Chương 19: Chapter 18: The Black Market

SCRAP clattered into Z-69's palm. The token looked like a broken machine tooth—cold, jagged, half burned, and scarred by old impacts. Under the dripping green neon, its damaged surface caught the light and pretended for half a second to be something valuable. It almost succeeded. Z-69 turned it between two fingers. Somewhere behind his missing memories, he knew what treasure should look like: gold beneath firelight, violet radiance sliding across polished steel, a city bright enough to deserve saving.

This was not that, it was trash dressed as wealth. He shook the pouch John had handed him. The fragments inside rattled like loose machine bones.

"This is money?"

"On Level Ten, yes." John stuffed more tokens into his coat with the bored familiarity of a man too tired to be insulted by absurdity, then lit a cigarette without slowing." Do not ask why. The answer gets uglier the longer you hear it." SCRAP. Syndicate Credit Ration Allowance Points. Officially, the tokens were worth almost nothing. In practice, they were worth whatever the people with the most guns decided they were worth, because Level Ten trusted armed ownership more than printed value.

Above Level Ten, the jagged fragments would have been swept aside as debris, down here, they bought meals, weapons, favors, silence, counterfeit oxygen filters, illegal stimulants, a replacement lung for someone desperate enough, and one more night of not being dead. The difference had nothing to do with economics. It had everything to do with force. That understanding settled cold beside the violet crystal in Z-69's chest. Lumina sat on his shoulder with her tail curled around the back of his neck.

Her blue-white fur had dimmed, and although her pale eyes still glowed beneath the toxic neon, the last several battles had taken more from her than she would admit. Now that you have money, perhaps you could use it for something radical. Z-69 tilted his head.

"Such as?" Food. She stared directly into his eyes. Actual edible food. For you. Preferably before you begin evaluating random criminals for nutritional value again. He considered that with grave seriousness.

"A reasonable priority." John snorted smoke through his nose.

"I have contacts to meet. Give me a few hours. Do not die, do not start a riot, do not inject anything glowing, and do not accidentally purchase anything alive." Lumina shifted closer to Z-69's neck. I am going with him.

"To stop him from making bad decisions?" John asked. No. To stop Level Ten from becoming his dinner. Z-69 frowned.

"I will not eat anyone unless they provoke me." John stared at him for one long second.

"That sentence alone is why I smoke." Then he disappeared into the alleys of Neon Hell as though they had been built to swallow him. At night, Level Ten felt less like a district than an infection that had learned architecture. Buildings leaned over narrow streets as if trying to listen. Wires sagged between rooftops, steam hissed from pavement vents, and broken signs painted the artificial rain in poisonous colors while music throbbed behind metal walls like a hidden mechanical heart.

A woman's holographic face smiled from a cracked billboard, glitched, and smiled again. Her lips repeated half a promise the advertisement system no longer remembered how to finish. Z-69 walked beneath it with SCRAP in his pocket and Lumina on his shoulder. People looked at them, then looked away, not because they were polite, but because staring too long on Level Ten was an invitation.

The air was warmer and thicker here, carrying recycled oxygen, engine smoke, cheap incense, old blood, and fine gray particles that glittered whenever neon struck them at the correct angle. Flux dust, not enough to kill quickly, but enough to scar lungs, irritate nerves, twist dreams, and make long-term survival feel like a negotiation with poison. A nearby vendor waved a cracked respirator at a coughing woman.

"Genuine worker-grade filter! Blocks dust, rot, and bad luck!" The woman spat black into the gutter and continued walking. Lumina watched her go. That filter was fake.

"Yes." You knew?

"The inside was already dirty." Her ears lowered. Then why is he selling it? Z-69 looked back at the vendor. The man had three eyes, two appeared natural, while the third blinked sideways and glowed faint green.

"Because people still need to breathe." That silenced her. Farther ahead, a man with shaking hands bought a red vial from a booth covered in handwritten warnings. He snapped off the cap with his teeth and drove the needle into his neck before the seller finished counting the SCRAP. For three seconds, nothing happened. Then the man's veins lit red. He laughed, too loudly and too happily as his pupils expanded until almost nothing human remained in his eyes.

He sprinted down the alley with impossible speed, slammed into a wall, bounced off it, kept running, and vanished screaming into the rain. Lumina stared after him. Was that supposed to happen?

"His body forced Prime Flux through channels too narrow to survive the pressure." So no?

"No." A cyber-doc beneath a blue surgical sign noticed them watching and grinned through steel teeth.

"First dose is cheap, pretty boy. Strong body like yours? You could handle the good stuff." Z-69 turned toward him. The doctor's smile weakened without vanishing, recalculating as he noticed the corpse-pale skin, the green eyes, and the faint violet light beneath Z-69's shirt. Z-69's gaze moved from the glowing vials to the bloodstains beneath the surgical curtain.

"How many survive the good stuff?" The cyber-doc chuckled.

"Define survive." Lumina's ears flattened. We are leaving.

"Yes," Z-69 agreed. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. The doctor called after them.

