Chapter Eleven

Where these two rooms had been luxurious—for an arcology dweller at least—the last one was anything but. Four women and two men were chained up naked, arms raised above their heads, staring at us in terrified desperation.

It’d been a few days since we’d killed lucky, and the stench that rolled out of the room made it clear that nobody had been in to clean up, or feed and water the prisoners.

“Motherfucker!” I repeated, seriously wishing that I could bring Lucky back from the dead just to kill him again.

“Stop,” Reign barked as I stepped forwards.

“What”?

“Don’t move.” She swore, shaking her head. “As soon as the door opened, the datadeck went active.”

“And?” I asked exasperated, glancing over at her and seeing it was still held in her hand.

“I was still linked to it or I’d have missed it. As soon as the door opened the explosive armed. That’s a trap.”

“So what do we do?”

“Try and disarm it, or we’re all fucked,” she said, lowering her rifle and starting to work on the datadeck.

“Shit, the room is locked out,” I growled, having just tried to contact Bowdoin. “I’m getting an error when I try and send out.”

“I…” Todds winced as he turned back to us, being careful not to move his feet, rotating at the hip instead. “Sorry guys, I didn’t consider the door might be trapped, not after the front door wasn’t.”

“It’s fine.” Reign waved the apology away, making me stare at her in confusion.

“What’s fine?”

“It’s a simple trigger.” She sighed, straightening. “I turned it off, try sending a message now?”

I tried, getting a connection no problem, and I sighed in relief. “What the fuck was that?” I asked, looking at her. “It’s literally that simple?”

“It was an on-off switch.” She snorted. “There’s a trigger if the door opens without it being disarmed, the explosives go live, and then if you enter the room? They go boom. If you flick the switch though?”

She shrugged. “Sounds stupid, being so simple, but…”

“But someone else put this in for a half orc gang banger.” I groaned. “Okay, look. We know someone with the skill to make sure this is safe, right?” I asked and she nodded, pointing down with one finger in question. “Exactly, I’ll make a call, see if they’re interested in this, see if they’ll check the place out and do… I don’t know. Find out what this shit is.”

“You can ask, but they were pretty adamant about not helping us until…?” She nodded towards Todds, who sighed.

“Look guys, I know I’m new, but seriously, either trust me or don’t, but can we get a move on here, this smell, and these people? We need to do something, and quick. I don’t think they’ve had so much as a drink in days.”

“Standby.” I sighed, putting the call through to Stinger.

There was a long delay, then an image of the crazy woman appeared in my connection, now well dressed and clean, her projection nothing like her public image.

“You called?” she asked laconically.

“We need a little help,” I said, getting a swift shake of the head as soon as the words left my virtual lips.

“You know the deal—”

“I do, and I’m not asking for us,” I clarified. “We just broke into Lucky’s place, and we found some shit we weren’t prepared for.” I linked my eyes into the feed, and heard the hiss of disgust at the sight of the prisoners.

“That is unfortunate, but—”

“There’s a shitload of high explosives around the room apparently, and we armed the trigger when we opened the door. We think we’ve switched it all off, but while I could call a hacker to check the controller…” I shrugged and looked at her appealingly.

“You’d rather have an explosives specialist make sure the room is clear?” She sighed. “There’d be a cost.”

“There always is.”

“Not what you’re expecting.” She smiled. “Anthos Black is gathering more of his ‘product’ ready for a trip out into the wastes I hear. Apparently someone disrupted one of his labs earlier today, and he lost a lot of credits. He’s stepped up his timescale, so you can either hit him before he leaves the city tomorrow, or wait a month or more for another chance.”

“He’s taking them out of the city?” I asked and she nodded, sending me an updated file. “I’ll check it out.”

“Until then, One of us will come and examine the situation for you, what are your intentions regarding the group?”

“Uh, I don’t know?” I admitted. “I was going to get them a drink and let them use the shower, then tell them to fuck off basically.”

“You might want to reconsider that.” Stinger sighed theatrically. “Two I can see are missing persons with a reward for their return…”

“A reward?” I asked hopefully.

“Not much, but you might as well claim it, Search the bounty system, you’ll find the subsystem of missing persons. ID each and you’ve got an easy win. One of us is on their way now.”

“One last thing…”

“Yes?”

“The chemists that Lucky was ‘employing’, he used obedience collars. We were going to set them free, so I just wanted to warn you, alright?”

