Chapter 2
1081words
The voice was gone.
Ellie checked every corner of her mind, like probing a painful tooth with her tongue.
Hallucination, she told herself.
The daily routine offered some comfort.
Shower, put on the nondescript work clothes, grab the keys.
On her way to the subway, she stopped at the cart on the street corner, where the owner was rude and the coffee perpetually lukewarm.
"Two-fifty," the man muttered.
She handed over crumpled bills. A baseline survival expense. A necessary ritual that allowed her to get through another day at Apex. She took a sip of the bitter, watery mixture, then waited.
Nothing happened.
No sound. No internal notification. Just the familiar, disappointing taste of cheap coffee. Relief washed over her, so intense it almost made her dizzy. It was indeed a hallucination.
She wasn't crazy, just under extreme pressure. And after the relief came the familiar, sinking despair.
Nothing had changed. She was still herself, with her seventy dollars and her stolen ideas.
But that voice had been so damn clear.
[For every dollar you spend on personal improvement beyond baseline survival expenses, you will be paid a proportional return on investment.]
The memory of those words echoed, a calm and enticing promise. Throughout the day at the office, they haunted her. They crept under her skin, becoming a persistent buzz of "what if." During a meeting so boring it numbed the mind, she found herself staring at Sarah's perfectly manicured nails and the gleaming logo on her handbag.
By the time she left the office at 5 PM, a reckless, passionate idea had taken root.
An experiment.
She didn't walk toward the subway. She found her feet carrying her north, steps quick and determined, as if driven by another will.
She walked past the gleaming storefronts on Fifth Avenue, those temples of wealth she would normally avert her eyes from. Tonight, she looked directly at them, and then she stopped.
Saks Fifth Avenue stood before her, its magnificent entrance a gateway to another world. A world of people who didn't need to check their bank balance before buying coffee. She took a deep, trembling breath and pushed through the revolving door.
The air inside was different. It smelled of perfume, leather, and money. It was quiet, with a sense of reverence. Women with sleek hair and diamond earrings strolled leisurely, matter-of-factly, from one counter to another. Ellie, in her worn flats and Zara jacket, felt like an intruder—a field mouse that had accidentally slipped into a lion's den. Every polished surface reflected her out-of-placeness.
She forced herself forward, her destination a gleaming, brightly lit cosmetics counter. Under the spotlights, a constellation of gold and black packaging glittered. Chanel. Tom Ford. Dior. Names she had only seen in magazines.
A sales assistant with a porcelain doll face and an extremely bored expression glided over. "Can I help you with anything?"
Ellie's mouth went dry. The rational part of her brain was screaming. Get out. What are you doing? This is insane. You have only seventy dollars to your name.
But that reckless impulse, born from the broken bottle last night and a decade of silent desperation, was stronger. "I... I'd like to see a lipstick," she stammered, her voice barely a whisper.
She pointed randomly at an elegant deep red tube. 'Rouge Absolu.'
The sales assistant tested the color on the back of her hand. The price tag on the display was small, yet vicious. $45.
Forty-five dollars. That was a week's worth of food. Half her electric bill. This was an act of severe financial self-harm.
Personal improvement. That voice was a ghost from her memory. This is the perfect test.
A lipstick was the quintessential non-essential. A pure, selfish desire.
An investment in nothing but vanity.
"I'll take it," Ellie said, the words feeling like stones in her mouth.
The sales assistant's eyebrows raised slightly in surprise. The transaction was a blur of guilt and adrenaline. Ellie felt a wave of nausea as the woman placed the heavy, luxurious little box into a sleek Saks shopping bag. She had just spent over 60% of her entire net worth on a tube of colored wax.
She fled the store, clutching the small bag tightly as if it were a dirty secret. She didn't stop until she had hidden herself in the relatively anonymous bathroom of a department store a block away. Her hands trembled as she unboxed this absurd trophy. The lipstick case was heavy and cool, closing with a satisfyingly expensive "click."
She leaned close to the mirror, her reflection stark under the harsh lighting. A tired, pale face stared back at her. A face she was tired of seeing. She made one last desperate prayer to a god she didn't believe in, then applied the lipstick.
The color was bold, a vivid crimson streak against her pale skin. She stared, waiting.
Then it came.
[Investment processed: $45.00.]
The voice in her head returned. Not a memory. Real-time.
[Category: Aesthetic enhancement. Target: Facial symmetry and pigmentation. Calculating...]
[ROI: 2500%. Paying out.]
A strange, tingling warmth spread across her face, like sinking into a hot bath. A pleasant, sizzling sensation that lasted less than three seconds.
Then it was gone.
Ellie stared at her reflection, heart pounding beneath her ribs.
Something wasn't right. No, not wrong. Different. Impossibly different.
Her lips... the lipstick was still there, but it wasn't the makeup that caught her attention. It was the lips themselves. Her slightly thin upper lip was now fuller, with a well-defined cupid's bow that hadn't existed a second ago.
The color seemed to come from within, a healthy, vibrant rose hue that made the applied lipstick almost redundant.
They were... perfect. Symmetrical. The kind of lips you only see on magazine covers.
Her gaze moved upward. The changes weren't just in her lips.
The faint, mottled redness on her cheeks left by adolescent acne had disappeared. Her skin tone was even, smooth, with a subtle luminosity, as if lit from within. It was her face, but a version processed through a masterful, invisible filter.
This was real.
She touched her lips with trembling fingers. They felt soft, full, completely her own. In the reflection, a woman of startling beauty stared back, eyes wide with fearful yet excited awe.
That $45 lipstick was a key. And she had just unlocked a door she never knew existed.
