I flew to Secthty-Two in my truck. I briefly sidered taking a Kodiak, but uhe northerors, the south did occasionally see truck traffic, so I decided to try and keep it low key. I had Nyx whip up a set of armored clothing ahead of time and made sure it was suffitly soiled before I left so I wouldn’t draw much attention to myself.

  “Are you sure you don’t want any backup, Boss?” Bob asked when I hopped out of the truck at the edge of the district.

  “The squirrels might not attract a lot of attention, but having you guys walk around behind me certainly will,” I replied. “Just idle somepce close, in case I need you.” He nodded hesitantly before pulling the door closed. I waited until my truck disappeared into the streets above before venturing deeper into the district.

  The people ihty-Two were retively wealthy, by uy standards. Many of them worked in the industrial sector, which meant their families could eat twice a day, and because they worked for the corps, the gangs had to be careful about not pushing too hard. If they ioo many corporate workers there would be swift and brutal backsh. The ohing you didn’t ever want to do is mess with corporate profit margins.

  The dowhis pce fug sucked. I’d never been this far south before, but I’d heard the rumors. The factories down here were supposed to pipe their pollution to the surface, filtering it along the way to have as little enviroal impact as possible, and maybe they did at first. After years of , many eys had holes in them, dumping their smht bato the uy. Evearactor fans, which had been desigo caty leaks, couldn’t keep up with the pollution.

  Eighty-Two wasn’t even iual industrial se, but the streets were coated in a thick yer of ash and smog. Most of the people I walked past either had impromptu rebreathers or were coughing so badly I thought they’d colpse ireet.

  “Nyx, gimme a rebreather,” I muttered under my breath. “Make it look really beat up.”

  Your new lungs are more than capable of filtering out this low level of pollution without any issues.

  “Yeah, but if I don’t have something c my mouth, people are going to start questioning why I’m so healthy,” I replied quietly. “Just give it to me on the down low.”

  I reached into my jacket and waited a few seds for the mask to be teleported in befrabbing the grubby thing and strapping it around my mouth. It probably provided better filtration than anything the corps provided, so I made a mental o pass it off to some kid before I left.

  The pollution wasn’t the only reason why life sucked around here. As I turned a er, heading towards the point Nyx had marked on my augs, I saw a corporate SUV parked ireet. Some guys in bat armor were pulling a family out of the building, while some suit read out orders from a tablet nearby. Someoed to them must have made a mistake otten injured, and god forbid the Cive anyone a break. There was always some cuse that allowed the pany to force the family into iured servitude in order to pay for the damage or medical bills. It had been that way for fug years, and everyone khe risks of looking for work down here in the south.

  A lot of people would rather starve than deal with this bullshit.

  I briefly sidered intervening, or calling the bears to deal with it, before discarding that idea. This same situation was going to repeat dozens, if not hundreds, of times today, all across the area. Saving one family wasn’t going to ge anything, and they khe risks when they signed up.

  I skittered away, swiftly making my way deeper into the distritil I came upon a surprisingly opeion. The area was filled with old cargo tainers, which people had turned into tiny shop stalls. The different levels were ected by makeshift stairs, dders, and bridges to make the entire area traversable, and uhe stacks bae, it actually looked surprisingly stable.

  As I slipped into the area, careful to avoid the locals milling about, the area was filled with cries. “Fresh veggie-waste! Give those nutri bricks some fvor!” “Recycled fabric here. Great for new clothes, only used once!” “Solid fiber boards for sale! Plug those holes in your walls, mostly not rotten!”

  I stopped for just a moment to ihe cloth the woman was hawking. It was dirty and ripped, but in mostly one piece. The junk being peddled here was slightly above the quality of stuff that would have been avaible bae half a year ago and signifitly inferior to the goods these days.

  Despite having some money ing in, these people weren’t in any much better shape than the people in the north, they were just surviving in a different way.

  When I reached the ter of the market, I paused and looked around the area. I couldn’t see Helen anywhere, even with the half dozen squirrels perched on the nearby buildings. “I ’t believe I trusted her,” I mumbled.

  “I thought you didn’t trust me,” came a voice from directly behind me. I spun around in surprise, only to find Helen standing right behind me, smirking. She was dressed like a sger with overalls and an old ripped-up vas jacket. I barely reized her.

  “How the fuck did you do that?” I hissed.

  “My specialty is perception filtering, remember? It’s the reason Mirage agreed to let me e down here,” she replied, gently pg a hand on my bad direg me towards one side of the market.

  “Should you really be admitting that so loudly and in the middle of a crowd?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Really Teddy? What did I just say? No one is going to notice us or listen to our versation unless we bring attention to ourselves, or I want them to hear us. Speaking of which…” she looked me up and down, “did you really have to put on another jacket with ears? Are y to attract attention?”

  “Shut-up,” I snapped. “It’s a popur style in the north these days.”

  As Helen led me over to a major north-south artery, I got my first look at the industrial district. The entire area looked like a solid wall of industrial maery and factories, packed as closely together as they could possibly fit. Uhe residential areas, the industrial se was fairly well maintained, and there were trucks rushiween the different plexes and the surface access. I had some trouble making out aails because most of the area was pletely bathed in smog, but I could make out the occasional corporate-branded security vehicle patrolling just outside the clouds of pollution.

  “So what exactly is your mission?” I asked as we joined a slowly growing line of people trudging towards the access bridge into the sector.

  “Someone is ing the workers to quit their jobs, strike, and sabotage the factories,” Helen expined without turning her head. “While some of that is expected, what’s not expected is for it to happen so often or for the families of the insurgents to have the moo pay off their debts.”

  “So you think someone is bankrolling this? Why?” I muttered, gng at Helen. “It’s filled with unskilled bour, assigo dangerous, menial jobs, but it doesn’t produything important. It’s mostly low-level processing for materials that are used in the advanced manufacturiers in the north.”

  “That, my dear Tedward, is what we’re here to find out,” Helen said, fshing me a smile. “I have a couple tacts inside, some of my old group, who I hope point us in the right dire. I assume you have eyes on the inside already.”

  “Don’t call me that,” I grumbled. “I have some around, but the cot pretty uppity when the squirrels got close, so they’re mostly watg the perimeter.”

  “That’ll have to do,” Helen replied.

  Now that we were approag the industrial district, I could feel the heat rolling off of it. Between the fes at the lower levels, stantly processing ore for the factories above, and the massive maes stantly stamping parts, the entire district must have been a sweatbox.

  Whe to the bridge, we had to push to make it on, shoving against the other unwashed bodies struggling to make it across.

  “Are you ready?” Helen asked as we bounced around. “Because I have a feeling this is going to be fun!”

  I, oher hand, was sure it was going to be quite the opposite.