The world had not changed. The Synth-Marble hallways of Aegis Tower still gleamed under sterile light. The air still carried the ozone tang of active powers and floor polish. The low, ever-present hum of the city beyond the armored glass was the same.
But Kaelen was a stranger in it.
For three days, he had moved through his routines like a ghost piloting a faulty machine. Every gesture felt alien, every glance a potential giveaway. The secret was a live wire in his chest, sparking with a terrifying current that threatened to arc out and burn everything down. His right index finger—the Porcelain Finger—was a constant, cold weight. He kept it curled into his palm, hidden in the pocket of his grey maintenance overalls.
He slept fitfully, haunted by a new nightmare. Not of the acid-death he couldn't remember, but of his own hand touching the dormitory wall and watching the corrosion spread, turning the entire sub-level into a brittle, crumbling hive that collapsed in on him and every other Null. He'd wake with a gasp, the cold solidity of the finger a reassurance and a curse.
The work was his only anchor. The mindless, physical rhythm of scrubbing, hauling, and polishing was a script he could still follow. Today's assignment was the West Observation Deck, a glass-domed perch high on the Tower's flank, used for corporate mixers and press events. A "Light-Sculptor" 3-Star named Iris had hosted a demonstration the night before. The aftermath wasn't stains, but a different kind of residue: microscopic photonic particulates that clung to every surface, making the entire deck smell of burnt sugar and leaving a faint, glittering grit underfoot.
He was on his knees, wiping down the base of a glass parapet, when the door hissed open.
"—absolute travesty of coordination. I had the luminance gradients perfectly mapped to the symphony's crescendo, and some idiot from Logistics routed a cargo drone through my aerial vector!"
Iris. Her voice was a sharp, melodic weapon. She swept onto the deck flanked by two assistants, her body sheathed in a gown of woven light that subtly shifted patterns. She was beautiful, and terrible, like a shard of a fallen star.
One of her assistants, a young man with a data-slate, spotted Kaelen. "You. Null. Have you decontaminated the central dais? The residue there is interfering with Lady Iris's personal aura."
Kaelen kept his head down, the Porcelain Finger tucked tight. "Working on the perimeter first, ma'am. Protocol."
"Protocol is wasting my light," Iris snapped. She didn't even look at him. To her, he was part of the furniture—less, even, because furniture didn't sometimes get in the way. "The dais. Now. And be thorough. I want to feel the purity of the photons when I stand there."
He moved to the central platform, a circle of polished black stone. The photonic grit was thickest here, a faintly luminous dust. As he began wiping, the familiar hollow pressure filled his chest. The purity of the photons. While people like Mara became stains on the floor.
A sudden, sharp pain lanced through his temple. He flinched. A pebble of solidified light, no bigger than a grain of sand, clattered off the stone where his head had been.
"Your frustration is creating dissonant projectiles again, Lady Iris," the assistant murmured.
"It's this place," she hissed. "The mediocrity is palpable. It leeches the artistry from everything." She began to pace, her light-gown flaring. "I need to realign. Let me feel the dais. Now, Null, move."
Kaelen scrambled back, his cleaning rag in hand. Iris stepped onto the platform, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. A look of profound disgust twisted her features. "It's still filthy. I can feel the particulate chaos. It's like static on my skin." She opened her eyes, and her gaze, for the first time, landed directly on Kaelen. It was not a look meant for a person. It was the look one gives a malfunctioning appliance. "You are incompetent. What is the point of you?"
The words were a needle driven straight into the core of the hollow pressure. He saw Mara's stain. Heard Aegis's boots. Felt the ache in his ribs. The live wire in his chest sparked, violently.
A strange sensation bloomed from the Porcelain Finger. Not cold this time, but a deep, resonant thrum, like a tuning fork struck against his soul. It traveled up his arm, a wave of intent seeking an outlet.
Iris was still talking, her voice a distant buzz. "—report you to Facilities. A Null who can't clean is less than worthless. You're a negative value. A drain."
Her heel was tapping impatiently on the dais. The sharp, elegant point of it.
The thrumming in Kaelen's finger focused, sharpened. He wasn't thinking. He was reacting. A silent, furious scream in the prison of his mind directed the energy down, through the floor, towards the source of the tapping contempt.
Crunch.
It wasn't a loud sound. Just a soft, definitive crackle, like stepping on hard-packed snow.
Iris stopped talking. She looked down.
The polished black stone of the dais, for a three-inch radius around the tip of her heel, had turned a milky, opaque white. It was no longer stone. It was brittle, chalky plaster.
She lifted her foot. The altered material crumbled instantly, leaving a small, perfect, ugly pockmark in the flawless platform.
