Chapter Twenty – Up Shit’s Creek

“They tried, you know. Way back in the late 2020s, there was this whole thing where they tried to cut down on drug use. It wasn’t all that great. The world was going to shit, what did they expect, people to inject less shit into themselves?

Nah, we still made bank. It became harder to move materials around, but then, no one ever really checked the sewers.”

–Excerpt from a 2049 autobiography.

***

One thing became increasingly clear as Gomorrah questioned our ambushers. They didn’t know jack shit.

If they did know something, then they weren’t spilling. Myalis and Atyacus both took a turn rooting around in their augments to see if there was anything worth finding, but other than some questionable kinks, a few bits of potential blackmail, and a lot of mundane messages, there wasn’t really anything worth our time.

One of them knew about the kidnappings. A younger member had been helping transport some people grabbed from the upper levels. He was a ferry driver, and that meant he had seen the kidnapped people being shifted to one of the locations Myalis had tagged as a likely spot for the kidnapped to be housed in.

But as for the why, he had nothing.

“This is such a waste of time,” I muttered as I stood up from a crouch. Talking to our new buddies was made more complicated when all of them were glued to the floors and walls in rather awkward positions.

The goop was starting to melt off though. Given another four or five hours, they’d be able to start fighting their way free. I didn’t plan on being around for that.

“I think I agree,” Gomorrah said. “Any ideas, Raccoon, Franny?”

“No. These people seem like… pardon the term, but they seem like lowlives. They’re not at the top of the food chain.”

“The way they put it, there’s no food chain around here,” I said. I reached up to rub at my nose, then sighed and let my hand drop. Masks were annoying. “I think we might need to go pay this Doc Hack guy a visit though. He doesn’t seem to be quite in charge, but he is giving out orders, which is close enough.”

“I think I’ve heard of him,” Rac said. “He’s, like, this super smart guy that used to be a bigwig in some company, but then he did something sleazy and he came down into the sewers to be left alone. He’s been there forever though. Some people say he’s like a boogieman.”

“Oh, great,” I said. I loved the idea of a sewer-dwelling bogeyman. The name Doc Hack inspired such great imagery too. I could imagine telling the kittens to shut up and go to sleep, or else Doc Hack would show up and gut them.

Gomorrah picked up her flame-thrower where she’d left it on the ground. “Should we keep moving?” she asked. “I have the codes for one of their vehicles.”

“That’ll save us some points,” I muttered. “Yeah, let’s move on. These guys can chill out over here. Do a bit of thinking about all of their, uh, sins or whatever.”

“Being glued to the floor isn’t exactly like visiting a confessional,” Franny said.

I laughed as I gestured to the end of the room. “We’re continuing down that way?”

Gomorrah took the lead with a nod, and I fell in behind her while turning my stealth systems back on. We still had a little ways to go.

The Ratways earned their name in the very next room. Gomorrah and I both froze as we came face to face with a rat the size of a small dog. It stared at Gomorrah with its two beady eyes, then its whiskers twitched and it skittered off and into an open grate it really shouldn’t have been able to fit through.

“I’m gonna go back and close the doors. I don’t want our buddies to be eaten by one of those,” I said.

“Good idea.”

I jogged back into the room, checked around for rats, and, on seeing none, closed the massive steel bulkheads. I even picked up one of those air-guns and placed it in the arms of one of the guys who had a bit of mobility. “For the rats,” I explained.

He swore at me, but I think he understood what I meant.

I closed the last door from the other side as I rejoined Gomorrah. “Right, let’s keep moving,” I said.

I made sure my railguns were ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. If we got buried by a pile of those rats, I wanted the firepower to kill them dead.

“I’m really not fond of this place,” I said. “It’s a shithole.”

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“Is that some sort of pun?” Gomorrah asked.

“No, it’s a fact.”