Profit Prophecy novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: A Hundred Thousand Volts

Zane wakes in the ER to a $9,400 bill and a glowing number over the TV ticker that says a penny stock will rise 310 percent.

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a number.

It was gold, about the size of my fist, and it hung over the ceiling light.

Plus 4.2 percent.

I blinked, and it stayed.

"Mr. Brannigan?" said a voice. "Can you hear me?"

A nurse leaned over me, and a number floated over her head too, a small gold one.

Plus nineteen dollars.

I didn't understand that either.

"You were hit by lightning," she said. "You're in the emergency department at Mercy. You've been out for about three hours."

"Is that normal?"

"You should be dead, honestly. A paramedic found you on the overpass with your hair smoking."

My hair did smell burned.

I looked at my hands and they were fine, except for a red branching mark across the back of my left one.

"Lichtenberg figure," the nurse said. "It fades in a day or two."

She checked the monitor beside my bed, and the numbers on it were just numbers.

Heart rate. Blood pressure. Nothing glowing.

So the thing in my head only worked on some things.

I just didn't know which things yet.

A doctor came in, young and tired, and said they wanted to keep me overnight.

"I can't afford overnight," I said.

"You've got no insurance on file."

"I deliver packages. They said I was a contractor."

"The bill so far is nine thousand four hundred dollars," the nurse said, gently, as if gentle would help.

I laughed, and it hurt my ribs.

Nine thousand four hundred dollars was what I earned in seven months.

I had three hundred and forty dollars in the bank and a ring in my jacket.

I had no key to the Maddox house and, apparently, no apartment.

The doctor frowned at the ticker on the TV bolted to the corner of the room.

It was the cable news channel with the stock crawl across the bottom.

I looked at it because I had nothing else to look at.

The crawl moved left, a string of letters and green or red arrows.

Over every symbol hung a number.

Plus 1.1 percent. Minus 0.6. Plus 2.0.

I sat up too fast and the room tilted.

"Mr. Brannigan?"

"Is that tomorrow?" I said, pointing at the screen.

The doctor looked at the screen, then at the nurse, then at me.

"Is what tomorrow?"

"Those numbers. Are they tomorrow's?"

"I think you should rest."

"What's the date?"

"Thursday. Well. Technically Friday morning, it's past midnight."

I watched the crawl until the symbols came around again, and every number sat exactly where it had been.

Stable.

I didn't know how I knew what they meant.

I knew it the way you know a word in your first language.

The gold ones meant gain by close of market tomorrow, which was today.

The red ones meant loss.

It hadn't told me why, and it wasn't going to.

The nurse left to get a form.

The door opened again, hard, and Dex came in smelling like fryer oil, still in his kitchen whites with the apron strings dangling.

He was twenty-seven, five foot nine and built like a mailbox, and he looked at me.

"Dude," he said. "A guy in a suit showed up at our door with a check for the landlord and a moving crew."

He dropped into the chair. "Your stuff is gone. What happened?"

I told him about the lawn, the laughter, the key in the champagne glass.

He listened with his fists on his knees, and when I got to Roxy putting the ring back in my hand he swore so loudly a nurse came to the door.

"And then lightning?" he said.

"Then lightning."

"Zane. That's insane. That's like winning the lottery in reverse."

"I didn't win anything."

"You're alive."

"I'm broke, homeless and alive."

"You're not homeless," he said, fierce. "You've got a couch. It's lumpy and it smells like onions, but you've got a couch."

I almost cried, which was embarrassing, so I looked at the TV again.

The crawl came around and stopped on a symbol I didn't recognize.

GLDX.

It sat at the end of a long line of bigger names.

The arrow beside it was grey, flat, a stock nobody cared about.

The number over it was gold, and it was huge.

Plus 310 percent.

I felt the hair rise on my forearms.

Dex followed my eyes.

"What?"

"What's GLDX?"

He pulled out his phone with his greasy thumb.

"Gold Dex Mining. Penny stock. Thirty-eight cents." He squinted. "Why?"

"Buy it."

"I don't have money."

"How much do you have?"

He looked at me for a long time.

"Six hundred and twenty bucks," he said slowly. "I've been saving for a used flat-top grill. Zane. Why?"

I held out my left hand, the one with the burn mark, and I didn't know how to say it so I just said it.

"Because I think I just got struck by the market."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend