Chapter 33: Upper City Access
The canister of Originium sat on the folding table, humming with a frequency that made Su Yuan's teeth ache. It was a heavy, lead-lined cylinder, scarred by shipping clamps, but inside, the rock was singing.
Su Yuan didn't touch it. Not yet.
He sat in the dark of his apartment, the blinds drawn against the neon strobe of Sector 7. The air recycler wheezed in the corner, coughing out filtered oxygen that still smelled of wet dog and sulfur.
Forty-one nodes.
He closed his eyes and checked the map in his head. The criminals from the Sunken Garden were moving. Little red blips scattering across the lower districts like a virus entering the bloodstream. They were asleep, or high, or counting their money. Their minds were open doors, and through the *Listening_Worm_V1.0*, Su Yuan could hear the draft.
It was a low-grade buzz. Static. Hunger. Fear.
*Weak,* the SoulNet whispered.
Quantity over quality. That had been the strategy. But looking at the canister of Originium—fuel for the gods, capable of running a city block or burning a hole through reality—Su Yuan realized the flaw in his architecture.
He was building a supercomputer out of pocket calculators.
The chip the White Suit—Lady Vermilion's proxy, though he didn't know the name yet—had given him lay next to the canister. Translucent. Expensive. It was an ID tag for a dead man, a ghost key to the Upper City.
It lit up.
No sound. No beep. Just a sudden, piercing blue light that cut through the gloom of the room.
The light projected a grid onto the peeling wallpaper.
**[ INVITATION: 09:00 HOURS. ]**
**[ LOCATION: SPIRE TIER 1. THE VERMILION CONSERVATORY. ]**
**[ ATTENDANCE: MANDATORY. ]**
Mandatory.
Su Yuan picked up the chip. It was warm. They knew he was watching. They knew the transaction was finished, and now they wanted the service plan.
"I don't do house calls," Su Yuan muttered.
He walked to the corner of the room where his workbench lay buried under scavenged electronics. He pushed aside a stack of fried motherboards and uncovered the drone.
It was a jagged, ugly thing. He'd built it from the carcass of a police surveillance unit and the rotors of a heavy-lift ventilation fan. It didn't have the sleek white shell of Spire tech. It was matte black, taped together, bristling with antennas that looked like insect legs.
He sat in his chair and pulled the neural interface cable from the back of his neck. He slotted it into the drone's control deck.
*Jack in.*
The room vanished.
The smell of ozone and old noodles was replaced by the cold, binary clarity of the video feed.
**[ SYSTEM: GHOST_VULTURE ONLINE. ]**
**[ BATTERY: 84%. ]**
**[ SIGNAL ENCRYPTION: SOULNET MASKING ACTIVE. ]**
Su Yuan flexed his mind. The rotors spun up with a shriek that he heard only through the audio sensors. He flew the drone out the window, shattering a pane of already-cracked glass he didn't bother to open.
Up.
He punched the throttle. The drone shot into the smog layer.
For two thousand feet, there was nothing but grey. The heavy metals in the air scrambled the feed, turning the city below into a smear of static. The wind shear was brutal. Su Yuan fought the drift, his physical body in the chair sweating, his hands gripping the armrests, while his mind rode the wind.
Then, he broke through.
The grey ceiling ended.
Su Yuan gasped—a sharp intake of breath in his empty apartment.
Blue.
The sky wasn't the color of television tuned to a dead channel. It was a terrifying, infinite blue. The sun was a physical object, a burning coin of gold, not a diffused glow behind clouds.
And there was the Upper City.
It floated above the smog like a silver crown on a rotting head. Towers of glass and white composite spiraled upward, connected by mag-lev trains that looked like threads of light. There was greenery—actual, chlorophyll-producing plants—spilling from terraces.
*Tier 1.*
He navigated the drone toward the coordinates embedded in the ID chip. The wind here was gentle, filtered by atmospheric stabilizers.
He approached a private landing pad jutting out from a spire that looked like a needle of frozen light. The security grid pinged him.
