CHAPTER1
TANYA
The server's encryption bent under my fingers like I'd been working it for hours, not days.Blue monitor light painted my skin in the universal color of hackers and insomniacs while I tapped one final command.The cursor blinked once, twice, three times… a digital heartbeat counting down to revelation.
My apartment smelled of cheap ramen and expensive equipment.Tonight, the Intergalactic Dating Agency's dirty little secret would become my podcast's hottest episode, and no amount of corporate firewalls or government threats would stop me from exposing what they'd been hiding behind their matchmaking facade.
"Come on, you bureaucratic bastards," I whispered to my screen."Show me your traffic."
Three days of sleepless coding and I was running on caffeine fumes and righteous indignation.My podcast listeners had sent me increasingly desperate messages about relatives who'd signed up for secret off-world dating services and disappeared.Not the regular kind of ghosting—the kind where government officials showed up with paperwork claiming voluntary emigration while personal belongings sat untouched in apartments.
Or worse, a missing person's report after ramblings of an alien dating agency.
Something rotten festered in the Intergalactic Dating Agency's matching algorithms, and I had the digital lockpicks to prove it.After I revealed their nefarious plan to the world.
My motel room flickered with the glow of multiple monitors.I'd chosen this dump specifically for its proximity to three different power grids and an outdated security system that wouldn't register my signal boosters.The bed remained unmade, covers twisted from the two hours of sleep I'd managed yesterday.Empty energy drink cans formed a small aluminum city across my desk.
The encryption weakened further.On-screen, security protocols folded like origami under my persistence.
"The Glitch Witch strikes again."I grinned at my own stupid nickname.The moniker had started as a joke on my podcast, but evolved into my brand… The hacker who exposed corporate lies with a wicked laugh and zero fucks given.
My fingertips danced across the keyboard.Lines of code reflected in my glasses as I slipped between firewalls like a ghost between worlds.Each keystroke brought me closer to the truth.My heart raced with that familiar rush… part adrenaline, part terror, part absolute conviction that information deserved to be free.
The final firewall collapsed.
"Gotcha," I whispered.
I expected data.Names, locations, transaction records, the raw material of conspiracy and cover-up.The evidence my listeners needed to find their missing loved ones.What I got instead was… nothing.
No, not nothing.Static.
The screen flickered, digital snow cascading across my monitor like a blizzard in binary.My other screens caught the infection, their displays dissolving into pixelated chaos.
"No, no, no!"I slammed my palm against the side of my main monitor."Don't you dare crash on me now!"
The static pulsed.It wasn't random.It had rhythm, like a heartbeat or breathing.My router lights blinked frantically as if having a seizure.The mini-fridge in the corner hummed at a higher pitch, its temperature display cycling through impossible numbers.
The static congealed, pulling together like mercury droplets finding each other.It formed a vague humanoid shape on my screen… a silhouette made of television snow and corrupted code.
"What the actual fuck?"I whispered, fingers frozen over my keyboard.
The shape pushed against my screen as if testing its boundaries.The glass bulged outward.Which was an impossible distortion that made my eyes water and my brain scream.Reality itself seemed to stretch as the static figure pressed forward.
Then my screen cracked, not shattered but parted, and a hand made of flowing silver light reached through.
I shoved my chair back so hard it hit the wall behind me.The impossible hand was followed by an arm, a shoulder, then a head.The figure pulled itself from my screen like someone climbing through a window, trailing wisps of code and light.This was right out of a horror movie.
It—he—stood in my motel room, a man-shaped collection of silver light and shifting data.His skin rippled with visible code, symbols and numbers flowing across his surface like tattoos with minds of their own.Where his hair should be, streams of data cascaded down to his shoulders.His eyes flickered between scrolling information and solid silver irises.
Every electronic device in my room went haywire.My phone sparked and died.The microwave beeped its death throes.The cheap digital clock reset itself to 00:00 and began counting up in random intervals.
The figure focused on me.Tiny emoji drones… actual fucking emojis, materialized around his head, displaying a series of question marks and surprised faces.
My brain short-circuited.Rational thought took a holiday.Survival instincts kicked in with the subtlety of a freight train.
I grabbed my keyboard—my beautiful, expensive, mechanical keyboard—and swung it like a baseball bat directly at his chest.
The keyboard connected with a sound halfway between a thud and the dial-up internet screech of my childhood.Several keys popped off on impact, sticking to his metallic skin like bizarre ASCII tattoos.
