Pop, here he is! Is he supposed to look like a shirtless dude with wings and a tail? "Hello - oh, I can talk - where are we, it's lovely to be asked for specifically but I don't recognize the, uh, venue -"

"Wh- Oh shit. It's... Demon."

His summoner is: Bleeding, looks absolutely high as fuck and delirious, she's slurring, and also seems dehydrated and malnourished under her gas mask and blue hair.

This might be pretty hard to see since the only light is from an anemic dropped flashlight.

"Oh? Who's that in there with you?" A voice calls from behind a rusty door. "I could have sworn you were alone, meat." And then metal scraping on metal. "Maybe I'll start with fingers this time. Fingers are fun."

"Is... that a legit slasher behind that door or are you filming a movie."

"I - what? Who has time for movies in this shitty place? It's the butcher. He kills scavengers. He's gonna kill me! I - I'm insane or - did I already die? Fuck!"

Okay, that was definitely two voices, right?

You don't last this long in this kind of life without knowing when to run away, and his instincts are saying 'run'.

The butcher stops clanging at the door and flees into the labyrinthine Abandoned Sections.

The door is going to open now and then a light falls on the fleeing serial killer, followed by some strategically placed rope. And a pillow for him to crash on.

Knife, meet rope, and swiftly part ways? No?

Well, fuck.

The girl lets out a breath and flops towards the ground herself out of sheer relief.

"Hey. Hey there, you're okay. Are there cops you can call?"

"Station security yeah - they - uh - red uniform - I need a - I need - Naloxgone - my bag - overdose-"

He grabs her bag and if she takes more than a couple seconds about it will appear in his hand.

Naloxgone is a grey auto injector! She stabs it to her arm and it auto injects.

Doesn't seem to help on a scale of seconds. She's still bleeding.

He gets her a little bonus blood, and - "Can I have a closer look at that scratch?"

"-Yeah sure - did summoning actually work - wait, are you evil? Why the fuck did I do that. God, I was gonna die, thank you-"

She is ineffectually trying to get at the gas mask's clasps with the uninjured arm.

"I'm not evil." He fills in her cut. "My name's Cam, what's yours?"

"I'm Kaia. Okay okay okay okay. So. If I'm dreaming nothing matters and if I'm not- You wanted to call station security? On the butcher? We're - this is the abandoned sections, none of the utilities reach down here anymore, we'd have to go up about eight levels to get to the lower levels proper and they'd be - around."

"Okay, so should we do that then?"

"I'm a little worried I'm hallucinating and I'll go introduce people to my invisible friend. I took like three pills of Phanta running from that guy. The Naloxgone will keep me from dying probably but like, it doesn't get rid of the high."

(Phanta, the local lingo informs him, occupies the same general niche as Meth.)

She digs through her pack and pulls out a bottle of water. It's labelled 'ghostwater'. She makes a face at it, then puts it down and digs out a purple - fruit? Of some kind and bites into that instead.

"Thanks for saving me if what I think is happening is in any way correlated to, like, reality."

"You're welcome. I'd offer to bring him up without you but you don't seem to be in great shape, I don't want to leave you alone. Can I get you anything?"

"I'm really not. You did something about that slash wound. My best bet is probably water, food, and a nap. Have you got any high-quality water?" (That is, water with less than 1% shit that is not water in it.)

"I don't know what kind of mineral content you're looking for but if you just mean, like, drinkable and not those puddles over there?" Bottle of water.

"Yeah. Ghostwater is better than dying of thirst but not by much."

She uncaps and tips over the ghostwater bottle and drinks from the provided bottle.

"Republic Station is falling apart, man. I'm a little surprised the abandoned sections are even still airtight sometimes. Clean water's expensive, food's expensive, meds are expensive, every few days we get a water plant breakdown or a nutrifruit farm failure or a power outage. Security is corrupt as fuck but at least a little better than the cartels, they do actually kinda sorta enforce the law still."

"Wow, I hope Mr. Slasher over there is a clear enough case for them. Uh, why has no one fixed this place?"

"I dunno. I'm just trying to get by. Maybe save up to rent a compartment and do a hydroponics farm, that'd be nice."

"You can summon, why is this the first time you tried that? A lot of people are scared of demons but an angel could handle a lot of this!"

"I was freaking out when I did that. I didn't think it would work."