**[ UNIDENTIFIED CRAFT. STATE PURPOSE. ]**
Su Yuan transmitted the code from the ID chip.
**[ ACCESS GRANTED. WELCOME, GUEST. ]**
The laser turrets tracking his jagged, ugly drone swiveled away.
He set the machine down on a marble terrace. The landing gear—bent rebar—scratched the polished stone.
Su Yuan adjusted the camera focus.
A woman sat at a white iron table ten meters away. She didn't look up. She was pouring tea from a porcelain pot that looked older than the city itself.
She wore red. Not the neon red of the district signs, but a deep, blood-colored velvet that absorbed the sunlight. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, the veins beneath it tracing patterns that hinted at expensive genetic editing.
Lady Vermilion.
Su Yuan spoke through the drone's speaker. He didn't bother filtering the distortion.
"You asked for a meeting."
The woman stopped pouring. She placed the pot down with a soft clink. She looked at the drone—at the camera lens, at him.
Her eyes were violet. Unnaturally so.
"I expected the Architect," she said. Her voice was bored, carrying a cadence of weary amusement. "Instead, I get a flying toaster."
"The Architect is busy," Su Yuan said. "This is safer for both of us."
"Safe." She tasted the word like it was a cheap wine. "I bought a knife from you last night that cuts through physics. I assumed you were a man who appreciated risk."
"I appreciate leverage," Su Yuan replied. "You have the knife. What do you want?"
Vermilion picked up a silver teaspoon and stirred her tea. "The knife is... quaint. My engineers are currently taking it apart. They tell me the metal is infused with 'noise.' That the molecular structure is held together by something that resembles a scream."
She smiled. It didn't reach her eyes.
"They can't replicate it. Every time they try to scan the enchantment, the data corrupts. It breaks their sensors."
"It's proprietary," Su Yuan said.
"It's dirty," she corrected. "It's tech built from the mud up. But it works. And that makes it valuable."
She stood up and walked to the edge of the terrace. Below her, the clouds of the Lower City roiled like a boiling sea.
"I am bored, Architect. Do you know what boredom does to a mind like mine? It makes us destructive. We start wars just to see the stock market fluctuate. We edit our own DNA to see if we can dream in new colors."
She turned back to the drone.
"I want exclusive rights. Whatever you build—the knives, the keys, the shields—I want the patent. I want to be the only house in the Upper City that sells the 'Ghost' line."
Su Yuan's mind raced. He was sitting in a chair that wobbled, forty floors above a sewer, negotiating with a woman who could buy his entire block and turn it into a parking lot.
He needed to get the SoulNet in here.
The *Genesis Protocol* remained silent, but Su Yuan felt the pressure of it. A waiting game.
"I don't sell patents," Su Yuan said. "I sell licenses."
"A license," she scoffed. "And what are your terms?"
"You get the tech. You get the knives, the armor, the codes. Exclusive distribution in the Upper City."
"And in exchange?"
"Access," Su Yuan said. "I need materials. Originium. Nanoweave. Neural processors grade A or higher. And I need a dedicated server node in the Upper City to handle the... complexity of the encryption."
Vermilion paused. She tapped her chin with a fingernail that looked like polished onyx.
"A server node," she mused. "You want to run your code on my hardware."
"The encryption is heavy," Su Yuan lied smoothly. "My systems down below can't handle the update cycles. If you want the weapons to keep working, they need to phone home to a processor that doesn't choke on the math."
It was a trap. A blatant, Trojan Horse trap.
But it was wrapped in arrogance. He was betting on her belief that nothing from the Lower City could possibly threaten her firewalls.
Vermilion looked at the drone. She saw a heap of scrap metal piloted by a scavenger. She didn't see a threat. She saw a pet.
"Very well," she said. "I have a private server farm in the sub-basement of this tower. I'll grant you a partition. Encrypted, of course. I'll have my IT director monitor the traffic."
"Of course," Su Yuan said.
"But," she added, her voice hardening. "If the weapons stop working, or if I find you selling to House Azure or House Sterling... I won't send the Spire Guard. I will simply turn off the atmospheric stabilizers above your sector."
