Chapter Thirty-Two - Rathunt

“No one wants to live in a megabuilding.

Not like we have any damned choice, so might as well make the best of it, right, you fucking rats?”

--Jeffery ‘Whiskers’ Tablespoon, 2055

***

“So, where can I find these...” I paused to yawn. “Assholes?” I was already walking deeper into the building, towards the far end of the square that held our little clinic. I wasn’t sure where I’d be going, but there were several corridors leading off into the distance so it was a good bet that I’d be in this general direction.

I’m tracking them now. Unfortunately, there are surprisingly few working cameras outside of the market areas.

Myalis opened a little box in the corner of my vision and started playing a video within it. It was the front of the clinic, seen from the corner of a camera.

I turned, matching the angles of what I was seeing until I spotted where the camera had to be. It was hidden behind the signage for a little automated doughnut shop across the square from the clinic.

The video continued to fast forward until it paused on a group of five people standing in front of the clinic. One of them had a crowbar that he was using with expertise to rip the door open.

“Why is this kind of footage always a blurry mess?” I asked. “It’s like... can you even buy cameras with such shitty quality anymore?”

The camera is able to capture much higher fidelity. It’s the data-transfer rates for off-site storage that encourage the owners of the security to reduce the quality of their footage.

I shook my head. It made sense, I supposed, but it was still annoying. I watch the five rip into the clinic, then come rushing out with a crate held between them. A sixth member rushed over pushing a wheeled trash bin, and they dumbed the container with all of our prosthetics into it.

Then the lot of them took off running. Myalis switched cameras, and I was able to see which passage they took.

“You lost them after this?” I asked.

I tracked them down two floors, which brings them close to the floor operated by the so-called Ventrats. There isn’t any clear evidence of who committed the crime, however.

The screen split into six, an image of each one of the assholes on each. Myalis added some metrics next to the images, heights as compared to the doorway and approximate weight and presented gender. “Right,” I said as I took them in. there weren’t any faces. All six of them were wearing full-face masks. Just black disks with holes for eyes with some sort of covering, and most of them had hoodies on over that. We had some skin colour, from two members that didn’t wear gloves, or who reached up and exposed some stomachs, but that was it.

They were surprisingly clever about this.

I followed the direction they’d run in while pushing their trash bin filled with my shit. Myalis continued to point towards where they went, and soon enough I found myself in a stairwell, walking past graffiti murals that had been there so long they were peeling and stepping over sleeping forms on the steps.

I made it to the right floor, then shoved my way past a pair of guys standing guard at the door. They cursed and looked around, but I wasn’t visible, so their search turned up nothing.

This was a residential floor, which meant a square grid of corridors lined with doors that had numbers on them. The Ventrats, as it turned out, weren’t making much of an effort to hide where they were hanging out.

I found a group of some dozen or so younger people, all dressed in black and frequently wearing plastic rat masks all hanging out in one of the dead-ends to one side of the floor. The walls behind them were covered in images of rats, all done in a sort of cell-shaded style, often with large green pipes.

It was a miracle that a Nintendo hit-squad hadn’t wiped them out already.

I slipped between a few of the Ventrats by the entrance of the dead end, then stepped over a few more deeper in that looked like they were knocked out by whatever shit they were plugging into their own veins.

I wasn’t surprised by the drugs. I was surprised by the amount. The Ventrats were doing well for themselves. Interestingly, I didn’t notice much by way of cybernetics. Maybe one or two eyes, or some cosmetic mods, but no borgs or even a cybernetic arm or leg in sight.

My gaze kept sweeping over the group. Something was... off, here. These people looked either sleepy, or just tired. That fit with the hour, I supposed.

Moving deeper into their little corner, I found that the apartments at the end of the hall had the walls between them ripped out to create a much bigger floor space. That was probably their main hangout. The interior had a few fridges, some couches, and a very expensive entertainment system pressed up against one wall.

A shirtless man with whiskers tattooed to his face was sitting on a big ass couch, one leg over the arm, a hand resting on a fuck-huge revolver.

“That the boss?” I asked.

According to his NMPD criminal record, this is Jeffery ‘Whiskers’ Tablespoon, the leader of the Ventrats.

I blinked. “Fucking, Tablespoon?”

I didn’t pick his name.

I couldn’t imagine that Whiskers here picked out his family name either. With a name like that, I might also have considered a life of crime. I kicked his shin, and Whiskers jumped, blinking fast as he took in the room.

Reaching down, I plucked his gun away and tossed it to the far end of the room, then I pulled out my Laser Pointer and aimed it at him. He stared at the floating gun, mouth agape, and didn’t seem to know what to do about it.

So, in a show of mercy, I uninvisibled myself. “Hey,” I said.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asked. He was awake now.

“Just the friendly neighbourhood Stray Cat. Where’s my shit, Whiskers?”

Whiskers looked around, but his buddies weren’t as quick to move as he was. He looked for his gun, then started to reach for another gun left on a side table nearby. I poked him in the chest with the end of my rifle. “Who are you?” he asked as he fell back.

“Someone that was woken up at a stupid hour of the morning to deal with your morons. Where’s my shit?”

Whiskers fell back into his seat and looked at me. Really looked at me. “Did the seventh-floor fucks send you?” he asked.

He’s actually looking you up now.

I squinted. Yeah, his eyes were twitching very slightly in that tell-tale sign that he was using his augs. It was pretty subtle, though. “Ah, shit, you’re a samurai,” he said.

“An annoyed one,” I said.

“It wasn’t us,” he said.

“What wasn’t you?” I asked.

He swallowed. “I don’t know, but it wasn’t us,” he said.

This guy... “Look, some punks stole from a clinic a few floors up, one that’s under my protection. Give me all the shit you stole back, maybe grovel a bit, and this won’t end in bloodshed. I really don’t want to have to take a shower before getting back to bed, you know?”

He nodded, then paused. “We really didn’t take your shit, though,” he said.

“Myalis, send him the videos, and that pic I took of the tag they left in the clinic.”

Sending.

It took a moment for Whiskers to look over everything, but he was shaking his head halfway through. “That’s not us,” he said. “I know my rats, that’s not them. We don’t wear that kind of mask. And the tag’s all wrong. The rat only has one tail, and the pipe’s the wrong green.”

I turned, looked at the nearest wall. There were a few gang tags on it, rats poking out of pipes and tunnels, some rather graphic images of rats doing all sorts of weird shit. They all had two tails. The pipes were all a cartoonish green too. I compared it to the picture I’d taken while in the clinic. It didn’t quite match, either stylistically, or with the number of tails. “Huh,” I said.

“It’s a set-up,” he said.

“The people that took my shit brought it to this floor.”

“We only run the east-side. There’s a service elevator on the west-end. They could have gone right through. Wait, here, I’m linked into the cameras there. We use them to see who comes in.”

Whiskers sent me a quick link, which would have been exceptionally stupid to open, so I let Myalis play with it.

Interesting.

I pulled back, lowering my gun away from Whisker’s chest. “Interesting?”

Another little box with some footage, this time of the gate in front of an elevator. The same six people rushed to it and pulled the gate open, then loaded themselves and that trash bin in. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I muttered before going invisible again.

This was going to take all damned night, wasn’t it?

***