Chapter Twenty-Two - Reaction Ti
“If you ever have to fight a Samurai, and that’s already a losing proposition, then the very best thing you can do is make sure they don’t have ti to react.
They have an infinite arsenal at their disposal; but only a finite amount of ti to pick which tool to use.
Strike fast. Strike hard, and never strike the sa way twice.’
--Anonymous, from a dark web guide for hitn, 2052
***
“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.”
Gomorrah twitched her hands to the side, and we juked out of the path of a cargo craft so fast that even my cybernetic eye only caught a passing glimpse of the life insurance ad on its side.
‘Shit shit shit!” I added as Gomorrah started to pull up, then encountered the rising, warning-light covered smokestacks of New Montreal’s industrial district.
My everything clenched as she flung us to one side to avoid a pole, then tossed us in the other direction to keep from ramming a chimney.
“Tight,” Gomorrah said before rolling the car to the side to slip in between two tallic blurs. I didn’t even see them until we were shooting past them.
“Fuck shit,” I agreed.
Gomorrah snorted and levelled us off. She smoothly guided the Fury down between the ga structures nearest the industrial sector and wove down into the main traffic lanes. She was still ducking and weaving around slower cars, but it wasn’t at a speed that had my lunch considering a violent exit.
“Where did you learn to drive, and can soone sue them for incompetence,” I said.
“Co on, no one’s died from my driving,” Gomorrah said.
“I feel there should be a ‘yet’ at the end there,” I said. “Maybe in italics.”
The nun laughed. “I got my license early, so I used to drive the church van around a lot.”
“Bringing people closer to god by ans of heart attacks?” I asked. “You know, at this rate I expect you to just crash into the rc’s hidey-hole.”
“That’s one way of doing it,” Gomorrah said. “But nah. I’m going to park us a few blocks over, and we can make our way down on foot.”
“Is it a nice enough neighbourhood to leave this thing parked on its own?” I asked.
“No one’s going to steal my car, Cat.”
“It’s a nice car,” I said.
“It can handle itself,” Gomorrah said. “Right Fury?”
The car chid a positive-sounding two-tone note.
I shrugged. She was probably right. It would take soone with serious balls to try and jack a Samurai’s ride. We veered out of traffic a mont later and glided down a few levels, past billboards and ads and a few sky bridges between the buildings towering above us until Gomorrah ca level with a hangar door in the side of a building.
“It’s one of those pay-per-minute parking spots,” Gomorrah said. “The cheap ones, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said. “What’s the rate like?”
“Forty-Five credits per minute. Countdown starts when you move in, ends when you’re finally out,” Gomorrah said. I noticed her head twitching, the telltale sign that soone was navigating so nu. “It’s got so vacancy.”
“You know, this might take a few hours.”
“That’s fine,” she said.
“‘Cause you’re not planning on paying?” I asked. I sure as hell wouldn’t.
Gomorrah looked my way for a mont. “What? Of course I’ll pay. It’ll be what, a few thousand credits at most?”
I shrugged. It was her credit.
The hangar opened and we slid into the poorly lit interior. Gomorrah hovered past automated car racking system and headed towards a more traditional parking lot by the back. I tucked in between a sedan and a soccermom van.
I stepped out with a sigh. Gomorrah’s driving was a bit much for , and it was nice to have both feet on solid ground again. “Okay,” I said as I pushed Fury's door closed. It hissed and shut itself on its own. “So, I’m a bit disorientated. Where’s that rc hideout?”
“Three buildings down,” Gomorrah said. She moved to the back of her car, the trunk opening as she approached it. “It’s near ground level.” A set of chanical arms ca out of the back of her car, carrying a very familiar fla thrower which Gomorrah grabbed and, with a tug on its strap, hung off her shoulder.
“Cool. Myalis, can you give waypoints?”
Certainly.
I nodded, taking in the faintly glowing green balls set a couple of ters apart in my vision, all of them leading over to an elevator bank at the back of the parking garage. A three dinsional wire-fra of the building pointed more or less in the right direction too.
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“Are we really just going to knock on their front door?” Gomorrah asked.
“No. But we’ll get within a building of them before we start planning properly, I think. Myalis, can you make it so we don’t ping anything on the way over? I don’t want them to see us coming until we want them to know.”
I can do that. Though I can’t account for organic observers, or for that matter closed circuit systems or a few other thods of observation.
“Just do your best with what you’ve got,” I said. “Let’s go!”
Gomorrah caught up with and we walked over to the elevators side by side. I slapped the right floor number and leaned against the wall as the elevator rumbled its way down. “Do you know how you’ll get in?” the nun asked.
“Not yet,” I said. “I don’t suppose the place has suspiciously large air vents able to hold my weight?
Not unless you’re considering losing quite a few kilos.
I snorted. “Okay. Backdoors? Windows maybe?
One mont, I’m going to send you and Gomorrah the schematics to the building. Keep in mind, these are the official schematics, not sothing taken from a scan. It’s entirely possible that the building has been changed.
A three dinsional model appeared before of an entire gastructure. Hundreds of rooms, corridors, small hos and shops, all stacked up one atop the other, with supports marked in orange and walls in translucent greens. Faint blue lines marked out what I suspected were the buildings wiring.
“Can you highlight the rc’s place?” I asked.
Here you go.
A stretch of the building so three stories tall lit up in purple. I toyed with the controls built into my augs until it was zood in a little and I could see it better. The section the rcs were using wasn’t perfectly square. So of the rooms from other parts of the building poked into their space, but it was a near thing.
“Looks like a sort of garage on the first floor. Living spaces on the second, and... maybe those are offices on the third?”
Indeed. The bottommost floor occupied by The Hour n is the fifth floor of the building.
“Where are the entrances?” I asked.
Five doors were highlighted in red. Three ergency exits leading into a stairwell that crossed a decent portion of the entire building. A door by the offices, no doubt leading into a sort of lounge, and the main door of the garage.
“Those fire escape entrances look to be in pretty quiet spots,” Gomorrah said.
“I really doubt they’re viable entrances,” I said. “They have to be locked up, or else bricked over. Unless these guys are complete idiots, and I doubt that.”
“You think that highly of them?”
“No. I just don’t like the idea of underestimating soone so much,” I said. “I think the garage is too obvious, and the main entrance is a bust.”
“Unless you go in with a disguise or sothing.”
That... was an idea. “Maybe. Let’s look at other things first. Myalis, they have an entire wall that’s on the exterior, right?”
They do.
The garage-side wall lit up. “Any windows?”
Four windows flashed the sa colour as the entrances.
“Well, there’s another option,” I said.
“How important is it that you get in physically?” Gomorrah asked.
The elevator dinged and its doors opened out into a little lobby with cracked tiled floors and heaps of trash shoved up against the corners. “I guess we should figure out what we want to do with them before breaking in, huh?”
“That might save us so ti,” Gomorrah said.
“Right. Priority one is the girl. And I guess her dog. We need to find out if she’s there. If she is, then we extract her.”
“Just the two of us?” Gomorrah asked.
I chewed on my cheek, then shook my head. “No. That’s too risky. If she is there, then we get so other Samurai to help. Soone like Deus Ex could probably fry everyone in the building from a dozen kiloters away without hurting her. It’d be safer.”
“And if she’s not there?” Gomorrah asked.
“Then we find out where she is. If that ans finding soone to ask questions to, then so be it.”
***
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