Exalta

The city doesn’t kill you. It processes you. In the fog-choked Sprawl beneath the corporate tower called Exalta, the Runner survives by staying uncounted. He carries packages he doesn’t open, follows routes he doesn’t question, and renews his identity in shrinking access windows. His existence is a suffix on a form. When the suffix expires, so does he. Liam Kestrel is a Security & Containment Commander inside Exalta’s administrative core. He enforces compliance, signs disposal orders, and tells himself the system works because it has to. Then a routine surveillance report crosses his desk: an unidentified subject, still breathing, who should have been processed weeks ago. Liam should file the report. He should let the system close the case. He doesn’t. As the Runner’s windows slam shut and Liam’s quiet mutiny draws the attention of the people who erase problems rather than solve them, their paths converge on a room where the corporation will demonstrate exactly how it maintains order. There are no firing squads. No gulags. Just paperwork, and the clean silence after it’s filed. *For readers of Never Let Me Go and Kafka. A dystopian nightmare where the most terrifying sentence is: “Your request has been processed.”*