The crawlspace under Eira's unit was never meant for storage—too narrow, too damp, and far too close to the filament vents that hissed stale heat through the infrastructure of ChronoCity's Sector 9. But to someone who measured his life in digits, every hidden inch was sanctuary.
Eira slid the metal case beneath the warped steel panel beneath his floorboards, listening to its soft hum like a second heartbeat in the silence. It wasn't just warm—it was alive. No standard time-case had heat, and certainly not sound. He'd carried hundreds in the past four years of running data chips and sealed trades. None of them had ever felt like they watched him back.
His fingers hesitated at the lid one more time. No seams. No visible biometric seal. Just a brushed-black surface and a single red sigil at its center: a thin spiral overlaid with a crossed hourglass—old ChronoCorp design, long before privatization gutted the public sector.
It wasn't meant to be opened. Not casually. Maybe not at all.
He sat back, heartbeat still spiking from the chase earlier, and pulled his sleeve up past his elbow. The chronolatch on his inner wrist buzzed weakly. Its blue light flickered like a dying bulb. Thirty-seven minutes remained.
That glitch in the courier routing still bothered him. The system didn't reroute jobs randomly—especially not ones flagged under secure corporate channels. And the fact that the drop point had been empty? It screamed setup.
He'd reviewed the file en route. It had no return ping, no validation check. Just the case, and that odd silence on the line when he tried to call dispatch.
No one was supposed to talk to couriers. Not directly.
He stood, palms sweaty, and walked back into the main room. A single hanging bulb above his cot illuminated the peeling ferroplastic walls of his unit. The stench of ozone and melting circuitry lingered after each recharge. The air was thick with the metallic sting of recycled blood filtration—standard in low-rent units near the plasma exchange plants.
His chronolatch beeped again. Ten minutes had passed.
Instinct pushed him toward the recharge station. His implant was aching—a raw, dull throb in the base of his skull. It happened when his time ran too low, when the neural net interfacing his bloodstream with the implant began to strain under lack of input.
Without recharging, the pain would escalate to seizures. And if the sync dropped below 5 minutes?
He wouldn't get back up.
He crossed to the small wall console and booted the black-market kiosk. It took five seconds to buffer, a luxury few could afford. Each delay ticked off microseconds from his clock.
A woman's voice chirped from the console, smooth and low.
"Need time? Need repairs? Come see Dr. Raya—No IDs, no questions, full implant recalibrations while you wait."
Eira blinked at the ad. He'd heard it before, hundreds of times across Sector 9. But tonight, the name caught him off guard. Raya. That voice wasn't AI-generated. It was real, threaded with exhaustion and calm. Street-level doctors didn't usually advertise on blackline consoles unless they were desperate. Or hiding something.
He filed it away. Not relevant. Not now.
The kiosk connected.
Balance: 00:31:52
Recharge Options:
– 15 Minutes @ 90T
– 30 Minutes @ 180T
– 1 Hour @ 350T
Surcharge: Sector 9 Processing Fee: +20T
He clenched his jaw. The processing fee was a scam. Always was.
He selected 30 minutes. The trade pinged. His account light dimmed. The pain in his skull dulled slightly as the sync updated, and he felt the cool chemical tickle of the implant absorbing the purchased seconds.
Thirty more minutes. Enough to get to sleep, maybe wake up without feeling like his veins were laced with barbed wire.
Then he remembered the hum.
He walked slowly back to the crawlspace, knee cracking as he knelt again. The case was still there, still softly vibrating with something that shouldn't be inside.
A moment later, a soft knock echoed against his unit's door.
His entire body went still.
No one knocked here. If someone wanted in, they hacked your code or smashed your lock. Either meant trouble.
He slid the case back into its hiding place, pulling the panel over it with practiced speed, then crossed the room and tapped the embedded lens above the handle. The hallway camera flared to life.
A figure stood in the foggy gray static. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a heavy coat with the hood drawn low.
A courier?
No.
Too still. Not waiting for a signature. Not checking a HUD.
He tapped the audio channel open.
"Who are you?"
Silence.
He tapped again. "This unit's not for trade or visit. Move on."
More silence.
Then, quietly, the figure turned—and disappeared down the stairwell without a word.
He waited, chest pounding, then bolted the locks and returned to his cot. No one in ChronoCity did anything without reason. That knock meant something.
Another knock.
But this time it came from inside the wall.
He froze. His eyes snapped toward the crawlspace.
Was it possible? Could the case emit sound?
He crawled toward it slowly, heart thudding. One pull, one quick slide of the panel, and it was in his hands again.
The hum was louder now. A faint red glow shone beneath the surface—pulsing slowly, in rhythm with a heartbeat not his own.
He tapped its side. Nothing.
He lifted it. Still no response.
Then he turned it upside down—and a latch clicked open silently. A seam appeared.
He stared. The case wasn't sealed after all. It was waiting.
Carefully, with fingers trembling, Eira lifted the lid.
Inside lay a single microdrive—sleek, gold-trimmed, with the ChronoSeal of the Integrity Bureau etched into its surface. That wasn't the part that scared him.
The part that did?
A time-stamp etched into the drive's header: "Deceased List 2481-C | Confirmed | Archive: Year 2413"
He scanned the first page.
Name. Time of Death. Verified implant decay.
Line after line. Faces flashed through the data screen automatically as the file tried to sync with the room's AI interface. No signal meant no match—but it didn't stop the feed.
Until it hit one entry.
His own.
EIRA MENDAX
D.O.D.: 2408.6.11
Cause: Implant rejection. Expired.
His hands began to shake. The implant in his wrist flickered again, reacting to a memory that didn't exist.
He wasn't supposed to be alive.
The screen glitched once more, and something below his name began to scroll. Hidden text. Embedded code. A phrase flickering through encrypted sublayer:
"You were borrowed. They will collect."
The screen cut to black.
And for the first time since his first minute trade, Eira didn't know how much time he had left—not on the clock, but in the world.
To be continued…