One of the most respected but at the same time secluded Cell Circuit Castes is the Caste of Erebus. Their mysterious aura lends itself to fear sometimes among the more suspiciously aligned of Papülonis.

  One of its last members ever created, Eurus, is an almost 400-year-old Cell. His physical appearance is balanced between muscular and lean, and he stands at 2.52 meters tall. He lives at the Martian headquarters for the Cell Circuits. He receives a message on his prompter: “Cell needed at 97 district PD. Code 84-19-AF Sightings of some sort of mutant. ACCEPT Y/N.” Eurus types:

  “C.E.” - stands for Caste of Erebus- “Y”

  People are killed every day and not every police department can afford a Cell. However, the higher the skyscraper, the better the cash flow, which means higher tax revenue and better PD-s. Many in Papülonis or anywhere, really, prefer the equivalent of cars to get around. With such a high population as mankind’s, travel by internal combustion vehicles has become impractical and as such, another type of engine is now in use - the electrostatic pulse engine and its variants.

  A car would be safer, but in a gigapolis like Papülonis, speed is impossible in traffic—even in three dimensions, congestion exists. A static-electricity bike is quicker and noticeably cheaper to use. When Eurus fires up his Vulcan 5, the sound of small continuous thunderstorms in slow and shallow flange fills the HQ’s mid-level garage, big enough to fit 8 vehicles, all of which are currently in use, with their slots empty.

  The hangar door opens and Eurus blitzes off, roaring through the Caste’s out-tunnel, a 200 meter metal tube, feeding into the main artery of the city’s traffic from several cutoffs. At first glance it seems chaotic coming onto the main flux of traverse, however everything is actually in smooth order. Every vehicle feeds data to all the other cars and collisions are almost impossible, because although drivers must navigate 3D environments, this comes as naturally to them as it did to those driving in two dimensions 450 years before them. The pedestrians are able to cross the chasms on specifically designed crosswalks and bridges.

  Whether one was to look up or down, the vertical lines of the skyscrapers converge almost into a single point, with only a tiny strip of the pink and pale Martian sky peeking over the edges of the buildings, visually almost as thin as a hair. Each building contains hundreds of thousands of people with possibly entirely different languages and religions from building to building.

  Some buildings are better off than others, and this almost solely depends who lives at the top. For instance there are a few that entirely contain police departments with hundreds of thousands of policemen or others are filled with the militia families of the Solar System’s most prominent crime lords. These are recognizable by their relatively safe neighborhoods and floors though perhaps the latter also by their somewhat different legal system where the rule of law is superseded by the will of the relevant crime lord.

  The higher up you get however, the smaller the differences may seem. Whoever gets to buy themselves an apartment or a hanging garden   The differences in social status are literally measured by who lives on top of whom.

  When Eurus arrives at the police department, his contact at the force waits for him at the parking lot, nested neatly within the higher levels of the PD. Detective Pharao Paskal is a well-built, young Hispanic man. His face is almost completely symmetrical as it draws closer to Eurus. He’s got medium eyes and a big nose and even though his lips aren’t small, they’re hardly distinguishable from the rest of his face. For a regular human, Paskal is very perceptive and highly intelligent, especially for someone who isn’t purposefully designed to hunt down criminals. Despite being an ?old-school“ human, Paskal is very well adjusted to the life. When Eurus gets off his statbike, Paskal says:

  “I see you’re still riding the thunderbike. Still life gets you bored?”

  “I never knew that riding a stat bike equates you to a walking death wish,” Eurus says, while dismounting the bike. His voice is baritone, calm and somewhat hypnotic. It’s as if it were coarse but its fast tremolo rattles in a way that can almost resonate with your lungs, easily cutting through noises of his surroundings. It is designed to relax humans around them but at the same time sound assertive and dominant.

  Paskal lights up a Marlboro Gold Deluxe. Thanks to advanced medicine and extremely accurate targeted chemotherapy and radiation therapy, cancer has become as curable as the common flu and therefore cigarettes don’t carry the same threat they would’ve some time ago. He says:

  “Yeah, but statistics do. Come on up, I wanna show you something.”

