Chapter 9: Robbery

  The doors to the PRG Headquarters hissed open, releasing Sym into a world bathed in pale midday light and the sharp scent of rust and rot.

  The facility stood behind him now: a boxy, ironcd structure, its bones exposed in brass pipes and riveted joints.

  The front was wide, fortified, and built like a holdout bunker, and the path in front forked outward into winding, splintered pathways that bled into Zones Nine and Ten like a forgotten tree root.

  Sym stopped.

  He stood just outside the main gate, staring up at the wall that loomed in the far distance, the outer barrier of the settlement.

  A vertical impossibility. It rose into the sky like a second horizon, blotting out clouds, its stone-dark surface streaked with lines of reinforced metal and old repair signs.

  It wasn’t built for beauty.

  It was built to keep things out. Or in.

  “How did they even construct that?” Sym muttered, more to himself than Sage.

  “Unknown. Pre-Obelisk structures may have included advanced mechanized fabrication. However, considering current technology and spiritual integration, it’s highly probable the wall is... anomalous.”

  Sym nodded slightly.

  Then he heard it.

  A heavy bang, deep and resonant. It came from the far side, from the inner wall, that allegedly separated zone 8 and zone 9..

  Sym turned, eyes narrowing. This wall was smaller than the outer perimeter, yet it felt just as vast and endless, and it hummed with a pressure that pushed against the air itself. A different kind of dread clung to it.

  Then it came again.

  BOOM!

  A thud so dense it vibrated through the cracked concrete beneath his boots.

  Then another.

  BOOM!

  Each impact sent a muted shockwave outward, faint enough that the structure didn’t tremble, but strong enough to make his chest feel compressed, like a lung forgotten mid-inhale.

  He scoured his memories, both his own and the fragments Sage helped him piece together from the old Sym.

  No such sound was within those memories. He wondered if these anomalies had begun while he was being experimented on by the PRG.

  He looked back down the path. The yout was vaguely familiar, memories from the body he now inhabited stirring underfoot.

  He turned left.

  Toward the motel district in Zone Nine.

  He walked without urgency, hands in his coat pockets, eyes flicking left and right. The deeper he moved into the zone, the clearer the change became.

  Concrete cracked underfoot. Walls leaned like they were tired of standing. Wiring drooped from utility poles like tangled vines, buzzing softly with barely functioning power.

  The air carried a stale, acrid stench, the kind of chemical rot that clung to metal and memory.

  Every few blocks, the scent of urine overwhelmed it, and Sym moved a little faster, careful not to step in the drying puddles that darkened the alleys.

  It was midday. But the streets were nearly empty, as strange silhouettes watched from the slits of their windows.

  Doors cracked just enough to let one eye peer through. Sym could feel them, people studying him with the hunger of scavengers and the fear of survivors.

  He didn’t meet their eyes.

  The Jitters.

  There were more of them now. Too

  Their eyes, if you could call them that, were clouded, milky, and faded. Their eye unfocused as if they were staring into a different yer of the world. As if their souls had long since fled the flesh, but the body refused to colpse.

  And Sym? He was walking through it with exactly 1,000 notes tucked into his coat, enough to rent a month of air and locks, if no one decided to take it from him first.

  “Sage,” he murmured under his breath, eyes watching a shadow shift behind a broken fence. “Alert me the moment someone follows. Even just a footstep too many.”

  “Understood. Scanning ambient noise. Pattern tracking engaged.”

  He kept walking.

  Soon, he’d find a pce to sleep.

  But first, he had to make it there alive.

  Sym passed under a faded, flickering neon sign that read:

  Richie’s - Rooms - Weekly - Quiet Guaranteed

  The building looked like it had once been a tavern.

  The lower half had been reinforced with mismatched scrap metal, bolted directly into the stone. Above, wooden beams sagged, and a cracked window blinked with yellow light.

  He stepped inside.

  The air smelled of old alcohol and dust, with just a faint hint of pipe smoke.

  A small, boxy front bar stood at the center of the lobby, patched together from rusted metal and splintered wood. Small tables and chairs were spread around the bar, with tires and tools on the walls as decorations.

  Behind it stood an old man with deep-set eyes, a crooked nose, and a pipe clenched in his teeth. His hair was gray, almost white, tied back with a stained cord.

  He looked up as Sym entered, eyes narrowing in polite suspicion.

  “Room?” he asked, voice gravel-coated.

  Sym nodded. “Yeah. weekly.”

  The man exhaled a long plume of smoke through his nose and tapped a thick, handwritten ledger open. “Three hundred per. First floor’s taken. Second has plumbing. Third’s quietest. You get what you pay for.”

  Sym reached into his coat and withdrew the bills. “Third.”

  The man grunted. “Name?”

  Sym paused.

  Then: “Sym.”

  The man gave him a slow look, then scratched it into the book. He didn’t comment. Maybe he’d heard stranger names.

  He handed over a brass key with a strip of dull-red cloth tied through it. “Room twelve. End of the hall. Don’t touch the boiler door.”

  Sym took the key and gave him a nod. “Thanks, Richie.”

  The man raised a brow and looked perplexed. “How’d you know my name?”

  Sym just smiled slightly. “Just a guess.”

  He pced the notes on the bar in front of Richie, who was still trying to figure out what trick Sym had used to guess his name, and watched, before he made his way up the creaking metal stairwell, the air growing colder with each level.

  On the third floor, the hallway stretched long and narrow, carpet worn to the threads. Room Twelve was at the far end, just like Richie had said.

