Chapter Fifty-Nine - Urban Spelunking

  Sharp held me by the collar, pinching it between forefinger and thumb as she carefully squeezed me through the hole they'd manage to make so far.

  "Okay, you can let go," I said.

  Sharp opened her hand, and I fell into the almost complete darkness for a thrilling half-second before landing on all fours on the ground.

  The only light pouring into this area was from the hole that the girls had made, and it wasn't all that big, especially with Sharp's head jammed into it. "Be careful over there," she said.

  "I've got it, don't worry," I said back with an affirmative meow.

  The truth was, I wasn't so sure I did have it, but these tunnels we'd been navigating were mostly empty save for some electrical boxes and pipes along the walls. To a normal person, the idea of hiding in here would be... unappetizing. To someone of my size? Well, there were also a few small heaps of trash left along the sides, and mounds of old dust. They were almost as large as I was, and I was certain that I could squeeze into the cracks between some of the pipes and the walls.

  Basically, being tiny made stealth a lot more palatable, and having natural night vision just helped.

  I shook myself and focused as best I could. This might have been an easy-mode gig with the girls, but it was still a serious job. Things could and would go wrong if we weren't careful, and my task at the moment was to discover the elements that could make things go wrong before they had time to activate.

  I started down the corridor, walking at a slow, careful pace. As I reached a T-junction further in, one that continued on straight and turned to the right, I discovered a single EXIT-sign hanging above. It was broken off on one side, as if something had smashed into it, and only half the lights within the sign worked, but it was enough to cast a faint reddish glare across the corridors.

  It was enough to see by.

  I'd spent a bit of time in the odd megabuilding in my day. Sometimes to track a target down, but more often to secure a deal or pick something up. They were strange spaces. Cities within cities. Some developed their own cultures and communities, becoming separate from the actual city they were within. I'd heard of some older megabuildings which had their own patois that was almost incomprehensible to outsiders.

  I'd never been in the basement of a megabuilding, but this was... pretty much what I imagined it to look like.

  I moved with the slow, stealthy caution of a cat on the prowl, eyes scanning ahead and tail straight behind me. I didn't want to be surprised, nor did I want to make any more noise than I absolutely had to.

  The space was empty. In fact, it was more than empty, it was long empty. There were a few spots where water was collecting on the floor, and more where a lack of ventilation led to a small pile of dust forming in the middle of a passage. These were deep and undisturbed. Just moving close had the dust shifting, so I knew that anyone walking by would leave traces that would last a while.

  I kept walking, reaching an intersection, then turning back to the previous intersection and then taking the other option. It was a terribly slow way of moving around, but the search pattern made getting lost rather difficult, especially since, as I was re-walking the same paths over and over, I had the time to form a pretty accurate mental map of the area.

  I wouldn't trust my ability to draw something completely accurate, but I wasn't getting lost. That was a very real possibility when so much of the underground looked the same.

  I suspected that Alyssa's little ghostly trick had allowed her to slip through walls and obstacles, otherwise there was no way she had properly scouted the area.

  After what must have been a half-hour of scouting around, I finally found a stairwell.

  It was behind a door that was chained shut, but someone had tried to force it open from the inside, and they'd left it ajar. Enough so that I was able to squeeze in through and into the stairs.

  They were simple concrete stairs, leading upwards. When I followed them by the light of a few old emergency lighting fixtures, I found a set of doors a level above, then a second a level above that.

  This was a maintenance area. Not a well-decorated space for civilian use. The stairs even had a built-in ramp in the centre for carts.

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  "Good enough," I muttered to myself before I turned tail and made my way back to the girls.

  When I returned, it was to find that the hole was now large enough for someone to squeeze through, but no one was working on making it any larger. Instead, all three girls were sitting down against the walls. Jenny had her PPE suit halfway off and was slowly taking sips from a canteen, and the other two looked like they were just chatting along.

  "Glad to see you all hard at work," I said, though it was only Sharp who heard it.

  "Regentesse Roflbottom!" Sharp said. "You're back! Did you find anything?"

  I hopped up and through the hole, then walked over and sat on Sharp's lap. "I did. A maintenance stairwell not too far away. Alyssa was correct. A number of the other corridors have been bricked off, just like this one."

  Sharp nodded. "We've opened enough of a hole to move through. Uh, but we were getting tired. Even all three of us taking turns is... not very fun. We're not very strong."

  "Hey now," Jenny said. "I bet I'm above average in terms of strength. Just... not made for this kind of endurance work."

  "I'm sure," I said flatly.

  "Right... oh! You guys can't speak cat," Sharp said with a nod. "She said that she found a maintenance staircase a little ways in."

  "I can lead you there," I confirmed. "Assuming you're done sitting around and being lazy?"

  "Yeah, we're done being lazy," Sharp agreed with a nod.

  "Good, in that case, carry me up, I'm tired of walking all over."

  Sharp snorted, but I soon found myself on her shoulder, and the others finally decided to stand up from their rest.

  Jenny took a few more swings at the wall, breaking through a couple more cinderblocks that she wiggled and then tossed aside. It was enough that the girls could simply step into the corridor beyond now.

  "Alright, kitty cat, lead the way," Jenny said. Then, in a lower voice that I was probably not meant to pick up, she said, "Man, I'm following a cat around now..."

  I led Sharp through the corridors, pointing out where to turn and where to go. Jenny, showing a surprising level of cleverness, pulled out a piece of chalk and made little marks on the walls, pointing back to the way we'd come. It was even some sort of glow-in-the-dark chalk, though I doubted it would continue to glow for terribly long.

  Once we reached the door with the heavy padlock and chains, the girls all paused. "This is the way up?" Jenny asked. She grabbed the lock and tugged at it. "Shit's locked up tight."

  "I think I can undo that one," Sharp said. "Maybe. It looks kind of heavy-duty."

  "That has little to do with the quality of the lock itself," I said. "And a lot more to do with its weight."

  Sharp shrugged, then pulled out a lockpicking kit from a pocket inside her PPE. She bent down and started to fumble with the lock, but only after Alyssa had a look at it. I suspect that she was checking for traces of magic or the like.

  Whatever we were moving towards, there was definitely some sort of magical crap going on.

  I hated jobs like those. Magic was always such a wildcard that it was hard to work around.

  "Alright, listen up," Alyssa said. "This is going to be easy as long as we don't make it hard. We're heading for a specific storage unit on sublevel three. It's technically restricted access, but it's not exactly high security. The problem is... there's a mage that should have made getting into any of the sublevels impossible. But we're coming in from a different angle, and we should be fine. Our job is to get in, get the box, and get out without drawing attention. Simple, right?"

  Sharp nodded while still focused on the lock. "What kind of security are we dealing with?"

  "Mostly passive stuff," Alyssa said. "Security cameras--though I don't think anyone's watching. The occasional maintenance drone, and if we're really unlucky, warding magic. The basement's been impossible to reach for a long time, so it should be unoccupied."

  "Why?" Sharp asked. "I mean, why is the basement blocked off?"

  "Some mage turned it into his lab-slash-tower. But he's dead now, so the magic keeping the place safe is falling apart. That's why it's a race to get the good stuff first."

  "Oh," Sharp said. "Well, that makes it kind of exciting." And with that, she tugged the lock down and it opened with a heavy click.

  ***