I had four hundred million credits in my account, and I couldn't buy a sandwich on Level 7.
The scanner at the checkpoint hummed its cheerful mechanical song, reading my DNA like a book written in my grandfather's cells. The guard didn't even look up from his display when the red light flashed.
"Gamma caste. Access denied."
"I'm aware of my caste designation," I said, keeping my voice level. "But I have proper authorization." I transmitted the forged credentials that had cost me ten million credits - documentation claiming I was a maintenance contractor hired for emergency repairs in the Beta residential sector.
The guard looked up then, interest flickering across his face as he saw the credit verification in his system. Ten million as a deposit. Another twenty million on completion. The kind of numbers that made even jaded Beta bureaucrats pay attention.
"Credentials are flagged as forgery," the scanner announced in that same sweet artificial voice. "Genetic markers do not match employment authorization. Bribe attempt detected. Logging incident."
The guard's hand dropped to his pulse weapon. "Step back, Gamma. Before this becomes a bigger problem for you than it already is."
I stepped back. I'd already tried three different checkpoints, three different approaches, three different forgeries. The answer was always the same.
The system didn't care how much money I had. The system knew what I was down to my DNA, and no amount of credits could rewrite that code.
The genetic hacker worked out of a clinic in Sector 9, the kind of place where they didn't ask questions and didn't keep records. I'd found her through six layers of intermediaries, each one taking a cut, each one swearing she was the best.
Her name was Dr. Yin, and she looked at me like I was asking her to reverse entropy.
"You want me to hack your genetic markers," she said slowly, "so the biometric scanners read you as Beta? Or Alpha?"
"Either. Both. I don't care. I just need to pass the checkpoints."
She gestured for me to sit on the examination table. The clinic was cleaner than I'd expected, all white surfaces and medical equipment that looked newer than anything I'd seen in the undercity. Money could buy a lot, even down here.
Dr. Yin pulled out a scanner and ran it over my arm, reading my genetic code. Her expression didn't change as data scrolled across her display, but I saw her shoulders tighten.
"Your markers are flagged," she said after a long moment. "Not just categorized as Gamma - actually flagged. There's a secondary lock in your genetic code, something I've never seen before."
"What does that mean?"
"It means someone really doesn't want you leaving Level 9." She showed me the display. I couldn't read most of it - genetic sequencing looked like nonsense to my untrained eyes - but I could see the highlighted sections, the areas marked in red. "These flags are embedded in your mitochondrial DNA. They're passed down maternally, unchangeable without complete cellular replacement."
"So change it."
"Do you understand what you're asking?" She pulled up a simulation on her display. "Complete genetic rewrite at the cellular level would require years of treatment. We'd have to replace your bone marrow, introduce retroviruses to alter every cell in your body, suppress your immune system so it doesn't reject the changes. The mortality rate is somewhere around seventy percent. And that's before we factor in the fact that the scanners would detect the alteration in progress and flag you as genetic fraud, which carries an automatic death sentence."
I stared at the simulation. Little DNA helixes unraveling and reforming. "How much would it cost?"
"That's your question? How much?" She laughed, bitter and short. "Assuming you survived? Fifty billion, maybe. Specialized equipment I don't have. Treatments that don't exist on this station. You'd need to go to one of the core worlds, and you'd need to get there without being scanned."
"There has to be a way."
"There isn't." She turned off the display. "I'm sorry. I've been hacking genetics for twenty years, and I've never seen locks this tight. Whoever designed the caste system built it to be permanent. You were engineered to stay Gamma, and your children would be Gamma, and their children forever."
She said it clinically, like it was just data. Like she wasn't telling me my DNA was a cage I could never pick.
I paid her fifty thousand credits for the consultation. She tried to refuse it - professional courtesy, she said, for someone facing impossible odds. I made her take it anyway. Money had to be good for something.
My squat wasn't a squat anymore. I'd bought the entire building two weeks ago, had it renovated, turned my tiny room into a decent apartment with real furniture and working climate control. The rain still fell outside, but at least I could keep it outside.
