Chapter 1: The Hero of the Rust Grid

Josephine's POV

The end-of-shift bell at the water plant finally rang, and I got to walk out of that underground space that smelled of rust and sour sweat.

I dragged my legs up the street with the ration bag I'd just collected, one step at a time, toward the room I rented.

The light at the stairwell flickered, and a stomach-turning smell of synthetic alcohol hit my nose. Old Hall's ugly face darted out of the shadow and planted itself across the middle of the corridor.

"Your man's half dead. What are you still babysitting him for? Sign a vassal contract with Old Hall here and I'll keep you in meat cans every meal — real meat, not that gray mush."

He rocked on his feet, ran his eyes up and down me with a narrow little grin, and steadied himself against the wall.

I'd worked a full day and my body had nothing left. I didn't have the energy to deal with garbage like him, so I pulled up my dust scarf and walked straight ahead.

I tried to slip past him. All I wanted was to get home.

"What, you don't like the offer? Old Hall's got plenty of credits. Just name your number."

He blocked me with his shoulder, grinning like a creep.

He licked his lips and kept going. "Or is it that you don't want a contract at all and you'd rather do straight business? Why don't you just quote me a price? What's a night cost? We're neighbors — I have to open your account for you. Give me a discount."

I held the nausea down so I wouldn't throw up right there.

Ever since my boyfriend went under, I'd run into men like this every single day.

A woman with no way to defend herself and no protector left is a toy anyone in this wasteland can put their hands on.

But what was I supposed to do? As a four-tier purifier, if I got into a fight, the only thing I could do was rinse the mud off a man's shoes.

Since I couldn't win, getting out of the way was the best option I had.

I backed up fast and tried to go around him again, reminding myself quietly as I moved.

Win, and there's no reward. Lose, and Mira and Milo don't eat dinner tonight, and they spend the whole evening wondering when I'll be back.

"What the hell are you pretending for?" His hand came out and clamped my chin.

"Nose in the air every day, like you're not the same breed as the rest of this floor. Who are you staying so clean for? Answer me!"

He tilted my face up, and the loose strand of hair slipped out from under the scarf. The corridor light happened to fall right on me, and his expression changed all at once.

His fingers stopped. His breathing got rough and the whites of his eyes slowly flooded red — that's how men in this city look when greed gets the better of them.

I was used to it. This face of mine always brings out that look.

Someone once told me it was a gift from God, like Aphrodite in the moonlight, a masterpiece of the divine.

But in this wasteland, a fine face is never a good thing.

I kept my face buried in the dust scarf for exactly this reason — so today wouldn't happen.

"Get your hands off her!"

A shout cracked down the corridor from behind me.

He didn't let go. He frowned and turned his head to look.

"I said take your goddamn filthy hands off her face!" Marcus Glenn's thick arm came out from behind, seized the man's wrist, pulled once and flung — the man slammed into the sheet metal with a boom like a thunderclap.

Old Hall picked himself up, saw who it was, and scrambled down the corridor on all fours in a panic.

At the same moment, a door behind me that had been open a crack shut quickly.

Marcus turned around and switched his expression on the spot. The ferocity drained off him completely, replaced by a face full of concern.

"Josie. Did he hurt you? Did he touch you anywhere else?"

"Thanks." I kept my eyes down and didn't want to meet his. "Captain Glenn. I'm fine."

There it was again.

Third time this week.

Every time I ran into "danger," Captain Glenn was always the first one on the scene, running his little hero-saves-the-girl routine.

"Who was he? Want me to go have a talk with him?" His tone was eager.

"The one from the third floor. Forget it." I fixed the scarf back in place. "No point wasting time on trash."

"Josie." He stepped closer and lowered his voice. "Last time you said you'd think about it. How much longer does that take?"

"Things are busy at the plant." I pushed the hair back from my ear. "The schedule's packed and Eli's medical pod needs money every single day. I don't have time to think about anything else right now. Give me a few more days."

It was obvious Marcus had run out of patience.

"What do you actually want? How about signing a contract with me?" One hand clamped around my wrist, a little too tight. "I'm better than trash like that, aren't I?"

In this wasteland, a low-tier logistics Evolver has no legal right to stand alone. Each one is required to sign a vassal compact with a higher-tier Evolver, becoming a ward under a guardian.

The guardian controls resource allocation and answers for the ward's safety. It is sold as protection for the weak, but it is really just the powerful keeping the leash in their own hands.

"Captain Glenn, don't." I smiled — strained, but absolutely polite.

"You've done so much for us lately. Why don't you come up for dinner tonight? I'll cook."

Murmuring picked up around us. More and more people were drifting over to watch.

If I made a scene with him here, the trouble afterward would only multiply.

"Sure." His whole body loosened up. "Your cooking is the best I've ever had."

He smiled the whole way, talking about the small stuff from work.

I hummed now and then, kept my face buried in the scarf, and moved fast down the corridor.

"Aunt Josie! You're finally back!"

The door flew open on a bright shout.

Behind it were two seven-year-olds, two cute little faces that looked almost exactly alike.

They're my sister's kids — Mira and Milo. My sister died a few years back in a radiation dust storm.

"You came back late today, Aunt Josie." Mira crashed into my arms and asked sweetly. Milo followed behind her, holding the door frame and watching his sister act cute.

Then both children saw the man standing behind me and immediately switched on their good-manners faces. "Hello, Uncle Marcus."

Mira tipped her head back and blinked up at him sweetly. "Uncle Marcus, did you finally have time to come see my uncle?"

"Ever since uncle Eli got hurt, you don't really come to our house anymore." Mira's words made Marcus's expression freeze.

"I've been busy lately." He looked a little awkward. "Since your uncle got hurt there's a pile of things at the unit waiting on me. I happened to have time today, so I came to check on him."

Right. So busy, and still had time to play hero downstairs every night. I kept the thought to myself.

Mira nodded like a sensible child. "Then thank you for working so hard."

Under the child's innocent stare, Marcus ran out of things to say. "I'll go check on Eli."

He walked into the master bedroom with practiced ease — after all, there was a time he almost treated this place as his own.

I tipped my chin at the two kids and they followed right away.

In the master bedroom, the pod's circulation light went bright and dim on the wall. Eli lay under a thin blanket, his face dead white, both arms laid out on top of the covers, lifeless.

Marcus stopped in the doorway and didn't go in.

He just stood there, looking at the man in the pod, wearing an expression I had never seen on his face before — not grief, not guilt. Something calm. The look of a man gazing at a problem he had already taken care of.

Something inside me dropped hard.

The day Eli got hurt, the external mission roster had been tampered with.

Someone had slipped into the dispatch room half an hour before they left — and the duty log for the dispatch room that day was never found.

I'd told myself back then that I was being paranoid. Everyone in the unit told the same story, and the few who came back all told it in the same order, like they'd rehearsed it.

In the end it was Marcus who brought Eli home. And his face that day — something about it hadn't looked right.

I had never dared let myself think too hard in that direction.

But now he was standing in that doorway, looking at Eli with those eyes, and something clicked into place.