Chapter Thirteen – Interloping is My Passion

Chapter Thirteen – Interloping is My Passion

“And in today’s financial news, social media mega corp SpyCorp will be merging with the international security firm Unlimited Protections Limited. This is a seven trillion credit merger, and one of the biggest in the year so far.

A spokesAI for SpyCorp says that this merger will combine the best of both companies in one, easy-to-use package for advertisers and safety-concious consumers everywhere.”

–FinTechNews, Aug 2042

***

It wasn’t long before Gomorrah arrived and with her the entire army.

There were some large gates around the city, but most of them were for smaller overland transports, so a larger set of doors further in had to be open to let the army column enter. It all happened rather efficiently, though. The militia cleared out, and soon enough Juno was chatting with the local commanders about… army stuff.

I wanted to stick my nose into that, but before I figured it might be best to have a talk with the local samurai. Notably, Libre.

So, once Gomorrah had landed next to the base inside of the walls and the Bastion was properly relocated, I joined up with her and Crisis Mode, then started to head towards the centre of operations for the Quebec city militia and samurai.

That centre was a building on the far north-eastern end of the city. A narrow concrete tower, with no windows but with several walkways around its exterior and with a large AA-system on the roof.

It was strange being in the walls. Quebec city proper was… a little smaller than the big walls around it would have suggested? There was a space, maybe some quarter-kilometre wide, that was basically free of buildings on the inside of the walls. Then the more suburban sprawl started.

Crisis Mode and I, as well as Hedgehog and Gomorrah, took a bus towards the command centre from the military base. It was a little awkward to load into plain public transportation, but this one had been converted to military use. That just meant that everything comfortable had been stripped out of it and it was running 24/7.

I didn’t like walking into Libre’s space without a few tons of armour at my back. I didn’t expect things to go wrong, but… yeah, a big part of me suspected that I would butt heads with Libre as soon as we met.

Still, it wasn’t just me. Gomorrah was there, as well as Hedgehog. Shy and Princess were staying behind to help the army and get things set up, and a little to spy on the situation for us. If Libre wanted to turn this into a situation it would be him versus three, and I gave us good odds.

We made it to the base of the tower, and Crisis Mode led us out. “Libre’s office is here,” she said. “I mostly stay at one of the barracks.”

“A barrack?” I asked. “Not like… somewhere comfortable? Or did you turn it into your own pad?”

She stared at me as if I’d grown a second head. “No? I mean, I have my own room. It’s an officer’s room.”

“Alright, I guess,” I said.

“Not everyone can casually take over an entire floor of a skyscraper,” Gomorrah said.

“I mean, no, but we can,” I replied. It was weird that Crisis Mode didn’t have her own place, but maybe she didn’t care much for it? I could see some folks not caring about where they laid their heads at night. “I’d at least get a hotel or something. A place with room service, you know?”

“That’s an idea, I suppose. It would make it harder to get to the wall in an emergency,” she said.

“We have flying cars,” I pointed out. “Buy one with points, or take one from someone who looks rich and whose car you like the look of.”

“That’s theft, Stray Cat,” Hedgehog said.

I shrugged. “It’s borrowing without permission.”

There was an elevator within, one guarded by a pair of men with assault rifles and a bit of decent-looking gear. They wanted us to surrender our weapons, but I didn’t even have time to tell them to fuck off in an interesting way before Gomorrah’s flat ‘no,’ did the job.

After a short ride up, the doors opened into a decently open room. To one side were computers and a dozen small offices with people working through paperwork. I wasn’t one to judge offices, but they looked busy, multiple ongoing calls and desks with dirty mugs and lots of black pockets under eyes.

In the middle of the room was a holographic map. A massive one, set about a foot off the ground on a platform, with the wall poking up about ten centimetres up and the bigger megabuildings standing about knee-high, more or less. The map was large enough that a good deal of the surrounding countryside was visible.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Standing on that map was a man that had to be Libre.

He looked… not like what I imagined. For one, he looked like he was short on sleep, with a bit of stubble on his cheeks and chin. His eyes were down, staring between the map and something I couldn’t see. He moved his hands, probably touching some interface, and hundreds of red dots appeared on the map and moved. The Antithesis?