The carpet beneath Veyne's knees was damp. His palms, slick with sweat, shook as he tried to steady the syringe—its plunger half-pulled, needle trembling near the vein in his left arm. The room was silent except for the low hum of his monitor, its screensaver looping white wireframe spirals like some hypnotic countdown.
His breath was shallow. He hated how his hands still trembled, even now.
"You're pathetic," he muttered, voice dry from hours without water. "Can't even finish this without making it messy."
On the desk behind him, lines of code flickered across a screen. An unfinished exploit tool. One last puzzle, left unsolved. He turned away from it.
All his life, he'd been invisible. Unless someone wanted to laugh at him. Touch his stuff. Leak his name. Twist it around like a joke.
He'd been quiet. Brilliant. Polite. That made it easier for them.
And when he tried to be honest—really honest—they'd eaten him alive.
Veyne looked down at the vein bulging faintly beneath his skin. Blue under pale light. The needle pricked gently.
Just a push. Just go.
He exhaled, closed his eyes—and pressed the plunger.
Silence.
No panic. No struggle. Just a slow, rising heat in his chest as the liquid slipped into him.
Then the hum of the monitor warped.
A sound—not quite a voice—pulsed in his ears, like something electric burrowing through bone.
Initiation pending.
Host found: Veyne Devran.
System Integration… 9%… 47%… 83%...
He tried to open his eyes, but his body no longer responded.
Shared Vessel: [UNSTABLE]
Anomaly detected. Executing merge protocol…
A flicker of red light split his vision.
A laugh—soft, female, smug—echoed somewhere inside his skull.
"Oh. You're not dead? That's inconvenient. But cute."
Darkness folded in like velvet.
Everything went still.
The first thing Veyne felt was pressure—a weight on his chest like someone had left a stack of books there. The second was dryness. His throat, his eyes, the inside of his skull all felt cracked and too warm.
Fluorescent lights hummed above him. Dull white ceiling tiles. A beeping machine beside his ear. Something smelled sterile and bitter, like cheap alcohol and plastic tubing.
Hospital.
His mind reeled. Why am I not dead?
He tried to move but found resistance—wires stuck into his arm, a heart monitor clamped to a fingertip. He was in a narrow bed, tucked in like a child, and the room was empty.
Mostly.
There, floating in the top-right corner of his vision, was a symbol—simple, angular, pulsing softly in green. Like a button in the corner of a game screen. He blinked. It stayed.
"Hallucination," he whispered. His voice sounded like sandpaper.
"Oh, it's not," said a voice. Feminine. Clear. Inside his head.
He froze.
"You're not hallucinating, darling. You're just… rented out now."
Veyne's heart rate spiked. The monitor beeped faster.
He looked around, trying to find a speaker, a screen, anything—but the voice wasn't coming from the room.
It was in his mind.
"Who the hell—?"
"Calm down. You'll tear your stitches. Also, don't bother shouting for help. They gave you a mild sedative drip." The voice was lazy, confident, velvet around razor blades. "You should thank me, by the way. You were about to die. I made a better call."
He grit his teeth. "You're not real."
"I'm more real than your browser history."
He jerked slightly at that. "That's not funny."
"It is from where I'm sitting. Which is... inside your meatbag brain."
Something moved. Not in the room—in his mind. Like a second presence adjusting itself behind his thoughts. He wasn't alone.
A cold, slick shiver ran up his spine.
"Who are you?"
"Names are expensive. But for you, I'll give a discount. Call me Liorah."
He lay still, heart thumping like a trapped animal, eyes fixed on the pulsing green icon in his vision. It hovered exactly where his eye tracked, defying logic.
"There you go," Liorah murmured inside his head. "That's better. Don't scream. You're smarter than that."
Veyne kept silent. His thoughts, however, swirled like a storm surge. A voice in his head. A hallucination. A possible breach of reality itself.
"You're... not human," he said slowly.
"No," she replied, "but I used to wear one. Lovely body. Flexible in all the right places. I miss it."
"Where the hell did you come from?"
"It's not really 'where' so much as 'when and through what'. You tripped something, Veyne. When you killed yourself, you tore a hole just wide enough for me to slide through. Not a full door. More like a crack in the glass. I got stuck in the landing."
"A crack in what?"
"Reality. Quantum probability. Or maybe just your rotting soul. Pick a term that gives you comfort."
He wanted to laugh. Or cry. But he did neither.
"You're just... talking. Like you've always been here."
"Well, I am now. Permanently. Fused, actually. We share the real estate. One mind, two tenants. Think of it as very exclusive cohabitation."
Veyne took a shaky breath, glancing at the monitor beside him. His vitals danced erratically.
"You expect me to believe I tried to off myself and got possessed by a sexy psychic parasite?"
"Aw, you think I'm sexy already. How sweet." Her voice purred.
