Chapter Thirty-Nine - Meetingus Interuptus

“Cheating? No, no, I would never. My wife and I have been in a loving relationship for nearly a decade now—more, maybe. She’s the one that tans my hide when I forget the date of our anniversary! Hah!

No, Tom, I won’t be paying those sorts of accusations any mind. They’re just a loser’s attempt to throw dirt on my good name.

Now, my competition seem like good folk at first glance, but I think if the wise, voting citizens of our fine city start to dig a little deeper, they’ll learn that things aren’t quite as they seem.

Why...”

--Excerpt from an interview with Mayor Dupont, 2056

***

The secretary jumped out of his seat and darted down the corridor ahead of me. “Th-this way, miss,” he said. “I’ve sent a message to the mayor to expect you, but, ah, he’s preparing for an important meeting.”

“What about?” I asked. We soon took a turn in the passageway and were crossing down the middle of a room filled with cubicles. Office drones were clicking away behind screens, some few leaning back while jacked into the net.

“Ah, it’s with the city council? There’s a meeting at ten this morning.”

I glanced at my aug clock and held back a wince. It was past nine already? At the rate we were going, I wouldn’t get to sleep until the afternoon. “What’s the meeting’s agenda?” I asked. “Is it an emergency meeting?”

“Ah, no? Just an ordinary meeting.”

“Huh, alright,” I said. I considered crashing the meeting instead, but we were already here, and there was no way I could just sit around and wait. Maybe I could have planned things a little better, but then, I wasn’t all that keen on planning things.

The mayor would be... interesting to handle. I didn’t know anything about him. I think I’d seen his face on some posters slapped onto walls and maybe a few ads between two posts.

“Hey, wait up!”

I stopped and glanced over my shoulder. Rac wasn’t next to me anymore, and I had no idea when she’d moved away. I spotted her a few metres back, tossing aside bits of paper and junk off her shirt. She had a stapler in hand, and there was an office worker staring at her from next to a tipped-over trash can.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Stapler. Slightly used. Probably a broken spring or something,” Rac said. She stuffed it into one of her bigger pockets, and it clunked against something else she had in there. Then her arm darted out and she added a pen to her collection.

“That wasn’t in the trash,” I said.

“Meh, they won’t miss it,” she replied.

Fair enough.

“Uh, here,” the secretary said. He gestured down at the end of the room. There were some steps leading up to a landing with a mirrored wall beyond that. I bet that it was there so that anyone in the room could overlook their sea of keyboard monkeys.

“So, you know the mayor, right?” I asked.

“In passing,” the secretary said. “I've been an intern here for two years now. Just a bit more and I’ll be on the payroll! But yeah, I’ve seen the mayor before. Mister Dupont is... nice enough. I’m not his secretary, I’m just at the front lobby.”

“Uh-huh, so how do you figure he’s going to react if I tell him there’s a threat to the city that needs his immediate action to fix?”

The secretary winced.

“Right, got it,” I said. “Rac, stay close, and if you see me pulling a gun, cover your ears. I don’t want to hurt your hearing.”

“Aww, thanks!”

I walked up the steps and right up to the mayor’s door. There was a plaque next to it with “Mayor Dupont” written on it in big blocky letters. I turned the handle, then frowned as it jiggled in place. He left his door locked?

I checked with my augs, but there didn’t seem to be any electronic lock on the door. I knocked instead.

“I’m busy here,” someone said. “Come back in a moment.”

I heard shuffling, and with a twitch of my ears I could make out some of what was happening on the other side. The mayor had to be the big guy behind a bigger desk. The woman on her knees before him was probably not the mayor.

I shrugged and brought my foot up.

“Want me to pick the lock?” Rac asked.

I considered it. “No, but thanks. It’s nice of you to offer.” My foot rammed into the door right next to the handle with all the force I and my very expensive power armour could put into it.

The real wood wall next to the door cracked and the entire thing crashed back into the room.

I glanced around as I walked in. The mirror really was a window. Knew it! There were some plinths with pots on them, and a few old knick-knacks in glass cases. The desk was pretty impressive, a huge wooden thing that looked older than most of the buildings in the city, the kind that had probably broken someone’s back when they tried to fit it into the room. The far wall had another window, this one overlooking the front of the city hall and the streets before it.

“Who the fuck are you?” the mayor asked as he stood up.

My hand snapped out and covered Rac’s face.

“Might wanna put away your little electoral device there,” I said.

The mayor’s face went red, but he put things away and zipped up his pants while a pretty young woman in office chic climbed to her feet and stared daggers. Not at me, but at the secretary who had led me here. “Fuck off, Tim,” she snapped.

“I didn’t say anything,” Tim the intern said, his hands raised.

“Okay, the drama’s cute, but could you two... you know, do this somewhere else? I need to talk with the mayor.”

The two secretaries moved out of the room while Mayor Dupont slammed his hands on his fancy desk. “Who are you, and why hasn’t security stopped you?”

“I’m Stray Cat, or just Cat. Apparently I’m ranked 48,094th most... something samurai, which is really unimpressive. Also, they didn’t stop me because of either common sense, or a sense of self-preservation. Toss up, really.”

The mayor swallowed, eyes widening a moment before they narrowed and his glare reset itself. “I don’t care if you’re the head of the Family itself. You can’t just... barge in here!”

“She literally just did,” Racoon said. “Can I?” she asked, pointing with both hands at the wastebasket next to his desk.

“Who’s that?” he asked, pointing to Racoon.

“That’s Raccoon,” I said. “She, uh, likes trash. Don’t ask. I’m here to talk.”

“So you broke my door? That’s oak!”

“I thought you’d be more pissed because I interrupted your pre-meeting BJ,” I said. “I would be.”

Rac stood up, a pair of very lacy underthings held up by a string in her hands. “I don’t know, fatso here seems to get it on a lot. That, or he’s got really small hips.” She held the panties out by the band and raised them, as if judging if he’d fit in them.

“Don’t touch that, Rac. You don’t know where it’s been.”

“I can guess,” she said.

I shook my head, then stepped up and pulled out one of the chairs before the mayor’s desk. “Come on, let’s sit down. We have a lot to talk about, and I feel like I’ve made a bad first impression.”

The mayor glared for a moment more, then he stepped back and sat down. “I’m Mayor Dupont, the rightfully elected official in charge of the city of New Montreal,” he said.

“Brilliant,” I said. “I was hoping that if I started at the top I might be able to get things done. We have a problem, both of us.”

He eyed me up and down, not in a dirty way, just judging. “I imagine it has something to do with the faint odour of shit wafting off of you?”

“Are you guessing?” I asked. “Because that would be somewhat impressive.”

“No, I received reports that two samurai were causing trouble in the sewers sometime very early this morning.” He gestured to me, then Rac. Did he think she was a samurai? She was certainly weird enough.

“Yeah. A lot of citizens were kidnapped by the Sewer Dragons.” No recognition on his face. “A gang living in the sewers. They maintained the sewers and kept them running; it also made them somewhat untouchable. Plus, their home is a death trap.”

“You’re using the past tense,” he noted. “I imagine they’re no longer an issue.”

“Maybe. We freed the civilians they’d taken and... we’ll take care of them, I guess. There’re probably some remnants of the gang down there. Our problem is that they kept the sewers working.”

“And that’s our problem?” he asked.

“I like hot showers and running water as much as the next girl. And when I flush, I like it when my toilet doesn’t vomit shit all over. Now, I’m no expert in matters of sewage, but I know something’s fucky when I see it, and the entire city’s sewage system is very fucky.”

***