The Longevity Job

The rain in LA doesn't wash anything clean. It just makes the grime slicker. I sat in my car outside the GeneTech tower on Flower Street and watched the droplets track down the windshield like tears on a face that's forgotten how to cry. Three hours. I'd been sitting there for three hours with a USB drive in my coat pocket and a decision that felt like a stone in my gut.

Five million dollars. That's what Aeterna cost. That's what a normal lifespan—three hundred years instead of seventy—cost. And I had access to the accounts. Not the big accounts, not the ones with seven figures. The mid-tier accounts, the ones where companies paid their quarterly fees and their annual audits and their compliance reviews. I was an accountant. I knew where the bodies were buried because I'd filed the paperwork.

Across the street, someone had spray-painted MEMENTO MORI on the wall in red letters that were already running in the rain. Remember you must die. The irony wasn't lost on me. None of the irony was lost on me. It was the only thing that was.

I killed the engine and got out of the car. The rain hit me like a slap. I pulled my coat tight and walked toward the tower's main entrance, the USB drive pressing against my ribs like a second heart.

The lobby was empty except for a security guard watching a basketball game on a phone that was too small to see. I walked past him, through the glass doors, into the elevator bank, and pressed the button for the forty-second floor.

The elevator mirrored reflected me back: Raymond Cole, thirty-four years old, dark circles under my eyes, a face that looked older than it should because stress ages you faster than time, they say. They're right. They're absolutely right.

Marcus had introduced me to Memento Mori six months ago. We were at a bar in Boyle Heights—some place with neon lights and a jukebox that only played songs from the seventies—and Marcus had slid across the booth and said, "You know what your problem is, Ray? You're not brave enough to be selfish."

I'd laughed at the time. I didn't laugh now.

The forty-second floor was GeneTech's executive level. Marble floors, abstract paintings, a receptionist who looked at me the way you look at a bug that's crawled into your kitchen and is too small to be worth the effort of squashing.

"Can I help you?"

"I'm here to see Dr. Chen."

"She didn't schedule an appointment."

"I don't need an appointment."

The receptionist's smile didn't waver, but her eyes did something I couldn't read. She picked up her phone and said something I couldn't hear. Thirty seconds later, the elevator doors opened and a man in a dark suit stepped out. He was tall, clean-shaven, wearing the kind of expression that said he'd never been surprised in his life and probably never would be.

"Mr. Cole," he said. "Dr. Chen will see you now."

I followed him down a corridor lined with plants—real plants, not the fake ones they put in offices to make people feel better—and into an office that had a view of the ocean. The ocean. I hadn't seen the ocean in two years. I lived in Echo Park, which is not the same thing as living near the ocean, though the realtors will tell you it's the same thing if you say it with enough confidence.

Dr. Victoria Chen's office was exactly what I expected: minimalist, expensive, tasteful. A desk made of wood that cost more than my annual salary. A chair that probably had lumbar support. A window that looked out at a world I wasn't part of anymore.

"Mr. Cole. Please sit."

I sat. The chair was comfortable. I hated it for being comfortable.

Dr. Chen was fifty, maybe fifty-two, with the kind of face that gene therapy had preserved but not warmed. She was beautiful in the way a sculpture is beautiful—symmetrical, flawless, and completely indifferent to your existence.

"I understand you're interested in Aeterna," she said. Her voice was calm, precise, the voice of a woman who had had this conversation a thousand times and would have it a thousand more.

"I'm interested," I said.

"In purchasing it, or in understanding it?"

"Both."

She smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. "Then let me be direct. You have access to the company accounts. You've been siphoning funds—small amounts, cleverly, through a series of shell transactions that would take our audit team at least six months to trace. I know this because I've been watching you. And I'm offering you a deal."

The USB drive in my pocket felt heavier.

"You can do it the hard way," Dr. Chen continued. "You can transfer your five million into a shell account, purchase Aeterna on the black market, and live to see the year 2229. Or you can do it the easy way. I can fast-track your application. Same price, but legal. You sign a waiver acknowledging that the funds came from your personal savings—which they don't, but who's counting?—and I process your Aeterna injection by the end of the week."

