The weeks after the battle passed quickly. New inductees joined the company, bringing it back to strength, and Mai’s assistance to Fat John had made her a trusted member of the company, even if later it turned out she was somewhat envied.

Andries continued to help mentor her, and the day before she’d finally managed to hit her daily quota for the first time, levelling up as she did. She smiled at the memory of the cake the rest of the company had brought out for her. They took any opportunity they could to celebrate the good things in life. A brief pang of longing passed through her as she realized with having hit that goal, her time with Andries as her mentor was close to being finished. She felt she still had so much to learn though.

Flexing in front of her room’s mirror, she admired her body while avoiding those thoughts. It had changed. All of the hard work had stripped away most of her previous life’s spread and she was pleased to see she had signs of a developing six pack. Her HEALTH bar had also increased. Looking it up in her Primer, after finally getting around to reading it – mostly to just shut up Andries - she’d read that it had been as a result of her increased strength, as well as her constant exposure to the germs and diseases present in the sewers.

Her legs and arms were also much stronger, and she gurned for a second as she flexed before breaking out into a laugh. No matter how much she wanted to deny it, the job had been good for her both physically and mentally.

Mai had a focus in life that she hadn’t had since her parents died. Determined to get back to Li, the job had given her a mental and physical strength she hadn’t possessed before and which if she hadn’t developed, would have meant she’d never get back to her sister.

“Mai! Are you ready for the shift?” Andries knocked on her door. Since their losses he’d been assigned to their team to make up numbers and bring the inductees brought in to replace them up to speed as quickly as possible

“Be there in a second. Just finishing off,” she quickly formed her underclothes and selected ‘Hazmat Suit’ from the menu. As soon as the nanites had formed the suit, she opened her door.

“Ready to hit quota second-day running?” he grinned, offering his hand for a high-five.

“You know it,” she laughed.

The laughter quickly ended as she saw the looks she was getting from some of the other members of the Company. Whilst they weren’t quite glowering at the pair of them, they definitely looked decidedly unfriendly.

“What’s with them?” she asked out of the side of her mouth.

“The mentoring. I’ve kind of gone beyond the parameters of what mentors usually do,” sighed Andries. “Most mentors just work alongside the normal crews whilst teaching newcomers how to do their jobs.”

“Gone beyond is a bit of an understatement,” Mai gasped. Andries had been taking her on special missions more times than she could count. “Why have you been doing that?”

She stopped and placed a hand on his shoulder, forcing him to face her.

“There’s just something different about you. I did it without thinking.”

“And now people are starting to dislike me because you’re showing me special treatment, helping me get extra credits that others think they deserve, or should at least have a chance at?”

“Yeah?” he half-asked, half-stated.

Taking a quick glance around the room, Mai slowly blew out a breath. “I think you need to start sharing the love.”

“Yeah,” he repeated. “After this one.”

***

As usual they headed up the sewer to the seemingly never ending fat berg. Considerably smaller than it had been when they had first started, there was still a good few weeks of labour to be done before they were even halfway to clearing it.

Even with a number of her party levelling up due to the battle with the urbexers, as well as hitting quota on a daily basis, not enough of them were at a level where they could use nanites to speed things up.

The limitations imposed by the Emperor and the Jade Court just didn’t make sense, yet she could see this as a perverse way in which they worked to keep people who were indentured in that perpetual state. A way to keep the indentured from ever actually working their way out of debt and at the very least, not to do so quickly.

Whilst slavery was, technically, illegal, this was a legal way of replacing it. She and her company would continue to work for months, even years in some cases to clear their debts and there was always going to be some new cost that added to it.

And the longer they were here ,and the more people that were sent down to work in places like this, the less the Jade Court had to spend on expensive robots, drones, and other automated systems.

It also had the effect of curbing the population. Another thing she’d learnt in her first few days was that there were prophylactics in the food and water given to all indentured citizens.

They’d been effectively sterilised against their will. No children meant that only those not indentured would be adding to the population growth.

Just wish I knew how many of us there are, Mai had always thought that debt-free citizens were in the majority. But now that she was in the sewers, places she’d never even known existed when she was still living with her sister, she wondered just how large the population truly was. One hundred and sixty billion free citizens, but how many billion toiling away in all of the unseen places.

“Hey, Mai, stop wool gathering. Pay attention. There was a report of mogwai up ahead,” Andries pointed to a side tunnel just up the way from them. “Sun asked me to take you ahead, check things out. The rest of the work party is following a bit further back.”

“Hah, you’re not worried are you? The great Mogwai Bane?” she laughed.

