The second-class carriage of the Nederlandse Spoorwegen train rattled with a rhythmic, metallic clatter as it cut through the flat, gray landscape between Den Haag and Amsterdam.
Elias van Kempen sat by the window, his long legs cramped against the plastic seat in front of him. His reflection in the smudged glass showed a dangerously thin, striking sixteen-year-old boy. But behind those dark, predatory eyes, the mind of a fifty-year-old corporate titan was running a ruthless mathematical audit of his current existence.
He slipped a hand into his faded jacket pocket, feeling the rough texture of the thirty-six Guilders he had left. Eighteen US dollars. That was his entire net worth.
In the modeling industry, you didn’t just walk through a door and ask for a job based on your cheekbones. You needed a book. A portfolio. And to get agency representation or freelance work, you needed Comp Cards—small, heavy-stock cards printed with your best photos, your exact measurements, and your contact info. They were the currency of the casting room.
In 1991, hiring a decent fashion photographer for a test shoot, paying for studio time, lighting, film development, and the bulk printing of five hundred high-quality Comp Cards would cost approximately 3,000 Guilders. Fifteen hundred dollars.
Elias let out a slow, cynical breath. Three thousand Guilders required. Thirty-six Guilders on hand. The math is offensive.
He could, theoretically, work at the Rotterdam docks for six months, save every penny while living on stale bread, and pay for the shoot legally.
Elias almost laughed out loud at the thought. Work for six months? To pay retail price? I’d rather swallow glass. He was a capitalist hustler, not a saint. If he couldn’t afford to buy the asset, he simply had to extort the means of production.
The train hissed to a halt at Amsterdam Centraal. The city greeted him with a blast of freezing, damp air rolling off the canals.
Elias walked out of the station, pulling his thin collar up against the wind. His stomach, completely unsatisfied by the single piece of stale bread he’d stolen from his brother, let out a violent rumble. To make matters worse, his cheap shoes were letting in the cold moisture of the cobblestones. He needed to look the part of a misunderstood, arrogant muse, not a freezing homeless runaway.
He spotted a small kiosk near the tram lines. Gritting his teeth, he slapped a five-Guilder coin on the counter. "Black coffee. The cheapest one you have."
The vendor handed him a steaming paper cup and a single Guilder in change. Elias stared at the coin as if it had personally insulted him. He had just spent four Guilders—two whole US dollars—on hot bean water. His heart physically ached. It was a tragedy of the highest order.
"I will make them pay for this coffee," Elias muttered darkly, taking a sip of the bitter liquid as he navigated the labyrinthine streets of the Jordaan district.
Thanks to his Photographic Memory, he didn’t need a map. He remembered an article from a 2010 issue of Vogue that detailed the early, struggling years of the legendary photography duo, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. Before they were shooting global campaigns for Dior and Saint Laurent, before they were the undisputed royalty of avant-garde fashion photography, they were just two starving artists renting a drafty loft in Amsterdam in the early nineties, trying to break into the industry.
Elias found the building. It was a repurposed warehouse with rusted iron fire escapes and a heavy, graffiti-covered wooden door.
He pushed the door open, ignoring the ’Studio Rental - Do Not Enter’ sign, and climbed three flights of concrete stairs. At the top, a heavy steel door stood slightly ajar, loud synth-pop music spilling out into the hallway.
Elias took a final sip of his four-Guilder coffee, adjusted his posture so that his natural, towering 189-centimeter frame radiated absolute dominance, and pushed the door wide open.
The loft was a chaotic mess of coiled cables, massive softbox lights, and rolls of seamless white paper. In the center of the room, a frustratingly generic male model was posing. The guy had a muscular, tanned physique, hair sprayed into a stiff pompadour, and an aggressively bright, commercial smile. He looked like an extra from a 1980s surfing commercial.
Behind the camera stood Inez and Vinoodh. Even in their youth, their creative intensity was palpable. Vinoodh was adjusting a light meter, looking thoroughly depressed, while Inez was sighing loudly behind the viewfinder of a medium-format Hasselblad camera.
"No, no, no," Inez said, lowering the camera and rubbing her temples. "Lars, you’re smiling like you’re trying to sell me toothpaste. We need angst. We need edge. You look too... healthy. Too rich."
"I can do angry!" Lars, the muscular model, flexed his jaw and glared at the camera, looking less like a tortured artist and more like a confused golden retriever.
"God help us," Vinoodh muttered under his breath.
"It’s not his fault," a smooth, baritone voice echoed from the back of the room.
The music was abruptly killed. Inez, Vinoodh, and Lars all turned to see Elias standing near the craft services table. He was leaning casually against a brick pillar, holding a cheap paper coffee cup as if it were a crystal glass of Dom Pérignon.
