So that was that. It was over.

If it came down to it, she could make some excuse for being where she was, but she doubted anyone would notice or even care if they did. That was the thing about these streets. It wasn't enough that many of the random assholes here could forcefully strip down your physical being and parade your psyche for you if you weren't sharp but these days, nobody looked too hard at the faces of strangers, nobody got involved. That kind of impersonal apathy could make plastic out of the glass that you felt inside after what the advos in charge called an "incident". Shattering can be good for a person.

Shattering can be good.

It had taken her years to rip through the scratches on her soul and strip off the tape that held her together after what he did to her. Right here in fact, right in this alley, behind this bar. Or another. Did it really matter? Out here in Verestiny, there were bars on near-every corner and always the same grungy alley behind. The same strange clientele. Cops kept peace elsewhere and that was enough for most people. This was where the leftovers of society's riots had stranded the radiated freaks, the scientists who have lost too much for their art and those few inviolates who were unlucky enough to get on the wrong side of the wrong people. Some of the denizens had real powers, like the piece of offal lying in front of her, behind her and somewhere over there, maybe. But who cares? Even if they possessed such "skills" as were deemed highly prizable by all the right people, these talents were usually wasted on the wrong sort of kicks and just like him, always on the wrong sort of person. She kicked the biggest part she could find for good measure.

Shattering can be good. But so is carrying an extra set of clothes, just in case.

It wouldn't have been that difficult to get beyond what had happened in the dungy darkness of that night if she had found an advocate to take her case. Why do these things always happen at night? It's not like the days are much better here and she surmised that it does happen during the day, in broad daylight even. One who cares, one who is skilled enough could tear a psyche apart from across a crowded room at lunchtime. Dropping her soiled clothes in a trash incinerator (so much cleanliness for the common good, so efficient), she could believe anything of this place.

It was dangerous to walk these streets, especially at night. Oh and look at that, it was indeed night again and she knew that killing him had not made it any safer. She could feel the grin on her face, a strange spasm of unfamiliar muscles, as she began the long, slow walk home.

The problem was that she was wrong. Someone did care, cared very much that this particular asshole lay in shreds behind some lowlife bar in a dirtbag place like Verestiny. Cared enough to try to put, if not his body, at least his story back together.

But this is not where it begins.

She had quit. She was free.

She stepped out in to the morning fresh-scented air and was surprised to find that she was happy. It felt good to walk away from the compound just as the tank swirled the air over her head. No matter that the air tasted like oil, at least it no longer clogged at her throat, dulling her mind. She was free and freedom felt good.

This was a new planet, somewhere off the charts for a svanik like her to slosh a new life in between the grating cogs of civilization. She had paid her time and paid it over again but before this day, she never knew how easy it was just to walk away, just to leave it behind her. She had not gone more than a few paces and yet - and yet it seemed to her that years had passed. That the memory of her time in Sub-Section Ferris3 had faded in the bright light. That the weight of those dark years, those years when she never was high enough on the ladder to see the daylight, of those dark men in their suits talking to her in words she understood but whose meaning had always slid just out of hearing, those years she was least herself - all of it was ages ago. They happened in a story book, to another person in a another place. She was free.

By the time she reached the end of the walkway, if asked, she wouldn't have been able to identify her master's face, the face she had stared into every day for four years. By the time she reached the curb, if asked, she wouldn't have been able to name the equipment that had been used in the compound, nor how the machines were used. By the time she hailed a flocab, (one of the yellow ones that skimmed right over the ground instead of on the upper streams, she didn't trust any other kind and didn't question where the distrust came from), she wouldn't have been able to explain why she had spent four years of her life in an underground facility, nor how she had come to this place. By the time tossed her small bag in the back seat of the flocab and closed the door, she wouldn't even been able to recall her own name. But she knew where she was going. She was free and there are only a few places that the truly free can go.

Only one set of eyes followed the yellow monstrosity merge with the other colors of the rainbow and skim away. Those eyes were close set over a nasty grin that seemed to make the day a little less bright.

But this isn't where it begins.