Jake became aware of existence the way you might notice a sound that had been going on for hours. Suddenly, completely, with no memory of the transition between nothing and something.

  There was no light. No darkness either, not in any way he understood. Darkness implied the absence of light, the potential for sight. This was different. This was the total absence of the concept itself. He had no eyes. No eyelids to open or close. No visual cortex processing information that wasn't coming.

  But there was... something. A pressure that wasn't pressure. Like being crushed by the weight of non-existence itself, except there was no "being crushed" because he had nothing to crush. The sensation defied language, defied comprehension, but his mind kept grasping for analogies anyway because that's what minds did when faced with the impossible.

  It was like falling, except there was no direction to fall in. Like drowning, except there was nothing to drown in. Like screaming into a void that had no space to carry sound.

  For a time that might have been seconds or centuries, Jake simply existed in that void, and the terror of it was unlike anything he'd experienced dying. At least dying had been quick. Painful, sure, but finite. This was infinite nothing, and he was conscious for all of it.

  Am I in Hell?

  The thought formed slowly, like trying to speak underwater. Words didn't work quite right here. They had to be constructed from scratch, assembled from the raw material of whatever passed for his consciousness now.

  Is this what eternity feels like?

  Then, gradually, he became aware of something else. A sensation that wasn't sight or sound or touch, but that his mind kept trying to categorize as all three simultaneously. It was like hunger, but hunger didn't quite cover it. Hunger was something that happened in your stomach, a biological signal that could be ignored or endured.

  This was deeper. This was every cell of whatever he'd become screaming for something he couldn't name. An emptiness so profound it threatened to collapse him in on himself like a dying star. A cold that had nothing to do with temperature, just the absolute absence of whatever warmth meant at a fundamental level.

  And beneath the hunger, another realization was creeping in with the slow inevitability of sunrise: he wasn't dead. He couldn't be. Dead people didn't feel hunger. Dead people didn't feel anything.

  Whatever Hope had done to him, death would have been mercy.

  Okay. Not dead. That's... something. Now what?

  As if in answer, sensation began returning. Not all at once. Gradually. Like a body waking from anesthesia, awareness filtering back in pieces.

  He had form. Small. The knowledge came instinctively, written into whatever biology he now possessed. Not just small. Microscopic. Smaller than a grain of sand. Smaller than the width of a human hair. So small that the concept barely had meaning.

  And segmented. His body was divided into chambers, each one capable of independent movement. He could feel them contracting and expanding in sequence, like a microscopic caterpillar preparing to crawl. The sensation was alien but functional, wrong but working, a body that shouldn't exist but somehow did.

  The sensation triggered something. A memory rising unbidden from wherever memories lived now.

  Washington, D.C. Three years ago.

  The call center was in a converted warehouse in Anacostia. Fifty desks. Fifty headsets. Fifty people making cold calls to seniors about "updated life insurance policies that could save your family thousands."

  Jake had started in telemarketing because it was easy money and they didn't do background checks. You showed up, you could read a script without slurring, you got hired. Simple.

  What he hadn't expected was how much he'd enjoy it.

  "Mrs. Patterson, I completely understand your concern," Jake said into his headset, voice smooth as honey. Sympathetic. Trustworthy. "That's exactly why we're calling. Your current policy has what we call a 'legacy gap' that could leave your grandchildren with nothing. But if we can just verify some information today, we can close that gap and ensure your family is protected."

  The woman on the other end was eighty-three. Widowed. Living on Social Security and her late husband's pension. She had two children she barely spoke to and grandchildren she'd never met. Jake knew all of this because he'd spent twenty minutes building rapport, letting her talk, expressing genuine-sounding interest in her stories.

  Now she trusted him.

  "I don't know," Mrs. Patterson said. "It sounds expensive..."

  "Not at all. In fact, with the senior discount we're offering this month, you'd actually be paying less than your current premium. We just need to set up the automatic deduction so you don't miss a payment and lose coverage. Could you grab your bank statement?"

  She could. She did. She read him her routing number and account number with only the slightest hesitation, because Jake sounded so nice, so professional, so genuinely concerned about her family's welfare.

