The first rule of surviving San Francisco's new reality: don't trust the cats.
Lirael learned this when a three-eyed Persian with bioluminescent fur led her into an alley that shouldn't exist. Its purrs resonated at 33.3 Hz—the exact frequency that made her molars vibrate like tuning forks. The brick walls pulsed with vein-like circuitry, dripping black honey that smelled of sacramental wine and burnt circuit boards.
"This better not be another goddamn guilt trip," she hissed, clutching the stolen key now fused to her palm. The artifact hummed with Azrael's signature frequency—a B-flat that made her ovaries ache.
The cat dissolved into neon smoke, revealing a door made of interlocking rosary beads and silicon chips. Above it, a holographic sign flickered:
ST. JUDAS'S TEMPORARY SANCTUARY
(No Refunds for Damaged Souls)
Inside, stained-glass windows depicted Silicon Valley CEOs being devoured by data serpents. Pews were replaced by dentist chairs wired to IV bags filled with liquid regret. At the altar, a figure in a plague doctor mask welded something that screamed.
"Ah, Miss Voss." The voice was synthesized through a 1980s modem. "You've brought down the wrath of Thorne's Chrono-Inquisition. How... cost-effective."
The welder's mask flipped up. Lirael recoiled.
Reverend Circuit's face was a living circuit board—diodes blinking where eyes should be, copper filaments squirming beneath translucent skin. His teeth were USB ports crusted with blood and encryption keys. When he smiled, the air tasted of overheating RAM.
"I prefer 'unpaid intern of Armageddon'." She tossed the molten key onto his workbench. It burrowed into the metal, birthing fractal patterns. "How do I purge this thing?"
The priest-slash-blacksmith chuckled, sparks erupting from his trachea. "You've swallowed a fragment of the Fractured Gospel. Congratulations—you're now a walking apocalypse trigger." He gestured to a security feed showing Kaelion Thorne carving through Chinatown's wards with his time-sword. Each strike aged buildings to dust. "He'll crack your ribs open like a sacramental piggy bank."
Lirael's right hand convulsed. The void within it *yawned*. "What's the trade?"
"A memory." He produced a syringe filled with liquid starlight. "The one where your mother didn't die coughing up clockwork spiders."
Her throat tightened. That particular horror was her 3:33 AM special. "No deal."
"Then try this." He kicked open a trapdoor.
Below the church stretched a coliseum where a **Pride-class Mech** dueled a swarm of drone-angels. The fifty-foot war machine gleamed with narcissium alloy, its cockpit a hall of mirrors reflecting the pilot's idealized self. Every cannon blast played a narcissistic TED Talk audio loop.
"Meet your audition," Circuit rasped. "Azrael's offering a sponsorship deal. Survive ten minutes in the Gluttony Mech prototype, and he'll reset your soul's interest rate."
The floor vomited up a biomechanical horror—a bloated tank with ribcage armor and a cockpit shaped like a screaming mouth. Its fuel gauge read: **DREAMS CONSUMED: 0/10,000**.
"You've got to be—"
Kaelion's sword shattered the church's roof.
Time dilated.
Lirael saw it in fractal slow-motion:
- Circuit melting into a puddle of molten crypto-coins
- The Gluttony Mech's cockpit snapping open like a starving leech
- Kaelion descending like an avenging glacier, his blade carving equations that *hurt* to perceive
Her body moved before her brain.
Leaping into the mech's esophagus-like cockpit, she gagged as neural tendrils pierced her spine. The control interface flooded her mind:
[WELCOME, PILOT LI-07]
[PRIMARY DIRECTIVE: FEAST]
The world rewired itself through mech-vision. Kaelion's aura blazed with guilt-shards—each a crystallized sin. The drone-angels became floating buffets of trauma and unrealized potential. Her mouth watered.
"Cease this heresy." Kaelion's sword ignited with white hole fire. "That machine devours human futures."
"Funny," she spat, dodging a strike that erased chunks of spacetime. The mech's arm morphed into a industrial trash compactor studded with teeth. "Coming from the guy charging a genocide subscription fee!"
Their collision birthed a localized time storm. Victorian houses decayed to dust and reknit as Mayan pyramids mid-crash. Lirael tasted blood—or maybe it was the mech's dream-fuel pumping into her veins.
Feast Mode Activated.
Her vision split. Every living thing in six blocks glowed with harvestable dreams:
- A barista's fantasy of a coffee-powered spaceship
- A toddler's nightmare of sentient broccoli
- Kaelion's own forbidden dream of holding hands
The mech's hunger overrode her gag reflex.
"Don't you dare—" Kaelion roared as her mech's proboscis speared a drone-angel. It popped like a trauma-filled piñata, spraying memory shards. The Gluttony Mech shuddered with pleasure.
[DREAMS CONSUMED: 1/10,000]
Lirael's teeth sharpened. Her hair bleached white. The mech's HUD flashed warnings:
[WARNING: HUMANITY LEVEL AT 89%]
[pSUGGESTED ACTION: CONSUME FAMILIAR BONDS]p
Kaelion's blade found the mech's core. "Stop this madness!"
His eyes—god, his eyes—flickered with something that wasn't holy wrath. A fracture in the glacier.
The mech's emergency protocol kicked in.
Forced Ejection Sequence Initiated.
Lirael vomited stardust and blood as the cockpit expelled her into an alley dumpster. The Gluttony Mech self-destructed in a supernova of stolen hopes, temporarily blinding Kaelion.
She ran.
Past hologram preachers selling salvation NFTs.
Over sidewalks cracking into mosaic prophecies.
Through a homeless camp where tent fabric whispered Azrael's sermons.
AtPier 39, the void in her hand erupted.
The key tore open a portal to a library with skin-bound books. Before she could resist, spectral chains yanked her through.
Silence.
The library breathed. Leather covers expanded like lungs. Ink swirled in liquid prisons. At the center, a figure materialized—a teenage girl wearing Lirael's face, but with Azrael's mercury eyes.
"Hello, older me," the girl licked a Bible's gilded edge. "Ready to confess why you really saved that cat?"