Rebate King: Every Beauty I Spoil Makes Me a Billionaire

Zack leaned in over the rim of his cup, lowering his voice less because the room was dangerous than because rumor liked to be told that way.

”You heard the hot one yet? Campus won’t shut up.”

Stan shook his head. ”Haven’t. What is it.”

Zack looked at him as if Stan had admitted to missing a fire alarm. ”You’re serious. It’s everywhere. And it’s not just at Peak uni. Same flavor of story is popping off worldwide.”

He set the cup down with a small, final click.

”Bioscience. Dr. Prisca Ainsworth. Her control cultures are growing like they’ve been paid. Way past normal parameters. The bacteria are metabolizing something her instruments can’t even see. She started a private log, called it the X factor. Once she was sure it wasn’t contamination or a bad sensor, she put the findings out. Now other labs are raising their hands. Same anomaly. Same invisible meal. Consensus forming among the ones who don’t want to look stupid later: something large-scale is starting, it’s going to hit people too, and we should prepare. Nobody can say for what.”

Stan listened. Inwardly he let out a short breath through the nose. ’I’m underestimating this energy’s emergence... watching all this happen is crazy... sigh’

”She published the log?” he asked.

”Enough of it. The rest leaked the way everything leaks. Hale’s students are treating it like a horror podcast. Half the science building wants grant money. The other half wants her to retract before the board calls it a circus.”

”Instruments can’t detect it,” Stan said. Not a question. A measurement.

”That’s the part that makes people itchy. If you can’t meter it, you can’t file it. And if it’s happening in London and Seoul and here on the same hour range, it’s not a fume hood.”

Zack rubbed his thumb along the cup. ”Prep how, though. Stock canned food? Meditate? Buy a generator? The statement’s all urgency, no manual.”

”Then people will invent manuals,” Stan said. ”That’s the dangerous part.”

Zack huffed. ”You sound like you’ve already accepted the premise.”

”I accept that cultures don’t lie for clout.”

They let the weight of it sit between the tray and the napkin dispenser. Around them, Peak stayed Peak: laughter, a dropped fork, someone singing two bars of a song and getting told to stop. The news had not reached every table yet. It would.

A hand closed on Zack’s sleeve with no interest in courtesy.

”Up,” Zoey said. ”Both of you. Dining hall. Now.”

Zack twisted. ”Zoey...”

”I am not debating the itinerary.” She had already claimed Stan’s forearm as well. ”You can finish being mysterious while you walk.”

They went, half pulled, half deciding not to make a scene. Campus paths were busier than the cafeteria had been. Phones out. Clusters forming and breaking like weather. Zoey talked the whole way, half gossip, half dispatch.

”Swim team just lost their minds. Some guy took two full seconds off a record that was supposed to be furniture. He came out of the water looking like he’d been pickpocketed. Said he doesn’t know how. Coach is smiling with his soul leaving his body.”

Zack whistled. ”Two seconds isn’t a PR. That’s a different animal.”

”Library yesterday evening,” Zoey went on. ”Kid dropped in the stacks. Woke up in the infirmary saying he can see in the dark. Perfect. Like someone flipped a switch. Doctors have no box to put it in, so the timeline has six theories and a joke about radiation vending machines.”

The dining hall hit them as sound first.

Bigger room, higher ceiling, the same oil-and-coffee smell stretched over more bodies.

Voices overlapped until individual sentences became a weather system: record, night vision, Ainsworth, X factor, my cousin in another city said the same thing. Excitement sat next to confusion. Mild fear wore the costume of jokes. A girl near the entrance was watching a swim clip on loop, thumb hovering as if she could rewind the two seconds and make them ordinary again. A boy two tables in swore he had always had good eyes and nobody believed him. Someone at the far end had already started a spreadsheet of ”incidents” and was taking names like a census taker who had decided the apocalypse needed better data hygiene.

Zack slowed, the science news still occupying the front of his head, now colliding with campus folklore in real time. ”Okay. That’s not one lab anymore.”

Zoey scanned for a table like a general claiming high ground. ”I told you. Something’s in the water. Or the air.”

They found seats at the edge of a long table that had already surrendered to the topic. A first-year across from them was mid-theory: ”It’s the new HVAC filters. I read they use some kind of ion thing...”

”It’s not the filters,” said the girl beside him, not looking up from her phone. ”My sister’s lab in Berlin posted the same growth curves yesterday evening. Same ’undetectable substrate.’ They’re not even using the same brand of anything.”

Zack leaned in, professional now. ”Did Ainsworth name the organism?”

”Control strain. E. coli K-12 derivative. Nothing fancy. That’s why people are losing it. If the boring bacteria are eating ghosts, what are we eating?”

Stan took it in without changing his face. Cultures feeding on what machines could not name. A body finding a gear it had not been issued. A swimmer borrowing time from a future that had already started arriving. Same root. Different costumes.

Camilla was still somewhere on the walks, watching humans teach each other things they did not yet have language for. Sacha was on a floor in Inksea, learning how to fill a basin in her abdomen that had never been empty before. The dining hall did not know any of that. It only knew the buzz.

****

A/N:

What do you guys think of the story so far? Power stones, golden tickets are very much appreciated and will go a long way in motivating me thank you...