Chapter Fourteen - The City Knows Not of Fear

From here on out, we're on foot," Derek said as he lifted himself off of his bike. He slid it forwards, locking the front wheel in place in one of those pay-by-the-hour bike locking stations.

"O-oh-hokay," Sharp said. She wobbled off the side of her bike, then gripped the handles to stay standing. Her legs shook like leaves on a windy day with the effort needed to keep her standing. With the amount of sweat drenching her shirt and plastering her hair to her face, she looked rather pathetic.

"Are you alright?" I asked.

"I'm fine," she said before reaching into the sidecar. There was only one package left to deliver in there. And myself, of course. I hopped up and managed to grip onto her shoulders as she stood with the last box we had to deliver.

The Fenway deliveries went well enough. The area had some alright roads for pedestrians and we got away with slipping through those on our bikes. There was one moment where a guard yelled at us, but we didn't get into any real sort of trouble. The two delivered were dropped off where they were meant to go, and we then rode all the way back to the eastern end of the district.

It was probably a solid twenty miles of biking with very few pauses. Not so much that a fit person would be out of sorts from it, but enough that...

"You don't look so good," Derek said.

I almost fell off of Sharp as she leaned forwards and rested her elbows on the bike's handles to catch her breath. "I'll be fine," she said. "No, really. Just... maybe I need a drink."

"Alcohol?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Water."

"Good, because Mark isn't fond of any of us drinking on the job. After is fine, but don't show up to work drunk or high."

Sharp gave him a thumb's up. "Okay," she said before making a supreme effort and pushing her bike into the same locking mechanism that Derek had just used. She had to lean over to fold the sidecar back up as well.

Then Sharp stumbled over to a row of vending machines nearby. They were the usual. Convenience machine, drinks, guns, ammo, and gacha machine with various bits of merch. She fumbled a few dollars out of her pocket and soon enough we had a fresh, moderately chill bottle of water in hand.

Sharp gulped it down, a few drops running down the side of her chin. "Ahhh!" she said as she lowered the bottle. "Here, want some?"

I leaned forwards and when she tipped the bottle back, I licked a few drops out of the air. It was weird, but my cat tongue could kind of... cling to the water? It made drinking by licking much easier than it would have been as a human.

Still hated getting water all over myself, but staying hydrated was important.

"That is one weird little cat you've got there," Derek said. "It's well-trained. Is it like one of those corpo-made pets?"

"Huh? Oh no, I met Countess Cotton-Cream in an alleyway a few days ago," Sharp said. "You could say that she changed my life for the better!"

"Huh," he said. "Well, whatever. A corp-made pet wouldn't be so ugly."

I turned my head his way and glared. I wasn't ugly... well... dammit, kittens were always cute, even the ugly ones, no?

"Don't mind him, I think that you're beautiful on the inside," Sharp said as she rubbed my head.

I gave her hand a smack, though I chose to keep my claws to myself, this time.

With Sharp no longer looking quite so drained, we started off towards South Boston. The area was rough enough that Derek didn't want to risk taking company bikes into it. Instead, we moved down into the Boston underground and grabbed a ride in the metro. The jacket's fancy floating logos on the shoulders actually charged the company directly when it came to metro tickets as long as we walked through the right kind of turn-stall.

Armed guards stood waiting nearby, under a sign that read 'Ticket Skippers Will Be Shot.'

I'd never had the misfortune of riding in the metro before. It was as bad as I imagined. Cars covered in graffiti except for the VIP ones at the very front. As 'business' people we got to ride in one of the central cars nearer the front of the train, which meant that it was only exceptionally tight within. The civilian cars had robots shoving people in so that the doors would close.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Fortunately, we weren't going far. Fenway was three stops from South Boston including one line transfer from the Greygun Grey line to the CokaCola Red line which dropped us off in the north end of South Boston.

Once we were back out in the open air, Derek stared at the sky for a moment, likely reading something off of an internal hud, then he pointed us in the right direction.

From there, it was just a long walk across the city, moving further and further from the busier centre of the district and into the areas where I wouldn't want to be caught out in during the night.

Surprisingly, the area felt... familiar.

"Hey, I was just around here a couple of days ago," Sharp said. She looked up and towards a familiar megabuilding. The same one we'd run out of after hearing... strange things over the building's PA.

"It's not a great spot, but it's not usually problematic during the day," Derek said. "Anyway, that's our drop-off." He pointed to a smaller mega building across the street. This one covered in the red and brown banners of the riveters.

A few gangsters eyed us at the entrance, but we were let in without any fuss. The drop off was at a reception area on the first floor.

"And we're done," Derek said. "Now's the ride back to fetch our bikes. You've got time?"

"Uh, yeah, I should," Sharp said after glancing at a wall-mounted clock. "I need to be back in Fenway in about an hour."

"A little tight, but we should make it, no problem," Derek said.

Sharp seemed ready to agree when all three of us turned towards the entrance. One of the riveters, a man in his late thirties or so in a leather jacket covered in small rivets, flagged Derek down. "You the couriers?" he asked.

"Yeah," Derek said. "Can I help?"

"You should get out of here," the man said.

I glanced around, noticing that there were more and more rivetters around. Men and women, often with guns or pipes or machetes. The elevator opened and a half-dozen more filed into the lobby.

"What's going on?" Sharp asked.

"None of our business," Derek said. "Thanks man, we're heading out. Can we leave out back?"

The riveter shook his head. "You don't wanna go out that way. Trust me, pal. Out the front, then make a run south. That's your best bet."

Derek nodded, then turned to touch Sharp on the shoulder. "Let's make a move, then."

The riveter wasn't messing around. Something big was happening. The streets outside were clearing out. People were getting into their cars and driving off, traffic was speeding up faster than the usual crawl, and it looked like everyone with a lick of common sense was making themselves scarce.

Sharp had to push her way through a growing crowd of riveters. We popped out near the exit and found Derek already outside.

"What do you think is happening?" Sharp asked.

"I don't know. My work rarely involved street-level gang work. At a guess, someone's started something and the riveters are about to respond. We should head back to Fenway, if it's a gangwar it won't spill out all the way--"

It all happened at once. Sharp stepped outside into the street even as an alarm went off somewhere down the road. A man pushed his street vendor cart past us, even as automatic shutters started to come down across the shops lining the road.

A car alarm started to honk, soon joined by another.

And there was a crack.

Sharp didn't recognize it, but I sure did. That was a gun going off. Not unheard of in this city, but still cause for some alarm.

And then Derek stumbled to the side, his eyes going wide before he reached down towards his lower abdomen. His hand came back bloody.

"Sharp, run!" I shouted.

She gasped, finally catching on that shit was hitting the fan.

Down the street, I could see a small crowd gushing out onto the road. They were coming from the same direction as that cursed mega building. People in tattered, dirty clothes, with smudges on their faces who walked like they were drunk and carried guns like they were ready to start a revolution.

Then a voice, the same one we'd heard over the PA, started to blare out of a dozen loudspeakers.

"This city doesn't know pain. Not real pain. They don't know the pain of serving under him, and his eternal, everlasting glory. We will show them the error of their ways!"

***