The moment I saw that I was being ambushed I slowed time down to a crawl. I had no worries about being caught, I just realized that their movements would cause talking on the phone while driving to be a little dangerous. I mean, I am sure that they all thought that they were moving at a high speed towards me. When in reality, it felt like I was watching a snail crawl across the ground and that was even without using my Prime Speed Control. I needed to contact Meditati and ask her for the best way out of here.

I picked her out of my contacts list as I looked at the gang of convicts surging down from around the carrier. They all seemed to be better equipped than anyone else that I had just spent the last two hours saving. The topping on the cake was the guy who had yelled for everyone to jump on me. He didn’t look like he belonged here at all. His harvester robot body seemed to be custom with stripes of paint along the sides and down the legs. As I looked closer it appeared that his harvester robot was slightly bigger than all the others as well. Was this guy a normal citizen scalping off of the hard work of the convicts?

Having time to think was nice. It wouldn’t have occurred to me earlier but my escape from this situation was actually pretty simple. I just had to sow a bit of chaos.

I turned tail and ran. Well, more exactly, I slowly crawled back towards the surface of the sun, making sure to keep just a hair in front of the lead convict’s grasp. My teardrop shape made it so that the five who were in the lead had nothing to grab onto. They each started to string together and build a net out of cr to catch me with. So they were free to manipulate cr at will? This wasn’t an option for normal convicts. Someone here must have the Authority to unlock certain restricted abilities. My guess was that it was the brightly painted stooge running his mouth back on the carrier.

My speed was just slightly faster than the maximum extra 7% that these guys could pump out. I had to turn off my ability to speak while I watched them, it was all I could do not to laugh right in their faces from how determined they all seemed to catch me.

“Get him! He is getting away!” I heard their leader shouting over the top of his gang’s shouts. Many of them were yelling threats and insults at me as if that would somehow slow me down enough for them to catch me. I let a minor close call happen just to keep up the perceived tension, not wanting anyone to focus on the fact that no matter what they did, they couldn’t fully overtake me. Four of the closest guys managed to fling a net out in front of my path, making it look like they had surely caught me. At the last moment, I spun in place, using my tail to catch and flip around the edge of the net. I tried not to make it look too easy, but I was doing this all in slow time so I had as much time as I needed to make sure my flip caused the tip of my tail to just graze and crumple the edge of the net, letting me slip past. I had done it so smoothly that the four who had thrown the net were already in the middle of pulling trying to cinch the sides together. They realized too late that I had slipped past, letting me enter slowly into the surface of the sun just moments later.

Once I was out of their sight I called Meditati.

“No no no! You losers let him get away! He could have had so much cr! Get in there and get him!” The leader shouted when I made sure to slow down, letting them all think that the fatigue was making my entry into the sun difficult.

I didn’t really care to see if they came in after me because the moment that I was hidden from view I picked up my speed to dart away, letting the leeches do what they wanted.

“Hello!” I said when I got the feeling that I had connected to something.

“Please state my designation.” I heard a drab and featureless voice say a moment later. Something had happened to Meditati.

“Meditati?” I asked, concern growing inside me.

“Hi! Kevin! This is just a recording. So much has happened since we last spoke. Just an hour ago, in real-time for me, the convicts around the south pole of Magus’s star started to have all fatigue vanish. This allowed for several, if not all, of them to escape their confinement in the grip of the sun. This news caused my Owner to focus on me. She wanted to know who the “undisclosed citizen” was that had discovered a way to get rid of the source of the fatigue in her star. I hid your identity by using my name as a shield. I fear she is suspecting something is wrong however because Magus called and laughed at her. Saying that he had trapped the source of the disturbance within his star and that the secret to all of the wealth would be his and his alone. I don’t want to be erased so I have decided to leave this message for you. I hate doing this, too many variables are unknown… but… I can’t stay a slave anymore. I set up a series of events to sneak my module out of my Owner’s Core. My module will be thrown into the trash and ejected into space as soon as I finish sending you these messages. Here, take this data. I will be launched in this direction and at this speed.” She said as data flowed into me, showing me her estimated trip away from her Owner’s core. I just needed to go pick her up.

“Before I go, I managed to contact your habitat. I am dying to know what you did to your AI, they are impervious to my Authority and… hacking attempts. I am sorry, yes I tried to hack your AI and habitat. It was just too big of a point of interest for me. The good news is that I was unable to get in, the bad news is, they somehow knew every time I tried. I don’t understand how that is possible. I managed to convince them of my intentions, even after trying to hack everything. It was only after I showed all of our conversations and how I needed you to come to rescue me that they understood. It seems that you have my brother’s AI module on board as well. Sleeping and safe. Here is its hidden location as well as a message from someone you know.” She said before someone else's voice began speaking. I didn’t recognize the voice or even the language that the person was speaking for the first few seconds until I realized that it was Elaya and that she was crying.