(This guy still exists and is trying to make a nuisance of himself re: Getting out of these ropes.)

That’s not really going to work, though Cam keeps half an eye on him in case of surprise.

"You... didn’t think it would work?"

"Nope! I dreamed up the butcher was a demon so I needed another one and did - that."

She giggles. Lingering drug effects may be apparent here.

"So you are not... familiar with summoning as a phenomenon."

"Yeah. My grandma was into that occultism stuff. Summoning things and making deals with them and stuff. But like, never in a way that looked real. Always figured it was just a kink thing. Or like... Whatever the word is for kink that's not sex. Larp?"

"Larp might be the word you want. Huh. Hm. What year is it and where are we?"

"Uhhhh 89. No, 90. 2590. It's Republic Station, in the NWP, the New Worf-Picard system. Pretty close to Cyberstan but like, antispinwards."

"Wow. Is there... faster than light travel... or did people get here in a generation ship?"

"I mean... Yeah? Slowboats are out, except for intra-system stuff. There are ice miners and stuff. Highliners are like super expensive though. Or maybe we're just poor as gutterwater out here."

...Oops it is time to hunch over and try not to barf up her water and nutrifruit.

"Ohhhh the Nalox detox is hitting. Urk."

"Sorry, if I knew what you were on I could try to get you something better."

Hurk. Deeep slow breathing.

"Yeah. I mean. It was better get high and run than fall over and die to the slasher guy. Phanta sure as hell lets you run while it lasts. Shit. You're really real... Hope I didn't interrupt you sipping on wine and exhanging vaguely threatening banter with knights, or whatever demons actually do that isn't stories?"

"I mostly read. Play the violin. I am pleased to have been interrupted with this more urgent activity."

"So you can conjure stuff? If you can do that how about a bag of blueblood- And a Synaprest injector? Phanta's addictive as fuck, and Synaprest is the gold standard for treating addiction. Especially early on. Blueblood is, like, expensive synthetic hospital blood replacement fluid."

"What were you thinking of doing with Blueblood?"

"I'm thinking that a lot of my blood is in that puddle over there?"

"Yes, but I gave you more. Just, like, blood that is blood and not blood that has a brand name."

"Heh. It's supposed to also be life-extending... I think, it's just a rumor. It was worth a shot. I mean not that I'm ungrateful. I'm just - it feels like I'm dreaming still, you know, not that this is a helpful comment."

"I'm also not sure if I should expect Synaprest to have any complicated administration instructions? I'm not trained on it."

"...When I can climb stairs again we can go right to Lower Levels General and dump a whole storage bay of meds on them and ask a nurse there. Since you seem charitable an' all. Maybe the food bank too. Maybe we're scavs who hit the motherlode of all motherlodes and are feeling generous about it, if you don't want to be too obvious."

"I'm very charitable! I don't mind being obvious, if you don't think anyone except that jerk wants to kill you."

"I don't think anyone actively wants to kill me right now? But I can imagine lots of ways that changes if you do dramatic things and are obviously associated with me. Let's see... The black market and the drug cartel might think you're interfering with 'business'. Maybe you spook Security and the Revolution into starting the third war early. The Augs have mostly been hunted down and shot but a few of them are still around- Fucked up brain implants with a rogue AI in them, trying to implant more people. I guess I don't mind so much though, you saved me once so..."

"I'm indestructible, it's you I'd worry about."

"Yeah, I mean, if I'm your buddy, local guide, maybe someone gets a bright idea. And threatens me."

"Basically."

"I think I can walk now. I kinda need a nap but there's too much to do first. Can't just sit here for hours."

Nom nom on another purple fruit. Sip the water.

"Yeah, let's get this guy turned in and then we can figure out where you can sleep." He puts a coat on over the wings. "We go up for that?"

"Yeah. Spin grav is a bitch, it's about one point oh five here."

(He's not going to try to resist any more at this point. He can get out of a Station Security cell. Probably.)

"Yeah, spin's out of vogue where I'm from." He puts the guy on wheels.

Kaia picks up her backpack. They go along corridors and up stairs. They pass an elevator shaft but Kaia doesn't even glance at it.

Four flights of stairs up, there are voices that turn out to be a bunch of teenagers drinking beer and playing cards in one of the slightly more intact side rooms. One of them has a metal lower arm. They stare but don't interrupt.

