The rest of the day was a blur of activity, starting with Elli and me heading outside to string clothing wraps around the mech bay, yellow and black striping that would let outsiders know that the building was currently considered dangerous.
“Do you really think we need to state the obvious?” I asked, and Elli shot me a flat stare as if I’d asked the dumbest question in the world.
“Kids nowadays sniff and drink charred mech-oil. So do I need to overstate how important it is to try and keep people away from the unit? Some will probably just want to peek inside to see if they can knock over a wall or something since it’s already getting ‘renovated’ anyway.”
“You got a point,” I muttered, helping her tie a particularly large piece of fabric.
We added a sign below her name chevron just to make things even clearer, as if they weren’t enough already.
UNIT UNDER RENOVATION. DO NOT ENTER.
When we’d discussed the idea before starting, it hadn’t seemed like it would be that hard or time-intensive. Nearly three hours later, though, we were both sweating hard and putting the finishing touches on our small ruse. Once done, we climbed on top of the water tower to take a breather and look out over the city. It was the best spot in this part of the city, as it gave us a clear view of most of the destruction the attack had caused.
Stretched out before us, we could see a place that was cracked and broken, with piles of bodies being stacked up in the neighborhood square. Most of the bodies wore orange and yellow overalls, coats, and helmets. A knot formed in my guts and I had a hard time speaking for a long moment.
“This isn’t good, Al,” Elli said as took a deep breath. “Those are all engineers and guild people. Out of all the groups the monsters could have hit . . . this is going to hurt the city just as much as the lost mechs.”
I nodded solemnly, looking out to the mass of corpses. They must have been caught out during lunch and were either killed by the enemy mech, lightlings, or even barbars, but my money was on the second. Many of the bodies looked too torn up even from where we sat.
“What do you think? Will it affect the economy? The efficiency, sure, but what about repairs and all the other work they’d been doing? The guild’s going to be in an uproar come dawn.”
She tensed beside me and even looked away.
“That could have been us, you know? Would anyone have even shed a single tear over us? You, probably not, but I’m too cute and pretty to just fall over and die, Al.”
I just nodded, knowing very well that she was trying to cheer me up in her own dumb way, but it was hard to feel anything but sorrow and anger.
As the bodies kept on piling atop one another, I noticed some more lavish clothes mixed in there as well, the sort of colorful and garish stuff that no one who had to work for a living would be found dead in. Those would be sorted out later, the upper class or elites within the upper city would go on to have lavish funerals while the rest of the lot would have to settle with simple burials or cremation.
The buildings around the quarter fared mostly well, leading me to suspect that the dead we’d caught sight of were the result of a pack of monsters getting this far into the city. Elsewhere, some of the buildings and towers showed pieces missing, and Alnda’s wall and gates were simply one big line of pitted rubble. Beyond what used to be the massive city gate, I could barely make out the torn-up battlefield. The bodies of mechs and men still littered the muddy soil and probably would for a day or two as everyone tended to their own lives and livelihoods first.
“In the end, they didn’t even get what they came for, the bastards,” I grumbled. “Freaking savages. Is it really just like CD said? Are we doomed to keep repeating the same mistakes over a little bit of wealth?”
“It is always as I say,” CD interrupted.
“Isn’t that exactly why we’re risking everything as well, Al?” Elli asked, ignoring him and surprising me by the coldness in her voice. “We’re risking our lives just by having that stiltwalker in the mech bay. And if everything we’ve got planned actually works, what kind of shitstorm will we be in then?”
I knew she was right, and that only made it even harder to admit that we were barely any different. We’d gone after a fallen mech, killed a man for it, and then used a vastly superior being from another world to make it work. Oh, and that being was an AI hellbent on our destruction.
“Talk about double standards, huh?” I muttered.
“At least we don’t want to enslave or kill anyone, right? All we want to do is earn enough creds to get by more comfortably in life. So that you become a noble and can finally marry me. I’m not getting any younger, Al, and I don’t want to carry a baby in my forties.”
I patted her knee and shot her a smile.
“Please, never change, alright?” I said, shooting her a warm smile, and she beamed right back at me, even tossing her hair.
