Chapter 21

Sitting in a booth in The Drunk Kitten, I wasn’t sure if I was more nervous about the upcoming gig or the looks I was getting from the more established crews. I’d gotten here early and was waiting for Sara, Lizzy, and the twins. But, based on the glares I was receiving from some of the hardened, well armed, mercs around me, I was starting to think I’d have been better off just showing up on time.

I took a sip of my ice water and tried to ignore the dirty looks. Sure, these booths were supposed to be for established crews, according to Lizzy, but I’d specifically asked the bartender if I could sit up here and he’d said yes.

First thing I’d done when I got here was to give the bartender an update on the job, and I’d even sent him a little video presentation that I’d cut together of me purchasing the poison and distributing it, he was well aware we were just going down to finish off any stragglers and verify the poison’s efficacy. So if he said I could sit here and wait for my crew, then sit here I would.

I ran through my inventory to make sure I had everything I’d need. Two dozen AeroMed inhalers: check. Two dozen clips for my Python and CrowdController respectively: check. A dozen quick loaders for my Overseer: check. Ten frag grenades and ten flashbangs: check. Noticing the Sakura CherryBlossom Alloy Nano Plating still sitting in my inventory, I reminded myself to check that out sometime, since I still had no idea what it was.

I’d armed up pretty well, if I did say so myself. But adding in my new pair of black tier 1 pants and matching black tier 1 combat boots, I was looking pretty cash poor with only 200c left to me. I checked my balance, 189c…Right, bought this water. I took a smaller sip to make it last. Still, I figured it was better to be broke than to get stabbed again.

As I looked through my various perks and stats I’d recently upgraded. I was fairly happy with them, and, if I decided later that I wasn’t, I could always upgrade more then. I’d briefly questioned the upgraded inhaler perk I’d so blithely spent multiple points on. I mean, if a basic inhaler actually heals 40% of my health, then aren’t I getting 120% healing from using just one now? How does that work? I shook off my unanswerable questions and just assured myself that being able to damn near instantly heal myself from the brink of death was fucking useful, especially considering how much I seemed to get shot.

Closing out of my GEMA display, I looked to the XP counter I’d set up for this gig. It was sitting at an astonishing 1,255,250 XP. Considering the way the XP counter had been rapidly ticking up faster and faster over the course of this week, it was almost disconcerting the way it had been dead stable on that final count since I woke up. It had almost immediately occurred to me that when I purchased my new Selectively Venomous Perk it’d been toggled in the ‘on’ position by default. That, combined with Touch of the Viper, meant that all those people that I was doing damage to via pre-existing poison down on sub 10 were suddenly hit with a massive dose of additional poison. Or maybe it had just accentuated what was already there? I wasn’t sure. More experimentation required. But, however it worked, I had doubled my level overnight up to 50.

Once again I had more skill and perk points than I knew what to do with. I was really tempted to just dump a bunch into my basic attributes, but figured it’d be best to wait until after the gig at the very least. Sara had kindly done my ammo and clothing shopping for me, so she was well aware how broke I was. If I suddenly had superhuman muscles, she’d assume it was something I got from a Ripper and would want to know how I paid for it. Better to just wait til I was flush and could explain it away…Might just hold off on that anyway. No need to spend the points if I can just exercise. I’d decide later, right now-

“The fuck you think you’re doing?!” came an angry voice. I looked up from my quiet contemplation of my icewater to see a rather muscular, borged out, woman in a bright yellow tank top, holding an improbably large gun, standing in front of my table, and fiercely staring at me like she thought she could kill me with her eyes alone. Is that a minigun? Very cool. Her shiny chrome arms perfectly matched the shiny chrome surrounding her glowing red left eye. She seemed unhappy.

“Just enjoying a delicious glass of the bartender’s best water,” I responded, taking another sip as if to provide proof. “Why? Is there a problem?” I asked politely.

