The morning transport for Sector 7 was a repurposed fusion-bus, its armor plating dented and stained from forty years of service. It groaned under the weight of dozens of weary workers and a handful of students from the local Academy, all commuting toward the industrial core.
Caine stood near the rear doors, gripping an overhead pole. He kept his right hand shoved deep inside the pocket of his faded utility jacket.
The ride was a blur. Caine kept checking his forearm beneath his sleeve. He had managed to suppress the chaotic current from last night's sudden surge, but the feeling remained—the deep, cold thrumming inside his bones. When he concentrated, he could still feel the energy wanting to explode, demanding release. He was effectively storing raw potential inside his nervous system, a state that should have been impossible.
Normal CrystalHeart users felt empty between uses. Caine felt full. Uncomfortably, dangerously full.
He needed answers, but he couldn't go to the official Academy trainers. They would use a standard digital measuring device. They would see his '10' rating and laugh—or worse, they would notice the erratic internal frequency of his core and lock him down for Directorate experimentation.
There was only one person he trusted who understood off-grid, irregular awakenings.
The shop was barely a shop. Nestled deep within the Sector 7 black market, it was a cramped bunker smelling of ozone, burnt oil, and hydraulic fluid.
"You're a week early, kid," a voice grunted from beneath the chassis of a disassembled Jahgred crawler. "I wasn't expecting your next scrap load until Friday."
The man, Old Man Silas, slid out on a wheeled creeper. He was missing one eye and half his left leg, both taken during the early wars. He was one of the few surviving Level 3 Masters from the old era.
"I don't have scrap today, Silas. I need you to look at something else," Caine said, his voice quiet. "Not a device. Me."
Silas paused, his single good eye narrowing. He wiped his greasy hands on an oil-stained rag and stood up slowly. "I'm a mechanic, Caine. Not a bio-engineer. What did you do to yourself this time?"
Caine took a deep breath. Slowly, he pulled his right hand out of his pocket and placed it on the worn steel counter. He closed his eyes, focusing on the heavy current locked beneath his ribs, allowing just a tiny fraction of that overwhelming flow to escape.
Bzzzt.
A small, flawless azure crystal scale, no bigger than a fingernail, erupted over his knuckle. It emitted a soft, internal hum that vibrated through the metal counter.
Silas froze. His single eye widened until the whites showed clearly. "By the Ancestors..."
He didn't touch Caine. Instead, he turned, unlocked a heavy metal drawer, and pulled out a primitive, handheld measuring rod—a relic from the first generation, far older than the modern digital scanners used by the Academy. He touched the glass tip directly to Caine's glowing knuckle.
The internal filament inside the glass rod turned a dark, stable sapphire, glowing with intense, concentrated light.
"The digital counters at the Academy read your base output, Caine. And it reads '10' because your power doesn't project outward," Silas whispered, his voice trembling slightly. "It can't read what isn't bleeding into the air. But..."
Silas held the ancient rod up between them.
"This is an old resonance reader. It measures structural density, not light projection. Caine... your base CHPower readout might be 10, but the density and purity of the energy you are suppressing inside your body..."
He looked from the glowing rod to the azure scale resting on Caine's hand.
"That tiny piece? It holds the density of a High Master."
Caine's heart hammered against his ribs. The density of a High Master. He wasn't weak. His power was just compressed.
"Can anyone else measure this?" Caine asked, panic tightening his chest.
"No. Not without specialized equipment I haven't seen in twenty years. To the world, you're just a glitch—a weak baseline with an incomplete materialization," Silas said, his face dead serious. "Caine, listen to me. If the Academy—or worse, the Jahgreds—find out you have access to true density... they will dismantle you."
"I need to learn how to control it, Silas. How to release it without blowing my own arm off."
Silas stared at him for a long moment, then nodded grimly. "I can teach you. But it won't be standard drill practice. It will be torture. If you can't learn to compress and lock that energy on command, the first serious Jahgred fight you get into won't just kill you—it'll detonate you like a fusion bomb."