CHAPTER SIXTEEN - FUN IN THE WASHROOM

“The article looked wonderful.

The Sewer Dragons are an interesting enough society from a purely anthropological viewpoint that the university would never pass up an opportunity to study them.

So, they send in a team of five graduate students, and (apparently) after conferring with the Sewer Dragons they met, three of them agreed--with the university’s approval--to go through the extensive procedures needed to join the group on a temporary basis.

I was really eager to read their publication and look through the initial findings, but the paper is just ‘fuck you’ written over and over. The graduates discovered that the university insurance wouldn’t cover their retransformation into people able to return to normal society.

Why can’t I get a refund on the paper I bought?”

--Excerpt from the Anthrough Journal Customer Support Forums, 2052

***

Gomorrah pulled our favourite new boy toy to a washroom. “Hey, hey, this is a bit fast for me,” he said as his back bumped into the door and shoved it open.

I followed them in, ears twitching to make sure we were alone. If there was anyone in one of the stalls, they were real quiet shitters. I pushed the door closed and pressed the heel of a boot against it.

The bathroom was a shit hole. Busted doors on the stalls, a cracked mirror against the wall. Of the three sinks, only one was free of yellow tape, and that one was currently leaking brownish sludge water into a basin already half-full of the stuff. Some of the non-penis art was nice though.

Gomorrah let go of flirty boy and wiped her hand against the side of her robes. “I’m happy you came up to me,” she said.

“Uh, yeah,” the idiot said.

“Yes. I have questions. I doubt you’ll be able to answer them. Atyacus, shut off his coms.”

“My coms? Oh, fuck, how’d you do that?” He reached up, rubbing the side of his head in the way a lot of people did when their augs were on the fritz. “Hey, I wasn’t going to record everything, and if I had, it’s not like I’d resell it.”

Gomorrah reeled back. “That’s disgusting,” she said.

“It is,” Franny agreed over the line.

“I don’t get it,” Raccoon added.

“That’s fine,” I said. “Franny can explain. Gomorrah, question away.”

“I’m not entirely sure where to start,” Gomorrah said. She tilted her head to both sides, stretching her neck. When she next spoke, her voice filled the bathroom. “Are you part of the Sewer Dragons?”

“Hey, babe, I'll be anyone’s dragon if they ask nice enough,” he said, some of his confidence returning.

Gomorrah looked at him. A pair of flamethrowers slid out from her habit over her shoulders and pointed themselves at his face. “Do you work for the Sewer Dragons?” she asked again.

“Oh shit, what are those?” he asked, two mechanical fingers pointing at the flamethrowers.

“Flamethrowers,” Gomorrah said.

“I wouldn’t have expected to see Delilah threatening someone,” Franny said.

“What, and you carry that bat around as a walking stick?” I asked.

Our new friend squirmed a bit. “Like, that’s hot, but I’m not into whatever kink that is.”

Gomorrah grabbed him by the front of his jacket and pulled him closer. “You will stop messing around and answer my questions, or you’ll regret it by ten.”

“Ten what?” he asked.

“One,” Gomorrah said.

“What?”

“Two.” Her flamethrowers burped, and two licks of flame danced on their ends.

His eyes went wide. “Oh shit.”

“Three.”

“We’re all Sewer Dragons,” he said. “Everyone here.”

I shifted. “What’s that mean?” I asked.

“Explain,” Gomorrah said.

“Look, everyone who lives here, in the Oasis, is a dragon. All of us. I don’t know what you want, babe.”

“I want the location of the people the Sewer Dragons have been kidnapping,” Gomorrah said. “And I want to find out who is responsible so I can bring them to justice.”

“Oh, fuck, you’re a samurai.” The realization had the guy trembling. “We’re not going to fuck, are we?”

“... No, we aren’t,” Gomorrah said. “Just answer my questions.”

I shook my head. “This is why people don’t talk to each other live anymore. It’s such a bitch to get answers.”

“Oh man, right, so the Sewer Dragons: we’re an anarcho communist commune. We don’t really have leaders, you know. Just a lot of free-thinking people, doing our own things, and sharing based on what we need.”

“Does sharing include kidnapping people off the streets?” Gomorrah asked.

“I don’t know anything about that!” he said, both hands raised in surrender.

“Atyacus, check his location data, cross-reference it with the kidnapping locations,” Gomorrah said. We all waited for a moment, then Gomorrah nodded. “You might be telling the truth. So, if some of you were taking people, where would you take them, and what would you do with them?”

