The "Sector 4 Archive" was a graveyard of information.
Rows of rusted, floor-to-ceiling metal racks stretched into the darkness, holding millions of waterlogged micro-fiches and crumbling paper ledgers from a world that had valued ink over Essence. The air was thick with the scent of damp cellulose, ozone, and the sharp, chemical tang of the Sprawl's sewage.
Kael sat on a stack of half-dissolved records, watching Elara work. She had cleared a space on a heavy stone desk—once likely the station of a chief archivist—and had begun to arrange a dizzying array of glass tubes, copper coils, and a small, hand-cranked centrifuge.
"You're remarkably quiet," she said, her fingers moving with the precision of a jeweler as she poured the amber contents of the thug's vial into a filtration flask.
"Thinking about the math," Kael replied. He traced the obsidian thorns on his right hand, the new weight of the graft having become a steady, dull throb. "Ten thousand Essence for a bounty. One thousand to unlock a plot. The thugs only had five units in that vial. At this rate, Jax will catch us before I even see the second plot of soil."
Elara snorted, a dry sound that echoed in the vast vault. "Raw Essence isn't like water, Kael. It's light. It's information. That vial didn't contain 'five units'; it contained raw, unrefined mutagenic sludge. My job is to burn off the noise."
She started the centrifuge, the low, rhythmic hum cutting through the steady drip of sewer-water from the ceiling.
"Most scavengers just slap raw Essence onto their grafts," she continued, her gaze fixed on the spinning amber liquid. "It works, but it's dirty. It builds up 'Graft-Slag'—micro-calcifications in the nervous system. That's why Ironbark enforcers eventually turn into pillars of wood. I'm refining this into 'Pure Amber.' One unit of this is worth ten of whatever you'd find in a feral's throat."
[SYSTEM CALIBRATION SENSORY UPDATE]
[Detection: High-Purity Essence Processing detected.]
[Condition: Orchard receptivity increased by 12%.]
Kael felt it. As the centrifuge spun, a faint, sweet warmth radiated from the flask—a biological magnetism that made the 'starvation' in his bones ache with renewed intensity. The Orchard in his mind wasn't just hungry; it was salivating.
"How long?" he asked.
"An hour to refine. Another three for your body to metabolize it without triggering another seizure," Elara said, finally looking at him. Her face was pale, the shadows under her eyes deepening in the flickering violet light of their last chem-stick. "While I finish this, you need to scout the perimeter. Not just for Jax. For the Orchard."
Kael stood up, his legs feeling steadier than they had in the tunnels. "What do you mean?"
"The System you're hosting... it doesn't just grow what you give it. It's an antenna. It look for compatibility. If there's an ancient seed nearby—one of the deep-sector strains that the Guilds haven't cataloged—it'll find it."
Kael nodded, picking up his rusted pipe and moving toward the archives' shadowed exit. He walked slowly, his boots silent on the damp concrete. He closed his eyes, forgoing his physical vision for the grey, foggy mindscape of the Orchard.
The single plot of grey soil was there, the 'Thorn Knuckles' and 'Needle-Threader' saplings glowing with a faint, expectant light. He focused on the grey fog beyond the plot, reaching out with a sense he didn't quite understand.
At first, there was only the cold, empty static of the sewer. Then, a pulse.
It wasn't a warning. It was a rhythmic, low-frequency hum that felt like a heartbeat vibrating through a sheet of metal. It came from the dark, flooded corridor that led deeper into the Sector 4 maintenance ducts—a place where the algae didn't glow, but instead seemed to swallow the light.
[SENSORY LOCK ACQUIRED]
[Signal Type: Dormant Bio-Signature.]
[Grade Rank: UNKNOWN (Potential Grade D-C).]
[Distance: 120 Meters. Bearing: Submerged Maintenance Duct B.]
Kael opened his eyes. The darkness of the corridor didn't look empty anymore. It looked like a harvest.
"Elara," he whispered, his hand tightening on the pipe. "The System found something. It's close."