After a few seconds of silence, Mai opened her eyes. The weapon was still trained on her, but the urbexer seemed to be looking past her.

“She’s mine! And so’s that power-sabre you found. These are my sewers!”

He was definitely the owner of the nasty, bullying voice, and from the way he licked his lips as he spoke, was also the one who had hurt the other urbexer and caused the Oni to attack them.

As he shouted, his weapon danced, moving off and on to her. She winced to see that his finger was still on the trigger, even though he was looking off into the distance at the other group.

“Please, just take your finger off the trigger, I won’t cause trouble.”

Eyes squinting her looked down at her for a second, before giving a slow blink.

“I won’t shoot you, not anywhere important, that is, you’re too valuable.”

It was then she remembered what he’d said about the other Cullers.

“What do you mean?”

“Lots of people got money on you after you killed your boyfriend. Lots of Cullers offering rewards for locations.”

She didn’t bother correcting him on the boyfriend score, but a cold sweat covered her at the thought that he would sell her out to other Cullers. She tried to SASS him, but like some of the others from her bunkroom, the gangers, the prisoners, and the former soldiers, she couldn’t open it up.

“I can give you money,” she tried to shift her weight slightly, easing the tension in her legs. “I’m on a quest right now to clear the sewers down here, get a member of the Sewer Company back. I’ll split it.”

“You can’t outbid the Celestial Court,” he spat. “You! Stop whispering and get over here!”

Turning, she watched as the other group of urbexers approached. Not one had a nano-weapon, they were all printed hard copies. None of them were in a good shape, and their armour was a hodgepodge of styles, poorly maintained and in some cases, poorly fitting.

Are they urbexers or one-milers? She thought as she took their appearance in. Her captor was a different matter. Not only did he have some sort of energy rifle, his armour was clearly of a much higher level of quality.

Now that she was looking closer, it gave off a faint glow, and there were glyphs inscribed which resembled skill effects. She’d never seen anything like it before and made a mental note to look in her menus if – when – she got out of this situation.

As the other urbexers dutifully handed over the items they’d scavenged from the sewers, she blink-clicked open her menu and performed a search for claws. Quicker than it took to finish thinking, the menu popped up.

Another thought, this time “extended nails”, and she had a smaller menu. The BIOMASS cost was negligible at nought point one per cent for each claw, or one per cent BIOMASS in total.

BIOMASS NOTIFICATION

Keeping her face blank, merely blinking as the pain of having her fingers turn into diamond-sharp claws made it feel as though she’d dipped her hands into acid, she shifted her weight, bringing her feet under her.

Activating FREE RUNNING, DIRTY BOXING, UNARMED COMBAT, and SEWER COMBAT she plotted the fastest route towards him, using the other urbexers to fix his aim. The two hand-to-hand skills lit him up with target boxes.

Combined, the DIRTY BOXING and UNARMED COMBAT skills gave her a roughly ten per cent critical hit average on two key areas. The first was the side of his neck, and the second was his diaphragm.

He was six paces away from her, weapon now pointed roughly in the direction of the other urbexers as they dropped their items at his feet for him to look over. Risking a glance at his eyes, she saw that he wasn’t even looking in her direction.

Careless, then again, her passive SCAVENGER skill was picking up on certain items and the prices that were coming up on them were enough to take her attention for a second or two.

One of the urbexers, limping, a large cut running down her thigh, tripped, staggering towards him for a couple of paces. As his head turned, his neck critical hit chance rose to twenty per cent.

She didn’t hesitate. Even as he was stepping back from the injured urbexer, mouth opening to curse her, Mai was sprinting towards him, using two other urbexers to shield her movement until the very last moment.

Spinning around the last urbexer in line, the injured one still trying to recover, Mai drove her left hand in an angled stabbing motion to the base of the side of his neck. At the same time, her right hand punched up towards his diaphragm, which was showing a seven per cent critical hit.

HIT! 10% DAMAGE

BLEED! @4%

HIT! 5% DAMAGE

WINDED!

STAGGERED!

“What …” as the glyphs for his negative status effects popped into life above his head, the lone urbexer tried to raise his weapon. Ripping her right hand free from where it had sunk into his flesh, she palmed the weapon down.

There was a blur from her right side, and a blade hacked into the side of his face. The energy weapon flashed, stars exploding in Mai’s eyes, steam blasting from the floor as the coherent light flash-boiled the liquid on the floor.

Screaming, the blade still lodged in his skull, the man turned to run, a PANIC! Glyph lighting up. Howling, the other urbexers surged forward, knocking Mai to one side before burying him under a torrent of blades, feet and hands. It was all over in seconds.

KILL ASSIST!

BOUNTY! 100 UC

Mai stood perfectly still as the other urbexers turned to face her. She hadn’t been able to get a proper count, but now she could see that there were eight of them. Not counting the couple still injured behind her.

“Easy now, I don’t want any trouble,” she quickly absorbed her blood-covered claws before holding her hands out in a show of peace. No one spoke for a couple of seconds, the urbexers turning their heads to look at a surprisingly young-looking woman.

