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 green broadcast icon returned to Caleb's cracked visor while the extraction cable swung him through the wind.


The number climbed as his feed appeared on the civilian stadium screens.


Chat ran past too quickly to read. Blue and red bounty notices crowded the edge of his vision.


[Gladhand: Highlight Clip Acquired. Structural Breach Maneuver.]


A replay opened beneath the watermark: Caleb diving under the Mimic's scythe, close enough for the blade to fill the frame. The energy drink logo spun in the corner while the machine wrenched its trapped blades through the calcified wall.


"They bought the footage," Suzu shouted.


She hung from the next cable, her white armor streaked with black Kaiju fluid. Caleb looked past her at the billboards beneath the blimps.


Chapter 33 - Landing Page