I sat in my new chair, in my new space, surrounded by things I'd bought with money I'd earned by selling paper from a dead world. A bookshelf with actual first editions - Hammett, Chandler, real print books worth a fortune. A sound system playing music I'd only heard in static before. A kitchen with food that wasn't expired rations.
All of it worthless.
I pulled out a vial of Drift. Then another. Then six more. I'd bought the good stuff, pharmaceutical grade, the kind Alphas used in their medical bays. It came in injection packs that promised clean highs and minimal side effects.
I used them all.
The world dissolved into warm honey, thick and golden and sweet. The anger melted into something more diffuse, spread across my consciousness like oil on water. I could see my apartment - my cage - but it felt distant. Someone else's problem.
I thought about the checkpoint. About the scanner's cheerful voice telling me I was livestock. About the guard's hand on his weapon, ready to put down a Gamma who'd forgotten his place.
Four hundred million credits. I could buy buildings. I could buy people. I could buy everything except the one thing I wanted.
Freedom.
I laughed, and it turned into something broken. The Drift made everything soft, but it couldn't erase the fundamental truth: I was rich and I was trapped and I was exactly what the system had designed me to be.
A worker. A resource. A thing with a red genetic tag that told the whole station I was property.
The books on my shelf blurred into colors. I'd read them all, dreamed about being the hard-boiled detective walking rain-slicked streets of old Earth, solving mysteries and righting wrongs. But those men had been free. Broke, maybe. Beaten down, sure. But they could walk through any door they wanted.
I couldn't even leave my level.
I don't know how long I sat there, riding the Drift and staring at my expensive cage. Hours, maybe. The neural implant chimed with messages I didn't answer. Finn checking in. The Collector asking about the next shipment. Other dealers wanting to know if I was still in business.
All of it noise.
Somewhere in the chemical peace, a thought started to crystallize. Small at first. Then growing, taking shape, becoming solid enough to hold onto.
If I couldn't leave, I'd change where I was.
The undercity was a tomb because everyone with money left it. Everyone who could escape did. The only people who stayed were the ones who had no choice - the Gammas, the forgotten, the red-tagged cattle.
But I had money now. Billions, if I kept selling to The Collector. And money could change things. Not genetics. Not caste. But infrastructure. Living conditions. The thousand small cruelties of poverty that made the undercity hell.
I sat up, the Drift making the movement slow and deliberate. My mind was racing now, thoughts cascading through the chemical haze.
What if I didn't leave? What if I stayed and built something here? What if I took all those billions and poured them into Level 9, made it worth living in, made it somewhere people chose to be instead of somewhere they were trapped?
It wasn't freedom. Not real freedom. But it was something.
It was better than this. Better than sitting in my upgraded cage hating the bars.
I pulled up my neural interface, fingers shaking as I navigated to the station's property listings. Level 9 real estate was dirt cheap - no one wanted to buy into a dying level. I could afford whole sectors. I could afford to rebuild.
Housing first. Real housing, not squats. Climate-controlled, maintained, dry. I could gut whole buildings, renovate them, offer them to Gammas at cost or free. Give people homes instead of just shelter.
Then food. The undercity's food was rationed garbage, expired supplies the upper levels didn't want. But with money, I could buy real food. Fresh protein. Vegetables grown in proper hydroponics. I could distribute it freely, end the constant gnawing hunger that made everyone desperate.
Medical care. Education. Infrastructure repair. All the things the station authority had abandoned when they sealed off Level 9 and pretended we didn't exist.
I could make them see us. Not by leaving, but by building something impossible to ignore.
The plan formed in layers, each piece fitting together with the kind of clarity that only came from desperation and drugs. I started making lists, calculations, projections. How much to buy a sector? How much to renovate? How much to feed a thousand people? Ten thousand?
