The building in Sector 4 had been condemned for fifteen years.
Twenty-unit residential block, art deco architecture from the station's first generation, probably beautiful once. Now it was a skeleton - windows broken, pipes frozen, electrical systems fried by decades of water damage. The kind of place squatters wouldn't even touch because the structural integrity was questionable at best.
The owner was a Beta property speculator who'd bought it for tax write-offs and never looked at it twice. When I offered twelve million credits for a building worth maybe fifty thousand in scrap, she signed the transfer so fast I wondered if she thought I was laundering money.
Maybe I was, in a way. Laundering hope.
That's what Finn said when I told them the plan.
"You're going to fix up a condemned building and give people free housing?"
"And food. And medical care. And job training if they want it."
"Why?"
I didn't have a good answer. The plan had crystallized during my Drift binge, formed out of rage and desperation and the fundamental truth that I couldn't leave. "Because I can. Because the money has to mean something. Because if I'm trapped here, I might as well make here worth living in."
Finn studied me like I was a puzzle they couldn't solve. "People are going to think it's a scam."
"Probably."
"People are going to think you want something from them."
"I know."
"Are you sure you don't?"
That question landed harder than it should have. I thought about it while the Drift hangover made my head throb. What did I want? Redemption? Purpose? To prove Gammas were more than what we'd been engineered to be?
"I want to not feel like this money is worthless," I said finally. "I want to build something that matters."
"That's not a small want, Jax."
"I don't have small wants anymore."
The renovation took six weeks and cost ninety million credits.
I hired Gamma workers exclusively - undercity residents who needed jobs and knew their way around old station infrastructure. Paid them triple the legal minimum wage, which was still insulting but better than most of them had ever seen. The crew boss was a woman named Kara who'd worked maintenance before the station authority laid off half the Gamma workforce for "efficiency improvements."
She looked at the building and whistled low. "This is going to take serious work."
"I have serious money."
"I can see that. Question is what you're planning to do with it once we're done."
"Free housing. Free meals. Free medical clinic in the ground floor units."
She stopped examining the structure and turned to look at me. "You running some kind of religious operation? Trying to convert people?"
"No religion. No strings. Just... housing. For people who need it."
"Nobody does that."
"I'm doing it."
Kara studied me for a long moment. I could see her trying to figure out the angle, the scam, the hidden cost. In the undercity, nothing was free. Everything had a price, even if the price was paid later in ways you didn't expect.
"Alright," she said finally. "We'll build your charity project. But when people figure out you're running some kind of gang recruitment or organ harvesting operation, I'm out."
"Deal."
We shook on it. Her grip was strong - enhanced muscle density modifications in her ancestry, same as mine. Workers engineered to be useful.
The crew got to work the next day.
Six weeks later, the building was transformed.
They'd stripped it down to the bones and rebuilt everything. New plumbing. New electrical. New walls where the old ones had rotted through. The art deco details - the elegant lines, the geometric patterns - had been cleaned and preserved. It looked like what it was: a beautiful piece of station history brought back to life.
Twenty units. Eighteen one-bedrooms and two studios. Each with working climate control, hot water, real windows, basic furniture I'd had delivered. Nothing fancy. But clean, dry, and structurally sound.
The ground floor had been converted to communal space. Kitchen with industrial equipment and enough capacity to feed a hundred people. Common area with seating and tables. Medical clinic with equipment I'd bought from legitimate suppliers who didn't ask questions when I showed them my credit balance.
I'd hired Dr. Yin to run the clinic three days a week. She'd asked the same questions Kara had - what was my angle, what did I want, what was this really about. I told her the truth: I was trapped, I was rich, and I needed the money to mean something.
She'd accepted the job on the condition that she could treat anyone who walked in, no questions asked. No reporting to station authority, no genetic verification, no billing.
"You're going to attract every outlaw and fugitive in the undercity," she'd warned.
"Good. They need medical care too."
On the day we opened, I stood in the common area and looked at what ninety million credits could build. It was real. Solid. A place where people could actually live instead of just survive.
The question was whether anyone would trust it.
I put up notices in every sector of Level 9. Simple messages on local networks and physical postings in places people gathered:
FREE HOUSING AND MEALS
Sector 4, Building 47
No cost. No contract. No catch.
First come, first served.
The first person to show up was an old man I recognized from Sector 7. He'd been squatting in what used to be a hotel, in a room where the ceiling had partially collapsed. He stood outside the building for twenty minutes before coming inside.
I met him in the common area. "Welcome. Are you here for housing?"
He looked around like he was expecting guards to jump out. "This a joke?"
"No joke. Free housing, free meals. You interested?"
"What do you want?"
It was the same question everyone asked. "Nothing. Just... want people to have a place to live."
"You're that dealer. The one who came into money."
Word traveled fast in the undercity. "I was a dealer. Now I'm doing this."
"Why?"
I could have given him the practiced answer - that I wanted to help, wanted to give back, wanted to make the undercity better. But something about his suspicious eyes made me tell the truth.
"Because I tried to leave Level 9 and found out I can't. Because I have more money than I can spend and nowhere to go. Because I'm Gamma and I'm stuck here and if I have to be stuck somewhere, it might as well not be hell."
He looked at me for a long moment. Then: "Which unit?"
"Your choice. Any of them."
