-The Night's Harvest-

The night's gloom ignored the glow of Pepper Park trying to light the area, and the crate grasped the darkness, relucant to reveal its contents to me. My scarred hands crawled around, rummaging in the splintery wooden crate, brushing aside short lengths of wires and jagged pieces of glass. I lifted the box, turning the box's irregular opening to the bright red light of the lewd sign not so far above me, the large hologram-broadcasting sign focusing my eyes on the sight of a shapely writhing woman, advertising the erotic entertainment one could have for a price, in the Red Light District I was in. I turned my eyes back into the box and the wan shine of dull grey metal glinted. A closer look showed thin packages with regular protusions of metal. 'Ammo clips?' the thought went in my head. I grabbed the four ammo clips. The neat row of tiny grey bullets nestling in the cold black plastic of the thin clip that I held in one hand spoke of being designed to chamber very quickly into a gun designed to take the cartridge. I dropped the crate, and it broke into splintered boards. I looked down at the pile, and decided to take it along for the wood. I bent down and took up the crate with me, crumbling it as I struggled to put it into a webber-sack that also contained my other few belongings.

The edges of my thin, chapped lips nudged into a smile, guessing at the sale price for the ammoclips. The Archer & Wesson, a short ways down the street, incongrously bright and clean in the zone's squalor, might give me enough credits that I could buy a few bottles of Green Bull Light and Warbot Cola cans from the tiny Snak-Attack outlet behind me. My parched tongue, tired of drinking strained rainwater, would think they went nicely with the large bloodily red meat I tore from a rat the size of my leg I killed earlier this morning. I had to find a spot to cook the meat though, and with some privacy to eat it in. I remembered the panicky rumblings of my gut when I ate a raw piece of meat, yellowish with fat, a while ago, when it was too rainy to cook it and I was so desperate to fill my stomach. Bright yellow sparks flashed on the rooftop of a run-down building down near an end of the street proper, near where the road continued on into the Industrial Zones. That looked promising as a spot to climb up for some exposed live wiring to start a small fire with.

The three trash cans caught my eyes, in the alley besides the store, and their lids teetering precariously on the bugling mounds of junk beckoned to me. I glanced around, a lone junkie laying flat from unconsiciousness the only other thing that interested my eyes, and I stepped into the alleyway. I tossed away the cans' lids, and squinted to better see their contents. Eagerness rushed into my sore limbs, making the fingers skitter around, lifting this and that. I shook and wiped my fingers frequently to clean off the slime of decayed foods. Piles from two trash cans quickly carpeted the aggregamic surface of the road. The initial rush had petered, and the toil of searching for any usable loot tired me further, but I kept on, hoping for anything valuable. A few minutes later, a grin making my chapped lips bleed, I held a knife. Its' blade broken nearly in half made it unsalable, but the remaining length of blade was sharp. Dinner would go a lot more pleasantly now that I didn't have to tear and gnaw at the meat.

I turned back out to the street, and looked at the junkie. He looked still unconsicous, wallowing in narcotic slumber, and my feet quietly took me over to his prostrate form. I knelt, and felt around in his clothes, searching for anything of value. Three green vials with screw-on caps offered themselves to my hand, the label spelling out "Detrosol Forte". A nice find, and one that would mellow my nights for the next few weeks. I kept on looking, and found someting that looked like a tool, though not like one I was familiar with. The markings on the tool said "Cryton Internal Supply", "Recycling Mechanism Gen-4", and "Do not distribute outside proper channels". Nothing else revealed themself, so I stood up and moved on down the street.

I slouched and walked around, enjoying my brief bit of entreprentuerial success, and finally went into the building that I had eyed earlier from the store. The doors offered no resistance to my entry, swinging around at the wind's whim. A dim corridor yawned before me, and I toed through the squishy floor, soggy with unnameable fluids. I stayed in the middle of the hallway to avoid touching walls streaked with stains that looked too brown to be excused as rust. My feet thudded into the flimsy floor of the elevator that I pried apart the doors to. The elevator juddered unnervily as it took me to the highest floor it could go to, and my arms moved to pry apart the doors again. Rhythmic noises came out to offend my ears, and I sighed, at the rampant indulgement in sexuality and the reminder that I had been celibate for too long. My tattered cloak tickled the floor as I strode past many doors, all sitting umcomfortably in their jambs, my eyes searching for the way to the stairway. A lull in the sounds appeared, and my eyes flicked to the pair of gouged doors to my right. My hands glided to rest upon one of those doors, and it swung open almost soundlessly. The gloom past the doors didn't hide the steps staggering upwards, and my feet started climbing, tiny mice darting out from under my boots just in time from their nests made from feathery random strips of scavenged materials.

After a tense while, I finally beheld faint pinlights of stars in that dank stairwell through the slats of a almost completely shattered door. I pushed the door, and it fell past me down the stairs, the thin wood having become too rotten for the hinges to continue holding it up. The top of the building wasn't much wider than the doorway that opened out into it. My personal demon cringed at the vertigo-inducing views all around me, but I forced myself to quietly step on the gravelly surface of the roof. Yellow sparks spewed occasionally from a dangling cable as it bounced off a metallic antenna inset in a wall. I unpacked the broken crate from the webber-sack and tore off boards that were more or less dry, and tenderly arranged them into a small pile near the protuding metal wires of the cable. My poor cloak wrapped around my feet, almost as if it knew it would happen, as my hands took a sacrifice of tinder from the hem. I rearranged the pile, and the cable guided itself into my grasp, and I gingerly pressed it to the wall. A torrent of molten metal fell onto the wood as if rain, and relucant reddish tongues of flame woke. I yanked the cable away from the wall, stopping the welding of the wire to the wall, and holding the wire by a length of dark insulation, put it away, trying to make a small measure of safety as I prepared my meagre meal.

