By the time I made it back to the apartment, I was roaring drunk, dressed slightly better than I had been, and yeah, broke as fuck.

Gunther had sorted me out, as I’d hoped he would, and he’d looked out for himself as well, ripping me off well and truly. I staggered out of the lift, waving generally at the gang members as one of them tried saying something. Somehow, I made it down the corridor, through the darkness, and to my own apartment, only burning my fingers three times on the lighter.

I didn’t remember much of the night before when I awoke the next morning, but the pounding hangover, the reek of cheap whisky, and…yeah, the bloody and battered knuckles told me I’d spent longer in West Shamrik than I should have.

I was half dressed, having evidently passed out drunk while trying to undress, and I’d apparently vomited at some point. I wrinkled my nose, looking at the congealed mess on the floor. With absolutely nothing else to use, I had to gather it all up with my hands and wash it away in the sink.

The apartment was by now in an even shittier condition than when I arrived, and stank to high heaven, but ten minutes of cleaning, followed by scrubbing the floor with my still sodden top from the recovery clinic—then flushing it away—meant the room was livable again.

I forced myself to go through the full two-hour workout, despite being desperate for a drink, some food, and a fucking shower. The water ration I’d used yesterday was three days’ worth, and if I wanted to use the toilet and shower each day for the rest of the week, I was going to damn well need to be tactical about using it from now on.

Panting and covered in sweat, I lathered up and quickly rinsed off. The entire shower took less than a minute. The lease stipulated it’d charge by the “gallon used or time, whichever was the greater, and each minute of usage would be rounded up.”

Basically, if I went to sixty-one seconds, I’d have two minutes’ worth of water flow deducted from my tab. Assholes got you every which way they could.

Still, now clean, and feeling a little more human, I was ready for the day.

I had sixteen credits left to my name, but yesterday had been about more than seeing an old friend who bought and sold dodgy gear.

I’d sold him the three handguns—all trash tier, cheap and mass-produced—but for thirty credits a piece. That’d taken me to two hundred and ninety-five after my train ticket, and I’d gone on a spending spree.

A decent jacket—army surplus, as that was literally what he stocked, but not bad. A second pair of combat trousers, reinforced and in good condition. Two tops. A hip holster for my handgun, a back holster that would do for either the shotgun or the rifle. Some basic-as-fuck body armor—it’d been blatantly scavenged and repaired—gloves, some tactical goggles. And, just in case, a pair of flash-bangs.

It didn’t seem much for the money, considering it was all secondhand, but I was now as comfortable as I could be. I could see in the dark thanks to the goggles, and I’d got a lead on a few quick credit jobs that I could do to scrape enough together to pay the entry fee to the cheapest of the merc guilds.

They, in turn, would pay the bare minimum for jobs. But considering the situation I was in? Bare minimum was something at least.

An hour later, I was dressed, armed, and getting both far less attention and slightly more respect, dressed back in army gear, armored and departing the train, only two stops along the line.

The area I was in was shitty, but I wasn’t likely to get many jobs collecting on debts in nice places—not for a cut of the claim, anyway.

These were the kind of debts that got written off, and that people like Gunther bought for an absolute song, sending some muscle to collect anything that could be sold.

The location in question made me curse as soon as I saw it.

Thankfully, it wasn’t some little old lady. Gunther knew me enough, and had some standards left himself, to refuse those kinds of debts.

The three gangbangers lounging outside the shuttered-up shop that was my target, smoking and jeering at the passing girls, weren’t going to make this an easy call.

“What you want?” one asked, perking up as I approached, misunderstanding my reason for being there. “Skiff? Char? Got some angel dust as well, for the right price.”

“Here to see Hector,” I said calmly, as the other two rose from the shitty plastic chairs, moving to either side of me.

“Why?” The figure before me sniffed, scrubbing at his nose. The purplish glitter suggested that the angel dust he had wasn’t likely to be as much as he had a few minutes earlier.

“He owes a debt.”

“So?”

“So I’m here to get the creds,” I replied flatly, seeing the way they moved, and the hands moving to guns.

“He don’t owe you shit.” The talkative one threw his shoulders back and widened his stance, resting his hand on the butt of a handgun. “So you turn around and fuck off, maybe we forget about this.”

“This doesn’t have to get nasty.” My RI tracked the other two as they moved, projecting probable locations based on sound and the distance they could have traveled.

Fuck, the prediction was rough, though, considering the way it’d normally appear.

“You come onto our turf, you want my money? Oh, believe me fool, it does!” the fucker before me snarled.

“You Hector?” I asked, and he snorted.

“Nah, dog. I own Hector…”

“Own…” I glanced at him, at where his friends sat on the wall outside of “Hector’s,” a dilapidated shopfront that looked as if it’d closed down decades ago. But the traffic, and them?

