Captain Shen eased the corroded gate shut behind him and stepped onto the weather-beaten construction scaffold. He picked his way over abandoned drones and gutted power tools, their casings split open and circuit boards torn out. Fifty metres above the empty alleyways of District Pik, he paused midway across the scaffold and consulted his holocommunicator.

  Looks like I’ve got to cut through here… Certainly is an interesting route.

  He studied the thick mesh draped along the side of the scaffold and lifted it aside. Beyond the small gap loomed the shadowed face of another towering groundscraper. Set into its wall, between two barred windows, was a narrow, shadowy archway. The snaking crimson line on his three-dimensional holomap went straight through it.

  With a quiet exhale, Shen jumped the gap and slipped into the damp, grimy passageway beyond, his footsteps echoing off the surrounding dusty concrete walls.

  Captain Shen shivered as the darkness engulfed him. It’s so cold here in Pik. He drew his hooded green robes close, longing for the comforting warmth of his Kingmaker coat he had left back at the tower. However, with the Kingmakers’ name stirring resentment in this part of Kowloon, keeping a low profile was his best option.

  He passed boarded-up doors on either side, hearing no signs of life from within these dwellings. The ground was dark and his foot caught on the base of a narrow staircase. I wish I had my cap’s visor-light, too.

  The captain began to climb. At the top, he stepped out from the side of a building onto a wide arcade street, where lanterns hung overhead – long, dark and lifeless. All the billboards and LED signs were switched off as well. In the dark corners, Shen could make out the gaunt outlines of people lying motionless, clothed in little more than rags, their ribs and hips jutting sharply beneath their skin. They were so small they could easily have been children.

  Pik is suffering the worst of the food shortages. I was told the Zhaisheng was making things better for everyone.

  He’d heard stories of how desolate District Pik had become. But Shen had never walked through emptier streets in his life.

  A shuttered storefront had wilted fungal spores strewn across its entrance. They were crushed and dead. Spore carrier plants. Famous in East Kowloon as celebratory gifts. They were recently laid for a celebration. Shen could almost still catch the metallic tang of blood in the air, recalling how desperate citizens had trampled each other to death for scraps of food. Probably the worst coronation in all Kowlooni history.

  Turning a corner, the captain found himself on a broad, deserted avenue lined with empty kiosk stalls and abandoned produce trays. Some neon signs still sputtered, but missing Yue characters twisted shop names into strange new meanings. The brick walls and metal shutters were blanketed in vivid, colourful graffiti. But this wasn’t crude or careless vandalism. Here in East Kowloon, even the most simplistic gang tags looked beautiful and artistic. They were bursting in stylistic fonts, some bubbly and others in sharp strokes.

  Passing a large brick wall on his right, Shen saw a stretch of graffiti that was vivid and colourful. Illustrations of people were rendered in a cartoonish-style, but the art was clearly the work of master spray painters. The graffiti depicted bony families waiting in ration lines, then the chaos of the coronation stampede, with hollow-eyed figures pleading for justice all around. It felt as if the people were using the walls to record their recent suffering.

  Everyone knows about East Kowloon’s deep, ancient bond with the arts, Shen thought. Baoyan once told me there was a time when every brick and tile here was painted in bright colours. Looking at Pik’s graffiti now, it’s clear that legacy lives on.

  The air was thick with the stench of unwashed bodies and sour rice water. Squealing, fat rodents scurried across corners in the open. How long has it been since anyone bothered to drive them off?

  On his right, underneath an empty produce tray, someone was curled up on the floor, arms wrapped around their knees. As Shen passed, he caught the faint murmur of muttered prayers. He could only hope the Prophet Dong was listening.

  This Lord Mingchi has driven the place into the ground!

  Though he kept to a civilian’s pace, Shen kept a constant eye on his surroundings, his hand never straying too far from his concealed hand cannon at his hip. He had never lived through a famine, but he knew how quickly hunger drove people to steal and kill. But will the bandits be any less victims than the starved children I’ve passed? He let his hand drop past his gun. Is there even anyone left with the strength to lift a blade?