"Come back when you need an extra heart, an extra spine, or an extra excuse to keep living!" Z-69 continued walking.

"That is a broad service range." Do not compliment him. Ahead, a sign blinked weakly: FOOD Then: FD Then: F D Half the sign died. Z-69 stopped, studied the remaining letters, and nodded as though he had solved a tactical problem.

"F D appears to be an abbreviation of food. We should proceed." Lumina squinted at him. That is the red-light district. He was already moving. The entrance was framed in pink neon and cheap holographic flowers. Women leaned beneath the lights with expressions combining invitation, boredom, threat, and salesmanship in different proportions. Some looked fully human except for circuitry glowing beneath their skin, while others had gone so far into augmentation that the distinction barely mattered.

Level Ten did not practice seduction elegantly. It weaponized it, then taxed it. Z-69 walked inside like a tourist with no understanding of danger. A purple-haired woman immediately looped an arm around his shoulders. Embedded circuits shimmered beneath her skin, and her smile held the polished warmth of something practiced until it became armor.

"Lost, pretty boy?" she purred.

"Want big sister to show you a good time?" Z-69 turned toward her with perfect sincerity. He scanned her breathing, pulse, posture, the hidden angle of a blade beneath her clothes, and the chemical brightness of a low-grade Flux stimulant keeping exhaustion out of her expression. Then he answered politely.

"I am looking for food." The woman blinked.

"So?"

"Do you have anything edible available for purchase?" Silence held for one whole beat before the women around him burst into laughter—not cruelly, at least not at first, but with genuine surprise.

"Do you mean literally or figuratively, sweetheart?"

"We can sell both."

"He's cute. Keep him." Z-69 looked from face to face, becoming more confused rather than embarrassed.

"I meant food. Substances intended for nutritional intake." That made them laugh harder. Lumina struck the side of his head with a psychic thump strong enough to sting. No. We are leaving.

"I was only asking—" These women will drain every SCRAP you possess, dose you with affection-scented Flux perfume, and sell your organs to a cyber-doc with a loyalty discount. Z-69 processed the warning, then bowed to the women with absurdly perfect politeness.

"My apologies. My companion appears to disapprove of your cooking." That nearly killed them, and they were still laughing when he left, and one called after him,"Come back when you're hungry for something else, pretty boy!" Z-69 did not look back. Lumina burrowed deeper into his collar with the fury of someone personally offended by reality. You are impossible.

"I was polite." That is not the point. He considered this carefully, then stored away a new lesson. On Level Ten, broken signs could not be trusted. And food was apparently not always food. This floor had a strange talent for turning language into traps. He had barely escaped the pink-lit district when two hustlers seized him by the arms.

"Hey, silver-hair!"

"Come try your luck!"

"You survived The Pit, right? Might as well make money from it!" Z-69 looked at the hands holding him, then at the men.

"I do not rely on luck." They were already dragging him toward a purple-lit doorway. The casino swallowed him whole. Inside, the air was warm enough to sweat and bright enough to lie, with purple lights rotating overhead in sick circles, holographic dice floating above tables, energy roulette wheels spitting sparks into the smoke, and SCRAP tokens burning inside betting furnaces at the room's center until metallic fumes and heated desperation became the same atmosphere. Every face looked hungry.

Not for food, but for reversal—for escape, for one impossible turn that would make their lives become someone else's problem. The vents released a sweet chemical mist at regular intervals. It was a stimulant, microdosed just below the threshold most patrons would notice, yet strong enough to keep them awake, reckless, and convinced that every loss was merely a delayed victory. Z-69 scanned the room once. That was enough. Dealer pulse rates. Hand tremors. Micro-expressions. Concealed tells. Partnership cues.

Rigged patterns. The roulette field flickered half a breath before every controlled stop, the card projector lagged on every third shuffle, and beneath the main table a hidden Flux cell pulsed softly, nudging chance just enough for the house to remain rich without making the lie obvious. He understood the system almost immediately. Lumina nestled into his collar. You are going to cheat.

"Anyone who does not cheat here will be eaten by the system." She paused. Fair. Z-69 sat down. He lost the first round on purpose: a small bet, harmless enough to let the table relax. The players eased, the dealer smiled, and someone laughed at him. Good. Complacency was a weapon too. He won the second round by reading pulse spikes. During the third, Lumina murmured, Left shoe. Extra card hidden in the sole. Z-69 adjusted his play.

The cheater was exposed and dragged away, while nobody at the table looked surprised. By the fourth round, Z-69 no longer needed cards. He simply watched the man across from him until the pressure of being truly observed made the guilty human nervous system destroy itself. No psychic trick. No power. Only enough calm predatory focus to make deceit feel visible. Tokens began sliding toward Z-69—small piles first, then larger ones, then enough for the entire room to notice.

Across the table, a thug leaned back with a metal toothpick between his teeth and too much confidence in his eyes.

"You're too lucky."

"That is skill." The thug stopped smiling.

