Growing up in the AshField, I was used to grime, but the safe room Dax had dumped me in after the Phantom incident was a new level of filth.
The industrial stabilizer he’d injected into my neck moved through me like cold syrup. My body felt sluggish, weighed down. Subdued. The fire was quiet…for now. It wasn't gone. I couldn’t be that lucky.
I sat up, testing my limbs.
[CORE TEMP: NORMAL]
[BURN LOAD: 6%]
[REBOOT STABILITY: MARGINAL]
I flexed my fingers. They were stiff, the skin around the knuckles pale and tight.
I swung my legs off the cot. I was wearing borrowed clothes, cheap Vein tactical gear that Dax had left in a pile. Boots that actually fit, reinforced pants, dirty but at least they didn’t smell like a dead man's bowels, a thermal under-layer, and an old, battered jacket that felt heavy enough to stop a knife.
The Brand on my left arm was throbbing…a dull, rhythmic ache. I pulled up the sleeve. The fracture lines had spread, spiderwebbing out from the iron circle like cracks in a windshield. The orange light pulsing beneath the skin was faint, but ever-present.
The door creaked open with a slow, clunky hiss.
Dax stepped inside. He didn't knock. He didn't say hello. He unceremoniously dumped an armful of gear onto a small table in the corner with a heavy clatter.
"Up," he said.
"Morning, sunshine," I rasped, more AshLung than sultry siren. My throat still felt raw from venting.
He ignored me, sorting through the pile with efficient, gloved hands:
- Basic respirator.
- Two stabilizer injectors.
- Heat-dampening neck guard made of matte-black polymer.
- Utility belt.
- Fingerless gloves that looked like they'd been chewed on by a grinder.
- Satchel that smelled faintly of ozone.
"Gear up," he said.
He walked over to me, grabbing my chin and tilting my head back. He checked my pupils, then my pulse. His touch was clinical, cold. He wasn't checking on a patient; he was checking the oil in an engine. He was never overly friendly before, but he seemed even less interested in Lexi Leigh the person than before.
"You're stable," he said. "Good enough."
"Define stable," I asked, pulling away.
"You aren't currently melting the floor," he said. "That's stable. Can you walk?"
"I can run if I have to."
"Good. Because we probably will."
He tossed me the gloves. I pulled them on. They fit tight.
"Where are we going?" I asked, cinching the utility belt. It felt good to have weight on my hips. Grounding.
"Scrap Market," Dax said. "I need information. And there's someone there who might have some insight on what you're becoming."
"There’s someone who knows about this hot mess inside me?"
"Tess," he said. "Local broker. Matriarch of the rust heap."
"And you trust her?"
Dax snorted, checking the charge on his pistol. "No. I don’t trust anyone. But I’m pragmatic and Tess is useful."
The Scrap Market was a massive, open-air pit of metal, neon tarps, and screaming commerce sunken into the foundation of Sector 9. Towers of stacked engines leaned precariously over narrow aisles. Children with welding torches ran along the tops of shipping containers, sparks showering down like rain. The smell alone hit you like a physical wall: hot coolant, solder, cooked noodles, and blood. It always smelled like noodles.
I kept my head down as we slinked through the market, the respirator hanging loose around my neck.
It was a carnival of the broken…people, things, homes. Gutter-priests in makeshift robes of circuit-boards chanted over malfunctioning servitors, promising silicon salvation. A man with three arms was bartering with a jar of what looked like human kidneys. So many kidneys… Mechanical animals, dogs made of pistons and wire, skittered underfoot, snapping at ankles; makeshift pets, because anything not human living here was a meal…
My HUD flickered, overwhelmed by the data density:
[THERMAL ECHO: FAINT]
I looked down. I could see my own footprints glowing softly on the metal grating. Faint orange ghosts trailing behind me again.
Scavengers noticed. I saw heads turn. I saw whispers spread like a contagion.
