Claws That Catch

by Lee Hayton

  “You think you’re making history?” The average man started to laugh. “Oh, that’s a good one. Unless something incredible happens accidentally, I won't hold out much hope of anyone recording you.”

  “We don’t care about that,” Asha interjected. “We just want to do what’s right and get it done quickly. How’re you doing?” She directed that last at Nika who shrugged, not even moving her eyes away from her task.

  “There’s a lot of Dory to move,” she said. “I’m going to have to put her on an enormous server. You said you work at the pits?” Nika looked up at me, and I nodded. “Good. Well, I’ll store her there for the time being and leave it to you to work out how to move her.”

  “You mean, put her on a disk or something?” I frowned, my cloudy mind not capable of working that part out.

  “No. She’s already on a disk. You need to work out how to get the hard drive out of your workplace. Who’s your supervisor?”

  I gave her the name, rank, and serial number of my boss, and soon she was engrossed in her task again. I still didn’t understand how getting Dory back into a new body was meant to help us in our noble pursuit, but I was used to not asking too many questions when working with the average man. It helped to keep the status quo.

  Instead, I helped myself to a few snack bars and wrapped up in a heavy blanket. After a few minutes spent laying against the wall, confident that the terrible images racketing around in my head would preclude sleep forever, I fell into a light doze. I don’t know how long after that I was awoken with a shout from Nika.

  “Done! Now, you just need to retrieve it from its new home.”

  “And put it into a body,” Asha pointed out. “That seems the trickier bit to me.”

  “There are instructions with her brain upload,” Nika said as she struggled to her feet. After hours spent on the cold floor with not even the benefit of a chair, she had to walk up and down for a few minutes to get her legs working properly again. “I presume they’re up to date. If not, you’re fucked.”

  Even though she coached the words with a smile, the truth was stark and simplistic. After all, if the guidelines didn’t work, then we could hardly ask the military for a helping hand. I couldn’t imagine they were too pleased with what we’d done with the last version.

  “Now, we just need a plan to break it out,” I said, yawning. “If you don’t mind working on that alone, I’d just as soon get a good night’s sleep.”

  “There’s not much to be sorted out anyway,” Nika said. “Along with Dory’s upload, I’ve installed a trigger that will let one valid passkey grant entry to the whole facility. I’ll give you the details for the device, Asha, and you can upload it to the system once you’re inside.”

  I left them to it while I fell asleep again. Where once I might have cared too much about the plans, for the time being, I just wanted to relieve my exhaustion.

  With that thought, I promptly fell back to sleep.

  Chapter Twenty

  The next day when I woke, the group handed me the task of gaining access to the supervisor’s office. Once there, Nika gave me a replacement hard drive for his computer. “Get Dory out and put this in there. That’ll take care of phase one nicely.”

  Phase two was getting the werecats into the facility and down into the vampire pits. For that, I had a device to set next to the entry keypad—it would take a snapshot of the card from each person who entered and allowed Nika to copy them remotely.

  Once they hit the right number, the werecats could come up from the sewer and work quickly to transform as many vamps as they could. Given the current state of weakness amongst the bloodsuckers, that wouldn’t be a long or dangerous task. Once dead, they could be loaded onto trucks like cordwood and transported off the base.

  Asha would bring in the brand spanking new key cards and hand them out to the troops working from the outside in. Drive the trucks off the base, and we’d be home free.

  Anything that went wrong would likely send us all to the death chamber as traitors to the state.

  In the light of morning, the average man didn’t seem as agitated as he had the night before. He must be getting accustomed to his new status as an outsider. Welcome aboard, my friend, I felt like saying. It’s cold out there.

  Nobody had mentioned talking to my son or revealing my relationship as part of the plan. As I clocked into work that morning, though, I couldn’t help but consider it. To tell the information, might place him in the same danger that the rest of my group was operating within. To leave him clueless, abandoned him on the wrong side of the equation between good and evil. If I didn’t reach out to him now, that was a jump he might never take on his own.

  For the moment, it was a moot point. I needed to figure out a way into the supervisor’s space and how to stay there for five minutes alone to get done what needed to be. Still pondering the decision, I waited until Wallace turned his back before affixing the small reading device to the entry keypad.

  One job down, just all the hard jobs left to go.

  “We need to start transporting some of the vampires from the lower to the upper levels,” Wallace told me as we walked through to the employee lounge to have coffee. “Some big-wigs from our private-sector owners are dropping by today to catch up with the latest developments.”

  “What? The development that the vamps are being starved and no work is being done?”

  He cast me a long look that made me shift from one foot to another. “They’re coming in to ensure that their investment will survive the latest setbacks.” Wallace gave a long shake of his head and sighed. “You might want to watch your step if you intend to make this your career. They only own a quarter-share now, but by the end of the year, they’ll likely control the whole thing.”

  I nodded with a serious expression on my face, as though I was giving the matter my full consideration. In actuality, I was wondering how I’d broach the subject of parentage with the man, or how he’d respond if I told him of my plan.

