Chapter Forty-Eight - A Time for Explanations

“We need something better to really sell our new fall 2047 collection. Chanel’s Water Number 7 is coming out soon, and Louis Vutton is pushing out a new flavour with a new bottle and everything.

If we don’t step up our game, we’re going to start losing shares. We’re only the fifth best designer water brand in the NA region, we can’t afford to fall back any further.”

--Interior Guucci Memo from head of Designer Water Production to head of Marketing, 2047

***

Manic, Jennifer and I walked back towards the front lines of our defences. I figured we probably made something of a weird show. Manic in her leather coat and new-samurai armour, me in my slightly better gear, then Jennifer in nothing but a hoodie.

The sun was setting quickly, with the buildings shrouding us in deep shadows, at least until we turned a corner and came face-to-face with one of the fires Gomorrah had lit. It was currently chewing its way up an apartment building, but fortunately, the fire didn’t seem to be burning through everything.

Some buildings were a little more robust, made of nothing but cement and glass and the fire didn’t seem to catch onto them as easily. They’d hopefully act as firebreaks, keeping it all away from Downtown and from spreading too far.

They’d also make any antithesis invasion a little bit harder, I imagined.

We went around, in any case, avoiding the worst of the fire. I could probably walk through some of it without much issue, but Manic’s gear wasn’t as fire proof and Jennifer risked melting her latex ass right off if we tried.

So it took a little longer to reach the makeshift barricade, but we made it there eventually. We found a few alien corpses dotting the roadside, and as I squinted I was able to make out a couple of militia folk up on the wall next to a few of Lucy’s kittens in their jumpsuits and cat ears.

“Hey!” I called out. “Got a place we can come in through?”

As it turned out, they didn’t, but what they did have was a ladder they could sling over the side to make it easier to climb our way up. Jennifer went first, since we didn’t want to leave her undefended on the ground, then I followed after her and kept my head down on the rungs ahead of me, because she was just wearing a hoodie and Lucy would kill me for staring.

Once all three of us were up, the kittens and militia pulled the ladder back up. “Anything to report?” I asked one of the nearest militia guys.

He froze up for a moment, then shook his head. “No, sir,” he said. “Nothing much going on here. Just a few stragglers.” He gestured down the street, towards the corpses dotting the road.

“Uh, alright then,” I said. A few random, low-tier aliens was fine. In fact, that was pretty much the best we could hope for. We could hold out for days if all we were dealing with was the occasional lost alien. I had the impression we’d be dealing with a lot more than just that soon, though. “Keep an eye open for more trouble,” I said. “There’s some bigger fuckers hanging out there, and they might pop around for a visit.”

He snapped a salute, and I went and climbed down the other side of the wall with Manic and Jennifer following after me.

“What now?’ Manic asked.

“Depends, what do you want to do?”

“Me?” she asked. “Grab a bite, maybe an hour of shut-eye. If you think the real show will start tonight, then I’ll want a bit of sleep before it really gets down to it. I can rock on with nothing but beer and energy drinks in my veins like the best of them, but there’s nothing like a nap to keep you going for even longer.”

I nodded along. “Right, let’s head over to the mall. You can get both there. And I’ll leave Jennifer there too, maybe you can find your, ah, owner, right?” That felt like such a strange thing to say to someone who looked so human. Maybe I’d leave her with Lucy, she might think it was funny.

We hitched a ride on a bus that was doing transport duty between the centre of downtown and the walls. It looked like Lucy was busy moving her volunteers towards the edges of the city where they’d be able to do a bit more to help.

While we found seats near the front of the bus, I dialled up Intel-chan. “Hey,” I said as a familiar weeb-y avatar popped up in my augs.

Intel-chan was now wearing a fake--insofar as anything on a digital avatar could be fake--pair of cat ears atop her head, but otherwise they looked the same as ever. “Hello! You’re back.”

“Yeah,” I said as I crossed my arms and leaned back. “Any news?”

“Plenty. You were gone for nearly three hours, which is forever. We had a small rebellion in the militia instigated by the Major who was fourth-in-command. He disagreed with the general on a few points and tried to depose him. That failed though. Fortunately, he wasn’t very popular. The fires Gomorrah-dono started began slipping into downtown, but we were able to put them out. The kittens started a zombie eradication campaign near the south end of the city. It pissed off a lot of people until Lucy-sama started posting helmet-cam videos of the zombie exterminators breaking into apartments and finding zombified people within.”

“Fuck,” I said.

“It’s being handled. Lucy-sama has a gift for PR. Ah, what else... oh, Gomorrah-dono burnt down three mansions in River Heights. The citizens there are a lot more cooperative now!”

That was... good? Yeah, I decided that that was good and I wouldn’t think about it too much. “Are they done evacuating then?” I asked.

“There’s an over-land convoy of people and supplies being brought into Downtown from River Heights. A lot of the equipment there is too heavy to be moved by hovercar, so we’re bringing it back the old fashioned way. The road is being secured. It has been attacked a few times, but the militia fought the antithesis off already.”

I nodded along. “Ping me if there’s anything that goes super wrong,” I said.

“Sure thing! Nice to have you back, boss. By the way, did you take down those buildings?”

“There were hives under them,” I said.

Intel-chan didn’t seem to care either way, and the bus came to a stop before they could add much. “Say hi to Lucy-sama for me!” Intel-chan said before the line went off.

I hopped out of the bus, suddenly very much aware of how tired I was, and how dry my mouth had gone. What was the last time I drank something? An hour or so before heading out with Manic? If I was going to be staying up all night, then maybe I’d need a nap too, and something to eat and drink.

The mall was quieter now than it had been earlier in the day. There were still a few kittens lingering by the entrance, but with fewer people around it seemed rather perfunctory.

I checked my map, and found that Lucy’s tag was real close. She was on the second floor again, around the space that she’d taken over as her base of operations. “Want to split up here?” I asked Manic as we slipped into the mall. There were fewer people, sure, but that didn’t mean it was empty, and we both earned ourselves a lot of looks from those who remained. I caught a few eyes glowing with the tell-tale sign that their augs were filming us.

“Is the food court even still open?” Manic asked.

I shrugged. Half the places were automated most of the time, so there was a chance that it was. Still... “Well, whatever. Come upstairs, you can meet Lucy. I bet she’s got food around. She always liked keeping a few granola bars or something hidden away.”

“That’s strange,” Manic said.

“Really?” I asked. I thought it was rather smart. If one of the kittens got hungry she could toss a bar out to keep them quiet. Plus it always made Lucy even more of a snack than usual.

We rode up an escalator, and I glanced back at Jennifer who was still following after us. How was I going to explain her to Lucy? There was no way Lucy wouldn’t notice what Jennifer was, and it didn’t feel right to just tell Jennifer to piss off and find her owner all on her own.

I decided I’d just wing it and hope for the best.

Then I saw Lucy working behind a row of hastily setup desks, directing a volunteer with looking at a tablet computer and back. She was pointing at something, a cute little frown showing her mild displeasure.

“Lucy!” I called out.

Her head whipped up, and the frown disappeared into a brilliant smile. “Cat!” she said. Then she was stumbling around the desk to meet me with a hug. “And you brought friends too!”

“Yeah,” I said as I returned the hug. It was too bad my arms were tangled up, or else I’d be removing my helmet to capture her lips with mine. “Uh, this is Manic, and that’s Jennifer. We rescued Jennifer from the area outside of Downtown a while ago.”

“Pleased to meet ya,” Manic said.

“Hello,” Jennifer said.

“Ah, you’re the other samurai from here,” Lucy said. “And you’re... a sex bot?”

“I can explain,” I said.

***