We had driven around the outside of the city and we had now stopped in an almost rural area. The place we were at looked almost like an airbase having multiple hangar-sized warehouses surrounding a central building. Of course, instead of a runway there just a road.

Emily had stopped the car in front of the central building where someone ran out to meet us. After saying something indecipherable to him he ran off, and she put the truck back into gear.

The compound was extremely similar to the base I had left just yesterday. It had the same levels of activity, with various people moving around between the buildings. The only real difference was the lack of uniforms, everyone just seemed to be wearing whatever they wanted, the only unifying factor being an insignia emblazoned on their shoulder.

We drove out to one of the smaller warehouses, where Emily parked the truck and we got out. Instead of immediately heading inside, she directed me to start unloading her stuff while keeping mine in the truck. Grabbing a box that felt like it was full of water, I followed her inside.

Stepping inside reminded me a lot of that lab I had sheltered in my first night in the Dome, only a lot bigger. The warehouse was split into two parts. The smaller part, the one we were headed to, seemed to be more in line with Emily's profession. There were multiple dissection tables and various sharp implements all around them. A corner of the lab devoted solely to chemistry and its various tools.

The bigger portion of the lab was in a state of almost organized chaos, with various machines, gadgets, and even guns in various states of assembly. Despite its size, there was only one worker present and he was fiddling with some device I didn't recognize.

We moved all almost all of the boxes and bags into Emily's space, most just went into the corner, but some went into a cold storage unit in the back. The rest of the stuff, mine included, remained in the car.

Much to my chagrin, we got back into the truck once we were done, though this time it was only for a few minutes. We drove off of the compound and back towards the city. Instead of going into it, however, we stopped at a house a few miles from the city proper. As we pulled into the driveway she started to speak.

"You'll be staying with me for the next few days. Nate's out in the Dome for the rest of the week. So you're stuck here until then."

"Does this new job of mine not come with housing?"

"Well, it does, you're just technically not hired yet."

A pit formed in the bottom of my stomach.

"What do you mean not hired yet? Did you just drag me all the way out here for nothing?"

"Don't worry about it, you'll have a job no matter what happens, but if you want the job I promised Nathan will have to look you over first. If it makes you feel any better you're better than most of the people he takes in."

That mollified me somewhat, though it didn't entirely ease the growing nervousness. The more I thought about it, the more I regretted making such a hasty decision.

"In the meantime," she continued, "feel free to make yourself at home. If you get bored, I'd recommend exploring the city, which should keep you entertained for a few days. I'll get your payment for the guard duty, so you should have some money to spend."

She guided me to a guestroom where I threw my stuff down. She told me she was leaving to go back to the lab, but that I was free to walk there if I needed anything. Just like that, I was left alone in the house.

I spent some time exploring the house. It was a nice house, kind of small but well furnished and filled with expensive and sometimes exotic things. Emily mentioned that her research had led to a few scientific discoveries, but I didn't imagine it would have been enough to make a living on. I guess I was wrong.

As I wandered the house I realized that a lot of things that should have been present in any modern house just weren't. There was no television or even a radio. The only thing I found even remotely akin to entertainment was a small personal laptop. Electricity clearly existed here, but I guess that large scale public entertainment did not.

Before she left she had handed me a stack of bills, as payment for the trip. It was free money as far as I was concerned, and I intended to blow it on something entirely useless.

It wasn't long before I realized there was literally nothing to do here. Deciding to follow Emily's earlier advice I left the house in search of something interesting. Not really having anything better to do I left the house and started walking towards the huge building piercing through the skyline.

When I started I tried using the map function on my watch, only to remember that it was next to useless. It was bad enough without GPS, but without a map, I knew my chances of getting back to Emily's place were slim. Thankfully, there was an option to scan maps with my watch, which just meant I needed to find one. Now with a goal in mind, I resumed my walk towards the city center.

The residential sector was actually quite small, and soon I found myself entering commercial areas. Signs for all kinds of things assaulted my vision and people swarmed like cockroaches. It took me all of a few minutes to realize that I had entered a sort of open market place.

Stalls lined either side of the street, hawking various wares. I almost felt like I had taken a step out of a modern urban area and into a medieval market. The only thing that convinced me otherwise was the copious amounts of advanced tech.

One stall had a working hologram, another had a sort of robot butler, both of those next to a stall trying to get me to buy some kind of kebab. The whole disparity between the world I had left at Emily's house and the one I entered was truly startling.

