Mike’s shipping container squatted in the middle tier of the stack. Its faded blue paint was hidden under decades of grime and the rust bloom that stained everything in Sector 4. Someone had stenciled letters along its side a lifetime ago. Company name. Destination port. Time and chemical rain had eaten them into illegible ghosts.

  The climb up the welded rebar ladder made his arms tremble. Halfway up his vision tunneled and black spots chewed at the edges while his newly-reinforced lungs sawed for air. Tumors or crystal or both. They didn’t appreciate verticality.

  He forced himself on with his jaw clenched. The metal rungs burned hot under his fingers. At the top he hauled himself over the lip and into his claimed space. He rolled onto the cool shadowed floor and just lay there for a moment. He listened to his heart smash against his ribs.

  The container smelled like old oil and metal and him. Sweat and sick and scrubbed plastic. He kept it as clean as the heap allowed.

  The door had no real lock. There was just a steel bar he could slide across. The effort of moving trash to get up here deterred most casual thieves anyway. The smart ones knew he had nothing worth stealing beyond a couple of scavenged filters and some scrap.

  They’d be right. For now.

  He sat up with his back pressed against the corrugated wall and took stock. A mat made from layered tarp and flattened cardboard lay at one end. It was thin but familiar. Beside it a crate held his few possessions. There was a coil of scav cable and some pry tools. A scalpel-knife sat there with its last two sharp edges chipped but serviceable. Three mostly functional water filters were stacked like treasure. They were his ticket to whatever rations Riggs’ man grudgingly doled out. A dented pot. A rag bundle of clothes.

  Tucked into the corner and wrapped in oily cloth was the rusty shiv he’d made from a snapped strut. Eight inches of pitted metal ground to a point that would slice or stab. Not that he’d ever used it for more than cutting tough plastic.

  His lungs seized. A dry cough tried to drag air raw across scarred tissue. He bowed forward with it and the spots danced again.

  [HEALTH STATUS: CRITICAL / STABLE]

  [FORECAST: 82% CHANCE OF HOST-VITALS FAILURE WITHOUT FURTHER OPTIMIZATION]

  [SUGGESTION: LEVEL UP]

  The text ghosted against the inside of his eyelids when he blinked. It was too fast to read if he didn’t want to. The gist lodged anyway.

  "Yeah," he rasped. His voice was a scrape. "Working on it."

  He let his head thunk back against the corrugated steel. He felt its faint warmth where the sun had baked the outer wall. Sweat chilled on his skin. The ache from the Dead Zone’s toxic slurry had faded to an angry itch wherever it had soaked through his clothes.

  He closed his eyes again and turned inward deliberately this time. Not toward the hum of vermin but toward the System’s cold cathedral built sudden and crooked in his head.

  "Interface," he murmured. He felt stupid. "Menu. Whatever."

  Something unfolded.

  It wasn't visual. Instead concepts arranged themselves like boxes behind his forehead. Labels bled into his awareness even as parts of them fuzzed and stuttered.

  [STATUS] …. ……. ……….. [—ERROR]

  He flinched at the spike of static through the last corrupted bit. The sense of something trying to render and failing left a taste like burned wires at the back of his throat.

  "Status," he thought. He wasn't sure if he was speaking aloud.

  The focus shifted.

  HOST STATUS: UNSTABLE

  SUBJECT: Mike. LEVEL: 2. SPECIES: Human [Dormant Mutations Detected]

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  [ BIO-METRICS ]

  

  STR (Strength): 4 [CRITICAL WEAKNESS]

  AGI (Agility): 3 [CRITICAL WEAKNESS]

  CON (Constitution): 4 [CRITICAL WEAKNESS]

  INT (Intelligence): 12 [STABLE]

  WIS (Wisdom): 11 [STABLE]

  [ACTIVE SKILLS:]

  – Neural Tether: Connect mind-to-mind with vermin.

  [PASSIVE SKILLS:]

  – Sense Vermin: Radar that detects small lifeforms, grows with INT and WIS

  – Bio-Suppression: Hides mutations and pheromones.

  – Hive Resonance: Grants Stat buffs (STR/AGI/CON) based on the number of active minions max 50% of base stats.

  Mike stared at the numbers. Strength 4. Agility 3. Constitution 4.

  "Trash," Mike whispered. The word scraped his raw throat. "Absolute trash."

