The Slag. The playground for would-be gangbangers, scavvers, go-gangers and everything in between. Officially, it's called Emerald Meadows, but most of the district burnt down in a giant fire long before my time. There's rumors abound why nobody has come up here to revitalize the place. They range from the cost needed to drive all the go-gangers out—they're no better than scavvers on bikes, so that'd be easy for any corp with a half-decent security team—to cryptids living in the ductwork and vents of the abandoned buildings. The latter one being utter bullshit, given that it's superstition at best. Everyone knows there's no wildlife in the Slag. There's nothing out here for anything larger than a rodent to eat.

The place is a lawless wasteland where the only merit of your survival is your ability to kill, loot, and pillage what meager scraps everyone else has. Rats climbing over the corpses of their brethren to be king for a day.

It'd be impressive, if they weren't all two-timing backstabbers that aren't to be trusted. It gets hammered into our skulls day in and day out that we shouldn't, for absolutely any reason, approach the Slag. Let alone enter it.

Gathunk. Gathunk.

We're going offroad, assuming from how the vehicle is rocking now. I've never actually been this far out in this direction. No reason to come out here. Why would anyone voluntarily live out here, anyways? Fuck. They could just move into the low-rent neighborhoods bordering the place. At least they'd be doing more than living in hovels made out of corrugated iron sheets.

I didn't think this would be the end for me. Not in the Slag. Especially by corpos. I thought I'd get shot in the gut by a volthead or a scavver and bleed out on the streets. Funny that. Scavvers killing people on corpo turf, corpos killing people on scavver turf.

I guess the bright side is we seem to be going in a straight line now, so I don't have to brace for Saba unintentionally crushing my bones every few seconds. Judging by the muffled sounds coming from outside, it feels like we're going through mud now. I should probably brace for the lights out and the credits rolling soon. Now, here's to hoping that they make it quick instead of dragging it out with some kind of monologue.

The vehicle attempts to come to a stop, audibly squelching through wet terrain in the process before it crawls to a halt.

“End of the line,” that dreaded modulated voice speaks up. The underlying accent betrays that it was the asshole who put his knees between my shoulderblades barely a few hours ago. Maybe I could make like Saba and headbutt the son of a bitch before I get shot down. Some part of my pride wants me to go out kicking and screaming, with at least bloodying the fucker's nose in the process.

Kind of hard to do with a bag over my head and my wrists cuffed, though.

The back door opens with another audible ‘clonk,’ and I hear Saba getting dragged out. Or at least I hear her agitated grunts. And then I'm pulled out just as promptly and thrown to the ground.

Splorch.

Yep. That's definitely mud. Damp as hell, like it only just stopped raining moments ago. I manage to sit up before the bag gets pulled from my head. I don't recognize where in the absolute hell we are. It's almost like a swamp, but without any of the parts that make it a swamp. Fuck. I take a deep breath of fresh air. Or, at least, fresher than whatever was in the back of that truck. The only person I can see from my crew is Saba. The other two are nowhere to be seen. They must've been taken away in another vehicle. Shit. I can't help but feel responsible for them even though I know there's no way I could've seen this coming. Other than that, it looks like we've got two tac-armored assholes at the ready, one with a big-ass AR and the other with—this guy's got my fucking pistol. The nerve on this bastard.

“Wrong place at the wrong time, huh.” The corpo strolls around me, waggling my pistol around and disregarding any form of firearm safety as he flags his co-worker. Repeatedly. I was resigned to my fate just a few minutes ago, but the fact that this dickwad is waving my gun around is actually kind of making my blood boil. “You have figured out what has happened by now, yes?”

“Well, I've figured out that you're a gigantic pile of shit, for one.”

I hear Saba snort at that. At least I can have fun dying.

“Haha. You are a very funny man, my friend,” the corpo deadpans through their modulator, holding up my own pistol to my forehead. “I could do with more funny men in my line of work. Do you have a name?”

I exhale a sharp breath. My attention has been locked on the mud below me this entire time. Maybe some part of me still wanted it all to end. I had a good run, right? The last few years have just been wading through mud and fog with no end in sight, and this was my shameless ticket out.

“No name, then? That is very sad.” He cocks the hammer back. I glance up, catching Saba out of the corner of my eye. Still hasn't wiped off the crusted blood on her nose. She looks many things, but most of all, she looks pissed. Definitely not as checked out as I am, but I feel like she's waiting for me to make a move.

Fight for what I believe in? I don't know why that came to my mind right now. I guess I can't fix the system if I'm face down in a bog. Fuck it. I'm not dying in some backwoods middle-of-nowhere shithole. If I'm going down, I'm going down with a fight. Don't make me go out like an idiot because of something you said, Ames.

The good news is that this guy is a bozo who probably thinks I'm defenseless because I'm cuffed. Number one rule, don't stick the barrel straight to someone's head who only has one thing to lose and has a fucking rage burning up from deep inside them to keep that one thing.

