The nightmare always started the same way.

  Chrome hands that weren't hers. Bodies on the floor, breathing shallow or not at all. The taste of copper flooding her mouth. And Dante's voice, distant and wrong: Promise me you'll still be you.

  Beatrix woke to her HUD flashing crimson, the notification burning directly onto her retina.

  > THE CULLING - MANDATORY TRANSPORT NOTIFICATION

  > REGISTERED COMBATANT: BEATRIX ALIGER

  > REPORT TO DELTA-SEVEN TRANSPORT HUB - SECTOR 2

  > COUNTDOWN TO DEPARTURE: 11:59:59

  > FAILURE TO REPORT CONSTITUTES CONTRACT BREACH - PENALTY: TERMINATION

  12 hours. The panic was a cold spike, muscles coiling, hand reaching for a weapon that wasn't there. Then memory crashed back. Kivi's workshop. The couch. The smell of solder and safety.

  Gray, artificial dawn light bled through the single viewport. Kivi sat at her workbench, hair cycling through the muted, predawn palette of a sleeping station: soft amber to pale green. She was reassembling a neural interface with micro-tools, movements precise and quiet. The smell of burnt flux mixed with synthetic coffee.

  Beatrix stayed still, watching. When was the last time she'd woken to someone nearby who wasn't a threat? The calculation came back empty.

  "Girl, you sleep like a corpse." Kivi said without looking up. "No tossing, no snoring. My dad's old bot had more restless cycles. It's creepy."

  Caught. Beatrix sat up... "How long was I out?"

  "Six hours. The perfect, creepy six hours." Kivi finally turned, studying her... "Your vitals went textbook optimal the second you dropped off. Which means you're burning energy just existing with that rig… When's the last time you ate real food?"

  "Yesterday."

  "Try again."

  Beatrix started pulling on her boots. "Doesn't matter."

  "It matters if you plan to walk in there fueled by spite and bad luck." Kivi stood, crossed to a cooling unit, and pulled out two paste-tubes. "Nutrient sludge or nutrient sludge with fake berry flavor?"

  "I should go. Prep."

  "Sit." Not a request.

  Beatrix wanted to argue, wanted to maintain distance, wanted to run. It felt more dangerous than the arena. Instead, she found herself sitting back down. The paste tasted like chalk and regret, but it was calories, and her body recognized the deficit with a sudden, desperate greed.

  They ate in silence before Kivi spoke again. "You said his name three times."

  Beatrix's spoon stopped halfway to her mouth. "What?"

  "While you were sleeping. Dante. Three times." Kivi's hair shifted to curious purple. "Boyfriend?"

  The word hung between them. Beatrix could deflect, could lie, could leave. Instead: "Brother. Younger."

  Kivi's hair didn't change color. It just seemed to deepen, the purple becoming more substantial. "Is he why..."

  Beatrix set down the empty tube. "He's why for everything. The Culling starts soon. I should…"

  "Are you that kind of girl?" Kivi leaned back, her gaze sharp. "Someone gets close to something real and you pivot straight to logistics?"

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  "Logistics keep people alive."

  "So does having someone who gives a damn if you come back."

  The words hit with the force of a decompression. Beatrix stood, turning to gather her meager gear, all of it fitting into one worn pack. The action was a retreat.

  "You don't have to…" she started.

  "I'm walking with you," Kivi said, already pulling on a patched jacket. "I need to pick up components in Sector Seven anyway."

  A transparent lie. They both knew it.

  Kivi's hair had settled into a steady steel-gray, shot through with threads of silver. Determination, or maybe worry dressed in armor. “Nice scarf, by the way. Breaks the gloomy tones.”

  As they stepped into the corridor, the station felt different. Charged. Public service screens, usually glitching through ads for recycled air and protein blocks, were now all broadcasting a single feed.

  > THE CULLING - LIVE QUALIFIERS

  > T MINUS 11:21:47

  Grainy, violent highlights from previous years played on a loop: a crush of bodies in a zero-g cargo hold; people scrambling over razor-wire in what looked like a flooded processing plant; a lone fighter standing over three others in a toxic yellow fog. The production was cheap, frenetic, designed to highlight chaos and suffering.

  Beatrix’s HUD automatically scanned the feed, pulling data.

  > THE CULLING RACE

  > Distance: 10 kilometers

  > Rules: None

  > Registered participants: 507

  > Spots available: 12

  "Cheery," Kivi muttered, her eyes on a clip of someone being dragged under by competitors in gray sands.

  The station's comms feed, which Beatrix usually filtered out, was now a torrent of noise. She let a stream of public chatter scroll in her peripheral vision.

  Beatrix killed the feed. The chatter was just noise.

  As they navigated the crowded thoroughfares, they passed others like her. A man with crude hydraulic fist augs, pacing and muttering to himself. A woman with reflective optic implants, staring blankly at a wall. A pair of teenagers clinging to each other, both looking like they were untouchable. The desperate, the hungry, the fools. All heading the same direction.

  "This is what I'm walking into," Beatrix said, her voice low.

  "You're not like them," Kivi said, not looking at the other competitors.

  Virgil interrupted their conversation..

  > INITIATE UPGRADE [Y/N]

  “I can handle discomfort?” She stopped walking. “Just do it.”

  The upgrade hit like a fever breaking in reverse.

  The heat started crawling up her spine. Small tremors in her nervous system, like aftershocks from violence.

  Virgil announced.

  Her muscles locked. Her own body, responding to signals she couldn’t control. The nanites in her bloodstream were moving, billions of microscopic machines rearranging themselves according to new parameters she hadn’t approved.

  The heat peaked. It spread from her spine into her shoulders, down her arms, across her chest. It felt like her bones were being read. Like something was flipping through her skeleton page by page, taking notes.

  Then it passed.

  > VERSION 2.0 INSTALLED

  > 1 new open slot for apps

  > New processing capacity: 2,750 units

  Kivi was watching her, deeply worried, her hair a solid white.

  A scrawny kid with a trembling data-knife shuffle past them, full of hope and dreams.

  "I am exactly like him. Like them. I just have a bigger hammer." Beatrix grimaced as the pain vanished. "That's the point. I have a Tier 5 military rig in a field of sharpened sticks and prayer. I need to stop thinking about surviving a marathon and start thinking about winning a sprint. Maximize the hammer. Hit first, hit hardest, make sure nothing gets back up."

  Kivi glanced at her, hair flickering with concern. "Maximize how?"

  "I need an opener. Not a balanced buff. A shock-and-awe protocol. Something that doesn't just make me stronger, but makes everyone else look like they're moving in sludge. I can't win a war of attrition against three hundred people. I need to win the first five seconds of every fight I'm forced into."

  Kivi processed this, her expression grim. "I know someone who can maybe build that. An app-smith. He's brilliant. He's also an insufferable asshole."

  "What's the catch?"

  "The catch is he'll want to crawl so deep into your system architecture he'll know your neural frequency. Privacy is a currency he doesn't deal in."

  "I know, Virgil."

  Kivi caught the name. "Your AI doesn't like it."

  "My AI doesn't have to live through the Culling. When can I meet him?"

  "Now. His den is in Sector Seven. Consider this your last chance for a terrible idea."