The sky in High-Side isn't just blue; it’s expensive. Up there, the air is thick, the wine stays in the glass, and the elite walk with the slow, rhythmic thud of people who own every Newton of force pressing them into their silk rugs.
Down in the Drift? We’re lucky if we can keep our boots on the pavement. I spent my morning cinching my lead-lined belt and checking the tether-points on my shins. Being "Light" isn't a lifestyle; it’s a death sentence if your knots aren't tight. One bad gust of wind and you’re a human balloon, drifting into the stratosphere until the oxygen runs out.
I’m Kaelen. Most call me a thief. I prefer the term Leaker.
The Job: The Vane-Harrow Vault
The mark was Silas Vane-Harrow, a man so "Heavy" he probably had to reinforce his toilet. He kept his surplus mass in a hyper-compressed vault beneath his penthouse.
"Three minutes, Kael," Jax hissed into my earpiece. "The local dampers are cycling. If you aren't out by then, you’ll be flattened into a pancake when the security field kicks back in."
I didn't answer. I was too busy drilling.
The vault wasn't filled with gold. It was filled with Aether-Mass—liquid gravity. It looks like shimmering, violet mercury, and it’s worth more than any currency. I jammed the puncture-needle into the alloy seal.
"Time to give it back to the people," I muttered.
I didn't just want to bottle it. I wanted to break it. I twisted the valve, expecting a steady flow. Instead, the vault screamed. A hairline fracture turned into a canyon. The pressure inside was ten times what the schematics suggested. This wasn't standard Aether-Mass. This was Pure Mass.
The seal turned to shrapnel.
The violet light didn't spill; it exploded. It hit me like a freight train made of lead. I tried to scream, but the air in my lungs suddenly weighed fifty pounds. I swallowed—a reflex, a mistake—and a glob of the violet fire slid down my throat.
The Aftermath: The Law of Attraction
I didn't die. I should have been a red smear on the floor, but the physics of the room had gone sideways.
I woke up hanging from the ceiling. Not because I was floating, but because the ceiling had become my "down."
"Kael? Talk to me!" Jax was frantic. "The sensors are going nuts. You’re registering a signature of... wait, that’s impossible."
"I feel... dense," I croaked.
I dropped to the floor—or the ceiling, I couldn't tell anymore—and the floor cracked. I didn't just land; I impacted.
I looked at my hands. They were glowing with a faint, pulsing violet hue. A loose wrench on the workbench nearby didn't just sit there. It shivered. Then it slid across the metal table toward me. Then a chair followed. Then a filing cabinet.
"Jax," I said, my voice vibrating with a bass I didn't recognize. "I’m not Light anymore."
"What are you talking about? Get out of there!"
I ran for the window, but I wasn't running. Every step I took felt like I was punching the earth. As I dove through the glass, I didn't fall toward the streets of the Drift.
The debris from the window didn't scatter. It began to circle me. Shards of glass, bits of brick, and a discarded soda can formed a chaotic, spinning ring around my waist.
I wasn't falling. I was orbiting.
The New Reality
I hit the side of a neighboring building, and instead of sliding down, I stuck to it. My own personal gravity was fighting the planet’s, and for the moment, I was winning.
"I've got a problem," I told Jax, watching as a stray cat was pulled off a fire escape, meowing in terror as it began to circle my head like a furry moon. "I think I’m becoming a center of gravity."
"Kael, listen to me," Jax’s voice was pale. "The Enforcers are on their way. And they aren't bringing handcuffs. They’re bringing anchors."
I looked down at the street. The "Heavy" guards were coming, their boots clanking. But for the first time in my life, I wasn't afraid of the weight. I reached out a hand, felt the pull in my gut, and tugged.
A parked car groaned, flipped over, and flew toward me.
"Let them come," I grinned, feeling the Pure Mass thrumming in my veins. "I’ve got a lot of things I want to attract."
"Kael, move! You’re glowing like a supernova on the heat-maps!" Jax yelled.
I didn't need the warning. My internal compass was spinning like a drunk top. The "Pure Mass" in my gut felt like a miniature star trying to collapse, and the world was starting to notice.
