I leaned against the black marble sink, staring at my reflection in the mirror. I expected to see bulging veins, dilated pupils, the signs of an imminent stroke. But the face staring back was placidly calm. Perfect skin, not a drop of sweat. My biology was lying to me. Inside, my brain screamed with the smell of ozone and rotting meat that didn't exist in that sanitized bathroom.
“Diagnostic,” I demanded of the empty air. “Am I having a psychotic break?”
The system didn't answer with a medical report. It answered with an invoice.
A notification appeared in the corner of my vision, discreet and lethal like an assassin in white gloves.
[TRANSACTION APPROVED] SERVICE: Emergency Tissue Knitting (Local) COST: 850 Credits.
I blinked. The pop-up remained.
“What?” I murmured. Before I could process it, another window opened over my reflection in the mirror.
[TRANSACTION APPROVED] SERVICE: Neural Shock Buffer (Cortisol Scrub) COST: 1,200 Credits.
“System, freeze accounts!” I screamed, my voice echoing off the cold tiles.
[ERROR 403] REASON: Critical Health Event in progress. By the Asset Preservation Law, life-saving transactions ("Premium Care") take priority over security freezes.
[TRANSACTION APPROVED] SERVICE: Rapid Cellular Regeneration (Gold-Nanoweave Class) COST: 5,000 Credits. STATUS: Injecting...
The total spent was the price of a mid-tier kidney, or complete aesthetic recovery after a car accident. Someone was running a marathon on my corporate credit card. And they weren't buying luxury goods; they were buying survival.
Then, the glitch happened.
The black marble of the sink vanished. For a second, I wasn't looking at the luxury bathroom of the Conservatory. I was looking at a hand. It was small, pale, and covered in industrial soot. But the skin on the back of the hand was bubbling. It had been burned. Badly.
But it wasn't scabbing over. It was shining.
Tiny golden filaments—my paid-for nanotechnology—were weaving themselves through the raw flesh, stitching the burn shut in real-time. I could feel the drain on my bank account synchronized with the regeneration of that strange meat.
“Trace the source,” I hissed. “Now.”
The HUD in my lenses overlaid a map of the city onto my vision. A red debit line drew itself rapidly from my location in Sector 1, crossing the city and diving into industrial filth.
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The line stopped five kilometers away.
LOCATION OF DEBIT: SECTOR 4 (INDUSTRIAL). FACILITY: Narcissus Data Processing & Waste Management. LEVEL: -4 (Bio-Incineration).
It wasn't a hacker. It was a physical person, burning in the basement of a waste processing plant, using my money not to die.
The system tried to identify the beneficiary. Facial recognition failed due to virus interference. It blinked yellow:
ID UNKNOWN. ANOMALY: IP DUPLICITY. ASSIGNING ERROR ALIAS: [ECHO_ERROR_01]
“Echo,” I read the temporary file name. “I'm going to silence you.”
I left the bathroom, kicking the door open. My aides recoiled. “Mr. Kross?” “Call my transport. I want the armed containment team on the ground floor in two minutes. We are going to the trash.”
The pain should have been blinding. But the Virus wasn't letting me feel it. Instead of agony, I felt a cool, tingling sensation.
I looked down at my right hand.
Golden threads erupted from my pores, moving back and forth like microscopic spiders, knitting the damage back to perfection. Instinctively, I peeled off the glove from that hand in pain, slowly, because it was pulling off parts of skin. I watched, mesmerized, as the red, irritated burn turned into smooth, flawless, slightly golden skin.
My knees buckled. The healing didn't hurt, but it was exhausting. The energy for the repair had to come from somewhere. The virus was cannibalizing my physical stamina.
“Stop,” I wheezed, clutching the wet black box against my chest with my good arm. “I need to walk.”
I was cornered. Behind me, the roar of the furnaces. In front of me, the only exit: the Cargo Elevator. But, standing between me and the elevator, was the Guardian. The “Delisted.” A human Husk turned into a biological security camera.
He was standing next to the conveyor belt. He wouldn't care if I walked past him. But he would care about the box. The scanner on his chest was a “Loss Prevention” unit. If I tried to walk out with Corporate Property, he would snap me in half.
I needed to pass. But I was too weak to fight.
It was then that the impasse formed. I took a step and stopped. The guard's scanner turned yellow-alert. If I advanced another meter, he would attack. If I retreated, the heat of the furnaces would eventually kill me—or make me spend so much money on regeneration that the man in the tower would remotely shut me down.
I was trapped between physical death and financial death.
Then, I felt the shift. Not in my body, but in the “aura” around me. My golden hand pulsed. The man... the Echo... he wasn't just paying. He was looking. I could feel his attention, heavy and cold, focused on my hand like a laser. He was seeing his money being knitted into my skin.
A notification flashed on my retina, coming from the Narcissus system:
[ASSET SECURITY ALERT] CURRENT INVESTMENT: 7,500 CREDITS AND RISING. RISK OF TOTAL LOSS: IMMINENT. ACTION: VALUE PROTECTION PROTOCOL.
The virus made an executive decision. I wasn't a thief anymore. I was an investment too expensive to be damaged by a cheap guard.
My skin shone with intense light, projecting a holographic QR code into the air. The Delisted froze. His mechanical eyes focused on my regenerated hand. His scanner read the code—not my employee badge, but the receipt of my cure. He saw the value. To the cold logic of the machine, destroying a 7,000-credit asset to save a 50-credit trash box was an accounting error.
The lights in the guard's eyes changed from Yellow to Green. The hydraulic pistons in his arms relaxed with a hiss of steam. Slowly, heavily, the giant of dead meat took a step back. He didn't move out of my way out of kindness. He moved because the hierarchy of money commanded it.
He pointed his mechanical arm to the elevator. Permission granted.
I took a deep breath, the air trembling in my exhausted lungs. “Thanks for the check, boss,” I whispered to the ghost in my head.
I pressed the black box against my chest and entered the elevator. The door closed, and I began the ascent to the ground floor. To the meeting.
[ASSET UPDATE] Error: The Trash is now Gold.
I love the irony of the MC being saved not because she is a human being, but because the system recognized her as a "High-Value Asset" due to the money spent on her skin. It really sets the tone for how messed up the Narcissus logic is.
Question for you guys: Valerian is coming down to the trash level to "silence" the error. The MC is heading up to the meeting point. Who do you think has the actual leverage here? The one with the money, or the one who can drain the account?
Next Chapter: The Alleyway Meeting. The rain, the neon, and the negotiation.
A small request: If you are enjoying the story so far, please consider leaving a Rating or a Follow. It helps the story climb the Rising Stars list and reach more victims... I mean, readers.