Crawling things crept closer to the strip of meat as it cooked, their hunger overcoming their fear of fire and danger. My fingers, swollen and careworn, scrabbled briefly to lever up the tab to open a warbot cola that I lifted from my webber-sack. The night sky was practically nonexistent, the smoggy clouds reflecting much of the bright lights of Via Rosso and Plaza back down, drowning out whatever dim stars still shone, but Pepper Park wouldn't let itself be illuminated by that muddy sky. Everything in Pepper Park was grimy, right down to the ancient electrostatics-tinted windows that had given up trying to keep themselves clean, except for the porno signs and nightclub lights, presumably because their owners knew people wouldn't be able to see them if they weren't. A faint smell of burning meat wafted to my nose made my head turn, and I snatched the meat from the fire, the steak just become brown with a speck of black, and laid it to rest on a somewhat clean slab of ceramicrete besides me. I licked the grease from my fingers, and then my mouth drank of the cool sugary froth of the soda as the meat cooled.

Dancing flames cast shadows of phantoms onto the wall nearby where I had made the fire. Tense muscles and jumpy senses slowly relaxed, the sense of safety creeping in. No place in Neocron City, not even the so-called "safe-zones" where special energy-suppressor fields and very subtle subliminal sonics permeated them, rendering most weapons useless and making it very hard to think about doing violence inside the sectors, was safe, but it felt nice to think so.

The solitude from the night made the few sad thoughts and memories I had left in my mind run around. 'Ruiz Harran' The name came relucantly, slinking around the cobwebs of my mind's vaults. 'A fine life you lead, Harran' The mocking tone roused a sullen heat in my heart, and I huddled to warm myself. 'What happened, Harran? What happened that you should be homeless and friendless, Harran, without even a toothy knife to ward off the vermin that come out at night?' I sighed, the questions asking for answers, and I couldn't answer them. I remembered nothing, nothing but this scavenger's life, which had lasted so long I forgot what year it was. So very long, that even the ghosts that sometimes flittered through my eyes had faded.

-Night of Unease-

Rattling gunshots rang out below on a far away street, and the twitch of a solitary bird nearby me turned my eyes. The night didn't make the bird sleepy, and its perch on the crumbling ceramicrete was solid. I saw no sheen from the raven's feathers, so coated with Pepper Park's soot they were. Its eyes, the bird's eyes had no glint, almost as if they were dead. The demon in me fancied that if I ever looked in a mirror, my eyes would look the same as that bird's, almost lightless by the dirty struggle for survival and worn by the compromises of living. I jerked away from the bird, and touched the meat. It felt cool to the touch, and I hurried to cut it up before it became colder than the air around me, my newfound blade flashing in the dark.

I chewed a bit of the tough, stringy flesh. A soapy flavor stained my tongue, and I sighed at the prospect of an uncomfortable meal. The rat obivously had spent far too much time in the deep sewers, drank of liquid so deeply contaminated it could no longer be named water, and partaken of food so filth-ridden it might as well as eaten the toxic material itself. I wanted to throw the meat pieces back onto the fire and burn them until they were charred black so I wouldn't have to offend my tongue with the disquieting taste of chemical wastes. I knocked back the open warbot cola and kept choking down the meat. The small meal kept down fairly well, and I drank another warbot cola to ensure it stayed down. Sounds of sirens and the feathery hissing from ion-stream hoverjets grew in volume, and I glanced around to see the source. A strobing point of light suddenly flashed into being a couple buildings over from me, and my straining eyes made it out, a hijacked police surviellance drone. Some hacker must have dropped out from a line-of-sight wireless port piping a HackNet connection to pull the huge drone from its programmed patrol and took it on a virtual joyride. If I had the money, I'd have bet on the NCPD finding the hacker, and dealing with him, within fifteen minutes. I didn't really know much about hacking, but I knew the NCPD didn't kid around when they had security breaches.

*Whoooomp!*

I jumped at that loud noise, and spun around looking for the cause.

*ThroomThoomThoomTHOOM!*

That noise sounded familiar. Cannons being used, most likely the local thugs from Tsunami and Black Dragon duking it out again, the perennial struggle for territory and the attendant privledges of power and fearful respect. I hoped that the nearness of the causes of that sound didn't mean the turf battle was moving into the building. 'Better check it out, I don't want to be suprised.' I sprang to the edge of the slender layout of the roof and gingerly braced myself to look down at the street. I slowly moved my head out from the edge, trying not to get it shot off. My life may have been harsh beyond words, but I still liked living.

Bright points of lights flashed all over from the shadowy corners surrounding the street below. 'Another turf battle, apparently.' More explosions blossomed around the street. 'Oh, my mistake. Just some thugs spritzing around' It weren't a turf battle as I thought. The sheer number of firepower had fooled me. The four GenTanks that I could see, quite burly, were trying to kill a lone spindly runner, three of them using large-bore plasma cannons to spray the street down with, using sheer number of projectiles to try to make up for their lack of accuracy. The thin runner showed an impressive number of acrobatics, evading the scorching projectiles with uncanny agility, leaping over trash cans and crates and practically dancing around the plasma blobs. I couldn't see any markings that usually identified their affliations on the GenTanks' clothes or on the fleeing runner. One of the Gentanks stopped. I guessed he got frustrated with constantly missing his target because he put away his plasma cannon. He pulls out a large cannon with a long, thin barrel out of his backpack, and squatted, tossing it up on his right shoulder. I watch as he raises it, aims the cannon ever so carefully, and then he pressed something on it. A thin, glaringly red beam shimmered from its barrel and struck the fleeing runner in the calf of his left leg. The runner was in the process of jumping over a bench when the laser hit, and he went down with a crash into the crate besides the bench.