"Who the hell are you?" Inez asked, her eyes narrowing at the intrusion. "The agency only sent one model. Get out, we’re closed."
Elias didn’t move. He took a slow sip of his coffee, his dark, exotic eyes sweeping over the lighting setup with the clinical disdain of a seasoned art director.
"You’re shooting with a flat, two-point lighting setup, trying to capture raw avant-garde emotion on a guy whose genetic peak was 1986," Elias said, his voice laced with shameless arrogance. He pointed a long finger at Lars. "He’s selling Wall Street excess in 1991. The global market is in a recession. The Berlin Wall just fell. People don’t want glossy perfection anymore. They want authenticity. They want raw, starving, and broken. You’re trying to squeeze blood from a plastic mannequin."
Lars turned red. "Listen here, you little punk—"
"Quiet, Lars," Vinoodh suddenly said. The photographer had stepped out from behind a light stand, his eyes fixed entirely on Elias.
Vinoodh’s gaze traced the sharp, glass-cutting lines of Elias’s jaw, the hollow cheeks brought on by actual poverty, and the exotic, ambiguous blend of Indonesian and Dutch heritage. Elias’s clothes were faded and practically hanging off his dangerously thin frame. It wasn’t a costume. It was the purest manifestation of an aesthetic the fashion world wouldn’t officially name "Grunge" or "Heroin Chic" for another two years.
"Inez," Vinoodh whispered, grabbing his partner’s arm. "Look at his bone structure. Look at the way the ambient light hits his collarbone. It’s... it’s exactly what we mapped out on the mood board."
Inez blinked, her frustration slowly melting into the hungry, obsessive stare of an artist who had just found her muse. She walked slowly toward Elias, sizing him up. "Are you with Touche? Paparazzi Management? I haven’t seen your face in any of the local books."
"I don’t do local," Elias lied flawlessly, maintaining his cold, untouchable aura. "My name is Elias van Kempen. And I am currently unrepresented by choice, because frankly, the agencies in this city lack vision."
Lars scoffed loudly. "He’s wearing shoes with a hole in the sole! He’s a beggar!"
"I am a canvas," Elias corrected, not even looking at Lars. He kept his eyes locked on Inez and Vinoodh. "You two are trying to build an editorial portfolio that will get you flown to Paris and New York. You want to shoot for Vogue Italia. You want to catch the eye of Franca Sozzani."
Inez and Vinoodh exchanged a shocked look. How did this sixteen-year-old street kid know their exact, secret career ambitions? It wasn’t telepathy; Elias simply remembered the exact trajectory of their historical rise to fame.
"I can give you the aesthetic that will put your book on Franca’s desk," Elias continued, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial, seductive register. "I will give you three hours of my time. I will bleed raw, unapologetic high-fashion onto your film. I will be the centerpiece of the portfolio that makes you famous."
"And what do you want?" Inez asked, her business instincts flaring up. "We don’t have the budget to pay a day rate, let alone whatever ridiculous fee you think you’re worth."
Elias smiled. It was a terrifyingly predatory grin. Hook, line, and sinker.
"I don’t want your money," Elias said. "I want access to your printing lab. After we wrap, you will develop the best shots. You will design my layout. And you will print me five hundred high-grade, heavy-stock Comp Cards before sunset. Free of charge."
Vinoodh choked on his own spit. "Five hundred? Are you insane? Do you know how much photographic paper and chemical developer that costs? That’s nearly three thousand Guilders worth of materials and labor!"
"It’s an extortion!" Lars yelled, pointing an accusing finger.
"It’s an investment," Elias corrected coldly. He stepped directly into the center of the white seamless paper backdrop, entirely ignoring the fact that Lars was still standing there. Elias turned his back to them, shrugging off his cheap jacket and tossing it onto the floor.
Underneath, he wore a simple, worn-out white tank top that clung to his lean, desperately thin torso. He didn’t need to flex. The raw, hungry reality of his life did the work for him.
"You can keep shooting the surfer boy and guarantee your portfolio ends up in the trash bin of a local catalog agency," Elias said, his back still turned. "Or you can print my cards, and I will give you magic."
Inez bit her lip. She looked at the lighting. She looked at Vinoodh. Vinoodh was already loading a fresh roll of Ilford black-and-white film into the Hasselblad, his hands shaking slightly with anticipation. Artists were so wonderfully easy to manipulate when you dangled a masterpiece in front of them.
"Lars, you’re wrapped for the day. We’ll pay your half-day rate," Inez said abruptly.
