Joren didn't wait to be caught by the Watchmen. He grabbed Elian at the back of his jacket and yanked him towards a gap between two collapsed buildings. They ran through the shadows, stepping on the wet garbage, until Joren stopped at a rusted iron gate covering a storm drain. He gripped the rusted bars, muscles trembling as he fought against years of corrosion. With a groan of protesting metal, the gate finally gave way.
They descended into the dark, their boots slipping on the ladder. With every step downwards, the cold rain was replaced by a humid heat that smelled of sulfur and rotting water.
When he reached the bottom of the tunnel, his legs almost gave out. The adrenaline from the trial was slowly fading away, leaving behind exhaustion. Elian leaned against the concrete wall and looked down at his right hand. In the darkness of the tunnel, his knuckles looked like dead ash. It was grey, dry, and entirely numb. He flexed his fingers, feeling the painful pull of tendons that no longer had blood pumping through them. If he didn't find fuel soon, his hand wasn't just going to be numb. It was going to die.
"Keep moving," Joren whispered nervously. "The patrols don't come down this far, but the Syndicate's sweepers do."
They walked for ten minutes through the drainage system until they came across a massive wall of reinforced steel. It looked like the hull of a scavenged transport ship, fused directly onto the concrete.
Joren stepped up to the metal wall and knocked. It wasn't a normal pounding but a specific, rhythmic sequence. Three heavy thuds, a pause, then a scrape of metal on metal.
A heavy bolt slid back with a loud clank. A narrow slit slid open, revealing a pair of glowing red cybernetic eyes.
"Got scrap," Joren said while holding up a small bag of useless copper wiring he always carried with him. "Looking to trade for rotgut."
The red eyes glanced at Elian, looking at his pale, exhausted face, before the slit slammed shut. A moment later, gears groaned, and the heavy steel door swung inward.
A blast of hot, thick air came traveling out, hitting Elian in the face.
The Rat King's market wasn't just a shop; it was a whole subterranean city. It was built inside a massive excavated cavern that the Spire had abandoned centuries ago. The architecture was pure chaos, hollowed-out subway cars lifted in place by heavy chains, shipping containers six stories high, and walkways made of rusted grating crisscrossing in the air. The entire cavern was bathed in the glow of flickering neon signs and the flames of chemical fires burning in oil drums.
The noise was deafening. Generators hummed, vendors were shouting, and the smell was a suffocating mix of roasting meat, cheap ozone, and the sharp, coppery smell of old blood.
But the most overwhelming part wasn't the sights or the smells. It was the feeling Elian felt.
For the first time since Awakening, his new senses came alive. As he looked at the stalls around the muddy central path, he didn't just see junk. He felt a faint hint of energy. A stall selling scavenged dented Warden armor. A cage holding a small aberrant.
"Keep your head down," Joren hissed, pulling Elian out of his thoughts. "And keep that dead hand of yours in your pocket. If the Syndicate thinks you're sick, they'll gut you for your organs. If they think you're an Awakened… they'll do much worse."
Joren led the way through countless dangerous-looking people. Thugs with cybernetic arms shoved past them, while cloaked scavengers were huddling over piles of broken Spire-tech.
They finally stopped in front of a stall set up beneath a canvas tarp. Behind the counter stood a man who looked like he could crush stone with his bare hands. He was fully bald, and the left side of his face was covered in a shiny burnt scar. A heavily rusted pistol rested on the counter near his right hand.
But Elian didn't look at the gun. He looked at the merchandise.
Lined up in heavily armored cases were dozens of thick glass vials. Inside them was a viscous, glowing fluid. It was black, with streaks of deep, angry crimson. Even from three feet away, Elian could feel the energy. His Inner Archive hummed. It was beast blood. Pure, raw fuel from the Gyre.
"What do you want, grease monkeys?" the massive man grunted.
"Silas," Joren said, attempting to smile. "My friend here is looking for a… specialized coolant. Low grade."
Silas leaned his massive weight on the counter. His good eye looked over Elian's oil-stained jacket and wet hair. "Low-grade Lurker blood still costs five thousand credits a drop, surface trash. Unless you've got a Spire-issued credit chip in that dirty pocket, get away from my stall before I break your legs."
