Eternity Decay

A SURPLUS TO BE PAID

The stench of gunpowder, thick grease, and rusting iron was the first thing to assault Axel’s senses as his consciousness slowly drifted back.

He could no longer hear the steady drum of rain. Above him, a cracked concrete ceiling crisscrossed with leaking steam pipes signaled his location: deep within the bowels of the earth, the Lower District.

Axel attempted to move his right arm, but a sharp, agonizing ache shot straight to his marrow. Instinctively, he glanced down at his wrist. 29 Days, 21 Hours, 14 Seconds.

The numbers were no longer flashing a menacing red. Instead, they glowed a stable, solid green. Someone had injected a fresh surplus of lifespan into his system, stabilizing the Chronos Decay that had nearly crushed his heart a few hours ago.

“Don’t move too much unless you want your heart valves to burst.”

A cold yet familiar female voice cut through the billowing smoke of a soldering iron. A woman with short hair tied back haphazardly stepped into view. Rhea. She wore decorative cargo pants stained with hull oil, her safety goggles still resting on her forehead. In her hand, she wielded a pair of hydraulic-powered pliers.

Axel forced himself up into a sitting position on the metal examination table. His tactical black frock coat, torn open at the chest, had been stripped away, leaving only a black undershirt wrapping his bruised torso. His mother’s silver necklace remained tightly clutched in his left hand.

“You injected bootleg Time Core into me, Rhea?” Axel asked, his voice raw and raspy. “Where did you get a thirty-day surplus overnight? This district doesn't even have enough time to run the power generators for a week.”

Rhea didn't answer immediately. She tossed her pliers onto the table with a loud, metallic clang, then glared at Axel with eyes that burned with a mixture of fury and profound exhaustion.

“You should be thanking whatever is left of your luck that you're still breathing, Axel! You fell from the Upper District sky like a piece of tower wreckage. If Angga hadn't risked his entire career to steal a quota from the sub-sector’s Time Bank tonight, you’d already be a corpse rotting in the gutters!”

Axel narrowed his eyes. Angga. He knew the man, a two-faced, low-level operational manager at the Lower District Time Bank who had been eyeing Rhea for a long time.

Axel knew exactly how Eternity Corp’s logistics security worked; he was the one who had designed its encryption architecture. It was utterly impossible for a bottom-feeder like Angga to breach a cyber-vault without triggering a mass-purge alarm.

Then, Axel remembered. Right before he blacked out in the disposal chute, his left hand had managed to hack into the tower’s residual emergency terminal. Using his highest-level authority bypass protocol, AXEL-01, he had rerouted the surplus operational time directly into the Lower District's grid. He had done it entirely to ensure Rhea’s clinic wouldn't be seized this morning.

But now, Angga was twisting the facts, claiming the credit for himself.

Before Axel could utter a word, the clinic's sliding door was violently thrown open. Angga strode in, wearing a formal dress shirt with the sleeves intentionally torn a bit, swaggering as if he were a hero returning from the front lines.

“Rhea, thank goodness the lifespan supply adapted well to this cripple’s body,” Angga said, letting out a theatrical, forced gasp for air. He threw a demeaning glance at Axel. “You know, Axel? To save your useless life, I had to falsify a logistics audit report. If Headquarters finds out, it’s my head on a platter. You owe me your life.”

Rhea gazed at Angga with a look of pure, genuine gratitude, a sight that made Axel’s jaw tighten.

“Thank you, Angga. This district won't forget what you did,” Rhea said softly, before turning a sharp, icy glare toward Axel. “Look at you, Axel. You go up there and come back as dying trash, and the very man you always dismissed as a corporate rat is the one who saved you. You don't even have the right to be arrogant here anymore.”

Axel balled his left hand into a fist until his knuckles turned white. The sting of betrayal by his family in the Upper District hadn't even faded, and now, in the Lower District, he had to swallow the bitter pill of being insulted by the very people he had secretly saved.

Let it go, Axel’s inner monologue echoed, cold and calculating. If I open my mouth right now and reveal that I was the one who cracked the bank's encryption, Eternity Corp's radar will lock onto this clinic's coordinates within seconds. Let this dog bark and enjoy his stage. I have twenty-nine days left, and I don't have time to beg for recognition.

Axel reached for his black tactical frock coat on the back of the chair, gave it a light shake, and slid it back on. He buttoned the long coat tightly all the way up to his throat, burying his emotions and his physical wounds beneath the stiff, dark fabric.

“I’m leaving,” Axel said flatly, his voice as cold as ice.

“Leaving where?!” Rhea snapped, blocking his path at the door. “Your body hasn't even stabilized! Angga sacrificed his position just to give you thirty days, and you're just going to throw it away on the streets?”

“I never asked this bank dracula to beg for time on my behalf, Rhea,” Axel replied, without giving Angga so much as a glance. He looked straight into Rhea’s eyes. “And as for you... save your tears for the day this city’s system stops ticking.”

Axel slid the clinic door open and stepped out into the dark, damp corridor of the Lower District. He left behind a furious, frozen Rhea and a smugly smiling Angga. Axel knew the game of cat-and-mouse with his father had just begun, and he needed to forge his weapons immediately.