Gamma Protocol (107)

[107]

“Caveman!”

When I’d approached the Saint’s base of operations (which was to say, the garage entrance to the bunker they’d requisitioned some indefinite amount of time ago), I’d fully expected to find them asleep. Though I’d approached wearing the full ‘Caveman’ getup because Vesper had insisted on it through DMs. Apparently there were too many people and this way it would help protect my identity a little.

I’d figured that approaching a few hours before dawn would be more convenient. Less people. Maybe it could also make it harder for Vesper to corner me and start asking about the shush-monster thing.

Instead what I found was that the place was in full swing and packed. The garage was packed with loaded pallets and people. Outside was a throng of people neatly organized against the entrance. Each one approached four or five at a time and left with a set amount of supplies, with several people wearing Sewer Saint paraphernalia operating as clerks in some fashion.

And Isia, who’d spotted me the instant I’d entered her line of sight, began waving maniacally. “The Caveman’s back!” She shouted to the whole damn crowd before I could say or do anything. She jumped on the table and waved at me. “Hey you lot! Open the way to the guy that made Fourthers legal!”

Everyone stopped and turned, staring at me as if I’d promised them a billion credits. The way indeed cleared out and I tried not to bolt through as every pair of eyes present was zeroed in on me. Keeping my smile polite I powerwalked my way to the front of the line, keeping my smile polite and steps hurried.

“Did you-”

“He spoke to the Bullwark herself!” Isia’s voice grew even louder as she leisurely tapped my skull-mask. “Don’t forget to pass it on to everyone you know! He’ll be streaming later today! Don’t miss it!”

With the crowd behind my back, I glared up at her through the mask. “Don’t you have better ways to do this?” I hissed. Like making the announcements online where I couldn’t feel the brunt of all this attention.

“Doesn’t your Caveman costume involve a loincloth and no shirt?” She waggled her eyebrows shamelessly.

Rather than answer, I kicked out the table from underneath her with a small tap, then proceeded to catch her as she let out a shocked squawk mid-drop right as I grabbed her by the shoulders. I put her down at floor level where she’d have to look up at me. “And how can I help?” I asked. 

Isia blinked for a moment. “Are you taller? You look taller.”

“Where’s Vesper?” I growled, drawing attention to the trashbag I’d brought. “I’ve got some materials I’d like her opinion on.”

“Things have been hectic while you were out, it’s nice seeing you back in one piece,” she crossed her arms, cocking her hip and sparing an annoyed look. “The doc treat you good?”

“What? Oh yeah.” I’d almost forgotten the official story was that I’d been seriously hurt during the C-Class attack and Moreau had given me treatment. Not my brightest idea, but better than admitting I was the shush monster. “I’m glad to be back. It just seems like you guys could use the help.”

“You couldn’t believe how horrible it’s been!” Isia proclaimed. “Why, if not for the strange and mysterious shush-monster, we would’ve surely been toast!” She sighed exaggeratedly, a glint of something in her eyes I couldn’t make out. “It’s a shame that you were not around to stomp the foul monster!”

“That thing’s way out of my league,” I snapped, rolling my eyes. “Do I have to ask someone else to point me where Vesper is?”

“Fine, be that way,” she scoffed, though kept smirking. “I’ll still insist on exchanging juicy details later. Vespi’s out cold, she’s been doing two hours of sleep and it finally caught up to her,” she said, pointing with a thumb over her shoulder. “If you want opinions on materials, Quinn’s the one to talk to, they’re still a few hours away from mandatory sleep time.”

I nodded along, going inside the bunker itself was the best place to take the skull-mask off.

The inside of the bunker reeked of stress, sweat, and fear. It was faint, but it hung in the air like a shroud as I made my way through the narrow corridors. As if hundreds of people had been huddled in every corridor and every room crammed tightly and waiting for death. I was reminded of the shelters in Frontier City 02, of the tiny spaces everyone was meant to go into whenever a C-Class was spotted approaching the city. There were other signs of change since I was here last time, the vents looked newer, and the air coming from them lacked that scent of mold that had clung to the place.

