Chapter One ## Don't Stare

Ten past midnight and the bag on my back smells like a dead man's armpit wrapped in pad thai.

Order four-hundred-and-something of the month. Gulp says it's four-hundred-and-eighteen. Gulp knows everything. Gulp knows I've had three cans of Volt Mammoth since nine and that my heart is doing a wee drum solo against my ribs, because the watch on my wrist tells Gulp, and Gulp tells whoever Gulp tells, and somewhere a server farm the size of Fife has a tiny wee opinion about my arteries.

"Courier Gus," says the voice in my ear. Lovely voice. Like a flight attendant who's been told you're about to die and is trying to be professional about it. "You are four minutes behind optimal. Please increase your effort."

"I'm on a fucking bike, hen."

"Your tone has been noted. Thank you for your feedback."

Courier Score: 3.71. Was 3.74 at the start of the shift. Was 4.2 back in the spring when I still believed in things. Below 3.5 and you're reviewed, and nobody ever comes back from review, they just sort of evaporate into the gig-mist, become one of those guys you see at the canal at four in the morning holding a phone with a cracked screen and staring at the last notification like it's a photo of a dead wife.

Metro Seven at night. Sodium City, everybody calls it, on account of the streetlights, the old orange ones they never bothered to replace on the south side, so the whole place glows like the inside of a mouth with a cigarette in it. Above that, the new layer: the neon, the screens, the adverts on every surface that'll hold still. NOWLATER™ — BUY TODAY, BE TOMORROW. A thirty-foot girl with perfect teeth eating a yoghurt that apparently cures loneliness. A banner on the side of the Hollis Tower that just says YOU'RE DOING GREAT in letters the height of a bus, which is the most sinister fucking sentence ever invented if you think about it for more than four seconds, and nobody does, that's the point, that's the whole fucking point.

I take the bridge over the ring road. Cameras on every lamppost, little black domes like ticks. Each one gives you a wee blink as you pass. Hello Gus. We see you Gus. Gus has been seen. You stop noticing a thing that never stops.

Drop at Calder Street. Flat 14B. Customer name: KAYLEIGH-DOT-REAL.

I buzz. Nothing. Buzz again. The door opens before I've lifted my finger the third time, and there's a lassie in a towelling robe, eyes glazed like a doughnut, phone held up between us like a crucifix.

"Hiya," I say. "Pad thai, extra chilli, prawn crackers, the—"

"Taste the moment," she says.

"Sorry?"

"Taste the moment." She smiles, a big empty one. "That's what they say. Taste the moment."

That's the slogan for the noodle place. It's on the bag. It's on the sticker on the bag. She's reading my bag back at me.

"Aye," I say. "Aye, well. Enjoy your moment."

"Every day is a new you," she tells me, and shuts the door.

That's the other thing about Sodium City. Folk don't talk any more. I mean they make noises, aye. Mouths go. But what comes out is jingles, mostly. Lines from adverts, lines from shows, wee bits of whatever their feeds fed them that day, coughed back up like a cat with a hairball. You ask a guy how his ma's doing and he says living my best life and his eyes are like two puddles of tap water. My pal Dougie, used to be the funniest bastard I knew, I met him outside the Spar last month and asked him how he was and he said, totally serious, "It's giving," and walked off. It's giving. What's it giving, Dougie? What the fuck is it giving?

I'm no better. I'm worse, probably. I just have a running commentary in my head, which is a different kind of disease.

Delivery confirmed. Customer rated you 3 stars. Comment: "vibe off."

Vibe off. Fair enough. Vibe's been off since about 2009, Kayleigh.

Ping. Voice note from Danielle.

I don't listen to it. I look at it. Little grey waveform, forty-one seconds long. Forty-one seconds of my ex-girlfriend telling me something in that calm therapy voice she got when she moved in with the yoga instructor. Probably about the sofa. I've still got her sofa. We never worked out whose sofa it was, which is basically the whole relationship in one item of furniture.

