The Warden’s permissions changed the way David saw the Abyss.

  Before, the navigation map had been a player-level interface—a simplified overlay showing dungeon locations, danger ratings, and the Consortium’s hidden intranet. Useful, but shallow. Like reading a city map that showed streets and buildings but not the sewage system, the electrical grid, or the geological faults running beneath the foundations.

  Now, with system-level access, the map was the infrastructure. David could see the routing tables that connected dungeons to each other—the dimensional pathways that the Abyss used to transport players between instances. He could see the scheduling algorithms that assigned players to dungeons based on their stats, their history, and variables he hadn’t known existed: psychological profiles, stress tolerance thresholds, estimated cognitive flexibility scores. The system didn’t just send players to dungeons. It matched them, the way a dating algorithm paired users based on compatibility metrics—except the compatibility being measured was the likelihood of producing a specific type of fear response.

  The system was farming emotions. Specifically, it was farming the neurochemical cascade produced when a human mind encountered a problem at the exact threshold of its ability—difficult enough to produce extreme stress, solvable enough to prevent complete shutdown. The "Survival Points" players earned weren’t an abstraction. They were the refined output of that process: crystallized cognitive labor, extracted through fear and compressed into a tradeable format.

  David had known this from the Archive data. But seeing the infrastructure laid bare—the scheduling queues, the harvest metrics, the efficiency reports that tracked "yield per player-hour"—was different from knowing it abstractly. It was the difference between reading about a factory and standing on its production floor, watching the machinery run.

  "You’re quiet," Michael said from the navigator’s chair. They’d been traveling for three hours. The Abyss scrolled past the viewport in streaks of dark matter, occasionally punctuated by the distant glow of a dungeon instance or the red pulse of a Consortium waypoint.

  "I’m reading the infrastructure." David didn’t look away from the map. "The system’s scheduling algorithm has a bias. Players who produce high yield—high stress, high problem-solving output—get routed to progressively harder dungeons. The difficulty curve isn’t linear. It’s adaptive. The system is training each player to maximize output."

  "Like a gym program. Increase the weight until you can’t lift anymore."

  "Exactly. And when a player reaches the point of diminishing returns—when the stress response peaks and begins to flatten—the system has three options." David held up three fingers. "Retirement to the Hub Bazaar as a long-term monitored subject. Recruitment into the Consortium’s operational structure. Or ‘harvesting.’"

  "The Archive mentioned harvesting but didn’t define it."

  "I can see the definition now." David’s voice was flat, but his jaw was tight. "Harvesting is the extraction of a player’s entire cognitive substrate. Not their points—their consciousness. The system can strip the accumulated stress-response data from a human mind and compress it into a high-density energy format. The process is lethal. The mind doesn’t survive."

  Michael’s coin stopped mid-flip. "That’s what the Beta-Tier gateway is for."

  "The gateway requires massive energy input. The Consortium has been harvesting player consciousness to fuel the dimensional bridge’s construction. Every dungeon clear, every survival run, every terrified player counting to ten in a blood-red tent—it all feeds the bridge."

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  The train rocked gently. The Bear Spirit shifted in its sleep at David’s feet.

  "How many?" Michael asked. "How many players have been harvested?"

  David looked at a counter on the system-level map. A number, updating in real time, tracking the cumulative input into the Beta-Tier gateway’s energy buffer.

  "Forty-seven thousand, eight hundred and twelve. Since the system’s inception."

  The number hung in the air between them.

  "And the bridge is 67% complete," Michael said.

  "68%. It ticked over while we were in the Penitentiary."

  David closed the map overlay and turned to face Michael directly. "I need you to understand what happens if the bridge completes. The Consortium’s Board of Directors crosses into the Beta-Tier. The Alpha server—this dimension, the 10-Star cap, all of us—becomes a permanent resource extraction operation with no oversight. The Board ascends and leaves behind a fully automated death factory."

  "And if we destroy the bridge?"

  "Forty-seven thousand harvested minds’ worth of energy detonates. The Abyss destabilizes. Every active dungeon collapses. Every player currently in an instance dies."

  Michael went very still. "So we can’t destroy it."

  "We can’t destroy it." David turned back to the console. "We have to repurpose it. The bridge is a dimensional conduit. It doesn’t care what direction the energy flows. If I can access its architecture, I can reverse the polarity—use the accumulated energy to push something down from the Beta-Tier instead of pulling the Board up."

  "Push what down?"

  David’s fingers danced across the navigation interface, zooming into the gateway’s structural data. "I don’t know yet. The Beta-Tier’s architecture is outside my current access scope. But the bridge’s construction blueprints are stored at the gateway itself, and with Warden-level permissions, I should be able to access the design documents."

  "Should."

  "Welcome to probabilistic computing, Michael. We work with ‘should’ now."

  The console beeped. A waypoint alert.

  [Approaching coordinates: Gateway Node perimeter. Warning: Consortium security presence detected. Multiple high-level entities in patrol formation.]

  David pulled up the sensor overlay. The gateway was still two hours out, but its security perimeter extended far into the surrounding void. He counted the signatures: thirty-two patrol entities, ranging from A-rank to S-rank, moving in overlapping coverage patterns designed to eliminate approach vectors.

  And one signature that was larger than the others. Much larger. Stationed at the gateway itself, motionless, radiating an authority level that David’s Warden permissions flagged as "EXCEEDS LOCAL ASSESSMENT CAPABILITY."

  "That’s not a patrol unit," David said quietly.

  "What is it?"

  David zoomed in. The entity’s system tag resolved:

  [Regional Executor — Class: S+ — Designation: "Cleaner Unit 7" — Assignment: Gateway Defense / Target Elimination (Player No. 7749)]

  Cleaner Unit 7. The kill order that had been authorized against him before he’d even finished the Ghost Train. The Consortium’s response to his existence, waiting at the exact location he needed to reach.

  David stared at the tag. Then he leaned back in the command chair, closed his eyes, and began to think.

  Not react. Not panic. Think. The way a programmer thinks when the production server is on fire and the only path to the fix runs through the burning room.

  "Michael. I need you to contact the Archivist. She said her account might reactivate in the Hub. If it has, I need her to access the scavenger networks and find me everything—everything—on Cleaner Unit 7. Combat profile. Behavioral patterns. Known weaknesses. Operational history."

  "And what are you going to do?"

  David opened his eyes. "I’m going to find Razor."