  The lock clicked smoothly. Inside: a small cot, a desk bolted to the wall, a single cracked window with a view of the alley, and a bathroom with rust stains and a stubborn faucet.

  But it was his.

  For now.

  He sat on the cot, the springs groaning beneath him, then stood again and looked out the window, up at the distant silhouette of the wall, farther now, but still towering.

  He needed to understand this pce. These zones. The people. The rot. The power that moved behind it all.

  “Sage,” he said aloud, voice soft.

  “Listening.”

  “Build me a regimen. Physical improvement. Strength, flexibility, endurance. Match it to my current profile.”

  “Compiling. It will take four minutes. Will also integrate awakened physiology factors.”

  Sym nodded.

  While Sage worked, his mind drifted again.

  He needed knowledge. Not just training drills from PRG tutors, but real context, about this world, its factions, its history, and the deeper mechanisms behind the System.

  Maybe the Order would never teach it. Maybe they'd forbid it. But that just meant he'd have to find it himself.

  He also needed clothes. The numbered uniform made him stand out like a fre in a thunderstorm. He wanted something low-profile. Dark. Functional.

  Sym left the room and descended the creaking stairs of Richie’s with the same slow calm he used to study distant gaxies.

  His boots echoed gently on the warped wood, the smell of smoke and old wood varnish thick in the air.

  He needed information, details about this part of the city, its dangers, its rhythms. The kind only locals knew.

  Richie was behind the bar again, a half-cleaned gss in his hand, moving with the kind of tired grace that came from years of routine and silence.

  “Evenin',” the old man said as Sym approached. “Room okay?”

  “Quiet,” Sym replied. “Just how I like it.”

  They talked. Brief words, low tones. Richie, despite his crooked spine and years in this decaying zone, was surprisingly sharp.

  He spoke of northern paths, a series of alleys and broken markets where trades still happened. Some legit, most not.

  “Clothes, tools, bck-market meds... you’ll find it if you look,” Richie said, wiping down the bar.

  Sym nodded. “Appreciate it.”

  He was just turning to leave when the door smmed open.

  Three men stepped inside.

  Wearing dark coats and fabric masks that hung loose like shrouds, each of them carried tension like static.

  One let a knife dangle from his hand like an afterthought. Another kicked the door shut behind them.

  “This is a robbery,” one of them said. His voice was young. Too young to sound that cruel. “Money. Now. Or we peel your skin off with salt and string.”

  Richie froze, the gss in his hand slipping.

  It shattered on the floor.

  “I—I already paid the Big Boss,” he stammered, backing up. “I paid him st week. Full amount. This ain’t right.”

  The lead one stepped closer, twirling the knife.

  “Big Boss is dead, old man. We run this street now. Pay again or bleed. We’ve already taken care of your neighbors; you don't want to end up like them.”

  Richie’s eyes flicked sideways toward Sym.

  It wasn’t a cry for help.

  It was a hope.

  A silent ask.

  Sym didn’t hesitate.

  “Sage.”

  “Scanning targets. Three hostile entities. No visible enhancements. Two are out of shape. One has prior stab wounds. Conclusion: low-level threats.”

  “Pn?”

  “Upload completed. Execution ready.”

  Sym wasn't a fighter, and that was because he had Sage with him; he took one step forward. Just one.

  The men turned, cocky, amused.

  “You wanna be next, hero?”

  Sym tried at first to bring some sense into the man, "Dude, look, wouldn't it be much more sensible to let him off this time, and then come back next month for the money? Youre killing your investment here."

  The man raised an eyebrow as if trying to understand the foreign nguage that just escaped Sym's mouth, then, in confusion, he became angry, and with that, he prepared to attack. "I've killed whole neighborhoods, I can kill you, talkative little batard!"

  And then Sym moved.

  Like something designed, like every muscle had been tuned for this exact sequence.

  He unched forward in a low crouch, then sprang up and knee-struck the first man in the chin.

  Bone crunched. Teeth were scattered across the floor.

  Before the man hit the ground, Sym twisted, ripped the knife from his hand, and in one seamless spin, sshed across the second man’s throat.

  A spray of red.

  A wet gasp.

  The third attacker lunged, but Sym was already gone. Sliding sideways, pivoting on one heel, ducking the clumsy ssh. Then, without expression, he plunged the bde into the man’s chest.

  A grunt. A twitch. A body slumping backward.

  Silence.

  The only sound was the slow drip of blood onto the warped wood.

  Sym stood still, breathing heavily.

  His expression hadn’t changed once.

  Richie stood behind the bar, hands trembling, eyes wide as saucers.

  “Y-you... you just...” he stammered.

  “I’ve seen worse,” Sym said softly, gncing down at the bodies. “But this pce... it needs better rules, man, you can't just let people in here like that. Put a better wood on the door or something.”

  Richie blinked, then chuckled, half-hysterical.

  “I... Gods above... Thank you. You saved me.”

  Sym didn’t reply as he shook his head, picking some of the debris from the floor and broken things..

  “I... your stay’s on the house,” Richie said quickly. “No one sees what you did and doesn’t get something back. I owe you.”

  Sym finally smiled. Just a little."Keep the money for the improvements, you need it."

  Richie leaned in. “You’re new here, but I know someone. Knows things. Pces. You want information? He can get it. I'll see if I can get him to visit us.”

  Sym met his gaze.

  “Good, please send them up whenever!” he said.

  He turned and walked out into the night, boots spshing through fresh blood.

  And for the first time since arriving in Zone Nine, the street was empty.

  People had watched from the shadows.

  They’d seen what he could do.

  And now, the city whispered his name like a rumor behind closed doors.