I stood at the edge of the fourth district, behind a cheap token chain-link fence, staring into the badlands and seeing the explosions that were distinctly closer than a minute ago. It was still far off over the horizon, but my ears were starting to pick up the faintest sounds of artillery fire and bombs.

"How, exactly, does the rubber wall operate?" I asked, already picking everything up. I didn't need an explanation to recognize the panic in Isia's voice. "Shouldn't there be an alarm or something?"

"There should be." Isia glowered, poking her temple. "But internet's down, CYPHER's using it all up for the A-class. Fuck, I didn't notice 'cause we were having fun, shit, we-" She cut herself off, slamming the door shut and revving the engine, starting up the car as I hopped in. "We need to warn the others."

That didn't make sense. "Connection shouldn't be completely cut off, but extremely throttled. CYPHER should allow for emergency communications to go through."

"Yeah? Well, I'm just getting silence here," Isia snarled, the car lurching as she went well beyond the speed limit. "Can't even send an alert."

My eyes widened in sudden realization, holding on for dear life as the tires screeched. "You're telling me there's no recognized administrative position within the people fighting on the rubber wall itself!?" It would be the peak of insanity. I could only gawk in horror at the prospect that not a single individual would have the administrative permissions to even send a notification. "What about the megucas!? Surely they-"

"I don't know!" Yanking the steering wheel, the car's frame complained as it swerved around a corner, nearly missing the lamppost along the way. "This is the first time I've ever heard of something pushing the wall back this much without an alarm going off!"

Though her tone was bordering on a shrill sound, Isia's driving kept a precise insanity to it as she hurled us both back towards the wall. The electric engine was complaining, a dull whine that kept pushing for more power and greater demand from the cooling units, and all I could do was hold on for dear life and try to make heads or tails of what was happening. The academy back in FC02 had gone into extenuating detail over what to do and what was expected from us in the event of a breach. The monopoly city had left no uncertainty over what each person was meant to do.

My eyes lingered on something I hadn't truly noticed until now… or rather, the lack of something. "Are there bunkers? Defense points? Evacuation routes?" It was something I should've noticed, something that'd been lost in the newness of everything that'd been going on. The buildings here in the fourth district had not been cobbled together with some grand strategy in mind. The streets weren't laid out to create natural bottlenecks. The structures lacked the sort of reinforcements that could stand up to a D-class.

Isia laughed bitterly, confirming my suspicions. "Third district's using all the good stuff to rebuild the wall. If there's a breach and some damage, we just make-do with whatever the corpos throw our way to rebuild."

I felt like I'd just swallowed a rock.

As the car carved its way through the irregular streets and odd turns, we began encountering other drivers, and even Isia's demented speed was slowed down. Though it was very late (or very early, depending on who you asked), the number of people going out to the street had noticeably surged. Within minutes, we found ourselves stuck in slow lanes more often than not, and though Isia had used the sidewalk a few times, the number of pedestrians quickly made that impossible.

"Shift change," Isia growled, squeezing the steering wheel. "Either that, or some folk got the memo. Shit, shit, shit."

The people around us were moving so calmly, bored and tired, following the routine and unaware of what was about to come their way.

"How many people have work shifts inside the third district?" Maybe if a significant % of the population travelled into the safety of the third district, then...

"Not enough."

I bit my lip.

Corporate protocol dictated splitting areas by how much time it would take to evacuate vs the ETA of arrival of the threat. Places with no hope for escape were meant to hunker down and create defensive positions; it was preferable to clogging up transportation routes for everyone else. But right now there was nowhere to hunker down in, not for these people. They might as well assume they were standing within houses made of paper.

"We need to warn them," I said, jaw tight.

"Quinn has a setup with their drones to run without internet since it's cheaper." Isia poked her temple repeatedly. "I might be able to get a ping once we're close enough to the base."

"Whose territory are we in? Can they help?" Would it be possible to get the other gangs to help? They were supposed to have at least one meguca each, meaning there should be some capacity to create a defensive perimeter.

She grimaced. "Technically, this is our territory."

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I looked around, trying to find any of the graffiti that would mark gang presence. There were only scribbles and crude drawings, nothing that was consistent enough to scream 'ownership.'

"Wait, what?"

"It was a whole thing. The boss' gang, the Rats, they run their chunk of the wall, and they run protection on smaller gangs like us from other gangs and corpos," she said, words coming out in a quickening stream. "They also decide who's got what territory, and Vespi's been running circles protecting the old territory, which is a lot more than we can handle if push comes to shove, but-"

"Breathe." I gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "Just focus on what we can do next." Which was something I definitely should've been doing. I was so tense I was starting to consider whether running to the Saints would be a better prospect. Wait. "What's the ETA on getting to the gang?"

"I don't know," Isia replied. "At this rate, maybe an hour before we get in range? Two?"

"You have a word-of-the-day app but not an offline route tracker?" I accused, already unbuckling my seatbelt. "Park the car, lock it up, we're going on foot."

