The year was 5018 by the Federation Calendar.
Above the world, the sky hung heavy, choked in an endless sheet of ashen gray, leaking a fine drizzle of oily rain that slicked the endless mountains of scrap metal below. Out here, on the fringes of Lower Argon City, the world was forgotten — buried under the ruins of wars no one even remembered anymore.
Luke hunched low behind the carcass of a rusted engine, his gloved fingers sifting carefully through broken circuits and shards of ancient alloys. The air stank of wet iron and something sourer — the rot of things left too long to die.
He worked silently, methodically.
In this place, noise was death.
The junkyard sprawled out for miles, a graveyard of old Federation dreams — shattered walkers, collapsed skyships, torn banners of forgotten houses. And somewhere hidden among them, he had heard rumors, was treasure — not gold, but fragments of knowledge, remnants of a time when mankind still dared to dream bigger than their cages.
Luke was only sixteen, though the sunken hardness of his gray eyes could have belonged to a man twice his age. Life in the Redstone Orphanage had stripped the softness from him early — left only hunger, wariness, and a drive that gnawed at his bones day and night.
Today, he thought. Today's the day I find something real.
He wiped rain from his brow, ducked under a collapsed strut, and froze.
Voices.
Close.
Luke's hand slid instinctively to the iron rod tucked into his belt. He crouched lower, melting into the junk around him, breath shallow.
Two figures stumbled into view from the shifting haze — scavengers like himself.
The first was a stocky man with a mess of black hair, a scar running jagged down his cheek — Tren, Luke recognized him instantly.
Tren was bad news, one of the worst rats that prowled the ruins.
The second was a woman, tall, with wild red hair tied into a loose knot and sharp, predatory eyes. She moved like she was used to getting what she wanted.
"Jessie," Luke mouthed silently. He'd heard of her too — quick with a knife, quicker with betrayal.
They were arguing, low but heated.
"— I'm telling you, it's real," Tren hissed. "Codex fragment. Leftover from the last purge."
Jessie crossed her arms, unimpressed. "Or another busted nav core. I'm not getting my throat slit for junk, Tren."
Luke's heart pounded painfully against his ribs.
Codex fragment?
He knew the stories — black codices were forbidden relics, military-grade tech or worse, things that could get you shot on sight.
He couldn't let them have it.
Slowly, silently, he crept closer, picking a path through the broken detritus. He needed an opening — something.
Tren yanked a tattered sheet of synth-cloth off a battered container.
There, nestled amid cracked screens and dead batteries, was a small, matte-black case no larger than a book. Strange, faint markings pulsed along its surface, alive even in the dimness.
Luke's breath caught.
It's real.
But how? Why here, in this forgotten waste?
Jessie leaned down, reaching for it—
—and Luke acted.
He snatched up a shard of mirrorglass from the ground, hurled it wide into the distance.
The sound of shattering glass erupted through the ruins.
Both scavengers whirled instinctively toward the noise.
Luke moved like a ghost, his hands fast and sure.
One shove sent Tren sprawling into Jessie, cursing.
In the same motion, Luke snatched the case from the container and bolted.
"Hey! You little sh*t!" Tren roared behind him.
Footsteps pounded after him, furious and clumsy.
Luke zigzagged through the ruins, heart hammering. He ducked under twisted beams, slid over rusting panels, every instinct screaming to keep moving.
A blast echoed behind him — Tren firing a homemade scattergun — pellets ripping the air where Luke had been a moment before.
Almost there, he thought, desperation tightening his throat.
But then —
A second sound.
Low. Mechanical. Rhythmic.
Whump. Whump. Whump.
Luke skidded to a stop behind an overturned hoverbike, eyes wide.
A shape emerged through the smog — hulking, armored, old Federation military colors dulled with age but unmistakable.
A mecha suit — battered, half-rusted, but still functional.
And inside, a soldier.
No — soldiers. Two more mecha followed, stomping through the junkyard like iron giants.
"Secure the area," one barked over the loudspeaker, voice distorted by static.
Jessie and Tren froze as spotlights snapped on, bathing the junkyard in brutal white light.
Luke shrank deeper into the shadows, clutching the Codex to his chest.
One wrong move and he'd be a smoking stain on the ground.
The soldiers fanned out, weapons humming ominously.
Luke could see it now — the mecha weren't fully sealed units. They were old, patched together with civilian scrap. Exoskeletons more than true war machines. But lethal enough.
Jessie tried to run. Tren cursed and followed.
The mecha didn't hesitate.
A sharp crack split the air — stun rounds.
Jessie dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.
Tren fell seconds later, twitching.
Luke didn't breathe.
He pressed himself flat under the hoverbike, the rain soaking into his clothes, shivering violently.
He couldn't be caught.
Not with this.
Minutes dragged by like hours.
Finally, the soldiers moved on, dragging the two scavengers away.
When the sounds faded, Luke peeled himself up slowly, every muscle screaming.
He clutched the black case tighter.
