“Once again, I’m called Mai Xio. I’m a Culler. You’ve seen my SASS. You’ve seen my profile on the fucking scoreboard. I’m not an agent of the Emperor. I’m not here to kill you all.” Mai tried to keep her tone patient and polite, but it was difficult.

She’d been interrogated for at least three hours now and the questions had all been along the same lines. The phrasing of them had varied each time but they’d essentially been, ‘Who are you, why are you here, who are you working for, are you an agent of the Emperor?’

Mai was tired, and bored. She would have tried forcing the issue and having them stop asking questions, but she was surrounded by a ring of armed and incredibly hostile- and nervous-looking people and ceiling mounted turret weapons.

At least they haven’t tried beating whatever their definition of the truth is out of me, for which she was heartily thankful. Never having been tortured before, unless the selection for the Culling counted, she wasn’t sure how well she’d be able to hold up. Even if she did have ENDURE PAIN, TREAT LIGHT WOUNDS and, Emperor forbid, TREAT SERIOUS WOUNDS, they would only be available for both their duration and the amount of BIOMASS she had.

And I can’t even begin to imagine the amount of pain once ENDURE PAIN ended and whatever they’d done to me came crashing in. More importantly, how the Hells have the drones not come and tried to move me on?

That was a question she’d save for later once the interrogation was over. It was clear the people around her were the ‘we’re asking questions, not you’ type.

“Why should we believe you?” Her interrogator was a young woman, around Mai’s age. Covered in gang tattoos, she would have absolutely terrified Mai before the Culling. Now though, she looked like a kid playing a role. Mai had seen far tougher gangers. Killed far tougher gangers. Hells, she’d killed tougher civilians.

“Believe me, don’t believe me. Believe the scoreboard, don’t believe the scoreboard,” snapped Mai. “I no longer give a mogwai’s arse what you paranoid idiots do or don’t think. I’m bored. Continue boring me and I’ll leave.”

Turrets and rings of weapons be damned. Probably suicidal. Definitely stupid. But she wasn’t sure it was a bluff. Her

“And what makes you think a wimp like you could take on just one of us, let alone all of us?” sneered the ganger, jabbing Mai’s chest with a sharp finger. Mai gritted her teeth. She hated it when people did that. It was rude, condescending, and put the person doing it at a severe disadvantage if they were underestimating the person being jabbed.

“Fucking try that again,” she sneered. She was done with being patient and polite. Ganger girl deserved everything she had coming.

Mai didn’t need to activate a skill for what happened next. As the girl’s finger came in for another jab, Mai expertly caught it with her right hand. Bending it towards the girl and outwards, she forced her to her knees, bringing her head forward and her eye straight on to Mai’s held out right index finger.

Gasping in fear and pain, the girl tried to blink as Mai’s finger lightly brushed her eye. Her eyelid fluttered, instinctively trying to clear the obstruction. She tried to jerk her head back, but all Mai had to do was exert a little more pressure and her head was back in, eyeball-to-finger.

Mai ignored all the shouts and needless racking of slides as her guards tried to catch up with what had just happened. The majority of them were slow, still thinking too much about what they were seeing rather than reacting. Several of the more experienced were much quicker. Still not as quick as her or her fellow Cullers though.

Guess the selection really did prepare me! It was slightly surprising to feel indebted to the Gorilla and Dragon Warrior for all of the beatings and killings they’d doled out.

“I’m bored. Get Anna so that the adults can have a proper conversation,” she hissed. Giving the finger an extra little push, making the ganger squeal, she released it.

Springing back away from her the ganger cocked a fist, teeth bared, skin flushed with embarrassment.

“That’s enough, Qi,” a voice that Mai had heard before ordered. Qi, the pissed off ganger, hissed at Mai. Mai merely smiled as Qi lowered her fist.

“I’m Anna,” said the woman she’d seen earlier stepping from behind her and taking Qi’s chair. Her scar rippled as she spoke, making it look as though she was sneering. Her voice, nasal, grated on Mai’s nerves. It was just the wrong combination of arrogant, nasal, and pure bitch.

“And you know who I am,” Mai replied. She couldn’t help but stare. Now that she was seeing Anna properly up close she was surprised to see that she was a vat-born, indicated by the top of a barcode tattoo just poking out of the front of the woman’s collar.

Vat-born were slaves. They were bred to do specific tasks, usually in the higher mile-levels where the rich didn’t want inducted civilians soiling their precious carpets with their very presence.

And vat-born never just upped and left.

Her conditioning must have broken, or not taken in the first place, either way, Mai was surprised that Anna had been allowed to continue living.

Slaves are meant to be submissive. When they’re not submissive they tend to stop being slaves and kill the people who have been forcing them to live that way. If a vat-born’s conditioning didn’t take, or was broken, the simplest thing was to kill them and replace them with a fully functional vat-born.

Vat borns were also fed their own. When they died they were rendered down into protein and fed to the ones still in their vat. It was one of those well-known facts that no-one ever spoke about, and which Mai was pretty certain no Vat born actually knew about. They were supposed to have limited lifespans as well, with fifty-five being their official retirement.

From the looks of it, Anna was at least fifty. What Mai didn’t know about vat born was whether they retired automatically, or forcibly.

“It’s rude to stare, womber,” snapped Anna, popping up her collar to hide the tattoo.