Her one remaining eyebrow drew down as she frowned even more deeply at my nonchalance “These booths are for merc crews, not solos. Solos get the pit.” She vehemently pointed to the moderately occupied sunken lounge in front of the currently empty stage. “I’ve watched you taking up space for real mercs for the past hour. Get out of our booth!” I heard a few of the nearby mercs grumble their agreement with her shouting.

I noticed a flash of red near the entrance out of the corner of my eye and noted with a growing smile that it was, according to the clock in my HUD, 12:00. “Well then it’s a good thing I’m a part of a merc crew, isn’t it?” I asked, in a friendly tone. “Besides, I got permission from the bartender. So, I’ll be staying. For your safety, I recommend you just walk away calmly.”

She didn’t seem to have any intention of heeding my warning, judging by the way she was now pointing her minigun at my face, the noise it made as the barrels began to spin was somewhat alarming. A gorilla sized hand landed heavily on the woman's shoulder. “Let’s not do anything we’re going to regret, sweetie,” said Sara, now standing next to the woman, as she looked down at the woman beside her from easily half a head above.

The minigun in her hands suddenly sparked, and some kind of electrical discharge appeared around it, as its spinning barrels dramatically jammed to a halt with a clang. Lizzy slid into the booth next to me and stole my water. Taking a sip, she grimaced and pushed it back to me. “Disgusting, can’t believe you’re still drinking that.” In reaction to a pained squeak from the minigun wielding cyborg, Lizzy looked up at the woman, whose face seemed to be going a bit pale as Sara increased the strength of her grip on the fleshy part of the woman’s shoulder. “Hi, Katrina, long time no see. Seems you’ve met Malcolm already. This is his big sister Sara. Sara can rip your head off with her bare hands. You probably shouldn’t mess with Malcolm.” Lizzy tilted her head to the side as if considering something. “Also? The twins are getting us some drinks. You should probably leave before they get here.”

“Th-the twins are back?” If I’d thought she’d been going a bit pale before, she was now white as a sheet, and the moment Sara relaxed her grip a little she tore herself away and all but bolted back to another booth. The way she ducked down once she rejoined her own crew made it look like she was hiding.

Sara slid into the booth with a sigh, “Can’t I leave you alone for an hour without you getting into trouble?” she asked me exasperatedly.

Two ninjas walked up to the table a couple of minutes later while I was defending my actions as being perfectly reasonable. They slid a drink each in front of Sara and Lizzy as they sat down. Fanti and Minga? I wondered, as I gave them a look over. They were wearing matching pitch black, skin tight, extremely expensive looking, sleek body suits that left only their eyes uncovered. I wonder if that’s tier 2 armor. Really doesn’t leave much to the imagination, so it can’t be too thick, but that just looks too nice to be anything else. The equally expensive, equally black, katanas worn on their hips bore a dark red Tsunami logo. “What’d we miss? Looked like Malcolm was having some fun over here,” said…Minga? Fanti? I really couldn’t tell. I’d inwardly been differentiating them by their hair color last time we met. With those body suits they really are identical.

“Meh, Katrina was just being a bitch. Same old same old,” said Lizzy as she took a slug of her glowing red beverage.

“Oh, she was, was she?” The twins got back up from the booth as if synchronized and turned towards the booth Katrina was sitting in.

“Do you have to?” asked Lizzy.

“We promised,” said one of the twins, I still didn’t know which. “If she ever messed with us or one of ours again…” she trailed off and the other ninja twin finished her sentence.

“We take the other eye too.”

“‘Too?’” I asked Lizzy as the twins walked off.

“They have some history with Katrina,” Lizzy shrugged. “Now, let’s go over the gig, you said you had it all planned out.”

We spent a few minutes going over a map of sub 10 that my IA had managed to get from the building’s elevator of all places. I’d set up a route that would take us through every hallway down there. I was fairly certain it would get me close enough that my new weird Life Sense Skill should be able to pick out any survivors. I was vague in my explanation of how I’d be scanning for them, as I certainly wasn’t going to mention actual fucking magic. Lizzy would pop the doors as necessary, and we’d clean up whatever we found.

