The trip to my new apartment was a slightly less violent one. As much as I’d tried to clean off, the fight had left a few stains on my clothes, especially from the guy I’d stabbed. Surprisingly, even in this city, there were few people who saw a man in blood-soaked clothes stomping the streets with a bag full of guns over his shoulder and decided to fuck with him.

The enforcers, of course, took note, pulling in alongside me as I trudged along, looking me up and down, before getting out of their transport and making me stop for a “wellness check.”

They searched my bag, one of them unsubtly pocketing the two credit-chips they found there—empty; scum like these being exactly why I’d already cleared them—and asked me some shitty questions about the state I was in.

“Just got discharged today from the army,” I answered flatly, giving them no reason to say anything. “Someone was hurt outside the recovery clinic; I helped him in. That’s it.”

“That’s where the blood’s from?” one queried, looking me over.

“Yup.”

“Why’d you help?”

“Just helping a fellow man in need.”

“You one of those religious nutters?”

“Nope.”

“Why all the guns?”

“You seen this fucking city?”

“Fair.”

“You broke any laws?” the second asked suddenly, speaking for the first time, now that he was finished searching me for “contraband” and having pocketed another cred-chip, presumably having some way to unlock them.

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Davy, you dumbass,” the other one groaned, looking at me as if to say What can you do? “Come on, if he has, he’s not gonna come out with it, is he?”

“He might…”

“He won’t.”

“Look, guys, you about done? I got discharged this morning. I really need to sleep, and I need my pills.”

“These pills?” Davy dug through my bag and held up the container. “What’s in them? These drugs?”

“Yeah. You see my name on them? You see that they’re sealed?”

“Yeah, so?”

“So there’s nothing in there but what it says on the scrip. You think I’m smart enough to forge a seal like that?”

We all looked at the iridescent seal that ran in a loop around the top. Then they looked at me, and he spat after a few seconds.

“Probably not,” he admitted.

“Exactly. Look, I’m not looking for trouble, and I’m not being a dick. I just want to take my pills, get some sleep, and figure out my life, right?” I entreated the slightly less thick one.

“You live here?” he asked, and I shrugged.

“Army paid for a month for me to sort my life out, so I guess so?”

“Right.” He grunted. “Well, nobody with any money or clue would live here by choice. Behave yourself, citizen.”

“Yeah,” I growled. “Will do, thanks.” I forced as close to a smile as I could manage, noting that the other one made no move to give me back the credit-chips.

They turned and sauntered back to their transport, and for a long second I idly considered shooting them both in the back of the head. Not for any reason, not really, just that the enforcers were always like that.

Fucking dickheads from birth to death, corrupt as the night was dark, and those who weren’t? Well, they soon ended up floating in the river.

Eventually I forced myself to remember that it wasn’t my place, though. I…we brought the law to the wastes. We had no authority in the city. We had no place here, and even if the APS did? I was out of the army.

I’d take care of the guilty as I saw them now, but I’d never again be responsible in the way I’d led a squad in the wastes.

Corruption and city police forces went hand in hand, and the few who weren’t thieves, who weren’t bought and paid for, or who weren’t on the take outright? They never lasted. The others couldn’t afford to let the occasional good guy who wandered in by accident survive long.

They gave snakes a bad name, and made goblins look trustworthy.

I watched the illuminated golden sign as they pulled away: ACE, Artem City Enforcers. Beneath it, in golden letters, read the words “To protect our way of life,” and I snorted again, shaking my head and picking my bag up.

Everyone knew what that sign meant. They protected their way of life. Fucking assholes.

I slowly made my way across the sidewalk to the apartment building, stepping inside out of the harsh sunlight, and breathing a sigh of relief, before snorting and spitting at the acrid stench that filled the air.

“Hey!” someone shouted. A short, wrinkled older woman shuffled forward, jabbing a cane at me. The stench got markedly worse the closer she got. “You clean that up, ya hear!”

“What?” I frowned and looked around. The foyer of the apartment block was black with filth, smeared mud and quite possibly shit up one wall, and mold covered the front of a vending machine, clawing its way up the inside between the glass and the light that proclaimed its “wonders.”

I’d tasted the nasty as soon as I’d taken that breath, and spitting it out had been instinctual.

“Spittin’—it’s a dis’gustin’ habit! You clean that up, ya hear!” she snarled at me, before edging closer, shuffling sideways and peering up at me from between greasy locks. “You new here? You…you a hooker?”

“Yes, I’m new, and no, I’m not a hooker,” I growled.

“You sure?” She flattened her hair down on one side and peered up at me suggestively. “Maybe I can change yer mind?”

“Uh…no.” I moved around her and headed toward the elevator.

“No, you’re not sure?” she tried, smiling hopefully.

