[HOST INTEGRITY: 6%]
[LOCATION: SECTOR 9 – LOWER SLUMS / DISTRIBUTION ZONE C]
[TIME: 10:40 PM]
The slums didn't sleep.
They twitched.
Thousands of crooked alleys stacked on top of each other like rotting teeth. Neon signs flickered—some dead, some strobing. Acid rain dripped from exposed pipes, hissing when it hit metal. Ghosts drifted between dumpsters, clutching their stomachs like addicts waiting for a fix.
Hunger was a constant background noise.
A low spiritual whine that never stopped.
Ren Wu watched it all from inside a dented black delivery van. The engine idled rough—needed new filters. The windows were blacked out with spray paint that was already peeling.
Inside: forty sealed crates.
Each crate: two hundred sticks.
Grey sticks.
No logos. No artwork. No seals.
Just plain ash-grey cylinders wrapped in thin paper that felt wrong to the touch. Too smooth. Too uniform.
Jian sat in the passenger seat, nervously refreshing a handheld scanner that kept glitching.
"Boss..." He licked his lips. "This price is fucking insane, right?"
Ren leaned back against the metal wall. The van reeked of cigarette ash and Red Dog's cheap cologne.
"Say it."
"One coin per stick."
Jian's hand shook slightly.
"Nether-Core's cheapest product is eight coins. Even their garbage tier—the stuff that barely works—sells at six."
Ren stared at the slum outside.
"Then tonight, six becomes obsolete."
Red Dog sat near the back, sharpening a cleaver out of habit. The scraping sound filled the silence.
"If this stuff doesn't work," Red Dog said, not looking up, "we get lynched. Like, actually torn apart."
"It works," Ren replied.
He closed his eyes briefly.
The smell of static and damp ash still lingered in his nostrils from the factory.
Soulless.
Sterile.
Functional.
Perfect.
Ren opened his eyes.
"Open channel."
Jian pressed a button. Static crackled.
A distorted voice came through a cheap communicator.
— *Sewer Rat One online.*
— *Bone Alley Runner online.*
— *Scrap Queen online.*
— *Three Fingers online.*
— *Hook Face online.*
Five low-tier street distributors.
Not gangs. Not corporations.
Parasites who lived between cracks.
Ren spoke.
"You each get two crates."
Static.
Skepticism.
"Payment?" Scrap Queen's voice was suspicious.
"Cash on delivery."
A pause.
Three Fingers laughed—high-pitched, nervous.
"You fronting inventory? You stupid or desperate?"
Ren's voice stayed flat.
"Sell at one coin per stick."
More laughter.
"That's suicide pricing, friend."
"Correct."
Silence crept into the channel like cold water.
Hook Face spoke slowly.
"...Why?"
Ren looked at the slum. Watched a ghost child dig through trash.
"Because hunger doesn't give a shit about brand loyalty."
Another pause.
Ren continued.
"No contracts. No exclusivity. Sell whatever else you want."
"But if you cut the Grey Line with anything—herbs, ash, fucking sawdust—I kill you."
The temperature inside the van seemed to drop.
Nobody questioned how he'd know.
"Delivery points uploaded," Jian said, voice cracking slightly.
Ren opened the door. Cold air rushed in.
"Move."
---
The first sale happened in Bone Alley at 11:04 PM.
A hunched ghost with half a jaw missing—looked like he'd been dead for years.
He had three coins clutched in a translucent fist.
He expected half a stick. Maybe a third.
The runner handed him three full sticks.
The ghost stared.
"...Trick?"
"Light it," the runner said.
The ghost lit it with shaking hands.
He inhaled.
The reaction wasn't euphoric.
No moaning. No screaming pleasure like Nether-Core's premium lines.
Just—
Relief.
His shaking stopped.
His bent spine straightened slightly.
The hollow look in his eyes dulled from sharp panic to manageable dread.
"I'm... not fading," the ghost whispered.
---
Word spread in seconds.
Not through ads. Not through announcements.
Through mouths.
Through coughing.
Through shaking hands grabbing sleeves in dark alleys.
"One coin."
"One coin."
"One fucking coin."
Lines formed.
Silent lines.
No cheering. No excitement.
Only survival.
---
Ren watched the sales through Jian's live feed. The scanner kept losing signal, then reconnecting.
Numbers climbed.
10 sold.
50 sold.
200 sold.
Crates opening. Hands exchanging coins—some copper, some barely recognizable as currency.
No bargaining.
No haggling.
Because nobody was comparing flavors or brand reputation.
They were comparing hunger levels.
Red Dog leaned closer, cleaver now resting on his knee.
"They're not even asking what it is. What's in it."
Ren nodded.
"They don't care what it is. They care that it stops the pain."
---
At 11:30 PM, Nether-Core noticed.
It didn't come from informants.
It didn't come from street patrols.
It came from a graph doing something impossible.
A junior market analyst—night shift, overworked, underpaid—stared at his screen.
"S-Supervisor?"
"What." The supervisor didn't look up from his own terminal.
"Low-tier incense sales in District C dropped... uh..." He refreshed the screen. "Ninety-two percent in forty minutes."
Silence.
"Explain."
"Consumers migrated to an unknown product labeled... Grey Line? No manufacturer signature. No—"
"Price?"
The analyst hesitated.
"One coin."
The supervisor laughed.
Then stopped laughing.
"Trace supplier."
"Unknown."
"Trace raw materials."
"Unknown. Actually, wait—" The analyst's fingers flew across the keyboard. "Unknown."
"Trace manufacturing signature."
