He rounded the corner of the building quickly. As he neared the door he primed his weapon. It was standard issue, a basic model powered by pressurized steam cartridges. If the scalding hot gobs of steel didn’t bring the target down he could always throw the gun at them and hope the cartridges destabilized. It was a nasty business carrying a weapon that was as much a danger to the user as it was to whoever it was pointed at but HQ insisted they use them. It left a lot of his colleagues confused and a little angry when the thugs they traded bullets with were using weapons that fired bullets shaped like bullets instead of marbles and the whole thing was powered by exploding powder. The door opened suddenly and he instinctively raised his weapon and fired. The gun cracked, not at the sound of a round exiting the barrel but because of the cartridge ripping itself open. He fell back, his hand badly burned. He looked up then into the barrel of a real gun. He only had one thought left to think:

God damn Steam.