His pulse kept beating against his temples in thick, ugly throbs, each one carrying a dull little stab of pain that felt like his body lodging an official complaint about how much alcohol it had been forced to swallow.
Elias Kane lifted a hand and rubbed at the side of his head, then gave it a small shake, trying to clear the haze.
The blur in front of him slowly settled into shape. Warm amber light washed over the room, soft enough to look almost cozy, but the noise leaking through the walls ruined any chance of that illusion holding. Heavy bass kept pounding from somewhere outside. A crowd moved with it in bursts, screaming, cheering, surging in rough waves that even excellent soundproofing could not fully smother.
Private club. Too much alcohol. A high-end room with the door closed and the party still pressing at the seams.
Elias needed less than a second to sort out where he was and what kind of situation he had woken up inside.
Then he caught sight of the black card lying directly in front of him.
His mind cleared all at once.
Experience told him that a card like that almost never came loaded with anything less than enough money to buy a thousand men like him without the owner ever noticing the loss.
Which meant, in practical terms, that somebody was trying to keep him.
Across from him, Liora Voss lifted her eyes a fraction, as if his reaction had gone exactly the way she expected. That made sense. Very few people stayed calm when that kind of money hit the table, and a young host boy who worked in a place like this was not the sort she expected to possess uncommon restraint. Men like that were usually easy. Money did the hard part for you.
"The first offer may have gone past you," she said, her tone lazy, smooth, and thoroughly sure of itself. "So I'll make it simple. There's five million dollars on that card. If you take it, it's yours. Spend it however you want. In return, for one year, you show up when I call and do exactly what I tell you."
At that, Elias looked up properly.
She sat deep in her chair with the easy posture of someone who had never needed to work for control because the room always handed it to her first. Her hands rested on the armrests, fingers loosely linked. The part that caught the eye most was her gaze. Her eyes had that fox-soft curve to them, the kind that made it look as though she might laugh at any second, even while the rest of her face stayed cool. Beautiful, flirtatious, and dangerous in a way that did not bother pretending to be either innocent or kind.
Now that is a face I can appreciate, Elias thought.
A flat mechanical voice rang through his head.
[Hello. System Theta at your service. Freezing time now.]
Elias stilled.
Then, with the ease of a man who had been through far stranger things than waking up drunk in a luxury suite, he asked, Where's Echo?
Echo had been his system. There was no reason the Division should have swapped it out without warning.
[One moment.]
The voice fell silent for a beat.
[This is a recorded message left by Echo.]
A different voice replaced it at once, lively and full of feeling in a way no machine had any business sounding.
"Elias, babe, if you're hearing this, I'm probably gone already. Well, not dead. Relax. My last world was my retirement mission, and we cleared it perfectly, which means I retired with honors. Beautiful, right?"
Elias stared ahead without blinking.
The recording kept going.
"You should be in your final world now, getting ready to finish your own retirement task. So try a little harder than usual, okay? Don't mess it up. I'm rooting for you."
The first voice returned.
[As you heard, Echo has retired. I will be your assigned system from this point forward.]
Elias slowly pressed a hand to his chest, his expression pained in a way that might have convinced someone much less familiar with him.
It betrayed the organization.
The fact that Echo had managed to retire one world before he did hurt worse than any failed mission ever had. Knowing someone else had crossed the finish line first made his own unfinished work feel personally insulting.
Even stripped of emotion, System Theta still managed to sound strangely considerate.
[Are you dissatisfied with my assignment? I can request another system.]
"Not necessary," Elias said, dropping the act just as quickly as he had put it on.
[Understood. Since this is your first task, please allow me to explain the mission parameters.]
Elias cut in immediately.
Hold on. Whose first task are we talking about?
[Mine.] There was a brief pause that somehow still felt polite. [I am aware that this is not your first assignment. You are one of the Trash Trope Intervention Division's top operatives. However, this is my beginner mission. If I complete it successfully, I receive a reward.]
Elias went quiet for a moment.
Then he gave a small nod.
Fair enough. Taking something off the Division's books is a good habit. I support professional growth.
He let System Theta run through the background, and unlike the first time he had ever heard this kind of thing, when the absurdity of it had actually managed to shock him, now he listened with the weary interest of a man who had long since developed a tolerance for nonsense.
A matriarchal world. Women above men, strong above weak, power written into the social order from top to bottom.