  “Statistics? And what about statistics makes you pull on this spliff?”

  “No cancer… and,” – drag – “… The air makes it crispy on my throat,” Paskal says, “But enough chit-chat.”

  “You seem excited,” Eurus says.

  “Yeah, the boys don’t get to see Cells as much in this district, but this case is something special too, Eurus.”

  Paskal breathes out a waft of cigarette smoke, smelling slightly of salted caramel.

  “Why so?”

  “I’ll show you upstairs,” says Paskal.

  The parking garage is half empty on this floor because this area of megastructures calls for frequent patrols. The vehicles still there, however, are regular squad cars and busses. They keep the cooler stuff hidden in specialized chambers. The total area of the lot is around 400 000 square meters. It stretches further than the eye can see in almost all directions.

  Only a few dozen pairs of policemen, all of whom are wearing armor are walking in and out of the garage and going about their business. Their armors have a pseudo-perpetual energy supply generated from the movement of the officers and some of the kinetic energy absorbed to vitalize the officers from smaller injuries without needing a medic. Nigh’ impregnable from small arms fire, still some officers return from the fray bleeding and a partner short. Not every crook in Papülonis uses small arms.

  Though dimly lit, the exit is clearly marked and the parking lot comes to an end. The lobby of the exit features   a staircase and a hub for pods, necessary for carrying people quickly from one part of the building to another. Paskal and Eurus push one of the dozen buttons, each corresponding to a pod receiver, to order a pod. While waiting, Paskal says:

  “So I know you don’t like talking about your contracts, but I’m very much sure the guys simply can’t help themselves but ask you how you go about some of them. Got any good stories?”

  “I can tell the story, how I saved a small child in the Pits from being devoured by a gene-junkie after watching her family suffer the same fate, but truth be told, there haven’t been much contracts lately,” says Eurus.

  “Really? You don’t seem bothered by it,” wonders Paskal.

  “Though it might not show because of my conditioning, I actually feel relieved. I haven’t been in this business for the money for a long time now. You know it makes it seem like this behemoth of a city no longer feels the need to devour itself, or that humanity has regained some semblance of sanity” says Eurus.

  Paskal jabs at Eurus: “I would hope that too. But we’ve actually been swamped with work. There’s more a trend in the force to steer ourselves away from Cell assistance. I don’t know why but commissioning you guys is not recommended. I guess maybe they want us to stand on our own legs.”

  “Swamped? You mean more than usual?”

  “Yeah, way more,” says Paskal, “anyway, if you could keep your story nice and short, guys would love to hear it and maybe they’ll pitch in more often to get your help.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Huh.”

  Their black shiny pod arrives and the door hisses open. With only two passengers, the five seated compartment feels quite roomy. The seats themselves have lost their original fluffiness, and they’re flat from the likely thousands of butts of pressure to them over the years. With calming elevator music filling their ears, the doors hiss shut and the pod is off, silently whizzing on its magnetic rail with zero friction and zero lateral G’s. A ride as smooth as silk.

  “If you are armed or are carrying any weapons with lethal capacity, please relinquish them to the nearest administrator,” a female voice says over the music.

  After a few minutes of silent riding, the men arrive. Paskal knows that Eurus prefers to keep his stoic character, so he doesn’t bother him with much small talk. The magpod stops and the doors hiss open to the lobby of the department.

  It’s moderately spacious, a few dozen front desks, each operated by a closed system AI. Some of them are occupied by the usual - victims of theft, assault or rape. Papülonis keeps its departments busy. A few of the people there could hardly be called human. All the mutations or cybernetic enhancements have changed their appearance beyond recognition - a hooded girl with blue skin stands at one desk, quite frantic, another is a victim of severe mutapoison, with his skin blackened at parts and at others limb-like structures protruding - the stuff of nightmares.