“He’s your chemist?” I asked, and the one before me smiled.

“He’s workin’ off his debt to me. He don’t owe nobody else nuffin’.”

“He owes me fifty credits.” I grit my teeth when they laughed.

“Fifty creds?” the one before me hooted. “Fifty goddamn creds? Bitch, he owes me thirty K! You want fifty creds? I’ll pay you to go fuck up some fools for that. Shit, fifty creds!”

“You about to get your ass kicked for less creds than I spend on getting my dick sucked, fool,” the one to my right whispered, stepping in close, visibly relaxing and deciding that I was little threat. After all, who’d send anyone serious after such a pathetic debt?

I smiled, looking from the one directly ahead to the one to my right, locking their locations in, and then glanced at the one to my left.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“So, who wants to go first?” I felt the rising adrenaline, now that the situation had moved from “possible” into “definite” violence, and the old mad thrill.

“What?” Lefty grunted, as I struck.

My first target was the one to my right, a chop to the throat. No need to kill him outright—none of them had drawn a weapon…yet.

I hit hard, though, and with my training, he was out of the fight at the very least. He’d probably be fine with a little medical help, but that was as far as my goodwill went.

The one on my left, I grabbed, slamming my left hand down atop his right as he tried to draw his gun from the hip holster, holding it in place, even as I ripped my own gun out and paused, waiting.

The one in front, the mouthy one of the three, had tried to pull his gun free, but the iron sight had caught on something in his pants, making him almost castrate himself as he tried to rip it free.

In the time it took him to look up, he was staring down the barrel of my gun, Righty was coughing and wheezing on the floor, unable to breathe, and Lefty…well. I’d closed my metal hand over his flesh one, and he hissed in pain, trying to draw the gun still.

“Now…I came for Hector,” I said softly. The people who’d been walking past on the sidewalk hurried to be anywhere else…but once they were what they judged to be a safe distance, they paused and watched curiously, most utterly unconcerned if some gangbangers got hurt.

After all, fewer gang members was good for everyone—less chance they’d pull a gun on someone innocent.

There was a handful of heartbeats as I waited, before Mouthy released his gun and lifted his hands.

“Fine, you want, what? Fifty creds? Here.”

I acknowledged the knock. My RI located, reported to me, and blocked the crude attempt at the trace he activated as well as the money transfer.

“Ah-ah.” I shook my head slowly. “That’s not nice.”

“Fuck nice,” he growled. “You’re a dead man walkin’.”

“You tried to spike the transfer,” I said. “You don’t get to know who I am. You don’t get to come after me. I came for a debt—it’s paid. You want to live through this? You view it as a cost of employing Hector. We all walk away, and nobody gets hurt.”

“Nah. I’ll find you,” he promised, eyes wide, pupils dilated, and I snorted. “I’ll find you, and I’ll f—”

“Fuck’s sake, you know what? Fine! Whatever, you dumb motherfucker. Guilty.” I sighed as I pulled the trigger, blowing his brains across the metal grates of the shop entrance, then rammed the barrel against the eye of the man on my left.

“What do you think?” I moved slowly so that he was between me and the door now, and so I could clearly see the third figure still on the floor, gasping, with a damaged trachea. “You think you’ll be coming after me?”

“No…” he whispered, eyes wide. “Cost of doing business, right?”

“Good boy.” I smiled. “Now you fucks just cost me ammo, and ruined my good mood. I’m going to let go of your hand. You’re going to let go of the gun, and you’re going to transfer me a hundred credits…”

“I’ve only got ten.”

“Ten?”

“My girl…” He swallowed.

Not for the first time, I wished there was a way to check someone else’s balance.

“Fine. Whatever, dickhead. Gimme.” I felt the knock and nodded, accepting the transfer. As soon as I let go of his hand, he cradled it under his arm, and I pulled the handgun free, feeling by the weight that it was almost certainly empty.

“Goddammit,” I growled. “Their guns, and credit-chips,” I ordered, getting a shitty, badly modded gun that looked as if it were from some ancient war, a knife that would be slightly less use than harsh language, and a container full of drugs.

That I took, dumping them all in my bag, before gesturing to the door into the building, the one covered by their friend’s brains.

“Now let’s take your friends and go see Hector.”

“Why?” he asked dumbly.

“Why?” I glared at him. “That fucker owes a debt!”

“But…” He shrugged, grabbing his friends at my direction and dragging them inside.

The shop had been stripped. Everything but the walls were gone. A mass of chemical equipment was spread across three tables, with a figure huddled in the far corner, trying to hide under a sleeping bag.

“You Hector?” I called, and a terrified pair of eyes peeked out over the top of the tattered fabric, before nodding frantically.