  At last, his holocommunicator signalled that he was near his destination. According to the Kowlooni Network, Hing Sing Calligraphy & Design was supposed to be Kambaland’s best art supply shop. Shen had already browsed its website and seen that it stocked both seshwan ink and the solvent he needed. But there’d been nothing online to confirm whether it was still open. Given that every storefront he’d passed since stepping off the King Rail had been shuttered, he was already bracing himself to look for other options.

  The store was indeed closed. Behind graffiti-covered glass doors, a wide metal shutter was pulled tight. On either side of the doors, vivid purple and teal graffiti sprawled across the windows. A thick, broad concrete awning jutted out above the storefront. Captain Shen stepped up to the glass and peered inside, but there was nothing to see but the dull grey of the metal shutter blocking his view.

  What are the chances the owner lives inside?

  He raised his fist. Knock. Knock. Knock.

  Shen leaned close to the glass again, hoping someone inside might open it. Suddenly a low, drunken groan floated down from above.

  ‘Nnngh…’

  He jerked back just as a rack of sharpened construction rods swung down from the side of the awning.

  Shen’s eyes shot up, scanning the awning’s edge. A second later, a sack of bricks hurtled down and slammed into the ground to his right, bursting open in a puff of dust. It missed him by millimetres.

  ‘Stay back if you don’t want more!’ The voice was hoarse, slurred, thick with the Eastern Kowlooni accent. The endings of words were pronounced differently, and the rhythm of the sentence was not what he was used to. Shen watched the top of a bald man’s head appear from above the awning. A lawn chair creaked as he hauled himself upright, using a battered zuche bat for balance. ‘Get outta here!’ he rasped. ‘Already told enough of yous, ya can’t eat paint! Everything else’s been nicked!’

  The man was skinny and short, as expected, wearing a stained singlet that clung to his bony chest and some loose garments around his waist. Despite his size, he brandished the bat overhead as if he might hurl it down at Shen any second.

  Shen raised his hands in a placatory gesture. ‘I’m not here to steal. I want to buy.’

  ‘Buy?!’

  The drunk man let out a wheezing chuckle that quickly swelled into wild laughter. Soon he was clutching his sides, struggling to breathe.

  ‘Right, right,’ he gasped between snorts. ‘Let me just grab my chequebook from out under my ass! Harharhar!! Might need to…’ he caught his breath, ‘Grab change from next door!’

  Shen pushed on, ignoring the laughter. ‘Do you have anything that removes seshwan ink?’

  ‘Sesh–… seshwan ink!? HARHARHAR!’

  Shen frowned. ‘What’s so funny? You don’t have any?’

  ‘You’re actually serious?!—’

  As the man howled with laughter, the concrete awning beneath him suddenly gave way. He, his lawn chair, a scatter of crumpled drink cans and an old radio crashed down in a burst of dust right in front of Shen. Overhead, a boxy entertainment console dangled from the torn awning by its power cord, swaying dangerously.

  ‘Ohhhh…’ the man groaned, raising his hands weakly. ‘Even the pain doesn’t hurt anymore…’

  Then the console fell on top of him with a dull, heavy thud.

  Shen took a cautious step closer. The man was facedown, half-pinned under his chair, chunks of concrete, and his entertainment console screen. Shen looked up – he had ripped a clean hole through the awning.

  ‘Need a hand, sir?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ came the muffled reply.

  Shen went straight to work, tossing aside the screen, rubble and broken scraps until he reached the chair’s metal legs. With both hands, he lifted it easily and pulled the man clear. Light. Everything I lifted was heavier than him.

  He helped brush the dust off the man’s sweaty shoulders. ‘You all right? That was a nasty fall.’

  The man dashed a hand across his dirty face. ‘At least you’re not laughing. I would’ve if I saw me fall like that.’

  ‘Nothing keeps your spirit down, eh sir?’

  The man barked a short laugh. ‘Where’re you from, anyways? What’s your name? You’re built like a southerner!’

  ‘Not a southerner, but thank you. My name’s Li.’

