The morning felt colder than usual. Despite all the bodies mingling about, Grey just couldn’t shake the chill. Today was the day, Domina couldn`t distract the Cartel any longer. They were on their way, to every rattery, to collect their taxes. Domina had managed to buy them just enough time to prepare. Each farm stood guarded by a handful of muscle reinforced by Grey`s prosthetics. They stood ready, their orders clear, to turn the Cartel back no matter what.

  Despite Max`s insistence, Grey made sure she was present at Mika`s farm. Grey might have been able to keep her from the fighting but she couldn`t keep her from her work. A stern look made sure Mika knew not to interfere in whatever happened today. Grey on the other hand refused to be so careful, she needed to be here, to see it all through. Come what may.

  The Cartel member who showed up was not what she expected. A baby faced youngster in an ill-fitting suit, couldn`t have been older than seventeen. He strolled down the hill confident, sure of himself, just a feint hint of nervousness. Just a young pup, strutting his stuff, looking to make someone proud. Definitely not what she was expecting.

  Grey stepped forward to meet him as he got closer, her men giving her some space.

  “Morning.”, Grey opened, taking a guarded posture.

  “Good morning ma`am, are you the manager of this farm?”, he replied pleasantly.

  “You could say that.”, Grey responded, standing firm, refusing to fall for the nice guy act.

  “Wonderful, I have been assigned to handle the organisation of your dues. As I understand it, your given rate is sixty percent. Half in goods and half in revenue.”, he decred, matter of fact.

  The nice guy act was starting to rub her the wrong way.

  “Ow I`m terribly sorry to inform you but this farm is exempt from paying dues.”, Grey informed him with a wry smile.

  He looked at her puzzled and scratched what little chin hair he had.

  “I`m sorry, did you say you are exempt?”, he asked, hoping he heard wrong.

  “You heard me.”, Grey confirmed smugly.

  “I`m sorry, but that doesn`t sound right. Laws always been; you use our oil you pay our dues. Same as everyone else. Ma`am.”, the boy attempted to correct her.

  Grey was starting to think the nice guy act wasn’t an act.

  “This farm doesn’t make use of Cartel oil. Therefore we do not owe you any dues. As per the w.”, Grey replied, feeling this confrontation was becoming a conversation.

  “That`s impossible.”, he muttered in disbelief. “The Cartel is the sole supplier of oil in the Undercity. How could-“, Grey cut him off.

  “We found an alternative. Don`t believe me? Check our mps, you will find the oil is different to yours.”, Grey revealed to her hidden delight.

  “I… I don`t know what to say to that.”, he responded honestly.

  Grey was certain now, this was no act, the kid must be new. He hasn`t yet been corrupted by the Cartel, he was still innocent. A little na?ve maybe, it made Grey sympathetic towards the boy.

  “Look, it`s real simple. The farms are going independent, all of them. Take that back as a message to your boss. Once you done that, it`s on them and you can start looking for a better job.”, Grey suggested, to the ds benefit.

  He walked away dejected and confused.

  [---]

  Grey knew they would be back in force and back they were. What she didn`t expect was to see the young pup trailing them with a bck eye and a bloody nose.

  They came down the hill huffing and puffing, a sweaty middle aged man, slightly overweight. And a handful of Enforcers, rough and looking ready for a scrap. This was more like the Cartel she was familiar with.

  She met them half way, her own guards moving with her this time.

  “Who do you think you are?”, excimed the sweaty man. “Let me tell you who you are, you’re dirt, dust. Unless you get to knowing your pce and give us what is owed, before we decide to just take it.”

  “We don`t owe you anything.” Grey spat back defiantly.

  The sweaty man looked Grey over then the guards she had standing with her.

  “You think you scare me? You think you scare my ds?”, he asked brutishly.

  “I think, you and your ds aren`t used to people fighting back. I think, it would be in your best interest to walk away. Before you get hurt.”, Grey insisted, channelling necromantic energy into her hands ready to go.

  To Grey`s surprise the sweaty man turned away in a huff and took his Enforcers with him. All bark and no bite she thought to herself.

  She took a deep breath and turned back to the farm, see Mika staring back at her both concerned and amazed.

  Grey smiled back at her. This time they avoided violence. This time.

  [---]

  They were lucky, the farms were able to decre their independence with little resistance. The Cartel were taken by surprise but that could only happen once. The next time they would come with a pn, grey needed one of her own.

  They had the farms, but all that ground to cover spread them thin. They would have to push deeper into the Undercity faster than she was comfortable with. The Lower Ring wasn`t small but it was less ground than the farms. The consensus was that the Cartel would strike at the Markets next, make a show of force. They needed to do the same.

