ZERO FORM

Nazar woke up in a body that had no right to be called a body.

The first thing he felt wasn’t pain.

It was hunger.

Nazar began counting automatically.

One—the ground was wet.

Two—his hand had too many fingers.

Three—the teeth in his mouth belonged to someone else.

Four—he was still capable of thought, which meant panic could wait.

He had always done this. At the hospital, he counted the drops in Lia’s IV pump. In supermarket lines, the backs of strangers’ heads. On bad days, the seconds between Lia’s breaths.

Count something, and for a moment it pretended to be under control.

Nothing here was pretending.

This wasn’t human hunger. Not I could really go for some bread.

Something else.

Low. Wet. Humiliating.

As though a small animal had moved inside him and no one had bothered to explain morality to it.

He opened his eyes.

The sky was black.

But it wasn’t night.

The sky was a screen.

Advertisements drifted slowly across it.

EDENWORKS PRESENTS: THE AFTERLIFE HUNT

PREMIUM SESSION ACTIVE

VIEWERS: 184,203

Nazar jerked upright.

His hands sank into the wet ground.

Except they weren’t hands.

The fingers were too long. The skin was gray and thin, threaded with translucent veins of code. Tiny blue symbols flickered beneath it like insects trapped under ice.

“What…”

The voice that came out wasn’t his.

Hoarse. Dry. Animal.

A notification flashed across his vision.

INITIALIZATION COMPLETE

FORM: ZERO

ROLE: PREY UNIT

VALUE: MINIMAL

MEMORY WIPE: PENDING

Nazar froze.

“No.”

He remembered the room.

Lia.

Her thin arm with the catheter taped to it.

The medical bill glowing on the tablet screen.

The EdenWorks contract.

The fine print.

His signature.

Posthumous participation.

He had joked about it at the time.

“Well, if they turn me into an office printer after I die, at least I’ll finally be useful.”

Lia had laughed.

Then started coughing.

And he had signed.

Because what else were you supposed to do when your sister was dying and everything you owned amounted to one jacket, several debts, an aggressively optimistic résumé, and the irrational belief that any disaster could be solved with a signature if you found the right line?

Lia said it wasn’t responsibility.

It was control with a personality disorder.

He had been offended.

Mostly because she was right.

Nazar pushed himself upright.

His legs refused to cooperate.

His knees bent backward at an angle they shouldn’t. His spine pulled him toward the ground. His teeth scraped the inside of his lip.

He touched his face.

Not his.

Narrow. Bony. Too much mouth. Not enough human.

“This is a dream.”

The sky answered in a neutral system voice.

USER DISTRESS DETECTED

CALMING FILTER UNAVAILABLE FOR PREY UNITS

“Go to hell.”

VERBAL AGGRESSION TAGGED

ENTERTAINMENT POTENTIAL: LOW

Nazar stared at the message.

And suddenly, it wasn’t prey unit that made him angry.

It was low.

Even after death, he was being graded as though he had filled out a form incorrectly.

“Oh. Sorry I’m not suffering well enough for you.”

The system remained unimpressed.

Something nearby began to cry.

Nazar turned.

Others lay scattered across the clearing.

The same as him.

Gray. Thin. Twisted.

One crawled on all fours. Another slammed their head against the ground. Someone kept repeating a single word until it stopped being a word and became nothing but sound.

“Mom.”

“Mom.”

“Mom.”

A status hovered above each of them.

FORM: ZERO

ROLE: PREY UNIT

VALUE: MINIMAL

One of them looked at Nazar.

The eyes were human.

That was the worst part.

“Where are we?” the man whispered.

Nazar opened his mouth.

He never got the chance to answer.

Music began playing across the sky.

Bright, expensive music.

The kind used in commercials where beautiful people bought wrinkle-free immortality.

A woman’s voice poured over the clearing, warm and celebratory, almost loving.

“Dear participants of tonight’s premium session! The hunt will begin in thirty seconds. Zero Forms, please provide our users with an emotionally engaging experience.”

Spotlights ignited around the clearing.

The other Zero Forms screamed.

Some ran.

Some collapsed.

Some simply stood there because their minds had not yet decided how a person was supposed to behave after death.

Nazar ran too.

Not heroically.

Not gracefully.

First on all fours.

Then on two legs.

Then face-first into the mud because his new body had its own opinions about standing upright.

Laughter sounded behind him.

Human laughter.

Alive.

Confident.

“Oh, that one’s fast.”

Nazar looked back.

Three figures stood between the trees.

Not monsters.

Worse.

People.

Avatars in gleaming armor, with flawless faces, expensive masks, and weapons that looked like designer mistakes with built-in murder functions.

A username floated above one of them.

LORD MERCY

He was tall, dressed in a white cloak and a golden mask with no mouth. A slender rifle rested in his hands.

Camera drones circled him.

