Nita skimmed the news and was horrified to find even the general news was now talking about how the black market was on the hunt for a teenage girl with supposed healing powers. Thank God for laws, because the news couldn’t legally show the video causing all this—a video of a kidnapped minor being cut and healing wasn’t public-viewing-approved in most places. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to make its way from the dark web to the regular web eventually.

Nita swore to herself. This was getting out of control. When her captor, Reyes, had first uploaded the video onto the dark web as proof of what Nita could do, Nita had known she’d be screwed. She was a new unnatural, unknown, and people would pay for that. Especially if they thought they could gain some of her power by eating her.

The emptiness where her toe used to be tingled. She’d already had one person eat her flesh, though she hadn’t seen any effects, especially not the immortality he wanted, given that he was dead now.

She rubbed her temples. She’d never imagined she’d be so in demand that gangs of black market dealers would literally have gunfights over a body that might or might not be hers.

She forced her fingers to unclench on her phone. She needed to leave Toronto. Corrupt INHUP agents had sold out her location, and it was time Nita got out, before more black market hunters found her. But running away wasn’t going to fix the problem.

Luckily, Nita had several other ideas that might.

She went onto the dark net websites, scrolling through black market forums, searching up what people were saying about her. Her mother had told her she’d started to plant seeds that the video was doctored and fake, and Nita saw a few comments about that, but not enough, not nearly enough.

Her mother’s idea was solid—make the video seem like a fake. Some people would always believe it, and it was already so talked about that it might not do much now, but it couldn’t hurt to try. She couldn’t rely on her mother for that sort of thing, though, and she made a mental note to think of ways to discredit the video.

She scrolled through other forums, picking up information nuggets like a gamer on a quest, except the consequences for this were very, very real.

Sighing, she moved her attention to the general forums and paused, eyes catching on something unusual. It was a request for information on the location of a black market dealer who went by the name Monica. Nita clicked it.

Someone was trying to buy information on her mother.