The God of Ruin’s Pocket Change

CHAPTER 6: The Consultant

The girl was staring at my stomach.

Specifically, she was staring at the white fabric of my hoodie, right where her knife had struck. She wasn't blinking. Her chest was heaving beneath layers of wet, grey rags, her breath coming in short, panicked gasps that puffed out like white smoke in the freezing air.

She looked like a ghost that had just tried to walk through a wall and bounced off.

I lowered the rat skewer. I chewed the piece of cartilage in my mouth, swallowed it with a grimace, and wiped my free hand on my jeans.

"You dropped your toy," I said, pointing to the mud.

At her feet, the shards of her knife lay scattered like broken teeth. The handle was half-buried in the sludge.

She didn't look at it. She looked up at my face.

Her eyes were grey. Not the soft, misty grey of a morning cloud, but the hard, flat grey of concrete that has been rained on for a century. They were wide, terrified, and calculating.

"It didn't cut," she whispered. Her voice was scratchy, like rusted hinges. "It didn't even snag."

"It is a high-quality weave," I said, smoothing the fabric with my thumb. "Celestial Silk. It breathes very well. Terrible for wine stains, though."

She scrambled backward. Her boots slid in the muck. She hit the brick wall behind her with a dull thud and stayed there, pressed against the wet masonry like she was trying to merge with it.

"You're not human," she breathed.

"I am a tourist," I corrected. "A very unsatisfied tourist. The culinary scene here is a disaster."

She looked at me. She looked at the pocket I had just been protecting. The pocket that held the Ten Dollar Bill, the Five, and the coins.

Then, she looked at the mouth of the alley.

I watched her face change.

It was fascinating. In the span of three seconds, the terror evaporated. It didn't disappear. It hardened. The panic in her eyes was replaced by a sharp, cold intelligence. She wasn't looking at a monster anymore. She was looking at a puzzle.

She started to turn away. She took a step toward the exit, intending to flee into the shadows.

Then she stopped.

She froze mid-step, her back to me. Her shoulders were hunched against the rain. I could see her shivering—violent, racking tremors that shook her entire small frame.

She looked back at the street, where the noise of the market was still buzzing. Then she looked back at me.

She was doing math. I could practically hear the gears grinding in her head.

If she ran, she survived. But she survived hungry. If she stayed...

She turned around fully. She didn't raise her hands. She didn't reach for another weapon. She just stood there, ankle-deep in toxic sludge, and looked me dead in the eye.

"You're a mark," she said flatly.

I blinked. "I beg your pardon? My name is Russ."

"A mark," she repeated, stepping closer. "A target. A walking loot box."

She pointed a dirty finger at my chest.

"Do you have any idea what you look like right now?"

"I look like a man enjoying a kebab," I said, lifting the skewer.

"You look like a flare in a dark room," she snapped. "You're glowing, soft-skin. Your clothes are clean. Your teeth are straight. You just dropped pure copper in the middle of the street and stepped over the vendor like he was a pothole."

She stepped closer again. The fear was still there, vibrating under her skin, but her desperation was louder.

"Everyone saw it," she hissed. "The scavengers. The beggars. The spies."

I frowned. "Spies?"

"The gangs have eyes everywhere," she said. "Little kids. Old women. They see the flash. They smell the money. And right now? You smell like a bank vault that someone left open."

I shifted my weight. My feet were heavy. The gravity of this world was exhausting me, dragging down my shoulders.

"I am very durable," I said, tapping my chest. "As you discovered."

"You're tough," she admitted. She glanced at the spot where the knife had shattered. "Maybe you can take a scav-blade. Maybe you can take a punch."

She looked up at my eyes, her expression grim.

"But can you take a bike chain to the knees? Can you take a crowbar to the back of the head? Can you fight fifty men who haven't eaten in three days and think you're made of money?"

I paused.

I thought about it.

I had strength. I could flick things. I was heavy.

But I was also slow. My reflexes felt like they were moving through molasses. And I was tired. So incredibly tired.

If fifty men swarmed me... if they dragged me down...

"No," I realized, the word tasting sour. "Probably not."

"Then you're dead," she said.

It wasn't a threat. It was a statement of fact, delivered with the casual indifference of a weather report.

"Two blocks," she said, holding up two grime-stained fingers. "That's how far you make it. You walk out of this alley, you turn left, you hit the intersection. The Neon Jackals will be there. Or the Iron Skulls. They won't ask for your wallet. They'll strip you naked. They'll peel that magic hoodie off your corpse and sell it for parts."

I felt a cold prickle on the back of my neck.

I looked at the alley exit. It looked darker than before. The shadows seemed to be stretching, reaching for me.

"I see," I whispered.

The girl turned to leave again. She had delivered her warning. She was cutting her losses.

I watched her go.

She was small. Frail. But she moved with a fluidity I lacked. She knew where to step to avoid the deep mud. She knew which shadows hid the rats.

I was a god lost in a sewer. She was the rat who built the maze.

"Wait," I called out.

She stopped. She didn't turn around immediately. She let out a sigh. A puff of white mist that vanished in the rain.

"What?" she asked, looking over her shoulder.

"You seem... knowledgeable," I said. "About the local customs. And the geography."

She turned fully around, crossing her arms over her chest to keep her coat closed. "So?"

"I require a guide," I said. "A consultant."

Her eyebrows shot up. "A consultant?"

"Yes," I said. "Someone to navigate the... complexities of the socioeconomic landscape. Someone to tell me which food won't dissolve my internal organs. Someone to keep me from being peeled."