Su Yuan felt a chill that had nothing to do with the draft in his room. She would suffocate a hundred thousand people to settle a breach of contract.
"Deal," Su Yuan said.
"Good." She waved a hand dismissively. "My secretary will send the transfer protocols. Now, remove this eyesore from my terrace. It's dripping oil on the marble."
Su Yuan didn't say goodbye. He gunned the rotors.
The drone shot up and backward, peeling away from the pristine white tower. He pushed it into a dive, plunging back toward the grey cloud layer.
As the blue sky vanished and the smog swallowed the camera feed, Su Yuan let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
*Disconnect.*
He ripped the cable from his neck.
The apartment rushed back in—the smell, the noise, the darkness.
He sat there for a moment, shaking.
He had done it. He had a node in the Upper City.
"System," he croaked. "Status."
**[ GENESIS PROTOCOL: OBSERVING. ]**
**[ NEW CONNECTION AVAILABLE: TIER 1 PRIVATE SERVER. ]**
**[ DESIGNATION: VERMILION_GATE. ]**
**[ CAPACITY: UNKNOWN. ]**
Su Yuan turned to the Originium canister.
Now he could work.
He placed his hands on the lead casing.
"Soul Forge," he commanded. "Initiate integration."
The black metal of the *Soul Forge*—still fused into his own biology, lurking in his blood—surged. It didn't need the external interface anymore. He *was* the interface.
He opened the canister.
The light was blinding. The rock inside pulsed with a violet rhythm, not unlike Lady Vermilion's eyes.
Su Yuan grabbed the rock.
It burned. It wasn't heat; it was radiation and raw data. It felt like sticking his hand into a fusion reactor.
"Convert," he gritted out. "Fuel the update."
The *Genesis Protocol* woke up.
**[ HIGH ENERGY SOURCE DETECTED. ]**
**[ ADMIN FRAGMENT 1/9: DECRYPTING... ]**
**[ BYPASSING SECURITY LOCKS... ]**
The pain was exquisite. Su Yuan fell off his chair, curling into a ball on the dirty floor. The Originium dissolved in his grip, turning into streams of violet light that shot up his arm, burning out his veins and rebuilding them with light.
His mind fractured.
He wasn't in the room anymore.
He was in the network.
He saw the forty-one criminal nodes in the Lower City—dim, flickering candles.
And then, he saw the new connection.
*Vermilion_Gate.*
It wasn't a candle. It was a lighthouse.
He pushed his consciousness through the backdoor he had just negotiated. He bypassed the "monitoring" of the IT director—child's play, standard military encryption that the *Soul Forge* ate for breakfast.
He touched the souls of the Upper City.
Su Yuan gasped in the void.
They were... different.
The souls down here, in the muck, were jagged. They were scarred by trauma, sharpened by hunger. They provided chaotic, spikey energy.
But the souls up there?
He brushed against the mind of a servant in the Vermilion tower. Then a guard. Then, briefly, Lady Vermilion herself.
Their souls were smooth. Dense.
Years of perfect nutrition. Genetic editing to remove defects. No trauma. No fear of starvation.
They were like batteries that had been kept at 100% charge for generations.
**[ ANALYSIS: HIGH-GRADE SOUL DATA. ]**
**[ PURITY: 98%. ]**
**[ COMPUTING EFFICIENCY: 500% INCREASE. ]**
Su Yuan laughed. It was a wet, ragged sound in the silence of his mind.
They thought they were the masters. They thought their wealth and their walls protected them. But they had spent centuries making themselves into the perfect fuel.
"System," Su Yuan thought. "Establish the drain."
**[ WARNING: AGGRESSIVE DRAIN WILL BE DETECTED. ]**
"No," Su Yuan corrected. "Passive. Background process. Take the excess. The boredom. The ennui. They have so much energy they don't know what to do with it."
**[ INITIATING PARASITIC ALGORITHM... ]**
**[ TARGET: HOUSE VERMILION. ]**
He felt the surge. It wasn't the trickle he got from the gangs. It was a river.
