Chương 18: Twenty-four-hour Safety Threshold

The dust of Canaan snapped into cold, grey static. Ethan pulled the manual emergency overrides. The polymer seals of his reconditioned capsule popped with a deep, hydraulic hiss, venting the familiar smell of warm insulation and ozone into the room. He pushed the visor back, his neck vertebrae popping as he sat up. The air in the room felt thick and cold. The metallic burn was entirely gone. He climbed out of the polymer tube, his bare feet meeting the freezing concrete floor.

He took three paces to the wall-mounted meter box. The flashing red emergency indicator had been replaced by a clean, unwavering green bar. [Chinatown Smart-Grid Node — Block 52] Current Credit: S$8. 14 Status: Normal (Unthrottled) Time Remaining: 6 Hours, 12 Minutes Ethan pulled up his bank interface, executing the direct black-market conversion of his 15. 40 Silver Shekels. The digital broker in Geylang cleared the trade in four seconds flat, applying a minimal transaction fee. S$7.

34 SGD credited to your residential node. The numbers on the wall shifted instantly. The time remaining box whirred, the internal algorithm recalculating their existence in clean, digital cells. New Status: Normal (Unthrottled) Time Remaining: 31 Hours, 44 Minutes Ethan let out a slow, silent breath. For the first time since his university tuition sweep at midnight, they had crossed the twenty-four-hour safety threshold. They were no longer counting their existence in minutes.

He walked to the far corner, kneeling beside the medical preservation pod. The gel-pad beneath Grandma Tan's shoulders pulsed with a deep, automated warmth. Her pale cheeks carried a faint pink tint, her breathing deep and rhythmic.

"Ethan?" Her eyes did not open, but her voice came through the audio mesh, clearer than it had been during the noon shift.

"I'm here, Grandma," Ethan said, checking the nutrient indicators. 14%. Locked.

"The machine stopped clicking," she murmured, her wrinkled fingers relaxing against the warm gel.

"The air tastes like the old flat in Queenstown."

"I cleared fifteen silver pieces from the computer game," Ethan said, "I found a way to make the rich boys pay for my food. Every copper bit I earn now goes straight to your power lines." Grandma Tan let out a dry, rattling chuckle.

"Good. Eat their food. Let them buy the iron while you keep your feet on the ground. Did you sign any of their digital paper?"

"No," Ethan said, "I'm hoarding the silver until I hit fifty shekels. Then I buy my way into the elite horse chariot track. That's the one that pays eighty dollars a session for your physiotherapy."

"Don't get greedy, boy," she whispered, her voice fading slightly as the machine entered its passive sleep cycle.

"The bookies knows how to rig the races."

"I'm the one rigging it, Grandma," Ethan muttered. He stood up, walking over to the small synthetic induction stove. He poured fifty millilitres of tap water into a plastic mug, drinking it slowly to clear the taste of Levantine dust from his throat. Thirty-one hours of air was a solid anchor, but it was just a temporary reprieve. To clear the fifty-shekel enlistment bond for the Chariot Commander class at the Hazor military academy without eating into his survival assets, he couldn't just slide by.

He needed to generate an absolute industrial mountain of silver. He had to hit six hundred and eighty shekels. The baseline variables were perfectly aligned. Bochim's account was locked into a five-day sharecropping deficit, meaning his manual labor overhead remained completely free. Ethan climbed back into the polymer capsule. The cold plastic molding caught his bare shoulders with a rigid, familiar pressure.

He pulled the visor down, locking the seals until the hum of Chinatown died into the absolute silence of the code.