  He leaned his head back against the cold metal. An average healthy adult in the chaotic sprawl of the Heap usually sat at a 10 across the board. The spacers and corpo-soldiers living in the upper tiers probably pushed 20 or 30 before they even installed their first chrome.

  And here he was. A three and a four. He wasn't just weak. He was statistically barely alive. The tumors in his lungs and the malnutrition combined with the years of breathing in vaporized heavy metals. The System had quantified his slow death into neat single-digit insults.

  "If the wolf hadn't choked I’d be paste," he admitted to the empty room.

  His attention drifted down the list until it snagged on the one skill he hadn't tested yet.

  [PASSIVE: Hive Resonance]

  "Attribute bonuses..." Mike straightened up. He winced as his bruised ribs protested the movement.

  He needed to know. If he was going to survive the night let alone the week he couldn't rely on base stats lower than a stunted child's. He closed his eyes and opened that new strange hatch in his mind known as the Neural Tether.

  The world around him lit up in a monochrome map of sparks. The container was crawling with life. Mostly roaches. They were the background radiation of the Heap.

  He waited for the sensation.

  It wasn't a number or a gauge. It was a subtle nudge in his subconscious. It was a feeling of empty space in the back of his mind. It was a silent intuition telling him exactly how many hands he had available to hold onto things. Twelve. He could feel twelve distinct voids waiting to be filled.

  Okay Mike thought. He focused on a cluster of sparks near his boot. Let's see how much signal I can push.

  He reached out. The mental action was becoming smoother. It was less like screaming into a void and more like flipping a switch. He snagged a cockroach.

  One.

  He felt a tiny weight settle on his mind. It was like a pebble dropping into a pond.

  The nudge in his mind shifted. One space filled. Eleven remained.

  "One bug fills one slot. Cheap," Mike muttered. He felt nothing different in his body. Still weak. Still aching. The roach’s mind was a simple machine. It was on and off switches wired to hunger and flee. No memories. No images. Just NOW repeated.

  He grabbed another. Then another. Three. Four. Five.

  As the fifth connection snapped into place a subtle shift rippled through his physiology. It wasn't a rush of power. It was quieter than that. The sharp knitting pain in his side dulled just a fraction. The air he sucked into his lungs felt slightly less like broken glass.

  Mike blinked and checked his status. The Constitution stat flickered. It didn't change permanently. A small ghostly +1 hovered next to the 4.

  The pressure in his head was noticeable now. Five pebbles. Five weights pulling at his attention.

  "Five roaches for one point of Constitution," he realized. "It's not much but it's not nothing."

  He pushed it further. He grabbed five more. The mental capacity filled rapidly. Ten slots taken. Only two slivers of space remained in his subconscious. The ghostly number bumped to +2.

  "Okay. Durability comes in numbers."

  But the cost was immediate.

  With ten connections active a pressure mounted at the edges of his awareness. It was like stretching skin. The world outside the container and the broader vermin-hum muffled as if he’d turned down the volume to focus on his chosen few. A faint heat slicked the inside of his skull. It felt like someone had poured warm oil into the crevices of his brain.

  He scanned the mental map again. There were brighter heavier sparks scuttling under the floorboards. Rats.

  Let's trade he thought.

  He severed the roach connections. The mental weight vanished. Immediately the aches returned in full force. His lungs tightened up like a fist. The loss of that small buffer was violent.

  He focused on a rat gnawing on a cable near the door and threw the tether.

  This time the resistance was higher. The rat’s mind was a chaotic knot of hunger and aggression. It was harder to subdue than the simple static-like buzz of a cockroach. Mike clamped down on it and forced obedience.

  Click.

  The feeling in his mind lurched.

  He gasped. That wasn't a pebble. It was a brick. The nudge in his subconscious slammed down hard. He could feel the capacity shrinking. Two slots instantly vanished.

  "Expensive," Mike noted. He wiped a sudden tickle from his upper lip. His hand came away smeared with dark red blood. "One rat costs as much as two roaches."

  He didn't feel any tougher. In fact the rat felt restless in his mind. It was a twitchy nervous energy. He reached out for more and found a nest behind a stack of old batteries. He snagged four more.

  The pressure inside his skull turned into a headache that sat right behind his eyes. The mental count was full. Ten slots consumed by five rats. The last two slots hovered empty and useless. He tried to grab a sixth rat but his mind slipped off it like wet glass. The container was full.

  He breathed out slowly. The metallic taste in his mouth was stronger.

  "Limit reached," he whispered. He wiped his lip again.