Chapter Thirty-Two – Horses to Water

Chapter Thirty-Two – Horses to Water

“Space is looking less like the final frontier and more like our last hope.”

–JimJam Science Show, 2041

***

I patted Sprout on the knee. “Stay here, alright?” I asked. “I’m going to pop on in there, seal things up in a bit, and then we’ll head on out. Or…” I licked my lips.

Sometimes, when dealing with the kittens, they’d end up being afraid of something, or unable to do a chore, and while I ribbed them about it, I usually just did the task for them while telling them to do something easier to make up for it.

Stuff like doing the dishes if they didn’t want to take out the trash.

I didn’t think this was quite the same, but it was all I knew so it was all I had to draw a comparison to right then.

“You know what, no,” I said. I checked Sprout up and down, and he seemed fine, physically, at least. “You’re coming with me?” I asked… said. It started as a statement and ended as a question, really. I didn’t want to force the guy, but I wanted him to come.

He looked up. “Coming?”

“Good!” I said, taking the question as an answer. “You can show me what your plants have been doing. I haven’t had a chance to see them up close. And if anything tries to eat you this time they’ll have to get through me first.”

I start heading off, a grin growing as I heard Sprout scramble to keep up. We were met halfway to the office building by a militia guy with the pips of a second lieutenant next to the badges on his uniform. “Ma’am,” he said with a quick, sharp salute. “Second Lieutenant Hawke, ma’am, you mentioned needing me?”

“Ah, right,” I said. The Hawke was a vaguely native-American looking guy, tall and broad shouldered and looking very serious. “The two of us are going to head in there to poke around. Can you make sure that nothing comes out of the building until we’re done? Ah, aside from us, of course.”

“We can do that,” he said with another salute. “Good luck in there.”

“Thanks,” I said before walking past him. Once out of immediate ear-shot I glanced back at Sprout. “Got a gun?” I asked.

“Uh,” was his reply.

I tossed him my Laser Pointer. “You’ll need to buy ammo yourself,” I said. “Myalis, can I get another?”

With the same Depleted Iridium rounds?

“Maybe switch it up to something like buckshot? We’ll be in closer quarters.” A gun appeared in the air before me and I caught it before it could start to fall. Then we were at the single door into the complex. “I’ll be going ahead. Watch my back,” I said to Sprout.

He nodded. “I’ll do my best,” he said. Obviously, he was still nervous. I was pretty sure that dragging him back in here was probably not the best move for his mental health but… he needed to learn.

Fuck, I didn’t like being put in this kind of position, but I needed dependable samurai I could work with if I was going to keep this shithole city mostly intact, and that meant pushing Sprout a little.

I’d try to soften the blow, maybe? … Was I going to have to attend, like, a seminar on convincing people to jump into trouble for a greater cause? Did that even exist?

I stepped into the office building, invisibility off so that any antithesis we ran into would jump me first. I swept my gaze around, Laser Pointer following as I looked for trouble. The entrance lobby was a tight corridor, with a couple of benches on the sides and a security booth at the end that I imagined doubled as a shitty sort of reception.

A turret was mounted on the ceiling, but it looked inactive. Was it just for show?

I focused back on the ground where a few model threes were laying there, dead and covered in little bulletholes. I wasn’t any sort of forensic expert, but I guessed that they’d been shot up by the militia folk.

“So, where did you find the entrance?” I asked Sprout.

“The one the antithesis were using? Two levels down,” he said.

“This place has multiple basements?” I asked.

“It’s a cubicle farm,” he replied. I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I just nodded along anyway.

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Past the multiple metal detectors and EMP scramblers by the entrance, we came into the main space of the office building. A large room with a few enclosed offices along the edges and a sea of cubicles in the middle. Each had walls that stopped at about my waist, probably so that managers could better see their employees at work. There were a few more antithesis bodies here, but some of them looked like they had been dragged across the floor, leaving bloody trails behind.

“They’re trying to recoup their bodies,” I guessed. A model three body probably had just about enough biomass to create another, fresh model three. Give or take a bit of waste. “Which means that they’re not far.”