A woman’s pained scream from the booth containing Katrina heralded the twins’ return, and we all went through the plan. Essentially, we’d have the twins on the front line walking the sides of the hall. I’d hold back a step or two and provide cover fire from the center. Lizzy would be behind me with Sara behind her to watch our backs and make sure nothing happened to Lizzy. She’d worn a short tier 1 jacket that looked like some kind of shiny blue plastic, but she was still the squishiest of the five of us.

We finished our drinks quickly, I still couldn’t tell the difference between the twins, even when they briefly lowered their face masks to drink, and then we headed for the exit. This should be easy. I thought to myself. Right?

==

King was having a bad day.

First: a majority of his pawns had idiotically eaten candy that they’d discovered too late was in fact poison. Many of his pawns had even somehow held this to be his fault, since much of the candy that had been collected he'd actually generously distributed out to those pawns that had been doing the best work. Even when some of them died a few days after first eating it, it hadn’t been connected as being the candy that was the cause. Too few had died initially for it to be definitive, and many that had eaten it were just fine. Sometimes pawns got sick and died. That was just the way things were, it wasn’t as though the pawns could afford proper care from a Ripper Doc.

Second: last night every single person that was poisoned suddenly sickened even further as black veins began appearing all over their bodies. The screams in his kingdom had been deafening in places as his pawns’ agony reached unfathomable heights before finally granting them the sweet mercy of death. While the previous week had been bad enough, costing him over 1000 pawns, last night alone had cost him an additional 4000 casualties. He thanked the gods that he’d had the foresight to take himself, his three captains, and his four favorite concubines to the only Ripper they knew would take their creds. It had cost him no less than 5000c each to fix them…And an additional 5000c cleaning fee, after one of his captains pissed in the corner of the Ripper’s office. With that one visit to the Ripper their funds had taken a serious hit. King was down under 200,000c for the first time in almost a year. He’d have to increase the tax on the pawns after he’d weathered this debacle.

Third: there now seemed to be a two pronged attack on his kingdom occurring. He was even now receiving reports that two teams of heavily armed mercs had attacked the northeast and southwest corners of his domain. His remaining two captains were heading up a thousand pawns each in a counter attack.

Which led to the fourth and final issue degrading the quality of King’s day. That bastard Yarl, his oldest and most trusted captain, had used the distraction of the attacks to help himself to the best of the remaining pawns and had made a run for it. 1500 pawns gone, just like that. King had received one final message from Yarl before he’d stopped responding to messages entirely. “Good luck, Eugene, you’ll need it.” The message had a location stamp showing Yarl was already on the levtrain and halfway across the city. King found himself gritting his teeth at the mere thought of the impertinence. Yarl knew he hated being called by his birth name. He was King now, goddamnit!

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King checked the reports coming in from the battles, feeling sweat start to bead on his forehead as he began to wonder if Yarl had in fact had the right idea. The battle was not going well, not well at all.

==

Well it’s not as easy as I’d hoped, but not as bad as I’d feared. I thought to myself as I stabbed my knife through the eye of a 10 year old that managed to get past the twins.

It had actually been pretty smooth sailing all said. We’d first worked our way through the halls of the southwest corner of the level. And we were now slowly working our way to the middle of the level in the hopes of finding some loot in a more centrally located area, since that appeared to be where these latest waves of suicidal little fucks were originating. Once we secured any valuables we discovered, we’d do a complete sweep of every remaining hallway.

At first, the hardest thing to deal with had been the smell down here. The scent of piss and shit were prevalent, and it was readily apparent why. Anything resembling a corner was piled high with feces. Perhaps the management had turned off the plumbing or something to try to get rid of them peacefully, before putting out a contract on their lives, but I had no idea. The fact that the trash drones rather obviously weren’t cleaning either was apparent by the ubiquitous heaps of trash lining the edges of the halls.