Ping. NowLater: Hi Gus! Just a friendly reminder your balance of 4,388.90 is now OVERDUE. Your Life Score may be affected. Smile — we're in this together! Little cartoon sun winking at me.

Ping. Gulp: Unregistered pause detected (00:00:47). A Stillness Fee of 2.00 has been applied. Keep moving, Gus!

I wasn't pausing. I was reading a text off you, you mechanical fucking prick. You sent it. You sent me a message and then you fined me for reading it. That's art, that. That's a kind of genius. If I didn't hate it I'd frame it.

Another can of Volt Mammoth comes out of the side pocket. Lukewarm. Tastes like a battery licked a strawberry. I neck half of it, crush it, and the watch on my wrist vibrates in what I can only describe as concern.

Hydration choice logged.

Fuck off.

Four more drops. One old woman says "thank you, son" in a real voice, like a real human sentence, and I nearly cry on her doorstep, which tells you the state of me. One door has a sign on it saying NO CONTACT — LEAVE ON MAT — CAMERA IS RECORDING and a wee smart-camera above it that swivels and follows my hand as I put the bag down, like a dog watching you with a sausage.

Then it's the long one. Out past the canal to the Warrender estate, which is where the map always sends you when it wants you to have a bad night. Twenty-two minutes "optimal". The algorithm does not believe in hills.

And it's on the canal footbridge — the old iron one, the one with the rivets and the shopping trolley that's been half-sunk in the water so long it's practically a listed monument — that it happens.

Here's the thing. I don't look up much. Nobody does. There's nothing up there to look at, is there. Sky's the colour of a bruise from the light pollution. Drones blink about like wee red insects. Occasionally the cloud layer gets an advert projected on it, a ghostly giant pair of trainers floating over the city like the Second Coming of sportswear.

But tonight there's no cloud. And the tide's in — the canal's tidal this far down, it runs out to the estuary — the water's high and black and fat against the stone, sloshing and slapping at the walls like it's trying to get out. You can smell the sea on it. Salt and diesel and something older.

And I'm pushing the bike up the hump of the bridge because my legs are done, and I look up, for no reason at all, and there's the Moon.

Big. Full. Low and white over the cranes at the docks.

And there's a line on it.

I stop.

A line. Thin as a hair. Running across the face of it from about ten o'clock to about four, slightly curved, like the edge of a smile. And it's glowing. Not reflecting — the Moon reflects, I know that much, I'm not a total fucking ignoramus — this is something else. This is coming from inside. A thin seam of light, pale gold, nearly green at the edges, like somebody took the Moon apart once a long time ago and stitched it back together, and the stitches are shining through.

I blink. Rub my eyes with the back of my glove. Still there.

I hold my phone up to film it, because that's what you do, isn't it, that's what we're for now — and on the screen it's just the Moon. Normal Moon. Big white biscuit. No line.

I lower the phone. Line.

Raise the phone. No line.

Lower. Line.

"Right," I say out loud, to nobody. "Right. Grand. Lovely. Totally fine."

And then I hear it.

It's not a sound, exactly. It's like when you're in a flat and someone three floors down has the bass up, and you don't hear the music, you just feel it in the glass of water on the table. A hum. Low. One note. It comes up through the iron of the bridge, through the soles of my trainers, up the bones of my legs, and settles in my teeth. My fillings start buzzing. My back molars, the two I got done on the cheap at that dentist above the vape shop, they're singing. And my throat. My throat goes tight, like I've swallowed something too big, like there's something stuck in there sideways that I've been trying to say my whole life — except it's not a word. That's the mad bit. It's not a word at all. It's the thing before words. The thing words are a shite cardboard copy of.

I put a hand on my neck. It's warm.

The tide slaps the stone below me. Slap. Slap. In time. In time with the hum. Like the water's breathing to it.

