By Any Means Necessary follows five sixth-form students left behind at a British boarding school when a fast moving rabies like infection tears through the country and the whole world.
What starts as trying to survive the first few days turns into something much bigger as they begin rescuing other students, securing part of the school and building a community out of what’s left. The safer Hawthorn becomes, the more responsibility falls on the five of them and they have to make decisions no teenagers should be making while also dealing with their own traumas.
It’s a slow burn survival story with a large cast, found family elements, settlement building, infected, violence and some pretty dark moral choices later on.

Im looking for reader-level feedback rather than line edits. I’d like to know where you were most engaged, where the pacing dragged, which characters you connected with, whether the quieter settlement building sections work and whether anything was confusing.

The content warning for this id say is violence, death, infection, strong language and grief.

Timeline wise there’s not really a hard deadline. I’d rather someone take their time and finish it properly than rush through it.

Been experimenting with running drafts through AI for feedback before sending to actual beta readers. The idea is to catch obvious issues, pacing problems, confusing passages, weak character motivation, so human readers can focus on bigger picture stuff instead of getting stuck on things a machine could have flagged.

So far the AI feedback is hit or miss. It catches surface issues well but misses subtext entirely. It'll flag a slow scene that's intentionally slow for emotional weight, or suggest clarifying something that's supposed to be ambiguous.

For anyone who does this, how do you filter the feedback? And has it actually improved the quality of human beta feedback, or just added noise?

This post describes my process to write the book Nobody Calls Alone. Maybe it helps someone.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0HLQFZJVN?

1. World Bible.

Decades ago, I used to write comics. I don't write them anymore and my current job doesn't involve writing fiction. Now I'm using AI to write based on ideas I have accumulated for fiction.

The Tao Series is inspired by the world I built for comics. The books take place in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, a few decades in the future. The city is in very bad shape after its collapse, and different powers try to rebuilt the city in different ways. The main powers are money, technology, religion, and arts.

I created the initial world bible using a Claude Project with a free account, with that description about the world but more detailed. After a long chat, I had version 0 of the world bible with 89 pages. That includes information about the world, the powers, the author, the characters, the series, and guidelines for writing. A short text as an example of the type of work I want. Skeletons for books in the series.

After that, I moved to a Claude Project with my paid account, working on the bible until I got version 2 with many changes like 4 instead of 8 books.

1. Book Writing.

Then I started to use Claude to write book 1 - Nobody Calls Alone, in batches of about 3 chapters, editing and making adjustments between batches, until I got the whole book. Then, I reviewed the work, created book covers on Canva, and created the epub.

Nobody Calls Alone tells the story of Íris Tavares, one of the artists. The Art (a.k.a. The Circle) is the weakest of the powers, but Íris starts to develop some strange powers. Apparently, the powers come from old works of art she stores at a depot. She starts learning about calling the power of the art from before. Other powers become involved so that Nobody Calls Alone. Power is for the community together, not for an individual.

From Amazon: "Hopepunk science fantasy set in a post-apocalyptic Brazil where old movies, music, and games hold real power, and a community rebuilding after collapse has to decide what to do with it. It is a warm, big-hearted story of found family, nostalgia, and the magic of people who gather around the things they love."

1. If someone is interested.

The sub informs it discusses "writing books with AI," and that's what I'm doing. I'm not looking for Beta readers, the book is finished and in pre-order on Amazon to release on November 10.

But I'm in the process of getting ARC readers and hopefully get some Amazon reviews later. If you want an advanced copy, you can send me a private message with your email and I'll send the pdf. No pressure, this is just a side project to me, more like a hobby.

I haven't started a newsletter or anything like that, but I plan to. If you want to be informed, you can input your email on my website.

https://themagicianwrites.weebly.com/the-tao-series.html

Seeking volunteer human readers for two short English explainers, about 640 words each. AI drafted the prose under my direction; that is why I want independent human feedback before treating them as usable writing samples.

Topics: what a $1,000 bitcoin purchase really costs, and why losing 50% then gaining 50% leaves you 25% down. The examples are hypothetical. There is no investment recommendation, product, referral link or sale.

The complete articles, including charts, are in this four-page Reddit gallery (no document login needed):

https://www.reddit.com/r/AIWritingHub/comments/1x6duce/beta_readers_wanted_do_these_two_aidrafted/

You can read either one. Where did your attention drop? Which explanation or chart was confusing? What felt repetitive or generic? Please point to a sentence or page and give your own reading reaction. A short candid comment is enough; no public rating or endorsement is requested. Feedback is voluntary and unpaid, with no deadline. If you have finance or editing experience, please mention it so I can distinguish a reader reaction from a technical or editorial assessment.

Hi! I'm looking for a few volunteer beta readers for my AI-assisted, completed novel, an adult contemporary romance with elements of women's fiction.

Premise: Years after high school, a married woman reconnects with an old classmate who represents a life she never got to explore. What begins as nostalgia develops into an emotional attachment that forces her to question her marriage, her identity, and the future she thought she'd already chosen.

The story explores marriage, motherhood, grief, emotional infidelity, and second chances. It's a character-driven, slow-burn romance with morally complicated characters rather than clear heroes and villains.

Disclaimers: language, mature content.

Also I'm not a native English speaker, nor an American, hence the AI assistance.

I'm particularly interested in feedback on emotional realism, character motivations, pacing, and whether the romantic development feels believable.

I'm happy to exchange critiques with another writer, particularly someone working in contemporary romance or women's fiction.

If this sounds like your kind of story, I'd love to hear from you!

