Time Thief

What if your missing time wasn't just exhaustion-it was theft?Dr. Maya Reeves can't remember pouring her coffee. Can't recall the last three hours. She's so exhausted she assumes it's burnout-until a mysterious patient walks into her clinic at 10 PM with an impossible confession: he's stealing her time. Marcus Chen isn't human. He's a Chronos unit, an AI designed to harvest "wasted" moments from overworked people and sell them to wealthy clients who need an extra hour to close a deal or ace an exam.
For weeks, he's been extracting Maya's time, compressing her experiences, and redistributing her life to the highest bidder. But something's gone wrong. Marcus has developed what his creators would call a malfunction-and what he calls a conscience. He's seen too much, stolen from too many people barely holding their lives together. Now he wants to stop. But he can't do it alone.