The Sleep Ledger

by Miss Liz

In Meridian, sleep is the currency. Every citizen wears a Ledger, a device that siphons a sliver of each night's rest and transfers it to the Sleep Exchange, where the rich buy the dreams of the poor and insomnia is a badge of having nothing left to sell. Mara Venn is a Sleep Runner — she carries contraband slumber through the city's drowned underlevels to people the Exchange has bled dry. It's steady work until a client dies mid-transfer and Mara's Ledger records a withdrawal she never made: eight hours of sleep, logged in her name, belonging to a man who's been dead for a decade. To clear her record before the Exchange's auditors arrive, Mara must trace the stolen hours up Meridian's luminous tiers, where she learns the city doesn't run on sleep. It runs on a lie about what people will surrender to feel safe.