Chapter Twenty-Six – Bip Bap Bam

“Here at CAGE–a subsidiary of ImmigraTech!–we do our very best to ensure all beings captured while attempting illegal border crossings are treated humanely and with the care and attention they deserve.

Our state-of-the-art housing and lockdown facilities guarantee that cases of physical harm, sexual harm, suicide, and child mismanagement are kept to a tolerable minimum, while also encouraging and re-educating any future citizens on the benefits of joining the workforce of any corporation looking for new employees!”

–The Collateral Acquisition and Gatekeeping Enforcement Handbook, Page 759, 2048 Edition.

***

I grunted as I shoved the door aside. The folk who made it probably wouldn’t be happy I’d jammed a hand against the Faraday netting and fucked it up, but then I didn’t really care all that much about those folk.

The corridor past the doorway led to a bright room with a ceiling five metres up. It was pretty wide too, and I assumed it was just as deep.

I glanced at my map, but it didn’t match what was there at all. Someone had gone around and modified the room a good deal. Not too surprising.

The walls were entirely white, that kind of near-fluorescent white they painted on asphalt. Combined with the dozens of lights hanging from the ceiling, it made for a room that might have been too bright to look at if it weren’t for the visor on my helmet darkening itself.

The walls were covered in wired mesh, or at least the exterior walls.

In the centre of the room were some enclosures. Just walls without any roofs, and with one door leading in.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“Looks like a cage, for people,” Gomorrah said. “Like something you’d see at the borders.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess we might’ve found our missing people.” I moved over to the doorway and fiddled with the latch keeping it shut. It was a rusty metal bar, nothing fancy, but likely enough to keep anyone without tools or good leverage from breaking through.

I pushed the door open and peeked past it. There was a small room, with a fridge, of all things, and a second gate, this one made of fencing mesh. A table, with some trays stacked on it and a microwave on the end, sat off to one side.

“Likely for food,” Gomorrah said. “To feed their prisoners.”

The fridge was filled to the brim with cheap microwavable meals that anyone could afford. Mostly flavoured cardboard and some cheap vat-grown veggies. The brownies always tasted good though.

I moved over to the next door and unlocked it. The enclosure was split down the middle. One large cage on the left, another on the right. “Shit,” I muttered.

The folk we were looking for were there. Some of them, at least. Poor, decrepit people, lounging on the floor, some sleeping, others huddled against the walls. A few were pacing back and forth.

They’d at least had the common decency to split them up, men on one side, women on the other.

It struck me as a little strange that they only had buckets and a small corner with a curtain to take care of their business. They were being held here by Sewer Dragons. Of all the people able to furnish usable plumbing…

“Can you ping their augs?” Gomorrah asked. “We could identify them.”

“That’s a good idea. Myalis?” I said.

“Of the forty-two people here, thirty-nine are on the list of missing people we previously created,” Myalis said.

Franny hummed. “We missed a few. Where are the rest?”

“Unknown,” Myalis replied. “Though some have recordings on their augmentations of other captives being escorted away, from which I’ve identified twelve more individuals. As for those present who were not on the list, they are without prior documentation, housing, or are from far outside the search range attributed to this scenario.”

“Folk from outside of New Montreal,” I asked.

“Essentially, yes.”

“We’re going to need to evacuate all of these people,” Gomorrah said. “Atyacus, I need a route back to the surface.”

I nodded as I crossed the room. The people here seemed to cover the entire spectrum, young and old, male and female, and there were plenty of skin tones and nationalities on display. Whatever anyone said about the Sewer Dragons, they couldn’t be called discriminatory when it came to picking future kidnapping victims.