The boy stepped into the shack without invitation.
He didn't stomp or swagger—just walked in like the place was already his. His bruised cheek pulsed beneath the flickering firelight. His left eye was nearly shut, but the right one watched Elias like a hawk circling prey.
The other three followed—quiet, fast. Two boys, one girl. All skinny. All older than Elias. One had a length of copper pipe tucked in his belt. Another carried a broken broom handle sharpened to a splintered point.
Street weapons.
Slum law.
The lead boy glanced at Liora, curled in her sleep behind the blanket wall. His gaze lingered—calculating—then shifted back to Elias.
"So," he said, crouching beside the fire. "You're the clever one."
Elias didn't move.
He kept his back straight. Hands open. Calm voice.
"Who wants to know?"
The boy smirked.
"Bran."
He tapped his chest with two fingers, then pointed behind him.
"Skiv, Nala, Rote."
The others didn't speak. They just watched, arms crossed or hands near weapons.
"Never seen someone sell trash before," Bran continued. "Not unless it was painted gold. But people are talkin'. Say you made soap."
"I did."
"You trade it?"
"Yes."
Bran nodded like he was confirming something already known. Then leaned in slightly.
"You got protection?"
Elias shook his head.
"Then you got a problem."
Bran's voice was steady, but the edge beneath it wasn't a threat—it was a fact.
This was how things worked. The moment something had value, it belonged to someone stronger. Or someone hungrier.
Protection was just robbery with a polite name.
"I'm not paying," Elias said.
Bran blinked.
"Didn't say you were. Yet."
The two boys behind him chuckled.
Elias stood slowly, meeting Bran's eye.
"What if I offer something better?"
Bran raised an eyebrow.
Elias pointed to the fire.
"I need fat. Ash. Clean water. Bones. Rag cloth. Tin scraps. Gutter runoff. Things no one wants. Things you're already good at finding."
Bran's smirk returned. "You want us to dig through shit and scraps?"
"You already do. Now you'd get food for it."
A beat.
"Work," Elias said. "Real work. You gather. I make. We trade. I feed you. You stop threatening me."
Bran's expression didn't change for a long moment.
Then he laughed.
It wasn't cruel—but it wasn't kind either.
"You want us to work for you?"
"No," Elias said.
"For yourselves."
The silence shifted.
Nala leaned in and whispered something to Bran.
He didn't reply.
Just stood.
"You're crazy," Bran said. "And you'll probably get knifed."
Then he turned.
"C'mon."
The gang left without another word.
Elias stayed by the fire until the sound of their footsteps disappeared into the rain.
Elias didn't sit down right away.
He waited by the door, back to the wall, eyes on the alley outside.
The fire hissed behind him, low and steady. Liora murmured in her sleep, shifting under the blanket. The rain softened, turned to a whisper.
They were gone.
But not gone-gone.
Not the kind that stayed away.
He'd seen it in Bran's face.
He didn't laugh because he thought it was stupid. He laughed because it made sense—and that made him nervous.
Slum boys didn't work. They took. That was the rule. The only one.
And Elias had offered something dangerous:
A way to earn.
Not beg. Not steal. Not threaten.
Earn.
He turned from the door and went back to the fire. A fresh bar sat cooling, pale and solid, flecked with ash. He wrapped it in cloth and tucked it into the hidden pocket he'd sewn into the bottom of the straw mat.
He was about to sit down—
A faint sound.
Behind the shack.
A shuffle.
A step.
He turned, silently walked to the wall, and crouched by the rear slats. One had a small gap where the wood had split in the rain.
He peeked through.
There—by the edge of the wall, crouched under the lip of the broken gutter—was Rote.
The smallest of Bran's crew. Thin as rope, with eyes too big for his face. Elias had barely heard him speak. Right now, he was chewing his lip, staring at the shack like he'd lost something inside it.
Elias didn't call out.
He just opened the door slowly, quietly.
Rote flinched when it creaked, turned to run—
"Wait."
Rote paused, shoulders hunched.
Elias held something out in his open palm. A crust of bread. The last bite of the soup trade.
"Take it."
Rote looked at it, then back at Elias.
"What's the catch?" he muttered.
"No catch," Elias said. "You bring me anything usable—fat, bones, rags—I'll trade again."
The boy hesitated.
"You said you wanted workers. Not beggars."
"I meant it," Elias said. "But sometimes the first trade is free."
Rote took the bread.
Didn't thank him. Just nodded once and disappeared back into the alley like smoke.
Elias closed the door.
And this time, when he sat by the fire, his heart was calm.
One spark.
That was all it took to start a burn.
The fire had nearly burned itself out, its embers glowing dull and red beneath the pot.
Elias didn't feed it.
He sat cross-legged beside it, arms resting on his knees, staring at the ashes like they might spell something only he could read.
The rain outside had slowed to a whisper on the roof. The wind no longer whistled through the boards—it merely passed through, gentle, unnoticed.
Inside, all was still.
Liora breathed steadily now, her fever lighter, her face no longer so pale.
Elias's mind wasn't on her anymore.
It was on Rote.
The way the boy had looked at the bread. The way he hadn't said thank you—but hadn't walked away either. The way he'd lingered outside, unsure if what he wanted was permission or purpose.
The first trade is free, Elias had said.
And that was true.
But it wasn't just about bread.
It was about choice.
He hadn't begged them to work. He hadn't threatened them. He'd offered a third thing—structure. A shape. A reason.
He remembered something his old engineering mentor once said, back when Elias was just some angry, brilliant dropout helping fix heating units in slum towers back on Earth:
> "You don't build machines. You build systems. Machines break. Systems adapt."
That phrase had stuck with him.
It stuck now.
Soap was just a machine.
But if he could build a system?
Of labor. Of trade. Of rules?
That wouldn't just lift him.
That would change everything.
The System must have sensed the thought because a whisper curled into the edge of his mind:
[Human Resource Path: Unlocked]
[Prototype Network Formation Detected]
[Tier 0 Labor Relations: "Informal Barter"]
Elias smiled faintly.
For once, the voice in his head made sense.
This wasn't about soap.
It was about what soap bought.