The Siphon

I bring justice to the corrupt by draining their ambition, leaving them hollow and content, but I have to put all that stolen hunger somewhere.

The snow globe sits on my kitchen counter, filled with what looks like ordinary water and artificial snow. But when the light hits it right, you can see the shimmer of something else entirely. Pure greed, distilled and trapped. It belonged to Mark Veil, the pharmaceutical CEO who jacked insulin prices until diabetics started dying in parking lots. I found him in his penthouse office, counting profit margins while people counted their remaining days.

The process was simple. I placed my hand on his shoulder, felt for that burning core of avarice that drove him, and pulled. It came out like smoke, thick and golden, screaming silently as I forced it into the snow globe I’d brought for exactly that purpose. When I finished, Veil blinked slowly, smiled with genuine peace, and announced he was donating his fortune to free clinics.

He never remembered me. They never do.

The fountain pen rests beside the globe, its silver surface etched with tiny words that seem to move when you're not looking. Inside lives the distilled cruelty of Sarah Cole, who ran underground fighting rings. The music box on the windowsill holds the paranoid energy of General Morrison; its ballerina spins faster whenever I walk too close. My apartment is small, a cramped archive of captured sin. A chess set that pulses with manipulative intelligence. A mirror that reflects narcissistic rage. A coffee mug brimming with envy so thick it never empties.

I used to have a life. Friends. A job teaching high school history, trying to convince teenagers that the fall of Rome mattered. That was before I watched my brother Tommy die because his insurance company decided his treatment was "experimental." Before I shook the claims adjuster's hand at the funeral and felt something dark flow out of him, leaving him weeping with sudden remorse while I stood there, holding a piece of his soul.

The objects demand attention. They whisper constantly, trying to seduce me with promises of power. The chess set particularly likes to suggest I could rule entire cities if I just touched one piece. Just one.

I never do.

The brass compass sits apart from the others, wrapped in soundproof cloth and locked inside a lead-lined box. It contains the most dangerous thing I've ever siphoned: the bottomless ambition of Senator William Cross, a man who believed history belonged to people like him. It took everything I had to trap his hunger for power inside it. That was six months ago.

But something is wrong in the city. People are stopping. Not with violence, but with a quiet, final stillness. Mrs. Valdez from downstairs hasn't left her unit in four days. The mailman quit mid-route yesterday.

At the grocery store, I saw it happen up close. A mother, mid-aisle, simply let go of her shopping cart. She looked at her toddler sitting in the seat, her expression not cruel or angry, but blank. Then she turned and walked out of the store. The child sat there, surrounded by cereal boxes, and began to cry. After a few minutes, I found a security guard. Then I found the mother, standing in the parking lot, staring at her own hands.

"Ma'am?" I asked, placing a hand on her shoulder, instinctively searching for the familiar heat of a corrupted trait.

But there was nothing there to take. No vice, no malice. It wasn't a corruption; it was an absence. A vacuum where her purpose should have been. This isn't my work. This is something else entirely.

I walk through the city, and the emptiness is a plague. History is full of moments like this, I think. A collapse of faith, not by sword or fire, but by a quiet, shared sigh. The Romans called it acedia—a spiritual listlessness, an indifference to one's own existence. I’m watching it spread block by block.

The plaza downtown used to pulse with life. I remember bringing Tommy here once, years before he got sick. We ate pretzels and he tried to teach me how to skateboard, laughing as I stumbled over and over. Now it stretches empty under the afternoon sun. The fountain still runs, but its only audience is a handful of motionless figures.

A man in a gray suit stands staring at the water, his briefcase open at his feet, papers scattered like fallen leaves.

"Excuse me," I say.

He turns slowly. His eyes are flat. "I was going to work," he says, his voice a monotone. "Then I stopped. I can't remember why it seemed so important."

I don't bother trying to siphon anything from him. I already know what I’ll find: nothing. This apathy isn't a trait I can bottle. It's a virus of the soul, teaching people that nothing matters, that effort is pointless.

Back in my apartment, the objects sense my agitation. The chess pieces vibrate. The mirror reflects something hungrier than my own face.

And from its lead-lined prison, the compass calls to me.

