Thump-hiss. Thump-hiss.

  I could hear the rhythmic sound from the floor of the abandoned mod-shop where Dax left me. I was there, but I wasn’t. Conscious, but not present.

  The lead-lined tarp he’d thrown over me was sticking to my skin, stinking of hot rubber. My vision was a kaleidoscope of colors that didn't exist, radiant purples, psychedelic yellows, and electric blues pulsing in time with a heartbeat that felt like someone else’s.

  It sounded like a steam engine dying in the dark.

  I tried to sit up, grasping for my faculties, but the room tilted violently. I gagged, dry heaving nothing but acid and bile. I kind of wished the Wolfskins had gotten me at that point.

  My HUD flickered, the text overlaid on the world in a jittery, nausea-inducing green that kept tearing at the edges, fighting the rainbow of pulsing color already flooding my vision:

  [WARNING: CORE TEMP CRITICAL]

  [BURN LOAD: 82% (CLIMBING)]

  [MEMORY ARTIFACTS DETECTED]

  [ROOT SIGNATURE: UNKNOWN]

  "Great," I forced out in a wheeze, my voice sounding foreign inside my own skull. "Time for a meltdown..."

  I pushed the tarp off. It peeled away with a pop, leaving trails of melted polymer on the concrete. My hands were shaking uncontrollably. Under the skin, my veins were glowing faintly orange, radiating light.

  I rattled around on the floor, desperate to ground myself. The concrete was cool, but the moment I touched it, it hissed, steam curling up from my fingertips.

  I tried to will myself to cool down. To center. Anything to contain the core meltdown that was coming.

  My body refused to listen. The heat built in my chest, trapped behind my ribs. It felt like I’d swallowed a celestial body.

  [SYSTEM ERROR: BIOCORE DESYNCHRONIZED]

  [SYMPTOMS: DELIRIUM / MOTOR IMPAIRMENT]

  [RECOMMENDATION: SHUTDOWN]

  “Shutdown?” I thought. “Sure, let me flip the switch…”

  The idea sounded nice. Just turn off completely. Go dark. Let the ash take me back.

  Memories flickered; the kind you hear come before death. It was an experience I had already had…recently. The images were disjointed and sharp. The plaza. The white pole. Korran Vale’s face, smooth and hateful. The smell of my own hair burning.

  No.

  I pushed the memories out.

  I curled into a ball, knees to chest, trying to hold myself together.

  Breathe.

  The distinction between me and the fire was blurring. I closed my eyes, but the swirling kaleidoscope of static wouldn’t be denied. A high-pitched whine that drilled into the base of my skull.

  Then, a new sound cut through the whine.

  Scrape.

  Metal on concrete. Soft. Deliberate.

  I froze. My heart hammered against my ribs, each beat sending a fresh wave of heat through my limbs, my chest heaving up and down.

  I forced my eyes open. The room spun, then steadied. Shadows lengthened in the corners, stretching like fingers.

  Something was skulking in the darkness beyond the broken mod-chairs.

  Dax? No – Dax was fluid. Whatever this was moved cautiously, but with a subtle, uncontrollable twitch.

  It was thin…startlingly so. A skeletal mesh of scrap metal and wire. It had too many limbs –jointed, hydraulic arms that twitched and readjusted with every step. Its face was a mask of welded plating, a single cluster of mismatched optical lenses glowing faint red in the center.

  A Phantom.

  I’d heard stories in the Ash. Scavengers who modded themselves for stealth and opportunity. They didn't hunt their prey; they circled like vultures, waiting for the wounded, the unconscious, the dying.

  I definitely checked boxes on their prerequisites for easy pickings.

  It stepped closer, its movements jerky and unnatural. It tilted its head, lenses whirring as they focused on me.

  "Warm..." a voice buzzed from a gritty vocal synthesizer. "Fresh..."

  It raised one of its extra limbs. A surgical cutter extended from the wrist, the blade humming with ultrasonic vibration. It wasn't a weapon for fighting, but a tool for harvesting.