Honestly, once you got used to it, there were benefits.
In a world like this, rich women keeping men was not scandalous. It was routine. Which meant Elias did not have to waste energy manufacturing ways to approach his targets. Usually, when he opened his eyes in a new world, one of two things happened. Either the woman was already sitting right in front of him, like now, or he woke up midway through some deeply regrettable exploration of life's mysteries.
[Thank you for your cooperation. I have received my reward.] System Theta sounded almost pleased, even though the tone itself never changed. [Now loading the plot. Loading complete.]
Elias closed his eyes and let the flood of information settle into place.
The Division had once again lived up to its name.
The original owner of this body, now effectively Elias himself, had the standard tragic opening package. Orphaned young, taken in by a foster couple, raised in a home that had never been good but had occasionally risen as high as tolerable. They had at least managed to keep him in school, and like a proper protagonist built for maximum suffering, he had clawed his way into the most elite university in the world despite everything stacked against him.
There's definitely another scumbag woman waiting on campus, Elias thought.
He turned out to be right.
The foster mother drank too much, smoked too much, and then, after Elias got into Westbridge University, somehow found room in her life to become a gambling addict too. The little money the household had was already under strain. Gambling finished the job. Then his foster father collapsed from overwork and landed in the hospital, where he was diagnosed with a rare disease expensive enough to crush whatever was left.
Elias clicked his tongue softly in his mind.
That was practically a full debuff set. If you dropped an ordinary person into a setup like that, they were done. But a melodrama protagonist was never allowed the dignity of being ordinary. The original Elias had gone to work as a host boy, using his face, his body, and his tolerance for humiliation to make enough money to keep the whole rotten structure from collapsing in on itself.
And just when it looked like life might settle into something survivable, Serena Blackwood appeared.
She was exactly the kind of woman Elias associated with the title female CEO. Controlling. Possessive. Used to getting agreement before she finished speaking. She wore refinement like a second skin, which made her worse, not better. The money did not hurt either. Five million dollars was precisely the sort of number a woman like Serena would slide across a table as if generosity had anything to do with it.
Why him?
Because he looked too much like Lucien Hart, the untouchable white-moonlight ideal she wanted and could not have. Lucien was the one she would not dare damage. Elias, on the other hand, made for a convenient substitute.
Elias almost laughed.
Any woman with a functioning brain should have gone after the person she actually wanted. Instead, Serena had chosen the cheaper, uglier route and decided a stand-in would do.
And of course the original Elias had agreed.
Please. Who is saying no to five million dollars?
After a brief silence, Elias sighed inwardly.
Now I know why nobody interrupted to object. Echo is really gone. Keep going.
Serena, according to the loaded plot, was not the sort who flaunted her cruelty in obvious ways. She was a smiling knife. No matter how little she thought of Elias, no matter how close he sat in her mind to something disposable, she still treated him with perfect softness in daily life. She was elegant. Patient. Gentle enough to fool a man who wanted to be fooled.
That softness stopped mattering the second things moved to a bed.
At that point, Elias could only hope her learning curve had been decent enough to spare him some unnecessary suffering.
System Theta went silent for a beat.
If it had possessed eyebrows, Elias suspected one of them would have gone up.
Even so, the original Elias had failed to read anything wrong in the arrangement. Serena's daytime tenderness had been more than enough to make him overlook what happened at night. Gradually she became more attached to his body while her mind clung harder and harder to Lucien. The more she wanted the real thing, the more she began to despise the imitation.
Naturally, none of that stopped the original Elias from falling for her.
He got emotionally dependent first, then physically hungry for the same person who kept hurting him. His feelings had grown out of a rotten arrangement, but the plot insisted on treating them as pure. So pure, in fact, that despite everything between them, the two of them had not even kissed.
Then came the disaster.
One night Serena happened to be unusually gentle. The original Elias, overwhelmed by it, finally failed to hold back and leaned in to kiss her.
She slapped him off the bed hard enough to knock him unconscious.
Why? Not because he disgusted her. That would have been too simple. The real reason was that she had hesitated for a moment before rejecting him, and that hesitation felt, to her, like a betrayal of Lucien. She would never allow it.
Of course, Elias thought. Naturally.
The moment Serena realized she had developed even the slightest improper feeling toward her substitute, she cut the whole thing off with brutal efficiency and threw him out.
