The market under Park Planet never slept—it just flickered. Neon signs buzzed like dying insects, casting electric veins of color through the metal labyrinth. The air was a cocktail of static, oil, and desperation, and Sparky thrived on it. He’d been awake for thirty hours, give or take. Down here, time didn’t march—it bartered.

He leaned against the rusted hull of an old drop shuttle, one boot propped on a crate marked SURPLUS ENERGY CELLS (long since emptied). A half-burnt cigarette clung to his lip, its smoke spiraling up toward the humming pipes overhead. Sparks crackled somewhere behind the stalls, followed by a shout, then laughter. The market was alive, noisy, chaotic—beautiful in its ugliness. Just how he liked it.

He’d made three trades that day, all crooked in their own ways: a half-dead battery core for two canisters of clean water, a busted plasma cutter for information about a cargo drop, and his patience for another drink. Profit came in small doses these days. Everyone wanted something, no one could afford it, and Sparky made a living filling that gap with whatever he could scavenge or bluff into existence.

“Keep the current flowing, keep the credits moving,” he muttered, flicking ash off his glove. “That’s the rhythm.”

He tapped his wristband—a scuffed old tech relic that flickered with static more than signal. No new jobs. No messages. Just silence in a sea of noise. Typical. He scanned the market crowd, eyes glinting in the glow of flickering signage. Smugglers. Junk rats. Starved engineers. Kids hawking false data-chips like candy. The world had shrunk to trade and survival, and Sparky had learned to make both into an art.

He pushed off the shuttle and started moving, weaving through the press of bodies with practiced ease. The soundscape of the lower decks followed him—vendors shouting over coolant leaks, old music looping through cheap speakers, the occasional pop of a plasma discharge from someone’s temper. Above it all, Park Planet loomed unseen, glittering and indifferent, a world of clean air and full plates floating over the people it forgot.

“Not that I ever needed an invitation,” he said under his breath. His grin was dry, self-satisfied, like a man who’d long made peace with being the punchline of someone else’s story.

He ducked beneath a flickering tarp canopy, entering a shadowed alley between two vendor stalls. A makeshift bar occupied the space—a counter made from a hovercar hood, a few jury-rigged lights, and a man behind it too tired to care about anyone’s name. Sparky slid onto a stool, letting the metal groan under his weight.

“House special,” he said, tapping two chipped coins on the counter. The bartender raised an eyebrow. “You mean the only thing I got?”

Sparky smirked. “Then make it a double.”

The drink arrived: something brown, smoky, and probably illegal to call whiskey. He took a slow sip, savoring the burn. For a moment, the din of the market faded—just the hum of his own thoughts, the low pulse of danger always circling the air like static.

He wasn’t looking for trouble, not tonight. But in the lower world, trouble never needed an invitation either. It showed up unannounced—sometimes with a smile, sometimes with a gun, sometimes with a story worth trading for.

Sparky lit another cigarette off the dying ember of the last. The smoke curled like a ghost between the neon beams. He didn’t look up when someone’s shadow fell across his table; he just took another drag, exhaled, and said without turning,

“If you’re selling, make it quick. If you’re buying, make it worth my time.”

The market roared around him—alive, relentless, and waiting for the next deal to be made.