Part I — Beneath the Skin, the Broadcast
The city didn't sleep that night.
It buzzed — not with traffic or nightlife, but with a frequency just below hearing. Like the world itself was tuning up for something.
Kai felt it under his ribs. A low, trembling vibration that matched his pulse.
He'd been walking for hours, hoodie up, head down, tracing the neon arteries that stitched the metropolis together.
Mama Z's café lights glowed faintly in the distance, a safe pulse amid chaos, but he couldn't bring himself to go back.
Every reflection he passed was alive with static.
Billboards glitched when he looked at them too long.
Dogs barked once, then fell silent, ears pressed flat as if they could sense the wavelength bleeding off him.
He ducked into a narrow alley — graffiti walls scabbed with torn posters, each layer older than the last.
On one of them, a symbol shimmered faintly: a crescent made of overlapping teeth.
He blinked.
It was gone.
A text buzzed his phone — no sender, no number.
> DO NOT RUN WHEN IT CALLS.
He dropped the phone.
The hum spiked. His vision blurred; the world fractured into light and scent and pulse.
And from somewhere deep within that distortion —
a scream.
A woman's.