At first Hinote acted like he didn’t need my help until Shun pulled him aside. When they were done talking, he came over to me and offered less than what I’d earned on the last job. I didn’t fight him on it, just rolled my eyes.

“He’ll make it right,” Shun assured me. “He seems like an ass, but it’s all a front.”

“The fuck it is,” he snapped, walking away to the others who were standing around a table filled with equipment: hand terminals, knives, bombs, gloves, and bags of Sachi powder.

Shun pulled me over to the table.

“I hate that we rely on the shit, but we gonna need it to stay awake tonight,” Hinote said, passing bags of Sachi powder to everyone.

I took a snort. “It’s weak,” I said, grabbing a bag from one of my suit’s sealing pockets. It was a lightning-invested Sachi powder, bright yellow. Good shit for strength and for staying awake. All Sachi is stimulative, but more so when the Sachi is invested.

My suit had needles I could fill with liquid Sachi if needed, but I’d stopped doing that five years before. It was … too much and wore off too quickly.

I passed around my bag.

“Shit!” Daiki said, his fat shaking as he did a kind of dance, jerking his head back and forth. “That’s good shit, man! What is it?”

“Lightning.”

“Where’d you get it?” Kaito said.

“In Chudo, we were trained to look for such Sachi when we weren’t investing it ourselves. Lightning Sachi is harder to come by but very useful in battle. I found it after a storm outside of Man’naka.”

Hinote coughed loudly. “Goddamn!”

I took a snort myself, the powder filling my senses with burning as the smell of minerals and plastic exploded through my nostrils and into my brain.

Shun refrained from snorting from either bag. “I feel wide awake,” she claimed, giving me a look.

“We’ll enter the maintenance path … here,” Suzume said, pointing a gloved hand to a point on her holo map. “I’ll jack into the system and get the doors open. I can get us to the surface from there; I worked on that area of the plateau myself when it needed updating and repairs.” She blew a strand of blue hair out of her face and flipped the switch on her terminal, shutting the holo off.

“Aren’t you worried about them listening in? Pretty sure the tunnels record video and audio at all times,” I said.

“I briefed the others about this when you were dramatically leaving and never coming back, Nin,” she said with a wink. “I’ve scrambled this specific section. We should be good for a time. It's minorly invasive, so it will just seem to them that their computer fucked up.”

“Meek Pox,” Hinote said, shaking his head.

“That the next tower?” I said.

“This is one step closer to a future where my daughter can breathe clean air in her own home,” Hinote said. I stared at him a moment, expressionless, wondering if I should leave it alone, but stupidly, I went ahead with my thought.

“And what about your eye, Hinote? And your ear? I see the yellow veins running through them. What do you do without those?” I said. “And what about the withdrawals?”

“After I’m done using these to crush Andalaf, I’ll bury the pieces of shit and be happy to live without an ear and an eye the rest of my motherfuckin’, clean-breathin’ days.”

“Gotcha,” I said.

“Why do you ask questions like that if you don’t actually give a shit?”

“Not sure.”

“Shit. We good, Suzume?” Hinote said, turning away from me to look at the young engineer.

“Meek Pox’s drill tower is on the southeastern point of the Meek,” she said, “so I have to get the maintenance tunnels dead from here to there.”

“So … five minutes?” Kaito said, smiling at her.

“More like ten,” Suzume said, typing frantically into a hand terminal.

We stood in a circle around Suzume for a few minutes in silence before Kaito broke it. “So, the suit?”

It took me a moment to realize he was talking to me.

“What about it?” I said.

“Hear a lot about them,” Kaito said. “But what’s all the fuss?”

I laughed, thinking of the times it saved my ass. “The fuss is it’s connected to my spine, my nerves, and reacts instantly to, say, a fall or excess adrenaline. It will anticipate my need to run, becoming looser, sending Sachi to the leg section of the suit to amplify impact pads and muscle assistance.”

“So it's a fucking robot,” Daiki said. “Machine skin.”

I shook my head, but Shun answered for me, “It’s organic. Feeds on Sachi.”

“I have to give it a Sachi bath from time to time,” I said. “But other than that, it uses the Sachi I snort to keep it going.”

“Ah shit,” Kaito said. “That’s why those veins light up yellow when you’re doing your crazy shit.”

