MICE Quotient: Event, Style: City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett, In the Slopes by China Mievalle, Uprooted by Naomi Novik, and The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

Natalie lurches up from bed as a fractal Thread tugs against her startled body. This Thread is strong and clearly hostile; her own Threads resist, but she feels her will unraveling with each tug.

Stand, her opponent orders. Obey.

Her core clenches as she sits straight up. Her feet slam down on the carpet.

The balcony, comes the command. Now.

He—she is sure it’s a he—wants her to jump, Natalie realizes as her body carries her to the ledge. A man stands in the shaded street below, arms folded as if waiting for a bus.

No. She manages, pulling with her own power. No! Her resistance shocks him and he lets her go. She falls backward onto the ground. When she gets up, he is gone.

###

In the Net, all living organisms were connected by fractal Threads, the glue that held things together. Living things tugged on one another all the time, usually without realizing what they did; how they manipulated each other.

Once she pushed away the other threads crowding her fractal Sight—she was skilled at this by now—Natalie was able to focus on her attacker. His thread was stiff but inflexible. Pull too far and there would be no give, only a snap.

She tugged on it now, not so hard as to enter into another pulling contest, just enough so that she could ride the line all the way across the length of the Net to get the info she needed.

A face. A name.

###

The door opened and I was upon him. We stumbled across the foyer together, my arms wrapped around his throat in a parody of loving embrace. He squealed in panic, surprise bulging out from beady eyes. He didn’t resist, not even to draw upon his Threads. As we bumped against a shoe-bench, he fumbled in a basket for the wooden handle of something long and straight, pulled it out and pressed it into my chest.

An umbrella. I laughed and pinned him to the wall. “Why choose me?” I demanded. “Of all the possible targets, why me?”

He only managed a “why not?” before I reached in and yanked out his Threads. I let go as his corpse slid down the wall.

###

He was in her head now, even more than when he’d been alive. She had denied it at first, chalking it up to adrenaline and trauma. But as the urge to hunt—to wrench upon other Threads—increased, Natalie was forced to admit the truth: when she pulled part her attacker’s Thread, some of the broken strands had interwoven with her own; he was a part of her now, embedded in her psyche where he was impossible to excise.

She could resist. Resign herself to a life of constant struggle against the deep hunger, but that would only wear her down, making her more vulnerable to other Threadhunters.

Instead, she closed her eyes and entered the Net, searching with her fractal Sight for other Threads similar to her own, others who also shared that hunger.

She found one and tugged. It was firm and sufficient.

Her next target.