“It's Luc and FUCK YOU!” I shout out. Time feels like it slows down the second the adrenaline hits. Fight or flight, and my body picks fight. I can see his finger drawing back on that heavy as shit trigger, and it barely gives me a split second to dip to the left before the muzzle explodes in color. There's a searing pain along the right side of my head—I don't really have time to figure out why—and I can't hear shit out of my right ear. I manage to throw myself up to my feet, tackling the bastard over. Neither one of us has good footing in the mud. We both land with a loud squelch. I can tell the weight of his gear makes him sink just a bit further than me. That gives me a few seconds. I hear something metallic snapping to my left.

I tuck my legs up, hoping that I'm still flexible enough after all of these years to pull off what they taught me in SERE. I bend, and twist, trying to pull those handcuffed wrists under me. It takes longer than I hoped after the metal loops snag on my belt a few times. Fuck me, I should've just dislocated my thumb. It would've been easier.

My new best friend staggers to his feet just seconds after I do, his armor waterlogged to hell and back with swampy bog water. Something makes him take pause, and I catch it with a quick glance. Saba somehow managed to snap the link between her cuffs and she was in the process of throwing left hooks and right hooks straight into the other CorpSec dickbag.

I shouldn't be wasting time. I throw my shoulder into the bastard again, making a go for my gun. It's about as clumsy as expected. Cuffed wrists don't afford you dexterity in any real form. He's flailing, trying to get his boots out of the mud. I'm flailing, trying to get my gun out of his hand. I shouldn't be letting Saba show me up—

I heft my boot up and kick his knee the moment I remember this poor sap is pretty much cemented to the ground. There's a sickening crack as my heel lands just in the right spot to turn him into a collapsing stack of crap.

I tumble backwards. He tumbles backwards. The difference being: I have a gun, and his knee is utterly fucked. I take a deep breath, taking the seconds afforded to me to check if Saba needs help.

She does not. At all. In fact, it looks like she could've ended the fight a few seconds ago, but she's taking out some pent up anger on that bozo. He lowers his guard to protect his ribs, and she immediately transitions to giving him the one-two to either side of the skull. He lifts his guard? She immediately knees him in the guts, and proceeds to turn his ribs into a xylophone with those agitation-fueled fists. It truly was like watching the world's most one-sided boxing match.

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The groans of pain from my opponent snaps me back to what should be my fight. A whole lot less clean than Saba's, but I got it done. I didn't die.

“Code Red. One-One-Three. Agent down.” I hear him murmur into an old-style walkie-talkie. Fuck. I should've just shot the bastard. It takes me a second to push out of the mud, again. Now I'm waterlogged. I feel like I'm twenty pounds heavier just from the mud seeping into my clothes. Taking aim, my pistol beaded right on his head. From a safe distance of three feet away. Which, coincidentally, also gives me a good view of Saba collapsing a poor fool's windpipe with her fist.

“So. Who the hell told you to drive us out here?”

I couldn't even look intimidating in my current state if I tried. A handcuffed bog monster.

“Haha. Fuck you—”

Bang. He sinks backwards into the ground for the final time. I guess I wanted to live more than he did.

I realize a second too late that I am running my mouth after he just called for reinforcements. Not the smartest thing to do. Maybe I should've asked him for the keys to the cuffs before I blew his brains out. Oh well. Not the first time I'm digging through a dead guy's pockets for something. Probably won't be the last.

“You good, Chambers?” Saba calls from over my shoulder, cracking her knuckles. It sounds like a godsdamned dried out cement mixer being cleaned out. For once, she doesn't sound perpetually pissed. Maybe she got whatever was bugging her out of her system.

“I'm good. You?” Bingo. Found the maglock key. I swipe it across the scanner on the base of the cuffs and they disengage, and then I hurl it over to Saba. She does the same just as promptly, letting the cuffs drop from her wrists before ditching the device over her shoulder. I keep rummaging through this guy's pockets and pouches regardless of already finding what I was looking for. If he had my gun, he might have the rest of my junk, or even Saba's.

“Never felt friggen better,” she laughs, crouching down next to me. Or so I thought for a split second, because she starts doing squats then and there. “How long you figure 'til we've got drones overhead?”

“Half a minute at best.”

Found it. Dumbass shoved both of our communicators and my spare rounds in one of his tac pouches—I shouldn't speak so soon. Those pouches were waterproof, so at least our communicators weren't fucked up on mud. My attention trails along the tire tracks of the truck that drove us here.

“What're you figuring, Chambers?”

“The truck's probably ID locked, and even if it wasn't, I'd bet all my creds on it being covered in tracking bugs.” I look back towards the wall separating the Slag from the rest of the metroplex; its skyline polluted with illuminating lights that make it look like it's midday over Novonachalsk from where I'm standing. And in the other direction? A whole lot of ruined buildings in the far distance. A hundred meters out or so. “We run back to the city, we're dead. We run out there? We're probably dead. Just a little slower, but I'd rather—”

The audible buzzing of drones overhead cuts me off. I catch another unmarked MT Vaultron approaching us from the metroplex's direction. I don't think our luck would hold out enough to pull another lucky win out of our back pocket.

