Hovering on the Edge of Death
Xili City. Gene Warrior Association, South Branch.
He'd walked the whole way — over an hour on his own two feet, following the map on his phone — and found his destination.
Even in the prosperous district, the building was unmistakable. Black stone from top to bottom, it stretched more than two hundred meters across. Two warrior statues flanked the main entrance, each roughly fifty meters tall, holding longswords raised high. The blades crossed in an X above the doorway, and the entrance waited in the shadowed space below.
Lu Yuan took a deep breath and stepped inside.
The interior opened into an enormous lobby. His gaze found the reception desk at the center — and then found the people filling the hall around it.
Gene Warriors. Every variety. Some wore gleaming armor, some flowing robes, some had swords strapped to their backs, and at least one had a tail. Lu Yuan stared at the tail. *Can humans just... grow tails?*
Nearly every one of them radiated a powerful, barely-contained aura. Among them, he felt like a sheep that had stumbled into a wolf pack.
He picked his way carefully through the hall, sidestepping warriors who moved with the unhurried confidence of people who owned the floor, and made his way to the reception desk.
The receptionist looked up with a warm, professional smile. "Hello! What can I help you with today?"
"I just had my Awakening," Lu Yuan said. "I'd like to register."
"Of course." She pointed to the right side of the lobby. "Registration is just over that way. Xiao Ai — could you show this gentleman the way?"
As she spoke, a white robot stepped out from beside the desk. It stood about a meter and a half tall, and when it spoke, the voice that came out was bright and chipper, almost childlike.
"Right this way, sir. Xiao Ai will escort you to the Gene Warrior Registration Office."
It turned and moved off without waiting. Lu Yuan hurried after it.
As the robot moved through the lobby, the Gene Warriors stepped aside without being asked. Lu Yuan followed in its wake, spared the constant weaving and sidestepping. They reached a room on the right side of the hall within minutes.
"Here we are, sir," Xiao Ai announced. "This is the registration office. Please take a number from the dispenser and wait to be called."
It pointed to a ticketing machine by the door, then left.
Lu Yuan went to the machine and pulled a number. B12. He checked the display: currently serving B08. He found an empty corner, sat down, and settled in.
The room ran to a couple of hundred square meters, with rows of chairs in the center and a line of service windows along the far wall, each staffed by an attendant. About twenty people were already seated — all young, most looking around his age or possibly a little younger. Every one of them had the same freshly-awakened, slightly lost expression. *Same situation as me, probably.*
Half an hour passed. The intercom called his number.
Lu Yuan approached his window and sat down. The attendant on the other side was a slender young woman.
"Please show your Gene Battle Mark."
He raised his left wrist, exposing the golden pattern traced into his skin.
She produced a black scanning device and pressed it against the mark. A soft beep. Green light pulsed across the device's surface.
"Gene Battle Mark confirmed." A holographic display materialized in front of him, showing his photo alongside his ID number and name. The attendant glanced at the screen and smiled. "Imperial citizen, ID number XL139205253232, name: Lu Yuan. Please confirm that this is correct."
"Correct."
She tapped through a few more entries, then recited in a practiced rhythm:
"Registration is complete. As a newly Awakened Gene Warrior, you are now at Trainee Rank. You will receive a monthly Imperial stipend of 5,000 Red Maple Coins — this month's payment has already been deposited to your personal account. I have also activated your access to the Gene Warrior website. Your account ID is your citizen ID number; the initial password is 666666. You can log in to the Gene Warrior website to look up information related to Gene Warriors. As a welcome gift, the Empire has provided three complimentary techniques for newly Awakened warriors: the Basic Spiritual Energy Guidance Technique, the Military Body Fist, and the Military Body Killing Sword. All three have been sent to your Battle Net inbox — please check for them when you get home."
Lu Yuan listened all the way through, blinking slightly. That was a lot to absorb at once.
The attendant looked up with a smile. "Any other questions?"
"No. Thank you."
"You're welcome! If there's nothing else, I'd appreciate it if you could rate my service."
He gave her five stars with a smile. She'd earned them.
Then he wasted no time getting out of there.
The moment he was outside, he pulled out his phone — and saw it: a transfer notification. 5,000 yuan, already in his account.
*Wait.*
*Hold on.*
His grin lit up his face.
*Does that mean I actually have money now?*
With funds at his disposal, he opened a ride-hailing app and called a car. An autonomous hover vehicle pulled up to the curb within seconds.
He got in.
Time to go home.
The hovercar carried him out of the prosperous district. Neon lights and glass towers gave way, block by block, to something older and grimmer.
Somewhere in the distance, gunfire rang out.
*Bang. Bang. Bang.*
Lu Yuan's expression didn't shift. He was used to it.
This world's technology was considerably ahead of what he'd known before — autonomous vehicles, intelligent robots, anti-gravity propulsion, all mature and in wide use. But it was also a world with Aberration Events: sudden catastrophes, monsters that occasionally slipped into cities. Ordinary citizens were legally permitted to carry weapons as a result. In districts where law enforcement was thin on the ground, that permissiveness bred gangs and crime.
His neighborhood was actually on the calmer end of the spectrum, as these things went. He'd heard that in some areas, people vanished daily and no one asked questions.
Every time he came home, there was a small, persistent voice in the back of his head wondering if today was the day a stray bullet found him.
The vehicle set down outside his compound. Lu Yuan lowered his head and walked quickly through the gate.
He sidestepped a cluster of drunks, politely declined the attentions of several women working the street, and made it back to his room.
The door closed behind him. He let out a long breath.
The room was a twenty-square-meter partition — a bed, a desk, a bathroom in name only. Rent was 200 a month. He understood why.
He'd only known this place through the original owner's memories. Experiencing it firsthand was a different matter. He'd been managing a quiet, persistent anxiety ever since he arrived in the neighborhood.
He did a quick sweep of the room out of habit, then sat down at the desk and opened his laptop. The thing was ancient, but functional. He pulled up a browser, found the Gene Warrior website — the Battle Net, as most people called it — and entered his credentials.
*ID number... 666666... I'm in.*
First order of business: change the password.
Second: pick a username.
He'd originally wanted "FatedOne" — a quiet nod to his own name, since the character *yuán* could mean fate or karmic connection. Already taken. He tried a handful of alternatives. Those were taken too. This, he realized, was the one universal constant that held across every world and every life: picking a name was always the single most insufferable task a person could face.
He settled on "AidedOne." In Chinese it was a perfect homophone for his first choice — the same pronunciation, different characters, different meaning. Someone backed by reinforcements. There was something appealing about that.
With username and password sorted, he found an unread message in his inbox.
He opened it. Three attached files.
*Basic Spiritual Energy Guidance Technique.*
*Military Body Fist.*
*Military Body Killing Sword.*
He accepted all three.
From what he understood, techniques like these had their ultimate origins in the Land of Origin — knowledge recovered by Gene Warriors who had ventured there and brought it back to civilization. Every skill in those files was, at its source, a treasure extracted from that place.
*Just imagine,* he thought, *how much the Land of Origin actually holds.*
And then something clicked.
His eyes brightened.
*Wait.*
He thought about his Evolution Cube. His ability to take any gene — no matter how mediocre, no matter how ordinary — and push it to the absolute peak of what it could ever become.
If he died in this slum before he ever reached that place. If some random bullet ended things before he'd accomplished a single thing —
*That would absolutely be the greatest loss in the history of the Human Race.*
He checked his balance. 5,035 yuan. A genuine cause for celebration.
His resolve solidified.
*Tomorrow. I'm going to find a new place. I'm moving out of this dump.*