  They enter the department. As in the parking lot, many of the few hundred desks are empty. Bloody tracks lead to the med bay and as expected, as soon as Eurus and Paskal entered, almost all of the officers still there take a good look at Eurus. Cells are legendary among regular police officers.

  An officer stands up from his desk a few dozen meters away and walks toward them. He is older than Paskal, by a decade at least. He has a limp and a cane to match, balding and bearded, the aging man walked up to Paskal and Eurus, but before he could say anything, Paskal said:

  “This is my partner, and the man in charge of the case in question, Detective Ron Anderson.”

  Anderson is a black man in his early 50s with silver in his hair. He’s built like a linebacker and Eurus knows he has been on the force ever since graduating high school.

  “I believe we’ve met,” says Eurus, “During the Winter Massacres of Ragnalow.”

  “Good memory,” says Anderson, “Wouldn’t have thought you’d remember me.”

  “I am physically unable to forget,” says Eurus.

  “That’s about as shy as he gets. Enough romance, ladies, time to get to work,” Paskal interrupts.

  They walk over to Anderson’s desk and he takes the memory chip containing the case.

  “Let’s get a bit of privacy,” says Paskal.

  ---

  They walk by all the desks – still accompanied by the stares of the other officers - until they reach the far end of the room and enter a small conference room there. It contains a holodesk. A machine created for ease of presentations. When Anderson puts the data chip on it, it lights up and displays an interface in the air. Anderson expertly navigates it to find the folder containing photos and videos. He explains:

  “As you can see, there have been sightings of a small pack of howlers.”

  A small note in the corner of the screen has a typical image of a howler and a little box of text that reads:

  ‘Named by the sound they make, originally trained and bred to be scouting dogs for the miners. After the invention of selective mutation and cross-species insemination, some were mutated to unusable extremes. These howlers eventually ended up in the abandoned urban areas of Kor, Martis and Terram. Papülonis provides a surprisingly nourishing ecosystem for carnivores, with birds and small mammals, such as pets or the occasional missing child.’

  “Hmm. howlers don’t usually roam in such small packs,” Eurus says, “But how is putting them down a problem?”

  Anderson plays another piece of footage. This one shows several helpfully edited security clips of the howlers making their way through the tunnels and lower levels up to an indoor street on one of the primary levels of the city. One can easily tell it’s the lower levels because even on the security camera it looks unclean, unmaintained and the few people faintly visible there dress casual at best. Ghostly and scared, the people down there look pathetic to anyone they might cross paths with near the top.

  When the beasts arrive near the humans, they look back as if being aware of the risks of approaching a human. But one, in its desparation, decides to venture onwards and it almost immediately bites one of the vagrants there.

  Paskal says:

  “As you know, howlers don’t usually make their way into populated areas of the city and as you could see, they’re attacking civilians. Thing is, we’ve sent several patrols down there and they didn’t make it back and people are saying that something else is down there.”

  “I’ll check it out and I’ll be there in a couple of hours… send me the digits,” Eurus says.

  “Show you out?” Paskal says.

  “No need.”

  Even though the entire department present is hooked up to their computers, filling out reports, their eyes still often avert when they see Eurus walk by. Many don’t like Cells because of their extensive alterations saying they’re not even human.

  Before going to the pits below, Eurus goes to a Cell outpost on one of the lower levels in a mob family tower. Since it’s rush hour, many of the transit lines are congested, but Eurus flies past them easily on his Vulcan 5. The Cell outpost is located in the same hub as one of Papülonis’ biggest crime lords, Mirra Leone. Eurus leaves his statbike at a transport bay near the entrance to the hub floor he needs to go to.

  Cells, even when not in action, wear light protective gear (Eurus preferred a chestpiece of boiled leather from genetically designed goats, whose milk is used to boil their hides which gives the armor the ability to resist almost all kinds of damage), carry a sidearm, tower well above 2 metres and some are even capable of small scale electromagnetic manipulation, Eurus being the exception in this regard. Many are garnished by scars and Eurus is no exception (he also carries a nuclear-powered power-blade and a grappling hook). As soon as he removes his helmet, he is instantly recognised by every man, woman and child on the streets of the hub, because of his scars and reptilian eyes. They immediately stand aside to allow him to pass but not without hissing or hurling insults.

