The HUD in Eira's eye glowed crimson.
00:11:37.
That was how much time he had left to live.
The number ticked down with every heartbeat, displayed in the corner of his vision like a cruel joke. He didn't need to look—he felt it, like a noose tightening with each second lost. It wasn't just a countdown. It was him.
He ducked into a side alley off Eon Row, the major pulse artery of ChronoCity's Fifth Ring, his breath clouding in the cold neon-lit air. His boots slapped against water-stained concrete. Behind him, an armed patrol swept past—black-armored ChronoEnforcers with glowing blue visors and time-scanning rifles. One glance, one stray ping, and they'd see the truth: Eira was living on borrowed seconds.
He clutched the satchel to his side like a lifeline.
Inside was a black-market time-chip. Unauthorized. Raw. Untaxed. Worth 3.2 years if the client didn't flake. But if he got caught with it? That was instant expiration. The Bureau didn't care if you were a second over or a decade under. You had what you hadn't earned? You forfeited the rest.
The city loomed around him—endless towers stacked like data blocks, flickering signs offering hope in the form of time loans. Get five years now, pay it back in interest! Your children's future for your present! We buy unwanted minutes—instant credit!
Every inch of ChronoCity was plastered with advertisements for timebanks and longevity clinics, their chrome smiles promising salvation if you just had the right digits in your HUD.
Eira didn't. Not anymore.
00:09:58
The number blinked at him again. He picked up his pace.
The courierrun was supposed to be easy. Cut through Sector Six, avoid patrols, make the drop at a cloaked rooftop garden. But a construction collapse in Grid Twelve forced a detour, and now he was running minutes away from death through crumbling slums he hadn't visited since he was a kid.
He passed a dying man slumped against a wall, his timer reading 00:00:03.
Eira met his eyes.
The man's lips moved: "Got a second?"
The timer blinked red.
00:00:02
Eira kept running.
00:00:01
Behind him, silence.
No scream. No explosion. Just… nothing. When the timer hit zero, the body shut down. Brain. Heart. Everything. Time made you live, and time made you stop.
That was the law.
And the law never blinked.
The rooftop came into view: rusted beams, an old solar panel half-eaten by moss, and a flickering signal emitter disguised as a rain tower.
Two figures waited, both masked. One was tall and thin, standing unnaturally still. The other sat cross-legged, fiddling with an interface chip. Both wore the burnt-orange tags of the Latchkey—black-market brokers who dealt in illegal time trades.
"Courier," Eira said, panting. "Delivery—Transaction ID seven-zero-A-Six."
The tall one stepped forward. "Palm."
Eira extended his left hand, fingers twitching. A small pulse emitted from his skin-chip, bouncing to a scanner in the man's glove. A soft beep followed.
"Chip's clean. Mostly. Got a little radiation damage on the west node."
"It's intact," Eira said.
"You'll get your minutes." The man reached into a coat pocket, pulled out a small white square with a copper back—the payment chip.
Eira stared at it.
"Transfer?"
The man held it out. "Thirty days. As agreed."
Eira took the chip and pressed it to his implant node just behind his ear. It clicked magnetically. A second passed.
Then, his HUD blinked.
+30 days
Total Time Remaining: 30 days, 07 minutes, 26 seconds
Eira nearly collapsed from the weight of relief. He sank to his knees and laughed—a harsh, cracked sound.
"You good?" asked the seated Latchkey, looking up for the first time.
"No," Eira said, breathing. "But I'll make it another day."
He climbed to the next rooftop over, curling behind a half-collapsed solar turbine. The city spread beneath him, impossibly massive. ChronoCity—the city of seconds—was carved into vertical rings, stacked like a mechanical spinal cord stretching from sea to sky.
The top rings belonged to the Sovereigns—those who'd bought their immortality. Ten thousand years in reserve, modified genes, neural backup systems, time-share estates.
The middle belonged to the Sellers—those with jobs, education, and credit. Their time decreased with every mortgage, every child, every mistake.
The bottom?
That was Eira. The Borrowed. The Forgotten. The Minutes-Men.
He watched a drone zip overhead and vanish toward the Platinum Towers far above. A moment later, a scream echoed from the lower rings.
He didn't even flinch.
Later, he walked back to his den in the Old Rail sector, passing by time pawnshops and bleeding-edge street clinics that offered minute-siphoning surgeries.
Raya's clinic was still lit. He thought about stopping by.
She could top off his node efficiency, maybe patch the jitter in his left hand. But he couldn't afford it now. Even if he had time to spend, he needed every second in reserve.
Just in case.
He entered his building—a converted maglev tunnel long since abandoned—and climbed the ladder to the fourth strut. His room was barely a coffin: a cot, a sink, and a rusted mirror. But the door locked, and the sensors warned him if anyone got close.
He activated the chip reader.
The payment chip he'd received today had no metadata. No source. No log.
It was supposed to be normal. That was standard for Latchkey transactions.
But something itched at him.
He frowned and pulled up a debug menu on his HUD, running a backtrace.
To his surprise, a corrupted file piggybacked the transaction. Hidden. Encrypted with a 7th-gen post-quantum key.
Eira's heart skipped.
Only government systems used encryption that clean.
He hesitated, then opened a decryption chain using a cracked protocol Tarin had taught him years ago, when they both ran smaller courier jobs for war-time smugglers.
The file unfolded.
It was a list.
1,248 names.
Each name followed by a timestamp. A death date.
Eira's eyes scanned it casually—until his breath caught.
Eira Kallistrade
Died: Five Years Ago
He stared.
The screen didn't change.
He blinked. Opened it again. Cross-referenced the ID. Birth location. Node registration.
It was him.
Five years ago, Eira Kallistrade had died.
But he hadn't. He was still here.
He touched his chest, felt his heartbeat, checked his HUD again.
30 days, 07 minutes, 04 seconds
He should be dead. Someone had bought him time.
Illegally. Secretly.
And now?
Now someone knew he'd found the file.
Because the lights in his room flickered—off, on, off—and his sensor pinged.
INTRUSION DETECTED
He scrambled for his bag. The satchel was gone.
No—not gone.
Taken.
Outside, footsteps echoed along the steel struts of the tunnel. Slow. Purposeful.
Someone had followed him back.
Someone who knew he'd seen the list.
He pulled a shock blade from under his cot and backed against the wall.
The file still hovered in his HUD, frozen.
1,248 names.
All of them dead.
One of them still breathing.
And whoever bought Eira's time...
They wanted it back.
To be continued…