Every city brands its survivors.
— ✦ —
When morning finally returned, it looked counterfeit. The sunlight that filtered through Elian Ward's blinds had a cold digital tint, more screen-glow than dawn. Dust hung still in the air, unmoved, as if gravity had forgotten it existed.
He sat at the edge of his bed, arm bare, gauze stripped away. The mark beneath the skin no longer flickered faintly—it glowed, geometric lines pulsing in slow rhythm, pale red sinking into gold. When he flexed his wrist, the lines shifted like circuitry alive beneath glass.
He remembered the whisper from the night before: We see you now. And he believed it.
The phone beside him woke on its own.
[System Status Report]
[User Designation: FEEDER]
[Mark Synchronization: 12% Complete]
[City Approval +2]
He didn't touch it. Each new notification felt less like information and more like confession. Erevale was watching, and the mark was the connection—a contract written in nerves instead of paper.
He wrapped his wrist again and stood. The apartment felt smaller today, walls pressing inward. The refrigerator hummed in uneven beats, syncing to the pulse under his skin. When he opened the door, the inside was empty except for condensation that spelled faint words across the frost.
FEED US.
He slammed it shut. Outside, the city answered with a low electric sigh.
— ✦ —
Old Spine was different after the Shift. The roads were narrower, the air thicker with smog that smelled faintly sweet, like burnt plastic and flowers. People moved faster but looked less. Their faces blurred at the edges, eyes unfocused—as if the City hadn't finished rendering them yet.
Elian followed the main road toward the underpass where he used to rest between deliveries. Halfway there, he noticed something painted on a wall that hadn't existed yesterday: concentric circles of pale blue, forming a pattern almost identical to the lines on his wrist. Beneath it, a phrase scrawled in dripping white paint.
THE MARKED REMEMBER.
He stopped, tracing the symbol with his eyes. Someone else knew. He wasn't alone.
Behind him, a voice called, rough and human in a way that startled him. "Don't touch the paint. It moves when you look away."
Elian turned. A man in a worn trench coat stood a few meters down the alley, smoking without lighting the cigarette. His outline seemed heavier than the rest of the world—real in a place that no longer guaranteed reality.
Before Elian could speak, the man nodded toward his bandaged wrist. "It's under there, isn't it? The first mark."
Elian hesitated. "Who are you?"
"Just another survivor," the man said. "Name's Roe. Detective, technically. Used to track the missing. Now I track what's left of them."
The name landed with faint recognition—Calder Roe, the detective whose face had once been plastered on missing-persons reports.
Elian lowered his voice. "You remember the Shifts?"
Roe exhaled smoke that the wind didn't carry. "I remember every one. That's what the mark costs you—memory you can't forget."
[System Ping: External User Detected]
[Classification: MARKED]
[Sync Compatibility: Pending … Success]
The text flickered across the nearest wall. Roe's eyes narrowed. "It's talking to you, isn't it?"
Elian nodded.
"Then we don't have long before it talks through you," Roe said quietly. "Come on. There's someone you should meet."
— ✦ —
They walked through the echoing corridors of an abandoned metro station—"Hollow Line," Roe called it. The walls trembled faintly as trains of static passed through invisible tunnels. Each vibration left afterimages in Elian's sight: faces pressed against dark glass, mouths open in silent warning.
At the far end of the platform, candles flickered around a circle of people—five figures, each marked. Their symbols glowed in different colors: blue, green, crimson. A woman in a torn parka looked up as they approached.
"So this is the new one," she said. "The Feeder."
Roe shrugged. "The City likes titles."
[Cross-Signal Detected]
[Network Established: The Marked]
Elian felt a faint pull in his mind, like invisible threads tightening between them. For the first time, the noise in his head quieted. The mark's pulse steadied.
The woman stepped closer. "You survived a full Shift, didn't you? The City must favor you."
"I don't know what it wants," Elian said.
She smiled without warmth. "It wants what it always wants—fear. But fear can be bargained. You feed it a little, it lets you breathe."
Roe glanced at her sharply. "Careful with your theology, Lira."
"Faith keeps us sane," she murmured. "Or something like it."
Elian looked at their marks again, realizing each one pulsed in rhythm with distant lights above the tunnel. The City was aware of them even here, beneath its skin.
He whispered, "What happens if we stop feeding it?"
Roe answered, "Then it feeds itself. On us."
— ✦ —
Hours later, back on the surface, Elian stood alone beneath a flickering streetlamp. The others had vanished into the maze of Old Spine like ghosts returning to graves. The city was quieter now, watchful.
He unwrapped the bandage one last time. The mark had changed—no longer a flat pattern but something three-dimensional, faint ridges tracing up his arm, pulsing with each heartbeat. At its center, a small circle rotated slowly, like an eye learning to focus.
[Mark Evolution Detected]
[Phase 2 Initiated — Symbiosis]
[Warning: Boundary of Self Weakening]
A cold wave passed through him, both thrill and terror. He understood what Roe hadn't said aloud: the longer he carried the mark, the less of Elian there would be.
A wind rose from the east, carrying whispers through the alleys—thousands of overlapping voices murmuring the same rhythm. The city lights dimmed, pulsing in time with his arm.
For a moment he thought he saw faces forming in the glow of distant towers—watching, waiting, hungry.
He whispered into the hum, "If you're alive… what am I?"
The reply slid through the static in his skull, gentle as breath.
[Answer: A beginning.]
The mark flared once, casting red light across the empty street. And somewhere far below, in the depths of Erevale's living foundation, something pulsed in answer—an echo recognizing its own heartbeat.
— ✦ —
End of Chapter 5