  The lower markets were a buzz with activity. Money changed hands for goods and services. Food was delivered, cooked and served. The flow of commerce was virulent, indiscriminate, as it should be. All were benefitting, all but the Cartel.

  The Enforcers made themselves known, muscling their way into the crowd with reckless abandon. They spread out to the various stalls shaking down the tradesman for their taxes, pressing to get a little extra to make a point. Some of the merchants tried to resist the Enforcers coercions but it was difficult when the person you were talking to was ready to crack your skull.

  One of the cooks, sweaty and covered in grease, saw fit to give an Enforcer some lip. He responded with his fist. It failed to connect, a skeletal hand clutched around his wrist. He recoiled in disgust.

  The guard had arrived, important to note they had started referring to themselves as the Grey Guard. To her displeasure.

  They came in scattered amongst the crowd and herded the Enforcers together. Again their orders were clear, turn the Cartel back. The Enforcers gathered up, ready to meet resistance with violence. The Grey Guard had them matched, this was to be expected.

  What they didn`t expect, was the crowd of people around them. The people of the lower ring had had a taste of freedom and they weren`t ready to give it up. They had gotten used to no longer feeling the squeeze of the Cartel. They could breathe easy, see clearly and read the writing on the wall. All they needed to do now was speak up.

  The Enforcers stood off with the Grey Guard, both sides waiting for the other to make the first move.

  A cy bowl came flying out of the crowd striking an Enforcer in the head. Time stood still as nobody knew how to react. Another improvised projectile came flying from somewhere else in the crowd but missed its mark.

  ‘We don’t want you here’, ‘You need to leave’, ‘You aren`t welcome here’. The people had found their voices and one by one they melted together into an inferno. Another piece of cy crockery struck an Enforcer in the head, then another and another. The crowd screamed and shouted and through whatever they had handy at the Cartel`s muscle. They had had enough, there was no going back to the way things were before.

  The Enforcers had no choice but to leave, least they get burnt by the burning hatred of the people. The fled back into the middle ring, tails between their legs.

  [---]

  Capitalising on their success in the lower markets; the Grey Guard pushed the Cartel back to the border of the middle ring. There they held the line while Grey and the others setup lines of oil distribution. It wasn`t hard work, there were always people looking for work and they had all the supply they needed. It just took time.

  The Cartel were slow to respond this time. Grey theorised they were waiting for the lights to burn out. They just couldn`t fathom an alternative source of oil existed.

  Two days went by and the Cartel began to realise the alternative source was no joke. They needed to push back fast or risk losing the lower ring for good.

  Grey and Max were at the border of the lower and middle rings, where the dirt road met cobble streets. She was checking in on the Grey Guard stationed all along the border, making sure everyone was okay. She felt indebted to every single one of them that put their life on the line for her and the Undercity. The very least she could do was make sure they were doing well.

  Max was catching up with some of the Grey Guard, checking their prosthetics for her. She looked off into the distance of the middle ring and ran scenarios in her head. Their next step would be to move in to the middle ring. But that`s where the Cartels Enforcers rested their heads. She wondered who would make the first move, her question was answered.

  A group of Enforcers began amassing among the cobble streets and started moving towards Grey and them. It felt disorganised, maybe just a group tired of waiting. Regardless, they seemed to be looking for trouble.

  She gestured for Max and he in turn called to the Grey Guard.

  “Look lively everyone. Troubles heading our way and it don`t look in a talking mood.”, he spoke out, moving in front of Grey protectively.

  Grey examined the approaching mob; faces full of bitter resentment, hands wrapped tight around rusted pipes and chipped knives.

  She had refused to outfit the Grey Guard with weapons hesitant to emuting the Cartel. Now she was regretting the decision fearful for the lives of her people. How fortunate that her prosthetic limbs functioned as weapons of their own.

  The Enforcers met with the Grey Guard and the two parties stared each other down in the street.

  “We have had it up to here with you lot!”, one of the Enforcers decred. “Either you shove off now or me and my boys are going to paint these streets with your guts.”

  Max flexed his skeletal arm threateningly, “We ain`t going anywhere friend. Change has come to this city and it won`t be stopped. Certainly not by the likes of you.”

  The Enforcer gred at Max with murderous intent and Grey could see something in the man`s mind snap. He lunged out with knife in hand and swung wildly at Max. The rest of the Enforcers charged in after their leader and the street erupted into a violent skirmish.

  Grey was knocked over by the charge and fought to stand. All around her scenes of violence pyed out. Knives pierced skin and sliced through muscle with reckless abandon. Skeletal appendages crushed bone and ripped through flesh with ferocity. Pipes split skulls and shattered bones still within flesh.

