There’s no welcome sign for the Black Labs.

  The copper tang of the pipes simply faded away. It was replaced by something sweeter and heavier that hit us without warning as we transitioned from the coolant corridors. Ozone, charred meat, and antiseptic gone sour invaded our senses.

  We emerged from a rusted service hatch into an alleyway with walls slick with grime and bioluminescent moss that fed on the chemical runoff from the unauthorized clinics above. Neon signs buzzed in the smog. Green crosses, blue syringes, and red eyes advertising services that would get you arrested in the Upper Sectors…and killed in the Lower.

  [LOCATION DISCOVERED: THE BLACK LABS (SECTOR 9 PERIMETER)]

  [THREAT LEVEL: HIGH]

  [LOCAL FACTION: THE HARVESTERS // VEX’S CIRCLE]

  I stumbled, my shoulder scraping the damp brickwork and leaving a faint trace of bioluminescence on my sleeve.

  “Steady,” Dax said. He seemed looser. He still had his head on a swivel, ready for action, but he was more…at ease.

  “Super steady, boss!” I lied.

  I wasn’t. The cold from the coolant pipe was wearing off, and the fire was roaring back with a vengeance.

  My HUD was a blurred mess of warning flags that I was learning to ignore:

  [CORE TEMP: 99.8 °F (RISING)]

  [STABILIZER: TRACE LEVELS]

  “Vex’s place is three blocks in,” Dax said, his voice low. “Keep your head down. Don’t make eye contact. And for the love of the System, don’t glow.”

  “I feel like you’re telling me to not shine,” I smirked. “Don’t you want me to shine, Dax?”

  The look he shot back nearly set off the reactor inside me. My face dropped into a half grin, “Right, no shining.”

  We moved out of the alley and onto the main drag of the Black Labs.

  If the Vein was where the desperate lived, this was where they came to live...to be remade. The street was a narrow canyon of jury-rigged architecture cobbled together for functionality, not aesthetics. Cables hung like jungle vines, connecting generator blocks to illegal surgical theaters. Steam vented from street-level grates, blurring the kaleidoscope of glowing pink and teal from the light of the signs above shimmering off the moist ground.

  People shuffled through the fog. Some looked human. Others...didn’t.

  I saw a man with a chrome jaw that didn’t fit right, drooling hydraulic fluid. I saw a woman with two sets of eyes, blinking out of sync. I saw a kid selling rapid-clot injectors from a cardboard box. Another bumped into his customers, a silent lift. They looked like pre-teens, but down here, you can never tell.

  This was the meat market. A chop shop for the soul. Upgrades, downgrades, everything is on the menu for a price.

  “Keep moving,” Dax ordered, steering me around a puddle of something that looked like it used to be alive.

  “Friendly neighborhood,” I whispered.

  “It’s an ecosystem,” Dax said. “Rippers cut you up, fixers patch you up, and scavengers wait for the rejection sequence to kill you so they can sell your parts back to the rippers.”

  “Circle of life.”

  “Circle of profit.”

  My HUD twitched. The glitch was back, pulsing in the corner of my eye:

  [SIGNAL: PERSISTENT]

  […hungry…]

  The voice wasn’t audible this time. It was a feeling. A hunger that wasn’t mine. It rippled through the Brand on my arm, a phantom itch deep under the skin.

  Hungry.

  I rubbed my forearm, trying to scratch the sensation away. “Dax. The signal. It’s changing.”

  “Suppress it,” he said, scanning the rooftops.

  “I can’t suppress a ghost.”

  “You can if you shift your focus. Walk. Count your steps.” He said calmly.

  We turned a corner, heading toward a structure that looked like a bunker fortified with scrap metal. A red cross flickered above the blast door, the bulb buzzing like an angry hornet.

  That’s when the shadows detached themselves from the wall.

  Three of them.

  They were all heavily modded, their skin a patchwork of graft-leather and cheap synthetic plating, eyes glowing clusters of mismatched optics.

  Harvesters. The bottom feeders of the Labs.

  The one in the lead was big, his arms replaced by hydraulic excavators meant for mining droids. The metal was rusted, stained with dried blood.

  “Toll,” the big one grunted. His voice came through a grinding vocal synthesizer.

  Dax stopped. He didn’t reach for his gun. He was nearly rolling his eyes at them.

  “We’re passing through, Krell,” Dax said. Of course he knew them.

  “Pass is expired, Morne,” the big one, Krell barked back. His optics whirred, zooming in on me. Specifically, on my arm where the Brand was hidden under my jacket, pulsing its faint, irregular heat. “New toy? She’s hot. What’s under that jacket? I’m sure we can make a trade for passage…”

  “She’s not for sale,” Dax said.