  Three months later, when she tried to file a claim, she'd discover that the "insurance policy" she'd paid $400 a month for didn't actually cover anything. The company would deny the claim, cite seventeen different clauses in the contract she'd never read, and eventually just stop returning her calls.

  But that wasn't Jake's problem. His problem was closing sales, and he was very, very good at it.

  By month two, he was the top performer. By month four, they'd promoted him to "Team Lead" with a raise and a corner desk. By month six, he was training new hires on "objection handling" and "trust-building techniques."

  He knew the company was fraudulent. Everyone did. The policies were designed to never pay out. The contracts were deliberately incomprehensible. The whole operation existed to extract money from vulnerable people and then vanish before the lawsuits could stick.

  Jake didn't care.

  It was a game. A really fun game. Every call was a puzzle to solve. How do you get someone to trust you in under five minutes? How do you make them believe you're on their side? How do you turn skepticism into compliance, doubt into commitment?

  He got good at reading voices. Learned to identify the lonely ones, the scared ones, the confused ones. Those were the easiest. The desperate ones practically begged you to take their money.

  Sometimes he'd get someone sharp. Someone who asked the right questions, demanded documentation, refused to commit. Those were his favorites. The challenge made it interesting. And when he finally cracked them, got them to say yes, the satisfaction was incredible.

  Like leveling up in a video game. Like winning a hand of poker where you'd been dealt garbage but bluffed your way through anyway.

  The Feds busted the operation eighteen months in. Elder financial abuse. Wire fraud. Conspiracy. They arrested everyone. Seized the servers. Froze the accounts.

  Jake's supervisor tried to pin everything on the "sales team." Said they'd gone rogue, ignored company policy, made unauthorized promises. Tried to paint it like the salespeople were the real criminals and management had no idea.

  Jake had the financial records. Had been quietly keeping copies because you didn't work a con without an exit strategy. Had documentation of every policy decision, every training session, every email from management encouraging them to "be more aggressive" and "overcome resistance."

  He made a deal. Provided evidence. Testified. Watched his bosses get real prison time while he got six months in a minimum-security facility that was basically summer camp for white-collar criminals.

  Then house arrest. A year living in some woman's apartment while she thought they were building a relationship. While she hoped he might be the one. While she cooked him dinner and let him sleep in her bed and introduced him to her friends like he mattered.

  He'd walked out one day while she was at work and never went back. Left her with the rent he'd promised to split. Left her wondering what she'd done wrong. Left her hoping he might come back.

  The memory should have brought shame. Guilt. Something.

  Instead, Jake just remembered how satisfying it had been. The game. The wins. The pure intellectual pleasure of manipulating people into doing what you wanted.

  And how easy it had been to walk away when it stopped being fun.

  The memory faded. Jake was back in the void, feeling his segmented body, understanding what he'd become.

  Small. Divided into parts. Designed to slip through cracks and disappear.

  Just like always.

  Another sense returned. Awareness of his size relative to... everything. The scale was incomprehensible. At his current dimensions, a human hair would be as wide as a tree trunk. A single cell was a boulder. He was smaller than anything he'd ever conceptualized.

  He was nothing. Nobody. Invisible.

  Another memory surfaced.

  After the parole officer.

  Her name was Sarah Chen. Twenty-four years old. Fresh out of graduate school with a degree in Criminal Justice and minor in Social Work. She'd wanted to help people. Actually believed that the system could reform offenders if given the right support.

  Jake had been one of her first cases.

  She'd smiled at him during their initial meeting. Genuine warmth. "I've reviewed your file, Jake. I think you have a lot of potential. You're clearly intelligent. You just need someone to help you channel that in a positive direction."

  She'd laid out the program. Weekly check-ins. Job placement assistance. Counseling sessions. Drug testing. All the standard parole requirements. But she'd delivered it with optimism. With hope.

  "I know the system can feel overwhelming," she'd said. "But I'm here to help. We'll figure this out together."

  Jake had smiled back. Nodded. Played the role of the reformed criminal who just needed a second chance.

  He'd attended the first two meetings on time. Been polite. Engaged. Asked thoughtful questions about the job placement program. Talked about wanting to "turn his life around" and "be better."

