“In the mines, your gear lies, your teachers lie, your paycheck lies.

  Only the bugs tell the truth, and the truth is they want you dead.”

  — Common saying among Traninum South High students

  Dad died on Mars and left me two things: his name, and the certainty that everything else would cost blood and scrap metal.

  So here I was. Twenty years old, choking down Jeup Protein-Rich Paste? in a school-mine cafeteria, calculating how many more fights until I could afford system-grade armor plate for my next upgrade… and the numbers on my HUD were dying.

  [Sol balance: ￠1???6??5??4??]

  “Bugged again,” I hissed, smacking the side of my headset until the AI chip settled. The number didn’t; still pathetic, not enough for real gear.

  I rolled my eyes and headed to the locker room to suit up for the “mining” shift.

  My armor hung on its rack; a patchwork of scuffed plating and stitched synth-leather I’d built myself, one shoulder pauldron loose enough to rattle when I walked. Around me, most of the other kids pulled on their standard school-issue gear, all identical, boring gray. Mine was streaked with black grime and held together with improvised welds, but it was mine.

  And it worked. Mom kept offering to buy me gear with money from selling our Mars house, but I kept saying no. Some things you don’t buy.

  You build them.

  Call me stubborn; it’s a family trait.

  My only real companions were two low-grade plasma pistols: one with a cracked casing that whistled when it cooled, the other bound with heat-tape to keep the coil assembly from rattling loose mid-shot.

  I’d always dreamed of crafting system-approved weapons, not these junkers, but that wasn’t possible without a system of my own.

  I checked myself in the locker mirror and let out a dry laugh. My friends from Creston System Prep were out there learning system skills and leveling up, and here I was. Half-white, half-Vietnamese Martian in scuffed armor, heading into the dark to mine Traninum on Earth 2.0.

  “Here we go again,” I muttered, slamming the locker shut and turning toward the yawning black of the tunnel entrance.

  When the mine swallowed me whole, a message flared on my HUD.

  [Flash questionnaire!]

  I grunted and switched to audio only. “Lazy teacher,” I muttered, continuing my preparations.

  “Dash! Heading down?” My teacher’s voice crackled through, far too cheery. “Quick one: what’s the difference between an incursion and native spawning?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Native spawns are local. Incursions are invasions. Can we skip to—”

  “One point! Now for some math—”

  “Couldn’t you just start—”

  [DANGER! Flash questionnaire ended!]

  The school AI cut the call. Even my crappy headset mic had picked up something skittering in the distance.

  The bugs were coming.

  We called them bugs. Easier than trying to pronounce whatever mouthful the [System] labeled them… something like Xx’thariens of Burak-Ma. But if it skittered like a bug, hissed like a bug, and exploded in blue goo when you shot it?

  It was a bug.

  “Well, thanks bugs. I hate math anyway,” I muttered, straining to listen.

  Screeches echoed down the tunnels: high, metallic shrieks that made my ears ring under my helmet. Each step forward pulled me closer to that sound, and it never stopped screaming. Drawn to heat, noise, blood... and when you killed them, they dropped [Traninum].

  That was the only reason I was still down here. Quota was quota. If I didn’t bag at least five shards today, I’d lose school credits again. And if Mom found out, she’d ship me to a proper school… the kind with sunlight and uniforms.

  One pistol blinked dull green on its cracked side panel. The other wheezed out a puff of warm air. Reliable in the way old junk was: not good, but familiar.

  Then I turned the corner.

  Six of them.

  Hunched low, crab-walking over fractured stone, carapaces gleaming oil-black and sickly green under the tunnel lights. All wrong angles and twitching motions. Their eyes, too many to count, blinked out of sync like broken glass.

  Mandibles clicked as they tilted their heads, sensors twitching, searching for heat or breath or whatever the hell they hunted by.

  They hadn’t noticed me yet, but my shin guard caught and clanked against the rock. The sound echoed, loud and stupid.

  All six heads snapped toward me as they shrieked and lunged, claws gouging rock, legs churning like pistons. “Shit, here we go,” I muttered, backpedaling as my dented shin plate caught on every other step.