I sighed, stabbing my finger at the button for the sixty-fifth floor, before turning back to her. I was going to be here a few days at least, and there was no need to take my foul mood out on this crazy old bat.

“I’m not a hooker, but thanks for the offer.” I forced a smile.

“Well, can’t blame a girl for tryin’.” She sauntered off, kicking a pile of rubbish that was piled in one corner, and laughing when a voice rose in drunken complaint, then started to search them, expertly dodging a kick from the body.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I shook my head as the doors closed. I turned, looking around the piss and blood-stained interior of the elevator, waiting as the mag-lev slid me up the tower with reassuring speed.

Looking out over the city, I smiled as glass sections opened and the lower buildings fell away, shaking my head as for the first time in a long while, I was reminded that the city could be beautiful.

When you stripped away the corpo scumbags, the enforcers, the criminal gangs, and the assholes, what was left was the city herself. And when you looked? It took your breath away.

The harsh sunlight reflected off towers of glass and chrome; metal of all colors held a mind-blowing variety of projectors, and a riot of colors filled the air. Advertising slogans were too far away to see clearly, and so they projected images, perfect smiles and grassy fields, paradises of easy living and more.

Those, in turn, blurred into streams of colors when you saw them from somewhere like this, as nobody in their right mind would try to advertise to the people who lived here.

I distantly saw the homes of the mid-level wage slaves, crafters, high officers, and corpo starting slots. All the real “better than the rest of us” scumbags lived atop the towers, or in the slender elite megastructures that radiated power and wealth. But here and there?

We still existed.

Regular giant megastructures like the apartment block I stood in now were dotted around the city, restrictions on how many could be how close to each other, due to the immense weight of the structures. Rather than let us have actual homes in the nicer areas, we were jammed into these megaliths, half a kilometer on a side and a hundred stories high. Each floor housed nearly six thousand apartments, and fuck, they were horrible places compared to virtually anywhere else.

What those fuckers out there didn’t care enough to see, though? Was that this was where the real city lived.

The lift had been hacked at some point by a juvenile motherfucker, as rather than the traditional chime on arrival at the destination, there was an amusing fart noise, ending with a subtle note whose suggestion was clear that trousers would need to be changed immediately. I sighed and turned; the doors before me slid open slowly, as music rolled in, along with clouds of smoke from the half dozen gang members who stood about talking or sprawled on couches dragged near to the doors.

All conversation stopped as I strode out, and after a second, the sniggers started.

“Fuck, man, look at that arm!” One laughed.

“She-et…my gramma got better mods than this fool—she bin dead ten year!” another called, half laid back in a filthy old padded chair.

“What you doin’ here, fool?” A third stepped forward, and I stifled a growl.

My instinctual reaction was to compare these street and tower thugs to the people I’d fought alongside and against for the last nine years.

They were utterly no threat in comparison.

My second was that they were certainly a threat to the innocent, and probably guilty of something.

But…I wasn’t wearing an APS. I wasn’t armed to the teeth with the latest and greatest the military could provide.

I wasn’t surrounded by my squad, and last of all, I was still barely walking at this point. If I pissed these guys off? They’d slaughter me.

“I live here,” I said coldly, knowing damn well that if I backed down, I was giving off a signal that I was prey. Do that? I was dead, and we all knew it.

The trick was not to be prey, and not to be a challenge they couldn’t ignore. I couldn’t cow them all the way I’d normally do it, so instead I needed to be a threat, but not one that was worth the effort.

“Nah, dog,” another voice said, and I turned, seeing the characteristic tilted eyes and tipped ears of a half-elf as he strolled forward, a drawn sword laid across his shoulders. “This here’s our place. No street trash like you allowed.”

The space I’d come out into was a nexus of five corridors. Three were lit, one was blocked off by battered and broken-looking boards, warning signs plastered across them, and the fifth…

“I’ll be here a month, tops,” I said firmly, turning to walk in the opposite direction, reading the sign on the wall to the left, and following it.

“Hey asshole!” Elf-boy called out. “I didn’t say you could leave!”

“Nope, you didn’t,” I agreed, as two more of the gang moved to intercept, closing ranks ahead of me.

“What’s in the bag?” one of them asked, and I fixed him with a glare.

“You blind or just dumb?” I shrugged the bag. “It’s full of fucking guns.”

“Gimme.”

“No.”

The one on the right pulled a short plasma knife out and thumbed it to life. The sputtering glow, as it flared and the containment chamber struggled to maintain its form, bathed us all. “I said…”

“I said no,” I repeated, whipping my personal gun out and resting the barrel against his forehead. His eyes widened slightly, the speed not being something he was ready for, as he went cross-eyed staring down the barrel, and I thumbed off the safety. “Anyone moves, and I kill him.”

“Nah,” an unknown voice rumbled.