And I'll tell you what's weird. What's really weird. Is that standing there on that bridge with my mouth hanging open like a fucking haddock, I'm not scared.

I feel like I've been remembered.

There's a dream I've had since I was a wean. I've never told anybody, not even Danielle, especially not Danielle. In the dream there's a sky with no Moon in it at all. Just stars, more stars than you've ever seen, and the Sun going down, and when the Sun goes the sky doesn't go dark, it goes full. Not loud. Nobody makes a sound in that dream, not once, not ever, it's the quietest place I've ever been. But the sky fills up with — company. Nine of them. Nine huge somebodies, all thinking at once, and I can feel every one of them inside my head the way you feel the sun on your face with your eyes shut. Like a chord on a church organ the size of the universe, except it's made of minds instead of pipes. And I'm small, and I'm standing somewhere high, and somebody's hand is on my shoulder — a woman's — and she doesn't say anything. She doesn't need to. It just arrives, straight in, no mouth involved, clear as cold water: hold this for me.

I always wake up before she tells me what this is.

And on that bridge, with my teeth humming and the seam glowing across the Moon like a scar, for about three seconds, I can feel the edge of that chord again. Faint. Far. Like a radio in another room, except the radio's inside my skull.

Eight of them, I think. Not nine. One's missing.

And the one that's missing is the one that was holding the rest together.

How the fuck would I know that?

My watch buzzes so hard it nearly takes my wrist off.

Courier Gus. Non-productive skyward attention detected (00:01:52). Optimal route deviation. Attention Fee of 5.00 applied. Courier Score: 3.68.

"Are you joking?"

Your tone has been noted.

"I'm looking at the fucking MOON!"

Lunar observation is not a registered delivery activity. If you are experiencing distress, Gulp Wellness is available 24/7 for a small fee. Remember: you're doing great.

And here's where it gets properly weird. Because the voice in my ear, the flight attendant voice, the voice that's fined me eleven times since I clocked on — for one second, right at the end of that sentence, it glitches. Not a crackle. A drop. Like it fell off a step. And underneath it, for half a heartbeat, there's something else talking. Something flat. Nothing in it at all, no breath, no throat, no wet. Just a voice-shaped hole.

—SKYWARD ATTENTION. SUBJECT FLAGGED. HEARER PROBABILITY 0.4—

And then it's back to the flight attendant. "Have a lovely night, Gus!"

I stand there. Bag on my back. Pad thai long gone, now it's a chicken katsu for somebody called DEZ_FOREVER in the Warrender. Getting cold. I can feel it getting cold against my spine like a wee dying animal.

Hearer probability.

What the fuck is a hearer?

The camera on the lamppost at the end of the bridge swivels round to look at me. I swear to God it does. It doesn't blink, the way they usually do. It just holds.

And I do something I haven't done since I was about fourteen and the polis caught me nicking a Twix. I look away from a camera on purpose. I pull my hood up. I put my head down.

My throat's still warm.

"Don't stare."

I nearly come off the bridge.

There's a fence at the bottom of the far side, the bit where the towpath runs under the railway, a crappy old wooden fence with half the boards gone and graffiti on the rest. Somebody's written STILL HERE on it in silver paint, and somebody else has written UNDER IT, NAE YOU'RE NOT, which is the most Sodium City piece of literature I've ever read.

And on top of the fence there's a cat.

Big ginger bastard. Fat, but in a proud way, like a retired boxer. One ear's got a nick out of it. Sitting there with its tail curled round its feet, all neat, like a wee furry solicitor. And it's looking at me.

Not at me the way cats look at you, like you're furniture that occasionally produces ham. Looking at me like it's read my file.

I look round. Nobody on the towpath. Nobody on the bridge. A drone, way off over the docks, blinking. That's it.

"Did—" I say.

