“It’s insane. You can’t name children like punctuation marks.”

  “You don’t get it. It’s a Kallum thing.”

  “A… typo thing?”

  “A legacy thing.”

  — Overheard outside Kallum Inc.

  I leaned back in my chair, letting the irritation show on my face now. The corporate mask I’d been trying to maintain dissolved.

  “Yes,” I said coldly. “You forced me to walk through your facility like some random pleb. That never happened on Mars or Luna.” I glanced pointedly at his employee tag, reading the name: JORDAN STEVENS - CUSTOMER SUPPORT SPECIALIST. “The CEO will be hearing about this, Stevens.”

  His face went pale. “Please, Mister Kallum, I didn’t—I wasn’t—” He stammered, fingers flying across his terminal. “Let me pull up your account immediately. I apologize for any inconvenience—”

  “What happened to my account?” I cut him off.

  “Right, yes, of course.” His voice pitched higher, panic making him talk faster. He tapped frantically at his terminal, screens flashing as he navigated through the Kallum backend system. “Your account shows... ah. Here. It was flagged for inactivity. Three months without access triggered an automatic soft lock. Standard security protocol for Level-2 accounts.”

  “Three months,” I repeated. “So it should’ve been locked three months ago.”

  “Yes, exactly—” He stopped, frowning at the screen. “Wait. That’s... odd.”

  “What?”

  “Your account was soft-locked three months ago, yes. But...” He leaned closer to his terminal, squinting. “There’s a manual override logged here. From earlier today.” His eyes widened. “Someone manually escalated it to a hard suspension. This morning. At 09:47.”

  My chest tightened.

  Someone had locked my account, not automatically, not because of security protocols. Manually, and this morning, right after I’d tried to access it.

  “Who?” I demanded. “Who placed the override?”

  Stevens tapped on his screen, navigating deeper into the logs. “It doesn’t say. The command came from... administrator-level access. No specific ID attached.” He looked up at me, confusion and fear warring on his face. “Mister Kallum, I don’t understand. Why would someone manually lock your account?”

  “Hmmm, let me think,” I said slowly, leaning back in the chair.

  My mind raced.

  Someone had been monitoring my account, waiting for me to access it, and the moment I did, they’d locked me out. Why?

  The system drain. It had to be connected to the system drain. Whoever had been draining my compatibility for six months… they knew. They knew I’d discovered something. Maybe they knew I had the emergency system now, and they were trying to stop me from getting resources.

  But why?

  I ran through the possibilities.

  The Kallum family wasn’t small, but it wasn’t huge either. Most of the younger generation got along fine. We’d never been close, geographic distance and the whole “my father got disowned” thing made family reunions awkward, but we exchanged messages every few months. Birthday greetings. Holiday chats. Generic “how are you doing” check-ins.

  I wasn’t a threat to any of them.

  Legally, I couldn’t be.

  The only way I could inherit anything from Kallum Holdings was if my father signed a repentance letter, officially asking forgiveness and requesting reinstatement to the family. He alone could do that. And since he was dead...

  I had no claim. No legal path to the company and no reason for anyone to see me as competition.

  So why would someone in the family want to drain my system compatibility? Why lock my account? Why go through the trouble of stopping me from accessing resources I’d been given?

  Stevens was still staring at me, nervous sweat beading on his forehead.

  I looked up at him. “Can you call Apostra?”

  He blinked. “Apostra?”

  “My cousin,” I said. “Apostra Kallum. She’s head of the sales department, isn’t she?”

  “She’s... yes, but—” Stevens stammered. “Mister Kallum, I can’t just call a department head for an account verification issue. There are protocols—”

  “I’m not asking you to bypass protocols,” I cut him off. “She isn’t your customer support boss, but I’m asking you to contact her because someone in this company manually locked my account this morning. Someone with administrator access. And I’d like to know who.”

  Stevens’s face went even paler. “You think... you think someone inside Kallum did this deliberately?”

  “I know they did,” I said flatly. “Check the logs again. Tell me exactly when the override was placed.”

  He turned back to his terminal, hands shaking slightly as he pulled up the information. “09:47:23. Command originated from... the internal network. No remote access. Whoever did this was in a Kallum facility.”