Seems fine. "Elevator broken?" he asks Kaia.

She just lets out a short 'ha' like he made a good joke.

"It might take an actual miracle of God for the lower decks elevators to be working and stay that way for more than a day. We're lucky the tram in the trench still runs. Let alone elevators in the abandoned seections."

"Bad design, incompetent repair, or sabotage?"

"Yes.

...Mostly the last thing."

"Who sabotages elevators?"

"People looking for copper to pawn, and the Revolution, I think."

"What are they revolting against, do they have a platform?"

"Shit, I dunno. The big fracas twenty years ago was over changes to the laws- 'Indefinite detention without trial'. So it's probably that. And, you know, Security being corrupt as fuck. They arrested and executed this guy who cracked the GRM on Nutrifruit like ten years ago, and eventually managed to eradicate the cracked strain too. That's pretty damn infuriating if you ask me. And it makes too much sense if 'power failures' and 'water treatment plant breakdowns' are cunningly timed. The upper decks never suffer like that. An' some of the upper deckers are really odious, like they kill people and get away with it."

"Huh. What prevents people from leaving this station for pleasanter climes?"

"Cash for a ticket. Security screening for 'criminals'. And not liking Cyberstan- That's the cheapest and closest, uh, major power I guess? And they're creepy AI-lovers over there."

"What does that cash out to, being creepy AI-lovers?"

"It's an algocracy. They run everything by constantly monitoring everyone's everything and feeding it all to some super-AI they call Central, which spits out decisions and you're supposed to just follow those. They don't hold elections, they don't have a constitution or rights or anything like we notionally still do around here. Cyberstanians say it's nice but then they say some shit like 'I was sent to therapy for watching too many music videos'."

"Huh. That does sound creepy. Are there system-level rules about establishing new stations?"

"You're not talking to an educated persona here. There's lots of slowboats around, I even heard of a guy managing to salvage one and become an ice miner, so it's probably not too too locked down? Thinking of establishing Cam Station?"

"I would give it a more tasteful name!"

"Ours is so generic. 'Republic Station', sheesh. The Republic of Silos we were originally a mining outpost of doesn't even exist anymore, you know? The federal level dissolved."

They are now close enough to actually populated parts of the station that most of the lights work and the distant roar of conversation and activity can be heard in the background.

"Yeah, that's tacky. I'd call a station 'Atriama', I think."

One more stairway and now they're officially passing actually inhabited compartments. Rows and rows of neatly labelled little side doors, not much decoration. It would be really easy to get lost until you learn the system.

People are walking around with groceries or deliveries and so on. They look askance at the prisoner. Occasionally there are neon signs and paper ads. One of the compartments they pass is a water store, and another loudly announces that it buys all scrap.

She sees a flash of red uniform down the hall.

"Hey, Security! Over here! We've captured someone on the wanted posters!"

The guy comes over at the jog.

"That's the Butcher! He's wanted for murder. I'm calling for backup!"

And starts speaking into his radio.

That's so valid! He looks and is secure but it's fine to be more cautious than that.

Two more security people show up pretty promptly. These one have serious-looking guns instead of the first guy's taser.

"We'll take custody from here. How would you like the wanted reward distributed?"

"Can you give us cash?"

"Let me scan your ID, and I can give you an incident slip to be exchanged for cash at a proper security station."

Kaia nods and hands over a plastic card. The security guys have pocket scanner/printer devices on their belts for these slips apparently. A little business card is handed back.

"Thanks, by the way. This guy's a menace. Have a nice day."

"You too!"

"I figure it's your money," Kaia says. "You can get a lot more pawning stuff around but, uh, that might actually be a little scummy in a way, it'll fuck up the markets something fierce, the first people to buy before prices drop will get relatively screwed, I guess."

"That's true of commodities but I would generally not worry about it for, like, scrap metal or musical instruments."

"Scrap metal is a commodity? I mean most everything is a commodity. Materials like scrap and wire and printer plastic are pretty low margin though." She has to know these things because she's a scavenger for a living. "Yeah, dumping scrap and various bits of hardware on workshops and repair services would work. Sprinkling the Dumping Grounds with all sorts of miscellaneous stuff would be a pretty decent method of charity on top of the charity clinic and food bank visits. Pretty much the most desperate pick through the trash there. Community sourced recycling. You don't need money yet, I think."

