Part 1

It was 3:14 AM in The Bronx, and the rain was coming down hard enough to drown out the city’s sins—or at least try to. My name is Officer Ray Mercer, NYPD, 44th Precinct. I’ve been wearing this badge for fifteen years. You think you’ve seen it all, until the city throws you a curveball that hits you right in the chest.

The cruiser smelled like stale coffee and wet wool. My partner, hazy-eyed rookie named Gomez, was driving. We were silent, the rhythmic thump-thump of the wipers marking time. Then, the radio crackled to life, shattering the quiet.

“Dispatch to 4-4. We have a 10-30, Robbery in Progress. 1280 Grand Concourse. Bodega owner says subject is armed. Shots fred.”*

“Light ’em up,” I said, my voice flatter than I felt. The adrenaline always hits the same, a cold spike in the gut.

We arrived in three minutes. The neon lights of the bodega reflected off the wet pavement like spilled blood. Glass was shattered across the sidewalk. I drew my service w*apon, the metal cold against my palm. “Gomez, take the back. I got the front. Watch your corners.”

I stepped through the broken door frame, glass crunching under my boots. The smell hit me first—ozone, cheap wine, and the copper tang of bl*od.

“Police! Show me your hands!” I roared, my voice echoing in the cramped aisles.

Behind the counter, the clerk was shivering, pointing a trembling finger toward the back storage room. I moved forward, clearing the aisles one by one. Chips, soda, candy—colorful wrappers mocking the grey grimness of the night.

Then I heard it. A sound that didn’t belong.

It wasn’t a siren. It wasn’t a scream. It was a soft, robotic voice coming from a cell phone lying on the dirty linoleum floor near the back freezer.

“I am a magnet for financial prosperity and success… I am aligned with the energy of abundance…”

I rounded the corner, w*apon raised.

There he was. A kid. Couldn’t have been more than seventeen. He was slumped against the freezer door, a snub-nose .38 resting loosely in his lap. He was wearing a faded hoodie that said “Future CEO.” He was clutching a wound in his side, his breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps.

But it was the look in his eyes that froze me. He wasn’t looking at me with hate. He was looking at me with pure, terrified confusion.

“I… I just wanted…” he stammered, his voice weak.

On the floor next to him, the cracked phone screen glowed, playing a YouTube video. The voice continued, oblivious to the bl*od pooling around it.

“I am worthy of living a life of luxury and comfort… My bank account is growing every day…”

“Don’t move, son,” I said, holstering my w*apon and kneeling beside him. I applied pressure to the wound. “Stay with me.”

“I… I listened every night,” the kid whispered, tears mixing with the sweat on his face. “It said… it said money flows effortlessly. Why didn’t it flow, Officer? Why did I have to…”

He coughed, wincing in pain. “I just wanted to help my momma. The rent… it’s just paper, right? I am a millionaire… I am…”

The irony hung in the air, heavy and suffocating. Here was a kid in one of the toughest neighborhoods in America, brainwashed by the algorithm into thinking he could manifest millions, pushed by desperation to take a few hundred bucks from a register at gunpoint.

The video kept playing, the upbeat music and affirmations filling the silence of the dying room.

“I am attracting money from multiple sources every day…”

I looked at Gomez, who had just come in from the back, his face pale. I looked back down at the kid. The “American Dream” was playing on a loop on the floor, while the reality of the American struggle bled out in my hands.

“Medic is two minutes out!” Gomez yelled.

“Hold on, kid. You hear me? You hold on,” I commanded, pressing harder.

He looked up at the fluorescent lights, his eyes glazing over. “I am… debt-free…” he mumbled, repeating the video’s script.

I wanted to smash that phone. I wanted to scream at the universe. Instead, I just held the pressure, praying that this story didn’t end here, knowing deep down that for this kid, the affirmations had lied.

Part 2

The ambulance, which we call a “bus” here in New York, screamed away from the curb, its red lights painting the wet brick buildings of the Grand Concourse in rhythmic, bloody pulses. I watched it go, the rain dripping off the brim of my cover, running down my neck, cold as ice.

