Chapter 19
The outer slave district of Gaeth-9 was not a place anyone lived.
It was a place people were buried—slowly, over years. Not with soil, but with labor. With silence. With the kind of despair that didn't scream, but swallowed its own voice to survive.
The sky above the district was choked with ash vents and low-hanging smog, dyed orange by the refraction of orbital burnoff. Steel monorails ran overhead like chains, transporting ore and corpses in equal measure. Barracks stretched for kilometers—rusted rectangles where thousands slept on stone floors, waiting for the next horn-blast that meant they had ten minutes to report for work... or be culled.
Kiro entered the zone in silence.
No alarms blared. No soldiers gave chase.
The Sleeper Cells were dead.
But the real chains were still intact.
He walked through the outer gates with his hood pulled low, face shadowed. Around him, workers shuffled with their heads down, skin blistered from chemical exposure, backs warped from loading rigs. They didn't notice him at first. To them, he was just another broken thing.
Then a child looked up—and froze.