The lock stuck the way it always did, and Garrett Rafferty gave it the same half-lift, half-twist that never should have worked and always did.
The smell hit him first. Old toast, something sour underneath it he didn’t want to identify. He stepped over a trainer that had been lying sideways in the hallway for long enough that he’d stopped seeing it as a trainer and started seeing it as furniture.
The kitchen counter had two mugs on it, one with a film of something grown across the top. A stack of unopened post sat by the door, bills mixed in with things he assumed were also bills. He didn’t check. Checking wouldn’t change what was in them.
He dropped his bag, sat on the sofa without taking his jacket off, and let his head fall back against the cushion.
"Home," he said, to the room. "Great."
He’d been fired that afternoon. His manager, Aliya, had called him into the back and used the word "demeanour" twice in one sentence, which felt like overachieving for a conversation about him restocking crisps without enough enthusiasm.
"Customers have said you’re a bit..." she’d paused, looking for something professional.
"Honest?" Garrett offered.
"Flat," she said.
He hadn’t argued. He’d swiped his lanyard through the till one last time, said thanks for the opportunity in a tone that suggested otherwise, and left with his final wage sitting in his account like a small apology.
He checked his banking app now, out of habit more than hope. £61.12. His mum had sent him £50 that morning < saw this was a bit tight, don’t tell your dad> before any of this had even happened, like she’d known. He hadn’t replied yet. He wasn’t sure what you said to that. "Thanks, sorry I’m like this" felt too honest even for him.
He wasn’t used to this kind of life. He used to attend one of the best schools in town, until one day his father pulled him out and transferred him to where he currently schooled. He used to have the best life and didn’t have to do part time jobs whatsoever to sustain himself. Garrett had never been given the full story. All he knew was that, from that point on, things had steadily gone from bad to worse.
He wasn’t broke-broke. He could eat, technically, if he counted the heel of bread in the cupboard and whatever was still good in the freezer. He just couldn’t do anything else. There was a difference between those two states, and he’d become uncomfortably fluent in it.
None of that, if he was honest, was really what he was thinking about.
Jacey had ended it four days ago.
He kept doing the maths on it, like there was a term in the equation he’d missed. Four days ago, fine. Three weeks before that, fine. He could not locate the moment it went wrong, because as far as he’d been able to tell, it hadn’t.
It’s not really about one thing, she’d said, which he’d since learned was the sound of someone declining to give you the thing you actually needed.
He replayed it most nights, staring at a ceiling crack shaped vaguely like Portugal, hunting for signs he’d missed. He came up mostly empty, which was worse than finding something , it meant either she’d hidden it well, or he simply hadn’t been paying attention. He didn’t love either answer.
She’d sent one more message two days after. I’m sorry, I know this probably came out of nowhere. He’d read it four or five times and never replied. He considered himself a reasonably attentive boyfriend. He remembered her coffee order. Her sister’s name. He’d have said, with total sincerity, that he understood women well enough.
The fact that the last woman he’d believed that about had walked away without him seeing it coming sat there, available, the way a fact sits in a room without anyone picking it up.
He looked around the flat and felt something settle in his chest that wasn’t quite despair. It was quieter than that. More like recognition. This was just what his life was now, and he’d stopped being surprised by it days, maybe weeks, ago.
That was the part that actually scared him, if he let it. Not that things were bad. That he’d gotten used to it.
He was midway through deciding whether he had the energy to make dinner or the greater energy of not making dinner when his phone, face-up on the arm of the sofa, went black.
Not off. Black. The backlight was still on. Everything else — icons, time, battery had gone.
"Right," he said.
He picked it up, half expecting his own dim reflection and nothing else, which would’ve suited the day. Instead white text began assembling itself, letter by letter, like something being typed by a hand he couldn’t see.
[LIFE STATUS: REVIEWING ■■■]
"Okay," he said, mostly to hear a human voice, even his own. "Sure."
[FINANCIAL SECURITY: POOR.]
"No argument there."
[LIVING CONDITIONS: NEGLECTED.]
He looked around the flat again, involuntarily, like it had just been named in a court proceeding.
[ROMANTIC STABILITY: PATHETIC.]
That one landed harder than the others. He didn’t say anything to it.
He checked the case, the cracked corner, confirmed it was in fact his phone and not something swapped in while he wasn’t looking. It was his. The text kept coming.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE.]
[WELCOME, GARRETT RAFFERTY.]
A logo bloomed at the centre, a violet circle, a gold E sitting inside it like a coin.
[EROS CASHBACK SYSTEM — ACTIVE.]
"Eros," he repeated. "What the hell does that mean?."
[PROFILE:]
[AGE: 22]
[BANK BALANCE: £61.12]
He should, by any reasonable standard, have been more alarmed. He filed the absence of alarm away as either a personality trait or a symptom, undecided which.
"Is this a stroke," he asked the room, conversationally. "Genuinely asking, because how the hell does it know even my account balance?! "
The system didn’t answer that. Instead, another line appeared.
[HOST HAS BEEN ASSESSED.]
Garrett stared at it.
[ASSESSMENT RESULT: SUBOPTIMAL.]
He blinked once.
"That’s a little harsh."
The system remained silent. It didn’t seem interested in defending itself.
Garrett found that, somehow, more annoying than if it had.
[PRIMARY OBJECTIVE AVAILABLE.]
He waited for the rest. The rest didn’t come.
"That’s it?" he said. "You’re not going to tell me what it is?"
[OBJECTIVE DETAILS WITHHELD UNTIL ACCEPTANCE.]
[COMPLETION UNLOCKS FURTHER PROGRESSION, INCLUDING MEANINGFUL FINANCIAL RETURN. ]
He read that twice. Meaningful financial return was doing a lot of work in that sentence, and the system clearly knew it, vague enough to promise nothing, specific enough that his brain immediately started doing the maths anyway.
"So I’m meant to just say yes," he said, "to a mystery task, from a stalker app, based on the word meaningful."
The system did not dignify that with a response.
Then another line appeared.
[ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: THE HOST’S CURRENT APPROACH TO LIFE HAS PRODUCED POOR RETURNS.]
Garrett stared at the screen.
"Was that necessary?"
[YES.]
He rubbed his face.
"You’re going to be annoying, aren’t you?"
[PROBABILITY: HIGH.]
Garrett looked at the phone for a long second.
For the first time, he wasn’t entirely sure whether he had received a system or acquired a particularly judgmental roommate.
He thought about Jacey, briefly, and put her away again, because whatever this was, it apparently wasn’t ready to tell him if it had anything to do with her.
"Fine," he said, to no one, to the phone, to the flat. "Go on, then."
He didn’t feel transformed. He didn’t feel hopeful, exactly — hope felt like a bigger word than the moment deserved. But for the first time in four days, there was something in front of him other than the ceiling crack.
A direction. Not a good one, necessarily. Not one he’d have chosen if anyone had asked him first.
But a direction.
[AWAITING HOST RESPONSE.]
He set the phone face-up on his knee instead of putting it down.
"Alright," he said. "Let’s see what you’re not telling me."
The screen changed.
Not with the objective, Not with another assessment.
A single line appeared instead.
[WARNING: PRIMARY OBJECTIVE MAY ALTER THE HOST’S CURRENT LIFE TRAJECTORY.]
Garrett stared at it.
"How bad is it?"
For once, the system answered immediately.
[THAT DEPENDS ENTIRELY ON WHAT YOU DO NEXT.]
The screen went black.
Garrett looked at his reflection in it.Then the phone lit up again.
[ACCEPTANCE CONFIRMED.]
And beneath it, something began loading...