Nico spent the rest of day four in a haze.
Not the fog of withdrawal—Kade's vial had handled that—but the disorienting unreality of knowing something so large it couldn't fit inside his head. Thirty to sixty million credits. The numbers kept repeating like a mantra, like a prayer, like a hallucination he couldn't shake.
He tried to calculate what that meant. Tried to ground the abstract enormity in concrete terms.
At three hundred credits per cleaning job, he'd have to work 100,000 jobs to earn thirty million credits. At his current rate of selling Veil—maybe 200 credits profit per week if he was lucky—it would take him 2,884 years to earn that much.
Longer than human civilization on Earth before the station era. Longer than any human had ever lived.
Impossible money. The kind that changed everything.
The kind that got people killed.
He should have been planning. Should have been figuring out how to access the accounts, how to move the money safely, how to cover his tracks. Instead, he bought two more vials from a street dealer he barely knew—spending credits he couldn't afford—and went looking for a quiet place to not think.
The observation deck at the edge of Level 8 was empty at this hour. Nobody came here except maintenance workers and people who needed to stare at something bigger than their problems. The windows were scratched and filthy, but beyond them: Jupiter. Massive, swirling, indifferent to the tiny humans orbiting above it.
Nico loaded a vial into his wrist port and let the Veil take him.
The warmth spread through his bloodstream, softening everything. The hard edges of the metal bench became comfortable. The industrial smell of Level 8 faded to almost nothing. The constant anxiety grinding in his chest loosened, then disappeared.
Better living through chemistry.
He stared at Jupiter and let his mind wander.
FEVER DREAM #1: THE ESCAPE
In this version, Nico accesses the money tomorrow. Transfers it clean, moves it through Kade's intermediary accounts, and within a week has enough legitimate credits to apply for housing on Level 4. Not Level 6—that's Maya's world, too complicated—but Level 4, where professionals lived. Engineers, technicians, people with actual careers.
He rents an apartment. A real apartment with a door that locks and windows that aren't scratched. With a kitchen he could cook in, a bathroom he doesn't share with two hundred people, a bed instead of a sleeping pod.
He enrolls in treatment. Real treatment, Level 4 medical care where they don't just warehouse addicts but actually help them. Nanite therapy, neural rebalancing, counseling from someone who isn't reading from a script. It's expensive but he can afford expensive now.
Six months clean. Then twelve. Then he doesn't count anymore because he doesn't need to.
He finishes his engineering degree, the one he dropped out of at nineteen. Gets a job with a mid-tier firm doing infrastructure maintenance—ironic, since he grew up in infrastructure that was never maintained—and it pays decent money. Not fortune money, but steady money. Safe money.
He has friends who aren't dealers. He dates people who aren't junkies. He goes to restaurants instead of stealing from donation bins.
One day, years from now, he runs into Maya on Level 5. She's on her way to work, he's on his way to a job site. They have coffee. They talk about the old days like they're a different lifetime. She tells him she's proud of him. He believes her.
In this version, the money saves him.
The vial ran dry. Nico loaded the second one.
FEVER DREAM #2: THE REVENGE
In this version, Nico doesn't escape. He stays on Level 8 with forty million credits and becomes the person everyone wished they could be.
He buys property. Not just one restaurant but dozens. Not just housing for himself but housing blocks for others. He becomes a landlord, but the good kind—the kind who actually fixes things, who doesn't gouge on rent, who remembers what it's like to be broke.
He funds clinics. Real medical care for Level 8 residents who've never had it. He pays for education programs, job training, childcare centers. Everything the station authorities should provide but don't because nobody on Level 8 matters.
People start calling him Uncle Nico. The man who came from nothing and remembered where he came from. The man who made it and reached back down to pull others up.
Station Security comes sniffing around, but he's clean. Everything's legal, everything's documented. They can't touch him. And when they try, when they plant evidence or make accusations, he has lawyers. Real lawyers, the kind corporations hire, and they tear SSS apart in court.
Commander Wright himself shows up one day, trying to intimidate him. Nico doesn't flinch. "I'm feeding people you let starve," he says. "I'm housing people you let die in maintenance tunnels. So yeah, Commander. Come at me. Let's see how that plays in the media."
Wright backs down. Because what can he do? Arrest a man for helping people?
The upper tiers hate him. The corporate council tries to freeze his assets, revoke his permits, make his life hell. But they can't, because he has money now. Their money, ironically. And money is the only language they speak.
In this version, the money is revenge.
The second vial emptied. Nico sat in the warm haze of the high, Jupiter blurring in his vision, and felt the dreams dissolve into what they were: fantasies. Pretty lies he told himself to avoid the reality that money didn't actually solve anything.
Because even in his fever dreams, he was still using. Still loading vials. Still needing the chemical warmth to make the world bearable.
Treatment worked in fantasies. In reality, he'd tried treatment three times and relapsed three times. The problem wasn't access to care. The problem was that sobriety meant feeling everything he'd spent nine years avoiding.
And revenge was a joke. You didn't get revenge on systems. Systems didn't care. They ground you down whether you had money or not, whether you were Level 8 or Level 3. Money just bought you a nicer cell in the same prison.
His tablet pinged. A message from Maya: Need to talk. Coffee tomorrow, 10am, usual place? -M
Nico stared at the message. Maya. Social worker Maya who'd tried to save him a dozen times and failed every time. Maya who looked at him with disappointment so thick he could drown in it.
He should ignore the message. Should avoid her until he figured out what to do with the money, until he had his life together enough to face her judgment.
But the Veil made him reckless, and he was tired of avoiding.
Sure he sent back. 10am.
