Nico was drunk. Not tipsy, not buzzed—properly, catastrophically drunk for the first time in three years. And high. Two vials of Veil in the past four hours, which was stupid and wasteful and he didn't give a single fuck.
Four weeks. Four weeks since he'd accessed the first account, transferred the money through Kade's labyrinth of intermediary accounts, and watched numbers appear in his balance that he'd never imagined having. Four weeks of trying to buy his way out of Level 8, and all he had to show for it was a hundred thousand credits lighter and the bitter taste of every door slamming in his face.
Housing application for Level 6: Denied. Criminal record, insufficient credit history, "concerns about social integration."
Business license for a tech repair shop on Level 5: Denied. No verifiable employment history, no references from established businesses, "questions about funding sources."
Attempted bribe to a housing official on Level 4: Scammed out of a hundred thousand credits by a man who'd looked him dead in the eye, taken his money, and disappeared.
Every attempt, every angle, every desperate play—nothing. The system wasn't rigged; it was a fucking wall, smooth and high and designed specifically to keep people like him exactly where they were.
So yeah. He was drunk. At Chen's Noodle House, his usual spot, sitting in the back corner booth he'd occupied probably a thousand times over the years. The booth's plastic seat was cracked, the table scarred with decades of use, and the fluorescent light overhead flickered in a rhythm he'd long since memorized. This place was as close to home as anything on Level 8 could be.
Old Mrs. Chen—no relation to Nico, but she called him nephew anyway—had served him a bowl of her standard noodles without comment when he'd stumbled in an hour ago. She knew better than to ask questions when someone looked like Nico looked.
The noodles sat half-eaten in front of him, cooling into a congealed mass. His tablet lay beside the bowl, screen showing his current balance: forty-nine million, seven hundred and twelve thousand, eight hundred and forty-three credits.
He'd spent less than three hundred thousand, and he'd already hit every wall the system could build.
"More tea, nephew?" Mrs. Chen appeared at his elbow, teapot in hand. She was ancient—at least seventy, maybe eighty—with the weathered face of someone who'd lived hard and kept going anyway. She'd run this noodle shop for thirty years, serving cheap food to people who could barely afford it.
"Yeah," Nico slurred. "Thanks, Auntie."
She poured, her hands steady despite her age, then lingered. "Bad day?"
"Bad month."
"Mm." She pulled a rag from her apron and wiped down his table, though it wasn't particularly dirty. "You want to talk about it?"
"Not really."
"Then I'll tell you something instead." She settled into the booth across from him, uninvited but welcome. This was her place; she sat where she wanted. "I'm selling the restaurant."
That cut through the fog of intoxication. "What? Why?"
"I'm old, nephew. Too old to work twelve-hour days anymore. My daughter wants me to retire, come live with her on Level 7." She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Says she can afford a bigger place now, has room for me."
"Level 7's barely better than here."
"Still better. And she wants me close." Mrs. Chen folded the rag precisely, her movements practiced. "The restaurant's worth maybe fifty thousand credits. Not much, but it's steady income for whoever buys it. I've got a few offers from people who want to turn it into something else. A bar, maybe, or another drug den." She said it without judgment. Level 8 was full of drug dens.
Nico looked around the restaurant. It was evening now, the dinner rush such as it was. Twenty, maybe thirty people scattered across the tables and booths. Working people, mostly. The kind who came in after sixteen-hour shifts in the recycling plants or maintenance tunnels, who had just enough credits for a bowl of noodles before going home to their pods or partitions or, if they were lucky, shoebox apartments.
He saw the Patel brothers, the ones who bought Veil from him in bulk, sitting together and splitting a single bowl because that's all they could afford. Saw Jess, the woman who'd lost her recycling plant job, nursing a cup of tea she'd probably make last an hour. Saw strangers, dozens of strangers, all carrying the same weight of exhaustion and survival.
When had he stopped seeing them? When had the people of Level 8 become just background noise to his own misery?
"How much?" Nico heard himself say.
"What?"
"How much for the restaurant? You said fifty thousand, yeah?"
Mrs. Chen's eyes narrowed. "You've been drinking, nephew."
"I have money," Nico said, and the words felt surreal coming out of his mouth. "More than fifty thousand. I want to buy it."
"You're a dealer, Nico. You sell Veil on street corners. Where would you get—"
"I found it." Close enough to true. "Inheritance from a dead relative. Doesn't matter. Point is, I have it, and I want to buy your restaurant."
She studied him for a long moment, and he wondered what she saw. A drunk junkie with delusions? A desperate kid making a stupid decision? Or something else?
"Why?" she finally asked.
Good question. Why? He looked at his tablet again, at the number that should have been his ticket out. Forty-nine million credits, and it hadn't bought him a goddamn thing except the knowledge that the system would never let him leave.
"Because fuck them," Nico said. "That's why."
Mrs. Chen's eyebrows rose. "Eloquent."
