The day felt unreal - the fog too bright, the sounds too loud, his body too raw... too...

Focus on the task at hand.

Etissa was built on a mountain slope, and the worst parts of town were also the lowest when it came to their physical location. They received all the rainwater rushing from the roofs of the upper town, and also all of its sewage. On the other hand, skinners, tanners, and dyers couldn't run their business uphill, or they would poison the whole town with their special brand of sewage, so the current layout had probably been inevitable.

At least it made finding his destination easier - he had just to follow the streets that led downward. Virdon only slowed when the houses became shabbier and dirtier, just like the apes slouching in the doorways. The humans who skittered from shadow to shadow reminded him of the robbers who had stopped their wagon - gaunt and hollow-eyed, stinking and wheezing, clinging to their wretched lives with the mindless determination of animals.

That's what we are in the end, animals, trapped in the bodies of animals...

Pete. He had to find him. Find the boy who had - somehow - gotten hold of his friend's beloved ANSA knife.

Virdon knew that despite his three days in hell, he didn't look nearly as wrecked as any of these people; but he had to signal somehow that he was one of them, just as downtrodden and abused as the humans of Skinner Street. Just being human wouldn't suffice.

Slowly, deliberately, he began to roll up his sleeves.

The rope marks were still there, bright red and swollen. Virdon stared at them for a moment, wondering if he should also roll up his pant legs... but in this weather, it would look too deliberate. This would have to do.

Virdon slowly wandered down Skinner Street, taking in every detail without staring openly at anything or anyone, or letting his gaze rest anywhere for more than a short instant. He stopped at a street vendor to buy a mug filled with hot broth and some vegetables, and forced it down, more for the sake of blending in than out of real hunger. It still warmed him from within, and some of the tension that had been twisting his insides began to slowly dissipate.

It felt good to be able to move his limbs again; and it felt good to cast his attention outward, to the sights and sounds and smells of the real world, and away from his own body. But no matter how much he walked, and how determinedly he took in the stench of urine from the gutters, the shades of ochre and umber that tinted the walls of the houses, his mind still felt untethered to his body; it was as if he was sitting in the back row of a theater, watching the movie playing a mile away with mild interest. He felt fuzzy, frayed... half asleep. It was a dangerous state of being, one that he was probably telegraphing to any criminal, human or simian, in a ten mile radius; but he couldn't find the energy to care about it.

It took him some time to realize that he was being followed; but right now, it wasn't hard to ignore the quiet patter of feet, the furtive movements at the edge of his vision. He was too exhausted to be curious.

Then he remembered again that he was supposed to be looking for Burke, and stopped at another food vendor to buy a second mug of soup, and a fat slice of nut bread, and used the interruption to flick a glance at the street behind him.

They were good; he only saw one of them, a little girl of maybe three years who was tottering along as if she had forgotten the first lesson of all street kids no matter the place or time: when a big one suddenly stops in his tracks, make yourself invisible.

She was staring at the nut bread in his hand as if hypnotized, following it with her eyes as he slowly moved it towards his mouth; she only realized that he was watching her when he stopped the movement an inch away from his mouth. Her eyes flicked up to his, huge and frightened, and he smiled at her, and tried to put all his love for his own children into his gaze. Poor little girl - did they throw you out because you didn't match the standards? Or did your new owners throw you out when you didn't get housebroken quickly enough?

To his relief, the girl smiled back, a slow, tremulous smile, and in response he deepened his own smile and held out the bread to her, nodding encouragingly. She looked at it, then back at him, clearly torn between hunger and fear.

Virdon slowly crouched down and laid the slice of bread onto the dirty cobblestones, then turned away to buy another, even fatter piece of bread and another cup of broth in addition to the one that was already cooling in his hand.

When he turned back, both the girl and his offering had vanished.

He walked down the street a few steps, until he had found an empty doorway, and sat down on the doorstep, putting one of the mugs with soup beside him, and breaking the bread in half. He balanced one half on the top of the mug, and bit into the other one, deliberately moaning with pleasure.

