Chelsea’s apartment wasn’t far, but it felt like we were crossing a whole stream channel.
The city grid flickered by outside the window—neon strip lights reflecting off wet pavement, drone delivery lanes blinking overhead in regulated patterns. Even the air felt different over here, like the filtration units worked a little harder on this side of town.

Her building was newer—one of those mid-rise pods the city started cranking out after the last climate reboot. Solar skins on the windows, self-tinting glass, plant walls in the lobby that were supposed to filter the air. It looked nice from the outside, like a brochure for a better life.

The towers curved slightly at the edges, eco-arch design meant to resist heatwaves and windstorms. Everything gleamed under the night lights, polished like the future was already here.

Inside? Same old grindloop, just with better lighting.

The same late payments, the same loop work jobs that didn’t pay enough, the same tenants whispering in hallways about grid outages and food rations—just with walls that changed color depending on the hour.

We pulled into the parking dock, and the car auto-slid into a charge bay.
The dashboard blinked green as the vehicle synced with the building’s charge ports, humming quietly as wireless energy locks clamped around the wheels.

Chelsea didn’t even wait for the doors to fully open before she unbuckled, shoving the keys into her pocket.
The car hadn’t finished its auto-off sequence, but she was already out.

“Come on,” she said, popping the hatch. “We’ll grab Bean first.”

Bean’s eyes were still wide, pupils like black saucers. Her chest rose and fell fast, little shallow breaths like she was trying to softpatch her system in real-time. She made a tiny warble sound, her version of what the glitch is happening?

Her whiskers twitched against the mesh of her carrier door.

“Same, girl,” I whispered.

My throat tightened. I wasn’t sure if I was talking to her or to myself.

Chelsea slung one of the boxes onto her hip and led the way through the motion-lock door.
The lobby scanner blinked to life as we approached, sensors tracking our vitals in soft pulses of blue light. Her building had a palm scanner, but she’d already added me to the patch list by the time we got there.

My name flashed on the panel as I followed her inside:
WELCOME ISABELLA JAMES
—TEMPORARY ACCESS GRANTED—

Temporary. Of course.
Everything in this city ran on biometric access now—jobs, housing, even groceries. Temporary status meant the system was already counting the minutes until you were ghoststreamed.

“You always have the best up-to-date tech,” I whined, even though I didn’t mean for it to sound so bitter.

Chelsea glanced over her shoulder as the door slid open, her box still balanced on her hip.
“Yeah, because my building doesn’t run on duct tape and drain zone hope.”

I forced a smile, but my stomach tightened anyway.

Her place wasn’t fancy—not really—but compared to where I’d just come from, it felt like stepping into another version branch of human.

Different tax bracket, different system layer.

The lobby lights adjusted automatically as we walked in. Soft, warm tones at night—eco-sensitivity settings, probably.

They even smelled different here. Plant wall oxygen had a leafy edge to it, like a sim-stream of outside air. Somewhere, a quiet ventilation hum kept the flood sensors active, part of the standard anti-climate-failure package.

Chelsea’s building had all the bio-upgrades: energy conservation modes, smart air filters, anti-flood barriers for when the ocean glitches decided to throw another tantrum.

Still, the paint wasn’t perfect. There was a crack along the ceiling seam near the security cameras, just visible if you knew where to look. The future always looked better from far away.

Inside, though? It was still small. Still just life.

The elevator recognized her face and unlocked. The doors slid open with a soft hiss.

We stepped inside, Bean’s carrier clutched to my chest like a lifeline cache.

“You know this is your place too now, right?” Chelsea said, reading my silence like a screen.

I shrugged. “Feels like visiting a nicer server while your own life’s still glitching.”

Chelsea snorted. “It’s not that nice. Half the water taps here leak carbon filter failcodes every other week. You’re not exactly in the elite zone.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” I mumbled, shifting the carrier.

Bean’s nose was pressed against the mesh, eyes still huge. Her tail flicked once, a twitchy neural metronome of stress.

The elevator hummed softly under our feet. No buttons—just destination presets and eye-track nav that always made me uncomfortable.

