Sector 4 was the only direction that made sense. I was homeless, again, without enough Credits… not even for a run-down room in the Scourge. I walked for hours, following the assassin’s free online map. It seemed the VIPs wanted Sector 4 purged, but nobody dared to. I came to a hidden elevator, hiding in the basement of a quiet bar; and inputted the code. I hit the button for the ground floor. The elevator ride took three minutes. That was how long it took to drop from the sky to the gutter.

  When the doors opened on Sector 4, the air hit me first. It didn't smell like ozone anymore. It smelled of wet rust, burning plastic, and unwashed bodies. The display was built into the side of the transit wall. It was two stories tall and impossible to ignore. Mayor Nicodemus filled the screen. The angle was deliberate. He was looking down. He looked exactly as I remembered. Blond hair perfectly coiffed. Expression composed. The top hat was missing, but the posture implied it.

  I stopped walking. The last time I saw him, my face was pressed against the ground, and the Diamond Doll had a boot on her back. My future was being decided by people who didn't know my name. He hadn't touched me himself. He hadn't needed to. He just watched. That was worse.

  The ticker tape beneath his chin scrolled in soothing blue text. Sector 4: Temporary Containment. For Your Safety.

  Seeing him elevated like this stirred something sharp in my chest. This was the man who preached stability. This was the man who signed the order to throw me in prison. I looked to the right. There was another poster pasted over a warning sign. It was smaller. Half of it was torn away. Isaiah King Jr. stared out from the paper, his dark skin and blue hair vivid against the grey concrete. His text promised reform. It promised transparency. The contrast was obvious. Nicodemus was the wall. Isaiah was the hammer. One was winning. The other was peeling off the concrete.

  There were no officers nearby. No patrols walked the perimeter. I turned my back on the display. The unease followed me, sticking to my skin like the humidity. I couldn't tell if Nicodemus actually believed the slogans scrolling beneath his face.

  Crossing into Sector 4 felt like stepping into a different pressure system. Dozens of languages overlapped, a chaotic mix of trading, arguing, and laughing. Music thumped from somewhere deep in the alleyways, the bass distorted by distance and cheap speakers. Neon signs flickered overhead, buzzing against the damp concrete as the rain began to fall. It started light and then turned steady, turning the grime beneath my shoes into slick, black oil.

  The street narrowed. Tents choked the sidewalks. Some were standard issue black plastic. Others were patchwork quilts of tarps and scavenged fabric. People moved between them with a fluidity that suggested they had been here a long time. Commerce happened in the open. Carts spewed steam into the cold air, smelling of spices and burnt grease. Meat changed hands without packaging or explanation. I didn't ask what kind it was. The vices were just as visible. A man slumped against a graffiti-covered wall, his eyes rolling back in his head. Another man stood next to him, shaking as he pressed credits into a dealer's palm. No one looked twice. No one intervened.

  I slowed down near a figure huddled in the gutter. He looked Japanese; which struck me immediately, since there wasn’t many of us left. He sat wrapped in a thin coat that was soaking through, his hair matted and wet. He looked older than he probably was. He stared at the pavement as hundreds of feet passed him by. He was invisible to them. My stomach tightened. Months ago, I was travelling around in space and felt like the entire world was in my hands. Now, I was in the same position as this man. Back to zero. No, I was less than zero now, running on borrowed time.

  I felt a pull of conflicting instincts. Part of me wanted to recoil from the smell and the desperation. The other part of me recognized the efficiency of it. It was a system. It was cruel, but it was functional.

  I pulled my collar up against the rain and kept walking. I wasn't done forming my conclusions yet. I couldn't judge the bottom of the world until I met the man who lived there. I spotted him before I was certain it was him. He was leaning against the facade of a bar that looked less like a business and more like a structural failure. The neon sign above the door buzzed with a dying capacitor, flickering between two jagged characters that no longer formed a word. He was louder than the street traffic. His voice cut through the ambient noise with a practiced, slurry projection. It was the volume of a man who used to command rooms and now only commanded irritation.

  A woman stood next to him. She wasn't leaning into him; she was just enduring the proximity. She looked tired, her arms crossed over a jacket that was too thin for the weather. One of Nick's hands rested heavily on her waist. It wasn't an affectionate touch.

  "Goldddd~ Tier," Nick said, though the repository had said Bronze. He tapped the side of his temple with a finger that wouldn't stop twitching. "I was the strongest man in the world. Still got the instinct. You don't lose that just because they strip some fuckin’ points."

  A scavenger walked past and deliberately bumped Nick’s shoulder. Nick didn’t even notice. The woman rolled her eyes. She looked at the passing traffic, clearly calculating how much longer she had to stand there. "You say the same thing night, Nick."

