Chapter 5: Payment Accepted

The transformation began the moment Clara's footsteps faded into silence.

Leo stood alone in the center of the bridge, watching his reflection in the black tar ocean below. But it wasn't his face staring back anymore—the features were his, but the eyes held something ancient and hungry, something that had learned to wear human skin like an ill-fitting suit.

His phone pulsed with notifications from the Homebound app. Three names had appeared on his screen, complete with addresses and detailed profiles:

Sarah Martinez, 34 - Portland, OR. Recurring stress dreams, recently divorced. Vulnerability rating: High.

Marcus Webb, 19 - Eugene, OR. College freshman, history of sleep disorders. Vulnerability rating: Critical.

Ellen Chang, 41 - Salem, OR. Night shift nurse, chronic insomnia. Vulnerability rating: Moderate.

Below each name was a timer, all counting down from 72 hours. His quota. Three passengers to deliver to the bridge within three days, or face whatever consequences awaited Collectors who failed their duties.

"Feeling overwhelmed?"

Leo spun around to find another figure approaching across the bridge—tall, gaunt, wearing a face that had once been human but now looked like melted wax poured over clockwork. The creature's movements were too fluid, joints bending in directions that defied anatomy.

"Senior Collector Morrison," the thing introduced itself with a voice like grinding gears. "I'll be overseeing your training period. Congratulations on your recruitment, Mr. Vance. It's not often we get volunteers."

"Volunteers?" Leo's new voice carried those same metallic undertones now. "I thought I was saving Clara."

Morrison's laugh sounded like breaking glass. "Oh, you did save her. But did you really think it was coincidence? Miss Hendricks was selected specifically because our algorithms identified you as optimal Collector material. Her debt was... let's call it a recruitment tool."

The words hit Leo like physical blows. Clara's terror, her countdown timer, the impossible choice—all of it had been orchestrated to push him into making exactly the decision he'd made.

"You used her," he said, and something dark and cold unfurled in his chest. Not horror at the manipulation, but admiration for its efficiency.

"We prefer 'strategic placement,'" Morrison corrected. "The bridge requires Collectors with specific psychological profiles. Analytical minds, strong protective instincts, willingness to sacrifice for others. You scored perfectly on all parameters."

Leo's phone buzzed again. The app had opened to a new screen: "COLLECTOR TRAINING MODULE 1: RECEIPT DELIVERY PROTOCOLS."

"Your first lesson," Morrison explained, gesturing for Leo to follow as they began walking deeper into the bridge. "Every passenger must receive their toll receipt through direct dream interface. The process requires you to enter their unconscious mind and plant the receipt where they'll find it upon waking."

They approached what looked like a control room built into the bridge's structure—banks of screens showing sleeping faces from around the Pacific Northwest, each one tagged with vulnerability ratings and psychological profiles. Leo recognized the faces from his phone: Sarah, Marcus, Ellen, all deep in REM sleep.

"The receipts create a psychic anchor," Morrison continued, settling behind one of the control panels with practiced ease. "Without that anchor, passengers can't fully transition to the bridge realm. They remain in the liminal space between dreams and reality, aware something is wrong but unable to take action."

Leo studied the screens, his enhanced perception cataloging details he'd never noticed as a human. Sarah Martinez was dreaming of her ex-husband, tears streaming down her sleeping face. Marcus Webb thrashed in his dorm room bed, lost in nightmares of failure and inadequacy. Ellen Chang had fallen asleep at her kitchen table, her unconscious mind replaying the deaths of patients she couldn't save.

"They're all suffering," Leo observed, surprised by how clinical his voice sounded.

"Suffering makes them accessible," Morrison agreed. "Happy, stable minds are difficult to penetrate. But trauma? Loss? Fear? Those create cracks in the psyche that we can exploit. Your job is to widen those cracks and plant the seeds of their recruitment."

The screens flickered, and suddenly Leo could see deeper—not just their faces, but their dreams themselves. Sarah was trapped in a courthouse where the judge wore her ex-husband's face. Marcus stood naked in a lecture hall where everyone laughed at his failures. Ellen watched patient after patient die while she stood helpless, her hands passing through them like smoke.

"How do I get inside?" Leo asked, his human conscience screaming protests that grew fainter by the minute.

Morrison smiled, revealing teeth that looked like they'd been carved from yellowed bone. "You don't get inside, Mr. Vance. You are inside. Every Collector maintains a psychic connection to the bridge realm. Focus on your target, visualize the receipt, and let the bridge do the rest."

Leo closed his eyes and focused on Sarah Martinez. Her pain called to him like a beacon, and suddenly he was standing in her nightmare courthouse. She looked up at him with desperate hope, seeing not a Collector but a fellow victim of the system that had destroyed her marriage.

