Sleep came in fragments.
The hostel bed was narrow and smelled like industrial disinfectant, the sheets scratchy with too many washes, but William managed seven hours of unconsciousness that felt like the deepest rest he'd experienced in years. His old body—his real body, the one with the bad back and the sleep apnea and the three prescriptions for things he'd never quite understood—had never slept like this.
Small mercies. Carl Engström's body was a mess, but at least it slept well.
[REST PERIOD COMPLETE.]
[PHYSICAL RECOVERY: +5% BASELINE]
[SYSTEM OPTIMIZATION: PROCESSING...]
William sat up and stared at the ceiling until the notifications stopped scrolling across his vision. The hostel room held six bunks, four of them occupied by backpackers who'd arrived sometime after midnight, and none of them were awake yet.
Good. He needed time.
The three contacts from Engström's network arranged themselves in his memory: Voss in Hamburg, Jansen in Amsterdam, Fontaine in Brussels. Three cities. Three people who might help him survive longer than a week. Three chances to build something that resembled a future.
The forger first. Everything else depended on having papers that wouldn't trigger ICA flags the moment he crossed a border.
William checked the burner phone—still working, still showing no messages, which meant either the ICA hadn't traced Engström's network yet or they were being very quiet about it.
The wallet held 147 kroner. Not enough for food and transport. Not enough for another night, if the hostel didn't accept credit cards that would put his location on a database somewhere.
"You need money."
The thought came with a sick weight. He'd earned 85 SP by killing an innocent man. What would it cost to steal enough kroner to eat?
[SIN TIER REFERENCE]
[THEFT (NON-VIOLENT): TIER 1]
[BASE SP: 2-5]
[RECOMMENDED: Opportunity approaching in common area.]
William closed his eyes. The system wasn't just tracking his sins—it was suggesting them.
"I'm not—"
He stopped the thought before it finished forming. He'd already killed someone. Strangled an import-export dealer from Copenhagen whose only crime was answering the door. The line between murder and petty theft wasn't a line at all. It was a cliff he'd already fallen off.
"Survive first. Moralize later."
He grabbed Engström's jacket and headed for the common area.
The hostel's shared kitchen was chaos: backpackers scrambling eggs, tourists arguing over who'd eaten whose yogurt, a British couple loudly discussing their itinerary while blocking access to the coffee maker. Standard morning noise. Normal people doing normal things.
William found a corner table near the exit and watched.
The tourist checking out at the front desk had a wallet in his back pocket. Visible. Accessible. The angle of the counter meant the teenager working reception couldn't see anything below waist level.
"This is who you are now."
The thought felt like someone else's voice. Cold. Practical.
William stood. Walked to the coffee station. Bumped the tourist on the way—apologized, smiled, kept moving—and Engström's fingers did the rest.
Three seconds. The wallet transferred from back pocket to jacket interior with a smoothness that felt practiced even though William had never picked a pocket in his life.
[SIN REGISTERED: THEFT (TIER 1)]
[SP EARNED: 4]
[CURRENT SP: 89]
[HUMANITY: 94 → 93 (-1)]
The humanity meter ticked down by one point. Four more points of sin currency joined the pile. The system logged the transaction with the same cheerful efficiency it had used to congratulate him for murder.
William ducked into the bathroom. The wallet held 400 kroner, a German ID for someone named Klaus Weber, and a credit card he didn't dare use. He kept the cash and dumped the wallet in a trash can.
Four hundred kroner. Enough for food and transport to Hamburg. Maybe.
[RESOURCE ACQUISITION: SUCCESSFUL]
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: IMPROVED (+2.3%)]
[SUGGESTED: Repeat for optimal resource accumulation.]
"No."
The word came out loud enough that someone at the urinals glanced over. William pretended to wash his hands and left.
The common area had a coat rack near the entrance. Jackets hung in a careless pile—tourists and backpackers who didn't expect theft from their fellow travelers. William grabbed a heavy wool coat that looked like it would survive German winter weather and walked out before anyone noticed.
[SIN REGISTERED: THEFT (TIER 1)]
[SP EARNED: 2]
[CURRENT SP: 91]
[HUMANITY: 93 (UNCHANGED)]
Ninety-one SP. Humanity holding at 93. The system calculated the diminishing returns—two points for a jacket, compared to four for a wallet, compared to 85 for a life—and William tried very hard not to think about what those numbers meant.
"You're keeping score. Why are you keeping score?"
[QUERY DETECTED.]
[SYSTEM PURPOSE: Life optimization through incentivized moral flexibility.]
[ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Restricted (Clearance Level Insufficient)]
Moral flexibility. The system called murder "moral flexibility."
William bought a bus ticket to Hamburg at the central station. Cash. No ID required. The departure time read 06:00, which gave him forty-five minutes to find something to eat and somewhere to sit that wasn't directly in view of any security cameras.