  The hub itself is a huge tower, going up for at least a mile and every floor including the one Eurus is on, contains at least 2000 apartments, coffee shops, local bars and pharmacies. Some contain malls, theaters and everything one would need to maintain their livelihood. Everyone and everything on every corner is neon and leather, with this being a rougher neighborhood.

  He starts walking towards his destination that should be in a couple of hundred meters. The busiest street, called Swig Street for the many places one might have a swig, is low altitude enough to have gang members walking around during working and leisure hours, openly carrying arms. The streets are not without the occasional crack-or-worse-whore, offering themselves - anything for a walk in the clouds. Sometimes they attempt to provoke a Cell or officer because the government always has a few wads of cash lying around to pay for damages or super-soldier brutality. Eurus finds no such attempts there though.

  Yes, the lower the levels get, the more colorful the crowd, but even amongst them, a Cell Circuit is easily recognizable. Some gangsters spit as he walks by and the attitude towards him is somewhat understandable. After all, not many can afford him and his brethren are at times sent to these very same neighborhoods to gather the peace when the police or the politicians can’t be bothered to fight the gangs there. Just when the local crime lord seems to have the upper hand the Imperial government has the Cell trick up their sleeve to squash any pesky idiot who thinks they might beat the status quo.

  Eurus arrives at his outpost. Seemingly a regular piece of concrete wall, it has a hidden microphone for vocal recognition.

  “Eurus, Cell of Caste Erebus,” he says.

  A light emits from the wall and then an almost static, fax-like noise after which a feminine voice says:

  “Welcome, Eurus of Caste Erebus” hears only the Cell.

  The concrete wall drops into the ground and a hallway is revealed, which Eurus enters. This happens in full view of every person on the streets. People understand their cities are filled with hidden armories of godlike weaponry and armors capable of brushing off anything up to a direct hit from a tank. Any effort to break into such a place would be futile however because of the swift hammer of justice which would immediately flatten them as a result.

  At the end of the hallway there’s a retinal scanner next to a door. It’s got a rubber edge where the user is supposed to press their eye. Eurus does so while holding his hand against the wall next to it. Unbeknownst to any outsider but a Cell the eye scanner doesn’t work without doing so, because that spot also hides a palm scanner.

  Like clockwork, the door hisses and beeps, a few clanks from its locks undoing themselves and it quickly unlocks. Eurus enters a room as clean as an OR at a hospital. Seemingly it contains nothing but panel walls but as he crosses the threshold, the room mechanically transforms into an armory of gadgets, weapons and armor.

  Eurus takes a mechanical harness from a stand on the wall and puts it on the table in the middle of the room to adjust it to his needs. Essentially this harness allows him to quickly holster or unholster a weapon strapped to it.

  He grabs the M930 Hound adaptive grenade launcher, no bigger than a thermos in its compact form, and straps it to his harness, holstering it such that it is easy to access from his back. Next he finds the 50. cal Cell bullrifle, currently the size of a few red bricks and adds it as well. It’s one of the oldest weapons in the Cell arsenal. Eurus himself used it during the Machine Revolt. It reminds him of the first time he was deployed to battle in a Cell Artillery Deep Strike. He was shot out of a cannon in a shell to the middle of a bloodbath where a few squads of human soldiers were on the brink of defeat. From their perspective, a giant killing machine burst through the ground and scrapped every robot approaching on them with lightning speed. It didn’t talk, it didn’t look at them and every action was instant.

  He then takes several kilograms of ammo which he holsters onto his harness as well, each having a pouch or a bandolier-like belt feeding it into whatever gun he might use.

  He puts it on and adjusts it so it perfectly aligned with his back and adheres perfectly to his motions.

  Last but not least he puts on Cell Boost Boots. These use energy stored and conducted by his nanofiber muscles to make him jump several dozen meters without any effort.