Kael woke starving. Not the kind of slow, background gnaw he'd been living with since forever — the polite emptiness that grumbled but kept its voice down. This was new. Sharp. Mean. His whole body was a hollow drum that someone was beating from the inside.
Every nerve screamed feed me. His head spun when he sat up. His arms buzzed like stripped wires sparking against each other. And his palms prickled again, Grip-Matrix humming under his skin like a swarm of tiny insects stretching after a nap.
The Protocol blinked alive in his vision, clinical as a butcher's invoice:
[Fuel Reserves: critical. Module stability: compromised.]
Performance degraded: 37%. Recommend caloric input.
Kael barked a laugh bitter enough to crack his throat. "Yeah, sure. Let me check the pantry. Oh wait—my pantry is three nails, some resin, and disappointment."
He staggered toward the bench, planted both hands on its scarred surface, and hissed when they stuck. His skin clung as though the table suddenly loved him. He yanked free hard enough to nearly pull the thing over.
"Fantastic. I'm a gecko that skipped breakfast. Peak evolution."
The Protocol didn't laugh. It flicked another notification instead:
[Adrenaline cycle incomplete. Excessive use without replenishment will cause collapse.]
Kael spat to the side. "Collapse already happened, friend. It's called my life."
Still, the truth was as sharp as broken glass: if he didn't eat soon, the shiny new modules would chew him apart from the inside. They wanted fuel. Real fuel. Strips. Protein. Something thicker than salted cardboard.
Survival wasn't optional fuel anymore. It was mandatory.
He geared up: crowbar, knife, mirror shard, sack patched with more holes than cloth, a few bolts to throw at suspicious shadows. He pulled the rag across his mouth and stepped out into the heaps.
Pushing the fatigue and dizziness down he decided to move. If you didn't constantly move within the heaps it meant death.
The mountain sang louder than usual. Every creak another insult. Every rattle another dare. Kael ignored the commentary and focused on the overlay.
Thin arcs traced across his vision — ghost-lines marking stable footing. Red streaks glared where plates were begging to betray him. For once, he wasn't just guessing his way through the heap. The overlay was whispering: step here, not there.
For a moment, Kael almost felt like the heaps were less an enemy and more a grudging tour guide.
Scav-Sense pulsed behind his eyes. Not a word. Not even a clear direction. Just a pressure, a subtle push, the feeling of being nudged that way.
He followed it to a collapsed slope no rat touched. A nightmare of sharp beams interlocked like drunken teeth. Normally he'd avoid it, because gravity had a sense of humor. But the whisper insisted.
"Alright," he muttered, "let's try for an interesting death."
He carefully crawled under, palms clinging and releasing in awkward rhythm as the Grip-Matrix flickered between obedience and rebellion. A slab shifted, groaning. His left hand stuck instinctively, anchoring him until his legs scrambled free. Without it, he'd already be a pancake without a gravestone to remember him by.
Inside the wreckage, half-buried, he found it: a coolant coil etched with alien filigree, intact and heavy. Worth several strips at least. Collector bait.
He stuffed it into his sack, grinning despite his crushing hunger. "Breakfast acquired. Lunch optional."
The second find came with teeth.
Kael was prying a seam open when the ash around it hissed and moved. A spined scavenger rat — mutated to triple their normal size, its eyes were milky with wrongness — it lunged from the gap. Its jaw was unhinged wider than any rat's had permission to.
Kael almost slipped, but Kinetic Sync flickered. A ghost-line traced the beast's leap, sketching exactly where its teeth would be in a few more milliseconds. He sidestepped, crowbar rising on reflex. The bar cracked across its skull with a crunch that rang in his bones.
The mutant screeched, shook its head, and pounced again. Another ghost-line flickered across Kael's sight, flashing and arrow that said, there, duck left. He obeyed, the teeth cutting air where his neck had just been. He shoved the crowbar into its throat, leveraged down with a grunt, and the thing spasmed until it stilled.