I could practically taste the events that had gone down a few weeks ago.

Despite the ungodly hour, there was plenty of activity. There were people going back and forth, most carrying what looked like maintenance parts. Here and there I saw people dismantling parts of the ventilation and cleaning/replacing them piece by piece. The smell of soldering and cleaning products were barely noticeable, which I guess meant they were using scentless cleaning products.

But what gave me a slight smile was how they all just greeted me with a simple nod. No fanfare, no shouting, no boisterous stuff. Just a nod and everyone continued their work.

Making my way to the entrails of the bunker, I’d reached the infirmary section, and then realized I didn’t know where to find Quinn. So I just sent them a quick message for directions.

QUINN: Do I have to?
QUINN: Currently cerebellum deep in some coding problems for the AC system.
AXEL: It’s monster materials, D-Class. And something I got from a meguca.

There was a heartbeat, a tiny pause.

QUINN: Sublevel 6, room 13, the one with the loud music.

Yeah, I knew where that was, I could feel the bass through my feet. I took the moment to pull out a set of earplugs I’d acquired while in the Third Wall. The level up had heightened my senses a bit, and with music that loud, I was sure it would be torture.

The room was near the area I’d woken up from that one time… weeks? More than weeks. It felt like forever ago. The door was heavy and metallic, the sort you’d put into a small armory.

The air hit me first, that particular heat of overworked servers mixed with AC chilly air from the opposite direction. The scent of ozone was thick. The hum was constant, a high whirr of fans that was almost drowned out by the heavy synth-metal. There were no lights on other than the scattered LED lights blinking along server racks, tiny constellations of red and green that did almost nothing to push back the black.

Not that it bothered me, but it seemed it did not bother Quinn either.

I picked my way through the maze of equipment. Cables snaked across the floor in thick bundles, some duct-taped down, others left to coil between the server racks. An ancient pair of headphones dangled from a jury-rigged stand, cord disappearing behind more racks.

Pill bottles clustered on every flat surface within arm's reach, their plastic shapes catching what little light there was. Too many of them. All within easy reach.

I found Quinn, or who I thought was Quinn, at the far wall, folded into a chair, little more than a silhouette against the faint glow of server lights. Thin enough that the darkness seemed to eat them, metal glinting at joints and along their skull where it caught the LEDs. Something about the way they sat made my chest tighten, that instinctive recoil from seeing something that looked too breakable, too wrong. It reminded me of Grills but in a way that made my skin crawl a little. Their body was androgynous in the sense that they appeared closer to a modified skeleton wearing skin.

This was the first time I’d ever seen them outside the climate-control suit they’d wear during the outings. “Hey,” I called out, trying to get over the music, trying to seem casual to what I did not feel could be.

“Seventy seconds,” they replied, waving off at the empty air.

I put down the trashbag and watched as they sat there, eyes closed but twitching in that way that betrayed deep concentration about something. Not wanting to disturb, and more importantly, not wanting to touch anything, I just waited.

When they opened their eyes, I held back the grimace, keeping my face straight. It was like Grill’s eyes, hollow plastic things with ever adjusting camera lenses underneath. The kind of cheap knock-off that would’ve seemed more like a downgrade from regular eyes. Quinn studied me for half a second, looking for something.

“You said you brought something?” they prompted.

“Yes, this.” I proceeded to open the bag and, after a second of rummaging, pulled out the horn. “This is the D-Class material I mentioned. It was called a fissure bull, it used four of them to create massive sound attacks. But it could also target tiny things and destroy them through resonance.”

My first instinct had been to toss it, the thing would not break under any normal application, but thought better of it. Handing it over for him to grab, Quinn frowned for a second. “There’s no easily accessible information about fissure-bull materials,” they proclaimed after half a second. “Are you sure you want us to put this to use? It’s worth a small fortune.”

