Page 55 of GlitchBorn Heart

“According to Ember, she’s gone, body dead but still getting some sort of waves from her in the feeds.” The words taste like poison, each one corroding my mouth. “Corporate sweep, virus collapse, blah-blah, take your pick. She didn’t make it back.” I can’t hold back the anger-infested sarcasm.

Ash’s voice breaks into static for a moment, then steadies, colder than I’ve ever heard it. “I told her. I told her not to go in.” His words fill with anger, with guilt. “And you...you’re sitting in your white tower, telling me she’s a line item? An inconvenience to your day? A casualty in a corporate sweep?”

My hand tightens around the edge of my desk until the metal groans. “Don’t!” I snap, harsher than intended. “Don’t act like I wanted this or did this. Vikktor and Eli did this. Like I wouldn’t trade every godsdamn piece of code in this system to undo it. Non-citizens may be worthless, but they didn’t deserve to die!”

There’s silence again, thick, buzzing, like the moment before a wire snaps. I feel a tiny piece of regret for that last statement.

Finally, Ash exhales. “If she’s really gone, then something doesn’t add up. I just tried, and I can still feel her, Kael. I’m still getting big vibes, you hear me? She can’t be dead.”

My gaze flicks back to the image of the anomaly, pulsing like a heartbeat. For once, I don’t argue. “Yeah,” I mutter, voice dropping low. “I know.”

He doesn’t ask how. He just hangs up, leaving me with a line of static.

21

GameKross

Playlist: Aftermath - Caravan Palace

Lyra

I wake to noise.

It’s not the quiet hum of DreamNet, but movement: laughter, boots pounding on pavement, and music humming somewhere in the distance.

I pick myself up off the cobblestone, cobblestone that’s warm instead of cold. Except it isn’t cobblestone, just an augmented reality of a ground that glitches under me. It’s flickering between a damp Parisian street and circuit grids. My breath is ragged, lungs on fire, pulse still heightened from fear of deletion.

When I finally stand tall, I almost laugh at the spectacular world unfolding around me.

GameNet.

GameNet is the most addictive and beloved underground server in the city. Everything here is louder, sharper and less curated. GameNet doesn’t cradle you the way DreamNet does, it throws you into the deep end and waits to see if you swim. It’s a perfect blend of wanton hedonism and brutal reckoning.

Every month, the system loads a new world simulation: a city, a future decade, a war, or a mythological past. Edo-period Japan. New York during Prohibition. The Fall of Rome. Sometimes even re-creations of ancient myths or fictional fantasy worlds. This month is obviously Paris in the 1960s. There is usually some type of quest or battle, but it’s an open map world where you decide your own fate. There are two basic rules:

No magic can be used for gameplay

If you are killed in-game, you cannot return until the next month’s game change

Of course, I would land here.

Giant holoboards give a nod to the creator, Dax Kross, while still maintaining the look and feel of the streets of Paris. GameNet was built by someone young. Someone reckless enough to think a system like this would stay free.

They say Dax was barely out of his teens when he built it, a brilliant U21, absurdly wealthy before he could legally drink.

Another prodigy who coded like time bent around him, who believed games were the purest form of truth and the harshest drop from reality. VikkCorp bought GameNet from him, making him an instant billionaire. They polished it, monetized it, but the bones are still his and players still pay homage.

GameNet still carries his fingerprints: hidden pathways that loop time when they shouldn’t, NPCs that remember things across the monthly resets, clock cycles that drag or jump without warning. Rumors ripple through the underground that he didn’t just build this place, that he injected his magic into it. Another casualty of StarFell. Rebels say he can step sideways through time, rewind mistakes, change outcomes before they happen. A time trickster. A KairoShifter.

VikkCorp allows GameNet to continue solely to watch and analyze U21 behavior while inside. Which means either I’m very lucky to be here or trapped exactly where someone wanted me to land.

I begin walking, scanning the crowded street as players rush past me. No one looks twice at me because I’m already immersed as an avatar. In GameNet, your “skin” or your “drip” is currency.

I can do this. Maybe I can hang out in-game until this blows over. Play, get killed and it will kick me out. Back to my bed, back to life.

I round the street corner and catch a glimpse of my image reflected in a passing shop window. My avatar adjusts instantly, the game draping me in the look of the era, only sharpened, sexed-up by the system’s taste for spectacle. I’m poured in sleek black cigarette pants, cropped just above the ankle, paired with a sheer, form-fitting turtleneck that clings to my skin like smoke. A cropped leather jacket hangs loose over my shoulders.

The game leaves my hair long, messy in a way that’s intentional, like I’ve just rolled out of an artist’s bed. My eyes are framed in thick liner, cat-eyed, lips lacquered in what I like to call, “Come fuck me red,” that feels more vixen than beauty queen.