The morning after the raid it was market day and the generally nocturnal Rats were up before midday with their backpacks stuffed with things to trade: alien vegetables, portable pieces of technology like fuel cells and scraps of metal to be made into knives and tools.

Matthew yawned. He had had hardly any sleep, having been up since dawn fiddling with the Troll head in the area of the crumbling entranceway he grandiosely called his workshop. Unlike his reading, electronics was not something he could do in tallow candlelight, even with difficulty, so he came up here, where the roof had caved in and sunlight streamed onto Art Deco tiles. But despite the good light, the Troll's synthetic head remained stubbornly inactive, loose wires sticking out of its neck so so many veins and sinews. Perhaps it would not work, detached from its android body? Or perhaps the Arocind technology was too far beyond that of the humans, but Matthew never gave up that easily.

Putting the head down on the workbench, he heard the clanking sound of people coming up the stairs - rusted and seized escalators - from the tunnels below. It was a good thing they hadn't gone with the plan to rip up the stairs and replace them with lightweight ladders, he reflected with a wry smile. Okay, so it might have made it more difficult for the Trolls to get in. On the other hand, dragging huge, heavy packs up from the depths of the tunnels would not have been easy.

He grabbed his bag and threw some unwanted pieces of equipment and some handmade knives into it, for selling later.

"You look knackered," said Jemmy, as his head appeared at the top of the stairs, framed by an absolutely enormous backpack.

"Thanks, you look... what the hell are you carrying?" exclaimed Matthew.

'Troll parts. I went back for them after I gave you the head. I thought to myself "Why waste good technology when its going begging?"'

'So you've got in there...."

'Legs, torsos, bits of wire, arms. Really useful stuff. Should get a good price for it.' Jemmy lumbered across the hall, his body straining like Atlas supporting the sky.

Matthew was sure he felt the floor shake momentarily and gave the floor tiles a nervous inspection as if, any second, Jemmy was about to disappear through the floor, propelled by the weight of his load. 'And can you manage that?' he said, 'Its a fair walk to the market.'

Jemmy replied with a withering look and continued his ponderous progress towards the door. Matthew might have been the unchallenged leader of the Rats, but when it came to sheer physical strength, Jemmy was definitely his superior. And Jemmy was not one to be bashful about his talents.

