"Move. Now," Elara commanded.
I didn't argue. My heart was still hammering against my ribs, and the metallic tang of the scavenger's blood was thick in the air. I scrambled to my feet, my legs feeling like lead.
"Where are we going?" I hissed, stumbling after her as she sprinted toward the back of the alley, scaling a chain-link fence with the grace of a cat.
"To a Dead Zone," she shouted over her shoulder. "The Bank just registered a 'Time Transfer' through violence. That means a Collector is already en route to your coordinates to audit the transaction."
"Audit? I just killed a man to save my own life!"
Elara paused at the top of the fence, looking down at me with a chillingly blank expression. "The Bank doesn't care about 'why,' Kael. They care about the balance. You took eight seconds from the system. Now, they're coming to take their interest."
As if on cue, the temperature in the alley dropped forty degrees. My breath hitched in my throat, turning into a white mist. Behind us, the air began to ripple like heat waves on a highway, distorted and wrong. A tall, spindly figure began to materialize out of the shadows. It wore a long, tattered grey coat and a porcelain mask with no eyes—only a jagged, painted-on smile.
In its hand was a heavy, rusted iron lantern.
[Warning: High-Tier Entity Detected.]
[Entity: Junior Collector - Unit 74]
[Status: Auditing...]
My wrist pulsed a frantic, burning red. [00:42:10]...
"Jump, you idiot!" Elara yelled.
I lunged for the fence, my fingers catching the wire. I hauled myself over just as a cold, spectral chain whipped through the air, shattering the brickwork where my head had been a second ago. I landed hard on the other side, rolling into a pile of trash.
We didn't stop. We ran through a maze of backstreets, Elara weaving through the urban decay with practiced ease. Finally, she ducked into the basement of a derelict clock factory. The smell of oil and dry rot was suffocating.
She slammed the heavy steel door and slid a deadbolt home. On the door, a strange symbol was carved—a circle with a line through the center. As soon as the door closed, the frantic pulsing on my wrist slowed down.
"We're safe. For now," Elara panted, leaning against the wall. "This is a Dead Zone. The dampening runes on the door mask your Time Signature. The Collector will lose the scent."
I slumped to the floor, staring at the glowing numbers on my wrist. [00:38:12].
"Explain it to me," I demanded, my voice cracking. "Everything. If I'm going to die in thirty-eight minutes, I want to know why."
Elara sighed, sliding down the wall to sit opposite me. She pulled out a small, silver flask and took a sip. "You died, Kael. The 'How' doesn't matter. But your soul had enough 'Residual Will' to trigger the Chronos System. The Bank revived you, but nothing is free. They gave you a one-hour loan of Life Force."
"And to pay it back?"
"You can't. Not really," she said, a dark smile playing on her lips. "The interest rate is 10% of your total time every hour. To survive, you have to keep your balance above zero. You do that by harvesting time from others, or by completing 'Tasks' issued by the System."
I looked at the black band on her wrist. "And you? You don't have a timer."
She reached for the band but stopped. "I'm... different. I don't play by their rules. But you? You're a Level 1 Borrower. Right now, you're just prey."
Suddenly, a blue holographic screen flickered into existence in front of my eyes.
[New Task Assigned!]
[Type: Survival]
[Objective: The Collector has marked you. Escape the Audit or Eliminate the Auditor.]
[Time Reward: +24 Hours]
[Failure: Permanent Deletion]
"Twenty-four hours..." I whispered. That was a lifetime compared to what I had.
"Don't get excited," Elara warned, her eyes narrowing. "Eliminating a Collector is impossible for a Freshie. But... there is a way to cheat."
She stood up and walked toward me, her violet eyes glowing in the dim light. She reached out and grabbed my left hand. Her touch was ice-cold, but as soon as her fingers met my skin, my timer stopped.
[00:37:05] — Frozen.
"My ability," she whispered, her face inches from mine. "I can 'Freeze' the flow of time in a localized area. But it drains me. And it only works while we're... connected."
The air in the basement suddenly turned heavy. The sound of a bell—slow and rhythmic—echoed through the steel door.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
The Collector hadn't lost the scent. It was standing right outside.
"He's here," I whispered, my heart freezing.
"He can't get in through the runes," Elara said, but her hand was trembling. "Unless..."
The steel door, four inches of solid reinforced metal, began to glow cherry-red. It was melting. The Collector wasn't just auditing me anymore; it was using its own 'Time' to accelerate the decay of the door.
[Warning: The Collector is sacrificing 'Life Span' to force entry.]
[Estimated Time to Breach: 15 Seconds.]
Elara looked at me, a desperate look in her eyes. "Kael, listen to me. I have a skill that can blow that thing back to the Bank, but I don't have enough 'Time' to cast it. I'm running on empty."
"What do you need?" I asked, realizing where this was going.
"I need a loan," she said. "Transfer me thirty minutes. Now. If you don't, we both die when that door melts."
I looked at my wrist. 37 minutes left. If I gave her 30, I would have 7 minutes to live. If she failed, I was a dead man in seconds.
The door groaned, the metal dripping like wax. The eyeless porcelain mask of the Collector peered through the hole.
"Give me your hand," I growled.
[Transferring 00:30:00 to User: ELARA...]
[Transaction Confirmed.]
[Your Remaining Time: 00:07:02]
The world didn't just slow down this time—it turned inside out. Elara's skin began to glow with a blinding violet radiance. She let go of my hand and stepped toward the melting door, her hair floating as if underwater.
"Hey, Smiley," she spat at the Collector. "Check the exchange rate on this."
She slammed her palms together. A shockwave of purple energy erupted, screaming with the sound of a thousand ticking clocks.
The explosion threw me backward into the darkness. The last thing I saw was the Collector's mask shattering into a million pieces.
Then, silence.
I groaned, pushing a piece of debris off my chest. My head was spinning. "Elara?" I called out.
No answer.
I looked at my wrist, and my heart stopped.
The transfer had worked. The Collector was gone. But because the Collector was 'Destroyed' and not 'Harvested,' I didn't get the kill reward yet.
[Current Time: 00:00:59]
[00:00:58]
[00:00:57]
I had less than a minute to live. Elara was lying unconscious across the room, her own energy spent.
"Wake up!" I screamed, crawling toward her. "Elara! I'm going to zero!"
She didn't move.
[00:00:10]
[00:00:09]
My vision began to fade. The cold was coming back—the same cold from the 4th Avenue asphalt.
[00:00:03]
[00:00:02]
[00:00:01]
[00:00:00]
[HEART RATE: STOPPED]