The Codex felt alive in his hands, humming faintly against his skin.
He didn't know what it was, not really. But he knew this — it was worth more than anything he had ever owned.
Maybe enough to buy a new life.
Keeping low, Luke made his way back toward the crumbling skyline of Lower Argon City, the broken towers barely visible through the mist.
The city loomed like a dying beast, its neon lights flickering feebly against the eternal dusk. The trek back to the city was always the worst part.
Luke trudged through the outer ruins, feet aching, clothes soaked and stinking of oil and rust. The black Codex was pressed tight against his chest, hidden beneath the folds of his patched-up coat. His heart still hadn't stopped racing. Not from the run. Not from the fight. From what he was holding.
His fingers were trembling, and it wasn't from the cold.
He didn't even know what the Codex was—not exactly. But it pulsed. Faintly. As if something inside it was aware of him now. Watching. Waiting.
And that scared him more than the soldiers did.
By the time the jagged skyline of Lower Argon came into view, his legs felt like lead. Rows of crooked towers leaned against each other like old drunks, draped in neon wire and the occasional torn cloth banner. Below them sprawled the city's underbelly — rusted walkways, makeshift homes, old generator stacks that coughed smoke into the rain.
This was the Gutterline. Where the city's forgotten lived.
Luke didn't slow down.
He passed hunched figures warming their hands over fire pits, saw a man in a hood whispering to someone who wasn't there, and carefully avoided the narrow alleys where wild-eyed addicts whispered about gods that bled electricity.
"Hey, Luke!"
He flinched. Turned.
A skinny girl with tangled hair waved at him from behind a scrap stall, where old tech was stacked in neat rows. Mina — one of the other kids from Redstone. Orphan, like him.
He managed a nod. "Can't talk now."
Her smile faltered as he slipped past. She wouldn't be offended. They all understood. Everyone had their own battles to fight here.
When he finally reached the outer walls of the orphanage, his body nearly gave out. Redstone was built into the shell of an old banking center — reinforced walls, heavy doors, no love. The matron barely tolerated them. The food was rationed. The punishments were... efficient.
Luke crept in through a side passage, past the busted security grid that nobody bothered to fix anymore. Once inside, he moved fast — up two flights of stairs, into the small maintenance closet that he'd converted into his private corner of the world.
It was barely the size of a coffin. But it was his.
He sealed the door, pulled the hanging tarp closed, and finally — finally — took the Codex out.
For a moment, he just stared at it.
The case was heavier now. Warmer. Like it was reacting to being closer to the city.
"...What are you?"
There was no reply, of course.
Only a low hum, almost like breathing.
Luke ran his fingers along the edge. Symbols danced faintly across its surface, rearranging every few seconds, as if deciding what to show him.
Old Federation language. But not just that.
There were other characters too. Ones he didn't recognize.
He paused, heart skipping. He'd seen similar marks once before, in a forbidden archive accessed through an orphanage maintenance panel.
A fringe religion. Supposedly extinct.
The Archivist had mentioned it in passing: The Caldrith Chain. Not Federation, not rebel. Something older. They didn't worship gods. They studied them. Or what was left of them.
He swallowed.
Could this be from them?
He wanted to open it.
He also didn't want to die.
In the end, he wrapped it in cloth, stuffed it into the hidden panel under the floor grating, and sealed it tight.
He couldn't risk it. Not until he knew more.
Not until he could sell it… or understand it.
---
That night, sleep came slowly.
And when it did, it came with dreams.
He was standing in the junkyard again, only this time the sky above wasn't gray — it was split, bleeding light. Shapes moved in the clouds. Massive, coiling things with too many eyes and no mouths.
A voice spoke, from everywhere and nowhere.
"You have touched it."
Luke tried to run.
But there was no ground. Only metal and stars and fire.
"You are marked now, little thing. Fed or free — it doesn't matter. The chains are waking."
He jerked awake, gasping.
The room was dark. Quiet. The sound of distant generators throbbed through the walls like a dying heartbeat.
He rubbed his face, trying to shake the dream.
But something lingered. A pressure behind his eyes. Like something unseen had stepped through with him from the other side of sleep.
Outside his door, the hallway creaked. Someone was walking.
No — something.
The footsteps were too heavy, too even.
Luke held his breath.
Then it passed. Slowly. Fading into the distance.
He exhaled, heart hammering.
He didn't think the Federation knew about him. Not yet.
But if the Codex was what he thought it was, it wasn't just them he needed to worry about.
There were other powers out there.
The Primacy of Hevelen, who hunted forbidden tech like this to burn it.
The Tethered Accord, who believed knowledge like this was meant to be absorbed — no matter the cost.
And the Crucible Drift, silent buyers who paid fortunes for relics, never asking questions... never answering them.
Luke knew the world was bigger than Lower Argon.
He just didn't expect it to start growing this fast.
He lay back down.
Tomorrow, he would find a buyer.
Tomorrow, he'd make enough to leave this city forever.
But something in him whispered… it wouldn't be that