces of my under armor. As soon as they were on, the armor itself started to melt onto me, connecting itself together and hardening over my important bits.

“Cat, your back has a bunch of blue splotches on it, and your arms, and your legs.”

I shrugged. “I got tossed around a bit. The armor did a lot to help.”

Your Mark IV TIGER-B armor did prevent you from dying. Some of the impacts you sustained would have been lethal otherwise. Not to mention its ability to protect your skin from all the acids in the air.

“See,” I said.

“You didn’t mention acids in the air!” Lucy said.

“I, uh, forgot?” Maybe that explained why my pants had melted a bit. They were just normal cargo pants.

Lucy rolled her eyes. “Proper armor,” she said. “Like your new helmet.” She pointed to where my new helmet was sitting on the floor. It was a nice piece, shaped like a cybernetic tiger of sorts, teeth barred and eyes set in a frown. I didn’t know what it was made of, but it was tough, airtight, had its own air purification thing going on and a bottle of oxygen for when things got rough.

“I . . . guess?” I tried. I was well aware of time ticking by. “Okay, um, Gomorrah had this thing with modular armor. It was actually kind of cool.”

“Then get something like that,” Lucy said.

I nodded. “Right, right.”

“And when you come back, we can shop some more, for other things you need. Your new arm is a first-tier one from your Sun Watcher catalog, and you have the second tier unlocked there. You could get something way better.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Myalis is a gossip. She texts a lot.”

I turned and glared at the Dumbass drone since I couldn’t exactly glare at Myalis when she was in my head. “Really?”

“Would you rather I not tell Lucy how you are? She gets worried,” the AI said. “It’s healthier for your relationship that she knows.”

“And she can help you bully me into buying stuff.”

“That too,” Myalis admitted.

Lucy giggled at my distress. “We win!” she declared. “Now buy cool sexy armor!”

I shook my head but gave in to the inevitable. Lucy wanted to see new toys, but she did also want me to stay alive, so there was that. “Okay, fine. Myalis, can I do the modular armor thing?”

“You could. It would require a new catalog, but combined with your second-tier Sun Watcher Technologies, you could purchase some fairly impressive gear. Though it would mean discarding some of your equipment.”

I looked at the pile of gear in the corner. I had my auto-reloading underarm holsters, one with my Claw, another with my Trench Maker. And my back-mounted guns, with the plasma cat-tail and all.

My coat was kind of awesome, but the cloak was a bit much. It was unwieldy. And in terms of weaponry, my Icarus was nice, but my Whisper was a tiny bit clunky.

“All right,” I said. “Get me a modular gear catalog.”

“Consider it done!”

Class I Modular Equipment Unlocked!

Points Reduced from . . . 12,471 to . . . 12,371

An expensive catalog, but not much compared to what I had.

“Okay, so, armor. I want . . . uh.”

“It needs to look cool,” Lucy said.

“Yeah, obviously,” I replied. “It needs to be stealthy. Silent, no smells, invisibility too. I’m tired of being partially invisible. I bet there are other senses we can mess with.”

“A high priority for stealth. Noted,” Myalis said.

Lucy bounced. “It needs to be tough! But not something like a walking tank. Those are cool, but they’re not sexy cool.”

I laughed. “Yeah, that works for me. Back-mounted weapons wouldn’t be bad either. I’ve gotten used to having those.”

“I think I have something that would fit,” Myalis said. “Though it would come with a few compromises. The Lion’s Mane, Mark XII. It’s an expensive platform, but it should cover most of your bases.”

Dumbass shifted, and soon an image was projected above it. The armor was pretty much what I imagined when thinking about stealthy cybernetic armor. Plates covered everything, with some sort of weave between them and glowing lines in between. The legs had a set of curved metal pieces at the back that joined up under the heel.

“Is that a boob-plate?” Lucy asked the pertinent question.

The way the chest was shaped did hint at . . . some . . . chest. It wasn’t as egregious as some armor I’d seen, though. The way the abs were shaped was neat too.

“The armor is meant to be worn over an under armor like the one you already have. It can turn entirely invisible, has jump assists, and servos around every joint. Each section is hermetically sealed.”

