The perpetual rain of Onyx Prime wasn't merely precipitation; it was a constant, metallic drizzle that seeped into everything, tasting of ozone, recycled despair, and the faint, coppery tang of old blood. It polished the polished chrome of the High-District to a blinding sheen while simultaneously dissolving the rusted scaffolding of the Lower Slums into a slow, agonizing decay. For Kaelen, the rain was a mirror, reflecting his own existence a constant, eroding force.
Above his head, a dim, flickering red holographic number pulsed with a sick rhythm, a stark, digital branding visible to every augmented eye in the city: [SV: 0.1].
He was a "Null." A walking glitch in the city's perfect machine. In Onyx Prime, Social Value (SV) was the sole currency, the immutable measure of a soul's worth. A score above 50.0 granted access to filtered air and Aether-enhanced organs, promising centuries of life.
Below 1.0, however, was a death sentence.
The city's ubiquitous automated systems were programmed to ignore you, to let you starve, to allow the elements to reclaim your biomass for the greater good of the "Value-Positive." Kaelen was statistically dead, yet still breathing. A cruel paradox.
He stood at the edge of the High-District's border, his threadbare boots sinking into the grey, slushy runoff that gathered in the gutter. His gaze, weary but unbroken, was fixed on the shimmering, heat-hazed façade of the Aura-Tech Tower, a monument to the city's opulent indifference. In his trembling hand, a crumpled datapad displayed his sister Lyra's medical bill a death warrant signed in glowing, unpayable digits. Her Life-Pod's power matrix was scheduled for automatic severance at midnight.
"Please," Kaelen rasped, his throat raw, the words barely audible above the rhythmic hiss of the nearby atmospheric purifiers. He was addressing the imposing, obsidian-black automated gate that shimmered with an invisible force field. "I have a work permit, a temporary pass from the Scrap-Yards. Just let me through to the payment office. My sister... she's critical."
The gate's integrated AI, a saccharine-sweet feminine voice that grated on Kaelen's nerves, replied with clinical indifference:
[ACCESS DENIED. CITIZENS WITH SV BELOW 1.0 ARE RESTRICTED TO THE LOWER SLUMS. YOUR REQUEST FOR EMERGENCY ACCESS IS INVALIDATED. HAVE A PRODUCTIVE DAY.]
A bitter, humorless laugh escaped Kaelen's lips. "Productive," he muttered, the word a poison on his tongue. He'd spent the last three cycles working 18-hour shifts in the toxic depths of the reactor-core, his lungs burning, his meager earnings swallowed by black market Aether-scraps to keep Lyra's failing pod powered for just another day. It was a Sisyphean struggle, designed by a system that demanded everything and gave nothing to those it deemed worthless.
Suddenly, the polished chrome of a sleek, black hover-limo sliced through a puddle nearby, spraying Kaelen with an icy torrent of sewage and street grime. The vehicle came to a silent halt. A young man, his hair perfectly coiffed, his silk-weave suit glowing faintly with embedded Aether-threads, stepped out. Above his head, a vibrant gold number pulsed with smug assurance: [SV: 38.7]. This was Jax, a minor scion of a newly wealthy family, a petty tyrant who once bullied Kaelen in the slum-arcades.
"Look at this," Jax sneered, his voice dripping with condescension, amplified by subtle vocal augmentations. He pointed a perfectly manicured finger at Kaelen's flickering 0.1.
"I didn't know the sensors still registered anything that low. Are you even human, Null? Or are you just a particularly resilient piece of sidewalk debris?"
The two sycophants who followed Jax out of the limo, their own scores hovering around [22.0] and [25.0], snickered dutifully. The sound was like a physical blow.
"I'm just trying to get to the office, Jax," Kaelen managed, his voice strained, the humiliation a familiar, burning coal in his gut.
"That's 'Sir' to you, Null," Jax corrected, his eyes glinting with malicious amusement. He flicked his wrist, and a faint, shimmering field of pure kinetic energy a trivial perk of his mid-tier SV slapped Kaelen across the face. The impact wasn't severe, but the message was clear: You are less than dirt.
Kaelen stumbled backward, his already precarious footing failing him. He landed hard in the muddy gutter, his hand splashing into a pile of discarded electronic scrap. His fingers closed around something sharp, cold, and strangely dense. It was a jagged shard of obsidian-black, polished smooth on one side, rough and crystalline on the other a fragment of what looked like a shattered Sovereign's Data-Core, tossed away as garbage.
As the sharp edge of the shard bit into his skin, piercing the thin, grime-covered flesh of his palm, a sound like a thousand glass bells shattering, followed by the deafening roar of a breaking dam, erupted inside Kaelen's skull. His world went white. Then, a terrifying, impossible vista of pure violet light and shimmering code bloomed behind his eyelids, drowning out the physical world.
[CRITICAL SYSTEM BREACH DETECTED...]
[SOURCE: UNKNOWN ABYSSAL ARCHIVE.]
[HOST: KAELEN (STATUS: NULL/GHOST).]
[COMPATIBILITY: 100%.]
