The Man Without A Price
Name your number
Issue No. 1 · The First Flame
The Man Without A Price
They made an offer. He answered it years ago.
Eleven silver-suited figures invite Nick Reynolds to a glass table and open a ledger with his name at the top. They have bought quieter men for less. What they have not accounted for is a builder who already knows the exact size of his own life, and a backyard fire that has been keeping score.
2 min read12 panelsPublished 2026-01-12
Featuring Nick Reynolds, Spark.
Panel 1 of 12 · 2 min read
Panel 01
The Glass Table
A high glass boardroom at night. Eleven silhouettes in silver suits sit around a black table. A blank coin spins slowly at the center. They had priced the town down to the curb stone: every porch, every corner store, every family that had stayed too long to be convenient. Then somebody wrote a name at the top of a clean page and the room went quiet, because nobody could work out what the number beside it should be.
Panel 02
The Ledger
A Keeper slides a black leather ledger across the glass. The page is blank except for a single ruled line. - The Keeper: Write it yourself. Everyone writes it eventually.
- Nick: You brought a pen for a conversation that needed a handshake.
Panel 03
What The Room Did Not Know
Close on Nick's hands resting flat on the glass. Ember light bleeds up from beneath the skin, warming the reflection of the table. The thermostat in that building had never once been argued with. It lost that night by four degrees and nobody in a silver suit could say why.
Panel 04
The Inventory
Split panel: the boardroom on one side, and on the other a warm kitchen with six chairs pulled out from a crowded table. He did the arithmetic they invited him to do. Six kids. One wife who had gone without so the roof could get finished. A block of neighbors who called him first and apologized second.
- Nick: I already know what I'm worth. That's the problem with me.
Panel 05
Escalation
The Keeper stands. Behind him a wall screen wakes up showing the Reynolds house from the street, six windows lit. - The Keeper: Then we'll price what's behind you instead.
- Nick: Say the rest of that sentence slowly. I want to remember it right.
Panel 06
The Answer
Nick rises. Fire runs the length of both forearms and lights the underside of the glass table. Silver suits lean back as one. He did not shout. Men who shout are asking for something. Nick had stopped asking somewhere around the second mortgage and never picked the habit back up.
- Nick: You cannot buy a man who already knows what makes him rich.
Panel 07
Exit
Wide cinematic panel: the black 1975 Eldorado pulling out of the tower garage, chrome throwing six small golden reflections down a wet street. He left the ledger open. He left the coin spinning. He drove home, because he always drives home, and the streetlights he passed under held a half-second longer than they should have.
Panel 08
Spark, Waiting
The driveway. Spark leans against the garage frame with two mugs, headlights washing over him. - Spark: How'd it go?
- Nick: They found out I'm expensive.
- Spark: They find out. Then they get creative.
Panel 09
The Drive Home
Interior of the Eldorado. Nick's face in dashboard light, one hand loose on the wheel, the county sliding past in blue and orange. Eleven miles of county road gave him time to name the thing he was feeling, and it was not fear. It was the flat, patient anger of a man who has already rebuilt a life once and has priced out exactly how long it takes to do it again.
Panel 10
Six Windows
The Reynolds house from the street. Six upstairs windows glowing warm gold against a cold blue sky. Every one of those windows was a room he had framed himself, and every one of them had a kid in it who thought the world was fundamentally safe because he had never let them see the invoice.
- Nick: That's the number. Six windows. Good luck.
Panel 11
What He Told His Wife
The kitchen, late. Two coffee cups. She is already awake, arms folded, reading him the way she has for twenty years. - Her: They offered you something.
- Nick: They offered me everything.
- Her: And you said no before you sat down.
- Nick: I said no the day I met you. Tonight I just repeated myself.
Panel 12
The Fire Keeps Score
The backyard stone fire pit, low coals, seen from above. The embers arrange themselves briefly into eleven small points of light, then scatter. Behind the house the pit had been banked down to nothing for the night. At 1:14 a.m. it came back up on its own, counted to eleven, and settled. Nick did not see it. The fire had not asked him to.
