Chapter One Hundred and Ninety-Two

***

The first thing I checked was the door. It was solid. A few good thumps with the bottom of my first against the wood made a nice, deep sound, and the door didn’t jutter in its frame too much. That was a good sign. A lot of apartments had doors that could be kicked in with way too much ease, as I’d recently discovered. 

I wasn’t fond of that at all. I was rather fond of a place that had solid doors. 

“Okay then,” Becky said as she reached over to the panel next to the door. There was a keypad there, which was... less than ideal. Those could be hacked. She typed in a five digit code and a small light went green.

I twisted the handle and stepped in.

The apartment was relatively small, but not cramped. The entranceway had a small closet to one side, and a rack for shoes on the other, with a mirror behind it. It led directly into a small space with two doors.

I walked up to the one on the left and pushed it open. A bedroom? It was about half the size of my previous apartment. That was to say that it was spacious enough. There was a bed just large enough to fit two, if they didn’t mind skinship, with a table next to them. One wall had an in-built closet, and there was a modest dresser in the corner. A small window at the back gave a narrow view out into the city.

It was decent. A little dark, with very little light coming in, but the place looked new enough.

Becky squeezed in past me and immediately sat on the uncovered mattress of the bed and started to bounce. “Nice!” she said.

“We can christen the place later,” I said as I turned back. It wasn’t so fast that I didn’t see the explosion of red splash across Becky’s face. 

“Huu?”

The other door in that small entranceway led to the bathroom. It wasn’t anything too impressive, though it was twice as big as my previous apartments. That only meant that there was a whole foot between the toilet and shower. 

I could live with it. The shower was way newer than the leaky thing I had, and it didn’t smell like sulfur in the bathroom, which was nice. 

The corridor led off into the rest of the apartment. There was a small kitchen, with a stove, a small fridge, and some counterspace, an island separated that from the living room, where there was room enough for a couch and TV, and then there was another door into a room a little larger than the bedroom with nothing in it. The living room had a sliding door onto a tiny balcony. 

It wasn’t a huge space, but it had three times the square footage of my last apartment and was a solid three decades younger, at least. Young enough that the paint still looked fresh and the place didn’t smell faintly like mold. 

“This is nice,” I said.

“Bit bland,” Becky said. “All the walls are white or grey or beige. It’s not exactly shiny, you know?”

“Walls can be repainted,” I said. I wouldn’t, because that sounded like a lot of work, but they could be. 

“I guess,” Becky said. “There’s room in that corner for a nice display case, and you could hang a TV off that wall there. Plus you have an entire office for gaming.”

“I could turn it into a home gym,” I said. “Or a place for music.”

“Oh, right, you do music,” Becky said. “I saw your guitar! I tried to learn music a few times, but it never took. You should play something for me when we get back!”

“I’ll serenade you later,” I promised even if the thought of playing in front of someone made me feel rather vulnerable all of a sudden.

We puttered around, opening cabinets and flicking lights on and off, but really, there wasn’t too much that could be done.

I did take pictures of every room. I had once spent a decent bit of time using some of those digital furnishing things online where you could post an image of a space and see it filled with brand-name stuff. 

I’d need to furnish the whole place, so I might as well start shopping around now, even if this wasn’t going to be a timeline I wanted to keep.

We left soon after, riding back on my bike to Becky’s place, though we did stop by some 24/7 place to eat some cardboard burgers. We started the conversation on music, and pretty much stayed on it. Becky had opinions on music in general, but most of her listening time was split between anime OSTs and video game OSTs.

Not that either of them weren’t music, some had bangers, but it was a strange part of the entire ecosystem, since those songs were usually stuck in their own little corner of the world, listened to by fans and such, but rarely breaking out into the mainstream.

My tastes weren’t exactly mainstream either. I liked more oldschool punk rock and anything sung by a particularly hot woman, which made for an eclectic mix.

It was good conversation, though, even if I couldn’t help but feel a little queasy about it.

I wasn’t keeping this timeline. I liked Becky, she was a good friend, she was cute, too. I felt a certain way about this version of her never existing.

We made it back to her place, and I expected to sit around and do nothing for a while. Honestly, I could use the break. Maybe I’d spend the next couple of days just gathering intel? It wouldn’t hurt to know the approximate location of a few more breaches. 

I definitely had to push through a few more portals. If the last couple of days--of real time--had proven anything, it was that I needed more power. 

If I reached C-rank, then fucking with me would become a much riskier prospect, especially since I’d proven that I could punch up as a D-ranker.

“Oh, shit,” Becky said.

“What is it?” I asked. 

She had grabbed a cellphone when we got to her place, and she raised it up. “We have a job!” 

“We do?” I asked.

“Well... I do, I guess,” Becky said. She walked over then slumped onto the couch next to me. “Uh, it’s an escort mission, I guess. You know Franklin?”

“He’s.. I vaguely recall meeting him, like a month or two ago,” I said.

“Nah, it wasn’t that long ago! He’s a big guy. Water mage. Been a rat forever. Anyway, he’s usually out with Josh since Josh is... smarter, but uh, he’s off to meet some friends solo. I mean, some of the other Rats are going with, but not like, a lot of them? And none of the others are anything more than E-rankers. So Mousey wants us to go with.”

“Us?” I asked.

“Well, she didn’t say that you couldn’t come, so that’s as good as permission.”

Right, this wasn’t a corporation where fifty pencil-pushers were looking over every choice in case it broke some obscure liability thing. 

“I guess I might do a ride-along,” I said. “Who are we meeting?”

“I think that gang Mouse wants to work with. Don’t know their name.” Becky hopped off the couch, then ran over to her room. “I’m gonna get geared up! Oh, should we go in costume?”

“Probably not,” I said. “This isn’t a... us thing?”

“Ah, right! We need a name for out secret club, by the way! I think... the Killer Belles!” 

I frowned. “Really?”

“I picked Belles because it’s a fancy word, and I bet Fran likes those,” Becky replied. She was changing without closing her door. So I stared the other way. I was dressed about as well as I could be for this sort of thing.

Becky returned, dressed in River Rat chic, which meant punk clothes with extra rips. “Ready?” I asked.

“Yup,” she said.

It was a quick ride down to the ground floor, then we left out the back and moved into a parking lot a block over. A few old delivery vans were parked around there, the boxy kind of car that I wouldn’t give a second glance at if they drove by, though these were maybe a little rusty and rough.

Around them were a dozen River Rats, folks dressed up like street toughs, the only matching elements were frequent grey and blue bandanas and some of them had ‘water’ themed clothes on. T-shirts with the Great Wave on them or waves stenciled onto the backs of coats. It was rather subtle as far as gang signage went.

Franklin was the big guy, sitting on the passenger seat of one of the vans. “Becky, you made it. And on time too, damn. This your girl?”

“Ah,” Becky said.

“Hey,” I replied. “And no?”

“Ah,” Becky repeated.

What had she been telling people?

***