  Why did he have to be on the wrong side? If I’d been left to raise him, as nature intended, then things would have turned out so differently. I couldn’t imagine what his adoptive parents were like that they thought this was a suitable job for my boy.

  The moment of reverie soon passed as we started to work down in the pits area. Although the vampires were weak, we needed to ensure that during their travels they didn’t have the opportunity to bite. Hunger made them desperate, and desperation could make them strong.

  “What would happen if one of them bit you?” I asked as I narrowly avoided a confrontation. Wallace had been right about the stench down in the pits. It was only my third day, but I had ceased to smell anything down there at all.

  “Ambulance if you were badly hurt,” he replied with a stern expression. “If they just gave you a nibble, then it’d be a few rounds of paperwork and maybe some remedial training.” After saying that, he gave a smile. “Not that they have any training on offer at the moment, so in truth, it would be filling out a couple of reports, then back onto the job.”

  We got the next cart loaded up with limp vampires and drove them up one level to a different holding facility. This was on the other side of the pits, away from the clean workers in their sterile office. A long row of bathrooms was at the ready. Although it wasn’t part of my role, Wallace explained that they’d spruce up a hundred or so vampires to give a better impression when the visitors came.

  “I thought the Pennyworths controlled all of this facility already,” I observed as we headed down below to pick up another dozen display vamps. “I thought they’d been handed control when the empire made the law changes last year.”

  “They’ll get there, but it takes time. As long as the empire can be seen to be doing all the tasks they’re required to do, then the government won’t secede all power over to privatization.”

  “But you said it was just a matter of time,” I prompted.

  Wallace nodded. “They’ll slip up soon enough. Look at your
employment, for example. When I came on board a few years back, they put us through three weeks of vigorous training. You got a uniform and an order to stay close to me for the first week. That’s just one of the ways they’ve been cutting corners to make the budget. Sooner or later, something’s got to give.”

  “Would you prefer that?”

  He gave me a curious stare. “As long as I get paid, I don’t really care.”

  It wasn’t the truth of the matter, but I could hardly blame him for withholding information. It would be odder if he volunteered his private thoughts more, on the basis of just three day’s acquaintance.

  As we piled up the next cartload, one of the vampires caught my hand and stared into my eyes, his dull pink and pleading. I was all too familiar with the crawling sensation inside an empty belly that had been starved of food for too long. There’d been too many times on the streets when I’d tried to fall asleep to a sensation that felt like my stomach was trying to eat itself in desperation.

  I shook his hand off, then stared down at it for a long moment. The vampires we took to be spruced up for display likely wouldn’t be in the group my team could rescue. Wrong place, wrong time. So sorry, but when it was a case of the many against the few, sometimes a cat had to exercise caution over emotion.

  But for this one vampire, perhaps he could play a part in the rescue, albeit so removed that he might never know the truth. I gave a quick flick of my claw along the side of my neck, close to the artery, then leaned over to let him smell the blood.

  His mouth opened in a craving overriding common sense and he strained upwards to reach toward the blood. I let a few drops fall upon his tongue, and that gave him the strength to lunge, fastening his teeth on me in a clench of jaws that held as fast as a pit bull’s.

  I yelled and tried to jerk back a step. No need to act out that role, my heart beat at triple time, and my eyes widened in terror. I’d never been the one to feed Norman or Percival when they needed it. I didn’t understand how distressing the experience would be.

  I slashed at his chest with my claws, the tips plunging deep into the blackened heart, popping it open and stopping him in his tracks. My little finger popped up and sliced through his throat, letting loose the same blood that he’d just sucked out of my body.

  The vampire slumped, the last of his pink light dying out of his eyes. Although I’d seen the same transformation happen before, once again I was shot through with guilt. To turn a creature, even for their own good, felt wrong when it was against their will. I still harbored a strong sense of resentment for when the same thing was done to me.

  Wallace turned when I cried out. His face drained to white as he stepped back, his hand reaching for his baton. When he saw the vampire become limp, the cuts splitting his body open, Wallace turned a shocked face in my direction.

  Before he spoke a word to me, he thumped down on the closest emergency button, letting loose a siren call for help that pierced my ears worse than a vampire’s screech. After shooting a quick glance up the corridor to either side, Wallace came over to me. In a hurried whisper, he said, “You’ll need to get rid of the knife.”

  The footsteps were pounding down the hallway, coming to our unneeded rescue, by the time I worked out that the glint in Wallace’s eye was one of admiration.

  “There’s a form 37/B for your accident report, and you’ll also need to fill out a 217 to explain how the vampire died in your custody.”

  My supervisor ran a hand through his thinning hair, closing his eyes briefly as his brow furrowed. He made it readily apparent that I was a pain in his ass.

  “What about Wallace?” I asked with a flicker of concern. “Will he get into trouble, since he was officially the experienced partner?”

  “He’ll have to fill out the same reports, and as long as they tally, the two of you should be fine.”

