THE GLASS CEILING
The rain in District 9 did not fall; it bled. It was a thick, greasy drizzle that clung to the neon signs of the high-rises and dripped down into the gutters like industrial runoff. For Su Meng, the rain was just another weight to carry.
He stood at the edge of the curb, his back straight, his chin tucked, and his hands clasped behind his back in a perfect parade rest. His security guard uniform, a cheap polyester blend that chafed his neck, was soaked through. The cold was a dull blade pressing against his skin, but Su Meng did not shiver. To shiver was to show weakness, and in the shadow of the Grand Celestial Hotel, weakness was the only sin that wasn't forgiven.
Through the towering, triple-paned glass doors behind him, another world existed. It was a world of climate-controlled gold and marble, where the air tasted of expensive cigars and aged scotch rather than smog and wet asphalt.
Su Meng watched them—the "Gentry."
There was Young Master Chen, the twenty-four-year-old heir to the Chen Logistical Empire. He was currently laughing, a sound muffled by the glass but visible in the arrogant tilt of his head. He was surrounded by three women whose dresses cost more than the apartment building Su Meng grew up in. Chen hadn't earned his position. He had been born into it. His "talent" was being the right sperm in the right womb at the right time.
On paper, we are equals, Su Meng thought, his eyes narrowing as a droplet of rain hung from his eyelash. We are both citizens. We both have rights. The law says we are the same.
But Su Meng knew the law was a fairy tale told to children to keep them from burning the city down. On Earth, the only law was the ledger. If your bank account had enough zeros, the laws bent until they snapped. If your father knew the Senator, the police were your private army.
Su Meng's father had been a construction worker. He had died when a crane cable snapped because the company had bribed the inspector to ignore the frayed steel. There had been no lawsuit. There had been no settlement. Only a "clerical error" and a grieving widow who worked herself to death at a textile mill to keep Su Meng in school.
"Meng! Eyes front! The Senator's car is pulling up!"
The bark came from his supervisor, Captain Gao, a man whose soul had been crushed into the shape of a boot years ago.
Su Meng straightened further. A sleek, black hover-limo glided to the curb, its silent engine humming with the sound of pure, concentrated wealth. The door slid open, and Senator Vane stepped out. He was followed by his son, Julian Vane—a boy Su Meng's age who had recently been appointed as a High Commissioner. Julian hadn't even finished his degree, yet he held the power of life and death over the district's zoning laws.
As Julian stepped out, his polished leather shoe landed in a puddle, splashing grey water onto his pristine trousers.
He stopped. He looked at the smudge on his cuff. Then, he looked at Su Meng.
"Clean it," Julian said. It wasn't a request. It wasn't even an insult. It was a command given to a tool.
Su Meng's heart hammered against his ribs. A heat, fierce and primal, rose in his chest. I am a top-tier graduate in Mechanical Engineering, his mind screamed. I speak three languages. I can calculate the stresses of a bridge in my head. And you want me to kneel in the mud for your shoe?
"I am a security officer, Commissioner," Su Meng said, his voice a low, controlled vibration. "Not a valet."
The silence that followed was heavier than the rain. Captain Gao turned pale, his mouth hanging open. Senator Vane didn't even look up; he was already checking his watch. But Julian—Julian smiled. It was the smile of a boy pulling the wings off a fly.
"Gao," Julian whispered, his eyes never leaving Su Meng's. "Your 'officer' seems to have forgotten his place. Remind him."
Gao didn't hesitate. He stepped forward and drove a gloved fist into Su Meng's stomach.
The air left Su Meng's lungs in a violent rush. He collapsed to his knees, his hands splashing into the very puddle that had soiled Julian's pants. The pain was sharp, but the humiliation was sharper. It was a cold, acidic burn that traveled from his gut to his brain.
"Apologize," Gao hissed, leaning over him. "Apologize or you're blacklisted. You'll never work in this city again. Not as a guard, not as a janitor. You'll starve in the streets like your father."
Su Meng looked up through the strands of damp hair clinging to his forehead. He saw the Senator and his son walking away, already bored with the spectacle. They didn't hate him. They didn't even think about him. He was an insect, a rounding error in their quarterly reports.
"I'm sorry," Su Meng choked out, the words tasting like copper and gall. "Commissioner."
Julian didn't turn back. He just waved a dismissive hand as he entered the warm, golden light of the hotel.