'I just hope we've got enough, ' said Matthew, doing a quick, mental inventory of people and goods.

~~~
The market was in an old warehouse that had survived the Invasion pretty much intact. The Freeborn had repaired the holes in the roof with woven branches and vines, ensuring that the market could not been seen from the air, and entranceways had been disguised to look like impassable barriers. A few ragged, Freeborn children kept watch.

Although few Patrols had ventured this far south of the River in years, the Freeborn were naturally cautious: Who knew when the Arocind might suddenly revive their passion for extermination and finish what they started? In the early days, they had killed humans in their millions. No one really knew why they stopped, or even if they had, for sure. Perhaps they run out of a sufficient number of targets to make it worth their while?

By the time the Rats arrived, the market was bustling. It was just as well the Patrols did tend to ignore this area, given the amount of noise they were generating. There were people from other City shelters: the Wild Dogs, the Ravens, the Diggers; And people from the villages outside the city: Green Village, Stone Village, Hobbittown - in the bits of countryside that had not been strip-mined or sealed in alien domes.

Goods were piled up on blankets that were spread across the floor: cheese and flour from the countryside, metal and electronics from the City, weirdly shaped, alien vegetables and grains from the scavenging raids; cured animal skins, woven cloth and knitted garments. There were even a few retrieved items of canned food and dusty bottles of wine, from before the Invasion, displayed on a low table: unobtainable riches gazed upon by ragged admirers.

The journey from the Western Shelter had not been a quick one as Jemmy had not been the only member of the group to be over-laden. Everyone had done their bit, hauling as much as they could carry to the market, and they were now eager to start trading.

Matthew ignored the hubbub in the busiest part of the market, and after instructing his men to start laying out their goods for sale, he went to the furthest corner which had been fenced off and formed into makeshift pens. Large curtains of rough cloth and aging polythene had been tied to the tall, metal fences of the pens to deter prying eyes. A group of vicious-looking men stood guard, their weapons at the ready.

They recognised Matthew as he approached and grumbled menacingly as he pushed passed them and marched straight up to their leader: a bear of a man who would have given Jemmy a run for his money, one Olaf Sumners.

Olaf had dealt with Matthew before. Their exchanges never exactly friendly, but lately the vaneer of civility was thinner than ever. To Matthew, Olaf's business was despicable; To Olaf, Matthew was just a mark, a 'do-gooder' who allowed sentimentality to rot his brain. Who but an idiot or a lunatic would pay such a high price for virtually worthless stock? He was practically asking to be ripped-off. Which naturally made him Olaf's best customer.

An oily smile on his pockmarked face, Olaf pulled back one of the curtains to reveal the contents of the pens. Matthew barely glanced inside. 'How many?'

'Six, including four females.'

'Fresh?'

'All six caught this week, healthy and de-tagged. This one...' he opened the pen door and reached inside, 'would be perfect if you want a little "fun"".' He dragged his hapless victim from the pen by her shoulder: a woman, barely four foot tall, dressed in a torn and stained white bodysuit; an adult, despite her diminutive size. She trembled as she was manhandled in front of her prospective purchaser, and winced in pain when suspended by wrist-restraints from a meat-hook, sobbing, but silent.

'I'm not into your kind of "fun", I told you before' Matthew snarled, avoiding the woman's pleading gaze. Doing business with the slave-trader always made him feel slightly sick, but he had no intention of letting Olaf know that. 'De-tagged, you say?'

'Thoroughly.' Olaf spun the woman round by her waist, causing her cry out as he revealed a large, circular burn between her shoulder blades. 'See, completely fried. You heard what went down in Croydon the other day? Geezer brought home some pretty little Capborn fluff he found wandering about. Didn't know where she came from or nothing. Halfway back to the shelter 'Whoosh', the Trolls took them out. Miles out from the nearest Zone. No way that's going to happen to me - That tag's not telling no one its location.'

What Olaf lacked in morals or brains, he made up for in survival instinct, and the blistered, weeping wound on the Capborn's back certainly could indicate a deactivated tag. Still, Matthew had to be sure. He wouldn't put it passed Olaf - possibly under the pay of one of the Rats rival Shelters - to deliberately pass a tagged Capborn onto them and get them taken out by the Trolls. After all, the risk to Olaf or the market from an untagged Capborn was relatively small, this far out from any Patrol Zones, but the risk to the Western Shelter was huge. They were barely a stone's throw from the Arocind Colony Dome itself, and surrounded by Patrol Zones on all sides.

'I need to inspect the merchandise,' Matthew said coldly.

Olaf nodded as he threw himself into a chair. 'Be my guest.'

The 'merchandise' appeared to be around thirty years old, her features obscured by mud and grime and her white-blonde hair matted and tangled. His stomach tightening, Matthew pressed his thumbs into the woman's wound, causing her to yelp. She fought against her restraints., bucking and twisting as she did so.

'Hold still!' Matthew ordered 'Or it'll hurt even more'.

Whether it was something in his voice that told her he cared, or the threat of worse pain, the woman's frantic struggles ceased. She continued to cry, but without the previous intensity. Still no words. The poor thing probably couldn't speak, Matthew reflected sadly, as he felt the bony processes of her spine. He counted down from her neck - T4, the fourth throacic vertebrae. There was the hard circle of a tag, about ten centimetres across, and the attachment bolts either side.

'I'm so sorry,' he whispered in her ear, as Olaf was preoccupied with something stuck in his teeth, 'this is going to hurt'.

He pressed his fingers hard into the wound, around the edge of the tag. She screamed and then collapsed, still hanging from her restraints. Matthew felt for the tell-tale web of wires coming out of the tag, like the legs of metallic cranefly. There were none. The tag had been de-activated.