The timer above Lissa's bed ticked over with a soft chime.
PAYMENT DUE: 6 DAYSNEXUS CREDIT: 0.7
Yellow glow. Not red yet. Not safe either.
Barry Raner watched the numbers like they might flinch and run backward if he glared hard enough.
They didn't.
Lissa's chest rose and fell under the thin clinic blanket, breath wheezing through the mask clamped over her face. Tubes ran from her arms into a humming purifier tower in the corner, its casing slick black, stamped with a NEXUS sigil and a line of alien glyphs nobody in the Stacks could read.
The machine had more power than anyone Barry knew. It decided who breathed clean and who choked.
"Three vials a week," the clinic tech had said. "New schedule. New price. Praise NEXUS for continued support."
"Staring won't hack the meter," a rough voice said behind him.
Barry turned.
Jay Raner filled the doorway, one sleeve rolled to show old neural ports like pale scars, one leg ending in a steel-and-carbon prosthetic that whirred softly when he shifted. He wore his yellow fabricator band on his bicep, marking him as a registered gear tech—barely one notch above disposable.
He also wore the same collar at his neck Barry did: black ring of composite with a faint blue status line.
Everyone in the Stacks wore one.
"NEXUS doesn't bleed if you frown at it," Jay added.
Barry dragged his eyes off the timer. "We've got almost a week."
"Timer lies," Jay said. He limped in, cane tapping plastic tile. "They cut early. They always cut early. Keeps the beds turning."
"She's stable," Barry said. He needed it to be true.
"Stable doesn't pay for itself," Jay said. "They sent the notice?"
Barry pulled the crumpled foil slip from his pocket. Blue NEXUS logo. The numbers hurt to look at.
Jay didn't bother reading twice. "Right. No chance scrap work covers that."
"So what then?" Barry asked, though he already knew.
Jay's gaze flicked from Lissa, to the slip, to Barry's face. "Field 3 opens tonight. ROUND 221. Beginner slot cap."
The clinic lights hummed.
"I'm not a runner," Barry said.
"Neither is she," Jay said, nodding at Lissa. "Guess which one has six days."
Barry flinched.
Outside the clinic window, the Stack glowed sickly neon. Hundred-meter towers of stacked containers and prefab slabs climbed toward the low clouds, all wired into a central black spire where NEXUS' local node pulsed. Sky-drones drifted past like lazy fireflies, blue eyes scanning the walkways.
No aliens. Just their code.
Rounds were how humans ate when rations came up short.
Rounds were how MedTower fees got paid.
Rounds were how people died on camera feeds no one admitted were still being watched.
"I've never even fired a real gun," Barry tried.
Jay snorted. "Good. Means you haven't wasted bullets."
He stepped closer, metal leg ticking. "Listen carefully. You want cyber-gospel or you want pretty lies?"
"Just say it," Barry said.
"Alright." Jay hooked a chair with his cane, spun it, sat. "NEXUS runs Fields on schedule. You know that much."
"Dead districts," Barry said. "Loot, bots, mutants, psychos. Round-based. I'm not an idiot."
"Debatable," Jay said. "Field 3. ROUND 221. Today. Gate opens nineteen hundred. Your collar gets an invite. You step through the yellow line, NEXUS flips you to Field Mode. Guns and aug ports unlocked. Constraints off. Three extraction windows: T+15, T+30, T+40. At T+45, Field hard-closes. Any human still inside gets marked ABANDONED."
Barry knew that word. Everyone did.
"Locals," he said.
Jay nodded once. "Used to be runners. Missed a gate. Glitched. Got trapped. Protocol won't let them back in the Stacks, but their collars never got the memo to shut their combat down."
He leaned forward, eyes flat.
"They can't work. They can't buy. They can't plug in at clinics or stalls. They can only eat what they take off people like you. You meet one, that's not a victim. That's a wolf in a cage full of new meat."
Barry looked at Lissa's timer again.
PAYMENT DUE: 6 DAYS.
He swallowed. "What about the bots?"
"Blue-eyes?" Jay shrugged. "Standard NEXUS hardware. Enforcement. They stick to script. In the Stacks they keep your trigger finger honest. In the Fields they guard whatever NEXUS doesn't want chewed on. Don't poke them, they mostly don't poke you."
"Mostly?"
"You'll figure the edges out." Jay's tone said or you won't.
