The pair continue to bicker as she heads off. Staying in the shade of the old overpass is, at least, mostly doable. As she walks through the barren land- Not entirely lifeless, but certainly worthy of being called 'badlands'- She will encounter:

A huge steel box just lying there and rusting, doors open with trash and dust filling one corner
A large tan lizard lounging on a cool rock, scampering away from her
A white plastic drone buzzing along overhead, pausing near her for a bit before moving on
An old convenience store, now little more than rusty shelves and broken glass.
A cardboard box full of more old trash, including dirty (literally, not metaphorically) magazines, cloth scraps, empty bottles, and an unlabelled packet of pills
A squad of motorcyclists audible well before they approach, eight people on six big chrome bikes, dressed in black and with white-and-black face paint. One of them idly tosses a green glass bottle of beer in her direction as they roar past at speed; Dodge, catch, or hit, he laughs as the bikes roar past and kick up a huge cloud of dust.

...What the fuck kind of - thing - is that?  It's smart enough to see her - or in direct contact with someone that is.  Ugh.  It's worse than Nerat's Eyes.

...Actually it may be just as bad, come to think of it.

She actually takes a bit of time to page through the magazines.  Someone thought them worth making.

...What's motorcycle guy's response to 'throw back'?

The most recoverable magazine is some kind of - catalog? Attractive people in weird clothes, or with 'augmentations' like shining eyes or glowy bones, with prices attached. Strange advertisements for Toho (clothes), SensPerience (who apparently sell 'spikes' like Rex's), Serisse (it's unclear what they sell), Touchstone (security??), Green Dragon (food???).

At thirty miles an hour, his response is a manic grin and a clumsy grab for the flying bottle- A successful one.

"Slick move, head! Enjoy!" He shouts over the roar, and tosses something else- A few single dollar bills wrapped around a plastic baggie of some white powder with a rubber band. And then is gone.

...Serisse sells an image, clearly.  An image in contrast to the vast majority of the market.  Not that she's sure why someone thought it necessary to make a magazine of advertiser graffiti.

(The powder in the baggie goes in a pocket somewhere; she's not even sure what the fuck it is.  She peels off the dollar bills, sees if any of them are different issuers.)

Augmentations, you say?  Those sound...interesting.

She wonders if the names are their variant of Archons, because profound magic is certainly the only way she can think of of giving someone glowing bones.  Why even would you do that, though?  Why would you want that to begin with?

(The magazine does not seem to answer her.)

The listed prices for augmentations are all in the tens, twenties, thirties thousands of dollars. Or more. They're described in flowery sales patter, "a premium supportive integration offering unmatched stabilization of nerves and musculature, to ensure you hold steady even under the heaviest workloads". But it's not that hard to figure out what they're supposed to do. Make you stronger. Faster. Tougher. Keener. Concealed weapons. Life-saving devices carried within your very body. And give you the ability to slot in 'spikes', which seem to have two variants- Ones that replay memories or experiences, and ones that grant new skills or abilities.

The desert wind blows on.

Interesting, certainly.

She doesn't trust it, but...interesting.

The wind blows on, and on she walks.

She sees another bike run past her, heading the other way this time. The rider doesn't so much as acknowledge her. There's a wild dog, starving looking, that slinks along one of the hillsides warily before vanishing out of sight.

A huge land train trundles past, practically a whole fortress on treads moving at a horse's gallop. The rear areas of it are loaded with eight metal boxes similar to the empty one she saw. And then another. And then a third. She can spot Rex atop the last one. They turn off the path ahead of her, heading off somewhere else in the rolling hills.

And then over the next hill, and she seems to be on the Bordertown's outskirts. It's still brown and dusty out here, the structures made of junk and trash, but there's more of said structures. Shacks here and there along the outskirts, with no particular plan or layout. Deeper in are larger structures- Old silos, or mostly-solid dwellings. People wandering around, lounging in whatever shade is at hand. Crowds milling around and haggling, almost universally looking dusty, haggard, worn out. It's a rusty maze of a place. The stench is a lot stronger here. Something polluted and rusty, like ore tailings or old compost, but worse. And beyond it, high grey walls with watchtowers. More drones patrol overhead at odd intervals. There's a main gate - guarded by black-suited individuals and more towers. The long tubes must be weapons, surely- A series of large turrets atop the towers have really big ones.