“I figured. That one I wouldn’t mind if we sold it for the credits, and I keep 30% of the value,” I said. “But these might prove more useful.” I proceeded to shake the bag a little, letting it rattle, before pulling out one of the obsidian scales. “I figured the easiest application is body-armor. I’m betting they can take any standard low-caliber round, so it should be plenty for anything out in the field.” I cocked a smirk. “And hey, maybe you can use some of this on Cecilia. Where is that drone anyway?”

Quinn’s lips twitched. “Cecilia is currently on a mission. No thanks to…” They took a deep breath. “After the… accident…” The word was acid on their lips. “I managed to put her back together. She’s been operational since before the monster rush.” Their brow furrowed as they looked me over. “What about you?”

“I got banged up, got tangled in some… things.” I answered with a simple shrug. “I wish I would’ve been able to help more.”

“More.” They looked at me in bewilderment. “You got the Fourth District to become legal.”

“That was entirely Elder Fulton,” I quickly said. “And I think CYPHER got involved, somehow, I’m not entirely sure of the details.” I scratched my cheek awkwardly. “I just delivered the message and got lucky that she did something about it.”

All of this had come out of the whim of the elders and whatever calculation CYPHER had going on. That I just so happened to be in the right place at the right time didn’t make it feel like I really had had any say in things. If anything, I was still annoyed that they had allowed for things to remain this long. But it wasn’t like I could do anything about that, either.

“I find that hard to believe.” Quinn took the scale and looked at it, carefully rubbing its glossy surface. “The Fourth District’s been trying to get its legal status through since before I was born. The governors have been one long stream of-” Their voice rose, then tightened. “You know what? Nevermind. It’s legal now, and however little you said you helped, you got it through.”

“That is surprisingly nice of you to say that, thanks,” I shift a little where I stand. “I… uh, I think I’ll leave these here for you to look over, at least hold on to them until Vesper’s up and running. Is there anything I could be able to help with? Maybe help move boxes or something?”

“Yes, you can help, but being the muscle would be a waste of your time,” they waved off. “What you need to be is our face.”

“Face.”

“Face,” they repeated. “You’ll be streaming the whole thing. Make sure the whole sector knows that if they want food, we have it for an absurdly reasonable price. Just enough to cover costs and half a percent for our coffers.”

I hesitated. On one hand, I did not want to stream myself helping people get food and medicine. Not that I didn’t understand the need for it. Streaming would be able to more easily spread the word than through buying ads. “Could we avoid the whole interview thing Isia was talking about?”

Quinn looked absolutely pleased, skin drawn tight over a smile, half their teeth were metallic. “No.”

Pausing, I frowned. “Fine, but it’ll be my way.”

---

I grabbed the next chunk of rubble and hauled it out of the stairwell, feeling the weight pull at my shoulders but the concrete didn’t scratch my bare skin, and the rebar was pliant under my grip. I added it to the growing pile on the street, trying to place it where the scavengers could easily access the metal.

"Maybe twenty minutes to finish," I gruffly said to the camera drone hovering somewhere to my left.

The apartment building behind me was one of the squat five-story blocks that made up most of this part of the Fourth District. The main stairwell had collapsed during the attack, cutting the upper floors from looters, and now the Saints wanted to turn this place into a new defensible position to alleviate the load on the other residences. Machinery could not fit through the narrow entryway, and hiring a crew to clear it by hand would cost more than most people here made in half a year.

So here I was, hauling out chunks of destroyed staircase one piece at a time while people watched.

Take THAT “not being the muscle”!

Sure, there were a lot of people watching, but that wasn't going to stop me from doing stuff other than talk to a camera.

The crowd had kept growing over the past few hours. Maybe forty people now, spread across the street and sitting on the rubble of neighboring buildings. Some were residents waiting to get back into their homes, but plenty had come to the Saints to purchase food and water and stuck around just to watch. I could see a group of kids had claimed a partially collapsed stoop as their viewing platform, though I noticed they stayed close to the armed adults.

