The industrial vacuum hummed, a low-frequency drone that vibrated up Naomi’s arm and settled deep in her sore shoulder.

She pushed the wand forward, watching the beige carpet fibers jump, then pulled it back.

Forward, back.

The motion was mechanical, a rhythm that matched the dull throb behind her eyes.

The digital clock on a dormant computer screen read 10:47 PM.

She had been on her feet since 4:15 AM.

This was the seventh floor of the Kincaid Building.

Apex Solutions.

The desks were uniform gray laminate, each with a sleeping black monitor.

Family photos smiled from the cubicle walls, frozen moments of lives she couldn’t comprehend.

A man held a silver fish.

A woman in a graduation cap.

A toddler smearing blue cake across its face.

These people would arrive at eight in the morning, fresh and smelling of coffee, and sit in the chairs she wiped down.

They would complain about the air conditioning or the weak Wi-Fi, and they would leave at five.

Naomi emptied a small bin into the rolling cart.

A crumpled protein bar wrapper, a paper cup stained with bright red lipstick, a memo about ‘Synergy.

‘ She separated the paper for recycling, her gloved hands moving with a practiced, listless efficiency.

Her back sparked with a familiar pain as she bent to snag a paperclip from the carpet.

She straightened slowly, pressing a fist into her spine.

She finished the last cubicle and pushed her cart to the service elevator.

The button was sticky.

Down in the lobby, the fluorescent lights were even brighter, glaring off the polished marble floor.

Manny was at the security desk, but he wasn’t reading his usual paperback.

He was standing by the glass doors, peering out into the rainy street.

His gray security uniform jacket was pulled tight over his stomach, and he kept rocking on his heels.

“See you tomorrow, Manny,” Naomi said.

Her voice was rough, a dry rasp from hours of disuse.

He started, turning around.

“Oh, hey, Naomi.

Night’s over?”

“Just about.

” She swiped her badge at the employee clock-out station.

The machine beeped, a flat, final sound.

10:58 PM.

“You’re a machine, you know that?” Manny said, trying for a smile.

It didn’t reach his eyes.

His gaze flickered back to the dark, wet street.

“Just tired,” she said, pulling the cart toward the janitor’s closet.

“Everything okay? You look.

.

.

antsy.

”

Manny blew out a long breath, fogging the glass in front of him.

“Ah, you know.

Teenagers.

My kid, Leo, he was supposed to be home from basketball practice an hour ago.

Now he’s not picking up his phone.

” He pulled out his own phone, stared at the black screen as if willing it to life, then shoved it back in his pocket.

“Wife’s worried sick, which, you know, means I gotta be worried twice as much.

”

“He’s probably just at a friend’s,” Naomi offered.

“Battery died.

”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what I keep saying.

” But he didn’t look convinced.

He resumed his post at the door.

“He’s a good kid, but he’s got this new friend, Marcus.

.

.

I don’t know.

Kid looks like he’s always calculating something.

” Manny shook his head.

“Sorry.

You don’t need to hear my problems.

You got your own, I’m sure.

”

“I’m sure he’s fine, Manny.

” The words felt hollow, but they were all she had.

“Yeah.

Sure.

” He gave her a small wave.

“You get home safe, you hear? It’s nasty out there.

”

The rain hit her the moment she pushed through the revolving door.

It wasn’t a gentle rain.

It was a cold, driving wind that smelled of bus exhaust and wet pavement.

Her car, a twelve-year-old sedan with a persistent rattle in the engine, was parked three blocks away in the ‘economy’ lot.

She pulled the hood of her thin jacket over her head and hunched her shoulders.

Her sneakers, the ones with the sole separating at the left toe, were soaked in seconds.

The city was still alive, but it was the late-night, hollowed-out version.

A man huddled in a doorway, wrapped in a bright blue plastic tarp.

The neon ‘Open’ sign of a corner bodega buzzed and flickered, casting red and green light on the glistening sidewalk.

She passed the 24-hour call center where she’d worked from 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM.

The windows were dark on this side.

She’d spent those four hours listening to people yell about their internet service, her voice perpetually set to ‘calm and apologetic.

‘ Before that, the hospital, 6:00 AM to 2:00 PM, the smell of sanitizer and the endless, clicking-clacking of her keyboard in the billing department.

Hospital.

Call center.

Cleaning.

Three jobs.

Yesterday had been the four-job day, with the restaurant shift squeezed in.