He flinched. "I didn't—"
"Relax. I peeked. Just a glimpse. You have a surprisingly… vivid imagination for someone who's barely been touched."
His fingers curled into the blanket. "Stay out of my head."
"Not possible. Shared bandwidth. You see what I see. I feel what you feel. Though technically, I could push you out of control... but I'm being polite."
His eyes narrowed. "Control?"
"Oh, sweetheart," Liorah cooed, "Let me show you."
The light in the room shifted. Just slightly.
Colors saturated—too rich, too deep. The fluorescent buzz dampened. The air felt... warmer. Softer. As if reality had been run through a filter.
Veyne's fingers twitched without his input. His legs flexed.
His own body sat up.
It wasn't him moving.
He watched—horrified, fascinated—as his arm raised, graceful, languid, sensual. The hand touched his own cheek like a lover's.
Then she gave him his body back.
He gasped, recoiling. "What the hell was that?"
*"That," she said, "was a courtesy warning. I only do soft takes when I like the host."
The door clicked.
Veyne flinched and instinctively turned his head. A woman stepped in—mid-30s, wearing soft blue scrubs and carrying a tablet in one hand. Auburn curls pulled into a bun. Gentle eyes. Thin-framed glasses slightly too big for her face.
"Good morning," she said quietly, as though not to startle him. "You're awake earlier than expected. That's a good sign."
Veyne didn't respond.
She paused at the foot of the bed, then offered a small smile. "I'm Mara. I'll be monitoring you for the next few hours. You've been through a lot."
"Mmm," Liorah whispered in his mind. "Cute. Do you think she pities you, or is she just trained to act like it?"
He ignored her, eyes narrowing slightly as Mara walked closer. As she moved, something flickered at the edges of his vision.
A window appeared.
Translucent, green-bordered, hovering silently above Mara's head like a tooltip in a game.
› [SUBJECT: Mara | DESIRE: Self-Esteem Boost]
› Offer: Confidence Enhancement – Level 1
› Suggested Cost: 3 Years of Intimacy Memory
› Status: Idle | Tap to Initiate
Veyne's throat tightened. He blinked hard. The screen faded, then returned. No one else in the room reacted. Only him.
"What... is that?"
*"That," Liorah said smoothly, "is your interface. Your System. I told you, darling. We're in business now."
He didn't move. Didn't breathe.
Mara placed the tablet on a side table, looked at him again, then chuckled softly. "You don't have to look so scared. I promise no one's here to hurt you."
The screen pulsed once.
Tap to Accept
Veyne's finger twitched.
He didn't know why he reached forward, but he did. One slow, uncertain motion. His hand rose just an inch off the blanket—hovered.
And then—like a reflex—he blinked. The green window pulsed. Accepted.
The air shifted.
Mara stiffened mid-sentence. Her smile froze. She blinked, looked slightly disoriented.
Then, slowly, her posture changed—just a touch. She stood taller. Her chest squared. Her eyes sharpened slightly, like someone had just whispered a long-kept truth into her ear.
The smile returned—but this time, it held weight.
"Let me know if you feel pain, Mr. Devran. Or discomfort. Or anything… unusual."
She winked.
The moment the door closed behind Mara, the green window shimmered again. It reconfigured itself in midair—numbers, names, and new data now streaming across it like transaction logs.
› Transaction Complete
› Request: Confidence Boost – Level 1
› Subject: Mara E. [Nurse | 35 | Status: Active]
› Price Collected: 3 Years of Intimacy Memory
› Memory Content Summary: (Suppressed) — 2 romantic relationships, 1 spontaneous encounter, 1 fantasy loop
› Emotional Rebound: 14% Sadness | 68% Confidence | 18% Relief
Veyne stared.
"Wait," he breathed. "That's… real?"
"As the ache in your spine," Liorah purred, her voice low and wickedly amused.
"I just… took something from her."
"You made a deal," she corrected. "The System offered, you accepted. She got what she wanted. You got what it needed."
"She didn't consent to that cost."
"She didn't know," Liorah replied. "Big difference. The System doesn't lie—but it doesn't volunteer fine print unless asked."
He turned his head slowly, staring at the now-fading window.
Three years. Three years of intimacy, gone from her mind—wiped, rewritten, filed away into... wherever this thing stored it. And she had no idea.
"She won't even remember?"
"She'll think she had some boring lovers, or no one memorable," Liorah said, stretching each syllable. "But inside, she'll feel better about herself. Isn't that beautiful?"
Veyne's mouth went dry. "That's theft."
"That's commerce, sugar."
The screen vanished with a soft chime.
A cold realization clicked into place in his mind: he could do this to anyone. Grant them what they craved. And take something they'd never know they lost.
And only he saw the ledger.
"...This is real," he whispered.
"It's very real," Liorah said, voice now low and intimate, curling around his thoughts like silk around a throat. "And you, Veyne Devran, are now the only man alive who can set the price of desire."