“Hahaha! How rude! And off-theme as well!”

  Despite his complaints, the dungeon intelligence didn’t seem at all upset. It gave us all a sly grin from the screen of the mobile phone.

  “Tell me that letting you talk isn’t the only use for this damned thing,” I said, “Or I’m throwing it out.”

  “Of course it has other uses!” it declared. “It has a mapping function as you guessed, and it can also keep track of your status!”

  “Status?” I asked. I had a good guess of what that was, but better to ask.

  “How each of the various factions feel about you,” the intelligence explained. “Progressing your status with as many factions as possible is the key to success!”

  I grunted and took the phone. A quick swipe of my finger banished the video call to a small box on the screen, which was almost what I wanted. The rest of the apps were revealed at least. There were the maps and status icons as it had said. There was also a photos app. And a phone function, but the only contact was…

  “Axel?” I asked.

  “That’s me!” the intell—Axel said. “You can call me any time you get stuck. You can call others too, but you have to add their contact.”

  “Where are you getting these details from?” I demanded. “The phones, the cyberpunk… it’s too similar for you to have made them up… where did you get this from?”

  “Ah, that is the question, isn’t it?” Axel said slyly. “From the gods? From some unclaimed memories, lying around?”

  He leered at me. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  I blinked. “You know about that?”

  “I know a lot of things! But exactly what is the question, isn’t it?” Axel giggled.

  “It is, as long as you keep failing to give a straight answer,” I grumbled. Axel just grinned.

  “Ho ho!” it said. “Have we found a reward that will keep you motivated? I do hate it when my guests are bored.”

  “Maybe if you didn’t serve them a cheap knockoff of a failed computer game,” I replied. “With all the time and mana you’ve had, couldn’t you have come up with something original?”

  Axel’s grin didn’t waver. Not that it needs to, I reminded myself. It’s just a projection on a screen. There’s no reason for it to make involuntary changes.

  “I have, in the past,” Axel said. “I created such things of wonder and beauty that your soul would cry out for release… but there just isn’t a market for that.”

  “A market?” I asked. “I really doubt that the elves are into trashy urban dystopias. And it’s not like they pay you anything for them anyway.”

  “Oh no, no, no,” Axel said. “I mean: yes. You’re right, the elves aren’t exactly eager customers. My audience, my market; it comes from the other direction.”

  It took me a moment to make the connection. “You mean the demons,” I said flatly. “You’re trading with them.”

  Felicia gasped and the others made exclamations of surprise, but Axel ignored them.

  “Hmm. Perhaps that’s the word. Things come in, things go out. Does that make it trade, or is there something more?” Axel looked at me slyly.

  “That is another question, so I assume you won’t answer it,” I said sourly.

  “Yes, I definitely smell some motivation there,” Axel said gleefully. “Three questions! Should you complete this level I shall answer them fully and completely.”

  He winked at me. “Three questions should be enough that you get one good answer. Do try not to waste them on ‘Are you serious?’ or ‘Is that all right?’. There won’t be any take-backs.”

  “And how do we complete the level?” I asked.

  “You have to collect enough corporate tokens to force a citywide vote on opening the Tower,” Axel replied, giving me a straight answer for once.

  “Corporate tokens? Is that the money on these things?”

  “Oh no,” Axel said. “Each corporation has one token that can be awarded by the CEO.”

  “So we have to do missions to gain status points just to meet with him,” I said. “And then more missions to get the actual token.”

  “Or you could just fight your way up and kill him!” Axel said cheerfully. “However you want to play it! Just be careful, those guns get a lot more deadly as the quality goes up.”

  Borys grunted. “How do we get missions?” he asked.

  “There are lots of ways! You can hang out in bars, you can mug the right people. Some stores will have options… So many ways. Start with your map!”

  Then his image winked out.

  “Anyone want to call him back?” I asked.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “I’m good,” Borys declared. “Let’s take a look at the map.”

  We all looked, huddled around the glowing screen. At least until the natives realised that they couldn’t read the writing.

  “That seems a little unfair,” Felicia said.

  “If you really wanted to, you could spend a point to learn the language,” I pointed out. “But I bet he was expecting Chosen to come down here.”

  “What about the elves?” Cloridan asked.

  “For all we know, it could be a language they speak,” I said. “It doesn’t look like any Earth language I’m familiar with.”

  “No,” Borys agreed. “And the elves might not have bothered with this game. Their levels might be high enough to just cut through whatever obstacles Axel has put in place.”

  “Should we try doing that?” Felicia asked.

  “Oh, we’re going to cheat as much as possible,” I assured her. “Just as soon as we find out how.”

  “We should start with a bar,” Borys said. “There’s one three blocks that way.”

  “Now that is a suggestion I can agree with!” Cloridan said eagerly.

  “I doubt the booze in here is any good, at least not in this low-end section,” I said. “And I don’t think that Borys has drinks in mind.”

  “Weapons at the door,” the mook said. “No fighting inside.”

  I raised an eyebrow and stepped forward. I didn’t have any weapons visible, and spatial storage didn’t seem to count. I was allowed past. Kyles's armour didn’t cause any concern, and with that out there was room in his storage for his and Felicia’s weapons. Borys had spatial storage as well.

  Cloridan got past by handing over two of his obvious daggers. That left at least eight still on him by my count, but the bouncer didn’t seem to notice.

