Chapter 1: The Five Hundred Dollar Hour

Chapter 1: The Five Hundred Dollar Hour

The rejection letter was a digital slap in the face, cold and impersonal. ‘After careful consideration, we regret to inform you that your application for the student loan extension has been denied.’

Leo Vance stared at the glowing screen, the words blurring into a meaningless jumble. Outside his dorm room window, the sounds of campus life—laughter, a distant siren, the bass thump of someone's stereo—felt like they were from another planet. His world had shrunk to the size of this screen and the crushing weight in his chest.

He ran a hand through his perpetually messy brown hair, his fingers catching in the knots. Sleep had been a luxury for months, a distant memory from a time before his sister, Maya, had gotten sick. Now, his days were a frantic juggling act: classes he could barely focus on, a part-time job shelving books at the library for pocket change, and long, draining hours at the hospital, trying to coax a smile from Maya’s pale face.

On his desk, beneath a stack of overdue textbooks, lay the bill. It was the latest one, a crisp, terrifying document detailing the initial costs for the experimental treatment that was Maya’s last real hope. The number at the bottom seemed to mock him, a figure so laughably out of reach it might as well have been the distance to the moon.

Desperation was a physical thing, a sour taste in his mouth and a cold knot in his stomach. It was what kept him scrolling through obscure job forums at two in the morning, past the pyramid schemes and the requests for medical trial participants with side effects listed in microscopic font. He was looking for a miracle.

And then he saw it.

The post was stark, almost minimalist, buried on a forum for short-term contract work.

TITLE: Observational Specialist Required. LOCATION: Provided upon successful application. PAYMENT: $500/hour. Cash. REQUIREMENTS: Excellent focus. Ability to follow simple instructions. Absolute discretion. No prior experience necessary. DURATION: Flexible shifts.

Leo blinked, his sleep-deprived eyes struggling to process the number. Five hundred dollars an hour. It was a typo. It had to be. That was more than he made in a month at the library. He read it again. And again. The number didn't change.

A scam. Obviously. No legitimate job paid that kind of money for "no experience." It was probably organ harvesting, or some kind of illegal courier work. His rational mind, the part of him that aced midterms and remembered Dewey Decimal codes, screamed at him to close the tab and forget he ever saw it.

But the image of Maya’s tired smile, the quiet whir of the machines by her bed, pushed back with a force that was stronger than logic. That kind of money wasn't just a solution; it was a lifeline. It was the treatment. It was everything.

With a tremor in his hand that he couldn't control, he clicked the link. The application was just as bizarrely simple as the ad: a single field for his name and email address. No resume, no cover letter, no references.

This is a mistake, he thought, as he typed in his details and hit ‘send.’

He expected nothing. At best, a flood of spam emails. At worst, a virus. What he got, less than five minutes later, was a reply.

The email was as sterile as the ad. No company name, no logo, just black text on a white background.

Mr. Vance,

Your preliminary application has been accepted. Your interview is scheduled for tomorrow at 3:00 PM. The address is attached. Do not be late. Do not bring your phone into the building. Await instruction in the lobby.

Regards, The Foundation.

The address was on the far edge of the city, an industrial wasteland of decaying warehouses and forgotten factories he’d only ever seen from the highway. The Foundation. It sounded vaguely corporate, but also unsettlingly grand. He tried searching the name online, but came up with nothing. No website, no records, no footprint at all. It was a digital ghost.

Every instinct for self-preservation told him to run. But the number kept flashing in his mind. $500/hour. For Maya.

---

The next day, the bus spat him out onto a cracked sidewalk across from the address. The building wasn’t a derelict warehouse, but a perfect, featureless cube of gray concrete and smoked black glass. It had no signs, no logos, no indication of what it was or who worked inside. It looked less like an office and more like a high-security data center, or a tomb.

Leo’s heart hammered against his ribs. He’d left his phone at a corner store locker as instructed, and the absence of its familiar weight in his pocket made him feel naked and disconnected. He checked his cheap digital watch. 2:58 PM.

Taking a deep, shaky breath that did nothing to calm the frantic hummingbird in his chest, he crossed the street. The glass doors hissed open before he could touch them, revealing a lobby that was as sterile and silent as an operating theater.

The walls were stark white. The floor was polished white marble. The air smelled faintly of bleach and recycled air, cold and dry. The only furniture was a single, severe-looking white desk, behind which sat a woman who looked as though she’d been assembled from spare parts and old fears.

She was thin, almost skeletal, her graying hair pulled back so tightly it seemed to stretch the skin of her face. Her eyes, bloodshot and wide, darted around the empty room, never resting on any one spot for more than a second. Her hands trembled where they were clasped on the desk.

"Leo Vance," he said, his voice sounding too loud in the oppressive silence.

The woman’s head snapped towards him, her eyes finally landing on him with an unnerving intensity. "You are on time," she stated, her voice a dry rasp. She didn't check a list. She didn't ask for ID. It was as if she had been waiting only for him. "I am Evelyn. Follow me."

She rose without another word, her movements jerky and bird-like. Leo followed her away from the desk and down a long, impossibly white corridor. The only sound was the soft squeak of his worn-out sneakers on the pristine floor. The walls were lined with unmarked white doors, all of them closed. It felt like walking through a hospital for ghosts.

"The position has been filled," Evelyn said abruptly, not bothering to turn around.

Leo’s stomach plummeted. "What? But the email—"

"By you," she clarified, stopping so suddenly he almost ran into her. She turned, and for the first time, he saw the deep, soul-weary terror etched into her face. It was the look of someone who had seen something they could never unsee. "There is no interview. We do not care about your work history or your five-year plan. We care only about your desperation. And yours is… sufficient."

The cold, clinical assessment sent a shiver down his spine. She wasn't offering him a job; she was diagnosing a condition.

She gestured to the door beside them. It was identical to all the others. "This is your station. The shifts are four hours long. You will be paid in cash upon completion of each shift. Two thousand dollars."

Leo’s mind reeled. Two thousand dollars for four hours of… what?

Evelyn opened the door, revealing a room that was even starker than the hallway. It was small, white, and completely empty except for a single, hard-backed chair bolted to the floor. The chair faced the opposite wall, where a large object, perhaps six feet tall, was concealed beneath a heavy, dark purple velvet drape.

"Your job," Evelyn said, her voice dropping to a near whisper, "is to observe."

"Observe what?" Leo asked, his gaze fixed on the shrouded shape.

Evelyn's trembling hand reached out, hovering in the air as if she couldn't bring herself to touch the velvet. "Him."

The word hung in the sterile air. Him?

"You will enter the room. You will sit in the chair. You will wait for the intercom to instruct you," she continued, her breathing growing shallow. "There are rules. Many rules. You will learn them. But today, you only need to know the first and most important one."

She finally looked him directly in the eye, and the fear there was so profound, so absolute, it was contagious.

"Rule Number One," she whispered, her voice cracking. "You will not, under any circumstances, touch the mirror. Not the frame. Not the glass. Your job is to observe. Only observe."