A wave of dizziness hit her as she realized she’d almost forgotten what day it was.

Tuesday.

The ‘B’ lot was under the highway overpass, the massive concrete pillars stained dark with grime.

The air was thick with the smell of damp and urine.

Her car was waiting.

She fumbled with the keys, her fingers numb and stiff.

The lock clicked, a loud, metallic sound in the relative quiet.

She slid into the driver’s seat.

The worn fabric was damp and cold.

For a full minute, she just sat there, the only sound the rhythmic thwack-thwack-thwack of the rain on the roof and the distant rumble of a truck on the overpass above.

Her stomach growled, a sharp, angry cramp.

She’d had a protein bar at 2:45 PM and a handful of peanuts from the vending machine at the call center.

In her bag, there was a half-eaten apple.

She didn’t have the energy to lift it.

She turned the key.

The engine hesitated, coughed, then finally turned over with a shudder.

The headlights cut through the gloom.

11:15 PM.

Derek would be home.

He was always home.

She put the car in reverse, the gears grinding in protest.

She thought about the hot shower she was promising herself.

She thought about the four, maybe four and a half, hours of sleep she might get before the alarm went off at 4:15 AM.

She pictured her bed, the one she shared with Derek.

He’d be on his side of the mattress, the room dark, the sound of his steady breathing.

That’s what she focused on.

The shower, the dark, the quiet.

She pulled out of the parking lot and pointed the car toward home.

Naomi stood frozen in the hallway of her own home, her hand on the doorknob, her body swaying with exhaustion.

It was 11:45 at night.

The numbers on her wrist-com glowed a dull, accusing red.

The hallway’s recycled air smelled of ozone and synthetic pine cleaner, a scent that never quite masked the underlying odors of too many people living too close together—the faint tang of microwaved soy-noodles, of damp laundry, of someone’s illegal pet-fungus.

Her hand, chapped and raw from the industrial cleansers at the clinic, fumbled the key-card.

She missed the electronic plate twice before it finally beeped, a cheerful, three-note chime that grated on her nerves.

The lock clicked open.

She sagged against the doorframe, not yet pushing it open.

One more step.

Just one more step and she could be horizontal.

Her feet, encased in the mandated non-slip polymer clogs, felt less like feet and more like bruised stones.

The antiseptic smell of the hospital still clung to her scrubs, warring with the faint, greasy-sweet aroma of the diner where she’d pulled a double shift just this afternoon.

A triple.

A quadruple.

She’d lost count.

All she wanted was four hours of silent, black sleep before the 4:00 AM alert would scream her back to consciousness for the med-clinic run.

Then she heard it.

Not the low murmur of a vid-screen or the hum of the apartment’s nutrient-paste rehydrator.

It was Derek’s voice.

Loud.

Carefree.

It was the voice he used with his friends, the one she hadn’t heard directed at her in… months.

Years.

It was the voice from before.

And he was laughing.

A full-throated, uncomplicated laugh that hit her like a physical blow.

She leaned her head against the cool metal of the door, her eyes closing.

She didn’t have the energy for this.

Not for guests.

Not for noise.

“Man, I’m telling you, I got it made,” Derek’s voice boomed, tinny and sharp.

He had his comms on speaker.

Naomi’s fingers tightened on the door.

She didn’t push.

She just listened.

Seventy-three blocks away, Jax sat on the narrow balcony of his rain-slicked hab-pod, watching the neon-drenched downpour.

The city’s perpetual drizzle misted his face.

Below, the street was a canyon of glowing advertisements and speeding courier-drones, their anti-grav engines whining.

Derek’s voice was a metallic squawk in his ear-bud.

“…four jobs.

Can you believe it? Hospital, call center, restaurant, and the night-cleaner contract at the old data-hub.

She just… does it.

”

Jax took a long drag from his vape, the cherry-red tip glowing in the gloom.

He was supposed to be working, running diagnostics on a corporate server that kept glitching, but Derek’s calls were a morbidly fascinating distraction.

“That’s… wild, man,” Jax said, his voice flat.

He muted his end of the line.

“Fucking leech,” he muttered to the rain.

He un-muted.

“She must really, uh, be a team player.

”

Derek’s laugh crackled through.

“Oh, ‘team’ for sure! She thinks we’re in this together.

Digging out of ‘my’ debt.

” He used air-quotes Jax couldn’t see but could absolutely hear.

