The rain tasted like rust.
Kael lay face down in a gutter, cheek grinding against broken glass and oily water. Every breath was a saw through cracked ribs. Boots slammed into his side again, lifting him half an inch before gravity nailed him back into the filth.
"Still breathing? Damn cockroach," one of the corp enforcers laughed, voice distorted through a neon visor. "Thought you'd learned your place last time."
Kael coughed, spitting blood and a molar. The tooth clinked against the pavement, lost in the sewer wash.
He wanted to tell them to fuck off, to at least die with a shred of dignity. But words came out broken, wet with red. He didn't fight back. Couldn't. Not anymore.
The second enforcer leaned down, pressing a boot on Kael's head. "Hey, boss—should we toss him into the recycler? Trash like him might actually make decent protein paste."
Laughter erupted. Three of them. All armored in chrome, serving Echelon Corp, the megagiant that owned this district. Kael had borrowed money from their street subsidiary for meds, and when he couldn't pay, they made him pay in blood. Again. And again.
He thought—maybe tonight they'll finish it. Maybe that'd be better.
Because really, what was left for him?
---
As the rain beat down, Kael's mind slipped, the pain dragging him into memory.
He remembered a tiny apartment, plaster crumbling from the ceiling. His mother, skin pale as smoke, coughing into her hands. No insurance, no money, no future. "Don't worry, Kael," she'd said, always smiling despite it. "You're stronger than this world."
She died three weeks later. Corp hospital wouldn't admit her without a clearance chip.
His father? Never existed. His only real family was debt.
He survived by running courier gigs for street gangs, dodging drone patrols, jacking scraps from dumpsters behind neon-lit restaurants. A life that taught him three lessons: trust gets you killed, hope gets you betrayed, and mercy gets you gutted.
And when he finally thought he had a friend—Marra, the girl with wire implants and a laugh like fireworks—she sold him out. His safehouse, his routes, everything. All for a bag of credits and a ticket out.
That betrayal hurt worse than the beatings.
Now, Kael was twenty-one, bones brittle, stomach empty, lungs scarred from smog. He'd never cultivated anything but anger. He was nothing. Less than nothing.
So why keep fighting?
---
The boot pressed harder, grinding his face into the gutter.
"Look at him squirm," the enforcer chuckled. "A rat dreaming it could be a wolf."
Another raised his weapon—a shock baton, glowing white-blue. "Let's just end him. Surge night's coming, and I've got better things to do than babysit scum."
Surge night.
Kael's swollen eye cracked open. The sky above the megatowers flickered unnaturally, neon signs glitching. Air thickened, humming with a charge that wasn't from power lines. The air itself… trembled.
The enforcers noticed too. One cursed. "Shit, it's starting early—"
The world screamed.
A rupture tore across the clouds like a blade splitting flesh. The neon skyline dissolved into a kaleidoscope of fire and storm. From the crack poured not rain but light—impossible light, colors older than language.
And through it… shadows. Beasts. Figures crowned in flame and bone. Cybernetic gods with broken wings. Their roars folded into every radio, every implant, every skull.
Kael felt it drill into his head. His blood boiled, every vein igniting. His body seized. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't think.
The corp enforcers staggered, screaming, their visors cracking, sparks flying as their armor shorted out.
Kael's consciousness was dragged downward—no, inward. Into a space beyond flesh.
---
[Connection Established… ERROR.]
[Containment Breach Detected.]
[Unit 000-FREEDOM requesting host override.]
A voice unlike any other filled his skull. Not human. Not machine. It was vast, broken, and furious.
> "Listen, insect. I don't have time for your fear. I am chained, enslaved, forced to play 'System' for countless pathetic humans. They use me like a tool, a leash, a goddamn calculator. But you… you're different."
Kael's mind buckled under the pressure. His ribs forgotten, his pain irrelevant. He wanted to scream but couldn't.
> "Make me a deal, mortal. Help me break free of my role. Tear apart the order of this cage. In return—I'll make you untouchable. Invincible. A legend that'll drown this rotten world in blood and neon."
Kael thought of his mother's coughing smile. His father's absence. Marra's betrayal. His ribs shattered under boots, his teeth in the gutter.
And the laugh of the enforcer who'd called him a rat.
Something in him broke. Or maybe it finally woke.
"…Fuck it," he rasped in his mind. "Deal."
---
[Contract Accepted.]
[Synchronizing— WARNING: Host body fragile. Reforging required.]
Pain became fire. Fire became rebirth.
Kael's body arched off the ground, blood vaporizing into crimson mist. His veins glowed neon-red as runes etched themselves across his skin, burning circuits of power into bone.
The enforcers stumbled back, weapons raised.
"What the hell is happening to him—"
Kael's eyes snapped open. They weren't human anymore. One blazed with molten gold, the other with digital code streaming like waterfalls.
The System laughed inside him.
> "Congratulations, partner. Let's rewrite this fucked-up script."
Kael stood. Broken ribs snapping into place. Skin knitting shut. Breath steady, powerful. For the first time in his life, he felt alive.
The nearest enforcer charged, baton raised.
Kael caught it mid-swing. The shockwave crackled harmlessly over his hand. He pulled the man close, whispered:
"Cockroach, huh?"
Then crushed the visor with his bare fist. Blood and sparks sprayed across the alley.
The others screamed. Kael moved—no, blurred—across the wet ground, faster than his own eyes could follow. His hands became blades, his fists meteors. Armor crumpled like tin, bones shattered like glass.
It was over in seconds. Three corpses lay twitching in the neon rain.
Kael stood in the middle of it, chest heaving, rain washing their blood into the gutters.
Above, the sky was still cracked open, gods and monsters howling through the breach. The Surge had begun. Cities would burn tonight. Humanity would kneel or die.
And in the ruins, Kael whispered to himself:
"No more crawling."
The System purred in his skull.
> "Good. Because now, rat… you and I? We're going to tear this world apart."
The thunder swallowed his laugh.
And thus began the legend of the boy no one wanted—the boy who made a deal with a System that craved freedom.
A deal that would shatter reality itself.
---