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 train left Basin Junction at 14:08.


At 14:11, Basin Junction disappeared from rail control.


Ten passenger carriages and one locomotive traveled east at 112 kilometers per hour. Black lane paint ran between the rails beneath them. The locomotive wheels stayed on steel and followed road direction.


Brake pressure reached every carriage. Speed did not change.


"Track relation?" Ridge rail control asked.


"Wheels report rail. Cab reports road. Signals report no line ahead."


Thirty kilometers of current track lay between the train and Ridge Array. The one-ended road occupied all of it from driver height. From the air, the train crossed normal rail.


Ridge had thirteen minutes before arrival.


Rail control held 603 ticketed passengers and 17 crew.


Carriages One and Two carried current tickets from Basin Junction.


Chapter 325 - No First Station