Chapter 6: The Foreman Falls
The envelope slid under the factory supervisor's door at six minutes past five in the morning, when the hallways were empty and the night watchman was napping in the coal shed.
Sterling walked away without looking back.
Inside the envelope: copies of payroll records, annotated in a hand that matched none of the factory employees. The annotations highlighted discrepancies—wages docked from workers who couldn't read, production bonuses diverted to personal accounts, expense reports for materials that had never been purchased.
Day one of Foreman Harwick's destruction had begun.
Sterling worked his loom station with the steady rhythm of a man who had nothing on his mind except thread and shuttle. The supervisor's office door remained closed all morning. By lunch, whispers were spreading through the factory floor—someone had reported Harwick, someone had given the supervisors evidence of wage theft, someone was going to be very sorry.
The workers assumed it was one of them. They looked at each other with suspicion and fear.
Sterling ate his bread and watched.
Thomas appeared at his elbow. "You've heard?"
"Everyone's heard."
"They're saying Harwick might actually get sacked. First time anyone's managed to make something stick." Thomas's voice was low, excited, guilty. "I know I shouldn't be happy about another man's misfortune, but—"
"But he's a bastard who deserves it."
"Clara would wash my mouth for saying that." Thomas grinned. "Clara's not here."
The chains inside Sterling loosened fractionally.
"This is working. The parasite accepts justified cruelty."
The thought was satisfying in ways Sterling tried not to examine too closely.
Day three.
Harwick was on edge, snapping at workers who had done nothing wrong, pacing the factory floor like a caged animal. The supervisor had begun asking questions. The accounting records were being reviewed.
Sterling watched and waited.
At two in the afternoon, a pregnant woman named Mary Hollins dropped a shuttle. It was a minor mistake—the kind that happened a dozen times a day on any factory floor. Under normal circumstances, Harwick would have docked her wages and moved on.
These were not normal circumstances.
"You worthless, clumsy cow!" Harwick's voice echoed off the brick walls. "Three weeks from delivery and you're still taking up space on my floor? You should be home with your husband—oh, that's right, your husband left because you're too stupid to keep house properly!"
Mary Hollins burst into tears.
The factory floor went silent. Forty workers stood at their stations, watching Harwick berate a pregnant woman for dropping a shuttle.
Sterling did not need to do anything else that day. The witnesses were already cataloguing what they had seen.
Day five.
The letter to Mrs. Harwick was the most delicate part of the operation.
Sterling wrote it in his tenement room by candlelight, using his left hand to disguise the handwriting. The prose was simple, direct, and devastating: dates, times, locations. The name of the factory owner's secretary. A description of the mole on her left shoulder that Harwick would have no innocent explanation for knowing.
He sealed the letter with candle wax and delivered it to the Harwick residence during his lunch break.
By evening, Mrs. Harwick had packed two trunks and departed for her sister's house in the West District. She took the household savings with her.
Sterling heard about it from Thomas at the tenement dinner.
"—and she left a note calling him 'a faithless wretch unworthy of the vows he swore.' The whole street heard her screaming before she left. My aunt lives two doors down."
The chains loosened another increment.
Sterling ate his stew and said nothing.
Day six.
Foreman Harwick was terminated at nine in the morning, escorted from the factory by two constables who had been summoned to ensure the transition remained peaceful. The official charges were financial misconduct and conduct unbecoming. The unofficial charges were whatever the factory owner had learned from the pregnant worker's testimony and the supervisor's accounting review.
The workers celebrated during lunch.
Old Mr. Pemberton actually hummed while working—a tuneless, wandering melody that made younger workers stare.
"I haven't heard him do that in years," Thomas whispered to Sterling. "Not since his wife died."
Sterling nodded and returned to his loom.
The chains inside him were looser than they had been since transmigration. The cold weight behind his sternum had settled into something almost comfortable—a presence that was pleased rather than demanding.
He had destroyed a man's career, his marriage, and his reputation. He had done it with surgical precision over the course of six days, leaving no evidence that connected him to any of the catastrophe.
The factory floor was safer now. The workers were happier. Harwick's victims had received something like justice.
And Sterling felt nothing but satisfaction.
His tenement room was dark when he returned that evening.
Sterling lit the candle stub and sat cross-legged on the floor. He turned his spiritual perception inward, the way he had practiced since his second day in this body.
The chains had changed.
Before, there had been a single loop of black iron wrapped around his soul—the original bond, established when the contaminated potion had fused with his spirituality. Now there were two loops. The second was newer, brighter, connected to a faint thread that stretched through the walls and streets to wherever Foreman Harwick now sat, broken and alone.