  Sarah had been thrilled. Had told him he was one of her success stories already. Had genuine excitement in her voice when she talked about his progress.

  Third meeting, she'd stepped out to make copies of some forms. Left her purse on the desk between them. The wallet was visible, partially open, cash tucked inside.

  Jake had taken forty dollars. Not all of it. Just enough for a bus ticket to Cleveland. Left everything else. Her credit cards, her ID, even the rest of the cash. Just forty dollars.

  She probably didn't notice for hours. Maybe not until that evening when she tried to buy groceries and realized she was short.

  And then she'd have put it together. Her promising case. Her success story. The guy she'd believed in.

  Gone.

  With her money.

  Jake never found out if she'd reported it. Didn't care. He was already on the bus by then, watching Kentucky roll past the windows, free of the system and Sarah Chen and anyone else who thought they could fix him.

  He'd felt bad about it. For maybe twenty minutes. Then he'd reminded himself that she was getting paid to be his parole officer. That she was naive if she thought leaving her purse out was smart. That he'd needed that money more than she did.

  The guilt had evaporated like morning dew.

  That was always the trick, Jake had learned. You could make yourself feel better about anything if you framed it right. If you focused on the other person's mistakes instead of your own actions. If you remembered that everyone was looking out for themselves anyway, so you might as well do the same.

  Sarah Chen had hoped she could save him.

  Jake had used that hope to get exactly what he needed and disappeared.

  Back in the void, understanding settled over him with cold clarity.

  He was microscopic now. Invisible. Nobody would see him coming. Nobody would know he was there until it was too late.

  Just like he'd always operated. Slipping through gaps. Being forgettable when convenient. Using people's inability to track something so small against them.

  Hope had made him literal. Turned his tactics into his biology.

  Movement became easier now. His segments responded to intent, contracting and expanding in coordinated rhythm. He could crawl. Slowly. Awkwardly. But functional.

  The sensation brought more memories. A cascade of them. Years of movement compressed into feeling.

  The carnival circuit.

  Cleveland to Indianapolis to Louisville to Memphis to Little Rock. Never staying more than a few weeks. Never putting down roots. Never becoming someone people could track or hold accountable.

  Jake had found his paradise in the carnival life.

  It was perfect. The games were rigged, everyone knew it, but they played anyway because the illusion was fun. And Jake got to crush their hope professionally, legally, with a smile on his face. Got paid for it. Got good at it.

  The basketball game had been his specialty, but he'd run others too. The ring toss with bottles slightly too large. The balloon darts with underinflated balloons and overinflated darts. The milk bottle pyramid with weights hidden in the bottom row.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Every game designed to make people hope they might win. Every game engineered to ensure they wouldn't.

  And between shifts, there were other opportunities.

  Teenagers would come around looking to buy weed. Jake would sell them oregano in sandwich bags for forty bucks. They'd smoke it, convince themselves they felt something, and never come back to complain because admitting they'd been scammed meant admitting they'd tried to buy drugs.

  Women would drift by his booth. Bored with their boyfriends. Looking for excitement. Jake would flirt, make suggestions, leave implications hanging in the air. Some would come back. Some wouldn't. He didn't care either way. It was all just passing time.

  The girl in the summer dress had been one of dozens. Pretty, sure, but not special. Just another mark who'd looked at him with interest while her boyfriend failed at a rigged game.

  Jake had planned to sleep with her if she came back. Would have enjoyed it. Would have left her with some story about moving on with the carnival. Would have forgotten her name within a week.

  That was the beauty of carnival life. Everything was temporary. Everyone was a stranger. You could be whoever you wanted for a few hours, take what you wanted, and disappear before consequences caught up.

  No commitments. No connections. No one expecting anything from you because you'd be gone in a week anyway.

  Jake had loved it. The freedom. The constant motion. The absolute lack of responsibility to anyone or anything except his own immediate desires.

  He'd hurt people along the way. Of course he had. That's what happened when you lived like a predator drifting through crowds of prey. But they were strangers. Forgettable. They'd get over it. Move on. Forget him like he forgot them.