Kael leaned on the bar, chest heaving. "Breakfast fought back. Figures."
Kinetic Sync flickered another hint, this one tugging his eyes toward the mutant's chest. He frowned, crouched, and cut it open with his knife. Inside, pulsing faintly, sat a marble-sized bio-core, glowing like a sick star.
Scav-Sense whispered approval.
He pocketed it, lips twisting. The Collectors won't pay for this, I guess the system has a use for it..
By midday, Kael's sack bulged heavier than any haul he'd ever carried; Coolant coil, an alien fragment scavenged from a beam, multiple bundles of copper wire, and the bio-core wrapped in cloth. His arms screamed, his ribs throbbed, but the Protocol hummed like it was faintly proud.
[Fuel: replenishment possible. Directive Log inputs acquired.]
On his way down to the trade patch, he passed other rats scrambling through garbage seams. One boy no older than Kael's thirteen dug half his body into a pipe before emerging with two screws and eyes that were too hopeful. Another rat — older, bitter — eyed Kael's sagging sack and whispered to his partner.
Kael caught it. Saw the suspicion. His hand drifted to the crowbar and his overlay flickered a red arc across the older rat's arm, whispering if he tries, break it here.
The man thought better of it. Kael walked on, heart pounding, hiding the grin that wanted to bloom. For the first time, he wasn't the slow one. He wasn't the desperate one trailing behind.
He was ahead.
The market reacted before he even reached the stalls. Rats glanced with hollow envy. Collectors sniffed profit like dogs. Black-jaws on the ridges tilted helmets toward him.
Kael dropped the coolant coil onto the table with a clang. The Collector's eyes widened, then narrowed. "Where?"
Kael smiled with cracked lips. "Where do you think? I went shopping in paradise."
The man's hands trembled as he weighed the coil. He sorted the copper, tested the ceramic. He licked his lips when he touched the alien fragment. The bio-core he didn't even pretend not to want.
Kael braced for the inevitable lowball.
Instead, the Collector shoved forward not half a strip, not one, but five full strips.
Kael's throat closed. His fingers shook as he scooped them up, tucked them fast into his shirt before the black-jaws had a chance to invent questions.
Five strips. Enough food to last a week if he rationed like a saint. Or possibly enough to run the Protocol at full burn for three days.
For the first time, he had a choice.
Back in the burrow, Kael sat on his bedroll with strips spread in front of him like treasure. His hands hovered over them, almost reverent. Then hunger won.
He tore into one strip raw, barely chewing. Salt burned his tongue. His stomach clenched, then shuddered with gratitude as it finally received something to work with.
The Protocol flickered, smug as ever:
[Fuel Reserves: 43%. Module stability improved.]
Nutritional input: still suboptimal.]
Kael laughed with his mouth full. "Suboptimal? I just ate heaven. You're welcome."
He chewed slower on the second bite, letting the taste linger, letting muscles remember what calories felt like. Already, the ache dulled. The tremor eased. His lungs purred steady and clear. The modules in his head thrummed faint approval, like a machine finally oiled after laying idle for many years.
For the first time in his life, food wasn't just survival. It was progress.
Night settled across the heaps. Kael sat in the glow of the inspection light, gnawing on salt-paper, watching his chalk map. The arrow pointing to the city wall seemed less like a child's dream and more like a blueprint now.
Not forever, he whispered.
Outside, the heaps groaned like they always did. But tonight, to Kael, it sounded less like a threat and more like applause.
Far away, up on the ridge above the red zone, two black-jaws crouched over slag and ash. One held a cracked binocular, peering down at craters and carcasses.
He muttered. "Heat blooms in the slag."
"Something's moving down there," said the other.
After observing for a moment longer they turned toward the Baron's camp.
Kael licked salt from his fingers, curled up with crowbar in reach, and slept with a belly full enough to dream.
This time, the dream wasn't of rust or hunger. It was of modules unfurling like constellations, each node waiting for him to claim it.