Pain is a patient teacher, and in the Underveil, it is the only one that never takes a holiday. I woke up to the sound of rhythmic dripping—the rust-rain finding a new path through the polymer sheets of my ceiling. My right eye felt like someone had driven a heated copper needle into the socket and left it there to vibrate. I didn't move for a long time. I just lay there on the damp blankets, staring at the blurred edges of my world. The Interface was quiet, reduced to a faint, pulsing amber glow in the corner of my vision, but the weight of it was everywhere. It felt like a layer of lead had been poured into my veins while I slept. I tried to reach for the memory of my mother's laughter again, a morning ritual that used to keep me sane, but the silence that met me was absolute. It wasn't just forgotten; it was erased. There was a smooth, terrifying emptiness where that sound used to live.
I pushed myself up, my joints popping like dry twigs. Every movement was a negotiation with gravity. My body felt older, heavier, as if the four hours of life expectancy I'd surrendered had been taken from the very best parts of me. I crawled to the corner of the shack and splashed some grey, tepid water onto my face from a rusted basin. The reflection that stared back from the disturbed surface was unsettling. My skin was paler, almost translucent in the dim light, and the dark circles under my eyes looked like bruises. But it was the right eye that caught me. The iris hadn't changed color, but it held a predatory stillness, a digital coldness that didn't belong to a human.
"You look like a man who has seen his own ghost," Velzar's voice drifted through the shack, though he was nowhere to be seen. He didn't occupy physical space unless he chose to, yet his presence was as thick as the smog outside.
"I look like a man who's paying your bills," I rasped, my throat raw.
I checked my pockets. Empty. The Spirit Battery was gone, and the Essence I had harvested from the Enforcer—twelve units—was currently sitting in the Interface's 'Bank,' a cold currency that I didn't know how to spend on bread. Twelve units of Essence. It was enough to power a small residential block in the Grid for an hour, or enough to keep a man like me alive in a fight for thirty seconds. But in the markets of the Underveil, Essence wasn't something you traded in its raw form unless you wanted to be hunted by every vulture with a shiv.
I stepped outside, pulling my hood low. The 'morning' in the Underveil was just a slight shift from deep obsidian to a bruised, sickly violet as the atmospheric lights of the Grid far above hummed to life. The air was thick with the smell of scorched ozone and rotting synth-meat. I began the long walk toward the Rust Bazaar, the central nervous system of our district. It was a place where everything was for sale, from salvaged organs to memories extracted via illegal neuro-taps. If I was going to reach the Grid, I needed more than just a contract; I needed information. And in this city, information was the only thing more expensive than blood.
The streets—or 'Veins,' as we called them—were narrow, choked with the discarded skeletons of machinery and the desperate bodies of those who had given up. I passed a group of 'Siphoners,' addicts who spent their days trying to catch the stray Essence leaking from the massive power conduits that ran along the walls. They looked like grey dolls, their skin stretched tight over bone, their eyes fixed on the humming pipes. They didn't even look at me. They were already part of the architecture, waiting for the city to finally digest them.
[Warning: Hunger levels reaching threshold. Physical performance will degrade in 2 hours.]
The Interface was helpful as always, documenting my slow demise with clinical precision. I ignored it, focusing on the rhythmic clank of my boots against the metal grating. I needed to see 'Old Marrow.' He was a scavenger boss who controlled the flow of Tier 1 scrap in this sector. He was a man made of ninety percent malice and ten percent recycled cybernetics, but he knew the transit routes to the Grid better than anyone.
The Rust Bazaar opened up before me like a festering wound. It was a cavernous space beneath a junction of three massive ventilation shafts. Huts were stacked on top of each other, held together by prayers and industrial glue. Neon signs, half-broken and flickering, advertised things no one could afford. I pushed through the crowd, feeling the eyes of the 'Vultures' on me. They could smell the weakness on a person like a shark smells blood in the water. They saw a lone boy with a twitching eye and a hood, and they saw a target.
I felt a hand on my shoulder—a heavy, greasy grip that locked onto my collar.
"Lost, little rat?"
I didn't stop. I didn't turn around. I just felt the coldness of the contract beginning to stir at the base of my neck. "Let go," I said, my voice flat.
"Or what? You'll cry to the Enforcers?" The man stepped in front of me. He was twice my size, his arms reinforced with crude, external hydraulics that hissed with every movement. Behind him stood two others, younger and leaner, holding sharpened lengths of rebar.
