The cleaning solution smelled of fake lemons and regret.
Kaelen worked the stiff-bristled brush in a tight, tired circle, the chemical tang coating the back of his throat. The stain on the lobby's white Synth-Marble floor wasn't grease, or ink, or coffee. It was a deep, angry black, a shadow burned into the stone by something too bright to look at. A carbonized silhouette. They never got all the organic matter out.
The official Aegis Incorporated incident report, which he'd heard a publicist dictating, called it "regrettable collateral discharge during a high-risk apprehension." In the maintenance tunnels, they called it what it was: what was left of a person when a 4-Star hero like Luminary decided "subduing force" meant a sustained, point-blank photon lance.
A pair of mirror-polished white boots, edged in gold, stopped just inches from his bucket. Kaelen didn't need to look up. He knew the smug, perfectly symmetrical face that went with them.
"You're leaving a film, Null." The voice was smooth, amplified slightly by the helmet he wasn't wearing, a common affectation among the Advantaged. Aegis, 3-Stars, Kinetic Redirection. His power was taking hits and making others take them instead. His real talent was being a prick.
Kaelen kept scrubbing. A year ago, he might have flinched. Now, he just felt the familiar, hollow pressure in his chest. The humiliation was a daily ritual, as routine as breathing the recycled, hero-scented air of the Tower.
"The Chilean investors tour at ten," Aegis continued, his tone one of bored authority. "Luminary wants the vestibule immaculate. We can't have them thinking we're slobs. Or that we employ them." He meant Nulls. He meant Kaelen.
A memory flickered, sharp and unwanted: Aegis, last month, "demonstrating" his power for a group of socialites by having a 1-Star porter throw a punch at him. Aegis had absorbed the kinetic energy, touched a finger to Kaelen's chest, and released it. Two ribs had cracked with a sound like stepping on wet wood. The med-tech, a bored 2-Star with flesh-knitting, had patched him up just enough to work, but they'd healed crooked. Kaelen could still feel the slight, constant ache when he breathed deep.
"It'll be clean," Kaelen muttered, the words barely leaving his lips.
"It had better be." The boots lingered a moment longer, a silent promise of consequence, then clicked away towards the soaring atrium where sunlight streamed through holographic banners of Luminary's smirking face.
Kaelen sat back on his heels, the brush dripping acrid foam. He gazed at the stain. He'd known her. Not well. A logistics coordinator, a 1-Star with an eidetic memory for schedules. Mara. She'd once given him an extra nutrient bar from the vending bank when his cred-stick was short. She had a kid. The "regrettable collateral" fund would have paid out a standard settlement. The story would have been about Luminary's brave stand against a dangerous, mind-controlling villain. Not about the console Mara was manning that had malfunctioned, locking the security shutters a half-second too slow.
This was the system. Clean, brutal, and gleaming. The Star-Chamber's ratings decided your worth. The Power-Brokers and corps like Aegis Inc. packaged and sold it. The public bought the story. And the stains got scrubbed away by people who didn't exist.
His shift ended in the muted grey haze that passed for night in the city's lower sectors. The maintenance corridors of the Tower were his world; the polished lobby was the stage, and he was part of the crew that struck the set after the show. He rode the freight elevator down to Sub-Level 4, the Null dormitory. It was a cavernous space, once a parking garage, now lined with rows of identical coffin-racks. The air was cool and smelled of damp concrete and recycled bodies.
In the designated "meal alcove"—a recess with a scarred table and a hydration tap—two low-tier sidekicks, a 2-Star with prehensile hair and a 1-Star who could glow faintly, were hunched over a tablet, voices low.
"…caught the tail end of the feed from the Diamond District," Prehensile Hair was saying. "Berserker-class, they're saying. Went completely off-script at the Black Rabbit. Tore the place apart."
The Glower whistled, a faint, luminescent pulse escaping his skin. "Casualties?"
"Four confirmed. But the Star-Chamber bulletin is calling it a 'successful, if forceful, intervention.' Kept the property damage to three blocks. Under projection."
Success. The word echoed in Kaelen's skull, mixing with the phantom scent of lemons and carbon. A successful intervention with four bodies. A successful apprehension with one stain on the floor. He pulled his daily ration—a bland brick of caloric paste—from his locker and sat on his bunk, his back to the chatter.
The paste was chalky and stuck to his teeth. He squeezed the tube, the cheap polymer yielding under his fingers. The hollow pressure in his chest was building, a slow boil of rage and helplessness he had no outlet for. He thought of Mara' stain. Of Aegis's boots. Of the four "successful" bodies at the Black Rabbit. He squeezed the tube harder, his knuckles bleaching white with the strain.
CRACK.
The sound was sharp, internal. A white-hot lance of pain shot from his hand up his arm. Not the tube. His own index finger.
He dropped the paste, cradling his hand. The finger was bent at a sickening, unnatural angle. A classic fracture. He needed a med-tech. He'd have to report it, log the injury, lose a day's pay he couldn't afford—
Then he felt it. A movement under the skin. Not the bone sliding, but… changing. The white-hot pain didn't subside, it was consumed, replaced by a deep, cold, unyielding solidity. He watched, breath caught in his throat, as the swollen flesh around the fracture seemed to smooth and pale. The angry red flush drained away, leaving skin the color of old milk. Beneath it, he could see the outline of the bone—no longer a jagged break, but a single, seamless, dense shaft. It looked less like bone and more like… porcelain.
Tentatively, he flexed the finger. No pain. Just a strange, heavy stiffness. He touched the finger to the cold steel frame of his bunk.
Crunch.
He pulled back. Where his porcelain fingertip had made contact, a perfect, coin-sized patch of the steel had transformed. It was no longer dull grey metal, but a shiny, brittle, glass-like substance. He tapped it with a normal finger. It flaked away like icing sugar.
A silent, electric shock tore through him, erasing the fatigue, the hunger, the hollow pressure. It was replaced by a roaring, terrifying void of possibility.
The Luminance Test. The verdict of Zero Stars. The lifetime of being nothing, a ghost who cleaned up after the real people.
It was all a lie.
The machine hadn't seen nothing. It had seen something it couldn't comprehend. A signal so chaotic, so overloaded, it defaulted to zero.
He looked at his hand. One finger, hard and cold and wrong. A power that shouldn't exist. Solid Manipulation.
He wasn't a Null.
He was something the Star-System had no box for. And in a world that traded in lies, his truth was the most dangerous currency of all.
The first spark had been struck. Now, all that remained was to see what would burn.