I found the hub not far from the subway station, just around the corner from the staircase down from it really but I had to take a long way around the streets as the shortest path was blocked off by a gang barricade on the street there.

Didn’t recognize the gang sign or colors but it didn’t matter. I found another way around and was stood in front of the maintenance hub entrance to find it basically torn open with some sort of explosive charge at the front door.

So someone had wanted to get in here and didn’t like the idea of taking their time with the hydraulic lock or even just hacking the console on the door. At least the blast was old with moss already growing over the scorch marks.

The inside was mostly a ruin but you could see some empty lockers and tables and other debris around the floor of the rooms that still had walls. I soon found my way to the middle of what was left of the structure and a wide staircase down to the basement.

Metal clanking and water dripping were the only sounds as I stepped down the staircase into the already much darker basement. There I found a room that had been mostly ransacked for valuables and scrap with remains all over the floor. The lockers still attached to the walls were levered open and empty too.

No bonus scrap for me then, I thought.

I looked towards the open doorway on the far wall that led to a little metal walkway that split in two, one going downwards one way and the other going downwards the other. Both would lead me down to the pipe ways but some distance away from each other. I picked the one on the right from my perspective, after a quick check of the maps I’d got from Marchand.

Looking down the thin staircase, it just went on and on until the little red PLED lights in the ceiling stopped, then the staircase continued on into the shadows until all sign of it was gone from view.

It was time to get down there. I began the long walk into the dark.

The walk down this stair case was even quieter than the basement one as all I could here was the rolling thrum of the ventilation and the steadily growing, distant and distorted noise of the deep city pumps. There wasn’t even the dripping of water, just mechanical functions.

One the way down I double checked through the maps and notes that Marchand had given me. Some of the maps were quite old according to the metadata and I hoped I wouldn’t find a closed off tunnel or newer dead end. I also checked through my kit, pulling the signet out to hand.

I kept what gun discipline I knew of in mind as I handled the gun. Checking the round was chambered and keeping my finger away from the trigger. Safety off, alright. Well, that was all the gun stuff I knew about so I carried on down the thin staircase as the red lighting above gave out and left me in the dark.

Pulling out the NV scope from my rig, I held it up to my eye to take a look down into the dark while standing still. I at least knew enough sense not to walk around with a scope in my eye and fall down the stairs breaking a leg, or worse the scope itself. Noe would skewer me for that.

The dark was replaced with a green expanse where shadows were still thick but the edges of things glittered with green visibility and the closer the thing was the lighter and more visible it became.

The NV scope was surprisingly good with me being able to pick out little pixel dots of staircase all the way down to a barely flickering grated floor a good distance down from where I was on the stairs.

With an idea of where the pipe way floor was the staircase journey didn’t seem to take long and before I was prepared the quiet buckle of the steps became a deeper clank of the grated flooring. I was now in the pipe ways. I’d visited the pipe ways near my home twice and both times had been for short periods, both times had also been when running from a known threat.

Now, I was heading towards the threat.

I pulled up the NV scope again and checked around me for obvious traps, snag wires or lasers or just some hung up cans or something. I didn’t want to alert whoever was down here right away. Once I was sure the green pixelated darkness didn’t contain danger in my area I put the scope back in my rig and turned on the light on my pistol.

The little beam of light was tightly focused and only cast a small circle of visibility among the dark but I used it to check the walls around for markings or directions as well as looking for a maintenance map to see if it was different than the one I had.

There didn’t seem to be a map on the wall here, I guess the engineers who came down here were expected to have them on their interface. Or maybe they had a whole app for navigation down here.

There was also no markings on the walls, cryptic or otherwise. Just some pale, yellow moss.

Pulling up the maps from Marchand again I started plotting the route, I knew a few of the details of the layout from looking earlier but now I needed actual pipe layouts to follow and to know if there were any adjoining tunnels that could be filled with hostiles. There were even drone only crawlspaces I could use if need be, the entire zone was an industrial maze of tight and thin hallways of various heights with some for humans, some for bots and some just for airflow.

I had a rough idea of what to do using the three overlaying types of map I had, some split into different images, and was about to head off when Sanctum popped up.

[Amygdala Adrenal Bypass white list constructed based on User experience data. User should find their tactile sensitivity and overall bodily sensation and stress levels return to normal in a few minutes.]

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

[Overall integration of the Ability is performing very well given the starting parameters but side effects are expected as time goes on until integration is complete. These side effects are unknown but estimates are fatigue and disturbed sleep at a minimum.]

[Amygdala Adrenal Bypass operation is unadvised due to User self-injury risk but if used the white list will be updated with any missing data related to it’s function along with data associated with the Kinetic Dispersion Ability.]

Sanctum you really need to start shortening these ability names, especially the ones with science names. I don’t even know what an amygdala is, it could be my earlobe for all I know. Just shorten them to acronyms unless it’s new or relevant to the discussion or I’m going to burn out listening to them over and over.

I turned off the torch on my pistol and moved into the darkness while keeping my gun aimed low and my other hand on the railing of the grated catwalk style flooring. The tunnels were slim and the floor was just a very long catwalk with pipes below, above and on either side at all times.

