Chapter Thirty-One - Saying Hello to the Good Doctor

“You want to be doctor?

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--A pop-up ad on the University of New Montreal homepage, 2027

***

“We don’t have far to go,” I said as we walked down yet another maintenance corridor. It was becoming a habit to spend time in cramped spaces with a bunch of pipes and terrible ventilation. At least it was better than the actual sewers, though not by much.

“How do you want to do this?” Gomorrah asked. “The way I see it, we have a few potential approaches. Doc Hack’s... I can’t believe that’s their name.”

“I’m called Stray Cat and you’re named after a city,” I said. “Glass stones.”

“Glass... the expression is casting stones from a glass house. There’s nothing about glass stones,” Gomorrah said.

I shrugged. “Sure. I just figured stones made of glass would suck to deal with. All that shrapnel, you know?”

“I suppose,” Gomorrah said. “We’re getting off-topic.”

“Right, you want to know how to deal with Doc Hack?” I asked.

“More like I want to know how we’ll reach him. He’s not terribly far from here. A couple of levels down. But the route to get to his... lab, I suppose, isn’t exactly straightforward.”

She wasn’t wrong. The fastest path Myalis had outlined involved going into the sewers again, travelling uphill a ways, cutting into a maintenance elevator, then up to the level where Doc Hack was from below.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked.

“Are you imagining unreasonably powerful explosives being used in confined spaces in defiance of all common sense?”

I nodded. “I wasn’t going to say it with such a negative tone, but essentially that, yeah.”

Gomorrah nodded, and my map flickered as it updated. Our path now went through two floors as if there weren’t several feet of concrete in the way. “We should be able to bypass any traps if we demolish our way to the heart of the enemy’s installation. I think it’s our big advantage in fighting a foe that wants to use the terrain against us.”

“I like it,” I said.

“Are you two certain that this Doc Hack is so antagonistic?” Franny asked.

“I mean, he’s called Doc Hack.”

“Yes,” she said with the strained patience of someone dealing with a brat, which I found rather insulting. “But other than his association with the Sewer Dragons, you don’t know that he’s really the person who ordered all of the kidnappings. For all we know, he could be at least somewhat innocent in all of this.”

“That sounds real unlikely,” I said. “But we're packing non-lethals, and I don’t plan on blowing that big a hole in this place. We’ll try to ensure he stays alive enough to answer some questions.”

“Aren’t you afraid you’re sounding like exactly the kind of person a saint would despise?” Franny asked.

I paused and thought about it. “Nah.” I was way too cool for any samurai to despise me. Besides, something in my gut was telling me that Doc Hack wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine. No one with a name like that living in the sewers was going to be a friendly old man who handed out lollipops to orphans and only wanted good in the world. Best-case scenario, I could imagine him being chased down here for fucking up and somehow acting like the local doctor, but that was a big ask.

“You’re very confident in yourself, aren’t you?” Franny asked. I didn’t miss the bite in her words.

“Franny, for a long-ass time, all I had going for me was a heap of confidence and a lack of shits to give. I don’t see why becoming a samurai should change any of that.”

“You would think those are some traits that might fade when given so much power,” she said.

“I don’t think I was given any power with the expectation it’d change me that much,” I shot back. “At least, that’s the impression I got.”

Gomorrah nodded, though it was reluctant. “I think Cat is essentially correct. The people chosen to become saints aren’t the ones likely to change too much from the act of becoming a saint.”

“If the cool aliens wanted people that acted one way, they could just hire people to be samurai,” Raccoon said. Something about the way she spoke gave me the impression she was sitting in a very comfortable, back-breaking posture. “Or they could send down, like, robots or something. Like those androids that some places have, but more people-like... unless Cat and Gom are androids, which would still be really cool.”

“I’m afraid that I’m at least eighty percent human,” I said. We reached a passageway that was fairly close to right on top of Doc Hack’s place. “Gom, should we drop down from here? It looks like there’s... some sort of large room over the Doc’s place, but there’s a passage under us now.”

“You don’t want to drop directly on top of him?” Gomorrah asked.

I shook my head. “What if he’s an actual doctor? He might have patients and shit around. Dropping the ceiling on some poor injured guy would suck. It might piss people off too. There’s a reason you only bomb hospitals when you know you can get away with it.”

I leaned down and took a moment to survey the spot. This was a corridor that technically connected the basements of two larger skyscrapers. Technically, because the corridor ended at a bricked-up wall. Someone had likely blocked things off to prevent people from passing at some point, though there was still access to the sewers below.

Weird, but alright.

The passage was about large enough that two forklifts could drive past each other if they squeezed in tight. Concrete walls, a floor covered in plasticky shit with some tile pattern printed onto it.

You’ll likely want an explosive with a fairly low yield and an easily controlled cone of destruction. Aimed downwards, naturally. Alternatively, if you want to create a passage directly, you can use an applied detonation that will burn out the edges of a hole into the floor.

“I think that might be best,” I agreed. Big explosions were cool, but we did want to limit the property damage somewhat. I didn’t know which wall was load-bearing, but I figured it was safest to assume “all of them.” “Give me the bomb, Myalis.”

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The box that appeared next to me had a well-folded cord within it, as well as a small brick that the cord was connected to at both ends.

I pulled it out and stared for a second before catching on. I started to lay the cord down in a circle on the ground.

The detonator goes in the centre.

I nodded and placed the brick in the middle, the black-ropy cord coming out of it and forming a loop on the ground that was about the size of a proper manhole. “Should we move over to the next room?” I asked.

That is not necessary. This will burn rather than explode, and the amount of light produced, while dangerous to the naked eye, won’t harm you as long as you don’t remove your helmet. Gomorrah’s equipment is likewise sufficient to keep her safe. Though I would strongly advise not standing on the hole you’ve marked, or touching the wire with any limbs you intend to keep.

I nodded and backed up a good few metres, just in case. Gomorrah, the more cautious one between us, stood even further back. I found the controls for the detonator in my aug menus and tapped the Detonate button with great relish.

The room lit up, the lights hanging from the ceiling entirely eclipsed by the burst of light on the ground. A rough circle of light burned, tracing the path I’d laid to cord on. I blinked just as the brick in the centre blew up with a low whump.

The floor caved in, the circle cracking in half and falling down and out of sight even as the cord winked out and left us in the comparative darkness of the corridor.

“Well then,” I said. “Ladies first?”

Gomorrah stared at me. “You’re a woman, last I checked.”

I grinned. “So you’re saying you’ve been checking me out? Besides, you’re a lot fleshier than I am, so technically you’re a little bit more lady, aren’t you?”

“You have a very strange mind. And no, that’s not a compliment,” Gomorrah said as she stepped past. She levelled her flamethrower at the hole and peered within, then she tapped the edge with her foot. “Cool already.”

“How can you tell?” I asked. There was no way her boots were thin enough to let her feel the ground.

“Heat-vision,” she muttered before dropping into the hole with a little hop.

I moved over to the edge, then stared down. That was deeper than I was comfortable leaping, so I sat myself on the edge of the hole and scooted forward until I dropped. The servos in my armour’s knees bent with a hiss I felt rather than heard.

“Dark in here,” I muttered.

“Come on, we need to do the same trick all over again,” Gomorrah said. “And then we can say hello to the good doctor.”