I made my way across the sea of trash with ease, even running in some spots where the trash was so compacted it was almost like solid ground.

On the final stretch, a landscape of sheet metal stacked like crackers that slanted more and more the closer I got to Meek Pox, I jumped and slid down into the Meek behind a rusted building that looked like three stacked tin cans. The streets were mostly vacant, aside from a few stray cats and a few stray people.

“Meek Pox. Stay inside. There has been another attack from the Sun-Seekers. Lock your doors. Andalaf is here to help. Meek Pox. Stay inside. There—”

The message repeated over the speakers, but there were no Andalaf infantrymen, not in this part of the Meek.

“Unnnhh,” a voice grumbled to my right. I turned to see a black-cloaked figure lying down against the slope of trash. “Edd God …” he said. I wrote him off as drunk.

As soon as I set my feet on the wide road that ran between this stretch of closed businesses, I saw figures stepping out from between each building. Some with rods, some with wooden clubs, and one even carried a Sachiblade. Men and women, spread thirty feet in either direction, with all different colors of hair, most wearing leather or nothing at all.

“Hey Luther?” one woman said.

“Huh?” said another.

“How much is a Sachiblade and armor worth to us?”

“More than your life, Janey. Let’s go,” Luther, the one with the Sachiblade, said dispassionately. Then, as one, the entire gang sniffed from bags of Sachi powder in one cacophonous snort. Luther charged at me as I took a quick snort of my own lightning-invested. He had two gems slotted into his blade: earth, and wind.

I ran at him, tapping my ice to send it at his Sachiblade, but unfortunately, he wasn’t an idiot, and he sidestepped the tendrils as they branched out in the air around him, slapping them with the flat of his blade, shattering them. I needed to get that earth away from him, or at least disabled. Swinging brutishly, in hard downward strokes, he came for me. I blocked, then rolled to my right, where a woman in red leather clubbed me hard in my side. The Sachiarmor did its job, but a dull pain still reverberated.

I blocked another potential strike, then rolled away again, back to Luther and his Sachiblade. I had to get that earth. I tapped fire. The flames exploded toward Luther, but he quickly tapped his wind Sachi gem in his own blade, blowing away my flames, keeping them from touching him, but they licked at six of his gang members, the wind aggravating the flame even more, burning the six to a crisp. I ducked beneath his wind and flame, tossed my hooked pommel up, catching it backhand, then twisted up, blade arcing up toward him. I knew he wasn’t fast enough to block, but he managed to flick two fingers to his earth gem before I could hit him.

The Meek road cracked in jagged arches. His own members were falling into the chasms, but he didn’t seem to care as he touched it again. A boulder threw me against one of the scrap metal buildings, and I lost my breath. I struggled to my knees, then my feet, but his wind pulled me up and threw me against another building on the opposite side.

I tasted blood, and I couldn’t believe that nothing more than a gang of Meek scavengers was beating me. I heard footsteps approaching, but my head felt foggy. I tried to get to my feet again, leaning against the building, but stumbled back down. I hadn’t slotted my healing Sachi yet and didn’t have the energy to do so now.

“Come on, you son of a bitch! Did you steal that armor or what?”

“Luther! It’s her! It’s the girl from the tower!”

“What?”

“You know what kind of Andalaf credits we could get for turning her in? Old Andy Andalaf’s offering fifty-thousand!”

“How soon before the sky falls?” Luther said.

“Oh fuck that if he’s paying.”

Luther hesitated, then nodded. “True enough.”

I felt a sharp, intense pinching on the back of my neck. Then, an invigorating energy filled me: the need to stand, to move, to run, to do.

I turned around. Someone from the Silence was behind me, holding an empty syringe. They put a finger to the painted black mouth on the mask, then pulled out a pure black Sachi gem, not the dull black of an illusion Sachi gem, but a slick, oily, moving black, like it was alive.

I stepped around the Person of Silence, holding my blade at the ready, but allowing them to use their Sachi. I was not going to get in their way. If they planned on taking me and turning me in, like the gang, then there was nothing I could do, not with that gem in their hands.

The gang approached. Luther smiled and looked at the Person of Silence with the oily black gem.

His smile disappeared as a black demon three or four times my height appeared in front of us. The demon had four large, muscular arms that ended in black edges sharp as razors. The body was lean and corded with muscles, four legs, and I saw three streams of urine flowing down between its legs out of three penises. The urine pooled at Luther’s feet. The demon shrieked, then charged.

Luther attempted the earth Sachi again, but it was useless. The demon stepped over the fissures in the street as if they were nothing more than tall blades of grass. The four blade-arms cut through ten of the gang members at a time. It worked fast, and the gang fled as Luther’s head was severed from his body. I looked over to the Person of Silence and saw that they were shaking.

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“Call it back! You can’t keep it here!” I said. “You’ll die!” My heartbeat was out of control, partly from the shot of speed and partly from worry about this person who had saved me with their summon Sachi. I thought of Morfran. He’d shake in the same way, unwilling to call his demon back. But Morfran was a different type of Chudo. The others who tried to mimic him died shortly after the shakes started.

The demon let out another shriek, then it disappeared as it was called back to its realm. A different world, not one I’d like to be in.

The Person of Silence fell to the ground. I bent down, changing out my ice-invested Sachi gem for the green healing one I got from Ai. I tapped the healing and placed it over the shaking form, a thin green mist drifting down over them. I took off the mask.

I’m not sure why I was surprised. It made sense that it would be Ai, but I suppose I didn’t expect her to come after me. I was just a woman who fell into a field of flowers after destroying a drill tower; who follows that woman? Besides Shun, that is, but that was kind of our thing.

“You left,” Ai said, sitting up on her elbows. “You lied.”

