Chapter Ten - More Questions than Answers

“By 2020, China was well on its way to becoming the world’s second superpower.

By 2025, the country was in turmoil, plagued by economic instability (much of it caused by a global recession where many countries simply stopped importing goods), social unrest, and a growing feud between the ruling party and the few Samurai in the country.

Most major shifts in global affairs past 2020 can be linked in one way or another to a Samurai, or a group of them, but China’s near-collapse is the most obvious of these.

In 2022, an incursion appeared over Fujian. The reaction of the government was, surprisingly, positive. By then many other global powers had their own Samurai, and China was looking forward to obtaining its own.

The incursion went poorly, with the first mass appearance of Model Sevens. Someone, and it is still unknown who was responsible, authorized the use of low-yield nuclear weapons over the province.

It secured a victory, but at the cost of nearly all local Samurai.

In the following year, another pair of incursions appeared over the area: in Taiwan, and near Hong Kong. The Samurai born from these did not share an enthusiastic relationship with the Chinese government. By 2030, the area was governed by three countries, two of which were, and still are, under the protection of local Samurai warlords. The Democratic Republic of Hong Kong, the Independent Republic of Taiwan, and the People’s Republic of China.”

--A History After the Drop, Online Lecture by Professor Sterne

***

I grinned at all the workers. “Where’s your manager?” I asked.

It took all of a minute for some sweaty middle-aged woman to jog over to meet me in the same corridor I’d almost been shot in. “H-hello,” she said as she caught her breath. “How can I help?”

“Well, first, you can explain what’s going on here,” I said with a gesture to the workers behind her. They’d stopped breaking into apartments and emptying them to stare at our little spectacle.

“We’re checking the area for xenos, ma’am,” the manager said.

I stared at her, then at the cart laden with computers and televisions and tablets. “Have the aliens been disguising themselves as PCs while I wasn’t paying attention?” I asked.

The woman straightened. “It’s within our charter to recover any valuables left in the area.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “You’re not even tagging them or anything. There’s no way that someone that lives here will be able to tell their stuff apart from anyone else’s.”

“There are ways to recoup any lost belongings,” the woman said. She didn’t look comfortable saying it, and it only took a second of meeting her eyes to communicate that we both knew how full of shit she was.

“You guys can leave the rest of the stuff where it is,” I said. “And leave the cart too.”

She hesitated. I could almost see the math working itself out behind her eyes. She was no doubt going to be losing a lot of credit with this, but I found myself with few fucks to give. “I, of course, we’ll clear out right away.”

“Good. Now, I’m looking for someone. Myalis, can you send her a photo?”

Of course. Consider it sent.

The manager shook her head. “Never seen her. One moment.” She had me nervous for a moment as she reached into a big pocket, but it was only to retrieve a tablet. Soon she was clicking through images. Faces, some bloody, others not. Most with their eyes closed, and all obviously dead.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“One of our duties here is clearing out the dead. There aren’t usually that many, but some xenos did make it over here.”

I nodded. I’d seen as much with what little footage of Katallina I’d seen. “You keep a catalogue of the dead?” I asked.

She nodded absently while still scrolling past pictures. “The dead, and their IDs if we can find them. I can’t find anyone fitting the bill. The only person that looks about the right age is this boy.”

She turned the tablet over so that I could take in an image of a boy, maybe Junior’s age, with a nice set of augs and a face covered in dried blood. “Right,” I said. “Did you guys see anything suspicious?”

“No,” she said.

One of the guys shuffled, and I turned over to stare at him.

He froze up. “I-I might have, uh, seen something?” he said.

“Spill,” I said.

The man swallowed. “We found bullet casings on this floor. Um, lots of them, near some dead antithesis. No guns though, and no bodies.”

It could be just anything. Someone with a fancy gun or two that came out to help with the aliens came around. Or it could be Katallina. She had a gun on her in that little bit of footage I saw.

“Got any pictures or video of the casings and bodies?” I asked.

He nodded and looked over to his manager.

“We’ll send it to you as soon as it’s processed,” the woman said.

“Good,” I said. “We can all wait here while that happens.”

