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 silver hand on Soma's terminal pressed down by itself.


Just Kim's right-hand authorization map, palm open over the old buy-button icon, flexing like it had nerves.


AUTHORIZED TO CONFIRM RESPONSIBLE HOLDER CONTINUITY.


The 119 quarantined acceptances brightened.


Caleb's injured palm throbbed once, answering the shape before he wanted it to. Elara's nail marks were still open. Blood had dried along the life line and cracked when he moved his fingers.


The handprint on the screen moved the same way.


Now the dead part of that hand was trying to finish the purchase.


Kim's text blinked on the broken terminal.


The answer came in pieces, each one slower than the last.


Chapter 238 - Break The Hand