When we were just getting started, we’d been surprised that there wasn’t anyone around at all. I’d eventually pointed us to a few rats nests containing a handful of kids each that seemed to be huddling together in fear. I didn’t get the impression that they’d been expecting us.

That impression changed quickly when we found ourselves being charged by a veritable wall of knife wielding prepubescent anger. At which point the twins went to work.

I’d initially been just a little dubious about their whole ninja motif, but seeing them working in concert to tirelessly slice their way through dozens upon dozens of bodies was rather eye opening. Their Tsunami thermal blades were pretty impressive in their own right. The glowing orange katanas seemed capable of cutting through nearly anything, and the girls regularly killed two or three kids with a single cut.

My job was mostly to keep an eye out for kids with guns, and there were more than a few. They’d usually hang out in the back of the pack taking pot shots. I’d take careful aim, making sure to avoid the twins as they danced frenetically about with their swords, and then pop the gun toting pukes once each in the head.

Even being as careful as we were, we couldn't avoid taking hits entirely. The twins didn’t seem to be getting hit much, if at all, as they were right up in the thick of it with kiddie meat shields in between them and the guns, but I’d taken a handful of hits, mostly to my head and face. The shots really weren’t bothering me much. Each time I felt the bullets strike, it’d whip my head back a little bit, but before I could even feel the pain my nanites went to work and stopped the pain and the bleeding. Minutes later I’d find myself wiping away the blood and find there was no injury remaining at all. My new skull seemed to be holding up marvelously. I did take one hit to the throat that threw me off my game for a minute, as I suddenly found myself inhaling a lot of blood from my first injury of the day that didn’t immediately stop bleeding. I just sucked an AeroMed down through my coughing, and it closed right up. Less than a minute later and I was good as new.

I’d taken to keeping my Python in my right hand, for its ease in reloading, and my knife in my left, so as not to waste ammo on the few that made it past the twins. I was only mildly concerned about running out, but better safe than sorry.

The feral little bastards seemed to be coming at us in groups of around 200 or so, and by the third wave we’d fallen into a groove. Only to suddenly be flanked by a second wave of 200 coming from behind us.

Fortunately, we had Sara. And Sara had loaded up her brand new GoreTech auto shotty with armor piercing flechette shells. Turns out, little orphans do not qualify as armor by modern ammunition standards. Sara had let them get nice and close, taking a dozen shots from the few of them that had guns, and then her shotgun seemed to deafeningly roar as she opened up on full auto. Each shot pierced all the way through the crowd running down the hall towards her, blowing bloody chunks of children in every direction like blood filled water balloons choosing that particular moment to pop together in perfect gory synchrony. A quick 32 round sweep of her shotgun left and right had cleared all but a single child that seemed incredibly intent on trying to stab her in the knee. Before the kid got within the range required for this attempt, Sara introduced him to the stock of her gun as she crushed his skull with a single blow.

The sheer brutality and instant death of hundreds brought a brief awkward lull to the battle as Lizzy, the twins, myself, and the remaining hundred kids on our opposite side all looked at Sara as she turned back around and calmly began reloading a fresh drum mag into her gun. That was enough for some of the kids, and over a dozen made a run for it. I popped most of them in the back, but wasn’t quite able to get them all before they turned down the last hall towards the food court at the center of the level.

Having been thoroughly demoralized by the loss of their comrades, both to Sara and to desertion, the remainder fell quickly, primarily to the twins’ burning katanas.

