Ashfall Divide`

Rowan Vale has three days left before his body becomes salvage. In the abandoned Outer Zones, people survive on broken implants, black-market medicine, and whatever the Core throws away. Rowan has lasted longer than most. He is a pit fighter with a failing artificial heart, a  body full of obsolete hardware, and a habit of staying alive past every number written beside his name. Then the Core notices. To the citizens inside its sealed cities, the Core is paradise: no hunger, no pain, no disorder, no dangerous emotions left unmanaged. To everyone outside, it is the machine that decided half the country was cheaper to abandon than repair.    When Core medical engineer Ella Vance discovers Rowan’s impossible survival record, she sees more than a dying fighter. She sees proof that the system has been lying about what it discards. Her forbidden intervention buys Rowan six more months.    Six months to repair a dying heart. Six months to turn stolen upgrades into leverage. Six months to climb back into the system that marked him disposable. But every augmentation comes with a cost. The stronger Rowan becomes, the more dependent he is on the same technology that owns him. And the Core does not like losing assets.