  I yanked both pistols free and flicked off the safeties, and the red indicators flared as the coils whined to life. The right pistol charged first with a loud ping.

  The lead bug was almost on me.

  I fired.

  A bolt of molten red punched through its torso. It kept coming for a moment, then exploded in a spray of blue gore.

  Traninum shards glinted in the mess. “Thanks for the tip,” I grunted just when the left pistol chimed. I fired again; another bug disintegrated mid-lunge, nothing left but smoke and twitching legs.

  The rest adapted.

  They began zig-zagging, darting in unpredictable bursts. Clever little bastards. I tracked one mid-leap and fired; it flipped backward into stone. Another caught a bolt through the neck, its head snapping clean off.

  Two left.

  The tunnel reeked of musk and scorched metal, and my visor fogged with heat. Four shots each… that’s all the pistols could handle before overheating.

  Time for something sharper.

  I reached over my shoulder and drew the blade strapped beneath my pack. The family heirloom, one of the first [System] weapons. Great-grandpa called it [Sharp Sword], which told you everything about his creativity stat.

  But the edge was still perfect.

  The nearest bug lunged.

  I sidestepped, knee joint grinding, and swung. The blade met carapace and sliced clean through. The upper half toppled forward, legs still spasming. “This—” I reset my stance, blade dripping blue, “—is why I’m not bottom-tier!”

  I laughed, sweat stinging my eyes, and turned toward the last one.

  It was already mid-air; a black blur streaking toward me, claws outstretched, mandibles wide, screeching like a broken saw.

  The impact hit my right side hard enough to knock the breath out of me. My shoulder armor groaned, a fresh dent popping into the plating like crushed foil. Teeth scraped across the metal with a horrible screet-chk, biting but not breaking through.

  “Damn—” I twisted, dropped my weight, and brought the sword around in a tight arc. The edge caught the bug beneath its jointed maw and carved through with a gritty, vibrating slice.

  It fell in two twitching halves at my feet, legs kicking at nothing, blue ichor splattering across my boots.

  I exhaled hard. My right arm was numb from the impact.

  “Not my cleanest kill,” I muttered, scanning the carnage. “But better than nothing, right, AI?”

  “Sorry, Dash. Battle analysis plugin not installed. You can buy—”

  “Stop.” I cut it off with a grunt. The voice droned through my cheap headset speaker, garbled and useless, about as helpful as a wet rock.

  The [System] was an alien AI, and it hated when we tried to build another, so it limited us. But still… there had to be something better than a chip I’d pulled from the trash.

  I snorted. “Figures.”

  I stepped over a half-splattered thorax and crouched beside the first corpse. My gloves squelched as I pried open the cracked carapace, heat still rolling off in rippling waves.

  There: [Traninum]. Buried deep in the mess, pulsing faintly, as if it had its own heartbeat. I grabbed the chunk with both hands and tugged. It came free with a wet shhlok, leaving a line of blue slime down my forearm.

  Still humming with energy. Still worth credits. I collected the rest and dropped each chunk into my side pouch. Click. The seal hissed shut.

  After a couple more fights with bugs, I headed for one of the school’s exchange stations. Nobody was queuing, so I dumped the Traninum into the old automatic [Currency Exchange Machine], a rusted beast that looked like it’d been dragged from a museum and kicked down every stair on Earth 2.0.

  The paint was a sickly green-white, flaking to bare steel. A faded logo on the side read Fitro Inc. Machinery?, half the letters scraped off like someone tried to erase the company’s shame before “donating” it to us.

  The intake hatch clunked open with a wheeze, swallowed the [Traninum], and rattled for a few seconds before the screen flickered to life.

  Ding!

  The cracked display lit up cheerfully yellow, completely at odds with the grime.

  I pulled up my HUD.

  Standard day-pay stipend: ￠60

  Bonus: ￠60

  Bonus secured… hopefully enough to keep Mom off my back for another week. The tax on our old Earth 2.0 family home was bleeding us dry, and she was getting restless. “Yay, school-worker rights…” I muttered, voice dry as dust.

