Chapter Thirty-Four - Something's Dirty Down In CleanTown

“Laundering materials and equipment has, strangely, become exponentially more complex, even as crime has mounted and become far more common. That’s because of technology like this. A simple RFID tag, no bigger than a grain of sand, can be hidden in nearly any piece of equipment and will allow you to track it across a city.”

--Securatek Demonstration, 2031

***

“No one wants to talk?” I asked the silent room. I looked around, but all I found were grown men and women in baggy uniforms who didn’t want to meet my gaze. They were still fondling their guns though.

Honestly, this whole thing could go pretty damned poorly. I was probably mostly bullet-proof, but there were two dozen of them to one of me, and if they piled on, it would get messy.

“Okay,” I said.

I stood up from the chair, then flung it aside. It crashed to the ground with a bang, and I saw half the room jump at the noise.

Reaching down, I plucked a grenade from one of my pockets and placed it on the booth’s table right in front of the three masked morons. “Who came up with your plan?” I asked.

None of them answered, but their eyes gave them away. Two of them glanced to the side and I turned, following their gaze to the end of the room where a man was standing next to the sound system. He was a middle aged guy, balding, a bit sweaty, and holding onto a large beer with white-knuckled fingers.

I touched the grenade I’d placed on the table. “If any of you three moves, this goes off,” I said.

Then I carefully put my Trench Maker away.

The tension in the room relaxed a hair, at least until I drew my sword.

The Void Terminus didn't look like much when it wasn’t active. There wasn’t a blade on it. Instead, the entire shaft was a long rod with a sort of cap on the end. It almost looked like a tool rather than a weapon.

I walked slowly across the room, hoping that no one would try anything funny, then I stopped before the guy. “You the boss?” I asked.

That’s Robert Brigadeiro. He’s the manager of this building’s janitorial unit.

Robert swallowed, but he was quick to get his shit together. “I’m the manager, yes,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, Miss Samurai. We have nothing to do with you. We’re just the cleaning staff.”

“Well it looks like you, or at least some of your buddies here, cleaned out my clinic upstairs. I’m a little annoyed about it, to be honest. And I want to know where my limbs ended up. Those were meant to help people, you know.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. “We’re just cleaning staff, that’s all.”

“Uh-huh. You won’t mind if I have my AI check your augs then? Just to be sure?”

Robert was sweating bullets and blinking fast. He wiped the back of his hand across his face. “I... I don’t know. I mean. No. I don’t want that.”

“Then tell me where my shit is, and you can... well, no, I’m not just going to allow you to go back to partying after robbing from armless and legless people, but at least I won’t kill you all and then find out by hacking through your augs.”

Robert shook his head. “It’s too late,” he said.

“What do you mean, it’s too late.”

“Let my people go, please,” he said. “Most of them have nothing to do with this.”

“Most of them are here partying too, aren’t they?” I asked. “Spill.”

“We sold them. Everything we grabbed. You have to understand, we’re the cleaning people, no one cares about us, we’re practically third-class citizens and it was a lot of credits. We’re invisible to most people, so it was--”

I poked him in the chest with the end of my sword’s rod and he fell back against the wall, arms rising in surrender by his sides. “Who did you sell them to?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Where did they take them?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you get them back?”

Robert shook his head. “I don’t know!”

“Fuck you,” I barked.

The Void Terminus snapped, then it filled the room with a powerful hiss. A black, empty crack appeared between the end of the sword and the end of its hilt, a space dark as night with only the faint glimmer of distant stars within.

Immediately, the room filled with a powerful gust and pressure in the room mounted as air was sucked into the crack in reality.

A loose piece of paper fluttered through the air and into the cut, disappearing in a blink while Robert pissed himself and cried while trying hard to push himself through the wall holding him in place.

“All of you, listen to me,” I said over the sword’s hiss. It was a damned good thing the door wasn’t closed because otherwise the room might be running out of air soon. “You’re going to find my stuff. You’re going to look real hard for it. Then you’re going to come back here. You have five minutes, and I’ll let your imagination fill you in on what’ll happen if you don’t produce results... go!”

I turned, tossed the sword up and caught it with my other hand, then pointed to the three in the booth. “Not you three,” I said. “You three call the others that helped you on your little heist and tell them to come here before I have to go get them.”

The janitors took off running out of the room. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be seeing most of them again, warnings be damned. The three in the booth though, were looking particularly cowed, and Robert was trembling and breathing hard while staring at the void hovering a little too close to his neck for comfort.

I sighed and flicked the sword off, then quickly spun it around and slid it back into its sheath. “So, why’d you do it?” I asked. I had been angry... and was still a little pissed, but a lot of that anger was fading now.

Robert swallowed and pushed himself away from the wall. He really had been trying to melt through it there. “There was an offer,” he said. “It was worth a lot. A quarter of what we all make in a year. I couldn’t pass that up, not for such an easy job. We... we don’t do this kind of thing.”

“Really? So you went from no crime at all to breaking and entering while disguised as a rival gang in one jump?”

Robert looked a little fidgety. “The most we’ve done is carry things around, maybe dispose of bodies for the other groups above.”

I couldn’t decide what to do about Robert and his pals, so I just kept an eye on the lot of them and hoped that me standing there would spook them into behaving while I dumped the problem on someone else. “Myalis, what do I do?” I subvocalized.

In an ideal world, you could contact the authorities about this. You may not be legally beholden to any laws, but the Janitors are. Do you want me to call the police? They’re bound to answer.

I shrugged. “Screw it. Sure, call them in. I can’t imagine they’ll be happy about this either, but maybe it’ll send out the right kind of warning.”

Understood. Message sent. Their response time for this area is thirty-seven minutes.

“How far are they?” I asked. That amount of time didn’t make sense.

The police force I contacted is the nearest. They’re stationed on the topmost floors of this building.

“That’s an elevator ride away,” I said.

They only respond to calls like this in force. It may take time for them to armour up and prepare. I’m not excusing them. This level of inefficiency is impressive only in its scope.

“Tell them to send a token force down first, dammit. I’ve got these idiots cowed, I think.” I glanced at the Broom Closet’s entrance as two more Janitors in Ventrat costumes came in, then moved towards the booth in the corner, but kept glancing my way.

I moved towards them, then crossed my arms near the booth for a moment.

“Care to tell me where my stuff is now?” I asked.

One of the two newcomers actually spoke up, some younger guy with a bit of hair on his chin. “We sent it off,” he said.

“Sent it off where? To who?”

Whom.

I rolled my eyes which the idiots in front of me couldn’t see, but which Myalis would no doubt notice.

“The service dock for trucks on the bottom floor. We loaded it into a self-driving truck and it took off,” the guy said.

“Fucking hell,” I muttered.

How hard would it be for someone to have the stuff switch trucks? I’d be able to track things eventually, once the prosthetics got used, they’d probably leave a mark, or be recognizable, but until then?

“I'm going to need to ask for help,” I muttered.

I had someone in mind, someone who’d probably enjoy it if I owed them a small favour and who I’d been meaning to test out. It was worth a try.

***