Current Status: Loop 48
Location: Jade Lotus Teahouse (Back Alley)
Time: 09:12 AM
Inventory: None.
I stood by the dumpster behind the teahouse and emptied my pockets.
The ceramic knife clattered onto the wet pavement.
The wallet, thick with physical currency and credit chips, landed with a heavy thud.
The Patek Philippe tactical watch—mechanical, worth more than this entire city block—joined the pile.
"No credits. No weapons. No lies," I muttered.
I felt naked. Not physically—I still wore the charcoal suit, now stained with sewer muck—but existentially. For twenty-eight years, and forty-seven loops, my armor had been my leverage. I bought people, I threatened them, or I deceived them. Without those three tools, what was I?
Just a man standing in the garbage.
Objective: survive 24 hours.
I stepped out of the alley. The Mist was thicker here, swirling in lazy, grey vortices. It dampened sound, turning the roar of the city into a muffled hum.
I needed a place to hide. A place where the Erasure Protocol couldn't track me. My penthouse was a death trap. Hotels required ID and money. The streets were open ground.
I needed a ghost.
I needed Mei Chen.
I hadn't met her in this loop. In fact, I hadn't "met" her properly in any loop. I knew of her. In Loop 34, I had hacked a Resistance node and found her file: Mei Chen. Codename: Glitch. Wanted for data-trafficking and neural-jack crimes. She operated out of a retro-gaming arcade in the dense slums of the 70th floor.
She hated corporate types. Specifically, she hated me.
Perfect.
Location: "Pixel Dust" Arcade, 70th Floor
Time: 10:45 AM
Mist Density: 85%
The walk took ninety minutes. My feet blistered in the dress shoes. Without money for the mag-lev transit or a rickshaw, I had to take the stairs—two hundred flights of rusted, graffiti-covered metal.
I passed beggars, synth-drug dealers, and patrolling Triad members. Every instinct screamed at me to lie.
When a beggar asked for credits: "I don't have any," I said. (Truth. It felt foreign on my tongue.)
When a dealer offered 'clarity': "I'm trying to stay clear on my own." (Truth.)
When a thug asked what a suit was doing here: "I'm hiding from someone who wants to kill me." (Truth.)
The thug had blinked, laughed, and let me pass. "Good luck, suit. You look like you're already dead."
It was disorienting. The truth didn't provoke attack; it provoked confusion. People in the Silver Mist were used to lies. Radical honesty was a glitch in their social programming.
I reached the arcade. It was a cavernous space filled with antique CRT monitors and VR rigs from the 2030s. The air smelled of ozone and instant noodles.
I walked to the back counter. A girl with neon-blue hair and a cybernetic arm stripped down to the chassis was soldering a circuit board. She didn't look up.
"Machines are busted. hourly rates are 50 credits. No loitering."
"I'm not here to play," I said.
She looked up. Her eyes were modified—irises shifting like camera shutters. She scanned me.
"Corporate cut," she sneered. "Silk blend. Italian shoes. You're lost, salaryman. The elevators to the sky are that way."
"I'm Alex Mercer," I said.
The soldering iron froze. The air in the arcade seemed to drop ten degrees.
"Mercer," she repeated. "The Neural-Link Mercer? The one who sold the proprietary interface code to the government so they could build the surveillance grid?"
"Yes."
She stood up slowly. The cybernetic arm whirred, the servos whining with torque. She picked up a heavy wrench.
"Give me one reason why I shouldn't smash your skull in and sell your implants for scrap."
Lie, my brain screamed. Tell her you defected. Tell her you're here to fund the Resistance. Tell her you have the codes.
The Brain Fog prickled at the base of my skull. A warning. No lies.
I took a breath.
"Because I'm terrified," I said.
Mei paused. Her grip on the wrench didn't loosen, but her eyebrows twitched. "What?"
"I'm terrified," I repeated, my voice steady but quiet. "I've died forty-seven times. I'm stuck in a time loop. There is an AI assassin outside who moves faster than physics should allow, and I have zero credits, no weapons, and no idea how to stop it. I came to you because you're the only person in this sector smart enough to hide me."
