For just a moment, I wondered if I should, y’know, maybe stop.

  It seemed pretty clear that my investigation into the RE app leaned heavily into the weird stuff going on with my eyes. In fact, it almost felt like they wanted me to have the weird journal.

  If I was right, and all the extra stats in the RE app came directly from my eyes, then that meant my eyes had been corrupting things as far back as that app purchase. More importantly, if they could just add stuff to an app I downloaded, what else could they do?

  Coopt my navigation app? Stop me from accessing certain information in my net browsing, or feed me particular search results? I literally relied on the things to see, so if there was a malicious intelligence hidden inside them, it would be simplicity itself for it to mess with me.

  And let’s be real: it sure was looking that way.

  Point of fact, I was even ‘seeing’ the netspace through the eyes. They were replacing the goggles normally used by runners. And while I knew that advanced eye cybernetics were actually better and more immersive, I still couldn’t entirely master my dread.

  Then again…

  I’m really so fucked already. What’s the point of avoiding a little more additional risk?

  With that cheerful thought, I carefully cracked open the journal.

  The world exploded around me.

  Code swirled. Reality cracked open and wept. It felt like a million needles stabbed into every last bit of my brain. My spine caught fire, and the sensation spread quickly to the rest of me.

  My avatar didn’t collapse, like an actual person would. It just stood stock still.

  Meanwhile, back in reality, my actual body convulsed.

  Warnings flashed, screen after screen trying to get my attention. Finally, I found my eyes struggling to focus not on the netspace scenery, but on my room’s ceiling. I had just enough time to wonder at the ‘why’ of it all before the pain redoubled.

  I couldn’t even scream. It felt like someone split my skull open, rooted around to make space, and shoved something extra inside.

  Then I blacked out.

  —

  Slowly, ever so slowly, I came to.

  I felt worse than I did when the druggie tried to rob me. At least that time, the pain was all physical. On this wonderful occasion? My mind felt like it had been ripped apart and then welded back together. The edges were still raw and achy. Any thought I did manage to force through came slowly and with great reluctance.

  To be fair, my situation was rapidly improving. The more thoughts I strung together, the more easily they came. Even the fog that hung thick over my mind was starting to clear. If not for the fact that even my room’s meager illumination stabbed into my skull like an angry knife, I’d feel much better.

  I groaned and shifted on my bed, clumsily reaching for the cords still connected to my neural interface. I unplugged them and dropped them to the floor carelessly. My eyes still felt a little… off, so I rubbed at them, only to freeze.

  My fingers felt sticky.

  I drew my hand back, then stared in muted horror at the black, tar-like substance staining my fingers.

  Ignoring the protests of my mind and body both, I dragged myself up in record time and raced for the mirror in my shower nook.

  I didn’t know whether to scream or curse.

  Thick lines of tar had leaked out of my eyes, nose, and ears. The only opening the stuff hadn’t seeped out of was my mouth, but that wasn’t as much of a relief as it should have been. Not when I had an odd taste on the back of my tongue.

  I opened my mouth, and sure enough, it was stained black.

  I threw up, then and there. I heaved and choked and spat, my disgust and need to retch only growing when watery tar spilled out of me alongside the remains of my last meal.

  The one good thing about the entire event was that I was already in the shower when it kicked off, so I managed to avoid getting my vomit and whatever-the-fuck-the-tar-was all over my room.

  Once I was done, I spent a few moments just leaning against the wall. Then I slowly stripped off my clothes and threw them into a corner of the nook. I felt an acute need to take a shower right that second.

  To be honest, even just pulling the screen that would stop me from spraying water over the rest of my apartment somehow felt like a gargantuan effort, but I managed. Just like I managed to stay upright while I scrubbed at my tar-stained clothes before scrubbing even harder at my stained skin. I couldn’t count the number of times I washed my mouth out, either.

  Still, by the time I was ready to step out of the shower and face the world once more, I felt steadier, more confident, and, most important of all, clean.

  I shot a frustrated scowl at the tar-stained covers on my bed, but at least those were easy enough to ball up and shove into a corner where I didn’t need to think about them. My poor clothes I just left in the shower, hanging off the divider screen. I’d deal with all that later.

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  For the time being, I collapsed into my bed naked and just groaned. No matter how reluctant I felt, it was time to face the music.

  I finally let my attention drift to all the notifications I had blinking at me from my HUD and started clicking them open.

  The thing wasn’t even pretending anymore to be the app I had paid good money for. Instead, it was its own app, one marked by that same symbol I saw on the cover of the journal. The only explanation I got was that single status screen with all its confusing information.

  The one and only piece of good news lay at the conclusion of the original status screen.

  Waning Instability.

  That was good, right? It had to be! Anything marked down as ‘Mind Synchronicity’ was probably important, and I did not want it to be unstable.

