ㅤ

Mission No. 61

Zoness
District 13 Sewers

"The Hidden City"

ㅤ⦼ㅤ

Falco hit the ground hard. His knees immediately buckled, and he collapsed to the wet cement floor. His bones reverberated from the impact, and the aching in his joints intensified.

At first he saw only blackness—blackness, and a glowing fuzz that clouded his vision. He felt dizzy. All he could manage for the present was to lay in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the ladder, a trickle of cool sewage flowing around him and dampening his clothes. He just needed a moment to catch his breath and let the pain subside. That was all…

He didn't know how much time passed while he lay there—only that it was too long. He needed to get moving if he was going to save Katt.

Groaning, he sat up and scooted over to lean against the tunnel wall. With the manhole cover replaced, the loud emergency sirens no longer assaulted his ears. That was a relief. For a moment he listened, and other sounds began to reach his ears: a faint drip, drip, drip, somewhere down the passage; the trickle of water moving through the bottom of the tunnel; and even the skittering of insects and other creatures inhabiting the sewers.

When he'd rested as long he dared, Falco grunted and struggled into a standing position, bracing himself against the wet, grime-covered wall. He now had to make a guess: did the kidnapper take Katt left, or right down the tunnel? It was a 50-50 chance, but one he wasn't willing to take blindly.

He needed more of the KLA.

Falco patted down his clothes, searching through them for any pills he might have on hand. He checked the pockets in his shirt, jacket, and pants till he found a small handful of the stuff. He stared at the blue and red pills in his palm; it almost looked like they glowed in the dark.

It was a large dose he held—bigger than the recommended amount. While they'd never received reports of a fatal overdose, taking too much at one time still had unpleasant side effects. Falco had already exceeded that amount earlier in the day to fight Grimmer, and who knew what would happen if he took more.

But the effects were fading. If he wanted to find Katt, he had to take it. So he threw his head back and tossed the entire handful into his beak, swallowing the dry mouthful without any liquid to wash it down. He grimaced as the pills uncomfortably slid down his throat. It was so bad he considered lapping up the sewer water to chase them with.

Falco swayed in place for a moment, waiting as the Corruption took effect. His head swam with dizziness, and his body swayed against the wall for a second, signaling the pills had begun to work their magic. Now with the new dosage aiding him, he closed his eyes and opened his mind. He remained deathly quiet, silencing his own thoughts and simply listening. At first he heard only a few stray thoughts, but they were little more than whispers; almost indistinguishable from a light breeze rifling past his ears.

Over time, however, the inner monologues began to clarify; Katt's familiar consciousness rose above the rest, and his heart leapt. He sensed her thoughts in the distance: close enough to know they were hers, yet too far to resolve what she was thinking. All he could pick up on was her frightened emotions—but that was all Falco needed, and he set off down the tunnel.

Anyone who thought the streets of District 13 were bad hadn't seen the sewers. Compared to the filthy network of tunnels beneath the district, the surface looked like the pristine heart of Corneria City. The stench nearly overpowered Falco's nostrils, and he fumbled with his avian-shaped gas mask as he put it on. If it wasn't the noxious smog suffocating the streets above, it was the unbearable odor of the sewage below. Whenever the filth was washed clean from the surface, it all ended up down here—and from here it had nowhere else to go.

Nowhere, that is, except further down.

The going was tough. The avian had to limp his way through the passage, clutching at the wall for support. He wished Kitt or someone was there for him to lean on. In fact, he wished he could just lie down at the base of the sewer and sleep. Each shuffling step he took caused his limbs to curse him for moving. In addition to being dragged around the city last week by Scrimmer, that morning he'd been pummeled to a pulp by Grimmer. He now sported two sets of wounds to hamper him, but he had to keep going; Katt's life was at stake. He could rest or die after he found her.

Falco pushed himself on, pausing at each turn and junction to sense for her mind. Even though they were frightened and filled with despair, her thoughts led him like a string through the dark of the labyrinth, guiding his way. For whatever reason her mind stood out above all the rest—even those of the people right above him, cowering in their homes. He began to wonder if the concept of a 'soulmate' really had some basis in reality.

Oddly enough, the pain began to disappear the further he walked. Though he still felt weak, his wounds no longer screamed at him with each sudden movement he took. He felt numb, like he'd set his body on autopilot.

