The interrogation room in the Security Zone had no corners of shadow. It was a cube of white polymers, lit by full-spectrum lamps that made the mud on my clothes an aesthetic insult. At the center, an Enforcer official named Vance—a Percentile 72—scrolled through data on his holographic terminal.
«You survived the Grade D Beast. You survived the warehouse assault. Ten NILs were vaporized by the turrets, but you came home with a scratch on your shoulder», Vance said, his voice filtered by the armor's modulator. «The statistics say you should be dead six times over, Zero.»
My brain was mapping the room. Two thermal cameras. A heartbeat sensor under the table. Vance carried a magnetic pulse pistol on his right hip.
«Luck isn't a variable the System recognizes, officer», I replied, keeping my heart rate at a steady 62 bpm. «I was simply at the point of lowest fire density.»
The Soul Scan
Vance slammed a fist on the table. «No bullshit. Activate Status. I want to see what you're hiding.»
He moved a sensor toward me. It was a superior-grade scanner designed to read through magic protections and system glitches. I closed my eyes. Beneath my skin, the Grade D Bio-Inductive Stabilizer hummed silently, integrating the neural cables into my tissues. I had programmed my brain to create a "void data loop" around my implants.
[SCAN IN PROGRESS...] > [IDENTIFICATION: ZERO] > [STATUS: NIL] > [LEVEL: 0] > [SKILLS: NONE] > [MANA: 0/0] > Note: Subject lacks martial or magical potential. Threat value: Irrelevant.
Vance stared at the result for a long minute. His disgust was palpable, a chemical reaction I could almost smell. To him, I was just a particularly lucky piece of refuse. A scrap that refused to rust.
«You're a biological error», Vance spat, turning off the scanner. «Take him back to the mud. He's not even worth the energy needed for execution. If the Abyss wants him so badly, let it eat him in Block 17.»
The Exit Vector
They loaded me onto a generic armored transport. Two NIL-Rank guards—men who had sold their freedom for a uniform and an E-Class—sat across from me. The vehicle began to move, vibrating as it crossed the Security Zone gates toward the Block 17 border.
But I wasn't going home. My brain had already calculated the exact moment.
Under my sleeve, I activated the Stabilizer. I felt a surge of synthetic adrenaline invade my muscle fibers. It wasn't magic; it was forced bio-mechanics. My reaction time dropped below 5 milliseconds.
«What are you looking at, scrap?» one of the guards asked, noticing my fixed stare.
«I'm calculating the structural strength of the rear hinge», I replied.
Before he could react, I struck. It wasn't a punch; it was a pure force vector. My arm, boosted by the neural cables, moved with a speed their human eye couldn't follow. I hit the first guard's trachea and, in the same movement, used his body as leverage to kick the tailgate's electromagnetic lock.
A short circuit. A metallic boom.
The First Step Upward
The tailgate swung open as the transport sped across a viaduct suspended over the abyss dividing Sector Z from the Countries (Country-Rank). The toxic wind hit my face, but for the first time, it tasted of freedom, not sulfur.
I threw myself into the void.
As I fell, my brain calculated the parabola. I grabbed a massive steam pipe running along the support pillar of the upper level. The metal burned my palms, but the Stabilizer filtered the pain, allowing me to maintain my grip.
I was hanging three hundred meters up. Below me, the dim, dirty lights of Block 17 looked like an infected wound. Above me, the base of the Country of Oakhaven shone with a golden, artificial light.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION] > Act Detected: Escape from Enforcer custody.
Environmental Status: Outside assigned boundaries.
Note: You are moving in a zone unauthorized for your rank. Social gravitational pressure will increase.
«Increase it all you want», I whispered, beginning the climb along the pillar's bolts. «The more weight you put on me, the stronger I'll become to carry it.»
I was no longer a mud hero. I was a parasite that had just begun to climb the world's esophagus.
Day 80. Altitude: +350 meters. Destination: Country of Oakhaven. Objective: Acquisition of first "Hacked" Class.