“That depends on you,” Elli said and nodded toward the war-torn plains. People are already out scavenging.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” I said, squinting my eyes. “Rather sooner than later, we should head out, too. A lot of things to do.”
It was hard to see most of the city from where we sat, despite the tower’s height. There was just too much distance, and too many other buildings were in the way. The sound of hammers and saws, though, told us both more than enough about the state of the rest of Alnda. People were clearing rubble and rebuilding.
Elli had been right about her idea. No one would think twice about us working on a mech instead of actually renovating the bay.
“I wonder how the main market’s doing,” Elli chimed in thoughtfully. “Who knows, maybe they got hit too.”
I thought about it, all of the temp stalls for the lesser merchants, the actual shops for the better-off. If it got crunched to hell, we’d have a problem. The demand would go up, and the black market was already short in supply. We needed to be quick and think on the fly. The regular market rules weren’t going to be back in play until Alnda got back on its feet and from the looks of things, that could take a while.
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Honestly, as chaotic as it made the place and as shitty as I felt for the victims and those who lost someone, it was the perfect timing to do something about our own future.
“Elli, I’m not sure how well the black market is doing, but with the city reeling, we need to go get that . . .what was it again? QRC?”
“Yes, get the QRC Alaric,” CD chimed in. “I’d have thought that with your TUNI mind upgrade, you'd understand what I need by now. Do you need me to spell it for you?”
“Have you ever wondered what it might be like to not be an asshole, CD?” I barked, feeling annoyed.
“I speak from a position of earned honor and glory. If you want the same, earn it ape.”
We headed down, kicking back out of our break into another eight hours of cutting, prying, chopping, following the instructions of CD as we stripped all the barbar tech and parts that we wouldn’t need. These would be loaded meticulously into a series of covered hand carts. I figured it’d make them easy to pick up for whatever bandit lord had that we needed down at the black market.
I prayed they’d be enough to cover what we needed but suspected there’d be a job involved as well. As long as it wasn’t anything that would get us killed or anything that was too immoral, then we’d . . .yeah, do what? The Church had already told me that AIs like CD were demons and that by dealing with their ilk, I was immorality incarnate.
And they were right as I couldn’t disagree no matter how hard I tried. I’d do whatever it took to give us the lives we deserved. Wasn’t that immoral in its own way?
We crashed into the same cot together that night. I was so tired that I slept as soon as hit the ground. And when the next day rose, I was well ready to set off and make a deal.
We left the mech bay at first light, a list of our available trade loot was in my pocket, a sack in each hand, and a ruck on each of our backs, we made it through the haphazard damage of the wounded city. I wasn’t too surprised to see that repairs were well underway. There was a good thing about disaster, and that was that cred was plentiful. Especially when there was a serf or worker shortage.
Dawn cracked over the horizon, casting long shadows everywhere as we got close to where the gate had once been. As we approached, I noticed a cluster of city guards standing and taking notes, jotting people’s names down on paper, cuffing a serf-bracer to their legs, and then sending them out.
No creds were being exchanged, which meant that a lot of people were heading out to scavenge. In turn, that also meant the main market was probably out of goods.
I sighed. We’d gotten lucky with getting the mech, but getting lucky once didn’t mean that we were already done. We still needed to get lucky quite a few times before everything was said and done.
When we got there, the market wasn’t just alive; it was joyous. The amount of commerce being had and deals being made would best be described as shocking. The cacophony of sounds, the clash of smells, and the sea of faces made for a sensory overload, yet there was comfort in the chaos.
The electric mandolin's strum and the vendors' shouts blended into the market's rhythm, a bizarre harmony to their determined steps. The constant clicking and beeping of cred being exchanged, and the long line of covered barrows being pushed out towards the city meant everything was going just as Alnda needed it to.
It gave me some new perspective on the place, and I cocked my head at the thought.
“Elli, I think the nobles might actually allow the black market to exist out in the open to back supply when the regular market experiences shortfall,” I said as we walked through the packed lanes and aisles.
She lifted an eyebrow as she regarded me.
