Jiss lasted ten blocks pretending everything was normal.
He copied the city's momentum: eyes down, shoulders tucked, walk like you have a destination. It almost worked until the smell hit him: meat searing on a flat-top, onions cooking. The sweet, charred smell was strong.
Hungry.
The word kept repeating in his head.
"I heard you the first time," he muttered. He wasn't talking out loud. Not really. Lips barely moved. "We're getting… fries. Or a hot dog."
Meat. A warm purr under the word. Teeth for meat.
He swallowed. The vendor flipped food on the grill with a hiss. He told himself to keep walking, his feet carried him to the end of the line.
It wasn't a long line: two construction workers and a teenager wrestling a skateboard, but time stretched. His palms tingled. His tongue ached, which made no sense until he realized his teeth felt… too present. Not bigger. Just aware, like every canine had an opinion.
"Uh, one—" He had to force his voice into shape. "One hot dog. Mustard. No.! everything. All of it."
The vendor nodded, hands already moving. Jiss fumbled cash from his wallet, fingers shaky. He hadn't processed the Stark billboard or the impossible skyline yet, and now his body wanted to sprint at a food cart like a feral raccoon.
Host is weak, the voice said, almost fond. We make host strong.
"Stop calling me 'host.'" He tried to inhale slow. "I'm Jiss."
A pause, listening, tasting the word.
Jiss. A satisfied hum. Host-Jiss.
"Just Jiss."
Hungry-Jiss.
He shut his eyes. "Do you come with a mute button?"
We come with teeth.
The vendor put a paper-wrapped hot dog in his hand. He stepped aside, took a bite, and closed his eyes. Salt, grease, and heat. It helped a little. His hands stopped shaking.
But not enough to quiet the voice.
More. Not this. This is… small.
"Yeah," Jiss said, mouth full. "Welcome to my budget."
He finished the hot dog quickly. He licked mustard from the edge of the bun. His hunger dropped from a roar to a low buzz, but it stayed. He wanted something else, something that bled.
A siren sounded to the south. He felt unsteady. He turned into the nearest side street. It was quieter and dimmer. He leaned on the brick wall, breathing.
"Okay," he said softly. "You're real. You're in me. We need… a plan."
We are plan.
"That's terrifying."
We kept you alive. Giant moving metal. Horn. Lights. We wrapped you when bones were soft.
He froze. "You....saved me?"
A pleased ripple. We chose you. Good bones. Strong. Scared, but clever.
He didn't know whether to be flattered or to vomit. "What are you?"
The answer came not in words at first, but in impressions: slick dark pressure; the sense of a sea with no surface; an echo of countless mouths. Then it put a name on the impression with a child's certainty.
Sym-bi-ote, it said, syllables careful. We live with. We make together.
Jiss sagged against the wall. "A symbiote." He laughed once, a small, cracked sound. "That's… not a word I wanted to be relevant today."
We are we, it added, prim. And we are one. We are…
The next word wasn't in his language. It came as a taste: metal, spice, static. His brain translated badly: Toxin.
"Okay," he whispered. "Toxin. Sure. That's extremely reassuring. Top ten comforting names."
Toxin is strong.
"So you're the thing in horror movies that whispers 'eat,' aren't you?"
Eat. Bright, eager. Eat now? Eat people?
"Nope, Not people." He forced his shoulders down, unclenched fists he didn't remember clenching. "New rule. Rule One: we don't eat people."
It considered this like a cat considers gravity.
What about small people?
"Also no. That was the whole umbrella."
Criminal people?
"No look, we're not..."
Footsteps scraped behind him.
Jiss turned. Two guys in hoodies peeled off the sidewalk and into the entrance of the side street. One stayed near the corner; the other walked closer, a casual slouch that broadcast problem.
"Yo," the closer one said. "You got the time?"
Jiss's brain helpfully offered: This is the part where you die again. "I....sure." He lifted his wrist, then remembered he didn't own a watch anymore. "I no. Sorry. Phone died."
"Uh-huh." The guy smiled without humor. "Then we'll take the wallet. No big deal."
Eat? Toxin said, delighted.
"Still no," Jiss whispered through his teeth.
He took a step back and hit brick. The second guy slid in to his left. Their choreography was practiced, their scent a blend of stale smoke and nerves. His pulse kicked. The hunger spiked.
Threat, Toxin purred. Threat. Fix threat.
"Guys," Jiss said, hands open. "I had a really bad day. Let's not..."
The closer one grabbed for his jacket.
Something in Jiss uncoiled.
His hand moved first, no, not his hand. His hand wrapped in something that was also him. A dark ripple climbed the skin and became a tendril, fluid-solid, fast as instinct. It snapped across the thief's wrist and squeezed.
The man yelped. The other one swore and pulled a knife. Jiss didn't see a blade; he saw a line of light he wanted to swallow.
Eat, Toxin said, almost laughing. Fast. Clean.
For a heartbeat, it was easy. The hunger wasn't an emptiness; it was a solution. He could feel where the knife would move, where the tendril could go, how easy it would be to pull, to break, to fill the rush in his chest with meat and heat and.....