  "That is because it is true," he snapped. The defensive anger rose and fell in a second. "Why shouldn’t I talk about that? Ask anyone who was there. Ask Doctor Vainio. Ask about the Exhibition." His excitement almost caused him to vomit on the black concrete.

  "Nobody here knows what that is," she said flatly. “I’m tired. Please. Let’s not do this today.”

  Nick glared at her. For a second, the fog in his eyes cleared, and I saw a flash of something dangerous. It was the look of a predator realizing it had lost its teeth. The look vanished, replaced by a wet, charming grin that made my skin crawl. "You hear that?" he shouted to the empty street. "No respect for the veterans."

  I stood in the shadow of a collapsed awning, watching. This was not the man in the file. This was not the crisp, sharp-eyed operative in the suit. This was a man bloated by cheap liquor and resentment. His clothes were stained with grease, and he leaned all his weight on a reinforced steel cane that looked like it cost more than his life.

  The woman finally stepped out of his grip. She adjusted her jacket, putting a foot of distance between them. "I'm getting another drink," she said. She didn't ask if he wanted one.

  "Get me one too," Nick called out. "Put it on my tab."

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  She laughed. It was a dry, humourless sound. "What tab?"

  She disappeared into the dark mouth of the bar without looking back. Nick watched the door swing shut. He spat on the pavement. "Ungrateful bitch," he muttered. “Got a lot of pride for a prostitute.”

  I stepped out of the shadows. Nick didn't flinch. He just slowly peeled his eyes away from the neon sign and looked at me. The recognition took a second to swim through the alcohol, but when it hit, his expression didn't change to anger. It settled into a bored, heavy disappointment. "Well," he rasped, his voice sounding like wet gravel. "Look at that. The, uh… Wooden Lizard? No… The Paper Dragon~! I was, urk, just reading about you, kid…"

  "I'm not here for an autograph," I said. My voice was steady, but my hands were trembling.

  "No?" Nick pushed himself off the wall, the cane clinking against the concrete. He stumbled slightly, his balance shot. "Hold on, let me guess. You're here because you think you can climb. You think if you beat a legend, the system will notice you." He laughed, but it was a bitter, hacking sound. "I’ve seen countless brats like you come by here.”

  “And now, we’re both here,” I said. The anger burst from a hot pit in my chest. A sharp comment I couldn’t back up.

  He spat on the ground again. "I wouldn’t be in this dump, if it weren’t for the event. The 'Exhibition.' Put the assassin against the World Champion Boxer. See if 'fair fighting' beats the killer." Nick’s grip tightened on the cane until his knuckles turned white. "I thought it was a joke. I didn't take my stims. I didn't prep. I thought... who loses to a man who only uses his fists? You’d have thought the same." He looked at me, his eyes haunted. "He broke me, Arata. Shattered my ribs. Shattered my sponsors. Turns out, the Association doesn't like losers. They cut the funding. I couldn't afford the maintenance. They fucking fucked with my entire life, kid.”

  We shared a strange affinity. I listened to him. Frozen, like I was this morning. It was a connection I didn’t understand and really didn’t want to.

  "Go home, Arata," he said softly. "You have soft hands. You're not built for the noise down here."

  "I'm not going home," I said. "And… I'm not leaving until I take your spot."

  Nick sighed. The sadness vanished, replaced by a flicker of the killer he used to be. "Alright," he whispered. "Soooo~ that’s how it is… eh? I’m going to scalp you, boy.”

  He swung the cane. It was meant to be a crushing blow, but it was slow. Drunk. I saw it coming a mile away. I stepped to the left, and the steel smashed into a pile of wet trash bags with a dull thud.

  Nick stumbled, overextended. He breathed heavily, wheezing.

  "Is that it?" I asked, adrenaline spiking.

  "Is this the kid that got Vaino’s attention?" Nick straightened up. He wiped blood from his mouth. He looked pathetic. Weak. A man defeated by his own history.

  “You’re slower than I thought,” I said, encasing my skin in wooden plating. The thirst hit acutely, but that was the least of my worries.

  "You're right," Nick muttered. "I'm not enough. Not like this."

  He reached into his jacket pocket. He didn't pull out a flask. He pulled out a syringe gun, filled with a thick, bubbling red liquid. The label was scratched off, but the warning symbol was clear. Veterinary Use Only. Combat K-9 Unit. High Toxicity.