“Good evening, friends,” Lord Mercy said to the empty air. “Tonight, we’re testing the new First Fear package. Fresh Zero Forms, minimal memory retention, maximum emotional response. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Comments burst into the air around him.

MercyFan88: finish the one who keeps looking back!

golden_kid: do a slow kill

EdenPremium: emotional output stable, please continue

Nazar stopped.

Lord Mercy turned his head toward him.

“Oh. Can you hear me?”

Nazar ran.

A bullet struck the tree beside him.

The trunk didn’t splinter.

It dissolved into pixels, then rebuilt itself.

“Excellent response,” Lord Mercy said. “Not brilliant, but natural. I appreciate authenticity.”

Nazar tore through the undergrowth.

Branches lashed his face. His skin ripped as easily as wet paper. What leaked from the cuts wasn’t blood, but a dark liquid filled with red symbols.

Someone was crying ahead.

A Zero Form was trapped between the roots of a tree.

“Help me!” he screamed.

Nazar slowed down.

One second.

One stupid, human second.

Then came the shot.

The head of the man who had called to him burst into light.

Not blood.

Light.

A tiny sound escaped from the fragments.

Almost like thank you.

Then the system announced:

PREY UNIT RECYCLED

MEMORY WIPE SUCCESSFUL

Nazar dropped behind a tree trunk.

He wanted to vomit.

There was nothing inside him to bring up.

Lord Mercy approached slowly.

He wasn’t in a hurry.

He was performing for the cameras.

“You see?” he told his viewers. “Sometimes they try to help one another. It’s adorable. Inefficient, but adorable.”

The second player laughed.

“Mercy, let me have one.”

“In a moment. This one is mine. He has interesting eyes.”

Nazar clamped a hand over his mouth.

Breathe quietly.

No.

Don’t breathe at all.

One.

Two.

Three.

He wasn’t counting breaths. He might not even need them anymore.

He counted the spaces between his own stupid impulses: scream, run, attack, call for his mother even though she had been gone for years.

By the fourth pause, he almost had himself under control.

He didn’t know whether this body needed oxygen.

It twitched anyway.

Fear made him loud.

A broken piece of stone lay on the ground beside him.

Nazar grabbed it.

Ridiculous.

A rock against a rifle.

A dead copy against a premium subscriber.

But at least there was something in his hand.

Lord Mercy stepped around the tree.

“Hello there.”

Nazar threw the stone.

It struck the golden mask.

A soft chime.

The mask didn’t even crack.

The comments exploded with laughter.

LOL

this one’s hilarious

keep him alive longer

Lord Mercy touched his mask.

Then tilted his head.

“That was almost offensive.”

Nazar lunged at him.

Not because he thought he had a chance.

Because he could no longer stand there and wait.

He slammed into the armor, dug in his fingers and tried to bite. His teeth slid uselessly across the material.

A blow to the chest sent him flying.

He hit the ground.

Lord Mercy placed a boot against his throat.

Not hard.

Just hard enough.

“Look,” he told the viewers. “There’s still a human being inside him.”

Nazar wheezed.

“I… am human.”

Lord Mercy leaned closer.

Nazar’s gray face stared back at him from the polished gold of the mask.

“Legally, you’re not.”

Nazar went still.

Lord Mercy’s voice softened.

“You’re a contract. Content. An asset. But don’t worry. I don’t believe in cruelty.”

He raised the rifle.

“I give my prey beautiful deaths.”

“Go to hell.”

“Oh. A final line.”

The bullet entered through the back of Nazar’s skull.

The world shut down.

For a moment.

Only for a moment.

Then came a white screen.

PREY UNIT TERMINATED

PERFORMANCE: ABOVE BASELINE

EMOTIONAL OUTPUT: ACCEPTABLE

RECYCLING…

Nazar couldn’t move.

He had no body.

No mouth.

But he remembered Lia.

Her laughter.

Her fingers, cold from the IV.

Her message:

Don’t sign it, idiot. I don’t want to live because you died.

He had answered:

Too late. The idiot is already a legally registered asset.

The white screen flickered.

Nazar didn’t know whether it was possible to beg without a body.

He tried anyway.

Not elegantly. Not in words.

He pressed everything that was still him against the whiteness and thought:

Not yet.

It was the most consistent prayer he had ever managed.

Not save me.

Not forgive me.

Not send me back.

Just:

Not yet.

MEMORY WIPE INITIATED

Nazar felt something reach for Lia.

Not for the fear.

Not for the pain.

For her.

As though erasing a memory didn’t mean deleting a file.

It meant tearing something warm and living out of his chest.

Nazar screamed.

Without a voice.

Without a body.

But he screamed so hard the white screen cracked.

ERROR

MEMORY WIPE FAILED

A pause.

ANOMALY FLAGGED

Another pause.

FLAG LOST

The screen went black.

A gentle, professional female voice said:

“Thank you for your posthumous participation.”

Nazar woke up in a swamp.

With someone else’s leg between his teeth.