Under the concrete sky and in the warmth of the steam the young girl walked in the underground city while hugging her treasure chest in fear of getting robbed. It was true that this master thief wouldn't survive a day in Steamhall's war of thieves. People would rob you of your clothes in a minute. The mechanical horses walked between the people forcing them to be crammed to the sidewalk. They were huge and the loud thud of their steps were terrifying to those new to Steamhall. Their neighing was weak, and their backs were rusty, yet their violence was fatal and one blow from their legs could break a man's bones.

The buildings weren't lower than two stories, they were in no way revolutionary or pleasing to look at, they were ugly and hellish to those who lived in them. High, in the concrete ceiling, there was a huge light source resembling the sun. It would go dim at night and strong in the morning, hurting those who would be stupid enough to look at it. There were bridges and robes connecting the buildings' top together to facilitate the movement of machinery and people.

The city's children were horribly malnourished and badly beaten. Drug use was widespread, and dealers sold it in the light as if they were selling candy. A mother would drag four children behind and only one would look like her. A father would force his children into heavy machinery work in their youth, making children as young as Merit walking around the city crippled and missing their limps.

This world never obeyed the law. It was poisonous to those brutes. Morals were sold with a few coins and never taught. Schools were hidden underneath spider webs. It was a foolish belief that humans were born good, that their morals bloom inside them once they grow, the reality was that children would kill for a coin, and they would obey the law only to keep their heads on their shoulders.

A world with corrupted adults would only give birth to parasitic children.

A helping hand.

Merit's youth was blurry in her head. She could remember few names and addresses. She remembered the face of the man that picked her from the streets and his name as well. Forger, a man in his late thirties or early forties,

claimed to be the son of an illegal immigrant from 'The land of the blue'. He was an intelligent mechanic whose work was very artistic and revolutionary. Forger took Merit and gave her a shelter, treating her like a daughter until she turned ten and he vanished into thin air after his plot to overthrow the government unfolded.

Forger's friend, Rossland, was a fellow bright man with a huge workshop were Merit mostly spent her time. Ross would occasionally help Merit by giving her money and food but for the two years she spent in Ilusia, she would run away after stealing some of his pieces and selling them in the upper ground. Ross had his way with machines. He would even speak to them like his family, and so, Merit trusted him to help her with the mystery hiding in her camera.

Merit waddled like an exhausted penguin, following trails from her memory where she remembered the workshop's address. Her memory was strong. She arrived in a dark, empty, and dangerous street where the squeaking of the rats could be heard from the sidewalk and the domestic feuds would echo in the main street.

As the young one moved on her tiptoes to avoid getting robbed, she looked at each building, inspecting them carefully to find his workshop sign but it was to no avail.

"Oh, no…Last time I came here was a year ago..." Merit sighed in frustration as she arrived on the doorstep and what seemed to be an abandoned workshop with a broken rusty sign that said, "Iron fist wonders."

She walked towards the door hopelessly only to find it firmly closed. She wiped the dirty windows and peeked inside the dark place. There were no signs of life inside that workshop. She could see the spider webs on the windows and the broken machinery piled up in the corner.

"Hmmm, maybe I can sell this junk..?" Merit smirked as she struggled to open the window which miraculously opened.

She jumped squeezed her small body through the window and jumped inside cautiously, looking around her and making sure there was no other being in that place even if a fly.

Merit coughed violently as she was met by a wave of dust indicating that this workshop has been abandoned for long enough. Her face turned red as she tried to suppress her coughing, but a sudden sound echoed in the empty room that made her heart jump out of her chest. Quickly, she ran and hid herself behind the pile of junk in the corner as she struggled to stay silent.

"Intruder." The alarm went off and a peeping sound resounded. There was a red light going on and off in the ceiling and having realized that there were heavy footsteps approaching her, she understood the trouble she was in.

"Fuck no." She cried as she sunk into the ground while the footsteps became closer and closer. She couldn't peek but she could tell that these weren't human footsteps. The "Intruder" Message was no longer repeated as she found a red dot on her chest. The guard found her.

Merit looked at the exit carefully while the guard took the junk off her. There was no plan B once she got inside that place and negotiating with a security robot was not an option as she was trespassing.

"Get out." It said. "Do not move." It said with its stern static-dipped voice. Merit got up and moved out, obeying the orders she was given.

In the dusty room and underneath the red light. Several faces stuck themselves into the windows, watching the thief with their blank faces as if it was a theatre play. The empty street wasn't empty after all, it was sheltering the nosey powerless children and beggars in its darkness.

