“I’m telling you, a mango-kale fusion is the key to peak performance,” Tessa said, stabbing her straw into a violently green concoction. We were lounging at a sidewalk table outside “Blend,” a smoothie joint so trendy it probably had its own line of designer lab-grown fruit. “It’s what all the pro-level anti-grav athletes drink. It balances your electrolytes and your aura.”

  Something in the city felt off. The thrum of a million lives in motion had a weird vibration under it, like a speaker with a blown-out cone. The news drones seemed to fly in tighter formations, their red lights looking less like warnings and more like accusations. Probably just pre-championship jitters infecting everyone. Probably.

  Cody snorted into his own smoothie, looking like a sludgy brown thing scraped from the bottom of a river. “Synthetic chocolate and protein perfectly balanced my aura paste, thank you very much.” He took a long, noisy sip. “And it tastes like victory.”

  “It tastes like despair,” I said, swirling my strawberry-banana classic. Safe. Predictable. “And you’re just saying that because you read it on some back-alley bio-hacker’s blog.”

  “The best kind of blog.”

  Above us, a massive public display screen flickered, the grim, overly-serious face of a Channel 9 news anchor replaced the rotation of slick hover-car ads and pop-star promos. A breaking news banner flashed in angry red letters at the bottom of the screen.

  “—another grisly discovery in the Lower Sector this mothe grim, overly-serious face of a Channel 9 news anchor replaced the rotation of slick hover-car ads and pop-star promosrning,” the anchor said, her voice a smooth, practiced monotone that did nothing to soften the words. “Authorities are confirming a fourth victim in as many days, attributed to what is being described only as a series of ‘unusually savage animal attacks.’”

  The screen cut to shaky, night-vision footage. A dark alley, overflowing dumpsters, the glint of something wet on the pavement. Crime scene strobes painted the grimy brick walls in flashes of red and blue. It looked like a different planet.

  “Ugh, can they not?” Tessa wrinkled her nose, turning away from the screen to inspect her cuticles. “I’m trying to enjoy my aura-balancing smoothie, and they’re showing… that. It’s tragic, sure, but do they have to show it while people are eating?”

  Cody watched the screen for a moment longer, his easy-going expression tightening just a fraction. “Fourth one. That’s a lot.”

  “While officials urge calm,” the anchor said, her face now superimposed over a map of the city with a blinking red circle over the industrial zones south of the river, “the anchor advised residents in the affected wards to remain indoors after dark and to avoid unlit or abandoned areas. The perpetrator, believed to be a large, unidentified predator, remains at large.”

  “Probably just some rich idiot’s exotic pet that got loose,” I said, shrugging. It felt a million miles away. The Lower Sector was a world of crumbling factories and forgotten warehouses, a place people like us only saw from the elevated mag-trains on our way to somewhere better. Grim things happened down there. It was a fact of life, like traffic or bad synth-pop. “Someone’s cyber-mastiff goes rabid and the news calls it a monster. Classic.”

  “Well, whatever it is, I hope they catch it,” Tessa said, her attention already drifting to a group of cute guys from a rival cheer squad walking past. Her gossip-radar was far more powerful than her sense of civic dread. “Did you see the new uniforms the Cyber-Stallions have? Total knock-offs of our ’24 seasonals.”

  And just like that, the conversation shifted. The unidentified predator and its victims in the forgotten sectors of the city, replaced by the far more pressing concerns of uniform plagiarism, championship routines, and whether Jason’s post-game party was worth the hype. The news report became what it always was for us: background noise. A problem for someone else.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  I got home late, practice having run three hours over. Coach Johnson was riding us hard for the championship, drilling the new routine until my muscles felt like frayed wires and my brain was a puddle of half-remembered eight-counts. The only sound when I let myself in was the soft click of the door, the auto-lights glowing to a soft, welcoming level. Our apartment took up the 80th floor of the Olympus Tower, a sterile, minimalist space of white walls, chrome accents, and floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the glittering expanse of the city.

