Decisions
Jake's left hand had begun to smell like something dug out of a mass grave.
Rain fell in greasy sheets as Jake crouched in the corpse of an abandoned subway car. Below, the slums stretched—a labyrinth of decaying skyscrapers strung with bioluminescent fungus and gang graffiti.
In his palm, a cracked vial glowed faintly. Laney's last gift. The glass was smudged with her fingerprints, still visible beneath the dried blood.
"Watching you die… that'd cost me more." Her voice haunted him.
Jake pressed the vial to his forehead. The glass was cold.
Of course she'd target Laney first. Of course she'd make him watch.
His rotting fingers dug into the wet earth. No grave for Laney. No funeral pyre. Elena probably ran away while Abyssal Hive beetles scuttled over her still-warm corpse. The Syndicate didn't bury maggots; they recycled them into nutrient paste for the next batch of desperate spinners.
Jake's free hand found the blade's hilt. The Edge purred as it drank his fury, Rot tendrils squirming hungrily beneath his skin. He carved two words into the ground:
LANEY KIM
The Edge faltered on the last letter. Even cursed blades feared honest grief.
Rain blurred the inscription. Jake pressed Laney's broken vial into the mud beneath it. Let the runoff take it. Let the rot consume it. Let something in this godforsaken city remember she'd been more than cannon fodder.
Jake rose.
The rot had spread past his elbow.
He willed the Vorpal Edge to manifest. The blade slid into his grip soundlessly, its bone-white surface now streaked with black veins. As always, it pulled, sucking at the marrow of his existence.
[ Lifespan: 45 Years, 14 Days ]
Deactivating the Edge would freeze the decay. It would also leave him defenseless in a district where starving scavengers would carve him apart for the dirty water in his canteen.
You're dying faster holding it. Dying slower without it. Pick your poison.
Jake let the blade dissolve. The stench of necrosis lessened slightly, but the blackened flesh remained.
The Wheelwright.
The memory surfaced jagged. In his first life—the one where he'd died old and forgotten in a Syndicate work camp—he'd heard whispers. A mechanic in the Iron Wastes who could contain the side effects of cursed weapons.
But the path there isn't as simple as he'd wished.
Phase Stalkers. Creatures born from temporal rifts. They patrolled the collapsed Eight-Trigram Highway, the only route to the Wastes.
Jake's stomach growled. Three days since he'd last risked looting a corpse.
Nightfall brought neon and nightmares.
Jake watched from his perch as a pack of Scab Dogs dragged down a loot hauler below. The mutated canines—former pets swollen to the size of SUVs—tore into the man's cargo: a dented Chrono-Wheel, white-tier, its hologram sputtering.
"Spin! Spin! Spin!" chanted a gang of child scavengers, their skin glowing faintly from rad-poisoning. They pelted the dogs with rocks until one beast collapsed, half its skull caved in. The white wheel rolled free, and a gaunt teenager lunged.
CLICK-CLICK-CLICK.
The wheel landed on [ Rat Poison ].
The boy convulsed, foaming at the mouth. His friends scattered as the surviving Scab Dogs returned, drawn by the death throes.
Typical.
White-tier wheels were garbage—a 90% chance of death or misery. But in the slums, even garbage drew blood.
Jake's gaze drifted north. Beyond the acid rain curtain, the Eight-Trigram Highway's ruined overpasses loomed. The Syndicate had once used it to transport Chrono-Wheels citywide. Now? A graveyard of derelict freight drones and things that gnawed on time itself.
He traced the rot creeping up his forearm.
If the Wheelwright exists…
A gamble. The Stalkers were death. But so was waiting here, decaying.
…
Morning brought a coughing fit that left Jake's palm smeared with black phlegm. The rot had reached his bicep.
He reactivated the Vorpal Edge.
[ Lifespan: 10 Years, 298 Days ]
[ Drain: -1 Year/Minute (Active) ]
The blade's icy whisper flooded his veins, sharpening his senses. Downstairs, he heard the skitter of claws on concrete.
Not today.
