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 CHAIR waited like patience had a shape.


The straps hidden under the smooth arms were only hardware. The pale line running from the seat into the floor was only wiring. The eleven marks held their witness around him, but witness had already been named.


The chair had all the time in the building, and Caleb's body had three percent left before the count became a cliff again.


Tali's hand rose at once. "Recommendation. Distance."


The woman stood beside the downward path, leaving the chair empty by design.


Sam opened the Record. "Choice without informed terms is bait."


It looked harmless from three steps away.


So had the woman, the first night she spoke through a screen.


So had every clean room in Marcus's old papers.


Chapter 208 - The Empty Chair