Kai sat in the cage, alone but not truly. DM was with him, a steady presence nested somewhere behind his eyes, smoothing the edges of fear into shapes he could hold. Three days had dragged by in a thin, grey ribbon. His rations had been an avocado—already browning along the split seam—and a crumpled bag of stale potato chips. Enough to remind him he wasn't dead yet. Not enough to quiet the ache gnawing his ribs.
He'd filled the hours with questions because questions moved time. Why did Sovereign shape taboos as gifts instead of curses? Why did survival always demand a toll paid in pride, memory, or blood? DM's answer had been even, almost kind: [Our taboo was selected, tailored to keep us alive in this environment. You hate it now. Later you'll call it necessary.] Kai didn't like that answer. He liked less that it felt true.
A shadow cut the corridor. Iron shrieked as a boot slammed the bars and sent a tremor through his bones.
"Well look at you," a slaver drawled, showing a grin crowded with rotten teeth. "Three days in, still got your chin up. Guess the avocado didn't kill you." He crouched to eye level, breath sour with old liquor. "Hope you enjoyed it. Next meal's whatever your buyer feels like throwing you."
Kai kept his face calm. The slaver's kind fed on flinches.
The man chuckled at the silence. "You quiet ones fetch the best coin. Some noble'll want to break you, see how long it takes 'til your spirit cracks. Others might like those eyes—still burning, still thinking you'll get out. Don't lose it, boy. Hope makes for better merchandise."
He smacked the bars again. The ringing crawled down the corridor while his laughter dispersed into the other cages, into the rattles and curses and prayers. Then the slaver wandered off, boots scuffing through straw.
[Don't give him what he wants,] DM murmured. [He's testing reactions to calibrate your price.]
I know, Kai thought back, and exhaled slow. His hands stayed in his lap, fingers absent-mindedly turning a palm-smooth coin. The arcade token was the only thing the frisk had missed—flat against his hipbone under the waistband, too unremarkable to bother with. They'd taken his bone knife and lighter. The two Sovereign chips were gone as well, palmed with the casual efficiency of long practice. Somehow the concrete shard had slipped past the search, tucked into the hem of his bandage like grime. Not a weapon so much as a promise that he could still move his own fate a millimeter if the chance came.
The cages hummed with low talk as afternoon bruised toward evening. A pair of slavers paused at the bend in the corridor. Kai angled his head to listen. Listening was free.
"A hunt tonight," one said, excitement sharpening his whisper. "Whole city's in on it."
"Yeah? Another purge?" the other asked.
"Bigger. They're calling it a Sweep. Gangs, collectors, cults—everyone gets a piece. Aluth's kids are already out oiling their threads." He snorted. "City's going to sing."
"And guess who's here? Black Omen."
The corridor tightened around that name. Kai's spine prickled. He kept his eyes on the coin.
"No," the second slaver said, half-laughing, half-afraid. "Those Zone Alpha ghosts? Why would they come here?"
"Passed through the Eastern Gate in daylight. Had permits in three dialects and a smile I wouldn't trust on my own mother. No clue what they're after. Heard they put in a quiet bid for warehouse space and medical waste disposal. Medical. Waste. In the Lawless City." A soft whistle. "I'm telling you—something's about to break."
They drifted farther down. The words stuck. Black Omen didn't belong here. They were Zone Alpha's shadow hounds—clean angles, silent methods, disappearances that left no ripples. Not slavers. Not ghouls. Not circus hunters hungry for spectacle. If they'd stepped into this cesspit with permits and smiles, it meant gravity had shifted somewhere out of sight.
Could this be a way out? The thought rose on its own. He hated it for being bright.
[Unlikely,] DM said, tempering the flare. [They won't come near the cages. Their operating doctrine in lawless zones is non-contact without vetted cover. If you want their attention, you'll have to be on a platform, not a floor.]
Bought.
[Yes.]
Hope curdled in his throat, bitter and metallic. He let a tired breath leak out. The city was moving without him; all he could do was keep his footing inside rusted iron and wait for the tide to swing his way.
The corridor dipped into a quieter hour. Somewhere above, loudspeakers crackled to life, and a woman's voice with a smoker's husk announced routes closing, streets opening, the curfew lifted for "licensed participants." The Sweep was official, then—in whatever passed for official here. From his corner, Kai pieced together fragments of what it meant. Factions would release prey—criminals owing debts, beasts dragged from the pit, political opponents bought for the occasion—and hunters would flood the streets to collect trophies: teeth, hands, collars, tokens, rumors. It would be entertainment for the crowds, revenue for the brokers, and cover for anyone who needed mess without questions.
And cover for a Black Omen operation.
[They'll move under the noise,] DM said. [If I were them, I would take a target that draws attention elsewhere—stage a spectacle east while the true objective lies west.]
What objective?