I stared at the floor to avoid triggering anything. Eye-tech always felt like a ghoststream risk. Too many trackers, too many records. Cheap apartments didn’t have that problem—no one cared enough to monitor you.

Her floor blinked:
LEVEL 12: OCCUPANT CHELSEA MARIN. GUEST: ISABELLA JAMES.
Temporary Access Granted.
Again.

We stepped out into the hallway. Pale green walls, soft-lit floor panels.

Everything looked clean enough to eat off, but it smelled faintly of ozone and life-stream tax air.

The lights pulsed faintly underfoot as we walked—part of the anti-fall safety firmware for late-night tenants.

The luxury of the future was still just… survival with better packaging.

Chelsea nudged the door with her elbow and it slid open to her apartment.

“Home sweet upgrade rental,” she muttered.

I set the carrier down just inside the door and unzipped it halfway.

Bean bolted out like she’d been nano-hacked from a cannon.

Her claws clicked against the smooth floor panels as she skittered across them, tail puffed up like a malfunctioning duster bot, then stopped under Chelsea’s couch to reboot her threat matrix.

Her eyes glowed slightly in the floor lights, pupils still huge. Watching. Processing.

The smartpanels under the couch reflected just enough for me to see her little chest rising and falling, sharp and fast.

“Welcome home, Bean,” Chelsea said, kicking off her shoes by the door.
“Try not to hack up a furball on the charge ports, okay?”

Bean blinked at her like she was making no promises.

I crouched down, fingers resting on the cool plastifoam floor, just watching Bean breathe for a second.

She was safe. We were safe. For now.

That part of me—the part that wanted to full reboot—loosened its grip just a little.

Chelsea plopped the moving box onto the couch and started peeling back the tape.

The sound of the adhesive crackling in the quiet room felt louder than it should.

“We can deal with the rest of this tomorrow. Right now? You’re sitting down and eating something. Hard yes. Non-negotiable.”

I didn’t argue. My legs felt like wet noodles anyway.

The smart fridge pinged softly in the background as it re-upped the patch scan, like it was already preparing for me to stay.

****

I must’ve fallen into sleep-mode, because the next thing I noticed, it was daytime.
Light filtered through the auto-tint windows, shifting from sleep-mode into morning mode.
The panels adjusted in soft waves, mimicking natural dawn even though the real sun wasn’t anywhere near this precise. Sim-sunrise, tuned to avoid cortisol spikes.

Fancy, but my body still tensed up like I’d overslept something important.
Old instincts didn’t care about smartglass patches.

Bean was curled up right next to me, her tiny body pressed against my ribs.
Her fur twitched with each slow breath, tail wrapped around her like a comma.
Her purring had slowed to a barely-there hum, the kind that synced up with the low, steady thrum of Chelsea’s apartment filters cycling clean air.

I shifted a little, careful not to wake her.

Chelsea’s guest bed wasn’t really a bed—just a mod-foam fold-out, one of those modular slabs that adjusted to your body type.
The bed flexed automatically, sensors bio-aligned around me as I moved.

Better than my old plastifoam crashpad, but still hard enough to remind me I wasn’t home.
Not that I had a home anymore.

I lay there staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out how long I’d pinged out.

My holo-lens blinked quietly in the corner of my vision: 08:42 A.M.
The system must’ve auto-synced to Chelsea’s netspace overnight. Of course it did.
Everything syncs now, whether you asked it to or not.

Bean let out a tiny snore, and my chest tightened in a way I didn’t expect.

All my boxes from Chelsea’s car were here.
I blinked at them, stacked neatly by the wall like some softpatch of my life had already arrived ahead of me.

I didn’t remember moving them. I didn’t remember anything after sitting down last night.

Either Chelsea had gone down to the parking dock a hundred times like some kind of stubborn human drone, or she’d called the apartment bots to bring them up for her.

Knowing her? Probably both.

She was the kind of person who’d haul half your life on her back just to prove she could—then quietly let the drones do the rest while you weren’t looking.

Bean stretched beside me, let out a soft chirp, and blinked up at me like, Well? What’s the patch now?

Good question, Bean.

