The next day started like any other. That was the first red flag.
Kael had learned to trust patterns systems made sense, even broken ones. The grind was supposed to feel like rot: slow, predictable, numbing. When things ran too smoothly, that was when you watched your back.
He woke up to an uncorrupted HUD, no flickering, no error logs. His chain account showed Level 9, clean and confirmed. His drone was at 87% battery, which was impossible he hadn't charged it in days.
"Okay," he muttered. "Weird flex, system."
[DAILY QUEST AVAILABLE: DELIVER PACKAGE – ZONE 6-K]
REWARD: +30 XP | +1 Chain Credit | ???
He hadn't opted into courier quests. But the system tagged it "Auto-Assigned Due to Local Shortage."
That happened sometimes.
Fine. He needed the XP. One more level, and he'd unlock basic housing rights again. No more shared pods, no more three-minute showers.
Zone 6-K was a ghost district—industrial edge of the rings. No NPC traffic. No ambient music. Just silence and smog and empty billboards glitching old ads for luxury software skins no one could afford.
He reached the drop point, a rusted mail port tucked behind a half-collapsed datacenter.
No one was there.
No box. No coordinates. Just a single black envelope sitting on the metal ledge.
He stared at it.
[ITEM RECEIVED: UNMARKED DATA FRAGMENT]
That wasn't standard protocol.
No confirmation ping. No "Thank you, citizen!" reward cheer. Just a pulse of light, faint and blue, through his lens.
And when he checked his log?
No quest recorded.
The XP was there. The credit too. But the system had no memory of the delivery quest ever existing.
That night, more coincidences.
The vending unit in his district—Unit 4-A, the one that never worked offered him a free nutrition bar. Not Tier 3. Not even Tier 2.
Tier 5.
The highest grade. Technically illegal for anyone under Level 20.
He took it. Ate half. Saved the rest. It tasted like actual food. Like his mother's cooking, long before she got burned out and quiet.
He didn't report the error.
Then came the message.
Not on his chain inbox. Not in any chat channel.
It appeared in the air beside him while he cleaned Zone 11-C. Just floating—raw, untagged text. No sender.
You're being watched. Don't look directly at cameras for 48 hours.
His hands froze mid-motion.
He turned slowly not toward the nearest camera. Toward the drone beside him. Its lens gleamed with dull amber light. Passive mode.
Nothing changed.
He kept working.
But now, every flicker of light felt suspicious. Every shadow behind a vent, every reflection in a window. The world felt off-axis. Slightly tilted. Like he was seeing the edge of a simulation trying to pretend it was real.
[CORE STATUS: AWAITING TRIGGER EVENT]
[TRIGGER EVENTS REGISTERED: 4]
[THRESHOLD: 6]
He hadn't checked the core window since that night. But now, it opened on its own. Just hovering there. Waiting.
"Four?" he muttered. "What even counts as a trigger?"
The envelope?
The message?
The free bar?
The blood in his dream?
Then he paused.
If the system didn't acknowledge the Core… who was tracking the trigger events?
That night, he dreamed of the woman in white again.
Only this time, she turned around.
He couldn't remember her face when he woke up.
But his bedsheet was marked with another curved line, drawn in ink he didn't own.
Kael sat on the edge of his cot, heart thudding.
Two more events. That was all it would take. And then… something. He didn't know what.
But someone...or something....was orchestrating this. A test. A trap. An invitation.
He could stop. Refuse quests. Go dormant for a week. Fall off the logs.
But if he did that, he'd get Dropped.
And maybe that wasn't the worst thing anymore.