The summons on the cracked data-slate was a set of coordinates, nothing more. A location deep in the gut of the Veridia District, a place even the Repo Auditors hesitated to tread after dark. Kaelen moved through the narrow, winding streets, keeping to the deepest shadows. Every flicker of a failing light panel, every skittering sound from a darkened alley, sent a jolt through him. He was a creature of procedure and protocol, and he had just thrown the book into a fire. Now he was navigating by instinct, a tool he had long since learned to despise. The air was thick with the district’s signature scent of damp rot and ozone, the smell of a place bleeding its remaining time into the gutters.
He found the cafe exactly where the coordinates said it would be. The sign above the door was dark, the glass of the front window opaque with a thick layer of grime. It was a dead place, a husk. The perfect meeting spot for a ghost. Kaelen’s hand went to the pocket of his worn jacket, his fingers finding the familiar, sharp edge of the hairline fracture on his old TAC data-slate. He gripped it. It was a known quantity. A failure, yes, but his failure.
He pushed the door open. It groaned on rusted hinges, the sound loud in the oppressive quiet. The air inside was stale, heavy with the dust of years. Faint light from a single, flickering streetlamp outside filtered through the grimy window, casting long, distorted shadows across the room. Overturned chairs lay like skeletons. Tables were coated in the same fine grey powder that had covered his apartment. He was a fugitive, and he was walking into a trap. He knew it with the same certainty he once reserved for a balanced ledger. But it was the only trap on offer.
A figure sat in a booth at the far end of the room, shrouded in a pool of near-perfect darkness. Kaelen couldn't make out a face, only a silhouette. But he saw the numbers. Hovering in the air above the man’s wrist was a T-Minus, its digits a calm, steady blue. Fifteen years, eight months, and twenty-one days. It was the glow of a man with time to spare, a man who was not hunted. It was the glow of a man with power.
— You came, — the voice was a low rasp, familiar and unwelcome. It was the voice of Silas Marr. The man who had been his mentor at the Temporal Audit Commission, before a catastrophic miscalculation had shattered Silas’s career and left him a ghost in the system he’d helped build.
— The invitation was compelling, — Kaelen said, his own voice tight. He did not move from the doorway, keeping his escape route clear. He scanned the room, his training kicking in. No other heat signatures. No obvious ambush points. Just him and a man who was technically a legend and functionally a disgrace.
Silas Marr made a small gesture with one hand, a flicker of movement in the gloom. He wasn't pointing at Kaelen, but past him, toward the crumbling street outside. The gesture was weary, freighted with a history Kaelen knew all too well. The decay of Veridia wasn't just a failure of infrastructure; it was a failure of philosophy. It was the end result of a system that prized the integrity of its records over the lives of the people it was meant to govern.
— Trusting a ledger gets you this, — Silas said, his voice resonating in the dead air of the cafe. The words were simple, but they landed like stones. — Trusting a person might save one.
The statement was so contrary to everything Kaelen had rebuilt his life around that a dry, humorless laugh escaped his lips. Hope. Silas was selling hope in a graveyard. Kaelen pulled the cracked data-slate from his pocket, its dead screen facing the shadowed booth. He tapped a finger against the hairline fracture that ran through the TAC’s official seal, the eagle and the hourglass forever broken. The gesture was his entire argument.
— Trust got me this, — Kaelen’s voice was cold, stripped of any emotion. He had trusted a source once, a person. He had built a case on a lie wrapped in sincerity, and the system, in its perfect, procedural blindness, had executed an innocent man based on his mistake. The memory was a brand on his soul. Trust was a flaw in the code, a vulnerability to be patched, not embraced. He had paid for that lesson with his career, his status, and the amber glow of his T-Minus. The price for that lesson had been hope itself.
Silas was silent for a long moment. Kaelen could feel the man’s gaze on him, analytical and tinged with something that might have been pity. Kaelen’s jaw tightened. He didn’t need pity from a man who’d fallen from a greater height.
— They’re going to make you an offer, Kaelen, — Silas said, his tone shifting from philosophical to practical. — Command. A formal proposal. It will be high-risk. It will feel like the only way out.
Kaelen’s mind went into overdrive, analyzing the statement. This wasn't a random encounter. Silas was a player, moving pieces on a board Kaelen couldn't see. The summons, this meeting—it was a pre-briefing. A manipulation. He felt a surge of anger, hot and sharp. He was being managed, herded down a specific path. His trust in Silas, whatever lingering dregs remained from his academy days, evaporated. It was now no greater than the baseline probability that any given actor in this city might accidentally tell the truth.
— Why are you telling me this? — Kaelen asked, his voice low and suspicious.
— Because it will be your only way to clear your temporal debt, — Silas stated, ignoring the question. The words hung in the air, a simple, brutal fact. Total Repossession. The end of the line. Silas was confirming what Kaelen already knew: he was cornered. He had no other options. This wasn't a choice; it was a sentence with a single, unlikely chance for a pardon.
— And they’ll need you to be someone you’re not, — Silas added, his voice dropping lower. — They’ll ask you to trade your logic for their faith. Don’t. Use what you are. It’s the only weapon you have that they can’t predict.
Before Kaelen could process the warning, Silas Marr began to rise from the booth. He didn’t stand so much as dissolve, his form melting back into the deeper shadows at the rear of the cafe until he was simply gone. There was no sound of a back door, no footfalls. One moment he was there, a stable blue glow in the darkness, and the next, the booth was empty. Kaelen was left alone in the silence, the dust, and the lingering scent of a conversation that felt more like a prophecy.
He stood frozen for a full minute, his mind racing. A high-risk offer. A way to clear his debt. A demand that he become a fraud. It was all too clean, too convenient. He was a pawn, being positioned for a sacrifice. He clutched the cracked slate in his hand, the sharp edge of the fracture digging into his palm. This was real. Data. Failure. Consequence. Not the smoke and mirrors of a disgraced mentor playing mind games.
A soft chime broke the silence. It came from the slate in his hand. He looked down. An official, encrypted communication alert pulsed on the fractured screen. A secure channel from TAC Headquarters. The predicted offer had arrived, right on schedule.
The ghost had told the truth.
And Kaelen knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that he was going to take the deal.