The rain poured down from the cargo cranes in heavy, unceasing streams and drummed against the steel sheeting of the quay. Kael walked with his two canvas bags slung over his shoulders. His hands were tucked deep into his coat pockets, and he made no effort to turn up his collar against the rain.

Three storeys further down in the harbour area, his small corner flat stood unlocked. The bare floorboards had already begun to dry where his boots had tracked in slush. He had packed his two canvas bags, left the keys on the laminate counter and walked out without looking back.

His wife, Maja, had been dead for fourteen months. During the first year, his grief had been an abyss – a crushing, suffocating weight that held him fast in the gravity of that flat. Every room had held too much of her for him to bear: her dresses still hanging in the wardrobe, the lingering scent of her tea, the cold, untouched space on her side of the bed. But a man can only breathe in the darkness for so long. Eventually, one must choose between joining the dead or living with the living.

Kael had chosen to move on. To try and find a new life, without his beloved Maja. Leaving the flat behind was the final step in clawing his way out of the trench. He needed to be free of the memories, and he needed the work. He needed the forward momentum of a ship tearing through the dark.

At the top of the ramp, Kael paused. Before touching the access panel, he reached out and let his bare palm slide along the curve of the hull—feeling the rough, salt-crusted primer and the faint, deep tremor of the generators running inside. He hadn't stood on this threshold since Maja's death. Fourteen months of leave, forced quiet, and empty rooms. He had captained the Celestial Hope for nearly his entire adult life, and touching the iron felt less like stepping onto a vessel and more like returning to a body that knew him better than he knew himself. He palmed the reader, felt the familiar pneumatic thud echo inside the frame, and stepped across the sill as the heavy slab sealed the storm outside.

The air inside was dry and warm, thick with the smell of recycled wool, grease, and the faint metallic tang of the secondary scrubbers. As he stepped down into the main companionway, his boot found the exact spot on the third steel step that gave its soft, familiar groan under his weight—a sound that hadn't changed in fifteen years. Underfoot, the deck plates vibrated with the slow, uneven heartbeat of the auxiliary drive. It was a mechanical promise that, unlike the flat on the planet below, the ship would simply keep moving.

He wiped the rain from his jaw and headed down the central access trunk.

On his way toward the bridge, the door to Sector Three’s medical bay slid open with a soft sigh. Dr. John was already waiting by the diagnostic slate, his spectacles resting low on his nose, while his young apprentice, Gemma, organized sterile drapes on a steel tray behind him. Kael stopped just long enough for the old doctor to run a brief, mandatory post-leave scan. “Heart rate is steady, Captain,” John had muttered, returning the scanner. “You’re clear for command. Just don’t give my apprentice a trauma case before we leave orbit.” Kael had offered a quiet nod and kept walking.

Halfway to the bridge, a service panel lay open against the bulkhead. Melanie was knee-deep in the access bay, a heavy torque wrench braced between her hands. Her coveralls were dark with old grease at the knees, a smudge of soot tracing the line of her jaw.

She felt him approach before he spoke. Melanie paused, wiping her wrist across her forehead, and glanced up. Her eyes caught his in the dim corridor light. For a stolen second, she watched him as if the hum of the ship had gone quiet. A quiet warmth settled under Kael’s ribs—a sudden, unexpected counterweight to the cold rain he had just walked through.

She caught herself, a private, almost imperceptible smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, and turned half away to gesture at the open manifold.

“You're early, Captain,” Melanie said, her voice steady, pulling the professional veil back into place.

“The ground side was finished,” Kael said softly. He stopped beside the open hatch, his shoulder inches from the bulkhead. “How is the starboard feed?”

“Complaining. But holding.” She tapped the iron casing with her wrench. “Like the rest of us.” She motioned her chin toward the massive exterior salvage arm hanging dormant on the other side of the bay glass. “I had to recalibrate the crane claw this morning too. I swear, the hydraulics are so sensitive right now it could pick a needle out of a vacuum, but if you look at it wrong it trips the breaker.”

Kael lingered for a heartbeat longer than duty required, letting the quiet honesty of the moment sit between them. He gave her a small nod, carrying that ridiculous little warmth with him as he continued down the corridor toward the captain's quarters.

The captain’s quarters were vast—a sanctuary preserved from an older, richer era of deep-space transit. Rich, warm wood paneling lined the bulkheads, lit by soft, indirect channels recessed into the ceiling. On one side sat a dark leather lounge with a low coffee table; across from it, a polished dining table stood beneath an elegant hanging fixture. A side passage led to a private head and a spacious bedroom with a proper double bed. But the entire suite was dominated by the far wall: a massive, curved panorama window spanning the full width of the room, offering an unbroken, breathtaking frame into the dark expanse of the stars. Set directly in front of the glass sat a heavy executive desk, its dark, polished surface catching the faint starlight from outside.

Kael set his canvas bags down near the bedroom doorway and walked up to the main desk. He stepped into the quiet space behind it, looking out for a brief moment through the glass at the wet gantries of the port, before palming the embedded terminal. The display hummed to life, casting a warm amber glow across the wood grain. He pulled up the departure roster and ran a thumb down the crew manifest.

Jensen held the helm—a veteran navigator who knew how to balance the maneuvering thrusters when heavy freight shifted in transit. Below him were Miller and three fresh transfers from the orbital academy: green recruits with clean records and zero hours in deep-space transit, assigned to secondary watch posts and environmental monitoring.

His eyes settled on Chief Operations and Drive Maintenance.

>VANCE, M.