“Be a dear and piss off,” smirked Andries, giving her the finger. “It always pays to be on your guard.”

And like that he was gone, staff flying away.

“Andries!” Mai lunged with her staff, jabbing it into the morass. A hand appeared and she slapped the stick into it, pulling him up with all her might.

He popped into view, arms flailing, tentacles as thick as her fingers wrapped around him from behind.

Raising her staff, Mai smashed it down behind him. Noxious liquid splashed in all directions, coating her goggles. Nanites wiped it away with a thought.

Her attack had done nothing to help him. The surface coating had dissipated the strength of her blow.

“Thrust!” Andries choked out. He’d managed to get to his feet. “Thrust!”

He bent over and a creature of nightmares schlepped out of the river of sewage. It looked like a rat. If rats were the size of mastiffs, coated in lizard scales and had tentacles where their mouths should be.

She activated her STREET FIGHTING skill, kicking in her TUNNEL FIGHTER, SEWER COMBAT and LARCENY as well. Target boxes with hit chances filled her retinal display.

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HIT CHANCE 75%

CRITICAL HIT CHANCE 35%

SNEAK ATTACK +5% HIT CHANCE

I’ll take that, Mai thought as she thrust her staff forward with all her might. It struck on the creature’s flank, the slimy liquid causing it to glance.

“Again! Keep hitting it!” Andries’ hands were gone, replaced by luminescent blades at least two feet long. Since the battle with the urbexers he’d been hunting mogwai on a daily basis, making a public oath that he would always defend members of the company from their enemies. As such, it was clear he’d been able to access some very cool upgrades to the weapons he could use.

Despite that, his personal crusade had made him even more popular with the workers, and his daily battles with mogwais, who had started to appear with an alarming regularity had seen him level up beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

Mai thrust again as he cut at the finger-thick tentacles. Despite the hit boxes showing her fairly good to great odds of hitting, she cursed in frustration as her attacks proved fruitless.

It didn’t help that her ACTIVATED skills showed how long they would remain active before entering cooldown, during which time she wouldn’t even be able to benefit from any PASSIVE boosts they gave her.

For some reason, she knew that if that happened, neither of them was going to live. It was something she felt deep in her bones. She had no idea why, but she couldn’t force it to the back of her mind.

I’m surprised I don’t have a bloody PANIC glyph above my head.

This mogwai was unlike any other they’d fought before. It was far more determined than the others. Normally they would only attack in packs, swarming their enemies, wearing them down before taking the most wounded away with them.

This one had attacked them by itself when it was outnumbered. It was bigger too, by at least half again.

It’s almost as if Andries killing so many has caused them to evolve, to get stronger, but that’s just ridiculous!

All of this flashed through her brain in a split second, barely registering as she tried to work out how to kill it before it killed her friend.

The mogwai screeched so loudly that stars danced before her eyes. Pain more intense than anything she’d experienced before exploded in her skull.

Without conscious thought she activated her USE ARMOUR skill. A helmet formed around her head, replacing the hazmat headset she’d been using, sound dampeners cutting off the incessant screech.

Shaking her head to clear it, Mai took a second to assess the battle before her.

There were no damage markers, so she knew that the sound hadn’t injured her.

Andries on the other hand screamed in pain and staggered about having broken free of the things grip somehow. A DISORIENTED glyph of three birds circling his head. Too late he somehow managed to activate his own armour, encasing his head and body.

Clever. Unlike the mastiff they’d fought last time, the mogwai’s sonic attack only caused pain, not PANIC, with the added negative effect of DISORIENT, flashed through her mind while she set up her next strike.

She attacked again, only scoring weak hits on various hit boxes. Gritting her teeth she spun her staff and cracked it across the spine.

HIT! 4% DAMAGE

It wasn’t a lot, but it stopped the mogwai’s sonic attack mid-screech, and its health bar had a block of black. She didn’t like the fact that it was able to cycle through the attack as if it didn’t need to even draw breath. Its cooldown seemed to be non-existent.

Does it have a certain number of attacks before it recharges? She pushed the thought away as irrelevant, changing her staff into a cutter so that she had both blunt and cutting attacks.

Still, the distraction was all that Andries needed and with a massive effort he managed to free himself from the mogwai’s tentacles once again.

Purple blood streamed from his blades as he continuously crossed his weapon arms, trying to force the mogwai back and preventing it from finding an easy opening.

Trying to circle behind it, Mai cursed as the wily creature countered her moves whilst still concentrating on killing Andries.

As if tentacles, teeth as long as a human’s finger, and a sonic attack weren’t enough, the mogwai’s next attack caught them both by surprise.