The avian blinked, feeling dizzy; he couldn't feel gravity tethering him to the ground anymore. His vision followed the sewer pipe all the way to its end, where it joined an even bigger canal. He saw the water continuing down a network of intertwining tunnels like tangles of serpentine hair. The sewer system of District 13 was so vast and sprawling, yet he could see it all laid out before him as if he were flying above and staring through the ground with X-ray vision.

He blinked again, for there was Katt a few hundred feet away, being dragged along by an unidentifiable figure. He didn't understand how he could see them; there should have been solid walls of concrete and asphalt in between. It felt like one second he was stumbling through the cramped sewer, and the next he was leaving his body to freely soar over the city; as euphoric as riding the Azure Sky, or flying in his Arwing.

Though Falco couldn't feel much of anything anymore, he did feel himself steadily going down. He realized the kidnapper was kiting him south, towards the heart of District 13. If this kept up, they'd soon be underneath the downtown sector, where all the wealthiest citizens lived—but separated by fathoms of impenetrable concrete and empty, tangled passages.

After what felt like several torturous hours of descent, a breeze wafted against Falco's face; a wet, musty one, but a breeze all the same. And in that moment, Falco realized where he was.

The passage opened out into a massive atrium; the room stretched out in every direction, the far reaches shrouded in darkness so that one couldn't see the end. The ceiling too was out of view; rows and columns of concrete pillars towered high above him, likewise disappearing into the expanse. From below it looked like some brutalist cathedral or an underground city carved by mystical, tunneling races from folklore and fantasy.

This was District 13's underground discharge channel: a massive, 60-foot tall chamber built to divert water in case of emergencies. During typhoons, a system of dams, levees, and sewers carried the flood water downwards, where pumps forced the water back into the ocean to keep the district from sinking. While indispensable, on average the system was only needed a few times a year. There were no tropical storms on the forecast now, meaning it would likely be safe for some time.

But the chamber wasn't empty at all. In fact, it was home to a veritable city of lowlifes: black market dealers, smugglers, druggies, and other various criminals—the kind of folk who, while on the surface, were forced to hide out in smoke-filled backrooms, alleys, and dumpsters. But down here they were free to live out in the open, and surface-dwellers like Falco were the outcasts. They congregated, did business, ate, drank, and slept in the darkness. The shadiest folk crept down even further below the city, slinking into the passages used for flushing the water out—and therefore the most dangerous. They were the murderers, the perverts, the Bureau's most-wanted who couldn't even show their face for fear of being turned in for rewards. Rumor even had it some were escaped Venomian war criminals who fled the fall of the empire.

During times when the discharge system was needed, the squatters scattered like cockroaches: they packed their things, dismantled their stalls, rolled up their tents, and fled into the higher tunnels not used during the floods. Then the chamber would lock and the system would open, flooding large amounts of water through. Anyone who didn't get the memo was flushed out into Zoness' toxic ocean, crushed by the hundreds of feet of water between them and the surface.

"Styx," the locals named the chamber.

The ruling government knew full-well how the criminal denizens of 13 used the space. The only reason they didn't just take them by surprise with an unannounced flush and be done with them was the simple fact that the city's elites traded contraband here as well.

And some said the floating city didn't have a foundation…

Focusing, Falco listened for Katt's thoughts. Instead he was assaulted by a sea of others; a thousand jumbled minds all murmured back at him at once, buzzing like the chorus of thoughts from an anthill. It was so overpowering it sounded like white noise to his brain. The people went about their daily business as if nothing was wrong on the surface above. But even over the ocean of discordant thoughts, Falco was able to make out Katt's somewhere on the far end. So, there was nothing for it but to wade down into the underworld after her.

Falco turned the collar of his jacket up to conceal his face. He already had his mask on, though Zoness' polluted fumes and the stench from the sewers weren't as much of an issue here. And beneath his jacket, he kept a wing on the butt of his concealed blaster, just in case. He shuffled down into the shanty town, doing his best to hide his limp. Here, any sign of weakness was cause for exploitation.

As he walked through Styx, he passed by seas of tents and stalls. Vendors with carts sold food to passersby: mostly native Zonessian crustaceans and arthropods that found their way into the sewers from outside. There were grills with skewers of the many-legged creatures along the way, some of which still wiggled disconcertingly—but the smells were undeniably-good. Outdoor bars sold booze to loyal frequenters: stern-looking people who muttered darkly to one another as they huddled over their drinks, their faces lit by flickering light from trashcan fires. There even were a few tents with seductive purple and scarlet-colored light escaping their folds, the silhouettes of alluring figures dancing within. The sweet-smelling perfumes wafting out were almost as suffocating as the sewer stench earlier, and Falco didn't know which he preferred.

