The harsh hum of the city’s underbelly reverberated through the dimly lit corridors as they dragged me from my cell. The stale air was thick with the stench of decay and sweat, but that wasn't what was dulling my edge. Halfway down the hall, one of the goons had jammed a pneumatic hypo against my neck. Whatever synthetic garbage he’d pumped into my veins was spreading fast, a cold, chemical burn that made my teeth ache.
My head still throbbed from the probe's assault, but I forced my focus, scanning the tunnel walls, crumbling slabs tagged with grimy murals and slogans from a propaganda era long gone. Rust crept like a cancer, crawling into every crevice of this forsaken maze.
The guards flanked me, their patchwork armor a motley mix of rusted plates, frayed straps, and scavenged tech held together by a blend of desperation and ingenuity. Their battered stun guns hung loosely at their sides. They spoke in low, clipped tones, their words laced with the casual brutality of those who had long since adapted to the harshness of their world.
“Ya hear ‘bout them Red Talons?” one rasped, voice gravel chewing gravel. “Left a line o’ stiffs by the old refinery. Pretty work.”
The other snorted. “Pfft, Black Veil’s been at it too. Hit Underhand’s stash last night. Jax ain’t gonna be happy 'bout that.”
Their chatter crawled behind my thoughts, a soundtrack of dead cities and worse men. Even with my weird ability to process the toxic air, it felt like breathing wet lead.
My eyes darted to every shadow, wary of potential threats.
The chamber we entered stank of sweat, machine oil, and something fouler, burnt flesh, maybe. A circular platform rose in the center, grime and rust-streaked, surrounded by a shoddy rail barely pretending to hold back the mob below. The periphery was a chaotic bazaar of illicit flesh and salvaged chrome. To my left, a hooded broker haggled fiercely over a bruised wretch locked in a suspension cage, while across the floor, cred-sticks flashed hands over crates of stripped cybernetics. Slavers, buyers, freakshow tourists. Faces twisted by greed, boredom, or whatever passed for taste down here.
The lead slaver was a riot of bad decisions, plump and glistening, his outfit a crime scene of clashing fabrics and gold-painted plastic. Goggles the size of saucers sat on his face, turning his eyes into insectile distortions. Every movement he made was a theatrical flourish, his voice dripping with a peculiar blend of formality and condescension.
“Ah, splendid! A most curious specimen,” he drawled, a silken voice, adjusting his goggles with meticulous care. “Such a fascinatingly refined character.”
He prowled around me, fingers twitching, itching to touch but holding back. The predator circled its prey. The restraint only amplified the unnerve of his scrutiny.
“Divines! Jax, what an exquisite find!” he sang, practically vibrating. “Truly, a marvel!”
The gang leader stepped up, a walking slab of meat with metal cage for jaws and a voice like a landslide. “Price just went up,” he grunted, jerking a thumb at me. “Ain't like the others, this one. Got the fancy look, with the hair and them eyes. And breathin' the rot? That's worth a damn lot more.”
The slaver’s eyes gleamed behind his goggles. He leaned in, calculating.
“Breathing the miasma, you say?” he murmured, half to himself. “Now that is something. How much are we talking, my good man?”
“Triple,” Jax said, his breath rancid with the smell of cheap synth-beer and half-rotted food. “Then we talk.”
“Triple, you say? My, my, ambitious, aren’t we?” The slaver’s smile was all teeth and velvet. “But let’s not descend into crassness. Mutual satisfaction, yes? We wouldn’t want to sour the relationship.”
“Ain’t no relationship,” Jax growled. “Just a sale. You wanna play, you pay.”
“Very well,” the slaver purred, waving a hand like he was swatting a fly. “But mind your tone. Dignity has value too, dear boy.”
My head buzzed, the slaver’s silky words clashing with the gang leader’s rough growl. I could feel the tension winding tighter between them.
“Quite the show, eh, master?” Arvie’s voice teased. “I’d say this is the part where you make your grand escape, but something tells me you’re not quite ready to leave the stage just yet.”