He rose quickly, but it looked obvious he got crippled, the way he limped. The distinctive colored tint of under-clothing body armor showed. Apparently it wasn't rated to defend against lasers or concentrated bursts of energy, considering it completely dissolved in the laser's path. The runner pulled out something and scrambled towards a sewer cover, just ahead of a sweeping spray of green plasma. He pulled up the cover, yanked on the thing that was in his hand and tossed it at his pursuers, and neatly dived down feet-first.

*THHOOOOOMMMmmmmmm*

A huge explosion shook the street, bowling over the GenTanks, and generally upsetting anything not bolted down. I grabbed the edge, trying not to fall over from the shockwave. One of the GenTank, a yellow-haired and heavily scarred male, jumped up and ran to the sewer cover just as the runner went down, and he bent down, extending a thick arm to pull the hatch back.

*WHhhhhoooooooooosh*

A gout of red flame engulfed the unlucky GenTank, burning his skin off. He went down screaming hideously, tattered shards of armor and fabric flying from him. The other GenTanks had stood up, recovered from that initial shock, but they dived to the ground again at the second explosion.

*Srrrrreeee* *Clunk*

My eyes moved down the street at the distinctive sound of a sewer hatch being opened, a flat rusty one just over to the side under me, and I wasn't the only one looking. The GenTanks quickly regained their composure and unsheathed their weapons, leveling them at the hatch just as their prey emerged from it, wreathed in thick gray smoke. The runner didn't hestitate to use the smoke's cover to sprint right into the building I was standing, shredded clothes and smoke clinging to him. The fusillade of destructive force the GenTanks laid down trying to stop him was truly impressive, clawing and punching several deep craters into the street and building but completely missing the runner, and he slammed the door shut. 'Ah, shame.' I didn't feel very happy at the prospect of trying to hide for however long the burly goons would be searching the building to find their quarry. The goons lumbered into the building, angry countenances boding ill for whoever got into their way.

A woman' long scream rang out, and a dull boom shook the building. The scream ended abruptly before the boom quieted. Alarm and fear ran rampant in my chilling veins. If that boom was what I figured, then the goons weren't letting any witnesses present themselves to the NCPD that would investigate the major disturbance. I looked around for any chance to escape. My eyes set on the fire, and I frenetically stamped it out. Dark gloom closed in more tightly with the fire's death, and I clutched at everything that I had left scattered around me, scooping them into the webber-sack and cinching it shut.

My eyes lighted on the roof over the stairway's hut that let me up on the main roof. Nothing else remained to me, so I gripped the webber-sack tighter and scrabbled onto that tiny patch. My ears took over, and clawed at the most minute sound that flew through the air. Screams and wails rang out with almost regular frequency, and my blood jellied further into solid ice the more it went on, a methodical slaughter combing through the building for its final quarry. Something within me felt odd. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I thought it might've been something important. That feeling made me turn around.

A shape now occupied the same square meter I had perched on. The shadowed form made a shushing motion to me. After I took a few seconds (it may have been minutes) to calm myself from the suprise and to swallow my left testicle down from my throat to its rightful place of a wrinkly pouch of skin, I nodded. The shots were getting louder and clearer with every passing minute, and I wasn't about to make any trouble that would make noise. The shadow settled down into a sitting position, looking quite relaxed despite the situation.

Thudding steps started up, my heart falling into the knelling of incipent doom, making my eyes squeeze shut from tethered panic. The stranger and I crouched down further on the roof. Wooden slats from the door that I made fall crunched below, broken from malevolent weight. Hair sprouted from the edge of that small roof, then detached and moved down further along the main roof. Other patches of hair followed it. The three hair patches moved around the main roof for a while, their owners presumably investigating what nooks and crannies occupied the main roof, then stopped.

"DAMMIT!" a rage-filled voice roared, "Where the hell did that scrawny bastard go?".

"Beats me." said a calmer voice, "I told you that mutie-sexing asshole could hide better than anything I seen.".

"Well...drrrr..uuuuh..." a quiet, slow voice spoke, "Hey, maybe he went into the elevator shaft and got below the elevator cab?".

"That's possible, it's all we got now." murmured the calm voice, "Let's go and check it out".

"YAArrrrrrrggghh!" the roaring again, "This FUCKING sucks shaved drom balls! YAAAAArrgghh! FUCK this!".

"Calm down, that does nothing for us." the calm voice said in a soothing manner.

"FUCK FUCK FUCK this!" *snickt* *ThroomThoomThoomTHOOM*

Debris rained down that spot of roofing, many sharp bits flying down and nicking my exposed patches of skin. My mind ignored the wetness in my pants and the pained stuttering in my chest to inventory my body parts and came up with all boxes checked.

"I said CALM DOWN, Tarnrid! Let's GO!"

