Chapter Text
The «Industrial District» was located on the outskirts of Glocken.
Initially built largely over a partially buried, relatively flat segment of the former Battle Cruiser, and later expanding outward as the desert and city ruins were slowly reclaimed and population demands increased, it was one of many districts part of a larger region otherwise known as the «Outer Rim».
It was, despite the current uncivilness and the typical dysfunctions of a cyberpunk-type city, actually one of the more stable outer suburbs one could find themselves in. And this was not a coincidence; industrial output of both consumer and military products were the lifeblood of Glocken’s economy, such that it was with the city’s difficult logistical circumstances and unfortunate location.
But an industrial heartland it was, nonetheless.
For all their heavy handedness, the private sector law enforcers active in the area, the Public Security Department and the less severe Civil Patrol, were effectively used to keep order in the area.
But an Outer Rim district was still an Outer Rim district. “Stable” did not mean “safe,” and the security and control apparatus was never going to be as high quality or as robust as the districts closer to the interior. Such as the『Market Strip』, which not only featured armed patrols, roving mercenaries, and border checkpoints, but also facial recognition and ID-scanning technology, and the ever-present eye of a complex CCTV surveillance system.
(Whether these security deterrents were actually effective against the truly powerful or untouchable, however, was another matter.)
What was more, it wasn’t like criminals and other unsavory types were confined to where they were born and raised. They traveled too—one might even say they commuted—and between the robust public transit systems and porous district borders, the same kinds of villains from neighboring districts could be found here.
To Players however, either ignorant of or indifferent to the lore of this world, it was simply one of many “places where I go to practice or farm equipment against low-level gunmen.”
—
Rather than workers or the usual patrolmen, the streets of Industrial were crawling with bandits.
If one considered the kind of place SBC Glocken was, this was actually more normal than not.
However, there were also other, familiar things crawling on the floor. Far more than was usual, even to this inhospitable part of the city.
Human bodies. Or conversely, humans in the process of turning from “living people,” into “dead objects.”
Step. Step. Click. Click.
Argo and Sinon’s gear rattled noisily as they leapt from cover to cover—an alleyway here, a destroyed food truck there, a collapsed wall further ahead.
The usual sterile comms. Bereft of idle conversation, now that they had something mildly interesting to do: Covering. Moving. Open window front. Roger, I see it. Holding right. Holding left. Eyes on gunmen. Eyes on civs.
...Eyes on a lot of civs.
Squirming bodies. Groaning bodies. Dead bodies.
They passed by many dissolute scenes like these.
Unlike with citizens from the upper city or the Players, down here, body augmentions were a matter of survival. Air scrubber-equipped lungs to filter the caustic smog, and cybernetic prosthetics for limbs lost in industrial accidents, or—what was more often the case—street battles and fixer jobs.
Expensive things nonetheless, even if these were under-the-table operations—how laughable, building up debt just to live!—but what else was one expected to do, roll over and politely die? It was a natural impulse to want to survive, to make a miserable life just a bit more bearable to endure.
Bearable…but nevertheless, life here remained a brutal affair.
“…Urrrgh… Keuk…”
“Help me! …Don’t leave me here…please!”
Between the towering skyscrapers of civilization, these were Glocken’s refuse: the people the city forgot. Those who had truly reached the end of their rope and no longer had the funds to keep themselves alive, those who had succumbed to the physical and psychological ravages of cyberware rejection and cyberpsychosis... but more often, those who had simply fallen victim to Glocken’s usual naked violence.
“Yo~. Don’t worry there pal, don’t worry~. We ain’t gonna leave you like this.”
One of the still-moving bodies lurched his upper body forward. Or he tried to, simply rolling onto his back with his neck craned forward instead.
“R-really? Y-you will?”
“Yeah~. Sure, sure we will~.”
Watching and listening from afar, Sinon’s lips formed a deep furrow of abject disgust.
It was a false hope.
His body was in an appalling state; not only were his limbs damaged, but he was also missing parts of his skull and upper chest, exposing the silver color of his subdermal cybernetics underneath. Forget moving or talking, the fact he could even react to people at all was a small miracle.
She could hear the group rumble with laughter at a shared joke. The almost-corpse looked around as if confused…no, he probably did understand. It was too obvious.
But what person, in such a wretched state, could stoically accept their demise as death peered down and laughed at him?
“Well~, your chrome’s going to a good cause at least. Now just sit tight there buddy, or this is gonna get painful… Boys, get to it.”
Sinon had tagged much better augmented fixers and corporate goons out in the «Wasteland» to know at a glance: the buzzards circling him weren’t much to look at, but that man wasn’t long for this world either. Even if he hadn’t been preyed on by Scavs, even if he had been lying on a surgical table in front of the best Ripperdoc money could find in the outskirts when he’d been wounded… There was no difference.
He was, like so many others, little more than fuel to sustain the rest of the underclass from oblivion. Life was in a very real sense cheap—literally worth less than the augmentations grafted onto them by some unlicensed medtech.
And the Scavs, well…
In Sinon’s economy, bullets were significantly more valuable than the trouble it took to deal with Scavs.
“ … Still holding contact on Civs. Looks like they’re starting soon.”
“Aye, sure. And, seriously—they couldn’ find someone dead ta harvest? They have ta go for someone who’s still conscious?”
“Yeah…Hmm.” Sinon took up the slack on the trigger.
The Prediction Circle in her vision narrowed rapidly into a green pinpoint that disappeared behind her irons, lined up on the head of the blabbermouth Scav with the irritatingly languid voice of a real charlatan. She considered for a moment…before sighing and lightly shaking her head. Again, not worth the ammo or time.
“Argo-san, we’re clear. They’re busy.”
