THE GLUTTONY SYSTEM

Chapter 24: The Ascent Protocol

Chapter 24: The Ascent Protocol

"Hold still, you overgrown trash compactor, or I’m going to weld your jaw shut permanently," Lin snapped, her blowtorch hissing as a bright blue bead of plasma fused a heavy-duty bypass cable directly into the housing of Box’s interface.

Sparks rained down onto the grease-stained metal of the workbench, stinging Chai’s scarred cheek. He didn’t flinch, though his massive shoulders—now clad in thick, industrial-grade carbon plating—heaved with a slow, mechanical rhythm. Inside his skull, the interface flickered violently, cycling through a dizzying cascade of corporate blue and amber error warnings.

[WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED BIOSIGNATURE DETECTED. ATTEMPTING TO ACCESS MID-TIER SECURITY GATEWAY...]

"That’s it, keep pushing," Lin muttered, wiping a streak of black soot across her forehead with the back of a bare, grease-stained arm. She tossed the welding torch onto a magnetic tray with a sharp clatter and grabbed a thick, heavy-duty battery pack that hummed with a dangerously unstable, high-frequency charge. "Because if this doesn’t work, you’re staying right here in the rust-buckets, and I’m going back to sleep."

Chai let out a low, gravelly rumble that rattled the tools hanging from the pegboard above Lin’s head. "The gate is locked by three separate departmental encryptions, Lin. Somsak’s access code only got us past the perimeter. The upper-middle tiers won't just open because we knock."

"They won't have a choice once I plug this little beauty into your spine," Lin said, hoisting the heavy battery pack with a grunt and sliding the mounting brackets over the scarred, heavily plated ridges of Chai’s upper back. The metal prongs clicked into his newly reinforced vertebrae with a sickening, wet crunch. "The catch is simple, Chai. This thing is a walking capacitor. It’s carrying enough raw current to jump-start a cargo lift, but it’s completely uninsulated."

Chai’s eyes flashed a dangerous, synthetic amber. "Uninsulated?"

"Meaning if you move too fast, or let your body temperature spike past ninety percent, the casing melts directly into your spine," Lin said, her tone entirely devoid of humor as she secured the heavy locking bolts with a rapid-fire ratcheting tool. "It will fry every neural pathway from your skull down to your tail in about three seconds flat. You’ll be a very expensive, very dead paperweight."

[SYSTEM ALERT: EXTERNAL POWER SOURCE CONNECTED. OVERLOAD THRESHOLD AT 74%.]

Box’s synthesized voice chimed in, sounding slightly clearer than it had since the Vachirawit data-ghost had begun clawing at the margins of Chai’s consciousness. The lingering digital echo of the dead man didn’t speak, but Chai could feel a cold, calculated pressure at the base of his brain, like a phantom hand resting against his nape.

"Seventy-four percent," Chai growled, testing the weight of the massive battery strapped to his spine. The extra bulk threw off his center of gravity, forcing him to shift his stance on the vibrating deck plates. "And if I run?"

"Then you turn into a brilliant blue flash, and I inherit all your scrap metal," Lin replied, slamming the maintenance bay’s heavy side door open with a resounding bang. Outside, the dim, flickering blue-light alley stretched upward into the vertiginous gloom of the mid-tier service shafts, a vertical maze of rusted iron ladders, humming conduits, and hanging maintenance gantries. "The security gate for the upper-middle tiers is three hundred meters straight up. Move."

Chai didn't hesitate. He dropped into a heavy, quadrupedal lunge, his steel-capped fingers gripping the lowest rung of the service ladder with enough force to warp the metal. The battery on his back groaned, a high-pitched whine of protesting capacitors echoing against the metal walls.

[WARNING: SYSTEM TEMPERATURE RISING. CURRENT LOAD: 78%.]

"Slow down, you idiot!" Lin shouted from the doorway, her voice already fading as Chai surged upward into the vertical shaft. "Smooth and steady! If the casing breaches, don't come crying to me!"

The ascent was an exercise in pure, unadulterated agony. Every time Chai hauled his massive, armored frame up another rung of the ladder, the heavy battery shifted, its uninsulated terminals pressing dangerously close to his exposed nerve clusters. The current leaking from the core sent jagged, white-hot bolts of simulated pain racing down his spine, making his vision flash with cascading columns of corrupted code.

[DATA ERROR: NEURAL PATHWAY STRESS AT 82%.]

"Box," Chai gritted through locked jaws, his carbon-weave vocal cords vibrating with a harsh, metallic rasp. "Tell me the gate is close."

