The lower city really only had two smells.
Burned cheap synth-oil, and sewer rot crawling back up through busted pipes.
Old John's Aug Shop sat at the dead end of a narrow alley, right where the concrete started sweating. The neon sign over the metal door flickered weakly, throwing jumpy red light around like it had a nervous disorder.
A crooked "Closed" plate dangled on the handle.
Lu Jin pushed the door open anyway. The bell over the frame knocked against itself and let out a sad little clank.
Behind the counter, an old man with half his face replaced by brass plating was wiping down a serrated knife. His mechanical eye rotated twice, gears whining as it focused on Lu Jin.
"Rare guest," Old John rasped, voice dry as sandpaper. "The sick kid from D-block isn't dead yet?"
Lu Jin didn't bother answering.
He walked up to the counter, reached into his jacket, and dropped three small glass vials onto the stained metal surface.
High-grade painkillers. The strong stuff. Every pill in those bottles was a night he'd ridden out the agony with nothing but his teeth in his pillow.
"All of it," he said quietly. The tone was calm. "Cash."
Old John's human eye slid to the labels. Something hungry moved there.
"Black-market gold." He clicked his tongue. "You really done with living? Without these, that garbage gene sequence of yours will have you trying to bite your tongue off before midnight."
"That's my problem."
Lu Jin nudged his glasses up with one knuckle. His gaze went past Old John to the workbench behind him—specifically to the electronic microscope and the sheet of paper pinned underneath.
A job listing.
[Urgent Request: Manual Repair – Military-Grade Neural Conduction Chip.][Reward: ¥30,000.00.][Failure Penalty: Pay back materials cost ¥100,000.00 (or equivalent organs).]
Suicide work.
Chips like that were supposed to be handled by precision robotic arms. Human fingers could barely keep up with the pulse of current inside those circuits. One twitch at the wrong moment and the feedback would ride the probe straight back into the tech's skull and cook everything behind their eyes.
Which was why the flyer had been gathering dust for a week.
"I'll take it," Lu Jin said. He tapped the paper.
Old John stared for a beat, then laughed, sharp and ugly.
"You?" He leaned on the counter, brass plates creaking. "D-class trash? Your hand twitches one micron and they'll be scraping your brain off my ceiling."
"D-class because my genes collapsed three years ago," Lu Jin said. Still calm. He didn't blink. "Before that, I was top of my class at the Federal Institute of Technology. Microelectronic engineering. Four years in a row."
His eyes slid to the printed circuit diagram under the flyer.
"If not for this disease, the person designing that chip might've been me."
He paused, then raised one thin finger and tapped his own temple.
"And sequence collapse… hurts. Constantly. That kind of pain has made my nerves ten times more sensitive than a normal person's."
A corner of his mouth tugged up, not quite a smile.
"Right now, I'm a precision instrument built for feeling pain."
Old John's laughter jammed in his throat.
He squinted at Lu Jin again, more carefully this time. The kid looked like he could fold in half in a strong breeze, but the look in his eyes wasn't soft or desperate. It was the look of someone who'd already stepped past the edge and found a weird kind of calm on the way down.
"…Maniac," Old John muttered.
He snorted, tossed a pair of fine tweezers and a micro-probe over the counter, and jerked his chin toward the back.
"Deal. Try not to spray your head all over my floor."
—
A-11 Wasteland Zone.
Li Xing woke up because the light wouldn't let her stay asleep.
The camping pod was too good at its job. No howling wind, no dragging sand, just the pale glare of morning bleeding through the translucent shell and laying across the white mat under her.
She pushed herself up and looked toward the hatch.
There, near the entrance, a dark patch stained the flawless surface.
Dried blood. From the scavenger she'd cut last night. When she'd dragged her injured leg inside, she'd tracked some of it in.
In this tiny, spotless space that belonged to the "listener," that ugly mark sat like a scab on a clean face.
"Dirty…" she whispered.
Panic crawled up her spine.
