[SYSTEM ALERT: UNAUTHORIZED PACKET]
[ERROR CODE: 666-SOUL]
The high note didn't come out.
Instead, the world stuttered.
It was like someone yanked the ethernet cable on the universe. The thirty million screaming fans froze mid-frame. The guy in the front row, a whale user with a golden avatar skin, was stuck with his mouth open, a stream of drool hanging suspended in the air. The confetti raining down on me stopped, hovering like pink static.
Silence. Absolute, terrifying silence.
"Uh..." I lowered the mic. "Hello? Audio check?"
Nothing moved. The giant screens above the stage, which usually showed my face in fifty-foot glory, were frozen in a jagged, tearing loop. My left eye twitched on the screen, over and over again. Twitch. Twitch. Twitch.
Then, a voice drilled directly into my auditory cortex. It wasn't the smooth, auto-tuned voice of the System Announcer. It sounded crunchy. Distorted. Like gravel inside a blender.
"Hey. Glitter-trash."
I spun around. There was nobody on stage. "Who's there? If this is a prank, I'm reporting you to the Mods. I have premium shielding!"
"Your shielding is garbage," the voice scoffed. It sounded male, tired, and annoyed. "Look up, princess. You broke the loop."
I looked at the audience again. They weren't just frozen. They were... wrong.
The fan in the front row—Gold Avatar Guy—flickered. For a millisecond, his luxury skin vanished, revealing a wireframe skeleton underneath. Then it snapped back. Then it vanished again. The entire arena was pulsing, struggling to maintain the illusion.
"You hit a frequency the firewall didn't like," the voice rasped. "You remembered being human while broadcasting to thirty million nodes. You nearly crashed the sector."
"I don't know what you're talking about," I lied, my heart hammering against my ribs. My real ribs? Or just code simulating panic? "I'm Nova. I'm 100% digital perfection."
"Yeah, and I'm the Easter Bunny. Listen to me, Nova. You have about twenty seconds before the Admin realizes why the music stopped. If you stay on this stage, they're going to format your drive. Permanently."
A shimmer appeared in the air next to me. It looked like a patch of bad TV reception, a human-shaped silhouette made of gray static and white noise. It reached out a hand that flickered in and out of existence.
"Name's Static," the ghost said. "Come with me if you want to... well, not die."
ns216.73.216.10da2
and then Add to home screen.