She stared at me. Her mouth hung open slightly.

"You want to hire me?"

"Yes," I said. "I am currently without staff. My valet remained in the upper atmosphere. It was a whole thing with a cat. I need a local expert."

She looked at me. She looked at my pocket. The hunger in her eyes flared, sharp and painful.

"You can't pay me," she said.

"I have currency," I argued, patting my pocket. "I have paper money. Greenbacks."

"That's the problem," she said, stepping back toward me. "You have large currency. I saw the bulge. You have rectangular paper."

She lowered her voice to a harsh whisper.

"If you give me a bill—a Ten, or even a Five—I can't spend it. I'm a street rat, Mister. If I walk into a shop with a Ten Dollar Bill, the shopkeeper will shoot me and take it. If I try to trade it, I get mugged. It's too much value. It's a death sentence."

I frowned.

I had forgotten how poverty worked. When you have too much, you cannot trade with those who have nothing. The economy breaks.

"I have coins," I offered. "I have another penny."

"If you drop another penny," she said, "you'll start a riot. I don't want a riot. I want to eat."

She looked at me, her face hard.

"I can't take your money. It's too hot."

I stood there, stumped. I was the richest man in the alley, and I couldn't afford a teenager's help because I was too rich.

"Then I have nothing," I said, slumping against the wall. "I have no small change. I have no credits."

The girl looked at me. She chewed on her lip. She looked at the exit, then back at me. She didn't want to leave. She knew that if I died, the money disappeared into a gang's vault. But if she stayed...

"Trash," I said suddenly.

She blinked. "What?"

"I have trash," I said. "Refuse. Debris. Things I forgot to throw away. Small things. Low value."

"Show me," she said.

I reached into my pocket.

I bypassed the bills. I bypassed the silver coins. I felt around the seams of the dimensionally-sealed pocket, searching for the detritus of my past life.

My fingers brushed against something crinkly.

I pulled it out.

It was a small ball of silver, crumpled tight.

I held it out in the rain.

"A gum wrapper," I said.

The girl stared at it. She looked at me like I had just slapped her.

"You're joking," she said, her voice rising. "I just told you I'm starving, and you offer me garbage?"

"It is garbage to me," I admitted. "I ate the gum three hundred years ago. It lost its flavor after the first decade."

I began to uncrumple it.

"But," I said, smoothing the foil out with my thumb, "it is very shiny."

The wrapper flattened out.

It wasn't aluminum. It wasn't tin.

It was Celestial Foil.

It was a material forged in the pressurized heart of a dying star, designed to wrap the snacks of the gods to keep them fresh for eternity. It was impossibly thin, lighter than air, yet rigid enough to hold its shape.

And it glowed.

Even in the dark, filthy alley, with the rain pouring down, the foil seemed to catch the ambient light and amplify it. It shimmered with a pearlescent, silver-blue hue. It pulsed faintly, like it was breathing.

The girl’s eyes went wide.

She stepped closer, drawn in by the light. The skepticism vanished, replaced by a raw, technical awe.

"That..." she whispered. "That's not foil."

"It kept the gum fresh," I said. "It blocks all thermal radiation. It is completely impermeable to moisture. And it never wrinkles permanently."

I crumpled it up again in my fist, squeezing it tight. Then I opened my hand.

The foil sprang back to a perfect, flat square. No creases. No damage.

"Memory metal," she breathed.

She reached out a trembling hand. Her fingers were caked in mud, the nails broken and dirty. She hesitated, afraid to touch it.

"Can I...?" she asked.

"Be my guest," I said. "It's trash."

She took the wrapper.

She held it like it was a piece of holy glass. She brought it close to her face. She breathed on it. The condensation vanished instantly, repelled by the material. She held it against her cheek.

"It's warm," she whispered. Her eyes closed for a second. "It reflects body heat. 100% reflection."

She looked up at me. Her face was illuminated by the soft glow of the wrapper, making her look younger, less like a ghost.

"Do you know what this is?" she asked. Her voice was shaking.

"A wrapper," I said.

"No," she said fiercely. "This is thermal shielding. High-grade. Military... no, beyond military. If I sew this into the lining of a jacket, I could walk through a reactor core. I could sleep in a snowstorm and sweat."

She looked at the wrapper, then at me.

"A sheet of shielding this pure... even a scrap this size... the scavengers would trade a water filter for this. Maybe a whole tank of fuel. Maybe a warm bed for a week."

She looked at me. The calculation in her eyes was complete.

I was an idiot. I was a target. But I was an idiot with pockets full of god-tier garbage.

She shoved the wrapper into her own pocket, a patch sewn onto her coat with heavy industrial staples. She patted it to make sure it was safe.

She stood up straighter. She wiped the rain from her face.

"I'm Anya," she said.

"Russ," I replied. "Russ Stone."

She took a deep breath. She looked at the exit of the alley. She looked back at me.

"Okay, Russ," she said. Her voice shifted. It became firmer. "Here's the deal. I keep you alive. I navigate. I tell you who to talk to and who to run from. And you pay me."

"In trash," I clarified.

"In trash," she agreed. "Whatever you pull out of that pocket that you think is worthless... I get first refusal."

"Acceptable," I said.

She grabbed my sleeve. Her grip was surprisingly strong for someone who looked like a stiff breeze would knock her over.

"Good," she said. "Now move. We need to get off the street before the engines start."

"Engines?" I asked.

"Just move," she commanded, pulling me deeper into the alley.

I followed her.