RECLAIMING THE INTEREST

I didn't bother making coffee. I didn't need the jittery, false energy of caffeine anymore. Instead, I stood by the kitchen island and watched the bread knife. It was a simple serrated blade, but under the influence of the LUS, it seemed to vibrate with a low-frequency hum that only I could feel.

[Predator's Mark: Level 1 Initializing.] LUS whispered. [Target proximity detected: 2.2 miles. Estimated arrival: 14 minutes. Recommendation: Secure the perimeter. Assets at risk.]

I looked around my apartment. It was a clean space, too clean. It was the home of a woman who spent her weekends volunteering and her evenings worrying about whether Jason felt supported. It was a room full of vulnerabilities.

I walked to the hallway closet and pulled out the heavy tool kit Jason had borrowed and never returned. I didn't need him to return it anymore. I knew where he kept it in his trunk. But I had my own spares.

I began to move with a liquid grace that shouldn't have belonged to a human body. I wasn't thinking about the steps. I was reacting to the flash of memory from my death. I knew which windows the gray-skinned things would break first. I knew which door hinges would fail under the pressure of a dozen rotting bodies.

As I worked, the LUS interface flickered in the corner of my vision like a ghost trapped in the current.

[Mission Progress: 20%. Assets identified: $12,400 in hidden safe. 48 gallons of potable water. 120 days of dry rations.] [Note: The 'Jason' entity currently possesses 62% of your mobile assets. Reclaim is mandatory for survival.]

The doorbell rang.

It was a cheerful, ordinary sound, the kind that usually meant a pizza delivery or a neighbor asking for mail. Today it sounded like an accusation.

I checked the mirror one last time. I let my shoulders slump. I practiced the tremble in my hands, a flawless mimicry of the woman who had died on 4th Street.

File it, I told myself. The softness. The uncertainty. The mask.

I opened the door.

Jason stood there, looking exactly like the man I'd once loved. He had a practiced smile on his face, the one he used when he was about to ask for something he didn't intend to earn. Behind him, Cami stood half-hidden in the hallway, her eyes darting around the apartment with that same leeching curiosity she always had.

"Audrey, hey!" Jason stepped inside without waiting for an invitation, his hand already reaching for my shoulder in a gesture he thought was tender. "You're a lifesaver, babe. Seriously. That mechanic was such a jerk; I thought I was gonna have to leave the car there overnight."

I let him touch me. His hand was warm, so obscenely, humanly warm, and it made my skin crawl with the memory of him prying my fingers off the SUV door.

"I'm just glad you're okay," I said, my voice small and harmless. I looked past him to Cami. "Hi, Cami. I'm so glad you could make it. We have so much to talk about."

Cami gave me a tight, insincere smile. "I hope it's not a bad time, Audrey. Jason said it was important."

"It is," I whispered, leading them toward the kitchen, where the bread knife sat under the morning light. "It's about the math of the future. I think I finally found the solution."

[Warning: Host Heartbeat Rising.] LUS hummed. [Predatory Instincts at 88%. Mission: Reclaim Assets. Target: Jason. Method: Direct Confrontation.]

Jason laughed, a rich baritone that seemed to vibrate against my spine. "You and your math, Audrey. Always overcomplicating things. Just give me the cash and we can go get some lunch, okay? My treat."

I stopped at the island. I didn't reach for the knife. Not yet. I just looked at him, really looked at him, with my deep salt eyes.

"The thing is, Jason," I said, the tremble in my voice fading into something colder, something that sounded like the tide dragging stones under. "I did the arithmetic again this morning. And I realized that for the last three years, I've been paying interest on a debt I never actually owed."

Jason's smile faltered. He tilted his head, the tilt of a man who'd just realized the prey had stopped running. "What are you talking about?"

"The $500," I said. "The rent. The gas. The water." I leaned in close enough to breathe him in, the scent of his expensive cologne and his cowardice. "I'm not investing in you anymore, Jason. It’s time for me to collect the interest.”

For a second, nobody moved. Then Jason laughed again, but it came out thin this time, missing its usual bottom. "Okay. Okay, you're freaking me out a little. Is this a joke? Did I forget something? Your birthday isn't until, what, September?"

"It's not a joke." I let the silence sit there until it started to cost him something. "I want you to think very carefully about the last three years. Every time I covered you. Every time I told myself it was temporary."

"Audrey, come on." His voice climbed, the practiced tenderness curdling into something more familiar, more useful to me. Irritation. Entitlement. The real him, finally surfacing without an audience to perform for. "I don't have time for a guilt trip. I've got somewhere to be."

"You always do."

Behind him, Cami had gone very still. She wasn't looking at the knife on the island, not yet, but her eyes had started cataloging exits the way mine used to catalog his lies. She was smarter than Jason. She always had been. That was what made her dangerous, and it was also what was about to make her useful.

"Audrey." Cami's voice was careful now, stripped of its earlier insincerity. "What's going on with your eyes?"

Jason turned to look at me properly for the first time since he'd walked in, and I watched the recognition arrive too late, the way it always did with him. The smoky gray at the edges of my irises. The stillness in my hands that used to shake for him.

[Mission Update: Target Awareness Rising.] LUS's voice slid through my spine like cold water finding a crack. [Recommend immediate action. Window for compliance closing. 40% asset reclaim available through negotiation. 100% available through force.]

"There isn't a version of this where you get to walk out with the cash and pretend nothing happened," I said, and I meant it for both of them. "I've already run the numbers, Jason. I know exactly what I'm owed, and I know exactly what it's going to cost you to pay it."

Jason took a step back toward the door, his hand fumbling for Cami's wrist instead of mine this time. "Cami. Cami, we're leaving."

"There isn't room, Jason." I let the words land exactly the way his had that gray afternoon on 4th Street, and I watched something in his face come apart when he heard his own math handed back to him. "Three people is just arithmetic we can't solve. Isn't that what you said?"

The bread knife hummed against the counter, patient and unhurried, the way old water waits for anything that still has a heartbeat. I grabbed it.

[Predator's Mark: Level 1 Complete.] LUS whispered, almost gentle now. [Reclaim initiated. Host, the interest is due.]

Cami screamed first.