Several minutes later, the truck drove into a traffic jam and slowed to a stop. Wanda climbed out. It was only the through the effort of climbing that she realized how bad her condition actually was. She felt short of breath and queezy. He ribs her. Her back hurt. Her head hurt. She found the robotic snake impaled into her thigh.

She could not focus on anything further than a hundred meters or so away, but she reasoned that she never had to see at such a distance before. All of her vistas were simulated on screens much closer to her eyes. She was probably near-sighted and had never realized it before.

Wanda dragged her body over the side of the tank and slowly eased her way down to pavement. Her injured leg gave out, and she fell backwards onto the blacktop. The street felt rougher and warmer than she had always imagined. The truck began moving again, and she pulled her legs out of the way quickly. As other vehicles rolled past her, she noticed that none had passengers. All of these were automated work vehicles, mostly of the shipping kind. A garbage truck rolled close to her and assaulted her nose with the most putrid odor she had ever encountered. Wanda picked herself up and stumbled off the road.

“Where is everybody?” she shouted the question to no one in particular. “Aren’t cities supposed to be full of people?”

She climbed over a small fence at the side of the road and tried to orient herself. The tallest buildings were behind her. A lot of neon lights illuminated details about these buildings in the distance, but Wanda could not focus on them. In front of her, a salty smell came to her on the wind. She decided that she must have been carried near some seaport.

The sky above was dark except for a diffused grey haze. No movement there could be seen except for small drones flying past just beyond her reach. She wondered whether cloud cover had completely obstructed the stars and moon or if her eyesight was really that bad. A rain drop on her forehead confirmed which is was.

She slid down an embankment into a junk-covered alley. “Hello! Aloha! Is anybody home?!” she shouted.

“Who wants to know?” came a reply in a deep grunting voice.

The rain was beginning to come down in earnest now. Wanda pulled some wet hair away from her face and walked gingerly towards the voice. She called out, “I do! I want to know. But you sort of already answered that question. I hope that I can’t see you because you’re scared of me and I’m not really blind.”

An alley door slammed open. Two figures stepped out. Her eyes took a few seconds to focus, but they did focus. One figure was a burly humanoid, a broad at the shoulders as he was tall, with a snout and a tall bushy line of spiked hair. The snouted figure wore chains and pink leather clothes which almost matched his skin tone. The second figure was an alley cat, orange furred, nude and as large as Wanda but walking on all fours. The cat was naked except for a face mask which covered it’s mouth, and it had a main of spiky reddish hair running down its back.

The boar bellowed, “You’re in the territory of the Pink, trespasser! You come into my house and ask if we’re scared! That makes me want to rip your cyberthroat right out of your neck, ya blue-faced freak!”

Wanda stepped back half a step. She felt her grip on the dead robot snake tighten in her hand. She did not immediately respond, but she did look down at her hands. They did look bluish.

The cat spoke in a synthetic-sounding voice. “Hey, she don’t have a cyberthroat. I don’t see any the electrical signature of any of wetwear in her, not even a lung filter. I think she’s a squishy who lost her mask!”

The boar said, “Aw glitch, girl! You can’t be out breathing this slop. Sea breeze air is a little better than downtown air, but it can still kill ya.”

The cat jogged up to her side. “Come inside, kitten. The Pink won’t eat ya. Not until after you’ve had a bath at least. Phew! You could knock a neo-vulture off a manure truck, kitten.”

Wanda nodded an acceptance of this invitation and stumbled through the door into a brightly lit gang hideout. The boar said, “You’ve got a little much hair on our head, but it’s the right hue. Welcome to the home of the Pink Mohawks, sugar.” He slapped her on her back so hard, she fell forward, face-planted, and passed out again.