He navigated the city's underbelly like a minefield. He didn't dare bump into any of Styx's unruly citizens and risk starting a fight. Any other day he'd walk with enough confidence to make people part like the sea around him, but he was too physically weak to afford a confrontation. Nervously, he looked into the eyes of each person he passed, till they noticed and stared back. Some were merely curious; others were distrustful, or even hateful. He sampled a few seconds of their thoughts, but there were too many of them to linger on. It was like flipping through a thousand TV stations and trying to find the one that secretly wanted to kill him.

'He's clearly never been down here before,' someone thought while looking at him.

'Why the mask? Doesn't smell that bad in here. He must be hiding his face.'

'What's wrong with him? Why's he limping?'

'Nice clothes, fresh in from the surface, and pockets ripe for the picking. If I could just get closer—Augh, move it, fatso! Dammit, I lost him…'

'Urgh, that kani wasn't fully cooked…'

'Now where've I seen a blue pheasant before?'

Falco adjusted his mask and pulled his collar up higher, but minutes passed without incident. As he neared the other side of the town, his mind began to wander. The chamber seemed like such wasted space when not in use—which was the better part of its life. For a second, he imagined the bottom of the atrium flooded with water and filled with glowing purple mycelium from column-to-column. If they wanted, they could turn District 13 into one big ocean purifier, intentionally letting in water, decontaminating it with the mushrooms used for Corruption, and flushing it back out into the sea. In fact, they could do that with every floating city, speeding up Zoness's recovery a hundredfold—but first they had to get the Bureaus to agree to it—

'KILL!'

That single, overpowering thought snapped Falco out of his daydream. He spun around to find a hooded figure shoving his way through the crowd towards him. Once he realized Falco had spotted him, he screeched to a halt and reached for a gun. His hood slipped down, revealing him to be a black-and-brown-furred canine with pock-marked ears.

Falco saw the flash of his gun barrel coming up to face him. Instinctively he whipped his own blaster out of his waistband. He was faster to the draw but lost time when he hesitated before firing; too many pedestrians passed back and forth between them, and he risked hitting one in the crossfire. But his assailant had no regard for the bystanders in his way.

Falco felt him squeezing the trigger and ducked. He popped off two shots at the avian, but the first hit an unintended target, and the second must have missed.

"You should be dead! You'll pay for what you did!"

The canid paused to aim his next shot carefully, waiting for a gap to open this time. Those in between cried out after the first gunshots and either ducked to the ground or fled. But the instant a line of sight opened between them, Falco managed to fire his blaster first.

The assailant jerked backwards, dropping his own weapon. The townspeople watched in surprise as he fell to the ground with a thud, his cloak billowing to the sides to reveal an emerald green G tattooed on his shoulder.

Damn, one of Grimmer's men was down here. He'd probably split off from the rest during the routing and was working alone, as killing Falco now would've spoiled the iguana brother's plans for revenge.

The crowd turned their attention on Falco, and the paranoid avian raised his blaster. He swung to-and-fro, but they completely surrounded him, and he couldn't cover every angle at once.

In spite of his shaking weapon, people began to slip their way through the crowd and step forward: curious, concerned people the likes of which he was surprised to find below the surface. They walked towards him, and Falco lowered his blaster, feeling no negative aura coming from them. Wordlessly they helped him, lending him their shoulders to stand upright and ripping off parts of their clothes to use as bandages. His hand came away bloodied from his side, and he realized that second bullet had grazed him after all—but just as quickly, the people surrounding him patched up the wound. Somehow, they knew his every need—for these, he realized, were the Corrupt.

Rather than coax him to a medical tent, they helped him finish his journey. The souls of the underworld carried him across the sea—or rather, helped him limp across it, as he now favored his side in addition to… everything else.

After a few minutes they made it safely to the other side of the shanty town. Katt's thoughts continued to drift from the next passage, so he led the people in.

Soon they came upon a giant doorway in the side of the tunnel; Falco could hear Katt somewhere deep inside, but the effects of Corruption were weakening. He had to move fast before they disappeared completely, robbing him of his one and only advantage.