  “Just the arm, Morne. We’ll cauterize the stump...on the house. And you can be on your way.”

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  “It’s in your best interest to let it go today, Krell,” Dax sighed.

  The bounty on my head was irrelevant. They could tell I had something of value, and down here, that was all it took.

  Krell stepped forward, while the other two spread out, flanking us. One, a woman, or at least it had been at some point, had blades for fingers. The other held a stun-baton that crackled with blue electricity.

  My heart rate spiked as my HUD flashed to life:

  [THREAT DETECTED]

  [ADRENALINE SURGE: ACTIVE]

  [BRAND ACTIVITY: SPIKING]

  “Dax,” I whispered.

  “Quiet,” Dax said.

  “I can feel it,” I said. The temperature around us dropped as my body started pulling ambient thermal energy in, hoarding it for the release. It was a new sensation.

  [WARNING: INVOLUNTARY SIPHON]

  [CHARGE LEVEL: 14%]

  “Give us the arm,” Krell rasped. “Or we’ll take the whole girl...and your optics.”

  Dax sighed again. It was an exasperated sound. One that was beginning to concern me.

  “Why does no one listen?” He wasn’t asking. It was clearly rhetorical as he moved faster than I’d ever seen a human move before.

  It was violent and precise.

  Dax didn’t draw his pistol immediately; he didn’t need to. He stepped into Krell’s reach, and as his massive hydraulic arm swung down to crush him, Dax dropped to one knee, sliding under the arc.

  Then in one smooth motion, he drew the hand-cannon mid-slide and...

  BOOM.

  The sound was deafening in the narrow alley. Dax put a round directly into the hydraulic joint of Krell’s knee. The metal exploded. Fluid sprayed. Krell roared, a sound of static and rage, and collapsed to one side.

  The other two rushed toward us.

  “Lexi, back!” Dax shouted, pivoting to pistol-whip blade-fingers across the jaw.

  I scrambled backward, tripping over a pile of trash.

  The third scavenger saw a perceived weak link: the girl shivering against the wall.

  He lunged at me.

  “Pretty girl,” he hissed. “With pretty parts...”

  He swung the baton. I ducked, but I was slow. The tip of the baton grazed my shoulder.

  ZAP.

  Electricity coursed through me.

  But instead of locking my muscles, it hit the Brand...

  It was like throwing a match on gasoline...

  [EXTERNAL ENERGY DETECTED]

  [ABSORPTION: COMPLETE]

  [PYRO-SPASM: TRIGGERED]

  The world went red.

  Since my rise after the pyre, my fight or flight instincts no longer belonged to me. When danger came, my body simply reacted.

  The electricity from the baton didn’t hurt me – it fed me. I felt the Brand swallow the voltage, convert it, and scream to let it out.

  The scavenger raised the baton for a killing blow.

  “Please, don’t,” I gasped.

  I threw my hand up.

  A cone of superheated air blasted from my palm - pure kinetic heat...

  It hit the scavenger in the chest.

  His synthetic vest melted, the plastic fusing instantly. The air in his lungs flash-boiled. He didn’t scream because he couldn’t breathe; the air was sucked right out of his throat. He was blasted backward, off his feet, slamming into the opposite wall with a wet crunch.

  He slid down, his chest armor glowing dull orange.

  Silence fell over the alley.

  Dax stood over finger-blades, his gun pressed to their temple. But his focus was on me.

  Krell was groaning on the ground, clutching his shattered knee.

  I stared at my hand. Smoke was curling off my fingers. My skin wasn’t burned, but the sleeve of my jacket was singed black.

  [COMBAT ENGAGEMENT SURVIVED]

  [XP GAINED: +65]

  [SKILL UNLOCKED: THERMAL SHUNT (UNSTABLE)]

  [WARNING: CORE TEMP CRITICAL]

  Every day brought a new unexpected “power.” Or curse. I was still trying to figure that out.

  I dropped to my knees, retching dryly. The heat was receding, leaving me freezing cold and shaking violently.

  Dax holstered his gun and followed with a swift kick to the temple of his opponent, sending them to the ground, before another sharp, efficient crack ensured they stayed down.

  He made his way to me but didn’t ask if I was okay. He just grabbed my wrist and checked the Brand.

  “You vented again,” he said. “But that was an offensive discharge.”

  “I didn’t...I didn’t mean to...,” I stammered, then laughed. It had to all be just some sick joke at this point. “Offend you.”

  Dax looked up as if he was trying to find someone to share in the pain my joke had caused. Then he sighed, again.

  “That was energy conversion,” Dax muttered, looking at the smoking scavenger across the alley. “You ate the charge and spat it back as heat. Lexi, that’s...that’s impossible.”