Thudding receded down the stairs, but I didn't move until I felt sure they had really left, then I inched forward to see the whole of the main roof. A huge sigh cleared my throat and my mind, and I turned to face the stranger. His slumped form made as to guard a shredded area in the roof. Looking at that shredding tickled into being an awful realization, and I grabbed the stranger's body and laid him back down on the roof. With him spread out and me in a better position to see, the diffused light from the clouds let me see enough to know he was the runner that tried to evade the goons. Colossal bad luck had singled him out with miraculous accuracy, and the huge spreading redness in his chest plainly showed his fate.

-The Night of Change-

He made to gasp, and the gaping hole in his chest billowed with mist from his lungs' spasming. I could see the remmants of an artifical heart twitching as it drained of blood, and deeper in, the two ends of the severed spine sparked and flashed with several strands of electronics and wires. Gleaming steel bars protuded, fashioned into ribs, the molten metal from cut spokes dripping into exposed flesh, sending vapors up upon contact.. The handsome face contorted and twitched less and less, and finally smoothed. Shadowed death left him, having dealt with what spark of life had remained to him.

My head shook in disbelief. 'Sucks to be ya.'

But long-practiced hands skittered over his few pockets. A large knife with an extremely thick blade showed itself first, then a curiously made nailgun and several packages of long nails coated with something gritty and noxiously odiferious, and then a heavy block with unintelligble labeling, all going into my webber-sack. I used the knife to prize off two intact implants off his head and they found their way into my webber-sack as well. My eyes moved all over the dead body, latching into a curious glove on his right hand.

I bent to remove it, and it pulled off easily. Without the purple mesh-alloy and metal-splinting, it didn't look like a PSI-enabler glove, something that monks and PSI-sensitives used to unlock their PSI abilities. Nor did it look like a glove that might be used for insulation. No, the greenish tint of the extremely and disturbingly soft metal hull, and the exceptionally warm feel of the glove marked it as something very different from what I knew of. The cold of the night made me appreciate the warmth of the glove, however odd, and I pulled it on.

The instant it went onto my hand it made to tighten and tingling and sharp pricks started up on my right hand. I strained to pull it off, to no avail. A throbbing headache started swelling. The glove kept tightening, and when it squeezed tight enough to press into the skin of my hand, the pain and the shrinking stopped except for the headache, though it subsided to a muted throb that felt like it kept spreading. The scratchings of my fingers couldn't get under the glove's hull, so I gave up for the moment. The rather more pressing issue of getting out of that abbatior alive got my focus.

A few careful steps got me down to the main roof, and a few more got me to the edge. I spent a few minutes walking along the rooftop's side, praying to find anything resembling an emergency evacuation route, but that time passed and to no avail. I glanced back to that stairwell, its opening the maw of doom to me.

-One Surivor of a Whirlwind-

Fifteen minutes of careful sneaking saw me to the bottom of that dank staircase, muscles sore from flinching every other step for fear of making some fatal sound. I bent down to wipe the dust and grime that piled up on my boots from being shuffled through. The unexpected movement of the scarred door ahead sent andrealine surging through my body, sending me into a crouch. I swung up the broken knife for lack of a better weapon, the ones in my webbersack too difficult to figure out. I saw no one holding the door and it continued to swing open for another foot, but then, it swung back to being almost closed. I still crouched, warily watching the door for a few more minutes.

After time had passed and nothing other than the stench of ozone and burnt flesh had been picked up by my senses, I slowly stood, my spine creaking startlingly loud with the rise. A soft swipe with the flat of my broken knife pushed the door open, and with my ears pricked for even a mouse's breath, stepped through. My eyes darted around for anything, found nothing but death with three slender bodies burnt beyond recognition in the hallway. Another body was on a doorway, pushed onto the jamb hard enough that the body had been split almost in half, judging from the blood running down the walls and floor around it. I kept on walking, ducking below huge holes blown in the walls and gingerly stepping over weak sections in the floor. One particular hole in the floor blocked my escapade, stretching from wall to wall and more than five feet across.

'Fuck.'

A look into the hole nearly scared me witless with a large population of long sharp shards of broken flooring and metal. Thinking that, aside from the noise that would make, two holes for breathing were more than sufficent for me, so I didn't try to jump down the hole. A running jump looked very risky and noisy, but I didn't see any other way. A few long steps back did little to bolster my confidence, but forward I went, and barely made it across. Teetering on the brink for three seconds felt like an eternity, then my wildly flailing arms powered me forward into more stable footing. I hoped that my landing wasn't too loud, only hope as my blood thudded too loudly in my ears for me to actually hear anything.

Getting past that hole got me right in front of the elevator, its thin doors crumpled as carelessly as a piece of paper. Dim service illumipanels lit the shaft that yawned open before me. I gingerly bent forward to look up and down the shaft, seeing nearly nothing in such dim light. Some oddly shaped knobs kept blinking red. I looked back down, straining to see the elevator cab. A few more seconds of looking down told me nothing, and the sense of danger kept rising, putting me even more on edge. My demon said 'Hell with it, staying here won't do me any good', and I couldn't argue. Stepping to my right from the lip of the floor got me onto a crude service ladder, and I started down.

"Bleep Bleep"

I looked around me. It looked like the odd knobs had started flashing red faster. That was strange, and with a night this bad, strange wasn't good. I started scrabbling down, trying to get to the ground floor more quickly. Crumpled open doors went past me, portals to sights of butchery and blood. I kept my head down and kept moving my arms and legs. Finally, the panel that specified the ground floor came up, and I stepped onto the floor. As I massaged my arms, a look around told me little else than an abundance of spilled blood and destroyed furnishings. At the very end of the corridor, shadows flitted across the box of red illumination from Pepper Park outside.