I looked at Chelsea’s TV on the wall.
It was huge—had to be at least 200 inches. One of those hyper-thin holo-skins that practically glued itself to the surface, no frame, no border. Just wall-to-wall entertainment.

I thought about my pathetic 65-inch back at the old apartment.
The one I had to smack on the side to get it to turn on. The one that glitched every time someone flushed a smart-toilet too hard.
Half the time the image would freeze and pixelate into static bursts like some retro stream-lock aesthetic, except it wasn’t supposed to be aesthetic.

Having a 65-inch screen is like owning a rotary holo-port. Sad. Embarrassing, even.

Chelsea’s setup probably had all the extras too—full holo-ports, spatial sound, immersion mods if you wanted it.
You could dive into someone else’s life and forget your own for hours. Just swipe in, click Hard Yes on the liability waiver, and disappear into fantasy.

Total sensory override. Plug-and-play ghoststream.

Part of me wanted to do that right now. Just… vanish for a while.

But Bean shifted beside me, let out a tiny sigh, and reminded me where I really was.
Her tail flicked once against my hip, a soft reality ping.

No matter how big the screen, life was still here.

I headed to the kitchen to make breakfast since I had to get ready for loop work at noon.

I wasn’t even sure why I was bothering—part of me felt like hard ghoststreaming everything today.

Rent might’ve been canceled for now, and the eviction notice ghosted, but bills didn’t stop just because my life hit pause-mode.

Energy credits still auto-drain from your account whether you feel like existing or not.

When I stepped into the kitchen, Chelsea was already there.

She had breakfast ready for both of us.

“Hey,” she said, without looking up. She was busy stirring something in a pan—real eggs, by the smell of it.
Not the synth packs or protein print-powder I was used to. Actual bio-up food.

The pan hissed softly, steam curling toward the ceiling where the air filter panels whisked it away.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I muttered, standing awkwardly in the doorway.

Chelsea glanced over her shoulder, eyebrows raised.
“I know I didn’t have to. That’s kind of the point.”

Her apartment’s kitchen was small but clean. Solar burners, patch-fridge, microplastic-scan taps—everything I didn’t have before.

The cabinets softly lit themselves when you walked past. The faucet ran a built-in scanner to check for microplastics in your cup.
Everything I still wasn’t sure I deserved.

“Sit.” She nodded toward the table.

I sat.

Bean followed me in, rubbing against my leg like she owned the streamspace already.

Her claws made tiny tapping sounds on the smartfloor, sensors blinking as they registered new motion patterns.

I sat at the table while Chelsea finished up at the stove.

“Real eggs?” I asked, still kind of stunned.

Chelsea smirked.
“Don’t get too excited. They’re lab-grown Gen-4 bio-ups. But they’re not powder, so that’s a win.”

She plated the food and slid one of the trays in front of me.

Toast, eggs, some kind of synth-bacon that still spoofed the smell sensors well enough to glitch you for a second.
The toast wasn’t even burnt—that’s how you knew Chelsea had hacked her kitchen settings perfectly.

I picked up a fork. “Fancy.”

Chelsea dropped into the seat across from me, cradling her mug between both hands.
Steam curled up from it, something herbal. Probably nerve-buffer tea from one of those sub-boxes nobody cancels.

“Don’t get used to it,” she teased. “This was leftover from my mom’s last shipment. She keeps sending me food crates like I’m living in sleep-mode.”

“Well,” I said, stabbing at the eggs, “I am in drain zone, so tell her thanks for me.”

Chelsea laughed, but her eyes stayed soft.
“Consider it a patch family housewarming gift.”

Bean jumped up onto the bench beside me, curling into a warm, purring loaf.
I broke off a tiny piece of egg and handed it to her under the table.

She sniffed it suspiciously, then licked at it anyway. Her little pink tongue flicked out, tentative but curious, like she wasn’t sure if breakfast was a matrix glitch.

Chelsea sipped her tea, tapping her thumbnail against the side of the mug.
Her nails clicked lightly on the ceramic—real ceramic, not plastimug printouts. Small luxury.

“So… signal check. How you feeling today?” she asked carefully.

