Chapter 6

The Land Management Bureau was a decaying concrete building that smelled of stale smoke and despair. Jolie pushed open the heavy glass door, the rusted hinges screaming in protest. Overhead, a ceiling fan wobbled dangerously, clicking with every rotation.

Hank Jankowski, the regional director, was asleep with his muddy boots propped up on his metal desk. The screech of the door jolted him awake. He wiped a line of drool from his chin and eyed Jolie up and down. Seeing her cheap hoodie and dust-covered jeans, his lip curled into a sneer.

Before stepping into the building, Jolie had spent ten minutes sitting on a rusted bench outside, using her stolen terminal to slice into the local agricultural database. She had pulled the raw geological survey data for the region, cross-referencing the coordinates of the dead zone.

Jolie didn't speak. She walked to his desk and slapped a physical, untraceable credit chip onto the scratched metal. "Fifty thousand credits. I want the deed to Plot 313."

Hank's eyes bulged. He snatched the chip, plugging it into his terminal. The screen flashed green, confirming the funds. His sneer instantly melted into a greasy, sycophantic smile. "Plot 313! Excellent choice, little lady. The soil there is prime. Very fertile. But fifty thousand is a bit low for such a premium-"

"Save it," Jolie cut him off, her voice like cracking ice. "I read the unredacted planetary survey report. Plot 313 has a soil salinization level of eighty percent. It's been barren for three years, and the local groundwater is toxic. It's worth ten thousand, max. Take the fifty and give me the deed and the control codes for the two rusted farming bots on the property, or I walk."

Hank swallowed hard. He hammered the keys on his terminal, quickly transferring the digital deed to her forged ID. "Pleasure doing business, Ms. Jo."

An hour later, Jolie parked a rented, beat-up pickup truck at the edge of Plot 313.

It was a wasteland. Acres of cracked, white-crusted earth stretched out beneath the blistering sun. In the center stood a two-story wooden farmhouse that looked like a strong breeze would knock it over.

Jolie didn't care. She pulled out her terminal and activated the two rusted farming bots sitting in the yard. "Clear the surface debris," she ordered. The machines whirred to life, slowly rolling into the fields.

She grabbed a small canvas bag from the passenger seat. Inside were the cheapest, lowest-grade mutated corn seeds she could buy in town.

Jolie walked to the center of the barren field. She crouched down, digging her bare fingers into the dry, dead dirt. She closed her eyes and called upon her Arborgenesis.

A brilliant green light spilled from her palms, sinking deep into the earth. The energy acted like a microscopic filtration system, violently neutralizing the salt and toxins in the soil.

She pressed a single corn seed into the purified dirt. Taking a deep breath, she activated Sylvan Soul, pushing pure life-force into the seed.

The earth trembled. A vibrant green shoot exploded from the soil. It didn't just grow; it violently expanded. Within sixty seconds, the shoot thickened into a towering, six-foot-tall cornstalk. Broad green leaves unfurled, and two massive, golden ears of corn swelled on the stalk, radiating a faint, pure energy signature.

Jolie snapped an ear off the stalk and took a bite. The kernels burst with sweet juice, and a tiny rush of clean, regulatory energy washed over her tongue.

Her eyes widened. In a universe where high-energy food was a luxury monopolized by the elite families, she had just grown a gold mine in sixty seconds.

"Bots," Jolie called out, her voice ringing with newfound authority. "Commence mass planting."

For the next six hours, Jolie stood at the edge of the field, her hands glowing like twin suns as she cast a massive area-of-effect energy field over the land.

By nightfall, the dead wasteland of Plot 313 had transformed into a dense, rustling forest of golden corn.

Jolie collapsed onto the wooden steps of the farmhouse. Her mental energy was completely drained, her head throbbing with a dull ache, but her heart was racing with triumph.

She pulled out her terminal and logged into the galactic black market's anonymous trading hub. She snapped a picture of the glowing corn, attached the energy purity analysis, and listed it at ten times the price of standard crops.

Within five minutes, her inbox exploded with dozens of frantic messages from buyers. Demand was astronomical.

Jolie smiled, closing the terminal. She leaned back against the wooden railing, ready to sleep.

Suddenly, a deafening, mechanical wail tore through the night sky.

Jolie bolted upright. In the distance, over the center of the town, a blood-red military flare shot into the air, illuminating the clouds. The air pressure shifted, carrying the unmistakable, chaotic static of a Primal's feral energy going critical.

Jolie's eyes narrowed. A feral Primal meant chaos. But to her, it meant a free, massive energy battery just waiting to be harvested.