She still owed him, despite what he said. But Undercity was a vast place, and the chance of running into Satyr was one in a million. Better to concentrate on the droid fight.
As they entered the border checkpoint, a blanketing darkness filled the hovertrain and protectors entered through every door. The protectors of the border were fast and efficient compared to their inbred cousins at Hera High. They checked every carriage in minutes, Lex included. When they finished, she rolled her crinkled sleeve back down, hiding her tattooed floorcode shaped into a 2.
As the hovertrain rumbled through opening doors of heavy steel, Lex shielded her eyes from the flare of light. A paralysing ecstasy coated the Third Floor in every stimulating hue, every sign shining brighter than the last and every hologram fighting to draw more eyes.
The narrow streets were filled with outlandish individuals unafraid to look how they wanted. On either side rose stacks of prefab cubes, and the hazy air hid towers tipped with golden statues, each crowned head thick with network antennae.
The side alleys were filled with dazed bums burnt out from cheap entertainment and cheaper drugs. But despite the catalogue of spine-tingling thrills, Lex noted brief bursts of light in the darkest cracks of Third: muted gunshots flashed, Third Floorers ran, and pink-haired Eros Union workers stormed the scene with snubguns and wrenches.
Zeus zealots, alongside street kids in their freshest kicks, roared around on electric cybercycles. The bikers tore through the Eros, smashing skulls and breaking legs. The Eros fired snubguns and sent bikes crashing into walls and crates, the explosions blasting their passengers into the air. Through the flames emerged a lone Bishop, his ionised fists and thunderous eyes roaring blue as he crushed Eros workers' skulls like eggs. Mere men stood no chance, their cheap snubguns and heavy tools worthless against the cyberblade's might.
Two bloodthirsty cyberblades with neon-pink hair, high cheekbones and wearing revealing powder-blue uniforms, strode in from the street. The Eros workers cheered and sprinted towards the girls. Past the exposed curves, Lex noticed plasma-hot sickle blades sliding out of their wrists—the hovertrain swerved away, and Lex lost sight of the fight.
Slowing down, the hovertrain came to land beside a pylon of flickering red plasma. Lex caught her breath, her heart rate calming.
In the sky, a processor collected the raw red and refined the flow into a stable blue while a shower of red dust billowed out to either side. The Second Floor received the refined plasma far above while the red runoff formed storm clouds that crackled crimson and released a toxic rain to shower the scattering crowds of the Third Floor below.
To human eyes, the Third Floor was a den of debauchery, but to the Great Engine, the Third Floor was responsible for purifying Zeus's gift to civilisation.
Pulling out her welding goggles, Lex slipped them on snug. Smacking the darkglass a few times, her HUD flickered on, the augmented reality layered over her vision like a frame around a painting. Pulling out her knotty wig, Lex wiggled it on and used the window to guide her as she tucked each red lock beneath the brown curls.
Lex stepped onto the station platform, the darkglass shielding her eyes from the acidic rain as she pressed through the crowd. Walking fast, Lex was eager to be away from that too-close pylon and its red rain that stung her face.
She didn't need to travel far before she came to the edge of a broken district, the prefab homes blackened, the people who had once lived there burned to ash. At the centre stood a tower of shattered glass, an overloaded pylon. Lex shivered and pressed on.
Finding a dark corner, Lex connected to the public network and swiped in 'Crimson Arcade'. A map popped up on the bottom left of her vision. In the bottom right corner was a flickering red number, shifting between 148 and 149. Lex let loose a smug smile to see her Connection Coefficient so high.
"You looking to buy some Psycho?" said a man with a flickering blue holographic mask and wearing a ragged brown coat with bronze clasps. The dealer unzipped his front and LEDs flickered on inside to reveal an assortment of auto-injectors, each with a different glowing symbol painted on the side. "I've got other goods too. Canisters of fresh Upstairs air. Data shards with sims of Maketonian forests. You ever seen the sky? Because I'm also selling pictures of the Big Blue."
Lex reached for her credits without thinking. The sky. The Big Blue. Hololoops, recordings and simulations of it were illegal, but Lex still remembered. As a child, she'd seen a few months' worth of blue and the memory was now wrinkled and faded. She barely remembered the image of an open sky streaked with silver space wreckage. But seeing the Big Blue again after all this time could refresh those precious memories …
Lex turned her family ring in quick twists. Drugs be damned; Lex wanted the picture so badly she only just realised she'd already taken another step into the dark. A step closer to the flickering face of the dealer. A step closer to a life that was not for her.
Turning, Lex ran back into the crowd. She shouldered past the mass of bodies, gritting her teeth as she felt strangers' clammy hands and cold shoulders. Ignoring the people, the sights, the shops and delights as best she could, Lex reached the Crimson Arcade.
The Crimson Arcade was an old Temple of Ares made of black stone, tower tall, with bars over the windows and a wound-red carpet that lolled out like a tongue from the door to the street. Lex swallowed her fears, ignored the silver warriors of High Sparta guarding the entrance and entered the building's maw.