I stared at her. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because I'm generous. And because I enjoy watching men make the same mistake twice." She leaned forward. "Here's what's going to happen. You're going to leave this office. You're going to go home. You're going to sit in your apartment and you're going to think about what I've offered you. And then you're going to call me and tell me you want the easy way. Because the hard way—the siphoning, the shell accounts, the six-month audit window—is risky. And you, Raymond Cole, are a risk-averse man. That's why you're an accountant. That's why you haven't embezzled before. That's why you're sitting in your car right now instead of walking in and doing what you came to do."

I stood up. My legs felt unsteady. "I need time to think."

"Of course you do." She sat back in her chair and picked up a file, already dismissing me. "Call me by Friday."

I walked out of the office, past the plants, past the receptionist, past the security guard, and into the elevator. The elevator mirrored reflected me again: smaller this time. Smaller and more transparent, like a ghost who hadn't realized he was dead yet.

I called Diane from the elevator lobby. She answered on the second ring.

"Where are you?" she asked. Her voice was different—distant, certain, the voice of someone who had already made a decision and was waiting for you to catch up.

"Outside GeneTech."

"Did you do it?"

"No. I talked to Dr. Chen."

"And?"

"She offered me a deal."

Diane was quiet for a moment. I could hear the faint sound of music in the background—jazz, probably, playing in whatever gallery she worked at, where she spent her days surrounded by paintings she couldn't afford and smiling at people who could.

"Ray," she said finally. "How long is this going to take?"

"What do you mean?"

"How long are you going to sit in your car and think about it? How long are you going to run the numbers and weigh the risks and calculate the probability of getting caught? How long, Ray?"

"I don't—"

"Don't. Just don't. I've been waiting for two years, Ray. Two years of 'soon,' of 'not yet,' of 'I'm working on it.' I'm thirty-two years old and I'm going to die at seventy like everyone else, and I'm tired of being the girl who waited for a man who couldn't make up his mind."

"Diane, I—"

"I have my own plan, Ray. I've had it for months. You don't need to worry about me anymore."

She hung up.

I stood in the elevator lobby holding my phone and listening to the dial tone. The rain had stopped. Through the glass doors, I could see the LA skyline glittering in the evening light—a city of immortals and the doomed, and I was standing in the doorway, unable to choose which side I belonged to.

I walked out into the street. The sidewalks were wet and reflected the neon signs like a watercolor painting left out in the rain. I walked west, toward the hills, toward the neighborhoods where the Centurions lived in their glass houses and looked down at the rest of us like we were a species they'd read about in a book.

I didn't go home. I walked until my feet hurt and the hills got steeper and the lights got brighter and the air got thinner. I sat on a bench overlooking the city and watched the lights flicker on, one by one, like stars being born in slow motion.

My phone buzzed. A text from Diane:

*Where are you?*

I typed a reply: *Wherever the rain takes me.*

I deleted it. I typed another: *I love you.*

I deleted that too. I put the phone in my pocket and kept watching the lights.

Somewhere below me, in the neighborhoods I couldn't afford to live in anymore, Diane was packing a bag. She would leave tonight or tomorrow. She would go to the black-market clinic in Koreatown and let some tired doctor with shaky hands inject her with the thing that would give her two more centuries. And she would live them—beautiful, certain, unburdened by a man who couldn't decide whether to be brave or careful.

I stood up and started walking back down the hill. The city spread out before me, glittering and indifferent, and I was just another shadow moving through it, thirty-four years old, still dying, and for the first time in my life, not afraid of it.

© 2026 - Authored by Z R ZHANG ( EL9507135 -- パスポート番号[ちゅうごく] 중국 여권 번호 Номер паспорта หมายเลขหนังสือเดินทาง Passnummer رقم جواز السفر CHN Passport) The aforementioned Author hereby grants to OXFORD INDUSTRIAL HOLDING GROUP (ASIA PACIFIC) CO., LIMITED （BRN74685111） all economic property rights, including but not limited to the rights of: reproduction, distribution, rental, exhibition, performance, communication to the public via information network, adaptation, compilation, commercial operation, authorization for third-party use, and rights enforcement. Such grant is exclusive and irrevocable. The term of such rights shall be 49 years from the date of publication. 联系方式： To contact author， please email to datatorent@yeah.net OTMES-v2-UKT-05-B7E3A9-E0759-M5-T005-C8D2