Arrival of an Assassin

As the transport came to a halt, the passengers swayed to maintain their balance. As they settled down, he noted the mix of expressions on their pathetic faces ranging from hope to apprehension. In the flickering light from the lamps on the walls, they waited in silence for the door of the hold to open. All were tired and sweaty from the long journey in cramped conditions, and the stale air was becoming close and uncomfortable. As the pistons started to operate, he heard many people breathe out with relief, the sound mingling with the hiss of the steam escaping as the metal hatch rolled open. The cogs reverberated through the chamber and people clutched what belongings they had in anticipation as the light from outside shone on their faces.

Stepping out, he was met by a wave of heat and sound. It was night, however the lights from the street and various stalls by the station were blindingly bright after the dim hours spent inside the land-steamer. The cries of traders hawking their wares and street-chefs proclaiming their food mixed in with the pounding and clanging of the ever ongoing industry within the city. Chimneys belched smoke, furnaces roared, huge flywheels rumbled as they drove massive pistons back and forth, powering the machines and factories of Ferra. While the air was not as stale as that he had just left, it was full of the smells of a city; the aromas of food from all over the continent with their own distinct spices interlaced with the sharp tang of the refuse on the street, and always underlying them were the fumes unique to the Manufactorum.

He shuffled down the ramp with the others, like cattle at a market. People like that filled him with disgust. Ferra was the only one of the Five Great Cities that had remained neutral in the war which now swept the continents, but the influx of jobseekers and refugees was filling it with seething humanity and had laid waste to it nevertheless. This was no longer the Iron City, birthplace of the Manufactorum, as portrayed in the histories. This was a spoil heap of the world; the iron had corroded. Watching the newcomers flocking to the food stalls, bartering for meagre portions with the valuables they had guarded so closely on the journey here evoked nothing within him. He had no pity for the families with gaunt children that filled the doorways of nearby boarded up shops and houses, their faces streaked with grime from the steam vents that lined the gutters.

The war would drag Ferra in sooner or later, and by the end of the next cycle he expected that most of them would be dead or dying; of that, he was certain. He strode down the street, ignoring the cries of pedlars and pleas of beggars. There was work to be done; he had traced his target here and now it was time to kill him.