Chapter Thirty-Six – Catkiller

Chapter Thirty-Six – Catkiller

“Our weakness? You want me to just tell you what Samurai are weak against?

Well, I suppose… awkwardness?”

–Guillotine, interview with Star-Spangled Monthly, 2029

***

There were all sorts of things I could have handled. Katallina being angry at me. Her throwing a tantrum. Having her curse me out. All reactions I’d seen from my kittens plenty of times. They were outlets to anger and sadness that I got. I could deal with snark, it was how I did emotions.

Katallina looked at me, then her eyes got wet and she started to cry.

I didn’t do crying. Lucy did crying.

If a kitten cried, it was Lucy that did the hugging and the shushing and all that junk.

“Ah, fuck,” I said. “Uh, shit, it’s okay, kid?” I tried.

Somehow that didn’t work.

I looked around, but other than her dog, there wasn’t much to see. “Shit, uh, look, you’re safe, alright?” I asked. “I’m gonna slip you, and your dog I guess, a mask, and we can both leave this place, okay?”

She bawled harder.

Interesting.

“What?” I asked.

I started looking for catalogues that could improve maternal instincts or help people in emotional distress, but other than some drug cocktails I can’t find anything very relevant. It’s an oversight I don’t think we were expecting. A complaint has been filed.

“That’s nice,” I deadpanned. I reached up to run my hands through my hair, bumped my helmet, then groaned. “Okay, okay. Hey, kid, you hear me?”

The girl nodded. She was ugly crying, and she was just old enough that it wasn’t even passably cute.

“Okay, look, I’ve got some questions, alright?” I asked.

Katallina snorted some and I sighed as I backed up.

“Myalis, can you connect me to Gomorrah?”

Certainly.

“Thanks,” I said. Something ‘pinged’ and I sighed again because I was in that sort of mood. “Yo, G-girl,” I said.

“I recall telling you not to call me that. Or some variation thereof,” Gomorrah said.

“Yup. I recall not recalling that. So, uh, found the girl, and the dog. Neither are Vanguards. I… wait, Myalis, is the dog?”

No. The dog is not a Vanguard.

Gomorrah hummed. “Interesting. So, where is our wayward Samurai?”

“That’s a question, isn’t it?” I muttered. I tapped on the glass of the chamber. “Hey, kid, uh… shit, I don’t know where to start. Look, we’re looking for someone, a Samurai. The one that gave you that gun you had. Do you know where they are?”

“He’s dead,” Katallina said. “The monsters ate him.”

“Uh,” I said. “Do you know who he was? His name?”

She nodded. “Randall, he was from 2B.”

I blanked, but Gomorrah was on the ball apparently. “Randall from 2B. That’s an older teenaged boy from the same floor where Katallina lived. Male, sixteen. Good clean record. Babysits others on occasion from his social feeds… and the cleanup crews for that building have tagged his body already.”

I rubbed at the nape of my neck, then stood up and stretched. “Whelp, that’s fucked,” I said. “Can you tell Deus Ex?”

“You don’t want to tell her yourself?”

“Not particularly. Make some space in your car for a girl and a dog, would you?”

Gomorrah was quiet for a little while. “You want to put a dog in my car?”

“I’m not leaving the kid here,” I said. “She’s in a fucking cage.”

“That’s fine. But the dog?”

I started pacing. “Gomorrah, you can’t just abandon a dog. Even I know that.”

Gomorrah groaned, a very un-nunlike sound. “God give me patience. Fine. I’m going to contact Deus-Ex. Ping me when you’re done, and I’ll blow off a wall to pick you up.”

“We could leave from the front,” I said.

“Look, this whole thing has been a little disappointing to me, and I have missiles primed to fire already. Don’t take my fun away from me.”

I surrendered to the crazy pyromaniac nun with the missile launchers on account of her being crazy and a pyromaniac and having missile launchers. “See you in a bit then.” I said.

Once the line cut off, I moved closer to the glass wall of Katallina’s cell.

I didn’t want to speak my next question out loud, so I opened a text box with a twitch of my eye and typed it out. Myalis, her parents?