  “Protect Grey!”, yelled out Max from somewhere amongst the carnage.

  ‘Protect yourselves’, Grey thought to herself more concerned for their safety than her own.

  A Grey Guard crashed to the ground in front of Grey, a knife having sliced him across the throat. He clung at the wound with his hand of flesh the other of bone, convulsing as he bled out.

  Grey csped her hands over his and tried to channel her energy to heal his wound. It was too te, he had already bled out and was gone from the world.

  Something from behind struck her in the back, the impact sending her rolling across the ground. She nded with her face to the sky of the Undercity and only had a moment before her view was filled with the twisted face of an Enforcer.

  He wrung his hands around her neck and began to choke her. Grey gasped for air and struggled to think in the hands of her assaint. She resolved herself to act instead; she grasped his hands and reached into his very soul. She grabbed it with the same force he had grabbed her and squeezed it quickly out of his body and into hers. He gasped out in shock and his hands went limp his strength fading.

  Grey took a deep grateful breath as she threw the dead man off of her, her recovery time shortened by his very soul. She rose to her feet the fighting having died down. She looked around her and saw a few remaining Enforcers flee for their lives.

  Triumphant the Grey Guard yelled at them, too tired to chase them down. Grey looked down at those that had fallen in the melee. Both Enforcers and Grey Guard y dead or dying. One of them, an Enforcer, caught Grey`s eye as he bled out from a gash in his side.

  She threw herself upon him and pressed her hands against his wound.

  “Easy now, it`s going to be okay. Let me help you.”, she pleaded.

  He resisted her intervention fearful she was going to finish him off. Too weak to fight her off he could not help but let her hands rest upon him.

  Grey channelled the life force she had stolen from the man prior and spread it through the injured man`s body.

  Max wondered over and grabbed her by the shoulder, “What are you doing?”

  “I`m trying to save him.”, she blurted out, regaining her focus to let her magic stitch his wound shut.

  “Save him? He is our enemy! He attacked us, tried to kill us! They deserve no mercy from you or any of us.”, Max argued, a cut across his cheek bleeding and dripping onto the floor.

  “He is no longer our enemy.”, Grey decred, removing her hands from his scarred and healed wound.

  The boy looked up at her in disbelief and checked his healed wound.

  Grey stood up fighting the fatigue that had grabbed hold of her following the man`s healing. She reached out and presented a hand, a second chance.

  “He is one of us now, a citizen of the Undercity. Isn`t that right?”, she asked the man, helping him up off the ground.

  “Yes.”, he replied, hesitant and still in shock. He looked around at the aftermath of the violence he had helped instigate. He looked at the face of the girl who despite everything had saved his life. “I`m sorry.”, he muttered shamefully.

  “Go back, seek out your fellow Enforcers. Tell them this doesn`t have to happen. We don`t need the Cartel and neither do you. You have a choice, you all do. Remember that. You can stand with the Cartel, people who are ready to let you die for nothing, or you can stand with us and live for a better tomorrow.”, spoke Grey passionately.

  The man nodded his head and stumbled past Grey looking back one st time in disbelief.

  Grey turned to Max and met his angered gaze with one of compassion.

  “Killing the Cartel won`t make us any better than them. We need to get them to disband.”, Grey expined.

  “Disband? What makes you think they would be open to disbanding? This is a war now Grey. You tried negotiating with them and it failed. They want to fight so we should oblige their want for violence.”, Max argued.

  “This is not a war, not yet. A war wouldn`t just destroy the Cartel, it would destroy us as well. We need to prevent a war, we need to prevent unnecessary deaths.”, Grey replied.

  “And just how do you propose we do that? How do we prevent blood shed when they come charging at us with such hate?”, Max yelled, gesturing at the violence around them.

  “We have shown the people that they don`t need the Cartel. We have shown the Cartel that we don`t need them. The Cartel is holding itself together through violence and sheer will. If we can prevent the violence then all we have left to do is erode their will. Look around Max, the Undercity is becoming a better pce. Soon the members of the Cartel will see that too. Once they do they will start to question why they are fighting.”, Grey pleaded, taking Max`s hands and looking him in the eye.

  “I don`t know.”, Max contempted.

  “You don`t need to know, you just need to trust me. I`m not na?ve, I know the Cartel wants our blood. But we can`t let ourselves fall to their level, we need to be different, better. Every Enforcer we get to walk away from the Cartel is one less person holding a knife pointed at us. So we consolidate, we repel any advances with mercy and let doubt set in their ranks. Then we make our move. Agreed?”, Grey proposed.

  “Agreed”, Max responded.