Chapter 101: Three Percent

The transport seal closed around Jace's wrists. Nothing pulled him through it. The room left instead. The Spire stretched into white lines. Liam, Olivia, Seraphina, and the restored north block thinned behind sheets of gold until Manhattan looked less like a place than something being removed from a file. Jace kept his eyes on Liam.

The falling Access numbers became a progression test in reverse. Jace paid attention to which perceptions vanished first. At sixty-one percent he lost fine claim seams. Below forty-four, the room stopped exposing secondary permissions. At twenty-one, even obvious title pressure became dull. He memorized the order. If he ever rebuilt Access from this depth, he wanted to know exactly what each threshold returned rather than treating the percentage as a bigger-number reward.

He rehearsed the thresholds in order, matching each lost perception to a number until the sequence felt less like surrender and more like a map he might someday climb back through.

Sebastian noticed Jace tracking the losses and asked what he was doing.

"Inventory."

"Of what?"

"Me."

The answer stopped Sebastian. Recovery treated suppressed functions as hazards removed from a patient. Jace treated each vanished perception as part of himself temporarily unavailable. The difference would matter if Sunchain later tried to argue that silence proved the functions had never been necessary.

Temporary Shield Authority: 43%.

Volunteer Network Authority: 39%.

Residual Jace Authority: 18%.

Barrier Continuity Forecast: 94%.

Then the connection began to close. Sebastian Sunchain stood opposite him inside the transport field.

"Suppression begins in six seconds."

Jace looked down at his wrists.

"Usually buy me dinner first."

Sebastian did not smile.

EXTRACTION TRANSFER

Stage One:

Combat isolation.

Stage Two:

Title suppression.

Stage Three:

Bloodline stabilization.

Stage Four:

Identity assessment.

Estimated consciousness retention: 34%.

Access reduction forecast:

76% -> 3%.

Corruption response: VARIABLE.

Title access: MUTED.

Skill access: RESTRICTED.

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Inventory access: SEALED.

Jace focused on the hidden flaw buried in the transport seal. The Error Mark remained there. Tiny. Dark. Not visible to Sunchain inspection.

ERROR MARK

Transport Metadata Integrity: 97%.

Detection Risk: 4%.

Persistent Connection: ACTIVE.

Behind the formal transport route, one thread still ran backward. It was not enough to use, only enough to know Manhattan had not stopped existing. Seraphina appeared at the edge of the collapsing connection.

"Jace."

He looked at her. The Free Accord was already graying under the extraction seal. She saw the suppression forecast. Access three percent. Titles muted. Claims inaccessible.

"You knew this would happen."

"Knew most of it."

"You still went."

"Had two hundred thirty reasons."

Her expression tightened.

"You surrendered your body."

"That's the paperwork."

Her eyes moved to his wrists. Then back to him.

"Not the case."

Jace's mouth twitched.

"There you go."

The connection snapped.

FREE ACCORD

Remote Status: UNAVAILABLE.

Last Verified Integrity: 59%.

No termination detected.

The transport chamber replaced Manhattan. There were no windows. The walls were polished white with gold lines embedded beneath the surface, too clean to tell where one panel ended and another began. Jace stood inside a circle barely wide enough for his feet. Sebastian remained outside it. Suppression began.

Access: 76% -> 61%.

Breach Sight vanished from half the room. Jace's stomach turned.

Access: 61% -> 44%.

The title over his head disappeared.

THE GLITCH KING

ACTIVE -> MUTED.

Contested Sector Control: OFFLINE.

Claim-Seam Detection: OFFLINE.

Crown Tax Interference: OFFLINE.

Command Resistance bonus: OFFLINE.

Authority: 17 -> SUPPRESSED.

Jace's knees buckled. Sebastian moved. His hand stopped an inch from Jace's shoulder.

"May I?"

Jace looked at him. That question, here of all places, bought Sebastian half a second of surprise.

"Yeah."

Sebastian caught him before his head reached the floor.

Access: 44% -> 21%.

The world became quieter, though not physically. The pressure Jace had lived with since Times Square simply receded. No claim lines pulling at the edge of his thoughts. No territory asking for Charge. No dead structures whispering ownership clauses. No title demanding subjects. He hated how good it felt. Sebastian lowered him onto the transport platform.

"Do not fight the suppression."

"Sales pitch?"

"Medical advice."

"House seems confused about those."

Sebastian's knuckles whitened around the edge of the console.

Access: 21% -> 9%.

Jace tried to open Breach Sight. Nothing. Static Step. Nothing. Rule Fracture. Nothing. Heir's Claim. Nothing. Only the Error Mark remained, hidden because Sunchain had carried it inside its own authorized seal. That was the joke.

They had confiscated every weapon they knew he possessed. Then escorted his smallest one through security themselves.

[HIDDEN QUEST UPDATED]

INFILTRATE SUNCHAIN RECOVERY

Objective:

Enter an authenticated Sunchain recovery facility while preserving an unregistered rule defect.

Conditions:

Transport accepted: COMPLETE.

Persistent Error Mark concealed: COMPLETE.

Safe Zone control delegated: COMPLETE.

Reach Recovery Core: INCOMPLETE.

Escape with identity intact: INCOMPLETE.

Failure:

Recovery finalization.

Identity partition.

Crownline indexing.

Reward: SEALED.

Access: 9% -> 5%.

Sebastian read Jace's visible vitals.

Health: 5/420.

Stamina: 4/160.

His composure slipped.

"How long have you been functioning like this?"

"Functioning generous."

"You should have died."

"Been told."

Sebastian opened emergency stabilization. Jace's body warmed as something entered the platform beneath him.

Health deterioration: PAUSED.

Pain Response: 100% -> 41%.

Jace closed his eyes. It was not pleasure. It was the sudden absence of pain so constant he had stopped treating it as information. His body felt light. Wrongly light. Sebastian watched his face.

"This is what recovery is meant to do."

Jace opened his eyes.

"That's what makes it dangerous."

Sebastian looked almost offended. Then the final suppression layer descended.

Access: 5% -> 3%.

The Error Mark dimmed until Jace could barely feel it.

ERROR MARK SIGNAL

Strength: 0.2%.

Connection Destination: UNKNOWN.

Persistent: YES.

Access: 3%.

Title: MUTED.

Authority: SUPPRESSED.

Active Skills: SEALED.

Unassigned Attribute Points: 32.

Unassigned Skill Points: 16.

Allocation: LOCKED DURING RECOVERY.

Jace tried to keep Sebastian's face in focus. White walls softened around him. The transport platform became a bed. Or the bed had always been there. He could no longer tell. The last thing he remembered was Manhattan disappearing. The next thing he knew, he was staring at a ceiling he had never seen before.

Access: 3%.

SUNCHAIN RECOVERY VESSEL

Patient Status:

STABILIZATION IN PROGRESS.