We moved right along, following the few who’d escaped. About 100 meters before we reached the food court, I stopped our group and pointed out that it seemed there were at least a couple of hundred kids in the apartments lining both sides of the hall. I pulled 5 frag grenades out of my inventory, while pretending they’d been in my pocket the whole time, just like I’d been doing with my clips when reloading. I passed out one to each of the girls, keeping one for myself, and, after a classic count of three, Lizzy opened all the doors in the hall simultaneously. We had each picked out a door to lob our grenade into, and it went off perfectly. They hadn’t been ready for the doors to suddenly open, and they definitely hadn’t been ready to be subjected to explosives moments later. Unfortunately, the apartments down here were quite small and we only got about 20 or so with each grenade. But, since that only left us 100 or so, a decent number of which were still somewhat shocked from the explosive ambush, we tore through them like they were wet tissue paper.

A quick check with my Life Sense didn’t show anyone else so we moved along, following the twins to the food court.

“STOP!” I suddenly yelled when something twigged both my Danger Sense and my Detect Trap skill. The twins froze in place. “Back up, slowly,” I said, trying to calm myself as my sense of impending doom slowly let up with each careful step they retreated. “There’s a trap here, gimme a minute.” So saying, I moved up to their previous position and examined the area. When I crouched down to check the floor, I noticed a dim red light coming from under a piece of cardboard on top of the pile of trash against the wall.

Carefully lifting the cardboard, I found myself looking at some kind of mine. I really hoped that it wasn't remotely activated. I had no idea what I was doing here with a damn mine but tried to keep myself off to its side, the mines in the game had almost all been of the laser tripwire variety.

It was a simple octagon, about an inch thick, stuck on the wall. The logo across the center of the device told me that apparently this thing was a Konami brand product. A dim red light shone from the center of the letter A on its front and it seemed to have some kind of sensor built into the letter O. Looking closely I found a small but familiar symbol on the top of the mine, the temp app symbol. My IA immediately tried to access the device, only to find that it was requiring a code to do so. I got the distinct feeling that entering the wrong code would be a very bad idea. Instead, I just sort of intuitively pushed against the app with my IA, I felt a little give, but it pushed back. So I gritted my teeth and dropped the full force of my IA on it. It took a good ten seconds before the app finally collapsed and brought up a menu that allowed me to disarm the mine, and, when I hit the disconnect option, it popped right off the wall into my waiting hand. I slid it into my pocket and immediately pushed it into my inventory. It was scary enough just holding the thing for a few seconds. I really didn’t want to carry it around.

+200 Net XP (+100 XP from Rested XP Bonus)

+200 Tech XP (+100 XP from Rested XP Bonus)

Waving the twins forward, I stood up and followed, ignoring the XP alerts. I noticed an odd sizzling sound that I couldn’t place for a moment, until I realized it was my own skin frying around my IA plates behind my ears. I quickly popped out an inhaler and took a deep hit. It was good of my nanites to prevent me from feeling the pain from that, but…Definitely want to avoid brain damage if possible… Guess that’s why netrunners have all that support chrome around their IAs and down their necks.

I noticed Lizzy giving me an odd look as we prepared to enter the open space of the food court. I just gave her a grin and a wink, and focused on getting ready to shoot some people. Walking into the wide open food court, we found that most of the tables that had previously occupied this place seemed to have been broken off their base by one means or another and were leaned up against the counters of the many broken down, heavily graffitied, fast food joints that ringed the derelict dining area. Many, if not most, of the various neon signs and holographic ads in here had been broken at one time or another. Just like the rest of the level the amount of garbage in here was pretty ridiculous, piled up a good five feet in places.

But amongst the refuse of thousands of children sat something I’d never seen before. A veritable throne made of trash. Tables, chairs, garbage of every stripe, chunks of plastic, and bits and pieces of scrap metal all seemingly glommed together in a massive disgusting chair that rose up until its occupant’s head nearly brushed the ceiling.

