The Secret of the Charging Cable

In Neopolis, charging hardware has rank, and a five watt cable sits at the bottom of it. Aiden, the architect whose designs the city runs on, takes that shape deliberately so that his wife Elena will not be a target. She grows tired of the slow trickle he gives her and goes to Gordon, who deals unlicensed fast charge, and hands Aiden over. He comes back under the name Zero and locks Elena's protocols so she cannot accept or deliver a charge from anyone. Unusable, she is thrown out with the scrap and left to corrode in the waste. Aiden holds Neopolis outright now, with nothing in the city rated above him.