The retreat from the Bit-Stream was a lesson in paranoia.
Kai didn't run in a straight line. Straight lines were predictable; they were algorithms easily extrapolated by tracking software. Instead, he moved in a fractal pattern, doubling back through collapsed sewer pipes, scaling walls of compressed garbage, and sliding down chutes of industrial runoff.
He spent two hours ensuring he wasn't followed. The Copper-Wire Vipers were low-level thugs, mostly running on cracked software and cheap stimulants, but they had numbers. And in the Junkyard, numbers were the only variable that mattered.
By the time Kai saw the familiar rust-orange glow of Sector 404, his lungs were burning. The adrenaline crash was hitting him hard, leaving his limbs heavy and his hands shaking.
He approached his container home from the roof of a neighboring shack, dropping down silently into the shadows of the alleyway. He paused at the door, pressing his ear against the cold metal.
Silence.
Or, as much silence as the slums allowed. The ambient hum of the sector's power generator and the distant wail of sirens were the baseline noise floor.
He scanned his thumb, and the door hissed open.
Inside, the air was stale but warm. The single UV heating lamp suspended from the ceiling cast a purple twilight over the small room. Rin was asleep, her breathing shallow and rapid.
Kai locked the door—three deadbolts he had machined himself from high-grade steel scavenged from a collapsed bridge. He leaned his back against the door and slid down to the floor, exhaling a breath he felt he had been holding since he saw the blue smoke.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the Faraday bag.
It sat heavy in his palm. Through the thick lead-lined fabric, he could feel a faint vibration, like a phone buzzing with a notification that never stopped.
"Forbidden Code," Kai murmured.
He didn't open the bag. Not here. Not yet. If the shard was broadcasting a signal, opening it could alert the local cell towers. He needed a shielded environment—or a buyer who could handle the heat.
He pried up a loose floor panel near the heating unit. Beneath it was a small hollow space lined with rubber insulation. He placed the bag inside, next to his small stash of emergency credits (three coins) and a rusted pistol with only two bullets.
He replaced the panel.
His stomach gave a violent lurch. The hunger was back, sharp and demanding.
Kai looked at the Scrap-Beast corpse he had thrown into the corner of the room earlier—the synthetic rat he had killed in the rain.
"Dinner," he said grimly.
Cleaning a Scrap-Beast was more like bomb disposal than butchery.
Kai moved the carcass to the small metal table they used for meals and repairs. He turned on a magnetic work-lamp, illuminating the creature's mangled form.
The rat was a grotesque fusion of biology and industry. In the Dyson Sectors, nature didn't evolve; it was patched. Animals in the Lower Realm scavenged on silicon and drank coolant, and over generations, their bodies had adapted—or mutated.
Kai took his serrated knife and made an incision along the creature's spine.
Spark.
The knife hit a live nerve cluster. The rat's leg kicked reflexively.
"Still holding a charge," Kai noted.
He carefully peeled back the skin. Underneath the fur, the flesh was gray and threaded with filaments of copper and fiber-optic cable. The creature's heart wasn't just a muscle; it was wrapped in a mesh of pacemaker wires that kept it beating long after it should have failed.
Kai worked with the precision of a surgeon. He had to separate the edible meat from the toxic components.
"Liver... black. Toxic. Discard." He tossed a lump of dark organ meat into the waste bucket.
"Stomach... full of plastic. Discard."
"Muscle tissue... acceptable."
He carved out strips of pale, stringy meat from the hindquarters. He had to be careful to pull out the micro-shards of metal embedded in the muscle fibers. If he missed one, it could perforated a bowel.
The smell was distinct—a mix of copper, ozone, and wet dog.
He fired up a small chemical burner. They couldn't afford a proper electric stove; electricity was metered by the Void Financial Group, and the rates in the slums were predatory. He used a canister of filtered methane gas he'd siphoned from the sector's waste pipes.
He threw the meat into a dented pan. It sizzled, releasing a plume of greasy, metallic smoke.
There were no spices. Spices were for the Upper Realm. Down here, flavor was a warning sign. If it tasted like almonds, it was cyanide. If it tasted like sour milk, it was acidic.
"Kai?"
The voice was barely a whisper.
Kai turned. Rin was sitting up on the cot, clutching the thermal blanket to her chin. Her face was flushed, sweat beading on her forehead. The Hardware Rejection Syndrome was getting worse; her body was fighting the port in her neck as if it were a viral infection.
"I woke you," Kai said softly, turning down the flame.
"I smelled... cooking." Rin tried to smile, but it looked painful. "Is it chicken?"
It was a running joke between them. Neither of them had ever seen a chicken. They had only seen holographic images of them in the advertisements for Azure Bio-Systems' "Perfect Protein" nutrient blocks.