The image spun around so that we were looking at the back, which unfolded.

“There is room for small gun emplacements in the upper back. Or you might wish to install jump-jets. The amount of room is limited, which reduces the space for weapons and equipment. The plates themselves are reactive armor over a graphene weave. The armor is heavy; you might need to accustom yourself to the weight, even if the powered parts of the armor will make movement feel relatively natural.”

“Neat,” I said. “And bits can be replaced piecemeal?”

“Indeed! The full set costs nine hundred points.”

I winced.

“That’s not much if it means you get to live,” Lucy said.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “Anything better out there, Myalis?”

“Plainly put, yes, but the price would either be significantly higher, would require better tiers than you currently have, or would need different compromises. Larger armor would be safer but would limit your mobility and increase your mass.”

“What kind of upgrades can it take?” I asked.

“I would suggest back-mounted weapons, seeing as how you enjoy those.” The armor in the image spun and the ribs and chest unfolded. “There is room for multiple smaller systems. A nanite self-repair system, injectors for adrenals and an exterior healing system, maintenance subsystems, communication suites, more weapons . . .”

“Nice,” I said. “Okay, get it.”

“Wonderful!”

“That was fun!” Lucy cheered. “I was afraid I’d need to toss a ball of yarn down while Myalis and I talked about things.”

“Hey!”

New Purchase: The Lion’s Mane, MARK XII

Points Reduced from . . . 12,371 to . . . 11,471

The armor appeared standing in the center of the room, arms crossed and shoulders set. If it didn’t lack a head, I might have thought someone was there. It had a tail behind it, because of course it did, but otherwise it was pretty un-catlike for something Myalis had suggested. Though there was the word “STRAY” stenciled on one pauldron and “CAT” on the other.

I walked over to it, then blinked. My nose came up to its shoulder. Sure, I wasn’t wearing shoes, but still. “Tall,” I said.

The armor unfolded, plates shifting aside then opening up to reveal an interior that would have a claustrophobe sweating.

“Okay, then,” I said as I gingerly stepped in. It was only when I was awkwardly pressing myself into it that the armor closed up around me. My augs tingled, then I felt as if I had been dunked into cold water for a moment. I gasped.

“Are you okay?” Lucy asked.

“Oh, yeah, just . . .” I snapped the fingers on the glove of my left hand, and felt it. “Oh, that’s messed up. There’s some tactile thing going on.”

“Really?” Lucy asked.

She got up, tugging a blanket around herself, then reached out a hand and grabbed the armor by the breast. She squeezed. “Did you feel that?”

I felt my cheeks warming just a bit. “Uh, yeah.”

“Sensation levels can be tweaked. It shouldn’t allow you to feel pain, but it is sensitive enough to feel changes in temperature.”

“What about pleasure?” Lucy asked.

“That . . . that isn’t part of the original package, but there may be modules for that sort of thing,” Myalis admitted. The AI sounded reluctant there.

“Okay, so . . . put a pin on that one,” I said. “Weapons, real fast, then Gomorrah. I don’t want to be late, all right?”

“Sure thing!” Lucy said. “We can explore all the options later.”

CHAPTER THREE

TAXI

The closer you are to ground level, the poorer you’re likely to be.

It’s the way it is, you know? Shit’s dragged down, and down here is where it stops.

—Quote from a vagrant, Chicago Megacity Complex Four, 2039

“Guns!” I cheered.

“Guns!” Lucy cheered right back.

“The ability of humans to be amused by anything that can make a projectile move fast is fascinating,” Myalis said.

“Oh, come on, don’t tell me you’re not keen on weapons and the like, not with the amount you have available.”

“Oh no, don’t misunderstand. The Protectors are also keenly interested in weaponry in all its forms, but more from the viewpoint of someone who wishes to have the most effective tool at their disposal at any given time.”

“That just sounds like an excuse to compare cannon sizes to me,” I said. “Speaking of: modular guns, what do you have?”

“There are two slots on the back of your armor, over your shoulder blades. They are relatively small.”

I shifted my shoulders around, the armor moving languidly along with the motion. No satisfying servo sounds either, which kinda sucked but made sense if the suit was supposed to be stealthy. “I need something with a bit more kick than my last shoulder-mounted guns. The railgun was all right, but the plasma casters were too bright, and they didn’t have enough oomph to them.”

“Ah yes, more oomph,” Myalis agreed. “You seemed to enjoy the railgun. Perhaps two smaller rails, designed to fire silent rounds. The overall rate of fire would be lower, but each shot should mean a dead opponent as long as you’re not fighting Antithesis that are too armored.”

“Railguns use ammo, right?” Lucy asked. “Maybe we can use the fabricator to make you some! Save some points for later.”

I nodded. “Genius. Yeah, two railguns, then. I liked the last one, it made things dead in a way that I liked.”

“Might I suggest a railgun catalog, then? Your options are otherwise limited.”

I nodded. “A cheaper catalog, maybe?”

“I think this should do!”

Class I Subsonic Rail Weaponry

Points Reduced from . . . 11,471 to . . . 11,401

“And two railguns.”

New Purchase: Class I Stealthed Micro Rail Launcher (two units)

Points Reduced from . . . 11,401 to . . . 11,301

“That wasn’t expensive,” I said as two boxes appeared. I opened them to reveal . . . a mess of rods and pipes and little servos, all next to a sharplooking gun painted a deep black.

“Lucy, could you lend Catherine your hands?” Myalis asked.

“Oh, I’d love to insert something into Cat’s back,” Lucy said.

I shook my head and turned while dropping carefully to one knee. My shoulder panel opened, and Lucy fiddled with the railgun for a moment before it slid into place. Like putting a square peg in a square hole.

Once both were in and connected to my augs, I had them deployed.

They weren’t as imposing as my last railgun, but maybe that was for the best. They were certainly a lot sleeker, and they sat just over my shoulders when deployed. Also, they glowed pink from within, which was a plus.

“Nice!” I said, “Okay, we just wasted like, ten minutes, easy. I need to get going. Kiss?”

Lucy got onto her tiptoes, and we wasted another thirty seconds before I broke off and rushed to the last of my equipment.

There are holsters in your thighs. They should conceal your holdout weapons and reload them if you place some ammunition within.

That was cool. I slid my trusty old Trench Maker into a slot that opened on my right thigh, and then my Claw went into a similar opening on my left. I slung on the strap for my Icarus, then tossed my long coat on top of everything else. “Right, I’m off!”

“Helmet!” Lucy said. “And kiss!”

“Oh!”

I picked up my helmet and slid it on, then waved to Lucy as I squeezed out of the room, careful not to mess up the door.

The Twins were in the corridor, both of them holding on to juice boxes and what looked like bags of chips. They stared at me.

“Uh, gotta run for a bit,” I said.

“A’ight,” one of them said.

I felt awkward in my armor as I slunk out of the penthouse. It wasn’t that it didn’t move right or felt wrong, it was just . . . kind of strange. It felt like I had some tight clothes on, but at the same time I could feel the air moving around me as if I were in loose sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt.

Grabbing the handle was a bit strange; my hand wasn’t exactly where I thought it was. Maybe that was it? My sense of where my limbs were was being thrown off.

I’d get used to it.

I made sure to close the door carefully behind me as I stepped into the hotel’s corridor, then turned toward the elevators and noticed the two rotating guards next to it staring at me, wide-eyed.

“Probably looks a bit scary, huh?” I asked as I came closer.

“Yes, ma’am,” the one on the left said.

Well, at least people were taking me seriously in this.

I flicked through my augs, then went fully invisible, my jacket following a moment later. I knew that my gun, between my jacket and armor, was still visible, but someone would need to be at just the right angle to see.

“What about now?” I asked.

The guard wasn’t looking my way when he replied. “That’s, uh, not much better, ma’am.”

“Wonderful,” I said.

The elevator door dinged open, and I stepped in before jabbing the button for the lobby.

Once I was on the ground floor, I switched on the muffling on my mask. Didn’t need anyone to hear me speaking. “So, where’s Gomorrah and how are we getting there?”

