The Price Of Staying

In a near future where corporations have solved economic collapse by turning human bodies into financial assets, stability comes at a price. The privileged live comfortably under Ascendent contracts-luxury housing, healthcare, and security in exchange for the rights to their bodies after death.

Adrian Vale spent his life doing everything right.

Healthy habits. Perfect evaluations. A prestigious corporate job at Halcyon Continuance Holdings. But when a surprise compliance screening destroys his status overnight, Adrian is pushed into the brutal world of Frontline labor, where workers survive by selling pieces of themselves to stay ahead of impossible debt.

As the system tightens around him, Adrian forms a fragile connection with Marisol, a coworker trapped beneath inherited family debt and the crushing reality of a society that measures human worth in recoverable assets. Together, they begin searching for a way out of a world designed to consume them completely.

Cold, haunting, and deeply unsettling, The Price of Staying is a dystopian horror novella about labor, survival, grief, and the terrifying cost of remaining valuable in a system built to profit from human suffering.