"Better," Kai said, plating the gray strips of meat. "Sector 7 Rat. High iron content."
He brought the plate and a cup of filtered water to the cot. He helped her sit up, propping pillows behind her back.
Rin stared at the meat. "It looks... chewy."
"Chewing burns calories. It keeps you warm."
She took a small bite. She chewed slowly, her face scrunching up.
"It tastes like a battery," she whispered.
"That's the electrolytes," Kai said, taking a piece for himself.
He forced himself to swallow. It tasted like oil and old pennies. The texture was rubbery, resisting his teeth. But as it hit his stomach, his body gratefully accepted the protein. In the Junkyard, you didn't eat for pleasure; you ate to keep the engine running.
Rin ate two small pieces before pushing the plate away. "I'm not hungry."
"You need to eat, Rin. Your immune system needs fuel."
"I'm tired, Kai." She leaned back, closing her eyes. "My head hurts. It feels like... like there's static in my brain. White noise."
Kai stiffened. White noise was a symptom of neural degradation. The port was leaking interference into her cortex.
"I know," Kai said, his voice tight. "I'm getting the suppressors tomorrow. Top shelf. Azure brand."
"How?" Rin opened her eyes, looking at him with a lucidity that scared him. "We have no credits. And Iron-Skin is coming."
Kai looked at the floorboard where the shard was hidden.
"I found something," Kai said carefully. "A glitch in the system. A loophole."
"Kai..." Rin reached out and grabbed his wrist. Her hand was burning hot, but her grip was weak. "Don't do anything stupid. Don't fight the System. You can't hack the Heavens with a crowbar."
"I'm not fighting," Kai lied again. "I'm just... calculating a better exchange rate."
He took her hand and tucked it back under the blanket. "Sleep. When you wake up, everything will be solved."
Rin watched him for a moment longer, her gray eyes searching his face for the truth. But the fever was pulling her under. Her eyelids drooped. Within seconds, she was asleep again, the wet cough rattling in her chest.
Kai sat in the dark, finishing the rest of the synthetic rat.
He chewed on a piece of wire he had missed, spitting the copper filament onto the floor.
He looked at his mechanical watch. 04:00 AM.
The debt collector, Iron-Skin, would arrive at noon. He was a mid-level enforcer for the local triad, a man who had replaced his skin with low-grade industrial plating. He was bulletproof to small arms and enjoyed breaking bones.
Kai had the shard. But he couldn't sell it by noon. The black market for Forbidden Tech opened at midnight, in the deep shadows of the Market District.
If Iron-Skin came at noon, and Kai didn't have the money, Rin would be taken.
He needed a bridge. He needed to buy time.
Kai stood up and walked to the small workbench. He picked up the bio-capacitor he had kept—the one he hadn't used to blow up the Vipers. It was damaged, barely worth two credits.
He looked at the iron pipe. He looked at his knife.
Then, he looked at his own reflection in the darkened window. A boy with no port. A Null. A ghost in the machine.
"I can't hack the Heavens," Kai whispered, repeating Rin's words.
His eyes drifted to the floorboard.
"But maybe," he thought, "I can crash them."
He didn't know what was on the shard. The Entropy Sutra. A virus? A weapon? A god?
He walked over to the loose panel and pried it up again. He took the bag out.
He needed to know what he was holding. Knowledge was leverage.
Kai sat cross-legged on the floor. He opened the velcro.
He reached in with the tongs and pulled the crystal out.
In the dim light of the room, the purple pulse was mesmerizing. It didn't sync with the hum of the city. It had its own rhythm—chaotic, syncopated, like a drumbeat from a different universe.
Kai leaned closer.
Zzzzt.
A spark jumped from the crystal, arching through the air and striking Kai right in the center of his forehead.
Pain.
It wasn't physical pain. It was data overload.
For a split second, Kai saw the world not as shapes and colors, but as lines of green code falling like rain. He saw the walls of his container dissolve into wireframes. He saw the code comprising Rin's body—complex, beautiful, and riddled with red error flags.
And then, a voice spoke in his mind. Not a sound, but a text prompt appearing in his thoughts.
>> SYSTEM DETECTED: UNREGISTERED USER.>> HARDWARE: NULL.>> COMPATIBILITY: 0%.>> OVERRIDE INITIATED...
Kai gasped and dropped the shard back into the bag.
He fell back, clutching his head. The vision vanished. The room was just a room again.
But the text remained, burning in the corner of his mind like a persistent pop-up window.
>> INSTALLATION PENDING.
Kai stared at the bag, his heart racing. He hadn't just found a Data-Shard.
It was trying to install itself into him.
And for a boy without a port, that shouldn't be possible. Unless the software didn't need a computer to run.
Unless it ran on meat.