  My parents were normally in the main living area, watching a movie on the wall-screen or listening to some old-world jazz. They were masters of the carefree attitude, their biggest concerns revolved around stock market fluctuations and which orbital resort to book for the holidays. My little sister probably sleeping in her room. She was a quick snoozer when she ate a lot of cookies after dunner. But tonight, the living area was dark.

  I padded toward the kitchen, my empty stomach rumbling a complaint. That’s when I heard their voices. They were coming from my dad’s office; the door shut tight, but the sound was still audible. It was the tone that stopped me, my hand hovering over the fridge handle.

  Hushed. Worried. I’d never heard my parents sound like that. Ever. Their voices were so full of calm confidence. This was different. This was the sound of a door being quietly locked against a rising wind.

  I crept closer, my sneakers silent on the polished concrete floor. I knew I shouldn’t eavesdrop. It was a bratty, little-kid move. But the wrongness of their tone was a hook in my gut, pulling me forward. I pressed my ear against the cold wood of the door.

  “—don’t think you’re taking this seriously enough, Mark,” my mom was saying. Her voice was thin, stripped of its usual warmth. “Three department heads have been ‘reassigned’ in the last month. Just vanished. And now this… this instability.”

  “It’s corporate restructuring, honey, that’s all,” my dad’s voice was a low rumble, trying to be reassuring but failing. He sounded tired. “Pandora Corp is expanding its security division. It’s an aggressive move, but it’s just business.”

  Pandora Corp. The name hung in the air, heavy and metallic. They were the biggest tech conglomerate in the city, their sleek, black logo plastered on everything from public transport to the cybernetics in half the city’s population. They were a part of the city’s DNA, as much as the river or the endless neon glow.

  “Business?” My mom’s laugh was a sharp, brittle sound. “People are getting scared. The private security checkpoints are everywhere now. Pandora is rerouting their supply drones around whole sectors. And these attacks… Mark, you can’t tell me it’s a coincidence that they all started happening right after Pandora’s ‘bio-division’ had that containment issue they swept under the rug.”

  A chill traced its way down my spine. The news report. The savage animal attacks. A containment issue?

  “That’s a rumor, Sarah,” my dad said, his voice dropping even lower. “A dangerous one. We don’t talk about that. Not here. Not anywhere.”

  “I’m just saying it doesn’t feel safe anymore. It feels… fragile. Like our entire apartment is just a screen, and someone’s found the button to turn up the static.”

  There was a long silence. I held my breath, my heart hammering against my ribs. The silence was worse than the words. It was a void filled with everything they weren’t saying, everything they were too afraid to even whisper.

  My dad spoke, his voice low. “I’ll make some calls tomorrow. Check on our sector’s security contract.” The forced casualness in his voice was a flimsy paper shield. “It’s fine, Sarah. Everything is fine. We’re safe up here.”

  I backed away from the door, my breathing loud in my ears. The polished floor felt icy through my sneakers. Back in the kitchen, the idea of food made my stomach clench. I grabbed a water bottle just to have something cold and solid to hold on to.

  It was one thing to see a scary news report about a bad part of town. It was something else to hear the fear in your own parents’ voices, in the one place in the world you were supposed to be completely safe. My dad had said it himself: We’re safe up here. But he didn’t sound convinced. He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

  I walked over to the massive window in the living area and looked out. The city laid out before me, a tapestry of light and motion. Hover-cars zipped by like shooting stars. The Pandora Corp tower, a monolithic spike of black glass and steel, dominated the skyline, its logo a glowing red eye watching over everything. It had always looked like a symbol of progress, of power. Tonight, it looked like a threat.

  The distant tragedies from the news didn't feel so distant anymore. My mom's words echoed in my head. It feels... fragile. Up here, we were supposed to be safe. But looking at the Pandora tower, that monolithic spike of black glass, I wasn't so sure. That glowing red eye at its peak no longer looked like progress. It looked like a warning. And for the first time, I felt like it was pointed right at me.