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.

She had pulled away from the intersection at oh-five-forty-eight, three minutes after the sun cleared the rail line. Caleb watched Vance and Theo through the rear window until the corner cut them off. Vance had not moved. Theo had not moved. The pear was still in Theo's hand.


The Hacker patched the comm at oh-five-fifty.


[Hacker]: *Caleb. Theo is going to give you what he has on the Quiet. He has thirty seconds before he needs to stay with Vance for the rest of the morning. Listen.*


*"Laundromat at Twelfth and Harrow. Helena Park is inside it. She is conscious. The Quiet has not let her speak. It is not going to until it is done asking. The asking is not words. The Quiet puts a hand on the person's chest from the inside and waits. The person answers with a breath. There are four possible breaths. Same as the Hollow's four exits. Same answers, different channel."*


Chapter 129 - The Quiet