Joren swallowed hard and tugged at Elian's sleeve. "Come on, Elian. Let's go. I told you this was a mistake."
Elian didn't move. He wasn't looking at Silas, and he wasn't looking at the blood anymore. His eyes were looking at a machine sitting on the corner of the table.
It was a Spire-made centrifugal blood extractor, a piece of technology meant to purify aberrant cores. But it was currently smoking and leaking a foul-smelling clear fluid onto the table.
In Elian's mind, the Inner Archive blinked. A translucent, blue schematic of the extractor could be seen in his vision. He didn't just see a broken machine; he saw the pressure imbalance in the secondary valve, the stripped gear in the rotary motor, and the exact three millimeters of misalignment causing the leak.
"Your primary housing is misaligned," Elian said, his voice completely flat. "The rotary gear is slipping. It's burning your product, and in about four minutes, the pressure is going to blow that glass casing straight into your good eye."
Silas stopped wiping the counter. The sneer dropped from his face, replaced by a cold, calculating stare. "How do you know that without opening the chassis, boy?"
"I know machines," Elian said, stepping up to the counter. He kept his right hand hidden inside his pocket. "I'll make you a deal. I fix your extractor right now, and you give me one vial of the cheapest, lowest grade blood.
Silas looked at the broken machine, then back at Elian. He laughed. "If you break it worse, I'm taking your eyes to pay for it. Go ahead. Amuse me."
Elian didn't hesitate. He pulled his multi-tool from his belt with his left good hand. He didn't even need to think. He moved with the practiced, blinding speed of a man who had spent his entire life taking things apart and repairing things.
With a few sharp twists, he popped the metal casing off. He bypassed the safety locks, reached directly into the hot, smoking gears, and jammed the flathead of his tool against the rotary shaft. He applied a precise amount of pressure, waiting for the heavy click of the gear snapping back into alignment. He tightened the primary valve, locked the chassis back into place, and wiped his hand on his jacket.
It took exactly twelve seconds.
The high-pitched whine of the machine immediately died down, replaced by a smooth, quiet hum. The smoke cleared, and a drop of perfectly purified, glowing red liquid fell neatly into the collection tray.
Silas stared at the machine, his mouth slightly open. He looked up at Elian as if a ghost had just walked into his stall.
"Pay up," Elian said quietly.
Silas hesitated, his eyes narrowing, but he reached under the counter. He tossed a small, cloudy glass vial onto the metal table. It was tiny, barely the size of Elian's thumb, containing a single drop of muddy, blackish-red Lurker blood.
"Let's go," Joren whispered nervously, already backing away. "Elian, we have it. Let's go!"
But Elian couldn't wait. The hunger in his dead hand was screaming at him.
He pulled his right hand out of his pocket. Silas flinched at the sight of the grey, ashen skin. Elian popped the cork off the vial with his thumb and tipped it over, letting the single, thick drop of beast-blood fall directly onto his deadened knuckles.
It didn't drip off his skin.
The moment the blood touched him, it hissed. It soaked into his grey flesh instantly, absorbed like water into a dry sponge.
A violent, burning heat shot up Elian's arm. He gasped, his knees buckling slightly. Before his eyes, the grey, dead tissue flushed with sudden color. The blood vessels swelled, the warmth spreading through his hand, restoring feeling, restoring life.
In the center of his mind, the System flickered to life in bright, stable letters.
[Foreign Fuel Accepted.]
[Creation Aspect Capacity: 5%]
Elian let out a shaky breath, flexing his fingers. They were completely healed.
A heavy silence fell over the stall.
Elian looked up. Silas wasn't looking at the machine anymore. He was staring at Elian's healed hand, his one good eye wide with a mixture of greed and horror.
"Normal men die of toxic shock if raw beast blood touches their skin," Silas whispered. "The body rejects it. Unless the body belongs to an Awakened."
Joren froze. Elian slowly reached for the heavy wrench on his belt.
Silas raised a hand and snapped his thick fingers. From the shadows on either side of the stall, two massive Syndicate enforcers stepped out, holding heavy iron pipes. They blocked the only path back to the main market.
Silas picked up the rusted pistol from the counter and smiled, revealing a row of yellow, metal-capped teeth.
"Well now," the broker purred. "Looks like an unregistered Awakened just walked into my shop. You aren't leaving, mechanic."