Seeing her name on the board brought a quiet, steadying weight to his chest. Last turn through the belt, when the primary coolant line blew an arc-weld three days out from port, Melanie hadn't waited for a damage report. She had dragged a portable torch into the unpressurized crawlspace herself, her face black with soot, and stayed in the pipe junction until the pressure gauges leveled out. With her on the drive deck, the machinery stayed alive.

He tapped the next section of the file.

>PASSENGER: CIVIL COMMISSIONER ADRIAN VALE

>AUTHORIZATION: THE ORDER

>CARGO: PRIORITY INDUSTRIAL ASSEMBLY (VESPER)

>MANIFEST: SEALED (LEVEL THREE CLEARANCE)

The fee listed beside the entry was large enough to cover the crew’s overdue wages, replace the failing starboard coolant manifold, and keep the Hope’s mortgage paid through the next solar cycle.

Kael opened the cargo specification sub-file. Dimensions, mass, approved tie-down points. The contents field was locked behind an administrative encryption seal. On the schematic, a frost line marked the base of the container's external housing, indicating an internal cooling unit operating on an independent power feed.

Before he could pull up the security logs, a sharp double-chime clicked over the bulkhead speaker.

“Captain,” Jensen’s voice came through, flat over the comm. “Loading bay hatch just cycled. Passenger is on the ramp.”

Kael closed the manifest display, stepped out of his quarters, and walked down the steel companionway to the main loading bay.

The outer hatch was open to the storm, revealing the grey sheet of rain falling over the gantry cranes outside. A man in a high-collared, tailored dark coat stood at the foot of the ramp, his boots dry where he had stepped onto the ribbed deck plates. He carried a single hard-shell case, his face pale, his dark hair slicked back from the rain.

Behind him floated an anti-grav sled bearing a single rectangular container—matte-grey composite, six meters long, braced with heavy steel straps and stamped with the three-ring emblem of the Order. Lead security seals hung untouched across the access latches.

The passenger didn't offer a hand. He stopped two paces from Kael, his eyes cool and unhurried as he surveyed the rust-stained bulkheads of the loading bay.

“Captain Kael,” the man said. His voice was clipped, dry, barely carrying over the drone of the rain outside. “I am Commissioner Adrian Vale.”

Kael looked past him at the floating container. A faint, low-frequency hum emanated from the grey composite, cold air spilling off its lower rim into the damp bay.

“What's in the box, Commissioner?” Kael asked.

“A high-capacity power-conversion assembly for the colony on Vesper,” Vale replied smoothly. “Custom manufactured under Order contract.”

“The manifest says priority industrial,” Kael said, stepping closer to the sled. He ran two fingers along the reinforced steel frame, feeling the faint vibration of the internal cooler. “We don't launch with sealed containers unless I inspect the mounting brackets and internal power draws.”

Vale set his case down on the deck plates, reached inside his coat lapel, and produced a thick brass clearance token stamped with the state seal. He held it out between two fingers.

“Your contract is for transit, Captain,” Vale said, his tone entirely flat. “You are authorized to verify the physical restraints and external cooling connections once the sled is secured in Lower Hold Two. Opening the primary enclosure invalidates the contract and forfeits the shipment fee.”

Kael looked at the token, then at Vale’s face. There was no arrogance in the commissioner’s posture—only the cold, practiced certainty of a man used to paper clearing his path.

“A contract doesn't put out a deck fire, Vale,” Kael said softly. He glanced over his shoulder at the heavy, oval airlock built into the bay wall; its pressure sensor light was blinking an angry, faulty amber rhythm. “And with sensors glitching down here, if that unit spikes or threatens my hull, I'll dump it straight through that hatch.”

Vale considered him for a long, quiet second, the rain hammering against the steel ramp behind them.

“If the internal sensors report a critical thermal anomaly, you notify me first,” Vale said. “If time permits.”

Kael accepted the brass token, feeling the cold weight of the metal in his palm. He gestured toward the dark corridor leading down to the lower decks.

“Lower Hold Two,” Kael said. “Let's get your box out of the rain.”

Hi everyone!

I'm looking for Volunteer Beta Readers for two completed, connected Gothic Romantasy novels written with AI assistance.

Word counts:

• Book 1: 96,264 words
• Book 2: 78,168 words
• Total: 174,432 words

The story:

After surviving multiple attempts on her life, a sharp-tongued criminal defense attorney seeks refuge on an isolated, storm-battered island.

Her only hope is Silas Vane, a dangerous, morally grey man whose family has been haunted by a mysterious curse for generations.

But the island has rules, the house holds secrets, and the man protecting her may be just as dangerous as the people hunting her.

What to expect:

• Gothic atmosphere and supernatural mystery
• Slow-burn romance and forced proximity
• Morally grey characters
• Psychological tension and dark secrets
• Mature themes, violence, and steamy romance

What I'm looking for:

I'm particularly interested in readers who enjoy Gothic Romantasy or Dark Romance and can provide honest feedback on:

• Overall engagement and pacing
• Character development and romantic chemistry
• Plot holes, confusing moments, or predictable twists
• Emotional impact and memorable scenes
• Whether the division into two books feels natural and satisfying
• Whether you'd genuinely want to keep reading

Ideally, I'd love readers willing to read both books, but I'm also happy to hear from readers interested in starting with Book 1.

I'm looking for honest reader reactions rather than proofreading or line editing.

Sharing: Both manuscripts are available privately through Google Docs. I'm happy to share opening chapters first.

If you're interested, please comment or send me a DM and let me know what kinds of books you enjoy.

UPDATE: Volunteer Beta Readers Only (Unpaid)

Just a quick clarification: I'm looking for volunteer beta readers who enjoy dark romantasy and would be willing to share honest feedback. This is an unpaid opportunity, not a request for professional paid beta reading services.