According to the map I’d hit a T-junction soon and need to turn right so I’d need to keep myself on a hair pin trigger while blind against my environment and relying on my balance and my right hand on the railing for guidance. Fortunately the grated floor was quiet and only squeaked a tiny bit with each footstep and the industrial echoes drowned it out entirely.

I could not see a thing in front of my face, literal full blindness. There wasn’t a light to be seen in any direction, not even the way I had come as the tiny red hazard lights above had given up following the staircase down a good way above where the bottom was. I was in complete darkness and I would be for the entire time I was down here basically.

Step by step I moved through the tunnel, smooth railing then railing bump where a vertical bar wrapped around the top bar, then smooth railing again. Smooth, bump, smooth, bump, step, step, step.

Only the grip of my gun, the cold of the railing and the tiny sound of my footsteps and controlled breathing were my entire world. It was a very small world and it seemed very fragile considering the unknown threats.

Marchand had written her agent tried to get the gangers to move on, away from the drop point. But they’d got violent and entrenched so the agent left them to it. They’d recorded ten of them down there but also said they could have had more and Marchand had written that by now a few days later their numbers might have shrunk due to fatalities among them or the more sane ones leaving.

So I was looking at a group of near enough ten grown adults down here blitzed on scratch and meandering around in the dark around their territory. Or beyond, nothing to stop them wandering off while high after all. The mark on the map said they were at least twenty minutes of walking away but it wasn’t out of possibility that I’d meet one on the way.

I turned what I considered ninety degrees to the right and blindly reached in the air for the railing of the right hand tunnel. After a few moments of feeling like an astronaut floating away from the station

I just turned on my pistol light for a moment and found the railing before turning it off again. I took a deep breath.

Starting down the much longer tunnel I knew I’d have to skip over two crossroads and carry on straight each time then on the third it was a left hand turn. Simple enough. Smooth, bump, smooth, bump.

The thumping of the pumps was getting a little louder as I moved down the narrow corridor. The map did say that I would pass through a smaller junction room at the third crossroads where I needed to turn right, it likely had a pump in there. I couldn’t see any light up ahead though, so either I was going the wrong way or they didn’t light the junction rooms either. Probably that second one.

Smooth, bump, smooth, bump, clatter, smooth. Wait. What was that noise?

I froze in place for a few moments, holding my breath and keeping hyper prepared to raise my gun and fire while jumping back. The moments passed slowly and I didn’t hear another noise. I started breathing slowly as I smoothly reached into my rig with my free hand to pull out the NV scope, then equally smoothly I brought it up to my eye.

Looking ahead I saw a crossroads not far away, a tunnel left, right and forwards from my tunnel. All of it glowing green with pixelated static in the scope. No hostiles visible.

Maybe I’d nudged a bolt off the edge of the catwalk? Something light enough my boot hadn’t noticed it? Or some other tiny object, who knew what the engineers left down here randomly.

As I was about to put away the scope and continue a buzzing, moving cloud of green resolved into a person walking from the right hand turn up ahead. They were walking oddly, leaned forward with their head down low and one hand held to their ear. They didn’t look around and didn’t react to my presence if they could detect me. Being in total darkness wasn’t as safe as you’d think with cyberware making people inhumanly perceptive, for all I knew the guy in front of me could smell me let alone see my body heat.

I could feel multiple beads of sweat run down my head as I stood there looking at a potential hostile maybe twenty feet away from me. As I stood there silent and unmoving he continued to walk slowly to the middle of the crossroad and turned right haphazardly. The direction I had to go.

The guy was totally unaware of me as far as I knew and now he had turned his back on me. I considered just shooting him right now but that’d be a pretty good way to tell everyone down here where I was and that they were in danger. I carefully put away my gun under my arm and pulled out my knife, I’d need to get him in the neck to stop him screaming else I’d be better off just shooting the guy.

The echoes down here were long lasting and as loud as the pumps were they wouldn’t cover a scream or a gunshot until a good distance away.

Walking up behind the guy, I slowly swapped my hands, so I had the knife in my right and the scope in my left. Then bringing the scope back up I approached as close as I could without the minimum zoom distortion messing my view up, I reached the man. I lowered the scope when I was maybe a step or two behind him, not that I could see him.

I’d matched steps as best I could on the approach so I just needed to strike properly now.

Just the squeak of his sloppy steps and his ragged breathing told me where he was.

This wouldn’t be my first murder, lives were very cheap in the city and kids were easy targets. The first man I’d killed was trying to kidnap me and a kid called Ellis who I rarely hung around with back when I was six. He’d grabbed Ellis and was trying to get a grip on my arm while fighting with Ellis who was trying to break away when I pulled out my little knife and jammed it into his neck. I’d been aiming for his face but I was small and couldn’t reach at the angle I had.

Needless to say he tried to pull away but that only pulled the knife out of my hand, and his jugular wide open. He still got a little bit away before the blood pressure loss made him fall over, he bled out very quickly after that. Ellis took his bat and a bag of some sort of drug and wouldn’t share anything, but he was also a bit bigger than me so whatever.

I’ve not had to kill or even wound often, but it’s never bothered me much. It’s just a thing that happens in the water district, people get zeroed over some issue or another. Just hope it’s you killing and not being killed if you even get the chance of an option.

I slowed my breathing, aligned my arm with where I thought his neck would be. After a moment of focus, I struck.