To the faithful and loyal, Gyeo was the crown jewel of Incheo, a mecca of worship and a bulwark against darkness. It was here that the Imperium began its civilization and enlightenment of this world to uplift the savages from the oppression of statelessness and unbelief, here that they made hills and mountains out of metal rather than dirt and stone, and though its starport lay dormant now, it would one day be the locus that connected the world to the greater Imperium.

  One billion people lived in this hive city, considered a budding number for facilities of this kind according to what records remained of the time before the calamity. The spires, impressive mountains of metal though they were, housed only a hundred million. The spires had two purposes: to be the center of power from which Incheo’s leaders guided the world, and to produce the rank and file who would enforce the central government’s will. The bureaucrats that became regional and city leaders, the officers that lead the Incheo defense force, the clergy that preached across the continent, and the sisterhood of the Adepta Sororitas, all hailed from these spires. Whether they were Gyeo natives or brought in from other regions, they left the spires with unshakable loyalty and purpose in duty.

  The rest were born and raised in the vast hills of plascrete hab zones. Here people raised their children, attended church, labored in factorums, celebrated holidays, drank Amasec more than water, and saluted the enforcers and soldiers. The laud hailers on every corner and in every device ensured the fullness of faith demanded of every citizen in Gyeo. They could be proud of their part in His grand design as they saw the fruit of their labor built up around them and marching through the streets. When disasters such as an Epidemic or Witch Curse decimated the rest of the continent, it was the surplus of Gyeo that emigrated to fill the gaps with loyal citizens.

  That was how it was for the places sunlight had not forgotten.

  Where sunlight could never reach, where recycled air was all that circulated, and where clean water was worth more than gold, the story was different.

  The underhive were the habzones that ended up so buried by the development of the city that they are more considered part of the sewer system than the urban area. Whatever original planning went into the design of this layer was bulldozed over as needed to build the upper levels. Delicate and crucial insulation systems, wirings, and pipings were severed from the housing they were connected to make way for the supports needed to hold up the summits of the habzones hills. Whole neighborhoods were stuffed with rockrete to secure a base for the mountainous spires. Industrial waste was dumped here to the contamination of what little water the inhabitants had. Here the people prayed for deliverance from their lot in life, their salvation being employment to serve in the upperhive in roles unfit for the healthy and educated, their rapture relying upon the whims of their betters.

  This was where Yoon Si-nae had been plucked from. She was raised by the Underhive to claw each tomorrow from the cold and warm hands of others. She had been ‘adopted’ by one of the many aspiring gangs, which meant they gave her food and ammo as long as she stuck to killing their rivals. When the battle sisters swept through to clean up the scum, she was the diamond in the rough that the Sister Superior wrenched from the filth, washed clean with ecclesiarical teachings, and inducted into the Order of the Righteous Symphony as a novitiate. She spent years in training within the convent-spire, only brought out for expeditions that put her training to the test.

  Her final test before she could become a battle sister brought her back to the Underhive. Here they were to spend a month helping the enforcers bring order to the lowest levels of the hive. The nominal enforcers native to the underhive were thoroughly corrupt so conducting training missions here was how the spires kept control. It didn’t matter how many bribes the enforcers took, or if they even pointed to a target worthy of the military’s time, the point was to remind the rats who was in charge before they got any funny ideas. While gangers were not as dangerous as the witch beasts hunted in the wilds, the labrinythe of the underhive was a more hostile and disorienting environment than forests or mountains. Her sister novitiates had first wet their blades against convicts and blasphemers brought into the convent in bondage, and felled witch beasts on the outskirts of misty mountain villages in Namche, but this would be their first time fighting an enemy that could deceive and shootback.

  The novitiate attire was flexsteel plate wrapped in the yellow cloth of the order. Practically flak armor, far more sturdy than anything that could be scrounged together by gangers, and a step above the enforcers, but it was no ceramite. Their autopistols and knives were more reliable versions of the stubbers and rusty shanks that Yoon Si-nae grew up with. Still, there was no telling if a beggar may actually be an informant or when an amped up ganger would eat a full riff of bullets without flinching and punch through steel even if they had to splinter their arm to do it. Conversing and fighting with humans was a different ball game from hunting beasts or reciting scripture.

  The novitiates were under the command of a Sister Superior who was adorned in full power armor and wielded a bolt pistol in one hand and a burner in the other. This Superior was the very same who offered the grace that uplifted Yoon Si-nae from squalor to use her talent for death dealing in His name. She was the oddball of the order who turned down promotion to serve in more humble roles and cared to learn the differences between the kinds of scum or beasts she was sent to wipe out. She didn’t mind Yoon Si-nae sleeping through sermons as long as she blew away the other novitiates in marksmanship and brawling. This eccentricity was tolerated for the Superior was apparently the spitting image of Saint Arabella. Apparently ‘Saint Arabella’ could tear through dozens of crazed killers without a single grimace cracking her stone expression before she commanded you to join or die.

