The Shift

The bus wheezed down the frost-laced lane like a dying lung. Fog crawled across the moorland, low and pale as ash, seeping in through the loose seals of the window beside Callum Ray’s cheek. He blinked slowly, watching sheep vanish into mist like ghosts retreating from dawn. Everything was always damp now. Even the sun—what little of it was left—looked rusted.

Farm 41 came into view in the same way a wound might emerge from beneath a bandage. Squat, rectangular, surrounded by chain-link fences that buzzed with static and signage. “EMOTIONAL ZONE: NO ENTRY WITHOUT SYMPATHETIC FILTERING.” Another sign hung skewed on the gate: “Blessed Be the Circuit. Praise Be the Pulse.”

Callum muttered under his breath, “Bless this shit,” and tapped his ID chip against the scanner.

Inside, everything hummed.

White humming walls. White, humming floors. Fluorescent tubes embedded in the ceiling pulsed in slow rhythms, synced with the biofeedback of the Floaters. You could walk past any of them and feel your heartbeat go funny, like your soul was briefly sharing a socket.

He pulled his coat off, tossed it into his locker, and strapped on the standard-issue sympathetic dampener—looked like an old VR rig married to a defibrillator. It wrapped around the base of his skull and tugged gently at his spine as it calibrated.

The door to the harvest chamber hissed open.

Rows of human bodies floated in vertical tanks, suspended in luminous blue amniotic fluid. Hundreds of them. Naked, though, most were covered in thin webbing grown by their own neural mesh over time. The tanks stretched in neat lines under the pale industrial light, like a cathedral of drowned saints.

But Callum didn’t see saints. He saw work.

He tapped a few keys on his tablet and pulled up the day’s harvest queue.

“Floaters stable,” he mumbled. “Sixty-eight emotional peaks logged overnight. Eleven ruptures flagged. Three dreams failed transmission. Standard clean-up.”

He stepped toward the first tank. The man inside was gaunt, mouth slightly parted, brows furrowed like he was trying to scream through ten lifetimes of sleep.

Callum pressed the interface button and watched a trail of silver fluid begin to spiral through a tube at the tank’s base—Agape, raw and glowing like moonlight, turned viscous.

The readout beside it flickered:

Spike: Melancholic Sacrifice Level: Moderate Source: MMORTIS Scenario 77 (“Loss Loop: Autumn Mother”)

He clicked the log entry and moved on.

The next tank held a teenage girl. Soft twitching behind her eyes. A smile fluttered onto her lips and vanished just as quickly.

Spike: Selfless Love Level: High Source: MMORTIS Scenario 21 (“Burning House–Sibling Choice”)

He looked away.

“You’re not in love, sweetheart,” he muttered. “You’re in traction.”

A loud hum kicked in behind him as the system calibrated the ExoDrip turbines. That meant the Agape was clean, viable, and routing to refinery. Maybe some would be turned into serum. Maybe some would become micro-core fuel for elite towers in London. Or maybe it would just light a streetlamp for a while.

Didn’t matter.

Callum signed off the spike reports. Adjusted one dial manually on a tank that was vibrating a bit too enthusiastically—probably a rupture risk.

He rubbed his temple. The dampener always gave him headaches if he skipped breakfast, and he’d been running low on ration cubes. Mira got them first. Always.

The loudspeaker clicked on, flat and monotone: “Farm 41. Agape yield at 83%. Continue primary extraction.”

Callum yawned and clicked the next readout.

Spike: Grief/Confession Overload Level: Critical (Potential rupture) Source: MMORTIS Scenario 404 (“The Mirror That Screams”)

He flagged it for someone higher up. Too volatile for manual handling.

Another tank. Another face. Another river of dream-syrup bleeding into the pipes.

He leaned against a wall and stared at the sea of bodies. Eyes closed. Forever mid-sentence. Mid-confession. Mid-love.

A flicker of guilt fluttered in his gut. He pushed it down like he always did.

Glanced at the time.

Seven more hours.

He scratched at the peeling skin near his temple where the dampener always dug too deep.

Then, softly, almost like a prayer:

“Another day, another dream drained.”

*

The Drip

The lift was dead again.

Callum dragged his boots up ten flights of stained concrete stairs, each one echoing like a cough in a tomb. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead—some long since shattered, others barely clinging to life, stuttering out dim glows like dying thoughts. The air was heavy with damp and burnt plastic.

Flat 10C. Door warped from moisture. Frame taped up to keep out drafts that came in sideways like knives.

He fumbled the latch, stepped inside, and shut it quickly behind him—locking three bolts out of habit, though the door would barely keep a strong wind at bay.

No lights on. Just the amber glow of the drip rig in the corner, casting long, trembling shadows on the mouldy wallpaper.

Mira lay on the couch, small and impossibly still.

Her body had changed little in two years. Her skin was pale, but warm enough. Chest rose and fell with the soft sigh of the respirator. Her hands were curled like they were holding something she couldn’t let go of. Her head tilted slightly toward the window, eyes closed, lashes motionless.

The rig hissed as it fed another line of refined Agape into the drip. A translucent golden fluid, dense like honey but somehow lighter than air. It pulsed faintly with an inner light, like it remembered joy.

