Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Fifty-Five - A Cut Above Middle Management

"The next big thing? Hmm... I think it might be crossovers. You know, take one media IP that the audience loves, mash it with another. Modern creative AI systems can be trained on both, so it'll be easy for them to work it out into something semi-coherent, and you have a big audience to draw on. Easy money!"

--AI Prompting Artist ShallowPunk in a 2041 interview

***

I could be sneaky, when I wanted to be, and at the moment, I wanted to be.

Flying over to the Rama Corp building in the Bastion would have been a pretty stupid idea, so I had to figure out another way to get there. Fortunately, I wasn't entirely alone.

"Ah, we can take my car," Shy muttered.

"It has a stealth suite?" I asked.

She shrugged, very slightly.

That was... a maybe. I'd take it. Better than walking all the way over. For all that the building was only like, three hundred-ish metres away, it was three hundred metres of city away. Getting there would mean riding an elevator down, then finding my way across, then up. That could take all evening.

"Alrighty, then," I said as I opened the bag Gomorrah had brought. There were, as advertised, little bombs within. Each one looked more like a penlight than a proper bomb-bomb. No dangly wires here, just a short, fat stick with a twisty bit on one end. It was helpfully labelled 'TWIST TO ARM.'

I separated the lot into three equal piles on the table, then looked at Gomorrah. "Are you coming for this one?"

"I'm not the quiet and subtle sort," Gomorrah said. "I'll leave the padding around to the cats, and you as well, Miss Shy."

Fair enough.

My coat was stealthy, as was my undersuit, but I had some rather normal clothes too, so I shucked off my jacket onto the back of my chair, then started to undress.

"Ah! Ah, um," Shy said, which was practically a monologue from her.

"Just getting the non-stealthy stuff out of the way," I said. "I'm not stripping entirely, chill out."

"I don't know," Gomorrah said. "I wouldn't be surprised to see you stripping to your undergarments in the middle of a café."

I snorted. My undersuit was actually pretty damned modest. More so than even a one-piece swimming suit, what with the armoured plating and everything. It wasn't designed to make me look too hot, it was meant to go invisible.

"You're assuming I wear 'undergarments' at all," I said, imitating her hoity-ness at the word. "I mean, I do, when I'm bleeding all over, but that's the exception."

Gomorrah sighed, deep and weary. "Catherine, do you... oh, nevermind."

I grinned at her, then finished changing. "I'll have to grab some things from the Bastion before we head out," I said as I packed my coat pockets full of explosives.

It didn't take too long for Nya and Shy to get ready. Shy didn't have optical camo stuff. Her gear messed with augs and cameras, making her invisible to either. It wasn't perfect, but that was fine. She had some movement tech as well, and could get us in.

Gomorrah had a map of the interior of the HQ, and she divided things so that we each had one floor to ourselves.

Mine was the topmost 'lobby' floor, Shy had the maintenance area below, and Nya the harder, higher security offices and server spaces, where the corp likely had the most guards wandering around.

Nya had the best stealth tech. It was so good, she refused to tell me about it.

We boarded Shy's little car, which smelled like it had just been cleaned up on the inside, then we took off.

Her car was very much not a Protector vehicle. It might've been modded a bit. The console seemed too high tech, but the car itself was probably ten years old or so. I wanted to ask, but it wasn't long before we were slipping close to the Rama Corp building.

"No alarms?" I asked. "Or invisibility?"

Shy shook her head, then pointed to a computer screen fixed to the dash. "There's a system that flags my car as allowed wherever I go."

"Neat," I said.

She nodded slowly. "It means less questions."

Ah, that made... some sense.

Shy drove slowly and carefully, bringing us down and around and to a careful landing on a parking garage deck that stuck out of the building a little. It was currently rather busy in there, with several people pushing for place in one of the rare city buses.

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When we got out, the reason became obvious. The alarm had been set.

"Okay then," I said. "We do this fast, then. Everyone knows what we're doing?"

"N'yup!" Nya said.

"Cool. Our AI are all chatting with each other? If something goes wrong, let the others know, yeah? And don't hesitate to shoot first."

I only had my Trench Maker close to hand, my Laser Pointer stuck to the small of my back, just in case.

"See you soon, then," I said once I got confirmation from the others. I flicked on all of the stealth systems on my gear and turned entirely invisible. Maybe some small seam along my wrists or something was still visible, but I was pretty sure that anyone spotting me would have to be working for it.

I took off running, vaguely aware of Nya blowing past me, but only because I felt the wind move. She was on the ceiling. Maybe.

A door opened on its own ahead, and then a splash of paint appeared on the wall next to it. A cat, with a paw raised over its mouth, looking particularly mischievous. NYA WAS HERE was written above it.

I shook my head as I barged into the room after her, then I took just a moment to reorientate myself with the map in my Aug's HUD.

The floor I climbed to was the lobby. That meant wide open spaces, standing desks, seats for guests, and nice offices with views of the cityscape where clients could see.

I ran though, tossing a pair of Gomorrah's little firebombs more or less where her map indicated.

The rooms past the glitzy entrance weren't as pretty. There was a whole cubical farm up here, with people still arguing with each other over the blaring fire alarm. Some middle-managers were telling people to get back to work.

"What in the hell," I muttered.

I was pretty sure we wanted to limit the loss of life here. Send a message, not fill the morgue.

So I paused and listened in. The managers were sweating. Gomorrah had sent a second warning, it seemed, and it had her signature on it.

The middle managers were asking questions to their bosses, who in turn were gathered... ah, a couple of floors down?

"Nya, do you have an eye on the big boss?" I asked.

"Nya might," Nya replied. "Almost done."

Fuck, I wasn't even halfway. "Yeah, I think he's telling people to stay here. Can't have that."

"Got it, nya!"

I didn't know what to expect. Then Nya sent a Gif over our shared text channel. It was from her perspective, hanging upside-down on the ceiling somehow, staring at three corpo fucks arguing with a fourth. Fourth guy was clearly the big cheese around here. Nice suit, nicer office, no fucks to give. Had the look of someone used to having his way.

Nya's perspective shifted, and suddenly she was behind the guy, holding his face in her hands. I could actually see his eyes widen and mouth open to scream, but his head and body were no longer one unit, and nothing came out. Then he died, slack-jawed and dumb.

"Message sent, nya!"

The middle-managers changed their tune about thirty-seconds later, and the cubicle farm started to empty out.

"Myalis, can you tell Gom to send a third warning? Something that no one can ignore? I don't need some cleaning staffer caught in the crossfire."

Sent.

I didn't see what Gomorrah sent as a message, but a few people started screaming and moving a whole lot faster. I just rushed around, tossing bombs out where indicated. Looked like the plan was mostly to have them along the outer ring of the building, nearer to windows and exterior walls. Maybe to leave space unburnt in the middle?

I decided to trust my favourite pyro nun's knowledge of pyrotechnics above my own.

Ten minutes more, and I was running on my way out, just a little bit out of breath from all the cardio. I wasn't last to return. Nya was sitting on Shy's hood, eating a... burger?

"Where did you get that?" I asked.

"Is America, nya!" she answered, raising the burger like a toast, which... yeah, fair enough.

Shy showed up three minutes later, and then we were off. It was time to fly back to Gomorrah, sit back, finish that sugary coffee thing I'd been drinking, and watch the fireworks.

***