'That's it then, they're waiting to see who comes out.'

That depressing thought almost undid me. Considering that, from all I knew, the three GenTanks had pretty much demolished the entire building on their own, and I wasn't likely to be much of a threat to them. Perhaps there was another way out, a back door or a hole they blew into the walls. I decided to look into the rooms along the corridor, taking my chances with the unknown in the rooms rather than that most likely fate outside. A twist to my right bought me to a doorway, and I stepped through. One look told me little, with one broken body dressed in grimy gray slumped on a chair by a ratty piece of bedding with a box on it, and nothing else exceptional. My old scavenger's instinct made me look into the box. Three crumpled shirts, one new dark green cloak with black stripes, and a datacube. I gleefully took the new cloak, and grabbed the datacube to see what was on it later, throwing both into my webbersack. The room across the corridor had nothing but a dead woman and man huddled in the corner.

Back out in the corridor, my sense of urgency deepened, and I started really hurrying around. The next few rooms nearer to the building's exit had nothing in the way of loot or escape and too much in gore. As I turned into one of the last remaining rooms, a small foot-size pit I didn't see caught my foot, and I staggered to keep from falling. When I righted myself and looked around the room, the amount of debris almost stupefied me. So much of the room looked so torn apart I wasn't sure that I was even still in the building, the walls' ferrocrete like worm-infested wood, the floors and ceiling's support showing skeletally with the plaster peeled back like flaps of skin. A peek here and there under fallen beams showed nothing but pulverized furniture.

As I went deeper into the destroyed room, glass shards all over the floor glinted as gems, and I looked behind a broad but short panel flapping from where the ceiling joined the wall. A shattered window gaped open. As I stood there, mute to my good fortune, the panel bouncing up and down, making the window look like a crazed drug addict's blinking eye, a faint beeping could be heard growing louder. A jolt of uneasiness rushed through me, and I automatically lifted my arms to the window, trying to see if I could get out that way. Of course, I quickly jimmied out the remaining shards of glass, tossed through my webbersack, and jumped, managing to get my chest on the windowsill. Jangling beeps filled in between the thudding in my chest as I squirmed out through. I held on to the windowsill for a second, making me flip feet over head, and then I fell a few meters to a relatively soft landing on the ledge below the window.

From the front, one wouldn't have known the ground sloped down from the road. I noticed my webbersack clinging to the edge, teetering between stability and gravity, and bent to pick it up. An almighty clap of thunder slammed me down to the surface of the ledge. Oddly, as a reddish orange light brightened then dimmed, I noticed the orderly graininess of the ferrocrete beneath me. I got up unsteadily, and slung the webbersack over my shoulders. I couldn't hear my footseps for the roaring crackle of fire in the now-defunct building's guts. I looked to my left to see the street, and turned right, deeper into the small dark space between buildings.

Loose rock and shards crunched underfoot as I tramped aimlessly around, getting deeper and deeper into the bowels of the Outzone. I had left Pepper Park a fair bit ago when I stepped through a small chasm in the boundary wall between Pepper Park and the Outzone. Few knew about it, and even fewer used it because of the mutated humans hiding out somewhere nearby. I knew that the mutants wouldn't be out in the streets around this time, what with the sun coming up. One would hardly know that the sun was about to come up, with the soul-deep grime coating the walls of the buildings around here absorbing light as easily as cloth soaked up water. A lone runner seemingly sprouted out of the street, his drab armor very similiar to the color of the pavement, and when his feet was on the street, he turned around and bent to flip something on the ground. I could hear the clang of steel. 'Ah, a hunter finishing his rounds in a pest-infested cellar.' When the runner went further down the street, our of sight, I stepped out of the shadows of some wooden planks I had ducked behind.

Low chanting rose out of a building ahead of me, and I hestitated. Monks of Crahn were notorious for being surrounded by trouble, even when they weren't causing it on purpose. 'Best not even give them the chance to sense your presence' and I complied by turning around and going back the way I came. After going past a few buildings, I remembered that, deeper into the Outzone, there was a grumpy merchant that worked for the wide-ranging Yo's franchise. Perhaps he would give me some light work so I could earn some credits for a few meals. With the low population of customers in the Outzone, he couldn't afford to keep a menial laborer for any long period of time, but he did take someone on now and then. My plan of action was to stay low for a few days until whatever heat from the butchery last night died down, and then I'd see about what the damn things I had picked up were. The glove still clung irremovably to my hand, but I didn't feel any further pain other than the odd buzz in my head.

I spent a hour wending down several garbage-strewn alleys, keeping away from the crumbling concrete or brick walls of the buildings around me. Occassionly I took to stepping on the odd foot-size cockroaches or head-size scorpions or kicking away feral hounds, natives of the ruined Outzone. I looked up out of habit and saw smoke rising above the buildings. 'Another trash fire? Looks a little large for that'. I stepped more slowly, feeling wary. While many things in the Outzone were flammable, they usually didn't burn unless someone intended them to, and that meant either humans or mutants. No one in their right minds expected friendliness from either in the Outzone.

- Pursuit Always Comes -

The smell of meat cooking, fresh clean meat judging from the lack of a chemical undertone, hit me with increasing pungency the closer I moved to the smoke. Hunger made me salviate, but I still stepped warily and kept my hand on the rough wall of a building. Right then, a shriek rang out, a rough thing that didn't come from human throats. The rumbling booms of propellant-fired weapons started up. Then two badly misshapen humans fell into the pavement, their wounds disfiguring them even further. An odd drawn-out whooshing sound started up, and the walls of the building facing that alley noticably brightened.