Mai looked at her as well, tried to SASS her and got the same result as with the other urbexer. She tried again with the rest of the urbexers before her but was unable to view the details of two others. The rest were fine and she saw that they were only low level urbexers, barely started out.

Explains the crappy armour, but not why I can’t view those damned SASS.

“We don’t want any trouble either,” the woman said. She can’t have been more than nineteen years old, but her voice sounded far more mature. It had a strange lilt to it, possibly a six-miler’s accent. “Been watching you on the Culling. Impressive.”

Mai gave an upward nod, happy to let the woman keep talking as she continued to scan through the SASS’s of those she could read.

“How do we do this?” the woman asked.

“Do what?” it wasn’t as if Mai couldn’t answer. The other urbexers shifted slightly, bunching up less, bodies turning to minimise exposure. It was called Blading. Shifting one’s body so that the smallest profile possible was presented to the enemy.

She mirrored them, but kept her hands visible. All the same, she opened up her favourites menu and readied herself for a fight.

“Why did you help us? You’re supposed to be Culling.” It was a fair question.

“I was indentured in the sewers before I joined the Culling,” Mai said, shrugging as she did so. “I came back here after …”

She paused as a lump formed in her throat at the thought of what she’d done to Johnny. What he’d forced her to do to him.

“Yeah, that was shitty, sorry you went through that,” another one of the urbexers she couldn’t SASS spoke up. He was ivory black, with silver nanotats running over every inch of his skin. He was one of the most beautiful people she’d ever seen outside of the holomyths.

“Anyway,” lump gone, Mai acknowledged his sympathy with a sad smile, “I came here to hole up. Heard that my friends were having trouble with all of the increased monster activity, and accepted a mission to help. And whilst I was doing so, a friend was taken by one of the biggest mogwai I’ve ever seen.”

“So you’re not scavenging?” The woman was clearly the leader of the group, and Mai could see she was regaining her composure now that the adrenalin of the battle was well and truly wearing off.

“No. I’ve got to kill a nest of mogwai and get my friend back. And my friend is more important than killing some mogwai.”

“Things have gotten really bad down here since the Culling started,” said another urbexer. One she could SASS. “But what’s bad for the sewer workers is good for us.”

“Yeah, I can see,” Mai said, unable to keep the snark out of her voice. Mismatched, dirty, battered, and badly-kept armour really did give off an air of ‘success’.

“We’re just starting out,” the black man replied. “The Deadzone seemed like a good place to come and …”

“Get rich quick?” Mai sighed.

“Yeah, and we were doing well until he showed up,” the man jerked a thumb over his shoulder to the body behind them.

“Thanks for helping,” the woman spoke up again. “I’m Kitty, he’s Commander Root, and the quiet chap over there,” she pointed to a short, rotund man who looked so much like a happy Buddha it was startling, “is Modiphius.”

Both men gave a slight wave with their hands. Mai expected the woman to introduce the rest of her group, but she continued to speak. “Mort, the guy you killed, claimed this was his area of the Deadzone. And when he hurt Jenny over there,” this time she pointed behind Mai to one of the injured still lying on the floor, “it brought the Oni down on us.”

“The Oni, where did it come from?” Mai had only ever seen Oni in the holomyths before, and she knew that when she looked it up, it would be classified as a mythical creature. Just like the mogwai, jiangshi and ennui.

“Tunnel over there. We came out of the tunnel just behind you. Didn’t see your friend. Sorry.”

Mai shrugged, her quest guideline was still taking her directly up the tunnel they were in, but it was good to know where other threats were.

“Seen any more Oni?”

“Only small ones. We’re on a hunt, just weren’t expecting to come across one that big. It’s way beyond our level!” Kitty said.

Mai looked over at the dead spider-cum-scorpion-cum-demon. Activating SCAVENGER she gave a smile as the skill helped her price up the various body parts.

“I’d say you’re best off harvesting the stinger, that’ll give you five hundred credits. And the poison in the glands will give you another two hundred. Each of the leg spikes is fifty to one hundred, and its teeth – careful, they’re poisonous – are ten to fifteen. And there are far too many teeth for a mouth that size! Oh, and the armour is five credits per scale.”

She turned back and laughed at the stunned look on the urbexer’s faces. For people at their level, five hundred credits would go a long way. For a sewer worker, five hundred credits was fifty days’ worth of back-breaking labour.

At the minimum the urbexers had landed nearly two thousand credits.

“Head back down the way I came up, you’ll get to Excretiaville. Ask for the Scavenger Queen, she’s a crotchety old bint, but fair. Tell her I sent you, maybe that’ll help.”

Kitty gave a big smile, then ordered some of her people to get to work dismembering the Oni.

“We owe you, Mai, big time. You saved our lives, and our SCAVENGER skills weren’t really showing much worth taking from the Oni. You ever need a favour, let us know.”

Thanking her, Mai took one last look at the Oni, then left Kitty’s urbexers to it. As she walked away, she tried to ignore the pit in her stomach.

Things are way worse than I ever imagined, she thought, following it up with a prayer that she wouldn’t be faced with any more Oni. Not that the gods have been listening.