Last Vow of a Deadly Algorithm

PROLOGUE

Renata Pike had already filmed the moment three times before it happened, just to be safe.

She'd set her phone on the tripod in the corner of her garage studio an hour earlier, angled to catch the mirror and, in turn, everything in the room: the resistance bands hanging on their hooks, the kettlebells, and the black rubber flooring she'd installed herself two summers ago.

Her followers had been waiting for this workout for weeks.

She'd been counting down to it in her captions, telling them all that today was the day her Apogee watch said she'd hit her optimal peak.

It was, scientifically and biometrically, the single healthiest day of her tracked life, and she wanted them to see it happen in real time.

And Renata had built the last six months of content around hers.

"Oh my God," she said out loud, to no one, because the phone had stopped recording ten minutes ago. And there was nobody in the studio to hear her. She never allowed anyone into her studio, actually. She saw it as a sacred space.

She sat down on the weight bench and looked at the numbers on the app.

Her VO2 max had ticked up half a point in the last month.

Her resting heart rate had dropped to forty-eight.

The recovery score, the number Apogee used to measure how efficiently her body bounced back from strain, had never been higher.

She'd spent three years building toward a single day and the app was telling her she'd arrived.

God, it felt amazing.

She thought about what she'd say in the post. Something about how the number wasn't really the point. Maybe she’d discuss how it was about the discipline that got her there, though she knew her followers cared more about the number than the discipline.

She'd film the caption tomorrow morning when the light was better. Tonight she just wanted to sit with it.

The garage had been converted two years ago, insulated and drywalled, with a mini-split unit in the corner that kept it from turning into an oven in the summer or a freezer in January.

She'd hung blackout curtains over the single window that faced the backyard, more for the camera than for privacy.

The studio backed up against a wooded lot and nobody could see in even if they tried.

She liked working out alone in here at night.

It was the one hour of her day that wasn't being narrated for anyone.

And, quite honestly, it made her feel powerful.

She stood and reached for her towel again, pressing it against the back of her neck, and caught her reflection in the mirror.

She looked tired in a good way, the kind of tired that came from hard work.

She also allowed herself a moment of conceit because she did believe she looked quite hot when she was glistening with sweat.

She smiled at herself as she wiped down her face.

She then bent to unlace her shoes, one hand braced against the wall.

She didn't hear the door.

There was no creak, no click of the latch, nothing that would have told her someone had come into the garage behind her.

What she felt, a half-second before anything else registered, was a change in the air.

There was a presence at her back that hadn't been there a moment ago.

She started to turn, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling up.

A hand closed over her shoulder before she'd gotten halfway around. She let out a yelp as she felt a sharp pinch at the side of her neck. It was quick and precise, like an insect bite.

Her scream died in her throat, lowering in volume and force, as her whole body went rigid.

She reached up instinctively, her fingers grazing something cold and unfamiliar just below her jaw, and then her arm wouldn't do what she told it to do.

Her knees buckled first. She grabbed for the edge of the weight bench and missed it by inches, and the room tilted sideways in a way.

This was odd because inside, she felt surprisingly calm, almost curious, like she was watching herself fall from somewhere just outside her own body.

The last thing she saw before the black rubber flooring rushed up to meet her was her own reflection in the mirror. Behind it, for one instant, there was a shape she didn't have time to place.

On the bench beside her, the Apogee was still lit. The screen had gone dark and then relit itself with a new notification; it had detected a significant change in vitals. It glowed in the empty studio, unread, while the number it had spent three years building toward became something else entirely.