Enjoy my new career? The cheerful sign-off from the app echoed in the dead silence of my apartment, a piece of corporate nonsense so tonally deaf it bordered on psychological warfare. My new career was being a paranormal investigator, ghost therapist, and potential exorcist, all rolled into one. The starting salary was a thirty-day lease on my own life, and the performance review involved my soul being devoured by a vengeful spirit. There was no 401(k). There was no dental plan. There was only a crushing, all-encompassing dread.
For a long time, I just sat there on the floor, the cold radiating from my chest in waves, the black phone lying inert on the rug in front of me. My mind was a frantic storm of denial, fear, and a bizarre, hysterical sense of indignation. How was this fair? I was Alex Carter. I paid my taxes. I separated my recycling. I held the door open for people. The worst thing I had done all year was lie to my dentist about how often I flossed. I was not equipped to handle this. My life skills were geared towards navigating Chicago's public transit system and finding the best deep-dish pizza, not communicating with the dead and foiling supernatural consumption.
My first rational thought was to seek help. But who could I possibly turn to? I imagined the conversation with the Chicago PD. "Hello, Officer? Yes, I'd like to report a crime. My phone, which is a sentient, metaphysical artifact from a company called Eternity, Incorporated, has informed me that I'm being haunted. The ghost's name is Jessica Miller, and if I don't solve the mystery of her untimely demise, she's going to eat my soul. Also, I'm going to die in twenty-nine days." They would listen with polite, professional patience before fitting me for a very snug jacket with sleeves that buckle in the back. Calling the police was a non-starter.
What about a priest? A medium? A paranormal investigator I'd seen on some late-night cable show? The idea felt as alien and absurd as the app itself. Where do you even find a legitimate medium? Is there a Yelp page for that? "Five stars, successfully exorcised my grandmother from the attic, would recommend." Even if I could find one, what would I pay them with? My credit card was still smoking from its encounter with Mona Po's legendary appetite. I was broke, terrified, and utterly, hopelessly alone.
No. The problem had come from this phone. The solution, if one existed, had to be in there, too. This was a closed system, a twisted game with its own set of rules. I had to play by them.
With a groan, I pushed myself up and retrieved the device. It felt heavier now, weighted with the gravity of my situation. I opened the app again, my eyes scanning past the terrifying countdown and the soul-consuming assignment. I went back to the Rewards Catalog, scrolling with a new, desperate purpose. There had to be something, some tool, some low-level item I could afford. My balance was still a glaring, mocking zero. But maybe there was a freebie? A complimentary item for new, doomed employees?
I found it buried near the bottom of the list, under a section titled "Basic Field Equipment."
Item: Ectoplasmic Empathy (Level 1)
Description: A temporary attunement to the emotional frequency of an attached entity. Allows the user to vaguely sense the core emotions (e.g., anger, sadness, confusion) behind a spirit's regret. Does not allow for direct communication.
Cost: 5 Merit Points.
Five points. It might as well have been five million. My reward for completing the assignment was ten points. It was a perfect, cruel catch-22. To do the job, I needed the tool. To get the tool, I needed to have already done the job. It was like a bank telling you that you need to have money to get a loan. Eternity, Inc.'s business model, it seemed, was designed to ensure its employees failed.
I tossed the phone onto the couch in frustration, the soft thud echoing the sound of my last hope dying. I was pacing my small living room like a caged animal, the cold spot in my chest pulsing with a dull, rhythmic ache. It was a constant reminder of her presence. Jessica. She was here, in this room with me, a silent, invisible parasite feeding on my life force.
The word from the app's brief came back to me: attachment.
"The residual psychic energy (spirit) of Jessica Miller has formed a parasitic attachment to you..."
It wasn't just that she was haunting the apartment. She was attached to me. We were connected. That gust of ash hadn't just given me a chill; it had forged a link. The thought was horrifying, but it also sparked a new, insane idea. If she was connected to me, could that connection possibly be a two-way street?
My mind raced, grabbing onto tropes from every horror movie I had ever seen. Ghosts flickering lights. Spirits spelling out messages on Ouija boards. Poltergeists throwing objects across the room. They all had one thing in common: the ghost, somehow, could influence the physical world, usually through electronics. They were beings of energy, and electronics ran on energy. It was a stupid, flimsy, desperate shred of movie logic, but it was all I had.