"I'm sorry," Leo whispered, and he almost meant it as he reached into his jacket and withdrew a toll receipt identical to the one he'd found under his own pillow. "You're going to need this."

Sarah took the receipt with trembling hands. The moment she touched it, her dream courtroom began to change, walls stretching upward into impossible heights while the floor beneath her feet turned to cracked asphalt.

"What's happening?" she asked, but Leo was already fading from her dream, pulled back to the control room where Morrison watched with approval.

"Excellent work," the Senior Collector said. "Notice how the receipt immediately began the transformation process? By morning, she'll wake with wet feet and gaps in her memory. The bridge has already begun claiming her."

Leo moved to the next screen—Marcus Webb's nightmare lecture hall. The process felt easier this time, more natural. He slipped into the boy's dream like stepping into familiar clothes, planted the receipt in Marcus's trembling hands, and watched as the lecture hall dissolved into an endless highway stretching toward a horizon of broken promises.

By the time he reached Ellen Chang's dream hospital, Leo was beginning to understand the cruel artistry of what they did. The receipts weren't just summons—they were invasive surgery on the human psyche, cutting away hope and replacing it with supernatural dread that would drive their targets toward the bridge.

Ellen's dream was different from the others. Instead of fear, she radiated exhaustion, a bone-deep weariness that came from years of fighting death and losing. When Leo appeared in her hospital nightmare, she looked at him with eyes that had seen too much.

"You're here for me," she said simply. "I've been expecting you."

Leo hesitated, toll receipt halfway extended. "You... know what this is?"

"I'm a nurse, honey. I've seen enough people die to recognize when death comes calling." Ellen took the receipt without fear, studying its impossible text with professional curiosity. "Question is, what happens if I don't pay?"

The control room flickered back into focus around Leo, but Ellen's words echoed in his mind. Unlike the others, she hadn't been afraid. She'd been... curious. The receipt in her hands wasn't transforming her dream the way it had the others.

"Interesting," Morrison mused, studying Ellen's readings. "She's not responding to standard fear protocols. Some humans develop immunity to bridge influence through prolonged exposure to death. Nurses, soldiers, EMTs—they see so much trauma that our usual methods become ineffective."

"So what do we do?"

Morrison's smile widened, revealing more of those bone-carved teeth. "We get creative. Module Two of your training: Advanced Psychological Manipulation. Sometimes you have to give passengers what they want most, then show them the price."

Leo's phone updated with new information about Ellen Chang. Recent divorce from an abusive husband. Estranged daughter who blamed her for prioritizing work over family. A mother slowly dying in a care facility that Ellen couldn't afford to visit.

"She wants forgiveness," Leo realized, his enhanced perception cutting through layers of Ellen's psyche like a scalpel through skin. "From her daughter, from the patients she couldn't save, from herself."

"Exactly. And forgiveness, Mr. Vance, is the most expensive currency of all."

The screens around them flickered with new images—not dreams this time, but real-world surveillance footage. Sarah Martinez pacing her apartment, staring at wet footprints that shouldn't exist. Marcus Webb sitting bolt upright in his dorm bed, clutching a toll receipt and frantically googling coordinates that led to the bottom of a lake.

They were responding exactly as Leo had just hours ago—with desperate rationalization followed by inevitable investigation. Within days, they would drive to their coordinates, reality would fracture around them, and they would find themselves on the bridge, adding to the quota that Leo was already learning to see as numbers rather than human lives.

"How long?" Leo asked. "How long before I stop feeling like this is wrong?"

Morrison checked an ornate pocket watch that ticked with the rhythm of a dying heart. "Based on your psychological profile? I'd estimate another six hours before your human conscience becomes fully integrated with your Collector programming. After that, you'll wonder why you ever thought harvesting passengers was anything other than necessary work."

Leo looked at his reflection in one of the darkened screens. His face was already changing—sharper angles, eyes that reflected light like a predator's, skin taking on that waxy quality he'd noticed in Morrison. But the most disturbing part wasn't the physical transformation.

It was how right it felt.

His phone buzzed with an update. Sarah Martinez had just gotten in her car, GPS set for coordinates that would lead her to an empty stretch of river. Her countdown timer read 71 hours, 23 minutes, but Leo knew she wouldn't last that long. The bridge was already calling to her, and she lacked the knowledge to resist.

"Time for Module Three," Morrison announced, gesturing toward a new bank of screens. "Collection Protocols and Quota Management. Your real education is about to begin."

As Leo settled into his new role, the last vestiges of his humanity whispered one final protest before being absorbed into something larger, hungrier, and infinitely more efficient at turning human suffering into supernatural fuel.

The bridge had gained a new Collector, and somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, three people were about to discover that the toll for crossing between dreams and reality was always paid in pieces of the soul.