  “Which one?”

  “It doesn’t specify. Could be any office on the network.” He glanced at me, fear clear in his eyes now. “Mister Kallum, if there’s internal sabotage, if someone in the family is targeting you, I can’t help with that. That’s... that’s way above my clearance.”

  I leaned forward. “Then get someone with clearance. Call Apostra. Tell her Dash Kallum is here and his account was manually locked by an unknown administrator. Tell her I need to speak with her. Now.”

  Stevens hesitated, clearly torn between corporate protocol and the genuine fear of pissing off a Kallum.

  The Kallum name won.

  “Yes, sir,” he blurted. “I’ll... I’ll contact her immediately.”

  He pulled up another terminal window, typed rapidly, and then pressed a comm button. The line connected after two rings.

  “This is Apostra Kallum’s office,” a smooth, professional voice answered. Probably an assistant.

  “Hello, this is Jordan Stevens from Tago customer support. I have a... situation. Dash Kallum is here regarding a suspended account and—”

  “Hold please.”

  The line went silent for exactly three seconds. Then a familiar voice came through, sharp and commanding. “Stevens, right? Explain.”

  Stevens shot me a panicked look. I nodded.

  “Miss Kallum,” Stevens said, voice shaking slightly. “Dash Kallum is in my office. His account was manually suspended this morning by an unknown administrator. He’s requesting to speak with you directly.”

  Silence on the other end.

  “Put him on.”

  Stevens gestured frantically at me, practically shoving the comm unit in my direction. I leaned toward the speaker. “Apostra,” I said. “It’s Dash. It’s been a few months, hasn’t it? Do you still like green, or do you have a new crazy color for your food?”

  The tone at the other end changed instantly. The commanding voice evaporated, replaced by something warm and genuinely cheerful. “Dash!” She practically squealed. “You finally accepted the birthday gift! Stevens, send him to free Holo-Sale!”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  The line disconnected with a soft click, and I blinked at the comm unit.

  Stevens stared at his terminal, face cycling rapidly through confusion, panic, and resignation. “Holo-Sale,” he muttered, typing frantically. “She said... Holo-Sale Three. Right. Okay. Yes.”

  He stood abruptly, nearly knocking his chair over, and gestured toward the door. “Mister Kallum, if you’ll follow me, please.”

  I grabbed my license from his desk and followed him out into the corridor, but not the corridor I’d entered from.

  Stevens led me in the opposite direction, past rows of identical doors, until we reached an elevator I definitely hadn’t seen before. It was modern, with chrome paneling and a holographic interface that glowed softly when Stevens pressed his palm to the scanner.

  The doors slid open with a whisper-quiet hiss.

  We stepped inside. The interior was... nice. Too nice for a building that had made me walk through five security checkpoints to reach customer support. Soft lighting, polished metal, a faint hum of expensive technology.

  Stevens pressed a button marked SUB-3.

  The elevator descended smoothly, with no jolts or rattling. Just a gentle pull as we dropped deeper into the building. When the doors opened, we emerged into a corridor lined with doors. Each one was labeled with a simple plaque:

  HOLO-SALE 1

  HOLO-SALE 2

  HOLO-SALE 3

  HOLO-SALE 4

  Stevens led me to the third door and stopped. He turned to face me, expression somewhere between terrified and awestruck. “I apologize again for any inconvenience, Mister Kallum,” he said. “I hope your experience improves from here. If you need anything else—”

  “Thanks.”

  He nodded once and then practically fled back toward the elevator, leaving me alone in the corridor, staring at the door marked HOLO-SALE 3.

  Before I could break something by poking my screwdriver into things, the indicator light beside it blinked from red to green. “Guess that’s my cue,” I muttered, pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  And stopped because… I was standing in a warehouse.

  Not a small storage room, or a showroom with displays and sales counters. Proper warehouse, an absolutely enormous warehouse that stretched in every direction as far as I could see.

  The ceiling was lost somewhere overhead, easily ten stories up, crisscrossed with support beams and automated track systems that hummed with faint mechanical life. The floor was polished permacrete, marked with yellow guidance lines and loading zones and the shelves.

  Oh, the shelves.