Silence.
The arcade machines beeped and blooped in the background.
Mei stared at me. She looked for the lie. She looked for the angle.
"You're on drugs," she decided. "High-grade neuro-stims. Get out."
"In Loop 34, you were arrested for hacking the water filtration grid to divert supply to the orphanage on Level 40," I said rapidly. "You use a polymorphic encryption key based on music theory. Your left arm is a prosthetic because you refused a neural implant during the Draft of '49."
Clang.
The wrench hit the counter.
Mei vaulted over the desk, pinning me against a Street Fighter VI cabinet. Her metal hand clamped around my throat—not crushing, but threatening.
"Who told you that? That record is sealed. Even the Mist doesn't have that data."
"Nobody told me. I lived through a timeline where I hunted you down to ask for help, and you detonated an EMP vest rather than talk to me."
I looked her in the eyes. "Please don't do that this time. I'm tired of exploding."
She searched my face. She saw the exhaustion. The dirt. The lack of arrogance.
"You're telling the truth," she whispered. It wasn't a question. It was a diagnosis.
"Yes."
She let go of my throat. She stepped back, running her human hand through her blue hair.
"A time loop," she muttered. "That explains the probability anomalies we've been tracking near the penthouse levels. Massive spikes in entropy."
She looked at me again. "You said an AI assassin?"
"Erasure Protocol. It adapts. It's here."
As if on cue, the glass front of the arcade shattered.
Location: "Pixel Dust" Arcade
Time: 11:05 AM
The figure in black armor stepped through the broken window. The Mist poured in behind it, cold and heavy.
Gamers screamed and scrambled. The assassin ignored them. Its helmet turned, scanning the room. It locked onto me instantly.
"Target acquired," the synthesized voice boomed.
Mei didn't hesitate. She kicked the base of the arcade cabinet next to her.
"Hey, tin man!" she yelled.
The assassin turned.
Mei slammed her metal palm onto the exposed circuit board of the game machine. "Game over."
She surged power from her arm into the machine. A massive electrical arc leaped from the cabinet, chaining through the networked systems. Every screen in the arcade exploded in a shower of sparks and glass. The lights died.
"Move!" Mei grabbed my collar and dragged me into the darkness behind the counter.
We sprinted through a narrow service corridor, the air filled with smoke. Behind us, I heard the heavy, rhythmic thud of the assassin's boots crushing debris.
"He sees in thermal!" I yelled. "Smoke won't stop him!"
"I know!" Mei shouted back. She kicked open a heavy steel door leading to the maintenance shafts. "That's why we're going to the heat sink!"
We burst into a room dominated by massive, roaring ventilation fans pushing hot air up from the lower city. The temperature spiked to fifty degrees Celsius.
"Thermal masking," Mei panted, slamming the door and spinning the locking wheel. "The heat here washes out his sensors. We have maybe two minutes before he switches to audio triangulation."
She turned to me, sweat beading on her forehead. She looked wild, dangerous, and alive.
"Okay, Billionaire," she grinned, a sharp, predatory expression. "You survived ten minutes. You have 23 hours and 50 minutes left."
"I didn't do anything," I admitted. "You saved me."
"Yeah," she said, tapping her metal temple. "Because you told me the truth about the EMP vest. Nobody knows I have that rigged except me."
She pointed a finger at my chest.
"You owe me, Mercer. And I don't take credits. I take data. If we survive this, you're going to tell me everything you know about Concordia's source code."
"Deal," I said. "No lies."
"Good." She pulled a localized scrambler from her belt and tossed it to me. "Clip this on. It'll hide your bio-signature."
She looked at the door, where a heavy fist was already denting the steel.
"Now, let's go deeper. Welcome to the Underground, Alex. Watch your step."
Status Update:
Loop: 48
Time: 11:15 AM
Credits: 0
Weapons: 0
Lies: 0
Allies: 1 (Mei Chen - Provisional)
Threat: Erasure Protocol (Breaching Door)