“Here at CAGE--a subsidiary of ImmigraTech!--we do our very best to ensure all beings captured while attempting illegal border crossings are treated humanely and with the care and attention they deserve.

Our state-of-the-art housing and lockdown facilities guarantee that cases of physical harm, sexual harm, suicide, and child mismanagement are kept to a tolerable minimum, while also encouraging and re-educating any future citizens on the benefits of joining the workforce of any corporation looking for new employees!”

--The Collateral Acquisition and Gatekeeping Enforcement Handbook, Page 759, 2048 Edition.

***

I grunted as I shoved the door aside. The folk who made it probably wouldn’t be happy I’d jammed a hand against the Faraday netting and fucked it up, but then I didn’t really care all that much about those folk.

The corridor past the doorway led to a bright room with a ceiling five metres up. It was pretty wide too, and I assumed it was just as deep.

I glanced at my map, but it didn’t match what was there at all. Someone had gone around and modified the room a good deal. Not too surprising.

The walls were entirely white, that kind of near-fluorescent white they painted on asphalt. Combined with the dozens of lights hanging from the ceiling, it made for a room that might have been too bright to look at if it weren’t for the visor on my helmet darkening itself.

The walls were covered in wired mesh, or at least the exterior walls.

In the centre of the room were some enclosures. Just walls without any roofs, and with one door leading in.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“Looks like a cage, for people,” Gomorrah said. “Like something you’d see at the borders.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess we might’ve found our missing people.” I moved over to the doorway and fiddled with the latch keeping it shut. It was a rusty metal bar, nothing fancy, but likely enough to keep anyone without tools or good leverage from breaking through.

I pushed the door open and peeked past it. There was a small room, with a fridge, of all things, and a second gate, this one made of fencing mesh. A table, with some trays stacked on it and a microwave on the end, sat off to one side.

“Likely for food,” Gomorrah said. “To feed their prisoners.”

The fridge was filled to the brim with cheap microwavable meals that anyone could afford. Mostly flavoured cardboard and some cheap vat-grown veggies. The brownies always tasted good though.

I moved over to the next door and unlocked it. The enclosure was split down the middle. One large cage on the left, another on the right. “Shit,” I muttered.

The folk we were looking for were there. Some of them, at least. Poor, decrepit people, lounging on the floor, some sleeping, others huddled against the walls. A few were pacing back and forth.

They’d at least had the common decency to split them up, men on one side, women on the other.

It struck me as a little strange that they only had buckets and a small corner with a curtain to take care of their business. They were being held here by Sewer Dragons. Of all the people able to furnish usable plumbing...

“Can you ping their augs?” Gomorrah asked. “We could identify them.”

“That’s a good idea. Myalis?” I said.

“Of the forty-two people here, thirty-nine are on the list of missing people we previously created,” Myalis said.

Franny hummed. “We missed a few. Where are the rest?”

“Unknown,” Myalis replied. “Though some have recordings on their augmentations of other captives being escorted away, from which I’ve identified twelve more individuals. As for those present who were not on the list, they are without prior documentation, housing, or are from far outside the search range attributed to this scenario.”

“Folk from outside of New Montreal,” I asked.

“Essentially, yes.”

“We’re going to need to evacuate all of these people,” Gomorrah said. “Atyacus, I need a route back to the surface.”

I nodded as I crossed the room. The people here seemed to cover the entire spectrum, young and old, male and female, and there were plenty of skin tones and nationalities on display. Whatever anyone said about the Sewer Dragons, they couldn’t be called discriminatory when it came to picking future kidnapping victims.

I noticed one guy standing by the edge of the enclosure fence. He had a clean button-up shirt; only the bottom half had a chunk missing. It was tied around the lower half of his face. A real shitty mask, but an attempt anyway. He was staring at the still-open doorway behind me.

Bringing up the options for my cyber warfare augs, I aimed them at the guy and found the option to take over the speaker built into his system. “Hey,” I said.

The guy jumped and glanced around, eyes darting this way and that to search for the source of my voice. He reached up and touched his ear eventually.

“Yeah, sorry for the scare,” I said. “I’m standing right in front of you, but you can’t see me. My name’s Cat, I’m a samurai, and I’m here to get you folk out. Had a few questions though.”

He settled down, still scanning the room, but without any obvious panic. Dude had a cool head on his shoulder. “Ask away,” he muttered.

“You don’t need to talk loud, I’ve got good ears,” I said. “Anyway, how did you end up here, and what can you tell me about the place? Where are the others?”

“I was taken off the street while heading out to visit a student,” he muttered. “Three guys grabbed me, took my things, then dumped me here. That was yesterday. There were more of us then, but they’ve been moving people out all day. One or two at a time.”

“And new people keep coming in?” I asked.

He nodded slowly.

I checked his augs for his name. He had a couple of social media accounts, all linked to the name Shaun Gregory. “Alright, Shaun,” I said as I resisted the urge to snoop. I didn’t need to know the dude’s hobbies to know that getting him out of here was the right thing to do. “I’m going to be opening up the gates around this place in a moment. We need to clear the path for all of you to be able to get out of here—think you can help me keep everyone calm?”

“I’ll do what I can,” Shaun said. He stood a little taller, some of the wariness leaving him.

“Good man,” I said. “Did they tell you anything about where they were bringing the others?”

“They mentioned a Doctor Hack. I’ve been trying to send messages out every time they open the door, but the signal down here is trash.”

“Doc Hack again, huh. Right, hold tight, Shaun.” I backed up and moved to the gate to swing it open wider. “Gom, got a plan?”

“Something of a plan, yes,” Gomorrah said. “It’s going to require your explosives.”

My eyebrows perked. “I’m listening real hard,” I said.

“We’re currently under some buildings. There are a lot of access and maintenance corridors above this level. Getting to them naturally requires navigating a maze, and I bet half of it is trapped, but at some places the floors are right above.”

“So we blow up the ceiling and just keep bursting onto the floor above until we see the sun?”

“We’re maybe four floors below street level here,” Gomorrah said. “There’s a stairwell two floors up that leads right to the ground floor of what looks like an office building.”

“Great,” I said. I reached down to my thigh and unholstered my Trench Maker. “Let me give these folk an inspirational speech, then we can get a move on.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to hear this,” Franny muttered.

I sniffed. Someone was doubting my ability to give a good speech. I was about to start talking shit when I heard the room’s heavy door creaking open. “Someone opened the door,” a voice said from outside of the enclosure.

Two sets of feet ran over, and I backed away from the entrance so I was in the middle of the passageway when a pair of Sewer Dragons burst onto the scene. They had rifles tucked close to their sides, and had their heads on a swivel looking for escaped prisoners.

Their arrival woke people up, had them paying attention again.

Which was great for me. I raised my Trench Maker and pointed it at the face of the nearest Sewer Dragon.

They both stared at the very much not-invisible gun. “What the fuck?” the Sewer Dragon asked.

I answered by shooting him in the face, the bullet impacting with a meaty thump followed by a sparking electrical discharge. He hit the ground writhing with wild twitches.

“Oh shi--” his buddy said. I hit him twice in the face.

I lowered my handgun, noticed all the people starting at it, then flicked off my invisibility. “Alright, y’all motherfuckers, listen to me. I’m about to save all of your asses, but only if you’re real good about following orders.”

***