He watched as, near the base of the rock face, a group of five kids were kicking a ball back and forth. The term 'ball' applied loosely. Even from 100 meters up, he could see it was something wrapped in tape, probably garbage. They, at least, didn't have any prosthetics or implants. Not that it was much comfort.
People who give them any potential alternative…
An ad hoc police force. There may be some kind of ad hoc police force here. They might be a good source of information. If not direct questioning, then observation.
Pushing himself away from the edge, he scouted the immediate area. There was a path about 200 meters to his right that looked like it led down into the slums, there was the freeway overhead, and the dam to his left. The area he'd been lying in looked untravelled, with no footprints he could find other than his own.
As long as he wasn't spotted from the freeway, which would require someone to get out of their car, walk to the edge, and look into the junction between the overpass, dam, and rock face.
If this was just an urban center, and not under assault, that was about as unlikely as it gets. Considering the situation he was in, he'd take it.
Once he was satisfied with his chosen vantage point, he crawled back to his position and resumed his watch. It was an exercise he'd done countless times, both in training and in the field. There are ways you learn to keep yourself attentive during hours of inactivity. In this case, it was building a mental catalog of the different variations people had with their lights, prosthetics, and implants.
Maybe a third of the people he saw had obvious ones, most older than, he guessed, 18. That didn't include people who might have prosthetics hidden by their ragged, worn clothes. More than a few fights broke out throughout the night, not a surprise in an area like this.
Several of the participants had prosthetics that morphed into weapons. He saw one or two blades, electrified wires, and someone had what looked like a gun built into their forearm.
He caught his first look at, what might have been, their police force when a larger fight between a dozen people or so broke out about 200 meters from his position. He didn't see the start, but a flash caught his attention. Magnifying his HUD to focus on the fight, he watched as someone with an electric whip hit another person who had been charging them. There were already five or six others involved in the brawl.
Before it could grow beyond that, he noticed another group moving toward them. Every one of the six in the group had prosthetics, the one at the front had implants replacing his eyes and orbitals. They moved like a unit, all making straight toward the fight. The crowd that had gathered to watch started making room for them as the group neared the brawl.
As soon as they reached the fringe of the fight, they started subduing its participants. A few were dealt with violently, tackles, strikes, and one was stabbed (good police force…). Once the others noticed them, the fighting came to a stop almost immediately.
There wasn't much uniformity in their attire or equipment. If he didn't watch them enter the fight, he might have assumed they were part of the 'community'.
… But that wasn't quite true. No, they didn't seem to have a standard uniform, but they did look better dressed and in better shape than the others. Instead of ragged, dirt clothes that looked like they'd been worn out a decade ago, their attire fit, was clean, and mostly undamaged. They were healthier too, relatively large and muscular.
A quick scan of the immediate area revealed a few more people who fit that description. Each had their eyes on the now-finished fight.
It wasn't hard to imagine, unless they were part of a group that wouldn't allow its members to be targeted, nice clothes wouldn't stay with their original owners long in an environment like this.
While it wasn't conclusive, this could be this area's ad hoc peacekeeping force. If it was, it looked more like any number of gangs he'd run into on outer colony worlds. He knew from experience, sometimes that's the best people can do…
Then he saw a new group. There were four of them. All massive, stalking through the crowd toward the former fight.
They didn't really have prosthetics. Every limb had been replaced. Their heads were more implant than human. They probably shared more with a robot than they did with the people around them.
The group stopped and the man who, he assumed, had been the head of the team that broke up the fight approached them.
While the people around them gave the group a wide berth, no one bothered sparing a second look.
Is that… normal around here?
When those two assholes who almost hit him were yelling, they said he looked like a 'borg'. Was that what he was looking at? Those guys were obviously not wearing armor but… was there enough variety in what their prosthetics looked like for him to pass as one?