Chapter 136. The Corps Pays Well

Four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That exact figure, down to the last cent, appeared in the notification.

My accountant’s brain, trained to think in financial algorithms and structured data, kicked in immediately. The analysis took less than a second. Eight official assignments to Corps departments meant a base salary of fifty thousand dollars for each assignment. This was not classified information. My handler, Danny, had casually mentioned the pay scale once, and Selina had later confirmed the figures matter-of-factly during her introductory lectures. On top of that came another twenty thousand in fixed pay and a thirty-thousand-dollar allowance for my rank as a second lieutenant. The total came to exactly four hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month.

At first, the number seemed surreal, but the math was brutally straightforward. At that rate, in just over two months, my net worth would cross the one-million-dollar mark. The middle class was already behind me.

My evolved nervous system reliably shut down useless emotional surges, keeping a dopamine spike from clouding my judgment. Even so, a faint wave of satisfaction washed over me. I had to give the Pentagon and the Ministry credit: they had built a remarkably precise system of checks and balances. The government kept the Awakened on a very short leash while generously filling their trough with prime beef. The choice was simple: either you worked yourself to the bone for the government machine, or the machine ground you into dust. But with numbers like these on my pay stub, it was a lot harder to complain about the extra workload.

Still, my experience dealing with banks told me it was too early to celebrate. A sudden deposit of half a million dollars into an ordinary individual’s account at a commercial bank was an automatic trigger for financial monitoring.

That was exactly what happened. I opened the mobile app. For a fraction of a second, the balance updated to show the new amount. Then the entire screen was covered by a bright red banner with a padlock icon. Access restricted. When I tapped the footnote, a standard system notification popped up: Your account transaction has been flagged as suspicious under anti-money-laundering regulations. To restore access, you must appear in person at the bank’s main branch with documentation confirming the lawful source of the funds.

Typical banking bureaucracy.

If I had been an ordinary civilian, I would have been in for a full-blown administrative nightmare. First, I would have had to fight my way through a call-center bot just to schedule an appointment with a personal banker. Then I would have had to wait a week for an opening in the schedule. After that came a mountain of forms, declarations, and account statements, followed by a trip to the branch and at least fifteen business days while the finance committee reviewed my case. And if some clerk happened to lose a scanned page or check the wrong box, the whole nightmare would start all over again. There would be no way to expedite the process.

Fortunately for me, being Awakened opened doors that stayed firmly locked to everyone else. For the first time in a long while, I fully appreciated the advantages of my new status.

I dialed the Corps hotline again. It was still at the top of my recent calls.

“Hello, Mr. Ross. How can I help you?” the same impeccably trained female voice answered.

Either they had an unusual shift schedule, or the line was staffed by a very small group of operators with high-level clearance. There was not the slightest hint of surprise or irritation in her voice at my second call. Their training was clearly top-notch. And it made sense. Giving the runaround to, or keeping on hold, someone capable of wiping out a couple of city blocks with a single impulse would have been the height of incompetence.

“Good afternoon,” I said, skipping the usual office pleasantries. “I have two questions. First, I want to officially confirm that the transaction that went through twenty minutes ago is my monthly salary.”

“One moment, Mr. Ross.”

The familiar clatter of keyboard keys came through the speaker.

“Yes, that’s correct. The Finance Department processed your payment for the current period, even though technically you haven’t started your duties at the P-SWAT base yet.”

Her perfectly even tone faltered slightly on the last sentence. There was a barely perceptible but unmistakable note of human envy in her voice. I knew that feeling well. Back when I was a clerk, I had more than once struggled to suppress my irritation when a colleague got a sizable bonus simply because they had managed to file paperwork on the final day of the reporting period. By joining the Corps at the end of the month, I had technically made the cutoff, and the system had paid me my full salary.

“And your second question, Mr. Ross?” She immediately slipped back into her detached professional tone.

“My commercial bank froze my account as soon as the money came in. Their fraud-monitoring system flagged it.”

“Spell the bank’s name and give me your account number,” she said without missing a beat. Judging by her reaction, dealing with this kind of nonsense was probably a regular part of her job.

I read out all the account details.

“Got it. The Corps Legal Affairs Office will contact the bank’s head office. Access to your account and cards will be restored shortly. Anything else?”

“No, that’s all. Thanks.”

The line went dead.

Being locked out of my own money was a lousy situation, but fortunately, I had managed to order and pay for an entire stack of physics textbooks and problem sets one second before the bank’s algorithm snapped shut. That much reading should have been enough for roughly a day of intensive work in hyperfocus. If the bank took too long to restore access, I would have to borrow some cash from Mom, just like I had back in school when I needed spending money.

