“What’s more, there’s six ways into the Hole, and three thousand years later, there’s still six ways into the Hole. Some smart guys have thought they had a Good Idea at times, and tried to seal the entryways. After various suicides, mysterious disappearances, vanishing work crews, and screaming madmen attacking officials, there was a decision made to Officially Ignore the place.” I half-smirked at the practicality of it all. “What’s more, any equipment that goes missing related to machinery existing in The Hole is simply written off... and for three thousand years, none of that machinery has had any problems whatsoever, which is about two thousand years longer than is statistically possible.”

I sent a stray eye upwards after I finished. “They won’t let you block it off?” I asked knowingly.

“Tried a few times. The blockades fell apart and were dumped over the Plunge. The city tried to put up a false ceiling up there, actually got it all put up in one day and everything. A week later it fell apart, and the beams were just left there.” He was sweating a bit, looking at me sitting there completely unperturbed.

“Well, I’ve been told I’ve some resistance to this kind of thing, so I’ma have to take a closer look for a validation. Shouldn’t be an issue.”

He stared at me even harder. “A... closer look?”

“Sure. 159 is the cutoff?”

“Yeah. The lift stops at 157 by building override. Won’t be an issue taking the stairs. Nobody even posts graffiti up there now.”

“Nah, I’ll just run up.” I spun, oriented myself on the nearest emergency stairs, and skated off that way.

“You’re going to run up a hundred stories?” he asked in disbelief. Sounded more shocked than me looking Up.

“I didn’t get this ass riding a lift, Pops!” I waved over my back, and given where his eyes were focused, he had to agree with that.

Of course, he had a lot of disbelieving company watching my derriere heading for the stairs. Which is cool, rep is built all sorts of ways.

------------

True to his words, there was no graffiti after 157. There were some really crazy warning signs and outright insane dream-stuff that likely hadn’t ended well, but hey, that’s life.

Running a couple thousand vertical feet was a nice workout, especially at 3g’s. There were also four new corpses on the stairs who thought me running past them was a nice excuse to try to accost me. I’d have to tell Pops on the way out.

Yello. That there was some hefty negative energy pressure massing there. Seemed somewhat surprised to see me there as I kept going right up to 159 and threw the door open.

There were a few dozen standing corpses waiting there. Most of them were in ganger attire, a few workers or students who might have suicided here, couple hookers, and one fat fellow who had no pants on and had been emasculated. They were in oddly good shape for being dead, clothing very neat even as it hung on their shrunken flesh.

There was a blast of something roiling against my Null, and then the corpses all shivered subtly, and dark lights grew in their shriveled orbs.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said in Necrus, and flicked up my Claw.

Vivic fire from Chalice burned on the gold, and their heads all snapped around to look at it.

First, they were shocked they could understand me. Living people are hard for the dead to hear, as all those language centers get corrupted. All undead and unliving can understand Necrus, however, although it’s a bitch on the vocal cords of the living.

Second, vivic flames can render all that negative energy into helpful life energy, so the unwhite flames looked more real than anything here to them, even my Null figure who they couldn’t sense until I was right on top of them, and certainly weren’t able to tell was looking at them.

I flicked my hand out, and the smallest of the corpses, one of the hookers, was cut open from crown to groin instantly. Vivic fire blasted out, her flesh was gone before her bones hit the floor, and the impact of her clothes smashed her bones to dust.

“Given how long it’s taken you to get some bodies, I don’t think you want to lose these hands of yours. If you do, go ahead and attack me. Bring them all. They’ll all die.”

The dead don’t generally fear, that’s a living thing, but practicality and waste and futility are a thing. They were banging on my Null like no tomorrow, and I was ignoring them. Had to hurt. I’d been upping my Null like mad for a damn reason.

Collectively, they were damn powerful, but their individual strength wasn’t enough to pass my Null.

“And quit beating on me. You know I ain’t no psion. I am about as far from the people who did this to you as it is possible to be.

“Now, I have been tasked by the government with renewing the Tau Rating that you have afflicted this place with, be proud of yourselves. If you will kindly get out of my way so I can get my damn survey done?”

I started forwards, and shouldered my way rather rudely through the walking corpses, who lurched back at the approach of my Claw, lining themselves up stiffly against the wall to let me pass.

After all, I had a job to do, and that was all most of their lives had ever been about, getting a job done. How could they not understand the mindset?

-----------------

The next day...

“Heya Pops! Wanna sign me out?”

The flimsy fell, and the man on duty blinked and stared at me. “You’re still here?” he asked in shock.

“Never left. Been getting my survey done.” I held out my Band. “Can I get a thumb and eye here? Oh, and those four dead guys on the stair, my fault. Self-defense.”

