TThe alley was narrower than it had any right to be—like a crack in the city's body that Chen didn't want anyone to pass through. The walls on both sides were cold metal, etched with Persian patterns threaded with lines of light, but down here—in the lower layer—the glow was dull, tired, as if even gold had lost its faith.
Above him, the sirens wailed.
Not the howl of fear.
The howl of a system.
**"Breach in the Sovereign Qat Reserves!"**
A repetition that left you feeling accused even if you were nothing but a shadow.
Al-Muqarraḥ didn't keep his head raised for long. He carried the pure White sprig between his fingers the way a man carries a key dropped by fate.
It didn't resemble the White he'd known in his own era. Back then it was leaves you picked, stacked, and stuffed into your cheek until the world turned softer. This… was too clean to be just a plant. Its scent was raw, sharp—like it came from living stone, not a tree.
Near the mouth of the alley, a scanning beam swept down from a patrol drone. One heartbeat, then the light slid away as if it had seen nothing.
The violet seal in his neck… pulsed.
As if reminding him: *Now. Or not now.*
He didn't hesitate.
He raised the sprig to his mouth.
Bitterness came first—bitterness unlike ordinary qat. It was the bitterness of "noble" White: clean, painful, stripping the tongue of the familiar layer it had grown used to. Azzam's saliva mixed with it, and for a moment Al-Muqarraḥ felt the body itself react in surprise, as if tasting—perhaps for the first time in its short life—something it had been forbidden from touching.
Then he began building the **bajma**.
Not with an addict's mess.
With a king's care.
A leaf pressed.
A leaf aligned.
Then sealed into the cheek until the mouth became a small warehouse for power that had no business sitting in the hands of a caged man.
The instant the bajma settled into place, the violet seal struck hard.
One pulse raised gooseflesh along his skin.
A second made the air feel heavier.
A third—and then something happened he hadn't expected even from himself.
It was as if a second heart woke inside his neck.
The sensation was cold—not mountain-cold, but iron-cold when it kisses flesh. Then violet "fire" slid through him: it didn't burn, it rearranged. Flame without flame, moving through his veins like regulated current.
His fingers cramped.
Azzam's heartbeat sped up… then steadied, as if another heart had arrived to teach it the correct rhythm.
In the air before his eyes, a transparent layer of writing unfolded, fixed and steady despite his breathing:
**[INTEGRATING BIO-FUEL]**
And the voice—this time—wasn't a whisper. It was dry, official, like a report being read inside his skull.
He felt the muscles—the same weak muscles that had betrayed him at the rope—tighten suddenly. Not like natural growth, but like rapid polishing. As if the body were being reshaped under an invisible hand, a hand that didn't care about pain—only function.
His vision, which had been swimming in light fog from exhaustion and shock, sharpened into something predatory. He saw the light-lines woven into the Persian metalwork. He saw the green dust floating in the air as separate grains. He saw a tiny scratch on a pipe, as if the world had been a low-quality image…
And someone had just upgraded it.
And the throat pain?
Gone.
Not gradually. Not "improving."
It shut off the way an alarm shuts off on a control panel.
He parted his lips and tested a deep breath.
Air entered easily.
Al-Muqarraḥ smiled. A small smile—his first that wasn't made of mockery.
It was made of ownership.
He whispered to himself, the White sitting heavy in his cheek with a delicious dignity:
"So… this is taqreeha in Chen."
The violet seal wasn't a mark.
It was a machine.
And the White… was its bio-fuel.
---
Above him, the green smoke continued spreading like a radiant cloud. Sirens grew louder. More flight units poured out between towers. Wide scanning light swept over streets, hunting for a trace, a movement, an explanation for the chaos.
Al-Muqarraḥ moved through the alley with calm steps. He no longer needed to pant. Azzam's body—an hour ago a prey animal—was now lighter, harder, as if it had discovered joints that had never worked before.
He lifted his head at last.
And saw… a silhouette.
On a distant rooftop, between neon and smoke, a body leapt with impossible ease. Not the jump of a trained athlete.
The jump of someone who didn't fear falling—someone who treated emptiness like a second ground.
A woman.
Long liver-colored hair, tied tight into a high ponytail. A taut body, nothing like the palace nobles, ruined by comfort. And on her shoulder—she carried a massive **jūniyah**: a burlap sack of qat, heavy enough to bend two men.
She carried it like a feather.
As she crossed under a neon sign, light spilled over her face for less than a second.
He saw it.
Sharp features. Rebellious eyes. No fear, no luxury—only the face of someone who'd lived outside rules long enough to make chains into jokes.
She lifted a hand toward her face—a mask she was about to put on—but the light beat her by a heartbeat and gave him that stolen frame.
Then she vanished.
No slow fade.
One leap—then nothing.
But she left behind something no noble in Chen carried:
The scent of raw White—stronger than the sprig in his mouth.
A scent that felt like a promise.
Or a threat.
Al-Muqarraḥ narrowed his eyes.
*A thief.*
Not one of Badr's men. Not palace security. Her movement didn't carry military discipline—it carried gang freedom. And if she could carry a sack that heavy, she wasn't a petty robber.
She was part of something larger.
Part of the summit breach.