Gomez was standing by the yellow tape, keeping back a small crowd of onlookers who had gathered like moths to a flame. Phones were out. They weren’t recording the tragedy; they were recording content. I saw a teenager in a puffy jacket filming the shattered glass, probably already thinking about the caption.

“Sarge wants a report ASAP, Ray,” Gomez said, his voice shaky. He was twenty-three, fresh out of the Academy. He still thought the job was about catching bad guys. He didn’t know yet that mostly, it was about cleaning up the mess left behind when the world broke people.

“I’m on it,” I grunted.

I walked back into the bodega. The crime scene unit (CSU) guys were already dusting for prints, though we knew whose they were. The clerk, a guy named Manny I’d known for years, was sitting on a milk crate, shaking.

“Ray,” Manny said, looking up at me. “I didn’t want to sh*ot him. You know I didn’t. He pointed it right at me. He was shaking so bad, Ray. I thought he was gonna pull the trigger by accident.”

“I know, Manny. It’s a clean sh*ot. Self-defense. You did what you had to do to go home to your family.”

But as I said it, I looked at the floor where the kid—Leo, we found his ID in his back pocket—had bled out. The “Millionaire” video had finally stopped playing, the battery dead. But the silence was louder.

I picked up the evidence bag containing Leo’s belongings. A wallet with a student ID from the local community college. A library card. And three dollars and fifty cents in change.

That’s what he d*ed for. Three fifty and a dream.

Back at the 4-4 Precinct, the air was thick with the smell of floor wax and old sweat. I sat at my desk, the fluorescent lights humming that headache-inducing tune. I needed to write the report, but I couldn’t stop looking at the evidence bag.

I logged Leo’s phone into the system. It was an older model, screen cracked like a spiderweb. I plugged it into the charger, needing to see what this kid was seeing.

When it booted up, the wallpaper hit me in the gut. It wasn’t a picture of a girl, or a car, or a sports team.

It was a Photoshop job. A picture of a massive, white mansion in the Hamptons. Superimposed over the front door, in clumsy, blocky text, were the words: MAMA’S HOUSE – 2025.

I unlocked it—no passcode, just a swipe. I went to his browser history. It was a tragic roadmap of desperation.

“How to make $10k in a week.” “Drop shipping course reviews.” “Crypto fast gains.” “Is ‘Alpha Wealth University’ legit?”

And then, the emails. Hundreds of them.

“You’re missing out, Leo! The price goes up at midnight!” “Don’t be a slave to the 9-5. Be a Lion.” “Your future self is begging you to buy this course.”

I found a receipt from two days ago. Payment of $497 to “Alpha Wealth University.”

I did the math. The rent in the Bronx for a two-bedroom apartment averages around $2,000. If his mom was working minimum wage, or close to it, $500 was everything. That was the grocery money. That was the electric bill.

Leo hadn’t bought drugs. He hadn’t bought a weapon (the .38 looked ancient, probably found or bought cheap off the street). He had bought hope. He had bought a lie packaged by some guy in a rented Lamborghini in Miami, selling dreams to kids who were drowning in reality.

I pulled up the address on Leo’s ID. A tenement building on 167th Street.

“Gomez,” I called out. “Grab your hat. We have to do the notification.”

This is the part they don’t show you in the movies. The Knock. It’s the heaviest sound in the world.

We drove to the apartment complex. The elevator was broken—it’s always broken in these buildings—so we walked up four flights of stairs that smelled of boiled cabbage and weed. Apartment 4B.

I adjusted my tie. I took a deep breath, trying to push down the image of Leo’s eyes staring at the bodega ceiling. I knocked.

Rap. Rap. Rap.

Silence. Then, the sound of a chain sliding.

The door opened. A woman stood there. She looked like she was in her forties but carried the weight of someone in her sixties. She was wearing a nurse’s aide scrub top, purple with little teddy bears on it. Her eyes were red-rimmed, tired.

“Mrs. Alvarez?” I asked softly.

She looked at me, then at Gomez. She looked at our hats in our hands. And she knew. Every mother in the Bronx knows what two cops at the door at 4:00 AM means.

She didn’t scream. She didn’t faint. She just let out a sound like air escaping a punctured tire. A long, low exhale of a soul giving up.

“Leo?” she whispered.

“May we come in, Ma’am?”

