Three days after the explosion, Arin stood in front of a battered metal door in the worst part of Sector 9.
The sign above read: LOWER CITY HUNTERS GUILD – UNOFFICIAL – NO QUESTIONS ASKED
He'd heard about this place from other Cutters. When you needed money and didn't have credentials, you came here. The jobs were dangerous. The pay was bad. The clients didn't care if you lived or died.
Perfect for an M2 with no training and a death wish.
The room inside was small and thick with smoke. A few hard-eyed men and women sat on crates, cleaning weapons or staring at nothing. Behind a cage of iron bars sat a fat man with a glowing crystal eye—Greaser, they called him. He handled the contracts.
Arin walked to the cage.
Greaser looked him up and down. "You're new."
"I need work."
"Level?"
Arin hesitated. "M2."
Greaser laughed. It wasn't a nice laugh. "M2. Boy, M2s clean gutters. They don't hunt."
"I need money."
Something in Arin's voice made Greaser stop laughing. He studied him for a moment, then shrugged.
"Fine. Got a job no one wants. Sewer level 4. Rat infestation." He slid a paper through the slot. "T-Rank. Thirty rats. Payment: fifty credits. Half now, half when you bring proof."
Fifty credits. A week's medicine for his mother.
"I'll take it."
Greaser counted out twenty-five credits—dirty coins, not digital—and pushed them through. "Don't die in my sewers. Bad for business."
The sewers of Sector 9 were dark, wet, and smelled like death.
Arin moved slowly, a cheap flashlight in one hand and a salvaged pipe in the other. His plasma saw was back at Goliath—too loud, too bright, too likely to attract things he couldn't handle.
He'd borrowed this pipe from a construction site. It was just metal. But in his hands, it felt different. Heavier. Like his new power understood what it was for.
Density.
That was his only trick. When he focused, he could make things dense. His fists. His pipe. His skin, if he concentrated hard enough. It wasn't flashy. It wasn't fire or lightning or flight. It was just... weight.
But weight could break things.
The first rat came at him from a side tunnel.
It was the size of a dog, covered in patchy fur, with teeth that glowed faintly purple—mana-corrupted. It moved fast, faster than any normal animal.
Arin swung the pipe.
The rat dodged.
It lunged for his throat.
Arin's hand shot out and grabbed its skull. Without thinking, he pushed density into his palm. His fingers became stone. The rat's head crunched.
It dropped.
Arin stood there, breathing hard, staring at the body. His first kill. A sewer rat. Not exactly heroic.
But it was dead. He was alive.
He kept moving.
Three hours later, he'd killed twelve.
His arms ached. His legs shook. A deep scratch ran down his forearm from a rat that had gotten too close. But twelve was twelve. He needed eighteen more.
He found them in a flooded chamber—a nest. Dozens of rats, crawling over each other, feeding on something he didn't want to look at.
They smelled him.
They charged.
Arin didn't think. He just moved.
The pipe became a blur. Each swing carried density—heavy, crushing, final. Rats died in waves. They climbed over their dead to reach him. He kept swinging. Something bit his calf. He stomped, dense foot caving its skull. Another latched onto his shoulder. He smashed it against the wall.
When it was over, he stood in a pile of bodies, chest heaving, blood dripping from a dozen wounds.
He'd lost count.
He counted anyway.
Thirty-four.
Greaser counted the tails one by one, his crystal eye whirring.
"Thirty-four," he said finally. "Kid actually did it." He slid another twenty-five credits through the slot. "Here. Your half."
Arin took them. His hand was shaking.
Greaser noticed. "First time?"
Arin didn't answer.
"Yeah." Greaser leaned back. "It gets easier. That's not a good thing, but it gets easier." He paused. "You got something, kid. Most M2s would've died down there. You came back with thirty-four tails and a lot of scratches. That's not normal."
Arin said nothing.
Greaser shrugged. "Not my problem. You want more work, come back tomorrow. Always more work."
Arin walked out into the night.
His mother was asleep when he got home. Lina was sitting at the small table, studying crystal patterns by the light of a cheap tablet.
She looked up. Her eyes went wide.
"Arin! Your arm—"
"I'm fine." He sat down heavily. "Just work."
Lina stared at him. She was sixteen, but she'd grown up in the lower city. She knew what "just work" meant.
"Was it... hunting?"
He didn't answer.
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "Mom's medicine ran out. I was going to ask you tomorrow."
Arin reached into his pocket and placed fifty credits on the table.
Lina's eyes went wider. "Arin... that's—"
"Get the good kind. The one that actually helps."
She looked at the money, then at him. Her brother, who came home bloody and exhausted but put credits on the table anyway.
"Arin..."
"Go to sleep, Lina. You have class tomorrow."
She hugged him—quick, fierce—and disappeared into her corner.
Arin sat alone in the dark, listening to his mother's cough and the hum in his chest.
Fifty credits. One night's work. More than a week at Goliath.
He thought about the rats. The teeth. The blood.
Then he thought about his mother breathing easier.
He knew he'd go back.