[APPROACHING LEVEL 90 ACCESS PORT,] Box’s internal monitor flickered, the amber diagnostics fighting a losing battle against the encroaching blue glare of the bypass sequence Lin had hard-coded into his system. [WARNING: PROXIMITY SENSORS DETECT AUTOMATED SECURITY DRONES AT TWELVE O'CLOCK. ENGAGEMENT IMMINENT.]

Chai hauled himself over the lip of a massive, rusted maintenance platform, his heavy boots slamming down onto the grating with a force that sent a shower of sparks flying into the abyss below. Before him stood the security gate—a towering barrier of reinforced titanium bars etched with glowing corporate seals and biometric scanners.

And hovering directly in front of the access terminal were three spherical compliance drones, their red optical sensors locking onto Chai’s oversized, heavily armored silhouette with an irritatingly cheerful chime.

"Attention, unauthorized entity," a synthetic, perfectly modulated voice echoed from the lead drone's central speaker. "You have entered a restricted transit zone under the authority of Upper-Middle Compliance. Please present your departmental clearance badge or assume the position for immediate asset forfeiture."

Chai didn't reach for a weapon. He didn't have to. His body was a weapon, wrapped in Lin’s crude steel, powered by an unstable bomb strapped directly to his spine, and driven by a relentless, gnawing hunger that had only grown sharper since the tax-processing facility.

[CURRENT SYSTEM LOAD: 85%. TEMPERATURE CRITICAL.]

"I have my clearance right here," Chai muttered.

He didn't wait for the drones to finish their compliance scan. He charged forward, his massive shoulder plates leading the way like a battering ram. The lead drone fired a burst of low-yield stun beams, the violet energy splashing harmlessly against the thick industrial plating Lin had welded to his chest, though the thermal feedback sent another searing jolt of pain down his spine.

Chai slammed into the center drone with bone-crushing velocity, his hands wrapping around its spherical chassis and ripping the metal apart with a screech of tortured circuits. Without breaking momentum, he hurled the smoking remains directly into the second drone, knocking it off the platform and sending it spinning down into the endless vertical shaft below.

[WARNING: STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED. TEMPERATURE AT 88%.]

The third drone tried to retreat, its thrusters whining as it backed away toward the glowing security gate. "Error! Critical threat detected! Initiating emergency lockdown—"

Chai lunged across the remaining distance, his massive jaws unhinging beyond standard biological limits. With a single, brutal snap of his carbon-reinforced teeth, he caught the drone mid-air, crushing its optical housing and severing its primary data cable. Instead of spitting it out, he let his system do what it did best. A sudden, cold surge of electricity flooded his throat as he swallowed the shattered core, the machine's residual administrative codes integrating directly into Box’s bypassed interface.

[OVERRIDE ACCEPTED. GATE UNLOCKING IN THREE... TWO...]

The heavy titanium bars of the security gate shuddered, their glowing corporate seals flashing from amber to a brilliant, blinding green as the bypass script took hold. With a deafening pneumatic hiss, the gate slowly parted, revealing the pristine, sterile white corridors of the upper-middle tiers beyond.

[WARNING: SYSTEM TEMPERATURE AT 91%. STABILITY THREATENED.]

The battery on Chai’s back gave a sharp, terrifying hiss, a plume of acrid white smoke curling upward from the uninsulated housing as it scorched the calcified muscle fibers along his shoulder blades. The pain was absolute, a white-hot spike that threatened to black out his consciousness entirely.

Chai stumbled through the parting gates, his heavy boots leaving scorched, bloody footprints on the spotless white marble floor of the upper corridor. He slammed his fist into the wall-mounted manual close switch, the heavy titanium bars sliding shut behind him with a thunderous crash, cutting off the vertical shaft and the world he had just climbed out of.

He dropped to one knee, panting heavily, his internal diagnostics flashing an angry, pulsating crimson.

[SYSTEM STABILITY: CRITICAL. AWAITING FURTHER INPUT...]

Inside his head, the Vachirawit data-ghost flared up once more, a cold, mocking whisper that echoed through the smoking ruins of his neural pathways. They think they own the air up here, Chai. Let's see how much they charge for the view.

Chai lifted his head, his synthetic amber eyes locking onto the long, polished hallway stretching out before him, where the soft hum of luxury climate control whispered through hidden vents. He reached behind his back, his massive fingers gripping the overheated casing of the battery pack, and slowly wrenched the smoking device free from his spine, tossing it aside as it sparked against the pristine floor.

He stood up, his jaw aching, his hunger spike holding steady at eight

y-two percent. The mid-tiers were behind him. Now, there was only the Spire.