We sat on her plastic-covered sofa. The apartment was spotless. Prideful. On the wall, there were certificates. Perfect Attendance – Leo Alvarez. Honor Roll – Leo Alvarez.

“He was a good boy,” she said, her voice trembling. “He… he was studying business. He wanted to be an entrepreneur. He told me, ‘Mama, I’m gonna retire you. You won’t have to wipe floors anymore.’”

I felt a lump in my throat the size of a fist. “Mrs. Alvarez, there was an incident. At the bodega on the Concourse.”

” The bodega?” She looked confused. “He went to get milk. We… we ran out. He said he was just going to the store.”

“He was involved in a robbery, Ma’am,” Gomez said gently.

“No.” She stood up, her hands balling into fists. “No. Not my Leo. He doesn’t steal. He works. He delivers food on his bike. He doesn’t steal!”

“Mrs. Alvarez,” I said, leaning forward. “We found a receipt on his phone. He spent nearly five hundred dollars on an online course. Did he mention that?”

She froze. The color drained from her face, leaving it ashen. She sank back onto the sofa.

” The rent money,” she whispered. “The money was in the jar. I told him… I told him to deposit it tomorrow.” She looked at me, her eyes wide with horror. “He took the rent money?”

“I think he tried to invest it, Ma’am. I think he thought he could flip it. Make it back before you noticed. And when the course didn’t work… when the money was gone…”

I didn’t have to finish. We both saw the timeline. The panic. The realization that he had lost their shelter. The desperate, stupid idea to get the money back the only way he saw how in a moment of terror.

He didn’t rob that store because he was a criminal. He robbed it because he was a terrified kid who had gambled the roof over his mother’s head on a promise made by a stranger on YouTube, and lost.

She didn’t cry then. She just stared at the wall, at the framed picture of Leo in his graduation cap from middle school.

“He just wanted to be rich,” she whispered. “He just wanted to be like the men on the screen.”

I walked to the window and looked out at the city. The rain had stopped, leaving the streets slick and black. Somewhere out there, the “Guru” was sleeping in silk sheets, his bank account fat with the stolen dreams of kids like Leo.

And here, in apartment 4B, a mother was learning that her son was d*ad because he believed the lie.

Part 3

The hospital waiting room at Lincoln Medical Center is a purgatory of plastic chairs and vending machines. We were there because protocol demanded it, even though the doctors had called it twenty minutes after Leo arrived.

I stood by the coffee machine, watching the black sludge drip into a paper cup. My reflection in the machine’s chrome panel looked older than I remembered. Deep lines etched around my mouth. Eyes that had seen too much.

Gomez was sitting with Mrs. Alvarez. She was rocking back and forth, clutching Leo’s backpack to her chest.

I pulled out my phone. I couldn’t help it. I needed to see the face of the man who killed Leo. Not Manny the clerk. The other man.

I typed “Alpha Wealth University” into the search bar.

A video popped up. A man in his late twenties, teeth whitened to a blinding unnatural brightness, leaning against a gold-wrapped sports car.

“What’s up, future millionaires!” the man shouted, his energy manic and infectious. “Stop being a loser. Stop being poor. Being poor is a choice. You think working a 9-5 is safe? It’s a trap! Give me $500, and I will give you the keys to the kingdom. I will teach you the mindset of a King.”

I watched his hands moving, emphasizing his words. He was charismatic. He was confident. To a seventeen-year-old kid looking at a life of struggle, this guy must have looked like a god.

“It’s all about vibration,” the Guru said. “If you aren’t rich, it’s because you don’t want it enough. You have to take massive action. Ruthless action.”

Ruthless action.

Is that what Leo thought he was doing when he walked into that bodega? Was he manifesting his destiny with a .38 caliber pistol?

I felt a surge of anger so hot it made my hands shake. I wanted to reach through the screen and drag this guy onto the floor of the 44th Precinct. I wanted to show him the autopsy photos. I wanted to say, “Here. Here is your ‘massive action’. Here is your ‘return on investment’.”

But I couldn’t. What this guy was doing wasn’t illegal. It was just immoral. It was predatory. It was selling water to drowning people, but the water was saltwater.

“Officer Mercer?”