I sighed, glancing around the room, noting the utter lack of any creature comforts. Literally, his sleeping bag was laid on a tiled floor, and the only things in here, besides the chemistry equipment, were two glass door cabinets with shit growing in them under heat lamps.

“Get your ass up,” I growled at him. I’d been planning to get the credits from him as well, so I didn’t have to share the money I’d gotten outside, but yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.

The state of Hector as he stood made it clear that he’d not been getting paid for his time. Hell, he’d apparently not been getting fed and watered, never mind paid.

He was a lanky elf, clearly one with a pharmaceutical bent to his mind, and he looked like he’d been here awhile. His pointed ears were…well, one looked fine. The other had been recently hacked into a rough rounded shape, presumably by these assholes, judging from how bloody and battered it was.

His skin was pale, grey almost, rather than the golden hue most of the posh fucks had, and his fingers were bloody, the nails chewed—hopefully by him.

His clothes were filthy. His blond-gold hair looked like straw. And his eyes? Shit, he’d been on the ragged edge for a while. I could see the tracks of tears in the dirt on his face, and I growled, seeing the state of him.

Seeing him was a distraction, though, and one that nearly cost me my life as Lefty lunged at me with a scalpel aimed at my throat. I went to bat it away, bringing the gun around, and cursed as my new arm moved far too slowly.

The scalpel darted around the arm, and buried itself in my side. Most of it was stopped by the armor. The tip was all that made it into me, but that fucking hurt, despite only being a flesh wound.

Not as much, admittedly, as the slug that tore through his chest and out of his back though, sending him staggering, and the second shot that took him in the head. As he fell, Hector screamed, promising me anything I wanted, and the guy whose trachea I’d damaged struggled to his feet, taking a bullet to the chest, then one to the head when he fell, just to be sure.

By this point, Hector was practically frothing at the mouth, shrieking and trying to hide under the bedding, as I searched the dead, swearing.

Nothing of any use.

A watch that was probably worth about a credit, clothes that were ruined by blood, guns I already had in my bag, and another two containers of drugs off the table.

Well, drugs weren’t part of my remit. That was a city enforcers job, so fuck it. The chemist might be guilty of making drugs, but he was probably more guilty of being terminally fucking stupid than anything else.

Once that was all in my bag, and I could distantly hear the warbling siren of the enforcers that someone had presumably called, I turned to the elf, huddled in the corner.

“Hey…HEY!” I yelled, getting the eyes peeking out again. “You want to go to jail?”

“N…no?”

“Then run! Get out of here, you idiot!” I ordered him, not waiting to see whether he listened as I headed for the door.

I made it outside in a handful of steps, banging the flimsy door off the wall as I ran through it. The distant flashes reflected off a wall to the left, telling me which direction the fuckers were coming from. Knowing them, they’d have all scanners active when they arrived at the scene.

My guns might not draw much attention—this was Artem, after all—but the containers of drugs would. And, again, I had no authority to dispense judgment anymore.

I sprinted to the right, the crowd parting to make room for me. I put my gun away, taking the first alley on the right, then the second right as it came up.

Now heading back along the street, running parallel to the one I’d just left, I paused, dropping into a fast-food joint and ordering a bag of food randomly from the board.

It wasn’t the food that was important; it was the bag, and these places always advertised with…yeah.

The figure behind the counter, a grey-faced, clearly miserable half-orc, went to hand me the food in a bright-white, logo-covered bag, then looked confused when I knocked on him, and transferred a credit.

“A big bag, mate,” I requested.

He frowned and shrugged, handing over a second bag as requested, this one much larger.

I dumped my shoulder bag into it, putting the food on the top of it in the second bag, and turned my army coat inside out. The inside was black and looked a bit stupid. It wasn’t intended to be reversible like this, but it wasn’t a fashion statement.

Instead of a guy wearing all army gear and body armor, holding a gun with a backpack, running in one direction, I was now a guy in combat pants, which were common, a black jacket that was closed up, and a carrier bag full of takeout.

It’d not stand up to real scrutiny, but that wasn’t the point.

The streets were full of hundreds of people at all hours, and I weaved in and out of them. Now, unless I passed a transport with its scanners going—unlikely, as high-powered scanners running constantly fucked with everyone’s mods, and they’d get lynched—all I had to do was keep going, and get to the mag-train.

Twenty minutes after that, I sent Gunther a message with the details, and I was on my way to the next job, happily eating my takeout, feeling a little happier about the organelles as well, considering that replacing my organs with them meant the scalpel had literally missed everything besides a little fat and muscle.

It stung, but that was fucking life. I wondered whether Hector had made it out before the enforcers arrived. They’d have pinned that slaughter on him most likely, otherwise.

The least possible effort was about their style. But fuck it, I’d given him a chance and that was the best anyone could expect.