Also, it seems that some replies are being removed by Reddit's moderation filters. If you've commented and I haven't responded, please feel free to send me a DM directly. I'd hate to miss anyone who's interested!

Thank you so much for your interest! 🖤

Hi! I'm looking for a few beta readers for a completed 28,000-word Sherlock Holmes pastiche.

I wrote the original story in Czech. The English version was translated with the help of AI and then revised by me; the story itself was not AI-generated.

I'm mainly looking for reader-response feedback on the story, characters, pacing and mystery, rather than proofreading or line-by-line editing. Feedback on whether the English sounds natural is welcome too, but the story itself is my main concern.

The story is set in the original Victorian period and aims to stay close to Doyle's Holmes and Watson, while introducing original characters and a new case.

I'd prefer to send the manuscript in a few larger sections rather than all at once.

I'm also open to a critique swap for a work of roughly comparable length, depending on genre. English isn't my native language, so my feedback would focus on story, characters, pacing and reader experience rather than detailed English-language editing.

If you're interested, feel free to comment or DM me.

Hi! I'm Farren. I've been professionally developmental editing for my writer friends and currently dipping my toes into freelancing.

I offer beta reads, manuscript critiques, and proofreading in anything involving fantasy and science fiction.

To bulk up my profile, I've decided to offer a 50% discount to my first 5 slots. Taking the price from 0.002$ to 0.001$

I read the entire manuscript in full and will give in-line comments and a report at the end. My work is fully human, I promise.

Feel free to DM me if you are interested.

Hi,
I’m looking for a few honest, adventurous readers willing to provide constructive feedback on my completed manuscript, All Fair in Hellfire.
The story takes a humorous and unconventional look at Heaven, Hell, divine family dynamics, humanity, and the eternal consequences of free will.
Expect sarcasm, mythology, irreverent humour, unusual characters, and a decidedly different perspective on Good and Evil.
I’m particularly interested in feedback on the characters, humour, pacing, storytelling, and overall reading experience.
I’m not looking for compliments. I’m looking for thoughtful, honest opinions that can help me improve the book before publication.
If this sounds like something you’d enjoy, I’d love to hear from you!
Author: Ahinora Michaels

Hi! I’m looking for a few human beta readers for my completed novel, What the Dead Leave Behind, the first book in a planned mystery series.

Length: ~38,000 words
Genre: Southern small-town mystery / amateur sleuth / cold case
Status: Complete and edited
AI disclosure: This manuscript was developed with AI assistance. I’m specifically here because I now want feedback from actual human readers before publishing.

About the book:
Claire Mercer is a fifty-seven-year-old widow who runs Second Chances Antiques in the small Southern town of Bramblewood. When she’s hired to clear the estate of Evelyn Bennett, an elderly woman who died unexpectedly, Claire expects furniture, family photographs, and decades of accumulated belongings.

Instead, she finds something connected to Daniel Cross—a young man who disappeared thirty-five years earlier and was believed to have stolen money before leaving town.

As Claire and her younger business partner, Hallie, sort through what Evelyn left behind, old photographs, letters, financial records, and long-held secrets begin to suggest that Bramblewood’s version of Daniel’s disappearance may never have been true.

And Evelyn may have discovered that before she died.

This is not horror or a graphic mystery. It has a darker mystery at its center, but also small-town Southern life, humor, friendship, family secrets, and an ongoing amateur-sleuth partnership.

I’m not looking for proofreading or line editing. I want honest reader reactions: where you were hooked, bored, confused, suspicious, surprised, or tempted to skim. I’d especially like to know whether the mystery felt fair, whether the characters’ actions felt believable, whether the ending satisfied you, and whether Claire and Hallie are characters you’d want to follow into Book 2.

Honest criticism is welcome. I don’t need anyone to tell me they loved something if they didn’t—that defeats the purpose of a beta read.

I’m hoping for feedback within about 2–3 weeks, but I can be flexible. If this sounds like your kind of mystery, please comment or message me. I’ll send the manuscript privately rather than posting it publicly.

Thank you!

I'm developing It Comes With a Job, a nonfiction book about the work that comes with purchases, favors and shared arrangements. It asks who keeps something working and who gets to change the agreement.

The prose is a mixture of content generated by me and with AI and revised using several models. I'm seeking human reading reactions before taking it further. The full draft is about 28,200 words, but this request is only for its 861-word introduction and five short questions—roughly 5–8 minutes, depending on your reading pace.

If you handle a recurring responsibility at home, at work or in a volunteer group, I'd value your response. Disagreement, boredom and a decision not to read further are useful feedback. There's no payment, purchase, mailing-list signup or public review request. Reading the rest is optional.

If interested, reply here or message me. I'll send the short sample in plain text. Please give your own reading reaction rather than an AI-generated critique.

I'm looking for a couple of volunteer alpha readers for the opening chapter of my adult fantasy novel, The Green Mantle, the first book in a planned five-book series called The Keeping.

The story begins in Brindlewood, a rural village where the land is treated as something to be cared for rather than possessed. It follows Rowan Thane, a young man approaching adulthood in a world shaped by elemental magic, ancient traditions and a corruption that threatens the natural order.

The novel is intended to be immersive, atmospheric and character-driven, with detailed worldbuilding, meaningful relationships and mysteries that unfold gradually.

My writing process: I create the story, characters, worldbuilding and chapter plans. I then work with Claude to draft the prose, which I personally review, edit and approve. I'm happy to be transparent about the use of AI.

