“The road they’re on leads straight into Meek Onfidlack,” Ai said as we made a pursuit angle through the trash.

“Disgusting. Why would Shun be in the cage?”

“They … take them like that—”

“No, I know about that,” I said, “parade them through to attract buyers. I just don’t understand how Shun could get taken. She’s a fighter. She wouldn’t go down to a couple of Onfidlack suck-ups. Talk about privilege. Those fucks have it better than the people on the Upper-Plateau if you ask me.”

“I mean, you were looking pretty desperate before I came along. It’s gotten worse down here in the Meeks. You said you’ve been gone, what? Five years?” She breathed heavily, keeping a very fast pace despite the uneven surface of the trash. “Every year, more gangs pop up, and every year they have better shit. Like the earth and air Sachi that Luther guy had. She could have been overpowered. You were, and you’re a Chudo.”

You could do it, a voice said. It would be better. All of this could be better. I could feel the needles in my suit again, waiting. What did you get into Chudo for, if not to have unlimited access to Sachi, to mainline the shit? My mind went to the time before when Shun would try to get me to settle down, come and be with her, but I was running from everything, running myself ragged, fucking men like Keith Smith, fat and slobbering, joints popping as they came, all for a bump. Just like the men and women of the display cases, except I was on the streets of Onfidlack. And it wasn’t Keith Smith—I fucked guys more despicable and nowhere near as clean. And some of them hurt me. And here I was heading into their den; Onfidlack. Where a girl’s dreams could come true for the right price. Where a girl could make dreams come true for a bump of cut Sachi.

You have plenty. Shoot it in!

Not now, I told myself. After you kill Morfran, then you can shoot as much Sachi as you want. Forget about Asahi, Morfran, Shun. After you kill Morfran you can die like you want.

It was like acid in my gut, and my muscles clenched.

I turned to Ai. And nodded to myself. None of it would bring him back I knew, not enchanted Sallis-Faint, and not killing Morfran. I thought only death could bring relief, and maybe not even then. The Death Dogs say that in the afterlife you’re stuck the way you were when you died. The Silence says nothing.

We headed downhill onto the main road, Ai concealing her face, which reminded me to check my scarf and hood. The top of the golden cage peaked over the trash, heading to the left, then disappearing toward Onfidlack.

I could see the huge golden spires of Keith Smith’s Mansion, the golden elevator haft reaching from the middle of the mansion in a pillar all the way to the Upper-Plateau.

“Morfran took that elevator down here once that I know of. Probably more,” I said, tucking away my thoughts of needles and death that this fell city brought to me.

“I’ve always wondered what it was for. Is it a support beam?” Ai said, and we rounded the bend where I saw the cage last.

“Private transportation for Andalaf Incorporated higher-ups. To visit the—uh—”

“The whores? Slaves? What word you lookin’ for? I know a lot of ‘em,” Ai said.

“Goddamnit. Shun …” What was she doing here? I kept myself away from her back then to protect her from this life.

“We’ll get to her, Ningyo. Don’t forget, I’ve got Caelziax if all else fails.”

“Caelziax?”

“The demon. Old sword arms.”

“Oh. I was calling him three-cocks.”

“Well, I think that is because you are depraved,” Ai said. “But Caelziax does mean three-cocks in his language, so—lucky guess?”

“Seriously?”

“No.”

“We’re here,” I said. “We’ll go to the display cases. Shun is pretty. They probably don’t get too many like her, and I’ll bet they want to get her up immediately.”

“Hmm,” she said as she nodded her head. “Pretty.”

“Yes. Pretty. Very. And she’s my friend. I’ve known her since we were kids.”

“Of course! We need to take a right here for the display cases, so should we be turning?”

I could hear the smile in her voice, and I realized that I was about to walk right past the cramped alleyway that led to the display cases. I gave her a look, and we turned down the cobblestone alley.

The businesses were all open, lit with pale, yellow Sachilight. The buildings were made of sturdy wood and metal, not scrap metal and trash like the rest of the Meeks. Vendors stood outside with carts of steaming food. There was a Sachi blacksmith up ahead—a new one, though not surprising considering Onfidlack was directly below Andalaf Tower—and if I needed repairs on my equipment, I’d come to this one; they’d actually be able to get the materials from the Upper-Plateau, real parts, not trash stock. Yellow veins in blades glowed behind him, hanging from leather cords on the ceiling of his cart. These blades would be good weapons, of course, but they wouldn’t be specially crafted by Andalaf’s head scientist, Ben Nejirita, who makes each blade unique for individual Chudo soldiers.

There were inviting smiles as well as some questionable glances. Looks I took on during my time here before I made it into Chudo when all I cared about was my next hit and training to be a Chudo so I could get as much Sachi as I wanted. I could see them now, scraping around in side-alleys, scratching arms and infected legs, sipping on warm drinks someone gave them in a state of indulgent pity—toothless, ruthless, wretched wraiths, lined too early in life, playing for their supper, trading their supper for one more hit cause that’s the one that’s gonna scratch the itch, honey.