  It wasn't personal. It was just life. Just survival. Just the way things worked when you were smart enough to see the world for what it really was: a game where the only rule was get what you can and don't get caught.

  And Jake had been very, very good at not getting caught.

  The hunger pulsed through him. Stronger now. More urgent. The memories had distracted him, but his body was running on empty. Whatever energy reserves this form possessed were nearly depleted.

  He needed to feed. Soon. Or the darkness would become permanent.

  One more memory surfaced. The most recent. The one that mattered.

  The moment everything changed.

  The woman in the white dress. Beautiful and terrible. Her face cracking like porcelain. Tears burning the ground.

  "I am at the edge," she'd said. "The precipice. The moment of change."

  Jake had mocked her. Had pulled out the sign. Had denied her the prize she'd won because that's what he did. He rigged games and he never paid out and he didn't care who knew it.

  "You are the moment it happens," Hope had said.

  And he'd felt it. Actually felt the universe pivot. Felt something fundamental shift in reality. Felt a weight that had been balanced for millennia finally tip over the edge into freefall.

  The boyfriend's curse: "I hope you get what you deserve."

  Hope had turned that curse literal. Had made Jake into exactly what he'd always been.

  But more than that. She'd been breaking. Had been BECOMING something else. No longer aspiration. Now retribution. No longer light in darkness. Now knife in the dark.

  And Jake had been the final weight. The last straw. The moment when Hope herself fell off the cliff and became something twisted.

  He'd broken more than himself. He'd broken something cosmic. Something that mattered to every human being on Earth. The capacity to hope for better things had died, and Jake Rivers had killed it.

  Not alone. Not entirely. But he'd been there. He'd been the moment. The fulcrum. The tipping point.

  And unlike all the other people he'd hurt, all the other hopes he'd crushed, this one couldn't be walked away from. This one couldn't be forgotten or excused or reframed.

  This one was permanent.

  Humanity had lost something fundamental, and it was Jake's fault.

  The horror of that realization was worse than the lightning. Worse than dying. Worse than waking up as a parasitic worm.

  Because all those other things? Those were punishments. Consequences. Things that happened TO him.

  But breaking Hope? That was something he'd DONE. Something that couldn't be undone. Damage that would ripple forward forever, affecting billions of people who'd never know his name but would suffer because he'd been exactly what he'd always been at exactly the wrong moment.

  For the first time in Jake Rivers' life, he couldn't walk away from what he'd broken.

  The hunger yanked him back to the present. To the void. To the microscopic body and the desperate need to feed.

  He tried to move, and his segments responded. Awkward. Uncoordinated. But functional. He was crawling. Actually moving through space.

  He had no idea where he was going. But ahead of him, somewhere in the infinite darkness, was warmth.

  He couldn't see it. Couldn't hear it. But he could sense it somehow, through senses that didn't have names. Something alive. Something breathing. Something with the energy he needed to survive.

  Jake oriented himself toward the warmth and kept crawling.

  Just keep livin', he thought, McConaughey's drawl echoing through his memory like a mantra. Just keep livin', man.

  Even if living meant being exactly what Hope had called him. What he'd always been.

  Parasite.

  The warmth grew closer. Fractionally. Infinitesimally. But closer.

  Jake crawled toward it and tried not to think about what he'd have to do when he got there.

  The journey might have taken minutes or hours. Time had stopped being a reliable concept somewhere between dying and waking up as a parasitic worm.

  But gradually, Jake became aware of more than just warmth. He could sense vibration now. A rhythmic pulse that traveled through whatever medium he was crawling through. Regular. Steady. Organic.

  A heartbeat.

  He was getting close to something living. Something with a circulatory system and lungs and all the complex biological machinery that made life possible. Something that could provide what he needed.

  The hunger made thinking difficult. It had moved beyond pain into something almost transcendent. A need so absolute it had become his entire existence. He wasn't Jake Rivers anymore. He was just hunger in roughly worm-shaped form, crawling toward the only thing that could make it stop.

  Then: an opening.

  From his perspective, it was massive. A cave entrance, a tunnel, a passageway leading toward warmth and sound and life. He had no idea what it actually was. Didn't care. His body moved toward it automatically, instinct overriding whatever remained of his conscious thought.

