Shattered Ladder 1-23 (Patreon)

Chapter 23

Jiro's smile was thin, nothing actually kind from the man as he nodded back at Ken.

Ken knew that look, all business and nothing but. 

Wei had it sometimes, back when a customer was doing their best to haggle on a tonic or a brew it was obvious they needed but didn’t want to pay the price for. Business. Only this wasn't herbs and powders; he was trading in blood for plastic, selling his body for a card.

Just so he could have an identity.

"Pleasure.” The tech’s smile slid off his face as he turned around, "Doing business."

He gestured with his human hand toward a reinforced door at the back, the metal of it thick enough to stop almost anything that would break through. Clearly, the look of it hadn’t stopped some people as the thing was already scarred up with old scratches, some of them deep gouges almost half an inch deep. "Equipment's back here. I’m kind enough to hold my part up first." 

His gaze slid back towards them for a moment. “Besides, you seem to stick to your word more than the rat back there.”

“Hey!”

Biting back a sigh at Don’s antics, Ken shared a look with Zee, the blonde raising an eyebrow back at him before a hand to his back pushed him forward. Alright.

The door swung open and they walked through one by one; Zee right behind him with Don in the very back as he followed after Jiro.

Ken flinched as the light shifted only a few steps into the back room, the dull haze from the strips lining the ceiling hitting his eyes as a wave of heat did the same to his skin. The front shop had been cool, quiet in a sterile way he didn’t mind apart from the thrum coming off the walls. 

On the other hand, the back was almost oppresively louder, that same electronic thrumming thicker in his ears. Humidity pressed in on his chest, enough to make him feel like swallowing a mouthful of nothing. Large fans added to that same hum, pushing heat into the air that already tasted like static and further coating the back of his throat with another layer of unpleasantness. 

Wires ran everywhere, just like in the front; organized bundle after organized bundle feeding into black boxes stacked floor to ceiling as lights blinked on them in so many different shades of green and red. His eyes tracked them without meaning to. Like a heartbeat. 

Too many heartbeats, all out of sync.

In the center of it all, though, sat a large black chair, material worn down from who knew how many bodies had sat in it.

That's... His feet stopped moving before his brain caught up, Ken blinking as he took it in. Those are restraints.

Heavy, industrial restraints; thick straps that looked like they were meant to keep a person from escaping rather than just moving. 

"Sit." 

Ken turned as Jiro spoke, the techhead’s voice flat as the man moved off to the side of the room with a tray of tools already in hand. "Sit and don't touch the leads."

Sit? Ken looked at the chair. In that? At the straps, and the wires hanging from the ceiling like vines. His feet stayed planted.

For all of a few seconds before a shove hit him square in the back, the force of it hard enough to make him stumble forward a good few feet. He caught himself on the armrest, the metal cool under his palms. Ken whirled around, teeth grit and a growl on his lips as Zee grinned back at him, all teeth too. "Go on, muscle." 

She leaned in, breath warm against his ear as she laughed. "It don't bite unless you taste good."

Real helpful. Ken bit back the words on his tongue, and pushed down the growl. With a click of his tongue, the apprentice alchemist dropped himself into the seat before he could think about it too much. The black material was cool through his trousers, almost like leather but too smooth to have come from anything living.

The lights blinked, those black boxes humming louder as Jiro rolled a stool over, something in his flesh-and-blood hand that looked like a mess of wires and lenses held together by a grip worn smooth from years of use.

"So..." Ken cleared his throat as he stared around the room, the technology still something he’d not gotten used to. After three years of books and alchemy where the most advanced thing was a light bulb, everything in Jiro’s shop was hard for him not to stare at. "...these cards. They’re important, I get that, but… what are they, really?"

Jiro didn't look up, those metal fingers adjusting something on the device. He wasn’t even looking as he did it, the tech's eyes completely elsewhere as he looked at a separate screen over Ken’s shoulder, already working through whatever came next.

"You mean their official name?"

Jiro looked down, frowning slightly as he adjusted a dial on the device. "Meridian Access & Cultivation Credential. M.A.C.C."

A hand rose up, the tech tapping out a slow rhythm on the side of his head with a metal pointer finger. "It's all that makes you a person in the Ladder. Your name, your money, your right to exist anywhere but the back-stacks, understand?” The man pulled a face as he glanced up to look over Ken’s shoulder, something between a smile and a grimace; almost as if he wasn’t sure how to feel about his own words. 

“And for the Walkers, their Path level... all of it, right there. Card’s the key.” His arm whirred in time with his words, Jiro still adjusting the tool. “The key to everything on any floor. What doors open for you. Who talks to you. What you can buy. Where you can sleep without getting stabbed."

"He's sayin' it's how they know how much scrap you're worth.” Zee chimed in, the blonde standing with her back to the blinking boxes. Her arms were folded, jacket bright against the black metal. “Simple as that."

She popped her gum. "A zero on the Grand and you’re not even on the Path. Low number, you're junk. Invisible. High number, you're a king. If there’s no coin on your card, all people see is the number before they even see your face. Only thing that matters."

Jiro clearly didn’t disagree, the man nodding as he reached his real hand into a drawer to his left.