  The man wobbled to his feet, still grinning. ‘Say, Li, you said you was looking for something to remove seshwan?’

  ‘You got some inside?’

  ‘If I do, we’ll have to find out together.’

  ‘Together? Why’s that?’

  The man nodded toward his shop. ‘I’m fucking locked out, that’s why! Blasted doors won’t open.’

  ‘You can’t get inside? Is your stock safe?’

  ‘Safe? Show me one place that’s safe in Pik and I’ll move my shop there! Hah! Nowhere’s safe anymore. Brother turnin’ on brother, father sellin’ their sons, all for a bite to eat. Say, you don’t got a bite to eat, do ya?’

  The captain shook his head and gazed down the dark, lifeless street. ‘Has governance been completely abandoned? Where are the Kuishi? Where is your lord?’

  ‘Gone! Hiding! Like the little bitch he is!’ The man’s lips curled. ‘After the coronation, everything fell apart. Thousands dead. The royal runt called every Kuishi in Kambaland back to his estate because we demanded answers. Pik’s whole society collapsed overnight. Then the Red Eyebrow bandits tried to take power. They swarmed the Kambaland bazaar, went store to store and demanded loyalty to Master Chong Fan, their leader. Anyone who refused had their shop gutted. I locked mine and ran before they came here, only to realise I’d left the damn key fob inside.’

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  ‘Then as long as we can get back in, everything should be fine inside, right?’

  ‘Backroom has a sewer grate I’m supposed to lock up before I close. My dumbass forgot that as well. So, when the Red Eyebrows figured out they’d missed my shop, they went right in through the sewers. Neighbours called me, said they heard people inside. By the time I got here, I was pounding on my own shutters while they cleared me out!’

  Shen let out a slow breath. ‘Is the seshwan ink valuable? Maybe they didn’t bother taking it. I just need the remover, anyway, not the ink itself.’

  ‘Are you kidding me, man!? That stuff is our bloody culture! The damn thing may as well be sacred to us. It’s always been sought after by foreigners, people like you. Would’ve taken it first thing. Tell me, where are you from again? No place in East Kowloon, that’s for sure.’

  Shen shifted on the spot. ‘I’m… a traveller from the core districts. Kai Ching. Had some troublemakers tag my wall with seshwan. But why haven’t you tried to get inside through the sewers as well?’

  The man paled. ‘Starvation, or have your guts ripped out by a gang of super rodents roaming the sewers? Take your pick!’

  ‘Super rodents?’ Shen said. ‘I’ve heard about large rodents moving into West Kowloon on the news. Are they also here?’

  ‘These new freakish rodents only showed up recently. I’ve lost count of how many starving folks I’ve seen fall to them. One comes up first, nibbling at your skin. You’re starved, too weak to even notice that within a few minutes, more turn up. Before long, rodents the size of infants are crawling over your belly, tearing into your organs. It’s a slow death. And they’re not like the beasts from No Man’s Land that rip your throat out first. Your guts’ll be half gone, and you’re still alive, still looking around for help. You’ve got to put those poor souls out of their misery. I’ve had to, more than once.’ He rubbed his jaw, his voice raw and gravelly. ‘That’s why the bandits only go down into the sewers ten at a time. Look, if you help me open the shutters, I’ll let you take whatever you need from inside. Solvent or no solvent.’ The man stuck his hand out. ‘Deal?’

  ‘Deal.’ Shen shook his hand. ‘Got the keys to open these doors at least?’ The captain approached the locked glass doors. Behind it were the shutters to the store.

  ‘Yeah. I think the key is… up there.’ The man pointed above their heads, through the hole in the awning. Shen didn’t even sigh.

  ‘Hang tight. I’ll get it.’

  He stepped beneath the hole where the man had fallen through and glanced up at the twisted rods coming out its circular opening. Drawing a steady breath, he crouched low, powerful legs coiling as the augmented fibres in his thighs bunching beneath his green robes. Then he launched upward, clearing nearly three metres in a single bound and landing on the wreckage lightly. After a quick search, he found a key fob under a tipped storage box and tossed it down.

