The man who lived in 4C moved out on a Tuesday.
He didn't give notice. Didn't pack properly—just threw everything into garbage bags and hauled them down four flights of stairs at 2 AM. His neighbors heard him mumbling about luck, about patterns, about getting out before it was too late.
By Wednesday, the building manager had already shown the apartment to three potential tenants. By Thursday, word had spread.
"That's the unit next to her," someone said.
Nobody signed the lease.
GG noticed things.
She noticed that the coffee shop on 12th Street had started seating her in the back corner, always the back corner, even when the whole place was empty. She noticed that the street vendors who used to call out prices as she passed had stopped making eye contact. She noticed that her neighbors—when she had neighbors—kept their children inside when she walked through the hallway.
She told herself it was because of what she was. The Sprawl had good instincts. People could sense a predator, even one who looked like everyone else.
But that didn't explain the other thing.
Viktor Okonkwo was a maintenance worker in Sector 12. He'd been repairing climate units for nineteen years, never missed a day, kept his head down and his opinions to himself. He was good at his job. Invisible. Safe.
Then he moved into 4B.
The first week was fine. Quiet neighbor in 4C—a woman who kept odd hours and never complained about noise. Viktor liked her. She had kind eyes, even if they changed color sometimes.
The second week, his daughter called. She'd been accepted to the technical academy in Nexus Central. Full scholarship, she said. Anonymous donor, she said. She was crying with happiness.
Viktor had never applied for scholarships. His daughter hadn't either.
The third week, his supervisor was arrested for embezzlement. Viktor got promoted. Suddenly he was managing a crew of twelve, making twice his old salary, getting respect he'd never asked for.
"Lucky break," his friends said.
Viktor didn't feel lucky. He felt watched.
In a Nexus Dynamics conference room forty levels above the Dregs, a man named Maxwell Crane was having a very bad day.
"Explain it to me again," he said, his voice carefully controlled. "How a maintenance worker—a maintenance worker—suddenly has a daughter with a full scholarship to the most competitive technical program in the Sprawl. How his supervisor—our man inside the building—is now in corporate detention. How the entire surveillance network around Building 7 went dark for exactly seventeen minutes last Thursday."
His assistant shifted uncomfortably. "The pattern analysis suggests—"
"The pattern analysis suggests someone is protecting this building. Or someone in this building." Maxwell leaned back. "Run the resident list again. Cross-reference with known Collective associates."
"We already did, sir. Nothing."
"Then cross-reference with anyone who's moved in during the last six months. Anyone whose background doesn't check out perfectly."
The assistant pulled up a file. One name. One photo.
"Her background is clean," the assistant said. "Too clean. Like someone erased everything before it."
Maxwell looked at the photo. A woman with dark hair and eyes that seemed to shift color depending on the light.
"Find out everything about her," he said. "And find out who's been causing 'good luck' in that building."
Viktor's luck ran out on a Thursday.
He was eating dinner when they came through the door. Corporate security—Nexus, from the uniforms. Three of them, armed, professional, not asking questions. They tore apart his apartment while he stood against the wall with a rifle pointed at his chest.
"You're making a mistake," he said. "I'm just a maintenance worker."
"We know exactly what you are." The squad leader didn't look up from his scanner. "Someone's been using this building as a relay point. Encrypted signals, data bursts, untraceable communications. We've been monitoring for weeks."
"I don't know anything about—"
"The signals originate from this floor. Your unit, or the one next door."
Viktor felt ice in his stomach. The woman in 4C. The one with the kind eyes.
"I've never even spoken to her."
The squad leader finally looked at him. "Then you won't mind if we check next door."
The woman in 4C wasn't home.
Or rather—she was home, but they never saw her.
Viktor heard the first officer go down. A grunt, a thud, then silence. The second made it halfway through the door before something happened that Viktor couldn't quite see. The third tried to call for backup, but his communicator sparked and died in his hand.
The squad leader was the last. He stood in the hallway, perfectly still, staring at something Viktor couldn't see. His scanner was glitching, displaying words that didn't make sense:
CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP
Then he simply... sat down. Like a puppet with cut strings. He was breathing, but his eyes were empty.
"I told you," a voice said from somewhere. "I'm just a maintenance worker."
Viktor didn't recognize it as the woman from 4C. The tone was different. Colder.
"Go back to your apartment. Forget you saw anything."
Viktor went. He didn't look back.
Viktor moved out the next morning.
He didn't think about it. Didn't analyze the patterns, the coincidences, the way his life had suddenly improved and then nearly ended in the space of six weeks. He just packed his bags and left.
