He stood with his back against the wall and stared at Sera, then at Varen, then back at Sera. Like he was waiting for something to change if he looked long enough. For Sera to get up. For Varen to say it was a joke. For anything at all.
Nothing changed.
Outside the window the city was still screaming gold, but different now than a minute ago. Varen could hear the shift — he knew these sounds from the life before. First came the wonder, then the excitement, then the first panic when someone checked a neighbor's Valuation and saw how low it was and understood what that meant.
After that came a different kind of screaming.
"We need to go," Varen said.
Dorian said nothing.
"Dorian."
"I heard you." His voice was flat. Nothing readable in it. "Go where."
"Away from this apartment first." Varen went to the hallway, took his jacket from the hook. The same one as always, navy blue, a little too thin for September. "In about a week the first apartment raids start. Guild runners looking for easy targets — low Valuation, no protection, no weapons."
Dorian looked at him.
"How do you know what happens in a week."
Varen stopped at the door.
Good question. The first of many that would come, and none of them had a clean answer. Not one Dorian would accept on the spot.
"I just do." That was all for now. "Come on."
Dorian looked at him for a second. Two. Three. Then he picked up his jacket.
He didn't ask again.
On the stairwell someone was crying behind a closed door. A woman, voice muffled, that specific sound a person makes when they don't understand what's happened and are afraid of the moment they will.
Varen walked past without slowing.
Dorian slowed.
He didn't stop — but he slowed, just for a second, and Varen noticed and filed it away. Because that reflex, that pull toward a stranger crying behind a door, was something the Dorian from two years forward had buried under layers of cynicism and ledgers and clean business. It wasn't buried yet.
Not yet.
At the building entrance, the downstairs neighbor was standing in his doorway — Mr. Eriksen, mid-sixties, grew tomatoes on his balcony, always said good morning twice like once wasn't enough. He was staring at his phone with the expression of someone reading something very important and not sure they were understanding it correctly.
Above his head: 23 SC.
Varen saw the projection.
[Erik Eriksen. Valuation: 23 SC. Projection +72h: 0 SC. Cause of decline: no Guild affiliation, age over 60, no combat skills. Probability of surviving 30 days: 4%.]
Four percent.
Eriksen looked up. Saw Varen. Said good evening in that way of his — like it was just an evening, like those numbers above his head were a sports score.
"Good evening," Varen said, and walked out.
Dorian pulled the door shut behind them.
They walked in silence for a while. The street looked the same and completely different at the same time — same streetlights, same pavement, same buildings. But above every person they passed hung a hologram, and people didn't know yet where to look — at their own numbers, at other people's numbers, at their phones, at the sky.
Varen looked at the numbers.
A woman with a dog — 156 SC, stable projection, probably works security, has some basic combat skill. She'll make it through the first month.
Two guys by a car, one already on his phone, both gesturing — 89 and 112 SC, no strong growth potential, but not at rock bottom either.
An old man on a bench, alone, staring at his hologram with a face like stone — 31 SC.
Varen looked away from the man on the bench.
"You can see those numbers," Dorian said quietly. Not a question.
"Yes."
"So can I." Dorian walked with his hands in his pockets. "Mine is thirty-four. Is that good or bad."
"Bad. But not the worst starting point."
"How much do you need to... " He stopped. "How much to not be afraid of the Debt Collectors."
"Depends on the zone. In the city, in the first weeks, above two hundred is reasonably safe. Above five hundred the Collectors rarely show up without a specific reason." Varen stopped at a corner. Looked around. "A thousand and up is when the Guilds start being interested in you rather than the other way around."
"Five hundred." Dorian worked the number over for a moment. "How do you get SoulCoins."
"Different ways."
"How did you get yours."
Varen didn't answer right away. At the intersection a small crowd had gathered — maybe ten people, watching each other and their holograms with that particular look of the first night. Nobody understood yet what any of it meant in practice. In a few hours that would change.
"There are a few ways," he said finally. "System Contracts — the System generates tasks and pays you for completing them. Trade — you sell skills, information, services. You kill someone and take ten percent of their portfolio."
Dorian was quiet for a moment.
"Sera had twelve SC," he said.
"Yes."
"So you got... what, one."
"The System rounds down." Varen kept walking. "That's not what it was about."
"Then what was it about."
No answer to that. Not one Varen could give right now. Because the answer was because I watched how it ends and I didn't have enough in me to wait — and that couldn't be explained without all the rest. Without two years. Without the concrete and the blood and his watch in Dorian's hands.