With the help of two followers, Falco made to enter through the round, vault-like door—but they stopped. On either side of the doorway was the same symbol: a long black dragonfish curling in on itself like a spiral, spray-painted or perhaps burned into the cement wall. These were the headquarters of the Black Dragonfish, the most notorious criminal organization on Zoness: the yin to the Bureau's yang. He wasn't dealing with small-time ruffians like Grimmer's Gang anymore; he was dealing with the criminal underworld that pulled the real strings in the district above.

The crowd of the Corrupt halted behind Falco, not daring to walk further, and the two men helping him stand released him. Falco couldn't blame them; he shared the distinct feeling that, if he went in there, he was never coming back out alive.

…But if he turned away now, he'd never see Katt again.

After a few moments of hesitation, Falco ignored his pounding heart and ducked in, leaving the worried crowd behind.

He expected to be accosted as soon as he entered, but no one was there to greet him, and the interior was unlit. Falco would've assumed the lair was abandoned if not for the hundreds of inner voices his mind picked up inside. A fog began to cover his mind, but whether it was a result of Corruption or his wounds finally doing him in, he couldn't tell.

Katt was definitely inside here, but there was no route that led directly to her. It was just another maze of passages and rooms, now more nightmarish than ever. As he stumbled through the hallways, it felt like he'd entered a labyrinth of non-Euclidian geometry. The passages just led in circles. He recognized that stain on the floor; he'd seen that crack in the wall before. One moment the walls seemed to close in around him, and the next they disappeared, making him feel like an ant on the floor of a massive chamber. At other times he felt like the passages twisted and contorted till he was walking on the ceiling.

Exploring the fever dream, he wandered into a warehouse-like room storing luxury goods. Crates were stacked against the walls while stark white mannequins occupied the central floor in droves. Cold fluorescent lights flickered above them, reflecting off the shiny contours of their nude plastic bodies. They stood like an army of soldiers awaiting the command to spring to life. Most were arrayed in orderly rank-and-file, while others stood awkwardly about, breaking the illusion. Some were missing detachable limbs.

The mannequins wore all manner of expensive clothing: fashionable coats, scarves, necklaces, hats, lingerie—anything the dwellers of 13's rich central district might desire while everyone else wallowed in rot. All the garments were smuggled in to avoid the heavy taxes meant for the planet's reclamation, and sold for much less—though even the paid taxes merely ended up in the coffers of the Bureaus.

Falco eyed the mannequins uneasily as he limped through the room. He thought he heard whispers coming from their empty heads, but no matter which blank face he stared at he couldn't find the source. He kept swiveling and jerking his head around, peering at the darkness between their bodies, but never identifying anyone. Still, he couldn't shake this feverish paranoia as he walked between them.

Right as he reached the end of the figures, the last one on his right moved. She glided out in front of him like a phantom. Besides a black chrome respirator hiding her face, she was unclothed—her thin, white-furred body left her nearly indistinguishable from the dozens of other mannequins. Her long tail, triangular ears, and general form suggested that of a feline like Katt, though the mask completely obscured her face, and her fur was pale white.

Falco stumbled back, blinking through the haze. He felt frightened by her, but not because she presented any identifiable threat. It was just a general aura she exuded that disturbed him: her silence unnatural.

The woman crept over to the door at the end of the room, opening it for him. She paused on the threshold and stared back at Falco, though her eyes were hidden by the pitch-black visor. She simply extended a slender arm and beckoned through the door.

Swallowing, Falco resumed his halting march. He felt weaker by the second, and every passing moment he seemed to slip farther from this world. He paused in front of the woman, staring into her black mask, but he couldn't discern any eyes or face beneath it. Her thoughts came loud and clear, but she wasn't thinking much; just observing him curiously, awaiting his reaction.

Since he had no other choice, Falco trusted her. He turned down the dark hallway and took a few more steps… but slowed. He felt too weak to continue; too dizzy to stand. He teetered on his feet for a few weightless moments, then fell to the floor, and the room disappeared.

ㅤ⦲ㅤ

Bill stood alone in the Justice's hangar, staring down Fox's impounded Arwing. Well, technically it wasn't even Fox's; it belonged to his cohort Lombardi, as evident by the blue tips on the wings. It was another red herring while Fox hid out of reach, taunting him, but Bill knew he was closing in. As he glared at the iconic, dust-covered ship, he consoled himself with the knowledge that he was only a few days or hours away from capturing its pilot. Of course, that all depended on 19, and this mysterious "prophecy" Makepeace had been given.

