I crashed into something soft with a grunt, the impact almost absorbed, before whatever it was shifted, letting loose a growl.

I rolled to the side, blind, falling off whatever it was, feeling leathery carapace and warm scales as I went. I hit the ground, left hand catching my weight for a second, and then my right hand came down…into a deep puddle.

I fell sideways, face-first into the water, gasping as I forced myself back up, struggling to get my body to react after the savage beating I’d taken. But at least my new arm still worked.

Dragging myself free of the water, I frantically dug through the pockets of my jacket, thankful that they’d been too busy kicking the shit out of me to search me properly.

The cheap goggles that I’d gotten from Gunther on my first visit were still there, and I struggled to pull them on, gouging a bleeding cut on my forehead with my steel fingers and making it worse.

I hissed in pain, but blinked frantically. The goggles adjusted, linking to my chip and…

And suddenly the tunnel was bathed in green light. The tail of something I didn’t want to see the rest of vanished around the corner, out of sight.

I shook myself, quickly panning left and right, checking the entire area.

I was laid on what had once been train tracks, I guessed. The lip of a raised platform to my right blocked off most of the view in that direction, the ground ran off ahead of me to bend around to the right, and behind to bend out of sight to the left.

The ground was covered in a dozen centimeters, if not deeper, of old mud, filth and…and tattered, shredded clothing. I searched hurriedly, knowing the gun had come with me, and hissed in pain as I tried to move quicker.

I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. Hell, I probably looked like it too.

After a minute of looking, I found it. The old-fashioned slug thrower laid in a puddle, making me curse as I shook it, desperately emptying as much of the water and muck out as I could, before quickly checking the mechanism.

Searching around some more, I found an abandoned knife—a machete, more like—as opposed to the short blade I had on my ankle, and I felt a lot better with that in hand.

I also found a load of what could only be piles of shit scattered around. When I checked one of them, swallowing against the disgust that rose in me, I found it was liberally dotted with shards of bone and teeth.

Humanoid-looking teeth.

Those fucktards had been using this tunnel to dispose of their victims for a while, presumably people who they either owed money to, or who owed them money. But who knew, really.

It might have been the Girl Scouts who came to sell them cookies for all I cared. All I was sure about was that they should have fucking shot me in the head before dumping me.

One body or a hundred—I might have no authority here, but that wasn’t going to change anything. I’d get them for this.

Whatever I’d landed on was clearly used to regular feeds from above, and for it to move away when I’d still been alive? I had to assume either it wasn’t dangerous—which would normally equate to the same chance of survival down here as those Girl Scouts would have had in a bear’s den—or it was easily startled, and it’d be back once it was hungry.

Deciding that was the most likely of the outcomes, I forced myself to my feet, and scrubbed my hands in the puddle, before limping across to the raised platform. I dragged myself up and onto it, collapsing, panting, when I finally got my entire body over.

I laid there for long minutes, gasping and waiting for the pain to subside some, staring at the ancient, corroded metal of the ceiling, and wondering where I could lay my hands on a fuckload of high explosive.

Both far too long after I made it onto the platform and far too soon for my body, I forced myself back to my feet, left arm pressed to my stomach. I hissed out a breath, seriously glad I’d been wearing so much body armor.

I should be dead, or at least unable to move, so many bones broken that my only option was to lie there until something got hungry.

Instead, I was up and moving. Yeah, I was in serious pain, but I was also able to look around, seeing a pair of exits from the platform. They were both unmarked, and I chose the nearest one at random, bracing myself against a tiled wall as I shuffled along. I had the machete gripped tightly in my right hand, the gun—which I seriously doubted would fire, and even if it would, would draw way too much attention—was stuffed into a pocket, ready for an emergency.

The walls were filthy, a combination of old mold that had climbed high and fungus that covered unidentified piles in the corners. They released clouds of spores when I pushed past, making me cough and hack to get them out of my lungs. I grimaced, noting some old, and not-so-old, blood smears here and there.

I tried to walk properly, but could barely stay upright, and left smears of my own blood along the wall as I went, adding ambiance for the next victim.

The corridor joined another, but of course, it led down, rather than up. An arched ceiling little higher than my head was covered in dangling old growths of fuck knew what. I continued along it, no thought beyond following it and hopefully getting out.

The tunnel dipped lower and lower, before splitting around a metal-covered gate. Massive padlocks and welds sealed steel over it from fuck knew how long ago. I leaned against the gate, squinting into the gaps, trying to figure it out, before finally nodding to myself.

A lift, presumably one that led to the lower floors and higher, considering the shaft that vanished in both directions. But someone had really not wanted this opening again.

I looked left and right, and having no reason for one over the other, picked left. If you were stuck in a maze, and kept choosing left, you’d eventually find your way out…or so I was told once.

