Stray Cat Strut-Chapter Thirty-Four – Welcome to the Broom Closet

Chapter Thirty-Four - Welcome to the Broom Closet

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***

"Nice little... closet you've got here," I said. "Is this really all the space you have to work with?" I gestured at the room past the student who was looking between me and Nya, obviously not sure of what to do yet. I was mostly trying to get him to talk. freeweɓnovel.cøm

That was often a good way to get people to chill out; complaining about something they wanted to complain about. Bitching was a time-honoured way to make friends and bond with folk, and I was hoping that this dude would calm down fast because he looked ready to bolt.

"Yeah, it's what we have," he said. "Uh, did you need directions or something?"

So, he wanted to run, but didn't want to be rude to the two heavily armed samurai. Which, yeah that was fair. I'd want the same in his shoes. "Nope, this is where we wanna be," I said. "Look, what's your name?" I had his ID already, but I wanted to get him talking.

"Me?" he asked.

"No, the wall," I said. I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, you."

"I'm Kortas. Angelo Kortas," he said before licking his lips. "Did I do something?"

"No, no. Look... okay, usually I'd ask to sit down or something, but I don't know if we can fit that many chairs in there." The office they had really was a closet. It was maybe three metres deep, but only one wide. A single bulb in the ceiling lit it up, and while there were a few desks crammed in with computers on them and loose papers around, it looked like they didn't even have a power plug in there. Instead there was a long cord bundled up next to the entrance. I suspected that they ran it across the corridor to steal power from another outlet.

"There's a lounge over there," he said with a gesture back the way we'd come.

"Cool. Come on," I said as I turned. I expected him to follow, and after a long moment of hesitation, he did. Nya seemed content to just smile and look around, as if the inside of some school corridor was interesting.

The lounge was a small space with one of those very square-angled couches that didn't look comfortable and a pair of armchairs, both bolted to the floor. A large window at the back was opened up to the front of the building, giving a surprisingly decent view of the campus, and there was the obligatory plastic plant and a pair of vending machines.

I blinked at one of them. Six hundred credits for a can? I could buy a gun with that much. "Want anything?" I asked.

"Uh, sure," he said.

I kicked the machine, then glared at it. I had no idea how any of the hacking programs in my Augs actually worked, but I think the machine felt appropriately threatened by my presence that when I poked at the selection buttons it started spilling its entire contents out.

I picked a can off the floor, then underhanded it to Angelo who caught it awkwardly. I grabbed another for myself, then waded through the cans to one of the seats and popped the tab. "Alright. So, I'm concerned about New Montreal right now," I said.

I watched as Nya climbed up and sat on the backrest of the couch, her tail twitching behind her.

"The city's actually doing alright, all things considered. We avoided having every citizen turn into alien chow, twice, which is nice. Reconstruction's going, the sewers are getting fixed, and people are returning to something like normalcy."

"Okay," Angeloi said. "Uh, I mean... thanks?"

I snorted. "Sure. Anyway, I read your article. Well, the one you and your friends put out."

"You did?" he asked.

"I skimmed. Anyway, I want things to go back to normal, to stay nice and safe. That way I can focus on what's important; making sure Lucy is happy and not trying to take over the city. So, when I hear about gangs being uppity, I get a little concerned, you know?"

"Who's trying to take over the city?" Angelo asked.

I shook my head. "That's not the important part of that. Your article, and your research. It kinda hints that you have a good idea of what's going on in the gang side of things." I leaned forwards, drink held casually. "Gimme the downlow, yeah?"

Angelo leaned back, then shrugged. "I joined the club about two years ago? It was a cool way to get extra credits and... look, I live in the dorms now, but I used to live in a part of NM that was a little rougher, you know? I got lucky on some tests and was able to ride a scholarship to get here."

"Cool," I said.

"So I know some of the gangs. Some guys my age stayed with them, and I make a point of keeping in contact with them. The last guy in charge of this club used it to get some extra points, and when he did his thesis he used some of the research the club did for it. I was thinking of doing the same, you know?"

"That sounds fair," I said. "So, it's just an extra credit thing?"

He squirmed a little. "I'm in Anthropology and Targeted Cultural Marketing. That's what my bachelors is. I like this stuff. It's cool."

"Yeah," I said. "So, imagine for a minute that I'm really, really stupid, and that you have to explain things to me as if I'm a kid with like, three different attention deficit problems, okay?" When he nodded, I continued. "So, what's going on with the gangs?"

"It's... okay, like I'm explaining to a kid? I can do that. Uh... the gangs exist for two reasons. I mean, there's more, obviously, but broadly? Two reasons. The first is to make a lot of money, the second is to be a sort of... community thing? A family? A lot of the gangs start off as just people that have shared cultures or work or something coming together. Sometimes it's safety, sometimes it's something innocent."

"Okay, I'm following so far," I said.

"Right. So, with the incursion, a lot of these gangs rose up. Someone had to keep the lower neighbourhoods safe, and it wasn't going to be the cops or the army. A lot of problems with squigglies."

"Squigglies?" Nya asked.

"Uh, Model Sevens," Angelo said. "We call them squigglies. Because... yeah."

I nodded. They did look like a fistful of spaghetti, at least until they took over someone's body and zombfied them into a meat puppet serving the Antithesis. "Got it. So the gangs more or less stepped in and helped where they could?"

"Yeah. But that also means a lot of power. And control over some areas and neighbourhoods. And since a lot of people are without work right now, recruitment is way up. In some areas, the gangs run the supermarkets. If you want food, you go through them."

"So, that's nothing too new, just bigger."

Angelo nodded. "It would be fine, I think, only the gangs have started to consolidate."

"Consolidate?" I asked.

"Oh, right, like explaining to a kid. Um... the leaders of some gangs are friends with leaders of others. And they've been working together in some spaces. Some were wiped out too. Anyway, the point is, they're acting like companies, and when one company is much bigger than the other and they both occupy the same corner of the market..."

"They consolidate. The product gets worse, and way more expensive, half the employees lose their jobs, and the people at the top get way richer," I said. "Okay. Never thought that would work for gangs, but I guess they're kind of a business, if you squint your eyes."

"Oh! We're going to be the anti-monopoly people to your local yakuza, then?" Nya asked.

"Ah, shit, that might be what we have to do," I said. "I imagine that if we let the gangs grow too strong, it'll be a problem?"

"They want to change things," Angelo said. "Across the city. In a big way."

"That's not so bad," I said.

He winces. "It might be? There's precedent for this kind of thing, and it usually means things get worse for everyone. Or you end up with a city that's a lot more anarchic for a while. Usually until one corp or another steps in and takes over fully, or they annoy the local samurai enough that the gangs get decapitated and then, uh, things turn into a sort of civil war as all the smaller gang factions get to fighting, but it usually calms down within a year or two."

I pinched the bridge of my nose. Yeah, this is exactly what I wanted to do for the rest of the day. "Right... I suppose I might as well handle this now."

***