I shifted slightly, looking toward the dim corridor. Every instinct told me that this was the power behind the gang.

“Nah, you won’t kill him. You do that, and we kill you.”

The idiot before me spoke up. “Yeah, fool! You—”

“Shut it, Jerry.”

“Uh…yeah, boss. Sorry,” the terminally stupid Jerry replied, swallowing in fear.

Although the barrel of my gun was still pressed to his forehead, I knew it wasn’t me he was afraid of.

“That’s a nice gun.” The boss slowly moved out of the shadows.

I grit my teeth at what I could see in my peripheral vision.

Orc blood, I knew straightaway: the grey-green skin, the overdeveloped musculature, the jutting forward chin—all of it.

I’d fought with, alongside, and against orcs for years. They were some of the most dangerous opponents out there, and one of the most shit-upon races to make up the city.

Walk away from an orc like this? It would be a fight, no matter what.

“Yeah, personal piece.” I lowered it from the idiot’s temple, turning to him and holding it up, angled to the side so that he could get a clear look at it.

As I did it, I was insanely conscious that there was a spitting, flaring, and barely contained plasma projector masquerading as a blade right behind me, but…I had to show I was unafraid, or I was dead.

“Revolver?”

“Hurricane model.” I nodded. “Custom upgrade with personal gene-ID and twelve-shot cylinder.”

“Mind if I check it out?” he rumbled, striding closer.

I hesitated only a second, before flicking the safety back on and twisting it around, offering it to him grip first.

He took it, looking at the grip, nodding at the barely visible electrodes.

“High charge?”

I nodded. “Two hundred and fifty.”

“Impressive.” He grunted, hefting it experimentally, turning to point it straight at my face. His gang members laughed and hooted, while we stared at each other, looking for the slightest shift, the giveaway that would bathe the corridor in blood. And, to their surprise, he nodded slowly, grudgingly.

Then handed the gun back.

“Boss?” one of the monkeys asked, confused, and getting a glare from him.

“How long you say you’ll be here?” the boss asked me instead of replying to the idiot.

“A month, probably less. Army paid for the month, regardless.”

“Medical discharge?” He glanced me over, seeing the blatant fresh chrome, and I nodded. “A month. You have any issues here? You come see me in my office.” He jerked his thumb back to the dim recess he’d been sprawled in with a few women; he nodded to me and turned, wandering back the way he’d come.

“Uh…will do,” I muttered, before turning to the idiots who still blocked my way, seeing the shock on their faces. “So, you gonna fucking move?”

They practically fell over themselves getting out of the way.

I moved past them slowly, forced myself to walk at a steady, unhurried pace. All the while, my heart hammered and my legs shook. Adrenaline and a trained and experienced readiness for violence warred against exhaustion, the remnants of drugs, and the sheer overload of damage, stress, and changes that had been inflicted on my body and mind over the last few days.

I staggered along corridors, with only the occasional light to see by. The deeper into the tower I walked, the darker it got, as the windows got rarer and rarer. So did the working lights, with even the Aug-World connections dropping out.

By the time I found my apartment?

I was down to using the lighter that I’d stolen from that old grey-bearded fart, and I was damn thankful for it.

I “knocked” on the door through aug-space, offering my ident. After a brief second, it slid open, exposing a squalid room. It was barely big enough to hold my bed, two shitty built-in closets, a gun cabinet, a desk with a single chair, a transport crate with my gear from the barracks, and the bathroom, complete with a shower.

That was it, in a room I could almost touch opposite walls in at the same time.

It was tiny, it was shitty, and for the next month, it was all mine.

I forced myself into the shower, collapsing to sit on the floor in the tiny cubicle, chin resting on my knees and deep in thought, as much as I’d wanted to hit the sack.

I needed to process the shit I’d just done, and take a long hard look at who I was now. I’d been changed by the army—hell, that was obvious. We all were. But I’d been further trained and taught that if anyone crossed the line and was a danger to me, my team, or Artem’s interests? The best response was summary judgment.

I hadn’t always dealt with shit like that, and the constant cocktail of enhancement drugs the army provided had kept me purring along. But now?

Now I needed to figure out who I was. I wasn’t APS anymore.

Did I have the right to judge? Did I have the need to? Could I just walk away? I’d regretted that Sync had started to execute the scavs combatants—they’d gone for the guns, which made them valid targets, but still—I needed to have a hard look at myself.

The more I thought about it, though? If I gave these fuckers an inch, they’d kill me. I’d known growing up before the army that if you turned your back on a threat, it’d stab you, and what’d changed?

Nothing really, I decided. Nothing at all. The only difference was that rather than being in a full suit of armor that kept me safe, and let me have the luxury of making mistakes, I was now exposed.

I had to strike first. I had to, or they would—and my friends would die in that cavern.