Chapter Fifty-Two - The Real World

  We left the house at half-past six in the morning only to hit traffic into Boston Two anyway. That was the biggest downside to living outside of the city. The traffic in and out was god awful at the best of times.

  Still, we managed to arrive at the courier's office before eight, which wasn't bad all things said and done.

  Markham was in his office, feet up on his desk and a mug of hot coffee being nursed between his hands when we came in. He greeted Sharp with a grunt.

  Derek, on the other hand, was a lot more enthused to see her. "Sharp!" he said before clapping her on the shoulder hard enough to jostle. "Good to see you, girl. Been a minute."

  "Oh, hi!" Sharp said. Derek looked... fine enough. He seemed to be back to full strength and was standing tall. There was no way of telling how his healing was progressing at first glance, but he at least seemed energetic. "Are you feeling any better?"

  "Good enough to work," Derek said with a shrug. "And that's what matters, isn't it?"

  "I guess so," Sharp said. "Does it still hurt or anything?"

  "Nah. The stitches pull sometimes when I move my abs, and I think the doctor told me not to work out for a month? But who listens to those?" Derek grinned.

  "Yeah, what do they know," Sharp said with a disturbing amount of sincerity. I... suspected that she'd never actually visited a doctor before. It might explain some things, actually.

  "If you two are done. Derek, I have a few annoying jobs for you today," Markham said. He slid his boots off his desk and groaned as he reached over for a tablet and tapped it a few times. "You'll need the van." He passed the tablet over to Derek and I caught sight of a city map on it with some markers.

  "Alright," Derek said. "Can't say I love sitting in traffic all day, but it's whatever."

  "Mhm," Markham said. His attention shifted to Sharp, and for a moment me where I was sitting on her shoulder, before he grabbed a second tablet and fiddled with it. "Anywhere you wanted to work in particular?" he asked.

  "I can ask for that without, uh, problems?" Sharp asked.

  Marham looked up to Sharp, then shifted a boot slightly. "I've worked with folks that have mixed-allegiances before. As long as you don't do me dirty, I don't care. You've proven alright so far. Don't stretch it though."

  "Thank you," Sharp said. "And I won't! Stretch anything, that is. Um... I am on a gig right now that's in the sewers near the northern end of Fenway."

  I sank my claws into her jacket. Idiot trusting girl. Markham wasn't so trustworthy that she ought to spill anything to him. Sure, this was for an unimportant side-gig, but still.

  "We don't have anything that needs delivering in the sewers," Markham said. "That's never happened, even. But the northern end of Fenway? That I can accommodate a little." He tapped the tablet, then nodded to himself. "We have at least four packages that need to be delivered in that area, and one pick-up. Do the pick-up first."

  "There and back here?" Sharp asked.

  "That's it, yes," he said. "Bit of a pain, but they paid for it. I'll shoot you the details for the other three once you arrive. I might be able to set up a drop-off for some other thing around there too, since you'll be in the area. This should go without saying, but you're representing the company while working for us and wearing that jacket. Don't go around covered in sewer gunk."

  "Yessir!" Sharp said with a quick and sloppy salut that almost threw me off her shoulder. "I'll be on my best-smelling behaviour."

  Derek laughed, but I think she was being honest.

  Could her Pocket perk pull out air-freshener? We'd have to test that, actually.

  Sharp looked over the delivery schedule, took some notes on a small pad that she pulled out from an inner pocket, then gave the boss a quick salute. "I'm off, then! I'll try to get everything done as fast as I can!"

  "I appreciate it," Markham said. "Now get going, the traffic only gets worse around this time."

  Sharp and I slipped out of the back and grabbed one of the courier bikes from a shed, then we were out and heading on towards Fenway once more. It had been a minute since we'd gone to the area.

  The traffic was, as predicted, terrible, but being on a bike actually made some parts not as unbearable. With none of the cars able to move more than a foot an hour, the chances of crashing was reduced a fair bit, and with so many other bikes and mopeds on the road, the traffic police were too busy to catch us slipping by.

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  We made it to Fenway, found the first delivery, grabbed it, and made our way back to the Courier's office. Sharp took a small break on returning, just long enough to grab a bottle of water and down it. I shared, drinking out of the cap.

  We then rode back to Fenway, but this time we made a slight detour.

  The sewers of Boston Two were... nothing too special, really. They were pretty much what was expected from a modern city built atop the bones of an older city.