Merit faced the rusty robot who was no taller than 160 centimeters. The robot pointed its gun to Merit's chest as it couldn't identify its face in the dark. If Merit were to utter a single world, that gun would be fired in a second.

They faced each other's for minutes. "Its dumber than me." Merit spoke to herself. That robot was too stupid to act on its own and its indication system was very weak, yet, it still had a gun. Merit moved backwards until her back faced the table behind her. The robot didn't flinch.

Merit sensed the contents of the table behind her, looking for a weapon but her hand only met a paper which she hastily took. The confrontation lasted for too long and the crowds became bored. The faces melted and the glimmering eyes took its light away and left. As Merit begun to lose hope, the creaking of the main door was audible in the room. In seconds, some kicked the door and ran away making the robot's system stutter and in confusion, it started moving in its place erratically, Merit took it as a sign to run out of the main door.

"Thank you!" Merit cried as she ran outside but there were no one to be thanked. The young girl raised an eyebrow, yet she didn't think much of it. Her train of thought was interrupted once a sharp sensation hit her left arm followed by a loud peal at the doorstep of the workshop.

Merit didn't stop running.

Like masters like slaves.

Having reached what she believed to be a safe place; Merit screamed in pain as she realized what the adrenaline was hiding. She took off her jacket and investigated her arm carefully.

"That piece of junk!" She whimpered. The robot has fired a bullet that had hardly touched her skin but did its fair share of damage. "It must be my lucky day." Merit cried as she rested against the wall while cleaning her wound. It wasn't serious but the sight of blood made the situation terrifying in her eyes.

Merit peaked out of her hiding spot to see a fire on the workshop's doorsteps and few scavengers struggling to dismantle the robot into pieces, but the robot's duty was done as the door was firmly shut once again as well as the window, and in seconds, the robot ceased to exist.

"I was too reckless…." Merit brokenly said, wrapping a piece of dirty cloth around her arm. "But at least I know where to look." In a change of moods, Merit grinned as she looked at the piece of paper she took from the table.

"4th Neo Grand avenue, northern district." The paper read.

"If my intuition is right then this is his new workshop, but I can’t risk getting back on that train after seeing that crazy ass eyebrow-less bitch." Merit optimistically said as she wrapped that piece of paper into her pocket. She got up and wore her jacket and ran out from another street to avoid getting caught by anyone.

All the way into the crowded main street, Merit was in strange ecstasy. Her heart was fluttering with alien emotions. Excitement bubbled underneath her feet like a cloud that felt she could fly. It was true that she was just shot, and that a mysterious maniac hunted her, and her only acquaintance in this world vanished somewhere she would probably die trying to find, but the thrill of having a goal in life made that young child hopeful in a hopeless situation.

In Merit's tiny brain, she forged a witty yet perilous idea to get out of Steamhall without using a train. For years, Merit observed the scavengers' secret airline which resurfaces only at the slums of Ilusia, few kilometers that she could walk on foot.

"I could slip in like one of them, but I need the gear." Merit stated. "I have no money for a train ticket anyway..." She thought as she strolled among the immense crowds in the pungent city of smoke and steam.

There was no one she could steal from. All these people hardly had a penny in their pockets, some of their faces mirrored the grave destitute they lived in, but Merit was not blind or deaf. The other half had their pockets filled enough for her ears to catch their clinking; however, would she dare to put a finger on those shimmering coins, she would end up with her empty corpse running done the gutters.

"Join us for a generous reward!" shouted a man with a rumbling voice that ripped Merit's ear apart as if the man's throat was emitting thunder. He stood at the top of an old building while carrying a sign, Merit stood and watched him.

"The silver bandits gang applications// Open now." It read.

Merit starred for a second, her naturally frowned face slowly relaxed into a merry one. "My chance..." She grinned as she looked all the way up to the man to paint her way to the top.

The ancient squalid building looked like a colossal stairway to nowhere. The bridges veiled the top only showing bits of it. Merit could see the door to it, but the way up was unknown to her, and so, she hugged her bag and launched towards it in rapidly.

"Oh my…" Merit gasped at the sight if the spider web-like stairway to the top. The air smelt like vinegar and nicotine, but Merit wouldn't dare to look at the activity inside these dark apartments on her left and right. Instead, she ran up these stairs without looking anywhere. The higher she got, the more terrified she felt and the lesser her desire to look down became.

"It does-doesn't e-end" Merit breathily said, she inspected the two stories she had left in great exhaustion as her stomach growled.