I swallowed, trying not to make it weird. “Tired.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”

She let me sit with that for a minute. No pressure. Just… space.

Then she smiled a little.
“At least we didn’t get relocation-drone evicted in the middle of the night, right?”

I huffed out something close to a laugh. “I dunno. I kinda miss the glitch thrill of it.”

“Oh yeah?” Chelsea raised an eyebrow. “Next time I’ll call a repo-bot to scoop you up by the collar. We’ll make it an adventure.”

I rolled my eyes. “Please don’t.”

“Hey, you’re the one that ghoststreamed your apartment keys to a random guy on the street.”

I shrugged, mouth full of eggs. “At least I’m consistent.”

Chelsea shook her head, but she was smiling.

****

We finished breakfast like that—quiet, easy, no big speeches.
The kind of silence that didn’t feel heavy until the core-load rebooted.

But when I set my fork down, the core-load came back online.
Like gravity had just remembered where I was.

The holo-clock blinked softly in the corner of my eye, syncing to my peripheral HUD. The numbers stayed there like a silent accusation: 09:27 A.M.
The world didn’t stop just because you wanted it to.

“I have loop work at noon,” I said, mostly to fill the space.

Chelsea leaned back in her chair, folding her arms.
Her mug clicked softly against the table, the dregs of her tea still steam-looping in tiny spirals.

“You’re still going in?”

“Yeah.” I picked at the edge of my plate.
My nail scraped against the ceramic, my brain in softpatch autopilot.

“I mean… what else am I gonna do? Can’t exactly afford stream-out time.”

She studied me for a second, her eyes narrowing just a little.
Her gaze scanned me the same way her facial ID unpacks door locks—quiet, precise, no fast-forward skips.

“You’re allowed to ping out, Iz,” she said, using the nickname soft. “Especially right now.”

I shrugged. “Rent might be paused, but life isn’t.”

Chelsea reached across the table and soft-patched my wrist, just for a second.
Warmth in the middle of cold air. The smart-table lit up briefly where her hand brushed the surface, tracking contact out of habit.

“You’re not doing this solo-stream anymore, okay?”

I swallowed hard.
The smartfloor hummed faintly, like it could sense the shift in my pulse.

“I know.”
But knowing it and hardwiring it were still different codes.

“What about after the bio-up?” she asked.
Her voice dropped just a little—not sharp, not pushy. Just real. The kind of tone you can’t argue with because it’s not meant to start a fight.

“You can’t go to work in pain-sync, Iz.”

I pushed the eggs around my plate, not really looking at her.
The texture of the food blurred under my fork, soft synth yolk glitching into toast crumbs.

“I’m using sick-mode leave. But that’s it.”

Chelsea frowned. “That’s not gonna be enough time to softpatch-repair.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“You do,” she said, her jaw tightening. Her voice stayed level, but I could see the way her throat moved when she swallowed.
“You just don’t like it.”

I sighed, leaning back in the chair.
The plastifoam cushion stream-shifted under me, too soft to feel solid. The chair’s posture sensors pinged, sending a polite haptic nudge to my wrist screen telling me to sit up straighter. I ignored it.

“I’m not trying to be dramatic, Chels. But sick-mode leave is all I’ve got. No paid recovery patch, no backup income, no fairy godmother. Just me, my job, and whatever’s left in my credstream.”

Chelsea’s lips pressed into a line.
Her smartglasses dimmed automatically, her pupils contracting—stress reflex code. She hated this. Hated that I was already planning how to get back to work before my stitches would even bio-dissolve.

“Maybe you could stay out longer,” she offered, voice softer now.
“At least stay here. Heal. Let me help.”

“I’m already letting you help.”
I tried to smile but it code-crashed on the way out. My face didn’t want to follow the command.

“I’m literally patch-living on your couch, remember?”

“You’re in the bed,” she corrected, narrowing her eyes. “Big difference.”

I huffed out a breath, but my stomach twisted anyway.
Some part of me wanted to melt into the bed and disappear. Another part wanted to ghoststream out the door, like if I stayed too long, the system lag would catch up with me and revoke whatever kindness I was getting on empathy loan.

