Kaido keeps a relaxed grip on the sheathe of her blade as she sits in the tramway car she’d commandeered to get to her destination, holding to perfect posture and bearing while keeping a similarly tight grip on the rage that threatens to break it.

  Because, all around her, every sense is being assaulted by an infinite font of infuriating garbage.

  The electricity within the wires, being the kind that vibrates, creates a quiet droning that has the lights flicker at a harmonic to that same tone, that subtle flashing is asynchronous with the rattle of the tramway and only punctuated by the bouncing thud that occurs every three seconds.

  The air is damp and warm, pressing against her skin and coiling in her lungs, saturated in the unmistakable smell of mortal.

  The cultivator does not move a single muscle, but she barely needs her eyes to sense them all around her.

  Normally, when on official business she’d simply take command of the entire tram and order it to the destination she’s been assigned, but as she’s not working under the orders of the full council she has to be less ‘disruptive’ in her approach.

  Therefore, she’s been forced to do something she’s never done before.

  She had to simply board the tram, sit down, and wait at every stop while the mortals do their business around her. Like some mortal.

  Kaido lifts her head slightly and looks to her right, toward the front of the car, and takes in the sight of all the mortals pressing against each other to keep as far away as possible from her. All the while trying desperately to appear as if they don't see her.

  It's that sight that reminds her of why her honor demands that she have patience with the mortals.

  They know etiquette, they know how to behave as a member of their station, and the function of a cultivator is to be beyond what a mortal is capable of, to find insult in a mortal not meeting standards designed to be beyond them is not just foolish, it’s a sign of weakness of character.

  So as she returns her gaze straight ahead, it’s that understanding that allows her to cast aside the rising tide of hate as the sour smell of something mortal crosses her nose and she feels the gaze of yet another lingering on her blade.

  It feels like days before the intercom squeals to life.

  “Now arriving at Sector twenty four, subsector nine, Infrastructure and Material Reclamation, Zone four four seven.”

  The cultivator almost winces at the sound, the noise grating on her ears.

  Crude as it is, the synthetic voice did its job, and Kaido rises to her feet as the tram begins to slow.

  As the door opens and the cultivator walks out of the tram and into through the packed crowd, people part before her as if she’d cut through them with her blade with dropped gazes and jerking bows.

  She ignores it all, casting out her senses to find traces of where the initiates tasked with guarding this piece of vital infrastructure are.

  A few seconds later Kaido exhales sharply before changing direction and continues on her way, exiting the thickest part of crowd to be greeted by the sight of a bar set into an alcove on the wall, both initiates sitting with their backs to her and drinking.

  It’s clear that they have not noticed her approach, despite ostensibly being on guard duty.

  Marching across the empty bar, the mortal bartender notices her before the ostensible ‘cultivators’ manage to do so.

  “H-honored cultivators…” He mutters. “You have a–”

  “...and so I said, ‘you’ve got another thing coming if you think I’m gonna let some white-bleached rich kid tell me what to do!’” He laughs, continuing before his partner manages to quiet his own chuckle. “So this last tournament I used my cut of the tithe money to get a few of the outer disciples to help me out and–”

  “Initiates.” Kaido hisses, pressing her rage at the lack of respect to their assignment and to herself into a packet of Qi, sending it out in a dangerous flare of intent. “Stand and report.”

  Both cultivators jump up and spin around so quickly that their chairs fall to the floor, eyes wide as they meet hers before they disappear into a bow.

  “Initiates of the Bronze-Banded Fist Sect, Master Cultivator!” The former storyteller shouts at the floor. “Assigned to static patrol at this location!”

  Kaido looks up from the two cultivators to the large glass bottle of some kind of alcohol, then to the bartender.

  …This isn't worth it.

  “Rise and direct me to your sect immediately. Both of you.” She bites out.

  “”Yes Master Cultivator!”” Both yell out as they comply and march toward the exit of the bar without missing a step, Kaido following behind.

  Her cultivation means that she only has to sleep once every nine days, as it stands she has another five before she must make the dire choice of whether to return to her sect as a failure, or attempt to find a place to sleep in this… place.

  Kaido steps over a sticky looking spot of… something as she follows the layabout initiates.

  The quicker she can work through this the better.

