Three massive holographic screens hung over the central contract zone, refreshing District 3's rift listings in a continuous, silent cascade.
They were nothing like the paste-and-paper notices slapped onto iron frames in the District 9 slums. These were interactive. A hunter only had to tap an Association badge against the console below to claim, reserve, or review any active contract. I found a vacant glass terminal, pulled out my slate-grey token, and pressed the copper rune to the scanner.
HUMMM.
[WELCOME, RIFTER ANDARAS]
Current Rank: F-Rank
Filter Applied: F-Rank Public Rift Contracts (Solo / Unaffiliated)
I scrolled past herb-gathering and merchant escorts. I didn't need a babysitting job. I needed a rift packed with enough monsters to test both techniques for a few hours and send my point balance climbing.
One listing near the top stopped me.
[CONTRACT: ROCK-SNAKE DEN CLEARANCE — OLD SLAG QUARRY RIFT]
Target: Eliminate 30+ Venomous Rock-Snakes (F-Rank Low to Mid-Grade)
Objective: Clear the lower cavern nest so municipal mining crews can secure the spirit-coal vein.
Reward: 150 Silver Credits + keep all harvested cores and materials.
Location: District 3 Outskirts — Slag Quarry Rift Gate 4
"Thirty venomous rock-snakes," I murmured.
Rock-snakes were mid-grade F-Rank beasts with stone-plated scales, hollow fangs full of paralytic venom, and a nasty talent for exploding out of crevices. For a solo novice with an iron sword, thirty of them in a dark cavern made for a dangerous afternoon.
For me, it was thirty chances to practice and thirty payouts at a tenfold multiplier. And a hundred and fifty silver on top. Registration had cost me two silver's worth of coppers. This would cover it seventy-five times over.
I pressed the badge to the confirmation box.
CLICK.
[CONTRACT ACCEPTED]
Please present your badge at Slag Quarry Rift Gate 4 for entry authorization.
The Slag Quarry Rift lay four miles west of the city center, inside a vast, terraced granite canyon carved out decades ago. It was nothing like the unwatched garbage dumps back home. A towering brass-reinforced arch spanned the entrance, glowing with a stable blue spatial field that hummed with quiet, contained power. Two Association guards in polished grey alloy armor stood at a check-in desk, inspecting badges as hunters filed up the stone ramp.
I walked up the granite approach, Chen's boots clicking steadily on the stone, the canyon wind cool on my bare forearms.
Ahead of me at the desk, two teenagers were handing in their permits. Both wore the same high-end navy silk coats stitched with a silver compass crest, the uniform of the District 3 Celestial Star Academy prep division. A Grade-1 Spirit Sword hung at the boy's belt. The girl carried a slim silver rapier and a leather pouch of alchemy vials that clinked when she moved.
The boy was a tall, broad-shouldered kid named Damon, with neatly trimmed brown hair, and he was making his complaints very loud. "We've been waiting five minutes, officer. My instructor sent us here for our practical field quota. We don't have all day to stand around while you stamp low-grade paperwork."
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The guard didn't look up. His stamp came down with a dull thud. "Rules are rules, kid. Academy or not, everybody checks in."
Damon huffed, snatched his badge back, and turned around just as I stepped up behind him.
His eyes dragged over my stained cloth jacket, my burned-ragged sleeves, my patched trousers. His lip curled. "Great," he muttered, not quietly. "Another dirty freelance scavenger crowding the quarry. Hope he doesn't get bitten and make us waste an hour hauling his body out."
I didn't answer. I just pulled out my iron badge.
The girl beside him, slim, with long dark hair in a clean ponytail, gave him a look of quiet reproach. "Damon, don't be rude." She turned toward me with a small, apologetic smile. "Sorry about him. He's just..."
She stopped.
Her words trailed off completely.
She stood at the entrance to the rift gate, her dark eyes widening as they settled on my face. She blinked once. Twice. A faint pink rose along her cheekbones. Her gaze dropped to my bare forearms, then slowly came back up, as if she were trying to work out where I'd come from.