[Conflict Probability: 98%]
[Recommended Action: Tactical Withdrawal.]
I looked at the man's eyes. They were yellowed, the pupils blown wide from 'Spark,' a cheap drug that gave you a temporary burst of Essence at the cost of your nervous system. He wasn't looking for a conversation; he was looking for something to break.
"I don't have anything for you," I said, trying to keep my breathing steady. My right eye began to pulse with a low, red light.
"You've got a coat. You've got boots. And you've got that pretty little locket tucked under your shirt," the man sneered, reaching for my chest.
In that moment, I felt the memory of the Enforcer's ash. I felt the absolute power of the Void's Tax. I could kill him. I could turn him into a pile of dust before his friends could even blink. But I saw the price tag in my vision.
[Projected Cost: 2 hours of life expectancy. 5% Sanity degradation.]
I couldn't afford it. I was a beggar playing with the currency of gods. If I used the power for every street thug, I wouldn't make it to the end of the week, let alone the Grid. I had to be smarter. I had to be the ghost I was meant to be.
I didn't fight. Instead, I let my knees buckle, collapsing into a heap at his feet. It was a gamble—an appeal to the predator's sense of boredom. "Please," I whimpered, making my voice sound as thin and pathetic as possible. "I'm sick. The rot... it's in my blood."
The man paused, his hand inches from my collar. In the Underveil, 'The Rot' was a catch-all term for Essence-poisoning, and it was highly feared. If a person's Essence became unstable, they could detonate, or worse, become a vector for the Void.
"He's twitching," one of the others whispered, pointing at my eye. "Look at the light. That ain't normal Spark."
The big man spat on the ground near my head. "Useless scrap. If I touch you, I'll probably catch whatever's eating your brain." He kicked my side, a dull, heavy blow that sent a spike of white-hot pain through my ribs, but I didn't make a sound. I just lay there, shivering, until I heard their heavy footsteps receding into the noise of the Bazaar.
I waited a full minute before I stood up, wiping the grime from my cheek. My ribs were screaming, and I could feel a bruise already forming, but I was still whole. I hadn't spent a single second of my life on them.
"You are becoming quite the actor, Asher," Velzar whispered, his voice tinged with a strange mockery. "But a king who hides in the mud is still covered in filth."
"I'm not a king," I muttered, moving toward the back of the Bazaar where Old Marrow's 'Counting House' was located. "I'm just a guy who knows how to survive a kick."
Old Marrow's place was a fortified bunker made from the cockpit of a crashed cargo-hauler. Two guards with rusted shotguns stood outside, their eyes scanning the crowd with mechanical indifference. I approached them, holding my hands out where they could see them.
"I'm here to see Marrow. Tell him the kid from the Piston-Crotch has something he wants."
One of the guards grunted and spoke into a comms unit. A moment later, the heavy pressure-door hissed open, releasing a cloud of filtered air that smelled of cigars and expensive lubricant. I stepped inside, the sudden silence of the sound-proofed room making my ears pop.
The interior was filled with shelves of high-end salvage—chips from the Grid, refined Essence vials, and even a few pieces of real fruit preserved in stasis jars. At the center sat Marrow. He was a mountain of a man, his lower body replaced by a multi-legged hydraulic platform that made him look like a metallic centaur. His face was a patchwork of scars and gleaming chrome, one eye replaced by a rotating multi-lens sensor.
"Asher," he rumbled, the sound vibrating through the floor. "I heard you were dead. The Enforcers were sniffing around the Pit last night. Said they lost a man to a 'void anomaly.' You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"
I felt the Interface spike for a second, a sharp warning red. "I'm just a scavenger, Marrow. You know that. I was hiding in the pipes. I saw the lights, that's all."
Marrow leaned forward, his lenses clicking as they focused on my right eye. "You've changed, boy. You smell like the wrong side of the veil. It's a dangerous scent. Makes people want to burn you before you start a fire."
"I'm here to trade," I said, cutting through the tension. "I want passage to the Grid. Not just a temporary pass. I want a way through the maintenance shafts that isn't monitored by the Crown's sensors."
Marrow laughed, a dry, metallic sound. "Everyone wants to go to the Grid, Asher. They think the air is sweeter there. They think the neon hides the blood. But it costs. Passage like that? That's Tier 4 currency. You don't have that kind of Essence."
"I have something better," I said. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small, blackened shard of metal. It was a piece of the Enforcer's armor that I'd picked up after I turned him to ash. It was still humming with a faint, residual darkness, a physical manifestation of the Void's Tax.