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  Yoon Si-nae would never have been ‘accepted’ into the sororitas otherwise, as still the hoity-toity highborn girlies and spirerite mistresses made plain their revulsion to the underhive rat, totally unlike the calm composure of Arabella. Trying to keep up in studies was like eating seaweed soup but her superior dueling meant they could only express their hostility in gossip, sabotage, and exclusion. Their husbands came to the gutter to wet their willies in ways their wives could not, an open secret they pretended to tolerate while venting abuse on the servants; rumors of this sort seemed to be a favorite of them to pass along, as evidenced by the pious pastors who came to Yoon expecting a tryst. She declined them but passed along recommendations of reputable establishments for noblemen with an itch to scratch or soldiers that wanted to make the most of their leave.

  They also fudged numbers in scrumball. You need to be a real grox-fracker to cheat at scrumball.

  Today, coming to the last week now, they would bust an apartment complex that was converted into an obscura den. Amesac in various forms was the lingua franca of Incheo, enjoyed by all such that it made lobsters and crabs of the rich and poor; meanwhile, a puff of obscura to sleep the pain away was akin to selling one eye to the fly god, His Throne forbid you get a hit of anything harder. Something so routine as junkie busting was not what caught the Superior’s attention. It was the vandalization of laud hailers, a sacriligeous affront on this world’s connection to the God-Emperor, that saw both the novitiates and the enforces mobilized on before they could open their eyes and ears. Doing that brought them up the ladder from ‘hoodlum’ to ‘heretic’ which brought the punishment up from ‘bone breaking’ to ‘execution with discretion’.

  The enforcers would remain outside to cover all openings from those who tried to escape or those who tried to reinforce. Clearing the den was the novitiates’ charge.

  It was strange enough that there were no gangers as guards, stranger still when they opened the doors and still encountered no resistance. All they found was a dark, smokey den that reeked of sweat and excrement. The lumens were dimmed from disrepair which left only candles for light. The junkies were strewn about floors and walkways on piles of pillows, and in beds of the studios that may have once been living spaces. They were not dead or overdosing, but their catatonia made them easy for the enforcers to cuff and collar all the same. Whatever pleasant dreams they were having, they would wake up to a lot more than a bad hangover and have more to regret than a missed shift. The laws are clear about what fate awaits the wicked: penance by service unto death or execution by fire. Everyone gets so used to paying off the enforcers one way or another that they forget the sisters distribute those punishments without mercy, restraint, or reason. Fighting back would not get them much further than it did the gangs, though if they knew the extent of what was coming to them, they would surely use what lucidity they had to choose a swift death in battle.

  The Superior maglocked her weapons as there was no need to spray gore or burn flesh. She was glued to a wall while everyone else was carrying bodies out. She ran her fingers around the beads of her chaplet aquila. Idle hands are the tools of heresy, she would say, and just as song filled the mind, those beads filled her hands. Yoon Si-nae slacked off to have a look at what had the Superior so enraptured.

  “Do you hear it?” asked the Superior.

  “The silence is deafening, my lady,” Yoon Si-nae feigned etiquette. She had long tuned out the incessant scratch the spirerites called hymns. None of the cities besides Gyeo go this hard with it, and, as far as she knew, they have not started worshipping syphilis. When she once blurted that observation in a moment of laxity, her ‘sisters’ retorted that the lack of faith was why the north was plagued by Sinui and the south was harried by witchbeasts. Yoon Si-nae thought it was because of the geography that prevented any defense in depth from being built in the northern province around Sinui Mountains, and the southeast having similar proximity to the Witch’s Isle, but what would an underhive rat know?

  “Some may tire of their eternal reminders and vandalize a hailer here or there. Some may take their medication into their own hands to ease their aching. But this den was organized and abandoned. It was meant to be found to send a message of heresy without fear.”

  “Heresy? So we really think it's the fly god?”

  “There are more devils than the fly god, this one far more insidious,” said the Superior.

  The wall they looked at was torn up to resemble a soulless smile. The gangs usually marked their territory with spray paint or blood, so whoever, whatever, did this tag felt like being special.

  “Does the difference matter? asked Yoon Si-nae, genuinely for once, “We pray away taint and blow away heretics no matter their ritual.”

  “The devils make different demands and bestow different mutations. We must know our enemy to fight them lest we be caught unaware.”

  “I think the scholars would disagree, given that they didn’t teach us anything beyond ‘if it’s green, it’s unclean’.”

  “Damnation has many names and lays many paths. The scholars taught what was pertinent about the enemy we were likely to face. Besides, you never pay attention in class.”

  “I learned that enough fire would solve any problem regardless.”

  “Not all, Sister. Not all.”

  “My ladies,” an enforcer respectfully called attention, “you must come see this.”

  The enforcer led them out of the obscura den down a particularly dilapidated hallway. The laud hailers were busted and the walls were rent with more smiles. They stopped at a hole that opened into a dark, wet, rockrete tunnel. The Superior noticed the blood drain from the novitiate.

  “Is this of great concern?” asked the Superior.

  “That, that-that’s The Bad Zone that is,” stammered Yoon Si-nae, “you don’t go in, you don’t come out. Nothing comes out from there, nothing should come out from there.”

  “That does sound concerning,” said the Superior. This was the first time Yoon Si-nae ever showed fear. Whatever had left its mark intended to lead them here. A trap? Of course, but the besmirchment of this holy city could not be denied or ignored. If attention is what they wanted, then attention they have found and, soon, would regret.