Mai stared in slack-jawed amazement at the spot where Fat John had been standing. It had been so fast. One moment he was smiling at her, the next gone in what must surely have been a bone-snapping blur.

Looking up, she saw that the rest of the mogwai had also left. Sewer workers stood panting, warily looking around them, equally as stunned as her that the battle was over.

“Is everyone okay?” she shouted, gathering her wits.

“Cuts, the odd broken bone, nothing too bad!” a man she hadn’t met before answered. He was large, with a whole host of scars across his face. They were old, could have been HEALED, but it was clear that he was proud of them.

“Mai,” she said, holding out a hand. He grasped it, hard callouses rubbing against her palm as they gave a quick two-pump shake.

“Billy,” he replied. His voice was soft, a shocking contrast to his appearance. From the accent she would have placed him as being at least an eight-miler. “I’m Fat John’s second in command.”

“That thing. It …” she paused, trying to gather her thoughts, still on an adrenalin high. “It moved faster than any mogwai I’ve ever seen.”

Glancing around, he titled his head, placing a heavy hand on her shoulder and leading her away from the rest of the workers.

“Things have been bad since just after you left. For some reason, the mogwai have been braver. I’m not sure if it’s because of the attack on the jiangshi progenitor, but word is that killing that beast allowed the mogwai to grow.”

Frowning, Mai tried to parse the information, see if there was a correlation between her and Andries hunting the vampires, destroying their nest, and supposedly making the sewers safer, and the growth of the mogwai as a result.

“I suppose that the jiangshi could have been feeding off the mogwai in this area. Killing them, and killing the progenitor, could have meant that the mogwai no longer had much in the way of predators.”

“Meaning that some of them were able to grow beyond what we’re used to,” Billy nodded. “We’ve asked for help from other Sewer cities, but they’ve been slow in responding.”

“And the Celestial Court has done nothing?” she knew the answer before she even asked. “Praise the Emperor.”

That last was said with a complete lack of sincerity. Still, she got the notification.

PRAISE THE EMPEROR! +1 KARMA

She sniggered at the notification. As if one additional karma was actually going to help her social score. If she Ascended, she’d never need a social score. If she didn’t, she’d be dead. And wouldn’t need her social score.

“Praise the Emperor indeed,” Billy said, laughing as he looked around them. “What would we do without the Emperor’s Beneficence?”

Mai didn’t answer, just watched the sewer workers help each other repair their hazmat suits, HEAL, and comfort each other.

“You were lucky no-one was killed,” Mai said.

“Fat John saved us. I’m good, I mean, just look at the scars I’ve got. But Fat John? He just ranked up in a serious way once the mogwai started being a serious threat. Starting to spend money on modifications. Extra training. Assumed the role of defender.”

“Just like Andries,” her heart gave a double-thump at the memory of her friend. It seemed that no matter what she did, memories of her friends were around each corner, hiding in every conversation.

“Fat John even created a Guild of Mogwai Banes. Had a few people join up, but most didn’t fancy the idea of hunting the creatures.”

“Not even for the rewards?”

“No, too much risk. There was an initial wave of enthusiasm, but that soon went after the first dozen deaths or so,” Bob spoke matter-of-factly as if losing a few dozen of his fellow sewer workers to battling mogwai was as unremarkable as commenting on the condenrain. “And a lot of people thought that fifty universal credits wasn’t worth the risk.”

“You guys should head back,” Mai said, pointing towards Excretiaville. “This Fat berg’s not too big, and there’s no knowing what else is waiting to come attack you.”

“No can do, we need to hit quota. Some of them will have got assists, and some credits for the bank, but not enough to make missing quota a good idea,” he said, pointing at some of the workers who were already picking up their tools.

He paused, looking past the berg in the direction that Fat John had been taken.

“I’m going to need the boss back,” Billy said, turning back to face her. “Seems like you’re already on a hunt, are you up for finding him and getting him back?”

“I’ll do whatever it takes,” she promised. She’d have done it anyway. Fat John deserved nothing less and to have left him to his fate at the hands of the mogwai would have left a stain on her soul she would never be able to rid herself off.

“Wait one,” he went still for a moment. Then grunted. To her absolute surprise, a mission prompt filled her retinal monitor. She’d never seen an essentially ‘normal’ civilian create a mission like that.

Only managers, proper managers, at a higher level than Billy was, were usually able to create missions. And the only missions they created were mundane business as usual ones.

RESCUE FAT JOHN

BRING HIM BACK DEAD OR ALIVE

DO YOU ACCEPT YES/NO?

She blink-clicked the YES before the message even had time to finish forming.

“Stay safe, I’ll bring him back,” she promised Billy, returning his nod of approval.

Another guideline had appeared, leading off into the distance. Opening up her map, she looked at the tunnels she’d already been in and saw that an area she had once worked in often was now slightly darker than the rest of the map.

“What’s with the map?” she flicked it over to his retinal monitor.

“Deadzone. Like I say, things have been different since you left. It’s full of damaged tunnels, more than one lost sewer company, a few jiangshi, and hordes of mogwai.”

