Edinburgh, 25 December 1999 — 04:12
Some are born rich. Some are born poor. And some are born and tossed through a windscreen, into the night, into the trash.
The house on the crescent glowed the way good paper looks in a file: respectable, warmed by pine and the ghost of last night's mulled spice. He took the stairs two at a time, met her doubled over the banister, and said, "Hospital. Now." He was rich enough for a German saloon and daft enough to think it made him fast. He half-carried her out into the frost, bundled her into the back seat—no belt, no time—then buried his foot and shouldered Queensferry Road hard for Dean Bridge.
Snow powdered down like a secret. Halfway across the stone span she gasped, every syllable a flare.
"Oh my God—look! It's a boy—he's beautiful. He's got your golden-blond hair."
He looked back and laughed through fear—"Whoa—hello there, little man—welcome to the world—"
—long enough for the wheel to drift. Tyres whispered over lane paint. The saloon shouldered left. The stone parapet arrived like a closing door.
Impact.
Airbags punched like white fists. Glass atomised. The world bent.
A newborn met winter air for the first time and went straight through it. The windscreen burst; one bright shard skimmed the umbilical and made a clean, cruel cut. The baby arced out over the bridge, small and furious and impossibly alive. Time slowed the way it does when it's deciding what to keep.
Something cold and bloodless clicked on behind brand‑new eyes:
[CONGRATULATIONS] DOUBLE KILL (indirect): Mother; Father — credited. Cause linkage: distraction during parturition → decisive. Soul value → Mother: +540 SP | Father: +680 SP Threshold met. SOUL SYSTEM: ACTIVATED.
No warmth. No comfort. Just a ledger waking up.
Class: ROGUE — Level 1 (auto-fit) Race/Bloodline: Human (passives unlocked) Vitals: Stabilise — minimal Store: UNLOCKED | Rule: 1 SP = $1 (region pricing applies) Assistance: OFF | Hints: NONE | Quests: UNSUPPORTED Balance: 1,220 SP
Mid‑flight, the tiny body re‑plated itself. Abdomen tiles etched in like a bad joke on an angel; tendons drew clean lines into arms and legs. A sound—thin but defiant—left his throat: "awoo." He hit a stone corner by a close off Bell's Brae with the noise of a snapped ruler, pinged once, and vanished into a half‑open wheelie bin stuffed with black liners. The lid clanged. Snow sifted down and hid the hinge marks.
Up on Dean Bridge, blue and red bloomed. Fire. Police. Two sheets. Steam ghosting off a ruined bonnet. They taped the span, logged plates, craned the wreck, and stared down at the Water of Leith running black under the arch—the kind of water that keeps what it's given.
"Infant?" a constable asked, voice small.
"If there was one," the sergeant said, eyes on the current. "And it went over, we're not finding them before first light."
They swept the banks with torches, called divers who never launched, drank tea that cooled in paper cups. No one checked a bin down a close. The line of travel said water; the map said bridge; the story, as usual, wanted to be tidy.
Down in the dark plastic, the baby didn't cry. Rogue Lv.1 came with a small, mean calm: a little body that understood cold and chose smaller breaths. Icy blue eyes blinked—nothing, everything, nothing. From time to time he made a sound that wasn't a word, only a thoughtful "hmm."
Dawn burned to noon. Noon limped into early dusk. A gull took the stone like a crown and watched the river keep its secrets. The bridge reopened one lane and chalked an incident note—"possible infant over parapet — ongoing." In the bin, hunger arrived first. Cold came after, quiet as lint. He held onto the one clean word he owned.
System.
Something without heat opened—not like a door; more like a till roll spooling out in his head.
[STORE] Region: UK (normalised) Rule: 1 SP = $1 | Zero-value items: DENIED Assistance: OFF | Hints: NONE | Quests: UNSUPPORTED
He didn't know how to ask. He only thought the shape of hunger. The Store slid to the slot the world had invented:
FOOD.
