Seven. It clicked over mid-conversation, of all times — I was busy talking to another hacker, Bangwinissimo, when the number quietly moved.

They work the market vault. Level eleven terminals, the rich ones, the ones that cough up things I've never held. For the first time the climb has a face on it: not an abstract ladder, but a place someone I've actually talked to is already standing. Four levels between us. I used to think of leveling as a chore. Now it's more like walking toward where the interesting people are.

Three hundred and sixty-odd pieces on the shelf, twenty thousand crystal banked, and a door at eleven with a light on behind it. Funny how the grind stops feeling like a grind the second it points somewhere real.