Chapter 1 Full Payment, Move-In Within a Week

Victoria's POV

The night air outside the arrivals hall hit me, carrying the smell of jet fuel. I followed the signs into the Ground Transportation area, pulled open the rear door of a yellow cab, and got in, giving the driver the address of the Astor Hotel Group's flagship property. He glanced at me in the rearview mirror; I turned my face to the window and watched the streetlights fall away behind us one by one.

The meter stopped at seventy-eight dollars exactly. He opened his mouth before any words came out, and a hundred-dollar bill had already passed through the gap in the partition. I pushed the door open and stepped out, telling him to keep the rest as a tip.

The moment the door shut, a line surfaced across my retina: [Transaction detected: $100.00. Converted at the initial adaptation rate of 1:1. 100 Miracle Points credited.] I read it and found that tips counted as valid spending too, drew my gaze back, and walked into the hotel entrance without looking back.

The front desk checked the reservation, asked for my ID, ran a pre-authorization on a card for incidentals, and only then slid the key card across. Then the elevator attendant walked me to the elevator.

The doors closed, and the mirror panel showed a stranger — close to six feet tall, skin so smooth it looked faintly unreal, brow and jawline clean enough that I wanted to reach up and touch it to confirm the face was mine. I stood frozen until the elevator stopped at my floor.

The suite was small but serviceable. I hung my spare clothes in the closet, then turned on the bathtub faucet, let the hot water rise, and sat down in it, sinking my shoulders under the surface.

The last three seconds before my death floated up: a child darting onto the crosswalk, the high beams of a truck, and then everything dissolved into nothing. Then blankness — the Apex System laying out what the system entailed, legal large-sum spending converting automatically into Miracle Points, and what could ultimately be redeemed: a thing called the Transdimensional Rebirth Protocol, which would let me be reborn back into my original world.

And finally Vera Kane — my friend in the miracle task, the one who had fought to get me the easiest assignment of the lot. I laughed, and the tears came anyway and would not stop. Vera, I said, I will be grateful to you forever.

Out of the tub and in front of the mirror, this body read even more clearly under direct light than it had in the elevator — no pores, no fine lines, standing perfectly still and still looking as though it were appraising someone. My own face, and not quite my own face.

The system file surfaced alongside it: twenty years old, sophomore in the oil painting program at the St. Blair University School of Art, records complete, the reason for a one-year leave of absence airtight, the official story being that I had worked in New York to save tuition and studied on my own in the meantime.

Lying on the bed, I opened the system panel. Forty-five points for the in-flight meal, one hundred for the cab — one hundred and forty-five in total. Further down was the description of the Apex Obsidian Card: unlimited credit line, and the Apex Protocol guaranteeing at the base layer that every dollar was absolutely lawful and legitimate, such that any regulator, tax authority, or auditor would find nothing but an impeccable family trust inheritance record.

I stared at the line for two seconds, then scrolled to the settlement rules: 1:1 through the initial adaptation period, fixed at 100:1 thereafter. I sat up. A hundredfold gap in conversion was sitting right in front of me. Before the adaptation period ended, I supposed I ought to buy myself a place to live first.

I dialed the number the system had supplied for the person in charge at Harper Realty. A woman's voice answered, hoarse with having been woken up. "Harper Realty private line. How can I help you?"

"Is the penthouse on Fifty-Seventh Street still available?"

The hoarseness was gone in a second. "...You mean the three-story Crown penthouse?"

"Yes."

She drew in a sharp breath and then spoke at twice the speed. "It is. Listed at two hundred thirty-five million, and we can arrange a viewing tomorrow—"

"I'll take it, full payment. I want to be moved in by five o'clock next weekend. Send me the account." She read out a string of numbers, and toward the end of it there was a tremor in her voice she could not quite press down. I noted it, hung up, opened the private banking line tied to the Apex Obsidian Card, got through to the family trust account manager, gave the payee and the amount, and authorized the transfer.

Not long after I put the phone down, the contract signing invitation from Harper Realty arrived in my inbox: a rigorously worded, fully itemized purchase agreement, ending with a question about the signing date. I wrote back: ten o'clock tomorrow morning, I'll send my assistant to sign. Also, before handover, I want a full inspection report — air, structure, furnishings, security, anti-surveillance — with all-female staff only to carry out the inspection.

Several days later, fresh out of the shower after a run, I got a call from Elaine Harper, her tone far steadier than it had been at that hour of the night. "All six panels passed. Air, water, structure, furnishings, security, anti-surveillance — not a single defect. No unregistered devices, no anomalous outbound connections."

She paused, then added one more thing. "Someone on the team asked who you are. I didn't answer, per protocol." I told her I would be moving in at five o'clock that afternoon. She said, "Understood."

After hanging up, I sat on the edge of the bed and opened the Genesis Vault. In the Androids section, I picked two categories: a full all-female security detail, and a personal housekeeper. The page listed configurations and point costs, and the bottom line was blank, waiting for me to name them.

After thinking for a moment, I named the housekeeper Evelyn and the head of security Morgan, both with my surname — Sterling. To the outside world, a family office. Under the luxury section, I went ahead and clicked four cars.

At the very bottom of the shopping list sat a special item, marked in gray: Apex Tier Client. The description was one sentence — purchase this item, and you will become the apex client of the current world. I did not know what that meant. It cost almost nothing, and it looked as though it might be useful, so my fingertip came down and bought it.

I closed the panel, and the night settled into a single ledger: seventy-eight dollars on a taxi meter, a hundred handed over without counting, and two hundred and thirty-five million for a home I had never seen and did not need to see.

To most people, that last number would have been a fortune worth spending a lifetime earning. To me, it was simply the beginning.