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Lin Xu woke up flat on his back in a shack that smelled like rust and something dead.
No idea how he got there. No idea whose blood was on the floor. Just a splitting headache and a cracked egg sitting next to his hand, wrapped in a rag that used to be someone's shirt.
The door kicked open before he could sit up all the way.
"You're awake." The guy in the doorway was maybe fifty, maybe seventy. Hard to tell out here. His face looked like jerky left in the sun too long. "Good. Means you can listen."
Lin pushed himself up, ribs screaming. Everything hurt. "Who—"
"Doesn't matter who I am." The man stepped inside, boots crunching on grit. "Matters that Kai's dead and you're in his bunk. Wearing his coat. Holding his egg."
Lin looked down. Yeah. The coat was too big on him, sleeves hanging past his wrists. And the egg—
It was about the size of a grapefruit, mottled grey and brown, with a crack running down one side like someone had dropped it. He didn't remember picking it up. Didn't remember Kai, either.
"I don't know who Kai is," Lin said.
The man laughed, short and sharp. "Right. And I'm the mayor of Ember Gate." He crossed his arms. "Kai owed me three hundred marks. Now you owe me three hundred marks."
"I don't have three hundred marks."
"I can see that." The man's eyes flicked to the egg. "Sell it."
Lin's hand closed around the shell before he knew why. Protective. Stupid, maybe, but his fingers wouldn't let go. "Who'd buy it?"
"No one." The man spat to the side. "Thing's cracked. Probably dead inside. But you can try the morning market. Maybe some fool thinks it's salvageable."
Lin turned the egg over. The crack was deep, running almost halfway around. Through the gap he could see membrane, grey and dry. It looked bad. It looked like the kind of bad his old lab would've tossed in the biohazard bin without a second thought.
Wait. Lab?
He grabbed at the memory, but it slipped away like smoke. Just a flash of white tile, the smell of disinfectant, his own hands in blue gloves.
"You got three days," the man said. "After that, I take payment another way."
"What's another way?"
The man smiled. It wasn't a good smile. "You'll find out."
He left. Didn't close the door behind him.
Lin sat there, egg in his lap, trying to piece together what the hell was going on. His head felt like someone had scooped out half his brain and replaced it with static. Name: Lin Xu. Age: twenty-nine, he thought. Maybe. Everything else was fragments. A cityscape he couldn't place. A voice he couldn't attach to a face. The feeling of a scalpel in his hand.
Biologist. He'd been a biologist. Studying what, he didn't know. But he knew the weight of a pipette, the way agar plates smelled when they went bad, the sound of a centrifuge spinning up.
He looked at the egg again.
Cracked. Drying out. Definitely dying, if it wasn't dead already. But the membrane still had a little give when he pressed his thumb against it through the crack. And there was warmth, faint but there, like coals buried under ash.
Maybe not dead yet.
He stood up, legs shaky, and looked around the shack. One room, dirt floor, a table made out of scrap metal. No windows. A shelf on the wall held a dented tin cup, a roll of wire, and something that might've been a knife once. He took the cup, pushed open the door, and stepped outside.
The Ash Wilds hit him like a fist.
Grey sky. Grey ground. Grey buildings leaning against each other like drunks. The air tasted like metal and smoke, and the wind carried grit that stung his eyes. People moved through the narrow paths between shacks, heads down, faces wrapped in cloth. No one looked at him.
There was a pump at the end of the row. Lin filled the cup, came back, and dripped water along the crack in the egg. The membrane soaked it up, swelling slightly. He did it again. And again.
Basic hydration. If the embryo was still viable, it needed moisture. If it wasn't, well. He was wasting water. But it gave him something to do besides think about the three hundred marks he didn't have.
Footsteps outside. Lighter than the old man's.
A girl leaned in through the doorway. Maybe sixteen, seventeen. Short hair hacked off uneven, a scar running through one eyebrow. She looked at him, looked at the egg, and whistled low.
"You're the guy."
"What guy?"
"The guy who woke up in Kai's bunk. Everyone's talking about it." She stepped inside without asking. "I'm Yue. You gonna sell that thing or what?"