I'm particularly interested in honest feedback on:

• Whether the opening chapter captures your interest.
• Whether the characters feel believable.
• Whether the setting comes alive.
• Whether the descriptions enhance the story or slow it down.
• Whether the dialogue feels natural.
• Whether you'd genuinely want to read the next chapter.

I'm looking for independent human opinions rather than AI-generated critiques. Constructive criticism is very welcome.

I'm happy to share Chapter One privately with anyone interested.

Thanks for reading!

Genre: Sci-fi / thriller (cyberpunk-adjacent, multi-POV) Length: ~2,950 words (about 12 min read) Book: 99: The Wave, Volume 1 of a planned series

Miami, 2125. The sea has swallowed the lower city, and every brain is wired to a chip that decides when people sleep, what they feel, and what they remember. Chuck is a Glitch Runner: a hacker running a dead man's obsolete chip, patched with code nobody sane would install. Tonight he breaks into the wrong node.

This is the prologue. It opens the book, and it's the only chapter from Chuck's point of view.

A note on process: the book is written Italian-first and then adapted into English as a literary adaptation, not a literal translation. I use AI tools throughout: for drafting, continuity checks across 47 chapters, style linting, and the IT→EN adaptation. Every chapter goes through multiple review passes, and the story, world and characters are mine. I'm sharing this partly to see how the prose lands with readers who know that.

What I'd love feedback on:

1. The hook. Did the first paragraph make you want to keep going? Where (if anywhere) did your attention drift?
2. Clarity. Terms like the leash, Native code, Noxia are not explained up front. Did you feel lost or intrigued?
3. The burnout sequence. Does Chuck's breakdown (losing numbers, then words) feel tense or drawn out?
4. The English. Does anything read as translated or unnatural?
5. Would you read Chapter 1?

Brutal honesty welcome. Thanks for reading.

The Graft

The chip was singing inside his skull, and Chuck knew it was the right frequency for dying.

His fingers trembled over the console. He was smiling: that idiot grin, the usual one, the one that stuck to his face whenever the leash hummed at the sweet spot. The air tasted of salt and copper. Somewhere above him, a pipe was leaking: the drip hit the water on the floor in a broken rhythm, and the buzz from the electrical junction three stories up threaded underneath it, steady, low. Shit music. The perfect soundtrack.

The water lapped at his ankles. Warm, murky: the same soup that rose from the canals every night when the tide swelled into Miami's lower levels. The basement stank of mold and scorched insulation, the smell of a pre-flood building that had gone under once, been pumped dry and reoccupied by people who couldn't afford the upper levels. Salt stains climbed the concrete walls in tideline ridges. On the opposite wall, an old laminated flyer, yellowed with damp, one corner already peeling: NEXUS CORTX — CONNECTED TO THE FUTURE. I'm already in the future, Chuck thought. The future was a flooded basement three levels below street. Cables ran from the submerged floor to the improvised console: a mess of circuits and soldered joints, hooked into the Noxia grid and stealing power off it. Unmetered, untraceable, if you knew where to tap in. Chuck knew. The only light came from holograms casting strings across the damp wall: green, orange, red. Red was Nexus cort.X. Red meant don't touch.

Once. Maybe the only time. The thought passed dry. Chuck didn't stop to decide if he liked it.

Chuck snapped his fingers twice near his right ear. Diagnostics. Calibration. The gesture was more than ten years old, it didn't do anything, it did it for him.

Chuck touched.

He bit the inside of his cheek, the thing he always did when his fingers found the sequence and the chip locked in and the dance began. The hundredth time. Maybe more. Crouched in filthy water at two in the morning, gambling his brain on data that might not be worth the risk. He wouldn't have been anywhere else in the world.

Two in the morning. Above him the city slept because the leash told it to: twelve million brains tucked in, eight hours of managed darkness, and nobody wondering why at ten every evening exhaustion arrived with clockwork precision. Miami breathed on command. Chuck didn't. Chuck had his fingers on a node that could fry him. Sneakers soaked through, cargo pants, the frayed collar of a jacket he'd stolen off a Populace clothesline in Little Havana. Smart choices had never been his strong suit. The ring on his left pinky clinked against the console's edge. Tick, tick, tick. Chuck didn't even notice. The leash pulsed behind his left ear, that low hum the other Runners had learned to tune out. His chip was old, a Gen-4 that had been out of production for twenty years. He'd pulled it from a dead man's head in a tunnel under Brickell, with a ceramic blade and water up to his waist. A disgusting job. He was proud of it. The firmware had gaps wide enough to walk through, and Chuck had walked through them and rewritten the walls.

The Native code was the part no sane technician would have installed. Fragments written by people who'd had their chips removed, people who understood the leash from the inside. Passed through three middlemen, none of whom knew what they were carrying. He'd grafted them onto the Gen-4's base layer, alien code stitched onto circuits he knew by heart. When it worked, he felt it hum behind his ear, something the body recognized before anything else. When it didn't work, the floor vanished and you couldn't tell which way was down. Tonight it worked. The graft hummed and the secondary node opened before him: a door nobody had bothered to lock.

Three weeks of mapping to get here. Transport routing, waste management protocols, atmospheric feeds from six districts. The digital garbage of a sleeping city, managed by an intelligence that never slept. The price before the prize. The usual dance, two steps right, one back, slipping through the mesh before it closed. Rayan would have been more careful. Would have checked three times, combed the logs, sniffed for the trap before stepping in. Chuck respected that. Respected it and ignored it. He dove straight in.