"Ooooi, man, do-don't b-be hitting their ears o-or the guns", an alcohol-blurred voice shouted "th-th-that's good credits th-there"

"Fark that, I ain't gonna bother aimin', not with tha' flamethrower drom-sexer around that corner!", shrilled a reedy voice. "Why i' t' Light didn't buy the dammed 'nads?!"

"I d-d-did, b-b-bitch, I j-just had s-some p-p-problem p-pulling them out, now-w-w-W get b-behind m-m-mmme, I need ROOMMMM!"

'bounty hunters on a mutant harvest' That decided it, anything with enough firepower to hunt the streets of the Outzone REALLY wasn't something you wanted to casually meet on said streets. Turning back yet again, I spied a staircase up to the rooftops, and I eagerly took it, hoping to avoid any more street encounters. Soft whumps and clinks sounded behind me.

*CROOOOMPFHH!* *CROOOOMPFHH!*

Concussive waves shoved me up the stairs at an alarming rate, making it difficult to hold on to a piece of railing that hadn't rusted to a jagged edge capable of slicing through soft flesh like a starved rat chewing moss. Hands still intact, I hopped onto the roof and ran to the opposite edge of the roof, jumping across the gulf with an uncomfortably loose ledge. I quickly lose myself in the daze of running across broad rooftops studded with tublar vents, tall reed-like formations of antennae, and all crusted with countless decades of settled pollution. I coasted back to alertness when I noticed I was crossing over to a slightly cleaner area and appreciably more distance between buildings. Definitely the Industrial Sector, and more importantly, a place where I could get down to the ground very near to my target. The good thing about this sector, they all had doorways opening into staircases. Kicking open a rusted-shut door, I kept a very careful ear out for mutants. Experience had taught me that the mutants loved the abandoned Industrial Sectors, full of forgotten tools and machinery, and the giant buildings full of catwalks and gantries made perfect hiding and hunting places.

Down in the dusty gloom of a colossal loading bay, I hugged the hollow hulks of steel cargo crates, warily moving towards any door that led out into the streets. I really, really didn't want to meet up with a mutant in here. A step here, a turn of the head there, another step then, and an involuntary crouch as I half-expect a crazed creature shrieking and clawing at me. A while into the quiet gloom, I almost relaxed as nothing frightening happened. I shifted my webbersack, wincing at the pain of blood rushing back into the crease the cord on the webbersack had left on my skin. Shrugging it off, I accidentally swung the webbersack against a rusty spot on the cargo crate I was huddling by. The din as the rusted steel caved in and the whole side of the crate collapsing was deafening.

'SHIT!' I dove down and crawled to the next crate up, frantically looking around to see if anything had noticed. 'Time to move faster, Ruiz, not a good time to wait around to see if you were so rude as to disturb someone's nap.'

I kept on going.

Halfway into the skulking, I started hearing odd sounds. Normally, the Industrial Sectors were quite quiet, just perhaps the faint rumblings of ancient, still-functional machineries operating, or the sounds of vermin rattling around in the gutters. The unfamiliar sounds I was hearing was like an irregular rasping sound, and the occasional very faint "wooosh". Looking back, I saw nothing. No shadows where they shouldn't be, no glint of fresh steel or footsteps in the dust other than mine. The sounds stopped too. I decided to move a bit more quickly now.

The rasping and whoosing started up again. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw nothing, but the sounds stopped again. 'Dear Crahn, that's fucking spooky. What the fuck is going on?!' I broke into a near-run, sidestepping the rusty heaps that were former barrels. The sounds started up again, keeping pace with me. Sweating profusely, I stopped even trying to look back and broke into a flat-out run. A huge hangar door, webbed and dirty from disuse but most likely functional, was directly ahead of me. If I could only reach it...

Suddenly I came out into a clear area of the loading bay. No cargo crates, barrels, or structural beams were anywhere near me. I chanced looking behind, but even then, there wasn't anything I could see moving, and these damnable sounds... stopped... again. 'Crahn! Something's following me for sure! SHIT! SHIT! I FUCKING GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE!' Spinning awkwardly on my worn heel, I sprinted the last few meters to the door and pounded on the door panel's lever, praying to anything that would listen that the door would still work. Nothing. No sound from the door, and the scraping and whoomping still stalked me. Looking behind, I slammed with all the strength I had onto the panel. A screech sounded out, like the wail from a tortured creature, and I pissed my pants. As my pants were already soaked with sweat, it wasn't so bad. A rumbling started up under my hand. It was the door! Even after all these years, it worked! Seeing massive steel opening out into salvation, my heart lightened as the searing rays of the sun pierced the dim interior of the loading bay.

As slowly as the doors were opening, I didn't wait for them to widen fully. I hurled my webbersack out through the crack, and crammed myself bodily between the doors, straining and wriggling for my life. Clothes sodden with sweat made it so much easier. An arm got out, then a leg, then my head! Exhaling as much as I could, I strained to squeeze my chest out. The rumbling stopped suddenly. The doors weren't moving anymore! Snapping my head back into the other side, I looked over at the control panel for the door. The heavy lever was turned up the other way. And nothing was near it. 'What the FUCK?' Yanking my arm and leg back in, I rushed to the lever and slammed it down. The rumbling started up again. For good measure, I put my weight on the lever and snapped it off at the base. Turning back to the opening, I tossed the broken lever into the darkness.

