I followed my scriff sense through the back alleys of the Human Quarter.   The City had been built by Humans on Earth, and yet they had been relegated to a subsection of it which I found odd, or troubling.

The locals began to seem more predatory, and I surmised that I had passed some invisible boundary between the hopeless poor and the wolves who preyed upon them like a black hole at the center of a galaxy.  But, while there were plentiful "Human Territory Only" graffitti, I was Human.  Well, one could argue that point, but I thought I was Human.  That counted for something, right?

I dropped some of my mask, and let some of my inner ruthlessness shine through.  Not too much as I didn’t want to unduly frighten these back alley heroes of the revolution, under whatever name they gave their thievery and oppression.  If they saw the real me, they’d faint dead away, and thats so inconvenient to have to step over bodies.

As you can tell, I was getting into a mood.  My ‘please wipe your feet before entering’ mat was being rolled up, and stored away for another day. Crystalline-like logic and venom filled me, and in my mouth was the taste of gallows laughter.  And it was good.

Stepping through the infrequent crowds, and passed the sentries like I was a dire wolf among civilized, yet feral dogs, I came to a metal door.  Passed it on the right, and felt the vector shift as the straight line leading me to the other verser moved immediately to my left.  A two-step back, and a quick examination of the lock revealed nothing that a latch-key child of my homeworld could not have beaten.  A thin slip of metal fell into my hand, and wiggled gently between door jam and door.  I called it peanut butter, because once you added it to a door jam, you could get in easier than a sand witch could shape shift into dust and blow under the door.

Inside, I walked past rows of tables at which dull-faced workers sat and each over-watched four hyper-quick robot arms at once. If the program got hung up, or started looping, or slamming the goods all over the room in a spray of chemicals–all of which is the prerogative of mindless robotics.  MR works great with perfect precision, until it doesn’t.  So, at certain tech levels you need ‘babysitters’ who can trance out, and ‘feel the flow’, and keep the story of the Mill Under the Sea from coming true.

But, The City should be beyond that.  A simple lock might be put off as no need for real security, but this tech was 2050 at latest, and The City had ribbon steel bridges that arched over the whole city, and starships a mile long visiting it.  It should be beyond all this by several centuries.

At least that was my preliminary diagnoses.

In the next long, concrete-floored room, I saw a man talking to a crowd of uncertain newbies.  They were obviously new hires, and so he was stressing the general guidelines of What One Did in HIS Factory.

I checked with my scriff sense as I closed in, and yup, he was the guy. He pointed a long, flannel coated arm at me, and his sharp chin as well as he tilted his head back to help project from his shallow chest.

"You there!"

"Yes, sir?"  I replied politely, hoping that ’sir’ had not gone out of date, and been replaced with ‘von’, or ‘messer’, or ’sahib’ or ‘great master of all he surveys.’

"One of my rules. When I say on time, I mean, on time.  I don’t care if you have a family emergency, or the mobie street broke down, or what….be here, or be docked in pay. …Every day, every time."

I bowed even as I was thinking something uncomplimentary.

He went on with his rules for a bit, and I got the notion he was divided between being genuinely busy, and loving the sound of his own voice.  And truly, the work crew did not look that promising, but then most people who work for drug runners aren’t the pick of the crop.  Maybe he had to be so harsh because of the losers he was associated with?

See, I try hard to see all the sides of an issue.  So, I found myself taking up the side of a drug runner, and sympathizing with his managerial problems for a few seconds until I remembered something else.  "Lie down with dogs, get up with flees."  One of the chief problems, at least for me, with being a criminal is the people you have to hang out with.

And then he made a mistake.  He asked if there were any further questions.

"Um, is this legal?"

He laughed easily.

"Well, not exactly, but let me assure you we have good friends in high places, and what they say in public is not what they say in private."  That was an interesting, but not too surprising datum.  The minimal security argued for such protection.

"Well, but what about the Lizardfolk, doesn’t this like addict them, and all that…"

"Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t.  But the way I see it, they are free to use it or not.  They are after all, adults."

"Are they?" I asked back as he tried to turn away to his two guards who had stepped up, and they were now giving me a slightly unfriendly look.  He turned back with a show of exzaggerated patience as I slipped forward into the middle of the crowd.