The station café served pastries and coffee that cost too much. William ate a cheese danish that tasted like cardboard and watched the departure board cycle through destinations. Stockholm. Oslo. Berlin. Hamburg.
Engström's face stared back at him from the café's window reflection. Pale. Tired. Wrong.
"You're dead. I'm wearing your skin. Neither of us asked for this."
[INTERNAL MONOLOGUE DETECTED.]
[PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE: Stressed (Expected)]
[RECOMMENDATION: Focus on immediate objectives. Philosophical distress reduces operational efficiency by 12%.]
The system wanted him efficient. The system wanted him focused. The system wanted him to stop thinking about the man he'd killed and the man whose body he was wearing and start thinking about Hamburg and forged papers and the narrow path to survival that stretched ahead like a tightrope over an abyss.
William finished the danish. Threw away the cup. Found a seat near the platform where his bus would arrive.
And waited.
The bus pulled into Hamburg's central station at 14:23 local time. Eight hours of German highways and rest stops and an old woman who'd tried to make conversation until William's non-responses made her give up.
Hamburg smelled like rain and diesel. Industrial, compared to Copenhagen. Grittier.
William stepped off the bus and let the crowd carry him toward the exit. The system tracked his movement with little positional markers, overlaying the station layout with paths that suggested optimal routes, hiding spots, blind zones where surveillance cameras couldn't reach.
[LOCATION: HAMBURG HAUPTBAHNHOF]
[THREAT ASSESSMENT: Low]
[KNOWN ICA PRESENCE: None (Current Data)]
[SUGGESTED: Locate contact DIETRICH VOSS.]
Dietrich Voss. Ex-Stasi, according to Engström's files. Document forger. Paranoid as hell. The kind of man who'd survived the Cold War by trusting no one and charging premium prices for that distrust.
The address William had memorized led to a print shop in the Altona district—legitimate front, legitimate business, legitimate reason for someone to own the kind of equipment that produced high-quality identification documents.
William took public transit. Paid cash. Studied the city through the tram windows and tried to remember what he knew about Hamburg from guidebooks and Wikipedia articles and the vague cultural osmosis of an American who'd never traveled more than occasionally.
"You played Hitman for years. You know how this world works."
The thought was almost comforting. Almost.
Agent 47 had operated in Hamburg before. The city had appeared in mission briefings, background files, the kind of world-building details that serious players catalogued without meaning to. ICA had assets here. Providence had assets here. The shadow war that underpinned the entire franchise had left fingerprints on every major city in Europe.
"And now you're part of it."
[QUERY: Psychological distress continuing.]
[RECOMMENDATION: Compartmentalize. Survival requires focus.]
"Shut up."
The tram stopped. William got off.
The print shop occupied the ground floor of a building that had probably been beautiful once, before forty years of diesel fumes and economic stagnation had coated everything in grey. The sign above the door read DRUCKEREI VOSS in faded letters. A bell chimed when William pushed through.
The interior smelled like ink and old paper. Posters lined the walls—concert announcements, political advertisements, the mundane output of a legitimate printing business. Behind the counter, an old man with thick glasses looked up from a stack of invoices.
"We're closed for new orders until next week."
German. William's borrowed language skills processed the words with a half-second delay that made him sound like a tourist.
"I'm not here for printing. Carl sent me."
The name landed like a stone in still water. Voss's expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes went cold.
"Carl who?"
"Carl Engström. Copenhagen."
Silence. The old man set down his pen with deliberate care.
"Engström didn't have friends. He had people he hadn't sold out yet. Which are you?"
"Neither. I killed him without meaning to and now I'm wearing his face."
William kept that thought locked behind his teeth.
"I need papers. Clean documents. The kind of work he said you used to do before you retired."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Two thousand euros. Half now, half on delivery. I'm not ICA, I'm not Providence, and I'm not asking for anything that involves your old networks."
Voss studied him. The glasses made his eyes look huge, watery, like a fish examining something that might be food or might be a hook.
"You look like Engström."
"Everyone says that."
"No one says that. No one who matters."
William waited. The system hummed in the corner of his vision, tracking the old man's body language, calculating threat levels, offering suggestions William didn't want to read.
[SOCIAL ENCOUNTER: Critical]
[DECEPTION CHECK: Marginal]
[RECOMMENDATION: Offer additional incentive.]
"I have information," William said. "About what happened in Copenhagen. About who's cleaning up Engström's network and why. Information that might be useful to someone who values knowing which way the wind is blowing."
Voss's expression shifted. Interest, maybe. Or calculation.
"You'll forgive me if I check your story before we discuss business."
"I'd be disappointed if you didn't."
The old man gestured toward a door at the back of the shop. William followed him through a maze of printing equipment and storage rooms until they reached a small office that smelled like coffee and suspicion.