It didn't hit the floor with the loud clank as I would have expected it to. In fact, it didn't hit the floor at all. Sparks sheering off the steel doors as the lever piece slammed into them. I flinched at the near-miss and swung around to see what threw it at me. An abomination stared eyelessly at me. It was nothing like a living, breathing, bipedal mass of spines, teeth, and claws, all brown except for the bloodred stains at all its tips and edges. Its hands twitched, three huge claws on each snapping open and shut. I did what anyone would do facing a horror from the abyss. I screamed and flung myself backwards. It crouched, opened its mouth, a gaping blackness with too many teeth and edges surrounding it, and a sound like glass torturing another piece of glass clawed out. Tensing, it suddenly leapt high into the air, arcing towards me.

*BOOommmKRAK!*

The nightmare all but exploded in gore and shrapnel. Spines and claws whizzed lethally everywhere, outrunning the gory blob of blood and flesh spurting forth. Slowly spinning as I watched in terror, its shorn-off, huge, tri-taloned hand whipped into my shoulder. My flesh almost parted before the the razor-sharp claws sank down into the soft meat, stopping only when the three talons were fully jutting out my back.

"Ayaggghh!"

Shaking from the pain, I tore the hand out and whimpered at the blood spurting out. Running footsteps nearby snapped me back to alertness, and I scrambled to my feet, smearing my blood all over the bay doors. Off in the distance, I could see a faint humanoid figure carrying a long rod. He was running rapidly towards me, lifting the rod to his shoulder and pointing it at me. I turned back and jumped over the groove where the bay doors slid open on. Grabbing my webbersack out of the oily slick it fell on, I turned left and sprinted with all my speed. Straining with all my strength to only look forward, I reached out and grabbed a protruding corner, barreling around into a sharp turn, and kept going. Ferrocrete faded past me, shifting from polluted gray to merely disused offwhite. A sharp flash of light on the ground caught my eye, but I couldn't stop myself in time to avoid spinning out of control on the oil slick. Picking myself up from the pile of rough and splintery bags left on the street that somewhat cushioned my fall, I cursed. 'Everything's going wrong. Oh, fuck.'

Panting from the tail-end of an adrenaline and pain energy surge, I almost sobbed as I saw the "Yo's Pawnshop" sign. Tucked away in a corner, almost hiding, it would be difficult for a newcomer to find the place. I smiled as I read the sign again, one of my few memories as a young boy surfacing, spraypainting out some letters and putting down "Mama" between the words. The shopkeeper had caught me just as I finished up, and terrifying me with his wickedly humming technological pistol, made me clean up the area in front of the shop as punishment. He then took me inside and shared his dinner with me. Ever since the the great swaths of blankness in my memory of the past, I counted this place as a safe haven.

Looking around me, fervently hoping that I had lost whatever the hell was happening back at the loading bay, I knocked on the door to the pawnshop while carefully standing outside the doorframe. Listening carefully, I knocked again and opened the door. The place was a little dimmer than I recalled. 'Illuminator panels wearing out, probably. They last nearly forever, but the key word is "nearly".' Shaking my head to stop thinking, I carefully look at the counters arrayed around the walls. Just loads and loads of junk, even more tangled than the last time I came here. Almost nothing that anyone in their sane mind would want. Especially the used implants and bone-enforcements. They always had a bad past. Always.

"Hey, Borffe. It's Ruiz. You still alive, you old coot? I still ain't finished with the sign outside!"

"Try that bullshit again, Ruiz, and you'll feel the crahndamned butt of my pistol, you shitnosed whippersnapper. I'm in the stockroom sorting things. I'll come out to kick your fucking ass in a minute."

A few moments passed before a skinny and stoop-shouldered man limped out. Chapped lips crackling, I smiled as I saw his face. Crevassed with wrinkles and scars, a gleaming cybernetic eye with a glaring red light blinking out of a socket, Borffe was an ex-Merc that left his squad after a botched skirmish with a gun-smuggling gang he was contracted to take out. He smiled as he looked at me. His electronic eye glanced at my webbersack and blinked rapidly.

"So you have a few shitbag trinkets to pawn off again? You know I'm not a fucking charity. Wait! Your shoulder! What the fucking hell happened?"

He stopped limping and stared at my crusted up but still dripping shoulder. Borffe turned and scrambled through a pile on a counter, pulling out a few packets. I walked over to him and dropped my webbersack, sitting in a rickety wooden chair.

Grimacing, I slump. "Fucked up night AND day is what happened, Borffe. It never ends. You wouldn't believe last night. I don't know what happened, but some sort of guy and gang running all over. These huge GenTanks coming after this skinny guy, they scragged everyone in the WHOLE building I was hiding out on. Not just that, they fucking demolitioned the damn building with me in it!"

"Here, take these. They'll cut the pain and get some trauma-mitigation going. Not much I can do with these old first aid kits. I ran out of the good medikits again. More runners seem to be taking to the Outzone after the mutants and rats again with the new ProtoPharma bounties." I snatch the pills and cram them into my dry mouth. Anything, I'd take, to stop the searng pain.

The painkillers helped a little. Stopping to rest brought the pain from my shoulder to front and center, almost making me pass out. I took the tissues and bandages Borffe handed to me. I started relating the events of the night to him. Borffe's experiences might help me understand what was going on. I wanted to to know if something big was going down in Pepper Park again so I could avoid it for a while, even if it was the only place I could panhandle without getting snatched by the copbots. I started getting to the situation inside the loading bay I came through when he stopped me at the description of the nightmarish horror that attacked me.