[CORRUPTION ANCHOR: ESTABLISHED]
[GRADE: C]
[STABILITY POINTS: 15]
[NETWORK CAPACITY: 1/4 (SEQUENCE 9)]
[HUMANITY COST: 2%]
The system knowledge arrived with cold precision.
[CURRENT HUMANITY: 93%]
Sterling's breath caught.
Ninety-three percent. He had lost two percentage points of humanity by destroying Foreman Harwick. The number had been ninety-five since he arrived in this body, unchanged through days of labor and observation and small kindnesses.
Now it was ninety-three.
"Two percent for a guilty man. A corrupt, abusive, criminal man. What would it cost for someone innocent?"
He already knew the answer. The assessment of Elise Duval had included that information, filed alongside the rest of the parasitic analysis: four to six percentage points for a Grade B anchor. More if she resisted. More if the children were involved.
Sterling made himself stand. He made himself walk to the washbasin. He made himself pour water and begin preparing tea.
The water boiled. The tea steeped. Sterling poured a cup and raised it to his lips.
The flavor was extraordinary.
Rich, complex, nuanced—layers of taste that his previous life's palate had never been refined enough to detect. The tea was the same cheap blend Mrs. Greer sold from the common room, the same bitter brown liquid Sterling had been drinking since his arrival. But it tasted like something far more expensive.
Colors were brighter too. The candlelight seemed warmer, the shadows sharper. The world had gained definition, as though someone had wiped a layer of grime from Sterling's perceptions.
This was the reward.
Destroy a man's life, and everything becomes more vivid. Satisfy the parasite's hunger, and the chains loosen, and the senses sharpen, and the world opens up to be enjoyed.
Sterling drank his tea slowly.
It was delicious. It was horrifying. It was both at once, and he couldn't untangle the pleasure from the price.
"I destroyed a man who deserved it. I feel no guilt. I feel no regret. I feel nothing except the satisfaction of a job well done."
His hands weren't shaking.
That was the horror.
He washed his teacup in the shared basin and returned it to its hook. His body moved through the familiar motions without conscious direction—muscle memory from a life he was still learning, habits embedded in borrowed flesh.
He found himself humming.
Sterling stopped. His mouth had been producing a melody he didn't recognize, a tune that had started the moment the chains loosened. He didn't know where it came from. He didn't know what it meant.
The cold weight behind his sternum pulsed with satisfaction.
The Harwick anchor thread was already dimming.
Sterling discovered this three days later, during his nightly meditation. The connection that had seemed bright and strong after the foreman's fall was now faded, flickering, struggling to maintain itself.
He turned his perception toward the thread and followed it to its source.
Harwick was recovering.
The man had found work as a clerk in a shipping office on the south docks. His wife was gone, his reputation was ruined, but he had a roof over his head and food in his belly. The despair that had fed Sterling's anchor was being replaced by grim determination—the stubborn refusal to stay defeated that characterized men too proud to accept their fall.
[ANCHOR STATUS: DEGRADING]
[STABILITY POINTS: 15 → 12]
[DECAY RATE: ACCELERATED (GUILTY TARGET)]
[PROJECTED ANCHOR COLLAPSE: 30-45 DAYS]
Sterling's stomach dropped.
The loophole wasn't working. Guilty targets—people who deserved their suffering—didn't generate stable anchors. Their recovery undermined the corruption, weakened the bond, drained the stability points that the parasite needed to maintain its hold.
He needed innocent victims.
The realization settled into his consciousness with the weight of a death sentence. The parasite had been patient with Harwick because it knew the anchor wouldn't last. It had allowed Sterling his experiment, his moral compromise, his attempt to find a middle path.
Now the experiment was failing.
"Elise."
The name surfaced unbidden, accompanied by the assessment that had never left his memory. Grade B anchor. Forty stability points. Four to six percent humanity cost. Children who could be leveraged. Community bonds that could be severed.
The perfect victim.
Sterling sat in the dark, feeling the Harwick thread dim, and understood that his time for clever solutions was running out.
The parasite shifted behind his sternum.
For the first time, Sterling could identify the emotion it was projecting.
Impatience.
Reviews and Power Stones keep the heat on!
Want to see what happens before the "heroes" do?
Secure your spot in the inner circle on Patreon. Skip the weekly wait and read ahead:
Hustler [$5]: 10 Chapters ahead.
Enforcer [$9]: 15 Chapters ahead.
Kingpin [$15]: 20 Chapters ahead.
Periodic drops. Check on Patreon for the full release list.
Join the Syndicate: patreon.com/Anti_hero_fanfic