Being a baby, he thought of milk. The list pared itself to something that made sense even to a creature with minutes of life:
Starter Bottle Kit — BPA‑free 240 mL + Donor Human Milk (pasteurised, 240 mL) Cost: 42 SP (bottle 3 SP + milk 39 SP) Delivery: Immediate (localised manifestation) [PURCHASE?]
Need answered before numbers.
[PURCHASE CONFIRMED: −42 SP | Balance: 1,178 SP]
The bottle thunked against his shoulder, warm through the black plastic. Tiny, unnaturally sure hands caught it on instinct. He latched and drank with the intent of a creature that plans to live. Warmth in; cold out. The rim misted. Breathing slowed.
Warmth reminded him of cold. Another blurred thought found another slot.
COVERINGS.
The Store chose the cheapest thing that still counted.
Character Towel (cotton, toddler size) — white print, green muscular beast flexing Cost: 6 SP | Delivery: Immediate [PURCHASE?] [PURCHASE CONFIRMED: −6 SP | Balance: 1,172 SP]
Something soft fell out of nowhere and flopped over him like a cape from a kinder universe: cheap cotton, a green brute snarling across his absurd eight‑pack. He drew it up by clumsy inches and drank in the dark until the bottle emptied and the day did too.
Above, torches winked out. The sergeant said the thing people say when a story wants to be tidy. The tape came down. The river kept its secrets. Nobody checked a bin.
In the wheelie bin, the strange little athlete of a newborn lay quiet, eyes open, breath measured, wrapped in a cartoon of strength he didn't understand. The System waited—cold, patient, incurious.
No quests. No hints. No hand on the shoulder.
Only a ledger that would move for the price of something living. And, somewhere just beyond the lip of the close, the first soft click‑click of paws approaching through snow.
The night held its breath. Then came the paws—click‑click—careful, searching.
An Old English sheepdog shouldered into the narrow close, nose down, one eye lost under a curtain of hair. He tested the air, then rose on his hind legs, planted both forepaws on the lip of a wheelie bin, and pushed. The lid skated. The bin teetered, considered propriety, and went—over—spilling black liners like tuxedoed fish onto the frost.
Out with them spun a baby—bottle still clutched, a cheap cotton towel flapping round his middle like a cape. The print on it showed a green, muscle‑mad brute flexing in triumph, which would have been overkill if not for the fact the baby had an eight‑pack of his own. He slid until the curb disagreed and stopped him with a polite bump.
The dog licked his eyebrow once, solemn as a pledge, then gave a single boof.
"Sheepy?" A girl's whisper, bright and hungry. "What is it? Did you find—like—a present?"
She arrived at speed: all in black (hoodie, cap, gloves, puffer, joggers, trainers), red hair like a signal fire even under the cap, eyes winter‑blue. Six years old and running on the same battery that had carried her out of a house that had forgotten her that morning. She skidded, saw the dark little shape on the snow, and her voice turned to steam.
"Oh my God—little guy—what are you doing here? Where are your parents?"
She scooped him up—wrong, by the ribs, head bobbing against her elbow the way only a child holds a baby. He proved dense, heavier than a newborn should be, towel‑beast grinning across his belly. She blinked at the absurd eight‑pack. "Whoa. You're… strong."
As if he disliked being handled like contraband, he wriggled. She gasped, fumbled, and—oof—he dropped to the snow.
He didn't cry.
He rolled to his stomach, planted both hands and popped into a wobbly handstand. Two intent steps toward the bottle that had rolled under the dog; a wobble; whump. Gravity signed the log.
Anna clapped both hands over her mouth to catch a squeal. "Holy—actual—Christmas miracle. What are you?"
The baby frowned at the road salt as if insulted by it.
"Right—sorry—you're cold." She tucked him inside her jacket, zipping to make a pocket of heat. He watched her face from under the zip: freckles, blazing hair, astonished blue eyes.
"Drink," she said, finding the bottle and nudging the teat to his mouth. He latched with the grim, professional focus of a creature that intends to live.
"Good." She exhaled, then, because naming has the power to tidy chaos: "You're… Strong. That's your name. Strong. I'm Anna—Anna Hope—I'm six. This is Sheepy. He's a good boy. Don't judge his fringe. I was four when I named him."