“Sorry, I’ve never met a …”

“Tuber, jelly-baby, vatter, slimer, grimer, shall I go on?” sneered Anna, leaning towards Mai, both hands on her knees.

“Vat-born,” said Mai. She’d never used any of the derogatory terms for vat-born. Had always pitied the ones she’d seen from a distance when a high-miler felt like slumming it. Of course, no-one on her level had been rich enough to afford a vat-born of their own, but sometimes the slaves would come down to the lower levels on the sort of errands that no-one wanted to interfere with.

“Well, happy to have helped you enrich your life,” snarked Anna, drawing titters from those present.

Mai sighed. This wasn’t really going as she had thought it would. She’d known that there would be some surprise, suspicion, questions and a healthy bit of paranoia, but this hostility was totally unexpected.

“Stop putting words into my mouth,” she snapped back. “I merely meant that I was too poor to have any reason to meet one of your people. If I was staring, I apologise. But again, I wouldn’t have expected to find a free vat-born, let alone any of your colleagues hiding in the sewers. Why aren’t you all dead?”

“Um. No,” Anna wagged a finger, “that’s not how it works. You don’t get to ask any questions. Not until I think you’re no longer a threat.”

Mai stared back at Anna. The woman had clearly taken a dislike to her and she had no idea why. Then again, a vat-born with broken conditioning would have a lot of hate stored in them.

Maybe she hates me because I was free and fucked up my life so badly? Just like the Dragon Warrior had been. You never know how lucky you are until someone tells you. Or you throw it away.

She’d always been honest with herself. She knew she could wind people up the wrong way, bucked authority, and was generally a bit of an arsehole. On the other hand she also had a lot of good traits such as loyalty and honesty.

“Take her away. Give her some food, and a bit of the bio-mass liquid she was kind enough to donate to our cause,” ordered Anna with a flick of her fingers without taking her eyes off Mai

Mai bit her tongue at that. She’d known that she’d most likely lose the bottles. So she had weighted down a few in the river before entering the base. As long as the rebels didn’t kill her, she’d be able to retrieve the bottles.

A man stepped up and grabbed hold of her arm, lifting it as he tried to force her out of the chair. His grip was tight, too tight. Verging on hurting her.

“Don’t touch me,” she snarled. There’d been more than enough manhandling after she had entered the base and she’d been more than compliant. His force was absolutely unnecessary.

“Or what? You going to Cull me?” He leaned in, breath laden with garlic. She saw yellow teeth, coated in plaque, as he bared them at her. Body odour, competing with the garlic to stretch her gag reflex to maximum, washed over her. Nauseating wasn’t anywhere near to what it was.

“Yun, watch ..” Anna warned the man too late. Too late to help as she sprang to her feet, chair toppling over with the force. ACTIVATING UNARMED COMBAT and DIRTY BOXING, Mai pinned the hand holding her arm with her free hand, then rotated her arm round and back, wrapping the man’s arm with the arm he had thought he was controlling. She extended her fingers, pushing her supposedly trapped hand forward, slipping it behind his neck, palm down on the back of his head.

It might not have looked like it, the way they were both wrapped up, twisted. But now she had control of the back of his head there was no way he could resist any downward pressure she made.

From there it was a simple matter of standing up quickly, lifting Yun onto the tips of his toes, and then just as quickly dropping to the floor by lifting her feet completely off the floor. As she started to drop she forced the hand holding his head violently forward. Yun had absolutely no chance. No matter how strong he thought he was, or how strong he might have been, he was off balance and the full weight of Mai was now rapidly descending towards the floor.

This is going to hurt my knees, Mai thought as the floor raced towards her.

HIT! 13%

STUNNED

BLEED @0.5% PER SECOND

Yun’s face slammed into the plasticrete floor with the sound of a watermelon breaking. A couple of teeth skittered across the floor whilst blood spurted from his freshly broken nose.

DAMAGE! 3%

Her knees didn’t hurt as much as she thought they would have. Definitely not as much as Yun’s face certainly did, judging by the warbling scream he gave as he cupped his now free hands to his face.

The room erupted. Reactions were far quicker this time. All of the guards started shouting conflicting orders, the gun turrets sprung into life and lit her chest up with utterly needless aiming lasers and Mai smiled at the rage in Anna’s eyes.

“I’m bloody starving, who’s going to take me to get some food without feeling they can grab hold of me?” Mai kept her voice low, but just loud enough that even though they were shouting they would be aware she was speaking, and some would hear. ACTIVATING STREET SMARTS She turned slowly, looking at the guards as they continued to shout, assessing them.

“You,” she pointed at a young woman as a gut feeling came over her. Mai’s lips twitched as she realised she’d got a fish to hook. A young girl on second glance. Eyes wide with fear. Jabbing her hard-printed weapon as she shouted rather than keeping it tightly tucked into her shoulder like her comrades. “You can take me.”

Her mark stepped forward. Just a pace. Then stopped. She looked puzzled, as if she was trying to work out why she’d stepped forward.

Crooking her finger, Mai gestured for the girl to lead on, completely ignoring the still-shouting guards and their weapons.

The girl’s eyes darted towards Anna. Mai didn’t look over at the group’s leader, merely continued to look at the girl. With a jerky nod towards Anna, clearly returning a similar signal from Anna, the girl led her from the room as Anna ordered the guards to quieten down.