"I mean a commodity in the like, stock market sense, more. I do not need money, but I might eventually find something I need to pay for so it does make sense to be thinking about."

"Huh. 'Kay, hospital now?"

"Sure!"

The station has this huge open vertical slot area! You can see the curve, here. There's a public tram. Kaia pays 4 credits to get them on it. Everyone looks tired and mind-their-own-business-y. There's all sorts, including an armed guy in black carefully watching everyone and guarding an orange crate like a mother hen.

They pass the Dumping Grounds, a huge pile of, just, trash of all sorts. A handful of people are in there picking it over.

They pass a slightly more commercial nexus, a place with more open space and better lights, a vague attempt at plastic greenery, and a few facades with actual architecture- A fish restaurant with a large fish tank for a front wall giving a peek inside the place, a phone store, 'Solana Biogenics', and a clothes shop, among others.

Then they get to their stop. Lower Levels General Hospital is close by- There's a big sign. The line is out the door. Kaia is flagging and suffering a bit from her drug situation still, but trying to power through. She has them duck into a side niche.

"I think it'll go better if we walk in with a box of stuff to donate clearly visible." Here she digs through her backpack again. "Oxymore injectors, I don't have any of those but they're standard, by Carmichael Pharmaceutical. These," A blue bandage still in plastic wrap, "Hemostatic bandages." A plastic blood pack with a standardized fill slot. "O-negative blood packs. I guess actual docs will know what they need more but I really doubt any of those will go unused."

Cam makes a plastic box and fills it up with some of all of those things.

The orderlies running triage and paperwork out front are delighted by the donation and hand it off to go be added to stocks. One of them recognizes Kaia and asks if she's sure they can afford to donate this, they know she's not doing great-

"I could use someone to check me out, actually, I've got - uh, shit, at least three tabs of Fanta in me? I took a Naloxgone for it. Long story."

"-Okay yeah you're, that sounds right based on how you look. And we can let you skip the line, overdose is pretty serious and it's policy to do that for paying or donating patients besides. Who's your buddy?"

"Cam, he's got more stuff. Why don't we, uh, go talk about it?"

"I'd like a word once she's out of danger, yeah."

They're shuffled to a shabby exam room. They glare at Cam just a tad until Kaia says Cam can be present for the exam, he's not done anything.

(A minute later, she shows him a tiny little business card saying that she could say she needs to go to the bathroom and get out the back exit if she needs to, resources are available for dealing with abusive life situations, with a bit of dark amusement.)

A nurse does a brief quiz and physical exam instant bloodwork on her with a white tablet-type device. She pronounces a drug name and a dose and writes an order to have it fetched, and advises rest and nutrition and hydration. 

"I'm concerned about physical withdrawl symptoms," Kaia says, "Would a Synaprest injection help with those?"

"Not necessarily the acute symptoms. Synaprest is designed to address psychological withdrawal, a more long term concern. The Mosanatin will help you with the acute withdrawal and also with the heavy metal in your system that I must presume comes from either drinking Ghostwater, or contaminants in the Fanta pills. I'm told you wanted to have a word about your generous donation too?"

"Yeah," Cam materializes another O-neg pack, "where do you want more of those?"

"Huh."

The nurse stares blankly at it, then takes it and lets out a tiny droplet onto her scan pad thing from the standard nib designed for that.

"Huh. Actually- Well, we'll never have too much blood, but we could particularly use about a hundred liters of sterilization alcohol, new scrubs, surgical kit-" Four different medications she lists off. "...Fully charged power cells, too," she adds after some thought.

"You got it. Where?"

She jogs to a supply room, calling out instructions to two people on the way.

"Here! It's not my job to question where the supply comes from, it's my job to help people with it, but being able to be less stingy will be nice. I can have a more complete list in about ten minutes, what I told you is just the things we're always short of."

"Is there any organizational system here or should it just pile up kinda wherever?"

"Blood in this storage bay, bandages-" Two brand names, "Here," a different bay, and so on and so forth, with smaller cabinets for pill storage. The scrubs and power cells will be going in a different closet.

Another person is peering in. "Hold on, what's all this, where's it coming from?"

"Nowhere, it's new." Blood. Bandages. Pills. Scrubs. Batteries.

