I was snapped awake in the morning by relays kicking on the overhead lights.

The first thought that followed the blinding flash was to reach out for my slate so I could pump a few endorphins into my brain. Then my sense of smell reminded my where I was. Between the body odors, overcrowding, and unshakable feeling of impending doom, the state shelter was officially the worse place I'd ever had to sleep.

And sleeping had been more of a wish than an achievable goal. Considering the number of times I'd been stirred by coughs, shouts, or the feeling that someone was staring at me in the dark, I'd managed — at most — two hours of rest.

At least Bum was a model soldier, waiting for his de facto commanding officer before rushing the chow line. I pocketed one of my bottles of soap before we went to the rear of the shelter side-by-side. We kept our heads on swivels and queued up at the row of food chutes along the back wall.

"There must be two hundred people in this bay," I said to Bum, voice low. "And there's two floors. Ward A and Ward B."

Bum stared back, his eyes constantly darting to the food chute like he was scared of missing his turn in line.

I scratched my new-growth chin stubble. "And there's something around six hundred shelters like these around the mega."

"Yup," Bum said. "Seen my share."

"They all this size? Are some bigger?"

"Some. Some smaller, too." He coughed into his sleeve. "One of 'em in Edgerun…it's in a basement under a laundry. Barely twenty fit in that one."

We stepped forward, closer to the almost food-like smell of whatever synthmeat chunks people were carrying away from the chutes.

"Doesn't add up," I said. "Even with hundreds of these, there's not enough space for how many homeless and opt-outs are reported in the news feeds."

"Nope," said Bum, raising his eyebrow as if I'd just stated the obvious.

We stepped forward again and grabbed our trays, each with a bowl of 'food' and a cup of clear liquid. The smell of faux pork and scrambled egg substitute was so thick, I finally dialed down the olfactory on my neurocom. There was something disconcerting about smelling nothing, but a man has his limits.

Slop in hand, Bum and I looked for an empty table in the common area along the side walls. The crowded metal tables kept me thinking of the situation on the street. Dregs could always find places to crash in alleys and under bridges, but during the lockdown everyone needed a residence on record.

As a tier six, I got escorted to a shelter. But what in the hell was HMPD doing with everyone else?

I had guesses. None of them pleasant.

"Here!" Bum said, slamming his tray on a small, round table with four built-in stools.

He was already shoving the chunks in his mouth by the time I took the facing seat.

I forced down a small bite of lab-grown egg, totally dishonoring the memories of eating real chicken eggs that I'd worked so hard to attain. Washing the synthetic taste away with a swig from the cup, I realized they'd served us flat HeadRush. Probably out-of-date stock from the nearest NuFoods warehouse.

"So, what's the plan," I asked Bum.

He glanced up at me, still shoveling his meal into his hairy face. "Chill. It's not time, cap."

"You said that yesterday."

Bum chuckled, spewing a few yellow crumbles back onto his tray. "Today? Tomorrow? Not time is not time."

I sighed. "You know what 'insubordination' is, Recruit Bum?"

He gulped from his cup, then wiped his sleeve across his lips. "Yup."

"But you don't care, do you?"

Bum laughed, and I took another stab at a mouthful of chow.

"Show you after breakfast," he added, nodding toward the lift doors. "They mostly come then. Mostly."

They? Apparently, Bum's plan involved visitors, and with my luck, he probably wanted to kill them and jack their clothes. Flatlining people was one of my limits, too, and that overrode my threshold for street stink and bad food.

Shooting him a narrow look, I asked, "You're not one of the Community Control criminals they keep in these shelters, are you?"

"Nope."

"Good." I pushed my tray toward him with a squeal of metal on metal. "Take this if you want. I can't stomach this street-level synth shit."

Bum was on it like I'd just passed him a plate of shrimp risotto from Gino's.

Of course, thinking about one of my favorite high-tier restaurants set my stomach rumbling, which didn't play nice with the reality of the situation. I excused myself and headed for the showers near the lift entrance. Bum was too occupied with breakfast to salute.

The group shower looked clean, but the two dozen people in it didn't — like they had some kind of grunge that hot water couldn't wash off. After stripping down, I made sure to keep my clothes folded nearby. If anyone recognized the labels, there'd be a good chance they'd get klepped.

And the odds of that seemed high. Bum may have a clean history, but the state did put unhoused criminals into shelters to serve Community Control sentences. The program was one of the reasons why a megacity with a six-figure population only had one prison.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

All thanks to the Founders who believed in a complete overhaul of twenty-first century justice systems. They didn't plan for the other reason why Hope didn't need more prisons — namely that letting Commandant Greysen militarize the police force led to a skitzload of overzealous shootings.

Hope had one prison, sure. But it had over three hundred crematoriums.

I finished my shower, grateful that the shelter at least had hot water. Only problem was that I never felt clean when I had to get back into dirty clothes. What would laundry service look like in a dump like this?

Banish the thought of being there that long. Much better to find Bum and get the escape plan out of him. Praying that it was a workable plan wouldn't hurt, either.

***

After drying and dressing, I spotted Bum sitting alone at one of the small tables near the entrance lift. He wasn't easy to pick out of this crowd — turns out scraggly beards and torn jackets were in season — but he scoped me and threw up his hand.

I dropped into the uncomfortable metal stool beside him and rested my head on my folded arms.

A few minutes immersed in the echoing shelter chatter led to a visit from the thoughts that usually come during times of boredom. I imagined how easy it would be if I could just choose to stop breathing. How I could fall asleep and suddenly all life's annoyances — the bad food, the escape plan, the self-destruction of my life — would cease to exist.