  Rows upon rows upon rows of industrial shelving units, each one at least twenty meters tall, packed floor-to-ceiling with items: crates, boxes, individual pieces of equipment mounted on racks. Plus, everything was labeled with alphanumeric codes and glowing inventory tags.

  I knew my way around Eddy’s, but this… I squinted and saw weapons on one shelf, armor components on another. Tools. Electronics. Materials I couldn’t even identify. Some sections glowed faintly with contained energy, warning signs indicating volatile contents.

  There had to be millions of items here.

  Literally millions.

  “What?” I whispered, spinning slowly to take it all in.

  This wasn’t possible. The building I’d entered wasn’t big enough to contain this, and the sub-levels weren’t deep enough. This space shouldn’t exist.

  I turned around to look back at the door I’d entered through, but it wasn’t there.

  Nor the door, nor corridor, nor the elevator. Just more warehouse stretching endlessly behind me. “What is this...?” My voice echoed strangely, as if the space was absorbing the sound.

  “Dash!”

  I spun toward the voice.

  Apostra stood about ten meters away, grinning widely, arms spread for a hug. She was exactly as I remembered from the last family gathering a year ago: mid-twenties with long dark hair, wearing a professional Kallum uniform that somehow looked both formal and comfortable.

  She rushed toward me.

  I opened my arms instinctively—

  She passed straight through me.

  Like a hologram. Just the faint shimmer of light particles disrupting as her projection intersected with my physical body.

  She stopped on the other side, turning back with an exaggerated pout. “You promised me a hug!” she protested, crossing her arms. “Next time it has to be a big one!”

  I burst out laughing despite myself. “Yeah! Hello, Asti.” I looked around at the impossible warehouse surrounding us. “So, uh... where am I?”

  She grinned and gestured broadly at the space. “You’re still on Earth 2.0! Specifically, you’re in Holo-Sale Three, which is a joint venture between Kallum Holdings and Serrano Group. FTL magitech communication tech combined with holographic magitech environmental rendering.” She walked, or seemed to walk, closer to me, her projection perfectly mimicking natural movement. “I’m on Luna right now, in my office. What you’re seeing is a real-time holographic overlay of our inventory. Everything here exists. You can browse, select items, and we’ll ship them to you.”

  I stared at her. “That’s... insane.”

  “That’s cutting-edge!” she corrected cheerfully. “I worked at it with Serrano, who developed the core FTL tech about five years ago. I petitioned, and we partnered with them to implement it across our major facilities with our holo tech. Now you can shop in person without actually being in person!” She paused, tilting her head. “Well, sort of. You can’t touch anything, obviously. But you can see it all.”

  “Every second must cost a fortune,” I said, still trying to wrap my head around it.

  “For you? Free!” She beamed. “Grandma knew you’d hesitate to use her gift. She told me specifically: ‘Asti, when Dash finally gets it, make sure he doesn’t mess it up. Help him get what he needs.’” She spread her arms wide again, this time not attempting a hug. “So here I am! Your personal shopping assistant!”

  I looked around at the endless rows of shelves, at the billions of sols worth of equipment surrounding me. “Grandma knew I would contact specifically you, Asti... I don’t even know where to start.”

  Her grin widened. “Lucky for you, I do! Come on, Dash. Let’s buy you the best gear your Level-2 access can handle!” She turned and started walking, or maybe half floating, toward one of the massive shelving units, gesturing for me to follow.

  I followed her through the warehouse, my boots actually echoing against the polished permacrete as the holographic projection of my cousin glided ahead. The sheer scale of the place kept throwing me off. Every time I thought I’d gotten used to it, another row of shelves would extend into the distance, packed with equipment I couldn’t even name.

  “So,” Asti said, glancing back at me with that familiar grin. “What do you want? Armor upgrades? Better weapons? We’ve got some preem combat gear that just came in from—”

  Preem… she must’ve been watching the same shows as Alice.

  “Help with the system,” I blurted out, then immediately laughed nervously. “I mean, I know that’s not really something you can buy off a shelf, but...” I trailed off, not really expecting anything. System information was locked behind academies and corpo training programs.

  You couldn’t just purchase knowledge about how the system worked. Could you?

