The factories, a reminder of the past, old and dangerous, but most important, cheap. Cystella was never one of the richer cities, but she could be sure that they weren't the worst off. 

Storm was walking through a large open space, workers passed her in the dozens, each with a task. To her left, she noted the furnaces, reaching so high up that it was nearly as tall as the factory itself. Enormous tanks filled to the brim with pipe fluid lay behind them, place close enough to save space, but further enough that the tanks wouldn't rupture. 

Pipes almost as wide as she was tall, ran from each of the tanks, superheated thanks to the furnaces, and pass overhead, sometimes having smaller pipes that she could barely see from so far down, breaking off, becoming the energy needed to turn gears and push the pistons that caused arcs to fire off, hitting the massive crystals that granted the flame needed to see. 

Storm turned her head to the right side of the factory, following the paths of the giant pipes. 

The pipes quickly broke off, 10, 100, 1000. She could count no more, not without having to spend hours trying to pick out where one pipe breaks off into a group of smaller ones, and where another seems to entwine with another. The smaller pipes grow in numbers as they get closer to the ground. Finally, she sees the destination of the pipes, workbenches, in the thousands, workbenches were too good of a word for them, but that is what they were supposed to be. In truth, they were merely tables, with some machine that the workers would use to achieve their aims. 

One table she noticed, had a pipe leading towards to what she guessed was an automatic forge hammer. The steam pushing the hammer down, slamming it on ruby metal, distorting with every hit. The steam would then be released off a side vent, and so the worker would use that chance to move the piece of metal before the gas would pump again. The worker had no control over when the gas would be released. So, if they were too slow, then they would have to restart from the beginning. If they were unlucky and they had an arm under where the hammer would fall, then, the answer was simple. If you stopped working, then your place would be taken by another, there were always more people, so many that last revolution, the mayor finally done away with the only remaining safety protocols.

Now no worker was safe. 

She continued on, passing workstations, furnaces, and the dodging the odd drop of boiling pipe fluid that had failed to heat up to such a degree that it had condensed back into a liquid. 

She reached the a point in the main factory area where a small door lay, beyond the workbenches, the mayor and the merchants had decided that to increase the amount of workbenches, they would remove all 'unneeded luxuries', which meant that to get to where she needed to be, she had to dodge between the workbenches, stopping in enough time to allow the steam to vent off, making sure that you weren't going to be in the vents path when it fired was a skill that all workers that were long term learnt fast. Those who weren't able to, would never come back.  

She finally came to a stop outside of the door. 

Arc Department was written above the door in faded out words.

She closed her eyes in resignation, reached out, and pushed the door back, the squeal of the door alerted those inside to another arrival. Though after it was noted that it was in fact Storm that had arrived, the workers went back to what every they had been doing before, ignoring their fellow worker that stood in the doorway.

She walked in and just in time, as the steam flowed into the piston pushing the door closed. 

The room was dark, the crystal in the centre of the room providing just enough flame to ensure that you didn't run into somebody else. The manager of their sector had told the workers that he would have it replaced. She had heard that more times than she has had cold gruel. 

Across the walls of the room were lockers, she thought it was strange that it was called that. There were no locks on them, probably another stupid thing that they were forced to take on. She approached her locker, her name scratched on a small plate on the front of the locker. Around the edges she could see the evidence of the names of others before her, people who had left the factory, and by left she meant died. No one wilfully left a job in the city, unless they wanted to brave the journey in the wastes that lie between the cities, and nobody survives the wastes.

In her locker she had left her work gear that was either too heavy to carry home, or would attract too much attention, attention she had no doubts that would leave her wishing dead, if not already. 

 At the bottom of her locker was a letter, she picked it up and opened it.

Storm:

Areas: 84, 85, 90, 124

Workset: 900 Clicks

Note failure to complete set areas in the given workset will result in your payment being retracted

Storm cursed as she folded up the letter. She knew that today would be a bad day. 

The double-digit areas were fine, as long as you kept to yourself, but as you got further away from the centre, the area codes increased, and so did the poverty, but worst was what followed the poverty. 

Things had been getting worse for her lately, it was only her last workset that she was fixing in the area zone of 60. She looked around, the rest of the workers in the team were men, it wasn't to say that there were no other women, it was just that there are many teams, and it just so happened that she was placed by herself.

As she looked over the faces of the others, she noticed that each time her eyes met with theirs, they would suddenly look away, almost like they felt guilty. 

They know 

Storm remember back to a conversation she had with a girl in another team, she remembered the girl saying that the best way to get into the safer zones was to give favours to the manager. However, as only men went in and out of the manager’s office, she could only assume that he had no interest in her. 

They must have done favours in order to get out of jobs like this. She thought to herself gloomily, thinking that this might be the last time that she would be here, but if she didn't go it was guaranteed that she would lose her job, and that was a death sentence anyway.

She closed her locker door, resigned to her fate, all she could do was hope, hope that nothing would happen, and if something were to happen, it either wouldn't be to her, or she would just die, the alternative was never pretty. 

Storm walked out of the common room through another door, opposite to the one she walked into to, she pushed, feeling the door give way to her hand. She quickly moved through, the sound of hissing steam pushing pistons slamming the door added to the orchestra that was gears, steam, and pistons that was set up. 

The room acted as a storage area where all the equipment and items that arc repairers like her needed. Crystals, gears of all sizes, parts of pistons, pipes, all the pieces that she needed to get a job done were lined up in bins on shelves that went as high as 2 norm arcs. She walked along the shelves, collecting the spare parts that she though that she would need.

Though if it was the same as my own area, then all I would really need is a replacement crystal. She just hoped that whoever was stealing the crystals wouldn't be there waiting for her to repair it. 

But she had learnt over the revolutions that if you needed something you hadn't taken with you, then the long journey back might mean that a night job was instore for you. So, she picked up everything she though would be needed, gears, steam tools, gaseous pipe fluid, spare piston parts, throwing it in a bag she picked up from an earlier bin. She grabbed some ceclium chains, threading it through holes in the bag, then strapped it across her chest diagonally. 

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It wasn't comfy, but it was better than carrying it in her hands. She stepped out of the storage room, walked past the other workers, preparing for their own jobs. 

No doubt easier, but she knew she couldn't fault them, if it was to survive, even she wouldn't hesitate to sell out those around her. 

She walked out of the common room, passing through the workbenches, then proceeded to walk back towards the doors.

She gave her mind's flame to the endless forge in hopes that it would stave away the cold and darkness.

It was getting colder outside, she never knew why, the sky stayed the darkness as it had when she woke up. She tried to ignore it as she put a cross through the 90 on her letter. 

One left. The other areas had been as expected, someone had at least tried to steal the crystal, failing each time. The smell of smouldering corpses was the only thing around when she had started her work. It was both lucky and unlucky that she didn't have to replace any of the crystals due to damage, lucky in the fact that nobody saw her carrying 10s of chronium worth of crystals, but unlucky in the fact that if someone did find out, she would be a bigger target, especially in area 124. 

Storm took one last look at the bag at her side, the crystals might not be worth all that much compared to the crystals in the market area. However, as each one was the cost of either a canteen of water, or a meal of stale bread and gruel, those who were starving or dying of thirst saw the crystals as they were worth hundreds if not thousands of chronium. 

She took a long and deep sigh and began the journey towards her next area. The walkways in her area of 70 were narrow, but they were bearable, here at area 90, it felt as she had to walk sideways to get through some areas. It was at times like this that she was glad that she was small and thin, other girls she had seen before, would simply be unable to pass through. It was the same with the men, they would have to spend more time finding wider passages to get where they needed to go. 

After what she thought was at least 30 clicks, she came to the barrier between area 99 and 100. It served to keep the less friendly folk out of the working area. It was over in those areas where you would end up if you were out of a job and wasn't dead. 

As she approached the border between areas, marked by a torn down wall, scrapped for parts to make more factories. Two guards stood guard of the official entrance, holding last era gas weapons. Even as people past them in each direction, they took no notice, ogling anyone that catches their fancy. After being stared at like a piece of meat by the guards she moved through without interruption. It would only matter that she was back before her workset expired, otherwise she might end up staying at area 124 permanently. 

It took her a while to get to area 124, surprisingly, the walkways were much more open and wider. It was a shame that the residents tended to view that as the right to use it as their personal lavatory or at place to service their customers. The homes that surrounded her were completely unlike the one she has. It looked like a shake built out of ceclium scrap, barely holding together under the force of the breeze. She looked around, noting that in and out of the shacks she saw larger buildings that had been built before this became the lawless areas. 

As she moved through the areas, she noted that some areas were much more built up, even once seeing an impossible high multi-storey building made with the same amount of workmanship as the shacks she had passed. She made sure to take extra caution to travel through the areas she felt were less built up, such that there would be less chance to be spotted by the wrong people.

She slipped on a fresh patch of ice that had formed in the ever dropping cold, the only flame available were crystal of such a low quality that not even starving children would ever bother with them. Quality was only part of the story, those crystal were in fact a new type of crystal, easy to manufacture, cheap, and fast. The only problem was that it nearly always exploded when removed from its arc containment. That was because, from what she heard, was the fact that when they started to take on the energy from the arc, they would be able to hold it in, and so when the arcs stop, the energy explodes outwards.

She left soon after though, she never knew why in that case, why the crystals didn't just explode when they were hit with the arc?

She let the thought slip away when as she tried to stand up, she noticed that one of the crystals had slipped out. Looking back to see if anyone had seen her, she saw the running back of a street boy, probably no older than 6 or 7 revolutions. 

