The cost was high. It required two measures of his will for the larger vermin, the same price that the rats demanded. The hunters exacted a heavier toll on his spirit than the scavengers. He performed the calculations in the silence of the container.

  Roaches required a single nudge of his subconscious. Five of them granted a single measure of constitution.

  Rats demanded two of those precious mental spaces. Five of them granted a measure of agility.

  Spiders also claimed two spaces. Five of them granted a measure of strength.

  He looked inward at the limits of his mind. Two voids remained in his subconscious if he were to make use of the rats or the spiders. Alternatively he could mix them.

  Above the mat a solitary rat lay coiled in the shadows. Its presence sat in the upper corner of his mind like a dying ember. Lazy. Half-asleep. Safe.

  He focused his will upon it. He reached out into the void between minds.

  The link snapped into place.

  The sensation was not of numbers or bars filling but of a weight settling upon his soul. The pressure in his skull increased, a distinct nudge against his subconscious telling him the limit was reached. The world burst into him. It was not pictures but impulses and heavy suffocating weights. A dark tunnel. Heat. The scratch of fur against insulation. The taste of plastic gnawed thin.

  Beneath it all and underlaid like the rumble of an earthquake was himself.

  It was wrong to feel oneself from the outside. The rat possessed no word for human. To the beast he was just a massive and smelly heat-radiating thing that moved in and out of its world. Fear tagged the image but it was low-level.

  His presence in its mind gave that image weight. The fear sharpened and the rat's tiny heart ticked faster. It tensed with claws digging into the insulation foam.

  Mike inhaled slowly. Part of him wanted to pull away. The intrusion felt indecent. It was like rifling through the memories of another without consent. Another part of him that was new and cold and pragmatic saw only a resource.

  Out, he projected. It was not a word but a pressure. Move.

  For a second nothing happened. Then the rat shivered and shot out of its nest in a blur of brown and patchy fur to skitter along the ceiling beam. It dropped to the floor and scrambled for the door.

  Mike felt its panic double. Its world had been dislodged.

  The invisible cord between them tugged at his very awareness. The beast's hunger gnawed at him. It was not a physical emptiness in his gut but a ghostly ache. A feedback loop searching for a close. His own stomach cramped in sympathy. The phantom hunger layered over the real one and amplified it. For a moment he genuinely wanted to chew the insulation under his own mat just to make the gnawing stop.

  "Shit," he muttered. He pulled his attention back and loosened the connection until the rat became just another point on his radar. The borrowed hunger faded to a dull echo.

  He looked at his shaking hands.

  He did not yet possess the mental fortitude to become a god. A choice had to be made. To be tough enough to weather a blow. Fast enough to evade the strike. Or strong enough to return the violence.

  "Rats for the brawl. Spiders for the kill. Roaches for the simple act of existing."

  He let the connections fade. The bonus vitality vanished and left him feeling sluggish and heavy once more. But the headache receded to a dull throb and the nosebleed slowed.

  He turned his gaze to the carpet of roaches near his boot. One by one he rebuilt the links. He filled the empty hollows of his mind until ten spaces were occupied. The small measure of relief returned to his ruined lungs.

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  As he seized the tenth a pressure mounted at the edges of his thought. It was like skin being stretched too tight. The world outside of the container and the broader hum of the vermin became muffled. It was as if he had turned down the volume of reality to focus on his chosen few.

  By the twelfth connection he grabbed two more just to test the limit. A spike of pain jabbed just behind his right eye. His vision blurred for a second. When it cleared the inside of the container had gained an extra layer.

  He saw the dim rectangle of light leaking around the door frame. He saw the scuffed floor and the crate. Overlaid upon it all were ghostly impressions. The sensory world of the insect.

  A rough patch of fiber loomed like a forest of dead trees. The acidic sting of cleaning agents tasted like copper on his tongue. The delicious rotting sweetness under the crate called to him. The taste-memory of sugar from some crumb weeks gone lingered in the air.

  He focused and each roach responded. Their attention jerked in the direction his intent pointed. He lifted his hand experimentally and a finger twitched.

  Up, he projected.

