Chapter Ten - Tensions

“Never let anyone tell you you’re not valuable! You have organs after all!

At Organ-do’s, we turn some of that value into cold hard credits. It’s as easy as stepping into one of our insured Organ-do booths, and leaving a few minutes later with a pocket full of spending money!*”

*Organ sales are non-refundable

-Organ-do ad, 2051

***

Franny was a little different in person. A couple of years older than in the picture Gomorrah had shown me, and she wasn’t quite as clean. Not that she was dirty or anything, but her clothes had a few dusty stains on them, and she was obviously not wearing any makeup.

She looked past the fat man blocking her path, just a glance, but one that turned into an outright stare as Gomorrah stepped up... then paused.

I slowed to a stop behind Gomorrah. There was still a half-dozen metres between her and Franny, and yet she seemed reluctant to move.

“What’s going on?” Raccoon asked when the moment started to stretch.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I muttered back to her.

“Franny,” Gomorrah said.

The fat man turned, his frown disappearing in an instant when he locked eyes on Gomorrah. “Ah, Miss Samurai, you’re here at last. As you can see, I kept the girl here. I did as you asked.”

“You made him hold me back?” Franny asked.

“I didn’t want you running off before I could arrive.”

“I’m not twelve, Delilah,” Franny snapped. “I’m an adult.”

“One who’s currently in one of the worst establishments I’ve ever had the misfortune of laying eyes on,” Gomorrah retorted.

I felt my eyebrows rising. There was a whole heap of tension between the two, and not the fun kind. I imagined that Delilah was Gomorrah’s real name. A bit weird to have spent so much time with her without knowing, actually. “Are you two alright?” I asked.

“Who’s that?” Franny asked with a nod my way. “You hired a bodyguard?”

“That’s Stray Cat,” Gomorrah said. “She’s a samurai. A friend.”

Franny crossed her arms, the gesture bunching up the black cloth of her robes. She was wearing a mostly nun-like outfit, though her robes ended near her knees, which I was pretty sure wasn’t standard, nor were the jeans underneath, or the all-black combat boots and choker. “So, you’re making friends with more people playing God? I’m impressed you’re even managing to make friends at all.”

I raised my hand. “I’m not playing God. I wish I could play God. Right now I’m stuck in a permanent game of hide-and-go-seek but with high explosives. So, Gomorrah, this is the girl you ran halfway across the city to save? Because she doesn’t look like she needs saving.”

“I’ve never needed saving,” Franny said with the snap and bluster of someone who had very much needed saving at one time or another and who didn’t appreciate it.

“Yes, Cat, this is Franny. Now that the introductions are over with, let’s go home, Franny.”

Franny shook her head. “No, Delilah, I’m not just going to let you drag me back home like I’m some unruly kid. The old bags can live without someone to bitch at for an evening.”

My ‘unresolved issues’ radar was pinging like mad, but I decided not to poke at it. “Can we sit down?” I asked. “Maybe get a drink?”

“I don’t drink--“

“I don’t drink--”

Gomorrah and Franny turned to each other, then snapped their attention away and back onto me. “Uh, hey, I bet they have cola here? Rac, you like soda, right?”

“Fuck yeah,” Raccoon said.

“See, you’d be depriving the poor homeless girl of a free drink,” I said. “And you can spend the time educating her about the glories of proper language or whatever the fuck it is two nuns that need to get laid talk about around impressionable children.”

“Where did you find this one, Delilah?” Franny asked.

“I almost lit her on fire.”

“Have you maybe reconsidered the almost?”

I laughed. “Oh good, that’s where all of Gomorrah’s snark went. Come on, it’s... about six in the morning. Damn. I want to sit down and eat some breakfast, maybe get a few hours of sleep. But seeing as we’re here, I’ll settle for a bottle of something.”

I stepped between and past the two nuns on my way towards a corner of the room where a few booths sat empty. I guessed that even this place was quieter at this hour. Then again, the dance floor was nearly full.

Gomorrah let out an audible sigh and followed after me.

I gestured Raccoon ahead, and the girl slipped across the bench before I sat down. Gomorrah took her seat across from me, then scooted over to make room for Franny, who stood by the side of our table.

