My sister boasted the Midas touch, turning trash to gold with a flick. She livestreamed, letting viewers choose what to transform. Overnight, half our furniture became gold blocks. I noticed a chilling link. Each time she manifested gold, my digital gold portfolio dropped by the exact same value. I confronted her. She brushed it off as jealousy. “Green with envy, sis?” she sneered. “Maybe I’ll toss you a gold crumb.” Dad, wearing a gold chain she’d conjured, slapped me hard. “Can’t stand this family succeeding? Lexi cares for me. You? Bragging about investments? Where are they now?” I tasted blood, vowing to expose her. Days passed. I found nothing. My digital gold drained completely. Then came my medical report. A benign tumor. That same day, Lexi went live. “Drop those Supernovas!” she shrilled. “Keep gifting! Manifesting fifty pounds of solid gold today!” 1 Another grueling shift at the corporate firm finally ended. I slumped into the driver’s seat of my car and out of habit, tapped open my trading app to check my digital gold portfolio. My brows knitted together immediately. The numbers were wrong. It was only short by a fraction of a gram, roughly twenty bucks in fiat currency. But for someone like me who calculated every penny and watched the market trends like a hawk, this was no hallucination. Probably just a system lag or a slight slippage from market volatility. I pushed the thought away. The current commodities market was a chaotic rollercoaster, and a tiny fractional loss was a drop in the ocean for a long-term holder. Before I could lock my screen, my phone vibrated violently in my hand. It was my father, Frank. “Gwen! Get your ass home right now! We hit the jackpot!” I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. “What’s going on?” His manic, overly caffeinated voice blasted through the earpiece. “Your sister is a literal saint! A miracle worker! She can turn things into gold!” I let out a long, exhausted sigh, putting the car into gear. “Dad, have you been watching those fake conspiracy TikToks again? Or is Lexi just pulling another one of her prank streams?” “You stubborn brat, why won’t you just believe me? Get back here! Every minute you waste is costing the Dawson family thousands!” The line went dead. I shook my head, thoroughly drained. My younger sister Lexi had been chasing internet fame since she was a teenager. From wannabe influencer to aspiring reality star, she had drained a sickening amount of my father’s money. Whatever this new gimmick was, it was bound to be another massive headache. The moment I pushed open the front door, the stale smell of cheap beer hit me. Frank was practically doing a jig in the living room, clutching his outdated smartphone like a holy relic. “Look! I’m telling you, your sister has superpowers. She’s got the Midas touch!” He shoved the cracked screen mere inches from my nose. “Lexi just pointed her finger at the air, and boom! Five grand magically appeared in my retirement account! Five thousand bucks, Gwen!” I narrowed my eyes at the screen. The bank notification indeed showed an incoming deposit of five thousand dollars. The transaction ID was just a string of encrypted gibberish. “Look who finally showed up,” Lexi drawled from the couch. She was busy admiring her fresh acrylic nails. “Dad says you don’t believe in my gifts.” “Then open your trading app.” Under Frank’s feverish glare, I reluctantly unlocked my phone and tapped the familiar gold icon. “Watch closely,” Lexi whispered. She raised a manicured finger and tapped the empty air in front of my screen. A second later, my heart leaped into my throat. I nearly dropped the device. The screen, which had previously displayed a modest balance of a few hundred grams of digital gold, began to glitch. The numbers spun like a slot machine, completely bypassing any buy-in protocols. Three hundred and fifty. Four hundred. Five hundred! In the blink of an eye, the gold reserves in my account had literally doubled. My hands trembled as I refreshed the page three times. I even force-closed the app and logged back in. The extra gold was still sitting there, heavy and real, worth tens of thousands of dollars. “What… what exactly did you do?” I stammered, my eyes snapping up to look at her. “Told you it was real, you ungrateful wretch!” Frank slapped his thigh, his eyes bulging with greed. “Lexi is a walking goldmine! Everything she touches turns to cash!” Lexi couldn’t hide the venomous smirk curling her lips. “Believe me now, sis? It’s called manifesting.” “You always lectured me, saying my manifesting rituals were delusional and lazy. Well, look at me now. I manifested cold, hard wealth. Pretty incredible, right?” 