The rain never stops on Level 9.
Not real rain, of course. Just the endless drip-drip-drip of condensation from the failing climate control systems three levels up, collecting on ancient pipes, running down art deco columns that were beautiful once, pooling in the streets that nobody bothers to drain anymore. The station authority stopped maintaining the undercity decades ago. Out of sight, out of mind. Out of the budget.
I pulled my coat tighter and kept my head down, navigating the familiar maze of rusted walkways and flooded corridors. Water sloshed in my boots. The neon signs reflecting in the puddles turned everything purple and green, sick colors for a sick place. Somewhere in the distance, a pipe burst with a sound like a gunshot. Nobody even flinched.
Just another night in paradise.
The meeting spot was in Sector 7, deep in the old entertainment district where the casinos used to be before they moved everything worth a damn to the upper levels. Now it was just hollow shells with broken windows and graffiti that glowed in the dark. Some Gamma with too much time and not enough hope had painted "WE WERE HERE" across an entire wall in bioluminescent paint. Past tense. Like we were already ghosts.
I checked my internal clock - a cheap neural implant I'd had since I was sixteen, barely functional but better than nothing. 22:47. Three minutes early. In my line of work, you're either early or you're dead. Being on time just means you walked into a trap at exactly the moment they wanted you to.
My buyer was supposed to be a regular. Chen, a Beta who worked maintenance on Level 8 and liked to slum it in the undercity when he wanted to score Drift without his bosses knowing. Betas weren't supposed to associate with Gammas except in official capacity. Bad for their reputation. Bad for their career. But addiction doesn't care about caste.
The old casino's main floor was a cathedral of decay. Vaulted ceilings disappeared into shadow, chandeliers hung like crystal corpses, and the bar that once served thousand-credit cocktails now served as a home for rust. I counted six exits by habit. Paranoia keeps you breathing.
Chen was waiting by what used to be the roulette tables. He looked wrong. Too still. Too calm. Chen was always nervous, always looking over his shoulder, always twitching. Now he stood there like he had all the time in the world, and that's when I knew.
I was already moving when the lights came on.
"Jax Varro." The voice came from everywhere at once, amplified and cold. "Station Security Services. You're under arrest for distribution of controlled substances."
SSS. The station's enforcers, the ones who made sure people like me stayed in our place. Three of them stepped out from behind the old slot machines, pulse weapons trained on my chest. Military-grade hardware for a small-time dealer. They really didn't like us much.
Chen had the decency to look ashamed. "I'm sorry, man. They caught me last week. Said they'd wipe my record if I—"
"Shut up, Chen." I didn't have breath to waste on traitors.
The lead SSS officer was a woman, Alpha caste by the way she held herself - like she owned the air she breathed. Her biometric tag glowed blue-white on her collar, the color of pure human DNA. Mine would glow red if I ever bothered to turn it on. Red for labor. Red for lesser. Red for livestock.
"On your knees," she said. "Hands behind your head."
I ran.
Not towards the exits - they'd expect that. Instead I went up, vaulting over the bar and crashing through the service door into the back corridors. The old casinos were built like mazes, designed to keep drunk gamblers wandering and spending. Now they kept Gammas like me alive.
Pulse fire lit up the walls behind me, burning ozone sharp in my nose. My Gamma modifications kicked in - enhanced endurance, increased pain tolerance, all the gifts they'd engineered into my ancestors to make them better workers. Better slaves. I pushed harder, taking corners without slowing, my boots hammering on tile that had probably cost more than I'd make in a lifetime back when this place mattered.
The undercity was a labyrinth, but it was my labyrinth. I knew which doors led to dead ends and which led to the old maintenance tunnels. I knew where the scanners had blind spots and where the ceiling was low enough that the SSS, with their fancy Alpha-height genetics, would have to duck.
I lost them in the tunnels somewhere between the old water treatment plant and the hydroponics section that hadn't grown anything in forty years. My lungs were burning despite the modifications, my heart a hammer in my chest. I leaned against a wall that wept condensation and waited for my hands to stop shaking.
Chen had given me up. Chen, who I'd been selling to for three years, who'd told me about his daughter's birthday, who'd shown me pictures on his cheap photo display. I'd known him. Thought I knew him.
Stupid. Everyone breaks eventually. Everyone has a price, and most of us can't afford to be expensive.
I needed to get home, get my stash, and disappear for a while. Let things cool down. But first I needed to get through the checkpoint.
The border between Level 9 and Level 8 used to be a grand entrance - brass gates, marble floors, a statement about progress and civilization. Now it was just a scanner array and a bored guard who didn't look up from his display unless the alarm went off.
The alarm always went off for me.
