First Harvest

When the System woke up inside Anneres, it handed everyone a class, a level, and a rung on the ladder. Everyone but Carole Bowen. Carole is thirty-one, a maintenance tech who spent her whole life staying off the important paperwork. When the System sorted the living, she came up Unclassed, below its floor. No class. No sanctioned way to get stronger. As far as its surveillance can tell, she isn't even there. So she builds her own ladder. She kills the System's enforcers, strips the tech out of what's left of them, and bolts it into her own body. She is the only person alive who can make incompatible parts run together without it killing her. Every upgrade works. Every upgrade costs. Each kill and each install pushes her Heat higher, and the higher it climbs, the harder the System looks. Cross the wrong line and it stops sending patrols. It starts sending Hunters built to find exactly her. She wanted to outlast the cull and keep her people breathing. Instead she is becoming the thing the apocalypse is afraid of. What to expect:- A dry, competent female lead who reads machines the way other people read faces- A glitched System fragment riding along in her head, and the banter that comes with it- A clean kill, harvest, install loop with costs that actually bite- A Heat meter that only climbs, and the Hunters it pulls down on her- Legible progression, real numbers, no free upgrades- No harem, no romance- New chapters daily