She had a baseball bat.

I wasn’t sure when or how I’d missed it. The bat was an old wooden thing, poorly spray-painted a flat black, with some peeling tape around the handle. “Nice bat,” I said.

She scoffed and planted herself next to Gomorrah. “Yeah, well, it works. Not everyone can call down weapons from the heavens.”

“Fair enough,” I said. There was a screen in the middle of the table, one smudged with... liquids. I shook a napkin dispenser, found it to be empty, then reached over to the booth behind ours to steal a few from theirs to wipe the screen. “Order whatever, Rac. And grab me a Shock Soda. I need a sugar substitute.”

There are healthier alternatives, with no microplastics and less radioactive waste used as a water substitute.

I made sure no one could hear me as I answered. “Don’t need to alienate people right now,” I said. “Franny here seems touchy.”

She does seem somewhat nervous.

I leaned back into the bench and watched as Raccoon placed first my order, then two orders of water from Gomorrah and Franny. She moved over to the foods list and paused to look up at me. I nodded and made a go-on gesture, and she started adding one of everything to the order.

It was a good thing I was rich, because Raccoon seemed determined to sample everything.

Then again, she had been injured, and the nanites needed her fed.

Probably couldn’t expect much from the food here, but it was better than nothing, and she still had some healing stuff in her. When she was done, I connected to the screen through my augs, noted the number of viruses and junk my new augs just brushed off, and made the payment.

“So, Franny, Gomorrah here was stupidly worried about you.”

Franny scoffed. “She didn’t have to be.”

“Yeah, well, she interrupted me mid-happy-time with my girlfriend to come rescue you.” I enjoyed the incensed insult on Franny’s face, as if it was enough to disguise the reddening of her cheeks. “Now, I’m always willing to help a friend out, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be obnoxious and ask questions, like ‘Why didn’t you answer your calls?’ and ‘What were you doing here anyway?’ ”

“The old bags are the sort to spend the day preaching about being good rather than doing good,” Franny said.

She paused while pointing at me with a finger when a robot rolled over and crashed into the edge of our table. It was little more than an oversized roomba with some servos and a pitcher of ice where our drinks were waiting.

I served us all. “So you cut them off. Alright. Didn’t have to cut Gomorrah here off.”

“I took out my augs,” Franny said. “It’s safer that way.”

“Safer?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

I shrugged. “Okay. And what were you doing here? You don’t drink, and something tells me that while you'd like to look, the holographic strippers aren’t why you’re here.”

Franny looked to Gomorrah, then at me. “I’m not going to sit back and do nothing, alright.”

“Alright, so what were you doing?”

“While you were sleeping with... with your girlfriend, I was down here looking for people. There have been disappearances. Lots of them.”

“The incursion nearby probably accounts for some of that,” I said.

“Some, but not this many. No one pays much attention when nobodies disappear. But I know some of them. Or at least I know people that know them. A lot of them are too poor to move further out, and some have left families behind. That’s after the incursion.”

I leaned forward. “And what’s that got to do with the Sewer Dragons?” I asked.

“How do you know about them?”

“I really don’t know much,” I said.

Franny licked her lips, but she did spill. “They’re the ones doing the kidnappings. I couldn’t get any answers yesterday. I... uh, persuaded some people to let me see their security camera footage, but all the video from where the kidnappings happened was either wiped or a loop. No clues there, and no other witnesses, at least, none that I found. So I started to map things out.”

“Okay,” I said with a nod.

She reached out and grabbed some of the leftover napkins I had, then laid them out on the table. “The kidnappings happened in different buildings, but always on the same floor.” She poured some of her water into her hand, then started pressing dots onto the napkins. “And there was a pattern.”

There was a pattern now, all the wet smudges grouped together in a long trail. “The sewers, I guess.”

“Yeah, concentrated around openings. No specific target either, just anyone. Young, old. Inside their house or standing outside. It took some work to figure out the who, by the way.”

“That’s impressive work,” Gomorrah said, talking at last. “We can tell people, tell the authorities.”

Franny slapped the table. “They won’t do anything.”

I sighed. This was going to be one of those discussions.

***