4:45 a.m.
Half the automatic door at the Family Feast 24-hour joint had given up on life. The broken panel stayed stuck open, letting the dawn chill slip in like some petty thief and crawl across the floor. The cup of tap water in front of Lu Jin quivered with tiny ripples every time the wind pushed through.
He lay sprawled over a sticky table stained with old ketchup and fryer grease, staring at the new color in the corner of his vision.
[ Holy Resonance Balance: 47 ]
That was everything he owned.
To clear that nice little "energy loan shark" bill, he'd staged a miracle that almost got Li Xing killed. Now his life was out of pawn. His pockets were emptier than his expression. Real-world cash: ten cents. Holy Resonance: forty-seven.
"Forty-seven…" he muttered, just loud enough for himself, tapping an uneven rhythm on the plastic tabletop.
If this were some other power-fantasy protagonist, this was the part where he'd cash out and redeem a "Marrow-Cleansing Pill" or an "S-Class Power Armor," then go punch the planet into submission.
But Deep Space Echo wasn't a wish-fulfillment engine. It was a predatory lender with UI.
Forty-seven points in its shop might get him a "Thanks for playing."
Lu flicked the mall open anyway. His thumb slid past the retina-burning icons for [ S-Class Tactical Micro-Nuke ], [ Floating Battleship Summon Ticket ]—all grayed out, locked behind more zeros than he'd see in three lifetimes—and scrolled straight down to the clearance graveyard.
Li Xing was already on the move.
One hundred forty-two kilometers of wasteland with no one sane in sight. Even with S-09, that temperamental steel monster, hauling the sled, the reactor was almost dry. Her only proper weapon was a nail gun, and she was dragging two hangers-on who'd never asked to be in anyone's story.
She needed something.
Insurance. Or the closest thing this scam shop sold.
Lu's gaze sifted through piles of digital garbage until it snagged on one bundle that looked exactly like it had been swept out of a warehouse corner and priced as a prank.
[ Wasteland Budget Travel Pack (Beggar Edition v2.0) ][ Contents: ]
[ Pressure-Plate Anti-Personnel Mine (Model: Groundhog-3) x3 ]Note: Trigger sensitivity: "up to fate." Might go off when stepped on. Might not. Might let you tap-dance on it. Pray during installation.
[ Military First-Aid Bandage (Expired 3 Years) x1 ]Note: Slight stiffness and yellowing do not significantly affect hemostatic function. Probably.
[ Disposable Chameleon Cloak (Civilian Raincoat Conversion) x1 ]Note: Up to 80% visual camouflage while stationary. Loses effect when wet. Or if you move too much. Or breathe too loud. (Okay, last part not in the text, but implied.)
[ Price: 45 Holy Resonance (Original 200! Bones-cracking discount!) ][ Note: Sweetie~ this is already the lowest price on the whole net. If we cut it any further, the system will report you for robbery! Can't afford a Noah's Ark? At least patch together a raft☆ ]
Lu stared at the line "trigger sensitivity: up to fate" until his eye twitched.
That wasn't equipment. That was a lawsuit.
But that neat little "45" sat there like a devil's whisper, perfectly tuned. Just barely within his limit. Even left him a whole 2 points as "emergency funds."
"Parasite," he rasped.
He hit [Purchase].
He wasn't buying tools. He was buying one percent of a chance that his ragtag refugee squad wouldn't get chewed up on the road to hell.
[ Ding. Transaction Complete. ][ Current Holy Resonance: 2 ][ Drop Location: Wasteland A-11 Zone – Directly Above Sled. ]
—
The feed jumped, data tearing sideways, then settled into white-gray.
On the wasteland side, the wind made the cold in the diner look like child's play.
Li Xing stood in front of their improvised sled—an entire tank's bottom plate with ropes knotted everywhere. S-09, Big Yellow, lay in the snow beside it, metal bulk low to the ice. The red cloth tied around its neck in a dumb bow whipped back and forth, ridiculous and faintly unsettling.
"We're heading out," Li Xing announced, voice flattened by the wind shield over her face.
Little Rock hunched his shoulders and clutched the bag of expired cans like a life jacket, staring north. The world in that direction was just layers of pale and dead stories—exactly the sort of place people told ghost tales about and then never visited.
The old man shook so hard his teeth clicked. His voice scraped along his gums in a whisper: "We can't… that's a dead road… the north has eating fog… it eats sound… eats people…"
Right on cue, the air above the sled tore open with a faint crack.
Three dark iron disks, a roll of yellowed bandage, and a neatly folded gray raincoat dropped out of nowhere and clanged onto the tank plate.
Little Rock shrieked and landed on his backside in the snow.
Li Xing's eyes lit up.
She darted forward and scooped up the dirtiest of the mines, cradling the thing like it was some sacred relic instead of a questionable piece of hardware with bad QA. In her mind, this wasn't "trigger sensitivity: random." This was lightning, loaned out by a god.
"Look," she said, turning and holding it high so everyone could see. She didn't have the faintest idea how to arm it, but that didn't slow her down at all. "This is Lord Listener's gift. It's a Thunder Trap."
She shook the cloak out next. The "disposable chameleon tech" looked suspiciously like a cheap raincoat with a bad dye job.
