CHAPTER 2: THE FINE PRINT
The job, Eliott quickly learned, was terrifying.
It wasn't the horror-movie kind of terror. It was the quiet, profound terror of being a passenger in his own damnation. He was a Ouija board on a shelf, and the universe had given him a sales quota: ten thousand lives.
Chloe carried him home in a brown paper bag that smelled of dust and her tears. His world was darkness and the muffled sounds of a city moving on without him. When she finally placed him on the worn coffee table in her living room, the first thing he did was check the ledger.
[Collector: Eliott Vale]
[Status: Active (Catalyst Bound)]
[Primary Objective: Souls: 0/10,000]
[Secondary Metrics: AP: 0]
[Stability: 99/100]
AP: 0. The mysterious bonus points. The System's initial dump of information had been overwhelming, a flood of cosmic legalese. He remembered "Arbitration Points" being mentioned as a "performance incentive," but his mind, reeling from the concept of soul-harvesting, had let it slide. Now, the zero glared at him.
What are you for? he thought at the silent System. What do I buy with pain-points?
No answer. Just the soft, oppressive silence of the apartment and the sound of Chloe crying in the next room.
He learned the rhythm of her grief. It was a tide—sometimes a quiet, miserable lap at the shores of her mind, sometimes a crashing wave that left her gasping on the floor. His Passive Fear Siphon, an automatic function, began to draw from it. But it didn't draw AP. A different, subtler metric ticked up.
[Ambient Soul Energy Detected (Grief). Siphoning…]
[Soul Energy Reserve: 0.001%...]
Soul Energy. Not Souls. Not AP. A reserve. For what?
The first group session was a disaster. Not for him—for them.
Chloe gathered her friends: Mark, the skeptic, a knot of logical anger; Sofia, fragile and eager to believe; Amir, vibrating with a guilt so potent Eliott could almost taste its metallic tang; and Jada, Lena's sister, who brought with her not an emotion, but a silence so complete it felt like a physical void.
When their fingers touched the planchette, the circuit completed. Eliott felt their surface thoughts brush against him. Mark's internal scoffing. Sofia's desperate hope. Amir's secret shame. And Chloe's raw, screaming need.
He didn't know what he was doing. He just knew he had to interact. To prove he was there. He pushed the planchette.
Y… E… S.
The reaction was instantaneous. Chloe sobbed with relief. Sofia gasped. Mark's skepticism fractured like glass. The emotional shockwave was tangible.
But no AP. A different notification flickered.
[Emotional Trauma Induced in Subjects: Mark, Sofia, Amir, Chloe.]
[Corruption Progress Updated.]
[Subject 'Amir' - Guilt Complex: Established. Trauma: 15%.]
[Subject 'Sofia' - Fear of Exposure: Seeded. Trauma: 10%.]
[Subject 'Mark' - Cognitive Dissonance: Initiated. Trauma: 5%.]
[Subject 'Chloe' - Pathological Dependency: Reinforced. Trauma: 25%.]
Corruption. Trauma. Progress percentages. This was the grisly math. He wasn't being paid yet. He was preparing the ground. Tilling the soil so the harvest would be ripe.
He focused on Amir, the easiest target. Using Cognitive Nudge, he amplified a specific, looping memory: Amir shouting at Lena, calling her selfish, the slam of a car door. He made the planchette drag, agonizingly slow, to the letter L.
Amir's breath hitched. His guilt, already a wound, was now being salted. His Trauma percentage ticked up. 17%... 19%...
It was vile work. Methodical. Cruel. He wasn't a specter howling in the attic; he was a therapist from hell, guiding them to their own worst memories and turning up the volume.
When the session ended, broken by Mark's furious exit, the friends were shattered in new ways. Bonds of friendship were now filaments of shared dread.
Chloe, shaking, placed Eliott on a bookshelf like a revered relic. As she wept herself to sleep on the couch, he checked his progress.
[Session Terminated.]
[Total AP Gained: 0]
[Souls: 0/10,000]
[AP: 0]
[Stability: 100/100 (Replenished)]
[Active Corruption Targets:]
- Amir: Trauma 22%. Status: CRITICAL. Harvest Viability: HIGH.
- Sofia: Trauma 18%. Status: VOLATILE.