  “Am I going to explode?”

  “Not right now. You dumped the load. But you’re running on fumes.”

  He hauled me up but caught me subduing a smirk at his comment.

  “I’m not kidding.”

  “You said dumped the load...”

  “I see you’re adapting enough to make jokes. How do you feel?” He asked, scanning my pupils.

  I snickered, “Like shit, but not like I’m going to die for once.”

  “Then let’s move. The gunshot will bring worse things than Krell.”

  We stepped over the groaning bodies. I tried not to look at the guy I’d hit. The smell of melting plastic was nauseating.

  We reached the bunker with the flickering red cross. Dax hammered a rhythmic code on the blast door. Three knocks. Pause. Two knocks.

  A camera lens above the door whirred, focusing on Dax’s face, then panning down to me.

  A speaker crackled, “You look like shit, Morne. I don’t have time for another one of your strays.”

  The voice was female, scratchy.

  “Open the damn door, Vex,” Dax shouted at the camera. “I have the Solis override codes.”

  Silence.

  The camera zoomed in on my face; it felt like it was stripping me naked, analyzing every inch.

  “She’s the one?” the voice asked. Less sarcasm now. More curiosity.

  “She’s the one,” Dax confirmed.

  “She’s glowing, Dax.”

  “I know. Open the door before she melts your pavement.”

  The heavy magnetic locks on the blast door disengaged with a series of loud clanks. The metal groaned and slid sideways, revealing a corridor bathed in harsh, sterilizing UV light.

  “In,” Dax pushed me.

  The door grumbled its way shut behind us, sealing out the smog, the smell of the alley, and the moans of the outside world.

  The air in here was freezing and sterile. The walls were lined with server racks on one side and surgical tools on the other. It was a hybrid, half operating room, half data center. It was the cleanest place I’d ever been in my life.

  Vex was waiting for us at the end of the hall, in a chair like a miniature tank, part throne, part recliner.

  She was small, pale, and wiry. Her hair was shaved on one side, revealing a complex latticework of neural ports. Her arms were covered in tattoos that moved, digital ink scrolling with live code. Something I had heard about, but never actually seen in person. She wore a pristine lab coat that hung open over a mesh tank top.

  Holding a tablet in one hand and a half-eaten protein bar in the other, she eyed me up and down.

  Vex.

  Her eyes, one natural brown, one glowing purple cybernetic, narrowed as they probed me.

  “Well,” she said, taking a bite of the bar. “You weren’t kidding. She’s a walking reactor breach.”

  She hopped off the chair and walked toward us, with a strange, jittery energy.

  “Table,” she pointed to a steel slab in the center of the room. It was surrounded by robotic arms hanging from the ceiling. “Strap her down. If she spasms, I don’t want her punching a hole in my server stack.”

  “Ummm, do I have a say in this?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  Dax guided me to the table. “Just do it, Lexi. She knows what she’s doing.”

  I climbed onto the cold steel. It felt like a morgue slab. I’m ready for my autopsy, Dr. Vex. Was she a doctor? Thin line in these parts.

  Dax began buckling the heavy leather straps across my chest and legs.

  “Is this going to hurt?” I asked, looking up at the robotic arms.

  Vex leaned over me, her purple eye whirring as it scanned my Brand. She grinned, revealing teeth that had been filed into points.

  In my head, the question shifted to “Is she going to eat me?”

  “Compared to the pain I’m sure you’ve experienced since you respawned?” she said, reaching for a wicked-looking laser scalpel. “Yes.”

  She looked at Dax.

  “Hold her head. If she flinches, I lobotomize her.”

  Lobotomize!

  “Can we maybe discuss this a little first? Maybe something less invasive?” I tried to pull away, but they had me locked in.

  Dax moved behind me, his hands clamping firmly on either side of my skull as he commanded eye contact with his intense gaze. “Just relax. This is the only option at this point, or you're going to melt down and take out a whole city block.”

  His grip was grounding. His eyes felt different. Softer. Maybe he was just trying to comfort me, but it felt like maybe somewhere inside, he actually cared. That’s what I told myself anyway.

  “Don’t flinch,” he said.

  Vex powered up the scalpel. It whined with a high-pitched frequency that rattled my teeth.

  [SYSTEM ALERT]

  [SURGICAL INTERVENTION IMMINENT]

  [WARNING: ANCHOR INTEGRITY AT RISK]

  “Ready?” Vex asked.

  “Not even a little,” I said.

  “Good,” she said. “Breathe in.”

  She brought the scalpel down toward the glowing, fractured Brand on my arm.

  And then the Signal screamed:

  [DON’T LET THEM TOUCH IT]

  My back arched off the table, straining against the straps.