Mai’s whole body hurt. She’d discovered muscles she hadn’t known existed and they were all telling her just how much they hated what she was doing. She was in complete agreement with them. She hated what she was doing, but it was the only way she would ever get back to her sister unless she could land a lot more missions like hunting Jiangshi. She was also secretly hoping that now she had the SCAVENGER skill she’d be a lot better at finding items she could sell. Only that morning she’d watched one of her team pull some weird-looking jug out of the fat. It had been worth two hundred credits minimum, and now he was happily sitting watching them working away on the berg.

She couldn’t blame him if she was honest. Finding something like that would have been worth ten credits of not having to work. And then she realised that was another way the system kept them indentured. Yes, he’d found twenty days of hitting the daily target, but if he’d kept working, he’d have had twenty one days. Judging by the look on his face, he was going to be spending most of that money either lounging around or drinking and eating the finest he could find with no thought for the consequences. Not unlike what she had been willing to ‘waste’ on her massage, but at least she knew the consequence said action would mean.

It was sad, but she realised that there was no point in educating him. He knew the rules, he knew what he needed to do to get free, and yet there he was lounging around happy as a pig in shit. She gave a mental shrug and returned back to her body’s complaints.

Still, as she took a quick breather to rub some life back into her thighs, she could tell that it was doing her some good. Already her strength was starting to improve, and her health bar had grown by a tiny amount.

Carving the fat had become second nature to her in a short space of time. Once you shut off your brain and just let your body carry out the actions, time started to flow quicker. Having made sure she was settling into the team, Andries had started to take a backseat, moving on to mentor some new arrivals. They still hung out after shift-end, though not for long as she was often bone tired.

She regretted that as she’d come to truly appreciate his company, especially as he had a different perspective to most of the people she worked with. For one, he’d been here since he was a child, whereas a lot of her company had joined recently, or had only been working in the sewers for a couple of years. They were still mostly bitter, whereas Andries had a completely different outlook most of the time.

In her first hour she’d hit just over one thousand units for the first time, something the rest of the crew had cheered at. It felt strange to be so happy at receiving praise from people she wouldn’t have given the time of day back in her real life. But at the same time it felt good. It made her feel accepted.

“Urbexers!”

Mai spun to see a squad of four humans and what looked like a cyber-mastiff enter their tunnel. She’d only seen cyber-mastiffs in holomyths.

“Shit, they’re scarier in real life,” she whispered to Jin, the woman she’d spoken to on her first day and who she now competed with to see who could carve through the most fat in an hour. Jin didn’t know it was a competition, mostly because Mai still hadn’t managed to beat her.

“Urbexers or the mastiff?”

“Mastiff,” Mai pointed at the beast. It was far more impressive than a holocast version, but in real life it exuded – no it – oozed - menace. Her veins felt as though the blood in them was ice-water.

Pheromones. I bet they’re used to intimidate people. Make them panic. She fought her own rising fear. First she concentrated on slowing her breathing, only then realising that it had sped up.

Then, she started to tap her foot, to use up the nervous energy which was a sign her body was getting ready for either flight or fight.

And finally, she took a long and careful look at the mastiff. Its skin had been replaced by armour grafted onto certain vital areas and the light glinted off its augmented eyes, telescopic lenses, jutting at least a thumb’s length out from its skull. Its metal head wasn’t that much bigger than the mogwai’s. Without the pheromones, it certainly wouldn’t have been as scary.

Keeping that thought well and truly in her head, she turned her attention to the mastiff’s owners. Although upon consideration the urbexers looked damned scary in their combat armour, she could tell it wasn’t of the best quality. None of it seemed to match, and it was poorly looked after. Rust and scratches dulled the metal parts, and the composite pieces were just as dirty in their own way.

Whilst the leader looked absolutely huge, it seemed as though his armour was actually composed of pieces from at least six different sets, cunningly combined to form something big enough for him. Some parts even looked as though they were made from mogwai hide.

Each of them had at least three weapons mounted to the armour. The weapons themselves looked well-cared for, but were worn all the same. A couple moved jerkily as they switched from target to target.

She now had doubts as to whether the urbexers had access to any nanite weapons. Mai blink-clicked and tried to read their SASS but for some reason nothing happened.

