Nika woke to someone else's pain.
Her own was easy to recognize: dull, familiar, carrying the aftertaste of cheap painkillers and sleep-starved rage. Her pain lived in her left shoulder, beneath her ribs, inside the jaw she clenched every night as though she could bite clean through her contract.
This one wasn't hers.
It was expensive.
Premium fear always smelled of mint. Not real mint—the sterile kind that lingered after private dentists, white marble bathrooms, and people who never washed their own coffee cups because that was what the Lower Level was for.
Nika opened her eyes.
The ceiling above her bed flickered into a gray interface.
PAIN SHARE CONTRACT: MORNING PACKAGE
CLIENT: PRIVATE EDEN / ORCHID LEVEL
STATUS: PANIC ATTACK TRANSFER — 17%
"You've got to be kidding me," she rasped into the dark.
The dark, as usual, declined to comment.
Someone else's panic unfolded inside her chest. Neat. Well maintained. Expensive around the edges. Somewhere above, a man had woken up, panicked at the sound of his own heartbeat, tapped a service icon—and now Nika had to breathe for him.
She pushed herself upright.
Her fingers refused to cooperate. Reaching for the glass on the floor with her right hand, she knocked it over instead and swore louder this time. Water ran beneath the mattress.
Wonderful.
The day was off to a promising start: borrowed hysteria, wet socks, and a zero-percent chance of hazard pay.
The interface blinked.
PLEASE REMAIN CALM. YOUR EMOTIONAL STATE AFFECTS SERVICE QUALITY.
"Tell the client his service quality is affecting my will to live."
No response.
The panic jumped to thirty-one percent.
Nika dragged in a breath and dug her nails into her palm.
Pain.
Good.
Her own pain was like a handrail inside a train hurtling off a cliff. It wouldn't save her, but it gave her the illusion that she was still holding on.
"Breathe, rich boy," she whispered. "In. Out. You're not going to die from your own heart. Unfortunately, it's still under warranty."
On the third exhale, something clicked inside the wall.
Not inside the room.
Deeper.
Inside the system.
The interface twitched, as though someone on the other side had dragged a dirty finger across it.
PAIN SHARE CONTRACT: SYNCHRONIZATION ERROR
PAIN SOURCE: UNIDENTIFIED
THIRD-PARTY SIGNAL: —
The final line froze.
So did Nika.
There were no third-party signals. Not on the Lower Level. Not inside morning packages. And definitely not inside Orchid contracts, where even someone else's terror arrived wrapped in legal protection.
The line blinked again.
DON'T LET THEM TAKE YOUR EYES.
Nika stopped breathing.
YOU ARE READING
Private Eden
Science FictionIn Private Eden, pain is a luxury service-and Nika is one of the people forced to carry it. Every morning, the wealthy transfer their panic, grief, and physical suffering to workers on the lower levels. Nika survives by meeting other people's agony...
