Elias checked his watch for the fifth time in as many minutes, though he knew it would do him no good. Time, like everything else in this city, was quantified: thirty-nine minutes of productivity per citizen per hour, or risk a deduction. He sighed. Another day of making decisions that would ruin lives. Small decisions. Inevitably fatal ones.
The scanner beeped, and a holographic display flickered to life in front of him. Marin's number had dropped again. Fifty-nine point three. Below the safety threshold. She looked up at him from across the hall, eyes wide but defiant, hair a mess, hoodie slipping off her shoulder like she didn't care.
"You're still alive," Elias said dryly, hiding the tension in his chest.
Marin smirked. "Barely. You? Still deciding which lives to ruin today?"
Elias chuckled—a dry, brittle sound. "Somebody has to keep The Ledger honest."
A flicker of approval passed over her face, but it was brief. Compliance officers were watching, and jokes were currency one could ill afford. Marin ducked behind a pillar, scanning for loopholes in the public Ledger app. She'd learned early that The Ledger punished visibility more than guilt.
Meanwhile, Tobias crouched across the street, fingers dancing across his portable tablet. A minor hack—changing a decimal here, adjusting a point there. He imagined himself a savior, a Robin Hood for numbers. But The Ledger didn't notice heroes. It only noticed movement.
A beep sounded. Elias's display blinked red. A citizen near the West District had been flagged for "misallocated resources." The system was punishing him—not the offender. Routine. Predictable. Yet each red flash tightened the air in his lungs like invisible chains.
Marin made her move, slipping past a scanner, exploiting a loophole that would let her register for a ration she technically hadn't earned. She laughed quietly. Victory tasted sweet—but in the distance, Darin, the soldier assigned to monitor her block, turned sharply at the anomaly, eyes narrowing.
And then it happened.
A single, simple mistake. Marin misentered a code by a single character. The scanner beeped—loud, accusatory.
Elias froze. Tobias cursed under his breath. Across the street, Darin's hand went to his holster.
A holographic red marker hovered over a name. Marin's.
Irrevocable.
The screen blinked again. Someone had already flagged the error. It wasn't just a deduction. It was a permanent restriction. No ration. No passage. No appeal.
Marin stared at the display, her smirk gone, replaced by that terrible, unspoken knowledge: in The Ledger, even the cleverest mistake could ruin a life—and sometimes, someone else's too.
Elias' throat tightened. Tobias' hack had done nothing to prevent this. And for the first time that morning, none of them laughed.
Somewhere in the city, life continued. The Ledger watched. And it never blinked.