Chapters
This is a list of all chapters on this site, using the Chapters page template. You can add content above the list, but you don’t have to. Note that the Works parent menu item also links to this page but is invisible in the mobile menu thanks to the not-in-mobile-menu CSS class.
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Tracking Pira was easy; Elpida followed the trail of dried-out slime. The corridors beyond the resurrection chamber were made of uniform, seamless, silver-grey metal. Cold, windowless, and impossibly clean, without a single particle of dust. Flakes of dried slime stood out on the metal floor, scraps of crumbly translucent biomass caught in searing white illumination, from lights recessed behind thick plastic in the ceiling. Pira must have shed the flakes as the slime had dried on her skin, but the trail…-
39.9 K • Ongoing
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Pira’s intel was good; the service lift was right where she’d said it would be, fifty feet down a corridor off the side of the atrium. But that corridor was kinked into a trio of awkward corners, narrowed into choke-points, and punctuated by a steep switchback ramp. Empty hard-points pockmarked the walls and ceiling like scabbed sockets after tooth extraction. Everything was made of that same dull grey metal, just as spotless and dust-free as everything else inside the tomb — except for a few…
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39.9 K • Ongoing
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Two weeks and a day after the night which altered my life forever, I did a new and brave thing: I answered my front door at eleven in the morning. Might not seem like much, unless you’re used to seeing monsters around every corner. A month ago, I wouldn’t even have acknowledged the knock. That would risk opening the door to a leering skeletal face, or six hundred pounds of fur and blubber covered in mouths, or inviting a nightmare to spend days gibbering and whispering in the corner of my…
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95.8 K • Ongoing
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Elpida scrambled out of her coffin and landed on cold metal. The drop to the floor was a greater distance than she’d expected, her joints were stiff as fresh-drawn wire, and her soles were slicked with that thin, greasy fluid. Lances of red light strobed and stabbed, a flicker of electric blood in the air; the alarm pulsed out a moaning dirge; voices screamed in terror and pain, sobbed deep and hard, and laughed on the edge of loss. Training took over. Elpida’s body became a coiled spring, fists…
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39.9 K • Ongoing
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The machine womb was dying. Elpida saw it when she turned away from the door and the row of lockers — and away from Pira, who was plunging on alone into the depths of what could only be a Silico hive out in the deep green, the kind of structure that the best alienists in Telokopolis had only guessed at. Pira had also taken the only weapon: the lockers did not contain a second stun-baton, only several more grey jumpsuits. Elpida wished Pira good luck; a Silico construct wouldn’t flinch from a cattle…
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39.9 K • Ongoing
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Elpida had made sure that every member of the cadre was trained in close-quarters combat — unarmed or otherwise. Even the few who had no natural aptitude, like Bug, or Shade. At thirteen years old she’d spent six painstaking months personally coaching Shade every day, both of them black and blue all over, sleeping together in each others’ scent, until Shade could last five minutes against Elpida herself. The cadre hardly needed help to work together — they had proven that with their first group…
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39.9 K • Ongoing
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Ten minutes later, behind the locked door of the Medieval Metaphysics room, Evelyn provided a practical answer to ‘what is magic?’ Magic, in this quick and dirty example, started when she noticed the smear of Twil’s blood on her walking stick. She was still shaking, but her lips curled into that sharp, devious smile. “Evee?” She grunted in reply. That’s all I got. I was too busy crashing out on adrenaline. Raine would get here any minute. She’d had to skip straight out of a…
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95.8 K • Ongoing
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Officer Jackson hated these calls. Auktoris security already had the scene cordoned off, a picket line of men and women in a ring around the front of the store. Not the rent-a-cop schlubs that were so common around the fashion district—a real Auktoris Private Security team, their answer to police SWAT units. All black, full tactical armor, each face covered with a blank shell of a helmet. She landed her bike nearby, feeling the warm draft of the engine exhaust off the street even through the thick…-
21.8 K • Completed
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“Pay dirt!” Tess said. “This stuff is moving.” Nadia ran her index finger around the rim of her coffee cup. Late-afternoon light bathed the office. Soft and gentle, it stung in her eyes. “And here’s another deposit,” Tess said, pacing behind her. “I haven’t even put it all up yet.” “You’re selling it already?” “Sure, why not?” Nadia rubbed her temple with two fingers as she squinted at the coffee. She took a tentative sip and jerked back. Still too…
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21.8 K • Completed
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There wasn’t much happening in the fashion district at four in the morning. Nadia had parked her scooter some blocks away and calmly walked down small alleys and side streets without seeing a soul. If she had run into someone, all they would have seen was a young woman with a black turtleneck peeking out over the collar of a white trench coat. “Voice check,” she whispered. Sensors in the collar of her turtleneck turned the vibrations into words. “Still loud and clear,” Tess said through the…
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21.8 K • Completed
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