Chapter 1, thus far

Breathe in, flex throat. Push the tension out with sound. Vowels rattle my vocal chords. Hum once, up, hum again, back down. Rinse, lather, repeat.
"Put this on."
I opened my eyes to see my wardrobe manager thrusting a tight black top at me, the curves sewn into it to flatter my body as much as possible.
"She'd never let me get away with that."
"She isn't here. Connel! Where's the black nailpolish I asked for?"
I barked a laugh, stripping off my plain loose T and slipping into the black thing. It fit me like a second skin, snug and sexy. I loved it.
"She'll vacking murder me if I go out there with shit on my nails."
"Sweetie, it's what your fanbase wants. Polls were screaming for it after you did that vampire thing in that music video. Eternal Fapping."
"Eternal Passion," I corrected with a smirk. I liked this one. The last drobey had no sense of humour.
"Connel! Vack it, Connel's fired. You! Yes, you, with the hair. Get me black nail polish in the next minute and you'll have a promotion."
"What's next, lipstick?"
"I thought it best to ease into things, dear, but if you really want--"
"Forget it, I'm dead as it is." I closed my eyes to shut out the pre-concert chaos around me and went back to vocal warmups.

Step onto stage, listen to the roar. The only ocean any of us here tonight have ever known. It washes over me, and as I step up to the mic, parting my lips, I feel beautiful.
I take a breath.
You are so pretty...like a little doll.
Fingers brush the back of my neck.
My throat squeezes and convulses shut, mouth dry as the empty world outside the biodome, airless and bitterly, deathly cold.
So pretty. I could touch you all day long.
It's like my bones are rattling inside me while everything between them and my skin has turned to water. Bile surges in my throat, and I feel a mounting sensation of...of horrible, all over, inside and out. I actually want to pass out.
Shh, don't scream, don't want to ruin your pretty little voice--
"Forest!" the drummer hissed at me. "The vack, man?"
I signalled the band behind me and they immediately began playing. I could feel the whisper bubbling back to the surface of my mind. I fought it desperately.
Come on, come on, get to my entrance--
The intro was over and I practically flung the words out of my mouth at the microphone, assaulting it with my voice. The first few notes stuttered off-key, but I didn't care. I wasn't singing for them, at the moment, I was singing for myself. I needed this. It was the one thing he hadn't touched and destroyed and ripped away from me stop thinking about it stop thinking about it stop thinking about it and vacking sing.
So I sang.

It wasn't a big concert. I was the highest name there, and that's saying something. At the time I was maybe in the bottom thirty-thousands of drop rank, my name getting dropped throughout the entire city about ten times an hour. I'd gotten a recent flux in popularity to get it this high, but we were holding our breathe in case it was just a fad-spike. No point putting stake in numbers if I was only the latest trend of one of the many microsocieties that made up the New California Biodome's sprawling, diverse cultures.
A good gig in the end, though. It didn't matter how many of my fans were there. What mattered was how many people were there in general. Because by the end of the night, all of them would know my name. And they'd be talking about me. Not a huge spike in the drop rank, but every little bit helped.
"You're a vacking whore." The words oozed out from perfect white teeth, accompanied by a sinuous trail of smoke. My friend Tris smiled at me like a crocodile and fell into step beside me as I made a beeline for my room backstage.
"Piss off, bitch," I shot back, smirking. He laughed aloud and hooked his arm through mine.
"Not here," I muttered. I shifted slightly so that I slid free. Tris rolled his eyes and bounced ahead of me to the dressing room, the door sliding open when it recognized his genetic fingerprint.
"She isn't here, Julian," he said, pirouetting in front of the row of mirrors that covered the wall. The smoke from his cigarette formed a ghostly spiral about his head as he spun.
"Cams are, Tris."
"My God, Julian, you're like, vacking paranoid lately. What has crawled up and nested in your ass?"
"Nothing," I mumbled defensively. I finished changing and scrubbed off the black nailpolish. "I'm just...being careful."
"You're being paranoid."
"Tris--" I bit my lip and took a breath. "...What is it going to take you get you off my back about this?"