"You tell me." He mocked me.

"What I think is they don’t know much about addiction, not at all, and so you’re taking advantage of them."

"And if I am?" He snapped as the pair of guards moved forward, and the sheltering crowd parted like the Red Sea before Goon One and Goon Two.  "Its again their choice."

"You know, I think someone might say the same thing about some sweet-talking child molester.  But, we recognize restrictions on what an adult can do to a child.  In part, because the child can’t really defend himself."

He turned bright red in the face, and screamed.  "Get the missionary out of here!"

Goon One on my left reached to grab me on the jacket, and an armbar with my left arm plus a kick to the back of his knee dropped him right into the path of Goon Two.  I released Goon One, and stepped to the right, and did a straight arm, with my right arm, push into Goon Two left cheekbone.  He then went from tangled up in his partner’s legs to toppled on top of his partner.

I bent down and whispered to them.

"If I wanted to be a jerk, I could just kick both of you in the face right now."  Since my foot was right in front of their faces, they took my point, and scrambled up, and out of there with considerable alacrity.

I turned back to see Drug Dealer holding a .75 calibre magnum pistol pointed at me with a steady hand.

"Good help is so difficult to find these days." He said with a sardonic tilt of his head.

"Truly.  But birds of the feather, and all that."

He wrinkled his face, wondering what was bothering him.  It had not occurred to him yet, to check if I was a verser.  I would have to guess that he was very new at this.  He had that dazed "Wooohooo, I think I’m invulnerable" look that many early versers get before they realize that Murphy still hates them, and that sometimes all immortality means is you can’t escape the pain.

"Steven Jamison, or in my prior ah world, well, ah, not my first, Lord MacIntosh."

"Scottish clan lord?"  I asked, and he nodded with a puppy like expression on his face. Obviously it had been fun. "Well, that is cool."  Inwardly, I was aghast.  This punk was on his second world in the Multiverse.  And he was not catching on to the fact that a normal resident of The City should not know much about Scotland.  I was wondering if I was going to have to draw Lord MacIntosh a map.

"Some people call me T." I said, not wanting to use "Tadeusz" because, well, I have a certain reputation.  So does Genghis Khan, if you get my drift.  I’m not Bob the Agent of the Apocalypse, or Di Vars, but word does get around.  Drop a verser into a room-sized universe where they can’t die for ten thousand years,  and people start to think you’re a bit hard-nosed.  And it might be the final clue for him to wake up.

He took me into his office, and waved for me to sit down across from him while he thought himself safer behind his desk.  In truth, his desk was another weapon for me to use on him.  I felt faintly sorry for this guy.  He had walked out onto what he thought was a street ball game, but it actually was the World Series.

"So, tell me, did the Scottish clan approve of your …"

"Its not like that." He barked out, considering shooting me out of hand, but deciding against it.  "Besides, who gave you the right to come in here, and impose your morality on me?"

"Ah, so, we’ve seen its not legal.  Even if you do have some corrupt…"

"More than that." He gloated. "They want me to do it. The Vinki are a thorn in their side.  They have big plans for The City, and I’m going all the way to the top with them."

I nodded in gratitude.

"Still, one has to suspect that these plans are not legal."

"Who cares about legality? They have the power."  He snapped back.  "You need to get with the program, missionary."

"Mmmm. Let me ask you why you call me ‘missionary’."

"You aren’t? There’s this local church, ah, Waterdippers or something, been bugging me, and my people.  They’ve been promising to pray for a deliverer.  For justice to be done."

"Oh, sounds good."

"Who are they to impose their morality on me?"

"Good point."  I nodded as if I took it seriously, instead of laughing inside.

"And who are you to impose your morality on me?" He waved his gun like a conductor’s baton, warming to his theme.  I wanted to shake my head.  This was just too easy.

In fact, I held off a bit because my paranoia said that it could not be this easy.  But, alas, I saw no trap, no cunning scheme.  He really was this stupid.

"Hmmmm." I bent my head down like I was deeply thinking about his ideas, and he laid his gun down on the desk. My right hand dropped, and caught the bottom edge of his desk.  Flipping it up, and driving the other side into his stomach, and then him into the floor as his chair collapsed took half a second.  It took me another second to reach over, while holding the desk down, and grab the loose gun.