"Are you insane!? This shit might be slow, but not THAT-" Her words came to a stop as she looked at me, blinking slowly. "I suspect you're suggesting something, but I'm mostly sure that my half-drunk brain's guessing the wrong thing."

"I can carry us both. You and your gun weigh less than the shield did," I said. "I'm sure I can get us over to the base faster than going through traffic."

"Damn, I was right." She didn't ask any further, pushing the car behind to give herself the room to swerve into the sidewalk. Isia ignored the pedestrians that were starting to get very loud, drawing out a firearm and waving it in the air, sending them scrambling in every direction.

I glared.

"What?" she asked innocently, holstering the gun and opening the trunk, pulling out the case with her rifle as I packed anything of value I could find into the backpack. "No one's gonna mess with the car now."

I didn't try to argue the statement. For all we knew, the car wouldn't even survive what was coming our way. I slung the backpack on the front and glanced at the weapons case.

"You… need to get some proper grips on that thing."

"I'm not leaving it behind." She gave me an amused look. "Now, do I get the shoulder seat or do I get the wild-ride option?"

"Sack of potatoes option," I replied, moving in and quickly snatching the case from her grasp with one hand while flinging her over my shoulder with the other.

She shrieked but had few options to escape as I set off, following the road and the traffic at a hurried jog. Just as I'd suspected, I barely felt the weight, feeling no more burdened than if I were just moving about something that was far larger than it was heavier. Isia squirmed and kicked, and tried her best to escape to little avail; my grip on her waist was firm enough she wouldn't be falling by accident, let alone on purpose.

"Keep bouncing me on my stomach, and I'll puke all over you."

I hesitated, and in that moment Isia struck, wriggling free just enough to twist herself around. The next thing I knew, her legs had locked on either side of my shoulders, and her hands were gripping my hair.

"How…?" I still wasn't entirely sure how she'd managed that move. All I'd managed to catch was her kicking her legs and swinging like some sort of mad pendulum before she'd landed on my shoulders.

"Git!" she declared, half serious and half teasing, giving the top of my head a friendly tap.

"You have to teach me that." I was half-sure this had something to do with how she managed to climb places so fast.

"Maybe. Now git before-! Well, shit."

Though she cursed, her tone lacked any panic. I tried to grasp what she'd noticed, but didn't spot anything... well, not right away. Rather, the traffic jam had suddenly become far more frantic, with the honking of klaxons tripling in frequency, some cars abruptly breaking off to take side streets and other routes.

Isia piped up to explain. "Meguca-issued evacuation alert just came through for the whole district."

Though I was half-occupied dodging the people pouring onto the streets, I couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief. "What's the color?" I asked, thinking back to FC02's color classification system. Orange meant that evacuation was 'now-or-never,' with not much room for alternatives, while yellow-

"Colored zones are for fancy inner-district folk. This is 'run or else.' Take a left at the next intersection," she hissed, tapping my shoulder, entirely unconcerned by my weaving through the pedestrians. "By the way, has anyone told you you're a very smooth ride? What's your mileage?"

Her laughter was forced, but I didn't press her on it, focusing on the path ahead. All around us, people were ditching their rides in favor of taking whatever they could carry. Here and there, buildings would either see dozens of people rushing out with loaded backpacks or locking up. The number of folk sporting firearms was also increasing, and though no one was pointing at anyone else, I could feel the gazes scanning everyone around.

I was drawing a lot of attention, but everyone was giving ample room to us, probably because they suspected I was some sort of jacked-up cyborg.

We'd been making good progress, all things considered, when the first gunshot rang out. The sound had come from several streets to the side, and immediately the crowd jostled, firearms getting unholstered and .22 plastic-printed pea-shooters being pointed every which way.

"The panic's only going to get worse."

"We need to get out of here, pronto," Isia hissed.

"I can't go any faster with this many people," I replied, not particularly enjoying my limited visibility either. "But I have an idea."

Isia let out a strangled gasp as I jumped from the sidewalk onto the nearest car, using it as a springboard to lunge to the next vehicle. The metal groaned and creaked underfoot. It was awkward to take such long steps, nearly jumping as I used every car's rooftop as a stepping stone. Some people screamed complaints in our wake, but I focused on pushing ahead as hard as I could without falling over.

The minutes felt like hours.

The number of gunshots was multiplying, and there were several columns of smoke rising into the sky. More than once, I spotted shops and houses getting forcefully broken into, and each time I had to suppress the urge to rush the delinquents to put a stop to it. No, I had to focus on the bigger picture.

"I got a ping!" Isia shouted the same moment I spotted the first graffiti sporting a rat with a halo. "Oh."

"What? What is it?"

"Your ninja teacher sent a message," she muttered. "Good news: inner-city megucas and some elders are deploying." I could hear the way she swallowed heavily. "Bad news is they're being sent to deal with some high-classes in the badlands before they get too close to avoid collateral. They can't spare any resources for the lower-class hordes. We're on our own."

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