Voss made a phone call in rapid German that William's borrowed skills couldn't quite follow. Three minutes of conversation. Then silence. Then a long look at William that felt like being weighed on a scale.
"My contact in Copenhagen says there was a body in the Hotel Koenig yesterday. Danish businessman. Strangled."
"I heard."
"The body wasn't Engström."
"No."
"Then where is Carl Engström?"
William met the old man's eyes. Let the silence stretch.
"Gone. As far as anyone who matters is concerned, Carl Engström doesn't exist anymore."
Voss absorbed that. Nodded slowly.
"Two thousand. Half now. You'll have papers in three days. Stay somewhere public until then—hostels, tourist areas, nowhere that requires real identification. And don't come back to this shop. I'll contact you."
"How?"
The old man handed him a slip of paper with an address written in cramped handwriting.
"Dead drop. Check it every morning. When the papers are ready, you'll find instructions."
William pocketed the note. Counted out a thousand euros from Engström's emergency cash—money he'd found hidden in the duffel bag, tucked into a sock like the paranoid savings of a man who'd always known this day might come.
Voss took the money without counting it. Professional courtesy, or professional confidence that William wouldn't dare short him.
"One more thing."
William paused at the door.
"You're not Carl Engström. I don't know who you are, but Carl was soft. Scared. The kind of man who ran from shadows."
The old forger's eyes were steady behind those thick glasses.
"You don't move like someone who runs from shadows. You move like someone who's already seen the worst thing that's going to happen today and decided to walk toward it anyway."
[OBSERVATION LOGGED.]
[COVER ASSESSMENT: Partially compromised.]
[VOSS THREAT LEVEL: Low (Current), Elevated (If Suspicious)]
William didn't answer. He walked out of the print shop, into the Hamburg rain, and let the city swallow him.
That night, in another hostel bed that smelled like disinfectant and regret, William stared at the ceiling and did math.
Ninety-one SP. Humanity at 93. Three days until papers.
The bus ticket to Hamburg had cost most of Engström's cash. The deposit for Voss had taken the rest. William had enough kroner and euros combined to eat cheap meals for maybe four days, assuming he didn't need to bribe anyone or buy anything essential.
"You're going to have to steal again."
The system pulsed in agreement.
[RESOURCE DEFICIT DETECTED.]
[SURVIVAL OPTIMIZATION REQUIRES ADDITIONAL ACQUISITION.]
[RECOMMENDED: Local targets of opportunity, Tier 1 sins only.]
Tier 1. Petty theft. The kind of crime that barely registered on the humanity meter but added up over time.
"How much humanity did you lose today? One point? Two?"
He'd started at 100. Now he was at 93. Seven points gone in less than forty-eight hours.
"How long until you hit zero?"
[QUERY: Humanity depletion timeline.]
[CALCULATION: Dependent on sin frequency and severity.]
[CURRENT TRAJECTORY: 0.8% per day (average)]
[ESTIMATED TIME TO THRESHOLD EVENT: 116.25 days]
One hundred and sixteen days. Four months. That's how long the system calculated before William reached whatever "threshold event" meant.
He didn't want to know what happened at zero.
The hostel room was dark. The other guests were sleeping. Somewhere in Copenhagen, Agent 47 was probably still hunting for Carl Engström. Somewhere in the system's invisible architecture, a meter was counting down toward something terrible.
William closed his eyes.
[QUEST COMPLETE: ESTABLISH SHELTER]
[REWARD: +15 SP]
[CURRENT SP: 106]
[NEW QUEST AVAILABLE: ESTABLISH IDENTITY]
[OBJECTIVE: Acquire functional documentation.]
[REWARD: 50 SP]
[TIME LIMIT: 7 DAYS]
The cheerful notification chimed in his mind like an alarm clock for the damned.
Tomorrow: check the dead drop. Wait for Voss. Stay invisible.
The day after: same thing.
The day after that: maybe papers, maybe progress, maybe one step closer to becoming someone who wasn't Carl Engström and wasn't William Green and wasn't already dead.
William reached into his pocket and pulled out Engström's Danish ID. The photo stared up at him in the darkness—a face that was his now, whether he wanted it or not.
He tore it in half. Then quarters. Then smaller pieces that fell through his fingers like confetti.
The dead man's name scattered across the hostel floor.
William pulled the thin blanket over himself, curled toward the wall, and made a decision that felt like stepping off a cliff.
Hamburg was the first step. New papers. New identity. Then Amsterdam—Jansen and his data brokerage, the information networks that might give William leverage in a world designed to crush people without leverage.
The bus to Hamburg had cost him his last safe option. Everything from here required moving forward, acquiring resources, building something from the wreckage of two dead men's lives.
"You're not running anymore."
The thought settled into his bones like cold water.
"You're building."
The system hummed its approval in the dark.
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