Li Xing dropped to her knees. Her fingers were already a mess of scars and torn skin, but she still tried to scrape the stain away with her nails. The sound of keratin dragging across the mat's texture was barely there, but she heard every pass.
The blood had soaked into the fibers. It didn't budge.
She pressed harder.
A split nail tore open further. Fresh red beaded along the edge of her fingertip and smeared into the old stain, making it worse.
Her eyes went hot.
This was the home the listener had given her. The cleanest place in her world. And she was ruining it with filthy blood and dirt and the fact that she existed.
Her gaze dropped to the lab coat she still wore, the fabric stiff with dried mud and old stains. She bit her lip, grabbed a corner that looked slightly less disgusting, and tore.
The rip sounded too loud in the little pod.
Li Xing spat a bit of saliva onto the scrap of cloth, then bent over the stain. She scrubbed in small, fierce circles, hips lifted, movements clumsy but determined.
She hummed that wordless tune under her breath while she worked, the same melody she'd made up in a cage to keep from going mad. Maybe if she sang it, the mark would fade faster.
It didn't.
—
Back in the shop, Lu Jin's world had narrowed to lines of gold thinner than hair.
The chip sat under the microscope like a tiny city abandoned after the bomb. His tweezers and probe hovered over one broken "street."
Sweat ran off his forehead and into his eyes. The sting made him want to blink, rub, anything, but the probe was a hair's breadth from the bad junction point.
He held his breath. His lungs hated that. Scarred tissue flared with heat, membranes screaming for air. It felt like someone had stuffed burning coals into his chest.
Stay still.
He gave himself the order in his head. Cold, almost mechanical.
The chill that came with Holy Song slid along his spine, numbing just enough to keep his right hand steady.
The probe descended.
It was almost touching when—
His phone, lying next to the microscope, lit up on its own.
The Deep Space Echo icon bloomed across the screen with its usual obnoxious fanfare. The sudden brightness caught the lenses of the scope and threw a glare over his view.
The probe froze in midair. One twitch and the job—and his brain—would be done.
Lu Jin cut his eyes sideways.
Text screamed at him in bright colors.
[High-Alert OCD Warning.][Your cloud-adopted girl is scratching the floor with her fingers.][Broken nails x3. Bleeding x2.][That's your precious newbie mat she's turning into a rag. You really okay with that?]
On the screen, Li Xing knelt on the mat, shoulders hunched. Blood seeped from three fingers; she didn't notice. All she cared about was that one blot of dried red.
His temple throbbed.
Right now?
He flicked to the rest of the pop-up.
[Lazy Owner's Home-Care Bundle (Wasteland Edition)]
Includes:[Nano-Stain Eraser Sponge (High-Power)] x1[Smart Floor-Cleaning Bot (Dumb-Cute Edition / Silent Mode)] x1
Price: ¥99.00
[Recommended purchase method: Spend 1 point Holy Resonance Energy. (Cash payments unlock after newbie period.)](Don't let her bleed all over the floor. Timer: 10… 9…)
The glare on the scope field wasn't going away until he touched the screen. He couldn't risk moving his right hand.
Lu Jin ground his molars, then slid his left hand over, wrist rigid. Using only his little finger, he dragged across the option for energy exchange.
[Current Holy Resonance Energy: 21 points.][Confirm spending 1 point to redeem?]
"Confirm," he hissed.
[Holy Resonance Energy: 21 → 20.][Redemption successful. Deploying items…]
The window vanished.
The chip came back into focus.
Lu Jin didn't give himself time to think. The probe dipped, made contact with the microscopic pad, and traced the repair exactly along the line he'd plotted in his head.
A thin blue spark zipped across the damaged trace and disappeared.
—
Wasteland.
Li Xing had just changed her grip on the cloth when something white dropped in front of her.
Round. Flat. A little puck of a machine, with a single sensor eye and a glossy shell. It bounced twice and spun in place. A block of white sponge plopped down right by her hand.
"Uh?" she blurted, mid-hum.