Read a preview
Chapter 1
Chapter 1: The Static
The call is all static until I hear the breath on the line. Then a voice cuts through. “You don’t know me,” it says, soft, unshaken. “But you know what they’ve done.”
In the glass of my apartment window, my reflection wears the night. Towers prick the sky in white thread. Helixis keeps a warm glow on their crown—their name haloed above the city like a promise, like a script written across our throats.
“What have they done?” I ask. I set my phone on speaker, press the recorder on another.
Silence. Then a code appears in a text: A string of numbers, a dot, a version. “Falcon. 12.3.2,” the voice says. “They’re triaging the city.”
“You’re saying Helixis is…” I don’t finish. Helixis makes the bands on our wrists that count our steps, the wristbands on paramedics that lock med cabinets, the analytics suite that decides where ambulances pre-position before dawn.
“Diego Santos, 11:04 p.m., last night,” the voice says. “Push notification rerouted the unit on Sixth.”
I blink hard. “That’s my friend.”
“They flagged him low-priority after he published your piece on pharma kickbacks. He lived twenty-five minutes. They sent help at twenty-six. I can prove it.” A pause. “I need a drop.”
“Who are you?” I ask.
The voice doesn’t answer. “Check the mail slot tomorrow. And Rhea? Don’t look up. They see you when you look at them.”
