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.

They came down Green Lane in three black vans and one white registry truck with its lights off. The vans had riot shutters. The truck had a clean seal on the side.


June saw them through the bookshop glass and rang the Aldgate bell once.


The sound crossed old wood, wet stone, stacked shelves, stairwell pipes, and every cheap phone taped into the shop window. People in the lane turned toward the sound because they had learned the difference between panic and a place that could answer.


In the evidence room, the Aldgate feed filled the wall.


"You don't know what I was going to do."


Chapter 246 - The Bell Warrant