"Leave it," he said.
Dorian left it. For now.
They'd been walking about ten minutes when they saw the first Debt Collector.
It stood at the mouth of a side street — tall, pale, assembled from geometric planes instead of a face. Motionless as a post. No hologram above its head. The System didn't price its own enforcers.
Against the wall opposite sat a young guy on the ground. Maybe twenty, maybe younger. He had blood on his sleeve and he was watching the Collector with the face of someone from whom fear had drained away and left only exhaustion behind.
Above his head: 0 SC.
Dorian stopped.
"What is that," he said quietly.
"Debt Collector. System enforcer." Varen didn't stop. "Come on."
"That guy—"
"Come on, Dorian."
"He has zero above his head, does that mean—"
"Yes. Come on."
Dorian didn't move for a second. Varen turned and looked at him — and in his brother's face he recognized something. He'd had it himself once, in the first weeks, before the System ground it smooth. That reflex. That thing that shouts do something.
"Can't we help him?" Dorian asked. Not naively. Genuinely.
"We could buy him time." Varen kept his voice low. "Someone can buy a stake in his Valuation, push it above zero. The Collector disappears. But that costs SC we don't have, and we know nothing about this guy, and in five minutes his Valuation drops back to zero if no one makes sure it keeps growing."
"So he's finished."
"Tonight — yes. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. Or someone finds him and takes him in."
Dorian looked at the guy. The guy looked at the Collector. The Collector looked at nothing — it stood and waited, because it had time and no reason to hurry.
Dorian moved.
Not toward the guy. Toward Varen. He walked past him without a word and kept going and didn't look back, but his hands were balled in his pockets and his jaw was set, and Varen noticed that too and filed it away alongside everything else.
They walked in silence for a while.
"This is going to be normal," Dorian said eventually. Not asking.
"Eventually."
"This is terrible."
"I know."
"And we can't do anything."
"Not yet." Varen stopped at the entrance to an old park — the one with the fountain that had been under renovation for three years and never got renovated. He sat on a bench. "Sit down."
Dorian sat.
For a moment they just sat there. Somewhere further away someone was shouting — not in pain, in anger, one of those shouts that functions as a signal. The city was slowly stopping being a city and becoming something else, and those who understood it first had an advantage over those who understood it later.
Varen had a document in his head. Not literally — but he remembered. Every week of the first year. Every mistake he'd made, every opportunity he'd wasted because he hadn't known. Now he knew.
The problem was there was too much of it to hold at once.
"Tell me what you know," Dorian said.
Varen looked at him.
"What are you asking."
"Everything." Dorian turned to face him. In the lamplight he looked different than usual — not that confident expression, not the one with the numbers running behind his eyes. Something simpler. "You know what's coming. I saw it in your face back in the apartment, before you did anything — you already knew. So tell me what I'm dealing with. Because I'm sitting here with thirty-four SoulCoins above my head and I just watched something with a geometric face wait for a kid to die on the street, and I'd like to understand what I walked into by following you."
A long silence.
Varen stared at the fountain. Broken, as always. Some kind of local joke.
"The System is absolute," he started at last. "Valuation hits zero — the Collector comes, that's it. No appeal, no exception. The only thing you can do is make sure your Valuation doesn't fall. For it to grow you need SC. For SC you need either a Guild, or a skill, or something other people don't have."
"You have something other people don't have."
"Yes."
"What."
"I see the future Valuation of every person. And the conditions. What has to happen for it to rise, what will make it fall." Varen said it plainly, no wrapping. "I've been able to see it since I came back."
Dorian sat with that for a moment.
"Came back," he repeated slowly. "From where."
"From the future. More or less." Varen looked away from the fountain. "Long story. What matters right now is what we do next."
"What do we do next."
"We build Valuation. Both of us. Your thirty-four isn't enough to survive the first month without backup. My eighty-eight is better but far from a safe threshold." Varen stood. "I know someone. Someone who tonight is lost and weak and has no idea what they'll be worth in a year. We can find them before anyone else does."
"Who."
"Starting Valuation fourteen SC. In a year, without help, they're dead. With help — they grow into something worth having."
Dorian looked at him.
"How do you know they'll help us and not sell us out."
"I don't." Varen started walking. "But I know their conditions."
Behind them the city was entering its first night of the Debut — all its chaos and fear and those first people starting to understand that the rules had changed and that the System rewarded those who understood first and had nothing for those who understood too late.
Dorian caught up after a few steps.
He didn't ask where they were going.
He walked.