CHAPTER 1: THE LAST CEILING TILE
The machines kept him alive. The silence kept him sane. That's what Eliott Vale told himself, lying in the perfect, paralyzed dark of the medically-induced coma.
He wasn't supposed to be conscious. The doctors had been very clear. His body, wracked by the final, violent stages of Degenerative Neuro-Myopathy, could not handle the storm of a waking mind. So they turned the lights off. But they forgot to shut down the tenant.
His world was sound. The whoosh-click of the ventilator was the tide. The steady beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor was a metronome counting down the last measures of a song he couldn't move to. Nurses' soft shoes on linoleum. The distant, tinny echo of a television in another room.
And the ceiling tiles.
He had named them all. One hundred and forty-seven. Steve, directly above, had a water stain shaped like a frowning lamb. The one by the vent was Susan, who had a crack that looked like a lightning bolt. It was the only exploration left to him.
The pain was a distant, background hum, a terrible station his body was forever tuned to. He couldn't feel his legs. He couldn't feel his fingers. He was a ghost in his own crumbling machine.
This is it, he thought, not for the first time. This is how it ends. Not with a bang, but with a beep. And a water-stained ceiling tile named Steve.
A new sound cut through the rhythm.
[Ping.]
It wasn't in the room. It was inside his skull. A clean, digital, impossibly clear sound.
A rectangle of cool, blue light manifested in the darkness behind his eyelids. It didn't appear. It simply was, as if it had always been there.
[Soul Arbitration System - Terminal Client Interface v.7.2]
"Hallucination," Eliott thought. The word felt rusty. "Finally. Was starting to think my brain had forgotten how."
[Diagnostic Scan Running…]
[Subject: Eliott Vale. Age: 28. Status: Terminal. Degenerative Neuro-Myopathy (Stage IV).]
[Prognosis: 94% probability of complete systemic failure within 6-8 months.]
"Tell me something I don't know," he shot back mentally, a spark of his old defiance flickering.
The system continued, indifferent.
[Proposal: Contractual Collectorship.]
[Designation: Primary Harvest Agent. Dimension 7-B. Sector: Terra.]
[Catalyst Object Assigned: 'Oracle's Tongue' (Ouija Board Variant).]
[Primary Objective: Acquisition of 10,000 (ten thousand) Traumatized Human Souls.]
[Reward Upon Objective Completion: Full Cellular Reconstruction & Neural Reboot. Host Awakening.]
Ten thousand souls.
The number didn't land as a shock. It landed as an impossibility, so vast it was meaningless. It was like being told to count the stars. A madness.
But beneath the madness, a wire tripped in the deep, animal part of his mind. Awakening.
He saw a memory, sharp and cruel: his own hand, holding a glass of water. The sun warming his skin in the park. The simple, impossible act of taking a breath on his own.
The blue screen pulsed.
[Terms: Host consciousness will be transferred to, and operate through, the assigned Catalyst Object. Harvest is defined as the termination of a human life and the secure containment of its spiritual essence, with a preference for states of extreme psychological trauma (increased yield).]
A job description. For a monster.
[Do you accept this contract?]
[Y] / [N]
He looked at the choice. He felt the void of his body, the silent, screaming ache in nerves that no longer connected. He saw Steve the ceiling tile.
He had nothing. He was a mind waiting for a body to stop. This was a thread, frayed and terrible, but it was the only one.
His thought was not grand. It was quiet, and final.
I want to feel the sun again.
He chose [Y].
The hospital sounds vanished.
Not faded. Were severed.
He was yanked out of the dark and pulled through a tunnel of static and screaming pressure. There was no up or down. Then—impact.
Not pain. Grain. He felt… wood. Flat, smooth, cheap pressboard.
His perspective was locked. He was no longer a point of view. He was a rectangle. He could feel the painted letters under him: A through Z, 0 through 9, YES, NO, GOODBYE.
Panic, cold and sheer, lanced through him. What am I?
[Integration Complete. Catalyst Object Active. Welcome, Collector.]
The voice was in his mind, genderless, calm. The System.
He understood. The Ouija board on the shelf. He was the board.
Oh, god, he thought, the human horror breaking through. I'm a board game. I've become a party trick.
He was on a dusty shelf in a cramped antique shop. To his left was a porcelain clown with a cracked, weeping smile. To his right, a set of tarnished spoons from Toledo. The air smelled of lemony polish and decay.
A new window bloomed in his perception. A targeting reticule, like from a video game, slid across a strange, non-visual landscape. It wasn't seeing people; it was seeing smears of color and sound in the shape of people. Boredom was a dull grey. A flicker of desire was a weak orange.
It passed over them and locked onto a young woman near a rack of moth-eaten coats.
Her smear was a deep, bruised violet, shot through with jagged, sickly yellow bolts. It pulsed like a wound.
[Primary Target Acquired: 'Chloe Emerson.']
[Dominant Emotional Frequency: GRIEF (Grade A-). Guilt Sub-frequency: High. Susceptibility: Elevated.]
[Assignment: Initiate Harvest Protocol Alpha.]
[Potential Yield: 1 Soul. Bonus Status: Pending.]
The system was waiting. The silence of the shop pressed in. The clown's painted eyes seemed to watch.
Eliott's mind raced, then settled into a cold, hard clarity. This was the job. The first step on a ten-thousand-step road out of hell.
He focused on the bruise-colored smear that was Chloe. He didn't know how to do anything. He just… pushed.
A notification flashed.
[Starter Ability Unlocked: Cognitive Nudge.]
[Effect: Apply minor pressure to a pre-existing thought or emotion.]
[Stability Cost: 5 per minute. Current Stability: 100/100.]
A battery. A timer. He was on the clock.
He found the loop in her emotional signature—a spiraling, repeating thought. My fault. I should have called. My fault.
He focused, and gave it the slightest push. A Nudge.
In the shop, Chloe flinched as if struck. A single, sharp tear rolled down her cheek. The thought wasn't louder. It was heavier. It had the weight of truth.
[Emotional Resonance Detected. Stability Cost: 5. Grief Amplification: +2%.]
Two percent. He felt a pang, deep and human. He was making a grieving girl's pain worse.
Then he felt it. A ghost of the pain in his own dead legs, transmitted down the thread of the coma. A reminder. A threat.
Her pain, or yours. Her sanity, or your life.
The math was ugly. It was simple.
"I'm sorry," he thought, not to her, but to the person he used to be.
He Nudged again.
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