She’s on the eastern side of the city. Unfortunately, none of the automated taxi services will drive someone there, and taking the public transportation services would both take a long time and be a needless risk.

“The subway’s not that bad,” I said.

The infrastructure hasn’t been properly maintained since before your birth, and the amount of gun violence in the underground is so high that you are as likely to be shot while taking the night train as you are to be hit by friendly fire in an active incursion.

“So, how do we get there?” I asked before stifling a bit of a yawn. Maybe I needed a bit of sleep. Maybe I should have gone to sleep when I got home instead of messing with Lucy.

A non-automated taxi. One is waiting for you outside.

I nodded along as I moved across the lobby, then through one of the revolving doors onto the parking tarmac.

A car lit up in my vision, highlighted in pink until I started making my way to it. It was not an impressive ride. Some car from the early thirties, with a dented fender and one light that flickered intermittently.

Yes, that is the best they had.

“I’m going to need to look into getting my own ride one of these days,” I muttered.

I’ll add it to the list. You do have a somewhat significant number of points remaining.

“Might not have an incursion for a while, and besides, I want to spend a lot of those on the security of the museum-slash-orphanage.” I moved around the cab, peeked through the window, and waved at the driver, who currently had a finger in his nose up to the knuckle.

I pulled the passenger-side door open and sat down carefully. I just barely fit.

The driver stared out the side, past me, and looked both confused and a bit scared.

I felt like an idiot a moment later and flicked off my invisibility. “Hey.”

“Oh,” he squeaked.

“Hey, don’t worry,” I said. “Just looking for a ride over to, uh . . . this address.” I pointed to the computer jammed into the car’s dash and held in place by what looked like a strip of tape. Myalis caught on and the screen flickered before showing a new address.

“Ah, right, yes. The client is supposed to sit at the back?”

I looked behind. The seat had a fist-sized hole in it and what looked like cigarette burns all over the pleather. “This seat looks more comfortable. And you don’t need to be afraid or anything, I really do just need a ride.”

“That place isn’t very safe,” he said with a gesture to the car’s computer.

“I mean, no offense, but your setup here doesn’t look like it’s made to carry VIPs from one mansion to the other.”

The driver squirmed. “You will have to leave fast. We land, you leave, I go. And I want payment up front.”

I felt my eyebrows rising. “All right, but only if you tell me about the area on the way over. I’m not from the nicest part of this city, but even our neighborhood wouldn’t warrant that kind of response.”

“Yes, fine,” he said. And then he slammed his foot on the gas, and we chugged along at a perfectly reasonable speed while making an unreasonable amount of noise.

CHAPTER FOUR

BELOW THE CITY

Hex-platforming is a technique that became popular in the late twenties. It involves creating a set of six large pillars to hold up the corners of a hex. The hex’s size varies, but it’s usually between 100 and 200 meters from point to point. Buildings are built above these, and the gap between the hex platforms and the ground allows for plenty of space where infrastructure can be laid out. Sewers, electrical grids, any kind of interconnecting system.

If a city is attacked and a building collapses above, the hex’s pillars are designed to blow out, forcing that entire section to collapse beneath the main section of the city.

It almost guarantees that anyone there will die, but it also means that the destruction is contained.

This was wonderful on paper. By the midthirties, everyone realized it was a disaster in actuality. But by then, it was too late. Half of all new cities were hex-platformed, and it’s not something that can be stopped halfway.

Now new cities are built to sprawl out more and have extensive aboveground piping and networking. It’s not much better. At least in a hex city, the super-poor are entirely out of sight.

—The Hex, by Professor of Engineering Duskland, 2041

The taxi dove down, and down, and then even lower down, slowing all the while as the driver went from just a little nervous to an outright wreck, hunched over the wheel and with his eyes roving all over to look for danger.

I didn’t blame him.

The orphanage where I’d done a lot of my growing up had been on the ground level, near the outskirts of the city. Ground level was, generally, bad news. It was where all the people who fell from above ended up. A lot of the chemicals in the air were heavy, and they tended to seep down too.