Didn't matter.
She swung it around Little Rock's shoulders before he could protest, yanking the hood up and tugging it over his ears.
"This is the Invisibility Mantle," she declared. "Wear it and monsters can't see you."
The plastic was cold against his neck. The fear in his eyes loosened just a fraction anyway. Out here, superstition kept you warm longer than an extra sweater.
The old man, though, glued himself to the ground. He dug his fingers into frozen dirt, knuckles whitening, and refused to move.
Li Xing didn't waste another breath.
She turned her head, imitating the cool, indifferent tone she'd heard Lu Jin use before, and addressed the mech sprawled in the snow.
"Big Yellow."
The huge metal head rotated toward her, single eye pulsing once.
"Stomp."
"BOOM."
Dozens of tons of hydraulics came up and dropped.
The steel foot slammed into the ground a step in front of the old man. The earth jumped. Snow blasted up in a white fountain. For a second, the old guy's heart almost left his chest without the rest of him.
Li Xing crouched and gave his rigid shoulder a friendly pat, smile gentle enough to qualify as a threat.
"Grandpa, get on," she said. "Big Yellow has a temper, but I'll keep him in line."
He glanced from the steaming crater where the mech had stomped to the tiny girl with the polite tone.
Then he swallowed his words and crawled onto the sled like it was a lifeboat.
This wasn't a noble migration. There was nothing epic about it.
It was a circus act: one lunatic, one idiot, one terrified old rat, a pile of junk, and a half-starved war machine that might decide to snack on them if the power ran out—all of them setting off to pick a fight with hell.
Li Xing moved along the ropes, tugging and checking knots one last time.
Then she climbed up the cargo stack to the very top, to a particular spot she'd prepared.
Foam scraps, ragged stuffing from a dead mattress, all pressed down into a makeshift cushion. On top, her oldest scarf—washed so many times it had faded nearly white, but folded without a single crease.
That was the Listener's seat.
She stood on the swaying pile, wind tearing at her clothes, and turned to look back one last time at Black Rock Shelter. The place that used to be "home" was just rock and concrete now.
She took a breath, raised a hand, and waved hard at the empty air.
"Listener, hold on tight!" she yelled, grinning into the snow. "Big Yellow—run!"
"Vrrr—OOOM!"
S-09's core reactor snarled. Black exhaust belched from the rear vents. Its treads dug into the ice, and the tank plate shrieked as it ripped forward.
The wind hit like thrown nails.
Li Xing didn't flinch. She spread her arms as if she could hug the whole ruined world and opened her mouth.
She sang.
Not a prayer this time. Not a lullaby.
A road song. Off-key, stitched together from scraps of street jingles and whatever rhymes she'd hummed while digging through junk heaps.
"Run ahead, even if your shoes fall off—""North side stars are blinking, blink blink blink—""Big Yellow's belly's growling, gurgle gurgle gurgle—""Doesn't matter if it's wolves or ghosts in front—""God's listening from up high and laughing with us—"
Her voice carried along a path no one else could see, cutting through distance and whatever counted as "dimensions" to Deep Space Echo.
In one corner of the UI, a small line of text slid into existence.
[ Observed Subject: Li Xing ][ Holy Resonance Realm: Faint Echo – Glimmer Tier ][ Level: LV3 ][ Growth: 0 / 1000 → 18 / 1000 ][ Emotion Source: Departure Song (Hope + Excitement). ]
Her body moved north. Her little progress bar crawled with her.
—
Back in the Family Feast corner booth, Lu Jin had been twisted over the table like a boiled shrimp, back locked from the pain.
The warmth hit so suddenly he almost thought someone had turned on a heater under his spine.
Not adrenaline. Not chemical numbness. Just a slow, enveloping heat, as if a hand had slid under his vertebrae and pressed a heating pad along his nerves, smoothing out the jagged edges one by one.
Deep Space Echo's interface softened, gold seeping into the cool blue.
[ Holy Resonance Feedback: Breeze of Departure ][ Effect: A hopeful signal rides the line. Mental fatigue –40%. All chronic pathological pain suppressed for 3 hours. ]
The knot in Lu's muscles loosened. His shoulders eased down.
He didn't hear the freezer units whining anymore. Didn't notice the wind whistling through the half-broken door.
All he could hear was Li Xing's mangled little song, thin and bright, as if someone had hung windchimes in his head.
He folded his arms on the table and let his forehead drop into the crook of his elbow.
Warm.
Warmer than any radiator in this entire city tier.
"Idiot girl…" he muttered into his sleeve.
The line between his brows finally smoothed out. From the first collapse of his gene sequence until now, he'd been wired and dragging, eyes held open by pain and panic.
Forty-eight hours without shutting down.
So in the middle of the cheap diner, reeking of old oil and mop water, the man who'd just bet his life on a scripted miracle closed his eyes and slipped under.
Best sleep he'd had in six months.
On the phone screen by his hand, one little stat panel kept ticking.
S-09's status.
Every meter it tore across the snow chewed more power.
[ Energy Reserve: 2.8% ]
The number blinked once.
[ 2.7% ]
Somewhere in the blizzard on the other side, a tiny red warning light blinked to life on the mech's HUD.
Just once.
Like an eye opening in the dark.