Through the city's grimy skylight, dark clouds churned like industrial waste in a mixing vat. Perfect. Just what I needed after a full day bent in Finch's lab, a downpour to wade through.

  My stomach growled loud enough to compete with the thunder. Twenty-four hours of hyperfocus had left me hollow. The protein bars stashed in my pocket weren't going to cut it.

  The storm hit just as I reached Chen's stall, rain slicing down in sheets that cleared the street in seconds. I slipped under the plastic awning, water dripping from my hair onto the worn counter.

  "Hello, Chen. Give me a double portion, with extra pork," I added. The credit balance on my wrist display showed 103 credits remaining. The number made my chest tight, but not for long. A big payday was coming, so I could afford to live a little.

  "Coming right up," Chen's voice came from the back, his hands a mirage as he blended spices and broths with fresh noodles in a big pot.

  In no time at all, a large bowl of pork noodles appeared before me. My hands moved towards the chili sauce but stopped halfway. Maybe this wasn't such a great idea...

  "You look like hell, kid," Chen added, his voice covered by a sheet of concern.

  "Just a rough shift," I said, taking a small break from wolfing down the noodles. "Nothing new."

  I remembered my old life at the Junkyard. Sixteen-hour double shifts in smog and smoldering heat. Calling it hell would be an understatement. No wonder over 40% of workers don't live past 30, but there are more than enough bottom urchins to spare, and no one will miss them.

  "Drink this," Chen said, pushing a small shot glass towards me with a metallic-looking liquid inside. "It should help."

  Eyebrow raised, I gave the glass a second look. A normal urchin would think it's just a weird drink and down it. I knew better. Military-grade tonic. Designed to keep soldiers in peak condition for weeks in a row, if needed, with minimal aftereffects. Not exactly expensive but quite hard to get.

  I got the shot and took a small sip. The exhaustion drained out of me the moment I swallowed. My sore muscles sprang back to life while my heart entered into overdrive, pumping more oxygen through my body. Downing the glass helped stabilize the effects.

  Chen looked at me half expectant, half concerned that something might go wrong, but there was no such thing. This stuff was really stable, used for centuries.

  Even so, I still couldn't understand why he would bother to help me. My memories of San Marino were filled with death and despair. I could count on one hand the good memories from before meeting Daisy. Of course, I was aware there were still good people hidden here and there, but most were jackals that would trample anyone for a few extra credits or the promise of a good opportunity.

  "Thank you, Chen," I said, "I'll remember this." Swiping my card on the counter, 8 credits got deducted, and I made my way back towards the workshop.

  It was Monday. For now, I was still an apprentice, and I had a quota to fill.

  I descended the worn metal stairs into Dana's underground workshop, each step bringing me deeper into the familiar cacophony of machines and desperation. The air grew thicker, heavier with each level; a soup of oil fumes, scorched metal, and the raw smell of too many bodies working too hard in too little space.

  The main floor spread out before me like an industrial arena. Massive fabricators and welding stations lined the walls, their rhythmic thunder punctuated by the hiss of plasma torches. Through the haze, I watched grease-stained teenagers, most barely into their teens, bent over their workstations, faces locked in concentration as they repaired everything from nav units to kitchen appliances.

  "You call that a clean solder joint? My dead grandmother could do better with her eyes closed!" Dana's voice cut through the din like a plasma blade. Some poor kid at station twelve shrank into himself as she loomed over his shoulder, her cybernetic eye glowing red through the smoky air. "Redo it. All of it."

  I slipped past them to my own station, trying not to draw attention. Another apprentice fumbled a diagnostic tool, and Dana pounced. "What are you doing with that probe, playing spaceship? That's sensitive equipment!"

  The kid's face crumpled, but he kept working. Smart. Out in the streets, showing weakness meant getting eaten alive. In here, Dana's bark was worse than her bite, though try telling that to the trembling apprentices facing her wrath for the first time.

  I'd seen what happened to kids who lost their apprenticeships. They ended up in the recycling yards, breaking down toxic components with their bare hands, or worse, in the pleasure districts, where they would become just another commodity to be consumed. Dana's workshop might be harsh, but it was a fortress against the worst fates out there. Every scream, every demanding task, every punishing deadline was another brick in that wall.

  My workstation looked exactly as I remembered it, a graveyard of broken tech waiting for resurrection. A cracked holo-projector, its crystal matrix spiderwebbed but salvageable. Three dead data-pads with fried circuits, probably victims of power surges. A handful of personal comm units with issues ranging from broken screens to corrupted memory cores. Simple fixes, really. Things any third-tier apprentice should handle in a day's work.

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  To my right, my ancient quatix terminal wheezed and flickered, its display barely holding together as it showed the standard repair forms; one needed for each item. The diagnostic tools lay scattered nearby, some held together with tape and prayers.

  My hands moved with surgical precision, the military tonic turning my movements into a blur. Micro-welder dancing across circuits, diagnostic probe picking up errors faster than the computer could log them. But something felt off. That familiar twinge in my gut, the one I usually got when Mylo was doing his not-quite-cat thing. Like reality had hiccupped.

  "Wright!" Dana's voice snapped me back. She stood at my station, her good eye wide as she looked at my completed pile. "You've cleared your daily quota in..." she checked her wrist display, "twenty-eight minutes?"

