Deplorable, but Hackworth was thankful for it as he sampled the French 
Settlement's ramified backstreets. A handful of figures skulked across an 
intersection several
blocks away, bloody light from a mediatron glancing off their patchwork Nanobar 
outfits, the kind of thing only street criminals would need to wear. Hackworth 
comforted himself by reasoning that this must be a gang from one of the Leased 
Territories who had just come over the Causeway. They wouldn't possibly be so 
rash as to assault a gentleman in the street, not in Shanghai. Hackworth 
detoured around the intersection anyway. Having never done anything illegal in 
his life, he was startled to understand, all of a sudden, that a ruthless 
constabulary was a crucial resource to more imaginative sorts of criminals, 
such as himself.