A few hours later, I was back at my apartment, sipping on the leftover soup Feyo had made sure I took with me. My mind was still a little cloudy from the beating I’d received from Mela. But every few seconds, my eyes kept drifting back to the message that had greeted my awakening to the cruel, painful world.

  To my utter relief, there didn’t seem to be a time limit for me to hit that ‘yes’ button. It just got a little frustrating to have the pop-up hovering in the edge of my vision. Of course, that minor annoyance was nothing compared to my excitement.

  This was it. What I had worked so hard for. What I’d been willing to bleed for! I was a single thought away from the reward for all my pain.

  As soon as my stomach stopped trying to eat itself from lack of anything to digest, I would hit that button, and then the game would be on.

  I started to squirm in anticipation, hurrying to get through the last of the broth so I could demolish the spring rolls and then start in on the much more important part of my day. Unfortunately, just that tiny movement made the pain flare up, and I nearly choked on my food.

  That does it. Torn is an asshole, and he doesn’t deserve all the nice stuff I was thinking about him before, I groused.

  In spite of Mela’s death threats, the no-good ripper had administered the absolute minimum of treatment required to get me on my feet, and called it a day. He hadn’t even given me anything for the bruises.

  According to him, what Mela and I had done was ‘utterly idiotic’ and he ‘wouldn’t assist with the blatant waste of medical supplies.’ Shows how much he knew. I absolutely did need that spar to push my Clairvoyance skill over the edge, and it had worked.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t exactly tell him that.

  Any discussion about my eyes was dangerous. For one thing, the info could easily spread beyond the Kittens, and then we’d probably be in worse shit than we already were. For another, it might finally clue the Kittens into the fact that I had something to do with the problems raging in the slums.

  I curled in on myself a little at the thought. My chewing slowed down until I tossed a half-eaten spring roll back in the box. The lead weight in my stomach didn’t leave a ton of room for anything else, apparently.

  Someone was tearing the slums apart, searching for the cybernetics I had stolen. Every day that the Kittens paid a toll in blood and disappearances added another layer of weight to my shoulders. It was getting hard to keep my mouth shut, even if I knew that nothing I could say or do would make things better.

  Still, just thinking about all of the dead…

  No. No, it’s not my fault, I whispered desperately to myself. Jason would have done it anyway, whether I joined or not. What did I even do, past shooting him in the face? Well, and his bodyguard, I guess…

  Strangely enough, those deaths didn’t bother me even a little. In fact, I would happily shoot Jason and his borg in their stupid faces again and again, if the opportunity ever presented itself.

  It was all the other deaths that made me want to throw up.

  There were all the gangs that had gotten swept up in the chaos, some of which were actually decent, like the Kittens. There were the people of the slums, caught between the mysterious killers and the gangs. There were all the kids trapped in the crossfire, stuck on the literal streets with nowhere to go…

  I shivered again.

  Nope. No. Not doing this to myself. If not me, then Jason would have taken everything, just to prove he could. He might have made an even bigger mess out of things by bragging, or selling the cybernetics, or ‘gifting’ them to people. No… I didn’t do anything wrong.

  The excuses were getting a little old by that point, what with having to mutter them to myself like a mantra some evenings, but they hadn’t yet lost their appeal entirely. So, I faithfully repeated them as I forced the last of the food into my mouth. Then I collapsed onto my bed in relief, finally ready to claim the ‘information packet.’

  The next second, though, I got out of bed and started to strip my clothes off.

  It wasn’t a guarantee or anything, but if this ‘packet’ came with even a hint of tar, then I didn’t want it getting all over my clothes and bed. It was enough of a pain getting everything clean the first time. Thankfully, whatever the stuff was didn’t stain. Or at least, not in a way that couldn’t be fixed with some heavy duty washing.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Anyway, before my mental fingers went anywhere near that ‘yes’ button on my interface, I was in my shower with the divider drawn. I braced my hands against either side of the mirror, stared myself in the eye, and then accepted.

  My eyes burned red in the reflection.

  Then the world tilted sideways.

  Memories, knowledge, experience, ideas, all slammed into my brain. A whole world of instinct brought to life, illuminated, and elucidated. What had been a mere jumble of confusing impulses was explained and then cemented inside my mind as something I could actually wield.

  All by the hands of some mad eldritch sculptor who went through my brain with an unholy glee, altering and adjusting and shaping, until I was slightly more capable of interpreting Clairvoyance in a way that didn’t leave me a twitching, drooling mess on the floor.

  Which is obviously why, some time later, I woke up as a twitching, drooling mess on the floor.

