Chapter 5: The Walking Dead
Hour seventy-one.
Kayel's eyes snapped open like a circuit breaker tripping under overload. The world came into focus slowly—ceiling tiles that needed replacing, afternoon sunlight slanting through dirty windows, the taste of copper and regret coating his tongue.
His body felt like it had been disassembled and reassembled by someone who'd lost the instruction manual. Every muscle ached with the deep, bone-deep soreness that came from lying motionless for days. His mouth was dry as sandpaper, and when he tried to sit up, his head spun like a carnival ride.
[PROCESSING COMPLETE. WEBSITE READY. CURRENT BALANCE: -$282.50.]
The system's voice cut through his skull with mechanical indifference. Three days of his life, gone. Three days of forced unconsciousness while his brain was hijacked to build someone else's dream.
"Worth it," he told himself, though his body disagreed with every fiber. "Had to be worth it."
He rolled off the bed and immediately regretted the decision. His legs buckled, sending him to his knees on the hardwood floor. The impact sent shockwaves up his spine, but at least he was conscious enough to feel pain. That had to count for something.
Standing took three attempts. Walking to the door took longer. Each step felt like he was wearing cement boots, and his vision kept swimming in and out of focus. But he made it to the door, turned the deadbolt, and pulled it open.
The entire gang was there.
Leonard, Sheldon, Howard, Raj, and Penny, all standing in the hallway like some kind of bizarre intervention committee. They'd been talking in low, concerned voices, but when the door opened, they fell silent.
Kayel knew how he must look. Pale as a corpse, sweaty hair plastered to his skull, dark circles under his eyes that probably looked like bruises. His clothes were wrinkled from three days of sleeping in them, and he was pretty sure he smelled like someone who'd been unconscious for seventy-two hours.
"Jesus," Penny breathed. "Kayel, you look terrible."
"Feel worse than I look, which is saying something."
"Website," he managed, his voice coming out as a croak. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Your website. It's done."
He reached into his pocket—moving slowly because sudden movements made the world tilt—and pulled out a USB drive. The system had helpfully materialized it on his nightstand, along with installation instructions and login credentials written in his own handwriting. Apparently, his unconscious self had been busy.
"This is everything," he said, holding out the drive. "Full e-commerce platform. Payment processing. Inventory management. Customer relationship tools. You can launch Penny Blossoms tomorrow if you want."
Penny took the USB drive with shaking hands. "You... you actually did it. In three days."
"Three very long days," Leonard said, studying Kayel's face with obvious concern. "Are you okay? You look like you haven't slept."
"Haven't eaten either," Howard added. "When's the last time you had a meal?"
"Can't remember. Time gets weird when you're unconscious."
"I'm fine," Kayel said, though he had to lean against the doorframe to stay upright. "Just... focused. Really focused."
Penny was staring at the USB drive like it contained the secrets of the universe. "How do I know it works?"
"Plug it into your laptop," Kayel said. "Everything's there. Instructions, passwords, customer support documentation. I built it to be idiot-proof."
"Idiot-proof?" Sheldon's eyebrows shot up. "That's remarkably condescending toward your client base."
"User-friendly," Kayel corrected, too tired for Sheldon's semantic games. "I meant user-friendly."
Penny disappeared into her apartment, clutching the USB drive. The guys followed her, leaving Kayel swaying in his doorway. Through Penny's open door, he could hear the laptop booting up, the soft clicking of keys, then...
"Oh my God."
Her voice was barely a whisper, but it carried the weight of genuine awe. More clicking. Then a gasp.
"Oh my God, Kayel. This is... this is incredible."
She appeared in her doorway, laptop in hand, tears streaming down her face. The screen showed a professional website with clean lines, elegant fonts, and a color scheme that somehow captured the essence of spring meadows and flower crowns. It was beautiful. It was perfect.
It was exactly what the system had promised for $295.
"It's got everything," Penny said, her voice thick with emotion. "Product pages, shopping cart, payment processing. It even has a blog section and customer reviews and..." She looked up at him with wonder. "How did you know exactly what I wanted?"