[FORCING INTEGRATION: SSS-RANK SYSTEM 'VOID-GLITCH' HAS AWAKENED.]
The violet interface solidified, painting itself over Kaelen's vision. It wasn't a screen; it was woven into his perception, alive and pulsing.
[WELCOME, ARCHITECT OF THE VOID]
Rank: SSS (Unique)
Active Skill: Shatter-Point Extraction (Level 1)
Direct physical contact allows the host to steal Social Value and designated Skills/Assets from a target.
Passive Skill: The Predator's Tax . Every time an entity within a 10-meter radius expresses direct contempt, envy, or hostile intent towards the host, 0.1% of their current Social Value is automatically siphoned.
"What are you staring at, trash?" Jax's voice, now strangely distorted and distant, cut through the digital clamor. He was stepping closer, his foot already lifting, ready to deliver a contemptuous kick to Kaelen's ribs.
[NOTIFICATION: PASSIVE SKILL 'THE PREDATOR'S TAX' TRIGGERED!]
[TARGET: JAX (SV: 38.7) feels 'Extreme Contempt'. Siphoning 0.1% of SV...]
[SV +0.0387]
Kaelen felt a faint, invigorating spark in his chest. His flickering red 0.1 pulsed, growing infinitesimally: [0.1387]. It was miniscule, almost imperceptible to the naked eye, but it was there. And it was growing.
"Get up, Null!" Jax roared, his foot descending. "I'm talking to you!"
Kaelen didn't move fast enough to dodge. His body, weakened by years of malnutrition, simply wouldn't obey. Jax's boot connected with his side, sending a fresh jolt of pain through him. But this time, it was different.
The pain ignited a cold, righteous fury. A boundless void had opened in his soul, and it was screaming to be filled.
As Jax's boot recoiled, Kaelen's hand shot out. It wasn't a calculated move; it was a primal reflex, guided by the System's cold, absolute logic. His fingers, still slick with mud and his own blood, clamped around Jax's ankle.
[SSS-SKILL ACTIVATED: SHATTER-POINT EXTRACTION!]
"Let go of me, you—" Jax's voice, a moment ago filled with arrogance, dissolved into a gurgle of shock and terror. He felt an invisible, agonizing suction emanating from Kaelen's touch. The golden [38.7] above his head began to spin wildly, not just flickering, but visibly draining, like sand through an hourglass.
"My Value! My power!" Jax shrieked, his face blanching, his perfectly coiffed hair disheveling as his body sagged. The subtle kinetic energy field that had always enveloped him, a symbol of his inherited status, evaporated, leaving him exposed and vulnerable. "It's gone! Stop it! What are you doing?!"
[EXTRACTION IN PROGRESS: 10%... 40%... 80%...]
[EXTRACTION COMPLETE!]
[YOU HAVE STOLEN: 30.0 SV UNITS.]
[YOU HAVE STOLEN SKILL: 'KINETIC PULSE' (RANK: D).]
[YOU HAVE STOLEN ASSET: $5,000 DIGITAL CREDITS.]
Jax collapsed into the mud, a pathetic heap. His once vibrant gold number had shrunk, dimmed, and was now a sickly, flickering grey: [8.7]. He was still far from a Null, but the loss was astronomical, enough to strip him of his high-society perks and send him plummeting down the social hierarchy. He was no longer a prince; he was merely a commoner.
Kaelen stood up. He wasn't just standing; he felt taller, stronger, his muscles infused with a foreign, invigorating warmth. The crushing fatigue that had plagued him for years was gone, replaced by an electrifying clarity. He looked at Jax, now sobbing hysterically in the gutter, utterly broken.
Kaelen's own number didn't just increment. It shattered. The dim, red [0.1387] exploded into a thousand microscopic shards of light that dissolved into the rain, only to reform into a brilliant, piercing pillar of neon-violet. It hummed with power, visible even through the High-District's permanent haze.
[SV: 30.13]
The automated gate, which had moments ago denied him entry, suddenly hummed with renewed energy. The red "Access Denied" light vanished, replaced by a welcoming, vibrant blue.
[WELCOME, CITIZEN KAELEN. STATUS: WORKER-GRADE. ACCESS TO HIGH-DISTRICT LOBBY GRANTED. WOULD YOU LIKE A COMPLIMENTARY OXYGEN BOOST?]
Kaelen ignored the drone's polite query. He didn't even glance at Jax, whimpering in the gutter. He simply walked toward the gate, his every step purposeful, the rain sizzling as it hit the shimmering violet aura that now faintly enveloped him. He felt the phantom weight of $5,000 digital credits in his virtually linked pocket, a sum that, only moments ago, had been an impossible dream.
He looked up at the Aura-Tech Tower, where the "Sovereigns" lived, oblivious in their golden cages. They had built this system, twisted it, exploited it, crushed billions beneath its weight. And they had made him a Null.
"You called me atmospheric waste," Kaelen whispered, his eyes now glowing with the same vibrant violet light as his SV. The words were not for Jax, but for the entire indifferent city. "Let's see how much of you I can recycle."
The hunt had begun.