All Chapters of Karma Debt System: Payback Time: Chapter 11
- Chapter 20
69 chapters
A Diet of Sins
The handshake was brief. Her skin was freezing, like marble left out in the snow."Don't look so grim, Arlan," Viper said, pulling her hand back and sliding it into the pocket of her crimson coat. "You just survived a forty-story drop and made the untouchable Julian Mahendra cry on national television. You should be celebrating."Arlan didn't feel like celebrating. He felt like he had been chewed up and spat out by a garbage truck. His shoulder throbbed with a sickening, hot pulse where the bullet had grazed him."The envelope," Arlan grunted, nodding at the white paper lying on the dusty concrete."Ah, yes. Your signing bonus." Viper tapped her cigarette, the ash falling onto the tip of her designer boot. "Inside is a keycard to a safehouse in the Narrows. Untraceable. Stocked with medical supplies and enough calories to keep you standing. There’s also a burner phone. Keep it on."Arlan bent down to pick it up. The simple motion sent a shockwave of agony through
The Butcher's Bill
The Los Muertos Cartel didn’t hide their money in a bank. They hid it in a slaughterhouse on the edge of the Narrows. It made sense. The smell of rotting pork and bleach was strong enough to mask the scent of cocaine, and the sound of industrial meat saws drowned out the screams of anyone stupid enough to steal from them. Arlan crouched on the rusted fire escape of the building across the alley. The freezing rain whipped against his tactical jacket. His left shoulder—the one with the bullet graze—burned with a dull, rhythmic ache. Every time he shivered, it felt like a hot needle threading through his muscle. He pulled up the collar of his jacket and watched. Two guards at the loading dock. They were smoking, huddled under a flickering yellow bulb. They didn't look like professional mercenaries. They wore oversized hoodies and carried cheap, unregistered submachine guns slung loosely over their shoulders. Sloppy. Arlan reached into t
The House of Cards
The Thorne Estate didn't look like a sanctuary anymore. It looked like a war zone.Captain Elias Thorne coughed, spitting a mouthful of plaster dust onto his expensive Persian rug. His ears were ringing—a high-pitched, continuous squeal that drowned out everything except the deafening roar of automatic gunfire.Rat-tat-tat-tat!A spray of bullets tore through the grand mahogany front doors, shredding the wood into toothpicks. The cartel wasn't trying to breach tactically. They were trying to erase the house from the map.Thorne fired blindly over the edge of his overturned marble kitchen island. His Glock barked twice. He heard a scream from the lawn, but he didn't care to check. He dropped the empty magazine, his hands slick with his own sweat, and jammed a fresh one in."Dispatch!" Thorne screamed into his phone, the screen cracked from when he dropped it. "Where is my backup?! I have multiple hostiles! Heavy weapons!""Captain, units are en route! ETA thre
The Devil's Currency
The duffel bag hit the concrete floor of the safehouse with a heavy, wet thud. Arlan locked the reinforced steel door, throwing all three deadbolts. He didn't take off his tactical jacket. He just slid down the wall, his breathing ragged, his left arm hanging uselessly at his side. The surgical glue had held, but the shoulder was inflamed, radiating a sickening heat. He stared at the canvas bag. It was stained with cartel blood and smelled like a slaughterhouse, but inside was his salvation. He unzipped it with his good hand. Stacks of hundred-dollar bills spilled out, bound in rubber bands. Dirty money. Blood money. "System," Arlan croaked, his throat dry. "Count it." [ SYSTEM INVENTORY ASSIST. ] [ Estimated Value: $3,250,000 USD. ] Three million dollars. Most people would take the bag, buy a private island, and disa
The Rust Grid
For forty-eight hours, Arlan did nothing but sleep and eat. He didn't check the news. He didn't answer Viper’s burner phone. He ordered five rare steaks from a high-end delivery service using the Cartel’s dirty money, ate them like a starving wolf, and slept until his body stopped feeling like shattered glass. When he finally woke up on the third day, the air in the safehouse felt different. Still. Quiet. He walked to the bathroom mirror. The boy who had been kicked in the alley was completely gone. The man staring back had cold, calculating eyes. "System," Arlan said, splashing freezing water on his face. "Status." [ HOST STATUS REPORT ] [ Level: 3 (The Auditor) ] [ Physical Condition: Optimal (100%) ] [ Karma Balance: 36,550 Points. ] [ Active Skills: CQC Mastery (Lvl 1), Sin Reader (Lvl 1), Digital Intrusion (Lvl 1). ] Thirty-six thousand points. He was rich in the currency of the
A Price in Blood