19… Even now he worried about her. He couldn't shake the image of the Cerinian lying on that infirmary cot while the ship's doctors tended to her many wounds. While self-inflicted, Bill couldn't help but place the blame on himself. Besides her handler, he was the only other person on the ship she talked to. Every second he spent away from her now made him feel more and more anxious.

"You called, Captain?"

Bill snapped out of it in time to greet Doctor Makepeace. "Yes, thanks for coming. I'm sorry to call you away from 19, but I had some rather pressing questions."

"Very well." The vixen hopped onto a stack of cargo crates and set her tablet down. "How may I be of assistance?"

Before jumping up beside her, Bill made a detour to the nearest vending machine and bought two cans of Whimsy Cola. He set one next to her, then cracked open his own and took a swig. The vixen only frowned at her watermelon-flavored beverage, using her tablet's stylus to discreetly scoot it away.

Bill swallowed a few gulps, then furrowed his brow as he stared across the deck at the empty Arwing. "There's something I'm worried about, Doctor. When 19 heard Fox's Cerinian that day, she was in distress, correct?"

Makepeace dipped her head. "True."

"What if she was captured by other Cerinians—people like Ariki and his mate? She and Fox may be in a populated area when we find them, at which point we'd have to do battle with not one, but many self-proclaimed gods at once. After that encounter I'm… a little worried we'll have some difficulty against them."

"If you actually listened to Ariki's insane ramblings, you would have picked up on certain things. With a species like the Cerinians, it's not possible for large societies to function. The ones at the top are too scared to trust one another—not when stabbing your partner in the back is as easy as a fleeting thought. If someone is holding 28 against her will, it's probably only a few of these psychopaths at most—the rest will lack powers and merely be servants. Or, perhaps 28 might have risen to the top."

"And if it is more? If they've somehow established a working hierarchy?"

"Then you still need not worry. I assure you, we have the proper contingencies. When we make contact with their group we will simply parley. They may be persuaded to hand 28 over amicably. And if not… we'll force their hand."

Bill's eyebrows raised. "We have the ability to do that?"

"As I said, we have more tools at our disposal than you realize."

"Ones we didn't use against Ariki?"

Makepeace rolled her eyes. "What a waste that would have been; using our trump card on that pathetic flea bag. No, if we used the ace up our sleeve against Ariki, the Justice wouldn't be left standing."

Bill continued nursing his soda as he thought. "So, you have some sort of… bomb prepared?"

The doctor chuckled. "In a manner of speaking. But you need not know of our secret weapon yet. I am the only one aboard who can authorize its use."

Bill squeezed the tin can a little tighter in his fist, frustrated. "Then, what of 28? There's a chance we may have to subdue her to bring her aboard. Killing Ariki was hard enough. How could we even go about neutralizing her?"

"Indeed, Subject 28 is powerful. In fact, her energy reserves are practically immeasurable. Out of all the Cerinians, Andross made the most progress with her. But even then, she hasn't unlocked her full potential yet. If she didn't immediately kill Fox upon his meeting her, there's a chance she may be reasonable—or at least, gullible."

He gulped. "She… could have killed Fox when she met him?"

"Oh, effortlessly, if she felt inclined to. You saw how much carnage 19 wrecked on her own, didn't you?"

Bill nodded. He remembered the bloodied hallways in the Venomian labs and the eviscerated corpses of those unfortunate enough to cross her path. He had a hard-enough time believing someone as reserved and gentle as 19 could do that—but did Fox know 28 could do the same?

"Andross's Cerinians are… unstable, to say the least," Makepeace explained. "The fastest way to unlock their powers was to place them in situations where they were forced to use them. He put these girls through endless psychological and physical trauma, which, as much as I hate to admit, was indeed the most efficient way to bring out their powers. But that left each of them emotionally scarred and broken. Our main concern is something triggering that past trauma in 28, at which point…"

"…She'd release her true powers?"

Makepeace nodded. "It would be a repetition of 19's containment breach in the labs—only with someone much more powerful."

Bill looked down at his empty soda can. "I take it her cry of distress isn't a good sign, then?"

The vixen shook her head. "We may be too late…" But a smirk crept back on her face. "Then again, we may have arrived at exactly the right time…"