My Infinite Investment System

Chapter 1: Congratulations, Hero

Nine hundred dollars and seventeen cents, which Ryan checked a third time in the elevator because apparently he needed to watch the number personally before he’d believe in it.

Same number, obviously, since that was generally how numbers worked.

Eleven minutes ago he’d been standing under a wall-sized invoice explaining, very calmly, like an adult, that six replacement cores had gone into six clinics with zero occupied beds between them.

Six of them, checked twice, with a spreadsheet built to go underneath.

Mercer hadn’t argued with a single number, which, yeah, in hindsight, was the whole tell.

’He wasn’t listening,’ Ryan thought, watching the folded hands on the table, ’he was waiting for me to finish.’

"You accessed restricted procurement records," Mercer said, hands still folded exactly where they’d been for the last eleven minutes.

"They weren’t restricted this morning," Ryan replied, as his phone buzzed against the table.

{You no longer have access to #low-rank-audit.}

"...Seriously?" Ryan said under his breath, to the phone rather than to anybody in the room.

The projector went dark two seconds later, which meant somebody three floors up was speedrunning the delete key while he was still physically in the room.

’They set this up before I sat down,’ and the meeting had only ever been paperwork with chairs.

Mercer’s jaw did something, which was the entire response, then security walked in without being called.

Ah, so they’d been standing in the corridor the whole time, listening to him talk.

His badge died at the elevator bank, benefits went somewhere around the fourth floor, and by the lobby six affiliated-guild applications he had never submitted in his life had all come back ineligible.

Genuinely impressive turnaround, for a company that took nine business days to approve a chair.

Marcus from Compliance found something extremely interesting on his monitor, as did Priya, as did everybody else Ryan had eaten lunch with for two years.

’Not one of you,’ he thought, walking past all of them toward the doors, ’not a single one.’

Outside, the banking app still opened, which somehow felt like a personal insult, and underneath the balance sat a tidy little list of all the reasons that number was about to stop existing.

Rent, transport, groceries, plus a transfer to his mom completed that morning that he did not regret but could no longer afford.

Northline was still listing F-rank logistics roles, so he got as far as the apply button before the rejection came back at him.

Twelve floors, and Mercer had still beaten him down all twelve of them.

"...Okay, that’s actually kind of impressive," he said out loud, on a public street, to nobody, like a man having a completely normal day.

So there were three options, and he hated all of them in slightly different ways.

He could beg a guild small enough to ignore a blacklist, or he could go back upstairs and trade the report for his job, which was the entire purpose of blacklisting him in the first place.

Or he could stretch nine hundred dollars until somebody agreed to believe evidence that no longer had source files behind it.

’And that’s the good one,’ he thought, which was the part that actually stung.

The gold window opened over the job listing before he’d finished choosing.

[Congratulations, Chosen Hero]

[Divine Hero Growth System Activated]

[Preparing Soul Bond]

Ryan looked at it for a second, then said, "No," in the same voice he used on cold callers.

Pain went through his sternum like something being seated into place, dropping him onto his knees beside the bus shelter while heat came down through his chest, along his spine, and out into both wrists.

[Soul Bond: 08%]

[Error: Standard Hero Path Rejected]

[Adaptive Role Reclassification Initiated]

[Warning: Do Not Sever Connection]

’I said no,’ he thought, through a throat that had locked shut, ’I said the actual word.’

Phones came up around him, because of course they did, and somebody was going to get four thousand views out of the worst ninety seconds of his life.

Then a woman in recovery-center scrubs put her shoulder between him and the nearest camera, then crouched down without touching him.

"Hey, can you tell me your name?" she asked, keeping her voice level, the way people did when they’d asked it a hundred times before.

"Ryan Keller," he said through locked teeth, "recently unemployed."

She didn’t laugh, which was fine, since it hadn’t really been a joke.

The pressure let go all at once and left him sitting on the pavement sweating into a shirt worth more than his remaining assets, while a private interface settled over the crowd like a smudge on his eye.

[Soul Bond Status: Unstable]

[Adaptive Role Determination: Pending]

[Primary Interface Functions Restricted]

He waited, but the system had apparently said everything it intended to say, which did not include a quest, a weapon, or one of those obnoxious little chimes.

