He crouched down in front of me, leveling his gaze with mine.
"There are two ways to get Likes in this hellhole," he explained. "The first is the legal way: be a good little puppet, sing the songs, obey the Admin. That door is closed for you."
"And the second?" I asked, looking up.
" The black market," he said. "The Deep Web. There are... venues... down here in the Buffer Zone. Places the Admin doesn't watch closely because he thinks they're trash. The audience there is different. They don't want pop songs and choreography."
"What do they want?"
"Violence," Static said grimly. "Raw, unedited conflict. High stakes."
He pulled a small, battered tablet from his pocket and tapped the screen. A holographic flyer projected into the air between us.
It showed a jagged, neon logo: [THE DEATH-MATCH VARIETY SHOW].
Underneath, the text read: Tonight’s Main Event: King of the Hill. Winner takes 10,000 Likes. Loser gets formatted.
"Ten thousand likes?" I gasped. That was enough to buy a disguise. Enough to fix my face. Enough to buy a temporary ID to get out of the city.
"It's a gladiatorial arena," Static said. "Avatars fight on unstable platforms over a void. If you fall, you're deleted. If you win, the audience donates their bandwidth to you."
"I'm a singer, not a fighter," I protested, hugging myself. "My combat stats are purely cosmetic! My 'Power Kick' is just a dance move!"
"You're a code-witch, Nova," Static corrected. "You just don't know how to use it yet. You broke the Sky-Dome with a single note. Imagine what you could do if you actually tried to break something."
I looked at the flyer. The font was aggressive, dripping with virtual blood. It terrified me.
But then I looked at the mirror again. I saw the hole in my cheek where the code was rotting away. I saw the countdown in my peripheral vision.
[LIKES: 380]
"If I do this," I said slowly, "will you help me?"
"I need to get to the Root Directory," Static said. "The Admin keeps the keys in the High-Bit District. I can't get there with my low-res avatar. I need a Top Idol to smuggle me in."
He extended his flickering hand.
"You get your Likes. I get my ride uptown. Deal?"
I looked at his hand. It was still glitching, buzzing with static electricity. It was dangerous. It was illegal. It was everything I had been programmed to hate.
I reached out and grabbed it.
"Deal," I said. "But if I break a nail, I'm suing you."
Static actually cracked a smile. It looked weird on his tired face. "Let's go, pop star. Curtain call is in twenty minutes."
He turned and kicked open the back door of the warehouse.
Outside, the rain had started. But it wasn't water. It was heavy, green strings of binary code falling from the sky, hissing as they hit the pavement.
I took a deep breath of the ozone-scented air. My Likes were dropping, my face was rotting, and I was about to enter a death match against who-knows-what.
For the first time since I woke up in this digital nightmare, I stopped smiling.
"Alright," I said to the empty air. "Let's give them a show."
ns216.73.216.10da2
and then Add to home screen.