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“We’ll keep an eye on the local supply and demand, make sure nothing strange happens,” she assured me, before cutting the link and leaving me wondering what the hell that meant.

I relayed the information, as much as I could, then raised my voice so the terrified group inside could hear us.

“We’ve got a team coming, can you use your Keystones?” I asked, getting a shake of a few heads and that was it. “Fuck, well, I know some of you at least are on the missing persons roster, and there’s rewards for you. We’ll be claiming those, and you’ll all be going home to your families as soon as we’ve got the explosives sorted I guess.”

“Did you tell her about the chemists?” Reign asked, and I nodded.

“I did, she said something about monitoring the local supply and demand?”

“Probably in case it fluctuates, see who’s moving in to fill the void,” Reign suggested.

“Makes sense I guess.” I shook my head. “So, you want to claim the bounties on these people?” I asked her and she nodded as I turned to Todds. “Reign will register the people as found, send an image to them and their location to a next of kin I guess?”

“Yeah, then the bounty pays out on confirmation that this is that person,” Reign clarified. “I marked us all as involved, all five,” she said, making it obvious that even though the sisters weren’t with us, they still got a cut. “The payout will be released over the next few days.”

I nodded, looking back in at the people hanging there, then quickly away again.

My initial instinct was to cut them down, or hell, at least remove the gags and see if I could give the poor fuckers a drink, and cover their nakedness, but knowing so little about how the explosives were set? There could be a secondary trigger or anything in there. It wasn’t worth killing them and us, to cover them or save them another half an hour of being naked and thirsty.

Twenty minutes later, and the explosives were being stripped out, and blankets, drinks and a line formed for the shower, while the traumatized people begged for news about their loved ones. The six had been fitted with restraint collars, forcing them to stay in the apartment, even if they got free of their chains and unable to access their keystones.

Fortunately, there were groups that literally all they did was help with this, charities that dealt with trafficked people, and a swift call to one of them by Todds, and we were inundated with a group of tree hugging holier-than-thou types who glared at us, as though we were responsible for the things these people had gone through.

All in all, the only relief we got out of the whole thing, thanks to the glares and more, was that the controller for the chemists—who Reign had messaged, explained the realities of life to, and then set free—had also been used to store a lot of the credits the gang had been earning.

All five of us were just under sixteen thousand credits better off within an hour, and that gave us something to make up for the lack of any real loot.

We hit Gunther’s, sold the spare gear that we didn’t want to move through the guild, and I bought what felt like the most important purchase I’d made in forever.

Tac-Net

Tier : Two

This entry level Tactical Network is designed to pair up to ten units into a single highly encrypted communications grid. With the patented recycling encryption that only Lynyrd Corp can provide, you’ll know your innermost communiques are secure!

Note : Guarantees are valid only so long as supplied by an approved Lynyrd retailer with this month’s code!

Note : Guarantee is valid only so long as original Lynyrd comms gear is used.

Durability : 76/100

Credit Cost : 8,999

The kit came with ten links as standard, three of which didn’t work, but considering we realistically only needed five for now, and possibly one more in the near future? That was fine.

The fact that like most of the suppliers Gunther stocked, Lynyrd went out of business years ago, wasn’t overlooked, but hey. I managed to get the price down to only nine thousand in the end using that detail to my advantage.

I also got a new full face helm, several upgrades to my body armor—new tactical vest and trousers, thank you very much Gunther and the ART Collective, whoever they were—and lastly six boxes of ammo and a handful more grenades.

That left us time to make a little detour to order an electronics bench and a clean room prep drone—basically it was a small, dumb as fuck drone that would keep a designated area free of dust, dirt and debris, but it needed the room to be clean before it could be deployed the first time—then we were done.

Todds went home, happy that the day had gone easily, and ready to get a few hours downtime with the family, when the call came in, twenty minutes after we’d all started heading in different directions of course.

“Kabutt?”

“Yeah, Julius?” I sighed. If he was calling it was unlikely to be for good news.

“Join us in virtual,” he said, sending me a code then disconnecting.

“Fuck’s sake,” I grumbled, shifting to get more comfortable in the back of the cab and speaking to Reign quickly. “Julius wants me to meet him in virtual, nudge me when we get there if I’m not out before…”

“Will do,” she promised. “If it’s a virtual meeting then it might be good news, you think?”

“Is it ever?” I countered, shaking my head. “Just nudge me, and check on the girls will you?”

“Will do,” she repeated.

With that, I sighed, and triggered the code, watching as the world around me vanished.

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