by Jack Truxton
“So, before we take the train … milk and cream, I’ve never taken the train before! … why is that we don’t have to hide here?” Annie was looking around like she had, well, never been to a Muni station before, her eyes settling on the weathered stone of the main depot past the cab stop. “It seems odd to have a curfew but keep the trains running, don’t you think?”
“If you think that’s odd, hold onto your skirt, because we humans tend to do odd things all the time,” I laughed as I led her toward the grimy glass doors of the station proper. “But for the question at hand, even with supersonic flights and space plane lines, people arrive in town at all times of day and night. The airports sure as hell don’t want to put them up, so the city lets the rail lines keep going. Not to mention all the wageslaves strapped in for the night shift. They still have to get around.”
She stuck out her tongue as her ears flattened a little. “Now, I kind of wish I hadn’t asked. I thought Masters and Mistresses were supposed to be kind, awesome, thoughtful people. You’re incredible, Jake, I know, but … other people like that should take good care of others, Kats or humans. Guess after my first Master, this shouldn’t surprise me.”
“If it helps,” I said softly, pulling Annie close to me, “I think you’re actually right, well, overall. Most people are actually pretty awesome. Maybe not as awesome as you, but …” She leaned her head against my shoulder, smiling and purring at my little compliment. “What I’m trying to say is that there are a few real scumbags, greedy assholes that have got the reigns of the system in their little hands, and they are the ones causing all the problems.”
“Like Katsukami.” Those two words escaping her lips carried a steely weight that I hadn’t heard from the Kat so far.
“Exactly.”
Crossing the drop-off/pick-up zone, dead quiet this time of night, we came upon the Muni building proper. The massive, grime-streaked edifice had once run only a few lines, but now one-hundred-and-seventy-two rail lines linked up here, of which perhaps only a hundred were actually functional at any time. Fifty years ago, the place had no doubt been pristine, with a shining white stone façade and gleaming glass and chrome fixtures, every train running on time, but when the Neo-Corporate movement swept government services …
Well, let’s just say that keeping the infrastructure clean, tidy, and fully functional cut into the bottom line.
I started toward the holographic transit map, flickering in the center of the front room of the station, but Annie beat me there, her tail swishing with unbridled excitement as she pointed at the hovering image.
“Milk and cream, that’s sooo cool-looking!” she mewed as she stuck her hand into the glowing display, sending shafts of nothingness through the map. “You know, I’ve never ridden the Muni before. I’m sooo excited!”
It was like we hadn’t just been musing on the suckitude of humanity, every bit of Annie’s bubbly cheer coming right back. Tucking my hands in my pockets, I smiled as I strolled up next to her. “It’s hard to believe you’ve never ridden the trains before. I mean, almost everybody uses it to get around at least some of the time.”
“I’ve never been in a car either.” She shrugged. “And if I had ridden the train before, how can you not see how pretty this is?” Annie danced around the map, twirling with her arms held wide. “Why don’t they have more stuff like this everywhere? I mean, it’s like a light sculpture!”
Quirking my head, I thought about it for a moment, really tried to see it the same way that Annie was looking at it now. Try to see the glittering hologram as something other than a practical thing. I found myself taking a step or two back so that I could look at the map as a whole.
“You know what, Annie?” I said, looking back at Annie who was beaming at me from the other side of the map.
“What’s that, Jake?”
I smiled softly. “It really is beautiful.”
Annie’s smile grew even wider as she bounced around the map emitter, throwing her arms around my neck. “I knew you’d see it, Jake!” she purred. “Now, come on! Let’s ride the train!”
Looping my arm around her waist, I nodded, reading over the map to plan our route to Hunters Point, Mr. Romine’s stomping ground and one of the worst neighborhoods in town for decades running. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t know the usual routes to take, it was if those routes were functional at the moment. After a few moments of thought, I got a route in mind and tugged on Annie to follow me.
