And There Was Another✔️

Chapter 11: Just Red

Thankfully, the doctor had a picture of his son in the datapad he'd given Seth. It didn't occur to him that he'd completely forgotten to ask that until he'd left the clinic and walked for a few hundred meters. That was probably a good indicator of how screwed up he was just then. His headache was back and his body was aching and he was irritable. Seth studied the info as he walked on, and once he'd memorized the map, he set a good pace and tried to keep to himself, stuffing his hands deep into his pockets.

He wanted to be done with this.

He wanted to be off this miserable, awful cesspit of a world.

Seth tried to clear his head as he finished his little trip through the Lower City. Or this portion of it at least. As he came into another section, making his way slowly down one of the other thoroughfares, he could tell he'd come to a worse area. There were fewer people around, and those few that were in the area seemed to be sticking to themselves, trying to hurry to wherever it was they were going. Fine by him, the fewer people around the better.

Extractions were tough, especially if the person involved might not want to be extracted. Then again, this might not be an extraction. Seth wasn't sure what he was going to do, honestly. He was going in essentially blind. He didn't know the layout of the apartment building, didn't know if anyone was going to be there, or if they were, how many or how armed they were? Well, he was just going to have to wing it.

Seth thought that he was at least...kind of decent at doing that.

Not like he had a lot of options right now. But he did have a good bonus on his side: the stealth unit he'd picked up earlier. He moved in between derelict apartment buildings and heavily grilled and shuttered storefronts, past drifts of garbage and even the occasional corpse that was apparently just left to rot where it had fallen. Somewhere distant, he heard blaster fire, and someone shouting. Occasionally, in between the buildings, he caught sight of a tram shooting by on its rails, embedded in the area beyond the structures.

The Lower City's design was strange and dangerous and worrying. There were places that were just exposed to the massive drop down to the Undercity with seemingly little done to protect against the hundred meter fall. How many corpses were down there, resting on the roof of the Undercity? He didn't want to think about it.

Seth found the apartment. It didn't look all that much different from the others. The windows were mostly shuttered, the front door was closed, the place looked like crap, filthy and rusted in several areas. Garbage was scattered across the walkway in front of it. He kept walking, moving to the side apartment and slipping into the alleyway there. Okay, time for the run. Still not too sure what precisely he was going to do, Seth activated the stealth unit. He double-checked it and saw that it should be good for about half an hour of continuous use. Hopefully he could get in and out in that time frame. He began checking the windows.

All of them on the bottom floor were shut up tight.

He found an old ladder lashed to the side of the structure and made his way up it. It creaked and groaned occasionally, but held until he reached the top, finding no other windows that were easily accessible. No one on the roof at least. He crept over to what seemed to be a maintenance hatch and checked it out. It was old, to be sure, and in need of some maintenance itself, but it was still functional at least.

Seth opened it up.

Staring down into the room it led into, he froze as his eyes fell on a prone figure, lying on the floor, unmoving.

Crap.

Was it a dead body they'd stashed away?

One of the gang members sleeping off some drugs or booze?