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His free hand comes up to cup my jaw, thumb brushing over my cheekbone. “My fierce Omega.”

“I’m not fierce. I’m pragmatic.”

Kain laughs. “Okay, give me a few hours to scrub the data of anything that compromises our operation. Then you can blow this shit up.”

I survey our living room. Blood stains the floor and furniture. There’s a dent in the wall and a body to be dealt with.

These people went to a lot of work to make the Dusk Protocol archive disappear.

Now, we’ll make sure it never can.

24

My left heel strikes the blue panel dead center, and the strike zone on the screen flashes green. Six perfect hits in the sequence.

Seven.

Eight.

The platform thrums under me, nine panels arranged in a grid, each one flashing its color in rapid succession.

White. Blue. Amber. White. Blue. White. Amber. White. Blue.

I hit them all.

Sweat runs down the back of my neck, soaking into the collar of my white tee and weighing down the sponsor patches along my sleeve.

By the next landing, my calves burn like someone replaced the muscle with hot iron, and my thighs shake hard enough that I have to catch my balance at the hips, hands hovering at my sides, loose and ready.

No grip. No buttons. No controllers. Just my feet and the floor and the sequence burning through my brain faster than I can process it.

Above the stage, the giant screen blares my numbers in real time.

Accuracy: 98.4%

Combo counter: 43

Score: 587,422

BunnyGlitch sits at third on the leaderboard, two spots behind NeonVex and one behind ZeroError.

The names cycle through the sidebar while the giant screen tracks my run, and the crowd noise swells with each perfect hit.

“Go, BunnyGlitch!” someone shouts from the front row. “I love you!”

I don’t look at the crowd. Looking at the crowd is how you miss a panel.

The bunny-eared headphones sit warm and tight over my skull, the bass from the game track thumping through the foam. My bunny-nose mask fits snugly across my nose and mouth, hot and damp from my labored breathing.

The sequence shifts with a beat drop, and the pattern on the grid changes. Faster now. Diagonal crosses. Two-step chains that require a pivot on the center panel.

My right foot slides across the amber square, holding the sensor for the full beat count. One. Two. Three. Release.

Left foot plants on white. Right foot follows to blue. Pivot. Slide to amber again.

Hold.

The crowd noise builds. Someone pounds the railing in time with the beat. The combo counter hits fifty, and a ripple goes through the audience.