Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Fifty-Two - Down Down Down

“The Antithesis are, rightly, the stuff of many a nightmare. They are unreasonable, alien, and have an appetite for human flesh.

They are the boogiemen made real, and they could be anywhere. Small hives have been found hundreds of kilometers away from incursion sites, sometimes weeks after the last hive in the region was declared eradicated.

There are Models able to destroy entire city blocks all on their own.

And yet, of all of the Models, there is none more terrifying than the Model Seven.”

--Excerpt from a Lecture by Professor Sanderson, 2028

***

Speedy drove us to a stop before a tall, thin high rise three blocks and a bit over from the hospital. The building, like its neighbours, was tall and sleek, covered in bright stainless and mirrored windows.

It wasn’t one of the short-stack apartment blocks that fillled half the city, or one of those blocky factories that spat out plumes of smoke from three dozen vents on the roof. This was one of the fancy sorts of buildings where half the floors were corporate offices, and the rest homes for the kind of people that couldn’t live without a view.

I stopped craning my neck up and looked around the car as much as I could. No aliens, at least, none that I could see. “Right,” I said. “Back to the grind. Speedy, you’re staying here?”

“Sure thing, boss lady,” Speedy said with a two finger salute.

“Two per vehicle,” Monroe said. “The rest of us are with you.”

We got out, the soldiers doing the fancy thing where they panned their guns left and right and looked around for anything that wanted to eat them.

I looked up again, to make sure there weren’t any surprises there, then took in the front of the building.

The first three or so floors were all cement, no glass or windows and no decorations other than huge static ads for energy drinks, radio stations and the more popular porn livestreams.

“Ma’am, door,” Monroe said as he removed a hand from the barrel of his gun to point to a door set in the side of the building.

I shook off my lethargy, tried to put my game face on, realized that I didn’t have or need one, and moved over to the door.

The soldiers moved around it, two to a side, guns held so that they could spin around and clear the entrance the moment the door was opened. “Wait just a sec,” I said. They relaxed a bit. “Myalis, can you help me with this one?”

Certainly.

“And I’ll need a bit more help besides. Can I buy something to see through doors and such? Maybe a drone? To scout and such.”

There are all sorts of drones available. I would advise against going the drone swarm route though. The micromanaging needed to use one well wouldn’t suit you, I don’t think. Perhaps a larger, more robust stealth drone? Something with a Class I AI that can serve as a partner? Ｒå₦∅ꞖĘṥ

“An AI like you?” I asked.

No. I am a class XII Personal AI. I am far beyond your purchasing capability. A Class I AI would have the intelligence of a small mammal. A dog, or a cat, perhaps. The model I have in mind can be upgraded and improved over time.

I had over a thousand points to burn. “Sure.”

New Purchase: Type One GG3R Stealth Drone

Points Reduced to... 937

I was expecting a box to appear next to me.

Instead a black cat appeared by my feet. It looked up to me with deep blue eyes, then sat down, its tail curling through the air this way and that.

“Uh,” Monroe said after a minute. “Ma’am?”

“Yeah, one sec,” I said. “Myalis?”

Yes?

“What the fuck?”

Shall I go over its features?

“Features? It’s a fucking cat?”

Myalis giggled. The cat blinked away, leaving into a four-legged metal thing standing on the ground. No taller than my shins, it looked like a bulbous spider, with claw-tipped feet and a body made of the same bluish metal as my arm.

I worked my jaw. “Serious?” I asked.

Very. It will obey verbal and signalled commands, as well as orders sent through your current equipment.

I twitched. My AI was a sadistic, mean bitch who like fucking with me. But that would be better handled without Monroe and his buddies looking at me.

“It’s a very expensive stealth drone,” I told the sergeant.

He nodded.

“It’s name is... Dumbass.” That would teach Myalis to give me stupid toys. I grit my teeth, then pointed to the screen next to the doorway. “Dumbass, open that door.”

The drone meowed at me before it bounced onto the wall, climbed up to the screen and placed a leg that split open to reveal a dataport atop the keypad below the screen. Soon it was jacked into the building’s system, the screen flashing ‘Unlocked’ in bold green letters.

The door slid open.

Monroe and his buddies started, but they were quick to slip into the room, guns out ahead of them to scan the entrance.

I pulled my Whisper from my shoulder and followed them in.

The drone, I noticed, clicked after us and skittered along the wall like some sort of demented mechanical monster.

If you don’t mind, I’ll lead the way with the drone. It will guide you to the shelter.

“Follow the drone,” I said as we reached an intersection.

The lighting in the building was, in a word, piss poor. For all that the upper floors were fancy, it was obvious that someone had only installed a bulb at every other light. It was clean though, the corridors free of junk and the floors marked by the tale-tale scrub marks from an automated sweeper.

I watched the squad check every corridor, every closet, and every room as if they were hiding a monster. They moved with next to no sound, each step measured, their bodies held low with their guns pointing wherever they looked.

It made me feel like an amatuer. I was clunking along behind them, walking bold as day, and yet making less noise than any one of them because of my magic cheat-y boots.

I leaned forwards a bit, my grip on the underside of my new rifle’s barrel tightening as I imitated the way they stood. Did it serve a purpose?

We reached a stairwell. Unlike those in the last shithole building I’d been stuck in, this one climbed up for more than one floor, with landings at every level. “Which floor is the shelter on?” I asked.

It’s in the second basement.

I turned my gaze down to the stairs leading lower. “Well okay then,” I said. “Monroe, do you want to split the party, or do we move as a group?”

“I’d rather we stay together, ma’am,” the soldier said.

I nodded. ‘Then let’s go see what’s waiting for us down below.”

My new drone hopped down the steps one at a time with faint little clicks only to pause as it reached the bottom.

You might want to see this.

“Hold,” I whispered. The soldiers stopped, guns coming to bear as they looked for a threat. “Can I see?”

I’m linking the drone’s feed to your eye gear.

The HUD over my left eye filled with a view of a stairwell, the same one we were on. I saw myself from below, looking a bit awkward behind the four soldiers.

The camera panned over to the steps leading down.

There was a body there. A human. He was resting at the bottom of the next flight down, back against the wall next to an open door, a gun on his lap and his brains all over the ceiling. The corridor next to him was pitch black, with a faint red light glowing at the end.

I swallowed some bile. “Suicide?” I asked.

Perhaps.

“I don’t suppose that corridor is the one with the vault?”

It is.

I sighed. “Monroe, you have lights?”

The man nodded. “We do.” He tapped on something on his vest and a panel on its front flared up, then he did something with his rifle and a tiny encased LED popped out from under the barrel and lit the passage before him. His men did the same.

“Good, good. Cause I’m not the superstitious sort, but I've got a bad feeling about all of this.”

I stomped--silently--past the soldiers while working through some menus with my eye gear. Finding the controls for all of my gear was pretty simple. Everything had icons, from my boots to my gun to the Hydra system on my back. I blinked at the one for my coat, then with a flick of my eyes to the side, I turned invisible.

“I want a coat like that,” I heard one of the boys mutter behind me.

I just snorted and moved on.

***

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