A kaiju ate me alive. I felt my ribs go one at a time. 

Then something in the dark of its gut decided I was not finished.

It started my heart with a hand that was not mine, and I walked out of the corpse on my own two feet, the only person who ever has. That was the night she bought the rights to whatever I had become.

One screen. One subscriber. The screen is my life, live and uncut. 

The subscriber is her, and she pays whatever it costs to keep the feed running: every fight, every wound, every hour I lose to the thing growing up the inside of my spine. 

When I run, the money finds me. When I bleed, the bid climbs.

The Defense Force has me filed as a contaminant. 

The corporations want me as their next headliner. 

She understood the part both of them missed: the stronger the parasite makes me, the less of me is left.

Every night, behind one glowing screen, the woman who calls herself my sponsor watches me turn into the thing that killed me. She has never once looked away.

The three eleven marks split under the city.


One turned north, toward the rail cut where Jessa Venn still had families behind the old ticket gates.


One turned south, toward the school shelter Mira Sol had built out of desks, rain barrels, and three blown-out storefront doors.


Rina watched all three move and knew the request was poison before the form finished printing it.


The crime did too, if people only heard the clip.


Soma had the district map up, but the screen lagged behind the floor. The marks were faster than the civic system that claimed to own them. They moved like old debts finding names.


Tali leaned over the table with blood dried at the edge of one sleeve.


Chapter 243 - Fastest Available Route