The signs of the monster attack were everywhere. It was easy to tell which buildings had become fortified because every window on the ground floor was blocked with welded bars and welded sheet metal. Scorch marks and acid burns streaked across concrete and brick walls. One building across the street had what looked like massive claw gouges raked down its side pockmarked with so much bulletfire it looked like one strong breeze away from getting knocked over. Scrap metal barriers were stacked in doorways, heavy pieces of debris and graffiti delineating defensible perimeters.

Everyone was on edge, the sewers were cleared out but there were still monsters prowling about. Not to mention that many of the looters had coalesced into minor gangs. Vesper’s hope was that they’d dissolve once proper order was re-established throughout the zone.

“Chat is asking about your workout routine. Again,” Quinn's voice crackled in my earpiece. They sounded tired. “Someone wants to know if you are single. Someone else is arguing that you are definitely on nano-steroids.”

It shouldn’t have bothered me but my face heated up. Too long without being the center of attention it seemed. I was yet again thankful the plastic mask kept my features entirely hidden. I grabbed another chunk of concrete and worked it loose. “Don’t drugs.”

Isia cackled in the channel.

I groaned inwardly.

What else was I supposed to say? ‘Yeah, sure, I’m a weird thing that’s not a meguca, anyway, here’s a two hour explanation about why I’m not a trans meguca, and also let’s make myself even more of an oddity’ ? Better to just keep the question unanswered.

I ducked back into the stairwell. The rubble pile just kept getting deeper, every piece I removed revealed three more underneath. The air in here was stale and tasted like dust. At least it didn’t seem like anyone had died underneath it.

“Someone is asking where the food distribution points are,” Quinn growled. “They’re pinned, dammit, read!”

“Nobody reads pins,” Isia said as I wrestled with a piece that had rebar twisted through it in a way that made it hard to get leverage.

A vendor wearing Saints paraphernalia pushed through the crowd with a crate of water bottles, and I saw at least three people standing perfectly still with glazed eyes. They were streaming their point of view to people elsewhere, I realized. Piggybacking their neuralinks so others could watch remotely. I had no idea how many people were actually watching through those shared feeds. Could be dozens more for each person standing there.

Despite how many times I’d done this, it was still strange to know I was being watched and commented on and having no way to know what was going on without Quinn and Isia in my ear. Meanwhile, the physical crowd I could see and interact with the “enhanced digital environment” Quinn’s drones broadcasted to anyone within the area.

Not me.

“Making good progress,” someone called out. Some older man, his left leg below the knee was missing, replaced by a prosthetic that looked half-way between a piston and scrap metal.

“Getting there.” I heaved another chunk out onto the street. “Maybe an hour more.”

A woman clutched a faded shopping bag like it was precious.

“Chat says do a flip,” Quinn reported with audible disdain.

“Moving rocks.”

“They are calling you a coward.”

“Then help move rocks.” I grabbed another section, this one with twisted railing attached.

More people were gathering. I noticed someone on a nearby rooftop, silhouetted against the sky. They had a rifle but it was slung on their back. That had been one of the hard rules, anyone not Saints that openly carried or drew weapons would get downed by Isia or the others on the spot.

“There are some drones in the area that’re lingering too long,” Quinn said. “Their signals are not standard encryption.”

“Should I do anything?” I asked under my breath.

“I’ve tagged them, for now they’re not worth doing anything.” They answered. “Also, someone asked if you can lift a car.”

“Maybe,” I set down the concrete carefully on the salvage pile. The scavengers were already sorting through what I had pulled out, separating intact blocks from crushed rubble, pulling out rebar to sell.

A kid pushed through the crowd, maybe twelve years old. Neuralink ports visible at his temple, the standard kind everyone got before they could talk. “Can you lift a motorcycle?”

“Yes.”

“What about a person?”

I could see where this was going, I grinned under the mask. “Yes.”

“Can you lift me?”

“Too heavy,” I chuckled as I yanked another piece. “Will try later.”

The kid's face lit up and he melted back into the crowd.

