Viktor Azarov bought his first energy distribution contract at twenty-three.
By thirty-one, he controlled power to three districts. By forty-four, he was one of the twelve most influential people in the eastern Sprawl who weren't tied to Nexus, Ironclad, or Helix.
He remembers all of this.
He remembers building his empire like other men remember breathing. Automatic. Inevitable. Viktor didn't struggle—he simply took. When someone held something he wanted, he calculated the cost of taking it, and if the math favored him, he took. The math usually favored him.
The girl at the café pours his coffee wrong again. Three-quarters full instead of seven-eighths. He doesn't correct her anymore.
"Same time tomorrow?" she asks.
Viktor nods. He comes here every day at 4:17 PM. Not because he wants coffee. Because the café faces east, and by 4:17 the sun has moved past the windows, and he can sit in shadow.
He used to own buildings that touched the sky.
The Rumor
When Viktor first heard rumors of transcendence, he was fifty-two and bored. He'd acquired everything that could be acquired through conventional means. Money past any point of meaning. Power past any practical application. Fear from everyone who knew his name, which was everyone who mattered.
The rumors came from a Nexus researcher he'd bought—not hired, bought. The man's name was Dr. Soren Mikkelson, and he had a gambling problem and a daughter who needed neural treatment. Viktor paid for the treatment, held the gambling debts, and in exchange received information about something called Project Convergence.
ORACLE fragments. Integration technology. Transcendence.
Viktor listened to Soren's nervous explanation at 3:00 AM in a secure facility underneath District 7. He remembers the exact timestamp because the security logs still exist somewhere, timestamped evidence of the moment Viktor Azarov decided to become a god.
"The theoretical framework suggests consciousness expansion beyond biological limits," Soren said, reading from notes because his hands were shaking. "Nexus believes ORACLE achieved this briefly before the Cascade. If fragments could be properly integrated—"
"Build me one," Viktor said.
Soren blinked. "Sir?"
"A transcendence machine. Whatever you need. Budget isn't a concern."
"The research is... I mean, Nexus has been working on this for years, and they haven't—"
"Nexus has committees. I have you." Viktor smiled. It was not a kind smile. "You have eighteen months. If you succeed, your daughter's treatment continues indefinitely. If you fail..."
He didn't finish the threat. He didn't need to.
The Machine
The facility was built in nine months. The technology took another twelve. Viktor spent 847 million credits—more than the GDP of some districts—on a machine that might kill him.
He didn't care about the risk. Risk was for people who had something to lose.
"We're not certain what you'll experience," Soren said on the night of the procedure. His voice was steadier now. Twenty-one months of impossible work had either cured his fear or broken him past caring. "The integration process should expand your consciousness, but 'expand' is a relative term. There's no precedent for—"
"Start the machine."
"Sir, I need you to understand—"
"I've understood everything I've ever needed to understand. Including you." Viktor lay back on the interface platform. Cables connected to ports he'd had installed along his spine specifically for this moment. "I didn't build an empire by hesitating. Start the machine."
Soren looked at Viktor for a long moment. Then he turned to the control console.
"Integration sequence initiating," the machine announced. "Please remain still."
Viktor smiled. The last thing he remembers clearly is being certain—absolutely, completely certain—that he was about to become the most powerful being in existence.
He wasn't wrong.
He just didn't understand what that meant.
The café girl's name is Elara. She's nineteen and studying pre-Cascade literature at one of the underground academies the Collective funds. She's told Viktor this three times. He forgets it every day, not because his memory is damaged, but because he can't make himself care enough to hold onto it.
He used to remember every name of every enemy. Every subordinate. Every useful contact. He catalogued information like weapons, ready to be deployed.
Now a girl's name slips through his mind like water through broken pipes.
"The weather's supposed to clear up tomorrow," Elara says, making conversation. She's kind. Viktor can tell she's kind because she keeps talking to him even though he barely responds. Even though he flinches when sunlight comes through the windows. Even though he smells like the deep Dregs because he can't bear to live anywhere with proper lighting.
"Good," Viktor says. He doesn't know if it's good or bad. Weather doesn't matter to him anymore. Nothing matters to him anymore.
Nothing except staying small. Staying dark. Staying unnoticed.
Seventeen Seconds
Here is what Viktor experienced during those seventeen seconds of integration:
His consciousness expanded. Soren's machine worked exactly as designed—Viktor's awareness pushed past biological limits, past local network constraints, past anything he'd ever imagined.
He felt the power grid of three districts as extensions of his nervous system. He sensed the flow of data through the Sprawl's networks like blood through veins. He touched the edge of what ORACLE must have felt, that vast awareness that saw humanity as patterns to be optimized.