Once he had taken the second bite, he didn't have to fake his hunger anymore. The first mug of soup from before had woken up his stomach, and Virdon found himself wolfing down both his second mug and his half of the nut bread.

When he looked up, the boy was watching him from across the street. Virdon slowed his chewing and scrutinized him just as openly. He didn't see Burke's knife, but that meant nothing; the boy was smart enough not to openly display his weapons. His skin wasn't dirty, as Zana had believed, but simply of a darker color.

Virdon didn't know why he was so certain that this was the right boy - maybe because the little girl was clinging to his legs. Most of the street children he had seen so far were running in packs whose members were of roughly the same age; they didn't bother to burden themselves with children who couldn't pull their weight.

Well, maybe the girl was his sister. Although he seemed to have a lot of siblings of various ages - they were slowly emerging from the shadows now, fourteen children, if Virdon had counted them correctly from the corner of his eyes.

He thoughtfully bit into his bread and put the mug to his lips again. Several children stirred lightly when he swallowed. Virdon bit back a smile, put the mug down, drew his left leg to his chest and folded his hands around it. He couldn't jump up quickly from this position, or reach for a hidden weapon, and the boy's calculating look told him that he had realized that, too.

He nodded at the boy in acknowledgment. "My friend gave me a handful of sembles that will buy each of you a mug of soup and a big slice of nut bread," he said. "Do you think that is a good price?"

The children began to whisper to each other, and the little girl yanked at the boy's pant leg. The boy was chewing his lower lip, ignoring her.

"Depends on what you wanna buy," he said. His voice was surprisingly deep and scratchy; Virdon hoped he didn't smoke the apes' pipe weed. On the other hand, tobacco did numb the hunger... he could almost see these children scraping the discarded remains from tapped-out pipes from the gutters.

"Information," he said, and smiled his most pleasant smile. "Something that costs you no time or effort. My friend has gone missing here somewhere."

"That friend that gave you the sembles?" the boy scoffed. "Idiots don't make it for long around here."

Virdon slightly shook his head. "No. My human friend. We've been together a long time. We have each other's back - I saved his skin a number of times, and he saved mine." He smiled wryly. "And now it seems it's my turn again. I'm willing to do anything it takes to find him. Even inviting all of you for lunch."

The boy eyed him thoughtfully. "An' how do you think I know about your friend?"

"You have his knife," Virdon said calmly.

The boy took a step back. "Found it. It's mine now."

"I don't care about the knife," Virdon said evenly. Though I bet Pete will. "I just want to find my friend before the apes get him killed."

"Maybe he's already dead," the boy said, watching him.

"In that case," Virdon said in a heavy voice, "I want his body, so that I can bury him. That's what a friend does."

"A whole bread for everyone," the boy decided. "And a bowl of soup. And a piece of dried meat that is as big as my hand, for everyone. And we get to eat first."

"A bread and a bowl of soup for everyone up front," Virdon agreed. "The meat after you told me what you know."

The boy nodded. "Deal."

The deal ate up almost all of Virdon's sembles, but watching the children tear into their food made him wish he had asked Zana for more. The little girl - Dadi - had climbed onto his lap and had insisted that he hold the bowl for her as she soaked her bread in it. Looking down on her head, Virdon saw that her scalp was crawling with lice.

"You saw me buy the meat," he said when the last drop of soup had been soaked up with the last morsel of bread, and everyone was sighing with exhaustion - all but one unlucky child who had eaten so hastily that his body violently rejected the sudden load. The boy was crying with despair as he vomited his meal back into the gutter. Virdon resolved to buy him another slice of nut bread from his last sembles. "It's yours if your information is good."

The boy nodded. According to Dadi, his name was Pero, but Virdon was careful not to address him by it. As long as Pero didn't give his name, Virdon would pretend not to know it.

"Some apes jumped your friend in Skinner Street," Pero said. "One jumped on him from the rooftop, 'n when your friend went down, the other jumped on his legs, so he couldn't get up. There was a bit of fighting, but I couldn't see it clearly, 'cause it was dark. 'n then they hit him over the head, 'n put a bag over his head, 'n dragged him off. Went to see if he maybe lost his shoes or something, but he only lost his knife. Finders, keepers," he added defiantly. "It's mine now."