The batteries are big chunky things the size of a pop can, a bit bigger actually, with bright green indicator bars.

"New? Like, fresh from the factory and you've got... Some kinda supertech dimensional storage or something? That's a thing, right?"

"Not like this, it's boxes that are bigger on the inside, not teleporting things in."

"No factories were" harmed "employed."

"You claim to be conjuring matter ex nihilo? That's supposed to still be impossible, it's the entire reason they're doing that star mining thing at Pollux."

"Eppur si muove."

"That's... Hold on. I don't know that one."

"Don't question the gifts, Bennett. Just appreciate them! Do you need anything in turn or is this pure charity?"

"If you could make things out of nothing would you need anything in turn?"

"Experiences, you know. Games and plays and massage or sex, things like that? Anyway-" Three more medications are listed.

"You have divined the traditional arrangement but I'm not in the market at the moment, thanks." Bam bam bam.

"Well you'll have lower levels gratitude, much good may it do you. I could put in a word with Wild? He's a - community leader."

Anyway the doctors want to get to using all this new kit on the line they passed on the way in.

"I don't see why not, thanks."

Someone digs out a red business card. It just says 'Johnathan Wild - 8816'. Presumably the intra-station phone system has fewer digits.

"I'll call him later, or he'll probably hear about you through gossip anyway, it's not like the hospital supply will stay a secret."

"It doesn't need to, I'd be going about this differently if I needed a low profile. Can you think of anywhere else that needs stuff?"

"Lower Levels Food Bank."

"Local Deck Eight Engineering co-op tries to keep the lights and water on, they might have a wish list."

"Washer's aquaponics farm, give him twenty tons of preserved feed and plant food, maybe some new tanks, it'll translate into cheap filets and veggies for years." "Oh, yeah, guy loves his fish farm."

"Any chance of a map? Just, like, name one that exists and I can take it from there."

There's a buzz of consideration, then Kaia - who has followed after a while to see where Cam had gotten to - offers, "The official Station Atlas from '85. Georgio's Genuine Guaranteed Grifter's Guide. Wild Wiki's Lower Levels map. None of those will be really complete but, yeah."

Bam. "And we're looking for which spots?"

The Wiki map is probably the most useful of the three. The official station atlas mostly has transit lines, Security offices, and other official things on it- Plus tourist trap-y zones. Georgio's map is actually part of a pamphlet and is... Difficult to parse, but extremely annotated with a large legend, with symbols like 'unfriendly gang' to 'sell stolen goods here' to 'good spot for begging'. But the Wiki map seems both recent and detailed, as far as the lower levels go- Tons of businesses and districts are named, including all three of the previously mentioned spots. The food bank is easiest to get to- Two more tram stops, right next to the stop.

"Thank you!"

Kaia tags along again. The food bank is less busy than the hospital. The person at the front door says they're "out" before they manage to get a word out.

"Out of what?"

"Food and water rations. Out of both."

"Do you have refillable containers?"

"...Yes?"

"He can fill them. Water, and also food. Big donation."

"Ah. Well we always appreciate donations. We're all volunteers here you know, we don't even get paid except out of surplus donations."

"Cam, common packaged preserved foods everyone will be fine with are Peat cans, Galaxy Blend, juice boxes and sweetened milk, Nutrifruit like I was eating earlier, Bei's brand ice cream, LI-Eat snack bars, Cat Chocolate, instant ramen bowls, and Sami soda. I bet they'd also appreciate sealed water rations in addition to filling the tanks, and tampons and toilet paper and toothbrushes and toothpaste, water filters and purification tablets will last a lot longer than personally filling tanks, all this stuff has a station standard version if my vibes on your limits are correct. Condoms and coffee beans. Water testing strips."

"...That would all be wonderful. Come on in. It's not like we have anything to steal at the moment if it's a trick."

Wag wag wag. "How d'you want all this organized?" he asks, glancing at his computer where he took down Kaia's list.

Food here. Household goods there. They have battered old fridges and freezers here for the ice cream and milk. Here are their water tanks; A bank of twelve of them each about bathtub sized and with a little electronic screen and tap. Can the food bank get some charged power cells? Maybe the slightly illegal single-use kind? They last longer and also are a less tempting target for theft. (The slight illegality is due to an outdated and misguided recycling policy.)

Sure, he will do the slightly illegal kind.