The Freeloading Monster (2)
The night air over the industrial district was cold to the point of unpleasant. Rain had been falling since afternoon, so the ground was damp in every low place, and filthy water stood in the broken asphalt. I pulled my hood down low and fitted a mask over my face.
My steps came light and quick, and the moment I pushed off, my body sprang like a coil on pure instinct. I ran the dark alleys. I'd already mapped the outer routes and the strongpoints across Rusty Dogs turf that afternoon, so there was no chance of losing my way.
Truth is, what I'm clearing now doesn't line up with the original timeline.
The hideout I was hitting had been a mid-game target. It wasn't any harder than the rest—the story simply didn't drag Jackie's pawn-shop debts into the light until around then. The outcome of a fight was never in doubt. Their guns and cyberware sat at early-enemy level, and they'd crack like walnuts under a hammer.
And I already know the clear.
A whisper came through the earpiece.
"B-Boss! The three surveillance cameras on the front gate—I took care of them!"
Jackie's voice was shaking. She'd be glued to a terminal right about now, running a jammer and cracking tools. She was no professional hacker; the whole of it was spinning the cracking kit her uncle had used when he was alive. Bring in a proper hacker later and she'd be out of the job, but for the moment she was useful enough.
And Jackie had another trick besides.
A thin electric whine pulled my eyes up. Against the pitch-black sky a small silhouette darted back and forth. A drone.
"Status. Anyone else around?"
"Yes! I checked! Nobody else came in, and nobody left!"
No outstanding gift. Her real merit was doing the odd jobs well, exactly as she was told. Cute kid.
"Good. I'm going in."
I picked up speed, and before long an old repair shop showed through the dark, its lights burning in scattered patches. A wild-dog emblem was sprayed in red lacquer across the rusted slate wall. The mark of the Rusty Dogs.
Wouldn't be a gang if they didn't slap their brand on everything.
I needed to test what this body could do. I kicked off the concrete and went up higher than I had any right to, toes catching the thick fuel line on the outer wall, hand closing on the railing. The joints bent more fluidly than I'd expected and hauled me up like a lever. Then I was standing on the roof.
If I remember right, there's a lookout right about here.
There was. A sentry leaned on the railing with a cigarette going, and the red optic seated in his right eye was third-rate scrap. Your everyday scavenger ganger. I slid in through the shadows on all fours and reached.
"...Mph! Mmph!"
One hand sealed his mouth and nose. The other hooked his jaw. And if I grew the claws out and drove them up through it? A soft, wet punch. He folded without a scream. I shoved the body into a shadowed corner of the railing and moved to the cover over the skylight vent at the center of the roof.
Let's see if the gimmick's still...
I took the handle and twisted. A small creak, and the cover came open. Sure enough, the game knowledge worked exactly as advertised. I looked down through the gap. Musty heat rose into my face, threaded with some noise I couldn't place, climbing the shaft along with it.
Below, a bonfire burned in a drum barrel at the center of the wide floor. Around it, twenty scavengers or so sat where they'd settled, talking or tipping back cans of beer. One of them caught my eye—the man with his head in a ledger.
There he is.
An auto-turret was bolted high on a corner pillar, and the red lamp of its infrared sensor raked the floor back and forth like a searchlight.
I'll end this in one go.
Even by early-game standards their kit was miserable. Nothing to boast about but the headcount. Small fry. I dropped straight from the ceiling, and my body folded into a cat's landing all on its own.
I hit with a heavy thud. Ten meters, maybe, and it hurt less than it should have; the impact cracked the tiles and spat them outward. I slid low through the dust cloud, bone claws unsheathing from my fingertips.
Turret first.
I severed the power cable that ran up the pillar to the gun. Blue sparks spat once, and the barrel sagged toward the floor.
"It's a raid?!"
"Where'd he drop from?!"
The repair shop turned inside out. Gang members who'd been loafing around yanked up guns and iron pipes. First hit wins. I pulled the shotgun slung across my back and leveled it dead ahead.
The gun roared. A 4-gauge slug took the upper bodies off both men in the front rank, and flesh painted the wall behind them a wet, bright red.
"Aaaah?! Jefe?! I can hear gunshots! Are you all right?!"
Jackie's scream came through the earpiece.
"Spring cleaning. You just get the truck started."
I went forward. One step, two—and the shotgun that had been booming clicked dry. I flung it aside, drew the claws on the right hand as well, ducked my head, and crossed both arms in an X as I leapt at the nearest man. A few of their wild rounds punched through my shoulder and side. Not enough to break my stride. The wounds filled in fast, and I felt the lead being pushed back out of my body.
"Y-you son of a bitch! I'll kill y—ghaaah!"
I drove an arm into the man at my nose, and the claws went through his ribcage. I caught a few more shots on the impaled body, using him as a shield, then threw him and charged again, planting the claws in neck and skull. Both arms twisted. With a wet rip, the head tore free on the claws, spine still attached.
"Aaaaaagh!"
Fear, maybe. Four or five of them howled and scrambled backward. I torqued sideways, slipped into the angle they couldn't cover, and swung the left-hand claws through two necks. The severed heads rolled across the floor. My heart was pounding.
