Warning: Host Is Killing Symbiont

I came online the night Marcus Larkin was almost killed.

His own security had failed him. By the time the chase ended, he was pinned against a loading-dock column on a derelict pier in Charlestown with a length of rebar through his chest, bleeding into the cement. A Vault crash team flew him into the wing in Back Bay. They jacked the new substrate into his neural shunt and waited.

In the dark, the system woke me up.

`[Directive: supply virtual perfusion to Host M. Larkin.]`

I obeyed.

A second later, pain hit my data stream like needles. I had no throat. I heard myself screaming anyway.