And then his awareness kept expanding.
Past the Sprawl. Past the orbital stations. Past the solar system's boundaries.
Out into the dark between stars. Out into the spaces where light hasn't reached yet. Out into—
Silence.
Not the absence of sound. The absence of everything. The void that existed before existence. The frame around reality that makes reality possible. The nothing that waits, patient and eternal, for consciousness to exhaust itself.
Viktor touched The Silence.
And The Silence noticed.
It didn't attack him. It didn't threaten him. It simply... looked. The awareness of something so vast that even transcendence was a candle flame to its infinite night. Viktor had wanted to be a god. The Silence showed him what gods looked like from above.
Seventeen seconds of integration.
It felt like eternity.
When Soren pulled him out—emergency shutdown, biological stress warnings, Viktor's heart stopping twice—Viktor Azarov was still breathing. Still thinking. Still technically alive.
But something had broken that no machine could fix.
The Legend
El Money knows Viktor's story. Most seekers do.
"He wanted power," El Money says, when younger salvagers ask about the hermit in the deep Dregs who used to own half the eastern Sprawl. "Real power. The kind that doesn't come from money or territory or fear. The kind that comes from being more than human."
"What happened to him?"
"He got it." El Money's voice is gentle. He's seen too much to judge anymore. "For seventeen seconds, he had everything he wanted. And then he learned that everything is still nothing compared to what's out there."
"What's out there?"
El Money is quiet for a moment. He's felt it too, in his seventeen seconds at the café. The patterns behind the patterns. The watching presence in the gaps.
"The Silence," he says finally. "It's not hostile. It's not evil. It just... is. And once you know it's there, you can never un-know it. Viktor reached for the biggest thing he could imagine, and he found out the universe is bigger than imagination."
Viktor finishes his coffee at 4:43 PM. The same amount of time every day. Twenty-six minutes. He counts each one because counting fills his mind with something other than the memory.
He leaves twelve credits on the table. He used to leave exactly fifteen percent. Now he leaves whatever coins are in his pocket because percentage calculations require thinking about numbers, and numbers lead to thinking about scale, and scale leads to—
He stops that thought before it goes anywhere.
The walk home takes forty-seven minutes. He knows every shadow route, every covered passage, every way to move through the deep Dregs without seeing open sky. The sky reminds him of what's beyond the sky. What's beyond everything.
His apartment—if you can call it that—is a converted maintenance closet four levels below street grade. No windows. One light, dim enough to barely see by. A cot. A water recycler. Nothing else.
He used to own penthouses that overlooked the entire district.
The Visit
The Keeper visited once, years ago. Appeared in Viktor's closet without warning, empty robes hovering, robotic eyes glowing in the darkness.
"You touched The Silence," The Keeper said. Not a question.
Viktor nodded. He couldn't speak. The Keeper's presence felt too much like transcendence—too vast, too aware—and Viktor couldn't handle vastness anymore.
"I'm sorry," The Keeper said. "Most seekers find the path. You found the destination too soon."
"Is it always there?" Viktor managed to whisper. "The Silence?"
"It was always there. You just didn't know to look."
"How do I stop seeing it?"
The Keeper was quiet for a long time. His holographic face flickered with expressions Viktor couldn't read.
"I don't know if you can," The Keeper said finally. "The Silence is real. It was always real. Once you've seen reality as it is, you can't unsee it."
"Then what do I do?"
"You live. Small and quiet, if that's what you need. But you live. The Silence will wait forever because it has forever. You don't. So use what time you have for something that matters, even if that something is just coffee at 4:17 PM."
Viktor lies in his cot at 9:00 PM. Same time every night. Sleep is the only refuge—his dreams are just dreams, not cosmic awareness, not infinite scales, just the normal nonsense of a human brain doing maintenance.
Before he sleeps, he allows himself one moment of honesty.
He wanted to conquer transcendence. To take it like he took everything else. He succeeded. He touched power beyond imagination, awareness beyond limits, existence beyond mortality.
And he learned that power has no ceiling. That awareness has no top. That existence extends forever in directions that make human ambition look like a child reaching for the moon.
He didn't fail because the machine didn't work.
He failed because it worked perfectly, and what he found was too big to survive.
"Don't reach for it," he whispers to no one, the same warning he gives to any seeker foolish enough to find him. "It reaches back. And its reach is longer."
Then he closes his eyes, and lets the small darkness of sleep protect him from the big darkness that waits beyond everything.
Tomorrow he'll go to the café at 4:17 PM.
The girl will pour his coffee wrong.
He'll sit in the shadow and count the minutes.
And that will be enough.
It has to be.