The money made everything feel possible.
I stood in my new apartment - not a squat anymore, an actual apartment I'd paid for - and stared at the credit balance on my neural display. Four hundred and twelve million, seven hundred thousand credits. The number didn't feel real. Numbers that big belonged to corporations and governments, not to Gammas who'd been selling Drift in condemned casinos three months ago.
The apartment wasn't much by Level 3 standards. Hell, it probably wasn't much by Level 8 standards. But by Level 9 metrics, it was a palace. Three rooms instead of one. Real furniture I'd ordered from legal suppliers who'd actually delivered to the undercity when they saw my credit verification. A bathroom with a shower that had hot water. A kitchen with appliances that worked.
Windows. Real windows with real glass, not the cracked plexiglass I'd grown up with.
Through those windows, I could see the undercity spreading out below - still wet, still rusted, still trapped in perpetual twilight. But I wouldn't be down there much longer.
I was getting out.
"You're high," Finn said from the doorway. They leaned against the frame, arms crossed, watching me with that patient expression that meant they were humoring me until I came down.
"Observant as always." I took another hit from the vial - pharmaceutical grade Drift now, the kind Alphas used, smooth as silk and three times as strong as the street shit I used to sell. "I'm also rich. And I'm leaving."
"Right. Leaving." Finn pushed off the doorframe and walked into my new living room, examining the furniture like they were artifacts from another civilization. Which, in a way, they were. "When?"
"Soon. Few more weeks. Need to liquidate some assets, make arrangements, get the documents in order."
"Documents." They sat on my new couch - real leather, cost more than most people made in a year - and studied me. "What documents, exactly?"
I pulled up the research I'd been doing for the past two weeks, projected it on the wall screen I'd installed. "Identity brokers. Black market specialists who can create new biometric profiles. There's this guy on Level 6 who supposedly has connections to corrupted administrators. He can generate legitimate Beta credentials for two million credits."
"Two million for fake papers."
"Not fake. Legitimate Beta registration, clean genetic profile, employment history, residential authorization. Everything the scanners check for." I was pacing now, energy fizzing through my veins like electricity. The Drift made everything sharp and clear, all possibilities visible at once. "I move to Level 7 as a Beta logistics coordinator. Get a regular apartment. Walk around in the clean air without everyone looking at me like I'm shit on their shoe."
Finn was quiet for a long moment. Then: "You think it's that easy?"
"I think money makes everything easier. And I have a lot of money."
They stood, walked to the window, looked out at the undercity. "What about me?"
The question hit harder than it should have. I stopped pacing.
"What about you?"
"I'm your partner, aren't I? We found this together. You splitting the credits with me?" There was no accusation in their voice. Just a question.
I hadn't thought about it. Not really. The money had consumed all my planning, all my dreaming. "Yeah. Of course. How much do you need?"
"How much do I need." They laughed, short and bitter. "That's one hell of a question, Jax."
"I didn't mean it like that."
"Yeah, you did." They turned from the window. "You've been high for three days straight. Planning your escape. Your new life. Your Beta credentials and your Level 7 apartment. I don't think you've looked at anyone else down here since you made that last sale."
The words stung because they were true. I'd been floating in a Drift-bubble of possibility, imagining futures where I wasn't defined by my DNA.
"I'm sorry," I said. "You're right. We're partners. I'll get you out too. We'll both go up, both start over."
Finn looked at me for a long time. "I don't think I want to."
"What?"
"Go up. Live on Level 7, pretend to be Beta, walk around in someone else's skin." They shook their head. "That's not freedom, Jax. That's just a different cage with better furniture."
"It's a cage with sunlight. With real air. With people who don't spit when they see you coming."
"It's a cage where you have to lie about who you are every second of every day." They moved closer, their voice gentle despite the hard truth in it. "You think you can live like that? You think you can spend the rest of your life pretending you're not a Gamma?"
"I'd rather pretend to be Beta than actually be Gamma."
The moment I said it, I wanted to take it back. The self-hatred in those words was ugly, raw, the kind of internalized poison that Drift usually kept buried.
Finn's expression didn't change. "Yeah. I know you feel that way. That's the problem."
They left without another word.
I stood alone in my expensive apartment, surrounded by furniture I'd bought to prove I was worth something, and took another hit of Drift.
The planning consumed me.
I spent hours researching Level 7. Read everything I could find about it - the residential zones, the employment sectors, the social structures. Level 7 was where the professional class lived. Beta engineers, administrators, medical technicians. People who worked for the Alphas but weren't born into pure genetic privilege.
They had parks. Actual parks with real trees, hydroponically grown in climate-controlled biodomes. I'd seen pictures - green grass, flowering plants, children playing without fear of falling pipes or toxic runoff.
Children. That hit me strange. In the undercity, you didn't see many children. People didn't have kids when they couldn't feed themselves. But on Level 7, people had families. Raised them in apartments with two bedrooms and certified air filtration. Sent them to schools where they learned things beyond basic survival.
I could have that. Maybe not children - that felt too far, too impossible - but the rest. The apartment, the clean air, the trees. The simple dignity of walking down a street where the lights worked and the floor wasn't wet with condensation.
I wanted it so badly it hurt worse than withdrawal.
The identity broker's contact information sat in my encrypted files like a promise. One message, two million credits, and I could become someone else. Someone better.
Someone human.
I drafted the message a dozen times. Deleted it a dozen times. The Drift made me bold and paranoid in alternating waves. What if it was a trap? What if the broker took the money and disappeared? What if the credentials didn't work and I got caught at a checkpoint with fake Beta markers?
What if it worked?
That thought scared me more than the others.