  It thought I was paralyzed – just another junkie overdosing on bad stabilizers, waiting to be stripped for parts.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  I tried to push myself up. My arms trembled and gave out. I collapsed back onto the dirty floor, gasping.

  The Phantom chittered, a wet, clicking sound of anticipation, then it lunged.

  It moved fast, a blur of metal and rags. It was on top of me before I could scream. Cold metal fingers clamped onto my wrist…just below the Brand.

  It paused.

  The lenses widened. It could feel the heat radiating off my skin. It could feel the pulse.

  "Burning..." it whispered, sounding confused. "Burning inside..."

  Confusion set in. Predators understand flesh…blood.

  Panic flared in my chest. And with the panic, the dam broke.

  I couldn't fight. I was too weak to throw a punch, too delirious to aim a kick. I had only one weapon left: Failure.

  I stopped trying to suppress the fire. I stopped trying to hold it in. I let go.

  The Brand pulsed.

  [CRITICAL EVENT REGISTERED]

  [EVENT HORIZON IMMINENT]

  [CLASSIFICATION: IRREVERSIBLE]

  The Phantom tried to release, but my skin heated so rapidly its hand began to melt.

  Heat detonated outward from my core, erupting. The air in the room distorted violently, rippling like a blast furnace. The metal legs of the nearby table glowed cherry-red instantly. The tarp I’d been lying on curled and blackened.

  The Phantom shrieked.

  It was a horrible, digital sound of feedback and pain. The heat was so intense it was melting everything. Its electronics popped, the sensors in its mask overloading, blinding it. The hydraulic fluid in its limbs boiling and expanding, bursting seals.

  Something echoed in my mind: WHUD.

  It reeled backward, skittering across the floor like a spider on a hot skillet. It crashed into the wall, smoke pouring from its joints.

  "Too hot!" it screeched, scrabbling at its face. "Wrong girl! Wrong girl!"

  I wanted to scream at it. I tried to scream, but there was nothing. No sound, not even a strained squeak. My throat was seared shut. All I wanted was a release, to vent the furnace inside before I leveled a city block.

  Again, I heard it: WHUD, louder now.

  And then the release came:

  [EMERGENCY VENT: ACTIVE]

  [DAMAGE: SELF/ENVIRONMENT]

  [STABILITY: CRITICAL]

  I slumped back, the world greying out. Steam rose from my skin, swirling in the damp air. A torrent of hot air finally vented from my mouth.

  Again: WHUD WHUD.

  The door to the mod-shop had melted into an almost smooth wall, the lock fused into a useless decoration.

  Then the WHUD was accompanied by a cracking…

  Dax stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the hall light. He took in the scene intently…scorched walls, the glowing table legs sinking into the floor, what remained of the half-melted Phantom that had tried to claw its way into a ventilation shaft.

  "Shit," he muttered.

  He rushed to my side but hesitated. It looked like he wanted to scoop me up and comfort me but was afraid to touch me.

  He was right to be scared. I was scared.

  It was a short-lived concern, though, as his mood shifted quickly.

  "You're going to burn the whole damn block down," he growled.

  He knelt beside me, the concern giving way to annoyance. He looked at me like a malfunctioning piece of expensive equipment.

  He tested a touch on my skin with his glove; it was thick, reinforced, maybe steel or lead-lined. When it didn’t melt, he grabbed my chin, the gloves cool against my fever-hot skin, and forced my head up.

  "Eyes," he ordered.

  I tried to focus on him. He was a blur of grey and neon.

  "He tried to..." I rasped, the words scraping my throat raw. "Something was here..."

  "Phantom," Dax said, dismissing it. "Carrion with mods. Dead blocks always draw them. They smell weakness."

  He reached into a pouch on his belt and pulled out an injector. It looked industrial: thick glass, heavy plunger, filled with a viscous blue gel.

  "This is going to hurt," he said coldly.

  He didn't wait for permission, jamming the needle into the port at the base of my neck without hesitation.