“What the hells!” yelled Andries as the mogwai’s tongue shot out of its maw. Mai had seen nothing like it before. It had a triangular tip covered in suckers, with blood-red ooze flying in all directions as it lanced through the air.

Andries’ hands moved too fast to see, parrying the horrific attack away just before it could strike his face, changing into knives just before they hit the tongue. If there was any damage caused she couldn’t tell, but without a BLEED glyph appearing, she just had to accept he’d not managed to cut it.

Undeterred, the mogwai continued to press home its attack.

Every few seconds that creepy tongue would shoot out of its maw like a short spear. Circling around Andries it continued to ignore Mai as it tried to break through his defences.

“I’ve aggro’d it. When its back is to you, thrust at the base of its skull. These mogwai have a weak spot there. It’s where they would have originally been plugged in to accept further programming.”

She didn’t have time to ask what programming he was referring to, but it was clear to her he was used to fighting this type of mogwai since he had started his self-appointed quest.

The mogwai attacked again, cutting short any further conversation. Slicing through the glop, tongue shooting in and out, it reared up onto its hindlegs, revealing hook-clawed feet.

“Now!” roared Andries as the beast dropped onto him, claws raking. Blood, red this time, filled the air as its claws cut, and cut, and cut at Andries. His armour’s SOAK value no longer able to hold up against the damage the mogwai was causing.

Mai stamped forward, jamming her staff at the base of its skull. She missed again, the point merely glancing off the creature’s natural armour and slime that still clung to it.

What the hell! I should be hitting the bastard thing with these odds! She felt as though the odds were well and truly being stacked against them. Unfairly so in her biased opinion.

It continued raking its claws, Andries’ blood coating their evil crescent-shaped blades.

“Kill. It!” he screamed in agony. PANIC, BLEEDING, DISORIENTATED, and POISONED glyphs appeared above his head. The things head reared, and it roared, before plunging its maw down towards Andries. And at that moment it fully bared the socket.

Screaming she attacked again, putting all of her weight behind the attack. A moment of resistance and then her staff sank home.

CRITICAL HIT! 95% DAMAGE

BLEED @2.5% PER SECOND

PANIC!

PARALYSED!

Glyphs appeared over its head, registering the BLEED, PANIC and PARALYSED statuses whilst its health bar had just a glimmer of green left in it. Blood gushed out of the wound with such force that it knocked her backwards. Screeching, eyes bulging, the Mogwai stood stock still, its cries getting louder and louder.

Andries surfaced. His armour had been torn to shreds. Flesh and bone had been pared away by the mogwai’s claws. Roaring, he jammed his blades into the mogwai’s jaw, nano-blade punching out the top of its skull.

For a second they stood stock still and it was as if time itself had stopped. Then, without a sound, they both slid beneath the surface.

“No! Andries!” In that moment of her anguish, she didn’t even realize she had dismissed the armor’s helmet to yell.

Clawing at the gunk before her, she took a breath and plunged into the river, hands reaching, desperately searching for her mentor.

AIR DEPLETION IN 60 SECONDS

A timer appeared as she clawed her way along the bottom of the sewer. Time and time again she seized what she thought was her mentor only to realise it was another piece of illegally dumped waste.

AIR DEPLETION IN 10 … 9 … 8 … 7

Pushing off from the bottom of the sewer she surged to her feet. As her vision cleared of the muck she had just been desperately searching through , she saw a group of sewer workers wading their way towards her.

Sun was the first to reach her. “Go home. Get some rest. I’ll assign you another mentor.”

Stunned, Mai could only stare at Sun.

“Go home, rest. I’ll have someone assigned to you in a couple of hours and you can finish your shift then. No additional cost.” Sun’s eyes wrinkled as she smiled behind her mask.

Numb, totally shocked at her friend and mentor’s death, Mai could only stare at the company boss. It was clear that she thought she was being kind. But all Mai really wanted to do was kill her.

“Mai, listen to me. Go and get a couple of hour’s rest. We’ll look for his body and bring it back. You can finish your shift later.”

That smile again. Sun never realised just how close she was to dying that day. Instead of killing her, Mai nodded.

I’m never going to get out of here. That mad bitch doesn’t even care that Andries is dead! All she can think about is the company hitting its target. I’ve got to get away! Got to get to Li and find somewhere. We need to get away!

Walking slowly, mind racing, she counted the number of workers helping in the search. The number tallied with the full strength of her company.

There’s no one to stop me running. Decision made, she powered through the gunge, sobbing her heart out at her friend’s death but determined to make her escape before Andries’ body was found, and the company returned to the bunk house.