The Enforcer squads—the G-Men—didn't just walk; they marched with hydraulic stabilizers hissed into their calves. They hit the alleyway below me, four of them, carrying heavy-duty "Anchor-Bolts." These weren't guns; they were harpoons designed to pin Light-runners to the pavement.
"Target sighted!" the lead Enforcer barked. "He’s... wait. Why is he on the wall?"
"I’m having a vertical day!" I shouted back.
I tried to leap to the next roof, but my new physics had a different plan. Instead of a graceful arc, I launched off the bricks like a cannonball. I didn't just jump—I pushed the building away. The masonry crumbled where my feet had been, and I rocketed across the gap, dragging a tail of trash, glass, and that very confused alley cat in my wake.
The Skirmish
I slammed into the opposite rooftop, my density so high I cratered the concrete.
"Fire!"
Thwip-shink!
An Anchor-Bolt hissed through the air. Normally, I’d dodge. This time, I didn't have to. As the heavy steel bolt entered my "Event Horizon"—the ten-foot bubble of distorted space around me—it veered. My orbital pull grabbed the bolt, swung it around my body in a violent semi-circle, and flung it right back at the shooter.
The Enforcer barely dove out of the way before his own harpoon shattered the bricks behind him.
"Did you see that?" I laughed, the sound vibrating in my chest. "I’m a human slingshot!"
"Kaelen, shut up and listen," Jax’s voice was tight. "You aren't just heavy; you're collapsing. Your signature is tightening. If you don't find a way to vent that mass, you’re going to hit critical density. You’ll become a localized singularity. You’ll swallow the whole block."
The Venting
My heart hammered—not with fear, but with a heavy, rhythmic thrum. The air around me was shimmering, warping the light like a desert road in July.
"How do I vent it?" I gasped, struggling to stand. Every time I moved my arm, the air resisted me like I was underwater.
"The Vane-Harrow cooling pipes," Jax said. "They use liquid nitrogen to stabilize the vaults. If you can get to the sub-level, you can flash-freeze your core. It might slow the reaction, give us time to find a Leaker who can bleed you out."
"Back into the lion's den? Great plan, Jax. Stellar."
I looked down at the street. More Enforcers were piling out of APCs. They were setting up a "Gravity Net"—a series of pylons that create a zero-G vacuum. If they caught me in that, my internal mass would expand outward without the atmospheric pressure to hold it in. I’d go off like a meat-bomb.
"Okay," I whispered, focusing on the violet fire behind my ribs. "If I’m a planet, it’s time to use my moon."
I looked at the heavy dumpster sitting in the alley. I reached out, not with my hands, but with that tug in my soul. I grabbed the three-ton metal box and pulled it into my orbit. It began to whistle as it accelerated, circling me faster and faster.
"Clear the way!" I yelled.
I jumped off the roof, plummeting straight toward the vault entrance. I wasn't falling—I was an incoming asteroid, and I was bringing the trash with me.
I didn't wait for Jax to run the math. I leaned into the fall.
The wind didn't whistle past me; it groaned. I was pulling the atmosphere itself into a tight, screaming spiral. The dumpster I’d tethered to my orbit was now a blurred streak of rusted green metal, circling me like a frantic shield.
"Kael, the G-Net is live!" Jax screamed.
Below me, the Enforcers activated the pylons. A shimmering blue grid stretched across the street, a zero-gravity dead zone designed to turn my mass against me. If I hit that field, the "Pure Mass" in my gut would lose the fight against external pressure and expand until I was the size of a city block.
"I'm not hitting it," I grunted, my teeth aching from the G-force. "I'm going through it."
The Breach
I tucked my chin and focused every ounce of that violet heat on the point of impact. I didn't just fall—I condensed.
When I hit the blue grid, the world went silent. For a heartbeat, the vacuum of the G-Net tried to rip me apart, but my own orbital pull was stronger. I swallowed the net. Literally. The blue energy warped, bent toward me, and snapped like a rubber band, plunging the entire street into a localized black-out.
I slammed into the pavement in front of the Vane-Harrow sub-level entrance. The impact didn't just make a hole; it turned the asphalt into dust.
"Status!" Jax barked.
"I'm in," I wheezed, pushing myself up. "But I think I just ate the neighborhood's power grid."
