Gamma Protocol (036) (Patreon)

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[036]

“So… where’s the party going to be at?” I asked, searching for a seatbelt and not finding any.

Vesper and Isia had come to pick me up from the motel on a fancier truck than the one I’d seen them running around in. “Fancier” in the sense that there was no rust peeking from under chipped paint, and that it had a functioning AC with equally functional windows.

“It’s a surprise.” Isia declared excitedly, then immediately turned to look at Vesper. “And I’ll kill you if you ruin it.” Though her tone was slightly cheerful, even I could tell there was a bit of seriousness tucked away in her words.

“Don’t worry, my lips are sealed.” Vesper replied from behind the wheel. Unlike Isia, she wore the full weather-protection gear. Maybe she’d change at our destination? “I won’t ruin this one.”

Isia shot her a glare, but didn’t comment.

“By the way, where’s Quinn?” I asked, thoroughly grateful that Vesper was not driving like someone possessed by a demon.

“Hm?” Isia leaned away from the window, sparing me a glance. “They stayed at the base. That nerd can’t…” Her words trailed off as her head twitched. She glanced away, making a gesture with her hand. Some message through her neuralink? “Nevermind. They just don’t want to go out tonight. By the by…” Leaning back and glancing over at me, she gave me a tentative look. “Is your bioware… let’s say… potentially sensitive to alcohol?”

“Even if it wasn’t, I don’t think drinking would be a good idea for me.”

She gasped in horror. “Since when was drinking a good idea for anyone? I can’t have that.”

I gave her a deadpan.

“We have a few hours of footage explaining exactly why he shouldn’t lose control of himself.” Vesper laughed. “If he doesn’t want a drink, don’t push it.”

“Oh come on!” Grumbling, Isia crossed her arms and slumped into the seat. “It’s not a party if there’s no blackmail material by the end of it!” Though she made a show of grumbling about it, she didn’t push the subject further.

It was at this point that I noticed a shift in the scenery around us, mainly, that Vesper had taken a ramp into one of the highways up and towards the wall… only to immediately come to a crawling stop as we got caught in heavy traffic.

“Told you we should’ve scheduled the party for after the night-shift rush.” Vesper sighed.

“Not my fault so many members have a late-night shift.” Isia countered with a huff. “Oh, Axel, did you get to experience the tunnel of love?”

“The… what?”

“The tunnel, the Wall tunnel!” She cheered.

“Uh… no, when I came to the fourth district I took an air-bus drop.” I answered. “What’s the ‘love tunnel’?”

“It’s because of the ads.” Vesper replied. “The tunnel’s plastered with them. It’s like you’re stuck in some shitty technicolor joyride.”

Isia cackled. “It’s horrible! They had this whole campaign a year back or so where they tried to get a running theme. Some character or another that would dance between the ads, interactive and shit. They had to shut it down after someone hacked the bot to start swearing up and down the whole thing.”

So they’d installed screens inside the tunnel? The question left me as I stared out the window. We’d already made our way so far up I could look down at the rooftops of the fourth district. The going was slow, with the casual honker here and there, but a quick peek out the window left me frowning. “Everyone has the auto-pilot engaged.” I mumbled.

“Hm? Yeah, why?”

“No, just…” Every car we passed had the driver and passengers either dozing off or engaged in something else. It made me think back to the tram system in FC02. “Why aren’t there trains in New Francisco? I’ve seen plenty of buses and cabs… and they have that railway system going out…”

“Eh.” The duo shrugged at me.

“I guess no one wants to give up some chunk of their real-estate for something like that.” Vesper made a dismissive gesture. “Besides, poking holes into the wall would never be a good idea.”

Yet as I looked over the district I couldn’t avoid staring at the edge of it, at the improvised slum-houses that petered out into dusty brown soil. At how there was no wall to keep the monsters out, at how exposed it all felt. “What if there’s a need to evacuate people?”

“We die.”

The answer bothered me, but not as much as the laughter that followed. Vesper and Isia sharing a chuckle and shaking their heads as if this was some sort of joke. Isia noticed my expression and gave me another shrug.

“It’s happened before, like when we got the Gap in the wall. Inner-city folk just don’t give a shit… oh, no, sorry, they ‘just don’t have enough for everyone’.” She made air-quotes as she rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. “Nevermind that a burger in the upper-inner first district is made from actual cows and costs a thousand times more than a burrito wrap.”

“I bet it tastes a lot less like shit though.” Vesper nodded.

“Is that what your sold-out girlfriend says? If she rates cow-burguer so highly what would be her rating of your-”

Vesper shoved Isia before she could finish. “Shut up.” The shorter woman giggled wildly.

