Zahir slammed a heavy metal door shut and bolted it twice. Concrete stairs groaned under his weight as he descended into the flickering gloom below—a basement they called their fallback.
It was a repurposed subfloor beneath an old spice shop in the Slant—a crooked edge of Calvessan built on collapsing hills and scarred bedrock. The tenements here stacked sideways on top of each other, and scaffolding webbed the space between rooftops like a half-collapsed skeleton.
It was home. It was a trap. Sometimes both in the same breath.
The shop above had changed hands a dozen times before it was gutted. Now, it served as a makeshift war room for the hopeless.
Hearing the clangs of someone coming in, Elai looked up first.
He was reclined against a dented storage locker, rolling a copper fidget between tattooed fingers—each motion sharp, deliberate, like he was solving something without realizing it. His dark brown skin caught the flickering light strangely. Fine lines of ink etched across both arms, sleeves of abstract tattoos interwoven with moments of symmetry. His slanted eyes were still, calculating—not cold, but exact.
"You look like shit," he said, not moving.
"I feel like it," Zahir muttered, leaning into the wall. He slid down until he was sitting on the cold concrete, trying to ignore the tight throb in his ribs. He smelled like alley water and blood.
Mekka emerged from the back room—copper-brown skin catching the low light, her toned frame wrapped in minimalist tactical streetwear, her curls pulled back into a plume of frayed ends that crowned her head like a messy tiara, anchored by a silk wrap threaded with metallic beads. Her eyes, dark at first glance, shimmered with flecks of violet and gold beneath the surface.
She didn't say a word, just stepped up and yanked Zahir's coat off before he could protest. Her fingers brushed his jaw, pausing just long enough to register the swelling.
Her silence said more than a lecture ever could.
Brin was hunched over the worktable, cracked mini-slate spread open in front of him. His lean frame buzzed with barely-contained motion—legs bouncing, fingers drumming. A zigzag buzzcut caught the low light, and behind his grin, his eyes darted like he was mid-heist and mid-joke all at once. Around his shoulders, the air shimmered faintly—like heat rising off concrete, though the room wasn't warm.
"You got it?" Zahir asked, voice rough.
Brin grinned, jittery. "Boom. Slip lit their firewall like a cracked lighter in a gas leak. Logs popped out like—'please rob me.'"
"Primer?" Elai asked, already sitting upright.
Brin spun the reader. "Two units. Private coded. Plus some shiny add-ons."
Mekka folded her arms, her tone dry. "You sure it's not bait? Why even log it if they're trying to keep it quiet?"
"They're sloppy," Brin said with a shrug. "They think their lattice seal is uncrackable. They didn't count on a walking glitch frying their handshake buffer."
He pointed at Zahir like he was hyping up a championship fighter. "That's you, by the way."
The Lattice wasn't just a network—it was a monitor, a contract, a leash. Everyone connected. Everyone obeyed. Everyone benefited.
Except Zahir.
His glitch—his Slip—broke things it shouldn't. Not enough to be useful, just enough to be dangerous. Doors stalled. Sensors misfired. ID scans scrambled.
To the system, he wasn't a variable. He was an error message.
Zahir didn't smile. His ribs pulsed with every breath.
The silence that followed prickled like static before lightning. Everyone knew what came next, but not all of them liked it.
Mekka spoke first. "Tell me we're not actually doing this."
Zahir didn't answer.
She pressed. "We don't need a war. There are other holons. We could sign on, lay low, rebuild. Or… just fold in. Play it smart."
Mekka glanced toward the ladder that led back up to street level—eyes distant.
"My mom said we were free. Said the contract was off." Her voice was steady, but her hands had curled into fists. "I believed her."
She looked at Zahir, jaw tight. "I need this to be more than a delay."
Elai stood, arms crossed. "Yeah? You think they'd let you walk just because you signed the right form? BQP wants you poor, bent, and grateful. That's the whole contract."
"Or they burn down your school," Mekka added without looking at him.
The room went still.
Elai's jaw tightened. He looked at Zahir. "We do this, it's not about survival anymore. They need to fold."
Brin looked up, less sure. "Still… if we get caught—"
"Then we lose everything," Zahir said. "Same as if we do nothing."
They nodded—not out of certainty, but because uncertainty was the only thing they had, and this was the sharpest path through it.
---
Two months ago, Zahir made the mistake of walking into BQP territory without a plan. He wanted to get Mekka's parents out of a predatory contract. Thought he could talk his way through. He succeeded—barely—but doomed himself in the process. Deferred the inevitable. He'd told himself it wasn't a mistake. Said it was a gamble. A play.
Now the tribute was due. Two hundred thousand Grithcoin in two days—plus handling. If they failed, BQP would enforce the terms.
Which meant losing their stretch of the Sixth Ward.
And that wasn't just a turf loss. That was a power transfer.
BQP had been grinding toward this moment for years—ever since the old dynasties left and the Slant fractured into unregulated gutters. While other holons played politics up top, BQP played the long game down here. Not with guns or raids—contracts.
Mekka's parents ran one of the last real spots in their sector. A simple place—half bathhouse, half water clinic—but people went there for more than just clean pipes. Something about it settled the nerves. Helped you breathe. Even the Field felt quieter there.
BQP noticed. They always notice when a place gives people their strength back.
They called it protection. But it's not. It's leverage. First, they offer you a bridge—water credit, meds, maybe a lease. Nothing big. Just enough to catch your breath. Then they pull the floor out. Raise the rates. Rewrite the contract. Backdate the fees. By the time you figure it out, your mom's treatments are on pause and your block's on fire.
