The chime above the cafe door didn't ring; it hummed, a low-frequency vibration that synced with the pulse-clock embedded in Arthur's wrist.
"Double espresso," Arthur said, leaning his arm over the scanner.
"That'll be six hours, sir," the barista replied, her own wrist glowing a dull, faded amber. She was low on funds. Probably living paycheck to paycheck, or rather, minute to minute.
Arthur felt the familiar, cold tug at his marrow. A faint golden light shimmered between his skin and the sensor. -00:06:00:00. Just like that, six hours of his potential future were gone, traded for a caffeine kick to get him through a twelve-hour shift.
The irony wasn't lost on him. He worked for the Federal Temporal Reserve. He spent his days taking years from people, only to spend his own hours just to stay awake to keep taking them.
Arthur's office was a sterile cube of glass overlooking the "Lower Seconds"—the slums where people moved with a frantic, jerky energy, terrified of wasting a single breath.
His manager, a man named Silas who looked forty but was rumored to be three hundred, dropped a file on his desk.
"Target is Julian Vane," Silas said. "He took a 'Lifestyle Loan' twenty years ago to fund a startup. The venture failed. He's defaulted on the interest."
Arthur looked at the math. It was staggering.
* Original Loan: 10 Years.
* Interest Accrued: 45 Years.
* Current Age: 28 (Physical), 73 (Biological Debt).
"If I collect the interest, he drops dead on the spot," Arthur noted, his voice flat.
"That's the 'Interest of Life,' Arthur," Silas remarked, checking his polished, glowing cufflink. "The longer you live on someone else's time, the more it costs you to keep it. Collect by midnight."
The Girl Who Didn't Tick
Arthur tracked Vane to a basement in the Sector 4. But Vane wasn't there. Instead, he found a girl named Mara. She was sitting in total darkness, not a single flickering light on her wrist.
"You're a Collector," she said. It wasn't a question. "You're here for the interest."
"Where is Vane?"
"He gave it to me," she said, holding out her arm. It was dark. Dead. "But I'm not using it. I've figured out how to stop the clock, Arthur. I've figured out that the Reserve isn't just collecting time—they're manufacturing the debt."
Arthur reached for his extraction kit, but his hand hesitated. For the first time in a decade, he didn't hear the constant tick-tick-tick of the city. In this room, there was only silence.