I watched the exchange for a moment further as we kept inching closer to the wall. It was like a man-made sheer cliff of concrete and metal, it made the vehicles moving in and out little more than ants crawling out in designated lanes. The closer we got, the more harshly it loomed overhead, until we finally entered through the narrow tunnel.

“And here we go!”

Rather than a spectacle of light, I was met by a dozen red dots, each one belonging to a turret flanking either side of the tunnel and aimed at us. For every cannon there were four miniguns, for a moment they tracked us, then moved to the next vehicle in line. But there were more turrets further in that locked on to us… locked on each vehicle in turn.

Every single car had a turret aimed at them at any given time.

“I thought there were screens!?” I asked, voice hitching up.

“What? Oh, the neuralink, right, you don’t get ads.” Isia grimaced. “God I wish I could turn that stuff off, sometimes the technicolor vomit gets annoying.”

“What about the guns?”

I shuddered as one of the turrets took aim straight at me, the empty barrel thick enough my head could’ve fit in it. The blackness within the tube was like a knife against my throat. For a fraction of a second, I wondered if I’d be able to react on time to avoid the shot… whose finger was on the button? Could it become confused and catch something that made it see me as something I wasn’t? I knew they were dumb questions, I was in my human form, I was safe, there was no way they’d mistake me for anything else. Even with the mental reassurance, it didn’t make me any less tense.

Then the turret shifted aim, pointing at the car behind me, replaced by another one up ahead locking on to us.

“They’re there in case of monsters.” Vesper dismissed it as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Then why were they locked on to every vehicle at every moment?

I tried to find something to talk about to distract myself. “By any chance, would the Rusty Pitch be near where we’re going?” It was the place Kali had asked me to check out so she could get some in-person verification I was alive.

“You know of the place?” Vesper’s tone was a bit surprised, but not as much as Isia’s face.

“A friend of mine asked me to go there.”

“That friend of yours wants you dead?” Isia asked. “That bar’s smack in the middle of Scorpion territory.” Her exasperation became more apparent as I stared blankly at her. “They’re a mid-city gang, and one of the bad ones at that. It’s gangs like them that make ours look like Saints.”

“Hence the name.” Vesper quipped with a smirk in her voice. “Let’s just say that extortion rackets are one of the mildest things they do for money.” She spared a glance my way. “What sort of friend would ask you to go there out of all places?”

One that kept surprising me, it seemed.

I had to ask myself why Kali had pointed me that way, was there a close friend who just happened to work in the bar? I couldn’t fathom her having joined a gang, but then again, there was a lot about her I didn’t know. Putting my concerns aside, I focused on the change in scenery as we began to descend down to the third district. The gargantuan cubes that were the buildings of the third district. Each one had a letter-number combination, but the pattern it followed was not one that respected the roads, certainly not a grid, and definitely not the highway.

“Don’t gawk too much, these are the old-school mega-buildings.” Isia chirped as I was trying to find any distinguishing marks I could use for navigation. “Each one is its own city.”

“Mhm.” I commented noncommittally, trying to make a little song in my head to memorize the building patterns. Usually I’d have a small music-AI do it for me, but that wasn’t an option anymore.

“And here we are.”

S3.

Just another giant cube surrounded by littered and cracked streets. “Why isn't there any graffiti?” I was a bit forlorn. Already I was missing the splashes of color from the fourth district.

“Dunno.”

Grumbling a bit more at myself, I followed along as we entered through metal gates that reminded me of the mega-building I’d been living in for the past few years. Just a bit less rusty, with doors that didn’t squeak and fight.

The inside of the building was entirely different, however. My ears were immediately assaulted by the thump of industrial music, not deafeningly loud, but powerful enough to make itself felt. The air was pregnant with the air of a thousand meals that’d been drowned in a tub of synth-beer and corn-rum. It took a moment to catch up and notice I was in the middle of a street, one flanked by restaurants and bars on either side, neon signs and loud voices imposing themselves over one another, creating a cacophony of sounds.

Another moment, and I realized there weren’t that many people here, I nearly got whiplash as my head swiveled from left to right, my brain trapped in a sense of dichotomy. The sounds were coming from speakers, the smells from nozzles that sprayed out a thin mist of odor.

“What is this place?” I asked, trying to fight off the impression that I should be caught in a throng of people in the middle of a meal.

“It’s the grand buffet!” Isia snatched my arm and dragged me ahead, while Vesper closed the rear of our little group. “Now let’s move past the lobby, everyone’s waiting!”

“...everyone?”

Vesper shoved me along before I could potentially slow them down, dragging me through the falsely filled venue, all the way to the back, where we then hopped on to an elevator. Isia punched in a combination on the pad, and immediately turned back to grin at me. “Aaaand time for the uniform!”

Out of the confines of her overly-large sweater, she pulled out a T-shirt with a rat on the front. It was the same rat I’d seen a dozen times over: a cartoon little thing with a halo atop its head, a halo that was being used as a wheel by another much smaller rodent.