Elias Vance—Rook—couldn't stop staring at his hands.He sat in the center of the sprawling, minimalist penthouse that Arlan had secured with the Cartel’s dirty money. The floor-to-ceiling windows offered a panoramic view of Veridian City, but Rook didn't care about the skyline. He cared about the way his knuckles cracked when he formed a fist. He cared about the phantom heat still tingling in his nerve endings.Clack. Clack. Clack.His fingers danced across the mechanical keyboard. He was typing just to feel the resistance of the keys. It was a beautiful, chaotic symphony."Don't wear them out," Arlan said, stepping out of the shadows of the hallway. He was wiping down the barrel of the Cartel Glock with an oily rag. The metallic scent of gun oil mixed with the smell of the black coffee resting on Rook’s desk."I'm stress-testing them, Boss," Rook grinned, taking a long drag from a vapor-pen. "Besides, I need to stretch if I'm going to carve into the Mahendra Cor
The Ghost of Sector 7
The air in the abandoned Sector 7 subway expansion didn't just feel cold; it felt entirely dead. It was a tomb of forgotten urban promises. Twenty years ago, the city had planned to connect the Financial District to the deep industrial zones, but funding dried up, leaving behind a cavernous, subterranean labyrinth of reinforced concrete, rusted scaffolding, and stagnant pools of black water. The only sounds were the hollow, rhythmic dripping of condensation from the vaulted ceilings and the distant, muffled rumble of the active trains miles above. Arlan Mahendra stood in the center of the unfinished boarding platform, his boots ankle-deep in the freezing muck. He didn't seek cover behind the massive, graffiti-covered support pillars. He didn't crouch in the shadows of the abandoned ticket kiosks. He stood perfectly still in the open, breathing slowly, letting the biting chill seep into his tactical jacket. He was waiting. "System," Arlan whisp
Bleeding the Leviathan
The elevator doors to the penthouse slid open with a soft, expensive chime, a stark contrast to the smell of copper, gunpowder, and charred flesh that flooded the pristine hallway. Arlan Mahendra stepped out. He didn't walk with the confident stride of an action hero returning from a triumphant battle. He leaned heavily against the glass wall, dragging his left leg slightly. His tactical jacket was torn at the ribcage, the fabric stiff with dried, dark blood. But it was his left hand that looked the worst. The skin across his palm and fingers was blistered, raw, and peeling—a gruesome, angry red from gripping the glowing-hot suppressor of the mercenary's rifle. "Holy shit," Rook breathed, spinning his wheelchair away from his bank of monitors. The hacker’s face went pale under the blue glow of the screens. "Boss... you look like you crawled out of a meat grinder." "I won the argument," Arlan rasped, his voice sounding like two stones grinding together.
The Weight of Souls
The scent of St. Jude’s Hospital had changed. It used to smell like despair. Like cheap bleach, stale coffee, and the quiet, suffocating panic of families who couldn't afford another night of life support. Now, standing on the top floor of the VIP Penthouse Recovery Wing, the air smelled of fresh lavender, ionized oxygen, and expensive, sterile silence. Arlan Mahendra stood outside Suite 701. He didn't just walk in. He took a full three minutes in the pristine, marble-tiled restroom down the hall to scrub the remnants of the night from his skin. He had washed the dried blood from his neck, scrubbing until his skin was raw. He had thrown away the torn, blood-soaked tactical jacket in a dumpster miles away, replacing it with a simple, clean black hoodie he bought from a 24-hour convenience store. He carefully adjusted the thick gauze wrapped around his severely burned left hand, hiding it deep inside his hoodie pocket. He couldn't let her see th
The Hollow Crown
The Blackwood Hills Estate was designed to be a fortress of absolute luxury. Nestled deep within a private, old-growth forest, the sprawling, three-story mansion boasted imported Italian marble floors, vaulted ceilings painted with Renaissance-style frescoes, and windows made of ballistic glass. It was a monument to the Mahendra family’s untouchable wealth. Tonight, however, it felt like a mausoleum. Outside, a violent thunderstorm raged, the torrential rain hammering against the reinforced glass like thousands of angry, accusing fingers. Lightning flashed, casting jagged, elongated shadows across the empty grand foyer. Julian Mahendra sat on the floor of his father’s expansive mahogany study, his back pressed hard against the heavy oak doors. His breathing was shallow, frantic, and loud in the suffocating silence of the abandoned house. He looked nothing like the Golden Boy of Ve