I couldn’t help but smirk. “Right,” I replied, keeping my expression neutral. “We both know I’m stuck in this mess, but let me try.”
I rolled my wrists against the heavy synthetic zip-ties, feeling for a weak point. I tracked the exits through the haze. Two heavily armed guards by the main ramp, both favoring their right sides. The lead slaver was unarmed, relying entirely on the muscle flanking him. If I could snap the ties, I could drop the guard on my left, use his stun gun to clear a path to the red lit conduit, and...
The room tilted. My vision swam, the edges of the crowd blurring into smears of color. The hypo's payload was dragging me under. My muscles were wet sand. I had to wait for another opportunity.
Something pulled at the edge of my thoughts, formless, like a word I couldn't place.
Then a quake hit the place, a savage lurch that punched up through the floor and kept going. The platform shrieked on its mounts. The shoddy rail gave way on one side, spilling a scream and several bodies into the crowd below. The suspension cage above the hooded broker swung wild on its chain, the wretch inside slamming against the bars with a sound that didn't need describing. Somewhere in the dark above, something structural let go with a boom that rolled through the chamber like a second quake chasing the first.
Dust sifted down. The crowd found its feet in stages, checking itself for damage and finding enough to be unhappy about. The bazaar reassembled, badly, around its own wreckage.
Valcor materialized from behind an overturned display case, coat askew, one chain swinging loose across his chest. He straightened with elaborate composure, adjusting his goggles with meticulous, injured care, as though the tremor had targeted him specifically.
“This again!” he announced to no one and everyone, voice dripping with pure affront. “Again. One endures the indignity of this district.” a hand swept the settling dust “and still the ground itself sees fit to contribute.” He plucked a fragment of debris from his lapel between two ringed fingers and dropped it with visible distaste. “This city is becoming quite impossible to conduct business in, my dear. Quite impossible.”
Jax hawked something into the wreckage and said nothing. The consensus appeared to be that the quakes were getting worse and complaining about it was Valcor's job.
Valcor sniffed and turned back to me, the calculation behind those insectile lenses already reset, the tremor filed and forgotten. “Now then. A rare asset. Breathing the miasma, he says. Quite the addition to the right collection, indeed.”
The deal closed, as if preordained. The slaver’s muscle, two gaunt figures with the pallor of forgotten things, moved in with practiced precision. Rough hands slapped a blindfold over my eyes, the fabric rough and acrid against my skin, and the world shrank to the hum of hydraulics and the rasp of my own breath.
They shoved me into a transport, a big bastard from the sound of it, thrumming with power, armor-plated probably. Something built to crawl through collapsed cities, not glide over them.
The journey blurred into a series of disconnected, nauseating impressions. Engine growl. Blind dark. The chemical heavy in my blood making my limbs feel completely detached from my brain. Voices sounded like broken code. Arvie was a whisper in my skull, her presence the only anchor in the sick rhythm of metal and dread.
Then the transport stopped.
The blindfold was ripped away. Searing, sterile light stabbed into my retinas like needles. My brain was misfiring badly now, rendering the world in choppy, disconnected frames.
It was a subterranean chop-shop, a seedy medical den reeking of industrial disinfectant, ozone, and rot. Surgical auto-docs, mechanical spiders dangling from ceiling tracks, waited in the sterile glare. No words were spoken. Just faceless silhouettes in fluid-stained aprons grabbing me. I tried to brace my legs, tried to throw a shoulder into the nearest shape, but my body wouldn't obey.
Rough hands forced me backward into a pod. Cold metal kissed my skin, sending a delayed shiver up my spine. Activity buzzed around me as the pod sealed shut, the interior closing in, a second skin of molded steel.
A hiss filled the pod, gas swirling like some malevolent fog. My thoughts slowed, the world slipping away as consciousness faded. Arvie’s voice lingered, the last tether to something real, whispering through the encroaching void.
“We’ll get through this, you and I…”
And then, nothing. Just the cold embrace of my bartered destiny.
ns216.73.216.67da2
and then Add to home screen.