The tech pulled out a blank card from the cabinet, the gray polymer looking just like another piece of plastic as he slotted it into a port on the side of his machine.

A second later, the man uncoiled a thin, silver wire from the device.

Ken’s chest hitched as he stared at the end of the wire, the bright metal glint of a needle catching his eye. It wasn't a small needle, either. 

The thing was thick enough, too thick for a normal vein; thicker than anything you would ever use for medicine. 

"Wait, wait, w-wait..." He started to stand up.

Jiro’s mechanical arm shot out, the thing moving faster than a human arm should as five polished metal fingers landed on Ken’s shoulder. Immovable but surprisingly gentle, they held him down with force he couldn’t easily break free from.

"Relax, Outsider."

The man’s voice was calm, despite the grip he had him in. "Just a blood sample and a standard scan. The system needs a baseline. Needs to taste you to print the key."

Before Ken could protest — before he could even form the word 'no' — Jiro moved, that thick needle plunged firmly into the crook of Ken’s arm.

Son of a- He bit back a hiss, teeth gritting against the sharp, biting pain; cold fire shooting right up the vein in his limb and straight into his chest as the blinking machine in Jiro’s hand whirred to life.

A low vibration traveled up Ken’s arm, the feeling of it buzzing in his bones as a hazy, blue-white light projected from a lens on the device, hovering in the air between them.

It swirled together; a complex fractal pattern coalesced and began to form in the light, the image blooming like a flower made of lightning.

The colors shifted, the entire thing shuddering and twisting violently.

Wrongly.

Vivid purple — the familiar color of Wei’s eyes — clashed with a deep vibrant green. Both shades fought each other, twisting and snapping like wild animals; snapping, fizzing and crackling like a miniature lightningstorm. 

The machine whined, pitch rising erratically as those animals started to sound like they were dying as a string of  red, corrupted-looking characters flashed across the holographic display for a second before becoming readable.

[ERROR: READ FAILED.]

Jiro’s eyes widened, professional calm and tired cynicism vanishing again as if the man was under Zee’s glare again. "What is th...?"

The tech pulled the needle out, a trail of blood leaking from Ken’s arm as the apprentice choked on a groan. "Hold still."

The man’s voice came tighter now, not even looking at Ken as he focused on the image still floating above them. "One more time. Must be interference."

He plunged the needle back in, the same spot but deeper.

“Ah.” Ken flinched again, pain leaving him with a noise he didn’t have a name for, but the metal hand on his shoulder held him down as the machine whined up again. 

The fractal bloomed again, only to stutter almost immediately. Violet and jade warred in the air, a chaotic storm of light that refused to settle into a pattern.

A few seconds later, it collapsed once again, the entire thing dissolving into a mess of red glitching static.

[ERROR: READ FAILED.]

Sweat poured down Jiro’s face, the man looking not too dissimilar to Don as beads of thick moisture rolled down his temples and pooled in his beard. “This… this is impossible.”

The man looked over at Ken, curiosity clear in the man’s eyes. “Never seen a read fail like this. Not on a live subject."

Live subject? 

"One more time, kid."“I don’t kn-” 

"Don't move.” But Jiro clearly wasn’t in the mood to listen, the man talking right over him as he adjusted a dial on the machine; human hand shuddering a little as he did so. “Preferably, don’t breathe.”

The third thrust was the deepest, the scream Ken let out drowned out by the loudest whine the machine made yet. For the third time, the hologram flickered. The red error codes flashed—[ERR--]—and then...

Suddenly.

Everything settled.

The chaos vanished, the warring and raging green swallowed up to nothing. The machine let out a soft, affirmative sound, fractal bloom stabilizing as the purple dimmed, smoothed out, and locked into place into a stable solid hue. 

Nothing special. Nothing chaotic. Nothing to worry about.

Jiro let out a long, shaky breath, the man slumping slightly on his stool as he pulled the needle out for the last time. Yet again, Ken’s hiss went ignored as the tech worked in silence for a moment, typing commands into the device with his metal fingers. 

Finally, the blank gray card ejected from the machine.

It looked almost untouched, the same grey polymer that had entered the slot. But Ken knew he’d be a liar if he said he couldn’t feel a faint warmth coming from it.

Like it was alive.

"Here you go." The strain in Jiro’s voice was audible as he handed the card to Ken, the tech avoiding his eyes. "Your new life. Don't lose it."

Ken palmed it, the polymer smooth and warm to the touch as he held it up to the light. A holographic display hovered over its surface, shimmering and forming into something legible in a matter of seconds.

Grand Level: 1

Below it, the twelve-spoked ring was almost entirely dark, the majority of the wheel dead with only the first segment alive with a faint, dim gray.

And on that segment, only the very first node pulsed; a weak, white light.

Realm 1, Stage 1.

The bottom of the bottom. The absolute floor.

Ken just stared at it, unsure if he was relieved or disappointed. He was... normal. 

On paper, at least.

But that wasn't what made his breath catch in his throat.

It wasn't the level or the pain from the still-bleeding hole in his arm.

No, it was the name.

The words printed in dark official blocky characters at the very top of the card.

He stared at it, the letters almost burning themselves in his eyes.

"...Wei Kenshi?"