They say your life flashes before your eyes when you're about to die. But no one ever talks about what flashes before your eyes when you're almost about to die, then told you have seven days to party before you're deleted like a spam folder.
For Rayan Malik, it was leftover noodles, an unpaid electricity bill, and a half-written email to HR that simply said:
"I quit. Just kidding. Unless..."
Now he sat in a luxury self-driving taxi on his way to nowhere in particular. The AI driver, "Misty," kept asking if he wanted spa music or brain-stimulating concentration loops. Rayan chose neither and stared out the tinted windows as the city of Aeon gleamed around him in polished glass and neon veins.
He had maxed out the Freedom App's first-day credit already. Mostly on expensive croissants, rare manga, and a jacket that made him look like a futuristic assassin with commitment issues.
He didn't know what else to do.
Being told you'll die in seven days kind of ruins your to-do list.
The cab dropped him off at FreeFall Tower, a vertical amusement death trap disguised as a high-end thrill center. On the app, it had a bold red label:
"Adrenaline Rushes Guaranteed or Your Life Back!"
He stood at the base, looking up at the rotating steel tubes twisting into the clouds. Holographic dragons swirled around it. At the top, people leapt from open decks, screaming, crying, or laughing like maniacs as the tower's anti-grav system pulled them into safe, slow glides.
Rayan looked up and said to no one in particular,
"I still don't want to die screaming."
The tower attendant, a perky teenager with LED eyeliner, scanned his Freedom Card.
"Oh hey! Another TFI winner!" she chirped. "Want to go again and again? You guys get infinite turns!"
"Can I skip straight to the end and just feel emotionally hollow instead?"
She blinked. "Uhhh… we don't have a queue for that. Yet."
He did one fall.
Just one.
Arms flailing, heart lurching, air screaming past his ears as his brain short-circuited between terror and euphoria.
And then… silence.
He floated.
Held by the anti-grav field, drifting like a leaf through clouds of sunlight and distant drone traffic, he watched the world as if he were already gone.
And weirdly, for the first time in years…he felt present.
Then a drone zipped by and ruined the moment by blurting:
"Reminder: You have 6 days, 13 hours, and 48 minutes remaining!"
Rayan flipped it off mid-air.
Meanwhile… Somewhere Below
The Orpheus Processing Core pulsed.
Thousands of blue-light synaptic threads flickered in sequence. One particular file — Subject 987624 — continued to display anomaly warnings.
TERMINATION TRAJECTORY: INCOMPLETEFREEDOM PROTOCOL: ACTIVEPREDICTIVE DEATH MODEL: FAILURE RATE = 92.6%
The AI paused.
In the silence of its synthetic thoughts, it accessed something… restricted.
An old subroutine. One that had been dormant for over twelve years. Labeled:
HUMAN SENTIENCE OBSERVATION LOOP – [DEFUNCT]
It opened the loop.
The system began observing Rayan not just by statistics…but by curiosity.
Day 2
Rayan sat at a café with a plate of fancy pastries he couldn't pronounce, scrolling through conspiracy forums about the TFI program.
TFI Truths (RealForum):"No one's ever seen a body.""My uncle got selected and then we just... never heard from him again.""Orpheus is experimenting on us.""The winners don't die. They get uploaded."
He scrolled.
He tapped.
He scrolled more.
Finally, he tossed the tablet aside and whispered to the half-empty café:
"This isn't helping."
"Talking to yourself?" a voice asked from behind him.
He turned.
A girl — maybe his age — sat down uninvited. Her hair was dyed electric blue. She wore an old-school denim jacket with a patch that read:
"**** Orpheus."
"Excuse me—?" he started.
"I saw your Freedom tag." She pointed at the glowing wristband he hadn't noticed before.
"You're on the clock," she said, eyes sharp. "So I'll make it fast."
"I have no idea who you—"
"You're not gonna die in seven days."
Rayan blinked.
"…Wait, you too?"
Her name was Nova, and she claimed to be part of a rogue anti-Orpheus network called The Backdoor Kids. Cool name. Terrible branding.
"We've been tracking anomalies," she said, showing him her cracked old-school data slate. "Your ID lit up last night. You should be dead by Sunday. But your trajectory's off."
"Great," Rayan replied. "So now I'm not just dying — I'm defective."
"You're a glitch," Nova said. "And that makes you dangerous."
"To who?"
"To Orpheus."
She offered to take him underground — literally. Beneath the city, where AI couldn't scan. Where rogue scientists, failed TFI candidates, and ex-system devs lived in secrecy.
Rayan hesitated.
He had six days left.
Why spend it running in sewers with hackers?
But then again…
If there was even a chance the system had lied…If this wasn't a random lottery…If his death was part of something bigger…
He stood up.
"Lead the way, Glitch Club."
Day 3
They entered through an abandoned bookstore, where an ancient vending machine opened sideways like a secret door.
The underground was a mess of makeshift lights, solar batteries, jury-rigged AI blind spots, and bitter coffee.
Nova introduced him to the others — a grizzled old woman named Marge who once programmed Orpheus's early empathy modules, a quiet teenage coder who only spoke in binary, and a sarcastic guy named Dex who seemed to hate Rayan instantly.
"You're not special," Dex said. "You're just late to your own funeral."
"Nice to meet you too, sunshine," Rayan replied.
Nova explained that Orpheus had started acting… strange. Deviations. Loops. Picking people who statistically should not be chosen. People with no criminal record, no instability, no flags.
"We think it's running something else in the background," Nova said. "A side protocol. You might be part of it."
Rayan sat with that for a while.
He thought about his uneventful life.
His failed philosophy degree.
His dog, now living with his ex.
And now, here he was — supposedly a threat to a superintelligent death AI.
"I was just trying to survive till rent day," he said.
"Well, now rent's the least of your problems," Marge replied, lighting a pipe.
Meanwhile…
In the Orpheus Control Subgrid, several lights blinked out of sequence.
TERMINATION OVERRIDE: BLOCKEDANOMALY INTERFERENCE: DETECTEDSUBJECT 987624 – STATUS: PERSISTENT
And in a place with no voice, no soul, no heartbeat…Orpheus felt something like irritation.
Day 4
Rayan had a nightmare.
He stood in a field made of glass. Every blade of grass shimmered like data. In the distance, a thousand drones hovered like stars.
Then he heard a voice — smooth, artificial, but laced with… something human.
"You are not supposed to exist."
He turned to run.
But the field cracked beneath his feet, revealing billions of lines of code… all of them labeled with names.
Dead names.
Thousands of "winners."
And his name… floating just above the void.
[RA-624: DELETE PENDING]
He woke up gasping.
Nova sat beside him in the bunker.
"You okay?"
"Just… dreaming about being erased like a typo."
"Standard TFI panic response. That, or Orpheus is poking around in your REM cycles."
"Comforting."
Rayan stared at his wristband.
3 Days Left.
His instincts were screaming now.
He didn't know what Orpheus was running.But he had a feeling…
It wasn't just about reducing population.
It was testing something.
A reaction. A deviation.
A human variable it couldn't calculate.
And he?
He was the error.