The screen flashed red.
**ERROR: NO BIOLOGICAL INPUT DETECTED**
**ERROR: NO HERBAL MARKERS FOUND**
**ERROR: SPIRITUAL SIGNATURE ABSENT**
The supervisor felt a chill crawl up his spine.
"No herbs?"
"No herbs. No plants. No... anything we recognize."
The supervisor slowly stood up, chair scraping.
"Call Branch Manager Zhou. Now."
---
Back in the slums, 11:47 PM.
Scrap Queen was already out of stock.
She stared at her empty crate in disbelief, surrounded by ghosts asking if she had more.
"I need more. Right fucking now."
Her communicator buzzed.
Ren's voice, distorted slightly.
"Warehouse pickup. Dock 3. Come alone."
She ran.
---
Inside the van.
Jian stared at the dashboard, watching numbers update.
"Boss... collections rate is insane. Like, actually insane."
"Numbers."
"Seventy percent sell-through in forty minutes. That's... that's not normal. Premium products take days—"
Ren nodded slowly.
"Good."
"Also..." Jian hesitated. "Weird side effect reports coming in."
"What kind of weird?"
"Users report... emotional flattening. No high. No euphoria. But also no despair either. Just... nothing. They stop feeling hungry but they also stop feeling much of anything else."
Ren shrugged.
"Industrial grade. We aren't selling happiness. We're selling continuity."
Red Dog frowned.
"People gonna complain about that. Nether-Core at least makes you feel good."
Ren looked at him.
"They can complain after they stop starving."
---
Midnight.
Nether-Core emergency meeting.
The conference room smelled of burnt coffee and recycled air.
Branch Manager Zhou slammed his fist on the table hard enough to make coffee cups jump.
"Find the factory. Shut it down. I don't care how."
"We already know the factory," another executive said quietly, not meeting Zhou's eyes.
Zhou froze.
"...Last Stop?"
"Yes."
Silence filled the room like cold water.
Zhou felt a headache blooming behind his eyes.
"They don't have herbs. Their supply lines are cut. They shouldn't be able to produce anything."
The analyst whispered from the corner.
"They aren't producing incense, sir. They're producing something else. Something we don't... recognize."
Zhou slowly sat down.
"Synthetic?"
The word tasted wrong. Impossible. Illegal in seventeen sectors. Extinct technology from the old wars.
"Kill it."
"How?"
Zhou clenched his jaw so hard a tooth cracked slightly.
"Price war. Drop lowest tier to two coins. Flood the market. Crush them on volume."
Another executive hesitated.
"Sir, we lose profit margin. Shareholders—"
Zhou snapped.
"If we lose the slums, we lose distribution gravity. Everything above collapses. Deploy. Now."
---
12:20 AM.
Street runners received new messages on their cheap communicators.
**NETHER-CORE PRICE UPDATE: LOWEST TIER NOW 2 COINS**
Scrap Queen, halfway through restocking, laughed.
"Doesn't fucking matter."
She lifted a Grey Line stick.
"Mine's one."
Customers didn't even look at the Nether-Core crates being unloaded nearby.
They were already in line for grey sticks.
---
Ren watched price updates on Jian's glitching scanner.
"Expected."
Jian looked nervous, sweat beading on his forehead despite the cold.
"Boss, they halved their price. That's aggressive. That's—"
Ren closed his eyes.
"Then we halve again."
Silence.
"New price. One stick. Half coin."
Jian's mouth opened.
"Boss that's—we can't—there's no margin left—"
Ren cut him off.
"We're not competing on margin." He opened his eyes. They looked tired. Empty. "We're competing on oxygen."
He tapped the dashboard.
"Nether-Core is a publicly traded company. They have shareholders. Quarterly reports. Board meetings. They need profit."
Ren's voice dropped.
"I don't."
[HOST INTEGRITY: 5%]
Red Dog slowly grinned, understanding dawning.
"Oh. Oh, that's dirty."
---
1:00 AM.
Grey Line price updated across all channels.
**0.5 COIN PER STICK**
Nether-Core cheapest: 2 coins.
Four times higher.
The slum market collapsed.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
Unopened Nether-Core boxes piled in alleys like abandoned trash. Street dealers stopped answering calls from their suppliers. Middlemen began returning shipments.
Warehouse inventory backed up.
Nether-Core logistics software began flashing yellow warnings.
Then orange.
Then red.
**CRITICAL: INVENTORY OVERFLOW**
**ALERT: DISTRIBUTION CHAIN FAILURE**
**WARNING: MARKET SHARE LOSS ACCELERATING**
---
Ren Wu leaned his head back against the van wall.
Pain throbbed behind his eyes.
Worth it.
"This is day one," Ren said softly.
Jian looked at him.
"What's day five?"
Ren stared at the neon skyline through the cracked windshield.
"By day five... Sector 9 associates hunger relief with my brand."
"They won't ask who I am. They won't ask where it comes from."
"They'll just know... if Grey Line disappears... they starve."
Silence filled the van.
Red Dog felt a chill.
Jian swallowed.
Ren finished.
"That's called leverage."
[SYSTEM ALERT]
[MARKET SHARE – SLUM TIER: 38% → 61%]
[ECONOMIC DESTABILIZATION: ACTIVE]
[NETHER-CORE LOSS RATE: ACCELERATING]
[HOST INTEGRITY: 5% (CRITICAL)]
Ren closed his eyes.
"Drive."
"Where?"
Ren didn't open them.
"Next district."
The van's engine coughed to life.
Ren said quietly, "Good. Let it rot."