2 The concrete proof was right there in my hands. The transaction history couldn’t be faked. I was forced to believe it. Still, a deep sense of dread settled in my stomach. I stepped forward, looking her up and down. “Does this power have a backlash? Lexi, are you feeling sick? Is your heart racing?” She rolled her eyes and shoved my shoulder. “God, you are such a buzzkill, Gwen. We’re about to be filthy rich, and you’re whining about side effects?” Frank’s eyes darted around the room as the gears in his head turned. He suddenly slapped his forehead, his face lighting up with a manic idea. “Hold on, Lexi. Your sister might actually have a point. What if there’s a limit to your magic? We need to be smart. We need to leverage this and make the money multiply! We’ll start a live stream. People eat this garbage up online!” He was already pacing the worn carpet, mapping out his empire. “We won’t use your real power every time. That’s a waste. I’ll go to the hardware store, buy some gold foil, some metallic spray paint. We’ll prep a bunch of rocks and junk wood. During the stream, we use the props for the small stuff, but for the grand finale, you do the real magic! The visual shock value will make us go viral overnight!” Lexi’s eyes widened with pure, unadulterated ambition. “Yes! We can make it a whole event. We’ll randomly select viewers and manifest gold straight into their crypto or trading accounts! Just like I did for Gwen. Once the chat sees real money hitting real accounts, the donations will flood in!” The two of them fed off each other’s frenzy, already hallucinating mansions and sports cars raining from the ceiling. I stood in the corner, the chill in my gut spreading to my fingertips. The law of conservation of energy is absolute. You cannot create something out of nothing without paying a terrible price. I had to speak up. “Dad, Lexi, stop. This is way too sketchy. If this power is real, we need to take Lexi to a specialist, or at least keep it completely offline. What if the government finds out? What if she ends up in a black site lab? And more importantly, draining her body like this could kill her!” Frank’s ecstatic smile vanished. His face twisted into a mask of utter disgust. “Listen to yourself! Your sister finally makes something of herself, and instead of being happy, you stand there cursing her?” Lexi flawlessly shifted her demeanor, gently tugging at Frank’s flannel sleeve and looking up with wide, innocent eyes. “Don’t be mad at her, Dad. She’s just jealous, I mean, worried. Honestly, every time I use the manifestation, I do feel like my soul is being hollowed out. It’s exhausting.” Before I could jump in and tell her to stop, she lifted her chin, playing the ultimate martyr. “But you know what? If it means our family stops struggling, if it means you can finally buy that house in the hills and wear a Rolex, it’s worth it. I’d gladly shave years off my own life to see you live like a king, Dad.” Frank’s eyes welled up with thick, dramatic tears. He shot me a look of pure hatred, then wrapped his thick hands around Lexi’s. “Look at your sister! This is what true class looks like! This is what family means! She’s got talent and a heart of gold. Not like you, you bitter, selfish snake.” “Always hiding your little investments while I struggle to pay the tab with my buddies! You embarrassed me for the last time. I haven’t forgotten about that!” “If you can’t stand seeing us win, then get the hell out of my house! You won’t see a single dime of this new empire!” He lunged forward, grabbing me by the collar and shoving me toward the door. The heavy wood slammed shut, opened a second later, and my purse was violently chucked out onto the porch. Through the screen door, Lexi looked down at me with absolute triumph. “I know it eats you alive, Gwen. The fact that I can just blink and manifest more wealth than you could earn working yourself to the bone for thirty years.” “But that’s just the universe rewarding the chosen ones. Are you mad? Want me to toss a few coins your way?” I took a slow, steadying breath. I didn’t reach for my purse. I just stared dead into her eyes. “I’m your older sister. I’m telling you this because I know how the world works. You admitted the manifestation drains you. Frank’s greed is a bottomless pit. Don’t end up putting yourself in a body bag just to feed his ego.” I bent down to pick up my bag, but she kicked the screen door open, her designer boot sending my purse tumbling down the concrete stairs into a muddy puddle. “Oops. My foot slipped. Have fun fetching, sis.” She leaned against the doorframe, examining her cuticles with a chilling nonchalance. “And just to clear things up,” she whispered, her smile sharp as glass. “The side effects don’t actually hurt me at all. But I hope you’re ready to work some serious overtime.” “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I snapped, stepping up to block the door. But she slammed it shut with brutal force, the heavy deadbolt clicking into place. 3 I stood on the damp porch, listening to the muffled voices inside. Frank asked her what the noise was about. “Nothing, Dad. Gwen was just threatening me, trying to force me to manifest gold for her. I told her no.” A string of vile curses from my father echoed through the wood. I turned my back and walked to my car. I couldn’t listen to it anymore. For the next few days, I buried myself in my corporate job. The commodities market was soaring, a massive bull run painting all the charts a beautiful, glowing green. Everyone in the office was buzzing about the gold rush. During my lunch break, I opened my trading app, expecting to see a fat profit margin. The moment the numbers loaded, the blood drained from my face. My whole body went numb. Fifty grams were gone. I rubbed my eyes, pressing my fingers hard into my temples. The market