“...I’ve worn worse for a job.” I admitted, replacing my own with the offered overly-baggy piece of clothing.

“Hey! We’re not a corporation!” Isia wrapped an arm over my shoulder and shook me. “We’re a family!”

“That is so much worse.”

Vesper chuckled. “Introductions were due, and you’ve made a splash.” She patted my back, a pat that turned into a shove as the doors opened. A traitorous shove that was accompanied by Isia pushing alongside her, causing me to stumble out and into a large dark room.

“WOOT!”

The lights flicked on, revealing a hundred strangers burst out in cheer. There was a burst of paper confetti that rained down from the ceiling, a few speakers turned on to start up some music, and I was immediately snatched by Isia again. “Welcome to the gang!” She proclaimed. “You’re a Sewer Saint now.”

“Not yet he’s not!” One of the older people in the crowd spoke up, a guy with an RBG shifting mohawk. “He hasn’t received Spike’s blessing!”

“Spike?” I asked in a hushed voice.

“Spike! Spike! Spike!” The others chorused, even Isia hurrying to pull me along, crowd parting to let us through towards a table with a box. Mohawk guy hurried to approach the box, opening it up and gingerly pulling out… a rat.

A very big fat gray rat, it was the size of a football.

Beady milky eyes stared up at me as it was brought closer, sniffing at the air as mohawk brought the clearly mutated creature closer. My immediate reaction was to put my hands behind my back and freeze, entirely uncertain what to do.

“Come on!” Isia offered as mohawk-guy got closer.

“What?” I hurried to whisper.

“Put your hands out, dummy.”

Hesitantly, I did as told. It was then that mohawk gingerly placed “Spike” on my outstretched hands. Immediately the room went silent, everyone watching intently as the rat sniffed my thumb, then shifted, sniffed my palm, and then with a little squeak, curled into a ball. It was like holding on to a warm fuzzy water balloon, one that breathed irregularly and struggled to move.

“He has been chosen!” The room shouted all at once, and I very nearly threw the rat into the air out of surprise.

“Ok, NOW you can say you’re a Sewer Saint.” Vesper patted my shoulder.

“Uh…” I glanced at the rat, then at the others. “Do I just…?”

“Oh no, you’re the new Chosen One.” Mohawk immediately spoke up. “It is now your job to carry Spike in every group celebration. You are the Spike bearer until the next Chosen arises.”

It was upon hearing Isia’s cackling that I realized the trap.

“It is now time to celebrate for our new Sewer Saint!”

With a roar of the crowd, everyone gave a toast, and immediately Vesper saved me from getting swarmed. Apparently, everyone had seen my “unga bunga” stream and had something to say about it. Either direct congratulations, questions of the bioware, or congratulations through roundabout ways. All the while, I was made to carry the big fat sleeping rat that had grasped my thumb and had moved to snuggle it like some kind of pillow.

Spike-the-fat-rat served as the little magnet of the party. After that first round of introductions (and congratulations), people would come over to pet the rat and give it treats (no wonder it was so fat), making the gang pet a rather effective ice-breaker.

The people of the Sewer Saints were for the most part nothing like what I’d expected out of a gang. Everyone here had a day-job they went to, the gang operating more as their “side-gig”. Some of the “old school” members like Vesper made the gang their full-time job, but by the looks of it, the gang’s income wasn’t exuberant enough to make that an affordable prospect.

I was right in the middle of talking to mohawk-guy (Steve) about my own experiences in the “nutrient handling” aspect of Bacon-nado operations, when I noticed a slight shift in the room. Someone new had shown up, drawing attention from many of the attendees.

Because Bear was here.

“Uh…” I hesitated. “Is that who I think it is?” I asked Steve, who was also frowning.

“I don’t know why the leader of the Paws’ doing here either.”

“What’s the relationship between the Saints and the Paws?” I hurriedly asked, trying to make myself less noticeable.

“Rivals, but not in a bad way.” He hurriedly said, eyes flickering in a way that could only mean he was speaking to others through the neuralink. “Not someone we’d invite into this party, though.”

We all stared as Bear was approached by Vesper and two others. The tension wasn’t the violent sort, but it was definitely there as they exchanged words. The exchanged words were not happy ones, Vesper looking like she’d bitten into a lemon, eventually pointing my way.

A chill ran through me as Bear approached. There was no reason to be nervous, there should be no way she could know.

…

Right?

“Can I help you, ma’am?” I asked as soon as she’d gotten close enough.

Apparently the question surprised her slightly, but it was quickly replaced by a frown, scarred brow furrowing. “Yes, you can.” Coming to a halt directly in front of me, the scowl deepened. “Leave the Sewer Saints.”