“I’m not gonna ask for some weird tally where we all put together our money and live in a communistic kumbaya cult,” Ren said, lifting his can with a crooked grin.
The crowd laughed hard.
Because yeah, they would’ve absolutely beaten the crap out of him if he tried that.
Ren waited for the laughter to die down, then went on.
“What I’m gonna ask though,” he said, steady and clear, “is this—how many of you want to try this out with me?”
He looked around the room.
“I’m 100% doing it,” Ren said.
“Even if I have to sell my eyeballs, my kidneys, my liver, my sperm, and whatever else they want to take.”
More chuckles. A few snorts. But they were listening.
“In five days,” Ren said, lifting his can a little higher, “I’m gonna be holding a helmet and playing this free game.
Because based on what my friend said, you can earn more in one month in Towerbound than you can in one year working your asses off here.”
The laughter started to quiet down.
The faces changed—some curious, some skeptical, some still mocking but softer now.
“Are you kidding?” asked Reed, the skinny guy on the bottom bunk, who worked overnights at a laundromat.
“I’m not kidding,” Ren said.
“I know some of you guys work for the Black Op Docs,” Ren said casually.
“You know—what the rest of us call butchers.”
He didn’t look at anyone in particular.
Didn’t point fingers.
He didn’t need to.
Two of the guys in the room stiffened slightly, giving silent acknowledgment without words.
Ren just kept going, smooth.
“I don’t care what you do. You’ve never brought it back here. You’ve never made it our problem. That’s good enough for me.”
He took another sip of his beer.
“And what I’m saying is this: if I don’t have enough cash in five days,
I’m willing to sell my kidneys, my liver, whatever they want.”
He let that sink in.
“And if you know someone who can help?
I’ll owe you.”
The two guys who knew the score—Simms and Davon—nodded once, quietly.
No promises.
No noise.
Just simple understanding.
It wasn’t even that bad a deal anymore.
In 2037, you could get lab-grown organs easily enough.
Grown in vats, printed layer by layer.
But lab-grown had an 80% success rate.
Real human-modified organs?
Those hit 90%.
And if you were rich?
You paid for that extra 10% without blinking.
If it hadn’t been for the Organ Regulation Act clamping down, half the lower zones would’ve sold themselves dry by now.
The law existed because otherwise?
People would have started hunting each other like it was some purge-style nightmare.
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Ren nodded slightly to the two silent men.
And they nodded back.
Then he turned back to the rest of the room.
“Alright, here’s something else you should know,” Ren said, raising his voice again.
“The helmets we’re getting?
They’re the crappiest, cheapest ones.
Two thousand credits gets you a used-up, bare-bones piece of tech.”
He waited a beat.
“If we had real cash, we’d be sitting in full-dive pods.
Eighteen hours a day of living like kings.”
Someone muttered something bitter.
“But with these helmets?” Ren said.
“You get six hours.
Six hours a day before your brain starts frying.”
He let it hang there.
“Feels like a rip-off, right?” he said.
Grim nods around the room.
“So what does that mean?” he said, pacing a little.
“It means one helmet can support four people.”
He made a cutting motion with his hand.
“Four shifts.
Six hours each.
Split two thousand credits four ways.
Five hundred a person.”
You could hear the whisper of people doing the math.
Ren smiled thinly.
“Five hundred. Painful? Yeah. Impossible? No.”
He let the silence stretch.
“Five hundred to get a shot at making more in a month than you can busting your ass for a year.”
He lifted his beer.
“I’m not begging. I’m not asking for charity. I’m offering you a ticket out.”
The room was dead silent now.
Ren took a deep drink from his beer and looked across the room.
“Who’s in?” he asked simply.
One by one, slowly but surely, the beers started lifting into the air.
***
Collecting 500 credits from every willing participant wasn’t going to be easy.
Ren knew it wouldn’t be—because he himself only had 500.
And honestly? That was doing pretty damn well compared to some of the others.
Some of these guys had way less.
Some were even deep in debt already, working three jobs just to send credits back to their families.
The crazy thing about having a family was, technically, you could bring your wife into the dormitory.