Bean curled tighter in her loaf position, her tail flicking softly against my leg.
Her world was simple—food, sleep, safe loop.
Mine felt like a glitching OS nobody could softpatch fast enough.

I pushed my plate away and checked my wrist screen.

The PrimePort delivery queue was already updating, notifications sliding across my vision in quiet pulses.

Route Assigned: 14 deliveries. Estimated steps: 22,000. Estimated complaints: at least one.

The algorithm was honest, if nothing else.

“Work,” I muttered.

Chelsea glanced over. “You’re still running PrimePort grindloop?”

I shrugged. “Somebody’s gotta carry the stuff drones can’t.”

The smartdrones did most deliveries now, but they still wouldn’t touch stairs past a certain incline, or buildings with pre-update infrastructure. That meant human runners like me got the leftover glitch routes—rooftop drops, unscanned entryways, anything the system flagged as manual assist required.

Chelsea frowned. “They should be credit-stacking you for that.”

“They don’t. But they do track my stair lag.”

She rolled her eyes, but there wasn’t much else to say.
We both knew the system.

These days nobody hard-starved—technically.
But surviving still came with a system tax.

****

By noon, I was already halfway through my grindloop route.
The PrimePort wrist scanner kept pulsing blue, feeding me delivery after delivery.

No breaks. No questions. Just an endless stream-lock of addresses, package weights, and estimated docking times.

The scanner never slowed down. Even when my pulse did.

Most buildings let drones do the dirty work now, but there were always the exceptions—the towers with broken receivers, the neighborhoods where bots got hacked too many times, the old folks who still wanted human touch delivery because it made them feel special.

The company sold it as a luxury upgrade.
I got paid the same either way.

My legs burned as I jogged up a narrow staircase in a complex that reeked of melted synth-cheese and body spray, carrying a Priority+ package that weighed more than it should’ve.

Some customers used the delivery service to ship things they technically weren’t supposed to—heavy hardware parts, untagged medkits, illegal bio-ups. But PrimePort never cared. As long as the credstream cleared, the runners did the lifting.

My back was already screaming, but I kept moving.
Late deliveries meant pay-code penalties.

PrimePort liked to call them performance softpatches, like changing the wording made it fair.

My wrist screen pinged again:
DOOR 14B – HUMAN CONFIRMATION REQUIRED. CUSTOMER PRESENCE: DETECTED.

Great.
Human contact.

I pasted on my best I-don’t-hate-this face, knocked twice, and waited.

My knees popped when I system shifted my weight.

The door hissed open just enough to reveal an eyeball and half a forehead.

“Package for Taro Singh?” I asked, trying not to sound drain-zoned inside.

A hand shot out, grabbed the box, and vanished.
No thank you, no have a nice day. Just a door slam and a rating swipe.

My wrist buzzed:
Customer rating: 4.0/5.
Feedback: Delivery speed good. Eye contact awkward.

I sighed, wiped my forehead with my sleeve, and swiped to the next waypoint.

My sweat stuck to the scanner band. The inside of the strap smelled like recycled plastiskin.

By stop number nine, my feet felt like signal fuzz—numb but still glitching with ache.
My thighs twitched with little micro-spasms every time I hard-paused too long.

The PrimePort scanner pinged again:
NEXT DELIVERY: BUILDING 83A – ROOFTOP DROP.

Of course.

The drones couldn’t dock here because of the tower’s faulty sky-ports. Human patchrunners got the leftovers. Always.

I took the stairs because the lift was out, like always.
A bio-lift panel blinked error codes at me as I passed it—out of service since last November.

By floor seventeen, my lungs burned.
By floor twenty, I stopped pretending this was cardio-mode.

My mouth tasted like copper. The recycled air in the stairwell was thin, pumped in from budget filters that buzzed faintly overhead but didn’t actually clean anything.

My bio-monitor kept pinging hydration warnings into the corner of my vision, but I swiped them away.

At the top, the wind hit me in the face—cold, sharp, and metallic, like breathing in battery acid packets.

The city air scrubbers were grindlooping overtime today, but they never reached this high.

Rooftop sensors lined the rails, blinking quietly, pretending to system-patch the air.