  The roaches scuttled in a rough synchrony and climbed the underside of the mat. Their little claws scraped faintly but the sound was magnified in his perception. One hesitated with its less-damaged leg dragging. He felt its strain like a far-off twinge in his own knee.

  Hunger rose from them in a shared wave. Food? Food? Food? The concept thrummed and bounced between them and back into him. His stomach cramped again in a sympathetic reflex.

  He held them still for a count of ten. His breath was shallow as he gauged the strain. The pain behind his eye sharpened with each second like a screw turning.

  Then his own body shifted. The feedback loop was not merely sensory. It was structural.

  Constitution increased.

  The sharp and knitting pain in his side dulled. The air he sucked into his lungs felt less like broken glass and more like sustenance. Twelve lives. Two measures of borrowed fortitude. He was siphoning their resilience but the price was drowning in their starvation.

  When he released the connections one by one the relief sluiced through him. The pain retreated and left behind a faint buzz. The borrowed toughness vanished and his lungs tightened up like a fist again.

  His nose dripped. He wiped it and studiously ignored the dark red streak on his hand.

  He rested his head back again and let the dimness of the container wrap around him. The pain settled into a manageable throb. The crystal-cold in his core flared in small and inquisitive pulses as if testing the edges of its new home.

  Twelve connections at once before the pain became too much. Twelve little bodies he could pilot or push with each of their gnawing needs bleeding into his own.

  If he tried for more it was not hard to imagine the result. His head splitting open from the inside. Thoughts fraying. Pieces of him smeared thin across too many tiny lives until he forgot where he stopped and they began.

  He had seen men lose themselves to less. Riggs kept an enforcer named Kellan who had chewed heat-dust until the tapestry of his mind unravelled. The man walked the sector with a smile that was too wide. He laughed at odd moments as if some private joke tickled his ear. Rumour had it he felt no pain. The truth Mike suspected was worse. Kellan didn't feel anything right anymore. His responses were just echoes of old patterns.

  Mike touched the bridge of his nose and felt the sticky line of drying blood. He could not afford Kellan’s empty smile. Not when the Heap tried to chew him in more obvious ways.

  "So," he said to the air. His voice was rough but steadier. "Limited command. Limited time. The cost is paid in pain and whatever that strain is. And they aren't tools. They are lines I cannot cut without a tug on my own end."

  A laugh bubbled up. It was dry and sharp.

  "Perfect. Useless vermin and a skill that hurts me when I use it. Thanks be to the System. A real upgrade from cancer."

  The System did not reply. Of course it didn’t. It had already made its opinion clear. Optimize or die. Numbers on a tied-off spreadsheet.

  He sat there and let the ache settle before reaching out again. He was more careful this time. Not grabbing. Just brushing.

  He skimmed along the awareness of a roach near the door. He nudged its instinct gently without forcing. There. Soft pressure.

  The roach turned with antennae twitching and moved the way he suggested without the hard compulsion of a full tether. It was like coaxing instead of yanking.

  That tug cost less. It was barely a prickle behind his eyes and more akin to the strain of squinting.

  Better.

  He spent the next hour exploring the edges.

  He coaxed roaches along the walls in spirals and watched how far subtlety took them before their simple brains reset to old patterns. He nudged a rat to test if he could hint at a direction without flipping its terror-switch. He learned that direct control burned through his mental stamina fast while suggestion rode along their existing instincts and barely dented his reserves.

  The limit of his control wasn't just about how many minds he could hook at once. It was about the weight of what he asked of them.

  Making a roach walk in a straight line was light. Making ten attack something twice their size was heavy. Holding that attack while they were crushed and blinded and drowned in blood had been what nearly ripped his head open in the crater. It was not just the number of them.

  By the time the oily light leaking through the container’s seams shifted toward the bruised purple of evening he had pushed himself to the edge of another nosebleed and backed off twice. Each time he stopped before the breaking point the System’s warnings ticked down by imperceptible fractions.

  He ran the power like a water filter. An odd fondness threaded through his exhaustion. Clean in. Dirty out. Do not burn the membrane.