Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Forty-Eight - It's Never Easy

“And so I thought to myself... these games, their gacha mechanics and rewards, they addict our clients, the players.

It was genius!”

--Extract from the biography of Nimbletainment’s owner, 2039

***

“Who am I looking for?” I asked Myalis.

The group that Grasshopper was escorting was thirty-six members strong. I’m afraid that I can confirm that some of them have died. There are some cameras still active throughout the building.

“Fuck,” I said. Knowing Grasshopper, with all of her... Grasshopper-iness, she wouldn’t take that all that well. “Let’s find at least some of them alive.”

The first floor of the building was all offices and cubicles and that sort of horrific shit. I counted no less than three water coolers as I ran deeper into the building.

The centre was a wide-open space sporting balconies on the floors above with glass sides, a large staircase, and in the very centre, a glass-walled elevator. It probably made the poor fucks tied to one of the cubicles feel great when they could crane their neck back and see the people a few levels above them.

Right now, the steps leading up had a lot of blood on them.

I swore as I ran through the lobby and skipped over some woman’s corpse. “Was she one of Grasshopper’s?” I asked.

She was. The group moved up.

Made sense. They wanted distance. Didn’t look like it worked out too well though. I counted four more bodies on the staircase. Three dead aliens too, Model threes with their faces caved in or with mangled bones.

So the group were fighting back. Probably for the best. Model threes weren’t too hard to kill, overall. I’d done it with one arm and a pipe. I crouched, then jumped up. Myalis caught on to my intentions and fired off the jets on my legs, sending me rocketing up the space around the stairs.
I twisted a bit and landed unsteadily on the third floor. Another body, this one next to three dead model threes. A fourth was chewing the corpse’s face.

The alien paused mid-chew and turned its too-many-eyed face my way.

I stomped over to it and swung a boot into the side of its face. I don’t know if it was the anger, the armour, or some combination of the two, but the kick smashed it hard enough that it crumpled to the side, very much dead.

Leaning down, I checked on the faceless guy, then shook my head. Very dead. It looked like he was still holding onto a big knife that was stained green with alien goop. Those around him had clearly been stabbed a few times.

Good man. In other circumstances, he’d be hailed a hero.

I walked past him. There was a trail of blood leading deeper in to follow. As good an indication of where I had to go as any.

Bullcat raised, I started to follow the blood trail. The group must have moved pretty quickly. How long had Grasshopper been out of the fight for? A few minutes?

There are antithesis entering the building from a skybridge linked to the next building over.

“Alright,” I said. “Which floor?”

The third.

“Which floor are we on now?” I asked.

The third.

That was just brilliant. Folk had run up here for safety, then they’d run to the one floor that had more aliens coming onto it.

I entered a large cafeteria space. Lots of tables with seating for two spread out across the room, with a couple of franchise food-dispensers up against one wall with some vending machines next to them.

Someone had died pressed up against an anime-figure, some company mascot, with a speech bubble above her head. “Don’t forget! Only company-approved meals in the official rest and restoration cafeteria!*”

Not the nicest place to die. I leaned down, one hand dropping from my gun to shift the body aside. She’d been bitten in the back of the neck. Claw marks cut through her pseudo-leather coat.

I continued moving, eyes sweeping around.

More bodies near the room’s exit. It looked like the room’s exit was one of those barricades that dropped from the ceiling. It had been pried open, the long pole used for leverage discarded to one side.

The small opening meant that everyone had to get to all fours to squeeze through. That had probably taken some time. A fat guy was currently wedged in the gap, a few more bodies mangled behind him.

I looked around for another way through, then I lowered my gun so that it hung on by its strap and I grabbed the metal grating in both hands and pulled in opposite directions. The entire thing ripped apart above and tipped to the side. Not what I wanted, but it worked. I pulled at it again and the barricade came crashing down with a jangle of metal on metal.

I walked on through.

More offices, these much bigger, with glass walls between them and big desks with chairs to receive clients. The front-facing part of the business, then.

A helpful body pointed me in the right direction. Some guy bent over weirdly, a couple of dead model threes next to him. It was only as I was walking past that I noticed he was bent over a second body, clutching it close to keep it... her, safe. I checked for a pulse on both.

I moved on.

Screaming up ahead had me refocusing on what was at hand. I started running down the corridors until I rounded a corner and found Grasshopper’s people. They were using a couple of desks as a barricade. One was wielding an office chair like a battering ram.

They were stuck in a corner office, the entrance hounded by half a dozen model threes and a model four. It felt strangely familiar.

I slowed my sprint to a more careful walk, then raised up my Bullcat. I made sure there wasn’t anyone behind where I’d be shooting, then I flicked the gun to full auto.

It was like pressing a chainsaw into a steel drum filled with loose pans. A screeching scream filled the corridor as pellets rained across the passage.

The aliens were shredded in a blink, the wall behind them filled with a thousand pinpricks. The screaming from the office intensified for one brief moment, then calm settled.

I walked over, then eyed the other length of corridor. I could see the skybridge from out of a window, but not the entrance onto this floor, which was past a few walls. There were some aliens running over in through passageway. I mowed them down with a quick burst, then my gun clicked empty.

“Reload,” I said before turning to the barricade. “Any injured?” I asked.

There was a sudden cacophony of thanks and demands. “Save me!” “Thank you!” “Oh god, oh god.”

I pumped the Bullcat. The heavy Ker-chunk silenced everyone. “I asked if there were any injuries,” I repeated myself. “We’ll tend to those, then move back downstairs. Grasshopper’s down there. She’ll be wanting to see you.”

The barricade came down in quick order. I got two more cat mechs, just to keep an eye on the group, then I handed out healing packs like they were candy. They were basically smaller, cheaper versions of the nanomachine healing suite that I’d used on Grasshopper. Small enough that someone could just stick it against their own side and hold it there while it did its thing. Probably nowhere near as effective, but the worst injury I saw was a bad cut on one guy's leg.

“Myalis, I need a way back down that won’t pass through the same corridors,” I said. There were some kids in the group. They’d probably seen worse on TV, but... yeah.

Myalis outlined a map for me, and with a nod, I started off in that direction.

They followed, though some of them protested. I think the idea of not having a samurai around to keep them safe did wonders to quell the protests of those who were in that kind of mood.

Our path back down was done mostly through more discreet stairwells on the edges of the building. No one complained about having to go down a couple of floors. The cat mecha I’d bought watched the group’s back while I took the front.

On arriving at the first floor, I was greeted by one of the mechs I’d left with Grasshopper. The cat nodded, then turned and strutted off in the way only a cat could. We crossed some dead aliens a bit later, which might have explained all of that.

All that was left was getting back to Grasshopper, then figuring a way to get her and the civilians out of the area safely.

Easy.

***