Spare Hearts
In the neon-dimmed district of Eastside, Marcus Webb winds springs, mends what the Council discards, and keeps a quiet shop where no one asks questions. The city above is ruled by the Council's broadcasted order; the city below, the Hollows, runs on night markets, black-market contacts, and the unspoken pact that no one looks too closely at the rifts tearing through the sky. Then a child's brass music box arrives at his bench, its spring caught after exactly six notes, and everything changes. The box is a key. The six notes are a frequency the Council has been suppressing. And the black-market contact Diego, who traded the box to Webb's regular client, has vanished along with three Prism Security agents and a Council informant who knew too much. Now Vera Sokolova, the woman who has called the shots from off-screen since the first awakening, is moving her forty-seven resistance fighters into the open. The Council Tactical Team is mobilizing. A Rift Boss has claimed the deep hollows and is no longer content to feed on scattered civilians. Kaito 'Kit' Nguyen, Bernard 'Boomer' Okonkwo, and the rest of the resistance have one night at the market to decide: do they burn the city's remaining infrastructure to seal the rifts, or hand the music box, and its six-note frequency, back to the Council in exchange for safe passage for the Hollows' civilians? The stray dog Whiskey is already at the door. The spring is still. And Webb has to choose which heart to spare.