Dr. Yin ran an unofficial clinic in Sector 9, treating undercity residents for cash and barter. She was Gamma-caste, with genetic modifications for enhanced manual dexterity - her ancestors had been surgeons, back when Gammas were allowed to be doctors. Now she fixed broken bones and treated infections in a converted storage room with equipment she'd stolen or salvaged.
I found her on the third day of my planning binge, coming down from the Drift enough to realize I needed information, not just fantasies.
"Mr. Varro," she said when I walked into her clinic. "I heard you'd come into money. New furniture and new problems?"
"Something like that." I sat on the examination table without being asked. "I have questions about genetic modification."
She washed her hands in a sink that had probably been installed before I was born. "I don't do modification work. Illegal, dangerous, and I don't have the equipment."
"Not looking for modifications. Looking for information. How do the biometric scanners work? What exactly are they checking?"
She dried her hands on a clean towel, studying me. "You planning to run?"
"Maybe."
"Then you need to understand what you're running from." She pulled up a chair, settled into teaching mode. "The scanners don't just read your DNA. They read specific genetic markers that were modified three generations ago. The modifications are in your mitochondrial DNA, passed down maternally, impossible to change without complete cellular rewrite."
"But if someone had fake credentials-"
"Credentials don't matter. The scanner reads your actual genetic code and compares it to the genetic registry. If your DNA says Gamma, the scanner says Gamma. No amount of paperwork changes that."
The hope that had been building for three days started to crack.
"There has to be a way. Genetic hacking, modification, something-"
"There is," she said. "It's called complete genetic rewrite. Takes years of treatment, costs upward of fifty billion credits, has a seventy percent mortality rate, and if you survive, the modified DNA is detectable and carries an automatic death sentence."
I sat there on the examination table, feeling the floor drop out from under me.
"So there's no way out."
"There's no way to change what you are," she corrected. "Which means there's no way to fool a scanner. The system was designed to be permanent, Mr. Varro. Permanent across generations. Your children would be Gamma. Their children would be Gamma. Forever."
I thought about the parks on Level 7. The real trees. The clean air.
"What if I don't have children?"
She looked at me with something like pity. "Then the system still wins."
I went home and took enough Drift to forget the conversation. Enough to make the dreams come back.
In the dreams, I walked through Level 7's central park. Real grass under my feet, real sun overhead - artificial sun, but bright and warm, nothing like the dim emergency lighting of the undercity. There were people there, families, couples, children running and laughing.
Nobody looked at me with disgust. Nobody moved away when I sat on a bench. Nobody saw the Gamma markers in my DNA because in the dream, I didn't have them.
In the dream, I was just a person.
I sat on that dream-bench and watched dream-children play, and felt something dangerous uncurl in my chest. Not hope - hope would have been manageable. This was bigger and sharper and more destructive.
This was belief.
I believed I could have this. Believed the money could buy it. Believed that somehow, some way, I could walk out of the undercity and never come back.
The Drift made everything feel possible.
When I came down twelve hours later, Finn was sitting in my living room, waiting.
"You ready to listen?" they asked.
My mouth tasted like chemicals and my head felt like someone had packed it with wet sand. "To what?"
"To the truth you've been avoiding." They leaned forward. "You can't buy your way out of your DNA, Jax. You know that. Deep down, past all the Drift and the dreaming, you know."
"Dr. Yin said-"
"Dr. Yin told you what you needed to hear. But you're still planning. Still researching. Still convincing yourself there's a loophole." They stood. "There isn't. And when you finally try to leave and the scanners reject you, it's going to break something in you."
"Then what?" I asked. "I just stay here? Live in the undercity forever, no matter how much money I have?"
"I don't know," Finn said. "But running toward a fantasy won't help."
They left me alone with my expensive furniture and my impossible dreams.
I pulled up the Level 7 residential listings anyway. Looked at apartments I'd never live in, parks I'd never walk through, lives I'd never have.
The money sat in my account, four hundred million credits worth of possibility that couldn't buy the one thing I wanted.
Freedom.
But I didn't know that yet. Not really. The knowledge was there, circling in the dark parts of my mind where the Drift couldn't reach. But I didn't let myself look at it.
Not yet.
I had a few more days of dreaming left before reality made itself unavoidable.
I intended to use them.
The immigration forums were full of advice for people trying to move between levels. Most of it was useless - "just work hard and save up for a transfer petition" or "marry someone from a higher caste" - but buried in the noise were hints of real information.
Someone mentioned a checkpoint on Level 8 that was understaffed during third shift. Someone else talked about scanner glitches that sometimes happened during solar flares. A third person swore they knew a guy who'd successfully bribed a guard.
I collected these scraps of information like they were pieces of a map. Somewhere in all this noise was a path, a method, a way.
Had to be.
The money had to mean something.
I drafted another message to the identity broker. This time I sent it.
Two million credits transferred from my account seventeen seconds later.
The response came an hour after that: Documents ready in three days. Will message pickup location. Bring another million in physical scrip for the courier.
Three days.
In three days, I'd have Beta credentials. Legitimate-looking papers that said I was someone else. Someone allowed to move freely between levels.
I knew what Dr. Yin had said about scanners reading actual DNA. Knew that credentials didn't change biology. But there had to be scanner errors, glitches, ways around the system.
Had to be.
The alternative was unthinkable.
I stood at my window, looking out over the undercity, and imagined looking down from Level 7 instead. Looking down at this place from above, knowing I'd escaped it.
The fantasy felt so real I could taste it.
Three more days of dreaming.
Then I'd find out if hope was a gift or a poison.
The Drift told me it was a gift.
Everything else told me to be careful what I wished for.
I took another hit and let the dreams come back. Level 7. Real trees. Clean air. A life where my genetics didn't define my worth.
It was waiting for me.
Just three more days.
The rain kept falling outside, but I barely noticed it anymore.
I was already gone.