"No." The word scraped out of him with effort.
The tendril hesitated. The knife flashed. The world narrowed, He focused and chose.
Jiss made one.
He pivoted, wrenching his jacket free and letting the tendril push instead of pull. It hit the knife-wielder in the shoulder and slammed him back into the graffiti-scabbed wall. Another tendril, he had two, when did he have two? caught the first guy's forearm and held without crushing.
"Walk away," Jiss said, and his voice came out lower, double-toned. He heard it. They heard it. The knife hit the ground.
"Yo, yo, what?" The one pinned to the wall could barely breathe. "What are you?"
"Leaving," Jiss said. "And you are, too."
He loosened the tendrils. They slithered back under his sleeves, warm as blood and slick as ink. Both men staggered away, shoved past each other, and tripped over their own exits, vanishing into traffic with panicked curses.
Jiss sagged against the wall again. His heart pounded. Sweat cooled on his neck. The part of him that had liked the fear, the flavor of it, retreated, sullen.
Hungry, Toxin grumbled. Waste. Good meat runs away.
"They're people," Jiss said. His throat felt raw. "Scared, stupid, probably broke. We're not… monsters."
We can be good monsters.
"No." He closed his eyes. "Rule One. No eating people."
A skeptical hiss. We hide?
"We survive."
It mulled that. He could sense its thinking now, the way it pushed at his limits and checked for weak spots. But it listened. That surprised him more than the tendrils.
We saved you, it said finally, calm. You save us. Together.
Part of him wanted to smile. "That's… not a terrible definition of 'symbiosis.'"
We like meat definition better.
He huffed. "You and me both."
A bus rumbled past the end of the street. Jiss straightened, wiped his hands on his jeans, and merged into the crowd. In a storefront window, he saw his reflection: a young man, drenched and messy. For a moment, a faint shadow moved at his jaw, a hint of a second mouth, then it was gone.
He walked.
The city adjusted around him. He found a cheap diner with fogged windows and a cracked neon coffee sign. It was the kind of place where no one asked questions unless you left without paying. The waitress set down a menu that had laminated scars.
"Coffee?" she asked.
"Please," he said. The mug arrived. The coffee tasted flat. He ordered the cheapest meal with calories: pancakes and eggs, a big plate of both. He tried not to think about the word "blood" repeating in his head.
This meat is stale, Toxin complained when the eggs arrived.
"It's breakfast," Jiss said. "At three in the afternoon."
Stale.
"Deal with it."
He ate until the shaking eased. He paid in cash and left a tip he couldn't afford because it made him feel like himself. He stepped outside. The sky was a slightly different blue.
The city felt less hostile now. It seemed like a place with rules he could learn if he stayed calm in public.
He stepped into an alley, crouched on a crate, and rested his head against the brick.
"You chose me," he asked softly. "Why?"
Warm. Alive. Moving. The answer was simple. You did not stop. You tried to look. You tried to think.
He exhaled. "That… sounds like me."
Also your blood tasted like thunder.
"That sounds less like me."
A ripple, amusement? It could laugh. That was unfairly endearing for a nightmare.
His mind wandered to the problem he'd been pushing away: how to not get dissected by government alphabet soup. He needed basics: shelter, anonymity, a way to eat that didn't involve felonies. He needed to not reveal toxin.
"We need rules," he said again, more firmly.
Rules, it echoed, like a child's confusion
"Rule One: No eating people. Period. Rule Two: No killing unless… unless there's no other way, and even then we aim for 'no.' Rule Three: We don't show off. If we do something, we do it fast and quiet. Rule Four: We listen to me when I say stop."
A long silence.
Rule Four is boring.
"Good. Boring keeps us alive."
We will eat something real, it bargained after a beat. Soon.
"We'll figure it out." He rubbed his eyes. "There are butcher shops. Grocery stores. We can buy… something. We're not hunting."
It didn't answer, but the hunger settled into a watchful crouch. Agreement, for now.
He slid down the wall until he was sitting on cold concrete, knees up, arms wrapped around them, the posture of anyone who'd had too many new truths in one day. The city swelled and ebbed beyond the alley. He let the noise carry him.
Jiss, Toxin said after a while, softer than it had ever been. You are scared.
"Yes."
We will keep you. We like you soft and fast.
"I'm going to pretend that was sweet."
Eat later?
"We'll see."
We will.
He snorted. "You're impossible."
We are us.
Something in his chest loosened. He didn't trust it. He didn't trust anything. But he was still here. He could write rules and change them when they broke. He could hide. He could help. He could refuse.
He could say no when a voice in his head said eat and he had.
Jiss pushed up from the ground and brushed dust from his jeans. The alley smelled less like rot now, more like wet stone. He stepped back into the living city, shoulders set.
"Okay," he murmured, just for the two of them. "We do it my way."
A pleased purr in his blood. For now.
"For now."
He didn't look up. He didn't run. He walked, another anonymous figure in a world too bright to be fiction.