Instant Wealth System

Chapter 3

 

The digits hung in the air, cold and unyielding, layered over the drab reality of the hospital room like a hologram. A spectral interface, impossibly sharp, burned itself into the back of his eyes.

WEALTH ASCENSION SYSTEM ONLINE

User: Mark Faye

Status: RECALIBRATING... HOST VITALITY CRITICAL

Mandate: Capital is the only truth. Ascend.

TASK 1: SETTLE OUTSTANDING DEBT OF $864,329.18.

TIME LIMIT: 4 HOURS.

REWARD UPON SUCCESS: $5,000,000.00

PENALTY FOR FAILURE: PERMANENT SYSTEM DEACTIVATION.

No. A stress hallucination. One last, vicious joke from an oxygen-starved brain. He squeezed his eyes shut, counted slowly to three. When he opened them, the blue text was still there, throbbing faintly like a dying star. Five million. It was an answer to a prayer he'd never dared to speak. But the first step was impossible—a cliff he had to climb alone.

A frantic, improbable hope, thin and cutting as a splinter of glass, nicked the numbness in his chest. What if…? He crushed it instantly. Madness. But the clock was real. The debt was real. And some small, starving part of him—the part that had not, in the end, stayed under the water—decided to act as though it were true.

9:20 AM. The clock was already running.

His phone, dried out but dead, was useless. The wall phone beside his bed was his only instrument. Hands still trembling from the IV and the receding shock, he dialed billing.

"I need to make a payment," he rasped. "A large one. I have… an app."

A disinterested clerk read him the portal details. For the next twenty minutes, Mark became a ghost moving through the machinery of finance. He downloaded every instant-loan app he could type in: SwiftFund, ClearDebt, SecondChance Lending.

Each wanted the same things. Social Security number. Employment history. Annual income.

Status: UNEMPLOYED.

Annual Income: $0.00

Outstanding Debts: $1,364,329.18 (the half-million owed to Marilyn now part of his digital tombstone).

The rejections were instant, automated, almost polite.

"DECLINED: Debt-to-Income Ratio Exceeds Tolerance."

"DECLINED: Unstable Employment Record."

"DECLINED: High-Risk Applicant."

10:12 AM. Nearly an hour gone. Panic hummed in his chest like a live wire. The System's interface glowed on, indifferent. TIME REMAINING: 3 HOURS, 8 MINUTES.

He had to call a person. A real, living person who hated him.

His finger hung over the first contact. His brother. Victor.

It rang twice.

"Victor Faye."

"Victor. It's Mark."

The silence stretched so long he thought the line had dropped. Then a low, poisonous chuckle. "No. Impossible. The bridge jumper. The nurses called the house to say you were awake. I was holding out for a coma."

"I need help."

"You've needed help since the day you were born. A professional intervention. What is it this time? Bus fare? A referral to a taller bridge?"

Mark's fist tightened in the sheet. "A loan. Eight hundred and sixty-five thousand. Just for a few hours. I'll pay back double by sundown. You have my word."

Victor's laugh was short, sharp, and entirely without heat. "Your word? Your word is what you gave Father when you promised to take your place at Faye Industries. Your word is what you gave Marilyn when you said 'til death.' Your word is the single most worthless currency on the planet. You are a walking, breathing breach of contract. You are not my brother. You are this family's most expensive and most embarrassing mistake. Die in debt, Mark. It's the only thing you've ever been good for."

Click.

The dial tone buzzed against his ear, a jeering counterpoint to his hammering pulse. The slap landed so hard his ears rang. A mistake. An embarrassment. Worthless.

10:47 AM. He scrolled to another number. Lacey. Marilyn's younger sister. The girl whose sweet-sixteen party he'd quietly paid for when Marilyn's father lost a major client. Thirty thousand dollars out of his own savings, so she could have the princess night she'd dreamed of. Marilyn never found out.

"Hello?"

"Lacey. It's Mark."

A long, theatrical exhale. "Mark. My sister warned me you were harassing people from your hospital bed. Are you calling to beg me for pity?"

"I need a loan. A large one. Just for today. I'll pay you back triple. Please, Lacey. I paid for your sixteenth birthday. All of it. The dress, the hall, the band. You remember."

The silence changed. It went cold, calculating.

"I remember," she said, her voice dropping to a vicious murmur. "I remember my sister crying for a week because she thought our father had pulled it off for me. I remember letting her believe it. And I remember you—little Mark—thinking that bought you some permanent corner of my heart. It bought you one party's worth of silence. That debt is settled. You want money from me now? Get on your knees. Crawl to my sister's new penthouse and beg her billionaire fiancé for crumbs. You're not family. You're what we scrape off the bottom of a shoe. Don't ever call me again, you pathetic parasite."

Click.

This slap was worse. It didn't merely reject him; it poisoned a clean memory, turned his one secret act of kindness into fresh grounds for contempt. He felt filthy.

11:23 AM. Time was bleeding out. He thought of Ben, his oldest friend from before Marilyn. The guy he'd shared a walk-up with. Then he remembered: he still owed Ben twelve hundred dollars from five years back. A "loan"—Ben had fronted a security deposit. Mark had never repaid it. Calling him now would be an insult stacked on an injury.

But he had no choice. He dialed.

"Ben? It's Mark Faye."

"…I know who it is. My phone says 'Deadbeat.' What do you want?"

"I'm in a bad spot. I need—"

"You're always in a bad spot, Mark. The spot is being you. You need money. You always need money. You needed twelve hundred five years ago. Remember? You swore you'd have it back in a month. I saw the news. You tried to check out. Couldn't even get that right. Now you're ringing me for more? Here's my offer: you wire me my twelve hundred right now, with five years of interest, and maybe I won't change my number. That's the only transaction we will ever have again."

