“It looks like a decent selection today, but I might come up empty-handed today; that bitch Genera’s here.”

“She’s not a problem for me. She has that hangup about size—the bigger the better. I have to limit myself to the hand-sized ones. If it’s too big, it won’t fit. I see that they have a Silver Hoop, those aren’t common.”

“They have a new edition of Buinel. Wonder what’s changed? I bet it’s spicy enough to really get people going.”

“Did you notice that the main event is an early model Sprocket Rocket? The brochure says it’s barely customized even. I wonder how big it is? I might try for that one.”

“Meh, I’m just here for the Emoscythe Mordeath Noir in the third set. I need to complete my tops set.”

--Over heard conversation in the lobby of Lloyds Auction House, before an award winning auction of Samurai gear boxes.

***

“What is he trying to do?” I asked. My mind raced ahead, and I realized that I didn’t care. “Scratch that. How did you escape? Can one of you draw up the way there?” They must have escaped using a different route. I couldn’t see the trio, as lightly armed as I’d found them, getting through that many antithesis. I very much did not want to have to fight through all those Anti’s. That would certainly warn the cultists, and who knows how they would react? The cultists were not going to like us killing the aliens they were collecting and might get desperate.

“We came here through the same side door you did. To get here, we had to go through a couple strong security doors that Tara hacked. I don’t think the Anti’s could have made it through those doors. We closed them behind us to keep the cult from following.” Ginny pulled my tablet out of Tara’s hands and started drawing on an app. “The cells were tiny, a bit bigger than your reach. We could freely walk between them, but if any of the cultists entered the prison, you had to go into a cell quickly. The walls were all metal.”

“The metal was charged; a faraday cage to prevent signals.” Tara added. “Touch it wrong, you get shocked. They didn’t want to take out our augs and risk us dying afterwards, so they used jammers instead.”

Ginny had finished up her sketch. “This is not at all to scale. Here are the cells, and the hole out. I do mean hole; I barely fit through.” She gestured to her hip, where there were tears in her jeans. “I’m not sure you will. That dumps into a larger room, which had the first security door. Then another series of rooms along a hallway. At the end is the second security door with a booth, which is where we found the guns. After that, it was a series of hallways until we arrived here.”

She looked me in the eye as she returned the tablet to Tara. “Why did you want to know that?” asked Ginny.

“There’s an old saying: ‘A bird in the hand beats two in the bush.’ I’m wondering how well that scales. Three in the hand against a hundred in the prison?”

“No,” Tara said, staring me in the face. Her voice was firm and had lost any hint of breathiness. “I won’t go back. It’s not safe there. The Anti’s are coming, and they want to put them into us and into them, and then there will be screaming.” She grabbed me and clung. I felt her trembling as she buried her face in my chest. I gently curled my arms around her in a protective embrace.

“Tara, how many prisoners were left at the cult?” I asked.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“One hundred thirteen, including twelve minors, four elderly, six paraplegics with their cybernetics removed, and three nut jobs.” She looked at me. “Myself not included. You want to go back.” It was a statement, simple and not accusing.

“How many of those prisoners deserved to die at the hands of the cult?”

She craned her head to look up at me while still pressing against my body. I could see fear in her eyes and a little shame. “Four are convicted criminals, three abuse their spouses or children, and one of the old men is a pervert.” I raised an eyebrow at this litany. “Also, I hacked their augments. His aug’s storage is disgusting.”

Ginny settled down with us and stroked Tara’s hair. “Tara, do you remember that little girl two cells down?”

Tara nodded her head. “She had the cute barrettes in her hair.”

“You wanted to bring her but couldn’t. Do you remember?”

“She had a broken leg. Wouldn’t fit in the hole. Couldn’t run.”

“Yes. We were going to get help—to bring people back to save her.”

Tara nodded. “We tried once we were out of the suppression, but the emergency services bot glitched.”

Kaitlyn still stood before the console, but had been listening in. “Stupid bot got tied up in procedural hell. Three young women are not enough to warrant a full callout, but the cult’s too big an issue to be handled by a patrol car.”

“Well, now we have Marcus. We can be the ones to go save her. Think we can do that?” Ginny still stroked Tara’s hair, and I could feel her grip loosen.

“I won’t let them take me.”

“I won’t let them,” I promised. “You don’t have to go all the way back. You could stand guard at the security door. If any cultists or Anti’s come, you can lock the door and run. Will that work?” It might make handling the prisoners harder, but we’d manage.

Tara nodded and slowly let go of me. She started shoving gear into my backpack. In her spare time, she had neatly stacked the Samurai boxes in a corner, and they formed a tidy pile. I frowned at them for a minute.

“Corie, what are the rules on including or not including the boxes on my purchases? Does it cost more to include them?”

“There’s no extra cost to the boxes unless we start customizing the way they look. On the other hand, there’s no discount for not including them. It is part of the Vanguard tradition now, however, and not having the boxes could lead to issues.”

I wasn’t too worried about my image. I did, however, have problems with useless waste. If push came to shove, I’d make not having any boxes part of my image. I wondered how much of our landfills were taken up by all the boxes strewn about by the Samurai. “For mundane purchases where practical, I’d rather not have the box, please. Our landfills have enough to deal with.”

“Noted. Most of the Samurai boxes are either repurposed or traded as collectibles. One box from Hairumas sold for hundreds of millions of credits at auction last year. Others are in labs, where they analyze the materials to learn more about them. They almost never end up in the trash. And the few that do end up thrown away get salvaged.”

“While we’re doing housekeeping, let’s put a running total of my points on my glasses in the upper left.”

In one of the drawers of the console, Kaitlyn had found a canvas tote bag filled with the plastic storage of someone’s lunch. She and Tara split up the remaining ammo between my backpack and the bag. And with that, we left the machine room. It felt like we had been there for days, but when I checked the time on my clock, we had only been in there for a couple hours at most.

“Ginny, can you take the rear? Check it often so we don’t have any Threes catching us in the sensitive spot. I’ll take the front, with Tara and Kaitlyn in the middle.” Out in the hallway, I showed them how I had been marking my path and which way lay the safest way out. After that, the way proved as simple as they had described. Leaving the watchdog in place, Tara directed the other drone to range ahead as a scout. Only the occasional door broke the plain white wall. We briefly paused at each to lock them shut with sealing foam.

The first security door was in sight when I heard Kaitlyn’s hissed “Yes!” behind me. I looked at her, and she suddenly had a slightly guilty look on her face.

Ginny nudged her friend in the ribs with an elbow. “Don’t hold it in; share the good news!”

“Xenovir just hit two thousand.”