Was it ever in dispute that they were weapons, the way they were carried in the mercenaries' hands?  She wonders what they do.

Old, well-honed instincts seize her as she sees the crowd, and she looks for disputes in need of a Fatebinder's intervention - irreconcilable conflicts.  What she'll do when she finds them...  She's not sure.

There's an equilibrium here. It's not a kind one, but it's there. Wary faces taking her in over and over, evaluating her for trouble. One woman, bloodshot eyes and wearing a see-through mesh top, rambling almost incoherently. Her - sister? daughter? - is trying in vain to steer her towards an out of the way niche. A guy slouches at the entrance to an alley, grunting at passers-by, "Got ice. Got bangers. Need painkillers? Got it all." Someone sleeping on an old couch, a defenseless mark at first- Until you see the glint of metal in the shadows where a long-haired woman crouches, eyes darting around.

She doesn't know this place, not yet- But some things are obvious. Violence underpins it all.

The obvious place to start would be a bar, perhaps. There's a few places- Shacks, really. A guy in a Tower uniform is having a tense standoff with two armed women at the front of that one over there. Alone. And without the concealing helmet. Everyone else is surreptitiously vacating the area, or else lurking around and watching.

...The woman with the bloodshot eyes finds that she feels more alive, and the woman tending to her both more alive and more effort-full, as Ophelia brushes past them towards the guy in the Tower uniform and the two ladies.

She observes, at a polite distance.  Which is to say, not close enough to stab.

There's something of a family resemblance between one of the women and the Tower man.

"This is just the way things are, Mateo. You ain't gonna argue me out of it, for the fourth fucking time."

"No, just- Why? Christ, all I want is some beer. Is my money no good or something? Don't like 'my type' around here?"

"Well you could at least fucking take off the uniform, yeah?"

"No, can't, the supers yell at us for that."

"Oh, boo fucking hoo."

"Come on, what is up with you!? You know me! I used to come here, right?"

"Yeah, you did. Before you got hired by Tower. This is just how it is, man."

"You know me! Lissa knows me, Kev knows me. I miss the place, alright?"

"So?"

"I really need a break here. Just a chance to unwind. It's hard." Tower guy sighs.

"The answer is no."

"Oh yeah? Well, what if I talk to Threat Assessment and- Er..." Tower guy grimaces and thinks better of what he was about to say as a very skeptical eyebrow is raised. "I could bring more business in. We get paid okay."

"We don't want your money. We don't want a scene either. There's Tower bars, go to one of those."

"...Never knew you were such a bitch, Val."

Val sneers. "Only reason I ain't cutting you for that is because of your badge, cuz."

"...A word of advice for you, young man, if you want it."

Val stares levelly at her. Mateo turns with a glare that he then tries to smooth over, then makes a sort of 'get on with it' gesture.

"To align yourself with a source of power is to make its enemies your enemies.  Even the ones who know you must fear you - and you have seen the power you wield with Tower's sigil.

"'Threat Assessment'.  Such small words for what could bring your friends' lives crashing down around their ears.

"Don't lie to me and say you don't know that.

"Don't lie to yourself about what you're willing to pay for Tower's money.

"And don't lie to your friends by trying to pretend it's all the same when you're serving on another side of the battlefield, now.

"You can help them.  But they can't help you.  Not anymore.  You swore that camraderie away when you signed up for this, and you'd best hope you've a way out, if you ever want it back.  Keep in touch, quietly, if you want - but don't bring trouble knocking on their doors.  And you are trouble, here.  You know that.  You tried to use it.

"Do you really want to succeed?"

