Chapter 2: The Ten-Unit Hunger
Thirteen years is a long time to be a ghost.
By the age of twenty, Carson McCain had become a master of the "Crevice"—the narrow, damp gaps between New Seattle's industrial skyscrapers where the sun never reached. His skin was the color of old parchment, permanently stained with the grey grease of high-end hover-engines. His ribs ached with a dull, rhythmic throb every time the wind shifted, a reminder of the many times he had been "corrected" by the local enforcers.
He was a "Ghost-Washer." He spent his nights scrubbing the grime off the Tier-5 Phantoms of people who didn't even know he existed.
But while his body was scrawny and malnourished, his eyes were different. They were sharp, piercing, and constantly moving. Every night, by the flickering light of a stolen battery, Carson studied his mother's journals. To anyone else, they were just notes on gardening. To Carson, they were a map to the Grand Synthesis.
"The soul of the plant is the resonance of its Qi," his mother's elegant script read. "To refine the leaf is to refine the self."
He didn't have alchemical furnaces or Tier-9 cauldrons. He had a rusted pot and a heating element he'd salvaged from a trash heap. But he practiced the breathing. He felt the "Saber-Chi" in the city—the sharp, kinetic energy of the metal and the neon. While others slept, Carson breathed in the ozone, trying to find the "flow" his father had spoken of.
He had one anchor: Maya.
Maya was a girl who worked at a transit kiosk near his crevice. She was the only person who looked at him without disgust. She had shared her lunch with him once, a simple synthetic protein bar that tasted like heaven. For two years, Carson had worshipped her. He would skip meals for days, his stomach cramping in agony, just to save enough units to buy her small luxuries.
"I'm almost there, Maya," he whispered to himself, crouching in the shadows of an alley.
He reached into his boot and pulled out a small, grimy pouch. Inside were 290 units—the result of three years of starving and scrubbing. He needed 300 units to buy the Apex-7 smartphone she had been eyeing. In New Seattle, that phone was a ticket to social status in the Lower Sector. He wanted her to have it. He wanted to see her smile and know that he was the reason for it.
He just needed one more shift.
But the streets of the Lower Sector were governed by the Neon Fangs. And the Fangs had a leader named Viper—a Level 9 Mortal Foundation warrior whose pride was as thick as his cybernetic neck.
Carson was walking through the "Blind Alley" toward Maya's kiosk when a shadow blocked the exit.
"You've been very busy, Sparky," a raspy voice chuckled.
Viper stepped into the light. He was wearing Tier-2 Kinetic Boots that hummed with a menacing energy. Behind him stood three goons, their eyes glowing with cheap, black-market optical implants.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Carson said, his hand instinctively going to his boot.
"The units, kid. We've been watching you count them every night. You didn't think the 'protection tax' applied to everyone except you, did you?"
Viper didn't wait for an answer. He moved with the speed of a Level 9—a blur to Carson's untrained eyes. A kinetic boot slammed into Carson's chest.
CRACK.
The sound of his ribs breaking was louder than the distant thunder. Carson hit the brick wall, the air leaving his lungs in a painful wheeze. He tasted copper.
Viper reached into Carson's boot and snatched the pouch. He poured the 290 units into his palm, laughing. "All this for a girl? You're pathetic, McCain. A rat like you shouldn't be thinking about pretty things. You should be thinking about how to stay under my boot."
Viper kicked him one last time, a casual strike that sent Carson into a world of grey haze, before swaggering away.
Broken and bleeding, Carson didn't go to the clinic. He couldn't afford it. He dragged his shattered body toward the Lumina Grand Hotel. He just wanted to see Maya. He needed to hear her say it was okay. That they didn't need the phone.
He reached the service entrance, peering through the glass of the VIP lounge. The sight inside froze the blood in his veins.
Maya was there. But she wasn't working. She was draped over Viper's arm, a glass of expensive blue champagne in her hand. On the table in front of her sat a brand-new Apex-7.
"He was just a tool, Viper," Maya's voice drifted through a gap in the window, sounding like ice shards. "A boy like him was never meant to stand in the light. I was just waiting for someone with real power to notice me. The way he looked at me... it was creepy. Like he thought we were equals."
Carson stood in the rain, his blood mixing with the grime of the alley. The cold wasn't on the outside anymore; it was inside his soul. His father's words returned to him: Find the flow.
In that moment, Carson found the flow of the world. It was a flow of cruelty, of greed, and of betrayal.
And for the first time in thirteen years, the "heart" of the boy who wanted to be loved... died.
In its place, something sharper began to grow.