Chapter Thirty-Four – Something’s Dirty Down In CleanTown

Chapter Thirty-Four – Something’s Dirty Down In CleanTown

“Laundering materials and equipment has, strangely, become exponentially more complex, even as crime has mounted and become far more common. That’s because of technology like this. A simple RFID tag, no bigger than a grain of sand, can be hidden in nearly any piece of equipment and will allow you to track it across a city.”

–Securatek Demonstration, 2031

***

“No one wants to talk?” I asked the silent room. I looked around, but all I found were grown men and women in baggy uniforms who didn’t want to meet my gaze. They were still fondling their guns though.

Honestly, this whole thing could go pretty damned poorly. I was probably mostly bullet-proof, but there were two dozen of them to one of me, and if they piled on, it would get messy.

“Okay,” I said.

I stood up from the chair, then flung it aside. It crashed to the ground with a bang, and I saw half the room jump at the noise.

Reaching down, I plucked a grenade from one of my pockets and placed it on the booth’s table right in front of the three masked morons. “Who came up with your plan?” I asked.

None of them answered, but their eyes gave them away. Two of them glanced to the side and I turned, following their gaze to the end of the room where a man was standing next to the sound system. He was a middle aged guy, balding, a bit sweaty, and holding onto a large beer with white-knuckled fingers.

I touched the grenade I’d placed on the table. “If any of you three moves, this goes off,” I said.

Then I carefully put my Trench Maker away.

The tension in the room relaxed a hair, at least until I drew my sword.

The Void Terminus didn’t look like much when it wasn’t active. There wasn’t a blade on it. Instead, the entire shaft was a long rod with a sort of cap on the end. It almost looked like a tool rather than a weapon.

I walked slowly across the room, hoping that no one would try anything funny, then I stopped before the guy. “You the boss?” I asked.

That’s Robert Brigadeiro. He’s the manager of this building’s janitorial unit.

Robert swallowed, but he was quick to get his shit together. “I’m the manager, yes,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, Miss Samurai. We have nothing to do with you. We’re just the cleaning staff.”

“Well it looks like you, or at least some of your buddies here, cleaned out my clinic upstairs. I’m a little annoyed about it, to be honest. And I want to know where my limbs ended up. Those were meant to help people, you know.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. “We’re just cleaning staff, that’s all.”

“Uh-huh. You won’t mind if I have my AI check your augs then? Just to be sure?”

Robert was sweating bullets and blinking fast. He wiped the back of his hand across his face. “I… I don’t know. I mean. No. I don’t want that.”

“Then tell me where my shit is, and you can… well, no, I’m not just going to allow you to go back to partying after robbing from armless and legless people, but at least I won’t kill you all and then find out by hacking through your augs.”

Robert shook his head. “It’s too late,” he said.

“What do you mean, it’s too late.”

“Let my people go, please,” he said. “Most of them have nothing to do with this.”

“Most of them are here partying too, aren’t they?” I asked. “Spill.”

“We sold them. Everything we grabbed. You have to understand, we’re the cleaning people, no one cares about us, we’re practically third-class citizens and it was a lot of credits. We’re invisible to most people, so it was–”

I poked him in the chest with the end of my sword’s rod and he fell back against the wall, arms rising in surrender by his sides. “Who did you sell them to?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Where did they take them?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you get them back?”