Chapter Thirty-Two – Rathunt

Chapter Thirty-Two – Rathunt

“No one wants to live in a megabuilding.

Not like we have any damned choice, so might as well make the best of it, right, you fucking rats?”

–Jeffery ‘Whiskers’ Tablespoon, 2055

***

“So, where can I find these…” I paused to yawn. “Assholes?” I was already walking deeper into the building, towards the far end of the square that held our little clinic. I wasn’t sure where I’d be going, but there were several corridors leading off into the distance so it was a good bet that I’d be in this general direction.

I’m tracking them now. Unfortunately, there are surprisingly few working cameras outside of the market areas.

Myalis opened a little box in the corner of my vision and started playing a video within it. It was the front of the clinic, seen from the corner of a camera.

I turned, matching the angles of what I was seeing until I spotted where the camera had to be. It was hidden behind the signage for a little automated doughnut shop across the square from the clinic.

The video continued to fast forward until it paused on a group of five people standing in front of the clinic. One of them had a crowbar that he was using with expertise to rip the door open.

“Why is this kind of footage always a blurry mess?” I asked. “It’s like… can you even buy cameras with such shitty quality anymore?”

The camera is able to capture much higher fidelity. It’s the data-transfer rates for off-site storage that encourage the owners of the security to reduce the quality of their footage.

I shook my head. It made sense, I supposed, but it was still annoying. I watch the five rip into the clinic, then come rushing out with a crate held between them. A sixth member rushed over pushing a wheeled trash bin, and they dumbed the container with all of our prosthetics into it.

Then the lot of them took off running. Myalis switched cameras, and I was able to see which passage they took.

“You lost them after this?” I asked.

I tracked them down two floors, which brings them close to the floor operated by the so-called Ventrats. There isn’t any clear evidence of who committed the crime, however.

The screen split into six, an image of each one of the assholes on each. Myalis added some metrics next to the images, heights as compared to the doorway and approximate weight and presented gender. “Right,” I said as I took them in. there weren’t any faces. All six of them were wearing full-face masks. Just black disks with holes for eyes with some sort of covering, and most of them had hoodies on over that. We had some skin colour, from two members that didn’t wear gloves, or who reached up and exposed some stomachs, but that was it.

They were surprisingly clever about this.

I followed the direction they’d run in while pushing their trash bin filled with my shit. Myalis continued to point towards where they went, and soon enough I found myself in a stairwell, walking past graffiti murals that had been there so long they were peeling and stepping over sleeping forms on the steps.

I made it to the right floor, then shoved my way past a pair of guys standing guard at the door. They cursed and looked around, but I wasn’t visible, so their search turned up nothing.

This was a residential floor, which meant a square grid of corridors lined with doors that had numbers on them. The Ventrats, as it turned out, weren’t making much of an effort to hide where they were hanging out.

I found a group of some dozen or so younger people, all dressed in black and frequently wearing plastic rat masks all hanging out in one of the dead-ends to one side of the floor. The walls behind them were covered in images of rats, all done in a sort of cell-shaded style, often with large green pipes.

It was a miracle that a Nintendo hit-squad hadn’t wiped them out already.

I slipped between a few of the Ventrats by the entrance of the dead end, then stepped over a few more deeper in that looked like they were knocked out by whatever shit they were plugging into their own veins.

I wasn’t surprised by the drugs. I was surprised by the amount. The Ventrats were doing well for themselves. Interestingly, I didn’t notice much by way of cybernetics. Maybe one or two eyes, or some cosmetic mods, but no borgs or even a cybernetic arm or leg in sight.

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My gaze kept sweeping over the group. Something was… off, here. These people looked either sleepy, or just tired. That fit with the hour, I supposed.

Moving deeper into their little corner, I found that the apartments at the end of the hall had the walls between them ripped out to create a much bigger floor space. That was probably their main hangout. The interior had a few fridges, some couches, and a very expensive entertainment system pressed up against one wall.

A shirtless man with whiskers tattooed to his face was sitting on a big ass couch, one leg over the arm, a hand resting on a fuck-huge revolver.

“That the boss?” I asked.

According to his NMPD criminal record, this is Jeffery ‘Whiskers’ Tablespoon, the leader of the Ventrats.

I blinked. “Fucking, Tablespoon?”