"Fucking huge spikes all over, nothing but teeth and claw?" Spreading his hands and pressing them to his body, making little spikes with his fingers. I nod, closing my eyes. Nothing would ever make me forget that horror. "Sounds like a cruncher to me. Real fucking scary shit. I remember running into one a long while ago. It was an escorting squad, equipped to deal with men, not hell on legs. Took down three of my mates before someone jammed a grenade into its mouth. That guy lost an arm and half his face before the grenade went off. It's really bad news that there's one in the city."

"Not anymore. Some guy shot it and it blew up. I heard the thing blowing up before I heard the shot." Smacking my hands together, I imitate the sound. "That's a bit odd if you ask me."

"A fucking sniper rifle with explosive shells! Who the fucking hell goes in the Outzone with a fucking sniper rifle? Only people I know that does that are people with murder on their mind, not collecting vermin bounty." Borffe stares at me, disturbing me with his tone. An hardened ex-merc getting concerned gets me antsy. "These are fucking motherfuckers. Snipers fucking piss me off. You sure you didn't piss some gang off?"

"Honest, Borffe, I've been keeping clean these days. No courier runs for the Dragons or Tsunami, I swear. The only fucking loot I got is what i got off the guy last night. It's been real bad, real dry lately. People just aren't tossing to the bums these days."

Borffe smirks, turning his face into an even more grotesque mask. "Right, you little shitbag. What the hell did you pick up, then? Show me, I want a real close look on the shit you bought into this clean and honest fucking dump."

As Borffe shoved a whole pile off a counter, exposing a dusty, pitted and cracked surface, I started taking out items I looted from the junkie and the dead guy. The three green vials of Detrosol Forte clatters as they hit the counter. I set down the tool marked "Cryton Internal Supply - Recycling Mechanism Gen-4" more carefully, and the large knife with an extremely thick blade, a nailgun and several packages of long nails I gingerly place on the counter. The odd heavy block with unintelligble labeling and the two implants I ripped off the guy quickly followed. The glove, from which the prickling was very muted against the pain from my shoulder and the painkillers, I pointed to.

"This glove won't come off, but I looted it from the dead guy, too."

As an afterthought, I pull out the datacube and new cloak. I tenderly drape the cloak over the back of the counter. I really couldn't wait to put it on, finally dry and clean without all the itchiness from this shredded old cloak that couldn't even keep out a draft, much less the rain.

Borffe barely glances at it. "I'll get to that piece of shit later. The fucking smartie pills are nothing special. Nice combat knife, pretty well-made. A poison-modified nailgun with a hacked barrel, pretty damn fucking nice. These implants, Biotech experimental lines. It shouldn't be on the market, but with Biotech's lazy grasp on their best implants, I'm not suprised to see them. Bastards probably like a little tapline on the black market, maybe trade some of their fancy experiments for favors. Hell, they probably release them just so they can get free research data off the unlucky runners that shove the implants in. They're highly useful to the right runner, though. Now, this block and this tool..."

"What? What is it?" I look very intently on Borffe's face as he squints and stares. When he does that, odds are I've picked up hot shit. Shit that gets my ass roasted in the end. Borffe glances at me, and shakes his head.

"The drom-sexing cloak is standard Outfitter shit, PSI monk crap design, though it looks sharp style-wise. Bet the other guy's pissed. I don't know what's on this datacube. The mini-display on it isn't making any fucking sense. I guess I'll have to talk to some contacts."

"Borffe, dammit, what is it about the tool and that thing?" Panting, I look back and forth between the items and Borffe's face. "I could just run out to the Mainsewers and toss these things into the water. No one needs to know."

Borffe frowns, a sad look in his eye as he stares at me. " Ruiz Harran Binger, you know it doesn't work like that anymore." 'Oh shit. He's using my full name. That's not good at all.'. I cringe slightly as I listen. " The tech the Factions have now is getting very fucking sharp, security-wise. Micro-transponders, identity-sensitive hulls that'll sense and record whoever handles them, and some of the nastier pieces have active security measures. These doesn't seem like the "chop-your-cock-off-when-you-touch" type, but I'm almost certain they have the newer security shit. What's worse, Cryton's Tech Tools is a member of the Traders Union. These guys, none of the political factions will mess with, and none of the techno Factions will lightly try to crack the tech the Trader Union have. The TU has ties to fucking EVERYONE, Ruiz. Everyone. Messing with them means you mess with everyone. All the Factions will be sending people to safeguard TU shit because they want to stay in good with the TU. The TU sells a lot of stuff everyone needs, that's why. Hell, I hooked up to the TU when I took this job manning this pawnshop. The Yo's on the sign outside means I'm a schmuck for the Yo's Pawnshop network. Yo's is a member of the Trader Union, too. That's why you can see the Yo's everywhere you go. Quite frankly, you're shafted."

"Crahn's itchy left nut. I don't fucking believe it!" Today had went from bad to shitbag at an alarming rate. Grabbing one of the Detrosol Forte pills, I gulped it, hoping the intelligence-enhancing effects would help me find a solution. I quiver as the effects kick in.

Wryly smiling, Borffe knows what I was thinking. "That won't help, you know. Smarts is not what will get you out of this. I can take everyone you got, claim that I noticed the markings, but it means I gotta call my boss real soon, because they'll know that the tool has been sitting here. I still have to give a description because they don't let things lie. Anyone stupid enough to grab their tech, the TU doesn't let live."