I turned. A doctor in scrubs, looking exhausted, stood there.

“Mrs. Alvarez wants to see him,” the doctor said. “Before… before the ME takes him.”

I nodded. “I’ll take her.”

Walking down that corridor is the longest walk in law enforcement. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The smell of antiseptic couldn’t quite mask the smell of death.

We entered the room. Leo was lying on a gurney, covered by a white sheet up to his chest. He looked small. Without the hoodie, without the posturing, he was just a child. His face was pale, waxy.

Mrs. Alvarez let out a sound that I will never forget. It wasn’t a scream. It was a howl. primal. Ancient. The sound of a heart ripping in half.

“Mi bebé,” she sobbed, throwing herself onto his chest. “My baby boy. Wake up, Leo. Please, God, wake up. I don’t care about the money. I don’t care about the house. Just wake up!”

She kissed his cold forehead. She stroked his hair. She apologized to him over and over again.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t give you more,” she wept. “I’m sorry, Leo.”

I stood in the corner, staring at my boots, blinking back tears. Cops aren’t supposed to cry. We’re supposed to be the blue wall. But the wall was crumbling.

I thought about my own son, back in Jersey. He was fifteen. He spent hours on TikTok. What was he watching? Who was whispering in his ear?

I looked at Leo’s hands. They were calloused. He rode a bike for Uber Eats after school. He didn’t have “limitless abundance.” He had grit. He had work ethic. And it wasn’t enough against the algorithm.

Suddenly, Mrs. Alvarez’s phone chimed. It was in her pocket. She ignored it. It chimed again.

She pulled it out, her hands shaking so bad she almost dropped it. She looked at the screen and frowned through her tears.

“It’s… it’s his email,” she whispered. “It’s synced to my phone.”

She held it out to me.

I took the phone. It was a notification from Alpha Wealth University. An automated email, sent to all subscribers.

The subject line read: “Why did you give up, Leo?”

The body of the email said: “We noticed you haven’t logged in. Winners don’t quit. Losers quit. Do you want to be a loser forever? Buy our Platinum Mentorship now for just $997 and turn your life around.”

I stared at the screen. The audacity. The robotic cruelty of the automation.

I looked at Leo’s dead body. Then I looked at the email asking why he gave up.

“He didn’t give up,” I said, my voice cracking. “He d*ed trying.”

I handed the phone back to Mrs. Alvarez. “Block them,” I said. “Block everything.”

I walked out of the room, leaving the mother to say her final goodbye. I walked out into the cool night air of the ambulance bay. The rain had started again.

I leaned against a concrete pillar and lit a cigarette, a habit I thought I’d kicked years ago. I inhaled the smoke, letting it burn my lungs.

I pulled out my own phone. I found the “Billionaire Affirmations” video that had been playing when Leo d*ed. It had 15 million views.

15 million kids. 15 million dreams.

I scrolled to the comments.

“I listened to this and found $20 on the street! It works!” “I’m going to be the first millionaire in my family.” “Claiming this energy.”

And then, I typed a comment. My fingers were heavy.

“It’s not real,” I typed. “Work hard. Love your family. Stay alive. Don’t trade your life for a lie.”

I posted it. It disappeared instantly, buried under thousands of “I AM WEALTHY” comments.

I turned off my phone. The screen went black, reflecting the red lights of the emergency room.

In the distance, sirens wailed. Another 911 call. Another tragedy. The city didn’t stop to mourn Leo Alvarez. The algorithm didn’t pause. The Guru didn’t lose a wink of sleep.

But I did.

Part 4

Three weeks later.

The Bronx moved on. It always does. The shattered glass at the bodega was replaced. Manny was back behind the counter, though he kept a baseball bat next to the register now and jumped every time the door chime rang.

I was back on patrol. Same car, same partner, same rain-slicked streets.

We were parked outside a high school on Jerome Avenue, monitoring dismissal. It’s a “safe corridor” initiative. Basically, we make sure the kids get to the subway without getting jumped.

I watched them pour out of the double doors. Hundreds of them. Backpacks slung over one shoulder, laughter, shouting, the chaotic energy of youth.

And almost every single one of them had a phone in their hand.

