The fanatics were still stampeding through the alleys without pause, but the people of Warehouse 7 clearly had no intention of waiting to be slaughtered. Faced with the mad invaders, some ran (like me), but far more chose to fight.
In the distance I saw it: at the Grease Street junction, a fanatic with two oversized torches strapped to his back suddenly convulsed and collapsed. The fire he spilled caught the comrades beside him, and amid the flames and screams you could just make out a rebar-bolt buried in his back—shot from the rooftops. Up there, bell-tower cleaners were working some kind of homemade mechanical crossbow, its greasy, black-gloss string twisted from steel cable.
On the other side of the junction, six men in black—armoured in patchwork plates cobbled together from scrap metal—were throwing up a temporary line. Their look screamed Blackfire Gang… even the gang rats were in the fight?
Their weapons looked like a heavy-metal death-art exhibit: a sniper crossbow built from a hydraulic jack, an oversized circular saw with an extended grip, even something made of steel pipe and gas canisters that looked painfully familiar—a rocket launcher of some kind. When the fanatic mob surged again, a machine operated by one guy in a huge helmet like a gas mask suddenly started spitting—what should have been a fire pump head, but what it sprayed was a stinging acid slurry. Fanatics drenched in it hit the ground, rolling and howling.
The big brute who seemed to be their leader spotted us on this side of the street and started waving at me like his life depended on it, signaling us not to come any closer and to bolt down the right-hand side street instead.
I tried to look farther ahead, and my heart dropped into my boots.
Toward the main entrance of Warehouse 7, a moving wall had sealed the primary road completely—those ornate greatshields were unmistakable.
Fuck. The church bastards had come prepared.
I could already see the shape of their plan. They didn't have enough manpower to fully seal and suppress a maze-like slum, so they whipped up huge numbers of church faithful and zealots and poured them into the district. Part of it was a broad search net, and part of it was suppression by sheer chaos—breaking things, burning things, disrupting any organised resistance before it could form.
Those elite heavy infantry in cloaks with gigantic shields advanced like riot police: locking down streets, pushing forward methodically. The women in heavy armour with heavy weapons acted as the strike element—raids, arrests, snatch-and-grab, decapitation strikes.
As for civilian lives and property, that clearly wasn't even on their list of considerations. Either they simply didn't see lowborn people as human and treated them like livestock, or they'd already decided the entire slum had been "corrupted" by a heretic like me and classified it as enemy-held territory.
The high-powered loudspeakers were still blasting shrill sermons and scripture. Firelight bloomed everywhere like New Year's Eve fireworks. Gunfire and explosions cracked like strings of firecrackers, rising and falling in waves. Combined with the unorganised, undisciplined maniacs' arson, looting, and murder, it all became a grotesque, cruel festival.
For a moment I felt like I was back in Donigaton, drowning in blood and madness. And I realised that beyond slogans and banners, these people and the things that had been "suppressed" in Donigaton were, at their core, the same filth from the same pit.
Wait.
A question punched its way through my panic.
Why hadn't that Blackfire boss simply grabbed me and handed me to the church? That would have ended the bloodshed right there. And gangsters, criminals, villains—that's what they do, isn't it? But instead they were holding off the church's armed forces and covering our escape.
And why had I trusted his directions without a second's hesitation?
What, exactly, had gone wrong here?
"Big guy! Stop spacing out! Right!" Spark was practically dragging me. She'd lost one shoe, the sole of her foot was slick with blood, and she still didn't dare slow down for a heartbeat. "Run for the red-light district! More cables there—those things in the sky can't fly in!"
We cut and turned and cut again, diving into a narrow street crowded with neon signs and illegal, tangled webs of power lines. This had been Warehouse 7's liveliest red-light strip—usually full of cheap perfume and ambiguous pink glow. Now it held only terrified screaming and the sound of shattering glass.
"Primary target located."
A cold mechanical voice dropped from overhead.
My soul nearly left my body. I looked up and saw swarms of flying skulls tearing out of the smoke and diving down into the alley. The talons and needle-tools hanging beneath them flashed with murderous cold light, and several red laser beams painted my body.
I raised my right arm in a reflexive attempt to block—though I knew it was useless. It was what a normal person does when faced with absolute violence: helpless, pathetic.
That was it.
That was the only thought left in my head.
Then, in the instant before the kill—
BZZZ—!!!
Every neon sign on the street burst into a violent strobe, and the air filled with a deafening shriek of electrical overload.
It was the sound of hundreds—thousands—of volts being dumped in a single heartbeat.
A blinding white glare flooded my world, brighter than that golden beam earlier by a hundredfold. My eyes went instantly blind, leaving only a blank white void.
"Alert. Alert. Sensor overload."
"Reboot visual module. Reboot ssss…"
Then came a chain of crackling detonations, glass bursting, and the sharp, brittle impacts of servo-skulls losing control, dropping out of the air, and smashing into walls.
The pain I expected—metal tearing into flesh—never came.
I clapped my hands over my eyes, tears streaming down my face, unable to tell east from west. I spun in place like a blind man, and then hands reached out of the darkness and seized me.
They weren't strong hands. If anything they were soft, carrying a thick reek of powder and perfume. Fingernails painted with cheap polish that felt slightly rough to the touch.
"Quick! You big idiot! In here!"
A sharp female voice snapped at my ear.
I was yanked hard, dragged inside. Spark stumbled in after me.
Bang!
A heavy iron door slammed shut behind us—the kind of reinforced security door built to deal with customers who refused to pay and gangs who came to make trouble.
The explosions, gunfire, screaming, and mechanical buzzing outside were muffled all at once, pushed far away, reduced to a distant, dull roar.
I sucked in air in huge, ragged gulps, then slid down the cold door until I was sitting on the floor. My vision returned gradually, the room sharpening into focus.
A dim interior. Air thick with that unmistakable stench: sweat, bodily fluids, cheap incense, and mouldy wallpaper.
A brothel.
And the ones who had saved us were the girls who usually stood on the street soliciting customers—the "filthy" and "low" women everyone loved to spit on.
Now they were shoving heavy cabinets and tables and chairs against the door, bracing it, stacking it like a barricade. Black Lilian—the one who'd come to me for treatment before—was gripping a rusty pair of wire cutters, panting as she stared at me. Her pale, slender arm still showed scorched black marks.
It had been her.
She'd risked her life to hack through the red-light district's main power cable, forcing a massive short and power surge that could drive those mechanical things back—at least for a moment.
"Don't be afraid, my lord." Her face, caked in thick white powder, twisted into a miserable but resolute smile. Her voice was trembling, but the words came out clean. "As long as we're still alive, we won't let those mad dogs get in."
I looked at her. I looked at the other girls—half-dressed, shaking with fear, but still holding clubs and bottles like they meant it. Then I looked toward the door, where the world outside was burning like it wanted to end.
In this gutter where the so-called God-Emperor's light never reached, in this place soaked in sin and decay, I felt it for the first time:
Maybe the souls here were cleaner than those "shepherds" on high would ever be.
(End of Chapter)
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