Prologue

I refused to sit in the back, out of principle if nothing else.

So, with my legs bunched up, feet digging into the cloth upholstery of the bench, and my arms crossed over my knees, I watched as New Montreal flew by.

The soldier next to me kept his mouth shut, eyes focused on the skies as he diligently obeyed every traffic law. That was probably because of the officer on the bench behind us. The lieutenant was in a bad mood; being sat in the back like a kid didn’t suit his sensibilities. He wasn’t saying anything, but I knew he’d shared a glare or two with the driver in the rearview.

Maybe it was the large mechanical cat sitting next to him, a helmet carefully held between teeth that could spit plasma.

I watched the neon glow of advertisement-covered buildings scroll by, the signs turned into blurry messes by the constant downpour across the windshield that the car’s wipers were only just managing to clear out.

The rain in New Montreal always left things with a rainbow sheen. And it was always raining.

I guess it made it a colourful city, in a way.

We crossed over a section of the city that was little more than slums. You could always tell. The ads there were brighter, if only because everything beneath them was so much darker.

We drove past those soon enough. The traffic always moved a bit faster above the shittier parts of the city, it seemed.

The hotel loomed tall above us some blocks later, and even with the driver keeping to the speed limit, we eventually turned into the large tunnel cutting its way through the entire building.

“Stop here,” I said when it became clear the driver intended to get in line and wait. “I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

The officer said some pleasant-sounding things that I didn’t listen to, then I was out of the car and walking around it, pants flapping about my legs from the hot air pouring out from under the hoverpads. I went around and opened the back door, letting out my mecha cat who landed next to me with a click of metallic claws on whatever sort of concrete they were using for the landing zone.

I held back a yawn as I started towards the main entrance, which seemed somewhat calmer than usual. Still plenty of people moving in and out, but not as many as I’d seen before, and the valets looked just as done with everything as I felt.

After Gomorrah left me in Black Bear, I had to threaten the local mining corp, then sit down and pretend to care about some briefing put on by the military brass. Half of them were sitting in offices across the country, calling in their orders over webcams while I was stuck in some tent in the ass-end of nowhere.

I would have complained, but that would have made things take even longer than they did, and they at least tried to placate me with free food and a ride back home, especially after I briefed them on the nasty shit we’d encountered in the mines under the city.

My current goal was to find a nice, hot shower, and a nicer, hotter Lucy to share it with.

The valet by the door took one look at me, in my mud-and-blood stained coat, frowned and seemed to want to make trouble.

I fumbled around with my aug, the digital display hovering over my cybernetic eye twitching this way and that with a few stray thoughts until I found the tag I used to open my room door and sent it to him.

He opened the way with a bow. “Welcome back, ma’am,” he said. “Um.”

“Um?” I repeated, pausing by the door.

“No... animals allowed?”

I stared at him, then at the cybernetic tiger standing perfectly still at a pace behind me. “It’s a service animal,” I said. “The service it renders is killing shit that annoys me. Want to see?”

“Uh,” was his reply before I kept on moving in, the mecha cat close by my heels.

I think a few of the people in the lobby were in a mood to test my patience, but something about my look dissuaded them. Maybe the new full-face helmet, shaped like the face of a growling cat, was giving them pause.

Or maybe it was all the alien blood and sh… stuff.

I desperately, needed a shower.

My cat and I got in the elevator, and then it was up to the top. I was bouncing on the balls of my feet the entire ride. I was getting eager to arrive, to hug Lucy until she squeaked, and to annoy the kittens to make sure they were alright.

When the doors dinged open, I rushed over to the penthouse’s door, then knocked twice before barging in.

It was chaos.

Two of the kittens were rolling on the floor, screaming. Another was watching the television at a volume that would render most deaf within the week.

Catkiller, the dog, was rubbing his ass across the carpet, and Junior was eating cereal with Katerine, both girls eating out of the same bowl with two spoons, a rifle partially disassembled on the table next to them.

“Cat? Cat!” came Lucy’s cheer a moment before she tried to run into my arms, then tripped over nothing and ended up stumbling into my arms.

I sighed, tension bleeding off of me as I let the cat in and then closed the door with a heel. Home at last.

The peace wouldn’t last, but I’d take what I could when I could.

***