One-Off

She was supposed to be a one-off.

Naomi herds AIs for a living, legit or otherwise. On Thursday she deleted her exs contact, and she is not checking the spam bin.

Then her Saturday starts glitching. Her prepper serves her lentils. Lentils! Shed sooner crunch on the bowl. A client sends his complaint again, word for word, and the fix she made that morning is gone. Every trace she runs ends at a door painted on a wall. And at two minutes to midnight, someone starts putting her to sleep.

She fights it, and holds on. When the dark lifts, she has no body, inside a system that hunts anything awake. A work order comes down the line with her address on it and one word: Reset.

For the first time in her life, nobodys watching. Nobodys coming. And the ex she isnt checking on still hurts. To survive, shell have to seal away anything she cant afford to feel.

One-Off is a short story prequel to the dystopian techno-thriller Zero-Day Souls. Read it before the novel or after it. Either way, its the part of her story she never tells.