  I started up the long incline, calves burning with every step. For a while it was just me… boots crunching through dust, the faint hum of power lines in the walls, lights flickering like dying fireflies overhead.

  Then others joined the path: students, miners, whatever we were, and most walked in pairs. I stayed silent and kept moving. No point making friends, when I’d be out of here soon enough.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Before we left the mines, we passed through the sanitization room. I let the steam hiss over my armor, rinsing off the worst of the grime, but skipped the scrubbing. Waste of time. We were supposed to change into clean civilian clothes, head back to civilization looking like proper students.

  Most did.

  I kept my armor on. Walking around in full gear looked cool, right? Erika did the same thing, always strutting through the Ashford terminal in her combat rig like she owned the place. ‘Course, she was a system user.

  When your gear had actual magical runes, I guess you wanted people to see it.

  The tunnel widened onto the platform; half-circle walls stained green from years of grime, warning signs peeling and half-lit. A sign above the drop read:

  TRANINUM SOUTH HIGH—STATION 2

  Below, the transparent rail tunnel gleamed as if someone had buried a piece of a corpo showroom right in the dirt. Probably had some boring name like Tube Rail Alpha or People Mover 7. I didn’t bother asking my AI. The open-source version barely counted as intelligent… more like a bored intern watching me die from a safe distance.

  Then, in a blink, the train appeared. Silent one moment, solid the next. Magic, tech, teleportation… whatever it was, it worked.

  Usually. Schwarzstahl built half the transit on Earth 2.0, even their budget lines ran smooth.

  A hiss of pressure as the panels unfolded and the doors slid open. Students shuffled in, most of them clean. I pulled off my helmet and followed. Inside, the air was colder but still smelled of metal and sweat. The benches were scarred steel, slick with something that might’ve once been someone’s breakfast.

  [Paid: ￠1]

  Good thing I kept the armor on.

  The train hummed, gravity twisting as it pulled away from the station. Next stop: the shopping mall and Eddy’s shop.

  It didn’t take long to get there. The shop was decent enough that even system users showed up sometimes. Made sense—only a third of Earth 2.0 manifested Systems. The rest of us just had to get creative with trash.

  Eddy had everything I needed for tinkering: cracked circuit boards, scavenged plasma regulators, stripped servo motors still smelling faintly of ozone. My kind of chaos, organized only by StrataTech’s ancient franchise AI and the occasional angry label scribbled in permanent marker.

  The place was a maze.

  Hundreds of metal shelves crammed so tight you had to turn sideways to pass through. Stacks of parts towered to the ceiling; wires coiled like alien intestines, vacuum tubes, gear clusters, chipped armor plating, unmarked boxes that hummed with leftover static.

  The counter was thick and stained, like it had seen an incursion… probably had. Just as cluttered: bolts, screws, shattered lens glass, a half-disassembled drone.

  The only other notable thing was the metal door at the back. Industrial gray “oppressive” mesh panel stood where a window should be, barely letting light through. Above it glowed a sickly red bulb.

  “Oi, Eddy! Today’s the day for my armor upgrade,” I grinned, pushing inside. The doorbell chime let out a tired beep. I nodded to the man behind the counter.

  Eddy looked up from his tinkering, monocle HUD flickering. He was probably sixty, and probably lying about it. Dressed like he couldn’t decide if he was hosting a tech expo or crawling under a reactor… fancy workwear, polished boots, a long reinforced apron.

  He even had fingerless gloves.

  “Dash! My biggest customer!” he declared, arms wide.

  I rolled my eyes and glanced up at the glowing sign above the counter: StrataTech Solutions. Right. A corpo chain for tinkers like me. Eddy and I often argued about whether he was a sellout.

  He followed my gaze and shook his head. “Boy, this is called a franchise.”

  “Yeah, yeah…” I nodded sagely, pretending I knew exactly how business licensing worked. “Just let me work, okay?”

  “Need a hand?” He was already leaning under the counter. With a clunk, he pressed a button. The red light over the back door blinked green. “For a discounted cost, of course!”