’So it’s the kind that doesn’t explain itself,’ he thought, ’love that for me.’

He accepted the woman’s water, promised her he’d get checked out, and looked up what an unscheduled core scan cost, which turned out to be four hundred eighty dollars payable in full before anybody touched him.

That made divine selection the second organization that afternoon to hand him a bill he couldn’t pay.

He walked, because walking was free.

The towers gave out past the third intersection, replaced by pawnshops, hunter bars, and a noodle place with the shutters half down, until a hot-pink sign lit up the entire road ahead of him.

Northstar Club, on a Tuesday, with a truck backed up to the entrance and a repossession crew working the steps.

Livestreamers stood three deep behind the barrier while two guys carried a mirrored throne down toward the loading rail like they were removing a body.

"That throne is sponsor property," the supervisor said, pitching it for the cameras, "so anybody who scratches it explains it to the brand team, not to me."

The woman standing in front of the next cart laughed for the cameras, though her left hand stayed pressed flat under the cropped edge of her jacket and did not move once during the entire laugh.

Ryan knew her before the guy beside him said the name.

Mika Santos, B-rank lightning, who two years ago had been ending raids in clips too fast to follow, back when he’d watched every single one of them at 2 AM instead of sleeping.

’...Oh, this is so much worse,’ he thought.

"If you’re going to monetize my worst night," she told a vertical phone, "at least use the side my sponsors paid for."

{Why are they taking the throne}

Her left hand had not moved off her ribs once.

{she still looks insane and I mean that with love}

Then a gray box came down hard against the loading rail, her smile went out with it, while pink current jumped across her knuckles to die before it reached her wrist.

Ryan watched it die, and something in the back of his head filed it wrong.

’That’s not a weak spark,’ he thought, ’that’s a routing failure.’

"That one stays," Mika said, and the camera smile was gone out of her voice.

"Line thirty-seven, entertainment fixture," the supervisor answered, stepping closer now with a confidence he hadn’t had thirty seconds ago, so Ryan understood that he had seen the spark fail too, as had everybody else.

{who repossesses a B-rank???}

She set one boot against the cart wheel, which looked like a pose for the stream and was the only thing keeping her leg from shaking on camera.

"There are six cameras," she said with a frown, "so think about that before you touch it."

That bought her maybe four seconds, then the gold interface came back and drew itself down the length of her instead of him, while the bruise behind his ribs pulled tight.

[Potential Party Candidate Detected]

[Assigning Standard Party Role]

[Error: Standard Party Function Unavailable]

’Oh, now you work,’ he thought, because the thing had refused him food, refused him a doctor, refused him a job twice inside eleven minutes, and then woken up for her.

[Potential Investment Target Detected]

[Identity Verification In Progress]

Ryan had nine hundred dollars, no employer, plus a divine error lodged under his sternum, so every part of this belonged to somebody else and he had a very clear plan to keep walking.

Then he read the serial prefix stamped into the side of the gray box.

’...You’re kidding,’ and he was already moving before he’d finished deciding to.

"Stop the cart," he said, loud enough that half the barrier turned around.

The supervisor turned, took in the suit, looked for a badge he didn’t find, and reached for his radio.

"Class seven," Ryan continued, tapping the label, "and you’ve got it filed under the same recovery code as a fog machine."

Three livestreams swung toward the clipboard while he stepped past the man to put two fingers on the certification mark, and the whole crew let go of the cart like it had gotten hot.

The supervisor started asking somebody further up the chain for a serial review, in a voice that had lost most of its volume somewhere around "class seven."

Mika came close enough that he could smell perfume through the charge in the air, while her eyes went to the empty badge clip, then to the report sticking out of his bag, then to his face, where they stayed.

"So you appear out of nowhere, stop my repossession, and scare the man with the truck," she said, tipping her head, half amusement, half something warier, "which is a lot of entrance for somebody who looks like he lost a meeting."

"The meeting lost me," Ryan said, watching the hand she kept flat under the jacket.

Her eyebrow went up, because she’d caught him watching her hand.

"Mm. So are you another creditor," she asked, "or is this just how my night’s going?"