That night, Su Meng sat in his six-by-six-foot apartment. The walls were thin enough that he could hear his neighbor coughing—a wet, tubercular sound that spoke of a lack of healthcare.
He didn't turn on the lights. He couldn't afford the credits. Instead, he sat in the blue glow of his cracked tablet, his only window into a world that didn't hurt.
He was reading The Immortal's Path.
It was a "Cultivation" novel—a genre of Eastern Fantasy that most of his peers mocked as low-brow escapism. But to Su Meng, it was his Bible. He read about heroes who started with nothing, orphans who lived in the dirt, but who found a "Way." In those pages, there was no "legal system." There were no "business connections."
If a Young Master insulted a protagonist in a novel, the protagonist didn't have to apologize. He didn't have to worry about a lawsuit. He simply raised his hand and struck. In that world, if your fist was strong enough, the world bowed. If your Will was sharp enough, the Heavens trembled.
Strength, Su Meng whispered to the dark room. True strength. Not the strength of a bank account. Not the strength of a name. But the strength of the self.
He closed his eyes and imagined it. He imagined a world where, if Julian Vane stood before him, the only thing that mattered was whose spirit was more refined. Whose bones were harder. Whose strike was faster.
"I was born in the wrong world," he murmured. "Here, the coward with the coin is king. But there... the king is the one who can hold up the sky."
He spent hours studying the "laws" of these novels. He knew the names of the herbs, the structure of the meridians, the philosophy of the Dao. He treated it like a science. He looked for the logic in the madness. He realized that the cultivation world was the only truly fair world. It was a brutal meritocracy. If you were lazy, you died. If you were stupid, you died. But if you had the "Heart," you could become a God.
He fell asleep with the tablet on his chest, dreaming of mountains that touched the stars and air that tasted like lightning.
The next morning, the "rules" of Earth came for Su Meng one last time.
He was walking back to work, his body still aching from Gao's punch. He took the pedestrian bridge over the 404 Freeway, a massive vein of concrete where the rich sped in their mag-lev cars while the poor trudged above them.
A screech of tires tore through the morning fog.
A red sports car, a limited-edition Ferrari-Apex, was weaving through traffic at three times the legal limit. Behind the wheel was a face Su Meng recognized from the hotel: the son of the City Council President. He was laughing, a bottle of blue liquid in his hand, filming himself on his phone.
The car hit a patch of slick runoff. It spun. It didn't hit another car. It hit the support pillar of the pedestrian bridge.
The impact was a roar of rending metal. The bridge, built by the lowest bidder with substandard concrete, groaned and buckled.
Su Meng didn't have time to run. He felt the ground beneath him vanish. He felt the sickening lurch of gravity.
As he fell, he saw the red car. The driver's side airbag had deployed. The boy inside was already crawling out, dazed but unhurt, protected by a million dollars' worth of safety tech.
Su Meng, however, was falling into the path of a heavy freight truck.
In those final seconds, time stretched. He saw the truck's grill, a wall of rusted steel. He saw the grey sky. And he felt a roar of absolute, cosmic fury.
No! his soul screamed. Not like this! I refuse to die as a victim of their incompetence! I refuse to be a footnote in their drunk-driving report!
He thought of the books. He thought of the "Fist." He thought of the world where a man could stand against a charging beast and not flinch.
If there is a cycle of reincarnation... if there is a crack in the universe... take me to the world of the strong! Give me a world where I can fight back! GIVE ME THE POWER TO SMASH THIS FALSE REALITY!
The truck hit.
There was a sound like a wet cloth being slapped against stone.
Su Meng's body was broken instantly. His heart stopped. His brain shut down. But his Will—forged in the fires of twenty years of poverty and whetted by the philosophy of the Fist—did not dissipate. It gathered. It condensed into a single, needle-sharp point of pure intent.
And then, the needle pierced the veil.
The neon lights of Earth flickered and died. The rain stopped. The pain vanished.
In the absolute darkness of the void, a voice—neither male nor female, sounding like the grinding of tectonic plates—echoed:
"YOU SEEK A WORLD WITHOUT SHACKLES? YOU SEEK THE SUPREMACY OF THE SELF? THEN GO. AND SHOW THE HEAVENS IF YOUR FIST IS AS HEAVY AS YOUR HATE."
Su Meng felt a pull. A violent, tearing sensation, as if his very soul were being dragged through a keyhole. He didn't scream. He didn't beg.
He reached out and grabbed the darkness. And he pulled back.