Our progress back towards the lift was slow, but steady. Turns out there aren’t many single digit Antithesis that stand up against half a dozen assault rifles, chemical sers, and heavy ons, even at signifit numbers. Humboldt didn’t even have to break her stride.

  After being so talkative before, she was surprisingly quiet. “What’s eating you?"

  “I was just thinking,” she replied.

  “About what?"

  She paused, for the first time in quite awhile. “You’re ly what I would have expected from someohat grew up in the uy. No offense.”

  “I bet you thought the Uy was all gang and squalor from the vids, right?” I asked. I already khe answer, but I wao hear it from her mouth.

  “Kinda…” her face was red from embarrassment.

  I ughed. “Well, it’s pretty much all true. Most of us have to fight for scraps, and if you walk down the wrong street you’ll take a bullet in a gang war.”

  Humboldt paused, and turowards me. “And you’re ok with all that? Don’t you want more?”

  Shrugging, I looked over at her. “This is all I’ve ever known. I grew up oreet, where the bigger kids look after the smaller ones. You learn a skill to tribute as quickly as possible, you learn who you trust and who you ’t, and you learn to live with what you have.”

  “And you’re happy with that, you don’t want to get out of here?”

  “Fuck that, as far as I’m ed there are three ways to earn enough to move above ground, I call them the dream, the nightmare, and the deathwish,” I said, jumping up on a nearby car like a stage so I could expin it. “The dream is being an apprentice for a skilled trade, and learn enough to be useful above. The nightmare is being ‘volunteered’ during a corp recruitment drive; There are aleople that join up, but we all know if they’re recruiting down here it’s not for something good. And the deathwish, which is joining a gang and somehow surviving enough to gain a leadership position.”

  “That’s a pretty dark way to look at things,” Humboldt muttered.

  I shrugged, “That’s life down here. It’s not all bad, I have a lot of friends and allies down here. The good people help one another, because we know no one else is going to help us, and the bad oypically kill each other.”

  Humboldt shook her head and started walking again, “Fuck me.”

  We walked in silence for a few minutes before I spoke up.

  “What about you, what’s your story,” I asked.

  “Me? It’s not that exg.”

  “Humor me” I pushed against her side, and only succeeded in pushing myself away. She probably wasn’t even aware.

  “Fine, I lived with my mother in a little corporate mining town you’ve probably never heard of, until she died in an explosion and the corp bmed her for the damage. I had to work as an Iured Servant to pay off the debt.” She’d delivered the entire expnation without a mote of emotion, which is why it took me a couple moments to absorb what she said.

  When I did It was my turn to stop and look at her. “Excuse me. How is that ing?”

  “You try w a menial job day in and day out for nothing more than room and board, then try and vince me it’s exg.”

  “Fuck,” I muttered.

  “Anyways, one day I was ordered to scout out a newly opeunnel, which turned out to be a hibernating Antithesis hive. Everyohat was with me at the time died, thankfully I mao get a hold of a pickaxe to defend myself,” she expined.

  “It took me a while to fight my way through the Antithesis, but at the end of it I walked out of the mine as a Samurai with a kick ass set of armor. The pany executives fell all over themselves to find the true culprit for the explosion and hold them responsible, guess they really didn’t want to be on the bad side of a Samurai, even a new one.”

  I listeo the eory in silence, but couldn’t help but make a ent when it was over. “That sounds like the plot of a big budget vid, you know onake a name for yourself the movie studioing to be all over you.”

  She blushed, “Shut up, it’s nothing big.”

  We tinued forward, walking in silence for a bit while I absorbed everything we’d shared with each other. Finally, I shared what was on my mind. “You know, even though I’m a Samurai now, I still don’t think I’m going to leave this pce.”

  She gnced over at me, “Really?”

  “Yeah, this pce isn’t perfect, but there are good people here. I make a difference here; If I leave, they won’t have anyone around to protect them if this happens again.”

  She elbowed me, causio stagger away. “You’re a good person.”

  I puffed up my chest, “I know, I’m awesome.”

  She ughed as we walked on.