“Let’s get some MuniPasses.” I started toward the vending machines across the lobby, Annie happy to stay snuggled next to me. “Mine got, uh, lost in the accident, and you need one too.”
“I get one?!” Her squeal of delight was only matched by her quivering tail and huge eyes. “It’ll be totally mine?”
Though there weren’t many folks around to gawk at us this late, not like there were any important destinations for travelers in this neighborhood, I still shushed her as I tried not to crack up at her enthusiasm. “Of course, it’ll totally be yours.” As she looked at me with unabashed wonder, I smiled and tapped my forehead against hers. “Welcome to freedom, Annie. It means you get stuff that’s actually yours.”
She purred like a motorcycle and pointed at the vending machines we stopped in front of. “Can I pick one out?”
Like any good capitalist venture, the transit authority had a good twenty or thirty designs for the art on the MuniPasses, all shown across the vibrant LCD display of the machine in front of us. Not surprisingly, the place you actually spent money there was the best-maintained part of it, the screens crystal clear to show dancing Passes and the vast array of accessories you could get, like pass protectors and lanyards. Pulling out the wad of cash donated by our late-night guests, I took a quick count. Plenty to get us through a day or two, MuniPasses included.
“Of course, you can, Annie,” I answered with a nod. “And you should pick out a lanyard and card holder too. It’s going to be yours, so you should get something you like.”
It was like unleashing a kid in a candy shop. Annie started humming under her breath, tapping away at the screen rapid-fire to scroll through designs, lanyard colors, protector art, everything. When it became obvious she was going to take a few minutes to come to a decision, I went ahead and grabbed my own from an adjacent machine, loading up the utilitarian pass with a one-week unlimited transit plan. It would cut into our food and housing budget, but considering we were technically on the run, getting around fast took precedence.
By the time I was done with all of my business, lanyarded pass tucked under my shirt, Annie was still tapping away, each design seeming to enrapture her more than the last. She looked over at me with a slightly guilty look. “I’m sorry, Jake. It’s just … this is my first thing, and I want to make sure to pick the perfect one!”
“Annie, don’t worry about it so much,” I said with a smile. “It’s yours. Whichever you one you choose, that’ll be the perfect one.”
She thought about that for a moment and then smiled back at me. “Okay, Jake. Thank you!” With that resolved, she made a few deft taps, settling on a multicolored floral design, filled with soft pastel petals. It wasn’t stereotypically cute as I half-expected. It was a moving still-life, probably a reproduction of a painting from a museum. “Do you like it?”
“I do. It’s really you.” I patted her on the shoulder and took care of the payment. Tucking it into the lilac colored lanyard she had also picked out, I put the pass around Annie’s neck, sliding my hands to her shoulders as I did so. “Congratulations, you’re a real girl now.”
“Oh, Jake, thank you!” she said softly before a faint smirk crossed her lips. “Though I think I proved I was a real girl when we went to bed.” She added a mischievous wink and a mrowl in the back of her throat that made me rather warm inside.
“You can say that again,” I said with a grin. “Now, let’s go before we miss our train!”
We eventually managed to nab a working train towards our final destina
tion. Though so much had changed since the Muni rail lines had first opened in the 20th century, the rail cars themselves had changed surprisingly little from what I had seen in the history vids. The big difference was that instead of conventional tracks and wheel systems, everything was maglev and all of that.
As we settled into a pair of plastic seats in a mostly deserted car, I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding. We were as much in the clear as we could be. Of course, where we were going was probably more dangerous than staying there had been.
It didn’t get past Annie’s notice. She laid a hand over my own laying in my lap and looked over at me. “We’re safe for a little while, aren’t we? Sooo, are you going to tell me what’s going on now?” She smiled brightly. “I know you’re tense, so talking about it will help. Shared stress is less stress!”
