Half an hour of following Mori’s clicking bootsteps through increasingly populated sectors of the Vents brings us to a glut of smog-choked neighborhoods that she affectionately calls The Wallbang. It’s as unfriendly as any other place in the Vents. Far enough from the surface to make true sunlight a dream, close enough to the Orange for the telltale lights and sounds of distant clubs to trickle by when the fetid air gusts just right. Par for the course for what I’ve been expecting since she first told us about it during our long nights at Fang’s estate. Mori hyped the Wallbang up as being her personal hideout, one of the only places in the Vents that can truly be said to be off the grid from both undercity and overcity factions.

The neighborhood is one of cracked concrete, poorly maintained neon signs, and lingering bodies clustered around the shuttered doors of brightly lit corner marts. Meaty thumps and derisive boos echo out of a street-level staircase that heads down into the smoky depths of a moderately popular underground fighting ring. I flick my JOY open for a brief glance at the time as we walk by. It’s getting near noon, and judging by the sparse number of Venters lingering around the loan sharks outside the arena, it’s an establishment that caters to a more nocturnal crowd.

“Might not be a bad place to check out,” I mutter, catching Ajax’s attention.

He nods, but his eyes linger on parts of the neighborhood I only pay notice on a second pass. Lobbies of apartments with working lights and half-decent paint, electronic graffiti marking paths of acidic runoff in blazes of color. A general murmur of noise that sits at odds with the head-bowed silence of other Vents blocks. Small noodle bars open out of the walls of the towers with stool seats in the alleys themselves, adding to the honesty of the atmosphere. People actually nod to Mori as we pass them on the sidewalk, some even pausing for quick conversations. I don’t let the quiet atmosphere delude me- I’m pretty sure we pass at least two people getting mugged, and only Jolie and Ajax’s combined pulling keeps me from investigating- but I can’t deny how normal this block feels compared to the rest of the undercity.

I look up into the darkness of the next layer, looming fifteen stories above us. “This place, it’s…”

“It’s home,” Mori says, letting her hands sink into her pockets. “My streets.”

I watch Mori’s shoulders begin to release their tension and slump beneath the weight of an older, more adult burden as we wind between the shops, eventually detouring down an alley so thin I have to turn on my side to fit through. The alley opens up into a dank vertical shaft the size of a penthouse’s walk-in closet. Pools of acidic water shine with upside-down reflections of neon entertainment and silhouetted passerby back at the towerside. A pile of half-melted cardboard boxes lines one entire side of the shaft, butting against a sheer wall of hissing pipes and pinging metal ferrying steam from the overcity down to warm the Venter districts closest to the abyss.

Crossing her arms beneath her cape, Mori nods to the superheated pipes and the ancient, analog dials marking their temperature. “Home sweet home, boys and girls.”

Ajax closes his eyes, lips pressing together in concentration. “It’s a false wall,” he says. “Real, but not solid.”

Mori can’t keep a smirk from her face. “Bingo. Any of you-”

“-know why it’s called the Wallbang? It’s old Gunslinger lingo,” Jolie answers, already kneeling to inspect the analog readouts for herself. Her fingers unconsciously push her glasses higher. “Clever. You’d have to have a class that can see through the wall to even know there’s an alley on the other side. Fits the name well.”

Mori nonchalantly picks her nails while she watches. “Where did you learn Slingo?”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“From a book. Where else?”

“Ugh. Forget I asked.” Waving a dismissive hand at the rapidly deflating mystique in the air, she catches Ajax’s eye with a backward glance. “Do the honors?”

He’s melting and reforming the wall behind us before she can finish her sentence. The hairline seams his handiwork leaves are unnoticeable amongst a score of other, far less proficient signs of entry. Taking the vanguard when he doesn’t step forward, I lead the way down a rapidly widening concrete corridor. The heat of the pipes fades quick, replaced by a sweet taste that I’m already missing after being in the Vents for a little over an hour: air, fresh and filtered of smog. Gentle eddies of an unseen breeze flow past from somewhere further ahead. The others are less attuned to the sense, but even they instinctively feel the change around us. The growing lightness in our feet as our breath comes easier.

Soft light beckons us onward from around a bend in the tunnel. Alley walls stretch into indeterminate darkness over my head, their cryptic ceiling completely forgotten when my ears begin pricking up at the distant sounds of children’s laughter. The light ahead shifts like a curtain where it spills across the concrete, painting the walls in undulating patches of shadow and sunshine like those I grew too fond of during my short time at Fang’s estate. The cascade pattern of grass under leaves on a summer noon. And as I round the corner a step behind Mori, I see for myself the oasis that creates it.

Raw sunlight stings my eyes as we break out into an impossible playground of nature. Deep in the undercity, far from the surface world, my shoes sink into a splotchy carpet of grass that sprawls in an immense circle around the bounds of an overcity air shaft once meant to funnel smog straight to the Abyss. That air, now clean, feeds a world of lush greenery before me. Vines and strangely-colored flowers crawl the cylindrical shaft in chains tens of meters long, all stretching towards the distant autumn sun that blesses this place with noonday warmth. Metal walls concentrate the heat as it descends, creating an imitation of summertime. Clotheslines crisscross the sky between jury-rigged platforms and housing hewn directly into air ducts and the superstructure of the city itself. Small shapes dangle and dart between the platforms with an insatiable energy only children could possess. I watch as a slew of the kids catch sight of our arrival and race laughing down to meet us with a mix of JOY affinities and homemade Innovator tech; adolescent replicas of Mori’s airboard.

Mori strips off her boots and leaves her board at the tunnel mouth, sliding to a stop in the grass just before the pack of children reaches her. Incoming kids nosedive into the ground and go tumbling in every direction. Half of them miss her completely, screaming in delight. The other half, the older or more precocious, tackle her to the grass with a flood of hugs. Eight different flowers are shoved into her face at once. Sneezing, tickling two of the children so they roll away giggling like pillbugs, she sits upright and subjects herself to the ignominy of being crowned in petals and childlike admiration.

“Emmy!”

“Emmy, look!” A blue-haired grade schooler says. Uncontrolled drizzles of elemental water splash out of a marble-sized sphere in his palm. “Just like you!”

The little ones call her Emmy or Em, never Mori. Watching her suffer their attention is like watching rain etch new life into forgotten ruins. In the company of the children, Mori shares no resemblance with the delinquent who berated me for botching her heist just a few weeks ago. She does not smirk or grin. She smiles.

In her transformation, I see echoes of the same brave face I wear beneath the spotlights. Yet where I don a mask to become my truest self, Mori removes hers. My heart sinks as she draws a blonde-haired child with pink, catlike eyes to her chest in a hug. The girl is no older than five and already marked to become an Iros of Dynasty. Heartbreaking, once I realize it.

I don’t quite understand the feeling that curls through my stomach while I watch the children entangle Mori. It feels like stepping back from a vista and realizing there’s more to a piece of the world than you ever thought. When she glances back, mouth open mid-reply, my heart forgets its rhythm. I look away before she notices, but the damage is done. The smirk returns to her lips. And behind tired pieces of the face she dons for the world, Mori’s gaze rises up the walls of the shaft to the ramshackle balconies, where more flint-eyed teenagers and surly adolescents watch us intrude on their sanctuary like distrustful gargoyles.

“Unpacking comes first,” she sighs, petting the hair of the Iros girl. “Job second.”