Karla felt a tug on her leg as she slowly woke up. She had met her greatest enemy last night in the pitch black.
Water.
She had fallen several stories before impacting ice-cold water in a fast moving channel. Her mostly-steel body sunk like a stone, and she still needed oxygen. The turbulent flow prevented her from stabilizing herself, sending her into a tumble, not allowing her time to search for hand-holds or footholds to escape the icy cold death. Growing faint, she had moved along with the flow of water, searching for something to grab a hold of or a way to climb out, pushing her senses out in hope of something, anything.
On one side, she had sensed it. A small steel pathway followed the water channel, a service walkway it looked like. It was close enough to reach, if she leaped at just the right moment. She then sensed a change in the water channel, an abrupt drop. The water thundered over a sudden waterfall, and plummeted into an abyss just ahead. She had put everything into leaping out of the water, everything into landing on the small footpath. She was rewarded with a painful impact on dry steel just before the water fell away. She coughed up entire lung-fulls of water and rolled away from the deluge, her body shaking as she laid there.
Another tug pulled on her leg. She hadn’t been afraid to die, not when she’d been shot, not when she’d been nearly killed by Kite Bombs. Even while falling she hadn’t felt fear. Only when helplessly standing under a fast-moving underground river did she begin to feel true terror. The helplessness, the inability to do anything to save herself, the inevitability of a slow death.
Was she afraid of drowning before the Upheaval? She couldn’t remember, but she was afraid of it now.
On a positive note, though she wasn’t sure why, that terror had made her gifts grow by leaps and bounds. They were nowhere near as strong as they once were, but she could now look over her torso, down to her thighs in great detail. The body Olivia gifted her was clear now, it’s modifications were exquisite, and it was still in good shape. Her limbs more rough in appearance.
Another tug. She couldn’t sense down to her feet, so she sat up to bring whatever was pulling at her into range of her gift. Gnawing at her half-destroyed feet was a large, fat rat. The rat was as big as a German Shepherd, obviously changed by the upheaval or from the other side. It sucked up the fluid and chewed on the polymers and seals, its beady eyes locked onto its treat.
Karla lifted her hand to her chest, and found Delta’s machine pistol still inside one of the large pockets. She sighed in relief. How it didn’t get washed away, she didn’t know. She pulled the pistol up and aimed.
A feeling of vertigo washed over her. This was the first time she had properly held a firearm since she was awakened, and it felt so, so right. Her brain sent her demands to adjust her aim, to grip the pistol a little harder and be prepared to pull down to mitigate recoil. Information she never learned poured into her, adjusting her stance, her grip, her point of aim, her squeeze of the trigger.
A single round fired through the rat’s skull and down through its body, instantly killing it. She could just tell the shot was perfect, even without sight, even as it tumbled out of her sphere of perception.
She flexed her grip. That felt good. Natural. She had never felt such a strong affinity for something she’d never done…
She supposed she had. Who knows how many people she had killed for Stoke. Perhaps many even before she became nothing more than a brain in a jar. Karla grit her teeth when a step alerted her. She snapped around and aimed the pistol upwards. She was entirely blind, and the sensors on her mask were heavily damaged, but her hearing was almost supernatural. She aimed at just above the source of the footstep, and judging by the yelp, accurately at a somebody a dozen meters away from her.
“Who-oo-oOiiiiii’s there?” Her voice synthesizer cracked and sizzled as it worked. She punched her throat with her free hand. There was a spark as it made a popping noise. “Who’s there? Speak up!”
“Sorry! Sorry… I only came down to check the grates! To see if there was anything to salvage before the rats got to it.”
Karla frowned. “Like this bastard here?” There was silence for a second. “Speak, don’t just move your head.”
“Y-Yes! Like that! They eat corpses and the organic fluids some gear uses. I thought you were dead, honestly. I didn’t mean to bother you.” A footstep sounded as he began to walk away.
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“Wait! Does this pathway lead out?”
“Yes sir!”
“And you’re a scavenger?”
“Uh, I am part of the Scavenger Guild, but I don’t hack bodies to pieces up on the streets.”
“You were going to hack me up, though?”
“No sir!” the man sounded like he had bowed his head. “I wold have taken anything valuable left on a corpse, waste not want not and all that, but I don’t much like chopping people up. I would have left you whole.”
Karla nodded as she pulled herself to her feet, or rather what was left of her feet. She was currently balanced on what was essentially the jagged remains of her ankles. “If I follow this path up, will it lead me to an exit?”