I smiled back at her, sitting up in the uncomfortable chair and getting my head together. “Yep, and besides, I’ll need your help with what’s coming up.” Annie looked at me attentively, giving me full license to get on with it. “Right, so, those guys who wanted to take all our stuff? They work for a Mr. Mario Romine, loan shark, collections man, probably gangster, and general criminal asshole.” I rubbed the back of my head. “I, uh, sorta had to get my education financed by him. I’d been paying him off but—”
“But you don’t have a job anymore,” Annie said softly, stroking my hand. “Because you decided to save me.”
“Something I’d do a million times over, without a moment’s hesitation.” My voice was firm, and my feelings adamant on that. “We were going to have to leave my apartment soon anyway, and maybe it’s for the best that we got forced into action. You know how you asked me to do for your sisters what I did for you?”
Annie nodded firmly. “I do!”
“Well, Romine has a Wonder Kat of his own, a business Kat, I think.” I patted my old Army surplus jacket and the four previous genemod injectors in my inside pocket. “And after what he tried to do, steal a dead man’s stuff for a quick buck and shoot him if he just so happened to not be dead, I sincerely doubt that Mario is treating her with any kind of kindness or respect. He’s cut from the same cloth as the guys who run Katsukami and every other company and government stooge who’s pushing the little guy down.”
“So,” Annie began, her ears fully forward in intense interest as she tapped her lip, “we’re going to start our little …” She glanced around with exaggerated caution as if a million spies were surrounding us on the empty train, before continuing in a harsh whisper, “revolution …” And then she was right back to normal conversational tones, a smile beaming on her face. “By stopping Mr. Romine from hurting people and freeing his Kat?”
Rolling my eyes, I couldn’t help but laugh at Annie’s antics. “Yep, pretty much that exactly.”
12
“You know what this makes me feel like?” Annie said as she chewed thoughtfully on a piece of bacon, sat across from me in the Doughnut Emperor across from Romine’s public office.
I glanced away from the front window where I had been keeping watch. “I don’t know, Annie. It depends on what the what is. Is it the bacon, the situation, or the restaurant?” I asked with a grin.
It had still been pre-dawn when we arrived in Hunters Point, and skulking through the streets until dawn would have ended in muggings, attempted homicides, and all matter of trouble for us. The glittering circular logo of the Emperor, one of the countless franchise locations across the city, offered the closest thing to a safe refuge. This particular location of the Tyrant of Hunger wasn’t the cleanest or the nicest, the red painted walls starting to chip with abuse and the holographic statue of their mascot, a towering man in scarlet chef’s duds with a mighty doughnut crown, flickering, but it was still a lot nicer than the mean streets.
Plus, it was hard to ignore the allure of the Emperor’s Decadence, a double cheeseburger with bacon using a double-sized glazed doughnut for a bun.
“The situation, silly,” Annie laughed. “Though I have to admit, I do love bacon!”
We were pretty much alone in the place, the staff having long since ignored us after doing their minimum required diligence, so I didn’t feel a need to be too coy about things. My grin grew as I replied, “Now I have to know how the whole ‘shake down a small-time crime boss while his goons likely try to put holes in us’ makes you feel.”
“Like Krusader Kat!” she said without even batting an eye, her tail low and swishing from side to side.
I almost choked on my bite of Decadence, forcing the sweet-and-salty mix of sugary goodness and meaty wonder down my throat. “You mean, like on the vid? You, a Wonder Kat, watched your own kid’s vid show?” It seemed utterly insane to me, why would Annie do that? Unless … “They made you watch it in Klass, didn’t they?”
“Of course!” she answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “The Nurse Nya segments were my favorite, but I always was glued to my seat for Krusader Kat.” Annie punched the air a few times, miming the animated superheroine’s poses. “Pow! Bam! Zoom!”
I guess the Wonder Kat show wasn’t just good propaganda for kids. It made for great reinforcement for the Kats too. Despite that, I smiled at her infectious enthusiasm, clearing my throat with a big drink of water.
