Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Sixty-Seven - Life Story

“Most people look at the charts and graphs that mark the spread of an incursion and assume that the aliens do things by the numbers. First they send out the weaker Models to scout and gather, these are the Model Ones and Threes and Fours, with the occasional Six and Eight and Five thrown in. And only when the area is saturated with them, when there’s no more resistance, do the bigger Models come out to play.

The aliens don’t have a doctrine. Don’t expect them to play fair.”

--Major Hunt, to Prisoner Platoon 5874, 2054

***

I don’t know why, between myself and Gomorrah, I was elected default leader of our group of two.

She had more experience with the Samurai thing than I did, not to mention she was a nun, which meant a sort of mental image of competency of a sort. I was an orphan with a limp and a bit of an attitude problem.

Gomorrah still deferred to me.

We made our way into a building with a Casper Blackman Associates LLC sign above a rusty door. Dumbass was able to unlock it while Dumbass Two and Three kept an eye on the area around us.

I didn’t like using my new Samurai buddy as a crutch, but until my leg finished knitting itself together I was kinda stuck.

“Where to from here?” Gomorrah asked as she looked around the lobby. It was the kind of place that was pretty standard for some front business. Lots of generic posters, a few plastic seats to one side next to a vending machine that looked near-empty.

There were offices at the back that looked mostly empty, and the reception desk had a defaced older-model android sitting behind it.

“I doubt you brought us here on purpose,” she said.

“Nah,” I said with a shake of my head. “Just wanted a spot out of the rain. Our goal is... somewhere that way.” I gestured across the offices, pointing more or less towards where we were heading. “I don’t know what these guys do here, but they had a door.”

Gomorrah tilted her head to the side just a bit. “Plushies.”

“What?”

“Plushies. They’re a LLC that does the paperwork for a factory in New Hong Kong that makes knock-off plushie Samurai.”

“Huh,” I said. “Okay. That’s nice. Let’s find an elevator up a few floors. There should be some bridges across the street. We can get to the hospital from above ground level.”

“Fewer aliens that way,” she said.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I said.

She shrugged her shoulders. “That’s fair. I’ve made a good deal of points. I’ll try not to be greedy.”

I started forwards and she followed along, a good thing because I didn’t want to faceplant any more than I needed to. The muscles in my thigh were getting better too. I made a show of looking for the elevator while thinking about what she said.

The way she worded that suggested that there wouldn’t be any more points to be made in a bit. Would someone stop the Incursion?

Of course they would. We were Tier Ones, barely even worthy of the title Samurai, but people like Deus Ex? A few dozen like her could probably clear half the city. Someone stronger and older would probably just glass the rotten parts of the city.

“Think there will be any work for us tomorrow?” I asked.

Gomorrah nodded. “This area’s under the Family’s purview. They usually leave the gutter clearing to local low-tier Samurai. That’s us.”

“Gutter clearing?” I asked.

She looked at me, then back ahead. We’d found the elevator, and it was still working. “The sewers and subways and the rest of the undercity. It tends to get swarmed pretty bad. It can take months to clear it all out. Not a lot of points to be made, but some are better than none.”

“I’d rather not go sewer diving,” I said.

“Then enter your name into the next lottery.”

I nodded while having no idea what she was talking about. “Myalis, which floor are we going to?” I asked.

Not even going to look at a map to figure it out yourself? How lazy. Floor Sixteen.

“You’re a darling,” I deadpanned as I shoved my thumb onto the right button.

“You talk to your AI out loud?” Gomorrah asked. “There are upgrades that allow you to subvocalize.”

I shrugged. “I like snarking back.”

“How very surprising,” she said.

I pointed at her. “Exactly like that, yeah.”

She snorted.

“So, are you really a nun, or is it some sort of cosplay?” I asked. “Because if it is, I do approve. The whole nun kink isn’t my cup of tea, but I don’t mind a bit of roleplay.”

She turned my way. “I could light you on fire,” she said.

“Is that an innuendo?”

She turned away from me and stared at the elevator doors. “I’m... not actually a nun, no. But I was part of a pretty religious school.”

I nodded along. “Never had much of that at my schools. Didn’t have much schooling either.”

“Where did your parents send you?” she asked.

“To an orphanage, mostly,” I said.

She tensed. “I’m sorry,” she said.

I waved it off. “I’m used to it.”

The elevator dinged and I yanked my Trench Maker out before the door had even begun to open. Gomorrah shifted next to me, an arm raising to point out into... an empty lobby area.

“Just being careful,” I said, a bit sheepish. “So, uh, you have... parents and stuff?”

She snorted. “Yeah, I have parents. Well, a parent.”

“Sorry to hear that?” I tried.

She shook her head as we started moving through the abandoned lobby area and into a sort of concourse. It was pretty typical for buildings with multiple bridges across them to have stalls and shops and such in them so that people walking from one part of the city to the next could stop over to buy shit.

“My mom left when I was young. My dad did his best, but he’s an office guy, married to the job. So he sent me to the best school he could afford. Hence the religious upbringing. Or partially religious... I’m not too sure about it all, now that I’m one of the Samurai that we treated like saints.”

“We’re just people with alien storefronts in our heads,” I said.

I would like to think that I’m more than a mere storefront.

“I suppose so,” she said. “My... mom’s back. Not with my dad, she’s just back in my life. The moment I became this.” She gestured at herself. “She reappeared out of nowhere and is suddenly the nicest person I’ve ever met. It... it feels wrong.”

I eyed her from the corner of my eye. Did she want some sympathy? Or maybe It had been weighing her down for a while and I was just the first one to come along that could listen to her. Something said that Gommorah wasn’t drowning in friends.

“I’m no expert when it comes to parents,” I said. “But I’ve seen lots of people acting nice. The act can be a good thing. Sometimes you just need to pretend to be a good person to keep people calm. But most of the time, when someone switches from being an ass to being nice, there’s something fucky going on. At least, that’s my experience as a shitty orphan from a shitty orphanage.”

We finally arrived at one of the bridges, one of those fancy ones with glass walls and a glass ceiling which was being assaulted by rain from above. The skies had actually brightened a bit, some of the cloud cover breaking apart here and there, but not right above us.

I moved closer to the edge, feeling for the soreness in my leg as I moved. It was a bit annoying, pulling strangely with every stretch, but I could walk on it well enough.

The roads below were cleared of people. A few Model Threes were sniffing around, probably the very front of the next wave. Had we stalled them with our little fireshow?

“What’s that?”

I looked to Gomorrah, then followed her pointing finger into the sky.

At first I couldn’t see anything. The bridge wasn’t near the topmost floor, so all the buildings around us towered above and cut off line of sight except for straight down the street. Even that was a mess with other bridges cutting across.

And then, from out between two bridges came a huge grey-black form that swooped up and under the passages.

At first I thought it was a hoverbus. It was way too big to be a Model One. The snap of giant wings shot that idea down. The monster was huge, with four great wings that seemed almost fuzzy and a dog-like face at the end of a long neck. It had four eyes, eyes that were locked on us.

“Ah fuck,” I said as it swooped towards us with Cat-sized talons extended.