“Yeah. It’s using Sachi.”

“So it’s organic,” Daiki said, squinting and putting a hand under his chin. He had a backward hat on that made him look like a kid. “Like an animal?”

“You know the creature we just killed,” I said, “inside the tower?”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“The thing that sucks up the Sachi with its tusks?” Kaito said.

“Made from that,” I said. “It's symbiotic with both Sachi and humans. Nejirita makes them.”

“Shavin’ off the skin o’ some innocent animal,” Hinote said. “Sounds like the pieces of shit.”

I didn’t mention we were about to bomb another one of those innocent animals. Because now I had reason to. Morfran.

“Alright,” Suzume said, coming up from the terminal like she’d been submerged, “that should buy us plenty of time. You all ready?”

We all nodded and followed the blue hair out of the café. Shun locked the door behind us.

Suzume led us to the southeastern side of the Meek where the trash heaped high around one of the seven enormous support pillars keeping the Upper-Plateau hovering up there in the sky. Each pillar was bigger than an entire Meek and connected to the others with a low-hanging ring.

Spray-painted in large white lettering across the pillar wall was: HOW SOON BEFORE THE SKY FALLS?

Underneath this in smaller, black lettering was the response: How many hits to the center of the sun?

“Cover your ears!” Suzume said.

“What are you—”

Suzume’s insane laughter cut me off as she slapped a tiny plateau-shaped bomb, which pulsed with yellow light. She threw it in the trash around the pillar. I had just enough time to drop and cover my head before the trash took flight and the explosion rang in my ears.

“The fuck is wrong with you?” Hinote shouted.

It was only a small Sachibomb, but the trash could have seriously hurt someone. For once, I found myself agreeing with Hinote.

“What?” Suzume said, and she genuinely didn’t seem to understand as she pointed at the cleared section around the pillar. “We had to get the trash out of the way.”

She walked on, and the rest of us shared a look. It was then that I realized why Andalaf had fired her.

Suzume fiddled with her hand terminal, keys clacking furiously as we approached the pillar wall. For a moment, it looked as if she would walk right into the dark metal, but then it opened, steam hissing out through ribbons of pale, yellow light.

We walked through, and with more ferocious typing from Suzume, the wall closed behind us. Wires weaved like veins in the ceiling above, between hatches with iron wheels and ladders leading up to them. At the end was a grated stairway that climbed in a spiral through billowing yellow-peach Sachi fog.

“How far?” Daiki asked.

“Far,” Suzume said, taking the steps two at a time.

Kaito laughed and grabbed Daiki’s hat, ruffling his hair before putting it back on. “I could carry you,” he offered.

“Fuck off,” Daiki said, readjusting his hat and blowing out as he looked up.

We made it up countless levels, and even I was out of breath. I looked down a few levels to see Daiki still hanging in there next to Kaito, drenched in sweat, his fat sloshing around as he hoisted his bulk onto the next platform.

I leaned against a ribbed duct and traced a sinuous wire with a finger. Up above, Suzume waited with Hinote.

“Shit!” Hinote said, stomping and causing a metallic hum through my platform.

“What?” I said, furrowing my brow at the big man.

“Nothin’, just get up here,” Hinote said.

Shun stood next to me, looking down with a worried expression on her face.

“You coming?” Suzume called down.

“He’s coming, alright? Give him a break,” Kaito called up, wiping some sweat with his red headband, though he wasn’t nearly as drenched as Daiki, and I imagined most of Kaito’s strain came from helping the big man.

Suzume looked like she was ready to protest, arms going up in the air, but Hinote held a hand up to stop her. “He’s good. You know he’s good, so let it go.”

“All I’m saying is I know people. People who don’t get out of breath going up a set of steps. People that hate Andalaf,” Suzume said, crossing her arms and leaning against her own ribbed duct above.

“Andalaf fucks, yeah, no thanks,” Hinote said, pointing a finger at her, “only hired yo ass 'cause I needed ya.”

Suzume stuck her tongue out.

Daiki and Kaito made it up, and I gave Daiki another snort of lightning Sachi. He perked right up.

“Knew you was useful for somethin', Chudo-girl,” Hinote said, smirking down at me.