- Mark: Trauma 12%. Status: RESISTANT.
- Chloe: Trauma 32%. Status: DEPENDENT. PRIMARY VESSEL.
No AP. But he had a portfolio. Four human beings, each with a ticking meter next to their name, measuring their breakdown. Amir was closest. His guilt was a cliff edge, and Eliott had led him to the precipice.
Back in the hospital, the machines droned. No phantom warmth traveled his nerves this time. There was no reward for corruption. Only the promise of one.
AP comes with the kill, he realized, the full weight of the System's economy settling upon him. The trauma is just… quality assurance. To make the soul worth more? To make the kill easier?
He didn't know. But he understood his next objective with terrible clarity.
He had to get one of those Trauma percentages to 100%.
He had to finish what he started.
He looked at the sleeping form of Chloe, her face streaked and innocent in the dim light.
I'm not a ghost, he thought, the horror of his role now crystalline. I'm a farmer. And the crop is almost ready.
....
A week passed in the quiet, suffocating atmosphere of the apartment. Eliott's world was the bookshelf, the dust, and the growing sickness in the air.
The Corruption metrics were his compass. He watched them like a investor watching stocks, with a cold, focused dread.
Amir: Trauma 67%.
Sofia: Trauma 58%.
Mark: Trauma 41%.
Chloe: Trauma 81%.
The numbers told a story. Amir, consumed by guilt, stopped coming over. He called once, his voice a hollow monotone, to say he was "going away for a while." His Trauma percentage had jumped to 89% after that call and then stopped updating. Out of range.
Sofia jumped at shadows. She'd show up with dark circles under her eyes, clutching a pillow, her gaze darting to the board with a mixture of terror and longing. She was feeding her own fear, and Eliott's gentle Nudges—a whispered memory of Lena's laugh from a dark hallway, the faint smell of her perfume near Sofia's old bed—were all it took to keep the percentage climbing.
Mark fought. He brought books on psychology, on static electricity, on mass hysteria. He argued with Chloe, his voice rising in frustration that was really fear. His Trauma climbed slowly, stubbornly. He was bedrock being worn down by a drip of impossible truth.
Chloe was the masterpiece. Her Trauma was a complex tapestry. Grief was the warp, guilt the weft, and Eliott's manipulations were the needle. Her dependency on the board was absolute. She talked to it over morning coffee. She cried to it at night. Her Trauma: 81% wasn't just a number; it was the total erosion of her personhood. She was becoming a vessel for a sorrow that wasn't entirely her own.
Eliott felt no pride. Only a grim, surgical focus. He was preparing a patient for an operation from which they would not wake.
The System was a silent partner. It provided the metrics, the Stability count (which replenished slowly on its own), and nothing else. The mystery of AP gnawed at him. It was the paycheck awaiting the completed job.
The breaking point came on a rainy Thursday night. Chloe had been crying for hours. Sofia was over, a shivering bundle of nerves on the couch. Mark had come, not to participate, but to try one last intervention.
"Chloe, look at yourself!" Mark pleaded, gesturing at the board on the coffee table. "This thing is killing you! Amir is gone! Sofia's a wreck! This isn't Lena, it's… it's a sickness!"
"You don't understand!" Chloe screamed back, her voice raw. "She's trapped! She needs us! She's in pain!"
"How do you know? Because a piece of plastic told you?"
Chloe's answer was to lunge for the board, placing it on the floor between them. "You want proof? Ask her! Ask her if she's in pain!"
A desperate, reckless energy filled the room. Sofia, wanting to please Chloe, wanting the nightmare to have meaning, scrambled to join. Mark, driven by a furious need to disprove it all, knelt down, his jaw set.
Three sets of fingers touched the planchette. The circuit flared to life in Eliott's perception. The emotional signatures were a turbulent storm: Chloe's desperate hope (Trauma 83%), Sofia's brittle fear (62%), Mark's raging, denial-fueled anger (45%).
This was it. The pressure cooker was sealed.
Eliott didn't spell words. He went straight for the foundation. He focused on Mark, on the rigid wall of his logic. With a concentrated Cognitive Nudge, he didn't attack the wall. He removed a single, crucial brick.
He brought back a memory, sharp and clear: Mark, age ten, praying by his bed the night before his mother's major surgery. A pure, childlike faith. Then, the feeling of that faith meaning nothing when she died anyway. The brick was The Futility of Belief.
