Chapter 4: Everything Has A Price

I sat staring at the empty space where the panel had been, still half in a daze at what I had just pulled off. The system had passed its first test, and it had worked flawlessly. I sank onto the edge of my bed and tilted my head to one side, running a thumb along my jaw while my thoughts spun in circles.

I still had no idea why I had this system or where it had come from, and I decided that question could wait. What mattered was that it belonged to me now, and I intended to use every bit of it to prepare for what was coming.

First, I needed to understand exactly what I was working with. I closed my eyes and whispered, "System," and a chime answered almost instantly.

Ding!

The panel reappeared, and I remembered I had been in the middle of exploring it before Marie's pounding had cut me off. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, the writing on the screen shifted on its own.

Host, would you like to continue? a voice asked inside my head at the same moment the words appeared, and I nodded and selected yes, going back to the beginning and pausing again on my stats.

Host: Serelle Vale. Status: Alive. Age: twenty three years. Level: one. Influence Points: zero. Experience: zero out of one hundred. Mind Push: level one, one daily use remaining out of two. Resistance Penetration: five percent. Inventory: unbound. System Shop: locked. Current Timeline: three months before the apocalypse. Countdown: eighty nine days, sixteen hours, forty three minutes and counting.

I read every line slowly this time, letting each detail settle, and my gaze caught on the word Inventory, beside which sat a small black, almond shaped jade icon.

"What is that?" I asked.

The Inventory is the host's storage space.

"Then why is it unbound?"

The host has not yet obtained the jade containing the storage space. Once the host acquires the jade and completes the binding process, the Inventory will link automatically to the Mind Control System, allowing the host to stockpile unlimited supplies.

I nodded slowly, and a memory from my old life surfaced without warning. During the apocalypse, there had been rumors of certain survivors who never seemed to run out of anything, people who had food and medicine long after everyone else had run dry, and the popular explanation had been that they stockpiled everything before the collapse. Nobody had ever believed it, because the acid rain destroyed every warehouse it touched, and whatever survived the rain was usually finished off by the fires that followed. I had been one of the many who dismissed it as nonsense.

"Can anything destroy this storage space?" I asked, needing to be certain.

No. The storage space exists outside physical reality and cannot be seen, entered, or damaged by anyone other than the bound host.

Hearing that, I understood immediately that the old rumor had been true all along.

"How do I bind it to myself?"

Once the host's blood makes contact with the jade, the binding process begins automatically.

With that answered, I moved through the rest of the system's functions one by one, but once I had reviewed everything available to me, I leaned back against my pillow as the panel faded from view. I had knowledge of the apocalypse and time to prepare for it, but I had almost no money to make that preparation possible.

Where was I supposed to get money without a job? I blew out a breath and dragged a hand through my hair, chewing my lip as ideas turned over in my mind. Then something clicked into place, and I sat up straight, eyes bright.

I had a mind control system now. I could make people hand their money over willingly. I could deceive them without a shred of guilt if that was what it took to drain their accounts.

Who said I owed anyone honesty? When had the world ever once been fair to me?

If my old life had taught me anything, it was that kindness got good people killed first while selfish people survived to see another morning. To make it through what was coming, I needed a hard heart, not a clean conscience. I would not warn a single stranger about what was coming. I would survive by taking whatever I needed, scams included, and I refused to feel bad about it.

Besides, in three months every dollar in every bank account would be worthless to people who had not prepared for what was coming. Rather than let all that money rot uselessly in accounts nobody would ever spend again, I decided I would simply put it to better use myself.

I grabbed my phone off the bed and carried it to the desk where my laptop sat waiting. Getting the jade came first, before anything else, because without it I had nowhere to store the mountain of supplies I planned to gather.

I opened the browser and pressed my fingers to my temples, digging through every fractured memory from my past life, searching for any hint of where that jade had first surfaced. Nothing came at first, and I pulled my hands away, flattening my palm against the desk while I chewed my bottom lip.

Domino's Auction.

The name arrived in my mind like a whisper, and my heart slammed hard against my ribs. I remembered now. The old rumors had always tied the mysterious warehouse to an ancient jade artifact, which was exactly why nobody had ever believed it. A warehouse hidden inside a piece of jade sounded like a fairy tale. Domino's private auction was held only once every five years, and my fingers were already moving across the keyboard before I fully decided to search for it.

The results confirmed what little I remembered. Domino's private auction was not something anyone could simply attend. Invitations went out to a small, carefully chosen list of the wealthiest people in the country, and nobody else got through the door.

I clicked into the auction house's website and found photographs of rare items lined up across the page, and among them sat the same black, almond shaped jade icon I had already seen on my system screen. My hand curled into a fist. That was it. That was the jade I needed.

Then my eyes dropped to the date listed for the next private auction, and my mouth fell open.

August nineteenth, 2109.

The auction was tomorrow.