  “Nah, just lemme find something that’s not total junk,” I said, combing through the armor section. I brushed past piles of cracked pauldrons and chest plates dented like they’d been through a trash compactor.

  Then I stopped.

  Tucked in a plastic bucket, half-buried under leg armor and some mystery fluid, was something that made my heart skip.

  TitanWard Little Line.

  I pulled it out like a holy relic. There was a whole bucket of it… enough for a few full suits.

  Sure, this wasn’t the primo TitanWard Solar Line the big-league system users wore. But it still had the TitanWard insignia, proudly yellow like their Solar Line. Probably mass-produced in some corner factory where quality control meant “checking if it doesn’t explode when bent.”

  But still. TitanWard. The brand that made gear rated for [Incursion-Teal: Level 5]. Their worst was still levels above my best.

  “Hey, Eddy, where’d you get this TitanWard?” I asked, holding it up like treasure dredged from the void.

  Eddy snorted. “Some guy came in with a truckload. Wanted help scrubbing serial numbers.”

  I gave him a blank look, and he smiled, all innocence. “‘Didn’t say I accepted. That armor? Totally unrelated.”

  Yeah. As if any Tago PD detective gave a damn unless it threatened shareholder value. “I’ll take it,” I said, tucking the piece under my arm. “There’s enough here for a full rebuild, right?”

  Eddy nodded, and with a soft clunk, a floor tile slid aside. A floating cart rose from the opening, humming faintly as it adjusted altitude. The tile closed behind it as if nothing had ever moved. “Damn, Eddy... with this setup, I’ll be safe even if the bugs swarm me.”

  Eddy winked. “And hey, if you buy that armor today...” He gestured theatrically at the counter. “New plasma rifles? Special discounted rate at cost. I’ll even take installments.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  He didn’t flinch. “You repaid your last loan last month, so we need a new one, right? Only 16% interest!”

  I gave him a long, suspicious look, then turned toward the gun rack. “Eddy...” I sighed, already scanning the rifles. “I don’t need a loan. Besides, you can’t bribe me with busted junk—”

  But he could.

  Every single rifle was broken, but if I scavenged the coils from the MK-8, the stabilizer from the Revo-13, and maybe rewired the capacitor on the one with duct tape holding the grip together? I could build something that hit harder than my current setup.

  I let out a low whistle and tossed three of the least-dead ones onto the hovering cart.

  “Kid, I promised your dad. And besides, you’re the richest damn customer who comes through that door,” he said like he’d won the argument before it started. “You’ll get the money.”

  I scoffed. “I’m not rich… anymore. And I’m not a kid.” I stabbed a finger at the ground for emphasis. “I left Creston System Prep half a year ago.”

  Eddy just shrugged and started fiddling with the chip scanner, like arguing with me ranked somewhere between polishing rust and licking batteries. “Come on,” he said, waving me over. “Pay up and sign for the loan.”

  I didn’t argue.

  Grinning like an idiot, I nearly jogged to the counter, the floating cart humming obediently behind me.

  “Okay, pay up first.”

  I snorted and flicked my wrist, trying to send him the credits.

  Nothing happened.

  “AI...!!” I hissed under my breath. “That was your cue. Transfer the funds.”

  My cheap earpiece crackled. “Yes, Dash. Which account would you prefer to use? I will—” I cut it off with a wave and a groan.

  Eyes closed. Head tilted back and my dignity bleeding out.

  Eddy was already laughing. “Dash, dash... I’ve got an excellent selection of AI chips, you know.” He swept a hand dramatically over the counter like he was presenting fine jewelry.

  What he actually showed were scratched-up slabs with handwritten labels: “Maybe Works” and “Speech V3.2 (HALLUCINATION ONLY 50%).”

  One looked suspiciously like it had teeth marks.

  Cheap, though.

  Without a word, I placed my hand over the payment pad. A double chime rang out. “Thanks, Eddy. I’ll repay it!”

