The Debt Collector of 1679

The Debt Collector of 1679

Lena sat in the Leopoldstadt office, the air conditioning humming like a dying machine. It was 2:14 a.m. The monitors painted her face in sterile blue. At thirty-two, she had perfected the Viennese scowl that kept the world at a safe distance.

A new batch of accounts appeared in her queue. She clicked the top entry.

Debtor: Elias Vogl Balance: 40 silver gulden Status: Overdue 345 years Address: Hintere Zollamtsstraße 12, basement level

Lena exhaled sharply. System error. She deleted the line. The software chirped in protest. A red box pulsed: Action required.

She clicked again. A high-resolution scan of parchment loaded. Iron-gall ink, faded to bruise-brown. For the delivery of two bushels of uncontaminated grain during the Great Mortality. Date: August 16, 1679.

“Idiots,” she muttered.

She reached for her water. A dark, perfectly circular bruise had bloomed on the back of her wrist. It burned. It smelled faintly of wet earth and scorched vinegar.

More entries flooded the queue.

Anna Maria Hauer – 15 candles. Johann Krantz – Three vials of tincture. Matthias Steiner – Burial space for five bodies.

Her throat itched. She coughed into her palm. The smear was dark and viscous.

The office lights flickered. The shadows behind her desk stretched, elongating into shapes with long, beak-like silhouettes. The system had accessed her microphone. It was listening.

A new prompt covered the entire screen:

RECIPIENT: LENA YOUR ACCOUNT IS NOW DUE. PAYMENT REQUIRED IN FULL.

She tried to stand. Her knees buckled. The nodes on her arms were hardening, turning into painful, plague-like buboes. The sterile blue light of the monitors mixed with something older — the smell of rotting lilies and quicklime.

She looked at her personnel file. The system had rewritten it.

Position: Appointed collector of the final tithe. Service rendered: Null. Interest accrued: Infinite.

Footsteps dragged across the carpet outside her door. Heavy. Deliberate. Not human.

Lena stared at the screen. Her fingers, no longer entirely hers, began to type.

Subject: Final Liquidation. Client: The City. Amount: One life.

She sat back. The blue light died, screen by screen, until only darkness remained. The footsteps stopped directly outside her door.

There was no knock.

Only the soft, brass click of a latch turning — a sound that had no place in a modern, key-carded office.

Lena closed her eyes. The fever reached her throat. For the first time in years, she felt perfectly, terrifyingly balanced.

On the desk, her pen moved across a blank sheet of paper without her touch, scratching a single word in neat, bureaucratic handwriting:

Paid.