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stripper’s eye.
    Someone pinched Pita as she went by. Still hyped up from the encounter with the off-duty cops, she yelped and spun around, one fist raised. The pinching fingers belonged to a troll, so huge that his eyes were level with Pita’s even though he was sitting down.
    "You got a nice ass, girl." he said. "How about you sit it down here, on my lap."
    "Frag off." Pita snapped back. She was trying to sound tough, but her voice was close to cracking.
    "Ooh." said a man next to the troll. "I don’t think she likes you, Ralph. But don’t worry if this one gets away. She’s not much to look at anyhow."
    Pita hurried away, her cheeks burning. She found the door at the back of the restaurant that led into an underground passage. It was about half as wide as a city street, and was fronted by shops and offices on either side. The walls were cobbled together from a mix of brick, concrete, and plastiform, while rusted metal pillars held up the ceiling. A grid of overhead lights, pocked with burned-out tubes, cast a pattern of shadows. The floor underfoot was heavy-duty linoleum, scuffed by the passage of many feet and littered with drifts of plastic cups and paper wrappers that smelled of day-old food. Orks of every description walked back and forth along it, pausing to look into barred windows or bustling in and out of doorways. A handful wore double-breasted business suits or dresses and pumps, but most were wearing cheap, ill-fitting clothes that had been intended for human proportions. Mothers dragged complaining children along by the hand, while teens in baggy stretch pants and MetalMesh shirts lounged against pillars or rattled past on gyro boards. Some of the orks rode scooters or electric bicycles, weaving their way between those on foot. The effect was a strange cross between an enclosed shopping mall and a rundown city street.
    Pita walked slowly along the corridor, wondering which way to go. Unlike a megamall or an arcology, the Underground had no directory, no color-coded strip lights in the floor to follow. The narrow streets didn’t even run in straight lines. They zigzagged this way and that around the support pillars, disappearing around corners and then reappearing again. The shops seemed to be wedged in wherever they would fit.
    Two orks wearing gray jumpsuits and leather holsters with oversize pistols walked boldly down the center of the corridor, scanning the people who streamed past. Occasionally one grabbed someone by the shoulder, dragging the pedestrian over to him.
    Crumpled dollar bills would change hands, and then the pedestrian would be given a rough shove and sent on his way.
    Pita ducked behind one of the supporting pillars and kept it between herself and the two uniformed men until they had passed. These were the "security guards" who served as the semi-official police force for the Underground. They were little more than goons who shook down the inhabitants of the Underground for protection fees. They were also the reason why Pita and her street chummers never ventured into the Underground much. If you couldn’t pay the fee for the "protection" offered by the uniformed guards, you could always work off your fee as a press-ganged member of one of the maintenance crews who did all of the hard, dirty, and dangerous work of expanding and repairing the Underground’s ever-growing maze of tunnels. It didn’t sound like much fun.
    An electronics shop seemed the most likely place to start her search for Yao. The first three Pita tried didn’t produce any results. None of them had heard of Yao—or was willing to admit that they’d sold equipment to Orks First! Exhausted and hungry, Pita was about to give up. She had decided to find a fast food outlet and do some scrap snacking—eating the soggy fries and burger crusts that patrons had left behind—when she spotted an electronics shop. It was tucked into the bend of a street, its merchandise displayed behind barred windows. A flickering holo