The women wore the face paint popular in the Twelve Meeks currently, while the men wore many different colors in their hair, like the gang that ambushed me before Ai came to my rescue.

“We have to go in through here,” I said, pointing to a large red and blue canvas tent at the end of the alley. People filtered in and out as we watched, some smiling, some looking ashamed, some drunk, and others looking only bewildered. “Have you … ever been?”

“To the display cases? Yes. What does she look like?” Ai said.

“Dark brown hair and eyes, a heart-shaped face, full lips, um—large breasts—”

“Got it. If I see any men, I’ll be sure to describe them by their cock size.”

I chuckled at that, bringing me out of my Onfidlack hypnosis somewhat. “How will you know?”

“I have a sense for such things,” she whispered, “it’s why Andalaf so covets the Sallis-Faint their abilities.”

I opened the tent flap and stepped through to a different world.

There were glass cases on either side of us, and people were looking in as if they were at the market buying groceries. There were couples here together to make things more exciting for each other, I supposed. I saw one such older couple, the woman adjusting her glasses to look at a pale, thin man in one of the glass encasements.

Inside the display cases, there were people—one person per square encasement. The glass was slightly yellow in color, a dingy yellow, like old smoke on white wallpaper.

“It’s invested with Sachi. Nearly impossible to break,” I said. “I wonder how many Sachi-snorters they have on staff to keep it going.”

Ai remained silent. She was dressed as a person of Silence after all, and there were many people passing through, looking at the beautiful people in their glass prisons.

“Anything I can help you find?” a voice said from behind me. I turned around. A woman with buck teeth and a red-painted mouth was smiling at me to such a degree it almost looked like her teeth were trying to come out of her skull to bite me. She had brown hair so dark it looked black, and she was wearing a yellow business suit.

She looked back and forth between me and Ai, the smile fading from her eyes but hanging there on her mouth like an empty promise.

“My name is Sally, and I’ll be your hostess this evening. If you want to give me a general idea of—”

“Dark brown hair and eyes, a heart-shaped face, full lips, um—large breasts!” Ai said.

Sally looked surprised. “Ooo, I … I wasn’t aware that People of Silence talked!”

“It’s something we’ve always wanted to try. You understand,” I said, trying to ignore Ai’s verbatim reiteration of my description. It almost made me laugh.

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“Of course, of course! We get a lot of that here—surprise, surprise!” Sally said with a nervous, fabricated chuckle, her eyes shifting between us with her brows furrowed, the smile still letting those buck teeth shine on the world. “I think … that I have just the girl! If you’ll follow me.”

She turned and walked further down the aisle between the display cases. The tent was maybe three stories high, allowing for three display cases to be stacked up in each row. There were small, wire and rust-covered levers in front of each case, and hosts pulled the levers to raise a platform so the customers could get a peak at the third level men and women up close.

My heart beat hard in my chest. I knew they’d put her up as soon as they got her in. They didn’t parade them through the Meeks naked for no reason.

There had to be quite a few who saw and came to Onfidlack tonight just for Shun.

“If you’ll step onto the platform, please,” Sally said, her hand on a lever. I stepped up, followed closely by Ai. I turned to look at Ai, hoping Shun wouldn’t assume the worst.

The platform whirred to life. On the first level was a woman who was beautiful but very fat with short-cropped hair. She looked at us with dark, dead eyes. The platform jerked upward. The second level was a redheaded woman who looked frail and afraid, probably new—the light in her eyes hadn’t died yet. As we reached the third level, I came up close to the glass, the ache in my stomach like a burning hole in a sheet of paper. I saw the dark brown hair, the heart-shaped face …

But it wasn’t Shun. I shook my head. “Not her.”

“Do you have any more options?” Ai said.

Sally looked at us both like we were willfully disobedient for a moment before life returned to her eyes, and she said, “Of course! If you’ll just follow me.”

She had some trouble with the lever before she got it to go down again.

Shun was not there. We looked for nearly two hours, and I thought we had given Sally a good reason to quit her job and become a professional bad teeth model. Sally actually shut down, the light going from her eyes. A man came to collect her on a silver metal cart and wheeled her off down the long aisle of displays.

“Android,” Ai said.

“Hard to tell the difference. Especially in Meek Onfidlack,” I said. “Wouldn’t be surprised if Keith Smith is one built by Andalaf to keep whores for them.”

“Looking for someone?” The voice came from a man wearing dark sunglasses, his head shaved. He wore a yellow vest and purple pants tucked into knee-high boots. He leaned against a display case, the human behind the glass paying us no mind. “I might be able to find them for you. Depending on what you got.”