The baby's gaze held hers. Approval happened in him like a switch he didn't know he had.
A cold pane slid across his mind; the world stamped a receipt:
[TEAM] Pawn tether established.
Owner: STRONG (Rogue, Lv.1)
Pawn: ANNA HOPE (Human) — Class: HUNTER (Lv.1) (auto-fit)
Pet: SHEEPY (Old English Sheepdog) — bound to Hunter
Level Sync: Owner → Pawn (on level gain)
Assistance: NONE | Hints: NONE
The System did not explain. It never would.
Anna didn't hear the pane. She only felt a small click inside—like somebody had oiled her knees and rehung her courage. The baby felt lighter in her arms. Sheepy's ears pricked; he leaned a shoulder into Anna like a knight receiving orders he'd been waiting for.
"Huh." She flexed her fingers, surprised. "I suddenly feel… ace. Like your strong is catching." She squinted at him, mock stern. "No giving me bad cooties, Strong."
She looked up and down the close. The bridge hummed above; the uniforms had gone. No prams, no parents, no one calling "baby!" into the dark. The world preferred a tidy story—something about a parapet and a river—and so it had told itself one. (Earlier, the world had already decided who was lost and who was found; it had written Rogue on the way down.)
"Right. If nobody else cares about you, I do. We'll find your mum and dad tomorrow. Now we go inside." She tipped her head. "Come on, Sheepy. Hidey‑hole."
They zig‑zagged through the sleeping back lanes, past a burn barrel coughing its last orange, past a sagged bivvy where an old man with a fire‑tanned beard dozed, boots on, chin to chest. He didn't stir. (He would, later. And he would choose this ground as if it were an oath.)
They reached a cast‑iron coal hole half disguised under a pallet and junk. Anna levered it up with a broom handle, slid down the short ladder, Sheepy followed with careful paws, and she drew the lid into place. Warmth breathed from pipes; stone sweated an old damp.
Her small room blinked awake in the ring of a torch: a cut‑down mattress on pallets, thin pillow, two blankets, a cracked mirror with a sticker of a tiny angel, a plastic crate of biscuits, a carton of milk, two cups, a hairbrush, a toothbrush in a cup—treasures a six‑year‑old calls survival.
She set Strong on the mattress, tucked the blanket round him, tucked her jacket over all of it. "Don't die," she told him, fierce. "Not on Christmas. That's rude."
He drank the last of the bottle. Life warmed to his fingers. The towel‑beast glared like a cheap guardian. Somewhere far above, snow worried at the manhole and the bridge took secrets badly.
Up in his head, other quiet receipts had already stamped themselves:
[STORE LOG]
Starter Bottle Kit (bottle + donor milk 240 mL): −42 SP → Balance: 1,178 SP
Character Towel (cotton, toddler): −6 SP → Balance: 1,172 SP
Rule: 1 SP = $1 (Region: UK). No returns. No advice.
The Store had no warmth and no opinion; it had only prices.
Anna broke a biscuit, shared with Sheepy, and raised the stub like a toast. "Happy Christmas, Strong. You're my little miracle." She eyed his belly, deadpan. "Tomorrow: nappies, more milk, tiny hat. And a shirt that says I DO HANDSTANDS."
Strong stared at her, solemn and warm. The System said nothing. It had told him what he was; it would not tell him what to do. (Its rules were simple as frost: no hints, no quests, 1 SP = $1, indirect kills count if you caused them. Everything else, you learn by ruining a morning and paying for it.)
"Rule one," Anna added, voice small but steady. "No showing off in front of grown‑ups. They get weird about things. We lie low. Stay unseen." She tapped his nose. "It's what I do best."
Sheepy curled in a guarding C around the mattress, chin over Strong's feet, sighing like this was precisely how Christmas should be. The pipes hummed. The torch ticked down. Above them, Edinburgh carried on pretending stories end neatly at bridges.
Under the city, in a coal cellar no adult planned, a rogue, a hunter‑girl, and a shaggy knight formed because a dog pushed over a bin and a ledger knew only how to count.