Then I stepped back, checked the gun, fired a round into a stack of paper (paper, I ask you, how low-tech!) to verify that it worked, and pointed it at his face as he started to go for his back-up.

He stopped, and started babbling something about not being afraid to die.  He was a verser.  Unfortunately for him, he did not fully believe it, and so I was on him, and had him slung against the wall before he could do more than breathe once.

A full body search, and then some wire around his wrists.  I did this to keep him from boring me by trying to escape.

"You-you don’t know who, you’re messing with.  I’m a verser, an immortal…"

"Goody. So am I."  I had tired of my game.

"You, you’re not…" I waited as he scriff sensed. "Okay, you are."

"This is illegal."

"Now, now Stevie, I thought we aggreed that legality was not a concern."

"You’re crazy.  You’re insane." He shouted over his shoulder as I held him pinned to the wall of his office with a casual hand.

"Now, again, Stevie, pay attention. " I shoved my hand into his back, and drove the air from his lungs. "We also agreed that imposing morality on others was wrong.  Now granted thats a bit of a contradiction saying something is wrong, when you’re not supposed to….well never mind.  I’m not much for consistency."  I chuckled again, and he shivered.

"My people will…."

"Now, we’re talking Stevie.  Power. Yes. Power." I leaned back and gave my best villainous laugh out of a 1950’s horror flick.  "Problem is, Stevie, some people call me T, others they call me the Ghost, not many survivors call me Stormlord, and many call me Tadeusz, the Sledgehammer of Justice."

He gulped.

"I’ve been around a while.  So, I’m guessing, I have the power."

I grabbed him by the arm, and started dragging him from the room.  A few of his people saw me, but they ran the other way.  Imagine that, Mr. "Be here on time even if your kids are puking up blood" might have a lack of loyalty among his employees.  How will I cover my surprise?

Outside, the factory, I walked, and the sentries faded back from my face even as Steven pleaded with them.  Finally, we got out of the Human Quarter.

"What did I ever do to you?"

"Well, two things really.  One, I got my really, profoundly beaten up because of you.  Some really tall, irritable Vinki thought I was you, and so he beat on me for some time.  So, I’m predisposed to not really liking you that much.  And then on top of that, I saw your victims."

He gulped as a whole dozen different species I had never seen passed me by on the street as we walked toward the Vinki Ghetto.

"What are you going to do to me?"

"Me? Nothing."

I dragged him across the street, and clothed us in pseudo-invisibility as a police sled whipped by overhead.  He shouted for help, but the policeman’s ears heard it, but the message got altered and tagged ’extreme low priority’ on the way to the processing center in his brain.  So, he decided ’scream for help’ plus ‘low priority’ means he must have heard a jet overhead.  Far overhead.  He looked up, saw nothing, shrugged, and continued down the street.

"You, how?" Steven bleated.

"Isn’t it unfair how much advantage I have over you?  I mean, if I wanted to torture you to death, I probably could.  If I wanted to make you my slave for eternity, I probably could.  And since you’ve abandoned law, and morality, and taken refuge in power, why shouldn’t I do just that?"

I tossed him to the nearest Vinki who stood in the tunnel passage to their neighbourhood.  It was my former enemy, He-Who-In-Silence-Roars.

"I only request one thing, he keeps his life."  I bowed.  "He said, your people were a hindrace to the Powers That Be."

Silence nodded.

"Yes, we insist on respect. We are less advanced than some of the other races, and the powers of this city promised us good work, but now that we are here, they try to break us up, and weaken us, and make us dependent weaklings, like forgive me, much of the Humans."  He turned to Steven.  "And this one was one of their chief weapons."

He handed Steven a ten foot electric staff.

"Come with me, we shall fight.  Test your courage."

Steven look frightened and he turned to me.

"I’m, I’m sorry, but…"

"You may learn what it means to be a man in your pain.  You will live, although you might wish to die."

Steven nodded jerkily, and I turned away feeling happier.  He might be saved.  There might be the makings of a Real Man underneath all those self-serving rationalizations for abusing other people.  And then I heard a crack of a staff and a yowl of pain from Steven, and justice smiled.