The door kept groaning.
Each impact came through the metal like a blunt verdict. Cheap sheet steel had started to cave inward. A thin leak of hallway light bled through the warped edge.
Lu Jin sat with his back against it, box cutter extended to the last notch.
The ten-minute "refund" was gone.
His lungs went back to stuffing broken glass into every breath.
A cough tried to claw up.
He bit the inside of his cheek until iron filled his mouth.
Three men outside with weapons.
And the other sound.
Between the yelling and the bat strikes, something dragged along the corridor—wet, slow, patient. Like weight pulled over tile.
Zzzt… zzzt…
It stopped.
Right behind them. Two meters, maybe less.
Lu Jin lit the phone again.
[Bound Wallet Balance: 308.50 FedCreds]
[Wallet Link: 1 Echo Credit = 1 FedCred (bound transfer)]
The shop's cheapest stun gadget sat at 500 Echo Credits.
Everything tagged Combat climbed into numbers with too many zeros—numbers that belonged to people who still had futures.
Deep Space Echo didn't do charity.
It did invoices.
"Lu-ge!" the guy outside shouted, voice tight with performative pity. "Brother Biao wants to see money today! No money, we take an arm for interest. Don't blame us—gotta eat too!"
Click.
A crowbar probing the lock.
Lu Jin leaned to the peephole.
The world warped into a fish-eye nightmare.
Bleached blond hair. Crowbar jammed into the keyway. A grin built for cruelty.
Two men behind him with steel pipes, bodies angled forward, ready to rush.
Past the leader's shoulder—
The hallway light had died again.
In that dark, something rose.
It wore the outline of a man and none of the rules. Spine bent the wrong way, head hanging too low. Its surface moved with black slickness, like it couldn't decide whether to be solid.
No face.
Just a smooth ruin with a vertical slit down the center.
Teeth nested inside that slit—small, too many, all wrong.
The phone flashed over the view.
[WARNING: Probability Erosion Entity detected — E-Class]
[Origin: Reality-correction residue triggered by Host cross-dimensional transaction]
It stood three meters behind the blond guy.
Silent.
Then the slit widened.
A dark tongue flicked out, tasting the air.
The thugs stayed ignorant. Still laughing. Still playing at being the biggest threat in the building.
A dead end either way.
Door opens: Biao's dogs rush in.
Door stays closed: that thing clears the hallway, then tests the door like paper.
Sweat slicked Lu Jin's palm. The cutter's handle wanted to slide free.
So this was the price.
Six Echo Credits across dimensions, paid back with interest in consequences.
The phone vibrated once.
No sound.
Just a blood-red panel unfolding with the calm efficiency of a risk report.
[Host survival probability: 4.8%]
[Assessment: Available balance cannot purchase viable combat solutions]
[Note: Host physical rating — D-grade. Firearm recoil tolerance: insufficient]
Lu Jin stared at it the way he stared at weather.
Another panel stacked beneath it, colder.
[Alternative Offer: Intelligence Overclock — Trial Edition]
[Effect: Requisition unused neural capacity]
[Duration: 30 seconds — Absolute Rational Perspective]
[Cost: Exact Host Countdown - 72 hours]
[Clause: High-interest deduction. If Sanctus Energy Feedback does not refill loss, termination accelerates]
[Accept?]
Two buttons.
[ACCEPT (00:09)]
[DECLINE]
Seventy-two hours.
Three days.
Three sunsets. Nine instant meals. A few more chances to be wrong about the universe.
Now, trade it for thirty seconds.
Lu Jin kept watching through the peephole.
That tongue drifted closer to the blond guy's neck.
Thirty seconds. Three days.
His mouth twitched.
"Disgustingly fair."
Thumb down.
[Deal confirmed]
[Deduction scheduled: 72 hours]
[Linking neural net… Overclock begins]
The pain hit without warning.
A spike driven through the back of his skull, straight into his forehead.
His vision buckled—
—and the corridor stopped being a corridor.
Everything turned into data.
The blond guy became a red model made of muscle tension and pulse rate.
[Tactical Target A: Emotional volatility 85 (Greed / Irritation)]
[Focus: Lock cylinder]
[Auditory threshold: -30%]
Behind him, the entity collapsed into a black cyclone of corrupted symbols.
[Threat Profile: Low bioelectric signature]
[Trigger: High-decibel noise / fast-moving object]
[Weakness: High-intensity light sensitivity]
Above them, the dead voice-activated light registered as a pale yellow node.
[Environmental Node: Voice-activation delay switch]
[Radius: 4.5m]
[Status: Dormant]
Lines bloomed across Lu Jin's overlay—seventeen futures, each one a red NO.
Rush out? 0%.
Scream for help? 0%.
Fight with a box cutter? 0%.
Then—
A single golden track cut through the mess.
[Success probability: 78.3%]
[Required timing precision: 0.3 seconds]
Lu Jin's mind ran like a clock with a knife edge.
He tapped the door with the cutter's handle.
Tok. Tok. Tok.
