Chapter Thirty-Three - Cleaning Up

“Gangs start when people have a reason to stick together. If the world was all nice and good, if it wasn’t split because of class and race and violence, then you wouldn’t have anyone deciding that the best way to earn some peace and respect is to stick together and mess up anyone that gets in their way.”

--Laserjack, 2051

***

I rode up the elevator with my arms crossed, glaring through my visor at the elevator’s door until the entire thing came to a grinding halt and the doors shuttered open.

I hadn’t hurt the Ventrats. They weren’t to blame, so their leader got a stern warning to keep on minding his business before I left. It wasn’t fun, this chasing after thieves in the night.

The elevator had a small computer in it that tracked which floors it had stopped on previously, with timestamps and all. It was easy once I was at it to hook Myalis into the elevator’s little control panel and let her do her thing.

It meant that we were now on the right floor, about three floors away from ground level, deep into the pits of the mega building. That didn’t seem ideal.

The door finished opening and I stepped out invisibly into a dank corridor which... I paused.

The corridor was clean.

I had come here with a clear and obvious preconception, expecting more graffitied walls and floors with years of grime stuck to them, but that wasn’t the case. The linoleum was worn in the centre where people walked more, but it was otherwise spotless. The walls were clean, free of mould or stains. Even the ceiling was free of spiderwebs or smoke stains.

For some reason, the sheer cleanliness set me more on edge than if I’d walked out to discover an army waiting for me. “Who lives on this floor?” I asked.

There is a database of residents, but it doesn’t exactly include their gang affiliations, nor would I consider it overly accurate. One thing does stand out, however.

“Yeah?” I asked.

Over four fifths of this building’s cleaning staff live on this floor, and law enforcement reports suggest that one of the gangs inhabiting the building is called the Janitors.

“Janitors? So they’re what, a gang of cleaners? Or is it a euphemism? They ‘take out the trash’ or something stupid like that?”

There is little information available on them on the net. Even less than I’m finding about the other groups that inhabit this building. A cursory search suggests that someone is making an effort to delete and suppress any discussion of the group. It’s all archived and retrievable.

“So, they hid information about themselves, but you can still get to it?”

Yes. But the mere act of suppression and deleting that information has dampened any discussions. Oftentimes, the information I can learn about someone is circumstantial, or pieced together from several sources that each only give me a few small pieces of the puzzle. By keeping discussions to a minimum, I have little to work with and less information that’s trustworthy or corroborated from multiple sources.

“Right,” I said. I more or less understood that. It was like hearing gossip to learn about someone. Only probably more complicated than I cared to dive into.

“So, the Janitor gang. Any idea where they hang out?”

A few members have active social media accounts tracking their movements. They seem to concentrate in a small, unlicensed bar called the Broom Closet.

Of course they did. Myalis helpfully tossed the directions up onto my augs and I started making my silent way across the floor. It took a few turns before I met anyone in the corridors. I slid to one side to let a trio of middle-aged guys in jumpsuits move past. They weren’t wearing gear that matched, colour-wise, but it was clear that they had a theme going.

Or maybe jumpsuits had become stylish for 40-something guys when I wasn’t paying attention. They had a whole host of drab colours to pick from, and it looked like at least one of them had decorated his with some patches and a utility belt.

I didn’t miss the gun tucked into the belt either. Last I checked, handguns weren’t cleaning implements.

“Takes all sorts,” I muttered before stifling a yawn.

Fuck, I wanted to be back in bed already.

It didn’t take too long to find the Broom Closet. I just had to follow the noise. All of the clubs I’d been to had a thing for loud noises, this one wasn’t an exception, though they weren’t playing modern music but some oldies. Maroon Five and Adele and the kind of stuff older people liked.

The entrance to the Broom Closet was, unsurprisingly, a broom closet. Just another small doorway with a mop and bucket logo on the front of it. The only hint other than the music that it was something more was the way the linoleum was worn out.

I paused next to the door. “Any cameras?” I whispered.

None pointing to the doorway.

I nodded, then carefully turned the handle enough to undo the latch. A little pull after that, and I let go, the door slowly opening on its own momentum. Hopefully it just looked like it wasn’t latched properly to anyone looking.

I waited, expecting someone to come over and pull the door shut, but when no one did, I slipped into the closet. Then I chuckled, because Lucy would love this bit in the retelling.

The Broom Closet really did start off as a large utility closet. There was one of those rideable floor-cleaning machines with the pads on the bottom left to charge, and a few mop and buckets. There was a second door at the back, but this one was already opened up and led into an entirely misplaced bar.

I snuck past the cleaning supplies, then paused by the threshold of the bar. It was surprisingly festive in there. A long counter ran along one wall, with an automated bartending machine behind it. The rest of the room had a few round tables and tall chairs, though a number of them were pushed to the side.

A half dozen men were moving around, laughing, clinking drinks, and bobbing their heads in time with the music. I blinked, then noticed that some of the men were women. Jumpsuits turned everyone into a genderless blob that was more janitor than person, I supposed.

“Ah, there they are, the fucks,” I muttered.

At the back of the room, sitting in a corner booth, were four guys in all-black outfits. Two were wearing familiar masks on their heads, and there were more of them on the tabletop next to half-empty mugs of beer.

Four of the six assholes that had broken into my clinic, just sitting back and patting themselves on the shoulder for a job well done.

The fucks.

I don’t know if it was the lack of sleep, the untimely interruption, or just the way the group looked so damned pleased with themselves, but I was getting to be pretty damned pissed off.

I crossed the room in a straight line, only slowing down to rip one of the chairs out from behind a guy in the middle of the room. I dragged the seat after me, its feet scraping across the floor and drawing a few eyes its way. Chairs didn’t usually scrape their way across a room all on their own.

I spun the chair around in front of the corner table, pulled out my Trench Maker, then sat down and flicked off my invisibility.

The idiots in the booth reeled back for a moment. “Alright,” I said. I was liking their expressions a lot more now. “Where the fuck are my limbs?”

A couple of guys bolted out of the Broom Closet. I probably should have closed the door. A few others pulled out guns, mostly little handguns, but one guy had an old-school pump-action. No one was pointing anything yet, but the tension in the room had reached a dangerous high.

If all of them unloaded on me, what were the chances that I’d come out alright?

“Put your guns away,” I snapped. “And someone turn off that noise.”

The music cut off with a snap, pitching the entire bar into a sudden silence that only made everything so much more tense.

“You’re Stray Cat,” one of the Janitors said.

“Yeah,” I said. It was nice, being recognized when I was trying to scare the shit out of someone. “You guys. Where are my limbs?” The last was directed at the idiots sitting across from me.

One of them, who looked particularly stupid wearing his mask on his head, sat up straighter. “Don’t know what you’re on about,” he said.

I blinked. “Let me put it this way. Either you chucklefucks--” I assumed that was a term these old guys would understand--”Give me back the arms and legs you stole from my clinic. Or I start grabbing replacements, and I’m not picky when it comes to whether they’re prosthetics or meat limbs.”

***