Ravensdagger_Kittypunk_Cyberpunk_Kitrpg

Chapter Twenty-Six — No Plotting or Planning

Chapter Twenty-Six — No Plotting or Planning Ideally, we would have had a few solid hours to plot and plan, then a day or two to purchase all of the equipment I wanted to have access to. Ideally rarely happened, in my experience. More often than not, the best you could hope for was to have enough time to prepare as best you could. That was often still not enough to guarantee success. If we wanted to save Alyssa tonight (and I was still very much on the fence about that) then we had to act quickly."This is such a waste of time," Jenny cursed as she drove us through Fenway at a speed that bordered on the reckless. Sharp was hugging me close to her chest, so I could only barely see the traffic ahead of us as Jenny swerved in and out of lanes and punched her horn to get people to shove out of her way.The console in the middle of the old van's dashboard chimed for the thirtieth time that evening. "You have violated... one traffic law. A fresh penalty has been added to your record. A sum of... one hundred and... forty two dollars had been deducted from your Safe Driver account. The B2PD thanks you for your contri-" Jenny turned us up and onto the sidewalk, cutting ahead of traffic. "You have violated... one traffic-"I tuned the car's warnings out. Traffic violations were all fine-based in most major cities. Driving over the limit was an automatic fine, unless someone bought a fine-pass permit or had a special subscription. It basically meant that driving was best done by someone on the richer side of things.I suspected that Jenny wasn't that. She just didn't give a crap at the moment."Alright, here we are," she said as she slammed on the breaks and brought us to a stop. Right next to a fire hydrant. "You have violated-" The girl punched the dash, shutting the car up with a squeal."Get what you need, then get back here," Jenny said. "Here." she leaned all the way to the side and tugged out her wallet. The next thing I knew, Sharp was fumbling a credit card out of the air. "Don't spend more than you have to. I'll be checking.""T-thanks!" Sharp said before we exited the van in a hurry.We were next to one of the busier commercial mega buildings in Fenway. It was an enclosed mall, with several hundred small shops within. Fortunately, the place had a large interactive map right at the entrance that Sharp ran up to."What are we looking for?" Sharp asked."A pet clothing store, and a netrunner's electronics store," I said.Sharp glanced down at me, then nodded. A few taps later, and she took off running into the building. It was late, of course, but this kind of place was open 24/7 and most of the shops had self-checkout and automated defences to take care of anyone that tried to shoplift. These kinds of places were some of the safest in the city. No store wanted to get robbed, so the security was tight. As long as people behaved and spent cash, they were more than welcome to linger around. Which was why Sharp had to move around a group of homeless people by the entrance before making it to one of the elevators.A $2 ride up later and we were at a petshop. "We're looking for cat clothes?" Sharp asked."Anything that'll fit. Preferably closer to my fur colour than not. It'll make me stand out, but hopefully not too much."There was a whole wall of stuff to pick from. Sharp glanced over everything, then held me up next to a blue jacket-like thing. It had a zipper down the front, and longer sleeves. I knew from experience that trying to get a cat into that would result in claw marks and bites. "Like this?" she asked."It'll do," I said. Why was a coat that small fifty bucks? It wasn't even doubled!I noticed a display screen advertising pet-based augs by the entrance. The sort of thing used to keep track of a pet, or to have the pet imagine they were seeing things, like training videos and projected toys. Some came in the form of wearable glasses-like devices...Later. Definitely something to look at later.Next up was a netrunner's place. Seven more floors up, then a quick dash to a store that was nothing more than an ATM-like machine with several cameras pointing at the user. Sharp ran through the selections on the machine until we found what we were looking for.