I left my last particular narrative in a tragic place. I start this one in a comical one. The sewers under Region 23.

The police may control the skies and the streets and the places above the ground where people tread in their day to day lives, but us that tread where evils fear prefer to do our business underground, where even the officials have a hard time following us. In the dark and the dank where the smells are not especially pleasant, and one has to wear a filter over their nose and mouth if they wish to be able to actually breathe properly, it's only those who actually brave these places that have anything worth providing to the world, albeit in an illegal capacity. And Ashore and I, with a third following a few paces behind, happened to have a few cases of a new and potent hallucinogen named COLD SPACE. Who would pay for the stuff I have no idea. I hallucinate every night when I go to sleep and dream. But, I was being paid to be down there, so what the hell.

We moved in silence to the designated rendezvous with an underground group that the boss has had dealings with in the past. Picking up the case from the back of Dirty Work earlier that night from the two guards usually outside the boss' office, we were told that it was a routine thing, just a fair trade for the money, all in cash of course, and that we were to go in through an entrance on the one side of the Hyorue Area and to leave via a shaft to a manhole behind a pub on the other side of the area. The time of rendezvous would be 4:10pm. Ashrore had done the trip before with the same amount for a similar price, although not in the same location. You never used the same location, or the same time, and prices always fluctuated.

The tunnels, illuminated by faded, rusted lights that gave out only the dimmest of glows, cocooned us in as we travelled through their web. We tried to not to travel along the walkways that ran alongside the sludgy rivers if we could help it, always heading through an access hatch to one of the maintenance tunnels whenever we could, but sometimes the worst way was the most direct way. The lights flickered as we walked, and shadow people kept us company in the gloom.

I thought about Lura a lot during that walk. That particular job took place only two days after Lura's death. The boss had closed the club the day before, for 'personal reasons' to give us all a time to grieve. We may not run an especially popular line of work, and for the dancers it was of course not where they wanted to be in life, but we were as much of a family as we could be. We kept close, and although I didn't know Lura very well, I had seen her around and knew her to be much more than just an object to be gazed at. She was a very feisty individual that, given the right circumstances, could have flourished to become a successful woman in regions far surpassing the lowly points of Region 26 and her small, dingy apartment.

And I had held her in my arms as she had died. That connects you to a person in a way that nothing else can.

We were not far from where we needed to be when it happened. Ashrore plucked out her Halo-Core to check how far away we were, not two tunnels away, when we heard the first scream.

'What was that?' I asked.

'Weaponsssss,' she said.

We drew our guns from our holsters and squeezed up against the wall. Ashrore went first, heading along the hall, her footsteps now quietened. That scream had been the sound of one scared out of their wits, and after two steps, the second one came, this one the scream of a man being torn to shreds.

We stopped in our tracks. A gun blast echoed through the tunnels, followed by a second. We didn't move. My heart was louder than anything I could hear moving in the tunnels and I was sure, so sure, that it would give our position away. Our third, a silent girl that I had never heard speak in my life (but I was told was good in bed, and yes that is the extent of my knowledge on her) had drawn up behind us, her own gun in hand.

Footsteps, getting closer. Coming down a turn-off just a meter or so in front of us. We stayed close, guns primed, the liquid glowing in the canisters locked and loaded into their chambers. A flash preceded a blast right at the edge of the tunnel, and we saw a hand flail out of the lip of the turn-off. It smacked against the floor, blood soaking it, before it was pulled back again.

There was the sound of flesh being ripped, ligaments opened, and the sound of something feasting ravenously. Ashrore held her hand and began to count down her fingers.

Five.

I tightened my grip on the gun, the case still in my other hand. Letting it go would a) risk it clattering on the floor and b) be risking losing the case altogether. The boss would say very quickly that I was more expendable than the case, however decent I was at killing for him, and would surely prove it swiftly.

Four.

Blood splattered the floor, a drop hitting the water's edge and dropping into it with a neat 'plink'.

Three.

I felt sweat roll down my forehead. Whatever was attacking the man just around the corner was hungry. I saw a chunk of organ just nudge its way over the threshold. I concentrated incredibly hard to keep my lunch back.

Two.

The thing let out a howl, a cry so hideous it chilled me to the very core.

One.

Ashrore gripped her gun, putting it out before her. We all internally exhaled.

Ashrore turned the corner and fired, her Trovation tail moving gracefully behind her. She fired into the chamber and without missing a beat I moved behind her and fired likewise. I saw a black hulking mass scamper down the short tunnel, turning off into the murk. The whole thing took but two seconds.

I didn't want to think about what I had seen, and I hadn't even glanced down at the mess of a man beneath my feet, whose blood and bile was now lining my shoe. But I knew what I had seen heading off from his prey. That shape was something ingrained in the human mind more than any other, and the last that you want to see hovering over a body with entrails hung from its teeth.

'That was...'

'A man,' Ashrore finished, a waver of fear in her voice. 'A man attacked them.'