Out of curiosity, I opened the mobile banking app again and was mildly surprised. It loaded without a hitch, the red warning banner was gone, and the full amount was sitting there in my account. I checked when I had ended the call to the hotline. Only four minutes had passed. Apparently, the Corps had established a direct line to the bank’s compliance department to resolve this kind of nonsense on the fly.

Looking at those numbers and the speed of the Corps’s response, I caught myself thinking with cynical practicality that the collar around my neck was not actually all that tight. Being the government’s attack dog was hardly the worst job in the world when it paid nearly half a million dollars a month and every problem got fixed within minutes. If only I did not have to crawl into portals under alien fire, life would be downright perfect.

“Holy crap!” A shout from the hallway snapped me out of my thoughts.

I stepped out of the room. Mom stood in the middle of the kitchen, her hands pressed to her cheeks as she stared in genuine amazement at the tables, cabinets, and prep island, all practically groaning under the weight of the food. The last time I had seen her this shocked was about twenty years ago, when I had brought home my final report card from school with straight A’s in every subject.

“Tom, honey... Did you really make all this?” She looked at me over the top of her glasses. “I’ve only ever seen this much food on cooking shows.”

“Want a bigger serving?” I asked with a grin as I opened the refrigerator.

Mom’s eyebrows shot up as she took in the extra shelves filled with desserts, mousses, and baked goods.

“It took exactly four hours to make all of it,” I added.

“That’s physically impossible.” She shook her head and adjusted the arm of her glasses. “Just properly chopping that much food would take half a day. And then you’ve got sauces, sautéing, stocks...”

“Hyperfocus makes me exponentially more productive,” I said, pulling out a chair for her. “I can stir a sauce with one hand and chop herbs with the other without missing a beat. And the biggest advantage is that, from my perspective, the whole thing took about thirty seconds.”

“I’m genuinely jealous.” Maggie sighed and gave me a mildly reproachful look before pointedly walking around the chair I had pulled out for her. “You don’t need to put on a show like that, Tom. I’m not your date on a first date. Sit down. I’ll fix you a plate.”

“Just like old times, Mom.”

I sat down with the satisfaction of a job well done.

“There you go, calling me Mom again.” A barely perceptible warmth touched her smile as she deftly picked up juicy pieces of perfectly cooked meat with the serving tongs and arranged them on my plate alongside the vegetables. “Lately, all I’ve been hearing from you is Maggie. I get it, what with the whole secrecy thing, but it felt... weird.”

“Believe me, it was a lot harder calling a twenty-year-old girl with a wad of pink bubble gum for hair ‘Mom.’” I looked approvingly at her severe platinum hair and familiar glasses. “This is much better. Aesthetically and psychologically, Mom.”

“Looking back, I feel a little like one of those eccentric old people in movies who retire, buy a slingshot, and try to relive their childhood.” She spoke philosophically as she carefully decorated my plate with chocolate-covered strawberries. “Now I understand that everything has its time. Listening to teenagers ramble is not merely exhausting. I find it downright boring. And learning their slang... I did it, but I feel like I memorized the names of every Transformer. It has no relevance or appeal to me anymore. That time is over.”

“That sounds like the Mom I’ve always known and loved.” I accepted the generously portioned, professionally plated meal from her hands. “So, does that mean the parties with Stephanie are canceled?”

“Not at all. I promised I’d let her use the room for a while, and I keep my promises.” Mom began putting together a considerably smaller portion for herself. “Besides, Stephanie is not a lost cause. If she has a sensible adult example in front of her, she’ll grow out of this childish phase quickly.”

I had not the slightest doubt who Mom meant by the sensible example. No, not me. I would be leaving soon, and Stephanie would be living in my room.

We sat down at the table, only to run into a harsh dose of reality. The surface was so buried under containers and serving dishes that there was literally nowhere to put two plates.

“Let’s go to the living room,” Maggie said, immediately taking stock of the situation. “It’s about time for our show.”

A couple of minutes later, we were sitting on the couch in front of the television. Some random episode of CSI was playing. Completely mindless entertainment. After the Evolution, my brain no longer needed predictable TV fluff with weak acting to unwind, but sitting there beside Mom, silently eating an excellent lunch, felt damn good. It reminded me of the old days, when we spent almost every evening exactly like this.

The end credits rolled, another criminal went behind bars, and the episode came to an end.

Break time was over. It was time to get back to my physics textbooks and, more importantly, figure out how to invest the unexpected windfall now sitting in my account.