Then I started thinking about how I could code my hacked neurocom to stop my heart. One tap on a slate and I'd be shut down for good. Another idea that was no stranger to my mindspace. Though I'd never followed through with it, I'd worked out the ways and means months ago.

Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to program what I really wanted — not an off switch, but a reset button. A way to start over, avoid mistakes, and do it all better.

After almost an hour of those thoughts cycling at high RPM, Recruit Bum perked up and slapped me on the arm.

"Look," he said, jerking his head toward the lift.

Two men in orange robes stepped out, making their way into the throng of derelicts and opt-outs. I didn't know much about the Order or their monks, but you couldn't live in Hope Megacity without recognizing the uniforms that looked like something from an old Kung Fu cinema stream.

"Monks?" I asked, turning back to Bum.

He flashed his ruined grin. "Monks with keys, cap. Come and go as they please."

I shrugged. "At least it's pickpocketing, not murder. What are they here for?"

"Missionaries."

"Hmm," I scratched my stubble. "Like, recruiting? Hell, maybe we don't need their keys, Bum. Can't we just get them to take us to their temple or whatever?"

My subhuman subordinate gave a dismissive grunt.

A little smooth talk would be a hell of a lot easier than stealing, so Bum's opinion didn't matter a lot. I'd file that away as 'plan alpha' while hearing the rest of my underling's brilliant strategy.

"So, we steal the key and get out," I said. "Then we have to deal with the badger patrols topside. Sneaking around won't work when we've got working neurocoms in our heads."

"Change our pings," Bum said, shrugging like it was no big deal.

Of course, I could do it. I'd planned on doing that before the badgers even brought me to the shelter. But it was one hell of a presumptive request to make of a stranger.

I narrowed my eyes. "What makes you think I know how to hack neurocoms?"

"Corpo clothes. Corpo attitude. GreySec vet," he said, turning a smart-ass smirk toward me. "And you're here."

Perceptive for a guy with eyes so cloudy the Founders could build another HighHold on them.

"You need hardware," he added. "I know a place. Not far. Recycling store with shelves fulla tech."

I scoffed. "That's great, but we can't even cross the street without our pings giving us away. I need to hack them before we leave."

Bum waved a wrinkled hand like he was shooing a fly. "You'll figure it out, cap." He slipped a tiny bottle from under his jacket and took a nip of something that smelled like airship fuel.

"Jesus, Bum," I said, recoiling from the odor, "you can smuggle that in, but you can't get me a slate without dragging me to a recycling store?"

Bum snickered. "Supply an' demand."

I scoffed, knowing what he meant despite the inept economic justification. In here, booze had value. Tech didn't.

Not to mention, someone had to be bringing the fuel-booze in, and a small bottle would be infinitely easier to hide than a ten-inch electronic slate. So, that left us stuck running through the streets.

Laying my head back on the table, I set to work on how to make that work without ending up in one of those crematoriums.

***

Half an hour later, the solution came to me like a beautiful, metallic angel.

It was draped around one of the denizens milling around the bay. A reflective, mylar blanket. Fashioned the right way, it could absorb the MiFi signals beaming out of our heads long enough to make Bum's plan actually work.

My de facto recruit must have noticed me perking up, as he spun around on his hard chair to follow my stare.

"Whatcha thinking, cap?" he asked.

I nodded toward my target. "Where'd he get that blanket?"

"Medicos probably dropped him off with it."

"Damn," I sighed. "We need it. Can you snag it?"

Bum laughed, low and gravely. "Yeah, prolly get my ass kicked for it, too."

I jumped to my feet, did a couple of torso twists, and slapped my wetgear bicep. "Don't worry. I got your back, remember?"

"That right?" he asked, shaking his head.

"If you want your plan to work, this has gotta happen."

It surprised me a little when Bum complied, rising to his feet to stalk the denizen like a predatory animal.

What wasn't as surprising was the shouting that started as soon as Bum grabbed the blanket. I barely made it to him when the fists started flying, with Bum and the other guy trading blows until they hit the floor in a dirty, angry pileup.

A circle of denizens immediately formed around them to cheer, jeer, and throw in a few random kicks, forcing me to push through. A trill alarm sounded when I dove in to pull apart the melee, and I caught a glimpse of the lift doors opening through the slurring, growling crowd.

By the time I had our enraged target in a headlock, a handful of state guards in collared shirts were using seizure sticks to beat and stun their way to us. I released the flailing lowlife and threw my hands up, but still caught one of the batons in my shoulder.

The next blow was charged with a CNS interference pulse — not a shock that could damage wetgear or fry a neurocom, but a frequency that overloads the nervous system long enough to make every muscle tense up.

For me, that included emptying my stomach on the floor and pissing my pants. After the sudden rerun of the worst breakfast I'd ever tasted, everything became a loud, confusing blur.

I don't know how long they left me sprawled out on the floor in my own mess, but when I finally rose to my knees, the bay was back to normal and Bum was sitting on the floor a few feet away.

"Mission accomplished," he said, pulling a corner of the mylar blanket from under his ragged coat.

I groaned, rubbing the back of my neck. Every muscle screamed like I'd just finished a six-hour workout.

"Good," I said, chuckling, then recoiling from the cramps in my stomach. "I'll work on making a couple signal blockers tonight."

"Then what, cap?"

I sighed, rolling my head in a poor attempt to loosen my rock-tight neck muscles.

"Hm," I said, rising shakily to my feet. "Then tomorrow, I start working on the monks."