That's how they do it. They don't kick the door down. They sell you the lock, then charge you monthly to keep it closed. Mekka's parents signed. Elai's school said no. One got shackles, the other got fire.
That's the math.
Their goal wasn't just to control the Slant—it was to awaken it. To turn the whole district into a low-tier innovator engine. Kid by kid, block by block, using that spark to power their whole operation.
Zahir's crew got in the way of that. Warned people off. Disrupted deals. Made folks believe there was another option. That made them a problem. A visible one.
Their only shot was doing the impossible: form a holon of their own. A contract they wrote themselves. One no one else could take away.
In Calvessan, a contract wasn't just paperwork. It was memory—etched into the Lattice, mirrored across every node in the system. Breaking a contract is like blacklisting yourself, like your soul being rejected from the system. Innovators lose access to most of their power. Your reputation score turns to null.
Not that this would be anything different for Zahir. That was his everyday life.
No school credits. No health ledger. No ID hash to sign into anything. Public terminals froze when he got too close. Doors with Lattice locks wouldn't even blink for him. He was always the glitch in the feed. The system didn't blacklist him—it just never logged him in.
People like to talk about being invisible like it's some kind of power. But when your name doesn't show up on the grid? You don't get freedom. You get forgotten.
That's why Holons mattered. They didn't just hold power. They _wrote the record._
Holons acted like sovereign states—economic engines wrapped in ideology. Syndicates, research labs, noble houses, rogue blocs. If you generated value, you got to write the rules.
Rules meant laws, but more than that. _Allocations._ Who gets access to catalysts. Who gets taxed and who gets shielded. Who gets sponsored to ascend—and who gets flagged as a threat. Every vote cast by a Holon shaped what counted as progress, and what counted as crime.
Registering one required at least one Innovator of Base rank or higher, plus enough signed lattice-certified citizen contracts to form a legitimate bloc.
Registering one required three things:
A Base-rank Innovator, to anchor the structure.
A bloc of signed contracts, to show the people were with you.
And proof you could generate value—real value. Field activity, resource movement, catalyst flow. Enough to convince the system you weren't just shouting into the void.
They had already convinced half the Slant to sign contracts behind BQP's backs. That part wasn't the problem.
The problem was the breakthrough. None of them had awakened. Not yet.
And without someone at Base-rank or higher, they couldn't even apply.
Which meant they needed Primers—material components, triggers they could activate to help form their souls into a fixed structure. Then at least one of them would have a Signature.
Even the cheapest ones were ridiculously expensive. So instead of buying them, they were going to steal them.
Zahir didn't think he'd be the one to use one. His Signature—whatever it was—rejected every catalyst he'd ever tried.
But maybe one of his people would break through. Maybe one was close.
That would solve most of it. Enough to qualify. Enough to register.
The economic output part—the value engine? That was the part they hadn't figured out yet. Not fully.
But Zahir figured: get someone through the gate first. Once they were legit, they'd find a way to make the numbers work.
That's why they infiltrated BQP's logistics line.
Zahir's glitch—his Slip—jammed Lattice tech on contact. Shorted nodes. Triggered verification errors. It was unpredictable. Inconvenient. But with the right setup? It was leverage.
They tested it. Built the breach. Wrote the script.
Tonight, it worked.
---
Back in the present, Brin flicked through the intercepted data.
"The old tunnels—we were right. They're connected to BQP's smuggling routes. Hidden lines from before the Collapse."
Mekka frowned. "I don't like it. People disappear down there."
Zahir nodded, pulling a paper scrap from his coat. Hand-drawn notes from salvaged Lattice maps.
"That's why they use 'em. No patrols. No Lattice. No eyes."
Elai's arms stayed folded. "It's not just fear. Those ruins are unstable. You know that pre-collapse shit has weird field dynamics."
"No, I don't know that." Zahir stared at his notes, "We've been through worse."
Mekka shook her head. "So the plan is: sneak into haunted tunnels, jack their goods, and hope we don't die?"
Zahir nodded. "Take only what we need. No drama. No noise. We get in, get out. Enough Primer to break through and register our holon."
He tapped the edge of the map with two fingers. "Brin sets the distraction top-side—something loud enough to pull patrol off the vault corridor for twenty minutes. Maybe less. That's the window."
Mekka looked between them. Her voice was calm, but her eyes softened for a flicker.
"Just… don't get killed, yeah?"
Zahir smirked. "Wasn't on my to-do list."
---
Everyone started gathering gear—LED torches, a crack-blade machete that pulsed with kinetic charge, a single-shot pulse burner with stripped-down scrap rounds.
At the far end of the bench sat four homemade masks. Scavenged from scrap metal, bike visors, and broken filtration rigs—each one shaped like a different kind of dog.
Zahir picked his: a black muzzle rigged with jagged breath-holes and one lens scorched to hell. He then reached into his pack and pulled out a gold chain, looping it around his neck. The pendant glinted—glass-faced, worn edges.
The man inside stared back. Bald head. Cocky smile.
Zahir wiped it with his thumb and tucked it beneath his shirt.
Didn't matter how many layers he wore—it always rested just above his heart.
---
Later, a decommissioned elevator shaft creaked open, revealing a tunnel sloping beneath the city—part catacomb, part tech graveyard. Black cabling lined the walls like veins.
A pack of hounds cast their shadows across the threshold—masks down, breath low, movements synced by tension and trust.
Zahir paused at the threshold.
Somewhere down this path, the plan would break.
And something else—something none of them expected—would wake up.