No one wanted to live so low, so those that did have to live there weren’t often there by choice. They were the slums, built in and around the pillars holding up the massive towers that hid the sun from view.

Right now, we were below that.

The city had been an island, once, but that was decades ago. Someone had terraformed it, built a new “ground” onto which to build the rest of the city. Everything under that wasn’t fit for living in; it was all pipes and earthquake absorption shocks and pillars dug deep into the earth to hold the weight of everything above.

When we started to dive, we’d been in a nicer area. Gomorrah didn’t seem like a slum-raised kind of girl. Now, about thirty floors below that, we were in hell.

Horizontal smokestacks were spewing some vapors onto the road, the clouds of smoke being torn apart as cars that didn’t look street legal raced past. Bigger trucks were moving by, some taking the ramps leading up to the ground level. Most of those were being escorted by little drones.

“It’s a bit above this,” the driver said. He gestured up to a hole in the ceiling that cut through the ground level but never reached the sky. The interior of a hollow skyscraper?

By the looks of it, it was one of those industrial ones. The sort that was a windowless box from the outside. I guess it made sense that they’d move things in and out where no one could see it happening.

The cab rose up, and we started to navigate through a maze of catwalks and suspended roads, the path marked out by rings of green light, at least where the lights hadn’t been torn off and stolen.

“There it is,” the driver said. I didn’t know if that was relief in his voice or not. He pulled us up and around to a hole in the wall, the faded words “Employee Parking” next to it.

A bazaar had been tacked onto the sides of the hollow interior, catwalks leading to little booths and shops suspended over the void.

We came to a stop, not quite parking alongside the other cars. I guessed the driver wanted an easy path to rush out of if things went south.

“All right,” I said as I pushed the door open. Judging by the way my helmet’s augs flashed and switched to tanked air and the way the driver’s nose wrinkled up, the place didn’t smell rosy. “I’ll give you a call if I need to get out,” I said.

“My shift ends now,” he said. “Not working tomorrow.”

“Uh, all right?” I stepped out, boots squelching into some muck as I shifted my weight to move. “Myalis, can you give him a good tip?”

Certainly.

“See you around!” I said as the taxi driver put pedal to metal and rushed out of the parking area with a rumble of his car’s engine.

“Bye,” I said to the taxi’s retreating back. I shifted my shoulders, resettling my coat on properly, then tapped my thighs where my guns were tucked away. Everything looked like it was in place. I moved out of the parking garage, then to the edge of one of the walkways.

I held on to one of the struts coming up from below, a big chunky thing that was supporting some structural stuff above, then leaned forward to look down. The ground, the actual ground, with dirt and mud and trash, was only some hundred or so meters below.

It had probably been a forest or something once, and there were some lots where plain old-school homes still stood in the shadow of the city, trash heaped up against their walls. Some little buildings rose up around the pillars, with windows that had lights on within casting some light across the dark.

I couldn’t imagine it being much brighter in full daylight.

“Right, Myalis, where’s Gomorrah?”

Tracking her now . . . she’s three floors above, on an abandoned factory floor. To your right, then up. Follow the signs leading to Irregular Welding Co.

I nodded, then did as the AI said. The steps I climbed, all rust-covered corrugated steel, creaked as I moved up. There wasn’t too much traffic. In fact, as I entered the bazaar one floor above and started to make my way to another staircase, I noticed that half the stalls were empty, and maybe a third had shitty AI behind them.

“Hey, hey! Do you need anything? Best shit you’ve ever seen, fresh from the trash cans of the rich fucks above!”

I paused at the voice; not at the pitch—it wasn’t the best I’d heard—but at the age of it.

Turning a little at the next intersection, I found a little girl on a plastic crate, with what looked like a video game console over her head. “Look! A console, PlayStation Nine! Still functioning, three generations old! We can even hook you up with some DRM-cracked games!”

She had . . . trash behind her. That was the word for it. Knickknacks and broken toys and some exercise equipment. All of it a bit grimy, all of it obviously broken.

A dumpster diver, then.

I’d seen their sort before. Hell, I’d jumped into a few myself when I saw someone tossing something good away. They had their own little territories and rules. Where to dive, what to pick up, which places to avoid.