When we got up to Suzume and Hinote’s level, Suzume said, “Alright! Glad you made it. That’s the way we have to go!”

The stairway ended, leading to a tunnel, and Suzume pointed into a seven foot gap in the floor, the only way forward. Wires hung down spraying sparks, and hoses leaked Sachi to the grated stairway twenty feet below. If any but myself were to jump, and fall, it would mean broken bones.

“At least you’d land on a platform,” I said.

“I’m fucked!” Daiki said, pulling his hat off and running a hand through his soaking hair. “I’m so fucked. I can’t jump that.”

“I know, man, settle the fuck down,” Hinote said. “You wait here. There shouldn’t be no one coming up from the Meek, but you stay here just in case. And when we come back through, we might have heat behind us, and you’re gonna take care of ‘em.”

Daiki paced back and forth the length of the tunnel, pointing down into the gap and shaking his head. “Cause there’s no way I’m making it over—”

“I know. Now shut the fuck up. Suz? Give him some of those little ones.”

Suzume skipped over to him with a handful of the little terrors and poured them into his hat, smiling all the way. Kaito handed Daiki his gun back and patted him on the shoulder.

“Anybody else wanna bitch out?” Hinote said, scowling at each of us in turn.

No one answered him, and I snorted a laugh.

“Man, fuck that,” Hinote said, then he walked back to the platform and ran. He was fast for a big guy, and I thought he was going to clear it perfectly, but his right boot caught on the side at the last moment, and he tripped, falling on his hands.

Daiki called over to him, “You al—”

“Fine!” Hinote snapped, “Now come on!”

The rest of us cleared it with no trouble, and Daiki waved to us sadly as we departed into the maintenance wonderland tunnels in the sky.

Suzume kept sneaking glances back at me as she skipped ahead. I wondered how Shun felt about it.

“There should be a vein just through there,” she said, pointing to the black door at the top of yet more grated metal steps. The door opened into a long enclosed pass dimly lit by red and yellow Sachilights. The walls were made of hard plastic material, breaking in some spots to expose Sachipanels, and the many buttons near the switches blinked red and green. It smelled like burning plastic, chemicals, and sulfur.

Suzume, looking down at her hand terminal, nearly tripped over one of the many bunches of wire spread across the floor.

“A powerhouse of Sachi. These wires connect to the whole city, powering both Under and Upper,” Suzume said, the green map display glowing above her terminal. “Should only be … a fifteen minute walk!” She turned her head around excitedly, looking at me. This time Shun gripped my arm with her Sachiglove, ensuring Suzume could see. The girl’s face dropped and I felt a twinge of pity for her.

We entered a room with many clicking, turning gears, vents puffing out yellow, acrid-smelling steam with a hush and a hiss.

Hinote walked past at the end of a hush and just before a hiss, looking down at Shun’s hand on my arm, then looked away with a huff as steam obscured his form. No love lost there, though I didn’t think the man gave two shits; he just liked to get huffy about things.

Though I’d suspected it somewhat, the true surprise was Kaito’s fallen face as he passed, staring at the ground, hands in pockets. I put a hand on Shun’s. It was hard not to want Shun; I’d been dealing with that my whole life.

After walking through the dim tunnels of blinking lights and metal plating for a while, Suzume said, “This’ll lead us straight up into the tower. We’ll be in an obscure part of it, usually only accessed by the maintenance teams on the rare occasions that the Sachitronics or endorphin receptors are out, so we should be relatively safe from watchful eyes for a time. I’ve hacked the system to ensure we don’t run into locked doors.”

“Ain’t no shift change this time, though,” Hinote said. “And they might have new protocol since the last one. Hopefully they just expectin’ more planes. Put these on.”

Hinote handed out black face masks to all of us. I pulled my hair into a bun and put the mask on. It was leather, smelled old, and covered my entire face except for the two eyeholes.

I started climbing first, Shun, Suzume, Hinote, and Kaito behind me. The entrance above had a wheel crank that felt stuck for a moment before my suit fully adapted to the strain. I climbed onto a metal platform that ran along a wall of the drill tower. I’d only ever seen this section in my periphery, across from the main walkway in the middle of the giant pool of pure liquid Sachi underneath. It glowed yellow, and the gas it put off nearly brought tears to my eyes.