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.A subtle, long-ranged bluetooth-enabled camera, microphone and speaker system. The kind of thing that might be installed next to someone's door, or in a spy plushie, or in a small drone. It was over the counter, so I didn't expect it to be in any way secure, but it would do for now. "Buy a charger for it too. They never sell these things fully charged. Oh, and a palm computer. Yes, I can see how expensive they are. We'll need it to interact with the cameras. Ah, maybe an antenna wire as well?"We left a thousand dollars poorer... well, Jenny did. Passing us her card wasn't a wise move.Jenny was clearly at her wit's end by the time we made it to her van. "Fucking finally," she said."Sorry," Sharp replied. She was panting a little, having run the last bit over. "It was bigger than I thought in there. We have everything, though. Don't move, Queenie." I allowed her to man... cathandle me into position while she put that coat on. It was rather... floaty on me. If we kept it around I was sure I'd grow into it, but for now it was clearly a size too large. It had been the smallest size available, but I supposed that it was for adult cats, not kittens."How do I look?""You look kind of silly," Sharp said with a soft smile. "Now, let's get you mic'd up!" The camera sat at my neck along with the microphone and speaker. We turned the latter way down, until I could just barely make out what Sharp said from it. That ought to be low enough not to be overhead. Then the camera's antenna was wrapped around my waist. It caught in my fur uncomfortably, but I'd live with it.Sharp connected the palm computer up with some difficulty, though I tried to help, and in the end she did get it connected to the spy gear I was wearing. A fur-covered image appeared on the tiny screen of the palm-deck, then a lower-rez visual of what was before me. "Huh, that'll do," Jenny said as she looked away from the road and at us. She juked around a stopped car, then pressed on the gas some more. "You sure you'll be able to get that cat anywhere?""Yup!" Sharp said. She booped my nose, then escaped a vindictive swipe. "Tech up by one!" Oh... well, that was good. And not too surprising. This was a novel experience for her. Jenny continued to drive with the same enthusiasm across the city, weaving in and out of traffic and at one memorable moment, scraping the side of her van along the rear panel of a little roadster. The driver of that one screamed himself hoarse while we shot ahead.Finally, we made it to South Boston. It hadn't taken all that long, really. Disregarding every traffic and safety law made for quick traversal in the city.Jenny pulled us into a parking garage, and already I could feel something making my fur stand on end. "We're right next door to the fuckers," she said. "It's the building that way." She pointed through the garage. We'd come in from the far side, it seemed but I could still make out the mega building the cult occupied across the street."Better let your cat out here now. Then we can find a place to set up," Jenny grumbled."Right, okay," Sharp said. She turned me towards her, and met my eyes. "Please, please don't get hurt, okay?""My job is to hurt others, not myself. You have nothing to worry about," I lied.Sharp gave my head a smooch that I only allowed out of sympathy, then she opened the door and set me down. "Alright! Find Alyssa, then... we'll see what we can do from there, alright?"I nodded, then took off with a bounce across the garage. This was a stupid plan. At best I'd find the girl alive and be able to give her the gear I was carrying, but that would hardly free her. I was never so optimistic as to expect to find things so easy.Ideal situations were for optimistic morons to hope for and for pessimists to expect. This was going to be a rough one, and I could feel it in my bones.

