By the time Barry made it back to Jay's workshop, the stim was wearing off.
Each step up the narrow stair cut into his thigh. The bandage under his pants tugged and burned. He pushed the door with his shoulder; the chime glitched again.
Jay didn't look up.
"Close it," he said, hands busy inside a rifle's guts. "You're leaking the air I overpay for."
Barry kicked the door shut. The latch thunked. He should've answered. Instead, he just dropped his pack onto the bench.
It hit heavy, metal clanking inside.
Jay's head came up at that.
"You brought me another spider?" he asked.
Barry shook his head, jaw tight. "New friend."
He peeled his pant leg up, slow.
The medband was already half red.
Jay swore under his breath and was at his side in three uneven steps, cane forgotten.
"Sit," he ordered.
Barry sat on the nearest crate. The room tilted.
"Tell me you didn't pull the bandage to show off," Jay said, fingers already at the seal.
"Ball blew up," Barry said.
Jay went still. "What kind of ball."
"White. Little. Lens went red. Beeping." Barry huffed. "Like a bad movie."
"Fuck," Jay said, very quietly.
He peeled the medband free. The wound was ugly but clean—jagged slice, already clotted where the smart-gel had done its work.
"Lucky," Jay muttered. "Another ten centimeters and you'd be a speed bump."
Barry managed a grin. "Already limp. Missing the aesthetic."
"Shut up." Jay slapped a fresh medband from his own stash over it. "Clinic-grade. Don't argue. You got us the credits."
Barry's collar pinged like it had been waiting for its cue.
Jay grabbed the repeater slate.
RUNNER: RANER, B. — FIELD 3 / ROUND 222EXTRACT: WINDOW 1REGISTERED SALVAGE VALUE: 26.0 NC
Jay let out a low whistle. "Twenty-six on first window. Not bad for someone who tried to hug a bomb."
"Loot was good," Barry said. "Plus… this."
He hauled the scorch-marked core fragment from the pack, set it down next to the nutrient bricks, filter packs, medkit, and water.
Jay eyed the shard.
"That from the ball?" he asked.
"Didn't vaporize," Barry said. "Figured that's either bad, or profitable."
Jay picked it up carefully. The thing was misshapen metal, vents warped, but a faint, wrong light pulsed inside it, more purple than blue.
"Huh," Jay said.
"Huh what?" Barry asked.
"Huh I'm glad it didn't blow in your hand," Jay said. "And huh NEXUS official ordinance doesn't glow like that."
He set it down like it might bite.
"Eat," Jay said, nodding at one of the bricks. "You look like shit."
Barry's stomach tried to pretend it wasn't interested. The ache in his leg won. He tore the pack open, took a bite. Salt and something that tried to be meat.
"So?" he asked around the chew. "Clinic. How much this time?"
"Hold up." Jay tapped through menus.
"Clinic daily for Lissa: fifteen," he said. "After last Round and the spider sale, we had a three-credit buffer and a favor. Today: plus twenty-six. We can pay her next day, put you at ten credits personal, and I can probably flip this brick—" tap on the ball core "—for another ten or fifteen if it's readable."
"Or?" Barry said.
"Or we dump everything into MedTower and you go back in tomorrow with the same trash pistol, almost no meds, and a leg that's one bad sprint away from popping that bandage," Jay said. "Then we lose all income when you faceplant."
Barry chewed slower.
"Break it down," he said.
Jay sighed, but he did. It was how he loved them.
"Step one: fifteen to Lissa. Non-negotiable." He held up one finger. "That leaves eleven from this Round plus your three from last. Fourteen. We do nothing fancy with the ball yet."
"Step two: you," Jay said. "You burn stims, bands, ammo. You need to restock or the next bleed-out is your last. Call it: four credits to bring you back to one medband, one stim, one mag of good 9mm instead of range trash."
"Leaves ten," Barry said.
"Yeah," Jay said. "And those ten are where it hurts."
He nodded at Barry's leg. "You need a soft brace or that cut will pull open if you sprint. That's one or two. Your plates still suck. You could start piecing together something that actually stops bullets before they hit your lungs."
He paused.
"Or we throw those ten at Lissa too and sleep pretty while you run on empty."
Barry looked at the brick in his hand. At the bandage on his leg.
At the core fragment, faintly pulsing.
"How long if I gave her all of it?" Barry asked.
Jay flicked the slate.
"Today's fifteen buys one day," he said. "Another ten buys… nothing. It just chews the total. They don't discount for devotion. You front fifty in advance, they might log her as 'stable priority' and slow the bullshit. We're not there."
"So it's still one day no matter what," Barry said.
"Math says yeah," Jay said. "Unless we start hitting big. Aug caches. Data crates. Corporate orders. Until then, every Round is one more spin to not drown."
Silence stretched.
"Then I gear," Barry said finally. The words tasted like betrayal. "A little."
"Good," Jay said, no hesitation. "I like my son less dead."
He keyed the transfer.
APPLY 15.0 NC TO ACCOUNT: RANER, LISSA?
"Yes," Jay confirmed.