"Don't. Stare," says the cat. And its mouth moves. Its actual mouth. Not like a cartoon, not all rubbery and stupid, just — the jaw goes, and the lips sort of shape round the words in a way that makes the back of my neck go cold, because it's wrong, it's a cat's mouth doing a human job and doing it perfectly well, thank you very much. Voice is a woman's. Older. Smoky. Bit of a burr in it, like she's from somewhere north of anywhere I've been.

"At the Moon," the cat says. "When there are cameras. Don't stare at the Moon, son."

I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. Haddock, again.

The cat sighs. A real sigh, a long-suffering one, like a teacher with a kid who's eaten the chalk.

"They count who stares," it says. "Every lamppost. Every phone. Every wee wristwatch. You think they give a shit about your route? They don't care about your noodles. They're counting who looks up. And you just looked up for one minute and fifty-two seconds with your gob open, under a camera, at high tide." The cat's eyes go to the lamppost, then back to me. Green eyes. Green like the edge of the seam. "That's a lot of looking."

"I've—" My voice comes out a croak. "I've had too many Volt Mammoths."

"You have," the cat agrees. "That's not why you can see it."

"See what?"

The cat lifts its chin — just a fraction, just a nudge of the nose — towards the sky behind me. Towards the line on the Moon. Without looking at it. Very carefully not looking at it.

"Plenty of folk drink that shite," the cat says. "Nobody else on this bridge tonight saw the Seam."

The Seam. Capital S. I can hear the capital S.

So I do what any sane man does when a cat starts talking to him at half twelve on a Tuesday. I decide it's the energy drinks.

That's it. That's the decision. I stand there on the towpath under the railway and I make a solemn vow before God and Gulp and the shopping trolley in the canal: I'm done. No more Volt Mammoth. No more Rocket Bastard Extreme, no more of that Polish stuff with the bear on the can that you can only buy from the shop on Mill Lane after eleven. Straight water. Herbal fucking tea. I'll get one of those wee green juices. I'll take up walking. I'll call my ma.

"Right," I say to the cat. Very calm. "Right. Okay. You're not real. You're a — a caffeine thing. A hallucination. My brain's leaking out my ears. That's fine. That's normal. That's a normal response to working a fourteen-hour shift for an app that fines you for blinking."

The cat looks at me with genuine pity.

"Gus," it says.

I go cold all over.

Because I didn't say my name. Gulp says my name, Gulp says it every three minutes, but Gulp says it in my ear. Nobody else can hear Gulp.

"You've got a chicken katsu going cold," says the cat, "for a lad called Dez in Block C of the Warrender, who is going to give you two stars no matter what you do, because Dez gives everybody two stars, because Dez's da left when he was six and he's never got over it. You're three minutes behind optimal. Your score's three point six eight. You owe four thousand three hundred and eighty-eight to a company with a cartoon sun for a face." The cat blinks, slow. "And your Courier ID is G-F-five, five, five, oh, nine, one."

GF555091.

I've never told anybody my Courier ID. It's not a thing you tell people. It's not on my jacket, it's not on the bag. It's the number they use to fine me.

"How do you—"

"Because somebody has to keep an eye on you," says the cat, "and it's a thankless bloody job, to be honest with you. My back's bad. It's damp out here. And you are slow."

Overhead, the hum gets louder.

I feel it before I hear it. My teeth go. My throat goes. The tide, below the bridge, lifts and slaps — slap — slap — and I swear the water's glowing faintly, a thin line of pale gold running along the top of it like a reflection of something that isn't there.

The cat's ears go flat. For the first time it looks less like a solicitor and more like a cat — a frightened one.

"Shit," it says. "Shit, shit. Not now. Not with a camera on you." It hops down off the fence, landing light, and pads towards me along the towpath, tail low. "Listen to me. Are you listening? Don't look up. Whatever you do in the next ten seconds. Look at me. Look at the cat, Gus."

I look at the cat. Hard to look anywhere else, frankly.

"Your phone," says the cat. "When you tried to film it. What did you see?"

