Claire opened her eyes.
The low hum of jazz filtered into her ears—familiar, warm, oddly comforting.
She leapt from the bed.
Another streak of blood ran down her face. She wiped it with the back of her hand, watching the red bloom across her palm like ink in water.
No time to worry.
She changed quickly into the gear she could move best in. Zipped up the jacket. Threw the cloak over her shoulder. Dawn air greeted her like a warning—metallic, smoky. The kind of stillness that only happens before the city starts to scream.
People were still asleep. But the sky wasn't.
She tilted her head back, closed her eye—and yes, there it was.
Slime. Already falling.
She sprinted toward the safehouse.
The moment the storage wall creaked open, a sharp blend of oil and steel hit her nose. Behind it, resting in the shadows, was the rocket launcher. Waiting.
Claire hoisted it onto her back.
The weight dragged at her shoulders, but she didn’t flinch. She went through the checks—gear, grip, ammo, trigger—all muscle memory now.
And then she was gone.
Her motorcycle sliced through the sleeping city like a knife. The roads were empty, lights blinking like they didn’t realize no one was watching.
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On the ride, a memory punched its way in.
That crash.
She’d fallen hard on the runway, hard enough to flip her body over. She remembered staring up at the sky, the way it spun. Then came the real pain—her left eye burning like it had been torn open from the inside.
She’d thought she was blind.
She’d prepared herself for a future with half the world missing.
But the eye didn’t go blind.
Not exactly.
Something else had started.
It wasn’t a hallucination. It wasn’t even sound. It was a frequency. A whisper in her bones.
So hungry... so hungry...
At first, the voice only came in dreams. Then, it bled into waking life.
Claire had stopped believing she was entirely human.
She wasn’t just hearing it. She was connected to it—something wounded, starving, impossible to define.
Something that wanted to devour the Earth.
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She climbed the same building as before.
Each step felt heavier, the rocket launcher like a cross on her back. But it wasn’t just weight. It was everything she remembered. Everything no one else could understand.
The creature terrified her.
But it moved so slowly. Like its time was pouring in from another dimension.
So Claire waited.
She knew its hunger came from a place with no name, no clocks. And somehow... it had given her something. A sliver of its nature—time, maybe. Space. Just enough to keep her standing in this shattered timeline.
She hid that treasure in her left eye.
And she cut herself loose from the world she belonged to.
Now she spun, like the second hand on a broken clock—trapped in one endless turn, never reaching the end.
This was her cocoon. Her trap.
She had no other option. She was too weak.
And no one was coming.
All she had was “one day.”
Every time, it was one day.
Reset. Start over.
And now, she had climbed to the rooftop again.
The floor still radiated heat beneath her boots. The sky—heavier than before. Denser. Like pressure itself was shifting.
She closed her eye.
She could feel it—purple slime falling, faster this time. Like a different rhythm taking hold of the world.
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and then Add to home screen.