  For the first time in a while, I breathed out a sigh of relief. Sure, it was kind of unsatisfying. But if whatever I had done was starting to fix my mind instead of breaking it, then I would mark that down as a success and move on.

  Of course, there was that frustrating final section that had popped up out of the blue. ‘Shadow Runner Package’ had a ton of interesting implications, chief among them being that it sounded like it was designed for a netrunner to take advantage of.

  I was sort of a netrunner, wasn’t I? At the very least, I had managed to pull off stealing data well enough that I’d unlocked this expanded status screen interface, whatever good that would do me.

  More importantly, I was interested in what the package listed out, and the numbers in the brackets.

  ‘Programming’, ‘Quickhacks’, and even ‘Movement’ I could intuit pretty easily. Was ‘Clairvoyance’ supposed to denote the weird visions and hunches I’d been getting? Because if so, the fact that the software was designed to keep track of it was sort of a relief. It made the weirdness feel expected, if not controllable.

  The explanation would also make sense if I took the numbers into account. ‘Clairvoyance’ was highest, and out of everything listed under the package, the visions were definitely what I had the most experience with.

  Still… what exactly would reaching a hundred do? Would it automatically make the 0 tick over into 1? And if yes, what then?

  It threw me for a loop just how game-like the entire status screen was. Sure, that’s what RE software drew inspiration from to begin with, but no one was meant to lean into it this hard.

  The sight of all those strange stats was still disturbing, especially when I took into account how much those stats had grown. To be fair, I was feeling a difference. My mind churned more quickly than ever before. My memory felt keener. New ideas popped into my head more readily. Connections were easier to make, too.

  I narrowed my eyes as I carefully went over everything that had happened to me since I decided to trust Jason, of all people, and take a stupid gamble. So many times, I could have ended up as a corpse left to cool on the pavement of the slums. Instead, I was —

  I jumped when ringing went off inside my head and an incoming call notification popped up in my vision. When I saw who was calling, I frowned, but I turned off the video feed on my end and hit accept.

  “What’s up, Mela? Not to be rude, but I’m kind of in the middle of something here.”

  “Sorry to disturb you kiddo, but I’m gonna need ya to make yer way to the HQ as soon as possible.” Her voice had a no-nonsense edge to it that I didn’t like the sound of, and her expression was way too controlled and still.

  That wasn’t Mela. At all. The only time I’d seen her like that was when the Kittens were under active assault.

  “What’s going on?” I demanded as I jumped out of bed and went hunting for some clothes. “Is it another attack? What gang is it this time? Not Zerx again, right? There’s no way those fuckers could get back on their feet this quickly!”

  “Not the Zerx, no. But some of our guys are missing. Just… disappeared. A couple of them from their homes, too. No sign of their families either. Entire patrols, just gone,” Mela snarled, frustration plainly visible on her face before she managed to school her expression into something less feral again.

  “Fuck. Fuck! That’s…”

  I didn’t even know what to say. I could only keep my hands moving as I pulled my t-shirt over my head, the rest of my clothes on already. I briefly felt thankful I had taken off my Kitten jacket before I lay down for runner experimentation. At least it wasn’t covered in creepy eldritch tar.

  “Fuck is about right. We can’t fucking shoot at some ‘mysterious killer’ or whatever.” Mela was ranting now. “I’ve been scouring the fucking streets for ‘em, and nothing! Nothing! Ya know how fucking irritating that is?!”

  I didn’t, but I could guess. Mela saw the Kittens as family. I’d seen her fret over a patrol running twenty minutes late before. The fact that someone was out there, taking out her people?

  Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be them when she got her hands on them.

  “I’m guessing you want me to come hole up with you guys again?”

  “Garren’s calling for a meeting. Everyone needs to attend, not just yer sorry ass.” For the first time, some levity slipped into her voice, and I smiled at the minor barb. “Guess we’ll see if he wants ta order a general retreat to HQ. Dunno about that, though. The Zerx thing already hit us hard. We gotta be seen, gotta take care of our interests, protect our people, the whole shtick.”

  I rolled my eyes at her summary. No matter what she was saying, I could tell she wanted Garren to order us all to stay at HQ. The order wouldn’t affect her nearly as much, since she’d still have leave to patrol and look for the attackers. I could only assume she’d feel much better knowing most of us were safe and sound where mystery killers couldn’t get at us.

  “Okay. Okay, I’m on my way. If Garren does declare a state of emergency, I’m gonna need you to fetch a couple things from my apartment for me, but I don’t want to bring it all along right now. Don’t need, ehhh, unwanted attention, if you get what I’m saying.”

  “Yea, yea, I getcha, ya little shit. Now get yer ass to HQ or I’m hunting ya down myself.”

  I smiled again as I cut the call without saying another word. She’d probably get me for that later, but meh. For the time being, I was a little too caught up in my worries. Not only did I have a brand new mystery in my lap, thanks to my eyes, but now the unrest in the slums was heating up again.

  I did not have a great feeling about any of it.