Kisaragi Station

I was the top engineer at the National Deep-Sea Institute—and the only person in the world with real deep-sea rescue experience. When my younger brother's submarine went down and he called for help from 35,000 feet below, I hung up on him. Then, calm and unhurried, I went straight to the police station and turned myself in for leaking classified research data. A few minutes later, my father called, furious. "Your brother's life is hanging by a thread—where the hell are you?! I demand you to get to the site and save him right now, or you won't see a single penny of the family fortune!" I pulled the blanket over myself and said into the phone, perfectly composed, "Busy. Don't bother me—I'm trying to sleep."

Jennah Best left the adrenaline packed life of being a cop on the edge for a more peaceful place. She escaped a marriage that almost destroyed her and now lives her life working for a small police station in the town of Ridge. At her age, she's accepted that it's too late and too much work to start all over again, until she meets a man in a dream... While young, Dominic Palmer has always proven he can get the job done. Or at least, that was the case before he accepted a job and agreed to go undercover as an inmate. When months go by and there's no word from his outside contact he wonders if he's been left on the inside for good. He's fighting to stay alive and keep his sanity, but finds himself completely distracted by a mysterious woman he met in a dream...

Once again, my wife, Claire Winters, stabbed me with a silver needle. A reporter tracked me down and asked, "Louis Sterling, wasn't your wife, Claire, one of the winners of the National Inspiration Awards from ten years ago? She won the reward for saving you during the earthquake and ending up paralyzed from the waist down, right?" I stayed quiet for a moment, then nodded. "Louis, we're from a TV station, and we're producing a tenth anniversary special about the earthquake." I rubbed my arm, which was covered in tiny needle marks, and looked her straight in the eye. I replied, "That's fine, but can you keep the cameras discreet? Claire isn't used to being in front of so many lenses." However, I never expected that on the very first day of the live broadcast, I would be dragged onto the trending charts and torn apart online.

My cousin, Sonia Sanders, only trusts OmniGo Maps, or OmniGo, for everything. While waiting for the bus during a trip, the bus that we are supposed to get on pulls into the station. However, Sonia grabs my arm and says, "Amanda, OmniGo says that our bus is only arriving in another ten minutes. This is not our bus!" I watch helplessly as the bus pulls out of the station, ultimately making me miss my flight and forcing me to pay double the price for another ticket back home. Once, after work, Sonia sees the green arrow on OmniGo and floors the gas pedal at a road intersection. She says confidently, "OmniGo says it's supposed to be a green light! That means this traffic light is wrong!" I look at the red light in horror. Before I can stop her, a vehicle driving ordinarily past the intersection crashes right into our car. In the end, my legs have to be amputated, and I become wheelchair-bound, while Sonia only suffers a mild concussion and a fracture. One rainy day, Sonia calls me an Uber to go to my follow-up at the hospital, but she sets the pickup point at a location that is flooded a third of a mile away. I try to change the pickup point to my home, but she snatches my phone away and says, "OmniGo says that this pickup point is highly recommended for disabled people to board. You can't just change the pickup point as you like!" As a result, I fall into a puddle, wheelchair and all. Sonia doesn't even turn back to look at me and leaves me behind. Because of the rain and the prolonged soaking of my wounds in the dirty puddle, I develop a severe infection, which then leads to multiple organ failure. Despite being rushed to the emergency unit afterward, I ultimately die from the infection. When I open my eyes again, I realize that I'm standing at the bus station again. Sonia taps on her phone and leans closer to me, showing me the details on her phone. "Look, Amanda, OmniGo says that our bus isn't arriving for another ten more minutes."

On the third day after my death, my body was sent to the police station in different packages. Jonathan Walsh, my husband, and Frank Stone, my junior at work, saw my corpse and frowned. “If only Elena were here, she would have been able to find some clues.” Frank sighed as he stared at my horribly mangled remains. “Don’t mention her. She’s not even worthy of being a forensic scientist!” I stared at my husband with a conflicted look. He analyzed each part of my body and deduced the manner of my death with familiar ease. “The murderer is a monster…” Frank’s face turned pale, and he sighed again. Jonathan calmly used all that I had taught him and perfectly pieced out the entire process of my death based on the clues from my dismembered body. I could not help but feel proud. Unfortunately, he was still a little off the mark. He did not manage to figure out that this body belonged to me, his wife.