I moved on. Felt bad for the kid, but there was only so much I could do. It didn’t look like she was hawking to the greatest customers either. It struck me just how few people there were around.

“Is there anything about why this place is so empty?” I asked Myalis.

Nothing on any news site. Homeless migration trackers show a three hundred percent increase in mortality rates over the last week.

“Holy crap, what . . . oh, the incursion?”

That’s likely. The Antithesis would travel farther underground, though they usually prefer more access to sunlight. Most paramilitaries wouldn’t stop them.

“Damn,” I said. “Are there any left?”

It’s likely. The Antithesis are difficult to root out. Though any large breakouts within the city would be noticed and purged. There are some Vanguard whose entire duty is to sit above a recent incursion site and wait for more Antithesis to appear.

Made sense to me. I continued along, up another staircase that I didn’t trust, then past a large set of double doors with the words “Irregular Welding Co.” next to them. The interior was a poorly lit mess of girders and catwalks. There were supposed to be huge machines here, at least I assumed as much from the markings on the ground, but they were all long gone.

The hum from the neon lights above fought with a clunking air vent to be the more annoying sound filling the room.

It didn’t take much to find Gomorrah. She was walking away from a group that was huddled next to a tarp lean-to, her steps conveying just how frustrated she was.

“Oh great, she looks like she’s in a good mood,” I muttered as I started after her.

Time to see what was up with my closest samurai friend.

CHAPTER FIVE

RAC

Hello. I’m Jeff Personen, and I’m the director of CPS. Child Protective Services. I was made director because of my ability to turn any organization once run by the government into one that can bring in a steady profit.

With CPS, I did this by hiring ex-military, psychologists, and lawyers, and using them to extend the reach of both what CPS does and how it acts. Now, for a small fee, a parent can protect their child from just about anything: psychological issues, legal issues, and even the other parent!

—Jeff Personen, director of CPS, in a 2029 interview

“Uh, heya!”

Gomorrah stopped midstomp and whipped around to stare at me, her expressionless mask not conveying any emotion, but her stance did a lot of the work. “Cat? You took your time in getting here.”

“‘Here’ isn’t exactly the most accessible place,” I said. “The auto-taxis won’t even come here, you know? Plus I was buying new gear.”

“Nice armor,” she said. “I’m thinking of getting an upgrade too . . . but that’s beside the point. I’m glad you decided to show up.”

“Wow, you’re extra passive-aggressive this, uh, morning.”

She shook her head. “I haven’t slept. I’m running off adrenaline and two energy drinks. I’ve still got the shakes from them.”

“All right,” I said. “So you’re looking for Franny. I’m assuming no luck so far?”

Gomorrah sighed, then looked around us for a bit. The ex–factory floor was still as empty as it had been when I arrived, but that did leave some prying eyes. “Come with me; we shouldn’t talk out in the open.”

I followed the nun as she moved to an exit, then slipped outside. The air was as foggy and cancerous as it had been moments ago. “What’s the situation so far?”

“Right,” Gomorrah said as she grabbed on to a nearby set of rails. “I arrived at the convent because Sister Darlene called and said that some friends of Franny were worried about her. I figured I’d find her with some bruised knuckles and maybe a black eye again.”

“Again?”

“She takes the ‘saving the lambs’ things a little more literally than most,” Gomorrah said. “She’s a good person, just a bit zealous.”

“I figured zealous was a pro in your line of work,” I said.

“Usually,” Gomorrah agreed. “Franny is a bit more violent than I think the average nun should be.”

I paused, then pointed at her. “Don’t you frequently set things on fire? Living things?”

“That’s beside the point. I asked around, and she was here for a little bit. Usually she stays aboveground when she’s going after some pimp or whatever. It’s not like her to go down this deep. This isn’t the safest place around.”

“Who was she going after? You mentioned something about Sewer Dragons?”

“That’s what one of Franny’s friends said, but no one else will tell me anything about them. There’s barely anything on the net except a few mentions and those don’t tell me much.”

