The thing about scraping a living from the corpse of a dead world was the smell. It was a permanent, metallic tang of ozone and rust, undercut by the faint, sweet stench of decaying data. They called it the "Static Reek." After eighteen years, Kaelen's nose should have been numb to it. It was, most days.
Today was not most days.
"Come on, you glitched-out piece of scrap," he muttered, his fingers delicately tracing the exposed circuitry of a shattered terminal. His tools—a set of fine, magnetized probes—were the only things of value he owned. Around him, the skeletal remains of the old world reached for a sky the color of a bruised memory. This sector of the Rust-Wastes was picked clean, a graveyard of forgotten logic and dead code.
His Compiler, the latent part of his brain that should have let him interface with the world's broken source code, was as silent as the grave. A Null. A zero. A statistical error in a world that ran on Weavers and their glorious, flashy Scripts.
//SCAN_INITIATED
A pulse of blue light washed over the ruins from a nearby street. The Syntax Lord patrol. Kaelen ducked lower behind a collapsed wall, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He wasn't doing anything illegal. But being a Null in the wrong place was often crime enough.
He focused back on the terminal. There was something… odd about its corruption. It wasn't the usual chaotic scramble of data. This was different. Structured, almost. Like a locked box with a very, very complex key.
A flicker of light caught his eye. Not the patrol's scan, but from within the terminal itself. A shard of crystal data-storage, no bigger than his thumbnail, was wedged deep in the core. It was pristine, untouched by the rust, and it was pulsing with a soft, violet light.
His Null-Sense, the one useless trick his brain could do, tingled. It didn't see usable code like the Weavers did. It saw the lack of it. The flaws. The holes. And this shard… it had no flaws. It was a perfect, sealed unit in a universe of broken things. It was wrong.
The sound of armored boots on permacrete grew closer.
Screw it.
He jammed his probe into a weak point his senses showed him, and the terminal casing popped open with a groan of protesting metal. He snatched the shard. It was warm against his palm.
"Hey! Scavenger!"
Kaelen froze. Two Syntax Enforcers in polished grey armor stood at the entrance of the ruin, their helmets scanning the area. The lead one had his hand on the hilt of his Code-Blade, a weapon that could execute a //FORCE_TERMINATE Script on a person's soul.
"Identification chip," the Enforcer barked.
Kaelen slowly stood up, pocketing the shard. He held up his wrist, where a cheap, scratched data-bracelet displayed his public info. The Enforcer scanned it.
"Kaelen. Designation: Null." The Enforcer's voice was flat, devoid of any emotion. The ultimate condemnation. "This sector is off-limits for salvage. All assets are property of the Axiom."
"Was just passing through," Kaelen said, layering his voice with a thickness of false cheer. "Must have taken a wrong turn at the completely unmarked and collapsed highway."
The second Enforcer chuckled, a dry, static sound. The lead one wasn't amused. "Your presence is a violation. The fine is ten creds."
Ten creds. A week's food. Kaelen's jaw tightened. "Look, I've got nothing. You can scan me. My pockets are as empty as my Compiler."
The lead Enforcer took a step forward. "Then we'll have to confiscate your tools for the state's use."
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through Kaelen. His tools were his life. Without them, he was just… Null. Nothing.
It was then that his hand, still in his pocket, closed around the warm data-shard. A strange impulse, a flicker of the defiance that kept him alive in this gutted world, surged through him. He focused on it, on its perfect, sealed-off nature. He imagined it wasn't a thing to be read, but a wall. A shield.
He didn't have a Script. He couldn't write Code. But he could, sometimes, nudge.
He pushed his will against the shard, not trying to open it, but trying to project its "wrongness," its flawless, immutable state.
The lead Enforcer reached for him.
And his scanner glitched.
The readout on his wrist-mounted display fizzed into a mess of garbled pixels. He shook his arm, tapping it. "What in the—?"
Kaelen held his breath. He kept his focus on the shard, a single, desperate point of concentration.
The Enforcer's scanner rebooted, then focused on Kaelen again. This time, it flickered and displayed a single, looping error message: //TARGET_NOT_FOUND.
The Enforcer stared at his wrist, then at Kaelen, a look of profound confusion on his face. He looked right through him, as if he'd suddenly become a ghost.
"Glitched piece of junk," the Enforcer muttered to his partner. "Let's go. Nothing here but bad code and rust."
They turned and walked away, their boots echoing into the distance.
Kaelen stood there, trembling, his hand clenched around the shard so tight it felt like it might burn a brand into his skin. The Static Reek filled his lungs again.
He slowly pulled the shard out and looked at it. The violet pulse was gone. It was now just a dull, dark crystal.
He had done nothing. He had cast no spell. He had just… reflected. He had been a Null, and for a moment, he had made himself the error in the system, the thing that could not be processed.
A slow, sharp grin spread across his face. It wasn't a smile of joy, but of survival. Of a new, dangerous understanding.
He looked out over the endless, decaying ruins.
Well, he thought, the old, cynical humor returning as an armor against the terrifying unknown. This changes everything. And probably for the worse.
He tucked the shard into a hidden pouch. The first line of a new, terrifying chapter had just been written. And he, the Null, was holding the pen.
To be continued...