He kind of waved his hand absently. “Already carted off,” he mumbled. He got up to come forward to the partition. I flipped up the mission notice, he looked it over, offered his thumb, the Band beeped, and then he bent down for a retinal. The Band popped up with his government ID and job number file, beeped approval.

“Thanks! I’ll be back in a few days to move in.”

His eyes silently followed me out, heading down to the place well worth watching, and he shook his head despite himself.

----------------

“Hello, My Queen!” I yawned to the manager when I walked in.

He barely looked up from his screen, conveying neither surprise nor disappointment. “You’re late.”

“On the contrary, I’m punching out,” I yawned back at him, passing my hand over my Band, and sending my report to him. “You owe me overtime again.”

That did lift those disturbing tan eyes. “Assessment.” he asked, turning the question into a statement again.

“Definitely approve the Tau Rating. While they call it the Top Fifty, the top 81 stories of Habberblok are suffering a revenant wraith infestation to the tune of ninety thousand souls minimum, possibly upwards of a hundred and twenty thousand. They have massive, intense hostility to psi-users in particular and the living in general, and can sense when people are looking at them, inciting massive feelings of dread, despair, and hate; prolonged visual contact will drive a person mad, and if they are particularly despised by the spirits, termination and reanimation as a servant corpse.

“Several of the gangs there have executed rivals by forcing them to stare at the Top Fifty. Average death and reanimation time is about ten minutes. The corpse then gets up, walks to the nearest lift, takes a ride up to floor 159 despite the building overrides, and the lift comes down empty.

“I did a skate-through on all the floors, damage survey, and assessment. It’s all there in the report. Tau Rating recommendation confirmed.

“Oh, and rent there is thirty percent off! I think I’m moving there!”

Tau Rating, moving there... went right past him without a flicker of change. His eyes flipped down to the report, opened it up with a thought. “No streaming video.” Another question with a period. A true master of the monotone here, people!

“No, there’s massive necroic interference around data retention devices up there. You might have seen me drop off the Boole for a while, it doesn’t reach there. I memorized everything and dumped it in off the standard blok schematics.”

“I’ll send it up. Overtime approved. Come back tomorrow.” He made a dismissive gesture as my Band chimed. More money!

“Be back tomorrow, My Queen! Thanks for the easy creds!” I made the full curtsey as I glided backwards, turned, and headed out of the office.

-------------------

Egil Rosenblaun flipped through the neatly finished report. It was professionally done, with cover sheet, foreword, breakdown, table of contents, and floor by floor review and appraisal, with summary and recommendations at the end.

He thumbed floor 181 at random, and the holo flipped up, showing a video ready to play. He tapped three minutes in, and a map of the blok floor popped up, with sections before and aft painted different colors to indicate area covered, the one she was commenting on looked like one of the spacious corner sites reserved for the wealthy.

“-an see, the windows of this apartment have been blown off by external fire, looks like anti-material rounds by the scratches on the supports. There were burn scars spread out along the structures of the main room, which probably charcoaled the furniture and many of the appliances, and they were chucked down the garbage chute, leaving the empty room behind. The bedrooms were still in good shape, the doors kept closed and properly sealed against outside containment. Of course, there was no sign of invasive life given the unliving presence, and the room appears to be swept on a regular basis.

“Careful inspection of the kitchen area reveals several careful detachments of the appliances. As before, I believe they were removed to provide replacements for damaged appliances on other floors.”

Egil listened to Sama Rantha’s soothing, rather melodious voice, watching as she commented on traces of explosions, plasma burns, and filled-in bolter holes; carefully filed-down and semi-patched holes in walls and floors, some of considerable size; and blast shadows on walls white-washed over, yet still returning. The layout holo of the blok’s floor had all the data she observed painted onto it, to a rather alarming level of detail.

The cartoon kittens running around, tumbling off counters, darting under beds, pouncing from tables, snoozing on windowsills, and jumping out of doorways was a little unprofessional, but it also showed that she had idly added them in while getting all the important stuff done with a degree of competency that was just overboard.

She was just supposed to walk over there, look up, get sick, and recommend the Tau Rating be kept in force. Not somehow walk up there and survey every floor...

Egil sighed to himself, but his face didn’t move. He had long moved past being surprised or concerned by much of anything in the world. He swiped his way back to the contents, read the foreword, then went all the way to the back and read the recommendation.

He logged the file, sent the request for approval of the renewed Tau Rating upstairs to be signed off on, and shifted the report to the side.

Then he paused, and transferred a dataslate with the report to his shirt pocket.

After all, he hadn’t seen the whole report, and she did have a very smooth voice. He could put up with the kittens while he did a full review...

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