Not breathing, not moving, just aiming my pistol into the darkness in front of me with nothing but the vibrations through my feet to know when my target was in optimal range to open fire.

My previous calm was gone, my hands holding my gun were held tight and shaking a little but I did what I could to hold my aim steady. The foot falls were practically disturbing my aim now with how heavy they were and how much they were shaking the walkway.

This was the moment, it had to be. My instincts screamed it at me even if the rest of my mind was trying to work out distance to vibration mathematics with no visual data.

One shot, two, grunt, three, four, five, six. The gun’s kick puling my aim around but my grip pulling it into order as best I could with no sight. Seven, eight, click, click. Thump, clatter.

I’d already used some of the rounds in the magazine earlier and I hadn’t thought I’d need to reload yet. Bullets were expensive but my nerves and intuition told me to dump the magazine into the hostile in front of me.

Fourteen rounds of Noe’s special hand-loaded ammo used.

I stepped back a little from whatever was in front of me, and unloaded my gun. Trying not to fumble or drop anything I slipped the empty magazine into the little bag on my rig, the one with the shotgun poking into it, and then reached over to a fresh mag I’d fixed to the rig itself.

Slotting it into my pistol and pulling back the slide I took aim down the tunnel once more.

Just in time to hear a roar and feel the walkway bounce under me and my gun to be swiped from my hands painfully. I don’t even know if it was the adrenal skill or my own instincts that made me let go of the gun when it got hit into the pipes on the side.

Then a rushing of air, rustling of clothes and another roar.

I was tumbling uncontrollably back onto the grating hard before I could even react, but not before my abilities had tried their best to block something. A punch or a kick, I didn’t know but it sent me falling with no damage apart from my arms burning with exertion and a throbbing in my forearms.

“You burning gonk scum! You rat stuffed drek! I’ll tear you apart! You killed Benna!” the hostiles said from the darkness as I scrambled away and from what I could hear he swung wildly into the area in front of him while advancing.

I pulled my feet under me and tried to stand but we were close enough to hear details of each other’s movements now and with a scream the guy closed in.

Again I only managed to catch up with my body when everything had already happened as a rush panic ran through me. The hostile must have closed in and launched a big attack because my body thrown itself back instead of dodge or block. I managed to catch myself before I was back on the floor.

My legs were hurting a bit, lots of little spikes of pain. The guy ahead was groaning and I could hear him getting up off the floor, or trying to as I could hear the railing shifting where he’d grabbed it. I needed to strike.

I pulled my knife out and dashed forwards to land a few blind jabs in. Clank, clank. The walkway under me giving my enemy the information he needed to know I was coming at him. I heard a grunt of effort from the guy but I still managed a blind stab at the source of the noise feeling the knife slide home into flesh.

The hostile screamed out in pain.

“You filthy.. Urgh… rot licker.” The guy growled through clenched teeth.

I tried to get another jab in quickly but the guy started swiping away at the air in front of him from the floor. He must have got his knees under himself. I wondered where I’d managed to land the stab but judging from the small but steady splattering sound as he huffed and swung his punches around himself he was bleeding pretty bad, maybe from the bullets and the knife combined.

A clattering of the walkway. Then another rush attack from the guy, this time I stepped into it and thrust the knife forward for where I thought his head would be, hoping to land the stab in time to stop the charge and leave him on the floor again.

This turned out to be a dumb, adrenaline filled decision.

I felt the knife slice into flesh but then I was lost for a moment as my small dark world of noise and timing was replaced with flailing and pain. I hit the ground back first and tried to stab again but I’d lost the knife. I don’t know what the ability thought would be a good set of movements to keep me safe but it involved letting go of the knife somewhere in there.

Punching and flailing at the guy on top of me while grunting with the effort of keeping air going into my now compressed lungs. The dark was filled with the sounds of punches and grunting for a moment before I realized I wasn’t having my bones turned into powder by a blitzed ganger.

It was just me hitting him. He was just breathing real shallow.

Slowly and carefully pulling myself free from under the guy while readying myself to defend myself. I took a crawling stagger back from him and pulled out my scope, totally ready to jump back if he was pretending.

I looked at him and saw he was just laying on his front, barely moving as he breathed his last. My knife was jammed into his cybereye up past the hilt. With obvious gunshot exit wounds all over his back and arms. How did this guy even make it to me through that?

“No… Kill… Ben…” The guy mumbled into his own blood from the floor. Guy was scratched hard if he was still conscious enough to talk but not enough thinking in there to not charge a gun in the dark. Then again the scratch did seem to make him ignore the pain so what did I know.

I was in serious pain though. The little aches and pains were all back in force and now had formed some sort of gang to beat me down. I stepped forward and yanked my knife out of his eye and stowed it in my rig.

Stolen story; please report.

Looking through the scope to find my gun was easy, I’d fallen over it the last time I’d fallen with the guy tumbling after me. It had a nasty dent from his apparently chromed arm but the slide still pulled back smoothly so it seemed okay for now.

Likely still get shouted at by Noe but it was fine.

I needed to get out of here. This guy must have been very lucky to catch up so quickly and I didn’t need lucky gangers after me again. Especially ones this big and this scratched

Ignoring the pain running through me I turned on my heel, grabbed the railing and ran away from the now dead hostile. I still had another thirteen or so crossroads to go straight through and then a few turns to get me to the plant.

-

Finally arriving at the water treatment plant I slumped and fell to the floor away from the lights of the entrance. Sitting in the dark while breathing hard and shivering I just tried to focus on recovering.

The pain had taken more from me than I thought and they’d only got worse as I ran, eventually I’d had to slow down just to avoid some of the worst of it. I was now out of breath, out of energy and out of willpower to ignore the shooting pains with every step.