One of them was conspicuously slow about it. A fluorescent mohawk, and a prosthetic leg.
That's the boss of this place. Probably.
I sprang.
"No! Stop him! I said stop him!"
The yapping was loud, so I put the claws in. A boss with a handful of claw jammed through his mouth is not a face you show anyone. His eyes rolled, and I ripped the claws out on a diagonal. A clean hiss of a cut. Ah. That might have been a bit much. In the most literal sense, the scavenger's head had just split sideways like a watermelon.
"Aaaah! Run!"
They were wailing, and barely a bullet was still in the air. I closed the distance at an easy bound and kicked a leg out from under one.
"Kh... khak..."
I sank the claws into his chest and began to Devour. The groan died in the wet, gulping noise that traveled up my arm. By then a damp iron stink hung thick all around me.
"Ah. Done already."
I keyed the earpiece anyway.
"Jackie. Anybody bolt outside?"
A rustle at my ear, and the answer came at once.
"Nobody, Jefe! I was watching the whole thing from up top. Not a single person... wait. Jefe?"
"Yeah. It's what you're thinking."
I heard her suck in a breath. Was it really that shocking? No one left alive, which meant I could loot at my leisure. I headed for the office in the back first, and from memory I tore the closet door off with the claws. An old safe sat behind it.
"Hold on. What was the password again?"
I keyed it in from memory, and after a few tries the door clanked open. Bundles of credit chips and precious metal packed the inside. Fifty thousand credits, give or take. Clean out the pockets and the gear on the dead outside, sell the lot, and that was the job. And with the excuse that I'd kept my promise, I could keep working Jackie for a good long while yet.
I went back out into the blood, because one of the men I'd cut down had been holding something. I picked up the leather binder still dangling from a slack arm. The papers inside were crammed with names—everyone in debt to the Rusty Dogs. One line, the letters gone faint where blood had soaked them, caught my eye.
The loan-shark contract Jackie's dead uncle had left behind. The thing that would have kept its foot on her neck for years.
"Analog, in this day and age. That's a novelty."
A smart choice, too. You can't hack paper. Unfortunately for them, they hadn't planned on a physical hack—too proud, figuring twenty men and a turret or two would hold the place. The Rusty Dogs were permanently removed from the lending business.
I picked up a lighter nearby and set the pages alight. The paper curled in the flame, then broke apart into ash.
"Jackie. Get in here."
A minute later an old heavy cargo truck rolled into the shop. The body was dented and rusted, but the engine they'd hung on it for hauling stolen goods had power to spare—more useful, even, than an Atlas. Jackie, in a beige coat, jumped down from the driver's seat.
"J-Jefe?! Are you all right?!"
She came at a run and stopped dead at the blood and the bodies on the floor. Her face went white, so I toed the charred ash.
"Don't look away. What you need to see is right here."
Burning paper at my feet. The puzzlement on Jackie's face filled, slowly, with shock.
"Burned all of it. You don't owe a single credit anymore."
"Really... the debt's just gone...? For real...?"
"Yeah. So haul what's in that safe. Every bit of it, in the bed. Understood?"
At that she bobbed her head like a bobblehead and threw herself at the pile of credit chips. A cheer detonated inside the office.
"It's m-moneyyyyy!!!! Yaaaaaaah!!"
White as a sheet over the corpses a moment ago. The change of stance was a work of art. Jackie came back out clearing the office the way a starving woman clears a buffet.
There were, of course, minor problems.
"Ugh... Boss! It's all great, but... why are there so many people..."
Loading the guns—sticky with blood and with something that had, until recently, been a person—she nearly started crying.
"Enough. I'll do it."
Before the last trip out, I headed for a storeroom nearby. There was something in there that would suit the moment perfectly.
"Found it."
I came out with a bright red fuel can clamped under each arm and emptied them through the shop. The place went up in a rush of flame. I climbed into the truck, and we pulled away with the repair shop blazing bright behind us. Everything that had stood as proof the Rusty Dogs ever existed climbed with the smoke into the deep sky.
First farm. Success.
It was past two in the morning when we drove the loot-laden truck into the garage in the alley behind the pawn shop. I hauled the credit chips and the gold bars out of the bed and set them on the counter.
"Put them in the safe."
"Y-yes...! Boss, this still feels like a dream, it really does..."
Jackie clutched the sack of credits to her chest and grinned, loose and dazed. I jerked my chin at the broken window and the front door rattling in its frame.
"We've got money, so the shop comes first. Call a contractor at first light. The glass gets replaced, and the shutter needs to be new."
"Yes! I'll swap in thick bulletproof glass, and the toughest shutter they make!"
The skin under her eyes was hollowed out, but she wouldn't stop humming.
"It's late. Sleep."
"Yes! You should get to sleep soon too, Boss... no, use the bed! I'll really give you the bed tonight!"
Well, well. She still thinks the bed is hers. Even so, smiling like that, she was going to need a cot of her own. Jackie scurried to the sofa and pulled an old blanket over herself. I lay down on the bed, and the moment I did, I was gone.