Chapter Two – Like a Raccoon to a Trashbag

Chapter Two – Like a Raccoon to a Trashbag

“The population distribution in modern cities means that something like forty percent of all inhabitants of a city live in a ‘megabuilding.’ These are not to be confused with more traditional apartment buildings or megacondos (wherein each housing unit and the building as a whole is owned in part by its tenants).

Most of all, however, megabuildings are profitable for those who own them.”

–The Mega, An Exploration of Megabuilding Culture in New York, Detroit, California, and elsewhere in the NA Region, 2046

***

I stretched my back as I walked into the bedroom, hands on my hips and spine twisted backwards until something popped into place and I let out a long sigh. Showers were nice.

“Right, so where’s Rac now?” I asked.

New Montreal Centre. She just got off the public transportation network.

Damn, and last time I checked was nearly an hour ago. I’d almost forgotten how incredibly shit the public network was. But it was also cheap as hell and could get someone nearly anywhere within the lower city.

I picked up some underwear from the floor and started getting dressed. “So, if I’m gonna go pay her a visit, think I should go in casual?”

“I wouldn’t,” Lucy said as she walked in after me. She was dressed already, with a big towel wrapped around her head. “But maybe you don’t need to go in with power armour either.”

“Yeah, that might be overkill,” I agreed. So I found my skintight armoured suit and slipped it on. Fortunately, it was bullshit alien tech, and the material could expand and contract a little, so I wasn’t caught bouncing on the spot trying to get it to fit like too-tight jeans.

The suit was supposed to be able to absorb a fair bit of damage, so it would do for a little walk around town. Plus I had my jacket laying around, which was a bit better armoured.

“Where’s my helmet?” I muttered as I looked around.

Lucy snorted, but she bent down and used her foot to kick my helmet out from under the bed. It didn’t roll far, what with the catears atop it, making it a bit too unshapely to roll.

“Thanks,” I said as I scooped it up. I started to tie my hair up in a quick one-handed bun while I moved towards the door, helmet under my arm. The blue tint on the tips of my hair was fading. I’d have to reapply that stuff soon. “See you in a bit!” I called back.

“Love you!” Lucy sing-songed. “And remember, half days!”

Considering how it was already past noon, I imagined that meant that I could only ‘work’ for the next few hours. But checking up on Rac would hardly, I imagined, count as work. How much trouble could one kid possibly get herself into?

I slipped my helmet on and moved through the museum, only stopping when Nose and Tim ran past me screaming at each other. Which actually reminded me, I wasn’t armed!

I took a slight detour to the armoury, which was… actually, kind of pitiful. I had like, four guns and an entire room to store them in. I picked up my handy old Trenchmaker, mostly because it was a gun I was fairly comfortable with, and tucked it into a thigh-holster. Then I hesitated over whether to grab anything else.

In the end, I decided that I’d probably be okay with just the handcannon. If anything needed a bigger gun than that to deal with, then I’d just buy it on the spot.

My bike had, at some point, parked itself in the garage below the museum, because it was just handy that way. So I headed down while checking my map to see where Rac was at now. “Any idea where she’s heading to?” I asked.

She has visited a specific club three times in the last weeks. Though I haven’t broken into their security to see why, who she might be meeting, or what she’s up to.

“Yeah, best not to,” I said. “If she was one of the kittens, then I’d want to know, in case she was being misled or something, but she’s not my responsibility.”