He phase-cut through the billboard's floor, dropping into an abandoned noodle shop. The scent of mold and soy sauce hung thick. A Phase Stalker—or a fragment of one—rippled in the corner. Translucent, its six-eyed face simultaneously young and skeletal, jaws gnashing in two timelines at once.
Jake froze.
Stalkers rarely drifted this far south. But the Syndicate's collapse had destabilized the city's temporal wards.
The creature sniffed, its snout passing through a table. Half its body existed seconds ahead, the other half seconds behind. Attack now, and he'd hit only air.
Unless…
Jake let the Vorpal Edge's hunger guide him.
He slashed diagonally, the blade cutting through the idea of "now." The Stalker screamed as the edge connected across both temporal planes. Its halves slid apart, ichor evaporating before it hit the floor.
No loot. No wheel. Just a fading hiss.
Higher-tier monsters. Better drops.
But killing more would cost more years. A vicious cycle.
Still, he killed another 5 phase stalkers, and this time he had a white-tier wheel drop that gave him a 10-year vial.
[ Lifespan: 12 Years, 7 Days ]
Jake had dissected his options:
First: Stay in the slums: grinding mobs here can barely keep him alive while the Rot worsens.
Second: Seek green-tier zones: Gangs like the Tigers controlled them. Better wheels, better odds. Also better temporal cures for his Rot.
Third: Iron Wastes: A suicidal trek with a slim chance of cure.
Why? Because there are three kinds of zones.
Safe Zones: Zones where gangs like Elysium built fortresses, where gang bosses spun gold-tier wheels and tossed scraps to loyalists.
Gray Zones: Slums, markets, derelict sectors—lawless, but survivable if you stank of rot enough to deter predators.
Red Zones: Phase Stalker nests, Abyssal Hive remnants, places where time itself bled.
The highway was a Red Zone.
He found himself staring at a makeshift map etched in mold. The Eight-Trigram Highway's safest (a relative term) path wove through a necropolis of derelict Syndicate transports. One still carried a live Chrono-Wheel battery.
But somewhere in that death maze lived the Wheelwright.
If he can make it there before he dies of rot.
[ Lifespan: 11 Years, 7 Days ]
He saw a green-tier glow lit the southern slums.
Jake joined the shadows flocking toward the light. A mutated sewer leviathan had erupted onto the streets, its blubber studded with a spinning Chrono-Wheel. Green-tier.
"Mine!" roared a Neon Tigers lieutenant, her arm cannon charging.
The leviathan's maw yawned, swallowing three scavengers whole. The wheel on its back spun lazily, options visible through rancid flesh:
[ 30-Year Lifespan ]
[ Venomfang Dagger ]
[ Neurotoxin Immunity ]
Jake's blade hand twitched. The Tigers had the numbers, but chaos reigned—scavengers and rival gangs firing blindly.
A teenager darted past him, eyes fixed on the prize. "Come on, come—"
The leviathan's tail crushed him to paste.
Greed kills.
Jake melted into the crowd's periphery. Let the Tigers soften the beast. His time came when the lieutenant's cannon pierced the leviathan's eye. The creature thrashed, death rattling the streets.
The wheel dislodged, rolling into sludge.
Jake phase-cut through the fray, Vorpal Edge humming. His fingers brushed the wheel—
A pulse round scorched his side.
"Hands. Off." The Tiger lieutenant loomed, her cannon smoking.
Jake activated the blade.
[ Lifespan: 10 Years, 230 Days ]
She fired.
He split the blast mid-air, the halves detonating left and right. In the chaos, his dagger tasted her throat.
Spin.
10 Years Deducted.
The wheel landed as the Tigers' reinforcements arrived.
[ 30-Year Lifespan ]
Jake fled, their bullets phasing through the edges of his blade's distortions.
…
At dawn, he watched a Syndicate recon squad pick through the leviathan's corpse. Elena's crest adorned their armor.
She's rebuilding.
His arm throbbed. Rot now breached his shoulder, tendons black and brittle.
[ Lifespan: 30 Years, 230 Days ]
Decision made.
Jake packed his meager loot—a half-empty canteen, a stolen phase-distortion grenade (expired), and the Vorpal Edge's whispers.
The Eight-Trigram Highway awaited.
Find the Wheelwright.
Or die walking.