In the distance, a hazy heat glare distorted the ramshackle buildings. Cyrus looked down at his fob, which had stopped working a long time ago, and stuck it back in a pouch with a sigh. Nothing about this world appealed to him. From the near-unpronounceable name, to the angry sun beaming down rays of hate, to the swarms of insects somehow finding their way beneath his armor and clothing. The people here, while simpleminded at best, regarded him with immense suspicion, and it wasn’t uncommon for him to be chased out of one rundown shanty town after another with rocks and other improvised weapons. They’d even scratched part of his helmet paint with an incredibly well-placed slug shot, much to his chagrin.
Cyrus had been walking for the better part of two hours along a dirt road, the only companion being the constant zzzzzzzt of insects plinking harmlessly against his visor. A bead of sweat traveled down his forehead to the tip of his nose and fell to the ground below, but he’d grown used to the sensation by now. This entire place was incredibly low-tech, even for a backwater in the Outer Rim, almost to the point where it felt like his presence alone accelerated their technological progress by about a hundred years.
He was being disingenuous, though. The people here toiled endlessly under a harsh, tyrannical regime, and most of them found themselves in a poor position against their wishes. He was patient with them, and thus far had only shot in the direction of one particularly angry grandmother with a wooden spoon. That woman, the Three bless her soul, had chased him for the better part of a mile before he finally got fed up and fired a round off to scare her away. Even then, the only thing that did it was the fact that she had to have been damn near a hundred years old and running around outside in this heat was absolutely going to kill her before he did.
Cyrus contemplated why he didn’t just fly his ship to the favela, then remembered that there was nowhere close to land. It went from extreme urban sprawl to jungle in a matter of miles, and it took him a hell of a time to find a clearing large enough in which he could set down his ship. He doubted anyone here could break into a locked starship, so he was fine leaving it alone for now. After a while of walking, he finally came upon the favela, and all he had left to do was scour it for his target.
He continued along the main “road” until he came across a particularly rundown portion of the favela. A few armed guards stood on either side of the road in front of a fence. Their weapons were simple, but still dangerous enough to ward people off. One of the men stepped forward, an eyepatch covering one of his eyes. His dirty skin was sun-weathered and rugged, and a patchy beard covered what looked like several facial scars along his cheeks.
”This zone is quarantined,” he said sternly, raising his rifle, ”Only doctors, soldiers, and infected are allowed within.”
Cyrus stared at him for a moment, chewing the inside of his cheek, absolutely bewildered. Without thinking, he blurted out, "What the hell kind of infection has you block off an entire section of the city?" which caught the soldiers flatfooted somewhat. They looked at each other, unsure of how to answer the question. How had he not heard about the infection? Everyone in the city knew about it.