New numbers rolled up:
DUE: 7 DAYS — 105.0 NCPAID THIS CYCLE: 30.0 NC
"One week," Jay said softly. "Again."
"One week," Barry echoed.
It never felt like enough. It was more than nothing.
"Ball," Barry said, dragging his head back to the bench. "What was that? I thought blue was boring."
"Blue is boring," Jay said. "Until it twitches."
He snapped on a magnifier lens, pulled a connection cable from a port in his wrist, jacked it into the cracked core. The faint purple glow stuttered.
NEXUS glyphs blinked to life on his repeater slate. Jay frowned, scrolling.
"…Well that's ugly," he muttered.
"What?" Barry asked.
Jay chewed his lip, reading.
"It's tagged as a survey unit," Jay said. "Standard pathing, nothing special. Then it gets a mid-Round patch. Instructions overwrite. Something marks it CORRUPT-RISK. Changes its response template."
"In English?" Barry said.
"In goblin," Jay said, "something in NEXUS or near it decided that if this unit pinged certain signatures, it should self-delete with prejudice."
"Certain signatures like…?" Barry asked, pulse picking up.
Jay flicked the slate so Barry could see a scrubbed view: alien code, a few translated tags.
One line pulsed:
TRIGGER: [HUMAN FIELD ID // B-RANER-3]
Barry's mouth went dry. "Is that me?"
"Yeah," Jay said, too calm. "That's definitely you."
"That thing rolled in, scanned me, and decided to explode because of me," Barry said.
"Or it was told," Jay said. "Or its brain was mush and it read you wrong. Either way, that's twice now."
"Twice?" Barry asked.
Jay tapped another window: the spider's logs from last Round.
"Fridge dog that jumped you was reading your collar as HIGH-VALUE MONITOR for about three milliseconds before the rest of its code slapped it back down," Jay said. "I didn't mention it because one glitch is noise."
"And two?" Barry asked.
"Two's a pattern trying to start a fight," Jay said.
He yanked the cable out; the core shard's glow died completely.
"Someone or something in the system is flagging you and then choking on its own logic," Jay said. "Might be a corrupt directive, might be a misassigned ID, might be NEXUS taking a funny interest."
"That a good thing?" Barry said.
"Bad if it keeps sending exploding marbles at your nuts," Jay said. "Good if we can figure out why before it graduates to real ordnance."
"So I stop running?" Barry asked. Part of him already knew the answer.
Jay looked at him like he'd grown a second head.
"You stop, we lose fifteen a day," he said. "Timer eats us. NEXUS can't be the only one allowed buggy logic, kid."
Barry swallowed.
"Lena said red-eyes aren't ours," he said.
"Lena Voss?" Jay asked, surprised. "You met her?"
Barry blinked. "You know her?"
"Good medic, decent ethics, charges too much," Jay said. "If she's talking to you, you're either less pathetic than you look, or she was bored."
"She gave me a fridge tip," Barry said. "Didn't shoot me."
"Write that on your wall," Jay said dryly. "'Didn't shoot me' is high praise."
He tapped the dead core. "I'll see what else I can shake out of this before I flip it. Maybe it's just corrupted garbage. Maybe it's a breadcrumb."
"And if it's a target painted on me?" Barry asked.
"Then we use it," Jay said. "Run smarter. Choose Fields where NEXUS can't spare the good toys. Maybe sell that info if it's worth something. Maybe one day wedge a knife into whatever part of its brain thinks my kid is a bug."
Barry stared at him. "You're talking about hacking NEXUS."
"I'm talking about understanding NEXUS," Jay corrected. "Words like 'hacking' get people disappeared."
He set the core aside, picked up the can of protein, and tossed it at Barry.
"Right now," Jay said, "you're a goblin with a limp and a weird flag. Job one: heal. Job two: small gear upgrade. Job three: don't die next Round."
Barry caught the can, winced at the twinge in his thigh.
"What's next Round?" he asked.
Jay flicked the slate to the schedule.
"Field 1 tonight," he said. "Industrial maze. Shorter windows, tighter chokes, more bots. Better pay. More Locals."
"Sounds like a no," Barry said.
"Sounds like we skip that one," Jay agreed. "You limp, you sleep, we let someone else feed the grinder. Tomorrow, Field 2. Cleaner. You go in then. With a brace. With real ammo. Maybe with a new friend if Lena's still slumming it."
"Thought you said solo," Barry said.
"I said goblins live," Jay said. "Sometimes goblins run in packs. Just don't call it a squad; it curses it."
Barry snorted, then hissed as the movement pulled his leg.
He eased back on the crate, feeling the exhaustion catch up now that the adrenaline and stim were gone.
Up above, MedTower's lights stayed yellow over Lissa.
Seven days.
On the bench, a dead bomb core sat like a question mark.
After they lost the war, surviving wasn't just about pulling loot and dodging bullets. It was about reading glitches in a machine god's mood swings and hoping you weren't interesting enough to squash.
Barry closed his eyes for a second.
Rest now. Run later. Bleed for credits. Try not to explode.
That was the job.