The original Elias woke up from the blow still feverish, still hurting, barely able to stand, and got dumped outside in that condition. He tried to drag himself back to his dorm at Westbridge University and collapsed before he made it.
That was when Giselle Frost found him.
She got him to the university health center in time and pulled him back from a very stupid death.
Elias opened his eyes at that point and gave a small clap against his palm.
There it is. I told you there'd be one at school too.
In the loaded memory, the first thing the original Elias saw after waking was a silver-haired beauty taking care of him.
Elias immediately put up a hand.
Pause for a second. Where did the silver hair come from?
This was not a fantasy realm. He was not surrounded by elves.
System Theta sounded genuinely puzzled by the question.
[Is there an issue? That is part of the setting.]
Elias had no answer to that.
After a moment, he accepted defeat.
Fine. Setting won.
Giselle's care, according to the story, had been almost absurdly attentive. Which was what made it worse. At Westbridge University she was famous for being untouchable, cold enough that most people barely dared approach her. Yet she had lowered herself to take care of him with a level of care that would have made anyone feel chosen.
The catch was exactly what Elias expected.
Giselle wanted Lucien too.
She could not have him, so she did what Serena had done and settled for the next closest thing. Another substitute. Another man she could be gentle with only because she was looking through him at someone else.
That was the point where Elias nearly laughed out loud.
The plot was so shameless it came full circle and kept going.
He tipped his chin toward the woman still frozen across from him.
Don't tell me she wants Lucien too.
[Correct.]
A slow smile spread over Elias's face.
Good. Then I'll start with her.
He had already begun to look forward to dealing with women like this properly.
[Please wait. You have not finished reviewing the plot.]
Elias lifted one finger to his lips.
Shh.
His mental voice came out light and soft.
Echo would never have said something like that. The rest of the plot will still be there in ten minutes. My mood is here right now, and I'm not wasting it. Understood?
System Theta went quiet.
Then, after a pause, it answered.
[Understood.]
Elias gave a small approving nod.
That's better. Echo retired, and you took its place, so learn fast. I'll teach you if you pay attention.
[Understood.]
Time started moving again.
Liora Voss watched him for another moment, then opened the drawer beside her and took out a contract thick enough to do damage if thrown properly.
"It seems you've decided," she said. "Then sign this and we can stop wasting time."
"I don't want it."
The words left Elias's mouth easily, almost lazily.
Liora's hand stopped in midair. Then her grip shifted, and instead of placing the contract down, she tossed it. The stack hit the table with a flat smack and slid to the edge, stopping only a breath away from falling.
She let out a soft laugh. The curve of her mouth was mocking, though those fox-shaped eyes still gave everything she did a faint trace of charm.
"What is it," she asked, "not enough?"
Apparently she had underestimated his appetite. That, in itself, did not bother her. Men like him were still easy to read. Ignorant, greedy, convinced they were clever. She had seen the type before.
Elias lifted a hand and pushed his hair back from his forehead.
The movement exposed his whole face under the warm light.
His skin was pale from youth rather than fragility, his features clean in the way that made people stare before they realized they were doing it. His eyes were bright and clear, too open-looking to be safe. His nose was straight, his mouth soft and red enough to look indecent without effort. There was something about him that felt almost unreal on first glance, as if somebody had drawn a beautiful boy too carefully and then made him breathe.
Liora's breathing hitched once, very slightly.
She did not like men. That had not changed. Still, even she had to admit that a face like his earned the right to negotiate.
"Then I can add more," she said.
"Ms. Voss," Elias cut in, calm and smiling, "this isn't about money."
In her mind, that only meant one thing.
It was absolutely about money. He had simply decided five million was not enough to make him fold quickly.
The smile at her mouth cooled.
She disliked people who were foolish enough to think small tricks counted as intelligence.
"Even if you raised it to ten million," Elias said, "my answer would still be the same."
He took the contract in both hands, straightened the pages with casual care, then leaned forward and placed it neatly back in front of her.
"It's not me pretending to be hard to get," he said. "I just happen to care about a certain kind of feeling. If it isn't there, I'm not selling my body to anybody."
Then he smiled wider, the expression suddenly bright and almost innocent. It made the small points of his canine teeth show. There was something shameless in the contrast between that clean, lovely face and the words that followed.
"But if I do like the woman in front of me," he said softly, "then I wouldn't mind letting her take my first time even if she was flat broke."