I shared a look with Ai. “Sachi,” she whispered.

I hesitated, thinking of Luther and his gang and the quick damage they’d caused with the right Sachi in their hands.

I said, “I’ve got an air Sachi for you to start talking—”

“Not interested, thanks—”

“And a healing Sachi for you to finish.”

The bald man pushed off the glass case with a shoulder, hands in pockets.

“Ok. I may be interested. But I don’t think the wind Sachi is gonna be enough to start,” he said.

“I’m not into shakedowns. If you don’t want it, we’ll find someone else,” I said. “Plenty of slime in this Meek.”

“Alright. Enjoy,” he said, shrugging, walking away with hands in his pockets.

“Come on,” I said.

“Don’t you wanna try? I have another healing—”

“No. He’ll be back. He’s trying to get us to show him all our Sachi. We just gave him the best offer he’ll get tonight. He’s going to talk to his boss. He’ll be slow about it in case we’re idiots and run back, begging him to take more of our Sachi.”

Ai looked around at the glass prisons, adjusting her mask. I saw the ashen-grey skin of her hands as she reached them out of the long arms of her black cloak. “Are you sure that … behavior hasn’t changed in five years?”

“I’d be surprised if it has. But if so, we’ll just find another gang to give us the info. You mind using that … using him if things get whacky?”

“No, I don’t mind.”

“Do you need Sachi? Like powder?”

We started walking to the entrance flap of the tent. Many happy couples were leaving, no doubt ready to circle around to the back of the tent with their hosts to pick up their evening’s entertainment.

“I don’t snort Sachi,” Ai said.

“What?”

She shook her head. “Don’t need to. I just get quiet.”

“Like you showed me?”

“Yeah. I don’t know if it would work for you; I think it does for me because I’m Sallis-Faint. It’s always been that way.”

Her tone was … different.

“Are you alright?”

“Hm? Me? Yeah, I’m fine. Trying to be discreet.”

For some reason, I didn’t believe her, but I let it go. We needed to find Shun.

Outside the tent, people turned right to go pick up their men or women while we went straight back through the alley the way we came. The bald man with the sunglasses was nowhere in sight. I couldn’t see them passing up something like that, though; Sachi gems were somewhat difficult to come by in the Meeks, but healing Sachi was practically unheard of unless you were in Chudo with the premium shit and suits that could shoot you up.

Halfway through the dark yellow alley full of carts and vendors, the bald man, hands still in pockets, appeared from a doorway to our right.

“Come with me,” he said.

“Be ready,” I said to Ai. She nodded.

Tarps hung down from laundry lines in the alley, cloth doorways to the underworld, and the bald man pushed them away with one hand. I looked up to see the buildings were higher now, with many windows shining pale yellow light out into the night. Apartments. There was a woman leaning out of one, smoking, looking down at us, and ashing her cigarette with a silent tap.

“Hi, Stu,” she called down.

“Fuck off, Julie,” the bald man said.

“Ooo, big man working for the boss now, watch out, or he’ll put ya on ice.”

“I said, fuck off, Julie.”

“Sorry about your mom, Stu. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Your mommy issues?”

The man stopped, turning his head up toward her, pointing a gloved hand. “Julie, I swear to god, if you don’t shut the fuck up, I’ll come up there and put you on ice.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” Julie said.

Stu shook his head.

“Oh, come on, Stu.”

“No, Julie, fuck off. Every goddamn time I come down this alley. How’d you like it if I came to your work and started shouting at you in front of your coworkers about how you led me up to your shitty apartment, stripped me down, then when I got your clothes off, there was a cock and balls waiting for me, Julie? Fucking tell a guy!”

Julie’s face dropped.

“That’s what I thought,” Stu said.

“Fuck you, Stu,” Julie said, a sob in her voice.

“I can take my stuff somewhere else,” I said. “Plenty of other—”

“No, no. I’m sorry about her. Let’s keep going. Boss is waiting.”

We walked through, and I felt something sting the back of my neck. Julie’s cigarette. It bounced to the ground, tendrils of smoke slithering upward. I looked up, and Julie stared back at me for a moment before pulling back into her apartment and closing the window with a slam.

“Poor girl,” Ai said.

“Yeah,” I said, and I meant it. I didn’t imagine Stu was the victim here. Stu seemed like a complete fuck.

Stu turned right as we followed into yet another alley, though this one ended at a large metal door.

“Conflax,” Stu said. The door slid upward into the building, and we walked through. There was a man smoking and reading a newspaper on a wooden chair leaned back against the wall. Ai coughed.

“This is them, Jesse,” Stu said.

Jesse buzzed us through another sliding door, giving us a searching look behind the cigarette smoke. He was crusty and the kind of blonde that reminds me of a white onion.