“Make sense,” she said wryly. “I’m surprised that it doesn’t say ‘Beware all that enter’, or ‘Monsters be here’”. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so damned sad. Her heart ached at the size of the Deadzone. It was far bigger than it had any right being, and the idea that it was causing so much hurt knotted her stomach.

“We’re getting a lot more urbexers as well. You had a run-in with some of those before you left for the Culling didn’t you?”

“Yeah, and Fat John was my boss at the time. I’d only just begun,” she grimaced at the memory of the cyber-mastiff and the fear she’d felt as she fought for her life. “How many more are we talking about?”

“Hundreds. They keep coming individually, or in small groups. Those that survive are loaded to the gills with stuff they’ve scavenged. They’re drawn to the Deadzone like moths to a flame. Fortunately it means that most are too busy with the Deadzone to bother our companies. But they don’t do much about the mogwai out here.”

Mai said nothing, just continued to look at the map, working out a path using tunnels she’d already been in rather than trying to work out how blacked-out areas might join up.

“Can you show me where they mostly go?”

Billy didn’t answer, but a heat map of areas explored by the urbexers showed up. A lot of the heat areas were in the unmapped portions of her map. By the looks of it, it fell under the remit of Sewer Company Twelve. Good people, but they didn’t do half as good a job as her old Sewer Company Fifty-Five.

“They’ve even started doing timed runs of areas one and two. Turned a life or death situation into a fucking competition. Damn, sorry. I didn’t mean …” he trailed off, mouth turned down, shoulders slumping. She gave a gentle smile as he shifted awkwardly.

“Don’t let it bother you,” she put a hand on his shoulder. “Seriously. It was my crappy life choices that put me into the sewers, and a monumentally stupid decision which put me into the Culling. It is what it is.”

“You want us to escort you to the start of the Deadzone?” She could tell by the tone of his voice that he didn’t really want to. And she couldn’t blame him for that. He’d seen enough of his people killed, and just lost his best friend and mentor.

“No, tempting though it is. Get the guys back to work, hit quota and then get home safe and sound,” she was walking even before she’d finished talking. It was too tempting to stay with Billy and his crew.

Deadzone is apt, Mai thought as she took in the state of the sewer around her. There wasn’t a wall that didn’t have a spider’s web of cracks or missing whole chunks of concrete. Water and other less savoury liquids dripped down from the ceiling and rats ran along the walkway.

In some places the ceiling had even collapsed, raising the level of the effluent behind it as it created a rough dam.. Each time she came across one of those dams, she used her staff to knock some of the debris free and ease the pressure.

Everything sounded different to the maintained sewers and she could have sworn that just on the edge of her hearing was a wind. It set her teeth on edge, made them itch. Her skin crawled at the thought of the wind, even beneath her clothes. Even though there wasn’t a wind. She hated it.

“Don’t be stupid, no winds in this sewers,” she said, trying to reassure herself. But still, the sense of a wind persisted. It raised goosebumps on her skin and made her hackles rise.

It was as if the powers-that-be which were behind the Deadzone and the state it was in had tried to make it as intimidating as possible.

Which again, she knew was a daft idea. The Celestial Court rarely interfered in the lives of mere mortals. They had the Culling to entertain themselves. Why in the Twelve Heavens would they deliberately make a whole swathe of the sewers so dangerous?

But whilst talking to the others, she’d been surprised to find out just how quickly the Deadzone had appeared. Within two days, the area had gone from normal to resembling one of the sixteen thousand hells.

It was a huge area, and that it had changed so quickly made no sense to her. But her friends had accepted with a shrug and a lack of interest which had stunned her. They’d gone to bed, woken up, found the Deadzone and just accepted it with a Zen-like calm she couldn’t match.

How can they just accept this? I’m covered in goosebumps at the idea that a part of the sewer could become so bad, so quickly that it’s called the Deadzone by everyone around. And they just go to work like it’s another, slightly more dangerous day!

A pang of guilt twisted her mouth as she once again considered the possibility that her actions in killing the progenitor and its brood of ghouls and vampires had brought about this change.

Both guidelines for the DESTROY THE MOGWAI and RESCUE FAT JOHN continued to stretch into the distance. As far as she could tell, they ended up in roughly the same area.

A stone rattled in the distance, and she dropped into a crouch. The river of excrement was low here, barely higher than the soles of her boots. It meant that the mogwai wouldn’t be able to swim up and attack her from below. But it also meant that she couldn’t attempt to hide from any potential enemies.

Voices, muffled, low, anxious sounding drifted down from where the stone had fallen. Too far away for her to count. Too far away to work out what they were saying.

Dropping to a knee, she strained her ears, trying to work out if the voices were coming towards her or moving away. A light flashed across the walls, voices rising.

“What …?” it was the first word she’d been able to make out. It wasn’t angry, more curious.

“ … scavenge … een. … mine!” that one sounded angrier, it had a tone to it which set her nerves on edge and she immediately drew a mental picture of the speaker.

A scream, high and anguished, bounced off the walls of the sewer, seemingly never-ending.

“That’s going to bring every damned monster in existence here,” Mai hissed.

And as if her thoughts had the power to create, a roar drowned out the scream.