"Come on, this is a lifetime opportunity!" The man shouted again, Merit felt he was very close and thus, she dragged herself all the way up to the rooftop where a whole new world unfolded in front of her.

The rooftop showed the tiny dolls crammed in the narrow streets. It showed the hidden factories that the government knew about yet turned a blind eye to. It revealed the beauty of the ugliest city, the intertwining of the poisonous chemical smoke and delicious garlic soup, the unfiltered sight of the strange joy amongst the homeless children as they played football and the shimmering of the silver machinery in the market that displayed the sweat of its makers in pride.

It was a strange world, but it was a gift for a few to see the overlapping of its compelling beauty and the sharp ugliness of its cruelty, the one Merit had just felt in her arm.

"Oh, finally! A recruit!" The man said upon hearing the very loud gasps of Merit. "I want to k-know m-more." She stated as she needly looked at his bottle of water. Merit refused to walk forward towards the ledge where the man courageously stood on. "You must be very thirsty." The man said as he threw her the bottle and let down his sign.

Merit gulped the water like a whale, "Thank you, sir." She said as she struggled to retain her breath.

Merit looked on both of her sides, she found about three children her ages sitting in a very strange attire that she presumed to contain the airline gear. "I would like to know more about this..Gang.." She asked in a polite tone.

"This man looks straight out of a dog's ass" Merit thought to herself as she starred at his sad state. He was very skinny; his teeth were as yellow as the beer he slugged. His hair looked like a giant black filth that possibly reeked of alcohol and so, Merit kept her distance.

"Oh, alright! So, we give you the gear, you steal our required pieces, and we pay you after you return. Fair deal, huh?" He said, taking a sip of his beer.

"Fine, when do I start?" Merit asked gleefully, inside her villainous brain she planned to take the gear and never return.

"Right now!" The man said in ecstasy, the boy who sat on a broken chair threw Merit the heavy gear which she struggled to catch making her look very unexperienced and weak in front of the gang.

"There you go! The object list, not much but not an easy mission." The man said as he took a dirty folded paper out of his pocket, Merit took it and pretended to read it although she couldn't care less, she was in a hurry trying to wear the gear which consisted of boots with some sort of magnetic sole that only works when activated by its user near the airline. She wore straps that tightened the boots around her legs and thighs and wore gloves that had similar magnetic nodes to those on the sole of the boots. The final piece was interesting. Merit held it and starred at it in amusement as she always wished to rise the airlines.

The piece was like a wolf's claw that had a perfect curve to help the user grab the airline with ease, the airlines were only used by fit young people or mostly children because they could maneuver better. The gear had sizes and Merit's piece fit perfectly on her hands, it was closed around the wrist and when a certain button is pressed, the claws would extend, and the gloves would help the user protect their hands from the danger of its curled edges.

Upon realizing that her fascination with the gear was a big sign of her inexperience, Merit wore her doll face mask and tried to act professional. She fixed the gear around her perfectly to which she thought made her look like a ninja warrior shinning in black and silver. She stuffed her bag with her clothes and checked her precious camera while the boys stared at her with their greedy eyes, too curious to snatch the bag.

"I'll go now, when should-" As Merit sneakily took her belongings and walked towards the stairs cautiously, the drunk man seemed to be in his peak consciousness as he walked quickly towards her and grabbed her wounded arm which made her shriek in pain, "Not so easy, kiddo." He said, "Sign here, and place your other hand here." He continued; he held a small device which had a narrow screen at its top. Merit frowned yet obeyed blindly. She took her gloves off and, as soon as she had signed her name at the screen, a sharp pinch hit her other hand what she had placed underneath the device, she pulled her hand away and glared at the bonehead holding it, "What was that?" She asked, not thinking much of it.

"Uh, nothing. Safety precautions!" He grinned, "I just inserted a digital chip inside your hand in case you want to run away or something, confidentiality! Now, of you stray far away we will catch you easily!" He cheered as Merit felt her heart fall off her chest.

"Welcome to the gang! You are one of us now." The man said, Merit's face went dark as she swallowed the situation like a thorn down her throat.

Merit had just joined a very dangerous gang.

As Merit drowned in her chain of unfortunate events and the boys laughed at her expression as they saw through her idiotic plan, the train to Steamhall arrived again, and onboard was the man who swore to bring the head of this child onboard the next ride.

As the mystery remains in the hands of a foolish thief, the clock ticks and a vicious battle unfolds.