  The supervisor laid the forms down on the desk and handed me a pen.

  “Old-school,” I said with a murmur of appreciation, and that raised a small smile.

  “It’s hard to hack a piece of paper,” he said. “And this form will be going banging around the system for a long, long time.”

  I began to fill out the first couple of questions, observing the man under lowered lashes. If he didn’t move out of here for a few minutes at least, the ruse would have been for no reason at all.

  “Do you have any aspirin?” I asked. “The excitement has given me quite a headache.”

  “You can visit the infirmary later. They’ll have you fill out a whole lot more forms, and then they’ll patch you up. Each injury has to be reported to the government. If we gave you care outside of the system, then they wouldn’t have an accurate record.”

  Although his words sounded perfectly on key, I saw the expression on the supervisor’s face didn’t tally. I wondered how much of a dock this would be on his record. How much each additional injury would be to his promotion prospects or his retirement expectations.

  “I’m sure that it’s not worth the bother of completing a form,” I said in a hushed voice. “All I need is a couple of aspirin and a few band-aids to stop the bleeding.”

  At the mention of the blood, the supervisor’s face paled, and it made me wonder if the man had ever been hands on. If he had, worse things would be crowding his mind than the thought of a little scratch.

  “I could go down there, just ask for a few top-up supplies for the first aid kit that I keep here,” he said, standing and moving toward the door.

  I glanced outside and saw Wallace hard at work completing the same forms that I’d been given. His tongue stuck out the corner of his mouth, and he frowned in concentration. It sent a weird shiver up my spine. The expression made Wallace look a tad simple, and even as a kitten just a few days old, my boy had been whip-smart.

  As soon as the supervisor was out of the door, I whipped around the side of his desk and bent down to examine the computer. The entire casing was only a few inches long, but it held a powerhouse of information. The screen would go dark as soon as I pulled the guts of its memory out. I wondered what would appear on the screen when I replaced it with the mockup I’d been given.

  Too late to consider that, or how much trouble I’d be in. At the very least, I presumed when the supervisor came back, I’d be fired. So, what? I could wait out at the gate for Asha to arrive with the fake passes that Nika would be making right now.

  If they didn’t hold me in the detention cells and torture me to reveal my secrets, that was.

  The casing came off in one block, and I pulled out the three plugs connecting the hard drive to the motherboard. Without a screwdriver, I had to do my best to twist the little fixings free with my claws. A minute after I thought that this was a fool’s errand, the disk popped out loose. Part one done.

  It took a lot less time to slot in the new one since I didn’t worry about connecting up every last screw. Once the plugs were in place, I slotted the casing back over and held my breath for a second while I waited to see if the whole thing would hold. It did, and I looked at the monitor. Blank. Before I had time to wonder if there was a button I should push, the system restarted and within a minute was back in the same place it had been.

  I shoved the hard drive down the back of my pants and took a seat just a moment before the supervisor came back in the room.

  “Aspirin. Band-aids.”

  I took them and hurriedly filled out the rest of the forms. Most of the information was gobble-de-gook, so it didn’t take as long as it should. I pushed them back over to the supervisor, and he nodded. “You can go.”

  In the changing room, I stored Dory’s hard drive away in my bag, ready for the journey home, and affixed the plasters to the side of my neck.

  Now, I just needed to wait out the rest of the day until my gang came on board, ready to do the more prominent part of the deed. My heart rate continued to speed along, promising exhaustion by the end of the day, no matter what.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  As I came off
my shift, I saw Asha slip into the locked room before me. The plan must be coming together then. I said goodbye to Wallace and went ahead to change.

  “Did you get it okay?” Asha asked me. When I nodded, she continued, “Your old boss is waiting for it just outside the gate. Take it to him then meet me back here.”

  I followed her guidelines, passing the hard drive over to the average man.

  “Did you get the other one into the computer okay?” he asked me, and when I nodded, he broke apart the drive with one quick motion of his hands.

  I stood at the car door, my mouth open while I tried to process what had just happened. Even if I hadn’t known Dory well, to see her chance at life destroyed in front of my eyes tugged at my heart.

  “You can get in the back if you want,” the average man said with a grin. “I’m headed back to the gym anyway. Just need to clear up a few loose ends, if you get my drift.”

  “No.” I reached out and grabbed his shoulder. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Giving you a chance,” he said, his eyes blank discs in the glow from the setting sun. “I don’t really give a shit either way, but if you don’t come with me now, you’re probably dead.”

  I jerked my arm back as he rolled up the window, stepping away and shaking my head. What the hell was the point to all of this, then? Why did he come to us yesterday if he was just going to destroy Dory’s upload the second we got it out?

  It would have been just as quick for Nika to eradicate it on the original server, surely, if that was the whole point?

  Then it hit me. There was nothing on that hard drive that he wanted. There’d been nothing transferred, nothing changed. I turned and raced toward the facility, knowing that it would already be too late.

  He hadn’t wanted the hard drive out of the computer. The man had just wanted me to install his own drive in its place.