Chapter 16: Pickpocketing Without Hands
If they can’t see you, they can’t decide you’re not worth looking at. I don’t think about that for very long.
[System: Oi. Quest unlocked. The first one toward full camouflage. You want the details, or are you just gonna stand there being invisible to nobody?]
I mean. Yeah. Hit me, but please don’t actually hit me.
[System: Oh, and one more thing. You made a comment about being red.]
Red? I’m suddenly paying attention differently.
Yes, I want to be red, I am red.
[System: Yeah, a red fucking stop sign, a warning light. Bonus quest. Separate track. Nothing to do with hiding. The idea is that when you’re not trying to disappear, you get a tint. Red. Like if you held a piece of sea glass up to a window.]
I look down at the shimmer where I am. That’s two things at once, Invisible when I want. Red when I don’t.
[System: Correct ya wanker.]
Thinking about being seen on purpose. What that would look like now. A red distortion. A colored suggestion of a snake in a dark tunnel.
Alright, I guess. It’s the ’get a free existential crisis with your purchase’ option.
[System: Righto, you keen or just need a sec to wrap your noggin ’round it?]
Both, but yeah. I want it.
[System: Right. So. You’re not red yet. That’s a separate quest line entirely, mate. Different IP costs, different unlock conditions. The invisibility track you’re on right now, that’s the Phantom Scale line. Semi-invisible, thermal dampening, crowd infiltration. The red track’s called Crimson Tint. You’ll get there when you get there.]
I stare at the shimmer where my body is supposed to be. A ghost of a snake, a crystal noodle, a suggestion of nothing.
So what’s the quest?
[System: The market. There’s a junction point two levels down from the old sewer junction. They call it the twawi. Illegal traders, unlicensed vendors, the whole dodgy lot. people moving contraband, elves fencing stolen cold weapons, dwarves running unregistered smithing operations out of repurposed subway cars. You know. The usual.]
That sounds like the kind of place where a glass lizard gets stepped on.
[System: That’s the beauty of it, mate. You’re a snake who can fade out of sight. Nobody steps on what they can’t see. And here’s the kicker quest variable. You need to blend with the crowd thermally. Match body heat signatures to the ambient temperature of the people around you. Right now you’re a cold-blooded little arsehole standing out on every thermal phone scanner in the Undercity like a neon sign.]
Great. Fantastic, what’s a thermal phone scanner? Like I can guess, but I kinda need a guide or a tutorial.
[System: And while you’re at it, pickpocketing. Not for coin. For food. Whatever you can snag. Fruit, bread, dried meat, I don’t care. You refuse to eat bugs, so you’re going to starve unless you start stealing from people who have actual food.]
Pickpocketing. I’m a snake, no hands, remember?
[System: Remember you gotta take risks, you wanker, Figure it out. Grab something, drag it somewhere dark, and eat it. Simple. Also, a thermal phone scanner is a clip-on. Attaches to the back of any smartphone and turns the camera into a heat map. Warm bodies show up orange and white. You show up the colour of the tunnel wall. A snake-shaped absence. Which is currently the only thing keeping this quest from being completely fucked before it starts.]
I coil on the concrete, tasting the air with my tongue. The tunnel ahead slopes downward, dripping, reeking of rust and something fungal. Somewhere below, I can hear the distant murmur of voices, actual voices. Humanoid. Trading, bartering and gambling.
[System: Oi, Matt?]
What.
[System: Don’t get stepped on, ya slippery little snag. Red tint’s not going anywhere. One catastrophic errand at a time, yeah?]
The Twawi is what happens when a sewer system has a midlife crisis and decides to become a bazaar. Two levels down, old subway junction, the kind of place where the concrete walls have given up entirely and been replaced by graffiti that’s less vandalism and more architectural feature.
I slide down the drainage pipe, and the world opens up underneath me like a wound.
Neon everywhere. Not the tasteful kind, the kind that’s been salvaged from broken signs and jury-rigged into every available surface until the entire junction looks like someone threw a rave in a Circuit City dumpster. Pink, blue, green, that particular shade of orange that should not exist in nature and definitely shouldn’t be flickering in a sewer.
There are elves, actual elves with pointy ears and perfect cheekbones, like the dark elf from before. Standing behind folding tables selling stolen phones like they’re running a farmer’s market for murder. One of them has a laminated price sheet. A laminated price sheet. For contraband weaponry. The commitment to small business energy is staggering.
Dwarves have taken over an entire decommissioned subway car, hammering away at unregistered smithing operations that send sparks cascading across the platform every time someone hits an anvil. The sound is deafening and rhythmic, and nobody seems to care. A dwarf is arguing with a zebra man about the quality of a computer, and the zebra is losing.
I start moving well, gliding / slithering along as quietly as I can be. The faint iridescence of my scales catches what little light exists in the twawi and then lets it go as I decide, consciously.
The invisibility isn’t perfect. Not yet. I can feel the effort of it like holding my breath, a sustained tension along the length of my body, the scales doing something they weren’t doing five minutes ago. But I’m harder to see. That’s something.
Steam rises from pipes that shouldn’t be carrying anything pressurised. The air is thick with smoke and spice and the particular musk of too many bodies in too little space.
The floor is a mosaic of old subway tiles, cracked concrete, and the occasional metal grate that reveals yet another level of darkness below. My belly slides through cold puddles, and I hate every second of it.
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