But nobody did.
Wives and kids were usually placed in a separate set of dorms across the city—
family dorms.
Bigger.
More cushy.
Way more expensive.
And even worse?
If a man moved in with his wife, the government counted them as a married couple.
And married couples didn’t just pay double rent.
They paid triple.
Why?
Because the government assumed they’d eventually have a child.
And if they did, that child could live free in the marriage dorms until adulthood.
Somebody had to pay for that.
Guess who?
The parents.
So no, Ren wasn’t surprised some of the guys here were flat broke or buried under debt.
His goal of collecting all the money on Day One?
Completely impossible.
In fact, by Day Three, he had only managed to collect 4000 credits.
Enough for… two helmets.
He stared at the pathetic pile of credits stacked up on his bunk and sighed.
He didn’t have a choice.
It was time to rally the troops again.
Ren cracked open another Krud Brew, stood in the middle of the room, and banged the can against the metal bedpost until everyone looked up.
“Guys,” he said loudly, “We only have enough for two helmets.”
The room muttered.
Some cursed.
Some just looked defeated.
Ren lifted his hands.
“Wait, wait,” he said quickly.
“Don’t panic. I double-checked. Ten people? We don’t need ten helmets. We don’t even need five.”
He drew a square in the air with his hands, imaginary math hanging there.
“Each helmet can run four players a day.
Six hours each.
So with two helmets?”
He counted it out.
“Eight players.”
He nodded.
“And if we bust ass a little on shifting schedules, we can squeeze in the other two too.”
Grins started forming.
A little hope.
“Three helmets would’ve been better,” Ren admitted.
“Cleaner rotation. More breathing room. But two?”
He lifted his can.
“Two can work.”
The others looked at each other.
Nodded.
It wasn’t perfect.
But it was possible.
And in the slums, possible was good enough.
***
“Here’s the thing, guys,” Ren said, standing in the center of the room, beer can dangling from his hand.
“Enough of you believed in this to try it out.
And some of you—” he pointed vaguely around the room, “—some of you have wives in the women’s dorms. Friends at work. Tell them about this deal. Don’t hide it.”
A lot of guys nodded.
They had already told their wives, their coworkers, their drinking buddies.
But it was good to hear Ren say it.
To know it wasn’t some secret pact or shady backroom deal.
Ren smiled, pacing a little.
“Because when this game rolls out,” he said, “we’re gonna need more than just me.
More than just the ten of us.”
He stopped, planting his feet.
“We’re gonna need a group. A real guild. A slums guild.”
The room got quiet.
The words hung there, powerful.
“A guild made of people,” Ren said, “who society said, ‘Hey, you’re lucky we even let you live.’”
He grinned, sharp and fierce.
“Well, we’re not just gonna live,” he growled.
“We’re gonna break through. And fuck them all up”
He slammed his fist against the bedpost.
“We’re the weeds that crack through the concrete.”
Someone in the back shouted,
“Fuck yeah!”
Cheers followed.
Energy was sparking through the room now, lighting everyone up.
“We’ve got two days left!” Ren shouted over the noise.
“Make sure everyone knows!
Because yeah, we’re sharing helmets—and that saves us a lot of money—”
He paused, pacing again, forcing them to listen.
“But it also means something else.”
He pointed around the room.
“Instead of ten of us being strong at the same time, only two of us are on at a time.”
The realization hit a few guys visibly.
Murmurs ran through the dorm.
“Ohhh…”
“Shit, right.”
“So if we want to be a real group,” Ren said, voice rising,
“If we want to be strong,
we need enough money to get all of us online at once.”
He jabbed a finger at the ground for emphasis.
“Because ten of us fighting together is way stronger than two lonely bastards getting picked off one by one.”
“Yeah!”
“Fucking right!”
“Let’s do it!” people started shouting.
The whole tone of the dorm changed.
It wasn’t just about survival anymore.
It wasn’t just about scraping by another week.
Now they were thinking about expansion.
Building something.
No longer just being random, forgotten slum rats in a forgotten corner of the world.
Maybe—just maybe—having something important in their lives.
Something worth fighting for.
***
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