Lin set the cup down. "You want it?"
"Me? Hell no." She crouched next to him, poking the egg with one finger. "It's cracked. You know what that means, right?"
"It's damaged."
"It's worthless." Yue sat back on her heels. "Out here, eggs are currency. A good egg, fresh, solid shell—you can sell that for food, medicine, a spot in a caravan. But a cracked one?" She shook her head. "No tamer's gonna take that risk. Thing'll probably hatch wrong. If it hatches at all."
"What if it hatches fine?"
She gave him a look like he'd just asked if the sky was green. "Then you got lucky. But luck doesn't pay Gregor."
"Gregor's the guy who was here?"
"Yeah. He runs debts for the west quarter. If you don't pay, he sells you to the pits."
Lin's stomach dropped. "The pits."
"Beast fighting." Yue said it casual, like she was talking about the weather. "You bring a creature, you fight, you win or you die. Gregor owns three fighters. Always looking for more."
"I don't have a creature."
"Then you better get one." She stood, brushing dust off her knees. "Or get three hundred marks. Or run. But if you run, Gregor's got friends in every zone from here to the Scorch. You won't make it past Zone Two."
She left before he could ask what a zone was.
Lin looked at the egg. Looked at the crack. He'd kept things alive before. He was pretty sure he had. Tissue cultures that shouldn't have taken. A dataset everyone said was corrupted. He didn't remember the details, but his hands remembered the steadiness, the way you had to be patient and precise and just stubborn enough.
He dripped more water onto the membrane.
It twitched.
Lin froze. Watched. Waited.
There. Again. A ripple under the surface, faint but real. Something moving inside.
"Okay," he said softly. "You're still in there."
He spent the rest of the day trying to figure out how to keep it that way. No incubator. No temperature control. No way to monitor internal development. Just his hands and whatever he could scavenge.
He found a metal box behind the shack, lined it with the rag, and nested the egg inside. Kept it out of the wind. Dripped water every hour. When the sun started to set and the temperature dropped, he pulled the egg against his chest under the coat, letting his body heat do the work.
The crack didn't get bigger. That was something.
Gregor came back after dark.
This time he had two other guys with him. Big ones. The kind of big that didn't need weapons to make a point.
"Heard you didn't go to market," Gregor said.
Lin stood up slowly. The egg was still tucked inside his coat. "I'm keeping it."
Gregor laughed. So did the two big guys.
"You're keeping it," Gregor repeated. "You. A guy with no marks, no gear, no memory—yeah, I heard about that part—thinks he's gonna hatch a fighter out of a cracked egg."
"Maybe."
"Maybe." Gregor stepped closer. "You know how many eggs I've seen come through this quarter? Hundreds. You know how many cracked ones turned into something worth feeding? Zero."
Lin didn't move. "So what do you care if I try?"
"I care because you owe me. And if you're wasting time on a dead egg, you're not figuring out how to pay." Gregor's smile was gone now. "So here's the deal. Tomorrow night. You bring that thing to the practice pit. If it hatches, if it fights, if it wins—we talk about your debt. If it doesn't, you fight instead."
"It's not ready."
"Then you better hope you are." Gregor turned to leave, then stopped. "Oh. And if you run, I'll find you. And when I do, I won't be this nice."
He left. The two big guys followed.
Lin stood there, heart hammering, the egg warm against his ribs.
Tomorrow night.
He pulled the egg out, held it up to the dim light leaking through the door. The crack had widened. Just a hair, but enough to see more of the membrane beneath. And through the membrane, faint and grey, he could see something curled up inside.
It moved.
Not a twitch this time. A deliberate shift, like it was trying to turn over.
Lin's breath caught. "Come on," he whispered. "I know you're in there."
The shell split a little more.
A thin, pale claw poked through the gap. Tiny. Fragile. It flexed once, twice, then pulled back inside.
Lin stared.
Tomorrow night. Bring a fighter—or get dragged into the pit.
He looked down at the cracked egg in his hands. At the membrane still struggling to hold together. At the creature inside that shouldn't be alive.
"Guess we're doing this," he said.