“Right, so you lost her,” I said. Gomorrah turned to protest, but I cut in first. “No idea where she is, no idea where she’s heading. And neither of us knows much about this area. I’m poor . . . was poor, but not this poor.” I gestured to the wide open space around us. “So . . . let’s get help.”

“Help? Wait, where are you going?”

I descended the nearest stairs and walked back into the bazaar, Gomorrah hot on my heels. The bazaar hadn’t gotten better. Maybe some of that had to do with the time; it was very early in the morning. Most sane people would still be asleep, though I figured without any sunlight down here, there might not be anything like a natural circadian rhythm.

The girl hawking junk was still in place, sitting on the counter of her little stall while she rubbed at some old phone with a rag.

I gestured for Gomorrah to stay where she was as I moved up to the stall and coughed. It didn’t make any noise. Frowning, I reached out and tapped the counter twice.

The girl didn’t even turn around.

Was that not loud enough? I made sure my mask was set so that my voice was projected from it. “Hey.”

The girl bounced up and spun around, staring at me with widening eyes. “H-hey! Welcome to Rac’s Trash and Shit, uh, how can I help you?”

“Rac’s?” I asked.

“My name’s Raccoon,” she said.

It kind of fit. She had these big goggles on with thick pads around them that gave the impression of rings around her eyes, and she certainly had the “rooting around in trash” part down.

“Cute name,” I said. “Don’t mean to bother you, Rac, but my nun friend here and I are looking for some information. You got any? Or if not, do you know any good local gossip?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Raccoon said. She squinted, looking at me up and down. “Whoa, that’s some nice armor. You must be from above. Like, way above.”

“Not that far up,” I said. “So, we’re looking for someone called Franny. Uh. Gomorrah, you have a picture or something?”

“Sure,” Gomorrah said. In a blink I got a message from her, a picture of an unmasked Gomorrah, looking as genetically privileged as usual, with a girl next to her. Franny was a tall redhead with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose and cheeks. Bright green eyes, the sort of smile that I’d seen on the faces of plenty of kittens just before they did something unfortunate to someone.

“Okay, what the hell?” I asked. “Does your abbey or coven or whatever only take in cute girls?”

“Uh, no?” Gomorrah said. “I . . . guess there might be some overlap, though. We’re all well fed, and we exercise a lot. Beauty tends to follow that often enough, I guess.”

“Yeah, Lucy’s not allowed to visit, okay?”

“Deal,” Gomorrah said.

I turned back to Raccoon, then flicked through a few options with my augs. I found hers a moment later, the Cyberwarfare package I had making things a little bit too easy. The overlay basically let me see everything I could connect to with an outline, and focusing on anything just casually bypassed whatever there was as security. Raccoon’s augs were . . . actually, better than what I had had pre-samurai-ing.

“Here, this is who we’re looking for,” I said. “Not the blonde, the redhead. Her name’s Franny.”

“Whoa, hey, that’s fucky,” Raccoon said as she turned her head this way and that. “Didn’t know people could do that . . . did you fuck with my augs?”

“No viruses, I swear. Girl Scout’s honor.”

“You were not a Girl Scout,” Gomorrah snapped.

“No, but I stole some cookies once,” I said. “I figured I might have stolen some of their honor too, while I was at it.”

“So, you’re looking for that redhead? ’Cause I haven’t seen her. But for a few credits, I could show you to someone who might have,” Raccoon offered.

I laughed. “I think I can spare a credit or two. What about the Sewer Dragons? Know anything about them?”

Raccoon’s expression shifted, instantly turning guarded. “I don’t know anything about them,” she said.

“That was a fast reply,” I said. Leaning forward, I put my elbows on her counter and tilted my head to the side. “Come on. Our friend Franny’s in trouble with them; we mean to help her a bit.”

“Help her while wearing that?” Raccoon asked. “You look like . . . you look like a samurai.”

“Do I?” I asked. I guess the armor finally tipped things in my favor there. “Nice. You’ve got to know something.”

The girl looked left and right, checking for anyone watching us, but the few people I’d noticed were walking fast, and rarely our way. We probably looked like we were doing a shakedown. “A thousand—no, ten thousand credits.”

