The sound woke him before he knew what it was. A soft thunk.

  Ashe blinked into darkness. The cube’s lights were out—total bck, save for the dim glow of his terminal pulsing faintly in standby. His breath would have fogged in the air if he could see an inch in front of his face. It was cold. Bone-deep, air-biting cold.

  He pushed up onto one elbow, mind still fogged from sleep. How long had I been out?Something wet nded on his thigh. Then another drop, and another. Each one soaked through the thin fabric of his panties, cold enough to sting.

  He flinched. Snow? Here? The idea didn’t make sense, but neither did much else anymore.

  He reached out, sweeping his hands across the floor without getting up. His fingers brushed fabric—two thin cotton bnkets, folded where they hadn’t been before—and the familiar smooth pstic of a water bottle, cool to the touch.

  The noise must have been the hatch.

  He clutched the bottle to his chest and listened to the panel slide shut again with that same airtight hiss. The sound was strangely comforting; at least something in this pce still followed rules.

  Working by touch alone, he spread the bnkets over himself and tucked his knees close, wrapping himself in as much warmth as he could. His body ached, his skin prickled from the cold, and his thoughts blurred into the white noise of exhaustion.

  Within minutes, he was asleep again.

  Ashe woke to brightness.

  The cube’s lights had come on at full intensity, stabbing through his eyelids. He groaned and rolled onto his side, squinting against the sterile gre.

  At some point, the snow had stopped. A thin crust of frost clung to the walls and floor near the hatch. His breath still fogged faintly in the air.

  He pushed himself upright, the bnket sliding from his shoulders—then noticed something he hadn’t seen in the dark.

  Clipped to the top bnket was a small, stiff slip of paper, its surface speckled with leftover snow. The text was printed in a blocky, stamped font:

  J.H.+4 Influence Tokens

  For a moment, his mind didn’t catch up. Then his stomach dropped.

  He had completely forgotten about the Influence system—the idea that someone out there could see him, watch him, reward him, or manipute him without warning.

  His fingers trembled as he held the paper. Goosebumps prickled up his thighs.“J.H…” he whispered. With only initials to go on, he couldn’t tell if his benefactor was a man or a woman—just that someone out there had answered his cry for help.

  If it was a girl, that was somehow worse. She’d probably be bawling with ughter at the sight of a grown man in childish duck-print panties.

  A guy would probably be less judgmental—he'd just assume Ashe was a pervert and move on.Unless he swung that way, which opened a whole different set of problems.

  Ashe’s stomach tightened.

  He looked toward the ceiling as if expecting an answer, but there was only the soft hum of the cube’s ventition—steady, mechanical, indifferent.

  Was he being watched right then?

  He squeezed his eyes shut and exhaled. “No. No, it’s fine. They’re probably just… trying to help. Like I did for Chloe.”

  It was easier to believe that—to think J.H. was decent, that this was all some kind of repayment—than to picture someone watching him half-naked on their screen for fun.

  So that was what he decided. For his own sanity, J.H. was a good person. Helpful. Harmless.

  He tucked the note into the estic of his waistband, pretending that made it true.

  He tore open the packet of protein paste and gave it a cautious sniff. Almond, supposedly. One bite told him the truth—it tasted like chalk pretending to be food. Grainy, faintly sweet, and stubbornly dry. Still, it had protein, and that was something he needed.

  He forced himself to finish it, chasing the st mouthful with most of the water bottle. The cold liquid hit his stomach like a stone, but at least it washed the paste down.

  Climbing out from beneath the bnkets, he instantly regretted it. The cube’s floor bit at his bare legs. Too cold to stay bottomless. He wrapped one of the thin bnkets around his waist like a makeshift skirt—warmth first, modesty second.

  His shirt was still damp from yesterday, the snow and chill doing nothing to help it dry. He left it draped where it was.

  The terminal glowed faintly across the room. Ashe rubbed his hands together for warmth and checked the weather tab.

  Live Temperature: 38°F.He huffed. “Guess that’s better than st night.”

  The forecast below flickered zily:Tomorrow: 68°F.

  So much for predictability.

  He stared at the job list.

  Puzzle Assembler (Medium Credits);Farmhand (Medium Credits);??? (Random);

  No way was he going back to farmhand duty. His knees still ached just thinking about it. Puzzle Assembler sounded simple enough—quiet, clean, safe.

  He selected it.

  The elevator breathed open into a wide, dimly lit studio. Warm air drifted from the floor vents, melting the chill clinging to his skin. Condensation vanished from his shes in seconds.

  It was… warm in there. Not just comfortable—genuinely warm, the kind of heat that reached into his bones. So the rooms did have different climates. A quiet realization settled in his chest: every “job” might come with its own little world. Its own rules.

