Mornings are a special kind of corporate hell.
I stared at my reflection. It didn't stare back with defiance or hope. It just… existed. A ghost in a cheap shirt, a crooked tie its only claim to personality. The face of a man who had already lost, and hadn't been told the fight was over.
Another day as a phantom at TitanForge International.
My official title: Junior Operations Assistant. My real function: human shock absorber. I absorb tasks, blame, and the casual disdain of people whose shoes cost more than my rent.
I am criminally underpaid.
To the point where my budget has a line item for"existential dread groceries."
But the alternative? Moving back to my mother's house, to a bedroom that smells of nostalgia and defeat, sandwiched between the ghost of Christmases past and a treadmill that became a monument to abandoned resolutions.
The cruel joke?
I was supposed to be the success story. Top of my class. The grind. The hustle. I did everything the manual said.
The universe, it seems, forgot to read it.
Life doesn't reward effort. It rewards a particular kind of poison: confidence without conscience, charm without character.
I had neither the poison nor the antidote. My social skills were a dial-up connection in a fiber-optic world.
The TitanForge tower loomed ahead, a glass and steel monument to all I wasn't. It didn't just generate wealth; it exuded a gravitational field of superiority, pulling in the ambitious and crushing the uncertain.
The lobby was a temple to money. My footsteps on the marble sounded like apologies. I moved through the ecosystem of power—predators in tailored suits, prey in intern badges—and headed for the elevator, praying for five minutes of not being seen.
The universe, as always, denied my request.
Because there they were. The Triumvirate.
Sasha Haze and her two friends, orbiting her light. They were from Marketing, a department that dealt in perception, and their perception of me was unanimously, devastatingly poor.
One of them glanced my way. My nervous system short-circuited. Standard procedure.
The elevator chimed. They didn't move, lost in a conversation whose laughter felt weaponized.
Then Sasha turned. Her smile—a corporate asset—flickered and died when it landed on me, replaced by the cool distaste of someone finding a bug on their silk blouse.
"Ugh. It's you."
My tongue became a traitor in my mouth. All that emerged was a wet, choked sound. "H-hi, S-Sas—"
She didn't let me finish. A folder was thrust against my chest. "Print this. Three copies. Stapled. My desk."
"But…" The word was weak. "Your office is across the complex. I have a 9 a.m.—"
She lifted a single, perfectly shaped eyebrow. It was a gesture of pure, distilled authority. "Is that a 'no'?"
Her friends watched, their expressions a mirror of mild, entertained cruelty. One hid a smirk behind a manicured hand.
My mind screamed a symphony of defiance. My body played the song of submission. The fog rolled in—the same thick, smothering anxiety that had stolen my voice for twenty-seven years.
I nodded. "Right away."
A soft, synchronized giggle followed suit. The sound of social execution.
Sasha's phone buzzed. She read it, her smirk returning, then stepped into the elevator. I shuffled forward, a conditioned reflex.
"Wait—can I—"
Her hand shot out, stopping the doors. She didn't look at the sensor. She looked at me. Her gaze was a clinical assessment, and I was found terminally lacking.
A dry,contemptuous laugh escaped her. "The elevator? Really? That's for staff who actually matter. Take the stairs. Consider it penance."
One of her friends snorted. The other whispered. The doors slid shut, erasing their perfect faces, leaving me alone with the echo of my own irrelevance.
I stood there, not feeling hurt. Not feeling sad.
I felt a cold, familiar void. The void where my spine was supposed to be.
Why did I take this?
The answer was simple: because I was built to.
So I turned, the folder of my humiliation in hand, and faced the sixteen-floor ascent. Each step was a drumbeat of failure. I didn't just hate them. I hated the part of me that made their cruelty possible.
And then, the universe decided to make it literal.
My foot betrayed me. A slip. A lurch.
Gravity, always a bully, finally saw its chance.
I became a tumbling monument to incompetence. Skull met step. Elbow cracked against railing. The world dissolved into a kaleidoscope of pain and fluorescent light.
Then… nothing.
A silent, velvet black.
Then, a voice cut through the void. Not heard, but felt in the marrow of my being.
"Pathetic."
My eyes opened. I was… nowhere. Floating in an infinite dark. Before me, on a throne of what looked like solidified shadow, sat a man.
He was forgettable in every feature except his eyes. Silver. Pupilless. They didn't just see me; they dissected me.
"Am I dead?" I rasped.
"Death requires a life worth concluding," he said, his voice devoid of warmth or mockery. It was a statement of fact. "You have merely been… existing. A background character in your own story."
"I don't understand—"
"What is there to understand?" he interrupted. "You are a vessel of wasted potential. You observe the game of desire from the sidelines, starving, while others feast. You crave to be seen, to be wanted, to hold power… and yet you kneel for scraps."
His words didn't hurt. They crystallized the shame I'd carried for years, turning it into a cold, hard gem of truth.
"What… what are you?"
"A consequence," he said. The darkness behind him shimmered, and neon-bright symbols burned into my vision:
[DES – The Desire Effect System]
Initiation Sequence Locked
Awaiting User Consent
"A consequence of what?"
"Of reaching the absolute nadir of your own tolerance." He leaned forward slightly. "The System does not seek the worthy. It seeks the empty. The hungry. Those with nothing left to lose… and everything to covet."
He gestured to the glowing text.
"It will allow you to perceive the currency of human interaction: desire, ambition, fear, lust, hidden intent. You will see the strings that move every person around you. And you will learn to pull them."
My heart was a frantic drum. This was madness. A hallucination.
And yet… it felt more real than my entire life in that cubicle.
"Tell me, Terrence Holt," the man said, his silver eyes pinning me in place. "If offered the means to no longer be the victim of this world… to become its architect… would you take it?"
I didn't hesitate. The word left my lips not with hope, but with a final, decisive crack in the person I used to be.
"Yes."
A smile touched his lips—not kind, but satisfied. Like a surgeon making the first, clean incision.
"Then... wake up."
---
The world slammed back into place.
Light. Pain. The antiseptic stench of hospital.
Beeping machines. An IV in my arm.
I blinked, disoriented.
And there, superimposed over the sterile room, hovering like a phantom overlay:
[DES – Online]
User: Terrence Holt
Calibrating…
Assessing Host Psychology: [Resentment: High] [Ambition: Latent] [Moral Flexibility: … Expanding]
Initializing: Desire Perception Field.
My breath hitched.
A hallucination. It had to be.
The door opened. A nurse entered, kind-faced, professional.
"Mr. Holt? You're awake. Good. You took quite a fall."
I tried to speak, my throat felt raw. "Y-yeah. I'm… okay."
She smiled warmly, checking my chart.
And then I heard it. A clear, distinct voice. But her lips never moved.
{He has kind eyes… Poor guy. Kinda adorable, though.}
I froze. My blood turned to ice.
{I might need to check his vitals again in twenty. Not a bad excuse to see him again.}
I was hearing her thoughts.
The private, unfiltered current of her mind.
The HUD in my vision pulsed gently:
[Desire Perception: Active]
Target: Nurse Elena Rios
Primary Surface Desire: Ensure patient stability.
Secondary Substrate Desire: [Mild romantic/curiosity interest detected.]
Hidden Intent: None Malicious.
This wasn't a change.
This was an infection.
And it had just found the perfect host.
---
To be continued...