Seven tried not to lean against the earnings counter as a girl in a bright pink dress with platinum blond hair and an obvious attitude problem filled out her forms. Her newfound powers apparently were draining to use, and besides that, she’d had a long day. Maybe her injuries had healed, but her exhaustion remained.

  LMC’s bracelet still felt heavy on Seven’s wrist, and she shook her arm absently, wishing she could dislodge the thing. The girl barely glanced at Seven’s bloodied clothing or shaking hands as she dumped the pathetic handful of shards she’d kept into the deposit chute.

  The chute buzzed, and the girl at the counter checked the numbers, then jotted them down on a piece of paper and slid them towards Seven underneath a glass window. Seven took the page and stared at it, aghast.

  CHIPS EARNED: 41

  WORKPLACE FEES: 312

  INTEREST ACCRUED: 928

  LATE FEE: 239

  BALANCE: 5,652 CHIPS OWED

  PLEASE BE AWARE THAT EARNINGS ARE SUBJECT TO ADDITIONAL FEES. ADDITIONAL FEES CAN BE FOUND BELOW.

  Seven scanned the list and tried not to swear. Several fees made sense, at least—those that Rook had already outlined below in her first mishap on her shift, and the delay she’d created herself by traipsing halfway across the city. But the rest...

  “Uh,” she said weakly, her voice sounding hoarse. “What are these mining fees?”

  “Pickaxe wear,” the girl said flatly. “Environmental damage. Unauthorized swing penalties. Slime companion handling surcharge. Emotional distress tax. False use of SOS system.” Her finger tapped the page with a carefully manicured nail with each word, and if Seven squinted, she could make out the fine print at the bottom. And yet—

  “What the hell is an emotional distress tax?”

  “For Rook and his boys,” the girl said, blowing a bubble with her gum. “They don’t like those SOS calls. Too messy.” She tapped the page again, a little too insistently this time, and Seven dug around in her pocket for her tattered stamp. She stamped the page, the girl gave her the receipt, and she walked back in silence to her apartment.

  She barely made it to the cot before her legs gave out, and she flopped unceremoniously onto the cot, her face buried in the pillow. At least she’d had a chance to shower at Emmet’s. Otherwise she’d be ruining the only pillow corporate had allotted her. As it was, she didn’t even know where to get a shower in this cursed place. They’d probably charge her a fee, in any case. And yet, she had her life at least. That was more than she could say for the miners she’d seen buried in the dust tonight.

  She wondered where Luca had gone. Back to his own shift? His own tiny apartment? Maybe he’d simply returned to the wall when Seven wasn’t there. Wanting to die alone was your own form of control, she supposed.

  Nearby, Pocket oozed over and hopped up onto her nightstand, his little eyes even with hers. Was that...concern in his gaze? Seven laughed. The only thing left in the world that cared about her was this slime, and he was contractually obligated to do so—or she thought so, anyway. And maybe Emmet. But he was being paid by her mentor, so there was that.

  “That day could have gone better,” Pocket said brightly, his glow a soothing sort of warm light like the lamps she’d had back home. Anything was better than the harsh dice lights of Lucky Mining Corp, she supposed. She hadn’t even bothered turning hers on.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Please keep your commentary to yourself.”

  “I can’t wait to go back in,” he said cheerfully, his glow brightening. “With your new superpowers, we’ll get another pile in no time.”

  “I’ll send you in first, and you can contend with that death trap.”

  “I think I’m immortal, so that works out.”

  Seven groaned and shoved her face into the pillow. Her stomach rumbled, but she didn’t dare face that gray tube of nutritional paste yet. It had been foolish to turn Emmet’s offer of dinner down. Foolish and prideful. Starving wasn’t a good alternative, but after the shift she’d had, she didn’t think she could handle the blow of slurping down the terrible nutritional paste.

  Instead, she flopped on her side, trying to get comfortable, and wiggled the empty satchel that she’d dumped at the side of her bed. Empty. She’d emptied it herself, but there was the desperate hope—however small—that she’d overlooked something. That she’d gained more than just blood, bruises, crushingly large debt, and the concerning realization that she was somehow stealing the strength from the dice themselves.

  The more she thought about it, the more it annoyed her. What good was strength, speed, and stamina without the charm and allure of a good set of dice? She couldn’t duel anyone. She couldn’t curate a perfect set of dice that synergized together in perfect ways. What was she going to do—outrun people? Who would pay her to do that?

  Something dug into her side, and Seven swore, trying to find the source of the pain. Had she left some of her gear on? But when she patted her side, she didn’t find cast-aside gear at all. She didn’t find shards, which she now remembered putting in that pocket.

  She found a dice.

  Perfect. Whole. Glowing.

  She blinked, turning it in her hands. It was a perfect d12, but that was where any similarity to other dice ended. It wasn’t the single purple of a summoning dice, or the red of a combat dice. In fact, it wasn’t a single color at all, but a mix of hues, pulsing faintly beneath the surface. As she turned it in her hands, it mostly looked turquoise, but that color shifted, occasionally appearing a sort of azure, or an ice blue. Sometimes, flecks of fire would show up beneath its surface, but as soon as those flashed, they were gone.

  She waited for the inevitable fade. For the color to wink out, the dice to go dark. And, she realized with a bit of surprise, she was waiting for that burst of energy she always felt when she was holding one.

  But it held steady.

  Glowing.

  Bright.

  Alive.

  Seven nearly stopped breathing.

  “Pocket,” she said slowly. “Didn’t I put shards in my pocket when you tried to eat them?”

  “Of course,” he replied, digging in her cabinet for what he had described as ‘pancake tickets.’ “I couldn’t forget such a delicious meal being withheld from me.”

  “I...I think they combined.”

  Pocket’s rummaging stopped, and he popped up, bouncing onto the nightstand beside her. “They...they what?” Then he caught the glowing dice in her hands. His eyes went comically wide. “What is that?”

  “A dice,” she said simply, though she couldn’t figure out how it had ended up in her pocket. Had someone slipped it there? Was it a trap? And yet, it was the colors of those shards she’d placed there, hours ago. Shards she’d been lucky enough to not be searched for. Especially lucky given that she hadn’t gone straight to the earnings counter after her shift.

  She twisted it in her hands, still waiting for it to fade. The color held.

  There was no logical reason for the dice in her hands; shards didn’t combine of their own will, and even if you had enough shards to create a dice, even master craftsmen sometimes had problems getting them to combine. It was hardly something you could do yourself even if you had matching pieces of a dice. And even if she had, these pieces shouldn’t have combined at all—not with different types.

  And besides that, there was the idea that it was glowing.

  “It’s not fading,” she murmured, fascinated with it. “Not even a little.”

  “I hope it’s cursed! Or maybe it’s a misprint!” Pocket chirped excitedly. “We haven’t gotten anything interesting yet.”

  “I think,” Seven said, turning it in her hands, “you’ll find it more than meets your criteria, Pocket.”

  The dice warmed. Not with heat. Not with magic.

  But with something alive.

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