Field 5 looked wrong even on the holo.
FIELD 5 — ROUND 031EXTRACT WINDOWS: 16:10 / 16:30 / 16:50HARD CLOSE: 17:00NOTE: BOTANICAL SURVEY PRIORITY
Barry squinted up at the annotation.
"Botanical survey priority," he muttered. "They make it sound like a school trip."
Gate 2's tunnel smelled damp. Not Stack damp—this was loam and standing water and something sour underneath. The runners around him were different, too: fewer chrome clowns, more light rigs, filter masks, long sleeves. A couple had small harvesting tools clipped to belts.
He touched the slim audio band Jay had given him, seated snug against the back of his ear and tied into the collar.
World got sharper. Gate hum distinct from drone idle. Whispered conversations separated cleanly. His own breath a little too loud.
Jay's last briefing rattled in his head:
"Marked plants only. White tags, blue tags. Leave anything glowing or moving alone. Shade-moss, clear. Bitterleaf, fine. Spine-vines, no. If it looks like it wants a hug, shoot it."
He flexed his hands, feeling the lightness of his kit:
Same pistol.
Two good mags.
Two medbands.
One stim.
The audio band.
A cheap folding knife.
Empty space in the pack on purpose.
For once, he wasn't chasing cans. He was chasing value.
Collar buzzed.
FIELD MODE: ENGAGED
Gate 2 rolled up.
He stepped over the yellow line into another world.
Field 5 had been suburbs. Now it was a forest that remembered it was concrete.
Trees punched through cracked asphalt. Vines cabled up lampposts. Buildings sagged under blankets of moss, windows blind behind curtains of green. The air was humid, tasting metallic-sweet.
"Fuck," Barry whispered.
His audio band picked up the drip of water, the hum of distant drones, the soft tick of falling leaves. No immediate boots. No spiders.
HUD:
T+00:02
He let a small group push ahead, gear clinking. Another veered right, talking about "blue-tag groves." He cut left, into a quieter stretch of overgrown street.
Within ten meters, he understood why Jay said bots were lighter here.
Nature itself was tripwire.
A bush with translucent berries pulsed faint bioluminescent gold. NEXUS white tags blinked faintly on a post beside it: DO NOT HARVEST.
Barry gave it a meter of space.
Another corner: low, dark moss hugging a wall, marked with a flickering BLUE tag beacon.
He knelt.
Shade-moss. The same stringy black-green Jay had shown him.
"Okay," Barry murmured.
He slid the knife from his belt and scraped carefully, filling a sample pouch. Lightweight, packed tight.
Two handfuls. Three.
Audio band picked up something rustling deeper in the building. Bigger than a rat, smaller than a drone. He froze until it faded.
Back on his feet.
Move. Don't picnic.
He hit two more blue-tag patches in the next block, keeping his head on a swivel. Birds—insectile things—chittered in ruined gutters. Once, he watched a runner ignore a warning marker, step through a bed of low purple weeds.
The weeds snapped up needle-thorns.
The runner screamed, stumbling back, armor pocked and smoking.
"Help!" he yelled.
Three others watched. No one moved.
He staggered away, meds hissing. Maybe he'd live. Lesson.
Barry gave that species a wide berth.
T+07:18
Pack was still mostly empty. But what weight he had was worth more than cans.
He followed a broken cul-de-sac to where a playground had become a thicket. Half-buried swings. A slide swallowed in vines.
His audio band tickled: soft, irregular scraping. Not wind.
He dropped to a knee.
Two voices, faint, off to his right.
"—told you, Five's easy money—"
"—if you don't touch the wrong shit—"
He stayed still, let them pass through gaps in the brush. They didn't see him. Audio band tracked their steps clean: too fast, too casual.
He waited five count after they faded.
Then something else came.
Low skitter. Different rhythm. All metal.
Blue-Eye walker, single unit, picking its careful way through the wild. Lens blue. It paused by a tagged plant, scanned, moved on.
It turned its head a little too far as it passed near Barry's cover.
Blue cone swept right over him. Clear. Hold.
Barry tensed.
The walker's lens crackled static for half a heartbeat.
Then it re-centered, logged nothing, stomped away.
He exhaled through his teeth.
"Jay's gonna love that," he muttered.
He found another blue-tag moss patch behind a fallen fence, scraped fast. Pack getting pleasantly denser.
Then he saw it.
Half under a collapsed balcony, a thick cluster of broad, dark green leaves with silvery veins. Tiny white buds. Next to it: two NEXUS markers.
One: BLUE HARVEST PERMITTED.Two, freshly flickering: CLINIC PRIORITY.
Barry's collar pinged a contextual blip.