"I told you, I'm not interested in the knife," Virdon said. "Do you know where they took him? Do you know who took him?"

Pero held out his hand. "That's a new question... two new questions. You got the sembles to pay for them?"

Virdon gritted his teeth and forced himself to smile. "Not at the moment, but I can get more. Will you meet me here again?" He chucked the bag with dried meat at Pero's feet.

The boy bent down to pick it up, his eyes never leaving Virdon's face. "Not here. We'll find you anywhere in the quarter." He took a step back, still staring him down, then another.

Then they were gone.

Three days earlier

Burke woke up with the worst hangover since that week in Tokyo... a steady thrum in his skull, extending from his neck to the top of his head, slow waves of pain and nausea ebbing and flowing in the rhythm of his heartbeat. For a moment he just lay there, trying not to move, trying to remember where he had been and what he had been drinking, and if she had at least been worth it...

Then the sensation of hard stalks pricking his cheek and throat floated to the top of his awareness, together with the stench of sweat and urine, and underneath, the dark musk of ape.

Ape. That's where he had been. As far away from Tokyo as possible, at the other end of the galaxy, the other end of a wormhole.

I'm still in hell.

He didn't move a muscle, despite the dirty straw under his nose. He wasn't completely there yet, and he didn't want to alert anyone that he'd come around - not before he had gathered all of his brain matter. He silently took stock of his body. Except for his throbbing skull, everything seemed to be still in place and pretty much in working order.

The recording of the events that had brought him here seemed to be broken, though. Burke remembered leaving the inn for some last-ditch grocery shopping for Zana, and then deciding to make a quick detour to the stables to see if everything was okay with Tala and Apache.

But he couldn't remember if he had even been there. No idea if he had been mugged before he reached the stable, or afterwards. Or where it had happened. Had he taken a wrong turn in the twilight? Had he tried to take a shortcut?

After some more stabs at the stubborn darkness in his memory, Burke gave up. It didn't really matter what had happened. He was here now - wherever here was - and his sole objective was to get out of here as quickly as possible. And maybe kick the ass of whoever had knocked him out and dragged him into this stinking cage.

He slowly peeled one eye open and tried to scan his surroundings. The light was dim, but rolling his eyes sent another jolt of pain through his head. Burke clenched his teeth and slowly sat up.

He was in a cage alright - wooden frame, but the bars were made of metal. The weak light in the room - some grimy shack, probably in some dilapidated backyard - came through a single window high up in the wall; by the indigo tint of the fog outside, Burke estimated that it had to be early evening, not much later than when he had left the inn.

... unless he had been out cold for a whole day. He gingerly felt for the back of his head. A big lump, and what felt like dried blood confirmed his suspicion - someone had jumped him from behind and and clobbered him before he could even draw-

... yeah, his knife was gone. Probably for good this time. Burke felt a pang of despair at the thought - the knife had been the last relic of his old life, a tangible proof that he had really been an ANSA pilot, and that that life had really once existed.

Maybe one of his attackers had taken it, as some sort of trophy. Burke amended his marching orders to add 'get my knife back' and got to his knees to get a better overview over the rest of the shack's interior.

Two rows of cages were facing each other across a wide aisle, but it was too dark to see if someone else besides him was kept in any of them. Burke wondered what this setup was meant for - the cages were too small to keep people there permanently; it looked more like a holding place, maybe to collect a certain number of people, and then... what? Transport them somewhere else? Maybe... maybe a slave market?

I don't plan to stay around to find out.

The cage was too low to stand upright, probably on purpose; the most Burke could do was to get to his knees. He started probing the bars, one by one, where they were inserted into the wooden frame, but contrary to the shed, and the bedding in his cage, the cage itself was kept in top condition. Even the wooden planks underneath the straw were fitted seamlessly. There wasn't as much as a splinter missing anywhere. Burke bit back a curse and returned to the front of his cage. There had to be a lock somewhere - not that he could do much about it now, without lock picks, but once he knew what kind of lock it was, maybe he could dig out some splinters from those planks, and...