She cursed herself again for the nth time this workset. She had to quickly move away from this area and finish the job before someone a lot bigger and meaner started to show up, and she doubted very much that it would be a friendly meeting.

Running through the walkways, Storm opted to go for the narrower ones, hoping that anyone who would be trying to follow her would soon be lost. A choice she was glad to make as she heard raised voices over the steam works that still have managed to continue running despite the area being filled with crooks. 

Lost in the fear of what would happen to her if she were caught, she began to run in an almost erratic fashion, running through passageways, through shacks people called home, followed by screaming and shouting of curses. Not even thinking straight enough that this might cause them to find her even faster, she kept running, bruising her shins as she tripped and struggled to keep moving. 

Storm turned a corner into a dark walkway, the crystal in pieces across the walkway, confirmed when she cut herself on a piece when she reached out to the wall to steady herself. Gasping for breath, she tried her best to listen out for her pursuers. Glad when all she heard was the dripping of what she assumed was pipe fluid from a punctured pipe, she gave herself a moment to collapse on the ground, hoping that resting would allow her mind to catch up with her. 

Fuck

That was all she could say, she was lost, hopelessly lost, and to top it off, being chased around the lawless zone. 

FuCk, fUCk, fUcK

She continued to berate herself, she didn't know how long she had been running for, it could have been 5 clicks or even 60 clicks. Her curses slowly started to become unintelligible mumbles. 

*slap* She slapped herself hard, hard enough that there was a ruby imprint of her hand on her face. 

She stood up, brushing off the ice that had stuck to her bottoms, and started trying to find her bearings. 

Though she soon understood that it was impossible, there was no map of any area that didn't have a factory in it.

Wait! 

She remembered that there was in fact markings on crystals, gears, pistons and the like. While it wasn’t, she knew that it would at least tell her where she is. Nevertheless, she still had to find something that had it on. Reaching her hand out to where she thought was the pipe that was dripping pipe fluid, she soon felt the drips of fluid hitting her hand. She followed the drips up, till she found a low-lying pipe, gripping it she followed it along till she reached the wall. 

Rubbing her hands across the wall, she managed to find a small hole, where it seemed someone tried to take gears to sell. She hoped to the endless forge that she could fine one that had a marking on it. 

Reaching inside the wall, she fumbled around pulling out gears, bringing them over to a working crystal out of the walkway, then throwing them away once she realised that there were no such markings. She was nearly about to give up, when she held one of the last few years under the flame. 

Area 147

There it was in small letters. 

Storm couldn't decide whether she wanted to be happy or sad. Happy by the fact that she managed to find out where she was or sadden by the fact, she was both so far away, and so near the edge of the city. 

The city only had 150 areas, with the last area being the wall that hadn't yet been scrapped, that kept the beings of the waste separate from the city. She remembered looking at the wall for her home, it had seemed so small from so far away, and in her fear induced flight, she never seemed to notice the wall, growing in size, so much so, that as she moved into another walkway, dirty with filth of the residents, she could just barely see the wall, just a bit bigger than the factories. The flames from the crystals and the arcs outlined small parts of the wall against the darkness of the sky. 

Up close it looked so much more intimidating than when she would normally look at it. The wall, unlike the rest of the city wasn't made from the ceclium, but instead was made from a much harder metal. Though she didn't know its name, it was a look darker than ceclium, but that could just be the flame. 

She wondered what on Cystella could be out there that would require a wall to be so strong and tall.

She shuddered at the thought. 

Though I guess I must look after myself first

With that she moved out of the walkway hoping that she would be able to find her way to area 124, and that she wouldn't run into those people who were looking for her. After wandering through walkways, she felt that she had her bearings back. 

Until she heard the clacking of metal boots on metal, the sound seemed to be coming from all around her. 

They couldn't be doing this all for a few crystals, could they?!

Thinking that there wasn't much hope in escaping she desperately looked around for someplace that she could hide. She was becoming more frantic as the sound of the running came closer and closer. Looking around, in a last-ditch attempt to survive, she started to climb, wary as the shack she was using as a purchase to climb onto one of the more sturdier looking buildings. 

She spied a chunk of a wall that was missing at the corner and started climbing towards it. She just barely managed to get into the hole as she heard the footsteps on her pursuers below her. Hoping to the endless forge for the third time in on workset, she asked that they wouldn't look up, that they wouldn’t spot that weird lump in the side of the wall. 

"Where is she?!"

"We heard that the strange woman was seen fleeing in this direction"

"Did she fit the description?"

"Yessir"

"Then FIND HER!"

From what she heard, she could assume that her pursuers were all male. It was strange though, she didn't know of any lawless groups that would call each other sir.

They weren't called lawless for a reason.