[REVISION] Welcome To The Gutter (pt.1)

The most Ash had seen of The Gutter was in pursuit of fleeing suspects or perpetrators and in most cases suspects were the perpetrators. He had to say it looked much better when it was passing by at high speeds. Even then, the chases were through the upper tiers of it all where there were roads and air-routes for vehicles, this place was buried under infrastructure. 

Law enforcement wasn't a science, really, but tags (or 'chips') had really helped to track or identify crimes in progress. They certainly let you know if your fleeing suspect had any criminal history with only a seconds time spent scanning their birth tag. When convicted and sentenced your chip was updated and a lot of places above The Cloud flat-out refused to admit anyone with anything more than mild criminal charges on their tag, and good luck moving up in the workforce.

Before him he saw darkness barely lit with flickering lightrods, enormous pillars and columns, and nothing overhead except the constant drip of fluid and a deep darkness that swallowed up any hope of actually seeing past the first five tiers above you. There were spots that were completely uncovered, where one could almost see the sickly coloration of The Cloud in the daylight. The same Cloud that drizzled a constant rain of poisonous chemicals absorbed from the pre-regulation power-plants still chugging along, this was not that part of The Gutter. 

Just how toxic that fluid was was up for debate but he was sure it would burn a hole through his arm. The power-plants were long-since brushed off by The Obelisk and served more to power the lower tiers and The Gutter. A rough cycle, it was power and pollution or giving up almost everything in hopes the air-scrubbers would be able to filter out The Cloud over some reasonable amount of time.

The air here was perpetually damp and smelled quite a deal worse than anything Ash had experienced. Fluid ran down every column, pillar, and building, glistening in what little light there was. Mold grew copiously and strange fungi and fat-capped mushrooms grew along the ruined streets as the fluids ran along toward some spot ahead. 

The elevator had placed him at the corner of what was once a street, kept in better condition as it rarely brought anyone down except JPD equipment or forces and the two mounted sentry-guns were also a good deterrent for anyone thinking about attacking law enforcement or Juno personnel within the large range of the weapons.

Ash sighed, looking around and finding himself with little choice in which direction he traveled as the other had been barricaded by walls of JPD barriers. Walking along the remains of what was, at best, a path Ash sidestepped and jumped breaks in the cement and asphalt, he didn't want the pooling of those fluids to ruin his boots. He was moving toward the JPD outpost, guided partially by a map he had checked on his hub and signs spray-painted onto the large pillars, high and out of reach of those who tagged all the empty space there was. 

His shoulder-lamp helped expose the graffiti, some of the work was impressive, actually. He had seen some incredibly realistic work along a cement wall, it surely took someone months to complete. He wasn't sure how you managed to stay in one place so long and stay alive, here. Ash wondered, faintly, if Marie had ever seen the work of the young artists here. He had a fleeting thought of the two of them coming up with some sort of education scholarship for gifted artists trapped down here since birth, but with the direction things were heading with 'art' these days he wasn't so sure that would be a good idea. High up, the pillar markings guided him down the road.

Ash had to remind himself that this place was nothing like the other tiers of the city. There was a dramatic change between The Bottom Rung and the second tier and up that he had experience with. This was the the worst part of the worst tiers, this was where savagery was as common as everything else. It was not a stretch for people to be slaughtering each other here, JPD never touched it. Once the Ob' realized that The Gutter was completely useless and stopped observation and patrol. People often fled here in hopes of escape but they never seemed to understand that just because they had come here that JPD would not pursue them.

 In quite a lot of cases the fleeing suspects were killed by the people that lived in The Gutter. You can only run so far through the poorest part of the city in your nice clothes and accessories before you were robbed of them, usually without bothering asking before they just killed you. As awful as it was, it was pretty damn convenient when it came to wrapping things up. No one had to go to jail, no one had to be interviewed, so much of the paperwork vanished when the suspect was murdered in The Gutter. Ash and Phoenix had seen horrible things here but they had not been to the Bottom Rung where sense was apparently absent from everyone-- or so the stories told.

It took several minutes of walking before he finally began to encounter people-- and they were barely that. The whine of the spinning barrels on his weapon had kept the smart ones away, those that remained were incapable of fleeing. The first man had been half-slumped against a pillar with vomit in his lap an a busted bottle of liquor that Ash was pretty sure was home-made. The man bled slightly from his mouth as he leaned there and his unfocused eyes followed Ash as he passed. 

The man did not make any moves so Ash was comfortable passing him even though he figured a bullet would be a more human solution for improving the mans life. He had come across junkies and addicts cooking up extremely crude forms of Spark, named so because it was very easy to explode if one was cooking a potent batch. The smell was what gave it away, it was an acrid thing that was distinct and left you wanting to spit until the taste and smell of it were gone. The barrels of the ScumThumper apparently did not reach their ears or they were just more interested in the Spark.

