Birds Of A Feather, Chapter 1.2 (Patreon)

Chapter 1.1 of this particular work is available here:

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/drichs-drabbles.626815/page-21#post-107206415

1.2

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I moved forwards, coming a bit closer to the skylight. It had an access window, which was currently closed, but the only thing keeping it closed was a padlock that had clearly seen better days.

My talon flashed, and the padlock came apart. I worked it off the window, keeping an eye on the man.

He didn’t budge.

I grabbed the window’s edge, giving it a light twitch to see how well it would move.

It was a bit squeaky, but not too loud. I moved it carefully, reducing the sound as much as I could, until the opening was wide enough for me to fit through.

The man continued to watch his screen.

I glanced at the camera, waited two seconds, and then...

Dropped.

My robes fluttered quietly, spilling out around me as I let myself crumple to absorb the force of my landing, making it quiet. I wasted no time, pushing off the floor and gliding backwards, crossing the distance in barely a moment and rising to my feet underneath the camera, hiding in its blindspot.

One, two, three, four... five.

There was a very faint sound of gears clicking, and I heard the camera buzz as it rotated in the other direction. I waited until it was about halfway done for it to clear the path, and then dashed off again.

I paused, briefly, near the window’s edge.

The man reached up, and scratched his neck.

The camera’s clicking finished, and I continued onwards, over to the stairs and then downwards.

There was a door at the bottom, facing right, but it didn’t look to have any locks or alarms attached to it. It was a solid thing, no glass for me to see through, so I leaned closer to it.

I couldn’t hear much. A faint squealing noise, a motor in disrepair, but aside from that, nothing.

Hmm. I poked the handle experimentally, and when it didn’t make much noise, I grabbed it and carefully pulled the door a bit.

The smell hit me more than anything else. Old, rotted blood, thick enough in the air that it was nearly tangible. I want to believe that it is the result of exceedingly poor ventilation, but...

I know better.

They’ve been here for a while.

The door opened into a hallway with two paths, one going straight ahead and the other going right, both faintly lit with a couple old bulbs. With Cybereyes, that wasn’t too much of a problem.

In any case... No wires that I could see. Sensors... no. Solid flooring, no pressure plates. Not even much in the way of stray scrap to trip on and make noise.

I pulled the door open, and moved inside. The right path led to a closed door, the straight path led to a door -a thick one, at that-, another turn... and also a dead end, for some reason.

There were some boxes there now, yes, but that obviously wouldn’t have been the normal building plans.

Hmm. Straight? Straight.

I went forwards.

The door was first. Again, it was pretty thick. Solid stuff... As were the walls it was attached to. Very thick. Quiet, too... Insulated? Soundproofing?

Hmm.

I tilted my head, listening... And on the other side of the door, I could pinpoint the squealing motor that was still going.

The... ‘operations’ room, then.

My eyes closed, and my head dipped. I refrained from taking a deep breath, here. I didn’t want that smell to get stuck in the back of my throat.

I was going to go in there. Just... not... not yet. No matter how much my talons itched at the thought of it all.

I kept moving.

The next path was another long one. A door immediately on the left, the middle of it covered in reddish brown stains of odd shapes, with another door right at the end of the hall.

Sanitation clearly had not been a concern at any point, here. How... charming.

The whining motor shut off. The silence it left behind was oppressive... But not complete.

I could hear, faintly, the sounds of a creaky chair. A series of sharp clacks, one after the other. A keyboard... and either someone was fond of the older styles, or these guys either didn’t or couldn’t get something better.

The better question, however, was whether or not that was the guard from before.

My head tilted to the side. I could hear no other footsteps. Whatever nebulous supernatural bullshit I had going on was choosing not to chime in either way. Logically...

Well, how many people did you need for an operation like this? If these Scavs were going out and making acquisitions, quite a few, but I had yet to see any evidence of that. Considering how long they seemed to have been operating... Well, either people weren’t being observant, or they had been sufficiently subtle when it came to bringing people here. Considering the sheer amount of blood in the air and the sheer weight of odious malevolence...

Perhaps this was only a processing center? Bodies get delivered here, then get ripped apart for their cyberware, and they stay busy but relatively quiet... Crew count, low. Throughput, high.

Mmm. No way of knowing.

The motor started up again, its whine consuming the noise of the clacking keyboard. I moved forwards, towards the bloodstained door. The sounds of the keyboard had come from the end of the hallway, and I was going to check that out soon enough.

Right now, though...

I paused as I eyed up the bloodstained door. It really was just... absolutely covered. The handles, especially, which had layers of blood that had been applied so often that the metal seemed warped and twisted just by how thickly layered it all was.

How spectacularly unpleasant.