Mark had nothing. The shame burned on his face like fever. "I don't have it."

"Then you have nothing I want. Lose this number. Permanently."

The line went dead. Another door slammed shut—this one he'd locked himself.

12:02 PM. His phone, now charging on a cord he'd begged off an orderly, buzzed violently against the bedsheet. An unlisted number with an area code he knew too well. Marilyn's private line.

He answered, a moth to the flame.

"You stupid, entitled worm." Her voice was a whip of pure fury, so sharp it crackled. "You call my sister? You harass my family from your suicide ward? What is wrong with you?"

"Marilyn, I just needed—"

"You needed to stay dead! That was the one useful thing you could have done! Instead you're here, a rotting piece of my past, trying to leech off my present. Listen to me. You have nothing I want. You are nothing I remember. The next time you call anyone in my life—my sister, my lawyer, my florist—I will not have you fired. I will have you erased. I will buy the building you sleep in and have it bulldozed with you inside. I will finish what that river started. Do you understand me, Mark? This is your final warning. Be a ghost, or I will make you one."

She hung up.

The threat wasn't hysterical. It was calm, corporate, entirely believable. The last, definitive slap. His very existence was an insult to her. She wished the river had finished its work.

Mark sat in the quiet, the echo of her promise in his ears. He was out of numbers. Out of hope. Out of time.

TIME REMAINING: 49 MINUTES.

Then, from the bottom of a memory long buried, a face rose. Not his father's brother. His mother's. Uncle Darius. The one who'd built his own empire in shipping and freight, who despised Fredrick Faye and everything about his "sterile little pill kingdom." The black sheep who'd winked at a ten-year-old Mark and said, "Remember, kid—real power isn't in a bottle. It's in the container ship."

Mark had never called him. Not once in ten years.

With numb fingers he dialed information, got a line to Robertson Maritime Group, asked for Darius Robertson.

A minute of hold music later, a voice answered. Deep, roughened by cigars and salt wind. "Darius."

"Uncle Darius. It's Mark. Mark Faye."

A long pause. "Linsday's boy?"

"Yes."

"Why are you calling me?"

"I need eight hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars. Today. Within the hour. I will pay back two million by five o'clock tonight."

Another pause, filled by the flick of a lighter, a long slow inhale. "A two-hundred-thirty percent return in five hours. Either you've lost your mind, or you've found a goose that lays gold. Terms are non-negotiable. You pay back two million today. Not tomorrow. Today, by five. If you fail, the debt doesn't double. You don't get more time. I send my people. And they don't repossess your car. They take the debt out of your flesh. Do you understand the nature of this agreement, nephew?"

It wasn't a loan. It was a bargain with a devil. Failure meant being maimed or killed by his own uncle's men.

"I understand."

"Wire the details to this number. The money will come."

Mark relayed his own banking information. At 12:56 PM, his phone buzzed.

ALERT: Wire Transfer Received: $865,000.00.

He stared. The wild hope roared up again, a terrifying tide. He clung to denial. A mistake. A bank error. But he moved.

He climbed out of bed, IV pole rattling behind him, and made his way to the nurses' station. Linda was there, typing with sharp, irritated strokes. She looked up, her face settling into its familiar mask of weary contempt.

"You're not supposed to be up. Get back in that room before I call security."

Mark said nothing. He turned the phone screen toward her—the wire confirmation—then pulled up the hospital payment portal on the station's public terminal, his fingers moving with a calm he did not feel. He entered the account, the staggering sum, and hit AUTHORIZE.

Linda's eyes flicked from his hollow face to the screen. He watched the journey cross her expression: annoyance, confusion, then dawning, disbelieving comprehension as the payment cleared. Her mouth, always primed with a cutting line, hung slightly open. No sound came. She was utterly, completely silenced—every poverty-based insult rendered obsolete and absurd by the transaction finalizing in front of her.

Mark turned and walked back to his room, leaving her in stunned silence.

1:08 PM. A notification: Payment of $864,329.18 Accepted. Account Balance: $0.00.

He sagged back against the pillows. Done. The denial shattered. This was real.

A heartbeat later, a deeper vibration shook the phone. Not a notification. The sound of destiny arriving.

ALERT: Wire Transfer Received: $5,000,000.00.

The blue screen in his vision shimmered and reformed.

TASK 1: COMPLETE.

REWARD: $5,000,000.00 TRANSFERRED.

NEXT TASK: PENDING.

AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTION.

He couldn't absorb it. Five million dollars. The System had not lied. He opened a transfer immediately.

$2,000,000.00 to the account his uncle had wired from.

It went through at 1:13 PM. Seven minutes before his absolute deadline.

He'd paid back the devil. He was left with roughly $3,000,000.00, and a soul that felt scored by every word ever hurled at him.

He got out of bed. His body ached, but pain was an old friend now. He changed into his damp, rank clothes—the fabric a shroud for the man he'd been.

He walked out of the room, past the nurses' station. Linda looked up, mouth opening to spit more venom.

He met her eyes. She saw no despair, no fear, no shame. She saw nothing. A flat, quiet void where her insults could not reach.

She closed her mouth, frowning, unnerved by the silence in his gaze.

Mark Faye pushed through the hospital doors into the afternoon light. He was three million dollars rich. He was free of the hospital's debt.

And he was carved hollow by the hatred of everyone he had ever loved.

The System was quiet in his mind.

It had given him the first tool. Money.

Now he would need the second thing it had promised: the power to answer every single slap. Not with a shout, but with a silence so devastating it would sound like the end of the world to those who had laughed at him.