The air in the transport ship's gut didn't smell like home. It didn't smell like the Mojave's scorched ozone or the rusted, alkaline dust that usually heralded a sandstorm. This place—this floating hive—smelled like a sterilized morgue mixed with the coppery, stinging stink of terrified sweat from ten thousand different things that were all having a very bad day.
Asher's eyes snapped open.
He didn't move. He didn't gasp. He didn't even twitch. A man who survives twenty years in the irradiated trenches of a dying planet learns that the first three seconds after waking in a strange hole are the most important ones he'll ever have. If you show movement before you've mapped the bars of your cage, you've already given up the only edge you've got.
Status check, a cold voice whispered in the back of his skull.
His limbs felt heavy, like someone had replaced his marrow with cooling lead. The Class-G sedative was still sloshing around in his blood, a thick chemical fog, but his Hyper-Adaptive cells were already biting back. He could feel his liver working overtime, synthesizing some bitter, burning counter-enzyme that was slowly thawing the ice in his veins. It hurt like hell, but pain was just data.
His vision was a blur of high-contrast shadows. He wasn't in a room. He was in a slot. A honeycomb of translucent poly-carbon tubes, stacked twenty high and stretching back into a dark miles-deep distance. Directly to his right, in slot #491, was a three-eyed reptilian thing from some planet that probably had two suns and a lot of sand. It was wheezing in a drug-induced coma.
"Asher..."
The voice was a thready, desperate needle in the dark. Su Wan.
He shifted his gaze. She was in slot #493, directly to his left. Her face was pressed hard against the transparent barrier, her pupils so dilated they'd swallowed the blue of her eyes. The veins in her neck were thumping—a frantic, messy rhythm. She looked small. Vulnerable. He hated it.
"Don't... don't talk," Asher mouthed. His vocal cords felt like he'd been swallowing broken glass. "Just... breathe. Count your heartbeats. We're being watched."
As if the universe wanted to prove him right, the overhead lights flared. Not a warm, sun-like glow, but a harsh, clinical blue that made everything look like an operating theater.
A hover-platform drifted down the central aisle. On it stood a creature that looked like a praying mantis had a baby with a corporate debt collector. It was wearing a suit of shimmering, self-cleaning fabric and holding a tablet made of solid, flickering light. This was a UGL Junior Auditor. To it, Asher wasn't a King or a Warlord or even a man. He was just an entry on a ledger that needed to be balanced.
The platform stopped at slot #492.
Asher felt a searing, pinpoint heat on the back of his neck. The Slave Tag—a nasty little piece of nano-tech hardwired into his C3 vertebrae—pulsed as the Auditor scanned him.
[U.G.L. ASSET EVALUATION: UPDATE]Target: Earth-998-Alpha (Asher) Physiological Integrity: 94% (Sedative clearing too fast) Current Valuation: 12.5 SC Market Tier:F-Class (Protein / Fodder)
The Auditor peered through the glass. Its compound eyes didn't show curiosity. It showed the cold, bored judgment of a butcher checking the fat content on a side of beef.
"Waking up already?" the Auditor hissed. Its voice sounded like dry husks of corn rubbing together. The Universal Translator on its collar turned the clicks into a condescending, upper-class British accent. "Most Grade-F primates stay under for three cycles. You must have a very... efficient... adrenal system. Or you're just too stupid to stay asleep."
Asher stared back. He didn't scream. He didn't beg. He watched the way the Auditor held its tablet. He noticed a slight, microscopic lag in the hover-platform's stabilization thrusters.
Action -> Reaction. Friction -> Flaw.
"Where are we?" Asher asked. He tried to sound weak. He wasn't sure if he succeeded.
"In transit, little meat-sack," the Auditor said, tapping a command on its screen. "Moving to the Tower of Babylon. Earth-998 has been designated a 'Distressed Asset.' Since your little mudball failed to reach the Star-Credit threshold for sovereign protection, your planetary debt was purchased by the League. You're the interest payment."
"Debt?" Su Wan's voice cracked from the next slot. "We didn't owe anyone anything! We were just surviving!"
