“They say that I was beautiful once,” laughed Cog. “I have to admit that I don’t know if they spoke the truth, for I never saw it.”

Kid regarded the Queen of the Slums with a wary eye. A blindfold of metal covered both her eyes, with a large lens where one oculus ought to have been and a trio of smaller ones on a spindle in place of the other. A grill for what was presumably a microphone protruded, coin-sized, from the canal of each ear. Her skin was pale, blotched in places near her various implants, but her features very delicate and fine. Her hair was dishwatery if clean, and thrown back in a short mane. “I have heard many stories about you, my lady,” said Kid quietly. “I would be honored to hear the truth from your own lips.”

“Fair enough,” laughed Cog. “To satisfy your own curiosity, or to try and ingratiate yourself with me?”

“Both, my lady.” Kid’s answer was nothing if not truthful.

“I was rendered deaf and blind by the Red Plague as but a young girl,” Cog said. “I am told that my family cast me out upon learning of this, replacing me with a lookalike stolen from the slums. I do not know the truth of it, nor do I care to. All I know is that I was raised by a midwife and tinkerer amid the mounds of trash that make up the lowest and most base part of this supposedly grand city.”

Kid nodded, saying nothing that might interrupt or offend the Queen of the Slums, whose mercurial power could aid or cut down anyone as she saw fit.

“One day, my adopted mother was tinkering with a speaker and she brought it to my ear. I could hear the tiniest bit of sound through it–not completely deaf, I suppose, but only practically so. By the end of the year I had built myself a headset by feel alone that allowed me to hear what others said if they spoke into a microphone I had salvaged.”

“How old were you?” Kid asked.

“I neither know nor care,” Cog said dismissively, disarming Kid’s attempt to ferret out her true age. Based on her appearance, she could have been as young as twenty or as old as forty. “After my surrogate mother was murdered by the Guard, and her shop ransacked, for failing to pay protection money to a corrupt officer, I swore to have my revenge. It took years, but I eventually was able to piece together a very crude version of the eyepieces you now see, the earpieces that are my accoutrements, and fused them into my living flesh. It was crude, but effective enough for me to track the Guardsman down and spill every drop of blood in his body.”

The Guard no longer interfered with the Queen of the Sums. They were present, to be sure, but all were in her pocket or marked for death if they interfered.

“Through upgrades and compulsive tinkering, I now see better, hear better, than anyone without similar enhancements,” Cog continued, her eyepieces glowing green as they briefly switched to seeing in the infrared spectrum. “Some say that I have mutilated myself, trading in a flawless face for this power.”

“What do you say?” asked Kid carefully.

“I say that the visage I bear is as beautiful as any I have ever seen in the mirror,” said Cog. “And that if people say I am disfigured, let them say it to my face and bear the full brunt of my powerful response. For my rule over these slums at such a tender age could not have come about with the so-called beauty I once possessed.”

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