Rich Under Their Hate: The Social Status System
Chalida wheezed, her voice thin.
Pim looked down at her own hand. It was still gripping a small fragment of the broken tablet. The screen was flickering, barely holding onto power, but the data—the source code they had tried to protect—was still there, pulsing weakly in the corner of the display.
"No," Pim said, her voice heavy with a terrible realization. "It’s not gone. It just moved out."
From the shadows of the terrace, a familiar, distorted hum began to rise. A dozen more shadows emerged from the stairwell—not one puppet, but a small army of them. Each one wore the face of a person they had known, a person they had discarded, a person they had hurt.