Chapter Thirty-One - The Skinny Lowdown

“Oh, Stray Cat!

Bang bang bang, bang bang bang!”

NPC Streamer #31,501, Tik Tok Two, 2057

***

I landed my bike in the same parking garage as last time, then got off and started for the elevator. Halfway there I tested my suit’s invisibility. The surface of my coat wavered for a fraction of a second, then there was nothing. I could see straight through my arm and to the floor below.

Waving my arm around revealed only a very slight blurriness. It refreshed so quickly that it was almost impossible to tell that anything was wrong. If I wasn’t looking for it, I would have dismissed it outright. It looked too much like a heathaze. Or... no, a heathaze was more visible. Maybe like those little floater things that moved around in my eye when I was looking at something really dark? They were easy to dismiss when I wasn’t looking for them.

“This stealth shit’s a bit better than what I’m used to,” I said.

It’s a slight improvement over your last set of similar equipment. Don’t worry, you paid for the difference in quality.

“Yeah, I bet,” I said. My chat with Audrey-slash-Emoscythe the other day had me thinking a little about fighting styles. Well, mostly she’d put a lot of ideas about style in my head, but that kind of led from one thing to another.

I had to work a little on my fighting style as well as my image. They kind of went hand-in-hand. So far I’d been a bit wishy-washy about what I used. Bombs, sure, and some more silent weapons. But then I’d pick up an SMG, or a crossbow, and I still carried my Trench Maker around.

I wasn’t focused on a single weapon type or platform, which was... probably okay? It gave me a bit of flexibility, at least, but there was a lot of value in hyperfocusing. Gomorrah’s fire shit was probably leagues ahead of what I could manage by now.

The only advantage I had was the versatility of bombs as a weapon. They let me punch up enough to keep things interesting.

Eventually I’d fall behind someone like Gomorrah who speciaised, though.

I was still in the honeymoon phase of being a samurai however. I still had time to experiment and try shit, and it wasn’t as if there was a lack of things to experiment on at the moment.

“I’m gonna need something to knock people out, I think,” I said.

I’m sure I can find something that can do that. Flashbangs? Gas-based grenades?

“How about, uh...” I ran my hand against my front, looking for the currently empty pouches on my suit. “Two of each?”

Myalis summoned the grenades for me, and I stuffed them away by feel alone. It was nice to have a small contingency for when shit inevitably went south.

By the time I’d tucked everything away, I was back on the same floor as the clinic. It was a little strange being indoors so late at night, mostly because there was no way to tell. The LED lighting was the same off-white as during the day, and there were plenty of people wandering around, doing their own things.

Stores that were automated didn’t have much of a reason to close at night either, so while a few places were shut down, plenty were still operating. I walked into the open space where the clinic was located and glanced around. There were more gangsters than I had noticed last time. The bakery was closed at the moment, which made sense, it was operated by actual people.

See-Three was pacing in front of the clinic, arms crossed while two more cyborged-up people lingered in the clinic. I moved over to her, then past, carefully avoiding a few heaps of broken glass on the floor, just in case.

The clinic had been spruced up a little since I’d last been here. We had chairs now, and a dividing wall between the front and rear. The back had two operating rooms set up. They weren’t exactly super clean, more like dentist offices than a real operating room, but that would do for replacing prosthetics.

The rest of the space in the back seemed to be a small workshop of sorts, combined with a small office space and break room, all squeezed into a tight little place that probably wouldn’t be all that comfortable.

“So, what kind of theft are we dealing with here?” I muttered.

One of the cyborgs turned my way, but dismissed the noise after a moment.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

She didn’t lie about the lack of cameras within. I noticed some linked to other stores in this area. Their footage is recorded off-site, however. It’ll require some finesse to grab it from their servers. Or permission. Do you want me to contact the owners?

I nodded. Getting a recording of whichever dumbass robbed the place would help. Not that I thought we’d really need it.

There was a massive painting of a rat sticking out of a green pipe painted across one of the walls of the clinic, right over our new waiting room chairs. It was actually pretty well done for some quick graffiti.

I took a picture of it with my augs, then stepped out. My invisibility shut down as I came to stand behind See-Three. “Does that giant rat image mean anything?” I asked.

See-Three gasped and spun around, her hand--made flat like a blade--rushing towards my neck.

I stepped back and out of the wild swing. “Hey there,” I said. “Sorry, didn’t mean to spook you that bad.”

See-Three paused in the act of ripping a handgun from a holster. “Who the fuck are you?” she asked. “You’re not a Ventrat.”

“I’m Cat? New outfit. You literally called me out of bed about... twenty-ish minutes ago.”

See-Three scanned me up and down, then she slid her gun back in place. “I didn’t see you coming in,” she said. “Nice outfit?”

“Nor did I,” one of her cyborg buddies said. His voice sounded entirely text-to-speech, without anything fancy to make it sound properly human.

“I didn’t want to be seen,” I said simply. “And I wanted to get a lay of things before anything else. I got my look though. What can you tell me about what happened?”

“See-Three, you didn’t tell us you were dealing with a samurai,” the borg said.

“I... wasn’t sure,” See-Three said. “And it didn’t seem prudent to bother her with it.”

Well, that was nice, but it didn’t answer my other questions. “Was this caused by those Ventrats you mentioned?”

See-Three pulled herself together surprisingly quickly. “We think so. Not too much was stolen, actually. They broke through the front door. We had electronic locks and a metal bar lock in place, but they were able to get past that. Then they were in.”

“A smash and grab,” the borg guy said.

I turned towards him and his other pal and took the two in properly. The more talkative of the two had a squared off head like something ripped from a drone, linked to a robotic upper body. His legs looked mechanical too, and I had to wonder how much human was left in him. The other looked a lot less extreme. Two eyes, a few mods tacked onto his skull, one robotic hand that looked like it was designed to carry a rotating set of tools.

“Right. Well, this is unacceptable,” I said. “Do we know what they grabbed?”

“The prosthetics we received were all in a big container at the back,” See-Three said. “There must be a million credits worth of tech in that box. We had a lot of tools too, they’re missing.”

So, the Ventrats come over, break in, then leave with everything valuable. “That wasn’t very smart of them. Witnesses?”

“Locals, yeah. They didn’t move to help,” See-Three said. It clearly frustrated her. “The gang on this floor let me know where the Ventrats ran off to. So that’s something. No one will want to do anything about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“This building isn’t linked to city police,” borg-guy said. “It’s got its own security offices, and they’re unlikely to help.”

“Of course not,” I sighed. Then I pulled out my Laser Pointer with a shrug. “Welp, time to make an example. Can you three stay here, maybe clean things up? I’m going to see if I can’t get our shit back.”

“Alone?” See-Three asked.

“See-Three, she’s a samurai,” Borg-guy said.

I pointed to him for confirmation. “I can probably handle a little crew of common street thugs. Like, I don’t want to sound over-confident, but I’m maybe a little overqualified for this. But we can talk about that later. I’m gonna get our shit back, then we can chat, alright?”

See-Three didn’t seem entirely pleased with that, but she didn’t press the issue. “Alright,” she said.

“Cool! See you in like, half an hour, tops.” It wouldn’t take much more than that to figure this out, right? Then I could be back in bed, snuggling up with Lucy, and catching up on sleep again. Easy.

***