CHAPTER FIFTEEN - THE CULTURES BENEATH

“You’ll find good people anywhere.

You just won’t find a lot of them.”

--Sewer Dragon proverb

***

Mally turned her eyes down and stared at her counter, her hand resuming its slow circles, rubbing away at some grime that seemed determined not to leave.

“Miss Mally is nice,” Raccoon repeated in my ear. She was speaking in a hushed tone, as if worried she’d be heard. “She makes sure everyone has something to eat.”

I supposed that was important in a place like this, where food had to be scarce, or at least harder to come by. Kind people weren’t too uncommon. I could remember soup kitchens and vans set up by folk who’d given away meals. Some were pretty decent.

People were, I found, not mean by nature. Just greedy, and it was easy to forget to look down and remember that those beneath you didn’t need much to be helped. Some folk didn’t forget; they helped where they could. Maybe it was selfish, maybe they did it for the praise, but I figured that was fine. It was some of the only actual praise that was deserved.

“Miss Mally?” Gomorrah asked.

The woman’s mechanical hand tightened, squeezing her rag. “What do you need to know, dearie?”

I moved off to the side, to make sure I wouldn’t be in the way if anyone stepped into the room. It let me keep a better eye on the two still in the kitchen mixing stuff in a pot.

Gomorrah stood a little taller. “I need to know where the people who have been kidnapped are being kept. And I need to know who’s doing it. Everyone is pointing fingers at the Sewer Dragons, but it’s a big group; I don’t want to be indiscriminate.”

“Ah, I... thank you,” Mally said. “We’re not all bad people down here, you know. Jeff and Cynthia back there were middle management for a nice little company. When they closed up, some accounts came back crooked, and someone had to be blamed. So now they’re here.”

“Okay?” Gomorrah said.

Was she going on a tangent on purpose?

“I was a manager at Nimbletainment once. Then I slept with the wrong man, and the next thing I knew, his wife tried to bury me. I had nowhere to go. My story isn't so special, I don’t think. Most of the people here are like that.”

“I see,” Gomorrah said. “I just need to know where to look.”

Mally’s hand shot out, faster than I expected, and grabbed Gomorrah by the arm, metal fingers pinching the material of her habit. “You should leave. We have nothing left to take. And less to lose.”

Gomorrah tore her arm free. “Miss, I don’t care.”

“Those people are lost already,” Mally said, her arm retracting. It had stretched out, growing longer with her little lunge.

“Then I’ll find those responsible and stop them from trying again.”

“You’ll get yourself killed. Please, if you want to help, then there are other ways.” She gestured around, eyes jittering around as if she was nearing a panic attack. “There’re so many things you could be doing to help.”

“Gomorrah,” I said, my voice sent to her and the two in the Fury. “I think it’s time to go.”

Gomorrah nodded, and stepped back from Mally. She exited the tent, the woman staring after her as she held the flap open for a moment.

“So, that was a bust,” I said as I slid out after her.

“Yeah. Still, we learned some things.”

“That some of the people here are nuts?” I asked.

Gomorrah shook her head. “I had Atyacus break into her augs. Rooted around for a moment. She actually keeps good records of her transactions. Money spent on food, how much of what she bought, equipment expenses. I think she’s not lying when she says she had a corporate job.”

“You violated her privacy,” Franny said.

I snorted. “You’d have violated her brainspace with your bat, wouldn’t you?”

“I’m not some violent sociopath,” Franny shot back.

“Girls,” Gomorrah snapped. It was a good snap. “Let’s stay focused. If I found nothing, then I wouldn’t mind making reparations, maybe slip her a few credits for forgiveness, but I did find something.”

“Oh?” I asked.

Gomorrah nodded, then gestured ahead. “Let’s not stay on the edge here; we’ll attract attention.” She moved over to some stalls, one of which had weapons on racks and a man slumped behind the counter, sleeping. “Mally buys food. Recently she’s been buying a lot more. More equipment for cooking it too. Either she’s expanding her little business by a lot, or she’s supplying food to someone.”

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“The kidnapped,” I said.

“That’s what I was thinking too,” Gomorrah agreed.

I glanced around. The little stalls near the entrance didn’t provide much cover. There were people I’d call guards, or maybe thugs, standing around next to the entrance of the Oasis. Long, stalk-like legs, with hunched bodies and what was obviously an arsenal of guns under their coats. “We could find a place to jack into the local network; there might be more out there to learn. Cameras, maybe?”

I’m afraid that the local security network has been entirely disconnected. I can relay the position of some augmentations, but only to a certain depth within the sewer network. Many of the walls are made of lead to prevent radiological contamination from spreading out of the facility, and that makes communication impossible within the sewers themselves.

“Will we be able to communicate?”

Of course. With Atyacus’ assistance I can use the Fury as a relay. We are not limited to things like waveform communication methods.

“So, that’s a bust,” I said.

“What’s a bust?” Raccoon asked.

“Uh, I was talking to Myalis. They don’t have security for us to tap into.”

Gomorrah raised a handgun; it looked positively ancient, with wooden parts and a nice patina of rust. The label on its side called it an Oberez. She stared at it for a moment, then placed it back down onto the rack, next to other shitty-looking guns. I was pretty sure Myalis would throw a fit if I started using something like that. “We need to figure out something else.”

“We could... you know, walk in guns blazing.”

“That would be cool,” Raccoon said. “But some people aren’t mean.”

I sighed. “I miss killing aliens. There’s no moral shit to wade through, you know? They look like evil plants: you shoot them. Nice and simple.”

“If the Sewer Dragons themselves are as crude as I suspect, I don’t think you’ll need to worry too much. Now... maybe we find someone important to question?” Gomorrah tilted her head back and looked to the tower next to the entrance.

“That works for me,” I said.

We started crossing the Oasis, but had hardly made it more than a dozen metres before Gomorrah was stopped. The culprit was a boy wearing a hoodie under one of those long coats. He had normal-seeming legs, though their bottom halves were all bare metal and plastic-covered servos. His hood covered a full-face mask made of reflective glass on the outside. “Hey, babe,” he said.

“What?” Gomorrah asked.

“I said, ‘hey, babe,’” the guy repeated, louder.

“I’m not hard of hearing,” Gomorrah replied. “My question was more in the lines of ‘what are you doing?’ Perhaps ‘what do you think will happen if you don’t get out of my way?’ ”

“Hey, nothing like that,” he said. “Just saw an unfamiliar face, so to speak. Thought I’d say hi. You can’t believe how hard it is to meet new, ah, friends down here. Say, you bio under those robes?”

“I’m what?” Gomorrah asked.

“Bio? Meat, still got the curves your mama gave you.”

Gomorrah and I stared for a while. I knew he couldn’t see me, but still. “I’m a nun.”

“That’s cool.”

“No, no, it’s... go away, please.”

“Wait,” I said. “He might know something.”

Gomorrah half-turned to look in my general direction. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“He thinks you’re hot. Use it,” I said.

“That is both demeaning and disgusting,” Franny said.

“I agree,” Gomorrah replied.

“Uh, you okay, babe?” our new idiot buddy asked. “Cat got your tongue?”

Gomorrah sighed, then she grabbed the idiot by the arm and tugged him along. “Follow me,” she said as she aimed for the back of the Oasis, where a few signs indicated the bathrooms. “And don’t talk until I tell you to.”

“Yes, ma’am!” he said.

Poor fucker.

***