“Chat is discussing your deadlift form,” Quinn said. “Apparently it is terrible.”

I stopped and looked at the drone camera as it hovered from the side. “Everyone critic.”

“They are very offended,” Isia reported. “Someone is trying to organize a rubble-moving competition.”

I could not help but smile as I turned back to my work.

The sun climbed higher and the heat became oppressive, people were filtering out and being replaced by those who had heat protection. The observers seemed more insistent at that point, which was understandable, anyone doing physical labor with temperatures approaching 40ºC would’ve been suicidal. For me though, I barely even felt it, not that I wasn’t starting to sweat.

Someone brought me water, and I waved them off, showing the little nozzle inside the mask that connected to the bottle. Quinn’s design of a wolf-skull had included the crevice, which was rather ingenious all things considered.

“Chat wants to know if you ever get tired,” Quinn said.

“It takes while,” I answered, making a point to flex my arm. The sweat had mingled with the dirt and dust of all the work. “Unga and Bunga blessing strong.”

“Someone donated fifty credits,” Quinn reported. “Message says: Do a backflip.”

“Two hundred or no deal,” I quickly replied.

They didn’t take the bet, but more donations started trickling in according to Quinn. Small amounts, mostly. Five credits here, ten there. Mostly people using the opportunity to get their messages read out. Sometimes they would share their own stories of the attack in the local mesh network that I’d give minor comments to.

As I pulled out another chunk, the physical crowd reacted to something, a wave of murmurs and glances at empty air. Something in the mesh, some piece of data or gossip spreading through their neuralinks. I had no idea what it was. Just kept working while the invisible digital conversation happened around me.

“The drones are still there,” Isia said. “Holding position. Definitely watching you specifically.”

“Great.”

I pulled out another massive section of concrete and finally, finally, I could see the actual stairs underneath. Broken and cracked, but there, leading to the basement. “Chat is being weird.” At this point I wasn’t sure whether to pay attention to the commentary or not.

“The drones just repositioned,” Isia said. “Moved to get a better angle on you. I want to shoot them down.”

“We do that without clear cause and we’ll have a situation on our hands,” Quinn answered. “I’m trying to get into their channels, but it’s protected. Nothing corpo, just bothersome.”

As I moved to start clearing out the large pieces that blocked the way upstairs, some of the Saint’s people had hurried along to get into the basement to clear it out of anything valuable. From a quick glance, I had to assume there was machinery like water purification systems down there that could be of use to the bunker.

“Hey, Axel, think you could break that wall to your right?” Isia’s voice pinged through the private channel.

“What? No.” I answered with a hush. “Why?”

“You sure?” There was something teasing in her tone even through the radio static. “I would’ve thought it’d be easy for you.”

“What? Why?”

“No reason~,” she chuckled. “But it sure would be convenient, the thing looks like it’ll crumble if left alone.”

I hid the frown, staring at the wall in question. It was thick concrete, rebar included. She was right that it was crackled all over and buckling in a few spots and it would be probably necessary, but… as I was right now? It was definitely too much of a hassle. “No.”

She sighed. “You’re no fun, you know?”

“What?”

“You say something?” Quinn asked.

“Isia.”

“You cat bastard,” she huffed into the shared channel.

“Cat?”

“Sewer Saints are rats, rats don’t betray family. But cats lie.”

“She got dumped by a furry two years ago, that identified as a cat-sona,” Quinn helpfully provided, the first hint of cheer in their voice since the stream began.

“In my defense, he had a very strong tongue game.” Isia intoned. “By the way, Axel, while we’re on the subject-”

“I am not a furry.” I hurried to declare.

Isia broke into a fit of giggles. “If you say so.”

I blankly blinked at the pile of rubble as I tried to make sense of her amusement, failed, then frowned. “Is chat saying something about furries?”

“No, that’s just her being weird,” Quinn deadpanned.

“If you know you know~” She sing-sang.

And a shiver ran down my spine.

Authors Note: Internet got cut off, sorry for the delay!