Annie kept going, eyes sparkling with excitement. “And that’s what we’re doing, right? We’re going to do hero stuff, and save people, and fight for freedom and all Kat kind.” She tapped her lip, her ears swiveling forward in thought. “Milk and cream, maybe we should come up with costumes and cool codenames.” Looking at me with almost deadly seriousness, she asked, “What’s cool that goes with Nurse?”
“Okay, let’s take a step back.” I held up my hands in the universal gesture of ‘sloooow down.’ “How about we focus on the immediate problem? We can think, uh, big like that once we’ve gotten through this.” Annie gave me the most heart-melting ‘awww’ look I’ve ever seen, so, unable to resist, I added, “But if you want some thoughts, nimble, ninja, nimbus, nuclear, and nebula are all cool words that start with n.”
That placated her as she dropped back into a thoughtful silence, chewing happily on another piece of bacon. Me, though, I was chewing on something else, namely what we had just talked about. While Annie’s words had been almost naively innocent and a little ridiculous, she wasn’t entirely wrong. I was right to focus primarily on the next step, the immediate problems of which we had several, but if I was really going to make good on my promise to Annie and my own wish to save the Wonder Kats, I needed to start thinking big.
Revolutions need something, someone to rally too, after all.
I was broken out of my thoughts by movement out in the street, namely the big, black 2097 Mercedes Blockade security limousine that dominated the growing morning traffic. Even though it was a ten-year-old car, it was impeccably maintained and so far out of the price range of the average Hunters Point resident that it could only belong to one guy. I leaned closer to the window and squinted as the limo stopped in front of Romine’s brownstone.
“It’s almost time for us to go, I think,” I said with a sidelong glance at Annie as the limo’s doors opened wide. My suspicions were confirmed a moment later as the man I was here to see clambered out of the armored car, the heavy-duty suspension buckling from his girth.
There was no mistaking the sight of Mario Romine. While he wasn’t taller than average, maybe even a hair on the short side, he was built like a brick wall. Well, if that brick wall had one too many plates of lasagna and boxes of cheap wine. Unlike his goons, Mario didn’t go for the cheap velour tracksuit look, instead opting for what should have been a very tasteful charcoal silk suit. The problem was that, despite the designer name and tailoring, the suit seemed like it would burst right off of him if he moved wrong, like he was an alien whose body could not accept our puny human textiles. A matching grey trilby hat was perched on Romine’s pig-like face, and the distinctive bulky frames of a pair of smartglasses were per
ched on his stubby nose.
As he took a slow look around, he was followed by two of his goons, this time in their own atrocious shades of tracksuit. Just what was it with that? Maybe Mario got a discount on bulk tracksuits, or he owned a sweatshop that made them. They weren’t alone either, as the thugs flanked the last person to get out of the limo.
“There!” Annie said, stabbing a finger right against the glass towards the last of Mario’s entourage. “There she is!”
I nodded, not needing Annie’s helpful gesture as a prompt to focus in on the Wonder Kat as she gave a cool glance up and down the street. She was taller than Romine but was dwarfed by the two Muscles McGees she had as escorts. Her outfit was a rather smart-looking Tatsukami-branded business dress in red. Of course, being designed for Wonder Kats, it was cut and tailored to look more like Sexy Secretary than Powerhouse CEO. Slim and fit-looking, the Kat had a lithe build as opposed to Annie’s curvaceous one but shared her perfect skin and near-flawless beauty. Her cinnamon-colored hair had the signature ticked pattern of an Abyssinian, her breed confirmed by the large, pointed ears with the same fur, her short-furred tail kept low, practically tucked between her legs.
For a split-second, I thought our eyes met, her golden feline eyes almost dead in their coldness. At that moment, I swore there was the briefest spark of something, but then it was gone as she turned away, Romine putting a massive arm around her shoulders as he dragged her towards the brownstone.
My fists clenched as I rose out of my chair without thinking, and Annie was right there with me. “Are we going to go after them right now? I brought my frying pan!” She patted the black iron implement that was hanging from the side of her pack.