  The man caught the keys with a startled yelp. ‘You sure you’re not from the south? I swear only southerners can jump like that…’

  Shen dropped back to the street without so much as a grunt and approached the front door once more. After the man fumbled with the keys, the doors unlocked with a click. He muttered something under his breath and pushed it open, stepping into the dusty vestibule where their main obstacle still waited. Shen followed, reaching out to press his palm against the cold metal.

  Standard shop shutters. Nothing short of laser tools will cut through this. And I know I’m not stronger than the gears holding this down.

  ‘Utility box is inside, I’m guessing?’ Shen asked.

  ‘Yeah. Otherwise I’d have hot-wired the damned thing already!’

  An idea struck Shen. When he was on top of the awning earlier, he remembered seeing a long pipe lying nearby. If I can use the pipe to wedge the gate up just enough, maybe I can slip a voltugan through.

  ‘I need your help. Come with me, sir,’ Shen said.

  They both returned outside. ‘Stand there,’ Shen instructed, pointing out to the ground beneath the awning’s edge.

  As the man moved to his spot, Shen stepped beneath the torn opening of the awning, where the heavy entertainment console had fallen on the shopkeeper. It still lay on the floor. He tipped the bulky box onto its side: the concave screen was shattered, the casing fractured in several places. It must have weighed at least thirty kilos.

  He found the thick power cord trailing from the back, wound it tightly around the console several times and tucked the loose end into his robe pocket.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the bald man called from behind.

  ‘Just be ready.’

  ‘For?!’

  But Shen did not reply. He hauled himself back up through the gap and onto the awning. Bracing his feet around the torn opening, he pulled the cord from his pocket and coiled it around his forearm until it was short enough to be taut with the console below. With a grunt he heaved it between his legs and lifted it onto the awning and let go.

  He dusted his hands and looked around for the pipe he remembered seeing earlier.

  It lay half-buried beneath debris. He dug the almost two-metre long pipe free, strode to the edge and shouted down, ‘Catch!’

  The man below shrieked as he raised both arms and caught the long pipe as it fell.

  ‘Okay, mister,’ Shen said. ‘Hold the pipe’s end against the ground. I’m going to drop your console on it to flatten the rim.’

  ‘Aha, now I get it,’ the man said, angling the pipe and pressing its end to the paving.

  Shen returned to the console, hoisted it into his arms and carried it to the edge.

  Let’s hope I don’t miss. Doubt it’ll survive another drop.

  He dropped the console. The box landed on the pipe’s edge with a solid thud, but the force catapulted the pipe’s other end out of the man’s hands, followed by the sound of glass shattering.

  ‘Fuck!’ The man dashed after the pipe under the awning.

  Shen walked back and watched the man below through the hole lift the pipe through the smashed vestibule window. He held it and inspected the dent they’d made.

  ‘It’s flat!’ the man called as he looked up at Shen through the hole. He let out a breath and jumped back down.

  Together they returned to the vestibule, shards of glass scattered around the floor. The man held the deformed pipe. Shen was holding two chunks of broken concrete he found outside.

  ‘The moment I make a gap, wedge this under the shutter,’ Shen said, handing one concrete chunk to the bald man while he grabbed the pipe. ‘This pipe will not hold for long, so be ready and be quick.’

  ‘And how are we gonna get in?’ the man asked. Shen wedged the thin lip of the pipe through whatever gap he could make beneath the shutter.

  ‘We’re not. It just needs to be bigger than a little friend of mine. He’ll fit through.’

  ‘Friend?’ the man squinted as Shen placed the chunk of concrete under the pipe.

  ‘Get into position. It’ll only be up for a moment.’

  The man nodded and crouched down near the base of the shutter. Shen walked to the end of the pipe, gripped it with both hands and heaved down. The shutter groaned, moving barely a finger’s width. He pushed even harder, and the shutter moved up slightly once again.

  ‘It’s not enough!’ the man shouted. ‘A little more!’