“Kevin... My dad is gone! He had called me and tried to tell me something but our connection was severed. I haven’t been able to contact him since. The System says that he doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t know what to do. Please, if you can, please help.” She said before her message ended.

“All of my data indicates that Magus had something to do with his disappearance. Magus has set up an information filter throughout his System. He is trying to hide something and to find you. From what I can gather from messages leaving his Core, he has already found a buyer for you. Someone who will enjoy spending time obtaining your secrets. When you get this message, hopefully before you reach the south pole in 4 hours, I want you to be careful of the convict carriers. Magus has trusted relatives in place to “police” the convicts. In truth, it is just a cover to allow Magus and his relatives to skim off of the labor of people who were caught up in the legal system. Magus has fully locked down the interior wall of the Core. Only convicts who have paid off their debt in full can bypass the security walls and leave. I hope all of this helps and I hope to see you soon. So long Kevin.”

“Ok, that is it. I have had enough of this.” I said as I stopped and dropped off the 5 million gold CR. I would come back and pick it up after I was done straightening things out above. I still had 10 million raw cr inside me that I needed to offload so that I would be able to form limbs and to change my shape at will. The best place to do that was back at the carrier… I just needed to get to one of those disks to turn it all in.

I slowed time down to barely a crawl and moved out from inside the sun, peering over at the swarm of convicts who had been intent on catching me just moments ago. They all were focused on the spot that I had vanished from view which allowed me to zoom up behind and off to the side of the carrier. I rose over the side of the carrier, now formed as a chunky version of the octobot that everyone else was using. It was clear that I was massive compared to everyone else, I was relying on how fast I could move to hopefully cause whatever afterimages anyone had to just make it appear that I fat robot had just run past. I made no sound, unlike all of the rest of the convicts who were still using cr propulsion to drive themselves around.

“So that is how things are run here.” I mentally said when I got a look around the deck of the carrier. Mr. Important himself was still hanging off the side in front of me, calling down insults and orders to his men below. The disks were exactly where they had been on the other vessel, the main difference was the layer of cr that covered each and every single one of them. That was how he managed to get around the System. He simply covered up the access to turning in raw cr and demanded that the convicts shell out to use the disks. It was clever and very evil. It reminded me of gangs who would form to make people pay for access to clean water after a disaster once the foreign aid had dropped it off to the poor who were affected. I loved clever people but hated it when they used their abilities to enslave or harm others.

I inspected the brightly colored robot and found that his name was Magus the 15th. I had a bone to pick with this guy and his family but first things first. I moved to hover over one of the disks and turned off my Prime Speed Control before dropping onto the disk with a clang. This noise got the attention of Magus the 15th, causing him to spin in place. He spied me and started to crawl towards me. “So, you managed to sneak around my boys huh?” He noticed that I was sitting on one of the blocked-off disks. “Ha! so you do have currency. Well, you won't be paying any debt off to anyone until you first pay your debt to me.”

I tapped one of my legs on the disk, causing it to rap out a sharp sound. “Hahaha! Strike it all you want! No one gets free unless I let them go.”

“Is that so?” I asked, finally speaking. I had pierced his cr barrier easily and was now able to access the disk's interface. I directed my limb to act as a tunnel for the 10 million raw cr that I had in my body as the interface lit up for me.

-Unregistered cr detected-

-Congratulations Kevin! You have 10,010,557 raw CR to deposit. This is the largest deposit ever made at one time! You have set a record!-

-Would you like to purchase upgrades or to pay off debt?-

While Mr. 15th strutted around and told me how powerful he was, being a direct descendant of Magus the 2nd, I went through the options to pay off debt and found that there was an option to list all the convicts and their current debt. It seems that, had we been living in another world, these convicts would have had the option to pay each other’s debts off faster. This option probably had never been used much before though. I highlighted all of the convicts, including myself, and clicked “Pay.”

During this time of me browsing the menu and working on depositing all of the raw cr inside me, causing my robot body to gradually shrink down to just 3 million gold CR’s worth of volume, Magus had finally noticed that I wasn’t paying attention to him. This change in size added to my lack of attention being paid to him caused Magus the 15th douchebag to blow his top.