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guns and machine pistols in addition to their usual ordnance. Most of the surrounding streetlife seems intent on getting as far away as possible with no delay.
    About halfway up the block is a DocWagon clinic with metal bars arrayed across its façade of graffiti-covered windows. Brian wonders how the graffitoists got their paintguns in through the bars. Directly across from the clinic, jammed in between slum-rent apartment buildings, is a small structure that looks like it was carved out of a block of grayish bedrock. Brian guesses that’s where he’s supposed to go, based on his super’s descriptions, and pulls his car into an empty space at curbside.
    As he switches off the ignition, the clatter of autofire weapons erupts. Brian leans down across the front seat, covers the back of his head with his sky blue Department of Water and Wastewater Management hard hat, then waits.
    The opening fusillade is followed by a thunderous discharge of guns, like the whole First UCAS Marine had just opened up. That’s followed by a bang and a boom that could be from any one of a number of offensive or defensive explosives, possibly grenades. More bangs, thumps, wumps, and clatterings follow. Brian risks lifting a hand to flip down the sun visor on the passenger side, just to show his orange florescent Department of Water & Wastewater Management Official-Use-Only permit, allowing him to park anywhere in direct violation of law. That’s to show he’s a noncombatant. Just a guy with the D.W.W.M. The “Water” Department. He doesn’t bother anybody, nobody bothers him. Most of the time, anyway.
    A few minutes pass. The gunfire subsides. Brian carefully sits up, looking all around and rearranging his hard hat. Good thing he popped the extra cred for the special Kevlar-3 insulated hard hat, just in case. If his super keeps on dispatching him to neighborhoods like this, he’ll spring for the matching body armor and face shield, too.
    The quiet holds. Streetlife returns to the sidewalks. A few cars pass by. There’s a bunch of bodies sprawled near the corner, but nobody looks on the verge of punching any more tickets.
    Brian pulls his utility belt from the passenger-side floor and gets out. In addition to the hard hat, he’s wearing his sky blue D.W.W.M. jumpsuit. Nobody passing by more than glances in his direction. He’s invisible, or nearly so. Just another grunt for the city making his daily rounds. Too bad he’s not bullet-proof as well.
    He steps across the sidewalk to the rough-faced gray stone building. He’s never been to this particular site before, but that’s no surprise. The D.W.W.M. has literally thousands of sites scattered around the metroplex, everything from management offices in Midtown to sewers out in Queens. Brian notes that the building before him is certainly plain enough, workmanlike enough, to be a D.W.W.M. outpost. There’s a vehicle-sized bay door and a human-sized door, both black. Beside the latter is a black stud like for a doorbell. Immediately above the stud is a mesh-covered speaker and, above that, the lens of a security cam.
    Brian lifts a finger to touch the black stud, but a metallic-toned voice says from the speaker, “Let’s see your ID, kid.”
    Must be some automated voice program, maybe coupled with proximity sensors. Cute. You wouldn’t think that anyone would ever bother breaking into buildings devoted exclusively to either the water supply or the sewers, but, hey, there’s buttonheads everywhere, so security’s routine. Brian holds his D.W.W.M. ID up toward the security cam lens.
    “Okay, kid,” says the voice from the speaker.
    The door buzzes and clicks. There are no handles or doorknobs, so Brian steps forward and pushes and the door swings inward. He’s two or three steps beyond the doorway before he realizes that the shadowy interior is not just a lot dimmer than the sunlight outside, or that his eyes are not just taking an extra moment or two to adjust. The door slams