I can hear it through the metal, through the cloth. Senator Cross's ambition, pure and potent, whispers about solutions. About taking charge. About showing these empty people what purpose looks like. The idea terrifies me. But as I look out my window at the dying city, I realize something worse: it might be the only option.

Apathy isn't a person. It's an idea. And the only thing that can counter a perfect void is a perfect will.

Perfect ambition.

My hands shake as I lift the lead-lined box. It feels heavier than it should, weighted with concentrated purpose. I carry it through the silent streets, a gas station attendant sitting in his booth while fuel pumps click unattended. The city is suffocating on its own indifference.

At the plaza, the man in the gray suit is still there, joined now by a dozen others. A paramedic stands beside her idling ambulance. A teacher clutches a gradebook. They stand like monuments to abandoned purpose.

I set the box on the fountain's edge and work the locks, each click echoing in the silence. As I unwrap the layers of cloth, the compass begins to hum. The brass gleams, its needle spinning wildly before pointing not to magnetic north, but toward me. Inside is the absolute certainty that you deserve to rule everything you can see.

I open it.

The ambition hits me like lightning. Visions flood my mind: not just of control, but of order. I saw history not as a subject to be taught, but a script to be rewritten, its messy variables and human errors corrected by a single, decisive hand. I saw the city functioning perfectly, every person in their place, their quiet desperation replaced by the purpose I would give them.

"You're better than them," Cross's voice whispers through the compass, through my blood. "They are waiting for someone to tell them what matters. You could be that someone. You should be."

Around me, the people stir. The man in the gray suit straightens his tie. The paramedic turns toward her ambulance. They're looking at me, not with adoration, but with expectation. They want to be led.

And God help me, I want to lead them.

The compass grows hot in my palm, Cross's hunger merging with my own desperate desire to fix this. It would be so easy.

But beneath the seductive promise, I remember the look on Senator Cross's face after I took this from him—not just peaceful, but diminished. Hollowed out. He was happy, but he was no longer himself. Is that the price?

With every ounce of will I possess, I force the energy outward. Not as a command, but as an invitation. Not control, but inspiration. The compass grows cold as I release the ambition, diluting it, spreading it thin until it's not the singular hunger to rule, but the simple, ordinary drive that gets people out of bed in the morning.

The man in the suit picks up his papers. He gives me a brief, polite nod—the kind you give a stranger—and walks away.

Perfect. The compass falls silent.

***

Relief floods me as I walk home, the empty compass light in my pocket. The streets are coming alive. A shopkeeper sweeps his storefront. Teenagers laugh outside a pizza place. Normal sounds.

My building is humming with life. Mrs. Valdez waves from her window. I unlock my door and step into my sanctuary.

But something is wrong.

The snow globe is dark, its artificial snow settled like silt. No shimmer of greed. The fountain pen lies inert, just metal and ink. The music box ballerina is still. Every single object is empty.

With trembling hands, I pull the compass from my pocket. It should be just brass and magnetism now, but as I turn it over, new text catches the light. Delicate script that wasn't there before:

Thank you for the vessel.

The words burn. My knees give out, and I fall to the floor as understanding crashes over me.

The apathy wasn't random. It wasn't a virus.

It was bait. A psychic predator that fed on emptiness, clearing the field. It had been hunting for a container strong enough to hold its essence, and it needed a vessel forged by the very person trying to stop it—someone who knew how to channel psychic energy into an object.

It needed a compass. And I had prepared it perfectly.

The entity has absorbed Cross's refined ambition, learned how to want things, how to plan. It won't spread apathy now. It will spread purpose. Its purpose. It will be the leader they crave, the voice that cuts through the confusion. It will be everything Senator Cross dreamed of becoming, but infinitely more patient and clever.

The compass needle, which had been still, spins lazily. It stops. It’s pointing directly at me.

I drop it, but it’s too late. I can already feel it working, whispering suggestions that sound remarkably like my own thoughts. Reasonable ideas about order, about efficiency, about how much better things could be if someone just took charge.

My collection of human sins is gone, consumed by something far worse. I've spent years pushing power away.

Now, it lives in my pocket.

Outside, the city hums with renewed life, unaware that its savior may have just become its doom. The compass spins again, and this time, when it stops, it’s pointing toward the door.