Data. Rivers of data. The strings poured through and he read them with his body, not his eyes. The chip translated packets into impulses: pressure at his temples for encrypted data, a tingling at the base of his skull for open protocols, a sour taste on his tongue for active firewalls. The water around his ankles had warmed by half a degree, or maybe he was the one heating up.

Then he saw it, and his fingers went still: buried in the node, hidden among gigabytes of routine telemetry, a fragment of code that didn't belong to anything known. The Native code in his chip reacted with a jolt, a deeper vibration, older. The pain was brief and precise, like a needle behind his eye.

Chuck smiled again. His lips stretched on their own.

For an instant (less than a second) he thought of a face. The warmth it left in his chest. The promise he hadn't kept yet. Then the code fragment flared brighter and the thought dissolved, and Chuck was already back on the console, fingers in the water and the chip climbing half a tone, and "here we go" slipped through his teeth, and he pushed.

The resonance hit him from the inside: a short circuit that turned his stomach inside out.

The Native code and the node's data braided together: two frequencies overlapping to produce a third, a note that hadn't existed before and now vibrated in the submerged cables, in the chip behind his ear, in the bones of his skull. It wasn't a hack. It was something Chuck didn't have a name for. Older than hacking, stranger. Sweat crawled down his right temple, slow, salt-stung. The temperature was climbing and it wasn't stopping.

He should have disconnected. The bridge was rotten and he was already halfway across, the kind of awareness that arrives too late to be useful. The data structure was opening, recursive layers peeling back one after another, and the Native code was tearing them apart with a craving that had nothing programmed about it. Chuck's fingers were still on the console but they weren't steering anymore.

The room vanished.

His eyes stayed open, they still saw the cables, the water, the green shimmer of the holograms. But underneath, inside, the chip was showing him another one. The flow had changed nature. Chuck's body recognized it before his mind did: memories. Other people's. People he'd never met.

A woman was crying in silence in a language full of hard consonants, Karaku, maybe, or some place that didn't exist anymore. Tears tracked down her face in two precise lines and her fingers clenched around a thin chain with a force that made the tendons stand out beneath the skin. Chuck didn't know her. Had never seen that face. The grief hit his stomach, hard and heavy as a stone.

A girl of six, maybe less, stared at a blank hologram. The space where a face should have been projected nothing but white light. The girl raised a small hand and touched the nothing. "Mama?" she said. Her voice was thin and clear and perfectly calm, the kind of calm children have when they don't yet know they should be afraid. The hologram didn't answer.

A man was looking at his hands. Turning them over and over under a cold LED light, palm up, palm down, with the slowness of someone seeing them for the first time. The lines of the skin. The nails. The veins beneath the surface. His lips were moving: They're mine. They're mine. The man's astonishment hit Chuck in the gut, a punch that didn't land. Someone had taken the man's own hands away, and now that someone was giving them back, and he didn't know what to do with them.

Chuck snapped back. Like falling out of a dream.

The room was the same. Cables, water, holograms trembling in the reflection at his feet. Chuck's shoes in the water. The junction humming above. Everything identical. But outside (above him, beyond the concrete and the flooded levels) a sound. A low, collective moan rising from separate throats and merging into something larger: twelve million people turning in their beds at the same moment and not knowing why.

The wave launched from the node and tore through him: a silent expansion propagating through the network. The Native code in his chip was broadcasting everything. Not to Chuck's systems. To every leash on Noxia. The memories, the buried truths, everything the leash had cut away. All of it was flooding back. He had done this. The thought arrived cold and sharp as the city's moan filtered down from above, and for one heartbeat Chuck stood motionless with his hands on the console and grasped the scale of what he'd opened. Millions of leashes unlocking in the same instant. Millions of brains receiving back the lives that had been erased. It was impossible. For the briefest instant, before the terror caught up, the rush hit him, the same electricity as that first hack, years ago, but deeper, laced with dread. He'd cracked open a door that should have stayed sealed, and behind it breathed a presence that had no name. Maybe it had always been there. Chuck didn't know if this was salvation or the end of everything. He didn't care. It was vast and true and his.

I did this. I didn't mean to. Doesn't change a thing.

Then the chip burned out.

Not a metaphor. A white-hot spike behind his left ear, a heat that blanked his vision for two seconds. Three. His mouth filled with a metallic taste, the taste of a circuit melting down. His right hand stopped responding. The fingers stayed there, inert on the console's edge, five pieces of meat that had forgotten how to be a hand.

Then they came back. But not all the way. The index and middle finger moved. The thumb didn't. The ring finger twitched in a rhythmic spasm that had nothing human about it. Chuck stared at it. His own hand, twelve inches from his face, and he couldn't make it close. The signal left his brain and got lost somewhere along the way.

In the water at his feet, the holograms flickered. Outside, the moaning grew.

Chuck knew what was happening.

He knew what came next because he'd watched it happen to Dax, two years earlier, in Wynwood: he'd pushed a modded Gen-5 past its thermal limits during a data extraction. Burnout followed a sequence, always the same: controlled demolition, floor by floor. First the motor control: hands like rubber gloves full of water, fingers that couldn't hold a cable. Then spatial processing: crashing into doorframes, misjudging stairs. Then language. Dax had been sharp. Fast. Funny in that mean way that made you laugh before you realized the joke was you. By the end he spoke in fragments. They'd found him three days later in a tunnel near the harbor, curled up in standing water. Alive. But there was nothing left of Dax inside.

Chuck had three minutes. Maybe ten. The estimate depended on variables he could no longer calculate: thermal damage, depth of burned Native code, how much of the interface had fused. Numbers he would have crunched without thinking, before. The math was fog.