Looking at them briefly he could see that each of them had their eyes open wide as the one man worked on cooking the batch up. Hungry faces, desperate to escape their surroundings no matter how much it damaged them. Some time down the line they would die from their addiction but that wasn't a bad option in this place. The most clear symbol of addiction was the perpetually dry mouth. Lips cracked constantly, bleeding from the tears in the skin and their tongues were like dry sponges in their own mouths. 

Their speech would be affected by it and their teeth were quickly worn away as the drug wore the enamel away and then the teeth until they were completely gone. Recovered addicts could not eat solid foods well, if at all, and if they didn't have the money to have their teeth replaced they just lived that way with their scar-strewn lips and damaged brains.

The most unnerving part of this all was just how dark it really was. There were lightrods overhead but they lacked the power to properly illuminate anything. It was constantly dim and every line of lightrods seemed to be illuminating to a different degree than any of the others. Commonly he would come across the putrid smell of decay and rot where he was sure there was a corpse somewhere-- if he bothered to look for it. He didn't. 

Graffiti was exceedingly present and some of it was clearly the brown stain of dried blood. The gangs here had skirmishes and he could see the (poorly done) symbol of the Acid Eaters. A mouth full of sharp teeth cracking their way through a pipe or other object that was always marked with the common cautionary labels for dangerous chemicals. He had seen it done much better than this, this was just crude and off. If he was in the territory of the Acid Eaters he could expect to run into the Rabid Fangs who were constantly fighting over the eastern reaches of the seventh sector.

Ash was aware of every major gang that operated in the gutter and Espher as a whole and there were more than he could ever count. They constantly changed loyalties and territory, fought endlessly, and had the luxury of doing most everything without worrying about the JPD. It just made killing people too easy and he had been told in the Academy, verbatim, that the people in the gutter were lost and not worth the money the citizens of Espher paid them. Those in the Gutter did not pay, they did not get the protection of the JPD. Murder, here, was without penalty.

If you owned a weapon you could, in theory, come to the Bottom Rung and kill everyone you saw and then go home and wash the blood off of your hands and then never worry about any charges. In the government's view, it seemed, killing off people in the gutter could only benefit the city. They did not pay in to the city but the conditions they lived in were hardly a tax upon the city. Almost all of The Gutter was self-sufficient, running on ancient powerplants that were usually under the protection of larger gangs. The powerplants spewed pollutants into the air while being operated by the best people that could be found by the gang in control.

Ash soldiered onward, his eyes constantly observing his surroundings, receiving no help from the piss-poor lighting. Reaching up, Ash turned on the light mounted on the stock of the ScumThumper and was given at least a bit of ease being able to stab it into the darker areas. Most of what he saw was just as disgusting or unimpressive as the rest of the areas he had been. He began to hear the faint sounds of life scuffling around as he continued along the busted path. He killed the spin on the gun to listen more closely and began to furrow his brow. The scuffling was not a promising sound. Shutting off the light on the gun he moved further in, drilling one fact into his own head. Survival. He was not a cop here, he was going to be fighting to survive this. He could not be kind and gentle, he could not be a good guy, he could not survive this unless he killed all the parts of him that exposed weakness or vulnerabilities. It was a lot harder than he expect.

As the sounds of scuffling feet increased, he began to hear a faint gurgle that promised nothing pretty. Ash began to slowly stalk through the near-darkness, his feet placed carefully as he slipped around a pillar, listening. Whatever was going on was behind the pillar opposite of the one he had taken cover behind. There was a muffled curse and a clatter of metal on the dirty cement, he carefully looked around the pillar but could only see a pair of feet kicking weakly at the ground. Furrowing his brow, Ash went against his better judgment and slipped around the pillar he was at and carefully covered the distance. 

It took a decent amount of time before he could get close enough to put his back to the pillar. Listening, he could hear the gurgle much more clearly, he could muttered words and then the smell of blood hit him. Gritting his teeth and wishing he could just move on, Ash leaned his head out for a brief moment before common sense kicked in and he brought the weapon up. Carefully he began to side-step around the pillar, the scene unveiling itself. A pool of blood was on the ground and in it, propped against the pillar, was a youth who stared out with broad eyes.

Propped there, he was obscured partially by the crouching form of a man who was busy carving a line down the young man's chest with a knife. One arm was off to the side, torn open around the wrist where his chip was likely torn out and checked for any valuable information. The youth had a gag shoved in his mouth and suddenly his eyes found Ash. Standing there with his weapon ready, Ash must have looked like a savior but he was hardly feeling that way.