“I didn’t want to trouble you any further,” I said. “I appreciate you saving me—twice, now—and for the Sachi. It’s more than enough.”

“You lied. But I don’t think you’re a liar.”

The smile.

“Um—”

“Come on,” she said, getting up the rest of the way and walking to the sea of trash. I hesitated, blinking stupidly, then grabbed the Sachi from Luther’s Sachiblade and followed Ai up the slope.

I crested the hill, Ai waiting for me in her Silence mask.

“Does your dad know you’ve left?” I asked, pulling my cloak tight and readjusting my scarf. “Are you … ok?”

“Questions!” she said, jubilant. I was a bit confused that she was in such spirits after her demon killed all those people. “He gave up on trying to keep me home long ago. That’s why he got me this outfit. And yes. I’m fine. Shaky, but fine.”

“I just mean … when I … did my first one. It hit me hard for a few days. So …”

She turned on me. “First … one?” She considered me from behind her mask. “Ah. I see. What makes you think they’re my first?”

I shrugged.

“I’ve grown up being chased in the Meeks because I’m Sallis-Faint, and because I’m a woman. I don’t like killing. But I fight when I think it’s right.” She pointed with her chin to the broken streets where the gang attacked. “I thought it was right to help another woman alone in the Meeks. With creeps sniffing at her, Chudo or no.”

I did not say, but I could relate. Growing up here, doing things I wasn’t proud of for credits and Sachi … sometimes doing those things and getting neither—you learned to survive.

We walked in silence for a time.

“What’s it like?” I said, avoiding a nasty patch of jagged sheet metal poking up. “I might have to get used to it.”

“What, killing? Awful. Terrible. But it must be done. In gardening, we call it weeding, and you don’t revel in it, but—”

“No,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Making the rational decision to stay far away from Andalaf by hiding. I might have to consider that way of life now that my face made the endorphinscreens.”

“You’re right. My father has good reason to worry. But sometimes, I just feel like taking this mask off and walking around the Meeks until the Jonnys come and take me. Y’know? Be done with it.”

“Yeah. I’ve felt that way before,” I said.

“You have?”

“Sure. It’s easier to give in and let someone else take the wheel. That’s why everyone stays in the Meeks.”

She laughed. It was like a song.

“It seems a little convenient for an ex-Chudo to write off the reasoning as ‘this is just easier for them,’” she said, giving me a smile as she lifted her mask to rest on top of her red hair.

I chuckled. “I suppose. But this is where I’m from. And I came back here. Chose to.”

“And blew up the tower that provides you with such freedom from the big bad world of decisions,” she said, giving me a frank look. “Don’t you think you came back more for a sense of home? And comfort? There are far too many reasons why someone doesn’t leave a place they know is poisoning them. To write it off as a fear of—”

“Fine, Ai. Weren’t you asking me if I could relate?”

“Well, yes.”

“I can, and that’s how. I suppose I should speak for myself. It’s just something I’ve noticed as a pattern with others as well,” I said. Shun didn’t challenge me like this. I’m not sure that actually helped, though.

“I’m sorry. That probably is a reason for others, as well as you. I just feel that sometimes it can be … an easy explanation.”

“Well, now we’ve come full circle. Maybe I should argue that point.”

“No, you really shouldn’t,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because you’d lose.”

“How do you know about this shit anyway? You’ve been holed up in that paradise with your dad, haven’t you?”

“Oh, no. I told you I get out. My dad just finally got me a mask to wear.”

“So you talked to people then? Without being exposed as a Sallis-Faint?”

“I have my methods. The face paint trend came in handy for me. I’ve talked to all sorts of people in the Meeks, and I can tell you, your reason isn’t the only one.”

“Never said it was—”

“You implied it. A narrow view. And someone wearing that suit cannot afford a narrow view. Whether you like it or not, you became an Upper-Plateau woman the second you put on the spinal. It gives you a certain air of … privilege.”

I felt the leather squeak faintly as my fists tightened. I stopped walking.

“You can’t say that—you have no fucking idea what I’ve been through,” I said, staring at the metal trash as if the intensity of my gaze would set it on fire.

“Ningyo—”

“No, I’m fine with you coming and helping me if you feel like you have to or whatever, but you can’t tell me that I don’t know the suffering of the Meeks or of those who work upstairs. I do. I’ve been through it.” Asahi’s face filled my mind. She’d made that happen twice now, in two excruciatingly opposite ways.

“I was trying to show you that you might not understand how that suit changes the way people hear what you say.”

“You said I was privileged.”

“I said the suit gives you an air of privilege.” She said it calmly, not breaking eye contact with me. “An air, Ningyo. Really, they didn’t beat that sensitivity out of you in Chudo?” She smiled again, as if I wasn’t just angry. As if she didn’t mind. As if this were all a game.

My face softened. “No, they leave some of that in so we can truly appreciate our privilege.”

She laughed. “Well, I think you could do—”

“What is that?”

Just over the next ledge, there was what looked like a giant, golden bird cage, the top peaking over the trash as it glided by on the road below. As it passed a large dip in the trash, exposing the bottom, I saw that it was a giant cage, holding people—naked people. I cursed under my breath at the horror of it.

The cart was far enough away that it was hard to make out their faces, and it was moving at the speed of a car. I said, “Is that …”

It was Shun, trying to conceal her breasts with her knees, sitting up against the far right side of the cage’s golden bars. The cage was on wheels, and a cart pulled it along and out of my sight.

“I have to go. Thank you, Ai. That’s my … friend, in the cage.”

“I’ll help you.”

I didn’t have time to argue.

“Fine. But I won’t wait for you. You have to keep up.”

She ran past me through the trash in the direction of the cage, and I followed close behind.