“Yes! Though, it will be locked. The City keeps everything locked away down here, we’ve had to find other ways of getting out. I could show you if you’d like…”
Karla waved him off. “Go on, check your grates. If I find you sneaking up on me I’ll blow your head off, got it?”
“Yes sir! Thank you sir!” The man skittered to one side.
“That also goes for your two friends hiding up there.” Karla pointed. She didn’t know where ‘up there’ was, she could just hear the breaths, the dripping water from two figures, and the activation of heatblades. She wasn’t sure, but it felt like her hearing was getting better the more she couldn’t see.
At her mention, two figures dropped down from dark corners above the path. “Sir… Ma’am? Whatever. Sir! We just want this bastard. We have no interest in bothering you.”
“Oh, good.” Karla shrugged and began walking away, only to trip on the steps. Her senses didn’t show her that far, so she had to feel it out with each foot.
“Hey, that one’s crippled.” One of the pair whispered. “Blind? Busted feet, too.”
“Just get the old man first. We’ll chase that one down after.”
Karla sighed. She really was going to let them go. With the distance and the sound of rushing water, she shouldn’t be able to hear these two, but whatever the Church had installed on her head was amazing. She turned, aimed at the two voices and fired. The first fired perfectly, and Karla was rewarded with a gurgle, then splash as the man presumably fell backwards into the rushing water. The second trigger pull only resulted in a click. She cursed.
“You bastard!” The second man rushed forward, his wet footsteps moving faster than unmodified legs would allow. The sound still gave him away, and the first slashing cut missed Karla by a wide margin. She leaned in, placing her attacker within range of her sensors. She was surprised for a moment. It looked like a kid beneath his abstract mask. The surprise delayed her enough for the dagger to stab into her stomach.
The boy seemed surprised at the lack of penetration, at how the blade had broken in half against her abdomen. “A-A cyborg, wait!” He held up the dagger, which Karla snatched out of his hand. She hammered the butt of the pistol into his throat and pushed. He stumbled backwards into the rushing waters and was whisked away.
Karla felt her ribs, there was a small nick there now. If she had an organic torso, that blade would have gone straight through her heart. She thought of the boy’s age and shook that guilt right from her head. He and his friend had come here to murder an old man, and when she showed weakness, they’d planned on gutting her, too. She looked over the dagger. Cheap, long blade, half-blunt and now broken.
“Old man,” she called out as she placed the pistol back in her jacket. She dropped the grip of the dagger on the path. “Take your time coming back.” She began climbing the steps again, ignoring the silent scavenger who watched her leave.
The pathway lead through many long miles of tunnels under the city, and Karla was beginning to grow tired of these damn pathways. Not physically, she felt like she could walk forever and still be fresh. No, it was tediousness of it all. Constantly having to check if there were stairs in front of her, if there was a sudden dropoff or wall. She had to be careful, and that took up much of her biological brain’s processing power. She let out a breath of relief when she found a door. Tall, made of metal and with a small lock above a handle, she hoped this would lead her out of this hellhole.
She leaned close enough for her senses to pass through the lock. It was complicated, but the action to open the bolt wasn’t. A simple tug with her gift, and the bolt came free. She twisted the handle herself and stepped out into what sounded like a small underground tunnel. The sound of electric motorbikes filled the air, as did the wind from their passing.
She smiled at the newfound freedom. She walked one way, only to find a wall. She turned and walked the other, finding a wall there, too. Only the street accessed this location, and traffic today sounded busy.
She cursed. This was going to be a long day.
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The water tunnels under the city were a more recent addition to the city. The constant condensation and rainfall on the lower levels made managing the runoff an issue of primary importance as the city grew upwards. But recent was relative, and these tunnels had been around before BlueTwo was born, and had been his regular haunt throughout his life.
He hiked his way down into the waterways that ferried away water, trash, and bodies off the street every morning. When the bodies he found were actually dead, they would be sources of good income for him. And today was almost his last if he had tried going messing with a still-breathing cyborg.
He laughed under his breath as he climbed down to the two scavenger boys who thought they could take him down and claim his turf for their own. That cyborg had been injured, but he knew it was dangerous without testing them. Those two idiots probably never learned how sensitive a cyborg’s senses could be. They’d never learn it now. He pushed through their pockets, only finding drugs and trash. The good stuff was already mounted to their bodies anyways. He pulled out a fillet knife and went to work, carefully carving away the valuable arms and legs of the two dead scavengers.
BlueTwo whistled as he worked, which he hadn’t done in a while. Today was good.