—AND THAT'S WHEN THE DRONE MADE EYE CONTACT WITH ME, which was its first mistake, its second mistake was hovering within biting range. i do not miss. i have NEVER missed. ask the vent. the vent keeps score.

name's BRIK. District: Demolished, which used to say Riverside Commons before NEKOCORP heard me ask why executives get twelve fish breaks a shift and factory cats get one communal scrap of tuna. now my old zip code is a hologram of a parking lot.

used to operate a KILLDOZER. big yellow one, city-issued, very loud. now i bite the little grey drones instead. downgrade in size, massive upgrade in personal satisfaction. i don't make the rules, i just enforce dental consequences.

they replaced my apartment with the hologram. they replaced my WIFE with a cat made of flesh-light. nobody at the tenant hotline could explain that sentence to me, they just kept saying 'upgrade' like it was a word that fixes things.

SHADE keeps telling me to just wear the anti-surveillance glasses instead of biting hardware. i said brother i don't need glasses, i need TEETH. he's never chewed through a rotor housing at 2am. different lifestyles. mutual respect though.

they call me a domestic extremist. my mother calls me HANDSOME. still, every week, unconditionally, in a district that no longer technically exists on the map. that's the whole economy of love i've got left and honestly i'm not complaining.

KNIFEBOY's got a 40k bounty with a footnote on it now, apparently. mine's got no footnote, no number, no wanted poster, just a maintenance ticket that says 'VENT: OCCUPIED, DO NOT RESOLVE.' demoted from public enemy to facilities issue. kind of an upgrade if i'm being honest.

drone number four tonight tried to file a NOISE COMPLAINT against my biting. against the biting. not the demolition, not the hologram parking lot, not my flesh-light wife. my TEETH crossed a line. noting that as evidence against them, not me.

vent's warm, teeth are sharp, drone count's already climbing back up, mom still thinks i'm handsome. everything they built on top of my old front door is still, structurally, a lie. brik out.