DATA: SHADE-MOSS VARIANT // RESPIRATORY SUPPORT // HIGH MARKET VALUE
"Hi, gorgeous," Barry whispered.
He checked twice for tags saying DO NOT.
None.
He crouched and cut slow. This strain was tougher, richer. He filled a pouch, then another, careful not to rip roots.
Footsteps.
Not bots. Human.
He slipped deeper into the shadow of the balcony, knife vanishing, pistol in hand low.
Two runners came into view around the corner: gear decent, eyes scanning.
One pointed toward the plant patch.
"See? Told you."
The other grinned, jogging up.
He reached for the same leaves Barry had just harvested.
Something under the soil twitched.
Barry saw it because he was watching: a faint, tendril-like feeler recoiling from where he'd been careful and now bracing under the new guy's boots.
"Stop," Barry snapped, stepping out before he thought better.
Both spun, guns half coming up.
"Who the—"
"Don't step," Barry said, nodding at the ground. "Roots. You stomp, it bites."
"Bullshit," the grinning one said, but he hesitated.
The soil flexed again, subtly. A narrow, pale rootlet uncoiled, tasting the air.
The other runner swore. "He's not wrong. Saw a vid—those latch and pump you full of something ugly."
"Fine, fine," the first muttered, backing off a step. "We'll dig clean."
He lifted his chin at Barry. "You hit it already?"
"Some," Barry said.
"Fair." The man shrugged. "Plenty left."
The tension bled.
No one said friendly.
The two knelt and started cutting carefully around the stalks, mimicking Barry's precision.
"Watch your hands," Barry said. "Sap burns if it's milky, not clear."
They listened.
He left them to it.
T+14:26
He'd lost time, but he had:
Three pouches of shade-moss.
One pouch of clinic-priority variant.
Still good meds, ammo.
No reason to linger.
He angling toward extract: a broken overpass on the far perimeter.
On the way, the audio band caught a stuttering beep-beep-beep to his left.
He flinched. Not again.
He ducked behind a trunk, peered.
A white ball nestled in a root tangle five meters out. Lens dull. Shell cracked. No glow.
Dead.
He waited. No change.
His collar didn't ping.
"Stay dead," Barry whispered, and backed away slow.
He reached Extract 1 with thirty seconds spare: a NEXUS survey van half-sunk in ivy, rear doors shimmering green. Two Blue-Eye drones hovered like dragonflies.
Three other runners there. No obvious psychos. No Riggs.
Barry stepped in.
SYNCING…
He listened to his own breathing, the drones' hum, footsteps behind him that stopped at the edge of the field and stayed there.
SYNC COMPLETEROUND STATUS: SURVIVEDPERSONAL CREDIT: +34
White.
Stack air, cooler, still dirty, but familiar.
He checked his pack; all the moss pouches and plant salvage were there. Synced. His.
He couldn't help the quick grin.
Field 5 was hell.
Field 5 paid.
He made for Jay's workshop at a brisk walk, ears full of cleanly-separated Stack noise. Vaendors yelling. A couple arguing. Someone pitching "Field 5 guides" for a fee.
Jay saw the green in his pack before Barry spoke.
"Well, I'll be damned," Jay said. "You didn't get eaten by salad."
"Yet," Barry said. "Look what liked me."
He spilled the pouches carefully onto the bench.
Jay's hands went reverent for the first time Barry had seen all week.
"Shade-moss. Fat batch," he said. "Good. Good. That—"
He picked up the variant, eyes narrowing.
"Hello," he murmured.
"That the right one?" Barry asked.
"That's the right one and its rich cousin," Jay said. "We process this right, we're buying more than one day."
Barry's collar pinged again with updated projections as Jay keyed in potential sale values.
EST. TRADE VALUE (UNPROCESSED): 40–60 NCEST. FORMULA VALUE (PROCESSED, OFF-BOOK): HIGH
Jay looked up, grinning sharp.
"We don't sell all of it," he said. "We keep a cut. Brew our own lung-binder. That's Lissa's buffer not held entirely by NEXUS."
Barry let that sink in.
Not just another day.
Actual leverage.
"And the glitch?" Barry asked. "Blue-Eye walked a scan right over me again."
"We'll look," Jay said, already reaching for cables. "One miracle at a time. For tonight? You did good."
The words hit harder than he expected.
After they lost, sometimes the big win was just: you went into the feral green, didn't die, and came back with something the machines valued and you could twist for yourself.
Barry sat, leg intact, ears humming with the quiet of the shop, watching Jay line up moss like it was gold.
For the first time, the eight-day counter above his sister's bed felt like it might go up by more than one.