What the hells? I thought I could read everyone!

“Right you peons,” shouted their leader. “Let’s have whatever you’ve found. Hand it over and there won’t be any trouble.”

His lackeys laughed at that, turning Mai’s blood to ice. A couple bounced on their feet, clearly excited by the prospect of a fight.

“We haven’t got anything,” said Fat John, her work party’s leader. “Honest. Nothing of interest. Just lots of fat and faeces.”

“Save it you skinny arse.” Fat John wasn’t actually fat. He was the skinniest man Mai had ever seen, hence the nickname. She’d always thought he could probably have made a good living touring with a circus if he hadn’t accrued so much debt. It was as if he was a living skeleton with skin crudely stretched over his bones to create a semblance of normality. It had freaked her out at first, especially when he grinned.

In fact, now that she actually thought about it, he should have been assigned to a circus.

Maybe he wasn’t always skinny? The work they did was hard, and she was far fitter than she had ever been before.

A shout brought her back to the matter at hand. The urbex leader had grabbed Fat John by his suit. The man was massive, and the armour he was wearing made him look far larger than he actually was.

“Shit,” whispered Jin. “This isn’t good. They’re low level, look at the state of them. Shit birds, everyone. They reckon Fat John’s lying.”

“Well we can’t bloody fight them can we?” Mai gestured with her fat cutter at the nearest urbexer. It was clearly a female as they’d chosen to exaggerate their breasts in the design of their armour.

It was stupid in Mai’s opinion. Armour was designed so that attacks would just glance off. Giving armour actual breasts would just mean that a lot of blows would glance inwards to the centre of the wearer’s chest. And the seals at that point would also be a weakness, allowing attacks to crack the armour where it was most needed.

Neckbeard’s gonna neckbeard, she thought ruefully. It was a common term when items were designed for form rather than function in the Lower City. She had no idea where the saying came from. It was like when someone said something was ‘gammonsense’ to mean utterly stupid, bordering on the cretinous.

“Look,” said another of the urbexers. His suit looked as though it was designed for stealth and speed. A recon suit. “Just lay out everything you have, and we’ll take that and be gone. No one needs to get hurt.”

“We don’t have anything!” yelled Jin, making Mai jump. “We’ve been stood in shit and carving lumps of fat for days. The only other things aside from you we’ve seen were a few mogwai. And they’re long dead. Piss off of you utter gammon.”

Mai stepped away from Jin’s side, angling so that she wasn’t directly in the mastiff owner’s line of fire. There was a pool of shadow which she stepped into, using it to hide the change in her suit as she activated USE ARMOUR.

“Cocky little peon aren’t you?” Growled the mastiff owner as she stepped up to Jin. “What, you think you can disrespect us and get away with it?”

“No disrespect intended,” said Fat John as best as he could. His face was turning red due to his suit being so twisted up in the leader’s huge fist. “We all just a little tired. Been working on this berg for a month.”

“She was rude,” said the mastiff owner, jabbing a finger into Jin’s chest. “She should kowtow. Get real low.”

Although the level of waste was lower here than in other tunnels, the act of kowtowing would see Jin going under the surface. Kowtowing was an ancient way of demonstrating subservience and involved kneeling down, and then lowering your face to the ground, arms outstretched. It was rarely seen outside of the holomyths.

“I’m not kneeling in that shit,” snapped Jin. Mai admired her for her bravery. Despite having fought mogwai, jiangshi and ghouls, the fact that she couldn’t read anything about the bullies before them had her nerves jangling.

“You will. I’ll make you.” The urbexer stepped forward to follow up her threat, hand reaching towards Jin. And then all hell broke loose.

Jin screamed and thrust her fat cutter into the inside of the mastiff owner’s thigh, right at the top where the leg and torso met, the opening all too big due to the mismatched armour.

The mastiff owner screeched as the blade went deep into her crotch, blood jetting out of her wound. A BLEEDING glyph immediately appeared over her head. It wasn’t all one-sided however as her mastiff launched itself at Jin. Desperately, more with a hope and a prayer than true intent, Mai overcame her initial shock and thrust out her own fat cutter. With a roar the rest of the workers leaped into action, and battle was well and truly joined.