Enough credits to buy food for a week for a single person. Not exactly asking for much. “Okay,” I said. “Myalis, can you do the transfer?”

Done.

Raccoon blinked. Her eyes wandered around, obviously looking over things in her augs. “Oh, shit, uh, right. What . . . what do you want to know?” she asked.

“Everything you know? Mostly where they hang out.”

“Yeah, that’s easy. In the sewers. It’s in the name.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “But which ones?”

Catherine, the money we just deposited was moved. Not all of it, but nearly eighty percent was removed from the account it was placed in. It wasn’t done by Raccoon, so I found the transaction curious.

“Huh,” I said. “Hey, Rac, who just took your cash?”

Raccoon blinked, then frowned a little, her lips puckering up in a pout. “That’s . . . that’s the Underground Kings. It’s the local tax.”

“Local tax, huh,” I said. That wasn’t uncommon. The orphanage had been hit once or twice for protection money, but we barely made enough to keep everyone fed, and we didn’t have anything worth stealing. That, and stealing from literal orphans was a bad look. Most gangs at least tried to make themselves look a bit noble. “Think these Underground Kings might know a thing or two about the Sewer Dragons?”

“Yeah, I mean, they’ve been fighting a lot lately. Last couple of days, the Sewer Dragons have been a lot more active. Taking folk off the streets and all.”

“What for?” I asked.

The girl shrugged. “Parts.”

I looked back to Gomorrah. She seemed as unimpressed as I felt. “Tell you what, Rac, there has to be some place these Kings gather, right? How about you lead us there, and I’ll give you another lump of cash. I’m pretty sure I can make it so they can’t touch it.”

Raccoon considered it for a bit, then nodded. “Yeah, all right. Let me close up shop.”

I gave Gomorrah a thumbs-up. One step closer to getting to the bottom of things.

CHAPTER SIX

QUEEN TAKES PAWN

Name: George Orbad

Alias: King, The King of the Kings

Wanted for the minor crimes of: Racketeering, Assault, Smuggling of Contraband, Homicide.

Wanted for the major crimes of: Corporate Defamation, Pirating of Private Data, Corporate Espionage.

Suspect is presumed armed and dangerous.

Reward: 1,750,000Cr

—King of Kings bounty posting, 2057

The Underground Kings had their hideout in the same ring of buildings as we were in. The factory they occupied was an old cotton candy machine factory, of all things. Some of the signs on the outside were still bright and cheerful under the layer of grime that covered everything.

Of course, they’d covered it all with graffiti, mostly crude images of men with crowns on, sometimes just crowns, sometimes giant dicks with crowns on them. Very imaginative stuff. Some of the best bathroom-stall-type art I’d ever seen.

Raccoon, our guide, paused on one of the catwalks about a hundred meters away from the factory. “That’s it,” she said. “The King’s King stays there sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” Gomorrah asked.

“He doesn’t live here,” Raccoon said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “No one that makes a bunch of credits stays underground.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “Other than robbing little girls, do these idiots do anything special?”

Raccoon shrugged. “They make drugs to sell to the people above. It’s called syrup. You can smell it when they make it. It’s nice.”

“Syrup?” I asked. I’d heard of that. It was a sort of goopy liquid, golden and clear, and apparently really sweet. It was actually a bit of a classier street drug, the sort middle-class guys would buy for a party or something. “I didn’t think they’d make that shit here.”

“They have to make everything somewhere,” Gomorrah said. “I imagine real estate down here isn’t too pricey.”

I shrugged. Didn’t matter to me. I didn’t come down here to rid the world of some party drugs. “Maybe the stink down here is the special ingredient,” I muttered.

Raccoon giggled. “So, that’s it? You guys are going to go ask them for stuff?”

“Just going to ask them about Gomorrah’s girlfriend.”

“Franny isn’t my girlfriend,” Gomorrah said, voice flatter than usual.

“Not with that attitude,” I replied. “Rac, do you know who we should ask to see?”

“If they even let you in,” the girl said. “Ask for one of the Bishops. They’re, like, the important ones, I think.”