Memento Mori

3.0 - THE GREASER

THAT PLACE is called the Ibis, and it's an ashtray of an underground fight club.

Six in the morning, the place is quieter than a corpse. We come upon it in the middle of a dismal morning rush dressed like a trio of office coworkers heading up to Shimano Heavy Industries' skyscrapers in the overcity. My disguise is as thin as a projector screen. I might be as short as the grade schooler I'm impersonating, but I've got twice her figure and look exactly like the hell I've been through since last night. Hair streaked black with soot, face mottled by bruises, bandages creeping out of my sleeves, and a perpetual limp from the Armiger's parting gifts; I'm just barely passing, and that's not even counting the gun hiding under the thigh-cut skirt. The corporation's fishhook logo rides high on my chest, half-covered by an ironed jacket. The stealing didn't bother me. Knowing that this jacket belongs to someone who no longer has a home; that does.

There weren't any bloodstains in the family's abandoned apartment. Just a collection of holographic photos, two parents and a beaming little girl, candids from sightseeing tours on the surface. Blue skies punctured by chrome spears and speckled with greenery. A dream. An idyllic lie to forget the reality of the Vents.

Like the rest of the lies propping up the undercity, I can already see the fault lines forming in that illusion. The rattling morning metro, usually packed shoulder-to-shoulder with commuters, isn't even half-full. When we disembark at a block just four layers from the crust, the streets greet us with drizzling unease. None of the normal slew of hovertransports, vibrant neon signs, sizzling labmeat and squawking electronic speakers. Storms brew on the surface; though this far down, we can only see echoes of the rain. Venters with acidproof hoods raised high dart between spouts of oily stormwater pouring down from the overcity. Breakfast joints on the towerside bristle not with activity, but furtive glances and hushed conversations. Their patrons watch us pass with furtive eyes, scraping silverware the loudest noise.

Unease suffocates the undercity like an invisible blanket. Even if the few people we pass don't understand where it comes from, they too can feel that something is wrong. That primal warning of the tides pulling back before a tsunami hits.

Stream screens in closed storefronts flash electric-blue news programs over the grimy sidewalk. Clean suits, clean faces, clean studios blather through crackling speakers and cracked screens. I snort out loud when a live video of the Champion's stoic visage comes on front and center of a screen. A firing line of floating stream cams bombard the old man with camera flashes as he heads through the two-story entrance of the Metro Blockhouse, the largest arena in the overcity. There's calls for a comment on rumors of rising instability in the Vents, all ignored without a second glance. Cut to a morning press conference in a penthouse suite halfway across the Electric Town district; the Metro Blockhouse just the largest nail in the cityscape behind the interview. There, a uni-age girl wearing a slate grey dress shares coffee with a regal Mecha dressed in a designer suit patterned halfway between clerical robes and brutalist gunmetal fashion. Shimano Yor. Famed head of the Shimano industrial clan, a scalpel of a mogul who turned his clan's failing company of autobike manufacturers from the Section's rural villages into a corporation that now produces a third of the capital's consumer electronics.

Yor's no fighter- least, not that I've ever heard. Though he doesn't need to be with the amount of pro fighters he keeps on retainer. Retired veterans from faraway Sections, up-and-comers sponsored with lucrative contracts that ensure they'll never leave his pockets... rumor has it even a few members of the major league are on his payroll. Ulysses once called him the only man in the Section too rich for the Champion to make bow.

The golden horn of Yor's helm shifts as he directs his next answer at the camera. "...inaction, as always, is Champion Fang's modus operandi. While he allows the Venters to squabble amongst themselves, tens of millions of credits are squandered every hour. Civic infrastructure our taxes support are burned to the ground or coopted by undercity gangs. Power grids, medical relief, welfare and water treatment stations- who foots the bill? Certainly not the man with all the power to decide." Two golden photoreceptors blink patiently out at me. "Yet again, the Champion's laissez-faire management of the Vents undermines the validity of his centralist policies. He alone decides the course of our city's future- the major league merely exists to bicker and voice dissent without meaning. The minor league is little more than a popularity contest to entertain the masses. Gladiocracy is a dated concept which has long passed its era of usefulness." Aging metal fingertips caress a steaming cup of caf that rests in the Mecha's lap. "To think, the right to rule our Section rests with a single warrior who has proven himself strongest over all. What a shame that it also belongs to the man who has proven himself weakest of conviction..."