In the gritty heart of Duskville, where shadows hide the crimes no one wants to see, Detective Jackson Reyes works like a ghost—unflinching, relentless, and alone. Scarred by a childhood spent watching his mother suffer at the hands of a cruel man, Reyes learned early that justice doesn’t come easily. So he became it. When Lena, a young woman trapped in a world of coercion and violence, walks into his station and tells the truth no one else will hear, something shifts. As Reyes digs deeper into the criminal underworld controlled by Riko and his men, Lena becomes more than a witness—she becomes a reason. A reason to keep fighting. A reason to believe healing might be possible, even for someone like him. ______ Content Warning: This story contains themes and depictions of sxual assult, r*pe, non-consensual acts, gr*oming, sx traffcking, and dr*g use. Reader discretion is strongly advised. These topics are part of the narrative and may be distressing or triggering for some individuals. Please take care while reading.

Celia never wanted trouble, just a quiet life, working hard to support her younger brother. But trouble finds her when Rafael, a ruthless mafia boss, walks into her gas station one night. He’s dangerous, untouchable, and completely uninterested in attachments, until she becomes the bait in an ambush meant to take him down. Rafael should have walked away. Instead, he kills for her, rescues her, and drags her into his violent world. Celia fights him at every turn, refusing to be just another possession. But with enemies closing in and no way back to her old life, she has no choice but to trust the man who claims to own her. What starts as a battle of wills turns into something far more dangerous. Celia is no longer just a captive, she’s becoming Rafael’s greatest weakness. And in his world, weaknesses get people killed. But Rafael doesn’t care. He’ll burn his empire to the ground before he lets anyone take her from him.

My mother was the best portrait artist in the police station. She had a strong sense of justice and brooked no evil. However, all I got was a sharp retort when I called her to save me. "You know it's your sister's coming-of-age celebration today, and you're cursing her? Kidnapped, are you? Fine, the kidnappers can kill you for all I care." She assumed it was a prank call. So, she refused to go to the police station and do her job. I wasn't saved in time and was tortured to death. When the DNA report came out, she came to the scene all wobbly. She drew a portrait of me with my bones as reference, her hand trembling all the way. "Jessica? It can't be her. This is a mistake!" She tried again and again. Yet, it didn't matter how many times she redid it as the portrait showed my face. My mother, who had hated me my whole life, teared up.

Mia D’Lorne thought heartbreak would kill her but getting hit by a car did the job faster. One second she’s running from the sound of her boyfriend and sister fornicating, the next she’s standing in front of an abandoned bus station in what looks like purgatory. The bus that picks her up looks like a prop in a horror movie and she’s introduced to the world of the Soul Recycle Program. To exist, she has to compete in a twisted afterlife show where the dead fight their way through nightmare worlds for the amusement of unknown and unseen spectators. The rules are simple. Survive or disappear for good. Mia is joined by two strangers who are just as broken as she is. Axel Rivers, who has been dead for almost a century, and Bree DeBois, a control freak paramedic with more guilt than she can carry. Together they try to survive the challenges of the game. As the trio do their best to keep from being erased, they begin to realize the Game is more personal than they imagined.

I've been kidnapped for ten years. When I finally get to go home, I find out that my parents have adopted a new son. In order to prevent me from bullying the adopted heir, Jake Ewing, my parents decide to enroll me in a popular transformation reality show. Every day, I have to compete with the pigs for food and a spot to sleep. Before I go to bed, an instructor will make me recite a hundred times how good my parents and Jake are. If I ever make a mistake, I'll face harsh public punishment in front of the camera. I also have to apologize repeatedly until the director is satisfied with me. Once the reality show is over, I finally transform into the perfect son and brother my family prefers. But on the day the reality show is set to air, I choose to jump off the TV station's rooftop, killing myself once and for all. That's when my parents lose their minds.