“I ain't opposed to a slow death.” Saba laughs. Her usual grim demeanor seems to have been replaced with something far more upbeat, despite our imminent probable deaths. She's already taking off towards the only form of cover in the distance.

I go to follow, but I'm a bit more hampered by the bog filling my boots. There's a fighting chance if we get to—

THRAKKA-THRAKKA-THRAKKA.

Dirt, mud, and vegetation kick up into my face as the rounds draw a practical circle around me. If there's anything to put a spring in your step, it's realizing that those drones are armed. Normally, I'd make a joke about those non-lethals making my day a bit more spicy, but that was definitely some form of submachine gun judging from the sound. Probably loaded with armor piercing rounds. I can't tell from this distance, and I'm not sticking around to find out.

I'm practically hopping now, trying to keep my boots out of the mud as possible, with every footfall being punctuated by a wet splorp as the unsteady earth threatens to swallow them. Saba's barely visible on the horizon by now. The Vaultron on my tail must be nearly up my ass at this point. Did I seriously put in all that effort to avoid dying like an idiot, just to end up dying like an idiot? I can hear the tires right behind me cutting through the mud. I should've just asked Saba to carry me—

My foot finally catches solid, dry ground. My legs are numb at this point, but I'm sprinting as fast as I can now. It actually feels like I'm making decent pace. Though, I'm finding difficulty in being positive, what with the ground occasionally exploding in puffs of debris as the drones rain death on me. The truck, though. What happened to—

I look over my shoulder just for a brief second. They managed to get the thing stuck in the bog. My lungs are burning like I just inhaled a faceful of pepper spray, but I can't help but laugh like an absolute maniac.

Those distant buildings are getting bigger and bigger, before they practically jump out at me. What felt like an aeon of running suddenly compressed itself into milliseconds. I hop over a partially collapsed brick wall, before diving into the closest thing to cover I can find. You wouldn't be able to tell from the exterior, but the husked out inside looks like it could've been an old corner store.

“Still good, Chambers?”

“I'm good,” I wheeze. I'm too fucking tired to even jump at Saba blindsiding me. She's not even breaking a sweat. “Just let me catch my breath.”

I really don't have the time to. I open my dumb mouth again.

“Lucas. Call me Lucas. We're both probably out of a job, so—” I'm not going to get her killed by slowing her down. But I know she's going to say something if I frame it that way. “We should split up. I could only see two drones up ahead and they wrecked their truck. We're more likely to get away.”

Well, it's technically true.

“Good call. Catch your breath. I'll draw their fire.” She points to her communicator before pocketing it. “—I'll be in touch, Luc.”

Ugh. Close enough.

And she's already out the front of the shop. Despite her being a much, much larger target than me due to her height and frame, the drones still struggle to land shots even remotely close to her as she dips, ducks, dodges and weaves. She casually vaults a fence in a single bound, before disappearing from sight.

I resume my dogged hobble through the wrecks and ruins, trying to keep out of view from anyone who could be watching. There's no way I'm this out of shape. I could've easily done that run and back twice before feeling this fucked up. I should take a second. I'll just lean on this column inside this old restaurant and—

I feel something warm running down my side. That's definitely blood. Definitely my blood. When did I get shot? Fuck. I guess the adrenaline nulled the pain enough that I didn't notice. I can't stop here, though. I'll bandage myself up when I get somewhere safe.

In and out of buildings. Through narrow alleyways. I don't think I'm being chased any more, but I can't be sure. I keep going, despite my body screaming with every step of the way. I can't afford to stop. Stopping right now would be equal to dying, and I'm not giving up. I don't know what's fueling me at this point. It could be pride, or maybe I'm just being bull-headed and stubborn. Maybe everything being fucked has given me a reason to fight again. Ha. Yeah. I can't go home. I can't see the few friendly faces I have in the precinct again.

Fuck it. I'll do my best to keep my guts from spilling out while I'm moving. I rip my sleeve off, fumbling as I try to get it around my midsection. This is a little embarrassing. I'm glad that nobody I know is watching my absolute shitshow of failing to tie a knot. A positive: the buildings are starting to seem a little less burnt out the further I get. Maybe I'll find a nice place to hole up in.

A realization strikes me. Saba told me she'd get a hold of me. We've been told repeatedly one of the reasons we can't come out here is that it's a dead-zone when it comes to any form of matrix connectivity. I stagger through a back alley, catching my balance on a strangely intact chain link fence as I try to wrestle my communicator out of my pocket.

Full bars? What the hell? That can't be right. Maybe it got busted when I was tumbling with that dumbass in the bog? Or I could be hallucinating. The blood loss could be getting to me. I try the time-tested practice of turning it off and on again.

Still full bars.

It turns out the blood loss is getting to me, because my lack of coordination immediately becomes apparent as my hand slips and I speed-dial Ames. Here I thought today was going so well. My coordination continues to fail me as I urgently press around to cancel the call, smearing blood all over my device in the process.

“Amelia here—”

My stomach sinks.

“—I'm busy and can't come to the—”

The realization that I hit her voice mail allows me to conjure up enough willpower to actually close the call. Just one of those days.