  Entering them was probably as easy as popping open a manhole cover in the right area. The vast majority of the city's sewer system was nothing more than under-road piping. There was no way anyone sane could crawl through those.

  So, when people said that they were 'in the sewers' they were more likely to be found in the combined sewage tunnels under most of the streets and megabuildings in the city.

  In theory, those tunnels were meant to be... mostly pollutant-free. Wastewater from factories and mega-buildings was meant to be processed outside of the city, and pumped out to facilities elsewhere. In practice, plenty of folk dumped their crap down the storm drains.

  In any case, that meant that there was a network of highly polluted, dense, and very humid tunnels that were prone to flooding in spring right under our feet.

  They weren't pretty places to be, but no one honestly policed them unless it was urgent, and they made for decent smuggler hideouts, places for homeless camps, and areas for punks to hang out and feel cool about themselves while breathing in lungfuls of carcinogens and literal excrement.

  I wasn't a fan.

  "So, how do we get into the sewers anyway?" Sharp asked while peddling to our next pick up location.

  "You ask nicely. But... you can also find entrances all along the river."

  "Isn't the river like, hyper-dangerous?" Sharp asked. "Even at the orphanage, they warned us never to touch the water. Especially if it's foamy, colourful, dark, or bubbly."

  "I think that describes all the water in and around the Boston river," I said.

  "I think that was the point," Sharp said.

  Fair enough.

  The packages we had to deliver were mostly small things, and mostly destined to some nicer apartment complexes and even one rather nicely defended mansion tucked in the quieter part of Fenway.

  We didn't ask questions. People who could afford to have packages delivered directly and rapidly without using normal postal services tended to prize their privacy, and that was just fine for us.

  Sharp finished delivering the last package in the area just past one in the afternoon. Not too late, but not too early either. With a bit of time for a break that we could justifiably use for poking around, we started heading northwards, towards the river and presumably the sewers.

  Though we did stop for food along the way.

  Fenway had several large arenas, and arenas meant crowds of inebriated sorts who didn't mind eating at a roadside stall for prices that were frankly kind of ridiculous. I couldn't say it wasn't practical, however.

  "Oh... maybe we shouldn't have eaten," Sharp said as we approached the edge of the Boston river. It actually took some doing. The buildings nearest the river all had tall walls along the coast, and there was no easy access to the riverside. Most of it was actually cement rises, though there were a few rare areas where there was... something that could charitably be called a beachside.

  "It's not the prettiest sight," I said. "And the smell is, ah, not exactly pleasant."

  It stank of shit.

  "So, do you recall the exact wording of the gig?" I asked.

  Sharp covered her nose with one hand and fished out her phone with the other. She'd copied the post on there before we left. "Uh, looks like the person who posted the gig wants someone to find an entrance in the sewers, one into... Mega-building 371. You know, this sounded a lot easier when we were at home."

  "It always sounds easier when you're at home," I said. "Welcome to the real world."

  ***

  https://www.patreon.com/RavensDagger/redeem/CF533) I have a new story that'll be going up in late Feb that might interest some people, and I'm really eager to get feedback! Chapters will be posted on my Patreon starting today, so if you join for free, you'll get to read this fic a month before it launches and give your opinion/ideas to shape the story early!

  Here's the crappy AI mock up cover! Real cover coming as soon as the artist is done with it!

  Blurb:

  The dragons are dead. Their colossal forms, once the lifeblood of an empire, now rot in the wastelands of a cursed continent. The people they empowered—humans made unnaturally strong by dragonkind's gifts—have been driven to madness by their absence. The land festers, shrouded in mystery, death, and a creeping decay that no living being dares approach.

  Magus Maldrak Hollowspine is no stranger to impossible odds. Driven by curiosity and a desperate need to save the daughter lost on the decaying continent of Draya Calyrex, he crafts a solution that skirts the very edge of life and death: puppet-automatons animated by necromantic sorcery. Through their lifeless eyes, Maldrak will walk the ruins of a dead empire, searching for the truth behind the plague, the madness, and the dragons' fall. Yet some truths are meant to stay buried—and some lands are better left forgotten.

  Basically, it's what happens when I play 300 hours of Elden Ring in two months and then get ideas. Male MC (I know, right?) but cute gay puppet deuteragonists. Lots of magic, exploration, combat, and weird sword-and-sorcery flavoured post-apocalyptic city building?

  Uh... trust me? It's better than it sounds?