  _____

  _-__-_

  –––––

  Lian pauses for a moment as the hundreds of tons of twisted metal groan and shift above her while it slowly settles. After a few seconds and a quick check to make sure the crack she’d slipped through isn't closing, the scrapper continues pressing toward where she remembers the crushed ship being buried.

  What she’s doing right now is a bad idea, unequivocally one of the worst she’s ever had, because the reason these air pockets exist is because it takes time for the pile to settle and the cracks to seal. A process that’s happening right now.

  …But she’s so close.

  Pressing deeper into the total darkness, Lian pushes a piece of metal out of the way in the speckled light that has somehow made its way this far down.

  She’s been slowly digging down to this thing over the past few days, and in that time the final systems in her pod have been brought back to something resembling a working order.

  She wouldn't trust it to stay working under any strain right now, but now it’s just a process of stress testing each system and repairing whatever breaks as it comes up.

  Also hoping that the external engine systems actually work, because there’s not really a way to test that and no way to repair it without a voidsuit.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  But she remembers from the game that, while internal components decay over time, external components decay over use. So with a little bit of luck that game based abstraction will hold at least somewhat true now that it’s real.

  Crawling deeper, the scrapper leans against a chunk of some kind of solidified industrial slag and thanks her lucky stars once more that the goo hasn't made its way in here yet.

  She swears the stuff has gotten more dangerous since she woke up here, almost vindictively configuring itself in such a way it’s the most toxic in the most well trafficked areas.

  Despite her main objective taking up most of her effort, the scrapper is still forced to do her real work, so she’s startled out of pulling some copper wire out of some kind of small rotor by the buzzer signaling the end of her shift.

  “Second shift! Counter! Now!” The foreman’s muffled voice buzzes over the loudspeaker. “Last one out is paying a fifteen mark fine for obstruction of work!”

  The proclamation almost has Lian scrambling to get out of the pile as fast as possible, but better sense takes hold, and as she slowly extracts herself from the pile, she’s relieved to see that she’s still ahead of a few stragglers by the time she exchanges scrap for money at the counter.

  Stripping in the decon shower and hand washing her boilersuit after getting herself clean, she’s glad to feel that she’s finally started breaking into the thick synthetic fibers of her one piece outfit.

  Replacing a boilersuit is costly, but she’s watched others do their patchjob repairs with third party clients and realized that the inferior cloth and stitching that they use just means they end up spending more on repairs in the long run for anything larger than small tears.

  Two minutes later and her decon water cuts off, so she quickly wrings out her boilersuit and socks and stuffs herself back into the baggy garment before heading out.

  As she leaves, a group of guys she’s talked to a bit waves at her.

  “Well there’s little miss ‘crushed by scrap.’ I was starting to think you finally got dealt a bad hand.” Says Lin, his bit of gallows humor causing the others to laugh.

  Lian laughs along with him.

  “Not yet!” She chirps, then glances over at one of the only other scrappers who still has a relatively clean boilersuit, looking embarrassed as he slowly starts to remove it in the crowded room. “How’d it go with the new guy?”

  Lin’s smile becomes a slightly strained grimace, eyes flicking over to the man as he continues to delay in cleaning up.

  “Well he’s…” He trails off, then leans in a bit and continues in a quieter tone. “Turns out his personality is… well he’s planning on joining the sect, if you know what I mean.”

  Lian rolls her eyes and nods.

  “Yeah…” She sighs.

  Most people here are pretty normal, but there’s always one or two that seem to think that if they act like a cultivator they’ll get the respect that comes with it.

  In reality they’re just arrogant jerks, but that hasn't stopped anyone.

  Next to Lin, Huan scoffs as he pulls a cigarette from his bag and starts fumbling with a light.

  “The dunce almost walked into one of the lung melting areas, and then got mad at me for risking my skin getting close enough to pull him away.”

  Lian winces.

  “Ugh. I’m sorry.” She commiserates, then slowly starts continuing toward the door while waving goodbye. “Well I’ve got to get out of here. See ya’ll tomorrow!”

  The others give a muted wave, and as she walks out the scrapper grimaces and blinks rapidly for a second as she remembers why that slot in her shift opened up.

  She didn't know her personally, she’s not sure if she ever spoke more than two words to the girl, but…

  Lian pushes down the rising tide of negative emotions, then joins the bobbing crowd back toward home.

  –––––

  The walk to the atrium doesn't take long, but as she enters, the scrapper turns down a different hall.