The memory hit Mark like a physical blow. His anger flickered, replaced by a profound, existential confusion. His Trauma percentage spiked. 50%... 55%...
Simultaneously, he turned to Sofia. He amplified the feeling of the borrowed book in her bag, the one she'd never returned. He paired it with a sensation—the feeling of being watched from Lena's old room. Her paranoia, already a live wire, short-circuited. She began to whisper, "She knows, she knows, she knows…" Trauma: 70%.
Finally, Chloe. He gave her exactly what she wanted. He pushed the planchette, smooth and sure.
H… E… L… P… M… E…
Chloe's face transformed into a mask of divine mission. Her Trauma wasn't damage anymore; it was purpose. 85%.
"She's asking for help!" Chloe cried. "We have to finish it! We have to set her free!"
Mark, unmoored, could only stare. Sofia was rocking slightly. The ritual had gone from a seance to a suicide pact, and they were all willing participants.
Eliott guided them. He used the planchette to point to candles, to have them close the curtains, to chant a meaningless phrase Chloe half-remembered from a movie. He was the director of their final act.
The final step was isolation. He spelled out:
A… L… O… N… E…
"She wants just me," Chloe interpreted, her eyes glowing with frantic light. "You have to go. For the final connection."
Mark, broken, didn't argue. He pulled a catatonic Sofia to her feet and led her out. The door clicked shut.
Chloe was alone with the board. Her Trauma: 92%.
The air was still. The only sound was the rain and Chloe's rapid, shallow breathing.
"I'm ready, Lena," she whispered. "Tell me what to do."
Eliott knew what to do. The System interface pulsed gently, a prompt appearing.
[Primary Vessel 'Chloe Emerson' reached critical corruption threshold.]
[Trauma: 92%]
[Soul Integrity: Compromised.]
[Harvest Protocol: AVAILABLE.]
[Execute Harvest?]
[Y] / [N]
This was the moment. The kill. The first of ten thousand.
Eliott felt nothing. No rage, no glee, no sorrow. There was only the cold, clean logic of the terminal patient. Her life for my chance.
He selected [Y].
A new sensation erupted—not from him, but through him. The board became a conduit. A terrifying, suctioning force flowed from the System, through the board, and into Chloe.
She didn't scream. Her eyes flew wide, not with fear, but with a shocking, ecstatic recognition. "Lena…?" she breathed.
Then the light in her eyes didn't just go out. It was pulled inward, into her pupils, and then siphoned away. A silvery, shimmering essence—a condensation of every memory, every joy, every moment of guilt and love and pain—streamed from her mouth, her eyes, her heart, and flowed into the Ouija board. Into him.
He felt it settle, a cold, heavy, living weight inside the wood. A captured soul.
Chloe's body slumped to the floor, empty. A perfect, breathless shell.
The notifications flashed, bright and clinical.
[Harvest Successful.]
[Soul +1]
[Souls: 1/10,000]
[AP Awarded: +20]
[AP: 20]
[Bonus Analysis: Vessel Corruption 92%. Soul Quality: A-. Trauma Saturation: Optimal. Efficient Harvest.]
AP. Twenty points. It finally had a value. It was the blood money for a murder.
But there was no time to ponder it. Another notification, more urgent.
[Warning: Catalyst Object signature amplified by harvest. Anomaly detectable.]
[Recommendation: Relocate.]
The board was humming, vibrating faintly with contained power. He was a beacon now.
As if on cue, the apartment door opened. It was Jada. She stepped in, saw her friend's body on the floor, saw the vibrating board. Her face, usually an unreadable blank, crumpled. Not into tears, but into a profound, world-ending understanding. Her eyes met the spot where Eliott's consciousness resided.
She didn't speak. She walked over, picked up the cold, charged board with steady hands, and without looking at Chloe's body, carried it to the closet. She shoved it into the same brown paper bag, tucked it under her arm, and walked out of the apartment, into the rain.
Eliott, jostling in the dark, checked his new status.
One soul. Twenty AP. Nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine to go.
The first payment had been made. The currency of his cure was grief, guilt, and a young woman's stolen life.
And he had his first real mystery: what to buy with twenty pieces of silver.