Zidarov drove down to Vostoka in mid-morning, long after the first shifts had got going at the assembly halls. The crowds got shabbier the further away he got from the habclave’s centre. The towers on the fringes were shorter and squatter than in upper Urgeyena, made of cheaper materials, hardly renovated, locked together by a net of teetering viaducts and elevated mag-tracks. They didn’t last very long, as a rule, and either collapsed or were demolished when the cracks were wide enough to stick a hand through. Cheap replacements would spring up in time, thrown together by constructor outfits with little name recognition and heavy cartel links. You could make slate in the grade-eights if you really tried, but none of it without knowing the wrong people.

He drove down a heavily shaded alley that smelled of refuse even through the groundcar’s atmospheric filters. The sky was barely visible, masked by the undersides of mag-tracks and rockcrete transitways. Zidarov slid into an empty street-bay and got out. He made sure he had his jawsnapper primed. Everything shuddered and echoed, and the air throbbed with resonance from the layers of traffic. It was so dark it might have been night, and all the ground-level lumens were on.

Despite the murk and the muck, it was still crowded. Most of the crowds ignored him, keeping their eyes lowered and their cowls up, clambering up the walkways and down the access ramps, just as was sensible. Many were filthy, their tunics doing little to mask their underfed frames. A few individuals stood taller – the minority with access to slate. Zidarov spied a border­line abhuman scowling at him from the shadows, all vivid pink skin and porcine eyes. He swept his gaze over the busy streets, and spotted a couple of gangers lounging in a doorway, both carrying splinter-guns openly. They were wreathed in cotin smoke, and didn’t seem to care who saw them there.

He secured the Luxer and started to walk, paying close attention to everything around him. He stuck out, in a place like this. None of Vostoka was entirely safe; this end was positively sticky. He felt eyes on him at all times, peering out of empty windows, glimmering under the shadows of open doorways, glances stolen over the shoulders of limping vagrants. He could smell the sickness on the air, mingled with the stinks of an old and decaying cityscape. He walked confidently but not brashly, meeting no gazes, staying watchful.

Soon the narrow pedestrian walkways were overlooked by steep tenements on either side of him, cutting off the very last of the natural light. A faulty chameleon-screen far up jerked and fizzed, its lens array blown and trying to show three images at once. It threw blurts of raw light across the darkness, freeze-framing faces, profiles, snarls and simpers.