  Shen drew a breath, muscles locking tight. He leaned all his weight onto the pipe.

  ‘Come on, put some weight behind it!’ the man exclaimed. ‘I’ve got none to give! Gap’s almost big enough!’

  Desperation hit, and Shen set one foot on it, carefully letting go with his hands as he placed his second foot behind the first, and began rocking up and down. On the third bounce, he dropped into a crouch, driving the force through the pipe.

  There was a sharp pop. The shutter lurched up half a hand’s span. Behind him, he heard the scrape of concrete against tile. As Shen leapt off the pipe, the shutter screeched, and it finally rested on top of the concrete piece.

  ‘It worked! The gap is holding!’ the man shouted. Shen stepped back. The block was wedged beneath the shutter now, holding it open just enough, though hairline cracks were already splitting its surface.

  ‘It won’t hold long, sir. I’ll start working on getting it open all the way. Can you find a few solid pieces of debris outside to add support?’

  ‘On it!’ The bald man actually grinned, gave a sloppy salute, then dashed outside the vestibule humming some half-forgotten tune.

  I’m amazed how much energy he still has for a skeleton on legs.

  Shen exhaled, dropped to sit against the glass panel, and reached inside his robe. From one hidden pocket he pulled a small circular device. Outside, the bald man’s humming floated back, oddly cheerful against the ruin all around them. Shen set the small circular device on the ground in front of him. Rolling up his sleeve, he activated his holocommunicator. A pale holographic interface sprang to life, floating in the air. His hooded, shadowy face was illuminated in its icy shine. With a few swipes, he opened the voltugan program and powered up the drone.

  The tiny sphere immediately unfolded, sprouting tiny articulated limbs. It gave a quick hop, stabilising itself, while Shen’s display shifted to show a live camera feed from the drone’s perspective. He could see the gap of the shutter doors, yawning open for the tiny drone. Gently, Shen tapped controls on the holo-interface to guide the voltugan forward. On command, it scuttled across the dust-choked floor and disappeared into the dark interior of the shop.

  The low-light optics bathed everything in a faint teal monochrome. From the tiny drone’s perspective, the shop stretched out like a massive cavern of shadowy aisles, broken only by the occasional flicker from dying wall fixtures.

  The voltugan crawled forward, skirting shattered jars, crumpled ration packets, and scattered stationery supplies littering the floor. It crawled under a shelf that had fallen and was leaning against the wall, vanishing under its void-like shadow. Even with night vision, the feed struggled to pierce the gloom.

  Shen nudged the controls, guiding the voltugan around leaking paint cartridges and shards of glass. Then the drone bumped into something dark and unidentifiable, the screen blurring momentarily.

  At that moment, the vestibule doors swung open. The bald man returned, arms stacked high with chunks of debris. He paused when he caught sight of the strange, glowing tech on Shen’s wrist.

  ‘What’re you doing there, Li?’

  ‘Remember that friend that I mentioned?’

  ‘Yeah…?’

  Shen didn’t continue. His eyes stayed locked on the holodisplay. The bald man only shrugged, then dropped to his knees by the shutter and began wedging pieces of rubble into the narrow gap.

  The voltugan’s screen jolted violently—

  Something whipped it backward. It quickly righted itself with a small hop, just in time to reveal the enormous snout of a rodent filling the view.

  Shen’s eyes widened. Shit! Can’t let it damage the unit! It’s my only one!

  The creature lunged, teeth bared. Shen flicked a control and made the drone spring upward, narrowly avoiding the bite. It landed hard on the floor, only to be swiped by the rodent’s paw. But the voltugan skittered left, then veered right, dodging wildly.

  When the beast lunged for a bite again, Shen timed the next jump perfectly, and the drone bounced onto its pink snout and discharged half its stored power in a sharp jolt.

  The rodent shrieked and tossed its head violently. The voltugan flew off, tumbling across the floor until it lay on its back, the feed showing an upside-down view of the shop’s gutted shelves. With another quick hop, it flipped back onto its feet. The rodent was gone.