[Unknown. But they requisitioned disposal. Right now, my priors favor clean-up after a controlled extraction, or evidence destruction that must occur within the City's jurisdiction.]
Extraction. That word scraped against his ribs like the concrete shard. Me?
[Emotion bias detected,] DM replied, not unkindly. [But the fact remains: proximity increases probability. Your best line to Zone Alpha runs through those ghosts. To intersect, you must become visible.]
"How's our quiet one?" someone asked from the dark.
Kai looked up. A different slaver leaned on the bars, younger and less scarred, chewing on a strip of jerky. His eyes slid over Kai's posture, the blandness of his expression.
"Still not screaming?" the man said. "Shame. Screamers sell fast. Buyers like to think they're buying silence." He tapped the metal. "Be grateful. The Sweep shakes loose coin. Means a bigger audience at the market tomorrow."
Kai rolled the coin under his thumb, said nothing.
The slaver watched the movement, missing its meaning. He grinned and moved on, humming a vicious little tune.
The market. Kai pictured the platform, the auctioneer's voice like a metronome of debt, the eyes of the buyers cataloguing scars and angles, deciding what version of him they might purchase: labor, entertainment, study, punishment. A kind buyer—a myth spoken like a prayer—might let him eat more than bruised fruit. A cruel one might test the limits of spirit without touching skin. Any buyer, though, would move him out of the cage. Movement was the first ingredient of escape.
[We need a vector,] DM said softly. [Something to set you apart from the others on the platform without triggering a security response.]
Like what? He catalogued the inventory of himself. Bone knife—gone. Lighter—gone. Two Sovereign chips—lifted. Concrete shard—present, but a shard wouldn't win a stage. Arcade coin—present. It wasn't money. It wasn't anything, not here. Except… a story.
[Stories sell,] DM agreed. [Especially to collectors. We can frame you as a curiosity rather than a risk. Curiosity gets moved, catalogued, protected. Risks get shackled.]
Kai rubbed the arcade coin clean on his trouser leg, revealing an embossed comet and the word PLAY. He could name it as a token of luck from Zone Alpha's under-city. He could tell the truth in slant: that he'd kept it through a dozen bad nights because it was flat and honest and couldn't hurt him. He could let a buyer imagine they saw fate in it.
Bootsteps drummed above and then bled into a rising murmur. The Sweep was blooming across the city. He pictured streets uncorked—alleys letting out a thousand hunters with knives wrapped in cloth to catch blood and grins wrapped in cloth to catch identity. He pictured flares on rooftops, thread lines crossing like constellations, dogs dragged on chains, drones leased by the hour, ghouls clicking jointed fingers as they marked tally on their wrists. He pictured Black Omen blending into that fever like a shadow under shadow.
[Listen,] DM said. [The guards are rotating. The talk will loosen.]
It did. Night softened the slavers' tongues. He learned that the Sweep's trophies would be weighed at twelve stations. That Aluth's brood had been paid in crates of shoes and a crate of teeth. That the Red Circle Cartel had posted bounties on anyone wearing a rival's color. That a rumor said someone had shipped a god's bone through the southern canal and a richer rumor said the bone was just cow.
And—most important for him—that tomorrow's market would be moved from the usual pit-side scaffold to the eastern arena mezzanine where the ceiling fans worked and the buyers could drink while they pointed. The mezzanine had more exits. More exits meant more air.
Kai hid a yawn and let his body fold into an approximation of rest, back to the bars, chin on knees. He slept in thin slips and woke again to the brightness of a flare that had found a crack in the wall. His mind drifted to the questions that always found him in the shallow hours: What line had he crossed that made the City chew him so eagerly? Was it luck, or did he carry something that called teeth?
[You carry persistence,] DM said simply. [The City notices anyone who refuses its terms.]
A touch of dry humor rose in him. So I should be lazier?
[Strategically inert,] DM agreed. [Until the platform.]
A whistle blew twice. A door banged. Someone shouted for the pen to be ready. Kai tucked the coin back under his waistband and adjusted the bandage where the concrete shard hid. He flexed his hands, feeling for tremor. None. Good.
He listened for a last sliver of information and got it: "Black Omen moved west," a guard said, breathless, to his partner. "Took a med crate with them. Said it needed cold. Cold! In this heat."
Cold meant containment. Containment meant something fragile. Or someone.
Kai didn't know what they meant exactly but if he could escape. Perhaps they would take him back?
Kai pressed his forehead to the bars, just once. The iron was cool. Outside, the Sweep roared like a fever dream. Inside, his world was the size of a coin and a shard and a voice that would not abandon him.
[Tomorrow,] DM said.
Tomorrow, Kai answered, and didn't let himself picture a rescue. He pictured a platform, and a buyer with a blind spot, and a city distracted by its own hunger. He pictured stepping into that blind spot and widening it with the smallest, sharpest tool he had: the belief that he could move his fate a millimeter.