  It’s smaller than the central atrium, only five or six stories tall, the tall walls covered in alcoves housing shops and restaurants. The higher floors are serviced by overloaded gantries and spiral staircases in a weird aesthetic fusion between a mall and a prison.

  Walking down the way, Lian idly watches the composition of the crowd shift slightly as she moves further and further away from where her social class resides.

  She’s at the very bottom of the totem poll, belonging to no family or clan, she doesn't have a last name, so as she gets closer to the tramway and the shops get marginally nicer, she’s now rubbing shoulders with people wealthy enough to actually use the tram.

  But as she moves, she gets the feeling that something’s… off.

  Subtly looking around shows no difference, but something in her brain insists that the crowd is on edge, especially the more wealthy ones and the members of the private security stationed at regular intervals.

  Lian catches sight of an interaction, of a child moving a little too far away from his mother, only to be yanked back by the arm, followed by the woman glancing around suspiciously.

  The scrapper tries not to fidget or adjust her still wet boilersuit, quickly marching through the singular sliding glass door and into her destination as quickly as she can without looking suspicious and breathes a sigh of relief.

  Inside is just as she left it the last time she was here, shelves and displays full of various nicknacks that range in value from secondhand surplus to something pulled out of her work’s scrap heap and given a quick spit-shine.

  “Ahhhh. A warm welcome to my most regular customer.” The shopkeep’s baritone voice hums from where he’s sitting behind the counter. “The usual I suspect?”

  Lian smiles as she nods, walking to the counter and placing twenty marks on top, followed by a large empty metal flask.

  “Please.”

  The shopkeeper sweeps the money off the table and picks up the flask in one smooth motion. Quickly unscrewing to top, he places the container into a dedicated receptacle at the end of a desktop sized machine behind him.

  “Some triple distilled coming up then!” He hums, glancing back at her as he presses a button and the machine hums to life. “Goodness, aren't I glad we met, you’re my best customer for this stuff.”

  As she waits, Lian idly looks around the shop for any new additions.

  “So…” She starts casually. “Did you hear anything about what I’m looking for?”

  The shopkeep shakes his head as he pulls the container out of the machine and rescrews the lid.

  “I’m afraid starmaps are a bit too valuable and a bit too niche for my standard clientele. And believe me I’ve asked around.” He says offhandedly, underhand tossing her filled flask back. “Here, and if you’re looking for anything else I’d be happy to ask around.”

  Lian nods distractedly as she unscrews the flask and checks its contents.

  Water.

  She sloshes it around in the container.

  Clean water.

  Confirming the quality, she rescrews the lid and tucks it into her bag.

  She really doesn't trust the water they sell near her home, so she’s forced to make this half hour round trip twice every week to get it here.

  Not just for drinking either, electrolyzers don't like contaminates, and the air she’s going to breathe is going to be made of that water. Similarly, the hydrogen is going to be fueling the fusion reactor powering everything, but she assumes that thing is hardy enough to handle a little bit of toxic gas.

  Zipping her bag closed, Lian is almost about to turn and leave, but as she’s halfway through waving goodbye her eye picks out an odd absence in the clutter.

  Behind the counter, is an empty glass case that used to contain a CH-337A anti-personnel rifle. Though it shared more in common with an anti-tank rifle in size and caliber for one simple reason.

  It was designed to kill cultivators.

  Back on earth, during one of her rare mortal challenge runs, Lian found the thing too expensive and unwieldy to use for any kind of success. In the end it was just easier to eat the loyalty debuff and hire cultivators.

  But it did work, capable of punching through a cultivator up to the second stage of core formation if used in conjunction with a lot of fodder, one of the few purely mortal small arms that can do that.

  The scrapper tilts her head and points at the empty case.

  “Finally sold that piece of junk huh?” She asks, slowly realizing as she looks more carefully that all the other guns have been sold as well. “...or wait… did security finally–”

  “Thank you for your business valued customer.” The shopkeeper says formally, tone completely neutral. “But now that our business is concluded I must ask you to leave.”

  Lian blinks, surprised by the abrupt change in tone, and almost starts to ask why. But as she looks into his eyes she realizes that he really doesn't want to talk about whatever’s going on, so instead the scrapper bows her head and marches out of the store without another word.

  But during her long walk back home, she can't help but see more and more signs of… something.

  Something that’s making people nervous.