The heat within the district pressive. Most of the people stripped off their outer yers as soon as they crossed the bridge. I didn’t find it that bad. Helen just scowled as she stripped her ratty old coat off, exposing the fact that she’d run grease or something through her golden-blond hair earlier to blend ier. “How you not be hot?” she hissed.

  “If I had to guess, it would have to do with the fact that I had all my ans repced retly,” I replied flippantly.

  Helen paused and looked at me in fusion. “Why would you do that?”

  “Had to, the old ones were kinda… paste at the time,” I said, casually iing the area.

  “I’m actually a little gd we didn’t e to direct blows. You say some scary shit sometimes,” Helen muttered.

  We were just ihe entrao the industrial district, and I could already see how serious the corps took this pce. Each of the separate smelters was fenced off and separated from the main road, and just inside each of the pounds was a mixture of cameras and guards. There were checkpoints at the exits to most pces, perf patdown searches of the workers, even at the smelters.

  “I see why they’d want to rebel,” I muttered.

  “None of that talk! They’re super sensitive to that sort of thing right now,” Helen warned as she tied her jacket around her waist. “Now then, shall we try and find my tact?”

  “Sure, assuming they haven’t been arrested aen half to death for not having their shoes tied correctly,” I replied.

  Helen snorted. “Despite how things look, the corps aren’t that bad on their employees. Work hard, don’t do anything stupid, and you get paid,” she said as she started moving further down the road.

  “You’re right,” I grumbled, “it’s a true corporate paradise.” I had to slip around a particurly rge group of people hauling tools across the interse before catg up to Helen again. “Where exactly are we going?”

  “Floor ten, the flobal Rare-Earth manufacturing district,” Helen expined. I finally noticed that we were headed toward a massive bank of industrial lifts. Eae could probably hold a hundred people, and eae acked over capacity both up and down.

  I struggled against the horde of sweating bodies in order to hold onto my pce against the railing for several long moments before the lift filled, the barriers closed, and the ehing shook, struggling to climb to the higher floors. I holy thought we weren’t going to make it when the lift dropped a couple feet mid, but everyone else acted like this erfectly normal occurrence. Sure enough, a few mier the lift shuddered heavily as it slid to a stop at floor ten. I could not get off fast enough.

  “I see the corps haven’t bothered to maintain those deathtraps they call lifts anymore than in any of the other sectors,” I huffed as I slid away from the area.

  “Yet the ones here only suffer a single failure a year, which is a marked improvement,” Helen expined. I hadn’t seeep o me, which I didn’t find that surprising anymore.

  I inally thought the upper streets in the industrial sector were ier shape than elsewhere in the uy, but I was wrong. The crete and asphalt had still fallen away in many pces, only to be haphazardly patched by rge metal grate systems. There were still holes that you could easily step in, falling to your death, but they were, for the most part, passable.

  As we made our way dowreet, the hot air pushing the pollution up through the grates as we passed, I noticed the streets were slowly emptying of people. There were plenty of factories in the dire we were traveling, it just seemed like no one else was traveling there. I gave Helen a ed look.

  “Global Rare-earth’s properties have been shut down temporarily until they be sold to cover the bankruptcy proceedings,” Helen expined.

  “How is wandering into an abandoned factory and talking to your taOT attrag attention to ourselves?” I asked. “The other corps must have security watg the pce for looters.”

  “But we’re allowed to be here!” Helen excimed. “I’m the facility ior, and you’re my assistant!” She whipped out a little badge and fshed it in front of me.

  “Looks fake to me,” I muttered.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter. I’m actually a registered facility ior, thanks to Zetta, so even though the security might stop us, they’ll eventually have to let us go.”

  As she said this, we passed the final w factory and into aire shutdowion. pared to all the well-lit, noisy, and pletely packed factories before now, this pce was a ghost town. None of the factories in this se had lights on, but many of them had security, which eyed us suspiciously as we passed.

  “We’re looking for the Global Wiring plex,” Helen said, stopping to check the sigo one of the factories.

  “Don’t you know whie that is?”

  “Of course I do, but it’s best we look like tourists when the security es by,” Helen replied calmly as a hover car approached our position. It didn’t nd, but floated out of reach, and someone yelled at us out of the loudspeaker.

  “Identify yourselves! This area is off limits until further notice!”

  Helen just waved like a ditz and stumbled towards the patrol car. “Hi, Hello! I’m Traes, the facility ior for Trans Pacific Power, and this is my assistant. We’re here for a scheduled iion of the Global Rare-earth wiring plex, but we’re having trouble finding it.”

  “Stand-by,” came the cold reply. I just stared at Helen as she stood there, tapping a foot and pouting. It was like I was looking at a pletely different woman. “Your identity has been firmed. Your destination is three plexes up on the left.”

  “Thaaaanks!” Helen yelled as she bounced around, waving at the car. As soon as it was gone, she stretched and dropped batur mannerisms.

  “What the fuck was that?” I asked incredulously.

  Helen smiled. “There are limits to what my perception filtering do. It’ll hide my face from cameras and scramble my voice, but when I’m the focus of attention, I like to ge my mannerisms. That way they have absolutely nothing to go on if they want to track me down ter.”

  “Well, aren’t you full of surprises?” I grumbled. “Too bad you decided the best way to protect the uy was genocide.”

  “Not everyone has access to enough points to build an army of killbots,” Helen suddenly hissed, dropping her happy facade for the first time since we met up. “I did what I thought was necessary to protect my people.”

  I narrowed my eyes at the woman. “There’s the Helen I remember. I was holy beginning to think they’d brainwashed you instead of putting you into therapy.”

  “Shut up, you gremlin. My phe best ce for the uy to survive, until you showed up,” Helen grumbled before turning to jump across a gap in the pavement.

  “But I DID show up,” I reminded her, as I effortlessly hurdled the gap myself.

  “Yes, you did,” she replied quietly befoing silent.

  I followed her for a few hundred more meters until we came to an absolutely titaniplex. There were several dozen loading docks in the ter of a couple separate wings of the building, and from what I could tell, there appeared to be some sort of lift system t in raw materials from below. Helen simply hopped the security barrier at the front and headed towards the entrance.

  “We’re looking for the former foreman, a friend of mine named Andrew Moore. He’s looking after the facility while it’s in liquidation,” Helen said as she tested the door. “He has a lot of tacts in the industrial area and was iigating after a couple of them got hurt i riot. If anyone knows what’s happening around here, it’s him.”

  She fiddled with the door for a few more seds, until I heard a click, theepped inside.

  The factory was cavernous, with multiple floors of manufacturing equipment and veyor belts, all verging in eneral area. There was a small, multilevel office building a few feet away, and Helen immediately made a beeline for the building. “Alex, are you here?” she called quietly.

  The entire plex was quiet, even though our footsteps echoed loudly about the space, I couldn’t hear any movement from the small building. I was getting a bad feeling about this.

  When Helen got to the entrao the building, she paused and just stood there for a minute. I had to peek arouo see inside. Her friend was dead, and not only that but it looked like he’d been tortured. He’d beeo a chair aen ferociously before having his throat slit, then a message pio his chest with a knife.

  I carefully pulled the note loose while Helen checked over her friend.

  The note looked like it had been printed from the office printer, and it just tained a single line. ‘Enemies of the revolution will die!’

  I immediately crumpled the note. “We’ll see about that.”