Chapter Seventy-Two – In Service to the Prevention of Stupidity

“There’s this tendency for people to act a certain way in different situations. A person will act in a certain fashion around friends, in a different way with co-workers, and in an entirely different way with customers or their employer.

That doesn’t mean that people actually think how they act.”

–Quote from a discussion on the Void Fight forums, 2031

***

I walked next to Gomorrah, Whisper in hand and tail swaying contentedly with every step.

That last was growing to be really annoying, but I’d wasted enough of our time already that I didn’t want to lose any more with telling Myalis to turn that off.

We crossed another bridge, this one at a slight jog because I didn’t feel like being caught out in the open again, but there were no huge-ass flying aliens out to get us this time. And then, just like that, we were on the same block as the hospital.

“I can see something,” I said as I shifted over to the side of the corridor we were walking down and looked to the street below.

Through the maze of passages and the faint haze of rain, I could just make out a dozen trucks parked across the street with maybe half that number of armoured transports set between them. There were civilians moving around there, easy to make out thanks to their colourful clothes, and soldiers in much more drab colours.

I couldn’t tell how many were moving about, but it was more than the one squad I’d had with me.

It seemed as if they were shifting people around from one vehicle to another already while also setting up a barricade with their trucks and their mounted roof-weapons.

“We need to get down there,” I said.

“You don’t trust them to figure things out?” Gomorrah asked.

“Oh, they’ll do a much better job than I would,” I said. “No doubt about that. I’m just worried they might follow some asanine protocol and leave some people behind or do something else equally stupid. I figure being there with a big gun will keep everyone nice and honest.”

Gomorrah sighed. “That’s… probably more true than I’d want to admit. We should get down.”

We left the windowed corridor and headed deeper into the building. It wasn’t too hard to find a way to the next building, then the next. Myalis, and Gomorrah’s own AI, both had maps of the interior of the buildings and most of the locks we came across were either electronic, which were laughably poor at stopping Myalis, or they were big clunky things that Gomorah seemed to enjoy melting.

I could really get used to the ‘I’m a Samurai and I want to pass’ mentality on physical and not-so-physical barriers.

On arriving at the ground floor at last, we stepped out and into the rainy afternoon. The sun was more or less directly overhead, and whenever it peeked out from behind the layer of clouds above it would bathe the world in an eerie yellow.

Gomorrah and I stared across the street, hoods and habits up to cover against the rain. The roads were pretty much deserted until the line of PMC trucks started.

“Halt!” someone called out.

A head poked from over the hood of one of the trucks. His face was covered in the boxy helmet that all the soldiers were wearing, and he was carrying an assault rifle of some sort. Not one of those who had been with me then.

“Identify yourselves!” he screamed.

I looked over to Gomorrah, then down to the two bots by my feet, and finally back up to the nervous kid. “We’re Samurai,” I said. “I’m Stray Cat, this is Gomorrah.”

“I need proof! You could be Model Sevens again.”

“Again? I’ve never been one before. And Model Sevens don’t try to talk people out of doing stupid shit.”

The soldier, who sounded way too young for the job, was cut off when the familiar form of Speedy ran over. “It’s Stray Cat and the fire nun! They’re clear, they’re clear!” she screamed.