His headache vanished. The *Soul Forge* expanded, opening a second slot in his inventory instantly.
**[ SLOT 2: UNLOCKED. ]**
Su Yuan opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor of his apartment. The Originium canister was empty, just grey dust at the bottom.
He stood up. He felt stronger. Faster. The world seemed to move in slow motion.
He looked at the datapad on his desk. The schematic for the *Whisper Blade* was still there.
"Lady Vermilion wants exclusive rights," Su Yuan said to the empty room.
He picked up a scrap of metal from the floor.
"Let's give her a product line."
He activated the *Soul Forge*.
This time, he didn't use the trash data of the slums. He used the high-octane, premium-grade soul power he was siphoning from the lady's own household.
The metal in his hand shifted. It didn't just turn grey. It turned a deep, velvet red.
**[ CRAFTING: THE CRIMSON OATH. ]**
**[ TYPE: RING. ]**
**[ EFFECT: CONNECTS USER TO THE SOULNET. GRANTS MINOR REGENERATION. ]**
**[ HIDDEN ATTRIBUTE: LOYALTY OVERRIDE. ]**
Su Yuan smiled.
She wanted to be the only house selling his tech? Fine. He would make jewelry. Fashionable, expensive, must-have accessories for the elite.
Every ring a shackle. Every necklace a node.
He would dress the Upper City in chains, and they would thank him for the privilege.
A knock at the door.
Su Yuan froze. The *Iron Key* in his pocket didn't vibrate. No electronics.
He walked to the door, the red metal ring still warm in his hand. He looked through the peephole.
It was Li Wei. The kid looked terrified.
Su Yuan opened the door.
"Boss," Li Wei panted, leaning against the frame. "You need to see this."
"See what?"
"The news. The Spire... they just announced something."
Su Yuan stepped into the hall. A public screen at the end of the corridor was flickering with the emergency broadcast signal.
The face on the screen wasn't a news anchor. It was a mask. A golden, featureless mask.
A Celestial.
Su Yuan felt the blood drain from his face. They never showed themselves. Never.
The voice was synthesized, booming through the cracked speakers of the hallway.
"CITIZENS OF SECTOR 7. WE HAVE DETECTED AN UNAUTHORIZED EVOLUTION IN THE SYSTEM."
The mask tilted slightly.
"THE GENESIS PROTOCOL HAS FLAGGED A VARIANCE. TO PROTECT THE INTEGRITY OF THE HUMAN FILE, A PURGE CYCLE WILL BEGIN IN 24 HOURS."
Li Wei grabbed Su Yuan's arm. "Purge cycle? What does that mean?"
Su Yuan watched the screen.
"It means they're not sending police," Su Yuan said softly. "They're going to reboot the sector."
"Reboot?"
"They're going to kill everyone and start over."
Su Yuan looked at the ring in his hand. The link to the Upper City.
He had twenty-four hours.
He had a back door. He had a fuel source. And now, he had a deadline.
"Go," Su Yuan ordered Li Wei. "Gather the inner circle. Get to the sub-basement. The deep ones. Past the sewers."
"Where are you going?" Li Wei asked.
Su Yuan closed his fist over the Crimson Oath.
"I have a delivery to make," Su Yuan said. "If they want a reboot, I'm going to give them a system crash."
He walked back into his apartment and grabbed the trench coat.
The game had changed. It wasn't about profit anymore. It was about survival.
And the only way to stop the hand that held the delete key was to chop it off.
Su Yuan checked his internal clock.
23 hours, 58 minutes.
**[ ADMIN PRIVILEGE: 1/9 ACTIVE. ]**
**[ NEXT FRAGMENT LOCATION: THE ARCHIVES. ]**
"Time to visit the library," he whispered.
He stepped out into the hall, leaving the empty canister of Originium behind. The *SoulNet* hummed, ten thousand voices in the lower city screaming in panic as the news spread, and a hundred voices in the upper city yawning in boredom.
He would bridge that gap. With fire.