My knees hit the pavement hard enough to chip a bone, but instead of pain, a yellow progress bar appeared over my kneecaps: [CALCULATING IMPACT PHYSICS... 99%].
I stayed crouched, gasping for air. The transition from the Sky-Dome to... wherever this was... hadn't been smooth. It felt like being squeezed through a straw. The 8K clarity of the concert hall was gone. Here, everything was dark, grainy, and smelled like burnt plastic.
"Move," Static hissed, dragging me up by my elbow.
"Wait," I pulled back, slapping his hand away. My idol instincts kicked in automatically. You don't let a stranger touch the merchandise without a waiver. "My interface is lagging. I can't see my mini-map."
I tapped the air in front of me, trying to summon my settings menu. It flickered, ghostly and transparent, then dissolved into static.
[ERROR: SERVER DISCONNECT]
[REGION: BUFFER ZONE - SECTOR 0]
[CONNECTION SPEED: 14.4 KBPS]
"Buffer Zone?" I choked out. "No, no, no. This is a mistake. I have Platinum Status. I don't render in the Buffer Zone. My textures aren't compatible with this resolution!"
The Buffer Zone was where the failed uploads went. The background characters. The NPCs who didn't have enough charisma to get a name. It was the digital equivalent of a landfill.
"Your Platinum Status just became a target on your back," Static growled. He was already moving, his hooded figure blending into the shadows. "And stop shouting. You're drawing aggro."
I looked around. We were in an alleyway, but not a realistic one. The brick walls were flat textures with no depth. The dumpsters were just gray cubes labeled "TRASH_CONTAINER_04." Above us, the sky wasn't a dome of stars; it was a low, oppressive ceiling of gray fog that pulsed rhythmically, like a heartbeat.
A low, mechanical growl rumbled from the darkness behind us.
It sounded like a chainsaw gargling gravel.
I froze. My threat-detection subroutine finally loaded, flashing a red border around my vision.
[ENEMY DETECTED: SWEEPER UNIT (VER. 2.0)]
[ADVICE: RUN.]
"What is that?" I whispered, shrinking back against the flat wall.
"Antivirus," Static said, his voice tight. "They sniff out unauthorized code. Since you just ghosted a main event, you're practically a walking virus."
Two shapes emerged from the fog. They looked like Dobermans, but wrong. Their bodies were jagged polygons, and instead of fur, their skin was shifting, scrolling code. Where their eyes should have been, there were just empty sockets glowing with red command prompts.
They didn't bark. They emitted a high-pitched screech—the sound of a dial-up connection amplified to a scream.
One of the Sweepers lunged.
I screamed, throwing my hands up. I waited for the bite. I waited for the sharp pain of deletion.
It didn't happen.
I peeked through my fingers. The dog was frozen in mid-air, mouth open, suspended two feet off the ground. It was vibrating violently, like a video game character stuck in a wall.
Glitch... Glitch... Glitch...
"Lag switch," Static said casually, stepping around the frozen beast. He held his hand out, his fingers twitching as if he were typing on an invisible keyboard. "I overloaded its connection. It's processing the last second of time over and over again. It’ll crash in about ten seconds."
The second dog snarled and charged.
Static didn't move. He didn't even look at it. He just snapped his fingers.
The second dog vanished. No explosion, no body. It just blinked out of existence, replaced by a tiny, floating error icon: [FILE NOT FOUND].
"Whoa," I breathed. My internal fan-girl subroutine tried to applaud, but I squashed it. "How did you do that? That's Admin-level code."
"That's sloppy coding on their part," Static muttered, grabbing my wrist again. "I just told the server the dog was a duplicate file. The system cleaned it up for me. Now, are you coming, or do you want to wait for the first one to finish buffering?"
The frozen dog was starting to twitch faster, its jaw snapping shut and reopening in a blur.
"I'm coming," I said, scrambling after him.
ns216.73.216.10da2
and then Add to home screen.