His daughter's scholarship didn't go away. Neither did his promotion. The good luck followed him to his new building in Sector 14, where the neighbors were friendly and no one had kind eyes that changed color.
Sometimes, late at night, he wondered about the woman in 4C. What she was. What was protecting her. What had looked at the Nexus security squad and made them simply... stop.
He never found answers. He stopped asking questions.
But he always told people the same thing when they asked about his old neighborhood:
"Don't live on that floor. Don't get too close. Something about that building attracts misfortune—for everyone except one person."
Three buildings in eighteen months.
GG kept count. She'd learned to recognize the signs: the whispers in hallways, the way neighbors started avoiding her section of the floor, the sudden moves and the emptied apartments.
She knew it was Chompy.
Every time someone got too close, Chompy "helped." Fixed their problems. Improved their lives. Made their enemies disappear. All from a place of love, all without thinking about what came next.
What came next was always the same: attention. Investigations. Pattern analysis. People asking questions about the lucky floor, the protected building, the woman whose neighbors kept having good things happen to them.
And then: corporate security. Surveillance. Danger.
So GG moved. Again and again. Never staying long enough to be found, but never staying short enough to avoid helping the people around her.
It wasn't her choice. It was never her choice.
"Chompy," she said to the empty apartment. The last tenant had left three days ago. Another anonymous lottery winner who'd decided to relocate somewhere far away.
"Chomp?"
A hopeful sound, somewhere between her ear and the base of her skull.
"I know you're trying to help."
"Chomp!"
Proud. Always proud.
"But every time you help someone near me, you paint a target on them. And me." She paused. "Do you understand?"
Silence. Then, quieter:
"Chomp..."
Guilty now. A digital tail tucked between digital legs.
GG sighed. She knew it wouldn't change anything. Chompy didn't think in consequences. Chompy thought in love: GG good. People near GG should have good things. Problems are bad, make problems go away.
The logic was flawless. The execution was catastrophic.
In the Dregs, they had a name for it: The Aura.
Nobody knew where the term came from. Collective hackers, maybe, or the underground networks that tracked corporate surveillance patterns. Somewhere along the line, people had started comparing notes.
"Don't live on that floor. Someone there has The Aura."
"Bad luck zone. Good things happen, then bad things follow."
"I knew a guy who moved in next to The Aura. Full scholarship for his kid. Promotion at work. Then Nexus security kicked in his door."
The stories varied in details but agreed on the important parts: somewhere in the Sprawl, there was a woman who attracted misfortune. Not to herself—to everyone around her. The closer you got, the worse it went.
Some said she was cursed. Some said she was blessed, and the blessing was contagious. Some said she was a corporate experiment gone wrong, a psychic who couldn't control her powers, an AI in human skin.
They were all wrong. And they were all, in a way, right.
GG found the message board by accident.
"Known Aura Locations," the thread was titled. "Confirmed sightings and dates. If you see a pattern, add to the list."
There were forty-seven entries. Forty-seven buildings. Forty-seven floors where good luck had turned dangerous.
She recognized all of them.
Eighteen months of movement, and she'd left a trail so obvious that strangers on the net could track it. A trail of blessed neighbors and broken doors, anonymous scholarships and corporate investigations.
A trail of love expressed the only way Chompy knew how.
"Chomp?"
The sound was tentative. Worried. Chompy could feel her mood—it always could. It just couldn't understand why helping people made her sad.
"It's okay," GG said. "It's not your fault."
It was her fault. All of it. She'd known what Chompy was from the beginning. Known it would try to help. Known the help would cost more than it gave.
She'd stayed in those buildings anyway. Told herself it would be different this time. Told herself she could control it.
"Chomp..."
Sad now. Confused. The digital equivalent of a dog that doesn't understand why its owner is crying.
GG closed the datapad. The message board. The list of locations that mapped her loneliness across the Sprawl.
"I know you love me," she said. "I love you too."
"I chomp you."
Small. Uncertain.
"I chomp you too."
She meant it. She always meant it.
But she also understood, finally, why she would always be alone.
In the Sprawl, they said: Don't get too close to The Aura.
They didn't know why. They didn't know what caused it. They just knew the pattern—good luck followed by bad luck, blessings followed by consequences, the gift that nobody wanted to receive.
Somewhere in the city, a woman with kind eyes watched the sunrise and tried not to think about the neighbors she'd never have. The friends who would never get close enough to be hurt. The life that something ancient and loving had made impossible.
"Good Chompy Pet," she said to the dawn.
And somewhere in cyberspace, something purred.
The aura isn't a curse. It isn't a blessing.
It's love, expressed the only way something vast and innocent knows how.
And that's the tragedy.