I dropped the package into the bio-lock chute, scanned my wrist, and waited for the confirmation ping.

DELIVERY COMPLETE.
Payment deposited: 2.15 credits.

Two credits.
Not even enough for synth-caf.

I stood there for a second, hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath.

The rooftop’s solar panels flickered underfoot, struggling to pull power from the overcast sky.

The city stretched out in front of me—gray towers, drone lines streaking the sky like glitchstream constellations, advertising wraps scrolling soft neon text around glass and steel.

Somewhere out there, people lived baseline lives.

I wasn’t one of them.

My wrist buzzed again.

NEXT DELIVERY: HUMAN HANDOFF REQUIRED.
SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS: CUSTOMER PREFERS FACE-TO-FACE EXCHANGE.

I groaned.
“Of course they do.”

I took the stairs back down, muscles aching with every step.

The building’s stair-sensor auto-logged me, tracking my exact speed, heart rate, and recovery time to PrimePort HQ. Part of the wellness metrics suite. For “team optimization.”

Bean was probably home asleep right now, curled in a sunbeam patch, living her best life.

I shoved the thought away and kept grindlooping.

****

By the time my shift ended, my legs felt like recycled rubberware and my back was glitch-screaming.

I swiped the PrimePort scanner to clock out.

SHIFT COMPLETE.
Today’s Earnings: 38.40 credits.
Estimated energy burned: 2,100 calories.
Hydration level: below optimal.
Suggested recovery time: 12 hours.

I laughed under my breath.

Twelve hours to softpatch from a job that would start again tomorrow.

For less than forty credits. Nano-pay loop. Barely enough for a day of food, never mind bills.

I checked my credstream balance anyway.

The number blinked in my vision:
Total Account: 64.92 credits.

Cool.

Not even triple digits. But hey—at least the system live-streams your broke status now.

I stuffed my scanner back into my pocket and headed for the nearest tram dock.

The wind cut through my jacket on the walk, but I didn’t care anymore.

My legs kept moving. Because what else was I gonna do?
Stop?

****

By the time I got back to Chelsea’s apartment, my legs were noodled code and my stomach felt like a black hole cache.

I keyed into the building with the guest patch code again.

WELCOME BACK, ISABELLA JAMES
—TEMPORARY ACCESS GRANTED—

That word still hit me every time.

Temporary.

I shuffled into the apartment, letting the door close behind me.

The lights auto-shifted, warm tones fading up from the floor panels. The smart-environment system detected overclock fatigue and softpatched the brightness down.

Chelsea wasn’t home yet—probably still at her day-loop shift, or maybe grabbing more supplies she didn’t need to buy for me.

Bean padded over from the couch, tail high, pupils huge like I’d been gone a stream cycle.

She headbutted my leg once, then flopped dramatically onto her side like where’ve you been?

“Hey, Bean,” I mumbled, crouching down to scratch behind her ears.

My shoulders cracked on the way down. The cartilage felt like it wanted to soft retire early.

The apartment felt too bio-upgraded for me. Too quiet. Too safe.

Even the air smelled cleaner here. Filtered, lemon-coded, no stairwell grime packets.

I collapsed onto the couch, dropped my bag onto the floor, and checked my wrist feed.

That’s when I saw it.

[1] NEW MESSAGE: MEDI-NET SURGICAL COORDINATION

My stomach glitch-flipped.

I tapped it open with my thumb, pulse-spiking even though I hadn’t run a fuel loop to justify it.

Hello, Isabella. This is a reminder of your upcoming Womb Synthesis Procedure scheduled for Thursday at 9:00 a.m. Please confirm your arrival time and pre-op compliance check.

There was a holo-link under the message.

A little glowing circle that read:
CONFIRM / CANCEL / RESCHEDULE

I stared at it, my finger hovering just above the Confirm node.

Bean meowed softly, her tail flicking against my ankle.

My throat tightened.

I wasn’t scared of the bio-upgrade itself—not really.

I was scared of everything else. The what-ifs. The after. The fact that life didn’t auto-patch just because you ran an upgrade.

But I pressed Confirm anyway.