It sounded like bullshit to me, but hey, it wasn’t like I could file a complaint if it was wrong.

A handful of minutes passed in silence, beyond the occasional grunt and groan from me, or the sudden skittering of claws brushing against something nearby, before I found my first body.

It was in a bad way, having been shredded by dozens, if not hundreds, of tiny claws at some point. The remains, what little there were, were desiccated and broken, bones long since pulled this way and that as creatures foraged in the corpse.

I hissed in pain, crouching down and starting to search, little hope remaining. But I had to try. Most of the corpse was gone, eaten and broken, but whatever had feasted on them had no taste for metal.

A small chipset—no clue what it was, but about an inch across, with three tubes attached on the back, and spaces for connective tissue—was left behind.

I picked it up and pocketed it, searching the rest of the corpse. Aside from their standard neural jack at the back of the neck leading to the Keystone—which looked like something had gnawed it—I found nothing.

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I left that, embedded as it was in the spine, and frankly worthless; I moved on again.

Corridors came and went, shuttered and sealed mostly, but the occasional one was clear. Now and then, I’d find signs that this corridor had been sealed as well in the distant past.

I passed more bodies, scattered and broken, the vast majority missing their mods. I gripped my machete tighter, barely able to stay on my feet, exhausted, still bleeding steadily and…

I blinked, suddenly realizing that I’d stopped. I’d reached the end of the tunnel, a solid grate welded in place over it, and I’d been staring at it for who knew how long.

Glancing around, I tried to decide where to go, then shook myself. I could barely focus, I was that tired. I made my way to the edge of the grate, sitting and pressing my back against it and the sloped wall of the tunnel, telling myself it was just for a few minutes.

Just a few minutes, while I caught my breath.

I didn’t know how long I’d been out, head resting on my arms, drawn up tight around my knees, when the tugging sensation finally grew strong enough to register.

Blinking, I felt something tugging against my back, rhythmic, rough…

I twisted, pulling free and turning, then freezing at the growl of protest, and the blind eyes that stared back at me through the grate from inches away.

I frantically grabbed at my side, forcing myself to my feet and staring in horrified fascination as the specter shifted, pushing itself up as well, growling in anger at its interrupted meal.

Its face—no, its chin—was covered in red blood. I checked my side again, feeling the scabbed flesh that fucker had been licking through the grate.

I stared at it in shock, stunned by the knowledge that this thing had crept up on me, that it’d been feeding on me, lapping my blood up while I slept.

We stared at each other for long seconds. It reached up, fingers stroking down the grate, trying to get them through toward me…and I saw them.

The fingers of the left hand were tattered fragments of bone, the nails mostly missing, utterly fucked rotting meat. But the right?

They were filthy, but clearly synthetic, and I fixed on them, then the fucker that had been feeding on me.

Anger rose in me, anger that this shit-stain had dared to do such a thing. But also? Anger over everything that had been done to me. Everything that had happened over the last week or so.

I glanced at my metal arm, then his filthy one, and I nodded to myself slowly.

It was risky, insanely so, but I needed to get out of here. I needed to get back up top. And more than that? I needed to get credits. The underground was riddled with specters. In a city of a hundred million or so, all of whom were obsessed with mods, hundreds of new specters were created every day.

People who’d tried to cut corners, who’d trusted the wrong carver, or who’d been terminally unlucky in that they got a virus that was compatible with their mods, and that sparked just the wrong outcome.

All of it was possible, and it all led to a thriving undercity of creatures.

I’d heard the tales, growing up, of gangers who would buy the mods that could be harvested from specters, that they’d sell them to dodgy chop shops that asked no questions, and I gritted my teeth.

I’d never believed it, not really. Sure, there were rippers around, people who literally mugged and stripped people for their mods. To take healthy, intact mods? That was one thing. But to take the mods from a specter and put them in a normal, sane person?

I hesitated, then snarled to myself. I’d just had a lesson on how hard Artem treated those who let their guard down. It was time I looked out for myself instead. If I didn’t get my ass in gear? No way that Richie and Sync would get out of their cave.

I glanced at the arm again and nodded.

Well, Lucky had said he’d put me in touch with a carver. I’d not want to turn up to a normal chop shop with a bag full of torn-out mods, but maybe an orc wouldn’t give a shit?

Fuck knows, but one thing was for sure: if I came across more of these fuckers on the way out? I’d have to kill them anyway. Maybe it’d be worth the effort to strip them.

Either way, I was getting out of here.

The grate before me was solidly attached to the walls, made up of crisscrossing strips of steel, narrow enough that you could get a few fingers through, or, as that cheeky fuck had proved, a tongue.