Marrow's lenses spun frantically. He reached out with a trembling, cybernetic hand and took the shard. The moment his fingers touched it, the frost began to spread across the metal. He pulled back, his eyes wide.
"This... this isn't Essence. This is anti-matter. It's a fragment of a collapsed contract." He looked at me with a new kind of fear—a respect born of terror. "Where did you get this?"
"Does it matter?" I asked, my voice cold. "Is it enough?"
Marrow stared at the shard for a long time. I could see the greed fighting with his survival instinct. Greed won. It always did in the Underveil. "It's enough for a map and a code-breaker for the Sector 4 gates. But it won't get you past the Sentinels. You'll have to do that yourself."
"I'll take the risk," I said.
He slid a small, data-slug across the table toward me. "The shafts are flooded with toxic runoff right now. You'll need a Level 3 respirator or you'll be coughing up your lungs before you reach the first gate. And Asher..." He paused, his lenses dimming. "If you ever come back, don't come here. Whatever you've invited into your head... it isn't something this city can contain. You're a walking extinction event."
I took the slug and tucked it into my boot. "The city's already dead, Marrow. It just hasn't stopped moving yet."
I walked out of the bunker, the heavy door thudding shut behind me. The Bazaar felt louder now, more chaotic. I had the map. I had the code. But I also had a target on my back. Marrow would sell the information of our meeting to the highest bidder within the hour. That was how the game worked.
As I pushed through the crowd, I felt a sudden, sharp tug on my consciousness.
[Event Detected: Tracking Beacon synchronized.]
[Source: Unknown.]
I froze. I didn't look around. I didn't change my pace. They were already watching. Was it the Enforcers? Or someone else? The City didn't look back, but it certainly didn't let go once it had its teeth in you.
"They are coming for the shard, Asher," Velzar whispered, his voice sounding almost giddy. "They want the darkness you carry. They want to see if they can use it to light their own little world."
"Let them come," I thought, my jaw tightening.
I turned into a narrow side-alley, moving away from the main Bazaar. I needed to get to the Sector 4 entrance before the news spread. I could feel the Interface pulsing, a rhythmic beat that matched my heart. My life expectancy was a dwindling candle, and I was about to walk into a storm.
The path ahead was a vertical climb through the 'Gut'—the massive industrial shafts that carried the city's waste upward to the refineries. It was a place of steam, shadows, and silence. I reached the first ladder and began to climb, the metal slick with oily condensation. Above me, the massive concrete sky of the Line felt closer, a suffocating weight that I was determined to pierce.
[Sync Rate: 0.06%]
[Current Sanity: 82%]
The numbers were moving. The more I interacted with the world through the lens of the contract, the more the world began to push back. I reached a small landing and stopped to catch my breath. Below, the Underveil was a sea of flickering lights, a graveyard of millions of souls who would never see the sun. I looked at my hands. They were stained with the grey ash of the Enforcer, a mark that wouldn't wash away.
I wasn't the boy who scavenged for batteries anymore. I was something else. A glitch in the system. A debt that was coming due. I pulled out the locket and looked at it one last time. It didn't open, but it felt warm against my palm. It was the only part of me that was still human, the only part that hadn't been traded for Essence or survival.
"I'm coming for the Crown," I whispered to the dark.
I turned and vanished into the steam of the maintenance shafts, leaving the Underveil behind. The climb was only beginning, and the price was only going to get higher. But as I moved into the darkness, I didn't feel afraid. I felt cold. A deep, absolute cold that belonged to the void itself. The City didn't look back, but for the first time in my life, I wasn't looking back either. I was looking up. And the sky was about to break.
The shadows seemed to stretch toward me, inviting me deeper into the labyrinth. I could hear the faint, distant hum of the Grid, a siren song of neon and electricity. My ribs ached, my eye throbbed, and I could feel the hunger gnawing at my stomach, but none of it mattered. I was a contract-bearer. I was the tax-man of the void. And I was going to find out who drew the Line. As the first wave of toxic steam enveloped me, I closed my eyes and let the Interface guide my steps. The journey was no longer about living; it was about the ascent. And I would pay whatever it cost to reach the top. The silence of the shafts was absolute, broken only by the sound of my own ragged breath and the mechanical ticking of a heart that was slowly becoming something more—or less—than human. The game had changed. The rules were gone. And the only thing left was the climb. I pushed forward, a ghost in the machine, ready to burn the world down just to see what was hidden behind the smoke. The ascent had truly begun.