Lars opened his mouth, his face turning purple, but the sheer, dismissive energy in the room crushed his ego. He grabbed his duffel bag and stormed out of the loft, slamming the heavy steel door behind him.
"Alright, Elias van Kempen," Inez said, stepping behind the camera and adjusting the focal ring. "You talk like a Wall Street raider. Let’s see if your face can cash the check. Give me something. Give me... despair. Give me a boy who owns the city but has nothing in his pockets."
Elias closed his eyes.
Time to bleed the system.
He mentally opened his HUD.
[SYSTEM SHOP ACCESSED.][PURCHASING TEMPORARY SKILL: THE GLASS-CUTTING CAMERA STARE (DURATION: 1 MINUTE)][COST: -5 CP][TRANSACTION COMPLETE. ACTIVATING...]
[CHA-CHING!]
Elias felt a sudden, icy chill wash over his facial muscles. His jaw locked into a position of absolute, mathematical perfection. The microscopic tension around his eyes shifted, draining away the natural innocence of youth and replacing it with the heavy, dark, and intoxicating aura of a veteran predator.
He slowly turned his head to face the lens.
He didn’t pose. He didn’t flex. He simply looked down the barrel of the Hasselblad camera with eyes that held the weight of a thirty-four-year life ruined by debt, mixed with the absolute arrogance of a man who knew he was looking at his future employees.
The ambient chatter in the studio died instantly. The only sound left was the hum of the lighting generators.
Inez gasped audibly, her breath catching in her throat. She didn’t say a word. She just slammed her finger onto the shutter release.
CLICK-WHIRRR.
Vinoodh was frozen, staring at Elias from the side. "Good god," he whispered, a literal drop of sweat rolling down his temple—a pure, unadulterated sweatdrop at the sheer, overpowering pressure radiating from the sixteen-year-old boy. "He’s not a model. He’s a weapon."
CLICK-WHIRRR.CLICK-WHIRRR.
Inez fired the shutter repeatedly, completely hypnotized. "Don’t move. Do not breathe, Elias. Hold that exact tension in your jaw."
For the next sixty seconds, Elias held them hostage. The skill faded exactly one minute later, but by then, the damage was done. He had given them exactly enough raw material to guarantee their obsession.
For the next three hours, Elias worked the room. He manipulated the lighting, suggested angles, and posed with a cynical, effortless grace that made the two professional photographers feel like they were the ones auditioning for him. He didn’t just model; he art-directed his own extortion.
By three in the afternoon, the smell of developing chemicals filled the loft’s darkroom.
Elias sat on a stool, eating a complimentary bagel from their craft services table—because a true capitalist never misses a free meal—while Inez and Vinoodh hung the wet test prints on a wire line.
They stood before the drying photographs in absolute silence.
The images were breathtaking. Elias looked like a beautiful, broken prince of the underground. It was exactly the kind of jarring, disruptive imagery that the high-fashion world was secretly craving.
"It’s perfect," Inez whispered, almost reverently. She turned to Elias, her expression a mix of awe and deep, profound exhaustion. "You knew exactly what this was going to look like before we even turned the lights on, didn’t you?"
Elias took a bite of his free bagel, chewing slowly. "I told you. I’m an investment."
Vinoodh sighed, rubbing his face. He walked over to a massive, industrial Heidelberg printing press sitting in the corner of their extended lab. "Five hundred cards. Heavy stock. Matte finish. Just like you demanded, you little demon."
"Make sure my name is printed in a bold, sans-serif font," Elias commanded shamelessly, not lifting a finger to help. "And leave the agency contact line blank. I represent myself."
Two hours later, Elias walked out of the heavy steel doors of the warehouse. The freezing Amsterdam wind hit his face again, but this time, he didn’t care.
In his arms, he carried a dense, heavy cardboard box. Inside were five hundred perfectly printed, high-grade Comp Cards. His face was on the front, his measurements on the back. It was a professional portfolio that would have cost a normal, naive teenager months of grueling labor and crippling agency debt to acquire.
Elias had gotten it for the price of a four-Guilder cup of coffee and a little bit of psychological terrorism.
A sharp, metallic chime echoed in his skull.
[CHA-CHING!]
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED - THE FREE PORTFOLIO HACK.][EVALUATION: FLAWLESS EXTORTION. YOU LEVERAGED ARTISTIC VANITY TO STEAL $1,500 WORTH OF PRINTING SERVICES. KARMA IS WEEPING, BUT CAPITALISM IS PROUD.][REWARD: +10 SHAMELESS POINTS (CP)]
Elias van Kempen smiled, hefting the box of cards higher against his chest. He now had the ammunition. It was time to find a big, fat, wealthy target and pull the trigger.