The underlevels of Axiom Prime didn't just smell of rust and decay; they smelled of fear. It was a metallic tang, like old blood and ozone, that seeped from the permacrete and hung in the stagnant air. Kaelen breathed it in now, each gasp a painful reminder that he was in the city's gutters, both literally and metaphorically.
He'd run until his lungs burned and his legs turned to water, guided by nothing but a scavenger's instinct for the deepest, darkest holes. He'd found one—a collapsed maintenance closet behind a waterfall of leaking coolant from a fractured pipe. The liquid was probably toxic, but it masked his heat signature and the relentless, chemical stench overwhelmed all other smells. Including, he hoped, the scent of a terrified Null.
He crouched in the damp darkness, the shard clutched in one hand, his other pressed against a gash on his forearm from a fall during his blind flight. The pain was a grounding, real thing. It countered the surreal horror of what had just happened.
They'd known. The Syntax Enforcers hadn't been on a random patrol. They'd come to the Bazaar for him. For the shard. Zara's reaction, her terror… she'd recognized it instantly. That meant it was known. Cataloged. And his name was now digitally stapled to it.
Unauthorized data acquisition. Interference with sovereign systems. The charges echoed in his head. They weren't charges for a scavenger. They were charges for a revolutionary. A terrorist.
His Bolt-Hole was compromised. Zara's stall was burned. Hemlock… he pushed the thought away. Worrying about the old man was a luxury he couldn't afford. Worrying about anyone but himself was a fatal flaw.
A soft, scraping sound.
Kaelen froze, his breath catching in his throat. He pressed himself deeper into the shadows behind the coolant leak, the chemical burn of it a welcome distraction from the cold dread pooling in his gut. The sound came again. Not the rhythmic tread of Enforcer boots. This was lighter. Hesitant.
A figure appeared at the end of the corridor, silhouetted by the faint, sickly green light of a bioluminescent fungus growing on a conduit. Small. Hunched.
"Kaelen?" a voice rasped. Old Man Hemlock.
Every instinct screamed trap. But the old man was alone, and he was holding a small, shielded package.
"I'm not here," Kaelen whispered, the sound swallowed by the hiss of leaking coolant.
"Good. Stay that way," Hemlock said, his voice low and urgent. He shuffled closer, his eyes scanning the darkness until they found Kaelen's. There was no fear in them, only a grim resignation. "The Enforcers raided the Bazaar. Took Zara. Shut down the whole sector for 'decontamination.' They're sweeping the underlevels. They have resonance sniffers. They'll find you here soon."
The world tilted. They'd taken Zara. For knowing him. The guilt was a physical blow.
"Why are you here?" Kaelen's voice was raw. "You'll get yourself tagged, too."
Hemlock ignored the question. He thrust the package into Kaelen's hands. It was heavy. "Rations. A filtered water canister. A data-chit. It's a one-time, encrypted burst. Coordinates. A place you can lay low. The signal will only last for an hour before it self-scrambles."
Kaelen stared at the package, then at the old man. "Why?"
Hemlock's gaze was unwavering. "Because a system that hunts its own ghosts is a system that's afraid. And a afraid system is a stupid one." He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a bare whisper. "They're not just afraid of that thing you have. They're afraid of you, boy. A Null who can break their toys. You're an equation they can't solve. Now go. And don't trust anyone."
With that, the old man turned and shuffled back into the darkness, leaving Kaelen alone with the hissing pipe, the toxic smell, and the crushing weight of a purpose he never wanted.
He didn't open the package. He just clutched it, his mind reeling. They're afraid of you.
It was the most terrifying thing anyone had ever said to him.
A distant, high-pitched whine echoed down the corridor. Resonance sniffer. Hemlock was right. Time was up.
Pushing the pain and exhaustion aside, Kaelen moved. He used the data-chit, the coordinates blooming in his mind's eye—a derelict water purification plant in a sector so forgotten it wasn't even on most maps. It was a long, dangerous journey through the city's forgotten arteries.
He ran, not with the blind panic of before, but with a desperate, focused determination. He was no longer just Kaelen the Scavenger. He was Kaelen the Variable. Kaelen the Error.
And he had just been given his first command line.
Run.
To be continued...