"What about the red ones?" Barry asked. He'd heard it in alley rumors: glows wrong, moves wrong.
For a second Jay's face hardened. "If you see a red-eye, you don't shoot it. You don't bait it. You don't follow it. You turn around and you go be a coward somewhere else."
"That's it?"
"That's it." He rubbed his mechanical knee. "Those are corroded units. Off-script. NEXUS hates them worse than it hates us. Sometimes you'll see blues breaking formation to burn a red. That's not for us. That's the machines cleaning their own mess. You get between them, you're collateral."
Information stacked in Barry's head:
Fields. Rounds. Blue good-ish. Red bad. Locals worse.
Jay watched him, then reached into his coat and pulled out an oil-stained cloth bundle.
He laid it on the table under Lissa's timer and unrolled it.
A pistol. Compact, ugly, slide scarred, grip tape fraying. One magazine seated. Another next to it. A line of loose rounds.
"This," Jay said, "is a piece of shit."
Barry stared. "That's yours."
"Was." Jay nudged it his way. "Now it's collateral."
Barry picked it up. It was heavier than it looked, and familiar from the way Jay had cleaned it a thousand times.
"How many rounds?" Barry asked.
"Twelve and eight," Jay said. "Twenty if you're blessed. Ten if you panic. Less if she jams." His mouth twisted. "She will jam."
"I thought you'd give me one of the—"
"The good rifles go to people who've proved they can find an extract," Jay cut in. "Right now you are a civilian liability with nice cheekbones."
"That's comforting."
"It's honest." Jay poked his chest with the cane. "Lesson one. Say it back."
Barry sighed. "Don't die."
"Before that," Jay said. "You are not a hero. Heroes get edited out of registry. You are a lootgoblin."
Barry made a face. "Seriously?"
"Seriously. Goblins live." Jay pointed at the gun. "You go in on Round 221, you stay off main streets, you hug cover. You hit small buildings, side shops, back rooms. Food, water, meds, anything flip-friendly. You listen for fights. You do not run toward them."
"And if I see people?" Barry asked.
"You see squads looking loud, heavy, chromed up?" Jay said. "Murderhobos. They're there to farm players and clips. Let them. You're not contesting mid with a rusty pistol."
"And Locals?"
"If you think it might be a Local, assume it's better at this than you'll be on your best day and get out of line of sight," Jay said. "Lesson two: steps aren't friendly."
Barry frowned. "Because they might be murderhobos?"
"Because anything you hear clearly out there is either too dumb to live long or trying to sound dumb so you look at it." Jay's gaze was sharp. "Real survivors move like ghosts. You hear boots tailing you more than a breath? You change floor. You kill your light. You leave."
Barry slid the loaded mag into place with clumsy fingers. It clicked home.
His collar buzzed, a soft static against his neck. A HUD message flickered at the edge of his vision:
FIELD 3 — ROUND 221 | ENTRY AUTH: AVAILABLE
Like it had been listening.
"Clinic will lock her out in three days and say the counter glitched," Jay said quietly. "Or they'll 'reprioritize' supplies. You know that. You hate that. Use it."
Barry looked at Lissa. Pale. Small. Mask hissing.
If he did nothing, she died.
If he went out, he might.
He holstered the pistol in the patched rig Jay slid across. It hung wrong, too big, but it was real.
"I go in," Barry said, more to himself than Jay. "I rat. I extract early."
"Good boy." Jay hauled himself up, metal leg whining. "Gate 3 staging in forty. I'll see you to the yellow."
As they stepped out of the clinic, the NEXUS tower pulsed, and every collar in Block 12 lit faint blue.
Above the stacked shanties, a holo-banner unrolled across the smog:
FIELD 3 — ROUND 221
SLOTS: 60EXTRACT WINDOWS: 19:15 / 19:30 / 19:40HARD CLOSE: 19:45FAILURE TO EXTRACT = STATUS: ABANDONED
The Stacks buzzed. Runners started moving—some eager, some resigned.
Barry's collar pinged again, a soft confirmation.
He touched it once, like feeling the weight of a chain.
"Remember," Jay said as they joined the flow toward Gate 3. "Blue-eyes are bad news; red-eyes are worse; humans are worst of all. You're not going out there to win. You're going to buy your sister one more square on a glowing wall."
Barry looked back once, up at the clinic window where Lissa slept.
Then he faced the gate.
The first Round of his life was waiting.