Through the next door was a room with many pool tables, television sets, men and women entertaining themselves with both. Two women with pig tales sat underneath a magenta light looking at us, smiling like Ai smiled at me, then they touched tongues and kissed. Ai and I both watched them for a time as we crossed the room, walking past the pool players and Sachi snorters.

Ai drew many eyes with her dark cloak and mask of Silence.

We walked into an office. A woman sat on the desk, spread-legged, two men working on her with their tongues. She wore a red robe, breasts out and pointing at the ceiling, her back arched. She had dark skin, red-painted lips, and a shaved head. I had the creeping suspicion that she got these two men from the display cases, though I could’ve been wrong; I was sure it wouldn’t have been hard for her to find someone without paying; she was beautiful.

But, they also could have been subservient members of her gang which rubbed me wrong as I thought of my son, Asahi; how he looked up to Morfran in the same way I did, which is why I’d brought him with me five years previously.

Morfran had every Chudo under his thumb, willing to do anything for him. We were giving our bodies to Andalaf, surely, but more so to Morfran, who we looked at as a kind of god, a hero. All kids wanted to be like him when they grew up, including me. Watching the bald woman then, ignoring us while she screamed in pleasure—I couldn’t help but be reminded of Morfran, and how his influence warped my mind more than any Onfidlack pervert or pimp I scored my fix from. Disgust overtook me.

“Will you fucking stop?” I said. “What are you trying to do? Prove a point? I was under the impression that we were going to give you Sachi for information. Is that no longer the case?”

She screamed one last time, sweating and panting. She patted the two men on the head, smiling at them, then pushed them away, tightening her robe around her.

“That will be all, gentlemen,” she said. “And you, Stuart. You may go.”

“Thank you, Virginia,” Stu said to the woman, then stepped out of the room with the two thin, naked men.

“Oh, I get it. You can’t get off unless someone’s watching? Some weird shit like that?” I said.

Virginia looked at me like I was very stupid, still breathing heavily as she walked around to the other side of the desk.

“You not from around here, huh, sugar tits?” Virginia said. She sat down in a leather chair.

“Doesn’t matter where I’m from. There are plenty of others in this Meek that would love to have what I’m offering.”

She wiped her forehead, then pressed her hands into her eyes as if this was all very taxing.

“I apologize for your bein’ … unaccustomed to our ways here in Onfidlack, motherfucker. Feel free to take yo shit somewhere else. I am sure you will run into no trouble at all, carryin’ around healing Sachi and tellin’ all the gangs about it. Now you can either go do that—fine by me—or you can put my orgasm behind you and let’s fuckin’ talk, huh? What ya say, sugar tits?”

Ai giggled.

“Think that’s funny, huh? Maybe give your friend some of that shit. She a little too serious for me.”

“She doesn’t mean any harm,” Ai said. “She’s been away from the Meeks for years, and doesn’t understand how things have changed.”

“Things haven’t changed,” I said, raising a palm and gesturing toward Virginia. “This shit has been happening forever. I dug my way out of dens like this. I just—”

“Let’s just … talk to her, ok?” Ai said.

I looked at her a long moment, finding the ruby orbs hidden behind the small eye slits in the Silence mask, then let it go.

“Alright. Let’s talk.”

“Stu there said you got a wind Sachi to start, then the healing when I’m done. That right?” Virginia said, lighting a smoke.

“Mhm.”

“Ok. And remind me. Who you lookin’ for and why?”

“Her name is Shun, and—”

“Oh, honey. Oh, honey, no. That’s no good.”

“What? Why?” I said.

Virginia leaned back in her leather chair, taking a long drag and looking at me sympathetically. Then she extended a hand with red lacquered nails and pulled her fingers up toward herself in a gesture that said, “Uh-uh, motherfucker.” I handed her the wind Sachi gem.

“Ooooooo. That’s good shit! Where'd you get this? Never mind. Aight, so Shun … is a pretty little thing. More than that. She’s fuckin’ gorgeous. Just came in two hours ago. They dumped off everyone else at the cases, but they drove her beautiful ass away.”

“Where?” I demanded.

She made the gimme gesture with her hand again, smiling and taking another big pull from her cigarette.

Ai nodded to me, and I put the green healing Sachi into Virginia’s hand.

“Fuck. You wasn’t kiddin’.” She blew out a plume of smoke, tucked the Sachi into her robe, and then looked at me sadly. “You a girlfriend or some shit? No, don’t answer. I don’t wanna know. Girls like Shun, ya see … well, Keith Smith’s gotta get his kicks in, too. She’ll be his tonight. Up at the mansion. Sometimes they even get taken up the golden elevator to Andy Andalaf for … special rewards.”

“Ok, thank you. Let’s go,” I said, tugging at Ai’s cloak.

“Good luck, y’all!” Virginia said as we left the room and the lair. The man in the little entrance room leaning against the wall, still smoking, let us out into the alley.