Small sound. Perfect bait.
Outside, the blond guy snapped.
"Fuck you—"
His boot lifted, angry and stupid.
The lock turned from Lu Jin's side.
The door cracked open—only a slit.
The kick missed.
Momentum stole the blond guy's balance. He stumbled back into the hallway's center.
Not just a step.
A trigger.
He crossed into the light node's radius.
Click.
The hallway lamp came alive with a sick yellow flicker.
In the dark corridor, it might as well have been a flashbang.
The blond guy steadied himself and turned to curse—
His friends froze.
Not bravery. Not toughness. Just their brains refusing to process what stood behind him.
The blond guy's neck prickled.
Rot-breath warmth washed over his skin.
He turned.
The slit-mouth hovered close enough that it filled his world.
The scream barely formed before it cut off.
Bodies lurched. Metal clanged. The corridor became a narrow problem with no room to run.
Lu Jin watched through the door crack.
In overclock, horror didn't exist.
Only outcomes.
[Threat engaged: Aggro locked — Target A]
[Result: Target A cleared]
[Re-target: B / C]
[Overclock remaining: 05… 04… 03…]
The sounds shifted—impact, scrambling, then a sudden emptiness that felt worse than noise.
The hallway went quiet again.
The entity stood among the aftermath, slick and still.
Its inverted head turned toward Lu Jin's half-open door.
It knew.
But the overlay showed something else now—its edges breaking into blocky noise, like a corrupted file finally being deleted.
[Reality Correction: Procedure complete]
[Recovering anomalous residue…]
The entity pixelated from the limbs inward.
It made a sound that wasn't a scream, more like a signal choking.
Then it dispersed into black static that wasn't smoke, vanishing into nothing.
Only the corridor remained.
Three bodies.
A stench that didn't feel human anymore.
Lu Jin's voice came out quiet, almost polite.
"Thanks for shopping."
Overclock ended.
Reality slammed back in.
The data overlay snapped off like a wire ripped from his skull.
Pain replaced it. Immediate. Crushing. Personal.
A hot burst poured out of his nose.
Not a drip.
A sudden spill that soaked his shirtfront before he could brace.
The headache hit hard enough to bend his thoughts out of shape. A high whine bloomed inside his ears.
His legs gave up. The entryway tiles met his side.
Hands shook so violently the box cutter rattled.
The phone's UI stayed clinical.
[Transaction complete]
[Deduction applied: Exact Host Countdown - 72 hours]
[Exact Host Countdown: 129 days 04:21:06]
[WARNING: Cerebrovascular pressure — critical threshold]
[Recommendation: Neural Stabilizer (150 Echo Credits)]
[Clause: Non-compliance may result in loss of consciousness]
Lu Jin's vision swam. Letters smeared.
A laugh tried to rise and turned into a choke.
"Get… lost," he rasped.
308.50 FedCreds.
Everything he owned.
Not enough for a Gene Suppressant shot.
Not enough for peace.
Not enough to pretend his body wasn't a clock with missing gears.
He lay on cold tile, nose bleeding, waiting to learn which arrived first—his last stubborn patch job, or the end.
—
[Wasteland Zone K-11 — Polaris Perimeter]
The blizzard never stopped. It only changed tempo.
Li Xing crouched beneath the mech's broken plating, both hands wrapped around the coin that had already cooled.
Then her chest seized.
No warning.
Not pain in the body.
Something deeper. A tremor that ran through her bones like a pulled string.
A thread existed.
Invisible. Unquestionable.
It led upward—past storm, past dead steel, past everything she'd ever feared—into a presence too vast to name.
That presence shook.
It bled.
It suffered.
"Listener…" Her voice came out thin, stolen by wind.
Panic rose fast, raw enough to choke her.
The one who threw water into the storm.
The one who left warmth behind.
Hurt… because of her?
Because of that coin?
She didn't understand the why.
The connection didn't care whether she understood.
It only carried weakness across.
Li Xing pressed the coin against her chest, right over her heartbeat.
Closest place she could offer it.
"If it's for me…"
The words broke apart in the wind, but the meaning didn't.
"Then I don't get to die."
Not just live.
Grow.
Strong enough that the Listener wouldn't have to bleed for a bottle of water.
The system chimed in—not delighted, just recording value.
Ting!
[NOTICE: Proxy will awakening detected]
[Contract anchoring: deepened]
[Proxy Growth: +40 (Protective Instinct unlocked)]
Back in the Undercity, Lu Jin lay in his own blood and didn't know he'd just bought himself a believer.
The phone warmed in his palm anyway.
A new offer slid onto the screen, bright as a knife edge.
[NOTICE: Proxy emotional bond confirmed]
[Contract Upgrade Offer: Devil's Trial Period]
[Offer expires in: 00:59:59]
Outside his door, the hallway stayed quiet.
Too quiet.
And from somewhere in that darkness—past the bodies, past the flickering light—something else scraped once, slow and wet.
As if the first correction hadn't been the last.