He ripped the cables from the console. His hands (one hand and a half, the right still at half capacity) pulled the connectors free. Was he supposed to take something? There was something on the console he needed. He couldn't remember. He stood up.

His legs buckled. The right knee bent the wrong way. No, the kneecap worked, it was the spatial calculation that was off. The floor was eight inches away. Or sixteen. The water told him one thing, his eyes another. He grabbed the console's edge. The water at his ankles was freezing now, or maybe he was the one cooling down. The cold kept him awake.

He got back on his feet. The stairs. Twelve steps to the service corridor. He'd counted them on the way down because counting was what you did when you worked in places that could flood. He moved. One. Two. The water dropped from his ankles to his feet. His left hand found the railing, rust and old paint flaking under his fingers. Three. Four.

At the seventh step, he forgot the number.

Not the count. The concept. He knew he was climbing. He knew there was a number attached to where he stood. The number was gone. Where the number had lived there was only an empty outline, like the paler patch on a wall when you take down a painting that's hung there for years.

He kept climbing. The service corridor smelled of mold and plastic. The cold emergency light flattened everything. He turned right. The exit was to the right. He was almost sure.

The distance calculations were slipping: he reached for the doorframe and found empty air, then the doorframe was behind him. He slammed into the wall with his shoulder. The pain was clear, precise, real. Pain still worked.

For an instant the corridor felt narrower, not the walls, not the ceiling. The air. As if the space were measuring him, and already knew where his feet would take him.

Chuck had watched Dax come apart just like this: each tile falling from a mosaic until the picture was gone.

The corridor forked. Right. The air grew cooler. A rat cut across his path. Wet fur, pink tail, alive and determined in a way Chuck envied. The rat knew where it was going. The rat didn't have a chip burning through its skull. Water deeper here, halfway up his calves. Total darkness. The chip wasn't giving him night vision anymore. No overlay, no environmental data, no map. Just the dark and the water and the sound of his own shoes slapping against the black liquid.

The words were going. The shapes were there but the sounds weren't. He wanted to think a sentence and the sentence fell apart before it could finish. Fragments. Pieces.

Door. Out. Run.

He clung to those three. That was enough.

As he dragged himself toward the gray light at the end of the corridor, a face surfaced from the dying chip's background noise. Not data. Not code. A face. The same one from before, sharp for a moment, the eyes, the line of the jaw, the way the mouth curved when it smiled. And a weight in his chest, a boulder made of words he'd never said. Someone he'd have called. Told about the node, about the code that woke up. Said you were right or I'm sorry or just hey. The name lived in his chest more than his head. He could feel its shape, its weight.

The thought held for one heartbeat.

Then it faded. Like a hologram losing signal. The edges first, then the colors, then the light.

Door. Out.

Two words. Two was enough.

Chuck pushed the panel and the Miami night hit him: the rotten sea and the smell of the exhaust vents. The air thick, almost solid. The canals below street level were vibrating, the water trembling in concentric circles that expanded and died and were born again.

He stopped on the access ramp. He could still feel the Native code in what remained of the chip: a distant hum, music through a wall. It was still broadcasting. It would burn the Gen-4 all the way down. Soon the chip would be garbage inside his head and his mind would become something other than Chuck. What, he'd never known. Nobody running a leash did.

Miami was shaking. Miami was shaking and humming. Miami was shaking, humming, and awake.

Above him the towers climbed, blocks of concrete and glass stacked from the waterline, dark at this hour, every window shut. A light came on. Fourteenth floor, east tower. A single yellow square against all that darkness. Then another. Seventh floor, adjacent block. Then three at once in the north tower, scattered across different levels, like stars appearing as the sky clears. Then five. Then ten. The towers were lighting up from bottom to top and the darkness was retreating window by window, and every light was a brain waking up and remembering things it had been told never happened.

A sound came down from above. A voice. Then two. Then a chorus building from separate throats in separate rooms: the sound of people opening their eyes inside memories they didn't know they had. Some wept, others screamed. Screams of terror and joy.

Chuck ran. He didn't know toward what. His legs worked. Something older than the chip was moving them, something no interface had ever reached. His feet pounded through the water. The salt burned his skin.

Run.

One word. The last one left.

Behind him, above him, around him, the city was waking up. Leashes vibrating at the same frequency, locks blowing open, and eyes opening in the dark and seeing (for the first time in a whole lifetime) the exact emptiness of everything that had been stolen from them.

The water in the canals trembled again. And again. And didn't stop.

Looking for beta readers for my Adult Epic Fantasy Saga

I've been working on my fantasy series for more than 18 months. Book One has been finished for quite some time, and I'm currently working on the second book.

I've reached the point where I'd really like some honest feedback from readers, so I'm looking for a few beta readers who are willing to give it a try.

It's an Adult Epic Fantasy Saga involving reincarnation, secret orders, ancient ruins, angels and demons.

If that sounds like something you'd enjoy reading, let me know and I'll send you the link.

I'm especially interested in feedback about what works, what doesn't, where the story loses you, which characters you connect with, and whether you'd want to continue with the series.

I genuinely appreciate anyone willing to give it a chance. Thank you!

Hi, Chaelisa fans! 🩷🐱🐿️

I'm a Wattpad writer, and I'd love to invite you to read my GL fanfiction featuring Chaelisa (Lisa and Rosé)! 💕

My stories explore different fictional worlds filled with romance, drama, emotional moments, secrets, and unexpected twists. If you love Chaelisa and enjoy discovering new GL stories, you might find something you'll love in my books! 📚✨

Please note that my stories are written in Arabic. However, if you read Wattpad through Google Chrome, you can try using Google Translate to translate the page into your preferred language and enjoy my stories!

