The industrial district of District 9 was a graveyard of rusted steel and broken concrete, but Gluttony's Food Processing Plant was the only thing alive in it.
It sat in the center of the wasteland like a festering tumor—a sprawling fortress of smokestacks, grinding gears, and high walls topped with razor wire. Even from half a mile away, the ground vibrated with the rhythmic, heavy thud of the massive crushers inside.
The air here was thick, greasy, and warm. It coated the throat with the sickening taste of rendered fat and ozone.
Vance and Cerberus crouched on the rusted skeleton of an old transmission tower, overlooking the factory's perimeter.
"Perimeter check," Vance whispered, adjusting his collar against the oily wind.
Cerberus scanned the wall with his tactical visor. "Heavy resistance. Automated turrets every ten meters. Mark-IV Security Droids patrolling in pairs. I can't cut through that without setting off a general alarm."
"We aren't going in. Not yet," Vance said. "We need to know how the beast breathes before we try to choke it."
He reached behind his head, brushing aside his hair to touch the neural port at the base of his skull. He focused his will on the new partition—the bio-chip he had taken from Envy.
[Ability Activation: Visual Parasite.]
A spike of white-hot pain drilled through Vance's temples. His body went rigid as his optic nerves were hijacked by the foreign code. His vision grayed out, replaced by a wash of digital static.
He focused on a signal nearby. A patrol drone was buzzing fifty meters above the factory yard, its rotors humming.
Connect.
Vance's perspective wrenched violently out of his body.
Suddenly, he was looking down at the world from the sky. The roar of the wind filled his audio receptors. The data stream on his retina changed from his own biological feed to the drone's machine code. The vertigo was nauseating, disorienting his inner ear, but he forced his mind to stabilize.
He steered the drone's camera, banking left to sweep over the central infrastructure of the factory.
He saw the loading docks, where trucks were dumping piles of "raw material" into chutes. He ignored the horror of what those materials might be. He focused on the energy signatures.
There.
On the north side of the complex, three massive cooling towers stood like black monoliths against the smoggy sky. They were venting thick, white clouds of steam into the night.
Through the drone's thermal optics, the towers weren't black. They were glowing a violent, angry red.
[WARNING: Thermal Output 115%. Capacity Exceeded.]
The warning lights on the maintenance catwalks were strobing orange. The massive turbines at the base of the towers were spinning so fast they were a blur, vibrating with dangerous kinetic energy.
He's running it hot, Vance analyzed, fighting the headache building behind his real eyes. Gluttony is pushing the production line beyond its limits. He created a shortage, but now he has to produce enough to feed the demand he manipulated. He's greedy.
Vance severed the connection.
Snap.
His vision slammed back into his own head. He gasped, grabbing the railing of the tower to steady himself. A warm trickle of blood ran from his nose, dripping onto the rusted metal.
"Vance?" Cerberus asked, steadying him.
"I saw it," Vance wiped his nose, his hand shaking slightly. "The cooling towers are red-lining. The system is unstable."
Suddenly, the wind shifted. A gust blew directly from the factory toward them, carrying the exhaust from the vents.
Vance froze. He flared his nostrils, activating his synesthetic sense to dissect the complex odor profile carried by the wind.
The dominant smell was Copper—the scent of old blood—mixed with the cloying sweetness of Rot.
But underneath that, sharp and stinging like a needle in the eye, was a chemical scent that didn't belong in a kitchen.
Ammonia.
It was incredibly potent, cutting through the grease and fat.
Vance closed his eyes, isolating the scent. It wasn't just a byproduct of cleaning. It was raw, unrefined anhydrous ammonia—the primary coolant used in heavy industrial refrigeration.
And it was leaking.
The smell wasn't coming from a single pipe. It was a pervasive, low-level cloud hanging over the northern sector of the factory. It smelled of Neglect and Stress.
Vance opened his eyes, a cold, calculating smile forming on his face.
The visual data showed the towers were hot. The olfactory data proved the coolant lines were fractured.
"He's bleeding," Vance whispered.
"Bleeding?" Cerberus looked at the fortress. "I don't see any blood."
"Not blood. Coolant."
Vance pointed at the glowing towers in the distance.
"Gluttony is a cyborg. He integrated himself into the factory's power grid. If the factory is overheating, he is overheating. He's trying to keep up with his own greed, but his hardware is failing."
"The ammonia leak means his pressure valves are shot. Micro-fractures in the pipes. He's vulnerable."
Vance stood up, turning his back on the factory. He didn't need to see any more. He had the diagnosis.
"We don't need to fight his army," Vance said, adjusting his coat to hide the tremors in his hands. "We just need to make him run a little faster."
"If we push the temperature up just a few degrees... the whole system melts down."
"So we blow up the towers?" Cerberus asked, reaching for his explosives.
"No. That's too crude. And it destroys the assets. I want this factory intact when we're done." Vance's eyes gleamed in the dark.
"We are going to make him invite us in. And then, I'm going to feed him something he can't digest."