  I shrugged, keeping my hands busy. "I woke up and realized no one needs a dead weight."

  Her cybernetic eye whirred as she grabbed my arm, scanning. "What the hell did you do, girly?"

  The room tilted sideways. My legs turned to water beneath me. "Damn," I muttered as darkness crept in from the edges. "I knew I missed something."

  The workshop floor rushed up to meet me as everything went black.

  *********************

  Red warning lights flashed across my console. The habitat's power levels had dropped into critical territory months ago. Or was it years? Time meant nothing anymore, just an endless cycle of watching those things try to break in.

  My fingers traced the worn edges of the captain's chair. The leather was cracked, peeling away like my sanity. The emergency backup generators wheezed their last breaths, struggling to maintain what little atmosphere remained.

  Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.

  They never stopped. Day and night, their claws tested every seam, every weld point, searching for weakness. I'd sealed myself in the command center after they breached the lower levels. No more running. No more fighting. Just waiting.

  The darkness outside pressed against the viewports like a living thing. No stars. No hope. Just chittering shadows that moved wrong, that shouldn't exist.

  Crack.

  A sound like breaking ice. My eyes drifted to the reinforced wall where a massive claw, bigger than any I'd seen before, punched through the metal like paper. The rush of escaping air howled through the breach, scattering my papers, my last letters home that no one would ever read.

  They poured in through the gap, a writhing mass of legs and mandibles and hunger. In the red emergency lights, their carapaces gleamed like wet obsidian. I didn't move. What was the point? My chest tightened as the air grew thin.

  A sharp pain lanced through my side as the first one reached me. I screamed…

  And shot upright in my bed, drenched in sweat, sheets tangled around my legs.

  The familiar sounds of San Marino filtered through my window, the hum of the night markets, the distant clang of the scrapyards. My hand pressed against my side where phantom pain still lingered.

  'Slap'

  A sharp pain combined with a headache assaulted me, forcing my eyes wide open.

  "You finally up, girly?" Dana asked, her tiny body standing on a metallic chair by my bed while puffing smoke. "You know, you've been out for 34 hours, brat," she added, anger lacing her voice.

  Checking my body, I could still feel it. I knew I missed something. My subconscious was yelling at me but my brain was too overtaxed to perceive it. I thought it was Mylo and his casual reality breaking shenanigans. But no, it was something far simpler.

  'Slap'

  "Stop wasting my time, brat." Dana continued, another stroke of pain assaulting my already heavy head. "What did you do to end up like this?"

  "Drank a Type G military tonic," I said, massaging my head.

  'Swish'

  My hand shot up, intercepting hers before it connected.

  "Do you take me for an idiot?" Dana's voice rose an octave. "That thing is harmless." Her cybernetic eye whirred angrily. "You almost died! No apprentice has died under me in over a decade and I don't intend to start a new trend now."

  "Harmless, yes," I conceded, my brain finally making sense of the situation, "but not when mixed with a copious dose of Gloomfire."

  Everyone in San Marino knew about Gloomfire; those oily patches of light that hung in dark corners where reality wore thin. Most times you'd see wisps of it, barely enough to make your skin itch. But sometimes, when someone got careless with quantum tech or shield generators, you'd get what the junkers called a Glowbirth, a sudden burst that could light up half a block. Those were the dangerous ones, the kind that could cook you from the inside out if you weren't careful.

  I'm being bathed in small amounts of Gloomfire daily due to Mylo's presence. But in the lab, when I decided to play with laws I don't fully grasp, the amount of Gloomfire produced was enough to drown everthing, me included.

  And it just so happens that Type G tonics are extremely sensitive to Gloomfire. Add one plus one and you get an unrelated disaster on your hands.

  "What the hell did you get yourself into, girly?" Dana's voice softened, worry creeping in beneath her usual gruffness.

  I understood her concern. Gloomfire wasn't exactly front-page news when it showed up in trace amounts, but the kind of concentration that I was exposed to? That meant quantum tech. Expensive, illegal and rare. The kind that got people disappeared when the wrong entities noticed.

  "Wrong place, wrong time," I said, keeping my voice steady. "Don't worry, I made sure they didn't see me." The lie rolled off my tongue smooth as synthetic silk. In my previous life, I'd learned that the best lies were the ones people wanted to believe.

  'Slap'

  My head snapped sideways, pain exploding behind my eyes. Dana never pulled her punches when she was angry, and right now she was furious.

  "Find me when you're ready to tell the truth," she growled, turning toward the door. She paused in the doorway, her cybernetic eye glowing dimly. "Also don't worry about the credits. I extended your apprenticeship by a month."

  That stopped my thoughts cold. Unexpected didn't begin to cover it. In my previous life, Dana had never shown this kind of... what? Concern? Mercy?

  Reality was already diverging from the path I remembered. Small changes now could cascade into massive differences later. And there were certain events, critical moments that had to play out exactly right. Events I had to prevent, no matter the cost.

  'Ding'

  My phone buzzed against the metal floor, the sound echoing through my tiny room. Three hundred and four notifications lit up the cracked screen, all from an unknown number.

  The same two words repeated: "Come over."