  Asti’s expression shifted. The cheerful shopping assistant vanished, replaced by something more serious. She studied me for a long moment, holographic eyes searching my face. “Are you still at Creston Academy?” she asked carefully.

  I hesitated.

  That was a loaded question, wasn’t it? Technically, I hadn’t been at Creston Academy, I’d never have gotten in. My application had been “pending review”, because I let that rot there as a “backdoor” if I actually manifested the system. I begged for it, actually, which was pretty embarrassing, but now I was glad I did.

  I had a system now.

  Sort of.

  A broken, glitching mess of ancient runes and ERROR messages, but it was there. Functional enough to register as a licensed hunter. Functional enough that JD, whoever or whatever that was, could interact with it.

  If I could prove it worked, prove I wasn’t just some compatibility failure... and if I could solve the drain. Figure out who’d been stealing from me. Fix whatever they’d broken.

  Then yeah. Maybe I could attend the Academy.

  I nodded slowly. “Yeah,” I said, committing to the lie. Or maybe the future truth? “Yeah, I’m... working on that.”

  Asti bit her lip, the gesture oddly natural for a hologram. “They won’t teach you much, will they?” She sighed, shaking her head. “Looked it up back when you left Mars. Creston’s good for the basics, but they don’t have the custom systems. Not like Aurelia with their sub-traits, or Najjar with their system-made cybernetics.” She paused, then her expression brightened slightly. “But we have a mana subsystem!”

  She said it like that should mean something to me.

  I blinked. “Mana?”

  “Yes! Mana!” She jumped slightly, holographic form flickering slightly with excitement. “It’s a Kallum custom subsystem. Well, kind of?” She waved her hand, and suddenly the entire warehouse lurched into motion.

  I stumbled, grabbing instinctively at a shelf that wasn’t really there. My hand passed through empty air as the rows of equipment blurred past us, shelves whizzing by so fast they became streaks of color and light. The automated track systems overhead hummed louder, guiding the movement.

  “Asti, what—”

  The motion stopped as suddenly as it had started.

  We were standing in a completely different section of the warehouse. The industrial shelving units had been replaced by something that looked... wrong for this space. Wooden bookcases, dark and ornate, lined with actual books. Real paper books, not holo-displays or data chips. They looked ancient, leather-bound, the thing you’d find in a museum, not a corpo warehouse.

  “John,” Asti said, her voice softer now. “Our great-grandpa. He got twenty books from the system.”

  She gestured, and eight volumes flew from the shelves.

  I watched, frozen, as they floated through the air and settled neatly on a nearby table that definitely hadn’t been there a second ago. The books arranged themselves in a perfect row, spines facing outward, titles gleaming in languages I couldn’t read.

  “A lot of them got rented over time,” Asti continued, moving toward the table. Her projection flickered as she walked, the hologram struggling slightly with the fine details of the books. “Corporate wars, incursions, family drama. You know how it goes.” She pulled up an interface, fingers dancing across invisible keys. “But of these eight are still free to borrow, and six others are lent to Kallum academies or whatever. And I think... yeah, you can borrow one?”

  I stared at the books.

  System-granted items from my great-grandpa. Sitting on a shelf in a warehouse on Luna, scanned and projected into a holo-room on Earth 2.0 so I could browse them like I was shopping for gear.

  This was insane.

  “Do I need mana?” I asked, cutting through my own spiraling thoughts. The question burst out before I could stop it. “I haven’t touched the system much. Like, at all. Can you tell me...” I hesitated, searching for the right words. “Anything? Anything interesting?”

  Asti’s fingers paused over her interface. She looked at me, and for the first time since I’d stepped into this impossible warehouse, she looked uncertain. “Wait. Borrowing this book for a week,” she said slowly, “would cost half a million sols.”

  I almost choked.

  “Yeah, never—” I started, already backing away from the table mentally.

  “Grandma granted you a million,” Asti interrupted.

  I stopped breathing.

  “What?”

  “A million credits,” she repeated, meeting my eyes. “As part of your Level-2 access. It’s sitting in your Kallum shopping account right now, allocated specifically for gear and training resources.” She glanced at the books, then back at me. “And honestly, Dash? I think a Mana Book is the best option for you.”

  TODAY’S CHAPTER IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY Jordan Stevens

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