  He crawled inside.

  The tunnel was organic. He understood that immediately, even without knowing how. The walls weren't stone or metal but flesh, warm and slightly yielding, contracting and expanding with rhythmic regularity. Air moved past him, or what passed for air at his scale. Moisture beaded on surfaces too vast for him to comprehend.

  An ear canal. Some distant, still-rational part of his mind supplied the information. You've crawled into something's ear.

  The journey deeper felt infinite. The tunnel stretched ahead of him, curving gently downward, growing slightly narrower. The warmth increased with every microscopic movement forward. The heartbeat grew louder, more present, until it was less sound and more vibration, pulsing through the walls around him.

  Then the tunnel ended, and Jake felt himself pressed against something different. A membrane. Thin, delicate, but substantial. The barrier between the outer ear and everything beyond it.

  And beyond that barrier: heat, life, energy. Everything he needed. Everything the hunger screamed for.

  Jake didn't know how to proceed. Didn't know if he was supposed to push through, dissolve through, tear through. His body took over, instinct guiding him in ways his conscious mind couldn't comprehend.

  Microscopic tendrils extended from his form. He couldn't see them, but he could feel them, extensions of himself, thinner than spider silk, reaching out with delicate precision. They found purchase against the membrane, began to penetrate.

  Not forcefully. Almost gently. Threading through tissue like needles through silk. Pushing deeper, past the membrane, into warmth and wetness and...

  The world exploded.

  Sound hit him first. Not hearing, he still didn't have ears in any conventional sense, but something else. Something better. His body was producing clicks, rapid-fire pulses of sound too high-pitched for human ears, and those clicks were bouncing back to him with information.

  Echolocation.

  Jake's consciousness reeled as his mind tried to process the incoming data. The clicks painted the world in three-dimensional audio, building a map more detailed than sight had ever provided. He could "see" everything. The walls of the cave around him. The texture of stone overhead. The bodies clustered in groups.

  So many bodies.

  Hundreds of them, hanging upside down from the cave ceiling, wings folded tight against small furry forms, breathing in synchronized rhythm. Living creatures packed together, sharing space and warmth and safety.

  A bat colony.

  He was inside a bat's brain, he realized. His tendrils had pushed through the membrane, threaded through tissue, hooked into neurons and synapses. He was connected. Linked. Part of something that wasn't him.

  And he could feel everything.

  The bat's body became his body. Small, lightweight, perfectly designed for flight. He felt the membrane wings folded against his sides, thin skin stretched over delicate bone structure. Felt the tiny clawed feet gripping rough stone overhead, holding him suspended. Felt the fur, short and soft, trapping warmth close to skin.

  But more than the body, he felt the mind.

  The bat's consciousness was there with him, simple and serene. No words. No complex thoughts or anxieties or plans. Just present-moment awareness, flowing from one sensation to the next without judgment or analysis.

  Warm. Safe. Colony nearby. Rest now. Hunt later. This is good.

  That was it. The sum total of the bat's internal experience. Comfort and contentment and the simple pleasure of existing. No wondering if it was good enough, smart enough, successful enough. No comparing itself to other bats or worrying about the future or regretting the past.

  Just being.

  The purity of it was almost painful. Jake couldn't remember the last time he'd felt content like that. Actually satisfied. Actually at peace.

  Maybe never.

  He let himself drift in the bat's consciousness for a moment, experiencing what it felt like to just exist without the constant noise of human thought. The colony breathed around them, a hundred tiny heartbeats creating a rhythm that was almost musical. The stone was cool and familiar. The darkness was complete and comfortable.

  This was home. This was safety. This was enough.

  Then the hunger reminded him why he was here, and the peace shattered.

  Jake didn't want to do it. Some part of him, maybe the last part that remembered being human, recoiled from what he was about to do. This creature hadn't hurt him. Hadn't even noticed him. It was innocent, simple, just trying to live its small life in peace.

  But he was starving. And the hunger had moved beyond something he could resist or negotiate with. It was kill or die now, and Jake had never been the dying type.