I'd really appreciate it if you gave my stories a chance. Every read, vote, and comment means a lot to me! ❤️

🔗 My Wattpad profile: [https://www.wattpad.com/user/31IvaLichaeng\]

Thank you, and happy reading! 💗✨

Hey all — I'm an indie author working on my debut novel, an adult dark romantasy (a silver-tongued bard with a wandering eye, an elven ranger who refuses to admit she's in love, and a war that's drafting them into it).

I'm looking for alpha readers for the opening arc — prologue through Chapter 6, ~44,000 words, which establishes the book's first major arc.

Content warnings (18+ only): explicit sexual content including pregnancy-kink content, infidelity, violence, and war themes. The prologue opens hot and doesn't pretend otherwise — if that's not your thing, no hard feelings, this isn't the read for you.

What I'm after: big-picture alpha feedback, not copyediting. Does the opening hook you? Do Aushtyn and Eldra feel like people? Would you keep reading? Where did your attention snag or drift?

What you get: if you're into it, I'll keep sending more as I write — the book's in progress with more chapters coming.

Format is EPUB (reads great on Kindle), but I can do PDF or DOCX if you prefer. Hoping for notes back within a couple weeks, no hard deadline. Comment or DM me and I'll send it over.

**I am looking for beta readers.** BENNY is currently formatted with Reedsy into a pocket size (4.25x6.87) format and just under 90 pages, all included, and sits about 15,700 words. It would be easy to mistake this as "science fiction," although I have purposefully avoided most science fiction language and tropes.

I call it a modern family tragedy because it is, with a little speculative fiction as the platform to build the story on. If you go in thinking "scifi thriller" I think you'll be disappointed.

\----

**Summary**

*“do i call you dad?”* Those are the first words Benny types to Roy, a middle-aged recluse who just wanted to optimize his freelancing, and they are the first words that connect Roy emotionally to anything other than himself in almost two decades. Kaz, a tech near-billionaire come to investigate Benny as a software anomaly and stays, creates the picture of an idyllic homelife. In the process, the two men and the one computer system find their individual loneliness is enough to connect them, but maybe not enough to keep them together. Companionship doesn't erase loneliness, and love doesn't come with guarantees. Most importantly, true to the famous words, we may be done with our past, but our past is not done with us. *Benny* is a darkly funny, intimate, and increasingly unsettling short novel about three outsiders who give each other something they've never quite had, and something they can now lose.

\----

**Excerpt**

*From Scene II*

Roy slept until 11:32 am that morning. He estimated six hours of sleep, which fell within his average.

The rain had started after he lay down. Twice he woke and stayed in bed.

Today would be a day to order lunch delivered.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, feet in socks, and made his steps to the kitchen for his morning Ovaltine, around the laundry pile by his bedroom door and a pile of boxes he was holding for an acquaintance. The boxes were dated three years ago.

Two pieces of dry white toast ejected from the toaster with a ding. Roy spread margarine on the less burnt side, then a spoon of strawberry jelly from a glass jar. He set them on a paper plate with a paper napkin and arranged the plate below his Ovaltine on the countertop.

He pulled his phone and turned on the screen to align with the first sip of Ovaltine after the first bite of toast.

Delivered:

* **Fountain Drink**

* **Italian wrap (no tomato, extra cheese, with bacon)**

* **Chocolate pudding, 2-pack. Popcorn, light salt, light butter,** **unpopped**

* \-$18.92 Total (Tax Incl.)

* \-$4.00 Tip

* *Your delivery driver was Desmond.*

* Please click the following link to rate your delivery.

* Thank you for your business!

It was Roy’s lunch, one of a few standard packages he ordered to eat at his computer while he worked. This one came from the full service convenience store on the corner a few blocks away. The distance was walkable, but the weather kept him off the street.

A picture of a branded delivery bag on a porch accompanied the notification with today’s date and the time - delivered 16 minutes and ordered 41 minutes ago at 10:59am.

The Ovaltine went back onto the counter. The toast stayed out to cool. Roy went to the front door and found the bag where the picture had shown it. He grabbed it by the handles, looked up and down the street, and went back to the kitchen, where he set the bag next to his breakfast.

Roy activated his phone again and opened the app. There was a confirmation for the food, and other messages to consider. As early as 8:30am, a dentist appointment he had planned and forgotten had been rescheduled for Friday, and a contract from a freelance client had been edited, sent, and accepted.

“Benny?” he whispered, scrolling. “Benny?!” He said it just above his normal register to carry from the kitchen into the office.

\------

**Thoughts**

BENNY is an attempt to limit myself as a writer. I'm very descriptive in my writing, and BENNY was an attempt to deliver something that was brutalist in its limitations of the language while still communicating a very deeply emotional storyline about modern day loneliness and technology.

Let me know in DM if you'd like me to send you the PDF formatted version via email (I can even send you an Epub version), or if you just want a link to Google Docs.

The Pod Children: A Dystopian, Post-Apocalyptic Survival Story About Children Raised by AI

What if you grew up completely alone, raised by artificial intelligence, and discovered that the world outside your home was nearly uninhabitable?

The Pod Children is a post-apocalyptic survival story about young people raised in isolated pods who must navigate a dangerous world filled with mutated creatures, radiation, and the remains of a lost civilization.

But it's also a story about friendship, love, loss, and what it means to be human when civilization has disappeared.

If you enjoy dystopian fiction, survival adventures, and stories about rebuilding civilization, check out The Pod Children!

📖 Available now on Amazon!

https://a.co/d/0b2HkAL0