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Seven — Unnoticed

Chapter Twenty-Seven — Unnoticed Not being noticed was the first and greatest way to complete an assassination. How to avoid notice came in a few varieties. There was plain stealth, then there was deception. My first ever kill had come in that latter form. I'd taken a job delivering groceries, and delivered a lethal dose of something I picked up over the counter to the man I was being paid to kill.No one suspected me because I was just another nobody doing their job. Though I still cringed when I looked back at how poorly I'd planned my first job.Stealth and deception were the bread and butter of a good assassin, but on some occasions neither were options.In those rare moments it was sometimes preferable to go loud.People often over-prepared for the thing they feared most. The paranoid would have layers of systems in place to make stealth difficult and to make deception impossible. Those same people rarely expected it when you walked right into their home or hideout with weapons blazing.Of course, I was never the one to walk in like that, because doing so was asking to get shot. That kind of thing could be hired out.Assassination was a deep and complex art, the likes of which could take a lifetime to master. Even now, in my second chance at life, I was learning new things.For example, being a small animal drew plenty of attention, but it was also a very easy way to be dismissed."Kitty," a lady by the entrance to the mega building the cult inhabited said. She smiled guilelessly and bent down to scratch my head.I dodged out of the way, then walked up to the door she was standing next to and meowed."Oh, you want in, kitty?" she asked. "Here here." She shifted her assault rifle to the side so that it hung by its strap and opened the door for me.And just like that, I'd sauntered past the nineteen armed guards stationed around the base of the building and was let right in without a fuss. It helped that this was a residential building. Pets were likely banned, and that banning was likely ignored by a sizable percentage of the inhabitants.Sharp and I had been in this building before, but only for a few minutes. We'd moved quickly, because the place creeped us both out. That feeling was still here. It was an oppressive weight pushing me down. I wanted to hunch down, and my fur was standing on end.I noticed that the people around the ground floor all had a sort of... listlessness to them. They shuffled whenever they moved about and their eyes seemed unfocused. That wasn't to say that they were entirely unintelligent. I saw people smacking vending machines, others gathered in small groups listening to music. A few were passing a joint around next to an escalator, and the ground-floor shops were all mostly open.These people were either used to the feeling, or were learning to cope with it. In either case, it was definitely affecting people, just perhaps not as much as I feared. There was no voice over the building-wide intercom either. Maybe that was a factor as well?"-Queen? Can you hear me?""I can hear you. Can you hear me?" I asked in return. This entire operation was predicated on my ability to talk to Sharp not being lost with range. We really should have tested it, but this was the first time that I was more than two rooms away from the girl since we'd met."Mhm!" she said. "Okay, so it looks like you're on the ground floor. Jenny says that Aly is higher up.""Can you be any more precise?" I asked. This was a mega building. It had fifty floors above ground and likely a quarter as many below. Several thousand people lived here. I had no idea how many were involved with the cult, but I imagined it was likely a majority. Though it was very possible that it wasn't something they wanted for themselves.Subversive mind control magic like this was going to get noticed, if it wasn't already. The government and corps might have been slow to act at the best of times, but they would move eventually. Brain-dead zombies didn't make for good consumers and they didn't pay taxes."Hmm, okay, sorry for the delay. We're moving up the parking garage to be on the same level." Sharp huffed a little, and I imagined that she was walking up stairs at that very moment. "Uh, I think we're three floors up already?"If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.I nodded. "Heading up, then," I said. There was nothing for it. I bounced over to an escalator and made sure not to let my tail get caught on anything as I rode it up. Once at the top, I slipped between someone's legs and into an elevator.It was a bit of a gamble, but it paid off when someone tapped the fourth floor button."I'm on the fourth floor," I said."How?!""I rode the elevator.""That's cheating!" Sharp said. She was definitely out of breath.I grinned as I walked out of the elevator. "Think of all the Body experience."Sharp grumbled some more while I found a quiet place to hide. That turned out to be next to an overfilled garbage can by the entrance to a washroom. The whole floor was residential, but clearly whomever was supposed to keep it clean was off-duty and had been for a while. Trash was piling up and some of the lights above were flickering. I noticed some apartments had their doors left open, and the interiors looked abandoned.Graffiti covered just about everything too. More so than a poorer mega building would normally have. A lot of scrawled messages about Him, done by unsteady, inexpert hands."S-seventh," Sharp said. "We're on the... seventh... floor. Oh god, Jenny, why aren't you tired?"I missed whatever the shorter woman said."That's... not... fair... either. Queen, urgh, we think Aly's on this floor.""Understood," I said. So I had to climb up a few floors, then? Not too hard. There were several stairwells, and I needed some Body experience too. By the time I was up on the fifth, I was starting to feel a lot more sympathetic for Sharp. I was not in any shape to be running up stairs like this either.The sixth floor stairwell was blocked. Trash and rubble were stacked up, along with a few lengths of barbed wire just thrown onto the heap. The barricade was far from professional, but it was exactly the kind of thing that would stymie an unprepared advance. If the only way up to the seventh floor was the elevators, then that meant that defences could be concentrated there.Unfortunately for whomever jury-rigged the barricade, they'd done so to stop human-sized opponents. I squeezed myself under an upturned couch, then hopped over an ottoman and between some office chairs, then I was free on the other side.The door into the main corridor was left opened, and I noticed that there were no barricades to the eighth floor. Interesting, but not something I could do anything about at the moment."I'm on the seventh floor," I said as I carefully poked my head around the entrance.The carpets here had been ripped off, leaving the floor semi-bare except for glue marks and some tarp left on the ground. Doors were missing from every apartment, and some walls had been knocked down, turning what should have been tiny habitation units into much larger, more open spaces.I didn't know what was going on around here, but I was definitely getting bad vibes from it all. Fortunately, the lighting was poor, so even though I could see plenty of people wandering about in that same shuffling gait, I moved slowly and silently along the edge of the wall and kept to the darker patches and out of the way."We're watching," Sharp said. 'Uh, Jenny's complaining that there's fur in the way, but it's fine. Looks creepy in there.""It feels creepy," I agreed. The air here felt thin and cold when I breathed it in, but at the same time I couldn't help but feel like it was thick and cloying. The dichotomy didn't make sense, and yet it was what it was.Basically, some magic shenanigans were afoot, and I didn't like it.I liked it even less when I carefully rounded a corner and noticed that some apartments had been turned into large cages. There were people in those. No Alyssa, from what I could tell as I scampered past.Then I did find her. In one of the more central parts of the floor, in an area cordoned off by opaque sheets of plastic tarp. There were several cages laid down on the ground, barely tall enough for a short person to stand in, and surrounded by lines of salt and burning candles.Within one of those cages sat Alyssa, the girl's face pressed against the bars and her eyes glassy and unseeing.

* * *