"You cheated." It was not a question. Lumina's voice sharpened.

"Exit route?" Z-69 glanced around once. North has an energy net. South is blocked by bodies. East has a maintenance shaft beyond the kitchen.

"Trap?" Beneath the cashier counter. Low-grade paralysis mist. Manual trigger.

"Understood." Z-69 flipped the table. Drinks exploded, SCRAP scattered, and cards spun through holograms in a useless storm of manufactured chance. The cashier slammed his fist against a hidden switch. Yellow mist hissed from vents around the floor. Three nearby gamblers collapsed immediately as their muscles locked under overloaded nerves. Another tried to crawl and bit through his own tongue. Z-69 held his breath by habit. Then remembered he did not need to. The mist touched his skin.

The crystal in his chest pulsed once, and the paralysis field slid across him without finding anything ordinary enough to paralyze.

"Interesting." Move! He moved—not like a normal man. Normal men ran away from danger; Z-69 moved through it, cleaner, sharper, and more exact. Walls, rails, signs, balconies, and support beams became parts of a route his body seemed to have practiced through a lifetime of collapsing buildings and weaponized rooms: he kicked off a neon sign hard enough to shatter it, vaulted a trash bin, slid beneath a security beam, seized a vent pipe, and swung through a kitchen hatch while knives and curses chased his shadow.

Lumina became his second nervous system. Left. He ducked beneath a shock-shot. Up. He struck the fire escape without breaking stride. Not that door. Z-69 changed direction mid-run and crashed through a service corridor instead. Behind him, the casino roared. Security, gamblers, thieves, everyone wanted a piece of the man who had humiliated the house. Z-69 sprinted across a narrow catwalk.

"Level Ten's residents are interesting." Lumina sounded personally offended by his timing. You are making observations now?

"They repeatedly attempt to kill me." That is not a social quirk.

"Noted."

"I may need to reduce my visibility for a bit." He reached the roofline. Artificial rain struck his face. It fell from condensation pipes, cooling towers, ruptured filters, and ventilation grids old enough to cough poison into every drop. The liquid left a metallic taste and a thin trace of Flux dust that glittered on his skin before sliding away. Somewhere below, a drunk laughed at the false sky. Nearby, a child coughed hard enough to spit black into the gutter.

Level Ten continued living—badly, loudly, and stubbornly. Then every billboard in sight flickered. One. Five. Twenty. All of them came alive, and Z-69's face appeared over Level Ten, distorted by rain and bloodied from The Pit, the violet crystal in his chest blazing like a second sun. Beneath it flashed: PARTICIPANT NUMBER 69 — QUALIFIED The message pulsed and repeated across the district. Smaller text crawled beneath the image.

BIOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION: UNCONFIRMED ENERGY SIGNATURE: NON-STANDARD PRIME FLUX PROFILE: INCOMPATIBLE PUBLIC ODDS UPDATED Lumina went still against his shoulder. When her voice entered his mind, it carried horror rather than humor. Reduce your visibility, was it? Z-69 stared at his face hanging over the city.

"That may prove difficult." Pursuit sounds grew louder below them: casino security, angry gamblers, street predators, or perhaps all three. More would be drawn by the billboard. The city had named him. Marked him. Priced him. Voices began rising from the alleys.

"Participant Sixty-Nine!"

"That's him?"

"The Pit survivor?"

"Look at that crystal."

"Think he's awakened?"

"No. Look at the scan. Non-standard."

"Non-standard means expensive." A cyber-doc slowly lifted his head from an operating table. A drug vendor hid his best vials beneath the counter, while a child with glowing veins stared at the billboard as if he had just seen a saint. Or a disaster. Z-69 turned from the screen and continued deeper into Level Ten. Away from safety and toward the real black market. The neon thinned as he advanced, replaced by colder lights and quieter predators. Here, stalls did not shout; they whispered.

A man sold crystallized Flux shards wrapped in prayer paper beside a woman offering to erase mutation marks with a knife and a smile. Behind a curtain, something in a cage breathed with too much intelligence to be an animal and too much misery to be merchandise. No one advertised loudly here. The real sins did not need customers. They attracted believers. Behind Z-69, his image continued glowing over the rain-wet streets. Participant 69. Qualified. Visible. Marked.

The city had turned him into spectacle, which meant hiding was no longer a tactic. Only movement remained, so Z-69 walked on. Lumina watched the billboards fade behind them, then looked toward the deeper dark ahead. The violet crystal in his chest pulsed more strongly, not from pain, but recognition and proximity. Something unseen was waiting. Thunderlight, the name still meant little to him, yet every time it brushed his mind, it landed harder, like a memory that had not decided whether it wanted to return.

The dirty Flux currents in Level Ten shifted around him, toward him, away from him, confused by him as though the city itself could not decide whether he was fuel, contamination, weapon, or warning. Level Ten watched its newest monster walk deeper into the market. Its newest entertainment and its newest rumor. And somewhere ahead, buried beyond the neon and whispers, something waited. Something that already knew his name.