With the sheer amount of variety present, it wasn't hard to find someone selling a map. I entered into a corner store that was tucked between two different stalls. When I entered I almost surprised by the numerous different maps on display. On closer inspection, I realized whoever made these had once for almost every city that had come through the Dome in the past thirty years.

Shanghai, Helsinki, Madrid, London were just a few of the names my eyes caught as I went by. Each name had a date or in some cases multiple next to it. As interesting as they were though, it wasn't something I particularly needed at the moment. Instead, I turned to the section labeled Erros.

The selection here was much smaller, only containing maybe a dozen options. It wasn't hard to find Petrograd among the others, and while I was there I took a general map of Erros. I could have scanned it in and been on my way, but that was a bit too close to stealing for my tastes. Instead, I ambled over to the counter where an old man sat hunched over in a seat.

When I told him I just wanted it to copy, he offered to sell it to me for half price. Considering I had been fine with full, that was more than suitable for me. Maps scanned, I went out to explore the market.

I drifted from stall to stall, checking out the various wares on display. I wasn't really sure what I was going to buy if anything. Most of the items on display were curiosities or knick-knacks that provided no real utility.

Even if I wasn't looking to buy anything, window shopping was still fun.

Eventually, I had explored most of the interesting things in the market. I certainly hadn't explored everything but some of the stuff I had seen was pretty cool. One guy was even selling bionic limbs and offering to install them for a small additional fee, but as cool as that would have been it was not something I was interested in trying.

I had spent the rest of the day in the market, but the only other thing I had bought was food off of a street vendor. No clue what it was, but it was fried and tasted good so that was all I really cared about. Mystery meat aside, there wasn't anything else that had caught my eye and had been in my, admittedly, small price range.

What had surprised me the most about the throng of people was the sheer diversity of them all. For a country that was founded and named by Russians, there were surprisingly few of them. People didn't seem limited to the normal range of human attributes either, many sporting unnatural eye colors, hair, and proportions.

I hadn't had the time to venture into the city center, but if I was still free over the coming days I would make it a point to explore. For its small size, this place had a lot to offer. With that resolution in mind, I started back towards Emily's place.

Emily still wasn't back when I got there, but I didn't really feel like staying up to see her. Instead, I crashed on the guest bed and went to sleep.

I didn't hear Emily come back in that night, nor did I see her leave the next morning, but I knew she came home at some point from the note she left me: Be ready to go early tomorrow!

Making myself a mental reminder to be ready to go tomorrow morning, I left the house once again with a promise not to spend the entire day in the market. There were a few interesting places I had marked on my map as places I wanted to go to, so I wanted to make sure I had more than enough time for that.

I still ended up going through the market, but in my defense, I only spent a few minutes inside. Once I made it through I continued on my original path towards the skyscraper in the distance. With any luck, I wouldn't be distracted by too much on the way.

It took about forty-five minutes to make it all the way to my destination. This time there wasn't anything to distract me, well except for that pastry shop, but I digress.

As I went through the city I noticed that almost nothing went above three floors, at least in the outer sections. There were a few notable exceptions in the center, but they were far from the rule. It looked like a city that had just discovered the wonders of steel framing, and they had just started experimenting with it.

The contrast between all the futuristic tech I had seen in the market and the ancient city architecture was disconcerting. I almost felt like I had stumbled upon the remains of a movie set. Not that it made some of the stuff I had seen any less cool of course.

The center of the city was as busy as one might expect from any metropolitan area. The only exception was the near-complete lack of cars. The streets too were small, and almost entirely for pedestrian use. The only cars I saw were small and compact little things that could benefit from the smaller roads.

I spent quite a few hours exploring the city. Moving around the center in expanding circles, just trying to see everything. Large scale companies seemed few and far between, most everything was seemed to be relegated to one store. Office buildings were notably absent too, with most buildings serving as housing, public services, or for commercial use.

I did find something interesting though, a McDonalds in fact. It seemed that even here, outside of the entire galaxy, there was a McDonalds. Though it didn't seem to have the corporate backing that most enjoyed back home, and the menu was a bit different too.

I ended up spending most of the day in and around the city, exploring all the places I had marked on my map. Mostly various bars and shops none of which were anywhere near matching the market in terms of interest.

When the sun was started descending from its zenith, I decided to hop back over to the market, see if I could explore all of it and find something worth blowing my cash on.

