“They tried, you know. Way back in the late 2020s, there was this whole thing where they tried to cut down on drug use. It wasn’t all that great. The world was going to shit, what did they expect, people to inject less shit into themselves?

Nah, we still made bank. It became harder to move materials around, but then, no one ever really checked the sewers.”

--Excerpt from a 2049 autobiography.

***

One thing became increasingly clear as Gomorrah questioned our ambushers. They didn’t know jack shit.

If they did know something, then they weren’t spilling. Myalis and Atyacus both took a turn rooting around in their augments to see if there was anything worth finding, but other than some questionable kinks, a few bits of potential blackmail, and a lot of mundane messages, there wasn’t really anything worth our time.

One of them knew about the kidnappings. A younger member had been helping transport some people grabbed from the upper levels. He was a ferry driver, and that meant he had seen the kidnapped people being shifted to one of the locations Myalis had tagged as a likely spot for the kidnapped to be housed in.

But as for the why, he had nothing.

“This is such a waste of time,” I muttered as I stood up from a crouch. Talking to our new buddies was made more complicated when all of them were glued to the floors and walls in rather awkward positions.

The goop was starting to melt off though. Given another four or five hours, they’d be able to start fighting their way free. I didn’t plan on being around for that.

“I think I agree,” Gomorrah said. “Any ideas, Raccoon, Franny?”

“No. These people seem like... pardon the term, but they seem like lowlives. They’re not at the top of the food chain.”

“The way they put it, there’s no food chain around here,” I said. I reached up to rub at my nose, then sighed and let my hand drop. Masks were annoying. “I think we might need to go pay this Doc Hack guy a visit though. He doesn’t seem to be quite in charge, but he is giving out orders, which is close enough.”

“I think I’ve heard of him,” Rac said. “He’s, like, this super smart guy that used to be a bigwig in some company, but then he did something sleazy and he came down into the sewers to be left alone. He’s been there forever though. Some people say he’s like a boogieman.”

“Oh, great,” I said. I loved the idea of a sewer-dwelling bogeyman. The name Doc Hack inspired such great imagery too. I could imagine telling the kittens to shut up and go to sleep, or else Doc Hack would show up and gut them.

Gomorrah picked up her flame-thrower where she’d left it on the ground. “Should we keep moving?” she asked. “I have the codes for one of their vehicles.”

“That’ll save us some points,” I muttered. “Yeah, let’s move on. These guys can chill out over here. Do a bit of thinking about all of their, uh, sins or whatever.”

“Being glued to the floor isn’t exactly like visiting a confessional,” Franny said.

I laughed as I gestured to the end of the room. “We’re continuing down that way?”

Gomorrah took the lead with a nod, and I fell in behind her while turning my stealth systems back on. We still had a little ways to go.

The Ratways earned their name in the very next room. Gomorrah and I both froze as we came face to face with a rat the size of a small dog. It stared at Gomorrah with its two beady eyes, then its whiskers twitched and it skittered off and into an open grate it really shouldn’t have been able to fit through.

“I’m gonna go back and close the doors. I don’t want our buddies to be eaten by one of those,” I said.

“Good idea.”

I jogged back into the room, checked around for rats, and, on seeing none, closed the massive steel bulkheads. I even picked up one of those air-guns and placed it in the arms of one of the guys who had a bit of mobility. “For the rats,” I explained.

He swore at me, but I think he understood what I meant.

I closed the last door from the other side as I rejoined Gomorrah. “Right, let’s keep moving,” I said.

I made sure my railguns were ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. If we got buried by a pile of those rats, I wanted the firepower to kill them dead.

“I’m really not fond of this place,” I said. “It’s a shithole.”

“Is that some sort of pun?” Gomorrah asked.

“No, it’s a fact.”

We crossed a few smaller rooms, occasionally after something scurried out of the way. There were enough droppings around to guess what.

And then, at long last, we reached the next junction, a space where the room ended with a staircase going up and onto an airlock. The airlock wasn’t anything impressive. Two bulkheads with a rod system in the middle made it so that opening one door closed the other.

We crossed through and into the sludge line.

“Fuck,” I said as I took it in.

Sludge line 537 was a long tunnel, set at a slight angle so the sludge could flow down and towards us. It was wider than some highways, with an arched ceiling with LED lights casting their glow onto the river of shit below.

This wasn’t some brownish water, but a thick paste of stuff, like one of those store-bought cream of whatever soups. Small bits of detritus stood out in the muck, making it easier to see the gentle flow of it.

Pipes stuck out of the walls at even intervals, occasionally disgorging a downpour of sludge like a frat kid vomiting out his last Mexican-alcohol fusion meals.

“Those have to be their vehicles,” Gomorrah said.

I followed her gaze to a makeshift dock set into the side of the tunnel, accessible from a ramp. Three boats were parked there. I think they were pontoon boats, but my knowledge of nautical things started and ended with what I’d picked up from rerun cartoons.

“They don’t look so reliable,” I said.

Of the three, two looked like they’d been scavenged from one time too many, which meant there really was just one boat we could use.

The third was about as big as a minivan, with hip-high walls around it covered in a nice spray of shit over off-white plastic boards. There was a small cabin in the centre, with a window and a wheel next to some levers that no doubt operated the whole thing.

“That’s our ride?” I asked.

“It’s that or we swim,” Gomorrah said. “Or you could buy something.”

“I’m not buying a vehicle specifically made to navigate through shit,” I said. “That’s... such a waste of points. No, let’s use that thing.”

I started to regret my choice the moment I walked down the ramp leading to the dock. The boat was even worse from up close, with a few holes in its bottom and some obvious decay all over. Even the bits that looked like they were made of aluminium looked like they were starting to fall apart.

“I don’t believe this thing was made for these conditions,” Gomorrah said as she leapt onto the boat. It bobbed in place, sending a few quick-fading ripples through the sludge.

“I pity the poor idiot who discovered their boat was stolen and brought over here,” I said.

Gomorrah installed herself behind the wheel and looked over the controls. There was a small onboard computer on the dashboard, with a touch screen that was entirely dark. She poked at it, then the obvious ‘on’ button next to it. Predictably it did nothing. “There’s nothing on here to start the engine,” Gomorrah said.

I shifted over to the back and grimaced at the onboard. “I think it’s electric?” There wasn’t an obvious gas tank or an exhaust. The latches to the side of the engine were undone, so I tugged them open then stared at the stuff within. “There’s a gun here,” I said. “And... I think those are batteries?”

There was a thick wire with a metal loop on the end dangling next to a battery post. I grabbed the wire and touched it to the post, then shifted my legs for balance as the engine whined to life and started to push the boat forwards--while we were still connected to the dock.

“That worked,” Gomorrah said. She throttled down and the boat stopped bobbing quite so badly.

“Great,” I said as I slammed the case shut. I walked over to the nearest line holding the boat in place and, after a moment of staring, recalled that I had a super suit that had very sharp nails. The shitty ropes holding us in place didn’t last long.

The boat moved over towards the middle of the sludge line, and Gomorrah spun it around to face the direction we had to go. There weren’t any seats on the boat, so I gravitated to the middle and hung onto the cabin.

“Let’s get going then,” Gomorrah said.

“I’m real happy I’m here and not there,” Rac said.

I didn’t say anything, but I wished I was back there too.

***