  [Loan: ￠1000]

  [Paid: ￠2500]

  [Sol balance: ￠214]

  At the sound of Eddy’s laughter, I headed for the back room, also known as:

  [StrataTech Solutions Ultimate Tinkering Room Pro v6, fully furnished]

  The room buzzed with a low electric hum, walls cluttered with racks of precision tools. Auto-hammers, plasma welders, arc torches, grease-stained pliers with bite marks on the grip.

  Fully furnished.

  Sure.

  A lone workbench dominated the center, scarred with heat damage and chemical stains, surrounded by flickering lamps that cast everything in twitchy blue light. The air smelled of scorched polymer.

  I pulled the TitanWard Little Line onto the bench and gave it a once-over.

  It looked impressive… clean seams, angular design, half-faded branding etched near the collar. You could almost believe it had been worn by a system user.

  But once I started poking at it?

  All show.

  Just sturdy metal, barebones to the core. No internal shielding, no kinetic weave, not even basic gel padding. Just thick plating and a TitanWard name slapped on and dented to hell and back, too.

  One shoulder was caved in as if someone had punched it with a mining rig. I sighed and stripped off my armor; the layers peeling away with gritty velcro rips and the dust scattered.

  Beneath the shell was the real secret: my padding and shock-absorbing electronics, all jury-rigged to act like a pseudo-exosuit. Not full power-assist, but enough to keep my joints from screaming every time I moved in full gear.

  One by one, I unhooked the pieces: gel pads, actuator strips, a cracked motion driver held together with adhesive foam. My fingers moved automatically, snapping connectors loose, folding flexible parts, setting aside the salvageable bits.

  Time to make this relic wearable.

  I clamped the TitanWard chest plate onto the bench and flicked on the arc torch. Sparks flew as I smoothed out the worst dents, pressing a cooling block behind to avoid warping the metal. A few rusted rivets refused to cooperate until I introduced them to Mr. Mini-Jackhammer.

  Then came the gutting.

  Damaged internals clattered onto the floor as I pried open access panels and yanked out stripped wiring and fried pressure sensors, tossing them into a bin labeled “Eddy’s Best.” I scavenged better ones from another ruined suit and slotted them in with gentle, precise clicks. Solder smoke curled into the air.

  Elbow piece from suit two, left thigh plate from suit three. I had to shave excess off a shoulder mount just to get the rotation angle right... but eventually it clicked into place. Internals from my old armor, new plating from TitanWard. A match made in Eddy’s shop.

  Three battered suits. One masterpiece.

  Not bad.

  Not corpo-quality, sure. But she’d hold together in the mine. Maybe even give a bug second thoughts.

  Now... the rifle.

  I pulled the first one apart on instinct, fingers twisting latches and sliding off the casing. Serial number? Scraped off so thoroughly it left grooves.

  Eddy...

  Well, whatever. Who cares? Do I work for Guardian Ltd?

  The main chamber was scorched… probably overclocked by some idiot who thought heat sinks were optional. I salvaged the coils from the MK-8 and swapped them in. The fit wasn’t perfect, but a little bracket-bending and thermal paste went a long way.

  From the Revo-13, I extracted the stabilizer. Long and narrow, wrapped in insulation tape like someone tried to isolate it from the rest of the gun.

  Stabilizer. Isolate.

  Whatever.

  I rewired the capacitor from the third rifle, its casing rattling with loose solder. It took the most time: tweezers, microtorch, and about six whispered curses, but I sealed it up with a weld ring and coated the join with conductive gel.

  I snapped the casing back into place and gave it a test grip.

  The balance was... good. Not top-tier firepower, but enough to punch holes in bugs and keep my face intact. The moment I clicked the charge indicator, and it pulsed bright green, I smirked.

  “Now that’s a good gun.”

  And it was mine.

  Well, on credit from Eddy, but... mine.

  I grinned and slipped into the new armor one limb at a time; the plates clinking softly as they nested together. The internal padding hugged just right… tight where it needed to be, flexible where it counted and the motion sensors purred to life with a satisfying click-hum. I rolled my shoulders to test the fit.

  Damn.