I explored a bit beyond the areas I had previously, going into smaller streets that were more densely packed with stalls. It was here that I found something that piqued my interest. A pair of contacts that when worn could connect to almost any device and act as a secondary display. Part of the sales pitch told me that once they were put on you could wear them for almost ten years before needing a replacement.

As tempting as it was though, I still had a few more shops to search through before I came to a final decision. It was because of this hesitation that I found myself walking down the street towards another promising stall. Only, some guy came out of nowhere and ran into me, and without so much as an apology continued on his way.

At first, I didn't think much of it, just one asshole who didn't feel like apologizing, so what. But some gut feeling told me to check my pocket, only to find that my money was gone.

I spun myself around, trying to find the bastard. For a moment I thought I had lost sight of him in the throng of people. However, just as I was about to give up, I saw a familiar head flash through the mass. Without much hesitation I pushed myself through the crowds, bowling over anyone who didn't get out of my way in time.

It was just my luck of course, that he decided to turn his head around, and when he did I could almost see his eyes widen in surprise. Though I guess anyone who saw an angry young woman charging at them would too. With only a split second of hesitation, he bolted into a nearby alley.

I followed him through it, only a few dozen feet behind him and gaining. He turned at the end of the alley and popped out of my sight. When I turned the corner he was gone from my sight. The alley he turned into continued for a few dozen feet but splintered off in three directions.

I peeked down the first two pathways. One was a dead end, so I could rule it out almost immediately. The second one continued on until the next street, and that was way too far for him to have gone. The third one proved to be the correct choice because I caught sight of him turning around a corner just as I turned the corner.

Having lost a few seconds on him I renewed the chase. We continued through the alleys for a while, sometimes he would knock something over behind hoping to slow me down, but more often than not did nothing.

The chase ended just after he turned into another corner, I had gained on him significantly and given a few hundred more feet I would have probably been able to tackle him. When I reached the corner he had disappeared behind I stopped.

He was just standing there, stuck in a dead-end with a stupid expression on his face. He was young, definitely in his late teens. The thing that made me stop was the fact that he didn't look worried in the slightest. In fact, he seemed to be pretty happy considering the circumstances.

Slightly winded I stepped forward, eyeing him in case he tried to slip by me. It turns out I should have been watching behind me. I heard steps of footsteps come out into the alley from the doorway I had just passed.

Still wearing the idiotic grin on his face he started to speak.

"Why don't yah jus' go back da way yah came, dat way nobody has tah get hurt."

He spoke with an accent I couldn't place and a great deal of smugness like he was almost gloating.

I glanced behind me trying to get a look at his two accomplices. They were both about his age, male, and a good deal smaller. They both had taken up position on either side of me, just outside of reach.

Much like the first time I had held a gun, I had a feeling that I knew how to fight. The only question was if it was worth the risk. Considering he had essentially stolen my first ever paycheck and my life savings, I decided to go for it.

Instead of responding to the thief, I spun and picked my leg up as I did, swinging it into the guy on my right. Before he could even react my foot made a very satisfying crunching noise on the end of his nose and he sprawled to the ground.

The other picked up his hands and threw one of them at me. I stepped under it and threw a jab at his crotch. Despite the small target, my hand landed right on the mark. When he keeled over, I brought my knee up to his face and put him down on the ground.

I turned back to the thief, expecting him to be on me any moment now. Instead, he had barely moved, his jaw was wide open, and he seemed shocked that I had been able to take out his friends with such ease.

"Why don't you give me back my stuff before you get hurt?" I said, throwing his own words back at him.

He reached into his pocket and threw the wad of bills at me, all the while looking at me with such abject terror it was hard not to laugh. With my property returned, I backed out of the alley, leaving him to take care of his groaning friends.

I hurried back to the stall I had found earlier. The alleys he had led me through were a veritable maze and without the map, I had purchased I doubt I would have been able to find my way back.

Nevertheless, I ended up back at the shop and purchased what I had found. It cost me just about every penny I had on me, but that was fine. If Emily was only telling half the truth I still had a fortune back at her place.

I resolved to wait until I got back home before I tried them out, but first I decided to grab some more street food. Nothing like a fight to get the stomach rumbling.

When I was done I headed back to Emily's house, slightly weary from the adventures of the day, after all, tomorrow was supposed to be an early start, and it wouldn't do to be late on my first day.