I approached the scanner like I had a right to pass through. Confidence is armor when you don't have anything else. The scanner was a six-foot arch of black metal covered in sensors that could read your DNA from three feet away. Every person on Meridian-9 was in the database. Every person sorted, categorized, assigned a place. The scanner knew where you belonged.
It knew I didn't belong here.
The light turned red before I even reached the arch. The alarm was a soft, almost polite chime that might as well have been a klaxon. The guard looked up, saw me, and his hand dropped to his pulse weapon.
"Back up, Gamma. You're not cleared for Level 8."
"I just need to pass through to—"
"Genetic marker flagged," the scanner's artificial voice announced, sweet and mechanical. "Caste designation: Gamma. Employment verification: None. Residential authorization: None. Level 8 access: DENIED."
The words hit like bullets. Precise. Clinical. Absolute.
"I'm not trying to stay," I said, keeping my voice level. "Just need to see someone. I'll be back down in an hour."
The guard actually laughed. "You think I'm going to override the system for you? Get back where you belong before I call it in."
Where I belonged. Where my DNA said I belonged. Where my grandfather's employer had decided he belonged when they modified his genes and locked us into this caste forever.
I backed away before the guard decided I was a problem worth solving violently. The scanner's red light followed me like an accusation. You are lesser. You are owned. You are exactly what we made you.
I walked back into the undercity, into the rain that never stopped, past the ghosts who used to think they were people, and I didn't look back.
My squat was in Sector 4, in what used to be residential housing before the Sealing. Tiny studio apartments that were supposed to be temporary housing for station workers. Temporary turned into seventy years. The building sagged like it was tired, held together by hope and habit.
I climbed three flights of stairs - the elevator hadn't worked since before I was born - and keyed my door lock with a biometric tap that worked maybe half the time. Tonight it worked. Small mercies.
The room was about as big as a prison cell. Mattress on the floor, stolen books stacked against one wall (Hammett, Chandler, Thompson - the old noir masters, back when Earth still had cities), a hot plate I'd traded for, and a picture of my mother that was so faded I couldn't remember if I was remembering her face or just the photograph.
I pulled the Drift from its hiding spot behind the baseboard and sat on the mattress, turning the vial over in my hands. Clear liquid, slightly luminescent, warm to the touch. Chemical peace. Chemical surrender.
The corporate propaganda called it a medical miracle - a painkiller for workers doing dangerous jobs. They didn't mention it was designed for Gammas specifically, targeted to our modified neurology. They didn't mention it was addictive. They didn't mention it turned you compliant and dreamlike, perfect for people they needed obedient.
I mentioned it to myself every time I took it, and I took it anyway.
The injection was a quick burn in my arm, and then the world got softer. The edges blurred. The anger faded to something manageable. The humiliation at the scanner became a distant thing that happened to someone else.
I leaned back against the wall and stared at the ceiling where water damage had created patterns like continents on some long-dead world. Earth, maybe. The planet we'd left behind seven hundred years ago when we thought the stars would save us.
The stars hadn't saved anyone. We'd just brought all our shit with us and painted it with chrome.
My cheap neural implant flickered in the corner of my vision - a message notification. I almost ignored it, but I was high enough that curiosity was easier than caution. I pulled up the message with a thought.
It was from Finn: deal went south. u alive?
I typed back with the neural interface, letters forming from intention alone: barely. chen sold me out.
figures. everyone's got a tell. urs is trusting people.
I smiled despite everything. Finn knew me too well.
laying low for a bit. talk tomorrow.
yeah. dont od.
no promises.
I closed the interface and let my head fall back against the wall. The Drift was singing in my blood now, everything distant and bearable. Through my single window - real glass, not plexiglas, one of the tiny luxuries of this old building - I could see the undercity spreading out beneath me. Neon and shadow, rust and rain, a thousand people trying to survive in a place designed to be forgotten.
Somewhere in that labyrinth, there were supposed to be old sections even deeper than this. Sealed-off areas from when they first built the station, before the castes, before the modifications, when everyone thought we'd build a better world out here in orbit around Saturn.
They said scavengers went into those deep sections sometimes. Said some found things worth selling. Technology, artifacts, old world treasures.
Probably bullshit. Probably just stories we told ourselves to believe there was something valuable in being forgotten.
But sometimes, high on Drift and staring at the rain-soaked ruins of a better dream, I wondered.
I wondered if there was anything down there in the dark.
Anything worth finding.
Anything worth more than this.
The rain kept falling. The neon kept glowing. And I kept wondering, right up until the Drift pulled me under into dreamless sleep, what it might mean to be free.
Whatever that was.
Whatever that could be for someone like me.
Just a Gamma in the rain, dreaming of a sun I'd never see.