I kicked the reinforced steel doors of the sub-level. They didn't just open—they flew off their hinges as if hit by a wrecking ball. My density was becoming a physical weapon. Every step I took toward the cooling pipes left a footprint three inches deep in the solid concrete.
The Deep Freeze
The sub-level was a forest of frost-covered pipes and humming compressors. This was the "heatsink" for the vaults above, filled with enough liquid nitrogen to flash-freeze a whale.
"There! The primary intake!" Jax pointed out via my HUD.
I stumbled toward a massive, silver-jacketed pipe. My skin was starting to crack, violet light leaking through the fissures in my glowing veins. The air in the room was swirling now—loose bolts, clipboards, and heavy wrenches were all caught in my "pull," clattering against my back like magnetic hail.
"Kael, you have to rupture the main line," Jax warned. "But if you stay in the spray for more than ten seconds, your heart will stop along with the reaction."
"I've always... liked the cold," I lied.
I grabbed the frozen pipe with both hands. The metal groaned. I didn't use a tool; I just pulled. With a sound like a ship's hull snapping, the pipe burst.
A geyser of liquid nitrogen, at $-196$°C, erupted directly onto my chest.
The Reaction
The world turned white. The screaming violet heat in my gut met the absolute zero of the nitrogen, and the resulting shockwave threw every piece of orbiting debris against the walls.
I felt my heartbeat slow. The thrumming in my ears faded from a roar to a dull hum. The glow beneath my skin dimmed, retreating from my fingertips back toward my core, turning from a violent purple to a jagged, frozen amethyst.
"Kael? Kael!"
I slumped against the shattered pipe, covered in a thick layer of rime ice. I was still heavy—I could feel the floor groaning beneath my weight—but the world had stopped trying to fall into me.
"I'm here," I whispered, my breath a cloud of crystals. "I think... I think I stabilized it."
"For now," Jax sighed, the relief evident. "But you're not a Leaker anymore, Kael. You're a walking vault. And every 'Heavy' in this city is going to want to crack you open to see what's inside."
I looked at my hand. A single frost-covered bolt was still hovering an inch above my palm, refusing to fall.
"Let them try," I said, a cold smile touching my lips. "I'm tired of being Light. It's time the Drift had some real weight behind it."
I opted for the "pulse." Staying still was a death sentence; navigating the Drift while weighing ten tons was like trying to walk on a cake without crushing the sponge.
Three days later, I was hiding out in an abandoned shipyard at the edge of the Light-slums. The "Pure Mass" had settled into a dense, cold coal in my solar plexus. I wasn't an accidental black hole anymore, but I was something arguably more dangerous: a Variable.
"Focus, Kael," Jax’s voice echoed through the rusted hull of the freighter we were using as a gym. "Don't just let the weight sit there. Direct it."
The Training
I stood in the center of a ring of rusted shipping containers. I closed my eyes and reached for that amethyst spark in my gut. It felt like a heavy, spinning flywheel.
"Now!" Jax triggered the traps.
Four pneumatic cannons fired heavy lead slugs at me from different angles. In the old days, I would have dove for cover. Now, I just exhaled.
I didn't try to catch them. I pulsed.
I threw my hands outward, and for a split second, I reversed my internal polarity. The gravity didn't pull; it shoved. A circular wave of distorted air rippled out from my chest. The lead slugs didn't just stop—they flattened into pancakes in mid-air and were flung back into the cannons with enough force to turn the machinery into scrap.
"Not bad," Jax muttered, impressed despite himself. "You’re learning to project your 'Down.' But can you do it precisely?"
The Test
"Watch this," I said, a street-smart grin tugging at my mouth.
I spotted a discarded crane hook hanging twenty feet away. I didn't pulse outward this time. I focused the "pull" into just my right hand. I made my palm the most attractive thing in the universe for exactly one second.
The crane hook didn't just swing; it snapped its cable and flew into my hand like a loyal dog. I caught the three-hundred-pound hunk of iron with one arm. My feet didn't even buckle—I had learned to anchor my own weight into the floor.