Ash watched in morbid fascination as the street surgeon began to tear flesh away to expose muscle and bone. He moved the knife down and plunged it into the youth's abdomen causing his eyes to widen in shock as he stared at Ash, pleading with his eyes for help. It was not until he youth's abdomen was cut open wide that the sense of decency in Ash clicked and he brandished the weapon, curling his finger over the trigger and pulling it just a bit.

The barrels on the ScumThumper began to wind up and spin and the street surgeon whipped around, drawing an older model pistol from his coat. As the street surgeon brought the pistol toward Ash he squeezed the trigger. In a storm of pellets and furious thunder, the weapon bucked violently in Ash's gripped. Ash watched in awe as the body of the surgeon was chipped away with intense speed. Shapes of anatomy were blasted apart, pellets obliterating flesh and bone at such range. The Surgeon's face was stripped away with one blast and then the remains of bone were ripped to shards as pellets tore through his skull. 

The contents of the surgeon's head were quickly scattered across the ground several feet away, along with the majority of his shoulder and chest. The surgeon fell back and began to twitch, headless and missing half his torso, his disconnected arm still brandishing the pistol. Ash held the trigger down a couple seconds longer before releasing it and letting the barrels wind down. His eyes examined the abstract, grisly work of art the ScumThumper had made of the street surgeon's head and torso. It was much more devastating and violent than he had imagined it would be.

Curiosity had been indulged and Ash turned to regard the youth bleeding out. Lowering the gun, Ash looked the youth over. Slowly he knelt down, carefully avoiding thee pool of blood with his knee, and looked into the youth's eyes. There was no telling how he got here, he was dressed well for the area and he must have had some sort of implant if the surgeon was harvesting him right here... or maybe things had become so nightmarish that the street surgeons just did it all in plain sight. 

The young man stared at Ash, eyes still pleading and there was a sting in Ash's gut as he read every word in the young man's head. 'Help me. I'm going to die. Please help. I don't want to die here. Call for emergency medical attention. You're JPD, save me. I don't want to die here. I don't want to die here.' Ash's face twisted up in anguish and the weight pulled down on him.

“I can't do anything.” Ash forced out, his eyes looking away. “Even if I could get you emergency transport you would be dead before you got to the hospital.” he sighed, and grit his teeth. Many thoughts swept through his head and he began to observe the cuts and bleeding wounds. He could not have much blood left. “I... I can't help you. Not like that.” Ash muttered, reaching up to pull the gag from the young man's mouth. Ash stood up and looked down at the mess, reaching behind him to wrap his fingers around his sidearm and pull it free of the holster. 

“I can make it stop or you can bleed out.” Ash said, his voice dry of any emotion. “Just... It's all I can do for you.” he explained. The youth nodded and Ash raised his pistol to place the barrel against the youth's forehead. “Just nod.” Ash whispered, his eyes looking away. He felt the youth nod against the barrel of the gun and closed his eyes. There was a crack that split the air as the gun fired and blood flecked Ash's uniform. Ash's arm went limp and let the weapon hang at his side. Slowly the youth's body slid to the side and then slumped over and hit the ground.

Survive seven days and you can go back to your life, Ash. Survive seven days and you can be with her again. Ash raised his head and began to walk away. He didn't look back to see what he was imagining in his head. He couldn't do more than that, as selfish as it was this was -his- life and Marie was -his- … something. Girlfriend? She was waiting at the end of this hellhole and Ash holstered the pistol at his back and took the ScumThumper back in both hands. 

Ash wasn't sure how the youth had ended up here but at the least, Ash saved him a few minutes worth of bleeding out and dying. The shot killed him instantly and freed the youth from the pain, Ash tried his best to make that sound like he had helped the youth in some substantial way. If Ash had been quicker to investigate maybe he could have done more but... once more he hammered the words home. You must survive, Ash.

Walking with his eyes somewhat unfocused, Ash followed the ruins of the street toward distant lights and sounds. Perhaps it was a bit of a settlement, somewhere alive, somewhere he could immerse himself in and forget the gurgling sound of the young man while he had hid behind that pillar. He wanted to scream at himself and scold his mind for dwelling on it. The kid was dead the moment he entered the Bottom Run. Healthy bodies, decent clothes, that made you a target. 

“It was all I could do...” he muttered, his eyes moving to focus on the distance where the sounds of life were originating and began to move swiftly toward it, something to distract his thoughts as he told himself to be cold, to not care, to worry only about himself after spending so much of his career doing the exact opposite. It was a brutally opposite way of thinking but this life was -his-, Marie was -his-. It was selfish but it was the only way he was sure he could get out of this alive.