Again," Sarah ordered. Her voice was sharp, cutting through the hum of the ventilation fans.
I stood in the center of the training room, sweat dripping from my nose and stinging my eyes. My jumpsuit was soaked through, clinging to my skin. My lungs burned with every breath — the air tasted like stale and burnt metal.
Across the room, a combat droid — a sleek, silver model armed with a stun-baton — circled me. Its had a single red eye that tracked my every moves.
"I'm empty," I wheezed, dropping my hands to my knees. "No energy left. I'm dry."
"You're not empty," Glitch's voice crackled over the intercom, sounding bored. "I'm reading 15% in your reserves. You're just mentally tired. Your brain is trying to protect you from the strain."
"Stop thinking about the energy as fuel in a tank," Sarah said, walking around the edge of the mat. She moved smoothly like a hunter, despite her weak human body. "Think of it as blood. It's part of you. Don't push it out. Flow with it. Let it move through you."
The droid lunged.
It moved with machine speed, the baton humming with thousands of volts.
I raised my arm to block, purely on instinct. The stun-baton slammed against my forearm.
ZAP.
Pain shot through my body, locking every muscle tight. White light flashed behind my eyes. But this time, I didn't scream. I didn't collapse. I gritted my teeth and focused on the pain.
[Skill: Energy Siphon]
I didn't try to drain the whole droid. That would take too long. I just drained the hit.
My skin glowed faintly blue. The electricity from the baton didn't fry my nerves — it swirled around my wrist, sucked into the black hole of my Class. It felt cold, then hot, then powerful.
[XP GAINED: +5]
I grabbed the droid's arm while it was still recovering from the strike.
[Skill: Discharge]
I released the energy I'd just absorbed, firing it back into the droid's chest point-blank.
BOOM.
The droid flew backward, crashing into the reinforced wall. Its chest plate was smoking, and the wire inside had melted from the blast. It twitched once and shut down.
"Good," Sarah said, nodding slowly. "But you're too slow. If that was a Reaper, you'd be dead. Reapers don't pause after a strike."
She tapped a button on her tablet.
Two more droids stepped out of the alcoves. These ones were bigger. They had bladed arms instead of batons.
"Level 2 difficulty," Sarah said, with a hint of a smile appearing on her lips. "Begin."
[TIME SKIP: 3 DAYS LATER]
For three days, we lived in the bunker.
Time lost its meaning underground. No sun, no day, no night. Just the hum of Glitch's servers and the sound of my own breathing.
I didn't sleep much. When I wasn't fighting droids, Glitch was teaching me about the System.
"Here," Glitch said, sliding a tablet across the pizza-stained table. "Memorize this."
It was a map of the Network. Not a map of streets — a map of data.
"Technomancy isn't magic," Glitch explained, chewing on a crust of three-day-old pepperoni pizza. "It's code. Everything in this city has an address. The lights, the doors, the coffee machine, the guns. They're all connected. They're all talking to each other, all the time."
He pointed to my wrist-comp, which was now built into a sleek black gauntlet he'd put together for me.
"Your Devourer ability is a brute-force hack. You break the lock by smashing it with a hammer. It works, but it's loud, and It sets off alarms."
He tapped the screen.
"But you have Network Sense now. You can see the code. You need to learn control. Look at this."
He tossed me a small, encrypted data-pad. A standard corporate lock — heavy-duty security.
"Unlock it. Without frying it."
I stared at the pad. Normally, I would just drain the battery until the lock gave up. But that would destroy the data inside.
I closed my eyes. I reached out with my mind.
At first, I saw nothing. Then, slowly, the world dissolved into lines of light. I saw the power source of the pad — a small red pulse. I saw the lock — a knot of blue thorns wrapped tight around the core.
It felt tight.
Instead of burning through it, I tried to untie it. I followed the flow of energy. Found the weak point. Pushed... gently. I slipped a small bit of my own energy into the gap.
CLICK.
The pad lit up green. [ACCESS GRANTED]
I opened my eyes.
"Level 6," I whispered, looking at my stats.
[NAME: ELIAS]
[CLASS: DEVOURER]
[LEVEL: 6]
[STR: 12 — Above Average]
[AGI: 14 — Athlete]
[INT: 18 — Genius]
[SKILLS: ENERGY SIPHON, DISCHARGE, OVERCHARGE, WEAPON HACK, NETWORK SENSE]
"You're learning," Glitch said, looking impressed. "You're not just a blunt instrument anymore. You're a scalpel."
He spun his chair around. "But the Penitentiary... that's the big leagues. That's not a data-pad. That's a fortress."
[THE NIGHT BEFORE THE HEIST]
The bunker felt smaller that night. The tension was thick enough to choke on.
I found Sarah sitting outside the bunker entrance, on a ledge overlooking the pipe maze. Above us, through the cracks in the rusted ceiling of Sector 2, you could just barely see the smoggy sky. The rain had stopped, leaving the industrial district slick and black, reflecting the distant neon glow of the Upper City.
I sat down next to her. She looked tired. The body she was in wasn't built for the stress she was putting on it. Her skin was pale, almost see-through, and I could see the faint blue veins of her brain connection pulsing in her neck.
"You okay?" I asked softly.
"I miss the Aether," she admitted quietly, not looking at me. "It's... quiet there. No pain. No hunger. Just endless creation. If I wanted a mountain, I built one. If I wanted silence, I deleted the wind."
"Why did you leave?" I asked. "If it was paradise?"
She turned to me. Her eyes were sad. "Because I saw the records, Elias. Being an Admin meant I saw everything. I saw what Malachi was doing to the poor. I saw the bodies being flushed out like garbage. I realized that my paradise was built on a graveyard."
She pulled her knees to her chest, shivering in the cold damp air.
"And... I have a daughter," she whispered.
I froze. "You do?"
"She was four years old when I Ascended. I left her behind. I thought... I thought the money I left would keep her safe. I thought I was giving her a better life."
She looked at the Spire — the massive tower of Sector 1, glowing in the distance like a sharp beam of cold white light.
"Malachi took her. He put her in the Penitentiary. She's a political prisoner because of who her mother is. He uses her to keep my old allies in line."
"That's why we're going," I realized. "Not just for the army. But for her."
"Her name is Maya," Sarah said. "She's twenty-four now. I don't even know if she remembers me. I haven't seen her face in twenty years."
I reached out and took her hand. It was ice cold.
"We'll get her back," I promised. "We'll burn the whole prison down if we have to. I don't care about the army. We will get Maya first."
Sarah squeezed my hand. A faint blue light passed between us — not a drain, but a connection. A spark of trust.
"Thank you, Elias."
The heavy steel door behind us hissed open. Glitch poked his head out.
"Hate to interrupt the romance scene," he grinned, ruining the moment. "But the shuttle is ready. And I found a back door into the Sky-Prison's docking bay."
I stood up, feeling the weight of the new armor Glitch had built for me. The Shadow-Weave Suit — matte black, sleek, with blue glowing lines running down the arms that channeled my energy.
I looked at the city one last time.
"Let's go," I said. "It's feeding time."