"You're becoming a one-man wrecking crew," Jax said, his tone turning serious. "Which is good, because Vane-Harrow just put a 'Heavy' bounty on your head. They aren't sending G-Men anymore. They’ve hired The Anchors."
The Arrival
The air in the shipyard suddenly got thick. My inner compass didn't spin—it dipped.
Three figures dropped from a hovering dropship above. They didn't use parachutes. They didn't need them. They hit the ground with the synchronized boom of a demolition team.
These were the elite—The Anchors. They wore "Gravity Suits" that allowed them to manipulate their own weight, but they were amateurs compared to the star-stuff currently burning in my veins.
"Kaelen," the leader growled, his voice muffled by a heavy, reinforced helmet. "Give us the Mass, and we might let you keep your limbs. You’re a Light-born rat playing with the powers of a god."
I let the crane hook drop. It hit the floor with a localized thud that made the Anchors stumble. I felt the violet fire in my chest roar to life, hungry and dense.
"You call it the power of a god," I said, stepping out of the shadows, my eyes glowing a faint, dangerous amethyst. "I just call it leverage."
I didn't run at them. I just blinked, shifted my personal "down" to the wall behind them, and "fell" horizontally at sixty miles per hour.
I didn’t just "fall" toward them; I became a human railgun.
As I streaked across the shipyard, the leader of the Anchors tried to adjust his suit's stabilizers. "Anchor down!" he yelled. His suit hummed, pinning him to the spot with five tons of artificial pressure. He thought he was an immovable object.
He was wrong.
I slammed into him shoulder-first. At the last microsecond, I spiked my density to the absolute limit. It wasn't a punch; it was a collision between a moon and a mountain. His reinforced suit crumpled like a soda can, and the shockwave blew his teammates back twenty feet.
The Fight
The other two didn't stay down. They flipped their suits into "Negative-G" mode, soaring into the air to rain down micro-missiles.
"Jax! Cover!" I yelled, skidding across the rusted deck.
"I can't stop missiles, Kael! Use your orbit!"
I didn't just use it; I mastered it. I dropped to one knee and threw my arms out. "Everything... COMES TO ME!"
The shipyard groaned. Thousands of loose rivets, rusted chains, and jagged shards of scrap metal screamed as they were ripped from the ground. They formed a swirling, metallic storm-cloud around me—a "Junk Shield" rotating at a hundred miles per hour. The missiles hit the barrier and detonated harmlessly against a wall of spinning trash.
"My turn," I growled.
I spotted a massive, ten-ton shipping container. I didn't just pull it; I tethered it to my personal gravity. With a violent twist of my torso, I swung my arm in a wide arc. The container followed the motion, whistling through the air like a giant flail. It caught the two airborne Anchors mid-flight, swatting them out of the sky and burying them under a pile of industrial wreckage.
The Heist: Bringing it All Down
"Kael, that’s enough! We have to go!" Jax signaled.
"No," I said, looking up at the shimmering spires of High-Side, looming over the Drift like a taunt. "The Anchors were just the distraction. Vane-Harrow is up there in his 'Cloud-Manor,' thinking he’s safe because he’s literally above us. I’m going to show him what happens when the center of gravity shifts."
"What are you doing?"
"I'm going to give the Drift a gift."
I ran toward the base of the massive "Gravity-Lift"—the colossal pillar that held the elite's mansions in the sky. It was powered by a central core of stabilized Aether.
I didn't drill into this one. I didn't leak it. I grabbed the base of the pillar, sank my feet into the foundation, and started to inhale.
I reached out with my internal "Pure Mass" and grabbed the gravity of the mansion above. I didn't want to steal it; I wanted to claim it. The violet fire in my chest flared white-hot.
"Kael, stop! You're going to pull the whole district down!" Jax screamed.
"Not the district," I wheezed, my muscles bulging as I fought the weight of a million-ton estate. "Just... him."
The sky began to scream. The golden lights of the Vane-Harrow mansion flickered. Then, with a sound like the world's largest bone snapping, the mansion’s stabilizers failed.
The house didn't just fall. It was drawn. It descended toward the Drift like a falling star, pulled toward the tiny, glowing thief standing in the wreckage of the shipyard.