"That's her," a woman with a chrome jaw muttered, nudging the man beside her. "The ghost-flare girl."
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
"No," her companion hissed, eyes wide. "She blew up a drone with her mind. I heard it. Liquified the lens."
"Nullchild," an old man whispered, clasping his hands over his chest in an intricate ward against evil. "I heard she eats heat. Don't look at her."
I pulled my sleeve down, hiding the glow of the Brand. "You could probably just throw me in a cage and charge admission."
"Don’t tempt me," Dax murmured, steering me around a pile of leaking batteries that hissed green foam.
He led me toward the center of the pit, where a platform made of discarded mechanical parts welded together rose like a throne. Cables snaked down, powering half the stalls in the immediate vicinity.
Atop the throne Tess sat, lording over it all.
She was compact, deadly, and streaked with grease. Her hair was shaved on the sides, long braids hanging down her back, woven with copper wire, goggles perched on her forehead. Tattoos of mechanical diagrams ran down her neck, disappearing under a stained tank top. Her right arm was encased in a heavy industrial exosleeve, the servos whining softly as she lifted a piece of scrap metal the size of a door.
"Dax Morne!" she shouted over the din, dropping the metal with a deafening clang that shook the platform. "You owe me credits, you tower-excrement dropout!"
"Tess," Dax said, stopping at the base of the platform. He didn't look intimidated. He looked tired. "I brought you something better."
And as I expected all along, this is where he cashed me in. Keep me safe just long enough to pay off some debt.
Tess hopped down, landing with a heavy thud that buckled my knees. She wiped her hands on a rag that was dirtier than her pants, before giving us both a once over.
"She's the one from the pyre," Dax said.
Tess laughed. A loud, barking sound that made the nearby scavengers flinch. "Bullshit. Nobody walks off a pyre. Solis-burn is absolute. That's just a scav story used to scare tourists."
I met her stare. I didn't look away. I didn't say a word. I just let the Brand pulse, once, orange light bleeding through the heavy canvas of my jacket.
Tess stopped laughing.
"Oh hell," she whispered. "You’re real."
She circled me like an engineer sizing up a broken machine. No touching, but her gaze probed my whole body for cracks in the chassis.
"Too hot," she muttered, holding a hand near my neck without making contact. "Way too hot. And your eyes...too bright."
She saw the Brand fracture peeking out from my sleeve.
"That's new," she said. "And off…no, it’s wrong. I like wrong."
She leaned in close, smelling of oil, ozone, and old tobacco.
"How long have you been burning, girl?"
"Since I woke up," I said. "In the crater."
"Memories?"
"Flashes," I admitted. "Static. Like a corrupted file."
"Do you hear voices in the static?"
I froze. My heart skipped a beat. "Yes."
Tess tapped her temple with a grease-stained finger. "This isn't an Ashborn mutation. This is protocol damage. You're not evolving, honey. You're leaking code."
"We need help," Dax cut in, impatient. "Not poetic hyperbole."
Tess snarled at him, showing jagged teeth that could have been filed or mangled from eating god knows what in this pit. "Shut up, Morne. I'm cogitating."
She turned back to me, her expression shifting from curiosity to calculation. "Leaking code means you're unstable. Unstable means dangerous. Dangerous means valuable...or dead."
A group of scavengers had gathered nearby, drawn by the argument. A small gang, looking for trouble or a payout. They had the look of bottom-feeders who thought numbers made them brave.
“Every minute you're free,” Tess sighed, assessing the intentions of the approaching trouble. “The numbers floating above your head increase…”
I, of course, looked up, even though I know she was speaking metaphorically. The leader, pupils blown wide open by stims, stepped forward with a shock prod on his back. He’d overheard Dax, the whole pit had.
"Pyre girl?" he sneered, spitting on the grate. "Let's see the fire trick. I bet it's just a chem-rig."
He poked my shoulder with the prod.
That was a mistake.