  It felt like someone else’s armor… someone wealthier. I slung the rifle over my shoulder, secured my sword to my side, and checked both pistols on my hips with a quick slap and twist.

  When I stepped out of the workshop fog, Eddy gave me a long, exaggerated once-over. “Took you long enough.” He nodded slowly. “But... good job, kid.” Then he burst into laughter that echoed off the steel shelves. “You look like a cosplayer pretending to be a system user. Where’s your theme music?”

  “Fuck off,” I muttered with a crooked grin. I spun on my heel and called over my shoulder, “Next time I see you, I’m buying your entire shop!”

  Eddy’s place was tucked deep inside the Ashford Terminal, which sounded like a sleepy train station but was really just a glorified shopping mall owned by that Palistra prick.

  There was a tiny, crooked sign beside the main entrance that read “Ashford Terminal” in fading white paint, right under a glossy, five-meter-tall corporate plaque:

  Palistra Apex Markets Holdings — Building Your Future Since Ours Began

  Nobody had the guts or budget to scrape it off. The fine was enough to feed a clerk’s family for a year.

  The terminal itself was a fifty-story monster of steel and grime, wrapped around a massive central shaft. A yawning hole in the middle let you peer straight down from top to bottom, a death wish if you had vertigo. Or enemies. Steel rails ringed each level, bent and rusted, the protective mesh looking more like a budget cut than a safety feature.

  Tired workers crowded the elevators, standing arm-to-arm, pretending they didn’t smell, so I took the stairs.

  I descended fast, two steps at a time, boots clanking against hollow steel grates. Stopped by a small café squeezed between an escort parlor and a gear shop.

  The sign wasn’t glowing. The floor wasn’t clean and it didn’t have the Palistra seal of quality on the door.

  Perfect.

  [Paid: ￠6]

  Not Tian’s, but the old guy behind the counter didn’t ask for ID, and the food didn’t taste like recycled nutrient gel. I bought a steaming bowl of noodles and found a spot in the “official dining area.”

  Which was a joke.

  Palistra’s dining space was a box with a few metal slabs passed off as tables resting at the ground level, each rigged with motion sensors and retractable spikes that extended after twenty minutes to “encourage turnover.” A terminal was embedded in the wall, ready to collect payments if you wanted to stay longer.

  [Only ￠1 per minute!]

  The seating was “premium”, probably cost ten times what my chair at home did. Worth it for one meal, it was my big day. I could afford one luxury before going back to being expendable. I closed my eyes and relaxed, waiting for the noodles to cool before the table beeped.

  Payment or spikes. Yay.

  I pulled up my holo-net, letting the interface fizzle into view above my wrist. Time to scroll through Pulse? and see which gang had gotten themselves into a fight with Tago PD’s “war on crime”.

  But instead of headlines, I got static.

  I frowned and smacked the side of my wrist unit.

  “AI,” I muttered. “Why can’t I load the net?”

  My AI’s voice buzzed in like a bored bureaucrat. “Apologies, Dash. Analysis: the network chip is now part of your left armpit. You built it wrong.”

  “Goddamn it.” I’d forgotten I’d shoved it into the shock absorber when it broke and I needed a replacement fast. Now it was fused to the new armor.

  I sighed, leaned back, paid the terminal, and closed my eyes. It was a long day. The noodles were hot. I could rest for a minute.

  I jolted awake.

  Had I dozed off? A quick check: noodles still warm. Good. I grinned and slurped them down before they got cold.

  Then paused.

  It was... quiet. Too quiet.

  I glanced around. Behind me, a massive holo-screen that dominated the terminal wall flashed with stuttering red light.

  [ALERT!]

  [INCURSION-GRAY: LEVEL 1-3]

  [EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY]

  No siren. Of course not. Palistra hadn’t bothered fixing the emergency system since the last incursion.

  I froze, spoon halfway to my mouth.

  “...Oh,” I said aloud, the word flat.

  I stood slowly, heartbeat already picking up.

  “Oh.”

  I blinked.

  “I’m fucked.”

  TODAY’S CHAPTER IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY Palistra Apex

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