Damon allowed himself to be pushed along in the river of humanity. They were all charged with life but didn't know how to live. Randy deviants were groping and grinding against any warm body they could find. Families with children huddled and clung to each other desperate to avoid separation.

None of the urchins or drunken belligerents deigned to reach for one of his peaches though. Damon was doing his best to emote. He projected extreme confidence, iron will, controlled violence. But if he was being honest most people avoided him because he was six eight and took high doses of snipe liver. Quid made normal men into super humans it made trained killers into something beyond that. It was also highly toxic, most people that took it ended up shitting blood until they died, the ones that survived had to keep up the habit or they'd develop flesh eating sores that killed them slowly. The substance was banned throughout the empire the only people that partook were outlaws or men like him who were tasked with pretending to be outlaws.

The street was full of thugs looking for victims, but they avoided eye contact with him, soldiers lining the street locked eyes but soon looked away. One of them whispered something to his captain. That was dangerous, so Damon dialed things down, adjusted his posture, tried to act natural, just another enormous quid addict delivering peaches, nothing out of the ordinary. The thoroughfare broke up into dozens of side streets and the mass of humanity churning and ebbing found these areas of weaker resistance and the flood dispersed.

Damon found the particular intersection he wanted and left the mainstream to find his own dark corner to cower in. As he walked along the gutter an emaciated beggar grabbed his leg. The man looked like he'd been trampled but he was probably just strung out. Damon hooked the man under his arm and drug him out of the street.

He set the man against a stone storefront. The junky's eyes were open but glazed over, face dried up, body shutting down one system at a time. Damon had to weigh the merits of this man's existence. Inside his left inner pocket Damon had little pouches of pit cut with sugar. In his right pocket he had had packets of pure unadulterated product. One would give the man a respite, a chance to continue living, the other would be lethal.

Damon gave the man the cut pit, and a piece of silver. He bent down and whispered into his greasy ear. "If you want to live, live for the resistance. Remember the Master; he will heal all your wounds. He will carry all your burdens. Soon the resistance will act and a reign of peace will come, a time when the plague of creepers will pass and the world will be ours again. Find the resistance."

The odds of the man finding the resistance weren't good, the chances of him being a worthy asset were even lower, but it was really all just a numbers game. A hundred beggars in the street contacted and maybe three would become allies not a bad return on an investment. Beggars were useful. They saw everything, were invisible, could report the mood and the pulse of the city better than a consulate and his risk adverse analysts.

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"Have you seen him? Have you seen the Master?" The stricken man managed to ask.

Damon nodded his head and tried to look benevolent. "He is greater than the legends make out."

The man looked up at him and tried to spit. "I hope you and your Master choke on shit."

Damon smiled, sometimes he felt that way himself. He almost told the man that, but it wouldn't be good for his cover. So he tried to muster some righteous indignation. "When the revolution comes, you will be left behind, to gnash your teeth and beg for death. The master has eyes, and they are always watching."

Damon stared the man down trying to look vindictive, then walked away in a huff. When Damon turned the corner he gradually went back to posturing like a quid fiend who was too sick to be a threat to anyone. He passed the grocers' market and leaned his hunched back against a wall discreetly eyeing the crowd to make sure he wasn't being followed.

Several soldiers stood around a makeshift palisade made of fruit crates. A bunch of degenerate gamblers milled about waiting for the show to start. Several syndicate stooges took wagers. A man in a grey frock unloaded a few small crates from the back of a wagon. It was illegal to bring creepers into the city, but angel freighters did it all the time. They were a privileged class, guild members with the secret of harnessing an angel wing to carry freight from one city to the next. They often carried in contraband; evidently this one had a side hustle organizing small creeper fights. This lurid event relied on using dogs pitted against newly hatched manticore, and beakers. It was an all-around bad idea. The dogs didn't do well. The creepers were handled by amateurs and often members of the crowd were killed. Sometimes the creepers escaped. Imperial hunters would have to scour the city following the trail of dead bodies to find the monster's lair. Damon watched the grey coat unloading a black pit dog to the crowds mixed applause. Damon hesitated, he wanted to teach these people that playing with creepers was wrong, it would get somebody killed, dogs had warm blood and shouldn't be made to suffer, but he also thought about putting fifty coppers on the dog. He could see the manticore had part of its beak cut off and wouldn't be able to use its net. Sometimes he disgusted himself. Violence and suffering, they'd become so common. He kept his money in his pocket and felt like a saint.

The grocery barkers hawked nuts and fruit to the crowd. Damon asked one of them where the back door was. He had some peaches to sell. When the mistress' overseer opened it, Damon told him he was here to sell three dozen peaches for seven copper pieces. The overseer asked him if the peaches were bruised, and he told him they resisted all bruises. The man smiled wide and led him up the stairs. Before he entered the mistress' office, the man pulled him close, "I can't wait for the revolution to come. I can't stand living behind these walls, having to scrape and beg to get by, when the whole world is out there waiting for us to fill it. Do you have any news of the Master? Will he act soon?"

Damon studied the man's easy face, his big soft eyes, his pale fleshy cheeks. Damon figured this man would last about six heartbeats outside the walls. Damon smiled and placed his hand on the man's shoulders. "Soon, comrade, soon you will behold the healer himself."

The man opened the door and Damon was relieved to step inside.