“She thinks every credit she earns goes straight to the collectors.

”

“And it doesn’t?” Jax asked, just to hear him say it.

“Man, collectors are slow.

They’ll get their synth-leather boots off my neck eventually.

But a guy’s gotta live, right?” Jax heard the distinctive thwip-clink of a pressure-sealed bottle of high-end whiskey.

The real stuff, not the bathtub-brewed swill Jax was drinking.

“She doesn’t even check the bank statements.

Too tired.

Just dumps the chits in and keeps going.

”

A kid in a bright yellow rain-slicker darted into the alley below Jax.

The kid started working on the access panel of a parked delivery drone.

Jax watched, mildly interested.

“Cold, man,” another voice on the line—Skag, probably—mumbled.

“Nah, that’s smart,” Derek shot back.

“I got a personal slave who thinks she’s being a good wife.

Why should I suffer just ’cause I made a few bad bets?”

The kid below got the panel open.

A small shower of sparks.

Jax smiled.

Attaboy.

“What about that girl,” Skag asked, “Amber?”

Amber checked her wrist-chrono.

11:51 PM.

She sighed, signaling the bar-bot for another ‘Nebula-Drift.

‘ The glowing blue liquid arrived with a silent, pneumatic hiss.

The bar, The Gilded Tentacle, was all chrome, black light, and expensive synthetics.

It was a place for people who didn’t look at price-tages.

Derek was late.

Again.

He’d said 11:30.

A “quick celebration” after closing a “massive data-trade” with an off-world client.

Amber wasn’t stupid; she knew Derek was all flash and fast-talk.

But his flash was good.

He paid for drinks like this.

He bought her the shimmer-silk dress she was wearing.

He was fun, and he wasn’t exhausted and boring like the mid-level-management drones she usually met.

“He’s not worth the wait, sweet,” Gloss said, polishing a reactor-glass.

Gloss the bartender was a full-body modification, her skin the color of brushed steel, her eyes a pair of whirring, multi-lensed optics.

“He pays well,” Amber replied, swirling the blue drink.

“They all pay well until they don’t,” Gloss said, her voice a low-fidelity rasp.

Her custom optics zoomed, focusing on something in the corner.

“My little brother.

He got in with a joy-wire crew over in Sector K.

Thinks he’s a big-shot.

Now he owes the wrong people.

”

Amber nodded, pretending to care.

“That’s rough.

”

“Yeah.

Rough.

” Gloss looked back at Amber.

“This guy of yours, Derek.

He feels like a Sector K kind of problem.

All smiles, deep pockets, but the pockets ain’t his.

”

Amber bristled.

“He’s an investor.

”

“Right.

” Gloss moved down the bar.

“He’s late.

Just sayin’.

”

Amber looked at her empty glass.

Gloss was right.

He was late.

She was tired of waiting.

She tapped her comm, about to send Derek an angry text.

Naomi’s purse, weighted with a power-cell, a half-eaten protein bar, and her clinic-issued scanner, slipped from her numb shoulder.

It hit the grooved-metal floor of the hallway with a soft, heavy thud.

The noise was just loud enough.

Inside the apartment, the voices stopped.

Naomi’s heart, which had been beating in a slow, exhausted rhythm, suddenly kicked.

Thump-thump.

Thump-thump.

 

The apartment door slid open.

Derek stood there.

He wasn’t in his usual sleep-pants and stained t-shirt.

He was dressed to go out.

Black synth-leather jacket, the expensive one.

His hair was slicked back with high-gloss gel.

He smelled, not of sleep, but of whiskey and sharp, citrusy cologne.

He was looking down at his phone, a bright, smug smile on his face.

He hadn’t seen her.

“Babe! You’re home.

” He looked up, and the smile froze, then re-formed, but it was wrong.

Brittle.

“God, you look.

.

.

dead on your feet.

Why are you just standing in the hall?”

Naomi’s gaze didn’t meet his.

It was fixed on the phone in his hand, which was still lit up.

A new message had just arrived.

From: Amber

Where are you?? I’m not waiting all night, Der.

 

Naomi’s eyes slowly lifted from the phone to his face.

She hadn’t heard the “slave” comment.

She hadn’t heard the financial details.

She didn’t know about the jewelry or the dinners.

She just saw the jacket, the cologne, and the name.

“Who,” she whispered, her voice cracking, not with emotion, but with sheer, physical dryness, “is Amber?”