I didn’t have an opportunity to think before my body reacted, a tiny, concentrated heat pulse lashed out from my shoulder.
Hiss.
The tip of the shock-prod melted instantly, fusing into a glob of hot plastic and ruined circuitry. The scavenger yelped, dropping it like it was a snake. He stared at his hand, then at the smoking ruin of his weapon.
[THREAT ENCOUNTER: RESOLVED]
[METHOD: CONTROLLED RESPONSE]
[XP GAINED: +15]
The gang backed off; eyes wide. The bravado evaporated in the face of impossible physics.
Dax stepped forward, hand resting casually on his pistol. "She's not a sideshow."
"No, she is most assuredly the main attraction," Tess said, eyeing the melted prod with appreciation. "That wasn’t on purpose, was it?”
I shook my head. Staring at the gang of miscreants planning their escape.
“That was clean. Hot, but clean." She pointed at the retreating gang. “Can you do it on purpose?”
They didn’t wait to find out and turned tail, fumbling over each other.
Nearby, a group of gutter-priests began to chant, their voices rising over the market noise. They pointed crooked fingers at me.
"The ember-girl walks!”
“The pyre failed!”
”The fire has chosen a vessel!"
I groaned, rubbing my face. "We can’t stay here."
"You’re a miracle," Tess said, crossing her arms over her chest. "And down here, they could use a miracle right about now..."
"Ignore them," Dax said. "Gossip becomes religion in under a day down here. By tomorrow, they'll say you have wings."
Tess grabbed my arm and pulled me aside, away from the ears of the crowd. Her grip was strong, enhanced by the servos in her sleeve.
"Listen, ember-girl," she said, her voice dropping to a serious rasp. "You're not cursed. You're not chosen. You're corrupted. Something in the Burn Protocol broke, and now the city is trying to read you but it can’t because you’re bad code."
"Can it be fixed?" I asked.
She studied my face, her hand beginning to glow from the heat radiating from my arm. She pulled back, flexing her mechanical fingers.
"If it could," Tess said grimly. "The Order would've killed you quieter…quicker.”
I think she felt sorry for me. She seemed like she was trying to comfort me, but I guess she could have been trying to protect her home from a nuclear meltdown.
“My guess is they’ve never seen anything like you before,” Tess scrunched her nose. “There’s value in taking you alive to study…but make no mistake in thinking that means you’re safe. They will end you before they let you fall into the wrong hands or expose a crack in the system.
"And them…” She gestured toward the rumors already swirling around the market.
“You need to understand: the more they talk about you, the more dangerous you get, for them and for you. Be careful what story the city tells about you. It'll decide who or what hunts you next."
A distant alarm cut through the Scrap Market noise. A klaxon from the upper levels, echoing down into the pit.
A massive holoscreen bolted to the side of a crusher flickered. The image distorted, showing a bounty update. It was the same silhouette from before, but the data had changed.
[ANOMALY 774 – SIGHTINGS MULTIPLYING]
[PROBABILITY MODELING: UNSTABLE]
[ORDER RESPONSE: ELEVATED]
Tess stared at it.
"Well shit," she said. "Looks like your ghost is getting bolder."
"I’m not a fucking ghost…" I sighed.
"No, just the wrong girl," Dax said, stepping up beside us. He watched the screen with cold eyes. "The city's building a version of you that doesn't exist. Monster. Messiah. It doesn't matter which one sticks, as long as it gives them a reason to burn the sector down to find you."
"You’re not just a girl from the Ash anymore," Tess added.
I felt the Brand pulse violently, an echo of the Overheat signature from the mod-shop. It was reacting to the alarm, to the threat, to the sheer weight of the city's attention.
"I need to know why the system keeps getting me wrong," I said. "Why I'm not dead…"
Dax looked at the screen, then at me.
"Then you're not going to like who's looking for you next."
I could feel the heat rising again, “Who?”
Dax looked up, almost wistfully, “Everyone.”