  He filed that away as he stepped forward, blinking against the low amber light.

  At the center stood a circur work table, ringed by a waist-high rail. Above it floated a shimmering ttice of translucent cubes—hundreds of them—each faintly tinted, like gss shards catching unseen light. He slipped off his makeshift bnket skirt, leaving only his sweater and panties. The air there was pleasantly warm, almost gentle.

  He stepped to the pedestal.

  “Jigsaw” turned out to be an understatement. The puzzle wasn’t ft—it was fully three-dimensional. Ashe reached out, plucked a cube from the air, and turned it until its ghostly edges aligned with a slot in the ttice. Snap. The grid pulsed green.

  A wrong rotation made the piece blink out of existence, reappearing beside his left shoulder.

  He fell into rhythm.Turn—fit—snap.Turn—fit—snap.

  After a dozen pcements, he started to recognize the images forming on each completed face. Vignettes from half-remembered pces: an iron slide in a weedy park—the one where Sara chipped her baby tooth. A heap of café aprons, espresso stains shaped like flowers. A thrift-store mirror with a pair of denim jeans hanging in the frame.

  Each new slice hit like déjà vu—too personal to be random, too vivid to be coincidence.

  Turn—snap—fsh of a Midwest sky.Turn—snap—fsh of undry on a dorm radiator.

  He worked faster, chasing the next memory before it could fade. At the one-hour mark, a soft chime sounded: Efficiency +10%. Two cubes began drifting toward him at once. His hands moved automatically; his heartbeat evened out.

  Exactly four hours in, the ttice sealed with a deep, resonant gong. The montage froze in pce—a mosaic of fragments from a life that didn’t feel entirely his anymore. Then it dissolved into static.

  He exhaled slowly. For the first time, the comfortable warmth in the air felt earned.With the bnkets retied skirt-style, Ashe stepped into the elevator. The hum of machinery followed him upward, like a heartbeat behind the walls.

  If the system could mine my memories for puzzles, what else could it do?

  When he arrived back at his cube, his terminal was already glowing with a new readout:

  Job Summary — Puzzle AssemblerBase: 20 crEfficiency Bonus: 5 crTotal Earned: 25 cr

  Credit Bance: 27 cr

  Snow was falling again—thin, ghostlike fkes drifting down from new vents in the ceiling. They vanished before hitting the floor, but the cold they carried stayed behind. His breath fogged in the air. It had to be below freezing again.

  He rubbed his arms, teeth lightly chattering. Taking another job was probably stupid, but not taking one felt worse. If he stopped moving, he’d freeze. So he’d keep moving. Earn every credit he could.The elevator swallowed him up once more.

  Farmhand (Medium Credits) — the same job, but different.

  When the doors opened, he stepped into something halfway between a greenhouse and a barn. The air was faintly warmer than his cube—enough to sting rather than soothe. Frost glittered along the timbers. Condensation clung to the gss panels overhead, framing a sunmp that gave no real heat.

  He hugged his bnket-skirt tighter around his waist and got to work.

  The first task was simple enough: rows of pnters filled with fake soil and pstic tomato pnts. When he ran his fingers through it, the “earth” flexed like damp rubber. A few more of those purple-stemmed weeds grew among them. He tugged one out and stared at the clean, manufactured snap. The bel above the bed read Growth Cycle 17B – Maintain Uniformity.

  “I hope I can get a bonus like st time,” he muttered under his breath.

  Next came the animals—or what passed for them.

  In the chicken aisle, rubbery hens blinked awake as he approached. He slipped warm, silicone eggs from beneath their bellies, each one registering with a soft ka-ching on a nearby wall dispy. The small sound felt absurdly satisfying.

  Then came the cows—massive constructs of tex and synthetic muscle, their “breath” condensing in the cold. The udders were full and icy to the touch. Every squeeze sent a pulse of lukewarm, chalky milk hissing into a pail. By the third one, the rhythm blurred into something almost meditative—squeeze, release, steam, repeat. He caught himself wondering if the job was testing precision or endurance.

  He shoveled pellets into troughs for fibergss goats, their muzzles glowing green when they “ate.” He brushed the flocked manes of three model horses, earning prerecorded whinnies that echoed hollowly through the barn.

  His gloveless fingers throbbed. His thighs stung whenever the bnket fluttered open and cold air bit at the thin cotton underneath. He worked faster, trying not to think about the unseen eyes that might be watching—or what they might be thinking.

  But the steady repetition helped. The rhythm. The routine. For a few hours, he almost forgot to be scared.

