They let the offers blink like small lighthouses you only sail toward in daylight. Jace clicks the pen once and lays it across the memo and sticky like a gentle bar. Max rinses two mugs and doesn't make coffee because after 08:00 is a line they drew with their mouths and want to keep with their hands.
Rain slows to a whisper. The fan argues with air. The building does its late-night animal noises: pipes thinking, footsteps consulting, an elevator clearing its throat.
"Alarm at seven-forty," Jace says.
Max sets it, puts the phone face down, and doesn't look again. "If I close my eyes, I'll sleep wrong."
"So keep them open," Jace says. They don't talk much after that. They breathe in the same time signature. Jace reads the memo once more, not because he forgot it but because paper turning into rails pleases the part of him that likes floors.
At some point, the world goes from black to blue without telling them. The window stops being a mirror and starts being outside. Birds audition for the day offstage. The alarm buzzes like a small mercy.
Jace taps it off. The HUD waits at the top edge of his sight like a polite bailiff.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Advisory: session may resume.
"Good morning," Max says to the room, which feels true.
"Coffee," Jace says. He pockets the chain card sleeve in the inner slot, the house card sleeve in the outer. He leaves the pen across the memo because objects know when they've been given jobs. He pockets the tuition notebook. He checks the receipts stack—flat, squared—and breathes once like he's sealing a container.
Hallway. Lobby. Doors breathe them out into a city that's washed and alert. The campus café is two blocks and a crosswalk away; their feet find the rhythm cities give you when you behave. The air is clean enough to be rude.
Inside, heat and grinder noise and the smell of baked sugar pretending to be breakfast. Line short. Jace orders two coffees and a bagel presentable to gods. Maya arrives at his three o'clock, ponytail admitting daylight.
"I said I'd bribe you," she says, already shifting to pay.
"You did," Jace says.
She stabs the POS with card and triumph like science is a verb. Jace lets her. The panel stays quiet; no money in, no spend from him—just heat and a table by the window.
"Explain being normal," she says when cups land. "In forty-five seconds like I have somewhere to be."
"Four rules," Jace says. "One—rails before luck. You don't chase; you route. Two—paper before mouth. You label what you'll forget. Three—visible hands. You let cameras like you. Four—variety. You don't ask the same door the same question twice."
Maya sips, grimaces (hot), nods. "Science agrees," she says. "Also my PI thinks variety is a sin."
"Your PI is a pattern," Max says, cheerful.
Jace's phone hums with polite persistence. He flips it so they can all see without it owning them.
Becca Q: can do 300 for the electronics chain card today. 10 at campus center?
He taps a reply with sentences that are rails:
Jace: 11:30 is better (store is calmer). We'll purchase items you choose with the card—then you transfer $300. You get receipts + warranty. No cash. OK?
Three dots. Then:
Becca Q: ok. earbuds + usb-c hub ok?Jace: Yes.Becca Q: 11:30 campus center main doors. I'm in denim jacket, black cap.Jace: We'll see you.
"Transfer only," Max says, pleased.
"Receipts always," Jace says.
He tears the bagel, hands half to Maya because men with floors can split bread. "You can come watch civilized commerce," he tells her.
"I have a lab meeting at eleven," she says. "But I expect a post-game summary with diagrams."
"Receipts are diagrams," Jace says.
They finish coffee. The morning loosens its shoulders. They bus the table like people who know the back end of buildings matter. Outside, the campus center sits like an airport that forgot planes—glass, flags, posters pretending to be urgent.
"Envelope," Jace says.
"Stationery shop in the lobby," Max says, already angling.
They step into the lobby's cool, controlled air. The stationery counter sells notebooks, lottery pun-chance pencils, and envelopes that promise a level of order only paper understands. Jace buys one kraft envelope ($2) with card; he doesn't ask the panel for blessing; it's a purchase that doesn't need ceremony. He slips the chain card sleeve inside, writes CHAIN — BAL 2,500 in neat block letters, then SLICE AT COUNTER under it to remind future hands what today is.
They kill ten minutes in a slow loop—bulletin boards, photo exhibit, a student radio booth playing vinyl at ten percent louder than it thinks. Jace calls the chain's balance line from the back of the card, listens to the robot's careful counting: Two thousand five hundred dollars. He ends the call and feels the number settle like a clean floor.
11:20. They post at the main doors—not as if guarding, just present. Students pour. A mascot in a suit that suffers waves. An admin with a lanyard harvests forms. At 11:29 twenty-something becomes someone: denim jacket, black cap, tote bag with battered stickers.
"Becca?" Jace says.
She nods. Close-cropped hair under the cap, eyes that have met edges and kept going. "You're tidy," she says, amused, taking in the envelope, the pen, the awake posture.
"Tidy is cheap," Jace says. "Plan?"
"Earbuds ($199)," she says. "USB-C hub ($89). I have classes at one. I want to not hate my laptop until then."
"Transfer after purchase," Jace says. "Receipts and warranty to you."
"Transfer after purchase," she echoes, as if testing the feel of it in her mouth. She is not naive. She is deciding they are the kind of strangers who make sense.
They walk.
The store glows refrigerated light again but less harsh under day. New clerk at the glass island, name tag KENNY; Sandra is at the far register speaking fluent shipment to a pallet. Taj is not on shift; the space remembers him anyway.
Jace keeps the envelope in his left hand, visible. He smiles at Kenny like he genuinely likes people, which he often does. "Earbuds ($199), hub ($89)," he says. "Separate receipts, please. Paying with store gift card."
Kenny unlocks the case with the ease of someone who has never had a key taken from him. Items arrive on the glass like small planets.
"Earbuds first," Jace says.
Kenny rings. Jace slides the card out, taps. The panel notes what the world already knows.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Spend detected: $199.00 via store gift card.[SYSTEM PROMPT] Tender type: gift card → Host cash spend = $0.00.[SYSTEM PROMPT] Cashback: ineligible (no Host spend).
Receipt #1 prints. Jace folds and hands it to Becca along with the box like a ritual that makes ownership real. No speeches. No theater. Just clean motion.
"USB-C hub," Kenny says, catching the rhythm.
Tap.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Spend detected: $89.00 via store gift card.[SYSTEM PROMPT] Tender type: gift card → Host cash spend = $0.00.[SYSTEM PROMPT] Cashback: ineligible (no Host spend).
Receipt #2. Jace passes it to Becca and waits, hands visible on the glass, nothing that can read greedy. He keeps his body the shape of rails.
Becca checks model numbers, peels nothing, pockets both receipts like small passports. She lifts her phone. "Transfer now?"
"Now," Jace says. "$300. Name Carter. I'll confirm received and we're done."
Kenny bags air, interested without being a problem. Sandra glances over, reads posture, and returns to a conversation about barcode labels with a man who lives in boxes.
Becca's thumb hovers over Send $300. Max stands half a step back, hands tucked, breathing like a normal mammal.
The panel sits very still, a judge who likes being right and knows when to wait.
Becca looks at Jace the way people look at bridges: test, trust, step.
Her thumb lowers.