Charity pushed her entire body weight against the heavy iron door at the bottom of the ramshackle apartment building. It groaned open, revealing the ruined, squalid lower sector of the beast tribe's territory.
The sky above was a sickly, bruised lead-gray. The air was thick with the sharp, chemical stench of industrial smog from the distant forges and refineries.
Suddenly, heavy drops of rain began to fall. A single drop hit the exposed skin on the back of Charity's hand.
It hissed.
A sharp, burning sensation bit into her flesh. Charity flinched, realizing instantly that this was the highly corrosive acid rain unique to the lower sectors, a byproduct of the corrupted coolant leaking from the upper tribes' manufacturing zones.
She quickly pulled the oversized hood of her synthetic-fur cloak over her head, shielding her face and neck, and desperately scanned the street for an awning.
The metal shutters of the shops lining the street were slammed shut. Only a few dying holographic signs provided any light in the gloom.
Charity hugged the walls, walking as fast as her heavy, poisoned body would allow. Her chest heaved, and her heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
As she limped past the opening of a pitch-black dead-end alley, a sharp prickle of instinct made her freeze in her tracks.
From deep within the shadows, a wet, sickening crunching sound echoed. It was the sound of bones being snapped and flesh being chewed.
Two massive, glowing red optical lenses slowly opened in the darkness. They locked onto Charity.
A mutated dire rat, the size of a fully grown wolf, crawled out of the shadows. Its fur was matted with black, oily blood. Rusted metal plates were crudely welded onto its spine, and a broken data-jack dangled from the base of its skull.
The beast let out a high-pitched, ear-piercing shriek. Its powerful hind legs coiled, and it launched itself through the rain, a dark blur aiming straight for Charity's throat.
Charity's pupils shrank to pinpricks. Her bloated body was too slow, too heavy. She couldn't move.
Through the heavy rain, the faint, rhythmic splash of heavy military boots echoed from the adjacent street, though Charity was too paralyzed by the beast's approach to notice.
Just as the beast's razor-sharp claws were inches from tearing her throat open, a deafening gunshot ripped through the heavy rain.
An armor-piercing bolt, trailing a blinding blue arc of electricity, punched directly through the mutated rat's skull.
The beast's massive body crashed into the mud right at Charity's feet, carried by its own momentum. Thick, black blood and hydraulic fluid splashed across her cloak and boots.
Charity collapsed backward into the acidic mud, her chest heaving as she gasped for air, her whole body trembling from the near-death adrenaline.
The heavy, rhythmic thud of military boots splashing through the puddles approached from the other end of the street.
A tall, broad-shouldered man stepped out of the rain-soaked fog. He wore a black, tactical coat that repelled the acid rain, and on his chest was the silver badge of the High Guard. His features were sharp, wolflike—a powerful predator in his own right, though his ears were round, indicating a pure-blooded humanoid warrior.
Braden Dickson held a heavy, railgun. The barrel was still smoking. His eyes were colder than the acid rain pouring down around them.
He stood over Charity, looking down at her collapsed form. Pure, undisguised disgust twisted his sharp features.
"If you want to die," Braden said, his voice a flat, cutting blade, "go die somewhere else. Don't dirty my patrol sector."
Charity's newly acquired memories supplied his name. This was Braden. Another one of her forced bond-mates. The cold, ruthless captain of the High Guard stationed in this district, a man who despised her with every fiber of his being.
Faced with his brutal insult, Charity didn't scream. She didn't throw a hysterical tantrum like the original owner would have.
She remained completely silent. She raised her sleeve and calmly wiped the black monster blood and acidic mud from her cheek.
She didn't even look up at him. She placed her hands flat on the wet wall and forced her heavy, aching body to stand.
Braden's brow furrowed. He stared at her unnatural silence. A brief flicker of genuine confusion crossed his cold eyes.
Charity dragged her exhausted body forward. She carefully stepped around the massive, bleeding rat corpse and limped away, heading toward another ruined safe house she remembered from the memories.
Braden stood perfectly still in the rain. He watched her bloated, silent figure disappear into the fog. He let out a cold scoff, turned on his heel, and vanished back into the shadows.
Charity finally reached a slightly sturdier abandoned concrete building. She pressed her thumb to the rusted biometric scanner, and the heavy iron door clicked open.