  “That was easy,” Borys said. “If everyone in here is unarmed, this will be even easier.”

  I could tell that it wasn’t going to be that easy as soon as we walked in. All the gangers still had the Armed property. I guess the guy at the door was just to sort out the chumps.

  “How do you want to do this?” I asked, looking around the room. There were about twenty people scattered around in the gloom. Some of them were looking at us, some of them were drinking. They were mostly gangers, but there were some prostitutes working the crowd.

  “The numbers are the main problem,” Borys said. “Perhaps we could get some privacy?”

  “Gotcha. We can start over there, then,” I said, pointing.

  They were, I reminded myself, monsters. They may look and act like semi-civilised thugs who had thoughts and feelings, but they were just there to be killed. I cast [Privacy].

  “Hey! What happened?” three voices said in unison. We didn’t bother answering. Borys and Kyles swords appeared, and the killing began.

  Afterwards, we started gathering up the loot and I went over the numbers.

  “Kyle didn’t have any trouble hitting them, but I couldn’t unless I blinded them,” I reported. “That puts their defences somewhere between 180 and 200.”

  “There were a couple that even Cloridan couldn’t hit,” Kyle said. “Borys didn’t have any trouble, but…”

  “That’s what [Blind] is for,” I said. “Those guys were the leaders, with thirteen Threat. Given how hard they were to hit, they must have had better skills too. I figure that the Mooks had an Ability of six and a Skill of three. The bosses had one more Skill at least.”

  “I presume this is the bottom tier of what we will be facing,” Borys said thoughtfully. “If their skills increase as their Threat does, the total will ramp up quickly.”

  “We might need to rely on the guns as an equaliser,” I said. “Fortunately they didn’t get a chance to fire them in here.”

  “More like a result of our tactics,” Borys said. “Getting ambushed by thugs with better versions of these… It’s worrying.”

  We all agreed soberly and started collecting our loot. There were only two guns that were of Mediocre quality, sixteen that were Poor. Twenty-two phones and twenty-six credsticks, all of Poor quality. We siphoned off the creds to five sticks, leaving each of us with about a thousand creds each.

  “Now what?” Cloridan asked. He had sampled the drinks and was making a sour face.

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Borys said, staring at the wall of bottles behind him. “It’s not worth anything to us, but someone might pay good creds for all that.

  “No, I don’t want any of that shit,” the mook behind the plastic wall said scornfully. “Does it say Finn’s Bar on the door?”

  “No, it says Finn’s Used Goods,” Borys admitted. “Are you saying we’d have to drink this before you’d buy it?”

  “Don’t try to make me sick. You got goods to sell?”

  “Sure,” Borys said and pulled a pair of the Poor pistols out of his sack. Finn sneered.

  “One hundred, each.”

  “You’re selling these for five,” I said mildly.

  “Not these, I ain’t. These, I gotta clean up and recharge, make sure there isn’t any biological evidence left on them from whoever you took them from. One hundred, take it or leave it.”

  “Take it, I guess,” Borys said. “There’s more where that came from.” He held up his sack.

  Finn cursed. “Don’t just dump them on the counter, lay ‘em out proper.”

  Borys shrugged and complied, laying the guns out neatly. He added the one we picked up in the alley for a total of seventeen guns. Finn nodded briskly.

  “Seventeen-hundred it is.” He held out his credstick, giving another sneer when he saw the quality of Borys’s.

  “Do you sell a better one?” Borys asked.

  “I can shit a better one,” Finn said. He slapped two down on the counter.

  “One grand, ten grand,” he said, pointing at each one in turn.

  “A thousand creds just to stop losing our money each day?” I asked.

  “Gotta spend money to make money,” Finn said.

  “We’ll take one. How much will you give us for our old ones?”

  “They have bins of those things for free at the banks,” Finn said. “Just toss ‘em in the garbage.”

  Borys made an annoyed sound. “We’ve got phones as well, do you take them?”

  “Sure. Crappy ones like the guns? Five hundred each.”

  “That’s not bad,” Borys said, surprised.

  “Not much difference between the grades of phone,” Finn explained. “Mostly, it’s a status thing.”

  “Eighteen of them, then,” Borys said, starting to set them out on the counter.

  “Gotta admire your work ethic,” Finn murmured. “You folks interested in buying at all?”

  “I’ve got some questions,” I said. “First, is that shelf really used cyberware?”

  “It’s properly cleaned, don’t worry. There’s a lot of chop shops that won’t deal with used hardware, but I can direct you to a clinic that does mostly good work.”

  “What is it, exactly?” Kyle asked. “I see some pieces there that look like armour?”

  “Those arms aren’t hollow,” I said. “You need to chop your arm off to use them— leave it to the monsters.”

  “Oh,” Kyle said, working it out. “Then second-hand means…” he trailed off, looking distressed.

  “Hey,” Finn said. “I don’t think you lot are in a position to criticise my other suppliers.”

  “Fair enough,” I admitted. “What are the trays labelled with corporation names for?”

  “Corp IDs,” Finn told me, glancing over at them. “Corporates are always losing them, and they don’t get cancelled until the end of the month.”

  “They let you get into buildings?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Not the higher levels, you understand. The likes of those don’t show up on the street to get mugged. But they’ll get you in the door, no problem.

  “Interesting,” I said.

  Finn grinned. “If you’re interested in sneaking into corps, I know some people that might have a job for you.”

  “Do tell,” I said.