She looked like someone that had just swallowed something sour. “I’ll... see what I can do,” she said before returning to tap at her device. “It’s a lot of data to sift through.”

“I’m pretty sure my AI can manage.”

I’d say that your faith in me is reassuring, but really, there are only a few terabytes to sort through. It’s child’s play.

The woman reluctantly sent the file at me through an Aug-code that my fancy new gear picked off her screen and parsed through.

This is interesting. Look at these.

A screen opened before me, then a few more. One had video of a camera panning across a couple of Model Threes, all very dead, and down to a small pile of casings on the floor.

The photos of the casings weren’t all that helpful at first glance. They were a metallic-white, with no serial numbers that I could make out on them.

I took a step back from the manager and frowned at the empty air. “Could they be from the gun the girl was using?”

They’re not. Nor are these.

A different set of images, this one of more dead aliens. The image zoomed in on a few casings left on the ground, all small and coppery.

Standard 10mm armour piercing rounds. Not too common among human weaponry.

“That doesn’t leave us with that many clues,” I muttered.

No, but it is a start. I could perhaps trace these other rounds.

I shook my head. “It could be nothing. Let’s find the security room first, we might be able to find something there.”

I asked the very relieved manager for directions, then waved the scavengers off as I headed out towards the security rooms near the centre of the building. I could hear them arguing over whether or not to take the stuff they’d been ‘securing’ or not. The consensus seemed that the few credits they’d make after it was all sold wasn’t worth annoying me over, which was nice.

The security room, as it turned out, was little more than a closet tucked into a maintenance passage. The door was heavy, and had a pretty nice security system linked to it. It took Myalis more time to say something witty than it did for her to bypass it.

I found myself before a shitty old desk with a pair of dusty screens before it. There was a minifridge in the corner, and an ashtray overflowing with used filters.

Sitting down, I turned to the screens, then, realizing I knew nothing about what had to be done, turned to the fridge instead. There was a small bounty of energy drinks in there.

You’re really working hard on this mission, aren’t you?

I kicked back, legs crossing atop the desk as I examined two cans. One was Hyper Sucrose Extreme!, a special edition can with some anime figure on it. It had to be an import because the can didn’t have any nutritional information other than ‘fuckloads of sugah!’ written in small text at the bottom.

The other choice was some Boomerade. It had some silver-haired Samurai on its side giving me a thumbs up and occasionally winking.

I stuck to the can with the anime girl on it. She was less creepy. A sip and a full-body shiver later, and I gestured to the screens. “Have you found anything?” I asked.

Myalis’ response was a long suffering sigh.

The screens came on, and I got to see the same video of Katallina running, though now from two angles.

“Do we have anything earlier?” I asked.

All the cameras in the other areas of the building are defective and have been for some time. Maintenance logs claim that they were taken care of, but the evidence suggests otherwise. There’s more.

The footage sped ahead, changing angles every so often as Myalis changed cameras. I got to see the girl running, tears streaming from her eyes. The gun she had was definitely high-tech, more so than the raggedy clothes she had on.

Her dog barked on camera, and jumped at a Model Three that was charging at her.

I was nervous for a bit, until she gunned the alien down and called her dog back to her side.

She seemed to be making good time across the building, no doubt racking up a few points as she went down one staircase, then another, meeting more aliens as she went.

No stopping for new gear, not even when she paused to replace the magazine in her gun with one from a back pocket.

Too nervous? In too much of a hurry? Maybe the adrenaline was in the way.

This one is from this floor.

The next bit was very familiar. Katallina running with her dog at her heels, Model Threes coming out behind her in chase.

And then she ran into a group of three men in black uniforms. Full-face masks, armored padding, all in pitch black.

They gunned the aliens down, then moved up to Kattallina who looked surprised for a moment. I couldn’t blame her.

She smiled, hope breaking through the tears at last, and pointed to something behind her.

Then one of the men grabbed her and tossed her to the floor.

The dog was kicked aside. Something was sprayed in her face, and she fought for a bit before going limp.

They tied her up, then did the same to her dog, knocking it out and tying its paws together with straps.

My feet dropped from the desk. “What the fuck,” I said.

That is certainly the right question to ask.

***