Dead silence filled the observation deck.
Iris stared at the hole. Then, very slowly, she lifted her head and looked at Kaelen. Her expression had shifted from disgust to a kind of frozen, incredulous confusion. Her eyes flicked from his face to his hands, still holding the rag, one finger curled awkwardly inward.
"What," she said, her voice dangerously quiet, "was that?"
The assistants were frozen, data-slates forgotten.
Kaelen's blood turned to ice. The terror was immediate and absolute. He had done the one thing he could not do. He had interacted. He had left a mark that could not be explained by a Null's incompetence.
"A… a flaw in the stone, ma'am," he stammered, the words ash in his mouth. "Sub-surface stress. The cleaning solution must have… reacted."
Iris's eyes narrowed. They were the color of sunlight through an opal, and just then, just as cold. She knew about light, about energy, about matter in its refined states. She did not know about crumbling plaster where there should be reinforced synth-stone. But she knew anomaly.
"You touched nothing," she whispered, more to herself than to him. Her gaze was locked on his hidden hand. "You were over there."
Then the confusion on her face burned away, replaced by a sudden, blazing realization. It wasn't fear. It was interest. The kind of interest a scientist shows a novel, possibly dangerous specimen. The kind of interest a Power-Broker shows an undiscovered asset.
"Hold him," she said, her voice no longer melodic, but flat and commanding.
The two assistants, their own low-level powers (likely minor kinetics or barriers) flickering uncertainly to life, moved forward.
Panic, pure and electric, overrode every other thought in Kaelen's head. Run. The command was primal. As the first assistant reached for his arm, Kaelen didn't think. He swung the hand clutching the cleaning rag.
He didn't mean to use the Porcelain Finger. But in his flailing panic, it was the leading edge of his fist.
It did not connect with the assistant's skin. It grazed the man's reinforced polymer bracer.
CRACK-SHING!
A sound like shattering dinner plates. A web of white, porcelain-like fractures exploded across the surface of the bracer. Then, with a high-pitched whine, the entire piece of armor shattered, falling away from the man's arm in a dozen jagged, opaque pieces.
The assistant screamed, clutching at his now-exposed and bleeding forearm, not from a cut, but from the violent, sudden decompression and the shock of the blast.
The second assistant stumbled back, a weak yellow barrier flickering into existence before him.
Iris didn't move. She just watched, the light of her gown intensifying, casting sharp, dramatic shadows. "Fascinating," she breathed.
Kaelen didn't wait. He turned and ran for the service door. Behind him, he heard Iris's voice, not raised in alarm, but cool and projected, talking to her communicator.
"Security Sub-Level 4. A containment issue on the West Observation Deck. A maintenance Null… appears to be anomalous. He has displayed unregistered matter-alteration effects. Potential latent power manifestation. I want him detained for evaluation. Do not use lethal force. I want him intact."
The door hissed shut behind him, cutting off her words. But they echoed in the stark, concrete service stairwell as he took the steps three at a time, descending into the bowels of the Tower.
Anomalous. Latent power. Evaluation. Intact.
They were not words of safety. They were the words of the system identifying a resource it had misplaced. The Star-Chamber did not tolerate unmeasured variables. They would box him, test him, and if they couldn't rate him, they would dissect him to find out why.
He hit Sub-Level 4 at a sprint, his heart hammering against his crooked ribs. The dim dormitory was mostly empty—the day shift still active. His mind raced, a frantic animal in a trap. They would come here first. They would seal the exits. His cred-stick was worthless for real travel. He had no outside contacts, no hidden boltholes.
Then he saw it. Taped to the side of a rusting locker was a faded, grimy flyer he'd passed a thousand times without seeing.
'THE PIT'
Unofficial Matches. No Ratings. No Rules.
Power Testing & Freelance Recruitment.
Below SECTOR 7, the old storm drain junction.
Ask for Mender.
A place with no ratings. No rules. Where the system's gaze didn't reach. It was a death sentence, likely a trap. It was also the only crack in the wall he could see.
The sound of heavy, rapid footfalls and the crackle of security comms echoed from the main corridor entrance. They were here.
Kaelen tore the flyer from the locker. The Porcelain Finger left a faint, smooth scrape in the metal beneath it.
He had no plan. No power he understood. No hope.
But he had a direction. Into the dark, where the stains didn't get cleaned up. Where a false Null with a porcelain finger might, for a moment, be something the system couldn't define.
He turned and fled deeper into the maze of maintenance tunnels, towards the city's rotting underbelly, leaving the gleaming, brutal lie of the Tower behind. The chase was on.