The Auditor turned its head 180 degrees to look at her. It was a fluid, nauseating motion. "Surviving is a liability. You occupied a planet rich in heavy isotopes and did nothing but burn them to keep your hovels warm. That's an opportunity cost of trillions. In the eyes of the Galaxy, your species are just squatters. We're the... renovation team."
The Auditor turned back to Asher. "You, though. You have a bit more value than the rest of the sludge. Your neural spikes during the harvest were... curious. You didn't pray to a ghost. You didn't cry for your mother. You were trying to calculate the tractor beam's frequency."
The creature leaned in. Its breath smelled like synthetic ammonia. "The high-rollers in the Midway love a smart pet. It makes the 'High-IQ' deathmatches so much more... spicy. Don't die in the first minute, #492. You're the only thing Earth produced this millennium that isn't industrial waste."
The platform drifted away, the hum of its anti-grav engine fading into the distance.
Asher closed his eyes. The word 'livestock' echoed in his skull. It didn't make him angry. Rage was a high-caloric emotion, and he was already feeling the first pangs of a Caloric Deficit. He felt hollow.
12.5 Star Credits.
That was his price. He thought about the Iron Bastion. He thought about the fifty thousand people who had looked to him to build a world out of the ashes. All that blood, all that unification, all those sleepless nights—it was worth less than a mid-grade alien lunch.
He had this sudden, stupid urge to check his pockets for a cigarette. He didn't have any. He hadn't seen a real cigarette in five years, but the phantom itch was there.
"Asher," Su Wan whispered. "What do we do? I can feel them... the others. There are thousands of us in this belly. They're all crying. They're all... screaming in my head. I can't block the static."
"Let them scream," Asher said. He opened his eyes. They were glowing with a faint, predatory orange. "Sanity is a luxury for people who aren't about to be eaten. We need to stop being human and start being a glitch in their system."
He felt a sharp, stabbing pinch in his gut. The sedative was gone, replaced by a gnawing, black-hole hunger. His Hyper-Adaptive cells were screaming for fuel. They'd spent energy purging the alien drugs; now they wanted to be paid.
He looked at the poly-carbon barrier of his tube. To Su Wan, it was an unbreakable wall of magic alien tech. To Asher, it was a series of molecular bonds held together by a specific electromagnetic frequency. He watched the way the blue light refracted through the edges. He felt the microscopic vibrations caused by the ship's primary engines.
The ship lurched. course correction. A sudden shift in the gravity-dampeners. To the Auditor, it was routine. To Asher, it was the moment the friction changed.
"Su Wan," Asher hissed. "When the lights dim for the next rest-cycle, I need you to push. Not with your hands. Use that psionic 'static' you used to jam the Blood-Wolf radios. Don't aim for the guards. Aim for the gravity-plates beneath the floorboards."
"I... I can't. The collar... it shocks me if I try to—"
"Accept the shock," Asher snapped. He felt a drop of sweat roll down his nose. It tickled. He couldn't wipe it. "Calculate the cost, Wan. A second of pain for a lifetime of not being a delicasy. Do the math! If we arrive at the Tower as compliant livestock, we're dead. If we arrive as a 'complication,' we have leverage."
He felt his skin begin to tingle. His Cockroach Factor was kicking in. The stress of the environment was triggering a defensive mutation. His pores were secreting a thin, waxy substance—a bio-insulator against the energy-nets the drones had used.
He wasn't just a King anymore. He was a biological virus. And the UGL had just invited him into their house.
"Attention, Assets," the ship's intercom crackled. "Docking at Babylon Station. Prepare for offloading to the Sump. Any asset unable to walk will be liquidated immediately to save transport costs. Valuation is final. Welcome to the market."
Asher gripped the edge of his slot. His knuckles turned white. He could feel the carbon-fiber in his tendons tightening, a slow, dull ache of structural reinforcement.
"Liquidation," Asher whispered. A cold, ugly smile touched his lips. "Good. I've always been better at hostile takeovers anyway."