  I'm sorry. I don't have a choice.

  His tendrils found a cluster of neurons. He could sense them somehow, feel their electrical activity, taste the energy they contained even before he touched them. They pulsed with life and information and everything his body was screaming for.

  Jake bit down.

  The sensation defied description.

  It wasn't taste, not in any physical sense. But his mind kept trying to categorize it that way because there was no other framework for what he was experiencing. Flavor and texture and satisfaction all rolled into something that bypassed normal sensory processing and hit directly on whatever pleasure centers his new biology possessed.

  Relief flooded through him. The screaming hunger quieted to a bearable hum. Strength returned to his microscopic form. The threatened shutdown of his systems reversed, energy flowing in to replace what he'd burned.

  But more than physical relief, something else happened. Something unexpected.

  Knowledge flooded in. Not abstract knowledge. Experience. Memory. The bat's life, encoded in the neurons he'd just consumed, downloading directly into Jake's consciousness like files being copied to a new hard drive.

  The sensation of first flight, leaving the safety of the cave for the first time, tiny wings catching air in ways that felt impossible but worked, the terror and exhilaration of being airborne.

  Jake gasped. Or would have, if he'd had lungs. The memory was vivid, immediate, more real than any memory of his human life. He could feel the way air moved over membrane wings, the subtle adjustments needed to bank and turn and rise. Could sense the thermals as columns of warmth, visible through echolocation as ripples in the air.

  He'd never flown. Never even skydived or parasailed or done any of the stupid thrill-seeking things people did to pretend they could defy gravity. But now he knew what it felt like. Had the muscle memory encoded in neurons that had once belonged to another creature.

  The bat didn't notice anything wrong. Its consciousness continued its simple loop: Safe. Warm. Colony. Rest.

  It had no idea that a microscopic parasite was nestled in its brain, eating its memories one neuron cluster at a time.

  Jake forced himself to take another bite. Smaller this time. Careful. He didn't want to kill it quickly. Didn't want to cause pain or alarm. Just... survive. Just take what he needed to keep existing.

  More memories flooded in:

  The colony clustered together during the day, dozens of bodies pressed close, wings overlapping, heartbeats syncing until it was impossible to tell where one bat ended and another began. Warmth shared. Safety multiplied. Belonging without question or doubt.

  Jake had never belonged anywhere. Had never wanted to. Belonging meant obligation, meant staying put, meant being accountable to something other than his own immediate desires. He'd been alone his entire life by choice, and he'd told himself he preferred it that way.

  But this... this was something else. This was community without the weight of it. Connection without possession. The simple comfort of not being alone, without any of the complicated human baggage that usually came with relationships.

  The sweet explosion of ripe mango stolen from a tree near some village, juice and pulp and perfect sweetness, the simple pleasure of hunger satisfied, of finding food and eating until full.

  Rain on wings during an unexpected storm, water droplets feeling wrong against membrane, the frantic flight back to the cave, the relief of reaching shelter, shaking out moisture, pressing close to colony-mates for warmth.

  Mating season, finding a female, the brief coupling that was more instinct than romance, satisfaction without emotional complication, then returning to normal life as though nothing had changed.

  Each memory tasted different. The older ones had more depth, more complexity, like wine that had aged into something richer. But even the simple moment-to-moment experiences, hanging upside down in comfortable darkness, grooming fur with tiny clawed hands, the sound of a million insects in the night sky, carried a satisfaction that Jake had never felt in his human life.

  This was living distilled down to pure experience. No anxiety about money or status or what people thought of you. No wondering if you were doing it right. Just existing, moment to moment, finding pleasure in simple things, being part of something larger than yourself without losing yourself in it.

  And Jake was eating it. Consuming these perfect, simple moments and converting them into fuel.

  Stop. You're killing it. You're killing something innocent.

  But the bat wasn't dead yet. Wasn't even suffering. Just hanging there peacefully, unaware that its memories were being slowly erased, its consciousness being hollowed out one neuron at a time.

  Jake took another bite. Then another. Small, careful bites, spacing them out, trying to make it last. Trying to minimize the damage even though he knew it was futile. The bat was going to die. That was inevitable now. He could only control how quickly it happened.

