Chapter Forty-Four - Dirty Break

“Mental health services are, like healthcare, one of those things that just aren’t profitable for a society whose main concern is monetary.

In fact, it’s worse than healthcare. With that, you can at least extort people for money. Someone with a gaping wound will be willing to pay much for treatment and to live. Someone hearing voices though? Someone going through a depressive period? Well, they’re just not great clients.

I think that’s why all of the help and assistance we had just... disappeared one day.”

--Jacob Washington, last member of the all-volunteer Suicide Watch group, 2023

***

I’d seen buildings collapse before. I mean, on my media feeds.

Happened all the time. Usually it was buildings that needed to be demolished, but every couple of weeks some mega-complex would fall apart all on its own. Shitty construction, too many cut corners, maybe the place was only designed to last thirty years and that was before you counted the years shaved off by subpar materials.

So yeah I’d seen plenty of buildings fall apart.

Never seen it happen from the inside in first person though.

“Fuck fuck fuck,” I swore as the floor started to tilt.

Office shit went flying, desks crashed down and chairs with those little wheels at the bottom went sailing across the room.

I half-turned and planted a foot onto an exterior wall. The building was tipping towards the street below. The chairs and desks crashing around me eventually lost their momentum or hooked onto something, so the din in the room stilled.

The cacophony outside though, didn’t. A glance out the window showed blackened marks and craters punched into the road where a liberal application of heavy ordnance had rained down.

The aliens had been pushed back a bit, but then so had some of my defences. Most of the garrote grenades were destroyed and I didn’t see any of my acid sprayers left.

The aliens regrouped and resumed their charge, this time meeting a lot less resistance.

“Dammit! Myalis, can you tell whoever aimed that last volley that I’m going to kick their ass? We need to reset the defences.”

Message sent.

“Right, thanks,” I said. I paused as the building creaked. A building this big tilting wasn’t good, but maybe whoever had built the place knew what they were doing because it seemed to be holding.

Catherine! Incoming volley!

“Are you seri--”

Explosions rained down across the street, shells rammed into some of the buildings across from us, shrapnel and glass raining down in a cascade atop the aliens below. Then I heard something punch through the ceiling.

I spun and saw a hole the size of my head missing in the middle of the office.

Whatever had punched that hole went off and a gout of dust poured out into the office. I was blind, dust and smoke robbing me of sight.

The floor fell out from under me, and I swore as I tumbled. Everything was moving in different directions, and for a panicked moment, all I could do was be rag-dolled around. Even with my armour, the breath was blown out of me as I was thrown about.

Metal screamed and glass shattered. I think the building just decided to give up and crashed down onto the street.

I hit something hard and it shifted beneath me. Then all my fighting and rolling around was stopped. A pressure grabbed onto my mechanical arm and didn’t let go.

Everything ended in a single, final boom that rattled my head.

I blinked as the dust cleared a little.

I was on my back, with a cement barrier about a handspan away from my face. I wiggled my toes, then shifted on the spot. Still had all of my meat limbs. There was no burning. I was fine. Peachy, even. Never better.

Armour integrity is at seventy-four percent. I’m afraid you’ll need a new suit. The back component of your jump pack is damaged as well.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Uh... where the fuck am I?”

Pinned under the building you were on. The topmost floor hit the building across the street, then it collapsed on top of your position. Here.

A screen opened up in my augs and I got to see... a lot of wreckage through a thick film of dust. Some shit was on fire too. “What am I seeing this from?”

One of your cat mechas survived.

“Tough little shits,” I murmured. She was distracting me, wasn’t she? “Uh... Myalis, I think I’m stuck.”

You do have a building on top of you at the moment, yes.

I swallowed. “Okay. Yeah. That would do it.” My breathing came in a little faster, chest heaving. I didn’t know why but I almost felt like laughing. “I can’t get out.”

Catherine, you have a multitude of methods to remove yourself from this location. I can guide you through them. You are safe.

“Right. My arm?”

Your cybernetic arm is pinned. Please do not activate the rocket within it. That would be irresponsible.

This time I did laugh. “Yeah, yeah, okay.” I tugged at my arm, but it didn’t do much. The space I was in was... not very big. I’d used public toilets with more room. A pocket that was maybe a metre wide, half that tall. I’d lost my Bullcat somewhere along the way. Still had my sword buckled to my hip though. Too bad, I liked that gun.

I tugged on the arm again, but it didn’t move at all.

“I need to get this unstuck,” I said.

I can release the arm. You’ll be able to purchase another. It was beginning to be outdated compared to your other equipment anyway.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, okay.”

There is one issue. The armour is nonfunctional in that section. It is likely that some of its internals were damaged. I cannot disengage it.

“Okay, okay,” I said.

Well, when all you had was a sword that could cut through anything, everything started to look like a nail. Or something like that. I tugged the sword out of its sheath, then brought it up and around, blade part hovering over my bicep.

I paused.

What the fuck was I doing?

There are more delicate tools for that sort of operation if you wish. Or I could contact other Vanguard for assistance.

I swallowed. “No, it’s fine.” Myalis had to know that I’d put my own pride before any nervousness about self-mutilation. I took a deep breath. “Fuck you,” I said.

The sword activated with a snapping hiss and I closed my eyes as I sliced down.

I didn’t realise it, but the place I was resting was uneven. I shut the sword off quickly as I slid down deeper into my little nook, suddenly free from the arm holding me in place.

“Oh shit,” I said. I looked at the stump by my side. I’d lived most of my life with only a stump there, it would probably be a lot more dramatic for someone losing their arm for the first time. But hey, practice made perfect and all that.

I shifted, then sat up. There was barely enough room for that.

“Myalis, I want to get out of this hole.”

Are you certain? It’s actually relatively safe.

“Are you kidding me?”

If you’re going to purchase new limbs and new armour, then it makes sense to do so from a place of relative safety.

“Just get me out of this hole!”

I closed my eyes and leaned back, head clunking against the cement behind me.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

No apology is necessary.

The ground shook a little, and I almost screamed, but the building held.

Just artillery hitting nearby. Now, as for options to remove yourself from this location, might I suggest a short-range wormhole bomb? There are several other options, but this seems like the cheapest and most expedient. It is also relatively safe.

“I don’t know, the words wormhole and bomb put together don’t sound... safe. At all.”

I can guarantee its safety, if that helps.

“And if you’re wrong?” I asked.

Then you’ll be too dead to make a complaint.

I felt like that deserved a laugh, but what escaped wasn’t quite that. I sniffed. “Okay, okay, let’s do that.”

New Purchase: M.I.C.E. Bomb

Points Reduced to... 35,742

“Mice bomb, really? What’s that one mean?” I asked as a box landed on my chest.

Micro-scale Intralocation Cat Extractor

I paused. “You really dove deep for that one,” I said. The box had a cylinder in it with a switch. That was it. Not even a pin to pull, or options to toggle. I shrugged, suppressed the weird feeling from my right side at the motion, then flicked the switch.

I was in mid-air.

That didn’t last long.

I crashed down, fortunately only a couple of centimetres, and winced as cement and rebar rained down around me. I was back on the street, or above it and the building I had been on. Did that teleport me a few metres straight up?

“Okay,” I said. It was immensely easier to breathe without the metaphorical weight of a building atop me.

Unfortunately, being up here meant that I didn’t have a building between me and the beasties.

“Ah, fuck,” I muttered.

***