“Smart and sexy. Those are certainly qualities I admire in a man.”
“Just those qualities? How about—”
Navigating through the narrowest of gaps, I snatched a quick moment to buy some carrots from a corner stall farm vendor. I felt the people’s gazes upon me. Row upon row of eyes turned, shouting their wares before moving on to the next.
We visited those who mentioned mech wares or old-tech, but none of it was any good, just mostly stuff that we could have gotten out scavenging the stiltwalkers. After a good hour of searching, I eyed Techlock’s place, which was strange as I hadn’t even been going to meet him.
I grabbed Elli’s hand and hurried over, making my way into his small store. It creaked when we pushed the door open, and Techlock’s masked face glared our way from behind his counter. Just like it always did.
“Gonna have to oil those hinges,” he noted.
“Sure do, Tech,” I said with a nod.
“Well, we don't have an appointment that I know of, haven’t figured out where to sell the mutagen yet, and I certainly didn't send for you. That speaks of a man in need with little time. What can I do for you today, Al?”
As he talked, the man ducked his tall, lean figure down and out of sight, emerging with an oil can in hand. He stepped out from behind the counter, moving to the door and squirting a good amount of oil where the door met the wall. Opening and closing it several times, he nodded, evidently satisfied.
“Serpent got your tongue?” he asked.
“Uh, yeah, sorry. Was waiting til you weren’t busy,” I said, trying not to stumble over my words. Even though we'd ventured out together, he wasn't exactly a friend. And his strange and eccentric nature gave him a reputation as unpredictable. It was strange to think about, given our time in the old bunker. There he had become a companion. Here he felt like a stranger.
“We need a Quantum Resonance Core,” Elli said when I didn’t speak. “A cylinder, not much larger than a fist, encased in a shell that sparkles when light hits it. It's crucial for . . . a project we have in mind.”
Techlock's eyes narrowed.
“A QRC, you say? Yeah, I’ve heard of them. Can’t say I’ve ever had one, though.”
He moved back behind his counter, disappearing again beneath it. After a bit of loud scraping and clattering, he reappeared, holding a rust-damaged old tech terminal that he clanked on top of the cluttered counter.
He glanced at us, flipped a toggle switch, and the old-tech device hummed to life under his skilled fingers, the flickering screen casting eerie shadows across the room.
Typing with deliberate strokes on the plastic keypad, Techlock stood still for several minutes, his eyes bounding left to right as he read through the words displayed. Elli made to peek around and see the screen, but he just put up a hand, pointing a finger for her to back off. She did so, holding her hands up in apology as he completed his search.
Techlock paused, his gaze lifting from the screen to meet ours.
“A QRC is rare and highly sought after. It is not something that’s easily obtained,” he began, his voice dropping a note. “Also very illegal to any but the church, at least according to SHARELIST. But, given the right incentive,” he said, shooting us a meaningful look, “I might be able to arrange something.”
I pulled the list of our stiltwalker salvage from my pocket and handed it to him.
“We’ve come into a lot of items recently. How much of this is worth a meeting?”
“When?” Techlock asked, grabbing the paper from my hands and beginning to scan it in much the same way he had scanned the terminal previously.
“Today if possible.”
Techlock sighed, but as he read the list, I could see that he was ready to negotiate. There were a lot of good items there, and if he could get a meeting done fast, he’d get to keep some of the nicer bits.
Once he finished going through the list, our negotiations began. The three of us discussed our collection of salvage, Techlock openly discussing his assessments on their current and near-future market value, as well as their possible delegation to other, more expensive backroom dealers.
Finally, the man stopped talking and nodded in confirmation.
“We got ourselves a deal. Just so you know, the guy we’ll see isn’t someone that deals lightly. He’ll probably want you to do him a favor or ask for an exorbitant price. If it’s the former, it won’t be anything good.”
“I hadn’t expected anything less,” I said with a firm nod. “Elli?”
She nodded too, her usual bluster and joking attitude set aside for the moment. I held out my hand to the man and he seized it, sealing our agreement with a handshake. Then, locking his front door, he led us around the back and deeper into the market.