Callum knelt beside her. Ran a hand through her hair. It was getting long again. Tangled, but still soft. Smelled faintly of the cheap lilac shampoo they used to joke about.

“Hey, baby,” he said quietly, like they were sharing a secret. “It’s Dad.”

He reached into his workbag and pulled out the little black cylinder. Slotted it into the pump, locked it, primed it. The rig beeped once, then purred.

“I pulled three litres today,” he said, brushing her fringe back. “Good batch. Clean burn. High heat index. Should keep the dreams warm.”

She didn’t move. Didn’t twitch. But he always imagined she smiled—just a little—when the new batch hit. Like she could feel it. Like somewhere inside the game, she knew.

Callum sat down heavily beside the couch. The springs groaned beneath him.

He looked over at the old photo on the wall: Mira, age ten, grinning with two front teeth missing. Sunlight. Real trees. Her birthday picnic before the Bloom.

She’d gone into MMORTIS two years ago, chasing escape like every other kid. “Just a couple hours, Dad,” she’d said. “Everyone’s talking about it.” She’d laughed as the headset booted up.

She never laughed again.

They told him her body survived, brain activity was “abnormal but stable.” Said she must be caught in a persistent scenario cluster. Said there was hope—if he could keep the neural circuits charged.

He didn’t understand the tech, didn’t care to. All he knew was the Agape kept her brain from flatlining.

Black market only. Refined drip-grade. Expensive as hell. But he knew a guy who owed him a favour. And now he owed him favours every day.

He leaned in and kissed her forehead.

The skin was cold. He told himself it was just the room.

“I’m doing my best, love. I am.”

Outside, the city groaned and flickered like an old machine full of dying lights.

Inside, a father whispered to a daughter who might never hear him.

But he kept speaking anyway.

“I pulled three litres today, love. Should keep the dreams warm.”

*

The Dealer

The rain came down in greasy sheets, plastering old flyers to brick and bone. Eastway Market had long since died, but its corpse still twitched—neon graffiti smeared over boarded shops, half-dismantled kiosks used as shelters for the city’s ghosts. Everything smelled like rust, piss, and the oily breath of broken machines.

Callum pulled his hood low and walked fast, boots splashing through shallow filth pools, past silent shapes with flickering eye-mods and blank stares. They didn’t speak. They never did.

He ducked through a rusted shutter behind an old butcher’s, past a burning barrel manned by no one, and slipped into the crawlspace behind the cold-room.

Migs was already there—pale, twitchy, wrapped in three layers of synthetic fur and smelling like hot ozone. He perched on a stack of collapsed VR consoles, scraping under his nails with a scalpel.

“You’re late,” Migs said without looking up.

“You’re paranoid,” Callum grunted.

“That too.”

They didn’t shake hands. Just exchanged glares. Old dance, old rhythm.

Migs reached into a lead-lined case and pulled out a vial. The drip glowed like a bottled prayer. Less gold this time—closer to amber, with cloudy whorls like smoke trapped in sap.

Callum frowned.

“That looks thin.”

“It is.”

“How thin?”

“Couple points off purity. Maybe more.”

Callum stiffened. “That’s brain damage range.”

Migs shrugged, a motion too sharp to be casual. “Tell me about it. Everyone’s bitchin’. Farm stock’s down. Spikes are flat. Some batches don’t even register a burn.”

Callum stared at the vial. His fingers twitched like they wanted to throw it.

“Don’t worry, this one’ll hold,” Migs said, pressing it into his hand. “Barely. You got two, maybe three days.”

“Something’s wrong,” Callum said. “It’s the sources, innit?”

Migs grinned wide. Too wide.

“You’re not stupid for a boiler tech. Yeah. Something’s wrong. Fluctuations. Weird readings. Signal loops in the heat logs. There’s chatter—underground servers lighting up with patterns nobody’s seen since the Bloom.”

He leaned in, eyes glittering. “There’s talk of a girl.”

Callum’s stomach dropped.

Migs didn’t notice.

“One they’re calling the Saint. Word is, she’s not just giving off Agape. She’s giving off miracles. The purest emotional core since the First Siphon Protocol. Like she’s plugged straight into God’s breastmilk or somethin’.”

Callum’s jaw tightened. “You believe in saints now?”

“I believe in high-yield serum and profit margins. This girl, wherever she is, she’s the reason half the farms are dry. They’re pulling everything toward her.”

He tapped the vial. “Even this batch? Diluted. You’re drinking from her overflow.”

Callum stared at the glowing serum in his hand.

He saw Mira’s face. Smiling. Before the rig. Before the game.

Before.

“How do they know it’s a girl?” he asked.

Migs smirked. “Purity signature. Emotional resonance like that? Only comes from grief crossed with love. That’s girl-shaped pain, mate.”

He laughed, hoarse and low.

Callum didn’t.

He slid the vial into his coat, turned, and walked out without another word.

Migs called after him, voice echoing in the dark:

“She don’t just dream, old man—she bleeds faith. That’s power now, yeah? That’s your goddamn electricity.”

The rain had turned to sleet by the time Callum reached the street.

He walked home with the miracle in his pocket and a scream building behind his teeth.

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