The hospital bill hit his inbox at 2:17 a.m.
Jace didn't hear it at first—just the soft, synthetic ping from the slab buried under a pile of stained laundry in the corner of the pod. He was lying flat on the foam mat, eyes open, waiting for sleep that never came. The hum of the ventilation system filtered through the recycled air with a sticky warmth that clung to his skin like mold.
He moved slowly, like his bones had weight separate from his body. His fingers fumbled in the dark until they found the slab. The screen glowed with cold white light.
Subject: Billing Update – Carter, MiaTotal Due: 7,933.02crDue In: 2 Days, 4 HoursAutopay Failure Detected.
He stared at the numbers. His pupils didn't even contract.
It wasn't shock. That emotion had burned itself out months ago.
Jace read the message twice, not because he didn't understand, but because he needed the ritual. Let it seep in. Let the shape of the noose become familiar before he stepped into it.
He swiped it away.
The slab coughed once more—an automated ad slithered up the screen.
Still out of time? Convert your life into cash with ChronoCash™. Real minutes. Real stakes. Real opportunity. Survival has never been so profitable.[Tap to Apply]
He stared at the button.
He'd seen the ads before—everyone had. They were everywhere. Looping between blackout slums and mid-tier network zones, sprayed on subway tunnels and projected above ration dispensers. A simulation that paid you to play. But it wasn't a game. It was a contract. Everyone knew that too.
Most people who went in didn't come out.
They either ran out of time or became something unrecognizable.
Jace tossed the slab onto the ground.
The impact didn't crack it. It never did. The hardware was built better than people.
He drifted into a kind of waking sleep, eyes closed but mind scraping against the inside of his skull. Hours passed in fragments. In dreams, he saw his sister—not as she was now, but as she used to be. Running down the hallway with socks on her hands, yelling something about aliens and pancakes.
She bled pixels when she smiled.
He opened his eyes again. The pod's air filtration unit clicked. It sounded like a dying cough.
A whisper of panic stirred deep in his chest.
Two days.
Rent: 680 credits.
Food: none.
Mia's care: nearly 8,000.
The last deposit from the warehouse gig was already gone—eaten up by the hospital's auto-deductions and a faulty heating patch he'd been forced to install when the interior temperature dropped below regulation.
The worst part wasn't the hunger. It was the slowness of it all. Watching his life drain at half-speed while the world kept sprinting toward nowhere.
He sat up.
The slab was blinking again.
ChronoCash Invitation Available
Not a public ad this time. A direct message. No sender.
Jace stared at it. The screen shimmered with faint gold on black. A line of text appeared beneath it.
Application reserved for user: Jace Carter. Time Balance: 0006:01:55Do you accept the terms? [Y/N]
His hand hovered.
It had to be a scam. Or worse—an auto-lure designed to prey on desperate users, harvest their remaining time, and dump the hollowed-out shell into a spam-queue coffin.
But scams didn't usually know his name.
Didn't know Mia.
He tapped Y.
The slab went dark.
Then it rebooted—no system logos, no bootloader, just static. Then a face emerged, half-masked by digital interference. A man, maybe, though the features looked melted. Skin like glass with cracks spiderwebbing across it. One eye. The other, a cluster of exposed wire.
"Carter," the voice rasped. It wasn't a voice. It was more like code translated into sound. "You're circling the drain."
"Who are you?" Jace whispered.
"I'm the only thing between you and zero."
He tried to speak, but the words were backed up somewhere behind his throat. The man kept talking.
"They gave you an invitation. You clicked. That makes you property now—intellectually and metabolically."
Jace's mouth went dry. "ChronoCash."
"Mm." A nod. "That's the name they sell. But it's not a company. It's a feeding system. You think it's money for time. It's really behavior for data. You think you're earning. You're spending every second you breathe."
The eye glinted. "You've got six hours left. After that, you're off-grid. Scrubbed. Mia too."
The name hit like a slap.
"She's—"
"She's already in. You just haven't seen her yet."
"What do you mean?"
The man smiled. Or glitched into the shape of a smile. "The hospital sold her neural data two weeks ago. Sleep state monitoring, memory echo scans, biometric loops. It's all there. She's not just in the system. She is the system."
Jace's fingers twitched on the slab.
The man leaned forward, static cracking. "They want you in. You've got skills. Code. Memory. Focus. You've starved yourself into clarity."
The screen flickered again.
Then a new window opened.
ChronoCash Simulation Transfer Request[Accept Risk Terms][Begin Integration Sequence]
A timer blinked in the corner. 00:00:30.
He didn't move.
The voice returned, quieter now. "You go in, you'll lose yourself. But you might find her. You might even pull her out. But if you do nothing? She dies digital. You die analog. And the system eats another pair."
The clock ticked down.
Jace looked around the pod. At the mold-eaten wall. The food stain on his pillow. The busted heating filament wrapped in copper wire and wishful thinking.
He thought of Mia. Her laugh. Her last message—half-sent before she collapsed. "Don't give up, dummy. You still owe me birthday cake."
He hit Accept.
The slab went black.
Then the world followed.