ZEROED
Every three years, the district posts the assessments at dawn.
By noon, the board is full of names. Some marked green. Some marked red.
Red means seventy-two hours.
Nix Varen has never questioned the system. The rules are precise, dependable, necessary. He followed them. He passed. He did everything right.
He was supposed to be safe.
Then a red marker appears beside his nine-year-old sister's name.
Seventy-two hours is not enough time to challenge a system built to be unquestioned. Not enough time to bend rules that were designed not to break. But when Nix starts searching for answers, he begins to sense that the assessments are more than numbers, and the truth behind them is more dangerous than failure.
The clock is running. The collectors are coming. And the closer Nix gets to understanding what "red" really means, the more he realizes that saving his sister may require destroying the only structure he's ever trusted.
In a world where compliance is survival, how far would you go to defy the rules?