The numbers were insane. Billions of credits poured into a level the station had written off as dead. But I had billions. And I'd have more. The vault had enough Earth currency to fund this for years, maybe decades.
And if I was going to be trapped, I'd rather be trapped somewhere I built than somewhere I was assigned.
My neural interface chimed. Finn, checking in for the fifth time: where are you. getting worried.
I typed back with shaking fingers: im here. had an idea.
good idea or drift idea
both. come over. need to talk.
Twenty minutes later, Finn was at my door. They looked at me - at my dilated pupils, at the empty Drift packs scattered across the floor - and sighed.
"You look like shit."
"I feel enlightened."
"That's the drugs talking."
"Maybe. Or maybe the drugs are letting me see clearly for the first time." I gestured for them to sit. "I tried to leave today. Three different checkpoints. Forged credentials. Massive bribes. Nothing worked."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. It clarified things." I pulled up my interface, shared my screen with theirs. "Look at this. Level 9 property listings. I could buy Sector 4 outright for two hundred million. Sector 6 for three hundred. Sector 9 for half that."
Finn scrolled through the listings, expression unreadable. "Why would you want to?"
"Because if I can't leave, I'll make where I am worth staying." I stood up, pacing now, the Drift making everything feel possible. "We rebuild, Finn. We take the money from selling Earth's past and build a future. Free housing. Free food. Real medical care. Everything the station denies us because we're Gamma."
"That's insane."
"Yes."
"The station authority will shut you down. They don't want Gammas having anything."
"They don't want us leaving. But rebuilding Level 9? That's containment. We're making our cage nicer, not escaping it. They might not like it, but it doesn't threaten them."
Finn was quiet for a long time, still scrolling through the property listings. "How many people could you help?"
"With the money I have now? Maybe five thousand. With everything in the vault? Maybe fifty thousand. Maybe everyone in the undercity."
"And you'd do this? Just... give it away?"
I thought about the scanner's red light. About the guard's hand on his weapon. About Dr. Yin's clinical explanation of genetic locks that could never be picked.
"I can't buy freedom," I said. "Not for me. But maybe I can buy dignity. Maybe I can make it so the next kid born Gamma doesn't have to deal Drift and sleep in a squat and wonder if they're human."
"That's almost noble."
"Don't. I'm doing it because I'm trapped and angry and high and this is the only thing I can think of that isn't putting a pulse weapon in my mouth."
"Still counts."
We sat there, two Gammas in a renovated squat, planning to rebuild a tomb with money from selling ghosts.
It was insane. It was impossible. It was exactly the kind of desperate, grandiose, drugged-up plan that would probably fail and definitely get us in trouble.
But it was something.
And something was better than the nothing I'd been staring at all day.
"Okay," Finn said finally. "If you're doing this, I'm in. Someone needs to keep you from making completely stupid decisions."
"Like this one?"
"No, this one's only mostly stupid. I'm saving you from the completely stupid ones."
I smiled despite everything. "Thanks."
"Don't thank me yet. Thank me when we're not dead or bankrupt or both."
I pulled up the first property listing - a twenty-unit building in Sector 4, condemned but structurally sound. "Let's start here. Buy it tomorrow, start renovations immediately. We'll make it beautiful. Make it impossible to ignore."
"And when the station authority asks what you're doing?"
"We tell them the truth. We're improving our community. We're being good little Gammas, staying in our place, making the best of what we have." I met Finn's eyes. "And we make them watch while we build something they can't take away."
The Drift was starting to fade, reality creeping back in with its sharp edges and harder truths. But the plan remained, solid enough to hold.
I couldn't leave Level 9.
So I'd make Level 9 worth staying in.
And maybe, in the process, I'd prove that the system was wrong. That Gammas weren't just workers and resources and red-tagged cattle. That we were people who could build futures, who could dream dreams, who could be more than what they'd engineered us to be.
Or maybe I'd just spend billions making a nicer cage.
Either way, I'd know I tried.
And for someone who'd spent his whole life just surviving, trying felt like revolution.