Atop this grotesquery sat a chubby, pimply faced, teenager with some kind of golden plastic wrappers glued together in a headband over his long greasy hair. To either side of him sat four heavily bruised girls on the rough steps that formed the somewhat pyramidal throne. Upon seeing us, the kid up by the ceiling started screeching and flailing like he was having some kind of fit. Sara, who finally had some open room, moved to our side and took two quick shots. The girls to the throne’s sides all but erupted into bloody chum. This only seemed to antagonize the child who would be king further, as his shrieks quickly ramped up into what could only be described as squeals of rage. Without much thought, I quickdrew my Overseer and plugged him in the throat. That cut the noise off nicely, but I hadn’t seen any blood.

“Subdermal,” I mentioned quietly. The twins nodded as one and stalked forward while the kid struggled to breathe. They darted up the garbage steps to the seat of power, and, in a perfectly synchronized horizontal slash, they each sliced through his neck and the back of the throne in a single blow from either side.

Some melted plastic seemed to have caught fire as the back of the throne tilted and fell backwards out of sight. The king kid’s head fell forwards and bounced from step to step. Coming to a stop at my feet, I looked down to see the head’s eyes blinking at me as it scowled furiously and seemed to be trying to say something. I guess it’s true what they say about a decapitated head staying alive for a little while after it’s cut off. I felt my eyes widen as I realized I could potentially survive something like that if I could use an inhaler. But how do I use an inhaler without lungs?...Or hands? The AeroMed inhalers I’d quickly become accustomed to required suction to trigger the release of their nanites and drugs. Hmm, well if ChemCo let me customize a poison, I bet AeroTech might very well let me order some custom inhalers. Something to look into another time.

I bent down and picked up the no longer animate head and checked its sockets. Jackpot! I found a cred shard slotted amongst his sockets. I pulled it out and slipped it into a free socket behind my right ear, smiling wide as I saw the balance. “Hey, Lizzy, what’s 193,125 divided by 5?” I asked cheerfully.

“38,625,” Lizzy immediately responded, with a smile of her own.

I sent out an equal share of the find to everyone in the group and heard some murmurs of appreciation from the twins, while Sara cursed and then cheered.

It was at that moment that I noticed a man watching us from just inside the entrance to the food court, opposite from the one we’d entered by. As much as it was a bit unexpected to see a grown adult down here, it was the large high tech rifle he was raising to aim at me and Lizzy that really got my attention. “Contact!” I yelled out as I grabbed Lizzy by the back of her coat and shoved her as hard as I could to land behind a pile of broken tabletops stacked nearby. As I crouched to dash away, he opened fire. I felt his first shot hit me in the side, and whatever he was shooting with didn’t seem to give a flying fuck that I was wearing tier 1 armor, because it ripped right through me. I lurched to the side with the force of the bullet, and that was enough to get me moving. I felt my Slippery Perk go into effect, and his next three shots missed me as I dove for cover. For some reason he didn’t seem to be moving out any farther into the food court and had held his position in the entryway, but I wasn’t complaining. I was sucking down an AeroMed before checking out the damage.

Checking to make sure that Lizzy had avoided taking a hit, I saw her crouched low behind the stack of tabletops where I’d unceremoniously pushed her, seemingly unharmed. The twins were behind the throne. And Sara had her back up against the wall with her shotgun aimed to shred anyone that dared to poke their head into the open. “You okay, Mal?” She asked with some concern in her voice, but without looking away from the source of the brief barrage of bullets.

“No, I’m not okay!” I snapped back with irritation as I noted the matching holes in both sides of my coat. “That asshole just put two holes in my favorite coat, two holes in my lucky McDonald's shirt, and gut shot me…” I opened my coat and inspected the damage, the nanites were trying to dampen the pain, but this shit hurt. There were a good two feet of intestine hanging out the fist sized hole in my side below my ribs, even as I watched, the hole grew smaller. “Sprayed the inside of my coat with blood, guts, and my own shit, this is absolutely disgusting. That fucker better pray this washes out or there’ll be hell to pay.”

I heard a snort of amusement from Lizzy, got a chuckle from Sara, and one of the twins was straight up giggling back behind the throne. I’m glad my pain amuses you, girls. Damnit, this was supposed to be easy.