They were walking with their heads down, scrolling. The blue light reflected in their eyes. They weren’t looking at the crumbling sidewalk or the grey sky. They were looking at a window into another world—a world of private jets, stacks of cash, and impossible beauty.

A world that told them their reality wasn’t enough.

“Look at ’em,” Gomez said, chewing on a toothpick. “Zombies.”

“They’re not zombies, Gomez,” I said, watching a group of boys near the fence. “They’re targets.”

One of the kids, a skinny boy in a faded hoodie, was showing something on his phone to his friends. They huddled around, eyes wide. I could see the screen from where I sat. It was a video of a guy fanning out a stack of hundred-dollar bills.

The skinny kid pointed at the screen, then pointed at his chest. Me. That’s gonna be me.

I felt a ghost pain in my chest, right where the bullet had hit Leo.

I opened the car door and stepped out.

“Where you going, Ray?” Gomez asked.

“Just stretching my legs.”

I walked over to the group of kids. They tensed up immediately. Shoulders went up, eyes went guarded. To them, I wasn’t a protector. I was the opposition. I was the system.

“How’s it going, fellas?” I asked.

“We ain’t doing nothing, Officer,” the skinny kid said, quickly sliding his phone into his pocket.

“I know,” I said. “I just saw the video. The guy with the money.”

The kid hesitated, then smirked. “Yeah? That’s Brad Sterling. He’s a beast. I’m taking his masterclass next month.”

My heart sank. Brad Sterling. The same guy. The same poison.

“How much is the class?” I asked.

“Three hundred. But it’s an investment, yo. You spend money to make money, right?”

He recited the line like scripture.

I looked at this kid. He had the same hunger in his eyes that Leo had. The same desperate need to escape the concrete and the noise.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Marcus.”

“Marcus,” I said, stepping closer, ignoring the hostility from his friends. “You work?”

“I pack bags at the C-Town on weekends.”

“That’s honest money,” I said. “Hard money.”

“It’s chump change,” Marcus spat. “I ain’t trying to pack bags forever. I’m trying to be a CEO.”

“I get that,” I said softly. “But listen to me. That guy in the video? He didn’t get rich by taking a masterclass. He got rich by selling the masterclass to you.”

Marcus frowned. “You just a hater. You don’t get the mindset.”

“Maybe,” I said. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a card. It wasn’t my business card. It was a flyer for the Police Athletic League boxing gym a few blocks away. “But if you want to fight for a future, do it for real. Learn a trade. Go to school. Save your ‘chump change’ in a bank, not a website.”

I handed him the flyer. “Free membership for students. We teach discipline. We teach reality.”

Marcus took the flyer, looking at it skeptically. “Boxing? I ain’t trying to get hit.”

“You’re already getting hit, Marcus,” I said, looking him dead in the eye. “You just don’t feel the punches yet. But they leave marks.”

He held my gaze for a second. Something flickered there. Doubt? Curiosity?

“Whatever, man,” he muttered, stuffing the flyer into his pocket. “Let’s go.”

The group walked away, laughing, pushing each other. But I saw Marcus look back once. He touched his pocket where the flyer was.

It wasn’t a victory. It wasn’t a happy ending. It was a tiny, fragile seed planted in concrete.

I got back in the cruiser.

“What was that about?” Gomez asked.

“Just trying to break the algorithm,” I said, putting the car in drive.

As we pulled away, I looked at the dashboard. My own phone was mounted there. A notification popped up from Facebook. An ad.

“Tired of the rat race? Manifest your destiny today!”

I swiped it away.

The rain started to fall again, washing the streets of the Bronx. It couldn’t wash away the blood, or the poverty, or the grief. But as I drove, I turned off the police radio for a moment.

I didn’t put on affirmations. I didn’t put on music.

I just listened to the sound of the tires on the wet pavement. The sound of the real world. The sound of a city that was fighting to survive, one heartbeat at a time.

“Unit 4-4,” dispatch crackled, breaking the silence. “Family dispute. 170th Street.”

I picked up the mic.

“4-4 Central. Show us responding.”

We rolled on. Because that’s what we do. We don’t manifest. We don’t affirm. We show up.

And sometimes, just sometimes, that has to be enough.