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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On the day I met Raine, the first thing I did was jerk awake in bed and vomit nightmares into my lap. That’s not quite accurate. If I could purge the nightmares like a bad meal then life would be a lot easier. No, I brought up bile and what little I’d managed to keep down over the last couple of days, then dry-heaved through the aftershocks, shaking and coated in cold sweat. The nightmares had lashed at me for two weeks; last night set a new record of unbroken pain. For a long moment I screwed my…-
95.8 K • Ongoing
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My lips glistened with a rather costly lipstick—my very own blood. The noises around us faded from my mind. They became distant, so very distant, and all that mattered was her. Her, as she held me, and her, now stained with my life’s pulse liquefied. Her thin, weak arms of a scholar surrounded me, so different and distinct than those of the many men and women that had claimed my body before. The curtains fell. In the distance, I heard thunderous applause. “The show must go on,” I told…-
27.1 K • Completed
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We are all stories in the end. Your heart will stop, your breath will cease, your flesh will rot, but your story? It will live on and on, in the memories of those around you, in the dozens upon dozens of little echoes you left in your old apartment, in the corner of the local bar, in the scars you left while living on Earth. Two people sit at a bus stop. What they look like isn’t important. Neither are their names. The one on the left holds a paper in their left hand, the thin…-
4.9 K • Ongoing
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A blossom of alchemical fire grew in quiet flesh; a spark took hold in the wet crimson darkness of muscle and marrow and memory. And Elpida choked back to life inside her own coffin. Blank grey steel, inches from her nose. Eyes aching like spent coals, lids rasping like sandpaper. A shallow layer of cold, greasy fluid clung to her back, her buttocks, the undersides of her legs. Hair slicked to her skull and stuck to her neck. A faint blue glow came from left of her head, illuminating her naked…
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39.9 K • Ongoing
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It was ugly, really. Horrid. She stared at herself in a small mirror, the gem around her neck barely catching her eye. “Stunning,” the salesman said. “That color is perfect for you.” She ignored him. He didn’t know what he was talking about. The gem on this necklace was too big and tawdry. Not at all like the simple, elegant silver thing a few inches farther down the display, with diamonds so small and clear they looked like pinpricks of light running down the chain. It had caught…-
21.8 K • Completed
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Days later, Nadia stepped out of the Pass out From Exhaustion Suite cursing the late-afternoon sunlight. The suite had really been earning its name lately. She shuffled along, wiping her eyes, legs stiff and screaming with every motion. “Look who’s up!” Tess said, far too cheerily. She was at one of her workbenches, wearing huge safety goggles as she did…something. Nadia’s eyes were too weak just yet. She fumbled around at one of her desks, having already given up on coffee—it was never…
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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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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…
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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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A maze of grey metal corridors, punctuated by abandoned rooms, empty niches, and broken medical equipment; steep stairs with matching metal handrails, the stairways divided in two, with helpful yellow arrows on the floor to indicate which side was for going up and which was for going down; semi-circles of uncomfortable chairs, the fossils of forgotten meetings; atria with glass ceilings looking out on the dead sky, reception desks with broken computer terminals, locker rooms with nothing left inside. Every…
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39.9 K • Ongoing
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