  Once the job was complete, a sudden brass bell cnged overhead, sharp and out of nowhere. Ashe flinched, heart leaping into his throat.

  Job Summary — FarmhandBase: 25 crBonus (Weed Removal): +4 crTotal Earned: 29 cr

  Credit Bance: 48

  Ashe watched his credit bance climb, a small flicker of relief stirring in his chest. Still, he wasn’t exactly rich. He’d already burned through eight credits on a nutrient paste and water bottle before the shift, and he was about to do the same again just to keep his strength up.

  It was still hovering around freezing; his breath hung in faint clouds. Working himself half to death in that cold made no sense—but stopping meant risking worse.

  He leaned back against the wall, eyes heavy. “Maybe… just a short rest,” he murmured. A nap, a recharge, before he forced himself into another round. Survival first. Comfort ter.

  The hiss of the hatch jolted him awake. For a few seconds, Ashe didn’t know where—or when—he was. Then the cold hit him. His whole body trembled, teeth chattering hard enough to hurt. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep. The bnkets half-draped over him weren’t enough to keep him warm.

  Something cttered softly onto the floor beside him. Through the half-dark he made out two shapes: a foil emergency bnket, crinkly and metallic, and a capped insuted cup leaking faint trails of steam. The scent—chicken and salt and warmth—stabbed through the haze of exhaustion.

  The thought of dying there had never quite crossed his mind until then. But falling asleep in that kind of cold? He’d been flirting with it.

  He reached for the bnket first. A stiff paper slip was clipped to one corner, dusted in frost and stamped in that same blocky ink:

  Emergency Care PackageJ.H.–2 Influence Tokens

  Ashe stared at the slip, fingers tightening around the crinkled foil.J.H. again.

  This time, they hadn’t just answered a request—they had acted on their own. That meant they had probably spent a token to check on him… and seen him lying there, half-frozen, barely covered. His face burned.

  Great. They probably got a full view of the duck-print panties, too.

  But the thought that J.H. had spent another two tokens just to send help—a feature Ashe didn’t even have access to—made something tighten in his chest. Maybe this person wasn’t some voyeur or maniputor after all. Maybe they just didn’t want to watch someone die.

  He spread the emergency bnket over his shoulders, the metallic crinkle echoing in the small cube. It caught and reflected the pale light like foil sunlight. Then came the two thin cotton bnkets, yered over top until he was wrapped like a cocoon.

  The heat from the soup seeped through the insuted cup into his hands. Ashe lifted it carefully, breathing in the steam before taking a sip. Salt, broth, noodles—simple, perfect. Each swallow seemed to thaw something deeper than just his fingers.

  When the st of the warmth was gone, he set the empty cup aside and rubbed the creases out of the paper slip. For a moment he studied J.H.’s stamped initials, the rough ink pressed deep into the fibers, before folding it neatly and tucking it into his waistband with the other.

  He didn’t want to move. The bnkets had finally trapped enough warmth to make the cube bearable, and his body begged to stay wrapped in it forever. But his bdder had other pns.

  With a groan, Ashe peeled himself free, every fold of the foil bnket sighing as it shifted. Cold air bit instantly at his skin, turning the brief comfort into torture.

  He couldn’t help thinking of Monica’s gentle grin, the way she’d said “You’re more like one of the girls to me” like it was a kindness. Or his best friend’s ugh right after he’d told him about Monica’s reaction—“With that butt? You’ve got more ass than half the girls I know.” The memory still carried the phantom sting of that sp through denim.

  Now, under that harsh white light, he looked down and almost believed them.

  The cold had shrunk him to almost nothing, and a stray thought flickered: Was that really what a grown man was supposed to look like?

  The thought almost made him ugh. Really, Ashe—worried about size when you’re freezing in a white-walled nightmare?

  The warm stream pattered against the gel lining with a faint hiss, fogging briefly in the frigid air. Steam rose and vanished as quickly as it formed. A few precious squares of toilet paper followed with a soft rip; the deodorizing gel swallowed scent and sound alike.

  It was humiliating, but relief bloomed immediately, loosening cramped muscles and quieting that nagging ache.

  He wiped, pulled his panties back into pce, and reseated the lid. One small, necessary indignity survived—on to the next. Bnkets rearranged skirt-style for warmth, he tapped Job on the tablet.

  The list blinked open. Most of the usual tasks were grayed out; only one option remained, a pin line of text marked with three question marks:

  ??? (Random Job)

  He hesitated, thumb hovering over the screen. “Can’t be worse than sorting trash,” he muttered—and tapped Accept.

  The confirmation window expanded.Assignment: Brothel (High Credits)

  Ashe stared at the word, his eyes skimming the description.“...The hell does that mean?”