I paused with the badge halfway out of my pocket, puzzled.
Is there mud on my face? I raised a hand to my cheek. Did I miss a smear of coal dust?
She didn't look away. She took a small step closer, and her posture softened into something shy. "Hi," she said, surprisingly softly. "Are you taking a solo contract in the quarry too?"
Damon's head snapped around. "Maya? What are you doing?" He stepped between us and scowled at my jacket. "It's just a freelancer in rags. Why are you talking to him like that?"
Maya peeked around his shoulder and kept her eyes on me, waiting.
"Rock-snake den clearance," I said, handing my token to the guard.
"Oh! We're clearing the upper ridge for academy credit." Her smile widened slightly. "Maybe we'll see you in the lower caverns?" When I said maybe, Damon cut in, abruptly and to nobody in particular.
"Upper ridge pays peanuts. My father says real hunters don't waste time on the ridge. We should go lower. The lower caverns pay triple."
"Our instructor said upper only," Maya said.
"Our instructor," Damon said, "is a coward."
I'd had my back half turned, but Hyper-Cognition had caught every word, and a slight frown pulled at my face. "The ridge is safer," I said. I hadn't meant to say anything at all. "The lower tunnels are tight, and the snakes drop from above. If you can't see the ledge, you won't see the strike."
Damon turned and gave me a long, flat stare. "Did anyone ask you, scavenger?"
Maya murmured his name. "No," I said. "Nobody did."
"Rifter Andaras, clear for entry," the guard said, passing my badge back. "Mind the venom in the dark channels."
I thanked him and stepped past the pair toward the shimmering blue gate, and as I passed the guard booth, I caught my reflection in its polished glass window.
I stopped.
I hadn't really looked at my own face in days. For fifteen years, the reflection in the rusted mirror above my tenement sink had been a depressing thing: a pale, scrawny kid with dark circles, hollow cheeks, uncombed hair, and the permanent stoop of someone who'd hauled scrap iron six hours a day. A boy who looked as if he'd never once had enough to eat.
The face in the glass didn't look like him.
Unsealing my biology, building a Primordial Core, and forging Ironhide had done something I hadn't noticed from the inside. My skin was clean and clear, scoured of old toxins, the thin white scars on my hands gone. My jawline was sharp. My shoulders filled out the cloth jacket now instead of hanging inside it. I stood straight, because I'd forgotten how to stand any other way.
And my eyes.
They weren't dull and tired and fixed on the floor anymore. It wasn't the gold and black I'd watched flare and fade in the crane booth's glass. But something of it had stayed: a deep, startling clarity, a quiet depth that hadn't been there before, as if Creation and Destruction were folded together somewhere behind them, just out of sight.
I stared for a long moment.
Whose jaw is that? I wondered.
The thought came from nowhere. Somewhere there was a woman with this nose, a man with this set to the shoulders, two people who'd looked at each other across a room and decided, against every law of the cosmos, to try. I'd been given their faces. I'd just never been able to see them in the mirror, because they'd been buried under so much hunger.
My throat went tight. I looked away from the glass.
Well, crap, I thought, because the alternative was something else. So that's why she was staring.
"Maya, come on!" Damon snapped, grabbing her sleeve and towing her toward the portal. "We're wasting daylight talking to strangers!"
Maya let out a tiny, disappointed sigh, but she gave me one last shy wave over her shoulder. "Good luck in the den, Andaras!"
I raised a hand in return. It felt awkward, and I didn't mind.
I watched them vanish into the shimmering blue light, Damon still arguing. I hoped, with a small, uneasy pang, that Maya would win.
Then I adjusted the strap of my bag and stepped through the gate after them.
The spatial distortion wrapped around me for half a heartbeat, pressing on my eardrums, and the warm, bright sun of District 3 gave way to the cold, damp dark of the Slag Quarry Caverns.