Sanctum can you do anything for the pain? Like a numbing thing or whatever?

[Sanctum could sever the User’s sensory connections to affected area, but repairing them again is impossible without access to an installed medical suite and would likely have additional side effects that could include loss of motor control to specific parts.]

Damn, it’s always the medical suite with you isn’t it? Ah well. I don’t need you chopping my nerves off Sanctum, thanks anyway. Maybe next time.

Do you know what damage that ability did to me during that whole thing?

[User has sustained a number of self inflicted injuries. Several micro-tears to the User’s ligaments in their right arm. Several minor muscle tears in the User’s arms, legs and back. Possible micro-fractures to several bones. A medical suite or medical scanner cyberware is required for more precise details.]

Oh, that’s why my body feels like I’ve been hit by a car, because I almost have been. My arm is killing me but it’s the legs that are more the issue right now, I need to make this drop and then get home, maybe I can klep a little motor scooter on the way.

I pulled up my maps again, I checked the layout of the facility in front of me. I’d need to move through the floor of the thing and to the big pumping station, take a left to the intake room and leave the little box in a maintenance post desk drawer in there. Apparently the little triangle had been pre-carved for my convenience.

Oh, well isn’t that preem right there. My convenience. I’d carve the gonk thing myself if they’d go clear out the gangers for my convenience. Damn it.

Getting up and walking up to the door of the place, there was a little keypad to the right with a scanner. I put in the override code I’d been given that would skip the scan. The door popped open smoothly with a small hiss, at least the bots kept this place working well.

I walked into the huge room, more of a factory floor than anything. All well lit and filled with industrial mechanical things. Lots of pipes in every direction with a few giant pipes going though the space. I saw a few small pipe crawling drones moving about among them.

Across the room was a double wide doorway to the pumping station. Even from here I could see the giant machines. I headed over.

In the pumping station were naturally the two big pumps, two gigantic cylinder structures with big pipes going in and out and a massive engine structure above each of them. The odd part was they were loud but not deafening. The engines were electrical but just put out a loud and constant hum that changed pitch back and forth repeatedly, the pumps themselves just made a steady, deep rumble.

Well, I don’t have that industrial mechanical skill or whatever yet. So I have no idea what they should sound like. Likely they were just fine.

[Civic Engineering is the name of the Skill User is considering.]

Right, that one.

Turning left I walked along to the entrance to the intake room. It was open and I stepped right in to a tall room with more of the giant pipes. A lot more of them than I’d seen so far, with a lot of giant valves you’d need two arms to get turned.

I looked around and saw a little cubicle in the corner, in that a desk with a IR port hub and a computer of some sort but it looked more industrial with lots of big cables going into it. Maybe monitoring the local equipment? Whatever. The steel desk it was on had two drawers and the one on the left had a tiny triangle carved just under the stainless steel handle.

A quick sweep around the room and to check for cameras of microphones didn’t find anything, this was a clear drop site. I hadn’t brought my trouble with me. And I had the package. I placed the little box into the back of the drawer and closed it smoothly. Job complete.

Relief washed over me.

From here I’d just need to head to the flooding evacuation staircase to the surface, head down to the subway and then ride the subway train all the way home. Except this time I wasn’t heading to the rose tinted Wash Street, I was heading to Marchand’s street for a big payday and hopefully a spray shower.

Heading back into the pumping station and across to the evac staircase in the corner. It was a rectangular staircase that spiraled around a sturdy central pillar all the way from this level, the lowest level, all the way up to the surface. It was going to take a long time. At least it had hazard lighting though so I wasn’t going back into the dark.

I started climbing.

-

I don’t know how long I was walking up those stairs but it must have been an hour. My tired and hurting legs were screaming at me to just sit down. But I wanted to get home now, I wanted to be there more than I was tired.

Eventually I arrived at a wide hallway with a few doorways that led to other corridors that had stair signs in the distance. Another maze then. But at least this one had exit signs and lighting.

Following the big multi-language signs was simple enough so I just limped along holding my bad arm until I reached a doorway, a quick check into it showed it empty so I headed into the main corridor. A triple side tunnel that sloped gradually upwards with floor lighting and holographic arrows with the distance to the exit that appeared near the wall when I passed on some motion sensor, very fancy.

Another ten minutes of limping later I reached a big closed door with a little normal door built into it for maintenance access, I popped the release on the small door and walked out into a pedestrian only street above ground.

The surface of the city wasn’t too different from the underside, it was just a little more expensive and had a sky that was usually raining. At least in the wet season. We only had two here, wet and dry.

Dry was sandstorms that were kept away from the city with ecological controller planes or just very big bombs as far as I’d heard before. Wet was constant rain that sometimes dropped all pretense and tried to drown humanity once and for all with a storm that dumped so much rain down that it actually causes structural damage in the city through sheer pressure. Either way people stayed indoors in extreme weathers.

Down in the underground there was none of that, just the odd flood when something broke and the rare but occasional nanite swarm eating through your bedroom ceiling and roasting you alive.

Overall it was a lot calmer.

I’d been up to the surface a lot as I’d grown up, first time seeing the sky was a big whoa moment for tiny me. But then it’s just another backdrop for running from or running into danger and money. I didn’t visit it much these days.

The city didn’t change much for poor folks like me, you’d likely get a lot of stuff on the surface that you couldn’t get underground. Actual meat or fish, expensive clothes, milspec cyberware, hyper-diamonds to throw at each other or whatever it was rich people did for fun. I wasn’t ever going to see those sides of the surface though, I just got the poor side, the one that didn’t look a lot different from underground. Except about another one or two aura more in cost on average.

I headed to the close by subway while trying to not draw too much attention to my injured form while strapped with three guns. Might make a target.