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.

Vena Korr laid the broken chain lever across her knees.


The other three walker stations still had working handles.


Tesk Arin turned his front plate toward Gali Pann's treatment camera.


He kept both walker feet fixed and left the one-person cradle facing Basalt. Gali's requested return needed seven loaded minutes. Tesk had six and refused to erase the request because the machine was short.


Pori Halm closed steam to both recovery arms.


Her body-only plan withdrew the walker from the corpse shell in five loaded minutes with every chain open. It returned four crew members to red soil and left Crossing Ten open.


Vena pulled the right-chain clutch by hand. The broken command lever could no longer hold it.


Chapter 413 - The Crew Breaks Its Order