"I'm drunk, Auntie. Eloquence is beyond me." He leaned forward, trying to marshal his thoughts through the haze. "They won't let me move up. Won't sell me property, won't give me licenses, won't take my money even though I've got more than most of them will see in their lives. Because I'm from Level 8. Because I've got a record. Because the system's designed to keep people like me exactly where we are."
"This is not news, nephew."
"No, but it's hitting different tonight." He gestured at the restaurant, at the people eating their cheap noodles and drinking their watered-down tea. "These people—our people—they work themselves to death maintaining the upper tiers. Cleaning their corridors, fixing their infrastructure, recycling their waste. And what do they get? Poverty wages and the privilege of barely surviving."
"Also not news."
"So what if..." Nico paused, the idea forming even as he spoke it, dangerous and reckless and maybe the first real thing he'd thought in years. "What if I spend my money here instead? What if I buy this restaurant and make it free?"
Mrs. Chen blinked. "Free."
"Free meals. Every Friday, anyone who needs it, no questions asked." He was talking faster now, the Veil and alcohol stripping away his usual caution. "You said you wanted to retire? I'll pay you double what anyone else offered—a hundred thousand credits. You can move to Level 7, live comfortable, and I'll keep this place running exactly like you did."
"Nico—"
"I know it's crazy. I know it makes no financial sense. But nothing else makes sense either, yeah? I can't escape, and I'm tired of trying. So maybe..." He met her eyes. "Maybe I do something that actually matters."
The restaurant had gone quiet. He hadn't noticed, but his voice had risen, and now people were listening. The Patel brothers. Jess. Half a dozen other familiar faces, all watching him with expressions ranging from confusion to suspicion to something that might have been hope.
Shit. He hadn't meant to make a speech.
Mrs. Chen broke the silence. "You're serious."
"Dead serious."
"You have a hundred thousand credits."
"I have way more than that, but yeah, a hundred thousand is yours if you sell to me."
She laughed, sudden and sharp. "You're either a liar, crazy, or the universe's idea of a joke." A pause. "But I've known you since you were nineteen years old, Nico Chen. You're a junkie and a dealer, but you're not a liar."
"So you'll sell?"
"On one condition." She leaned across the table, her ancient eyes sharp as knives. "You serve real food. Not the cut-rate garbage some places serve. Real noodles, real broth, real vegetables. These people deserve that much."
"Deal."
"And you don't water down the tea."
"Wouldn't dream of it, Auntie."
"And if you're going to do this crazy thing, you do it right. Not just Fridays. Every day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Anyone who needs it."
Nico's heart hammered. Every day was bigger than he'd planned, more money, more commitment. More of a statement that he couldn't take back.
"Every day," he agreed.
Mrs. Chen stood, pulled a tablet from her apron pocket, and brought up a transfer contract. "Then transfer fifty thousand now as a deposit, and we'll make it official tomorrow when we're both sober. Well, when you're sober. I'm old, not drunk."
Nico pulled up his account with shaking hands—shaking from alcohol and Veil and something else, something he couldn't name—and authorized the transfer. Fifty thousand credits. A fortune by Level 8 standards, and he'd just spent it on a noodle shop he had no idea how to run.
The confirmation pinged. Mrs. Chen checked her tablet, and her weathered face split into a grin. "You beautiful, crazy child. You actually did it."
"I actually did it," Nico echoed, and started laughing because what else could he do?
Mrs. Chen raised her voice, addressing the restaurant. "Everyone listen! This fool nephew of mine just bought Chen's Noodle House. And starting Friday—" She looked at Nico. "No, starting tomorrow. Starting tomorrow, meals here are free. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You're hungry, you come here, and you eat. That's the new policy."
Silence. Then someone started clapping. Slowly at first, then others joined in, until the whole restaurant was applauding and some people were crying and Nico sat there drunk and high and terrified because he'd just committed to something he couldn't take back.
The Patel brothers came over, shaking his hand. Jess hugged him, smelling of recycling plant chemicals and saying thank you over and over. More people crowded around, touching his shoulder, thanking him, asking if it was real, was it really real?
"It's real," he kept saying. "It's real, yeah?"
Kade was going to kill him. This was the opposite of lying low. This was the opposite of being careful. This was standing up and painting a target on his back.
But as he watched people's faces—really saw them, saw their disbelief transforming into hope—Nico realized he didn't care.
For the first time since finding that data core, for the first time since learning he was technically rich, he felt like the money meant something.
"Free meals," someone said, testing out the words.
"Free meals," Nico confirmed, and his voice didn't sound like his own. It sounded bigger, more certain. "Every day. Starting tomorrow."
Mrs. Chen clapped him on the shoulder. "Well, nephew. Let's see if we can't change a little piece of this hell into something better."
"Yeah," Nico said, and believed it. "Let's try."
He was still drunk. Still high. Still a junkie dealer with more money than sense and no idea what he was doing.
But for the first time in ten years, Nico Chen felt like maybe—maybe—his life could be about more than just surviving until he didn't.
Maybe it could be about something that mattered.
Even if it was just a noodle shop on Level 8.
Even if it was just one meal at a time.
It was a start.