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“Hey, hey, I don’t know,” he said.

Gomorrah’s flamethrowers shifted, the flames on the end growing brighter and longer. “Are you certain about that?”

“Oh, shit. Uh. Look, I’m sure there’s some folk that know all of that. But I’m not one of them. I’ve been doing nothing but robbing vending machines and trying to get ass for the past two weeks.”

“... Seriously?” Gomorrah asked. She paused. “Oh, wow. Atyacus confirms it. That’s... kind of disgusting, actually.”

“Hey, babe, I have needs,” he said.

I sighed. “This idiot doesn’t seem to know anything. Let’s rip any maps he has. I don’t think we’ll be getting much more out of him.”

Done. If you want, I can chart out the most likely location where you’ll find a large group of people within the sewer system based on the little map data I do have.

I nodded. “Thanks, Myalis. Send it to Gom and the others; it might be useful.”

Gomorrah didn’t seem quite done with her new friend. “A few last questions,” she said. “You say there’s no one in charge, but there has to be some sort of hierarchy. And how do the Sewer Dragons operate? You can’t be this much of a black box.”

“Hey, hey, it’s real simple,” he said, then he started to gestured, hands coming around as if moving a little ball though the air. “Everyone that joins the commune has skills. Even if it’s just manual stuff. If someone brings someone new in, or someone joins up, they’re brought to Doc Hack, and he fixes you up.”

“Fixes how?” I asked.

Gomorrah repeated the question to our pal who gestured to himself. “Make it so that you can live down here. You need filters over your air intake; that means replacing some of your throat. You can’t have legs in the sewers, not for long. And you need some other things, augs that let you know what the air’s like.”

That explained some of his extensive modifications. I’d seen a few aug-junkies before, idiots that went really deep into cybernetics. Usually they wanted high-tech stuff, not the rust-chic aesthetic the Sewer Dragons I’d seen had going for them.

“So, you get fixed up, then you get a nook to live in. Nicer ones have better air, are further from the ins than the outs.”

“The whats?” Gomorrah asked.

“Intake or outtake tunnels,” he explained. “Once you’re set up, you do your part. That’s it. We keep each other safe, sorta. There’s no police down here, no bossmans, no leaders. We have community halls and game nights.”

“Cute,” Gomorrah said. “We have the same at the convent, but without the hideous self-mutilation and kidnapping.” She growled. “Where does your money come from? You can’t live off of nothing.”

“I dunno. We take care of the sewers, keep it running. Without us, people will have to shit in buckets and fling it out the windows.”

“That’s it?” Gomorrah asked.

He nodded. “Yeah. Been a right nightmare this last week too. I’ve been, uh, not around for added work shifts because of other preoccupations, but lately everyone’s working a lot more.”

“How many of you are there?” Gomorrah asked.

“We don’t exactly have a census,” he said. “But, uh, maybe twenty k? Thirty maybe? Less now; a lot of us died last week. Lost, like, a whole housing area to the xenos and a bunch of good folk besides when the aliens dipped into the sewers.”

“Are there any left? Antithesis, I mean?”

“Some other samurai came in, gave the sewers a look, said it was fine. Haven’t heard of any, but we’ve been on high alert for that shit for a few days.”

“There are a lot less of them around,” Raccoon said. “Usually there’s a lot of Sewer Dragons near the Oasis, and today it looked a bit empty.”

I unjammed my foot from the edge of the door. “Anything else you want to ask Casanova here?”

“No, I’m done,” Gomorrah said. She let go of the boy and backed off, then she pointed a finger right at him. “Stay here. I don’t need you running into the crossfire.”

“Yes, ma’am!” he said. His eyes widened as I opened the door for Gomorrah and followed her out.

“Didn’t learn much,” Franny said.

I saw Gomorrah’s shoulders tensing up. “We did learn some things. Mostly that we’re not fighting anything organized.”

“What do you think is happening? Kidnapping people to feed pet aliens? More bodies for some corporation or another?”

“Nah,” Raccoon said. “When a corp wants bodies, they just put a bounty out.”

“That’s disturbing,” Gomorrah muttered. “As for the antithesis, it would be significantly cheaper to feed one with just about any other biomass. Buying a tonne of potatoes is easier than kidnapping a tonne’s worth of people.”

“Well then,” I said. “I’m stumped.”

***