  It felt like he’d injected liquid nitrogen directly into my spine.

  I gasped, my back arching off the floor. The cold rushed through my veins, warring with the heat, a chemical battlefield waged in every millimeter of nervous system.

  But the grey haze in my vision cleared. The room stopped spinning.

  [CORE TEMP: 104°F → 100°F → 98.9°F]

  [BURN LOAD: DROPPING]

  [STABILIZER: GRADE-C (VEIN STANDARD)]

  I collapsed back, panting. Sweat cooled instantly on my skin, turning clammy.

  "Breathe," Dax said. "Slow. Don't fight the coolant."

  I lay there, staring at the ceiling, trying to pick a spot to focus on. Anything to center myself. One. Two. Three.

  "I thought I was dead," I whispered.

  "You were close," Dax said. He sat back on his heels, watching the readout on a small diagnostic tool he’d plugged into my port. "Another two minutes and you would have cooked your own frontal lobe. You vent like that again, you’re ash, Lexi."

  He reached for my left arm. I flinched, but I didn't pull away.

  He rolled up the sleeve of the scorched bomber jacket. The Brand was angry. The fracture had widened, spiderwebbing further up my forearm. The skin around it was red and irritated, the veins black against the pale flesh.

  Dax traced the lines with a gloved finger, face plastered with consternation.

  "This shouldn't be possible," he muttered to himself. "Not this fast."

  "What's happening to me?" I asked. "Why isn't it healing?"

  He looked at me. His expression was guarded, tight.

  "Burn Protocol isn't just execution," he said quietly. "It's a rewrite. It deletes the data. The soul. Whatever you want to call it."

  He let go of my arm.

  "Something in you isn't following the delete command. It's rewriting the rewrite."

  "I don’t understand. What does that even mean?” I could finally speak clearly, but it was still a strain. “Am I going to die?”

  "It's unprecedented and dangerous," Dax said.

  He stood up, offering me a hand.

  "Can you stand?"

  He ignored the question, probably because he didn’t really know. So, I took his hand. He pulled me up onto wobbling legs that could barely hold me. The exhaustion was still there, heavy as lead, but the frantic, boiling panic was gone. As cold as he was, it was a comfort to have him there.

  My HUD chimed. A soft, clear tone that cut through the silence:

  [SYSTEM REFORGE COMPLETE]

  [LEVEL-UP DETECTED]

  [NEW LEVEL: 3]

  [TRAIT: OVERHEAT TOLERANCE + MINOR]

  [WARNING: ROOT SIGNATURE STILL ACTIVE]

  I stared at the text. Level 3.

  It didn't feel like a victory. It felt like a scar.

  "If that's what leveling feels like," I said, leaning against the scorched wall for support, "I don't want the next one."

  Dax checked his pistol, sliding it back into its holster with a metallic click.

  "Too late," he said. "You already started climbing. The only way off the ladder now is to plummet."

  Always the extremes with this one. He was right, though. This was my life now. The only way is up.

  He moved to the door, checking the corridor.

  "We leave. Now. This place is compromised."

  I looked back at the room. At the melted table. At the remains of the Phantom.

  I was hazardous material. Worse, a beacon.

  Dax led the way out. We moved quickly, leaving the dead block behind. The air in the corridor was cooler, smelling of the city…smog and ozone, full of desperation. Home.

  From a vent high on the wall, something watched us pass.

  Two red lenses glowed in the darkness.

  "Burning girl..." a synthesized voice whispered, soft as a dying breath. "Wrong girl..."

  In the distance, a siren wailed. It wasn't the police. It was a sector alarm. A low, mournful sound that echoed off the towers.

  Dax stopped, looking toward the lights of the Vein.

  "Word's spreading," he said. "The city is hunting a ghost."

  I touched the Brand through my jacket. It was warm. Pulsing. Alive.

  "I'm not a ghost," I said.

  Dax looked at me.

  "Yet," he said.

  We walked into the dark.