Dungeon Exploiter

The posting said ASSIST — CLINIC FLOOR, GRADE-C, HAZARD DIFFERENTIAL.

Under it, in the fine print where the truth lives, it said the clinic's gig healers carried their own malpractice deductibles.

Read that twice. The people who fix dungeon injuries are personally liable for the injuries they fix. If a healer's patch fails, the healer pays.

It's like making firefighters buy the houses.

We took it. The funeral had a due date. The Club loot had gone to the funeral.

That's our whole economy lately. Money comes in wearing a black suit and leaves wearing one.

The Clinic sat over a Grade-C like a bandage over a bite. Triage on the ground floor. Recovery wards above. The dungeon underneath, feeding it.

Mangled parties came up the intake ramp at all hours. The healers worked the seam.

I'd met one of them before. The healer who fixed my shoulder in the dark, back in the MegaDepot days, and never said a word — the gig app had auto-clocked him out at midnight, and anything he said after that was free.

He had a face now. Tired, forty-something, a name badge worn blank from thumbing.

He recognized me and nodded a quarter-inch. From him, that's a parade.

Every stitch came with a screen. The screen suggested gratuities. 20%. 25%. 30%.

There was a fourth button. It said I UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM.

I watched a bleeding man tip 30% on a compression wrap and apologize for not doing more.

Kayla filmed none of it. She's been filming less and noticing more. I think it's the same muscle, changing jobs.

Rob spent the first hour trying to get injured.

Strategically. He'd read the hazard differential on the way over, and the differential paid per incident, and Rob's math said one shallow, well-documented wound was worth a day's fee.

He tripped near a gurney. Nothing. He stood under a loose ceiling panel with the patience of a fisherman. The panel held.

Finally he presented himself at the intake desk with a paper cut he'd administered himself, using the posting.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

The chart scanned him.

CLAIM DENIED.

cause of injury: scheming.

pre-existing condition.

"It's pre-existing," Joe said. "They have your file."

The trouble came up the intake ramp the way trouble does. All of it at once.

A party dragged their tank in from the Grade-C. Big lad. Scratched forearm. Nothing wound.

The healer waved a wand over it for the chart, and the chart made a sound I'd never heard a chart make.

CODE 12042-B: minor laceration

CODE 12044-A: complex laceration

CODE 12051-PREMIUM: arterial event

this is a growth opportunity.

Not a metaphor. The wound upgraded itself to match its billing. Minor, complex, arterial. The tank went from embarrassed to gray in the time it takes to read a menu.

And something came up the ramp behind him, wearing a lab coat like a hermit crab wears a shell.

The Upcoder.

It didn't look like much. A suggestion of a clipboard. A stethoscope of fingers.

Then you saw it work. It touched things, and things became more expensive.

A cough became pneumonia. A bruise became a structural claim. It was turning the triage floor into revenue, wound by wound, and the wounds obliged.

In this world, the paperwork is load-bearing.

The room panicked in the standard directions. I did the thing I do.

I read.

Everything that hunts has an order it hunts in. The Upcoder's order was on its clipboard, plain as a leaderboard.

It worked the room by coverage. Platinum plans first. Gold second. The healers — self-insured, deductible-crushed — dead last.

It wasn't a predator. It was a sales route.

And three names from the top of that leaderboard, freshly appraised by a Gold trial we never asked for: TIM.

"Tim," I said. "You're rich."

"I'm WHAT?"

"Your coverage is. Get behind the healer."

The Upcoder finished the tank. CODE FINALIZED — the wound politely stopped escalating once it was worth enough.

Then it turned, and consulted the clipboard, and looked at Tim the way the Club looks at a member.

Now, about the VALUED MEMBER we'd been sharing the floor with. Gold frame glowing even in triage. He'd come in for a wellness consultation. I swear this on the stick.

His type buys spares of everything. Cards, plans, coverage itself. Backup insurance for the insurance.

"Sir," I said, "I need to borrow a card."

"Which one?"

"The heaviest."

He produced a platinum card the size of a coaster. The kind that comes with its own weather.

I felt the Upcoder's attention bend toward it before the card cleared his coat. The way iron feels a magnet.

The stick was already in my hands.

Everyone thinks the slapshot is a wind-up. It isn't. The wind-up is where the reading happens.

The floor. The angles. The aisle between the gurneys. The swinging door to the east stairwell, propped open by a mop bucket at exactly the wrong height for everyone but me.

"Jon," Joe said, in his sub-clause voice, "whatever you're doing, section nine—"

I shot the card across the triage floor.

It went through the propped door and down the stairwell, spinning, platinum edge catching every light in the building. Five figures of coverage moving at ninety kilometers an hour, away from every warm body on the floor.

The Upcoder dropped its clipboard.

It went after the card with a sound like a printer having a religious experience. Straight through the swinging door.

The door swung. The mop bucket did its work.

Somewhere below us, the most dangerous billing entity in Sector 4 was chasing a piece of plastic down a stairwell at full spend.

"Okay," I said. "Everyone on a gurney."

"Why," said Joe, in the voice of a man who has read what gurneys are for.

Below us, the printer sound turned around.