Chapter Thirty-Three – Cleaning Up

Chapter Thirty-Three – Cleaning Up

“Gangs start when people have a reason to stick together. If the world was all nice and good, if it wasn’t split because of class and race and violence, then you wouldn’t have anyone deciding that the best way to earn some peace and respect is to stick together and mess up anyone that gets in their way.”

–Laserjack, 2051

***

I rode up the elevator with my arms crossed, glaring through my visor at the elevator’s door until the entire thing came to a grinding halt and the doors shuttered open.

I hadn’t hurt the Ventrats. They weren’t to blame, so their leader got a stern warning to keep on minding his business before I left. It wasn’t fun, this chasing after thieves in the night.

The elevator had a small computer in it that tracked which floors it had stopped on previously, with timestamps and all. It was easy once I was at it to hook Myalis into the elevator’s little control panel and let her do her thing.

It meant that we were now on the right floor, about three floors away from ground level, deep into the pits of the mega building. That didn’t seem ideal.

The door finished opening and I stepped out invisibly into a dank corridor which… I paused.

The corridor was clean.

I had come here with a clear and obvious preconception, expecting more graffitied walls and floors with years of grime stuck to them, but that wasn’t the case. The linoleum was worn in the centre where people walked more, but it was otherwise spotless. The walls were clean, free of mould or stains. Even the ceiling was free of spiderwebs or smoke stains.

For some reason, the sheer cleanliness set me more on edge than if I’d walked out to discover an army waiting for me. “Who lives on this floor?” I asked.

There is a database of residents, but it doesn’t exactly include their gang affiliations, nor would I consider it overly accurate. One thing does stand out, however.

“Yeah?” I asked.

Over four fifths of this building’s cleaning staff live on this floor, and law enforcement reports suggest that one of the gangs inhabiting the building is called the Janitors.

“Janitors? So they’re what, a gang of cleaners? Or is it a euphemism? They ‘take out the trash’ or something stupid like that?”

There is little information available on them on the net. Even less than I’m finding about the other groups that inhabit this building. A cursory search suggests that someone is making an effort to delete and suppress any discussion of the group. It’s all archived and retrievable.

“So, they hid information about themselves, but you can still get to it?”

Yes. But the mere act of suppression and deleting that information has dampened any discussions. Oftentimes, the information I can learn about someone is circumstantial, or pieced together from several sources that each only give me a few small pieces of the puzzle. By keeping discussions to a minimum, I have little to work with and less information that’s trustworthy or corroborated from multiple sources.

“Right,” I said. I more or less understood that. It was like hearing gossip to learn about someone. Only probably more complicated than I cared to dive into.

“So, the Janitor gang. Any idea where they hang out?”

A few members have active social media accounts tracking their movements. They seem to concentrate in a small, unlicensed bar called the Broom Closet.

Of course they did. Myalis helpfully tossed the directions up onto my augs and I started making my silent way across the floor. It took a few turns before I met anyone in the corridors. I slid to one side to let a trio of middle-aged guys in jumpsuits move past. They weren’t wearing gear that matched, colour-wise, but it was clear that they had a theme going.

Or maybe jumpsuits had become stylish for 40-something guys when I wasn’t paying attention. They had a whole host of drab colours to pick from, and it looked like at least one of them had decorated his with some patches and a utility belt.

I didn’t miss the gun tucked into the belt either. Last I checked, handguns weren’t cleaning implements.

“Takes all sorts,” I muttered before stifling a yawn.