Her reply came instantly: Thank you. See you then.
Nico pocketed his tablet and left the observation deck, Jupiter shrinking behind him. The high was fading now, leaving the familiar hollow feeling in its wake. The warmth draining away, reality seeping back in.
He had thirty to sixty million credits in a data core in his pocket.
And he was still broke, still addicted, still drowning.
Money didn't solve problems.
But maybe—maybe—it bought time to solve them yourself.
Or maybe that was just another fever dream.
The coffee shop where Nico met Maya was on Level 7, one tier up from his usual territory. It was the kind of place that straddled the line between working class and professional—not fancy enough to intimidate, not rough enough to scare off Level 6 visitors. Maya chose it deliberately: neutral ground.
She was already there when Nico arrived, sitting at a corner table with two cups of coffee. Real coffee, not the synthetic shit Level 8 served. The smell alone was enough to make his mouth water.
"You came," Maya said, and there was genuine surprise in her voice.
"You asked."
"You usually ignore me when I ask."
"Yeah, well. Felt like being unpredictable today." Nico sat across from her and wrapped his hands around the coffee cup. Still hot. She'd timed this perfectly, or she'd been here for a while waiting to see if he'd actually show.
Maya looked good. She always looked good, put-together and professional in a way Nico had long since stopped aspiring to. Her hair was pulled back, her clothes were clean and unpatched, and she smelled like soap and that floral something he could never quite identify. Level 6 smells. Success smells.
"You look terrible," she said, not unkindly.
"Thanks. You look great. I'm glad we had this talk."
"Nico—"
"Sorry. Sorry, yeah." He sipped the coffee. It was perfect. Rich and bitter and real. "What did you want to talk about?"
"You. I want to talk about you." She pulled up her tablet, and Nico's stomach sank. This was official social worker Maya, not friend Maya. "I pulled your recent activity. You've been arrested twice in the past month for possession. Both times released with fines you can't pay."
"Dealing's not a real crime on Level 8. Everyone knows that."
"It's a real crime everywhere, Nico. SSS just doesn't waste resources enforcing it down here." She set down the tablet. "But it's on your record. Two more arrests and you're looking at mandatory detention and treatment."
"Great. Free treatment."
"It's not free. It's punitive. They warehouse you in a detention facility with fifty other addicts, give you the cheapest meds available, and kick you out after ninety days whether you're clean or not." Her voice softened. "I've seen the stats, Nico. Ninety-three percent relapse rate within six months. It doesn't work."
"So why are you telling me this?"
"Because I can get you into a real program. Level 5 facility, actual medical care, therapy that isn't just watching videos. Eighteen-month residential treatment with job training after. You could actually get clean."
There it was. The offer she made every few months, the one he always turned down. But this time it hit different, because this time he had a secret worth keeping.
"I appreciate the offer, Maya. Really. But I'm not interested."
"Why not?"
"Because I've done treatment. Three times. It didn't stick."
"This would be different. Better facility, better care—"
"Better doesn't matter if I don't want to be there." He met her eyes. "Listen to me. I'm not in denial about my addiction. I know I'm a junkie. I know I'm probably going to die from this. But treatment doesn't work because the problem isn't access to care. The problem is that I don't want to stop."
"That's the addiction talking."
"No, that's me talking." He leaned forward. "You know what sobriety means? It means feeling everything. The hunger, the exhaustion, the crushing awareness of how badly I've fucked up my life. It means being present for every humiliation, every failure, every moment of grinding poverty. Veil makes that bearable. Treatment takes it away and offers nothing in its place except the promise that maybe, someday, being sober won't hurt as much."
"It won't hurt as much if you build a life worth being sober for."
"And how do I do that? Get a job?" He laughed, bitter. "Maya, I can't get a job cleaning toilets on Level 6 with my record. I can't rent a decent apartment. I can't do anything except deal drugs and survive. Sobriety doesn't change that."
"You're wrong."
"I'm not, and you know I'm not. You work in social services. You see the system every day. You know it's rigged to keep people like me exactly where we are."
Maya was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was smaller. "So what do I do? Just watch you die?"
"Yeah. Probably. I'm sorry."
"I don't accept that."
"You don't have to accept it. But that doesn't make it not true." Nico drained his coffee. "Look, I know you mean well. I know you're trying to help. But I'm not one of your success stories. I'm the cautionary tale. The one you tell the next junkie to scare them straight."
"You're not a cautionary tale. You're a person." She reached across the table, took his hand. Her fingers were warm. "You're someone I care about. Someone I've known since before... before all this. And I refuse to believe you're beyond saving."
"Then you're lying to yourself."
He pulled his hand back, stood up. The data core in his pocket felt heavy. Thirty to sixty million credits, and he was sitting here letting Maya try to save him like money could make a difference.
"Thank you for the coffee," he said.
"Nico, please—"
"I'm not doing treatment, Maya. But I appreciate that you keep trying."
He walked out before she could argue further, before the guilt could override his certainty that this was the right choice. Because if he went into treatment now, if he disappeared for eighteen months, what would happen to the money? To the one chance he had to actually change his life on his own terms?
No. He'd try it his way first. And if that failed, if the money disappeared or got traced or destroyed him, then maybe he'd consider Maya's offer.
Maybe.
But probably not.
Outside, Level 7's corridors were cleaner than Level 8's, better maintained, less desperate. But not by much. One tier up was still the bottom, just with nicer paint.
Nico walked back down to Level 8, to the pod blocks and market stalls and the smell of failure he'd been breathing for ten years.
Thirty to sixty million credits in his pocket.
And still, nothing had changed.
Yet.