"The one with the window facing east. Used to watch the sun come up through the station rotation before my building condemned that section."
I handed him a key card. "It's yours. Kitchen serves meals at eight, thirteen, and nineteen hundred. Clinic is open Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. No rent, no obligations."
He took the key like it might burn him. "When's the other shoe dropping?"
"There is no other shoe."
"There's always another shoe."
I watched him climb the stairs to his unit, moving slow, not quite believing it was real.
He'd find out it was real. They all would.
Eventually.
By the end of the first week, twelve units were occupied.
They came suspicious and stayed wary. Checked their doors for locks they couldn't control. Tested the food for drugs or poison. Waited for the moment I'd reveal what I really wanted from them.
That moment never came.
The meals kept coming. The hot water kept running. The clinic treated injuries and illnesses without asking for payment or documentation. And slowly - very slowly - people started to accept that it might actually be what I said it was.
A free level. A place in the undercity where you could live without paying the cost of survival.
Finn helped run the kitchen. They'd accepted my job offer with the same suspicion everyone else had, but they were good at it - organizing meal prep, managing supplies, making sure everyone got fed.
"People are starting to talk," they said one evening while we cleaned up after dinner service.
"Good talk or bad talk?"
"Both. Some people think you're trying to start a cult. Some think you're running a gang and this is your recruitment center. Some think you're doing human experiments."
"And what do you think?"
Finn dried a plate with more attention than it needed. "I think you're trying to do something good and you're terrible at explaining why."
"That's fair."
"But it's working. People have food. They have shelter. Whatever your reasons, it's more than anyone else is doing."
I looked out at the common area where residents were sitting together, talking, eating. Most still looked over their shoulders. Most still expected the catch.
But they were here. Living in clean rooms with hot water. Eating real food. Getting medical care.
It was a start.
The thirteenth resident was a woman with two children.
She showed up at the door soaking wet - the eternal rain had turned into a downpour in Sector 6 where she'd been squatting. Her youngest couldn't have been more than four, clinging to her leg and shivering. The older one was maybe seven, trying to be brave.
"I heard there's free housing," she said, voice flat with the exhaustion of someone who'd heard too many promises that turned to lies.
"There is. You and your children are welcome."
"What's it cost?"
"Nothing."
"I don't have money for bribes or—"
"No money. No bribes. No strings. Just housing and food."
She looked at her children, then back at me. "If you're lying to me, if this is some kind of—"
"I'm not lying. Come inside. Get dry. There's a two-bedroom unit on the third floor that's perfect for you."
I showed them up. The unit had furniture I'd specifically requested for families - a real bed in one room, two child-sized beds in the other. The kids stared at their beds like they'd never seen anything so extravagant.
Maybe they hadn't.
Their mother stood in the doorway, not quite entering. "This is really free?"
"Really free."
"Why?"
The question again. Always the question. I knelt down to be at eye level with the kids. "You two like it here?"
The youngest nodded. The older one was more cautious. "It's warm."
"Then it's yours. Your mom doesn't have to pay anything. You can stay as long as you want."
The mother's eyes were shining. "I don't understand."
"You don't have to. Just... live here. Be safe. Let your kids be warm."
She broke then, just for a moment - the careful control cracking to show the desperation underneath. "Thank you."
"You're welcome."
I left them to settle in. Heard the door lock behind me - paranoia was healthy in the undercity. Trust took time.
But they were here. Out of the rain. In a place with working heat and clean water.
Three more people who didn't have to choose between food and shelter tonight.
Ninety million credits had bought that. And I had hundreds of millions more.
The Free Level was just beginning.
By the end of the second week, all twenty units were full and I had a waiting list.
Word was spreading. The charity-that-might-be-a-scam-but-seemed-real. The rich ex-dealer who was giving away housing for reasons no one quite believed.
I sat in my office - a small room off the common area where I managed the operations - and looked at the numbers. Ninety million for the building and renovation. Three million per month for food, utilities, and Dr. Yin's salary. Another two million for maintenance and supplies.
Sixty million per year to keep one building running.
I had enough to run this place for five years without selling another piece of Earth currency to The Collector. And I still had more currency to sell. Billions more.
How many buildings could I buy? How many people could I house and feed?
Finn knocked on the open door. "There's a line outside. People wanting to know when the next building opens."
"What next building?"
"The one you're obviously going to open. Word is you've got more money than sense and you're spending it on Gammas. Everyone wants a piece."
I looked at the waiting list. Forty-seven names. Families with children. Old people who'd been squatting in condemned sections. Young workers who couldn't afford the extortionate rent most undercity landlords charged.
"Find me another building," I said. "Something in Sector 6, near the old market district."
"You're serious."
"I'm serious. Same setup - twenty to thirty units, ground floor community space, medical clinic. Budget a hundred million for acquisition and renovation."
Finn looked at me like I'd grown a second head. "You're going to rebuild the entire undercity."
"No. Just the parts that need it most."
"That's the entire undercity, Jax."
"Then I guess I better get started."
They left shaking their head, but I saw the smile they tried to hide.
This was insane. Unsustainable. A fantasy built on money I'd found by accident in a dead vault.
But it was real. People were living in safe housing. Eating real food. Getting medical care.
The money meant something now.
I pulled up property listings for Sector 6 and started looking for the next building.
The Free Level was growing.
And I was finally doing something that mattered.