  Six bites total before he forced himself to stop. His body felt different now. Energized. Stable. The hunger had retreated to background noise instead of existential scream. He would survive. For now. For a while.

  The bat stirred slightly, adjusting its grip on the stone overhead. Its consciousness flickered: Small discomfort. Shift position. Return to rest. Still safe. Still good.

  It was okay. For now.

  Jake settled into the warm darkness of the bat's mind, surrounded by the simple beauty of its thoughts and the synchronized breathing of the colony, and let himself process what had just happened.

  He was a parasite.

  Not metaphorically. Not as some clever insult Hope had thrown at him to make a point. Actually, literally, biologically a parasite. Living inside another creature's brain. Feeding on its neural tissue. Slowly killing it through the simple act of survival.

  Hope had made him into exactly what he'd always been. Just honest about it now. Just literal.

  Jake thought about the people he'd used over the years. The old folks on the phone, trusting his voice, giving him their bank information while he smiled and knew the policy would never pay out. Sarah Chen, fresh out of grad school, hoping she could save him. The women who'd let him crash on their couches, in their spare rooms, in their beds, thinking maybe he'd stay, maybe he'd be different. The marks at the carnival who'd played his rigged games with hope in their eyes.

  He'd taken from all of them. Never violently, never obviously, but taken nonetheless. Consumed their resources, their time, their emotional energy, their hope. Used them up and moved on before the damage became too obvious.

  And he'd told himself it was fine. Everyone used everyone. That was just how the world worked. He was just more honest about it than most people. At least he didn't pretend to be something he wasn't.

  Carnival, carnivore, Hope had said. Same root. You don't bid farewell to flesh. You just devour it.

  Yeah. She'd been right about that.

  The bat's heartbeat was steady against Jake's awareness. Its breathing calm and even. Its dreams, if bats dreamed, were probably simple and sweet.

  And Jake was going to kill it. Not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. Inevitably. Because he had to eat to survive, and eating meant destroying the very thing keeping him alive.

  That was the elegant horror of what Hope had done. Turned survival itself into murder. Made every moment of Jake's continued existence dependent on killing something innocent.

  This is real. This is actually, genuinely, no-way-out real.

  I'm inside a bat's brain.

  I'm eating it alive.

  And I can't stop.

  Because stopping meant dying. And for all his faults, all his failures, all the ways he'd fucked up his human life, Jake Rivers had never once considered just giving up. Survival was the one thing he'd always been good at. The one talent he'd never questioned.

  Even if survival meant becoming the monster Hope accused him of being.

  Even if living meant killing something that didn't deserve to die.

  The hunger pulsed once in his awareness, a quiet reminder that it would be back. Soon. Always. He would need to feed again, and again, and again, until the bat's brain was gone and he had to find something else to consume.

  Just like before. Just like Earth. Just like always.

  The only difference now was that he couldn't pretend otherwise. Couldn't tell himself pretty lies about everyone doing it or it being harmless or them not really needing what he took.

  This was honest. Brutal and horrible and wrong, but honest.

  The bat dreamed of flying, and Jake tasted the memory even as he consumed the neurons that held it. Experienced the joy of movement and freedom and perfect simplicity, all while knowing he was destroying the creature that had created those experiences.

  Just keep livin', Jake thought, McConaughey's drawl echoing in his mind like permission or condemnation or maybe both. Just keep livin', man.

  Even if living meant killing.

  Even if surviving meant becoming exactly what he'd always been. Just more honest about it.

  The bat's heart beat steadily in the comfortable darkness. The colony breathed around them in perfect synchronization, a hundred small lives creating warmth and safety together.

  And Jake Rivers, microscopic parasite, brain-eating worm, former insurance scammer and con artist and career criminal, settled deeper into his host's mind and accepted what he'd become.

  At least he wasn't lying anymore.

  At least that was something.

  The hunger would be back soon. And when it was, he'd feed again. Take another bite, another memory, another piece of simple bat joy. He'd keep taking until there was nothing left to take.

  Because that's what parasites did.

  And Hope had been right about him all along.

  - - -

  End of Chapter 2