  I groaned and tried to peel myself off the tiles, but it took me several long minutes of fumbling around to re-learn how to use my limbs.

  Everything felt… unnatural. My arms and legs just wouldn’t work right. It was a bit like moving around a puppet on jerky strings: you knew how the puppet should move to come across as something close to human, but every attempt to put that into practice went badly.

  I’m moving like… like…

  My face went ashen white in the blink of an eye as I froze, terror gripping me in its icy claws.

  I’m moving like one of the shadows.

  That only made me struggle with more urgency, even as my limbs flailed and tried to bend in unnatural directions.

  I was getting there, though. With every second that panic burned through me with all its tangy aftertaste, I was reestablishing control of my own body. The alien quality that had settled over my mind slowly lifted, allowing my brain to remember what it was supposed to be doing.

  Eventually, I found myself staring at my mirror again.

  I immediately sighed in both exasperation and reluctant acceptance. Of course there were tracks of tar running down my cheeks from my nose, eyes, and ears. There was even a little trail that had dribbled out of my mouth. I didn’t want to think about what that meant for the current state of my stomach’s contents.

  The thought made me feel briefly nauseous, but I discovered that it didn’t upset me as much as it should. I just felt kind of… numb. Not numb enough to be totally fine, but definitely numb enough to refrain from sticking fingers down my throat to force the issue.

  I had no food on hand. I wasn’t about to force myself to throw up Feyo’s cooking, just to end up going hungry.

  I turned on the shower and let the water cascade over me. Trying not to think about what else my stomach might be digesting besides ramen and spring rolls, I reached for a distraction.

  So, Clairvoyance was back to zero out of hundred. I’d wondered about that. I did assume I’d be starting over from zero again, but I’d been worried that the hundred would be replaced by double that number. Or maybe even something insane, like a thousand!

  Games did love their escalating numbers. Since my eyes seemed to be ripping off game design in general, it was a legitimate concern that I’d eventually be unable to level up my skills.

  Speaking of skills…

  I took a deep breath. Then I tilted my head back, focused, and tapped into Clairvoyance.

  The world shifted in some ineffable way I still couldn’t completely understand. Two layers of vision overlapped in my mind. I got to peek at exactly which drops of water would land on my face a couple seconds into the future, even as I watched them sail through the air in real time.

  It should not have been possible. The duality of the whole thing, of being stretched between both the present and the future moment, would have reduced my mind to mush not even a couple hours ago.

  Now, though unpleasant, it was something I could put up with.

  Whatever the information packet had done to me went beyond just the knowledge of how to trigger and use Clairvoyance on a whim. It was a fundamental alteration, a shift towards something that wasn’t strictly human.

  I understood what the change aimed to emulate too, even if I was reluctant to admit it.

  Still, no use hiding from the truth, right? So, ever so slowly, I let my eyes drift down to land on the mirror again.

  My face briefly stared back at me. Then it glitched into the face of a grinning shadow. Even as I stared, its grin stretched a little further into uncanny territory, and I lifted my hand to touch my own lips.

  I was grinning.

  Why was I grinning?

  —

  I dragged myself out of the shower eventually. Not just because I was done, but because the abrupt cutoff of the Clairvoyance left me feeling dizzy and oddly drained.

  I’d kept it up for almost two consecutive minutes, just staring into my own eerie shadow face, lost and confused.

  As I collapsed into bed, I realized I knew something: I couldn’t keep Clairvoyance running permanently. I wasn’t sure how I knew that. The knowledge was just there, slotting into basic facts of life like it had always been part of me.

  It was creepy, and stupid, and I hated it.

  Still, it was useful. I decided to root around in my head in search of more such helpful information about my newly upgraded ‘skill.’

  And I found nothing.

  Well, I found plenty of things. For example, I instinctively knew that Clairvoyance wasn’t actually peeking into the future. Still didn’t have a clue what it was. That was frustrating, let me tell you.

  I could also say, with startling certainty, that I was ‘seeing’ exactly three seconds ahead, no more and no less. And I knew for a fact that I could only use Clairvoyance for two minutes before I needed a break. But my unnatural knowledge was a little fuzzy on the ‘why’, and on what exactly constituted a ‘break.’

  Which was… not ideal.

  Would I somehow melt my own brain by using Clairvoyance too much? Would I be reduced to a vegetable? How long did I have to wait before using the skill again? An hour? A minute? A whole day?

  I was frustrated to realize I might have had it good when the visions were just coming at me randomly. If I overused the skill by accident, I could be left vulnerable.