“Haiii~. Movin’.”
“A simple ‘yes’ would suffice.”
“Hai hai~.”
There were countless swarms hovering and fussing over the too-many bodies that filled the streets and alleys, as if there wasn’t a full-blown battle happening all around. A grim reminder of the nature of the city, the commonality of violence and death, the worthlessness of human life in the cold face of survival and hard currency.
Far from medical professionals, these so-called Scavs were in fact the complete opposite…yet, strangely, this could’ve been considered a unique virtue here.
Like their scavenger animal namesakes smelling blood, the Scavs pecked and prodded at the decaying outer flank of SBC Glocken. They broke down the bodies with no less efficiency than engine parts from a car.
Nothing went to waste here; “the belongings of the dead belong to everyone,” it was simply a matter of survival.
But the girls remained cautious, on their guard. Among the underclass, there were always more lurking than the carrion birds and rodents.
“Shove off! The hell are you two girls looking at!”
Argo swung around, pitching quickly as if she were a turret on a swivel, her muzzle snapping dead-center on the man’s face.
“Oi—turn ‘round! Back there! Back there, before I thump a 12 gauge slug through yer brow, Scav!”
His tone suddenly turned conciliatory.
“Aish—come on, please! Please, just go away! I’ve got no fight with you, you wouldn’t want this stuff anyway!”
As she brought up the rear flank, Sinon compressed her PDW towards her chest with the muzzle pointed diagonal, the familiar armed policeman stance. With her other hand she waved harshly to the side. It was the universally understood gesture of “We get it. Shut up and look away.”
Brash, but not stupid. Recognizing the commonly used sign language that Private Security firms often favored, and thoroughly drained of his hostility, the Scav turned his eyes down sullenly before he dutifully went back to his “recycling job.”
Argo snorted internally.
‘Am I supposed to feel bad for a corpse robber? An opportunist rifling through pockets for vendor trash, when the so-called militias have underground settlements set up everywhere with the necessities?’
‘What is this, their day job?’
‘These rats—no, wait, that feels weird for me. These vultures don’t even have anything worth looting off of. The fast ones already made off with the good battlefield pickups, these guys are just picking through scraps.’
True to her roots, the professional merchant. She barely ranked him above the status of “talking furniture”; the only reason she even reacted to him was because he might try something stupid with a gun.
Sinon’s assessment was more sober, but similarly unfavorable.
‘Opportunists always go for easy prey. The Rim is full of them, and that guy had weapons material in a pile off to the side.
‘Better for us if people like him continue thinking we’re more trouble than our attention is worth.’
Sinon extended her compressed weapon stance back into low-ready.
‘Not that it would make any difference if he tried.’ Sinon thought, still eying the discarded pistol and the pile of handgun magazines until they were firmly out of sight. Trash was still trash, but in any confrontation they’d only suffer losses.
‘Even on a calm day, I’d expect half the people I pass to eventually try their luck on an ambush. Normally I’d skip the entire Outer Rim by train.’
Strong against the weak and weak against the strong: another classic trait of Scavs, Bandits, Raiders, and other low-rate scoundrels.
Most Scavs did little more than acknowledge their presence, averting their eyes or shuffling away as the duo approached. Their confidence reached the tips of Glocken’s skyscrapers themselves among the half-dead, but as soon as well-equipped fighters appeared they were suddenly on their best behavior.
Until.
“Halt! I mean, shit, stop! Stooop! You, the fuck are you doing here! !”
… They’d captured someone’s attention.
On the approach to an alleyway, which the menu map had plotted as the shortest route to the target destination.
Sinon remained hidden at the back for overwatch when it was Argo’s turn to bound forward to the next car. Caught in between, in an instant she whipped her shotgun around to the voice. Argo side-stepped along to close a bit more of the distance to the front half of a destroyed cargo van, but ultimately she was still exposed in the open, near the mouth of the back alley.
[These goddamn mobs. Wastin’ my time.]
Sinon heard Argo hiss annoyedly over the radio.
The man visibly stiffened at the business end of a shotgun being leveled at him. But when she still hadn’t ended him, his expression relaxed a bit, and he breathed in twice—Hoo…hoo—to calm himself.
Whether it was Argo stopping, or her initial decision not to immediately turn his head into chunky salsa which played a larger role in his relief, who knew. Nevertheless, Sinon’s «Prediction Circle» tightened onto his center mass.
“Ma’am! …Uhm, corporate, problem-solver, contractor—person!” The mohawked man quickly rattled off every respectable identifier and title he could think of, just in case. “The road to the apartment ahead’s off limits! Go away!”
For a few more seconds, Argo simply stared at him.
But then her eyes, usually a dull yellow like tarnished brass, suddenly glimmered a dangerous, familiar gold color.
She breathed deeply. Her lungs filled with air and smoke particles. Her chest rose with volume, yet the meager spot below her collarbone remained disappointingly small. She opened her mouth—
“WHAT! ? WHAT DID YA SAY! ? !”
—And yelled at the absolute top of her lungs.
Mohawk Punk flinched, obviously taken aback. He darted his eyes to the left, but quickly regained his composure and faced forward.
“Err, um—ahem! Ma’am! I said—!”
“WHAT?”
“You can’t come here—!”
“WHAAAT? !”
As the punk started to adapt and shout louder, Argo increased her own volume an octave higher. She emptied her lungs in one mighty shout.
“I! CAN’T! HEAR! YA! YA NEED! TA SPEAK! LOUDERRRRR!”
“I SAID! YOU CAN’T—”
“WHAAAT? ! I CAN’T DO WHAAAT! ?”
Watching this absolute dog’s meal of a conversation unfold, Sinon’s brow formed the shape of the number eight (八).
‘What the…’