Chapter 54 – In the Belly of the Market
The Silex city market pulsed like a living thing.
Stalls spilled into narrow alleys, colorful cloth canopies swaying like sails over heads. Shouts of merchants layered over each other like overlapping waveforms—each one fighting for frequency. Children darted through crates of glowing fruit and thermoregulated bread rolls. Tiny wind-powered fans dangled from awnings, spinning lazily despite the calm.
"This place is… loud," Luma muttered, eyes darting from a robotic parrot squawking jokes to a man selling "soundproof socks" that literally purred when walked in.
Ion smirked. "It's entropy in the form of commerce."
Juno was already haggling with a spice vendor who claimed his herbs were "tuned to enhance personal gravity."
"No thanks," she replied. "I've already got enough things weighing me down—mostly emotional baggage and test pressure."
Luma elbowed Ion. "Is any of this real science?"
Ion gave a neutral shrug. "The fans are real. The spices are… wishful chemistry. And the socks? Probably just noise-canceling feedback loops disguised as fashion."
As they wove through the crowd, something began to nag at Luma's senses—not her gauntlet this time, but something more instinctual. A strange emptiness beneath the noise.
"Do you feel that?" she asked softly.
Ion paused. "Yeah. There's a… quiet beneath the chaos. Like something's suppressing natural resonance."
They passed a toy stall with a "learning laser slingshot," and Luma stopped short. A boy—no older than seven—was pointing it at the sky, pressing the trigger. Nothing happened. The laser fizzled weakly.
Luma crouched beside him. "Mind if I help?"
The boy nodded silently.
She adjusted the slingshot's capacitor, flipped a grounding switch, then aimed at a nearby wall. A soft red beam painted a wiggly line.
"Why wasn't it working?" the boy asked.
"It was built to function with environmental charge," she said. "But the background electromagnetic field here is being dampened. On purpose."
Ion's expression darkened. "Entropy suppression field. Low-level. Just enough to make physics feel… uncertain."
Juno returned with a bag of glow beans. "I heard someone say the Bureau's got a propaganda stage on the plaza up ahead. They're showing 'truth reels' every hour."
Luma exhaled slowly. "Let's give them a science lesson."
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The plaza was built like a shallow amphitheater. A stage pulsed with white-blue light, and above it hovered a giant holoscreen showing clips of orderly classrooms, perfectly aligned solar towers, and clean equations that glowed too uniformly to be real.
A Bureau host in a sleek silver suit spoke in polished tones:
"Order is peace. Predictability is progress. Control is the highest form of knowledge."
Luma's face twisted. "That's not teaching. That's... programming."
She marched to an open patch of cobblestone just below the stage and set down her backpack.
"What are you doing?" Juno asked.
"Teaching."
Luma pulled out a paper cone, a spoon, and a bottle of vinegar. Then a pouch of baking soda.
Ion's eyes widened. "Oh no."
She stood up, faced the curious onlookers, and raised her voice.
"Hey! Anyone want to see science misbehave?"
That got attention.
She poured the vinegar into the cone, added a scoop of soda, and stepped back as it shot straight into the air with a fizzing squeal—splattering the Bureau banner above with froth.
Children gasped. Some laughed. The Bureau host froze mid-speech.
Luma grinned. "That's chemical reaction. Acid meets base, boom. No control. No fear. Just the truth of matter interacting."
More soda rockets followed. Juno joined her, launching two-liter bottles tied to handmade gliders. One crashed into a hologram projector, sending the screen into a wobbly loop of upside-down math.
Ion sighed but stepped forward. "Gravity isn't order—it's falling with predictability. Energy isn't control—it's freedom, bound by rules we can learn, not rules we must obey blindly."
The crowd began murmuring.
Then—applause.
Children clapped. Vendors nodded. Even the spice seller tossed Luma a wink.
The Bureau host tried to recover, shouting about "sanctioned knowledge," but a flying vinegar cone splatted against his podium, and the crowd erupted with laughter.
Juno wiped foam from her cheek. "That counts as a lesson, right?"
Luma beamed. "That was the midterm."
Ion, smiling faintly, added, "And no one failed."
As the market buzzed with new questions and a little more courage, the team packed up and slipped away into the side alleys—heading for the next place in need of noise, truth, and maybe another rocket or two.