  "I can't afford human enhancements anymore," Nick said, his voice trembling. "But the black market has plenty of stuff for the dogs." He slammed the injector into his neck. The change was instant and horrifying. Nick screamed. It wasn't a human scream; it was a gurgling, wet howl. His veins turned black, bulging against his skin. The alcohol flush vanished, replaced by a surging, unnatural vitality. His muscles spasmed and tore, reknitting instantly. His jaw distended with a sickening crack. He dropped the cane. He didn't need it anymore. He fell to all fours, his fingernails elongating into jagged, yellow claws.

  He looked up. He didn't look like a human anymore. He looked like a rabid animal wearing a man's skin. The thing was a biological insult, a hunchbacked scavenger that looked less born than assembled. It moved with a front-heavy, predatory tilt, its massive forelimbs ending in blackened. Its hide was a macabre patchwork of matted, rust-coloured fur stretched over a dark, sinewy chassis. There was no warmth in his face anymore… only a tapering, blood-stained snout and a single, milk-white eye that burned with a cold, intelligent malice.

  There was only one person I knew of that could create a monster as grotesque like this, with a single vial. No, not a monster, an Eldros. The dog’s owner was Doctor Vainio.

  "Come here, puppy," I whispered, the terror rising in my throat.

  He was on me before I could blink. The claws raked across my chest, shredding through my wooden armour instantly and straight into my shirt and skin. Pain flared… hot and sharp. I was bleeding out. Deep. I scrambled back, slipping in the mud. Nick, or the thing that used to be Nick, was on top of me. He snapped his jaws, aiming for my throat. I summoned a vine to block him, but he tore through it like it was paper. He was fast. Too fast. And he was healing. The cuts I’d managed to land were already closing up, steam rising from his skin.

  "Die!" he gurgled, the word slurred by his changing vocal cords.

  He raised a clawed hand for the killing blow. I couldn't dodge. I couldn't block. He was fully buffed, a berserker running on chemicals meant for war beasts.

  Fire, I thought. He'd burn like straw with all those chemicals. But I didn't have fire. I only had myself. As he brought the claw down, I didn't try to stop it. I shoved my left forearm, my soft arm, straight into the path of the strike. SQUELCH. The claws punched through my forearm, pinning my limb to the pavement. Agony white-washed my vision. I felt the radius bone snap. The blood, my blood, sprayed hot over his face.

  But he was stuck. For one second, his claw was anchored in my flesh. The pain didn't stop me. It grounded me. Now. I reached down with my right hand and grabbed a fistful of the thick, radioactive sludge from the gutter.

  "Bad dog," I snarled.

  I jammed my fist, mud and all, deep into his distended, howling mouth. The beast gagged. The radioactive filth hit the delicate, over-clocked biology of the dog enhancements. Nick convulsed. The chemicals in his blood reacted to the toxins. He screamed, smoke beginning to pour from his mouth as the reaction burned him from the inside out. It wasn't fire, but it was close enough. I didn't stop. I shoved deeper. His eyes rolled back. The massive, chemically pumped muscles twitched violently, then seized.

  I ripped my bleeding arm free from his claws and threw my weight into him. We rolled into the freezing slush. I wrapped my vines, black, thorny, and fuelled by the agony in my arm, around his throat.

  "Sit," I growled, squeezing until my knuckles turned white.

  Nick thrashed once. Then the chemical high crashed. His body went limp.

  I stood up, swaying. Silence rushed back into the alley. I looked at the corpse. The muscles were already shrinking, deflating back into the shape of a sad, broken man who had tried to cheat the rules one last time. My left arm was a ruin of puncture wounds and shredded muscle. My right hand was stained yellow with radioactive sludge. I walked to the Ripper-Doc machine in the corner of the alley. My reflection in the metal was a nightmare. The acid rain had burned my cheeks. My eyes were hollow, bloodshot red, and my hands were shaking. The last time I looked in the mirror was in the association bathroom, I thought. I didn’t think it was possible to fall any lower, at that time.

  I pulled out a stapler from the machine’s auto-kit. I didn't have aesthetic. A deep breath, and a beat of silence. I sterilized and stapled the deepest gash on my arm shut. Chunk. Chunk. The pain was sharp and cold. A grounding wire. It brought tears to my eyes, as hot flashes of pain run through my entire body. I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t. If I let up, I’d pass out, and the contagion would necrose the tissue within hours.

  I pulled out my phone. My fingers left bloody smears on the screen as I typed one text to Bǎo. I fixed my hands. Don't wait up.

  A text from Hugo Lawson glowed on my screen. Another opportunity, I thought. I was wrong. I hadn’t been swallowed into the void yet, I still had time for another miracle. I turned toward the Bronze Lounge. I was hunting. And I knew exactly what I’d do when I’d arrive. Perhaps my era was just beginning.

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