  Shen’s eyes darted to the top corner of his holodisplay.

  46% power left. Hope that’s enough to jump-start the utility box.

  The voltugan crept forward through the dark tunnel formed by the toppled shelf, finally emerging on the other side near the corner of a wall. It paused, then positioned its tiny limbs and began to crawl up its vertical surface.

  Through the drone’s feed, Shen spotted a thick, dark wire taped along the wall, snaking upward through patches of crumbling plaster and deep cracks. He guided the voltugan to follow it, careful to avoid loose bits of wall.

  ‘There we go! That should do it.’

  A voice pulled Shen’s eyes from the holodisplay. The bald man stood proudly by the shutter, having arranged various chunks of concrete in a neat line across the gap. Shen gave him an approving nod before refocusing on his screen.

  The cord led the voltugan to a small utility cabinet, half-embedded high in the wall. If the drone slipped now, the drop would ruin it. Shen manoeuvred it to the edge of the cabinet’s cover and nudged it open. The cover, with the voltugan on its edge, swung open. The voltugan performed a daring hop, landing on a protruding wire inside the box. It steadied itself, then crawled along the wire toward the capacitor.

  Shen exhaled and closed his eyes briefly.

  Holy Light, guide me to destiny.

  He pressed the discharge command.

  The voltugan dropped from the utility box and landed hard on the floor below, its feed cutting out as the program died. Instantly, the shutter door lurched upward, metal groaning, and the shop’s lights flared to life all at once.

  ‘Quick! Get in! Now!’ Shen barked.

  The man bolted through the opening with Shen right behind him. They had barely cleared the threshold when the lights gave a low hum and died, the shutter crashing back down behind them, smashing through the makeshift braces.

  In the sudden darkness, the man let out a raspy laugh. ‘Cheeky bugger. Yer plan worked!’

  ‘Want to see if we can find your keys and get these gates open?’

  ‘Oh, right. Give me a moment.’

  Shen listened as the man’s footsteps shuffled off into the darkness. A door slid open somewhere deeper in the shop, then shut again. Moments later, the footsteps returned, then stopped near the wall by the shutter.

  With a low groan, the metal shutter began to rise. A sliver of dim streetlight spilled in as the shutter creaked upward. Shen spotted the man standing by the control panel, one hand twisting a key in its socket.

  ‘Oh, this feels so good,’ the man remarked, taking deep breaths of the dusty air like it was freshly ventilated oxygen.

  ‘Did you spot any of that seshwan remover left?’

  The man exhaled and wandered closer. ‘Sorry, Li. Just a quick look and I can tell they took everything. Even nicked the spare slippers I keep over my counter. These Red Eyebrows – they take everything. They would’ve grabbed the seshwan first.’

  Captain Shen rubbed his chin. ‘Damn. Maybe I should talk to these Eyebrow people. Where are they?’

  The bald man shot him a sharp look. ‘Are you mad?! … Wait here, I have an idea. You helped me get my store back, I won’t let you leave empty-handed.’

  The man disappeared behind the shelves and through a back door. A moment later, he returned with a folded pamphlet and handed it to Shen. Frowning, Shen unfolded it and tried to make sense of the contents.

  ‘That’s my seshwan supplier’s invoice. Kiln quarter folk.’

  Shen squinted. The text was written in flowing Eastern script he couldn’t read. ‘I don’t understand this, sir.’

  ‘Ah, you’re a foreigner, I forgot. Got something to write with?’

  Shen raised his wrist, activating his holocommunicator and opening the map interface. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Donghua Firingworks. 515th kiln, Jyiu precinct 9864. But I haven’t heard from them since everything went to hell. There might be a way inside, though.’

  There was a single match. A few hours walk away.

  ‘Got it. Thank you.’

  The man gave a small, tired smile. ‘No, thank you. You gave me a sliver of hope when I was starving for it more than food. Just watch yourself, Li. The Red Eyebrows aren’t scared of anyone these days.’

  Captain Shen stood tall, his expression grim under the green hood. ‘Maybe they’ve just forgotten who’s running things.’