was strictly trending upward. Even if I had misread the charts, the total fiat value might fluctuate, but the actual physical weight of the assets held shouldn’t disappear. I violently tapped the transaction history. My hands shook so badly I almost dropped the phone. Ten minutes ago. A “Sell” order had been executed. Fifty grams of gold had been liquidated, and the funds had been routed to an encrypted intermediary routing number before vanishing completely into the dark web. “This is impossible. I was in a boardroom ten minutes ago! My phone was locked in my blazer pocket!” I scrambled out of the breakroom and dialed the trading platform’s fraud department. “Hello! I need to report a massive security breach! My account was just drained of fifty grams of gold! I did not authorize that sale! My account has been hacked!” The representative on the other end sounded painfully bored and mechanical. “Ma’am, I am looking at the backend logs right now. That transaction was executed from your primary registered device. It successfully cleared both your private PIN and a live biometric facial recognition scan. According to our security protocols, this is a fully authorized, manual transaction.” “No! I swear to God, I didn’t do it!” “I want to escalate this! Your security system is deeply flawed!” I was hyperventilating, tears of sheer panic pricking my eyes. “Ma’am, if you firmly believe this is a case of grand larceny, we strongly advise you to contact local law enforcement. We will comply with any official subpoenas and get back to you within three business days.” The line clicked dead. Primary device? Facial recognition? It was physically impossible. It was like fighting a ghost. My mind was a chaotic mess. I couldn’t go back to my desk. I needed to breathe. In a desperate attempt to ground myself, I blindly opened a social media app. The very first recommended video on the homepage was Lexi’s live stream. The neon text flashed across the top: “FAN APPRECIATION EVENT! Random Drops! Live Gold Manifestation!” A morbid curiosity took over. I needed to see what she was doing. I tapped the screen. Lexi was dressed in some ridiculous, glittering high-fashion gown, sitting on a velvet throne in the middle of Frank’s living room. “Squad, the energy in this chat is insane! Thank you for the gifts! To give back to the universe, I’m pulling one lucky viewer right now and blessing their crypto wallet with solid gold! Who’s ready?” The chat was moving at lightspeed. A voice connection was accepted, and a frantic, breathless male viewer spoke up. “Hey! Lexi! I only have about ten grams in my reserve. Can you actually double it?” Lexi stared directly into the camera, her smile perfectly practiced. “Absolutely, babe. Keep your eyes on the screen. Watch the magic happen.” She raised her slender index finger, pointing directly at the camera lens, and whispered, “Manifest.” A split second later, the guy on the audio feed started screaming. “Holy shit! Holy shit! It just refreshed! It went up fifty grams! I just got fifty grams out of thin air! You are a literal goddess!” My jaw dropped. Because at that exact microscopic second, a push notification dropped down from the top of my phone screen. Alert: 50g of Digital Gold successfully transferred out of your portfolio. Before the nausea of this sick, synchronized theft could fully set in, an unknown number called my phone. It was the medical diagnostics clinic affiliated with my company’s health insurance. “Hi, is this Gwen? We have the results from your annual screening. We located a nodule on your thyroid. The biopsy confirms it’s a benign tumor. It is not immediately life-threatening, but you need to come in to discuss surgical removal before it has a chance to mutate or spread.” A jolt of electricity shot down my spine. I looked at Lexi’s glowing, triumphant face on the stream, and then down at the bank notification draining my life savings. Suddenly, the puzzle pieces violently locked into place. There was no magic. There was no divine universe blessing her. There was no Midas touch. I grabbed my car keys and sprinted for the parking garage. The engine roared to life, and I slammed my foot on the gas. I had to move. I had to get to the one place in the city that could stop this bleeding! Idling at a red light, I shoved my phone into the dashboard mount. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lexi’s viewer count rocketing past half a million. She was the number one trending stream on the entire platform. Her cheeks were flushed with pure adrenaline as heavy donation graphics exploded across the screen. “Squad, that fifty grams was just the appetizer! A huge shoutout to my VIP in the chat for dropping a hundred Supernovas! Since the energy is so high, I’m doing something crazy!” “Next up, I’m pulling a mega-winner! I am going to manifest one hundred pounds of gold! Who wants to be a millionaire today?!” The chat broke. It was a solid wall of text moving too fast to read. A cold sweat broke out across my forehead. I pulled the car onto the shoulder, threw it in park, and rapidly typed a single message into the chaotic chat. [Manifesting gold? Cut the bullshit, Lexi. I know exactly what you’re doing.]
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