What if I could let her use me as a bridge? A conduit to the physical world?
The idea was so profoundly crazy that it circled all the way back around to making a strange kind of sense. I looked at my laptop, sitting closed on my cluttered desk. It was a direct line to the world. A keyboard, a screen. A way to form words.
"Okay," I said out loud, the sound of my own voice startling me. It cracked with disuse and fear. "Okay, Jessica. Let's try something. I don't know if you can hear me, or understand me, or if you're even a 'you' anymore. But I'm supposed to help you. And I can't do that if I don't know what you want."
I walked over to the desk and sat down, my movements stiff and robotic. I opened the laptop. The screen flared to life, illuminating my pale, drawn face. I opened a new, blank document. The white page and the blinking cursor stared back at me, waiting.
"This is probably stupid," I muttered, addressing the empty air. "But it's all I've got. The app said you have a regret. Something that's keeping you here. I need you to tell me what it is."
I took a deep breath, trying to calm the frantic beating of my heart. I closed my eyes. I tried to ignore the rational part of my brain that was screaming at me about how insane this was. Instead, I focused all of my attention inward, on the cold, heavy presence in my chest. I tried to "listen" to it, not with my ears, but with my gut. I tried to feel what it was feeling. There was sadness, a deep, profound well of it. There was confusion. But beneath it all, there was a current of something else, something hot and sharp, even through the cold. Rage. A furious, burning rage.
"Focus on that," I whispered. "Think about what made you so angry. Think about what happened. Think about what you want. Use me. Use my hands. Just... tell me."
I placed my hands on the keyboard, my fingers hovering lightly over the home row. I emptied my mind, focusing only on the cold, angry energy inside me and the plastic keys under my fingertips. For a long, silent minute, nothing happened. The blinking cursor was the only thing moving in the room. I felt a wave of foolishness wash over me. Of course this wasn't going to work. This was real life, not a movie.
But then... my right pinky finger twitched.
It moved down, unnaturally, and tapped the 'H' key. Then my left index finger tapped 'A'. Then 'R'. It was slow, clumsy, like a child learning to type for the first time. But it was happening. My fingers were moving, but I wasn't the one moving them. It was the most unsettling sensation I had ever experienced, a complete disconnect between intention and action. I was a puppet, and an unseen force was pulling the strings.
The movements grew faster, more confident. A rhythm developed. My hands flew across the keyboard with a speed and accuracy I could never hope to achieve on my own. It was a frantic, furious clattering of plastic on plastic, the only sound in the room. I kept my eyes squeezed shut, too terrified to look at what I was writing.
The typing stopped as abruptly as it had begun. My hands fell away from the keyboard, trembling. My whole body was shaking. The cold in my chest had receded slightly, replaced by a feeling of utter exhaustion, as if I had just run a marathon.
For a full minute, I just sat there, breathing heavily. Finally, I forced myself to open my eyes.
The blank page was no longer blank. It was filled with a single, unbroken paragraph of text, written in all capital letters.
HAROLD FINCH. HE PROMISED ME THE PROMOTION. THE LEAD PROJECT MANAGER ROLE. IT WAS MY PROJECT. MY IDEA. I WORKED ON IT FOR A YEAR. HE STOLE IT. HE PRESENTED IT AS HIS OWN. I FOUND THE PROOF. I SAVED THE EMAILS TO A DRIVE. I WAS GOING TO GO TO HR. I TOLD HIM TO HIS FACE. HE JUST SMILED. THE NEXT NIGHT, MY CAR... THE BRAKES FELT SOFT. I WAS ON LAKE SHORE DRIVE. IT WAS RAINING. I PRESSED THE PEDAL. NOTHING. IT WASN'T AN ACCIDENT. HE KILLED ME. HE TOOK EVERYTHING FROM ME. I WANT JUSTICE. I WANT EVERYONE TO KNOW. JUSTICE.
I stared at the screen, my blood turning to ice water in my veins. The words pulsed with a raw, undeniable fury. This wasn't just about a lingering regret over an unfinished project.
This was about murder.
My impossible, supernatural problem had just become a very real, very dangerous one. My task wasn't to appease a sad ghost. It was to expose a killer. And he was a director at a major tech corporation, a man with money, power, and a demonstrated willingness to kill to protect his secrets.
The blinking cursor at the end of the last word seemed to be asking a question.
What are you going to do now, Alex?