"Hold on, Jax," I grinned as the shadow of the manor blotted out the moon. "Things are about to get real Heavy down here."
The Manor hit the Drift with the sound of a god slamming a door.
Dust, silk, and pulverized marble turned the shipyard into a white-out zone. The G-stabilizers on the estate hissed their final breath, letting out a cloud of golden vapor that smelled like expensive perfume and ozone.
I stood in the center of the crater, my boots fused to the bedrock. I was the anchor point now. The "Pure Mass" in my chest was humming a low, satisfied vibration. The mansion hadn't just crashed; it had wrapped itself around me like a broken shell.
"Kael, sensors are picking up a high-density signature in the wreckage," Jax’s voice was shaky through the static. "Vane-Harrow. He didn't just survive. He’s... he’s geared up."
The Final Heavyweight
The ruins of the grand ballroom groaned as a massive slab of white quartz was flung aside. Silas Vane-Harrow stepped out, but he wasn't the soft aristocrat I’d seen on the news.
He was wearing a Titan-Exo—a suit of armor powered by six industrial-grade gravity cores. He walked toward me, each step creating a miniature earthquake. He wasn't Light. He wasn't even Heavy. He was artificial mass.
"You little gutter-rat," Vane-Harrow spat, his voice amplified by the suit’s external speakers. "Do you have any idea what that 'Pure Mass' is? It’s not just a resource. It’s the blood of the stars. It wasn't meant for someone who sleeps in a tether-bed."
"Funny," I said, cracking my neck. The amethyst light in my veins pulsed in time with my heart. "Because it seems to like me just fine."
The Clash of Densities
He moved faster than a man that big should. He didn't run; he used his suit to "repel" the ground, launching himself at me like a piston.
He swung a fist that weighed as much as a train. I didn't dodge. I raised my arm and condensed.
When our knuckles met, the air between us ignited. The shockwave stripped the paint off every shipping container for a mile. I felt my bones groan, but the Pure Mass held. I wasn't just a man anymore—I was a fixed point in the universe.
"Is that it?" I grunted.
I grabbed his metallic forearm. I didn't pull him; I multiplied his weight. I reached into his suit’s gravity cores with my mind and told them to obey.
Vane-Harrow’s eyes widened behind his visor. The Titan-Exo, designed to carry five tons, suddenly found itself weighing fifty. The metal began to scream. His knees hit the marble floor, shattering it.
"You... you’re a freak!" he wheezed, the servos in his suit smoking as they tried to fight the crushing force I was projecting.
"I’m a Leaker, Silas," I whispered, leaning in. "And you’re full of surplus."
The Great Redistribution
I placed my glowing hand over his suit’s primary Aether-chamber.
"Jax, open the Drift-wide broadcast," I commanded. "Every tether-station, every public screen. Let them see."
"Ready, Kael. You’re live."
I didn't steal the gravity for myself. I didn't want to be the new king of the mountain. I opened the valve in my own chest and used it as a vacuum. I ripped the Aether-Mass out of Vane-Harrow’s suit, out of the fallen mansion’s reserves, and out of the very air of High-Side.
I took all that stolen weight and flung it outward.
A wave of violet light washed over the Drift. It wasn't a destructive blast; it was a gift. Across the slums, the tethers went slack. The "Light" people felt their feet press firmly, safely, onto the earth. For the first time in generations, the people in the gutters walked with the weight of the elite.
Vane-Harrow slumped in his hollow, powerless suit—now as Light as a feather.
"The world’s a bit more balanced now, Silas," I said, stepping back as the violet glow in my skin faded to a steady, manageable simmer. "Get used to the floating. It’s a long way up from here."
The Aftermath
I walked away from the wreckage as the sun began to rise. I wasn't a human black hole anymore, but I wasn't Light either. I was something new.
"So," Jax said, his voice coming through clear now. "What’s the plan, Boss? We’ve got the whole city’s attention, a few tons of spare Aether, and you can still probably flip a bus if you sneeze too hard."
I looked up at the remaining High-Side towers, their foundations trembling now that the Drift had found its footing.
"The plan?" I smiled, tossing a heavy silver coin into the air and catching it before it could orbit my head. "The plan is to see who else thinks they’re too Heavy to fall."