I moved up close, staring through the grate and waiting, checking the width and wondering whether this fucker was dumb enough. It moved closer, so I crouched, drew my knife, and swapped it to my right hand, the machete in the left, then straightened, and moved even closer, staring into the milky-white rotting eyes of the specter.

Its skin was drawn tight, the lips pulled back to expose teeth that were split between gleaming anti-stain ceramic and blackened, rotting original.

The tongue was pinkish, the blood having soaked into it, and made it look slightly better. But half of it had been bitten off at some point, leaving a ragged section.

The overall look was of someone long dead, and not a recent body who’d gotten lost or was in the early stages, and they clearly wanted me.

We moved closer, the specter trying to worm its fingers through the gaps, even as it moved its face closer and closer.

I did the same, mimicking it and waiting.

Once we were eye to eye, literally with just the steel grate between us, inches away, I slowly lifted the blade and laid it point first against the middle of one of the gaps, waiting.

It shifted, watching the blade, clearly curious, but not aware enough to recognize it as a threat, then turned back to me as I leaned even closer.

It pressed against the grate, trying to force its tongue through this thicker section, and I moved.

The blade sank deep into one eye, digging through the decaying flesh and into the brain. It stiffened, and I shoved harder. Something scraped against the blade before it cracked, and the body just fell.

It collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, fully dead at last, although I’d never understood entirely why, considering they were literally the dead being puppeted by their mods until the brain was destroyed. I mean, why still the brain?

Either way, I pulled the knife back and wiped it clean, before searching the grate more carefully. After a few seconds, I growled to myself. It was sealed too well. Sod’s Law.

I set off back the way I’d come, limping, still in a hell of a lot of pain. But as I stretched out the muscles, forcing them to work, I found that although I was a mess of bruises, I probably wasn’t quite as badly fucked up as I thought.

I had some broken ribs, definitely, and I was basically one big bruise from head to toe, but the more I moved, the less it hurt in most places.

A decent medikit had to go on the shopping list now. A medium dose of good nanites would have me fixed up and back to peak health by the time I’d slept the day away.

I tried connecting to Gunther, to the city net, and then finally to anyone, including the fucking enforcers. Yeah, too deep. No connection at all, and I growled as I came to the first grate that a way through had been forced open.

The entrance was down near the ground, bent into the corridor I was leaving, and I hissed with pain as I laid down on the floor and dragged myself through the gap, grunting as I climbed back to my feet on the far side.

This new tunnel was much like the rest: flat tiled floor, arched ceiling, and small, presumably once-white tiles that covered the walls. I hesitated, seeing a map at one point, a handful of meters into the new tunnel. But considering it helpfully didn’t have so much as a “you are here” and nothing was marked clearly?

I moved on.

It ran for a few dozen meters, then split to the left and right. After sniffing the air, trying to locate any hint of a way to go, I thoroughly fucked my previously well-reasoned out plan of always going left by going right.

There was a reason. I wanted to find that corpse, after all, and considering the direction I’d gone, back away from the corpse, then right, then right again? I was heading back to what I hoped would be a parallel path.

It wasn’t, of course.

It led to another grate across what I assumed had been another lift access, splitting left and right, and I took the right, finding a set of steps that led downward a minute or so later.

I winced with each step down, but soon passed another two bodies. These two had clearly fallen in combat, and I paused, searching them both.

A handgun with no rounds and after a few seconds of mentally arguing with myself, I pocketed an optical implant: a full-on, old-school eye mod that covered half the right side of the corpse’s face.

The sounds that echoed around the stairwell as I removed it were horrific, and yet…judging from some of the bodies I’d seen already, there’d been far worse sounds in the past than the cracking of bones and the grunt of ripping free tech.

An hour passed. The bottom of the stairs led to a T junction, and I took a right, guessing I had a pattern by now, and after hitting a dead end, went back and took a left instead.

I passed bodies here and there, pausing to make sure of them before moving on if they were more or less intact, and searching them as I went.

Surprisingly, I found credit-chips, as well as things like watches, rings, and more on the corpses. But the lack of any viable weapons?

Someone had passed this way before me.

There was no way that a citizen of Artem walked around unarmed by choice. I could get occasional people being dropped by the merc assholes, and had I not landed on whatever lived in the tunnel? I’d have broken more bones and I’d probably not have gotten far, admittedly. But most?

I had to guess these were ordinary people who came down here for other reasons. Searching for loot, hiding maybe, or…

I searched the bodies I passed more carefully, not just for mods and weapons, but for how they died, and for those with missing mods, when they’d been removed.

More and more, now that I started to check, had been stripped post-death I guessed, and that pointed to others coming this way, looking for mods.

That gave me hope, lightening my step, right until I took the next corner and walked out into a sudden wide open underground station area with a dozen specters standing listlessly around one, much larger, fucking armed, and yeah, aware.

I’d just found a goddamn ghoul.