The walk back from the warehouse gig left his legs buzzing with static. He didn't remember the route. The city was made to be forgettable—gray corridors between gray walls, vending stations that coughed up disappointment, holo-ads that never stopped watching. Jace moved on autopilot. Pavement, elevator, door scan. Unit 943D. Tower 9B.
Home.
He sealed the pod behind him with a hiss.
His boots squelched from damp. His shirt clung to his back. The sweat hadn't dried; it never did in the recycled air. The moment the seal locked, the temperature began to climb. No real AC. Just the illusion of climate—more software than hardware, more placebo than control.
Jace slid down against the pod wall, arms limp.
He didn't even take off the gloves. Still had the barcode scanner from the job clipped to his chest like a parasite. Warehouse Inventory Visual Confirmer. Seventeen credits. Two hours of walking between crates so heavy the floor groaned beneath them. No breaks. No chairs. Not even a human supervisor—just a floating retinal drone with a cheery text-to-speech overlay.
"Keep it up, partner! Every box is a chance at stability!"
The drone didn't notice when his hands began shaking halfway through.
Back in the pod, he stared at the glowing slab that pulsed gently on standby.
Rent due in 42 hours now. Power was bleeding out of the wall meter faster than usual. He reached for the battery ration switch and turned off the light. It bought him maybe twenty extra minutes before blackout.
The darkness pressed in immediately.
He clicked open the slab.
It glitched twice—then blinked alive. A low whir came from the processor trying to cool itself in the stifling air.
He pulled up his project.
ChronoDreamer – Level Editor v0.4
The screen filled with pixelated stars and silence. A blank grid waited for him. Rows of invisible time stretching outward, begging to be filled. In the void of the pod, it was the only place that felt remotely like his.
He moved the cursor. Slow. Deliberate.
A single sprite blinked into existence—a girl with wild hair and a green dress running through a forgotten garden. The colors were wrong—he never could get the palette to match his memory—but the shape was unmistakable.
Mia.
Or how he remembered her, before the coma, before the tubes, before the signature that sold her digital soul.
Jace stared at the tiny figure, trembling slightly.
A static crackle moved through his spine—hunger or grief or caffeine withdrawal. He wasn't sure anymore.
He touched the trackpad again. The cursor hovered over the sprite.
He hit delete.
The girl vanished.
Dreams didn't survive long in places like this.
The slab's alert chime made him jump. It wasn't the usual rent warning, not another push notification for a payday loan or survival raffle.
Time Balance Alert: -02:13:07 Discrepancy Detected.
Jace blinked. He reread it.
Review activity? [Y/N]
He tapped Y.
A wall of micro-logs populated the screen. Too fast to read individually. Just lines and lines of his temporal balance shifting in real-time. Most were tiny—minutes here, seconds there. All accounted for.
Then he saw it.
JOB: WAREHOUSE CONFIRMATIONTime Credit Earned: +2:00:00Time Lost: -3:17:07Net Balance: -1:17:07
He stared at it. Mouth dry.
No typo.
They hadn't just underpaid him. They had siphoned time directly from his life. Somehow, while he scanned crates and blinked through the exhaustion, someone stole an hour and seventeen minutes from him.
Gone.
Unrecoverable.
His pulse kicked. Not fear exactly. Something colder. Closer to horror, but dulled. Like seeing your reflection blink when you don't.
The slab blinked again.
Dispute Process Available: 45 Credit Filing Fee.
He laughed, but it came out wrong. Brittle. Choked.
He didn't have 45 credits.
He barely had 3.5. Not even enough for noodles.
Not enough for time.
The slab slipped from his hand.
He curled against the pod wall, watching the outline of the data-port light blink like a dying star. His ribs stuck out now—sharp enough to bruise from the inside.
He pulled his knees to his chest. Tried to breathe shallow to conserve energy. The pod creaked with the shifting weight.
His brain buzzed. Caffeine pills, mostly. He hadn't eaten more than flavored broth in days. The protein packs ran out last week, and the food printer had been jammed since.
This wasn't exhaustion. It was erosion.
They were wearing him down, second by second.
Jace reached blindly to the corner of the pod and pulled down the taped micro-mirror. He barely recognized himself.
Sunken eyes. Lips cracked. A patch of facial hair growing wild down his neck. His skin looked like the inside of a used bandage. His pupils were dilated.
Then he saw the timer blinking at the bottom corner of the slab.
TIME REMAINING: 0006:23:11
It kept counting.
Not down from some job. Not from his rent notice.
This was him. The real clock.
ChronoCash had synced it when he signed the end-user agreement. The one buried inside the slab's firmware. The one he never read.
Every action he took—every bite, every breath, every minute alive—subtracted from the total.
And now he was under seven hours.
He sat still for a long time. Breathing shallow. Watching the seconds bleed.
Then he reached for the neural jack.
The port clicked softly into place behind his ear.
The slab flickered again. This time it didn't load the mini-game.
Instead, a black screen opened with an encrypted message blinking at the center.
"If they stole time, steal it back. Meet me inside." – E
No signature. Just the single letter.
He didn't know who E was. But the slab shifted and an old bootloader activated—one he hadn't coded himself.
ChronoCash.
Unauthorized Entry Detected. Risk Level: Critical. Connection: Approved.
The pod darkened. His vision stuttered. The system swallowed him.