To Give Them a Show

Things did not go swimmingly, Ambitan was very certain of that especially now that he was stuck with the rest of the child laborers.

Getting into the Gnashers had been easy enough, just sneak into the group as they returned from one of their dump raids. No one paid attention to the little extra, and it's not like the overseers went out of their way to get acquainted with their laborers.

So the infiltration was seamless for the most part. The issue was that the overseers took delight in inflicting sick, twisted cruelties upon their victims.

The children's eyes were glazed over, their spirits lay broken from the repeated abuse.

When strike after strike landed after another though their bodies shuddered they didn't respond in the slightest.

They responded only when spoken to, the spirit of individuality had been stamped out to remove the risk of revolts or rebellion.

They moved like those robots or androids, knowing nothing but that same painful routine.

And despite the agenda that Clemont had given him about only retrieving information he couldn't help but want to dismantle the operation.

Of course, the bias of his previous experiences with the Gnashers also factored into that, but the atrocities they were committing certainly helped advance that motivation.

Their bodies were emaciated and shivered helplessly in the cold.

During the nights, Ambitan would be unable to sleep due to the chattering of teeth.

It was the fourth day by now, and the sun was slowly shining through the dense clouds of smog. The sound of heavy footsteps approached and suddenly there was a crack of the whip and Ambitan saw a kid who had been lying in the middle of their path get flayed.

Dark red blood oozed out, the lack of water causing it to thicken. Rather than beading out it instead dribbled out in globs.

But the kid didn't respond to the pain. In shock, Ambitan assumed that this was because the kid was used to such beatings. His nerves were probably long since dead after having been subjected to this sort of life.

Disgusted, one of the enforcers, who Ambitan had discovered to be subordinates of the overseers walked over and spit on the kid before kicking him to the side to curl in a fetal position with his arms tucked around his head.

Ambitan really wanted to take a jagged bottle and lacerate that asshole's face, but obviously attacking one of them in their own territory wouldn't lead to a favorable result.

As he ground his spitwad into the ground with the heel of his boot the enforcer, Martin, shouted, "Up and at em you dirty bastards! Don't make me say this twice!"

Hearing the command, the kids stood ramrod straight and Ambitan tried his best to mimic their responses.

However, due to the lack of a chip in his brain, his response wasn't as fast as the others, picking him out from the rest of the crowd.

Seeing this, the enforcer sneered at him, mentally noting how he would have to keep an eye on this one.

From there on, having been rudely roused from their so-called 'rest' they were made to march on down to the dumps where they rooted through the trash.

Anything that could be taken into the markets was snatched up immediately and the kids listlessly picked at pile after pile, slowly but surely whittling them down.

"Hey, Martin!" another enforcer called out.

"What's up Jasper?"

"Ain't it boring out here?"

"You asking what I think you're asking?" Martin replied.

"I mean, some entertainment would be awfully nice now, wouldn't it?"

"Jasper, you sick son of a bitch let's do this already," Martin turned to the kids as they picked at the garbage pile in front of them, "Now listen up!" he shouted.

"We're going to make a little competition out of this, and I trust you know what that means. Whoever finds the most valuable piece out of today will receive all of tonight's rations while the rest won't receive any."

"Sounds good?"

No one said anything in reply, not daring to protest against the tyrannical rule.

"Well then, get to it," and then suddenly Martin flipped a little control switch that Ambitan had deduced to be the control switch for this group of chips here.

As soon as the switch was flipped it was as if an electric current had run through all the other kids, and frantically they began to dig through the pile of trash.

They ignored the sharp objects, opting to cut themselves at their frantic pace.

Ambitan, in a panic, tried to stay as far from sight as the enforcers to make sure they didn't notice that he wasn't acting the same as the rest of the group. Because there was no way he going to voluntarily shove his hands into broken glass. Not even for double sludge rations.

At first, the desperate burrowing for salvageable garbage was somewhat manageable, but as time passed on and the pile dried up of items, some glances were tossed at other's piles of loot.

Then, suddenly the move was made when a kid named Alex bull-rushed someone else to knock them clean off their ass before rummaging through his pile.

Seizing the opportunity though, a bystander decided to get involved and snuck off towards Alex's pile.

However, Alex was already returning with a surprising find, a partially damaged energy cell, something that wasn't typically available to slum dwellers.

Seeing this he also bull-rushed this opportunist but this time the thief managed to dodge as he continued to barrel on.

Then haphazardly chaos began to descend over them all.

Meanwhile, the enforcers just stood there, not bothering to maintain a facade of order, and instead, they opted to simply watch the events.

Blood was spilled, and teeth were knocked loose. Feral roars and piercing shrieks were released as everybody turned on one another.

Thankfully enough, Ambitan hadn't collected much and no one took notice of him.

Everyone's eyes were on the energy core, for now, the variety of minor altercations that had broken out slowly ground to a halt as their focus shifted to Alex instead.