SARAH MORNINGHAWK is a winter wolf of a woman. Tall, powerfully built, with an expensive penchant for fur hoods. Everything else she wears is brown and black and padded at the joints. Hugging, not clinging to her angular frame, down to the knee-high boots. Short-chopped razors of grey-shot blonde hair hang just below her ears, and a cruel, regal scar stretches from her lips to her left jaw. She’s the sort of lady people look twice at. I sure did, first time I saw her. People don’t call her the One-Shot Queen ‘cause she’s ugly.

Sarah sits in the rattling metro like a sumo wrestler with balls the size of a bathtub. Legs spread over two different seats, head resting against the jittering glass windows of the undercity train. Lighter leaking a provocative haze of smoke. Icy blue eyes daring any of the other late-night riders to fuck around and find out. Wind and lights scream past at intermittent intervals as we pass between blocks of dingy apartments, halogen streets, trash-filled parks of artificial dirt and rusted workout equipment.

“You didn’t kill him,” she says, drawing my attention back. Five different recordbooks are scattered across the metro seat beside her. She picks up another at random, thumbs through the pages, adds it to a different stack. But they’re not what she’s talking about.

I slouch in a rebellious mirror of her pose. “You saying I shouldn’t have put that bastard in a coma? He deserved way worse than a taser nap. I just gave him a warning shot.”

“I didn’t teach you to miss when you pull the trigger.”

“You didn’t teach me to kill people, either.”

“No. I taught you to fight smart. There are no heroes in the Vents, Mori. A few months of smooth jobs doesn’t change that. I’ve been letting you off the leash because I didn’t think it’d go to your head.” Sarah pauses to take a long drag, blowing the smoke up towards a broken ventilation grate. “Letting a gangster like Carto Bask remember your face isn’t being a hero. It’s not being merciful. Some mistakes, you only live long enough to regret until they come back to finish the job.”

She tosses one of the binders across the aisle, straight onto my lap. Monochrome mugshots of naked teenagers spill out from between the pages.

“You should never have stuck around in his office in the first place. And you fucked with his merchandise. Did you think I wasn’t going to notice? I didn’t tell you to stage a jailbreak. It changes the entire game.”

My nose wrinkles from anger. “They were as old as I am, Sarah.”

“You mean they were as young as you.”

I sit up at that, feet tapping as I glare across the row. “Dynasty was going to sell them like meat to rich overcity fucks. If I didn’t do anything to help them, who else would?”

Sarah sighs. “God. Look at those eyes.” Her voice sinks in disappointment. “You remind me of me, when I was dumber.”

I say nothing. She crushes a lighter against the plastic seat, then ignites another with a grunt.

“Sometimes you have to play the long game,” she says. “No one can save everyone, Mori. I knew a lot of people who tried. A lot of people who played hero one too many times ‘cause they thought it could make a difference. I don’t want you to end up like them.”

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“It can make a difference,” I snap. “If even one of those girls got away, it’s worth it.”

“And if they get caught? Beaten, punished, or worse because your dumb ass thought a couple kids could squirm out of a Dynasty safehouse without getting picked right back off the streets?”

“That all you got? ‘You’re young, you don’t know how the real world works?’”

Her lips wrinkle in frustration as she raps her knuckles against the cracked glass behind her head. “It’s a meat grinder out there. You can’t stop the gears, just have to jump between them. Sometimes that means cutting corners. Survival comes first. You can always help more people later.”

“There was no later. They needed someone. Anyone.” The back of my hands slap against my thighs. “I couldn’t just walk away once I saw them.”

“I get it, kid. And you’ll get what I’m saying too, someday.” The fire dims in her eyes as she stares into her own reflection. “There comes a day in your life where you have to make a choice you never wanted to. Do what that angry voice in your head tells you, or compromise, and do what you need to. Things are different after that.”

My mouth works in silence. Kinda hard to tell the closest thing I’ve had to a mom that I think she’s full of bullshit. That she’s just saying what she is because she’s too used to taking the easy path these days. That even if she doesn’t admit it, the Vents wore her down too, like it does everyone else. Like runoff from the overcity, smoothing her sharp edges until the path of least resistance is the only path she’ll take. The Sarah Morninghawk I know from bar legends would never have looked the other way if she saw what I did in that safehouse. And she wouldn’t have told me to look away, either.

Three thumping heartbeats reverberate through the floor of the metro as we speed over gaps in the rails. Eventually, Sarah shakes her head and strikes up another lighter.

“What’s done is done,” she says. “I’m not angry. It takes guts to walk away when you know exactly the kind of scumbag you have in your irons. You have kick, Mori. I just don’t want someone to take that from you.”

“Thanks,” I growl.

“Ah, gonna bullshit me ‘cause you’re getting scolded like a kid?”

I glance towards the empty rear of the train. “Gonna bullshit you because you’re old.”

“That, I can live with.”

Chuckling, Sarah bundles up the rest of the binders snaps her fingers for me to grab them, then stands and finds a handhold near the door. I sack up and stuff the rest of my opinions far enough down that I won’t get any more scolding from her.

Ancient brakes that haven’t seen a mechanic in half a century screech and spray sparks across a nearby towerside as the metro slows to a stop in a quiet block halfway down the Vents; a residential layer populated by lucky workers who managed to score jobs with overcity corporations and ride up to the surface on the daily. Loud thumps pound against the metal roof as flying classes take off and land on the roof of the train, arcing over the tower gaps on wings of aether and technology given by their JOYs.

A small crowd of salarymen in Shimano Heavy Industries jumpsuits and women in doffed formal jackets disembark around us. E-Town waiters and Metro Blockhouse interns share smokes beneath faded ice-blue LED streetlamps on the metro platform. The peaceful, weary air outside the train is at odds with the rest of the Vents; the groaning chain of metal boxes that rattles off to its next destination.

Even a block like this one is just another slice of the undercity cake. The hard roof of another layer fills the sky fifteen stories up, bracketed at its four corners by four towers of residential housing.

Behind a chainlink fence leading to a greenless park, two dark-eyed teens belonging to the local neighborhood watch nod to Sarah as she strides past. The boy is a Ki Fighter by class, skin pulsing with a faintly glowing aura of white soulfire. The girl is a Martial Artist- gangly, skin pocked with acne scars, white antibac tape covering her arms from knuckles to nape. They’re religious about the stuff, slather themselves in it like bathwater.

Once the platform clears out, the two kids disappear into one of the towers supporting the corner of the block. We head towards the center of the quiet streets, navigating softly lit alleys and dodging pools of runoff. I take a sniff of the greasy sheen on my arms and fake a disgusted noise.

Sarah just laughs.