"...Goddamn it, you're right. I thought- It doesn't matter what I thought. Fuck. Fine, fuck it. I'm out of here... Sorry."

He turns with a scowl and starts walking away.

(...This moment, precisely when he makes to leave, is when a bearded man in the corner of her vision gets a sharp look in his eye and vanishes down an alleyway himself.)

...Hm.

She murmurs to the bouncer that's not been busy engaging with the argument - "The fellow with the beard that just cut out," she thumbs at where he was, "was he one of yours?  Or have I just made my life interesting.  'cause he sure looked like he saw something up, and now he's gone running."

To all other appearances, she's watching Departing Boy.

An old man, actually, or at least middle age. He's out of sight already.

"...Oh. Shit. Val-!"

"What?"

"Trouble. Maybe."

"What kind of maybe?"

"...Trouble if I tell you how I know that, kind of maybe."

"Oh come the hell on."

"Head ducked out, might be following Mateo. And who does that?"

"...Shit." Val frowns at Ophelia. "Nothing we can do about it from here."

"Don't you want to... Warn him?"

"You heard this preppy chica, we can't help him anymore."

"Damn.  I have what one of my friends has charmingly called 'an overinflated sense of responsibility', and here I am, having meddled.  I'll go keep an eye out, shall I.  Thank you, ladies.  Luck be with you."

She vanishes into the crowd, Vigor thumping in her veins, and spins minor illusions around herself to look just less obvious enough as she catches up to whoever this guy is.  (And if she can't find him direct, well, she can tail Mateo too.)

He ducked into an alley; The alley has a bunch of doors, none obviously having just been opened, and splits into two directions, one of which turns another corner and one that lets out into a street. The footprints lead to the corner-cutting one, and that leads to a little courtyard with lots of doors where a couple of kids are being hurried inside by a man who's glancing at the other entrance at the far end, and then that lets out back into the dusty open areas.

The middle-aged man has put on a baseball cap and shucked his tan jacket, but might still be recognizable from behind.

And from his tracks, if the sand's still around.  And the purpose in his core; that's really hard to hide.  (She manages.)  And his beard.  Really, that wasn't a fake?  Amateurs.

She walks very quietly, as illusions continue to be thumbed into being - when she has eyes on him again, she's practically unrecognizable, though no-one who saw her at any one step of the way would notice anything off.

It's the little details, really.

Now what is this gentleman up to?

Tailing Mateo as he attracts plenty of wary looks in that Tower uniform heading back towards the gate, apparently. While casually strolling along and telling a long-winded story into a handheld phone about his kid's friends. If he's speaking in code it's not an obvious one.

There's codes, and then there's codes; what sort of story is he telling?  Other than 'long-winded and rambling', of course.

(It is a good tactic, she'll admit.)

Oh, you know, they had this stupid bar crawl, and didn't realize what assholes they were being. But you're still an asshole whether or not you know you're one, right? And then they got jumped by some punks to prove that same point, near this one burger stand. (He has just passed a burger stand). They were alright, even the punks know not to bring down too much heat. Stole his wallet, but that's all. They were doing it just to prove a point, you know? Not out for blood. He was an asshole, but makin' bodies brings down way too much heat if they're connected.

Aaaand she's going to intervene.  "I think," she says directly into the phone, hand on the man's shoulder so he doesn't run, "that you may have forgotten the important detail where some preppy chica managed to send your kid spinning 'round to go home and think about his life, and she'd be rather upset to see her hard work wasted by some punks, you know?  If your kid gets the message that they really are out to get him right now...Well, that seems like the sort of thing that makes someone double down on their allegiance to power.  And if you want to turn somebody 'round from the enemy...You can't send them running into its arms.

"Just a thought."

"-Hold on, I gotta take care'a this."

He beeps the phone closed and shrugs the hand off his shoulder with a shove and turns to face her.

"'Kay. One, fuck you for interrupting my conversation. Who does that shit? Dos, don't fucking touch me, crazy lady, what the fuck's your problem? C, I have no idea what the hell you're on about."