I extended a hand slowly, twisting a single finger so that the outer curl of my talon pressed against the handle. It fortunately required nothing more than just a slight bit of pushing to open it.

I peeked through the gap, and saw nothing. With a bit of careful force, I pushed the doors even further, opening them slowly.

Inside was simply racks upon racks, arranged tightly together and with remarkably little maneuvering space between them. The ones at the back were full, boxes layered upon the shelves with additional racks then moved in front of them.

I ducked through the doorway, twisting my body so that my robes didn’t brush over the blood. The door shifted to close behind me, and I caught it with the same talon to make sure it closed gently.

A quick glance around confirmed that there was nothing new to see. Nobody in here, just the racks and the boxes.

As for the boxes themselves... Most of them had blood on them. Not as much as the door had, but certainly an absolutely unnecessary amount of blood around the lips and edges. Most of them were shaped like handprints, and at this point, I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not this macabre aesthetic was on purpose.

Seriously, it’s insane. The complete lack of cleanliness...

I’d have sighed, but I still didn’t want the scent to get stuck in my throat.

I advanced, moving to one of the more recent boxes judging by the blood not having flaked so much. With a talon, I lifted the lid of the box, and immediately found out where all the blood had come from.

Inside of the box was a piece of Cyberware. It was a flat, thin piece, but evidently a rather important one considering it still had nerves and muscle attached to it. It had been ripped right out of the body.

Etched on the side -and again covered in an unnecessary amount of gore- were some words I could barely make out. ‘Zetatech’ was one of them, and there was another that began with an ‘S’ but was cut off by the blood.

This would be the storage room, then...

Well, the lack of cleaned Cyberware did explain all the blood on the door. Rip the pieces out, then just walk right over and toss it straight in a box...

Seriously though, not even cleaning the Cyberware? Wasn’t the Cyberware the entire fucking point? One would expect that they’d show a bit more care for the merchandise if nothing else. The scale of this implied they weren’t amateurs, so either they were going through so much product that cleaning was a waste of time, or the blood was very deliberate indeed.

So, fucked up, or fucked up...

Well, it doesn’t matter. I’ve seen all that I needed to see, and I was in agreement with my nebulous supernatural bullshit. This could not stand.

I let the lid fall back into place, and turned around. The inside of the door was only slightly less filth than the rest of it, but I didn’t let that stop me.

Again, I caught it before it could slam, and instead simply let it shut quietly. Then, I turned down the hallway, and started moving.

The next door was marginally cleaner, at least, but a single glance at the hinges told me that it was going to squeak something fierce no matter how quietly I tried to open it.

So, I didn’t bother.

One talon pushed the door open with a sudden, loud whine of rusting metal, and it opened wide just in time for me to see the guard from before suddenly look up from his computer, facing the door.

I move. The world around sharpens into quiet stillness.

His eyes have barely even finished widening before my hand closes over his scalp.

My hand twists, and a loud snap echoes through the room as his head turns to the other side of his body.

His arms and legs barely even have the chance to twitch before he’s rendered limp, neck snapped and brainstem thoroughly twisted out of place. The sheer speed of it had been enough to cause secondary damage, rendering the end of consciousness very sudden.

Noise comes back. The snap echoes for a moment, but fades quickly enough as the motor’s whine overtakes it.

“Fast.” I murmured to myself. Because it had been. Just... an absolutely absurd boost of speed and even more potent acceleration, and I knew that I could still move faster.

The body I’m holding died before he could blink.

I let go. The body falls back in its chair.

For a moment, I simply stood there. A life, ended in an instant, and I feel...

Little. A wrong righted. An evil ended. No joy taken in the act itself, only the certainty that this particular cruelty would not continue.

“Mmm.” I hummed. “Something to consider later.”

For now, though...

My attention turns to the computer he’d been working at. It’s open to an email chain.

I pull the chair and the body out of the way, and quickly read through it. The inbox only goes back a week or so. There’s an advertisement -recent, only yesterday-, but aside from that, there’s a few names which I certainly hope are codenames, because I can’t imagine anybody actually naming their child Brickface Wallhammer, but I know for a fact that in this universe, I would find someone that stupid.

The contents of those messages, though...

Well, if I’d doubted my conviction or nebulous supernatural bullshit before... now there was no question whatsoever.

This place apparently doubled as an XBD producer. The worker in the operating theatre recorded himself... processing the bodies. They came in dead, for the most part, but these guys somehow managed to turn relatively straightforward Scavving into... Well, worse things than that. Suffice to say, pillage, rape, and murder, and not necessarily in that order.

There was unfortunately nothing to tell me where the deliveries were coming from -that was compartmentalised information-, or when either deliveries or pickups would be expected. Unfortunate.

I’ll have to make do.

One dead. That leaves two more to go.

And neither of them knew I was here.