His old instinct said: *Follow her now.*
But his utilitarian mind—trained to grip instinct by the throat—said: *No.*
This body was newly reinforced, but still unfamiliar. He didn't know its limits. And chasing someone across rooftops under a sky full of patrol drones wasn't heroism.
It was a delayed suicide.
And more importantly…
If she were running with a sack, the sack was likely torn.
And the White… would be shedding.
Al-Muqarraḥ smiled.
The smile of a hunter who doesn't chase the deer—
It collects what falls from its antlers.
---
He moved quickly.
Not in a way that drew attention. He moved like a shadow that knew how shadows breathe. Out of the alley into a side passage, into a small gap between two buildings, then a light hop onto a metal service stair.
His body was lighter than before. The jump didn't sting his knees. No heavy breath escaped him. It was as if the White in his cheek held his muscles from the inside and pulled them into the correct alignment.
On the ground, White leaves were scattered—not many, but pure, faintly glowing under the green fall from the sky. Some were still damp. Some had been crushed into powder by impact.
He crouched and collected them.
Not with greedy haste.
With the speed and cleanliness of a gemstone trader picking rare cuts: quick, precise, leaving no trace.
He filled his inner pocket. Then tore a small piece of fabric from inside Azzam's coat—a fancy handkerchief—turned it into a temporary pouch, and tied it tight.
Every leaf wins with time.
Every grain was another pulse for the seal.
In his mind, the arithmetic was clear:
*Tonight isn't for war.*
*Tonight is for loot.*
He lifted his head again. He didn't see the woman now, but her path had left a trail of scattered leaves—enough to know she'd dropped toward another sector.
He let her go.
He took the crumbs that were enough for him.
Then… he returned.
---
Returning to the palace was harder than he expected—not because the guards were stronger, but because the gaps were more sensitive now.
After the Whitwactivated, the violet seal behaved like a radar. Every camera he approached triggered a specific pulse. Every time he stepped away, the pulse calmed. As if it were showing him an invisible map: where the eyes were, where the blind spots lay.
He climbed the metal façade again, but this time not like a fugitive—
like a man coming back to his place after a walk.
He hopped onto the balcony. Opened the glass door slowly.
Entered.
No sound.
Inside, everything was as he'd left it. The rope in the corner. The screens displaying White data as if the city hadn't exploded above.
He sat on the sofa.
A royal bajma in his cheek.
A small pouch of green treasure in his pocket.
His face under the blue neon looked different—not because the features had changed, but because the presence had. A thin violet something had taken residence in the eyes.
He felt this body becoming more compatible with his soul. The gap between mountain man and noble flesh was shrinking—not fully, but enough.
Enough to remain master of the room.
He heard movement outside.
Then a light knock at the door.
He didn't say "Enter" immediately. He let the knock repeat once more, to remind whoever waited that control lived here, not there.
Then he said calmly, "Enter."
The door opened fast.
Badr stepped in.
He wasn't wearing the composed face of a noble this time. His skin was pale. His eyes shone with obvious worry. Beneath the forced calm was something close to panic—panic that the summit blast had exposed everything, or opened a door to an authority larger than the family.
He spoke too quickly before he could polish his voice:
"There's… an explosion at the summits. The sovereign reserves—the White—"
He stopped when he saw Azzam.
Words froze in his mouth.
Because the Azzam in front of him wasn't the one he'd left hours ago. The same sofa, the same posture—yet the body felt different. The same stillness—yet the weight in the room was heavier.
And the eyes…
The eyes carried a faint violet shine—unmistakable to anyone who knew kayf, even if he'd never tasted it.
Badr took half a step back.
"Azzam…" he whispered, then added as if he hated to ask, "Your eyes—violet. Where did you get this kayf?"
Al-Muqarraḥ didn't smile widely. Only a slight bend at the corner of his mouth.
He said coolly, "The sky rained White, Badr."
Then he lifted his hand slowly and pointed to his swollen cheek.
"And I was the only one with the right pouch."
Badr stared, his mind trying to stitch together the summit breach with the brother who should have been dead, with this violet gleam he'd only heard of in family whispers.
He swallowed.
"Where were you?" he asked at last, suspicion now plain.
Al-Muqarraḥ looked at him—one short glance, enough to put him back in place.
"I was… breathing."?
Then, heavier:
"And you were… trembling."
Badr clenched his fist, then released it. He wanted anger, but he didn't dare. Anger in front of a beast whose limits you don't know is a luxury.
Al-Muqarraḥ leaned forward slightly.
"Sit, Badr."
This time it wasn't a suggestion.
It was an order.
Badr sat, but he sat like a man before a court.
Al-Muqarraḥ continued in a low voice:
"Now you'll tell me everything you know about the summits. The reserves. The 'sovereignty.' The reason for the explosion."
A pause.
Then a sentence that made Badr go cold from the inside:
"And you'll tell me… who else knew Azzam would be hanged tonight?"
Badr lifted his head slowly. His eyes trembled. The question was no longer a game.
Outside the palace, the sirens still wailed.
Above the palace, the city burned with the hunt for an unknown thief.
But inside this room, Badr discovered a colder truth:
The failure he'd tried to bury with a rope had come back walking—leaning on a sofa, chewing White from the summits.
And the thing sitting in front of him didn't only want to survive.
It wanted to rule.