The Second Number

The Wire meets a LitRPG System.Marcus Ellison can see the machine. Not a dungeon—the real one. The predatory loan's true cost, the school's real odds, the second price on every deal, rendered in cold text only he can read.His neighborhood is being harvested. Legally. Quietly. By a machine that has no villain—it runs on good people handing out traps they think are help.He can't fight it. So he teaches a whole city to see it. And every level he gains whispers the same offer, sweeter each time: stop fighting the machine. Become it.A progression fantasy about extraction, sight, and the oldest trap there is—how high do you climb before you turn into the thing you're fighting?