"Because an AI system living in my head spent three days building your dreams while I was unconscious."
"Lucky guess," he said aloud.
She launched herself at him, wrapping him in a hug that nearly knocked him over. His entire body was so sore that the embrace felt like being squeezed by a vice, but he didn't have the heart to pull away.
"Thank you," she whispered into his shoulder. "Thank you so much. This is going to change everything."
When she finally let go, Kayel had to grip the doorframe again to stay vertical. "You're welcome. Now, about the payment..."
"Right! Of course!" Penny rushed back into her apartment and returned with an envelope. "Three hundred, just like we agreed."
She pressed the envelope into his hands, and for a moment, Kayel just stared at it. Three hundred dollars. More money than he'd seen since transmigrating to this universe. More money than he'd had in weeks.
After the system's $295 fee, he'd have exactly five dollars profit.
He started laughing. It began as a quiet chuckle, then built into full-blown hysteria. Three days of his life. Seventy-two hours of forced unconsciousness. A debt that would have triggered sensory penalties. All for five dollars.
"Kayel?" Penny's voice was concerned. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he gasped between laughs. "Perfect. Everything's perfect."
But the laughter felt bitter in his throat. Five dollars. He could buy a single meal with five dollars. Maybe two if he was careful.
"Dude," Howard said, "you seriously need to eat something. And sleep. In a bed, not at a computer."
"I should go," Kayel said, pocketing the envelope. "Let you explore the site. If you have any questions, just... knock."
He retreated into his apartment and closed the door, leaving the concerned voices in the hallway. Through the wall, he could hear them discussing his condition in hushed tones—words like "exhaustion" and "dedication" and "kind of scary."
"They think I'm dedicated. If they only knew I was literally unconscious."
An hour later, Kayel stood on the sidewalk outside a taco truck, five dollars clutched in his hand like a winning lottery ticket. The truck's menu was a festival of options he couldn't afford—burritos, quesadillas, nachos—but at the bottom, in small print, was salvation: "Basic taco: $1.50."
"One taco," he told the vendor, a middle-aged man with kind eyes and flour-dusted hands.
"Just one?" the man asked. "You sure? You look like you could use three or four."
"Just one."
The taco was small—a single soft tortilla wrapped around seasoned beef, lettuce, and a dollop of salsa. It cost a dollar fifty and left him with three-fifty in change. By any reasonable measure, it was inadequate nutrition for someone who hadn't eaten in three days.
But as Kayel sat on the curb outside the Los Robles apartment building, eating his single taco in small, deliberate bites to make it last, it tasted like victory.
"This is it. This is what seventy-two hours of my life bought me. One taco."
[NUTRITIONAL VALUE: INADEQUATE. MEAL PLAN SUBSCRIPTION: $9.99/MONTH. BALANCED NUTRITION GUARANTEED.]
"Shut up," Kayel said aloud, earning strange looks from passing pedestrians.
Leonard emerged from the building just as Kayel was finishing the last bite. He looked around, clearly puzzled by the sight of his neighbor sitting on the curb with taco wrapper debris.
"That's all you're eating?" Leonard asked. "After three days?"
"It's enough," Kayel said, though his stomach was already growling again.
"You just earned three hundred dollars," Leonard pointed out. "You could afford a real meal."
"I earned five dollars. The rest goes to pay for the privilege of existing in my own head."
"I'm not that hungry," Kayel lied.
Leonard sat down on the curb beside him, uninvited. "You know, if you ever want to join us for Chinese takeout or pizza night, you're welcome. We order way too much food anyway."
The offer was kind, genuine, and completely impossible to accept. Every social interaction was a minefield of potential queries and billable thoughts. Dinner with the gang would probably cost him ten dollars in accidental system charges.
"Thanks," Kayel said. "Maybe sometime."
But as he sat there on the curb, picking taco crumbs off his shirt and watching Leonard's concerned expression, he couldn't help thinking that maybe—just maybe—this was the beginning of something better.
He had five dollars to his name and a system that charged him for breathing.
But for the first time since arriving in this universe, he wasn't drowning.
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