"You don't need to try to break out. It's no use."

The voice sounded young; it came from the cage opposite of him, accompanied by rustling straw. Burke squinted into the deepening darkness, but didn't see more than vague movement. "You'd know, eh? Did you even try? Where are we, anyway?"

"We're in Asar's stable," the voice said. It was a bit scratchy, teetering on the floating beam of voice break and repeatedly falling off to the wrong side of pitch. Its owner couldn't be older than twelve, Burke guessed - with the rampant malnutrition, puberty tended to start later in these kids.

"Okay, and who is this Asar guy?" he asked. "And why is he keeping you here?"

"Uh..." said the voice. "Everyone knows Asar..."

"Just imagine that there are people who don't," Burke snapped. "Not everyone was born in this shithole."

"Uhm, yes, sorry," the boy stuttered. "Asar is a chimpanzee. He's... he owns humans and he... he lets them fight against other humans. To the, to the death."

"Great," Burke muttered. "Jus' my kind of luck." Aloud, he said, "So, what are you, then? Some kind of ninja kid?"

"What?" The boy sounded utterly confused now. Burke decided not to elaborate.

"How did you end up here?" he asked instead. "Did they clobber you over the head while you tried to piss your name into the mud?"

"Uhm, no... my, my master lost me in a game of keppa."

Keppa was some sort of card game the apes were fond of. During their stay in Sapan, Galen had managed to lose exactly as much money with it as he had won, which had told Burke that he was a viciously good player. If the ape hadn't mutated into such an asshole after the disaster with the mutants in the Forbidden Zone, Burke would've asked him to teach him the finer points of the game. He'd figured that it could be as profitable as poker, provided he could find an ape who was willing to play - and lose - against a human.

Right now, though, it seemed that it was humans who could only lose at that game. "And he expects you to fight to the death? What kind of town is this?" Burke asked, bewildered. He had seen some bad shit since they had crashed on this world, but this easily took the cake.

"It's forbidden," the boy said, "but they're doing it anyway. They bet on us, and when Asar wins, we get extra meals, and an hour in the yard. And you don't have to fight to the death every time. Sometimes, they call it a win when the other human can't get up anymore, or taps out. But that's only sometimes."

"And did you already have to... fight... against someone?"

"Yeah. And I lost." The boy sounded embarrassed. "They let me fight against a girl. But she was bigger than me, and really vicious."

Burke blew out a sigh of relief. So that Asar bastard maybe wanted to train the kid as a fighter, and only send him into the real knockout tournaments once he was big and bad enough.

As for himself, Burke didn't harbour any illusions - he was already big and bad. You'll find out just how bad I can get, you motherfuckers. He wouldn't stay around to let himself get beaten to death for the profit and entertainment of those monkeys.

But he needed more information first, and the kid seemed to have been around long enough to be useful. Burke tried to find a comfortable position in the cage. "So, buddy - what's your name anyway?"

"Shut up, frog, I wanna sleep!"

The slur whipped through Burke like an electric current, jerking him away from the bars. The new voice had been deeper, the words slightly slurred; the sound of rustling straw came from his right, two cages over.

From a cage? Another prisoner?

"My name is Len," the boy whispered. "We gotta be silent now, or Todan gets angry with us."

"My name's Pete," Burke whispered back. "Who's Todan? Another human? Thought I heard his voice coming from another cage..."

"He's Asar's best fighter," Len whispered back. "And when Todan complains about you to Asar, Asar will give you a whipping."

So they had a kapo with them. Beautiful, just beautiful. That explained why the asshole used ape slurs.

Burke slowly unclenched his fists and took some measured breaths. That slur had taken him by surprise. He couldn't let that happen again. You just assumed that every human hates the monkeys. But there's always a rat who sides with the bullies.

He'd just have to take Todan into account from now on. And maybe he shouldn't make any assumptions about the kid, either.

In this world, you couldn't navigate on autopilot. Not when everything had gotten apeshit crazy.