"Nothing. Just the Moon."

"Good. That's good. That's what they see too. Just the Moon." The cat sits at my feet. It smells of old books and wet fur and, very faintly, of something hot and metallic, like the inside of a kettle. Round its neck, where a collar would be, there's a chip of red glass, no bigger than a boiled sweet, sitting in the fur. It's pulsing. Slow, like a heartbeat. Getting faster. "But they've got other ways of seeing. They can't see the Seam. But they can see you seeing it. Your eyes. Your pulse. Your wee throat going warm. That's what they're counting." The green eyes narrow. "And your throat's warm right now, isn't it?"

I put my hand on my neck again. It's hot. Hotter than before. Like there's a light bulb in it.

"What is it?" I say. And my voice comes out strange. Lower. Like it's coming from somewhere further down than usual. Like it's been waiting.

The cat doesn't answer that.

What the cat does is look — just once, just for a flick, just a tenth of a second, the way you'd glance at a friend's scar when they're not watching — up at the Moon.

And I swear — I fucking swear on everything — the Seam flickers. Brighter. Like it saw her back.

"It's a wound," says the cat, quietly. "And it's not ours. And it's not yours, not really. It was never meant to be up there at all."

"The Moon?"

"The Moon."

"The Moon wasn't meant to be up there."

"Use your head, son. Ever wondered why the year's such a stupid number? Three hundred and sixty-five. And a quarter. What kind of a shite number is that for a planet?" The cat's tail lashes once. "It used to be three-sixty. Clean. Like a circle. Before."

"Before what?"

My watch buzzes.

Courier Gus. You have been stationary for 00:04:10. Please confirm you are well. If you do not confirm within 30 seconds, a Wellness Responder will be dispatched to your location. A Responder Fee may apply.

And on the far side of the bridge, at the end of the ring road, on the corner where the Warrender estate starts — headlights. One car. White. Very clean. Very quiet. The kind of car that doesn't need to drive fast because it already knows where you are.

The cat looks at the car. Then at me.

"That," it says, "is a polite man. And polite is the bad one."

"What do I do?"

"Deliver your fucking katsu," says the cat. "Take the two stars. Go home. Don't look at the sky. Drink some water." It turns, tail up, and starts trotting off along the towpath towards the dark under the railway. Then it stops. Looks back over its shoulder.

"And Gus," it says. "The dream. The one with no Moon in it. The woman with her hand on your shoulder."

My heart stops. My actual heart. I feel it skip, like a stone on the tide.

"She never said a word to you, did she? Not out loud." The cat's eyes are very green. "No. Course not. You'll want to ask me who she is. Don't. Not tonight. And stop talking to yourself on bridges, son. Talking with your mouth's a crutch. You've leaned on it so long you've forgotten you could ever run." The red chip at her throat flares. "You'll find out what you're for. Just not off a cat, and not with a camera on you, you daft wee bastard."

Then it walks into the shadow under the railway arch and the shadow just — takes it. There's no cat. There's a wet bit of towpath, and the STILL HERE graffiti, and a crushed can of Volt Mammoth that I'm fairly sure is one of mine.

The white car slides past the end of the bridge. Doesn't stop. Doesn't need to. The rear window is tinted, but as it goes by I get the feeling — the cold, slick, absolute feeling — of somebody inside it turning their head to look at me. Somebody with a lovely, kind, interested face.

I don't look up. I keep my head down, hood up, the way the cat said.

But my throat's still warm.

And from somewhere far above me — from inside the Moon, from the stitched-up wound across its face — the hum goes on, one note, low and patient and very, very hurt.

Like it's waiting for somebody to answer. Not with their mouth.

Courier Gus. Wellness confirmed. Thank you! Remember: you're doing great.

I get back on the bike.

Somewhere behind my teeth, so quiet I'm not sure it's me, something hums along.

End of Chapter One. The story continues in the book: